Author's Chapter Notes:
I wrote this fic a while ago and I overworked it a little ;) I apologize for any mistakes I might have made – I´m not a native speaker, so be gentle with me!
„William? What are you doing?“
Jenny’s tongue felt strangely thick as she called her son’s name. He was sitting in the garden, holding a pack of cards in his small hands.
The little boy´s concentration was so intense that he heard but didn’t respond to the question until she repeated it.
He cocked his head, waved at her and answered: “I’m playing cards with Buffy, Mommy.”

She closed her eyes, doing her best to keep from looking deeply scared.
Oh God, please… not again, she thought as she let her head fall slowly backwards.
“Come in, William!” she shouted, realizing that her voice was coarser that she had intended it to be.
“But Mom…,” he protested as he saw her running towards him.
She grabbed both his arms and, ignoring his outcry, carried him back to the house.
“Buffy!,” he screamed and stretched out his arms, trying desperately to get back to her, but he couldn’t free himself from his mother’s grasp.

With a loud bang she closed the door behind them and said: “William, for God’s sake, can you just stop that?”
Looking at her with his innocent blue eyes he asked: “Stop what?”
She let out a sound that was more sob than sigh, though it was composed of both.
Her increasingly raspy voice fell to a whisper.
“Stop talking about… that girl.” In spite of the summer heat she suddenly felt as if an icy wind was blowing, causing her goosebumps.

“Buffy´s my friend!” he said defiantly and folded his arms while his eyes filled with tears.
As soon as he spoke the name, Buffy, she felt the hairs on her neck stand up. She cupped his face with her hands and said softly: “William, sweetie… we talked about it, didn’t we? Your friend Buffy…” She paused for a moment and took a deep breath, as if trying to encourage herself to go on.
“Buffy’s not real, darling. You know that. She’s only in your imagination.”

“No!”
He shook his head and pointed at the window.
“She is there, Mommy, can’t you see her? Look!”
He took her hand and went with her to the window.
“She’s sitting there… she waits for me! Why can’t I play with her?”
His lower lip started to tremble and she knew that he was about to cry.
With shaking hands she caressed his silky hair and tried her best to keep her voice as calm and soft as she wanted it sound.
“William, you know that you had just made it up.”
He was still pointing at the place where, of course, no one was sitting.

It had been about five months ago when William had spoken of Buffy for the very first time.
He had described her as a girl with blonde hair and a “somehow strange nose”, but obviously he liked her. So much that he picked flowers for her, telling his mother that she was the only girl he liked to play with.
When he talked to his mother, his conversation consisted of “Buffy said…” and “Buffy did…” and although she was in the beginning slightly amused that her five-year-old son seemed to be in love, she soon felt that something strange was going on.

And then she had found out the truth about William’s little girlfriend Buffy.
She remembered the terrifying moment when she had realized that Buffy was not a girl that William had met in the kindergarten.
She had watched him playing in his room and talking as if someone was with him, but he had been alone. And when she had asked him who he was talking with, he had answered: “I’m playing with Buffy. Can she stay for dinner? Please, Mommy!”

He can’t deal with his father’s death, she thought. He’s just a little boy who has lost his father, he’s scared and he can’t understand why Daddy won’t come back. That’s why he had made up an invisible friend.”

A sudden weight of fear and pity made her force back her tears while she looked at William.
He was a lovely little boy and usually she sensed when he was lying… but whenever he talked about Buffy, his eyes were sparkling with a mixture of joy and honesty.

She was scared and she had no idea what to do.
Her neighbour and best friend Darla had advised her to consult a child psychologist a few days ago and while she watched William waving sadly at his invisible friend, she decided to take him to Dr. Rupert Giles, one of the most reputable psychologists.

It took seven months until William stopped talking about the girl.
During the first weeks he refused furiously to believe that his little girlfriend was just a product of his imagination, but by and by he seemed to accept it.

He looked somewhat sad and lost, but he never mentioned Buffy again, although in some hidden little corner of his heart he knew that she was real.


*******



When he woke and was unable to breathe, he stretched out a hand to touch his brow.
His skin was covered with fine, cold sweat and he realized that his heart was pounding heavily.
He couldn’t remember the dream that had woken him, an irritating mixture of blurring pictures and hastily spoken words, and he gave up trying to reconstruct it.

