Hello, all! This is actually the first ever Buffy fanfiction. I've never written one before and it's been a long time since I've seen them in order, so some of this might not be cannon. Most of it will be sorta... AU tinged with cannon in that the events are the same but the people there are not. Dig it!

Peace, Love, Sunshine, and Death Glares

Preface- Merry Meet (Even for Vampires)

Emily Gable was perfectly content to remain among the few in Sunnydale High School who never changed their routine. She wanted nothing more to graduate and disappear, preferably into the great unknown that was death. She honestly felt that she had nothing left ahead of her except for death. She felt she had no purpose left.

But, her life had yet to truly begin.

When Rupert Giles had gone to pick Emily up from Los Angeles, specifically the LAPD precinct building, he'd been expecting a small amount of the smiley, sunshiney girl he'd once known. He expected her to crack a smile once in a while, trying to reassure him that she was fine. What he'd found was much, much worse. Emily had already begun the slow process of burning up from within. She didn't crack so much as a cheeky grin on the way to Sunnydale. She was wearing the baggy black jeans and black t-shirt of her ex-long-term-boyfriend, and hadn't bothered with the idea of cleaning the dirt and blood from her face. It had been the day after the... incident, and Giles hadn't been expecting much. Emily hadn't even met those expectations.

He honestly didn't know what was the most unnerving about her; the fact that she went out at night like a true bad ass, or the fact that she was so calm and quiet that he could believe she really was a bad ass. He had known his sister, Melinda Giles, had told her about vampires, werewolves, and the like, but he had no idea that she had been trained to defend herself until she dumped a bag full of stakes onto her bed, waiting in silence for the outburst of rage that would send her to an orphanage.

It had never come.

Giles had tried everything possible to get her to say even one word to him. He'd set Buffy and Willow on the girl, left her alone in the same room with Xander and Angel. He'd even gone so far as to force her to listen to the BeeGees, which he knew she despised. Every time; nothing. She'd simply get up and leave, without saying a word of where she was going or what she was doing.

It was another one of these failures that sets our stage.

"Emily; where on earth are you going at this late hour?" Giles shouted, hoping against hope for a reply. It was his custom to shout it, hoping one day that she'd be annoyed enough to reply. All he got was the passive report of the door crashing closed before she was gone.

Emily secretly fumed within her mind, wishing she had the strength and courage to shout at her uncle that it was none of his business. However, she knew that if she so much as opened her mouth she would tell him everything. She didn't need to be the poster child for the tortured and traumatized; she'd seen enough of her own blood on the walls of her house in L.A. She had enough time to consider her options while she stared at her reflection in the glassy dead eyes of her mother, father, brother, and sister. Even when her ex-boyfriend and best friend had pulled her out those four short years ago, she hadn't said a word. She'd given a statement to the police in a monotone, never using an ounce of inflection. She hadn't looked away from the ring on her right ring finger that once belonged to her father.

As all the memories of the LAPD interrogation room finished flicking around inside her head, she caught the sound of a breaking stick and the rustle of leather on denimn. Her hands snaked their way cautiously to the stakes concealed at her waist as she sensed a presence descend upon her. Anger rose within her at being disturbed on her short walk to the liqour cabinet that was the Bronze. All she wanted was to get trashed one last time before her senior year began and she had to be sober for fear of slipping up.

Sorry but I want to die, not become someone's meal.

She almost cracked a smile at the thought before she whorled around, her hands never leaving the waistband of her jeans.

He was the most beautiful man she'd ever seen. His long, peroxide blonde hair, so reminiscent of the golden age of rock that was Billy Idol, curled delicately around his face, damp as it was. His long, leather duster clung to him in all the right places, revealing wiry muscles in his arms that she had no doubt he would try to use to pin her to the ground and drain her dry. Yes, even though he was beautiful, she knew he was a vampire. His luminescent skin gave it away, as did the golden tint in his eyes. It didn't help that she had seen him just last year, although he'd been in a wheel chair at the time.

"Most little girlies would have screamed by now, or at least asked who I was," he said darkly, his south London accent sounding almost fake to Emily's unaccustomed ears. "It's a mite rude to not speak to someone you 'appen to be starin' at."

Emily said nothing, simply drew the stake from her belt and pointed it at him.

"What are you? A mute? I'm not going to kill you, if that's what you think. I may be a vampire, but I got morals," he said darkly.

That gave her a moment of pause. She knew it was dangerous to have one of those around a vampire, but she couldn't help it. She hadn't expected him to tell her he wouldn't kill her. They should have been fighting already; she had come out of the starting gates ready and willing to dust something, after all.

"I'm not a mute," she said, her voice cracking from long years of non-use. It was still its old, familiar high soprano, despite her dark appearance and dyed hair, which were all ploys to attract vampires ripe for the dusting.

"It speaks," he said with a smile. "Name's Spike. What's yours?"

"Emily."

Ok. Shortest chapter of the whole thing out of the way. The shortest after this has 2, 528 words. Muah hahahahahaha. Thank you for reading, please review! Pretty please? I mean, uber pretty please?

Night