Requiem For A Dream
by HDGenscher
A Goddess Come True
[reviews]
TITLE: Requiem For A Dream [1/?] - The Dreamer - A Goddess Come True
AUTHOR: HD_Genscher
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: B/W
DISCLAIMER: All characters and places belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, et al.
ARCHIVE: HD's Fan Fiction Archive, http://www.wiffy.de/hdffa/
FEEDBACK: If you liked it, I'll appreciate your feedback. And if you didn't like it, it'll help me a lot if you point out what I did wrong.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Waaay AU, and not your usual narrative technique. What else can I say? Right, the girl's name is Buffy, not Elizabeth, but that's just my two euro cents.
---
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
As our case is new, we must think and act anew.
We must disenthrall ourselves.
-- Abraham Lincoln
What is past is prologue.
-- inscription at the Library Of Congress
Study your dreams, for they are messengers of the future.
-- Willow Rosenberg, "Mind's Mechanics"
Back when I saw my first vampires... I got so scared. I told my parents about it. And they freaked out. Figured there was something seriously wrong with me. They sent me to a clinic. I was only there a couple of weeks. I stopped talking about it so they let me go. And eventually, my parents just...forgot.
-- Buffy Summers, 6x17 "Normal Again"
THE DREAMER
Chapter 1.
A GODDESS COME TRUE
Willow is running fast, as fast as she can. She's running over a graveyard, a dark and eerie and truly frightening place. This isn't a place a good girl should be at that time of the day...night, actually...and Willow is really trying hard to think of the reason why she's here at all. She can't remember, though, and the more she's trying to get hold of the reason, the more it slips away, annoying her very much. She doesn't have time to contemplate this anymore, as she's hunted by someone...something...and whoever or whatever it is, they're closing up rapidly. The redhead tries to dart sideways between some gravestones and bushes, hoping to fool her pursuers, but to no avail. She can't shake them off.
Feeling she won't be able to go on like this much longer, she turns around to catch a short glimpse at them, tries to estimate how far they're away, but she immediately regrets that as it turns out to be a terrible mistake. Not paying attention as to where she's running, she trips over the flat tombstone of an urn grave and falls to the ground, pulled down by the rather heavy bag she suddenly notices to be carrying, her knee grazing at one of the stone's edges. 'Ouch!' and 'It's all over,' these thoughts are circling in her head, paralysing her, preventing her from getting up again and resuming her flight. And her pursuers are still coming closer and closer...
Suddenly their sounds stop, and someone with a clear voice like bells ringing says something Willow can't make out, followed by a thud and what sounds like a muffled cry. 'My savior,' Willow thinks and smiles.
She reaches out to the doorhandle above her and pulls herself up from the loamy ground. She slowly presses the handle down and slips into her dorm room. 'Home, sweet home,' she thinks to herself. In the moon-lit room, she can see the lithe body of her roommate in the bed next to hers, her blonde hair carefully restrained with a hairband. She's sleeping peacefully, and carefully avoiding to wake her up, Willow tiptoes over to her bed. Putting down the rather heavy bag with her textbooks next to her small bedside table, she quickly strips down to her underwear, throwing her now useless street clothes to the floor, then slips into her pyjamas, all the while thinking that, somehow, this blonde girl sleeping over there is an important part of why this dorm room is home to her. She sits down on her bed...
...and mercilessly, her bottom meets the hard, asphalted ground. She's sitting right on a street, a sub-urban street in some town, framed by trees. Cars are parking in front of small houses, the sun is shining brightly, and the whole atmosphere is one of neighborhood bliss.
Willow slowly picks herself up, and rubs her aching bottom lost in thought. She could swear that just a moment ago, she was... A giggle just like bells ringing startles her.
The redhead walks over to the two girls, both about nine or ten years old, sitting about five yards away from where she just sat. The one that giggled has long blonde hair. She points at Willow, whispering something into her friend's ear, whose hair is red like Willow's and slightly shorter than the blonde's. Both start giggling. Willow looks down at herself to find out what's amusing the girls so much and mentally scolds herself for running around in her pyjamas on a sunny day. If only she could remember why she's wearing them, or where she actually is...
