14244/Something Is Wrong

Something Is Wrong
Date of Scene:	30 March 2022
Location:	Apartment 214, Hugo Building
Synopsis:	Buffy discovers that something is missing: Her memory. She meets up with Willow and learns that she's lost a lot of time. What happened?!
Cast of Characters:	Buffy Summers, Willow Rosenberg

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Buffy Summers has posed:
It had been a long night. She'd been on patrol and was attacked by a whole group of vampires. Then in the middle of the fight, there was a bright flash of light that blinded all of them. She recovered but things looked different. Yet, there were still vampires and she still took care of business. But after that, she was done for the night.

She made her way back to her apartment. Let herself in the front door with her key. Trudged her way across the living room, dropping her bag on the couch for a moment. She went to the fridge to get out a soda. Popped the top and took a sip. Then back to the couch to get her bag and off to her bedroom.

When she opened the door, she stared. Then she closed the door. Looked around the apartment. Opened the door again to look inside. No one was there but there was also the problem that none of her stuff was either! There were some things but they most certainly didn't belong to her.

"Willow! I've been robbed! And whoever did it redecorated!"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
*blink blink*

That's not right. In fact it's really not right. Who thought that they could pretend that someone was Buffy and make herself at home to spy on them.. or to play a trick on them. Willow looked out of the bedroom, with a burning sage (it's all she had - unless you meant to use magic..)

She got out of her bedroom, wielded the sage as a weapon. "Who are you? And why are you pretending that you are Buffy?"

Two thoughts occurred right then:

One: if she wasn't Buffy, she shouldn't have been able to cross the door. And Two: is it possible that Buffy was in a spell? It wouldn't be the first time.

Buffy Summers has posed:
"Wait what?"

That wasn't nearly as eloquent as Buffy usually was but having Willow confront her as if she was a stranger instead of being worried about Buffy's missing property had thrown off the Slayer.

"Why am I pretending to be Buffy? I am Buffy. The vampire Slayer? Y'know the whole 'one girl in all the world' although we both know that isn't true because the people that created this whole thing didn't have a concept of CPR back then so surprise, there's two of us now!"

She suddenly had a random thought. "If we took Faith and I and knocked us both out just long enough to seem dead then brought us back, would we keep triggering new activations?" That was too deep of a conversation for a night like this so she shook her head.

"It's me, Wil. What can I do to prove it? I mean I never did a Snoopy dance for you as a kid like Xander did so I can't use that one."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow still was brandishing the sage. "You aren't fooling me!"

Really she wasn't.. except..

"What?" She sure didn't sound like Buffy.. and she kinda did? Weird.. "Okay if you are who you say who are.. Tell me about the day when we all went to your parents place to introduce Thomas to them. Go on!"

Wait. Did she actually say what Willow thought she had said?? "Don't even think about it! Three Slayers, are you kidding me? Why not a hundred, or a thousand?" Though she really would like to see Buffy doing the Xander dance.

/That/ would be cool!

Buffy Summers has posed:
"Why are you threatening me with sage? I'm not a ghost. I mean the most you'll do is make me smell sagey. Smudgey? Is that a thing?"

Buffy eyed the room that should be her room but most definitely was not her room. She closed the door and took a few steps backwards, eyeing it suspiciously. Then she opened the door very slowly. Nope. Still other stuff. Closed. Then opening it really really fast. No change.

She sighed and closed the door, turning back to Willow and looking confused. "Huh?" Very astute. "I don't know anyone named Thomas unless you mean Thomas McGee from seventh grade but that was before I came to Sunnydale. And it was a just a crush. I forgot all about him a week later when Carl was the new kid and was way hotter."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"You know Thomas - your boyfriend Thomas. Thomas Raith?" The man who was a White Court vampire.

Good grief. That didn't sound right to Willow, and she had gone along with it.

Quickly she put her hands behind her back to hide the sage. ..No go. It was 'hidden' but still smelled all through the apartment. "That's the boys' room. Don't you remember? When you moved in with Thomas, I found them to make up your rent."

Now Willow frowns. Something wasn't right.

Buffy Summers has posed:
Buffy as now staring at Willow as though the woman had just turned out to be a demon. Her hand started to slide into her messenger bag, where she kept all her goodies for fighting bad things.

Though, to be honest, she'd never had a monster try to sage her before. So the likelihood this was a monster was slim to none. Or they were a really smart monster.

"I moved in with someone named Thomas Raith?" She seemed to dwell on that a moment. "I don't know anyone with that name. And even if I did know him, and was dating him, I wouldn't have screwed you and left you paying the rent by yourself so there would be no need for 'the boys' to move in to cover so right now I am really confused and wondering what the hell is going on here."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"They've been here almost a year, Buffy."

Yep. Something was wrong. Very. Wrong.

First she had to scold Buffy. "Don't bother. The apartment is so secure from almost any types of demons, ghosts.. etc. The odds of me being one, in the apartment waiting for you, is almost nil. You do realize that, huh? Otherwise we'd still be thinking that /you/ aren't Buffy."

