Title: A Faithless Rhapsody
Author: Jane McCartney
Disclaimer: Do I look like a genius? Perhaps (Cough! Cough! Ahem) but not a god, eh? Of course Buffy's characters aren't mine, but Joss'. Though I'm still inclined to believe that the man made a diabolical pact and sold his soul to the Devil, to get them first. Damn!
Classification: A Buffyverse three chapter fanfic, from Buffy's POV.
Rating: PG13
Feedback: If I could, I'd marry all that give it. As Spike would say, 'nuff said.
E-mail: janemccartney@bol.com.br
Distribution: Anywhere, I don't mind, just credit me and inform me where it's at.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to everyone who made this what it is today. And, of course, a big special thanks to Theo - with the English grammar and all the required adaptations. Once again, he's saving my butt in this project.
Author's Note: It's a different kind of fiction, with a different proposition, I guess. Deals with Buffy-Xander friendship and, as a good old Beatlemaniac, there'll be three of their songs following each of the three chapters. Buffy's POV. Well, be nice with me. Uh, pleeease? Remember, even when Theo was a big help helping me with the English, he couldn't change the whole fic, and English isn't my native language.
Summary: Buffy's silent cries to feel are getting her deeper and deeper into a powerful web of lies and isolation, from which she may not be able to get out later. Who will catch her when she falls?
***
Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better
Hey Jude, don't be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better
~~~~~~
They've been talking a lot during these past few weeks. My friends, that is. Talking about me.
Buffy's not OK, Buffy's sad, Buffy needs to talk.
Buffy's this, Buffy's that.
BuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffy...
I haven't really noticed how funny my name sounds, till now.
And sometimes, it makes me wanna scream.
Well, I'm Buffy and I'm OK. I'm not sad. I don't need to talk.
First off, I'd have to be able to *feel* anything to deal with that little matter.
I loved my friends with all my heart, really. Dawn and them are everything I've got in the world now, they're my family â€" they've always been that.
They're my link with this world â€" they're that tiny, shy spark of hopeful dreams, which I dared to have once in a while. The one important thing that used to make me choose between the two attractive sides of the line and its tricky directions, mistakes and regrets â€" 'cause there's two ways, two roads for Buffy Anne Summers.
Behind door number 1, this so-called life â€" come closer, little Slayer, and take a look at the unchangeable splendor of feeling the air plunging into your lungs, while watching the magnificent beauty of the sunrise softly burning your skin, embraced in the arms of the one you love so passionately.
I loved Angel, and he was a vampire. He doesn't breathe, and isn't able to feel the dazzling majesty of a warm, comforting sunrise. He's dead.
Is he lucky? Perhaps not, in his case. He isn't dead like in my way of having been dead, to be sure. He's undead, cold.
Angel's cursed â€" he's living death.
What his soul yearns for, his inner demon rejects with all its might.
And what his dark nature desires, his soul needs to bleed to stop it.
Buffy don't wanna be a dead soul. I don't want that.
I want to feel the air plunging into my lungs while watching the magnificent beauty of the sunrise softly burning my skin, embraced in the arms of the one I love so passionately.
But Buffy doesn't love anymore, does she?
After all, doesn't love conquer a person who's actually capable of feeling something? So I'm just the wrong girl for that, I guess.
'Cause I'm Buffy. I don't feel. And that's my newest spiel.
Moreover, that's what'll probably be carved onto my new tombstone. Or my coffin â€" one that isn't located six feet underground, but somewhere worse. A cold, gilded tomb in which your coffin's your life, as you watch everything and everyone at the same time, and never be truly part of things.
Sometimes I dream about that imminent upcoming day, with all the strength I have left. But other times I just know I'll be punished, that that's my impending destiny.
Loneliness. Suffering. Despair. Coldness.
A blank portrait. The blankest.
~~~~~~
And any time you feel the pain
Hey Jude, refrain, don't carry the world upon your shoulder
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder
~~~~~~
I'll end up being that scary, wrinkled old lady who lives inside the creepy mansion that not even the bravest children of the neighborhood dares to pass in front of; without friends, and love, and feelings.
Alone, and living death. For a very long time, I'm sure. The longest.
A living corpse, that's what I'll be.
Then we have door number 2 and its hidden challenge â€" death and all its sweet, dark mysteries to be discovered in the ultimate, unpredictable road every human soul has to take.
