The Groom of Rosenberg...PG-13
Archived at the Buffy Rebecca verse (there are pictures...)
PG-13...One or two violent scenes...
Disclaimer: All BTVS characters remain the property of Joss Whedon, MutantEnemy, and all other owner/creators of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series...
Summary: Just for fun...I wanted to do a big creation scene in Sunnydalopolis but a "Bride of Frankenstein" scene couldn't quite work...So...Since "Bride" is one of my favorites…
Later note: I'm just polishing up this one with some corrections while trying inspire myself to finally finish "Daughter of Rosenberg" but we'll see. If I get really ambitious, maybe I'll even throw in "Rosenberg…(The Wiccan Who Made A Monster)."
(Angelis was sportier for this fictional tale. And I still prefer Walthrop to Pratt in my stuff…Though in "Prattfall…" I do expand the family to include a famous member.)
An alternate season 5 ending...
Willow resurrects Buffy the hard way...The really hard way.
With results not very pleasing to our reanimated Slayer...
Yeah, another Cicelyverse story...
Prologue...
An evening in 1891...Darkness...We vaguely see a large English manor house appearing out of the mists...Well isolated from intruding eyes...
A heavy rainstorm, accompanied by severe gusts of wind, punctuated by blasts of thunder and lightning tears the fabric of night...
But the glow of a warm and cheery fire is spied through a large side window. We hear strains of music playing as we move up to that window...And see, scattered in chairs about the large fireplace...Angelis, Spike, and diligently working at needlepoint...Drusilla...
All in rather elegant clothes of the era...
Angelis strides to the window, looking out at the storm...
"What a marvelous night!" he exults. "Mother Nature at her worst...While we three...We elegant three safe within."
Yeah...Spike notes, whispering to Dru. And when Darla gets back from having to hunt on her own in this weather...Mother Nature's wrath won't begin to compare...
"I should like to think that an irate Jehovah was aiming those thunderbolts directly at me...At the unbowed head of Angelis!" Angelis continues grandiosely...Peering out into the fierce storm...
Ireland's greatest sinner...he gloats.
Spike rolls his eyes, grinning at Drusilla...
"But...I mustn't be too quick...Perhaps these represent an accolade for our dear William...
Heaven's applause for England's worst poet." Angelis eyes William, sneering...
Spike snarles at him...
A distinguished butler, human, enters, forcing Spike to cut short his challenge...Good servants being just too precious to kill...
Angelis nods to him and the butler sets out a tray, glasses, and a bottle of the master's "special" vintage...
"Well..." Spike glares at Angelis as the butler leaves...
"What of my Drusilla then...?"
She is an angel...Angelis leers...
As long as Darla insisted on being out on hunt for the evening...He can hope to get away with a pass or two...
"You think so...?" Dru smiles up at him from her work...
"Come, Dru...Come and watch the storm." Angelis moves to her...
"You know how lightning alarms me..." Dru notes...Looking to William...
"Spike, dear...? Would you light these candles...All of them?" Dru pleads...
He rises...And begins lighting...
"Look at her, Will...Such an enchanting creature. Fearful of the lightning...Afraid of the dark..."
Angelis smiles at her...
"And yet...So capable a killer."
Not to mention that you have written a story that caused my blood to run even colder than usual...Angelis notes, smiling at her...
"Well..." Dru smiles. "What do you expect...? With such company, it takes more than a pretty little love story..."
"Ah...But such a story. A story from the future...Our very own futures, if your visions be true...The story of Willow Rosenberg who sought to create living men, to restore her own best friend...A Slayer no less...From the rifled graves of cadavers." Angelis chuckles.
"Murray, the latest publisher I took it to, refuses to touch it...He says the reading public would be too shocked."
Right...Spike sneers to himself. If either of these lot ever opened a book, they'd see why a cheap rip-off of Frankenstein isn't publishable. But mustn't hurt poor ole Dru, poor dear girl...he sighs to himself. Smiling at her as well...
Angelis trying to pass it off as his own work, no doubt. No wonder he wouldn't let us come...he whispers to her, slipping over...
"It will be published, I think..." Drusilla smiles.
Saw it in a vision on a bookstore shelf, she explains...
"Of course it would help if you'd stop eating the publishers we bring it to, Dru..." Angelis notes.
