simplestgift | Twenty Bells: [Action/Voice]

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Twenty Bells: [Action/Voice]

[He'd won her a stuffed penguin. She'd been hanging on his arm and squeezing it with a giant grin on her face. Everything felt, finally, like it was going to be okay. Like this trouble between them since sleeping together was just a little thing.

He turns away to grab a strawberry daiquiri for her, still holding her hand. When he turns back, she's gone.

He wanders Lucetiland for a while, looking for her, shaking, still holding the drink, but he knows what's happened. When someone dematerializes while you are touching them...

She was just there, grinning, cheeks rosy. The warmth of her hand hasn't quite faded yet.

He sits on a bench in the middle of the park, staring into space, and nothing in the world draws his attention until, mechanically, he draws out his journal. He's shaking too badly to write, so he has to voice it, and he sounds weak.]

Dawn Summers was sent home.

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[A deep breath.] I hope you're right. [A dozen little Kennedys. It was like a nursery rhyme.]

...Me, too.

[Now he can't stop thinking about the images Jack gave him of those dozen little Kennedys. He'd started thinking of names, even knowing Dawn surely had all her kids' names picked out already.

He gestures toward a strawberry daiquiri on the coffee table.]

It's hers. Would you like it?

Don't you think that's a little...[ macabre? ]

N-no. I couldn't.

[A sigh.] I suppose I should throw it away.

Archie...

[ buffy frowns. ] That daiquiri isn't her. I get the association; I do. But it's just a drink. And she's...she's Dawnie.

I know, but it's hers She wants it. Wanted it. [Throwing it away would mean she really isn't there to claim it anymore.]

...Say she comes back, Archie. The whole drink'll have spoiled by then anyway.

What if she didn't leave? [Then he snaps his mouth shut and looks ashamed of himself. He knows better than to talk like that.]

...And you think for a second that even if she wanted anyone else to think that she was gone...that she'd let me believe it? For even a second?

[He shakes his head softly.] No.

You've got all of my sympathy, Archie. All of it. But don't even think about suggesting that again.

[He only said it because he didn't want her to be gone.]

Don't wait, you said.

...I said it for a reason.

[ she doesn't know if archie is recognizing the wisdom in what she had said or...or something else? ]

[There is a slight exhalation.]

It still wasn't enough.

[ with a matching sigh, buffy thinks as objectively as she can on the mountainous amount of loss she's been on the receiving end for. almost affectionately -- and certainly as if she were somehow older than archie -- she cups the side of his cheek with one hand. just for a moment before her hand drops. ]

It never is.

[He meets her eyes for a second, then glances away.] What did you do?

...You don't want to do what I did, Archie. I'm not the role-model for healthy coping. [ a shuddering breath. ] You'll figure it out as you go. That's all we ever do -- feel our way forward.

[It's not that Archie never lost anyone. But he's never lost anyone this close. He'd received the letter about his grandfather's death years after the last time he'd seen the man, and he hadn't been close with him since he was a boy. Dawn is his. He loves her.]

...At least I was there.

It's cold comfort.

[ she had been with angel before she -- well. and she had held spike's hand as he had burned up. and she'd only left kirk in the room for a moment.

and jack... ] But even cold comfort's...something.

It is something. [One moment everything had been okay, and the next...]

[ she would tell him that she envied him his last moment but -- ah, no. he still has it worse. she would go back to her sister, assuredly. ]

If you ever need anything, Archie...[ you're still like a brother to me, sometimes. ]

Edited 2011-08-23 13:18 (UTC)

I know. [He can remember being her brother. It feels like he still is, right now, no matter the troubles that have passed between them since they thought they'd grown up in Luceti Valley.]

[ the fits and starts rumblings of a progressing relationship between the two of them -- her dawnie and archie -- had long ago put buffy in mind of what it might be like to be part of a larger family again. not strictly a brother-in-law, per se...but something. tied to her through her sister. it helps that luceti valley made the tie that much easier to imagine.

firmly, she holds archie's hand. ] It's okay to go a little crazy, you know.

[He shakes his head softly, disagreeing. He's been "a little crazy" before and it's in a hurry to go back there. But this doesn't feel crazy. It feels crippling, for now, but not crazy. Still, he squeezes her hand gently to communicate that he understands her intentions.]

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