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Exhumation
It’s late but the moon is bright as Buffy trudges along on her way to Mom’s…grave. God is it hard to think that word, even though she’d seen her Mom’s casket get lowered into the ground.
Even though she’d been the one to discover Mom’s body.
Even though she keeps on seeing it every time she closes her eyes.
She isn’t closing her eyes now, but that doesn’t stop the vision from making an unwelcome appearance.
Why is she coming back to this part of the cemetery again, even though patrol is over and she’s supposed to be home? Oh yeah. That would be last night’s weirdness.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up – a Slayer’s instincts overriding a daughter’s grief – and she whirled around, a stake in her hand.
Yes, her senses had been on the mark. There was a vampire there.
A vampire she’d never seen before.
A vampire holding a bouquet of flowers.
Huh?
But it wasn’t the flowers that halted her in the course of performing her sacred duty. It was the look on his face as he stared past her at her mother’s grave.
He looked… wistful.
Again… huh?
She took a breath and asked, in a halting voice that sounded nothing like that of the warrior she’d been seconds ago, “You… you knew her? My Mom?”
He nodded and then he stepped past her and laid the flowers on the earth covering her… Mommy. “Oliver’s calling to pay his respects,” he whispered, as if he somehow expected her to hear him. Maybe that was normal considering how many he’d probably known who could have. She hadn’t been doing this job as long as she had without being able to tell the difference between a newbie and a vamp who’d unlived for a few years. This guy wasn’t Angel-old, but he might be around Spike’s age.
But how did he… “When did you meet her?”
Now he turned to look at her – no, it was more of a sharp appraisal and she felt uncomfortably vulnerable. “She never told you.”
Okay, now she wanted to slay him. “Told me what?”
A rueful chuckle. “If she never told you… well, perhaps it’s because she didn’t want you to know. Whatever the reason, a gentleman never reveals a lady’s secrets. Your mother, my dear, was a lady. A brave, shrewd, and very beautiful one.” Another onceover, this time of a more annoyingly familiar type. He shook his head. “You obviously take after your father.”
Before the Slayer could reemerge from beneath the frustrated and offended woman, he was gone.
Who was he and how had he known her Mom?
A part of her had almost hoped that Oliver-vamp would be here, but now that she’s arrived at the right plot, there’s nothing. She’s all alone.
Just like she will be forever.
So she stands at the foot of the grave and stares down, thinking of all the questions she has, the questions her Mom is never going to answer. Questions like: “Hey, Mom, by the way, did you ever make friends with any strange vampires I should know about?”
He sure hadn’t seemed like some random acquaintance, that was for sure.
Her mind goes back to the day she came home from Los Angeles. The prodigal daughter’s return. Hadn’t her Mom said something about going to Willy’s? She rustles through her memory, wishing she’d paid more attention, been less self-absorbed, less concerned with trying to get back to normal with the friends she’d abandoned, less obsessed with…
Okay. There go her spider senses again. For the second time in as many nights, she whirls around with a stake in her hand. And for the second time she’s face to face with a vampire.
A vampire she’s definitely seen before.
A vampire she’d been sure she’d never see again.
“Angel?”
All kinds of thoughts race through her mind at breakneck speed: How does he know? Why is he here?
Does he still love her?
She’s never stopped, has she? Not when she threw herself into a futile and stupid relationship with Owen that had ended in insults and tears. Not when she let herself get talked out of her panties by Parker Abrams after too many beers and not enough thought. Not when she met Riley Finn and believed there was finally a man who could handle both the woman and the Slayer in Buffy Summers.
Not now.
Her eyes are locked on his face, looking for… something.
It isn’t there.
“I didn’t expect to see you.”
The first time she’s heard his voice in over three years and those are the words he gives her? They’re even colder than the note she found in the mansion the week after her return:
“I can’t stay here. I can’t be with you. I hope you understand. Leaving is the best thing for us both. Take care.”
How could he be so cruel? Twice?
But if he hadn’t expected to see her… “Why are you here?”
It’s déjà vu, because here she is, getting a shrewd, appraising look from a vampire – again. “She never told you.”
Okay, what was it with her Mom and vampires? Buffy’s almost angry, because it was one thing when it was some strange vamp she’d never met, but now… this is Angel, and her Mom… No, her Mom would never have kept secrets about Angel. She wouldn’t. Angel’s just… Oh wait. She gets it now. “Yeah, she told me about what you did. Telling her about us… after you lost your soul.” Because that’s it, right? Angel is here because he feels bad about having hurt her Mom, about using her to hurt Buffy.
