Learning to live
Buffy awoke with a start and instantly took in her
surroundings. She should have been
lying on top of the pallets she had seen below her when she jumped, should have
seen her friends looking at her or helping her up. Instead she was sitting in a comfy padded chair in a well-lit
beach house in broad daylight. She
looked out the glass doors in front of her and watched the ocean, which crashed
and rolled less than 100 yards away from her.
She looked down and realized she had on the same clothes as she had been
wearing for the fight with Glory. She
stood up quickly and looked frantically around the room for signs of Dawn or
the scoobies but saw nothing but a tastefully decorated home.
"Oh great!" She said
with mock enthusiasm. "So I'm guessing
I'm either in an alternate dimension or in heaven."
"Actually, this place has no name." Came a male voice from behind her.
She whirled around to find the source and her eyes came to
rest on a man who stood at the railing of the second floor loft, which she had
not noticed.
"But then, what is in a name?" He continued, looking at her with an emotion she could only
explain as pride.
"Who the hell are you and why the hell
am I here?" She demanded. In the blink of an eye the stranger was gone
and his voice now came from behind her again.
"Well…somebody is just a teensy-weensy bit bitchy
today?" He responded in an amused
manner.
Buffy whirled around again, already growing tired of this
game. She stalked toward him
purposefully. She planned on grabbing
him by the shirt and hoisting him off of the couch he was now sitting on and
beating him until he gave her some answers.
As she got closer he spoke.
"Don't be stupid."
She was right on top of him now and reached for him. Suddenly, he was gone and an iron grip
seized her by the back of her neck. The
hand lifted her up until her feet were dangling helplessly off the ground and
then tossed her gently onto the couch.
Buffy grabbed the back of her neck instinctively and rolled
over to see her attacker. The stranger
stood there completely unfazed. 'This
guy is stronger than he looks' she thought.
"Are you ready to listen now?" He asked, like a father talking to a child he was berating.
Buffy began to curse him but decided that it couldn't hurt to
let him speak while she regrouped her thoughts. She nodded for him to go on.
"Good." He said as
he sat in the chair she had recently awoken in. He smiled at her. The
smile was friendly and warm, but Buffy had learned that a smile could betray a
creature's true intent.
"You are dead." He
began, as if giving a history lecture.
"You sacrificed yourself to save your sister and died from the energy
you faced in the portal if not from the actual fall to the ground."
Buffy's face drained of all color as she realized that his
version of events seemed to jibe with what she thought would happen.
An uncomfortable silence fell upon the pair as he allowed
Buffy to process this information. Her
eyes began to shine as tears pooled in her eyes. Her face reddened as she thought of all the consequences of her
action. Dawn was alone. Her friends were all hurting. She blinked and felt the cool drops run down
her face. Her host noticed this and
decided to keep going to help her keep her mind off these things for now.
"Hey." He added
tenderly, trying to get her attention.
She raised her head slightly to his voice, but could not look towards
him. She looked out the window and
watched the waves crashing as he continued.
"You should know that she is safe now.
Your gift was…very brave indeed."
Buffy turned her head to look toward him, but avoided eye
contact as she wiped her tears.
"My gift huh?
How do you know about that?" She
looked directly into his Aqua eyes with more than a little anger. He looked like a normal human, but was
obviously privy to the higher powers.
His sympathetic expression threw her a little. She wanted to hate someone right now. He looked out the window, maybe trying to
see what she had been looking at, as he spoke.
"I know everything about you." He said flatly. "From
your birth to…well, you know."
"What kind of demon are you?" Buffy's face softened, but her voice held a twinge of pain.
"I'm not a demon."
He was ducking his neck down a little, trying to meet Buffy's eyes, which
were now looking at the floor.
"God then?" She
could almost hear how tired and burnt out she was in her own voice.
"Not a god either."
He paused. "I don't really have
a classification. Most people call me
Thad." He held out his hand over the
glass and steel coffee table which separated the pair. The corner of Buffy's mouth turned up in a
half grin. If the situation hadn't been
so freaky she would have laughed. She
reached out and shook his hand.
"I guess you already know my name?" The comment sounded more a statement of fact
than a snide remark.
"Yes, I do. By the
way…which one of your parents was it that decided on Buffy?" Her jaw moved out a little and her face grew
cold as she remembered how her mother had loved her name.
"Not that I don't like it…" He added quickly. He clucked his tongue and looked to the side
to avoid her cold stare.
"So…" She began,
"Are you going to tell me the secrets of the universe or what?" She was beginning to wonder why she was
here. If she was in heaven, where was
her mother?
Thad chuckled softly.
"I can tell you the secret to life…"
He began. Buffy leaned forward,
now showing a keen interest in his words.
"Don't Die so much!"
Buffy jumped at the raise in his voice, but couldn't help but smile as
he went on a short tirade.
"I mean…what is it with you? Always with the dying!
The master kills you…twice, although I guess that alternate
reality didn't really count but…Ah, it just gets so annoying finding
ways to bring you back!" Buffy's face
now held a confused look as her nose scrunched up trying to figure out some of
the things he was talking about.
"Nevermind that." He
was finally back to reality. "There are
questions you have that I can answer for you, but we don't have much time. I guess we'll skip the boyfriend problem
questions and go straight to the 'Why you are here' portion of the evening."
TBC
