By Sauscony
E-mail: sauscony@forty-two.co.nz
Rating: R for a couple of rude words
Pairings: Buffy/Riley, Buffy/Giles (if you don't like either, stop reading now)
Summary: A prophecy says the Slayer's daughter will save the world. But's who's to be her father? And is there someone out to change things? (Set in the summer between seasons four and five.)
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel characters are copyrighted ©20th Century Fox, Joss Whedon, Mutant Eniy, UPN and the WB, and are used without permission. No copyright infringment is intended.
Becca was halfway down the stairs - on a mission to find herself a glass of water - when she heard the front door open. Buffy walked in, dropped a set of keys on the table beside the door and then turned back to shut out the night and set the locks and chain. That done, she turned again, paused for a second and then changed her mind, ignoring the stairs and walking into the lounge instead.
Becca was torn. Part of her wanted to turn and scurry back upstairs, but another part of her wanted to go and put her arms around her mother and make everything right. Because Buffy surely looked as if right now everything was wrong.
She looked... overwhelmed. Lost. Buried under a weight of cares. And as irrational as it might be, Becca felt like it was her fault. She just didn't know if she could help. Or if she was likely to make things worse.
In the end, she chose to go down the stairs rather than up. She paused in the open entrance to the lounge, leaning against the frame and looking at Buffy. She was slouched on the sofa, her gaze directed at the ceiling, her thoughts clearly troubled and possibly light years away.
Becca was about ready to chicken out and flee back upstairs to the safety of the spare bedroom when Buffy looked up and saw her standing there.
"Hi," Becca said lamely, automatically offering the other girl a little wave and then feeling incredibly stupid.
Unbelievably, Buffy smiled. "Hi," she agreed. "Couldn't sleep, huh?"
Becca held up her empty glass. "Raging attack of the thirsties. I didn't want to wake your mom, so I came down to the kitchen."
Buffy's eyes grew speculative. "How about OJ and ice-cream? We've got both in the fridge and I'm feeling in need of a vitamin and calcium fix."
Becca laughed. "I remember doing that when I was little. Until Daddy caught us and said it was unhealthy."
"Healthy, schmalthy," Buffy stated firmly. "If I ever meet your father, remind me to tell him to chill out." Already on her way to the kitchen, she didn't see the startled, almost hurting look that appeared in Becca's eyes - or the resolve that settled there a moment later.
Becca found her bent nearly double, searching the freezer for chocolate fudge ice-cream. Two bowls were already waiting on the centre counter, a pair of tall glasses and a bottle of orange juice waiting beside them. Becca took it upon herself to pour the drinks and received a grateful smile from Buffy as she closed the freezer door with one foot and came to join the younger girl.
"Grab a seat," Buffy offered as she pulled a spoon from a drawer and started piling ice-cream into the bowls.
Becca sat and pushed one glass of juice over to Buffy. She slid across a bowl of ice-cream in reply, followed a second later by a spoon.
Buffy held up her own spoon and saluted Becca with it. "Here's to chocolate ice-cream and a world without men."
"Right," Becca agreed uncertainly and Buffy laughed shortly.
"It's okay, I just had a fight with Riley. Not a fun thing at the best of times and a whole lot worse when you're trying to fight off a horde of vampires at the same time." She frowned thoughtfully. "Although the whole staking thing goes well with the blinding fury."
Becca wasn't sure if the sudden knot in her stomach was hope or fear. Either way, she tried to ignore it, concentrating instead on the woman across from her who was attacking her ice-cream with a single-mindedness that would have scared any dairy treat of lesser breeding than double chocolate fudge sundae.
"Want to talk about it?" she asked in what she hoped was a casual tone.
For a long moment Buffy didn't answer, her attention still on the ice-cream. Finally she looked up and sighed.
"I so don't need this crap, you know?"
It was clearly a rhetorical question, so Becca just ate some more of her own ice-cream and waited.
"I mean, fifteen years old and this guy turns up and tells me I'm the Slayer. How does that end up? I lose all my friends and end up getting expelled for burning down the school gym. It was full of vampires, but can I tell anyone that? No, of course not, not even my own mother."
She refilled her bowl with a second helping of ice-cream. "So Mom and I move to Sunnydale. New start, no vampires. Except that on my first day at school I find that I have a new Watcher and I'm now living on an active Hellmouth."
