PART IV
Apparently she wasn't as easy to find as he'd thought she would be. She wasn't in the phonebook and he didn't really want to call her parents and inquire about her whereabouts; and the college was quite a bit bigger than he'd remembered—it could have been just because he was trying to find her, but he chose to think not.
He guessed it was time for Plan B—which currently consisted of simply asking numerous people if they knew Buffy Summers and knew where she was. Not the best plan, he knew, but it was all he could think of at the moment.
So he spent several hours wandering around campus asking random people if they knew where he could find Buffy. Several of them just looked at him strangely and quickly walked away, while a few others muttered a quick 'no, sorry' before leaving.
But he did finally find one person, after two hours of asking, who didn't just say 'no' or walk away. "Why are you looking for Buffy?" the young man asked.
William couldn't help but notice that he looked fairly irritated with him. But he didn't want to examine that one. "Need to talk to her, mate," he replied shortly.
"Not sure that's a good enough reason for me to tell you where she is; how do I know you're not going to hurt her?"
William had been looking at the man intently while he spoke. "You Finn?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Sure do like to ask 'why'. Just tell me."
"Yeah, I'm Riley."
"Good, now tell me where Buffy is so I can get going."
When he saw that he wasn't anything he could do, Riley just told him. "She's in the library. Or she was ten minutes ago."
"Thanks." And now that he had his information, William did something he had wanted to do for a year: he hit Riley as hard as he could, knocking the other man to the ground. Shaking his hand out, he simply walked away, leaving the other man nearly unconscious on the ground.
It was time for him to get some things across to Buffy.
He found the library easily--he was a man on a mission after all—but according to the librarian she'd left just a few minutes earlier.
He found which way she'd gone and set out. He wasn't going to let a few obstacles get in his way.
"Buffy!" Well, that hadn't taken nearly as long as he'd prepared himself for. "Buffy, please wait." She didn't stop right away so he walked quickly to where she was, managing to get in front of her. "Buffy, come on, stop. I need to talk to you."
"No, William, I have to go."
"I get that you want to go; that you don't want to take a chance. But," he wasn't going to let her give up--not on them, "Look, I've thought of a way to stop that."
"What?" She asked incredulously. "You've found out a way to stop this from being 'taking a chance'? There's nothing you can do about that, William. There's nothing you can do to show me that this....that....God, William, don't you see that if this screws up...you'll hate me, you'll finally see how pathetic I really am."
"You're not pathetic, love. You're the strongest woman—hell, the strongest person I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. And I know that you think this is some sort of fleeting fancy on my part…that I'm going to give up on you after a while, have my fill of you and move on. But don't you get it, pet? I'm never, never going to have my fill of you. I love you," he said vehemently, making sure she was looking into her eyes.
"Right! I'm sure. How exactly do you know that? How am I supposed to know that?" She started to walk away from him again, but continued talking to him when she realized he was following her. "Don't you see? You're a young guy, William. You're good looking, you're smart. You're all the things women want…don't you see that?
“And me? I'm a single mother. I'm not done with school, I'm not all that smart, Lord knows I could be prettier…don't you see, I'm not good enou—"
He didn't even let her finish that sentence.
He'd wanted to do this right, wanted to make it something grand and romantic and loving and symbolic.
But she...he couldn't stand her saying that and he didn't think she was going to believe him otherwise.
"You want to see how much I mean it?" He pulled a black velvet box out of his jacket pocket.
“Oh, that’s just rich!” Buffy laughed as soon as she saw it. When he just looked hurt by her quick rebuff, Buffy felt the inexplicable urge to explain herself. “Have you just forgotten everything that’s happened to me since you met me? Before you met me?”
“Of course I haven’t!” It hurt him to know that she could even think that.
“Then you should know full well that I’m the last girl to take a proposal as a sign of security. Come on, William. What exactly makes you think that you asking me to marry you will make me sure of everything—will take away the ‘taking a chance’ aspect?”
