1. Song at Sunset
She does not cry, nor does she allow herself one last look. Just turns her back on the smoldering battlefield and walks away. Her footsteps seem too loud, crunch crunch crunch on the crisped grass. So much quiet, silence that stretches on and on. There is nothing to fill her ears except memory; the sound of her friends' screams still echo in her mind.
The sun is setting now, the sky is darkening and the only illumination is the still-glowing fires here and there on the ground.
If she was a better person, she tells herself, she would have stayed to bury the dead. But there is no point. There is possibly no way to tell her friends' bodies from the charred, blackened ones of demons.
But she is strong. She is steel. So she turns her back, bloody and bruised, and walks away. Searches for that next battle.
2. Camps of Green
"Are you here to help us? Can you?" they ask.
They clutch at each other, these people, both family and strangers alike. Look at her as if she might be their salvation. After all, she did walk out of the largest demon battle yet, limping and alive.
But she can't help these people. No one can. She couldn't save her friends, her sister, with all her will and strength behind her; how can she help these lost, nearly dead survivors? All her hope for humanity is gone.
Her face is blank when she shakes her head. "I'm just a girl," she says. Nothing greater, not any more. What good is Slayer speed and strength, now?
She stays in one of their green, army surplus tents for one night. Long enough to rest her body, if not her mind.
3. Ashes of Soldiers
He finds her. She should have known he would.
"I followed the rumors of a girl who'd walked out of the demon fire," he explains. He tries to pull her close to him, offer comfort, perhaps. But there is nothing left. No love, no comfort. She stiffens and pulls away.
"I didn't walk out of the fire," she says, staring off into the night. She can see fire several hills over. Another camp taken by the horde. She doesn't even wonder anymore why she can't bring herself to care.
"Buffy, you're alive," he says. "You're here ..."
"I barely fought," she says quietly. "I got knocked out, and when I woke up they'd moved on. There was nothing left. No one alive. Just ... ashes."
But she's strong, and she does not cry.
4. Thoughts
The land has been ruined, the grass all dead or burned away, no matter where they go. She follows him because if she did not, he would only drag her. She does not speak. Does not have the energy to argue.
She can only think.
Dawn will never fall in love, or go to college, or have a career, or marry, or have children.
No one will, because there is no future, not anymore.
The demon horde has spread like a plague, leaving nothing but death and pain in their wake. They pass a sign that says, 'Welcome to Colorado', and Buffy thinks maybe she should ask where they're going. But she does not. Does not want to know. It doesn't matter to her.
5. Years of the Modern
"What is this place?" she asks.
Angel smiles sadly. "So now you've decided to talk?"
She shrugs. Looks around. "Some kind of government ... place?"
"A facility, built in the late fifties. A type of bunker, for the military higher-up types to take cover if there'd been a nuclear holocaust." He strains and closes the steel door behind him, seals them inside. Buffy's reminded of a giant metal tomb.
"So why aren't they here?" she says. She wraps her arms around herself. She's starting to feel the cold, which is odd. She's been numb for weeks.
Angel shrugs in answer to her question. "Outdated. Probably forgotten. There's sure to be rations here, though. Food. Water."
She gives him a look. "From the fifties?"
"Sure," he says, nodding. "Made to last for years. Could probably be good for a few hundred years."
She turns away. "You can't live on human food."
He's quiet for a while. Then says, "I'll think of something."
6. The Sobbing of the Bells
She runs her hands down the door, the cold steel feeling almost hot to her.
"I feel like maybe ... maybe I should be out there. That I should care enough to ..." She trails off.
"What?" His hands run down her back.
"I'm not supposed to give up," she whispers. "But I ... I don't see the point any more."
He sighs. "There isn't a point. Someone once told me that heroes, true heroes, don't stop fighting, even when there's no hope left. No reason to continue. Because it's the right thing to do."
The laugh that escapes from her throat is cracked, brittle. As cold as she is inside. "I guess we aren't heroes after all, Angel," she says.
His hands move to her arms, hold tight to her as if he thinks she might slip away. "I would still fight for you."
She pulls out of his grip and turns around. Looks up and faces him. Sees him for the first time since this began. "Why?" she asks, and her voice breaks like her heart.
"Because I love you."
7. The Untold Want
He's not gentle, and she does not want him to be. She wants to hurt, to bleed. To break beneath his hands and teeth and cock. His kiss makes her ache, throb for him the way she never has before. He makes her feel, and now that the numbness is fading she feels a hole opening up inside her. It is massive and hollow, a gaping wound right through her soul. She scrambles for him, pulls him close and pushes him inside her, trying to fill herself with the only thing she has left.
"Please," she says. Begs. Cries out as each touch bruises, each blunt bite is enough to make her bleed. Still, it's not enough.
Her name, her blood is on his lips, and she's hot, ready to boil over.
He covers her body like an animal, possessive and flexing above her, devouring her mouth while he fucks her. No love words this time, no hint of tenderness. Just need, and passion, and blood. Love cut down to the sum of its parts.
After, she feels as broken as when she walked away from the burned out shells of what had once been her friends and family. This time, she lets herself cry.
8. So Long
She doesn't allow to think of how they will survive. She lets him feed from her, but knows eventually it won't be enough. He will be too weak, too hungry to stop. He's a demon, after all, and she's never forgotten.
The only thing that keeps her pushing him away now when she feels herself slipping away, is the thought of him being alone and full of guilt at her death.
But then there is no wrong anymore. No right. Only pain and sex and need.
She wonders if he will turn her. They could leave this place, visit the little camps of broken humans, take away their pain forever. It's almost a welcome thought, to be rid of her soul. To lose her pain.
She knows Angel is thinking about it. He hurts with her when she cries. Holds onto her desperately when she wonders how much she is to blame for the whimpers the world makes now. He's hidden any weapons they have, watches her like a hawk. Afraid she'll decide death is a better existence than this.
There's a feverish gleam to his gaze when he comes to her tonight, and she knows he's decided something.
She looks up into his face and guides him inside her. Feels her eyes fill with tears as he begins to move, as gentle as their first time.
END
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Title and headings taken from Songs of Parting, from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which are hopelessly out of order and incomplete, suiting my purposes.
Rating: Hard R
Disclaimer: Characters belong to people other than me.
Warnings: Het. Dark and angsty. Seriously.
Summary: Buffy finally met an apocalypse she couldn't stop.
Notes: Written for Chrislee in leni_ba's B/A ficathon. Chrislee asked for angst. I think I filled the requirement. (It's my first B/A fic, be gentle?) Thank you to ladycat777 for the first read-through, and to beamer242 for the beta reading.