#and then! grave and buffy once again facing someone she loves wanting to end the world

[dawnssummers]

by the way becoming ii grave parallels make me want to climb walls

[hello-nichya-here]

Yes, Buffy loved Spike

The way people act like that was in anyway left up to discussion by the show is legit hilarious/infuriating.

James Marsters (Spike) has said in an interview that, when Joss Whedon let him know that Spike was gonna fall in love with Buffy in season five, he had assumed it would one-sided - only for Whedon to correct him with a "Oh no, she's gonna fall in love with you too."

And the show wasn't shy about it either. Through seasons six and seven, we are shown Buffy repeatedly denying that she loves Spike - and then immediatelly contradicting herself either through actions or her own words (and even in season five she had already kissed him once after he did not give away her sister's identiy to Glory even after being tortured).

After Buffy comes back from the dead - from heaven - and is dragged to the literal hellmouth, having to crawl out of her grave, she sees the Buffy-bot being torn from limb by a bunch of demons. Naturally, this fucks with her head a bit. She manages to save her friends, but she is still very shaken, and looking like she's not really fully back to her senses as her sister is speaking to her. It really does look like something is very wrong and that she is not at all the same girl we once knew.

Then she hears Spike's voice and goes to see him. Only when she sees HIM, when HE starts trying to talk to her, when HE is the one taking care of her, does she start to properly respond. And, of course, out of all the people there - all of whom are worried about her and that she supposedly trusts way more than she trusts this "fully evil" vampire - Spike is the one to whom she reveals what actually happened to her.

During the musical episode, we see her sing "I touch the fire and it freezes me, I look into it and it's black. Why can't I feel? My skin should crack and peal - I want the fire back" confirming to us that her depression after being taken from heaven was not just a temporary consequence of the shock of it all, and has left her completely disconnected from the people she loved, and from life itself, and that she does not know if it can ever be fixed.

But at the end of the episode, after Spike stops her from basically commiting suicide (because remember, he stopped BUFFY. not the bad guy) she sings to Spike "This isn't real, but I just wanna feel" right before they kiss. And Spike's own song says "I died so many years ago. You can make me feel like it isn't so."

It is very clear that what convinced Buffy to keep on living wasn't just because Spike loved her - she already knew that, and she also her friends and this has not done anything to make her less depressed. What makes her not give up is realizing that SHE can still connect to others, SHE still can have feelings for someone. Only it is with her former mortal enemy instead of her friends and family (she had even said in an earlier episode that he was the only person she could stand to be around) and the kiss makes it obvious that this new bond she has with Spike is NOT platonic.

And the following episode when she tries to pretend it means nothing? It has her acting all flirty with Spike while they're both dealing with the amnesia spell, and once their memories return the episode ends with her kissing him AGAIN.

And during ALL of the episodes she's claming she is totally disgusted by him? She's having sex with him all the time. And when Tara finds out about it, Buffy does admit she's using him, but she refuses to give an answer when Tara asks "Do you love him?"

When Spike brings a date to Xander's wedding , Buffy KNOWS is just to get her jealous and Spike even admits to it - and she admits that, even knowing all of that, it DOES bother her. She is unbelievably distraught after finding out he slept with Anya, and even says to his face "I have feelings for you, I do. But it's not love. I could never trust you enough for that" showing us that the thing stopping Buffy from truly giving Spike a chance is, understandably, the "You're a literal souless creature that needs to feed on people to survive" factor, not because their connection is not genuine or strong enough, or because of her past with Angel.

Not to mention, it makes perfect sense that, during the season she was clearly suicidal, she falls in love with the character that is representing the possibility of her death - their first time even happens after Spike reveals that, for some reason, the chip no longer causes him pain when he attacks her, and thus he actually poses a threat to her again.

Unhealthy? Absolutely. Scary? Fuck yes. Does she get over her "feelings that are totally not love" in the season finale, when she's crawling "out of her grave" again, this time triumphantly, in the sunlight, all brave and finally letting go of her self loathing? NOPE!

In season seven, when she's finally about to go out with a man that is not and has never been evil, her friends are all obviously wondering if this is a sign that she is over Spike - of if she's just pretending to. Buffy's response? THE biggest Freudian Slip she's ever had in the series.

"Why does everyone in this house think that I'm still in love with Spike?"

STILL!

Still. In. Love.

Not "Why is everyone convinced that I fell in love with Spike? I told you guys I liked him, but didn't love him" but "Why do you guys think I'm not over those totally vague, definitively not deep 'feelings' I had and that were 100% not just a code for 'Yes, I am in love with him, but I'm scared it will blow up in my face'?"

And how does that date with that Not Evil guy, that was revealed to be the son of Slayer, go? Pretty well! It looks like this romance might actually have a chance of going somewhere.

At least until she goes "Look, I know Spike killed your mom when he was souless and all, but if you try to go after him to get revenge again, he will murder you, and I will let him." She also turns her back on her watcher, and father figure, when she finds out he was in on the plan to kill this vampire that is Totally-Not-Her-Boyfriend.

The episode even has Giles directly compare her codependent bond with Spike to what she had with Angel - which again, included her letting Angelus get away and kill people. Sure, Spike has a soul now, he let the dude live to tell the tale since killing his mom WAS an awful thing to do, and if he was attacked again and killed him it would be self-defense - but it's impossible not to notice the very clear "Buffy is protecting her man" tone of it all.

Not to mention, before that, Spike offers to leave Sunnydale since Buffy's potential new boyfriend clearly can help her find demons and thus she no longer needs him around - and she full on says that SHE IS NOT READY FOR HIM NOT TO BE THERE.

Then, of course, there's "Touched." The episode in which EVERYONE is going "We might die tomorrow, lets fuck to cope", and not only is Buffy clearly touched (Get it? Get it?) by Spike's speech about how much he loves her, she asks him to get in bed with her and hold her. And even though they are not having sex, the scenes of them cuddling are being framed as being just as intimate and romantic as the scenes of everyone else making love to their partners. Again, we had Giles full on state the obvious to Buffy: she and Spike might not be sleeping together anymore, but they are VERY clearly acting like they're still in a relationship, even if both are now hesitant to give it a try after literally everything went wrong for them.

The following day, Spike says that it was the happiest night of his life, and when he starts saying that he knows it obviously didn't mean as much for Buffy as it did to him, she corrects him and says it absolutely did. Spike even goes as far as trying to confirm it AGAIN by asking "Were you there with me?" to which Buffy says "I was", which is HUGE considering she had just admited to him the previous night that she had always cut herself off from everyone - Spike VERY much included - due to being the slayer.

"Oh, but what about the Bangel kiss in the finale?"

The one Joss Whedon explicitly refered to as "the show's way of servicing the Bangel fans" aka FANSERVICE? The one that came right out of nowhere as the signature of Bangel's "romantic chemistry" is angsty pining? The one that didn't hold a candle to one of the few Bangel scenes I say absolutely worked, aka the kiss after Angel comes back to Sunnydale to help Buffy deal with her grief over her mother and that only happened after they had spend HOURS together because, surprise surprise, it doesn't matter if they still have feelings for each other, they have NEVER had this dynamic of exes that just casually make out with each other the second they are in the same room together?

The one that happens right before Buffy says "Sorry, you won't be the vampire champion that will save the world, I'm chosing Spike for that role"? The one that is followed by an obviously jealous Angel making it very clear to Buffy that he is bitter she's "brushing him off for captain peroxide"? And then she asks if he'll react that way everytime she gets a BOYFRIEND?

When Angel points out that, again, she just let slip how she actually feels about Spike, Buffy has to deny it because Joss Whedon thought the ONLY way to make sure viewers didn't miss that Buffy is totally an independent woman that don't need no man was to tease both the possibility of a Bangel AND a Spuffy endgame just to go "Sorry, Buffy is gonna choose to be single."

HOWEVER, even the way she does that has changed significantly, as she says "He is not my boyfriend, but he is in my heart." Notice how, unlike all the previous times, Buffy is not trying to diminish what she has with Spike.

She went from "I slept with Spike/said I feelings for him BUT this totally means nothing and I could NEVER love him because he doesn't have a soul like Angel did" to "Look, Angel, I swear that Spike is totally not my boyfriend BUT I will treat him like he is because I absolutely do have feelings for him. Could you pretty, pretty please go back to L.A. now that the fanservice moment is over? I'll even end it with a 'sometimes I totally think of what could happen between us someday' so we can pretend our romance has not been officially pronounced 'impossible to ever be endgame' since season three of my show and season one of your show?"

And where does she immediatelly go to after this? To see Spike. Because she wants another night of cuddling with him. Then The First shows up in the middle of the night to torment her, he explicitly refers to Spike as Buffy's vampire LOVER.

Finally, the final battle is happening, and Spike is about to die saving the world, and Buffy, with tears in her eyes finally says that she loves him. Whedon had even said to Sarah "Be proud of him. Love him when saying it." We even see literal flames as they are holding hands - an obvious nod to the musical, with the "I want the fire (feeling) back", and Whedon basically confirmed it by saying it was a very deliberate choice to symbolize the feelings the characters have for each other. It is the visual representation of Buffy FINALLY accepting that she truly does love Spike.

"Oh, but he responds 'No, you don't, but thanks for saying it' implying Buffy was only trying to make sure he would die happy!"

Did you guys forget EVERYTHING ELSE I just mentioned in this post? Or the fact, at that point, Spike is still processing the guilt of all the monstruous things he did as a vampire now that he has a soul again? Did you forget him literally asking Buffy to kill him for what he did and telling her that the soul did not suddenly make him good - only for HER to be the one to say he fought back against the monster inside of him and that she believes in him?

Again, James Marsters gave us his insight on what he felt Spike meant by that line and how he played it: Spike was saying that Buffy COULDN'T love him. Not yet. Because he didn't feel he deserved it yet. It was not the right time for them. Yet.

"Oh, but in the late seasons of Angel, when Spike is brought back to life, he is told that Buffy never truly loved him!" Yeah, he is told that - BY ANGEL! In what world would he, Buffy's ex that has had problems with Spike since long before Buffy was even born and that had already admited that having her pick Spike over him "did not bring out the champion in him", not be extremely biased?

"But you're forgetting the Buffy comics in which she is basically told Angel is her soulmate and sleeps with him during some magical fuckery that made her go mad with power!"

Yeah, and in those same comics, even though it took forever and Whedon just HAS to force the "Buffy ends the story chosing to be single because she can either be a strong female character OR be in a happy relationship" AGAIN, she and Spike became a couple after all of that, with her explicitly telling him WHAT SHE HAD WITH ANGEL IS IN THE PAST, and the ending even suggests is only a matter of time before she and Spike get back together again, this time for good.

Claiming that it was up for debate if Buffy ever truly loved Spike is as ridiculous as if I said "I know we are both shown and told many times that Angel and Buffy slept together in season two, but I actually think it's up for the debate if they truly did" NO, IT ISN'T!

We are shown how Buffy's feelings for Spike grow over time, how her dynamic with him changes, how she is actively choosing him over everybody else after he gets his soul, and both the character and the people involved in making the show EXPLICITLY SAY she loves him.

You can dislike it, but don't expect everyone else to cover their ears and close their eyes to pretend it wasn't clear that Spike's love for Buffy has not been one-sided for a VERY long time.

[sorryforbeingcrazy]

Buffy and Spike deserved more...talking.

I´ve been marinating this in my brain for a couple of days, so here I go.

I really liked the relationship between Buffy and Spike. And I´m not only focusing on the “romance” part, but in general. I loved their transition from enemies to allies to....friends? I just enjoyed how when it came to serious threats, they always looked  and relied on one another for help.

That´s why one of the things that disappointed me the most about the last season was the fact that they never really talked about how wrong they did to each other on season 6.

Season 6 is a very very dark season, for all of the characters: Willow´s addiction to magic and the effects it has on Tara, Xander´s fears that end up leaving Anya on the altar, Giles feeling that he is useless...But who really takes the trophy home in this one, is Buffy. I don´t even know how to start.

From the moment she is brought back to life, she suffers. We were expecting her comeback to be a happy moment, filled with tears of joy, laughter and hugs. Instead, she wakes up in her grave, has to dig herself out and then she walks around a Sunnydale on fire and full of demons. Can you imagine the shock? Only the crawling up from the grave should be enough to send someone to therapy for the rest of their lives. The mere thought of waking up in a coffin, six-feet undergroundnd makes me anxious...But let´s keep going.

She is back. She is traumatized and shocked beyond belief and at home with Dawn (after reliving everything that happened before she died). She is quiet, trying to process everything while Dawn is constantly talking to her about how things are and asking if she is ok. Her hands still wrecked from the diggin. And suddenly, she is face to face with Spike. (This is a sidenote related to the actors. I cannot give enough credit to James Marsters portrayal of Spike in general. But in this scene...man, 12/10, flawless). He looks at her in disbelief. And despite the fact that he was happier than ever that she was alive again, he does not try to touch her or approach her, and the moment he sees her hands he acknowledges what she has been through. So he just tell her that they are going to take care of her, and sends Dawn away to fetch stuff to clean her wounds. And they are alone in the living room. He does not overwhelm her with questions or hugs or anything. He just stares at her, giving her time to put her thoughts in order.

It may look like a trivial scene but I´m not kidding when I tell you that, for me, this is the most important scene of the whole season. And it is because it defines how the dynamic between Buffy and Spike, and Buffy and her friends is going to be.

When Spike is holding her wounded hands, letting her ask questions, just staring at each other, there´s silence. Peace. Calm. It´s the first moment since she is back that she is at ease. But the moment her friends burst through the door, is chaos. Noise, questions, worry, light, people...And this is why this scene is so important. During the rest of the season, the reason why Buffy goes away looking for Spike is because she wants that peace and quiet. She wants the calmness she gets around him, when she does not have to worry about being fine and happy in front of her friends. She can take her mask off when she is in front of Spike. That´s why she tells him that she was in a good place. That´s why he turns into her confident.

And for sometime, it works. Whenever she feels like she can´t take it anymore she goes to spend sometime with Spike. The problem is that her life gets harder and harder: financial problems, Giles leaves, Willow´s addiction, her relationship with Dawn. Her struggle becomes unbearable to the point were Spike is the only safe constant in her life. The only person she can rely on. And of course, mixing this with Spike´s feelings and their “tension”, their relationship turns physical. Very physical. And here is when Buffy starts using, quite wrongly, Spike.

The first time could be a slip, but not the rest. She may not have been aware at the beginning, but deep inside she knew what she was doing. She knew that Spike had strong feelings for her. She knew that he would never deny her and even if he did (that he actually does a couple of times) he wouldn´t last long. So she takes advantage of him and his feelings.

Someone, blind as a fucking bat, could say “Spike wasn´t minding it. He was enjoying the sex with Buffy. It´s what he wanted.” Fuck, no. He spents the whole season wanting to talk to her about their relationship. To discuss what is going on between them. If you are in it just for the sex, you don´t care to ask questions. You just don´t care. You just take what you came for and then you leave. The way Buffy does. And this bothers him. It bothers him that the moment they are finished she runs away. It hurts him. More than once he calls her out by the fact that whenever they are not “in bed”, she is constantly yelling at him and insulting him and his feelings, and yet, she always comes back to him.

Now, for those who think that Spike was fine with this I want you to imagine for a second, that you are in his shoes. As a human being, and not caring about genders. Imagine you loved someone, beyond reason (i´m not even going to throw in the fact that he saw her die even though i could). And because you care about this person, you spent time with them because they are in a bad place mentally. And that person enjoys your company. And starts spending more time with you. And one day, you kiss. Once. Twice. Then, you sleep together. Once. Twice. And god knows how many more times. You could think “If they like to spend time with me, tell me things they do not to their friends, kiss me and even sleep with me, they must feel something, right?” It´s a fair assumption. But instead, this person is constantly telling you how disgusted they feel with themselves for being with you physically, to the point were they keep what you have in absolute secret from their friends, and they run from you everytime you sleep together.

Fucking. Imagine.

Evil or not. Souless or not. That fucks you up my friends.

What leads us to the horrifying events of Seeing Red. You won´t see me coming any close to justify what Spike tries to do to Buffy. There´s no excuse in the world that clears you from that one. But I do see where it comes from. And it´s not just because Spike is evil. That´s a lame excuse of an argument. That scene, is the representation of Spike hitting rock bottom. He wants what he had with Buffy back. Even if it was only physical, it was at least something. And so, he is desperate...and well....we all know what happens. I swear to you, that scene creeped me out so fucking much.

That´s why it angers me how they did not approach these subjects on season 7. They both did terrible things to each other. They should have talked about it in depth. And even though I´m quite satisfied how they ended up acknowledging each other in ways any of the other characters do, I cannot hide my displeasure about that missing conversation. They needed more closure for what happened on season 6.

Good lord. This really turned out long.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[prose-for-hire]

Tomb-mates

Pairing: Buffy Summers x fem!vamp!reader

Request: If you're accepting requests at the moment could you please write a story with a female vampire reader that goes to college and ends up being Buffy's roommate (Buffy doesn't know the readers a vampire and the reader doesn't know Buffys a slayer), at first Buffy and the reader are feuding over petty roommate drama but then their suspicion of each other grows and the drama becomes more intense, ending in romance please?

Requested by: Anon

Warning: Swearing. Fighting/ violence. A little heated kissing.

You were new. New to vampirism. New to dating women. You felt like a fish out of water. You were adapting, but slowly. You always known you liked women, but you had never gotten enough of a chance to explore that side of yourself when you were living.

You may be thinking this a story of repression, perhaps you were growing up in a time where you had to marry a man rather than initiate any relationships with women...

But you had been sired last week. 

The week before you moved to college. Luckily you were taking night classes. So, you weren’t ashamed. Or completely pious or virginal. You just hadn’t dated much, expecting everything to change once you got to college.

Now here you were. Trying to adjust to the bloodlust and the tenuous grip you had on your soul (as well as your attraction to your new roommate). You had never really met many other vampires and so you weren’t aware that you were a lot different than most. Human blood tasted horrible to you. Like rotten fruit. And it made you feel kind of sad inside.

So you ate animal. It was sweeter, not by much. But it was better than nothing. Your sire had dropped you, leaving you to it. She, the vampire you weren’t even sure the name of, went to LA because some store had a rare unicorn figurine she was dying to get her hands on. Or she ‘would totally die… again to get my hands on’ as she had so eloquently put it.

Ever since you moved in with Buffy, things were a little rocky. She could be fun to have a conversation with, she could make you laugh at times and she was honestly the most beautiful woman you had ever met. But there was something missing. Something you couldn’t figure out.

Without realising until it was too late, a gradual tension had permeated the air around you. In every conversation. Every glance when the other wasn’t looking. Every heated comment to or about the other.

The tension became more obvious a few weeks after you moved in together. You were brushing your teeth when she ran in. Teeth meaning fangs. You had changed into your vampire form knowing from experience that it wasn’t good to neglect the teeth that grew when you changed.

You panicked, your face and the reflection would tell her something you really didn’t want her to know. Your face changed back and you shouted at her to get out. You stood closer to her, blocking her vision from your lack of reflection.

She explained that she had wanted to know if you would like to hang with her and her friends. At noon. Also known as sizzle o’clock when you were a vampire.

You stared at each other. You could cut the tension with a knife. Eventually she just backed out and you closed the door behind her, breathing heavily despite the fact you didn’t need to.

You made it up to her after this, you did meet her friends at the Bronze after class one evening. Her pizza delivery guy friend kept eyeing you. You didn’t know if this was because you were under suspicion or otherwise. You didn’t go out with them all again. But you did spend a bunch of time with Buffy.

It was strange, your relationship with Buffy. You were flung together, reliant on each other in some sense. And completely infuriated by the other almost every other hour. But in that alternate hour… God, you would be lying if you said you didn’t enjoy just being in the same room as her.

You arrived back after your night class and dropped your bags to the floor. You didn’t notice that she had stopped still, her eyes wide until you took a second glance at her.

You then realised what she was holding, and then concealing behind her back. A heavy set mace, complete with angry looking spikes.

“What’s that? A mace? Y’know I think they meant the spray kind in the campus talk” You laughed, shaking your head.

“I-It’s for an elective!” She rushed, a panicked look before she pointed as if she had found a better excuse, “They were just handing them out!”

“…You got a free mace?” You questioned, as if it being free was the least believable part of it.

“Well, you know what they say…” You shook your head as she came up with it on the fly, “Maces prevent assault-cases”

“Sounds like it would increase assault cases, but I mean what do I know” You muttered, eyeing her a little confused. She fidgeted under your gaze. You made her a little confused, she loved women. She knew this. But if she had been honest she had never really expected to find someone like you. That she could picture pressing up against a wall and kissing so urgently it made her dizzy with want.

She would never act on it, she told herself. She was scared that you would be uncomfortable. Didn’t want to bring you into the danger that was her life.

Besides, at times you would fight. Pretty heatedly at that. She wasn’t sure if it was tension, her lying or you being hard to live with at times. Perhaps a mix of all of them.

You squinted at her for a moment but then nodded slowly, just letting this one slide. It never crossed your mind that she could be a vampire slayer. You didn’t know they existed. Which, is understandable considering you were fresh-faced and just out of the grave.

It annoyed her how perceptive you were. How interested in her life, in the hours that she kept. It bugged her that you were inquisitive. But mostly, it bugged her that she couldn’t be honest with you. That she found you so insanely attractive and she felt as if there was nothing she could do about it.

You both frustrated her and excited her. She had had more than one dream about you by this time. Luckily for her, it had been early morning and you hadn’t heard her whispering your name. Either way, at the moment all of her attention was on you. She was evening starting to annoy Willow with the amount she would talk about you.

Both of you were becoming suspicious of the other. You could sense something, neither of you entirely able to put your finger on it. Instinct told you that there was something off. Some danger or confusion that made your senses flare around each other.

One afternoon it had become too much for you. You had stepped into her side of the room and started rooting through drawers and cupboards. Just as your hand touched a heavy duffel bag (that contained weapons and thick books on vampire mythology) she stepped into the room.

She caught you. Snooping. Crap.

She pulled you back and asked what you were doing. You explained you were going to a party and thought she wouldn’t mind sharing clothes. She didn’t like this excuse.

She became mad. And weirdly defensive which made your instincts tell you that you had been right to snoop. And you told her this. Which infuriated her more.

“That’s it! My side. Your side” Buffy gestured to a line in the floor that split the two halves.

“Fine” You muttered, tension in the air rising and whipping around you.

“Fine!” She replied. You stared at each other, holding the gaze. The room started to heat up and you weren’t sure if you were imagining it or not.

Neither of you knew whether you wanted to shout or kiss each other. The attraction and frustration was growing more and more.

“You’re impossible!” You muttered grabbing your coat, leaving and slamming the door closed.

Yes, you had been caught out. Yes, you were in the wrong. But I mean you lived with her without her ever revealing anything about herself. What were you supposed to do?

Buffy, despite being angry would feel incredibly guilty if you got hurt because you left in the middle of the night. She didn’t realise but you would usually leave the house for blood and the like in the early morning just before sunrise (so you wouldn’t be disturbing her).

She had actually started to grow weirdly fond of you. She thought you were pretty, so pretty. It was hard getting used to living with you but she found herself almost enjoying the petty arguments. Some days she envisioned holding your hand, maybe asking you to go with her to the Bronze. But, not now you had been snooping.

She had followed you through the night, you went to the library to swap some books. The 24 hour superstore on the corner. You even met up with a friend. Buffy came along with you for all of this, without you realising.

You made one final stop before going back. The local demon bar. They did takeout and some days you really didn’t want to go breaking into a butchers in the middle of the night.

It was a good job too, considering there was a slayer on your tail.

She squinted, frowning slightly. What would you be doing in there? Did you know what kind of clientele actually went in there? She wasn’t sure what to do without having to explain to you the whole demon and slayer jazz. She stayed and waited and you left without an issue.

The only problem was, she couldn’t bring it up without you realising that she had followed you almost all night after your argument.

It was a week or two later and there had been more suspicion. And definitely more arguments. Some petty, some just filled with a tension you couldn’t name. She had arrived late into the night, just as you were curling up with a book. You had finished your classes and began to rest before you would go out after she slept. She sighed twice as she got ready for bed but you just focused on your book.

Buffy left to the bathroom and then came back, sighing again loudly. When you ignored this, she spoke up.

“Turn the light off, Y/n!”

“I’m trying to read here – you’re the one that only just came back!” You warned her, the tone in your voice expecting an argument again. It had annoyed you because it gave you less time to do your errands. She had the entire day to do things she wanted, why did she have to take the night too?

“Well, I can’t stay here in the day you’re always taking those long naps”

“I live here, don’t I? I’m allowed to sleep sometime without your constant interruptions!”

“God! It’s like you don’t even sleep at all at night!” She bit back before turning away from you. She had started to lift back her bedclothes but stopped. She was thinking.

It’s like you don’t even sleep at night… The way you stood in front of the mirror to hide your reflection… The demon bar…. She barely ever saw you eating human food…

Buffy’s eyes bulged at this realisation. Of how you had hidden it for so long. What was your plan? Were you sent to seduce her? She had definitely seen you walking around in a towel more than once and her mouth had dropped every time, her eyes not able to look away.

