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Nov. 3rd, 2004 02:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holliI started this fic an age and a half ago, but escapism is a powerful force, so I'm working on it instead of thinking too hard about the goddamn fucking election. Only the last third or so is new. Buffyverse, scary dark post-Chosen future, G.
Two weeks she's managed to keep herself hidden, two weeks of dark and hiding and blood freezing in her veins every time she hears a patrol. Two weeks, and no time to grieve for her mother, no time, she thinks, for Jamie to even understand what's happened. Chrissie hopes he doesn't figure it out for a while yet-- he's only nine, poor baby, though he'd hate to hear her say it. Mom told her to keep him safe, and she does her best, but in this world two weeks is better than she expected to get.
The last of the glamours wore off five days ago. Since then, she hasn't let Jamie leave their latest bolt-hole, a place in the basement of a mostly-abandoned building, next to the boiler. It's warm, and dry enough, and he's safe there. He feels safe when she's there, or so he tells her, and that's the best she can do.
When she has to, Chrissie goes out at night, keeps her hood up and her hair in her eyes. Barely manageable on the best days, her hair has transmuted and gone dreadlocky after two weeks without a shower. All the better to hide behind, as far as Chrissie's concerned. In the dark, her face hidden, Chrissie looks like just another of the countless street kids in this district. The patrols, terrifying as they are, hardly notice her. She's grateful for it-- she'd much rather be a nonentity than someone of interest to them.
Last night, waiting in an alley for a group of rowdy drunks to pass, the unreality of it all struck her like fists, left her winded. Two weeks ago-- two weeks ago, she'd been in the kitchen, listening to music and doing her homework, only half aware that someone'd knocked at the door. She'd flipped the monitor on the wall, seen the grainy picture of of patrollers and frozen. Could be nothing, could be they hadn't been found out. But.
Her mother had rushed in, pushing a protesting Jamie before her. She'd shoved all the glamours they had into Chrissie's hands, and a wad of cash, and as the knocking turned into pounding turned into the unmistakable sound of someone kicking down the door, she'd ordered Chrissie to run. "Take the back stair. Keep hidden. Keep your brother safe. Baby, I love you--"
And she'd pushed them out the back entrance. Halfway down the stairs, Chrissie hear the door crash in, heard her mother scream, but she didn't stop. She pushed Jamie before her, ran until the stitch in her side threatened to become a full-blown seam. Kept hidden. Kept Jamie safe.
Chrissie didn't hear shots as they fled their apartment. She hopes her mother died there, though. Better that than burning. Bad enough to be exposed, caught as a non-human, but a demon who'd tried to hide behind magic? Better to die in her home than in front of the crowd.
Chrissie keeps an eye on the news, when she can. Mostly, that means fishing papers and vidsheets our of the trash, so her knowlege of current events is spotty. She hasn't seen any reports of a she-demon burned, of her escaped spawn, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Chrissie turned fifteen three days ago. There wasn't much to celebrate-- the patrollers didn't burn me at the stake another year, yay-- but Jamie sang her "Happy Birthday" anyway.
Chrissie Akins is fifteen, and so of course the injustice of it all makes her want to cry, and scream, and maybe hit something. We're only a quarter demon! she wants to say, though she has no one to say it to. Mom was only half! We only needed a tiny glamour to look normal!
If she had anyone to ask, Chrissie would want to know why the world is like this. Her mother remembered a time Before, though she was very young, and even then she had to keep hidden. But then-- okay, if you got found out, maybe an angry mob would show up with torches and pitchforks. But it wasn't official. Witches and werewolves and demons weren't burned on live TV, because nobody thought they were real.
There are other things the world still doesn't think is real. Chrissie's been dreaming about them, these last few nights.
*****
Chrissie's been running on less sleep than usual, the past few days, and she's afraid it's going to get her killed. She's not as alert as she should be, not as sharp, and she's caught Jamie shooting worried glances her way. But the dreams aren't something she can stop- she has them every night, and there's no way to sleep after she's been thrown into waking by one of them.