Thank goodness the sage had begun to peter out. "What is the last memory you have?"

Buffy Summers has posed:
"Well, my last was fighting a bunch of vampires. Big flash of light thing which blinded me. Managed to dust them anyway then I came home. Before that..."

Buffy paused as she moved toward the couch, setting down her bag again. She hadn't taken anything out of the bag. "Patrolling. A couple of classes this afternoon. Before that, you and I had coffee after Psych class. Well I had hot chocolate and not coffee cause coffee ew." Her brow furrowed slightly. "You were talking about maybe checking out the Wicca club they have on campus if you got the time."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Oh wow. That long ago."

Willow went pale. "According to that, you're missing a whole bunch." She didn't want to spill it right this minute, but what she could remember of that day, it was all the way back from the beginning of their University days.

Oh boy.. though it made much more sense when Willow looked back and rewound all the time that Willow felt pushed aside by Buffy for her 'new' friends. Maybe it wasn't Buffy, really.

Buffy Summers has posed:
That phrasing did not sound good. The addition of missing a whole bunch was worse. With someone like Buffy, missing a whole bunch might mean a week. Or a month. Since Willow tended to be the glass-half-full type, for her to say a whole bunch meant it was far longer than Buffy wanted to imagine. Only Giles, with his British viewpoint, could maybe make a 'whole bunch' sound like a mere trifle. Stiff upper lip and all that stuff.

Considering the Buffy everyone remembered took Psych first year and never again after that because OMG that was hard, this was a bad thing.

"I get the feeling I'm going to want to be sitting down for this. Or is this a Giles probably should tell me thing?" Because really bad things, Giles got to deliver that sort of news traditionally. "I mean, Giles is still Giles right? Magic Shop and all that?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Giles is in England."

Really there was not a right way to tell Buffy. Even Willow could not find a way to make it sound not as bad. Really there wasn't. A week - maybe. A month - suuuure.. But a whole two and a bit years - there wasn't a nice way to break the news.

Even if your name was Willow.

Buffy Summers has posed:
With that, Buffy frowned. She looked away, honestly in the direction of Sunnydale as though she might be able to see over the miles, through the walls, to verify for herself. "Oh."

She looked back over at Willow and considered. "Is my Mom still at my house? If so I think I need to go there and...try to figure some things out." Mainly because she couldn't take more surprises. Not yet.

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow nods very carefully. "Maybe you had better sit down. Oh!"

How does she tell her that her parents still think she's going out with Thomas. And furthermore, Willow has no idea what they knew about Thomas. For all they knew Buffy might have told them he was a vampire.. she wouldn't have.. would she?

"You've been visiting your parents a lot. More than I have." Which doesn't say a lot.

"You're sure you want to go there? I can rewrite the sigils to keep Thomas out of here, and you can sleep on my bed. Really!"

Buffy Summers has posed:
"I mean I can just sleep on the couch if my Mom isn't home." Last she knew her father was still in California so that had her looking confused as well. "My father is back in the picture?"

She sat down. Heavily. More collapsing onto the couch because that was one for the record books. She'd seen less and less of him in her high school years, after her parents divorced. So for him to be back in the house?

But something else had the hair at the nape of her neck standing on end and she looked at Willow with slightly narrowed eyes. "Why would sigils keep this Thomas Raith out?" Because for them to work he was something other. Not human.

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Uhm.."

Willow sat quietly next to Buffy, and put the sage down on the coffee table. Holding out her hands, she sighed. Forget about the business of her father, there was a bigger issue.

"Buffy, Thomas was a White Court vampire. I think, sometimes, he fed on you." To heck with think, she knows he did. "If you don't remember him, nothing says he won't remember YOU. And until we can figure it out, I think you are better off here than are you mom's. For all we know, maybe he's had you under his spell."

Which made Willow feel sick. She allowed it. Because Buffy said she loved him, and she'd done with stranger people - Angel and Spike for example. Heck! Willow had an affair with Oz. And worse, a demon. So..

Buffy Summers has posed:
Being Buffy, typically the questions would be falling from her lips as son as she thought them. Instead she sat a moment as she tried to digest this particular info drop.

"I..." She paused and took a sip of that soda she'd all but forgotten was in her hand. Her mouth was suddenly very dry. "So I was with a guy who is a vampire and let him feed off me? That doesn't sound like me. I didn't even let Angel do that." And Willow knows more than anyone that Buffy's love for the brooding vampire had been deep. She'd never let Spike feed off her either, come to think of it. Did she? Now her memory was suspect and she hated that.

"And what is a White Court vampire? Never heard of that before. I mean if I loved the guy, if I needed to save his life maybe once. But not like more than that. And you using the word sometimes means...more than once."

She glanced around the room. "How can I help with those sigils? Or just like be your cheerleader while you do the work so I don't break something?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Oh. Boy. Really oh boy.

"Do you really want.. me.." And there she stopped. She would have wanted to know. And she wasn't even the Slayer. Darn skippy Buffy would want to know of the details - especially if Thomas /had/ ensorcelled her.