The blood chills in her veins as the shake of his head tells her clearer than words ever could that she’s wrong.
Why is she wrong? How can she be wrong?
“She never told you.” A mirthless bark of laughter. “Guess I’m not surprised about that.” He’s staring at the grave, as intently as Oliver had last night. “Was it easy for you? Going back to life as usual? Being Mommy again and forgetting…” Then there’s a shake of his head and he all but spits out the next words. “No, you didn’t forget me. You didn’t forget me any more than I forgot you.”
This is shock, isn’t it? This numb, freezing feeling? Buffy is going into shock. What Angel is saying…
There are questions… but she doesn’t want to ask them, doesn’t want to know…
Why? Why is he here? Why did he have to…?
“She chose you.”
Angel’s voice is a splash of cold water bringing her back to gravity. He sounds… he hates her, doesn’t he? Oh god. Mom is dead and Angel hates her and she doesn’t understand… “W-what do you mean?”
His eyes – they are ice and steel and they look like the enemy. Those eyes have never gazed at her with love or stared at her body as if it were poetry he was memorizing. She’s never looked into those eyes before. Who is he? For a moment, she wonders… but no, it isn’t that easy, is it? This isn’t Angelus. Him she knows. Better by far than this… this vampire who has the face and voice – and soul – of the one she loves.
This cold, horrible stranger who is transforming agonizing grief into pain and confusion too terrible to bear.
“She was with me. Before you came back. She found me… took care of me… talked to me… Does she still have any of Rafael’s paintings? They’re worth a lot now, just like she said they would be. In fact, he came along even faster than she predicted. I was just at a show of his in L.A… the painting she sold me… it’s worth about four thousand dollars today. Not quite ten times my investment yet, but in a few more years…”
Buffy’s mind whipsaws through the tangle of his words, trying to put them together in a way that makes sense, but… Rafael?
Her confusion must show on her face. “Rafael Garcia. He was Joyce’s favorite of all the artists in the gallery. He’s the one who told me what happened. That she died.” The new expression – that’s contempt, isn’t it? The way he’s looking at her. “You didn’t know, did you? Did you ever care about her work? About the artists she nurtured and the art she loved? About her dream of an African exhibition? Did she ever get in touch with Sokari Douglas Camp?”
Spinning. Her head was spinning. Douglas… “Who’s he?”
More mocking laughter. “Not he, Buffy. She. She is one of the finest sculptors on the contemporary scene. She’s from Nigeria and she uses found objects to create… Doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t get it. You clearly… you never gave a damn did you? Do you even know who your mother was?” His eyes move back to her mother’s grave and his next words aren’t for Buffy. “This is what you wanted? Was it worth it? Really?”
A moment later that icy gaze is fixed on her again. “There’s a letter… and a sketch. I know Joyce. She’d never have thrown those away. If you want to know the truth, it’s all there. All you have to do is look for it.”
His eyes soften as they return to the grave and, in a soft voice full of an emotion she would have recognized years ago, he says, “Goodbye, Joyce.”
Once again, before the Slayer can take the place of the wounded girl, a vampire who’d known her mother is gone.
Angel is gone.
“Just stay out, okay? It’s a school night. You’re supposed to be in bed.”
Buffy closes the door to Mom’s room and locks it, ignoring the muffled teenage whining she can still hear through it. This is her quest and she doesn’t need to have Dawn looking over her shoulder, especially not if it means her sister will have to share whatever knowledge she gains.
There’s still time to change her mind, to leave well enough alone, to let sleeping dogs lie, to… think in something other than tired clichés.
No, she isn’t changing her mind. After all, how much more pain can anything make her feel?
That was a rhetorical question, by the way, universe, and she’s not looking for it to be answered.
So she sets to work with a will, going through every drawer, ignoring the temptation to get lost in reverie over each uncovered memento and piece of shared history she finds. She isn’t looking for what she knows. She’s looking for what she doesn’t know.
But with each drawer ransacked and each closet shelf she lays bare, success – if you can call it that – seems less and less likely. She keeps looking, though, searching inside the pockets of every jacket and in the folds of each pair of jeans, turning books upside down and shaking them to see if something is hidden in their pages.