The provoking temptation of the unknown, the urge for the final, deserved rest; the storm, and the calmness, their playful and attractive twang in death's matching dance, a warm hall for the dazed contradictions and uncertainty offered from life.
They could even have a freaking jingle to go with it, don't you think?
'Cause, in the end, life's a show, and we all play our part... well, you know what I mean. It's all just a game.
Will Buffy win? Will Buffy lose? Will Buffy be forever an outcast and mere observer?
If I'm Buffy and I don't know the answer, well â€" we can call Houston now, 'cause we *really* have a problem here.
Buffy doesn't know which way she should go. But doesn't Buffy need to know that? Isn't Buffy supposed to know the answer for everything?
Isn't Buffy a superhero, after all?
Well, but I'm Buffy and I'm lost. And I'm not wearing any blue costume with red underwear on the outside, no way; I don't care if I'll have a flying cape and-
Uh, flying cape?
Could I choose the cape's color? 'Cause I've been hearing that blue's definitely next season's in thing, and Mom used to keep a old piece of blue silk in her desk that'd be just perfect for a...
No, wait. Mom's dead.
And I'm not.
And I don't wanna be a superhero anymore, either. I don't think my friends understand that.
I know they've been judging me. Or feeling pity â€" and sometimes I hate it so much that it feels so hard just to breathe, and then I think I'm going to die suffocating.
And then, in a sudden cruelty, the breath comes easily and the panting ceases. There was that brief, short instant, in which I'd felt relief â€" I'd thought this was all going to come to an end, that I'd finally die.
I was wrong. I'm wrong, and not just in the surface-y physical way. And I'll be wrong. Over and over and over.
Forever.
And they feel sorry for me.
Even knowing I'm someone who deserves it, I still totally and utterly hate it.
Is Buffy sad? Why's Buffy sad? Please Buffy, don't be sad! Talk to us! We'll understand you, we'll understand how it feels to be abruptly taken away from the one place where you finally felt completely safe and whole, in your entire goddamn life! Buffy, don't cry!
Oh no, Buffy don't cry anymore. Buffy, don't feel. People who don't feel usually don't have tears to be wept on her best friend's shoulders.
BuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffy...
I'm starting to get real sick of that name.
~~~~~~
Hey Jude, don't let me down
You have found her now go and get her
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better
~~~~~~
You know what I hate the most? My friends.
No, no, don't misunderstand me. It's not like that.
Yes, I love them. A helluva lot. Or at least I would, if I were capable of love now anyhow. But I know it'd be them I'd love first off, if I ever win back the capacity of being able to love.
And I don't blame them, not really. I know I'd have done the same thing they did if Dawn, Xander, Willow, Giles, or any of them had had the slightest possibility of spending his or her eternity in the middle of pain and despair, in some demon hell dimension.
And that's exactly what I hate the most about my friends â€" how I can't hate them. Even knowing I can't feel at all, I can't even despise them.
And God knows I try. Yes; I, Buffy Anne Summers, the glorious heroine of the Hellmouth's helpless crowd, had desired one hopeless day that I could despise my own beloved, true friends.
Actually, it had been more than just one day.
Shame on you, Buffy.
See, I wanted to feel â€" at any cost. It's not like this is something that I'm proud of, but I'm just being honest here. Nevertheless, I'd be a rookie in the art of feeling again, and I couldn't let myself go lusting after the highest emotions, right?
So I just wanted to appeal to the lower choices; to be, I don't know, mad, angry, sad...
Something. Anything. Anyone.
But I'm Zombie Buffy now.
I don't know what to do.
I know I came back wrong. I just know.
And Spike was there for me.
~~~~~~
So let it out and let it in
Hey Jude, begin, you're waiting for someone to perform with
And don't you know that it's just you
Hey Jude, you'll do
The movement you need is on your shoulder
~~~~~~
The truth is, he was the one thing that wasn't completely aimless in that crazy, painful and anguished journey for the priceless art of feeling that I've gotten myself into, ever since I'd been brought back from the silence and calmness.
After all, Spike's a vampire, you know? He's just like me, dead in the not- being-dead sense.
Or something like that, I'm not sure. I'm a little confused sometimes.
And we'd talk, share, exchange... and we kissed.
