herotypical | voice + action ✪ there must be some way to bring the hero home

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voice + action ✪ there must be some way to bring the hero home

[ after a week of agonizing combat, buffy summers returns home with only exhaustion on her mind. despite all the excitement and crisis, there's little left to do other than collapse onto her bed and fall into a sleep fit for a weary, worn-out soul. morning sees her feeling no less -- shudder -- zombieish. the horror of the last week is bone-and-marrow deep and has yet to fully make itself known in her system. the slayer is running on auxillery humanity, stringing herself along from second to second until she can find a friendly face. find willow and...

and all she finds is an empty room. an empty closet. empty drawers. her best friend is gone. deported while she wasn't even looking. come the afternoon, after she's gotten the first onslaught of emotions out of her system, buffy sits alone on the empty bed. she addresses her journal: ]

Willow and I have this game we like to play. Willow Rosenberg. She was in town...but now she's not. [ a pause allows buffy to catch her breath. to stay strong. ] We call it 'Anywhere But Here' -- self-explanatory, really. Pick a fantasty-elsewhere to be and a fantasy-someone to share it with. I'm not talking about the obvious ones: home or family or anything even remotely whiffing of responsibility. I'm talking about fun. I'm talking about pure escapism. I'm talking Daniel Craig on the beach or Amy Yip at the waterpark.

I'll go first. Show you how it's done. [ but which escape route from reality should she take? ] The '88 Winter Olympics. The Saddledome. Calgary, of all places. Brian Boitano is taking the time to personally skate me through his gold medal routine. Perhaps there's hot chocolate involved. I, being made entirely of my own imagination, copy each move perfectly.

Got it? Good. Because now it's your turn.

[ when her broken little tribute to an absent friend is finished, she'll be searching out her injured pirate (wherever he may be convalescing) and it's off to good spirits, where she can be found working a shift behind the bar. ]

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A castle in the sky!!! [ If she has to choose anywhere for a fantasy, that's always going to be the option. "Who with" took a few minutes to figure out, though, when she'd listened to this. The answer she would have given to that for her entire life would have been "grandpa", or one of the other relatives she'd never had a chance to get to know.

The people she lives with, here, who aren't fantasies or memories at all. It took Ikki a little while to think about who she would invite along with her now that those people were real and off-limits for a sort of fantasy game. ]

Aaaaaand I think Avatar Yangchen? She was the last airbender, before grandpa. [ They. Don't have that many celebrities at home, save probenders, and she's only recently been allowed to listen to matches and has only really seen one in her entire life. ] Oh, and Little Red could come, too!!! And if I get to pick what we're doing, we'd be flying our castle allllllllllll over the world! Like a big ship! And then we'd have a tea party!

[ this is exactly why she asked people to play this game. the level of merciful distraction provided by ikki's answer is...phenomenal. perfect. ]

If you and....Yangchen, was it? Are airbenders -- does that mean that it's the two of you flying the castle with your bending?

Yep, Yangchen!

[ ...oh wow how did she never think of powering her own flying castle? ]

Oh!! Maybe we could? I don't know, would I be able to sleep in the flying castle if we had to keep it going?? Or maybe we could land when it's night time. In a different place every time, so we could see everything!!!

Like a cruise ship. Only...sky-bound.

Yeah! We could take people to wherever they want to go!!!

You can have a ride, too, if you want! [ you know, in fantasy imagination land. ]

That's very generous of you, Ikki. [ a beat. ] How was your Halloween, by the way?

Oh, it was great! I got a red cloak for my costume and I helped pass things out with Grune and I went through the maze and got prizes and the ghosts were pretty funny although some of them chased my Uncle around - Uncle Roku, not Uncle Sokka - and also some were following Sabo?

[ and her grandpa and Roku had come home safe, as had...

...well, okay, not all of her friends. sob. But that's okay. It has to be okay, because they'll be back. Right? ]

How was yours?

