whattingawhat | Let's talk about it [RP for stillacrime]

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Let's talk about it [RP for stillacrime]

Buffy had gotten Danny's letter at work and now she was nervous about talking to him. She knew it was inevitable and it was something that needed to be done. In fact, there were things he needed to know but it didn't make it any easier to talk to him about it. She was sitting out on the balcony with a dozen candles tucked in corners. She had taken their comforter off the bed, piled the pillows outside as well. Everything was all ready for a balcony picnic. The only thing missing was Danny and takeout. She glanced at her cell phone, deciding she had time to change before he got there. She got up and slipped into a pair of yoga shorts and a wife beater, pulled her hair up in a messy bun at the back of her head and went back out onto the balcony to wait.

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Danny walked into the apartment and was bombarded on his shins by a tiny Rocky. He leaned over to scratch at the pups ears before moving into the living room. After shrugging off his coat and kicking off his shoes, he took off the shirt he had worn over the wife beater leaving him in the tank and jeans.

He picked up the take out and walked out to the balcony. Setting the bag on the floor, he wrapped his arms around Buffy from behind. "Hey there Sunshine."

"Hey," Buffy responded, leaning back against Danny. She reached over to the bucket of ice and beer she had, snagging a beer for him and twisting the top off before she handed it to him. "How was your day?"

Danny leaned over and kissed her cheek as he took the beer and stepped back. "Long. Glad to be home with you and Rocky."

"We're glad you're home too. Neither one of us really know what to do with each other when you're gone," Buffy told him with a half smile. She took a sip of the beer she had in her hand.

"You got my letter, I guess? I brought lots of eggrolls and sweet and sour chicken and fried rice." Danny settled down on the floor of the balcony and sipped at his beer. Rocky curled up in his lap as he started unpacking food.

"Yum," Buffy said as she sat down next to Danny. She snagged an egg roll out of the box as soon as Danny set it down. Her stomach protested but she kept munching on it. "Yeah I was letter having this afternoon. Hence the balcony picnic. Good idea by the way. And I know you're worried about saying things wrong but don't. You pretty much can't. You're getting lots of leeway on the verbage here because of the mind blowing."

"I just know I'm gonna screw this up. And I don't wanna lose you. You know?" Danny scratched at Rocky's ears.

Buffy reached over and took Danny's chin in one hand, her eyes meeting his. "Hey, you can't lose me. Not like this. Besides, I still think there's a good chance you're going to be the one running out the door screaming. That or committing me to a nut house."

"Never been one for screaming. The runnin' I'm pretty damn good at. But I won't from you." Danny answered, meeting Buffy's gaze. "Promise. I get freaked, I'll tell you."

Buffy nodded. "Okay. I can handle that. I'll try to be explain-y girl as much as I can without the freaking out." She pulled one knee up to her chest, her arms wrapping around her leg as she rested her chin on her knee. "Do what do you want to know?"

"Tell me the definition of a Slayer." Not 'what a Slayer is'. Because Buffy was a Slayer and she was a person, not a what.

She appreciated the person acknowledgment more than he would know. She furrowed her brow, gnawing on her lip a moment. "It's...long. I mean Websters would probably cut it down and sterilize it and make it something it's not. A slayer is a girl with super power, reflexes, speed and healing. She's got a big fat destiny to kill vampires, demons and anything else that's not supposed to exist in a rational world. And even if she wants to walk away, she can't because all of those things are drawn to her, like a magnet. If you're a slayer, you have no choice except to be a slayer because they're going to hunt you down." She looked over at Danny to see how he was coping. "I can tell you more about how slayers were made if you want or we can leave it at that and go on. It's all a bunch of...stuff that doesn't really matter in practice."

"I want you to tell me what you want me to know about being a slayer. I wanna know it all." Danny prompted. "How quick do you heal?"

"I heal...fast," Buffy answered. "Uhm...almost anything minor like bruises, cuts, scrapes within twelve hours. More major...twenty four. When I've broken my nose...it was healed in...like maybe forty eight hours and it never did the nasty black eyes and swelling thing broken noses do. Other things...I've never taken more than a week to heal from anything. And that was sort of a special circumstance. I don't go to the hospital for anything short of massive blood loss and by massive I mean...four to five pints massive. Also if I get shot because they're better at removing bullets and they give me lots of fuzzy pain killers. It takes more alcohol or drugs to knock me out because my constitution is through the roof and then I metabolize it all a lot quicker. Getting drunk is like a challenge."

She mused a moment, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. "I can run about 70 to 80 miles an hour. I sort of tracked myself once on accident. I mean I was chasing down a bus. Uhm...I only need 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night but I can function on 2. Less than that and I start getting run down."

