Note: Just as a reminder and disclaimer I do not own any of the characters depicted in this work of fiction. If you haven't already please go back and re-read chapter 2 as I made a pretty heavy revision to the short choppy chapter I first posted. I am drawing pretty heavy on stuff from the comics and even some story lines and mythos that has since been retconned both for Buffy and the X-men. This isn't the longest chapter in the world, but it moves us through some backstory before we get to the action. I plan on setting a schedule for when and how often I post updates in the hope that it will keep me on track. This has not been beta read, but I am now using a professional manuscript application to find and weed out errors that I might have missed. I hope you enjoy and happy Hannukah everyone!
Chapter 3: Memory
Shadows danced along the rough-hewn surface of a cave wall. In the center of the cave, a large fire burned surrounded by a group of crudely dressed people. The group laughed as their alpha and beta fought over the carcass of a steer. The alpha a short dark haired man shoved the other man away from the steer sending the taller blond man to the cave floor. The rest of the pack howled in laughter at the blond man's shame. Growling and baring his sharp canine teeth the taller man got to his feet and charged at his alpha. Curved talon like claws extended from the tips of his fingers as he made to swipe at the shorter man's throat. The large beast of a man was stopped short just out of arms reach of the pack leader. Glancing down He could see a short slip of a girl, the alpha's daughter, standing between him and his target. Three bone claws had extended from her fists and were embedded into each of his thighs.
The pack laughed uproariously at the beta's humiliation. The dark haired alpha also laughed at the taller man's plight. None had ever dared threaten the alpha's place in the pack except the blond man. Raising one of his fists three claws extended out of his own hand with a scraping and tearing sound. In a quick forward motion, the shorter man impaled the blond's chest upon his claws.
The taller man screamed in rage and swung his clawed fingers wildly in a vain attempt to remove the two shorter people's claws from his body. The dark haired alpha ducked out of the way of the flailing limbs and swung his other arm in an arc extending his claws in mid-air. A wet sound echoed through the cave as the bone claws severed the head of the taller man. In an instant, the other members of the pack descended on the fallen beta dragging the limp body out of the cave. The head remained behind and the pack leaders daughter picked it up off the floor. The trophy would be hung outside the cave as a warning to any others who would question the alpha's claim to dominance. The short blond girl looked up at her father and smiled at the look of pride in his eyes.
The dream was new, Buffy had never seen any of these people in a dream before. The look of pride in the man's eyes left an impression on her mind that she couldn't shake. On the walk to school that morning Buffy kept replaying the violent scene over and over. Who were they? Why had they felt so familiar to her? The answer to that seemed rather obvious. If she had really been resurrected again and again throughout history then those primitives were likely her family. Or at least, a family from a past life. The look in the man's eyes, her father's eye's, haunted her. It was a feeling that seemed unique to that particular memory. None of the fathers she had seen in her other dreams had looked at her like that. In fact, the only other men she could remember who had ever shown pride toward her had been Merrick and Giles. Perhaps it was the darkness in her that had kept her apart from her other families. Giles was certainly not a stranger to darkness and Merrick was likely just as familiar with it. Neither had a traditional attitude toward a slayer. She knew this because she could remember all of her other watchers. Most had been men though a few had been women. The female watchers never lasted very long. They always tried to mother her and treat her like she was supposed to be a lady. She had been a real lady multiple times, but darkness and violence set her apart from society. More than one family member had fallen victim to the blood rage that followed the emergence of her mutant powers.
A week had passed now since her powers had manifested. She had grown weary of falling asleep as every time she slept new memories surfaced in her dreams. Most of these dreams were just flashes, short bursts of violent images depicting the horrific brutal nature of her immortality. She could place names to faces and knew the barest details of these people who had once been important to her. The only name she couldn't remember was his, the father who had been proud of her. None of the primitives from that life had names. They hadn't even had a language, only a series of grunts and snorts that conveyed a wide range of meaning. To Buffy however not having a name to attribute to him left an emptiness in her heart. She had taken to thinking of him simply as Father.
Without realizing where she was headed, Buffy found herself outside Sunnydale High school. Her legs had carried her there on autopilot. A few dozen students were milling about the quad busily chatting to each other. One student stood out in the crowd. On a stone bench, an auburn haired girl sat chatting animatedly to the boy sitting next to her. Buffy made a beeline for the other girl barely noticing the students she shouldered passed.
"Hey, Willow," She called once she was within earshot.
The redhead looked up excitedly at her friend. "Buffy!" She shouted.
