I'll Stand by You
By Kirayoshi
Disclaimers - All the characters of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are
owned by Joss
Whedon and Mutant Enemy. I'm just taking them off the shelf for a little
harmless fun.
Other Disclaimers - This story has two women love, specifically a Slayer and a Witch,
it that bothers you then leave now.
Feedback - As always, feedback, feedback, feedback! Jim_D_Means@prodigy.net
Tonight's episode features music by
the Pretenders.
__________________________________________________________________________
"Love, why do you look so sad?
Tears are in your eyes.
Come on and talk to me.
Don't be ashamed to cry.
Let me see you through.
'Cause I've seen the dark side too.
When the night falls on you,
And you don't know what to do,
Nothing you confess
Will make me love you less.
I'll Stand By You,
I'll Stand By You,
I won't let nobody hurt you,
I'll Stand By You.
--"I'll
Stand By You"
The Pretenders
Buffy reached across the bed, expecting to
touch the warm smooth skin of her lover, but instead hit a warm indentation in
the mattress. Buffy sat up suddenly,
worried that something had happened to her beloved. In the town of Sunnydale, so close to the Hellmouth, those who
walk alone at night literally take their souls into their own hands.
She looked around the bedroom, and saw her
lover, her friend, her Willow, wearing a red negligee, leaning against the
window sill, pondering the night sky beyond the window. She smiled, relieved that Willow was safe,
then she stepped beside her, wrapped her arms around her and whispered into her
ear; "C'mon, Sweetheart. Let's go
back to bed."
"In a minute, Buff," the redhead
answered. Buffy could hear the resigned
tension in her beloved's voice, could feel the stiffness in her muscles. She turned her around and saw a tear making
a thin rivulet down her cheek.
"Okay, Wills, spill," she said in a
gentle voice. Buffy and Willow had been
best friends for over three years, and lovers for nearly three months. They were now at what Buffy called the "when-she-smiles-I-smile-when-she-hurts-I-hurt"
stage. She couldn't stand by and watch Willow
in pain, not if she could do something to assuage it.
Willow bowed her head, then began
quietly; "You know a week ago last
Saturday, when I was at my parents' for dinner?"
"Yeah?"
She gulped hard. "I told them."
Buffy stood silently for a second, letting the
redhead's words sink in. "About
us?"
"I told them we were lovers, Buffy. I told them I'm in love with you, that I'm
happy with you."
Buffy stroked her friend's cheek, smoothing a
lock of red hair from her face.
"And from the general mopeyness, it didn't go well." When Willow nodded, Buffy asked, "What
did they say?"
"That's just it, Buffy, they didn't say
anything. Not one word to me over the
rest of dinner. After dinner, I tried
to talk to Daddy in the living room, but he just opened up the newspaper and
held it in front of his face. It was
like he put the Great Wall of China between us. I left for the dorms right after that, and they didn't even nag
me. No 'remember to wear a sweater', no
'careful walking at night', nothing."
"So you were at your folks' house and
they didn't nag you once? Check their
basement for pods!" Buffy laughed lightly, but stopped once she caught
Willow's withering glance. "Sorry,
Will. I'll leave the jokes to
Xander."
Willow managed a slight smile, and
continued. "It's just that it's
been ten days since then, and they haven't called me once. I tried to call them, but they just said,
'we're fine', 'nothing new here', 'look, I gotta go', you know, that sort of
thing. No support, no anger, no 'keep
away from that Summers girl or you'll no longer be welcome in our home,' no
nothing. I don't know which would be
worse; hearing them tell me I'm wrong, or not hearing anything at
all." She looked at Buffy again,
apologizing, "I'm sorry, I know, babble mode, but Geez, if I wanted the
silent treatment, I'd have stayed together with Oz!" She saw Buffy's head turn away at the
mention of her old boyfriend, and realized that Oz was still a sore spot with
her. "Oh, Geez, Buffy, I'm sorry,
I shouldn't have mentioned him, I'm..."
