Five days, and still no sight of him, and I totally thought about bagging on coming in at all the rest of the week. Gunn trying to be all normal, talking about sports, the weather, politics. Wesley glancing at the stairs or elevator every thirty seconds, but sucking it up, being the noble Warrior in waiting or whatever he thinks he is nowadays. The tick, tick, tick of the imaginary time-bomb in my head, Angel inducted detonation, and just waiting for it is so not me. Have to hold myself back from busting in on him and dragging him downstairs, maybe just getting into his space and reminding him some people aren’t dead yet, but they might be if he doesn’t get off his grieving ass.
But, I got Fred with me 24/7, so I come in anyway. Let Wes and Gunn deal with her during “work” hours. Gunn doesn’t seem to mind her bizarre comments and dartling hands, but he’s seen worse, crack and meth and Bethanys times twenty. Wes just nods at her and treats her like an infant, but she doesn’t appear to care, even if it causes my temper to spike, and I yell at him over the lack of pens in the office or not putting gas in Angel’s car.
It’s weird how fast I get used to change now. Having Fred around. Almost like a girl-pal, but one with serious issues. She doesn’t mind sitting in the dark. Doesn’t mind Dennis. Doesn’t mention me talking to him about Buffy. Asking him to tell her things. Never said word one about it, and so, she’s fine by me. She likes pizza with pineapple on it and to do the laundry, putting the coins for the machines in stacks lined in a row before she goes to the basement. I wonder what is would be like to be her. To not be the Princess, but be the one used and living off scraps, snatched from my *normal* life and raped and beaten. She never said anything about the rape, never told me, but I *know*. It was the damned middle-demon-ages there, and I might not be Wesley , but I know how it used to be, back then, in the time before being a woman meant anything besides being the receptacle for a man. Never thought about power and whose hands it was in, more about money, and it not being in my hand. But, yeah, things aren’t the same. Not since Pylea, not since She died. Somehow the girl part of Vision Girl seems to be more important.
I see Fred struggling in her sleep, shrugging off invisible hands, twisting away from nothing, and Dennis gets upset. Bangs things until she wakes up, shakes the plants, like that will do anything. I let her sleep with me now, just in case she flips out; I want her close, not near the knives. Earlier in the week, when she woke up to the windows rattling and the radio flipping from station to station, she asked me “How do you know this is real?” It was late, light from the street coming in the window making my room yellow and heavy for some reason, like living in corn syrup. “I’ve never known,” I told her. And I thought of Buffy, about Doyle and wondered who would die next, and if with each one I would feel more distant, more unsure about what’s in my head and what’s outside of me. I wondered if that was how Fred felt the first or second time a man or demon touched her in Pylea. Considered power and the balance of it. I think I’ll drive next time we go out on a case.