Continued after Previous…

Sunnydale, CA Summers house, 1999:

Buffy slowly came back from her memory to the present and looked at everyone in turn after the end of her recap.  Willow was the embodiment of sympathetic pain and understanding.  Giles had long since lost his rage over the fact that his charge had been hiding something like this from him, now had a new look of rage on his face.  If she had to hazard a guess, she would imagine it to be rage at the other Immortal, Kronos that had killed her first Teacher.  Cordelia surprisingly had tears streaming down her face in small rivulets, ruining what little makeup she still had on, and Amy joined her in silent tears.  Xander still looked confused by something, yet he also had tears upon his face.  Oz was the only one to have little or no outward emotions.  Well, except to the trained eye.  Just looking at him, Buffy could tell that he too was enraged by what Kronos had done and was.  Yet there was an also subtle amount of fear leaking through his mask.  Buffy immediately understood.

Just to be sure, when Willow had first brought her attention to Oz, Buffy had done some quiet background checking on the young man.  He was very impressive academically, and showed keen interest and aptitude for various types of music.  Yet there was this one little incident when he was five years old.  He had lost his temper at his father for something that probably not even he remembered.  He then began to hit his father over and over.  Not really causing any damage, but surprising enough to make the older man take a few steps back.  While he was one step away from the edge of a cliff.  Psychological tests indicated that Daniel had blamed himself and his temper.  So he sealed himself off from the world and became the "cool" unflappable Oz that he is today.

He's afraid of losing control, Buffy mused as she registered the fear. Shaking her head in silent pity for the traumatized werewolf, Buffy turned her attention to Xander's confusion.

"What's wrong Xander?  You look confused." She asked.

Startled, Xander jumped slightly, "What?" he asked.  Then realizing the question, "Oh, uh I was just kinda wondering why you came up with the name Buffy three thousand years ago and you still use it today.  And how did this Alai Kea-yum know about Buffalo back then if he was in Europe?"

Buffy grinned impishly and answered his question.  "Remember I said that Alaekiam was already pretty old and experienced?" They all nodded.  "Well, he was old enough that he could have swam from the America's to Europe, or maybe even crossed the Continental bridge between Asia and Alaska a couple times.  Or maybe it had something to do that he was from Atlantis."

Everyone did a double take on that.  "Atlantis!!" they all shrieked at more or less the same time.  "Buffy that's impossible, Atlantis is only a myth!" Giles exclaimed.  Buffy kept her grin and answered back, "Right, like vampires, demons, Immortals, and gods are myths.  Giles, trust me.  Besides, Atlantis wasn't exactly a lost continent or anywhere really near the Bermuda triangle.  It was actually a shipping company of evolved humans that covered the entire world.  Alaekiam never told me the real name of the company, but he told me that the ruin of it was the flood.  Oh, that was also ahead of my time, but I can guarantee you that it happened."

Everyone just sat in stunned silence around the Summer's living room.  Amy, the most at ease with discussing things about and with Immortals, was the first to recover and asked Buffy another question.  "Buffy, how did the slayers even come to be if you weren't…uh, aren't one and Faith is…or was?  Know what I mean?" Amy asked.

Buffy grinned and nodded.  "Yeah, I know what you mean.  And it's actually kind of a long story, but I'll try and shorten it, even if only for Xander's ease of thinking."

"Hey!"

SMACK  "Shut up dweeb boy!" Cordelia yelled at Xander after hitting upside the back of his head.

Rather than risk yet another argument with his girlfriend, Xander just shut up and listened to Buffy.

"All right, as simple as I can make it, a thousand and few hundred years of living, running, fighting, and demon hunting later, I found myself in Greece in about 200, 250 B.C." Buffy began.  "I had heard of a new breed of demon that had begun to spread around the area.  They were called Bacchi.  Basically, they were a breed of vampire newly created by this demonic Greek God Bacchus."

"The Greek God of wine and pleasure?" Giles interrupted with a peculiar tone.

Buffy smiled at him and shook her head.  "Wine?  Whoa yeah!  Pleasure, sure if you count undead orgies as pleasure."  Buffy spared a glare at Xander, as though daring him to comment.  He wisely kept his mouth shut.  Though he did blush a very interesting shade of pink.

