North Shores of Loch Shoal, Ireland: 792 A.D.
"I-I-I…I can't believe you Buffy!" Joy Thatcher apologized to the youthful blond standing crossly before her. "I-I I'm sorry, but-but I just can't."
"What's so hard to believe Joy?" the blonde Immortal asked innocently enough.
Joy, dressed in the normal rags-sewn-together-dress and heavy cloak, looked mournfully at the young-looking girl. But she had already proven her age and strange powers, to Joy at the least, and with the proper proof presented, it was easy to believe. At least the part where Buffy, this strange foreign warrior that just a week ago was little more than a Roman slave and concubine, was an Immortal Demon Slayer and was destined to save all of humanity by gathering all of humanity's heroes into one impossible to defeat Army of Light. But…but the part that she was also an Immortal warrior, and would one day be one of the generals that actually lead this Army…that, that was what she had a lot of trouble believing.
Buffy was still waiting for an answer, so Joy gave the only one that she could. "I-I'm not a leader! I-I can't be your general in an Immortal army! Buffy, I want to believe you. I do believe you about who and what you are, but…but I can't believe you about, that I'm…I mean, I can't be…you understand?"
Buffy just started chuckling and ruefully shook her head in amusement over some private thing that completely eluded Joy at the time. "You don't believe you're Immortal, is that it?" Buffy asked her gently. Frowning, Joy turned out towards the sea, where the vile Romans had come from. The two women were standing on the edge of a cliff, just over the vast expanse of water, with nary a strip of beach directly beneath, hidden slightly by the overhang of the rocky outcropping.
Again, Joy hesitated before answering. "I…I-I'm not really…sure. I…I remember the Roman's blade, and then pain, pain like I have never known. And the next thing I knew…I woke up amide the ashes of our village. Did I really die?" She asked, turning back to the shorter blonde warrior.
Buffy was dressed more typical of her chosen profession, Demon Slayer, rather than her falsified part as a slave, or even as her gender would've decreed she dress. Rather than a dress or modest skirt, she wore tight-fitting warm leather pants, heavy weighted and protected boots that were actually sewn to her feet, and a borrowed plate of leather armor she asked for from the village over the brightest, most white shirt that anybody on the isle had ever seen. Because of the dropping temperature, she too wore a heavy cloak, but while Joy's was a dark forest green, Buffy's was an incredibly bright golden yellow, a color few had ever seen before Spring among the flowers of the valleys, Joy had thought the first time she saw the cloak around the Golden Slayer.
Buffy could only nod in answer, avoiding Joy's eyes for the moment.
"Why me?" Joy finally asked.
Buffy looked up and really, really looked at the middle-aged woman. "Fate," was the short reply, followed by another, "Destiny. All of that." Then she stood up from the large boulder she had been leaning against, and took several steps closer to the Druid apprentice. "Joy, it's a choice. Destiny is always that, I've found anyway. Unfortunately, it's not much of a choice. Joy. You are Immortal. And you can choose one of three things. Come with me, let me teach you, and then follow a destiny that ancient and long forgotten gods chose and made for you. Or, stay here and try your damnedest to ignore and forget about everything that has happened for the past month, and watch everybody around you grow old, die, and have children while you can't, no matter what. Or the last choice. Throw it all away. Say no to me, say no to seeing all your loved ones dying in front of you, and say no to the Fates, and just end it all."
Joy blinked in surprise. "End-end it…all?" she stuttered.
Buffy then smiled, a sharp contrast and a sudden change to the angry warrior she had been but a moment ago. "You know…" her grin grew further, "…kill yourself." With no more warning than that, Buffy shoved with a belying strength, given her small stature, Joy over the cliff. And far enough out that she would hit water, and not the soft wet sand beneath the edge of the cliff.
