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brat_inslayageAs holiday seasons went, this one had been hands-down the most hectic one of Kennedy's life, and the least festive. Oh, they'd given it a shot, but there was nowhere to put a Christmas tree anyway with the growing number of sleeping bags and backpacks taking up every inch of available space, and the last time someone tried to put up a wreath it had only ended up knocked off the wall and trampled. The freakout Andrew'd had over it put an end to any further attempts at decking the halls... though it did answer the question of who'd tried in the first place. None of the Potentials would admit to being the culprits whose roughhousing smushed a bit of holiday cheer, either.
Still. There hadn't been much in the way of presents, but they'd tried: some subdued presents were exchanged between the Scoobies, and some of the Potentials exchanged a few of the things they'd managed to bring with them. Nothing fancy, just keychains or pictures out of teenybopper magazines, but it was the thought that counted in this case.
A Charlie Brown Christmas was a little harder to enjoy when some of the girls who weren't familiar with the holiday had to have things explained to them, but not even the cramped quarters were going to get in the way of Xander's traditional Snoopy dance. Kennedy had gotten one look at the warning signs of disappointment on Willow's face, and hadn't thought twice about leveraging her junior-trainer authority to make some of the girls scoot over to give him dancing room.
She'd long since given up pretending she didn't have it bad for that girl.
Then there had been New Year's, an intensely awkward affair with a thousand degrees of forced cheer and nobody kissing anyone at midnight, although given the Looks exchanged between Xander and Anya, and Buffy and Spike, Kennedy got the feeling she wasn't the only one who wished she was. (No way was she forcing that, though. She could be patient. She'd learned that kind of patience pretty well, and if anyone noticed that she sometimes took the last shower in the morning when the hot water had run out they didn't mention it.)
Yeah, they'd actually yelled "Happy New Year" at midnight. Some of the girls had traded looks as if to say they weren't sure there was a point when it didn't look like the new year would be happy at all. Still, there was something memorable about that unexpected and really spirited debate over whether Dick Clark was a demon. That, for an hour at least, had been fun. Amanda, afterward, solemnly informed them that opinions on the matter had been too evenly split to declare a winner, and would they maybe have a more structured version of the debate sometime, because it had been fun?
If anyone had made a New Year's resolution, they didn't really share with the group at large. Despite their best efforts at keeping their spirits up, it just seemed... almost like holding onto false hope.
No one had any intention of pointing that out, though.
Well, no one but Anya.
Kennedy knew a few of the younger girls had shared resolutions among themselves, whispered or scribbled on scraps of paper, and she suspected that Buffy, Dawn, and the Scoobies had done a little thing of their own. For her part, she waited until the moment that the sun rose on January 1 and slipped out onto the back porch to watch that line of red creep up from the horizon and make a silent, vehement promise that she'd make it out of this thing alive, but if she couldn't do that, she'd make sure that Constance and her friends would be damn proud of the way she went out.
God, she hoped they'd get a chance to find out, if she did. She'd sent out a dozen more messages back to Fandom and all of them had failed to go through.
All things considered it was actually a relief when school started back up again-- not because it gave anyone who didn't actually go to school here anything new to do, but because... well... For Kennedy, at least, it was easier to try and fight off the urge to give up when she didn't have to pretend to be festive at the same time.
Not that she was that close to giving up-- every bit of improvement the girls made when she ran them through drills was a little bit of a boost. As was, and if she was honest this was the big one, the sort of stomach-swoopy, warm-fuzzies sense of accomplishment she got whenever she managed to get Willow to crack a smile, which she inevitably found so adorable she had to try again, right?
God. Hadn't even kissed her yet, and already totally whipped.
So no, giving up wasn't a tempting prospect; it was just that the idea occasionally swooped in and poked at the periphery of conscious thought and hi, Kennedy didn't have time for that. She had a bunch of Potentials who needed to learn to be fighters, an end of the world situation to help prevent, and a girl to try and win over.
If she was going to get her way, she had her work cut out for her.
At least when it came to getting her way, Kennedy didn't slack off.
