(no subject)
She’s getting ready for the fight of her life when the call comes. She’s faced Apocalypse: Plural, fought off vampires by the score and been brought back from the dead all in the space of three years and when she answers the phone, hears the roughened voice of Bobby Singer telling her that Sam’s dead, it almost knocks Buffy on her ass - literally.
She texted him twice yesterday. Called once. But there was no answer and she thought--Maybe hoped would be a better word -- that Sam was off somewhere, doing something normal. That he’d get the call after.
But Sam was dead yesterday. Had been for a week and Dean… Dean’s not doing so great.
The end’s coming, Bobby tells her. They’re two hunters down. If ever he needed to call in a favour, it would be right now, and Buffy whitens further when she realizes what he’s asking.
She fills him in quickly on everything that’s happened recently. The First, the Potentials, all of it… She’s leading the fight of her life down into the Hell mouth tomorrow and it’s waiting to swallow her whole.
If she survives, she’ll be there… If not…
She hangs up with a frown, forgoing the game of Dungeons and Dragons the others have going on and heads up to her room, which is still hers even though they’re putting up a whole lotta potentials lately. There, she sits on the bed and cries because Sam’s dead.
Sam, the dorky, sweet, only slightly younger than Buffy guy who’d seemed as bewildered as her on their first day at Stanford. They’d become friends first, something a little more later, until an untimely attack of demon got in the way and their relationship stalled, somewhat.
She was just realizing there was something there - that there was something more about Sam that’d been lacking in any other relationship she’d had - when the phone call came.
“Mom collapsed, Buffy,” Dawn tells her, trying her hardest not to cry ‘cause she‘s fourteen and not a baby, damnit, “She’s sick. She told me not to call…”
Buffy heads home, not a second thought in that, beating up demons and trying to find a cure for whatever made her Mom be this way because it has to be a mystical thing, right? Mom’s never sick. Except she really is this time.
Mom lasts eight weeks. The operation to cure her is also the operation that kills her and between that and looking after Dawn, Buffy realizes that college is just a dream now - a far off dream that holds Sam Winchester and a girl called Jess who he thinks may be The One.
A few weeks after that, Buffy receives another text. Jess is dead and Sam is taking a road trip with his brother.
There’s more to it, of course - always is. But between Hell Gods wanting to twirl her sister in some kind of mystical lock and the untimely death of Buffy herself, she barely has time to think let alone wonder about Sam and the road he’s travelling lately.
She clings to the idea that he’s okay - he’s with his big brother, after all, and he can look after himself, can’t he?
She sees him again twice in the next two years. He shows up on her doorstep three weeks after her friends bring her back from the dead and he looks different - older, somehow. Buffy knows that feeling only too well.
He asks how she is and Buffy shrugs. She finds it hard to breathe in the presence of her friends - she finds it harder with Sam and when he leaves, Buffy goes with. She needs to get out of Sunnydale, to not be there for a while.
She meets Dean, Bobby, Missouri… A psychic who takes her hand gently and makes Buffy feel like she’s taken part of her soul right along with her because she knows without Buffy ever having opened her mouth.
“You gotta let that go sooner or later, honey,” says Missouri, knocking the wind out of her all over again as she pulls her hand away.
That’s how she feels now. Like Bobby’s knocked the wind out of her because Sam was never supposed to die. Not like this… Not like anything.
She can’t even be there to help because she has her own fight.
-----
Spike’s dead. Spike and Sam and Anya and a whole lot of potentials who, when it counted, became Slayers and Buffy’s so very fucking tired of death and dying and saving the world when the people who die are the very people who sacrifice themselves to save it.
She’s on a plane to Cold Oak, South Dakota. It’s quick and it’s easy and Buffy doesn’t think she could drive right now anyway. She’s still trying to sort through stuff - craterising her hometown being one of them, Sam and Spike and Anya being dead for another.
The Air Hostess reminds her of Anya. A more polite, less-interested-in-money and so-not-a-demon version, but Anya, nonetheless and it makes her want to cry.
She tries Bobby’s cell twice when she gets off the plane but he doesn’t answer, making Buffy’s stomach clench. And then she remembers something Sam told her, that one time they got separated on a hunt - goddamn police showing up halfway through.
First hotel in the Yellow Pages. Jim Rockford.
It’s a long shot, really. But Buffy’s exhausted enough to hope that it works and that at the end of it she’ll find a familiar face.
She hits the jackpot but it doesn’t feel like that. The guy looks at her like she’s a hooker and considering she had to loan clothing from Faith’s Awesome Bag of Bail, it’s not exactly a surprise.
