Entry tags:
Threads: Insomnia
Threads: Insomnia
Author: AkaiNagi
Rating: PG
Genre: X-over with Stephen King’s Insomnia.
Summary: Buffy returns from Phoenix carrying a curse, one she must face alone. But when she disappears again, will anyone, even her Watcher, keep faith in her?
It all started in Phoenix.
As so many other things in her life had ended, it was beginning. Love, innocence, her very sense of self. She had lost them all. She was not the person she had always thought she was. Would that Buffy have sent the man who loved her through the gate to hell? Stabbing him literally and figuratively in the heart? So came the death of the old Buffy. Born was a new Buffy, tortured by images of her past.
And the nightmares followed hard upon. Variations on a theme; an instant relived over and over. The gaping maw of Hell, with Angel falling into its depths, propelled by Buffy’s own hand. Or, sometimes, the dreams would be of Angelus, torturing her friends and family; visiting pain on them joyfully, gleefully.
In that context, she had not considered the insidious curse of sleeplessness to be a bad thing. During those dark days in Phoenix, day was nearly the same as night to her numbed heart and mind. Her waking hours were filled with nearly as many demons as those hours she spent dreaming.
And none of these demons were the slaying kind.
So when she began waking before the harsh buzz of her bargain-priced alarm clock, she thought nothing of it. She spent the extra few minutes lying in the uncomfortable bed, and staring at the cracked ceiling, imagining the ceiling in her room at home. Wondering if she would ever see it again. Wondering if the day would come when she would feel clean enough to grace the sheets of her own bed again.
By the middle of the summer her 5AM wake-up call had rolled back to 4:30. By the end of July it was nearing 4AM. By the time she turned her eyes back to Sunnydale, the scent of fall beginning to fill the air, she was waking even earlier. The unexpected clash with Phoenix’s baddies had reminded her that she did indeed have a purpose in life, even if her heart still felt hollow, even if the nightmares still filled her rapidly dwindling nights.
***
In the back of his mind, or perhaps the back of his heart, rather, he had always known this day would come.
The day when he would have to acknowledge what his elders and betters on the Watchers Council had always taken as a foregone conclusion.
That Rupert Giles, as Watchers go, was an abject failure.
Sure, he had kept his Slayer alive, the bare minimum requisite for the job. On some days that task had been easier than others. He had done what he thought was his best to train her in the physical sense. He had supported her in the capacity of ‘ walking encyclopedia of badness,’ as Buffy had so glibly termed it He had watched her rise to meet her destiny, he had watched her grow as a slayer.
While he had stagnated. Always assuming that his role was to propel her from behind, rather than walk forward with her hand-in-hand.
A Watcher and Slayer, unbonded, lacking any united front against the darkness. A superficial partnership. But an earthly partnership was not enough to combat the unearthly forces that surrounded them on all sides, like a great gaping maw. The Hellmouth. Waiting for the chance to devour the chosen one and all who walked with her.
It was with a profound sense of irony that he remembered the high-handed way he had lectured to her in the Bronze those two years ago; their acquaintance merely hours old at that point. All that hogwash he had spouted about ‘honing’ her senses to locate vampires. He was one to talk. Two years his slayer, and now that she had disappeared he hadn’t the slightest idea where she was. Whether she yet lived on this earth. She must, he told himself. For to think otherwise made his heart constrict in his chest in a way that was too painful to bear.
He was her Watcher. He should know where his slayer was at all times, so the rules dictated. But he had thrown out the rulebook the day that he met Elizabeth “Buffy” Summers. So much of it didn’t apply to one so advanced in years. Buffy was positively aged for a Slayer. She was strong, independent, willful. Nearly a woman grown. To force a formal bond on her was something he could never bring himself to do. Advisable as it might have been.
And now he wished that he had. He would give anything to know where she was at that moment. To know she was safe and whole. To go to her side, if not to bring her home then simply to be with her. Then perhaps the gaping emptiness in his chest would ease.
A soft knock at the door roused him from his bout of self-loathing. He set down his book next to the now cold cup of tea and rose to answer the door. It was the children, no doubt reporting in after an evening of substitute slaying. He was thinking to himself how blessed he was to have them in Buffy’s absence when his world was suddenly thrown off axis and his heart seemingly stopped in his chest.
He had to remind himself to breathe as he took her in. She appeared to him even more petite than usual. Small and fragile, her face filled with weariness and trepidation. She seemed almost like she might flee if startled. He took her in as Xander blathered on in the background, and as the reality of her set in, a warmth started to fill that part of him that had been so empty these long months. And he said the only thing that he could think of to say. It was far less than he wanted to say, but he tried to inject those few words with all he couldn’t bring himself to convey in speech.
“Welcome home, Buffy.”
As a soft, tremulous smile lit her features, he knew he had succeeded.
