Rift, Hellmouth, Same Difference (7/?)
Title: Rift, Hellmouth, Same Difference
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: "Buffy" through The Becoming, all of Torchwood.
Summary: Buffy gets sucked into the Hell vortex at the end of Becoming, only to end up on the rain-slicked streets of Cardiff. What's Torchwood to do with a lost Slayer?
Disclaimer: Joss owns "Buffy," RTD and the BBC own "Torchwood," I own my iPod.
AN: Thank you to the amazing revdorothyl for betaing!
Chapter One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six
Banner by the awesome skylar0grace
Chapter Seven
“How’s she doing?” Tosh asked Ianto a few days after Bernie’s death. Ianto shot a worried look at the CCTV monitor that showed the area around the invisible lift and shook his head.
“She still blames herself for not getting there in time,” Ianto said, filling out forms in his typically neat manner. “She refuses to talk about it, but it’s been eating at her.” Ianto didn’t mention the times he had gone into her room to find her pillow wet with tears and Buffy with dark circles under her eyes, that she then hid with copious amounts of makeup.
“But it wasn’t her fault!” Tosh protested. Ianto sighed irritably.
“We’ve tried telling her that, but she doesn’t seem to believe it,” he said. “It’s like she failed at some self-appointed task.”
“She’s just a girl. She should be worried about boys and school, not something like this,” Tosh said, not knowing that the object of their discussion had been worrying about saving people since she was fifteen. “Do you think she’s like that because she wants to feel like part of the team and thinks that she needs to save someone?”
“I think this goes beyond her wanting to be part of Torchwood,” Ianto replied quietly. “I get the feeling that’s she’s carrying some sort of guilt from where she was before she came here.” Ianto didn’t have much to back up his suspicions, but he was positive Buffy felt as if she had failed someone in her previous life. “There’s nothing we can really do until she feels ready to talk to us,” Ianto continued. Tosh shook her head and went back to her workstation.
Above them, perched beside the water tower, Buffy sat with her knees drawn close to her chest, watching the bustling crowds make their way through the Roald Dahl Plass. She needed to be out of the Hub, needed to feel the sun on her skin. Even though everyone in Torchwood tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault that Bernie had died, she still felt like it was. It was her job to save people, and she had failed.
Shifting her legs slightly, so as not to cut off her circulation, she watched the mass of people and wished desperately she could be one of them, without the burden of being the Slayer. A gaggle of giggling girls passed by, leaving Buffy to gaze after them wistfully.
“Oi, what’s your problem?” she heard someone shout. Turning her head to see what was going on, Buffy spied something that snapped her out of her melancholy mood.
A crowd was gathering around a man, who could only be described as being in a very happy place. He weaved through the crowd with an overly contented smile on his face, not caring if he bumped into others, or even if he strayed into the busy street. Sporadically, he would whistle some little tune only he seemed to know, Buffy watched his progress, wondering what he was taking in order to get him in that state of mind.
“That’s the third one like that I’ve seen this week,” a person standing near Buffy complained. “I don’t know who they think they are, but they’re disrupting the city, that’s what they’re doing.”
“As long as they aren’t hurting anyone, why are you bothered?” her companion asked, eyes following the strange man.
“It’s just unnatural,” the woman complained before she and her friend moved out of Buffy’s earshot. Third one this week? Weird, Buffy thought, repositioning herself again. She continued to follow the man with her eyes until she decided she should go back inside before Torchwood started worrying about her.
“You’re back,” Ianto commented, handing her the sandwich he had bought her.
“Thanks,” Buffy mumbled, taking the food and sitting down. “Do you know anything about the crazy happy people?” she asked. “Is there something in the water I should know about and avoid?”
“Pardon?” Ianto asked, slightly confused as to where this was coming from.
“Up there, I saw this guy who was completely out of it in a ‘I’m too happy to be believed’ kind of way,” Buffy explained. “Then, this lady was all, ‘That’s the third one I’ve seen this week,’ and it got me wondering.”