You had turned off your light and pretended to sleep. You had a habit of doing this, waiting to hear her breathing softly. Imagining her inviting you to slide in beside her. To hold her in those surprisingly strong arms of hers. You often waited until she was properly asleep and then you would get back to whatever activity you wanted. You may even go on a walk and take in the night air if you were in the mood.

But she never got into her bed or allowed you to conjure up your vivid fantasy of holding her while she slept. Lazily staying in bed on a Sunday Evening. Sleepy kisses. Oh God, you had it bad.

No, she didn’t even allow you to imagine so far as her inviting you into bed before she grabbed your shoulder and harshly turned you over to face her.

“What the fuck-!” You shouted, “What happened to my side and your side!?” you gestured from one side to the other your frown setting in almost as deep as when your vampire form changed.

“Up. Now. I can’t believe I didn’t see this!” She rolled her eyes at herself as you got out of bed, only now she realised you had only put on your pyjama top on to pretend you were sleeping.

She tried to punch you several times and you dodged her. You weren’t a fighter but there was something within you now that meant that you were better than a human at least. You didn’t really make any offensive blows, however. You didn’t really want to hurt her.

That was, until she took out a wooden stake. You knew enough to know this would be the end. Like, the real one this time. Your eyes widened and you started to throw desperate punches. She shoved you backwards and you almost had something close to an equally matched fight.

The room was a mess, no counter was safe. The room shook and almost felt as if it would crumble around you. The air was thick, heated. Fuelled by your fight. Your frustration. Your… incredible attraction to her when she became feisty.

“Those things are actually really dangerous – get it off me!” You screamed as the stake came too close to your heart again. You slammed her hand against something leaving her dropping the stake. But she already pulled another from somewhere before you even had time to celebrate this win.

“Introductions. Slayer, meet vampire. Vampire, meet slayer. Me” Buffy stated, a self-satisfied grin that frustrated you as she rushed you.

Both of you now throwing wilder punches. The fight raging on, heatedly. You were trying to get her off you but she was so strong.

“I thought the whole van helsing thing was a myth” you said a hint of humour but you weren’t sure where this was going. You really enjoyed the contact with her but you had kind of hoped she would want to embrace you instead.

“Well, you were myth-taken” She quipped, “A vampire who doesn’t know the slayer? God, you are new”

“Aw, what, you don’t wanna be my tomb-mate?” you teased and she flipped you over your head, leaving you sprawled on the floor. Before you could even think (your brain was left somewhere above you), she was on top of you. The stake had been lost, flung far away by your defensive movement in the fight.

You were so conflicted as she descended on you. You could become so annoyed with her and yet so unbelievably attracted to her at the same time. It was infuriating. And now you weren’t sure what was coming next.

She straddled you, her face agonisingly close to yours. The way her body heaved, her desperate intake of breath. You saw the glint in her eyes, the one where she knew she was right. Knew she had won.

But rather than moving, doing anything to hurt you she stopped. Your wrists pinned where she held them.

The moment slowing down. Time standing to a stop.

You felt her hands slide up, now on resting on your once curled hands. Her fingers locking with yours. The most life, most alive you had felt. Her grasp on you was firm. She was incredibly strong.

But her brow furrowed deeper. She was debating something. Deep within, you could almost hear it her mind was so loud. You started to breath deeply, from habit and anticipation. Your own chest heaving at the proximity. Her eyes dropped to your lips. It was only brief but you willed her to do it again.

Willed her to give all of her attention to you, even if it was to say goodbye. To end your very short unlife.

You would take it, you would take any of it. You licked your lips, eyes scanning her face. Daring to hope.

Your hands, rather than curling into fists were now holding hers just as tight as she gripped you. There was an intimacy to it, no other way to describe it.

Within moments, life rushed back into motion. Her lips instantly on yours. It was passion and urgency and she near knocked the breath back into your body. Her mouth willing yours open, her tongue meeting yours. Desperate for you and willing you to stop her at the same time.

The room around you was on fire. Crackling with the ember of desire that was starting to rise. The room surrounding you was igniting. It could burn down for all either of you cared. You only had eyes for each other. Hands, mouths, everything. For each other.

Her lips sloppily kissing down your jaw, along your neck. You sighed in pleasure, her lips felt so good. She relaxed her grip, only for a moment. As you began wrapped up in the kisses she pressed against your neck you decided to wrestle against her. Managing to roll her onto her back. Allowing you to move on top of her. Your thighs either side of her heavenly body.

The kiss waged on, hands tangling in hair. Grasping at skin. The touch sizzling, warming each other inside and out. You were addicted to her. Her lips. Her hands.

Just as she was to you. It was gradual and sudden. Every sense of hers was wrapped in you.

You knew then. This wasn’t the end. Not of your unlife, not even of your relationship with Buffy. It was just the beginning.

The beginning of the intense and intricate dance you would choreograph together. Weaving between such animal attraction and adoration that blurred into one.

You adored her even when you shouldn’t. She couldn’t get her mind off you, even though she tried.

[stressedspidergirlsfandomblog]

So like mild book spoilers I guess but the legend is all that the Witcher will come back from (Avalon) the land of apple trees if he's ever needed.

So imagine, modern day is happening. Let's say the Continent was Europe. Wherever you want. Imagine that Dandelion is reincarnated. Ciri can hop time and place, so she could just show up. And in the books Yen is with Geralt already.

So imagine Dandelion showing them around (Ciri has already visited) and they do things like treat Geralt to all sorts of foods and experiences and it's just mind blowing.

Yennefer laughing when they try ice cream for the first time. Geralt being shocked to see people of all genders showing PDA. But not like at a party, people just smooching on a street corner.

Finding out with super senses that sour candy is truly horrible - to Ciri's delight and endless laughter.

Fried food.

Modern plumbing.

Electricity and libraries that anyone can access. Doctors who treat everyone. (Well. It's a magical scenario so we can pretend right?)

Like they can't even be mad they were pulled out of the Summerlands for this because so much stuff is neat.

Geralt losing his mind at an action film fight scene not being realistic. Driving Dandelion up the wall with his articulate and complete explanation of why that would literally never happen.

Holding hands in public. Lil cheek kisses and things. Excitement to try new foods. Being the history/philosophy nerd he is, spending hours at the library reading and catching up.

Of course, hunting monsters.

Zoos. Geralt talks about how he's heard of zebras but never seen one,(book canon) so imagine Dandelion taking him to the zoo and he just loses his mind. The petting area cracks him up because it's lame farm animals. And he's like no thanks.

The little ocean petting area is neat bc most of his ocean experiences include monsters. And while the octopus watching them in it's tank is freaky AF the little pettable sharks are pretty cool.

Just imagine them all having a nice day together, and living in a cozy flat or small home that has enough space. And Ciri pranking Geralt a lot with him basically going "that sounds wrong but I don't know enough about it to dispute it."

Imagine them all going to a monster movie or watching a show like Buffy and Geralt thinking it's a comedy because that's not how monsters work at all.

Or a horror film and he's just disgusted by all the fake blood and mistaken details and cannot stop complaining: If she had just gone right. Or picked up the knife. that blood splatter is ridiculous. People like this shit?

And modern Dandelion of course goes by Jaskier or Julian depending on how well he knows people. He plays his lute sometimes, his guitar others, his keyboard others. He's working on a doctorate at uni where he student teaches and loves it. He also routinely has small gigs with some friends all around town. In summer he travels more and plays in other areas.

Yennefer still dresses like Yennefer but in a modern vibe.

Geralt (book) still wears all black but he is very attached to soft shirts and jeans with plenty of give for range of motion. He likes hoodies, too, thinking of plenty of miserable winters spent freezing his ass off. He still wears his gloves a lot, and is weird about strangers touching him. He's still Geralt but he's very excited about nature documentaries and gets livid about history ones talking about aliens building things he saw built. Or people desecrating graves.

"you want monsters? Curses? This is how you unleash curses Dandelion!"

"We know, Geralt, we know." *Patpat*

*angry/indignant spluttering*

He deeply enjoys modern medicine when he gets sick for the first time. Other than the taste which leaves him spitting and wondering if Ciri is fucking with him again. She isn't, but she did so film it for the views. She adapts fine to modern life, having shown up before. She still goes back to her own timeline and place here and there but overall stays with her family.

Geralt's other favorite invention might be the washing machine and dryer. Since he keeps getting his clothes dirty hunting down monsters "just couldn't leave the graves alone they said. Might have artifacts they said. Fucking idiots" he no longer has to rinse them in streams and put them on wet, he can come home, strip, dump them into the washer on the setting that rinses extra, and then take a shower. Come back, put them in the dryer and have them warm and in his hands again in less than an hour.

Yennefer doesn't wear a lot of clothes that can go in the machine but she appreciates how pleased Geralt is about it all. And if she's being honest on chilly nights she puts their blankets in the dryer before bed so it'll be warmer.

Dandelion feels more at home with them around. He's happier. His students notice his hulking boyfriend coming to visit and bringing his daughter. She's super hot but has a really bad scar on one side of her face that twists her mouth a little so she keeps her hair over it. Any time Geralt or Dandelion see someone staring at her they mean mug the shit out of them.

The students are deeply confused when they catch their student teacher making out with his boyfriend but later see said boyfriend come in with a dark haired woman he holds hands with and kisses a lot. Speculation runs rampant and so do rumors.

It upsets the status quo even more when Yen comes alone once and they hug and touch and kiss some, and a few students see it. A few smart ones figure it out and some hate her and some hate Geralt because they can't figure out who's cheating on who.

End of year some brave soul asks which one he's dating and he's like ??? Both??? (Even if Geralt is usually the buffer between them bc he gets far less annoyed about the little things when people think aliens built Kaer Morhen. Fucking stupid! - so he doesn't much care whose coffee cup got left out. It's not his, it's too bitter. And there's pills with just as much stimulant so why drink something that tastes so bad?)

Also please imagine them trying to explain to Geralt why he can't wear athletic wear 24/7. Like no you cannot wear sweat pants at all times. No you can't wear skin tight underarmour I don't care about your range of movement people are staring at you. You wear this to work out in. no, you cannot wear tight pants made for running out and about especially without a jock strap c'mon man.

Please wear jeans and a normal t-shirt.

Also can I just say: therapists now exist.

[ettadunham]

A Buffy rewatch 6x22 Grave

aka doesn’t matter i still love you

Welcome to this dailyish (weekly? bi-weekly?) text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And today’s episode is easily the most unconventional season finale of the show (excluding Restless, which is more of a bonus episode). Buffy doesn’t defeat the Big Bad. Or... does she?

Fun fact, Grave is the only season finale that wasn’t written by Joss Whedon. Well, depending on whether you count Primeval or Restless as the finale of season 4, since the former was also penned by David Fury instead of Whedon.

But this episode has many other distinctions as well. It comes at the heels of an already subversive season, that was meant to deconstruct the very structure of the show, as well as its characters.

Deconstruction however is tough. If you don’t do it well, your audience will rightfully call you out on needlessly pulling your story in an often darker direction to seem fake deep or interesting.

And I feel like season 6 has plenty of criticisms on that front. This certainly wasn’t one of my favorite seasons on my first, or even second go at it. It’s hard seeing characters you love hurting and acting against their own self interests. It’s even harder to see them hurt each other.

This time around however, I wanted to not only look past those previous misgivings I had, but appreciate them and what they mean to the story. Because truth be told, I’m not sure season 6 is actually more flawed than any other season of Buffy.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues – Willow’s drug addiction metaphor was pushed way too hard and took away from the themes of power and control surrounding her narrative for one –, but every season has its hurdles and strengths. Season 2 had an excellent arc, but a lot of confusing fillers. Season 4 meanwhile had great standalones, but a weak overall Big Bad. Every season had its missteps, and a lot of those are subjective to begin with. One girl’s Go Fish is anothers Beer Bad.

There are no wrong answers on this quiz.

So yeah, I went into season 6 not only knowing what to expect, but expecting to gain a new, more favorable perspective on it. And that’s more or less what I got.

Sure, there are things to criticize. But what I’ve been enjoying about this Buffy rewatch in particular, is the opportunity to write long paragraphs of nonsense rather than just saying “Thing Bad”.

Look at Tara’s death. I am perpetually ready to fight Joss Whedon over that in a parking lot, but it also gave us one of the most memorable examples of a hero going dark. And people’s been coming up fixes to that storyline for years (Xander being the one to die is a popular alternative among some fans, but also time travel if you go by fanfics), but it only goes to show that that story itself still worked.

…it’s just that it works in a horrible cultural context that’s rightfully criticized for perpetuating harmful notions, especially for some of the most vulnerable of our population, and the role of media in our society as both a reflection and a model can’t be ignored and should be discussed in order to call attention to these patterns.

Anywho. Grave.

As mentioned before, this is a rather unconventional season finale. Buffy doesn’t even get to fight the Big Bad, aka Willow in this one. Instead the initial showdown happens between Giles and Willow, at least up until the moment Willow breaks free.

That doesn’t mean that Buffy doesn’t fight though. She runs to save Dawn and Xander (and also Jonathan and Andrew I guess), and then when she gets stuck underground with Dawn, she fights to get out. And then she fights some magic zombie skeletons.

More importantly though, Buffy fights her own depression. She’s fighting to see that beauty and meaning in life that she failed to convince Willow of in the last episode.

She even talks to Giles about this. She tells him that she doesn’t understand why she’s here, why she’s alive, and Giles’s response of how she has a calling feels unsatisfying.

Others would’ve taken her place. She was done.

Then why is she here now?

And Giles doesn’t have an answer to that. Because they both know that there isn’t one. There isn’t a purpose to life, no all-encompassing explanation. We all have to find our own answers to get us through the day.

And by the end, Buffy finds hers in Dawn. Seeing life through her eyes, her future, the many things that’s yet to come. It’s arguably a bit clumsy, and I wish we built more on this theme between Buffy and Dawn this season, but it does tie into another aspect of the episode.

While season 6 in itself is a deconstruction of the show, this finale, and Buffy’s arc in particular, is clearly a subversion of the end of season 5. And in true Buffy fashion, a very unsubtle one at that.

In The Gift, the sun coming up marked the turning point for Buffy, the realization that she can save Dawn by sacrificing herself.

In Grave, the sun comes up right after Giles confirms that Willow’s going to end the world.

In the season 5 finale, Buffy jumps to her death. At the end of season 6, she crawls out of the ground to live.

I could go on, but you get my point.

This is also just a great moment for Dawn, as she interrogates Buffy on why she didn’t tell her what Spike did, and reminds Buffy how she can’t protect her from the world. Tragedy happens either way.

BUFFY:  “Dawn, I'm trying to protect you.” DAWN:  “Well, you can't! Look around, Buffy. We're trapped in here! Willow's killing and people I love keep dying! And you cannot protect me from that.”

At the center of it all though is Willow. I’ve already been through the broad strokes here; basically, Willow’s rampage is about avoiding feeling her pain and grief.

And Giles understands that. I absolutely love Anthony Stewart Head’s performance in this one; Giles is focused and cautious, but there��s also genuine pain and concern in his expression as he’s talking to Willow. I also love this exchange around the end of their fight:

GILES:  “Your powers may be undeniably greater. But I can still hurt you if I have to.” WILLOW:  “Boy, you just don't get it, do you? Nothing can hurt me now. This? *heals a cut on her face* Is nothing. It's all... nothing.” GILES:  “I see. If you lose someone you love, the other people in your life who care about you become meaningless. I wonder what Tara would say about that.”

Yup. Giles definitely knows how to hurt Willow. Willow’s line of “it’s all… nothing” is also a lot, especially that little melancholic tint that Alyson Hannigan delivers it with.

But apparently this was all part of Giles’ plan to get Willow to take his magic away, so it would open up her to feel again. However, his line to her afterwards about how “she can make it stop” naturally backfires.

Willow’s been doing all this in order to stop the pain. Giles wants her to feel it to get through it, but Willow predictably would rather see the whole world burn than feel it anymore.

I’m not a super big fan of the narrative choice to have Giles comment upon what’s happening through his link to Willow after that, especially by the end as Xander shows up with her. But I do like those initial lines when he first feels what Willow does, and you can see the pain through him.

Giles later says that the magic she took from him tapped into Willow’s remaining humanity, but I’m not sure I would use that wording. Willow tried to avoid and shut off her pain through her murder trip, but that was still her. Her humanity, her pain was there underneath all along – Giles’ plan just made it harder for her to repress those emotions.

So, hence why she decided to go full apocalypse in order to stop feeling them anymore.

It definitely made it easier for Xander to get through to her in that moment too. But maybe he didn’t even need the extra supernatural help for that.

Willow spent the last three episodes trying to get away from herself. She didn’t want to come back, and she made sure to burn all her bridges in the process. Knowing that what she’s done would cost her friends only strengthened her resolve.

And here comes Xander, out of nowhere. Xander with his familiar, signature jokes, the ones that he cracks in order to cope with life.

More importantly, Xander doesn’t blink. He doesn’t fight or argues with Willow. Doesn’t try to convince her to stop. And that, paired with the familiarity momentarily disarms Willow. So she counters that by lashing out, hurting Xander.

But Xander, once again, doesn’t blink. Because he’s not bluffing. When he says that he’s okay with the world ending as long as he gets to be with his best friend, it’s because he means it.

This is a difference that I’ve been alluding with Buffy for a while now. Buffy can’t do what Xander does here. She can’t put the whole world aside to be with her best friend. That’s not who she is.

It’s definitely who Xander is though. Right or wrong, he always goes with his heart.

So, that’s what he does. He does exactly what Willow mocks him for, and tells her that he loves her.

Even if she kills him, he’ll still love her.

The fear of being unlovable is ingrained into us all on some level. It creeps in when we least expect it. Fear that we’re not good enough. Fear that we can never live up to others expectations of us. Fear that we won’t be accepted. Fear that we can’t be forgiven.

That’s why there’s so much power in unconditional love. Being told that we’ll be loved, no matter what.

We often don’t even realize the anxiety and fears we have about it and how deep they go; so the sheer relief upon hearing those words can be unexpected and overwhelming. And Willow’s no exception.

Again, she tries lashing out, telling Xander to stop, hurting him, but it’s of no use. All he does is repeat those words, even while suffering through the pain that was inflicted on him. By her. “I love you. I love you.”

And when Willow breaks, she breaks hard. Letting herself go in her best friend’s arms, feeling all of her grief at once.

Platonic love saves the day, as the show once again invokes Sarah McLachlan in its final moments. It’s a less memorable song choice than Full of Grace was at the end of season 2, but it’s a nice callback to that.

Oh, and Spike’s got his soul back, after the last few episodes aggressively tried red-herring that he went to remove his chip.

Overall, as I said, I enjoyed this season. As with all seasons, there were things that worked less so, but I generally liked the deconstruction that we’ve got around to. Instead of a Big Bad representing a metaphor for Buffy to overcome, we’ve made those struggles real. The Big Bad of season 6 was Buffy’s depression, Willow’s addiction and need for control, Xander’s baggage, and so on.

We also didn’t need to turn the characters inside out to have these turns and conflicts. The season built on well-established character flaws, and guided us through a journey full of ups and downs, culminating in an emotionally cathartic finale.

I think I’m ready for the finish line.

[buffyversefanfiction]

Twisted Tristan (Buffy Fanfiction)

Chapter 10 - #TeamTwisted #Death2Drusilla #Volume2

Warnings: I do not own or claim to own the original content to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Angel”, the comics or any of the original characters from the “Buffyverse” all rights belong to Joss Whedon.

15 plus, displays of Violence, Gore, Torture, M/M, F/M, F/F.

Tristan Summers had lived an extraordinary life over his few short years on this earth getting to experience love not once but twice: his first love being his high school sweetheart Lucas Brown and his second being the love of his life vampire Dante.

He once had the perfect family life with his parents Mr and Mrs Black until they were cruelly taken away from him and that’s when everything started to go downhill from there. He never did recover from losing his adoptive parents who he loved just as much as if they were his biological parents.

He was doomed from birth wanted by so many evils upon conception as manipulated by Drusilla since birth as she placed him time and time exactly where she needed him to be to make her dreams a reality as she twisted his grief into vengeance using that to calculate his every move.

Despite his dark and twisted life Tristan was loved deeply: Dante never experienced nor felt love until he fell in love with Tristan, despite how much Mandi hated him she loved him even more having loved him all her life and there was nothing he could ever do that would make his biological parents Buffy and Angel stop loving him even if would be easier for them all not to love him they kept doing so.

Tristan Summers’ lifeless body just lay there in the middle of the woods late at night with a clear wound on his throat that could only have been caused by his throat being slit by a knife while his own dry blood stain his clothes.

Tristan’s plan, Faith’s plan, Spike’s plan, Mandi’s plan was to finally kill Drusilla a vampire who had escaped death one too many times a vampire who most of them felt deserved to be killed and even though Drusilla would always hold a special place in Spike’s heart he would’ve rather have had her die than Tristan but due a series of cruel twists and turns it was Tristan who’s death was delivered not Drusilla.

“So, I guess this is what death must feel like to be honest with you it feels weirder than I though it’s weirdly numbing. Death is everything and yet nothing like I expected it to be and I never expected death to come for me tonight although I knew my days were always number I just never expected to be murdered by a woman I was claimed was my savior a woman I was loved like a mother.” Tristan said from beyond the grave as his spirit appeared standing above his corpse. “I’ve cheated death so many times I knew one day it would finally come for me, but never did I expect it to be by her. A part of me died the moment I found my parents lifeless and bloodied bodies in our family home and I became a dead man walking, talking only for revenge hoping once I got my revenge, I would finally find peace. I was a fool for believing that someone like me ever deserved to find peace.”

Earlier That Night

Faith, Spike and Mandi found themselves hiding behind trees with the sight of the abandoned hospital asylum in front of them just a few yards away as they waited for Tristan to signal them to make their move all three of them fearing that the signal may never come knowing how much Drusilla once meant to Tristan.

“So, at which stage do we call it quits and head home before or after we’re killed?” Spike asked Faith and Mandi while remained hiding behind the trees watching the building closely.

“We’re not heading home without him!” Mandi snapped. “He may not give a damn about any of us but the one thing he’s loved ever since Drusilla came into his life is revenge and right now all that rage is aimed in her direction.”

“You mean until she feeds him some lie and suddenly, we’re the sitting targets.” Faith replied to her. “You of all people should know how convincing she can be.”

“I believe in him.” She said with uncertainty until she noticed a vampire being thrown through a window smashing the glass into pieces while he fell to the ground causing Mandi to sigh with relief. “Okay that wasn’t quite the signal we talked about, but it certainly got our attention.”

“Here goes nothing Spike.” Faith said to the blonde-haired vampire before turning to face the brown-haired witch. “Start chanting and hope we don’t all wind up dead.”

Tristan found himself fighting for his life after pulling out a wooden stake and launching himself towards the vampire army circling him staking vampire after vampire causing them to turn to dust each time as he continued to fight his way a seemingly never ending army of vampires but to Drusilla’s dismay who stood at the end of the hallway within the abandoned hospital asylum confused and horrified by Tristan’s actions.

“Stop being a bad boy!” She began screaming frantically and repeatedly before seeing Faith and Spike burst into the hallway with wooden stakes in hands wasting no time in joining Tristan fight against the vampires making Drusilla even more worried than before.

“I must admit I thought you were going to kill us all.” Faith shouted in Tristan’s direction while dusting a vampire.

“The night is still young yet.” Tristan replied as he dodged a punch from a vampire before punching the same vampire and dusting it.

“Which one of us gets to stake Drusilla?” Spike asked while eyeing up his former ex while fighting with her vampire army before noticing her beginning to run away out of the hallway. “I guess she escapes again.”

“To hell with that!” Tristan snapped as he dusted another vampire. “You guys can finish up here, but this doesn’t end until I’ve plunged a stake in that bitch once and for all.”

Mandi stood right in front of the abandoned hospital asylum chanting away to herself while the rest of team twisted fought of the vampires inside.

The wind began to pick up as Mandi’s hair began to change from brown to black as the wind grew stronger and strong until it was circling her blowing her black hair back and forth as her veins grew darker and more vibrantly showing on her skin as she continued to chant louder and louder not noticing Drusilla coming out of the building via jumping out of an opened window.

Drusilla eyed Mandi up from a distance and in that moment felt nothing but rage blaming the witch for taking away here last child and deciding to teach the girl a lesson right there and then as she began lurking towards her prey making sure the witch was too busy chanting whatever spell she was casting to notice her.

“You’ve been a really bad witch!” Drusilla snapped at her before punching Mandi across the face causing her to hit the ground instantly, knocking her out in the process and causing Mandi’s hair to turn back brown.

Drusilla pulled a blade from out of the chest of her dress before picking up Mandi’s unconscious body and holding the knife to her throat ready to slay the witch she blamed for Tristan’s sudden turnaround.

“No!” Tristan screamed after jumping out of the same window as Drusilla and ran over to stop Drusilla.

“You’ve been a bad boy Tristan and you need to be punished.” She replied as she continued to hold the knife towards the throat of an unconscious Mandi. “Besides she’s annoyed me for far too long.”

“If you let her live, I’ll come with you without any tricks.” Tristan pleaded with her. “You can turn me into a vampire, and I won’t fight you anymore. We can be a family again!”

“Fool me once shame on you.” Drusilla uttered before throwing Mandi’s unconscious body at Tristan who quickly caught his childhood friend stumbling a bit by doing so.