The two girls seem to have lost all interest in her strange attire all of a sudden, and for Willow, the little redhead's striking resemblance with herself as she was younger suddenly is much more interesting than her inappropriate clothing. The girls take each other's hands and start hopping away from Willow in a strange rhythm. They're singing a children's rhyme the older redhead almost had forgotten:
"Buffy and Willow sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g."
Willow joins in, humming the tune. "Buffy...hmm hmmhmm hmm hmm hmm, hmm hmm hmm hmm..."
Buffy...that name still echoes in her head. Buffy.
**
I suddenly open my eyes, then sit up. The bedroom is only dimly lit by the moon, and it's not mine at home. It's simply furnished, with two beds, one of them unoccupied at the moment, a closet at each side of the room and a chest of drawers. There's nothing personal, though, and with the realization why this is so, I remember where I am.
Something woke me up from my dream, in the middle of the night, and it wasn't the cooling breeze that's coming in through the tilted side of the window, nor the owl shoo-hooing somewhere outside. I gaze at the door, trying to collect myself from the sudden reality shift. Muffled female voices can be heard from outside the room. 'It must be a new arrival,' I think. Fragments of my dream return in my mind's eye, and before its details begin slipping away, I reach under my pillow and produce a small leather-bound book from underneath. I quickly open it, skipping the pages already written on while I intensely listen to all sounds from outside. Reassured by the fact that they're not coming closer at the moment, I pick up a pencil from my bedside table and start writing down the current date on the first blank page by the light of my small flashlight. Below, I write 'fleeing on a graveyard, saved by her,' then on the next line, 'dorm room,' and finally 'kissing dream.' I add some more details to the last item since it's new, like 'younger me and blonde girl, ten years old, singing.' Finally, I write 'Buffy,' and underline that name twice.
'Buffy...sounds nice, like a river's name,' I think to myself. The river Buffy. I like that.
I suddenly realize that the steps of two different people become louder on the hall's floor covering as they're approaching my room. I quickly close my diary and hide it again, lay down and pretend to be asleep.
The door opens, and two people enter the room. One seems to be carrying something... someone?, as his steps are irregular and he's breathing quite heavily. I hear the sound of someone laying down on a bed, while the other person (a third, obviously, as one was carried into the room) puts something into the closet on the other side of the room; I can hear its doors shut. Finally I can make out the flip of the light switch and the door to the room is closed very carefully. The two people who disturbed my dream are leaving.
As soon as their footsteps die away in the distance, I open my eyes. The new girl's lying there on the other bed, no more than fifteen feet away from mine, breathing deeply. The room's still rather dark though, and the waxing moon isn't lighting it up enough to see the girl's face. I wouldn't have been able to see it anyway from my bed, because her long blonde hair is spread everywhere on the pillow, covering her face. To make things worse, I realize just now that the moon is disappearing behind the clouds every now and then, leaving the room in impenetrable darkness, giving me time to contemplate that first thought running through my head when I saw her lying there: 'I wanna braid that long, golden hair.' That's what I thought, really! I thought about braiding her hair, after having combed it so it's all golden and shiny, into a nice three-strand braid, or maybe a crown braid...
After letting pass five minutes that seem to go by as slowly as never before, I silently get up and sneak over to her on tiptoe, my curiosity finally taking over. When I've almost reached her, the moon disappears again, leaving me standing motionless like five feet away from her. When the moonlight's there again, I catch my breath and reach out to brush one of her golden strands out of her face.
Then things are happening so fast that I have trouble catching all of them. The moment my fingertips touch her hair, the girl jumps up as if stung by an adder. Her hand intercepts mine and she grabs my wrist with unexpected strength. I'm kind of flying through the air without even knowing what's really happening. 'Whoa, that girl has fast reactions,' I begin to think, but that thought really can't manifest itself completely, as in the next moment I'm landing hard on my back on her bed, and she's kneeling over me, her right arm raised as if to hit me. There's something in her hand that I can't make out as at the very moment the moon is gone again, and with it any chance to see her. I can feel her weight on me, though, and I can feel her other hand touch my throat. She's not trying to strangle me to a slow and painful death, however. Instead, she's feeling for my pulse, and when she finds it, I can feel her strained muscles relax immediately. When the room lights up again, her hand is empty, whatever she was holding there gone...wherever. She rolls off me slowly and out of her bed, almost falling to the floor in front of it, remaining there motionless.