“I don’t believe I’ve heard anything about overly happy people, but that could be because I’m here most of the day,” Ianto replied, secretly happy that she had found something to take her mind off the Bernie Harris incident. “Although, I’m not sure being overly happy is necessarily a bad thing.”
“Ianto, I’m not talking about ‘Yay, I found an extra prize in my cereal’ happy,” Buffy clarified. “I’m talking about full on, walking in a daze of happy feelings so strong you walk into oncoming traffic. How’s that normal?”
“There are drugs that do that, I’m sure,” Ianto replied. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Why, are you some secret drug lord? Is there something you aren’t telling me, Ianto Jones?” Buffy asked, playing with the sandwich wrappings. Ianto’s heart momentarily stopped, worrying for a brief second if she had any suspicions about Lisa. Then, he noticed the mischievous glint in her eye that had been lately absent, and he realized she was trying to joke with him.
“Yes, because in my abundant spare time, I manage to experiment with dangerous chemicals and successfully run a drug empire,” he deadpanned, just as Jack walked past.
“What’s this about Ianto being a secret drug lord?” he asked Buffy, eyebrows raised in confusion.
“We’re just talking about how overly happy people are weird and unnatural,” Buffy informed him. “I saw this guy up there who was either really drugged up or just happy beyond normal bounds of human happiness. Then, to make matters even weirder, this lady said that’s the third one like that she had seen this week.” Instead of laughing it off, as she half-expected him to, Jack stilled and narrowed his gaze.
“Describe to me exactly what you saw,” he ordered. Buffy, wondering what caused this sudden change, described as best she could remember the man’s actions. When she finished, Jack paused for a moment before turning to Gwen and Owen.
“Gwen, contact your buddies at the police station, ask them if they’ve had any complaints about people in overly euphoric states,” he said. “Also, ask if they have any in custody at the moment. If they do, I want you to go with Owen to get a blood sample.”
“Why do we need to take a sample of some bloke who’s just having a good time?” Owen asked, turning his chair to face Jack.
“Just do what I said, and I’ll explain later. Now!” Jack barked at the duo. Gwen jumped a little and went to the phone to call up her old partner, Andy. Within minutes, she had her answer.
“There’ve been multiple reports, and they seem to be increasing,” Gwen reported, looking at what she had written down. “They currently have one woman in the holding cells.”
“Good. Gwen, Owen, go. Tosh, I want you to go into the police files and see if there’s a common location factor, either where they live, or if there’s an area where a majority of these people seem to appear.”
“On it, Jack,” Tosh said, flashing him a quick smile. Buffy, feeling left out of the general bustle, started to withdraw again. She was fine as long as she had something to focus on, but once that ended all she was left with were her thoughts. Ianto, noticing this, turned to Jack.
“How much longer do you think it will be until we get the employee gym ready?” Ianto asked his boss, following the man into his office.
“Why do you ask?” Jack said, rubbing his temples. He had a suspicion about what was causing those people to act the way they were, but he sincerely hoped he was wrong.
“Buffy needs something to distract her,” Ianto replied succinctly. “If she has something to occupy her attention, it distracts her from Bernie Harris’s death. From what I gather, she was fairly active before she came here, so the exercise may prove to be therapeutic.”
“Do you have the forms completed for equipment requisitions?” Jack knew that Ianto probably had everything well in hand, but it made him feel better just asking about it. Silently, Ianto dug through the precariously perched pile of paperwork on Jack’s desk to produce the forms, all filled out and awaiting Jack’s signature. Jack glanced through them, noting that nothing unusual had been requested, just the normal materials for a gym. He quickly signed off on them, giving them back to Ianto to process.
“Thank you, sir,” Ianto, said, preparing to leave before Jack stopped him.
“Has she talked about that night at all to you?” Jack asked. Ianto shook his head.
“I don’t want to push her and cause her to withdraw from us further,” Ianto explained. “She was getting better with dealing about coming here until this whole mess occurred.”
“Just take care of her, Ianto,” Jack said. Ianto, taking that as a sign to leave, nodded and made for the door before Jack could call him back again. From his small workstation, he covertly watched Buffy as she listlessly flipped through a magazine Gwen had brought with her this morning.
