N o r m a l i s O v e r r a t e d
BtVS/Se7en crossover
Spoilers BtVS: 'The Gift' though to 'Normal Again'
Ship: David Mills/Buffy Summers
Author's Notes: Normal again opened up so many avenues for fanfic and crossovers, I've got about a million ideas floating around my head (pushing out all the actual useful information) there's even a half written Spuffy fic on my hard drive waiting to be completed and has been waiting ever since the episode first aired. Oh well.
BTW, I know close to nothing about mental illness and most things I'll be making up, so if I slip up here and there be sure to tell me, mock me, belittle me for my lack of knowledge.
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p r o l o g u e
nobody has to stay – Mirah
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Four months. Three days. Sixteen hours. Twenty-three minutes.
"How're you feeling today, Mills?"
David stares outside of his passenger side window (it was already spring? He hadn't even noticed the passing of winter) hating the forced, overly polite small talk between he and his friend.
The weather's been pretty mild this year, hope it holds out till summer.
Did you bring everything? Comb, toothbrush . . .
He hates it almost as much as the things that were being left unsaid.
"Fine. I feel fine Somerset."
I'm not fine though. All I want to do is go back to my apartment and curl up in bed with her pillow. Did you know it still smells like her? Did you know that I sometimes sit in the dark waiting for the subway to rattle the walls and drown out my thoughts and I can almost pretend she's there, just in another room maybe. Humming off-key as she makes dinner, but oh God, when the cups and saucers stop rattling all I'm left with is silence, Somerset.
And it breaks me.
I just, I wish. . .
"That's good," Somerset says in that soft gravelly voice of his, "That's good."
David can feel Somerset throwing him furtive glances every now and then, but he doesn't take much notice of his ex-partner. He doesn't take much notice of anything except that he's on his way to a mental institution, mostly against his will.
It's funny. He had been in the city for less than a month before the his wife's death, he had been in therapy because of that death for longer, not so much funny, more like tragic. And not the everyday I-have-cancer kind of tragic either, more like Shakespearian tragic - Days of Our Lives melodramatically, unbelievably tragic. The kind of tragic that no one in real life should have to endure.
"We'll be there soon."
It had been four months since the end of the John Doe killings (Four months. Three days. Seventeen hours. Two minutes.) David wasn't ever charged for the shooting and was back at work less than a month after the events, which was a mistake everyone now knew, because a month wasn't so much time for someone to recover from something like that.
It had been four months since Tracy and their unborn child's murder, yet it felt like a year, a decade, a lifetime.
We never talked about kids, I always assumed we would eventually have them though, maybe further on down the track, when we would have settled into our new life. When Tracy got a job - when I got a promotion - when we had time to paint the spare room together.
We'd have one of each of course.
I had their names planned out already, did I ever tell you that, Somerset?
Thomas and June, after my grandfather and Trace's aunt.
I wonder which name we would have had to use.
"This isn't about punishment David, you know that right?" Somerset asks suddenly because he can't take David's silent statue act any longer. He needs to make Mills understand.
"God knows that son-of-a-bitch deserved everything he got, but you need to do this."
Because he sees it. Sees his friend slowly deteriorating.
Because all he wants is for the obnoxiously energetic Mills that was so sure he could make a difference in the world to break through the sorrow and hurt and get on with his life. It was completely unfair of Somerset to feel that way, but it didn't stop him from feeling it.
Because if that Mills was gone forever, what hope was there for him?
David doesn't bother to tell Somerset that no, he really didn't need to be institutionalized; put away because of his predilection for breaking furniture.
And yes. Sometimes the furniture breaking happened to be on drug-dealing-scum faces (when they were clearly lying through their speed-chomping teeth) but he didn't need to be monitored twenty-four seven and he certainly didn't need some head-doctor telling him he was mourning. He knew all that, he knew he was channeling his grief into unhealthy rage but he didn't need to be put into a mental hospital because all he really needed, was his wife back.
"It'll only be a couple of weeks, a month at most, but I know you need this break, as much as you might—"
"Is that what they're calling it now?" David interrupts, his words sounding as hard as his gaze, "A break?"
William stops at a red light and turns to his friend with sad understanding eyes that make David want to punch the look right off of Somerset's perceptive face.
"It wont be so bad, David," William says finally in that rich, soothing voice of his.
"Then why don't you 'voluntarily' commit yourself too then?"
David blinks, tightens his jaw and turns back to stare blankly out of his window, pretending he didn't see the way William's face seemed to cave in on itself at his harsh words.
Somerset sighs to himself and turns back to the road.
"It wont be so bad," he repeats softly.
Four months. Three days. Seventeen hours. Twenty one minutes.
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