[Fic] "Lazy Day" -- BtVS
This is the story I mentioned back in February, in which Buffy and Faith watch Firefly for no particular reason. Television canon only; I am completely ignoring the season 8 and 9 comics. For reference, the episode Faith is watching is Safe. (3,600 words)
This story is basically a slice of life in which nothing dramatic happens, but Buffy thinks back to various horrible things that happened during her years in Sunnydale, so... warnings for violence, gore, and emotional trauma roughly on a level with the show, only not with graphic visual accompaniment?
[ETA: The ever-so-slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
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Lazy Day
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The new house was strangely quiet when Buffy woke around noon, but she wasn't together enough to catch that at first. What she noticed was that nobody was using the upstairs bathroom. There was actual hot water for her shower.
She hurried anyway -- unexpected liquid ice and huge swings in water pressure had a way of creating new habits fast -- and somewhere between rinsing conditioner out of her hair and brushing her teeth, she realized the house was still strangely quiet. Which was not right. At all. Especially not on a Saturday.
There was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation... except given her life, something like 'everyone else got kidnapped to a parallel dimension' or 'this is all an artificially induced dream state meant to kill your brain' would qualify as reasonable explanations. Buffy grimaced at her reflection in the mirror, wrapped herself in the day-glo orange bathrobe Dawn had bought at a dollar store as a yay-we-survived present, and ventured downstairs to investigate.
The living room was equally quiet and deserted, though clearly people had been there not long ago: a half-full glass of cranberry juice sat on a coaster next to one of the secondhand armchairs, and an empty Dunkin' Donuts box lay trampled on the floor. Buffy bent and picked up the cardboard, trying to remember where Xander and Andrew had set up the recycling collection. Was it in the kitchen or on the porch? And if the porch, front or back?
Funny how the little things kept tripping her up.
Buffy closed her eyes and counted to ten. She was not going to fall apart thinking about everything she'd lost when her house -- Mom's house -- went under with the rest of Sunnydale. She was going to take a deep breath and be a responsible adult for Dawn and the rest of the Scoobies and Slayers.
Then she was going to figure out where everyone had vanished off to. Or been kidnapped to. So help her, if someone was after Dawn again...
Loud footsteps yanked Buffy out of her growing worry. She spun on her heels to see Faith walk out of the kitchen, slouchy casual in jeans, boots, and one of Robin's button-down shirts. She was carrying a giant bag of potato chips and a six-pack of beer.
She didn't look worried. Buffy tried to tell herself this was a good sign. Faith wouldn't be this laid-back if anyone was in trouble -- at least, not anymore.
Her gut wasn't convinced. Then again, what did a bunch of intestines know about evil? That was a stupid expression.
"Faith, have you seen--" Buffy started, but Faith talked right over her.
"Hey, Sleeping Beauty wakes! I thought you were gonna be out 'til sunset, the way you were snoring a couple hours ago," Faith said as she sat sideways on the couch and kicked her feet up onto the cushions. "I'm trying to catch up on all the TV I missed the past few years. Andrew hooked me up with tapes of this show that's like a western in space -- lots of guns and fighting the man. Wanna join me?"
"There will be no beer in my house," Buffy said, temporarily distracted from the weirdness of the empty building. "Beer is bad, and I know you know what teenage girls are like."
"That would be why I'm planning to drink it all myself," Faith said. She cracked the can and took a long drink, then pulled a sour face. "Man, I forgot how much light beer sucks. Does the job, though, and by the third can it's not like I care about the taste."
"I said there will be no beer," Buffy repeated, dropping the mangled donut box onto Faith's head. She snatched the rest of the six-pack off the couch and marched into the kitchen. She'd tipped two cans upside down in the sink before Faith knocked her away from the counter and grabbed the remaining three, cradling them to her chest.
"You're lucky I bought the cheap stuff, or I'd charge you for that," Faith snapped.
"You're lucky we're letting you stay here," Buffy snapped back. "You don't get infinite second chances. Stop trying to blow it."
Faith's face darkened and she stepped forward, switching the cans to her left arm and raising her right hand to point at Buffy. "Okay, look. You're the general: fine. You're the better slayer: whatever, fine. You're the fucking soul of generosity who's never screwed up in her life: yeah, sure, whatever you wanna tell yourself. You see me arguing? But you are not my mom. If I want to spend my weekend off getting mellow and watching weird dystopian sci-fi shows, that's none of your business. It's not like the baby Slayers are even in Cleveland today, so unless you think I'm gonna corrupt you with my horrible no-good example, lay the fuck off."
