The Forgotten
A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fan Fiction
Setting: The prologue and epilogue take place sometime after Season Seven of BTVS. I have yet to read Seasons Eight or Nine of BTVS or seen the last two seasons of Angel so pardon any continuity errors. The rest of the story's settings will mark itself as needed throughout the chapters.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Buffyverse or any of the BTVS characters. I'm merely borrowing them. I promise to put them all back in their rightful places when I'm done.
Prologue
The place was, in a word, thrashed. In two words: majorly thrashed. It had seemed like such a good idea at first, but after being here for the last few days—jetlag aside—it was beginning to feel like a ginormous waste of time.
But time was all they had now that they'd destroyed the Hellmouth. Correction, now that they'd destroyed that Hellmouth, though everyone decided not to think about that little detail for the time being. For now it was footloose-and-fancy-free time.
Until buzz-kill Giles pointed out the importance of completing this mission ASAP. Which, okay it was important and it probably needed to get done sooner rather than later, but still… lame, party of five; your table's ready.
Crash, bang, thud followed by an "ow!" broke through the silence. This occurrence was so commonplace by now that it didn't even startle nor surprise anyone anymore.
"I'm alright, I'm alright! I'm good!" came the near spastic voice of the source of the constant commotion. He was always "alright" or "good" so the others no longer saw the need for the clarification.
"Maybe we should've brought Dawn instead," Kennedy muttered amused, tossing yet another stack of charred, useless papers into a large plastic trash bin.
"Be nice," Willow warned. "We're not exactly in the safest place right now—a bomb did sorta go off and all. Besides, Dawn's got a lot of work to catch up on in summer school."
"You don't see me fallin' all over the place."
"And I'm sure if Xander was a limber full-fledged Slayer he wouldn't be either. Cut him a little slack. It's not like he's gonna accidentally —"
Her words were interrupted by yet another series of loud crashes.
"Uh…" came Xander's uncertain voice. "Should this stuff be moving?"
Kennedy and Willow glanced up at each other before rushing off to help.
Deeper inside the ruins that had once served as headquarters for the Watchers Council, Buffy and Giles were sorting through thick volumes and ancient weapons for anything salvageable. For the weapons, Buffy would test them out, see if they held up, and place the ones that did carefully in padded shipping crates. It was reminiscent of how her mom used to pack up fragile pieces for her art gallery before she died.
She'd been a little distracted thinking about her mom when she whacked a support beam with a double-bladed ax. The larger blade shattered on impact and the smaller blade shot off into the air.
"Oh, Giles, look—!"
The blade embedded itself into the wall about a foot away from her ex-Watcher's head. He looked at the blade then cast a particularly reproachful look at his former Slayer.
"Oops?" she offered, making it a question.
"Perhaps we should set the weapons aside for the time being?" he suggested, gingerly yanking the blade out and tossing it onto Buffy's rejection pile. "I could use your help over here anyway."
She dropped the broken handle into the same pile then moved toward Giles. "This is the last room, right? I mean there aren't any, like, secret bookcase-rotating hidden passageways or anything like that, right?"
"Not that I'm aware of. Though, to be fair, I haven't been back here in quite some time." He grunted as he shoved a heavy oak desk out of his way.
"Good. I wanna get back home. I don't like leaving Dawn alone for so long." Though technically she knew Dawn was perfectly safe with Vi, the big sister in her couldn't help but worry.
"Plus I promised Angel I'd meet up with those mystery guests he's sending my way." She lifted the same oak desk one-handed and tossed it lightly to the side with little effort.
"And he didn't mention who they were or why they're coming?"
She shrugged. "Nope, just that they really wanna meet me. It's weird—it's almost like he's reverting back to his old cryptic-guy ways."
Giles regarded her kindly. "You've heard those rumors about him, haven't you?"
Buffy said nothing for a few moments. "I trust him, Giles. I'm not gonna let some rumor that he's gone all Darth Vader on us change what I know about him. Not until I see for myself."
Giles nodded. "Fair enough."
They worked their way silently together, moving broken furniture and large pieces of plaster out of their path. This was the main council room where meetings took place and the most important archives were kept—mostly dealing with information about the Slayers. Real for-your-eyes-only stuff that had been kept under literal and mystical lock and key.
