deercountry | 06 . the sleepy town expedition.

Who's is this?

[She has some guesses, but she's not going to just be like. Hey, Willow, is this your deer tombstone.

That'd be rude.]

Mine.

[Her tone is soft as she answers. She doesn't talk much about dying in Deerington, but she's been reflecting on it more since her death in Trench as well.]

All I came back with then was a really bad case of the flu. That's what Ozpin was talking about back at the house.

Figured. [She cocks her head, considering.] You make a pretty dope looking deer.

[She looks around at the surrounding ruins of this town that apparently served as a home for all of them. It sounds like a nightmare, but there's a... grief to it, even when something awful ends.

Her own tone is soft too, despite the prior joke.]

Can I ask how it happened?

Edited 2022-03-12 18:41 (UTC)

Thanks. I've, uh, never actually seen it before now. It wasn't that long before the dream really started falling apart.

[Willow gives a little smile at the joke, and follows up with a nod.]

This, uh, witch from Ozpin's world showed up here. They're fighting back at home - she's trying to destroy their world. Anyway, she killed a few people here too, including Ford's brother. Ford went after her for revenge, and I followed him. I figured she'd probably try to kill him too, and I thought I could talk him down before she noticed we were there.

[Her gaze remains fixed on the statue as she speaks. There's a few details she's deliberately leaving out - she doesn't mention the witch was Ozpin's ex, that's not her story to share. It doesn't seem relevant either to mention she had met Salem herself, and until she realized who it was, thought that, mostly, she had just seemed particularly sad and lonely.]

Anyway, she did, and things started to go bad pretty quick. Then Ozpin turned up - I still don't know if he was coming to confront her himself, or if he knew Ford and I were there, or what. I managed to teleport both of them out, but I didn't have enough power left to get me out too.

[That... is a very stupid way to die. Faith furrows her brow.]

...You didn't teleport yourself out first? [Surely Ozpin can handle himself if he came over to confront her? Or if not it's his own fault?] Did you know you wouldn't be able to?

If I left them behind, I probably wouldn't have been able to get them out at all.

[She couldn't just abandon her friends to a potentially deadly fate. She had nearly killed Ford herself months before, and Ozpin had saved her life more than once in the short time they had known each other at that point.]

I knew it was a risk - teleportation spells aren't exactly easy. They take a lot of power, and magic in Deerington was, uh, a little extra finicky compared to home.

What I did know, though, was that if Ford and Ozpin died, they would have lost their memories. There was, uh, a pattern to death in Deerington. The first time, you got a really bad case of the flu, the second time, you got the flu and lost a bunch of your memory, and so on. It got worse every time it happened.

[She shrugs a little and looks to Faith.]

I knew if anything happened to me, I'd be sick, but I'd still have all my memories intact.

[Faith hums, crossing her arms before nodding in a concession to Willow's point.]

Alright, I see the logic. Guessing they must have felt pretty guilty afterward.

What happened to her? The witch?

Yeah, it wasn't exactly a good time for any of us. The dream was falling apart by then too, and crazy dangerous all on its own, then add in a super powerful witch with a grudge...

[She shrugs a little.]

Ruby and the rest of her people took down Salem the same night she got me. It was the only solution they had at the time - to just keep killing her until she forgot she wanted to kill everyone else.

[She hums. They should have taken that option with Maul, really. There's no point anymore, probably, if he's not entirely full of shit. But that's the thought that comes to the forefront of Faith's mind.]

Ruby's pretty badass, huh? [There's a small smile on her face. She likes Ruby.]

[Willow is content to leave well enough alone where Maul is concerned, at least for now. He seems to be genuinely repentant for the harm he's caused, and determined to prove he can become a better person.

All she can do for now is hope it sticks.

She glances to Faith with a little smile of her own.]

Yeah, she really is.

Only really saw her fight against the Leviathan, but I'd believe she could take down a real pissed off witch.

[She glances again at the deer statue.]

So, guessing there's a lot of these around? [She thinks she might have spotted a few on the way, but she didn't have anyway to realize what they were.]

Yeah, I saw her fight in Deerington. It's, uh, a good thing she's on our side, huh?

[Willow turns serious again as Faith's attention is drawn back to the statue, and she follows her gaze.]

Buffy was there too. And Giles. Not for long - they both ended up waking up just a couple weeks after I got there. Sunnydale on crack, she called it. She really wasn't wrong.

[She glances at Faith briefly. Has she told her this before? Maybe? Not that she can recall, she doesn't think. Regardless, it easily comes to the surface here and now, at the base of this statue that signified her death and forced her out of the house that Giles had owned, and still held so many memories of home. She's not sure how ready she is to open up about trying to adapt when she first arrived, so instead, she puts her focus back on the question at hand.]

But yeah. There's not really a statue shortage around here.

[The idea of evil Ruby is fucked up and evil.]

Yeah, you told me that in our first chat, when you fished me out of the waters. [She glances at the building... the wreckage is actually almost familiar, in the haze that was everything that happened while she was under Buffy's skin.]

