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]

"...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.

[all7seas]

"Buffy? It's alright if it's gone. Just guidelines, anyway, really."

[herotypical]

"Still...if I was in your shoes? I'd be royally pissed to come back to missing skates. Ooor if this didn't rejoin me." She lifted up the scythe. "I waited almost two years before this turned up."

[all7seas]

"It's far better off at the court, Buffy; these pirates, y'see, they----

...


BUGGER! We've forgotten your flowers."

[herotypical]

Hmm. They had, hadn't they? Buffy frowned.

"...I'll go back. You meet me at the library?"

[all7seas]

"Meet you at the library? Right. I'll...I'll meet you there, darling."

[herotypical]

Buffy leaned up on her tip-toes to kiss his cheek. "I'll be fast."

[all7seas]

"Be fast," he murmured in return. "I shall find myself a chart or two in the meantime."

[herotypical]

And she was off -- somewhere between a sprint and a quick-march.

[all7seas]

The library was cool, dark, and deserted at this hour. A stray firefly was trapped and blinking at the window and Jack raised the pane, freeing it, before beginning his search through the stacks.

He wanted charts of the world, and he wanted them to be Modern. Modern, from Buffy's time. His future? Was it?

Perhaps there'd be time later to search for references to Robin Whitby. Maybe.

[herotypical]

Buffy seized the chance to look over the console controls -- alone. Had something glitched? Had there been perhaps a power short or had it genuinely be in her mind? The Slayer idly picked up the flowers and held them to her chest as she flicked buttons and twisted dials and knelt down to peer at the wires behind a little door. It was all tech to her; she was clueless.

And so left and walked to the library with a slow, lost-in-thought kind of pace. It had been Joyce's voice -- and she hadn't heard it in years. Buffy allowed herself a few tears and some trembling but she had herself marvelously under control upon her arrival.

She stepped inside and tucked her scythe by the entrance. She kept the flowers in hand.

[all7seas]

She would find the pirate seated at the large reading table, several charts rolled up beside him and one large one unfurled before him. It was a map of the world circa 1950. A look of naked sadness sat on the pirate's face, which was quickly replaced by a more neutral and then glad expression as she joined him.

"You're quick, Buffy Summers. I'll give you that."

[herotypical]

"Didn't have a car, remember? Had to be quick to get around all of Sunnydale and still win the day. Or -- night."

She approached and peered over his shoulder. "Found one, huh?" Though she eyed the date.

[all7seas]

He drummed his fingers against the chart, his other hand closed in a fist, resting there beside it on the table. "Found one."

[herotypical]

Buffy tapped the USSR. "Not my world -- or, yes. My world. But my world before me. Sorta. It's..."

She sifted through the charts and maps. Eventually, she tugged free a map from 2002. "This is closer. Though -- I guess it doesn't look so different."