Reaching

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"They're going to bring in someone who knows what she's doing," whispers Xander in her ear. He has two eyes and ten fingers and ten toes; she counted. It's not Xander, she knows this isn't Xander, but she wants to believe so badly, she wants it to be.

She knows this isn't Xander, because there is never coffee. Still, when he whispers in her ear, she nods at him somberly, and he doesn't seem to know that she knows that he's not real.

**

"They're going to bring in someone to fix all of this," whispers Xander in her ear. He has a cup of coffee, but she knows that she put it there herself.

She lights a cigarette with her fingertip, blows the smoke in his face. He frowns at her. She just stares at him. Rain drips off her hair but she's not wet, so it doesn't matter. And even if it did matter, she wouldn't care anyway.

**

"She's coming," whispers Xander in her ear. "When she gets here, they won't need you any more."

It's hard, because he -- it -- really is whispering her secret fears. But she knows that he's wrong. It's wrong. After all, Hannah doesn't actually do anything. What are they doing to tell her? Sorry, you don't wash the bloodstains out of our laundry well enough?

**

Hannah sees Willow dash through the hallway, her hair flying out behind her. She doesn't bother to put the glamour on it anymore, so everyone can see her brown roots, not just Hannah. Hannah could always see through her glamours. Hannah can see glamour, can see ghosts, can see the horrible wraiths who drift through the hallways of the hotel.

"You're a Seer," says Willow, but that doesn't mean anything, since none of the shit that Hannah sees is worth anything at all. It's not like she could see any of it when it would have helped her.

The person Willow is running to is in the lobby. Hannah can see her through the wall of the office. She looks kind of like Avril, even more than that one Potential Slayer girl did, except her hair is puffier and she's not dead like the other girl. She's even wearing the skater pants that Avril sometimes wore when she thought no one would be looking at her, the kind with the really wide leg.

Not-Avril is wearing some kind of bathrobe over her pants and -- a blink-182 t-shirt. Whatever.

Hannah rolls her eyes and goes back to twirling her hair and reading the book she found yesterday, the diary of some Watcher guy from a long time ago, who was watching the most evil vampire who ever lived. Or, uh, unlived.

"You're not supposed to be reading that," whispers Xander in her ear. He reaches out for her and she doesn't pull away; he can't touch her. She can't touch him. He's not strong enough. Yet.

"Whatever," she says. "Go bother someone who cares."

**

No one introduces Hannah to Not-Avril. Hannah cleans the blood off her bathrobes -- they're, like, weird, though, heavy, like curtains, like something maybe Aragorn or someone would wear -- and gets the books she asks for and travels with the Potentials, those lame teenage girls who are so annoying, to get the ingredients Not-Avril needs from the magic stores in town, because when the Potentials go by themselves, they don't come back and their bodies are found in pieces.

Hannah knows how to stay in the shadows; she did it all her life, anyway. Like there's sun? It's metaphorical or something, like one of Viggo's poems.

Why they didn't pick a base of operations closer to the magic is something Hannah doesn't understand, but she doesn't ask, because she doesn't care.

Not-Avril's name is Hermione, but she wouldn't have known that if Spike hadn't told her.

**

"Spike likes her," whispers Xander in her ear.

Hannah sips her coffee. She wants a cigarette. She reaches out, slowly, and pulls one from Spike's pack. He slaps her hand absently, wherever he is, out with the Potentials, out getting laid by some evil demon who doesn't know Spike is on the wrong side, but she gets it anyway, pulls it toward her, and then it's lit and she's smoking it, faster, faster than should be.

She's fiercely jealous of whoever it is that Spike is touching tonight. He stays out of her dreams now, and she can't pull him in, not even with her hand in his pocket, groping for cigarettes.

She glares at Xander over her shoulder.

"Can you put the eyepatch on?" she finally says. "You're fucking creeping me out here."

**

Hannah knows everyone now. She knows Giles and Dawn and Robin. She knows Faith. She's even met Dru and Lindsey, although she didn't tell anyone that they're both here in the hotel, following Spike around, watching.

"We're waiting for Daddy," says Dru, but she doesn't tell Hannah who Daddy is.

"Why is everything about killing me?" asks Lindsey.

"Why do you have a girl's name, assface?" says Hannah. "Nothing needs to make sense."

Hannah even knows Angel. She sees him sometimes, hanging from the rafters in the lobby of the hotel. She isn't sure if that's really how he died, though, since she's not sure he was really human, if he was an angel.

Dru says, "Miss Edith loved him and called him William," but that's Dru; she never makes sense.

If Hannah squints a little, she can see the shadow of Spike standing behind Dru, but that's because Spike used to be a ghost.

