Chapter 12: Mommy Dearest

A/N: There's an explanation for why Joyce is the way she is at the end of the chapter. It is not necessarily there to excuse her, but to say why she's over the top horrible to Buffy and others in this story.

Warning: nothing much until the very end. Well, maybe a small warning that this is very anti-Joyce.

Thanks to my betas: nightshadowlife and AerynSpeedleCaine. Sorry to the others, I couldn't wait.

Disclaimer: BtVS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. CSI: Miami characters belong to Anthony E. Zuiker, Carol Mendelsohn, Ann Donahue and CBS. Diagnosis Murder characters belong to Joyce Burditt and CBS. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

Hospital cafeteria

Steve waited until the table next to theirs cleared out before he began talking, "We may have a problem, guys." Unfolding the sketch from his pocket, he passed it around, then asked Calleigh, "Did Joyce say anything about Buffy being in LA this summer?"

"No," Calleigh answered, shaking her head. "In fact she told me that Hank said he was 'too busy' to take care of Buffy. She was so upset that she ran away. Why do you have a police sketch of her?" she asked while she waved the paper at him.

At the same time, Mark replied as well, "And Hank told me that Joyce said Buffy was in some kind of club and couldn't make it to LA. He said nothing about her running away; my guess is that he doesn't even know. Does this have anything to do with that case that was bothering you earlier?"

"Yeah, Dad," Steve answered his father's question first. Then he explained to the other three about the rash of missing teens; the homeless people who kept muttering 'I'm no one'; and the shelter in the middle of it all. "This sketch – which I assume that we all agree is Buffy? – is the only thing I got from the victims about their mysterious hero. They won't say where they were being held or by whom, or how she managed to save them. All we know is that the man who ran the shelter, Ken Montgomery, went missing at the same time."

"Do you think this might have something to do with Buffy's memory loss? Maybe she had to hurt that guy to save those people and she felt guilty about it. When she hit her head, it gave her subconscious a perfect opportunity to bury the memory," Horatio theorized.

Mark shook his head, "It's possible, but I don't think so. If that was the only thing she blocked out, you'd have a point. Total amnesia like this indicates that she needed to forget so much of her life that she lost everything."

The bigger issue in Mark's mind, though, was that Buffy had been missing for who knows how long and Joyce kept lying to Hank about it. Excusing himself, he went to call his nephew and suggest that he get to Sunnydale immediately. Hopefully somebody could find out what the hell had happened over the summer.

When they went back to Buffy's room an hour later, the foursome was surprised to see an orderly stripping her bed. Surprise turned to concern when Mark noticed that her name was missing from the plate next to the door.

"Where's my cousin?" Calleigh demanded.

The orderly shrugged and replied, "Not sure. I was just told to come and clean the room. I'm guessing she must have checked out, though."

Seeing the upset people headed her way, the nurse running the station held up her hand. "Before you say anything, the Chief of Staff himself signed her out at her mother's request. Then he dragged her doctors into his office for a 'talk'. That's all I can tell you," she finished, pointing down a hallway.

"Thank you, Nurse Bennett," Mark said with a grateful smile.

They walked down the hallway she indicated and when they heard a raised voice, they stopped to listen. Sure enough, it was the Chief of Staff's office.

"What were you thinking?" he yelled. "You can't allow a minor any visitors that her guardian hasn't approved of!"

Wanting to help the doctors who were trying to help his grandniece, Mark knocked on the door and stuck his head inside. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but overhear your last comment. Just so you know, I didn't tell Drs. Matthews and Hobbes that I was related to Buffy. All I said was that her family requested that I check in on her condition…and that is true; her father, Hank Summers, asked me." What he said was technically true; Calleigh had been the one to introduce him as Buffy's great-uncle, not him.

"Dr. Sloan is a respected doctor at LA Community General Hospital. I knew that Miss Summers and her mother were originally from that area, so it made sense to me that he probably knew them there. And we never left him alone in the room with her, sir," Dr. Matthews assured him, grateful to Mark for the assist.