She tied her hair back, herded the girls out into the yard, and started them on warmup exercises. The First was still lying low (and it was stupid), but hey, if it gave them more time to get ready... All of the good, right?
[[just advancing the timeline this week! nfi/nfb/ooc-okay and all, but no post spam from me today. resume your bde disappearing awesomeness.]]
Still. There hadn't been much in the way of presents, but they'd tried: some subdued presents were exchanged between the Scoobies, and some of the Potentials exchanged a few of the things they'd managed to bring with them. Nothing fancy, just keychains or pictures out of teenybopper magazines, but it was the thought that counted in this case.
A Charlie Brown Christmas was a little harder to enjoy when some of the girls who weren't familiar with the holiday had to have things explained to them, but not even the cramped quarters were going to get in the way of Xander's traditional Snoopy dance. Kennedy had gotten one look at the warning signs of disappointment on Willow's face, and hadn't thought twice about leveraging her junior-trainer authority to make some of the girls scoot over to give him dancing room.
She'd long since given up pretending she didn't have it bad for that girl.
Then there had been New Year's, an intensely awkward affair with a thousand degrees of forced cheer and nobody kissing anyone at midnight, although given the Looks exchanged between Xander and Anya, and Buffy and Spike, Kennedy got the feeling she wasn't the only one who wished she was. (No way was she forcing that, though. She could be patient. She'd learned that kind of patience pretty well, and if anyone noticed that she sometimes took the last shower in the morning when the hot water had run out they didn't mention it.)
Yeah, they'd actually yelled "Happy New Year" at midnight. Some of the girls had traded looks as if to say they weren't sure there was a point when it didn't look like the new year would be happy at all. Still, there was something memorable about that unexpected and really spirited debate over whether Dick Clark was a demon. That, for an hour at least, had been fun. Amanda, afterward, solemnly informed them that opinions on the matter had been too evenly split to declare a winner, and would they maybe have a more structured version of the debate sometime, because it had been fun?
If anyone had made a New Year's resolution, they didn't really share with the group at large. Despite their best efforts at keeping their spirits up, it just seemed... almost like holding onto false hope.
No one had any intention of pointing that out, though.
Well, no one but Anya.
Kennedy knew a few of the younger girls had shared resolutions among themselves, whispered or scribbled on scraps of paper, and she suspected that Buffy, Dawn, and the Scoobies had done a little thing of their own. For her part, she waited until the moment that the sun rose on January 1 and slipped out onto the back porch to watch that line of red creep up from the horizon and make a silent, vehement promise that she'd make it out of this thing alive, but if she couldn't do that, she'd make sure that Constance and her friends would be damn proud of the way she went out.
God, she hoped they'd get a chance to find out, if she did. She'd sent out a dozen more messages back to Fandom and all of them had failed to go through.
All things considered it was actually a relief when school started back up again-- not because it gave anyone who didn't actually go to school here anything new to do, but because... well... For Kennedy, at least, it was easier to try and fight off the urge to give up when she didn't have to pretend to be festive at the same time.
Not that she was that close to giving up-- every bit of improvement the girls made when she ran them through drills was a little bit of a boost. As was, and if she was honest this was the big one, the sort of stomach-swoopy, warm-fuzzies sense of accomplishment she got whenever she managed to get Willow to crack a smile, which she inevitably found so adorable she had to try again, right?
God. Hadn't even kissed her yet, and already totally whipped.
So no, giving up wasn't a tempting prospect; it was just that the idea occasionally swooped in and poked at the periphery of conscious thought and hi, Kennedy didn't have time for that. She had a bunch of Potentials who needed to learn to be fighters, an end of the world situation to help prevent, and a girl to try and win over.
If she was going to get her way, she had her work cut out for her.
At least when it came to getting her way, Kennedy didn't slack off.
She tied her hair back, herded the girls out into the yard, and started them on warmup exercises. The First was still lying low (and it was stupid), but hey, if it gave them more time to get ready... All of the good, right?
[[just advancing the timeline this week! nfi/nfb/ooc-okay and all, but no post spam from me today. resume your bde disappearing awesomeness.]]