|
Title: Let Me Start to Fade Away Author: seraphcelene Email: seraphcelene[at]yahoo[dot]com Spoilers: AU during Anne Rating: PG Archiving: House of Leaves. Everyone else please ask. A/N: This is an extension of the drabble Undertow. Summary courtesy of Emily Dickinson. Written to Lonely Lonely by Feist. Mucho thanks to Minim Calibre for the beta. Feedback: Is like air and highly addictive. In other words, yes, please. Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all related characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the Warner Company, UPN, et al. I’m just taking them out for a little exercise. Summary: Three times, 'tis said, a sinking man comes up to face the skies. Dedication: Written with affection for chrisleeoctaves. one. “How did you find me?” She smiles and the sky blossoms with pink and gold. She writes her name in the sand with her toes. Her eyes, a conflicted tangle of gold and green, still wink when she thinks of him. Twitches behind her eyelids. “If I were blind,” he says, “I would see you.” This is the meaning of bliss: Angel’s arms around her waist and the sun warm on her face. It fills her up, leaves her breathless as the rush of tide tugging at the sand beneath her feet. She ignores the way it washes away her name. She feels it, yearning as big as eternity, from her belly beneath his hands, from her heart, thudding against his chest. “Stay with me,” she murmurs, head tilted back, the line of her throat angled towards the caress of his lips. Angel whispers “Forever” against her hair and it is the sound of bridal white and giddy, laughing children. Innocence in the dusk and destiny that has nothing to do with slaughter. Angel’s arms tighten around her waist, a band of muscle and bone that speaks of more than just the surf and the pastel colors at the edge of the sky. The sharp scent of salt and water rise with the wind as the sky darkens. He whispers against her hair a siren’s wail of anguish. Anne slaps the alarm beside her bed, sighs at the sharp crack it makes in the quiet room. She peers through make-up encrusted eyes at the mangled alarm. Her shift begins at eight-thirty. She struggles from ropes of damp, scratchy cotton, heavy-limbed and sluggish with exhaustion. Staggers to the bathroom, flinching as her sleepy-warm feet glide across cold linoleum. In the shower, beneath the icy blast of water, Anne recalls the wistful sun and the insistent tug of the ocean, the scent of salt in the air and arms heavy around her waist In the shower she pretends that she does not cry. Head bent, back bowed, Anne tells herself that it is only the soap in her eyes. “You look like shit,” Mitch barks, watching as she knots and double-knots the apron around her waist. Anne smiles, a curl of lip over even white teeth. “Thanks. Not really sleeping well.” Mitch turns away and then half way back again. Watches her from the corners of his eyes, scratches his head, and finally clears his throat. “Make sure the kids at table three don’t slither outta here without paying.“ At the end of nine long hours, her hair carries the stink of the deep fryer, and there are stains on the front of her uniform. With the sun careening desperately through the windows Anne races the falling dusk. The hum of approaching night crawls through her veins. When the sun falls, the palms of her hands began to itch. Restlessness crackles down her spine until she is nearly running. Anne wonders if they can smell the power on her beneath the aroma of hamburger. She locks herself into her apartment, swallows the sleeping pills that her body burns too fast, and wearily undoes the buttons on her uniform. Lets it lie where it falls and climbs half-naked into the unmade bed. She misses him, Angel. Misses the clasp of his arms and the caress of his lips. two. “How did you find me?” “If I were blind I would see you.” They watch the sun sink into the distant horizon, a promise of gold, pink, and blue. She leans back into Angel’s arms, leans into the freedom of miles and miles of ocean and sand. “Stay with me,” she says, yearning thick in her voice. “Forever,” Angel replies into the tangle of her hair. “That’s the whole point. I’ll never leave.” A promise and a lie as new and as old as truth. It beats in the back of her throat and she wishes that it were real, knows in her heart, somewhere beyond this moment, that all of this is a dream. That his hands beneath hers are not there and that her heart is broken still. Angel curves around her, cuddles her close, and whispers into her ear the thudding bass of betrayal. Anne wakes disoriented by the boom and thud, music from the apartment upstairs, and frantically wipes away the sweat and tears staining her cheeks. She inhales deeply, her lungs straining for the scent of the ocean, and chokes on the breath. Chokes on the stale city air and the sobs that rise and lodge in her throat. On the table beside the bed, the clock still rests broken on splintered legs. She’d forgotten to replace it. In the tiny kitchen, the dishes rattle with the reverb. Tinkle and clank with a rhythm she can’t quite make out beyond the homogeneous thud of too much bass. Across the room the face of the VCR shouts two forty-five in neon green. “Godamnit!” Anne throws aside the blankets, trips out of the bed and grabs the broom from its lonely corner. Bangs at the ceiling hard enough to dislodge the plaster. Cracks splinter across the ceiling and she turns from the dust floating into her eyes. The music dies for a moment, an insolent question, before soaring ever louder. Anne closes her eyes, her hand pressed to her