Disclaimer: Buffy certaintly does not belong to me. Kite, however, in all his dual-haired glory, does. As does the plot of this paticular epic. Please ask permission before using, unless you wished to be attacked by an battalion of rabid plushies armed with root beer.
Deeper
By Chibidragon7
Chapter 1: The Missing
I wanna go deeper
But I don’t know how to swim
I wanna be meeker
But have you seen this old Earth?
I wanna fly higher
But these arms won’t take me there
I wanna be
I wanna be
~ 'Deeper' Delerious
He was the third.
Even as Giles warned her. Even as he argued. Even as he finally pleaded with her, she knew that.
Even as Willow despretly tried to show her her error, she knew that.
Even as Xander loudly voiced his complaint, she knew that.
Even as deep inside, that voice of her Slayer, told her what she was doing was wrong, so wrong, she knew that.
Even as her blood ran cold on aspahalt, she knew that.
The third.
She didn't know why, how or when.
There was no explaination. Not one in her brittle soul or one to be found in his immortal one.
But there was a beginning, for all things have a beginning. It was not quite a fairy tale story, a snow white or a cinderella.
It didn't need to be.
Life went on.
What was the end of one era is only the beginning of another.
Buffy wandererd around her house, slowly unpacking the mess of brown boxes currently doing their best to pass for furniture. Dawn's room was of now mostly done - except for those few odds and ends it would always take a while to unpack .
Sunnyvale was over. With it came life they had spent the last six years missing.
For six months, Buffy and Dawn had been living in England with Giles, putting back together that shattered fragments of what might have been their lives, slowly rebuilding themselves from scratch. Slowly, Buffy began to live again, comming out of the hallow shell she had formed around herself after the events in Sunnyvale, with the help of her sister and her former Watcher.
Despite this, Buffy felt as if she was forgetting something, as if something that should be there, was not.
In that time, the former Slayer of Sunnyvale saw off many of her new kin on their way into the world on undead butt-kicking. 'Potiential' girls where actually seeking her out now, determined to be trained by the best. It had been suprising at first, and then it had led to a joking speculation of her being 'the mother of all Vampire Slayers', but she had jumped at the chance.
Now, however, it was almost like have a fan club, and Buffy could barely keep a normal lifestyle without a new trainee showing up every three seconds. With her once quiet lifestyle gone, Buffy had finally decided it was time to return to the states.
They had given a tearful farewell to Giles and everything the Watcher had done for her, taking a raincheck for another trip, and had flown back to the good 'ol USA, home of vampires and demons everywhere.
Somehow, though, deep inside, not any of this mattered. Something, something important, something essential, was still missing from her life.
Finding a house had been short order and little choice: There was a Hellmouth in Cleveland, and Willow was already living there, make a little buisness of her own by finally putting her own powers to good use. The power of the famous Slayer was duelly welcomed, as was a rekindeled freindship.
Their new house was cluttered with boxes, a mess of a place, now. And the wonderful real estate location soon required certain 'special services' only the immortal Buffy could offer.
While she was unpacking the kitchen cookery, the call came. Willow was rather suprisingly melancholy about the whole matter. 'Oh hi, Buffy. How are you? Are you guys settling in well? Okay. I just thought you should now theres a vampire at the local high school sucking out kids minds. See you tommarow.'
Paticulally, vampire care and removal.
The case was so cliche' she almost laughed... a weaker vampire trying to bring his undead master back into the world of the living, slowly gathering followers with entirley abstract and compeltely idiotic means... something like that.
That paticular night, she had chased the creepy bloodsucker (in this case, a local youth group organizer) to the graveyard, where his moaning minions where ready for the showdown. And thus, for the first time in six months, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Slayed, in true patented Super Buffy Mode undead butt-kicking action.
Unfourtunatly for the beloved Slayer, six months can put quite damper on your abilities. And he was quite a strong Vampire. Sort of. Okay, she didn't really have an excuse for being captured, but, dammit, she'd been out of commision for half a year! Training kids! You get fat in your old age, too.