That is until said lock and key got blown to smithereens by the Bringers a few months ago. Now it was pretty much public domain to anyone willing to riffle through the wreckage for four and a half days straight.
A loud creak followed by an equally loud groaning caught the Slayer's and Watcher's attention. Both tensed, looking for the source of the noise. To be honest, they all had a bet going to see how long this place would hold up before finally falling apart. So far Buffy and Xander were out of the running, both insisting it wouldn't last more than a day, although Xander insisted that Willow was cheating, using her magics to keep the place up so she'd win. Willow was insulted by his accusations, but never really denied them either.
"Don't move," Giles cautioned Buffy in a stage whisper. "It might just be the building settling around us."
But Buffy's sensitive eyes had caught sight of a large crack in the roof's foundation slowly getting bigger and bigger as it crawled over to a huge iron and crystal chandelier miraculously still hanging on for dear life.
Though not for long…
"Sorry, gotta veto that idea!"
Hooking her fingers into the older man's collar, Buffy threw her body back hard, dragging Giles along for the ride. They landed atop a metal filing cabinet with Buffy taking most of the brunt, crumpling it. Overhead, the chandelier crashed to the ground with a savage tremor, shaking the building's remains. The drop zone was exactly where Buffy and Giles had been standing seconds ago.
"Are you all right?" Giles asked, rolling over onto his feet before lowering a hand to help her up.
"Peachy," Buffy groaned, accepting his offer. "Luckily my spine broke my fall. And the cabinet, apparently," she added, surveying the damage. "Hope there wasn't anything important in there."
"Buffy! Giles!"
Willow, Xander and Kennedy scrambled through the entrance, faces all identical expressions of worry.
"You guys okay?" Xander asked.
"Still breathing," Buffy assured them, dusting off the seat of her pants. "Though my dry cleaner's bill just about doubled."
"Now, see, most people in your position would be grateful just to be alive, but not our Miss Glass-Half-Empty Summers, oh no."
"My God… it can't be…"
Everyone turned to Giles. His eyes were focused on the massive fissure the falling chandelier had created. Beyond the split wall was what appeared to be an old stoned archway. Carved into the archway in thick bold letters was the word EFFLUO.
"Huh, I guess there really is a secret behind-the-bookcase room thingy," Buffy observed. "Just minus the bookcase part."
"'Effluo'? 'Forgotten'?" Willow read, looking to Giles for clarification.
But Giles wasn't paying attention to the others. He was already making his way across the debris and through the giant crack. After a quick glance amongst each other, the group all followed after him.
Past the arch was a massive chamber. There were wooden crates stacked floor to ceiling with more Latin words painted on the sides. Beside those were older metal filing cabinets either two feet wide or eight feet tall and newer sleeker models made from chrome and oak.
"Can you say Raiders of the Lost Ark?" Kennedy said, turning a full three-sixty to take it all in.
"Oh great," Xander groaned. "More work. Way to go, Buff," he threw at the blond Slayer.
"Hey, I didn't do this!" she defended. "This was just done! Blame shoddy English workmanship."
"Giles, what is all this?" Willow asked a little awestruck.
Once again it seemed their mentor didn't even notice their presence around him. "I can't believe…never in my wildest…it's real…it actually exists…"
"Uh, Giles?" Buffy prompted, stepping in front of her distracted Watcher. "Sharing is caring."
"Yeah, for those of us who do not possess awesome Professor Xavier style abilities, would ya care to enlighten us?" Xander asked.
It took Giles a few more moments before he was able to compose himself long enough to explain. "This is the Archive of the Forgotten. It houses all the dark secrets of the Council that no man was ever meant to see. It was always sort of a myth—a warning to pass down from the older Watchers to the new ones. Hazing in a sense. None of us actually believed in it."
"So we basically just found the Watcher Council's dirty laundry?" Buffy asked, not the least bit impressed.
"Not at all." He turned to face the others, expression deathly serious. "To be Forgotten means precisely that. You are erased from all records in existence—not only here among the Council, but in the entire world, mystical or otherwise. Birth records, medical histories…everything. You essentially cease to be."
