Fic: Shanshu 12 - Destiny. Destiny. No Escaping, Not For Me

[dragonyphoenix]

Title: Destiny. Destiny. No Escaping, Not For Me
Fandom: BtVS
Prompt: 443 - Wyrd
Rating: PG
Summary: Part 12 of Shanshu
Word Count: 1101

Will rested against the wall with his fingers interlaced behind his head and his legs stretched out before him. He felt remarkably calm considering he was shackled to the wall. When he'd woken, still groggy from Ash's sleepy pills, he'd remembered a story Morgan had told him, something about a guy who'd taken LSD and ended up on some farm, stark naked, claiming to be Jesus Christ. Will had crashed at Ash's apartment and woken in a cell so narrow he couldn't even stretch his arms out without hitting a wall. He'd have thought he was hallucinating, like that guy Morgan had mentioned, except for one tiny and inconvenient detail. Ash hadn't given him LSD.

He'd done his shouting but that was behind him now. There was a chain shackling his ankle to the wall, its metal was dark and heavy, rough rather than smooth as if modern smelting techniques hadn't gone into its making. There was something almost medieval about it, about the whole setup. The walls, surrounding him on three sides, seemed to have been carved out of living stone. The fourth wasn't a wall at all but prison bars stretching the length of the cell, which seemed a bit redundant since the chain wouldn't let him get that far. Past the bars, on the wall behind, a sconce held a flaming torch. It should have seemed outlandish or at least a bit strange, but Will felt strangely comfortable, almost as if this were normal for him.

The flames started bucking wildly, as if blown by a heavy wind, but Will, at the far end of the cell, couldn't feel even a breath of moving air. When the flames settled back to relative stillness, a figure, its body masked by a dark robe, stood on the other side of the bars. The cloth, its roughness suggesting tree bark, revealed only a face and a pair of pale arms, so thin they seemed little more than lean branches. A face, feminine rather than masculine, a perfect oval, pale against the shadows under the robe's hood, seemed to float as if detached from a body.

“Spike.” Her voice echoed as if it were reaching up from the bottom of a deep well. “Tonight you face your wyrd.”

Yeah, this was weird alright. He didn't ask. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that if he wanted to live out the night he had to convince this – witch? woman? – that he wasn't Spike. “Don't know whom you mean. Name's William.” He didn't bother telling her it was Will to his friends.

“Do not try to deceive us, Spike. We know your memories have returned,” she said in that deep echoing voice.

As if her words had conjured the images, he saw, once again, Xander laid out as if dead on a table and the red-head, Buffy, crying as he jabbed at her with a bottle. “Don't know what you mean.” He forced into his voice a casualness that he didn't feel.

She stared long and hard as if trying to read him. Well, two could play at that game. He stared back, looking just a bit above her shoulder rather than at that disturbing visage. In a flash, she dropped to the floor and scattered stones before her. She peered at them, staring just as she'd been staring at him not a moment earlier. He stood to see what she was seeing. There seemed to be markings, black against the gray stones, but he couldn't make them out. He could hear her muttering, but the echoing words didn't make any sense. “Isa blocking Perdhro.” Her head jerked up, as quickly as that of a hawk spotting its prey, and he froze under that gaze. With a sweep of her hand, she gathered the stones into a small bag. She shouted as she rose to her feet, “A'handru.”

A woman stepped into view, donned in the same type of robe but hoodless, revealing the face. In that flickering light, he recognized the dark pixie haircut before he knew the face. “Ash,” he shouted. “Ash, run. Get out.”

“A'handru,” the woman said again and Ash nodded in response. What the hell was this?

“A'handru, you told us the Shanshu had regained his memory.”

“He has,” Ash replied. “He told me he remembered the Slayer.”

The woman's hand reached out and slapped across Ash's cheek. “He recalls no Slayer. Tell me his words.”

“I met with Xander,” Ash said, parroting his words. “Harris, that is. When I met him I remembered, I'd known him before, him and this girl, Buffy.”

“Foolish child. His memories are too few. You should have dug deeper. For this error, you shall face the dr'grasith.”

Ash' face seemed to pale as she dropped to her knees. “I apologize for my most egregious error. I was afraid his old friends would take him away, that we would lose our chance.”

She'd asked for more details, back in the apartment, but he hadn't wanted to talk. “Just give me a couple of pills,” he'd told her. “I need the sleep.”

“Take her to the dr'grasith.” The woman waved her hand and three others, also hooded, stepped out of the shadows, surrounding Ash.

“No, sister.” Another, twin to the first from what Will could see, stepped into the light.

“Urdror,” the first woman said. Urdror? Was that a name?

“No, V'ranti. The others search for him. We may need A'handru. She may still serve to lead them astray.”

The first woman, V'ranti, waved her hand in dismissal and the three figures surrounding Ash stepped away. “S'kutul,” V'ranti called out. “What instructions do we have for our instrument?”

Another woman, identical to the first two, appeared. Triplets? “The one he remembers.”

“Buffy?” V'ranti asked.

“Not Buffy,” Urdror replied. “His memory misleads him there.”

“The witch,” S'kutul added. “The witch is the key. She will restore his memory and then he will face his wyrd.”

“Hey,” Will called out. “What's this wyrd you keep going on about?”

“Destiny, but stronger,” Ash replied.

Destiny. Destiny. No escaping, not for me, echoed in Will's thoughts, the humor of that scene a stark contrast to the place he found himself.

Urdror turned and slapped Ash. “You do not speak to the Shanshu. Fail us again and you will be food for the great worm.”

Ash bowed and did not speak again.

Destiny. Wyrd. That didn't sound too bad. On the other hand, the people deciding his destiny were the kind to casually talk of feeding people to worms. He didn't think he'd like their idea of his destiny.

Comments

[dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I decided that a while back.

Funny aside: Because I've been thinking about the Headline Awards, I first read Ash as Tony Head and it took me a moment to realize what you were talking about. This was in my e-mail and not on this page. It would have been more obvious here. ;-)