How
Lyrics from Firecracker by Lisa Loeb. I don't own BTVS stuff. Some dude named Joss does. Yeah, I understand it either.
Thanks Shannon and Bex for beta'ing for me. You guys are great.
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Buffy stared at the door of the crypt. It was dark and heavy -- she knew from experience -- decorated with carvings found only on older mausoleums. In its way it was a classic. Despite her night vision, without the moonlight she could barely make out a lot of the scrollwork and most of the more delicate carvings were lost on her. It was all right. She had been there, stood in that very spot, enough during daylight to follow patterns she could not see at night.
Buffy placed a hand on the door, very near where the dark brass met stone just over the still-good hinges. The craftsmanship was something Xander would admire -- she noticed how cold it felt under hands. Carefully, she measured the door's width against her body. Even with her face pressed into the opposite seam, Buffy could keep her hand flat and vertical on the other side.
Pressing her forehead into the juncture of stone and brass she took a deep breath through her nostrils. Stone and metal and age filled her senses. It was cool but not quite cold. Buffy pressed her one cheek into the stone, then the other onto the brass door.
She took in a deep, shivering breath. He was lined fingertip to forehead with her, on the other side of the door.
"I didn't come this far," she whispered into the seam, one hand on the door handle, "for you to make this hard for me. And now you want to ask me, 'How?'" Buffy paused. The words had left her and she was afraid that he would leave before she had said everything she had come to say -- before she could make him understand what she was feeling. The turmoil and agony. Ecstasy.
A sense of déjà vu washed over her like the wind.
"Willow, it's like, 'How does your heart beat, and why do you breathe?'"
Buffy had accidentally stumbled upon Oz and Willow having an argument in Giles' courtyard, of all places. Standing above them on the main street level, neither saw nor sensed her and she just couldn't make herself turn away.
"Then tell me, Oz. Tell me, how does your heart beat and why do you breathe? I want to understand."
Buffy felt his voice through the door as she would his breath in her ear as he spoke, "Why did you come here? You weren't invited. 'You were on the outside -- stay on the outside.' Your words, not mine."
She felt her face flush as her words were so softly thrown back at her. It hurt. "And you want to ask me, why?" He didn't answer her. "How does your heart beat?" She felt him the leave the door.
"...and why do you cry?" Oz had asked Willow.
Buffy turned her back to the door and slid down 'til she could wrap her arms around her legs and rest her chin on her knees. "How does your heat beat?" she asked the Night, herself, No One. She could feel the tightness in her throat, the sudden need to breathe through her mouth that always signaled she was about to cry. Not tonight. She refused to shed another tear.
"...and there are some things that I like to figure out," Willow had told Oz. Buffy couldn't remember what her friend had been responding to. "There are some things that I could do without..." The couple had been dancing around the courtyard for some time by then. One would step back as the other said something painful or profound, or sit down, or walk away. But neither left.
Buffy shook her head. "...like you and your letters that go on forever," she said finishing Willow's long dead heartache with her own. "You and the people that were never friends. Never friends," she whispered thinking of every time they had fought, verbally and physically. She shook her head. They weren't even acquaintances, let alone friends, and yet ... and yet... the things she had told him. The ache she felt now, knowing he was in there, somewhere, ignoring her -- or worse, that he had taken to the sewers and she was sitting out there on windy moonless night like a fool. "Never friends."
Oz had stepped within touching distance of Willow. It was the closest they'd been since Buffy had happened upon them. Gently, lovingly he had cupped Willow's face. "You are so great and so amazing and so talented that, sometimes, it scares me. Of all the things that you could be, Willow, you never could learn how to be and you don't want to." He brushed an invisible hair from her forehead, "I don't want you to be."
"Of all the things that you could be," Buffy heard from the door seam, "you never could learn how to be me, Slayer." Quickly she scrambled to her feet as the door opened. "And now you want to ask me, 'How?'"
Oz had taken Willow's limp right hand in his and placed it over her heart. "How does your heart beat and why do you breathe?"
Buffy nodded dumbly, shock and fear in her eyes that had nothing to do with who he was, but who they were.
He shook his head and shrugged. "Don't have one. So tell me," he placed his hand over Buffy's heart, "how does your heart beat? Why do you breathe?"
Her laugh was shallow and watery. "Because one of us has to?"
"How does your heart beat? Why do you breathe?"
She found Willow's words pouring from her lips, spoken, it felt, so long ago, "Because I am what I am and you are what you are and . . .we have no choice."
Breath to breath, Oz had pressed his forehead to Willow's. Buffy didn't know what happened next. She had turned heel and fled.
Spike pulled her inside his crypt and closed the door.
End