You reach for the barre, tentative fingers scrabbling against the well-worn wood, and you pull your right leg up to stretch against your side. Oh, the glory of movement! You are giddy and happy and you tighten your hand around the barre to stead yourself. As your leg comes down, your arm flexes; you now hold the barre in your hand, as though it was light as a feather. You stare blankly at the wall, where huge chunks of the plaster have been ripped out by your unthinking tug. "She doesn't know her own strength," your mind taunts you. You drop the barre and it clatters loudly, sending you skittishly across the room to hunch in a corner. Your head hits the wall, and it seems as though you can feel an indent forming.
You curse your body and your attachment to it, and your head drops to your knees as you sob quietly, tears staining the light pink of your tights.
---
Interlude Two
Buffy drives now, because she has to. She's okay with it, just goes the speed limit and stays in the right-hand lane at all times. She never passes other cars.
She hums to the radio, singing off-key to Radiohead and drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. In the short time that she's been gone, she's checked in twice; Willow has located two more Slayers, sending Vi and Kennedy out to collect them. Dawn initiated a movie night for most of the remaining Slayers--they're not Potentials, now--and she chattered loudly on the phone to Buffy as the movie was playing, narrating the stupid comments thrown at the screen as a blonde girl takes an axe to the chest and screams her head off. Popcorn, Dawn reports, was thrown at the screen in waves.
She knows this road too well, having driven up and down it for the past seven years.
There's a diner she'll probably stop by on her way back from LA. She hopes this pickup will go easily. Most of the girls had been so confused and frustrated that when someone had come to lead them into sanity, they came with barely a question.
It wasn't true for all of them--she still has to drive back to Las Vegas to grab the Slayer-cum-hooker who had some business she wanted to finish before she came to the hotel. Buffy got chills up her spine when she saw the dark smile on that girl's face.
This one, Willow thinks, is a dancer. It's hard to match names to the faces, even with the resources they have. Most of the information they gather is a quick visual flash, and some point of location that makes it easier to reference where the girls are.
Buffy sips the last of her smoothie with her eyes on the road. She sees the exit and carefully puts on her blinker, turning slowly onto the ramp. Here she goes, again. It never gets any easier to tell them just how fucked up their lives are going to be.
---
You can't remember when you last ate. Your fingers rattle the water bottle that was lying haphazardly on the floor when you pick it up to take a sip. Your muscles are shuddering, and you've resigned yourself to lying on your side.
Your eyes have roamed over the wood grain in the floor a thousand times. It never changes, the complex pattern imprinted upon your retinas. You feel your toe shoe drag across the floor, and pull your knees up to your chest to keep them from moving.
You have never felt this way before, so utterly helpless in the face of something you simply cannot control. Your body rebels against your every thought. It is as if this Hell were created personally for you, and you would weep but your body has refused you tears.
Your body. Your body--it seems a thing outside of yourself, now. If you close your eyes, you can see yourself from beyond it, crude flesh that demands its own whims. Your eyelashes flutter against your cheeks and your breath runs harsh in your throat.
You think you must be going crazy, and all you can think of is how you still haven't paid your account at school.
The laugh that escapes from your mouth sounds brittle and sharp, rubbing against your teeth and tongue thickly, wanting to draw more hysterical sounds from deep within you.
You refuse to give in, to completely surrender to the crazy. You are more than that.
You hear the door bang again, and you wonder if the superintendent will find you before or after you have died.
The door is forced open, and without you wanting to, your head turns in the direction of the sound. There is a girl, a small blonde girl, standing over you. She touches your arm lightly and you flinch, pulling away. She says words, flings sentences at you, but you refuse to understand.
You want her to leave, but you can't make the words leave your mouth. You try to force them out, but only stuttered sounds echo in your ears.
She picks you up and your limp body is helpless in her arms. You scream from inside your head, telling your body to move, to escape, to test it's newfound strength against this strangely solid woman, but just as before it ignores you and allows itself to be put into a car.
Your head rests against the seat, and you cannot move your arms for your weakness. But with your last ounce of strength you turn your head and meet her eyes. In them, you see something you never expected: recognition.