Anyone Can Play Guitar

by Lise and River

"I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sand stretch far away." --Shelley, 'Ozymandias'.

"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw." --Shakespeare, 'Hamlet'.

~

It wasn't possible, a hawk circling around and around in the clouds. It wasn't possible that there was anything that large and-- noble, left alive anymore.

It wasn't possible. It wasn't possible and it's not possible still. He shielded his eyes, pointed up at the sky.

"Hey. Hawk."

It wasn't possible. Oz said it anyway.

A sigh by his side. Devon stretched on the rock, squinted up against setting sun. "Man, that's not a bird, it's one of those tools with wings again."

A handsaw -- a handsaw with wings, flying around the way a hawk would; he could tell Dev that. He could tell him about the moment he spotted it, the moment he realized, and wished for a fleeting moment he still had a compass to find out which direction the wind blew.

 -- he doesn't trust the sun, here. It may rise in the north, for all he knows.

He wonders, now, a little, if it's a huge magnificent coincidence, if there is someone -- out there, somewhere, anywhere -- someone with a really strange sense of humor, controlling this.

He shakes it off, because it doesn't really matter, because it wouldn't do them any good in the here and now. Someone somewhere, or someone nowhere, isn't someone -- here.

Oz looks around, peering behind empty oil drums and the burned out hulks of cars. Always, those blazing car-fires, burning down to smoldering wrecks. Every third shift, they found a kind of Ford graveyard.

No one left alive here. It looked like whatever was once this town ended up a volcano first, then this other-- snap. --Beautiful igneous, and he knew that word because of high school geography and an ex-girlfriend who always made the honor roll.

Beautiful igneous. Horrible climate.

And Devon stretches again, trying to bake in sunshine that couldn't be giving off any heat whatsoever, trying to become one of those little horned lizards that scuttle around in the desert and are too small to eat.

But, they're not too small to eat.

"Hey, Devon, is this rock, like, hot, or something?"

Doesn't get an answer. Devon's asleep, just like a little, sunning, lizard. Maybe a gecko-- and the sunshine's so cold.

He crouches down, smoothes a palm across hard surface; it's cool, just that one bit colder than the air around them. Looks back at the fire dancing a few feet away, sparking at occasional wet wood. They spent a lot of time lighting it.

Oz tilts his head, lays down the rest of the way, curls around long long body and less clothes than seems comfortable. Skin is warm, and he wonders if he'll dream of electrical blankets tonight.

Drifting off, something in him shakes its head. No electric blankets, boy. Goose-bumps raise along his arms and legs, sun setting and animals coming out in the dusk... no, no electric blankets for you.

Maybe guitars instead. Lizards playing guitar in the dark.

They sleep; somewhere in between, Dev shivers, and Oz wonders if there's really music living along their skin.

    ~*~

It's dim light all around by the time he wakes up. Could be just before sunrise, could be just after sunset. Could be high noon. It's an interesting place, the Shifts.

Devon is sitting by the fire, absently poking a stick into dying flames. He's humming something, just on the edge of his breath; Oz finds himself humming along a few minutes before he recognizes the Dingoes' Cherry Flavored. Brad wrote that one, music and lyrics, and he wouldn't explain to them how the hell a song about sniffing dead animals settled with his claim that he wrote it for an ex-girlfriend.

Maybe the dead dog was hers, Oz thinks now, and looks up at a strangely-shaped cloud. Brad, he's been torn away Shifts and Shifts ago. The van just... it just *melted*.

He wonders if Buffy is still out there, somewhere, survivor of a sheer drop out of a van and down a suddenly-formed cliff. Slayers, they're unpredictable, and Oz has seen enough Saturday morning cartoons in his life to know about random branches poking out of cliff faces. He has faith.

He wonders, though; if the rest of the band hadn't come along when he answered Buffy's frantic phone call for help-on-wheels, if Xander hadn't known he was in town and volunteered him, if he hadn't come back in the first place... this would happen anyway, but maybe differently.

The Slayer, she's dead off a mile-high cliff somewhere out there, one where a mall should have been. It's pointless trying to What If this place. It'll just What If you back, right into oblivion.

He's glad Devon's here, though. He's glad the guitars survived. He still has some small hope of finding Brad, somewhere around the next bend.

He doesn't think about Willow.

    ~*~

Golden Gate bridge-- something he's always wanted to see, something he's always wanted to find, always wanted to feel beneath his feet. The normal bridge, though, not the relic they're standing on now.

Not the relic, not the What If of lizards' skin, slick with oil and crumbling.

"Think the foundation's gonna hold, man?"

Oz shrugs, jumps up and down a little bit. Makes a noncommittal 'Huh'.

Truth be told, he doesn't care.

He's always wanted to play a gig in San Francisco.

So they take the instruments from off their backs, and strum a few songs, Devon crooning to the black and murky water-- same cold sun-- while he strums, strums, strums, and Devon thumps, thumps, thumps with both feet on rotten metal.

Thump, thump, ba-bum, and crooning.