She thinks she had the first one the night of her birthday, though it was muddled, not nearly as vivid as the ones that followed. She can't be sure if it was the same kind of dream as the others. The details aren't as fresh in her mind. She remembers a candlelit cavern, a monster, a pool. She remembers drowning, dying, but she dreams worse than that most nights. Sometimes she doesn't die in her dreams, and that's much worse, because that means whoever she dreamed lived to keep killing demons.
She thinks there must be something wrong with her, that she dreams about killing her own kind, casts herself as the righteous, virginal human girl-warrior. Chrissie's pretty self-aware for her age. It doesn't occur to her that her dreams might be about something more than her own self-hatred, because Chrissie thinks she knows everything there is to know about the supernatural. And it doesn't occur to her that her dreams might make her a person of interest to people in the know.
The dreams have made her slow, sleepy where she should be sharp. So it takes her a while to realize that she's being followed, but she's alert enough to hear the patrollers coming long before her pursuer. She figures she'd best make what she can of a bad situation, and leads the man who's been following her into the path of the people who'd kill her if they caught her.
Chrissie's pretty sure there's irony somewhere in there.
So the patroller harass this guy, asking him why he's skulking around at this hour, fine upstanding citizen like him. They probably figure he's there for one of the brothels-- there are a few in this neighborhood, though from the look of him this guy could probably afford a better class of bordello. His papers are in order, so they let him go for a stern warning and a light bribe. He doesn't look too threatening: a man past middle age, shading towards old, salt-and-pepper hair. He's got an eyepatch-- how dangerous could he be?
Chrissie uses the time to get away. She's just slipped into an alley, made herself invisible from the street, when she realizes the old man wasn't working alone. There's a woman, too, who slips out of the fog so quietly Chrissie doesn't notice her until her hand grips Chrissie's shoulder and spins her around.
"Aah!" Maybe it's not the best thing she could have said. But the woman who's got her arm in an iron grip hadn't made a sound, and it's freaking Chrissie out. That, and the imminent death-- but Chrissie'd mostly resigned herself to that. At least her brother will be safe a little while longer.
The woman claps a hand over Chrissie's mouth. "Shh. There's still patrollers around. Don't draw their attention."
"Mmph mm mrph mm!" If she's not dead, she can still fight, so Chrissie struggles to break the woman's hold. But she's strong-- incredibly strong-- unnaturally strong-- "Mrmph mm?"
"I'm trying to keep you alive, Chrissie." She takes her hand off Chrissie's mouth, and brushes back her white-blond hair. "So be quiet."
It's only a moment before the man who'd been following Chrissie appears through the fog, gives his friend a reassuring wave. "Lost them. We're clear. Is this her?"
"I-- look, who are you people? What do you want with me-- how did you know my name?"
The man smiles warmly at her, though the effect is spoiled a little by the eyepatch and the scars raking across one side of his face, disappearing into his hairline at his silvering temple. The woman, Chrissie sees, has almost as many scars as he does, and her hair isn't so much blonde as going white. And her grip on Chrissie's arm hasn't budged an inch. "We're going to get you out of here."
"Out of the district?"
"Out of the country, if we can." The woman's voice is kinder than it had been. "My name is Buffy Summers, Chrissie. This is Alexander Harris. We're here because there's something about you that's-- special."
Special. That's-- that's the most hysterically funny thing Chrissie's heard in weeks. Years, even. Chrissie almost laughs, though the sound she manages to produce is harsher than that. She's special, and that's why she's running for her life and dodging patrollers and getting jumped by strangers in alleyways. "Special." She yanks back her hood, lets the two of them see her face, her real face, cartilage and all. The worst they can do is kill her, right? "Oh, yeah, I'm really special."
