FIC: Ashes-This Isn't Hell

[Mad Hamlet <Mad-Hamlet@xxxxxxx>]

Disclaimer: All this belongs to Joss Whendon and Mutant Enemy Inc.
(Grrr..arrgh.) Except for the Crow stuff, that belongs to J.O. Barr. 

You're made of my rib or baby 
You're made of my sin 
And I can't tell where 
Your lust ends 
And where your love begins 

I didn't want to hurt you baby 
I didn't want to hurt you 
I didn't want to hurt you 
But you're pretty when you cry 

And the moon gives me 
Permission and I enter 
Through her eyes 
She's losing her virginity and 
All her will to compromise 

I didn't want to hurt you baby 
I didn't want to hurt you 
I didn't want to hurt you 
But you're pretty when you cry 

I didn't want to fuck you baby 
I didn't want to fuck you 
I didn't want to fuck you 
But you're pretty 
When you're mine 

I didn't really love you baby 
I didn't really love you 
I didn't really love you 
But I'm pretty when I lie 

You hurt me baby 
I hurt you baby

If you knew how much I love you 
You would run away 
But when I treat you bad 
It always makes you want to stay 

I didn't want to hurt you baby 
I didn't want to hurt you baby 
I didn't want to hurt you baby 
I didn't want to hurt you baby. 

-Vast 'I Didn't Want to Hurt You Baby'

			

Ashes, Ashes They All Fell Down

Part the Fourth
This Isn't Hell, But You Can See It From Here



It flew overhead, with the moon at it's back and the earth underneath; and
if, as it did fly, It noticed the evil, the demons and the other night
children that were free and about it didn't care. If It saw the vampire
feeding on a young girl, who's last wish was that she had listened to her
mother and not snuck out of her room, then It did nothing. If it noticed the
beastial shouts coming from an alley it flew overhead, and how the end of that
alley was just a little bit darker than the rest of the night and how the
unmistakeable sounds of tearing flesh, and chewing, and swallowing, came from
that maw It did nothing either.

It did not hold that duty. It did not save the living, It avenged the Dead.
Those were the rules, laid down by Itself far before the dawn of time. It's
reasons and justifications of It's own. Maybe It was that way so there would
be equal oppurtuinity for both Chaos and Order and the balance would be
maintained. Maybe It made these rules at the behest of a greater power, at the
behest of the Watchmaker, or maybe it was a cold, ancient power that honestly
did not care and merely went about the motions of it's duty. 

Or maybe it was wiser than that and knew it could not save everything and
settled for doing what it could. How human of it then. On the other hand maybe
it just preferred the taste of dead meat when it was feeling peckish. Either
way, if It noticed, it did nothing. As it had always done and as it always
would do. 

All it noticed was her, It's charge, messenger, avatar, agent and slave.
Watched as she hugged herself through her new clothes. Watched as she reached
into a jacket pocket and discovered the small wad of cash secreted there by
the witches. Watch as she turned around to return to their
house...stopped..shrugged her shoulders and continued on to the bus station. 

It watched her pay for a ticket. It watched her get on the bus and it saw her
open a window through which it quickly darted and perched on the luggage rack
within in a dark corner. And if she herself had noticed any of the death,
evil, rage, pain and hate that had surrounded her as she had walked, she
didn't do anything either. 

But It doubted that she had.


She sat on the bus and waited for it to pull away from the curb. She hadn't
noticed any of the other passengers boarding the bus, she couldn't get out of
her own mind. She didn't want too. When the young man in the snappy buisness
suit sat across from her and eyed her with an apprecitive eye she didn't
notice. When an old woman, carrying many suitcases and hobbling with a cane
nearly tripped and fell in the aisle only to be saved at the last minute by
the young man, she didn't see or hear. Her face was turned away, looking out
the window waiting for the bus to start and she could begin doing what she
really wanted.

Vengence.

Vengence is a tricky master. It supercedes right and wrong, overwhelms the
question of morals, it is unto itself a closed circle. It's own begining and
it's own ending. Closed, isolated alone. She was all of these things and
locked within as well. The pain of memories, all with a hundred sharp teeth,
fed on her insides and when the horrors of the endings grew bearable they
would switch and loving memories, good memories would come to the fore and for
all their happieness they had more viscious blades than the pain for they told
her what she had lost. What had been undone, what had been stolen, destroyed,
twisted...consumed.