Buffy. And. Spike. Kissed.
Saliva. Lips. Cold. Tongue. Kiss.
It happened after the musical day's fiasco; it wasn't exactly as if anyone was entirely focused and thinking straight, after all. But I don't regret it at all, actually.
I knew I had to do it, I knew I had to give myself that chance, that risk, that experience... and I didn't feel wrong â€" very much to my own big surprise, may I add.
Through I kept not feeling anything yet.
Life certainly has its odd paths to be taken and reins to be guided, during the unanticipated turn of the hourglass. But if someone had ever told me that I'd be kissing Spike a few years ago â€" boy, that'd have been a full day of laughing with Willow and Xander, while we watched TV and ate Twinkies.
But things changed, though. We grew up. I died. And I don't laugh anymore.
I kill. I slay. I breathe. I eat. I even crap.
I'm a primal animal.
I'm Zombie Buffy.
And I'm dead inside.
I even tried to fake amnesia, you know? If Willow's frustrated and dangerous attempt to make me forget about my days in Paradise didn't quite succeed... well, I'd decided then to give it a shot on my own.
It was something really stupid, but I'm Buffy. I do that all the time.
And I'm desperate.
After all, everybody would've been happier then, wouldn't they? Well, I wouldn't, but I don't care â€" I don't feel and I don't get happy, anyway.
So, I made up a really lame story about a four-armed demon with an ancient Greek weapon Giles had once told me about, during one of his unceasingly boring Watcher's kind of seminars; an attack which in my case had turned out to be pretty effective, in the end.
The weapon had had the exclusive power to blank a certain portion of the person's previous month's memory, in order to destroy the enemy in his utterly confused state of mind at that moment â€" and it could only snuff out a certain feeling from its target.
And I said, then, that my fear was gone. That it'd been that particular eradicated memory â€" my fear of feeling. Ironic, huh?
It doesn't matter, it didn't seem to bother me at the time. And I said to my friends that I've felt again, and I wasn't scared anymore. I wanted to live.
As previously said, a lame story. I think I've got a good imagination, you know? Did I ever tell you how I always used to invent horror stories to Dawn when we were kids, and she wouldn't be able to sleep without Mom by her side, sometimes for entire weeks?
See, there was never such a weapon. And I was already regretting putting Giles' name into the middle of this â€" since once my former Watcher would've been told about the Slayer situation, he'd have told them all the truth.
Because he'd never talked about such a weapon with me on account of, naturally, it didn't exist.
But when Willow told him the latest and startling news in a very expensive call to England directly from the Hellmouth, all that the middle-aged Tweed Guy did was tell the red-haired Wicca that he didn't quite recall this weapon, much to his own shame. But he was truly cheerful for me, and that he'd catch the first plane back to Sunnydale as fast as he could.
My friends believed it, basically 'cause they wanted to. They needed to. They still do.
Their blindness is what keeps them going on, and sometimes I envy them so strongly that I think I'll literally explode.
And I remember that, in the innocent past, I'd snap out a colossal 'ewww' at that statement.
And I remember then that there is no innocence left anymore, and I crash.
I go patrol and I kill a demon.
And I keep carrying on. As always.
~~~~~~
Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her under your skin
Then you'll begin to make it better
~~~~~~
Great job, Buffy. They're all happy now; they're good, the good old you has come back for them.
They'll not ask you anymore why you're sad, or why aren't you OK, or why do you keep insisting on refusing to talk to us? All you need to do now is keep up a big smile at all times, and wear your polished mask of a faker who's capable of feeling.
Willow's wide, radiant smile is one of pure joy, and for the first time in my entire life, I can't stand looking at her straight in the face.
All of them are smiling. I wanna hate them now; I also want to smile, as I can barely stand their goofy, joyful blindness. Their Buffy's back.
But I'm still here. Wasn't I supposed to stay dead? Doesn't God want me? Was I a bad girl?
Doesn't Buffy deserve Heaven too?
Or did the chance for eternal bliss just have a use-by date, and my time was past?
***
Hey, all you guys! It's Jane, what's up? Uh, I was really insecure with that fic, hell, *I'm* really insecure with 'A Faithless Rhapsody' - so be kind and nice, please? And send your reviews, I've a love affair with them!