Buffy finally looked up at Becca, slight surprise in her eyes as if she had forgotten the other girl was even there. After a second she took a swallow of orange juice and kept talking.
"When I was sixteen Giles found a prophecy that said I was going to die. And it was right. I did."
Startled, Becca dropped her soon, the metal clinking against the side of the china bowl and Buffy looked up at her with a slight smile. "Only for a moment," she said a little defensively. "I drowned and Xander revived me."
She set down her own spoon and sighed. "I really hate prophecies, you know that? I've dealt with enough of them now to know that even if they have loopholes, they usually come true in some way. And this one..." She shut her eyes, looking for an instant like she was trying not to cry. "I just wanted to be normal. If I'm going to have a daughter, I don't want her to have to deal with all the same kind of crap I did."
"But you could be there to help her. To explain and everything," Becca suggested quietly.
Buffy laughed, the sound hard and harsh. "That's what I said to Riley tonight. And all he did was give me an ultimatum. That we don't tell her, bring her up like a normal kid."
"Can you hide from destiny like that?" Becca asked.
"I don't know." Buffy laughed again. "It never worked when I tried it. Running away just made everything worse." She looked at Becca, her heart in her eyes, everything about her suddenly vulnerable.
"It's like she's real already. And I just want her to have a normal life. Giles..." She stopped and shook her head. "It doesn't matter."
"Giles said what you didn't want to hear and you don't want to admit he's right," Becca suggested gently.
This time, Buffy's chuckle was more genuine. "I thought Giles was the only person that knew me that well. And Mom, some of the time. Do I have to add you to the list too?"
"Shouldn't she be ready?" Becca asked, avoiding the question altogether.
For an instant, Buffy's eyes flashed. Then she sighed and seemed to collapse in on herself again. "I guess," she said tiredly. "But I so want her to have a normal life."
"Do you want to know about her normal life?" Becca asked suddenly. She took another swallow of orange juice. "I can tell you."
Buffy carefully poured herself a second glass of juice before answering. "How?" she asked finally.
That was a question Becca wasn't prepared to answer, so she just plunged into the telling without giving Buffy a chance to interrupt.
"You tried so hard to be normal, you lost sight of how to be yourself. You tried so hard to be the perfect wife, you became a shadow, a silent, pale woman who stood behind her husband and didn't speak. You tried so hard to please everyone that they stole your soul in little pieces. You tried so hard to be the way he wanted you to be that you became cowed and quiet and afraid. You're strong and you became weak.
"And your daughter... She grew up unaware the monsters were real, taught by her father that anyone who believed in them was a fool and an idiot, and that the world was simple, constructed in black and white without any colour. She too was cowed and quiet and didn't know that it was all right to have an opinion of her own. Didn't know that it was all right to disagree with her elders or tell someone what she thought, rather than what she were told to think.
"If she's supposed to save the world, she's going to fail. Because no-one taught her how to do it. She didn't have a Giles, watching over her and teaching her and protecting her like her mother did. She had only her father's denial and her mother's silence. She barely knows how to look after herself; she can't be humanity's saviour."
Buffy was listening, her face still and silent and stunned. Her expression made Becca want to cry, but she knew she had to keep talking.
Make your mother happy.
"Buffy, you're strong. You're brave and bright and beautiful. You have friends who love and care about you. You have Giles, who would die for you. Who loves you so much it hurts him. Don't turn them out of your life. Because the only way they will leave you is if you make them go. If you let Riley talk you into telling them to go. Because he doesn't want them there, always a reminder of what you used to be, not what he wants you to be.
"Let your daughter grow up knowing who and what you are. All of it, because it's every little thing together that makes you so special. Teach her as she grows, not as if Fate is chasing her, but so she that when the day comes, she is ready and strong and her mother's daughter, not a shadow moulded by her father.
"Choose your daughter's father well. Make sure he is someone who loves you. Someone you love in return. Someone who will protect and teach you both without trying to shape you into his image of what you should be.
"There's someone like that waiting for you. You just have to find him. Open you eyes and see him. Don't look for normality, look for the man who talks to your soul. Who knows you inside out and loves you, not despite of it but because of it. And whom you love in return.
"Did you ever tell D... Riley, I mean. Did you ever tell Riley you love him? Cause I can't remember it, not even once. Not ever."