Drusilla quickly launched at Tristan using her blade to slit his throat instantly before putting on her vamp face and launching her fangs into her slit neck draining him off his blood while grabbing a hold of him as he began to fall as an unconscious Mandi’s body once again fell to the ground.

Drusilla continued to drain Tristan of his blood until she started to hear his beat become slower and slower at which point, she dropped him to his knees before using her nail to slit her throat slightly just enough to make her bleed.

“Now be a good boy and feed it’s either feed or die my darling boy I know you’ll make the right choice.” Drusilla told him as she lifted him back up and placed his head on her neck ready for him to feed from her before he died.

Tristan looked resistant for a moment as he felt his life drawing nearer to it’s end before he bit down on Drusilla’s neck refusing to stay dead in that moment and began drinking from Drusilla’s blood making her his sire making Drusilla finally his vampire mother much to her own wicked delight.

Spike and Faith walked out of the front door of the abandoned hospital asylum having just dusted the remaining vampires only to be left shocked to see Mandi laid on the field looking lifeless.

“I swear to god if he’s back-stabbed us…” Spike snapped fearing for his friend as he and Faith rushed over to her.

Spike lifting her up in his arms shaking Mandi’s body furiously in hopes of waking her up and after a few moments her eyes opened much to Faith and Spike’s relief as Spike instantly hugged his friend thankful for her still being alive.

“Thank god he didn’t kill you.” Spike said while continuing to hug Mandi tighter and tighter.

“Okay let her go before you wind up finishing the job.” Faith told him as she broke off the friend’s hug.

“Where’s Tristan?” Mandi asked frantically worrying about her childhood friend.

“He’s either hunting Drusilla or on the run with her who knocked you out cold anyway?” Faith asked her.

“Drusilla I’m surprised I’m alive to snitch on her.” Mandi replied clearly in shock while looking around for any sign of Tristan. “He would never have run away from her.”

“I don’t think he did,” Spike revealed as he knelled putting his finger into a large amount of blood spilled on the ground before licking the blood off his finger. “This is Tristan’s blood.”

“Oh god no!” Mandi squealed in shock, truly devastated by the thoughts beginning to surface in her mind about what had happened to Tristan. “He must’ve fought her off as she tried to kill me.”

“Tristan didn’t strike me as the saving type he’s probably just wounded a little if he did try and save you and we’ll find him.” Faith guessed while beginning to look around the woods.

“He had several chances to kill me time and time again and he never did.” Mandi cried. “Despite everything he never turned twisted enough to kill me.”

“There’s a lot of Tristan’s blood here but there’s also some of Drusilla.” Spike said as he stood back up. “There’s no dust anywhere so I’m guessing Tristan’s either dead or undead judging by how much she loves her children I’d guess the latter.”

“Oh god this is all my fault,” Mandi began sobbing. “I should’ve seen her coming I should’ve been able to cast them damn sunlight spell quicker!”

“None of this is on you Mandi.” Spike reassured her as he rushed over to hug his heartbroken friend. “We all knew the risk going into this Tristan especially.”

“Do you really believe she would turn him?” Faith asked Spike while he continued to hug his grieving friend.

“I know for certain that’s exactly what she would do if she had a chance especially knowing his emotions was getting the better of him as she would say.” Spike admitted to Faith. “We need to inform Buffy and Angel and we need to let them decide.”

“Decide what?” Mandi asked as she broke off the hug and began drying her tears.

“If we find him now and kill him before he becomes a vampire, or we wait till he’s a vampire before we kill him.” Faith revealed, clearly not happy with the only choices they now had left.

Buffy sat on the couch in her living room sitting next to Willow the two all curled up on the sofa covered in blankets and eating popcorn while watching old movies on the television as they had a movie night within their apartment in San Francisco which was Willow’s idea to try and calm Buffy’s nerves about Tristan not realizing that this was the day Buffy would lose her son once again.

Their movie time was quickly interrupted by the loud ringing of their house phone as Buffy pinched the popcorn bowl and looked at Willow with a knowing smile that said Willow was the one who was going to have to answer that call.

“Fine but if I miss anything good, I’ll put a hex on you.” Willow joked as she rushed into the kitchen of their apartment and picked up the phone which was hanging on the wall next to the fridge. “Hello oh hey Spike yes it’s Willow you’d think you’d know my voice by now.”

Willow suddenly went painfully silent as she found herself completely shocked by the news that Spike was telling her while tears began forming in her eyes.

“No, it’s okay I’ll tell her I don’t know how I’m going to tell her, but I will.” Willow told Spike as her voice began to break and tears began falling down her cheeks. “I know use done the best you could, we all did.”

Willow put the phone back on the wall before allowing herself to break down for a moment covering her mouth as she wept so Buffy wouldn’t hear her cries knowing she was going to have to stay strong for her friend knowing this news was going to break her and fearing she may never come back from losing her son again.

“Willow what’s wrong?” Buffy asked her as Willow walked back into the living room.

Buffy’s face began to drop as Willow told her of Tristan’s death at the hands of Drusilla causing her to scream and cry while sobbing as she struggled to contain her grief over her son’s death wishing nothing more for it all to be a terrible dream as she couldn’t help but blame herself for her son’s fate.

“We’ll get through this somehow I don’t know how but we will.” Willow cried as she rushed over to Buffy and hugged her tightly allowing Buffy to completely break down in her hands. “I’m so sorry Buffy I’m so sorry.”

Tristan’s lifeless corpse just lay there in the middle of the woods his throat slit from Drusilla’s knife as his spirit continued to linger while watching Drusilla dig him a grave out in the wild knowing night was going to turn to day soon so she had little time to bury her son before hiding from the sunlight as she planned to return for him at night forced into hoping no-one would find him before then.

“The last thing I ever expected to get me killed was my humanity the irony is if I was as truly twisted as I and everyone else believed I’d probably still be alive right now or maybe I was always destined to die this day maybe this was always her plan after all she wanted nothing more than Buffy to die more so than I ever did so I guess there’s a chance she saw all this coming that she saw Dante die and then me.” Tristan said as his spirit continued to watch Drusilla dig a grave for his body. “I guess I can’t complain with the amount of lives I’ve snuffed out over my life this is clearly what is deserving for me however I can’t help but wish that this death was finale that my body could finally rest from all this madness. God knows how much evil that body will commit now it’s a soulless monster even more wicked than I once was, but I guess that’s exactly what she wanted.”

Drusilla walked over to Tristan’s body picking it up and throwing it into the grave before beginning to shovel the dirt back on top of him burying him as quickly as possible so she could run off and find somewhere to hide out until the impending day turned back to night.

“I’m sorry mummy had to kill you I really am my darling boy, but I had to kill you, so I didn’t lose you.” Drusilla said while continuing to shovel more dirt onto Tristan’s corpse as she shed a single tear. “I know you won’t be the same when you return but I’ll love you all the same and if they thought you were twisted before just wait until you rise again my sweet boy.”

Faith got herself to New York before getting on the first plane she could early hours that morning as she jetted off to Los Angeles to inform Angel what had happened to his son fearing how he would react especially knowing Mandi and Spike were still out in those woods searching for Tristan’s corpse as Spike used a blanket he found within the hospital to cover his body as much as possible taking breaks in shade to heal from his burns as the two of them hoping to end Tristan once and for all before the monster inside of him rose again.

“Angel there’s something I need to tell you.” Faith said with tears in her eyes after finally arriving at the Hyperion Hotel in Los Angeles now standing in front of Angel who was sat behind his desk in his off. “It’s about Tristan.”

[theajaheira]

bless her soul

read it on ao3!

“You’re not her,” said Giles desperately. Begging.

Jenny stepped forward, stood on tiptoe, brushed her mouth against his. Warm to the touch. “Oh, England,” she whispered. “Don’t you wish that were true?”

(s3. jenny comes back wrong.)

i have no real explanation for this fic beyond “it seemed like a good idea six thousand words ago, and then it got very devastating-angst-with-a-happy-ending and i don’t know what to do with myself.” stayed up till 1am to write it and now i’m in my emotions!! yikes!

They were expecting Giles to light up when he entered the library. Cordelia was still fussing with Ms. Calendar’s hair the way one might with a well-loved and long-lost Barbie doll, smoothing down the twigs and tangles. Willow was washing Ms. Calendar’s hands, working at the blood under her fingernails. Xander was hanging awkwardly near the checkout desk, watching as though he wasn’t quite sure where his place in all this was, and Buffy hovered near him; she didn’t know where she fit into this picture either. But they all did know one thing, and it was that Giles’s return to the library would make this moment the perfect, happy thing that it needed to be.

Ms. Calendar’s shoulders were curled inward. She had been trapped under the ground for hours before Angel picked up muffled screaming, and her unfamiliar detachment made sense to them all. No one was looking too closely at her, anyway; everyone was determined to believe that this one thing, this one miracle, could happen. Angel had returned, didn’t he? Maybe there was just some mystical thing going on.

Giles came into the library. He looked blankly at Ms. Calendar, whose unfocused gaze was directed at her bloody hands, and then he said, “Get away from it.”

Willow flinched, then burst into tears. She’d been incredibly close to crying ever since seeing Ms. Calendar, and Giles’s sharp voice had been enough to push her over the edge. Cordelia’s hands dropped from Ms. Calendar’s hair, and Xander went a little pale, and Buffy said, “Giles—”

“Get away from it,” said Giles again. His voice was level.

“But Giles—”

“These things,” said Giles, “do not happen without a reason. The Powers that Be do not grant boons like this. It is not Jenny, and it is dangerous, and the moment you trust it, it will strike. Get away from it.”

Ms. Calendar looked up at Giles. Her eyes were blank, no spark of anything in them.

Ms. Calendar ended up going home with Buffy, seeing as Buffy’s mom was the only one who knew about the whole supernatural thing. Plus Buffy did die that one time, so she figured maybe she and Ms. Calendar might have something in common now. They couldn’t get Giles to drive them, because Giles was still furious at everyone for even letting Ms. Calendar (or, as he called her, The Unconfirmed Entity) into the library, so they rode in the back of Oz’s van.

Ms. Calendar was still wearing the black dress she’d been buried in, as well as the tacky high heels, one of them broken in the struggle that had been Angel’s attempt to get her out of the coffin. She’d been half-conscious when she saw him, he said, but she’d woken up and started fighting him. They needed to be gentle with her, he said, she’d been through a lot.

Buffy took off her cardigan and tucked it around Ms. Calendar’s shoulders. Ms. Calendar looked at her, then said, “It was your fault, you know.”

The words felt jagged enough to cut. Buffy felt sick. “Yeah,” she said. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“That doesn’t fix anything,” said Ms. Calendar, and gave her a small, tight smile. “I’m still hurting. And it’s still your fault.”

Buffy felt suddenly grateful that no one else was in the back of the van to hear this. “I’m sorry,” she said again, voice cracking. “If there’s anything I can do—”

“Let me make myself very clear, Buffy Summers,” said Ms. Calendar coldly. “Helping you was a waste. I only wish I hadn’t died for it.” She turned away, then, directing her gaze out the back window of the van, seeming utterly disinterested in Buffy as a whole.

Buffy felt like something had been scooped out of her stomach. It is not Jenny, and it is dangerous, Giles had said, but Buffy sure couldn’t believe that. Ms. Calendar had died in the worst way someone could, and anyone with half a brain would blame Buffy.

Ms. Calendar slept in the guest room and spent the whole night having very loud nightmares, which Buffy knew because the screams from the guest room were keeping her wide awake. Buffy had to go into her mom’s room and cuddle up in her mom’s arms, which she hadn’t done since she was twelve and had a nightmare. Her mom held her tightly and said, “She was dead, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah,” said Buffy.

“But then she came back,” said her mom.

“Yeah,” said Buffy.

Her mom let out this shaky little sigh, then let go of Buffy and said, “I think she could do with some hot cocoa, don’t you? You said they found her buried alive.”

Buffy felt a strange sense of loss as she watched her mom leave the room. Ms. Calendar’s screams cut off, replaced by gasping sobs and the muffled, reassuring tones of Buffy’s mom. Some selfish part of Buffy, the one still stinging from Ms. Calendar’s cool, sharp words in the van, thought that’s my mom, not hers. It made her hate herself even more.

“You let it into your house?” said Giles. His voice was shaking with fury.

“It’s not an it, it’s Ms. Calendar,” said Willow, sounding angry enough to be near tears. “And you should know that, Giles. Buffy, it’s her, isn’t it? No weirdness, no supernatural stuff—”

“Yeah,” said Buffy, her stomach twisting. “It can’t be anyone but her.”

Giles slammed the books he’d been filing down onto the library table. He was staring at them both like he couldn’t believe they were this dumb. It felt like it could go hand-in-hand with that quiet contempt Ms. Calendar had directed at Buffy in the van. Everyone seemed to think Buffy was stupid for wanting to help, for caring. “That is not Jenny Calendar,” he said. “For once, Buffy, Willow, trust me when I say I know what is and isn’t her—”

“You thought that poltergeist was Ms. Calendar, Giles, and we’re supposed to trust you now?” Buffy shot back, furious. “When there’s a living, breathing Ms. Calendar who Angel had to dig out of her own grave? Maybe she’s not falling all over herself to make out with you, but news flash, that’s not how it works! She’s not gonna just show up and forgive you for what happened—”

She stopped, horrified. Some of those words hadn’t been meant for Giles, and directed at him, they had the potency to hurt more than any long-dead girlfriend could.

All the anger had drained from Giles’s face, and suddenly Buffy missed it. There was this terrible, broken look in his eyes. “You’re quite right,” he said weakly. “Quite right. When have my senses ever served me well, after all?”

“Giles,” said Buffy, trying to think of something, anything to say that could possibly make this better.

“She said she’d never leave me,” said Giles, eyes unfocused, and then he went and locked himself in his office.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” said Willow unsteadily, her gaze still locked on the place where Giles had been standing, like she couldn’t quite look at Buffy. “You shouldn’t have said that, Buffy, he’s not arguing with you because he doesn’t believe in you—”

“Don’t tell me what I’m doing wrong!” Buffy shouted. “I’m hearing it from enough people already, Willow, don’t you start on me too!”

“I wasn’t!” Willow was beginning to cry. “I’m so sorry, Buffy, it’s just everyone’s so angry and I don’t know why—”

There was a knock on the door, and then Ms. Calendar stepped in, wearing what looked like some of Buffy’s mom’s clothing. She looked softer in the morning light; more earnest. “Is Rupert in?” she said, eyes flitting over Willow and Buffy as though they were part of the background. Something felt wrong about that.

“Ms. Calendar,” Willow began, sniffling, smiling. “It’s so good to—”

“Not now, Willow,” said Ms. Calendar, waving a hand as though dismissing a fly. “Is Rupert in?”

Willow’s face crumpled. Without warning, she raced from the library in tears.

“You know what?” said Buffy, anger rising in her as she turned on Ms. Calendar. “That’s it. That’s the last freaking straw. You can say whatever you want to say to me, but don’t you dare take whatever you’re dealing with out on Willow.”

“I’m sorry, is a teenage girl’s insecurity the first thing I’m supposed to cater to after I come back from being brutally murdered?” Ms. Calendar shot back. “Murdered, might I add, by the homicidal vampire terrorizing Sunnydale for months just because you couldn’t keep your sad little love life together?”

“If you weren’t Giles’s girlfriend—” Buffy didn’t want to know how she was going to end that sentence.

“What?” Ms. Calendar tossed her hair over one shoulder, all fake-cool and too-pretty even in Buffy’s mom’s beige sweater. “You’d slay me? Kill me? What do you think Rupert would do if he heard you talking like that?”

The door to Giles’s office opened; Ms. Calendar turned, expectant, with big doe eyes and a sweet smile all for Giles. Something in Buffy’s chest started hurting. She couldn’t watch Giles and Ms. Calendar come back together, not after all that stuff Ms. Calendar had said. “I have to go,” she said flatly, and hurried away herself. At the very least, she could apologize to Willow.

Willow ran through the halls, ran out into the courtyard, and tumbled into Oz’s arms, crying and crying and crying into his shoulder. She couldn’t tell him why. It would make her sound stupid, ridiculous, weak, and he wouldn’t like her half so much if he knew how much she’d loved Ms. Calendar. Ms. Calendar, with her cool sweaters and her soft brown hair and her smile that lit up a whole room. Ms. Calendar, who had always had time to listen to Willow, who always put her work down and gave Willow advice in the moments that Willow’s mom would have shooed her away. Ms. Calendar, who called Buffy Buffy and not Bunny, who knew Willow’s favorite candy was from those little Pez dispensers, who was so kind that Willow had known from the very beginning that she couldn’t have been that angry, vicious poltergeist—

Poltergeist.

Something struck Willow, a half-formed concept that shocked her enough to get her to stop crying.

“Willow,” Oz whispered, stroking her hair like he thought she was calming down.

But she wasn’t. Thoughts were whirring through Willow’s mind at a mile a minute. Jenny could never be this mean, she’d said, near tears, and she knew Ms. Calendar couldn’t have. Ms. Calendar had been a lot of things when she was tired and scared after Eyghon, but never once had she turned Willow away. And as easy as it had been to believe in the moment, Willow knew in her gut that dying wouldn’t have changed the kind of person Ms. Calendar was.

Willow thought about the hollow, empty look in Ms. Calendar’s eyes, devoid of any soul at all. She thought about Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) and Giles (the Watcher) and Angel (the vampire with a soul). She thought about the people who, if Ms. Calendar came back raw and angry and blaming them, would be wracked with guilt and completely distracted.

Willow, however, was not wracked with guilt. And it was why she was beginning to get the sense that things with Ms. Calendar weren’t as cut-and-dry as they seemed to everyone else.

“Hey,” Willow heard Buffy say. “Is she okay?”

“Not sure,” said Oz, and Willow felt a kiss pressed to the top of her head. “Been kind of a tough day for all of us.”

Willow raised her head, sniffling. “Buffy,” she began, unsteady.

“No, Will, let me just—” Buffy sniffled too, trying to smile. “It’s been really weird,” she said. “And hard. And I’m so sorry I took it out on you. I’m no better than Ms. Calendar if I’m—”

“Buffy, something’s wrong with Ms. Calendar,” said Willow. “Something has to be.”

“Rupert,” said the thing wearing Jenny’s face, and her voice was that same low, liquid tone he still dreamed about, sometimes. Every single one of those dreams had hurt to wake from.

“You’re not her,” said Giles. “Prove that you’re her.”

Drusilla had said tell me what to do, he reminded himself. Drusilla had looked at him like he was the sunlight, like he held every answer within him just by virtue of being himself. Drusilla had looked at him like evil things looked at him when they were mimicking what they thought love was: gentle and adoring, free of complexity.

Jenny had always looked at him with fond exasperation, on their best days. Giles tried to remember the exact tilt of her head, the exact wry shape her mouth would make, and couldn’t, and god, whether or not this was Jenny, that gap in his memory fucking hurt.

“How am I supposed to prove myself to you?” There was a gentle half-laugh in the thing’s voice as it raised Jenny’s hand to his face.

“Don’t—don’t touch me,” said Giles, staggering back into the doorframe and hitting his head against it, hard. He barely registered the pain. He remembered the cool touch of Drusilla’s hand, and fucking god if she touched him and she was cold he might die, he might kill her, he might do both, the universe throwing her in his face thrice like this was too much for a man to bear—

“You’re expecting your Jenny, aren’t you?” it said, and dropped its hand, looking frustrated. Looking like Jenny, his Jenny, his love, how dare it. “What if I’ve changed, down there in the ground? Maybe whether or not I’m me isn’t your judgment to make, not after what you let happen to me.”

And whether or not she was Jenny, that felt like being punched in the stomach. “I love you,” whispered Giles, because even after it all, he was still a weak man.

Jenny laughed, a sharp, derisive sound. “Sure you do,” she said. “Enough to trust me over your Slayer? Oh, wait.” She stepped back, looking at him as though he was lacking. None of Giles’s dreams had hurt as much as this. “I loved you,” she said, “and I died knowing you’d never love me half as much. That kind of thing changes a girl, Rupert, so yeah. I’m not the girl you know, and I’m not whoever you tricked yourself into thinking you were in love with.”

“I love you,” said Giles again, a broken record.

“For once in our relationship, Rupert, do me the courtesy of being honest with me,” said Jenny with another hard laugh. “You lied to me about who you were from the very beginning. I lied to you about what, my name? A mission I didn’t care about? And you threw me away without even thinking about it. That’s not love.”

She died not knowing. She died not knowing.

“Don’t you ask me to prove myself to you,” said Jenny. “You don’t get to ask me that. Prove yourself to me first and we’ll talk.”

“You’re not her,” said Giles desperately. Begging.

Jenny stepped forward, stood on tiptoe, brushed her mouth against his. Warm to the touch. “Oh, England,” she whispered. “Don’t you wish that were true?”

Buffy had a dream that night, one she’d had before. It was that one in the graveyard, the one that had got her to realize what Ms. Calendar hadn’t been telling them, and returning to it was jarring and infuriating. “She can’t have more secrets,” she said, loud and furious, to Angel and the mourners. “She died. What else can she possibly be keeping from us?”

“You have to know what to see,” said Angel again.

Buffy turned, and the mourner that she knew was Ms. Calendar raised their veil—

—only Ms. Calendar’s eyes were missing. There were just two symbols carved where her eyes should be, and when she opened her mouth, Buffy saw rows and rows of sharp teeth.

And then Buffy woke up, heart pounding, frightened and angry. Something was messing with her friends.

Angel was drinking a cup of pig’s blood when Ms. Calendar stepped into the mansion, looking around with a detached interest. “So this is where you holed up after Rupert burned the old place down, huh?” she said. “I like it. Roomier.”

“I’m sorry,” said Angel, putting down the pig’s blood.

“You fucking should be,” said Ms. Calendar, a sudden hardness in her voice. It was only there for a moment, and then she was smiling, sweet and bright. “So are you still banging sixteen-year-olds, or is that just one other habit you’ve decided to drop?”

Angel didn’t know what to say to that. The guilt was overwhelming, stifling, looking at her. “I’m sorry,” he said again, helpless.

Ms. Calendar crossed her arms, teacher-like, cocking her head reprovingly at him in that way Angel had once seen her look at Xander. “I want you to know that you are nothing,” she said. “I want you to know that giving you your soul back meant nothing. I want you to know that I am always going to look at you and see a killer, soul or no soul. You ruined my life, Angel. You killed me. You hurt the man I love more than anything in this world, and he has to live with guilt I can’t take away from him.”

“I’m sor—”

“What is that supposed to mean to me?” said Ms. Calendar, eyes blank, mouth half-smiling. “Why do I care how you feel? You broke me like a twig and you smiled while you did it. You’re a monster, Angel, and I hope you live out the rest of your days knowing it.”

Angel sunk back into the sofa, the mug of pig’s blood smashing on the floor. He only barely noticed.

“I don’t know if we can be sure that it isn’t Jenny,” said Giles. Sleep-rumpled and forlorn, he gently nudged a cup of tea in Buffy’s direction. They hadn’t exactly talked about what Buffy had said to him, but after she’d told him about her dream, things had felt a little easier between them. Until this weird thing with Ms. Calendar was solved, Buffy thought they might at least be able to pretend that things were okay. “The things she said, they were—”

“She told me that helping me was a waste,” said Buffy. Giles stilled. “And she brushed Willow off. Giles, listen, maybe I didn’t know Ms. Calendar as well as the rest of you, but it feels like she’s playing off all our insecurities about her death. And remember what you said about the poltergeist? You knew it wasn’t her, because you knew she’d never hurt us like that.”

Giles smiled a little tiredly. “I wasn’t aware you remembered that bit,” he said wryly.

Okay. So maybe things weren’t completely cool between them. “I was mad,” said Buffy quietly. “I was upset you were saying it wasn’t her, because—” She swallowed. “Because it felt like her,” she said. “It felt like she should be this mad at me for what I did.”

“Buffy, Jenny’s death was in no way your fault—”

“And it wasn’t yours either!” Buffy persisted. “That’s what I’m saying! There’s something going on here that isn’t right! Willow pointed it out to me earlier today, and I thought I’d sleep on it, but this dream proves—”

She stopped. Giles had this strange, sad look on his face. “Having her alive and hating me,” he said, quiet and shaky, “is still better than having her dead and gone.”

Buffy thought back to Angelus. She thought how it had felt when he was alive, like there was still, somehow, some magical chance that things might fix themselves. She thought about the terrible hole that feeling had left inside her, and she reached across the table, awkwardly, and hugged Giles very hard. “I love you,” she said. “Okay?”

Giles hugged her back. He didn’t say I love you too, but Buffy didn’t really need to hear it to know it. “We’re going to figure out what this is,” he said shakily. “We’re going to figure it out and we’re going to stop it.”

“Darn right we are,” Buffy agreed, sniffling, and pulled back. “Okay. I’m gonna call Willow and Xander, you—”

“I’ll check in on Jenny,” said Giles. “You said she was at your mum’s, still?”

“I mean, I left early in the morning, I didn’t exactly check her bedroom, but she should be, yeah,” Buffy answered, already heading in the direction of the phone. “And if she’s not—”

But Giles had stopped moving. He had that look on his face that he always got when he was working something out and really didn’t like where it was going. “No,” he said. “No, Buffy, she isn’t with your mum, not if she isn’t Jenny. If she wanted to sow real seeds of discord, cause lasting damage, she’d go for the most volatile and dangerous agent of good in Sunnydale.”

