FF: The Tumbleweed Chronicles (4/?)

[Jason Rune <winter_herald@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well, I finally got back to this old thing, as you can see. I have a
second part to Two Steps Back in the works, but it's starting to depress
even me, and I'm usually in a pretty good mood even while writing tales of
death and sorrow. I think some fluff is in order, and soon.

Title: The Tumbleweed Chronicles (4/?)
Author: Jason Rune (winter_herald@xxxxxxxxx)
Summary: Buffy and Willow go on a road trip through the desert. AU after
season 4.
Rating: R
Feedback: Love it.
Archiving: If you want it. Just let me know so I can go see.
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns Buffy, the show and its characters. But M.
Scone is mine.

The Tumbleweed Chronicles - Chapter 4

* * *

This is too cool. I'm driving a Jeep with a magically animated spirit. I
animated the car! We're heading out over the desert, brushing aside the
scrub and bushes like they're nothing. I try to head us in the direction
Buffy left. I think she was following the band of the Milky Way -- more
like the Bloody Way now. What is that... north? East? I can hack into
government security organizations and can rattle off the ingredients for a
Akuroth demon banishing spell, easy, but sometimes the little things slip
my mind.

Oh well. It's not like I have a compass anyway. Somehow I didn't think
I'd be needing one in Vegas. They have signs.

As I get further from the road, the ground gets hillier. We seem to be
handling the bumps pretty well, for now. But I hope Buffy hasn't gotten
too far. Why did she have to run away? We could have fixed it. We always
do. Just a little change in eye color doesn't mean she's turning into some
horrible demon. It could be perfectly harmless. Some mischievous little
imp could have snuck in at night and put yellow contact lenses on her.

Bad thoughts. Bad Willow.

And that's what it's really about, isn't it? Bad thoughts. I've
practically been wanting to jump her since we woke up. Run my fingers up
her spine, taste her neck... again, I say, bad Willow. But what if she's
having bad thoughts too? She might be thinking about killing demons and
enjoying it, or making out with Riley in graveyards, or Faith coming
back... all sorts of things. And now she doesn't have anyone to talk to
about it.

And that thing that passed through us was just plain wrong. There's no
other way to describe it, unless you count unclean, dirty, filthy, and the
negation of anything good. And it really wasn't very nice. And the way it
spread its arms to us before we drove through it... it was like it reached
out to take our hearts in its fists. I don't even know if it had hands,
really, but for all intents and purposes, it was very claw-y.

I wonder, though, about Buffy's last words. I mean, the last thing she
said before she ran off. It's real, she said, it's really
there. What? That... shadow? Is that what she's been seeing on the back
of her eyelids this whole time? If that's what she was upset about... I
mean, my problems so far have been limited to occasional dizziness, a
constriction of my magical senses, and thoughts of making wild, passionate
love to my best friend. I could very well have gotten the easy stuff.

I snap myself out of my thoughts and focus on the desert ahead of us. The
headlights cut through the darkness. I have the brights on. Every so
often I think I see something dart furtively away from us but, hey, they're
probably just shadows, right?

I can see something out to my left, and it's not going away. It's a dark
band across the ground, maybe a few feet wide, and stretching off as far as
I can see. The headlights aren't on it, and I don't know if I want to try
turning to face it. I tell the Jeep to stop, and we pull up alongside
it. After fondly patting the dashboard, I grab the flashlight Buffy's mom
always keeps under the seat and hop out.

I brush aside the scrub as I walk towards the band. I realize now that
it's mostly tumbleweed. When I was running earlier I didn't pay much
attention, and it seemed to cling and scratch. But now it falls easily away.

As I approach, I can see that the dark band is rippling slightly. It's
like a river of some kind. Maybe the dark powers are trying to irrigate
the desert so they can grow their evil crops? The glow from the sky, as
usual, is giving everything a reddish tint. I realize that the river is
actually running right under the Milky Way. Coincidence? I shine my
flashlight at it. It's red. No, really red. In the beam of light I can
see it pooling and running slowly back the way I came. I don't need to
touch it to know that it's blood. I don't need to touch it, period.

I have an audience. I can feel them over my left shoulder; I can sense
them. They're like flickers on the edge of my peripheral vision, except I
know that if I look over at them, they'll still be there. I back away from
the river of blood and get back in the Jeep. It purrs comfortingly, and I
smile.