"Anyway, while I was staying in a small town called Potadia, I had the unmentionable gall to hang around long enough for some slave traders, slash ugly disgusting pig shit jerk offs with whips and horses, to come by town and decide to pick up some "merchandise"." Nobody missed the tone of emphasis she placed on the last word.  "Well, naturally I tried to fight them off.  Yet me being just a regular girl, and without any particular weapon of choice at the time, I tried to fight them off as best I could.  They were getting ready to make an example of me by the time that we got to the edge of the forest.  Luck would have it that a warrior was just passing through on her way home."

Buffy was interrupted once again, this time by Xander, though Amy and Cordelia each held wide eyes themselves.  "Wait a second, wait a second!  This warrior that just happened to be passing by was a woman?"  Buffy nodded, hiding her smile.  "Potadia??!!?" he near screeched.  Buffy nodded once again.  "And Greek gods are really real?  Myths and everything in them are real?"  Buffy scrunched her face and shrugged.  "Sometimes things get a little muddled from the truth.  It really happened a little differently than the "textbook" version of myths, but yeah, gods and all of that are real, and before you ask, Kevin Sorbo really is Hercules.  We keep in touch now and then."

Xander was just left blinking after that.  Buffy grinned full bear and continued.  "Anyway, after this warrior kicked all of the slaver's asses back into their respective necks, I was more than a little impressed and got the family that I was staying with to say that I was their daughter so that it wouldn't look so fishy to the warrior."

"WHAT WAS HER NAME??" Amy suddenly exploded, startling even Buffy and causing everyone to jump just a little.

Stifling the laughter that started bubbling soon after, Buffy shook herself and answered, "Jean (French pronunciation), but the English translation comes to roughly…Xena."  Dead silence.

Continuing, "As I was saying, I made it seem as though I were a real member of the village and then I started bugging her to take me on as a student.  That's what Immortals do.  They learn everything they can about fighting or whatever they need to in order to survive.  Having nowhere near the fighting skills of this warrior…Xena, I desperately wanted to train under her.  By the way, in case you are wondering, yes that Halloween special where Gabrielle got turned into a Bacchi vampire really did happen, but I wasn't the one turned.  I'll leave it at that."

"It took a lot of convincing, not to mention following Xena to her home, which was in Macedonia, more than one hundred miles to the north.  After a hell of a lot of sweet-talking on my part, she agreed and we started traveling together.  She never found out my secret, the Immortal one, and she taught me almost every single one of hers."

"So that whole deal with the Xena scrolls…?" Xander trailed off, finishing the question with his eyes.

Buffy nodded.  "I always thought I had a talent for writing.  Turns out it was a little drab and too mushy for Hollywood.  Only about a tenth or less of the TV show is anywhere close to the truth.  Yes, Xena and Hercules knew each other, and yes they teamed up to release Prometheus, no they did not have the jones for each other and no they did not sleep together even once.  Hercules' wife Deanera and children did not die before he met Xena, but yes Hera did kill them.  Yes we went to China and India and Rome and no we did not go to heaven and hell to release Callisto's soul because the only resemblance Callisto had to anybody back then was an Immortal I killed that killed my boyfriend.  He was only a boyfriend.  And Giles, I have been married thirty seven times total if you were wondering.  Any more questions?"

Almost immediately every hand went up, and soft chuckling could be heard at the entrance to the living room.  Buffy whirled on the sound and stopped and grimaced as she saw Joyce Summers standing there with the ring in her fist, and her other hand covering up her mouth to try and hide her laughter.  "Oh shut up," Buffy drawled to her "mother".

Rather than doing as the young looking woman asked, Joyce just walked into the room and handed her the ring, which Buffy immediately put back on and began to mutter something under her breath.  Joyce sat down in a rocking chair opposite the couch, just to the left of the TV and waited for the blonde to finish.  When she did, everyone, including Joyce was staring at her.  "What?" she asked.

Joyce just smiled and raised her hand.  Frowning, Buffy looked pointedly at the other blonde.  "Have you gotten to my part of the story yet?" Joyce asked.  Sighing in exasperation, Buffy shook her head and answered, "No, I'm still on Greece and the origin of the slayers."

"Oh," came the quiet response.

"I repeat", Buffy repeated, "any questions?"

