**DISCLAIMER: Buffy the
Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon, the WB, and all those other brilliant
people who aren't me (drat it all). Again, none of these characters belong to
me. However, the storyline and the few new characters are mine.**
Author's Notes: I cannot
believe the finale to season five. I was bawling by the time it was over, and I
could have strangled whoever thought of ending it that way. When I went online,
I was upset to find a lack of hopeful fanfics out there. So I decided to write a
fanfic that gave our favorite show a different ending, one that's not just
grieving but not a blanket Buffy resurrected plot. Please send some feedback or
review! I love getting your comments, and I will consider any suggestions that
you have. After all, I am writing this for you, and I do want you to like it.
Enjoy reading!
Rating: PG
*******************
"The best and most beautiful things in the world
cannot be seen, not touched, but are
felt in the heart."
~ Helen Keller ~
Her Gift is Life
by: The Silver Princess
She woke up confused and bleary. Her head hurt as though cotton
had been stuffed inside her skull instead of a brain. Her muscles hurt like
planks of wood that had been forced to bend. Her stomach hurt as though her
organs had been encased in lead. In short, everything hurt like hell. She
blinked several times, that small action nearly too much. She waited
impatiently for her body to accustom itself to the waking world and tried to
comprehend her situation. Everything was a blur, a dizzying montage of
disjointed images. There were faces without names, names without people.
Everything conflicted, and nothing made sense in the bewildering stream of
images.
"Aaargh!" she growled finally, squeezing her eyes shut.
She slowly counted to ten, breathing deeply and slowly, and then
she opened her eyes more calmly. Okay, start with the little things. At least,
she was feeling more fit. Now, where exactly was she? A hospital. Okay, so,
what was she doing there? Lying in a bed in an unbecomingly formless hospital
green gown. In a hospital? she wondered. She frowned as she glanced at herself.
Why were her wrists bandaged? And why was she hooked up to several monitors and
an IV?
She concentrated but no answers emerged from the bewildering
torrent of memories. Fine. She didn't want to get frustrated again so she'd
move on to something else.
First name. Uh, um. Elizabeth! That was it. Elizabeth. Still, it
didn't seem quite right. Did she have a nickname or something?
She shrugged, ignoring that for now. Last name. Summerwind. Yes,
that sounded familiar.
Pleased with her progress but exhausted by her expended energy,
she lay back and let herself slip into sleep again.
When she woke again, things seemed much clearer. Her mind was
still hazy, but her memories were mostly in order again. Elizabeth Summerwinds.
In her second year of college. Orphaned last year. Incredibly heartbroken.
Depressed even.
The nurse came in, cutting her train of
thought short.
"And how are you doing?" the woman said in
that annoying voice meant for five-year-olds. Magda, her nametag read in
embossed black. Magda smiled at Elizabeth in what she apparently thought was
comforting, but her plain, reddened face was only written with condescension.
Elizabeth winced when she tried to speak and
only a croak emerged. Trying again, she asked, "What am I doing here?" She
licked her lips nervously. "What happened?"
"Hmm," Magda murmured disapprovingly. "You
don't remember."
Elizabeth shook her head worriedly.
"Silly child. You never stop to think, do
you?"
"What?" she asked in confusion.
"You tried to kill yourself, girl," Magda
explained frowningly.
Elizabeth gaped as she settled back in her
pillow. Suicide? She couldn't have…but she had. She gasped as strange memories
overtook her. The depression, the anger, the hopelessness, and then the final
moment when razors sliced into her wrists.
Suicide. Why did that feel so strange in her
soul? She would never, but contradictorily she did.
She looked down at her hands. They were the
same. She peered up at the tiny mirror. Yes, that was her. Same silk-black hair
jetting to her shoulders. Same chestnut eyes and same high cheekbones. Every
detail was hers. That was her face, the Native American face she had worn so
proudly her entire life. This was her.
Then why did she feel so different? Why did
her thoughts not flow logically with her memories? She couldn't imagine acting
as she had, but again—she had. Why?
She shook her head in annoyance. "I can't
think in here," she whispered to herself, her voice seeming to echo inside her
skull. The room was suffocating. The white walls pressed against her, and the
air was heavy in her lungs. She wrinkled her forehead suddenly. No, it wasn't
the room, not even the hospital. It was this city. She couldn't stay here. She
had to get out of here. Had to go somewhere else, had to be somewhere.
But where?
Sunnydale.
The name, the place, came to her like a
bullet shot. She gasped sharply, falling back to her pillow as memories surged
for a brief instant and then faded. She smiled thoughtfully. Yes, Sunnydale was
the place. She had to be in Sunnydale.
