Life's Not a Song (6/6) (Glee/Buffy Crossover)
Title: Life's Not a Song (6/6)
Author: lennoxave
Pairing,Character(s): BtVS: Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles; Glee: Kurt, Tina
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,446
Spoilers: Glee: Through 2.06, "Never Been Kissed"; BtVS: The whole series, and very vague ones for the set-up of the Season 8 comics, but they're vague because I've only read the first trade of Season 8 :) (And the story has nothing to do with the plot of the comics)
Summary: The Scoobies get called from the U.K. to Lima, Ohio to search for a missing book on raising the dead. In what is surely a coincidence, Kurt misses his mother more than ever.
Author's Note: Takes place after Glee episode 2.05, but before episode 2.06 (however, it brings up some things that occur in 2.06). As for the Buffy timeline, uh . . . sometime after the series ended, but before the comics started? Probably not too long before the start of the comics. But, yeah, the Buffy timeline's not going to make any sense, but that's okay. :D
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
In no time at all, Willow had swooped down and grabbed Buffy and Xander. She hoisted them up by the backs of their jackets, and they flew over the fence toward the people responsible for the spell.
“Oh, I do not like this kind of flying,” Xander groaned as he felt the seams of his coat digging into his armpits. “I do not like it at all.”
It was fast, though, much faster than walking, and they soon landed in front of Tina Cohen-Chang and the boy they all recognized as the one who had been pushed into the lockers.
They didn't look like triumphant Big Bads, however; they looked like two terrified teenagers.
“What--” Xander heard Buffy start speaking to the kids, but he was distracted by the tombstone behind them. It said “Cynthia Hummel, Beloved Wife and Mother.”
Hummel. He'd seen that name before.
Kurt Hummel. Behavioral file. Personal history. What was in that section? Father's illness. Dead mother.
Dead mother.
“Oh, we are so dumb,” Xander whispered.
“Wait, what?” Buffy asked. Tina and Kurt were still clutching each other, and Willow was muttering something under her breath. Suddenly, the rumbling of the ground began to sound more distant, and the shaking of the earth slowed so much that it was barely noticeable.
“. . . Did you just slow down time?” Tina asked, looking at Willow in disbelief.
“Nah,” Willow shook her head. “I sped us up. There's way more of time than there is of us, so it's easier to work that way.”
“Kurt?” Xander asked. Buffy turned to him.
“How did you know his name?”
“I saw it on a file. Kurt Hummel,” Xander said, and he gestured at the tombstone with his head. Willow and Buffy both looked at it.
Buffy got it right away. “Your mother,” she said solemnly, thoughts of her own dead mom clearly running through her head.
Kurt nodded slowly.
“This is bad, isn't it?” Tina cut in, her voice quavering. “This is really, really bad.”
“Yes,” Willow agreed, “it is. But we might be able to fix it. Show me the spell you used.”
Tina let go of Kurt and opened the book. She passed it to Willow.
“Damn,” Willow said. “You didn't bother to get a translation, did you?”
“N-no,” Tina said.
“These are some ancient magicks at work,” Willow said. “War spells. You probably looked up a few of the spell titles, huh?” Tina nodded. “When they say 'Spell to Wake the Dead,' they mean 'dead' plural, not singular.”
“Wait,” Kurt said. “Who are you people?”
“We're experts,” Xander replied, “in magic and the supernatural. We found out that that book was missing, so we were sent here to recover it.”
“And hopefully stop whatever this is from happening,” Buffy added. “Which, we're still gonna be able to do that, right?” she asked Willow. “'Cause as much as I've been itching to get in a good slay since I met Sue Sylvester, I'd kind of rather not take on hundreds of zombies tonight.”
Willow frowned at the spell book. “Like I said, this is some ancient stuff. Powerful. Potent. It plays by a whole different set of rules than what we usually deal with.”
“Will, you broke the bonds of millenia of patriarchy and turned thousands of girls into Slayers. Are you telling me you can't do anything about this?”
“I can't, not right now, anyway.” Willow looked up and pointed to Kurt. “But he can.”
“What?” Kurt looked alarmed.
