Four Women Connor Never Had, and One That He Did
Chapter Three: Buffy
There are two different sections of Heaven, Buffy soon finds out. There's the section that she is in, called The Returns, which holds the spirits of the people who have died of gunshot wounds and encephalitis and Giant Hell Portals and basically anything else that can make a heart stop. Then, there's the part roughly known as The Unsent, which encompasses all of the unborn children of the world. She's fascinated by this section the most (which isn't that odd, because Heaven was a pretty boring place once you got right down to it), and it's there that she first sees him.
He's seated upon a stretch of cumulonimbus, and his sneakers are dirty and his hair is floppy and he's laughing at the swirling mass of colors at his feet. As strange as this part of Heaven was to her, Buffy knows enough about it to know that the Unsent usually spent most of their time watching their future lives unfold, much like how the Returns spent most of their time watching the Living. She also knows that the Unsent can change their appearence to any stage of their future life, from toddlers to teenagers to their elderly selves, and they never stay the same for long.
Which is why his silence and his stillness is so strange to her.
Buffy drifts next to him for a while before seating herself, watching the colors in his face change as the scenes of his life unfold before him. "Are you excited?" she asks, and when he turns his head to her she swears she sees rainbows in his eyes. The unspoilt potential of a child is a beautiful thing.
He shrugs a little as the colors swirl brighter and then harsher, and he suddenly laughs and points into them. "Did you see that?" he asks, eyes wide and smile wider; Buffy can count all of his teeth. "That was awesome." But when Buffy looks, all she sees is static.
"I don't think I'm meant to see your life. It is yours, after all." She can't help but be a little moody about it, though. Heaven was a snooze. He shrugs again and turns his attention away, but not before saying the truest words Buffy has ever heard before, both in her life and in her death.
"Prophecies are a bitch, aren't they?"
Buffy almost laughs at this. "Yeah, they really are." She watches him for a little while longer, watching him watching himself, and she can see the rainbows in his eyes growing brighter and stretching over his face and soon the whole place is full of rainbows, but that's really nothing new. It was Heaven, after all. She feels a bit of regret at leaving, because The Returns always had a sort of bitterness about them, but the Unsent... what did they have to feel bitter about? They had their whole lives ahead of themselves, after all.
And five months later, when Buffy is clawing her way out of her own coffin and choking on grave dirt, she swears she hears a baby crying.
--
She dreams about him sometime later, when her basement is flooded.
"Isn't it wet down there?" she asks, sitting down on her basement steps and propping her chin up with the palm of one delicate-looking hand. Delicate-looking was the key, there. Buffy could snap a grown man in half.
He's standing in the (ocean)water below, and Buffy can't remember her basement being so big. And she certainly doesn't remember the giant wooden box in the middle of it.
"Yeah, it is," he answers, and wrinkles his nose. "Did you know it was flooded like this?"
"I had an idea," she murmurs. He nods at that like it made complete sense, and when he turns around to glance at the bluffs surrounding them, Buffy starts to realize that this is more than a dream.
"My father told me about this place," he begins wistfully, as Buffy's eyes fall to the huge box in the middle of her basement. The huge box that looks like it could fit a full grown man. Or full grown demon, if you want to put it lightly. "He never said it was so..."
"Flooded?" Buffy offers.
"Empty." he responds, and his eyes agree.
"Is your father here?" She asks him, and she's really starting to wonder what the hell that box was doing in the middle of her ocean. The boy glances halfheartedly over his shoulder at it before shrugging.
"Technically, neither of us are here," he states, looking her square in the eyes, and the rainbows are brighter now. "Because I think one of us is dreaming."
"Well," Buffy begins cheerily, placing her delicate-looking man-breaking hands on her knees and rising up to her full height. "I really hope it's me, because God knows I can't afford to fix this baseme-"
Buffy's alarm clock goes off at that moment and she's jerked out of sleep, and she realizes that she woke up again today, and wonders why the unshed tears in the back of her throat taste so much like salt water.
--
Nearly a year later, Buffy's dreams mostly involve a bunch of pretty girls being hacked down by creepy men with robes and no eyes. She tries to relay them to Willow the best she can so that Willow can look into them, and sometimes she finds herself rambling. She's telling Willow about the girl in her dream that was being chased through the streets, and how she had felt the growing horror that this girl had already been killed and she was just looking at her last moments on Earth, and she finds herself saying, "-And of course Connor was there, and Connor said..."
