Character: Buffy Summers
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2598
Setting: The Harvest

Buffy stood there in the cold night air, staring out at the cemetery. Distant headstones and old stone crosses stood out against the moonlight, looking for all the world like rows of broken teeth. They seemed to stretch for miles in all directions, melting away into the forest that surrounded the grounds. She looked for a shadow, moving shapes, anything that didn't belong, but she saw nothing. Twenty seconds ago she'd been fighting, but now they were alone, and the quiet was so dense it almost felt as if nothing that had happened in the past hour was real.

Her arm throbbed painfully, and she pressed her palm against it.

But she knew it had, and she knew that she had failed, just as she'd failed Merrick and Tisha and that woman in the alley. Her body count would grow again. She didn't know if she'd killed the boy in the locker, but Jesse she knew she could've saved. He'd been right there, within her reach, and she'd let him slip away.

"Ow."

The sound drew her attention, and she looked down at her newfound charges. Less than a day and they'd both found out her secret. Worse, they'd almost died for it.

"Let me help you," Willow was saying as Xander struggled to sit up.

"I think I like it better down here," he said.

Buffy exhaled. "Here," she said, reaching out for him. He took her hand, then used his other to prop himself up on Willow's shoulder. They rose in a huddle, and he wobbled unsteadily, letting go of her hand to rub his head again.

"That was a new experience for me," he said.

"Yeah," Willow said, voice distant and distracted.

Buffy backed up a pace, taking the opportunity to glance around again. She didn't expect to see anything, and when she didn't, she looked back at them. They were both staring at her, almost as if she was Superman or Batman or something and had responded to their distress call by blasting through a wall. She didn't know what to say, and she couldn't escape the guilt. Why was she standing there? She should've gone after Jesse.

Then again, she thought as they continued to stare at each other, she couldn't exactly have left these two here alone.

"How's your head?" she asked to break the growing silence.

Xander blinked at her, then withdrew his hand from his head, as if suddenly remembering it was there. "Oh, uh, you know, it's throbbing, but I'm pretty sure that'll go away."

"It will," she said. That much she knew at least, even as her own arm and a few ribs pulsed to her heart beat.

Willow glanced between them, but her eyes slipped down when Buffy met them.

"You alright?" Buffy asked her, trying to regain her eyes. She felt like she was responsible for her too.

"Oh, yeah, I'm good, you know, fine." She brushed her hair nervously behind her ears. "Everything's good. What just happened?"

She stared at them. What to say? This wasn't in the handbook.

Then again, she'd never had a handbook. Was there a handbook?

"Isn't it obvious?" Xander said, cutting through her internal rambling and rubbing his scalp again. "Buffy here is a Vampire Slayer."

Willow's brows creased, and she looked at him. "What?"

"Yeah," he dropped his hand. "I was at that stage before too. Strangely, past that now."

Willow looked over at Buffy, her sudden nervousness having evaporated almost as quickly as it had appeared.

"What he said," she answered her unspoken question.

"You're..." she looked around. "So, those were vampires?"

"Yes," she nodded. What the hell—they were past the point of cover stories anyway.

She looked back at her, "And you're a Vampire Slayer?"

"Yes."

"And," she pointed at her makeshift stake, "you slayed them?"

"Yes."

"With a stick?"

"Yes."

"Oh," she shifted. "That's...special."

Xander was looking around. "Jesse?"

Buffy swallowed, "I'm sorry, I..." what? She had tried? She had been too late?

Again, he swept his unsteady gaze over the cemetery. "We should look around," he said, lurching forward, "in case he, you know, got away." He only got a few steps before stumbling.

"Xander," Willow exclaimed, catching him. She looked at Buffy, "What should we do?"

"I..." her voice trailed off as she stared at them. Alone, she could spend the whole night looking, and she would, but they couldn't accompany her. She couldn't keep them safe, especially since one of them was only barely mobile. "I should take you home," she said finally. To do it was to effectively abandon Jesse to his fate, but she didn't really have a choice.

