"If I Should Die Before I Wake"
by Gaius Petronius
DISCLAIMER:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all the characters that appear on
the show are the exclusive property of Joss Whedon, the WB, Fox
and Mutant Enemy, Inc. I only borrow them, mess with their heads,
make them cry and, every once in a while, torture them. I do lay
claim to the character of Johannes Martel since he is the central
character in an original novel I've been working on now for too
many years.
Spoilers: BtVS season two. Originally written in script format
during the spring of 1998, "If I should die before I wake"
is the sequel to my first Buffy novel, "Carpe Diem."
Rating: PG for violence and language."
* * * * * * * *
"But in the grey of the morning,
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose."
The Moody Blues, "Question," 1970
* * * * * * * *
"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."
Anonymous child's prayer
* * * * * * * *
Chapter 8 - A Lousy Liar
Joyce Summers sat across the kitchen table from her daughter
as she and Buffy struggled through an evening dinner together.
Both were silent, neither glancing up from their plates. This
was one of those increasingly rare occasions, eating supper together.
For a change, Joyce was not late from a show at her struggling
art gallery and Buffy during the last three weeks rarely rushed
out at first dusk as she used to. So here they were together,
uncomfortable and unspeaking.
Buffy stared at her warmed over, nutritionally balanced, three
food group, prepackaged microwave meal mounded up on her plate.
She poked the pile of mashed potatoes with her fork, releasing
a flow of lukewarm gravy down the ridged slope in an imaginary
rush of lava that, in her mind, inundated all the undead of the
cemetery. Dozens of nameless vampires along with those few with
faces, Drusilla, Spike, and Angelus . . . especially Angelus,
were all swept away in the rush of brown goo that oozed across
her plate toward the levee of off-green partially cooked peas.
More worried than usual about Buffy's silent and gloomy expression,
Joyce studied her daughter carefully as Buffy appeared to push
her food around with an unfathomable purpose. Finally, Joyce faced
up to the inevitable. Being both a Gemini and a mother of a teenage
daughter, she had to talk.
"Buffy?" she asked carefully.
"Yeah, Mom?" Buffy answered as if called back from
a dream.
Joyce took a deep breath as she prepared to initiate the actual
conversation.
"You're going to have to tell me sooner or later what's
happened."
"What?" Buffy asked, looking up from the fantasized
devastation on her plate as she realized she had been asked an
actual question.
"You've been tearing yourself to pieces the last three
weeks," Joyce said as gently as possible, "Please don't
shut me out. Let me help."
"It's okay, Mom," Buffy said in a flat tone of voice
as she stared back down at what was now just an ordinary plate
of microwaved food, "There's nothing you can do."
Joyce picked up on the slight opening.
"Why don't you let me be the judge. Is it anything to
do with that exchange student you were seeing?"
Buffy didn't respond but continued to stare down at her plate.
"Oh no, Buffy! It's not something like what happened with
that Angel person . . ." Instantly Joyce realized in mid
sentence her verbal blunder, allowing her emotions to get in the
way of her need to collect information. To her surprise, her daughter
cut her off.
"No! No, Mom. Nothing like that."
"Thank God," Joyce sighed.
There was a long silence as Buffy offered no further information.
"But it is about that Martel boy, isn't it?" Joyce
asked hoping to re-establish the dialogue.
Buffy nodded, still staring down at her plate. Suddenly she
looked up directly at her mother. Joyce's heart skipped a silent
beat as she saw her daughter's wide eyes and the wetness steaming
down her cheeks.
"He died, Mom," Buffy stumbled over the words but
their meaning clear nonetheless, "Jonathan died."
Momentarily in a state of total shock, Joyce stared at her
daughter. This was the one thing she had never expected to hear.
And then the walls between them crumbled. The agonized look on
Buffy's face cut to her mother's heart. Joyce quickly rediscovered
her voice, stood up and pulled up a kitchen chair next to Buffy.
As she sat back down, she wrapped her arms around her daughter
in an unconditional expression of mother's love.
"Oh, my God. My poor darling. Oh Buffy . . . I'm so sorry."
The embrace lasted for a long time. As she stroked her daughter's
long hair, Joyce worried that Buffy felt immobile in her arms,
like a rag doll. Finally, Joyce held her daughter out at arm's
length.
