tatty bojangles (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
apocalypsos) wrote2003-09-27 12:33 am
apocalypsos) wrote2003-09-27 12:33 am
Entry tags:
Yay! Time to eat my cheesecake bar!
Title: An Unbearable Lightness of Brain Cells
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Buffy/Angel
Pairing: None. I swear. Witch's honor. I don't care what it looks like.
Summary: A chance meeting between Connor and Dawn results in some major life-changing damage.
Archive: Just give me fair warning.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Otherwise, I'd be much nicer to them, with the sole exceptions of Connor and Dawn, who'd be fed to rabid mutant squirrels. But I swear I'll be nice to them in the story, honest. (Okay, sorta nice. No embarrassing photos, and pulses all around.)
Spoilers for: Angel -- "Home", Buffy -- "Chosen"
Author's Note: Fair warning ... this chapter's fairly gruesome at one point. Just figured I'd give a head's-up.
Chapter Three: No Gas, No Cigarettes, 1001 Miles to Nowhere, and She's Wearing Sunglasses
You'd think being in a twenty-four-hour Cajun/Japanese restaurant with a heavily pierced waitress and "Gay Bar" pounding from the stereo speakers would have made it a weird enough night for anybody.
But watching the creepily silent girl across from him stare at her soda and fries as if they were going to pounce and tear out her jugular, Connor was fast beginning to realize that he didn't know the meaning of the word "weird". It was entirely possible, though, that the girl on the other side of the table knew how to say it in forty-seven different languages and had it tattooed in bright red in a very embarrassing place.
"So," he said.
No answer.
Connor drummed his fingertips on the tabletop, took another quick glance outside to make sure they hadn't been followed, and said, "Do you have a name? Because calling you She Who Stares Blankly Into Space is going to get really old, really fast."
Still no answer. Okay, so cracking jokes wasn't going to work.
The only other customer, an old woman on the other side of the restaurant, cackled hysterically at some unknown joke, and shivers ran up and down Connor's spine. Something about this place didn't feel right, as if everything had suddenly shifted slightly to the left of reality and only he and Dawn were noticing. Not only that, but this new and frantic sensation settled over him, like someone was coming and he wasn't ready for it.
The old woman laughed again, louder this time, and Connor gave her an annoyed look. She caught his gaze with her own, frightingly direct and sparkling with mischief as she winked at him. He stiffened and turned back to Dawn. Oh, yeah. Logic and reason had officially been thrown out the damn window, and were currently splattering across the pavement with a resounding squish.
So. Situation fucked up, and moving further away from normal with every passing second. Check.
Dawn sat on the other side of the booth with her back to the wall and her knees tucked up against her chest, tuning out the rest of humanity as she focused solely on her food. She'd only tried one french fry before she'd stopped eating them, although Connor could understand why. When they'd ducked into the place for cover, he hadn't expected to bother to sit down and try eating, what with his wallet missing. But since she'd slid into the nearest booth and ordered fries and a drink, he'd done the same. Hey, if she was willing to order, she had to have money, right?
Then again, she hadn't known that her french fries were going to come tasting like wasabi and cayenne, but Connor didn't think anybody could see *that* coming.
Summoning up his courage, even though he was fairly positive he didn't want to hear the answer, Connor asked, "What did you mean, about me not being real, either?"
"I'm not real. You're not real." Her voice painfully small, she turned those big blue eyes to him and said, "Nobody remembers you, do they?"
"No," he said. "My girlfriend, my mom --"
"It's my fault."
"What?"
"I must have rubbed off on you or something," she said. A strange undercurrent in her voice chilled him to the bone, daring him to question her sanity. He wanted to, he really did, but ... "I bumped into you on the train and gave you memory spell cooties. Poof. No more ..."
Her eyes narrowed, and he suddenly realized she was looking for his name. "Connor ..." His surname died on his lips, and he cleared his suddenly rough throat to say, "Just Connor."