The look on her friend's face temporarily erased Buffy's dark mood. "What were you and Xander talking about?" She asked glancing over to her only male friend.
"Oh, we were talking about the X-Men!" She said with a wide smile.
Buffy scrunched up her nose. "Who are the X-Men?" She had never heard of them before. Where they a band? She wondered.
Xander spoke up before Willow and explained. "It's the name some people have been giving a group of mutant superheroes," He said obviously just as excited about them as Willow was. "They were supposedly behind stopping the terrorist attack at liberty island and a hostage situation at a train station in New York."
Willow took off her backpack and rooted around in it for a minute before she pulled out a picture printed out on computer paper. "This is the guy from the X-Men who has claws like yours," she said handing the picture to the slayer.
Taking the picture from her friend Buffy looked at it and immediately froze. Her eyes grew wide and she stared at the picture for nearly a minute before Willow grew worried. "Buffy?" The redhead called. When the slayer didn't respond Willow grew, even more, concerned. "Whats wrong Buffy?"
Buffy was at a complete loss. The man captured in the crude security footage of liberty island looked exactly like him! The person in the picture had combed and trimmed hair not wild dirty locks, but there was no mistaking who this man was. The short blond girl was lost in her own thoughts until Willow stood up and put her hand on the slayer's shoulder. The contact shocked Buffy back into reality.
"What has the Buffster so spooked?" Xander wondered jokingly trying to lighten the mood. "Do you know that guy or something?" He asked not really meaning to imply a connection.
Buffy looked over at her best male friend. "Yes, I do," she admitted. "Sort of."
Willow seemed intrigued by this and neither girl noticed the apprehensive look on Xander's face. "How do you know him?" Willow asked. "Are you related? Like is he an uncle of yours or something?" she continued without taking a breath. "Cause you know that would make a lot of sense. They say that mutation passes down from the male side of the family. At least, that's what it said in this article I read from the sixties." She said starting to ramble. "It was written by this professor at Oxford. He's done a bunch of research in the field of genetics and has tried tracing the source and cause of mutation in humans."
Buffy shook her head. "No, I don't know him from this life," She explained looking back at the picture of the man who had haunted her thoughts for days. "I've seen him in a dream."
Willow was noticeably energized by this news and even Xander seemed to be intrigued. "What happened in the dream?" Willow wondered aloud. "Was it bad?" she asked. Buffy's slayer dreams usually turned out to be more morbid than uplifting. "Did anyone die?"
Buffy smiled absently at the question and the image it brought to mind. "Yeah someone did." She admitted, then barked a short laugh. "The look on his face when dad cut off his head was priceless."
Buffy's two friends shared a worried look before returning their attention to their friend who didn't seem particularly bothered by the admission. "Your dad?" Xander questioned not sure he was going to like the answer. What kind of dad went around cutting off people's heads?
Buffy's gleeful look grew somber and she looked back at her friends and saw the look of confusion on both of their faces. "It's a long story," She said looking around at the other students in the quad. "Maybe we should go to the library and we can talk to Giles about it."
The teens both nodded their agreement and followed Buffy through the halls of the school. It only took a few minutes to reach the library and Buffy was happy that no one appeared to be in the library but her watcher. Just to make sure of this though Buffy reached out with her senses to see if she could hear or smell anyone hidden up in the stacks. Satisfied that they were the only four people in the library, Buffy walked over to the research table and sat down on the edge facing her friends and her watcher who had just come around from the check in desk. "So," Buffy started lamely. "You guys want to know about my dream." She wasn't sure exactly what to tell them or how. Based on their reactions outside it didn't seem like they were gonna be excited to hear the gory details.
Giles was at full attention at the news and drew closer to his slayer. "You've been having more dreams?" he asked taking off his glasses.
Buffy shook her head negatively. "Not just more," She said. "It's every time I close my eyes." The slayer elaborated thinking back to all of the things she had seen and memories that were hers but not really hers. "Ever since my emergence I've been seeing things." Lifting up her arms she looked at her hands and instead of seeing slightly tanned flesh her limbs looked blood soaked. "I have seen and been the cause of so much death and violence. It's almost maddening." Tears streamed down her face, but she refused to give in and cry. Her father had raised her to be stronger than that. "Every life I have ever lived is stampeding through my head. Most are just flashes and brief images of people I had loved and lost. Though most lost me and not the other way around. I seem to always die young like most slayers do." Shutting her eyes Buffy tried to erase the images from her mind before looking up at her friends. "The best memories are the earliest ones. The memories from my first life. I still can't remember when I died in that life though I can see lots of memories from times that were happy and sad."