I sit up, still trying to sort out what has happened in the past moments. I see her shoulders beginning to tremble, and hear a loud sob. Quickly, I get off of her bed and slowly sit down next to her cowering figure on the floor, making sure she's not feeling threatened again. Because that's what I obviously did to her, threaten and scare her, without wanting it of course.
She's really crying now. I'm confused as hell. First she's trying to...whatever...me, and now she's crying? I don't know what to do, so I do the first thing coming to my mind: I take her hand, and hold it between my hands, slowly stroking it. This causes her to raise her head, the moonlight reflecting in her hair. She's looking at me with her large, green eyes, filled with tears, while the rest of her face, from the root of her nose downwards, is still in the shade. Somehow these eyes seems familiar... 'Could it be?' I wonder.
Our eyes lock, and I see regret and fear in hers, between the tears. Obviously she can see in mine how scared I am at her outburst. I slowly move behind her, wrap my arms around her, hold her. Slowly I begin rocking her back and forth, to the rhythm of our breathing. This seems to have a soothing effect on her as her sobs subside, and it begins to feel really good for me as well when she gently stops our jointly motions. This time it's her who takes my hand into hers, pulling me up as she stands up. I almost get a glance at her face this time, but that evil moon chose that very moment to disappear behind the clouds again. "Thanks," I hear her say, her voice still laden with emotion. She sniffs loudly, then continues, "...and I'm sorry." Her voice is clear, with no noticeable accent, which means she must be from around here. She leads me over to her bed in the darkness, and we sit down, next to each other. The moon appears again, and her face is still in shade of course, this time from a part of the window frame, but this doesn't surprise me anymore. 'Hey, tomorrow will be soon enough to see you in all your beauty,' I think to myself and smile at the thought, at the same time wondering about where that one came from. I feel really strange inside, light as a feather, the tension from the adrenaline-induced high slowly fading away. She seems to have sensed that somehow, because she lets out a short laugh that really sounds like bells ringing. And she's still holding my hand, as I suddenly realize. "I hope you're not afraid of me now or anything?" she asks after a while. I shake my head, giving that gesture all the conviction I have, because I feel it's important to reassure her. "You're not talking much, right?" I slowly nod my head. She lays down on her bed, not breaking the contact our hands are still having. Her breathing is as calm as it was at the beginning. I begin to think that she's fallen asleep when she suddenly speaks up again, this time with a very little voice. "Will you hold my hand until I'm asleep?" I nod again, and although the moon is about to disappear again, she has caught my answer, since she replies "Good." I'm holding her, and time goes by as I watch the clouds rushing over the sky and listen to her calm breathing. When I'm finally sure that she's sound asleep, I slowly get up and tiptoe back to my bed. As soon as my head touches the pillow, I'm drifting off into a dreamless sleep.
**
I wake up from someone knocking at our door. As I reluctantly open my eyes, I can see Melissa, the ward sister and an absolute dear, enter the room. She's in her mid thirties, has a pretty face with watchful eyes, and wears her hazel hair in a thick pigtail.
"Wake up, girls," she says in her 'I'm in a good mood today' voice.
While I grumble and turn around to get my usual additional five minutes, I see the blonde girl jump up and almost out of bed. Facing the wall, I can just hear her going over to her closet, getting out what I assume to be her toilet bag, and leaving the room with Melissa, who says something like, "Come on, I show you where the shower room is," as the door closes behind them.
I really must've dozed off again, because when they return, it's my turn to jump up at the sound of Melissa's voice, now with a slightly reprimanding tone.
"Come on, Willow. It's really time to get up," she says.
