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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...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.]

[ she sees the shake of his head and shakes right back. ] No, I mean...it's okay to take off. Have some you-time. There's no rule book about this stuff that says you have to stay and talk to anyone. Or that you have to talk at all.

[He can remember talking with Pellew. Being lectured, more like it. It had been shortly after Ferrol, and he'd been distracted on watch. They'd nearly lost a French corvette. After a proper dressing-down, Pellew had hesitated, sighed and told him he understood how impossible it was to do what he asked. Kennedy barely knew how to function as a man anymore, let alone as an officer, and he was doing the best anyone could who had been through what he'd been through. But this went beyond him or Pellew or anyone else. He had to pretend he was whole, at least, or everyone on the ship could be ruined.

After that, Archie had noticed Bracegirdle hanging nearby more often during Archie's watch, usually reading by lantern-light or simply looking out to sea. When asked, the jolly lieutenant would smile and say he was just stretching his legs. Archie wonders to this day if he'd done that on his own or if Pellew had requested him to keep an eye out for a struggling midshipman.]

Me-time.

Just...don't skip out on town and run away for three months and change your name and never phone anyone. Dawn tells me this isn't the right way to deal with loss. I'm pretty sure she elbowed me in the gut for it.

[ it's...a rather poor, clumsy attempt at injecting dawn-based humour into the moment. her best mechanism for survival. ]

[Actually, Archie is pretty astonished by everything Buffy just said. It takes him a moment to recover.]

I'm sure I won't.

[A beat.]

What happened then?

[ she's not sure if archie is asking the before or the after -- so she diplomatically chooses for him: ] We hugged it out and she forgave me. Eventually. After much sucking up and me even giving her my good cable-knit sweater.

[ at least that is what buffy remembers. and she need only drive home to archie the fact that dawn is a young woman made up of memories -- that to hold onto what he has already had with her is the best thing he could do. but it will take her a while to reach that point. ]

[Right. It wasn't his business anyway. Buffy's life was so full of tragedy he never quite felt like he had the right to be melancholy around her. He doesn't think to ask if this is one of the real memories or one of the fake ones. He knows they feel the same to both the girls.]

I'll stay within the barrier, then. [Ha ha.]

Good man. 'Cause I don't think you want me elbowing you instead of her. She may be a terror 'cause she's vicious but I just can't help it.

[ buffy takes the liberty of taking a seat. ] It gets better, you know. It's cruel to say but it's true. The last Captain I...well, Bones' Captain? It took me a while to get over his leaving.

[ and then in a kind of confession that she'd never really managed to string together before now: ] Jack helped. He's good at that kind of thing -- he makes fun and distraction his mission in life. I'd bet my last dollar that he'll come looking to distract you as soon as he...as soon as I tell him.

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