Takes place thirteen years post-Chosen. Buffy never returned to Sunnydale after running away to LA at the end of season two. She is working at a diner somewhere on a desert highway, when a figure from her past unexpectedly shows up. Inspired by Neil Young's "Unknown Legend."
Somewhere on a Desert Highway
At least in this place they didn't make you wear polyester.
Russ, her boss, had told her to wear whatever she wanted. She just had to look "presentable." His word. Not hers. "Presentable." The way he had said it, leering at her, making her feel so exposed, had made his meaning clear. She has had crossed her arms in front of her chest, hugging herself, protecting herself, trying to block his cold, calculating eyes.
Not that she wasn't used to men looking at her like that. She had grown way too used to it. Accepted it. It was part of the job. But she hated it still.
"We tend to get a lot of men stopping here," he explained, eyeing her lewdly. "We want to give them something nice to look at. Something easy on the eyes after all of those miles of sand and dust and nothing but the road." His gaze ran up and down her body again and she felt violated, dirty. "You'll do nicely. Not every day a pretty girl like you moves to a small town like this."
Beth had left his office convinced that she would not be long for this place. Not if she had to deal with that every day. But she had needed to take the job. She needed money. Couldn't get much further on what she had. Once she had saved a bit though, then she would be gone. On the road and running again.
She had spent last half of her life running. Running away. At one point she thought she had something to run to. But that delusion had slipped away with the years. There was nothing to run to. Never had been. Only the running away. And it had been so long now she wasn't even sure what she was running away from. But it had become a habit. And those things were hard to break.
Not like bones and hearts and people.
Those were all way too fragile. Broke too easily and were too hard to fix. Better just to keep running. It was the only way she had found to keep herself together.
At first she had run to the cities. L.A. Chicago. Seattle. Atlanta. Phoenix. Boston. Cleveland (She had only stayed a week. It had reminded her way too much of home. Hellmouthy and everything.) Detroit. Denver. New York.
It was easy to lose yourself in a city. All those people too concerned about their own lives to even glance at you. In cities, you could become anonymous. Just another face in the crowd that rushed past every day.
It was easy to find work too. The places she applied to, they didn't ask a lot of questions. Figured her for another runaway. Or, as she got older, another single mother or ex-junkie trying to keep out of trouble, keep sober, keep clean. They didn't want to hear her story, so they never asked. Which was more than fine by her, because she didn't want to tell it.
After all, it was her story that kept her running.
But it did seem like she could ever run fast enough.
Some how it always seemed to catch up with her. Somehow someone would find out who she was, what she was, and then it would be time for her to move on. To run away again.
The sun hung over the horizon as she walked into the dinner. Blue jeans and a black v-neck tee-shirt. Hair pulled back in a simple braid. That was the uniform she decided on. It was simple and practical and at least it wasn't polyester.
"Hey Bethy," Rob, the line cook, called to her. He worked the night shift. Nora worked the day. Despite the difference in gender they were remarkably similar. Round, loud, warm, and with a laugh that thawed even her iciness.
"Hey Rob," she responded with a smile.
"You know I can't handle that smile of yours, girl," he grinned. "Captures my heart every time. Tell me you'll marry me Bethy."
"You ask me that every night, and the answer is always the same, Rob."
"I know, I know. Somebody done wrong by you girl. Still, every night, breaks my heart." He finished clutching his hands to his chest and wheezing with laughter.
That was how he always said hello to her. His own bizarre little ritual. At first she had been uncomfortable with the whole thing, the confession of love, the marriage proposal. Until she realized that he greeted all of the waitresses that way. It was always the smile that captured him and the answer that broke him.
It was always that way, wasn't it? Begin with a smile. End with a broken heart.
Life would have been so much easier for her if she had given up smiling years ago.
"What are the specials tonight?"
"Made me some delicious chowder. And I think I'll whip up some fried chicken and waffles. I'm in the mood for a little southern comfort. What do you think about that, Bethy?"
"You make with the cooking, I'll make with the serving. And the eating," she added.
"Girl after my own heart. Are you sure you won't pity an old fool and marry me?"
"Pretty sure, Rob. Besides, I think that Renee totally has the hots for you. Wouldn't want to step on her toes," she winked and left the kitchen, the sound of Rob's booming laughter following her into the dining room.
"Hiya Beth," Alison greeted her as she stepped into the dining room, securing her apron around her narrow waist.
"Hey Ali," she smiled. Ali was a small birdlike brunette. She had three kids at home and a handsome blond husband who worked at the town's hardware store. The way Ali told it they had been the classic cliché of high school sweethearts. The quarter back and the head cheerleader. They had married young, had kids younger, had gotten trapped, stuck in this small town. Now, they both worked double and triple shifts and barely had enough to get by. Still, they seemed happy, if completely exhausted.