[ awful. hers was awful. ]

Not as many treats as I might have liked, but...

Did you get lots of candy?

Yeah! And I made a bunch of candy apples for everyone I know.

...Got any left over?

Yeah!! [ And she remembers Buffy's reluctance to meet her in person last time. ] Want me to give some to Uncle Sokka to give to you?

I could come by the house. [ someone else was bound to be there! ] Are you at home?

Yep! I got home a little bit ago.

...Then I'll drop by in about an hour from now?

That works for me!! I'll keep an eye out for you, Buffy!

[ and -- soon enough -- a slip of a slayer is knocking on the door. she has plans for these treats she's looking to hijack. ]

[ The door is opened pretty quickly. Ikki...may or may not have been watching at the window - as in she was, and she ran to the door the minute she spotted Buffy, just waiting to open it.

It's the first time they've ever met in person, so Buffy wins a huge smile. Ikki is more than a little excited about checking off another person on her "meet and greet" list, which consists of the names of friends of her grandparents and Uncle Sokka, gathered over the course of her stay.

It's a pretty big list. ]

Hi!!!!! Come in come in come in! Oh, there are people home, too. [ Doing...things...

...Yeah, Ikki has been watching the window, not her relatives. ]

[ buffy is not in the mood to smile. not after the draft and definitely not after having lost willow. but she drums up a circumspect and perfunctory one for ikki -- it's only right and good to do so.

bundled to the nines, though, you'd swear she was prepared for a blizzard. three years in this town and she still isn't accustomed to the colder shoulder seasons. ]

I'll say hi on my way out, maybe. I'm here to see you.

[ she steps in. ]

[ Ikki's less bundled up, but then, she's also inside. She waits for Buffy to step in before shutting the door behind her, and then cheerfully leading the way into the kitchen, skipping along.

There's the usual sounds of the household; someone moving around down the hall, Momo's chatter from that direction. Soren is settled in on a stool near the kitchen, perched on the edge, and Ikki detours to pat him on the head before going back to her actual route.

On the counter there are at least three trays of candy apples, covered in plastic wrap. It's...pretty clear that Ikki wasn't joking about making some for "all her friends". She'd learned how to do them pretty soon after the draft started, and then making them for the people who were gone was sort of a nice way to make her feel...less worried. ]

Grandpa helped on a few of these on this tray, once he got back, and Katara helped with some of these ones over here!

[ leaning her elbows on the counter, she notes the difference: for ikki, one was grandpa and the other was katara. but buffy kept her brittle smile in place. it isn't her right to comment. ]

They look delicious. You must've been quite the busy beaver.

[ Buffy had missed the days of Gra-Katara, back when Ikki had first arrived. It'd taken her a little while to acclimate to the new way of calling her not-quite-grandmother, while Aang had never requested a different way of calling him. ]

It was fun! And, y'know, I wanted to make enough for all the people I know. ...I know a lot of people! A lot of them are people my family knows, but I met new people, too. A lot of them I met in art club, actually!!

Art club, huh? Tell me about it.

[ any distraction-port in a storm. ]

Rapunzel and I founded it! We've had two whole meetings so far! The meetings are on the second Sunday of each month. Oh, and last time we made badges! Mine is really glittery!!! So's grandpa's! The people who are in it are Rapunzel and me and Hugo and Konan and Steve and Sora and grandpa and Florian who's making a secret language with me and Noel and Jeb and Madoka and Miyabi and Yotsuba and Rydia and Ventus and Raven and Valvalis and Grune and Mayoi and Emil and Luce and Marco and Sifu Raine and Taiki and Billy and Pao-Lin and Loki and Rudy!

[ ...all in one breath. ]

[ oh jeez. buffy looks suitably impressed at the recitation. ]

Lemme guess. Roll call is your duty at the meetings?

How'd you guess?

[ are you a psychic, Buffy? ]

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