1912

City of Westminster

Palace Theatre

Lost amongst the crowd walking out of the red-brick theatre. Angelus placed the black silk high top hat with a felt band wrapped around its circular shape on the top of his head. He then fixed the buttons of the black paletot overcoat.

Angelus held out his elbow for Buffy to take. The frown on his face deepened unsure how to fix the look of melancholy on Buffy's face. He had thought a night at the theatre would lift her spirits but throughout the entire program, Buffy's mind was elsewhere. She stared into the abyss appearing utterly disinterested.

Nodding to the chauffeur holding open the car door, Buffy entered a cherry coloured 1912 Renault Type CB Coupé de Ville vehicle, followed by Angelus.

Driving away from the popular West End theatre, Angelus took Buffy's black silk gloved hand into his own, drawing her attention from watching the Londoners walk down the sidewalks to various places across the bustling city.

"Why t'a long face, lass?" asked Angelus. "Ye've been draggin' yer feet for some time."

Releasing a needless breath, Buffy shook her head and turned her gaze straight ahead. "It's nothing."

"I don't believe t'at." Angelus told her. "Would ye rather take a walk? Perhaps fresh air and someone to kill will do ye some good."

"That's just it. Sad to say, this is what I live for." said Buffy, unsure how to express her frustration that boiled at the bottom of her chest.

"Sad to say?" Angelus frowned. "Why are ye so melancholy, mo ghrá (my love)?"

"I'm not. It's just…" Buffy twisted her fingers and looked out the window for a moment before turning her gaze to Angelus. "Do you get the feeling that we are kind of… in a rut?" she asked.

"A rut?" Angelus frowned, with uncertainty.

"You never take me any place new."

Angelus thought for a moment. "What about t'a massacre on the continent? Remember t'a one by t'a beach? I felt t'at was a nice change of pace."

"So this is our future? This is how we're going to spend our nights doing the same thing over and over again. Never changing."

Angelus reached for her hand again and gave it a gentle squeeze. "What is t'at ye suggest, mo ghrá (my love)?"

"I want to travel somewhere that isn't the bloody contient." The frustration for the feeling of stagnantness was clear in Buffy's voice.

"Where else t'ere?"

Buffy frowned, biting the insides of her cheeks. "America." She said, her entire face brightening at the prospect of traveling to the new land.

"America?" Angelus' brows furrowed over his dark eyes. "What's t'ere t'at isn't here, lass?"

"I'm not sure." A smile appeared across her face. "But what a marvelous adventure it could be. Oh! The Hellmouth is there! We can pay the Master and your sire a visit, if you so wish."

Eyeing her carefully for a moment, this wouldn't be the first time that Buffy had a grandiose plan of world travelling only to be utterly bored and desperate to go back home to London or their chateau in France. "T'is is truly what ye want, Buffy? America is a long ways away."

"Yes." She said with conviction. "We can go someplace new and reinvent ourselves."

"Reinvent ourselves? How, pray?"

Buffy's bottom lip pouted. "I don't know. Maybe we can... become American and wreak havoc on those bloody yankees. They will never see it coming, I dare say." The mischievous smile on her face made Angelus chuckle.

"And what are we to do wit' Dru and William—excuse me, Spike. I'm afraid I'll never get used to t'at awful name he wants to be called now."

"My love, we gave him our word that we would try." Buffy reminded him.

Angelus frowned. "Ye dote on 'em too much."

Rolling her eyes, Buffy continued, "I think it may be time for them to branch out on their own. 'Leave the nest' if you will."

Unable to argue with her justification, Angelus had been itching to leave Drusilla and Spike behind for sometime. He had been waiting for Buffy to come around. "And t'is is what will make ye happy?" He asked.

"I believe so."

Angelus nodded with a heavy needless sigh. "Alright. I will make t'a arrangement for passage."

A large smile gleamed across Buffy's face. She leaned across the back bench of the car and held Angelus' face into her hands. She covered Angelus' mouth with her own then hugged his neck with excitement.

New York City, USA

18 April 1912

Cunard Line: Pier 54

Looking anxiously ahead, the eighteen year old from Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland, Arabella Gish stepped down the gangplank into a swarming pit of reporters and photographers.

The media circus jostled to get close to the survivors of the new infamous ship that had sunk only three days before in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The BOOM of photographers magnesium flashes startle her and the glare is blinding. The loud volume of the reporters shouting over one another was deafening.

Covering herself together with the woolen shawl, Arabella declined to talk to anyone about her horrific experience aboard the ill-fated RMS Titanic.

An Immigration officer appeared before Arabella just as she reached the bottom of the gangplank.

"Name?" The officer asked.

"Gish. Arabella Gish," she said, shocked by how steady her voice sounded in her ears.

The officer jotted down her name. "You're over there, Miss Gish." He pointed her towards another area for processing for the steerage passengers.

Arabella walked forward with the dazed newly arrived immigrants. There is a sudden disturbance near her as two men burst through the cordon, running to embrace an older woman along the survivors. The women cries out with joy.

The reporters cover on this emotional scene, and flashes explode.

Arabella uses this moment to slip away into the crowd. She pushes through the jostling people, moving with purpose, and none challenges her in the confusion.


Standing off to the side, waiting for the chauffeur to arrive to pick them up and bring them to their new mansion home on the Upper East Side, Buffy ran her green eyes over the new arrivals dragging their feet. Finding their state of undress dirty and uncouth. Even the First Class arrivees looked incredibly despicable in their torn state of undress. Buffy snobbishly turned her nose, although the expressions on these impoverished faces intrigued the vampiress.

"They all look rather glum," curiously said Buffy.

