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

[asthehawkflies]

Yeah, I've noticed. I think I did the bad part long before I ever got here so... besides. Steve would look so disappointed in me and I can't take that again.

[herotypical]

...Steve?

[ gentle curiousity. ]

[asthehawkflies]

Steve Rogers. He's here. He's kind of my... boss right now? Leader. Something like that.

[herotypical]

Him? [ she sounds neutral, at least. ] I think I've seen him around. We haven't...met formally or anything.

[asthehawkflies]

Yeah. Tall, blond, looks like he walked out of a comic book?

He's one of those people who really does make him being disappointed in you worse than getting punched.

[herotypical]

...I've known one or two people like that.

[ hell, she's certain she is one. ]

[asthehawkflies]

Yeah, me too. It's an effective deterrent, I'll give you that.

[herotypical]

So -- is he an archery guy too? Or what? Are you a team of archers?

[asthehawkflies]

No, god no. I'm the only archer in this particular band. We're... I don't know. A combat team, I guess. Couple of them are here. Steve, Stark.

[herotypical]

[ her eyes light up -- ever so slightly. ]

Tony, huh? Or are you talking about Daddy Stark? [ does this make this one of the avenger kids, she wonders? buffy watches clint with renewed interest. ]

[asthehawkflies]

[She knows him, huh? Friends, maybe. Clint nods.]

Yeha, Tony Stark. I have yet to run into his... father. That has to be weird.

[herotypical]

Weird is the name of the game, here. We used to have a gal that was my...hmm. [ how to put it? ] Successor. Two hundred years in the future. But--

Tony's been here for a while. Verging on an old friend, at this point.

[ they knew each others' secrets. it wasn't simple friendship; it was trust. and the slayer relaxes visibly to learn that this man was part of a team that also included iron man. ]

[asthehawkflies]

I'm getting that impression, yeah. I seem to come from a couple of weeks earlier than him and Steve though. And it's a two weeks that makes a hell of a difference.

...can't imagine what it'd feel like to be a couple of hundred years earlier than someone.

That's good to know.

[He can relax a little himself, if she's friends with Tony.]

[herotypical]

...She was an alright kid. Will be an alright kid? Something like that. Tenses are never my strong suit in these cases.

[asthehawkflies]

I think it's the kind of thing you hope you don't have to get good at really. Tenses for talking about future people being in the present, I mean.

[herotypical]

Oh? Time travel not a problem in your wacky world of heroes and arch-villains?

[asthehawkflies]

Well, Steve did wake up after being frozen for seventy years. But otherwise... not yet Considering we've just had to deal with an alien god though, I'm not willing to rule it out.

[herotypical]

...Frozen. [ well. this just gets curiouser and curiouser. ]

[asthehawkflies]

Okay, so... during World War Two, Steve became Captain America through the magic of, well, science. He's really strong, agile, fast. Sometime while fighting a group called Hydra, he downed a plane in the arctic. Assumed dead until a few months ago when the plane was found. And he was still alive.

[herotypical]

[ ... huh.

captain america.

her nose wrinkles. ]

You sound like quite the fan, actually.

[asthehawkflies]

[Oh god, he does. This is all Coulson's fault.]

My handler is. I think his enthusiasm must have rubbed off on me.

...he has trading cards.

[herotypical]

Isn't that a little...cheesy?

[asthehawkflies]

Incredibly.

He has special cases for them to stop them fading. They're vintage.

[herotypical]

I'm...not certain whether that's adorable or weird, to be honest.

[asthehawkflies]

Well, he's terrifyingly competent and efficient with everything else, so I figure he gets a free pass on this.