Never Run from Anything Immortal
Chapter Two: The Difference Between Slaying and Therapy
by Troll Princess

This was no -- kick -- freaking -- gut punch -- fair!

Buffy Summers, Sunnydale's resident vampire Slayer, spun around and delivered a roundhouse kick into the face of the nearest vampire. She'd been fighting these stupid jerks for the past ten minutes, and she still hadn't gotten all of her frustrations out.

Hell, God knew she could have staked these weaklings in seconds, but she needed to vent, and there was nothing like --

"Uh, Buff? I know it goes to eleven, but do you really have to turn it all the way up like that?"

-- kicking a few vampire asses for stress management.

"Poor vampires. Look at 'em. I think she gave that one a noogie."

Buffy grabbed onto one of the vamps and threw him onto the spiked iron fence of the graveyard before turning around and flashing her best friends a warning glare. Willow and Xander were supposed to be in the middle of a spell to deal with the demon who'd gotten these loser bloodsuckers under his control, but apparently they were already done, since the demon was presently frozen, statue-like, in the center of the graveyard.

Willow and Xander, meanwhile, were finishing off a bag of kettle corn as they watched the show. The vampire Buffy had stuck to the fence was just yanking himself off the stupid thing when Buffy brought the stake in her hand down into his chest.

He was exploding into DustBuster food right about the time she was decapitating the last two vampires with the ceremonial sword the demon had brought to the party. Seemed only fair, really. The demon had been planning to use it on the vamps anyway for whatever this ritual was.

Not that Buffy cared. Although ... oh, perfect ... there was a huge grass stain on her new blue shirt. Just wonderful.

It was official. Minions sucked.

She brushed the dead vamp dust off her pants and faked a smile for her best friends. "There. All done. No more walking, talking, blood-drinking dustbunnies."

Willow and Xander exchanged a worried look as Xander handed Willow the bag of popcorn and walked over to Buffy. "Color me crazy here, Buff, but wasn't that just a little over your usual kill?"

"No," she said, a little too vehemently. Oh, great. Now they'd think she was pissed at them. Which she wasn't. Generally pissed, yes. Specifically at them, no.

Think, stupid, think! Her mind a blank, Buffy blindly pointed towards one of the dust piles on the ground. "He was asking for that. He groaned."

Aw, hell, even Xander and Will weren't buying it. Then again, she wasn't buying it, either.

"He groaned," Willow said.

"Yes, he groaned. I knocked him over and he yanked me down with him and when I fell on top of him, he groaned."

"So?"

"Do I need a vocabulary book here, Xander? He practically said I was fat."

Okay, so it sounded cheesy and girly. But since Buffy barely ever got to do girly stuff -- unless you counted killing vampires girly, which she didn't -- it was as if all the unexpressed girly stuff in the back of her head suddenly flooded out in one extremely goofy-sounding statement. Now it was time to blush accordingly.

Xander could tell she was grasping at straws, trying to avoid the real issue, so it was time for some serious, big kid talking. "Okay, we're not on Mars. Therefore, unless gravity suddenly increased and we didn't notice, you're not fat. And you're not fat, anyway, so I'm going to go with Door Number Two and say you're venting."

"I'm venting," Buffy said, as if trying to get herself to believe it.

Willow nodded enthusiastically. "Yup. Definite venting there. Especially with the noogie and all."

Xander got Buffy's attention and did that friendly meeting-her-gaze thing. "With your mom, and Dawn going all Pet Semetary with your mom ... you're just venting."

Oh, that did it.

He could see her squirming under his stare. He wasn't surprised. Burying Joyce had been bad enough. They'd all felt like they'd lost a mother, to be honest. But afterwards, when Dawn had tried to raise her mother, it just hadn't been pretty.

And here was Buffy, being all superhero-y, trying to keep Dawn around so that she could protect her from Glory and still sticking with the whole Slayer gig every night and managing to keep a SuperGlue-assisted grasp on what little sanity she had left.

Buffy nervously tucked her hair behind her ears as she offered Xander a smile. A weak one, but at least this time, it was genuine. "What can I say? It's cheaper than therapy."

She looked away, a little embarrassed to have gone nuts like that, but got distracted by a movement she spotted out of the corner of her eye. Something flittered in and out of the graveyard's lush bushes, a shimmering, darting bug-like thing with iridescent wings -- oh, wow.

Was that a faery?

Buffy moved a bit closer to where she'd seen it last. "Did you see that?"

"See what?" Willow asked, looking towards the spot Buffy was pointing at.

"The --" Oh, yeah. That's exactly what they needed to hear out of her, especially now. Besides, it probably was just her coming down off the slaying high or something. "Never mind. I must have left my sanity in my other pants or something," she said, before turning back to the demon. "So what are we supposed to do with this guy again?"

"Hey, Giles. Guess what I found."

Oh, God. That was never good.

In the past, when Giles had heard that particular phrase out of Buffy, it had preceded the presentation of, among other things, three rather noxious horns off a Klever demon, a severed arm, a pair of dead cats marked with a symbol indicating yet another end of the world, and Faith. So far, he had yet to like any time that Buffy said that phrase.

This time was no different.

Giles rose from behind his kitchen counter with a colander in his hands just as Buffy plopped the still-quivering blue-green brain of a Yex demon onto his countertop. The disapproving look that flashed in his eyes made Buffy wince. He'd been getting the colander out specifically so that he wouldn't be scrubbing blue-green Yex blood -- that stained badly -- off his countertop for the rest of this night.

Hmm. Pity.

Placing the colander down on the counter next to the brain, Giles frowned and said, "Oh, how wonderful. I'll be sure to add this to my collection of oozing, pungent demon brains."

"You have a collection?" All eyes turned to Willow, who instantly blushed bright pink and said, "Sorry. I just ... wouldn't be surprised, actually."