When he didn’t answer her for several moments and wouldn’t even meet her eyes, she thought she’d finally won and started to prepare some sort of reply.
But he was not giving up…rather, he was just having a hard time giving her his answer.
“It’s me,” he answered quietly, still staring at the ground.
“What?” Buffy asked him, confusion clouding her mind.
“Why…you asked why you should think that this is a sure thing…why I expected you to see it as some sort of security,” William explained.
“And?”
“It’s me, Buffy. Maybe to Riley, marriage wasn’t something to put much stock in…maybe it didn’t mean anything to him. But this is me, luv.”
“That doesn’t mean—“
“Don’t you dare tell me that it doesn’t mean anything,” he warned her. “Or that it doesn’t mean I won’t leave you. You should know me by now, Buffy. Have I ever given you any reason to believe I’d leave you? To believe that asking someone to marry me is something I’d take lightly? That asking you to marry me is something I’d take lightly?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to agree with him, to tell him that no, he hadn’t ever given her any reason to believe that. But she couldn’t say it—a part of her was still too scared too.
“Yeah, well I thought I knew Riley too. Wouldn’t exactly have said I’d marry him if I thought he’d just throw it away like he did.” She was trying for snark and sarcasm, but he could hear the hurt—the pain.
“Some day, Buffy,” he began, “you’re going to have to realize that not every man is like Riley. You’re going to end up alone if you don’t. And if you have to…if you’re ever going to give someone a chance again, why can’t it be me? Haven’t I at least given you reason to believe I won’t leave you?”
“I’m just scared, William,” she finally admitted in a small voice full of tears.
“Then just tell me what I can do to change that,” he practically begged.
“I’m not sure you can.”
“Let me try, Buffy. Please.” Now he was begging and he didn’t care.
“What do you have in mind?” Buffy asked a full minute later.
“I know that I can’t just make you not be scared—that’s something that you’re going to have to come to on your own. But I also know that I can do everything in my power to show you that you don’t need to be scared.” William pulled the ring box back into view and opened it. “You don’t have to give me any sort of answer, not just yet at least. But I want you to know…” he took the ring out of the box and held it carefully between his fingers, putting the box back in his pocket with his other hand. “I want you to know that I’m serious about this.”
When he tried to put the ring on her finger, Buffy snatched her hand back and demanded to know what he was doing.
“This ring, luv, is something to represent how much I love you, right? I want you to have the ring so that every time you look at it you can remember how very much I love you. You don’t have to say you’ll be my wife to wear it…can you just accept it as a token of my love? Will you wear it, Buffy?”
“It hardly seems fair to wear an engagement ring when we’re not engaged.”
“The day that you can say for sure that you won’t marry me…then you don’t have to wear it anymore.”
“You seem to have a lot of faith in yourself.”
”Not in me; in you. I have a lot of faith in you, Buffy.”
“So this is my ring to wear unless I decide that I absolutely will not marry you?”
“And you can even then…just don’t have to then.”
”And if I decide that I want to?”
”Marry me?”
“Yeah.”
”Then you just let me know.” Buffy thought he sounded a little too hopeful, but didn’t know what to say to him about it.
“Is there any more to this plan of yours?” she asked instead.
“Was hoping, actually, that you’d have dinner with me on Friday.”
“I’m not going to be able to get anyone to watch Isabelle and you know that,” Buffy told him, somewhat and to her surprise, regretfully.
“I’ll make the three of us dinner. You can come over to my place round six and we’ll have dinner…maybe watch some telly too.”
“You’re not giving up on me, are you?”
“Never.” He was going to show her how to love again.
THE END
[Reviews - 28]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | 
Chapter or Story
Has been viewed 3302 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story - Text Size +
Author's Chapter Notes:
it's my birthday! (sorry, I just felt like sharing)....I posted an alternate version to Panta_rei's Bridging the Gap a few minutes ago (Don't worry, she not only knows but sort of made me) and the first chapter of Interpretations will be up in just a few more mins :)