FOLLOWING FRANKENSTEIN


Chapter 7: Rain


It rained that day. Of course, it rained. She shouldn't have been surprised by the grey, dismal cloud cover or the incessant perspiration from the saturated heavens swirling over London all day and night. Rain might have been too tame a term. Actually, it poured cats and dogs and perhaps a few horses.

She hadn't slept at all. Instead, she tossed and turned, debating what her next step should be. She didn't really know. All she knew was that she hadn't felt this terrified since the day she left the Temple and the fear she felt now had nothing to do with vampires. She paced her kitchen, a cup of tea growing cold in her hand without her taking a single sip. She nearly started when she heard footsteps and Anthony came into the kitchen. He had managed to throw on a pair of flannel pajamas but his chest was bare and his hair was a riot of arguing waves of dark red locks. The beginnings of a beard dotted his chin. He yawned and stretched once before he noticed her in the corner. Then his face broke into a positively radiant grin. He nearly leapt across the room to take her into his arms and he moved to kiss her when she stopped him with a solid fist against his chest.

"Don't," she said. "Last night, I wasn't thinking clearly. I was afraid. I should never have… We are family. I crossed the line and made it weird and I never should have… and I wish I hadn't."

She swallowed back the choking, grasping, clawing feeling deep in the pit of her stomach as forced out those bitter words. Even as she spoke them, she wondered if it was those words that were the mistake and she should run around with a butterfly net to capture them each as they fluttered from her mouth. Still, she vomited them out and land where they will.

"I don't," he insisted. He took a step back, his smile instantly vanishing. "This is exactly as it should be. We belong together."

He motioned between himself and her with one hand. At her interrupting noise of protest, he held up a hand to stop her. "Buffy, we've been through this. Don't tell me I am in love with somebody else. Buffy, I don't care if there are a million carbon copies of you-they aren't you. My clearest, more formative memories are all from your flat- with you by my side. Don't tell me it's all in my head. I did not imagine your patience, your kindness, your humor. I did not imagine how your eyes shine when you are happy or the way the sun picks hints of red in your hair. Buffy, you are the best part of my existence and even if I should never have been created, I can't regret it, because I've loved it. I've loved being alive. I've loved being here, with you.

"Yeah, once you could have argued it's cause I have never been around other women, but now? Buffy, I go to university with thousands of other women. I've gone on dates. I've met people. I've tried to forget you, to tell myself I can find someone else. The more I go out with other women, the more I am disappointed that they are not you. We have a connection that I will never find with anyone else and its more than being the products of a mad scientist and you know it. You said yourself he had some kind of draw to you… perhaps, no matter how many times we are resurrected and thrown together, we are always meant to be together."

He was so sure, so hopeful, so terribly genuine. She also had an uncomfortably niggling suspicion he was right. Still, she could not surrender. She pulled herself up taller and glared at him, forcing as much ice into her expression as a Zamboni on a Friday night.

"No. We don't," she argued. She watched as his pleading, plying smile slowly shrank back, quivering in the frigidity of her answering expression, and soon he warred between wounded desperation and anger.

He sank against the nearby tabletop and closed his eyes. "No, stop. I get it. It's not enough. It's not like that," he said. "Do you know how many times I've wished we had started differently? How I wondered what it would have been like if it was anybody else who first raised me?" He lifted his hands from the table to run them through his hair till it stood off his head in all directions. He opened his eyes again and shrugged. "Do you know how many times I've sat in bed, imagining what it would have been like if I met you in the pub or at the park? I could introduce myself to you as I am now and you could meet me as if I were any other man, rather than your child or your burden or your unwanted charge. I could have a chance at impressing you, at gaining your respect. Instead, when you look at me, all you can see are my soiled nappies and how you taught me to change my socks and not to stick my finger in boiling water. I never had a chance."

He glanced back over his shoulder to the bedroom he had emerged from. He ran his hand over his face again and he suddenly seemed so much older, so much wearier, than she had ever seen him before. He watched her, but by the focus of his gaze, she didn't think he actually saw her. His mind was somewhere far away. He swung back to face her again, sitting up slightly on the table to nod in her direction.

"Buffy, you know that picture you hate? The one in my room of you from Mike's wedding?"

She nodded.

"Do you know why I love it so much?"

"Because I look like an idiot, and you laughed your ass off when I faceplanted?"

He gave a low chuckle and shook his head. "Partly. No, it's because I loved that entire night! I don't know if you did it intentionally, but that was the first time you introduced me as 'your date' instead of your 'brother-in-law' and you played the part masterfully. I felt like I belonged beside you, that we were equals. For a moment, I believed you saw me as a person and not as a pet project or as something less-than-human. Not once that night did you call me 'Baby Fangs'. Not once did you mock my clumsy attempts to be suave and charming. You laughed at my jokes. You looked up at me with those gorgeous eyes of yours and I felt like I could conquer the world. I didn't want it to end. I'd do anything to make that night last forever. But, as soon as the clock struck midnight, I was turned back into the reincarnation of a deranged vampire and nothing I can do will turn me into anything else."

