Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Mutant Enemy and Twentieth Century Fox Television. This story is intended for entertainment purposes only and no copyright infringement is intended.
AN: This is a revamp (no pun intended) of a story I wrote many years ago in an old BtVS newsgroup. Filler for the Season 3 episode "Anne" to explore Buffy's thoughts and what prompted her to finally go home to Sunnydale. I recently found it again when I acquired a USB floppy drive and remembered that I'd written this about two weeks before the launch of this site. (Yes, it's THAT old because I wrote it just after the episode aired.) I did some editing to it to make it more presentable.
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Not No One
I'm no one. Those words that the evil Ken had beaten into the heads of his "workers" kept ringing through Buffy's ears repeatedly as she lay in bed trying her damndest to sleep. That was a surefire way to bring on the nightmares again. "Great," she muttered as she flung the covers off and padded barefoot to the kitchen sink to get a drink of water. She couldn't help thinking of the poor lost souls that Ken had lured into his demon dimension and their utter hopelessness in believing him when he told them they were no one. How could anyone sink that low?
Hypocrite, she scolded herself. Isn't that why you ran away from home? Because you felt that hopeless? She made her way into her tiny bathroom, snapped on the light and squinted slightly as she glanced at herself in the mirror. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she really looked at herself and it occurred to her just how old she looked for only seventeen, dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, her skin pale and as an added bonus, a fresh bruise from her fight with Ken's minions on the upper part of her left arm. "Story of my life," she grumbled. "Good thing this slayer gig means I heal fast." She wondered if being the slayer by itself was making her old before her time or if it was just her inner turmoil at work.
She let out a deep sigh as she gripped the edge of the sink wishing that her slayer powers could heal the pain in her heart as easily as they did her physical injuries. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she could easily have become like one of those other teens that she'd rescued from Ken's clutches. Her despair when she'd left Sunnydale had been so complete that she'd thought she might never be happy again. If Ken had found her when she'd first arrived in town, she might have suffered the same fate as poor Ricky. He'd literally grown old before his time, looking like an old man on his death bed when she'd found him in the LA streets whispering those haunting words, "I'm no one."
"What am I gonna' do?" she asked her reflection. She'd come to LA, back to where it had all started, thinking that if she could get back to her roots, be reminded of happier times before that fateful day when Merrick had come to her telling her of her calling, she'd find some sense of herself again, some happiness. No, not happiness, that was the wrong word...more like peace. Had it really only been two years since that had happened? Two years since she'd been young and carefree and she had to admit, a bit shallow. To the outside world she was still young and carefree, but they didn't know that she carried the weight of the world on her young shoulders. She'd tried so hard to suppress that side of herself these two months that she'd been here, hadn't engaged in one single fight, had ignored what she knew was really going on in the city and how many of the "unexplained murders" could be readily explained if only people would open their eyes a bit. She'd tried too hard to get away from all that, but Ricky and Lily had pulled her right back in.
She recalled vividly all the reasons she'd left her home and began to recount them in her mind. One, her sister slayer, Kendra, murdered in cold blood by Drusilla. She swallowed hard as she felt a bit of guilt over that one. Why hadn't she thought to tell Kendra of Dru's powers of mind control? Two, accused of Kendra's murder and wanted by the Sunnydale PD. A second wave of guilt washed over her. She didn't kill Kendra as the police thought she had, but she was still responsible. She'd known that Kendra, so unlike herself, was a by-the-book slayer, no friends, no family, no emotion, just the hunt. Being the slayer had been her whole life and now it was over. Maybe if Buffy had told her what Dru could do, she'd have been able to fight her off better. While Kendra believed her lack of attachments meant that there was no sentimentality, thereby making her a better warrior, it had also left her mind open for Dru's invasion.
Three, expelled from school by a way-too-gleeful Principal Snyder. She snorted at the thought of his name and how fitting it was. He certainly had the snide part down with his taunting her before he'd expelled her. "You do know this is a crime scene, don't you? But then...you're a criminal..." Of course she'd argued that she wasn't guilty and that the police had to eventually figure that out. She did have to admit that he'd made a fair point about the collective stupidity of the Sunnydale police force before those fateful words were uttered. "These are the moments you want to savor. You wish time would stop so that you could live them over and over..."