So there she was, tied to a tree, sitting in a rotting pile of dead trees without even a good stick. The crazy man (corpse?) with the pointy teeth currently instructing his underlings on how to perform a dignified Virgin Sacrifice Ritual being her captor. The blonde rolled her eyes, just wonderful.
What she wouldn't give to be wearing a decent pair of pants right about now...
With preparations, including handy marble slab for the sacrifice, set out in the cold summer air, two lesser demons apparently working for the leader grabbed their 'virgin', forcing her on to the stone slab and tieing her down again. Buffy made a mental note to do some serious working out when she got home. When a direct hit to the groin only results in a grin from the victim, you know that you are seriously lacking in the muscle area...
"For your information Slayer." Said her captor nonchalantly, picking a bit of non existant fluff off his jumper. "These guys don't have the organs you where aiming for. You can stop kicking now. It'll all be over in a few minutes. This won't hurt a bit, trust me."
"Excpet for the part where you tear out my still beating heart, right?" She retorted, still pulling futilly on the chains.
"Well, there is that." He seemed to find his dust, and let it drift to the dark grass. He walked over to the slab and leaned over her, grinning. "But the rest will be totally painless, I promise you."
With a parting kiss blowed in her direction, he gave a few last instructions to his fellow bloodsuckers.
In a normal situation, Buffy might've used her mighty Slayer Strength to tear through the chains, rip the leaders head off, dispatch a few Vampires, locate where the demons organs really where, and give them a good kicking.
This apparently wasn't a normal situation. Her strength had packed its bags and left town, leaving a distraut Buffy with only a groggy memory of how to actually do half the stuff she had been teaching for six months. In shock, she pulled again and again on her restraints, only to come to a single conslusion.
One minute the power of the Slayer than ran through her veins was there, and now it was not.
Her captor returned to toment her.
"Oh, having a little trouble with the chains? I find that suprising. The famous Slayer seemes to missing her infamous fire." His evil grin this time only did so much more to point out green running jumpers so do not go with a goatee.
"Well, you know me." Risked Buffy. "You know that this is never going to work."
"Because I'm not a virgin. I think that's kinda required, isn't it?"
The man actually laughed at her. "Oh, you're not getting me with that trick. Whoever heard of an unchaste Slayer?"
It was at this point Buffy, straining uselessly on the rather rusty chains biting into her limbs and giving her captor death glares, noticed the man sitting on the masouluem.
He was barely a shadow in the night now, skulking just in the darkness cast by the stone pillars. And he certaintly was an odd looking one. Buffy had come to consider Cleveland a completly normal town. This man, however, couldn't seem to decide on his hair color. While the top half of of the shoulder length mess was pitch black, the underside was bright blue.
He winked at her.
The leader turned around to follow her gaze. There was nothing but shadows on the masouluem.
He gave her a look. "Waiting for one of your freinds to show up, Slayer?"
She grimaced at him.
"Well, don't hope too much." From the inside of his tacky outfit, he pulled out a dagger. Great, now he was going to give her a boring monologue AND cut her up. "This cemetary is surrounded, and anyone coming near it will be destroyed. Prepare to die, Slayer."
Much to her frustration, the great Vampire Hunter was unable to fight back. Buffy felt the cold metal pierice flesh and muscle, totally ruining her new shirt. The pain was not torture nor emotional strain, or one of the worst excess of a battle wound, but the simple black kind the burns like a fire deep inside.
She cried out. A dark smile of enjoyment passed over her captors features.
The Slayer's blood ran on the marble of the slab... of the coffin. It fed the creature inside, slowly drawing strength into ancirnt limbs. Excess blood pooled over bright crimsion lips.
The marble shifted.
Black spots danced in Buffy's vision, shapes and figures fading in and out of each other. Out of the black vortex of her foggy mind came a profound thought: This sucked. Really bad. She would've give anything to have the glory days back, to have Angel appear out of nowhere and save her life...
So this how she was going to die. On a routiune patrol by a vampire she would've eaten for breakfast on any other day. (Not really, of course. Vampires tend to taste of rust and dirt. Not a pleasent morning snack by any means). Her powers, her ability suddenly - gone.
