A/N: Well, here's chapter three for ya! Sorry it took a while, but I really did need answers to that question bout Gracia's Watcher to continue. So thanks for your reviews and I hope you enjoy this! And FanFreak- I really liked your first suggestion (damn your copyright laws!), as well as the second, and no, I'm not Joss Whedon. At least...I HOPE I'm not...lol!
Disclaimer: I'd be rich if I owned Buffy. As it is, my worldly wealth amounts to 23 pence, a borrowed copy of Final Fantasy 8, and an Angel poster. **wails**
Dedication: My friend Lil' Smartass (formerly Stumpy), for when you finally join ff.n!
********************************************************************************
Attention spans in Sunnydale Highschool were notoriously shortlived- not least in Mr. Morgan's history class on a sunny Friday morning.
Gracia McCormack slumped in her seat halfway back from the front of the room where the elderly man was droning on and seriously considered catching up on a few hours of the sleep her career as the Chosen One stole from her.
Occupying the two desks to her left, Gracia could see that her two best friends were thinking along similar lines. Luke and Keisha Goldsmith were twins, the two outcasts who had befriended Gracia when she had first moved to Sunnydale about four months ago. To look at them, you wouldn't immediately realise that they were related- Luke was tall and blonde, whereas Keisha had reddish-brown hair and was built around a smaller frame. The only blatant link was their eyes- identical mixes of green and blue.
If being the Slayer wasn't enough, Gracia had more of a past than this life. She had originally been born in 1737 as Grace McCormick...a younger sister of a man called Liam who would later become Angelus, the Scourge of Europe...
So when the Powers That Be had sent Angel to meet the new Slayer in a Sunnydale graveyard three months after Faith's death in 2008, it had been a shock (to say the least) to find out that the sister he had killed so brutally had been reborn, and was now sixteen years old and a Slayer.
She hadn't exactly had an easy time of it when she first arrived on the Hellmouth, after immigrating from Belfast with the parents who had adopted her at the age of five, as well as their younger daughter- her adoptive sister. A vampire cult had been out to resurrect the Anointed One in a ritual involving very dark magick and the loss of her life. Of course, it didn't help that her own Watcher, the cold and hostile Cecelia Rees, had chosen to betray her in order to escape the death Fate had planned for her by cancer by becoming a vampire.
But now the cult had been wiped out, and Cecelia had killed herself by jumping from a balcony. Gracia had a new Watcher now, under whose helpful tutelage she was really beginning to suceed.
Things were looking up.
A small nude at her side made her look around sharply. Keisha grinned at her and slipped her a small, folded piece of paper. Gracia returned the smile and unfolded the note.
"You! There!"
Both girls looked up quickly to see that the teacher, and now quite a few people in the rows in front, looking straight at them. Or rather, one of them.
"You! The girl with the brown hair!" the man said sharply, pointing straight at Keisha.
"Me?"
"Yes, you. What's your name?"
"Keisha." she replied, somewhat hesitantly. The cheerleaders at the back of the room giggled, which Mr. Morgan conveniently didn't hear.
"You are not to pass notes in my classroom! For that, you can go off and get the textbooks for the lesson. They're the thick red ones called 'Wars Of The Last Century' You should find them in the store cupboard down the corridor. Be quick, or you might get a more severe punishment."
Keisha kept her lips tightly pressed together against the sarcastic reply she was dying to shoot back as she scraped her chair and stood up. Luke gave her a sympathetic look (which sure was a rarity from him), and Gracia mouthed 'Sorry!' as the airhead patrol sniggered again. With a defiant glance at the teacher, she quickly exited, making sure that the door swung shut abruptly behind her.
The corridor was deserted as Keisha stalked up it, tempted to hit a locker or something in her frustration. Damn Mr. Morgan...she wasn't even sure WHY he wanted the textbooks now. There was little more than ten minutes till the end of the lesson, which meant lunch.
Hallelujah, Keisha thought dryly, causing herself to smile a little. Then she even laughed a little, when she realised where she was headed to.
Ooh, the Haunted Store Cupboard...
It was the room of Sunnydale Highschool that people were most reluctant to go in. Somebody, probably right back when the school had been rebuilt after the class of 1999 destroyed it, had started a rumor of some type of ghost in the room. That rumor had grown into a story, which had eventually evolved into a legend that most people probably took for fact, however much they sneered at it. Of course, it was all to cliché for Keisha to really believe it- all cold air and flying objects. She giggled again quietly as she eventually reached her destination and pushed open the door.
