strangelyliteral | + appointments

Buffy was on her fifth chai, and a half-finished danish she must have smuggled in now sat on a plate at her elbow. Her head was down. Her expression veiled. The Slayer looked to be at least mostly invested in her journal, flipping pages and scribbling messages and doing anything to avoid glancing at the entrance. Because entrance-glancing looked desperate, and Buffy hated to look desperate. Especially when the other someone involved was a thousand-and-some year old ex-vengeance demon who you've wronged in a pretty serious capacity. Anya might have been powerless, but she was still walking around as though she expected the sky to fall on her head.

It was all very undignified.

For the longest time Anya finds herself pacing in front of the mural that had been erected on a lone wall opposite the building. It hadn't taken much to figure out that the tea shop - Celsius Tear, by the name on the sign - was located on the second floor of the Welcome Center. Which, okay, she had poked in once or twice after arriving out of curiosity, peered at the large maps inside, mostly disappointed with how limited the entire place was.

Eventually she decides that pacing won't get her anywhere - in fact, it only would attract strange looks, and the last thing she needed was one of these goody-goody strangers to poke their head in her business and for her to decide whether or not the mess of a situation was worth explaining or complaining about to them.

Maybe Buffy wasn't even there.

She stops her pacing, taking a few uneasy breaths. Just what was this meeting supposed to do, anyway? One step, two. Eventually she reaches the top, scowling at the door for a few moments before pushing it open.

And there she was. Wonderful. And now Anya was here, framed in the doorway, bright colored halter in contrast to her still dark hair. Not as dark as she had worn it while possessed, but enough. She lets the door close behind her and stands, with her arms folded across her chest.

Perhaps it was the particular way in which the door had just closed. And, as if its sharp note was filled with all the hatred and disappointment Buffy expected to be met with, she suppressed a wince as it sounded across the relatively quiet tea house. Her fingertips touched the lip of her mug, she mourned how lukewarm her tea had become, and she gathered her wits about her as she stood from her chair. She didn't have to look; she simply knew. Anya was here.

Buffy raised a flattened palm, canting it once in an almost-wave. A signal. An invitation. But she didn't look happy about it.

Anya cautiously slides her eyes to the left and right to survey the shop, feigning slight disinterest before quitting the human game and striding forward silently until she's standing two feet away from the Slayer.

"I'm here. Talk now."

Buffy could be equally blunt when she wanted to be: "I wanted to apologize."

"... that's a first."

She doesn't budge in her stance. After all, Buffy hadn't actually apologized yet.

"...Not as first as you might think," she sighed -- but couldn't really explain how this place had changed her. And so: "I am sorry, Anya. I had no right to tell you what I told you. Especially not the way that I told you. It was scummy."

Her voice shook. Clearly, the apology was no easy feat -- and she'd only managed to talk herself into giving Anya one once she'd hashed the situation through with Jack.

"You're sorry." The word felt almost alien to her, strange to hear and strange to repeat on her own tongue. "Sorry...?" She frowns, looking puzzled at first, until it fades to disappointment. "Is that supposed to make me feel better, or you? Because, it's not doing a whole lot for me. Not that it matters, I guess."

"It's not supposed to make anyone feel better," Buffy insisted -- but could already feel the disappointment settling in. "It's just supposed to be the right thing to do."

"You can't take it back, you can't change what happened. It's too late to do the right thing."

Anya could recall a time all too clearly when doing the right thing involved her being impaled on the end of the slayer's sword. And when taking it back meant sacrificing herself - or so she thought - until she watched her oldest friend's life wiped out in front of her. The guilt that followed, thinking that it should still have been her - and then for all of that, she died anyway. What was even the point of living those few months longer?

"It's always been too late for me."

"Anya. You've lived a thousand years. How could anything be too late?"

"For someone who's survived dying twice, you're awfully dense! You know that? You - you just take this life thing for granted!" She waves her arms to emphasize her frustration. "You think that saying sorry is - what. Something you needed? What if I don't accept your sorry?"

"...For granted. Me. Hah. What gives you the right to say anything like that?" She sighed -- audible and bitter.

"When you decided that it was for the best to tell me - in the middle of a bar, in the middle of a crazy situation, that oh, by the way, you have no future."

"I didn't decide anything. It...happened. It happened it was wrong and I was in the wrong -- jeez, Anya. What more do you want from me?"

