Spoilers: "Anne" Begins _in medias res_.
Summary: What if Buffy didn't leave hell at the end of "Anne"?
Disclaimer: Buffy, Giles, and all their friends and enemies belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. The only thing I own is my elderly Macintosh computer, which falls prey to periodic bouts of demonic possession. And oh, I own my imagination as well. And my Giles' obsession belongs to me too. I guess I'm actually fairly well off, aren't I?
Author's Notes: This is the first part of a series, one that should eventually encompass the first half of season three. (Assuming my work ethic can live up to my ambition.) It goes AU halfway through this fic, and will remain so for the rest of the series.
This one is for Taryn, who didn't think this idea was as strange as I feared and strongly urged me to write it out. I know I am several months late for your birthday, but the fic I was going to write for you didn't work out. Here ya go...
And oh, thanks to Morrwen for the beta. I'm deeply grateful; I would never have the courage to start a series without the promise of a critical eye to keep me focused.
Buffy was fighting for her life. She was vastly outnumbered and had no reliable allies. Death seemed like the most likely outcome, and Buffy wondered what it said about her that she hadn't felt this alive in months. For the first time since she sent Angel to hell, Buffy didn't want to die. Well, she wasn't going to stay alive up here--that was for sure. Time for a new strategy.
Buffy ran, jumped off the platform, and grabbed hold of a pole as her feet left the platform. The pole wasn't strong enough to hold her weight, but luckily it bent rather than simply breaking. She slid down the pole to the ground and began to run. The ugly bald demon dudes began to chase her, and Buffy had to bite down on her urge to laugh. It wasn't funny, and she couldn't afford to waste her oxygen on giggles right now, but the exhilaration of fighting and running was proving to be a serious high for her.
The high didn't last long, however. When she happened to glance up, Buffy saw Ken on the platform, holding a knife to Lily's throat. Shit. Whether she liked it or not, Lily was her responsibility, and she couldn't let the girl die. She stopped abruptly, and the guards that were chasing her grabbed hold of her arms. They were not gentle.
Ken, weasel that he was, waited until all eyes were on him. Then he spoke loudly and dramatically. "One of you fights... and you all die!" He abruptly pushed Lily aside, and Buffy breathed a small sigh of relief. She tensed up again, however, when she realized that Ken was staring directly at her. "That... was not... permitted."
God, don't let him mean that about killing all of the slaves because of her! Hoping to ensure that all punishments would be reserved for her alone, Buffy gave him her most arrogant grin. "Yeah, but it was fun."
Ken smiled nastily. "You've got guts. I think I'd like to slice you open and play with them." Bingo. He'd forgotten about the others. Before Buffy could begin to gloat, however, Ken held up his knife and scanned the entire cavern. "Let everyone know! *This* is the price of rebellio--"
For half a moment, Buffy was held frozen by shock. It turned out that she did have an ally after all... the very last one she would ever have predicted. Lily had pushed Ken from behind, and he fell screaming all the way down. Buffy shook off her surprise quickly however. She grinned and then gave both her captors backhand punches, one to the groin and the other smack in the face. The fight was back on, but she didn't have time to play anymore. She needed to get Lily out of this place. She jumped into the air and caught hold of a heavy chain hanging from the ceiling. She quickly climbed up to Lily's ledge and then urged the waifish woman to follow her out.
They soon caught up with the six slaves that Buffy had rescued earlier, and found them struggling with a heavy iron gate. Lily gave Buffy a small helpless look and whispered, "They'll be coming."
Of course. It was down to her again. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, Buffy was starting to feel tired and sore, but it didn't look like there was a helluva lot of choice here. Silently, Buffy crouched down and took hold of the gate, bracing her legs and back for a very heavy lift. For a long moment, Buffy wondered whether she could actually do it, but slowly the gate began to rise up. Buffy couldn't hold back a grunt, so she started to talk to herself, hoping to prevent more unladylike noises from escaping. "Okay... this... works... the abs... and... the glutes." As she heard herself letting out another grunt, Buffy found herself praying that she wouldn't have to do this for too much longer. Luckily, Lily proved more alert than Buffy would have guessed, and she started to wave to the others to crawl underneath the partially opened gate. It didn't take long for all seven of them to scramble to the other side.
When they were all through, Buffy breathed to herself, "I'm gonna feel this for a week!" Now for the tricky part: figuring out how to get herself through without letting the gate fall on her. This quandary was solved, oddly enough, by Ken. He tackled her from behind, pushing her clear of the gate. A scream of pain from behind her suggested that Ken wasn't so lucky. Buffy rolled onto her hands and knees and then turned to look at the demon. She couldn't help but grin when she saw that the bars of the gate had impaled themselves through the bastard's legs. And looky! He lost his club...
As Buffy walked towards Ken, he shot her a look of pure hatred. "You've *ruined*-- You–"
Buffy wanted to smirk, but she was too exhausted to mold her features into the appropriate facial expression. Being Buffy, however, she wasn't too tired for a taunt, though. "Hey, Ken, wanna see my impression of Gandhi?" She gave him a second to respond, and then smashed Ken's club into his skull. The brains squished out beautifully.
Buffy had forgotten that Lily was still there, until she heard the girl's soft voice asking, "Gandhi?"
Buffy shrugged. "Well, you know, if he was really pissed off."
Lily was silent for a moment, and then said, "They all got out okay. The others, I mean. They didn't want– I mean, I couldn't make them wait for you."
