Story: The Bracelet (chapter 12)

Authors: Jessica Knight

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Chapter 12

Title: Part 12: Morning's Light Right From The Heart

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part twelve:
MORNING'S LIGHT RIGHT FROM THE HEART

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1630 Revello Drive, the home of Joyce
Summers, her daughter Buffy Summers, and
their apparently magical cat Aslan (there are
currently two guests in residence also);
It's 6:17 in the morning, the same day;
a time to wake up...

The morning came, as mornings do, and Buffy awoke to the very pleasant feeling of having Amy's body curled up on top of hers, head tucked into her shoulder, and a hand moving in slow circles over her side. "Morning sleepy head." She heard a suspiciously wide awake and cheerful Amy speak softly from her spot using her as a pillow.

"Good morning." An affectionate smile came over Buffy's features as she ran a hand through Amy's curly hair. "You're a wonderful sight to wake up to... Early riser?" She asked, glancing at the clock and seeing that it was just after six twenty? Which was actually a little late for her, to tell the truth. She usually didn't need much sleep unless she'd been really active.

"Not especially." Amy said. "I never went to sleep actually. It was the strangest thing." She said with a little bit of wonder in her voice.

"You mean to say, you've just been laying here with me like this the whole night?" Buffy questioned, a little incredulous.

"Yup, 'fraid so." Amy admitted with a little abashedness. "It was kind of weird at first, but when I got used to it, it was really nice just laying here with you." She said, moving from her comfy spot at last to raise herself up over Buffy so she was looking down into her eyes.

Buffy smiled, meeting Amy's eyes and feeling very drawn into them. It was the first thing in the morning after all, and the logic centers of her brain had yet to fully click into place. She was sure this was a good thing though. "Are you going to kiss me now, or what?" Buffy asked with a little of a playful dare in her voice.

Amy lowered herself down slowly and their lips met, Amy running her hands through Buffy's hair and Buffy running her hands over Amy's back in slow, unhurried motions. As the kissing continued, Buffy wound her hands up over Amy's neck to tangle them up in her hair. By the time they parted at last, Buffy was breathless and feeling really blissful as she stared up at the ceiling. "God, I should wake up like this more often." She breathed.

Amy chuckled. "I could think of a lot worse ideas." She said, trailing a wondering finger around the surface of one of Buffy's breasts.

Buffy turned and looked into Amy's eyes for a moment, running an thoughtful hand over the side of her face. She moved in and started to kiss her again, this time more slowly and deliberately. Amy moaned a little as Buffy trailed down and started to kiss her neck and shoulder blades. "Ooohhh, don't stop..." Amy spoke, her eyes closed, her hands running over Buffy's back and holding her close.

"I won't." Buffy promised her in almost a whisper. "I want you... so much... Amy..." Amy was on her back now, under her, and Buffy had moved her way downwards, trailing longing, ardent kisses over her skin, making her way to the tip of one of Amy's breasts, now stirred to hardening by her attentions. Amy arched her back a little into the touch, holding Buffy's head and softly urging her on with whispered words.

A knock on the door. "Girls? Are you two up yet?" Joyce's voice asked from the hall.

Amy and Buffy both groaned in frustration; Buffy, unable to hold back a little of a giggle at the situation, rolled over onto her back beside her would-be lover. "We're awake, Ms. Summers." Amy called, rolling over to look down into Buffy's eyes with laughing eyes.

"Yeah, thanks so much for asking." Buffy muttered. Cursing the luck that she'd seemingly gotten her early rising tendencies from her mother's side of the family and not her father's.

Joyce was quiet moment and Buffy could just imagine the embarrassed look on her face and she felt guilty for it. "It's just... I've got some tea and coffee on. Some toast and cereal. For breakfast?" Joyce inquired. "I thought, maybe we could talk over breakfast?" Second time she'd said 'breakfast'. [Good job Joyce, why don't you just start rambling about birds and bees while your at it?] Joyce internally berated herself for her apparent lack of loquaciousness this morning.

"We'll be there." Amy said.

"Twenty minutes." Buffy put forth.

"Alright." Joyce said. "I'll see you then girls." And with that she turned and left.

Buffy groaned. "What'm I gone'a tell her." She whined, hiding her head against Amy's chest just below her chin.

"Um, I donknow..." Amy replied. "Tell her about what? About Gwen?" She questioned.

"Among other things. Many, many other things, both dark and scary." Buffy explained it not very well.

"I... see... Like, vampires and stuff?" Amy hazarded. "And how you're all super powered?"