Author: Jane McCartney
Disclaimer: Do I look like a genius? Perhaps (Cough! Cough! Ahem) but not a god, eh? Of course Buffy's characters aren't mine, but Joss'. Though I'm still inclined to believe that the man made a diabolical pact and sold his soul to the Devil, to get them first. Damn!
Classification: A Buffyverse three chapter fanfic, from Buffy's POV.
Rating: PG13
Feedback: If I could, I'd marry all that give it. As Spike would say, 'nuff said.
E-mail: janemccartney@bol.com.br
Distribution: Anywhere, I don't mind, just credit me and inform me where it's at.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to everyone who made this what it is today. And, of course, a big special thanks to Theo - with the English grammar and all the required adaptations. Once again, he's saving my butt in this project.
Author's Note: It's a different kind of fiction, with a different proposition, I guess. Deals with Buffy-Xander friendship and, as a good old Beatlemaniac, there'll be three of their songs following each of the three chapters. Buffy's POV. Well, be nice with me. Uh, pleeease? Remember, even when Theo was a big help helping me with the English, he couldn't change the whole fic, and English isn't my native language.
Summary: Buffy's silent cries to feel are getting her deeper and deeper into a powerful web of lies and isolation, from which she may not be able to get out later. Who will catch her when she falls?
***
Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better
Hey Jude, don't be afraid
You were made to go out and get her
The minute you let her under your skin
Then you begin to make it better
~~~~~~
They've been talking a lot during these past few weeks. My friends, that is. Talking about me.
Buffy's not OK, Buffy's sad, Buffy needs to talk.
Buffy's this, Buffy's that.
BuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffy...
I haven't really noticed how funny my name sounds, till now.
And sometimes, it makes me wanna scream.
Well, I'm Buffy and I'm OK. I'm not sad. I don't need to talk.
First off, I'd have to be able to *feel* anything to deal with that little matter.
I loved my friends with all my heart, really. Dawn and them are everything I've got in the world now, they're my family â€" they've always been that.
They're my link with this world â€" they're that tiny, shy spark of hopeful dreams, which I dared to have once in a while. The one important thing that used to make me choose between the two attractive sides of the line and its tricky directions, mistakes and regrets â€" 'cause there's two ways, two roads for Buffy Anne Summers.
Behind door number 1, this so-called life â€" come closer, little Slayer, and take a look at the unchangeable splendor of feeling the air plunging into your lungs, while watching the magnificent beauty of the sunrise softly burning your skin, embraced in the arms of the one you love so passionately.
I loved Angel, and he was a vampire. He doesn't breathe, and isn't able to feel the dazzling majesty of a warm, comforting sunrise. He's dead.
Is he lucky? Perhaps not, in his case. He isn't dead like in my way of having been dead, to be sure. He's undead, cold.
Angel's cursed â€" he's living death.
What his soul yearns for, his inner demon rejects with all its might.
And what his dark nature desires, his soul needs to bleed to stop it.
Buffy don't wanna be a dead soul. I don't want that.
I want to feel the air plunging into my lungs while watching the magnificent beauty of the sunrise softly burning my skin, embraced in the arms of the one I love so passionately.
But Buffy doesn't love anymore, does she?
After all, doesn't love conquer a person who's actually capable of feeling something? So I'm just the wrong girl for that, I guess.
'Cause I'm Buffy. I don't feel. And that's my newest spiel.
Moreover, that's what'll probably be carved onto my new tombstone. Or my coffin â€" one that isn't located six feet underground, but somewhere worse. A cold, gilded tomb in which your coffin's your life, as you watch everything and everyone at the same time, and never be truly part of things.
Sometimes I dream about that imminent upcoming day, with all the strength I have left. But other times I just know I'll be punished, that that's my impending destiny.
Loneliness. Suffering. Despair. Coldness.
A blank portrait. The blankest.
~~~~~~
And any time you feel the pain
Hey Jude, refrain, don't carry the world upon your shoulder
For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder
~~~~~~
I'll end up being that scary, wrinkled old lady who lives inside the creepy mansion that not even the bravest children of the neighborhood dares to pass in front of; without friends, and love, and feelings.
Alone, and living death. For a very long time, I'm sure. The longest.
A living corpse, that's what I'll be.
Then we have door number 2 and its hidden challenge â€" death and all its sweet, dark mysteries to be discovered in the ultimate, unpredictable road every human soul has to take.
