Summary;
Buffy Summers split up with Pike and moved to Sunnydale. Or did
she?
Spoilers; late season 5
Ra; PG; PG Some Buffy/Pike
voyeurism
Disclaimer; all these characters belong to Mutant enemy
productions and this is a non profit work
Distribution; as you
like
The Class of 1992
The world turned.
The
ancient Greeks believed that our lives literally hung by a thread,
that the three fates, Clotho the maiden, Lacheis the mother and
Atropos the crone spun this thread. One would spin our births, one
weave our lives and one to cut the thread in death. Even Zeus, the
King of the Gods could not overrule their decree.
But sometimes,
just sometimes, the thread would unravel on its' journey. And then
things got interesting.
Buffy stretched out in her
seat, craning her neck around to check her children. Pandora and Ben
were asleep at last, their mouths still smeared with about a kilo of
chocolate. They looked so cute, the streetlights glinting softly off
the crosses around their necks. She turned back around, peeling off
the jacket of her Armani business suit as she did so. She had always
thought being a buyer would involve lots of clothes but not this
sort. She caught Pike giving her cleavage a sly glance and playfully
imitated the theatrical disrobing of a stripper.
"Eyes on the
road, hotshot"
"Buff, this car virtually drives itself"
He removed his hands from the wheel of the people car for for a
moment to prove his point
"That's what you said about your
bike before you crashed"
"Hey, I'm still in one
piece"
"You are?" she fingered the ragged seams of
his battered leather jacket. She should really get him new one but it
had a lot of sentimental value. "Where are we anyhow? Almost
home or miles to go before we sleep?"
"About an hour
from L.A. Little town called Sunnydale"
"Never heard of
it"
She doubled up, her laptop shooting forward onto the
floor. The pains shot through her stomach and abdomen, pains she
hadn't felt in nine long years, even in childbirth.
The nightmare
had returned.
"STOP THE CAR!"
Buffy
swept her arm in an anti-clockwise arc, blocking the blow. She struck
back, punching through the parry and carrying on right througe rie
ribcage until the stake hit the air on oth other side. The vamp
disintegrated as she twirled around to face his comrades.
Too
many.
Too damn many. Not enough weapons, no back up. Three hours
to sunrise. She was cornered. She was tired. She was...
Dead.
But
then she always had been. She had long ago resigned herself to dying
in some godforsaken alleyway, alone, unsung. Home, career, family, it
wasn't for her. She was the Slayer.
Death was her gift.
And
life. Life for Dawn. And Willow, and Xander. And everyone else. Every
fiend she killed meant a hundred long and happy lives, a hundred
chances for the good people of the world to laugh, marry and grow old
together. It was a good trade.
Because it wasn't about slaying.
It
was about saving.
She looked at the vamps, clamouring to get at
her, each eager to make their name by killing a Slayer. If death was
her gift it was time to play pass the parcel.
She decided to go
out in style.
"C'mon boys, ashes to ashes, dust to
dust!"
Buffy splintered the white picket fence
with a single kick, catching a particularly large, jagged piece in
her hand. She didn't stop, didn't hesitate, effortlessly kicking off
her high heels as she ran towards the vamps who had cornered the girl
in the corner of the alleyway.
She stuck the first one in the
back, the fiend never knowing what hit it...
To her amazement it
crumbled into dust.
She stopped and looked the pile of ashes,
utterly dumbstruck.
The other vamps turned on her, snarling and
baring their fangs.
She got over it. Quickly.
Buffy didn't know who this blonde dame was but she sure was a useful distraction. The vamps were flanked now, fighting on two fronts and the pair of humans were cutting through them like a hot knife through butter. The hunter had become the hunted in the blink of an eye.
It had been too long. She had forgotten the
sheer exhilarating joy of it, breaking fingers, smashing faces,
dodging, striking, stabbing, killing.
Surviving.
It was over
too soon. Over in a flurry of blows and kicks, of sweat and blood.
One last vamp, fleeing for his unlife, running terrified into the
night like so many of his victims. She moved to chase him but he had
run into a dead end, scrabbling desperately at the wall in an attempt
to climb it. Buffy leapt forward to finish him before the obvious
occurred to him.
Buffy nailed him with a single stao
tho the heart. It was good throw, over ten feet in distance and
avoiding the nice lady from Wall Street who had saved her ass, by a
good three inches. She had stopped in her tracks as the vamp crumbled
and stood staring at the pile as a breeze blew the ashes away.
Strange how that always happened. Such a cliché.
Buffy
took the woman by the arm. She seemed in shock but then discovering
that things you only thought of in horror movies were just around the
corner often did that to you. She gazed at her with a sympathetic
tilt of the head.
"You okay?"
Buffy turned to the
young girl holding her elbow and stared at her, puzzled. "Why
didn't he just fly over the wall?"
Buffy let her arm go
"Huh?"
"The vampire. Why didn't he just
fly?"
"Watched too many bad movies", thought
Buffy.
"And since when do they crumble into dust?" Buffy
asked. She'd always thought that was something that only happened in
the movies.
Buffy shrugged "Don't ask me, that's Watcher
territory".
Dawning realisation hit Buffy. "You're the
Slayer!" She looked at the girl with fresh interest. She seemed
so young but then so had she been. Merricks' rcemecement must have
selected a new Slayer when she and Pike had taken off. So much for
one dies, one is called. But then no one had ever said there could
only be one at a time.
"So", thought Buffy, "She
knows what's what".
"I think it's time for
introductions..." She held out her hand.
"Of course"
Buffy took her successor's grasp, "I'm...
"Buffy..."
"Summers"
There
was a moment of silence.
"You okay?" Pike
opened the door for her. She was glad the kids hadn't woken.
"I'm
okay"
"What happened?"
"Vamps"
"CHRIST!
I thought we killed them all!" He fingered his neck cross
nervously.
"Guess we missed a few. Let's go"
Pike
hesitated. "Buff, if there are vamps here...?"
Buffy
smiled "That's okay, I think this town is in good hands"
As
they drove off she looked back at the lonely blonde figure shrinking
in the rear view mirror.
The chill remained with her long after
the figure had disappeared.
Buffy watched the people
carrier go. She tried to reconcile the events of tonight but it made
her head hurt too much. Maybe Giles would be able to make sense of
it.
Maybe the sunrise would cure her of the feeling that someone
had just walked over her grave.
And stop her wondering what might
have been.
The world turned, the thread spun.
Bufy
Summers walked back to her late mothers' house in Sunnydale, to her
beloved sister Dawn, asleep in front of the television, awaiting her
return. Later she would call her friends, Willow, Xander, Tara, Anya.
She would drop by the magic shop and see her Watcher, Giles. She
would shop, gossip and train for the trials to come.
Buffy
Summers, an only child, slept as her husband, Pike, drove her home to
her fairytale cottage in the Hollywood hills. There she would put her
children to bed and prepare for the board meeting later that day and
dinner party that night. She would phone her mother and father, Joyce
and Hank, to take care of their grandchildren during the party. She
would never encounter another vampire.
The threads divided. They
would never meet again.
