Solo

Buffy’d never felt blackness as dark as this. It was nothing like being dead. She remembered that well enough, the way that everything in existence had become caramel and soft clouds. That had all been honey covered light and there was and infinite amount of absolutely nothing. Not a care in the world. This wasn’t that.

This was worry, it was guilt, and it was noisy. All she heard was her own breathing, each molecule being sucked down into her lungs. She couldn’t control any of it. She couldn’t escape the rhythmic breathing that meant she was alive. She wasn’t dead this time. Nope, dead people didn’t breathe. She’d seen it all but never that. She didn’t know how long she’d been wherever she was. She couldn’t really think of how she got their either. People didn’t just sleep for no reason, did they? She’d tried to stop thinking all together when she discovered she wouldn’t be able to even dream. She’d tried to double sleep, slip out of the cold hard reality of being trapped in a body she felt as though she wasn’t connected to, but that release never came. Only more breathing. She needed to wake up.

And then, after all this time, it happened. As if merely wishing it were so had made it possible. Suddenly it all flooded back to her. First the light, orangey-peach, shining through eyelids she felt flutter. Eyelids she felt flutter. She was feeling things. God was she feeling things. Suddenly it was all pain. She didn’t dare move yet, every square inch of her was aching in one way or another. Don’t move, focus on the sounds. There were other sounds now, people sounds. Voices she couldn’t distinguish, she tried to place faces to the two voices. There were two other people here. Two women. What does it smell like? Lavender. Vanilla.

Buffy willed herself to push the pain to the back of her mind. It seemed like it took a long time, but eventually all but one ache seemed to numb away. But holy heck was it one hell of an ache. All five of her senses were getting to their distracty goodness when suddenly she remembered it all. What had happened. She had lost to Faith, she had lost even though she was right. They probably had her chained and bound, no chance of registering despite the beatdown. The wrong thing had happened and it was utterly out of her control. Buffy thought she might be sick. She bolted up with a gasp (mostly in reaction to the unbearable pain shooting up her spine), and her eyes flew open to let the world back in. She was awake and her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach, she wished it could all be a dream.

All Through Water // solo

She saw it all through the wavering blur of water, pressing her face down into a puddle and falling through. She tumbled endlessly until she found herself standing tall among the Cleveland skyline- was it water or heat that caused the bright blue around her to dance? She felt the sun’s burning rays, certainly her skin was melting off by now. Buffy looked down to find herself golden, a bronze statue standing tall among the silver obelisks and reflective glass windows of a cityscape that looked unsettlingly like a graveyard. The buildings stood in a stark grid formation, the spacing like that of headstones. She picked up a heavy foot and began to walk.

There was only the sound of a clicking typewriter as each step thudded into the city street below. Every few steps or so at the bend of a knee the machine would readjust itself, it sounded like a new line. She searched through the buildings, the inscriptions written in ancient runes she couldn’t read or obscured by blinding glints of sunlight. She had to find it, had to find hers. She found her pace increasing to a jog of sorts as she rapidly scanned the skyscrapers, all sound halted as a thick silence fell over the city. The sun left the sky and she clasped her hands together, squinting her eyes in an attempt to read the rounded and grey building in front of her. It was possibly some sort of stadium, the retractable roof covering the artificial grass within. She could feel rain coming, she could smell it. She unclasped her hands and looked at them, so much blood. The skin was no longer covered in the color of the sun, instead it was pale and torn. She couldn’t bare to look at them any longer, she directed her gaze back to the building- her own tombstone.

