lucetilogs | >> this is my endgame

>> this is my endgame

Who: [Bad username or site: gotmebones title= @ livejournal.com] & [Bad username or site: a_slayer_slays title= @ livejournal.com]
What: Now that the snark has subsided, these two need some quality time.
When: Mid-afternoon, Friday.
Where: House Seven
Summary: Damnit, Bones! I'm a Slayer, not a chess nerd.
Rating: PG-13ish

In the haze of the improving season, Buffy had begun to contemplate where she had once heard that there was nothing really good, or nothing really bad--except in how you thought about it. A significant portion of her guessed that it was probably some stale English class back at Sunnydale High. The day had probably been quite similar to this one, with green tinges of growth outside the window. Back then, she had probably been aching to get out and into the green. Today? Well, today there were far too many interesting things going on inside the four walls of the house. Electricity had sprouted, as if from no where, and it had not taken her long to make what use she could from what they had been given. All morning, House Seven was treated to the incessant dinging and whirring of a microwave being rather over-used. As Buffy plunged her fork into the soft belly of a pizza pocket (new food had arrived in the shops, after all), she did not care that it was her fifth today. The point was that it was a good day to be a twenty-first century kinda girl.

She was sitting by a window in the house's lounge, her knees drawn close to her chest and the plate balanced precariously on the tops of her feet. Her chin, set in the crevice between her knees, tilted and shifted for each delivered bite. By all accounts, she looked peaceful enough. But how long would that last, with a certain medical doctor on the prowl?

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"The one that attacks the brain...that's what causes hallucinations, right?" She asked with that brilliant fake-casual tone again, trying to erase memories of the hospital with other incidents she knew of venoms. Like, how her blood was apparently the antidote for some strange vamp poison. Or how if you liked tree frog bellies, you get high. Not that she has ever licked a tree frog belly or experienced more than one or two really bad drunk-fests. It's just where her mind went to avoid--.

Buffy nudged another pawn into play.

McCoy hoped that no one licked her belly for crazy Slayer toxins as he took another chess piece after a moment of consideration. That was unsanitary.

"It can vary." The doctor said, sensing that there was some untruth behind that brilliant fake-casual tone, since he was doctor and patients always lied. "Why so interested?"

Buffy paused to consider her next move, her hands frozen over the board as she contemplated.

"Got poisoned once," she explained, distracted into truth by the visions of strategy before her. "Saw some stuff."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Good God."

"This demon had like neurotoxicish venom in this slicey things that came out of its arm. It got me and until an antidote was made, things were definitely of the odd variety."

Coolly, she moved her queen into play.

McCoy avoided the Queen that she put into play and took another bishop, ignoring the pawns that were still in play, whilst keeping his eye on the important pieces while not seizing the game away from her just yet. Let her work under the assumption it would be a close one.

"Whatever you might have seen, they were just illusions praying on what is inside your subconsciousness." He said quietly as he shifted in his chair and leant back, fingers linked behind his head, watching the chess board intently for her turn. "They can be disconcerting as hell and even upsetting, but that's all it is."

"Yeah. That's what we decided, in the end." She used her thumb to nudge a pawn forward, a ploy to block what she assumed would be a future attack on the queen. She mourned the second bishop but only coldly. The queen she cared about--the bishop could fall in her service.

"It was just so real, you know? Almost more real than real things were."

McCoy took the pawn put into play just equally as coldly as she had been when she mourned the loss of the bishop.

"The mind is a powerful thing; even more powerful than those inane Slayer powers of yours." Which was a way of asking if there had been any inkling they were beginning to return yet.

"Funny, that." She responded an a totally unfunny way. "The hallucination was all about being normal, too. Kinda. A hallucination that the real, vamptastic world was the hallucination, instead. That things were cool and I'd never left L.A. and mom--" was still alive. "And dad were still together."

Goodbye, pawn. Buffy ruthlessly pushed forward with the queen in order to take the piece that had taken her guard. The move left her last knight open.

"Do you want to be normal?"

Nearly there.

"What I want is to not be crazy." She answered, defensively. "And real girls in real worlds, according to that hallucination, shouldn't be going around thinking they're vampire slayers."

"You're not crazy, Summers. You might be a little adamant about some things, but nothing that warrants being shipped off to a funny farm if you get too rowdy." The pieces clinked across the board as he made that reference. "People can get defensive and strike out when they don't understand and that will make them act in the way they believe is right, even if it's the wrong way. People will do anything to avoid a confrontation or face the things they don't want to address."

He was a prime example of that mindset: vampires, demons, everything was medically impossible. Now he was beginning to tolerate there might be other things out there that were not just alien.

"Right. No funny farms for me." She gulped her way through that sentence, punctuating it with a dramatic sweep towards one of his more crucial pieces. She has not taken it, yet. But it is clear that she plans to. "I like to put my best not-crazy foot forward, every morning. Which is definitely not like the hallucination because hallucination-Buffy was big time loony bin material. Or at least, that was the truth according to the doctor my neuro-toxined mind made up."