"Well..." Spike notes in turn... "If it is ever published...You will have much to answer for, dear heart."
Especially as regards Mary Shelley's copywrite he does not say...
"The publishers I ate..." Dru notes, still a bit miffed at the memory... "Refused to see that I was presenting a moral lesson. Of the punishment that will befall a mortal woman who dares emulate God..."
"Well...Whatever your purpose in writing it...I adored every hideous moment." Angelis beams.
"Don't Angelis...Don't remind me of it tonight..." Drusilla nervously eyes him...
"I savor each horror..." Angelis sneers. "I roll them on my tongue..."
The graveyard where Willow and her unholy lover and assistant Tara waited...
The sobbing women...The first clods of earth on the coffin...
That was a pretty chill.
Willow and her unholy lover cutting the hanged woman down from where she hung, creaking in the wind...
(You think I should cut out the lesbian love story?...Dru looks at Spike. I know that might be pushing things for 1891...? Nah, he replies...Horror stories can have unholy love relationships, he notes.)
"The cunning of Rosenberg..." Angelis grins. "In her hilltop laboratory, picking together dead people to create a human monster. So fearful that only a half-crazed...And really desperate friend...Could conceive of it."
And then...The near-murders...
Certainly my favorite part, Spike chimes in...
"Little Dawny...Almost drowned."
"Willow Rosenberg herself thrown from the tower by the very monster she'd resurrected..."
And...Angelis takes Dru's hands...It was these little hands that penned the horror...
"Oh...You've made me prick myself, Angelis!" Dru gasps.
It's bleeding...she turns to Spike...
Want some?...she offers.
Fine with the bottled stuff...he notes. Thanks, dear heart...
"I do think, darling..." Spike dabs at the well-licked bleeding finger with a napkin... "It's a shame you didn't continue the story..."
Oh...You'd like to hear more of that Slayer and you, eh?..Dru frowns.
Heh-heh...Angelis chuckles...
Trouble in Paradise for our own little imitation Shelley?...He thinks happily.
"Well...That wasn't the end of the story...Would you like to hear what happened after that?" Dru asks.
"Or rather, what will happen? It is my vision of the future after all." She notes.
"I'm all ears!" Angelis comes over eagerly...
"While Heaven blasts the night away, open up your pits of Hell..."
They all resume their seats...
"Well..." Dru begins...
"Imagine yourself by the old mill tower...The crowd still howling for the monster's blood...The fire is slowly burning down...Soon the gaunt rafters of the old mill will be left alone, blackened against the sky..."
Part I...
The fire in the old mill continues to burn...Bystanders cheer as parts crumble down into the stream below. A group clustered about the dead?...Willow Rosenberg where she lies, thrown by her embittered creation in their final battle...
"Hey...What are you cryin' for?" Anya nudges Xander...Who weeps openly watching the burning mill...
"It's horrible...Horrible..." Xander shakes his head...
My poor Buffy...
"I know it's horrible..."Anya pats him, but turns grim...
"But after she nearly drowned Dawn, nearly strangled Giles, almost killed us. And what with poor Willow about to be taken home to die...
It can't be our Buffy in there." She shakes her head.
"I'm glad to see this thing...Her evil side no doubt...Roasted to death."
Xander sighing…
"It was evil, Xander...And I oughta be able to tell an evil nature...Now kiss me and go get the car...I'll see to poor Willow." She kisses and hugs him...
He wanders off to the car, forlornly...
"Ah..."Anya sighs...Parting the group about Willow.
"Poor Willow...She was to be married in Vermont tomorrow...To that lovely girl Tara."
The group eye each other...Jonathan and Warren among them...
"C'mon...Geesh..." Anya stares at all...
This is the twenty-first century, you know...
(Women marry each other in 2002?...Angelis interrupts Dru. Oh, yes, she happily replies...Men too...I have seen it...she notes. "Nice for you, Angelis..." Spike grins.)
Xander returns...Got the car...
We gotta a van...Jonathan notes...Eyeing Warren...
"We'll bring her home to the Rosenberg estate..." he offers.
Ok...Anya turns to Xander...
"You better drive to Castle Rosenberg...And tell Dawn and Tara we're bringing..." she pauses sadly...Eyeing the dead?...Wish we had a doctor here...Willow...