Faith stalked back into the living, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "And get dressed, B. Terrycloth does nothing for you."
"As if you have a fashion sense," Buffy muttered, but she tugged the fuzzy robe a bit tighter and made a tactical retreat up the stairs. She didn't mean to push at Faith -- after all, she was the only person who hadn't actively kicked Buffy out of her own house back in Sunnydale -- but something about the other Slayer just got under Buffy's skin and itched. Still. She should apologize. As soon as she figured out how to not sound like an idiot doing it.
Twenty minutes later, with her hair up and dry, her makeup on, and wearing a pink spaghetti-strap tank and a comfortable set of Capri jeans, Buffy descended the stairs, snatched the VCR remote from the arm of the sofa, and paused whatever Faith was watching.
"Sorry I snapped at you," she said. "I'm just a teeny bit wound up today, and waking up to find everybody gone didn't help. Where is everyone?"
Faith defiantly finished her beer before answering. "Robin's in the city working on the charter school stuff. Andrew's at the comics shop across from the library. Xander... I think he said something about a water heater? Willow and Giles took Dawn and the baby Slayers out on a camping trip. You should know this. They've only been talking about it for two weeks."
Buffy blinked. "That's this weekend? I thought that was next week." She'd been sure the trip was next week. Had she misplaced an entire week? That was bad. Either she was going crazy, or she'd been time-jumped forward in her own life... and wow, that really sounded crazy.
"Damn straight it sounds crazy, which saves me the long explanation of why you're here instead of tramping around whatever passes for nature in Ohio," Faith said.
Buffy blinked again. "...I said that out loud, didn't I." Dumb. Inner monologues were supposed to stay in her head; that's why they were called 'inner' monologues instead of 'outer' monologues. She made very sure to keep her lips pressed shut to keep that one from escaping.
Faith nodded. "Yeah, you did. You are so far beyond running on empty it's starting to scare people. The last thing you need is another adventure you think you have to organize. So it's just you, me, and the television, which I would like to get back to watching. Sit down and gimme the remote." She held out her hand, making tiny grabbing motions.
Buffy dropped the remote into Faith's lap and perched on the sofa arm, down by Faith's feet.
"Did they at least leave us a car?" she asked.
"No, I got the beer by magic," Faith said in a withering tone. "Of course we have a car. Which reminds me -- one of us has to pick up Andrew around five. If you drive off and abandon me, that's your job." She pressed play and started the television show running again.
Buffy watched absently as a deal between some cowboy types went bad in one plot thread, and a lost girl danced in another part of the story. Presumably there was some connection she'd missed earlier in the episode. Dawn would be asking a zillion questions, trying to get everything straight, but Buffy was okay just seeing what happened.
She'd never been hugely into TV anyway -- mostly she'd watched whatever Dawn or Mom had on when she happened to walk into the room, or sometimes stuff her friends watched so she'd understand their references and have up to date quip material. Since becoming the Slayer, she'd been even less interested. Her life was a big enough drama black hole on its own. The last thing she needed to do was waste brain cells keeping track of imaginary people's trauma.
This show was kind of funny, though. Whoever wrote it knew their way around a joke. And there was something about that girl, the crazy one who could mimic dance steps she'd never seen before, and maybe read minds...
"Do you think one of the writers met a Slayer?" Buffy asked Faith as the tape hit a commercial break. "Not like us, but one of the Council-raised girls? That River girl reminds me a little of Kendra, with the way she's so out of place and the way she moves."
Faith scooped up the remote and hit pause, biting her lower lip in -- okay, be fair, Buffy told herself. That was Faith thinking, not Faith being an evil seductress, though Buffy would bet a hundred dollars that Faith had practiced the expression in a mirror at some point. Nobody got that kind of come-fuck-me body language by accident.
"It's possible, I guess," Faith said after a few seconds. "Scriptwriters have just as much chance of getting munched as anyone else, and who the hell knows where the girls before us got sent. And I get what you're saying. In the show, River got taken from her family and experimented on, so now she's, I dunno, psychic or something? Also crazy." She drank a long swallow of beer and continued. "I didn't mind when my first Watcher took me from my mom, because fucking anything was better than my mom and her skeevy ass-creep boyfriends, but I bet you'd see it different if someone had taken you away from Joyce. And if we talked about our world to normal people, they'd think we were crazy too."
Buffy very carefully didn't think about mental hospitals.
Faith finished off her second can of beer and poked Buffy's thigh with the toe of her boot. "Does it really matter, in the long run?"