"You wouldn't let anything bad happen, would you?" I ask. "Just like
Buffy. She's always looking out for me, you know. Except for these few
times now and again when something really evil happens and she gets all
possessed and weird and stuff and runs away. But that doesn't happen too
often." The engine revs, probably in response to my unconscious desire to
get out of here.

"Yeah," I say. "Let's go. With any luck, Buffy will be following this too."

Luck. There's an odd word for all of this. It can't be much in the way of
good luck, not for us to be here. And not all of us are even here, in the
sense that my best friend is running off into the middle of the desert.

I take a moment to think about that. I know, I know, I've been thinking
about it a lot lately, but I take another moment. This isn't Sunnydale,
where the graveyards are plentiful but the population is still small. Back
when Buffy got turned into a rat, even, Oz tracked her down and found
her. Without clothes of any kind. But out here, she could go anywhere,
any direction. I can only hope that this is all leading somewhere.

And for the first time in quite a while, I find myself hoping against hope
that whatever evil thing is doing all of this has a really good plan to
draw all of us into its clutches.

We start to follow the river, the Jeep and I. It winds a little, but stays
mostly straight. I think it's getting wider. What kind of creature could
possibly release this much blood across the desert? And are there
more? Briefly, a picture flits through my mind of a wellspring, bubbling
red rivers that flow in all directions, like a bloody flower. I wonder
what could be its seed.

I watch out the window as the Jeep drives itself, following the river
upstream. That's what you're supposed to do when you're lost in the
wilderness, right? Follow the river and eventually, as long as you're not
too far out in the mountains or something, you'll come to one of those
towns and cities that inevitably spring up around rivers. Unless it
happens to be a river of blood, in which case you come across something
presumably quite icky.

The Jeep jerks to a halt. All told, it's still a smoother stop than
Buffy's; I guess magical animation trumps a barely passed driving
test. Score one for the supernatural. Aww, Buffy, don't pout. I love you
anyway... and there's nothing to be gained by talking to you now, is there?

Just a few feet in front of us is a man, who looks solid enough. He has
frazzled white hair that sticks out all over the place and sweeps down to
form a shockingly untamed beard and moustache. His eyes are shining in the
headlights. And he's wearing a black bathrobe. He looks surprised.

After a few moments, I decide to get out and talk to him. I did almost run
him over, after all, and, well, he looks harmless enough. Of course, he
could be a murderous fiend waiting to ensnare and devour me, but it's only
common courtesy to say something. I hop out of the door, holding on to it
so I can get back in quickly. He snaps out of his trance.

"I say!" he starts, sounding for all the world like I just tried to steal
his cucumber sandwich. "Watch where you're going, young miss."

I stare, and the thought crosses my mind that this strange creature might
somehow find my staring offensive. But I dismiss it.

"Who," I say, "are you?"

"Oh, I live around here," he responds, not really answering my
question. "I have for a long while, and I will for quite a while more, as
long as I don't go and get run over by some girl in a truck."

"You... you don't look like a creature of the night," I say. He scoffs.

"Not all creatures of the night are creatures of fear," he informs
me. "There exist... other things. But we are all made of darkness, and
while night remains, so will we."

"And then, in the morning, you'll all go back under the bed?" I say hopefully.

"No, child. For there will be no morning. Not here. Not in this
place. We have claimed it now." Finished with his lecture, he makes to
depart.

"Wait," I say, and he turns to me curiously. "I'm looking for
someone. Maybe you'd know where she is?"

"Oh, I doubt it," he says, shaking his head. "My specialty is losing
things, not finding them. I wouldn't know where to start."

"Well, maybe you could just walk backwards?" I suggest. I don't know why,
really, but given the circumstances it seems strangely appropriate.

"Oh, I do believe she fancies herself with a sense of humor," he mutters,
not at all unkindly. "But no. I would, as it happens, be required not
just to walk but to think backwards, and that's simply too
much. Especially before a proper breakfast."

"And if you had something to eat?" I say.

"Oh, I'm afraid I have no such thing on or around me. That's why I'm out
here, in fact."

"You think there's food out here?"

"Dear me, no. It's just that I had my breakfast with me, you see, but I
lost it. Lost it very well."

"But," I say, "didn't you just tell me you couldn't find anything? Why are
you out here looking?"

"Well, what else should I be doing?" he asks, and I have to admit I'm
stumped. "Besides, there's always the chance that, while I'm out here
meandering about, I'll lose my appetite."