The gazes connected, and the two of them reached a silent agreement of sorts. "Dawn," she said, not giving her last name, either.
He nodded, just as accepting of this situation as she was. For some reason, it just felt ... right. His family forgetting him, her fading from the memory of those she loved, the two of them on their own with no one but themselves for protection. Like something bigger than themselves clicking into place.
Still, something in her quiet way, in the weird greenish glint her eyes took on in certain lights, set the big-brother vibe he usually saved for Marcy into full effect. "Are you okay? And when I say okay, you know I mean sane, right?"
She went back to staring at her fries, hauntingly still.
Aw, hell, I give up, he thought. He gestured to her plate of fries, just as ferociously hungry as he had been all night long. "Are you going to finish those?"
She shook her head. "I don't feel like eating anymore."
Connor reached for her plates of fries.
"Ever."
Connor froze and stared at her, then slowly drew his hand back. Okay, definitely weird beyond all human comprehension.
In a very tinny, hollow voice that hinted at tears soon forthcoming, Dawn asked, "What's happening to me?"
Thinking of the hole in the wall of his apartment about the size of Tracy's new boyfriend, Connor grimaced. "I could ask you the same question."
They stared at each other for a long, painful moment, too wrapped up in each other's confusion and pain to notice their waitress until she slid a slip of paper in front of them and said, "Your check, guys," punctuating the statement with a snap of her gum.
The pair of them exchanged a glance, realizing at the same time that neither one of them had any money. The waitress's brow furrowed as she picked up on the sudden uneasy tension between the two of them. "Staring at it ain't going to make it pay itself, you know."
With another loud snap of her gum, the waitress made to walk away, but before she could, Dawn reached out and grabbed her wrist in an iron grip. The waitress lurched to a stop, narrowing her eyes and readying for what Connor could already tell was going to be a full-on blowout, when Dawn's steady gaze locked onto hers.
"We already paid," Dawn said, in an eerily calm voice that made the hair on the back of Connor's neck stand on end.
The waitress let loose with an apologetic smile. "You did, didn't you?"
"We tipped, even."
"Biggest tip I got all day."
Connor openly gaped at the waitress as she walked away, snapping her gum and dreaming up what she'd do with her large imaginary tip. He turned to look at Dawn, who'd curled back up in the far corner of the booth again and looked about as freaked out about what she'd just done as he was.
"You, um ... you forgot to tell her that we're not the droids she's looking for."
Another bout of silence from her. But her fingers trembled as they clutched at the knees of her jeans, and he felt an icy chill blanket his skin. "How'd you do that?"
"I don't know. I just did with the grabby hands and made her think what I wanted to think." She let loose with a small moan, some nightmare having come to life to scare the hell out of her, and she looked over at him with her eyes glistening with tears. "Oh, that's not good. Not good at all ..."
Connor flinched as her eyes flickered with a very realistic spark of emerald-green fire, and he bent forward to whisper, "Hey, shut your eyes."
"Why?"
"They're sort of ... glow-in-the-dark."
"Oh," she said, visibly growing pale. Her eyes immediately slammed shut.
He glanced around to make sure nobody had seen, then said, "Do you have a pair of sunglasses?"
Dawn reached to the side and grabbed her messenger bag, then opened the flap and dumped it upside down. A bottle of green nail polish and a bracelet made of mah-jongg tiles fell onto the table.
"So that's a no, then," Connor said. Glancing towards the cashier near the door, an idea quickly formed in Connor's mind, and he got up from the table. "Wait here."
Dawn nodded, her eyelids tightly shut.
Heading up to the cashier, an overweight kid Connor's age with more zits than hair, Connor forced his best friendly smile and said, "Hi, I was here a few days ago and I could have sworn I left my cell phone and a pair of sunglasses behind. You wouldn't happen to have a lost-and-found I could look through, do you?"
