“Dad, don’t do this,” Buffy pleaded. “You can’t, you can’t just put your daughter away like this… I swear I’m not lying, I swear, I promise, please believe me daddy, please…”
“Hank,” Joyce whispered between tears. “Let’s just take her back home. This place won’t—“
“Joyce, no. We have to do something about this. She can’t go around spreading lies and, and…” Buffy’s screams broke Hank’s sentence and he glanced at her painfully before returning his eyes to his wife’s face. “If she doesn’t get better, we’ll bring her home eventually. She just needs to… to sort things out in her mind. Away.”
Chaos broke loose as Buffy finally had had enough and began punching orderlies. One was unconscious and another sporting a broken nose by the time four of them forced her into bindings on a stretcher and disregarded her screams as they carried her off.
“Hank Hank Hank Hank Hank we can’t do this I can’t do this LET HER GO!” Joyce shouted after one of the men taking Buffy away. “JUST LET HER GO! SHE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG, THIS IS ALL A MISTAKE, JUST… just, it’s…” Hank stepped forward and wrapped Joyce in his arms, rocking her quietly and still not shedding a tear as Buffy was taken away by the men in white suits.
TWO WEEKS LATER…
It had been a mostly silent car ride. Joyce had tried to force uncomfortable conversation. Hank had shown regret. Buffy had shown her incredible ability at holding a grudge. Once home, Buffy had gone immediately to her room, somehow managing to carry everything up all at once. Hank had mumbled something and ducked into his office to do god knew what related to work. Joyce, left more alone than she would have liked to have been, fixed Buffy a snack and climbed the stairs slowly to bring it to her.
A quiet knock on the door. Buffy whirled around to see her mother standing there with a fairly large piece of chocolate cake on a plate. Buffy smiled despite herself and took the cake slowly. “Thanks,” she said quietly.
“You’re welcome. I figured you might need it.” Buffy nodded slowly and took a sliver of the cake off with her fork, focusing expertly at a point on the floor and waiting for her mother to retreat reluctantly back into the kitchen.
Instead she felt a hand on her face. “I’m so sorry, Buffy. I never wanted… I… it was…”
“Mostly dad?” she provided.
“Well… I wouldn’t say…”
“Don’t bother defending him, mom. Even in my supposed state, I remember everything that went on that week. I remember every time you tried to find another option.” She looked up slowly. “I’m not angry with you. Not really. Hurt, maybe. But I am angry with him.” Buffy shook her head and suppressed the anger and tears that threatened. She put her cake down and went back to her suitcase. “Thanks for the cake, mom, but I’d really like to be alone right now.”
“Of course,” came the quiet reply. Joyce turned her back and walked a couple of paces before stopping. “In his defense, Buffy, it did help. I’m so happy to see you well again… your father ultimately knew what was right.”
“Of course. Father knows best.” Buffy’s voice quivered as she stared into her suitcase. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s only pretending to be my father. Someday I’ll find my real dad, and he’ll be someone who believes in me. Not someone who sends me to a crazy house because he thinks I’m lying.” Buffy quickly slammed the door and leaned against it, still fighting against the tears and losing a futile battle.
Joyce, on the other hand, had an expression of pure panic on her face. She stood rooted to the spot in horror for almost a full minute before scurrying down the stairs and flying into her husband’s office.
“She knows, Hank. She figured it out. Somehow, her time in that place made her figure it out.”
Hank stared at Joyce evenly for a minute, wondering if the nonsense speaking had traveled from Buffy to her mother somehow. Finally, he spoke evenly: “That’s not possible. There’s no way she could know unless she was told by one of us. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me…”
“Of course not.”
“Then she doesn’t know. What did she say to make you concerned?”
“She said, ‘he’s only pretending to be my father. Someday I’ll find my real dad…’ and then some angsty teenager stuff, but that’s the bulk of it.”
Hank nodded, a slow smile spreading across his face. He stood and put his hands on Joyce’s shoulders. “That’s all it is. Just angst. She’s angry with us because we sent her to that place…”
“…Because you sent her to that place.”
Hank’s smile faded and he dropped his hands. “I thought we were together on this.”
“Never, Hank. Not ever did I outright agree to send her away to a crazy house. She was never insane, Hank. Just troubled. She’s only fifteen. Maybe she saw some people dressed in dark clothing, who only looked like va—“
“Don’t use that word!”
“Oh, why not? Are we going to completely avoid the subject now?”
“Yes. That’s precisely what we’re going to do. She’s better now, so we are never going to bring this up again. Now, I stand by my decision. If we hadn’t sent her there, she’d still be insane right now.”
“She was never insane!”
“Yes, well. You can remain in that frame of mind as much as you’d like, because we aren’t bringing this up again.”
“Hank, we have to talk about…”
“No we don’t. Now please leave me alone. I have work to do.”
Hank retreated back to his desk and began typing at an inconceivable rate. Joyce stood for a moment and stared at her soon-to-be ex-husband in disbelief before sighing heavily and leaving the room.
The next morning, when Buffy came down to breakfast, she seemed like their daughter. The incident never was brought up again. Well, not for six years at any rate.
SIX YEARS LATER…
“What if I’m still there?” Buffy whispered. “What if I never left that clinic?”
“Buffy… Buffy, you’re not. I’m so sorry you had to go through that, but it’s the past. You have to trust me.”
TBC. I heart reviews; the more, the merrier.
The last two lines were in the episode Normal Again, I used them to establish what the hell I was talking about. Not mine, Joss', just like the characters and the reason for which this site exists. What a guy.
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