Knowing there's not going to be another chance at five minutes extra sleep tomorrow if I don't get up right now, I open my eyes and get out of the bed in record time.
"Willow, I'd like you to meet your new roommate: Buffy," Melissa adds.
The girl whose hand I've been holding until she was asleep last night is standing there next to Melissa in the door frame, giving me a sheepish grin and a little wave as if nothing had occured. Our eyes lock, just like last night, and my heart is pounding in my chest as if it were trying to break it.
Although I saw her before--as I realize now--although I know her like all my life, it's as if I see her for the first time. Well, technically, I do see her...really see her...for the first time... Nevertheless, I take a closer look. As the warm light of the morning sun caresses her long straight hair, golden highlights appearing everywhere in it, the sun shining on her beautiful face with those green eyes and that unusually shaped nose, I feel like that sun is rising right inside of me at the same time.
So many emotions are flowing through me at this moment--bliss, euphoria, joy--just upon hearing her name, upon seeing her angelic face, that I can't help but to let out a small, happy sob.
"Buffy, this is Wi..."
Melissa's about to continue our introduction when her voice suddenly trails off with surprise at the sound I made. She expectantly looks at me, and smiles encouragingly.
I can't help it and throw myself at the blonde and into her arms. She hugs me, an expression of sheer surprise on her face, muttering something like "Uh... I'm glad to meet you, too."
I can't blame her, can't blame anyone, for not understanding. Cause no one can understand what's going on, no one in the world but me. Hell, in fact even I hardly can, but as unlikely as it seems, all my dreams have come true. My being here, my whole life, it's all connected...to her. And now I finally met her, know her name...
**
It started with a simple sentence, "You have the right to remain silent." I was sitting in front of the TV, watching an episode of one of those old police series.
Suddenly it made sense, it all made sense. It was my right to remain silent. And I decided to claim that right. Being alone all the time, with just my own thoughts and those puzzling dreams as my company, with what seemed to be almost a lifetime of unrequited feelings for Xander and my love (I was pretty sure of that!) for a girl I didn't even know the name of, with Cordelia and the others making my life in school a living hell (whereas I should've loved school, with the learning and all...), and without anyone in my family to support me, to cure my mental scars, I didn't see any sense in talking anymore. Since that day, I didn't speak a word. Oh, when it was absolutely necessary, I just nodded or shook my head.
And guess what? The really strange thing is that my parents noticed, almost right away in fact. I never had been very talkative, but this they realized immediately. After some fruitless attempts to find out what was wrong with me they decided I needed professional help.
**
My thoughts fly back to a couple of weeks ago...
"What happened?" Ira's voice is demanding, uncompromising, rather sharp, and it bears a coldness that he usually reserves for his work. As a police psychologist, he's responsible for interrogations of criminals and negotiations with hostage-takers.
The tone of his voice makes me shiver inwardly, and I wince at it.
"Ira, please," Mom interrupts him. She kneels down next to me, looking into my tear-filled eyes.
"Willow, what happened?" she softly asks, repeating his words.
I just stare at a spot on the wall of the living room, saying nothing.
"Willow, darling, please..." she urges me.
I still don't respond. Shall they think I've really lost my voice for a while! That serves them right!
"You're scaring me."
Got you scared, huh? After a lifetime of ignorance, you finally care about me, now that something might be really wrong. Too late, I'm sorry.
Ira takes over again.
"Have you been raped?" he asks.
Sure, that's what he had to come up with in the end.
Ira Rosenberg's daughter, raped. That must be about the worst thing that could happen to me according to his view, almost as bad as being pregnant, or gay.
'Oh no! Don't let it be rape. Ira Rosenberg's daughter can't have been raped.'
'No, and you'd wish I'd be ugly as the night just to make sure something like that could never happen...'
'How could I ever look into my colleagues' faces at the synagogue again, and read the torah, with the fact in mind that my daughter is impure.'
'I think this more revolves around *them* knowing that I was raped...'
But I wasn't raped. Not physically. But if what today is usually referred to as 'school mobbing' is what happened to me, and I think it did, I was mentally raped. And not just once.
Nevertheless, I slowly shake my head.