"Sure," he said, and lifted a box from behind the counter. The lost-and-found box practically overflowed with all manners of left-behind odds-and-ends, giving Connor the impression that a lot of people ended up here, but not a lot of them came back for more. Considering the protest his stomach was issuing about the french fries, he wasn't surprised. The cashier gave the box a push across the counter to Connor and smiled wryly. "Better watch it, man. Knowing the customers we get, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a corpse crawled out of there."
Connor grinned weakly and tried not to step away from the box. The way today was going, he wouldn't be surprised by anything anymore.
The cashier turned back to whatever comic book he'd been reading, and Connor bent over the box, looking for things the two of them could use. He winced as he realized how fast "the two of them" had popped into his mind, and shook the thought from his head before rummaging deeper in the box. He found two pairs of sunglasses, a horn-rimmed pair with light pink lenses that were too scratched to be worth using, and a pair of cheap dollar-store rounded lenses with clean dark plastic in the rims.
Tossing the hornrims back into the box and pocketing the dollar-store sunglasses, Connor dug around until he came up with three cell phones, two of which were the pre-paid kind and both of which, he found out with a bit of subtle checking, had more than enough minutes left on them to be useful. It wasn't like anybody was going to call them, but with no money and a pretty slim chance of getting collect calls accepted, if they were going to test the big memory-whozits theory, telephone access would be a big plus.
Well, with two prepaid cell phones, that was one less thing to worry about.
********
Oh, God ... this is what she'd always been worried about.
As soon as Connor had walked away, the old woman had rushed over as if carried on a hurricane wind. An unmistakable shadow of giddy madness hid in her rheumy blue eyes, her crooked smile lined with perfect, even brown teeth. She reached for Dawn like something out of a nightmare, wearing the expression of someone seeing an angelic vision of Heaven.
Dawn scrambled backwards in the booth, whimpering as she backed into the wall.
"You're a fairy tale, aren't you, girl?" the old lady asked, her voice deceptively sweet. Something's not right, Dawn thought, and God, don't let it be what I think it is ...
"What?" she said softly.
"A great pretty fairy tale, a skinny little myth. All bright and shiny," the old lady said, her voice trailing away as she tried to stroke Dawn's hair.
Dawn moaned quietly, long-buried fears flaring to life in a heartbeat. "Oh, God, not again ..."
"Again and again and again --" The old lady hitched towards her in a quick, jerky movement that made Dawn yelp loudly, the old woman moving towards her like a wild cat on the prowl. "The goddess is gone, but the threat remains, doesn't it? Waiting and waiting, all for such a sparkling, shimmering thing like you."
Dawn's voice caught in her throat. "C-Connor!"
"Yes, call your dark knight. That's what he's there for. Destiny says so. Knights protect damsels and gold, forever and ever." The crazy woman's arm snaked closer, Dawn wincing as she ducked away from the woman's tainted touch. "Damsels and gold ..."
"Stop it!"
A second later, the old lady lurched backward in the seat, as Connor latched onto her shoulder and pulled her away from Dawn's trembling form. The old woman stumbled away, Connor flashing her a dark look before sliding the sunglasses across the table to Dawn. She quickly slipped them on, making sure to hide her glowing eyes from the cashier and the waitress -- the only other people left in the restaurant, if the fact that they were the only ones watching the scene unfold was any indication.
"Back off and leave the girl alone," Connor said, the tone of his voice laced with steel.
The crazy woman looked up at him with something akin to awe. "The child of darkness," she said in a high-pitched squeal, almost as if she were meeting a famous actor or something. "Made of evil and bloodshed, maker of shadows and lies. Done with blacker purposes, are you? Time to meet your fate head-on, then?"
"Don't listen to her," the cashier said. "She's in here every night, like she's waiting for someone." The cashier shook his head with annoyance. "If you ask me, she's one too many talking animals short of a Disney movie."
"Yeah, I was starting to get that impression," Connor muttered. He didn't take his eyes off the old lady, but the cashier's momentary distraction was enough for the crazy woman to launch herself at an obviously terrified Dawn once again. "I said, hands off!" Connor said, making another grab for her.
