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. ]

Comments

[herotypical]

[ 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.

[breezing]

[ 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!!

[herotypical]

Art club, huh? Tell me about it.

[ any distraction-port in a storm. ]

[breezing]

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. ]

[herotypical]

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

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

[breezing]

How'd you guess?

[ are you a psychic, Buffy? ]

[herotypical]

Slayer's intuition. And you sounded such a dab hand at it.

[breezing]

What's a slayer? Do you slay things?

[herotypical]

[ she leans against the counter. ]

I'm...it's...

[ not kid-friendly. ] I'm an exterminator. Of sorts. That's all. It's not important.

[breezing]

Whoaaaaaaaa! You must've been super busy last week.

[ 'cause of all the spiders and bats, y'know. EXTERMINATOR WORK. ]

[herotypical]

I...I was. Yeah. Actually.

[ but because of the draft, not because of here. she freezes with her fingertip on a candy apple's stick. ] But I'm taking some time off now.

[breezing]

Well, the spiders and stuff went away anyway, so you deserve a break! I didn't really mind them, though. Although Katara was exterminating lots of them! The spider webs were kinda annoying though 'cause I kept running into them and they got everywhere.

[herotypical]

[ yeugh. still -- if spiders were the worst of it?

she tried not to feel envious. she tried, instead, to feel glad for those left in the village. ]

Spiders aren't so bad. In the long run -- I mean, they're monstrous. But they take care of the even worse bugs. But I guess you still wouldn't want a surplus of them.

[ boy did she ever feel like a spider sometimes. ]

[breezing]

I think the webs are pretty when they get dew on them in the mornings! I just didn't like how many webs were everywhere.

[herotypical]

Huh. Were they in the house, too?

[breezing]

Not so much. But we could clean there pretty easy, you know?

[herotypical]

Lemme guess. With a little helpful air-bending?

[breezing]

Yeah! There're three of us who can do it, anyway, and I like to help clean stuff when I can. So that I help!

[herotypical]

There's a saying about that, y'know. Many hands make light work.

[breezing]

Because it's more fun together, right?

[herotypical]

[ a ghost of a smile. ] Lookit you, having learned so well. But--

How about I grab those treats and free you up for the day, huh?

[breezing]

Oh, of course! You can take as many as you want. I guess I kinda made too many while grandpa was gone.

[herotypical]

In that case, I'll just...I'll pack up a few.

[ buffy -- presumptuous perhaps -- sets her basket on the counter and stores a few apples away in its considerable depth. ] And I'll owe you one.

[breezing]

[ Ikki doesn't appear to mind, shrugging. ] You don't owe me anything; I liked making them! And I think everyone should get to try some.

[herotypical]

...And I think I'll take an extra one. I'm visiting someone in the clinic, after this. He'd love a little pick-me-up. I'll be sure to let him know who made them.