Authors Note; This story already exists in eight chapters on the Elysian Fields site, but for those who wish to read it without the distracting gifs, I decided to put it up here, as well. I'll be adding all the already existing chapters over the next eight days, so everyone can get caught up for when I post the ninth and following ones.
Full Summary; When Buffy returns from her summer vacation with her father, she is forcefully drawn out of the depression she's been in since the Master killed her a few months earlier, when a new evil begins to put its spell on the inhabitants of the school above the Hellmouth. New faces are introduced and the story turns AU from the first paragraph. Also, so there's no confusion, this entire thing is NOT set in Sunnydale, California, but in Cleveland, the other American Hellmouth from canon. Reasons for that will be made clearer as the story moves along.
A past that comes back to haunt you is trying to tell you something. Will you learn from it or repeat mistakes for a worse result?
"Honey, I'm just worried about you. Your dad said you've been acting weird all summer. Are you sure you're okay?" Joyce asked her daughter as she parked outside the high school.
Buffy shook her head and put a fake smile on her face. "I told you I'm fine, mom. Just first day jitters, I guess. Y'know, being back after so long and everything?"
Joyce sighed, not sure she believed her. "Okay, sweetie, if you're sure. I'll see you tonight, okay?"
"Yeah, mom, see you." She said, distracted, as she got out of the car and slammed the door shut.
She moved as if in a daze, making her way into the school and through the halls. She missed the whispers coming from the cheerleaders, the snide look from Cordelia and Harmony, and the lusty stares of the football squad. Seeing nothing but the image in her head.
An ancient Vampire with a bat-like appearance.
She could almost taste the sewer water in her mouth, feel it running down her throat and into her lungs, as she lay still in the caves below the small town she lived in. Her arms started shaking and she forced herself to repeat the mantra in her head that she had thought of all summer long.
I'm fine.
She sighed and moved into her first class of the day, prepared for an hour of not paying attention as the teacher droned on about a subject she could care less about.
The world could end at any moment and she would be the one person who could stop it; what did she care about trivial things like geometry, history and science?
She placed her head in her right hand and closed her eyes half-way, trying to still look like she was paying attention, while being able to focus on something else entirely. There was someone who wasn't going to let her do that, though, and it wasn't the teacher.
"It doesn't help, y'know," a voice spoke from her left.
Turning her head, she saw a brunette girl in a cheerleading uniform. She sighed and rolled her eyes, wondering what kind of barb this particular Cordette would come up with. "What?" She asked, prepared for the snide words that would soon come.
"What you do. It doesn't help. Not in the end." She was still looking ahead, at the blackboard.
Buffy's brows furrowed. "Okay, I have no clue what you're talking about."
The cheerleader suddenly turned to her. "You will."
Buffy's head flew up from the table and she realized she'd fallen asleep. One look to the left showed her an empty desk and she frowned, wondering what was going on. And then she heard the whispers around her.
Looking up at the front of the room, she saw a piece of white chalk flying around on its own, spelling a word on the blackboard.
Soon.
"While I'm sure it is indeed something mystical, there really is no cause for alarm, Buffy. We will deal with it when it hits us, as we always do. For all we know, it's just someone causing a bit of mischief during class."
She thought of her classmate, Amy, whose mother had been a powerful Witch, and realized that anything was possible when you attended Hellmouth High. Sighing, she nodded in response to her Watcher and tried to put the incident out of her mind.
It had really freaked her out.
Her and her friends were gathered in the library, after school hours, helping Giles study up on some evil; nothing new there. But Buffy wasn't the researching type; she was the Slaying type, hence the title added to her name when she was fifteen.
She got bored quickly and excused herself, claiming the need to stretch out her sore muscles.
Though Giles surely must've seen right through her, he let her go, telling her to be back in ten minutes, ready to keep going. She swallowed a groan and made her way up the stairs, toward the stacks.
She just wanted to get lost for the moment.
