Part 2:

#

"Buffy, this is amazing," Joyce said with a proud smile on her face as she studied Buffy's SAT scores. Standing behind her Danielle Burg sported an equally proud look.

"Yeah, I guess." Buffy managed not to sound completely unenthusiastic. Barely.

"Buffy, with a score like that you can apply to any college you want," Joyce went on, though not unaware of her daughter's less than ecstatic mood.

"Aren't you happy that you did so good?" Burg asked, catching on as well.

"I'm happy," Buffy quickly assured them. "But ... what's the point, you know? I'm not going to go to college anyway."

Now her tutor looked really confused and Joyce's smile faded as well.

"Ms. Burg, could you give us a minute?"

"Uh ... yes, certainly."

Both Summers' women stayed silent until the tutor had left the room, then looked at each other with almost identical looks of frustration.

"You remember me telling you about not going to college, right?" Buffy asked pointedly.

"Yes," Joyce sighed. "I was just hoping that ... well, with you doing so well and ..."

"Mom, we've been over this. A hundred times. I agreed to finish my high school education, but that's it. What would I study in college anyway?"

"There are so many things ..."

Buffy took a step forward and grasped her mother by the shoulders.

"Mom, please! Do we really need to have this discussion again?"

Joyce shook her head after a moment's hesitation. No, they really had had this discussion often enough these last few months. She knew that Buffy would not be swayed and, if she was honest with herself, she fully understood her reasons.

Buffy would never have anything even remotely resembling a normal life. Odds had been bad even before her journey through hell, now they were practically nonexistent. Buffy was as old as Joyce was, maybe even older, and Buffy's mother had to admit that, at her age, she would certainly not want to go back to college again.

Buffy's life would not go Joyce had always wanted it to. It would not include a nice, normal husband and 2.5 kids. Instead it would include constant battles against demons and monsters, saving the world every other month. Buffy aged at a vastly decelerated rate, thanks to the demon blood in her veins, but she might be cut down this very night, or the next, or the one after that.

Joyce would not be a mother if she were not reluctant to accept these facts, but facts they were. Even if Buffy could somehow be convinced to go to college it would not change them. At best it would be a pretence, yet another mask she would wear like those contact lenses that disguised her amber demon eyes.

"Very well," Joyce finally said. "But allow your old mother to be proud of your academic accomplishments once in a while, okay? It's not something I can really turn off."

Now Buffy smiled at her. "Okay! But you don't get to call yourself old, mom. I might well be older than you."

"Considering that you still look like a teenager that will only make me feel more self-conscious."

"I am still trying to convince Angel to sell 'Blood, Bottled' as the new anti-aging miracle, but I don't really see him going for it."

They shared a laugh and the tension was broken, at least for the moment. Buffy doubted that this was the last time they would have a discussion about this or a similar topic. Her mother was doing her best to accept Buffy's circumstances and choices in life, but every so often her old master plan of 'Let's give Buffy the perfect life' tried to reassert itself in her head.

"Are you going to tell Ms. Burg," Buffy asked, "or should I?"

Buffy felt almost sorry for her tutor. Burg had looked so proud upon seeing Buffy's SAT scores.

"Let's do it together," Joyce offered. "I hope she's not too disappointed that her star pupil will not go on to conquer a college in her name."

The two Summers women smiled at each other and went in search of Ms. Burg.

#

"Oh, that is nice to hear," Mayor Richard Wilkins said. "Is there anything better than to watch our children as they excel?"

Well, he had to admit there were several better things he could think of at a moment's notice, but none of them were fit for a polite conversation with one of his employees. Especially one that did not need to know the full extent of his plans. There was no need to trouble too many people with the knowledge that most of them were liable to die within the next eight months.

"Keep up the good work, Ms. Burg," he told her over the phone. "I would love to see our good Ms. Summers earn enrolment in a really excellent college."

Not that she would ever have the opportunity to go there, he added silently. Again, not a topic for polite conversation.

When he had first heard about the return of the Slayer he had tried to get her out of his way in a rather crude manner: by sending assassins after. Looking back, he was a bit shocked that he had resorted to violence so very quickly. Something like that was not really befitting an elected official who held the trust of the people of Sunnydale.

He could always kill the Slayer and her friends later if it really had to be done.

No, at this moment in time all parties were better served by leaving her alive and keeping an eye on her. He kind of regretted that his initial reaction had been to tell Snyder to keep her out of school. It would have been easy to keep her under observation there.

Well, it no longer mattered. The past was the past and Danielle Burg was doing a fine job, would keep right on doing it until the young Ms. Summers finished her exams. Young ladies like her should really be concentrating on their education instead of getting in the way of things.

Besides, he reminded himself with a frown, having a Slayer or two around might not be the worst thing that could happen, considering who else was residing in his wonderful town at the moment. No, not the worst thing at all.

For what had to be the hundredth time in the last month or so he looked at the framed black-and-white photograph standing on his desk. For the longest time he had thought that the man standing beside him in that image was dead and gone. Unfortunately he knew better now and that worried him much, much more than all the Slayers and probably-soulful vampires in the world combined.

"Maybe I'll get lucky and the lovely Ms. Summers will take care of you, Sebastian," he addressed the photograph. "Or maybe even luckier and you will take care of each other. It would be nice for things to work out fine once in a while, don't you think?"

He frowned for a moment.

"God, Sebastian. Now you've got me talking out loud to myself, too."

#

The cat did not know that the very large, moving object that had almost barrelled it over was a car. A black Dodge Desoto FireFlite, to be exact, vintage 1958. Neither did it know that the object the car had hit was the 'Welcome to Sunnydale' sign, now so much wooden splinters. The fact that the sign had been replaced less than a year before after another unfortunate car-related incident - involving this very car actually - escaped it completely . Even if the cat had known all this, really, it would not have cared overmuch.

There were two things the cat did care about, though. One was the extremely offensive stink of alcohol coming its way as the car's door opened, causing about half a dozen empty bottles to fall out and smash on the sidewalk. The cat did not like the stink of alcohol and, in its experience, the two-foots who kept large amounts of alcohol close at hand were not among the most amiable of their kind. Case in point being the black-clad two-foot who stumbled out of the car a moment later and fell flat onto the sidewalk.

Moments later the second fact the cat cared about caused it to revise its earlier observation. This was not a two-foot, at least not one of the usual, sometimes amiable kind. This was one of the bloodsucking demon things that frequented these parts. Cats were really good at recognizing them, even when they hid inside the body of two-foots. The stink was rather unmistakable, even when masked by so much alcohol.

Usually the bloodsucking demon things did not bother cats, but this particular cat decided not to take the risk and made fast tracks away from the prone pretend-two-foot, taking its business for the night elsewhere. This decision, as well as its lacking knowledge when it came to two-foot languages, caused it to miss the first and only words the demon thing with the strangely-coloured hair uttered before passing out.

"Home, hic sweet home!"

TO BE CONTINUED