Buffy shrugged. "Probably not. I just think about all the other girls, sometimes -- all the way back to Sineya. Like, why are we the ones who broke the cycle? Why not them? So many dead girls for so many years, and who remembers them now that the Watchers' records are gone? They might as well never have lived at all."
Faith poked Buffy a little harder this time. "Hey. If they hadn't lived, we wouldn't have had a chance to spread the power out, because the world would've ended ages ago. I think the earth's a wicked cool legacy."
Buffy laughed for a second, despite herself. "Yeah, it is. It's where we keep all our stuff." And now she was thinking about Spike again. Such a brave, stupid, infuriating man. Vampire. Man. Whatever.
If he weren't dead, she'd stake him herself.
"Are we still talking, or have you gone off to brood all on your lonesome?" Faith asked. "'Cause I'd like to finish this episode if you don't need me to listen."
Buffy flapped a hand in Faith's general direction and ignored the resumed sound and motion coming from the television.
She hadn't really thought about Spike since Sunnydale, not for more than a handful of seconds before she found a new project to distract herself. She hadn't thought about any of the people they'd lost. God, Anya. She'd never liked Anya, never thought the ex-demon was good enough for Xander, never liked her mercenary lack of tact (seriously, anyone who made Cordelia look polite was just beyond belief), never really trusted her to stick around and know right from wrong... and then Anya went and died saving Andrew, of all people. It made no sense, unless she'd been wrong about Anya all along.
Buffy hated being wrong.
She hated not being able to save people even more.
She was the Slayer. She wasn't supposed to be helpless.
There had to be some project she could work on with everyone out of the house and not getting in her way. Hadn't Xander been talking about stripping the terrible seventies wallpaper and painting the rooms in bright, cheerful colors? Maybe she could get started on that. Or she could clean the oven. Dawn and Andrew had been complaining about weird smells and encrusted black gunk, right?
Buffy slid off the sofa arm and strode toward the kitchen, determined to have a clean oven ready to present to Dawn when she and the baby Slayers got home tomorrow night.
Faith scrambled up from the sofa and lunged after her, grabbing Buffy's left wrist before Buffy realized what was happening. She jerked her arm forward, breaking the awkward hold, and spun to face Faith, sinking back into a defensive stance. She shouldn't have let Faith surprise her. She shouldn't have let her guard down. Not even at home, not even with an ally. Carelessness got people killed.
But Faith wasn't fighting. She held up her hands, shoulder height with her palms open and facing forward: no weapons. "B, seriously, chill. Whatever campaign you were just marching off to start, forget it. This weekend is for you to relax. Unwind. Remember how to be Buffy Summers, not General Buffy. So you're gonna come back and sit down and watch television until your brain rots. In a couple hours, we'll go pick up Andrew and get McDonalds or something for dinner. If you don't want to watch TV, you can read a book or take the car and go see a movie, but you're not allowed to do anything that even remotely smells like work. The others will kill me if I don't stop you, okay?"
"No, not okay," Buffy snarled. "I am not a baby. I don't need you people watching me like I'm going to tip over and break. I'm not fragile, I'm the Slayer."
"A," Faith said.
Buffy blinked, nonplussed. "What?"
"Not the Slayer. A Slayer," Faith said. "Which is the point, get it? You don't have to do it all yourself. I don't know where you got that idea in the first place, since you're the one who gave the Council the finger over having friends and letting them fight with you, but wherever you bought it, take it back and get a goddamn refund."
"I do it myself because nobody else understands, or I get them killed when I try to keep them with me," Buffy snapped.
"Yeah? In case you haven't noticed, you're not the only person living in this house," Faith said, hands on her hips and a how-stupid-can-you-get expression on her face. "So that's a whole bunch of people you didn't get killed. As for Spike and Anya, they made their own choices. Don't take that away from them and make everything your fault. Taking blame for shit that's not yours is just as fucked-up as not taking blame for shit you did do. Trust me, I know."
She raked her hair over her shoulders and added, " And so what if nobody understands you? Boo fucking hoo. Nobody ever understands anybody else. It's called being human. But we suck it up and deal, 'cause that's how life goes. Now come back, sit down, and watch the fucking show."
Sullenly, Buffy trailed Faith back into the living room and tucked herself into a corner of the couch while Faith rewound the tape thirty seconds and restarted the show, stretching herself out lengthwise along the cushions until her feet nearly touched Buffy's thigh.