The provoking temptation of the unknown, the urge for the final, deserved rest; the storm, and the calmness, their playful and attractive twang in death's matching dance, a warm hall for the dazed contradictions and uncertainty offered from life.
They could even have a freaking jingle to go with it, don't you think?
'Cause, in the end, life's a show, and we all play our part... well, you know what I mean. It's all just a game.
Will Buffy win? Will Buffy lose? Will Buffy be forever an outcast and mere observer?
If I'm Buffy and I don't know the answer, well â€" we can call Houston now, 'cause we *really* have a problem here.
Buffy doesn't know which way she should go. But doesn't Buffy need to know that? Isn't Buffy supposed to know the answer for everything?
Isn't Buffy a superhero, after all?
Well, but I'm Buffy and I'm lost. And I'm not wearing any blue costume with red underwear on the outside, no way; I don't care if I'll have a flying cape and-
Uh, flying cape?
Could I choose the cape's color? 'Cause I've been hearing that blue's definitely next season's in thing, and Mom used to keep a old piece of blue silk in her desk that'd be just perfect for a...
No, wait. Mom's dead.
And I'm not.
And I don't wanna be a superhero anymore, either. I don't think my friends understand that.
I know they've been judging me. Or feeling pity â€" and sometimes I hate it so much that it feels so hard just to breathe, and then I think I'm going to die suffocating.
And then, in a sudden cruelty, the breath comes easily and the panting ceases. There was that brief, short instant, in which I'd felt relief â€" I'd thought this was all going to come to an end, that I'd finally die.
I was wrong. I'm wrong, and not just in the surface-y physical way. And I'll be wrong. Over and over and over.
Forever.
And they feel sorry for me.
Even knowing I'm someone who deserves it, I still totally and utterly hate it.
Is Buffy sad? Why's Buffy sad? Please Buffy, don't be sad! Talk to us! We'll understand you, we'll understand how it feels to be abruptly taken away from the one place where you finally felt completely safe and whole, in your entire goddamn life! Buffy, don't cry!
Oh no, Buffy don't cry anymore. Buffy, don't feel. People who don't feel usually don't have tears to be wept on her best friend's shoulders.
BuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffyBuffy...
I'm starting to get real sick of that name.
~~~~~~
Hey Jude, don't let me down
You have found her now go and get her
Remember to let her into your heart
Then you can start to make it better
~~~~~~
You know what I hate the most? My friends.
No, no, don't misunderstand me. It's not like that.
Yes, I love them. A helluva lot. Or at least I would, if I were capable of love now anyhow. But I know it'd be them I'd love first off, if I ever win back the capacity of being able to love.
And I don't blame them, not really. I know I'd have done the same thing they did if Dawn, Xander, Willow, Giles, or any of them had had the slightest possibility of spending his or her eternity in the middle of pain and despair, in some demon hell dimension.
And that's exactly what I hate the most about my friends â€" how I can't hate them. Even knowing I can't feel at all, I can't even despise them.
And God knows I try. Yes; I, Buffy Anne Summers, the glorious heroine of the Hellmouth's helpless crowd, had desired one hopeless day that I could despise my own beloved, true friends.
Actually, it had been more than just one day.
Shame on you, Buffy.
See, I wanted to feel â€" at any cost. It's not like this is something that I'm proud of, but I'm just being honest here. Nevertheless, I'd be a rookie in the art of feeling again, and I couldn't let myself go lusting after the highest emotions, right?
So I just wanted to appeal to the lower choices; to be, I don't know, mad, angry, sad...
Something. Anything. Anyone.
But I'm Zombie Buffy now.
I don't know what to do.
I know I came back wrong. I just know.
And Spike was there for me.
~~~~~~
So let it out and let it in
Hey Jude, begin, you're waiting for someone to perform with
And don't you know that it's just you
Hey Jude, you'll do
The movement you need is on your shoulder
~~~~~~
The truth is, he was the one thing that wasn't completely aimless in that crazy, painful and anguished journey for the priceless art of feeling that I've gotten myself into, ever since I'd been brought back from the silence and calmness.
After all, Spike's a vampire, you know? He's just like me, dead in the not- being-dead sense.
Or something like that, I'm not sure. I'm a little confused sometimes.
