|
|
Disclaimer: Not mine. All hail the wonderful Joss-man for his creation of these characters. I just play with them for a while.
Author's Note: B/O up ahead. Flame me not, for they're reported.
Thanks goes out to my wonderful beta-reader, Samantha Melissa Gold.
"Buffy Summers, you have a visitor."
The tiny young woman who really wasn't so young anymore looked up from the paperback book held between her small hands, a confused frown fluttering across her features. A visitor hadn't come to her in years - her existence in Sunnydale's renowned Riverview Institution was a lonely one, in fact. The part of her that still cared - though it was close to extinguished - wondered idly who it was.
She watched as the nurse's shadow peeked through the slit beneath the shielded door. Standing hesitantly, book forgotten, she memorized the beeps and their pitches and the sound the door made when opened on its hinges. Nurse Caitlyne's figure blocked the doorway, a happy smile on her cold face and motioned for Buffy to make her way to the visitor's chamber.
Buffy's slippers scraped the frigid black and white tiled floor, hating the feel of Caitlyne's hand on her back. The quiet screams and terrified whispers enveloped her as they made their way down the corridor and its blinding walls.
She was led quietly to the garden, overlooking a man-made lake the doctors thought therapeutic. There she was seated on a hard, white bench and told to wait. She knew enough to obey.
The first thing she was aware of was his cologne. The same one she noticed whenever Willow returned from his place, her heightened olfactory senses picking up its faint fragrance from the air surrounding the shy red head who died in her arms four years ago.
Their eyes met when she raised her head and his wolf greeted her slayer before a breath passed between them. She scooted over, giving him space on the bench and he sat beside her, seemingly content with their instinctual communication.
"Hey," he greeted. She echoed his address and turned so she was now facing him and his gray eyes. Today his hair was blue. She'd always liked that colour on him.
"What are you doing here?" she asked him, shifting as she felt the air stir. Impulsively she wiped her hands on the cotton of the white robe, her breathing becoming shallow. Almost instantly he placed his hand over hers and she felt herself relax beneath his touch. The beads on his hands were digging pleasantly into her skin.
"I just heard."
"I understand."
"How are you?" She traced the veins moulded into the leaves on their seat, momentarily distracted by the beauty of their surroundings. She could feel Caitlyne's eyes watching them cautiously, afraid the young patient would harm her visitor. Buffy knew what the nurse was thinking. She should have cut her nails that day.
"I get to wear a robe and slippers all day," she smiled, something behind the gesture turning feral. He smiled back, thumb massaging the back of her hand. It held a softness she hadn't seen in such a long while.
"And you've got your own private lake," he pointed out. Her smile grew wider, more tender, and she nodded.
"There is that," she acknowledged. Her voice dropped and she drew her hand from his, folding them on her lap. "How are you?"
His eyes were soft as he spoke, a light shining behind them that washed over her with warmth. In a timbre that matched her own he told her of the eleven years he spent away from Sunnydale, of the battles lost and won. His guitar was sold in favour of needed currency which was given away to the next needy person he saw. His life was situated mostly in the remote places where no one, sometimes not even he, was able to find him.
"That's why I returned now," he told her, "I just found out about you and needed to come home."
"Thank you." she said sincerely. His gentle smile radiated and she felt like the person she abandoned once she walked through the iron gates.
"You still look the same, you know," she told him. His laugh was easy and floated in the warm air. He bobbed his head, flattered.
She wondered how much had changed in his life. Eleven years away from the home he'd grown up in... she knew how that felt. Thirty years away from the only home she'd never known, and thirty years never knowing how to fit in.
"How'd you end up here?" The question was said tentatively, his voice soft and velvety. Buffy closed her eyes and tried to feel his feelings, knowing they both clung on to the same desperate love and knowledge that, in all the world, the other was all they had.
She spoke furtively, opening her eyes and meeting his. He was waiting patiently, just like she'd always remembered.
"It's a funny thing they don't tell you. Probably because they don't think you'll ever make it. It's written somewhere in that damned handbook - Slayers past twenty-five go crazy. We become a danger to ourselves and others." She looked around, gesturing to the gilded cage she lived in. "After my twenty-sixth, I was still going strong. After the first death... Xander's... I lost a part of myself. Suddenly it was like dominoes - they all just fell. After Xander it was Willow, then Tara, Spike then Anya. Anya was the worst they-they tortured her, calling her a traitor. T'Hoffren.
"After Giles, I lost it. I woke up and didn't know where I was or what had happened. I called Riverview and got myself admitted. I'm just waiting to die in here, so the next Slayer can be activated." A dense sort of silence settled over them, the hush muting everything else as well.
"So you've been here four years now." She nodded, blinking away the sudden moisture.
He scooted closer to her, their bodies making contact. When he spoke, his voice was an intimate whisper even she could barely pick up. "I still trust you with me life," he vowed. Her heart warmed at that moment and the desperation she unwillingly wore thinned. She still had Oz. Stoic, reliable, warm Oz, who returned as soon as he'd heard.
"The last supernatural conference of this time," she joked.
"Don't bet your life on it," he told her, smiling. "There's still mimes."
"No one deserves a mime," she smiled back, remembering a precious shared moment between them. His smile grew broader, gathering the tiny girl into an embrace. His arms were stronger than she remembered, or perhaps she was frailer than she realized. Whatever it was, she found comfort in the last reminder of the Scooby Gang.
"We're the last ones," he whispered, shaking slightly in her arms. She smiled, even though he couldn't see, and shook her head to contradict him.
"Not anymore," she assured him, hugging him tighter. She leaned over and placed a gentle kiss goodbye on his cheek and stepped back from his embrace. His eyes were misty, much like hers. But they weren't alone in the world. It was a promise.
Squeezing his hand, her eyes twinkled and she turned to walk back to Caitlyne and to spend another night in her cold room. He let go, his hand resting limply at his side as he watched her back walk away from him. Stuffing his hand in his pocket he turned, too, and left, strolling toward the iron gates that would lead him outside and away.