“Your blood started the spell,” Willow said, her voice gaining that dreamy, earth-mother quality it sometimes did when she talked about magic. “Blood is life; it gives life and it sustains it. You are sustaining this whole thing.” She gestured at the graves around them, which were slowly but steadily beginning to disintegrate. “Because blood is energy, too. Physical energy that feeds your brain to create mental energy. Your blood started this process, but your mental energy is keeping it going. You can stop all of this if you just stop giving it your energy.”
“How does he do that?” Tina asked.
Willow looked very hard at Kurt. “He has to stop wishing his mother was alive.”
“Come on,” Buffy said, “he can't just turn that feeling off!”
“It doesn't have to be permanent. Obviously, it's not going to be. But he has to stop wanting this particular spell to bring her back. Once he's done that, I can set everything back to normal.”
All eyes looked at Kurt Hummel.
“Is . . .” he faltered. “Is she alive now?”
“In the physical sense, yes,” Willow said. “But we can't know the nature of--”
“So what you're saying,” Kurt said slowly, looking away from them and at the dirt in front of Cynthia Hummel's tombstone, “is that I have to kill my mother.”
“That's not what--” Willow began, but Buffy cut her off.
“Yes,” she said. “That's what we're asking you to do.” Xander and Willow shot her looks, which she ignored. “I'm not going to sugar-coat it for you--that's what you'll be doing. But you have to understand.” She swallowed at the slight stretching of the truth she was about to do. Now wasn't the time discuss magical exceptions to this rule. “When people die . . . we can't bring them back. The ones who do come back? Are zombies, or vampires, or other corruptions of the people they once were. We're talking about a book of war spells, Kurt. You mother isn't going to come back as the woman you knew. She's going to be blood-thirsty, and looking to kill, and she's going to be bringing a couple hundred other undead warriors with her. And she won't know that she's your mother. She'll only know that you're a warm body.”
“You don't know that for sure,” Kurt said. “You can't know that for sure.”
“Are you going to risk your own life, and the lives of your friends and the family you have left, to prove us wrong?” Xander asked.
“You don't know what it's like,” Kurt had tears in his eyes now, “to be different and alone. To miss someone's comfort so much . . .”
“My mother died,” Buffy said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. “My mother died when I was a sophomore in college. She left me with a little sister to take care of. My father was off God-knows-where in Europe, and I had to be my sister's rock, even though I had just lost mine.” She took a deep breath. “It sucks. It sucks, and it's terrible, and I miss her everyday. But when we mess with the natural order of things and try to bring back people who don't belong here anymore, it never goes well. You don't want to meet your mother like this. She wouldn't want to meet you like this.”
Buffy walked over and placed a hand on Kurt's shoulder. “You can be strong, Kurt. Your mother taught you strength; all mothers do. Use it.”
Kurt bit his lip, thinking. Suddenly, the ground stopped moving.
“Thank you,” Buffy said, and she squeezed his shoulder.
* * *
Kurt wasn't sure what he was going to say. He was really, really not sure what he was going to say. “Hi, thanks for preventing the zombie apocalypse I almost inadvertently started” didn't seem like the best conversation starter, but he had a feeling those magic-people from last night weren't going to be sticking around much longer, and he needed to get this off his chest. Because it wasn't like there were a lot of other people around he could discuss zombies with (Finn's fondness for Shaun of the Dead aside).
He knocked on the door to her classroom, even though it was open. It seemed like the polite thing to do. “So . . . hi,” he said.
The red-haired woman smiled kindly at him. “Come in, Kurt. I don't think we were properly introduced last night. My name's Willow, or Ms. Rosenberg to the students,” she said, sticking out her hand. Kurt shook it mostly out of reflex. “What brings you by this early in the morning? I haven't seen many students who hang around at school before classes start.”
“I just wanted to thank you,” said Kurt. “You know, for . . . fixing everything.”
Willow smirked a little. “It was no problem. Everyone gets into magical scrapes now and again.” Her faced turned serious for a moment. “You've learned the lesson, though, right? Magic can't fix your life?”
“Yeah,” Kurt sighed, “I got it.”
“Good.” Her smile returned. “It took me years to figure that one out. You're one step ahead of where I was.”
Kurt made a brief sound of assent. The fact of the matter was that that was the only step ahead of anyone he was ever going to be in high school. He was still a loser. Karofsky was still going to bully him. He still missed his mom.