A thick sort of dark mud covered the text. She fell forward, desperately clawing at the clay. She didn’t care that her own fingernails had begun to bleed, her knuckles becoming even more torn. Her blood added to that which already covered her hands and had begun running up her arms, she didn’t question where it came from. She knew whose blood was on her hands. Finally she was able to uncover the text, written in plain English. She read the epitaph as if it was the only truth in this world:

Buffy Anne Summers

1981-2004

Ever destined to die for her cause

Upon reading the words she felt action bubbling up from within her, rage so pure and unfiltered that she couldn’t control herself. She stood, her head nearly bumping a cloud on the way up. With all of her might she kicked open the dome, the black letters and plexiglass shattering into it. This place, so ungreatful of her sacrifice, it all had to go. She looked up into the darkened sky and watched as one red droplet began to fall from above, it landed with an audible plop on her face and traveled down leaving a trail toward her lips. She tasted the metalic saltiness, it was blood. At the thought of it thousands if not hundreds of thousands of clonelike droplets followed, falling all around and over her. It stained her golden hair with it’s color. Blood was the truest red she’d ever known and it was all she could see. She let out a guttural and animalistic scream as she kicked another of the soulless buildings down around her. Suddenly they were the enemy, she destroyed them all. Kicking, punching, thrashing, and screaming until there was nothing left but grey rubble floating in a red sea. She fell down into the sludge, exasperated and unable to go on. Sitting shoulder deep in a blood rain that didn’t show signs of stopping she stared at the endless ripples each new drop created as it joined the legions of others that had congregated around her. She closed her eyes as the blood bath rose, higher and higher until she was fully submerged in it.

She opened her eyes and was in a desert. She was a figure approaching from afar, flames dancing from his form. His face was nondescript she observed once he was close enough. He only kept coming closer, closer and close until the shadow figure was inches from her. Flames jumped and stretched from him, almost touching her. He was covered in them. He put his hand out to caress her face and she was unafraid, she’d touched fire before. The flames, though red and orange, felt cold and blue- like ice. He dragged his hand down her neck then, she leaned her head back in ecstasy as his hand trailed even lower. He traced her collar bone with an icy thumb and forefinger, the rest of his hand flat against her chest. He lingered there only for a moment before his frozen fire found the collar of her shirt. At his touch her clothes dissolved in a misty haze, all of them.

He cupped one breast with his hand, the other somehow in her hair pulling her mouth toward his. Their was electricity between them, a pull she couldn’t resist. She pressed her lips to his with a ferocious hunger she couldn’t put in words, didn’t feel the need to put into words. She reached out to touch his chest it was muscular and smooth, she pulled her mouth from his planting a kiss upon his chest. Kissing down down down. Pushing him down onto the soft bed of sand beneath them, it burned. His hands were everywhere and nowhere now. She closed her eyes yet again, a soft swirling blackness heightening all other senses. Goosebumps covered her body, the feel of his skin on hers drawing a soft whimper from her lips. She began to breath heavily, the sound of her own jagged moans surrounded her. She was on her knees, straddling him. She bent down, her chest touching his and placed her hand upon his jaw, the other dug into the sand supporting her weight though it was constantly sinking deeper into it. She pushed his head to the side revealing the tender flesh of his neck. She brought her face to it, placed her lips just there- where the pulse was strongest. She could smell only him. Smoke and grass, that hair stuff they both seemed to use, the sweat that come from hard work done. She bit down, her teeth weren’t sharp but they drew blood.

Just a taste, it had been all she wanted. She bolted straight up, opening her eyes. She could see his face now, it was one she recognized but couldn’t place. He sat up breathing as heavily as she was now, letting out gruff pants. They wanted each other so badly, wanted to go to that place, but for some reason they couldn’t. He wasn’t on fire anymore and they weren’t in a desert. Everything around her was blue and they rested in the branches of a tree.

She took his face in her hands, pulling him in for yet another kiss. It could have lasted for an eternity, tongues dancing and battling between their two mouths. She tasted herself in his mouth and it only spurred her on, she had to have him. She looked into the face she knew so well, wanted to say his name. To beg for sweet release the need literally sucking the life from her. His name came out of her mouth so easily but trailed across her tongue on the way out like ice. No sound, it wasn’t needed.

She sat up with a jolt. Darkness surrounded her and she could feel sweat dripping down her temples from her hairline. She tried to catch her breath, still panting. The feel of cotton sheets surrounded her. She was in her bed, in her room. Awake.