Walking down the many rows of books, she began to feel as if she wasn't alone. An inner sense, if you will. Her brows furrowed and she stood completely still, trying to figure out why her innate Slayer radar was going haywire.
And then she heard it.
Whispers, coming from all around her.
"What is this place, haunted?" She spoke quietly to herself, deciding to investigate instead of going back for the others.
She moved further into the deep back of the library; a place much bigger than most first impressions showed. Zigzagging in between bookcases here and there, she eventually ended up far enough away that she could no longer hear the low murmur of her two friends and Watcher.
But the whispers were still there, as low as they had been two minutes ago, further back.
Weird.
And then she forgot all her experience as a Slayer; forgot her endless battles and hardened heart. For the first time since she was fifteen, she screamed like a little girl.
And then rolled her eyes at her reaction.
"What are you?" She said, not quite capable of hiding the tremor in her voice.
She had turned the corner of yet another bookcase and found herself face to face with a familiar, yet unfamiliar, man. Who had died several months ago.
"How dare you question me, after what you did?" He said in his normal voice, the only sign of his death being his severely mauled upper body and face, claw marks deep in his skin.
Buffy stepped back, slowly. "What I did? What are you talking about? Seriously, what are you?"
Her mind contemplated the possibilities, zombie, hallucination, shapeshifter, as she continued to back away from the unknown entity.
"You know what you did, young lady, and it is time for you to pay."
With those words, she decided to turn tail and run, not willing to fight something she didn't understand. She hated going in blind. But as she made her way back to the main room, she quickly realized that the thing remained one step behind her with each passing second.
"Giles!" She hollered when she came close enough that she knew he could hear. "Weapons!"
She pushed herself faster, finally making it to the others, vaulting herself over the stairs and catching the sword that her Watcher threw her. It all took a matter of seconds, and she turned to wait for the creature.
But it never showed.
After six agonizing minutes, Buffy dropped the sword down to her side and sighed, turning to her Watcher. "He was there, I swear." She muttered to herself. "I'm going insane, that's gotta be it."
Giles cleared his throat, cleaned his glasses, and walked closer to his charge. "Exactly who was it, Buffy? And I assure you, you are not insane. This is the Hellmouth, after all." He said, awkwardly patting her shoulder a few times.
"Yeah, Buffy, Giles is right. So, who was it?" An intrigued Willow leaned forward, expectant smile on her face.
The blonde looked suddenly insecure and worried, but answered them anyway.
"Principal Flutie."
No one spoke.
The evening was dark and the weather chilling as she sat at the window sill, staring out into the night. It was two in the morning and she'd already done her patrol for the night, but she just couldn't sleep, no matter how hard she tried.
They had gone through every explanation they could think of for what she had seen, except the one that seemed the most obvious to her.
She was losing her mind.
First, that creepy cheerleader, though she had probably fallen asleep in class, and now the old principal, in all his destroyed glory.
That had been a fun revelation; seeing the look on Xander's face and realizing that he had lied and he remembered everything that had happened that day.
Something she wasn't sure she was ready to forgive him for just yet.
But that was practically a zero on the scale as far as she was concerned.
On her way back from patrol she had stopped by Angel's apartment, but he had as little of a clue as they did. He tried to comfort her for a bit, but she had quickly made up an excuse and gotten the hell out of there.
Ever since her death, she hadn't been sure what to think of her almost-but-not-quite boyfriend. Even though he had been instrumental in rescuing her, leading Xander to the cave and instructing him on CPR... it wasn't enough anymore.
Not now that she had touched true death and managed to come back from it. Not to mention the darkness inherent in experiencing a bite; an encounter she was trying not to think of too much.
She'd heard rumors of victims becoming addicted and was not interested in going down that particular road.
Which was just one of the reasons she was staying away from the brooding Vampire.
Soul or no soul, he was just too dangerous, she'd decided. She'd just neglected to tell him that yet.
Sighing, she returned to her dilemma, reminded of her previous thoughts by the sound of her mother shifting, one room over.