When he graduated he was going to show this sorry town how fabulous Kurt Hummel really was, but god was it sucking to get there.
Willow was looking at him. She seemed to sense his depression. He wondered if she could read minds. That seemed like the type of thing she could do.
“I don't want to sound insensitive,” Willow began, “but your mother's been dead for a while now. What made you suddenly want to bring her back?”
Kurt sighed. “School. Bullies. Being different.” He paused. “It's like, my dad is the best dad I could ever ask for, but he doesn't get me. My mom always did. It's tough to be gay in small-town Ohio, but if she were here, I feel like it would be easier. At least, I could handle it better. I wouldn't feel so alone sometimes.” He found himself looking at his shoes. He hadn't meant to reveal that much. At least he was wearing his favorite pair of Docs.
Willow boosted herself up so she was sitting on one of the lab tables. “If it makes you feel less alone,” she said, “it's worth noting that I am, in fact, a big ol' lesbian.”
Kurt felt his eyebrows practically leap up off of his face. “Really?”
“Yup.”
“How--” Kurt was paralyzed with indecision as about a million different questions flew into his mind. “What was high school like for you?” he finally settled on.
“Oh, man,” Willow laughed, “high school, in comparison to this place, was fine. 'Cause, here's the thing: I didn't figure out I was gay until college.”
Kurt frowned. “You mean, you didn't come out until college?”
“Nope. I legitimately had no clue. I was a nerd in high school, and had a boatload of self-esteem issues, and I think I was enamored with the idea of being in love more than I was with boys. So I confused friendship-love for romance-love for years and then jumped at the chance to be with the one guy who'd ever been into me back.”
Willow sighed. “It's complicated, I guess. I did love him; maybe he's my one exception to the rule. But in college, after he broke my heart, I discovered girls, well, one girl, in particular, but . . . that's when it clicked for me. And it was like I had finally figured out who I was.” She paused. “So, again, you're one step ahead of where I was. At least you know who you are.”
That was true. Kurt couldn't imagine what it must be like to struggle with not knowing who you really were. “But . . . you didn't have to deal with the bullying?” he asked.
“Well, not about being gay,” Willow said. “And I did live in a college town in California, so gay-ness was not the hugest of deals. But like I said: giant nerd. Also, my mother tried to burn me at the stake once for being a witch, so . . . there's that.”
Kurt gaped at her. “I mean, she wasn't in her right mind, there was an enchantment, extenuating circumstances, but . . .” she trailed off. “Yeah, not fun.”
“How did you deal?”
Willow shrugged. “It sucks, but it's only four years of your life. You find some good friends, you find a place where you can be yourself, and you find an adult to be on your side when things get rough. And you get through it.”
“So there's no magic spell to make it better?” Kurt asked, arching an eyebrow so she knew he wasn't being serious. Not completely at least.
“It turns out the ancient sorcerers who came up with most of this stuff didn't have to go to high school,” Willow grinned. “I imagine magic as we know it today would have been much different if the Anglo-Saxon nerd-mages had had to play dodgeball, for instance.”
“Also, on the subject at hand, I don't think you'll have to worry about one particular bully anymore,” she added. “Xander--the cop with the eye patch--he had a little chat with Mr. Karofsky yesterday. I don't think he'll be bothering you anymore.”
Kurt shook his head. “I appreciate the effort, but it's never that easy.”
Willow looked at him like she knew something he didn't. “I can see why you'd say that, but I think in this case it may have actually worked.” She hopped off the table and grabbed a notecard off of her desk. “Just in case, though . . .” She took a pen out of the jar by her computer and wrote something down.
“If he starts giving you trouble again, or if you have another terrible idea for a piece of magic you want to work and something goes wrong, just give us a call.” She gave Kurt the notecard. “We're here to lend a hand.”
Kurt looked down at what Willow had written. “Is . . . this a phone number?” he asked. There were only six digits written on the card.
“In a manner of speaking. Just dial that number and concentrate really hard on who you want to talk to, and you'll find one of us.” At the look on his face, she laughed. “I can't believe you're still being surprised by this stuff. C'mon, it's magic.”
* * *
“. . . and then Willow said some stuff and waved her arms around and everything went back to normal. We drove the kids home and we're catching a flight out tonight.”