The room ahead was small, lit by the small window opposite the door. Wooden shelves stacked with school equipment, supplies of paper and piles of textbooks ran along the walls and the air was heavy with a musty smell that made Keisha wrinkle her nose as she stepped in. She shivered involuntarily- it seemed that whoever created the story of the ghost had the cold factor right.
Well, she decided, it's not like this room is probably heated or anything...
She continued through the room, glancing around nonchalantly, wondering where the books were. She passed row after row and stack after stack of stationery, seriously uninterested in everything there. Half of her was tempted to just leave, even though the other half reminded her that the teacher wouldn't like that too much. She supposed she'd just stick it out until she came across a promising sighting.
BANG!
Keisha let out a small shriek and spun around to see...the door. Now shut. She breathed hard, trying to calm her heart, which was thudding against her ribs with all the force of a sledge hammer.
Just a draught, that's all! It was gonna happen no matter what...that's all!
Unfortunately, it reminded her all too much of the the way Gracia's now deceased Watcher had tried to dispose of her, Luke, and the two Wiccan friends of Angel's, Willow and Tara, just to stop them from going after the vampires who had kidnapped Gracia. Cecelia had waited until they had entered one of the science labs to perform a spell, before barricading the door too firmly to open and unscrewing the gas valves for the place. The result had been a precarious escape from the window, in which Angel had had to carry her down as the lack of oxygen had made her pass out.
Well, no one did it this time. Unless it was Cecelia's ghost or something...
The joke backfired really. It worried her that she could have been right. The Hellmouth was not the most predictable of places to live on.
Still, Keisha made herself continue to search for the books, attempting to scrunch herself up so small that a passing spirit might not see her. It wasn't so much the idea of a ghost as the idea of what it might want. Telling her brain to shut up wasn't so easy when she thought that it might be right. Instead, she concentrated on the sound of her footsteps, and on keeping them going.
THUD!
Keisha gasped this time, whirling so fast that she had to grab hold of the lowest shelf to steady herself. Something had landed on the floor opposite where she had been searching.
A red textbook.
Slowly, warily, she approached it, edging as if she thought it was about to bite. She didn't even need to bend to read the clear title imprinted on the cover.
WARS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
"Wow..." she murmured, carefully picking it off of the floor and glancing up to see where it had come from. The third shelf up, and there was a large pile as well. A large, neat pile, that didn't look as though any books would fall from it...
Shut up, brain, she told her mind. It's just coincidence.
Choosing not to think any more of it, she quickly scooped the pile into one arm, leaving a hand free long enough to open the door quickly as she tried to make her speedy exit. Trying to tell herself that she wasn't even slightly freaked out.
********************************************************************************
Luke was staring at the clock, counting down the seconds until the bell rang for lunch break.
One hundred and thirty, one hundred and twenty-nine...
At one hundred and twenty seconds until the boredom of History ended, Keisha burst in, carrying a slipping stack of textbooks. Mr. Morgan broke off abruptly from whatever he was talking about to glare at her.
"What took you so long?" he snapped as she set them on his desk.
"Couldn't find them." Luke frowned slightly at this reply. Was it just him, or did she sound a little breathless?
When she headed for her place between himself and Gracia, he was very sure something wasn't right. Keisha was keeping her eyes down, chewing at her lower lip. Heck, something HAD to be wrong! She hadn't even spoken with any sarcasm to one of her least favourite teachers! He kept watching her as she sat down.
"Well, thanks to Miss Goldsmith," the teacher continued. "We won't be able to check the page reference for your projects, which, I shall remind you, are due in this time next week. We'll have to do that at the start of the next lesson." The bell choose to ring at this point, so everybody ignored his words of continuing the projects for their homework in favour of dumping their books in their bags and heading out of the room quickly.
Once out in the corridor, Gracia stretched her arms out. "Thank god that's all over. I was going to go insane if I had to listen to one more word from him."
"Yeah." Luke agreed. Keisha just nodded, which concerned him a little. "Hey, Keish?"
"Hmm?" she asked, looking round at him.
"You OK?" He frowned a little again. "You seem quiet."
She laughed then and punched his arm lightly. "Is that so much of a shock?"
He nodded with an, "Uh-huh.", which made them all laugh as they headed off towards their domain: the library.
The place was just as still and quiet as usual, due to the complete lack of interest that the Sunnydale students had in the extensive volumes kept in this room. Nowadays, Gracia was much more eager to spend her time here, as her new Watcher was also the librarian. At least he was friendlier than Cecelia.
"Hello?" she called jokingly. "Requesting one Watcher!"
A man came out of the office, adjusting his glasses as he did so so that he could see them better. He was quite old, about his fifties, and smartly dressed for work. He smiled slightly.