This has all been a very entertaining tangent, but nonetheless, I don't
think I'll find any help here. And Buffy's still out there, somewhere. I
decide to try one more time.

"Is there anyone else around here who could help me?" I ask, trying to keep
the frustration out of my voice. "Perhaps someone you haven't lost
yet?" He considers for a moment.

"Well, there's the Camp," he says, and I can just hear the capital
letter. "I don't imagine I could lose that if I tried."

"Camp? There's a camp? What camp? And do they have marshmallows?" I ask,
a bit too excited. Do they have Buffy is what I wanted to ask.

"Right, yes, the only Camp in this place, and I don't think so," he
says. I take a moment to remember my own questions and get them
straight. There's so much more I want to ask him, but I have a feeling it
would take more time than I want to spend.

"All right then," I say. "Where is this camp?"

"The camp is where it is," he says. "It is... central. Just as sure as my
specialty is losing things, it's is being found. Just keep on going the
way you're going."

"Oh. Right. And, uh... thanks, Mister..." I trail off as I realize I
never got his name.

"You're quite welcome, young miss. And if you're wanting my name, I'm
afraid I don't keep a hold of them for too long. You may call me Mister
Scone."

"Mister Scone?" I ask, and he nods. "Okay then, I will. Unless you lose
it, too."

"Oh, I probably will, and soon. But as long as you keep a hold of it,
it'll never really be lost, eh?" He clucks his tongue and, shaking his
head, walks off into the darkness without so much as a goodbye.

That was bizarre, I think, as I get back into the driver's seat. I start
thinking back to what Buffy said before about the night advancing. First
there was darkness, then bloody stars, then a bloody river, and now, odd
British guys in bathrobes. Bloody British guys. I wonder if he was a demon.

It's strange. If I were anything resembling a normal girl wandering about
alone at night, I'd be more worried about muggers and guys looking for
cheap, read free, sex than about whether odd British guys in bathrobes were
demons. Though as it is he could very well have lost his knickers at some
point. I hope Buffy hasn't acquired any new talents along the lines of
losing things all the time. It'd be a shame if she lost her
knickers. Especially if I wasn't there to...

Stop, Willow. Just stop.

Strangely, my chance meeting with Scone has improved my mood. He seemed so
cheerful for someone wandering about in the middle of a cloud of unnatural
blackness. I, on the other hand, am looking at the possibility of
permanent emotional scarring, in no small part due to a large number and
startling variety of naughty thoughts about my involved, female, best friend.

Somewhere amidst all the commotion in my head, I get the Jeep started
again. We follow the river for what the trip meter says is another five
miles, and I start to get a little worried. Just how long can this thing
be? There's only... well, okay, there's hundreds of miles of desert out
here, but whatever's bleeding all over the place can't expect me to drive
that far.

I think I see light up ahead. It's just a faint glow, but it's there. I
switch off the headlights for a moment, and as my eyes adjust I can see
what looks like a campfire. But I can't make out anything else, not at
this distance. There's only one thing to do, now. I start driving again,
following the light up ahead and being careful not to drive into the river
of blood. Yuck.

I wonder what kinds of people hang out in this camp... are they even
people? Or am I driving into the middle of a demonic tour group? Mister
Scone seemed nice enough, though I suppose he might have just lost his
evilness at some point. The rest? Who knows?

I hope this isn't all a terrible mistake.

Then again, what else am I going to do?

I pull up to the camp slowly, keeping the headlights off but ready to turn
them back on at any time. Nobody seems to notice, at least not in a
rush-out-and-attack kind of way. There's a fire, all right, a big cone of
red flames in some kind of pit. Around it are tents arranged in a
circle. Somewhere in between the red flickering light and the darkness, I
can see shapes moving.

"See?" a voice says to my left. "It's pretty hard to miss." Mister Scone
is there, standing by my car window in his bathrobe and looking at the camp
with a quizzical expression.

"And you didn't even have to walk backwards," I say, getting a small smirk
in response. "Are there others here... like you?" I venture.

"You never can tell quite what you'll find here," he says, his voice
lowering. "Or what you'll lose..."

"Sounds vaguely unsettling," I say. "High marks for presentation. But
I've heard it before. Who are those... people, or whatever they are?"

"You've got some kick, girl," he says, raising one bushy eyebrow.