“Well, that sounds like a job well done,” Giles said over the phone. “But why are you at the school today?”
“We wanted to make sure the kids were all right,” Buffy replied. “They were still in a lot of shock last night. Also, I had a few loose ends to tie up.”
There was a pause on Giles's end of the phone. “. . . Those loose ends don't have anything to do with that Sylvester woman, do they?”
“No. Although, if you could send a couple of 'Sweating with the Oldies' DVDs over to McKinley High when you get a chance, that would be great. No, I decided it would be a good idea to have a little chat with the librarian about leaving dangerous spell books out where any angsty teenager could find them. And you know what she told me?”
“Er . . .”
“She told me that it had been your idea to disperse the most dangerous books into public school libraries and to shelve them in the reference section because, quote, 'No one ever goes there.'”
Giles made a slightly huffy noise. “Well, no one ever did in Sunnydale! And kids these days have even greater access to computers! And--”
“--texting and internet and the cotton gin, yes, Giles, I know, people use technology more than they used to. But apparently, in Ohio kids occasionally still pick up those weird hard things with all the paper inside them--”
“Books, you mean?” Giles said irritatedly.
“--so maybe we shouldn't just be leaving instructions on how to raise zombie armies right next to the Encyclopaedia Brittanicas, huh?”
Giles sighed. “I'll come up with an alternative method of storage and alert the coven of it by tomorrow.”
“Awesome,” Buffy grinned.
There was a beat.
“You're not doing any work today, are you?” Giles asked.
“Nope! I'm just kickin' it in the janitor's closet and watching cartoons.”
It was almost like she could hear the look of disapproval on Giles's face.
* * *
Usually Kurt saw Tina a couple of times in the morning before glee. Today, he hadn't seen her once. He had a feeling she was avoiding him.
Or maybe he was avoiding her. He wasn't quite sure; it had been a weird, emotional night, and he knew that the next time they saw each other would be awkward.
But they couldn't keep avoiding each other forever, and they ran into each other outside of the choir room before rehearsal.
“Hey,” Kurt said as they both held up just outside the door.
“Hi,” Tina replied, not meeting his eyes. They stood awkwardly for a moment. Tina tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear and swallowed hard.
“Look,” she said, still staring at the floor, “it probably would have been way better if I had just kept my mouth shut and not caused you untold amounts of extra emotional trauma. So . . .” She finally lifted her head and looked Kurt in the eye. “. . . I'm sorry.”
He shook his head. “It's okay.” Tina looked at him like he was crazy. “I'm serious,” he said. “At least you tried to help, you know? That's more than a lot of people do, and . . . it means a lot to me. Thank you for that.”
She smiled at him and put her arms out. He took a step and walked into her hug. It wasn't quite the comfort he'd been looking for through the spell, but it was comfort all the same.
Suddenly, he felt Tina's body stiffen, and she quickly pulled away.
“What--” Kurt started to say, but when he turned around and saw Azimio and Karofsky coming toward them, the words died in his throat.
Karofsky, naturally, was carrying a cherry slushie. Oh, well. At least red was his color.
“Hey, nerds,” Azimio spat. He looked Karofsky, clearly waiting for the application of frozen drink. Instead, Karofsky put the cup to his own face and took a sip.
“Dude!” Azimio said. “What gives?”
“That jackass cop caught me yesterday,” Karofsky said. “If I step out of line again, Figgins is gonna expel me, and my dad will flip. The losers aren't worth it.” He glared at Kurt and Tina, but he kept walking. Azimio stood there confused for a second, but then he just rolled his eyes and jogged to catch up with his friend.
Kurt and Tina looked at each other.
“I did not see that one coming,” Tina said.
“Huh,” Kurt said. “Maybe competent school officials can get something done.” He held out his arm. “Shall we go to class?”
Tina smiled and took his arm as they walked into the choir room.
“By the way,” Tina whispered, “you should have heard the speech Ms. Rosenberg gave me after class about proper magic usage. It was epic. I was ten minutes late to English. And she gave me this weird six-digit phone number.”
“She gave me that, too,” Kurt whispered back. “Which begs the question: are magical phone calls subject to long distance charges?”
