How'd that happen?
Jul. 6th, 2006 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
samsomI was going to post the most memorable dream I ever had - you know, for shits and giggles, then Hank Summers slammed me between the eyes, demanding I write him instead.
Weiner.
~~
Title: Regrets
Rating: PG to R
Summary: Hank has regrets.
Spoilers: Up to Forever
Disclaimer: If they were mine, the Scoobies would have had better parents.
Standing off in a cluster of trees next to the walking path and stone benches, Hank Summers watches his wife's funeral from the safety of distance.
He doesn't know why he still thinks of her as his wife. When she asked for the divorce, he was mostly relieved, knowing he'd never been good at marriage, but he could barely recall a time when Joyce hadn't been there, laughing up at him with her blonde hair shining in the sun, so he figures he'll always think of her that way, as his wife.
He recalls the midnight phone call that interrupted his extended date with his assistant, the quiet British voice informing him that the woman he's loved in some way or another since he was twenty was dead.
He can't remember much else about the phone call, something about arrangements, the will reading, but he remembers asking about Buffy and the slight pause before he's told that Buffy is holding herself together. Dawn is fine, said the voice, as if he'd asked.
Of course he hadn't. He's failed his daughters too many times to keep count so what was one more?
Joyce's angry recriminations when he backed out of taking Buffy to the ice-skating show for her eighteenth birthday was the last time he tried to explain himself, after that it was always easier to not pick up the phone, not to send a card or visit the girls, let the distance build until it was a solid mountain of rock he couldn't climb over.
Now they're standing together, hands clasped, friends gathered.
He imagines what would happen if he went to Buffy now. Gather her up and offer her a father's love in place of the mother she lost, but he can't imagine she'd lean into his embrace and let him comfort her. She'd more than likely tell him to go back to Spain.
She'd always been the strong one, they all had.
Joyce, Buffy, Dawn.
Summers women.
He feels pride squeeze his chest as he watchs his eldest daughter's stoic grief, his youngest daughter's firm jaw.
With a crank, Joyce's casket lowers into the ground.
The wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining as he says good-bye.
When no part of it is visible anymore he looks up and sees a crack in Buffy's frozen mask, gets a peek at his little girl again, and thinks maybe he can step forward, reach out -
But an older man steps up behind her instead and Hank watches as she blindly gropes the man's hand, hanging on tightly. There's something about the way he gazes down at Buffy that conveys some deep emotion Hank can't quite recognize.
The service mercifully ends, and the others that had been surrounding his girls in a rough circle close in, enveloping them with friendship and love. The older man hugs Buffy closer than the others and Hank watches as she leans into the embrace, hugging back.
He was wrong, he thinks.
Buffy isn't missing a father's love after all.
He takes a step back and turns before the first shovel of dirt hits the hole his wife is in, and strides back to the rental car he left parked at the gate.
If he hurries back to the hotel, he can make the seven o' clock flight to LAX. He'll be back in Spain by morning.
Weiner.
~~
Title: Regrets
Rating: PG to R
Summary: Hank has regrets.
Spoilers: Up to Forever
Disclaimer: If they were mine, the Scoobies would have had better parents.
Standing off in a cluster of trees next to the walking path and stone benches, Hank Summers watches his wife's funeral from the safety of distance.
He doesn't know why he still thinks of her as his wife. When she asked for the divorce, he was mostly relieved, knowing he'd never been good at marriage, but he could barely recall a time when Joyce hadn't been there, laughing up at him with her blonde hair shining in the sun, so he figures he'll always think of her that way, as his wife.
He recalls the midnight phone call that interrupted his extended date with his assistant, the quiet British voice informing him that the woman he's loved in some way or another since he was twenty was dead.
He can't remember much else about the phone call, something about arrangements, the will reading, but he remembers asking about Buffy and the slight pause before he's told that Buffy is holding herself together. Dawn is fine, said the voice, as if he'd asked.
Of course he hadn't. He's failed his daughters too many times to keep count so what was one more?
Joyce's angry recriminations when he backed out of taking Buffy to the ice-skating show for her eighteenth birthday was the last time he tried to explain himself, after that it was always easier to not pick up the phone, not to send a card or visit the girls, let the distance build until it was a solid mountain of rock he couldn't climb over.
Now they're standing together, hands clasped, friends gathered.
He imagines what would happen if he went to Buffy now. Gather her up and offer her a father's love in place of the mother she lost, but he can't imagine she'd lean into his embrace and let him comfort her. She'd more than likely tell him to go back to Spain.
She'd always been the strong one, they all had.
Joyce, Buffy, Dawn.
Summers women.
He feels pride squeeze his chest as he watchs his eldest daughter's stoic grief, his youngest daughter's firm jaw.
With a crank, Joyce's casket lowers into the ground.
The wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining as he says good-bye.
When no part of it is visible anymore he looks up and sees a crack in Buffy's frozen mask, gets a peek at his little girl again, and thinks maybe he can step forward, reach out -
But an older man steps up behind her instead and Hank watches as she blindly gropes the man's hand, hanging on tightly. There's something about the way he gazes down at Buffy that conveys some deep emotion Hank can't quite recognize.
The service mercifully ends, and the others that had been surrounding his girls in a rough circle close in, enveloping them with friendship and love. The older man hugs Buffy closer than the others and Hank watches as she leans into the embrace, hugging back.
He was wrong, he thinks.
Buffy isn't missing a father's love after all.
He takes a step back and turns before the first shovel of dirt hits the hole his wife is in, and strides back to the rental car he left parked at the gate.
If he hurries back to the hotel, he can make the seven o' clock flight to LAX. He'll be back in Spain by morning.
