Damsel in Distress, My Ass

I don't believe in panic
I don't believe in fear
I don't believe in prophecies
so don't waste any tears

Sort of a part 2 to this

Her flowers are dead and she’s biting back tears. Her mouth tastes bitter, sour and dry. The sun overhead is blistering. Renee’s body is still lying across the corner of the garden but no one is moving her.

“Don’t touch the body. Don’t disturb the crime scene.”

Giles is absorbed in the books he has scattered across the surface of the table and Danny is setting up crime scene tape.

“You can’t do anything about this one, Boyfriend. Vampire and he’s dust now.”

Danny doesn’t even look up. He just keeps stringing crime scene tape out. Dawn steps across the tape and Danny steers her out of the way back over to where Spike is waiting out in the glaring sun.

“We have to do something, Giles. My garden is dead.”

“There’s nothing to be done, Buffy. It’s the natural order of things. We upset the balance. This is merely the world’s way of setting that balance back.” Giles doesn’t look up from his books as he says this and Buffy slams her hands down on the table in front of him. He doesn’t flinch, merely continues with his research.

“There has to be something we can do!” she screams at the top of her voice.

Angel steps out from the shadows. He has his hands shoved in his pockets and he’s looking at her from beneath his lashes. “One girl in every generation.”

“That’s the way it used to be,” Buffy reminds him.

“No, Buffy. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. The world isn’t going to stop until that’s the way it is.”

“I don’t believe that. I don’t believe in stupid, old, men who decided that girls should die so they could sleep safe in their beds!”

“Safe as houses,” Angel says quietly.

“What does that even mean? Like houses are safe. They fall and they crumble. They let in demons and vampires and people die of brain tumors in houses!” She’s walking toward him now and she realizes he’s so blindingly pale she can scarcely look at him.

Angel shrugs, both shoulders rising in a movement that only he could make graceful. “You can’t save them all, Buffy. You’ll damn the world.”

“And what if I’m tired of saving the world? What if I think the world has damned itself and it deserves to go to Hell while a bunch of little girls deserve to live?” She’s screaming at him and there are tears tracking down her cheeks.

He shakes his head, reaches out to smooth the tears off her skin. “Buffy, you’re the hero in this story. You’re always going to pick the world because that’s who you are. You’re incapable of picking anything or anyone else.”

“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” she screams as her hands go over her ears.

The sky starts to darken and out of the corner of her eye she can see it coming. There isn’t time to think, there isn’t time to make a choice. She can only react with her heart and her soul. It’s coming; it’s closer; it’s creeping toward them and she runs. She runs toward them, hitting Danny full force in the shoulder. His weight hits Dawn, like dominos falling, falling, forever falling but they’re out of the way. They’re in the sun and she’s standing between the garden and the darkness.

Right where she belongs

[Rebuild]

Buffy had been avoiding the therapist. Like the plague. Or you know how she’d avoid him if she knew what the plague was like. In any case, it had finally caught up to her. Giles had insisted, the Watcher’s Council had insisted. Even Willow had meekly suggested that it would be a good idea. With the bombing and everything; which is how she came to be sitting on the couch in the therapist’s office staring at a piece of art on the wall that she was pretty sure was Georgia O’Keefe.

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Half Baked: (Chocolate Fudge Brownies meets Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough) A Crazy Concoction of Chocolate & Vanilla Ice Cream mixed with Fudge Brownies & Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

OK, I'm cookie dough. I'm not done baking. I'm not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I'm gonna turn out to be. I make it through this, and the next thing, and the next thing, and maybe one day I turn around and realize I'm ready. I'm cookies. And then, you know, if I want someone to eat— or enjoy warm, delicious cookie me, then...that's fine. That'll be then. When I'm done.

Okay I’ve come to realize a couple of things since that infamous speech. First of all that Andrew cannot be trusted and he’s a sneaky little rat. Second of all, there is nothing wrong with being cookie dough. So I’m half baked. I’m cookie dough and maybe that’s all I’m ever gonna be. Maybe some people aren’t meant to be finished cookies. They’ve got gooey centers and chewy outsides and they’re just cookie dough. And maybe I’m one of those people. Normally I wouldn’t say I was gooey on the inside, metaphorically I mean. Literally…I’m very gooey but then so is everyone human. Great now I’m thinking of blood cookies.

