Chapter 4:

The neon sign buzzed and left a red glow in the room, it was late but Saffron picked up her cup of coffee that she had left too long and it had gone cold. The flashing neon light from outside reflected around the dimly lit room as she wrapped her fingers around the cup, her painted nails matched the red glow of the sign. Saff took a sip of her coffee despite the temperature but screwed her face up in annoyance as she swallowed the cold liquid. She rubbed her eyes to try to get rid of her tiredness; she was so exhausted, but she needed to try to figure out what was going on with her. She had decided to come to an internet café to do some research. She wanted to figure out why she was feeling the way she was, so she decided that google might have the answer. She had tracked through different sites, there was so much information to read through she wish she had the help of the others, she really didn't know how Giles did it. Nothing she read seemed to explain why she had fainted and felt so horrible. She had always felt things more than others, but she had never felt things as much as she had recently. She knew she was connected to everything on a deeper level, especially since she had been using tarot cards. But she had never considered that she was different from normal, she had grown up with Buffy after all. Saff sighed loudly as she tried to consider what to do next, could she be different? What did this mean? She decided to take a break from the screen and fished in her pocket for her green lighter, lit up her cigarette and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes and looking out of the large front window into the night.

"You can't do that in here." The annoyed night shift worker shouted at her from across the room as he folded his arms across his chest. He had broken the silence in the room, and Saffron had forgotten that he was there. All she had heard for the last three hours were the clicking of keyboards from the few others in the internet café. The spotty teenager was taking his job way too seriously considering he was probably on less than minimum wage. Saffron rolled her eyes, took another puff of her cigarette to spite him, and dropped the end into her cold cup of coffee. She exhaled in an over-exaggerated way as she looked him directly in the eyes, before turning back to the computer monitor in front of her. She had been there another hour before she decided to give up for the night, she started to log off and pack up her bright yellow notepad and fluffy flamingo pen that she had brought to do her serious research. She chucked the notepad and pen into her bag and took out the wooden stake that Buffy had kindly gifted to her. She briefly glanced out of the window into the street whilst deep in thought over what she had just read, before she looked down to grab her leather jacket from the back of her chair. She looked back up suddenly, she could have sworn she had seen a glimpse of a shadowy figure behind a cloud of smoke but there was no one out there when she looked back.

xoxoxo

Buffy and Saffron were walking towards the latest café Saff had chosen to do her readings in. Buffy had insisted on walking her through the streets of Sunnydale, Saffron had originally complained that she didn't need babysitting but secretly she felt a lot safer walking around at night with Buffy by her side. They had walked in silence through the campus, but as they got closer to Saff's café of choice for the night, Saffron felt like Buffy wanted to speak about something.

"Come on, Buff. What's on your mind?" Saff asked as she put her hands in her jacket pocket to protect them from the cold night.

"Huh? Just thinking, no big" Buffy tried to shrug Saffron off but she knew that Buffy wasn't being honest. She stopped on the pavement and waited for Buffy to stop and look back at her.

"Come on, Saff. I need to go and patrol" Buffy crossed her arms and tapped the toe of her boot.

"Come on, Buff." Saff attempted to mimick in a horrible American accent, "Not until you tell me, you know you can tell me anything"

"Riley is a commando" Buffy sighed.

"Like no pants? Ever?" Saffron didn't understand why it mattered, but she thought she should check why it was bothering her.

"No, he's one of the G.I Joe commandos that have been de-fanging our vamps" Buffy explained to Saffron, she could be so smart sometimes but could come across just as ditzy. They kept walking towards the café as Saffron was satisfied Buffy was talking to her properly, it was almost as if she could tell when Buffy was being honest. Buffy explained how she and Riley had discovered each of their identities, and how they now didn't know whether to be together because of the danger "So, we both exploded the gentlemen, but we tried to talk today and… nothing"

"Maybe you should just have a passionate shag and make with the talking after" Saffron shrugged at how Buffy's eyes widened as she mentioned her having sex so casually, "Buff, they don't all go evil and start killing people or worse, start hooking up with new people the next night" she laughed as Buffy sighed, which seemed to be all she did at the moment. They had arrived outside Nell's Diner which Saffron had carefully selected from the last remaining places that would let her stay long enough to do at least 4 readings. She wouldn't stay long tonight though; she was leaving to go to Xander's later to meet him and Willow before they went to check out the museum to look for any information on the word of Valios.

"I better go, do you need me to circle back and walk you to Xander's?"

