Kathy's Revenge

Chapter 8

After a little bit of convincing we manage to get the injured slayer up to her room so she can sleep. No one wanting to talk about anything while she was around. Almost as if she were made of china and the slightest mention of what just happened would break her.

Giles and myself come back down the slightly curved staircase, which dominates the front foyer. He wants everyone else to stay down here to give her a little more air. We head back into the office where everyone is practicing their nervous habits. If you don’t know them by now I’ll give you the rundown. Xander is just sitting around wringing his hands. Red is busy pacing. Angel well he’s pretty much brooding. That would be his everything habit. Everyone else? Not really sure where they went.

Giles more perches than sits on a seat left for him and begins to clean his glasses. I swear one day he’ll rub right through the glass. He seams to be thinking. I start pacing, why? I’m not sure. When I’m nervous or anything I usually just kick the shit out of something, guess this ones got me worried. We’ve only been out of Sunny D for like 24 hours and guess what? Just ‘cause there is no Sunny D don’t mean we aint got demonic shit going down. And this week was meant to be a break before Cleveland… guess not.

“So G-Man what have I gotta kill to stop this?” I say. I can’t think of any other explanation.

Red decides to step forward and put in her two cents. “What about a protection spell? Stop all other nasties getting into her mind?”

“N...no I don’t believe that w…will be necessary.” He’s still cleaning his glasses and what did he just say. “I don’t believe this is demon or magic related.”

I look at Red, she looks at me, we both look at Giles.

“What you talking about G-Man? This is obviously some sorta demon attack, trying to weaken her… maybe one of the demons form Sunny D survived?” I say trying to make sense of it all.

“Willow, do you remember what happened when Glory took Dawn?” Giles explains looking down, still cleaning those God forsaken glasses!

Willow just nods, she obviously wants to believe my story, but by the look on her face she is swaying more towards Giles’ argument.

“Okay, so what do we do? Do I need to do the whole invading her head thing again to get her back to normal?” Willow asks being her usual proactive-ness.

Giles puts his glasses on. Finally! He raises his head and looks into Willows eyes.

“I don’t think that is going to work this time.” He doesn’t elaborate.

I raise my eyebrows at him. “Well?”

“Buffy is experiencing a severe lack of control over her unconscious anxieties, which I believe is due to not only the loss of friends and family over the past years but also the realisation that if she could, she could give up being a slayer and lead a normal life away from death and danger.” He pauses for a second. “My best bet is that she cannot cope with the realisation of all this. It’s all well and good to have fantasies where you can escape to in the hard times and it is good to have a dream, even one you will never realise. Now Buffy can realise her dreams and it is just too much for her to take in. This is far worse than loosing Dawn, this is her being able to have choices, she is facing the biggest decision of her life and what is even more frustrating is that she doesn’t know it.”

There is a long pause where everyone lets this sink in. Well most of them anyway. I pipe up and ask “What’s that in English?”

“She’s having a mental breakdown.”