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shadowkat[For anyone who saw my last entry, I redid it here. Don't look for it, if you missed it - already deleted it. Didn't feel right. So deleted it. Tweaked. Added a few things. And here's what came out. Fits the tone of the piece much better I think. The pacing. And the characters. Like the sound and rhythm of this much more. Even though am beginning to think I need to wrap this baby up pretty soon - getting a tad long, methinks. Hardly a drabble any longer. Have an ending in mind - so only foresee four or five more entries, if that. Assuming of course I do end it and not just let it end here...]
Where we left off: Will just told Buffy how he decided he felt about her and what he thinks she felt about him. Here's her response.
His words made Buffy feel tired. Musing on them, she wondered why people felt the need to define undefinable emotions such as love or hate so neatly. Neither were neat emotions. Comparing her feelings for people as one might compare two sizes of steak or pieces of chicken. Weighing them. As if the feelings one felt for someone else were tangible items that could be placed on a sliding scale. 'From one to ten, ten being the highest, one the lowest, how'd you rank your lovers?' Dawn had asked her, finding the question in some Italian fashion magazine. As if lovers could even be ranked or compared in such a fashion or love were some prize to be rewarded at the end of the competition. Oh, I've done all these tasks, I've fought for you, now may I have your love? It wasn't that easy. It wasn't an emotion one chose to bestow on someone else because they'd earned it the way a dog might earn snacks. Nor in her experience, at least, had it ever been neat or definable. She didn't always understand why she loved someone the way she did, she just did. But then she'd never really been overly fond of overanalyzing her feelings or for that matter defining them; she preferred just to feel, to go with her gut.
She looked up at him, catching him watching her, his question hanging in the air between them unsaid. Realizing that if she wanted to change the subject, let it stay unanswered, he'd let her with little complaint.
"I think you loved me," she began slowly, choosing her words, "maybe not like Charles loves Annie or Tara loved Willow, but it was love all the same." She looked up at him, absently circling the rim of the glass with her finger. "I wonder if love is something that can be neatly define, like a three line poem placed in a box and wrapped with a nice little bow for valentine's day." She ignored his grimace at her analogy.
Looking up at his books, she continued, "I don't think it's as neat as you've outlined. Relationships. They're messy. At least mine always were." She sighed. "I've never been much of word person. So I don't always tell people that I care about how I feel. For me - it's always been more about the doing not the telling. Years ago I remember driving poor Giles and Dawn nuts telling them I loved him and how weird it sounded and how maybe I hadn't gotten that across to you or Angel or Mom or poor Tara, the people I loved that had died. I worried over it. Then, I realized something, I had told you maybe not in words, but in gestures. In what I did. And I loved each and every person differently. You can't love people the same way, that's impossible. Nor, do I think you can say you love one person more than another. You just love them differently. Some you love, like you loved your friend Fred, quietly. Others you love with blinding passion. And others, with a combination of both."
"Right..so, what did you feel for me? Blinding passion? Or quiet like?"
Still curled in his chair, she looked up from her glass, which she was still absently playing with, and smiled at him. "Before you closed the hellmouth?
Combination of both."
He nodded, appearing to take it in filing it away somewhere for later pondering. "You regret any of it?"
"What? Meeting you? Our time together?"
He nodded.
She tilted her head thoughtfully. Did she? Faith had asked her a similar question once. "No," she said after a couple of moments, staring straight ahead out at the darkness that lay outside his windows, in her mind's eye across the decades to Sunnydale. "I don't regret it. Don't want to relive it or anything close to it. Very glad it's over, believe me." She looked down at her hands and the glass cradled in them. "But don't regret it either. Doesn't seem to be much point in regretting, does there? Besides, it worked out more or less. Better in some ways than I expected."
Where we left off: Will just told Buffy how he decided he felt about her and what he thinks she felt about him. Here's her response.
His words made Buffy feel tired. Musing on them, she wondered why people felt the need to define undefinable emotions such as love or hate so neatly. Neither were neat emotions. Comparing her feelings for people as one might compare two sizes of steak or pieces of chicken. Weighing them. As if the feelings one felt for someone else were tangible items that could be placed on a sliding scale. 'From one to ten, ten being the highest, one the lowest, how'd you rank your lovers?' Dawn had asked her, finding the question in some Italian fashion magazine. As if lovers could even be ranked or compared in such a fashion or love were some prize to be rewarded at the end of the competition. Oh, I've done all these tasks, I've fought for you, now may I have your love? It wasn't that easy. It wasn't an emotion one chose to bestow on someone else because they'd earned it the way a dog might earn snacks. Nor in her experience, at least, had it ever been neat or definable. She didn't always understand why she loved someone the way she did, she just did. But then she'd never really been overly fond of overanalyzing her feelings or for that matter defining them; she preferred just to feel, to go with her gut.
She looked up at him, catching him watching her, his question hanging in the air between them unsaid. Realizing that if she wanted to change the subject, let it stay unanswered, he'd let her with little complaint.
"I think you loved me," she began slowly, choosing her words, "maybe not like Charles loves Annie or Tara loved Willow, but it was love all the same." She looked up at him, absently circling the rim of the glass with her finger. "I wonder if love is something that can be neatly define, like a three line poem placed in a box and wrapped with a nice little bow for valentine's day." She ignored his grimace at her analogy.
Looking up at his books, she continued, "I don't think it's as neat as you've outlined. Relationships. They're messy. At least mine always were." She sighed. "I've never been much of word person. So I don't always tell people that I care about how I feel. For me - it's always been more about the doing not the telling. Years ago I remember driving poor Giles and Dawn nuts telling them I loved him and how weird it sounded and how maybe I hadn't gotten that across to you or Angel or Mom or poor Tara, the people I loved that had died. I worried over it. Then, I realized something, I had told you maybe not in words, but in gestures. In what I did. And I loved each and every person differently. You can't love people the same way, that's impossible. Nor, do I think you can say you love one person more than another. You just love them differently. Some you love, like you loved your friend Fred, quietly. Others you love with blinding passion. And others, with a combination of both."
"Right..so, what did you feel for me? Blinding passion? Or quiet like?"
Still curled in his chair, she looked up from her glass, which she was still absently playing with, and smiled at him. "Before you closed the hellmouth?
Combination of both."
He nodded, appearing to take it in filing it away somewhere for later pondering. "You regret any of it?"
"What? Meeting you? Our time together?"
He nodded.
She tilted her head thoughtfully. Did she? Faith had asked her a similar question once. "No," she said after a couple of moments, staring straight ahead out at the darkness that lay outside his windows, in her mind's eye across the decades to Sunnydale. "I don't regret it. Don't want to relive it or anything close to it. Very glad it's over, believe me." She looked down at her hands and the glass cradled in them. "But don't regret it either. Doesn't seem to be much point in regretting, does there? Besides, it worked out more or less. Better in some ways than I expected."
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Date: 2005-04-09 11:39 pm (UTC)