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

[tenminutes]

[ There's a whole lot she could take out of this post, but there's something really important she wants to confirm. ]

Willow isn't here anymore? [ She liked Willow, a lot. ]

[herotypical]

Must've got her ticket punched when I was out being draft-girl.

[ a shivering sigh. everyone else has mostly played her game instead of asking. ]

[tenminutes]

[ Yuri's a bit straight-forward sometimes. ]

Sorry for your loss. At least she's home, probably.

[herotypical]

[ sorry for your loss is so funereal. sigh. ]

She is. I mean -- know the when she went back to. Not the easiest when but -- when are the whens ever easy?

[tenminutes]

She has a "when," so even a hard when is good.

[herotypical]

I'm inclined to agree. Even still -- she'll be missed.

[tenminutes]

[ Yuri nods. She's not much for admitting she'll miss people, or admitting to any feelings at all, but it's a way to let Buffy know that she's not alone in missing Willow. Even if Yuri didn't know her even half as well as Buffy did, she still hoped it was a little better than playing the game and ignoring that kind of stuff. Just as long as no one pointed out that she was trying to be comforting, Yuri would be okay with it. ]

Mhm.

[herotypical]

I'm grateful. To you -- to anyone who made friends with her, here.

[tenminutes]

You don't need to be, you know. We were friends because we're friends, that's it.

[herotypical]

It's just...I know she didn't get out much. Like I said -- a hard time back home. [ buffy never liked seeing her so skittish. ]

But I understand.

[tenminutes]

[ Yuri takes a couple of moments to think, since Willow did mention something about getting in trouble with magic to her and her first post was all hey, end of the world but there weren't any details beyond that .]

Magic or apocalypse hard times?

[herotypical]

Would it be too unbelievable if I said it was both?

[tenminutes]

I'm walking around in another world when I'm supposed to be dead. I don't think "unbelievable" is a factor anymore.

[herotypical]

Huh.

Touché.