who : buffy summers & dean winchester. what : a slayer & a hunter walk into an abandoned building... where : bit on the outskirts of town, for now. when : definitely night time. warnings : HILARITY TO ENSUE.
Some of us fall asleep praying that we’ll wake up as a different person in the morning. That maybe, we’ll be magically put into another life in the middle of the night by some fate-bending fairy Godmother; that this one’s just been a joke. A dream.
A rotting, concrete graveyard lay on the fringes of the strip’s money jails and smut huts, which left the taste of Benson & Hedges and horror in her desert-storm throat, her totally in-need-of-a-condition hair (EW!) and in the upset mascara that couldn’t help itself but to run and flake in specks when she’d called Giles, and no one had answered. In fact, the number didn’t even exist. Neither did Sunnydale. Not even when she’d screamed it’s name like a wager for the devil and slammed the phone against the shuddering booth at least 8 times.
So of abandoned industries, estranged bricks and ditched mechanical rust, she’d wound her way thru thickets and the rustling weather of her breaking heart; searching for answers in the teeth of this haunted mouth and in side-glances thrown at her in the laughing, drunken streets of Las Vegas. Where no wandering eyes had answers, and no wandering cured the questions.
She’d find an answer if it killed her. If she was here, where were all her friends? What if…
The freaky, brown goblin-wood Pan’s labyrinth door had opened all by itself; sighing and croaking like a melancholy frog prince waiting for a wet kiss underneath the judgmental white eyes of the unnaturally bright crescent moon. The baby kitten stars clawed at the midnight blanket of the black sky and tumbled between gray bundles of clouds and trimmed city smoke. It was peaceful outside. And here indoors, every peep and bump made Buffy jumpier and jumpier for battle. It didn’t matter if it was a harmless string of cobweb riding a stray breeze created by the miniature, repressed warmth of her muted breath, or the wincing sounds the floorboards made when her ankle-boots pressed against their spine wrong (“Ugh!” she’d think, rolling her eyes. Way to go with the NOT being sneaky!) – She’d never dealt with something like this before. She’d never felt this alone…
That somehow, all the things we hate about our lives will be replaced with things we love. And that in some way, this new, perfect life, it’ll fill the void that ate at us in the first place. But the truth is, we loathe change. We fear it.
Note to self: bad idea to wear lavender capris. Totally not the best color for trekking over-grown fields full of dirt and bugs she didn’t even want to think about. Not compatible with the oopsie, I’ve been thrust into another alternative reality in which like, nothing and not even me exist. Although it made her feel like Cordelia, she was really mourning the loss of this outfit. But hey, the leather jacket and the black T were still cool? And the watchful, holy mirror of the cross clasped around her neck, which kidnapped any hitchhiking illumination that stuck its thumb up thru these battered halls and broken windows, with a ray of light for an intruder.
The stake, of course, was flat in color against the colorless stream flowing out of the flashlight that swept across corners and bedsprings like a banishing spell.
No matter who we are, how good we’ve got it, how bad we’ve had it, somehow? We know it’s what we deserve. Our lives are only as good as we make them. We take everyone we know for granted, when we want to become someone else.
That’s when she knew someone was behind her. The fist hooked their hard, too hard, cheekbone in a splatter of pain her poor knuckles had never felt the likes of before.
And even if we know we deserve better, or that we can get better if we really tried, something always holds us back…
“OH MY GOD IT HURTS LIKE I JUST PUNCHED SOMEONE.” She’d shouted without thinking, cradling her throbbing hand and hopping around, doing the ouch dance with it. The wooden stake escaped and clunked on concrete.
“OH MY GOD PUNCHING HURTS… OH MY GOD… WHY DOES PUNCHING HURT? Why does punching hurt ME? I'm me!" and she paused, staring down at her opened palms; did the heartlines have answers? "My strength, my super convenient in bad situations chosen one strength... why does it hurt when I punch you?" her eyes narrowed and shot at him; signature nostril flaring was unleashed. She hated whoever this was for hurting her hand!
"You are SO dead in SO many ways right now if you don't answer me!"