Kill the Bunnies

*kisses Loki enthusiastically under the mistletoe gift he left*


...How did I miss the real mistletoe at the party?????? Stupid mun...

I don't lie. I'm quite proud of that fact, actually. Call me evil and vengeful and wicked or anything else, but I don't lie.

Humans lie. Men lie. It's all very irritating as you try to sort out what people are saying from what they really mean. I don't think any of you grasp how hard it is to try and learn to understand things when half the time what people are telling you is not the truth.

Xander tried to tell me that sometimes it was polite to lie. Only he didn't call it lying. He called it tact. "Tact" is just another word for "lie." Your fail to tell something the way it is. I'd much prefer the straight truth, thank you very much. That way there can't be any misunderstandings.

It's the lies that build up, hide the world and what it is from view. It makes it messy. Life is messy enough on its own without the lies adding to it all. If everyone would just...say what they meant then it would be clear. You'd know where you stood with people. And wouldn't that be better?

Oh. One other thing. Creative advertising does not count as a lie. Just so we're clear. That's just good business.

It's supposed to end with a kiss. A happily ever after. You kiss the bride and you dance at the wedding and everyone cheers and it's all about you.

But I've found that it usually starts with a kiss and then there isn't any happily ever after. Or sometimes it's there, but not with the right person, you know? You give in, you let them kiss you and the next thing you know you're scrubbing the store free of rabbit droppings and they're getting on a plane to England.

Or they're telling everyone that they've been screwing your supposed maid-of-honor and so once again you were second choice and how dare anyone be upset about that.

Kissing is overrated. It leads to badness and broken bruised hearts and egos. There shouldn't be any kissing. Like the girl in the movie who got paid a lot to have sex, said. You shouldn't kiss them. It implies an intimacy that they just toss back at you and you never see it coming.

Just stick to sex.

Just a note -- left on in T_Fen as well. I'm pulling Anya out of TM to play with another muse I've been wanting to pick up. I'm still going to RP Anya with those on her f-list willing to play with a non-official muse (and most of her friends seem to be non-TM folk lately anyway), but the challenges just aren't speaking to her, or we're getting really repetitive, or...something.

So. Yes. She's still here to RP. I'm not dropping the journal or anything. Just no more challenges in the official comm.

My mother's eyes were blue. This wasn't that surprising considering I grew up in what would now be considered Sweden. Or maybe Norway. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. I got the brunette and brown eyes from my father. I go blonde sometimes, trying to look more like her I think, but my eyesight's too good and I don't need contacts, so the brown eyes stay.

My sister's were blue, too. She looked just like her and they used to walk through the village together and everyone would say, "Oh there go Jensen's girls, aren't they lovely?" But no one said that when I walked through. Just, "It's Aud. Hurry or she'll ask you annoying questions."

They were very close, Mama and my sister. They laughed a lot and Mama taught her to sew and gave her all the best wools because she made beautiful things. She gave me the rabbits to mind. To kill when we needed food. Skin when we needed furs. My brothers should have done that, but they didn't. I didn't understand when I was a child, because I thought they were pets. I hated it.

Olaf's eyes were blue. And we had rabbits as well. Lots of them. They hopped everywhere and he hated them and told me we should at least eat them and have a lot of furs to wear, but I wouldn't kill them. Because this time they were my rabbits, not my mother's, and no one could make me harm them.

The Eelsbane was blue when I gathered it from the woods. The Thornton's Hope spell called for Eelsbane if you wanted to turn someone into a troll. I didn't think it would be blue. It starts out white, but I suppose by that time of the year it's changed. The spell also called for blood and a sacrifice to raise that much energy. Something you loved.

When you mix red and blue you get purple, but when you keep adding red and more red it washes all the blue away until all that's left is red.

The night D'hoffryn killed Hallie and I walked away from Xander outside the fraternity house. I'll grant you I wasn't alone very long. Oh, no. Of course, they came running with things they needed done. "Anya, watch Spike." "Anya, watch the cannon fodder Potentials." "Anya, torture Andrew." And so I moved into the overly crowded house and Buffy said I was just there because I was scared, but that wasn't the truth.

If I'd just been scared I would have ran. I always ran before I knew them. In the end, it's not like I did all that much to stop it so, you know, they would still have saved the world. God knows, they didn't need me. If I'd just been scared...