“Look at me, Angel,” said Ms. Calendar.

Angel couldn’t.

“Look,” said Ms. Calendar, and grabbed his face, nails digging into his flesh. “Look at me and tell me you’re not a monster. Tell me you don’t want to hurt me again. All these terrible things I’m saying, they make you angry, don’t they? They make you want to hurt me, break me, kill me—”

“Stop,” Angel begged her. “Please, Ms. Calendar, I—”

“Oh, Angel, if you murder a girl you should at least call her Jenny,” laughed Ms. Calendar, letting go of his face. “Have the decency to respect one of my requests, won’t you? Look at me and call me Jenny.”

Angel felt sick, looking at her, because he remembered Ms. Calendar. Not the woman with this mad, manic energy like she wanted him dead—the woman who was awkward, and a little too loud, and way too smart for her own good. The woman who had given him back his soul because she’d believed in him. He had killed that woman. He had done that. “Jenny,” he whispered.

Jenny’s smile widened. “Good,” she said, and placed his hands at her neck. “Now kill me again.”

Angel tried to jerk his hands away, but couldn’t. Why couldn’t he? Jenny was small, she was slight, she had broken so easily under his hands—she shouldn’t be holding him in a vicelike grip too strong for him to break free of. “Jenny,” he pleaded. “Please let me go.”

“No,” said Jenny. “Not until I show you what you are. I don’t want to be alive anymore, Angel. This world doesn’t have anything for me anymore, and that’s because of you. But if I’m going to die, I want to die knowing that you’re not pretending to be anything other than what you are.”

Angel thought he might be crying. Was he crying?

“Weak,” said Jenny. “I expected better.”

“Drive faster!” Buffy screamed. “We don’t get there in time and I don’t know what’s going to happen, she could hurt him, she could—”

Giles floored the gas and thought I will kill this thing for daring to wear her face.

“I can’t,” Angel sobbed, “I can’t,” and his hands fell limply to his sides as Jenny let go. He pulled himself up and off the sofa, stumbling away from her, lost in guilt and misery.

“You know what you are,” said Jenny. “Just because you can’t kill me doesn’t change that fact.” She stepped forward. “Kill Buffy,” she said. “How’s that? You remember what it was like, wanting to rip her pretty little throat out, and frankly, I remember too. The bitch kept me from Rupert, she deserves—”

“Hey!”

Angel looked up, stunned. Buffy and Giles were standing in the doorway. “Listen, lady—” Buffy began, but Giles lunged.

He ran past Buffy, ran past Angel, knocking the thing that could not possibly be Jenny to the concrete. It screamed. He grabbed at its throat, thinking about Eyghon and Angelus and Drusilla and every single demon that had treated Jenny like theirs to own and break and wear as a disguise. “Show me your face,” he shouted, “show me your face, I promise I’ll rip you to shreds—”

Jenny struggled and sobbed underneath him. “Rupert!” she begged. “Rupert, please, please stop, it’s me, I promise—”

Horrified, forgetting everything but his love, Giles pulled back.

Jenny lay on the floor, crying. “I don’t understand,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, Rupert, I don’t—”

“She’s lying,” said Buffy flatly from behind Giles. “Giles, she’s tricking you, that isn’t—”

Giles reached out, but Jenny flinched away, pulling herself awkwardly up into a sitting position. She was shaking, looking up at him with horror and fear. “Why would you think it wasn’t me?” she whispered. “You know me, Rupert, you know it’s me—”

“Prove it,” said Buffy.

And just like that, Jenny’s tears were gone. “It was a Slayer dream, wasn’t it?” she said. “I hate those things. Always giving me away.”

Giles tried to bring back that vicious, violent anger he had felt, now that he knew for certain that it was justified. But even though he had known it wasn’t Jenny, it had felt like hurting her, and the look on her face had been one he might never forget.

And the woman he truly loved was dead. And this was what he would remember of her.

“You hurt my Watcher,” said Buffy, “you hurt my friends, and you hurt the guy I love. Give me one good reason not to kill you.”

The thing that wasn’t Jenny laughed, that sharp, short sound that, now that Giles was really listening, didn’t sound like Jenny at all. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?” she said. “I’m warm to the touch. I blink, I sleep, I scream, I cry. I am Jenny Calendar in all the ways that count.”

“No,” said Buffy. “You’re really not.”

“Jenny Calendar loved these people,” said Giles, quiet and unsteady. “She might have been afraid and angry, coming back, but she would never wantto hurt us.”

“I’m not talking about Jenny Calendar’s soul,” said the thing that wasn’t Jenny, sounding somewhat annoyed. “Haven’t you all been wondering why Angelus came back?”

Buffy and Giles exchanged a wary look. “What?” said Buffy.

“The Powers chose a champion, and they returned a life to you in exchange for the many you saved from Acathla,” said the thing that wasn’t Jenny. “Angel was the champion. Jenny Calendar, bless her currently-missing soul, was restored in body.” It smiled slowly. “But I got here before her soul could.”

“What are you?” said Giles, and oh, good, there it was, the furious anger he’d been missing. Jenny’s body had returned, but something had stolen the life she deserved to have.

“I am something that your fragile little minds are not going to be understanding any time soon,” said the thing that wasn’t Jenny. “I’m the First Evil. The thing the darkness fears—”

“So get out of her body,” said Buffy fiercely. “Give it up.”

The First Evil raised one of Jenny’s eyebrows. “No,” it said.

“I will kill you,” said Giles. “Do you understand that? It will destroy me, but I will do it.”

“Do that and you’ll kill the shell I’m in, not me,” said the First, looking extremely amused. “But wow, it’ll be fun to—”

Angel whacked it over the back of the head with a volume of poetry. The First crumpled to the ground. “It’s gonna leave a bruise,” he said ruefully, “and it’s not a permanent solution, but it at least buys us some time to figure one out.”

“Angel, are you okay?” Buffy asked anxiously.

“Well, it does help to know that she was just trying to get under my skin,” said Angel, and tried to smile. “Besides which, I think someone needs to be okay right now.”

Giles was only half-listening to what they were saying. Carefully, he pulled Jenny’s body into his arms, his heart twisting as her head nestled against his shoulder. It was her. Not her soul, but her, and they would find a solution, because he would be damned if he’d let the world take her away all over again.

They brought the First to the library, carefully tied its hands behind its back, and locked it in the book cage.

“So,” said Willow uncomfortably. “Weird night.”

“Actually, by Sunnydale standards, this seems pretty normal,” said Xander, glancing nervously over at the First. “And we’re sure that’s not Ms. Calendar?”

“I mean, it is,” Buffy explained, “it’s just that she doesn’t have her soul.”

“Huh,” said Cordelia. “Well, there’s a lot of weird irony in that one.”

Inside the book cage, the First stirred, and then it sat up, looking at all of them with that cold, calculating expression. “So,” it said. “Planning on trying to thwart me?”

“No,” said Buffy.

There was a surprised silence.

“I’m sorry?” said Giles, who was very clearly in the Let’s-Hit-This-Thing-Until-It-Bleeds camp.

“No,” said Buffy again, stepping up towards the book cage. “We already have.”

The First scoffed. “You’re more confident than most Slayers,” it said. “Or perhaps more stupid.”

“I don’t think I am,” said Buffy. “See, you came in trying to mess us up, remember? You wanted us all at each other’s throats, so that when you turned Angel against us, he’d be able to kill us all easy-peasy.”

Angel looked a little sheepish at this. Willow patted his shoulder.

“But get this, smarty,” said Buffy, and rattled the book cage, punctuating each word. “It. Didn’t. Work. You’re stuck in a book cage with your hands behind your back because we know Jenny Calendar, and we knew you weren’t her.”

“Actually, I was the only one who—” Willow began. Xander covered her mouth with his hand.

“So no, we’re not gonna thwart you,” said Buffy. “You’ve lost. Big time. And unless you want us kicking you out of that body with a magic spell, I’d suggest getting out of it while the getting’s good, because I’m pretty sure Giles is going to make the exorcism process as painful for you as he possiblycan.”

“Oh, I definitely will,” Giles agreed.

“Your choice, Firsty,” said Buffy. “What’s it gonna be?”

A moment. And then Jenny’s head dropped, and a chill rushed through the library.

“Did that seriously work?” said Buffy, sounding much more like an seventeen-year-old instead of the Vampire Slayer.

Jenny’s head jerked back up, eyes glowing.

“Okay,” said Xander. “Uh, maybe not.”

Jenny’s eyes cleared. She squinted at them. Then she said, “Okay, either I’m really hungover or someone just clocked me over the head with a second edition of Wordsworth.”

“The second one,” replied Buffy, a little shakily.

“How do we know she’s not a pod person?” Cordelia piped up.

But Giles was already unlocking the door. Without a word, he knelt down in front of Jenny, gently touching her face, looking at her like he couldn’t quite believe she was there.

“I should be dead, right?” said Jenny softly. “Shouldn’t I be dead?”

“You’re all right?” said Giles shakily.

“Aside from the whole second-edition-of-Wordsworth concussion,” Jenny began, a shy laugh in her voice, and that was when Giles kissed her very hard.

“Ugh,” said Buffy, but she couldn’t even pretend at being disgusted. The bubble of stunned, happy relief in her chest was way too overwhelming. “Okay. You know what? We should, um, give them some—”

“Privacy!” Willow agreed, and hurried out of the library, shepherding Xander and Cordelia along with her. Buffy followed.

Angel wavered at the door. Giles was untying Jenny’s hands, all but sobbing his apologies and worried inquiries and words of love. Jenny, even with her hands still tied, was trying to kiss every inch of his face, whispering comforting words right back.

Angel smiled, and then he followed the rest of them out.

Giles wasn’t at school the next day, but neither was Buffy; after her mom had heard what had happened, she’d given Buffy the day off. So Buffy grabbed Xander and Willow and they all headed over to Giles’s place, knocking on the door.

Ms. Calendar answered it. “Buffy, Willow, I am so sorry,” she began immediately. “Rupert told me you two might have—that I might have said—I mean, I didn’t really get the details—”

Willow let out an incredulous, tearful laugh and flung herself at Ms. Calendar, throwing her arms around Ms. Calendar’s neck. Ms. Calendar staggered back into the coat tree and knocked it over onto Giles, who yelped. “Really!” he said, and steadied it.

Buffy stepped inside and hugged Giles again, because that felt like the sort of thing you should do after this kind of a messy two days. “How’s it going?” she asked.

“Well, the woman I love is back from the dead and not hell-bent on world destruction,” said Giles, “which is, all things considered, about as good as it can get.”

Ms. Calendar was fussing over Willow’s new haircut. “Look at that!” she was saying. “I hope it’s a tribute to me. Hey, Rupert, did you write me any sappy lost-love poetry? I seriously expect some Annabel Lee level stuff.”

“She’s taking the being-dead thing extremely lightly,” whispered Giles to Buffy.

“That’s just good sense,” said Buffy, stepping up to Ms. Calendar.

“Listen,” said Ms. Calendar, Willow still clinging to her like a barnacle (to Ms. Calendar’s credit, she didn’t seem to mind all that much), “it wasn’t your fault, Buffy. Okay? To be honest, I’m a little annoyed with all of you and your guilt complexes, because there was really only one of us who was dumb enough to stay after dark in a public building.”

Buffy looked at Ms. Calendar’s eyes. They were chocolate brown, and soft, and warm, and a little worried. “You mean that?” she said.

“I’m not the kind of lady to absolve myself of all responsibility,” said Ms. Calendar with a small smile. “If anything, I’m the kind who takes a ridiculous amount of it on and gets myself killed.”

“Really too soon to be making jokes,” said Willow into Ms. Calendar’s sweater.

“Hey, it’s been the blink of an eye for me,” Ms. Calendar reminded Willow, gently untangling herself from Willow’s grip. She extended her hand to Buffy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For what I didn’t tell you, and how I handled it. I-I’m so glad I was able to help Angel get his soul back, and I hope it at least begins to make things up to you.”

Buffy stared at Ms. Calendar. She thought of the First saying helping you was a waste. Then she sort of launched herself at Ms. Calendar too, hugging her tightly. Hey, Willow had some pretty good instincts.

Jenny headed down to her grave with some nice white roses, mostly because she thought the whole thing was way more hilarious than it had any right to be. Also deeply disturbing, and she was damn glad she couldn’t remember any of what the First had done in her body, but she thought she was getting a little better at handling traumatic events. It didn’t hurt to have a support system, this time around.

Angel was there. “Uh,” he said, looking nervous and a little guilty. “Hi.”

Jenny’s mouth twitched. “Hey,” she said.

“Listen—”

“Save it,” said Jenny. “You’re the guy who stopped Eyghon from rotting my excellent face, remember? We’re not gonna waste time talking about what a demon inside you did, Angel. I’d never blame you for that.”

Angel looked surprised, then touched.

“That’s not to say things aren’t still weird between us!” Jenny added. “Because just to clarify, I’m not inviting you in any time soon. But I don’t want you wracked with guilt, because Rupert says it’s a total drag—”

“Giles said that?”

“I’m paraphrasing,” said Jenny. “The point is that guilt isn’t going to get you anywhere. The Powers brought you back because you’re a champion, Angel, so take up the mantle.” She knelt down, setting the roses on her grave. “God, Rupert wasn’t wrong. This is a terrible gravestone.”

“Did anyone ever call you Jennifer?” Angel asked, frowning at the carved letters.

“I’d probably have personally killed them had they tried,” said Jenny, reaching out to run her fingers along the groove of the J.

They were quiet for a little while longer. Then Angel said, “Ms. Calendar—Jenny—I don’t know how easy this will be.”

“For who?”

“For everyone,” said Angel. “All of us were ready to believe that you’d hate us for the way you died—”

Jenny stood up, looking thoughtfully at Angel. “You know something?” she said. “I kinda thought I might too. There are a lot of parts of last year that really, really hurt me, and I died feeling like all that hurt had been for nothing. But Rupert, those kids, even you—” She thought of the tears in Rupert’s eyes, the way Willow had nestled into her arms and all but refused to let go. “I might have grown up surrounded by vengeance,” she said softly, “but that’s not the way I want to live. That’s never the way I want to live.”

“A champion,” said Angel.

Jenny blinked. “Huh?”

Angel smiled slightly. “I don’t think the First had it right,” he said. “The Powers brought back someone as a gift for Buffy and Giles and someone as a warrior of good. How do we know for certain that the champion isn’t you?”

“Cute, Angel,” said Jenny, amused. “You’re still the one with the vampire strength.”

But she was smiling a little as she looked down at the white roses on her grave.

[wonderlandmind4]

Delicate Stages Ch 48

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x OFC Ana Rios

Summary: Bucky Barnes agrees to participate in Deprogramming Sessions. What he gets is not anything like he expected.

Warnings: Language. Violence. Blood. Fighting. Choking.

Words: 6k+ @justreadingfics @nerdyandproud9 @buffy-morgendorffer-01​

One hour before Stage Ten:

Impatient fingers taps against a wooden surface, waiting for Ana’s confirmation. Max sighs, checking the time on his phone once again, a notification buzzing as he does. The message he was waiting for comes through, though it's not what he was expecting. He rereads the text to double check; Ana has moved the time of the last stage an hour out, and to take his lunch if he pleases. Slight suspicion registers in his gut, but when another text come through with nothing but pizza and coffee emoji, the feeling settles. Locking his phone, Max stands up from his desk in the Security department, deciding to take his lunch.

Half hour before Stage Ten:

Max is just about finished with his food, crushing the wrapper of the sandwich between his hands, when Jared Sharp walks in. He halts the second he sees him sitting at the table, a confused expression crosses his face. He points behind him.

"Weren’t you just in the Lab with Rios?" Sharp questions.

Max nearly bites his tongue to hold back a snippy retort, until he picks up on the confused curiosity in his tone. "She moved it to three. It's only half past two."

Sharp frowns. "No. I just left there. She's there now with Barnes."

Max shakes his head, tossing his wrapper into the trash. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Rolling his eyes, he marches over to Max. "I mean. You are standing guard during the Session right fucking now. Yet somehow you are in two places at once."

Max snatches his phone up, rereading the text. He shows it to Jared, already standing up and pulling his gun from his belt.

"Rios didn't have her phone with-"

"Fuck. Let's go!" Max tucks his phone into his pocket, running out of the café.

Jared follows quickly behind him, also pulling out his gun. "How the hell did you let this happen?" He sounds irritated.

"I don't think you have the right to show concern for Ana right about now. Or ever." Max snips, bypassing the elevator. He presses the COM in his ear, turning it on. "I need eyes on Rios and Barnes in the Lab. possible compromise in the session. Possible Hydra personal again."

"She's still Alex's baby sister." Jared says. "I'm not that heartless."

"Could've surprised me." Max mutters.

They're dashing down the second flight of stairs when a loud explosion sounds from somewhere above them, shaking the building. They pause to stare at each other, then glance up at the ceiling. Max makes the split decision to find Ana, rather than investigate what just happened.

"Fuck." He hisses, running down the steps again. 

"That's probably a diversion. Pull everyone's attention to the bomb. Get the Avengers to focus on a false breech instead of the Lab."

Goddammit, Max knows Jared’s suspicious are possible. They finally reach the floor, and the theory is proven correct. The floor is empty, as is the Lab when they enter. Max sprints towards the room, aiming his gun at the handle, shooting once and blowing off the knob.

They arrive too late. Ana is slung over someone's back, her body limp. Max's heart clenches in fear, then drops to his stomach when he sees Bucky across the shoulders of another person. The man is massive, easily able to carry the super soldier’s weight.

Next to him, Jared aims his weapon and fires. The bullet lodges in the thigh of the second man, who stumbles for a moment, the weight of Bucky making him lurch forward. The man sneers, points his gun and fires three rounds. Max dives out of the way, and the moment he springs back up, they're gone.

"Fuck!" Max shouts, tapping his COM again. No one has responded. "Rios and Barnes has been kidnapped. They're heading towards the second level of the Lab. Block all exists! Find Captain Rogers now! I repeat, find Captain Rogers!”

He turns to Jared. "I don't fucking understand, how did Bucky allow-"

Max halts. Jared is slumped against the wall, putting pressure over his chest, blood seeping between his fingers. Another wound deep in his stomach; Max presses his hand over it. He drops his gun and taps his COM once more.

"I need immediate medical attention. Deprogramming room, first level of the Lab." He requests gravely. "Two gun shot wounds to the chest and abdomen." 

“Did-did I save her?” Jared gasps, trying to catch his breath. His green eyes are fading.

Apparently, he was knocked down before he could see what happened. Max is conflicted, wants to tell him the truth, but he ends up lying instead; in the end, Jared tried to protect Ana. “Yeah. You did.”

“Good, that’s good. Alex will be happy.” His eyes flutter. His breath hitches and chest stutters.

Then Jared closes his eyes. Max waits for the team to arrive, keeping his hand over the wound.

*

Two minutes before the Capture:

Ana stares down at the unconscious man next to her, the widow's bite taser stopping it's currents. Her knife is still embedded into his arm, and she leaves it there out of spite. She lifts her eyes to Bucky, a quip on her tongue about not knocking all the man's teeth in, except that the guy is already bleeding from the mouth. Seems like Bucky had a little more fun then she did. She pouts, sticking out her lip, then he turns to look at her.

He chuckles, a soft little sound that never fails to make her stomach flutter. "What's that look for, darlin’?"

"That was too easy." She sighs. "No fun." She holds up her right wrist. "Bracelet's handy though."

She scrunches her nose at him as he rolls his eyes, a small smile on his lips. Then he turns back to the imposter. Ana briefly wonders where Max is, and how they were able to delay him. He would have caught onto the fake guard in a second.

“I’m going to call Steve.” Ana informs. She taps her bracelet twice until it lights up. “FRIDAY.”

“Ms. Rios.” The soft lilt of the AI voice responds.

“Call St-“ She freezes. Something sharp and cold is pressing against the vein in her neck. There’s only one person next to her, can see him from the corner of her eye.

“Motherfucker.” She hisses in disgust. “It’s been you this whole fucking time.”

The needle pierces her skin, sharp and pinching hard because he doesn't give one damn about it. The foreign sensation of the drugs seep and spread throughout her veins like ice. It works fast, efficient, the effects of it already shutting down her body functions. Ana’s limbs quickly become heavy, her right arm dropping to her side, and she blinks to fight off the blurry vision.

“Call out to your Soldier, Rios.” Erik Woods whispers in her ear. “I want him to see this.”

“Fuck you.” Ana sneers, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

Through the cotton in her ears, she registers the soft click of his gun. Then she sees him pointing the barrel at Bucky, his back is still turned to them, questioning the agent, too busy to realize what’s happening.

“He’s a super soldier, but I’m pretty sure even he can’t survive a bullet to the head. Call him.” Erik threatens.

Ana squeezes her eyes shut, terror spiking up her spine. She’s helpless. She’s got drugs pumping into her system and a gun pointed at the man she loves. Her heart rate is slowing, her stomach churning with bile rising up to her throat. She feels a quick stinging session from the bracelet, like the sting of a bee. Dropping her eyes to her wrist, her skin glows red for a moment then returns to normal. Her bracelet just embedded a tracker into her arm, courtesy of FRIDAY, who is probably recording this exchange. She would feel hopeful, if Ana wasn’t struggling to keep herself upright.

“Do it.”

“Bucky,” Ana breathes out.

Through the blackened spots of her vision, Bucky turns. He drops the guard, a feral snarl on his face. The last thing she sees is the utter rage in his eyes, laced with fear. She think words are spoken, but it sounds like she's under water, the pressure pressing down on her body, dragging her, drowning her in darkness.

***

Silence. Darkness. Heavy. 

A pounding ache brings gradual awareness. Another throb of pain pulls Ana from the fuzzy black of her mind; her head feels like its splitting open. She attempts to open her eyes, but they feel glued shut. She tries to lift her head, but it feels like it weighs 100 pounds. She tries to move her arms, but realizes she’s tied down to a chair, arms pinned with leather straps. She tries moving her legs; they’re heavy, along with every muscle in her body. 

Ana

A noise breaks through the silence in her ears, muffled as if it’s submerged in water. Her head moves towards the sound, trying to find it's source. Her fingers twitch, and she suddenly begins to feel every other ache in her body coming to the surface.

Two tender spots throb in sensitive places; one on the left side of her neck, as if something stabbed her with a pencil. One on the crook of her right elbow, and a new phantom sting on her right wrist. A tracker. A miniature tracker was injected into her wrist by her bracelet, that she can feel is no longer there.

Annie doll.

Through her dark, lethargic mind, images of the previous events flash by. The two agents, the small fight, the needle puncturing her skin. Erik Wood sneering in her ear, and the terrified look in eyes so incredibly blue. 

Bucky. 

Ana's head shoots up. She groans and winces, clamping her teeth shut as a wave of nausea rises from her stomach. She inhales deeply through her nose, shutting her eyes, willing for it to subside. She breathes out her mouth once it passes and slowly opens her eyes. What she sees in front of her makes her close them again, because this can't be happening.

She reluctantly opens her eyes again, her worse nightmare set up right in front of her. Bucky is there, a relieved expression washing over his face, shoulders slumping. He’s sat several feet away from her, locked down to the electro-shock chair. The one that has starred in her nightmares. The one that tortures, that suppresses memories, erases the mind; Bucky's mind.

"Annie, thank God." Bucky sighs, his voice slightly shaky, smiling despite their current predicament. 

"No." She whispers horrified.

Breathing hard through her nose, her chest expanding up and down, she swallows back the bile burning in her throat. Her chin trembles and she grind her teeth together to stop from screaming. Devastating defeat shines in Bucky’s eyes, his grin now self-deprecating, tugging at his mouth. As if he’s saying that he failed her. If anyone has failed anyone, it's Ana. She couldn't keep him out of Hydra’s hands.

She vehemently shakes her head, ignoring the pounding ache. "No, no, no!" 

The last word breaks, tears stinging and welling up in her eyes. Fear prickles throughout her body, she doesn't know how to get him out of this. She doesn't know how to save him. She’s helpless. She begins to tremble.

"Hey," Bucky coos softly. "Sweetheart, it's going to be alright. I'll keep you safe, I promise."

God, of fucking course his only goal here is to protect her. He is held prisoner it that chair once again, and all he can think about is saving her. Ana can't blame him though, since her only goal is to protect him too, free him from the never ending tentacles of Hydra.

"This is my fault." He continues ruefully. There's a split second of fear crossing his face before he schools it again. It lingers in the air.

"No, no. Don't!" Ana nearly gasps, trying to control her breathing. "I'm so sorry, Bucky. I-"

"Ana." His voice is so gentle, it tugs at her heart. "Don't you dare blame yourself."

She watches as Bucky glances around the room before he flexes his arms, biceps bulging beneath his shirt. Something snaps on his restraints, and in a few seconds Bucky will be free. It's then Ana notices two machines dawning automatic guns on either side of him. She lifts her eyes, the same machines are on her too, whirring to life as if-

“Ah ah, Sergeant." Erik Woods suddenly tisks from behind Ana. "You break free, those guns will shoot her. She breaks free, they shoot you. Wouldn’t want her blood on your hands now would we?”

