Imperfect

[madimpossibledreamer]

Happy Memorial Day if you celebrate it, or hope you have/had a good day if not!
people are complicated and not knowing what to expect makes me anxious.  /sigh

Main Points:
Buffy/Devil May Cry
Chapter Summary: Alisha tries to get her mind around the world she's stumbled into.
Word Count: 1531
Rating: Teen

         It’s clear from a look at her that the officer doesn’t quite know what to do with herself.
         “Xander’s cloaked this place with his powers somehow,” Buffy explains, glancing at the half demon who has plopped face-down into the couch, sprawled out, and is probably drooling into the cushions.  That will upset him later.  She can’t decide if it’s adorable or kind of sad, how attached he’s gotten to the place.  All of them are lonely and don’t have much, so there’s an extra significance attached to anything they’ve managed to get, but on the other hand she has distinctly noticed some improvements are for their benefit.  He cares about them and wants them to have a hospitable environment.  It’s why he fixed up some of the lighting wiring in some of the rooms—he could wander around in the dark for all the difference it makes to him, but even a Slayer’s sight isn’t good enough for that all the time.  “It’s how nobody’s found us yet.  Giles and I would’ve been on the run all the time otherwise, and it only takes one mistake, one goon to get lucky, for that to be the end.  He doesn’t want to see it like this, but we got lucky, finding this place.”
         The cop leans forward.  “I don’t think I introduced myself—I’m not on the clock, so call me Alisha.  So, Giles isn’t a kidnapper?”
         Buffy blinks.  That’s a weird one.  “No.  I mean, yeah, he did kinda grab me from home, but that was pretty shortly before the wetworks team showed up and we actually had a fight.  Where did that come from?”
         Alisha sighs, running a dark hand through her hair, and Buffy distracts herself a little too long wondering about the woman’s hair care routine.  She’s tired, too.  “You’re more right than you know.  Both of your faces are plastered all over the news—which means you made national, congrats, you’re famous.  I wouldn’t have even caught it if the hotel I didn’t want to look at wasn’t our destination, and I started looking more closely.”
         Buffy winces.  “….Ooof.”  And Giles hadn’t thought to mention that.  Probably trying to protect her again.  “Nah.  I mean, he’s being annoying and trying to make all my decisions for me, but I get where he’s coming from.  If he hadn’t insisted, I would’ve thought ‘nah, there’s no way anyone would just get away with shooting a Cali girl in her own home’ and probably would be very sort of dead right now.”
         “Why does he dislike Xander so much?”  She sounds a little protective, which is…actually rather touching.  He deserves some adult in his life that doesn’t hate his guts.
         “I think he’s still on a ‘all demons are evil’ kick.  I don’t know why he’s clinging onto that very much.  Apparently that’s a very Council attitude to think, and they’re obviously a bunch of murdering lying liars, so I don’t know why he’s choosing to believe them about that.”  Technically, she’s human, but she might as well be from Krypton, and it’s her new weird half-demon shaped friend that’s cheerfully told her that’s normal, there’s nothing wrong with her, not the adult that’s supposed to be making this process of growing up easier.
         “Attitudes like that are the worst.”  On second thoughts, looking at her, it makes all the sense that she’d understand a place of pain like that.  Some people are just jerks.  Some are well-meaning jerks, but that doesn’t absolve them of their jerkishness.
         “Agreed.”  They share a moment of silence about that before moving on.  “I’d love to talk to my mom again, but I don’t want to force her into living like this.  She deserves to live a life where she doesn’t basically have to scrounge, or live in fear.”
         Alisha’s fists clench.  “It’s not right that a kid has to be making that decision for their parent, but I get it.”