Fifty-Two Card Pick Up // Solo

Who is Buffy Summers? Buffy couldn’t count how many times she’d asked herself the question. She kept asking, kept wondering because each time she asked she couldn’t come up with an answer. She knew she was good, or everyone saw her that way at least. Most people told her she was, and that would have to suffice. Everything she was was built upon something someone had told her about herself, things she couldn’t see. None of it was real, not to her. It never was. She couldn’t remember feeling like a real person, not once. Everyone around her was real. She saw them and felt them, but when she looked at herself there was nothing. She had done so much, made such an impact on this planet and she’d been told time and time again that she’d changed. Giles said he’d watched her grow, but when she looked in the mirror she wasn’t there. She didn’t recognize the person looking back at her. She was a empty.

She’d come back from the dead yet again and hadn’t learned a thing. That was a lie, there was one thing she’d learned after Willow had brought her back the first time. She knew how to feel. Pain, rage, grief, elation, and love. There were other emotions but as far as she was concerned they were all just mixtures of those basic five. It was a science almost, the science of feeling- of controlling those feelings and of reacting to them the way she ought to. Her emotions were the one thing that she could use to convince herself she still existed. Buffy was in there somewhere, she had to be there because she felt everything. But the Buffy she had to see in the mirror every day? She wasn’t allowed to honestly feel anything, no she had to pick and choose which emotions were mature. She wasn’t violent anymore, not the way she had been before. She was charming, the face of the Slayers. Everyone knew her name, who she was. Or who they thought she was.

But what rested beneath the person she’d built herself up to be? She had no idea. She only knew what she felt. She felt her heart ripped from her chest the day Dawn died, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. That was real, the agony of knowing she’d never hear that laugh or see the light behind her baby sister’s eyes. She felt so much pride when she looked at Spike and the man he’d become, he’d fought his way to goodness and deserved every ounce of praise he got for it. That was also real. She couldn’t deny the comfort that being able to trust and respect a person completely brought her. She trusted Spike and she did love him. And with loving him came feelings of guilt. She wanted so desperately to love him the way she loved Angel, she wanted it because it would be easy, no tragedy in a pair who loved one another equally and were actually allowed to give themselves completely to one another. He’d loved her so completely despite the fact that he knew her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he got to know her when she didn’t even get to know herself. It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t reciprocate the feelings of love he was so certain of.

Angel. He was his own emotion, a part of her. She loved Angel with the entirety of her being, it was the only thing she was certain of. It made her real. When he was in the room he was the sun, she couldn’t look away. Every moment away from him that she didn’t fill with distractions was spent forcing herself not to give in to the raw magnetism that pulled her toward him constantly. So much of what she was came from the way that his heart had shaped hers. He made her want to fight, to be that force of good. His soul was tethered within him by a curse, and a lot of the time Buffy felt like she was cursed too. She was cursed with feeling everything inside of her squirm when she even thought about him being with someone else. She was cursed with the urge to offer her own life up in place of his without hesitation. And even knowing this couldn’t stop her from loving him, he was the center of her world. Buffy didn’t know who she was, but she knew who he was. He was the most beautiful star in the night sky, the one she orbited around. He was so much stronger than she could ever hope to be, so much better. When she saw him smile, her heart couldn’t help but give off the most triumphant glow. When he touched her, her skin burned and melted into his. He had lived so long and was somehow the youngest most alive person she’d ever encountered. He was selfless when he could be selfish instead and oh so incredibly wise. She felt him wherever she went.

Her feelings were what made her real. Buffy tried to force them away, put them on the shelf because she was a big girl now. She needed to handle things like a politician, to be what the world needed of her. She needed to face each problem as it came to her, not to ponder it or get emotional about anything. Emotions lead to attachments and attachments made her weak. But it was all a fabrication, all just a ruse that she clung to desperately. It was the only way she knew how to cope with what was thrown her way. Buffy Summers was propped up by a house of cards. What would happen if she just let go and let them fall? Simple- she’d find herself.

