Ripcord

by Lise and River

I was in the jungle when we heard the first signs of trouble.

The commander had decided not to recall us, not quite yet, because we were clearing out a whole territory in Brazil that had been demon infested for centuries. Cities for the dead. Laying in the mud waiting for dawn one day, I remember wondering if Spike and Drusilla ever passed through this way.

But it was just a fleeting thought, because once the sun reached over the horizon, we had our orders to move. No more gnats crawling along and trying to get into his eyes and nose and ears, and no more sinking into the mud-- we were finally going to kill the bastards.

The operation went all right. We lost two guys. I had to stake the one the next night, right before we broke camp. I remember, it was sunny, and the jungle was steaming, and our camo-tents were all down and ready to be stowed in the troop helicopters. Bugs the size of my fist, and bright blue, had been crawling through our sleeping bags the last two nights, and the commander was complaining about it.

We were to move at first light, because they'd all be underground.

But then, they got a message in from Los Angeles, coded for just the commander and me. Why they picked me-- why they knew to pick me-- I'll never know. But I heard, just as everyone else heard, how something had swallowed the town.

I remember instinctively barking an order for some coffee. Sitting down. And thinking, little smile on my face even though my heart was broken, 'The hellmouth's finally had a meal.'

~

There wasn't an airport whole in a fifty mile radius of LA, but the roads were still -- to some degree -- usable. Up until he got to that... place, just a hole in the ground, going deeper and deeper and deeper and --

Rising again, just a little too far to see well through all the smoky foggy shit.

He checked his bat belt, missed Forrest The Goofy for about the millionth time in the last year, found everything he may need that he could manage to carry with him, and started climbing down.

In the distance, Sunnydale beckoned.

~

There is a point in everyone's metabolism where the body says, 'no.' Cellular living and organismal living normally coexist peacefully, but when the organism is on a mission, or when the organism is bleeding and doesn't even feel it, or when-- maybe he's lonely...

The cells say, 'no'. Because Riley, he can't say no. He doesn't even want to think it.

'No' means he can't get to the bottom of this well.

Stops, tethered at the maw of some great gaping set of jaws. The slope of the land, starting out gradual and quiet, traces of grass and flowers and even a freeway sign or two... the lay of the land has sharpened. Dropped.

His cells jump up and down in a desperate plea. Sanity, Riley, they say. His muscles burn, but this is another triumph for Riley the Soldier. Overcome the pain. Descend.

Descend.

Sanity hasn't counted for much in a long, long time. Not around here.

He checks his harness for the eighth time, pulls on the rope experimentally. The peg holds in the rock-like soil, fused together pieces of dirt probably still holding earthworms in a kind of stasis, pressed together forever between harsh gravel.

He runs his hand over the surface of the ground... wall? Cave? World?

It's smooth, and a little warm. Brown.

Beside him, a cockroach scuttles away, and he puts one foot into the crux of the abyss.

Descends.

~

The green around him, it turns darker in the darkness. Shapes grow longer. He can't remember the exact, exactly right color of her eyes. Fear pulls him faster.

Sometimes, when he turns, he can see a light up ahead, a long way off. It disappears on the next step, appearing again a different place, color, size. His brain, so addled with sleep he almost wishes he could stumble just to have an excuse to stay down, comes up with all kinds of crazy shit about how the lights are his people.

Tinkerbell, he thinks, and he knows it's got nothing to do with anything, that it makes no sense, that insanity is becoming far far far too inviting here in the green and the flowers and the beauty and the stench of burns and blood and ashes, but he would have laughed if he had the breath. If he could remember how to use his throat. I'm going to fairy land.

Blond hair, and reddish one then, and dark with a stupid-ass grin beneath, and and. Maybe Forrest. All this town has cost him. He has to get back.

You don't get to set foot in Sunnydale without falling in love. All your soul, all your being, all that you can't afford.

Fuck the Hellmouth.

And wet heat, sense memory, it might be her it might be the early days the long long nights it might be just some dream or --

It must be just some dream. Fuck the Hellmouth.

His legs threaten to crack, to burn, to crawl away, and breathing -- hurts. He pushes. Walks.

~

I know what a circle is, he thinks to himself. And still, one foot moves in front of another, eyes tracing the pattern of bootprints in the not-quite dirt.