"Well, I suppose it could be a simple misunderstanding on your part, doctors," the Chief of Staff allowed before turning to the visiting doctor. "…however, Dr. Sloan must have known that his presence could cause trouble."

"Actually, I was hoping that my presence would be considered a nice compromise for Joyce. She shares custody with my nephew, Hank, and he has a right to know about Buffy's treatment too – especially since she's covered under his insurance," Mark explained. "The divorce turned very ugly when it came to Buffy, so rather than cause a scene by coming himself, Hank asked me to look in on her…hoping that Joyce would be reasonable about it." His anger boiled over a little and he added with a hint of irritation, "Apparently he overestimated his ex-wife's maturity level."

The Chief of Staff sighed, remembering the furious harpy who threatened to sue the hospital for allowing 'that man' into her daughter's room without consulting her. As it was, he'd have to check with the lawyers to see if he needed to discipline the doctors for that action. It sure seemed a waste for something that was most likely a misunderstanding. And Dr. Sloan was right; assuming they shared custody, Hank Summers had just as much right as Joyce Summers when it came to matters of Buffy's treatment.

Unfortunately, they needed the hospital bed anyway, so keeping somebody who was physically fine was out of the question. It was the general consensus of the doctors involved that the patient's memory loss wasn't physical in nature. The question was, would a psychiatrist be able to help unlock her memories? And why would she be blocking them in the first place?

Thankfully, he doubted that an angry mother would stop Dr. Matthews or her colleague from insuring the young lady got all the help she needed – even if they had to go over Joyce Summers' head to do it.

"Very well, you're dismissed for now. I'll let you know if the hospital lawyers say there's anything else we need to do to stay out of trouble with Ms. Summers."

Summers house

If there was any doubt in Buffy's mind that she didn't want to live with her mother, it vanished the moment they got into the house. The ride 'home' had been tense and silent. Buffy spent the time surreptitiously watching Joyce grip the steering wheel as if she was trying to choke it. Obviously the older woman was upset about something but wasn't saying why.

Apparently that was because she wanted to be in private before fighting with her daughter.

The front door barely closed when Joyce started screaming at Buffy about being a lying, conniving brat. Her proof of that was Mark Sloan's presence in the hospital.

"I saw him in your room, and you two looked very comfortable with each other for supposed strangers, Buffy! Give up the act and quit being a spoiled brat!" Joyce screamed.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mother," Buffy began, using the formal term instead of 'Mom' because she couldn't picture this woman as a tender, caring person her mind told her that a mom would be. If there was a more distant term than mother, she'd use that. Heck, she was close to calling her Joyce or Ms. Summers. "I can't speak for Dr. Mark, but for me, I was comfortable with him because he was kind to me."

That remark made Joyce fly into a rage. For half an hour, Buffy had to listen to all the things she had ever done that caused her mother grief, embarrassment, pain…going all the way back to when Joyce was pregnant with her. Some of the stuff she couldn't even understand how it was her fault. For example, what did she have to do with Joyce cutting ties with her Uncle Donald and that part of her family?

What she couldn't know was that her mother had one or more personality disorders that had never been diagnosed. From the time Joyce's mother died – when Joyce was 10 – she had steadily grown more and more manipulative and narcissistic. Darlene, her older sister, had tried caring for her, but being a 15 year old herself, she wasn't equipped to be a mother-figure. Especially to somebody like Joyce.

Joyce grew jealous of anyone who gained her daddy's attention, driving more than one potential stepmother away. When Edward Mallard managed to get married – with Darlene's encouragement – after Joyce graduated high school and went to college, she cut him out of her life for a whole year before dragging Hank Summers home to announce her engagement.

Within three years, she became pregnant and basked in the praise of how beautiful she looked and how dedicated she must be to finish college at the same time. She was daddy's princess again, so life was perfect.

