Buffy slid further down in her seat, hoping that to her history teacher's eye she blended in with the wall. After a few minutes, she realized that the teacher hadn't noticed her. However, just to be on the safe side, Buffy remained in the same position.
After awhile, Buffy's blank stare into space was interrupted by a folded note being tossed onto her desk. Blinking, she sat up straighter in her chair and unfolded the piece of notebook paper.
*Why are you trying to hide under your desk?*
Buffy scribbled back her reply and refolded the note. Waiting until Mrs. Perry's back was turned, she tossed the note back to Willow.
The note landed back on Buffy's desk moments later. *Buffy, we didn't *have* any homework.*
Buffy looked over to Willow, who was having a hard time surpressing a giggle, and mouthed, "Oh!" On the note, she wrote *Whatcha doin tonight?*
*Oz and I are gonna rent some movies and watch them at my house*, the reply read, and Buffy coughed to cover a laugh at how Willow had drawn hearts and smilie faces all around the line. *What about you?*
Buffy sighed. *Gonna go mope in the graveyard, maybe bag me a couple of v's.*
Willow was in the process of writing her response when the bell rang, which caused Buffy to breathe a sigh of relief. One more schoolday down without incident.
Out in the hallway, Willow continued their conversation by saying, "If you want, Oz and I can come keep you company tonight. I mean, it's not as if I need to watch Dirty Dancing again."
"Dirty Dancing? Oz agreed to that?" Buffy asked, giving her friend a look of disbelief.
The redhaired girl gave her and innocent smile.
Buffy just looked at her.
"Stop with the third degree already!" Willow exclaimed. "So he doesn't know yet."
Willow laughed along with Buffy, pleased to see her best friend smiling and laughing, at least making an outside effort to seem like she was all right. But Willow knew that inside, it was an entirely different story.
After the laughter had faded, Buffy said, "Thanks, but no thanks, Will. I don't want to be a burden. And to be honest, I don't want to be a third wheel. I think tonight I'm just gonna go it alone."
Willow nodded, a part of her thankful that Buffy had declined her offer, a part of her wanting to be with Buffy tonight, if only to work on getting her to open up. Ever since Buffy had been brought back home from L.A. after she'd run away, Willow and all of Buffy's other friends were having a hard time getting her to talk to them about what she was feeling, if she was okay, why she'd run, and most importantly, what had happened that night when she'd killed Angelus. It'd been almost a month since her mother had brought her home, and even Cordelia had noticed that Buffy was ... different.
"Well, if you're sure... "
"I'm sure."
"Hey, whatdoyaknow, I'm Sure too, today. Wait... is Sure the kind of deoderant that "you can even skip a day" with?" Xander commented, joining the girls in their trek down the hallway towards the library.
Buffy and Willow exchanged a look and decided to ignore the comment.
"Hey Xander, you got plans tonight?" Buffy asked, shifting her books into one arm to open the door.
"Me and Cordie are gonna Bronze it tonight," Xander told her as she pushed open the door to the school's library. "Why?"
Willow's eyebrows raised as she asked, "Cordelia's letting herself be seen with you in public? On purpose?"
"Oh, how you wound me," he replied sarcastically but without heat as he made his way to a chair and plopped down into it.
Buffy sat down and opened up her math book, and began working on an assignment that was due next period.
"Hey, G-man, where are you?" Xander called out.
"How many times must I tell you, Mr. Harris, not to call me that," came the reply from the stacks.
"Giles, I got work that I gotta do for next period that I kinda need to get done so that I can at least stay in the D-range, so can we skip the dream session? I promise, the worst thing I've dreamt about the past few weeks involved me, a McDonald's uniform, and being forced to ask strangers, "Would you like fries with that?"
Giles came around the corner of a shelf of books and looked down at Buffy, sighing. "Yes, yes, by all means get your work done. The last thing we need is an excuse for Snyder to kick you out again."
"Here, Buffy, let me help you with that..." Willow offered, scooting closer to see the text book. "Oh, this is easy, I did this freshman year. I remember this."
"Freshman year? I'm a senior doing things you did freshman year?"
Willow made a face at Buffy while taking the pencil and calculator from her hand, showing a not-particularly-caring Buffy how to solve the equation.
While Xander was enlisted by Giles as slave labor to help shelve books, Willow struggled with Buffy through the assignment until finally, the problems were all finished and double checked.
"Hey Giles, do you think I could go straight home after school? I'm feeling kinda sickly and I'm thinking a nap will put the spring right back into my step when I go on patrol tonight."
Giles had been planning on sending her home anyway, but put on a show of dismay. "Fine, Buffy, but remember to come here first thing in the morning to give me a full account of the night's activities."
"Don't I always?"
