FIC: Ice Capades -- Three Scenes from the Life of a Slayer

Happy Buffy Month!

Title: Ice Capades: Three Scenes from the Life of a Slayer
Rating: PG
Category: Gen, Post-"Chosen"
Written for buffy_love month. Thanks to marenfic for running this!
Description: I had a computer failure and lost some original work, so I adapted this from an earlier topic response I wrote for theatrical_muse. Some gen Buffy/family interaction.


February 2006

Buffy pulls the scarf tight around her neck, turns up her collar, and draws a deep breath, but she still isn't ready for the onslaught of cold. California born and bred, then a short summer interlude in England, and a year and a half in Rome. But this is Boston, and it's winter, and nothing in the Slayer handbook tells how to deal with that -- at least she's pretty sure; she's been meaning to read the whole thing through. Any day now.

But these stupid classes keep getting in the way. She hoists the satchel full of books, and it's not like Slayer strength makes her back any wider. Laws of physics catch up with superpowers at some point and now she finds it -- as she wrestles with the bag and the coat and the glass door, her stylish but affordable boots slip on a slealthy patch of ice, and frozen sidewalk meets Slayer tailbone.

If the sidewalk was some kind of demon, she's pretty sure she would have something witty to say to it. But as it is, she just lets out some air, and says, "Oof!" She starts to get up, but up seems like a long way, and just lying down and closing her eyes has things to recommend it.

"Buffy?" A girl she vaguely recognizes from the seminar she's just left -- Iris? --offers a hand, and Buffy decides she ought to take it. "I thought LeGrande was way hard on you in there."

"Well --" Buffy laughs sheepishly, pulling herself upright with much less grace than if she'd only been fighting a fanged Remorah demon. "It was pretty obvious I hadn't done the reading."

"Please. It's a bullshit media studies seminar. Nobody does the reading." The girl who might be Iris pushes dark-framed glasses back on her nose. The gesture makes her look very serious, and Buffy wonders if she should invest in a pair. Maybe then professors would stop taking her for an easy target. And maybe you should change your name to Myrtle. And oh, yeah, stop falling asleep in class.

"I did the reading," Buffy says sheepishly. That doesn't mean she understood it. "But I was working late. I work night shifts." Iris looks curious, and Buffy proceeds to overexplain. "At a call center. We get calls. People call us. Or we call people. In other time zones. It's really boring. Normally I'd talk to my friend Willow about the reading. She's really good with this stuff, but she's kind of in Timbuktu."

Iris nods sympathetically. "Flakes out on you? Believe me, my friends are so like that."

"No," Buffy answers. "She's actually in Timbuktu. Africa. With our friend Xander. Researching -- folk traditions." And Buffy knows Willow and Xander have been working hard and it isn't fair to be jealous of the photos Willow emailed from her cell phone -- the two of them in a sidewalk café, holding drinks with umbrellas in them. Gang minus Scooby. She isn't jealous, because she knows a college education is important and at the moment her father is willing to pay for it --

"You want to go to Starbucks, we can talk about it," says the other girl, adding, "I'm Irene." And Buffy thinks, That close.

"I --" Buffy flushes, thinking how lucky she was to meet Xander and Willow on the first day in Sunnydale. She's been here almost two months and hardly knows anyone. But. "I'd like to take a rain check on that, if it's okay."

"Working late again?" Irene sympathizes. Still there's something odd to her expression, and Buffy runs over what she's said about her job. Oh, God, she probably thinks it's phone sex.

"I'm working," Buffy answers, "but it's not phone sex. If you were wondering. Just a call center."

"Oh," says Irene. "I really wasn't." And goes off, no doubt, to tell everybody that the weird new girl in the seminar works in phone sex.

And the truth is, Buffy's not working tonight. She is absolutely completely committed to taking the night off. The vampires of Boston can go wild, as far as she's concerned. But come hell or high water, Buffy is going to go home to her cubbyhole sized apartment, put on a fuzzy sweater, drink some cocoa and eggnog, and watch the figure skating finals from Torino.

Then her pocket starts shaking, and playing the theme from "Flashdance." It takes forever to find the phone, under all those layers. She reads the name -- HANK -- pushes the green button.

She gives him her best motivated go-getter voice. "Hi, Dad!"

"Hi, Buffy." Before she can get in another word, he says, "What do you think about that little Japanese girl getting the gold?"

The phone hangs up by itself. That probably has to do with being hurled, Slayer-strength, across the quad. It hangs itself up and just lies there in the half-melted snow. Then it lights up and starts playing "Flashdance" again. Buffy considers pretending that she doesn't belong to it. She considers walking off and getting a new phone, dying her hair brown and changing her name to Myrtle and moving to Timbuktu to swallow drinks with umbrellas in them for the rest of her life and never never never telling Hank Summers how to reach her. But Buffy is a big girl. And she could use the money. She walks over, picks up the phone, as though she answers "Flashdance"-ing snow phones all the time.

"Sweetie," he says. "What's wrong? The way you screamed, I was about to call the police."

"I didn't scream," she says. "I yelled. At you. Because you just ruined my night when you spoiled the skating."

"What?" says the voice, and he sounds really confused. "Baby, it already happened. I saw it on the news so I thought of you . ."