The old lady keened pitifully, a clawed hand reaching, reaching ... "Just want to touch the pretty light --"
Connor sensed it before he felt it on his skin, an odd tingling that flashed over him in a sharp, prickling warmth. Common sense screamed at him to make a run for the nearest exit, but a newer, calmer voice in his head told him to stand still, that everything would be all right, that nothing would harm him here.
Even as their sodas boiled in their glasses and Dawn's bottle of nail polish cracked and exploded in a sudden flare of intense heat.
It took a minute for his brain to process it all, to go from the nail polish bubbling on the table to his own unmarred hand only inches away. From his silent acceptance of the burns he didn't have to the squealing old woman beside him. From her cries of agony, to the putrid stench of overcooked hot dogs that suddenly hung crisp and noxious in the air, the only scent that Connor could associate with the sick odor of the woman's quickly disintegrating hands.
Connor flung the crazy lady aside before he knew what he was doing, the smell of her roasting flesh settling everywhere. The cashier ducked off in the direction of the bathrooms -- Connor could only presume he was going there to throw up everything he'd eaten for the last decade -- and the waitress was out the front door so fast, Connor was amazed she didn't leave skid marks.
And frozen with shock over what the hell had just happened, all he could do was stare at the old lady, this mentally fucked-up woman wailing at the top of her lungs as she gaped at the stumps where her hands had once been.
Connor gulped back the almost casual disgust he felt at the sight of it all. Jesus, you'd think he'd grown up seeing carnage like this on a daily basis. "I hate to say I told you so," he said quietly.
He reached down to ... what? Help her up? Hurt her worse? Hell, even Connor didn't know why he held out a hand to the severely injured woman, but she took one look at him and screamed at the top of her lungs, scrambling awkwardly to her feet before racing out into the street.
Aw, hell, they couldn't be here. Not after this. He turned back to the booth to get Dawn and flinched.
The booth was empty.
"Dawn?"
********
Connor caught up with her a block away from the restaurant, running as fast as she could, his pulse finally beginning to slow down the closer he got to her. A hollow place inside of him roared to life the instant he'd realized she was gone, and Connor felt the sharp ache in his chest fade the second he grabbed onto her arm.
For someone he'd only known for less than a day, she was becoming a vital part of his existence, and it wasn't whether he did or didn't like it that scared him.
It was that considering all of the other weird stuff that had gone on in the past few hours, their unnerving connection and that crazy old lady and what it all meant somehow ... fit. Like he'd just been killing time with the rest of his life waiting for this.
"Where are you going?" he said, as she slowed from a run to what was, at the very least, a slow jog.
"Somewhere where crazy people aren't regulars," she said.
Well, he sure as hell couldn't argue her on that one. "Dawn, what the hell happened back --"
And that was when Godzilla attacked.
Okay, so whatever it was that grabbed onto Dawn and sent him flying against the nearest wall wasn't technically Godzilla. But it sure looked a hell of a lot like him -- well, the one in that crappy American remake, in any event, all slick black skin and bony ridges and the wicked flicking tail that had slammed into Connor's chest like a pick-up truck at full speed. Its shimmering black gaze darted between Connor's crumpled form and the girl it dangled off the ground by her neck.
Connor tried to get to his feet, a ripple of pain echoing through his entire body with a single movement. "Let go of her, you son of a bitch!"
Its tail whipped through the air once again, but this time, the tip wrapped tightly around his neck, dragging him forward until Connor was practically nose to nose with the thing. And then, in an elegant hiss that sounded almost gentlemanly, the thing said, "Takes one to know one, boy."
Dawn rasped out a ragged breath, and the creature dropped Connor to the pavement without ceremony as its face turned towards her, the dark thing eyeing her crooked sunglasses with amusement. "Is this your warrior, Key? This is who you choose?" The creature chuckled, more like a growling rumble in the center of its chest than an actual laugh. "Fate is a silly creature, isn't she? So easily amused, and such a lousy, sick sense of humor."
