Break Away (Away, Book 1) (31 page)

“Yeah, I guess,” she said with a shrug.

“Look Buffy, I…need to tell you something.” I
said, my hands shaky with nerves. “Just, please, listen to me and
don't say anything until I finish, okay?”

“You're scaring me.”

“No need to be,” I said, shaking my head, and
took in a deep breath. “You must come back with me to the real
world, Buffy.” She opened her mouth to say something but I held up
my hands to cut her off. “I know I said terrible and hurtful things
that day when we talked about college and…Ian, and I'm really
sorry. I never
ever
meant to hurt you. You and Gran are the
most important people in the world for me, and without you, I just
don't know how to go on. I need you, Buffy. I need you to leave
this dream and come back with me. I promise I won't ever hurt you
again.”

“Dream?” She frowned. “What are you talking
about?”

“All this”—I waved my hand around—”is a
dream. Your dream.” I paused. Was it, really? Or was it mine?

“Did you hit your head or something?” she
asked. “This is the
real
world, Dafne, our life.”

“No. In the real world you're in a coma,
Buffy, lying in a hospital bed.”

“Are you—” she trailed off, a glint of
something dimming the light in her eyes. My words must've triggered
something deep down.

“Please, listen to that little voice inside
you, Buffy.”

She looked at me. A stormy cloud of
hesitation and doubt had fallen over her eyes. Then, confusion
barged in, contorting her face in a mess of conflicting
feelings.

“I need you, please come back with me.”

“Dafne,” said a familiar, soft voice. I
snapped my head around and, as if my chest had exploded with
emotion, my eyes watered with thick, hot tears.

“Mom?” I said in a very small voice. She was
holding a big pitcher of fresh lemonade and Dad was standing next
to her with a picnic basket in his hands. “Dad?” I whispered, the
sound barely reaching my own ears. Both of them had white, button
up shirts that framed their bodies loosely, and like Buffy, they
looked radiant and filled with…life.

“Why do you look so surprised to see us,
sweetheart?” Mom said with a frown and a smile. “You knew we were
planning a picnic for today.” She walked to the blanket and placed
the pitcher on the center. “I'm happy you decided to skip your
little shopping trip.”

“Yep,” Dad said, settling the brown basket on
the grass, next to the blanket. “Who would've thought you and
dresses could get along so well. Though today isn't one of those
days, isn't it?” He glanced at my t-shirt and black jeans with a
smile.

Right in that moment, I thought I was going
to die of sorrow and happiness, both emotions tearing me up from
side to side in agonizing stretches. I remained there speechless,
staring at them with hot rivers streaming down my cheeks, short of
breath.

“Are you crying, sweetheart?” Mom asked with
a tilt of her head, her heart-shaped face looking lovelier than
ever under the golden sun.

Since I didn't answer, she moved towards me
but stopped when I raised my hands. “Don't come any closer,” I
said, as if my voice had gone through sharp blades of knife.

“Dafne?” Dad asked, worried, behind her.

I knew that if I allowed those arms to wrap
around me, I would never leave this dream, because I was starting
to ask myself if I really wanted to leave the soothing presence of
my parents. Their voice was like a balm to the gaping wound in my
chest, it completed me. A caress of their hands or a trace of their
warmth on my skin would be the last piece that would mean the end
of this quest. I couldn't let them touch me.

But if this was only a dream, then why the
worry? I could take this chance to bask in their presence and
comfort and wake up bright and shiny the next day—maybe not bright
and shiny but at least I would have a fleeting bandage on my heart.
But…what if the microscopic possibility of this not being a dream
existed?
What if this isn't really a dream?
That tiny little
voice said deep down inside me. Should I listen to it, just like
I'd asked Buffy to do?

“They're waiting for us,” Buffy said,
standing up and brushing her skirt with her hands. I looked at her
uncertain of what to do. “Dafne, let's go.”

“But I—”

“They're waiting for us!” She turned to glare
at me, but a look of entreaty covered her face under that layer of
anger. “Just stop it and…come.”

“Hey! Look what I got,” I said. Only it
wasn't me.

