The Kitchen at Buffy's House, Sunnydale, California, Late April 2003 (The Next Day/Tuesday FT)

[brat_inslayage]

For a quiet town, Sunnydale was doing a great job of impersonating Manhattan lately, at least in terms of traffic. They'd bought themselves a little time with Buffy's gambit at the Seal, but not even people who'd lived here their whole lives could turn a blind eye to the weirdness any more. Every school in town had followed Principal Wood's lead and canceled classes, which Kennedy gathered was an unprecedented thing, and now...

Everyone was getting the hell out. Not a bad idea, all things considered. Packing up everything, loading up the cars, and just leaving. Kennedy had taken some of the girls on a run this morning, and they'd nearly choked on the fumes from the idling cars stuck in gridlock on Sunnydale's tiny streets.

The run hadn't done much to soothe everyone's frayed nerves, though. Neither did much of anything else. They'd all thrown themselves into training harder than ever after what had gone down at the vineyard, out of some desperate need to have something to do, but the Potentials who'd survived the fight with Caleb kept shooting uncertain looks at one another, as if to say they knew how impossible this was, they'd seen how easily he'd taken Buffy out with one punch, and what were they going to be able to do? The ones who hadn't gone had gotten a good look at the ones who had-- and knew who hadn't made it back.

In short, morale had been in the toilet, and someone (oh, probably a guy in a priest's collar) flushed.

On today's schedule: some kind of review session that Anya was going to run for them, down in the basement, and to give Andrew something to do she'd agreed to let him illustrate the whole thing. Honestly, his frantic excitement over that, complete with running around requisitioning markers and a flip chart, was kind of adorable. At least someone was upbeat about something. Anya, at least, felt like she'd accomplished something, getting some information out of her demon contacts.

Not that a review of everything that was trying to kill them seemed very helpful.

After breakfast Buffy headed back to the hospital to see Xander, Giles and Willow took off to see what kind of new information they could dig up on Caleb, Anya hauled Andrew (possibly by the ear) downstairs to set up for the meeting, and most of the Potentials headed upstairs to change, wait in line for the bathroom, the usual.

That left Kennedy on cleanup duty with Caridad and Vi. Oh, and a fantastic sense of helplessness.

