Attacking anyone was the last thing on Buffy's mind. All the stares, the people not so discretely getting out of the way, the feeling of overwhelmed that Kenshin was radiating -- it brought back her own arrival and the feeling like she was under attack by a reality that wasn't right.
She walked briskly, focusing on each person who reacted to the red-clad samurai walking along with her, not letting them blur into a pattern of aversion but seeing them as individual people. Seeing the street, knowing where she was... She'd come a long way since she arrived, and she had a responsibility to Kenshin now, she couldn't get lost in herself.
The silence of their progress was hard for her, though. Talking grounded her in a social reality, and though she occasionally turned and gave Kenshin an encouraging smile or touched his arm to direct him, the silence felt barren.
Buffy turned into an alley, even further from the crowd. There were cars parked here, dumpsters and piles of empty boxes behind a store, but a distinct lack of people. "It's a shortcut," she said in explanation. If he understood, that was good. If not, then at least she'd tried.
They continued along the alley for a while, crossing wider streets occasionally. ("The grocery store is that way," Buffy said at one point, just to say it. Not really expecting 'grocery store' to be understood right now.)
Then they came to a chain link fence stretched across the alley, about eight feet tall. Buffy had forgotten about it; in her own ramblings, she just hopped right over, it didn't even register as an obstacle, but she should have remembered. Why did she keep doing this sort of thing?
She looked at Kenshin a little hoplessly. "Umm, how are you at climbing?" Of course they could backtrack, it wasn't that far to a cross street, but then they'd be back in the crowds...and it wasn't really a very tall fence. She hesitated, then repeated the last word for clarity, with a gesture toward the fence. "Climbing?"