Time seemed to slow suddenly for Joy. Her life, her time on Earth, was supposed to appear before her, so she could see any regrets she might have. At least that was how the superstition went. Not that Joy had any regrets. None at all. Instead, she just saw Buffy and the old tree and large boulder that had always rested atop the cliff for longer than she could remember, moving farther and farther away. Buffy no longer bore the insane grin that she'd had when she had shoved the witch, but rather it held an apologetic, yet not one holding the necessary strength of heart considering the act committed, gaze. After the moment or two, which felt like hours of the night to the falling blonde, that she was still held parallel to the cliff, things started to speed up to a completely unnatural and unbelievable pace. Buffy, the tree, the boulder, they disappeared faster than a bird over the horizon, only to be replaced with the racing wall of rock the held and made up the cliff. And then a sharp and sudden shock that was so hard in its force that there was no other sensation other than pain. Then…blackness.
After a heartbeat of the blackness, Joy opened her eyes, only to see the blue green murkiness that she sometimes saw when she went swimming in the sea, but she did not see the normal sparkle of light that revealed the barrier of sea and air. Where was the surface? Joy began to panic, and in her sudden struggles, she forgot for the moment…that it's impossible to breath underwater. The blackness, while ever familiar, came much slower this time, making it just that much more painful.
The next thing that the blond Druid was aware of…she was gasping in the life giver, the air! Sweet merciful air! After breathing her fill and coughing up several buckets of seawater, Joy looked around where she was. The beach.
She blinked several times, just to make sure she was not seeing things. Then she looked down at her appearance. She looked like a drowned rat. No, actually drowned rats looked dryer than she did right now. Coughing once more from trying to speak, Joy was finally able to get out, "What…'koff, koff, koff,' what happened?"
"You drowned." Came the unexpected reply.
Turning with a surge of adrenaline that surprised her at how she could ever move so fast, Joy saw that it was Buffy. She was sitting on a rock just past the sand line, among the weeds and grass that grew along the beaches. But she was dressed differently. She was wearing the same cloak, but she was wearing a skirt, plaid with the tribe's colors, and a red shirt that Joy recognized as her own.
"Buf-buffy?" Joy stuttered out, getting shakily to her feet.
"The one and only," the blonde warrior replied.
"What happened?" Joy repeated, stepping closer to the seated form, until she could sit down on the rock next to her.
Buffy just shrugged and continued to look out at the sea. "I pushed you off the cliff, you drowned, and you washed up on shore. I've been waiting since morning for you to wake up."
Gulping at the implications of what she had just been told, Joy considered all the facts. Which led her to her next question. "How long?"
Buffy didn't answer at first, just continuing to look out at the sea. Joy thought that she hadn't heard, but the smaller blond finally answered, albeit quietly. "Five days."
Joy sighed and closed her eyes in contemplation.
"Did you know?" she finally asked, also looking out at sea.
"Know what?" Buffy responded. "That you were Immortal? That you would wash ashore rather than swim ashore? That it would take the tide five days to decide to send you back here? Know what?"
Joy just closed her eyes and bent her head in prayer. Behind her tightly shuteyes, a tear leaked through. "What do I do?" she asked softly, sounding so much more younger and innocent than anybody could be.
Buffy sighed and continued to watch the water. "I take you back to the village, and we tell them everything. Everything. Then I teach you how to fight and survive in the world as it is. Then I teach you how to adapt. Unfortunately, that lesson will come sooner than either of us want it to be."
"Why's that?" Joy asked, her eyes still closed and crying.
"Because the Romans will be back in force, either by Spring, Mid-Summer, or at the very latest, the next Spring. Nothing either of us can do, or could do, can stop that. After I have taught you how to survive, you make your choice. To either stay…or to come with me. Either way, it's a risk. I'll only leave when your sister's grandchildren have married and expect children of their own. Or if the Romans come and destroy everything. I will not fight your people's war, not even for you, and certainly not for them. As much as I hate the Romans, as much as anybody does…they still have their purpose in life, and I won't become the ghost that haunts children's stories, just because one group of nomadic people, that will be dead in fifty to eighty years anyway, wanted me to keep them on their land for just one more year."