The crazy girl and her brother tried to help the poor Western settlers (which, what kind of sci-fi show was this anyway?), and got in trouble because she could read minds. Buffy understood how that went. Nobody liked proof of how precarious and artificial their normal, safe lives really were. Telepathy wasn't quite as freaky as, say, vampires and demons -- there was at least pseudo-science to make mind-reading sound good instead of pure fantasy -- but it was still abnormal and therefore to be shunned.
Meanwhile the people in the other plot were mucking around with a hurt guy and some assholes on a big spaceship. Which, whatever. The cowboy captain looked eerily like Caleb, mister Church of Misogyny and Squelching Eyes, who'd done such a number on them in Sunnydale. Buffy was sure she was supposed to be on his side, but the whole evil twin thing made that a teeny bit difficult.
Then the crazy girl was going to be burned at the stake.
"That almost happened to me and Willow once," Buffy said absently. "This demon pretended to be a couple kids murdered by a cult, and it pressured a bunch of people into thinking anyone who had 'dealings' with the supernatural needed to die." 'People,' in that case, being a euphemism for Mom. Which Buffy preferred not to think about. But, you know, brainwashed. And the demon had gotten to her because she'd been worried about Buffy, so there was that, too.
"Sucks," Faith said through a mouthful of potato chips. "How'd you get out of it?"
Buffy shrugged. "Amy panicked and turned herself into a rat, but Giles and Cordelia showed up and did a spell to make the demon show its real face before the fire got to me and Willow. Then I killed it."
"You ever notice how all our stories end with 'and then I killed it'?" Faith asked. "Someday I want to meet a demon and get rid of it by, I dunno, taking it out for ice cream and helping it buy tacky souvenirs to take home to its grandkids in whatever hell dimension it got summoned from. Just for variety's sake."
Buffy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. "Variety being the spice of life."
"Exactly. Oh, hey, shhh -- I think we're at the climax," Faith said, cracking open her last can of beer.
The brother tried to save the mind-reading girl, couldn't manage it, and decided to share her fate. Which was... well, considering Buffy had taken a swan-dive off a tower to save Dawn with nothing beyond a gut feeling that it would work, she had no room to criticize. But it was still dumb. Burning to death was an ugly, ugly way to go. And the man was a doctor, right? The least he could do was try to fake some kind of medical emergency, or even kill his sister gently before the flames reached her.
Except wait, here came the not-Caleb captain and his motley crew to save the day.
"Big damn heroes," Faith repeated, one moment after the captain's second, and laughed. "Yeah, maybe they are. For a bunch of small time crooks and scavengers, anyway." She offered Buffy a wry smile. "I guess that's why I like this show. Makes me feel like anyone can get a second chance, you know? You just have to keep trying to figure out the right thing and do it, no matter how much shit the world throws in your way."
Buffy winced. "Maybe."
"Don't 'maybe' me. It's not like either of our lives has been a picnic, but here we are, and so's the world and all the ungrateful dumbasses walking around alive because of us." Faith finished her beer and burped, not bothering to cover her mouth or excuse herself. "We're alive, so fuck it, I'm gonna enjoy it while I've got it. We can't spend every day fighting. Sometimes you need to just waste time and unwind. Which means beer and chips and bad television now and then, or whatever makes you happy. Days off are better with friends, though."
"Maybe," Buffy said again, putting her hand on Faith's encroaching feet and shoving them off the couch.
"Yeah, whatever. Hey, you wanna order pizza before we watch the next episode?" Faith asked, swinging herself upright.
Buffy shook her head. "Nah. We can pick up pizza when we go fetch Andrew. Give me a minute to grab a yoghurt, though?"
"No problem," Faith said, and grinned around another mouthful of potato chips.
"That's disgusting," Buffy said, but she smiled back. "So tell me about this show. Why are there cowboys in space, how'd River and her brother end up with them, and what's up with the assholes in that big ship?"
Faith's convoluted attempt at explaining the setup of the show trailed her into the kitchen. Buffy stared at the oven for a few seconds -- it really did need cleaning, and she could clean it, no matter what Faith said -- but then she turned to the refrigerator and tried to pay attention to Faith's voice.
She'd liked television back before her life went sideways, even if she'd let other people dictate the shows she watched. She'd had a life outside of Slaying for a few years even after Mom moved them to Sunnydale. Maybe it was time to reclaim that.
Yoghurt in hand, Buffy went out to waste her afternoon.
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End of Story
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That was really not what I meant to write today, but what the heck, it's one thing off my plate. Yay for progress!