Buffy silenced Willow's emerging babble mode
with a gentle finger to her lips.
"Don't worry, Wills. I
shouldn't get wigged out over Oz. And
you shouldn't worry about your folks.
They just need to get used to
it. They'll come around."
"You really think so?"
"Of course they will. You're their daughter. You're Willow. How could anyone not love you?
Look at me; I spent three years trying to avoid falling for you, and
look where I am now?"
"And where is that, exactly?" Willow
asked teasingly.
"In the arms of the woman I'm going to
love for the rest of my life," Buffy answered, her voice carrying
overtones of a growl. "The woman whom I want to make love to so
bad..."
"Shut up, Jerry Maguire," Willow
whispered huskily as she leaned in to her best friend's lips for a kiss. "You had me at 'hello'."
@---\---\-----
The two vampires prowling outside Stevenson
Hall were newly risen, and their sire had left without properly educating them
on the finer points of bloodsucking.
However, in life they had gorged themselves on a steady diet of grade Z
horror movies, from "Fright Night" to "Subspecies", so they
had a general idea of how to stalk their victims for their blood.
And it was their lucky night; a middle-aged
couple were walking alone on the campus.
They 'stalked' their prey with little grace, as the couple quickened
their pace, hearing footsteps behind them.
Suddenly, the newly-sired vampires jumped in front of the startled
couple, fangs and claws bared.
"Hey, guys," a sweet voice called
from the side of the causeway.
"Fresh blood over here!"
The two vampires turned to see two young women, one blonde and one
redheaded.
"Those two don't really have enough blood
for the two of you," the redhead said in a sweetly soothing voice, as she
waved her right hand in front of the two vampires.
One turned to the other, and said in a dazed
voice, "Those two don't really have enough blood for the two of us."
"You don't want to drain them, do
you?" the redhead asked.
"We don't want to drain them," the
vamps agreed.
"These are not the droids you're looking
for," the blonde piped in.
"These are not the--HEY!"
"Buffy!"
"Sorry, Willow, couldn't resist,"
Buffy returned her gaze to the two vampires, and said, "Okay, hard
way!"
She delivered a standing high kick to one
vampire's mandible, and as the fiend was sent reeling, she withdrew Mr. Pointy
from her belt loop, and staked the vampire quickly and efficiently. Wiping some of the resulting dust off of her
hands, she commented, "Newbies. Where's
the challenge?"
Willow ducked an attack from her sparring
partner, and ducked behind a large fir tree.
The vampire, thinking that he had his victim cornered, ran around the
other side of the tree to capture her, only to find himself looking down the
business end of a crossbow.
"It's amazing how often that trick
works," Willow smiled as she pulled the crossbow's trigger, firing a
wooden shaft directly into the heart of the beast. Within seconds, he was a pile of ash.
"She shoots, she scores," Willow
announced as she walked back to the scene of the attack. "Das right, we bad!"
"Way to use the Force, Luke," Buffy
greeted Willow as they high-fived.
"Hey, at least we know that my 'Jedi Mind
Trick' spell works. But what about
them?" she asked, indicating the two near-victims.
"We'd better make sure they're
okay," Buffy agreed. "Hey,
are you two all right -- Oh -- My -- God -- Mr. and Mrs. Rosenburg?"
At Buffy's statement, Willow looked at the couple
more closely, and gasped as she recognized them; "Mom? Dad?"
Ira Rosenburg had stood up, and was helping
his wife get on her feet. "Come on, Sheila," he announced
briskly. "We're going home."
As Willow's parents walked away, Buffy chased
after them. "Please, Mr.
Rosenburg, I think that we should talk about this--"
"I have nothing to say to you, Miss
Summers," Ira snapped at Buffy, not even bothering to look at her. "And I have no wish to discuss what we
saw tonight."