Buffy then stood up, from her posture and everything else, Joy knew she was angry. She looked right at the soaked rag that was her new student. "Joy, I won't lie to you. This life is a hard one. But it's made easier with company. You don't have much more of a choice than what I told you on that cliff. Now come on, you're family is worried about you."
Joy silently stood up, and was encompassed by the arms of her Teacher. The small warrior held her, comforting her, and gave Joy the clue to the revelation she had in the next instant. 'I'm a Mom…'
Sunnydale, CA Summers house, 1999:
"'I'm a Mom'?" Buffy blurted out as Joyce Summers finished her recount.
Joyce just shrugged and pointed at the small blond, "Like your ending was any better? 'Nobody's ever heard of the name Buffy?' Well, just as it was true for you, my dear, it was the same for me."
A second later, Joyce stuck her tongue out at her "daughter" and taunted, "So there!"
After the confusing looks that shot back and forth around the room after that statement was heard, it was unanimously, while silently, agreed that Xander would be the one to speak on it. "Uh, Mrs. Summers? Or Joy, or Joyce, or whoever you are…you do realize that you are an adult here, right?"
At both blond's sudden giggling fit, everybody felt like they'd been left out of something. Though, considering what they'd already been left out of…whatever the joke was, it was as easy as pie in comparison. "Uhhhh, care to let us in on the joke Buffy?" Xander proffered.
When no immediate response came, Willow put on the dreaded "Resolve face" and in a sharp tone that Joyce could only ever hope to mimic, she snapped out, "Buffy Anne Summers! Stop acting like a child and explain why you mother is!"
The room was immediately wrapped in a blanket of silence so thick that they stopped breathing for an instant. Until Joyce started giggling again.
Buffy just sighed and nodded her head, admitting the point. She just shrugged and said the first thing that came to her mind. "We're just letting our hair down Wills. Ever since Joy and I first came to the Hellmouth…we've been tense. Joy had to be careful to be just blind enough to make her seem one of the "normal" people still out there. I had to be careful in my slaying so I didn't die too soon or anything like that, and make sure that I never let out this big secret to you guys or anybody else. I mean, you've all been carrying around the secret of my being the Slayer, and vampires and demons and all of it for three years now. How hard has it been not to just shout it to the high heavens, or your parents, or your more normal friends that everything that there's a myth or legend for is real and is responsible for more than half of the deaths in this town?"
At no answer, Buffy continued. "Now imagine how hard it was on all of us, hiding this secret, not only from all of you, but from all of the people we've known. Living through high school is hard enough, right? Well try living through three wars, and you're the only person that walks out of it. Personally, I have lived through about nine major world power wars, Romans included. Altogether wars between everybody that had a beef with somebody else and the muscle to back them up? Then I have lived through more than a thousand wars. I lost friends, close friends in every one of them. Friends as close as we are, some even closer. And yes Xander, Xena would be considered to be one of those."
After several minutes silence, Xander finally gained the courage to ask a question that had been bugging him for some time, plus he hoped it would let go of the nasty tension hanging in the air at the moment. "So uh, on the show, they've started to…uh, well suggest certain things between Xena and Gabrielle…and I was, uh, wondering…uh, did…" he stuttered.
Buffy's expression said that she knew what he was talking about, but she was waiting for him to out and out say it. Finally he just blurted it out. "Were you and Xena gay together?"
Joy suddenly burst out laughing, Cordelia slapped Xander on the back of the head, while Willow froze and Oz just quirked an eyebrow. Buffy just waited for Joyce to stop laughing enough for her to answer. Except Faith came back before she did.
"Lucy, I'm home," Faith crowed out in a bad Ricky Ricardo accent. As she stepped into the living room with two bags of clothes over her shoulder. "We to my part yet?" she asked jovially.