“Buffy, do you want to help me with this?” he asked, gathering up various papers that needed to be placed in the Archives. Buffy nodded and followed him down. She had never been down to the Archives before, so she was taken by surprise at the sheer amount of material stored in such a small space.
“Giles would have a field day in here,” she breathed, before realizing what she had just said. Seeing Ianto’s curious look, Buffy decided she had gone past the point of no return and should continue. “He was my mentor,” she explained softly. “He-he was from here and we would tease him about loving tea and wearing tweed and his accent…” She hastily wiped away the tears that had started to fall. “He was-is a librarian, and I swear, loved books more than anything.” Except she knew this wasn’t true-he loved the Scoobies like they were his own children and would do anything for them.
Ianto stood next to her, stunned to hear what she was saying. Buffy had never, except for that brief instance on her first day, talked about the life she had left behind. He remembered that she had muttered the name Giles when she had first arrived and he had wondered who this person was. He didn’t know if he should take this openness as a sign she was feeling more comfortable around him, or a as a sign that the last few days had worn her down so much that she was letting things unintentionally slip past her barriers.
“Being around you guys just reminds me of him so much,” Buffy continued, looking at her hands. “You all aren’t as stuffy as him, but the accents, the humor, other little things just remind me of him.” She paused and gave Ianto a weak smile. “Sorry for getting all teary on you. I’m just…I’m just not in a good place right now.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Ianto reassured her. “Just…if you want to talk about anything…”
“I get it,” Buffy interrupted, turning to face the files. “So, what do you want help with, Coffee God?” she asked, trying to give him a bright smile and failing. Ianto didn’t say anything, but just showed her what he needed help with. They worked in silence for about an hour before everything was organized to Ianto’s satisfaction.
Emerging from the Archives, Buffy was surprised to see the remainder of the team gathered around a projection of a weird looking plant.
“…Secretes a pheromone that puts the population of the host planet in this euphoric state,” Jack was explaining to the confused team. “It not only pacifies them, but makes so that they gradually lose the will to take care of themselves. Eventually, they all just lie down and die. During this time, the plant will have spread and completely blankets the planet once all other living organisms are out of the way.”
“A plant? A bloody plant is going to end the world?” Owen asked, a disbelieving look on his face. “You’ve got to be joking!”
“No, Owen, I’m not,” Jack said. “The Trexalene Orchid is one of the most feared and deadly plants in the known universe. What we need to do is find it before it starts sending out seeds. Using what Tosh found out, this is our search area,” Jack said, pointing to an area on the map of Cardiff behind him.
Ianto had continued on to his workstation, but Buffy stayed to listen in on Jack’s briefing. “And I thought this place couldn’t get any weirder,” she muttered, loud enough so that only Ianto could hear her. “It’s like a plot out of a bad sci-fi movie. ‘Attack of the Killer Happy Plant!’”
“It could be worse,” Ianto said, watching Owen continuing to complain about the threat. “We could be in ‘Attack of the Killer Nightmare Plant.’” Buffy fake-shuddered and bit back the temptation to say, “Yeah, been there, done that, bored now.”
“Ianto, Buffy, go home,” Jack ordered after sending Owen, Gwen, and Tosh to search for the killer alien plant. Buffy looked at him in surprise. Jack had never sent them home early before, especially if there was a team in the field. Ianto looked equally surprised at Jack’s order.
“Are you sure?” he asked, looking at Jack. “There isn’t anything else you need me to do, sir?”
“Nope. Just go home, relax, and enjoy the rare evening off,” Jack said. Ianto shrugged and gathered his things, while Buffy continued to stare at Jack in confusion.
“Come on, Buffy,” Ianto said, placing his hand on her shoulder. Buffy nodded and began to follow him out.
“Buffy,” Jack’s voice said, causing her to stop and turn around. “You did good today.”
“Huh?” Buffy asked, confused as to what he meant. “I didn’t do anything.