Something was brewing in the Hellmouth, of that Buffy was sure. The only question was... what was it?
And would it turn out to be the cause of her second, and final, death?
For once not caring about the looks she garnered, Buffy stepped cautiously into the school the next day, on the lookout for anything that might seem out of place.
Of course, that wasn't saying much, this being a mouth of Hell and all.
She sighed when she saw nothing particularly weird, unless you count the complete lack of tact from Cordelia, and moved down the hall to the library. She was supposed to check in with her Watcher, even if it was just to let him know that patrol had been normal and Angel hadn't known anything about a new power rising in town.
Did he care that it left her late for her first class of the day? Nope.
Stupid tweed-wearing Brit.
Halfway down the long hall, she stopped just outside the door leading to the basement. The one off limits for students. There was a faint scratching noise coming from that area and the Slayer felt like sighing, again. Hadn't they learned from the incident with that girl the previous year, who'd been badly beaten by a huge monster?
Seriously.
Looking to see if anyone was watching her, she opened the door a bit and slid through, walking slowly down the steps. Carefully listening for any indication of what was going on below, much closer to the actual opening to the Hellmouth than she liked, to be honest.
But destiny was destiny, and this was hers.
As soon as her feet hit the concrete floor below, the scratching noise disappeared and a new sound entered her sensitive ears.
"Hello," she whisper-yelled into the dark room. "Who's there?" But the crying girl didn't respond.
Buffy walked further into the room, until she reached a hallway that forked in two. Furrowing her brows and chewing her lip, she contemplated her choice for five seconds, before going with her natural instinct and turning left.
She was rewarded by the sound of the crying growing louder as she moved forward.
"Are you okay?" She called out, her voice a little louder this time but still practically a whisper.
She didn't want to disturb whatever had frightened or harmed the student until she had a better idea of what she was dealing with.
There were plenty of twists and turns to contend with as she made her way closer, but the crying never got any louder. Until she passed the boiler room at the far end of the basement and spotted the girl in question.
A brunette in a cheerleading uniform.
Shivers ran down the Slayer's spine when the girl's cries instantly turned to scornful laughter. She looked up from her lap and Buffy noticed something she'd never realized in the classroom.
The brunette had burn scars running up and down her arms.
"Amber?" She whispered, brought suddenly back to last year and the try-outs, when a young girl had been set on fire by Catherine Madison.
She had later died from her injuries and an infection in the hospital.
So what was she doing here, now?
Buffy backed away, for the second time in two days. "You're like him, aren't you?" She didn't expect an answer.
The giggling cheerleader got up from her seated position, all the while staring at the Slayer as if she could look right through her. With each step the blonde took back, the brunette followed, menace in her eyes.
"I told you that it didn't help. Being different from other protectors won't help you, and neither will your friends. You're always alone in the dark." She spoke, a voice like something out of the Exorcist.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she whimpered, realizing she'd never been this frightened before in her years as the Slayer.
But she didn't know why.
"You will," she laughed, bringing Buffy back to the word on the blackboard.
Soon.
"What is it? What's coming?" She asked, desperate for answers.
Amber tilted her head, as if listening to something only she could hear. Then she smiled, an eerie smile, and pointed her fingers and eyes to the ground. "It's coming. From beneath you, it devours."
Twisting down cobbled roads and bent alleys, she keeps glancing over her shoulder, looking for her pursuer. She can feel music pounding loudly all around her, surrounded by buildings holding all sorts of nightclubs, but she doesn't hear a sound.
All she hears is heavy footsteps behind her.
More than one pair.
Her breath hitched and legs burning, she pushes herself as hard and fast as she can. If she stops she knows what will happen.
Death.
The cloaked beings come ever closer, even as she speeds up; they're faster than her and they're catching up.
Tears run down her dirty cheeks and she sobs, wondering why this is happening to her. What do they want with her? Why do they want to hurt her? Does she deserve this torment?
Questions all running rampant through her tired mind, she yells in fear and frustration as she hits the dead end brick wall.