heart. She stands in the center of her tiny room and shakes, squeezes the broom handle until it snaps. The pieces fit perfectly jagged and perfectly sharp in her hand. Some habits are a gift of blood and bone, unbreakable. “Shit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Anne stares at the remnants in her hand, fragments and splinters to be shoved into a cupboard under the sink. Too hard to sleep and too early to rise with normal people. Happy Meals on legs she remembers someone once saying. The night calls to her bones, and she turns her back to the blinds hanging precariously from the window. Ignores the shrieks and cries that rise periodically above the hum of the city. Anne turns on the TV, a different sort of window. A tiny view of the world in thirteen-inch black and white: Rer-runs of I Love Lucy, the national anthem, and static after four a.m. She doesn’t remember falling asleep, doesn’t remember the heavy, inevitable sink of her eyelids. Remembers only blinking and the beach. In her sleep, Anne smiles. Anne wakes to the streaming of light stealing in through the crooked slates on her apartment window. The clock on the VCR says that she is late for work, and suddenly there’s no time for a shower or to even brush her hair. She runs all the way to the diner, struggling to breathe around the lump in her throat, straining to see through the prick of tears in her eyes. She insists that it’s only the wind. Mitch doesn’t say anything when she finally dashes in, ignores the tear tracks and apologies. Just watches as she knots and double-knots her apron. She showers in the evenings now. Shaves twenty minutes off her morning and spends the extra time in bed. Anne stares at herself through the steam fogging the bathroom mirror. A vaguely familiar girl with brown hair and hollow eyes. Too thin, collarbone too sharp, her shoulders and knees are painfully pointed angles. Her fingertips skim the newly-concave hollow of her belly, the hipbones pressed tightly against the skin. There’s no softness there, in her body, nothing that is like the girl she once was, nothing soft or rounded. Nothing that might indicate that once she was loved. Nothing beyond the pink of her mouth and the unimpressive swell of her breasts. Anne used to get to work early. Hustle a free meal before her shift started. Now, skipping breakfast means that she can sleep longer. The dinner crowd reminds her too much of someone she used to be and so she never stays. Anne turns away from her image in the mirror; bundled in her towel she lies down in bed. Her hair is wet on the pillow. three. “How did you find me?” “If I were blind I would see you.” The sun is still setting, and the tide rushes over her feet, pulling away the sand. She still feels the tugging in her bones, the pull of the unseen moon in the sunny skies. Beneath her hands, around her waist, against her back, she feels Angel. “Stay with me,” she begs. Stars creep across the dusty sky and she feels a vague press and prick at her throat. Shaking her head against the buzzing in her ears, Anne tries to settle back into Angel’s arms but the angle is all wrong. There is a sharpness between her breasts. She doesn’t look down. Afraid of what she‘ll find if she does. Anne dreams of Angel and this beach, the surf washing across their toes and rinsing her name from the sand. She likes to image that one day Angel will ask her to say, and she likes to imagine her answer. Leaning into her neck, brushing his lips across her ear, Angel whispers “Forever. That’s the whole point. I’ll never leave.” It is a promise trimmed with Spanish lace, a star glinting lonely in the twilight sky. “Not even if you kill me,” he says, and the shore collapses beneath her. Anne sits up in bed, tears in her eyes, and sobs, broken sounds that tear from her chest and will not stop. She cries her broken heart, bitter, onto the blankets in her lap. Shivers and cries until she vomits beside the bed. Ignores the beeping alarm on her bedside table and the sour smell permeating the room. Later, she ignores the pounding on her door. The sound of the landlord shouting her name through the door: she’s too loud, the neighbors are complaining. A moment of sand and sun and Angel’s arms encircling her waist, chin dipped into the curve of her throat: "If I were blind, I would see you." He dissolves, blown away by the salty breeze and the sharp rise of guilt. Angel waits in the waves, she knows. “Forever, that’s the whole point. Even if you kill me.” Her eyes are dry, itchy, burning, raw. The world is glazed, too sharp and too bright. All angles and sharp edges. It is hard to see. The trip to the ocean doesn’t take long. She sinks into the sand, hugs her knees to her chest and stares into the soothing blackness of night water. Once, he read Hamlet to her, and she imagines herself as Ophelia beneath the waves with lungs full of salt and froth. She killed him. Slid a sword between his ribs for the honor of her kind and to save the world, again. Sitting there, on the beach, smothered by the scent of brine and rot, Anne watches the tide until she can't resist the pull of the moon. Forever calls to her in the crash of waves against the shore. Dawn crests, a gentle lightening, a blush of color on the horizon. She dreams of Angel waiting for her in the sand. Forever, and his arms around her waist. The water is cold against her ankles, and the tide rushes and tugs and pulls. Her throat fills up with the flavor of salt and the sharpness of the sea. On the shore she has left a warning, two words written in the sand: Buffy, and beside it, Angel. end |