*****
Thanks to her
sudden determination and surprising negotiating skills, Elizabeth was now on a
bus to Sunnydale. She had been transferred to Sunnydale U in record time,
thanks to her so-called desire to "recover" in a new place. True, she had to
attend psychiatric appointments regularly, but she'd be out of "therapy" in no
time. She didn't know why, but she felt like an entirely different person.
She'd even gone to the gym yesterday and worked out, delighting in her
instinctive feel for the punching bag and her unusual sensation of strength and
ability.
She grinned
cheerfully as she glanced down at the book of baby names she had bought
earlier. The name "Elizabeth" still didn't feel quite right to her. Besides,
she definitely wanted something fresh to start her new Sunnydale life with.
She skimmed
through the innumerable variations of Elizabeth, wrinkling her nose. None of
these were right for her. Bess, Elissa, Ilse, Libby, Liz. None of them fit.
"Aha!" she yelped
suddenly. She blushed as the others passengers turned to look at her strangely.
Still, the grin would not stay hidden for long. It was perfect. Buffy. She
would be Buffy.
Happily,
she—Buffy, she reminded herself—tucked the book away in her backpack and
glanced out the window, anxious for her new home to roll into view.
*****
Buffy wandered
through town. Her fingers trailed over shop windows, her eyes reflected the
rising moon. So familiar. She knew this place. God, why did she know this
place?
A strange, quivery
emotion was welling up inside her like helium filling a balloon. Something
hopeful, wistful. Something that just sighed to her, "Right. This is right."
Her feet moved on
their own accord as she let her mind wander thoughtfully. The wind felt so
blissfully cool on her skin, and the feeling of movement was so invigorating in
her limbs.
She opened her
eyes with a start, not having realized she had closed them. She swallowed
dryly. She was at a cemetery.
She walked in, her
hands knowing the shape of the gate with the ease of long familiarity. The
grass was mint-green and barely sprinkled with dew. Night hung over the trees
like a black cloak enfolding all the tombstones that loomed in the gloom.
Her ears caught a
sound, and she instinctively headed towards it.
Weeping,
sniffling, and a scraping of dirt in a shovel. God, she'd wandered into a
funeral.
She paused, nearly
turning to leave, but something drew her forward. She could almost see the tug,
like an iridescent string, steadily towing her onward towards the group of
mourners.
The black of their
clothes nearly blended into the shadows, and Buffy blinked as she realized just
how many people were there. Huge masses of teenagers and adults alike. It was
as though the whole town had chosen to attend this unknown person's burial. She
blinked; perhaps they had; the town had seemed somewhat empty.
She walked
forward, her feet barely rustling on the lush grass, and the out-of-place
feeling evaporated like slumber from a bed. She belonged here every bit as much
as anyone else did.
Buffy's attention
was drawn like a magnet to a closely-knit group of mourners directly across
from her and standing closest to the rapidly-filling grave. Their tears and
heartrending grief marked them as the closest to the dead person.
There was a
red-headed girl sobbing into the arms of a blond girl. There was a dark-haired
boy silently holding a girl with light brown hair. A man who stood rigidly with
slow tears coursing down his cheeks as though he were terrified to let his
grief free for fear that it would shatter him. A cocky teenager with peroxide
blond spikes for hair and a face so grief-stricken that it seemed incongruous.
But mostly, her attention was focused on a younger girl, about fifteen years old.
Her long auburn hair tousled in a light breeze, she stood slightly apart,
holding herself tightly for comfort and
shuddering with hot, painful tears. The grief and pain inside this group
was so poignant that Buffy could nearly touch it, see it like a thorny, sharp
splinter of glass, each facet gleaming and sharpening.
Ripping her eyes
away from the brokenhearted girl, Buffy glanced at the tombstone and gasped in
shock. Buffy Anne Summers. Her heart thudded against her ribcage and sounded
dully in her ears. Buffy Summers. Buffy Summerwinds.
Her gasp vibrated
unusually loud through the graveyard and the mourners looked up at her. Buffy
opened her mouth to apologize when she locked eyes with the fifteen-year-old.
"Dawn," she said to the crying girl. She pressed her
hand to the girl's cheek, wishing she didn't have to make this choice. "The
hardest thing in this world is to live."
Buffy stumbled back a step as her lips formed the
name "Dawn." Tears shone in her eyes. She turned and fled through the graveyard,
not stopping until she was well away from those people and that grave.
She was Buffy. She
was! Somehow, she was. But, then, did she really know who Buffy was?
****TBC****
