Author's note: Again, this is co-written with my brother, who truly has an uncanny sense for the written word. The prologue is during the episodes "Bargaining" and "After Life", the chapters after "Flooded". Spoilers shouldn't be much more than "Once More, With Feeling" and "Wrecked".
Co-Author's note: You will review this one. Either that or I will find stories you've written and give them so many bad reviews the server will shut down.
Author's note reprise: Ignore him
Co-author's note, 2: Ignore me? If you thought Marco was bad… Besides, all the fight scenes are mine, as are almost all of the Marco's. My sister specializes in the Spike stuff. She likes the bloodsucker, go figure. Also recall that in one of my sister's other stories, she resurrected the half-demon, part Irish Allen Francis Doyle, who had died long ago and far away in California, but refuses to stay dead, like certain other people in Joss Whedon's universe. We shall render unto Whedon what belongs to Whedon, the rest belong to us.
To Live, Perchance to Dream
Prologue: The Day the Slayer Un-Died.
Marco Cattalano was annoyed enough to kill those boisterous motorcycle demons driving by his college campus.
Actually, killing them sounds like a good plan.
The tall, part Irish blond opened his closet and removed the crossbow he'd forgotten to give back to the Magic Box. He often wondered how he'd wandered back to the dorms without anyone noticing it. He slid a bolt into the "chamber" and pulled the wire back, setting it to fire.
He walked out into the street and headed for someplace simple, Main Street, so he'd have plenty of targets. He had a midterm in another day or two, but he had been studying for days on end, and this would be a good way to kill time.
He walked along the devastation of the street, and he smiled an annoying little smile. The stores were in flames, cars were smashed, and several of the demon motorcyclists were gathered together, loading up on stolen wares while the others continued to loot and pillage.
Marco glanced at one popping a wheelie with the front tire in the air. He casually fired a bolt into the back tire. The motorcycle came down with a crash and dropped forward. When it landed on the front wheel, the cycle flipped end over end through the air and into a cluster of gang demons and their vehicles. He had to admit the resulting explosion was quite impressive.
He melted into the resulting confusion; i.e., he ran like a vampire chased by a convention of priests.
About an hour or so into the havoc and chaos, Marco literally tripped over Buffy Summers… or at least the mechanical sex toy version of her, reprogrammed to replace the Slayer in her fighting capacity, though his friend Willow was still working on the wit and wisdom of the Slayer. It didn't look like she'd ever get there, mainly because its arms and legs had been ripped off the torso.
Marco knelt down, looking over the machine, with its light blonde hair and blue-green eyes; he couldn't tell if they were one or the other. Even he could see why Spike had had this blasted machine built; Buffy had been quite pretty…at the very least, her face was interesting. However, Marco still wondered why Spike had fallen in love with the real thing in the first place, considering he was a vampire, had dealt in wholesale slaughter for over a century, and her job was to kill things like him.
The Buffybot twitched a little and stared at Marco. "Buffy."
He furrowed his brow, wondering if the recognition program was as shot as the rest. In mid-thought, the crash and boom of a building ripped through his thoughts. He looked up toward the sight of Mount Doom. "Mount Doom" was his nickname for the Eiffel Tower rip-off built by the insane minions of the hell god Glorificus—better known to most as Glory, and to Marco as "the blonde loony." He recalled that Buffy—the real Buffy—had taken a swan dive from the top of Mount Doom, straight onto the bricks below after closing a portal to Hell by going through it. For some reason, three months later, it was still standing. In New York, where Marco had been born and raised, any construction built without a permit would have been torn town within three to seven days, maybe less. However, the darn thing was still there, though it had been constructed for a single, temporary purpose—a one-hour opening of a portal into a hell dimension.
Marco glanced toward the robot and briefly pondered its last word. Willow was a witch, in one of the literal senses of the term. Could she have…?
"What the hell are you doing out here?" came the painful cockney accent of Spike, the peroxide blond vampire who had been "neutered" by a chip planted in his head by an Area-51 government project known as the Initiative. He couldn't harm humans, even to feed or defend himself, but he still had the sucky attitude of an annoying vampire.
"What is it with everyone tonight, eh?" the tall, lanky vamp asked, coming toward Marco, dressed in his ever-present black shirt, pants, and leather duster. "Can't anyone stay home? Out of the bloody line of fire?"
The creak and crash of metal kept Marco from replying. The human leapt into a run, straight for Mount Doom. He was there to see the last moments of its collapse. "Darn well about time."
"It's all right. You're alive. And you're home."
He snapped his head toward the voice of the Vampire Slayer's sister, Dawn. His eyes widened slightly as he focused on the Slayer herself. Dawn's arms were around her neck, and both of them were on the ground, though Buffy's eyes were slightly dazed and unfocused. Marco dropped the crossbow and approached as Spike's usual utterance of "bloody hell" stayed in the background of his mind.
Marco slowly closed in on them. It wasn't natural. Buffy was dead. It had to have been a zombie—a well-preserved zombie, but one nonetheless. Resurrection wasn't possible, unless of course God really wanted this Slayer to stay alive, and Marco knew God didn't play such games in the universe He created. He knelt down in front of Buffy's dazed eyes and looked into them, a semi-pleading smile on his face, asking what he could do for her.
After he had helped Dawn get Buffy to the Summers' house on Revello Drive, he was walking to the dorm when he found Willow Rosenburg with her accompanying hoard of "Scoobies." The bright, flowing red hair and blue eyes stood out plainly, even in the darkness. He heard them talking about how Buffy was when she came back.
Hearing this, Marco knew what she had done, and now fully understood the line from the Bible: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
He was annoyed.
Marco fumed on the bed in his dorm room, staring angrily at the ceiling. How could Willow do such a thing, and to her best friend, no less? He had really thought he'd convinced her not to worry, that Buffy was in heaven as her reward for sacrificing herself for the world multiple times.
He heard the familiar knock at his door. He really did not want to deal with her right now. "If that's Willow, go away."
"Marco, what is it?" she asked.
"Willow, if you come in here, I'm going to do something I might regret. Please don't make me deal with you right now; it wouldn't be good for either of us."
"You haven't even looked at me since we beat back that demon we made."
Marco sat up straight and growled. His right eye twitched with rage. "We?" he snarled. He sprang to the door and ripped it open. Willow stood at the threshold in a pink turtleneck sweater and navy blue slacks. "Inside."
He slammed the door behind her and whirled upon her. "You didn't tell me about what you were doing. You even had the good sense not to tell Spike what you were doing! You know why? Because we knew what you were doing was wrong. Don't you get that? How did you even convince the others to go along? Tell them that mystical energy could have dragged her soul into Hell? That only works if she deserved to go there, or if she were dropped in, body and all, like Angel. Since we both know neither happened—"
Willow's eyes flared. "Buffy told us she was tortured. She said she was in Hell. She—"
Marco cut her off with a leveling gaze, and his eyes became as cold as winter skies in Alaska. "And you believe her?"