Something in its eerily familiar voice struck a chord with Dawn, and she choked out a cough before she finally managed to wheeze, "Doc?"
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Buffy/Angel
Pairing: None. I swear. Witch's honor. I don't care what it looks like.
Summary: A chance meeting between Connor and Dawn results in some major life-changing damage.
Archive: Just give me fair warning.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Otherwise, I'd be much nicer to them, with the sole exceptions of Connor and Dawn, who'd be fed to rabid mutant squirrels. But I swear I'll be nice to them in the story, honest. (Okay, sorta nice. No embarrassing photos, and pulses all around.)
Spoilers for: Angel -- "Home", Buffy -- "Chosen"
Author's Note: Fair warning ... this chapter's fairly gruesome at one point. Just figured I'd give a head's-up.
Chapter Three: No Gas, No Cigarettes, 1001 Miles to Nowhere, and She's Wearing Sunglasses
You'd think being in a twenty-four-hour Cajun/Japanese restaurant with a heavily pierced waitress and "Gay Bar" pounding from the stereo speakers would have made it a weird enough night for anybody.
But watching the creepily silent girl across from him stare at her soda and fries as if they were going to pounce and tear out her jugular, Connor was fast beginning to realize that he didn't know the meaning of the word "weird". It was entirely possible, though, that the girl on the other side of the table knew how to say it in forty-seven different languages and had it tattooed in bright red in a very embarrassing place.
"So," he said.
No answer.
Connor drummed his fingertips on the tabletop, took another quick glance outside to make sure they hadn't been followed, and said, "Do you have a name? Because calling you She Who Stares Blankly Into Space is going to get really old, really fast."
Still no answer. Okay, so cracking jokes wasn't going to work.
The only other customer, an old woman on the other side of the restaurant, cackled hysterically at some unknown joke, and shivers ran up and down Connor's spine. Something about this place didn't feel right, as if everything had suddenly shifted slightly to the left of reality and only he and Dawn were noticing. Not only that, but this new and frantic sensation settled over him, like someone was coming and he wasn't ready for it.
The old woman laughed again, louder this time, and Connor gave her an annoyed look. She caught his gaze with her own, frightingly direct and sparkling with mischief as she winked at him. He stiffened and turned back to Dawn. Oh, yeah. Logic and reason had officially been thrown out the damn window, and were currently splattering across the pavement with a resounding squish.
So. Situation fucked up, and moving further away from normal with every passing second. Check.
Dawn sat on the other side of the booth with her back to the wall and her knees tucked up against her chest, tuning out the rest of humanity as she focused solely on her food. She'd only tried one french fry before she'd stopped eating them, although Connor could understand why. When they'd ducked into the place for cover, he hadn't expected to bother to sit down and try eating, what with his wallet missing. But since she'd slid into the nearest booth and ordered fries and a drink, he'd done the same. Hey, if she was willing to order, she had to have money, right?
Then again, she hadn't known that her french fries were going to come tasting like wasabi and cayenne, but Connor didn't think anybody could see *that* coming.
Summoning up his courage, even though he was fairly positive he didn't want to hear the answer, Connor asked, "What did you mean, about me not being real, either?"
"I'm not real. You're not real." Her voice painfully small, she turned those big blue eyes to him and said, "Nobody remembers you, do they?"
"No," he said. "My girlfriend, my mom --"
"It's my fault."
"What?"
"I must have rubbed off on you or something," she said. A strange undercurrent in her voice chilled him to the bone, daring him to question her sanity. He wanted to, he really did, but ... "I bumped into you on the train and gave you memory spell cooties. Poof. No more ..."
Her eyes narrowed, and he suddenly realized she was looking for his name. "Connor ..." His surname died on his lips, and he cleared his suddenly rough throat to say, "Just Connor."
The gazes connected, and the two of them reached a silent agreement of sorts. "Dawn," she said, not giving her last name, either.