Becca swallowed, and said the most important, most life-altering, soul- shattering thing she would ever say to her mother.
"Please, Buffy, don't choose Riley."
Buffy was staring at her, tears marking her cheeks. "How do you know all this?" she asked finally.
Becca brushed away her own tears and shrugged. "I just do."
Buffy was shaking her head. "Who are you?"
"I..." Becca hesitated, knowing she couldn't tell the truth. Especially not now. Finally she just shrugged again and tried to smile. "Someone who was sent to help," she said finally, hoping her voice wouldn't crack. "Just someone sent to make things work out right."
"Are they going to?" Buffy's voice was tiny, that of a little girl begging her mother for reassurance and if things hadn't been so serious, Becca might have found it funny. Instead, she felt like her heart was breaking.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "I think it's up to you now."
"I don't know what to do," Buffy whispered mournfully.
Becca gave her a sympathetic look but didn't dare say anything more.
"Willow was right," Buffy said slowly. "The prophecy - it's about my daughter. And you were right too. I've never told Riley I love him. He's said it to me, but I never said it back. I kept thinking I should, but the words always got stuck in my throat."
She brushed at her eyes and Becca pretended not to notice her tears, even though all she really wanted to do was jump up and hug her mother until she was smiling again.
"Was that true?" Buffy asked abruptly. "What you said, about my life if I married Riley... Is it really going to happen like that?"
Becca remembered the pains and hurts of growing up on the Finn farm and nodded.
"Then I suppose I start by breaking up with my boyfriend." She was silent for a very long moment. "Oh God, Becca, all I feel saying that is relief. I guess I really don't love him." The little girl's hurt was back in her voice. "Do you think I'll ever be able to love anyone?"
"Yes," Becca insisted fiercely. "Yes. You have so much love to give. Give it to someone worthy."
"Do you think so?"
The uncertainty in her voice made Becca want to go out and stomp all over Riley Finn.
"Yes," she said instead, putting all the truth and conviction she could into that one little word. "Yes," she repeated. "I know you can." Knowing she couldn't say it out loud, she completed sentence in her head. Because you always loved me.
"Yes," Buffy whispered softly. "I'll love my daughter, and I'll make sure I love her father. We'll both love her. Thank you, Becca."
She looked up, surprised to see the kitchen was empty, the only signs Becca had ever been there the half empty glass and the empty ice-cream bowl.
"Becca?"
But there was no reply, only the fading sound of footsteps running up the stairs.
Buffy was already waiting in the diner when Riley arrived. He was a little miffed about that, because he had planned to have breakfast all ordered before she got there, to show that he could look after her like he had promised. Her and their baby.
He leaned over to kiss her, but she pulled back and he was left brushing his lips against empty air. Confused, he sank into the seat opposite her.
"What's wrong, Buffy?"
Buffy wouldn't look at him, and something in the way she carefully stared at the menu on the chalkboard behind him, as if it was the most important thing in the world, made him suddenly nervous.
"Buffy?"
Finally, she shifted her gaze to meet his eyes. Her voice was quiet, so that he had to strain to hear it. "Riley, I don't think we should see each other any more."
He stared at her, unable to comprehend what she was saying. "Is this because of last night?" He tried to gentle his voice, make her understand. "You said you wanted our daughter to have a normal life. She can't have one with the entire freak show hanging around. That's why we should get away and go some place else where no-one knows about all the weird stuff."
"You're calling my friends a freak show?" Buffy's voice was dangerously calm, but Riley missed it altogether, too focussed on getting her to see things like they really were.
"So that's a bit strong," he agreed. "But wherever they are, weirdness comes."
"I'm the Slayer, Riley," Buffy pointed out. "The weirdness comes to me."
He shook his head insistently. "It's Sunnydale. Just come with me and leave it behind."
"I can't. That's not who I am. That's not who my daughter needs to be."
"Our daughter," Riley corrected.
But Buffy was shaking her head. "The prophecy doesn't talk about our daughter, Riley. It talks about my daughter. And you know what? I've realised I don't want you to be her father."
Riley was staring at her, his eyes shocked and his mouth hanging somewhere around his ankles.
"What do you mean?" he asked weakly.