The creatures surround her in a half-circle, no emotion in their eyeless faces. Her head whips from one to the other, trying to find a way out of this.
But she knows such a thing doesn't exist.
As if one being, they all jump on her, throwing her to the ground and immediately stab a rounded knife into her gut.
As her life slowly drains from her, Buffy woke up, a scream stuck in her throat.
Sitting up in the bed, she clutched her stomach and tried to get her breathing in order. Her eyes were stinging with tears, her heart racing in her chest, and her eyes searched the room around her in a panic.
It felt so real.
She knew it wasn't her; some innate sense of knowledge that came with her prophetic dreams. Because that's what this was, she knew this in her gut.
And it had happened while she was dreaming about it, which meant that somewhere in the world, a girl was dead.
But what her connection to the victim was, she didn't know.
And she was too tired to try and figure it out. But also too tired to fall back asleep. It was an evil circle, she thought with a sneer, throwing the cover to the side and stepping out of bed.
Since she was up, she figured she might as well get some homework done.
But first things first: writing down the dream for Giles.
And then she'd see what tomorrow would bring.
Rupert Giles had always been a very calm man; calm and collected. It was why the status as a Watcher was such a fit for him, despite past dreams of being a fighter pilot or grocer. He was completely in his element, sitting at a table, surrounded by old books instead of young people.
Not that they didn't exist these days either.
At the moment, the Watcher was engrossed in research about his charge's dream that previous night. She had come to him first thing, before class, which told him just how serious she had taken the warning.
And just how frightened she truly was.
Since Buffy's death just a few short months ago, Rupert had realized that he didn't think of her as his Slayer. He thought of her as the daughter he would never biologically have, if patterns kept repeating themselves with women. But more than that, she was his entire heart and he loved her dearly.
Even if he did have an awkward and almost non-existent way of showing it.
This realization had come with a few more epiphanies, about himself and about the Council he had once revered so. With this conclusion in mind, he had decided to wait until a later time, to inform his peers back in England of what he was currently researching.
Though the Council had a much more vast collection of books from which to choose, he was worried about the reaction of some of the Elders, especially if this new threat was as bad as it was beginning to seem. No, best to wait it out and see if they would need further help down the road.
He was the Watcher for a Slayer who had taken down Lothos when she was still new to her destiny. A Slayer who had faced the Master, surviving to tell the tale. Somewhat. He had no doubt that she could handle whatever the world threw her way.
He shouldn't have been so sure.
A few rooms over and downstairs, Buffy was once again roaming the basement halls, determined to look her own fear in the eyes and conquer it, once and for all.
But like her Watcher upstairs, she had no idea what she was up against.
A dark shadow began to edge its way out of the blackness and she wondered which one it would be, Principal Flutie or Amber Hearst. When the form became definitively male, she thought she had it figured out.
Until he stepped fully into the light.
Her hand came up to hover over her mouth. "Jesse?"
There was a soft smile on his face that would've fooled anyone... except that Buffy wasn't anyone. And she recognized the darkness in his eyes.
This wasn't Xander and Willow's dear friend. Just like when he was turned, this was the thing that had killed him. And yet she continued to remind herself, with each step forward he took toward her.
"If it isn't the Slayer, who likes to steal friends and lives. So nice to see you again, Buffy." He spoke, malice painting his tones as he stepped so close to her that she was forced to press herself up against the wall.
She had allowed him to see her weakness because she couldn't find it in her to fight him. To kill him. Again.
He stared deeply into her eyes as he continued speaking. "You thought you could find your place here? You thought this was your town? Wrong, wrong, wrong. This belongs to the darkness, to true power. You're just a little girl who fights rodents with a sharp stick. You don't know what exists in this world. You would tremble if you ever witnessed its true supremacy."