She sighed and took a sip of her beer. "Also, I'm sort of...the leader of the slayers? I was the last one that was made because a girl died. Her name was India. Anyway, that scythe that's under the bed. It was made for a slayer by some powerful women about the same time the first slayer was made. Willow, my best friend, took the scythe and made all the girls that might be slayers, slayers because I needed an army. That sort of made me General Buffy. I'm kind of famous? Or infamous. Something like that. Lots of people hate me for what I did."

She picked up another eggroll and took a bite of it. "A slayer is kind of like a monster's worst nightmare. We're the things Mommy Monsters tell Baby Monsters about to get them to behave. You know...'If you don't get in bed the Slayer is going to come get you..." that kind of thing."

Edited 2008-06-25 18:54 (UTC)

Danny listened carefully, not really absorbing and disecting the information but just taking it all in. "Monsters... meaning vampires and ghosts and stuff?"

"I don't really see many ghosts. There was one once," Buffy said. "Otherwise...yeah. There was a Der Kinderstod once. It's a German version of the boogeyman. They kill little kids. I killed him first. Little kids saved."

"You ever meet a Frankenstein?" It was part serious and part joke. What did he know? But he had to keep it light in his head somehow.

"The Scientist, yeah. The monster, no," Buffy answered with a slight smile. "In high school this genius scientist kid was trying to build the perfect girl. Sunnydale PD, who were not the brightest markers in the box, kept finding bodies with missing key parts. Like feet and hands and legs...you know, parts. The parts were all from freshly dead girls. Frankenstein, the scientist. Anyway...he was just a kid. I found out what he was doing and convinced him that it was psycho. I'm pretty sure he ended up a psycho anyway."

"Yuck. That's..." And his questions stopped there for the moment. He nodded and picked out an eggroll and ate it.

"Hey don't even pretend you don't have yuck in your job," Buffy teased him as she took another bite of her eggroll. "We both have jobs full of ick sometimes."

"But... but you told me one time that it's not a job." Danny countered, lips curling into a small, crooked grin.

Buffy grinned in response and shrugged. "Sounds less cheese-tastic than destiny. The biggest difference really is I can't quit and get a new one if I don't like it."

"But you seem to like it sometimes. I mean... you're a kick ass fighter. I've seen you smile. You like it." Danny observed.

Buffy wrinkled her nose and pondered how much to tell him. She glanced over at him and pulled both knees up to her chest. "Yes. It-" she stopped a second and then continued. "Yes. I love it. I love the fight and I love that moment when I win. I love that look on their face when they realize I'm going to win."

She rested her chin on her knees. "I hate that I can't quit. Just because I don't bruise or break doesn't mean that I don't feel pain. They hit like a wrecking ball and that hurts. I know how to fight through it because if I don't they'll win. It never stops. There's always more of them and it doesn't matter that there are hundreds of slayers all over the world now. I'm the one to get." She was careful not to say the word 'kill' even though it was the one she'd wanted to use in place of get.

She looked over at Danny and shrugged. "I better like it. This is what my life is going to be for the rest of my life."

Danny studied her in silence for a moment. "It sounds... kinda sad."

Buffy half smiled at him and uncurled. She reached out and put her hand on his cheek. "It might be if that was all my life was, but it's not. I have you and I have my day job. I've got Dawn and my friends. I have a good life."

"Do you ever wish... that you didn't have to be a Slayer?" Danny asked, his head tilting slightly into Buffy's palm.

Her thumb trailed over Danny's cheekbone as he leaned into her hand. "Didn't have to be? Sure. I'd love it if evil closed shop and all the monsters stayed in their closets. I could do normal. Really, really normal. Except I'd want to move to Europe and marry you instead of Charlie Sheen," she half joked. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, growing serious again.

"But as long as evil is running around all open for business and monsters are trying to rule the world, I'd rather be a slayer. At least I can do something about it. I don't have to hide under the bed and wait for them to go away. I know I sound all contradictory girl."

"Yeah I can't get behind it... I don't get it. I can't tell whether to be happy or sad for you. And maybe it isn't that cut and dry but I just... I'm havin' problems readin' you when we talk about this. I don't know what... Normally I'm pretty fluent in you but I can't read you about all of this."

Buffy shrugged and reached back to undo her hair. It spilled around her shoulders. "Probably because I'm all over the place about it. It's not cut and dry. Ever. There are days I love being what I am. And then there are bad days. And on those days..."

She bit her bottom lip and looked up at Danny. "On a scale of one to ten, how freaked out are you? Because there's this huge part of me you're missing. And it's going to freak you out but it's kind of the key to understanding this whole...well everything Buffy. It's not really a slayer thing though. It's a Buffy thing with a slayer thing costarring. I don't want to tell you though if you're at the front of the freak out rollercoaster."