"Hello, Gracia."
She nodded happily. "Hey Giles."
Rupert Giles was an old friend of Angel's back from the days when a girl called Buffy had been the Slayer- about ten years ago now. When Gracia had confided in Angel that she was having doubts about the security of the Watcher's Council, he had immediately thought of Giles- the most loyal and caring Watcher he knew. Although Giles had had some doubts at first of whether he was the best choice (and also whether he was up to training another Slayer, although he didn't say this), he had come to Sunnydale and decided to take the open job, as both Watcher and librarian. Quentin Travers hadn't agreed initially, demanding that someone younger should be the Slayer's mentor this time, Giles had refused to leave. And so they had had to accept the fact that everybody apart from them was completely happy with the situation.
"So," the Slayer continued. "What's on the agenda for today?"
Giles took off his glasses to polish them on his shirt. "Well, I was hoping that we could continue your work with the quarter staff. You still have to get some more work on your positioning."
Gracia raised her eyebrows slightly but didn't comment apart from, "OK then." She didn't really like working with quarter staffs, but was prepared to anyway. She still was glad that she was learning something more advanced than what she'd done before.
The twins had sat down- Keisha on a chair and Luke on the table. Giles had gone off to retrieve the weapons from the cabinet in his office and Gracia went over to jump up onto the table beside Luke.
"We all Bronzing tonight?" Luke asked. "I overheard in Maths that Bridget's going to be looking out for the lead singer of that band that's on tonight. Couldn't miss a chance to see possible humiliation of one of our enemies today, could we?"
Gracia giggled and aimed a playful slap around his head: unfortunately for Luke, she didn't miss. "You never give up, huh?"
Luke rubbed the back of his head, wincing slightly. "What am I today, human punchbag? First Keisha, now you. And really, save that energy for the vamps.You don't know your own strength sometimes."
"Sorry." She slipped off of the table as Giles emerged and threw a staff to her, which she caught expertly.
This was happiness, Gracia realised as the instructions began. She had great friends, a Watcher that cared, and she was going to be seeing her brother again tonight. Not to mention the fact that, at the moment, everything seemed to be quite peaceful.
She didn't know then, but the peace wouldn't last for long.
********************************************************************************
Man! Sorry about the wait...this was abit longer than I expected at first...plus I have been SO busy, what with a whole load of stuff (as well as my HP fanfic, but anyways...). But enough ramblings. Review please, and encourage my to get my backside into the computer chair to type up chapter four. Thanks!
Disclaimer: I'd be rich if I owned Buffy. As it is, my worldly wealth amounts to 23 pence, a borrowed copy of Final Fantasy 8, and an Angel poster. **wails**
Dedication: My friend Lil' Smartass (formerly Stumpy), for when you finally join ff.n!
********************************************************************************
Attention spans in Sunnydale Highschool were notoriously shortlived- not least in Mr. Morgan's history class on a sunny Friday morning.
Gracia McCormack slumped in her seat halfway back from the front of the room where the elderly man was droning on and seriously considered catching up on a few hours of the sleep her career as the Chosen One stole from her.
Occupying the two desks to her left, Gracia could see that her two best friends were thinking along similar lines. Luke and Keisha Goldsmith were twins, the two outcasts who had befriended Gracia when she had first moved to Sunnydale about four months ago. To look at them, you wouldn't immediately realise that they were related- Luke was tall and blonde, whereas Keisha had reddish-brown hair and was built around a smaller frame. The only blatant link was their eyes- identical mixes of green and blue.
If being the Slayer wasn't enough, Gracia had more of a past than this life. She had originally been born in 1737 as Grace McCormick...a younger sister of a man called Liam who would later become Angelus, the Scourge of Europe...
So when the Powers That Be had sent Angel to meet the new Slayer in a Sunnydale graveyard three months after Faith's death in 2008, it had been a shock (to say the least) to find out that the sister he had killed so brutally had been reborn, and was now sixteen years old and a Slayer.
She hadn't exactly had an easy time of it when she first arrived on the Hellmouth, after immigrating from Belfast with the parents who had adopted her at the age of five, as well as their younger daughter- her adoptive sister. A vampire cult had been out to resurrect the Anointed One in a ritual involving very dark magick and the loss of her life. Of course, it didn't help that her own Watcher, the cold and hostile Cecelia Rees, had chosen to betray her in order to escape the death Fate had planned for her by cancer by becoming a vampire.
But now the cult had been wiped out, and Cecelia had killed herself by jumping from a balcony. Gracia had a new Watcher now, under whose helpful tutelage she was really beginning to suceed.
Things were looking up.
