Character: Buffy Summers
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1616
Setting: Welcome to the Hellmouth
A/N: Sorry for the delay, but April is traditionally a fairly horrid month for ficcing. I'm expecting things won't relax until mid-May, after finals, but I'm going to try for an update at least once or twice a week until then. In case I don't make that goal, please be patient. Short of me being hit by a bus or something, I'm in this series for the long haul, so even if updates slow, they won't be stopping.
Secondary A/N: One borrowed line.
Oh, no.
Buffy glanced at Willow, who looked as disturbed as she knew she was supposed to feel—and to some degree she was, but for different reasons.
There was a corpse in the locker room.
Please god, no.
"Um," she quickly gathered up her half-eaten lunch and her bag, "I gotta book. I'll see you guys later." She slipped off the bench and half ran away, shoving her lunch back into her bag as she went.
She didn't know where the hell the gym was, but she would find it, just to assure herself it wasn't what she thought it was, because there was no way it had followed her here. She had left it all behind when her mother had made the turn onto the 101. They were in Sunnydale for god's sake.
And yet that Watcher had come here. What had he said his name was? Giles? All the way from England to move to a town where nothing happened?
Yes. He had retired, and he had come for the sun and the surf. That was it.
She saw a door that looked promising and went through it, then followed the hall down.
She didn't know what she was hoping for. That the dead guy had killed himself and somehow made it inside the locker before dying? That a couple jocks had gotten carried away and pummeled some unfortunate nerd to death? She didn't know, but it would be better than the alternative. Hell, she'd take serial killer over the alternative.
Yes, serial killer. She was going to hope for that.
She'd made it to a set of double red doors, and a nearby door card confirmed that they opened to the gym. She tugged on the doorknob, but there was no give. Locked.
She'd try another entrance.
She considered scenarios as she made her way around. It was going to be like something out of Law & Order. The dead guy had seen something he shouldn't have, like the killer dumping a body or cleaning off his blood-soaked hands. Maybe it was a black widow, who'd asked him back into the locker rooms for some early morning dalliance and had murdered him instead. Or maybe...maybe...
She rounded a corner and glanced another door. She didn't know, but anything was better than what she was thinking. She just had to see it, to assure herself that everything was normal in Sunnydale, that her paranoia was just that, and nothing further.
Looking around, she tried the door. It was also locked, but this time she didn't have the patience to look for another way. Grabbing it with both hands, she forced the door open, then closed it behind her. Someone would probably notice the slightly broken wall, but that wasn't her problem.
She walked across the gym, intent on the double doors across the way.
All she was going to find was a dead guy, a normal dead guy that the cops could investigate. The killer would be caught, justice would be served, and she wouldn't have to hear about it because she would be a guiltless party, at home eating ice cream out of the carton while watching TV and possibly doing her nails.
Assuming there was a god.
She opened the locker room doors, which weren't locked, then proceeded inside. She only had to turn one corner before she found a body-shaped lump under a heavy, grey blanket, and she walked to it.
Please, let him have been shot or something. No slime, no mutilation, no fang marks.
She didn't give herself a chance to hesitate before she lifted the blanket. Her eyes went immediately to his neck, and within a moment she knew without question that she'd been deluding herself.
"Oh, great," she muttered aloud, rocking backing on her heels.
She was at a loss. It was her first day in a new school, in a new town, and she hadn't even managed to make it through lunch before the dead had begun encroaching on her life again. She was supposed to be starting over. That was all she'd wanted.
She stood, rubbing her face with her hands, then stared down at the body.
As she stood there, a new, terrible thought occurred to her. Was it her? Had it followed her here? The bottom seemed to drop out of her stomach. Had she damned this town by coming here? It seemed like too much of a coincidence, and, after all, it wouldn't be the first time. Lothos had come to LA in search of her, and she still didn't know how many vampires had populated the city prior to her calling. Her final body count in LA was unknown, but she knew of at least three people who would probably still be alive if not for her.
And now it was starting again.
Please, no...
"Shit," she murmured. She could feel paralysis locking up her joints as numbness settled in.
She had given this up. She had told Sofer and the Council itself last month that she was done, that she had relinquished all responsibility. She couldn't be forced to walk this path again.
She stared at the body. Had she killed him? Was this all her fault?
Jesus, please no.
"He's back here."
The sound of voices and footsteps snapped her out of the catatonia she'd rapidly been slipping into, and she felt panic flood her soul as one thought crystallized in her brain: cops. Images of November rushed through her senses, and all at once she saw the hospital table and that little interview room at the LAPD, and she saw Kosseff as they told her she needed help. She saw Stone and the peach-colored walls of New Horizons.
Panic seized her.
She couldn't be found here. She was new. No one had any idea who she was. If they found her here, they might somehow connect her to the body, and she could not—she would not—go back to another police precinct for as long as she lived.
She hurriedly covered the body back up, then ran behind the nearest set of lockers. From there she spied a door that was different from the one she'd come in through, and she dashed to it. By some miracle, it was unlocked, and she opened it and slipped outside, then made her way around the corner and up some steps. Then she stopped.
She was standing in front of a racing pool.
She stared at it for a beat, slightly confused at having found it there, but the knowledge that only a single wall separated her from the loss of her freedom motivated her to keep moving, and after skimming the walls she spotted an exit.
She walked to it, putting a stranglehold on her emotions.
What was she supposed to do now? Find her next class and pretend everything was fine? There was still fifteen minutes left to her break, and she felt too jittery to sit. With some work she could relax, but she didn't want to do that. She just wanted this all to end. She wanted to be free of it. Ten minutes ago, she thought she'd been free of it. She'd been back among fellow teenagers who only regarded her as a transfer, some girl from LA. She had started down the path to possibly building a friendship or two. She'd been free.
She cracked the exit door, then glanced around outside to see if the coast was clear. It was, and she slipped out, back into the cool, January sunshine.
And yet she hadn't been, not really. There was a Watcher in the school library, and he'd come here for her. She had never truly escaped anything, and the body in the locker was like some sick sort of consolation prize.
She stopped under the shade of a tree.
She needed to talk to someone about this. It had been three months since she'd been able to discuss this seriously with anyone, since she could open her mouth without fear that she would end up tossed back in the looney bin for it. She'd blown Sofer off, but Giles had installed himself into her new school, and she wanted to know why.
She pushed off the tree, heading for the library.
How much did he know, about her and about Sunnydale? Had he known she was walking into this? Did he know about the body? Did he know what the hell was going on? Was this town already an undead hangout, or had she brought them here?
She had to confront him, she thought as she made her way along the walkway lining the quad. And it had to be now. She had to make him understand that she was finished, done—that she'd meant what she'd said to Sofer all those weeks ago.
Even if he didn't understand, he still needed to know. She wanted him to know how much she hated him, how much she hated all of this, how little she cared for the Council and its rules and its tweed. If she couldn't quit, maybe they could just fire her. If they fired her, it would all go away. Giles and his Vampyr book would go back to England, the Council would give up on her, and she could go back to her life.
Her focus was on a set of doors that weren't too far away now. Just beyond them, down the hall, would be the library. Yes, they could fire her. What the hell did she care? She was retired anyway.
She wondered even as she pushed the handle how much she was deluding herself.