second stake.

[slayerpreferred.livejournal.com]

[Buffy is sitting on an unweildy tower, looking out over the edge. This is where she died, and where Dawn almost had. It's a cloudy day and she wishes the rain would just fall and get it over with instead of taunting her with its heavy cumulus. She knows, logically, she could probably make the Sun come out, or even make the rain come, if it was what she wanted-- but she's sick of being in control. She wants the world back with its unpredictable and even sometimes cruel ways. She wants the real Earth beneath her and the real sky over her and all the messed up stuff in between. She wants to feel love and hate and trust and hurt. She wants her life back.

But she doesn't, all the same. Spike, her mom's death, Dawn.... So many things held a giant question mark, and things were good here. Great, even. She could be with Angel without fear, and she had made friends she could visit whenever she wanted. The only question she had left at the end of her long think-y process was simply, Was it more selfish to stay, or to go?]

Just go away. Get your own tower of feel-bad. [she murmurs when you approach, curling around herself.]

Comments

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

[But she likes this one. Or rather, it goes against her grain to see loneliness. And though she doesn't know it yet herself, she understands what's brought Buffy here.

So what she's about to say is far too personal to herself, but the words come out anyway.]

Is there someone who wants to be alone in one?

[slayerpreferred.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Me. [Hmph :| ]

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

[Ami is not so good at persistence in this sort of thing, or in having these awkward gestures that take so much effort to try, rejected. For a moment, she stands still.

Then she shrugs it off.]

I'll go then.

[And she turns away.]

[slayerpreferred.livejournal.com]

... [Goddammit.] No, wait.

Come sit.

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

[There's a pause. With the first flush of irritated embarrassment gone, of course she understands why Buffy might want privacy. And yet she doesn't quite want to leave, either, though she'd been willing to.

The latter wins out, and Ami settles back down beside Buffy.]

I'll stay. What brought you up here?

[slayerpreferred.livejournal.com]

Thinking about... thoughts. [she finishes lamely, unable to take her gaze away from the ledge.]

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

[The tower is a definite improvement over the city rooftops Ami used to escape to as Mercury, always chasing the endless same questions with no answers.]

I don't have a penny. [Someone has brushed up on English slang. Or perhaps it's the dream giving her more than textbook-perfect fluency.]

How about a hundred yen?

[slayerpreferred.livejournal.com]

How about it? [She lifts her eyebrows, playing dumb was a pasttime.] I mean-- What. What about it?

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

Instead of a penny. For your thoughts.

[slayerpreferred.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure my thoughts are worth a penny, let alone a hundred whole yen.

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

I'll refuse to pay in the end if they're not.

[slayerpreferred.livejournal.com]

.. Thanks.

[waterfell.livejournal.com]

[You mean it's not nice to tease someone when they're down? Who knew.]

So let me be the judge of what's worth it.