         Awkward.  Time for a topic change, before it can get any weirder.  “Oh, uh, if you’re hungry, just head into the dining hall—it’s a left and then the third right from the end.  And don’t freak out, there’s a chefghost who cooks us whatever we want.”  After tasting the delicious food, Giles had managed to get over his prejudice against non-humans for…she’s not even sure if it’s a male or female ghost.  Xander just keeps referring to ghostchef as sirma’am, and the rest of them have just kinda followed suit.  That exception should apply to Xander, too, if he’s just going by usefulness standards, but whatever, the former Watcher’s being a blockhead.  “I don’t know where the food comes from, and I’m not sure I want to know, but it’s great.  If you want to head home, we get it, though it’s probably safest if you want to get in touch with us…hmm.”  Her friend had to have a way for clients to get in touch and be referred, and he was calling from somewhere that smelt a little like alcohol, but while he’d had a drink he hadn’t actually had any because it’s more an atmospheric kind of smell than an immediate ‘this person has imbibed’ kind of smell.
         “Some place named Gold Rush, looks like an old-fashioned kind of saloon.  Tailed him from there,” Alisha admits, and…huh, not the kind of place she’d have pictured for his kind of haunt.
         “Okay, yeah, that’s probably best.  Or if you wanted to stay, for tonight at least, you could.  There are enough rooms.  I’ll warn you there’s no hot water yet—Xander hasn’t gotten to it.”  She glances pointedly at him to punctuate the ‘and there’s not going to be at least tonight’.
         Alisha grins at that.  “I’ll survive one night without a shower, though he wasn’t kidding about a ‘fixer-upper’.”
         “Oh, right.  None of the remaining ghosts are dangerous, but take care about the painting on the stairs.  He was pretty vague and didn’t mention why he hasn’t just slashed it up or gotten rid of it, but if he’s wary about the thing…”  She shrugs.
         “Noted.  Giles uses magic.  What do you do?” Alisha’s relaxed a lot, apart from the simmering anger about their situation which is very relieving.  It’s good to know that someone else finds your situation as wrong as you do.
         “Giles is better at the whole storytelling bit, but I’ll do my best.  Ages and ages ago, the Earth was overrun with demons.  Humans were prey, slaves, what have you.  A bunch of creepy guys in cloaks got together and decided they were having none of that, so they gave one girl powers to fight all the creepy-crawlies of the night.  The Slayer.  And to make it better, when one Slayer dies, the next is called.  Unfortunately, that also means that they don’t have a vested interest in keeping any one Slayer alive, because they can just get another, and if a Slayer defies them, they take care of it.”  She draws a line across her throat for emphasis.  “The way Giles tells it, they find all the Potential Slayers, take them from their families, and train them from when they’re young, but they missed me somehow.”
         Alisha gets up, taking her iced tea with her, and reaches out for Buffy’s hand.  The Slayer accepts it gratefully, trying to ignore the urge to cry.
         “I’m glad they missed you, honey,” she insists, and Buffy manages a smile.
         “Thing is, apparently there are two now, because I stopped breathing for a bit during the rescue and Giles had to do CPR and I think he blames himself, which is garbage.  It’s the fact that he came for me to warn me that gave me a chance at all, and apparently he hadn’t used his fighting magic in years.”  It’s not like Giles doesn’t have a good reason to be paranoid.  The thing is, humans have been worse for them than one very special half-demon, and yet she doesn’t hate humans.  That’d just be stupid, because there are good ones, too.  “As to the case, well.  Fae, or fairies, apparently.  The butler and all the staff and very probably Tristan whatshisface—”
         “Wellington,” Alisha corrects, briefly visibly gobsmacked before shrugging that off.  “I’m probably going to get used to that, aren’t I?”
         “Probably.  They were all, I dunno, really paranoid.  They seem worried about something.  Which as far as I know doesn’t happen, even if most of what I know is Disney.  If you’re powerful, you’d only have to worry about something else powerful, which is more rare, if that makes sense.”  She’s just working it through in her head, but it makes sense to her.
         “I’ve dealt with humans like that.  It’d make sense if that ego-thing is something non-humans have too.”  Alisha yawns and stands.  “And you’d make for a pretty good detective, because they were doing their best to hide it but they were all uneasy about something.”
         Buffy preens a little.
         “Here.”  Alisha finds a blanket in the corner, probably put there for something like this, and the remote for the TV.  “I’ll go find an unoccupied room.”
        "Night!" Buffy calls cheerfully, already channel surfing.