Joyce had decided to give Buffy more time than she had originally planned, partially because she thought Buffy needed it, but mostly because she herself needed it. She had tried to go into the gallery to get some work done, but had found that her mind was inevitably drawn back to Buffy. Eventually, she had just left the office and started strolling around Sunnydale. Now, both hours and miles later, she had returned home ready to face whatever might await her.
Unlocking the front door, Buffy's mother tried to adopt a cheerful tone as she called out to her daughter "Buffy, honey, I'm home. Do you want to talk about-"
Joyce cut herself off when she saw Buffy sitting in one of the stuffed chairs in the living room directly facing the door. The blank look on her face stopped Joyce cold. "Buffy, I'm sorry, I tried- Oh, you're not alone," Joyce remarked upon seeing the back of a blonde head, whose owner was sitting on the couch, in the exact same spot Joyce had left Buffy in hours earlier.
"I- I'm sorry, if I had known you had company I would have come home later," Joyce mumbled, looking down and fumbling with her purse strap.
"Mom, it's me."
The voice had come from the person on the couch, and when Joyce looked up, she gasped. The person on the couch was her daughter, but so was the person in the chair!
"What's going on?" Joyce asked, not knowing she parroted Willow's words of hours earlier.
"Mom," the figure on the couch said, as she got up and approached Joyce, "I'm not mad about the whole adoption thing. In fact, I'm the total opposite. I couldn't be happier!"
"Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?" Joyce asked, only half-kidding.
"Mom, I have some great news," Buffy said, taking her mother's hand and leading her over to the front of the chair. "I'm adopted, but that's not the whole story. *She* is the whole story." Buffy pointed to Lydia.
"But what-"
"This is Lydia, Mom. My twin sister."
Joyce just stood there for a split second before she quickly made her way over to the couch and collapsed on it.
"Twins?" Her shocked voice came out in little more than a whisper.
"Yup," Buffy said, sitting down on the arm of the chair and taking Lydia's hand.
Buffy expected her mom's next question to be something along the lines of "How is this possible?" so she was entirely shocked when her mother said to Lydia in a trembling voice, "We thought you were dead."
Lydia could do nothing but sit there with her mouth ajar, so it was up to Buffy to squeak out "What?!"
"I'm sorry Buffy," Joyce began, "for not telling you about this sooner. But your father and I have known since we brought you home from the hospital that you had a twin sister. However, we have always been under the impression that she died shortly after childbirth. Maybe it was just something the adoption agency told us so that we wouldn't concern ourselves with it. I don't know. But when you started having the dream, I thought, well, I'd always heard about psychic connections between twins and I thought that your subconscious was somehow telling you the truth. And I was afraid that once you found out that truth that you would be terribly angry with me, so I decided to tell you before you discovered it on your own."
By the end of her brief speech, Joyce was crying, and Buffy's eyes had filled with tears as well. "Oh mom," she whispered, before going over to her mom and embracing her.
A couple of minutes later, with the tears dried and only an occasional sniffle to be heard, Joyce finally got up the courage to have the twins tell her what had happened.
And so Buffy and Lydia told their story. And as Joyce heard more and more, her eyes became bigger, and bigger, and could not stop flicking back and forth between Buffy and Lydia. The one thought that kept flitting through her mind was "There are two Buffys." But then she'd correct herself and think "No, there's Buffy *and* Lydia." This thought was always closely followed by "Oh my God, what am I going to do?" It was only with a stubborn resolve that Joyce managed to cut off those thoughts and focus all her attention on the two girls sitting across from her.
By the time all the details had been explained, night had fallen. Joyce found herself exhausted, especially thinking of all the problems which had yet to sort themselves out.
"So Mom," Buffy asked excitedly, apparently not suffering at all from her mother's lack of energy, "what are we going to do?"
Joyce, being too tired at the moment to actually even begin thinking about where she had to start, settled on an easier alternative. "Well, first of all, I'm going to make us dinner. Macaroni and cheese sound good?"
* * *
A little over an hour later, with all their stomachs full and Lydia's foster parents called to inform them that she was okay, Joyce shut herself in the downstairs den to make some important phone calls while Buffy and Lydia headed upstairs. It was the first time Lydia had been in Buffy's room, and as she entered, she couldn't help but saying "Wow. Nice."
Buffy turned her head and smiled and said "Thanks." As Buffy shut the door, Lydia wandered over to the dresser and picked up the framed photograph of Buffy and her parents. Studying it closely, Lydia asked "Is this your dad?"
"Yeah," Buffy responded, walking over and plopping down on her bed, "he and Mom got divorced a few years ago. He still lives in LA and I see him pretty often, but I could never live with just him. We'd drive each other totally nuts. Mom can be bad enough at times, but Dad, well, let's just say it would be probably be the start of World War III."
"Are you sad they got divorced?" Lydia asked, walking over to study one of the framed prints on Buffy's wall.
"Well, I was when it happened, of course, but now I realize it was for the best. Sure there are times when I wish my parents were still happily married and we were living this Ozzie and Harriet kind of life, but sometimes things just don't work out that way."