Buffy smiled and decided to answer Xander's question as vaguely as possible. "Not yet Faith. And yes Xander, Xena and I "experimented" together." Faith's response was to drop her bags and start cackling with laughter identical to Joy's. "Oh man," she said after her breath was caught, "I had been hoping that question would come up. Hey B, ya wanna tell'em how many chicks you have "experimented" with?"
Buffy blushed slightly crimson, while Willow was already way ahead of her. Faith, seeing this, "What are you laughing at Red?" she asked lewdly.
Willow, if possible, actually blushed a little redder when she answered the Dark Slayer. "Uh…well Faith, in case you kinda forgot, Buffy magically transcribed all of her life memories into…uh, my mind. So I, uh, kinda…remember who exactly she . . . experimented with."
When Xander heard this, he had a double reaction. First, the instinctive reaction of all males on Earth, he wanted the details. Then he remembered that this was his friend, his best friend since they were both in Kindergarten. He knew her, and she knew him. He also knew that anything of the personal nature she tended to avoid and was often deeply embarrassed by, so the fact that she suddenly knew everything about Buffy, and that meant everything, when he made such innuendos about the . . . Immortal, then he might as well be making fun of Willow at the same time.
He was about to fully apologize to his friend, quite publicly, but she must have seen it on his face because she interrupted him before he could say a word. "Don't worry about it Xander. It's just that…uh that kind of reminded me of," Willow paused and closed her eyes, organizing her words, "I mean, it brought forth some memories of Buffy's that," she turned to look at the blonde across from her, "that I know she finds kinda painful. Because of the loss. I'm sorry Buffy."
The Immortal just waved off the apology saying, "Don't worry about it Will. You get used to it. Live long enough, go through it often enough…you get used to it." At this, all three Immortals were deathly silent. Remembering.
Cordelia, tactless enough to ask, not to mention able to see when a moment needed to be passed, asked, "So what happened after you drowned your mom?"
Faith's eyes widened and she shared a glance with Buffy, who started to laugh at the attempt of Queen C to change the topic. "Uh, B?" Faith asked, looking from one member of the group to another. "You wanna fill me in on what yer talkin' about?"
Buffy decided to take the floor and stood up, Joyce having sat back down on the couch as she told her story. "We've been catching them up on our personal histories Faith. I told them about the prophecy and how I helped in making the Slayers, and everything about Xena." At Faith's insinuating smirk, she amended, "Well, not everything."
Frowning, Faith turned and thought briefly of just moving her stuff into the extra bedroom rather than stay down here and get stared at. After all, she was the one that had died. However all thoughts of action were taken out of her head when Buffy suddenly grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. Faith barely had time to get out, "B…?" before Buffy's lips were pressed onto hers. After several moments, Faith stopped trying to think of what her teacher was doing and just went with it and enjoyed it. When Buffy finally let up from the semi-passionate kiss (no tongue), Faith had a smile almost as wide as her face on, and Buffy was still blushing pink.
"Faith," Buffy got the Slayer's attention. Faith looked up, the goofy grin plastered to her head. "Sit down." Buffy ordered. Faith nodded, giggled a little, and then sat down on the love seat next to Cordelia, the stupid grin still present. Xander was in shock.
"So, what happened after I convinced Joy?" Buffy continued the conversation as though nothing had happened. "Well, we started training. Immortal training. She learned the sword, all the fighting techniques I knew at the time, and half the languages I knew. Only half because half the languages I knew were the only ones being used at that time. Understand that by that time I was already over a thousand, nearly over two thousand years old. I knew Sumerian, Latin, Chinese, Ancient Chinese, several dialects of all, Japanese, German, Mongolian, Indian languages, and dozens of others. Then."
"So, uh, so how many languages do you truly know?" Giles interrupted suddenly.
Buffy got a thoughtful look on her face as she contemplated the question. After a minute or so, she answered, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe about oh say, two hundred and twelve-no thirteen. Two hundred and thirteen languages."
Giles slipped back into shock.