Spoilers / Timeline
Post - "The Body" / "Epiphany".
Disclaimer
This is an original, unauthorized work of fiction featuring characters from the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and is not intended for profit of any kind.
Notes
I lost my dad in a car crash when I was really young. Not necessarily the same as finding your mother dead of an aneurysm at twenty, but Joyce's death hit me really hard. (Both the suddenness of it, and the consequences but hey, that's death for you).
Warnings
Talk about death, attempted murder, implied drug use, implied sex work, murder, and slashy overtones. Thanks to the goddess of betas, hufflecas, for letting me regurgitate all my feels.
(This is a repost of a fic I wrote under my old pen name, Jessica Knorr.)
Angel came by a week or so ago. I hadn't seen him in months. He looked kinda rough. I asked him about it, but he cut to the chase - Joyce Summers died. Buffy found her lying there, in the living room, stone cold - that's apparently what Willow said.
I've always been jealous of B because she had stuff I didn't - friends, family, a home. She was Little Miss Perfect and her sanctimonious bullshit got on my nerves fast, so I tried to ruin her life. Make her like me. But I never actually felt anything bad about Joyce.
Before I went psycho and y'know, threatened her, I think Joyce loved me. Somehow. She gave me a place to stay that one Christmas; always wanted B to invite me over or hang out with me or give me food or whatever. I guess I kind of loved her back. She was kinda like the mom I never had.
When they took me back to my cell, I broke down and cried for about two hours.
My mom died before I became a Slayer. Overdose. Before I got the hell out of Dodge, some social worker brought me to the funeral, out of respect or whatever. I didn't cry. I just sat there, alone, and stared at the body. I wasn't sad, I wasn't even pissed. I hated her growing up, but just sitting there staring at her, I felt nothing. Joyce, well, she actually cared what happened to me. I'm sorry I treated her like shit, attacking her and Dawn just to get back at Buffy.
Dawn. There's someone else who thought I was pretty cool. I didn't care about her very much. Just B's annoying kid sister, something else I never had. I wonder how she's taking it? I forgot to ask. I'm a dumbass.
According to Angel, B's been just drifting through the days, and Dawn locked herself in her room. The kid only comes out to do her business and barricades herself right back in there.
I wish I could have gone to the funeral. I'm not allowed outside just yet. I went in for a review a couple months back; they said I was sane enough to have a cellmate. Her name's Teena; tough old bitch, killed some dirtbag pimp. She has this beautiful curly hair, like Joyce. Joyce's hair, B's body.
We talk, eat together, spot each other when we lift. She has a twelve year - old. That's why she was out there every night, because she loved her kid. Better than my mom, anyway.
Sometimes I have a dream, where T doesn't have to hook for a living, where she's at home with her daughter, brushing her hair. Then I'm twelve, and she's brushing my hair. Then Joyce is holding the brush.
And I finally have a mother I can cry for.