taxonomites | 036: [ location: castle summers ] / [ visual ] unwelcome visitors

Buffy is washing the dishes. It's a very mundane task of course, and the broadcast isn't terribly exciting. Soap, running water, annoyed mumbling about Dawn and fossilized lasagne, a little humming to the radio - which is playing some happy-sounding salsa music, the Summers kitchen staple.

At a certain point, she pulls the rubber gloves off her hands, pausing to lean against the sink, take a deep breath and stare into the plughole for a minute or two. There's a lot on her mind, evidently. When she finally comes back to herself, she turns to leave the sink, and then there's a gasp as she stops in her tracks, paralyzed with shock.

Her mother is standing beside her. Her mother, standing there silent and pale and unmistakeably dead. She doesn't know whether to scream or to throw her arms around the apparition. "Mom...?" She asks, in barely more than a whisper. "Mom, are you really here?" Still rooted to the spot, her vision already beginning to swim with hopeful tears, she lifts her hand, about to reach out and touch the ghost. She stops, however, when she notices that her mother isn't even looking at her. No, she's looking right past her. Through her. Behind her.

With a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, she turns, painfully slowly, feeling every single hair on the back of her neck prickle with the presence of death. She turns to meet the empty gaze of... herself. Only not quite herself, exactly. A version. A version of herself in decay. In the process of decomposition - an informative insight into how she must have looked in the coffin, before her friends brought her back. Her eyes widen with horror as she just stares for a heart-stopping second, and then turns back to look at her mother, only to find her gone. Her head whips around again, back to her cadaverous double, to see that she too has vanished.

There's a moment where she teeters on the edge of sinking to the floor to just cry. Pushing down that urge and steeling herself, she instead fumbles with the tablet, her hands trembling. When she speaks, her voice is mostly level. Mostly. It's also filled with anger.

"Whoever's doing this, the ghosts? Whatever you are, whatever you want, you have no right to use her face. You want to play with me? Fine. But don't you dare use her, because I swear to god I will find you."

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"I think so," she answers, glancing over her shoulder to make absolutely sure. "She had company, too. Limited edition zombie-me. Not pretty."

The image makes her shiver, though she tries to conceal the reaction. At least her hands are no longer trembling. "Thanks for the check-up," she adds, gratefully. Angel keeping her talking has definitely helped.

"Zombie you? One of the ghosts looked like..." The image in his head isn't a pretty one and it's one of those times when he hates the sort of world he lives in that makes it so easy to conjure up a likeness in his mind's eye without actually seeing it. That was new. They hadn't been doing that before, to his knowledge.

Angel frowns at her, but nods at the thanks. "Do you need anything? I can stay on the line as long as you need me to."

"Sorry for the visual," she replies, doing her fair share of frowning herself. She shakes her head at the offer, however. "No, I'm okay. But thank you." She sighs, casting a wary glance around the kitchen again. It's probably going to become a frequent gesture. "Just wish I knew what was causing this. Drusilla told me 'the dead are coming'. Guess this is what she meant. Whatever this is, it's gotta be big, Angel."

"Don't worry about it. Seen worse things in my time than a pan with caked-on lasagna," he says with a small hint of a smile, banishing the frown from before. This is his attempt at making a joke and lightening the mood a little, which is something he fails at even more when he sighs and nods in confirmation to this being something big. "Cordy had a vision about it. Whatever's coming, it's not going to be pretty. And I'm willing to bet that this thing with the ghosts is all to distract us from preparing." ...not that they quite knew what to prepare for.

"Tell that to my french manicure," she replies, matching his small smile. In bad times, they make jokes. This is what they do. The smile fades pretty quickly, however.

"I think you might be right about that. It all feels kinda like a pre-show." She nods, running a hand through her hair absently. "I volunteered the castle as a bunker though, if things get bad. I'll start stockpiling some weapons, too. Can't hurt to have a few sharp things close to hand when the shi--" Oh dear, language. "--the umm, the stuff. Hits the fan."

That smile returns as she corrects her language. "Shit, you mean? It is okay to swear around me, you know." Unless you're his teenage son, then it's very much not okay. ...yet he's letting Connor live with Faith at the moment. Yes, because that's not a direct source for learning new words of that variety at all.

"I've got weapons stored up I can dig out - we've got stuff at Wolfram & Hart, too." ...mentioning that building is odd around her, given what he'd done to her there while he was glitched soulless. "Weapons, resources, books."

"Nah, I wouldn't want to offend your delicate sensibilities." She's teasing, obviously, though she looks mildly embarrassed. For some reason it would just be weird to swear around Angel, though she's not entirely sure why.

"Great," she says, approvingly. She's pretty much over what happened at Wolfram & Hart - which isn't to say she'd love to spend time there, but she can hear the name without reacting. "Well, let me know if you find anything. Really wouldn't say no to a 'How to Exorcise Ghosts for Dummies' right about now."

036: [ location: castle summers ] / [ visual ] unwelcome visitors

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