P.S. If you can think of a good summary for this fic, please tell me! At the moment, all I have is, "Buffy and Faith watch Firefly in Cleveland," which, while technically accurate, leaves something to be desired by way of thematic relevance and also, you know, advertising draw. *wry*
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This story is basically a slice of life in which nothing dramatic happens, but Buffy thinks back to various horrible things that happened during her years in Sunnydale, so... warnings for violence, gore, and emotional trauma roughly on a level with the show, only not with graphic visual accompaniment?
[ETA: The ever-so-slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
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Lazy Day
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The new house was strangely quiet when Buffy woke around noon, but she wasn't together enough to catch that at first. What she noticed was that nobody was using the upstairs bathroom. There was actual hot water for her shower.
She hurried anyway -- unexpected liquid ice and huge swings in water pressure had a way of creating new habits fast -- and somewhere between rinsing conditioner out of her hair and brushing her teeth, she realized the house was still strangely quiet. Which was not right. At all. Especially not on a Saturday.
There was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation... except given her life, something like 'everyone else got kidnapped to a parallel dimension' or 'this is all an artificially induced dream state meant to kill your brain' would qualify as reasonable explanations. Buffy grimaced at her reflection in the mirror, wrapped herself in the day-glo orange bathrobe Dawn had bought at a dollar store as a yay-we-survived present, and ventured downstairs to investigate.
The living room was equally quiet and deserted, though clearly people had been there not long ago: a half-full glass of cranberry juice sat on a coaster next to one of the secondhand armchairs, and an empty Dunkin' Donuts box lay trampled on the floor. Buffy bent and picked up the cardboard, trying to remember where Xander and Andrew had set up the recycling collection. Was it in the kitchen or on the porch? And if the porch, front or back?
Funny how the little things kept tripping her up.
Buffy closed her eyes and counted to ten. She was not going to fall apart thinking about everything she'd lost when her house -- Mom's house -- went under with the rest of Sunnydale. She was going to take a deep breath and be a responsible adult for Dawn and the rest of the Scoobies and Slayers.
Then she was going to figure out where everyone had vanished off to. Or been kidnapped to. So help her, if someone was after Dawn again...
Loud footsteps yanked Buffy out of her growing worry. She spun on her heels to see Faith walk out of the kitchen, slouchy casual in jeans, boots, and one of Robin's button-down shirts. She was carrying a giant bag of potato chips and a six-pack of beer.
She didn't look worried. Buffy tried to tell herself this was a good sign. Faith wouldn't be this laid-back if anyone was in trouble -- at least, not anymore.
Her gut wasn't convinced. Then again, what did a bunch of intestines know about evil? That was a stupid expression.
"Faith, have you seen--" Buffy started, but Faith talked right over her.
"Hey, Sleeping Beauty wakes! I thought you were gonna be out 'til sunset, the way you were snoring a couple hours ago," Faith said as she sat sideways on the couch and kicked her feet up onto the cushions. "I'm trying to catch up on all the TV I missed the past few years. Andrew hooked me up with tapes of this show that's like a western in space -- lots of guns and fighting the man. Wanna join me?"
"There will be no beer in my house," Buffy said, temporarily distracted from the weirdness of the empty building. "Beer is bad, and I know you know what teenage girls are like."
"That would be why I'm planning to drink it all myself," Faith said. She cracked the can and took a long drink, then pulled a sour face. "Man, I forgot how much light beer sucks. Does the job, though, and by the third can it's not like I care about the taste."
"I said there will be no beer," Buffy repeated, dropping the mangled donut box onto Faith's head. She snatched the rest of the six-pack off the couch and marched into the kitchen. She'd tipped two cans upside down in the sink before Faith knocked her away from the counter and grabbed the remaining three, cradling them to her chest.
"You're lucky I bought the cheap stuff, or I'd charge you for that," Faith snapped.
"You're lucky we're letting you stay here," Buffy snapped back. "You don't get infinite second chances. Stop trying to blow it."
Faith's face darkened and she stepped forward, switching the cans to her left arm and raising her right hand to point at Buffy. "Okay, look. You're the general: fine. You're the better slayer: whatever, fine. You're the fucking soul of generosity who's never screwed up in her life: yeah, sure, whatever you wanna tell yourself. You see me arguing? But you are not my mom. If I want to spend my weekend off getting mellow and watching weird dystopian sci-fi shows, that's none of your business. It's not like the baby Slayers are even in Cleveland today, so unless you think I'm gonna corrupt you with my horrible no-good example, lay the fuck off."
Faith stalked back into the living, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "And get dressed, B. Terrycloth does nothing for you."