They giggled as they found a pair of seats in the back row.
Author: lennoxave
Pairing,Character(s): BtVS: Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles; Glee: Kurt, Tina
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,446
Spoilers: Glee: Through 2.06, "Never Been Kissed"; BtVS: The whole series, and very vague ones for the set-up of the Season 8 comics, but they're vague because I've only read the first trade of Season 8 :) (And the story has nothing to do with the plot of the comics)
Summary: The Scoobies get called from the U.K. to Lima, Ohio to search for a missing book on raising the dead. In what is surely a coincidence, Kurt misses his mother more than ever.
Author's Note: Takes place after Glee episode 2.05, but before episode 2.06 (however, it brings up some things that occur in 2.06). As for the Buffy timeline, uh . . . sometime after the series ended, but before the comics started? Probably not too long before the start of the comics. But, yeah, the Buffy timeline's not going to make any sense, but that's okay. :D
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
In no time at all, Willow had swooped down and grabbed Buffy and Xander. She hoisted them up by the backs of their jackets, and they flew over the fence toward the people responsible for the spell.
“Oh, I do not like this kind of flying,” Xander groaned as he felt the seams of his coat digging into his armpits. “I do not like it at all.”
It was fast, though, much faster than walking, and they soon landed in front of Tina Cohen-Chang and the boy they all recognized as the one who had been pushed into the lockers.
They didn't look like triumphant Big Bads, however; they looked like two terrified teenagers.
“What--” Xander heard Buffy start speaking to the kids, but he was distracted by the tombstone behind them. It said “Cynthia Hummel, Beloved Wife and Mother.”
Hummel. He'd seen that name before.
Kurt Hummel. Behavioral file. Personal history. What was in that section? Father's illness. Dead mother.
Dead mother.
“Oh, we are so dumb,” Xander whispered.
“Wait, what?” Buffy asked. Tina and Kurt were still clutching each other, and Willow was muttering something under her breath. Suddenly, the rumbling of the ground began to sound more distant, and the shaking of the earth slowed so much that it was barely noticeable.
“. . . Did you just slow down time?” Tina asked, looking at Willow in disbelief.
“Nah,” Willow shook her head. “I sped us up. There's way more of time than there is of us, so it's easier to work that way.”
“Kurt?” Xander asked. Buffy turned to him.
“How did you know his name?”
“I saw it on a file. Kurt Hummel,” Xander said, and he gestured at the tombstone with his head. Willow and Buffy both looked at it.
Buffy got it right away. “Your mother,” she said solemnly, thoughts of her own dead mom clearly running through her head.
Kurt nodded slowly.
“This is bad, isn't it?” Tina cut in, her voice quavering. “This is really, really bad.”
“Yes,” Willow agreed, “it is. But we might be able to fix it. Show me the spell you used.”
Tina let go of Kurt and opened the book. She passed it to Willow.
“Damn,” Willow said. “You didn't bother to get a translation, did you?”
“N-no,” Tina said.
“These are some ancient magicks at work,” Willow said. “War spells. You probably looked up a few of the spell titles, huh?” Tina nodded. “When they say 'Spell to Wake the Dead,' they mean 'dead' plural, not singular.”
“Wait,” Kurt said. “Who are you people?”
“We're experts,” Xander replied, “in magic and the supernatural. We found out that that book was missing, so we were sent here to recover it.”
“And hopefully stop whatever this is from happening,” Buffy added. “Which, we're still gonna be able to do that, right?” she asked Willow. “'Cause as much as I've been itching to get in a good slay since I met Sue Sylvester, I'd kind of rather not take on hundreds of zombies tonight.”
Willow frowned at the spell book. “Like I said, this is some ancient stuff. Powerful. Potent. It plays by a whole different set of rules than what we usually deal with.”
“Will, you broke the bonds of millenia of patriarchy and turned thousands of girls into Slayers. Are you telling me you can't do anything about this?”
“I can't, not right now, anyway.” Willow looked up and pointed to Kurt. “But he can.”
“What?” Kurt looked alarmed.