He nodded, just as accepting of this situation as she was. For some reason, it just felt ... right. His family forgetting him, her fading from the memory of those she loved, the two of them on their own with no one but themselves for protection. Like something bigger than themselves clicking into place.
Still, something in her quiet way, in the weird greenish glint her eyes took on in certain lights, set the big-brother vibe he usually saved for Marcy into full effect. "Are you okay? And when I say okay, you know I mean sane, right?"
She went back to staring at her fries, hauntingly still.
Aw, hell, I give up, he thought. He gestured to her plate of fries, just as ferociously hungry as he had been all night long. "Are you going to finish those?"
She shook her head. "I don't feel like eating anymore."
Connor reached for her plates of fries.
"Ever."
Connor froze and stared at her, then slowly drew his hand back. Okay, definitely weird beyond all human comprehension.
In a very tinny, hollow voice that hinted at tears soon forthcoming, Dawn asked, "What's happening to me?"
Thinking of the hole in the wall of his apartment about the size of Tracy's new boyfriend, Connor grimaced. "I could ask you the same question."
They stared at each other for a long, painful moment, too wrapped up in each other's confusion and pain to notice their waitress until she slid a slip of paper in front of them and said, "Your check, guys," punctuating the statement with a snap of her gum.
The pair of them exchanged a glance, realizing at the same time that neither one of them had any money. The waitress's brow furrowed as she picked up on the sudden uneasy tension between the two of them. "Staring at it ain't going to make it pay itself, you know."
With another loud snap of her gum, the waitress made to walk away, but before she could, Dawn reached out and grabbed her wrist in an iron grip. The waitress lurched to a stop, narrowing her eyes and readying for what Connor could already tell was going to be a full-on blowout, when Dawn's steady gaze locked onto hers.
"We already paid," Dawn said, in an eerily calm voice that made the hair on the back of Connor's neck stand on end.
The waitress let loose with an apologetic smile. "You did, didn't you?"
"We tipped, even."
"Biggest tip I got all day."
Connor openly gaped at the waitress as she walked away, snapping her gum and dreaming up what she'd do with her large imaginary tip. He turned to look at Dawn, who'd curled back up in the far corner of the booth again and looked about as freaked out about what she'd just done as he was.
"You, um ... you forgot to tell her that we're not the droids she's looking for."
Another bout of silence from her. But her fingers trembled as they clutched at the knees of her jeans, and he felt an icy chill blanket his skin. "How'd you do that?"
"I don't know. I just did with the grabby hands and made her think what I wanted to think." She let loose with a small moan, some nightmare having come to life to scare the hell out of her, and she looked over at him with her eyes glistening with tears. "Oh, that's not good. Not good at all ..."
Connor flinched as her eyes flickered with a very realistic spark of emerald-green fire, and he bent forward to whisper, "Hey, shut your eyes."
"Why?"
"They're sort of ... glow-in-the-dark."
"Oh," she said, visibly growing pale. Her eyes immediately slammed shut.
He glanced around to make sure nobody had seen, then said, "Do you have a pair of sunglasses?"
Dawn reached to the side and grabbed her messenger bag, then opened the flap and dumped it upside down. A bottle of green nail polish and a bracelet made of mah-jongg tiles fell onto the table.
"So that's a no, then," Connor said. Glancing towards the cashier near the door, an idea quickly formed in Connor's mind, and he got up from the table. "Wait here."
Dawn nodded, her eyelids tightly shut.
Heading up to the cashier, an overweight kid Connor's age with more zits than hair, Connor forced his best friendly smile and said, "Hi, I was here a few days ago and I could have sworn I left my cell phone and a pair of sunglasses behind. You wouldn't happen to have a lost-and-found I could look through, do you?"
"Sure," he said, and lifted a box from behind the counter. The lost-and-found box practically overflowed with all manners of left-behind odds-and-ends, giving Connor the impression that a lot of people ended up here, but not a lot of them came back for more. Considering the protest his stomach was issuing about the french fries, he wasn't surprised. The cashier gave the box a push across the counter to Connor and smiled wryly. "Better watch it, man. Knowing the customers we get, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a corpse crawled out of there."