"Buffy, are you going to be okay?"
"I don't know, Mom."
"You have to talk to me when something like this happens,"
Joyce said without any reproach in her voice, "You're right,
I may not be able to do anything. But no one should have to carry
that kind of burden alone."
"I am supposed to meet with the guidance counselor at
school," Buffy said hesitantly as she wiped her wet face
with her sleeve, ignoring the perfectly clean napkin by the side
of her plate, "Giles told Principal Snyder, and he asked
me to go."
"Mr. Giles, he watches out for you a lot, doesn't he,"
Joyce said, marveling that a total stranger in the Sunnydale school
system would actually pay attention to the well being of her difficult
daughter.
"Yeah," Buffy answered. Joyce sensed a world of emotions
in that single word response.
"I'll have to remember to thank him," Joyce said
out loud to herself. She really wanted to, since it had been so
long since someone had told her, even indirectly, that they cared.
"What happened?"
Buffy looked away from her Mother and almost mumbled her words.
"It was a car wreck," Buffy lied as best she could,
"Right after he got back to Europe."
"Anything you want me to do for you?" Joyce couldn't
believe she had gotten this far with her daughter.
"Mom?"
"Yes?"
Buffy looked up at her mother as her large green eyes glistened
and begged for an answer to the question that had plagued her
for the past three weeks.
"What do you think happens to someone . . . when they
die?"
The sentence struck Joyce as if she had been slapped in the
face. It was the second statement that evening for which she was
totally unprepared.
"I mean, like when my cousin died," Buffy continued
nervously as her eyes stayed focused on her mother, "Do you
think someone just disappears and everything ends?"
Joyce took a deep breath. She knew what she said next was probably
one of the most important things she was ever going to say to
her daughter. And then it came to Joyce Summers. All she had to
do was tell Buffy what she believed herself, what she hoped would
be the outcome of all things that she loved.
"Buffy, honey," Joyce said with conviction, "If
there is one thing I am sure of, it is that there is a spirit
in us that makes us what we are. And that spirit is forever."
Joyce realized that Buffy was hanging on every word. The weight
of guilt and worry that Joyce Summers had carried for so long,
first for the divorce and secondly for her daughter's continuous
"problems," were lifting. Buffy, for the first time
in years, was listening.
"You know we haven't been much for church since the divorce,"
Joyce continued, "I don't pretend to know what specifically
happens when someone dies. Nobody does. I like to think, maybe,
that spirit becomes a part of something beautiful. . . .a rainbow,
a sunset, waves breaking on the rocks at the beach. Does that
make sense?"
She could see the sadness recede, if only slightly, from Buffy's
face. Her daughter started to show the faintest hint of a smile.
"You know, Jonathan and I used to sit in the Library and
talk a lot . . . about all kinds of stuff," Buffy confessed
slowly, "That's just like what he said."
"See, so maybe I'm not so totally out of it," Joyce
replied with a mother's pride.
"Thanks, Mom."
Buffy wrapped her arms around Joyce and gave her a quick teenage
squeeze. A soft rap at the back kitchen door interrupted the case
of the huggies. Outside in the dark, an antsy Willow hopped from
foot to foot.
"Come on in, Will," Buffy called out as she wiped
her eyes, this time with the fresh napkin.
"Hello, Mrs. Summers," Willow sang out as she entered
the kitchen.
"Hello, Willow," Joyce answered warmly, "You
both off to the Library?"
"Right," Buffy volunteered, "Then we're going
to the Bronze after we finish studying."
As Willow and Buffy headed for the kitchen door, Willow looked
closely at Buffy's face.
"Your mascara's a mess. You been crying, again?"
"Nah!" Buffy lied, glancing away, "Just onions."
"Oh, yeah, right!" Willow quipped like Xander, "And
you're taking Latin your senior year, too!"
Willow quickly turned to Buffy's mother.
"She's a lousy liar, Mrs. Summers. But don't worry, she
can't fool me!"
Joyce watched with love as Buffy and Willow marched confidently
out into the evening darkness.
"I know, Willow," she said softly so that only she
herself could hear, "I know."
* * * * *
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