But I was lonely. They were my family. They were...even without Xander and all of that, they were all I knew in this world as a human. I still miss them. Miss gathering together to do the ridiculous Scooby thing. Nobody needs me now either, you know. I mean, I get the calls. "Anya, do you have this in your shop?" "Anya, what do you know about this or that demon." But nobody...

It doesn't matter. Now isn't what I'm writing about. I'm not alone now. I have the cats. And Loki. And the Twins. That's not alone.

But that night, Xander said I didn't have to be alone. Didn't have to...but I did. I had to figure out who I was without them. Without him. All my life I've just clung to whatever came along. Olaf. D'hoffryn. Xander. Ethan. Alan. Ray. And now I guess Loki and the Twins get to be the clung to ones. Only I'm trying not to. Because I remember what I said to Xander that night. About being alone. Figuring things out.

And for that night, and the next day or two, I was. My friend had died in my place. My boyfriend was now my ex. I had no power. I had no shop. I had...nothing.

Just me.

I didn't like it much.

School's out. I got all "As." Go me.

Learning to ride my bike with the Twins.

Searching for my own place because of the heavily anti-magic kick Lilah seems to be on, as if David would notice. Plus...well. Just easier. Somewhere closer to the shop would be good.

Michael's gone for the summer. I told him he could have his job back in the fall. I'm far too much of a softie. But really? Best worker I ever had, so. Still. Couldn't he find a girlfriend in Boston?

Isabel stayed and is working. Go her. She's nice. We should have drinks. She can do her thing. I can turn people into geese do mine. It'll be fun.

Yay, girl power! Or whatever.

Miss Loki. Kind of aimless with the cursing since I don't have to this time.

I guess the shop's the way to go.

It's doing very well.

More people are getting married/handfasted. Faith and Oz and whatshisnamewhoI'venevermet. Ben and Watcher Boy.

Anybody else? We could just light some sort of sacrificial pyre and....nevermind.

Right, I've updated. There you go.

That's easy. Xander. Marrying him. It was all I wanted for nearly three years. Just to be Mrs. Xander Harris. And I came really, really close. Then he walked away like the man he is. And everything I'd wanted and hoped for and dreamed about went with him. For the longest time, I thought my heart and soul did, too. But that's just what the poets say. Everyone survives and goes on. You know. Unless someone curses them.

But I wanted it. And if I'd gotten it...things would be very, very different. We would have had that year together, to love, and live and laugh. It might have changed other things. Maybe I would have been with him instead of Andrew in that hallway. Maybe I would have lived. Maybe he would have died. And maybe if things had still gone down that way, when I came back he would have been happy to see me.

He would have rushed here and held me and taken me home. And we would be together now, maybe expecting a baby, like Buffy is. Maybe just working and saving to buy a house. Or fighting vampires, like we always did. But the thing is, we'd be a team. We'd be a pair. We'd be Anya and Xander and we'd be working on building a future with our second chance.

But that didn't happen. We didn't get married. He wasn't here when I came back. And I'm alone.

I gave up on the dream when I...I don't want it anymore. It's not my heart's desire anymore.

But it was once. And if I'd gotten it, everything would have been different.

It's odd. The moment I am most proud of now was the moment I was most devastated during. And not the wedding, for all that might seem like it should be. The moment of greatest devastation was when I stood in that frat house and saw D'hoffryn kill Hallie instead of me. I hadn't wanted that. I wanted to take back what I'd done. Take back the murder of all those boys. And I wanted to be the one to pay the price. I knew what it would take. The life and soul of a vengeance demon. I figured it would be mine. I wasn't proud then. I wasn't doing it for pride or recognition. I was doing it because of the pain. Because I couldn't live with what I had done. It was actually pretty weak of me. I didn't want to be a vengeance demon anymore. I didn't want to kill. My friends all hated me and Buffy had tried to kill me.

All in all, I saw no reason to go on. So take it back. Get rid of the blood. And end the pain for me.

I was stupid and I forgot the first rule and he killed Hallie instead of me. Left me human and made me suffer through that.

It was kind of funny how quickly Xander wanted to be there for me then. I mean, of course, he'd stepped between me and Buffy and tried to reach me before then. And he had. But then it was all, "Look, Anya's human." Buffy didn't want to kill me. I could have just stepped right back in to the life I'd had before the wedding. Maybe even told Xander I still loved him and that we could try the dating thing again.

And they called me to watch Spike, and I was nominally part of them again and I know I went to live there because, yes, we were all scared and someone had to help take care of the cannon fodder.

But what I said to Xander—that moment of realization. The fact that I'd always clung to whatever came along, all my life. And I told him that I had to figure out who I was and learn to stand on my own.

I'm still struggling to do that in some ways. In others, that's what I've done since coming back. The gang's still here, sort of, but we're not really the Scoobies anymore. I rarely see most of them. And I've taken up with Loki and doing what he needs and helping him. It's probably not always…ethical. Moral. Not by Scooby standards, at least. But it's something. And it's mine. I make the choice of what to do, and when. And I made the choice to be Loki's on my own. I have my own shop. My own employees. I'm in school. I'm not clinging to a relationship to find my fulfillment in.

I'm working on being my own person. And that…that makes me proud. And it started in that moment, so I guess that has to be the moment I'm most proud of.

If you could only carry one memory with you into the afterlife, which would you choose?

There were lots of memories in Hell. Mainly about why I was there. All the things I'd done "wrong" all my life. All the people I'd hurt. Forcing me to live it over and over and over again when I couldn't see or touch or hear or smell or taste anything else. And you know what it taught me? That whoever makes those decisions is a self-righteous bastard. Because nothing I did inflicted that much torture on anyone. And I did a lot of good things, too.

So now I make the rules. I decide for me. No more Hell. No more heaven. Wherever Loki decides...whatever he asks...that's the choice I made. Because he believed in me and cared about me, if only because I amuse him. At least that's something.

So no more Hell. And maybe no more afterlife. And all those memories can just...burn there without me for all I care.

There's nothing. No memory so dear that I need it anymore. Nothing to cling to. I let it all burn in the fire of my sacrifice. No soft whispers in the night. No promises of love. No hopes for revival. No prayers to see him again.

It's gone. All of it. Memories of who and where and when and how and what it felt like when he touched me and when he said he loved me...

I don't carry them with me now and I won't take them with me to wherever I go from here.

He freed me from that.

And that freedom is what I'll remember.

Thank you to the anonymous benefactor who renewed Anya's paid journal!! *hugs and smooches*

That was so very, very sweet of you! We both appreciate it greatly. :)

Reply in here with something you would like to do with me someday. Then post this in your journal to find out what people want to do with you.

Whether I was arrogant or humble.

So.

( I'm either a Smartass or a Capitalist Pig )

Is anyone really surprised?

Which are you more afraid of: Being too gullible and believing things that aren't true, or being too skeptical and missing out on something important?

Anya laughs when she sees the topic, staring at the screen in disbelief. She believes lots of things that others didn't think were true. She believes in magic. In monsters. In gods. In immortality. She believes in heaven and hell and all things in between. She believes it was possible to walk between worlds and to dance through dimensions. She believes in Power. In skill. In Slayers. In the end of the world and the beginning of the next. She has her doubts about mermaids, but she is willing to keep an open mind.

None of that makes her gullible. It makes her open minded. It makes her draw on a millenia of experience to know that there are more things on heaven and earth and under the earth...

There is one thing she doubts though, and fears to doubt at the same time. For all her years, for all her experience, it isn't something she is sure exists, but if it doesn't, then is any of the rest worth it?

Her fingers start typing slowly, reluctantly.

I'm not, in general, afraid of either. I have an open mind because of the things I've seen and experienced. That I am willing to suspend disbelief when encountering something new makes me open minded, not gullible. That I question things to test their truthfulness makes me cautious, not skeptical. I don't fear either one.

But I fear my thoughts about love. I want to believe in it and it's power. I want to believe that someone could love me for who I am and want me for me. And yet I go back and forth and back and forth between belief and disbelief. I fear being gullible and believing, once again, that someone love me, only to have him turn out to be like all the rest and leave me alone again. So I push him away and I laugh it off, and I know that sometimes I might hurt him, because I know he thinks he...loves me. But I fear believing in that, in trusting in that. To believe again, I fear, would make me truly a gullible fool. I believed Ray, but he turned out like all the rest. How can I be fool enough to believe Aidan?