“You noticed something out of the ordinary and you let us know,” Jack said, walking towards her and giving her a pat on the back. “You were able to accurately describe what you observed, which gave us a clue as to what we might be facing. You did good.”
Buffy looked at him, unsure of what to say. “Thanks,” she finally said before following Ianto to the parking lot. She remained silent for the ride home, mulling over what Jack had said. Had she ever thanked Willow, Xander, or Giles when they had helped her save the world? It felt weird being relegated from world savior to research Scooby.
That night, no matter how much she read, she just couldn’t fall asleep. There was too much going through her head, from the events of the day to her wracking her brain to see if she ever let the rest of the Scoobies know how much she appreciated their help. Growling in frustration, she got out of bed and did her best to remain silent as she crept towards the kitchen.
Ianto didn’t know what it was, but something woke him up from the light sleep he had fallen into. Listening carefully, he heard someone moving in the kitchen, doing their best to remain silent. Ianto moved quietly to see what was behind the disturbance, only to be confronted by Buffy standing in front of the stove, watching something in a pot.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she explained when she noticed his questioning look. “Thought I’d make some hot cocoa, since it’s the only thing I can actually make. You want some? There won’t be any mini-marshmallows, though.”
“I can live without the marshmallows,” Ianto replied, getting the mugs down from the cupboard for her. She smiled at him in thanks, quickly preparing and serving the drink.
“My mom would make me this,” she said suddenly, looking at the drink in front of her. “Whenever things got tough, or if one of us was feeling down, she would make hot chocolate with the little marshmallows.” She took a deep breath and continued. “I miss her.” Buffy tried not to think of their last exchange, where her mother had given her the ultimatum of either staying inside or never coming home again. Buffy wondered if her mom had been serious, or just scared, and if she thought that her daughter had run away for good.
“She’d be proud of you, Buffy,” Ianto said, trying to reassure the girl in front of him. Buffy gave him a wry half-smile in reply.
“Yeah,” she found herself saying, the aftermath of Parents’ Night coming to mind, where her mother had been proud of her for defending the parents and teachers trapped inside. “Yeah, she would.”
Chapter Eight
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: "Buffy" through The Becoming, all of Torchwood.
Summary: Buffy gets sucked into the Hell vortex at the end of Becoming, only to end up on the rain-slicked streets of Cardiff. What's Torchwood to do with a lost Slayer?
Disclaimer: Joss owns "Buffy," RTD and the BBC own "Torchwood," I own my iPod.
AN: Thank you to the amazing revdorothyl for betaing!
Chapter One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six
Banner by the awesome skylar0grace
Chapter Seven
“How’s she doing?” Tosh asked Ianto a few days after Bernie’s death. Ianto shot a worried look at the CCTV monitor that showed the area around the invisible lift and shook his head.
“She still blames herself for not getting there in time,” Ianto said, filling out forms in his typically neat manner. “She refuses to talk about it, but it’s been eating at her.” Ianto didn’t mention the times he had gone into her room to find her pillow wet with tears and Buffy with dark circles under her eyes, that she then hid with copious amounts of makeup.
“But it wasn’t her fault!” Tosh protested. Ianto sighed irritably.
“We’ve tried telling her that, but she doesn’t seem to believe it,” he said. “It’s like she failed at some self-appointed task.”
“She’s just a girl. She should be worried about boys and school, not something like this,” Tosh said, not knowing that the object of their discussion had been worrying about saving people since she was fifteen. “Do you think she’s like that because she wants to feel like part of the team and thinks that she needs to save someone?”
“I think this goes beyond her wanting to be part of Torchwood,” Ianto replied quietly. “I get the feeling that’s she’s carrying some sort of guilt from where she was before she came here.” Ianto didn’t have much to back up his suspicions, but he was positive Buffy felt as if she had failed someone in her previous life. “There’s nothing we can really do until she feels ready to talk to us,” Ianto continued. Tosh shook her head and went back to her workstation.