And at least Ali was nice to work the night shift with. She was cheerful, although Beth wondered how she could keep up her schedule. All day at home with the kids. All night at work in the diner. Not at a lot of time for the sleeping.
Beth slept for most of the day. She would get home about four in the morning and pass out until about three in the afternoon. Then it was back to work at five in the afternoon.
Tips were good though, during the graveyard shift, even if there weren't a whole lot of them. Truckers felt bad for them and tipped generously and the work wasn't hard.
(Funny though. There was a time when graveyard shift meant being in an actual graveyard.
But not anymore.
That was a long time ago.)
"How are the kids?" she asked Ali, wanting to avoid those thoughts of the past. They had a nasty tendency of creeping in, of snaring her, of entrapping her when she least expected it. Best to change the mental channel.
"They're great. Sammy lost another tooth today, brought it home from school wrapped in a piece of bloody toilet paper, smiling that big gap-toothed smile of his. And Dean is crawling like a maniac. Can't hardly keep my eye on him. Thank god Elsie started pre-school. Gives me plenty of time to follow Dean all around the house. So, how do you want to do sections?"
"The usual?"
"Works for me."
Each woman took half of the tables. Ali the left half, Beth the right. Some of the other waitresses, like Renee, had more complicated methods of dividing up the table, which they insisted was fairer. So what if you had to be a NASA engineer to figure out the system. And if you messed it up, Renee was likely to bite your head off. Not literally of course.
(There was a time when that would have been literal.
But not any more.)
Dinner service was easy. Rob always got the food out quickly enough that no one had reason to complain, and Beth liked the hectic frenetic pace of the service. There was something in her, something smothered long ago, that craved, needed the adrenaline. And since she had run this was as close as she wanted to get to it.
Any closer and it would be time to run again.
By nine the diner had cleared out. Just one trucker sat hunkered over his pie, shoveling it into his mouth before hitting the road again.
There wasn't much for Beth to do. She and Ali had straightened up after the dinner rush, and now the two of them were facing a long slow night.
That was the trade off. You got to work dinner, which meant good tips, only if you had to endure the night shift. There would be a few customers who would drift in to the diner, hands shaking and eyes bloodshot from caffeine. Guys on deadline who needed to take an half and hour or so to rest their eyes from the road. Take a break. Fuel up their trucks and their stomachs before hitting the next long stretch of pavement and desert and dust.
Everything was so monotonous here. The line of it broken only by the random cacti or rock formation. Everything was brown and flat and lifeless. And the horizon always seemed so far away. It was not the sort of place people lived. It seemed like everyone was just passing through to somewhere else. Somewhere better. Greener, maybe. Definitely more welcoming. This landscape was just so hostile, sterile, dead.
There were communities that had huddled together here. Ali and her husband would never leave. And Nora and Rob were here for good. They had somehow sunk their roots into the dry, cracked, and inhospitable soil and made this place a home.
But Beth had no roots, nothing to hold her to this place. And she knew that soon enough the desert wind would take her up and carry her away.
The trucker stood up took one last long gulp of coffee, touched his two fingers to his cap, a solemn farewell salute that struck Beth oddly-old fashioned and yet somehow appropriate.
Ali yawned as she looked at the clock. "Lord, I cannot believe that it is only 9:30. It's going to be one hell of a long night."
"As opposed to every other night here?" Beth smiled.
"Too true. I don't know why Russ even bothers keeping this place open like this. Doesn't make much sense, if you ask me."
Ali had a point. They never served many customers after nine. But Beth had worked in an enough places like this to know what Russ was thinking. There wasn't anyplace to stop for miles around the diner, and he was counting on the fact that the few drivers who were driving on the old highway would be drawn in by the neon red of the open sign and the promise of a burger and pie and a cup of coffee. It must be working, because Russ didn't seem eager to change the way things were being done.
It didn't bother her. (She was kinda built to be a night owl.)
But she did feel bad for Ali, who went home slept for four hours and then had to be up with her kids by the time their father left for work. She would sneak in a nap when she put the baby down while the older kids were in kindergarten and pre-school. But Dean was sleeping more during the night and less during his mid day naps and it was starting wear on Ali. Her usually thin face was looking especially pinched and the circles under her eyes especially dark.
"You've still have the sleeping bag in your car?" Beth asked the other woman.
Ali looked down guilty. "Yeah. Sure. But I couldn't do that to you again, Beth. It's not fair."