And yet, I'm afraid of being too skeptical too. Because what if it's true? What if he does? What if I'm doubting and pushing away from the one thing that could make me truly happy? What if I'm ruining the one good thing in my life with the flirting and the cursing and the running away? It could be incredible. Or it could be disaster.

If I believe, I'm a fool. If I doubt, I'm a fool. I fear both equally and I'm caught between them, suspended and screaming and nobody hears me.

She stares at the post for a long, long time before highlighting it and then hitting delete. In its place she types:

Do you know who I am? What I am? This is a stupid question. I'm not going to answer it.

Falling in love with love
Is falling for make believe
Falling in love with love
Is playing the fool

Caring too much
Is such a juvenile fancy
Learning to trust
Is just for children in school

I fell in love with love
One night when the moon was full
I was unwise with eyes unable to see

I fell in love with love
With love everlasting
But love fell out with me!

She liked the wicked Stepmother much better than Cinderella, and not just because it was Bernadette Peters and Anya liked her. She had nothing against Brandy, after all, though the multi-culturalism of the production sometimes seemed a bow to political correctness than any coherency in casting. But there was something in her eyes that spoke to Anya. More depth than she seemed to have in some versions. A backstory, as it were, that intrigued Anya and made the character more interesting.

It was a fluffy musical version of a fluffy Disney-fied fairy tale. The cutting off of toes and heels was left off. The dresses coming from her mother's grave replaced with Whitney Houston. But Anya watched it over and over for the stepmother. She wanted to know her story. The song wasn't even in the original. She'd checked. The Supremes had sung it at one point. It intrigued her and she was dying to know.

The Stepmother had been hurt. She'd been left. Her trust had been betrayed and she'd closed herself off. Was it taking the place of a woman who was dead, hoping for her husband's love, and finding she was never good enough in his eyes or those of his daughter? Could she not compete with the memory of his first wife? Or was it a prior romance, damaging her trust to the extent that when Cinderella's father came along she couldn't love again? Had her daughters' father hurt her? Cheated on her? She'd been young once, beautiful. She'd had dreams and hopes and fears and had loved.

And now her echoing cry of pain flew through the digitization of television and stereo to pierce Anya's heart.

Caring too much
Is such a juvenile fancy
Learning to trust
Is just for children in school

You only felt that way when you'd cared and been rejected. You only felt that way when you'd trusted and been betrayed. Only someone who'd been hurt beyond bearing could harden that much, could close off that completely, could embrace that cynicism.

Anya liked the Stepmother. She knew what she was talking about.

In what appears to be a rash of kidnappings, several freshmen students from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College have gone missing (several being about half of an micro-economics class and two-thirds of a business ethics class, close to 30 students in total). There were signs of a struggle in some of their homes and dorm rooms, but no signs of forced entry or suspicious fingerprints in any of them. No notes for ransom have been received. A few of them were acting strangely, as freshmen are wont to do. Some of them were friends, but not all. No one knows where they have gone or why but college officials are quite concerned.

In other news, a large flock of geese (coincidentally about 30 of them) have landed and taken up residence in Boston Public Garden. They are incredibly noisy and aggressive, even for geese, chasing patrons through the Garden and refusing to eat the pellets fed to them. They will eat bread, though many of the female geese are refusing to do even that and are starting to look a bit emaciated. Fanciful types might say that the geese are trying to communicate, but Park officials laugh at this premise. No one has been injured yet, but officials are worried about patron safety if the geese continue in their aggressive, almost panicked behavior.

Thank you for your attention.

ooc: *sighs* Anya and Loki turned her classmates into geese. If anyone needs a crime to solve or just wants to play with the increased geese activity, feel free to have fun!

X-posted to theatrical_fen as well as muses's personal journals.

She hadn't told any of the Scoobies what she had planned. She didn't think they'd approve or understand. But it wasn't like she was going back to D'hoffryn. Not like that at all. She was just tired. Tired of trying to be human and not fitting in and always doing it wrong. Maybe if she wasn't human anymore, then she'd have an excuse. And she could say things like "Foolish mortal children with your silly rules I don't need to follow." Because she wouldn't need to.

She wouldn't need anything.

She wouldn't need anyone.

Alone was better.