As she made that sweep across the board, he figured it was time to wrap this game up: her moves showed she was out on the offensive now. "Hmm... the whole hallucination might have been a cruel way of showing you that even if there are times you want to give up and just be a normal girl, you are free. Nothing like a shock like the thing you witnessed to make you appreciate what you have, even if there are times you want to pack it all in at times."

He paused. "It's just speculation, anyway. I'm a doctor, not a therapist." He was only trained to ensure that his crew mates did not go completely insane during the long voyages into the clutches of space, where some of them may or may not return depending on the colour of their shirt.

She smiled gratefully, if uneasily. Joanna, she thought, was a lucky daughter. Her father made a good confidant for any uncertain young woman. Buffy did not put the sentiment to words but chose instead to maintain that smile and not trouble Bones with the serious topic of asylums any longer. It wouldn't end well.

However, her appreciation did fall short in the context of the game. One more offensive move and Buffy sat back. She was left with two rooks, a queen, and her king. The rooks were mere side-thoughts in her quest for chess glory.

"You're good at what you do," she offered.

Her reverie about any chess glory would soon be quashed as another move from the doctor eliminated another player from the game. The sentiment the Slayer had for his words would have only reminded him just how far he was from Joanna; back home, he at least had the chance for correspondence. Luceti was a void, a prison, one he was idly settling into without fully realizing it.

"I think that's the first compliment you've given me."

"Oh, come on. I must've given you plenty others." Only, perhaps, not to the doctor's face. But she did name a drink after him. "Y'know about how...tidy you are. And how your cooking skills a pretty good. And you're probably the only doctor I've ever willingly gone to for doctorly things. Remember? Hospital-o-phobia, right here."

Buffy felt alright. Losing that piece was not so bad. She countered with a risky move for her last rook.

Hospital phobia. Just like Jim... only that he had a phobia of hyposprays after a couple of painful encounters with one of the Enterprise's senior medical officers until attaining the status as ship's CMO. Which was him. He should have stood still, damn it.

"Heh... I'm obsolete now you have a Goddamn antique microwave." Which was probably going to end up in flames before the month was out.

"Never obsolete." She smiled, bright and full and much closer to the Buffy who had bounded into their cramped apartment, months ago. "Just because I'm a microwave-chef, it doesn't mean that I don't like a good home-cooked meal. Reminds me of home."

Buffy was left with her queen and her king. Admittedly, the game was close but not close enough. She nibbled her bottom lip.

McCoy was actually smiling too as he heard that audible bounce to her tone after the past few months of rough tumbles and heartbreak. Not that she would be able to see it considering he kept his eyes on the board and rubbed his upper lip with his hand, Starfleet academy ring catching the light from the ceiling.

McCoy considered what moves he could take. He had the choice of prolonging the inevitable and upset the Slayer by catching her Queen which she had been fixated on during the game, or he could finish the match quick and fast.

He reached forward to move his piece and chimed as the Queen remained untouched: "Checkmate."

"What? No way." Buffy groaned, dropping her gaze down to the board and re-examining the positions of the pieces. "I didn't even see that." Her smile grew in admiration, and she reached out to tentatively topple the queen. The king remained standing and she moved it off the board simply as an afterthought. It was a weak piece, anyway. Only being able to move one space? It was like a Watcher, slow and in need of protection. The queen was obviously the hero. But she had to admit defeat.

The teasing, the sarcasm, the cheap shots? They're stripped away. Buffy held out a hand to shake. "Good game."

McCoy was gracious when he won a game. Although when he lost, he tended to flip tables or throw accusations of cheating at the opposing player... which is why he would never be able to play a game with Spock ever, since the bastard thrived on logic and would excel at playing chess.

"It was." He accepted her hand shake. "You did better than I was expecting."

"Giles was big on the war games. And the strategy exercises, and the word problems. Maybe he was just really lonely." Her conclusion doesn't sound serious. The hand-shake is firm. Not Slayer-firm, but confident.

"When every other teenage girl was trawling California's best shopping quarters, I was stuck in a dusty old library--trying to remember chess moves. He could've at least moved the game outside."

McCoy had no complaints that the handshake did not end up with Buffy crushing his fingers or snapping them in another feat of accidental Slayer strength. It would have been embarrassing go back to Raine with yet another bone breakage.

"I don't think he would have been that lonely with you around, Summers."

"That's what you think, huh?" Buffy stood from the table, stretching her arms and shoulders. Every second moment of ever day, she seemed to be willing power back into herself. She was also sleeping more since becoming a normal girl. None of that Slayer sleep advantage.

Buffy pressed her hand to the side of her neck, rubbing as if there was a small ache. Who knew sitting could be so stressing upon your muscles. "I guess it wasn't boring. And he had his job as the librarian, too."

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