"The White Court has mainly vampires of the kind that lures you in by sex. Thomas was an incubus. The females are succubus.. and I don't need to tell you you did some things that.. well, /if/ you were in love wouldn't be so strange, but now that I know you weren't totally there, might be something you don't want to know. Trust me, you don't."

It's bad enough that Willow knows.

And if Thomas was truthful, there was no reason to drag everything out in the open.

As for the sigils, Willow perked up. "You should see the ones I have now! Across every opening. And written on the paint in between! Oh." For a minute she frowns. "You didn't meet the boys then, did you? I tried to set you up with Sam, but I guess you already were with Thomas - before I knew of him."

Buffy Summers has posed:
As Buffy is listening, she's feeling a little sick to her stomach. She looks at the soda as though it is to blame. It is set on the coffee table. On a coaster. Because Willow liked it when she used the coasters.

"We can't jump to conclusions. Maybe I'm just suffering from amensia. So maybe I do love this person. Just..." She frowned and shook her head. "Right now I have no idea who he is or what's happening. Maybe something was done. Maybe something wasn't. We have to figure out what happened first before we go placing blame."

Which was very adult of her to think. In the past she would be very much 'Stake First don't ask questions later cause they are dust'.

She glanced around at the walls now, particularly at the doors and windows. "If you mean the Winchesters, we met them a few years back. But we were still in Sunnydale, before we went to college. So if you mean something more recent then no. I don't remember them visiting us here."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Those are the ones!" Willow thinks back. "Sam was kinda cute, but he thought of me like a sister. And you were too close in personality with Dean. I'm really glad you two didn't hook up. Oh boy! That would have been real trouble!"

She laughs at the memory.

"And quite frankly, you seemed like you were happy with Thomas. He didn't seem to give me the heebie jeebies. Really he didn't."

Buffy Summers has posed:
"Lack of heebies and of jeebies. Those are good things."

Because really it was. If Willow wasn't uncomfortable. But at the same time, far too many unanswered questions for Buffy to be just going 'okay I'm in love with an incubus' cause really.

"Sam and Dean are both hot. I think Dean and I would be competing for who was more badass though. And when I won, he'd be all pouting and whining. So better avoided." Not that she had any idea what happened during their last visit when she was with Thomas. She was going on older history.

"Show me the new sigils they setup and what they do?" Not that she intended to be setting them cause that was Willow's job. She liked to understand things. A little. To an extent. If it didn't get too boring.

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Dean wouldn't even look my way." She thought about whether or not she would find them 'hot'. "Dean was kind of needy, I guess. It was like that was all he had, and he felt naked with it. Sam was the brains."

Willow was excited to show Buffy all she had learned during the amesnia term (which Willow had called it in her brain). She showed several sigils by illuminating then and showing Buffy how they were made, and the particular order the symbol went in.

There were a lot of new ones since Buffy had seen before. Each one was illuminated, and then put back so that they were visible to the naked eye - unless you could understand magic.

Buffy Summers has posed:
Buffy got up to move around the apartment with Willow. Watching as the sigils would appear out of nothing, be explained in full, then disappear again. A couple of times she touched the wall after they disappeared, wondering if there was any way to tell it was there without magic. It felt like a wall. No weird texture or anything.

"That's pretty amazing. I am guessing you learned a lot during my Missing Time." For Willow it would be Amnesia Term. For Buffy, it would be Missing Time. Willow had let her her know it was a lot of time. She was not ready to ask for a number. Or even to pull out her phone to look at the date on it.

There was only so much her mind could process at a time. Overload and she might just pass out in horror.

"That's the impression I had of the boys too. Dean was all about the hunting. Sam was the smart one. Which is kind of why they are the same as you and me." She said that with a smile, pleased with the comparison.

Then she thought of something. "Wait. When I first got here, you said the boys were in my room. Is it them? Or some other boys?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"oh.."

Small 'o' oh.

"When you had decided to make it official and move in with Thomas.." Let's be honest, she's payed her portion of the rent, but really hadn't been here for months. "..you were trying to hook me up with a roommate, and I found Vitali sleeping in the woods. And then he invited Xiang Zhao, with my permission, of course."

"They like a couple, but they haven't figured out how to let themselves do that. I know it wouldn't bother me. I tried to tactfully say I like girl as much as boys."

She shrugs.

"They've been here a whole year." There. She said it. Another piece of the puzzle. She'd been out of it for longer than a year.

Buffy Summers has posed:
Buffy was just listening to the explanation but when Willow added that final bit, she suddenly looked very tired. At least a year. And Willow had mentioned that it was when they started University where Buffy's memories picked up. So how long ago was that?

She wasn't looking at her phone.

She moved to the the closet area where they had kept spare blankets and pillows. Thankfully they were still there. She took out a blanket and pillow then headed for the couch. "I'll crash here. We can try to figure more out. I mean it's been a long night already and I have class... Or maybe I don't. Morning. Too much for my brain right now."

She threw the bedtime goodies on the couch then moved to try and hug her bestie. "Thanks, Willow. I couldn't ask for a better friend. I know you'll help me get through this."