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This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
--T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
When she cast the spell, Willow did not say: "This is how the world ends."
She didn't know.
None of them did.
*
"If this is the end of the world, what am I doing here?"
On the bed, her legs bent and spread wide, Dawn thinks about the world burning around a legion of beautiful slayers. But the thought is unanchored and floats away to the ceiling, chased by the burn of Buffy's nipples against her side. Beyond the window, the sky continues to rain fire and ash. It would be epic and poetic to say that hell was belching its way through vents and fissures in the earth. Truthfully, simply, it's only the fires the slayers lit.
"Shouldn't I have died? I'm, like, the harbinger of the end, right? Key girl?"
Memories are softer now, blurred, ephemeral, mostly out of reach, but she does remember the tower, blood seeping into the sky and reality beginning to crack along invisible seams.
Languidly, Buffy purrs into the cup of Dawn's collarbone.
"Oh, god," Dawn moans. "I stood there at the edge of that goddamned platform, like some fucking maiden on a plank."
Ugly sacrificial gown? Check. Virgin sacrifice hair? Check. Tears? Check and double check.
Then there was Buffy and that made two of them, one moving forward and Dawn standing still, her toes stained with the blood that seeped into the crevices around the nail. They were the same and split, and it took Willow two years to put them back together again.
"You're here because I want you here," Buffy says. Dawn can feel the gentle brush of Buffy's tilting smile against her skin. "You're here because I'm here and you're me and where else would you be? I own your bones."
Dawn bares her teeth at that. Fucking typical, they made you out of me bullshit. My bones are hollow, she thinks. Empty, worthless and all the girls have them.
"Maybe, I'd be in a temple, sitting on a throne, maybe on a pedestal. Maybe I'd have a tiara or an urn." Dawn's breath hitches at the warm, wet tickle of Buffy's tongue against her throat. "I'd still, you know, be. Even without you. It's not like I never ever was. I just wasn't like how I am now. I was better," she sighs. "A billion, zillion times better."
"You're here because I want you here." Buffy trails her fingers feather-light around Dawn's belly button and Dawn trembles. "You're here because I want to fuck your brains out."
She slips a hand between Dawn's legs, breaches her body with two fucking fingers. Dawn arches into the rhythm of it. Like waves on the ocean, pounding, crashing, in and out and in again, until Buffy brushes her thumb over Dawn's clit and Dawn's hips, quite of their own accord, slam upward.
"Oh, god!" Dawn gasps. "Why would you want to do that?"
Buffy smiles again, her mouth curled into an unholy, glittering smirk. She adjusts her position, wedges herself firmly between Dawn's legs, spreads her thighs to spread Dawn's.
"I need to find myself, bake until I'm done," Buffy whispers against Dawn's ribcage. She presses butterfly kisses onto each and every rib bone. "You're me, the part they cut out. So many parts cut out. If I make you come and you melt all over the bed, then maybe I can roll in you and you'll reattach. Maybe I'll be done then."
Dawn tugs at the restraints around her wrists, tests the tightness of the knots. Buffy brushes her thumb across Dawn's clit once more, and Dawn's shivering hips rise.
"Please," she moans. Dawn arches her hips upwards, chasing Buffy's fingers on the upstroke. Buffy always hits the best spots. It's like masturbating. It's so good, so true, so right there on that spot, that spot, that spot that nobody else can ever seem to find. And then Dawn's falling apart, splintering, the room spinning and dissolving until she's on the other side.
And Buffy is pinned to the bed, her thighs spread wide. Only Dawn ties down Buffy's ankles as well as her wrists because she'd rather that Buffy didn't break her back with all that super human slayer strength.
Dawn hunkers down into the v of Buffy's body, latches onto Buffy's clit and suckles the bundle of nerves at the top of her sex like candy.
Buffy twitches, moans, begs. "Please," on a desperate puff of breath.
Dawn laughs, her mouth full.
"When I'm ready," she says. "I need to find myself. You're the me I've been snapped apart from. If I make you come and you melt all over the bed, then maybe I can roll in you and be whole."
Dawn applies herself more closely to the task at hand, slides two long, elegant fingers into Buffy's cunt, thrusts once, twice, then adds a third finger and then a fourth. Buffy squirms, arches upward. The rope and the wooden bed posts groan, protesting the strain.
Buffy tries to spread her thighs further apart, but she's tied down good. Dawn suckles stronger, practically swallows the swollen little nub. Her hands are covered with come and Buffy shivers with her release. Groaning, moaning, throat raw with her cries.
Dawn's tongue laps up the overflow, strong, flat, like a cat in the cream.
"Oh, god," Buffy cries. "That was so good. Oh, god, what you did." Her body is limp and heavy.
"I wanted to fuck your brains out." Dawn grins. "But I need to be fucked again." She reaches down and back, touches herself and pulls her hand away wet.
Crawling over Buffy, up over her narrow, bronze body, Dawn nibbles at the nipples that are soft and pink and barely there. Licks, laps, sucks and pulls. But Dawn wants to play, too. She tucks her cunt over Buffy's lips, knees spread very wide so that she is low and close to Buffy's face. Dawn leans close and Buffy reaches up. They are like yin and yang or a mobius strip. They feed and are fed. It is never ending.
