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Apr. 8th, 2003 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holliAlias/Buffy crossover fic, Chapter 1. Yeah, I know. It's a sickness.
1. Buffy
Buffy hasn't expected easy sleep for a long time, but this night is worse than usual. She's dreaming, and her dreams have that brittle sharpness around the edges that tells her there is something more at work here than her own subconscious. Buffy's no stranger to prophetic dreams (she still watches the deaths of potentials she couldn't protect, some nights), and this dream is even more straightforward, less cryptic than almost all her other dreams; more like the visions she hears Cordelia got than the usual metaphor and allegory.
Buffy sees a dark, dank cave, walls covered in unpleasantly carved letters, somewhere in Sunnydale (she doesn't know how she knows this, but in dreams these things make sense), and more Bringers than she'd care to fight alone. The only other people there are human: two men, two women. Two old (in the sense that anyone old enough to be Buffy's parent is old), two young. The older man has a knife. The younger woman has a bloody lump on her skull, and looks half-conscious. The older woman speaks, looks angry and afraid, tries to take the knife away-- the younger man shoots her. Tranq dart, not a gun. None of them have guns. Her drags her away, while the older man advances on the concussed girl. He raises the knife, says something Buffy can't hear in the silent dreamscape, but based on past experience it's probably something ancient and evil--
--and Buffy wakes up. She knows (dream logic again) that none of what she dreamed has happened yet. There is a clock, counting down in the back of her head, to when this will happen. She knows she cannot let it play out to the last thing she saw
(the girl, dead, knife in her heart; the man, power swirling around him heavy as smoke)
because she is the Slayer.
2. Irina
There is a clock on the wall of Irina's plane, telling her how long before they need to be in California. Not L.A., at least. Things there were dangerous enough for her before the city started getting hit wih biblical plagues. The little town they're headed for (she doesn't know where Arvin could possibly have heard about it, but he swears they'll find something vital in Sunnydale) is far enough from L.A. that she shouldn't have to worry about running into anyone who'll recongize her.
Irina wonders how Sydney's doing, though. She hopes all the work she put into keeping her daughter alive hasn't gone up in a cloud of meteor fragments. For that matter, she hopes the spy Sydney doesn't know about, their ace in the hole, is safe and healthy too. If only because they'll need her to kill certain people and blow up certain things, later.
Irina doesn't know what Arvin's planning, and that worries her. He says it'll give them another piece of the Rambaldi puzzle, but she's too good a liar to miss someone else's lies. Even someone as good at lying as Arvin.
She's pretty sure she heard him talking to himself the other day. To himself, or to Emily. Irina doesn't know which, but neither prospect pleases. Irina doesn't like it when she doesn't know things.
3.
Irina doesn't know that Sydney is lying unconscious in the cargo hold of the plane she in sitting in. Sydney still doesn't know who hit her over the head with a baseball bat and dragged her to a waiting van. The woman who took Francie's place doesn't know why she was ordered to deliver Agent Bristow to Sloane in such an inelegant fashion, but she doesn't much care. Sloane knows a lot more than he is telling.
And Buffy knows where she needs to be, and when.
1. Buffy
Buffy hasn't expected easy sleep for a long time, but this night is worse than usual. She's dreaming, and her dreams have that brittle sharpness around the edges that tells her there is something more at work here than her own subconscious. Buffy's no stranger to prophetic dreams (she still watches the deaths of potentials she couldn't protect, some nights), and this dream is even more straightforward, less cryptic than almost all her other dreams; more like the visions she hears Cordelia got than the usual metaphor and allegory.
Buffy sees a dark, dank cave, walls covered in unpleasantly carved letters, somewhere in Sunnydale (she doesn't know how she knows this, but in dreams these things make sense), and more Bringers than she'd care to fight alone. The only other people there are human: two men, two women. Two old (in the sense that anyone old enough to be Buffy's parent is old), two young. The older man has a knife. The younger woman has a bloody lump on her skull, and looks half-conscious. The older woman speaks, looks angry and afraid, tries to take the knife away-- the younger man shoots her. Tranq dart, not a gun. None of them have guns. Her drags her away, while the older man advances on the concussed girl. He raises the knife, says something Buffy can't hear in the silent dreamscape, but based on past experience it's probably something ancient and evil--
--and Buffy wakes up. She knows (dream logic again) that none of what she dreamed has happened yet. There is a clock, counting down in the back of her head, to when this will happen. She knows she cannot let it play out to the last thing she saw
(the girl, dead, knife in her heart; the man, power swirling around him heavy as smoke)
because she is the Slayer.
2. Irina
There is a clock on the wall of Irina's plane, telling her how long before they need to be in California. Not L.A., at least. Things there were dangerous enough for her before the city started getting hit wih biblical plagues. The little town they're headed for (she doesn't know where Arvin could possibly have heard about it, but he swears they'll find something vital in Sunnydale) is far enough from L.A. that she shouldn't have to worry about running into anyone who'll recongize her.
Irina wonders how Sydney's doing, though. She hopes all the work she put into keeping her daughter alive hasn't gone up in a cloud of meteor fragments. For that matter, she hopes the spy Sydney doesn't know about, their ace in the hole, is safe and healthy too. If only because they'll need her to kill certain people and blow up certain things, later.
Irina doesn't know what Arvin's planning, and that worries her. He says it'll give them another piece of the Rambaldi puzzle, but she's too good a liar to miss someone else's lies. Even someone as good at lying as Arvin.
She's pretty sure she heard him talking to himself the other day. To himself, or to Emily. Irina doesn't know which, but neither prospect pleases. Irina doesn't like it when she doesn't know things.
3.
Irina doesn't know that Sydney is lying unconscious in the cargo hold of the plane she in sitting in. Sydney still doesn't know who hit her over the head with a baseball bat and dragged her to a waiting van. The woman who took Francie's place doesn't know why she was ordered to deliver Agent Bristow to Sloane in such an inelegant fashion, but she doesn't much care. Sloane knows a lot more than he is telling.
And Buffy knows where she needs to be, and when.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-09 07:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-09 07:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-09 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 08:17 am (UTC)I was thinking about it this morning and realized that if Dru vamps Jack it would link 24, Buffy, and the Lost Boys.