And now, on this bus, this moving can on wheels with people, people, PEOPLE
stuffed inside like fish in sardine can. All of them breathing, pushing,
grunting, standing making things hot and terrible and there was no way for her
rage to get out!

'The easiest way.' She decided 'To go insane is too look on the face of every
person you walk by and realise they all have the same wants, hopes, dreams,
fears, pain, joys and struggles that you do.'
With that in mind she opened her eyes and gazed out on black Sunnydale.
'Easier to look at something fallen, than it is too look at the living.'

The bus moved away from the curb with a jerk.

It's spread it's wings for a moment to maintain balance. The slick steel of
the rack slid between It's talons easily making remaining upright a bit of a
challenge. It didn't like that and so reality accomodated It and in momentsIt
could remain upright easily simply because It wished it so.

Cocking It's head to the side it looked down on the people. It tasted the
air. Much darkness was about, and pain. Pain from the living was diffrent from
that of pain from the dead. It had less purchase on the living's minds and
hearts. That pain could be challenged, could be faced and defeated. If they
were so inclined. It tasted the air again and drank in what was always there
within the living.

Hope. It burned inside them no matter the circumstances, eternal. It could
not understand how this was possible but it had accepted it long ago. That was
one of the reasons that, while It grew bored with these mortals and their
plodding little flicker lives, It would never fail in it's duties to their
dead. 

That was it's role after all. Not to care, but to do.

As the bus moved her eyes couldn't help but see what had become of her home.
She didn't really want to, everything within not occupied with trying not to
scream aloud, told her that looking would be a bad idea. The outside, the
depths of Sunnydale passed before her and she could not look away. Like a
traffic accident with twisted metal and steaming engines exposed to the world.
Like a traffic accident from underneath which a large pool of liquid was
spreading, darkening the road and you couldn't be sure that all of it just
came from the destroyed cars. 

The bus turned a corner and her eyes were drawn to the Bronze. It was still
there, in fact if not in spirit. She could make out shadows moving around the
entrance and even though they were only visible for a moment before the bus
moved past, she knew they were not human. 	

The bus moved on.

As it turned a corner the gutted remains of the high school came into view.
Though weathered by time and ruin, she still could see the path. The path that
lead to a specific bench, where a specific event had occured. An event that
marked a begining.


"But aren't you hanging out with Cordelia?" A redhead has asked once upon a
time.

"I can't do both?" The blonde sitting beside her had asked.

"Not legally."


Her chest hitched and she had to swallow down a sob. The back of her eyes
began to tingle, a steady, annoying itching burning feeling. She fought
against the impulse, the need to let go; thankfully fate accomodated her and
the remains of Sunnydale High swung out of site as the bus turned another
corner. 

To face the new SunnyDale High school. 
The walls might have been built within the last three years but already they
seemed to sag with age. Bright colored pastel walls were defaced with layers
and layers of spraypaint. The bushes that lined the path up to it's front
door were twisted and bare. The door itself was locked. With heavy chains and
padlocks even she could make out from this far distance. The bus moved on and
Sunnydale's new school was lost in the dark.

Her eyes flickered over the road, the houses streaming past, the yards she
was begining to recognise. Again her breath, uneeded but there anyway, caught
in her throat. A weak croak worked it's way past her parted lips.

"No." She mouthed more than spoke. 

She found her voice. 

"Not this way. Please. Turn, change, move..please don't go this way." She
said in a hushed whisper but the driver didn't hear and wouldn't have cared
anyway.

A familar house zipped past, then another and another and she knew what was
coming.

'Close your eyes!' Her mind screamed. 'Close your eyes now!' Yet even with
her heart hammering away, even knowing about the repeated squeaks of 'no no
no' over and over again, she couldn't command her eyelids to shut, or her face
to turn away from the window.

It was worse then she could have imagined.

What had been the Summers household, what had been their own home..wasn't
anymore.

Warm light blazed from nearly every window casting a cheery, glow on the
even, cut grass of the front lawn. The bushes were carefully trimmed and the
front porch had been given a fresh coat of paint. From behind the closed
curtains she could make out the silioutes of two people holding hands. They
seemed to be flowing in front of the large picture window, spinning, dancing
to music she could not hear. 

