Title: Five Times Buffy Summers forgot that she was the Slayer (And one time she was forced to remember)
Fandom: Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
Rating: K+/T, just because the rating increases with any mention of S6 Spuffy :p
Genre: Angst, Introspection, a little romance
Characters/Pairings: Buffy, mentions of the Scoobies, instances of Buffy/Angel and Buffy/Spike.
Spoilers: Up to 'Dead Things' in BtVS and for 'I Will Remember You' in Angel.
Summary: There were moments in Buffy's life when, for a few minutes, she could forget that she was the Slayer. But, eventually, something always happened to remind her.
Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own it. Joss Whedon and the cool little Mutant Enemy 'Grr Argh' guy do, and I'm just a devoted, obsessive fan.
A/N: Okay, second completed Buffy fic, and also my first ever 'Five Times' thing. Please R&R!
7th June - 1996 - Los Angeles
Buffy finished tying the overly complicated clasp on her emerald necklace, and applied a final layer of pink lip gloss, checking her appearance meticulously for minor imperfections in her - admittedly huge - wardrobe mirror.
She was going out with Pike again tonight, having finally convinced him to give a local club, Halo, a try. She wasn't sure why she was so nervous about her outfit. After all, she had only bought this dress last weekend, and all her friends had agreed it was gorgeous, so it wasn't like he was going to have seen it before, or hate it. Indeed, Pike was usually of the opinion that, as long as her outfit didn't make her look completely ridiculous, she looked fine whatever she wore.
So what was with the butterflies?
She catch on her necklace fell open again, and Buffy sighed in frustration. Pike had bought her this necklace, it matched her dress perfectly, so changing it wasn't an option, but it was so damn hard to keep fastened.
She messed with it in her irritation, and when it was closed, thoughtlessly tugged on the thick chain roughly to check it would hold.
The chain broke at the back, and fell to the floor with an audible clink.
She sighed, frustration draining into sadness. Somehow, this Slayer thing found a way to ruin everything.
March 10, 1997
Sunnydale High was sunnier and more open-plan than Hemery, but aside from that, Buffy couldn't see very many differences. The cafeteria had that same stench of over cooked cabbage and 'Goulash Surprise' (emphasis on the 'ghoul'), the popular kids were mean to the smarter, less stylish students, and people still hung out on the quad.
As she sat with the small group who, she hoped, were her new friends, Buffy felt a huge smile spreading across her face. Her mom was right - Sunnydale would be a fresh start. She was just a normal girl here, with a cute new hair cut, an outfit right out of Seventeen and the ambition to make friends, meet cute boys, and not fail Bio 101.
The kids she was chatting to seemed really friendly, too. The redhead, Willow, was sweet, and Xander was really funny… albeit in that teenage-boy way that made her roll her eyes and hide her giggles. Even Cordelia seemed nice enough - she made Buffy feel more at home by being so familiarly shallow. She reminded Buffy of who she'd been in LA, and that was automatically endearing .
Things were looking up - who knew, maybe she could even find someone with a car to take her to the nearest town with a proper mall on the weekends.
And maybe, just maybe, she could stop carrying a stake around with her all the time. She wasn't the Slayer, she never had been, really, and this safe, happy, sunny small town was the perfect place to remind her of that fact.
"Gym was cancelled due to the extreme dead guy in the locker!" Cordelia was shocked and upset… sort of, but Buffy's Slayer sense was already kicking in, sorting through all the questions she would need to ask…
Somewhere deep down, beneath the automatic Slayer reflex, Buffy sighed sadly. Somehow, no matter where she was, people were always dying horribly, or in danger of doing so in the immediate future.
And she was always right there, in the thick of it, every single time.
16th November - 1998 - Sunnydale
Okay, so she was a little drunk. Just a little, and hey, she was a senior now, right? So she could drink if she wanted to. It wasn't like she didn't have reason - her friends still treated her with kid gloves, her ex (or was he?) boyfriend was half-feral and living a secret life in a creepy mansion, and she wasn't even ready to face all the other crap surrounding that little issue. All she wanted was one night away from the memories, the problems, and the guilt - and alcohol could provide that.
She hadn't had a drink since the Delta-Cappa house last year. And yeah, that had ended badly, with the messed up reptile snake thing and the evil frat boys and the rufee in her drink, but she was older now, more mature, better at preventing herself from being drugged.
She could drink if she wanted to, it was no big deal. And that thought saw her through three more beers, a tequila shot, and onto Cordy's couch, a little drool threatening to escape as unconsciousness made a brilliant case for closing her eyes…
She couldn't see a downside to this - she was Buffy… Bu-u-ff-ey…hey, her name was so weird… and she was nearly eighteen, and this was her friend's skanky girlfriend's house, and she was only human, right? She was normal, and normal people drank lots of lovely drinkies and had fun on Saturday nights, and forgot about all their worries. She couldn't even remember what it was she was trying to forget.
Something about Willow… Willow who had red hair, shorter hair now, and it was very bright in front of Buffy's face as she kept saying things like "Buffy, are you okay?" and "Who gave her alcohol? Cordelia, we decided Buffy needed to stay sober!"
"Will?" Buffy tried to sit up, and giggled as she fell back onto her back, "I'm fine, I'm good, look, I am the goodest of the goody… good…" She collapsed into giggles again, it was just so funny. Because Willow was so silly: Buffy could drink if she wanted to. It wasn't like she had anywhere she had to be at 10pm on a Saturday night. She was a senior, partying was like her one true, sacred, duty.
Right?