She smiled, slightly. "Wanna know where you went wrong? It was the last word in your long-winded speech. Not exactly something often spoken by a hormonal teenage boy." She pushed off the wall and against Jesse in the next moment. "You are just some mystical entity, possessing the bodies of people I couldn't save. You play your little head games, because you have no real power. You're the one who doesn't know what this world holds."
He sneered at her. "And what does it hold, then?" He mocked her.
She shrugged and answered. "Me."
Kicking out with her foot, she didn't manage to connect before the mirage had vanished into thin air. She huffed, crossed her arms and almost stomped her foot. Why did he have to go and disappear, just when things were getting interesting?
She couldn't wait to bring this information back to Giles, though she would have to keep the true identity of the body away from her two friends. They had been through enough, just by being loyal friends of hers.
There was one thing she wanted an answer for, though. How could someone possess dust and bring it back to a full being? Because, while she hadn't witnessed it herself, she knew that Jesse was blowing in the wind.
All thanks to the dark look that sometimes crossed Xander's face.
She brushed off the invisible dust she was sure coated her clothing and turned around, making her way back to the stairs leading up. Only to quickly realize something very important.
She was lost.
"Great, just great," she muttered under her breath, trying to remember which way she'd come. "It's like the freaking walls move or something."
Ten minutes passed before she reached the boiler room, feeling like this was a recognizable enough place to start with. But before she could start moving toward what was hopefully the right direction, a new sound caught her heightened senses.
A strange, metallic banging.
Probably coming from the metal door to her far left, she thought with a satisfied smile, as she moved toward the noise. She had no idea what it was, but figured it was probably another possessed deceased, trying to frighten her.
Well, they would just have to be disappointed now, wouldn't they?
She was done being scared.
At least she thought she was, right up until she burst through the heavy door and found a completely unfamiliar picture in front of her.
There was a man sitting just a few feet away; but he wasn't anyone she'd ever seen before. Wasn't someone she hadn't managed to save, neither here nor in Los Angeles. He was a complete stranger.
And completely strange.
He sat on the floor, pressed up against the wall and in between storage of chairs, tables and boxes, as if he was trying to hide himself away from anyone who may come around. His pale hands were lifted up in the air, clutching his hair, a mixture of brown and blond and very unruly.
His skin was as pale as his hands, a pasty and stark contrast against the dark room. And, despite his obvious attempts to make himself as small as possible, he didn't seem able to sit still. He kept moving around, every so often; short, stiff bursts of movement, back and forth, side to side.
She was completely entranced.
He was muttering something under his breath, but it was low enough that even her supernatural hearing couldn't capture it.
Suddenly he moved to one side, leaving his open shirt to fall to the side and she gasped at the sight, reaching a hand forward despite not being anywhere close enough to touch. There were several crisscrosses of scars and newer wounds in one particular place.
Right over his heart.
Her eyes were stinging with liquid, her words frozen in her throat, and she stood there trying to figure out how to deal with this situation when something suddenly hit her, as if someone had poured a bucket of ice over her.
Her Vampire senses were going absolutely crazy.
Looking back at the stranger, she realized why. And yet she didn't feel the least bit threatened by his presence. If anything, it was the other way around.
He looked so innocent, and not just because he was wearing his human face; no, it was so much more than that. It was in every pore and fiber of his being, shining out of him like a bright beacon.
She had to save him.
Stepping as close as she could get, without scaring him off, she knelt down until she was face-to-face with him. She looked into the prettiest blue eyes she'd ever seen, though they were clouded over with deep emotion; deeper than she ever realized a Vampire could feel.
Even after meeting Angel.
As gently as she could, she reached out her hand to take his, and after some hesitation, he allowed it. His muttering was still going strong and she could only catch a few words here and there.
They made no sense to her.
Instead, she did what she did best.
She jumped in, head first.
"Hi, my name is Buffy and I'm the Slayer. Who are you?"
Authors Note; Hope you enjoyed this first chapter and, if you review, which I hope you do, please don't just ask me to update soon or to tell me great chapter. I'd love some actual feedback on what you enjoyed, what you didn't, and such.
Puppet.