"As if you have a fashion sense," Buffy muttered, but she tugged the fuzzy robe a bit tighter and made a tactical retreat up the stairs. She didn't mean to push at Faith -- after all, she was the only person who hadn't actively kicked Buffy out of her own house back in Sunnydale -- but something about the other Slayer just got under Buffy's skin and itched. Still. She should apologize. As soon as she figured out how to not sound like an idiot doing it.
Twenty minutes later, with her hair up and dry, her makeup on, and wearing a pink spaghetti-strap tank and a comfortable set of Capri jeans, Buffy descended the stairs, snatched the VCR remote from the arm of the sofa, and paused whatever Faith was watching.
"Sorry I snapped at you," she said. "I'm just a teeny bit wound up today, and waking up to find everybody gone didn't help. Where is everyone?"
Faith defiantly finished her beer before answering. "Robin's in the city working on the charter school stuff. Andrew's at the comics shop across from the library. Xander... I think he said something about a water heater? Willow and Giles took Dawn and the baby Slayers out on a camping trip. You should know this. They've only been talking about it for two weeks."
Buffy blinked. "That's this weekend? I thought that was next week." She'd been sure the trip was next week. Had she misplaced an entire week? That was bad. Either she was going crazy, or she'd been time-jumped forward in her own life... and wow, that really sounded crazy.
"Damn straight it sounds crazy, which saves me the long explanation of why you're here instead of tramping around whatever passes for nature in Ohio," Faith said.
Buffy blinked again. "...I said that out loud, didn't I." Dumb. Inner monologues were supposed to stay in her head; that's why they were called 'inner' monologues instead of 'outer' monologues. She made very sure to keep her lips pressed shut to keep that one from escaping.
Faith nodded. "Yeah, you did. You are so far beyond running on empty it's starting to scare people. The last thing you need is another adventure you think you have to organize. So it's just you, me, and the television, which I would like to get back to watching. Sit down and gimme the remote." She held out her hand, making tiny grabbing motions.
Buffy dropped the remote into Faith's lap and perched on the sofa arm, down by Faith's feet.
"Did they at least leave us a car?" she asked.
"No, I got the beer by magic," Faith said in a withering tone. "Of course we have a car. Which reminds me -- one of us has to pick up Andrew around five. If you drive off and abandon me, that's your job." She pressed play and started the television show running again.
Buffy watched absently as a deal between some cowboy types went bad in one plot thread, and a lost girl danced in another part of the story. Presumably there was some connection she'd missed earlier in the episode. Dawn would be asking a zillion questions, trying to get everything straight, but Buffy was okay just seeing what happened.
She'd never been hugely into TV anyway -- mostly she'd watched whatever Dawn or Mom had on when she happened to walk into the room, or sometimes stuff her friends watched so she'd understand their references and have up to date quip material. Since becoming the Slayer, she'd been even less interested. Her life was a big enough drama black hole on its own. The last thing she needed to do was waste brain cells keeping track of imaginary people's trauma.
This show was kind of funny, though. Whoever wrote it knew their way around a joke. And there was something about that girl, the crazy one who could mimic dance steps she'd never seen before, and maybe read minds...
"Do you think one of the writers met a Slayer?" Buffy asked Faith as the tape hit a commercial break. "Not like us, but one of the Council-raised girls? That River girl reminds me a little of Kendra, with the way she's so out of place and the way she moves."
Faith scooped up the remote and hit pause, biting her lower lip in -- okay, be fair, Buffy told herself. That was Faith thinking, not Faith being an evil seductress, though Buffy would bet a hundred dollars that Faith had practiced the expression in a mirror at some point. Nobody got that kind of come-fuck-me body language by accident.
"It's possible, I guess," Faith said after a few seconds. "Scriptwriters have just as much chance of getting munched as anyone else, and who the hell knows where the girls before us got sent. And I get what you're saying. In the show, River got taken from her family and experimented on, so now she's, I dunno, psychic or something? Also crazy." She drank a long swallow of beer and continued. "I didn't mind when my first Watcher took me from my mom, because fucking anything was better than my mom and her skeevy ass-creep boyfriends, but I bet you'd see it different if someone had taken you away from Joyce. And if we talked about our world to normal people, they'd think we were crazy too."
Buffy very carefully didn't think about mental hospitals.
Faith finished off her second can of beer and poked Buffy's thigh with the toe of her boot. "Does it really matter, in the long run?"
Buffy shrugged. "Probably not. I just think about all the other girls, sometimes -- all the way back to Sineya. Like, why are we the ones who broke the cycle? Why not them? So many dead girls for so many years, and who remembers them now that the Watchers' records are gone? They might as well never have lived at all."