> > From the top floor of the house a light switched on, maybe her ears were
deciving her, she shouldn't have been able to hear but...

A small piercing voice seemed to knife through the walls of the house, across
the space and into the constrictive, hot, bus just for her ears alone.

"Maaammmaaaa! Maaaaaammmaaa! I'm thirsty!! Mama? Can I get a cup of...." and
the voice grew dim as the bus moved past what had once been hers but wasn't
anymore. 

She covered her mouth with her hands, trying to muffle the sobs that were
wracking her body. Her home had been taken, not just left, empty and silent.
That would have been bad enough but it had been taken, stolen! And in her
place a family had found a home where, inside, they were comfortable, happy,
and safe. Things which should have been hers; a great swell of hate erupted
inside her guts and she half started to rise from her seat, to smash through
the window and take back her home. She started to rise up with her heart set
on murder. 

A quiet cry from It, for her ears alone, disuaded her from that mistake. She
hunched over in her seat, hands still firmly pressed again her mouth. Behind
her eyes the itching had grown to a screaming and she could feel the tears
begining to well up. Her hands pressed her lips against her teeth she could
feel the flesh tearing and begining to bleed from within.She knew if she began
to cry, she would begin to scream, and if she began to scream she would never
stop.

As if seized by a great hand she felt her head turning of it's own violition
to again stare out the window. Despite the tears along the edge of her vision
making things blurry she could make out what was before her clearly enough.

"May I say, you look truly radiant, Miss Willow. Having a baby agrees with
you." 

"Ah, and the proud papa, eh?" 

"Ah, not only am I an old Italian. I'm an old Gypsy, eh?" 

"Mario." The girl whispered, her hands were pressed against the glass as the
bus drove by the fire gutted remains of the italian resteraunt. Bare spikesof
blackened wood stabbed upward into the night sky like the ribs of an ancient
beast slaughtered and left to rot. The sign that had once glowed in the dark
inviting all to enter and feast hung disjointed and broken. The 'I' 'O' and
'S' were burned away leaving only the 'MAR' but it was enough to recognise. 

"Not Mario." The girl whispered, her breath fogging the window. She slid down
the glass into her seat, head bent over her knees, hands pressed to her face
as the final link to what she had known and loved was destroyed.

And as a new pain flared into life within it lent it's power to all the old
agonies and they reached a point. And inside her they blazed hotter and higher
than before and they fed and burned and devoured.
Something was destroyed within, something was eaten and something broke free.
Surging, rolling up from the darkness it screamed across her soul with the
fury of a tidal wave and in it's wake nothing was the same.

The young man across the aisle had been watching the strange girl seated on
the other side carefully. Yes she was attractive, very nice on they eyes
actually. Short, slim, a dark burnt hue of red hair that cascaded down just
below her shoulders. Her clothes were a bit somber but the figure to die for.
Despite all this he was getting somewhat nervous. He'd seen her trying to
muffle her cries and when she saw what was left of that resteraunt she had
fallen to pieces. She now lay on the two seats curled into a fetal position.
He could see her shoulders shaking and he figured she was crying. 
His heart panged in sympathy. 

'Well.' He thought. 'Nothing ventured nothing gained. Sides, maybe she'll
want a cup of coffee or something.'

"Miss?" He spoke quietly. "Miss are you okay?"

The redhead slowly lifted her face from her hands and looked in the direction
the voice had come from. She locked eyes with the man across from her and
watched his eyes widen in horror. The man scrambled back to the wall of the
bus. He had been wrong, she hadn't been crying.

She was laughing. 

She was laughing so hard that tears ran down her face and she could barely
keep her eyes open. Her cheecks were stretched to the point of splitting open,
her lips were pulled back revealing sharp, white teeth. 

"Me?" The redhead asked still laughing. "I'm fine! Can't you tell?"

Before his eyes her tears began to run turn slightly murky and were soon
bright red. 'Blood. His mind screamed at him. 'She's crying blood!' 

"I am the picture of health." The girl warbled teeth shining in the gloomy
confines of the bus. "Absolutly peachy! Did I mention that I'm peachy. Peachy
I tell you."