Beth smiled. "Sure it is. You go home to star in the kiddycapades, and I go home to my own snoozapalooza. It's totally fair."
"You shouldn't have to pick up the slack from my personal life."
"And you shouldn't have to suffer because you actually have a personal life. I have recently been declared personal-life-free, so I will keep on eye on the place while you take a much needed nap."
"You should have one. A personal life, I mean. I can see if Josh knows anyone from work... You shouldn't be alone. Especially not in a place like this. The desert. It does things to you, like wrinkles."
Beth laughed. "I look forward to the day when I'm all wrinkly and alone. Living like a hermit in the middle of the desert. Maybe I'll get a few goats to speed the process along, all wrinkly and goaty and alone."
Ali shook her head. "I swear I don't understand you. Why you'd even come to a place like this. This is the sort of place people run away from, they don't wander in and decide to stay."
Beth shrugged, figuring it was best not to confess that she would be running away from here soon enough. That all she did was run. Had been running since she was seventeen. Half a life ago. This place wouldn't hold her. No place did.
But saying this would just lead to more questions. Especially the painful ones about the past that she wouldn't, couldn't answer.
(Because how do you find the words to say that you killed the man you loved. That kissed him, told him you loved him, and then you drove a sword through his chest.
People would look at you like you were dangerous, unstable, nuts.
And explaining that you had to do that in order to save the world, which was about to be dragged into hell by the man that you loved, who had become a man that you couldn't recognize because he had lost his soul when he had had made love to your first time. That the man you loved had become an evil, sadistic killer. A psychopath gunning right for you. Torturing you. Trying to tear you down and crack you up and break you into little tiny pieces, broken fragments of yourself that would be too weak to do what you needed to do, to kill him and save the world. And explaining that you still loved him, still hoped that you could save him, even when he was beating you down to nothing. Tearing out your heart and laughing the whole time. Explaining that you loved him even then, and that you drove that sword through his heart the moment that it was yours again, in the moment that he was the man who loved you again, soul restored by a teenage witch, you killed him to save the world. Explaining that that had hurt you more than anything he had done to you when he was evil. That in order to save the world you couldn't save him. That that was the moment that had finally broken you and left you too weak to save the world again and had forced you to pack a bag and run to L.A. and then to Chicago and Seattle and Atlanta and Phoenix and Boston and then to Cleveland and Detroit and Denver and New York and countless roadside diners and small towns along the way and then to here.
Explaining all that, it didn't make you seem any less dangerous, any less stable, or any more sane.)
So instead of explaining all of that, Beth just looked out the window, able to see only her faint reflection and the darkness beyond. "Guess I just needed a place were I could rest. And this place definitely seems quiet, a little homesteady, maybe, but quiet. You know."
Ali laughed. "Oh yeah. This place is nothing if not quiet. It's like the grave."
"Well, graves aren't so bad. They can be pretty peaceful. Most of the time."
"You're a real sweetheart, Beth, but you are one odd girl," Ali laughed.
Beth sighed. "And you're exhausted go take a nap."
"Are you sure?" Ali asked, her large doe-eyes grateful.
"Yeah, I can take care of the ten customers that wander in here."
"Thank you," she said quietly, her eyes soft, before widening suddenly. "What if Russ finds out?" she asked. She needed the job, definitely needed the money.
"He's not going to find out. It's not like he's big with the stopping by in the middle of the night."
Ali looked down at her hands.
"Hey Rob," Beth called into the kitchen, "you going to snitch on Ali if she makes with some snoozage that she so needs."
Rob's chuckle boomed out from the kitchen. "You know I'd do anything for you ladies. Not going to go snitch to the bossman. Bethy, honey, whatever you girls gotta do what you gotta do. No matter to me."
Beth looked triumphantly at Ali. "See. Now, go take a nap."
"God Beth, you've got such a heart in you. You were meant for more than this diner, this town. God I just know it." She smiled. "I'll make it up to you, I swear."
"I know you will," Beth said, returning Ali's beaming smile with a tight one of her own, trying not to let her pain show on her face. Trying not to let the other woman see that the words that she had meant only in friendship had stabbed. (Like a sword through her lover's heart.) "Now go. There are some Zzzzs that need catching," she said, turning away.
She fiddled with the cash register as she heard Ali walking back into the kitchen. She took a deep breath, an attempt to force the pain, the tears, down.
(She was meant for more than this. But she didn't want to be. She didn't want to have to make those sacrifices. She couldn't endure that. Not even to save the world.
So she had walked away. Okay, run away. Away from her power. Away from her duty. Away from her friends and her family and her life and the world that needed her saving.)
She gripped the counter top to steady herself, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply.