melt your silver down / kiss your lover's face / the sirens start to sound

[herotypical]

Who: [Bad username or site: lists_to_port title= @ livejournal.com] & [Bad username or site: slaying title= @ livejournal.com]
What: a battle dome date
When: july 9th
Where: the battle dome
Summary: one part training exercise, two parts tourism
Rating: r -- for violence. and then who knows what. better to be safe than sorry idek?

Buffy Summers asked Jack Sparrow to meet her at the battle dome. It was a plan that had been discussed before the pirate had disappeared and now that he was back? Well -- she cared very little for dawdling. They had dawdled before but now was the time for seizing. She had yet to overcome the horror of waking up alone for yet another morning when she had expected to be the furthest thing from it.

People change. And Buffy mused quietly upon the changes to be found in Jack as she waited just outside the dome's entrance. She had a bag-o-weapons at her feet and a plastic bottle filled with some sort of over-sugared juice in her hand.

Comments

[herotypical]

...It was difficult to decide on an approach to that statement. Casual agreement? Touched sentimentality? Or should she take it the way her gut took it -- the part of her that tried to prompt her to hold onto the actual locket. But she kept her arm firmly in his.

"...Duck. Water."

[all7seas]

"There are ladies who would laugh in your face for such a statement, you know. Don't generalize. It's you I've taken to, Buffy Summers."

[herotypical]

"...Does that mean I get to in turn laugh in their faces? Because I want some face-laughing out of this deal."

[all7seas]

"You are entitled to that, my love. Just no PUNCHING their faces. Savvy?"

[herotypical]

"...What do you take me for?"

[all7seas]

"Beautiful? Lovely? And. Joke? It was a joke, darling. You'd never....probably. Probably never do that."

[herotypical]

"I think I can actually count on one hand the amount of other villagers I've actually straight up hit, here."

Jack. Bones. Oh -- then there were the people from home. Giles and Angel. Did they count? She hadn't hit them here. "Point is? I'm getting better."

[all7seas]

"And that second time, I told you to." He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. "Didn't go so well, did it. I can't remember: did Norrington's wig fall off?"

[herotypical]

"...From what very little I can manage to dredge up from the hazy depths of two white wine spritzers? I think he looked a little concerned, actually."

[all7seas]

"Ha! For yourself, or for me?"

[herotypical]

"If you would've asked me then? I would've said you. But now..."

A shrug. She didn't mind the Admiral so much, anymore.

[all7seas]

"So you've taken a liking to our Jamie, have you?" Jack smiled, but it wasn't a smile of mockery. It had all the earmarks of approval.

[herotypical]

"Maybe he's not so made-of-only-gravel as I first thought. I stand totally and way, way corrected."

[all7seas]

"Not gravel. Some sort of copper amalgam, perhaps. Shiny in places, all green and crusty in others. Norrington."

The very man Jack had impersonated for so many New Feathers.

[herotypical]

"...Green and crusty? That's pretty unkind. And he had such not-so-bad things to say about you."

[all7seas]

"It's all a bit complicated, sweetheart. And he knows, now; he knows that he died, back home."

[herotypical]

"...Are we talking like us or like Archie?"

The difference was rather important, though either option would grant membership to Buffy's little mental oh bum we died club.

[all7seas]

"Like Archie," he confirmed. "World's got less in it, to be certain. It makes me glad of my decision, love."

[herotypical]

She wanted to argue that the world's always losing things. That was how it was supposed to go. There was a cycle involved -- but then it started to sound a little too Disney in her head and so she nodded.

"C'mon," she hit the path with considerable speed. "I've got my word to keep. We're going to the library." All this talk of his decision and thinking about the fate of that strangely kind but very unfriendly Admiral was getting her worked up.

[all7seas]

Jack was likely thinking of a different decision entirely: the decision to stop pursuing immortality. It had been freeing to unweight himself in that way---to take what he had demanded of himself off his shoulders. It hadn't been a lowering of expectations at all---just a different choice.

"Library. Right. Onward."

[herotypical]

It was difficult to articulate, but she was proud of such a decision. It rang true with much that she had learned after returning from the dead. That when you'be bowed, you leave the crowd. Of course, Buffy Summers had the comfort of a righteous death and...well, some days she thought she had an assured afterlife. But others? If she feared death now, it.was only because now she was scared that she wouldn't get back in.

She settled her scythe on her shoulder and kept walking with him.

[all7seas]

Jack began humming a happy tune under his breath. The words were something along the lines of "I courted a sailor," but he couldn't quite remember how any of the verses went, and so humming was the next best thing. With the battle dome now behind them, it was easier to put aside things like fear and foreboding and to just be.

And that was what the strange man had intimated to him that night in the dungeon, wasn't it? Learning to be was just as important as knowing how to crave and want and dream. Otherwise the dreaming was all for nothing.

[herotypical]

The path crunched underfoot. Gravel and stones and this or that. And she listened to Jack's humming and basked a little in his impulsive habits. Humming. Who had she ever known before who had made such a particular habit of humming? It was nice. Like having a little soundtrack to an evening.

So she kept rather quiet and enjoyed the entertainment as they walked to the library.

[all7seas]

"I wonder if the Codex is still there," Jack mused after he'd come to the end of his song.

[herotypical]

"...Pretty much everything else that was yours-from-home went with you, Jack."

Softening the potential blow.