She doesn't expect the reaction she gets. The two of them look shocked, absolutely flabbergasted-- whatever they though Chrissie would be, it isn't this. Buffy's grip even loosens a little, though not enough for Chrissie to twist free. "Well," says Alexander. "This is unexpected."
"'Unexpected' doesn't really cover it, Xander," says Buffy. "Chrissie, are you-- I mean--"
"A demon?" Chrissie asks. She's not ashamed, whatever else she she may be. "Yeah. If you're gonna kill me, get on with it already." She tosses her hair out of her eyes, trying to look defiant.
"Oh, Chrissie, no," says Buffy, and lets go of Chrissie's arm. She puts her hand on her shoulder, instead, and squeezes gently. "We thought you were-- something else. But this is just as much of a reason to get you out of here."
Xander says, "I think we have a glamour ready-made that'll cover her, at least long enough to get us on a plane. Can you call the Council and tell them we need IDs and a cover story ready?"
Buffy nods, and unclips a shiny new cell-com from her belt. Before she can make a call, though, Chissie says, "Wait a minute! What are you people talking about? I'm not going anywhere with you." Of course, she probably will, since Buffy has freaky super powers and the two of them both seem to have the money and influence to smuggle a demon out of the country on no minute's notice, but Chrissie's only just gotten used to the idea of not getting killed and things are just moving too fast.
"Chrissie, we're going to try to get the three of us on the first plane out of here, okay? I understand that this is kind of a shock to you, but there are people who devote a lot of resources to helping rescue magical beings in this country-- witches, part-demons, the Fae-- and we're going to get in touch with them."
Xander's voice is steady and reassuring. Chrissie has the sense that he does this a lot-- that both of them do. They seem genuine, and Chrissie realized a while a go that she'd have to take a chance eventually. Besides, if she runs, it's not likely she or Jamie will live another week. "Okay. But I'm not going anywhere without my brother."
This gets their attention. "Your brother?"
"We've been hiding since they got our mom, a few weeks ago." Chrissie doesn't miss the look that travels between Buffy and Xander-- they're both aghast. "I need to keep him safe."
"Of course you do," says Buffy. "Of course."
To be continued!
Two weeks she's managed to keep herself hidden, two weeks of dark and hiding and blood freezing in her veins every time she hears a patrol. Two weeks, and no time to grieve for her mother, no time, she thinks, for Jamie to even understand what's happened. Chrissie hopes he doesn't figure it out for a while yet-- he's only nine, poor baby, though he'd hate to hear her say it. Mom told her to keep him safe, and she does her best, but in this world two weeks is better than she expected to get.
The last of the glamours wore off five days ago. Since then, she hasn't let Jamie leave their latest bolt-hole, a place in the basement of a mostly-abandoned building, next to the boiler. It's warm, and dry enough, and he's safe there. He feels safe when she's there, or so he tells her, and that's the best she can do.
When she has to, Chrissie goes out at night, keeps her hood up and her hair in her eyes. Barely manageable on the best days, her hair has transmuted and gone dreadlocky after two weeks without a shower. All the better to hide behind, as far as Chrissie's concerned. In the dark, her face hidden, Chrissie looks like just another of the countless street kids in this district. The patrols, terrifying as they are, hardly notice her. She's grateful for it-- she'd much rather be a nonentity than someone of interest to them.
Last night, waiting in an alley for a group of rowdy drunks to pass, the unreality of it all struck her like fists, left her winded. Two weeks ago-- two weeks ago, she'd been in the kitchen, listening to music and doing her homework, only half aware that someone'd knocked at the door. She'd flipped the monitor on the wall, seen the grainy picture of of patrollers and frozen. Could be nothing, could be they hadn't been found out. But.
Her mother had rushed in, pushing a protesting Jamie before her. She'd shoved all the glamours they had into Chrissie's hands, and a wad of cash, and as the knocking turned into pounding turned into the unmistakable sound of someone kicking down the door, she'd ordered Chrissie to run. "Take the back stair. Keep hidden. Keep your brother safe. Baby, I love you--"
And she'd pushed them out the back entrance. Halfway down the stairs, Chrissie hear the door crash in, heard her mother scream, but she didn't stop. She pushed Jamie before her, ran until the stitch in her side threatened to become a full-blown seam. Kept hidden. Kept Jamie safe.