Faith poked Buffy a little harder this time. "Hey. If they hadn't lived, we wouldn't have had a chance to spread the power out, because the world would've ended ages ago. I think the earth's a wicked cool legacy."
Buffy laughed for a second, despite herself. "Yeah, it is. It's where we keep all our stuff." And now she was thinking about Spike again. Such a brave, stupid, infuriating man. Vampire. Man. Whatever.
If he weren't dead, she'd stake him herself.
"Are we still talking, or have you gone off to brood all on your lonesome?" Faith asked. "'Cause I'd like to finish this episode if you don't need me to listen."
Buffy flapped a hand in Faith's general direction and ignored the resumed sound and motion coming from the television.
She hadn't really thought about Spike since Sunnydale, not for more than a handful of seconds before she found a new project to distract herself. She hadn't thought about any of the people they'd lost. God, Anya. She'd never liked Anya, never thought the ex-demon was good enough for Xander, never liked her mercenary lack of tact (seriously, anyone who made Cordelia look polite was just beyond belief), never really trusted her to stick around and know right from wrong... and then Anya went and died saving Andrew, of all people. It made no sense, unless she'd been wrong about Anya all along.
Buffy hated being wrong.
She hated not being able to save people even more.
She was the Slayer. She wasn't supposed to be helpless.
There had to be some project she could work on with everyone out of the house and not getting in her way. Hadn't Xander been talking about stripping the terrible seventies wallpaper and painting the rooms in bright, cheerful colors? Maybe she could get started on that. Or she could clean the oven. Dawn and Andrew had been complaining about weird smells and encrusted black gunk, right?
Buffy slid off the sofa arm and strode toward the kitchen, determined to have a clean oven ready to present to Dawn when she and the baby Slayers got home tomorrow night.
Faith scrambled up from the sofa and lunged after her, grabbing Buffy's left wrist before Buffy realized what was happening. She jerked her arm forward, breaking the awkward hold, and spun to face Faith, sinking back into a defensive stance. She shouldn't have let Faith surprise her. She shouldn't have let her guard down. Not even at home, not even with an ally. Carelessness got people killed.
But Faith wasn't fighting. She held up her hands, shoulder height with her palms open and facing forward: no weapons. "B, seriously, chill. Whatever campaign you were just marching off to start, forget it. This weekend is for you to relax. Unwind. Remember how to be Buffy Summers, not General Buffy. So you're gonna come back and sit down and watch television until your brain rots. In a couple hours, we'll go pick up Andrew and get McDonalds or something for dinner. If you don't want to watch TV, you can read a book or take the car and go see a movie, but you're not allowed to do anything that even remotely smells like work. The others will kill me if I don't stop you, okay?"
"No, not okay," Buffy snarled. "I am not a baby. I don't need you people watching me like I'm going to tip over and break. I'm not fragile, I'm the Slayer."
"A," Faith said.
Buffy blinked, nonplussed. "What?"
"Not the Slayer. A Slayer," Faith said. "Which is the point, get it? You don't have to do it all yourself. I don't know where you got that idea in the first place, since you're the one who gave the Council the finger over having friends and letting them fight with you, but wherever you bought it, take it back and get a goddamn refund."
"I do it myself because nobody else understands, or I get them killed when I try to keep them with me," Buffy snapped.
"Yeah? In case you haven't noticed, you're not the only person living in this house," Faith said, hands on her hips and a how-stupid-can-you-get expression on her face. "So that's a whole bunch of people you didn't get killed. As for Spike and Anya, they made their own choices. Don't take that away from them and make everything your fault. Taking blame for shit that's not yours is just as fucked-up as not taking blame for shit you did do. Trust me, I know."
She raked her hair over her shoulders and added, " And so what if nobody understands you? Boo fucking hoo. Nobody ever understands anybody else. It's called being human. But we suck it up and deal, 'cause that's how life goes. Now come back, sit down, and watch the fucking show."
Sullenly, Buffy trailed Faith back into the living room and tucked herself into a corner of the couch while Faith rewound the tape thirty seconds and restarted the show, stretching herself out lengthwise along the cushions until her feet nearly touched Buffy's thigh.
The crazy girl and her brother tried to help the poor Western settlers (which, what kind of sci-fi show was this anyway?), and got in trouble because she could read minds. Buffy understood how that went. Nobody liked proof of how precarious and artificial their normal, safe lives really were. Telepathy wasn't quite as freaky as, say, vampires and demons -- there was at least pseudo-science to make mind-reading sound good instead of pure fantasy -- but it was still abnormal and therefore to be shunned.