She sat up and leaned toward him, her whisper carried across the space
between them and struck with the force of a hammer. "Peachy."

The blood streamed down her face, from both eyes, in a long straight line
arcing over curved cheecks and around the lines marking the borders of her
strained smile. Then, to his mounting terror another line of blood worked it's
way from her upper eyelids and left a similar trail, directly opposite the
lower one, running up her forehead. 

"I'm smiling arn't?" She giggled. "I'm laughing. Laugh and the world laughs
with you, cry and the world laughs at you! Can't have that can we?"

She broke off into another fit of laughter as brigh blood gushed from her
lips coating them solid. A drop of blood in the corners of either side of her
mouth, defying all reality, rolled sideways across her face, extending,
twisting and corupting the natural smile of her laughing mouth. 

He gaped as she continue to laugh, either oblivious or not caring to what was
happening her. The blood leaking from her face seemed to drain the blood from
within and her flesh grew pale and white like carved marble before his eyes. 

"La..la..lady." He stuttered in a horrified whisper. "Y..your face!"

"She loved my face you know." The girl snapped her head around to lock himin
place with her glare. "We'd spend hours in bed together and she'd just run her
hands over my face so gently. Over and over, most of the time with the backof
her hand. Or she'd caress the line of my nose with her finger. If you ever
meet her you should ask her to do that for you, it feels great."

She snapped her fingers. "Wait. Sorry, you can't meet her. Why you ask?
Because she's dead. She's dead and gone and I somehow got left behind. I can't
quite figure out how that happened. We became dead at the same time you see
but... who knows. Maybe Heaven's behind on the paperwork?"
She giggled into her hand and the blood did not smear or run. 

Instead it began to grown darker and darker. In a few short seconds it was
midnight black and she looked like a hidious caractiture of a clown. A mask
was on her face now. Comedy, lighter of the twins of Drama. She wore Comedyon
her features but Tragedy feasted on her heart. 

"Yes." The redhead said nodding. "She's dead. But that's okay. I got left
behind and that's okay too. See..I got left behind for a reason. This
shouldn't have happened. To me, to her..to us. It was wrong. Wrong, wrong
wrongity wrong wrong wrong. But that's okay just like the other parts. Do you
know why?"

She peered at him intently as if waiting for an answer.

He worked the muscles of his suddenly parched mouth trying to find the saliva
to speak. "W..why?" He gasped.

She smiled again. It was a suddenly gentle, sweet, lost smile, even under the
hidious carictature she wore he felt it's impact shatter against his heart and
he felt tears of his own beging to well up. 

"Because." She began in a soft lilt. "Because I'm going to put things right."
She looked away from him for a moment and was silent.

With a sigh she looked at him again. "Thank you for asking, really. Are you
going to LA?"

The question caught him off guard and it took a moment for his brain to catch
up.
His best effort resulted in a mute nod.

She clucked her tounge a few times and shook her head. "I..I'd advise against
going just now." She said softly looking him in the eyes. "It won't be a very
nice place for the next few days. Sure you wanna go?" She titled her head to
the side and her lips slid apart in a wider smile revealing the tips of her 
teeth.

He dumbly nodded, scrambled to his feet, grabbed his belongings and hit the
'Next stop' button. 
As he clambered off the bus she called sofly after him. "Run home."

The bus pulled away from the curb and she slide through the people still on
board like a ghost, unoticed. She worked her way to the back seat and peered
out the large window in the rear. She watched him run as fast as he could, tie
flailing behind him, long legs eating up the distance between the bus stop and
wherever he lived.

"Maybe that wasn't such a good idea." She said to herself. A scratching sound
attracted her attention and she turned her painted face up the luggage rack.
It stared down at her with black eyes and she met's it's stare, moment for
moment, inch for inch, pound for pound.

It stared at a girl.

The Crow locked eyes with The Crow.

And carrying them both, like a can on wheels with a full load of flesh, a bus
drove to LA.



	

Do not cross a storyteller.
A storyteller is, perhaps, the most powerful thing in all of creation.
At their beck and call they have the powers of What Might be, What Could Be,
What Should Be and What Will Be.
All anyone else has is What Is. 
All the pontential versus mere reality. 


-Mad-Hamlet