FIC: Fimbul (1/?)

["C S Armitage" <soren_nyrond@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

TITLE: Fimbul (1/?)
AUTHOR: Soren Nyrond
DISCLAIMER: Several characters in this belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. I'm poor, I'm harmless, I'm just borrowing.
SUMMARY: It's got Buffy and Willow, and a Thing (but only a small one). And no real violence
SPOILERS: None, except that nothing much happens, so we're talking minimal smut
AUTHOR'S NOTES: All nice feedback welcome. I apologise in advance if I never get to the end of this -- the idea has been lurkling around for several years but B&W seem to be workable protagonists. Hi to anyone that knows me 
ARCHIVING: Wait and see if I ever finish the thing


 
"Hey, Jackson, aren't you coming ?"
"I got trigonometry to finish."
"It's ball time."
"You go ahead - I'll be there in a couple minutes."
 
The other three stormed out of home room and Jackson Fentleman reached for his books again. It wasn't fair - on the other hand, his place on the Razorbacks depended on his grade point average.
Sunnydale High might have burned down, in a massive explosion, the previousGraduation, but school went on - the Vas Complens warehouse (derelict since the directors all three died in a night - something to do with running PCP, so the papers had said) had been taken over and quickly subdivided and senior year classes were there, with the rest dotted elsewhere.
 
/I could tell you the answers/ the voice said, seductively, in his head. /Then you could go play ball with your friends/
"And what will it cost me this time ?" Jackson whispered, remembering, witha sick lurch in his stomach, the hamster and the kitten.
/Just some words this time - no hurting/
"What do you mean ?"
/Say the words - I tell you the answers/
Words never hurt - "Okay - what words ?"
They made no sense: in fact they sounded gibberish. The sudden icy draughtJackson put down to nerves.
The voice gave him answers, which Jackson wrote down, and then fell silent.Not that Jackson minded - there was ball to play.
 
The tiny glowing Thing that had materialised through the barrier between Sunnydale and the Hellmouth lay, unnoticed, on the warehouse floor after he'dgone. Then it shivered slightly and fell through a crack in the worn boards, into the space between the floor joists.
Evening was falling - it was getting colder already. Tomorrow, though, thesun would rise and there would be warmth. The Thing was waiting for the warmth . to start with, anyway.
 
 
FIMBUL  
By Soren Nyrond
Part 1 :: Chilling Out, Chilling In
 
 
It was warm in bed, with two.
Buffy Summers woke first - being a Slayer, with Slayer senses, did that. There were certain things that needed attending to first thing in a morning,and she was aware of them. She slipped out of the warmth, kissed Willow on the forehead, and snuck out to the bathroom.
Willow Rosenberg basked in the warmth and the love. Finally finding Buffy had made such a difference. Now every day seemed like summer . or something. She forced herself down from the level of Disney-fied bluebirds and chipmunks and faced it square. They were in love - certainly as much as she and Oz had been - and so long as Buffy was happy .
The door opened - Buffy coming back. Willow flipped back the edge of the covers invitingly, and gasped as Buffy dove straight in, wrapping her in herarms, and kissing her soundly.
"Awake ?"
"Now, yes - was drowsing - awake now. Good. Love. Cuddly."
Buffy nodded, not trusting her own voice, in case it, too, descended into babble-mode. Loving Willow could do that to a girl. (After all, it had kept the Oz-wolf in check for over a year, with one or two minor exceptions.)
 
"First class at ten," she said, "Plenty of - "
"Oh oh." Willow was struggling free suddenly. "Wednesday - lab test. Newprogram. Have to - "
"I'll come too," Buffy offered, as Willow scuttered round, getting her things together.
"No need." Willow headed for the bathroom, and Buffy pulled on her clothesfor the day and wondered just what was so important about this program.
Willow had been using the computer labs for a couple of months now, runninga series of programs. Buffy knew one had been to improve UC Sunnydale's enrolment system, and another was meant to predict "unusual occurrences" (inshort, using data Giles had assembled from the newspaper archives, to predict when the Hellmouth was likely to be liveliest). What this one was for,she didn't know, but going along sounded supportive (and, besides, there was a little conference room just off the labs she had been aching to try for weeks as a snugglarium).
 
