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Willow didn't go back home until almost four in the morning. Even then, despite the fact that her mother should have been long since asleep, she moved as quietly as she could, without turning on any lights. She didn't want to see her mother for a while. Right now, she wasn't entirely sure if she ever wanted to see Sheila Rosenberg again.
When she woke, her eyes felt gummy and scratchy from not enough sleep, and she'd only managed to kick off her shoes before collapsing into bed. Everything felt a little bit stiff. She hobbled to the shower, and felt a little better afterwards, until she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror.
Her eyes were bloodshot, and the damp strands of hair falling around her face didn't really help. What they did was frame her bloodshot eyes and the bruise nicely. There was a bruise on her cheek, right over the bone.
Right where her mother had hit her.
She fought against tears as she retreated to her bedroom. She avoided looking into her mirror as she got dressed, not wanting to get another look, or a better one. Using makeup to try hiding the bruise was right out – even if she owned the right sort of makeup, she had no idea how to go about something like that. And she doubted some tinted lip gloss, a couple barely there mascaras, or an old jar of glitter-infested body powder would cover a bruise.
It was Saturday, so there was no school, even if she would have slept through most of it already. No need to try to pretend that everything was okay in front of so many people, especially when a lot of those people weren't her friends and would be alert for the smallest hint of weakness. The first sign that it would hurt and some of them would be all over it, picking and taunting and sneering….
Maybe high school was better instruction for hunting demons than she'd thought?
What to do? She wasn't about to stay home. One encounter with her mother in a mood like that was more than enough. She couldn't visit Jesse like she would have a couple years ago. Maybe Xander? Or Buffy? Drusilla and Angel would almost certainly be asleep at this hour, and she didn't think waking either one of them up because she was awake and didn't want to be alone would be a good idea. Oz was away with his Aunt Maureen this weekend, so spending time with her boyfriend was out…
She ended up at the school library, a pot of the raspberry coffee brewing in Giles' office and the computer up and online. There was a web browser opened to the Coroner's office, and another to the police department. Vampires and demons didn't stop doing things just because it was the weekend.
And when she finished with that, she could work on her geometry. Maybe get started on the big history paper due next month.
"Willow? What are you doing here on a Saturday?" The puzzlement in Giles' voice was easy to hear. "I thought teenagers hated being in school."
Willow half turned, keeping the bruise hidden from him as she pondered how to answer. She didn't want to admit that she was avoiding her mother, or to need to explain the bruise. Didn't want to admit that she had such a pitiful and limited number of friends. That half of those friends were vampires… no, that was a conversation for some other time, like the fifth of Never.
Having considered and discarded all sorts of things, Willow settled on, "Do demons and vampires take the weekends off?"
"No, not really… ah, you have that dratted machine looking at the Coroner's office? Is that quite legal?"
"I've never had the first bit of trouble accessing the Coroner's office and their info," Willow didn't quite answer his question. Part of this was because they needed to know, needed every advantage they could get to identify the demons and help get rid of them before they did something awful, like try to open the Hellmouth, or big, nasty human sacrificial rituals to empower themselves, summon nastier demons, or try to end the world. She'd never quite got the appeal of ending the world – didn't the demons live here too? What would happen to them if they ruined the whole world? Partly because she suspected that it might be less than legal – a coroner was a specialized doctor, and it was illegal to get other people's medical information from the doctors who treated them when they were alive. Wouldn't it be just as illegal to get the records from the doctor who saw them when they were dead? Then again, if it was supposed to be illegal – which she suspected it was – then they should make it a little harder to access the data.
Who would ever suspect shy Willow to be breaking the law? Computer hacking, illegally accessing data… She might only suspect about the Coroner's office, but she knew that it was illegal to access the police records. Granted, that was pretty easy too, and she'd seen some signs that she wasn't the only person browsing their files through other channels, but that didn't make it legal.
Idly, she wondered if it would be a good idea to find out who else was browsing the police files. Maybe it was important… But today wouldn't be a good day for something like that. That would be tricky, and she'd need to be alert for signs of detection. Maybe when she'd finished alternating between numb, hurt, angry and horrified at what her mother had done. Whenever that turned out to be…
The question slipped out before she could stop it, "Giles? When did you realize that your parents were human? That they could make mistakes, have big flaws? That sometimes they just… that things… you know, wouldn't work?"
"With my father, it was the argument we had over what I would be when I grew up. When I was about twelve, I told him that I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I didn't have glasses yet, or I would have known that it would be impossible," Giles chuckled, one hand reaching up to brush the arm of his glasses. "He told me that there was no chance of that, because I was a Giles. I would be a Watcher, like he was and his father before him. That my future was set when I was born."
Willow wondered what it would be like to have your path set for you in such a way. To not have to wonder what you'd be, what classes to take, how to prepare for the future. To have someone else making that choice for you, to see things cast in stone… "Big fight?"
"Very. I do believe I told him that I had no interest in surrounding myself with musty old books and needing to know seventeen different ways that a person could be eviscerated. We argued, and I spent the next four months insisting that I'd run away and become a grocer," there was a faint smile on his face as Giles thought back.
Willow didn't ask when he'd realized that his mother was flawed.
"I guess part of growing up is realizing that things aren't so simple. That some people aren't as good and perfect and wonderful as we thought," Willow then whispered, "and that maybe some others aren't as awful as we thought."
"Yes, the realization that much of life is in shades of grey rather than black and white is part of growing up," Giles admitted. "It can be quite upsetting when you make that discovery."
Willow nodded, facing the computer again. "Things used to be simple. They aren't so simple anymore. I thought I could just hate her, and now… now she's so…"
"Yes, it is good to see that you're putting aside your disagreements with Miss Chase," Giles nodded before moving towards his office. "Did you find anything that needs immediate attention?"
For a moment, Willow wondered when and how Cordelia had come into things. She'd been thinking about her baffling new friendship with Drusilla… She'd thought that vampires were bad, that made Drusilla bad. Made Drusilla an enemy, a danger, someone to avoid. Except that she didn't seem so awful. She'd far rather spend time with Dru than with Cordelia, and Cordelia was supposed to be human! But Giles didn't know that she'd been talking to Drusilla. That they'd painted each other's nails and talked about dreams and butterflies and nursery rhymes. That they'd sipped tea and Dru had peeked at the leaves, looking for glimpses of the future. That they'd sipped coffee and talked about books. Gone walking in a graveyard and made up stories about the people buried there.
She had no idea how to even begin telling him about that.
"Umm…" Willow glanced back at the police files. "A bunch of frat boys had a party last night in one of the little parks. It got crashed by some vampires. The police got called out this morning and found twelve dead bodies, and beer cans everywhere. Cross referencing with the coroner's office, they all had pretty high blood alcohol levels, trauma to the throats, and massive blood loss."
"Yes, I'll make sure to have Buffy take care of them."
Closing the browser for the police files, Willow wondered when seeing reports like that had stopped bothering her as much. She could still remember how the first time she'd looked up a vampire incident she'd been disturbed and queasy. This time… she just wondered if they would have been driving around drunk, or knocking down signs and spray painting windows and buildings. If they had been the sort of drunken jerks who hit their girlfriends. If they were really a loss or just possible future minions.
She also wondered what it said about her that it didn't bother her now. If it was still shock over her mother, if it was just not enough sleep. Or maybe it was something wrong with her. Her own flaw.
End Dark Coffee 9: Coffee and Flaws.