"No thanks, but you can come in for a coffee with me? We don't chat like we used to, I've missed you telling me stuff before everyone else" Saffron asked, kicking herself mentally for sounding like a little kid when she asked Buffy to stay. Buffy did seem to pause before answering, as if she wanted to stay with her cousin.

"I should really go, more freaky cereal boxes to memorise" She said as she pulled out a stake and Saffron gave her a confused look but didn't want to ask. Buffy smiled and hugged her cousin, something they rarely did just to say goodbye. "You never said what happened when you were fainting-girl, you ok?" Buffy whispered while they hugged, Saff didn't know how to answer this and nodded before breaking their hug and turning to enter the café, without looking back. She would feel guilty telling Buffy everything that had been going on in her mind, especially as Buffy always has so much pressure on her as it was. Saff decided she could handle everything herself for now. If she had turned back to see Buffy's genuine concern, she might have broken and spilled everything, but she didn't.

Saffron turned to the door and slipped through it, hoping to avoid attracting attention as she swiftly found a booth at the back of the diner where she started to set up her tarot cloth on the sticky table. The red vinyl squeaked as she adjusted her sitting position and took out the deck from her pocket. The staff in there didn't seem to mind what you did in the 24 hour diner, as long as you were buying the crappy coffee, and Saffron respected that but felt better only staying for short amounts of time in case a manager decided to walk in and kick her out again. Saffron had ordered her coffee from the kind looking elderly waitress before turning back to the cards and shuffling them well. Her many silver rings stood out under the fluorescent lights and her long, painted nails were a sky-blue colour tonight as she laid her palms flat on the table and closed her eyes, trying to focus herself and ignore all the background noise of the diner.

Saffron had done three readings before she decided she should pack up and meet Xander after his shift at the pizza place. She was hoping he would bring back some extra slices like he had last week, praying silently to the Gods that it wouldn't be pepperoni because she wouldn't even touch meat unless she really had to. Before she got up to leave, Saffron pulled out her yellow notebook that she had started to use for her own private research, giving herself a rare moment to collect her thoughts and decide what to do about everything she had been feeling. Saffron had already written about the precognitive feelings and messages she had experienced since she was a child, her mother had encouraged her to channel this into using the tarot cards to practice her ability. Saffron hadn't been completely honest to anyone in Sunnydale about the tarot reading and the voice that guides her readings, but Buffy had noticed that Saff was often accurate when she had done her readings before. She thought about this as she flicked to the new pages, she had written about based on the internet search results she had found at the internet café earlier that week. One word kept circling her head like a tornado, it made her dizzy to think about. Empath.

xoxoxo

Saffron was leaning against the front wall of Xander's family home as she heard an argument raging over blaring music from the upper level of the house. A glass smashed against a wall as she felt a fiery heat rise in her chest and she stood there steaming with unexplained anger with no apparent reason for feeling this way. She hadn't noticed that her hands had been balled into tight fists and her knuckles were white. She released her tensed jaw as Xander and willow walked up to her, trying to smile convincingly with the bubbling anger still raging inside of her. They frowned when they saw her face but Saffron continued to smile a little too sweetly to convince them she was okay. Xander heard the argument coming from his home and looked embarrassed as he indicated them to follow him down to the basement where he had been living reluctantly with his bleach blonde hostage. They walked into the basement room where the scene before them shocked Saffron, as she watched Spike try to stake himself, but miss and break Xander's coffee table. Saffron rushed over to Spike who was just lying there on the splintered wood and rolled him over, noticing he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and beige shorts.

"Is this really the outfit you want to die in?" saffron asked looking him up and down scrutinising the horrible combination of what he had on.

"You were trying to stake yourself" Willow said, shocked. Saffron looked back down at Spike and seemed to him to have genuine concern on her face, before stepping back to stand next to the other two and filling his chest with disappointment. As Xander offered to do the staking for him, Willow insisted that they bring him with them to the museum and Saffron just stared at the ground listening to them.

"You said yourself, honeysuckle. I look bloody pathetic" he motioned at Saff as she rolled her eyes at the name he called her, and Spike motioned at his hideous outfit, "I mean, am I even remotely scary anymore? Tell me the truth" he said as he walked up to the girls with his hands up, as if he was a cartoon vampire.

"No" Saffron replied simply at the same time as Willow started to babble about his outfit making him less scary to try and make him feel better. Spike slumped his shoulders, feeling pathetic as Xander walked him through the doors of his basement promising an apocalypse if they couldn't find anything on the word of Valios.