Reality // Buffy solo

Reality: Buffy was finding it harder and harder to keep a firm grasp on, even with slayer strength. She couldn’t tell what was just the product of her imagination and what was fact. Was she experiencing incredibly realistic fantasy of dreams or was she a part of some time travel-y world saving? She didn’t know anymore. She’d stopped wishing for things to go any certain way days ago. Her predictions and assumptions about her life had all been wrong.
Dawn was back, alive and kicking, only something was missing. Angel was back but the time they spent together before he ascended to heaven didn’t mean they could be together, not that she’d want him to even see her in such a messed up state… She had all of this anger building up inside of her, anger she’d tried desperately to let go of. She was still estranged from Willow and no amount of rationalization or people defending Willow’s actions could remove the pain she felt when she thought about the fact that even before the time travel Willow had essentially chosen Faith over her.
Faith, the woman who had brutally murdered her sister. Sure she didn’t have a soul, but even Angel hadn’t attacked Buffy this way when he didn’t have a soul. The psychological torture he’d inflicted upon her was nothing compared to losing a person who was a part of her in every way. Dawn was even created from Buffy by the monks, and losing her to a brutal murderer wasn’t something Buffy’d easily forgive. Especially not when she’d just returned from giving her life for her the second time around.
And Spike, she couldn’t even begin to comprehend what the deal with him was. He was back on humans even though he had a soul. She wasn’t sure what she could do about it when Spike wouldn’t even accept her help. If he kept on killing innocent people, she feared she might have to chain him up and force redemption upon him ala the old days. And even though he wasn’t anywhere near the man he should be, Buffy found him to be the only person she could trust at the moment.
And then there was Cameron, she hadn’t spoken to him since their conversation on the evening the world had returned to real time. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was avoiding him, but she certainly was. She shouldn’t have been, not when she was about to tie herself to at least 18 years of parenthood with him. Because, yes, she was knocked up with his child and had at one point even been excited about it. The pregnancy seemed like burden now, in light of the onslaught of other problems that had decided to fall on her head at just the wrong moment.
But three positive pregnancy tests couldn’t lie. Three positive pregnancy tests had all the power in the world over her. Three positive pregnancy tests had brought her here, to a women’s clinic where she was now lying on a table with ultrasound goo on her flat abdomen. She looked at her stomach and couldn’t believe that a potential person could be within it. But even missing most of her high school health class, she knew it was more than possible. It happened every day. It even happened to slayers like herself.
“Miss Summers?” The clinician’s voice rung through the room, Buffy’d come there alone and had been silent the whole time apart from answering the array of health questions that had to be answered before the clinic could peek inside her uterus to the little bundle o joy cooking within her oven.
“Huh? Sorry,” Buffy replied in a cracking and flustered voice, she’d been lost in her thoughts. But now she looked to the clinician expectantly. The woman smiled, a hint of uncertainty lingered behind her eyes and Buffy suddenly felt a rush of worry fill her. Was something wrong?
“Miss Summers,” the woman began, the ultrasound tool still pressed to Buffy’s cold, gel covered abdomen. “You’re not pregnant.” Buffy felt her entire body tense up when she realized what the woman had said. Did she lose the baby? She couldn’t have. She still hadn’t had her period which, as far as she knew, meant only one thing.
“The home pregnancy tests were false positives,” the woman just continued on with her analysis. Did she even care what Buffy was feeling? No, she just began wiping the goo off of her machine and rambling on about some sort of “chemical pregnancy”.
“But what about my period?” Buffy felt the question spill out of her mouth, and the woman had an immediate answer to it. There was always a scientific answer to these sort of things. She wasn’t really listening for the answer, though. The next minutes passed in a daze. She’d been financially stable for long enough that both she and Dawn had insurance, which covered the ultrasound fee.
She should have been relieved, but she wasn’t. She shouldn’t have been upset, and yet she was. This shouldn’t have felt like a loss, even though it did. She shouldn’t have been shocked about this. If anything was true it was the fact that she shouldn’t be the least bit surprised. If things like dreams could turn out to be real, then why couldn’t pregnancies turn out to be fake?
Buffy didn’t know who she could talk to about this. But she had to talk to somebody. As she walked out of the clinic she scrolled through her contacts for a certain someone she hadn’t seen since Sunnydale. He was probably the only person on the planet who had firsthand experience with what she’d be missing, and she didn’t know what he could even offer her. But she knew he’d understand. With that she failed the number for the one and only Robin Wood and hoped like hell he’d pick up.