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

[herotypical]

[ 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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[herotypical]

"...What a relief," she said with no relief at all in her tone. Her head turned. She could see Seven from here. It wasn't far. Not really. And maybe she need only do a better job supporting him. A better job being there for him. A better job doing all but carrying him.

But a glimpse of red in her periphery caught her eye. Buffy started to stare at his shoulder. "Your dressings..."

Crap. She dragged a hand over her face before holding it out. Offering it. "Not long, now. I'll get you cleaned up and coagulating once again."

[all7seas]

He reached up to touch a wet shoulder, suddenly circumspect...too much so to sound as miserable as he knew he could feel. "Is it just me, sweetness, or is autumn a particularly bad season for Captain Jack Sparrow in Luceti? A man can be careful. He can be so careful, and he can know just when to run, and then..."

And then a stricken, traumatized teenage girl can turn on him and shoot him. And he would never see it coming.

"Maybe he's just losing his touch, eh?" he added softly.

[herotypical]

Him and his Slayer both, she thought -- but didn't dare say. In fact, instead of saying anything at all, she grabbed onto his blood-smudged hand and covered its redness with her palm. Hiding it from sight. Buffy never used to be this fatally troubled by blood. It had always been a thing of utter power, certainly. But she'd never feared it. Not the way she did now. Thanks to the General. Thanks to the zombies.

She drew his arm over her shoulders and settled her free hand on his opposite hip. Buffy stood straight and strong for him. She could be his body and he could be her soul, if those were the matching parts of themselves that both needed shoring up. She could accept that much mingling of an identity now that they were home and the battle was done.

Slowly, she urged him to walk once again.

[all7seas]

He had to wonder at how it was always a woman who landed a bullet in his body in the end. He'd always been careless with the female creature. Maybe that was it.

"Want to watch a motion picture with me?"

[herotypical]

"...I'd like that. I have some time to spare, pre-bar. We could set you up with a nest of pillows. Maybe a little stool for your feet."

[all7seas]

"That's coddling."

He'd love it. Absolutely love it.

[herotypical]

"Fine!" He made her smile genuinely -- at long last -- on this very not smile-worthy of days. "You get the lumpy chair. No pillows. And I'm hiding the remote. That's the anti-coddling."

[all7seas]

"So cruel, you." But obviously Jack preferred it that way. And obviously he meant exactly the opposite. "Soon enough I won't be such an anchor 'round your lovely neck, eh?"

[herotypical]

With one fluid movement, she caught another arm under his knees and swept him off his feet -- bridal-carrying him just as far as the distance from Seven's walkway to its door.

"Eh. A woman would have to be an idiot to complain about an anchor that's so very not unappealing."

Buffy Summers: an individual who wasn't not comprised almost entirely of iron and double-negatives.

[all7seas]

A lesser man would have felt his manhood lessened by this carrying.

Not Jack.

"You love how appealing I am."

[herotypical]

"...That is, I think, the whole point of being appealing. The very definition."

She fiddled with the doorknob as well as she could with a pirate in her arms. A duck here and a twist there. But -- soon enough -- the outer chill gave way to the house's warmer, well-heated ambience.

Buffy kicked the door shut behind them.

[all7seas]

"Going to have to pay you back for this one. After the Christmas Ball, perhaps?"

Would he be healed enough by then?

[herotypical]

Her responding groan of pain found its inspiration in anything but the physical labour of settling Sparrow onto one of the couches. No, instead she was suddenly burdened with the knowledge that -- sure enough -- society marched on, in spite of her heartache.

It wasn't a surprise. Still, it stung.

"Right. The ball. How many pay-backs do you owe me now? Or is the other way 'round? Do I owe you?"

After all, being carried anywhere was dreadful. Not her favourite thing and often allowed for his sake more than her own. Jack seemed to like that sort of thing.

[all7seas]

"What if we call it square, mmm?"

He puffed up one of the pillows with his good arm before settling back.

"Until you make me popcorn. Then I'll owe YOU popcorn."

[herotypical]

Buffy dropped her basket of untouched goodies by the couch's corner leg. They might do for a post-popcorn snack. But they were messy, finicky things -- candy apples.

"Until I make you popcorn please," she corrected him as she straightened her spin. "With sea salt and honey?"

[all7seas]

"Honey..."

That was a yes. Jack picked up a candy apple and within about ten seconds became a very sticky, caramel-y thing.

She'd remembered. She'd remembered the caramel. Oh, Annielove Annielove Annie.

[herotypical]

To say she'd remembered anything would be entirely too generous. Katara's granddaughter had simply had a surplus of the things and Buffy -- craving the sugar that would be vital in nursing her emotional hangover after the draft and after losing willow -- couldn't say no.

But she could pre-emptively scold him: "Get any on the cushions and I really don't care how mangled you might be -- you'll be on laundry duty for a month."

Dominance (hopefully) re-established, Buffy ducked into the kitchen. The peek-through counter did still allow her to keep an eye on His Royal Stickineess.

[all7seas]

Yes -- caramel in the beard tails. Caramel in the mustache. Caramel caramel caramel.

[herotypical]

Playing pretend -- even playing the austere nursemaid -- was an improvement over her earlier detachment. Buffy had spent a good long while hiding in the newly-emptied bedroom. Not quite wallowing in her sadness but certainly simmering in it. Stealing Jack home gave her something else to focus on.

She plugged in the hot air popper and made a simple can't-mess-it-up honey glaze over one of the burners. Buffy stood near the stove as she waited and worked, leeching up its warmth despite the fact that the rest of the house wasn't all that chilled to begin with.

Dipping her head now and then, she checked on him and his messy progress -- allowing perhaps just a quirk or two at the corner of her mouth.

"Not long now," she promised him as the popper shut off and she carefully drizzles honey and salt into every freshly popped nook and cranny.

[all7seas]

"Darling? That smells like popped divinity."

[herotypical]

Her head popped below the bottom line of the cupboards outlining the peek-through's top border. "Have you picked a flick? Or will I have to do that for you, too?"

And she was gone -- her disappearance followed hard upon by the sound of silverware on ceramic. Coffee.

[all7seas]

"Something adventuresome? And romantical?"

There. The apple was gone, and now his fingers were sticky.

"Also, you're going to have to wash me, woman."

[herotypical]

Buffy wasted time lining up her tray just so. Both mugs to the right, a spare spoon between them. One big bowl of popped popcorn -- absolutely shareable and bound to invite many a knuckle-brushing. Jack had been right enough, for the whole thing smelled heavenly. Her culinary clumsy and the last tablespoons of his wild honey, married together into a fine excuse for an afternoon on the couch.

Eventually, she walked the negligible distance from the kitchen door to the living room coffee table. Buffy nudged the tray onto the table and took the shortcut -- a hop -- over his legs to get to the other side of the couch. That was where she found the narrow shelf where their eclectic collection of DVDS were kept.

"Nothing new there. Washing you is practically like a second job," she murmured, distracted, as she flipped through the booklet of discs.

[all7seas]

"Mmmhmmm." Jack grabbed a handful of popcorn. "It's a highly important job, really."

[herotypical]

"It's a highly messy job. Not to mention lacking in discretion."

Flip. Flip flip flip. "Next time, we're having an en-suite. Bed-and-bath combo."

Next time. A lofty request/promise from a woman who'd practically let herself get bombed less than a week ago.