"Well, that's too damn bad!" Buffy
heard a voice she belatedly recognized as Willow's, shouting from behind
her. Hearing the anger in her lover's
voice, Buffy quietly prayed that she would never do anything to make Willow
that mad at her. "I don't give a
good goddamn whether you want to talk about it now, because we're gonna talk
about it now. And if you walk away from
me tonight, I'll never talk to you again!"
The Rosenburgs’ stopped and turned to their
daughter. Sheila hissed angrily at
Willow; "How dare you speak to us in that tone of voice?"
"How dare you not speak to me at
all?" Willow pleaded. "I know
that you have issues about me and Buffy, but I'm not leaving her, not now, not
ever. Please, Mom, we need to
talk. Now." She set her jaw firmly,
indicating that she would take no arguments.
Buffy looked back and forth between parents
and daughter, not knowing what to say to ease the stand-off. Finally Sheila looked at Buffy, and said,
"I'm sure that you've seen that expression before, right?"
"Eeeeyup-hah," Buffy exhaled. The two women looked at Willow for a second,
and said in unison, "Resolve face."
Ira finally nodded his head, saying, "You
are quite right, Willow, we do need to talk. Perhaps the two of you know of
some neutral territory where we may continue this discussion more
peacefully?"
Buffy looked at Willow, and asked,
"Espresso Pump?"
"Sounds good," Willow agreed.
@---\---\-----
"Okay," the waitress at the Espresso
Pump said cheerfully, "one French roast, black, two sugars for the
gentleman, chamomile tea with lemon for his wife, and two tall mochas for the young
ladies." She left the foursome
with their drinks, quietly heading for the cash register. Buffy sipped her
mocha pensively, waiting for a break in the stalemate between parents and daughter.
Finally, Ira Rosenburg spoke; "Willow, I
wish first to apologize for not saying anything to you when you announced
your...relationship with Miss Summers."
"Buffy," the blonde absently
corrected. Ira glanced at her, making
her feel self-conscious. "Please, Mr. Rosenburg, my friends call me
Buffy. Hell, Mr. Snyder called my
Buffy, and he hated my guts!"
Ira glared at her, saying, "All right,
Buffy." Turning back to his
daughter, he continued. "The reason we didn't speak was because
we didn't want to say anything that we would both regret. Your announcement about Buffy shocked
us. We simply didn't wish to react out
of that shock, and say anything that we couldn't take back."
"I guess I understand, Daddy,"
Willow replied. "But ten
days? I started to think you didn't want
to see me again."
"No, darling, that's not true,"
Sheila said immediately. "It's
just that we still didn't know what to say then. Personally, I wasn't sure which scared me more, that you were in
love with another woman, or that you were in love with a--well, a--" she
couldn't finish the thought.
Buffy took a stab at it; "A goy?"
she said, smiling.
This sudden outburst helped ease the tension
some more. Ira chuckled, amending her statement;
"Let's just say, a gentile. Not to
mention that you always did have a reputation for being a troublemaker. I seem to recall at least once when you were
accused of murder."
Buffy gulped hard at that memory; when the
soulless Angelus killed her fellow slayer Kendra, and Buffy was framed for the
crime. Snyder had her expelled
summarily, her mother didn't believe her, and when she learned about her being
a Slayer, that's when the organic material hit the ventilation device.
Willow was quick to defend her lover. "That charge was bogus, Mom. And it was dropped quickly, too." She held Buffy's hand tightly as she
spoke. "I know that I am safer
with Buffy than with anyone else."
"We understand, darling," answered
Sheila. "The truth is that we came to a consensus last night; it is your
life, and if Buffy was who you want, who you love, we would support you. That
is why we came to the campus tonight; I felt that we owed it to you, Willow, to
speak in person, to tell you that we had accepted your relationship with
Buffy."
"But then you saw--" Willow started,
"those guys attacking you--and we--" she felt herself sinking deeper
with every word.
Ira took another sip of coffee, and
continued. "What those two thugs
did to us was unnatural. Their speed,
their strength, they weren't human. And
what the two of you did to them..." He left the sentence hanging, and
Buffy and Willow knew that they had a greater secret to explain than their
merely being lovers.
