Tell Me I Was Dreaming
by Shyfox
Quiet Confessions
[reviews]
Chapter Four: Quiet confessions.
Sometimes late at night I lie awake and watch her sleeping.
She's lost in peaceful dreams so I turn out the lights and lay there in the dark.
And a thought crosses my mind, if I never wake up in the morning.
Would she ever doubt the way I feel about her in my heart.
If tomorrow never comes, Will she know how much I loved her?
Did I try in every way, to show her every day that she's the only one?
And if my time on Earth were through and she must face this world without me.
Is the love I gave her in the past, going to be enough to last if tomorrow never comes?
-- Garth Brooks
Willow could hear the sounds of the machines, even before she saw the still figure lying propped in the hospital bed. She wheeled her way over to where she lay, feeling her heart bleed as she took in the sight of her. Tubes ran from her nose and mouth, to a machine that apparently regulated her wife's breathing, wires ran from her arm to the heart monitoring machine that was giving off a set of beeps that was strangely soothing to Willow's otherwise agitated nerves.
She reached for the hand that was lying closest to her on the bed, and traced it with a cautious finger, relieved to find it warm to the touch. Buffy looked so pale...so...lifeless, that any sign of life was a good thing. Her fingers closed reflexively around the warm digits, like a lifeline that tugged painfully at her heart.
"Buffy." Willow whispered silently, almost afraid to make a sound that would cover the unnatural sounds of the machines. She fell silent again, as she watched her lover breathe, fixated on the sight of her chest moving up and down. She brought the relatively undamaged hand to her lips and kissed it gently, glancing down at the pale colored patch of skin on her wife's finger where her wedding ring had been.
Then her eyes tracked back up the bed, from the crinkled white sheet to the pale, nearly lifeless and bruised face of her wife. She couldn't stop the tears that slid from her eyes, and wondered idly if she'd ever stop crying. They had been through so much, in such a little span of time that it kind of felt like she was on the Cyclone at Coney Island, a roller coaster she had been on once, when her parents had taken her with them on a trip to New York City. She wondered briefly if the ride would ever stop, and then rushed with her prayer that it never would. The highs in her life with Buffy were so very much worth the lows.
"I know you're in there." She whispered to the pale still form, who looked more like a Mummy than her wife at the moment, as her head was covered in bandages. "I'm not going to let you go without a fight. I love you too much for that." She brushed her fingers gingerly over the bruised cheek, before turning her attention to the silver chain she still held loosely in one hand. "So, I'm just going to stay right here and keep you company. I'm gonna babble so much it will drive you crazy and then you'll have to wake up just to kiss me so I'll be quiet." She didn't know it, but her resolve face had just then completely taken over her face.
Joyce watched in silence from the doorway, feeling like an interloper on the quiet communication. She wasn't really sure that she could call it that, considering it was all one-sided. But if she didn't know any better, she would swear that she could see her daughter listening with all her might. She decided that maybe they'd be all right left on their own for a while, and slipped out of the room, wondering if the cafeteria would still be open. She could use a strong cup of tea right about now.
Willow never even noticed her Mother-in-law's departure, her entire focus centered on her wife. "Joyce gave me this to hold onto for you, but I think it looks better on you than it does on me." She quipped gently, forcing a smile as she gently put the silver chain around Buffy's neck. She fastened the clasp, careful not to lean on the bed, or put pressure on the all too fragile looking body, then leaned back examining the way the cross looked shining under the fluorescent light of the hospital room. She tucked it carefully under the loose fitting smock Buffy was wearing, then petted it once, feeling unreasonably better knowing it was there.
******
"How are you holding up?" The rich softness of his voice caused Joyce to tense up a brief millisecond before she put the Styrofoam cup down on the cafeteria table and picked her head up, looking at the love of her life through blood- shot eyes.
"Both of my daughters are in the hospital. Buffy is in a coma, and Dr. Wiseberg is worried about what all of the stress that Willow is undoubtedly going through is doing to the baby. I'd say other than that, I'm just peachy." Her voice was more tense and angry then she would have liked, and she felt guilty for the flinch she saw edge over Giles face before it disappeared. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. I'm just..." She closed her mouth, feeling frustration and an overwhelming anger building inside of her.
"Worried...angry...and undoubtedly very upset. I don't blame you." She could see his calm reassurance shining through the dark layers of his eyes, and for some reason felt unaccountably more upset that he wasn't outwardly falling apart like she was.
"I wish I could just get my hands around that conniving, little...to think I actually invited her into my house once." Joyce enjoyed her visions of strangling the life out of Faith immensely. The enjoyment in her eyes of the vision caused Giles to squirm uneasily. "Did you find any traces of her at all?"
"None." Faith, to everyone's surprise, seemed to have disappeared. There wasn't any sign of her body, anywhere. It's almost like the other Slayer had got up and walked away from the site...but that was impossible wasn't it? She had to have been as badly hurt as Buffy had been from that fall. "Xander, Oz and I have examined the scene thoroughly, but we have found no traces of where she might have landed. I can't quite figure it out...it's like she just disappeared."
Giles shook his head, mystified and just as upset as Joyce was that they hadn't been able to locate the other Slayer. He shuddered to think she was still out there, just waiting for another opportunity to take a crack at his Slayer. In her present condition, she would be no match for Faith in a fight.