She couldn't quite get back to that place, though. Loki had come when she was crying and offered her this. The Twins had been so wonderful, cheering her up. Buffy and Willow and Joan had all gotten in touch. Anteros had sent a rose for her. Michael had been sufficiently indignant and disbelieving.

Alone wasn't really all it was cracked up to be. It was nice to have people...but not like that. No more hopes of the white dress and the cake and the bridesmaids and the groomsmen and th house with the white picket fence and 2.5 children and a dog and a cat. Maybe a fish and a bird even, but then the cat would just eat them, so that wasn't really a wise idea and, anyway, she didn't want to think about pets being eaten after the recent massacre.

She wasn't sure exactly what to do or how to do it. She got the Baileys and Thin Mints and Twinkies out, because he loved them so. She cradled the diamond ring in the palm of her hand, tracing over it again and again. It had been lost in the Hellmouth and she'd let it stay there because the hope she had lived on in her heart and she didn't need the symbol to hold on to it.

Every smile. Every touch. Every word spoken was ingrained in her memory. Every hope that one day he'd...remember. One day he'd want her again. One day they could go back and have everything they'd always wanted. She held it inside. She cherished it. She kept it from the bright light of day so it wouldn't fade. She dated. She loved. But it was there, always.

She really couldn't blame Ray. She understood after all what it was to love someone who walked away. To still hold on to that hope. She had a picture, from Buffy's wedding. He was standing there with her, his hand resting on her waist. He'd gotten all flustered when he'd put it there and she'd gotten all nervous and they'd stammered and all she'd wanted to do was kiss him, tell him that it was all right and she loved him and ask him if they could start again. But then he'd disappeared and now there was just this child in his place.

Still she'd hoped. Maybe her Xander would come back. There'd been such promise, such hope. She'd clung to it for so long.

And now it was time to let it go.

Let go of the dream. Let go of the hope. Sacrifice it on Loki's altar and let him change her. Make her stronger. Make her something else. Make her his so that no matter if lovers came and went, she'd always know she belonged somewhere. No fear of Hell. No fear of what Daniel might do and leave her stranded a hundred years from now with no one.

Her fingers closed around the diamond ring and she rested her head on her knees and cried for a long time. When the tears dried up she stood and went to the bathroom. She washed her face and dried it off and did a little glamour to hide her red eyes.

Then taking a deep breath, she lit a candle, because it seemed the thing to do and called him.

Loki? I'm ready...

Anya skipped class Wednesday morning. It wasn't something she usually did, but this was important. She drove in to the shop, parking and hurrying in. With a smile at Michael, she started moving about the store, grabbing things. Herbs. Candles. Powders. Sand. Chicken feet.

She dumps them on the counter then goes to the kitchen and gets a plate. She sets it down on the table and then goes back to the little crafty section she'd put in for some of the local witches and grabbed paints.

Plopping down at the table she started sketching on the plate, then painting delicately.

OOC Edit: All parts of the spell/language and actions are from "Dopplegangland" written by Joss Whedon.

Macha Indeed, you are 54% erudite, 79% sensual, 66% martial, and 75% saturnine.

Macha was a ruthless and bloodthirsty Goddess of War that would feasts upon the heads of her fallen enemies. Apparently the Celts thought highly of her, which is only appropriate for a culture of head-hunters. It was not an uncommon practice for Celtic warriors to decorate the exteriors of their domiciles with the severed heads of soldiers they killed in battle. Not only did these household heads serve as an offering of thanks to the Goddess, but they also bore witness to the combat proficiency of the inhabitant. There were other admirable characteristics unique to Macha besides a taste for decapitation. She was initially one of those numerous "Mother Goddesses" we hear so much about. Naturally this meant that she ruled over matters of fertility and such. She held absolute dominance over males, intimidating even the most virile of men with the sheer force of her insatiable sexuality. This dual aspect of her nature - patroness of fruitfulness and productivity as well as fierce and ruinous warrior - brought her the mighty title of "Mother of Life and Death".

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 8% on erudite You scored higher than 66% on sensual You scored higher than 88% on martial You scored higher than 90% on saturnine

Link: The Mythological Goddess Test written by Nitsuki on OkCupid Free Online Dating

I remember ruthless...

( I'm an ESTJ: The Supervisor )