Buffy stared at her mocha for five seconds,
then looked at Willow. Willow regarded
Buffy with a look that clearly said, Tell them, they deserve to know the truth.
Buffy took Willow's hand in her own and smiled at her.
"Mr. Rosenburg," Buffy announced
quietly, "those two punks weren't human.
They were vampires. I'm a
vampire slayer."
"And I'm a witch," Willow added
sheepishly. In for a dime, in for a
dollar.
The Rosenburgs stared at their daughter for a
long moment. Ira then exhaled quietly
through pursed lips. "That would
explain your candle collection."
"And I have this dim memory," Sheila
added hesitantly, "of trying to burn the two of you at the
stake." She shuddered as she said
the words. "And your mother was with me, Buffy, and there was that girl
Amy, and we never did see her after that..."
"So babbling is genetic, Wills?"
Buffy quipped. Willow gave her a sour
look, and Buffy relented.
"You weren't yourself, Mom," Willow
quickly consoled her mother. "You
were controlled by a demon."
"Uh-huh," Sheila replied quietly.
Another dense silence took over the table.
"Look, Mom, Dad," Willow broke the
silence, "There's a lot of bad stuff going on in this town. Surely you've been aware of it; you think
it's natural for everyone in an entire town to lose their voices all at
once? For the entire swim team to turn
into sea monsters? For hundreds of
people to turn up dead from blood loss, while the police force does nothing about
it? For a demon to try to eat the
entire graduating class?
"I know that Judaism has some strong
words against both witchcraft and homosexuality, but that doesn't change who
and what I am. I'm still Willow
Rosenburg, the babbling computer hacker, I still light the menorah every Chanukah,
I still attend the synagogue. And I
also cast spells, and help fight vampires.
And I love Buffy Summers. I'm
sorry if that's not what you expected from a daughter, but that's who I
am."
Ira shook his head, and asked Willow, sadness
and compassion in his voice, "What ever happened to the little girl whom I
could convince everything was all right by shining a flashlight under the bed
and scaring out any monsters?"
"She grew up, Daddy," Willow said,
her voice catching. "She found out
that the monsters were real. And she
discovered that she could fight them herself." She looked as though she was going to break down and cry, and
Buffy instinctively put her arm around her beloved's shoulder.
After a final profound silence, Ira Rosenburg
spoke, quietly and clearly; "When I was six years old, I sat on my
father's lap, and asked him why he had a string of numbers written on his
arm. He said that he would tell me when
he was older. Shortly after my bar
mitzvah, he told me about those numbers.
How bad men in Germany tattooed those numbers on his arm when he was
just a child. How the Nazis routed him
and his family from their poor home in Poland, and forced them into the Warsaw
ghettos, and then into the camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, and
Auschwitz-Birkenau. I trust these names
are familiar to you."
"Yes, sir," Buffy nodded somberly.
"My father spent seven years at these
camps, imprisoned for the simple offense of being Jewish. His parents, my grandparents, were killed in
those camps. He and his sister, my aunt,
survived. Call it luck of the draw,
call it the will of God, call it what you will. He never forgot those years of trial, of torture. And he vowed never to allow his blood to
become guilty of the crimes he had witnessed.
The greatest sin of all, he often told me, is intolerance." He
stopped and sipped his coffee.
"That was the lesson I took with me from my father's relating to me
the story of the Holocaust. And I would
be a poor son to him if I forgot that lesson in regards to my own
daughter."
Willow nodded to her father, relieved at his
understanding. "I remember Grandpa
telling me about the holocaust. And I
too took a lesson from his story; evil cannot be ignored, or it will grow. Evil has to be opposed. Like the Nazis were finally opposed and
beaten. That's what I'm doing, what
Buffy and I are doing together. She
showed me the way, but I chose to walk down that path." She turned to Buffy and repeated the vow she
made a year ago; "It's a good fight, and I want in."
