taxonomites | 035: [ location: castle summers ] / [ visual ] (accidental)

Taxon has not been fun lately. Granted, fun is probably a relative concept, but as fun goes, things have been lacking. After the everything with the Master that requires no elaboration or specifics, and now Xander being taken away, Buffy's pretty certain she hit rock bottom a while back and then just inexplicably kept going.

Of course, in these situations what she does is get violent. Not with the sky this time, thankfully. She's setting her sights decidedly lower, and beating the crap out of a punching bag in one of the training rooms in the castle. She could kick the thing through several walls if she wanted, but she's working on controlling the uberpowers for the sake of the structural integrity of her home. It's clear that she's been at this for a long time, because the room is practically in darkness - she didn't switch the lights on when the sun went down.

Her tablet is lying discarded on the floor, as she isn't particularly desirous of company right now, but these things have minds of their own, as we all know.

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This is Kirk's usual way of handling emotionally intense situations: Run and avoid. Though, he's been good on not caving completely to the running, else he'd be back to crashing in the ready room of his ship again, like he was before he moved in to Buffy's castle months ago. He may be a man of twenty-six, a genius and back home, one of the most powerful men in Starfleet outside of admiralty as the captain of the flagship, but he's still got a lot of growing up to do - not that he'll own up to any of that anytime soon. He's very tempted to passive-aggressively turn the tablet off in response, but what good would that do? He wasn't some teenager who threw hissy fits when he didn't get his way, he was an adult and he should start acting like one. ...besides, he could always bail and run by way of turning off the tablet later if he wanted to. Best to talk now while he still felt up to looking at the screen.

"Weather's fine, health's good and the economy's interesting. We don't have one, back home. The acquisition of wealth is no longer something humanity strives for. It's like playing a big game of monopoly. Though, I'm likely to get a big ol' stack of paperwork when and if I ever get home over agreeing to be compensated financially. Sort of breaking a few dozen regulations in and outside of the Prime Directive."

Well, apparently the sarcasm with which she phrased her earlier question either got lost, or Kirk decided to ignore it. She's thinking it was probably the latter, and her frustration is rapidly mounting. Pressing the button to lock the feed, she sighs, deciding to be blunt. Maybe if she's blunt she can coax Kirk out of this avoidance game and into an actual conversation that matters.

"Jim, I don't care. About the Prime Directive or your paperwork or any of that. How long are you planning on keeping this up?"

Ignoring, yup. That's what he had been doing. Glossing over the issue by focusing on what she said rather than how she had said it. Avoidance, his good friend - but, apparently not hers. And his eyes narrowed in displeasure for having been called out directly on this, not appreciating it at all. Part of him felt she had no right to be so blunt, as she was the one at fault here, not him, but the other, logic minded part of his head told him that he was at fault, too. Avoiding, while the more comfortable, was not the most healthy. It was prolonging the issue, making it worse for both of them. And he knew she'd been the kissee and not the kisser, but the knowledge he'd had about her previously relationship with Spike beforehand had made the kiss itself, regardless of who initiated it, all the more worse than if she'd been smooched by a stranger.

"What do you want me to say? That's everything's alright?"

"No." Well, that's not exactly true. She'd love him to say that everything's alright, but it's uncomfortably obvious that everything is not, and the worst thing is, she doesn't know how to fix it. She knows she screwed up, she knows she created this situation by not telling Spike about her relationship with Kirk, even if she didn't initiate the kiss. She might not know how to fix it, or if it even can be fixed, but she does know that silence isn't the answer.

"I just... I just want you to talk to me. Tell me how you feel. Tell me what you want."

"How do I feel? I'm pissed, I'm hurt, I'm confused and I don't know what I want!"

The shouting there at the end was probably unnecessary, but when one bottles, things tend to come out with a force once you unscrew that top.

She flinches, slightly, at the yelling - it's unexpected, sudden. At least it's something real however, and it's better than the blank wall of politeness that was so upsetting her just a moment ago.

"Jim, I love you. And I'm sorry. And I don't know what else I can say. If that's not good enough, then I guess we..." Oh no, now would not be a good time to start crying. She swallows, hard. "Then I guess we have a really big problem."

"Guess we what?" He inquires, though he knows where she was going with that and after a moment of looking down at the floor, he picks his eyes and the unspoken topic back up. "Maybe we should. I'm just... I do love you, but you have...these unresolved issues with him that aren't going to go away over night. You said that yourself, back before we were together and then left and now he's back. This isn't about him kissing you, 'cause I get that: it was him and not you, but what is you is what you feel."

Kirk looks at her, directly, and asks: "Can you look me in the eye and tell me you don't still have feelings for him?"

Kirk's words hold a lot of truth of course, though it's not something she's even acknowledged fully to herself, up until very recently. She doesn't want this though - if she could banish those feelings, she would do it. She certainly never would have acted on them, but that was taken out of her hands. And now she's left with a question she doesn't want to answer, because she knows what it will mean, and the thought of it breaks her heart. She can't lie, though. She looks down at her hands for a second.

"No, I... I do." She looks back up at Kirk again, and her eyes are filled with tears. "I'm sorry. Jim... god, I--" She can't really put what she wants to say into words. That she loves him, that she doesn't know how she'll cope without him, that he's the best thing she's had in her life in years, that she needs him, that she misses him, that she just wants to make things how they were before. She stifles a sob, wishing he were there with her, though whether that would make it worse or better is hard to say. "This... hurts so bad."

Edited 2010-06-10 14:32 (UTC)

Hurts. Yeah, that's a good word for it, though at the same time, so undermining of how painful this is. Kirk still doesn't know what he wants, but he's almost positive that she doesn't know that either more so than him, right now. He won't be settled for. That doesn't sit right with him, as much as he wants to just let bygones be bygones. He can't take being settled on because he's there and the one attached; he wants her to want him, because she's one hundred percent sure and right now, he's not feeling that and he doesn't know if that uneasy feeling will still be hanging in the air or not if he just pushes all this into the background or not and isn't sure how he'll take it if it still is. It's going to hurt no matter what he does.

"I know." To the hurting or the apology? Possibly both. "I can't do this if you're not sure, if you still... You gotta sort this out, Buffy. Not just for me, but for him and for yourself. And you can't do that while you're still with me."

She knows he's right, of course. That doesn't make a difference to how she feels, however. For so long now, Kirk's been her ray of sunshine, one of the few things making Taxon feel less like a prison and more like a home. The thought of not being with him, not hanging out with him, not waking up next to him, not listening to his improbably-charming technobabble, not kissing him... it's heartbreaking. It feels like she's losing everything - and as much as she wants to cling to him, she knows it's not fair. Not when she's still untangling the messy knot of whatever it is that's going on with Spike. Kirk deserves better than that.

She nods mutely, not trusting her voice. She wipes at her eyes, concentrating all her efforts on not breaking down in front of him. "Yeah," she says finally. "It's for the best." It doesn't feel like it, though. It feels like she's losing the man she's in love with, and it's all her fault.

035: [ location: castle summers ] / [ visual ] (accidental)

[ visual ] now tracking this thread with angel's journal to hopefully see notifs now!

[ visual ] [ locked ] woo i hope it works!

[ visual ] [ locked ] tracking worked! \o/

[ visual ] [ locked ] hooray! :D

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