River Tam

This is familiar scenery now, seen only once but graven in the memory. Many of the signs are different, but the buildings and streets and intersections are the same.

Except it's wrong, deeply and chillingly. There's no singing in the air, no subvocal calling of love and always and yes -- nothing but silence and concrete.

These are ordinary city streets.

River's almost running by now, and if her breath is coming fast and harsh it's not from the exertion.

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There is a tall black building, on the corner up ahead.

And there is a little park across the street from it, with a fountain and a statue of a turtle.

And that's all.

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This, too, is familiar. She knows it heart-deep, and she doesn't know it at all.

The city smells of fumes and bodies and hot asphalt, and nothing at all of roses.

There's a woman heading into the black tower: an elegant woman, dark-skinned, power-suited, well-coiffed. River hits the corner just in time to trail in her wake.

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Inside the building is ... a lobby.

Security desk, a bank of elevators, a few sad-looking potted plants.

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There's no rose.

There's nothing. Marble and parched dirt and dispirited people slogging through the end of a long workday; no song of the White. No heart of the world. No fire and no memorial dedication and no wash of all-consuming rightness.

Just an office lobby, and a security guard beginning to stare at the tatterdemalion girl beginning to weep silently in the middle of the room.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

When he finally clears his throat and tries a tentative, "Excuse me, miss?" she whirls around, glaring hotly at him for an instant before she spins and runs out, back to the 42nd Street and away.

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The sun is long gone, and the bright colors of sunset are fading into ash and slate and soft violet.

There's a man sitting wrapped in a threadbare blanket, in the shelter of a piece of construction scaffolding. A scrap of cardboard propped in front of him reads, in straggling childish capital letters:

BE YE KIND TO THE STRANGER IN THY MIDST; FOR YE WERE STRANGERS IN THE LAND OF EGYPT
ANY FOOD OR CHANGE YOU CAN SPARE
GOD BLESS

His dull stare focuses abruptly as she approaches.

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River's half-running, arms wrapped tight around her middle. A beat, a stumble -- her head snaps around, but she doesn't appear to quite see him.

Her face is streaked with tears.

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He's shaking his head.

"Don't be naive," he says suddenly, his voice hoarse and wetly wheezing. "Came she didn't with the rest. Ever. Ever-ever? It's getting dark."

This last is apparently directed at River, with impatient urgency.

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"Fan-gon." River sucks in a breath, shoves back her hair with both hands, and focuses for an instant on the man before her gaze skitters sideways. A businessman dodges sharply left to avoid her, muttering something under his breath.

"He remembers," she whispers to the wall behind the man. "Scary monsters."

"Amp it up."

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"Scary monsters," he repeats, his eyes locking with hers. "Hairy scary quite contrary. With their teeth on backwards. You don't, you don't want to ..."

He coughs. Coughs again, and wipes his mouth, and looks back up at her with what might be worry.

"Are you lost?"

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"She can't find the door."

River's hand drifts to her hip, tracing through the air for something that isn't there, and settles stiffly on the heavy fabric of her coat.

"Face the dark alone. We gotta."

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His eyes search her face, and then dart away. He hauls the fetid blanket up around his shoulders, hunching into it, his urgency and concern both forgotten.

"Getting dark," he mumbles. "Oatmeal boxes."

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River's head snaps sharply around, her eyes darting restlessly from pedestrian to car to shadow.

(Simon, I hear thunder)

"Be careful," she half-whispers. "Gotta hide deep."

Her fingers uncurl, and a hard candy falls out: strawberry-flavored, slightly dusty, wrapped in paper with brightly colored Chinese emblazoned across it. It bounces off the man's knee, and skitters to a stop against the cardboard sign.

Her head turns once more, deliberately this time. "I'll remember," she says to the old man, careful and grave. "Thank you."

It's only polite.

And then she's gone, hurrying on.

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The streets are brightly lit, and still busy with both pedestrians and cars.

They're numbered, in orderly sequence: streets one way, avenues another, a neat precise grid. It's easy to find your way here, really.

If you have a way to find.

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River knows where to go in New York City.

But she's been there. And found nothing.

She's running blind now: casting quick glances at everything and nothing, her shoulders tight and fingers working by her sides. Whatever she's looking for, she's not finding it. Maybe she doesn't even know what it is.

And it's getting darker.

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The sky's getting darker. The streets are brighter than ever.

The character of the crowd has changed: these are not people leaving work and heading home. These are people out in the night, looking for fun, and heading home is the last thing on their minds.

Some of them are looking for fun with more dead-serious intent than anyone ever brings to the office.

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There are lights off in the distance: neon signs, bright flickering glitz, and hundreds of people; it's reminiscent of a tamer Beaumonde, to the quick glance of someone from another world.

But that's off in the distance. Around her now are corrugated metal covers over shop windows, and sparse bits of graffiti, and shadows between streetlights.

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And a figure that steps out of a doorway to stand not quite in her path, smiling.

"Hey, gorgeous."

It's a young man, tall and wiry and not that much older than herself --

-- it's a horror with a mouthful of fangs, dead flesh animated by something ancient and gleeful and hungry --

-- his smile fading to an expression of mild concern. "You okay?"

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River stares at him -- and then flinches back away from nothing, sucking in a sharp breath.

Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

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"What's the matter, sweet thing?"

The concern's a flat mask, and under it he's grinning.

There's motion behind her.

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(Even the orderlies wear)

You stay friends with Faith Lehane for a while, and you learn some things.

And you stay long enough at the Academy, they teach you how to see a certain way. How to move; how to think.

"Not sweet," River whispers.

There's a crate pushed up against the wall, with a forlorn and fading advertisement for oranges stapled to it. River's leg coils upwards, chambering, and lashes out hard; with a sharp crack, the wood splits. Styrofoam peanuts hemorrhage to the pavement as she spins, ducks, wrenches off a broken section of cheap pine and whirls upright.

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The half-dozen other figures that have moved in behind her (almost, almost silently) all startle back at her sudden movement.

Except one, who was on a sufficiently tight hair-trigger to leap as soon as she moved and didn't quite take in the nature of the movement.

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Well.

That was dumb of him, wasn't it.

River's not a Slayer. She's no stronger than any athletic girl her size. She wasn't born to kill these creatures.

But she has her own speed, faster than almost any human's, and she has her own feel for weapons, born and bred and trained and taught.

(we are of that an-tet, khef and ka)

And if her palm is pricked with splinters now, there's a vampire exploding into dust around her.

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bloodandnicotine

There's a vampire exploding into dust around her, halo-ing her head in the street lamp, all poetic-like.

'Course the other five idiots kinda spoil the picture. Spike leans back against a handy wall and folds his arms to watch the show. It is a nice night for killing and he'd meant to take down this lot before he got his evening cuppa, but ladies first, like Darla always said.

Besides, this is his second Slayer-in-the-rough, not counting the one who took his hands off, and Beth didn't have her heart in the game; this one doesn't seem to have any such scruples, and Spike is dead curious to see how well she dances before he cuts in.

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