Giles, Xander, and Willow all stopped what they were doing and looked at Buffy. "Uh, don't answer that."
With that, Buffy gathered up her books, told Willow she'd call before dinner, and left.
A few minutes after she left, Xander said, "Am I the only one who thinks that she's gonna either explode or implode sometime soon?"
Giles sighed. "No, you're not the only one. I suspect something happened the night Acathla was closed, something other than Buffy killing Angelus like she'd told us."
"Also, you have to figure in her Mom finding out she's the Slayer and that whole fight-running away thing. That's gotta be a little horrible," Willow added.
"It's like her spark is gone. Like she's on automatic or something," Xander commented, worry in his for once serious tone.
Giles sighed and shook his head. "I don't know how to help her."
Willow shook her head after a moment. "I was planning on surprising Buffy later tonight after my date with Oz, try and talk to her. Maybe I can get her to talk..."
* * *
Lifting another forkful of spaghetti to her mouth, Buffy ate her dinner without tasting it. The seventeen year old kept her eyes cast downward toward her plate, concentrating on not showing how upset she was. Her mother, seated across from her, likewise went through the motions of eating her meal while occasionally glancing at an obviously distraught Buffy.
The tense silence between mother and daughter was broken only by the noise of silverware scraping across crockery between every bite. The sound grated on both their nerves, like nails on a chalkboard, but neither one lessened the force with which they used their forks to spin strands of spaghetti round and round into mouthsized bites. Anything to fill the silence.
Buffy thought desperately. Standing up, she said, "Mom? I'm going to go out and patrol for a little while."
Joyce Summers looked tiredly up at her daughter and sighed.. "Just try and be home by midnight, please."
Buffy wasn't ready for this response.
Her surprise and confusion were clear to Joyce. "Buffy, I've come to the realization that I can't stop this slaying thing of yours. I've talked to Mr. Giles and I've been trying to accept this but..."
"It's not easy learning that your one and only offspring, the fruit of your loins, is a sideshow freak, is that it?" With that, Buffy grabbed her jacket and bag by the door, and left with the slam of the door loud in Joyce's ears.
"...it's difficult to know that your one and only offspring could die a horrible death and there's nothing I can do," Joyce finished her sentence on a whisper, her closed eyes filling with tears.
* * *
Her feet curled up under her, Buffy sat on the parkbench in the middle of the graveyard. She was sitting sideways leaning against the backing of the bench, her knees drawn up to her chest. Her chin rested on her folded arms, and she thought to herself,
Beside her was a streetlamp that shone a circle of light around the bench. Beyond the edge of light there was complete darkness, for the moon was hidden by thick storm clouds.
Buffy wasn't afraid though. She knew that wherever she chose to be in the graveyard, if vampires arose that night they'd be drawn to her by the scent of her blood. Although curled up wasn't the best position to be in if one knew they could be attacked by a member of the undead at any given moment, Buffy didn't particularly care. She'd rely on her hyper senses to tell her if she was being crept up upon. She'd be able to sense the evil. Besides, the newly made vampire is a stupid vampire, that's a given. They always make a hell of a lot of noise, all the unnecessary growling and shrieking and such.
She'd been here for an hour, maybe two, so lost in thought she'd barely given notice to the time. Still, it was only about nine o'clock, and she had hours stretching out before her until she'd go home. Hopefully, her mother would be in bed by then.
Her relationship with her mother had changed drastically over the past few months. When she'd run away, she'd ran to Los Angeles. She'd ran to her father, and stayed with him for about a month and a half. Hank Summers had been more than happy to have have his daughter, but he'd called Joyce immediately and talked to her. Then, thinking that his ex-wife had gone off the deep-end, he'd sat his daughter down and asked her what all this "slaying business" was about.
She'd told him everything from the beginning, she'd told him about being the Chosen One, about Merrick, about the real reason she'd burned down the gymnasium at her old school, about moving to Sunnydale and having the school librarian being her Watcher. She told him about her friends, and how they helped her fight the forces of evil. She told him of her extra power, power that didn't come from physical strength but from her very blood.
She told him about Drusilla and Spike and even Angelus. She told him about Kendra and how she died, how her mother found out about her being the Vampire Slayer, why she was expelled two weeks before the end of the school year. She told him everything about herself, except for one small detail.
In the telling of her life and her duty, she left out her love affair with Angel, and how exactly he'd been turned back into Angelus. She left out the part about having to run him through with a sword, sending him to Hell. She couldn't even think about it without almost crying, and she didn't want to break down in front of her father.
Hank Summers, for his part, didn't reject her story outright. He asked her to show him some of her powers, some of this "extraordinary fighting skill". So Buffy asked him to stand up and come at her from behind.
