Missing Buffy 2

Giles

He never tells the others the truth about these trips. He gets a phone call - a lead. It might be Buffy, and he has to go. A girl with her description was seen, but he doesn't tell them on a slab.

She's waiting for him in a drawer, with a name tag that reads Jane Doe number 2, because there is another woman with Jane Doe on her name tag. Jane Doe's hair peeks out gray and matted, and her stomach domes under the sheet. He doesn't need to look.

"It's not her."

"Must be this one then."

The morgue attendant pulls out the second drawer. He pulls back the sheet. Giles holds his breath as always. Shakes his head. So does the morgue attendant, like he's disappointed.

"Thought we had her identified," he says.

Giles just glares at him, but the look is wasted as the man doesn't meet his eyes.

The air outside seems very warm after the cold, medicinal, dead smell of the morgue. Of course it wasn't her.

Joyce

When she goes to bed she wonders where Buffy is sleeping. When she eats, she wonders if Buffy is eating. Is she eating out of a dumpster? Better if she stole food. So much food gets thrown away. So what if she steals a little.

Joyce can't taste what she is putting in her mouth. Last night she had spaghetti, and she ate it without thinking until it came to her suddenly - Buffy eating strands of spaghetti with her hands when she was little. Sauce on her cheeks. And Joyce thought she would choke on her food if she had another bite. But tonight she eats again. She skipped lunch. Now she eats without thinking.

Willow

Xander was staring off into nothing. To Willow it looked like he was waiting for someone to come from a long way off.

"Sometimes I have this feeling that if I turn around really fast, she'll be standing there," Willow said to him. It seemed like Buffy wouldn't come when she was looking. Like a watched clock stops moving. She had to let Buffy sneak up on her.

Xander made a noncommittal noise.

"She's going to be back," Willow told him because he looked glum and she wanted to say something reassuring.

Xander nodded. It was like when she said to Buffy's mom, "She'll be back soon". Joyce gave her that smile like a crack spreading over glass, and she patted her arm. And Willow felt like a fool.

"She is," Willow insisted.

Xander nodded again. He looked mad sometimes. Willow was mad too, but she was afraid to be. If she got mad something bad could happen to Buffy. She had to stay positive, and then Buffy would come back, and everything would go back to normal.

But if she heard the clicking of footsteps and turned and it wasn't Buffy, Willow couldn't help getting angry. She wanted to yell, "Pick up a damn phone, Buffy! Tell me you're coming back. Tell me when so I can stop waiting."

Willow was so sick of waiting, being on tenterhooks all summer. And the start of school looming like a deadline.

How I spent my summer vacation.

I spent my summer vacation waiting for my best friend to come home.

Xander

There was the little room where they tortured Giles. And the big room where that ugly statue used to stand. It's gone now. Xander had found a sword on the ground there. Creeping plants were growing over the walls in a garden that had turned wild. It was the last place he saw her. Doing what had to be done. He would have been proud of her for that. Except she ran away. She couldn't just shake it off.

Xander kept coming back there thinking she might turn up. He had some things to say to her. Not nice things like "Thank god you're back. I missed you." Other things. It seemed like the longer he waited the worse those things got. And there was only one way for them to get out - when she came back.

Cordelia had told him to let it out now, "Yell. Curse. Whatever. Stop being a resentment hog." Willow had tried to get him to talk about it, and she herself wouldn't really talk. Just said how Buffy was coming back. Like she didn't have any doubts.

Buffy was the only one he could tell, if only he didn't have all those ugly things to say.

The end