TBC …
Author: AkaiNagi
Rating: PG
Genre: X-over with Stephen King’s Insomnia.
Summary: Buffy returns from Phoenix carrying a curse, one she must face alone. But when she disappears again, will anyone, even her Watcher, keep faith in her?
It all started in Phoenix.
As so many other things in her life had ended, it was beginning. Love, innocence, her very sense of self. She had lost them all. She was not the person she had always thought she was. Would that Buffy have sent the man who loved her through the gate to hell? Stabbing him literally and figuratively in the heart? So came the death of the old Buffy. Born was a new Buffy, tortured by images of her past.
And the nightmares followed hard upon. Variations on a theme; an instant relived over and over. The gaping maw of Hell, with Angel falling into its depths, propelled by Buffy’s own hand. Or, sometimes, the dreams would be of Angelus, torturing her friends and family; visiting pain on them joyfully, gleefully.
In that context, she had not considered the insidious curse of sleeplessness to be a bad thing. During those dark days in Phoenix, day was nearly the same as night to her numbed heart and mind. Her waking hours were filled with nearly as many demons as those hours she spent dreaming.
And none of these demons were the slaying kind.
So when she began waking before the harsh buzz of her bargain-priced alarm clock, she thought nothing of it. She spent the extra few minutes lying in the uncomfortable bed, and staring at the cracked ceiling, imagining the ceiling in her room at home. Wondering if she would ever see it again. Wondering if the day would come when she would feel clean enough to grace the sheets of her own bed again.
By the middle of the summer her 5AM wake-up call had rolled back to 4:30. By the end of July it was nearing 4AM. By the time she turned her eyes back to Sunnydale, the scent of fall beginning to fill the air, she was waking even earlier. The unexpected clash with Phoenix’s baddies had reminded her that she did indeed have a purpose in life, even if her heart still felt hollow, even if the nightmares still filled her rapidly dwindling nights.
***
In the back of his mind, or perhaps the back of his heart, rather, he had always known this day would come.
The day when he would have to acknowledge what his elders and betters on the Watchers Council had always taken as a foregone conclusion.
That Rupert Giles, as Watchers go, was an abject failure.
Sure, he had kept his Slayer alive, the bare minimum requisite for the job. On some days that task had been easier than others. He had done what he thought was his best to train her in the physical sense. He had supported her in the capacity of ‘ walking encyclopedia of badness,’ as Buffy had so glibly termed it He had watched her rise to meet her destiny, he had watched her grow as a slayer.
While he had stagnated. Always assuming that his role was to propel her from behind, rather than walk forward with her hand-in-hand.
A Watcher and Slayer, unbonded, lacking any united front against the darkness. A superficial partnership. But an earthly partnership was not enough to combat the unearthly forces that surrounded them on all sides, like a great gaping maw. The Hellmouth. Waiting for the chance to devour the chosen one and all who walked with her.
It was with a profound sense of irony that he remembered the high-handed way he had lectured to her in the Bronze those two years ago; their acquaintance merely hours old at that point. All that hogwash he had spouted about ‘honing’ her senses to locate vampires. He was one to talk. Two years his slayer, and now that she had disappeared he hadn’t the slightest idea where she was. Whether she yet lived on this earth. She must, he told himself. For to think otherwise made his heart constrict in his chest in a way that was too painful to bear.
He was her Watcher. He should know where his slayer was at all times, so the rules dictated. But he had thrown out the rulebook the day that he met Elizabeth “Buffy” Summers. So much of it didn’t apply to one so advanced in years. Buffy was positively aged for a Slayer. She was strong, independent, willful. Nearly a woman grown. To force a formal bond on her was something he could never bring himself to do. Advisable as it might have been.
And now he wished that he had. He would give anything to know where she was at that moment. To know she was safe and whole. To go to her side, if not to bring her home then simply to be with her. Then perhaps the gaping emptiness in his chest would ease.
A soft knock at the door roused him from his bout of self-loathing. He set down his book next to the now cold cup of tea and rose to answer the door. It was the children, no doubt reporting in after an evening of substitute slaying. He was thinking to himself how blessed he was to have them in Buffy’s absence when his world was suddenly thrown off axis and his heart seemingly stopped in his chest.
He had to remind himself to breathe as he took her in. She appeared to him even more petite than usual. Small and fragile, her face filled with weariness and trepidation. She seemed almost like she might flee if startled. He took her in as Xander blathered on in the background, and as the reality of her set in, a warmth started to fill that part of him that had been so empty these long months. And he said the only thing that he could think of to say. It was far less than he wanted to say, but he tried to inject those few words with all he couldn’t bring himself to convey in speech.
“Welcome home, Buffy.”
As a soft, tremulous smile lit her features, he knew he had succeeded.
TBC …