Ana's heart sinks to her feet. He can't know that. There's no way he could know Bucky's deepest and worse fear. Bucky stops moving, an absolutely feral look on his face, his jaw clenching. Abruptly his expression turns stoic, but Ana sees the flash of terror reflecting in his eyes, feels it taint his energy. A harsh hand grabs her, gripping her hair and yanking her head backwards.

"Don't fucking touch her!" Bucky shouts, struggling against the bonds again. The guns next to Ana move, whirring to life once more. He halts.

"Took you long enough to wake up." Erik teases, then shoves her head forward. He walks around so he's standing between them, smirking pridefully at her, mocking her. Ana wishes a slow painful death on him.

"If you escape, Rios, if you use your nifty little ability to shut down the power, I’ll put a bullet in that damaged brain of his. Let’s test that shall we?”

Erik’s hand jerks towards her throat, wrapping his fingers around her neck in a bruising, vice grip. All air is cut from Ana.

She hears thrashing, hears Bucky screaming “Get your fucking hands off her!”

Ana’s eyes fall to him, watching as he jerks in the chair, rage coloring his face, horror in his eyes. She clenches her fists, trying uselessly to gasp for air. Her windpipe feels seconds away from being crushed. Her vision is beginning to blacken around the edges and her face is burning, blood pounding in her ears. Her body begins to jerk involuntary, desperate to break free, desperate for air. Bucky’s screams of fury fade out in her ears. Her heart pumping slower.

Woods finally releases her. Her head drops forward, Ana heaving air to fill her lungs. She gasps, and sputters, coughing as she regains her breath, her cheeks wet from unwilling tears. She inhales mouthfuls of air, trying to get the oxygen back to her brain, refill her lungs.

“His life is worth more than yours? How pitiful.” He rolls his eyes, glancing over his shoulder. "He's nothing but our weapon. Our perfect asset."

"I will murder you, and I will take my sweet ass time doing so." Bucky growls, a snarl on his lips.

Ana wills her body to calm down, holding her ability back as much as she can. "You-you were in charge of everything." She pants, voice strained and ragged. "You realize once we-we get out of here, that we're all coming for you, right?"

"You think so? As you said, I have been in charge of everything." Erik smiles menacingly back at her, pulling out a gun from his belt. He scratches his chin with the barrel. Insane fucker. 

"Those Avengers have no fucking idea either of you are here. I had to distract them, I had to distract everyone including you during your little session. I hacked into your phone, sent a text to Max. I planted a harmless bomb on the west side of the building, drawing almost every agent, every guard, every Avenger's attention away from the Lab."

Ana frowns briefly, shifting her eyes to meet Buckys own confused gaze. They come to the same conclusion simultaneously. That's what Ana had felt, the energy from the bomb, the energy from people buzzing around it.

"You'd think I'd just waltz in there without a plan?" He continues, "I've been planning this for years."

Bucky shakes his head, mouthing, Years? Ana shrugs the best she can with her arms held down. She refocuses her eyes on the crazy man in front of her.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" She demands. Might as well keep him talking, since he's wrong about no one knowing they're here.

He spins, a manic grin on his face. "I convinced Simon Mills to speed up the triggers, and to over take the fifth stage. I delayed you on purpose, Rios. I sent one of our agents to compromise the ninth stage. I have been undercover since the fall of SHIELD and Hydra in DC during 2014. I stayed undercover because I had a bigger mission than Alexander Pierce."

Ana's heart is racing. Erik steps closer to her, dragging a condescending finger down her cheek. She jerks away from his touch, and she can feel how tangible Bucky's rage is.

"It was meant to be you all along, AnaRosa Rios." Erik admits. "You heard of Dr. Zola's Algorithm? A program that targets anyone who's a threat, now or in the future, to Hydra. We knew of someone from your family to be special...your mother."

Ana's blood begins to boil at the mention of her mother. The shift in the air goes unnoticed by Erik.

"She was an Empathetic Healer just like you, though no where near your caliber. Which is probably why she never mentioned it to you, huh." Erik shrugs and continues.

"Your mother was rather sick during her first pregnancy, did you know that? Your father decided to take her to a Doctor named Murphy Woods. He told her she was a high risk pregnancy, kept her coming back for vitamin injections, or so he said. He gradually injected her with a serum, one designed to make our own special group of soldiers from birth."

"Fuck." Bucky breathes from behind Woods.

Ana can hardly react right now, keeping her eyes locked on Erik. She had no idea about any of this.

"The super soldier serum is a beautiful thing." He goes on. "Though we could never fully recreate it. However, if we could take that concept, and design it to activate the X gene in DNA, why not? We could easily monitor newborns, children, figure out if they were enhanced. The only problem was, the drug was too new, it took too long. 

“Until your family came along. Dr. Woods, or dad, as I like to call him, convinced your mother that her second pregnancy was high risk as well. It was perfect, there was only a three year difference between the babies. We could watch the eldest child, while keeping an eye on the infant."

"You sick fuckers." Ana whispers horrified, wanting to throw up. They've been watching her and Alex their entire lives. They lied to her parents. They lied to her mother, made her put her trust in a soulless person for the sake of experiments.

Erik ignores her. "We thought it was moot. Nothing had happened. Until your parents had a helping hand being run off the road and died 14 years later. The power at the funeral knocked out, along with ten other blocks. We knew it was one of her children. So, we followed closely, Alex always seemed to be around when it happened. Then he enlisted in the army. He beat out everyone else in training. He was tall, fit, fast, strong. Everything we knew the super soldiers to be.

"We thought it was him, and we took him. Needed to whip him into compliance." He turns to look at Bucky. "You know how that is, Soldier."

"I will rip your dick straight off your body you piece of shit." Ana threatens lowly, clenching her hands. 

It’s hard to breathe, her lungs hurt, her stomach rolls, her chest is tight. Hydra took her entire family from her. This whole time, Hydra was also responsible for her parents death. The air grows thicker, hotter; energy sizzles at her fingertips.

Erik tisks, walking around until he’s behind her again, pressing his cheek against hers. "Ah, ah, Rios. That tongue will get you both in trouble. We wasted time on your pathetic brother. Could've spent all this effort shutting that bitchy, stubborn mouth of yours up." He harshly grabs a fist full of her hair at the roots, yanking her head back. Ana yelps. His lips graze her ear.

"I will make you watch him suffer before I break you." Erik jerks her head forward, releasing her hair.

The lights in the room glow bright and the machines the guns are attached to shake. Erik is in front of her again, one eyebrow quirked up, as if challenging Ana to do more. She inhales slowly, thinks of keeping Bucky safe and bullet free, and controls her rage. The lights return to normal and the machines stop.

“Good girl." Erik smiles patronizingly. “Obviously, we figured out it wasn't your brother, but since we already started the memory wiping with him, we sent him to kill you, just for fun. It nearly worked, until we realized how powerful you really were. Without even knowing it!" 

He laughs haughtily, the noise echoing through her bones. He comes closer to her, bending over. "You probably would have made a great addition to Hydra, the both of you. The Life Drainer. The Soldier. Too bad we convinced Alexander to kill himself. Just shot himself in the head, crying to protect his baby sister.”

Ana feels fire in her veins. She spits in Erik's face. A sharp, stinging pain shoots across her left cheek as her face is jerked to the side. She hears Bucky bellow, struggling against the chair. Ana blinks the shock away, stretching her jaw to combat the pain. She turns her back to glare at Erik, seething. The lights flicker again, and she forms a plan.

When she spits in his face a second time, Erik’s hand shoots to her throat, squeezing his fingers around her neck once more. This is what she was counting on. Bucky is screaming, but Ana begins pulling Erik’s energy out from his body. It takes him several long moments to realize what she’s doing. Then he abruptly releases her, backhanding her hard across the mouth with the butt of his gun.

“Clever fucking bitch!” He gasps, taking a step back.

Warm blood gathers quickly in her mouth from her busted lip, Ana spits blood and saliva at his feet. Erik grabs her hair again, feeling several strand ripping from her scalp, yanking her head back roughly.

“Just for that..."

He tucks his gun away, then pulls a device out of his back pocket. He shows it off to Ana with a manic grin. A small five prong disk that looks like the widow's bite, each point long, a half inch in width and as sharp as needles. He presses the middle, then stabs the device against her inner right knee. 

A searing pain pierces though her leg. Feeling like the rods in her knee are being yanked from her bones. Ana screams in agony, throwing her head back. It’s nothing but blinding pain, building and building until something pops inside her knee. Tears sting behind her closed eyes, falling down her cheeks, her hands gripping the edges of the chair. 

She can barely hear Bucky calling out for her, but it's his voice that has her trying to rein in her own screams, to control her own breathing. She's had worse pain, she tells herself, and begins to breathe through her mouth.

“There. Stark's pieces of shit technology disabled.” Erik says gleefully. "Probably shouldn't list a knee injury in your file, sweetheart."

Ana hears Buck threatening him again, so she focuses on his voice, no matter how menacing he sounds. She has to be strong for him, she has to be able to grit her teeth, suck it up and get him out of that chair. She has to save him; she will be damned if Bucky falls right back into the abusive, heartless hands of Hydra once more.

Inhaling a deep, calming- shaky- breath, Ana drops her head back down, finding Bucky's eyes through her own watery ones. She offers him a weak grin and the look on his face breaks her heart.

"I'll get you out of here, Annie, I swear it." Bucky whispers, his voice cracking as a few tears escape his own blue eyes.

Ana nods, biting her lip but winces at the cut. The pain in her knee is subsiding into a throbbing ache. She slowly kicks her legs out to test it, but the white-hot pain shoots back up her thigh. If she escapes this, it's going to be difficult to fight, hell, to even walk. Erik suddenly pats her thigh, causing Ana to grit her teeth; a wave of sick curling dangerously in her stomach.

“We could see it, you know." Erik sighs in a dreamily sick tone. "Imagine it. Having an asset with your powers would make Hydra unstoppable. The Winter Soldier and an Energy Alchemist. Someone who could literally drain the life from people with just a simple touch. They were meant to take you, not your brother. They were meant to brainwash you, Rios."

"But, things happen and get in the way, so I waited, biding my time. Then the Winter Soldier ends up in the same place I am. Under cover for years, which was amazing fucking luck! The best part? You went ahead and fell in love with each other.” 

He snickers maniacally. “That’s where you failed. Love is weakness.”

Ana is in an immense amount of pain, her right leg beginning to go numb from her shin down, with a radiating sharp pain shoots up her thigh. Her neck is sore, bruised and hot with her vocal chords possibly damaged. Blood is still seeping into her mouth, so she spits it out once again. She can't take this anymore, she cracks. She shakes her head, chuckling under her breath, before her laughter becomes louder.

“Um. Ana, baby? You still with me?” Bucky questions confused and concerned, his voice raw from screaming. 

“Something funny, Rios?” Erik demands.

“Fucking hilarious.” Ana sneers at him. “Every villain, which is you by the way, dickless, believes that. That love has no place in a world of violence and control, world domination. Love isn’t weakness, you fucking tit bag. It’s strength. Just because your sick as fuck father was fixated on other children rather than his own son doesn't mean it's weak."

Erik grabs her face, his grip pressing into the cut on her lip. She hit a nerve for sure, given the glint of rage in his eyes. 

"I'm going to shut that nasty mouth of yours up, by making you watch your beloved Soldier’s mind be blended again. He won't recognize you, won’t remember you. He will shoot you on my command and you will be powerless to stop it."

He releases her face, looks at her blood on his thumb, then wipes it on his jeans. "What I neglected to inform you, Rios, is like the Captain and the Asset here, we can recreate the serum injected into your mother. We can take your blood, and recreate your powers." 

Erik jeers. "So, if I wanted to kill you. If I really wanted to, I would have no regrets in losing your source. I just need your blood, and you don't have to be alive for that."

Ana knew he fucking took blood from her already. The tiny needle mark in the crook of her elbow is evidence. She glares at Erik, wishing he could burn in hell at this very moment.

"The greatest thing about this," He chuckles like he was granted the best thing he could wish for. "Is that you nearly fixed him. You almost deprogrammed him to, what? Just end up back in his favorite little chair."

He leers at Bucky. "I see the fear in your eyes, Barnes. You won't be able to work your way through this one."

Ana's skin prickles with terror, with failure, and she wants to focus her energy, use it to pull Erik's out, to stop this process from happening. But the guns are still poised at Bucky, following every minuscule move she makes. If she does that, the guns will fire. She doesn't know what to do at this point, but she can not just sit here and watch him go through torture once again.

"Bucky." Her voice cracks, raspy. Copper heavy on her tongue, bile dangerously threatening to escape.

Bucky inhales slowly, closing his eyes. He takes a moment, before breathing out and reopens them. The smile he gives her is soft, loving, as if they're back in his bed wrapped around each other. The fondness in his eyes is there, it's the same one he gives her when she's rambling on about something.

"It's going to be fine, Annie. I swear." Bucky tells her firmly. "Don't worry, darling."

"I love you." She nearly whimpers, she has to tell him, to remind him. "I'm so sorry. I love you."

"I love you so much." He replies, his voice soft.

Erik moves behind her, pressing something on the wall; the buzz of the chair come to life. He apparently pulled his gun out again, pressing the barrel to Ana's jaw from behind her. Bucky falls silent, a murderous look overtaking his expression. 

Ana's heart stutters in her chest at the sight of it all. She forces air out of her nose, and flexes her arms against the restraints. He leans down to her level, his lips grazing over her ear.

"The most satisfying part of this," Erik whispers menacingly. "Is having you watch all your hard work come undone. You failed, Ana. Did you think that your silly little tactics were going to work? Deprogram decades of Hydra's most successful project with some meaningless, pathetic exercises. You’re delusional.”

Ana closes her eyes against the prickling she feels in them. Clenching and unclenching her fist. She's made her decision, can feel energy buzzing at her fingertips. She has to prevent that chair from hurting Bucky. 

"Did you honestly think," He pauses, pressing his mouth closer. "That falling in love with him would just erase everything?"

Ana jerks her head away from Erik. He straightens up and removes the gun. A tear escapes from her left eye, rolling down her cheek. Slowly, Ana locks gazes with Bucky, his expression broken, blue eyes wide and desperate.

I'm so sorry, she mouths at him as another tear falls. He shakes his head, still offering her a calm smile, those fond crinkles by his eyes.

"No matter what happens, you are the realest thing in my life," Bucky reminds her gently. 

"This will be fun." Erik chirps gleefully from behind her. He smacks his hand against something once more.

Suddenly, the machine whizzes to life, and the chair leans back. Bucky's chest is heaving with every anticipating breath, his hands squeezing into fists. The head pieces move to press firmly against his face, the zapping of electricity echoes throughout the room. A clenched scream rips from Bucky's throat; pierces straight through Ana's heart, shattering in her chest.

She can't take her eyes off him, watching horrified as the machine begins to wipe his brain once more. Ana can't let that happen to him again. Can't let the pain, the torture, continue. There's so much energy whizzing throughout the room, growing with the sound of Bucky's screams filling her ear; her body, her soul.

The buildup of energy is quick, can feel it surging around her, prickles her skin like needles. Ana feels it, holds that feeling in her chest until it's about to burst. She inhales slowly, then releases it. A bright light explodes through the room, the lighting simultaneously shutting off. 

The room is thrown into darkness, the chair ceases noise along with Bucky's screams. There's a thud behind her, like a body hitting the floor. The only source of light is coming from a red emergency bulb. It only took three seconds.

With the power temporarily down, Ana pulls as hard as she can against her bonds until they snap free, burning away from the hot energy emitting from her skin. She launches out of her chair, stumbling towards Bucky, adrenaline masking any pain. She yanks the arms of the machine, putting her foot on the chair for leverage. It gives way, Ana nearly falls back with momentum. She climbs onto the chair, straddling Bucky's thighs, placing her hands on his face, the same spots where the paddles were.

"Bucky, Bucky. Look at me!" Ana pleads frantically. His eyes are unfocused, head lulling against the chair. "I'm here, Bucky, come back to me. Please…James. Come back to me.”

"Annie." He murmurs, slowly picking his head up. She smiles at him, beginning to use her ability to heal what she can.

"Zhelaniye! Rzhavyy! Semnadtsat!"  The words are shouted behind her, one right after the other.

Bucky's eyes flicker. 

"No, no, Bucky, focus on me." Ana coaches shakily. "Focus on the good memories."

"Rassvet! Furnace! Pech!"

Bucky shakes his head, then yanks his arms free of the restraints. The movement shifts Ana, but she locks her thighs to stay on. His hands grip her hips tightly, making her wince.

"Bucky-"

"Go!" Bucky abruptly snaps.

"No. I am not leaving you!" Ana tells him fiercely. "Keep fighting it."

"Devyat! Dobroserdechnyy!"

"Can't." He mutters, his body shaking with the effort to hold back.

"Yes you can! Remember what's real in here. You can fight this!"

"Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu! Odin!"

Ana presses her forehead against his, moves her hand to the center of his chest. Bucky grits his teeth, his grip tightening on her hips enough to bruise.

"Run." He murmurs. 

"Gruzovoy vagon!!"

Ana is thrown backwards, crashing hard onto the floor, pain radiating throughout her body, but she ignores it all. She rights herself quickly, staring up at Bucky who's looming over her, peering down at her with a thousand-yard stare, eyes void of any emotion. The flashing red light illuminates his stone cold face; it's the first time he truly looks terrifying. He tilts his head to the side as he looks at her. Ana and Erik speak at the same time.

"Bucky?"

"Soldat?"

She hopes the theory of the last triggering phrase isn’t true. For several long moments, Bucky just continues to stare at Ana. Then, he lifts his eyes to look behind her. 

"Gotovy soblyudat." He responds flatly, emotionless. The Winter Soldier replacing her Bucky.

"No." Ana sobs. She slowly stands up, Bucky's eyes snapping back to hers. She limps closer, firmly pressing both hands against his chest again. 

"Ona vrag. Ubey' yeye." She is the enemy, kill her.

Bucky suddenly grabs her left wrist, twisting her arm away as he swings his metal fist towards her face. Ana ducks, nearly avoiding his punch, and brings her left knee up to nail him in the gut. His hand loosens enough for her to pull her arm away, turning to find a weapon of some sort. The only weapon she can reach is in Erik's hands, who seems content to watch Bucky kill her. That is not going to happen.

A metal arm wraps around her neck, locking her a choke hold. Flashes of that first time run through her mind. She tires the same move, but Bucky lifts her, cutting of air supply, her toes barely touching the floor. Instead, Ana performs the same trick she had done while he was training her. She quickly finds his knee with her foot, uses the leverage to twist and push herself up, swinging her right leg around and twisting in the air. 

Her move breaks Bucky’s hold enough, his arms slipping down her body. She kicks off his shoulder harder than she did during training. The force of it knocks him backwards, falling to the ground. Ana lands on her feet.

She's abruptly reminded of the device still lodged in her knee and she crumples. Ana clenches her teeth, yelping as she grabs the device and slowly pulls it out of her knee; blood dripping to the floor. She takes too much time doing it, and when she steadies herself, Bucky is standing. He halts, head tilted slightly. He seems...confused, eyebrows knitted together slightly.

"You know who I am, Bucky." Ana states, keeping her strained voice calm. "You know me, Sergeant Snowflake."

His head twitches, eyes flashing. Ana lifts the device, then throws it at Erik. She takes advantages of the Bucky’s conflicted stare, moving past him and advancing towards Erik. He lifts his gun, aiming and firing at her chest. The bullet is blocked by a metal arm in front of her. Ana blinks in surprised, before she's shoved backwards, out of the line of fire.

"You fucking moron! I said kill her!" Erik shouts.

Bucky's head twitches again, and he widens his stance. It gives Ana the opportunity she needs. She takes several, painful, steps backwards, grits her teeth, then sprints. She drops down at the last moment, sliding between Bucky's legs and pops up directly in front of Erik.

His look of appalled shock is amusing.

"You forget who you fucked with." She sneers, then promptly thrusts the heel of her palm up into his nose. 

She hears a satisfying crunch but doesn't waste time, kneeing him in the gut. Erik doubles over grunting, blood streaming from his nose. Ana steals the gun from his slackened grip, but he suddenly grabs her arm, yanking her to the side. Her knee twinges sharply in pain and she stumbles, gritting her teeth.

He slams her against the wall, knocking the gun out of her hand. Ana kicks his knee cap with her left foot, Erik shouting out in pain. She breaks away from his hold, taking the chance to go for the gun. 

She stops short. The metal of the gun gleams against the crimson light, barrel pointing straight at her held by Bucky. There's a split moment where time stands still as they stare at each other.

Then, the Winter Soldier pulls the trigger.

*******************************************************************

Previous   Next

[songofproserpine]

Mass Effect, mental illness, and healing.

I’m replaying the Shepard trilogy, and this has been bouncing around my thoughts lately.

So in Mass Effect 2, Miranda says that part of The Lazarus Project was the very specific order of recreating Shepard exactly as they were, no exceptions. This includes their personality, their memories, etc. Ignoring questions like ‘how do you reconstruct someone’s mental structure, store it in a computer, and then transfer it to a mind you hope to make sentient,’ this leads me to the more interesting question of (1) does future technology and medical science in the Mass Effect universe have the ability to map brain chemistry to the point of knowing how one’s individual mind functions; and (2) what does this mean for mental illnesses?

While it’s highly unlikely that Shepard could have served if they had a serious mental illness prior to their service, it’s all but flat out said in the opening lines of Mass Effect 1 that Shepard has serious emotional scars. I.E., Shepard at the very least had a PTSD diagnosis depending on what military background you chose for them. And while PTSD is treatable through medication and therapy, it doesn’t seem to have barred Shepard from continuing their service in the Alliance. If anything, Shepard only advanced further, becoming the Normandy’s commander and eventual commanding officer once Anderson stepped down.

I will allow Bioware some dramatic license for this story, and Shepard is also constantly considered a person with “a remarkably strong will,” which means they can endure pain and hardships beyond what most would find tolerable. But just because someone has a “strong will” doesn’t mean they aren’t affected by pain and trauma--they could just keep it all inside and suffer quietly, which Shepard seems to do.

Much like a post I made about Fallout 4 and Nick Valentine’s human form (and how the pre-Institute MIT folks mapped out his brain prior to his death, and simply used that data to make synth Nick’s mind), what we have here is yet another case of someone being created (or resurrected) with a mental map that included mental illness... and that mental illness being programmed in. It wasn’t removed. It wasn’t treated as a flaw to eliminate. It was an integral part of that person’s mind and identity.

With Shepard, this is likely because of Miranda’s orders: Shepard had to be the exact same, no exceptions. But with Nick Valentine, I consider this especially brutal and unfair, because synth Nick wanted so very much to put human Nick’s memories and ghosts to rest. He wanted to build a life and live that life separate from the man he was built from. And this choice of his, while noble and fully valid, was made all the more difficult for him to do because of human Nick’s PTSD and survivor’s guilt being transferred over.

Make no mistake: I’m not saying The Lazarus Project should have eliminated any/all of Shepard’s lingering mental trauma, nor am I saying the Institute should have done something different (it’s very likely that they couldn’t, or just didn’t think it would matter). I myself have been diagnosed with PTSD--that’s why I’m so fascinated by the presence (or lack thereof) of mental illnesses in the video games I play, which are largely RPGs in scenarios where mental health and treatment are either nonexistent (Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Soulsborne), or very seldom remarked upon (Mass Effect, Fallout) unless it’s for a specific quest. What I am saying is that I wonder what this says to us who have mental illnesses, no matter what they are, and how we can use this narrative choice in video games as a way to change our perspective about these illnesses and the part they play in our identities?

My psychiatrist and I have weekly therapy sessions as part of my Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Very recently, we ended a session with a question that we’ll explore in later sessions: is it possible to practice acceptance and active healing at the same time? Acceptance in this scenario means acknowledging that while my situation and illnesses are not fair, that’s also what they are. I do not like that my life is so brutally sidetracked far too often by symptoms of my illnesses, or by the very existence of the illness itself. But that’s my life.

I wasted an entire decade of my life (all of my 20s) mourning and hating and being brutally ashamed that this was my lot in life, that it wasn’t fair, that I couldn’t be expected to endure all that my illnesses demanded of me on top of the normal things life asks of us all--but none of that thinking got me anywhere. It didn’t make me feel stronger, it didn’t encourage me, it didn’t offer answers or hope or anything useful in the slightest. If anything, it made me worse, to the point where my body was then literally wasting away and destroying itself because of my anxiety by the time I was 29. But I digress.

Back to the question and, eventually, Mass Effect and Commander Shepard. Acceptance of mental illnesses and living with them simply means you look your life square in the face and you accept it--you don’t judge it, you don’t question it, you don’t wonder how it could have been different. It’s not different. It’s your life--period. And it’s yours. That alone should make you want to cherish it. It might be hard, it might be frightening, it might be lonely and all other kinds of things--but it’s yours. No one else’s. And your life, and most especially your illnesses, needs your love.

We care for wounds without questioning why they dare hurt in the first place. We just tend to what hurts and wait until it heals. Why should we do any less to ourselves and our illnesses? That’s acceptance.

The second part--active healing--is trickier, and slower, and far more intricate a process than acceptance. It also requires you return to step one (acceptance) almost every single day. Or, if you’re like me, and have a mood disorder, every hour of every day, for the rest of your life--period. But all active healing really is, in the end, is looking at why acceptance was so hard for you and filling that in with love and care.