I can see the relief in his eyes, almost giving him an human touch if it weren't for me knowing about his true thoughts.
Mom rises from her knees and half turns away from me, with a desperate look at her husband.
I open my mouth to say something witty, like 'Haha, look, it was all a joke. You thought something bad happened to me, and that I lost my voice because of that. But I was just kidding...'
Mom must've seen it, cause she spins around again.
"Willow... she's trying to say something, Ira."
I can't think of anything witty to say. Actually, I can't think of anything to say at all, and even if I wanted to, I couldn't. I--I can't speak!
I try again, close my mouth, then open it again and attempt to speak.
But my vocal chords aren't obeying my brain's commands anymore. And as I fight the urge to panic about having gone mute, Mom takes Ira's arm and leads him to the dining room.
I can hear their muffled voices through the door left ajar.
"What's going on with her?" she demands to know.
"I don't know," is his answer. He sounds tired, resigned.
"I'm going to call Jeff now," he continues.
Uh oh, now they're calling the cavalry! Doctor Jeffrey Marks is an old friend of Ira. They studied at Stanford together, and while Dr. Marks pursued a clinical career that finally led to his position as the medical director of an L.A. area mental hospital, Ira went for the rougher job and chose to go to the LAPD.
Suddenly I feel bad, and relieved at the same time. Maybe I really need help, maybe it'll be nice to talk to someone about how I feel...
No! I reject that thought vividly. If there's someone I can talk to about me, about my life, it's her. I know I can trust her... but I can't be sure of that as far as Dr. Marks is concerned. He's a friend of Ira, and that's not inspiring confidence at all. Ira will sure tell him about my "history of neuro-psychological aberrations" or whatever he would call it. With that term, he's referring to an integral part of me, a part that he dismissed as 'delusions' at another occasion. But these so-called delusions are in fact my dreams!
I've made the mistake to talk to Mom about them. I was so confused back then and just had to talk to someone. For all I knew, all people have recurring dreams, every now and then. But the same bunch of dreams? Over and over again -- slightly different though, from different angles or another point of view, but basically the same? All those dreams revolving around the same person, a girl? I thought that was unusual, so I told Mom about her...
I almost smile as I think about her. As far as I'm concerned, I've always been addressing her as 'her,' although just three little letters don't seem to do justice for what is the most important person in my life. Yes, I really think so. She really is the most important person in my life, because she's been with me as long as I can think, because she's with me every night.
She's a hero, my hero, although she's not looking superhero-y at all. She isn't tall and all muscly (is that a word?), or anything, actually rather...petite...I think is the right term, but she's strong and just and beautiful, and she's there to save me every time I'm chased by one of those really disfigured guys. You wouldn't believe how strong she is unless you've seen her, coming to my rescue, kicking the bad guy until he's almost unconscious...and then she does that thing with her little wooden stake, and the baddy goes all pooof...
She's got long blonde hair, and an angelic face. I really don't know her face though. That has troubled me for a long time. I'm always seeing her, even her face, I think, but I can't remember when I wake up. I just know that it's beautiful...angelic... I get those fuzzy warm feelings every time I'm just thinking of her, and I feel she's different than other girls. If only for making me feel the way I feel.
Certainly different than Cordelia and her friends...and the reason is simple: She didn't just save me... No, in my dreams, we became friends...I was fighting at her side later...we were attending university together...she held me when I cried because my boyfriend left me...I held her when she cried because her boyfriend cheated on her...we laughed about that later, together...I could tell her everything...anything...and she would help me...because she truly was my friend. My best friend. Even in the most scariest of my dreams, where something took possession of me and I did all kinds of terrible things...she just held me as I cried, believing to have lost her...she just rocked me back and forth ever so slightly...shushed me...soothed me...until the tears subsided. And when I smiled a shy, teary smile, she smiled back at me...and then the sun would rise, warming me, scaring away the ghosts of the past and the present...and all would be good.
Can you understand now that for me, she's the girl? Because as far as these dreams are concerned, there's but one girl out there, one girl in all the world, fighting the forces of darkness, helping me to fight the darkness in my life.