Connor grinned weakly and tried not to step away from the box. The way today was going, he wouldn't be surprised by anything anymore.
The cashier turned back to whatever comic book he'd been reading, and Connor bent over the box, looking for things the two of them could use. He winced as he realized how fast "the two of them" had popped into his mind, and shook the thought from his head before rummaging deeper in the box. He found two pairs of sunglasses, a horn-rimmed pair with light pink lenses that were too scratched to be worth using, and a pair of cheap dollar-store rounded lenses with clean dark plastic in the rims.
Tossing the hornrims back into the box and pocketing the dollar-store sunglasses, Connor dug around until he came up with three cell phones, two of which were the pre-paid kind and both of which, he found out with a bit of subtle checking, had more than enough minutes left on them to be useful. It wasn't like anybody was going to call them, but with no money and a pretty slim chance of getting collect calls accepted, if they were going to test the big memory-whozits theory, telephone access would be a big plus.
Well, with two prepaid cell phones, that was one less thing to worry about.
********
Oh, God ... this is what she'd always been worried about.
As soon as Connor had walked away, the old woman had rushed over as if carried on a hurricane wind. An unmistakable shadow of giddy madness hid in her rheumy blue eyes, her crooked smile lined with perfect, even brown teeth. She reached for Dawn like something out of a nightmare, wearing the expression of someone seeing an angelic vision of Heaven.
Dawn scrambled backwards in the booth, whimpering as she backed into the wall.
"You're a fairy tale, aren't you, girl?" the old lady asked, her voice deceptively sweet. Something's not right, Dawn thought, and God, don't let it be what I think it is ...
"What?" she said softly.
"A great pretty fairy tale, a skinny little myth. All bright and shiny," the old lady said, her voice trailing away as she tried to stroke Dawn's hair.
Dawn moaned quietly, long-buried fears flaring to life in a heartbeat. "Oh, God, not again ..."
"Again and again and again --" The old lady hitched towards her in a quick, jerky movement that made Dawn yelp loudly, the old woman moving towards her like a wild cat on the prowl. "The goddess is gone, but the threat remains, doesn't it? Waiting and waiting, all for such a sparkling, shimmering thing like you."
Dawn's voice caught in her throat. "C-Connor!"
"Yes, call your dark knight. That's what he's there for. Destiny says so. Knights protect damsels and gold, forever and ever." The crazy woman's arm snaked closer, Dawn wincing as she ducked away from the woman's tainted touch. "Damsels and gold ..."
"Stop it!"
A second later, the old lady lurched backward in the seat, as Connor latched onto her shoulder and pulled her away from Dawn's trembling form. The old woman stumbled away, Connor flashing her a dark look before sliding the sunglasses across the table to Dawn. She quickly slipped them on, making sure to hide her glowing eyes from the cashier and the waitress -- the only other people left in the restaurant, if the fact that they were the only ones watching the scene unfold was any indication.
"Back off and leave the girl alone," Connor said, the tone of his voice laced with steel.
The crazy woman looked up at him with something akin to awe. "The child of darkness," she said in a high-pitched squeal, almost as if she were meeting a famous actor or something. "Made of evil and bloodshed, maker of shadows and lies. Done with blacker purposes, are you? Time to meet your fate head-on, then?"
"Don't listen to her," the cashier said. "She's in here every night, like she's waiting for someone." The cashier shook his head with annoyance. "If you ask me, she's one too many talking animals short of a Disney movie."
"Yeah, I was starting to get that impression," Connor muttered. He didn't take his eyes off the old lady, but the cashier's momentary distraction was enough for the crazy woman to launch herself at an obviously terrified Dawn once again. "I said, hands off!" Connor said, making another grab for her.