“Your blood started the spell,” Willow said, her voice gaining that dreamy, earth-mother quality it sometimes did when she talked about magic. “Blood is life; it gives life and it sustains it. You are sustaining this whole thing.” She gestured at the graves around them, which were slowly but steadily beginning to disintegrate. “Because blood is energy, too. Physical energy that feeds your brain to create mental energy. Your blood started this process, but your mental energy is keeping it going. You can stop all of this if you just stop giving it your energy.”
“How does he do that?” Tina asked.
Willow looked very hard at Kurt. “He has to stop wishing his mother was alive.”
“Come on,” Buffy said, “he can't just turn that feeling off!”
“It doesn't have to be permanent. Obviously, it's not going to be. But he has to stop wanting this particular spell to bring her back. Once he's done that, I can set everything back to normal.”
All eyes looked at Kurt Hummel.
“Is . . .” he faltered. “Is she alive now?”
“In the physical sense, yes,” Willow said. “But we can't know the nature of--”
“So what you're saying,” Kurt said slowly, looking away from them and at the dirt in front of Cynthia Hummel's tombstone, “is that I have to kill my mother.”
“That's not what--” Willow began, but Buffy cut her off.
“Yes,” she said. “That's what we're asking you to do.” Xander and Willow shot her looks, which she ignored. “I'm not going to sugar-coat it for you--that's what you'll be doing. But you have to understand.” She swallowed at the slight stretching of the truth she was about to do. Now wasn't the time discuss magical exceptions to this rule. “When people die . . . we can't bring them back. The ones who do come back? Are zombies, or vampires, or other corruptions of the people they once were. We're talking about a book of war spells, Kurt. You mother isn't going to come back as the woman you knew. She's going to be blood-thirsty, and looking to kill, and she's going to be bringing a couple hundred other undead warriors with her. And she won't know that she's your mother. She'll only know that you're a warm body.”
“You don't know that for sure,” Kurt said. “You can't know that for sure.”
“Are you going to risk your own life, and the lives of your friends and the family you have left, to prove us wrong?” Xander asked.
“You don't know what it's like,” Kurt had tears in his eyes now, “to be different and alone. To miss someone's comfort so much . . .”
“My mother died,” Buffy said, so quietly it was almost a whisper. “My mother died when I was a sophomore in college. She left me with a little sister to take care of. My father was off God-knows-where in Europe, and I had to be my sister's rock, even though I had just lost mine.” She took a deep breath. “It sucks. It sucks, and it's terrible, and I miss her everyday. But when we mess with the natural order of things and try to bring back people who don't belong here anymore, it never goes well. You don't want to meet your mother like this. She wouldn't want to meet you like this.”
Buffy walked over and placed a hand on Kurt's shoulder. “You can be strong, Kurt. Your mother taught you strength; all mothers do. Use it.”
Kurt bit his lip, thinking. Suddenly, the ground stopped moving.
“Thank you,” Buffy said, and she squeezed his shoulder.
* * *
Kurt wasn't sure what he was going to say. He was really, really not sure what he was going to say. “Hi, thanks for preventing the zombie apocalypse I almost inadvertently started” didn't seem like the best conversation starter, but he had a feeling those magic-people from last night weren't going to be sticking around much longer, and he needed to get this off his chest. Because it wasn't like there were a lot of other people around he could discuss zombies with (Finn's fondness for Shaun of the Dead aside).
He knocked on the door to her classroom, even though it was open. It seemed like the polite thing to do. “So . . . hi,” he said.
The red-haired woman smiled kindly at him. “Come in, Kurt. I don't think we were properly introduced last night. My name's Willow, or Ms. Rosenberg to the students,” she said, sticking out her hand. Kurt shook it mostly out of reflex. “What brings you by this early in the morning? I haven't seen many students who hang around at school before classes start.”
“I just wanted to thank you,” said Kurt. “You know, for . . . fixing everything.”
Willow smirked a little. “It was no problem. Everyone gets into magical scrapes now and again.” Her faced turned serious for a moment. “You've learned the lesson, though, right? Magic can't fix your life?”
“Yeah,” Kurt sighed, “I got it.”
“Good.” Her smile returned. “It took me years to figure that one out. You're one step ahead of where I was.”
Kurt made a brief sound of assent. The fact of the matter was that that was the only step ahead of anyone he was ever going to be in high school. He was still a loser. Karofsky was still going to bully him. He still missed his mom.
