herotypical | 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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Yeah, that's how it's supposed to go.

[Hard to deny that it doesn't always, though.]

[ a dry, unhappy laugh. ]

Here I am, trying to b optimistic...

Oh. ...Yeah, sorry. I'm probably not the best person for that.

I'm starting to fear that's the veteran's burden.

Y'know, I was gonna say that doesn't apply to the other people who've been around as long as I have but...well, that'd be a lie. Mostly.

...Tell me, do you ever expect to go home any more?

I think- I think I was kinda starting not to. Pretty much giving up, until I did go home just for a day. And maybe it wasn't even a real day, maybe they totally messed with my head and it was wrong somehow and...you know. Not really Tethe'alla at all. I mean, someone else from here was with me and it wasn't anybody from my world.

...But it still kinda gave me hope again, I guess.

Maybe that's what I'm missing. I...didn't go home. Not to my home, at least.

Yeah? Where'd you go instead? [She may have known this at some point but things have a way of getting hectic fast around here.]

W-well...it was homeish in that it was Earth. A version of Earth. But -- more pasty than my Earth. And a part I'd never been to...

Cuba. Not far from Cuba. A gorgeous beach. And a sunset. And Jack's beloved boat stuck in a bottle.

Pasty, huh? [That means 'full of glue' to her.] So you...went to Jack's world? Why am I not surprised at all?

[ past-y. as in of the past! ]

You should be. I mean -- hell, he was. I was. [ ... ] If I'd been thinking straight, I would've insisted we go to mine.

Wait, you got the choice? [Did she get the choice? She doesn't remember.] The part that didn't surprise me was that it was Jack. Did he make you a pirate?

We volunteered, when His Blueness first asked. And...

No. He never would. I was me. Same old me. Until we got back.

Edited 2012-11-15 15:22 (UTC)

Uh. You weren't you when you got back here? I really feel like I should remember this stuff.

Maybe you were fortunate and missed out on it. Something glitched in the return -- and some of us thought we were from the worlds we'd visited? That's when I mistook myself for a pirate and...and after that, I don't think would wish that woman on anyone.

Oh wait...maybe I do remember. I mean, I went home, so maybe that's why nothing really happened to me? But yeah, the rest of it, people were...kinda crazy. I didn't meet your pirate self though, but I bet her name was Annie.

Captain Annie. [ her smile is mirthless. ] And she was a total bit--

Brat. Total brat.

That bad, huh? Sounds like she did the same "captain" thing Jack does too. [This is better than talking about the draft, clearly.] So were you rival pirates?

Rival everythings, I think. It's -- hazy. I remember the week but not really the life that went with it. Just that it's not a life I want for me.

Not one I'd wanna pick for me either. Then again, it's a bartender and a tea server talking right now, y'know?

And a Slayer and a ninja. I think we're all full-up on life options, wouldn't you agree?

[ because she almost doesn't want there to be room for anything else. ]

[She's got a couple other titles that Buffy doesn't know about. For now, it's going to stay that way.]

Pretty much. Too many more'd be a lot to say to a person.

See, that's why I just like good old fashioned names. Drop the Captains and the Misses and the Ma'ams. Me? I just wanna be Buffy.

[ and -- occasionally -- annie. it's complicated. ]

I know what you mean. Even if I had a title I don't think I'd want people to use it.

[action]

herotypical - 2012-11-25 13:06 (UTC) - Expand