A small nude at her side made her look around sharply. Keisha grinned at her and slipped her a small, folded piece of paper. Gracia returned the smile and unfolded the note.
"You! There!"
Both girls looked up quickly to see that the teacher, and now quite a few people in the rows in front, looking straight at them. Or rather, one of them.
"You! The girl with the brown hair!" the man said sharply, pointing straight at Keisha.
"Me?"
"Yes, you. What's your name?"
"Keisha." she replied, somewhat hesitantly. The cheerleaders at the back of the room giggled, which Mr. Morgan conveniently didn't hear.
"You are not to pass notes in my classroom! For that, you can go off and get the textbooks for the lesson. They're the thick red ones called 'Wars Of The Last Century' You should find them in the store cupboard down the corridor. Be quick, or you might get a more severe punishment."
Keisha kept her lips tightly pressed together against the sarcastic reply she was dying to shoot back as she scraped her chair and stood up. Luke gave her a sympathetic look (which sure was a rarity from him), and Gracia mouthed 'Sorry!' as the airhead patrol sniggered again. With a defiant glance at the teacher, she quickly exited, making sure that the door swung shut abruptly behind her.
The corridor was deserted as Keisha stalked up it, tempted to hit a locker or something in her frustration. Damn Mr. Morgan...she wasn't even sure WHY he wanted the textbooks now. There was little more than ten minutes till the end of the lesson, which meant lunch.
Hallelujah, Keisha thought dryly, causing herself to smile a little. Then she even laughed a little, when she realised where she was headed to.
Ooh, the Haunted Store Cupboard...
It was the room of Sunnydale Highschool that people were most reluctant to go in. Somebody, probably right back when the school had been rebuilt after the class of 1999 destroyed it, had started a rumor of some type of ghost in the room. That rumor had grown into a story, which had eventually evolved into a legend that most people probably took for fact, however much they sneered at it. Of course, it was all to cliché for Keisha to really believe it- all cold air and flying objects. She giggled again quietly as she eventually reached her destination and pushed open the door.
The room ahead was small, lit by the small window opposite the door. Wooden shelves stacked with school equipment, supplies of paper and piles of textbooks ran along the walls and the air was heavy with a musty smell that made Keisha wrinkle her nose as she stepped in. She shivered involuntarily- it seemed that whoever created the story of the ghost had the cold factor right.
Well, she decided, it's not like this room is probably heated or anything...
She continued through the room, glancing around nonchalantly, wondering where the books were. She passed row after row and stack after stack of stationery, seriously uninterested in everything there. Half of her was tempted to just leave, even though the other half reminded her that the teacher wouldn't like that too much. She supposed she'd just stick it out until she came across a promising sighting.
BANG!
Keisha let out a small shriek and spun around to see...the door. Now shut. She breathed hard, trying to calm her heart, which was thudding against her ribs with all the force of a sledge hammer.
Just a draught, that's all! It was gonna happen no matter what...that's all!
Unfortunately, it reminded her all too much of the the way Gracia's now deceased Watcher had tried to dispose of her, Luke, and the two Wiccan friends of Angel's, Willow and Tara, just to stop them from going after the vampires who had kidnapped Gracia. Cecelia had waited until they had entered one of the science labs to perform a spell, before barricading the door too firmly to open and unscrewing the gas valves for the place. The result had been a precarious escape from the window, in which Angel had had to carry her down as the lack of oxygen had made her pass out.
Well, no one did it this time. Unless it was Cecelia's ghost or something...
The joke backfired really. It worried her that she could have been right. The Hellmouth was not the most predictable of places to live on.
Still, Keisha made herself continue to search for the books, attempting to scrunch herself up so small that a passing spirit might not see her. It wasn't so much the idea of a ghost as the idea of what it might want. Telling her brain to shut up wasn't so easy when she thought that it might be right. Instead, she concentrated on the sound of her footsteps, and on keeping them going.
THUD!
Keisha gasped this time, whirling so fast that she had to grab hold of the lowest shelf to steady herself. Something had landed on the floor opposite where she had been searching.
A red textbook.
Slowly, warily, she approached it, edging as if she thought it was about to bite. She didn't even need to bend to read the clear title imprinted on the cover.
WARS OF THE LAST CENTURY.
"Wow..." she murmured, carefully picking it off of the floor and glancing up to see where it had come from. The third shelf up, and there was a large pile as well. A large, neat pile, that didn't look as though any books would fall from it...
Shut up, brain, she told her mind. It's just coincidence.
Choosing not to think any more of it, she quickly scooped the pile into one arm, leaving a hand free long enough to open the door quickly as she tried to make her speedy exit. Trying to tell herself that she wasn't even slightly freaked out.
