Joyce Summers Greatest Delight.
By James Carmody.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the storylines I'm using in this; Pirates of the Carribean is owned by someone else, as is Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series. I forego any financial remuneration for this work of literary art, and will only accept rightful praise for this work. Thank you in advance. Also, nor do I own the copyright for books such as the Catholic Bible, that having been in the public domain for over a thousand years at least... nor am I Union General Lew Wallace, so I do not own "Ben Hur" and forego any financial gains for using his characters- I hope I get them correct, some more vital than others.
Summary: Years after her death, Mrs. Joyce Summers gets her greatest delight: her kids (including a stepchild of hers) getting along in peace as they watch a movie and some of them indulge in a psychic dream due to their powers.
Genre(s): Family, Friendship, and some others as the story grows, but the theme is family friendship.
Characters/Pairings: Joyce Summers & Buffy Summers & Dawn Summers & Faith Lehane & their friends, as well as some bad friends, such as pirates from PotC showing up here and there.
Author's Story Notes: Inspired by the PotC movie "Dead Men Tell No Tales" this takes place during the Comics seasons, specifically around abouts Season 10 to Season 11, and features them going to see "Dead Men Tell No Tales", then some most peculiar dreams come up to them.
Dream sequences will be clear, as will the other parts of the story, but to be clear, it'll be inverted at the beginning, with the real world being written as if it were a dream, as in italics- to better facilitate the story writing. This may grow into a series, in fact, I aim to do just that! That'll only occur in chapters that involve crossing the storylines, to clarify- the first chapter is a trip to the movies with a twist, after that it has the elements of the crossover.
Warnings include for the story and series: bad boyfriends, namely pirates from time to time, so quirky behavior ahead; be warned.
Pairings between the girls will be chaste in nature, but the pirates will be seductive in their conduct- as the theme of the pirates from PotC show- but the guys will also often be modest, if not in some of their intents, in their behavior.
Imagine how a girl with superpowers could respond to her boyfriend coming onto her if she's not in the mood- that's why if one of those girls gets a pirate boyfriend he'll be inclined to respect her- but that's not the theme. As in all my works involved in this kind of girl, the goal is to show her as a girl, complete with the same interests, objectives, and other things as most girls have- irrespective of whether or not she has any preternatural gifts beyond the ordinary!
This is in answer to the "Joyce In May Challenge" by ACS o c. I hope he likes it (guessing that that person's a he- you can so rarely tell online, but grammar dictates that if in doubt use the masculine, a rule I totally agree with keeping- so I'll fight for it, tooth and nail if I have to!).
Rating: I'd rate this one at a good "PG" or "K+" to be sure; it's darn gentle, modest, and, while it can end up dealing with bad boyfriends in this chapter- the theme is family. Some of the things referenced are far from gentle, however; so Parental Guidence is definitely requested!
Chapter 1: "Movie & Visit from a Ghost."
Beginning Chapter 1 Author's Notes:Yeah, as previously cited, the theme is family and friendship, so it's a love story to be sure- and is to be taken as one... the theme is familial love, nothing less and nothing more, but in just about all its wonder.
"Come on, B! The movie's about to start!" Faith summoned her stepsister, Elizabeth, who was better known as "Buffy"; why she insisted on going by a childlike name was something that Faith didn't get, as due to her own past it had ended up with Buffy being the "head of the house" when Faith's stepmom, Joyce Summers, passed away... just recently Faith had bonded with Buffy, but it seemed that it was reflections on what her mom would've wanted that moved her to do that.
"Coming, Faith." Faith heard from behind her in Buffy's voice; looking backwards Faith almost burst out laughing; there was B, loaded down with concessions for the movie: several large popcorn containers, filled to the brim, some large drinks of soda, Faith guessed, and some candies, probably for Dawnie.
Faith knew it'd be rude to laugh at her stepsister for carrying all those treats however, but she felt strongly tempted to do just that; a look was cast between them, and Faith felt ashamed of her desire to laugh at her sister for this kindness; so she went back to carry at least her own snacks.
Dawnie came up behind their sister, and as Buffy extended her left hand with a bag of candies for Dawn, she snagged them and headed in... interestingly enough, it was Dawn that Faith loved the most of her new siblings.
It was incredibly weird to have gained siblings as a young adult, but that was exactly what those two young ladies had gone through; Dawn was still a minor, but Faith had been adopted by Joyce Summers in her late teens, in fact, she was already eighteen when she'd been adopted- which was even weirder... in fact, as she reflected on her complex relationship with Buffy Summers, she reasoned that the reason they didn't get along for so long was involved in a form of "corporate envy". To be blunt, Faith had been jealous of Buffy, and felt a bit threatened that Liz would steal her preternatural credit for her good actions.