She pulls her jacket tighter around her, giving him a glare though he really doesn’t care, and heads to Bobby’s room, knocking.
“Bobby? It’s Buffy.”
She texted him twice yesterday. Called once. But there was no answer and she thought--Maybe hoped would be a better word -- that Sam was off somewhere, doing something normal. That he’d get the call after.
But Sam was dead yesterday. Had been for a week and Dean… Dean’s not doing so great.
The end’s coming, Bobby tells her. They’re two hunters down. If ever he needed to call in a favour, it would be right now, and Buffy whitens further when she realizes what he’s asking.
She fills him in quickly on everything that’s happened recently. The First, the Potentials, all of it… She’s leading the fight of her life down into the Hell mouth tomorrow and it’s waiting to swallow her whole.
If she survives, she’ll be there… If not…
She hangs up with a frown, forgoing the game of Dungeons and Dragons the others have going on and heads up to her room, which is still hers even though they’re putting up a whole lotta potentials lately. There, she sits on the bed and cries because Sam’s dead.
Sam, the dorky, sweet, only slightly younger than Buffy guy who’d seemed as bewildered as her on their first day at Stanford. They’d become friends first, something a little more later, until an untimely attack of demon got in the way and their relationship stalled, somewhat.
She was just realizing there was something there - that there was something more about Sam that’d been lacking in any other relationship she’d had - when the phone call came.
“Mom collapsed, Buffy,” Dawn tells her, trying her hardest not to cry ‘cause she‘s fourteen and not a baby, damnit, “She’s sick. She told me not to call…”
Buffy heads home, not a second thought in that, beating up demons and trying to find a cure for whatever made her Mom be this way because it has to be a mystical thing, right? Mom’s never sick. Except she really is this time.
Mom lasts eight weeks. The operation to cure her is also the operation that kills her and between that and looking after Dawn, Buffy realizes that college is just a dream now - a far off dream that holds Sam Winchester and a girl called Jess who he thinks may be The One.
A few weeks after that, Buffy receives another text. Jess is dead and Sam is taking a road trip with his brother.
There’s more to it, of course - always is. But between Hell Gods wanting to twirl her sister in some kind of mystical lock and the untimely death of Buffy herself, she barely has time to think let alone wonder about Sam and the road he’s travelling lately.
She clings to the idea that he’s okay - he’s with his big brother, after all, and he can look after himself, can’t he?
She sees him again twice in the next two years. He shows up on her doorstep three weeks after her friends bring her back from the dead and he looks different - older, somehow. Buffy knows that feeling only too well.
He asks how she is and Buffy shrugs. She finds it hard to breathe in the presence of her friends - she finds it harder with Sam and when he leaves, Buffy goes with. She needs to get out of Sunnydale, to not be there for a while.
She meets Dean, Bobby, Missouri… A psychic who takes her hand gently and makes Buffy feel like she’s taken part of her soul right along with her because she knows without Buffy ever having opened her mouth.
“You gotta let that go sooner or later, honey,” says Missouri, knocking the wind out of her all over again as she pulls her hand away.
That’s how she feels now. Like Bobby’s knocked the wind out of her because Sam was never supposed to die. Not like this… Not like anything.
She can’t even be there to help because she has her own fight.
-----
Spike’s dead. Spike and Sam and Anya and a whole lot of potentials who, when it counted, became Slayers and Buffy’s so very fucking tired of death and dying and saving the world when the people who die are the very people who sacrifice themselves to save it.
She’s on a plane to Cold Oak, South Dakota. It’s quick and it’s easy and Buffy doesn’t think she could drive right now anyway. She’s still trying to sort through stuff - craterising her hometown being one of them, Sam and Spike and Anya being dead for another.
The Air Hostess reminds her of Anya. A more polite, less-interested-in-money and so-not-a-demon version, but Anya, nonetheless and it makes her want to cry.
She tries Bobby’s cell twice when she gets off the plane but he doesn’t answer, making Buffy’s stomach clench. And then she remembers something Sam told her, that one time they got separated on a hunt - goddamn police showing up halfway through.
First hotel in the Yellow Pages. Jim Rockford.
It’s a long shot, really. But Buffy’s exhausted enough to hope that it works and that at the end of it she’ll find a familiar face.
She hits the jackpot but it doesn’t feel like that. The guy looks at her like she’s a hooker and considering she had to loan clothing from Faith’s Awesome Bag of Bail, it’s not exactly a surprise.
She pulls her jacket tighter around her, giving him a glare though he really doesn’t care, and heads to Bobby’s room, knocking.
“Bobby? It’s Buffy.”