"Yeah, living where I live will do that to you. That or kill you." Man,
I'm starting to sound like a bad movie tough-guy. Girl. It's not all bad,
'cause Mister Scone seems to be suitably impressed. But I think I'm
beginning channeling vamp-me, and that worries me. At least I'm not
getting bored yet.

"Those things," he nods at the shadows, "are people like you and me. A lot
more like me than you, though. They eat, they sleep, they wake up. By
day, they go out into the world and act like normal people should. They
work. They get paid. They shop. But by night, they start letting things
out that they would never expose to sunlight."

"So, what, the sun goes down and they have an id-party?" I say. Hey, I
took psychology last semester, even if the professor did turn out to be an
evil bitch trying to kill us all and ending up on the skewer of her own
roboto-demon creation.

"You could put it that way," Mister Scone says, huffing as if to let me
know that his way is much more sophisticated. "Their hidden desires come
to the forefront as the sun sinks behind the world."

"Right. Id-party," I say, and he huffs again. "But if they're people, why
do they look all non-corporeal?"

"Oh, most of them are solid enough," he explains. "What you're seeing
isn't the people, it's the spirits of their little nighttime obsessions,
let loose by the promise of eternal night."

"You mean, that shadow thing that attacked us earlier was really just some
delinquent's subconscious?"

"Something like that, one would assume, not having been there to see it."

"Well then, what about you?" I ask, peering at him more closely. "Do you
have one of those things floating around somewhere?"

"Of course I do. Everyone does, at least once they've been here a
while. It's just that, ah, I, uh, lost mine a while ago," he says, having
the grace to at least look a little embarrassed. "Haven't seen it again
since," he says a bit more softly.

"So if all those things are spirits, where are the bodies?" I wonder out
loud. "In the tents?"

"Oh, most of them, heh. Some of them keep walking around for quite a
while, but eventually they go to sleep, you see," he says, looking sadly
over at the collection of pitched tents. "Me, I never could seem to find
any sleep."

"And the river? You know, the blood one? What about that?" I ask.

"Oh, that's a good one. Actually, I have an excellent book on the subject,
written by one of the premiere... where did I put it... I must have left it
in my other jacket, heh, actually, eh, my only jacket. Now, where would
that be..." he trails off, turning away from me and stumbling off into the
darkness. I consider calling after him, but what would be the use?

These latest developments have been disturbing, to say the least. Not only
am I stuck out here in a big patch of mystical darkness, oh no, I have to
be stuck here with a bunch of people so repressed and bored with their
lives that their secret obsessions have all escaped and started doing
secret obsessive things. And worse yet, my own little demons seem to be
trying to break out.

Is that what I've been feeling this whole time? That little voice telling
me to do unspeakable things to Buffy--well, obviously not unspeakable, or
it wouldn't be telling me to do them, but unspeakable out loud by me? And
is it going to start walking around on it's own and try to lick my neck?

I need to get out of here.

But first I need to find Buffy.

I hop out of the Jeep, landing with a thump on the sand. I close the door
behind me, and pat the hood lightly. My vehicle-cum-guardian spirit will
wait here until I return.

Clasping my hands before me, I say a quick spell for protection from
darkness within darkness. It's not much, but it will have to do... and
it's doing more than I expected. Looking at my hand, I can see that
there's a slight something there, an aura I can't quite make out. If I
look at it the right way, it could seem to be made of either light or
darkness. It tingles.

I just knew magic would be weird in this place.

As I walk towards the camp, slowly, trying to keep my breathing calm,
someone approaches. He appears solid as well, and much younger than Mister
Scone. He's wearing a tattered brown robe. His hair is black and looks
like something tried to nest in it--an owl, perhaps? They're nocturnal birds.

"Dark one?" he says, almost breathless, looking at me like I'm some sort of
celebrity. He's obviously expecting me to give some sort of assurance.

"Um, dark one?" I parrot. That wasn't assuring.

"You are what the waking ones call a witch, are you not?" he asks.

"Ah, yes," I say, gaining only slightly in confidence as he looks at me in
wonder. "That would be me." He falls to his knees in the sand, his robes
pooling around him, and clasps his hands before him.

"Mighty dark one," he says. "Please, give me your command!"

Hmm. Interesting.

* * *


Jason Rune (Zephyr)

"No one's going to go see the story of Othello going to get a peaceful
divorce."
-Joss Whedon


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