"How come you're not still living in LA?" This time Lydia plopped down on the bed next to Buffy. "I mean, you'd be closer to your dad and all, and I don't imagine Sunnydale can much compare with LA when it comes to, well, a lot of things."
"You've sure got that part right," Buffy muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing." This was going to be the tricky part. "Uh, Lydia, I have to tell you something, and it's kind of important. It's about me, and it's, it's not bad, but it's, well, it's kind of freaky."
When Lydia just stared at Buffy, Buffy continued. "See, I'm kind of, kind of...gifted."
"You mean like you're in special classes in school and your IQ measures off the chart on all the tests?" Lydia asked.
"Uh, not exactly," Buffy said, looking down and tracing the pattern on her comforter.
"Well, what exactly then," Lydia said grabbing Buffy's hand and stilling it, forcing Buffy to look at her.
Best to just get it out, Buffy thought. Taking a deep breath, she simply dove in, head first. "Okay, see, I'm the Slayer, and there's only one Slayer in each generation and her job is to fight the vampires and demons, and, and other bad things, and so she's super strong and super quick and she has to protect the whole world against everything, and sometimes it just builds up and gets really overwhelming and she just wants to be a normal teenage girl but she *can't* because, because she's the *Slayer.*"
At the end of her tirade, Buffy dared a glance at Lydia's face and found the girl's mouth hanging open and her eyes wide with surprise. The silence stretched, and Buffy felt compelled to speak.
"I- I'm sorry to lay all that on you like that, it's just, well, you're my sister and I thought you should know. I know it all sounds bizarre, like it's some sort of science fiction series or something-"
"No, it makes perfect sense!" Lydia interrupted, and this time it was Buffy's turn to look surprised.
"It does?" she asked, completely puzzled.
"Yes!" Lydia said, by now in such an excited state that she had to get up off the bed to pace. "I've always had this fascination with the dark side, like vampires and demons. I thought maybe it was just morbid curiosity because of my parents deaths or something, but I guess that wasn't the entire reason. And, *and*, I've always had super keen senses. Everyone always thought I was a freak, but I can hear things from far away and I can smell when it's going to rain, even if the storm doesn't hit until the next day. It's just something I learned to accept about myself, that I was the girl with the super senses. And now, you're telling me about this whole Slayer thing, and it just makes perfect sense!"
"Lydia, I'm still not getting you," Buffy said tentatively.
"Okay, sorry, I'll slow down," Lydia promised. "Well, if you're the Slayer, and we're connected, then that's why I've been like that. My morbidity is a direct result of your life. My super senses are probably some sort of off shoot of your Slayer abilities, just some small part of your abilities that I inherited. I don't really have the super strength or speed, although I have always been a little bit better than other people when it came to sports or other physical activity. Wow, I never knew being a twin could be *this* cool!"
"Lydia," Buffy cautioned, "vampire-slaying is dangerous. People get hurt all the time. Willow and Xander have been lucky so far-"
"Do they know about this?"
Buffy sighed. "Sometimes I think the whole world knows about it." At Lydia's shocked expression, Buffy quickly said "No, not literally of course. But the more people who know about it, the worse it could be, for them *and* for me. Yes, Willow and Xander know, and so does Giles, but they're careful and they don't tell anyone because someone could get hurt."
"Giles know too?"
Buffy sighed again. "Yeah. Giles is actually my Watcher. Basically, every Slayer has to have a Watcher, to train her and guide her, and they decided to saddle me with good ol' Giles. He's like a walking textbook and knows just about everything there is to know about everything. He is a big fuddy-duddy, but he gets the job done and he's saved my behind more times than I can count."
"Whoa this is weird," Lydia said. She came back to sit beside Buffy on the bed. "So, your mom...I mean, is she supportive of all this?"
"Actually that's kinda the funny part," Buffy said, "Mom doesn't know about any of it."
"What?! Your *mom* doesn't know?"
"Like I said, slaying is dangerous business. The less people who know, the better. Willow and Xander found out by accident, so there wasn't anything I could do about them. But I decided it would be best if my mom didn't know. Can you imagine her, worrying about me every time I went out slaying? Not a good thing, if you ask me. Of course, that's just assuming that she even believed me and didn't have me committed the minute the word `vampire' was out of my mouth."
"So why tell me?" Lydia asked.
"Giles didn't want me to," Buffy said, sighing heavily. "That's what we were talking about in his office this afternoon. But I basically convinced him that *not* telling you would be the bad idea. For one thing, you're going to notice a lot more than my mom would when I have to sneak away from the house or a party to go and dust a vampire. See, it's like I have this whole Superman thing going. Most of the time I'm just Clark Kent, going along living his happy little life. But then, something happens and I have to try and go to help, without anyone noticing that I'm gone. It really is lucky that Xander and Willow already know, or I'd have a hard time trying to explain everything to them. It was bad enough with Cordelia...."
"Who's Cordelia?"
"Oh, that's another story, for another time and place. Besides, you'll meet her soon enough."