Active healing means you tend to your wounds. You get out of bed. You brush your teeth. You shower. You make food. You do chores. You go for a walk. You take your medication. You call your doctor if you feel like you need help outside of your appointments. You remove habits that no longer serve you in healthy, useful ways. You indulge in things you like to comfort yourself when you’re feeling down. You realize that you might need more time to do things, but that extra time doesn’t diminish the importance of what you do. You’re healing. You’re on the mend. You will always be recovering and repairing. This doesn’t have to be shameful or exhausting (even though it can be--but then you start back from acceptance and slowly work yourself back up). It just is.

Which, finally, returns me to Mass Effect 2, The Lazarus Project, and a resurrected Commander Shepard who has their military background include a deep emotional scar added into the mix of the very current emotional scar of having died in space. Jacob tells you that you were “just meat and tubes” the first time he saw you. You weren’t a corpse--you were pieces of a corpse. And you were remade from every atom--including your illnesses. Including your wounds, private hurts that only you ever felt or knew about.

How would this make you feel?

How would you feel about this life, this second pass through the universe, this mulligan on oblivion that pulled you back to this ol’ mortal coil? Angry, undoubtedly. It’s why renegade Shepard in Mass Effect 2 is something of a raging vicious psychopath--but I can’t quite blame them. not really.

Remember the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? When Buffy finally lets slip that she wasn’t in hell, suffering--she was in some kind of heaven? She was happy. She was at peace. And her friend dragged her soul back to its body, forcing her to dig her own way out of her grave, back to life, before she suffocated and died once again. She got her life back, but was never asked if she wanted it back.

That’s Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 2. That’s baseline commander shepard in Mass Effect 2.

Now imagine a mentally ill Shepard having to bear this burden. I’m not questioning whether or not Shepard could endure it (you’ve probably played the trilogy--you know the answer to that question). I’m simply asking you to imagine it. Imagine a marine of whom the galaxy, the entire galaxy, demanded everything. Every thankless task, every brutal mission, every hard choice, every life-altering, life-threatening, life-shortening thing possible under every sun. Imagine a marine lying in a pool of their own blood being told, “it didn’t work,” and their response is, “what do you need me to do?”

What do you need me to do? That, my friends, is the central question of acceptance and active healing. What do you need me to do? Ask your illnesses this when times are tough, or even when times are good. What do you need me to do? Maybe your brain wants to trick you every now and then. Slips in an invasive thought, or a self-destructive demand. Maybe it tries to sell you on a suspicion, building up to full-scale paranoia. These are not things you should feed into; they aren’t actions you should take. More pain will not serve you. Hurting yourself in any way is not the answer to an already existing pain.

Acceptance. Active healing. What do you need me to do? Assess your damage, know that pain will always be integral to your existence, but is by no means the only thing that defines it, and figure out how to respond to it.

Instead of looking at your traumas, your symptoms, your triggers, your anythings as flaws, as failures, as setbacks, as things to hate and be ashamed of, look at it as a part of you in need of care, and ask, What do you need me to do?

And remember this last piece of advice: be kind. Because even after destruction, Commander Shepard took just one more breath--one more small gasp of life. And sometimes that’s all you can ask of yourself: just one more breath. And then another. And another. This is probably the hardest lesson anyone with an illness will ever have to learn: you are healing. You will always be healing. You will always have to take just one more breath. Because that’s what you need to do for you. No one else.

So breathe.

[tialovestelevision]

Smashed

“Coping.” Right? It’s “Coping?” Anyone?

Another dialogue post! But before we start…

T: That’s Creepmeister on the Netflix splash screen for this episode, isn’t it? Goddammit.

{*\../*} : Because nothing says fun like proto-Gamergate dudes on my screen.

T: Previously On calls back all the way to Gingerbread in Season 3. Remember when Amy was a human? Remember when Amy was a character instead of a running gag? It’s also very long.

{*\../*} : Buffy is really damn funny in this opening scene as she’s fending off muggers (muggers! In Sunnydale!) and generally acting like a woman with her head together. Which goes really weirdly with the end of “Tabula Rasa,” I gotta say. And now Spike has show up, gotten jolted with pain for attacking one of the (human) muggers and generally embarrassed himself, and is now hitting on Buffy. “To that, an extreme ‘see you later.’” Oh, Buffy, if only that would sink this ship.

T: I was about to comment on Spike also being funny, but then he showers her with slut-shaming metaphors and pointing out her isolation. Lovely guy, that Spike. You’d almost think he’s a soulless monster. You’d almost think a guy has to be a soulless monster to behave that way.

{*\../*} : Meanwhile, Willow is opening her door on a silent house and staring gloomily, then wandering back into her room. Sad music is playing. Am I supposed to be feeling sympathy here? Is that what’s going on? Because I gotta say that the girl who MIND-CONTROLLED her girlfriend to maintain her relationship is not getting sympathy from me at this time. ‘Cause even if I take the magic mojo out of the metaphor, she is the abuser in this situation and I am not inclined to feel sympathy no matter how big her puppy-eyes are.

T: I feel sympathy for Seasons 1-5 Willow because she has to be put through this storyline and thus shed my sympathy going forward. Oh, look, it’s Rat-Amy. And Willow missing the point. And trying to cover just how awful what she just said is with calling it joke.

{*\../*} : “And leave you for no good reason.” Um.... REASONS! There are A LOT. Like you literally dragged your Buffy out of the grave and moved her into the house you share with your girlfriend, had a fight with her and wiped her memory - not once, but twice, and the second time after promising to ease off trying to solve every problem with your big magic hammer! Bad Willow. Bad!

T: I think Sweet lacks Willow’s talent for wrecking relationships this season. And for causing trauma. And he’s an evil mind control fire music demon. Can we get him back? He was fun. Willow casts a spell and summons paper. It’s a magic scroll. She should scribe it to her spellbook before she uses it… hey, it’s Amy. It worked. Wait, she could have summoned paper any time? Opening credits. No Tara, but given that I’m pretty sure she’s been written off the show for a bit that’s not a surprise.

{*\../*} : As an aside, screaming Amy right before the credits. Not a good omen for this spell, either.

T: “I was a mouse. I had cheese. I had four legs. I was happy. Now I’m a human again, with human troubles. Everything is cold and nobody lets me run on a wheel.”

{*\../*} : Stop making up dialogue, honey. It confuses the readers. Even if it is better than the show’s right now.

T: If they’re going to bludgeon us with the metaphor, they need to use a big bludgeon. No pussyfooting around it.

{*\../*} : We resume with Andrew doing a ridiculous entry to a museum which is thoroughly unnecessary. Much Trio ‘witty banter’ which is not. “Phase One of the plan is now complete.” That’s the dialogue that really makes a girl’s heart beat faster. They use a freeze ray on the guard, and Creepmeister dismisses the idea of the guard telling on them in a way that screams “murderous intent” to me.

T: Unless he’s already murdered the guard via Jonathan’s very chilly and almost certainly frostbitten hands and hasn’t told them. I’m not sure whether to expect Cinematic Freezing, which wears off with various degrees of side effects, or Actual Freezing, which kills you stone dead, in this show.

{*\../*} : Meanwhile, Willow is trying to ply a very nervous Amy with hot chocolate and looks guilty when Amy says she felt like she was in the cage “for weeks.” Because, you know, the girl who’s been a rat for years because she was in your coven and had to turn herself into a rat to avoid being burned to death because of a.... You know what? Nevermind. Feel guilty about your abused girlfriend who moved out of the house to we-don’t-know-where!

T: I forgot Larry died. The Mayor killed him in “Graduation Day,” for the record - had to go look that up. Amy wants to go to prom with Larry. Larry is gay, Larry is dead, and prom is very far past over. Apparently, Rat-Amy has no sense of time. Also, I will note that the fancy rat, which is the most common pet rat subspecies and likely what Amy was, lives for 2-3 years if taken care of well. Amy keeps getting forgotten by the writers and often was simply absent from dorm scenes in season 5 - I’m not sure if they moved her cage to the Tara/Willow dorm room set. Magic must have kept Amy alive, because I don’t know what else would. Maybe she drained the life of Miss Kitty Fantastico, who appeared in “Family” and hasn’t been seen since. “Family” was set more than a year before “Smashed,” as a note.

{*\../*} : “How have you been?” “Rat. You?” “Dead.” So Buffy comes home and comes up the steps to talk to Willow, and they’re sitting down to talk, and Buffy asks Willow how she’s doing in a far too sympathetic tone and then launches into a conversation about choices - good, bad, living with them - and I think she’s about to talk to Willow about Tara and magic and then I realize no, she’s about to talk about kissing Spike. And then Amy walks in, and that’s when we get the classic dialogue I just quoted while Buffy is sitting there with a huge stunned look on her face and radiating a general air of “I should leave you two alone” after MISTAKING AMY FOR TARA as if Tara would just happen to be there again. I don’t even know where to start unpacking what a huge mess this scene is after barely a minute..

T: I think Buffy thinking Amy is Tara is one of the more sympathetic moments in the scene. She’s in Willow’s room and someone comes out of the bathroom; to Buffy’s reflexive reactions, of course the person coming out of the bathroom is Tara. Also, I have to say… while I’m really not into the arcs we’re working on here, the dialogue in this episode is really snappily written. Buffy’s scene in the cold open and this one here both do some wonderful things with that.

{*\../*} :  All true. But not only is Willow acting like a girl who got dumped instead of a girl who’s abused girlfriend walked out, but Buffy is acting like a woman whose friend is having a ‘normal’ fight with her girlfriend. I mean, granted Willow isn’t Angelus in the abuse department, but seriously? Nothing? We’re just going to sit down and have girl talk like we used to in high school?

T: Honestly, I buy that too. I don’t LIKE it, but I buy it. Buffy is basically going through super-trauma (like regular trauma, but with superpowers). She wants to talk about her problems. Willow doesn’t want to talk about hers. Might as well meet somebody’s needs, right?

{*\../*} : Stop enabling abuse, Buffy! Anyway, we should roll on while I fume.

T: I really don’t like it. On the other hand, Amy wants cookies, and not cheese. I want cookies and cheese.

{*\../*} : And now Buffy is leaving without talking about her issue after making sad-face when Willow talked about it being nice to have a magically-inclined “friend” around. Are the writers trying to play a romantic jealousy angle here or are they just really oblivious? Because as a lesbian girl, I’m sitting there going “Buffy is there to reestablish her prime straight-but-intimate placement with Willow and then gets beaten out by ex-coven-mate Amy and looks upset by that.” Is that not how I’m supposed to be reading that?

T: What I read in the scene, from Buffy’s perspective: “I have Problems. I have an emotionally intelligent friend who I have relied on in the past when I have had Problems. I will go tell my emotionally intelligent friend! Wait… my emotionally intelligent friend is busy. And holy fuck that thing she just said was heartless and oblivious and awful, wasn’t it? My emotionally intelligent friend is not a safe place to bring my problems now. I will go to the living room and set up a sofa bed.”

{*\../*} : Legit. That does make more sense.

T: Amy has all the cookies. There will be no cookies for Dawn. Amy is watching the news and it looks like Rusty survived the freeze ray and is in critical but stable condition. But when we get to the museum, he’s still frozen solid and being removed from the building on a hand cart, which would make measuring his vitals a little difficult.

{*\../*} : Now Buffy is talking with Spike at the museum. More priceless dialogue. The way that Buffy is wearing her hair and the turtleneck is weirdly artificial, now that I’m looking at her, and oh God the writers are playing a “she wants to get with Spike but is trying to talk herself out of it by armoring up her look” angle, right down to the pigtails as a provocative touch to encourage him to push, aren’t they?

T: Pretty sure they are. I wouldn’t have caught that, but now that you point it out it’s really obvious. I really want to hate this scene - it’s very Buffy/Spike, with the unhealthy and the slut-shaming and the Spike everywhere, but the dialogue. The dialogue. It’s so GOOD!

{*\../*} : “When I kissed you, you know I was thinking of Giles, right?” “You know, I always wondered about you two.” “What? Oh! Gross, Spike!” Sarah does a wonderful little-girl-on-the-playground cadence on gross which is great acting but also makes me want to take an icepick to my temple.

T: Did Spike just punch Buffy then not have his chip go off? I think that happened. Yep. That happened.

{*\../*} : Yep. And then he tracks a girl into an alley with intent to kill, gives himself a rousing “I’m still a monster, I’m not housebroken!” speech and then has blinding pain when he tries to bite her. Soooo the chip is working (probably), but Buffy isn’t reading as human anymore, which was neatly suggested by Buffy’s venomous delivery on calling him an inhuman thing. Because that’s not ominous at all.

T: So now Buffy isn’t human, according to a piece of evil military technology. What was the last time one of our cast thought they weren’t human? Pretty much it was the same time we last saw Miss Kitty Fantastico. “Family.” With Tara. Hey, it’s Tara! She could have been added to the opening credits!

{*\../*} : She’s having a milkshake with Dawn, which is adorable. Tara is encouraging Dawn to eat leafy greens and gently prodding her about the size of her milkshake, and breaks with minimal encouragement into the “I will always be there for you” speech. This is playing like a mom-with-daughter-in-midst-of-divorce scene, and a cute one. Please, writers, acknowledge Tara moved out because she was being abused. Any moment now. Oh God, Dawn is deploying the “You still love her” defense. Oh... God. “She’s been really good about careful about stuff.” The writers are not off-point, actually, because this is not the nice sunny scene it’s being shot as at all. This is the daughter from an abusive household trying to tell the abused mom who moved out that the remaining parent has changed because it has been X days since the last incident. It becomes really obvious if you change the gender pronouns in Dawn’s dialogue here. “[He’s] been doing a lot better lately. [He’s] been really good about being careful about stuff.”

And now we’re having a nice normal investigation scene with the gang, everyone sitting around the table, more brightly lit shooting, but when Anya says they don’t have the right text and Willow says “We’ll do it another way,” sudden Buffy and Xander are on red alert. “I don’t think we need to resort to...” Buffy stumbles out, and Xander’s mouth is hanging open to add something, and then Willow pulls out her laptop and suddenly Xander is enthusiastically talking about going “back to basics.” Apparently “Tabula Rasa” didn’t actually vanish from everyone’s minds after all.

T: And Willow magics the computer. Magic hacking. That’s… a neat idea, or would be if not for the fact that we’re in Buffy Season 6. I believe magic hacking more than I believe TV hacking, which basically treats computers as magical anyway. Xander wants to go away from her. And Anya gets everything out in the open.

{*\../*} : Except she makes it about Tara having left her, which is NOT THE POINT. Which is okay from Anya, but then nobody else corrects her. Also, “It’s better this way,” Willow? Really?

T: Truth. Though Anya did point out that nobody wants to talk about anything. Either they don’t understand, or they do and they don’t want to talk about anything. Either way… I don’t have an ending to that sentence.

To be fair, it IS better that Tara has left her abusive, memory-deleting girlfriend. Willow is right on that note. That Willow is the abusive, memory-deleting girlfriend makes me less sympathetic to her rightness. Then she finishes her sentence and is no longer right. Oh god I hate this scene.

{*\../*} : “This time away will help us sort things out” (while she does nothing to acknowledge what the problem is in the first place). “Now let’s get through this. I don’t want to leave Amy alone in the house so long.” Umm.....

T: Now we’re talking about Amy. Willow implies that Amy might not remember how to use a toilet. Buffy is now good with this not leaving her alone in the house thing. Ye gods, though, Willow, straight to insulting Amy?

Season 6 Willow might be worse than Spike. If not for Creepmeister’s presence, she might be the worst character in the season. Is Creepmeister there to provide a counterargument to “Willow is the very worst?”

{*\../*} : Speaking of whom, we cut to the diamond. And a dick joke.

T: PENIS JOKES! And here’s Spike, to ruin days. MORE PENIS JOKES! He is threatening Boba Fett. I think Creepmeister is revealing things we already knew based on him being Creepmeister here.

{*\../*} : The comedy here is wonderful, but the most interesting thing is that Spike just walked into the headquarters of the season Big Bads and did not in fact notice they were doing anything. Including, say, the big diamond on the table. He’s so focused on himself and his chip and what’s going on with Buffy that he doesn’t see them as anything but an easily-dismissed tool for his agenda.

And now Willow is home and talking with Amy, who wants to make her dad forget the last three years. And Willow is making jokes about the poor aim of her forgetfulness spells, because ha-ha that’s funny.

T: I hope we’re meant to be horrified that Willow thinks that’s funny. Oh god, I hope we’re meant to be horrified that Willow thinks that’s funny. Amy wants to go somewhere. Not to her father’s. Was her father involved in the attempt to burn her at the stake? Amy is playing on Willow’s old insecurities. Willow wants to have fun.

And now we get Creepmeister doing diagnostics on Spike’s chip. Then the aftermath. Andrew is trying to impress Spike with his Doctor Who viewing. Spike yells for Creepmeister. Creepmeister says the chip works still. Spike understands what’s going on. “Nothing wrong with me. Something wrong with her.”

{*\../*} : Tara is walking into the house with Dawn.  Who is pressuring her to stay and invoking her own loneliness. That’s horribly manipulative. I really feel for Tara here. Dawn’s being a pretty typical teenager, but Tara’s in a situation where her maternal feelings about Dawn are being used to hold her hostage in the house until her abuser (who is out hitting the town with the ex-rat) gets home so that Dawn can try to push them to reconcile. Icky.

T: I feel for both of them. You’ve hit why I feel for Tara - whose situation is among the worst of a whole cast of people in bad situations - but Dawn is basically out of even partially functional parental figures. Giles left. Willow’s utterly ‘round the bend. Buffy is broken on a fundamental level and, even if she’s hiding it better than she was a few episodes ago, Dawn knows it. Tara’s the closest thing to a safe adult she has left in her life. That’s… really terrifying, when you think about it.

{*\../*} : And the correct answer is for her to move out with Tara, but Dawn’s need to keep an eye on Buffy and her attachment to the house and her refusal to really process what Willow having done what she did means is keeping her where she is. Someone writing this knows about abusive households.

T: It’s not just refusal. Dawn can’t escape. Not processing that is a psychological survival mechanism.

{*\../*} : True. Sorry, that’s correct. That it has the effect it has doesn’t mean it’s something she’s making a choice to do or that she somehow ought to be pulling herself up by her mental bootstraps to get out. She’s fifteen and ‘grew up’ in a household run by Joyce, for heaven’s sake - even Season 5 Joyce didn’t exactly teach her kids how to identify and stand up to abuse.

T: Willow and Amy are playing pool and talking about Xander and Anya. And are drunk. And it’s magic pool. Amy’s going to dance with a boy. And now Amy is casting attraction spells on girls regarding Willow. We know that’s a thing she can do. Willow, at least, is begging off this, though her stated objection isn’t “this is overriding their free will,” which really needs to be brought up because Amy does this, but is instead “I’m getting over a breakup” or maybe “I’m still into my girlfriend who I expect to get together with again any day now.” Goddammit, Season Six Willow. Amy is going to dance. And is dancing. Michelle Branch isn’t playing the Bronze today. Willow has a sad face. Now she’s drinking alone and threatening her olive. Amy runs back over and apologizes, which is better than Willow’s done about her much worse offenses so far. Amy says yet another really good line of dialogue (the dialogue writing, as I’ve said, is REALLY ON this episode), and now the guys are insulting Willow and harassing Amy.

{*\../*} : Homophobically insulting Willow. She and Amy are swapping significant looks. Incoming magical doom in 3, 2, 1....

T: And now they’re in Speedos dancing in cages. The guys, I mean. Really? That’s the magical revenge/justice? It… honestly feels very “exploiting gay panic” to me.

{*\../*} : The guys are clearly meant to be acceptable targets and we’re either supposed to laugh or be horrified at that moment. Or maybe the writers are splitting the difference, with the idea that we’ll laugh now and be horrified when the fridge logic kicks in?

T: Inasmuch as this show ever creates acceptable human targets (remember: violence against humans in this show is described as basically always evil), the guys come close. But this particular approach to responding to them just reinforces the stuff they were doing in the first place. How can an episode with such good dialogue keep tripping over basic plotting and themes?

D&D manuals don’t look like that, writers.

{*\../*} : That’s Dragons of Summer Flame. It’s a Dragonlance novel. No-vel. With novel cover art. I know because it’s sitting on my shelf in my bedroom. They stuck a D&D novel in his hands and called it a monster manual? I don’t know if I’m impressed they had a D&D book lying around or horrified they got it so wrong.

T: It’s too bad, because the actual pages of the Second Edition AD&D Monster Manual would make a GREAT sight gag here. With the little rectangles in the corners that have the monster pictures? If they were worried about copyright, they could just make sure Xander had it open to the Invisible Stalker page, since its rectangle was empty.

{*\../*} : Xander and Anya and Buffy are sitting around talking about how bad they are at research. Then they talk about Willow. Then Spike calls, and there is wonderful farce comedy with the conversation. Soo.... lots to talk about here.

Anya and Xander are pitching the idea that you have to watch out for quiet, responsible people because when they get a taste of being bad (or connecting to something bigger than them, or getting out of control) then they explode into a frenzy of bad decisions/power use/out of control. They’re worried that Willow was using too much magic before Tara left and now it’s going to get worse. “It’s human nature,” Xander says, and Buffy is immediately launching into a defense of responsible people and the importance of not assuming everyone is being seduced right before Spike calls. At which point the camera gets very close to her face and we watch her eyes get all huge while Spike growls at her over the phone, followed by protestations of how professional the call is from Buffy, followed by her immediately jumping on his double entendre on which he then doubles down. The camera work here is just screaming “bad boy, good girl, they’re thinking about having sex” and Buffy’s ditched the pigtails and turtleneck for a semi-transparent white blouse over a camisole that bares her neck and tied her hair back in a way that’s designed to make those close shots provocative. The costuming department is loudly telling us that this is a woman setting herself up to be seduced by a soulless dead guy who she was trading punches with earlier and who is now excited to know he can hurt her and planning to meet up in a CEMETERY.

Help me, Tia. I can’t even start to explain how problematic both those conversations are.

T: I feel like we’re beating a horse that is not only dead here, but has been turned, stabbed and thrown into Hell, returned from Hell, regained its soul, and become an unlicensed private investigator in a hotel in Los Angeles, but, once again, the entire cast - and probably the writers and almost certainly the director? - have fixated on the magic thing without acknowledging that Willow was abusing Tara, or that they were there, in the room, being Randy and Joan and witnessing it. Hell, Anya made out with Giles in the middle of the evidence; that’s how much in the middle of it they were. And nobody - ever - even Anya who talks about everything - has so much as brought it up. “She’s using too much magic,” they say, like when I walk into a room and find there’s blood everywhere and a corpse and I say, “Huh. This person uses too many knives.” The knife addiction is NOT THE PROBLEM HERE. I really don’t know how long I can go repeatedly saying “They’re not acknowledging the abuse and the writers are giving no indication that that’s supposed to be a problem,” but this episode keeps throwing at me in the midst of its immensely clever dialogue.

Buffy and Spike’s dialogue here? Immensely clever. Seriously, this is the way those characters talk at its very best. As for the content of it… I think you covered why it’s fucked up pretty well there, with a side order of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer, especially when it comes to its main protagonist, has a bad habit of being generally sex-negative and that makes it even harder to tell whether it knows this particular moment is extra-problematic and super-creepy.”

Heh. “Captain Peroxide.” Good one, Xander.

{*\../*} : Buffy is making excuses about Spike. Like a bad boyfriend she doesn’t want to admit to.  And now he’s stalking her outside the magic shop. And they’re trading threatening banter, and she hits him. He hits her back, and there is a distinct lack of pain. Buffy’s horrified face. “Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? You came back wrong.” More horrified face. Cut to black. Credits.

T: Did you know that Russian scientists are trying to bring back the fauna of the Ice Age to combat global warming? We might live to see wooly mammoths on Earth, which is a happy thought.

Less happy is Spike exploiting Buffy’s already-extant insecurities about her resurrection in his continued fucked-up pursuit of fucked-up fucking.

{*\../*} : Sex and violence is a longstanding literary mixture. No question, it gets a lot of people’s motors running, but let’s be clear - Spike is now literally threatening Buffy with physical harm and psychologically abusing her while pursuing having sex with her in a dark alley, and the writers have just spent an episode coding “She wants him to fuck her” into every interaction they have. This is not an okay set-up for a show being made in a culture where women are routinely raped and then face attacks on their personal worth, credibility and whether it was “true stranger rape” or not. If you do not explicitly give verbal consent or if you withdraw consent at any time and someone continues trying to have sex with you, that is rape. Period. It is never okay.

T: I think the last time Spike got this rapey was that scene with Willow right after he got his chip. Remember that one? The one we were supposed to laugh right after when they started making impotence jokes? This is an attempted rape scene, and… yeah. They loaded it precisely how Dragon is describing. So now they fight. Buffy throws Spike into an abandoned house. Amy and Willow are still at the Bronze, watching the guys dance and listening to the music… and… holy fuck really? Dragon? I can’t even. Can you even?