Caridad	Caridad for her part was channeling that helplessness into anger. She hadn't been part of the disastrous attack, but she'd seen its aftermath. Molly and Eun dead, Xander horribly injured, everyone else wounded in one way or another. "I should've been there," she muttered, viciously attacking a countertop with a sponge. Because that would have made all the difference. Right.
Vi	"We both should have," Vi said, frowning hard at the oatmeal spatter she was trying to scrape off the stovetop. "All of us. We all should have insisted." She was half saying it because she felt guilty -- but she meant it, too.
Kennedy	In retrospect-- because she wouldn't have thought it a few days ago-- Kennedy had her own private reservations about how well either of them would have handled the situation. She didn't say so, though; she just shoved things into the fridge carelessly, letting the loud clatter vent some of her frustration for her. She didn't think she'd handled it all that well, either. But then, neither had Buffy if you asked her. "You guys, it was a trap," she finally said, slamming the fridge door shut. "All of it. He didn't have anything we needed. He just wanted to take more of us out." Crap. She probably shouldn't have said that either.
Caridad	"Then what are we doing here?" Caridad said, flinging the sponge across the counter in frustration. "Just waiting for them to come attack us and kill more of us? What are we supposed to do?" It had been cool at first, being pulled into this amazing situation, feeling special because she'd been chosen, but losing Molly and Eun had brought reality crashing back down. Someone wanted to kill them all and they were...cleaning the kitchen.
Vi	"I'm with her," Vi agreed. "There are too many of them and not enough of us." She rubbed at the oatmeal some more. "Plus, there's nowhere near enough people who know what they're doing. And one of the ones who sort of did is missing an arm now. We should either fight or run." Privately, she was in favor of running.
Kennedy	"We do know what we're doing," Kennedy insisted (hey, Buffy had her fallback talking points, Kennedy had her own), although the statement was somewhat lacking in conviction. Conviction was probably still somewhere in the mess on the floor of the wine cellar, along with... ugh, no thinking about it. "We just haven't gotten a chance to prove it to ourselves like we should've gotten all along." She snorted, kicked at the base of the counter, and started stacking dishes in the sink. "But nooooooo, we get to go get talked at some more instead, I guess. What the hell."
Caridad	"Talking and lecturing isn't getting us anywhere," Caridad said, slumping back against a wall. "We're just sitting here waiting for them to come attack us. Maybe we should take our chances on our own." That had worked out so much better for the potentials who hadn't even made it to Sunnydale, hadn't it?
Vi	"Great," Vi said morosely. "So we can go get killed all by ourselves. That's exactly what my watcher wanted for me." She glanced to Kennedy. "Buffy talks to you," she pled. "Could you maybe ask her not to lecture for a while? Please?"
Kennedy	Kennedy snorted. "Been trying, believe me. Blah blah 'I say these things because you need to hear them,' blah blah 'you need to be prepared,' lather, rinse, repeat. I'm trying to back you guys up here, but it's like she doesn't hear anything I say." She was pretty cranky about that. You'd think dating the boss's best friend would give her some kind of leverage. Come on, didn't Buffy get how these things worked?
Caridad	"And her idea of being prepared worked so well this time," Caridad said, crossing her arms and staring down at the floor. "Why does she get to tell us what to do anyway? Because she's a real Slayer and we're just Potentials? Faith's a Slayer, too. Doesn't she get a say?"
Vi	Vi nodded. "Seriously," she said. "Faith seems cool. And tough. And she's been fighting vampires almost as long as Buffy." Vi ... maybe had a wee baby crushlet. "This just all sucks so hard."
Kennedy	Oh, Vi so got a brief, amused quirk of an eyebrow for that. "Faith's pretty cool," she agreed offhandedly. She'd actually jump on board the fangirl bandwagon with a somersault or three, except-- on Faith's advice-- she was trying to downplay it. No need to sabotage what little cred she'd built up with the Scoobies, right? "Besides, I've been training, like, my entire life. Way longer than Buffy, and I've fought a bunch of stuff before, and..." Sure, Kennedy. Make it all about you. At least she realized it. "It all blows. I know."
Caridad	Caridad was well on that bandwagon as well. Faith was...wow. She sighed and scrubbed her fingers through her hair. "I don't have your training. I never had a Watcher," she said. "I thought I was up for this but...if we're just going to clean the kitchen and wait to die, I'd just rather be back with my family, you know?"
Vi	Vi sighed, not wanting to agree with Caridad. She had had a watcher, and that put her ahead of two-thirds of the girls in the house. The pessimism was contagious. "We have a nice sparkly stove now," she said, giving it a last wipe. "But ... I want to make more of a difference."
Kennedy	You know, despite the fact that this was a situation that optimism took one look at and ran screaming the other way? They were talking about wanting to do something. (Something not involving nice sparkly stoves, though.) Kennedy was just so damn proud of them right now, and she paused in the middle of filling the sink with soapy water to smile at them. Halfheartedly, granted, but. "Yeah, I hear you, believe me. Hey, who knows? Maybe Anya's demon contacts came up with something that'll actually be useful. If not, Willow and Giles have to find something. They had a whole..." She wasn't sure what the plan was, actually. "There was I-have-an-idea face." That was vaguely reassuring.
Caridad	"Did they tell you anything?" Caridad said eagerly. She was torn between flight and fight, between running back home to her parents and wanting to stay and actually do something and avenge Molly and Eun. She hadn't known them long but there had been a weird bond between all of them with this Potential business.
Vi	"I like that idea better than the one with the, uh, demon contacts," Vi said, nodding vigorously. "I mean ... they're demons."
Kennedy	"So's Spike, technically," Kennedy pointed out, "and Clem, and some of my best friends have been demons. It's not that..." She was probably just confusing them more. Stick to the basics, and then if they lived through this they could have the fun of learning the grey areas themselves. "Right, back to the point." She shook her head. "They're trying to get the lowdown on Caleb. If they find anything, guess we'll find out later." Wow, that was so not as reassuring as she'd hoped. Stupid if.

[[nfi/nfb, ooc-okay, you know by now, right? contains discussion of npc character deaths. part 4 of 5, based on btvs 7x19, "empty places." preplayed with the winsome trigons_child as ready_foraction, and the delightful life_inshadow as cutestripeyhat. i like synonyms.]]