WHO: Andrea Rojas (narrative) WHAT: WHERE: Her room WHEN: December 31st, 8:18 PM STATUS: Closed/Complete Ratings: PG
Andrea had spent most of post-exorcism asleep. Faith was ... she needed to check up on Faith but she had pretty much stayed until Faith and Pike had received medical attention. And after that she had stuck her head into check on Buffy only to be pointed out by the midget Winchester. She would have made much more of a fuss if Buffy hadn't been sleeping and Dean hadn't looked so ... She didn't know the word for it, or if she did she didn't want to think about it because the look had been enough to cause her to swallow a lump in her throat as an aching pain washed over. It was a variation of a look she was familiar with. That rage, the uncertainty. Being so damn lost that you couldn't even figure out if you should step left or if you should go right. Dean's look was because he didn't know how to make things better for Buffy. And one thing was clear about Dean Winchester - that she could sort of relate to even if she didn't like him - was that need to make things better for the people they cared about. In Dean it was near compulsive. It was a surprise he hadn't broken from it yet; a weaker man probably would have. And that was as much of a compliment her tired mind was willing to give Dean.
On her that look had been because she hadn't known where to go post finding out about her mother's death. She hadn't known what to do.
Walking from the med bay Andrea had crawled into bed and she just curled herself around her comforter and just slept. It was that or think about emotions that she wasn't ready to let go. Emotions she never fully moved on from. If at all. Andrea was too stubborn for her own good. She never liked throwing anything away. And while she supported change, deep down she was a creature of habit. Of memories. Warmth, and ... good times? It was hard to let go when there had been so many good times. Hard to let go when they clung so very tightly to her.
It had been her mother. They had killed her mother. The only family she had left. How was she supposed to let go of that? How was she supposed to say good-bye?
It didn't process to her.
She didn't know how.
So she just hadn't. She had become a vigilante not to just help people. Like what seemed to be the way. She had done it also to find her mother's killer. That had been the main reason. The former had just come along in the near aftermath. She had been raised both my her grandmother and her mother to help people, turning her back on the people in her city when they needed help. Just to find her mother's assassin? Wasn't in her. So she had done both.
Even in doing both and killing the man who killed her mother, she hadn't figured out how to say those two words. She'd just piled ... guilt. More anger. Confusion. And some self-disappointment. Okay. A lot. Along with the thought of this was how she honored her mother? By killing someone. Even if she still felt that it was justified.
So she'd come here and made her life. And it was a pretty damn decent one. It was hard and the process was slow but she was making it. And living it.
Still. The feeling as if she was lacking something. Fooling herself. Doing something wrong was still there. There were days where she just wanted to curl up into a ball and just stop trying.
Pushing up from her bed, she padded up to her radio.
Holidays were the hardest. Though something always seemed to happen to keep her from properly focusing on being without her mother. On el Dias De Los Muertos she had been mostly distracted by the body swapping and surprising herself by discovering that she actually cared that Spike had been hurt. She had used both, she was ashamed to admit, as an excuse to avoid doing anything. Even though the truth was she didn't have much of anything to do something with in the first place. Thanksgiving she'd thrown herself completely into the celebration and the day after ... well. The preparation of Christmas had been pretty much the same, completely focus on that. None of her mother. Which lead to hash brownies the day of. Which is one of the reasons she hadn't been half as upset with Spike as she could have been.
Andrea moved around for a bit collecting items before sitting on the floor and staring at it. Staring at what she created.
She fiddled at the tiny picture at the top of the altar. It was the only one of her mother that she had. By some strange luck it'd been scanned onto her computer by Andrea's girl .. ex-girlfriend's camera. She hadn't even printed out until a few days before Christmas.
It was crappy as far as altar's went. And her faith in God was crappy as far as faiths went. But Andrea believed in the dead. She sort of had to. It had been as much of a part of her culture as the sign of the cross and mass on Sundays. The belief in spirits. And even though she highly doubted that her mother's was on this plane. She had to build a meager something. To celebrate the coming New Year.
She had that tiny picture and some of her mother's favorite snackfoods and one of her favorite romance novels. And Sarah McLachlan ... wasn't making it easy for her not to cry. But it'd been one of her mother's favorite songs, and between that and Ice, Ice, Baby .. she'd decided on Sarah.
Grabbing a pillow, Andrea leaned back on her bed, as she wiped back any tears that threatened to leave a trial that would she that she'd been crying. It wasn't something she did often and when she did do it she fought not to. Cathartic? Her ass! It just left her feeling worse. And with a headache on top of it.
Pressing her face into the pillow, Andrea kept an eye on that small pictured and half-listening to the lulling sound of Angel.