{*\../*} : I can very even. So let’s start with Amy and Willow up on the railing of the Bronze, with the guys from before still up in their cages dancing and a guy next to them doing the Robot and looking incredibly freaked out. Both of them look like the cats that ate the canary. Willow decides she doesn’t like the music and flicks her fingers. Disney sparkles. And then the male band leader turns into a woman in a tight shirt and sexy-makeup fronting a band playing a completely different sort of music. The rest of the band are also women. Right before he got hit with the magic, his eyes got huge with terror. Question: did she just transform them into the bodies of girls and magically compel them to play, or swap them for a different band who are not being magically compelled to play, or erase them from reality and replace them with magical replicants who exist to play the music she wants them to?

Hint: none of these answers is good, and the problem is not that she did it with magic.

Now Amy is making a guy fly, and Willow is making one guy incredibly tall and shrinking another, and Amy is turning people into sheep or possibly just summoning sheep. More magic sparkles, I can’t even tell what they’re doing now except making the club look like something out of Lewis Carroll by way of Circe and mind control fiction. Willow has a creepily sexy look on her face and is pressing her tongue to the back of her teeth. Cut to Buffy and Spike beating the shit out of each other in the abandoned house they charged into before. Spike is doing a creepy laugh and swinging on a chandelier that’s coming out of the ceiling. They’re throwing each other through stairs and the fireplace mantle. Buffy has started in on the verbal abuse now, too. “I’m in love with you,” Spike says in a creepy voice, and Buffy fires back with “You’re in love with pain. Admit it. You like me ‘cause you enjoy being beat down. So really, who’s screwed up?” And Spike, bless whoever hit this line and James Marsters for delivering it, says “Hello? Vampire. I’m supposed to be treading on the dark side.”

Yes. Yes. Stake him now!

No. More punching with a sexy camera angle. “What’s your excuse?” he says. She throws him into a wall and then flying tackles him.

Cut back to Amy and Willow still hanging over the rail. Guy floating in the background. Flying music. “So we’ve kinda played this scene,” Willow says, looking bored. “Return.” And now everyone’s back to normal and nobody seems to remember what just happened. And Willow is talking about somewhere bigger. Amy makes a joke about it being too early in the night.

Cut back to Spike and Buffy. Spike: “I wasn’t planning on hurting you. Much.” Creepy smile. Buffy: “You haven’t even come close to hurting me.” Is this supposed to be foreplay? Am I supposed to be getting hot for this? Because I’m gonna level with you, readers, I am a kinky girl who is into all sorts of stuff that isn’t allowed in mainstream movies and what this making me is excruciatingly uncomfortable.

More beating up the walls. And now Buffy’s kissing him and he’s shoving her into walls and they’re mixing fighting with more kissing. And literally taking the building down around them while we hear the sound of his zipper. And they’re having sex with their clothes on and staring at each other. Dramatic music chords. Building is come down without a sound, but we hear their noises and they go right through the floor without breaking penetration (yeah, right, that’s NOT how that works boys and girls) and finally, finally the credits roll.

T: Finally. Mercifully. At long last. So… “Smashed.” It’s not the worst episode? It’s got clever dialogue. Nobody tries to burn their children at the stake. That’s… all it has going for it, isn’t it?

This was an actively painful watch. I know we talked about it a lot during the synopsis, but the whole thing nobody acknowledging the fact that Willow was abusing Tara and the story as a whole not making clear that it was aware either (the scene with Dawn and the milkshake indicates it might be, or that someone in the writer’s room is, but… I don’t know).

This is Season 6. During Season 6, Joss Whedon was basically ignoring Buffy (though he wrote “Once More, With Feeling”) and left it in the hands of lead writer Marti Noxon, who was herself suffering from a huge, severe bout of depression. It’s possible that, in addition to that affecting the show’s creative direction, the lack of effective leadership on the creative side led to poor communication among the writers?

{*\../*} : Something is certainly going on in the production, here, because we’re being told several contradictory things here. On the Willow side - 1) The Dawn scenes tell us that Willow abused Tara and they’re broken up, and 2) the gang scenes are pitching us a Willow is high on the rush of magic, Tara was a speedbrake on that, and now she’s going out of control with Amy as her enabler-buddy. Depending on which of the two we believe, we can read Willow’s scenes as either her being in denial about her own actions and their costs and trying to hide from it with Amy’s devil-may-care recklessness - taking an active pleasure in flaunting what Tara was warning her about - or we can read them as a soon-to-be-junkie ceasing to be functional on her first night of binging. But we can’t do both. We just can’t - the text dissolves into nonsense if you try. Similarly, the Buffy scenes are telling us one of two things - either Buffy is in a state of existential despair and discomfort and her willingness to charge into Spike’s rape fantasy game is an act of self-destructive self-loathing, or Buffy is a responsible girl who’s been trying to live for others and Spike is the bad boy who’s about to introduce her to rough, reckless sex and embracing the kind of self-centered aggression that isn’t heroic. You can reconcile those two if you squint, but it requires saying that Buffy’s retreading Faith’s path from Season 3 and doing it while keeping it a secret from all her nominally supportive friends, and even Faith only looked like the second one - it was very clearly put out there toward the end of Season 3 that her bad girl attitude was very much a mask over the self-loathing and self-doubt that the Mayor eventually assuaged by being (perversely) a good father figure. And even then, the script doesn’t seem to know if we should be cheering her on or shouting no.

T: If it does know that, it’s certainly not telling us. I’m really not sure what to do with this episode… from the episode titles and the way it closes out, I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a cliffhanger or a two-parter, but that also felt like they tried telling two complete, mutually exclusive stories with each lead within the course of an hour. Maybe “Wrecked” gives it some context, but I don’t expect it would be enough.

{*\../*} : Well, we’ll find out?

[assassin-owl]

I Need a Summer (But It’s Winter In My Heart)

Shortly after the fall of SHIELD Bucky tries laying low in Sunnydale. All he wants is peace and quiet, but Sunnydale isn’t a great place for either, except of the “silent as the grave” variety. While there, he runs into a strange group of people who are out to save the world. He is fresh from hell and their leader has just been pulled back from heaven and both of them are trying to learn to live again.

(In case you are wondering, the ship name is WinterSummer. I’m not even sure how I came up with it, but my sister and I were joking about these two and somehow we ended up naming the ship and once you name it you start getting attached to it. Somehow, that spiraled into this story.)

I’m finally posting in honor of Bucky’s 100th birthday falling on the same day as twenty years of BtVS.

Rated T

The Asset… no, Bucky, his name is Bucky. The man on the bridge, Steve called him Bucky. The exhibit at the museum called him Bucky. And Bucky had been running ever since. Literally, a lot of the time. He isn’t sure what he is running from, not most of it, just that he had to get away.

He stole a car a few times, to get further away, but walked a lot too. He just needed to keep moving. HYDRA might find him. Steve might find him. He isn’t sure which would be worse. If someone finds him, he might hurt them, and he is so tired of hurting people. 

He wasn’t able to get very far the first week or two. He spent most of it hiding in abandoned buildings, coming down from withdrawals from whatever HYDRA had pumped him full of. 

A couple of weeks later, he reaches the Pacific Ocean. Literally. He just keeps walking until he is standing on the beach of a tiny town called Sunnydale, staring out at the waves. For the first time that he can remember, which admittedly isn’t much, he feels almost peaceful. He has no idea where to go from here, but it’s a nice place for standing still.

He stands there for a long time, watching the sun set over the water. 

An odd snarling sound from behind him snaps him out of his reverie. He wheels around, ready for a fight. The man creeping up behind him doesn’t look quite human.

Bucky raises his metal arm to block the attack and the… thing bites his arm. Bites him. Whatever attack he was expecting, that wasn’t it. Apparently, it wasn’t expecting his metal arm either.

“Owww!” it complains.

“Hey!” a woman shouts from a little ways down the beach. “Leave him alone!”

“Which one of us?” the creature asks.

She answers by ramming a wooden stick through it’s chest. It collapses into a pile of dust.

She looks back at Bucky. “Whatever you think that was,” she says, waving around, “it was an optical illusion. A biker hopped up on pcp tried to mug you, and the rest was an optical illusion. He… ran off. Yeah.” She’s obviously lying, and not going to any great effort to hide the fact. “You’re new to Sunnydale, aren’t you?” she asks, then continues without waiting for him to answer. “You shouldn’t be outside after dark, especially alone.”

Bucky glances down at the pile of dust, then back up at the girl. There is a lot he doesn’t remember, a lot of lies to sort through, a lot of things he is unsure about, but he is almost entirely certain that this is not, and never has been, normal.

“What was that?” he asks.

“I told you. A drug addict. You should get inside.” She flashes him a smile, bright but haunted by something most people would probably miss. She takes off at a jog down the beach. She is almost out of sight before it even crosses his mind to thank her. He’s pretty sure he used to be good with people, which adds another layer of frustration to his present condition.

He knows he should leave, now, before he can get caught up in whatever weirdness is happening here. He sighed heavily. He had liked this town. It was the first place he had been since everything where he felt like he could have settled down. But he has to leave. He has to get away. He has to report back to… No. There is no one left to report to in any case, and he doesn’t have to do anything. If he wants to stay, he is damn well going to stay.

He had stolen some cash several days ago and still has a little left, so he gets a cheap hotel room, under an assumed name of course. According to the museum, James was actually his name, but it felt like an assumed name, and Dugan he had gotten from the museum too. He had been cycling through the old team’s names on the rare occasion that he needed to use a name, although he hadn’t figured out why.

“What kinds of things can a vampire not bite?” Buffy asks.

“Depends on the vampire,” Xander says.

“Very funny,” Spike retorts. “Mock your allies. See what I do to you when I get this chip out.”

“I mean it,” Buffy interrupts. I could have sworn the vamp bit a guy, but he didn’t act like he had been bitten and didn’t look like he was bleeding. I think the vamp may have been hurt trying.”

“By the, um, by the actual bite, or by the retaliation?” Giles asks.

“By the actual bite. The guy didn’t hit the vampire back or anything. It just recoiled and I dusted it. The guy came across as human, but kinda distant, barely said anything.”

Willow and Xander exchange a guilty glance because the same could be said about Buffy.

“He had just seen a vampire turn to dust,” Tara points out. “That’s a little freaky the first time.”

“I could check,” Willow offers. “There’s a spell…” she breaks off at the disapproving looks from Giles and Tara.

“Do you think he wants to buy anything?” Anya asks.

“I don’t think that’s a high priority right now, An,” Xander points out. “Um, what is the priority right now?”

“For now, I don’t think there is much we can do,” Giles says. “I mean, it might be worth looking into, but he doesn’t sound like an imminent threat. Keep your eyes open of course, but I hardly think a man surviving a vampire attack is cause for alarm.”

“That’s right. That’s good,” Dawn agrees.

“You’re probably right,” Buffy concedes. “It’s a good thing. Everybody lives. That’s the goal, right?” she adds with false brightness.

“Buffy,” Giles starts.

“You know what, I should get back out there.” She snatches up her jacket and heads out into the night.

“She just needs time,” Giles says, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

“Because time will totally make this better,” Xander retorts.

“We should get her a card,” Anya says.

“I don’t think a card will help,” Dawn says.

Bucky wakes from a confused dream, teaming with the woman from the beach to save a much smaller Steve from a fight in what he thinks is a familiar alleyway. It’s better than most of the dreams he has been having. There is a brief moment of fear. For so long, waking had brought pain. 

He sighs heavily and swings his feet onto the floor. He doesn’t have a plan. Staying had looked so much more reasonable the night before, or at least a properly defiant stance. But in the bright light of day it looks more like a quaint little beachside town. And his memory is questionable so he isn’t sure anymore about the man turning to dust. It’s frustrating, not being able to trust his own mind. 

He gets dressed in a hoodie and gloves like usual to hide his face and his metal arm. It’s a little warm here for that. He may have to head north where he can wear more clothes without drawing attention.

On his way out he flashes a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes at the receptionist. She smiles back.

“There’s a free continental breakfast in the dining room,” she says.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says with a nod, making the effort to be polite. He isn’t good at it like he thinks he used to be, but it is important. HYDRA never had time for niceties.

He hadn’t eaten with HYDRA either. It had taken him nearly a week to be able to keep anything down, but now he is enjoying trying different things. He isn’t sure, but he doesn’t think most of this was available back in Brooklyn in the old days. He doesn’t stuff his pockets with food, well, maybe a few muffins. He has enough money for a couple more nights and doesn’t want to blow it on lunch. Southern California is a little warm for his usual hoodie and gloves, even in early November. Oddly enough, he isn’t even the most completely covered person. Gloves, hats, sunglasses, scarves… It’s ridiculous. And he loves it, because he suspects he’s not the weirdest one here. For someone on the run, that is a very good quality in a town.

He isn’t sure what jobs people have these days, or which ones are open to people born in the twenties whose only recent job experience is murder. 

He is making his way through the town, just having a look around. He has the feeling someone is following him, but he is afraid he might just be paranoid. Just in case, he makes his way to the busiest part of town. That doesn’t always help, but he is pretty sure he was almost never sent after people on busy streets. Except that one time.

Someone is definitely following him. It’s one of those people in a ridiculously large amount of clothing.

The stranger catches up with him on the busy street and punches Bucky hard in the face. Then the stranger screams.

“Ow! Bloody hell!” the stranger shouts.

Bucky doesn’t let the man’s odd reaction throw him. He retaliates, striking with his flesh and blood hand, knocking the stranger into a wall.

“Woah! What the hell are you? You’re not a demon but that wasn’t a human punch.”

“What options are there, other than human?” Bucky asks, keeping a close eye on the stranger as he stands to his feet. Instinct tells him to finish his target, but this stranger may or may not be a target.

“So you don’t know about demons? Never mind then. But how did you throw me through a wall? Hate to break it to you, but no normal human could do that to me.”

“Get out of my way,” Bucky says quietly.

“Not until you answer my question.”

Bucky looks around, sizing up possible escape routes. Seeing none that are reliable, he hits the stranger hard across the jaw. The other man manages to hit back before pulling away clutching his head.

“Spike!” a woman’s voice snaps. The blonde woman from the beach is hurrying toward them. “Are you attacking random people?”

“No. I’m getting answers. For you if you must know. And for me,” he added, backpedaling quickly. “I was curious. He’s human, if you were wondering, but that punch is stronger than any human I’ve ever met. Present company excepted of course.”

“Get out of here, Spike,” she says

“What is the other option?” Bucky asks.

“He stays and I kick his ass into next week.”

Bucky lip twitches into almost a smile at that. “I mean other than human.” “Oh. Well… Nothing. There’s no such thing as monster. Everyone knows that.”

“Of course there are,” Bucky says softly. 

“Look, you’re new in town. Just turn around and leave again. If you don’t know about the monsters, you can keep sleeping soundly at night.”

“A bit late for that,” he admits.

She narrows her eyes, studying his face. “It really is, isn’t it.”  She frowns in thought. “Show him the other option, Spike.”

“Oh, so that’s how it is? You want me to stick around as an example of not being human?”

“You don’t like humans,” she retorts.

“Too right, I don’t. Fine, Slayer. I’ll show off.” He… changes. His teeth elongate into fangs and ridges form on his forehead.

“This is a vampire,” the woman says. “Normally we kill them.”

“Hey!”

“But Spike can’t hurt people.”

“He punched me. Twice,” Bucky argues at the same time as Spike exclaims “Hey! Way to keep up my fearsome reputation!”

“He has a chip in his head that causes him debilitating pain when he tries,” the woman clarifies.

“I see you’re keeping my secrets so well. Maybe I should let slip a few of your deep dark secrets, love.”

“Don’t you dare,” she says evenly, a hint of threat in the way she half turns toward Spike. Then her shoulders slump. “Please,” she adds in a much softer voice.

The vampire sighed. “You know I won’t. I should. I should march straight back and tell Willow on general principle. Remind you and the whole lot of them that I’m a vampire, evil bloodsucker, that’s me.”

The woman almost smiles. “Yes, Spike, you’re so terribly evil. It would really be much better if I just staked you.”

“Too right, it would. As soon as I get rid of this chip…” “You’ll disembowel all of us on the spot,” she says, shaking her head.

There is somethings of the familiar in their bickering, not so much that it reminds Bucky of anything (although he can almost hear Steve, his voice fond, calling him a jerk,) but that the two strangers are clearly comfortable and familiar with this dynamic. That means that it is unlikely to change, unlikely to become a problem, in spite of the threats their bickering contains.

“Don’t mind him,” the woman says as the vampire jogs off toward welcoming shade. “He’s all bark.”

Bucky nods.

“So how are you taking the existence of vampires so well?”

“I’m not easily freaked out,” Bucky says. It’s not entirely true. He nearly panicked when a train blocked his path a few days before.  <Freight train> He pushes that thought aside and manages a strained smile at the woman.

"I can see that. If you're really intent on staying in Sunnydale, my name's Buffy. I tend to be around so if you need anything, check in at the magic shop downtown."

"Bucky," he says, offering his hand.

"Bucky? Is that a name?" she asks.

"You're one to talk, Buffy," he retorts with a smile.

She smiles and for a second it reaches her eyes.

[lusciousvertigo]

As One Door Closes

… another one opens or so my Mother had always said but she’d also said that drinking several litres of Absolut would ensure that you forgot your failings and the loneliness after the waste of space my Dad was had fucked off and left her with a six month old squalling me. Those doors however? Seemed to stay permanently closed unless I worked myself into an early grave to achieve exactly what I want for me. The Kessler name had once been one to be respected at one point; my Dad had served in the military from the age of seventeen, honoring those who had served before on both sides of my family going back to the time of the Civil War and he had risen swiftly through the ranks becoming a Lieutenant General which apparently is really high and Mom still had a photograph of him in her room in his fancy uniform. SHe cries over it regularly and gets really pissed off when I tell her that maybe she would feel better if she wasn’t looking at the bastard who left us every day. Turns out that my Mom has a really vicious backhand when talking about dear ol’ Dad and I’ve learnt to keep my mouth shut over it all and embrace my distaste over them both by getting rid of my golden blonde curls with a bottle of dye and refusing to go lie out in the sunshine like the bitches of Hemery High School… Ah the place that spawn opinionated bitches out to be Valley girls who spent every waking moment looking perfect for their rich Father-figure boyfriends to marry. Just like my Mom had done… after all she got herself knocked up by a man twice her age and wondered why he did a fast one the moment he could so that he wasn’t shackled to a bimbo and a brat. His loss… my Mom may well drink herself into an early grave now? But there was a time when she was the epitome of a 1950s housewife ensuring I was well-fed and cared for (by well-fed read extremely strict diet so that I would be able to be a cheerleader and make her dreams come true so that I could become head cheerleader and come home with trophies galore…) I can now clarify that I despise protein shakes and the strict regimes she had me on that had me become a stick insect before I was thirteen. Hemery had been Hell ninety per cent of the time, as I became a misfit. Not because I was in a household made up of my Mom and I but because she was an addict and it got around the school within minutes thanks to.. Guess who? The cheerleaders and the jocks. I swore there and then that I wouldn’t end up like my Mom and worked hard through school earning good grades and pushing myself in the dance studio.. I had a dream and it was one that went against the look I had grown to love and embrace fully as my own now as Ariana Keller - child of drunk and a now deceased Dad. (Trust me, if I go there - I won’t stop and the irony of it is I found out before Mom did when I saw his photo in the obituaries section of the paper} I lost myself to music and the poise and grace found in the art of ballet. My Mom had been furious with me declaring that I was letting her down and had abandoned all her hopes and dreams.. But I had been training for years now, been offered a place in The Juilliard School - yes, the place to go if you had a true passion and talent for Dance, Drama, and/or Music.. It was there that I found peace and quiet because I was out the clutches of my Mother thanks to her decision that I was too much like my Dad and that meant I was to be cast aside and forgotten. Which had meant the last five years of my life had been relatively quiet and that of course meant I was in for a returning of the dead and that would ensure that the peace I had known would end. I’d earned my BFA with a diploma (Bachelor of Fine Arts) a year ago and had found work in various theatres throughout New York and had high hopes for what would happen.. My life was indeed in my own hands and I wanted to make the most of it before everything went wrong with the arrival of one Jennifer Mayfield also known as ‘Mom’... I mean life couldn’t be good forever right? Making my way to my apartment in the Village, I trolled through the fifty or so messages she had left each and everyone filled with what had to be the ravings of a mad woman. She swore that there were monsters in the Valley; I wonder if she’d switched vodka to something a little more interesting and illegal in the form of Charlie until I remembered just why I had learnt to admire the former cheerleader turned freak in Elizabeth ‘Buffy’ Summers and her rebel boytoy Oliver Pike.. the two of them had burnt down the gym of Hemery High to kill these freaks or what was it they had been accused of being? Oh that was it ‘an attack by a gang on PCP.’ Whoever came up with that excuse clearly hadn’t actually witnessed what a gang on PCP actually looked like and they certainly didn’t have faces that resembled wax masks under the sun.. But I didn’t believe in monsters either - not that kind anyway. Monsters were child molesters, absentee parents, abusers of the elderly. There’s a fucking long list let me tell you but not one of them came from an episode of Supernatural otherwise there would be a mass hunt throughout the country for the Winchesters to ‘assist’. Also known as women (and men) wanting to drag Sam and Dean under the sack to make mini-hunters. My internal thoughts are going to have me burning in the fiery pits because if my Mom was right, swearing was sinful as was me abandoning her (despite losing my sanity when I stayed there) and I would burn. Catholics… worse than any prison guard I tell ya. But if my Mom didn’t get a call back from me; given as there were ten missed calls within the last hour? She would presume I was dead and I had already had two cases of the police contacting me as my Mom believed I was missing presumed DOA in the nearest hospital. That had been embarrassing and on the last time the police had arrived at my apartment? I had sat with them and shared my dinner with them as they took their report down … and asked me if I was concerned that my Mom had mental issues or had been assessed for depression or other such conditions. I had wanted to disappear into the ground right there and then. But that was then and this is now and clearly my Mom was concerned and I had to become the adult dealing with a child. I would get her to talk to me and then try to persuade her to put her crutch down - the vodka treble she will have no doubt poured a few of so that she would go to bed and sleep it off. I just had to hope I wouldn’t have to go to the coach station and travel from Manhattan to LA because that would screw me up in my rehearsals for my part as Ophelia in the ballet performance of Hamlet at the Zeigfeld. I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t throttle her if that occurred. Again. Perhaps it was the stress of my life and need to be the best at my classes that I would find some way to unburden the weight of fear and failure. I would visit clubs pretty much nightly to drink and forget the pain of my various pairs of dance shoes. It would be on a crowded dance floor that I would embrace the feeling of feeling truly alone when music would flow through me like the very blood in my veins. I paid little attention to the dangers I was in; or rather refused to allowed my already beleaguered mind to process the several outcomes my behaviour could of perhaps more accurately; would induce. I saw dangers and discarded them both in the form of writhing bodies in a smoky and dark club; or along the sidewalks where any old vehicle to plough me down in the blink of an eye causing my Mother to finally lose control of the few marbles she still possessed. I was alone in the crowd; but there was always a sensation akin to the hairs on the back of my neck rising. I never spoke of it; never mentioned it to the few friends at Juilliard I had lest they think nights spent in a padded room with lovely white blinding lights would aid my recovery. After all; saying someone was watching you; even when you were undressing for bed was something that could be deemed as far-fetched. Even by those I entrusted my deepest secrets. And yet.. I swore I saw the same bleached white hair in each and every bar or club I frequented.. and then it would sneak up on me when I secured the curtains to my bedroom. Someone was indeed out there; I just had no way of proving it; or knowing just why someone would do such a thing without malignant intent for my person.. He was protecting me; I escaped muggings and threats to my life only for them to disappear once I was ordered to the room. He installed fear and yet security info my mindset and I was interlude lost wondering the simplest of questions? Why me?

[prose-for-hire]

Creature of the night

Pairing: Spike x vamp!reader

Request: 22 off the Halloween list with Spike and reader because I think it be hilarious and adorable Don’t take the requested for swapped though😊, I don’t ever wanna add to my friends anxiety

Requested by: @shy-ginger-in-the-graveyard​

Warning: Blood mention. Swearing.

A/N: The sentence for this was "I can't be a vampire! I'm a fucking vegetarian!" and I hope this is what you wanted !! 🖤🦇

You woke up slowly. You had slept deep, the kind of sleep where you didn’t know where you were after you opened your eyes. Deep and somewhat satisfying. Your joints were stiff as if you had been in the same position for a long time. You sat up slowly, as if you were wading through a thick liquid. Your senses telling you to rest, you felt dizzy. Strange. Something was off. You felt like someone was watching you. It almost made you shiver.

You had been lying on a beat-up couch. One you recognised. Spike’s place. You sighed, relieved. At least you knew where you were. That was something.

“Finally - You’re up! Thought you really had gone and bloody died there for a moment, pet” His familiar British accent rattling around your brain. He had eagerly been waiting for you to awaken.

“Wha-?” You asked, rubbing your forehead “Why do I feel…”

“Like you’re on top of the bloody world? Like you’ve met the face of salvation?!” He smiled, moving closer so he could put a hand on your shoulder. He had been checking on you every so often, anticipating this moment. He had dug up your grave himself. Didn’t want you to have to contend with your own coffin. Some may say it was a vampire’s rite of passage. But he didn’t necessarily care for tradition. It was pretty nasty and he wanted to shield you from certain horrors. And introduce you to more delightful horrors.

