Having had enough of other people's touchy feelies, Buffy rose, dusting off her butt, which was covered in chalk dust, saying, "While you two trade smoochies, I think I'll go have a look around!" as she worked her way towards the door through the maze of children's drawings that flickered and shifted around her feet.

"Have fun." Raina mumbled waving a hand at her dismissively. The man bear gave out another burst of static that sounded suspiciously like a laugh at Buffy's expense while the Fox and the Cat merely opened an eye or two before stretching out even more luxuriantly in front of the fire in the fireplace.

The Slayer stepped over the shaggy mutt who lay stretched out on his back, everything hanging out, across the threshold of the open door.

His back feet were wearing black combat boots.

Buffy stepped down off of the porch and onto the graveled path into an impossibly bright morning, dew like so much spilled glitter from Dawnie's crafts coating everything. She walked towards the two motorcycles parked at the edge of the nearby parking lot and studied them.

They were solid, and cast shadows, but they were… flat? Like a photograph? She reached out to touch a gleaming, water-beaded handle.

"Don't be too disappointed if you can't really feel that bike, blondie."

She jumped, startled, and looked down. The mutt had followed her and was now sitting at her feet, one ear up, one ear down. "Jeremy, warn me next time!"

"Whatever." The Shaggy Dog rose, becoming an unkempt little man with dark hair in the remains of a rent-a-cop uniform and a tail. He reached out one pawlike hand and slapped the bike where she had intended to touch it with a flat thump, as if it had been made of cardboard, "Son of a bitch may be an asshole and a dumb jock, but DAMN! He's good!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Look at this place!" Jeremy the Shaggy Dog waved his arms at the distant mountains, the ocean as it roared and hissed against the rocks and sand below, the gulls, the sun, the cabin, "I've three degrees, including a Ph.D from CalTech in Quantum Physics that I got when I was eighteen, and, and I can't do this!"

"You? Quantum Physics? A Ph.D? You look like something that lives under a bridge!" Buffy blurted out in disbelief, and then slapped both hands over her mouth. Jeremy didn't seem to notice. He continued, still waving his arms, honking out in a flat voice:

"I mean, LOOK at this level of DETAIL!" he spun, pointing at random, "Dude's batshit crazy, can't even focus half the time but he can do this and I CAN'T and it's not RIGHT!" He aimed a vicious kick at the bigger of the two bikes and then yelled, "And the worst part is, it's SOLID – owwwwwwwwwwowowowowowowowowowo!"

He sat down abruptly on the damp ground clutching his foot, almost but not quite a dog again.

"Ummmmm, yeah." Buffy backed away, finding the view of the beach a lot more interesting all of a sudden. This guy would have been too weird for even the Nerd Herd!

He joined her, back to man dog/dog man once again as she watched the waves on the beach down below. The same waves, the same seagull, the same wind blowing the same long grass, the sun exactly where it was when she first stepped out of the cabin, like a CD with a skip in it. "And you know what burns my ass?" he said conversationally while scratching with one booted back foot behind his floppy ear.

"What?" Buffy asked absently, fascinated. There went the same seagull, the same waves cresting. She started counting. There it went again.

"He can even sometimes bring physical objects INTO the maze: a newspaper, a bottle of beer, a sandwich, and this time, his own piece of ass!" The Shaggy Dog grumbled. He flopped over on his back, once more, showing the world everything he had, moaning sensuously as he scratched his back on the ground. He opened one eye, staring up at her, tongue lolling, "You don't suppose he brought you for…?"

"No." Buffy said flatly. The seagull glided past, the waves crested. "Anyway, if you're so darned smart, why are you… well, you?"

"Like I said, Asperger's a bitch when nobody but you acknowledges it."

The seagull glided past, the waves crested, the grass blew.

"Oh."

Ms. Letitia Fitzgerald, Jeremy's mother, loved the poor, the oppressed, and the voiceless.

If it was oppressed, she would stand up for it.

If it was poor, she'd run a fundraiser.

If it was voiceless, she'd find a way to speak for it.

Autism was her favorite, but when her son, who was supposed to be perfect, wasn't, it didn't exist.

It was all very well and good to speak for the unfortunate, but misfortune was something that happened to other people, not Ms. Letitia Fitzgerald.

Jeremy could manipulate numbers like Beethoven manipulated music.

But he was clumsy and unkempt and terrified of the bathtub and slow to talk and laugh as a baby– so she ordered the illegals she hired on the cheap to run her six houses and three penthouses, to deal with the baby who cried flatly in his designer crib and over-reacted to change because the world needed saving.

By the time Jeremy was twelve, though he now spoke like a robot and often forgot to put his pants on, his teachers said he was capable of more advanced work even if they thought, in their professional opinion, that the boy needed... help. So, while ignoring the latter she signed the papers for the former on her way to testify at a congressional hearing on behalf of Asperger's, and thought no more of it.

Though mercilessly bullied at the exclusive schools that she placed him in, Jeremy could see the way the universe worked in a stream of numbers – even as his eccentric behavior, messy appearance, and tendency to blurt whatever was on his mind out in public embarrassed her at more than one $1,000/plate black tie fundraiser in Palm Beach.

It was very noble and self-sacrificing to speak for those who couldn't speak for themselves in between weeks at various exclusive spas, but it better not be in her family – so she ignored his latest melt-down over the sensation of his new designer socks on her way to conferences in Europe on behalf of Spectrum Disorders while unseen, he got a Ph.D in Quantum Physics, graduated, moved out of her Beverly Hills mansion, and disappeared off of the face of the Earth, taking with him his embarrassing melt-downs, his action figures, his comic books, his one topic conversations, and his D&D dice.

Which had been a relief.

For both of them.

Ms. Letitia Fitzgerald got on with arranging for Lady Gaga to make an appearance on behalf of AIDS research in some exclusive club in Manhattan when she wasn't asking Madonna to donate some of her time in between tours on behalf of children who'd stepped on landmines somewhere in the Middle East while her son was murdered undetected and un-mourned in a cheesy kiddie entertainment complex, at the only real-world job he'd ever succeeded at.