As he spoke, his green eyes spoke of his inner turmoil more eloquently than an entire soliloquy of words could ever express.

"Tony, you know I care about you. More than anyone I know, it's just…," she said, wishing she could make him see or that something she could say would remove the expression of pain from his eyes, yet she knew she couldn't. "I can't." She tried to convince herself it was the truth. She really thought it was, but a dark part of her whispered it wasn't.

"Don't do this to me," he cried, reaching out to grasp the sleeve of her shirt. "Not after last night… I could bear it before because I thought there was no chance, but now, Buffy, please…"

"I wish I hadn't… we hadn't…," she began.

"You aren't the one to have regrets," he said, his eyes falling away from her and staring out the window as the rain began a steady patter against the glass. He lowered his voice to almost a whisper. "The regrets are all mine. I knew you weren't all in and still I took whatever I could get, just because that's how desperate I am. I know, you won't regret it. Not like me. I'm the one who has to pretend like I can move on, like I can forget, like it wasn't the worst decision I have ever made. Now we can't ever go back and that little I used to have from you will never be mine again. I used to cling to that little shred of hope with both hands - the illusion that someday, somehow you would love me as more than a friend will. Now, that hope has been twisted into a memory that will never cease to torture me for believing I could ever have you as my own."

"It doesn't have to be that way!" She protested. "We can go back to the way things were!"

"No, Buffy. Maybe you could. The fact that you could is the reason I can't. I'm sorry. I just don't think I'm strong enough for that anymore."

He vanished back down the hall and emerged fully dressed with his knapsack packed. He didn't even bother to comb his hair before he slammed open the door and ran down the stairs. The fire beneath his feet cooled as soon as he hit the wet pavement outside and he got stuck in place as if he hit molasses and not wet concrete. He stared up at her window, through her window, and straight at where she still stood and the expression on his face made her stomach lurch.

The rain poured down his hair, making little rivulets down his face and it did not take more than a moment for him to be soaked through. She couldn't separate Anthony's tears from the rain streaming down his face. Even so much higher up, she could still catch the longing in his expression, and she had to pull the blinds to keep him from watching from the sidewalk all day.

For once, the weather actually suited Buffy's mood. She was just as dour and swollen and leaky as the sky outside and she welcomed the perfectly acceptable excuse to hide in her bed and not come out for anything.

ooooo


Buffy didn't cry. Not even when Friday came and Anthony didn't come by the movie theatre. She didn't cry the next Friday, either. She didn't even cry when her phone stayed strangely silent and not random texts came her way.

Part of her hoped he would have continued on as before, that nothing would have changed. Another part of her felt relieved. She wouldn't have to think about him or why his absence in her life felt like an amputated limb. She wouldn't have to consider why the very thought of him made her insides freeze over in terror or why she still jumped every time she got a text, hoping it would be from him. It was easier not to think about him at all, to do what she was best at. She turned on her laptop and watched movies. Day and night, whenever thoughts of him came and she felt like she couldn't possibly bear it and she felt her eyes begin to sting, she turned on a movie and hid behind the lives of imaginary people doing pre-recorded, carefully edited fantastical things. She would rather focus on their lives, their stories, than be reminded of Anthony's face as he stared up at her through the rain.

She forced herself to go to work. She cooked. She cleaned. She shopped. She went to her dance class. She went to her cooking class. She visited her friends. She continued doing all the things she had always done. She told herself she didn't need Anthony in her life.

Even if he thought he needed her.

Oooo


Three months went by before she saw him again. She was sweeping the concession stand and discarding all the rubbish when she saw him emerge from a theatre. He wore a cap over his long, unkempt hair and he looked like hell frozen over. His drawn face was thinner than she'd seen it in years. His eyes were shadowed and he didn't smile, not to anyone. He was alone. She felt his eyes on her, but he did not approach her. He simply let his eyes settle on her like a bee gathering pollen on a flower. Then he was gone again.

He came back, two weeks later. This continued their strange ritual. He didn't come every Friday, but at least once or twice a month he appeared. He still didn't speak to her, but occasionally he gave her a forced, hollow smile or a brief nod of his head to acknowledge her existence.

She wondered how his classes were going and if he was still working nights at the hospital. She wondered how his roommates were and if he still forgot to put his socks in the laundry bin. She wondered if her photograph was still on his wall. She hoped he was remembering to eat.