Above them, perched beside the water tower, Buffy sat with her knees drawn close to her chest, watching the bustling crowds make their way through the Roald Dahl Plass. She needed to be out of the Hub, needed to feel the sun on her skin. Even though everyone in Torchwood tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault that Bernie had died, she still felt like it was. It was her job to save people, and she had failed.
Shifting her legs slightly, so as not to cut off her circulation, she watched the mass of people and wished desperately she could be one of them, without the burden of being the Slayer. A gaggle of giggling girls passed by, leaving Buffy to gaze after them wistfully.
“Oi, what’s your problem?” she heard someone shout. Turning her head to see what was going on, Buffy spied something that snapped her out of her melancholy mood.
A crowd was gathering around a man, who could only be described as being in a very happy place. He weaved through the crowd with an overly contented smile on his face, not caring if he bumped into others, or even if he strayed into the busy street. Sporadically, he would whistle some little tune only he seemed to know, Buffy watched his progress, wondering what he was taking in order to get him in that state of mind.
“That’s the third one like that I’ve seen this week,” a person standing near Buffy complained. “I don’t know who they think they are, but they’re disrupting the city, that’s what they’re doing.”
“As long as they aren’t hurting anyone, why are you bothered?” her companion asked, eyes following the strange man.
“It’s just unnatural,” the woman complained before she and her friend moved out of Buffy’s earshot. Third one this week? Weird, Buffy thought, repositioning herself again. She continued to follow the man with her eyes until she decided she should go back inside before Torchwood started worrying about her.
“You’re back,” Ianto commented, handing her the sandwich he had bought her.
“Thanks,” Buffy mumbled, taking the food and sitting down. “Do you know anything about the crazy happy people?” she asked. “Is there something in the water I should know about and avoid?”
“Pardon?” Ianto asked, slightly confused as to where this was coming from.
“Up there, I saw this guy who was completely out of it in a ‘I’m too happy to be believed’ kind of way,” Buffy explained. “Then, this lady was all, ‘That’s the third one I’ve seen this week,’ and it got me wondering.”
“I don’t believe I’ve heard anything about overly happy people, but that could be because I’m here most of the day,” Ianto replied, secretly happy that she had found something to take her mind off the Bernie Harris incident. “Although, I’m not sure being overly happy is necessarily a bad thing.”
“Ianto, I’m not talking about ‘Yay, I found an extra prize in my cereal’ happy,” Buffy clarified. “I’m talking about full on, walking in a daze of happy feelings so strong you walk into oncoming traffic. How’s that normal?”
“There are drugs that do that, I’m sure,” Ianto replied. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Why, are you some secret drug lord? Is there something you aren’t telling me, Ianto Jones?” Buffy asked, playing with the sandwich wrappings. Ianto’s heart momentarily stopped, worrying for a brief second if she had any suspicions about Lisa. Then, he noticed the mischievous glint in her eye that had been lately absent, and he realized she was trying to joke with him.
“Yes, because in my abundant spare time, I manage to experiment with dangerous chemicals and successfully run a drug empire,” he deadpanned, just as Jack walked past.
“What’s this about Ianto being a secret drug lord?” he asked Buffy, eyebrows raised in confusion.
“We’re just talking about how overly happy people are weird and unnatural,” Buffy informed him. “I saw this guy up there who was either really drugged up or just happy beyond normal bounds of human happiness. Then, to make matters even weirder, this lady said that’s the third one like that she had seen this week.” Instead of laughing it off, as she half-expected him to, Jack stilled and narrowed his gaze.
“Describe to me exactly what you saw,” he ordered. Buffy, wondering what caused this sudden change, described as best she could remember the man’s actions. When she finished, Jack paused for a moment before turning to Gwen and Owen.
“Gwen, contact your buddies at the police station, ask them if they’ve had any complaints about people in overly euphoric states,” he said. “Also, ask if they have any in custody at the moment. If they do, I want you to go with Owen to get a blood sample.”
“Why do we need to take a sample of some bloke who’s just having a good time?” Owen asked, turning his chair to face Jack.
“Just do what I said, and I’ll explain later. Now!” Jack barked at the duo. Gwen jumped a little and went to the phone to call up her old partner, Andy. Within minutes, she had her answer.
