Fourth Tide Turning ☠ Written | Video

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[Jack has been spending a great deal of time at House Seven, looking after Buffy. There are occasions though when he manages to slip off to Cullen House; he has to keep an eye on the place, after all, and is slowly but surely stocking up on necessary non-perishable supplies for the winter that he and Katie McCoy can share. Firewood. So many things

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"She wants so very badly to fill him up with cookies," he murmured, following along in her wake. "You know? There's no other child here that I'd really let serve on my crew. Katie was different. She could take care of herself, always."

[slaying]

"Haunt you. Why would...?"

Her voice caught. She pushed off the counter and shoved aside the mug and began to pace.

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"Buffy? Please. Don't."

[slaying]

"...You're the one that--"

She stopped short in the very centre of the kitchen. "You don't think something like what you were -- like what you were scared of -- you don't think the Malnosso are actually capable of that, are you? Of making a person who doesn't exist? Because that...that takes power. I should know."

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He shook his head, feeling horrible that he had brought this worry on her. "No. I don't think that they are capable, love."

She didn't exist. Didn't. And yet she seemed so insistent about the fact that she did.

"McCoy mentioned someone once: Paprika?"

[slaying]

"...The dream-shrink? Giles knows her. And I need to contact her over--" Nah. Jack didn't need to know that, right now. Not the time.

"You want help."

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"She might be able to..." he whispered, then stopped himself. Jack rubbed furiously at his eyes. Was he that cold-blooded? What had he become, truly? That he could ask her to do away with---to murder---this dream-child? A beautiful little girl who had frightened off the worst of his fetches and who had run into hiding when he had enough rum in his belly?

...Maybe that was the answer. Too much sobriety lately, and if he remedied it no one would have to be murdered. There would be no dream blood on his hands.

[slaying]

"When Giles came back from his last kidnapping," she tried again. "He...he thought he'd been gone for years, not days. They tricked him into thinking that things had happened...things, back here. Without him."

Finally, her eyes dropped. Buffy's hands wrenched at themselves. Her own nervous energy bubbling furiously to the surface. "One of the first things he asked me, Jack? If I had the baby."

Buffy's thoughts on the matter were complicated. Thanks to Giles's kidnapping aftermath, she was beginning to worry that Joyce might be part of some long-term Shift. Some targeted attack on Jack's mind -- one that had bled over into the ex-Watcher's delusion.

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"He..........what. I."

Words would not form. Was she suggesting that their daughter was some kind of Malnosso trick? Jack dug his fingertips against his temples, mindful that a very real little girl was sleeping down the hall and that he did not want to disturb her. But Giles? And Joyce had been used as part of a trick?

"Our little girl. Our baby."

[slaying]

"Pretty sure I was thrown for about ten loops when he asked."

Our. Oh, how that one word inspired more concern and fear than countless other battles. "And I didn't ask for details in return."

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Jack fumbled for his mug and took a sip of the juice. There were cookie crumbs floating in it, but he drank those down as well.

"I refuse to believe it. I refuse to believe that she is merely their tool, Buffy Summers. She's---"

He groped for the language. Realer? Precious to him? She had been in his head for a long time---well before Buffy had even begun to show more than slightly-less-unfriendly interest in him. They had kept each other safe that mad winter in exile. It couldn't be...

He could not face that level of betrayal. He could not. Jack stood up.

[slaying]

"What?" She grabbed onto Jack's arm. Firm -- nonviolent. "What is she?"

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His first instinct was to jerk away from that grasp--not out of any negative emotion, but because everything was so confused right now and his body was on such high adrenaline alert. Fight or flight. Mostly, Jack's body went with flight. He forced himself to remain still, though. He tried to speak calmly. and as the words spilled over he realized how insane they sounded.

"She's our little girl."

Could you love a madman, Jilly?

"She's our daughter, and she's beautiful; she shines and she's good and beautiful and she keeps the darknesses away. And I won't let them...she needs me to look after her."

[slaying]

Insane was not an issue -- or...it was, but not the sort that drove her away. As the list grew, her demeanor softened. This wasn't because of what Jack had to say but instead out of sheer love and concern for how he seemed to be unraveling. So she took him by the hands and brought him with her to the table. The dining table with such a surplus of chairs around it. She nudged him down into one.

"Tell me about her, Jack."

This strategy was not a new strategy. Buffy had kept this in her arsenal ever since she had first learned about Joyce -- and she had talked herself into a strategy whereby she would try and combat Jack's less sane moments by conjuring the child like a touchstone. She never expected that the strategy would have to be employed against the child herself.

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He kept hold of her hands. She was the only person, he realized, that he could trust with this information.

"She runs with light steps. She holds my hand when..." things are terrifying and all is lost. "She never speaks." He closed his eyes. "She's as beautiful as her mother. She smiles even when the worst of the Fetches lashes out. She won't be ignored." A breath. "The rum used to work to silence the Fetches, and it causes her to run off. She doesn't come about when I've had too much of it."

So much of his behavior on the bridge that cold winter day of the Jacksledding, explained.

"I never know when to expect her. She held my hand the night you...after I made you tired, Annie. And she stayed by me that night."

It had been a long night on cold flagstones. The worst. Possibly it had been the worst.

Talking about Joyce like this, oddly, did not conjure her. It was like talking about a loved person who was absent.

[slaying]

Buffy held her breath as Jack explained. Detailed. Fleshed out this girl who, now, -- troublingly -- presented herself with four-year-old Jilly's face. How could she not? With no other perfect frame of reference and with Jack so plainly stating that he had mistook her for Joyce?

And all at once the larger implications of looking after this little girl alongside Jack Sparrow became clear. She stepped closer and did not let go of his fingers and folded her hands around his. Holding his hands to her chest.

"...You want to keep her, don't you? Up there -- in that brain. If she's helped you..." Buffy tightened her grip. "If thinking about her has helped you, then you should. Should keep her. Forget about Paprika. Don't let someone else go stomping through your dreams."

Although that was exactly what she was planning to do -- later. Eventually. With Melaka.