Giles took a deep breath, glancing around the mostly empty cafeteria to ensure that no one was close enough to overhear them "You know there's something else that we need to consider."
"What's that?" Joyce asked, an eyebrow arching enquiringly on her forehead.
"While I'm confident that Buffy's going to make a full and speedy recovery, we just might have a problem with that."
"What do you mean?" Joyce asked, totally taken aback by Giles statement.
"Buffy doesn't heal like normal people. A bruise disappears overnight, a cut...depending on how bad it is, or how deep...in a day or two. Dr. Greene is probably going to notice that. I'm not sure if there's anything that we can do to prevent that. And he's probably going to have a lot of questions. Questions I'm not sure that we can answer."
"Okay...I can see that. But she has so many injuries, surely her body is going to take a while to heal them all, even with Super Slayer healing ability." Joyce said the last bit in a whisper, but it still caused Giles to scan the room, worriedly. "Maybe he won't notice?"
Giles shook his head slowly. "Doubtful. We're just going to have to figure out a plausible story to tell him."
Joyce looked at him, worry filling her expression. What could they say? Buffy comes from a long line of healers? Undoubtedly true, based on the stories she had heard as a child, and from the fact that Buffy was a Vampire Slayer. But not exactly something that the doctor would believe, was it? She wasn't sure what they were going to do when asked, hopefully they could find some way to bluff their way through it.
******
Sunlight dabbled across her cheeks, and she woke up to the tweetering of birds outside her window. Her hand reached out and traced the warm flesh that was curled protectively around her stomach, and she smiled at the feel of the warm weight that rested comfortably on top of her. Breath breezed across her face, as her wife exhaled then opened a pair of sleepy blue eyes. A warm smile was quick to follow, as the newly awakened sleeper stretched mightily.
"Did you sleep okay?" Green eyes with a shade of worry in them, examined the lithe form of her wife carefully.
"Like a rock." Came the sleepy but exuberant reply, as blue eyes shifted to rest warmly on the small form that had crawled into bed with them the night before, clutching her teddy bear tightly to her. "Think she's okay?" A strong but gentle hand caressed a tiny head full of reddish blonde hair.
"Yeah. She just had a bad dream. She'll be all right." Their daughter had scared the living daylights out of them the night before. They had been in the middle of a very pleasant daze, when the sharp shriek, that only their daughter could make, shattered their mood in a heartbeat. Buffy had collected the tear streaked red-head, who was sucking her thumb with one hand, while the other clung onto the tattered form of her Pooh bear, and taken her into bed with them.
"Yeah, but it was so strange. It's like she thought I had died or something." Buffy commented, looking down at her daughter who was still clutching at her skin fretfully with two tiny fingers. When she had entered her daughter's bedroom, the redhead had looked up at her with such a lost puppy expression that it had nearly broken her heart. Big wet tears had dripped out of those big blue eyes and it had caught her flat footed. The little arms had gone up, just waiting to be picked up, and Buffy had swept her up into her arms, holding her daughter tightly to her chest.
The little girl had clung tenaciously to her for the rest of the night, crying when Willow had tried to move her so Buffy could get more comfortable. So she had merely wrapped her arms around the small frame, watching as she sniffed and hiccoughed her way towards the sandman's door, before the blue eyes had drifted closed and the small mouth's movements on the tiny thumb had slowed to a halt.
"She looks alright now though." Willow replied, running her fingers through the soft and sweaty hair, as she studied the peaceful pose.
"Yeah." Buffy murmured, rubbing a gentle hand in a massaging motion over the tiny back. Their hands merged over their daughter's sleeping form, and their eyes rose to meet each others, conveying their love for each other and their child. Was there anything she wouldn't do for the both of them? One look into Willow's eyes gave her the answer.
*****
Willow was startled awake by a low melodic humming, coming from a chair beside her. Surprised to find she had fallen asleep in the first place, she picked up her head, feeling the crick in her neck from falling asleep in such an awkward position, and stared in amazement at the older woman.
There was such a presence around her, an air of calm gentility that it set Willow completely at peace as she examined the other woman's appearance. The older woman sat poised, as if she were in front of a camera or at a book recital, her long frame folded into the chair as if it were made specifically for her. Long, greyish-white hair was tied into a bun, and the still bright blue eyes rested peacefully and quite calmly on the occupant of the bed.
Willow knew immediately who it must be, but she was surprised that the elderly woman had arrived here so quickly. "Nana?"
"Came to see how my granddaughters were doing." The vibrant eyes rested on her for a half of a second, appearing to size her up with that one look, before moving her attention back to the form lying so still in the bed. "She's going to be just fine you know." Nana said, the sound of strong determination and belief in her voice.
"How do you know?" Willow asked, her eyes filling with questions.
"Because...she has a destiny that she has yet to fulfill. She will remember that and fight to come back. They always do."
"I want to believe that." Willow said, not feeling so sure herself at the moment, as she took in the sight of all of Buffy's wounds.
"Then believe it, child." The older woman said, catching Willow up in the strong pull of her azure eyes. "She comes from a long line of fast healers." A sparkle of amusement lit the blue, catching the redhead off guard.