Everything about Buffy is strong. It's the one thing they didn't give Dawn, that strength. Dawn can feel it in her cunt, that Buffy could literally eat her through, if she wanted to. Leave a bloody mess of Dawn, leave her running with blood instead of come. The thought pushes Dawn's hips closer to Buffy's lips. Buffy tugs harder, jams her tongue up into that one tiny patch of skin that is guaranteed to make them come. Dawn mimics the motion and Buffy arches so hard, her pelvis bangs painfully into Dawn's teeth.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Dawn moans. She's close, so close, closer than she should be, closer than they used to be. She's in Buffy's head, in her skin, in her sex.
They were separate once, but now they're not and neither is anyone else. Willow changed everything, damaged the spell that kept them apart, broke the binds that made Buffy who she was and Dawn and Kennedy and Faith and Rona. No one saw it coming. No one would have imagined it; key magic fucking everything up. Or maybe not, they didn't know enough about what they were doing in the first place. Key magic, Slayer magic, demon, primordial magic. Stuff you don't mess with because there's always a price and the price is usually more than you would ever want to pay.
They only saw victory and not the aftermath. To the victor belongs the spoils and the spoils are in ruins. The world ended and this is not how any of them imagined it would happen. Slayers run amok, insane as Buffy's mind fractures. Fractures more every day to give power to all those girls who could have power. All those who could be slayers are slayers and Buffy loses pieces of herself every day, and as she is lost, so is Dawn.
Across the room, Faith whimpers, her hand tucked between her thighs. She touches the same spot with her wicked fingers that Dawn and Buffy touch with tongues. She rocks in the corner, head thumping rhythmically against the wall, thighs spread.
They're all losing their minds.
Buffy's tongue is still stronger than Dawn's, like her arms and her legs. She still hits harder, runs faster, jumps higher. But they're the same, really, and sometimes Dawn doesn't understand why she doesn't hit harder, run faster, jump higher. There are bruises on the insides of her thighs that never really go away because sometimes Buffy forgets, too.
"Fuck," Dawn cries. "Oh, yeah. Fuck!"
She arches up, pushes away from Buffy's cunt, arches her back and presses her hips against Buffy's pistoning tongue.
But it isn't enough. Not this time. This time she wants to be filled, wants to be fucked well and good and true. Filled up and made whole. The place inside her left empty by Buffy has only gotten bigger since they turned Sunnydale into a crater.
They are all needy, ravenous.
Dawn realizes now, more than ever, that she is missing a piece, is the missing piece. And she doesn't want to wait for Buffy. Doesn't take the time to untie her, instead moves to the other side of the bed where Angel is pinned spread eagle, a mirror of Buffy.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Dawn cries and raises herself over him. She lowers herself onto his cock. She's so wet that his size doesn't make a difference. He groans and Dawn licks her lips.
They cut out his tongue ages ago and sometimes Buffy misses the harsh intensity of her name on his lips, the lap of his tongue on her clit, but he had developed a habit of talking too much, begging, cajoling, reasoning. She'd think that he would know better. Drusilla was not to be reasoned with and Buffy would be Dru's insane twin if she didn't already have Faith. It would be too much for them to be triplets, because what about Dawn who is a shadow and a doppelganger, if Faith weren't already Buffy's shadow, her double, her lover, her twin, the piece of herself that is missing.
Dawn is the part that they raped out of her, tinkered with and replaced. It was gentle, though, and she never realized it was missing until it was already too late.
Buffy twists on the bedclothes, watches Dawn raise and lower herself on Angel's cock, rigid despite himself because how can he watch them, light and dark, without getting hard. They are beautiful. They are the same and if he loves Buffy, how can he not love Dawn.
Buffy twists. She can feel his cock in her cunt, feel the push and drag against her clit. Desperately, she angles her neck to watch them, pushes up until she rests only on her head and heels.
"Uh, uh," she grunts. "Fuck. Angel, yes!"
Dawn meets Buffy's glazed eyes, her mouth falls open as the sensations spread up her body and are mirrored back.
This is what she has been waiting for. This is what she has been searching for. She is the key and she needs to be unlocked. Angel's cock fits tight, but it can't do the job. Only Dawn and Buffy match. They fit and they come.
Dawn throws her head back, her dark hair rippling over her naked hips.
"Buffy!" she cries, blinded and riding the ripples of orgasm spreading upwards and inwards.
Buffy arches hard, her body bowed impossibly high. Her thighs are soaked with her come and she is numb, but she still twitches as Dawn pulls free of Angel. Buffy barely moves as Dawn cuts her free from her bonds. She manages to roll over and tuck one thigh between Dawn's legs, up against her soaking cunt. She shudders as Dawn reaches around and slides her fingers along the come-slick crease of her ass.
She is too tired for that. She is found. For the moment the world almost balances. Her reflection is where it's supposed to be, right in front of her and not scattered around the room and the world staring back at her from other people's faces.
Dawn presses up and kisses Buffy, tastes herself and is content.
They are broken, degraded. All things have a source, and the slayer well is nearly tapped dry. On the other side of the blackened windows, out in the world, everything burns. Slayers fight, battling rage and insanity as they seek their reflections.
Buffy has found hers and it's always been there.