**

"Giles will be angry if he knows you're reading that. If he catches you, he's going to send you away," whispers Xander in her ear. She thinks maybe she feels his breath against her hair, but that can't be it. There's just a breeze.

Eighteen of the Potentials were killed the previous night. Hannah saw right through them before they left and she said to no one in particular, "They aren't coming back."

The blonde girl, Tara, the one who always watched Xander -- Hannah presses a fist into her stomach -- she was there, too. She was watching Hannah. She moved her mouth a little; Hannah thinks she said, "No one is listening to you."

**

When Spike disappears, Dru and Lindsey stop talking. They just stomp around, their insubstantial feet making no noise on the stained carpets and blackened marble. Dru glares reproachfully at Hannah, like there was something Hannah could have, should have done. She should have found their Daddy or whoever they've been waiting for, should have stopped Spike, should have -- should have. Done something.

**

Hannah can't tell what is dreams and what is reality and what are ghosts. Hannah dreams about Lij and wakes up feeling stoned; she dreams about Billy and wakes up crying; she dreams about Dom and wakes up feeling like she's had a long session of really rough sex. She doesn't even know what sex feels like; she's never had it before.

She dreams about Kelly, snapping her gum and saying "Cunt" over and over again.

She wakes up screaming sometimes, but no one comes, no one hears her. She sleeps in a room with nine other girls, and none of them hear her.

**

"Do you know who this is?" whispers Xander in her ear. "This is the savior of the world. Everything would be gone if it wasn't for him."

The boy standing with Xander has floppy hair and both eyes and a big scar in the middle of his forehead. Hannah squints at him. He seems familiar.

"Whatever," she says. "I totally don't care."

"His name is Harry," says Xander. "Remember that. He's mine now, and we're going to have a lot of fun."

"I don't know who you think you're fooling," says Hannah. "You don't even talk like him."

"I don't need to. I just need to remind you of him," says Xander, the first indication that he's not Xander.

Maybe Hannah had been wishing that Willow had been wrong.

The boy with the scar and the floppy hair doesn't say anything, just keeps grinning at Hannah. He's got a really scary grin, like at any minute he's going to snap and kill her.

**

Not-Avril Hermione comes to Hannah.

"You see things," she says. She's got an accent like Spike, except not. Only like Spike when Spike is feeling in trouble, when Spike lets it slip that he's not from the slums. Hannah can tell these things -- plus she's been reading those journals. They're totally informative about stuff like which herbs get you high when you steep them in tea and which vampires have souls and why Angel is sticking around.

And Buffy. That dumb blonde girl who kept out the sun. No one ever bothered to tell her that part, Hannah guesses, or she wouldn't have let herself get killed so easily.

So Hannah knows that Spike is William; she should have listened to Dru. She wishes she had, except maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. Probably not. Spike never listened to anyone; he wasn't going to start with her.

"Yeah, whatever," says Hannah. Not-Avril Hermione is wearing a Green Day t-shirt with a hole in the sleeve and carrying a wooden stick. Not like the pencils Hannah still keeps in her pockets, but an actual stick. "Everyone knows that."

Not-Avril Hermione rolls her eyes impatiently. "No one had to tell me that. Divination is a load of bollocks, but even I can recognize a Seer."

"What are you doing here?" says Hannah. She sneers, Spike's sneer.

"What are you doing here?" says Not-Avril Hermione. "We're having a meeting."

"I'm not invited to the meetings," says Hannah, and puts her feet back up on the desk. "I don't kill anything that's already dead."

"Well, you're going to start. We need your eyes." Not-Avril Hermione fingers her weird stick thing and glares at Hannah, and Hannah glares back. "And if you won't come lend them, I will just take them."

**

The meetings are boring. Mostly it's Giles and Willow and Not-Avril Hermione arguing about the best ways to kill demons. Not-Avril Hermione really is a witch and the stick is her magic wand. She did some magic for Hannah.

Hannah wants to know why she can't use her magic to get herself some decent clothes.

Not like Hannah's got room to talk; Spike looted a Marc Jacobs before he disappeared, so Hannah's in designer blacks, but it hangs off her bony wrists and displays her collar bone. She knows she looks like a refugee.

She is a refugee.

But Not-Avril Hermione looks like some kind of crazy street person.

**

"Spike is dead," whispers Xander in her ear.

Something touches the back of her neck. It's cold. She whips around, but even Xander isn't there. It's just the empty cafe she always comes to. Tara is standing in the corner, her skirts whipping around her in the wind.

Hannah reaches for Spike's cigarettes and can't find them; they're gone with him, wherever her is, away from her.

She hated him anyway, so she doesn't care, but she kind of misses the way he always lit her cigarettes for her, and also the way he made sure that she didn't get overlooked.

She also misses the way he sometimes made her thighs feel.

