ARRIVAL
I’m helping Buffy Bot make breakfast so we don’t wind up with another stack of pancakes that almost goes to the ceiling, and Willow is reading through something on her laptop at the dining table when I swallow my nerves and bring something up that’s been weighing on me, “Maybe you can invest some of it?” I realize once my sentence ends that I haven’t fully clarified everything given half the thought happened before I opened my mouth.
“What do you mean?” Willow, understandably, says.
“I mean, get some sort of return on the money left over from Joyce’s life insurance, so we have something coming in instead of just everything going out. It’s going to run out eventually otherwise given we’re paying her home equity loan and the second mortgage, as well as electricity and everything else.”
“Money is good to have.” Buffy Bot supplies, “It pays for goods and services.” Something she’s clearly picked up from Anya.
“Yes.” Willow says and I’m not sure which of us she’s talking to.
Dawn comes downstairs to eat breakfast so conversation shifts to getting her school supplies for the new year and how excited she’s not, other than for Janice being back from her family vacation so she can hang out with her again.
“How goes the hunting?” Dawn asks, as she’s getting a bag of lunch out of the fridge to take with her today. She agreed to help Giles and Anya out at The Magic Box to earn a little extra cash.
“We’re working out a system.” Willow explains, “and so long as we have Buffy Bot it’ll be easier.”
“She does have skills.” Dawn allows.
We don’t point out the reason it’s easier is because the vampires are still nervous about The Slayer living here, and despite the allure of a town with a Hellmouth there’s a healthy sense of self-preservation keeping them to the cities.
“Have a whizz-bang day.” Buffy Bot says to Dawn.
“I’m still working on her dialogue.” Willow apologizes.
“It’s fine.” Dawn gives Buffy Bot a hug before hugging both Willow and I on her way out. I wonder, again, how this is affecting her grieving process, this facsimile of her sister wandering around. She’s lost her whole family in six months. At least with Buffy Bot here we can keep her out of foster care. I can’t imagine letting Joyce or Buffy down like that.
“That’s what I mean—” I tell Willow.
“What?” she says, given once again I left my sentence out to dry.
I grab both plates of food and set a plate down in front of her, pushing her to eat and not just focus on whatever she has on her screen.
“You’re a genius, Will. You were hacking very full of security places long before I even knew you, and you reprogrammed Buffy Bot out of all the lovey dovey Spike things even though another genius, evil as he was, programmed her. It can’t be too hard to find ways to invest Joyce’s money so we can live off the dividends. We can’t live off air and Buffy Bot can’t exactly get a job. She barely made it through the last DCF interview.”
“You have a job.” Willow says.
“Doing tarot readings at the Magic Box, a couple of afternoons and evenings a week barely brings in enough to cover a week groceries and you know it.” I point out, “and with your advanced courses you have barely enough time to do homework as it is with all the slaying duties we’ve taken on.”
We both realize Buffy Bot has started on pancakes again. Willow manages to get her on putting the extras away so we can heat them up tomorrow, “What about our other project?” she says, “You know we can’t eave-lay er-hay in ell-hay. That’s not fair.”
“It’s beyond not fair.” I agree, “but it’d be pretty crap if we’re successful and she comes back to nothing.”
“There’s not nothing—”
“For now, but there’s the two loans we can’t refinance into one or individually even with the crappy housing market here.” I point out, “and the homeowner’s insurance is ridiculous.”
“We’ll make it work.” Willow says, but she’s more focused on what I realize is another search for the Urn of Osiris which is The Key Component for the spell she’s found to rescue Buffy the Original. She leans over and kisses my hand, and I love the way she looks at me like, and I’ve been working to teach myself that it’s because she finds me beautiful and enchanting and not something else, “Why are you worrying about this stuff?”
“Because someone has to.”
She kisses my forehead, “You’re going to stress yourself out.”
I give her a rueful smile, “I’m glad you feel so self-assured about everything.”
“You’re more self-assured now too.” She does have a point but it’s beside the other one I was trying to make.
“Thank you.” I tell her, sincerely, “It’s helped making a new and decent Family instead of the ones I was left with after Mom died.” I take her hand and kiss it, “but I still worry. I worry that we’re being dangerous and reckless with this plan. I worry what it will mean for Buffy and Dawn, and I don’t want any of us to lose where we’re living.”
“I’m not leaving Buffy suffering in a Hell dimension.” Willow says, tightly, “Especially not the one Glory came from.”
I kiss her gently on the lips, “I know, Will, and I’m not suggesting that, but you said when Angel came back he was feral. I don’t want Dawn to see her sister that way.”
“I don’t either.” Willow assures me, which I expected.
“So we need to plan things more.”