Meanwhile the people in the other plot were mucking around with a hurt guy and some assholes on a big spaceship. Which, whatever. The cowboy captain looked eerily like Caleb, mister Church of Misogyny and Squelching Eyes, who'd done such a number on them in Sunnydale. Buffy was sure she was supposed to be on his side, but the whole evil twin thing made that a teeny bit difficult.
Then the crazy girl was going to be burned at the stake.
"That almost happened to me and Willow once," Buffy said absently. "This demon pretended to be a couple kids murdered by a cult, and it pressured a bunch of people into thinking anyone who had 'dealings' with the supernatural needed to die." 'People,' in that case, being a euphemism for Mom. Which Buffy preferred not to think about. But, you know, brainwashed. And the demon had gotten to her because she'd been worried about Buffy, so there was that, too.
"Sucks," Faith said through a mouthful of potato chips. "How'd you get out of it?"
Buffy shrugged. "Amy panicked and turned herself into a rat, but Giles and Cordelia showed up and did a spell to make the demon show its real face before the fire got to me and Willow. Then I killed it."
"You ever notice how all our stories end with 'and then I killed it'?" Faith asked. "Someday I want to meet a demon and get rid of it by, I dunno, taking it out for ice cream and helping it buy tacky souvenirs to take home to its grandkids in whatever hell dimension it got summoned from. Just for variety's sake."
Buffy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. "Variety being the spice of life."
"Exactly. Oh, hey, shhh -- I think we're at the climax," Faith said, cracking open her last can of beer.
The brother tried to save the mind-reading girl, couldn't manage it, and decided to share her fate. Which was... well, considering Buffy had taken a swan-dive off a tower to save Dawn with nothing beyond a gut feeling that it would work, she had no room to criticize. But it was still dumb. Burning to death was an ugly, ugly way to go. And the man was a doctor, right? The least he could do was try to fake some kind of medical emergency, or even kill his sister gently before the flames reached her.
Except wait, here came the not-Caleb captain and his motley crew to save the day.
"Big damn heroes," Faith repeated, one moment after the captain's second, and laughed. "Yeah, maybe they are. For a bunch of small time crooks and scavengers, anyway." She offered Buffy a wry smile. "I guess that's why I like this show. Makes me feel like anyone can get a second chance, you know? You just have to keep trying to figure out the right thing and do it, no matter how much shit the world throws in your way."
Buffy winced. "Maybe."
"Don't 'maybe' me. It's not like either of our lives has been a picnic, but here we are, and so's the world and all the ungrateful dumbasses walking around alive because of us." Faith finished her beer and burped, not bothering to cover her mouth or excuse herself. "We're alive, so fuck it, I'm gonna enjoy it while I've got it. We can't spend every day fighting. Sometimes you need to just waste time and unwind. Which means beer and chips and bad television now and then, or whatever makes you happy. Days off are better with friends, though."
"Maybe," Buffy said again, putting her hand on Faith's encroaching feet and shoving them off the couch.
"Yeah, whatever. Hey, you wanna order pizza before we watch the next episode?" Faith asked, swinging herself upright.
Buffy shook her head. "Nah. We can pick up pizza when we go fetch Andrew. Give me a minute to grab a yoghurt, though?"
"No problem," Faith said, and grinned around another mouthful of potato chips.
"That's disgusting," Buffy said, but she smiled back. "So tell me about this show. Why are there cowboys in space, how'd River and her brother end up with them, and what's up with the assholes in that big ship?"
Faith's convoluted attempt at explaining the setup of the show trailed her into the kitchen. Buffy stared at the oven for a few seconds -- it really did need cleaning, and she could clean it, no matter what Faith said -- but then she turned to the refrigerator and tried to pay attention to Faith's voice.
She'd liked television back before her life went sideways, even if she'd let other people dictate the shows she watched. She'd had a life outside of Slaying for a few years even after Mom moved them to Sunnydale. Maybe it was time to reclaim that.
Yoghurt in hand, Buffy went out to waste her afternoon.
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End of Story
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That was really not what I meant to write today, but what the heck, it's one thing off my plate. Yay for progress!
P.S. If you can think of a good summary for this fic, please tell me! At the moment, all I have is, "Buffy and Faith watch Firefly in Cleveland," which, while technically accurate, leaves something to be desired by way of thematic relevance and also, you know, advertising draw. *wry*
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