Disclaimer: Since my name is not Joss Whedon, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and the amazing characters associated with the show belong to someone who isn't me. I also don't own the story line - that is taken from gidgetgirl's Before She Was Turned Challenge (details below). Lacey Kendall belongs to me.
The Before She Was Turned ChallengeUnbeknownst to the others, there was more to Harmony Kendall than met the eye. Two years before she was turned at graduation, Harmony actually gave birth to a child. When the child is turned, it's up to the scoobies to take care of him/her while soulless Harmony wreaks havoc.
Requirements:
Harmony's soul must somehow be tied to the little one.
The little one must be oddly quiet and shy for a Harmony child.
Someone snuggling with the child.
A skinned knee.
Chapter 2.
"I don't believe this!" Buffy hissed, her eyes blazing with fury. "She turned a little kid? What kind of sick freak . . ." She trailed off, unable to continue.
If looks could kill, then little Lacey would have fried the Slayer to a crisp with her glares.
/I should have got there sooner. / Buffy berated herself. /Harmony must have turned Lacey just before I got there. If I'd been a few minutes earlier. Her poor mother! / She felt nauseous. /She had to watch her daughter turned. /
She didn't even want to think what had been going through Harmony's mind when she had decided to make herself a tiny playmate.
Lacey put down the cup, her forehead ridges and fangs reforming into human, childlike features.
Could she kill a child?
"Buffy, wait." Xander scooped the little girl up, shielding her instinctively, despite knowing what she was. "She's just a little kid." He set Lacey to her feet. "You wait for us in the living room, honey."
"Okay." Lacey trotted off cheerfully enough.
"Xander, I have to." Buffy tried to convince herself as well as her friend. "You saw – she's a vampire. A killer."
"Not yet." Xander paused abashed. "I mean, she's a vampire already, but she's not a killer, not yet, not if she was just turned."
"But she will."
"So you'll kill her for something that she hasn't done yet?" Dawn took Xander's part. "Yeah, that's fair. She can't help being a vampire."
"Dawn, it's in her nature. . ."
"We don't know that." Xander pointed out. "She was hungry, but did she try to attack one of us? No – she went for the pig's blood."
"For all we know she can't kill." Dawn pointed out logically. "Maybe her fangs are too small."
"Seriously, Buff, can you see someone Lacey's size managing to overpower anything bigger than a squirrel, vampire strength or no vampire strength?"
"She doesn't know that she's supposed to kill people." Dawn pleaded. "And if we keep her away from Harmony she doesn't ever have to know."
"It's okay for Spike to have killed hundreds of people, all because he has a chip now." Xander pointed out acidly. "Lacey's never hurt anyone."
Buffy sighed.
Her duty as a Slayer had always been plain.
To find the vampires, to slay the vampires.
Faced with a vampire less than three feet tall, however, things didn't seem so black and white.
"We can get Willow to reensoul her." Dawn suggested, seeing her older sister's resolve falter.
"And then what?" Buffy exhaled, exasperated. "It's not like we can leave a mini vampire on the steps of an adoption agency.
"We'll work that out later." Xander said. "There has to be a solution, one that doesn't involve infanticide."
Buffy gave him a half smile, privately relieved to be allowed to be convinced not to perform a task she found repugnant.
"Okay." She said at last. "Let's see how things work out."
Lacey had been sitting in the living room when they rejoined her, an adorably angelic, innocent expression on her face, masking her inner turmoil.
She had tried to get out of the house, to find her mother, but the front door had been locked and she had been too short to reach the latch.
The little vampire was astute enough to realize where she was – in the house of the Slayer – and to know how dangerous her position was.
Her mother had told her about the Slayer, warning her about how dangerous they were and she had heard the young woman argue in favour of her death with her own ears.
The other two were nice, she liked them, but the Slayer scared her.
She shivered.
She was tired and she wanted to go to sleep, but she didn't have her bed or her blankie, and the blood in the cup had tasted funny, not as nice as the blood her mommy gave her in her special cup.
"I want to go to my Mommy." Her blue eyes filled with tears.
"I'm sorry, Lacey." Xander crouched down in front of her, gently wiping away her tears. "I'm afraid you can't go to your Mommy, but you can stay here with us, at least for a while." He gave her a goofy smile, eliciting a slight giggle from the shy toddler. "That'll be fun, won't it?"
"I'm sleepy." She confessed softly, trying not to yawn.
"Okay."
Xander had already been won over by the tiny girl's charms, the Summers sisters noted with amusement.
Little Lacey had won herself a loyal slave.
"She can sleep in my room." Dawn volunteered. "I'll move the pullout bed into Buffy's room and sleep there."
"Do I get a say in that?" Buffy asked, a faint touch of sarcasm mingled with her amusement at her younger sister's coolly dictatorial manner.
"Of course not." Dawn's response was matter of fact.
Lacey watched the sisters solemnly, before reaching out a hand to Xander.
"Can I have a story?" Her eyes were wide and appealing. "Please?"
"Sure thing."
Buffy watched the two leave the room and mount the stairs to Dawn's bedroom, Xander measuring his stride to Lacey's small steps, unsure as to how she should proceed.
She couldn't kill a child, and, as Xander and Dawn had argued, Lacey hadn't actually done anything.
/Yet. /
"I'm going to need some help with this one."
She hadn't intended her comment to be audible, but Dawn heard and responded.
"Let's see," Her tone was one of cherubic innocence more suited to a child Lacey's age than to a teenager. "We have a problem with a very little vampire. Gee, it's a shame that we don't know a vampire, say one living in a crypt nearby, who could help us out, maybe give us some advice. Oh wait . . ." She snorted derisively at her sister. "It must be the hair."
It wasn't until she scented the approach of dawn that Harmony could bring herself to leave her hiding place in the Summers' garden.
On the one hand, she was relieved.
Lacey had been unmasked as a vampire but, thanks to the intervention of Xander – who would have thought that she would ever be grateful to him for anything? – and Dawn, her little girl had been granted a reprieve.
Lacey was safe, at least for now, but that didn't stop her wondering.
Was her baby girl okay? Since the night she had turned Lacey, she and her child had not been separated for any length of time.
What if she had a nightmare? What if she called out for her during the night and she wasn't there? Would Buffy know that Lacey liked sugar stirred in with her blood? Would she care?
The tears that rolled down her cheeks were as cold as ice.
Harmony had to force herself to be calm, to think rationally.
She hadn't seen much of her minions since her little group had disbanded, before Lacey was turned, but she was confident that she could regather them, or else recruit new ones and they would be able to help her.
She would get her child back, if she had to wipe out half of Sunnydale to do it.
TBC.