“I was gonna say queasy…” You muttered, managing to haul yourself into a more comfortable sitting position as he moved his hand. A light frown on his face as he watched you trying to navigate your body as if it was something alien to you.

“What do you remember, pet?” he asked, there was something beside him, but you were still getting used to your sight.

“Uh… y-you offered me a new life” You said, squinting at the fuzzy figure in confusion before meeting Spike’s face again.

“And..?” he asked, holding back an eyeroll at how slow this was going. Your eyes widened, you remembered it all so suddenly. The face. The biting. His arm cradling you as you collapsed against him, losing consciousness.

Vampire. Spike, the man you had gotten to know had revealed himself. As a vampire. And that must mean…

"I can't be a vampire! I'm a fucking vegetarian!" You scream at him suddenly, not able to believe what had happened.

“Yeah, you’ll get over that, pet” he shrugged, he hadn’t expected that to carry over to your death, “Try this” he added, shoving the once fuzzy figure onto your lap. The figure became clear. It was a man. A man with a weakening pulse. With blood leaking from his neck. You stared down, blinking hard in case your eyes were deceiving you.

“I don’t want to try that!” you exclaimed, still staring as you heard his heartbeat slow to a stop.

“See? Dehumanisation. You’re already half-way there!” Spike smiled, a hint of pride as he patted your shoulder and left the corpse draped over your lap.

He watched you for a while, concern and something you didn’t understand yet in his eyes. He didn’t really comprehend why you weren’t so excited. Being turned had been a true revelation for him. His deliverance from the mundane. He had thought that was what he was giving to you. He stared at you for a while, you weren’t really doing much. You were just sat there letting the corpse which was still draped over your lap go cold.

He moved from where he had been sat opposite you, kneeling before you and looking you directly in the eye. Maybe he should explain. Maybe he should prove the care he had harboured since he had first seen you as a human almost half a year ago now. Your eyes cast back to the ground, the body slid off your lap and Spike never moved his eyes from your face. He didn’t care for the body but he did care for you, which is what he was willing you to understand.

He looked up at you, still kneeling as his hands rested on your thighs. He rubbed his thumb softly as he paused, trying to find the right way to phrase what he felt.

“I chose you… I saw your potential. I’ve never done this for anyone before, only you” He insisted, pulling you to look him in the eye, “I’m falling for you, love… can’t you see? Together, we’ll be unstoppable. You just have to trust me”

You frowned but nodded, sliding a hand over his. He had always made you feel safe. But currently you were unsure. You had agreed to it but you hadn’t quiet understood. You hadn’t thought it through. You didn’t eat animals, let alone humans.

It was a few hours later and you were pacing around Spike’s crypt. At least it made more sense as to why he had never gotten a real house. You had just thought he was cheap. How stupid you felt now. How naïve.

Was every human like you once were? Willingly stupid. Happily ignorant.

Spike offered to take you out. To stretch your legs. He wanted to teach you some things. To show you the wonders of what being undead could show you. He slung an arm around your shoulders and he smiled to notice it was the most relaxed you had been since waking up. Your feelings hadn’t changed. You had whispered affection and both hinted subtly of your love for the other.

“Let the night consume you. Feel it. Enjoy it” He said, his arm stretched out as as if he were showing you something amazing. The hint of glee in his voice that faltered once he saw your facial expression hadn’t changed. You were frowning. Confused. You were staring around the town as if you had never seen it before.

It was Halloween. Neither of you had realised until you saw all of the costumes surrounding you. You faltered slightly as he did. He should have turned back but he shrugged, asking you what you wanted to do. Saying you could pick anything you wanted.

You chose to crash the Bronze. You attend the Halloween party that always somehow ended in a disaster you managed to miss. He had rolled his eyes, but stopped short of saying something belittling. He wasn’t the biggest fan of the place, but for you he would go. It meant he was on hyper-alert, checking around from any threat.

The band was loud, louder with your heightened sense, and you felt it vibrate through you. Rather than a heartbeat, the only beat inside you was the heavy bass of the music.  You closed your eyes, enjoying the feeling. A ghost of a smile on your face. He smiled at you, he had always loved your smile. You couldn’t help staring at you as you looked around as if you had never experienced life before. As if you had never been to the Bronze. As if you had never heard music.

He liked watching you enjoy yourself. He offered a hand to you, and lead you onto the dance floor. He pulled you into him and you danced close. Swaying together in the centre of the dancefloor. Not caring about what anyone felt or thought about the pair of you.

You leaned in further, you found you were enjoying yourself. It was still him. You and him. You found yourself encased in his smell, it was stronger than you had ever remembered. But you allowed yourself to get lost in the smell.

That was until Spike abruptly stopped dancing. You saw his frown and started to ask what was wrong. His jaw tensed and then you sensed it.

You turned, confused. You smelled her first. She smelt so sweet but there was a little bite to her scent too…

You turned completely, coming face to face with the Slayer. Spike had immediately stepped in front of you. He knew he had to ensure your safety. You were new to all of this. You were inexperienced. He wanted you by his side. He couldn’t lose you – you had just started your unlife together. From behind Spike, you couldn’t help staring. Your stomach started to grumble and you rubbed it in a circular motion.

You were entranced by her. This Slayer. She made you hungry. She made you angry. You scowled in her direction, an involuntary act. Your hands balled into fists. Spike traded insults with the woman, who was dressed as a fairy tale character you no longer cared to recall. You stepped forwards, so that you were beside him. Buffy raised her eyebrows at you and muttered something derogatory. You lunged forwards, but Spike pulled you back. He smirked approvingly, stroking your back soothingly. Now you were getting it. You were finally getting it.

Spike was going to walk away, knowing that it was best to have a plan before taking on the slayer and he had only been wanting to show you a good time tonight. He should have known better than to leave the crypt on Halloween.

He decided to steer you away, whispering lowly to wait it out. To spend the night getting used to your new life. To each other. He didn’t want you to get ahead of yourself. You nodded. The girl started to turn away, wanting her night off and deciding she would deal with the both of you when she could be bothered. She was sure of herself and knew she would catch up with the both of you eventually.

But as she turned, you caught her scent so strongly it made you hiss slightly. It was primal. It was strange but you couldn’t feel embarrassed over it. It was a part of you now. You were slowly learning this.

You ran straight at the Slayer, your hunger for her blood overtaking your once understandable reservations. Spike’s eyes glinted with pride as you started matching blows with the slayer. You were a quick learner.

When he saw her inevitably take the upper hand, he stepped in. Protecting you. He kicked her full-force in the stomach, leaving her stumbling backwards as you shrugged off the humans that were trying to subdue you. He took your hand and pulled you as fast as he could out of the Bronze. You ran through the streets, checking behind you every so often.

That really was enough for one night. He wanted to teach you more before you stepped up to the slayer again. He wanted you to learn to preserve yourself first, maybe let him take on the slayer. He didn’t want to risk you. He wanted to get to know you more intimately. But this told him he had chosen correctly. That the potential he had seen, the love he had wasn’t unfounded.

Now, all he had to do was make sure he got you safely away from the Slayer before he lost you as soon as he found you.

[buffyversefanfiction]

Twisted Tristan (Buffy Fanfic)

Chapter 9 - #TEAMTWISTED #DEATH2DRUSILLA #VOLUME1

Warnings: I do not own or claim to own the original content to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Angel”, the comics or any of the original characters from the “Buffyverse” all rights belong to Joss Whedon.

15 plus, displays of Violence, Gore, Torture, M/M, F/M, F/F.

#1928

Location: The Soon to Be Abandoned Hospital Asylum, Outskirts of New York

Spike found himself running through the deep woods frantically before happening to find Drusilla stood dancing in the middle of a large field completely burned by fire.

“Dru darling whatever are you doing out here?” He asked her while walking up towards her and she continued to dance.

“So many terrible acts so many dreadful little secrets oh it thrills me Spike.” Drusilla responded as she grabbed a hold of her vampire lover and persuaded him into a slow dance with her. “This is the perfect location to one day raise a family.”

“Raise a family,” Spike laughed while continuing to dance with the love of his life on a burned field. “I knew you’d be out somewhere dancing, but Darla feared you had been caught and killed.”

“No, I won’t suffer a single death, but I will see many before my own eyes,” Drusilla revealed to him. “I can see them all happening right now some good and some not so good.”

“Your mind is a truly beautiful place.” Spike said lovingly with pure adoration as he brushed his hand through Drusilla’s hair. “So, what kind of family will be raised here?”

“Now Spike darling,” Drusilla laughed giddily. “I can’t reveal to you all the secrets that takes away the fun.”

#1977

Location: New York

Spike and Drusilla traveled to New York with beautifully brutal plans in their minds, Spike’s plans were to kill his second slayer Nikki Wood whereas Drusilla felt New York calling her for a very different reason she was preparing herself to become a mummy to her first child: Dante.

Drusilla stood across from a brothel eagerly hearing screams and shout coming from the building which just served to excite her more and more before a blood-soaked Dante appeared from out of the building looking shell shocked by the heinous murders he had just committed.

“I can feel your pain my darling boy,” Drusilla said as she walked over to the murderous man. “You feel so much, and I know how much that hurts Dante.”

“How do you know my name?” A confused Dante asked the vampire.

“You like chopping up women of the night,” Drusilla giggled before licking blood off his cheek. “The art of it all is simply stunning and yet you are stunted by time forced to live and die within an era that will soon forget you.”

“Who the hell are you?” Dante wondered.

“I’m going to be your mummy.” Drusilla revealed as she turned on her vampire facing making Dante instantly horrified. “Don’t worry baby it won’t hurt too much and then you’ll have an eternity to commit all kinds of crimes.”

#2000

Location: Los Angeles

“One by one they all fell down the fanged four is no more.” Drusilla said sadly while sitting on her knees on the floor of an abandoned warehouse. “I really did love that bloody man, but I lost him to her like she took Angelus and now grandmother mummy doesn’t want me.”

“If you ask me you spent far too much time wasted on Angelus and Spike, I say you waste no more mother.” Dante said as he walked into the abandoned warehouse instantly making Drusilla rise to her feet and smile at his presence.

“You’ve been a bad boy leaving mummy time and time again for whatever next takes your fancy.” Drusilla taunted him. “The mummy, the merfolk, the banshee and then that goat worshiping demon.”

“Yeah well I must admit the goat worshiping demon was into some freaky stuff and was one wild ride, but nobody does death and debauchery quite like my mother.” Dante replied, complimenting his mother. “How about we both put the past behind us and start looking forward to the future?”

“That’s my beautiful boy finally willing to accept his future,” Drusilla laughed while walking towards her son. “Although I must admit I did enjoy the merfolk they were a rather ravenous kind.”

#2016

Location: Abandoned Hospital Asylum, Outskirts of New York

Following a recent Riverborn ordeal Drusilla had taken both Tristan and Mandi to what she considered to be her family home, the property that was once a hospital for the insane in which brutal acts were done to their patients with several deaths caused by these acts and many lies and skeletons laying within the foundation of the land.

A perfect home for someone like Drusilla.

“So, you basically want us to be the strength and the spells for your little operation and in return we get your loyalty, knowledge and access to the things we need?” Mandi asked Drusilla as herself, Drusilla and Tristan walked down a decaying hallway within the hospital. “It still all seems a little bit sketchy to me.

“Well of course it would at first I mean this is all madness,” Dante admitted as he appeared into the hallway from a nearby door. “It’s all madness all the time and then you realize you’re just as crazy as the rest of us.”

“Speak for yourself.” Mandi snapped at the male vampire.

“I’m only here for revenge and once I get my revenge, I’ll be gone so don’t bother getting too attached to the idea of us sticking around.” Tristan told Drusilla, completely ignoring Dante’s arrival causing Dante to smirk.

“I know my darling boy,” Drusilla replied before lovingly putting her hand on his face. “You’re not quite ready for anything other than revenge right now but in time you will see a family in front of your very eyes.”

“Don’t bet on it.” Tristan replied causing Dante to smile once again.

#3WeeksBefore #Death2Drusilla

Location: A Cemetery Within San Francisco

Buffy and Spike’s on/off relationship had been going on for too many years they split up the reckoning (season 12) before reuniting only to split again leading to Buffy having a one-night stand with Angel leading to the birth of Tristan.

Since then they had mainly just been hooking up every now and then following Buffy’s ordeal with losing her son she became more and more distant and their relationship soon became to mirror how they used to be after Buffy clawed her way out of her own grave (Season 6) and it was Spike who decided to put an end to things for good for their own sakes.

Which meant the night in question Spike was patrolling solo within a local Cemetery in San Francisco having agreed to alternate between patrols with Buffy, so they didn’t have to see each other over the transitional period of their latest break up.

The night in question was particularly quite for Spike as he walked through the cemetery until he heard footsteps from a distance behind him.

“If your trying to sneak up on someone with vampire hearing then you’re a bloody fool.” Spike shouted as he turned around looking for a face within the shadows. “And if you’re a vampire trying to sneak up on a fire then you deserve the death I’m about to make happen.”

“And what if you’re just a witch looking for a friend in this lonely and miserable world.” Mandi said with sarcasm as she appeared from the shadows as she walked towards Spike.

“Well if it isn’t the witch, I saved from my ex Drusilla.” Spike said with a smile on his face as he rushed over and hugged Mandi. “It’s nice to see you little witch.”

“Good to see you too Spike,” Mandi replied. “I need a favour.”

“Wasn’t the last favour good enough for you?” Spike asked with sarcasm as they broke off their hug. “Who do you need saving from this time?”

“Actually, it’s more about revenge then a rescue mission this time around it’s more a favour for me and your girlfriend’s kid.” Mandi revealed to him.

“Ex-girlfriend.” Spike corrected her with a sense of sadness on his face. “And the last time I checked the only person that psychotic kid wanted revenge on was his parents I mean I’d consider Angel but Buffy’s a no go.”

“Well actually we’re getting our revenge on your other ex you know the one who raised Tristan to be the psycho killer we all know today.” Mandi admitted.

“Tristan’s going up against Dru?” Spike asked rhetorically, surprised by the turn of events. “Dru’s got a thing for always escaping death mind you so do Tristan which he probably gets off Drusilla and Buffy. This could get bloody messy I mean either Dru escapes once again and claims her second slayer or Tristan winds up dead in which Buffy will blame me and I’ll be following him.”

“Does that mean I can count you in?” Mandi wondered hoping she could count on her old friend once again.

“I suppose so,” Spike sighs. “Buffy will kill me if Tristan ends up dead and it’s not like he’s going to accept her or Angel’s help not to mention I’ve grown to tolerate you little witch and don’t want to see you dead anytime soon.”

“I knew I could count on you!” Mandi replied knowing he was about the only one she could rely on for the mission in hand.

#2WeeksBefore #Death2Drusilla

Location: Dante and Tristan’s Demonic Dive Bar, New York

“Of all the bars in all of the world you just keep coming, back don’t you?” Tristan asked Faith as she walked into his half destroy demonic dive bar while he stood behind the bar counter.

“Well clearly you’re in need of the business.” Faith stated while looking around at the damage the place had come under due to her and Tristan’s actions. “So, here’s the thing I’m not too sure on this Mandi chick and I’m sure as hell not sure on you but Spike seems to think it’s worth the risk although to be fair he also fault Drusilla was a good choice for like a century or more.”

“You’d be wise not to trust anyone after all last time I trusted some chick she helped get my lover killed.” Tristan snapped at her.

“Here in my defense you never actually trusted me which turned out to be a wise move on your part considering everything that went down.” Faith replied.

“Everything that went down?” Tristan shouted. “That blue bitch killed my Dante and for that I’ll never forgive you, her or Angel and I promise you when this is all over, I’ll get my revenge.”

“Yeah I get that but what I’m not sold on is why you’d want Drusilla dead it seems to me like a trap and not a very good one at that.” Faith explained to him. “Clearly Spike and Mandi are stupid enough to believe this, but Mandi just wants to believe there’s something redeemable in you and Spike is playing step daddy to try and get back in Buffy’s bed. I on the other hand I’m not particularly interested in either especially the getting down and dirty with B.”

“It wasn’t my idea to send you an invitation anyway.” Tristan scoffed. “Mandi seems to think you’d be a good fit, but I beg to differ so go on your way before I decide to take that revenge right now.”

“Why do you want revenge on her anyway?” Faith asked him curious to what his answer might be.

“That’s none of your business.” He snapped once more.

“Yeah it is because if I’m going to do this suicidal mostly out of my toleration to Spike and my need to make amends with Angel then I at least want to know why Dru has all of a sudden hit the top of your little revenge list.” Faith made herself clear.

“She killed my parents.” Tristan reluctantly revealed.

#Death2Drusilla

Location: The Woods, Outskirts of New York

Spike, Faith, Tristan and Mandi had been walking deep into the woods within an undisclosed location somewhere between the recently shut down Slayer Rehabilitation Center and New York City as they followed Tristan’s steps on wards to an abandoned insane asylum hospital within a long forgotten location deep within the woods the abandoned hospital probably having several bloody secrets of its own long before Drusilla made it her home.

“So, what’s the likelihood we’ve not just followed you into the middle of nowhere just for you to slaughter us all?” Faith asked Tristan as the four of them stopped walking.

“Seriously you’re the one accusing me of double crossing if it wasn’t for you being a backstabbing little bitch I wouldn’t even be here right now.” Tristan snapped at the redeemed slayer.

“Hold up now don’t be blaming Faith because she bet you in a fight trust me it happens so you may as well get the hell over it.” Spike told Tristan sticking up for his friend in the process.

“Listen Pirate Peroxide if you think you can take me then I’d love to see you try.” Tristan replied eagerly walking towards him. “I’m more than down for dusting your ass right here right now.”

“I’d love to see you try!” Spike snapped back at the unhinged male slayer, ready to fight him.

“Two to one Tristan if you want to try something try it.” Faith warned him.

“Enough with the fighting!” Mandi shouted, finally popping up before putting them all in their place. “Tristan you want Drusilla dead they’re here to get you what you want so if you can speak without threatening them just shut the hell up. Faith you were doing the right thing when dusting Dante but’s lets just not bring him up anytime soon just to be safe or Tristan probably will be turn on us and as for you Spike how about you only open your mouth when your lighting up a cigarette or downing booze from your flask.”

“Hold up you’ve been holding out on drink all this time?” Faith asked Spike, clearly unimpressed.

“I’ve been ready to kill for a smoke for the last three hours.” Tristan admitted.

“Why do I suddenly miss the threats of death?” Spike moaned as he went into his pocket and handed out a fag and lighter to Tristan before handing Faith his flask. “I expect all of it back with interest once we get this done and dusted so to speak.”

“So, go on then Mandi tell me what’s this master-plan of yours again?” Tristan asked the brown-haired witch while lighting up a cigarette.

#Death2Drusilla

Location: The Abandoned Hospital Asylum, Outskirts of New York

“You were my savior when I needed saving my crazed daylight in an eternal darkness. You taught me to be strong when I was weak and introduced me into a whole new way of living when I thought I was dead.” Tristan admitted to Drusilla as they walked down a hallway within the abandoned hospital in which Drusilla had made her home. “They actually believed after a few weeks of captivity and some shallow attempts at reaching my already ripened soul that I would turn against the only family I have left.”

“I worried so much about you when you left me last my darling boy but then I had a dream the most wonderful dream.” Drusilla giddily replied to him as they stopped walking. “You were there, and Dante was there too, and we were all sitting around a table and little miss Buffy was the family meal.”

“Dante’s dead he can’t join us for any feast not even if it was to toast to the death of Buffy much to my dismay.” Tristan said with a reluctant sigh before going on to say. “We’re all we have left now.”

“Silly boy you never let me finish.” Drusilla laughed. “Buffy wasn’t dead she just lay there while we drank from her and one by one, we all fell down.”

“Well that’s different from your usual dreams,” Tristan replied with shock. “What do you think it means?”

“I saw her poisonous blood ruin us all first Dante, then you and lastly me.” Drusilla revealed to him. “The dream continued to whisper in my ears until it’s words became too clear to ignore any longer and action had to be taken.”

“Okay what exactly did you get from that dream because I’m getting more confused than a werewolf with gluten allergies.” Tristan wondered before noticing a group of vampires appear on both sides as he begun to worry, she foresaw the plan made against her.

“The blood poisoned your Dante because his body wasn’t strong enough the same for you and me my darling boy, but mummy has a way of fixing that now.” Drusilla told him as her face revealed her vampire self once again. “Making you like your so-called mummy wasn’t enough now I have to make you like your other mother, me!”

[ettadunham]

A Buffy rewatch 6x14 Older and Far Away

aka and then they all snapped

Welcome to this dailyish (weekly? bi-weekly?) text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And while today’s episode is mostly Dawn-centric, there are two other characters in particular that I really wanna talk about: Tara and Anya.

Older and Far Away is almost infamous for its big Dawn outburst and her petty, bratty attitude. But to me, that’s ignoring the greater context of Dawn’s story, especially this season.

To be fair, I actually like how the episode resolves that, and emphasizes Dawn’s pain through Halfrek’s monologue, as well as let Buffy connect with her sister finally… But I can also see how someone else would have a harder time focusing on that, and not on Dawn yelling “GET OUT” as they’re questioning her.

It’s easy to look over how Dawn’s been ignored by her guardians this entire season in an episode, where everyone actually has some legit life reasons to not hang out with her in that moment. And Dawn’s been understanding of that as much as possible, but it also hurt her, and she’s been quietly acting out for a while. Without anyone even noticing.

The whole part of her stealing a leather jacket as Buffy’s birthday gift might as well be just her holding up a neon sign saying “PLEASE NOTICE THAT I NEED HELP”. I also loved the visual when she put on the jacket, almost as if she wanted to feel closer to her sister, wearing the types of clothes she’d have.

So yeah. I find it important to see Dawn’s attitude here as the product of a pattern, and a gradual process. Plus, it didn’t really help that everyone kept talking about how they all had “much better things to do” in front of her for a large chunk of the episode. I flinched with Dawn each time that happened, not even gonna lie.

It’s also not like Dawn was aware that she had anything to do with the whole thing. She just felt lonely and ignored. And before people realized that they couldn’t leave, she mostly had a good time too.

You know who else had a great time in the first half of this episode? Tara. Especially as she was annoying Spike.

Well, alright, maybe I’m also just projecting my own delight about those scenes, but can you blame me? First she made a comment while looking at Spike directly about how the guy Xander and Anya brought to set up with Buffy was cute (“I mean, I’m not a very good judge, but I think he seemed cute”), then when she caught him trying to make a move on Buffy, she called out his lame excuse (“A muscle cramp… in your pants?”), and later on when Spike was making innuendos at Buffy again, she shut him down by literally telling him to “put some ice on it”. Which… can I frame that moment and have it projected on my grave? It’s really quite possibly the most beautiful thing on the show ever.

Tara Maclay. Patron saint of girls in unhealthy relationships.

No wonder Buffy insisted on inviting Tara. Then again, she also bailed on Tara immediately when Willow showed up, letting Tara deal with her ex alone, like the traitor she is.

Of course, Tara’s other defining moment in the episode comes later, as she’s standing up to Anya, who’s trying to pressure Willow into doing magic.

And it’s not just Anya too. Xander joins in on the pressuring, even if he tries softening it by saying that they could help Willow recover afterwards, or whatever bullshit.

Tara stepping between Willow and Anya, and telling the latter to back off reminded me of Family a lot too. There, Tara was the one who was pressured by her family to go with them, and Willow was the one who asked her what she wanted. And then Buffy stepped between her and her family, and told them that they’d need to go through her if they wanted to take Tara – much like Tara here told Anya that she would need to go through her if she wanted to make Willow do something she didn’t want to do.

That’s a character arc coming full circle, and I love it so much.

Meanwhile, this is also just a great Anya episode. Throughout their entrapment in the house, you can see Anya’s panic growing. The scene of her and Xander outside of the room where Richard’s (Mr. ”He seems nice” Guy) bleeding to death is one of my favorites.

Xander is also pretty great here? Which might debunk my previous theory of how Xander in season 6 generally treats Anya worse than in season 5, and points more to inconsistent writing, when it comes to their relationship.

In any case, Xander is actually doing well comforting Anya, as she’s on the verge of a full-fledged panic attack, and is rambling about how they were all going to die. And then he gets immediately injured afterwards, which only adds onto Anya’s fears and anxiety.

So these are the kind of circumstances that lead us to the scene in the dining room, with Anya and Tara facing off. Two characters that usually get along well enough under normal circumstances.

And honestly? As much as that’s a great Tara moment, it’s also an amazing Anya moment.

You see, Anya’s usually brash and inconsiderate, but it’s framed in a comedic light. We rarely see this side of Anya, the one that’s brutal and cutthroat, and will fight tooth and nail when she’s cornered.

Like, the part that reminds you that she’s been a vengeance demon for 1000 years?

The Anya in this episode isn’t trying to play nice. Her words are real and blunt in a way they haven’t been allowed to be in a while. It even allows the next scene, where she’s going through Dawn’s stuff and finds the stolen items from the Magic Box, to be injected with that same kind of honesty.

She’s afraid, angry, confused and hurt throughout the episode, and for once it’s not portrayed as a comic relief.

I love that.

Oh, and her exhaustion with Hallie by the end is just the cherry on top.

I love this episode. A memorable, simple premise with great character moments. I’m sold.