Hank had sighed and agreed, standing behind his daughter in the middle of his living room. The lines of her body were relaxed, and Hank reached out a hand and almost gently grabbed her shoulder.
The next time he opened his eyes, he was flat on his back on the other side of Buffy. Daddy's girl was kneeling over him, a sharp stake poised over his heart.
After that he was much more inclined to believe what she was saying.
So Buffy had stayed with him in Los Angeles until the middle of July, and then one day her mother showed up. They had hugged, cried, and Buffy had apologized for both pushing her mother out of her way and for running. Joyce had forgiven her, and apologized for telling her that if she left the house she couldn't come back.
Buffy had gone home with her mother, and for the rest of the summer they'd been on thin ice with each other. Both were afraid to really talk about Buffy being the Slayer, so they skated around the issue as much as possible. At the rare times it couldn't be avoided, arguments erupted.
These arguments had steadily increased instead of gradually abating, especially since the new schoolyear had started. Buffy's mother had gone to the schoolboard and pleaded on behalf of her daughter. Buffy was accepted back into the school for her senior year on the condition that she wouldn't start trouble. Principal Snyder had been furious but there was nothing he could do about it.
Joyce felt that after all she'd done to get her daughter back into school, Buffy should spend more time on her schoolwork, try to make better grades. It was her hope that Buffy would go to college and forget about being the Chosen One, have a career, get married, give her grandchildren. Buffy had thanked her mother profusely for getting her accepted once again to Sunnydale High, but had a hard time getting her mother to understand the concept of being the Slayer.
She remembered clearly that particular fight. Her mother had asked about was career she was looking to go into after graduation and Buffy had told her that given her abilities and inclination, she was probably headed for a stunning career in the exciting field of law enforcement. Joyce had been dismayed, and didn't bother to cover her disappointment. Buffy had gotten upset and reminded her mother that she probably wouldn't live long enough to get through college, so she'd better enter the workforce as soon as possible.
Joyce had gasped, bringing the back of her hand to her mouth. She'd turned from her daughter, tears welling in her eyes. Buffy had been immediately sorry for the brutal and unneccessary mention of the high risk involved with being the Slayer.
Since that fight, which had occurred about two weeks ago, tense silence had covered the Summers' house like a wet, suffocating blanket.
So almost every night, Buffy saw patroling as an escape, as a place she could go to think, and incidentally, to rid the world of more vampires. Every night after dinner she'd gone out patroling, and was always back around midnight or one. She knew her mother checked on her about two thirty in the morning, but Buffy was always either genuinely asleep or faking it.
More often than not, though, she was only pretending to be asleep. Usually at two thirty in the morning, at least an hour and a half after she'd gotten home, she was still trying to quiet her mind enough to rest. Memories haunted her, scenes of both horrifying gore and breathtaking beauty chased each other through her mind, melding into a blur until finally her tired body won out over her mind and she fell asleep.
she thought to herself.
A moment later Buffy's senses became alert, adrenalin pumping through her veins. Beyond the circle of light she sensed a presence. Her eyes probed the darkness beyond the reach of the lamplight in vain.
After a few minutes, Buffy's body began to relax inch by inch. She was sure something or someone was out there, but whatever it was wasn't going to attack her. She didn't sense evil. The feeling was more of being watched than anything else.
After going back to her brooding, Buffy almost jumped out of her skin when the night itself seemed to whisper her name using the voice of a ghost.
"Show yourself," she called bravely into the night, leaping to her feet in front of the bench.
Silence greeted her.
"I know you're there!" Buffy said, scanning the darkness, unwilling to leave the safety of the light. She was sure whatever was out there wasn't a vampire. "I said show yourself!"
Buffy waited for a reply, trying to reach out with her senses to find the presence. Her body was too tense, though, and the ability was too new to her for her to be able to use it unless relaxed.
"Buffy."
Buffy's body whipped around to the area where the voice had come from. The voice of someone that couldn't possibly be there.
"Who are you?" she breathed the question, a shiver of fear racing up and down her spine.
Behind her, a hand reached out and grabbed her shoulder.
|
|
|
|
Rave
Barbie Girl (Becca)
biscuit07
Filmtheory (Jim)
Malice (Jess)
MebbtheScribe (MichaelB)
Reset (Allie)
Shay (Marrisa)
somnambulist29 (Shea)
Stephanie Loss
Wendyness (Wendy)
Questions?Contact Us
|
|
All stories on this site have been archived with the authors' consent. Do not copy these stories for your own uses without the express consent of the author themselves. Buffy the Vampire Slayer TM and Angel TM are © UPN, WB, Fox and its related entities. All photos on the site are © UPN, Fox, Warner Bros, and/or their respective owners. No profits are being made by use of these images.
Powered with the assitance of eFiction.
|
|
|