"But what about Jesse?" Willow voiced her thoughts.

She shifted, "I'm sorry, I don't know that we could find him."

"I'm not really eager to repeat the last twenty minutes of my life, but..." she bit her lip, "He's our friend, Buffy."

Her heart seemed to crush a little, and not just because her ribs were starting to feel like she'd been thrown into several walls. "I know," she said, "but..." she searched for the right words, "you can't really help." She glanced at Xander, who looked as if he was only a couple minutes away from tossing it all over the grass. "And he needs to go home," she nodded at him.

Willow looked back at him, brows scrunched.

"I'm good," Xander offered. Nothing about that statement was convincing.

Willow seemed to be of a similar mind. "You're right," she said.

Buffy sighed in relief. "Good, so I'll take you home. Xander," she looked at him, "maybe you should call your parents, tell them you're going to spend the night with Willow. Avoid questions."

"Yeah, good idea." He looked around, as if expecting a phone to have spontaneously sprouted from the ground. "Where?"

"There's a pay phone at the Bronze," Willow said. "We're not far."

"Okay," Buffy said, "I'll take you there, he can call, then I'll walk you home." She was planning aloud.

"Sounds good," Xander said. "Which way?"

She looked around, then paused suddenly, touching her hand to her chest. All at once she remembered the big vamp who had almost killed her—Luke—and the smell of the old coffin, and she felt the fear as he recited his prophecy and leaned down to bite her. She remembered the cross that had fallen out of her shirt, and the stranger in the alley.

She felt around her shirt, but neither the cross nor the box was still there. It wasn't surprising—at some point her over-shirt had fallen open—but she realized as she stood there that there was no way she could leave the graveyard without it. She didn't know if it had truly saved her life, but in a way it didn't matter. She needed to retrieve the stranger's token.

"Let's retrace back to the mausoleum," she said. "Find our way back from there."

"The mausoleum?" Willow repeated nervously. "Shouldn't we head away from there?"

Normally, she'd be inclined to agree. "I, uh...dropped something there, during the fight. I need to get it back." At their incredulous look, she quickly added, "I cleared the vamps from there. Besides, if anymore show up, I'll take care of them." She held up her torn-off branch, hoping that was reassurance enough. She didn't know if she believed what she was saying, but it really didn't matter as long as they did.

They both exchanged a look. After a beat, Xander said, "I'm choosing to trust you."

Buffy smiled grimly, then looked at Willow.

"I guess I will too," she said. "But we'll try to be fast?"

"As possible," she tried to sound soothing, and to compound her statement she started off. Her companions stuck close behind her, and she could feel their tension choking the air as they walked. When they came within view of the mausoleum a few minutes later, she could feel their anxiety ratchet up to the point where it seemed to be compressing her ribs.

She stopped when they reached the entrance, turning to face them. "You want to come in?" she asked. "Or you good to stay out here?"

They both glanced inside, then at her, then around them—at the cemetery grounds.

"I vote for the doorway," Willow said, stepping in just enough that the shadows cast by the mausoleum swallowed her, yet she wasn't quite inside. Xander joined her within moments.

"I'll only be a sec," Buffy said, then stepped all the way inside, down the steps, to the stone coffin where she'd so nearly died before. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes since that moment, and yet it felt like she was returning to an old crime scene.

She forced herself toward it, then lightly pulled herself up so she could balance there on the narrow coffin wall. She scanned the old cushions and the now broken skeleton where she had lain not long before, trying to catch a glimpse of silver through the gloom. A few minutes passed, then...there, she'd found it.

Despite all better judgment, she lowered herself back into the coffin, then reached down among the ruined fabric to feel for the silver she'd glanced. Her fingers quickly found what she was looking for, and she lifted the cross free, to hold it up against what little light had made its way into this tomb. It shined dully, and she retracted it back into her palm to squeeze it there.

After levering herself back out of the coffin, she held it up again to watch as it spun slowly in the air.

What had happened in that fight? Why had she let him throw her around like that? Had the cross truly saved her, or would she have been able to have done it herself?