Okay, now that got everyone's attention.
"Can they do that?" Willow asked.
"Again, none of us really believed such a thing existed. It seemed unfathomable to us. Imagine it…what could anyone possibly do to merit such wrath? To be thoroughly expunged from the world?"
He gestured around him with a hand. "These are secrets that the Council believed would harm them. So much so that they felt it necessary to completely eradicate that person or event in question to ensure the secret never got out."
"So I guess it's safe to say none of us have made the list," Xander piped up. "'Cause, check it. Here we be."
"Is it weird to feel kinda honored if I did end up in this archive?" Kennedy said, running a finger across the smooth surface of a random cabinet. "I mean I've got no real love for the Council—or hate for that matter—but I think it'd be kinda cool to think I got under someone's skin so bad they wanna erase me."
"Well, we all saw this a bit differently," Giles said, pulling open the drawer and riffling through the many files inside. "It was told to us as a warning. To be Forgotten was the ultimate shame. There was no greater humiliation for you."
"But I thought you said everybody forgets you," Xander pointed out. "How can you be humiliated and all that if nobody knows who you are or what you've done?"
"Because you will know. The Forgotten and those involved in whatever it is that is to be Forgotten still retain their memories, in most cases."
"Why go through all the trouble?" Kennedy asked, practically. "Why not just kill them?"
"Punishment. Having all of your loved ones instantly forgetting you in the blink of an eye and losing everything you hold dear? Can you imagine a worse fate?"
Kennedy processed that, unconsciously moving closer to Willow as the young Wicca began pulling files out and sifting through the pages.
Meanwhile, Buffy was working her way through an ancient chest—having torn the lid off when it wouldn't open for her—pulling out slabs of rock.
"Giles," she called. "Is this what I think it is?"
Giles came up beside her and peered over her shoulder at the tablet in her hands. It was a crude caveman-style drawing of what looked like a girl being offered to a monster. Below the picture were random symbols that might have been words.
"This is the birth of the Slayer, isn't it?" she asked. "This is exactly what I saw a few months ago—what those weird dudes did way back when to create the first Slayer."
"That is certainly something the Watchers wouldn't want getting out to their Slayers," he said, taking the tablet carefully in his hands, running his fingers over the picture.
"Whoa, check this out," Willow suddenly said, holding a yellowed stack of pages to her nose. The others gathered around her except for Buffy who moved further down the rows of files. "Back in 1909, a Japanese Watcher named Zikomo—after losing his Slayer nine years prior—was caught divulging trade secrets to a vampire who eventually killed him. It was believed he had actually trained this vampire in the ways of the Slayer in the years leading up to his untimely demise."
"That would certain ruffle some Watcher feathers," Kennedy said. "No wonder the guy wound up in here. Traitor."
"What about this?"
They all turned as Buffy came up holding a particularly thick bundle of folders including several leather journals. "There's information here about the Slayer that came right after Nikki Woods and the Slayer that came after her.
"This is weird," Buffy mused, reading further. "From 1977 to 1991 there are only records of these two Slayers. The first, Isabel, died in 1979—two years after she was called—and the other, Natalie, died in 1991."
"1991?" Willow did the math in her head without missing a beat. "That's twelve years later."
"I thought Slayers usually didn't last that long," Xander said soberly. "Present company excluded," he added with a nod to Buffy.
She met Giles's eyes. "If these Slayers were Forgotten then that means they wouldn't show up in regular records and the Watchers' Diaries and stuff. Didn't anybody notice a fourteen year gap in Slayers?"
He frowned. "Well over the years there have been numerous accidents and the like here. This isn't the original location for the Council either. It's probable that some records could be lost though after finding all this," he gestured around them "it's more likely those were all simple excuses."
"Wow," Xander mused, mostly to himself. "If defecting from the Watchers and going all bat-crazy with killing people doesn't get you Forgotten, I wonder what those girls did."
"It certainly begs the question," Giles agreed.
"Only one way to find out."
Buffy settled herself down on the floor, picked up what appeared to be the first journal and began to read.