Email: marenfic@yahoo.com
Summary: This fic takes off after Buffy
is brought back to life in Bargaining (Season 6). Events of Season 6 BtVS won't happen, but AtS
Season 3 will occur as they did until Connor is kidnapped. From there, events diverge a little, although
I'll be retaining some elements. Most
importantly, baby Connor never comes back as angry teen Connor—he is lost to
Angel for good.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, or any song lyrics.
Pairings: B/?; A/C, eventually B/A
Rating: Eventually R
Feedback: Please!!!
Thanks to: bashipforever, who writes wonderful B/A and inspired me to torture these characters a lot before letting them be happy; also Sarah McLachlan who provided the fic title.
A/N: Italics generally indicate direct thoughts of characters unless they indicate emphasis—it should be easy to tell which is which.
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Hurts.
So bright, so loud, so hard. No, please. No.
Those were the words that made up the woman's first coherent thoughts after her soul was shoved back into her body, after the magic had repaired and reanimated her rotting flesh, after she frantically dug her way out of the box that held her trapped under several feet of earth. Those were the first words that entered her mind after she tried to make out the shifting, hazy forms that swam in her not-yet-working vision, after she struggled to make sense of the riotous sounds that were pounding into her newly awakened ears, after she started trying to breath through her mouth so that she wouldn't have to breath in the acrid smell of the burning town. Those were the first words that invaded her fuzzy consciousness after she mindlessly, almost effortlessly, fought the demons who had cornered her in the alley.
Those were the first words that shoved their way into the woman's head, pounding and unrelenting, as she crouched against the brick wall, four strangely familiar faces peering at her as though she were some circus attraction.
With a cry that sounded like that of a wounded animal, the woman pulled herself up off of the ground and pushed past the people who were crowding her, suffocating her.
NopleaseNo. Hurts. Have to run. Have to hide.
Those were the second set of words that were spoken by the broken, raw voice in her head. An instant later she was throwing one leg over the seat of a dead demon's motorcycle and kicking it into gear. The sound of the roaring engine and the sensations of the rumbling bike under her were nearly painful in their intensity, but she preferred the discomfort they offered to the bracing, harsh reality staring at her from the eyes of those people who kept calling her "Buffy".
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Three days later, Buffy found herself shivering in the shadows in an alley across the street from her father's apartment in L.A. She was cold, tired, and ravenously hungry, but she couldn't make herself approach the glass double-doors that would lead into the warm, safe interior of the building.
Her memories had started coming back two days ago. She had fled the loud, burning town on the stolen motorcycle without knowing who she was, where she was (other than hell), or where she was going. She had gotten about an hour out of town before stopping at the side of the road and pulling into a small wooded area. It was quieter there, no people, and she wanted to rest but she couldn't. No matter how tightly she closed her eyes, she couldn't stop the memories from flooding in and they were harsh and painful and full of blood and death.
Those memories haunted her now as she stood in shoes with broken heels, her burial dress torn and bloody. As much as she was in desperate need of food and sleep, she couldn't take those final steps. She couldn't go to her father in his safe, normal upscale apartment in L.A. because she wasn't safe—she wasn't normal. She couldn't seek shelter with the people who loved her—not her father, not Willow, not Xander, not Dawn, not Giles. She couldn't allow them to see her for what she finally realized she was. She was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and she was a freak who wasn't welcome in Heaven or in Hell.
Buffy slowly turned away from the beckoning warmth of her father's apartment building and retreated further into the dark, dank alley. She realized now that she was a creature of night, something that belonged in the darkness, in the dankness with the other dangerous beings. She realized why the Watcher's Council must have wanted all the slayers to live their lives alone and carefully controlled. Beings like her were hazardous. Buffy had refused to accept that she couldn't live a normal life, have normal friends, do normal things like go to school and have human boyfriends. Now she knew for sure that she wasn't normal and could never be normal. The funny thing was that she also knew she wasn't a truly evil being either—otherwise, when she was expelled from Heaven she would have gone to a Hell dimension. She had died, after all. Fair and square. But here she was back on earth . . .
It might as well be hell
. . . and so she had to assume that neither place wanted her soul. She didn't dare think about the implications of that, that her soul would be bound to earth for eternity, never knowing the oblivion of death, never knowing peace . . .
Damn, I can't think about this now
So she didn't. She shut off those thoughts, shut off the few emotions that weren't already dead inside her. Buffy didn't cry for the loss of her life, her death, her dreams and her peace. She just didn't have it inside her. There were no tears, only pain and coldness. Darkness. The Slayer.
Slayer
When the quartet of three-mouthed demons surrounded her, it came as no surprise. This was her world and she had been a fool to deny it for so long. Perhaps it was this realization or perhaps it was the fact that she didn't fear death any longer, but when she spun into action, the fight seemed almost effortless to her. She felt . . . detached. Her mind was blank and free of the fear of losing something important to her for the first time ever. She was a machine, an instrument of destruction and death, and she embraced it fully for the first time.
With her mind free of distraction, her body was free to fight at its full potential for the first time in her life (or death). Her fighting body was a thing of treacherous, fatal beauty—what one could see of it anyway. She was a kicking, punching blur of magnificent force. Weaponless, she destroyed the four deadly demons who had mistaken her for a meal in less than 2 minutes, her only injury the reopening of the wounds on her knuckles that had come from clawing herself out of her grave.
As she gazed down at her bleeding knuckles, the first spark of feeling other than pain flickered inside before quickly fading back out. Buffy knew it was the adrenaline of the fight that sparked the fleetingly pleasant feeling, and it made sense to her. She was made to be a killer. Killing should feel good to her.
The crunch of a boot on a stray rock abruptly pulled her attention away from her knuckles and she searched the darkness for the source of the noise. Two, then three seconds passed by before she caught a glimpse of the masked sniper dressed completely in black stalking towards her, and then the blackness of the sniper's clothing turned into the blackness of nothingness as the tranquilizer shot into her bloodstream.
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