Xander blurted out, "You were Gabrielle?  The Gabrielle?  The Xena scrolls show, the whole bit, it's all for real?"

Buffy just shrugged and nodded, saying, "Well, yeah, except for like I said what Hollywood changed.  I did write down most of my adventures with Xena, and I was part of the expedition that unearthed them in 1943, though it took a lot longer and a whole lot more trouble that I would have initially liked.  And yes, Hercules really is Kevin Sorbo.  He asked my permission to use the scrolls to create a branch off from his show a couple years ago.  I really didn't have a problem with it since he was included in a number of them."

Cordelia asked, "You said you weren't as strong then as you are now, is that cause of lifting a whole lot of weights for two thousand years or something else like magic?"

Buffy raised an eyebrow, impressed at the question and Cordelia's observational skills.  "Actually I was about to get to that part Cordy.  But in short, magic.  Specifically, Olympian magic.  Let me elaborate." Buffy hastily added.

"About ten years after Xena and I started traveling together, I had pretty much picked up everything that she could have taught me and a little bit more." Buffy began.  "So things were actually quieting down on the whole warlord, gods-plots-to-destroy-humanity, and petty squabbles between tribes of Amazons and Centaurs front, so that either left settle down, or find something else to fight.  That was when were approached by Zeus and Hercules.  Apparently several demons had gotten it in their heads to open a Hellmouth in downtown Athens by setting up to sacrifice the entire populace of Greece as vampires.  So, Xena and I went into the vampire slaying business, occasionally helped by Hercules and various other friends.  While we did stop the entire countryside from being overrun by the vampires and Bacchi, they still grew in numbers until there were well over a thousand by a time."

"Xander, do you remember the Xena episode where she took on the entire Persian Infantry by herself while Gabrielle was poisoned?" Buffy asked suddenly.

Surprised at the change of pace, Xander nodded dumbly.  "Well, that actually happened.  Only I wasn't poisoned.  I was gutted through by that spy with a poisoned sword.  I was healed within minutes, but Xena didn't know I was Immortal so I had to keep stabbing myself every time she wanted to change my dress wounds.  And Xena actually took out more than half the Persian Infantry and drove them back.  Over five hundred men by herself.  There were a thousand vampires."

"I myself was nowhere near as strong as Xena was, nor could I ever be because of my size.  So I went before six of the gods and Hercules, who had been made a god himself.  I told them who and what I was, which they ofcourse knew, and I told them that I wanted to help Xena, but I couldn't if I wasn't at least as strong as her.  So I asked them to bless me to be just as strong as a vampire, just to make things a little more even.  They did better."

"The gods that I spoke with were Zeus, Hercules, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Cupid, and Hera.  They not only blessed me with the strength and skills that I have today, they blessed another girl, a mortal girl named Alika.  She was the first Slayer.  The fates then decreed a prophecy, 'Golden Slayer, timeless through the ages, warrior, Amazon, student, and Teacher.  North of Isles, land of Eire, shore of Loch Shoal, Mother witch and sacrifice nell.  Student, friend, ally, and mother will she be.  Time after the ages, the Dark Slayer, one meant to die yet will live through the ages, friend, lover, sister, enemy, wife of two.  End of Ages, time of the Gathering, your forces will come to aid you and give you your power and your army.  Jester and Knight, Lover and witch, Princess and Seer, Angel and demon.  You will win if you have the faith.'"

At the blank and confused stared, Buffy shrugged, "Hey, they got me with it too.  It took me nearly four hundred years later before I even began to figure out what it meant."

"And this is where I come in." Joyce spoke up, drawing everyone's attention to her.

"Oh yeah!" Willow bubbled, suddenly excited as the dawning of realization crested her face.  "Mother witch and sacrifice nell.  Student, friend, ally and mother will she be." Willow quoted from the prophecy.  She stopped as the look of confusion returned.  "Sacrifice nell?" she asked.

Joyce just shrugged and muttered something about different times before taking up the story with how she and Buffy first met.  Buffy made it a point to sit down where Joyce had been sitting as the younger Immortal took the floor.  A small staring contest was waged before Joyce just finally let it go and returned to facing the group.  As Joyce Summers told her ancient tale, they all thought they saw her eyes glow from within, with an inner light that was warm and carrying and caught them up in it.