Buffy smiled in remembrance of her words,
tears flowing freely from her eyes.
"I kinda love you, Wills." And she hugged her fiercely.
Ira smiled at the two women. Sheila said to them, "All that I need
to know is that you are happy, Willow.
And that Buffy will protect you from whatever evils you oppose."
"I am, Mom," Willow said, and Buffy
added, "And I will."
"Then there's only one more question to
ask," Sheila announced.
"Buffy, do you have plans for a week from Wednesday?"
"Not that I know of, why?"
"Then would you join us for the Seder
meal?" Sheila asked. Willow piqued
when she heard her mother make the invitation.
"Passover begins that night, and we would like you to join us."
"I would be honored, Mrs. Rosenburg,"
Buffy answered. "Should I bring
anything, some bread maybe?"
"Uh, Buffy," Willow corrected her
quietly, "leavened bread is not permitted for the Passover meal."
"Oh, sorry, my bad," Buffy grinned
sheepishly. "Some wine,
then?"
"If you wish," Ira replied, "As
long as it's kosher."
"I will personally bring a Rabbi with
me," Buffy announced, eliciting some laughs from the table. Willow said, "I'll help her find
something. That'll work."
The four of them laughed more easily together
as they finished their drinks. Buffy
chatted about her interest in skating, and her mishaps as Willow tried to teach
her the finer points of computers.
Suddenly Willow stood up, and announced, "Before I forget, I have
an early Passover gift for Buffy."
She fished through her ever-present backpack, and pulled out a small
jewelry case, and handed it to Buffy.
Buffy excitedly opened the box, and looked at
the charm. She looked quizzically at
Willow, asking, "A half of a necklace?"
"It's a Mizpah coin," Willow
announced, pulling on a gold chain on her neck. "See, I have the other half," she added, showing her
pendant. Indeed, it resembled a broken
half of a coin. She sat down next to Buffy, took the chain out of its box and
placed it around Buffy's neck. Buffy shuddered at the contact of Willow's
fingers against the skin of her neck, and the resulting sensation thrilled her
to the core.
"See," Willow demonstrated, taking
Buffy's pendant, and placing it next to her own, "The two pieces form one
whole coin. They symbolize how you and
I are two halves of the same entity."
Buffy smiled as she looked at the coin, and noticed the engraving on it.
"It's from the Book of Genesis," Willow explained.
Buffy looked at the inscription and read it
aloud; "'The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent, one from
another.' Oh, Willow, that's beautiful." She fought back a tear at her
lover's gift. "Thank you."
And she hugged her again.
"I remember the Claddagh rings you and
Angel shared," Willow observed. I
just wanted some symbol for us to share."
They embraced again, as Ira and Sheila applauded.
Ira turned to Buffy and offered his hand to
her. As they shook hands warmly, Ira commented,
"You're not quite the son-in-law I had in mind for Willow, but you'll
do." Sheila nodded in agreement with her husband, and Willow grinned
broadly. Buffy smiled at his easy-going
charm, and was glad to be accepted into Willow's family.
"See," Buffy said to Willow later,
after the Rosenburgs left for their house, "that wasn't so bad, was
it?"
"Yeah, I guess it wasn't," Willow
admitted. "I'm glad that they
finally accepted you. I know that some
people won't; I've already been called 'dyke' by three different people in my economics
class yesterday,--"
" You want I should mess up their faces
for youse?" Buffy offered in a lame Humphry Bogart accent.
"No, not really," Willow said, as
she leaned into Buffy's body. "I'm
just glad that my folks are cool with us.
Between gay-bashers and vampires, I've got enough aggravation."
"Hey, just remember, I'm here for you,
and I'm not going away," Buffy answered.
"I love you, Willow."
As their lips touched, two hearts sang anew
and yearned toward oneness again.
Whatever new challenges the next day would bring, with the support of
their families and closest friends, Buffy would stand by Willow and they would
make it through any adversity.
Together.
FINIS