Authors' Note: Once again, I don't own Buffy or any of its affiliates. They are all solely the property of Joss Whedon &etc.
Next chapter!
Oh, and I don't like Dawn. Plain and simple. I love the earlier seasons the way they are, with the mother-daughter bonding and no Dawn. So, she's not here.
"You want what?" Joyce asked disbelievingly. Buffy and Joyce both stood in the kitchen and Buffy crossed her arms defensively. They were in the middle of making dinner and the soup boiled over just as the tempers did.
"Just for a little while!" she whined.
"Buffy, you are not borrowing my car. What do you need it for, anyway? It's late, shouldn't you be doing homework?"
"Mom, I told you, no homework. I'm homework free."
"And you can stay car free too, until you pass your drivers exam."
"Mo-om!"
Buffy had been trying to persuade her mother to let her drive since forever. Just because she failed one teensy drivers' exam a few times, it was no reason not to let her drive!
"Buffy, I'm putting my foot down on this. When you pass your driver's test then you can drive."
Joyce Summers was a loving woman. She cared about her daughter more than anything else in the entire world, but sometimes she felt like there was another side to her that she wasn't seeing; like there were two people there. She knew she was a good mother, but sometimes she didn't know who she was mothering.
'More than likely at some point in their adolescence a teenager will rebel, and although some will become straight out defiant -' a Successful Mothering magazine had told her, 'others will develop an alias; a second person to help them relate to and cope with different avenues of their life. A child could be partaking in hazardous adventures with their peers (whether that means using illicit substances or acts of violence) and present a semblance of serenity in their home life. The compartmentalisation of their feelings and traits allows them to achieve what they desire of both of their worlds. This is often the most difficult type of rebellion to detect as in more cases than not it is completely silent.'
'They may as well have named the book 'Buffy Summers, summed up in two chapters',' Joyce mused as she scrubbed a dish with more force than necessary.
Without warning Buffy barrelled around the corner from the hall with a frightened expression on her face and dragged her mother outside hurriedly. Buffy knocked the dish out of Joyce's hands and it smashed into a hundred pieces. She doubled back to clean it up but her daughters grip was too strong. "No, we've gotta go!"
Buffy pushed her mother into the car and sprinted around the other side, jumping into the passengers' seat.
"Buffy, I am not letting you drive!" Joyce said sternly.
Buffy's face was as pale as a ghost as she laughed hysterically, "No mum, I know, I just think that you should you know, show me how to drive properly because my driving leaves so much to be desired and you've been driving for so long and you have a car and you can drive it and so you can show me how to drive the car -" her words were slurred together and her eyes continually darted towards the house.
Joyce cut her off, still not starting the engine. It was silent outside except for the crickets chirping and the barely audible thumping coming from their kitchen. What Joyce didn'tsee was a huge fyarl demon with its' eyes gouged out and a heart carved into its chest smashing its way into the back of their house. Buffy had seen this though, as well as a pair of Angel wings carved into its back as a clear message of whom the present was from.
This time it was Joyce's turn to fold her arms. She turned to face her daughter with her most serious face. "Buffy, I am not starting this car until you tell me what's going on."
"Mom, there's nothing going on," Buffy made an effort to calm herself. She needed to get her mother to leave and then they would stop at a nearby park. Then she would say that she had forgotten her purse and would run back to kill the demon. No, wait, she couldn't leave her mother alone in the park, not with all of the demons about. Maybe a petrol station. "Mom," she pleaded, "Please start driving."
"Fine, but you had better explain all of this to me when we get back."
"I will, Mom. Now go."
She wasn't sure whether her mother believed her or saw the panic in her eyes, but either way Joyce Summers began to drive down the street.
"Okay, so this is the gas pedal, you use this when – Buffy, are you listening to me?" Joyce stared incredulously.
"Huh? Yeah, I'm listening. Go on."
"Then what did I just say?"
Buffy groaned, "Oh come on Mom, what is this – school?"
"Buffy."
A pregnant pause ensued until Buffy finally said, "I guess just I zoned out for a minute."
"What is going on?"
"Oh, look! You need gas. We'd better go and get some gas. From the gas station. Just over here," Buffy pointed, subtly reaching for her door handle and preparing to run.
Joyce sighed, annoyed, and pulled into the station.
Meanwhile, at the Summers' residence a fyarl demon had smashed most of the plates and cupboards. Screeching in pain it hacked at everything that smelled like what had maimed it hours earlier.
Angelus smiled and kept pace a few steps in front of the demon, leading it through the house in a specific trail of destruction. He held in his hand someone who had said they'd known Buffy.
Or part of them, anyway.
Angelus had originally planned on killing the Slayers' mother when she had been busy training with the Watcher, but he decided that the scare would be much more satisfying than the kill. Willy had called in all of the contacts he knew fitting Angelus' description and left him alone with them. There had been fifteen. There was now one.
Angelus led the demon into the Slayers' room. He was quite aware that this thing wouldn't be able to kill her, but he'd have a lot of fun watching it try. Besides, as she had so often told him; she was his. His to love, his to consume.
His to kill.
He would be the one to kill the Slayer, of this he was sure.
Locking the demon in the bedroom from the inside, Angelus climbed out of the window and sat where his alter ego had but weeks ago for much less sinister reasons.
Right on cue the Slayer stomped into her bedroom. He watched her walk in and face the demon, and to his surprise a different kind of horror passed over her face.