"Well, what's the other reason then?" Lydia queried.
"Other reason for what?" Buffy asked, completely confused.
"For deciding to tell me about `the secret identity'." Lydia lowered her voice menacingly on the last three words.
"Oh. That reason. Okay, well, you're probably not going to like this very much, but you're in danger, simply because all the vampires are going to think that you *are* me."
This time it was Lydia's turn to say "Oh."
"I know, it's scary," Buffy said, covering her sister's hand with her own, "but we'll figure out something. Giles is doing research, even as we speak, I'm sure, into where you fit in the whole grand scheme of Slayers. Apparently this is a situation that's never been encountered before. Maybe by tomorrow we'll have some answers. And if not then, then maybe the day after tomorrow. But the important thing is that we *will* get answers. Until then, we just have to be really careful."
"This is a lot to take in," Lydia said, leaning back against the headboard.
"I know," was all Buffy said.
The room fell silent as each girl was momentarily lost in her own thoughts. It was in that time that there was a soft knock on the door.
"Come in," Buffy said.
Joyce walked in the room and sat on the bed next to the two girls. "Well, I've made some phone calls, but I haven't managed to learn much. All the social services agencies are shut down for the night, although I did leave a message on someone's voice mail, so maybe they'll call me back tonight. Lydia, I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that both Buffy and I would love to have you stay with us until it all gets sorted out."
"I- I'd like that," Lydia said softly.
"Of course, I don't know what the legal ramifications are for all of this, but I'm hoping that with such special circumstances there will be no problems with Lydia staying here. First thing tomorrow I'll make some more phone calls and then we'll go down and get you registered at the high school. Right now though I'm pooped, so I'm going to call it a night. Buffy, have you made up the bed in the guest bedroom yet?"
"I think," Buffy said looking at her twin, who returned her gaze, "that Lydia's going to sleep in here tonight. We've been apart for 16 years, and I think that right now we just want to get to know each other some more."
Joyce smiled, understanding completely. "Okay then. Well, I'm off to bed, but if you need anything, come in and get me."
Joyce leaned over and gave Buffy a big hug, before kissing her cheek. She then leaned over and hugged Lydia as well.
"'Night Mom," Buffy murmured as Joyce stood up and started walking out of the room.
"Goodnight girls," Joyce said, softly closing the door behind her.
The room was once more silent, and then Lydia said, "You're so lucky, Buffy."
Buffy's only response was "I know."
* * *
The insistent ringing of Buffy's alarm clock at 6:30 the next morning found Buffy groaning and fumbling blindly for the snooze button. She and Lydia had stayed up long into the night, as Buffy heard tales of Lydia's experiences with foster care and Lydia was regaled with both the ordinary aspects of Buffy's life and more of the not-so-ordinary aspects. Buffy had thought of it as something of a crash course in vampire-slayage. However, now, with only a few hours sleep, Buffy couldn't help but think that maybe it could have waited until morning.
Even as her hand at last landed upon the object of its search and the wailing finally stopped, Buffy knew there was no point in going back to sleep. Turning over in her bed, she looked down and saw Lydia lying on the floor, still fast asleep. So much for super keen senses, Buffy thought.
Quietly getting out of bed and tiptoeing into the bathroom, Buffy splashed cold water on her face, then glanced at her reflection. Strange to think it had been only yesterday when she had stared into the glass and asked herself Who am I? Now as that thought once again crept unknowingly into her head, the little voice which had answered her yesterday remained silent.
Buffy stared at her face a moment longer then padded down the hall towards her mom's bedroom. Tapping lightly on the door and hearing a muffled "Come in," Buffy walked in and found her mom sitting on her bed, still in her nightgown. Climbing onto the bed and sitting next to her mom, a once common childhood habit which had not manifested itself often in the past few years, Buffy laid her head on her mother's shoulder and sighed deeply.
"Gosh honey, I'm sorry. I meant to tell you that you could sleep in. Most of the agencies I need to call don't open for a while yet, so I won't be able to take you to school until later."
"That's okay, Mom," Buffy said. "I doubt I could have slept much longer anyway."
"Too much excitement, huh?"
"Tell me about it."
"It's hard to believe that at this time yesterday our lives were so, so, *normal*. Now look at them," Joyce said.
Buffy, knowing the truth about how *normal* their lives had been, simply said, "Yeah."
"I wish I knew what was going to happen, but I don't. I talked to your father and he's coming up this weekend to meet Lydia. He's just as shocked as I was, let me tell you. I think he actually needed to see with his own two eyes that there's another you," Joyce said, a smile evident in her voice.
"Not another me, just a person who looks like me," Buffy corrected.
"I know that honey, but like I said, it's going to take me a long time to get used to this whole situation."
"I understand," Buffy said. "It's the same way for me. It's the same way for Lydia. Everything I've ever believed to be reality for the last 16 years, has just been turned on its head and no longer exists anymore. It's going to be hard on everyone."
"You've got that right," Joyce murmured.
And as the room fell silent and the clock ticked away the time, mother and daughter just sat there, quietly taking comfort from the other's presence.
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