When he graduated he was going to show this sorry town how fabulous Kurt Hummel really was, but god was it sucking to get there.
Willow was looking at him. She seemed to sense his depression. He wondered if she could read minds. That seemed like the type of thing she could do.
“I don't want to sound insensitive,” Willow began, “but your mother's been dead for a while now. What made you suddenly want to bring her back?”
Kurt sighed. “School. Bullies. Being different.” He paused. “It's like, my dad is the best dad I could ever ask for, but he doesn't get me. My mom always did. It's tough to be gay in small-town Ohio, but if she were here, I feel like it would be easier. At least, I could handle it better. I wouldn't feel so alone sometimes.” He found himself looking at his shoes. He hadn't meant to reveal that much. At least he was wearing his favorite pair of Docs.
Willow boosted herself up so she was sitting on one of the lab tables. “If it makes you feel less alone,” she said, “it's worth noting that I am, in fact, a big ol' lesbian.”
Kurt felt his eyebrows practically leap up off of his face. “Really?”
“Yup.”
“How--” Kurt was paralyzed with indecision as about a million different questions flew into his mind. “What was high school like for you?” he finally settled on.
“Oh, man,” Willow laughed, “high school, in comparison to this place, was fine. 'Cause, here's the thing: I didn't figure out I was gay until college.”
Kurt frowned. “You mean, you didn't come out until college?”
“Nope. I legitimately had no clue. I was a nerd in high school, and had a boatload of self-esteem issues, and I think I was enamored with the idea of being in love more than I was with boys. So I confused friendship-love for romance-love for years and then jumped at the chance to be with the one guy who'd ever been into me back.”
Willow sighed. “It's complicated, I guess. I did love him; maybe he's my one exception to the rule. But in college, after he broke my heart, I discovered girls, well, one girl, in particular, but . . . that's when it clicked for me. And it was like I had finally figured out who I was.” She paused. “So, again, you're one step ahead of where I was. At least you know who you are.”
That was true. Kurt couldn't imagine what it must be like to struggle with not knowing who you really were. “But . . . you didn't have to deal with the bullying?” he asked.
“Well, not about being gay,” Willow said. “And I did live in a college town in California, so gay-ness was not the hugest of deals. But like I said: giant nerd. Also, my mother tried to burn me at the stake once for being a witch, so . . . there's that.”
Kurt gaped at her. “I mean, she wasn't in her right mind, there was an enchantment, extenuating circumstances, but . . .” she trailed off. “Yeah, not fun.”
“How did you deal?”
Willow shrugged. “It sucks, but it's only four years of your life. You find some good friends, you find a place where you can be yourself, and you find an adult to be on your side when things get rough. And you get through it.”
“So there's no magic spell to make it better?” Kurt asked, arching an eyebrow so she knew he wasn't being serious. Not completely at least.
“It turns out the ancient sorcerers who came up with most of this stuff didn't have to go to high school,” Willow grinned. “I imagine magic as we know it today would have been much different if the Anglo-Saxon nerd-mages had had to play dodgeball, for instance.”
“Also, on the subject at hand, I don't think you'll have to worry about one particular bully anymore,” she added. “Xander--the cop with the eye patch--he had a little chat with Mr. Karofsky yesterday. I don't think he'll be bothering you anymore.”
Kurt shook his head. “I appreciate the effort, but it's never that easy.”
Willow looked at him like she knew something he didn't. “I can see why you'd say that, but I think in this case it may have actually worked.” She hopped off the table and grabbed a notecard off of her desk. “Just in case, though . . .” She took a pen out of the jar by her computer and wrote something down.
“If he starts giving you trouble again, or if you have another terrible idea for a piece of magic you want to work and something goes wrong, just give us a call.” She gave Kurt the notecard. “We're here to lend a hand.”
Kurt looked down at what Willow had written. “Is . . . this a phone number?” he asked. There were only six digits written on the card.
“In a manner of speaking. Just dial that number and concentrate really hard on who you want to talk to, and you'll find one of us.” At the look on his face, she laughed. “I can't believe you're still being surprised by this stuff. C'mon, it's magic.”
* * *
“. . . and then Willow said some stuff and waved her arms around and everything went back to normal. We drove the kids home and we're catching a flight out tonight.”