Clenching her fists Buffy extended her claws out of each hand. Unlike the last time they had seen Buffy do this at Giles apartment, there was no blood and Buffy didn't flinch in pain as they tore through her skin. "I've been practicing." She simply stated at the astonished looks on their faces. "You showed me a picture outside of a man like me. One of those x-men." She said looking at Willow's face and seeing a war of emotions in her eyes. "I knew a man that looked exactly like him once. In the oldest set of memories I have, the happiest memories I have, he was my father."
Each of the rooms other occupants looked questioningly at Buffy and then each seemed to process the news in their own way. Xander seemed the most skeptical. "How could he be your father?" he asked aloud.
The blond shrugged her shoulders. "I guess the same way I could come back again and again," She said not really sure she understood everything exactly. Most of her past lives had been dominated by pain and death. There wasn't a whole lot of room left in her life for researching exactly what she was. And the one life where she had been surrounded by other people like her they didn't even know how to speak much less explain to each other who and what they were. "I know that in the dream he was short like me and had bone claws exactly like mine." She went on to explain "He taught me how to hunt and use my claws to defend and feed our pack." Holding her claws up in front of her face Buffy was amazed at how identical they looked in every lifetime. "He was our alpha our leader. He protected us and made sure we had food to eat." She continued hoping that they would understand. "It was our beta who my father killed. He had been almost like a brother to dad for most of my life. But I guess being second best to my father grated on his nerves and one night he just couldn't take it anymore."
"You sound like it was your real life," Xander said starting to feel uncomfortable by they way his friend was speaking.
Looking up at her best male friend in the whole world Buffy couldn't help feeling lost and hurt by the tone in his voice. "It was real," She said sadly. "They were all real, but it was the first." She hesitated before continuing. "That life feels more real than the others because it was the first and it was the happiest."
"Aren't you happy now?" Willow asked in a small voice not sure she wanted the answer to that. The response she received from her friend erased all doubt.
"Of course, I am Willow." Buffy had a stupidly goofy grin on her face as she lowered her claws and look at her best friend. "Nothing in my many lives has been better than knowing you."
She meant every word and hoped beyond hope that the redhead believed her. She may have been getting hung up on the father who loved her, but it was the girl she loved that anchored her to this life. "You're all my family and I wouldn't trade you for anything in the world."
Xander appeared to let go of whatever was holding him back at that proclamation and joined Willow and Giles in hugging the petite slayer. "So what do you want to do about the guy who looks like your old man?" Xander asked with his arm still around her shoulders.
"Don't know." She shrugged. "It's not like mutant superheroes leave calling cards or anything."
Willow started jumping up and down. "Ooh, maybe I can go online and see if I can find a trail or something," she said excitedly. "They couldn't have just vanished."
Buffy gave her friend a thankful look to her friend but caught the nervous look coming from her watcher. "Actually," he said pulling a handkerchief from his jacket pocket. "Some mutants can make themselves disappear."
Buffy instantly look pensive and uncertain but Xander seeing her apprehensive look joked "gee way to be a biz kill G-man like it wasn't already gonna be hard enough."
"Yes well," the British man began to say in a sour voice "we should start researching which I assume is going to require willow to use the computer must to my dismay. I do have some very interesting text that may shed light on the race of people for family hailed from." He explained. "In the meantime you should all go to class and we will meet up later to exchange notes and find what information Willow was able to glean from the net."
Buffy almost walked out of the library without retracting her claws it was only the sound of the tips of the claws on her right hand scratching the surface of the door as she pushed it open that reminded her and allowed her to sheath them back into her forearms before any of the students in the hall noticed.
Willow walked to her advanced physics class with a spring in her step and a silly grin on her face. The night before she and Buffy had watched movies at the Summer's house. The redhead had been thoroughly embarrassed by all the cuddling that had occurred on the couch in Buffy's living room, but she certainly wasn't going to say anything to Buffy. A part of her was worried that her friend may not repeat the display of affection in the future. Things between the two of them had been mostly the same though Buffy was much more touchy feel than before she had confessed her feelings. No matter how things progressed or what happened Willow was sure she could trust Buffy not to take things too far. So long as Buffy didn't revert to a cave woman and hit her over the head with a club and drag her back to her cave. At the though Willow stopped the trek to her class and wondered. "Nah," she said out loud shaking her head trying to dispel the image of Buffy the cave woman. It wasn't like Buffy was a feral animal or anything she mused to herself before entering the physics lab.