He still wore the harness, but the rope he was going to use to venture where angels fear to tread-- it's sitting in his backpack. Some how, Riley Finn is standing back where there is some give to the earth, before things turn into a black, obsidian, length of warm stone.

He had to be going in circles. Every class he'd taken, all the extra fucking training, all the drills, and he was still wandering off into the hills aimlessly, ending up farther from the center of hell than where he'd first started to climb.

There had to be a trick to it, he thought, and hunkered down.

Boot prints.

They had to be his. He was the only thing alive save the cockroaches and bits of lichen clinging to black walls of rock.

Riley put a hand down, pressed against the spongy ground gently. Like rubber. From this view of the earth, Sunnydale had been coated in tar, tires, rubber cat suits, and shiny black balloons.

Digging with his fingernails, he could pierce the stuff, getting it caught between hard nail and soft fingertip... each contact point burning a bit. The dirt would crumble, and become separate entities again-- it was possible to make a normal thing from this compressed mass, normal dirt where flowers could grow. This far away from the center, there was still some give in the universe.

He knew what a circle was, and all circles had a center. He just had to find it.

Riley laid down, head pointing towards the mouth of hell, back canted. Head over heels, or heels over head. This town. Obviously, he wasn't a tasty enough snack.

He thought, I wonder what the commander is doing now, before closing his eyes and feeling the radiation of the earthworms under him.

~

It's first light again when he recognizes the first one.

It's been light, and dark, and light, quite a few times. He's been trying to keep track, but close to crashing, close to sleep, he gets confused. Too much time pushing forward.

He isn't sure how long he has before the troops get here. He isn't sure if the troops will get here. He isn't sure if any of them will get out alive.

His legs must recognize the bend he's been walking through for some time now, the back of his brain must have known, because he's not really surprised when he recognizes the charred, blackened stub of the Sunnydale supermarket.

It must have been longer than he's realized.

He stops, there, because he's never had a plan, not really, and nerve endings can only pull you this far. Nobody can run on lack of hope for all eternity.

He is so tired. He can't remember if he came here to die.

He wants to go to her house, to Xander's, to Giles'. To the college. To the place where Forrest died, where the Professor died, where he first got bitten. He wants to find the cemetery. He wants something that will resonate, make a balance, even temporary. He's not looking for anything to make sense.

This is the end of the world.

Sunnydale High is a ten minutes walk away. He isn't surprised to find his steps growing steadier, lighter. Patrol mode.

When he turns his head, just a little, blinks through the corner of his eye, he isn't surprised not to find blonde hair there. He wonders if, once his vision is obscured with blood, once his hands are streaked with grime and ashes, once the pain has grown this much stronger... he wonders if he can see her then.

He doesn't think so, really, and he misses insanity like crazy.

~

Paratroopers. Landing outside the 'blast range'. That's what they're calling it. Blast range. Because only something that blows up could do this much damage. Damage this big must be outward motion. Moving outward. Moving--

Riley shakes his head. Shades his eyes.

Paratroopers. They're calling it a blast. Explosions pushing particles away from each other, racing into the darkness like quarks, racing in circles on destinations no scientist has a microscope fine enough to see.

But, these quarks are massive... just about the size of LA.

Riley takes up his favorite position, which is laying on his back, head pillowed on a pile of slightly springier dirt... far enough away from the tongue of the demons that he's not slipping down the slopes, not quite.

There's a view out there that stretches for miles-- a straight line from one side of the horizon to another, miles and miles and miles. But all laws of the universe and physics and every class he ever took say, they all say it has to be circular. The horizon only looks like a straight line.

On his back, Riley sees nothing but black, and bright blue sky.

Behind him, more soldiers land, feeling the grass beneath their feet and wondering why the ground's so warm.

~

The air -- shimmers. There's a sound, like all the dead traffic of LA compressed together and howling to the sky.

When Riley stands up, careful, wary, the lay of the land has changed. The soldiers, suddenly seeming that much fewer, look -- strange.

He focuses on one. He's... fading. In and out, like a heart beat, looking around in bewilderment.

And insanity knows, nerve endings tug. He turns and walks into the crumpled gateway, through long sloping corridors, longer than it seems a high-school should be --

He knows where the dead library is. Potential danger zone, always memorize the layout.