"Among other things." Buffy equivocated. "It's complicated, and I don't want to worry her."

"More than she is now?" Amy asked.

"Oh, much more." Buffy said. "There are whole worlds of worry out there, that she has no idea even exist." Buffy got up and propped herself up on her side next to Amy with one elbow, a hand resting on her chin. Amy rolling over on her side and resting her head on a pillow so their eyes could meet again. "Right now, she probably thinks Gwen is here running from the cops or something. And that she's trying to get her precious troublesome wayward daughter all caught up in a life of crime again. Which is bad, I grant you. But how would saying that Gwen was chased here by demons and helped us fight a gang of blood sucking monster movie rejects help the situation exactly, I ask you?"

"I see your point." Amy had to agree, not seeing an easy solution to the problem.

"Exactly. See, it's just this sort of lose-lose dilemma I face daily." Buffy said woefully. "And that's not the worst of it, believe me." Buffy lay back and let her head fall onto a pillow so she could look up at the ceiling, and Amy followed her over, getting up next to her so she could look down into her eyes.

"I do..." Amy said. "And I wish I could help somehow..." Amy absently played with a lock of Buffy's hair with her fingers as she thought.

"I wish you could to." Buffy agreed, lifting her head up and planting a quick kiss on Amy's lips. "But I don't think this is one even Solemn could solve.... It is a lot better just having you with me though. It helps a lot." Buffy traced a hand over Amy's face and in her hair a little. "You have this way of making me believe anything's possible, you know?" She admitted.

"Well... maybe it is?" Amy said. "It certainly seems to me like it could be anyway." Amy lay her head on Buffy's shoulder and let her mind wonder. "Yesterday morning I would have said: invulnerability bracelets, girls with electricity powers, demons, vampiress... superhero girlfriends, and even just dancing with you at The Bronze in front of everyone like we did? It all would have been impossible to me. Yet here I am, and it all actually was possible after all." Amy got up and looked Buffy in the eyes. "See what I'm saying?" She asked with a quirky smile.

"Yeah..." Buffy agreed with a bemused smile of her own, the new perspective her girlfriend offered having not really occurred to her in longer than she would have liked to admit. "Yeah, I do see what you mean." Buffy ruffled Amy's hair a little with one hand. "I really love you, you know that?"

"Just one more thing I wouldn't have thought possible." Amy said, laying back down on Buffy's shoulder.

"I still don't know what I'm going to say to her." Buffy pointed out logically.

"...Well... How about this. Imagine you were her, and you had you for a daughter. What would you choose? Truth, or fiction?" Amy asked, pondering the choice herself.

Buffy sat there silently for a few moments, trying to imagine what she would want in that situation. If she had a daughter who was a Slayer, and she herself never had been one. "I don't know." Buffy said. "I just don't know." She sounded defeated. "What would you choose?" She turned the question back to Amy, hoping the other girl would have some insight she lacked.

"Umm..." Amy was still trying to deicide that herself. "I guess... I guess I'd probably want to know the truth." She finally concluded.

"But why?" Buffy asked plaintively. "After all you've seen?"

"What I've seen is you saving a girl's life and protecting people from monsters." Amy pointed out. "That's not really such a bad thing, is it?" She asked.

"No, I guess not... but..."

"Listen, I don't pretend to have the answers about this, but... I'd want to know. I'd want to know who my daughter was... even if it came with a price attached. At least... I think I would anyway..." Amy admitted, some doubt in her decision surfacing.

Buffy lay there and pondered this. "You know... I ran away from home once." She said. "To be with Gwen."

"To be with... You were in love with her?" Amy asked.

"I still am I guess." Buffy admitted. "Maybe not in exactly the same way as back then, but yeah, I still love her very much."

Amy was silent for a moment. "What happened?"

"Mom and dad and I, we got in this huge fight about her. They didn't like her, didn't want me to see her anymore. But I had to Amy, they didn't know... Mom said I had to choose. Her or them. I chose her."

"...Where did you go?" Amy asked, still trying to digest this news.

"Gwen had a place. It wasn't that much, but it was nice, and it felt like home. It was home for a while.... I know, things didn't work out in the end. She couldn't even... look at me, anymore... I had to go. And she told me, I should just go back home. Be with my family. So that's what I did... Only, by then, my dad had left my mom. And, she was really broken up over... everything. Loosing him, losing me... I tired to help, to be there for her... I don't know. Sometimes I think it would have been better for her, safer, if I'd just stayed gone. Made a life for myself out there on my own somewhere. I know I could have done it... Amy...?" Buffy looked down and saw that Amy was crying. "Amy, I'm sorry. Don't cry, please don't cry..." Buffy almost pleaded in a soft imploring voice, her emotions brimming too close to the surface. Those tears were for her.

