VOICE ✪ LIGHTS WILL GUIDE YOU HOME & IGNITE YOUR BONES & I WILL TRY TO FIX YOU

[slaying]

[ the first thing she notices is cupcake mewing low and lonely in the hall. buffy clucks her tongue and stoops to spoil the cat, caressing the soft strip of short fur along the feline nose. a small smile and a few gentle words; from this angle, she can see that mccoy's door is open. ajar. was he home

Comments

[ written ]

[seventeensir]

[Archie left to go see Buffy personally. Necessary, and he'd stayed behind for the same reason. He'd only known the doctor slightly, and to have gone along... would have been to intrude.

But he does write one message, his writing no doubt easy to distinguish by this point.]

If there is anything I can do, Miss Buffy, let me know.

[ written | private ]

[lists_to_port]

Hornblower:

It might be she'll have need of you yet. Yourself and Kennedy.

[Because what would happen if he should be taken? Who would look after her? Far be it from Jack to recognize that Buffy can very much look after herself. He doesn't want her to HAVE to, even though that is generally her preference.]

--Sparrow

[ written | private ]

[seventeensir]

I am her servant.

[A quaint expression, and it occurs to him to strike it the moment it's written. It dates him-- he's yet to hear anyone else use it here-- and no doubt Buffy would laugh if she read it.

...But it's the best way he knows to reassure that he will be there. So it remains.]

Hornblower

[ written | private ]

[lists_to_port]

[It's not dated to Sparrow. It fills him with relief. Brief; to the point:]

As am I. Always.

[ written | private ]

[seventeensir]

[A simple, sincere promise.]

Call, any of you, and I will answer.

[lists_to_port]

[And that might have been the moment where something changed in Sparrow regarding Horatio Hornblower. It was not a sea change. It was not the sort of change anyone was going to notice anytime soon, no more so than a pebble slipping off a mountain ledge or that first anonymous flake of snow that always seems to fall at the end of November, sometime.

But it was there.]

[ written ]

[noprevaricating]

Horatio,

I'll be staying the night at house 7. Consider it to be family business.

Yours,
Archie

[ written ]

[seventeensir]

Archie,

Of course. If there's anything I can do, let me know.

Horatio