rivers_bend

Title: Of Fathers and Slayers
Author: river
Fandoms: Garden State and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (tv)
Words: ~1000
Rating: G
Summary: Andrew worries over a quote he found. His confusion over what it means is not helped by running into a waitress going by the name of ‘Anne’.
A/N: General spoilers for series finale of Buffy, not character specific.
Disclaimer: I am sadly neither Zach Braff nor Joss Wheadon. They have the genius. I'm just borrowing it.
Thank Yous: to delgaserasca for the ficathon, tigertrapped for alerting me to it and karaokegal for the beta.
Prompt: from delgaserasca’s multi-fandom ficathon. (It's not too late to join!)
A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma. ~ Marlene Dietrich



A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma. ~ Marlene Dietrich

Andrew Largeman found the book of quotes lying around the set one day and this one stuck in his mind. He knew there was something in it that he should understand, but every time he got close it slipped away. On the surface he didn’t think he really cared about this, but the quote kept coming back. It ran through his head long after he stopped sliding the scrap of paper he’d jotted it down on out of his wallet every time there was a quiet moment at work. Somewhere in there, it must matter.

For the last several years, when he could be bothered, which he admitted was less and less often recently, Andrew would go wandering the streets after work. He’d stop for coffee, if he could find a place with china mugs, and where the only choices were black or with cream and the sugar poured out of a jar. The ‘half-caff, non-fat, mocha-latte with a twist’ crowd made him want to scream.

One night, a few years ago, maybe longer, he’d found a diner in a part of town he’d never been to before. The waitress had worn a nametag that said Anne though when he called her by that name she had ignored him and then looked at him blankly before finally answering. She’d managed to make an impression on him at a time in his life when almost nothing did.

The blonde had two braids framing her face. She had the hair and skin of a young girl, but looked like she’d lived through a hundred years of pain. Maybe what impressed him the most was that she looked like she had lived through the pain. Not medicated, not blank, not empty. Alive. Holding on by a thread maybe, but living.

She’d looked at the tattered paper he, in those days, instinctively pulled out of his wallet every time he was still. She held the coffee pot outstretched, hovering over his cup at an angle, yet not spilling a drop. She put out one finger of her other hand and turned the paper towards herself. Her eyes darted over the words.

With a flick of her wrist the surface tension on the coffee broke and a stream poured into his cup. “It’s not just fathers you know.” She turned the paper back to face him and went to warm up someone else’s cup.

After that, he dwelt on her dilemma as well as his father’s. And he wondered. Because her comment had not helped him to understand. It had only confused him further.

He’d tried to go back later and find her. Ask her what she meant. What the paradox was, wherein lay the dilemma. The diner was the same, and the waitress in the Anne nametag was blonde, but it was a different girl. This one looked as numb as he felt. He didn’t even bother with the coffee.

Individually he knew what the words meant. Delegate, abdicate, paradox, dilemma. What was he missing? How to reach the meaning of the whole? For a time it was the only thing that mattered. Then, even that mystery seemed unimportant. Less often became never. Andrew stopped walking, or caring. He worked and slept.

Then the phone call came. The drugs got left behind. His life collided with another girl who spoke in riddles, but this time she didn’t walk away. She posed the question and gave the answer. She was both the puzzle and the solution. She made his life a little clearer.

Andrew finally understood. He’d been focusing on the wrong words. Realizing his incompetence was the key. Because a father could neither abdicate nor delegate, he was unable to realize his incompetence. Could not admit to his son that he was wrong. Could not say “I’m sorry.” Could not acknowledge that his actions, decisions, words – or lack thereof, had caused harm.

It didn’t matter if he had chosen fatherhood or had it thrust upon him. He had been forced to do the best he could with what he had. If what he had wasn’t good enough, maybe it wasn’t his fault. It was a job you could never quit, never take a vacation from. Even if you didn’t turn up, didn’t meet your targets, that was still a way of doing your job. It just meant you were doing it badly.

Andrew still wondered about ‘Anne’ sometimes. What responsibility could a girl of her age have that compared to fatherhood? It never occurred to him to doubt that she had such a responsibility. He’d been able to see it in her eyes, even through the numbing haze of prescriptions. The father question solved, he again started sliding the quote out of his wallet when life was quiet. He hoped she’d found a way to abdicate. At least to delegate.

* * * * * *

As Buffy stood on the edge of the crater where her home and her hell once stood, words she thought she had forgotten floated into her mind. A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma.

She had always felt more like the father than the king. Protecting Dawn, her friends, her mother, her classmates, the potentials, the people of Sunnydale. Sheltering them from vampires, daemons, the Hell Mouth, the truth. Yet in the end those she had tried hardest to protect had understood and had helped her. With them she had found a way to delegate. To abdicate even. And so finally she was neither parent nor monarch. She was a woman. She was free. And she wondered for a moment about the young man with the quote in his wallet. Wondered if he was still lost, or if it finally told him what he wanted to know.