The point is not gooeyness or crispy outsides or chocolate chip. The point is I’m not finished. Maybe I’m never going to be finished. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life evolving into something else. I’ll always have to deal with the changing and the moodiness and that feeling that I’m not done yet. Maybe it’s part of being a slayer or maybe, just maybe it’s something that everyone goes through and no one ever tells you about. We just walk around thinking everyone is finished except us. It’s a big conspiracy. A cookie dough conspiracy and there’s some evil mastermind orchestrating it all and making certain we’re all off kilter thinking there’s something wrong with us when really there’s something wrong with the whole human race. And maybe it’s not even something wrong with us. Possibly that’s the way PB&J made us because he/she/it/them get their kicks off on watching this whole flawed, screwed up soap opera the way Spike get his kicks watching Passions.

Besides, I don’t have to be cookies. Some people like to eat cookie dough. Shut up, Dawn. I swear to God I’ll hang you by your ankles off the balcony until all the blood rushes to your head and you forget your name.

And God I hate that song but hey! whatever

[Jealousy]

So the green eyed vampire is like my BFF whether I want him to be or not. It’s not like I don’t try to do the whole stakey-stakey thing but it never really works. I can’t help it. I see a woman making eyes at Danny and I start losing my control. It’s this white hot rage that makes me feel like I’m going to have to choke a bitch. Yeah, I did just say those words. No I don’t need medication. I’m perfectly capable of avoiding strangulation. Besides, my boyfriend is a CSI. That leaves like marks and fingerprints and evidence and the last thing I want to do is go to jail because I got jealous and…choked a bitch. Really not the legacy I want to leave behind and I think you have to be married to have conjugal visits. Besides, prison orange is not a good color on me.

Sooooooo jealousy, yeah I’m a victim and when it strikes me, it’s like a bulldozer hitting me right on the chin. You know that spot where a lot of boxers go all glass jaw? Yeah well I don’t have a glass jaw but it’s the same concept. Jealousy hits me and I’m going down. Except with a boxer it’s like one spot. Only I know it’s not. Technically it’s the neck twisting until the body sends overloading warning signs and passes out. Right…anyway the point is I’m jealous. Jealous rage jealous and I know I don’t have any reason to be. Danny is loyal and faithful and trustworthy and everything but jealousy is not a logical little, green eyed vampire. Jealous is like insanity and it just runs amuck. I’m not even sure what the word amuck means but Mom used to use it when Dawnie and I were running wild all over the house. So I’m all amucky with the jealousy and that whole violent girl side of me is threatening to amuck, strangle a girl and land me in prison for like ever.

I know that jealousy is a flaw and I know it probably says a lot about me mentally, emotionally and whatever. It probably means I’ve got daddy issues, abandonment issues, commitment issues, self-worth issues, insecurity issues and self-esteem issues. Whatever, I’m like Vogue, except I kick ass. One jealous Buffy, reporting for therapy.

[Locked from Danny]

[So it might have affected me a little bit]

It was supposed to be a good day, a normal day. Yeah I smashed the alarm clock to bits when I woke up that morning but I was extra cranky. There had been Christian Slater dreamage. Mom was supposed to pick me up after school. We were going to have dinner and then I was going to cheerleading practice. You know, normal day. Only Mom was late, I was left sitting on the school steps, there was this creepy shoe polished car across the street and then some old dude came to tell me I destined to save the world.

I just wanted to be a personal shopper and marry Christian Slater. That is not a destiny. That is a plan. That’s when my whole world went pear shaped. As opposed to round shaped. Life was never the same after that. Patrols and vampires replaced cheerleading and slumber parties. Mom and Dad got divorced and I ended up in a mental institution for a little while. I thought it was going to get better after we moved to Sunnydale. I thought I was getting away from the whole slayer gig. Turned out it was all engineered by the Watcher’s Council, right down to my Mom’s gallery so that the Hellmouth would have a slayer. I thought I could quit. I thought I could go back to that girl I was before. The funny thing is, the monsters were out of the closet and no matter how hard I shoved, I couldn’t get them back in the closet. I AM a slayer. It’s as much a part of me as breathing, bleeding and buying shoes. I have to fight and I have to slay and if I don’t I turn into Bitchy Buffy. I know what’s out there, I know what it will do to the world and the people in it. More importantly, I know I can stop it. Becoming a slayer didn’t just change my life, it changed who I am.