"M'sorry..." Amy said. "I'll stop.... Buffy, you're an awesome person. Maybe the best one ever..." She looked up at Buffy. "You didn't do anything wrong." She said. "I don't know everything, or how things will turn out, but I do know... that your mom would be really proud of you. She'd have to be." Amy hugged Buffy close to her and hid her head against Buffy's skin for s few moments.

"You really think so?" Buffy wondered at the idea. Would her mom really take things that well?

"Well, either that or she'd freak out and throw a fit." Amy admitted, in all honesty.

"That's what I thought." Buffy had to agree, rubbing the bridge of her nose, the answer still not coming to her.

"Buffy, why... Why couldn't Gwen look at you?" Amy asked.

"Huh?" That came out of nowhere.

"You said, she couldn't even look at you anymore. Why? What happened?" Amy asked, not being able to help but want to know that at least.

"Oh, that... It was, because I died... because I was stupid and I forgot... Just once. One stupid mistake..." Buffy admitted, beating herself up over it all over again.

"You died?!" Amy got up and looked down at her with a concerned look on her face.

"It was stupid..." Buffy looked away. "We'd just gotten back from a night out on the town. We'd had a great dinner at this nice restaurant in midtown, and taken on this nest of vampires we'd heard about living in an old textiles factory that was within walking distance of a new residential development out on the outskirts of town. The place used to be all factories. We'd totally kicked butt, those guys were complete losers. It was almost funny. We were laughing and talking about our night when we got home... I was so happy... But then... Well, Gwen took off her insulation gear as soon as she got inside... She'd gotten that comfortable around me, she didn't even worry about it anymore... I made a joke about this big guy in the vampire gang, he'd fallen into this... anyway, Gwen tripped over a pair of jeans I'd left on the floor for some reason... She was falling, I caught her. Didn't even think. We fell onto the floor together, I still remember her looking down at me with these wide, panicky eyes, like she couldn't believe what just happened for a moment, you know? She was shouting something at me not go... and everything went black, and I died. But then a minute later I was back, and Gwen could hardly look at me. She had tears in her eyes and she shut herself in the bedroom and wouldn't come out..."

"What... what happened? How'd you not die?" Amy asked, feeling the sadness in the memory almost like it was hers.

"She jumpstarted my heart again. Like those paddle things you see on TV?" Buffy explained. "It was never the same after that though. Gwen just seemed to close off... We tired, but Gwen just got so jumpy around me. I tried to tell her it was okay, that I'd just have to learn to be more careful. It didn't do any good though... I could tell I was just making it worse staying. So... I left..."

"I'm so sorry..." Amy said.

"Yeah... So was I..." Buffy remembered.

Amy just held her like that for a while, comforting her.

"And now we really do have to get out of bed, or my mom's gone'a be up here again telling me to get my lazy ass out of bed." Buffy joked. But as her girlfriend got up and out of bed, Amy could tell that those emotions were still pretty raw and she was maybe withdrawing a little to avoid them.

"Right." Amy said. "Can't let the toast get cold, can we?"

"No, we wouldn't want that." Buffy gave Amy a grateful smile as she went and put on some underwear "And thanks... For listing to me." Buffy said.

"That's what girlfriends are for." Amy said. "Well, among other things." She pondered with a little of a flirtatious smile sent Buffy's way.

"And just what other things did you have in mind for me?" Buffy asked. Tugging on some jeans.

Amy went over and hugged her from behind, whispering in her ear. "Oh, you know what they are. You've had more experience with them than me. You're my first girlfriend after all."

Buffy laughed and turned around to kiss Amy.

"See, I knew you would figure it out." Amy said with an affectionate smile. "So..." Amy said, backing up and sitting on the edge of the bed to let Buffy put on a shirt. "Do you know what we're going to tell her?" She asked, tugging on a shirt of her own that she'd borrowed from Buffy. Luckily they were about the same size. And she'd left her school stuff here last night anyway, so she was all set. [If only I really did live here with her...] Amy thought sadly of having to go back to her own house tomorrow night and face her mother again. Lord only knew how she'd react to her daughter staying out all night without her permission. Although, after what she'd faced last night, her mom somehow didn't seem nearly as intimidating as she had before.

"I don't know... I can't really think of a good lie this time... So maybe I'll just have to try the truth for once." Buffy finally said. "Or at least small doses of the truth." She qualified. "What do you think?"