"It already happened in Italy. It will be on television tonight in America. You do remember how I moved back to America because you thought Italy was too far?" Which wasn't why she moved back, not in the slightest, but she bets he won't start that argument now.

"Well, whatever," Hank says with a martyr's sigh. "You get too busy doing college girl things to talk to your old man, you might as well just say so."

Then he hangs up, and she hangs up, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer stands in the middle of the quad, phone in her hand, tailbone wet from the icy sidewalk, and cries.

*

February 2002

The phone rings and it surprises her. She doesn't remember paying the bill. Willow must have paid it, without making a fuss. Or Xander might have, in which case they might have to argue about this later, but for now, the sound is so welcome and unaccustomed, that Buffy snatches it up and says, "Doublemeat Palace. . .I mean, Summers residence."

"That's cute," laughs the voice on the other end.

"That's where I work, Dad." She tries not to sound snippy. There's always the chance he paid the bill. However remote. "If you think the name's cute --" She goes for perky, trying to imagine she's Dawn -- "--wait until you see the uniforms. I'm thinking of having pictures made when I'm employee of the month."

"Yes," Hank answers, pausing for a moment, clearly baffled by his offspring. "So. What do you think about these French judges."

"What did the French do?" Buffy presses the phone to her chest with her chin and starts to examine a mystery bruise on her leg. She might have stumbled over a gravestone, or been thwacked with a Remara beast's metallic tentacle. Or possibly, she did it at Spike's. Her mystery bruises are getting harder and harder to sort out. "I thought you were in Spain."

"The French judges," he repeats, "in Salt Lake. Haven't you heard the news?"

Buffy officially has no idea what he's talking about. The ankle hurts when she squeezes it, but not too bad. Hopefully it will be better, not worse, in the morning. "Is this something to do with terrorism?" she asks. "Because we already have lots of duct tape. Courtesy of Xander." She can't imagine what French judges have to do with international terrorism. But her father's three calls in the past six months have been about how Buffy and Dawn need to buy duct tape and stockpile antibiotics, and maybe move to Spain with him, as long as they don't try to fly. "Anyway," she says, "we're not going to be killed by terrorists. We live in Sunnydale." She's pretty sure that vampires will keep the terrorists away.

"Well, honey," he says, "as peaceful as a small town like that might seem, you're never really completely safe."

"I'll keep that in mind," she says. "I'm reassured."

"You brought it up," he answers. "I was calling to talk about the Olympic judges in figure skating."

In the brief remainder of the conversation, they manage to establish: that Buffy has completely forgotten the Winter Olympics are on; that she has no idea there is a controversy involving the judges; that even if she knew, the cable bill is unpaid, and the picture tube is busted; that if Hank had money he would send it; that Buffy has no intention of moving to Spain and that she won't even raise the subject with Dawn.

When they're finished, she goes upstairs, looks through her closet, her scrapbook, her bookshelves, and makes a count: Ticket stubs from Ice Capades, Cavalcade of Champions, Disney on Ice, every year from 1988 to 1999. US figure skater Barbie -- Christmas, 1992. VHS Olympic Highlights, birthday, 1994. Michelle Kwan signature ice skates, unspecified occasion, 1998. My Sergei: A Love Story, Russian Olympic champion's memoir of her dead husband and partner; 1999, "because I saw it and thought of you". She can't put her hands on a single other thing that he gave her. Increasingly sporadic and random gifts, unified by a single, predictable theme. As though every time he sees an ice skate, a lightbulb temporarily goes off in his head: "Oh yes! That's right! I have a Buffy!"

Every single piece of this collection goes out with the next day's trash. When Dawn discovers what she's done, there will be a fight. Buffy is enjoying herself too much to care.

*

February 1988

Daddy hands her a cold root beer, a special treat on a school night. "So who's going to win?" he asks her. "Debi or Katarina?

Buffy crosses her arms, rolls her eyes at his silliness. "Katarina!" she announces.

"How do you know?"

"Because she is," says Buffy. "Because she's better."

"Debi's from America," Daddy points out, drinking from his own root beer.

"Not important," says Buffy. "Katarina is just better. Teacher says. Every skater wants to be like Katarina."

Mommy sets down her crossword puzzle and sighs. "I remember Peggy Fleming. Whatever happened to Peggy Fleming?"

"Katarina," Buffy persists, not about to be distracted by her mother's embarrassing affection for has-beens -- "is going to win."

They tell her she can stay up late, skip school the next day if she's too tired. She sits on Daddy's lap, and an hour into it, she falls asleep anyway. Next thing, he's nuzzling her hair. "What do you know, my little expert? Your girl won."

"I told you," she mumbles. "She's the best, and the best always wins. One day, I'll be the best."

"You're already the best to me," he says. "You'll always be my favorite little skater."


*
February 2006

"You all right there?" The girl from class has come back to meet her.

"Yeah." Buffy rubs her eyes. "It's just my father."

"Oh God, what happened?"

"Nothing," Buffy answers. "He's just my father."

"Oh," says the girl, "like that."

"Yeah," Buffy smiles and brushes the hair from her eyes. "Exactly like that. Look, does that coffee offer still stand?"

"I dunno," Irene answers. "I just remembered. I was going to try to go home and watch the figure skating. But if you want to join me -- just don't tell me if you heard who won. I've been avoiding all day."

"Same here," Buffy says with a smile. "I like it to be a surprise."

END