“There’ve been multiple reports, and they seem to be increasing,” Gwen reported, looking at what she had written down. “They currently have one woman in the holding cells.”
“Good. Gwen, Owen, go. Tosh, I want you to go into the police files and see if there’s a common location factor, either where they live, or if there’s an area where a majority of these people seem to appear.”
“On it, Jack,” Tosh said, flashing him a quick smile. Buffy, feeling left out of the general bustle, started to withdraw again. She was fine as long as she had something to focus on, but once that ended all she was left with were her thoughts. Ianto, noticing this, turned to Jack.
“How much longer do you think it will be until we get the employee gym ready?” Ianto asked his boss, following the man into his office.
“Why do you ask?” Jack said, rubbing his temples. He had a suspicion about what was causing those people to act the way they were, but he sincerely hoped he was wrong.
“Buffy needs something to distract her,” Ianto replied succinctly. “If she has something to occupy her attention, it distracts her from Bernie Harris’s death. From what I gather, she was fairly active before she came here, so the exercise may prove to be therapeutic.”
“Do you have the forms completed for equipment requisitions?” Jack knew that Ianto probably had everything well in hand, but it made him feel better just asking about it. Silently, Ianto dug through the precariously perched pile of paperwork on Jack’s desk to produce the forms, all filled out and awaiting Jack’s signature. Jack glanced through them, noting that nothing unusual had been requested, just the normal materials for a gym. He quickly signed off on them, giving them back to Ianto to process.
“Thank you, sir,” Ianto, said, preparing to leave before Jack stopped him.
“Has she talked about that night at all to you?” Jack asked. Ianto shook his head.
“I don’t want to push her and cause her to withdraw from us further,” Ianto explained. “She was getting better with dealing about coming here until this whole mess occurred.”
“Just take care of her, Ianto,” Jack said. Ianto, taking that as a sign to leave, nodded and made for the door before Jack could call him back again. From his small workstation, he covertly watched Buffy as she listlessly flipped through a magazine Gwen had brought with her this morning.
“Buffy, do you want to help me with this?” he asked, gathering up various papers that needed to be placed in the Archives. Buffy nodded and followed him down. She had never been down to the Archives before, so she was taken by surprise at the sheer amount of material stored in such a small space.
“Giles would have a field day in here,” she breathed, before realizing what she had just said. Seeing Ianto’s curious look, Buffy decided she had gone past the point of no return and should continue. “He was my mentor,” she explained softly. “He-he was from here and we would tease him about loving tea and wearing tweed and his accent…” She hastily wiped away the tears that had started to fall. “He was-is a librarian, and I swear, loved books more than anything.” Except she knew this wasn’t true-he loved the Scoobies like they were his own children and would do anything for them.
Ianto stood next to her, stunned to hear what she was saying. Buffy had never, except for that brief instance on her first day, talked about the life she had left behind. He remembered that she had muttered the name Giles when she had first arrived and he had wondered who this person was. He didn’t know if he should take this openness as a sign she was feeling more comfortable around him, or a as a sign that the last few days had worn her down so much that she was letting things unintentionally slip past her barriers.
“Being around you guys just reminds me of him so much,” Buffy continued, looking at her hands. “You all aren’t as stuffy as him, but the accents, the humor, other little things just remind me of him.” She paused and gave Ianto a weak smile. “Sorry for getting all teary on you. I’m just…I’m just not in a good place right now.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Ianto reassured her. “Just…if you want to talk about anything…”
“I get it,” Buffy interrupted, turning to face the files. “So, what do you want help with, Coffee God?” she asked, trying to give him a bright smile and failing. Ianto didn’t say anything, but just showed her what he needed help with. They worked in silence for about an hour before everything was organized to Ianto’s satisfaction.
Emerging from the Archives, Buffy was surprised to see the remainder of the team gathered around a projection of a weird looking plant.