Once and a while, the bridge adds its own echo, creaking in time as another cable snaps and the pavement beneath their feet gives way. Thump, thump. Devon jumps up and down, Oz feels his calluses burn, the strings taut and beautiful.

Thump.

Strum. Twang.

They're playing odes. Telling stories, yeah-- the 'standing on the foundation column of some huge mansion' story. Oz made that one up. And the 'cut off at the knees, legs of stone in the desert' ditty, too-- that one was Devon's idea.

Or, standing on the Golden Gate Bay Bridge, while they see all the signs of something Not Quite Right.

They're making that one up now. Lizards that can sing.

Stumps of stone columns, cut off at the knees; all that's left of a huge building. Snapping cables. Standing on the bridge with nothing but a guitar.

Overhead, something dark and slim sails on; Oz watches huge wings unfurl, because he hadn't needed to watch the strings since he was in third grade. Devon is still staring at the water, and so Oz is the only one to recognize the winged handsaw this time. And maybe that's why, this time, he has no doubt in his mind that the wind isn't blowing south.

    ~*~

Three air-shimmers, world-tearings away, the cold sun is a distant memory. Oz lets his foot sink through dry land that's much too soft to grow any live things.

The dead things grow near and far here, through - a twisted limb, a darkened flower, a fallen leaf. They have the most brilliant colors, like a battle field fresh from the culling, the blood still glowing dark red.

The earth is blue. The sky is also blue -- a real thing amid a jumble of real things, in a land where, maybe, his eyes are the only thing out of place. Something utterly normal. The Shifts do not allow for balance.

Devon is staring. There are ducks flying overhead -- real ducks, no strangely animate inanimate objects this time. They're carrying something between them, beaks holding fast to the edges. There are dozens of them, and absurdly, he imagines the unrecognized shape to be a dead giant, carried to its last resting place, a noble death walk. Death fly. But that'd be much too heavy, and anyway, it'd make far too much sense.

He likes the story, though. Maybe he'll tell Devon, later.

Dev looks down, slowly, when the ducks have nearly disappeared in the much-too-near distance. Smiles -- the slow, sexy smile of a Devon not knowing what the hell is going on in the world around him and what his place is and not giving one shit. It's a new smile, and Oz likes it.

"Play?"

Devon nods.

The sun, real sun with hot sunshine, is warping the wood a little bit, and it's time for Oz to laugh.

They play a funeral dirge, watching the ducks fly east.

West.

--south.

Devon sinks down into the sand, getting it into all the cracks that people hate sand to be in. But it's so *warm*. He shields his eyes, feeling sand wriggle its way into his shorts and between his toes and in his ears. The dune shifts a little, takes his weight.

Oz sits down beside him. Fingers the guitar, hears the flat twang. "We need new strings, man."

Devon grunts. "Find a cat, skin it, gut it. The sun will take care of the rest."

They look at each other, and giggle. Oz lays down too, and eyes the edge of the expanse of sand; about fifty feet ahead of them, the true sand dunes give way to dusty desert floor, scrub, rabbits, --ducks. Where did the ducks come from?

"Forget it."

Devon says, "Huh?"

"I just mean, forget the ducks, man."

"--yeah."

Oz kicks his shoes off, but not so far away that he'll lose'em when the cold snap--

--snap, *snap*, it's bound and determined to keep them warm and sunburned--

--hits, and a little horned lizard crawls onto his shoelaces.

There's that song, now.

The guitar rests on his belly, and Devon, eyes closed, starts to hum, waving his hand. The little beady reptile eyes watch his fingers moving back and forth and, snapping to the rhythm.

Oz strum, strum, strums.

Someone says, "Ozymandias."

    ~*~

He thinks --

It must have been Giles who said, so long ago, about Wesley probably, 'We each have our own agendas.'

And he cleaned his spectacles slowly, carefully, taking care for the shine to find its place. Until they were clean enough to show that, while, of course, their agenda was the right one, it wasn't the *only* possible right one.

Most people didn't have glasses that clean. Giles rarely had glasses that clean, even. But when he did, sometimes, when they all did, Oz would sometimes sit there and feel -- right. Right in place, amid all that gray. It wasn't often.

Will, she was never really one for the perpetual gray, but she had a lot of white, and that kinda made up for it.

He wonders how white and white can mix together, when white and gray couldn't. There's no balance in the Shifts, but surely there was once. Surely.

We each have our own agenda, and there; a truth for every occasion. There's always an agenda. Oz, sailing through life not as best he can but as time carries him, sometimes thinks that must be extremely tiring. But, here --

No band, and no fame, and no gigs, and no groupies, squealing or otherwise. Fuckable or otherwise. Dev doesn't have an agenda. He seems kinda happy with it.

They're trailing after a shape that looks like a hammer with legs, now, and Oz wonders whether someone has scattered his - her? - toolbox all over the worlds surrounding them.

Directionless. Nowhere to go. Might as well follow walking power tools, and wonder about the colors of scarlet-and-flame sky, and play the night in and on and all around and trailing -- wrap it around them, tighter, until they're carrying with them darkness imbedded with sounds when they move off again.

