10Disclaimed: Ahh alas, these characters et al do not belong to me, I am borrowing.
Notes: A re-imagined version of a project I started a good 15+ years ago. Hoping to go a little further this time! Who is up for the ride?
Back to Reality Again
When she next opened her eyes, it was quiet. The room was dark except for the shard of harsh fluorescent light that escaped from the corridor outside. Looking down she found she was still wearing the hospital gown. Creasing her forehead in thought, she struggled to remember what had happened. How she'd got here. Her head was too full and what was in it wasn't making much sense. There was a demon, that she remembered, who could forget it, it had been completely gross. But now it was like there were two sets of memories, and neither seemed to mesh well with the other. She'd seen it before, before it had poisoned her this time, but where? It was like those times long past, that also felt like they'd happened recently. But wait, it was getting far too confusing. That thing had poisoned her in Sunnydale? What was going on? Buffy's head began to hurt from the ridiculously jumbled thoughts.
Her thoughts changed focus, her friends, and that automatic instinct to reach out to them, it took some restraint not to call out for their help, but she knew it was pointless, they weren't there were they? At least she knew she'd not killed them and had stopped that demon before it got to them. But that was before she'd been given the antidote and had woken up here again. Somehow Buffy knew, she wouldn't be going back to them.
That was a couple of days ago and the doctor couldn't believe she was now completely lucid. Oh yes alleluia. He and her parents regarded it as some miracle, but she knew that whatever the hell had happened it wasn't a miracle. Buffy had her own theories, but none she could possibly share with her doctor or anyone else. She needed to be believably sane to get out of here as quickly as possible and while she knew she was sane, it didn't mean that the doctor would be of the same frame of mind if she cared to share all her current thoughts following her 'awakening'.
Her parents. That had been the hardest thing to deal with. While this was the world she belonged in, it was so hard to discard the memories and cumulative feelings spanning those six years. Mom was here, she hadn't died, Dad was here as well, they were together, which was a strange thing to comprehend and would take some getting used to. She would be going home soon. As soon as the doctor thought she was ready. He had his reservations, well who wouldn't? He was concerned over her confusion and would likely be keen to keep her at the clinic because he had no idea what the hell had happened, he had no clue which was, kind of funny but not so funny if it meant he held her hostage longer than was necessary. Muttering about miracles and impossibilities, she thought he could do with some reality checking and a much more open mind. Which was precisely why she was keeping quite a bit to herself. She honestly did believe she belonged here, but Buffy couldn't bring herself to dismiss those six years in Sunnydale as a crazed delusion created by her mind.
All those confused thoughts and not one iota of anything that resembled an explanation. Confusion abounded, not least by some of the things her mom and dad had been talking about, to her and between themselves. Things like getting her back in school; what school? And though she didn't catch all of what they'd said, she could tell things weren't great between them. The stress of her being in there must have taken its toll.
But still, something wasn't sitting right, they looked different, younger and they'd talked about her blowing up the school gym like it was a recent disaster. That was during a discussion with the doctor. Buffy had managed to fob them off saying she wasn't sure why she'd done it, for attention, because she was bored or because she was very angry? And those were the theories her parents and the doctor preferred. They were leaning toward the idea that she had a personality disorder. She supposed that to outsiders, it might explain some of her behaviour.
Blowing up the school just seemed like so long ago, perhaps they were talking about it because it had occurred just before they locked her up in here. Was that right? For some reason she recollected two instances. She'd been released when she'd stopped talking about…everything she wasn't meant to be talking about, but then…there was a memory block just there, and she couldn't get through that.
And then that just highlighted that other thing. She had blown up the school here. She had talked about vampires here and then she'd been released once when she'd stopped going on about it. Did that mean something? The only answer Buffy could think of was that she was still the slayer and then that's when she was hit by an awful gnawing feeling crawling around in the pit of her stomach.
What had happened in the six years she'd been in here? Was there another slayer? Had they had to call another because she was incarcerated? Why hadn't the council of watchers tried to get her out? She was certain it was well within their power so why not?
When the answer came it came quickly and was so shocking that it rivalled discovering she was the slayer. A little over two weeks had passed and Buffy had to endure further therapy with her doctor. She had worked hard on how to talk to him in an average kind of way, obviously emphasising how well she felt and describing in detail her regular nothing out of the ordinary feelings. Though it was massively tedious she knew it was necessary. She wanted out after all. She couldn't wait to escape this place and made her peace with cooperating. Fortunately, it appeared to be working, they were beginning to realise she was 'okay', whatever the benchmark for that was, and they had ceased pumping her full of medication, thank god for that.
The doctor excused himself and left the room, clearly to confer with her parents and possibly to bring them into their discussion. Buffy took the opportunity to look around his office yet again.
It was typical, and dull; that wasn't surprising, it was the kind of room that was common in hospitals, not much to look at and what was there was various shades of grey. Her eyes came to rest on the calendar behind his desk. It was displaying February, which was strange, she had thought it was March. Buffy frowned momentarily before realising that whatever had happened in her mind or not, she'd been in this clinic long enough and had been given quite enough mind-altering drugs to explain her disorientation, awareness of time is probably a common one to lose. She shook her head satisfied with her explanation and her gaze moved on already bored by the objects on the desk, but when she caught sight of the year in the corner of the calendar she could go no further.
1996.
She did a double take and once again read the same year. That was wrong, why did he have a six-year-old calendar hanging up in his office? There was no way it was right. Buffy stood up and leaned over his desk to see if there was a date on his computer screen, a vague panic rising within her. When she moved the mouse over the time in the bottom right corner of the screen and the date was revealed as 12th February 1996, she knew that it wasn't the calendar that was wrong, she was.
Interested to hear your thoughts...even if you shared them with me originally! Hello there!
B