The cold metal left the warmth of her skin, but the damage had been done. She saw he Captor nod with finality and pull away into a blurry world.
Her supernatural strength may have been gone, but Buffy could still hear perfectly fine. In the foggy world on the edge of darkness, the slayer heard the soft thump and accominying cry of a crossbow bolt burying itself in the back of the vampires neck. Such a stunt would have killed a human. It certaintly killed the undead.
She mumbleed something indistinct as the slab benath her moved. She had to get off it. Why where her hands wet? Why was her shirt wet?
Newly revitilized limbs reached from under her to grasp her arms, and primeval hissing followed.
She stared at her hand dumbly, and then at the nails digging into her shoulders. I'm dieing. I really lost. I don't have my power anymore, she thought.
Another bolt fired buried into the Lord's steaming hands, and the creature pulled away from her.
I'm useless.
A shadow fell out of the night, and straddled her stomach long enough to pull the chains away from her limp body, and secure her in it's arms in time to jump clear of the ensue lid of the coffin blasting off.
The Master rose into the night air, angry, oh so very angry. So very hungry. But awake. Finally awake.
Can't do anything right anymore. No good as a Slayer. Better off teachin' snotty kids.
The arms wrapped around laid her on the cool grass. In her dim, dream world of death, Buffy made out a tall, thin man with bi-colored hair and a most quirky expression. He was stripping off his coat. Why was he doing that?
The coat went around Buffy's body, pulled tight as much as for modesty as to still the blood loss.
His coat was as cold as ice.
The crossbow was gone, replaced by a gun.
Words where exchanged with the naked, walking corpse and the the stranger. Buffy couldn' t make out their cryptic speech.
"Fake."
"You would call me a fake, hunter?"
"Less. You don't desreve the name VAMPIEL."
"I am a child of the night, quibbler in dark games."
"You're nothing but a ghost playing Nosferatu. A name you can't even fanthom the true meaning of."
"How dare you!"
The creature leaped at the stranger, who retaliated by taking to the air in a flip right over his head. The Master went rolling. In a single second, the hunter flying backwards through the air let off one shot. he couldn't have had more than a nanosecond to aim. A millisecond of oppurtunity.
It hit the Master right between the eyes.
The creature fell backwards withn a terrible screeching sound, its body burning into ash. The night once more fell in to quiet reverie, the nemisis defeated and the world saved. This week, anyway.
The man nodded to himself, and walked back over to where Buffy lay. If she had any strength in her at all when the battle had began, she could barely move her lips now.
"Shhh." He whispered gently, placing a finger to her lips. He pulled the coat back, the brown leather stained with blood. The knife had gone straight through her chest, had punctured and severed her lungs and several main arteries. God knew how she had survived this long, but then again, maybe he was the one watching over her.
Rushing the Slayer to the hospital now would only result in some uncomfortable questions. She could not be saved.
He set to work.
Dawn had long ago learned not to over worry during her sisters routine patrols. Over worry usually meant excessive calling of one's cell phone and serious disruption of certian slayerly activity, so when night rolled around and Buffy left for the cold darkness of the graveyard, Dawn would get a bag of popcorn and settle infront of the tube.
It must have been eleven when the knock came at the door, disrupting the Key's quiet evening. She groaned and popped up, making her way through the laybriynth of boxes that still scattered the floor.
She might've have expected UPS or a lost pizza boy. She might've thought it was a fundraiser or a pair of devout christians.
She did not excpect a man with blade-sharp eyes carrying the bloody body of her sister.
Author's Rambling: Well, what can I say? When plot bunnies bite they tend to hold on hard. Anyway, thanks so much for reading, and please, please review. Reviews are like coffee to me: I can't do anything without it. See you next chapter. Hopefully. Since Liberi Fatali is my main intrest right now, it might take me a little longer to finish Deeper. If you liked this peice, please check out my other stuff on Fanfiction.net under Chibidragon7! Ja Ne!
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