Just thinking of her helped me to endure the pressure they put on me in school every day, while I hadn't anyone to back me up at home. Ira was always at work, and Mom traveled the country. They had raised me, and I had finally reached an age where I was supposed to be independent according to their point of view. With that, they had done their part, and now it was up to me. They expected me to make them proud. And proud I made them, excelling at school. But what they didn't realize was that I was alone, and that commendations for my grades weren't enough.
I don't know when she first appeared in my dreams, but it must be long ago. I could go up into my room, reach behind the bookshelf and look it up in the oldest volume of my diary that I've hidden there.
"A dream is the mind's way of garbage collection. Memory fragments of what happened in the past are reprocessed, and either strengthened for further reference or discarded if they are irrelevant. This strengthening is managed through mental repetition, often in an distorted or encoded manner. If a night's dream work passed uninterrupted, one usually can't remember the dream's contents or images, whereas if a dream is interrupted, one remembers the details vividly right after the awakening, and with increasing difficulties as they fade away."
That's what I wrote in another volume of my diary. Sounds really reasonable, doesn't it? Maybe I should start writing a book about it. But first of all, it seems I got a lot of dream work to do that hasn't been finished yet...
Anyway, after I told Mom about my dreams, she went to Ira straightaway, of course. I should've known and therefore kept my mouth shut. But on one of the rare occasions we actually talked, we came to dreams somehow, and I told her. I've regretted that ever since. Ira wasn't impressed at all, and said that it was nonsense. Delusions! Just...nothing. Dreaming about a girl was nothing his daughter was supposed to do, especially if it was a girl...hence the gay comment. It was not important, because it wasn't supposed to be. He couldn't see how important it was for me...and he still wouldn't understand today. He told me to forget about it, basically forbid me to dream of her again. He prescribed me some sleeping pills, so I would "sleep soundly and without any disturbing dreams," treating my dreams of her like an illness, like something that had to be cured with some drugs.
Can you imagine what I felt back then? I couldn't let go of her-- this was something I couldn't control after all. And fortunately, it didn't work, as the drug failed to suppress my dreams. I was glad, because I didn't want to let go. I wanted her to be with me, every night. She was like an imaginary friend, saving me from the loneliness.
That's what it came down to in the end. I was alone, all alone. No one at school I could've talked to, and certainly no one at home. I mean really talked, not like talking to a boy or anything, but talking. Telling each other secrets, whispering, giggling. Really talking, you see?
That brings me back to the talking, and I can't see me...well, talking to Dr. Marks about any of that.
On the other hand, I'm not talking at all at the moment, so the whole talking therapy thingy that I remember reading about in a introductory book on clinical psychiatry won't work. Somehow, this thought is comforting. He'll have trouble finding out something if I can't tell him, and he won't be able to tell Ira then...
But what if I won't be able to speak, ever again? Once more, I'm fighting the rising panic, feel the lump in my throat and thus swallow hard. I discard that thought and the dreadful images coming with it right away. I push it aside and bury it in the darkest corner of my self. But this outlook, I think to myself, is enough to feel bad...
...and then I'm back in the present again.
**
In this present, right now, at this very moment, I'm so happy. So happy to finally know her name, to know that I was right and they were wrong, calling my dreams delusions, calling me ill. I look at her. She's even more beautiful than in my dreams. She's standing there, her hands still on my shoulders after hugging me, looking at me expectantly. I finally found her, she's standing right here in front of me, she's really here like a goddess come true, and the best thing is that she isn't nameless anymore. ('If it doesn't have a name, don't bother about it, 'cause it's hardly real anyway.' Guess by whom this quote is?)
She's got a name, and a beautiful, rivery one: Buffy.
'What's in a name?' Shakespeare let his Juliet ask in 'Romeo and Juliet.' Often there's very little, I'm afraid, but in this case, this girl's name contains a whole world, my world, our world. Radiant with joy, happy tears streaming down my face, the first word I speak in weeks is that name.
"Buffy."
To be continued in:
Chapter 2, "Turning My Back On The Abyss"