Intending to get up, he moved forward.

And then he saw her.

She was standing in the middle of his room, gazing down at him, her face bathed by the silvery moon light.

For a moment he felt disoriented, as though he had briefly stepped outside the flow of time, and now, stepping in again, could not adjust to the pace of life.
He smelled noises, heard smells, his senses moved and crowded each other for attention.
A slow tingle of recognition began as an electric pulse in his stomach, his inner thighs; memory only in body, not yet in mind.

Her hair was still the color of fresh honey, her green eyes still playful and alert- taking everything in.
She was grown-up now, just as he was, and although her face had changed, losing its innocent and childish expression, he immediately recognized her.

“Buffy…?,” he asked, hesitating.
He had been six years old when he had seen her for the last time, and now, more than twenty years later, she entered his life again, unexpected like a thunderstorm on a warm summer night.

His “invisible” friend Buffy.

“Is that you?,” he whispered, amazed at his voice sounding so calm while the world swam sideways.
His hands fluttered in the air, butterflies with nowhere to land.

“William… help me,” her voice was as thin and transparent as a gust of wind, but when he stretched out his hands to touch her, she disappeared, leaving him with a strange feeling of disbelief and excitement.


His eyes watered with the effort he was making to peer through the darkness. He reached for the switch on the reading lamp that was fixed to the headboard of his bed, but he realized that he was alone in the room.
His heart hammered against his chest as he stretched out a hand, feeling nothing but the chill night air.
“Buffy…,” again he spoke her name, thinking that he had fallen into a dream without first falling into sleep, but for some strange reasons he was sure that he had really seen her.
Although more than twenty years had passed since he had seen Buffy for the last time, he could remember everything from that time, down to the smallest details.
He closed his eyes and the years began to move in reverse, like the hands of a clock moving in the wrong direction.

“Do you want to play hide-and-seek,?” he asked after he had given her the flowers he had picked for her.
She nodded and buried her face in her hands while she began to count. “One, two, three, four, seven, twelve…”
“Hey, you’re cheating!” he protested.
“No, I’m not”, she began to giggle as he folded his arms.
“Girls are stupid!”
“Boys are much more stupid!”
“I don’ want to play with you anymore”, he said, knowing that he was lying.
“Okay, then I’ll go home and I won’t come back”, she said and, pretending that she was leaving, turned away from him.
“No, you must stay!” he shouted, following her with quick steps.
They looked at each other, chuckling.

“I want to play something else”, she suggested.
“What?”
“Hmm… let’s play that we are married. You’re my husband and you want to take me out for dinner. You must tell me that my dress is beautiful and that…”
“But you’re not wearing a dress”, he reminded her. “And I don’t want to play that we’re married. EEEEEW!”
She rolled her eyes. “Why not?”
He grimaced. “Because you’re a girl! And girls are stupid!”


He knew that many children had invisible friends, but he remained convinced that on a deep mysterious level, against all evidence to the contrary, his friend Buffy had been more than just a product of his imagination. His stubborn persistence through the years had been motivated by something more desperate than hope, by a faith that sometimes seemed foolish to him but that he never abandoned. He needed to believe that she existed, that she was not just a lonesome child’s fantasy.
For him she was just as real as the air that he was breathing, as true as the warmth of the sun.

He opened the window and looked out into the dark blue night sky. Listening to the sounds of the nearby river, he leaned his head against the glass pane. Usually a calming presence, the gushing of the river tonight was overloud, filling his head with white noise.

He thought of the moment when he had realized that she was standing in his room.
She had been a little girl when he had seen her for the last time… but now she seemed to be a young woman, with the same big green eyes and the blonde hair that framed her face.

Where had she been all the years? What had happened to her?

”Help me…”
He remembered the words that she had spoken, almost as silent as a whisper. Something cold and slick curled in his already twisting gut, something indefinable, like a suddenly arising feeling of fear.

“God, what is happening to me?” The words slipped from his lips as he watched the very first rays of sun displacing the darkness.
“Buffy… how can I help you?” He spoke into the silence, not knowing that it would take seventeen more days until he would see her again.





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