Danny considered that a moment. "I'm probably in the seat behind the front seat. How's that?"

"OK." She stood up and started pacing a very short distance on the balcony. She ran a hand back through her hair.

"There was this...hell goddess. She used to rule this hell dimension and she got kicked out for bad fashion sense...or you know being mean to her people. Something. Anyway she ended up here and she wanted to get back. She needed Dawn's blood to do it. There was this whole thing and I kicked the hell goddess' ass but it was too late. One of her twinky dinkies had already cut Dawn up. Just little cuts. Nothing big. Just enough to make her bleed slow and give Glory lots of time."

She had pulled her hair back and was tugging at it. "It opened this portal to Glory's dimension. A hell dimension and Hell started bleeding into our world. That's part of what I do, keep our world from turning to literal hell. The only way to close the portal was Dawn's blood. I could push her over the edge of this tower thing they had her tied to the top of or..."

She stopped and glanced over her shoulder at Danny. "I figured out. My blood is Dawn's blood. It's all the same. It's Summers blood. You still with me, Boyfriend?"

Danny looked up and watched her pacing as she spoke. His look was one of confusion, disbelief, shock, and a hint of 'okay this is real'.

But in midst of her speech, he lit a cigarette. "Hell God. Dawn. Blood. Got it. I'm with you."

She gave him a grateful smile, moved over and crouched down in front of him, careful of the cigarette he was holding. She cupped his face in her hands and leaned in to kiss him. "I love you," she told him quietly before she stood up and started her pacing again.

"Okay," she took a deep breath. "So to close the portal there had to be blood and the blood had to stop flowing which doesn't take a genius to realize dead. Right? So I...kissed Dawnie, told her I loved her I jumped. It was...several hundred feet up but the fall didn't kill me. Going through the portal did." She just kept going because if she stopped now, she was never going to tell him.

"I was dead for nearly five months. In the ground, buried, in a coffin. My best friend Willow thought I was in a hell dimension. She's pretty much the most powerful witch around and she brought me back. Thing is they forgot to dig me up first so I woke up in a coffin, six feet under ground. I busted my way out of the coffin, clawed all the way up through the dirt and I thought I was in Hell because Willow was wrong. I was never in a hell dimension. I was in Heaven and I was warm and safe and loved. I was finished and then...everything in this world is too bright, too cold and too loud. Anyway, that's why I'm claustrophobic." And that's why some days I look like I don't want to be here

She didn't dare look at Danny but near the end of her speech, she had stopped her pacing, hands curling around the balcony railing, eyes fixed on the ground beneath them.

Edited 2008-06-26 04:08 (UTC)

Danny just stared at her. What? "What?" He asked sharply, just as he had sounded to himself in his head. He wasn't sure what else to say. He tried to come up with some eloquent (for him) words to reply to Buffy with. But that was... not happening yet.

Buffy just shrugged a little in response. She didn't really expect eloquent. He was still there and that was enough for now.

"I'm not a zombie and that's why my blood looks so weird," she said after a minute. She sighed and glanced over at Danny. "Can I come...curl up next to you? Or is it weird to touch me now?"

"No, baby... come here." Danny lifted Rocky out of his lap and held out an arm to her. Maybe he didn't have to have words or be okay right now. Buffy didn't seem okay either. "Come on."

As soon as Danny held an arm out to her Buffy almost dove into him. She buried her head in his chest, curling up tight against him. "I was afraid that you either wouldn't believe me or you'd be so grossed out by me that you wouldn't want to touch me."

"Why would I be grossed out by you, Sunshine? Not grossed out." Danny assured her quickly as he held onto her tight.

Buffy shrugged a little. "Because I was dead and now I'm not. Because Heaven didn't want me enough to keep me when Willow wanted me back." It was something she'd never really said to anyone but it was probably her deepest, darkest secret. She was afraid Heaven had kicked her out because she wasn't good enough to stay.

Danny grew quiet, his chest tight with the knowledge. It bothered him. Alot. It was... he couldn't find words. He had no idea how he felt about it except for the shock. "I don't think I'm in the seat behind freakin' out now."

"I'm sorry," Buffy apologized, still curled up with him. "I knew you wouldn't be but I thought you needed to know. Out of all the things that have happened to me...that one is the biggest."

"Yeah... yeah I can see how it would be." He was still holding her. He was trying to force his mind to think things through. But he didn't know what to think.

"It's better now than it used to be," Buffy told him. Mostly she just needed to talk, needed to let him know that she was relatively okay. After all, he seemed to be sticking through it.

"I went through a really bad self destructive period after that. I got better because I sort of had to. Most days I'm fine. I'm happy and I'm happy to be here. The bad days are just really bad because I know what it was like."

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Let's talk about it [RP for stillacrime]

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