The doors seem, strangely, whole and oak and solid. Uncharred.

Swings open. Walks in.

It takes a minute before he realizes there are people there, people out of camo, people it feels like -- strangely -- like he ought to know. Focus ---

~

Hellmouth.

Hell. Mouth.

Where are the teeth, his brain whispers, right before he wakes up.

A dream, something about a black expanse of night sky beneath his feet, a black hole in the centre, with slippery sides that you had to climb down to traverse. Or, whirlpool sides, made of tires, like the cars on the freeways and the cars that drive along sweating cement in 100 degree heat--

Where are the teeth, his brain whispers.

He remembers what sleep deprivation does to a body in a clinical sense, and he remembers all the hallucinations the army put him through in basic training. Riley Finn knows that the senses can cheat.

But still. One eye cracked, and the blond hair doesn't add up, not even for an acid freak, not even for a drugged government monkey, not even for the end of the world.

He's come full circle, one of those wormhole physics theories that he never paid enough attention to in class. One of those theoretical mathematical ideals. Some demon ripping reality apart-- where's Anya when you need her.

The quark talking to him at the moment can't be there, his mind whispers, right before it adds, and where are you?

~

If he could, if he would, he would tell her, "Riley Finn, seven-oh-five-five-six-eight-oh-nine." Because the basics, they're comforting, they're solid and right and his. Your number, your name, nothing more, die for your country, truth, justice and the American way, we don't kill them just try to do ---

Shakes his head; focuses. He tells her, "I don't understand."

She looks confused, and angry, and tired. Like she can't feel this calm, settled over everything. She says, "Who the hell are you?!"

It must be time to reevaluate, he thinks, because he never expected anything here, but Buffy alive isn't on the list, not anywhere. Buffy with her hair shorn short and darker. Buffy with her face marked with three old, old looking scars. Buffy with a stake to his throat, demanding to know who the hell he is.

It's been a month, he thinks, advice columns really don't tell you how to deal with breakup on the Hellmouth.

The teeth.

He looks around. The room looks -- whole.

Strangely.

Books. There are books on the shelves, and even before he sees the red-haired boy with eyes that he knows, cross-legged on the unmarked table and staring at them both with something like revulsion, it's the books that make him realize Kansas was a long, long time ago.

Riley starts chuckling, and it makes the rather dangerous instrument of death pressed against him dig in more.

The blond-- he can't think of her as Buffy-- eyes him. He stares past her, through the boy that looks so much like Willow... he says, "Will, I guess."

They watch him.

He wonders if they know that something's eaten the world.

"Look." A voice that scratches from disuse-- talking to earthworms in their native tongue, talking as if death were a vibrant color in the rainbow-- "Look. Can we just go outside for a minute?"

She backs off. They travel in a straight line, back down the hallway and out to the front of Buffy's old high school. Riley wonders what kinds of memories he should give her, before she's eaten too, and then a humming starts in his head. A ringing in his ears, like blood.

"You know, you have to know-- something isn't right."

She rolls her eyes, and he can barely hear her over the sound of chopper blades, of the roar of a jet engine, ready to deposit more troops to the end of the world... no. She says, "Oh, great. More cryptic boys."

The event horizon flickers, just beyond the edge of the faculty parking lot. He points at it, and squints.

A stationary event horizon, stretching out beyond the horizon. And somewhere in the middle, a black hole.

"Buffy, I have to get out of here."

"You're not going anywhe--"

And she sees what's wrong.

Riley thinks about all the things he should have said to her, before she rushes back inside to save the world. There's not much point in telling her that they found the last of the Hollywood sign from up in Beverly Hills, where the palm trees were cooked to a crisp and the skeletons were compacted into little cubes of bone.

Sees the focus of his surroundings start to move again, flicker. Flickering, always.

One of them is moving towards the other, in a collision course. Like a science experiment gone wrong. He hears the buzz of student life behind him, and the rush of geometry coming to slam into him at full force.

Riley's going in circles, circles, circles, and falling down and down--

Out of the airplane, standing in front of a school that harbors hell, Riley's already reaching for that imaginary cord. All that military training and insomnia.

Descend.

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