Days in the Sun
May 9th, 2036 – Endings (2)
“Mom? Dad?”
Her hand was shaking when Joyce Anne closed the front door behind her and slipped the keys in her pocket. The locked door meant the house was probably empty, but she called out again, hoping that someone would finally answer. In seconds, she had climbed the steps to the second floor and checked her parents room, finding nothing more than an unmade bed.
She had kept dialing her parents’ number all through the drive, getting nothing more than a busy signal, and as she returned downstairs and entere the living room, she understood why. The phone was off the hook.
Setting it back in the cradle, she pressed the flashing red light on the answering machine. Lisa’s voice rose first, anxious, begging Spike to pick up. Then Will’s, his tone and words matching their sister’s. Lisa again, a little calmer, announcing she was taking the first flight out of London and would arrive in Los Angeles in the early morning of the day after next. Will, saying he had talked to Lisa and she was on her way, and so was he. Joyce Anne felt a pang at the idea that her siblings had called each other but not her, but she quickly reminded herself she had left her apartment minutes after Spike had called her and been on her way before anyone could have tried to contact her. She had only stopped for a minute to call Mark and tell him where she was headed. It was probably time to call him back.
She sat down on the sofa to make her call, and closed her eyes as she listened to the ringing. She was exhausted, having driven all the way from San Francisco without stopping more than once for gas. The phone rang twice before Mark picked up.
“Joy?”
Despite everything, she smiled as she heard his voice. She would have given the world to have him with her at that moment.
“Yeah, it’s me. I’m in Sunnydale.”
“How’s your mom?”
Throat tight, she explained that she hadn’t seen her yet. There were three hospitals in Sunnydale; she would call each of them as soon as she hung up and try to find out where Buffy was. Even as she said so, she wished she had thought of calling while she was driving.
“Will called and left a message,” Mark said when she fell silent. “They’re taking a plane from Seattle to LA in the morning and his godfather will drive them to Sunnydale.”
Sighing softly, Joyce Anne made a mental note to warn her father about Angel’s impending arrival. They usually were courteous enough, but she had seen Spike’s protectiveness where his wife was concerned, and she had no doubt that it would be worse now, whatever was happening. And she hated not knowing what it was exactly.
With Mark’s promise that he would join her the next day, she hung up the phone and took a deep breath, ready to dial for information and get the hospitals numbers. The quiet noise of the front door opening and closing again stopped her, and she rushed to the entrance hall. Her father was there, deep circles beneath his eyes, and the smile he gave her was a mere shadow of his usual one.
“Hey Birdie.”
“Where is mom? How is she? What happened?”
The smile wavered slightly but remained in place.
“She’s in the hospital. You can see her in the morning. They say she’s stable now, but they don’t know how long…”
His lips continued moving, but no sound was coming out anymore, or if it was Joyce Anne didn’t hear a thing. She didn’t want to hear it. Her mom was never sick, she was the healthiest, strongest woman Joyce Anne knew, and she couldn’t even begin to imagine…
Her father’s hand closing tightly on her shoulder jolted her back to the present, and she looked at him as she had all her life, hoping that, once more, he would make things better. The tears shining in his eyes were the scariest thing she had ever seen.
Somehow, this journey back home was making her acutely aware of her lack of sentimental links. Maybe because it would have been soothing to have a hand to hold as the plane seemed to go so slowly. Will had Sarah, Joy had Mark, and she was going home, as always, alone. And thinking of this, brooding about her own choices and their consequences, was the perfect decoy not to think of why she was in that plane, she was well aware of that too.
As a child, she had often remained awake in her bed, focused on the sounds coming from downstairs, waiting to hear the front door open, and her parents’ voices. She couldn’t remember how or when she had first realized what they did when they went out at night, but she had always known it was something dangerous. She had always been afraid one of them would get hurt.
Then they had stopped patrolling, and she had slept better. No more fears to be had. Her father was immortal, or as close to it as one could be, and her mother was a Slayer, never sick, never hurt. If anything, she had worried about how shattered they would be if she ever slipped and lost her life on patrol.
She hadn’t thought for years about losing one of them. She couldn’t imagine it. But she had never imagined either she would ever hear her father sound as broken as he had on the phone.
Or rather, he wanted to be sure of it.
But Angel’s gloomy features as they finally reached him were anything except reassuring.
“I managed to talk to Joy,” he said. “She’s in Sunnydale already.”
William was afraid to ask, to the point that the words refused to pass his lips. His fists closed and started shaking until Sarah’s hand curled around one of his.
“How is Buffy?” she asked, voicing William’s worry as well as her own.
If possible, Angel’s face became grimmer.
“Not good. We’d better go.”
He didn’t say, “we’d better hurry”, but that was what William heard, and something in his chest tightened at the simple idea that it was that bad. He had been hoping ever since his father had called, hoping it was all just a mistake, a false alert, even a tasteless prank. But now, he knew.
The characters and names used in these stories do not belong to me. All copyrights remain with Fox and Mutant Enemy. No profit is made from this fanfiction.