"MR. GORDO!" she screamed, grabbing the stuffed pig from the demons' grasp. "This little piggy is going to kick. Your. Ass."
The Slayer jumped and landed a kick to the demons' solar plexus, knocking it down. The fyarl shrieked in agony and quickly bounced back. However, the Slayer had an axe by this point and had no trouble in chopping its' head cleanly off.
The girl, obviously concerned for it, grabbed the stuffed animal once again and kissed it on the forehead. Angelus shuddered at the thought of his alter ego loving this; his lips kissing it.
"Oh, crap!" Buffy exclaimed. Although she had just beheaded this demon and it was definitely dead, she had no way of getting rid of it. "Crap! Aren't you supposed to melt when you die? Melt!" she commanded the corpse in vain. First sign of insanity; talking to a corpse. Second sign on insanity; talking to a demon corpse. "Hey Mom, what's this? It's a science project! No, that's not real congealing green blood: it's jelly!" she said mockingly. "Crap."
After pacing frantically for several minutes, Buffy stopped. Hairs rose at the back of her neck and she got goose bumps on her arms; the kind you got when you were being watched.
I wonder who would have done this, she thought sarcastically. "Oh, look at me, I'm so helpless, this big demon is going to kill me!" she projected out the window.
Content with silence while she searched for the vampire her eyes searched over all of the tree branches but saw nothing but the night.
"No, it isn't," the vampire said to himself, skulking away, "I am."
*
"So you just shoved it out the window?" Willow asked disbelievingly. Xander just smiled goofily. It was last period and the three of them sat in the library and waited for Giles to finish substituting an English class for Snyder. Giles had been extremely annoyed about being asked to teach a class, especially since he had no teaching credentials and detested most of the student body at the school.
Buffy seemed slightly offended by her tone, "It touched Mr. Gordo," she said defensively. "Besides, I mutilated it and everything. It was a slimy thousand piece demon jigsaw puzzle by the time I was done."
Xander looked slightly queasy, "Thanks for the visual, Buff."
"How'd you explain it your Mom?" Willow asked, the girls both ignoring Xander.
Buffy groaned at the thought of that encounter. Her mother hadn't been happy at all and – Buffy thought – she only believed what Buffy told her because she wished it was true.
"I told her that I saw two guys with balaclavas and knives heading for the house."
Willow mentally congratulated Buffy for the good cover story. "Did she actually believe you?"
"Yeah, but I think it was one of those believe-what-I-want-not-what's-obvious motherly things."
"Uh, Buff," Xander said, "I don't think that 'hey, my vampire ex lover brought a demon into the house to kill me' is the obvious in this situation."
Buffy looked thoughtful for a moment. "Yeah, I guess not."
*
It was a cloudy night and inside the mansion was silent; the presence of the undead assured that no animals would venture near the usually thriving outer garden.
Drusilla had been seated at the dining room table for several hours, just counting the individual dust specks.
Spike, who had been perched at the head of the table observing her all the while, finally broke the silence;
"Dru, did Angelus say where he'd gone? Tall, Dark and Forehead's usually back from dins by now," the subtle undertone of hope that Spike felt was carefully filtered out.
"He's dining with the Slayer," Dru grinned maniacally.
Spikes' reply was cut short by the nature of Drusilla's grinning. Maybe if the Slayer were dead, Angelus would leave. Spike still maintained hopes of Angelus once more being The Scourge of Europe.
In. Europe.
As if to remind him that he had no intentions of being in Europe, Angelus meandered into the mansion with severed cartilage from a human neck in hand. Throwing it haphazardly onto the table, Angelus sat. "Dru, I brought you a present."
Drusilla picked up the bleeding cartilage, running her tongue along them with childish glee. "Oh My Angel, I love it."
Spike sniffed it, "That's not the blood of the Slayer. She give you a spankin' again, eh?"
Angelus, well-learned in this game, rebuked; "No, I'll leave that to Drusilla."
Spikes' mouth contorted with rage as a growl reverberated in his chest.
"Now, now, Spike. Play nice," Dru said, running her hand across his chest. "Did you paint me a pretty picture, Angel?"
"Not yet Dru. But," he assured her, "I think I made my mark."
*
Buffy snuck expertly through her window after a good night of slaying and once inside her nostrils were met with something incredibly malodorous. Smelling herself, she crinkled her nose. "Demons of Sunnydale flee in fear of Buffy's B.O.," she sighed.
After a long shower Buffy walked back into her room and was overcome by the still-present smell.
"What the...?"
Finished checking her drawers, wardrobe and dresser, Buffy bent down to check under her bed.
All Buffy saw at first was a used tissue. Off-handedly dismissing the smell as something hidden and expired, she was halted by a tugging on her shoelace. As she bent down the object dislodged itself, remaining fractionally hidden under the bed.
Cringing from the smell, Buffy shoved her head energetically under the bed before halting as she met with the face of a girl in her year.
Buffys' screams echoed through the house and the girl remained silenced; her tortured eyes vacant forevermore.
*
Later on Angelus sat sketching in his book, a picture of a girls' severed head depicted in the centre of the page.
"Piece by piece..." he muttered to himself.
There you go, hope you liked! This chapter was a bit iffy for me, the next one'll be better, promise! Comments and reviews are welcome. Thanks for reading.