The old lady keened pitifully, a clawed hand reaching, reaching ... "Just want to touch the pretty light --"
Connor sensed it before he felt it on his skin, an odd tingling that flashed over him in a sharp, prickling warmth. Common sense screamed at him to make a run for the nearest exit, but a newer, calmer voice in his head told him to stand still, that everything would be all right, that nothing would harm him here.
Even as their sodas boiled in their glasses and Dawn's bottle of nail polish cracked and exploded in a sudden flare of intense heat.
It took a minute for his brain to process it all, to go from the nail polish bubbling on the table to his own unmarred hand only inches away. From his silent acceptance of the burns he didn't have to the squealing old woman beside him. From her cries of agony, to the putrid stench of overcooked hot dogs that suddenly hung crisp and noxious in the air, the only scent that Connor could associate with the sick odor of the woman's quickly disintegrating hands.
Connor flung the crazy lady aside before he knew what he was doing, the smell of her roasting flesh settling everywhere. The cashier ducked off in the direction of the bathrooms -- Connor could only presume he was going there to throw up everything he'd eaten for the last decade -- and the waitress was out the front door so fast, Connor was amazed she didn't leave skid marks.
And frozen with shock over what the hell had just happened, all he could do was stare at the old lady, this mentally fucked-up woman wailing at the top of her lungs as she gaped at the stumps where her hands had once been.
Connor gulped back the almost casual disgust he felt at the sight of it all. Jesus, you'd think he'd grown up seeing carnage like this on a daily basis. "I hate to say I told you so," he said quietly.
He reached down to ... what? Help her up? Hurt her worse? Hell, even Connor didn't know why he held out a hand to the severely injured woman, but she took one look at him and screamed at the top of her lungs, scrambling awkwardly to her feet before racing out into the street.
Aw, hell, they couldn't be here. Not after this. He turned back to the booth to get Dawn and flinched.
The booth was empty.
"Dawn?"
********
Connor caught up with her a block away from the restaurant, running as fast as she could, his pulse finally beginning to slow down the closer he got to her. A hollow place inside of him roared to life the instant he'd realized she was gone, and Connor felt the sharp ache in his chest fade the second he grabbed onto her arm.
For someone he'd only known for less than a day, she was becoming a vital part of his existence, and it wasn't whether he did or didn't like it that scared him.
It was that considering all of the other weird stuff that had gone on in the past few hours, their unnerving connection and that crazy old lady and what it all meant somehow ... fit. Like he'd just been killing time with the rest of his life waiting for this.
"Where are you going?" he said, as she slowed from a run to what was, at the very least, a slow jog.
"Somewhere where crazy people aren't regulars," she said.
Well, he sure as hell couldn't argue her on that one. "Dawn, what the hell happened back --"
And that was when Godzilla attacked.
Okay, so whatever it was that grabbed onto Dawn and sent him flying against the nearest wall wasn't technically Godzilla. But it sure looked a hell of a lot like him -- well, the one in that crappy American remake, in any event, all slick black skin and bony ridges and the wicked flicking tail that had slammed into Connor's chest like a pick-up truck at full speed. Its shimmering black gaze darted between Connor's crumpled form and the girl it dangled off the ground by her neck.
Connor tried to get to his feet, a ripple of pain echoing through his entire body with a single movement. "Let go of her, you son of a bitch!"
Its tail whipped through the air once again, but this time, the tip wrapped tightly around his neck, dragging him forward until Connor was practically nose to nose with the thing. And then, in an elegant hiss that sounded almost gentlemanly, the thing said, "Takes one to know one, boy."
Dawn rasped out a ragged breath, and the creature dropped Connor to the pavement without ceremony as its face turned towards her, the dark thing eyeing her crooked sunglasses with amusement. "Is this your warrior, Key? This is who you choose?" The creature chuckled, more like a growling rumble in the center of its chest than an actual laugh. "Fate is a silly creature, isn't she? So easily amused, and such a lousy, sick sense of humor."
Something in its eerily familiar voice struck a chord with Dawn, and she choked out a cough before she finally managed to wheeze, "Doc?"