She shook her head and continued. Four, Mom knows. No, there was more to it than that...and worse. Her mother not only knew how she spent her nights now, but was repulsed by it. Buffy would never be able get that image out of her mind; the expression of utter horror and terror on her mother's face when she'd unwittingly witnessed her dusting a vamp right in front of her. Then once the shock had died down, courtesy of Jack Daniels, she'd done what so many other residents of Sunnydale did; tried to explain it away by saying that she, Buffy, needed help, even going so far as to blame her lack of a strong father figure and asking her if she'd tried NOT being a slayer. "If you only knew, Mom," Buffy sighed.
You walk out of this house, don't even think about coming back, Joyce Summers' words echoed in her ears. She cringed. A couple of months had passed now. Had her mother had time to deal? Maybe had time to talk to Giles and really learn what was what? Did her mother miss her? Could she go home again? That's what all those lost kids didn't have that she did. She DID have a home to go to. The question was, was she welcome there? She supposed she wouldn't know unless she asked.
Five, Angel. There was the big one. The love of her life, her first and only lover. God, there was so much to deal with there. He'd turned and it was her fault. One moment of weakness, one night of reckless passion and the man she'd loved had been turned into a monster at her hands on the night of her seventeenth birthday. He'd killed people and she was just as responsible for every one of those deaths as he was. She'd caused him to turn and she hadn't been strong enough to take him out when she first had the opportunity. But that was done. She'd run a sword through his heart and sent him straight to hell.
She felt the tears welling up again as she thought of that moment. How for a brief moment, he'd been...well, him again, Angel, not the evil Angelus, telling her that Willow's spell to restore his soul had worked. She'd taken refuge in his strong arms again, the only ones really strong enough to hold her with her innate physical strength. His whispered "I love you," still haunted her because she'd known as soon as she'd seen the vortex opening behind him exactly what she had to do. The fate of the world had to come first. She couldn't be selfish, not again. Her selfishness had been what had started all the chaos in the first place.
She blinked back the tears, refusing to let them fall. She knew deep down this was the reason that she was still having the nightmares. It wasn't just his words that were haunting her. It was as if he was haunting her himself from whatever hell dimension he'd landed in when she'd closed the portal. Was that possible? Could his mind reach into hers across dimensions? If that were possible, could he somehow come back? That could be possible, right? What if her dreams weren't just your average, everyday dreams, but more of the prophetic dreams...or visions...or whatever you wanted to call them that were a part of the slayer legacy. Maybe they were trying to tell her that it was possible, that Angel would come back. After all, hadn't she just escaped Ken's dimension and helped others to escape as well? It was possible, right?
If that were true, it would have already happened, she told herself glumly. She'd never had the same prophetic dreams repeatedly for months. It was always something that was coming soon, not this two-month long trek of her brain imagining what hell Angel was in and what he might do to her in retaliation if he escaped. No, this was her own guilty conscience at work. The thought of hell dimensions brought her right back to where her thought train had begun: Ken. He was toast now, but she still couldn't help wondering how he'd had such a profound effect on so many people, convincing them that they were "no one."
Liar, she inwardly bitched at herself. You'd have been right there with them two months ago. Instead, when he'd asked who she was, she'd answered in her normal chipper, sassy tone used when confronting her enemies, "I'm Buffy, the vampire slayer...and you are?" Then it was on, like a live version of an action movie and Ken and his cronies were history.
Her mind back on the present, she affirmed, "No, Ken, I'm not no one." She had a mother, a watcher and friends who loved her unconditionally. Even Xander, who'd hated every minute that she ever spent with Angel had had her back in the end when he'd gotten Giles out of Angel's lair and had even helped her a bit in the fight. It was time to go back to them, no matter what may happen. If she was still wanted for Kendra's murder, she'd deal. If she was still expelled, she'd deal. If her mom was still angry, she'd deal. As for Angel, well, that was another story. She had a long way to go to deal with that one, but first things first.
She turned to switch the light off and caught sight of her waitress uniform hanging on the back of the door. She glanced at it and as she ran her fingers across the name tag bearing her middle name, a thought struck her. "Lily." There was a poor lost soul that she could do her part to keep from becoming the "no one" Ken had wanted her to be. She'd rescued her once in Sunnydale when the girl was calling herself Chantarelle, and again tonight. What was one more rescue? That was a slayer's job, right? To save people? She nodded and with that decided, she finally snapped off the light and climbed back into bed, drifting off into the first restful sleep she'd had in months.