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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Buffy shakes her head, recalling how things played out. "No, Dawn was afterwards. It was Max, I don't know if you know her. She's friends with Cordelia, too."

She smiles at the idea of sun-filtering windows. Why do bad guys always have the coolest stuff? "It must have been. But hey, now you're in Taxon, Land of Perpetual Sunburn. Some might call that a step up." She's mostly joking with that, though it does remind her of the conversation she and Spike had when he was all pink - and in light of their recent way-longer-than-necessary hug, she feels like she needs to be honest.

"Spike, I have to tell you something."

"We talked, once. She seemed nice enough." She'd warned him off of Buffy. A whole lot of good that had done.

"With an added bonus of not working for people who kill babies and things like that." Spike does not miss working for Wolfram and Hart at all.

Oh, here it comes. The serious talk. He's pretty sure he knows what it's about since he did overhear Cordelia and Kirk. But Spike would rather hear it from Buffy herself. He nods and sits down on the kitchen table. "I'm all ears," he says.

She moves to take a seat herself, though she opts for the more tradtional sitting on a chair. There are probably more elegant ways of putting this, and she could go for a long and rambling lead-up, but instead she just launches into it, drawing patterns on the wood grain of the table with a finger to distract herself.

"Well, Jim and I broke up." There, that's said. It still hurts a little, just saying it, like poking a fresh bruise. She meets Spike's eyes as she continues. "I don't know... what that means for us. But I think maybe I need... some time."

Time for it to not hurt anymore. Or hurt less, anyway.

Edited 2010-06-21 19:42 (UTC)

Spike nods. He hadn't really thought anything through past needing to talk to Buffy, but if he had, he would have wanted time too. She just got out of a relationship with another man, and even if Spike doesn't care for him, Buffy clearly does. If they're going to have a relationship, Spike wants to do it right this time, and that means he's not going to be her rebound. Even if part of him wants to pull her close and kiss her until she forgets Jim Kirk ever existed. But that's not going to work long term.

"I understand," he says quietly. "Take all the time you need. Besides, it's not like I won't be occupied. There's an apocalypse to stop. Again."

Buffy's thoughts on the subject all run in a very similar vein. She doesn't want to fall back into old habits, and she certainly never wants to treat Spike the way she did in the past. This time around she wants it to be right, which means not rushing into things, no matter how inclined she might be.

"Yay apocalypse," she says, with a faint wry smile. After a pause, she slides her hand along the table to touch his. Hand-holding doesn't count as rushing. "Thank you."

It means a lot to her that he understands, that he wants the same things, and that he's not pressuring her.

He gives her hand a light squeeze and smiles softly at her. The two of them, on the same page, not rushing, but hopefully heading in the right direction. It's good.

After a second, his smile sharpens into a smirk and he adds, "This time, I'm not accessorizing. If we find some magic trinket that needs a vampire champion with a soul, Angel can wear it. I'll stick with fists and fangs and maybe a sword or something."

She laughs, running her thumb across the back of his hand and making a show of looking thoughtful. "I don't know, I thought you looked good in the bling. Like the vamp version of B.A. Baracus."

(Evidently she's teasing.)

"I think that's the first time anyone's ever compared me to Mr. T," Spike says, managing to keep a straight face. "But you're right, the resemblance is uncanny."

"Plus, you're both fairly badass." Buffy offers, as further evidence towards her entirely ridiculous comparison. Twisting slightly in her seat, she casts a glance over her shoulder at the sink, coming back to reality. "Speaking of, you think we're safe now?"

She's mostly thinking that they can't keep each other company forever to keep the ghosts at bay. ....well, they could, but it might be counter-productive to their 'taking it slow' strategy.

"I don't know." He drops her hand and walks over to the sink. "I don't know if we're ever safe here. People keep disappearing. Angel's people think it might be, you know, the people who could help most in the upcoming apocalypse, like the Doctor and the Master." It doesn't explain Xander, but it's probably not the best time to pick on him, especially since he's not here and Buffy would probably get upset.

"But people like us, heroes, we might also be in trouble. We're all trying to keep an eye on each other." He should check up on Connor soon. "So, you know. Be careful."

"Help?" She repeats incredulously, the skepticism evident in her expression. "Help us how? By blowing us all up? Or by kidnapping a bunch of innocent people?" Her opinion of both the Doctor and the Master is sadly not very high, considering all she's ever seen is destruction from both of them.

"I don't know if the disappearances are connected, Spike. I've been here for a long time... maybe even the longest of anyone, and it seems like they're completely random." She frowns, thoughtfully. She could be wrong about that, of course - sometimes you don't see patterns unless you're looking for them.

"You know me. I'm Mrs. Cautious." It's possible that this is not actually true. "You be careful, too."

"According to Fred, the Doctor was working on an escape plan. She thought it might have worked." Spike didn't know the Doctor well, and he didn't like the Master. He doesn't miss them, but there are a lot of other people he would miss.

He looks back at her. "Even if they're random, it doesn't matter, I don't want to lose anyone else." Especially when so many of the people he's lost are here. He doesn't want to lose them again. "But yeah, I will be."

"Yeah, well his last escape plan involved using us all as bargaining chips. Oh, and dynamite. Which, believe me, does not a good combo make." Buffy is actually extremely glad Spike wasn't around for that, considering all the devastation and panic.

Setting that topic to one side, she stands up, hugging her elbows in her typical stress-related way. "I'm not going anywhere," she promises, with confidence in her voice in spite of everything. "There won't be any losing."

Spike shrugs. "I don't know or trust him, but Fred knows what she's talking about. If she thought it could have worked, it would have worked, and it wouldn't have involved blowing anyone up."

He walked back over to her and squeezes her shoulder gently. "Me neither."

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

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]

[ location: Castle Summers ]