The more she thought about it, the less certain she felt of an answer. She'd been afraid, and she'd been paralyzed by it. It had only taken that second of surprise on both their parts for her to remember herself, but in that moment before it...she didn't know.

It had been three months since she'd stopped training, two since she'd fought her last vampire. How much had she forgotten in that time? How much weaker was she?

She didn't know, but it frightened her that she had almost died tonight, and that she'd done so little to stop it.

Hesitantly, she looped the cool chain around her neck, then fastened it there. The cross felt heavy and reassuring on her chest, and she reached up to touch it again.

She hadn't wanted to be the Slayer. When she'd woken up this morning, she'd convinced herself that she was done, but now she knew. The reality was that she didn't have a choice, and she couldn't escape her fate. The time was past to fight it, and there would only be more bodies in the lockers and the cemeteries if she didn't step up.

She knew that with a clarity she'd never felt before as she stood there, next to the stone coffin where she'd so nearly died.

"Buffy?" a voice from the entryway. Willow. "You find it yet?"

She looked over at the two huddled figures, and then she made her way toward them. She had almost forgotten they were there. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, let's go."

"Good," she said.

They didn't move from their hiding place until she'd left the mausoleum, and then they shadowed her steps as she led the way back in the direction she remembered coming from. The tension eased the further they got from the mausoleum, but it never dissipated. She sensed something from her newfound companions, that they were holding something back. They didn't say anything though, at least not until they'd almost cleared the graveyard.

"So..." Xander asked, finally breaking the protracted silence, "how is the new librarian involved again?"

She glanced back to see that Willow was staring at him in confused surprise. "Mr. Giles?" she asked. "He's involved?"

"Yeah," Buffy affirmed after only a slight pause. After all, if her cover was blown, there was no reason to keep his identity a secret. "He's..." she searched for an explanation, but she didn't really know what to say. Finally, she settled on, "It's complicated."

"So simplify it," Xander said.

"He's my Watcher," she acquiesced, knowing that would mean nothing to them. "Or, at least, my new one. He's been assigned to me, I guess."

"New one?" he repeated. "You had an old one?"

Suddenly, it felt as if something sharp had caught onto something raw inside her and ripped it open. "I..." she swallowed, "I don't want to talk about that."

Apparently sensing danger, he let it go. Silently, she thanked him for it.

Willow smoothed a long strand of hair behind her ear. "So he's not really a librarian?" she asked. "I thought...we'd been getting along so well."

"I don't know," she shrugged. "Maybe he's both."

"Oh..." her voice trailed off.

Buffy let the silence drag a few moments, but the sudden compulsion to speak, to offer them an in into her life gripped her. "We'll end up meeting in the library tomorrow, during first period probably," the words spilled out before she could stop them. "We have things to talk about. You guys are involved now—you know what's going on."

"So you want us in on the secret meeting?" Xander caught her drift.

"Yeah," she said, not knowing and almost not caring if she was going to regret this somewhere down the line. "You're involved, and Jesse's your friend. You deserve to know what's going on, and I can't tell you everything. I mean," she exhaled, "only if you want to know. I get it if you don't, if you want to step away."

He was silent for what seemed a long time. Willow was the first to reply. "Yeah," she said, "I do. I want to help."

"Me too," Xander said after another beat.

She glanced at them again, wondering what she had just done. She had given them an invitation into her world, and they had accepted, not really knowing the kind of danger they were stepping into. But as much as she was afraid for them, a part of her—a very small part of her—was relieved. Her burden seemed lessened now that she'd shared it, and the fact that they were still here, that they hadn't run away screaming, it was a comfort, though she wasn't entirely sure why.

"And it is a secret," she added, maybe just a tad belatedly for the conversation. "The meeting, what happened tonight, me—everything."

"Don't worry, Buffy," Xander said. "We've got your back on that one."

At that, she smiled again, though a little less grimly. She was finally done running from her fate, but, this time, she wasn't going to have to face it alone. Somehow that made it seem easier.

Somehow, that made her less afraid.