They started the short walk to the museum that was only lit by sparsely placed streetlights, Saffron was convinced they put less lights on the street on purpose to make everything in Sunnydale seem creepier. Spike wasn't doing his usual saunter as he still felt a bit put out that the girls didn't find him scary, he kept glancing over to Saffron as they walked next to each other in silence, her hands in the pockets of her black jacket. She seemed to him to be in deep thought. Willow and Xander were walking in front and of them and babbling away to each other about anything and everything that they could think of, trying to include Saff here and there but she mostly gave one word replies. He frowned but put his hands in his own pockets and continued to walk with the Scoobies in silence. Spike was right in what he had observed, Saffron was thinking about what she had discovered about herself.

Her emotional state was influenced by any sudden emotional change around her and she was struggling to keep up with feeling lots of different things. She remembered back to what she had seen online, 'Empathic emotions can be hard, if impossible to control especially if in direct physical or emotional contact with others.' She thought back to how angry she had gotten just by Xander's family arguing near her. Why had she felt it all now? Could she make it go away or was she feeling like this for a reason? Saffron only had questions, not answers and they were spinning around her head so fast that when she felt a jolt of fear from Xander and Willow in front of her, her head started to pound and she had to steady herself against a fence before she could carry on with their journey. Spike had been watching her carefully the whole time and could see that something big was wrong, but he knew he couldn't ask. He decided to put a hand on her shoulder, he wanted to comfort her. She looked at him, confusion on her face as she squinted from his hand to his face. No, you don't bloody care he told himself as he dropped the hand he had on her shoulder back to his side so fast it was as if he had burnt it on her shoulder. Willow and Xander had only seen an animal rooting in a trashcan, but they were expecting a demon to pop out because it was after dark. They looked back and laughed with relief but stopped as they noticed Saffron leaning against the wall and Spike looking awkwardly at her with his arms rigid by his side.

"Hey there SP, is bleach boy bothering you?" Xander pointed between her and Spike with a protective look on his face, he had always been fond of her and seen her as his own sister, as he used the name he usually called her.

"What was he gonna do, send me bad vibes?" Saff struggled out as she rubbed her head and shakily stood up without the help of the fence.

"Hey!" Spike said as he crossed his arms over his chest and sulked.

"You don't look good Saffy" Will worried as she stepped towards her.

"I have a headache, just need some tablets when I get back in and I'll be golden, babe" Saffron said firmly as she started walking towards the museum. The others paused and Willow and Xander shared a look before they followed her down the road to where the museum was.

xoxoxo

The four of them walked out with nothing new on the word of Valios, and no one had done much talking apart from Spike winding Xander up as they walked around. Saffron hadn't said much although both Xander and Will asked her if she was okay on the way round. Spike was distancing himself from her because of the moment of concern he had shown and because of the way she spoke about him. He was still sulking and missed the time where he sent fear through the spines of the Scooby gang.

"So I'm one step closer to melting in a sea of molten hellfire?" Spike asked hopefully after Xander complained that their time at the museum was pointless.

"You'll adjust"

"Adjust? And what? End up like the lot of you? No, thank you"

"Here it goes" Xander rolled his eyes.

"We can't just leave him here to stake himself. It's not right."

"I should think you would be glad to greet the end of days. I mean, neither one of you is making much of a go at it. Kids your age are going off to university. You've made it as far as the basement. And Red here, you couldn't even keep Dog Boy happy. You can take the loser out of high school, but-"

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself and grow up, Spike. You're what? Over 100 and you need to insult us to make you feel better about your own shit" Saffron interrupted him, annoyed with how he was making her friends feel, whether he had shown he can be comforting or not.

"He wants us to stake him" Will whispered to her as Spike turned to face Saff.

"Oh, and the less said about you, honeysuckle, the better. The sad little orphan running around after big cuz, sitting in her shadow and holding her jacket as she saves the world, again" he sneered, colder than he had with the others, "You should have let me bite you when I had the chance, pet" He managed to meet her eyes as she looked back at him, her face was blank as she was hiding how he had upset her and he felt his heart twinge with something that felt new to him: guilt. "Buffy doesn't need you, she doesn't need any of you. You're all just the same tenth-grade losers you've always been and she's too much of a softy to cut you loose" He finished as he stalked off, impressed with himself that he's still got it in him to be bad, but that small hint of guilt swept through him as he walked along the streets.

They had been back to Giles' as he had discovered that they were trying to open the Hellmouth again with their ritual. They knew they would have to go back to their old high school. Saffron didn't want to go back to the ruin but she knew she had to come with the gang, despite what Spike said to her earlier. Spike had upset her, but she knew there was something almost kind there sometimes but maybe it was her nature to see the good in everyone. As they arrived at their old school, and the entrance to the hellmouth, Saffron felt a strange feeling when she walked through what used to be the corridors.