"Connor?" Willow interjects, looking downright confused, and for good reason. "Who's Connor? And what did he say?"
"I... don't remember," Buffy admits, and she's startled to realize that she just answered both of Willow's questions.
--
"Apocalypses really aren't what they're made out to be, you know?" Buffy says cheerily, scratching off her peeling pink nail polish. "I mean, one minute you're in the middle of a battle and then it's all over. You would have thought they would have put up more of a fight. Weren't they supposed to be the most evil law firm in the world or something?"
Connor simply smiles and tightens the dynamite around her waist.
Buffy can't help but realize that this dream was a lot more real than the others were. Her nail polish was peeling like it was when she had gone to sleep, and the sobs and whimpers coming from the hostages around them sounded a bit close for comfort. Connor didn't seem worried, though, so Buffy keeps her mouth shut, and simply watches him as he straps the rolls of dynamite to himself, now.
You recognize him as your inner child, Buffy, Giles had said to her so long ago, when he found out about her dreams. You listen to him and you tolerate him because, in your mind, you ARE him. And the fact that he's a boy is simply because you haven't had a proper father figure. That part is my fault, I'm afraid. Giles sighed at that and Buffy scratched her head, because that didn't sound like her at all. But Giles had been certain and had hugged her and promised that he would always be there for her, so Buffy put it to the back of her mind. She still didn't think that her inner child was some weird kid with floppy hair, though.
He's your spirit guide! Willow had announced at breakfast one morning, in typical Willow-fashion; smug eyes and a goofy smile. Buffy had simply blinked at her over her Cheerios. He was sent to protect you and to insight his wisdom on to you! Buffy, you need to tell me everything. He has to be here for a reason. Buffy had meant to tell her that Connor had done a whole lot of nothing in her dreams and the only thing that he was doing was keeping her up at night, but her mouth had been full and by the time she had swallowed Willow was already out the door, eager to go tell Giles of her theory.
The kid sounds like a loser, was all the Xander said. Now, if Spiderman starts talking to you through your dreams, then you'd better listen to him. He knows what he's talking about.
As Buffy stares at Connor now, she doesn't see him as her inner child, or her spirit guide. And he's not much of a superhero, either. She can remember dreams of him when he was right there, talking to her, or dreams of him when he was simply in the backdrop. Sometimes, his hair in blond in her dreams, or he's losing his soul or he's flying away on a helicopter. Connor reminds her a lot of the other men in her life; his face was young, his eyes were old, and his hair was annoying.
And when Connor looks up at her after hooking up the dynamite, the rainbows are gone from his eyes. The last moments of someone's life. Buffy starts to feel that old familiar sense of dread.
"Is there something wrong?" Buffy asks then, but it's a stupid question. Of course there was something wrong. Buffy hates it when people ask her that question. Connor looks thoughtful for a moment before shrugging.
"Teenagers are weird," he says softly, and his bangs fall forward and cover his eyes. "Unresolved daddy issues, you know how it is. Everyone's got them. Probably because I was never held enough as a baby." There's a brief flash of Angel, standing in the snow on Christmas Eve. Buffy wonders why she's thinking of Angel at a time like this. "But don't worry about it," Connor continues, and his face changes and he's grimacing and he turns his head, settling his eyes on something behind her. "It's all baggage. In the end, it all just goes away."
"Connor, I think we should-" but Buffy never gets to say what Connor should do because she's being shaken awake by a pair of cold hands, and when her eyes fly open she's met with a pair of angry brown ones.
"Buffy," Angel almost growls out the words, and she wonders for a brief moment if Angel lost his soul again, but the pain written across his face is too apparent. "How do you know about Connor?"
"Why, do you know the kid?" Buffy asks almost irritatedly, shrugging Angel's hands off of her shoulders and reaching under the bed to grab her top.
"Yeah," Angel's voice sounds tight-lipped at this. "Yeah, I knew him."
"Well, tell him to stay his crazy ass out of my dreams." Buffy says, pulling her shirt on and now directing her attention to finding her pants, which had seemingly disappeared sometime during the night. "I mean, honestly. There's only so much talk about daddy issues and prophecies and dragging boxes around my basement and blowing people up that someone can take-"
"Buffy," Angel interrupts, "Connor's dead."
And Buffy thinks, Oh, big surprise there.
--
She decides to go and visit his grave, just to make sure that he's still in it.
--
(A/N)
time lines are a bit wonky in this one, but I think it all mostly happened at similar times. maybe. hopefully.