As the kitchen door slams shut and Dawn shuffles off to school, Willow stacks the breakfast dishes in the sink. Plates inside the skillet next to the glasses. She turns on the tap and reaches for the spray nozzle to rinse the bits of egg and sausage into the garbage disposal. Pretends to care. This is her second pretend life scenario of the day: washing up. Her first was cooking breakfast for Dawn. Next will be taking a shower. The water turns from cool to warm to scalding against her hand, and before she can pull back, her fingers are scarlet, livid, reacting on the level she functions at now, automatically.
She scrubs and rinses the dishes with efficiency; she has a schedule and can't let idle hands throw her off. That would shift the entire day out of alignment, and the last time that happened she had to go to extra meetings. Because *they * were sure it was relapse. Actually, she got hung up outside the pet store on Barker watching the kittens in the window. She spent a half-hour fixated on the bounding bundles of fur wondering about Miss Kitty. If she really was 'adopted' by neighbors or if her bones were in a storm drain, bits of white and black still sticking to the fleshless bones. Her first impulse was to do a locator spell, just to put her mind at ease. But she hadn't. Even though Miss Kitty was her only real pet, not counting Amy and her long dead fish. What she'd being doing hadn't mattered in the end. Because *they * were sure.
Most of the time she doesn't even argue. When they give her a knowing look, an over-enthusiastic pat on the back, a raised eyebrow, it's alienating to her to know that all she is now is The Addict. The weak one. The tarnished one. After everything. After all the times every one of them would have died, stayed dead, if it weren't for her so-called addiction. What they perceive as her undoing, on occasion, was all that stood between humanity and destruction, between death and continued existence. She figures a few minutes or hours of utter bliss shouldn't erase that. But she doesn't argue. If she did, it would be a lot worse. She's a (w)illow; she bends instead of breaking. The external her bends to accommodate what's expected of her, contrition and capitulation. The internal her flexes and strains but remains intact and true to form, herself.
She has her routine that keeps the questions and the looks to a minimum, because that's what sets her off now. Not the tickle of craving she gets when her mind goes idle. Her 'stressor', as they call it at group, is their distrust. One or two mistakes, and she's suspect forever, too unstable, too unpredictable, an addict. She's swallowed down all the comments she's had recently about when Angel came back, about Spike, about Anya's second chance.
And, the bitterest strain of thought, about how it was fine when it was for Buffy, for the group, for anyone but herself. Years spent negating her needs, sublimating her desires, bending her abilities to the greater good. The good that was never about her, always about the bigger picture, about Good and Right and Buffy. It was all for them at the beginning. All to help, to be a part, to do her part.
She's aware that no one remembers her sacrifice but her. That if it hadn't been for the world ending on a weekly basis, she wouldn't have taken it up to begin with. Casting was not a choice so much as the only way, the necessity of constant battle. She tries not to think about that either, why it was her and not Xander. Fate and destiny make her wonder, make her fingertips itch. When she contemplates whether this is all there ever was going to be, if there really is a distinct plan for her, for everyone, she wants to give in and accept what she's become. She recognizes that her take on inevitability might be rationalization, and the loop makes her upper lip sweat.
She stacks the dried dishes in their place in the cabinet, hangs the pan on the wall with the others and goes to her mental grounding place for the first time today. The first of probably fifty, one for each time she remembers that she is the ONLY one who remembers anything but the accident, the few lies, the slips. She steadies herself by remembering the power. The power she still has. No amount of cleansing the house of totems and casting ingredients can wash away her self, her spirit, her magic. It sparks through her like a second heartbeat. She hasn't used it, doesn't plan to, but she knows if she wanted to, she could. If the day comes when she's needed, or if she discovers all she ever will be is her powers, one in-drawn and expelled breath can unleash all she's held in check. That thought consoles her during the routine of every day.