InsaneJournal

After it all (narrative)
Jesse woke up on his couch, the first thing he saw was snow outside of his window. Falling and falling. Gathering on the ledge where the birds usually sat. There were no birds now. Just piles of white powder. Something that he hadn't ever seen his entire time being in The City.

His body didn't ache or hurt in any way, though he knew that it should. He'd gone through a hell of a thing. Horrifyingly, he remembered all of it. From the time he'd been bitten to biting Zoe. To eating other people. He remembered looking out of his own eyes and not being able to stop himself. He remembered the incredible hunger. He also remembered the gathering of other zombies. How they'd come together and just... existed. It had been a very nice feeling, fitting in. That part of it, he thought, disturbed him more than anything. He hadn't minded being undead. He hadn't minded eating other people. All of it was against his basic nature, and he had liked it.

Everything seemed to be back to normal, though. He didn't have any marks on his body. No scars. Nothing to even suggest that something horrible might have happened to him. Which was strange, considering that he could remember Zoe shooting him in the head. Something like that should have killed him. Put him down, even as a zombie. He'd seen it plenty of times during the course of the disease. But it hadn't ended him.

Even his powers seemed to be back to normal.

It left him wondering.

What had it all been for? Was it the City's doing? Or was it something outside the City's control? And why had his powers been so badly thrown out of whack? Or maybe, was that part of it just coincidence? He already knew how much the City liked to fuck with him, so maybe the timing was just off for that portion of the adventure. Maybe all of this had nothing to do with the City itself, and the entity had planned to fuck with his abilities all on it's own.

He wanted to get to the bottom of all of it. He wanted to know what had gone on. Which meant going outside. Jesse was fairly sure that the general issues with the zombies would be taken care of by now, but there was the issue of the snow. It had been so long since he'd seen it, and wasn't sure how the rest of the city was going to be reacting to it.

But he also had to find Buffy. He wanted to find Zoe too and make sure that she'd been healed.

Staying inside wasn't really an option.