PART V
The first thing I became aware of was pain. There was a lot of pain, and I was very aware of it. The second thing was darkness. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn't. I tried to move, but I couldn't. I was about to start to start panicking, which is a pretty good course of action in a position like mine, until I heard a familiar voice.
"No," the voice said. It was Buffy.
"Buffy, it's time to go," this time the voice belonged to Mrs. Summers. "You can come back tomorrow when she's awake. There's nothing you can do for her now."
"Yes there is," Buffy responded, picking up my hand. "I can be here for her."
"Buffy, she's unconscious," Joyce said softly. "She doesn't know you're here."
"She knows," was all Buffy said in response. "I know she does."
"The doctor said you need your rest," Joyce said. She was switching tactics, and it was a valiant effort, it really was. It just wouldn't work. Buffy wouldn't leave.
"Screw the doctors," Buffy responded. "I'm not leaving until she wakes up and kicks me out."
"Buffy…"
"What if she wakes up?" Buffy asked, cutting off whatever her mother was going to say. "Someone has to be here. Someone has to be here for her."
"Her parents are on their way," Joyce responded reasonably.
"But they're not here," Buffy said. "Not yet."
"Buffy," Joyce said her name firmly this time. She was using the mom voice that was usually reserved for medicine time, and grounding. It was the voice that meant business. "I know you care about her, but…"
"You know what?" Buffy asked, her voice wavering a little. "What do you know?" she continued, her voice cracking. "You don't know…about…how much she…you…"she started to say more quietly then trailed off.
There was silence around the room for a few moments and I would have given anything to have known what was going on. I could sense something building in the room, and I wanted to be there, awake, when it all came down.
"I don't know, do I?" Joyce asked finally. Her voice was lower, a whisper almost, but that wasn't what struck me. It was something else, something indefinable in her voice when she asked the question that made it clear that perhaps she didn't understand before, but she did now. "Look at me," she continued. There was silence after that for a moment until Joyce spoke once again. "You're…you're in love with her," she stated, and it was that. A statement, there was no question in her voice. I was actually surprised by this, not that it showed. I didn't usually give the residents of Sunnydale much credit for perceptiveness, and Mrs. Summers had shown that she was proficient in the language of denial before.
"Don't be ridic…" Buffy started to say, but she was interrupted.
"Don't lie to me young lady," Joyce said quietly but firmly. "I'm your mother. You may be a big bad vampire Slayer, but remember I gave birth to you. Despite what you may think I don't have my head buried completely in the sand, and I know this," she continued. "I can see it in your eyes, in your words…in your actions," she continued. I didn't need to be awake to know that she was looking at our linked hands. "You love her."
"Yes," Buffy admitted softly.
"Does she know?" Joyce asked.
"Yes," Buffy responded. They were quiet for a while after that. I'm sure that there was some visual mother/daughter/silent communication thing going on, but I wasn't not sure. I was out of the loop.
"You can stay until her parents arrive…then I'm taking you home," Joyce said finally. "And yes," she added a moment later in response to what I suppose was a silent question posed by Buffy, "this does mean no more sleepovers," then I heard footsteps heading away and the door closing.
"That was a big scary," Buffy said once her mother had left the room. "It's going to be an interesting morning," she continued, stroking my hand a little. "Listen, if you promise to wake up, then I promise you won't have to talk to tomorrow. All you'll have to do is sit there and look pretty, cause I ain't up to doing this solo. Okay? Do we have a deal?" she asked raising my hand to her lips. I knew she wasn't expecting an answer but somehow I managed to squeeze her hand and I felt her smile. I'd be awake, I'd be awake if it killed me.
* * * * * *
"Mom," I said, trying to interrupt the endless flow of words that were streaming out of her mouth. "Mom, they are not, I repeat, not, hoodlums."
"What do you think you were doing running around that place, anyway? It's filthy and covered in things that have tetanus," my mom continued, totally unaware of my protests. "What were you looking for anyway? Old chips to cash in?"
"That, wouldn't make much sense, because to cash in chips there has to be a chip to money cashing place, and while there might have been one back in the day, it was closed down with the casino, which means that there is no cash to money place, which means that even if we did find chips we couldn't have cashed them, and if you can't cash them then there's really no reason to be looking for chips, and since we knew all of this, it wouldn't make much sense for us to be looking for chips," I said completely out of breath by the end of it.
