Tabula Litterae
Looking over from ringing up a sale to see Dawn slowly skimming through a heavy red text, Giles longs to strip away the false memories the Monks implanted.
Then he wouldn’t remember her peeking down from the top of the stairs that first time he visited Buffy at her house - a vision of big eyes and hair seemingly as long as she was tall all done up in something pink and fluffy with the animal on it having eyes equally large and compelling. She stuck out her tongue and giggled each time he looked her way.
Or the time she ran at him with such enthusiasm that - if her arms hadn’t snaked out to immediately wrap around him with the amazing tenacity children have for clinging - he thought she’d have bounced off like a rubber ball because he certainly hadn’t known how to catch her. The dazzlingly happy smile on her upturned face made him realize why people even had children.
Even the first time she slouched sullenly in the corner of the school library, made to come to a research session, but not allowed to get close enough to tell what they did. The repeated thunk, thunk, thunk of her swinging foot striking the wall all but overwhelmed the Scoobies’ whispered conversation. When he suggested she take Little Women from the shelf, an exaggerated eye roll accompanied her huff of irritation - she’d read it last year when she was little.
If only such vivid snatches of time would dissipate like the mist his rational mind knows them to be, he could watch her lean her head on one hand, shoulders slumped, and cleanly wish her dead in place of her sister instead of feeling his gut clench nauseously.
Then he wouldn’t remember her peeking down from the top of the stairs that first time he visited Buffy at her house - a vision of big eyes and hair seemingly as long as she was tall all done up in something pink and fluffy with the animal on it having eyes equally large and compelling. She stuck out her tongue and giggled each time he looked her way.
Or the time she ran at him with such enthusiasm that - if her arms hadn’t snaked out to immediately wrap around him with the amazing tenacity children have for clinging - he thought she’d have bounced off like a rubber ball because he certainly hadn’t known how to catch her. The dazzlingly happy smile on her upturned face made him realize why people even had children.
Even the first time she slouched sullenly in the corner of the school library, made to come to a research session, but not allowed to get close enough to tell what they did. The repeated thunk, thunk, thunk of her swinging foot striking the wall all but overwhelmed the Scoobies’ whispered conversation. When he suggested she take Little Women from the shelf, an exaggerated eye roll accompanied her huff of irritation - she’d read it last year when she was little.
If only such vivid snatches of time would dissipate like the mist his rational mind knows them to be, he could watch her lean her head on one hand, shoulders slumped, and cleanly wish her dead in place of her sister instead of feeling his gut clench nauseously.