Faith recalled that she *could* have just "summoned" her stepsister, Buffy, via some magic spell- after all, she'd spent a good amount of time seated at the Mayor's side on his couch at his home as he taught her magical rituals and spells, but she also knew that if she did so, it would both go tragically wrong in the worst way imaginable and also would cost her her immortal soul... interestingly, as the "Pirates" movie began and continued, regarding "the murderer of the Sea", "El Matador Del Mar" in Spanish, she found it relaxing, terrifying- especially due to her time as what amounted to an apprentice witch- but also comforting that she'd been rescued from that horror she had been so boldly curious about; little did she know the true monster that lived shrouded within the darkness she was being taken into. A happy tear came to her eye and rolled down her right cheek. Her sister, well, stepsister, to be exact Dawnie, saw her and whispered to her "Is everything okay?" in a most tender voice.
"Sweet little Dawnie..." Faith muttered to herself, and whispered into her ear "Yes, everything's fine... I just... I've had a bad past that is coming back to haunt me a bit; that's all." Faith said, eager to avoid upsetting the teen. It didn't work as well as Faith had intended, not at all; Dawn saw through her facade immediately. Faith had tried to buy her off with a white lie, and it had backfired.
In another level of reality, Joyce Summers, now in Purgatory from her courting of someone else while still technically married, but divorced, saw her stepdaughter Faith taint her very soul, and felt saddened. She'd adopted the teenager as soon as she was able to do so; and had fallen into a form of love with her some months prior to that. She understood why Faith had tainted her soul; she didn't want to upset her stepsister and friend Dawn, but it was still wrong to do; granted, not as disasterously wrong as if she'd tried to control Buffy through a spell (She'd have to have words with her if Faith tried to do *that*!), but it was still wrong. Interestingly, there was another reason for Joyce urgency, so she petitioned the Head of the "Powers that Be" to get permission to aid her adopted child. Her adopted offspring had kept one door closed, but another one had opened, presumably due to the pressure of urgency on the 20-something woman's mind, but oftentimes the doorways that are the most subtle are the most dangerous and most critical to defend... if not held, they can lead to the most horrible conditions in the human soul imaginable!
As the movie played, the girls ate and drank their snacks. As it turned out, Faith was pretty fond of the perspective of the pirates, and could see herself as a girlfriend to some of them- her mind began to take her in that general direction; and she looked forward to dreaming on that kind of trajectory that night. Faith was already playing around in her mind about what it'd be like to have some attractive pirate as a boyfriend- all the goods and bads of that kind of relationship; but here's the interesting thing, as she guessed, Elizabeth Summers was aware of what was going on in her head. Both girls had heard tell of a situation known as "twin telepathy"; here this was a freaky situation similar to that, and, as Buffy had previously surmised to Giles, she and Faith were psychically linked somehow, or telepathically linked, or something of the sort; but it was getting deeper- it was like that freaky dream they'd had when Faith was in a coma, only getting weirder and weirder, as Buffy was now aware what Faith was thinking!
"Telepathy gone bonkers, much?!" the blonde woman wondered to herself; she recalled all her unnerving discoveries she'd made while telepathic, in particular how she'd discovered that her mentor, Rupert Giles, was now her mother's lover- that was way too much for the 20-something blonde woman, even after her own "antics" of "bedroom activities", and it freaked her out a bit- well, much more than a bit, actually, much much more to be clear!
She herself was looking forward to playing around in her mind during her sleep, and wondered how it would go, her dreams, that is; and she hoped she'd dream about this fantasy movie she was watching, as well as that her dreams would be fun... now, she'd had fun, especially dressed up as an eighteenth-century noblewoman, fun till it had turned to a sheer meltdown of all order into a bubbling pot of chaos, that is; and she'd found herself helpless... but there was a certain beauty to that set of disasters; for she'd been inspired to research her predecessors in her lifestyle, and that turned out fun for the blonde. She usually hated research, but something about the "playing dress up" had gotten her teenaged imagination involved in it and that'd helped big time. That research binge had led to other events, like finding out how truly messed up the USSR had been- "Talk about Hell on Earth!" the blonde thought to herself as she recalled how disordered that state had been, oh, it had been an ordered disorder; but if the people themselves are hunted in their own country, then something is fatally wrong with the system of any nation that does that kind of behavior!