"Giles was right," Buffy told him. "The best thing I can do for my child is make sure she's ready. And trying to play at being normal isn't going to do that."
"And how are you going to do that?" Riley asked nastily. "You can't even look after yourself."
"I'll learn," Buffy snapped back. "And Giles will help me. Giles - "
"Giles!" Something inside Riley broke, unleashing a wave of bitterness and doubt. "It's always Giles, isn't it? I thought competition from a vampire was bad enough. But even before Angel comes Giles. I'm a pretty poor third down the list, aren't I?"
"Riley..."
Riley was too far gone to listen. "Giles, Giles, Giles. Next, you'll be telling me you're in love with him!"
Buffy blinked, feeling a little like she's just been hit over the head with a large brick. Possibly an entire pallet of them.
"I love Giles," she admitted. "But not..."
"That's better than you ever managed for me." The fury suddenly spent, Riley leaned back in his chair and just looked at her. "You've never said you love me. Can you say it, Buffy? Cause if you can't, we really are through. I'm walking out that door and I'm not coming back."
Buffy was silent. All she could hear was Becca's words in the kitchen at midnight.
Did you ever tell Riley you love him? Cause I can't remember it, not even once. Not ever.
You have friends who love and care about you. You have Giles, who would die for you. Who loves you so much it hurts him. Don't turn them out of your life. Because the only way they will leave you is if you make them go.
Finally, she just dropped her eyes to the table, and stared at the cheap, checkered cloth.
Riley sighed. "That's what I thought. I've just been fooling myself, hoping you'd fall in love with me."
He reached across the table and forced her head up. "You say you want 'normal', Buffy. But you don't. That's what I was offering you. A chance to be normal. To raise our child without demons or vampires or risking your life every night. But that isn't what you really want. You want to be the best - the Slayer, the one no-one can match, not even your husband. So go to your Giles, who is old and stupid and happy to stand in your shadow and be your inferior. Have your children with him and don't come running to me when one day the darkness kills your friends and your family. Because I won't be interested."
Buffy stared at him, seeing the cold hurt in his face, the humiliation of having his way, his choices, questioned and rejected. And she finally understood that Becca, however it was she knew, had been right.
And she was furious. So astoundingly, blindingly angry that she didn't know where to begin. "Don't worry," she assured him coldly. "I hope I never see you again in my life. If I stayed with you, you'd turn me into something I'm not. Your imagined, perfect little wife. It's you that can't take it - that someone out there is stronger than you, better than you. Well, you know what buddy, I am. And I will never, ever settle for being anything that I'm not.
"And you are so wrong about Giles. He's not my inferior, he's my equal. If anything, he's my better. He compliments me - he's the parts of me that are missing and I'm only whole with him. Together, we can beat anything. We can face anything. And my daughter with Giles, she'll kick ass like nobody you've ever seen. And one day, when you're old and grey and the world still exists, you can come crawling to our feet, hers and mine, and thank us for the future we've given you. The future you would have denied the entire world by making us normal."
Her voice on the last word was scathing, carrying enough acid to eat through the table.
"I'm not normal, I'm the Slayer. And you better remember it, mister."
Buffy took a deep breath, trying to control herself before she did something she'd regret. Like accidentally on purpose killing Riley and having to go on the run from the cops for the rest of her life.
"Get out, Riley. Just go away and don't come back."
"Do you really think an experienced man like Giles will stay to put up with a selfish child like you?" Riley's voice was ugly, his expression worse.
"Do you really think a callow boy like you could ever satisfy me?" Buffy snapped back and was pleased and ashamed both at the same time to see she'd wounded him. "Giles hasn't left me yet, and I love him. You're right. I'm in love with him. That's more than I can say about you."
She gave him a sweet, gently vicious smile. "And Riley, thank you for making me see something I hadn't realised before. Thank you from saving me from the mistake of running off with the pretty boy and never seeing how much I love the man who has always been at my side."
He didn't say another word. It looked like he couldn't have said a thing, even if he'd tried. He just walked out the door into the morning and, Buffy hoped, out of her life for good.
Alone at last, she sank back in her seat, astounded at just much tension was slipping away with the knowledge Riley was gone. That she didn't have to play things his way any more, had only to be herself.
Then she sat bolt upright, her heart hammering in her chest.
"Oh my God. I'm in love with Giles."