"Oh, geez, Buffy! If - if you remember, I didn't ask anything of you! You're the one who called me here."

"S-so I could be nice! Do the right thing! We're..." Her voice was raising. Her arms lifting. A public scene was close to being made. "We're the only ones. It's just you and me, y'know. From home. I just thought maybe, considering that fact, we oughta try and get along."

"Because we were doing so well at that before. Look, I'm already one of the last people you wanted to see here, and when I'm gone, I'm - gone? According to you?"

Buffy is not the only one raising her arms. "I mean, what is the point to any of this?"

"You know, there's something to be said for second chances. O-or even third ones. Some of us? We make something of our time here."

"Yes, you give booze to people for free. I know."

Deep down, the lack of monetary system shouldn't have bothered her. She had only gotten used to it because of needing to adjust to being human in the first place - and Xander. "There's nothing to gain by living here. We just wait for our turn to go, and we don't have a choice. Isn't that what you said?"

"That's just the sideline stuff. The little keep-me-from-going-crazy stuff. There's more to here than that -- there's the waiting, sure. But there's the people. And the..."

I'm engaged. She couldn't outright say it, because only know was her capacity not to blurt things aloud deciding to function. "I'm not ashamed to say I've put down roots. I'm rooted. You could be rooted too -- a little. Eventually."

"So what, I'm supposed to just - live here knowing that it's all a joke? That when reality comes back, it will bite back hard? I'd rather be dead than just - live knowing I'm going to lose it all again anyway."

But she doesn't have a choice. "Don't you understand how much that bites?"

"...Maybe we don't all go back to death when we leave her, Anya. But it is a colossal mistake to think we don't all lose something when we go."

In Buffy's case? Four years. Four whole damn years and all the development that brought her to this very tipping point: a day where she would willingly apologize and try and make peace with a nebulous ally like Anya.

For a moment she remains silent, arms crossed. Buffy had made some semblance of a point - she knew, rationally, that if she hadn't known she was going to presumably die, then maybe the life here still would feel fake. It was what made adapting rough to begin with. There was no real niche for her to slip into - nothing new, or exciting, and nothing that filled her with such purpose as being a demon had, as being engaged to Xander had, the shop - all things that she had gained and lost, back home. And even if she was alive on returning home - it wasn't as if she knew what the next step would be for her there, either. She watched others prepare themselves for the battle and had even given herself for it.

And that might not have been so bad, if she hadn't been taken here. A taste of hell before real hell? But it was so different. Everyone was so - friendly. Overly so, even to someone like her.

It just felt wrong.

And what could she do? All she could do was adapt. It was such a joke - that's all that ever was left to do: adapt. With nothing to cling to. Except the Slayer, who was seeming to offer it. In a way. With her want of forgiveness. That she wouldn't get. It wasn't Buffy's fault, true, in the long run: she was the messenger, though, and those never were treated well in the scope of things.

God, what could she even say? Her mouth opens and closes a few times, but her throat is dry. Thick.

"Look, I just ... I just don't know what to do. I mean - I know -- things. I want to live. But I don't ... know how to live, like this. And you just make it all sound so easy. LIke it's a human thing, you know? You just sort of pick up and dig in and ..."

She was so lost.

Buffy laughed. Tired and worn out and old-sounding. Perhaps only now did she start to look her age -- a full twenty-seven years, with added baggage beside. Not a high number even in human terms, but so unbelievably old for a Slayer. She laughed, yes, and she shook her head.

"Nothing about it is easy. I used to think the first six months were the hardest part -- all the shock and change and every new injustice getting into you like lemon juice in a cut. But it's not the first half a year or even full year that gets you; it's a few years in. You start forgetting what your favourite Starbucks drink tastes like. Or what the password was to your voicemail. Or which channel number is your favourite. The little things, 'cause the big things never leave. Before you showed up, I could still see what you looked like -- in my mind, right? But damn me if I can't remember who had the big pop hit the year I left."

She pulled in a tight, shaking breath. "I miss home. But I know I'd miss here, too, if given the chance to remember it. Don't sell this place or yourself short, Anya. If there's anything I have complete faith in, it's your ability to somehow figure out how to swindle the common Lucetian out of their hard-earned somethings."

S U R P R O S E

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