She walked through the empty corridor of her high school, her long brunette hair had been curled and it hung down to her waist. Saff was walking back from doing research in the library and on her way back to her home so her auntie wouldn't worry too much. She had her favourite black dungaree dress on with her backpack hanging on one shoulder as she hurried out of the school. She had been in a bad mood all day and couldn't explain it, nothing that anyone else had noticed what with all the research they were doing to try to defeat Angelus. She turned a corner, almost at the front door now, when a figure in a black veil, the kind a bride would wear, floated in and stood right in front of her. Saffron just stared, not sure whether to run back to the others in the library or not, she really did not want to have to deal with some bride of Frankenstein's ghost. She wanted a bubble bath and some of Auntie J's hot cocoa with the veggie marshmallows she had bought in specially for her. As she started to move around the figure and go past them, a beautifully manicured hand reached out and their dark red, sharp nails dug into her arm to stop her in her path. The hand was ice cold, which made the hairs on the back of Saffron's neck raise. They lifted her veil with the other hand to reveal Drusilla's pale face, her cheeks were stained with mascara as if she had been crying.

"Miss Edith has been whispering to me, you know. She says you're a naughty, naughty poppet. You're stealing him. Why are you stealing him, poppet?"

"I-I really don't know-"

"My Miss Edith invited you to the tea party but no one was home. The poppet is taking what is mine, when she had her picking of the whole table. All that cake waiting to be eaten, but now the maggots have it and she has my prize"

"I haven't taken anything from you, please believe me" Saffron begged as she started to panic, her arm was bleeding from Drusilla's grip and she knew it was a matter of time before Dru smelt her blood, if she hadn't already.

"Naughty poppet, grr" Dru growled and clawed her hand, as she changed into her game face, "She says it's the only way to save my Sp-" Drusilla had been cut off by a roundhouse kick as Buffy had come up behind them and Saff, who had been released from Dru's grip started to run but Drusilla grabbed her long hair and pulled her backwards.

Saffron remembered that moment with scary clarity as they walked through the wreck of the old school, she also remembered cutting her hair shorter after that. She subconsciously adjusted her ponytail as she followed the others towards where the library used to be.

xoxoxo

The arrived in the library to find the three demons that were performing the ritual. They all started to fight, with Buffy taking the lead. Saffron watched as two of them ran at Buffy and, without thinking twice she grabbed a plank of wood and hit one of them as hard as she could to get its attention off Buffy. She then panicked briefly as the demon walked towards her menacingly, before attempting to fight with the basic skills Giles and her cousin had taught her. Spike noticed Saff was not winning the fight she was having and ran in to punch the demon as hard as he could, expecting a massive pain in his head as he knocked the demon out of focusing on Saffron. Instead, he noticed something that excited him.

"No pain. I can hurt a demon!" Spike beamed and started beating the demon up properly, "I'm back, and I'm a bloody animal! Yeah!" He beamed as he threw the demon into the hole, much to Buffy's annoyance and Saffron's amusement, although she was still upset with him after what he had said about her. Riley turned up as the others ran out of the building as it was about to go down.

"About time you showed up, commando" Saffron winked at Riley knowingly as she ran past to get out of harms way. Riley looked shocked and didn't know what to say before he ran to help Buff. They worked together to stop the final demon from sacrificing themselves while the others impatiently waited in one of the sturdier corridors. Saff started to bite the skin around her nails with nerves as she waited for Buffy to return, she had complete faith in Buffy but she always worried about her. He looked over to the others and smiled at them as they waited.

When they both appeared in the corridor finally and Saff smiled at them both as Riley looked a bit uncomfortable that she knew his identity. She smiled even wider as she realised and watched as he made up ridiculous excuses to the others.

"You were just passing by in your GI Joe outfit?" Xander joked.

"No offence, but you do look wicked conspicuous" Willow agreed.

"I do? Paintball. Yeah, I was playing paintball." Riley tried to convince them and Saffron couldn't help but giggle as Riley stared hard at her.

"So, you're one ofthe commando guys, huh?"

"Oh, no, no, no. Commando? No, I mean-"

"He means yes" Saffron laughed at him, he was the worst agent she had met, and she was about to tell him that before Riley noticed Spike stood behind her.

"Do I know you?"

"Me? No. No, sir. I'm just an old pal of Xander's here" Spike continued in a horrible American accent that made Saffron snort loudly that she tried to pass off as a cough. They all went their separate ways and Saffron was relieved that the others now knew about Riley too.