Prologue: Men Found a Girl

Jo's never met the Slayer. Any Slayer, actually, and there have been four in her lifetime (which really says something about the life expectancy of Slayers, since Jo's only just fifteen). Still, she's read all their diaries, and those of their Watchers. She grew up on them, really. Where other kids had fairy tales of monsters and heroes, Jo had the real thing for her bedtime stories. (Dad said it was morbid, never approved; but Mom understands the importance – not of knowing monsters are real, but knowing there are heroes.)

Even now, Jo and Mom keep up with what the Slayer is doing, keep track of what vampires are up to what, et cetera. Mom spends a lot of time trying to get the Slayer of the moment to come to Lawrence because, hello, Hellmouth in Stull Cemetery? You'd think it'd be a bigger deal, but apparently not so much. Since, ya know, they never come. Maybe if the world ever actually decides to end for real it'll be worth their time.

It's not exactly easy, growing up on a Hellmouth with a Watcher for a mom. It's not easy, knowing exactly what's going bump in the night, or that the monsters are real, if not necessarily hiding under your bed. Normal kids played cops and robbers or pirates and princesses; Jo got Sam and Dean to play Slayer and vampires. (Jo was, obviously, always the Slayer. Dean was the biggest baby about always having to get ganked, whereas Sam took it as a matter of course.) She's always been kinda a freak, a fact which is generally appreciated by her friends but not so much by the school officials who discovered the collection of throwing knives in her locker. On the bright side, she's always had the best slumber party horror stories, which is really honestly saying something for Lawrence.

Because Mom has this stupid obsession with secrecy, though, Jo can't actually tell anyone that all this shit is real, let alone do something about it. Mom has all kinds of reasons – Jo's too young, too ordinary; the life's too dangerous. Just keep a knife on your person and learn to throw a punch and let the Slayers and the hunters do the work and you'll get by. Maybe they're good, sensible reasons, but still, it's enough to drive Jo up a wall.

So she buries herself in research, in the diaries, in the "newsletters" from the Council (although how the Council, sitting safe and pretty in England, gets news of this shit before those in the same country as the Slayer is beyond her). She jokes and she laughs and she goes to school, and then she comes home and reads up on demon lore and hell dimensions and makes up case files for hunts that Mom will send on to one of the zillions of civilian hunters she's in contact with. Jo reads the diaries and okay, yeah, sometimes she has imaginary conversations with the Slayer about stuff. What? It's not like she's gonna talk to her mom about some crap, jeez, they fight enough as it is.

She knows the story, the official Watcher's Council party line: In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.

But she also knows the Slayers themselves, in her own way. And they're so much cooler, so much more badass, so much kinder, so much more real, so much…so much more than the legend makes them out to be.

Point is, even though Jo's never spoken to Ava Wilson, she kinda feels like the Slayer's her best friend.

So when she gets home from school on a normal Thursday afternoon to have Mom greet her with the words, "Ava's dead," it's really kinda devastating.

"No," she chokes out, her backpack falling to the floor with a heavy thud. Even as she says it, her brain informs her that the first stage of grief is denial.

"Yeah, Jo," Mom says, her voice thick with emotion. There are tears in the corner of Mom's eyes, and that's what really gets Jo, because she hasn't seen Mom cry since Dad died five years ago.

Jo swallows tightly. "What got her?"

"Not sure. Andy thinks it was some kind of demon, but – but you know him, he's not exactly coherent when he's upset. Says he'll have the final entry for his Diaries in another day or two."

"Oh, God. Ava," and now Jo's crying, too, and isn't that just grand. Ava, whose perky optimism showed in her round, bubbly handwriting and her resolutely cheerful attitude toward her destiny. Ava, who had a full-on existential crisis when she first became Slayer three years ago, until some vamps got her boyfriend, at which point she embraced the cause with an enthusiasm that frankly terrified Andy, her super-chill Watcher. Ava, whose grinning high school senior portrait Jo uses as a bookmark in whatever ancient text she's reading.

Ava. Ava is dead.

"Goddammit," Jo swears, and it's louder than she means, but her brain happily informs her that anger is also a stage of grief.

"Language," Mom reminds her tiredly, but there's no force to it.

"I'm just – she's – was – only twenty, Mom! God, I am so sick of this. Of them getting these powers just to get killed young! It's so – so stupid."

It is stupid, and it's perfectly reasonable for Jo to be angry. It's perfectly reasonable for her to be furious at the injustice of sacrificing young girls to the cause of keeping evil at bay. It's perfectly reasonable for her to turn and punch the nearest wall in her frustration.

What's not perfectly reasonable is for her fist to punch straight through the solid oak paneling like it's paper.

Both Jo and Ellen just stare at the giant gaping hole in their kitchen wall with similarly gaping mouths for a solid minute before Jo sums up the situation.

"Shit."

Author's Notes:

Title from the telling of the story of the First Slayer, as shown in BtVS s7.

OKAY SO this is the very, very beginning of the longest fic I have ever embarked on, so wish me luck. A crossover/fusion of Supernatural and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it will be loosely based on events from seasons 1-5 of both shows, so abstract spoilers for both, up to "The Gift" and "Swan Song" I guess. The monsters will be taken from both shows, although they'll tend to be canonically closer to Buffy.
While you don't have to have seen BtVS to read this fic, things might make more sense in the beginning if you have. If not, all shall be explained in the second chapter of part two. (Also you should totally watch Buffy because it's friggin brilliant and wonderful and I can never do it justice wow.)
Theoretically, this fic will be divided into three, five-episode (chapter) "seasons." My goal is to update every other Tuesday - I know, I know, that's a while to wait, but I do work full-time. I hope it's worth the wait!
Also, this is my first plot-based (rather than ship-based) fic, so I'd love feedback! (I mean, I always love feedback, but you know what I mean.)