You think they'll ever come back? [She wants Buffy near, but she wants her far away from her, she wants to apologize, but she never wants to grovel again, she doesn't want to do this alone, but she's so sick of being a sidekick. It's a dilemma. She doesn't think she wants to see Giles again.]

[The closest Willow has seen Ruby to evil was when she had been transformed into a Grimm by Salem, but at the time she didn't even realize that the Hound was actually her friend. It had been a particularly horrifying situation and had shown her the kind of evil that Salem perpetuated.]

Oh, sorry. [The whole no memory thing makes it hard, but it's still a little embarrassing when she realizes she's repeating conversations that have already been had. To Faith's question, she shrugs a little. She misses Buffy, and Xander, and Giles, and Dawn, and everyone else still, but it's been awhile since she's had much held onto much hope of seeing anyone from home again.

Then again. Faith and Tara are both here. Even if the situation is best described as... well, complicated still feels a little understated.]

I don't know. I mean, I never thought I'd see anyone from home again, and then you and Tara both turned up - one after another, too. I'm not going to count on it, but then again, I don't know if I'll ever not at least keep an eye open for them, you know?

Why're you apologizing? Not your fault you were murdered. [If Willow blames herself at all, Faith might punch her in the mouth. She gets enough of that from Tara.]

I get it. I don't even know if I want her here. [For many reasons, some selfless, some selfish. Even more selfish are the resons she does want her here.] Feels weird making our bed on my own, though.

No, I mean the whole repeating myself thing.

[It's frustrating more than anything. Repeating conversations that she's already had that she simply can't recall. She's already had her moment of wondering whatever possessed her to leave the safety of the house with Maul, and that's passed quickly into holding him solely responsible for her death, even if he was under the influence of one of Trench's monsters at the time.]

In Deerington, I was always really torn between missing my friends, and not wanting to wish a literal nightmare town on anyone.

[The last reference flies over Willow's head with their previous conversations lost to her, and she just looks puzzled.]

Huh? Buffy used to help you make your bed?

Still hardly your fault, though. [Faith shrugs.

She wonders, not for the first time, what it's like to have friends you miss. She doesn't miss Buffy. That'd be... unfair. Stupid. She's better off without her. She's not allowed to miss her.

She just wants closure.]

I think it was our bed? [She doesn't seem too bothered. It was their bed.] Apparently having two slayers at once means we're just along for the ride in all the bullshit prophetic dreams. Most of them were just me and her in an apartment, full of unpacked boxes, and an unmade double bed. So we'd just... make the bed.

Now it's just me making it.

It's just... frustrating sometimes. Not being able to remember stuff. It makes everything way more complicated, and no solution in sight so far.

[Not that she ever would have wanted anyone to undertake the weight of the sacrifice Deeringon seemed to require from her circle of friends to restore a lost memory. Oscar had lost a leg to help one of his friends, and Ironwood had sacrificed an arm for Ozpin.

She's quiet for a moment as she contemplates the dream, and the possible interpretations of Buffy and Faith, making the bed together in a still packed apartment. Then the deeper meaning of Faith now making it alone.]

That kind of makes sense, with being connected by the source of your power and all. That sharing dreams might be a thing. Not seeing her now could mean a lot of things... it could even just be because this is a totally different world from home.

Yeah, I mean... I get it. I don't know, have you asked Bones or Ozpin about it? There might be some solution. [She shrugs. She's not exactly an optimist but she figures Willow needs the boost at least.]

I think it's just that she's... not here. Whenever we were there together, neither of us could really say whose mind we were in, hers or mine, the only thing I was sure of was that we were both having the same dream. [It still doesn't surprise her that Buffy kept that to herself. She wonders, internally, if Willow ever figured out that she was lying when she said she didn't get off on murder.] I still get Slayer dreams. Had a couple about the Leviathan.

She's just wholly absent, I guess. It's weird.

I haven't asked our friend here, no. A bunch of us at home are already working on it, though, and Ozpin's looking into it too. We'll figure it out, though. It's just taking longer than I'd like.

[It makes an odd amount of sense, not being able to tell whose mind they were in, or whose dream it started out as. Even Buffy's absence from Faith's dreams now seems reasonably able to be explained away.]

That'd be my guess - why Buffy's not in your dreams now, I mean. That it's because there's now a whole different world separating the two of you.

Well... you'd been working on regaining your magic for a while too. This is rich as fuck coming from me, but you just sort of have to be patient with these things. [She shrugs.

She nods along to Willow's explanation, giving one last parting glance to the statue.] Yeah. Guess so...

Well... there's a whole lot more around this place. Feel like taking a tour? You know more landmarks than I do.

Oh, I know... I feel like forgetting everything means I lost a lot of ground on the magic front too.

[She lets out a sigh. She's trying not to feel discouraged, but it certainly hasn't been easy by any stretch. Faith is right, though, she knows the situation calls for an infinite amount of patience. It doesn't make it easy.

She tears her attention away from the statue, and nods.]

Yeah, let's go take a look around. Maybe we can even find some stuff that got left behind or something.

06 . the sleepy town expedition.

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