"It's that Bunny," my mother said after a moment obviously choosing to ignore my previous statement. "She's a bad influence on you…"
"Buffy," I corrected. She was always calling Buffy, Bunny or something like that.
"Whatever, it's a ridiculous name either way," mother responded. "I don't approve of you hanging around Fluffy anymore…"
"It's Buffy," I said again. "And…well, you don't have to approve, because she's my friend, not yours. Buffy's a good, strong, brave person, not at all hooligan like," I continued adding the word 'mostly' to the sentence in my head. "As an eighteen year old adult type person, who is old enough to vote and in some states buy nudie magazines, I say Buffy stays," I concluded staring my mother in the eye. She simply stared back at me for a moment before responded.
"It's about time," was all she said when she finally said something.
"About time for what? I just had my medicine and…"
"That you stood up for something you believe in. I would rather it have been on an issue of political importance, but I suppose Muffy will do. I need to go check in with the office now, I'll be back in a bit," she continued before standing up and exiting the room.
I sat there for a while pondering the almost sensitive chat we just had. That and wondering if Buffy was really that hard a name to remember, until there was a knock at the door.
Standing at the door was a bunch of balloons and a bouquet of flowers with a pair of legs attached to them. I didn't need to see the body from the waist up however to know who it was.
"Buffy," I said, smiling.
"Hey," Buffy said, coming into the room. "I was hoping you were awake. I brought you some stuff to complete your stay. You can't be hospitalized without having a room full of flowers and balloons, it breaks some bylaw or something."
"They're beautiful," I said, smelling the flowers.
"Not as beautiful as you," she said, pulling up a chair. "I know, I know, that was sappy and in some countries I would be arrested and shot. But it's true," she insisted in response to the look I gave her. "You still don't believe me, do you?" she asked, taking my hand. "You are beautiful in every way imaginable, and the fact that no one has told you this before should be a capital offense," she said, leaning forward and kissing me on the forehead.
After that she spent a few minutes setting up the balloons, and the flowers before coming back over to sit near me.
"Uh, Will," she started. "Funny story…"
"Does it involve a baker?" I asked.
"Ah, no. No baker," she responded. "You know what's funny though? Parents. 'Cause they're old and stuff, but they kind of give birth to you which leads to a vibing thing, where they know stuff. Even though you didn't tell them. Like when I was six…"
"Buffy?" I asked, interrupting.
"Yeah?"
"Is this about your mom knowing that we're together?"
"No, it's about my mom knowing that we're…wait a second…" Buffy said, clearly confused. "How did you know?"
"It was so strange but last night when you and your mom were talking, I could hear you. I could feel you squeezing my head and everything, but I couldn't say anything or open my eyes. I wanted to but I couldn't," I answered.
"So then you must have heard the bad news," she said smiling a little.
"Yup," I responded. "No more sleepovers."
"You know what this means, don't you? We're going to have to do this the old fashioned way," Buffy said. "But there's good news…Faith says she can get us a discount at her motel," she continued, smiling fully now. I took one of the extra pillows from the bed and hit her over the head with it. "Hey," she protested. "It was either that or the jeep, and those seats are hard to fold away." I simply let my pillow do the talking for me from that point on.
* * * * * *
The day after I was released from the hospital, Buffy and I ended up having 'that talk' with her mother. What I realized was that as much as I had wanted to be awake that night in the hospital, I wanted to back asleep more then. It had been one of the most awkward, terrifying, and just plain disturbing conversations I had ever been a part of in life. I thought that when my parents sat me down to talk about the birds and the bees that would be it, that would be the one talk I would have nightmares about for the rest of my life, but this far surpassed it. Far, far, surpassed it. I mean, this conversation was bad in a worse way because it was no longer the theoretical discussion of sex to be had a latter date, but the actual discussion of sex that had already been had with someone in the room. And it did come down to that because, even though Mrs. Summers had no actual proof we had 'done it', she knew. And we knew she knew. I could recount it all so vividly and I did, even though I really didn't want to, and it went something like this:
I had just arrived at Buffy's house when Giles called and Buffy had go into the kitchen to take the call. Seeing as I was already in the house, I had no other option but to sit down with Mrs. Summers in the family room and chat.