23 November 1999 - Los AngelesBuffy woke up, after having dozed for maybe an hour, tops, and found herself completely relaxed. She was warm, and comfortable, curled up against something reassuringly warm and soft, which appeared to be wrapped around her.
She looked up dazedly, and saw for the first time ever Angel's sleeping face. His chest rose and fell rhythmically, his jaw slack but his arms tight around her.
She reached up her free hand, and delicately stroked the contours of his warm skin, still unable to believe this wonderful turn of fate, this glorious gift she had been given - they had been given. She was human, she was in the arms of her warm, strong, human boyfriend, and everything was good again.
This time, when the sun rose, she wouldn't wake up to find Angel gone, replaced by a soulless monster. She wouldn't wake up to see her bed empty and some stupid, thoughtless, selfish college boy busy demoting her to another notch in a bedpost.
No, this time she wasn't the Slayer, betrayed by faulty gypsy curses or underestimated by mindless frat boys. This time she was a warm, loved, happy girl, falling back into sated sleep in the arms of her warm, strong, living boyfriend, no thought in her head than that this was heaven.
14 November 2000 - Sunnydale
Buffy sat herself down on the back steps, and quickly glanced behind her to check for Dawn. Her little sister was weirdly good at sneaking up on people, a trait Buffy had learned to despise, and she would have hated for the younger girl to see her now.
Certain that she was alone, Buffy let her head fall, her hair hiding the tears now falling fast and hard down her cheeks.
Her mom was sick. Not possessed, not messed up by demon mojo, not under a spell that could be broken or retracted or ass-kicked. Her mom was sick by natural means, and sick enough to need a hospital visit, and Buffy couldn't think of how to fix this.
Because that's what she did, right? She fixed things, she saved lives. She killed the Master, she stopped Angelus and Acathla in one stab, she exploded Sunnydale High and channelled the First Slayer to defeat a Frankenstein-wannabe and save the world. Again.
But none of that mattered now, did it? The world was in tact but it refused to make sense. Her mom couldn't be sick, she couldn't be anything but the strong, stubborn, amazingly resilient woman who had raised both Buffy and Dawn, faced down Spike and Angelus and anyone else who messed with her girls, and remained the steadiest, most important fact in Buffy's world.
She couldn't be weak and frail, lying in a hospital bed, in possibly mortal danger from something natural and deadly that couldn't be fought and defeated by Slayer strength.
Buffy felt rather than saw Spike sit down next to her, something weirdly heavy and metal clunking down beside him. He didn't say a word, and neither did she. She couldn't care that he was there, for another round of the increasingly disturbing and confusing Spike-Vs-Buffy travelling circus of pain. Nothing he could say or do could make this worse.
But he didn't say anything. Weirdly, he didn't deliver some cutting remark or deadpan sarcasm that he'd obviously practiced before he arrived. She didn't receive the thorough verbal assault she should have earned by that last 'beneath me' insult, and she was too tired and scared and upset to even wonder why. She looked up into his face, and she could almost see the insults and retorts and arguments die on his lips.
Instead, he reached out, a little awkwardly, and she felt his hand pat her shoulder, as if to offer comfort.
Like a reserved, uncertain friend rather than a cruel and hateful enemy.
And as she sat there, for a few minutes, Buffy felt all her Slayer strength fade away. Spike already knew her weak spots, he'd outlined each and every one of them in great detail earlier that night. So she let the tears fall, let herself accept his comfort, his seemingly benign presence, and allowed herself, just for a few minutes, to be the hurt, lonely, fragile girl she was on the inside, beneath the Slayer strength and the older sister protectiveness.
February 5, 2002 - Sunnydale"C'mon Buffy, let's go!" Spike was desperate now, she could feel his arms around her waist, pulling her away from the dead girl's body.
"I killed her." The words wouldn't stop coming, they screamed inside her head and fell from her lips again and again. The girl had been an innocent, and Buffy's head had got all messed up by a weird combination of touching Spike and fighting some random demon and, in her anger, confusion and the midst of the fight, she'd punched out a poor, innocent girl at full Slayer-strength and watched her fall.
And now she was dead at Buffy's feet.
"There's nothing you can do, we've gotta get out of here!" Spike was dragging her away, but Buffy's mind was racing even faster than his.
She had to tell the police. She had to make sure they knew what she had done. She couldn't go down the road of 'a few innocent deaths are nothing compared to the amount of people I've saved'. She was the Slayer, she wasn't allowed accidents. Not with innocent people's lives, not when this poor girl would be alive and well if it wasn't for one moment of blind rage.
No matter what Spike said about responsibility, about how he'd take care of it, she couldn't listen.
And she wanted to. So much, she wanted to listen to his persuasive logic, his schemes to get them both out of this, his claims that it wasn't her fault, it was just an accident, and this dead girl was just another victim of the ongoing war against the Hellmouth, and not of a clumsy, confused, messed-up Slayer lashing out when she shouldn't have.
But she was the Slayer, the Chosen One, and that meant she was supposed to be held to a higher standard of responsibility and honour. Spike could kiss her in that way that would melt her brain, he could touch her and erase all her thoughts, her fears and worries. He could whisper promises of freedom and lies of redemption in her ear and watch as she soaked them into her heart, allowing them to comfort her. But he couldn't make her believe them.
She was the Slayer, and a Slayer had to be honest, strong and brave. She couldn't run away from her mistakes, her crimes. She couldn't let the scared girl or the concerned and worried older sister within her take control here.
She was the Slayer, and she could never let herself forget that.