Deep inside, somewhere off where the part that drove around chasing something for a year and a half lives, he wonders about the inevitability of finding a Shift with an actual functioning moon. Feels confident enough in the strange humor residing above this, in the rules of Saturday morning cartoons, to suspect it won't be a waning one.

Worry feels alien here, wonder does not, and he trails somewhere between the two, watching Devon hunt down a hammer with legs and letting a guitar stutter.

Devon sneaks him a grin, the next time they attempt to lure down darkness into guitar cages. Says, "You need to tune that one, man."

Oz vows to himself, the minute they get back to San Francisco, he'll get some new strings.

    ~*~

Snap.

The E-string snapped.

Oz sighs, and stares off into the distance, where the lone sands stretch. Devon and him have been walking, and walking, and strumming, and walking, and they're back at the bridge, still hunting tools, still walking.

"How are we gonna rehearse without an E-string, Dev?"

Same place, different worlds; this time the bridge is sandy surfaces and warmth, still crumbling a little, but in different areas. He wonders if it repairs itself this way, then lets it go.

Devon starts to clamber up metal battlements, getting the occasional cut from rusty metal. It's so far up, but Devon's determined. This is the best view of the sands below them, and that's where the toolchest is dancing, so that's where they're going to watch from.

Oz shakes his head, and starts to follow, wooden casing banging against the back of his legs.

Willow has faded, has become just the occasional note in the melody. Giles, ba-dum, Willow, sands, take me to the bridge, the instrumental.

The lyrics live on.

"I think I see that weird flying thing again!"

"That's nice, Devon!"

The wind picks up, the higher up they climb, and whistles. Devon starts to sing, with an occasional curse thrown in for the cuts and bruises he receives. They get up to the car deck, finally, and sit down, laughing, pointing at the sky. "Look, a whole flock of them!"

It occurs to Oz. A lot of things occur.

Standing on the foundation column of some huge mansion, like the stumps of a Greek warrior, the legs, the only thing left when his enemy's sword cut him down at the knees. Trunks of stone. Ozymandias. Or, standing on the San Francisco Bay Bridge when he sees the first sign of something Not Quite Right.

Devon grins at him, opens his mouth, and starts to wail.

Out in the distance, great pillars rise up, sea salt, maybe, as Devon shrieks and sings to the great yellow sandy expanse below them. Creaking metal, acoustic, and great wires laying, forlorn, on the car deck of a rotting piece of architecture. Oz squints, and watches the pillars become legs, blood red.

A cable snaps, and Devon jumps. "Shit, man, that was close!"

Oz wonders, suddenly and desperately, why anyone would want to bridge a desert... but the thought is drowned out by the calls of hawks, circling the sky. He says, "I wonder if the hawks have come to fix the Golden Gate."

Devon shrugs. A little lizard, placid and grey, scuttles out of the body of his guitar.

Oz stands up, wanders around the stretch of metalwork and warmth. His hand, strumming along the guitar, falters on the missing E-string. He thumps the guitar, a little, a balance thing, to compensate for the holes in the melody.

He peers down, leaning against giant-sized railing. Sand, sand, pillars.

Goes back, to sit down next to Devon, leaning back against metal and gathering knees close to chest. Leans arms on knees, chin on arms, then looks sideways. Dev had put the guitar aside; his left hand is stretched away, in the direction of hazy sun. He has in it the remains of a blue lizard, a tiny skull. Oz squints.

Dev lets the glittering white bone thing drop down, bouncing once against the edge and falling down to sand, sand, pillars. Rubs his hands against each other, once, perhaps cleaning them up.

Maybe this isn't a rehearsal anymore, Oz thinks. He can feel the wind.

"Where do you wanna go now?" Dev says. The yellow stretches all around them. Sand, sand, sand. Pillars.

Oz decides to try and say it, see where it leads, what the Devon will make of it. "This ain't a rehearsal anymore."

"Fine," Devon says. He doesn't seem very troubled by this. "Where do you want to go?"

Oz squints down again, down where the tiny skull has fallen. "North," He says, finally. "Let's go Northwest."

Dev nods. Neither of them wonders how they're gonna know where North is, much less West, in a land where the sun stays stuck up in the middle of the sky at all hours.

"C'mon," he says. He stands up, shoulders the guitar case, surveys the land again.

Somewhere off to the left, there's a group of lizards playing tiny guitars. The notes are tiny and stilted by the time they reach his ears from down there, but he's pretty sure he can recognize the melody. Cherry Flavored.

"C'mon," he says again, and Devon stands up, stretches, measures up the railing. Oz glances down again, hums with the melody. He wonders if they have a spare E-string.

A bird flies overhead, slow and languid in air that's shimmering again like maybe the world is gonna tear up soon. Oz doesn't bother looking up. He tracks the shadow it drops down, spooking the lizards into scattering away, passing the bridge, then down down down onto sand again and speeding away. Hawks, he thinks. Beautiful.

"Northwest," Dev says. He nods. They start climbing down.

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