"My real name is Joy Thatcher.  Thatcher because that was the job that my father held, while I "grew up" to be a midwife and a witch.  I suppose that I was born around 750 A.D, some time around then anyway.  Or at least that was when the Druids found me.  Buffy already explained that Immortals are never really born, we are just found by someone, or adopted into a family.  Well, I was raised by a tribe of Druids, on the northern shores of today's Britain Island, not too far from Scotland of today.  Please keep in mind that this all happened well over a thousand years ago, it was a very different world.  It was ruled by very different rules, different people, the same places with different names, and different morals."

"My life, our lives, were very simplistic back then.  We lived in harmony with nature, taking of the animals and the land as much as we needed, never anymore than was absolutely necessary.  We farmed, we hunted, we lived.  Oh we did a lot more than just exist.  We tried to understand nature, the universe, the heavens, everything around us.  We made up stories, we told our own over campfires, and we learned.  Until the Romans came."

"That was how I met Buffy.  She came with the second fleet of Romans to arrive on the Isle.  She wasn't one of the warriors that were seeking to dominate us as part of the Roman Empire, no, she was there to stop the Romans, or delay them as much as possible.  She was actually pretending to be one of the slaves for one of the higher-ranking general's.  Until she killed him that is."  Joyce paused as Buffy held a huge grin on her face and everyone else, save Willow, was holding back gasps of shock.  "When the first of the Romans arrived, the warriors of our land barely drove them back to their home, and it was only to the aid of a foreign stranger that was prophesied to come and help us by the elders of my tribe, the High Druids."

"Wait just a second here," Xander interrupted once again.  Cordelia hit him upside the head again.  "Ow!  What was that for?" came his immediate response.  "Don't interrupt again!" Cordelia threatened.  Xander looked defeated for a second before turning a hopeful eye to Buffy.

Sighing and rolling her eyes, Buffy asked exasperated, "What is it Xander?"

"Just what was this "foreign stranger's" name?  Just curious." Xander asked.

Buffy and Joyce exchanged another glance, Buffy laughed a little and confirmed the boy's suspicions by answering, "It was Hercules Xander.  Which by the way was how I found out about what the Romans were doing in Britannia.  And why I was actually with the second fleet of Romans, so I could help out.  Any more questions right now?"  They all shook their heads to the negative.  "Good."

Smiling and shaking her head wryly, Joy continued.  "Anyway, like I was saying, after the first wave of Romans were driven back, we got the idea that some of us should move away, incase they returned, they would find nothing to conquer and go home peacefully.  So my family and I, along with more than half our tribe, went across the way to Eire, or Ireland and we settled on the north shores of Loch Shoal."  Joyce paused, waiting to see if Willow or anyone else would comment.  When they did not, she resumed.  "When the Romans actually landed and started to build their monuments where we once resided, we got kind of desperate.  We started to ask for aid and guidance from the Old Gods, something not many of us did or even believed in then.  It was when I turned thirty-five that we finally decided to resort to using a sacrifice to get their attention.  Before we could even begin the ceremony however, our village was attacked."

"I'll give the Romans credit, they knew how to strike, and they knew how to do it well.  I was killed by the tip of a Roman saber through my heart, as I was trying to hide the children of our community.  I woke up several hours later, not believing that I was alive and healthy.  The village was destroyed, but the children and most of the people were still alive.  We moved on quickly, not wanting to risk that the Romans wouldn't come back to finish what they had started.  It was several weeks later that Buffy found me.  Shortly after she did, she killed the Roman General that was in charge of things that she had been "owned" by and somehow it was blamed on an internal assassination.  The Romans left, leaderless, to regroup.  Giving us time to recover and properly prepare for their next arrival."

"Buffy, which was the name that she introduced herself by and that I have always known her as, told me all of the things that she has told you here, now.  About Immortals, demons, the Game and the fallacy involved with it, and how I had to learn how to survive.  I already knew about demons and such, it was the Immortality that it took her a while to convince me of.  That it existed, all my darling little girl had to do was kill herself right in front of me.  That I was Immortal was what gave her the headaches."

"Hey, you finally figured it out after I pushed you off the cliff," Buffy pointed out like a good kid.

Joy ignored her for the most part, recalling the events of Buffy trying to convince her that she was Immortal and was destined to save the world from the demons and the "Old Ones".

TBC…