Then Buffy was born.

Whenever she was sick, Buffy ruined Joyce's life with her crying and throwing up and other unpleasant things. Hank helped out as much as he could, but it was important that Joyce appear to be the doting mother to get more sympathy and love from her father.

What was worse was when Buffy wasn't sick, though.

Hank fell in love with his daughter from the second she was born and kept asking Joyce when they could try for another child. He didn't know that after she had recovered, Joyce had her tubes tied, claiming that she had complications which required another surgery. She let him continue to think she could get pregnant, however, so he wouldn't consider divorcing her or trying to adopt.

Joyce's father was almost as bad with Buffy…and that was the final straw for her. Buffy wasn't supposed to take her place in Edward's heart. If he hadn't died from a heart attack the next year, who knows what would have happened. Since he did, Joyce used his death as the excuse she needed to cut that part of the family out of her life. She blamed his new wife, Karen, for his death and refused to listen to anyone who tried to defend her. The only one not completely dismissed was her brother, Duke…Calleigh's father. Basically because he was too consumed with his work most of the time to worry about one way or the other. After Celia died, he dove into the bottle and barely resurfaced.

From that point on, she decided to train Buffy to be the perfect society daughter. If she was lucky, Buffy would get married right out of high school and be out of the way so Joyce could have all of Hank's attention again.

But of course Buffy had to go and screw up that plan as well by becoming the Slayer.

Never mind the fact that Hank was starting to grow tired of his wife's manipulations and insistence that they be something they weren't. He enjoyed his job as an engineer and didn't want to become management. The mental institution was the breaking point for him. Joyce insisted on inpatient treatment while he thought it was more important to try outpatient so Buffy knew that they loved her no matter what.

If it hadn't been for that man-hating, feminist judge who awarded custody to Joyce, Hank would have kept Buffy with him in LA and sent her to private school if all the public schools wouldn't let her in. Enough money would open the right doors somewhere – especially since there was no proof that Buffy started the fire.

Maybe it was wrong of him, but Hank refused to be Joyce's sole support. She would have to work if she wanted anything more than a two-bedroom apartment. The money for Buffy's expenses was handled by a trust which Joyce didn't have direct access to. Hank took Buffy shopping for clothes and school supplies when she came to visit him. A small amount of child support went directly to Joyce to cover day-to-day expenses like groceries.

Unfortunately for him, Joyce used his plans against him by telling Buffy a different story about why they couldn't afford this or that. Even though Buffy was a daddy's girl, she couldn't stand up to her mother's influence for long – especially after being in the mental institution. Joyce was her guardian by then, so Buffy saw her mother as her rescuer from that place…despite the fact Joyce was the one who put her in there. Not that Buffy knew which parent was responsible; she assumed it was a joint decision.

Buffy made a mistake with her choice of words when she replied, "If you hate me so much, why didn't you let my dad have custody, Joyce?" Part of her error was 'requesting' to go to Hank, but the big part was calling the woman Joyce.

Slapping Buffy as hard as she could, Joyce shrieked, "You horrible, selfish, rotten girl! Just for that, I should let you go look for your real father! I'm not sure what his name is, but you can start looking at the bar where I picked him up about 18 years ago. Hank said he had to work on my birthday of all days – like he couldn't get somebody else to handle it – so I decided that I would celebrate on my own. I think it was Mac, Jack, Zack…something like that. Ahh, I should've just gotten rid of you when I found out I was pregnant. Foolishly, I thought having you would make life better, not worse."

"You cheated on your husband?" Buffy asked, horrified that she was related to this woman at all. "You are a selfish, miserable woman!"

Joyce reached back to slap Buffy again, but found her hand caught in a vise-like grip.

"I couldn't agree more," a man's voice said coldly.

A/N: Next…The beginning of the end for Joyce and the Scoobies in Buffy's life.

Disclaimer: Not sure if you noticed the mention or not, but I don't own Ducky or NCIS.