Nothing. At least nothing that would open the door into the part of her mother’s life she never knew existed.
After an hour, she’s done. There is nowhere left to look.
Guess Angel was wrong, huh? It looks like her Mom didn’t save his letter.
Is she glad or sorry?
Is there a third option?
Sad and disheartened and wishing she could find her way back to numb, she sits down on the bed, eyes brimming with tears. God. She has so many questions, even more than she took with her to the cemetery tonight. “What did you do? How did you know him? Why...?”
Her thoughts interrupt themselves with something completely random.
A fairy tale.
The Princess and the Pea.
The Princess who slept on lots of mattresses but could still feel…
The bed.
It’s here, isn’t it?
Buffy leaps to her feet, throws the bedspread off and onto the floor, pushes the mattress up and over – not caring if the noise wakes up Dawn – and… there it is. An envelope with her mother’s name on it.
She’d recognize that eighteenth century penmanship anywhere.
This is the letter Angel was talking about.
Hands that have never known a moment’s unsteadiness holding a stake tremble as she lifts paper from its resting place and tests its weight against the weight of her fear.
There is still time to turn back.
What had Oliver said?
Perhaps it’s because she didn’t want you to know.
A gentleman never reveals a lady’s secrets.
Guess that means Angel is no gentleman, though she’d kinda figured that out already.
Moments pass and she’s still standing here, unopened envelope in hand.
C’mon Buffy. You can do this. What’s the worst that could happen?
Every fond memory of your mother destroyed? Every moment of your life transformed into a mockery?
Slowly, her body lowers to the floor and then she’s sitting, back against the bed, envelope still in hand. Taking a breath so deep she wonders that her lungs can hold it, she takes thick sheets of parchment out and unfolds them.
The first thing she sees makes her glad of that huge breath. Will she ever be able to take another?
It’s a sketch.
Of a beautiful, naked woman.
A woman brought to passionate life through the eyes of someone who obviously adored her, someone who knew her as intimately as it’s possible to know someone.
It’s… oh god. It’s her Mom.
If the pain were any less, she’d be crying right now but she’s too agonized for tears.
Her Mom… her Mom was with…
How could she do that? She knew… she knew… and she…
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
Could she please go back in time and take back that question? The one about pain? Because she meant it when she said she didn’t want an answer.
Everything now is torture. She can’t think, can’t make sense of anything, can’t do anything but hurt.
It stays that way.
It stays that way for hours.
It’s almost morning when Buffy comes back to any kind of awareness and she’s stiff and sore and very, very tired. Also numb. Finally.
So she starts to notice things.
Like the sheets of parchment still clutched in her hand.
Like the absence of tearstains or dark spots from where fingers would have held the pages over and over again.
Like the way the two sheets of paper fit together as thought they’ve never been separated.
Like… “You never read it,” she says, feeling somehow as if her Mom can hear her. “You never read this, did you?” It’s… maybe it shouldn’t mean as much as it does and maybe what it means is a lie, but if it’s a lie… please, please let her believe it and keep on believing.
She pauses – and inhales. She can breathe. Again. At last. “I don’t know what happened, but… You chose me. You chose me.”
Suddenly, even though nothing makes sense – somehow it makes sense anyway. “You never read this… so I won’t either.”
With that, the paper slides back neatly into the envelope.
Oliver was right. A lady should be allowed to keep her secrets. Besides, she’s already found the truth.
Because no matter what Angel said, if Buffy knows anything now, she knows that she does know who her Mom was. Maybe not the art stuff, but she can fix that, and anyway… Angel needed to know…“Her favorite movie was Thelma and Louise. She loved bacon and pancakes and fried chicken and she only pretended to like vegetables so she could get me and Dawn to eat them. She loved Flashdance and all that tacky 80’s stuff and she used to sing while she vacuumed and… and she was my Mom. She loved me. More than I ever knew. More than you ever knew.”
It was true too, wasn’t it? Because even if… stuff had happened, her Mom had been her Mom first.
Back then, if Buffy had been the one who had to choose… would she have made the right choice?
Would she have been the woman her mother was?
Now the tears are falling, but it’s okay – or not, but it will be.
She manages a half smile as she leaves her Mom’s room and closes the door behind her.
Tomorrow night she’ll take that envelope to Mom’s grave and burn it; she’ll leave the ashes of Joyce Summers’ secrets at the cemetery.
That’s the right place for secrets, isn’t it?
The End