Then she told herself it didn't matter.

Oooooo


Eight months in the tears came. She told herself it was because it was Christmas and she hated Christmas but she knew it wasn't true. She used to hate Christmas. Till she knew she would spend it with Anthony. Yet, when Christmas came, he did not appear on her doorstep. She got off work with all the supplies for their gingerbread village and their sumptuous Bloody Marys but he never came. She told herself not to expect him to and she knew he really shouldn't.

Still, secretly she had hoped.

It was only after she finished her third movie and gone outside for a walk that she found the package on her doorstep. It was another terrible horror movie and a set of candied skeletons for her gingerbread city.

He had come, but he had not come in.

As she tore off the wrappings on the gifts and thought of the sound of his laughter bursting through her flat, filling the room that spark that was so uniquely Anthony, it was then that Buffy cried. Wept, really. It was a full-of-snot-ugly cry, too. She burst into a sob and fled back into her flat, her walk forgotten, and she locked herself in her room.

ooooo


Buffy had no idea how many days past. She hadn't kept track. The rain came. The sun set. The shadows drifted around her room. Her heart felt heavy, too heavy for her to move and she didn't know what she wanted anymore. All she knew was it was Sylvie who burst into her apartment and came to pry her out of her room.

"Buffy, are you alive?" she said as she tentatively came into the bedroom. "Girl, are you here?"

She tore back the comforter to find Buffy there, lying in a fetal position, eyes focused on nothing at all.

"You look like death warmed over? When did you last eat?" Sylvie said. She pulled Buffy's hands to help her sit up and her face was full of genuine concern. Buffy blinked.

"How did you get in?"

"You never called off. You missed three shifts and John was out of his mind with worry. He started calling your emergency contacts, but you only have one. Tony called me and sent me your key to get in, on the condition I let him know if you are ok."

Buffy sighed. "I'm fine."

Sylvie snorted. "If you're fine than I'm the Duke of Canterbury. Buffy, what's going on? Are you sick?"

"No."

"Then why…"

"I just had a rough holiday, ok. I'm fine. I just… don't know what to do with the rest of my life and had a bit of an existential crisis."

"Now you're scaring me. Buffy, did you… are you… have you…," Sylvie stumbled over her words and blew up a strand of hair in frustration. "You know that you are loved and have people around you that care about you. We'll talk to you. You have help."

"I know."

"Good. Good. Can you come out? I've brought over some fish and chips and, don't take this the wrong way, but you desperately need a bath."

Buffy gave a half-hearted chuckle and rose to her feet. "Ok."

Oooooo


The next time Anthony spoke to her was three months after Christmas. It was Friday night and he waited till the very end of the credits to find her. Once the lights came on and she was sweeping the aisles, he stood from the back corner and slowly descended the stairs.

He looked better. His beard was neatly trimmed and he had recently had his hair cut. It was combed over to one side, a riot of curls forming around the edges. He wore a dark red sweater over a collared shirt and a pair of black-rimmed glasses settled on his nose. If it was any other time before, she would have made fun of him for the glasses, while secretly admiring how well they suited him. Not now. Now, she simply gaped like an idiot and couldn't suppress the blush that flooded her entire face.

He didn't say, "hi." He didn't ask how she was. Instead, he bent his head down to speak low into her ear.

"Buffy, you are better than this," he said.

"What do you mean?" she asked, surprised both at his words and that he chose to speak to her at all.

He waved at the empty movie theater and back at her.

"You need to dream, to risk, to not be afraid to leave the movie theatre to try something new. You have more to offer the world than this. Your life is a gift. Do not forget that."

She opened her mouth to protest, but his finger on her lips stopped her. He leaned down and placed a slow, lingering kiss the top of her head. Then, he walked out of the movie theatre without a second glance.

His footsteps echoed off the stairwell and into her dreams that night.

And he never came back.

Oooo


Author's note: An interesting part of writing a "sandwich sequel" is that I have to somehow restrict my plot and characters around parameters arbitrarily created in the other two stories. For one, Buffy and Anthony live in London...simply because I picked a random city out of a hat and sent Buffy there in The Remnants. Now, I have to figure out how to make a story take place in a city I've spent a grand total of a week wandering around. If I knew I was going to write such a sequel, I probably would have stuck her in a different city. (Any Londonders out there, please forgive my breaches in knowledge and let me know of any glaring errors!)

Also, I have to follow my timeline from Shahrazád's Ghosts...which means there are a lot more time gaps to fill in Buffy and Tony's relationship than I probably would have put in if I had written this one first. Cue angst galore. Anyhow, this is probably our angstiest chapter... though the next will have a little bit too as Buffy sorts herself out and figures out who she is and where she's going. I estimate this story will have about ten chapters, total.