Little did she or her friends realize how close they were to uncovering the true, and vile, government of that villainous nation, and it wasn't the politburo of that country, they were mere puppets to the true rulers of that monster-state... it was in fact a different politburo, as Giles had told her, the one that ran, and currently runs Perdition itself! The USSR was in fact a mere colony of that very disordered nationstate of fallen spirits- "that" he had said "is the reason why they denied any reality to the human aside from that of an animal- they didn't want any possible resistance; and untrained resistance is the easiest to beat... if you have to have resistance, that is..." he had gone on, of course, but that got her interested in their mutual ethnic history, the history of England itself. So, she did a bit more digging, and found out some frightening details of the early days of the British Empire during the "Early Modern Era".
What she found out frightened her- oh, it wasn't the details that did so, it was in fact the really dark behavior of her English heritage, especially towards her neighbors.
Silently, Buffy strummed her fingers of her left hand on the hand-rest next to her, as she wondered how- and even if she *should* try to make it up to her newest sister, Faith, for what their ancestors had done- and if so, how? Some of her education told her that she *should* feel responsible for their actions, but her sense of logic told her it was patently and completely ridiculous; how in the world was she accountable for things that had been done hundreds of years before she was conceived, let alone born? How could she have influenced them? It made no sense! Yes, she wanted to be gentle, but to be fined for the offenses of her ancestors was a preposterous idea... she wanted justice, and she didn't want to be an accomplice to stealing by possessing the stolen goods, but how could she return the property or the value thereof? If she had a choice she would, but *could* she? That was the question... bothered by these questions, she tried to return her mind to the movie, but they lingered in her, as did the question of whether or not she herself was some kind of demon due to her gifts. That one had bothered her all along, ever since hearing of the origins of her line.
As the movie progressed to roughly the point where Captain Salazar was slaughtering the captives and Barbossa begs him to back off on the basis of honor, Faith detected Buffy's extremely perturbed state of mind, not quite knowing why this was the case, as Buffy was literally in her "inner room" of her head as she comprehended these matters, she leaned to her right towards her blonde stepsister and put her arm around her shoulders to comfort her.
Joyce meanwhile was turning to preternatural aid for her stepdaughter; interestingly, her distress had already enlisted the aid of another "participant" to sign her petition to be able to visit her family for some matters- but as her own soul... she knew it would frighten them, the First had already visited them earlier in her form, but there were ways she could show that it really was her- even if she wasn't trusted by them again, they'd research and contemplate her messages, she hoped... and as it turned out, this would aid her in getting out of her "prison cell" and get her an early release from her sentence, as a prisoner, interestingly, if she aided someone on Earth to wind up saved from their sins, that would help to engineer her release from her own captivity in the prison of Purgatory. That, above all, was made clear to her as another reason the Judge of the Next World, a Being known in the Narnia books as "Aslan", heartily agreed to allow this visit.
It would indeed be a weird visit, for usually it's those in prison who're visited, not those out of prison by those *in* prison- here in this case, and these cases, it was something totally different.
When the movie finished, Joyce' children, two of them adults, one a teenager, headed out of the theater into the warm early Summer sun that day; it was about noon, and while the older two had jobs to do, the youngest was currently enrolled in College and wanted to read her assignments, for she didn't have class that day, but didn't want to wind up behind in her work.
Faith had managed to get a bit of money stored up to visit her old homeland, the US, and wanted to do some sightseeing, as for Buffy, she herself wanted to get back to work., once Dawn had gotten to her room, she shut the door, laid on her bed, smoothed her skirt out so that she was modest- it was a loose skirt, perfect for the hot weather, but she wanted to be modest right now, and so was mildly afraid that it had ridden up when she flopped down on the bed, so she made sure it hadn't, then reached into her bag beside her bed and started reading her psychology schoolwork. She liked her teacher, liked the teacher a lot in fact; her instructor was a good one, as far as quality went, and, while assigning a good degree of homework, also went over it all in class- which in fact enabled her to focus on her special assignments for extra credit or the special parts of the class- like making sure she got the paperwork right for her research projects and experiments- her top was a loose blouse that was pale-colored, one of the few things about her chosen outfit that wasn't aimed at hot weather was that her hair was down... she was wearing flats on her feet; and felt attractive in that outfit.