A
version
of me had come and was
standing a few feet away from my parents, spinning around to show
them the dainty purple dress she'd, apparently, gotten herself. She
stopped and shoved her hand excitedly in the bag she was holding
and pulled out a colorful, flowery dress. “And look what I found
for you si—” She trailed off as her violet eyes found mine.

It was the most bizarre experience seeing
myself there in a dress, my own eyes staring at me in surprise. I
froze for a moment, examining every detail of my body and face, as
if I was seeing them for the first time, and finding things I'd
never been able to see before. A mirror didn't give you this
three-dimensional perspective.

But more than anything, it helped me find the
answer I'd been looking for: this wasn't a dream. At least, not
mine. This picture-perfect scene of me in a dress, with my parents
dressed in white, waiting on a pristine picnic blanket, and pink
and blue butterflies flying everywhere was far from being something
my mind would design. Somehow, my dream of Chimera had crossed ways
with Buffy's dream, and I'd been given a chance to talk to her and
convince her to go back.

I unlocked my eyes from surprised dream-Dafne
and stood up. “Buffy, do you really think the real me would wear
something like
that
?” I told her, throwing a glance at the
girly dress. “Or that the real me would buy you—God forbid—a
flowery
dress?”

Buffy swallowed, still hesitating on what to
make of this.

“Come on, you're smarter than this,” I
pressed.

She shook her head and brought her hands to
her temples, as if to soothe the pressure of her rumbling thoughts
within her head.

“Why would there be two of us in here if this
was real?” I sighed.

That did it. Her body stiffened and her eyes
closed in realization as the weight of that truth fell down on her.
A shaky breath escaped her pale mouth and she covered her eyes with
her hands.

I reached her and wrapped my arms around her
shoulders, whispering into her hair, “It's time to leave, Buffy. We
need you.”

After a moment, she lifted her head and
looked at me with pink rimmed, gleaming eyes, as if weighing
something in her mind. Then, she turned her head and fixed her
quiet, woeful stare on Mom and Dad. They smiled at us with pride
and love shining in their eyes, a gesture that said they would love
us no matter what, that we would always be in their hearts no
matter what.

I had to fight with teeth and claws the
desire to go up to them and hold them in a fierce hug forever. I
wanted with all my heart and being to get lost in that embrace and
cocoon of warmth and tell them they'd left us too early, but I
couldn't. I couldn't. And Buffy knew she couldn't do that, either,
or else she would stay here forever.

I dragged my eyes away from them and looked
at Buffy, who still stared at Mom and Dad. “They're better now,” I
said, my throat tight with piercing emotion. “They're in a better
place than us—far better.”

As a sob started crawling its way up to my
nose, she turned to look at me with her eyes filled with tears. “I
miss them,” she said under her breath.

“I know.” I nodded, my voice weak.

“I miss them so much, Dafne.” She threw her
arms around me and broke down in a cry.

For the first time since our parents died, we
cried together, witnessing each other's pain without barriers or
walls between us. No prejudices into play, no ego bounding us to
act a way and mask our true selves—our emotions were raw, naked.
Even if this wasn't happening in the real world, I knew it would
stay within us, branded in the deepest of our cores.

She pushed back, her nose and eyes swollen,
and looked behind me. “That dress doesn't even look good on you,”
she told me with a small smile.

I followed her gaze and chuckled with a
sniff. “Definitely not,” I agreed, looking at a confused
dream-Dafne. “I look kind of funny when I frown,” I noticed.

Buffy cracked a weak laugh, not strong enough
to become whole yet. “You do, but that's what guys would call
'cute.'“

I hugged her again and told her freely, “I
love you, sis.”

Her arms tightened around me. “I love you,
too.”

“Let's go back, okay?”

“Okay,” she sighed.

I closed my eyes with a smile and this time,
instead of a pull, I felt a knock at the back of my head. Afraid of
what that could mean, I snapped my eyes open, only to find I was
back in the Garden of Wandering Souls, surrounded by glowing blobs
and no Buffy.

And I was floating.

