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

[all7seas]

Oh, Jack watched. And watched. And winced when he saw Ethan, alone, last of his loyal crew. All gone.

And then:

"Bugger! Their cabinet of fish wonders certainly did just explode, didn't it?"

[herotypical]

"Well -- duh. Couldn't you see it coming a mile away?"

The actiony bits provided the best respite. Running, jumping, blowing things up. All the things that keep you from feeling...

From feeling exactly what Ethan must feel, not that the running and jumping and blowing things up was done. And the making sense part of the problem reared its ugly head.

[all7seas]

"Oi! He's being a bit rough on her, isn't he?"

Ethan was very busy tackling his teammate to the bed after frisking her down.




Actually, it kind of reminded Jack of how Buffy had treated him on more than one occasion. Before. Before all the courtship and dating and such.

[herotypical]

"Everyone's dead except for a presumed mole who sold them all out and he knows it ain't him." A careful, quick-timed glance. "Who wouldn't be a little rough?"

But -- truthfully -- the rough-housing did indeed make her feel...uncomfortable. Like her skin was unpleasantly too tight. She shifted, eating more popcorn and drowning her discomfort in coffee.

And a rant: "See, this is where it starts falling apart for me. What kind of villain goes so far as getting a balaclava and then sewing up all the damn holes? Not a very efficient use of evil time."

[all7seas]

"Perhaps his grandmother made it."


What.

[herotypical]

A serious espionage battle of wits was going down on screen, but Buffy didn't care.

"WHAT?"

[all7seas]

"Old ladies. They.......make things. With the knitting needles."

And maybe evil grandmas made evil things, like hostage hoods. He could see Grandmama doing that into her doddering years, horrid old thing.

1/2

[herotypical]

"Old ladies. With knitting needles. Making...creepy sewn up balaclavas for international instances of dirty dealing..."

Her cheeks puffed out. Brows up with disbelief.

2/2

[herotypical]

"...Jean Reno," she pointed out the grizzled, bearded fellow out -- avoiding the topic of evil grammies altogether. "That's Jean Reno. I think. Am I remembering that right...?"

Should've paid attention during the credits. Still, she felt good. Remembering pop culture slices from home.

[all7seas]

"Do all the ladies at Langley wear such sensible skirts?"

Yeah, Jack has no idea who any of these actors are, Buffy. It's useless.



"OOH! Firefighters!"

[herotypical]

How many similar heists had Jack run in his own lifetime, she wondered. Perhaps never so high-tech, but certainly as elaborate -- if his stories were to be believed.

"Shhh, you'll ruin the mood!"

Absolute silence. Not so much as a crunched kernel would be allowed.

[all7seas]

"Mmmmm. Sorry."


A minute passed. Jack was more than interested in this operation, but being near her on the couch was also distracting.


Absolute silence.


He took a moment to lean in and nuzzle Buffy's ear. At least he was being quiet doing so.

"I've hung upside down like that. Makes me head all waffle-y."

[herotypical]

"That'd be the blood rushing to it," she whispered back, "a think I'm not certain happens to you under normal circum--" Well. It had to be an ear, didn't it? There Ethan hung and what should have been a terribly tense scene was shattered; her attention splintered away and and and...

And then the poor Langley dupe got sick. Buffy pulled away in anticipation of Jack's disgust.

[all7seas]

Jack's reaction was to go very still and whimper very quietly at the back of his throat -- barely audible. Oh God how he hated vomit.

[herotypical]

A mood had certainly been ruined -- just not the one she'd previously anticipated. Buffy nudged the popcorn bowl and its honeyed dregs aside, looking for one of his hands. She tangled her fingers with his.

"Just watch," a squeeze, "it gets better. Impressiver. Less icky."

[all7seas]

It was, indeed, impressive -- even Jack could appreciate the tension, though he soundly cursed Krieger when that man nearly dropped Jack to the strangely battle-dome-like lit-up floor.


Then: "Annie? Your hair's much more shinier and beautifuller than THAT woman's hair."

Brownie points: he wanted them.

[herotypical]

"How...sweet of you to say."

Wait. Was she supposed to compliment him in turn? Buffy wasn't very good at this. Spoken flattery never sounded sincere enough, even when she meant it. She bestowed her favour with actions and glances, not words.

Still! She tried: "A-and your slight-of-hand is way more awe-inspiring. Than Tom's. Ethan's. Whatever."

[all7seas]

She was right. "Course it is!" Jack made a mental note to find a coin in her ear later. Or perhaps something prettier....

[herotypical]

"But -- hey! Look!"

Because a familiar face was on-screen. Plot was afoot. Jim was back.

[all7seas]

"Mmmmmm. I'm smellin' a rat, me."

Jack wrapped his good arm firmly around Buffy again. If there was a grand conclusion to this film, he wanted to watch it close to her. And at least no one else seemed to be about to vomit.

[herotypical]

He was still sticky. Caramel and honey. She didn't mind so much, though. Not now. Even the Willowless ache in her organs and bones lessened in the face of someone else's very fictional story. And when Claire took Ethan's hand, she wasn't wrapped up in her own disastrous life. She was wrapped up in theirs. No -- his. She willed herself to believe that even in the world of Hollywood Make-Believe, there was worse pain than knowing a dear friend had gone safely home.

She didn't mean to, but she mimicked the on-screen affection. She lifted the back of his hand and kissed his knuckled. Scenes changed. And...

"...Ugh. Train scenes."

[all7seas]

Fast trains. Going through tunnels. She was kissing his hand. And then, after harrowing laptop and malfunctioning modem intrigue:

"Oh. She's....she's betrayed him..."

He hadn't seen THAT coming. It was telling.

[herotypical]

But deep down -- somewhere in the truly conflicted parts of her soul -- Buffy wondered whether it would have been more surprising for the woman to have betrayed her husband. A long-time love.

Ah. The expected and anticipated and thrill-packed train roof scene. She'd seen it a dozen times before -- with Joyce, with Dawn, with Xander, with Willow. Willow always shut her eyes.

Buffy never could. So instead she moved from kissing his hand to nibbling anxiously on the edge of Jack's thumb.

"Surprising difficult to do, that. Jump and grab hold of a helicopter," she muttered.

[all7seas]

She knew he was alive!? All that time? But then there was leaping off of trains and helicopters crashing into trains and he buried the lower half of his face into her hair. Still watching. Would he survive this? She would, of course. Would he?


He would. If Ethan Hunt could live through that, then Jack could...

"Cinema of the Caribbean?!"

And then the music played. Bum bum BUM BUM bum bum BUM BUM bum bum BUM BUM.

"He goes to the Caribbean?!"

[herotypical]

"He goes everywhere. Such is the life of a spy. I guess."

Now and again, she turned her head -- temporarily abandoning the gnaw-work on his thumb -- to not so much kiss his forehead but to simply press her lips against his skin. Almost kisses. Small blessings, perhaps. Gratitude crumbs.

"But the second one's more...Australia-based."