“…Secretes a pheromone that puts the population of the host planet in this euphoric state,” Jack was explaining to the confused team. “It not only pacifies them, but makes so that they gradually lose the will to take care of themselves. Eventually, they all just lie down and die. During this time, the plant will have spread and completely blankets the planet once all other living organisms are out of the way.”
“A plant? A bloody plant is going to end the world?” Owen asked, a disbelieving look on his face. “You’ve got to be joking!”
“No, Owen, I’m not,” Jack said. “The Trexalene Orchid is one of the most feared and deadly plants in the known universe. What we need to do is find it before it starts sending out seeds. Using what Tosh found out, this is our search area,” Jack said, pointing to an area on the map of Cardiff behind him.
Ianto had continued on to his workstation, but Buffy stayed to listen in on Jack’s briefing. “And I thought this place couldn’t get any weirder,” she muttered, loud enough so that only Ianto could hear her. “It’s like a plot out of a bad sci-fi movie. ‘Attack of the Killer Happy Plant!’”
“It could be worse,” Ianto said, watching Owen continuing to complain about the threat. “We could be in ‘Attack of the Killer Nightmare Plant.’” Buffy fake-shuddered and bit back the temptation to say, “Yeah, been there, done that, bored now.”
“Ianto, Buffy, go home,” Jack ordered after sending Owen, Gwen, and Tosh to search for the killer alien plant. Buffy looked at him in surprise. Jack had never sent them home early before, especially if there was a team in the field. Ianto looked equally surprised at Jack’s order.
“Are you sure?” he asked, looking at Jack. “There isn’t anything else you need me to do, sir?”
“Nope. Just go home, relax, and enjoy the rare evening off,” Jack said. Ianto shrugged and gathered his things, while Buffy continued to stare at Jack in confusion.
“Come on, Buffy,” Ianto said, placing his hand on her shoulder. Buffy nodded and began to follow him out.
“Buffy,” Jack’s voice said, causing her to stop and turn around. “You did good today.”
“Huh?” Buffy asked, confused as to what he meant. “I didn’t do anything.
“You noticed something out of the ordinary and you let us know,” Jack said, walking towards her and giving her a pat on the back. “You were able to accurately describe what you observed, which gave us a clue as to what we might be facing. You did good.”
Buffy looked at him, unsure of what to say. “Thanks,” she finally said before following Ianto to the parking lot. She remained silent for the ride home, mulling over what Jack had said. Had she ever thanked Willow, Xander, or Giles when they had helped her save the world? It felt weird being relegated from world savior to research Scooby.
That night, no matter how much she read, she just couldn’t fall asleep. There was too much going through her head, from the events of the day to her wracking her brain to see if she ever let the rest of the Scoobies know how much she appreciated their help. Growling in frustration, she got out of bed and did her best to remain silent as she crept towards the kitchen.
Ianto didn’t know what it was, but something woke him up from the light sleep he had fallen into. Listening carefully, he heard someone moving in the kitchen, doing their best to remain silent. Ianto moved quietly to see what was behind the disturbance, only to be confronted by Buffy standing in front of the stove, watching something in a pot.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she explained when she noticed his questioning look. “Thought I’d make some hot cocoa, since it’s the only thing I can actually make. You want some? There won’t be any mini-marshmallows, though.”
“I can live without the marshmallows,” Ianto replied, getting the mugs down from the cupboard for her. She smiled at him in thanks, quickly preparing and serving the drink.
“My mom would make me this,” she said suddenly, looking at the drink in front of her. “Whenever things got tough, or if one of us was feeling down, she would make hot chocolate with the little marshmallows.” She took a deep breath and continued. “I miss her.” Buffy tried not to think of their last exchange, where her mother had given her the ultimatum of either staying inside or never coming home again. Buffy wondered if her mom had been serious, or just scared, and if she thought that her daughter had run away for good.
“She’d be proud of you, Buffy,” Ianto said, trying to reassure the girl in front of him. Buffy gave him a wry half-smile in reply.
“Yeah,” she found herself saying, the aftermath of Parents’ Night coming to mind, where her mother had been proud of her for defending the parents and teachers trapped inside. “Yeah, she would.”
Chapter Eight