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She’s pulled on joggers and just tugged her hair down from its towel when she looks at the sink and finds she’s bleeding.
It’s alarmingly thick, only she isn’t surprised. Because she was stabbed, wasn’t she? Red flows over her hands and down, darkening against the lemon-coloured porcelain – the details always mix up like that, like in a dream, and she still never clocks it until after. So the sink is yellow, large in her vision as she lurches towards it, fingers clutching and slipping on the rim. They stain it.
Her head feels heavy, fog setting in. Swallowing hard, she teeters towards panic, hands pressing to staunch blood but only finding pools and rivers of it.
It’s like an anchor has grabbed hold, and drops straight into the water below. This is it, she thinks, this is my turn.
I’m not ready.
Shaking breaths fill her ears; her own. They’re teary, but she beats them back, desperate instead to stop anything escaping, no more tears, no more blood.
But the horror doesn’t leave. She staggers back from the sink. In the real world, her heel clips Buffy’s precarious shelves.
She’s alone, had staggered in here, and now this is where it ends. Just her. And so what can she do but look herself in the eye, her last look at her world?
Her eyes track up, leaving her shaking hands to fix on the eyes in the mirror. Fear stretches them out, there’s a smudge of blood on her cheek, her lips are parted and panting in desperation.
She stops at the eyes.
It’s her.
Ash blinks, and the scene is bright white, Buffy’s room and her own body, but the face is the same.
She steps back, startled. It’s like the ghosts of bloodstains are burned in her retinas.
She doesn’t hear the crash. The memory overwhelms her again, crashing over her and she’s submerged in the mirror-image.
She’s reaching out. The bloodied fingertips, red encroaching. It could be her, but she’s never been taught to look with such sorrow. The eyes freeze her. She hardly notices them blink back to her own, to her unblemished hand brushing the mirror-glass without leaving so much as a smudge.
She wants to scream; her throat does it for her.
And she’s pulled back under the next rolling wave of yellow, and red, red, red.
~
Passions is on.
Spike isn’t about to miss it, wouldn’t have done even for many much grander things than Red’s little spell experiment in the park. He only hopes they won’t blow up the satellite.
Besides him, only Ash isn’t in attendance. Off-day, he reckons. She’d had a few more of those lately. Still none of them know what exactly’s going on, and he imagines for her it’s the worst of all. After the state he caught her in a while back, he’s noticed her sleeping less.
But she carries on, so he does too. Not complaining, not worrying suits him fine, he decides as he reclines back into the cushions as the theme tune fades.
He’s sitting forwards in his seat again, rapt by the unfolding drama, when he hears a crash from above him.
Instantly, his head perks up, eyeing the ceiling apprehensively as if it will assure him. The resounding impact is trailed by thuds echoing in the tub – those damn shelves again.
And then Ash screams.
He leaps from the seat like it's shocked him.
“Ash?” he calls up the stairs, and then follows his cry.
She doesn’t respond and his mind is racing with entirely unhelpful things as he dashes to the door.
Another scream pierces the wood and sets his hairs bolt upright.
“Tell me there’s just a bloody spider in there!” he calls.
When she says nothing, his heart sinks and a rough, fearful sigh tears from his mouth. He presses his ear up against the wood.
“Hey!” he barks, “Love! If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m bloody well coming in there!”
He’s on his toes, but makes himself wait just a second. His nostrils flare with an animal breath, and he can’t wait any longer.
With one solid go at the door, the bolt crunches and gives way, leaving him charging shoulder-first into the bathroom. Blundering to a stop, he whirls around, boots kicking the bottles of shampoo and things that litter the tiles, and finally spots her.
On the ground, back against the bath and knees to her chest, Ash stares into space.
Shit, he thinks. His heart stills, sinks steadier than it had in its flurry of panic. He’s always too late.
Not that he can get in the way of whatever this is. His hands yearn for something to grasp and twist and snap, like a neck, but they stay by his side as he carefully treads closer. Kneels in the wreckage at her side.
She’s still half in the memory, he can recognise that. But she’s moving, which means she’s back. Part-way, at least.
She lifts her hands and stares at them, the same way she stares at the visions no one else can see. They shake as she turns them.
“Ash, love?” he says.
Her hands go still and her lips close. But she doesn’t turn to him.
He studies her face so intently that when her brows close together, his do the same.
“I saw…” her faint voice chokes off, but the sound of it brings her back a little, and she tries again. Confused eyes, so lost, come to rest on him at last.
“I saw myself,” she breathes.