"He was dead anyway," she announces to Tara, who just looks sad, same as always. "He was a vampire."

**

"You have a bad attitude," says Not-Avril Hermione to her one day. Hannah has been translating Sumerian -- they thought it was a prophecy about the end of the world, but instead it was a story about a sacred brick. Hannah threw the tablet across the room and broke it in half.

"Shut up," says Hannah, and reaches, automatically, for one of Spike's cigarettes. Nothing. There wouldn't be anyway, because she'd never been able to do it awake. She reaches again; she should be able to feel Spike.

She feels like she's always reaching. Christ.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," says Not-Avril Hermione. "Stop doing that. Here." She waves her wand and says some gobbly-gook and there's a cigarette in Hannah's hand.

"What was that?" says Hannah. "Elvish?"

"No, I don't speak Elvish." Not-Avril Hermione looks surprised. "You speak Elvish? I didn't realize Muggles -- "

"Auta miqula orqu," says Hannah. "Go kiss an orc."

Not-Avril Hermione narrows her eyes. "Say something else."

"Utinu en lokirim," says Hannah, her other favorite insult. "Son of snakes."

Not-Avril Hermione's lips get really tight and she begins to glare. Hannah glares back. "Slytherin," Not-Avril Hermione hisses. "I should have known."

"Oh, whatever," says Hannah. "Lle lava? Because I could not care less about your bizzaro issues."

Not-Avril Hermione gapes at her. "Don't you know anything? Really, Hannah, have you even read -- "

"No," says Hannah. She stands up and walks out of the room, brushing past the scarred boy with the floppy hair. His wicked grin follows her, like the Cheshire Cat's grin, but she doesn't look back to see if it's also still on his face.

"Harry," whispers Xander. "His name is Harry."

**

It's totally dark, but Hannah still sits in the cafe. She can't get any coffee or anything, there are no cigarettes to steal from Spike, and she doesn't have a magic fucking wand like Hermione.

It's not raining tonight. Hannah made it not rain. She got angry and screamed and something inside her broke, and the rain stopped. All at once.

Tara stands in the corner. Her dress is tattered, drenched. "Dry off," snarls Hannah, but Tara stays wet.

"I told you she'd ruin everything," whispers Xander. He's all around her, embracing her, and she's melting into him, like she's never going to be by herself again. "Just --"

"Absum," says someone sharply. It has to be Hermione; she's British and she's a girl. And she's sitting across from Hannah. "Be gone."

"God," says Hannah, and thinks: Be gone, before somebody drops a house on you, bitch. "You're so fucking annoying. Just go away, okay? I'll help you translate your stupid Sumerian tomorrow."

"You cannot defeat the First Evil by yourself," says Hermione. There's her stupid wand. More phrases -- Latin, Hannah figures, or Greek or something. Some magic language. She shivers; without Xander around her, it's so cold.

"Fuck your evil." There's a cigarette in her mouth and a cup of coffee in her hand. She looks down at it, then up at Hermione.

"I asked Willow, of course." Hermione rolls her eyes. "Come on, Hannah, we have to focus. Obviously there are forces at play here that you and I are going to have to confront."

"Did you kill Spike? I can't see him, but he hasn't come back."

"Spike is gone for now." Hermione shrugs. Her robe is greenish black in the dark non-light, and moves with the wind. So does Hermione's bush of hair. Hannah thinks, uncharitably and she knows it, that Hermione isn't very pretty.

"Fine," says Hannah, and sips her coffee. It's not bad. It kind of tastes like tea.

"Can you focus please?" says Hermione. "Just for a few minutes, if it wouldn't be too hard for you?"

"Don't be a fucking bitch," says Hannah. She looks up. Harry is standing behind Hermione, his hand reaching out for her, that crazy smile on his face. "Ugh, that creepy kid again." Hermione twists her head slightly, then turns back to Hannah. She frowns. Hannah ignores her and continues: "Okay, hit me with your plans. What do you want me to do? Walk around in the streets and look for the ghosts of famous people? I'm pretty sure that Goldie Hawn had a house around here."

"You Americans never take anything seriously," says Hermione, and she sounds a little indignant and a little hurt and Hannah thinks that's just about right.

"Giles says the same thing," she replies, and takes another long pull off her cigarette.















e-mail lalejandra

Originally posted: 2005-03-08
Fandom: LOTR RPS/BtVS/Angel/Harry Potter
Pairing: n/a - Hannah. Hermione. Xander. Dru. Lindsey.
Rating: PG



Author note:

Post "Not Fade Away". Follows Preparing and Waiting.

Beta by the incomparable Kovsky (who almost died!!!). She also gave me permission to use skater!Hermione, who amuses everyone, including me.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEAR. I ADORE YOU!!