"Maybe I should phone Xander and ask him out, perhaps to an ice cream place..." Dawn considered taking her boyfriend out on a date, musing to herself after about a half-hour of steady reading. Then she got an idea: make this romantic attraction a topic in psychology "Why *am* I attracted to Xander?" Dawn wondered out loud, trying to piece together her reasons for her romantic love of Xander Harris. She thought this over, mulling it over and over in her head constantly "It's not just that he's cute, or "hot stuff", or that he's got a job..." she went on and on, running off the things that she liked about him, and what she loved about him, and why she liked, and loved, those things, some she counted off on her fingertips, others she wrote in a small notebook and checked them, but whatever the reason, she realized that she definitely had wife-like feelings for that man. "But *Why*?" she asked herself, still not sure why she felt this intense affection for him; she couldn't figure it out, and that fact was bugging her. Xander didn't seem to resemble her dad, Hank Summers, in any way that she could pinpoint- Hank, she knew, was really a lying, cheating, bad guy, who'd abandoned his sick wife to run off with his secretary- a disgusting act of adultery to be sure, and aside from both being guys and both having jobs she couldn't pinpoint any rational reason for her affection for Alexander Harris, but it definitely was there!
All she knew about that matter was that she was very definitely interested in standing up for him; and deep inside she wondered if this was either DNA shouting its will to her or if this was some "whisper" of a spirit urging her to go to him as a potential mate... what it was, she was completely unsure. ""Powers", not "control", not "urging"" she muttered to herself as it dawned on her- this wasn't remotely any expression of her "Key powers", this was in fact either DNA or the suggestions of some spirit urging her to marry him- if DNA, it'd be more lust than love, but it wasn't any violent or abusing desire, that lent credence to the idea that it was in fact the whispers of a spirit. Dawn herself had had more than enough experience with non-human monsters to know that not all are good; and being Buffy's little sister, and now Faith's as well, she knew she was a valuable hostage- an extremely valuable hostage in fact! ""Threaten her and the baddies can make her big sisters do whatever the baddies want!", or that's how bad-guy logic goes." Dawn mused to herself; little did they know she was more than a match for many of them put together now; but could still be manipulated... and the fact that not all spirits are good is what terrified the teenaged adult- terrified her big time! She'd been present when they learned of the fate of Anni Sonnenblume at the hands of the Politburo's executioners, and how they'd managed to force her to surrender to them- not that it did much good... men that wicked would still do the horrible things they're bought off from; and so they had: the Politburo had, in secret, burned down the villages they'd threatened to eliminate anyway- just to be mean! Of course, they did this after they'd killed both her and her boyfriend, Felix; him they burned, as was their punishment for treason by a political officer, and he knew it too.
Course, their actions had not gone unnoticed, and the brutality the Soviets had performed on some of their unwilling subjects had brought up protests by the Western Powers, protests the Soviets dared not defy- not with US nukes in position to eradicate Moscow at the press of a button if it came to it!
Dawn felt that there was a certain justice there, that they didn't get away with their excessive cruelty, and, while frightened by this, she was glad that they didn't get away with this... her studies of history had taught her too that they learned pretty early on too not to do that, otherwise their skilled workforce would die out and their production, so central to their national defense and their power, would collapse and they'd be overrun... "that being one of the things that controlled them." Dawn calculated; but she was also wondering what to go into in her schooling; however, that was for another time...
In her hotel room some hours later, Faith lay in her pajamas on her tummy, she'd gotten ready for bed all right, and now was trying to get a good night's sleep- hoping to dream about the movie she'd watched, dreaming for the fun of it. The covers were pulled to her head, her brown hair all over the pillow as she laid down resting her head on the soft pillow and tried to sleep, reflecting on her day... she was a perpetual teenager in some ways, and so in some ways, while the oldest of the three, she was also in other ways the youngest of the three now... it was confusing all right, but for the first time in her life she felt safe and secure, nestled in her stepfamily, but something in her didn't trust them, really... she had, however, she remembered, babysat Dawn for pay from Mrs. Summers, and that was fun, as it was bonding with B's younger sister... she remembered babysitting Dawn when she herself was about eighteen, and that had been fun. Sometimes Mrs. Summers had invited her over for a meal as a bonus; but it ended up with her boss being her stepmom, and that was peculiar enough in and of itself!
All in all, all three young ladies had fun that day.
To be Continued...
End Chapter 1 Author's Notes: Folks, this "Judge" I mentioned is *not* the monster from Season 2, He is, in fact, also known (In the Narnia books) as "Aslan", and is also known by another name in Judeo-Christian (especially Christian) religious history- that is the element that's so critical and is connected to both Christian Scripture and also "Ben Hur"... the reason why He showed mercy might well be addressed later on in this, but suffice it to say, that's in His personality to do.
This grew into a far greater crossover than I had intended, and is far from complete, but here's the beginning, and I hope you enjoy it.