Chrissie didn't hear shots as they fled their apartment. She hopes her mother died there, though. Better that than burning. Bad enough to be exposed, caught as a non-human, but a demon who'd tried to hide behind magic? Better to die in her home than in front of the crowd.
Chrissie keeps an eye on the news, when she can. Mostly, that means fishing papers and vidsheets our of the trash, so her knowlege of current events is spotty. She hasn't seen any reports of a she-demon burned, of her escaped spawn, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Chrissie turned fifteen three days ago. There wasn't much to celebrate-- the patrollers didn't burn me at the stake another year, yay-- but Jamie sang her "Happy Birthday" anyway.
Chrissie Akins is fifteen, and so of course the injustice of it all makes her want to cry, and scream, and maybe hit something. We're only a quarter demon! she wants to say, though she has no one to say it to. Mom was only half! We only needed a tiny glamour to look normal!
If she had anyone to ask, Chrissie would want to know why the world is like this. Her mother remembered a time Before, though she was very young, and even then she had to keep hidden. But then-- okay, if you got found out, maybe an angry mob would show up with torches and pitchforks. But it wasn't official. Witches and werewolves and demons weren't burned on live TV, because nobody thought they were real.
There are other things the world still doesn't think is real. Chrissie's been dreaming about them, these last few nights.
*****
Chrissie's been running on less sleep than usual, the past few days, and she's afraid it's going to get her killed. She's not as alert as she should be, not as sharp, and she's caught Jamie shooting worried glances her way. But the dreams aren't something she can stop- she has them every night, and there's no way to sleep after she's been thrown into waking by one of them.
She thinks she had the first one the night of her birthday, though it was muddled, not nearly as vivid as the ones that followed. She can't be sure if it was the same kind of dream as the others. The details aren't as fresh in her mind. She remembers a candlelit cavern, a monster, a pool. She remembers drowning, dying, but she dreams worse than that most nights. Sometimes she doesn't die in her dreams, and that's much worse, because that means whoever she dreamed lived to keep killing demons.
She thinks there must be something wrong with her, that she dreams about killing her own kind, casts herself as the righteous, virginal human girl-warrior. Chrissie's pretty self-aware for her age. It doesn't occur to her that her dreams might be about something more than her own self-hatred, because Chrissie thinks she knows everything there is to know about the supernatural. And it doesn't occur to her that her dreams might make her a person of interest to people in the know.
The dreams have made her slow, sleepy where she should be sharp. So it takes her a while to realize that she's being followed, but she's alert enough to hear the patrollers coming long before her pursuer. She figures she'd best make what she can of a bad situation, and leads the man who's been following her into the path of the people who'd kill her if they caught her.
Chrissie's pretty sure there's irony somewhere in there.
So the patroller harass this guy, asking him why he's skulking around at this hour, fine upstanding citizen like him. They probably figure he's there for one of the brothels-- there are a few in this neighborhood, though from the look of him this guy could probably afford a better class of bordello. His papers are in order, so they let him go for a stern warning and a light bribe. He doesn't look too threatening: a man past middle age, shading towards old, salt-and-pepper hair. He's got an eyepatch-- how dangerous could he be?
Chrissie uses the time to get away. She's just slipped into an alley, made herself invisible from the street, when she realizes the old man wasn't working alone. There's a woman, too, who slips out of the fog so quietly Chrissie doesn't notice her until her hand grips Chrissie's shoulder and spins her around.
"Aah!" Maybe it's not the best thing she could have said. But the woman who's got her arm in an iron grip hadn't made a sound, and it's freaking Chrissie out. That, and the imminent death-- but Chrissie'd mostly resigned herself to that. At least her brother will be safe a little while longer.