"Survivors." Angelus appeared behind Buffy, looking over her shoulder at the zombie-like people walking.

Buffy frowned. "Survivors of what?"

"T'a Titanic has apparently sunk."

Buffy looked up at Angelus with surprise. "The Titanic?"

"Read here." He said putting The New York Times into Buffy's hands with the headline that read in part: TITANIC SINKS FOUR HOURS AFTER HITTING ICEBERG; 866 RESCUED BY CARPATHIA, PROBABLY 1250 PERISH; ISMAY SAFE, MRS ASTOR MAYBE, NOTED NAMES MISSING

Buffy looked at Angelus from the newspaper. "I thought the ship was supposed to be unsinkable?"

"Mo ghrá (My love), every mountain is unclimbable until someone climbs it, so every ship is unsinkable until it sinks." He said into her ear with a smile dancing on his face.

Rolling her eyes, Buffy turned her gaze back to the traumatised Titanic survivors when a familiar tingle swirled in the pit of her stomach.

Buffy's eyes carefully moved around the crowded pier building when she noticed a young woman with saltwater matted red hair and a woolen blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

She watched as the young woman stepped out of the crowds, clearly overwhelmed with the American port.

"What is it?" asked Angelus, sensing Buffy's focus.

"Well, I don't think this journey will be an entire loss." said she, narrowing her gaze on the redhead a good distance across the building.

"Why do ye say t'at?" Angelus frowned. "Who's t'at?" He spotted the girl and turned his gaze over her.

Buffy began to smile, "That, my darling, is the Vampire Slayer. What such luck we have."

Angelus laughed.

Neither had any intention of tracking the Vampire Slayer. They had been on a boat for the six days. It wasn't a complete burdon. They travelled in First Class and had a never ending supply of people to eat on board.

Buffy was anxious to come to America after three days at sea. She hadn't stepped foot on the new land since sixteen ninety-two.


As Buffy came closer to the meak looking girl, an immigration office appeared, blocking Buffy's path towards the Vampire Slayer.

"Madam, I'm afraid these aren't your sort of people over here." He said in a broughish New York accent.

Pushing aside the immediate intense desire to kill this man for the interruption, Buffy instead plastered a polite smile across her face and said, "I am offering some good will, Officer."

The officer relaxed and returned her smile. "That's very kind of you, ma'am." He stepped around her and continued to approach people with a clipboard in hand.

A dark look casted over Buffy's beautiful face. She stepped to the side, camouflaging herself with the crowds of third class people now milling about because they were uncertain of where to go next.

Arabella sat on a bench, looking down at her folded hands, sniffling away her tears that were trickling down her cheek.

"Are you very well, my dear?"

Arabella head shot up with surprise. Her blue eyes widened at the beautiful and very elegant blonde haired woman wearing a large woven scarlet red hat with a large silk bow around its cylinder shape. By the outfit the woman wore, she was of the higher class. She wore a scarlet red silk dress with a slightly flared skirt and black beaded embellishments and a black silk bow tie around the neck.

Arabella swallowed, certain that she was in the presence of royalty.

"I'd rather t'ink not, milady," she replied with a quivering chin on the verge of tears.

Buffy sat down beside the girl on the bench and asked, "Have you lost someone you loved?"

Staring down at her twisting hands, Arabella quietly nodded her head and quickly wiped the fallen tear from her cheek.

"My Wat—father died on t'a Titanic. We were comin' to America…" she said, unable to stop her tears. "It was my fault. Comin' here is what I wanted and he…" she stopped herself and sobbed, burying her face into her hands.

Buffy placed a sympathetic hand on the Vampire Slayer's shoulder. "There, there, child." She interlaced her fingers through the Slayer's.

Lifting her head from her hands, Arabella looked at the kind woman that tried to comfort her and frowned, there was something vaguely familiar about this woman. She had seen her face somewhere before, but Arabella didn't have a single clue where. "Ye… I've seen ye before…"

Buffy raised a slight brow.

It had taken a minute for the memory finally came to her. Of course, she was the infamous vampire her Watcher had shown her in a Watcher's Diary not long ago. "In a book." Her eyes widened with realisation. "Ye're a vampire. I-I've been warned about ye." She said, remembering everything her Watcher had told her.

A devilish smile tugged at Buffy's lips. "What a nasty little girl you are. Letting your poor Watcher stay behind and flounder in that icy water. A heartless girl if I ever saw one."

The tears ran freely down the Slayer's face. "I-I-I-I tri-tried to—"

"—It doesn't matter what you had tried to do." Buffy's fingers squeezed the Vampire Slayer's hand tighter until the young woman whimpered. "The point is, my darling, that you had tried and you had failed. You are an evil little creature. Selfish."

"I'm…" The Slayer felt paralysed and weak from her crying emotions.

Buffy leans in close and whispers to the Slayer's ear, "What I will do to you, my darling, you'll wish you had died on that ship." With Buffy's free hand, she tenderly tucked a piece of Arabella's hair behind her ear.

The fear Arabella felt was suffocating. Her heart began to race. In that moment she truly wished that God had spared her from this face and let her die on the Titanic.

She was not prepared to face a demon like Quod Spiritus Sanctus (The Beautiful Demon). Her tale was almost mythical by its phenomenal irony of a devout belief in God from an age of Puritans had been changed into a violent and soulless demon.

Generations of Vampire Slayer's that had come before her had studied Buffy Summers' legend. The demon that demons feared. The Slayer of Slayer's.

Arabella did not think she would ever be able to best the notorious vampires. A choked cry for help forced itself up her throat, and she felt a drop run down her cheek. She stared into Buffy's green eyes and knew that this would be her final demise.