I'm learning to breathe on my own...

Some people live in a house on a hill
And they wish they were someplace else
There's nobody there when the evening is still
Secrets with no one to tell

Sometimes Fred didn't understand the world.

For all her learnings and education and the hundred upon hundred of thoughts that seemed content to roost up in the recesses of her mind? For all she'd seen and done and loved and had the rules of the world rewrite themselves right in front of her? Because when she added up all the hurt and loss and blended it with self discovery -- all done with the simple energy of the shivers down her back and up her arms as all the ideas collided?

She still didn't get it.

Because all she knew was when she was lost in Pylea, she would have given almost anything to have someone -- something even -- to talk to that would actually talk back. More importantly, to listen with. The most complicated, wonderful amazing of dances that took two people and four ears and a whole lost of hearing and very little talking. Heck, even more than four ears. She'd learned since then not to judge.

But either way, it's amazing what got said then.

But she got back, and there was all this stuff. Cell phones and chat rooms and internet conferencing and voice mail and billboards and blogs and ...

Why wasn't anyone saying anything.

Why wasn't anyone sharing anything.

She didn't get it.

Her walls did though. Those four lovely walls, with all the room in the world. For her story and her fears and her life. It listened without any ears at all. It wanted to know about the her she was, not was, or was supposed to be. So.... many different Freds.

But only one her. One room.

And it was enough.


( Read more... )

Fred sits on the edge of her borrowed bed, feet dangling and swaying ever so slightly. The bed it just tall anough that she can't quite reach the floor, though if she is industrious and stretches with a good bit of focus, the ground will greet her. The lights are off in most of the house, and it's quiet except for the occasional creak and whisper from the way a space will talk to you. And normally Fred would be familiar with it all by now, having taken time to say hello and see what there is to be discussed. But the days have run together a bit on her, time lost in the way traveling can sometimes take it away, and keeping the usual conversation from being had.


And what's there has been spent in the lab downstairs, or trips back and forth to the house that was Buffy's, but now's so empty it hurts in a way Fred didn't plan, or working on her computer. Fred's time has ben so taken and twisted she doesn't really know what hour it is anymore...only that it is late. And jet lag isn't her friend. She tries laying down, but Fred's legs still feels like they are swaying, even when they aren't moving at all. So she sits up and lets them do what they want anyways.

And still thinks about Buffy's house, empty and alone. All of those things, waiting for her to come back. All of those friends, waiting for her to come home. It's like the space that Fred couldn't see in her own life has opened up right in front of her, in someone elses. And they're here, everything that truely matters is still here. All Fred's really left or lost are silly, silent things, and suddenly the seld awareness appears. She's been spinning a bit, maybe more than anyone really saw, but spinning none the less. Waiting to be pulled back or rescused, for someone or anyone to come and save her. To take her home.


Only this is home.


Just like that's Buffy's home. With her rooms and her things and her friends. Her baby... Fred's home had gone and packed up and moved right underneath her feet, maybe even more she even saw it was gone. But Buffy's hadn't, and she was going to make sure it was still there when she came back. And...and that she came back.

Somewhere in all that thinking Fred makes her way downstairs, silently slipping the whole way. And of all things she finds the beer, lined up in the neat little rows. Well, not so little rows. At first it's just one of the bottles, it's dark amber colored glass just like the one her Dad would sip from on the porch on some nameless Saturday afternoon. So she opens and drinks the whole of it, and sits right there with him the all of the while. In her head she tells him countless, unordered and meaningless things. And then the kitchen is her lab, a liberated place to taste and see and be a part of welcoming Fred back to herself. It's all very organised at first, some bottles followed through. Some tasted and discarded.

Some good, some not.

Some right for her, others not at all.


But the whole of it...welcomed.


With progressingly less steady feet and arms.