buffy anne summers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
herotypical) wrote2012-11-01 11:22 am
herotypical) wrote2012-11-01 11:22 am
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. ]
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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"But I don't think being soft means you're not the best you. Is there a best Annie? You're you. You're her."
He reached up to touch her cheek. "And you'll be you when you're all old and wrinkly with no teeth. Or if you lost a leg like Sal. Or....other things."
He thought of Lorelai on the draft and almost smiled. That woman, he knew, had remained purely assuredly herself no matter what physical changes she had endured.
Still -- power caps -- Jack couldn't deny it. Those? Scary. Truly scary. The only biting fear he'd felt on any given draft or experiment or mission -- ever since the farmlands battle -- had been that Buffy Summers would lose her supernatural advantages and be at another's mercy.
And those others? Were not merciful.
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He'd never had to see that Buffy Summers. She'd come to him pre-humanized, as hard as it might have been to believe. Spike had told her -- she'd lost her fight. He'd honed right straight in and saw the parts of her that were missing. She'd been found wanting. Why did that sting her so much?
"You didn't even need me out there. And it's not...It's not as though I need to be needed. No, I only need..."
She only needed to not need anyone else in turn. It wasn't about proving it to anyone else. Spike had been right about that, too. It was so self-centred. Self-indulgent.
"What could I have even done, huh? To stop you from getting shot. Nothing. With teeth or without." A sigh. "Or maybe I'd just get gold ones like you."
Never. Never in a million years.
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Already through. Already home.
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"I'm gonna make some tea. You want anything while I'm up?"
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Ugh. Every inch of her was jumpy and dissatisfied and hovering on the edge of a place she'd been before and didn't want to be again. Her legs swung over the edge of the bed and her bare feet touched the cold floor.
"Didn't mean to keep you up. It's probably bad enough I stole you from the clinic." Bad enough I wasn't there. "I'll let you sleep."
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Medicinal.
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Jack tried to prop himself more comfortably on the pillows. The pills were making him drowsy again.
"Don't you do that. You belong with me, woman."
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"You won't even be awake by the time I get back!" Buffy...didn't challenge with this statement. Not really. But there was something there. Some kinda ache for conflict.
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If he wanted it? Of course. She tossed the tin in the air once. Caught it. And headed for the door. "Don't get up to too much trouble while I'm gone," she warned.
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Unless by "trouble" she meant taking up more than his fair share of the bed. Jack slowly began to drop back into sleep, the pain numbed for the present.
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But she had been humbled.
Buffy held her palms hard against here cheeks while she waited for the water to boil. Jack was all well and good; Jack was great. But -- of course -- what she wanted right now was the ability to curl up with Willow.
The water hissed and steamed as she poured it into her mug. Over that fragrant little steel ball. The mug'd contents changed colour almost immediately, a pale almost-yellow before darker tea colours billowed up from below.
At least this was a tastier tea than the other one. She breathed it in while balancing it precariously in both hands. And walking back to their room and he...
She peered in. Yes -- he looked to be asleep. Of course, the lamp was still on. And the magazine was still rumpled on the sheets. But there was no room for Buffy Summers. No. No room at all unless she wanted to risk moving him.
The floor would do.