"Sounds o'kay to me..." Amy said. "I've got your back, whatever you decide." She pledged, giving Buffy another affectionate look.

"Thanks..." Buffy said, going over to stand in front of Amy and take her hands, helping her up off the bed and then looking into her eyes for a moment. "Kiss for luck?" She asked.

"Yeah." Amy said, moving in the few inches that separated them and delivering a tender kiss that soon turned deeper.

"We should go check on Gwen before we go down though." Buffy remembered as they parted.

"O'kay." Amy said happily. "You really think she's going to be o'kay in just a day after all that?" She asked, having found it hard to imagine.

"Probably mostly." Buffy said as they went to the door. "Maybe two days. I don't know."

"What about that vampire in the cave?" Amy asked. "The one Gwen said had a soul?"

"Oh, that's right. I'd forgot about him..." Buffy admitted. "Oh well, we can check on him after school or something... He's probably already gotten loose anyway. I can't imagine those chains would hold a vampire who really wanted out of them for too long..."

"Then why didn't he do that when he was captured?" Amy asked as they got to Gwen's room.

"Because the other vampires would have been there to stop him." She pointed out. "Of course I could be wrong. The chains could be stronger than they looked."

"You have a lot of experience with chains?" Amy asked skeptically.

"Ew! Amy, gross!" Buffy protested. "God no."

"Well, that's a relief." Amy said. "I was beginning to wonder." They went into the room.

"Yeah, well don't." Buffy said, keeping her good humor about the whole thing.

"Hey guys." They heard a sleepy voice from the bed. "What time'isit?" The light from the hallway and the dim glow of the morning sun just having risen behind the curtains in the room the only sources of light.

"Somewhere around six thirty I think." Buffy said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, noticing that Aslan had chosen to spend the night on the chair in the corner of the room. The cat, having perked up at their arrival, moved to jump over onto the bed next to Gwen, noticeably keeping a careful distance. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, about like you'd expect." Gwen said tiredly. "What was that you were saying about Angel?" She asked.

"Her hearing's about as good as mine." Buffy told Amy, a little distractedly as she scratched Aslan's head with care, looking into her cat's eyes.

Amy nodded. "We were planning to go check on him later." She explained.

"Oh, o'kay. That's good then." Gwen said, still kind'a sleepy.

"Are you hungry?" Amy asked, sitting closer to Gwen and attentively moving a few strands of her hair out of her face.

Gwen reached a hand up and cradled Amy's hand to her cheek. "God, that feels so nice..." Gwen sighed. "Yeah." She said, self-consciously letting go of Amy's hand. "Some breakfast would be really nice." She said, looking at Buffy who was looking at them with a little of a wistful look. "I just need to rest some more..." Gwen said.

"O'kay" Amy said.

"We'll bring you up some stuff to eat a little later." Buffy said, her voice full of care. She hadn't realized lately just how much she'd missed having Gwen around. Even during the fighting and stuff last night, it had just been so nice to hear her voice again. To have her there. Despite the trouble it might cause, she hoped the girl she still loved would stay in town once all was said and done.

"I'll be right here." Gwen said with just a touch of humor in her voice. "...How's your mom taking having me around?" She asked self-consciously.

"Um, well... She's not very happy about it... As you might imagine." Buffy admitted.

"Well, I am the girl who led her daughter into a life of sin. You can't really blame her, can you?" Gwen said with a dose of wry honestly.

"No, I guess you can't at that." Buffy teased her back. "I'm going to tell her the truth Gwen." She said in all seriousness. "You need to stay with us for a while... and she needs to understand why..." Buffy said, now feeling a lot better about her decision to be honest with her mother.

"Buffy... If it's just for me..." Gwen said.

"It mostly is, but I'm telling her and that's all there is to it." Buffy said, her confidence and belief in Gwen showing through in her words.

"I... thanks..." Gwen said. "I don't know if I deserve it, but..."

"Of course you do." Amy put in.

"Amy..." Gwen looked at her. "You shouldn't be so sure of that..."

"Well I am, and so is Buffy." Amy said.

"She's right you know." Buffy agreed.

"Buffy... you know..."

"Look, we'll talk more later. If we don't go downstairs and have toast soon. My mom's gone'a send up a search party. O'kay?" Buffy asked.

"Yeah, o'kay" Gwen smiled at them.

Amy gave Gwen a hug and then they left the room to go downstairs and meet their fate.

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to be continued in part thirteen...
IT'S ONLY THE TRUTH WHEN YOU TELL IT WITH FORKS

see you next time!

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