********************************************************************************
Luke was staring at the clock, counting down the seconds until the bell rang for lunch break.
One hundred and thirty, one hundred and twenty-nine...
At one hundred and twenty seconds until the boredom of History ended, Keisha burst in, carrying a slipping stack of textbooks. Mr. Morgan broke off abruptly from whatever he was talking about to glare at her.
"What took you so long?" he snapped as she set them on his desk.
"Couldn't find them." Luke frowned slightly at this reply. Was it just him, or did she sound a little breathless?
When she headed for her place between himself and Gracia, he was very sure something wasn't right. Keisha was keeping her eyes down, chewing at her lower lip. Heck, something HAD to be wrong! She hadn't even spoken with any sarcasm to one of her least favourite teachers! He kept watching her as she sat down.
"Well, thanks to Miss Goldsmith," the teacher continued. "We won't be able to check the page reference for your projects, which, I shall remind you, are due in this time next week. We'll have to do that at the start of the next lesson." The bell choose to ring at this point, so everybody ignored his words of continuing the projects for their homework in favour of dumping their books in their bags and heading out of the room quickly.
Once out in the corridor, Gracia stretched her arms out. "Thank god that's all over. I was going to go insane if I had to listen to one more word from him."
"Yeah." Luke agreed. Keisha just nodded, which concerned him a little. "Hey, Keish?"
"Hmm?" she asked, looking round at him.
"You OK?" He frowned a little again. "You seem quiet."
She laughed then and punched his arm lightly. "Is that so much of a shock?"
He nodded with an, "Uh-huh.", which made them all laugh as they headed off towards their domain: the library.
The place was just as still and quiet as usual, due to the complete lack of interest that the Sunnydale students had in the extensive volumes kept in this room. Nowadays, Gracia was much more eager to spend her time here, as her new Watcher was also the librarian. At least he was friendlier than Cecelia.
"Hello?" she called jokingly. "Requesting one Watcher!"
A man came out of the office, adjusting his glasses as he did so so that he could see them better. He was quite old, about his fifties, and smartly dressed for work. He smiled slightly.
"Hello, Gracia."
She nodded happily. "Hey Giles."
Rupert Giles was an old friend of Angel's back from the days when a girl called Buffy had been the Slayer- about ten years ago now. When Gracia had confided in Angel that she was having doubts about the security of the Watcher's Council, he had immediately thought of Giles- the most loyal and caring Watcher he knew. Although Giles had had some doubts at first of whether he was the best choice (and also whether he was up to training another Slayer, although he didn't say this), he had come to Sunnydale and decided to take the open job, as both Watcher and librarian. Quentin Travers hadn't agreed initially, demanding that someone younger should be the Slayer's mentor this time, Giles had refused to leave. And so they had had to accept the fact that everybody apart from them was completely happy with the situation.
"So," the Slayer continued. "What's on the agenda for today?"
Giles took off his glasses to polish them on his shirt. "Well, I was hoping that we could continue your work with the quarter staff. You still have to get some more work on your positioning."
Gracia raised her eyebrows slightly but didn't comment apart from, "OK then." She didn't really like working with quarter staffs, but was prepared to anyway. She still was glad that she was learning something more advanced than what she'd done before.
The twins had sat down- Keisha on a chair and Luke on the table. Giles had gone off to retrieve the weapons from the cabinet in his office and Gracia went over to jump up onto the table beside Luke.
"We all Bronzing tonight?" Luke asked. "I overheard in Maths that Bridget's going to be looking out for the lead singer of that band that's on tonight. Couldn't miss a chance to see possible humiliation of one of our enemies today, could we?"
Gracia giggled and aimed a playful slap around his head: unfortunately for Luke, she didn't miss. "You never give up, huh?"
Luke rubbed the back of his head, wincing slightly. "What am I today, human punchbag? First Keisha, now you. And really, save that energy for the vamps.You don't know your own strength sometimes."
"Sorry." She slipped off of the table as Giles emerged and threw a staff to her, which she caught expertly.
This was happiness, Gracia realised as the instructions began. She had great friends, a Watcher that cared, and she was going to be seeing her brother again tonight. Not to mention the fact that, at the moment, everything seemed to be quite peaceful.
She didn't know then, but the peace wouldn't last for long.
********************************************************************************
Man! Sorry about the wait...this was abit longer than I expected at first...plus I have been SO busy, what with a whole load of stuff (as well as my HP fanfic, but anyways...). But enough ramblings. Review please, and encourage my to get my backside into the computer chair to type up chapter four. Thanks!