At the sudden realization, I fell to the
ground with a loud thump and the air whooshed out of my lungs.
Blades of neon-green grass crowded my field of view and a clawing
ache grasped my chest in an iron-grip. I groaned and wrinkled my
nose just to check if something inside was broken. Nothing. I
sighed in relief.

Slowly, I pushed my head up and spotted my
hand resting on a beautiful quartz crystal, and noticed it was
warm. Since it conducted the energy to the to—

I jerked my hand back and bounced up in a
flash, my heart pounding savagely. Andras words thundered through
my mind.
Make sure not to touch them since that'll alert
guardians of a breach.
I gulped and looked around me, my
stomach clenching in fear. Was I being paranoid or were there,
indeed, footsteps on the distance?

Oh, no
.
Oh, no.

I slapped my cheeks several times, trying to
wake up from this dream, but the surreal landscape still remained.
I sat down and closed my eyes; my lids were shaky and
uncooperative, so I squeezed them shut and started taking in deep
breaths.

Please, let this work. Please, let this
work
, I chanted inwardly.

Relaxation wasn't settling in and I was,
actually, close to hyperventilating. The footsteps were getting
near and faster. Since I was on the verge of being caught, I
decided skipping that step was the best thing and jumped straight
to step two: focusing on that weird spot in the back of my head. I
drifted into darkness and, after what felt like
endless
hours,
the vaporous tunnel appeared. I thought of Gran and the
Lady, of Linda and—I grunted—Ian, and focused on the radiant light
at the end of it. The brightness started pulling me and I let
myself be engulfed by it. There was no singing or whispery twirls
around my arms and legs, but I felt an immense sense of
well-being.

The light went out and I opened my eyes.

A young nurse was checking something above
me. She looked down to the notebook between her hands and wrote
something on it. Then, when she saw my eyes were wide open and
staring at her in confusion, she gasped and dropped her notebook
and pen. “She's awake!” She turned around and ran to the door,
screaming in disbelief. “She's awake! She's awake!”

“What?” I frowned and looked around,
disoriented. Pale walls, white floors, bleach scents, boxy room, no
window—oh, my God. I was in a hospital.

“D
afne!” Ian strode
into the room a few minutes later, his voice filled with awe and
disbelief. He stopped next to my bed and scanned my face as if
quenching a great thirst, like he'd been deprived of water for a
long time and had finally found a source. “I thought I would
never—” He trailed off and grasped my hand. “You're awake,” he
sighed, tightening his hold on me. “You're really awake.”

Speechless, I looked down at his hand over
mine.

He noticed where I was looking and pulled
back his hand. “Sorry, I just—” He shook his head and decided to
veer the conversation in a different direction. “Comus left about
an hour ago—I was downstairs talking to your grandmother on my cell
phone when they told me about you. I already told her you're awake
by the way,” he said, his emerald green eyes bright with happiness.
“She spent two days here with you and had to come back to Buffy, so
I stayed here.”

“What—what happened? Why am I here?” I asked,
my voice a bit groggy.

“You fell into a coma—a weird type of coma,
like all the others.” He paused. “I swear I wanted to kill
Comus.”

“Why?”

“It all happened after you did that
'meditation exercise' with him. You fell down on the carpet and
weren't responding. We brought you to the hospital—”

“Still in Oxford?” I interrupted.

“Yeah. You're the first coma case around
here, so they jumped to help us right away,” he said. “Comus
insisted you were in Chimera and that you just needed a bed to rest
on—I swear, that man is crazy.”

I swallowed and restrained myself from
commenting about my dream. Had it been a dream, though? I still
wasn't sure.

“You've been here about four days…”

“
Four days?”

“By far the shortest in time and the quickest
to wake up,” he said, with a smile. “You'll be all over the
news.”

I groaned. “Great.”

He looked at me and locked his intense eyes
with mine. “Are you okay?” he asked, worried.

I nodded. “I just…took a long nap, I guess. I
don't know what happened.” The only one I could talk to about what
had really happened was Comus. I didn't even know what to think of
it.