"That's okay," Buffy murmured. And it was. They were poor, scared, hungry kids, who ran from a bad situation at home to a worse situation on the streets. When they tried to make things right for themselves, they fell into hell. She didn't blame them for wanting to get back to the questionable security of the streets. She just wished that she could have helped more of them. There were so many of them who needed help...
Buffy's introspective brooding was interrupted by Lily's quiet voice. "Anne," she whispered, "do you think that you could help me up? And then you could jump up by yourself, since you're super strong and all."
Buffy shook herself. "Oh, right." As she braced herself to pick up Lily, however, she realized that this *wasn't* right, not at all. "Wait! I can't– I can't do this."
Lily's big blue eyes widened even more from a combination of fear and surprise. "What do you mean? Do we," she gulped and then lowered her voice. "Do we have to stay here."
"No," Buffy said firmly. "*We* don't, but *I* do. We saw hundreds of people working down here, perhaps thousands, and who knows how many more there might be. I can't just leave all of them down here." Lily started shaking her head helplessly, and Buffy grabbed the girl's hands to steady her. "Lily, you heard what Ken said. If one person fights, then everybody pays for it. I can't just go on my merry way knowing that I've sent hundreds of kids to their deaths. And even if these demons don't kill them, they'll still be used for slave labor until they are too old and weak to work any more. If I leave now, I'll be condemning all of those people to hell."
Lily looked like she wanted to cry. Buffy didn't think that fragile girl would hold it together, but somehow she did. "But there's so many of them. And they're so mean. Do you really think you can do this?"
Buffy wasn't certain at all; she just knew that she had to try. But she didn't want Lily to fall victim to her doubts; she couldn't afford that right now. "I just beat a ton of bad guys by myself, didn't I? Well," Buffy added with a kind smile, "almost by myself. Now I'll be freeing kids and teaching them to fight beside me, so it will be easier."
Lily looked scared. "But–"
"No buts," Buffy said firmly. "I've just shown hundreds of helpless slaves that these demons aren't invincible; *this* is the time to organize! If I don't do it now, it won't ever get done. I *need* to stay here. I need to do this. And I need to do it now."
"Okay," Lily breathed. "Do you want me to stay with you? I know that I'm not good at stuff, but maybe I could help a little..."
Buffy grinned. This girl was actually starting to grow on her. "I'm sure you could, Lily, but I need your help with something else. I need you to go back to my room and find my purse. Inside you will find a little address book. I need you to call Giles--G. I. L. E. S–and tell him to come to LA right away. Like yesterday. He needs to bring stuff with him so that he can do a spell and seal off that portal. There isn't a lot of use saving people if those creeps come back after us." Lily looked terrified; obviously that possibility hadn't occurred to her. "I'm thinking that it will take me a few months to do this, which will be like minutes in our reality. Give Giles the name and address of the mission, and then come back to wait for me. I'll be out as soon as I can."
Buffy spent the next few minutes alternating between reassuring Lily about her plan and drilling the somewhat dim girl in the message for Giles. By the time she finally hoisted the other girl through the portal Buffy was exhausted. The Slayer decided to take a few moments to catch her breath before she tackled that gate again. Unfortunately, that gave her time to think, and to ask herself if she really knew what she was doing.
One girl, taking on an entire hell dimension, all by herself. What was she thinking? But ... was this really any different from her "one girl in all the world" gig? And maybe she could find helpers here, allies, like Willow and Xander. Those names sent a pang through her heart, and Buffy choked back a sob. Now that Lily had reminded her of who she really was, she longed to see her friends again.
But she wasn't just Buffy Summers, she was also the Slayer, and she couldn't walk away and leave these people to their fates. When she had tried to avoid getting involved with Lily and Rickie's problems, Lily had said, "But you help people. That's what you do." Yeah, it was what she did, and now that she remembered that, she couldn't make herself forget. With a groan, Buffy pulled herself off the ground and started towards that damn gate.
That was when she heard it. A "whooshing" sound from behind her. Buffy swung around, and saw that the portal to her world was closing up. She watched in horror as the black pool disappeared altogether, and was replaced by bare rock, indistinguishable from the rest of the cave ceiling.
Ken's slimy voice echoed in her ears, "Uh, interesting thing: time moves more quickly here than in your reality. A hundred long years will pass here. On Earth, it's just a day." Suddenly, the full weight of the disaster suddenly hit her: there was no going back. She was stuck here. Her natural optimism railed against this pronouncement, but the strategist in her knew that it was true. Even if Giles managed to reopen the portal (and that was a very big if), it probably wouldn't do her any good. It took well over three hours to get to Los Angeles from Sunnydale, and that wasn't allowing for traffic. Or for Lily's flakiness. Given the unreliable nature of the Gilesmobile, and Giles' sketchy knowledge of magic, she might be dead of old age before he ever found her. Best case scenario; she would lose years of her life, perhaps decades.
Her altruism had just cost her everything. She wanted to scream her anguish to the heavens, even though she wasn't sure that she could be heard up there now that she was in hell. She wanted to run through every obscenity she had ever heard until her voice gave out. She wanted to cry until her eyes were too sore to remain open. She wanted to lay down and wait for death.
In the end, she did none of these things. If she was stuck in hell for the rest of her life, then she needed to make this sacrifice mean something. She needed to go free some slaves and start building an army. Since they could never go back, she needed to find people who would make life down here worth living.
But most of all, she needed to go kick some demon ass. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was back in action, and those bastards were going to pay.