Chapter V

'Has anyone on Earth become immortal since Seth?'

Buffy was stretched across Angel's bed lazily, an English textbook and a complex looking homework task before her.

Angel spun in his office chair and shook his head. 'Others have come close. But immortality on this plane is something far different from immortality on another.' She rolled onto her back and propped herself up on her elbows. 'What do you mean?' Angel swallowed and tried to focus on her face. 'In this plane, to be immortal is to outlive any existing memory of human existence. It may take thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years, but the immortal will age in this dimension and they will die. It is inevitable.'

'Do you know how he does it?'

'Sort of. I don't know the specifics but it's nothing like being immortal in Navistos. He dies when he's body expires, like all people; he's just reborn again. Sometimes as a man or a woman; always the same person.'

'Then what does it mean to be immortal in Navistos?'

'To have lived before the beginning and to live even after the end of time. To have a life, like ring. No ending, no beginning. It is a breed, an elite race, not a temporary earthbound trick, doomed to fail before the end of any era. To have accomplished something even close in this realm is an atrocity.'

'So Seth can be killed?'

'It's more complicated than that. All the information is still coming to me. Right now all I've got is that it would take an incredibly destructive force, but it can be done.' She bit her lip. 'How destructive?'

He sighed and mumbled to himself as if he was working out a complicated equation. 'End of the world destructive,' he answered eventually, rather matter-of-factly.

'That doesn't sound particularly doable.'

'Yeah,' He furrowed his brow thoughtfully and spun his chair back to face the desk. 'I assume there's another way.'

She raised her eyebrows. 'One would hope so.'

'While we're on this topic,' he began after a time, 'when are you going to break up with Riley?'

Buffy rolled her eyes and let her elbows go so that she flopped back onto the bed.

'I think it's a fair question,' Angel pointed out.

She sighed. 'I'll do it after the SAT'S. Is that alright with you?'

'How far away are the SAT'S?'

'Two weeks.'

He pursed his lips. 'I suppose... it depends.'

She sighed again, 'On?'

'Are you having sex with him?' he asked rather abruptly.

She sat up so fast that all the blood rushed to her head. 'What?'

'Well if you are,' he swallowed quite louder than necessary. 'I think you need to break up with him now.'

She stared at him for several moments before swinging her legs over the side of his bed so she was facing him. 'I'm not.'

Angel had been involuntarily holding his breath and he breathed out again loudly when she spoke. After a moment or two, he said, 'I know this might sound like I'm trying to talk you into it, which believe me, I'm not, but haven't you been with him for like... three years?'

'Four, actually,' she corrected. 'Since the first day of high school. It just never came up.'

'So you're a virgin,' he said, much louder than was strictly essential.

She cringed.

'Sorry,' Angel apologised. 'I meant to say that in my head.'

'S'fine,' she said shakily. 'I take it you have...'

He met her eyes guiltily. 'Yeah...'

Buffy pressed her lips together and nodded slowly. 'Do you want to stop talking about this?' She asked eventually.

'Desperately.' He agreed.

After an hour or so he drove her home, stopping only briefly to introduce her to his harassed looking foster parents.

When she arrived home her mother was wiping down the large oak dining table. Joyce didn't hear her daughter enter, so Buffy cleared her throat.

Joyce looked up briefly and half-smiled. 'Hello. Where've you been?'

'Riley's,' Buffy lied smoothly as she sat down at the table.

Joyce didn't question her, merely nodded. She began to turn towards the kitchen but Buffy caught her hand. 'Mum?'

'Yes, sweetheart?'

'Can I talk to you a minute?'

Joyce thought for a moment, looking worried, and scratched her head thoughtfully. 'I suppose so.' She took a seat across from Buffy.

Buffy contemplated her words carefully before she said them. 'I was wondering if I seem different at all?'

Joyce looked politely surprised. 'Not particularly. Should you?'

Buffy's face fell, but she tried again. 'Okay, well, I wanted to know if you ever got tired of being standard issue girl. Didn't you ever wish you'd done something extraordinary? Don't you ever get tired of this life?'

'Of what dear?'

Buffy licked her lips nervously. 'Just... being all ordered and perfectly sanitized and colour coordinated.'

'I'm sure I don't know what you mean.'

'I mean... didn't you ever want anything else?'

Her eyebrows rose in polite surprise. 'What more is there to want?'

Buffy smiled grimly and with an odd mixture of relief, disappointment and a spreading indifference, she slid off the dining table and marched upstairs. -

It's not that Buffy Summers was ever mistreated, nothing like that.

Buffy was respected and expected to respect in return. She was allowed to be independent, mostly because she was trusted, but more than anything she thought it was because they simply couldn't imagine a child of their own making doing anything but behaving as a conservative, unadventurous young lady. It seemed at times that they thought of her as more an extension of themselves than as an actual person, with their own ideals and ambitions. To them, her failures and achievements were shared. She always felt ungrateful even thinking about having more than she already did, but she thought about it nonetheless. Buffy was clothed, fed and kept under a stable roof – her parents never fought in front of her and if anything was going to change, she was always kept in the loop. When they moved, last year, it was a unanimous decision between the three of them but sometimes it was all she could do not to let out her longing for an unconventional family life. She wanted her mother to be the kind of quirky woman that sings all the time and her dad to scream at football players like they might listen. She wanted to laugh at dinner until diet coke came out her nose and not worry about being proper. She wanted there to be clothes strewn over the lounge, food fights and maybe even a puppy eating one of their ridiculous handmade dining room chairs. Essentially Buffy just wanted a bit of chaos, though she couldn't tell you why. She thought maybe everyone had that kind of wanting for what they don't have.