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

[lists_to_port]

[When he hears this request--this command--Jack Sparrow takes off from Cullen House at a sprint. Buffy never has called him like this. Her tone of voice has sent chills right up his spine.

He makes the journey in a record time of twenty-seven minutes. For once, Jack enters Seven by the front door.]

Buffy?!

[lists_to_port]

Cupcake was startled by the movement and jumped away, finally selecting McCoy's bed as her perch. She sprawled out and licked herself tidily. Surely her human would be back soon.

Sparrow, for his part, clutched Buffy tightly--almost fiercely. She could handle it. She was the slayer. And those were the words he'd kept in mind as he'd fallen and flown to his death. Better than us.

"Everything's gone, then? All of it? Cleared out?" Desperate.

[slaying]

"There's some stuff..." She spoke thickly against a mass of dreads. Her arms were loose and light around the pirate in comparison to how firmly he held her.

"Nothing left. Not by him." Because sometimes, people left letters. Buffy had her own secret stash somewhere in the house. "I checked. I checked everywhere. But there's other stuff. Things. This and that. Pieces."

[lists_to_port]

Jack released a deeply-held breath at that, loosening his hold on her by a fraction.

Defeated.

[slaying]

...So much about this moment made her feel so violently sick. Jack's question -- it reminded her of those difficult, challenging arrangements that had been required after Joyce's death. Wills and things leftover. Obituaries.

"I'll have to -- I'll tell everyone else. Later, I guess. Tonight."

[lists_to_port]

"You sure you want to do that? Annie? I can, you know. You don't have to."

It was her place to do it as closest family member--they both knew it. But if he could spare her that ritual...

[slaying]

"I'm sure. It's...I'm good at it. Practice makes mostly perfect." She tilted her head back.

"But -- Jack?"

[lists_to_port]

"Love?"

[slaying]

"...I wouldn't turn down help." McCoy was well-respected in the village. Well-loved. It wouldn't just be souls comforting her. There would be other souls in need of comforting. And there were limits even to Buffy's ability to hand bits of herself out on a sacrificial platter.

[lists_to_port]

"Yours."

McCoy had always looked after her. Always. Could he even begin to fill that role? Jack didn't trust himself.

"It's yours. Whatever you ask of me. I'll speak to them, Annie."

[slaying]

She and the doctor had shared a unique bond. Unique, here, being defined as something wholly unlike most other connections build by the two of them. There was nothing that could have persuaded one to move against the other. They omitted things here and there but never lied to each other. He had never been disappointed in her.

And Buffy knew that as cantankerous as McCoy had been with the both of them, Jack had enjoyed the doctor's frank and unaffected friendship, too. Her arms tightened by a fraction.

"And you'll stay here tonight." It wasn't a question.

[lists_to_port]

"For as long as you need me." There wasn't a question.

[slaying]

There was a freedom found in Jack's words. A happier version of some other phrase that was often tossed around. Need trumped have. And so Buffy committed herself fully to her as yet half-baked affection.

She drew him into a proper hug.

[lists_to_port]

"Annie," Jack whispered. The horror was still registering in small waves---small acknowledgments of the impact of his friend's absence rippled outward and grew and crashed into each other and continued to grow.

[slaying]

"Shh." She wound bits of long, sun-streaked hair in her fingers. It only took a second to find once again where her form seemed to best fit against his. She had already taken her time alone. Her thirty minutes of gut-wrenching tears and disobedient lungs. The shock was newer, for him. Rawer than raw. She understood this. She tried to support it.

[lists_to_port]

"The man who falls behind is left behind." He'd always been so amazingly stoical about that guideline in the past. Elizabeth had cracked it. Elizabeth, calling after her dead father. Cradling Buffy close was more comfort than he'd ever received after being left behind.