“Well, that sounds like a job well done,” Giles said over the phone. “But why are you at the school today?”
“We wanted to make sure the kids were all right,” Buffy replied. “They were still in a lot of shock last night. Also, I had a few loose ends to tie up.”
There was a pause on Giles's end of the phone. “. . . Those loose ends don't have anything to do with that Sylvester woman, do they?”
“No. Although, if you could send a couple of 'Sweating with the Oldies' DVDs over to McKinley High when you get a chance, that would be great. No, I decided it would be a good idea to have a little chat with the librarian about leaving dangerous spell books out where any angsty teenager could find them. And you know what she told me?”
“Er . . .”
“She told me that it had been your idea to disperse the most dangerous books into public school libraries and to shelve them in the reference section because, quote, 'No one ever goes there.'”
Giles made a slightly huffy noise. “Well, no one ever did in Sunnydale! And kids these days have even greater access to computers! And--”
“--texting and internet and the cotton gin, yes, Giles, I know, people use technology more than they used to. But apparently, in Ohio kids occasionally still pick up those weird hard things with all the paper inside them--”
“Books, you mean?” Giles said irritatedly.
“--so maybe we shouldn't just be leaving instructions on how to raise zombie armies right next to the Encyclopaedia Brittanicas, huh?”
Giles sighed. “I'll come up with an alternative method of storage and alert the coven of it by tomorrow.”
“Awesome,” Buffy grinned.
There was a beat.
“You're not doing any work today, are you?” Giles asked.
“Nope! I'm just kickin' it in the janitor's closet and watching cartoons.”
It was almost like she could hear the look of disapproval on Giles's face.
* * *
Usually Kurt saw Tina a couple of times in the morning before glee. Today, he hadn't seen her once. He had a feeling she was avoiding him.
Or maybe he was avoiding her. He wasn't quite sure; it had been a weird, emotional night, and he knew that the next time they saw each other would be awkward.
But they couldn't keep avoiding each other forever, and they ran into each other outside of the choir room before rehearsal.
“Hey,” Kurt said as they both held up just outside the door.
“Hi,” Tina replied, not meeting his eyes. They stood awkwardly for a moment. Tina tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear and swallowed hard.
“Look,” she said, still staring at the floor, “it probably would have been way better if I had just kept my mouth shut and not caused you untold amounts of extra emotional trauma. So . . .” She finally lifted her head and looked Kurt in the eye. “. . . I'm sorry.”
He shook his head. “It's okay.” Tina looked at him like he was crazy. “I'm serious,” he said. “At least you tried to help, you know? That's more than a lot of people do, and . . . it means a lot to me. Thank you for that.”
She smiled at him and put her arms out. He took a step and walked into her hug. It wasn't quite the comfort he'd been looking for through the spell, but it was comfort all the same.
Suddenly, he felt Tina's body stiffen, and she quickly pulled away.
“What--” Kurt started to say, but when he turned around and saw Azimio and Karofsky coming toward them, the words died in his throat.
Karofsky, naturally, was carrying a cherry slushie. Oh, well. At least red was his color.
“Hey, nerds,” Azimio spat. He looked Karofsky, clearly waiting for the application of frozen drink. Instead, Karofsky put the cup to his own face and took a sip.
“Dude!” Azimio said. “What gives?”
“That jackass cop caught me yesterday,” Karofsky said. “If I step out of line again, Figgins is gonna expel me, and my dad will flip. The losers aren't worth it.” He glared at Kurt and Tina, but he kept walking. Azimio stood there confused for a second, but then he just rolled his eyes and jogged to catch up with his friend.
Kurt and Tina looked at each other.
“I did not see that one coming,” Tina said.
“Huh,” Kurt said. “Maybe competent school officials can get something done.” He held out his arm. “Shall we go to class?”
Tina smiled and took his arm as they walked into the choir room.
“By the way,” Tina whispered, “you should have heard the speech Ms. Rosenberg gave me after class about proper magic usage. It was epic. I was ten minutes late to English. And she gave me this weird six-digit phone number.”
“She gave me that, too,” Kurt whispered back. “Which begs the question: are magical phone calls subject to long distance charges?”
They giggled as they found a pair of seats in the back row.