The Rosenburg Diaries: Part 4
by Sapphire
After Angel and I became involved, we started venturing out together, and he finally took me to see Giles for the first time since they had performed the restoration ritual on me. It felt good to see him after all that time. Seeing him was no longer the painful reminder it once had been, although I could still see the haunted look in his eyes.

The first thing he did was pull me into a fierce hug, telling me how much he had missed me. He had understood that I needed time to be alone to adjust to my new life, but he was happy to have me back. He kept saying that there was something so much different about me, that I seemed so confident now. The change he saw was drastic, not in my appearance, but in my whole demeanor. I took that as a compliment, knowing that I had never been the most confident one, and I had always lacked self-esteem down deep inside. It is beyond bizarre that I would gain it now as a vampire. I did not have the self-loathing that Angel battled against constantly. Seeing Giles again gave me part of myself back. The girl who, despite the danger, threw herself into the fray to save the world alongside her friends without a second thought.

I had essentially hid out for the last three years, and it was time to stop. I decided then that Angel and I would help Giles. He was desperately looking for the chosen one, and he needed help with that as well as with his spirit. Despite Angel's hunting, Sunnydale had become an open playground for vampires during the three years since Buffy's death. Angel and I decided that we would begin hunting together, and that he would teach me how to be a skillful predator. I thought that perhaps in the course of keeping the world safe, I could find a way to help Giles get over his pain.

Angel and I became quite proficient at the helpless-girl-bait-and-tackle routine. It still astounds me that these stupid vampires can't sense that I am one of them. They just see a poor, defenseless morsel out alone at night, and the urge to feed overrides any of their instincts. My favorite is to sit in the park and cry. It lures one in every time. Angel, ever the lurker, wastes no time staking them in the back when they grab me. On occasion we play the part of hunting vampires, and have been successful with that as well. The Bronze is still the best place to find them in the evening trolling for their meals. Strangely, people that I had went to school with all of my life never recognized me. I realize now just how different I act and look, despite my continued youth.

I still insist on going by the cemetery every night. It allows me to keep fresh flowers on their graves, and we can stop the new vampires as they rise. Someday, I have decided that I will buy them new headstones that say things more appropriate for the people they were. The plain ones they have now do not satisfy me. I would, of course, have to wait until their families are gone to do this. Buffy deserves one that proudly declares her as the heroine she was. I would never come right out and put 'vampire slayer extraordinaire', but I have years to come up with something I like. The same goes with the others. They all deserve something more, and they will have it someday. If even one person passes by and stops to read about them, then it will be worth it.

The search for the slayer was not going well. Frustration was evident as Giles looked for possible leads throughout the Watcher network. While Giles took that approach, I decided to take another. I started doing searches on the net about dreams. I read research studies, hacked into medical and psychological records, trying to find a young girl that fit the description of a slayer-in-waiting. I remembered Buffy telling me that she when she began having her dreams as a kid, her parents had taken her to a psychologist to try and find the reason behind them. I figured that the slayer would be experiencing the same dreams. It might have been a long shot, but it was better than nothing. I was to the point where I was about to give up on that idea when I found her. And, I'll be darned if she hadn't been sitting in Sunnydale the entire time.

She fit the profile, a 15 year-old having nightmares about demons, vampires, and other freakish stuff. She was always fighting against them in her dreams, and she also described things and people in her dreams that reminded me of us. She documented dreaming about a vampire who roamed the earth, unable to kill for blood because of the soul that haunted him. The girl she described seeing in her dreams was the picture of Buffy, and the death that she saw for her rang true as well. I knew that Buffy dreamt of things that would happen, but I also knew that she dreamt about past slayers, at least in the beginning before she knew she was the chosen one. The girl's parents had taken her to a sleep disorder clinic in Los Angeles when their daughter was terrified of sleeping at night because of the dreams. And even more amazing was the fact that the her father had just been transferred to Sunnydale, California. Once again, the slayer was pulled to the Hellmouth to meet her destiny.


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