So, not wanting to either be rude or to give anything away, Willow let Buffy go with her to the labs. On the way, they chatted inconsequentially, brushing their hands against each other to confirm their one-ness in two bodies.
They were at the lab door when suddenly Buffy shivered.
"You can't be cold," Willow said.
"I'd say someone walked over my grave, but that wouldn't be funny," Buffy replied. "Probably nothing . "
"You could go check - I wouldn't mind," Willow offered, artlessly, but Buffy picked up the resonance and grinned.
"You're trying to keep a secret, Will - come on, fess up, what is it ?"
 
 
It was cold in class - Jackson Fentleman was near to shivering. Which was odd - it had been warm enough on the school bus in.
He glanced round and saw Ricky Mendez rubbing his shoulders and arms. If the Rick-meister was feeling it, then things were definitely ..
"Mr. Fentleman - " He whipped his head round to face Mr. Capes, putting onhis "Number Four" expression: the one that said "I'm Listening and I'm Interested".
"Mr. Fentleman, would you go to the janitor's office and tell him that I think the air-conditioning is set a little too high."
Jackson wasn't going to argue: anything that saved him five . ten, if he played it right . of Capes' drone about pork bellies and Keynes was well worth it.
He headed out, noticing as he did that the cold wasn't just getting to him and Ricky - Angela Morrice's habit of "forgetting" her bra under her littleblouses was paying dividends in the "spot the nipples" division.
 
In fact, he managed to spin out the errand to a full fifteen minutes, by ducking into the school bathrooms on the way back. It was quite chilly in there, too, he noticed, and the cold water was like ice-melt. But by the time he got back, with only five minutes of Copes' lesson left, he was feelingquite easy in himself, and the temperature felt to be creeping upwards. Apity, really: he'd been wondering if Angela would be in favour of a littlebody-to-body to warm her up again.
 
 
Under the floorboards, the Thing glowed softly ice-white, as the warmth trickled in around it. It was still hungry, but there was plenty of time: there was no timetable for its mission, just a certainty of the final outcome.
 
 
It hadn't worked: Willow had tried distracting Buffy with a Mandelbrot-pattern generator, she'd tried to mystify her with a program which (actually) just created ever-more complicated random numbers, and she'd tried to get Buffy to go fetch coffee.
It hadn't worked: Buffy was insistent on finding out what this latest project was for. Finally the only thing that got her to go away was the imminence of ten o'clock classes, and since she and Willow shared the first one, Willow still couldn't get time to do the runs she had wanted.
What she also hadn't had time to do was to read over the "unusual occurrence" predictor's nightly report. If she had, she might have noticed radical changes in its predictions, and a line of red print-out toward the bottom.
But of such instances is fate made up, and for the moment both Slayer and Techno-Witch were oblivious to the warning signs.
 
And then, suddenly, things turned out: after classes they'd gone to Giles',and he had asked Buffy to do a special patrol at the Emberleigh Fields of Rest.
"I'll drive you there, and back," he said: "It's just that they've had three cases of vandalism in a week, and we're coming up to the New Moon - "
"And you were wondering if someone was collecting body parts," Willow chimed in.
"Ah - yes - exactly, now that you mention it. Yes."
"Fine - give me an hour to get changed and grab a snack. What about you, Will ?"
"I'll pass," Willow said: "Besides, I've an assignment to finish for Professor Walsh."
"Oh - yes," Buffy said, unenthusiastically, "That one . thanks for reminding me - Not. Okay. We'll be back by ... when, Giles ?"
"Oh, eleven at the latest."
"So, no Bronze - see you at the room, then."
Willow didn't mind at all - now she could get back to the lab.
The new project was something else she was developing with Giles - she wanted to help Buffy and again the first step was to combine her "Research Girl" skills (or, rather, the computers' skills, at her command) with Giles' diaries. Buffy kept having dreams - prophetic kinds of dreams. Giles kept anote of them, and tried to work out whether or not they were being fulfilled and, if so, how. Willow was going to take that to try and build an interpretation protocol - so, when Buffy told her the dream, Willow told the computer, and the computer threw out likely interpretations.
 
 
Meanwhile, as night deepened and the temperatures fell, the Thing waited, brooded, and hoarded its slowly-growing power.
 


END OF PART ONE

[Oh, look -- I got the formatting to work for once]

Love Soren