And we'd talk, share, exchange... and we kissed.
Buffy. And. Spike. Kissed.
Saliva. Lips. Cold. Tongue. Kiss.
It happened after the musical day's fiasco; it wasn't exactly as if anyone was entirely focused and thinking straight, after all. But I don't regret it at all, actually.
I knew I had to do it, I knew I had to give myself that chance, that risk, that experience... and I didn't feel wrong â€" very much to my own big surprise, may I add.
Through I kept not feeling anything yet.
Life certainly has its odd paths to be taken and reins to be guided, during the unanticipated turn of the hourglass. But if someone had ever told me that I'd be kissing Spike a few years ago â€" boy, that'd have been a full day of laughing with Willow and Xander, while we watched TV and ate Twinkies.
But things changed, though. We grew up. I died. And I don't laugh anymore.
I kill. I slay. I breathe. I eat. I even crap.
I'm a primal animal.
I'm Zombie Buffy.
And I'm dead inside.
I even tried to fake amnesia, you know? If Willow's frustrated and dangerous attempt to make me forget about my days in Paradise didn't quite succeed... well, I'd decided then to give it a shot on my own.
It was something really stupid, but I'm Buffy. I do that all the time.
And I'm desperate.
After all, everybody would've been happier then, wouldn't they? Well, I wouldn't, but I don't care â€" I don't feel and I don't get happy, anyway.
So, I made up a really lame story about a four-armed demon with an ancient Greek weapon Giles had once told me about, during one of his unceasingly boring Watcher's kind of seminars; an attack which in my case had turned out to be pretty effective, in the end.
The weapon had had the exclusive power to blank a certain portion of the person's previous month's memory, in order to destroy the enemy in his utterly confused state of mind at that moment â€" and it could only snuff out a certain feeling from its target.
And I said, then, that my fear was gone. That it'd been that particular eradicated memory â€" my fear of feeling. Ironic, huh?
It doesn't matter, it didn't seem to bother me at the time. And I said to my friends that I've felt again, and I wasn't scared anymore. I wanted to live.
As previously said, a lame story. I think I've got a good imagination, you know? Did I ever tell you how I always used to invent horror stories to Dawn when we were kids, and she wouldn't be able to sleep without Mom by her side, sometimes for entire weeks?
See, there was never such a weapon. And I was already regretting putting Giles' name into the middle of this â€" since once my former Watcher would've been told about the Slayer situation, he'd have told them all the truth.
Because he'd never talked about such a weapon with me on account of, naturally, it didn't exist.
But when Willow told him the latest and startling news in a very expensive call to England directly from the Hellmouth, all that the middle-aged Tweed Guy did was tell the red-haired Wicca that he didn't quite recall this weapon, much to his own shame. But he was truly cheerful for me, and that he'd catch the first plane back to Sunnydale as fast as he could.
My friends believed it, basically 'cause they wanted to. They needed to. They still do.
Their blindness is what keeps them going on, and sometimes I envy them so strongly that I think I'll literally explode.
And I remember that, in the innocent past, I'd snap out a colossal 'ewww' at that statement.
And I remember then that there is no innocence left anymore, and I crash.
I go patrol and I kill a demon.
And I keep carrying on. As always.
~~~~~~
Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her under your skin
Then you'll begin to make it better
~~~~~~
Great job, Buffy. They're all happy now; they're good, the good old you has come back for them.
They'll not ask you anymore why you're sad, or why aren't you OK, or why do you keep insisting on refusing to talk to us? All you need to do now is keep up a big smile at all times, and wear your polished mask of a faker who's capable of feeling.
Willow's wide, radiant smile is one of pure joy, and for the first time in my entire life, I can't stand looking at her straight in the face.
All of them are smiling. I wanna hate them now; I also want to smile, as I can barely stand their goofy, joyful blindness. Their Buffy's back.
But I'm still here. Wasn't I supposed to stay dead? Doesn't God want me? Was I a bad girl?
Doesn't Buffy deserve Heaven too?
Or did the chance for eternal bliss just have a use-by date, and my time was past?
***
Hey, all you guys! It's Jane, what's up? Uh, I was really insecure with that fic, hell, *I'm* really insecure with 'A Faithless Rhapsody' - so be kind and nice, please? And send your reviews, I've a love affair with them!