Giles gingerly swiped the brain into the colander with a tea towel as he watched Buffy out of the corner of his eye. The last few weeks had been hard on her, and it showed in the dark circles under her eyes. She looked as if she was going to pass out where she stood, more from mental fatigue than physical. Somewhere between Spike's twisted affections, Glory coming after Dawn still, and Hank's rather ridiculous attempt to prove himself a model parent and regain custody of Dawn, Buffy didn't need a lack of sleep to look like hell.

Although if what Dawn had told him the other day was true, sleep and peace of mind were two things lacking from Buffy's current situation.

Giles caught her hazel-eyed gaze and tried to give off a wave of concern in her direction. "Are you all right, Buffy?"

She smiled, barely making him feel better. Willow and Xander's identical expressions of worry didn't help, either. "Yeah. Sure. I'm a crying-on-the-inside kind of clown. What I need tonight is just some peace and quiet, not to mention a pint of Chunky Monkey and a round of 'The Weepiest Movie I Own.'"

"Oh, that reminds me! Here." Xander walked over to the table behind Giles's couch and grabbed a videotape that he'd left there earlier. He handed it to Buffy, who cocked an eyebrow in a silent question. Xander shrugged uncomfortably. "Anya said, and I quote, 'I don't get it. The hunter was hungry. Why am I supposed to cry again?'"

Buffy sighed as she stuck "Bambi" in her purse. "At least she cried at 'Terms of Endearment.' And during that Hallmark commercial with the old lady across the street. So she's getting better at this whole being-a-girl thing."

"She's had two years," Willow said softly. "I know we're complicated, but we're not that complicated."

"Can we talk about the matter at hand for at least a fraction of a second?"

All eyes turned to Giles, who was in the middle of putting the colander and its rather raunchy-smelling contents into the sink. Looking not the least bit embarrassed, the three of them headed into the kitchen and surrounded Giles.

"Okay," Buffy said, before pointing at the brain in the sink. "Eww."

"Yes, very," Giles said.

Willow looked up at him curiously. "What are you going to do with it?"

With the same dry wit he reserved for the more useless questions he received, Giles returned Willow's gaze and said, "I'm going to use it as my Easter dinner centerpiece."

Xander squirmed on the other side of him, clearly disgusted. "Great. Now I won't be able to look at the ham the same way."

"It's going to be properly destroyed, of course." And with that, Giles flipped on the hot water and sprayed it directly on the brain. It sizzled in the colander, fizzled briefly like a dying firecracker, then dissolved like so much sugar candy and flowed through the holes and down the drain.

Well, that was ... anti-climactic. (For everyone except Giles, of course.)

Xander leaned forward, examining the sink as if he'd find itty bitty brain parts stuck inside Giles's "Kiss the Librarian" mug or something. "That's properly destroyed? Shouldn't there be a spell or a Ginzu knife or something remotely resembling a Molotov cocktail involved?"

Giles just glared at Xander. "You've been spending too much time with Buffy, Xander."

"What's this?"

Giles turned around at the sound of Willow's voice carrying in from the living room, chiding himself for not even noticing her disappear from his side. He took note of the manila envelope and newspaper clipping in her hand and frowned. "Oh, that. An old friend of mine sent that to me -- Carl Wainwright. I knew him in college. He said it might behoove me to know about it. I don't see why, though."

Buffy, who'd sidled up beside Willow to look at her find, glanced over it quickly. "'Dozens Die in Unexplained Mass Murder.' Um, maybe he wants you to bone up on your bodies-in-big-piles crimes?"

"Quite," he said, as he walked up behind the two young woman and plucked the newspaper clipping from Willow's hands. His gaze drifted to the clock on the wall, and he glanced around at the other three Scoobies. "Don't you have jobs and school in the morning?"

Buffy pouted playfully and elbowed Willow. "Yell at him for me, Will. He ruined my temporary amnesia."

The girls exchanged a smile before the trio of young people said their goodbyes and departed hastily. As soon as they did, Giles let loose a sigh of relief.

And quickly went back to studying the newspaper clipping for clues.



This close, and she couldn't touch them.

The First lived in a quaint little apartment complex, teeming with plants and wildlife. A handful of her subjects had already infiltrated the grounds, the lush greenery decorating the complex's fountain area now infested with mirthful, silly faeries.

The fact that they were tiny, ruthless killers had never diminished the whole silly faery bit.

She watched from the shadows as the Second, the Third, and the Fourth exited the flat, making small talk. As soon they entered the light pouring down from one of the outdoor spotlights, she inhaled sharply.

My, they were the destined ones, weren't they?

The Second was a virtual copy of Dielo, his lazy, friendly swagger, his quirky, handsome smile, the bright brown eyes. The same could be said for the Fourth, whose soul shimmered just as Sorscha's once had, her innocent face and glossy red hair an exact replica of the pesky elf.

The Third, meanwhile ... she was Auria. Well, minus the glistening dragonfly wings.

Her most loyal subject. Her closest friend. Her most lethal assassin.

She merely smiled and hissed, "Soon," as the trio passed by. The Third lifted her head slightly, barely hearing the voice, but hearing it just the same.

Well, well ... the Blood was strong in this one. It was strong in many, of course. Some Bloodlines were just lucky that way.

But this one was obviously Auria's Chosen. And with the strength of her Bloodline, she could easily manipulated.

Not, thought the red-headed woman blending into the shadows, that she could control the Third just yet. If she took the Third now, got her under her thrall while she was unspelled, the spell itself would not work on her when the other two showed themselves and performed it. And if the Third was not there, the others would not perform the spell.

So close to grabbing them and killing them outright, but she had to wait.

The woman sighed and vanished into the shadows. Soon. It would be soon.