starlit_desires | It's Sunday...

And that means open_on_sunday time. This week's challenges were Counting Crow song titles or the word silence. Here's my offering this week.

She never knew how her mother could be so blind to what was happening right under her nose all the time. How could her mother not see all the times when she came home black and blue, how could she ignore it? It’s not as if her school was always calling her mother to say that she had been in a fight, or anything like that. But her mother ignored the bruises, just like she ignored the blood on her clothes and the tears and rips in the clothes that she washed. It made her sad and ache even more.

Buffy had gone away for summer vacation, the Mayor had been defeated, Cordelia had taken off for L.A., and Oz was touring with the Dingoes, so only Giles, Xander and Willow were left to defend the Hellmouth. However, the summer was relatively quiet, there wasn’t much to do. So the trio spent most days just hanging around at Giles apartment supposedly researching. Most days someone would arrive with a video or two and the three would watch them in companionable silence. The three of them couldn’t wait for Buffy’s return; at least her arrival would mean more things to do.

The silence was heavy in the room. Neither of them knew what to say and both of their minds flashed back to a similar night when she had waited to tell him the news. This time both of them knew what to expect, yet they were both silent as he sat down beside her. Neither knew how to say the words that would let their grief pour out of them for a third time. Perhaps that was the problem; they had thought she was invincible. That she had come back from the dead twice, so she couldn’t die once more.

The silence seemed to go on forever as the demons approached them. Angel didn’t know how the others were feeling at that moment as they saw the army of demons approaching them. He knew that he had warned them what to expect when he had decided to take on the Senior Partners. But at that precise moment when he saw the dragon, everything stood still for him and everything was silent. He didn’t know if he was looking his death in the face or not, and he found out that he really didn’t care either if it was or wasn’t.

He always laughed when he heard people say things like “in the still of the night.” He didn’t understand how people could be blind to what the silence really held. All the monsters that were hiding in the shadows waiting to attack, even all the demons who stayed hidden just to save themselves. Giles could never understand how people could trust the silence; perhaps it was because he knew what it really hid. He saw silence as an enemy that had to be defeated, if only to protect his Slayer and her friends. Silence wasn’t a peaceful thing in Sunnydale.

Drusilla was crying on the bed. She had told him that the stars and her dolls were refusing to speak to her. And all Spike could do was wish that she would fall asleep so the tears would stop; he hated it when she cried because she couldn’t hear things. And although he believed that she really did see things and hear things that he couldn’t, her crying breaking the silence was painful to him. The only good thing was that she wasn’t crying over Angelus, he could handle her tears over the silence of her dolls and her stars.

The silence of the morning was something that they all appreciated. They had survived another night but they were too tired to really be excited about it. Perhaps if Buffy hadn’t run away, and perhaps if Giles wasn’t too busy trying to find her, things would be different. But for Xander, Ox and Willow, all that mattered was the fact that they survived another night in Sunnydale. Later in the day they would be all excited about it, but for now they walked to Oz’s van in silence and remained silent as the werewolf dropped them each off at home.

When she was with Oz, the silence seemed natural in a way that it never really seemed natural with Buffy or Giles or Xander. With them, she felt that it was always necessary to fill the silence with words, if only to remind them all that they were still alive. But in Oz’s arms, she didn’t feel the need to fill a void, or to remind them that they were both alive. She appreciated the silence when she was with Oz. With Oz, Willow couldn’t wait what he would say after they had been sitting quietly in one another’s company.