"So," the conversation had started off. "How are you feeling Willow? Well, I hope."
"I'm feeling much better. Thank you for asking," I had responded. Things were going pretty well up to that point. We were in the comfort zone.
"Hot day out isn't it?" Mrs. Summers had asked. We were still playing things safe.
"It's a scorcher," I responded, making a fanning motion with my hand.
"Yeah, it's not so much the heat as the humidity," she had continued.
"That is so true," I had commented, although I really had no idea what the difference was between heat and humidity. As far as I was concerned hot was hot.
I was about to make some other comment about the weather when Buffy returned. She must have sensed the unease in the room because she kind of looked around when she walked in then took a seat next to me on the couch.
"We're going to have 'the talk' aren't we?" she asked no one in particular.
"There's no need to say it like it's coming of the Apocalyptic horsemen," Joyce said calmly. "We're simply opening up a dialogue."
"Dialogue. Right," Buffy had said skeptically. After that there was a few moments of silence that involved all of us looking around the room at everything but each other before Mrs. Summers broke it.
"How long have two been 'seeing' each other?" Joyce asked. All that was missing from the sentence was her raising her hands to the side of her head and making little quotation marks when she said the word seeing. Buffy told me that she and her mother had already talked about things briefly after they had come home from the hospital that night, and that her mother was 'dealing' with the news quite well, but the moment the question was asked I kind of went a little wiggy.
"Well, I suppose it's all subjective to the definition of 'seeing' that you want to use. Because if we're going to use the classic Webster's definition, which might I add is good for all occasions, then we have bee…" I started to say, but mercifully Buffy cut me off.
"Two weeks," Buffy said. "We've been 'seeing' each other for approximately two weeks," she said, actually making the quotation gesture with her hands.
"That's interesting," Joyce had commented. "Lot's of sleepovers in these past two weeks I've noticed," she continued. And things got disturbing from that point on.
In retrospect, I would have to say that Mrs. Summers did in fact take the news that her daughter was dating another girl quite well. I was actually very glad that she knew about Buffy's slaying-not just for the obvious reasons of it being much easier on Buffy not having to lie about her activities-but also because compared to knowledge that her daughter was destined to fight legions of evil demons, the fact that we were dating was a relative non-issue.
* * * * * *
Buffy and I were currently lying under a blanket on the beach just looking up at the stars quietly. It had been a tough few days and we had been going non-stop for all of them. It was starting to catch up with us. Buffy was lying curled up against me with her head resting on my shoulder and one of her legs draped over mine. I looked down at her, intending to ask her some question about Rio, but when I looked down, I saw that she was sleeping and whatever the question I was going to ask her was forgotten. I was absolutely certain that there was no one as beautiful as Buffy, especially when she was asleep. In sleep she looked completely at peace, it was the one place where the demands of her life couldn't hurt her. I was overcome with the urge to kiss her, so I did, gently on the forehead, then I leaned back and continued my contemplation of the stars.
It has been said that the day a child becomes aware of their own mortality is the day that childhood stops. I believe that the day our childhood stops is the day that we stop believing in our dreams, the day we can dream no more, the day we question the validity of love. We all grow up hearing stories of princesses and princes, frogs and swans, and we all transport ourselves into the make believe worlds of these stories, waiting for our prince charming. After years of struggling, denying, running, and living, I began to question whether there was such a thing as the thing called love. For a child who grew up with romanticized ideas of love and all that came along with it, the idea that perhaps it wasn't out there, and even if it was that few people found it, was a crushing epiphany.
As I lay on the blanket, watching her sleep I realized something. I was a very lucky girl. I was one very lucky girl who was loved completely and gave back no less. Our lives weren't perfect, I doubted if there were such a thing, but we were happy, really happy. I some way I suppose it all-life, love-came down to the luck of the draw. You won some hands, lost others, and at the end of the game you hoped you came out on top. Laying there under the stars, I knew that as long as we were together, I was going to walk away from the table a winner.
THE END