The woman claps a hand over Chrissie's mouth. "Shh. There's still patrollers around. Don't draw their attention."
"Mmph mm mrph mm!" If she's not dead, she can still fight, so Chrissie struggles to break the woman's hold. But she's strong-- incredibly strong-- unnaturally strong-- "Mrmph mm?"
"I'm trying to keep you alive, Chrissie." She takes her hand off Chrissie's mouth, and brushes back her white-blond hair. "So be quiet."
It's only a moment before the man who'd been following Chrissie appears through the fog, gives his friend a reassuring wave. "Lost them. We're clear. Is this her?"
"I-- look, who are you people? What do you want with me-- how did you know my name?"
The man smiles warmly at her, though the effect is spoiled a little by the eyepatch and the scars raking across one side of his face, disappearing into his hairline at his silvering temple. The woman, Chrissie sees, has almost as many scars as he does, and her hair isn't so much blonde as going white. And her grip on Chrissie's arm hasn't budged an inch. "We're going to get you out of here."
"Out of the district?"
"Out of the country, if we can." The woman's voice is kinder than it had been. "My name is Buffy Summers, Chrissie. This is Alexander Harris. We're here because there's something about you that's-- special."
Special. That's-- that's the most hysterically funny thing Chrissie's heard in weeks. Years, even. Chrissie almost laughs, though the sound she manages to produce is harsher than that. She's special, and that's why she's running for her life and dodging patrollers and getting jumped by strangers in alleyways. "Special." She yanks back her hood, lets the two of them see her face, her real face, cartilage and all. The worst they can do is kill her, right? "Oh, yeah, I'm really special."
She doesn't expect the reaction she gets. The two of them look shocked, absolutely flabbergasted-- whatever they though Chrissie would be, it isn't this. Buffy's grip even loosens a little, though not enough for Chrissie to twist free. "Well," says Alexander. "This is unexpected."
"'Unexpected' doesn't really cover it, Xander," says Buffy. "Chrissie, are you-- I mean--"
"A demon?" Chrissie asks. She's not ashamed, whatever else she she may be. "Yeah. If you're gonna kill me, get on with it already." She tosses her hair out of her eyes, trying to look defiant.
"Oh, Chrissie, no," says Buffy, and lets go of Chrissie's arm. She puts her hand on her shoulder, instead, and squeezes gently. "We thought you were-- something else. But this is just as much of a reason to get you out of here."
Xander says, "I think we have a glamour ready-made that'll cover her, at least long enough to get us on a plane. Can you call the Council and tell them we need IDs and a cover story ready?"
Buffy nods, and unclips a shiny new cell-com from her belt. Before she can make a call, though, Chissie says, "Wait a minute! What are you people talking about? I'm not going anywhere with you." Of course, she probably will, since Buffy has freaky super powers and the two of them both seem to have the money and influence to smuggle a demon out of the country on no minute's notice, but Chrissie's only just gotten used to the idea of not getting killed and things are just moving too fast.
"Chrissie, we're going to try to get the three of us on the first plane out of here, okay? I understand that this is kind of a shock to you, but there are people who devote a lot of resources to helping rescue magical beings in this country-- witches, part-demons, the Fae-- and we're going to get in touch with them."
Xander's voice is steady and reassuring. Chrissie has the sense that he does this a lot-- that both of them do. They seem genuine, and Chrissie realized a while a go that she'd have to take a chance eventually. Besides, if she runs, it's not likely she or Jamie will live another week. "Okay. But I'm not going anywhere without my brother."
This gets their attention. "Your brother?"
"We've been hiding since they got our mom, a few weeks ago." Chrissie doesn't miss the look that travels between Buffy and Xander-- they're both aghast. "I need to keep him safe."
"Of course you do," says Buffy. "Of course."
To be continued!
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Date: 2004-11-03 10:26 am (UTC)