"...Willow home..."
…
The old mill, shrouded in darkness...now abandoned by all but two...
Vampires...Just emerged, but determined to see the last of the Slayer.
At least...One is...
"Hans...?" the female addresses him.
"Why do you stay...? The Slayer must be burned up by now. And burned up or no...Nothing will bring our vicious little Maria back to us!"
Besides...If the Slayer's friends...Or that traitor Spike...catch us...
"Why do you stay here...?" she shakes him.
"I want to see..." Hans grumbles.
"If I can see her blackened bones with my own eyes...I can sleep at day."
He shakes his mate off and begins climbing into the rubble of the mill...
"Hans...!" the female cries... "You will be burned yourself...Come back!"
He falls through the charred remains of the floor to the cellar and stream below...
Hans!...the female collapses in a faint...
In the cellar of the mill...The former location of the mill's water wheel...Hans struggles to find something to grab onto...But...from a darkened corner...
A hideously deformed and scarred...Now badly burned as well...And extremely pissed, though still blonde...And one benefit of Willow's work, rather tall…Buffy is seen emerging slowly.
With a loud growl...Meant actually to be her trademark "Here's the deal..." but the best she can currently manage given the lightening-induced damage to her brain...
Thanks, Willow.
She rushes over to the now terrified Hans...And thrusts his head under the water...
He cries out, struggling to no avail...
Hmmn...Buffy thinks. Vampire no dead yet...Ummn?
Hans continues to struggle...
Oh..Buffy gotta stake to kill vamp...Right...she remembers. And tears a wooden stick loose from the mill beams...
So much for poor Hans...She climbs to beams and the remains of an old stairway...Slowly moving to the surface.
God...Look at dress...she thinks, looking at her torn and burned dress. And was bad choice by Willow to begin with...
Grrr...Re-Life suck...she thinks...
"Hans...?" the female vamp, now revived, calls...
"I hear you, Hans...Let me help you."
Buffy puts up a burned hand...The female lifts her out, not realizing...
Until too late...
And Buffy is in no mood to make allowances for the female's help as the vamp lets out an annoying scream...
Like all others she's encountered since Willow resurrected her...And this one's a vamp for crying out loud?
She tosses the female down the old mill stairs...Said female dusting on some sharp board ends at bottom…And heads off...
All have left...
Except Anya who found she must walk. No more room in Jonathan's van he had apologetically noted. She lags behind the tail end of the Sunnydalers making for Castle Rosenberg...And pauses to look back...Hearing...
Buffy lumbers over...Scarred, burned...Greenish skinned...Tall...Very tall. Buffy looks at her old friend a mo...Rather exhausted after this long day.
Anya's jaw drops...Bu...Bu...Bu...
"AHHHHH!" she runs off, racing after the others...
Buffy stares after her...
Was Anya?...she thinks.
"Bye-bye..." she waves. A little downcast...
And still rather pissed, now that she thinks about it...
Where go now?...she wonders. Looking around at the woods around the crumbled old mill...
No go home...Hurt Dawn before...Remember...she remembers...
Just playing but...Caught her by stream. Depressed Dawn trying to cheer herself making flower boats for the kids there...
Didn't mean to hurt...Thought she'd float like flowers...
Only one day old then...
And Willow...she frowns...
Bad...Lock her in cellar...No see friends...
Leave Warren watching her...Bastard...Wave fire at her...Hit her with whip...
Even Giles want hurt her. Woke up on table...Giles about to...
Cut her up...
"Painlessly dissecting subject..." she remembers him speaking into his pocket recorder...
Painlessly...Geesh...
Well...Don't think he dead after she grab by throat...
But they all mad at her after...Geesh...
Chase her...Shoot her...Hit her...Run away from her.
And me...World-saving Slayer...she notes. I think, anyway...
Oh...she sobs.
No ask for this...Geesh...
Willow...Very bad...
She wanders off into the woods...
…
The rather nice castle of the Rosenberg estate...Massive with the usual ramparts and turrets, an import by Ira from Europe to lend a little grandeur to Rosenburg Industries.
Willow's stricken parents are in seclusion...
While Tara watches the road from a large bay window in a room of the one of the towers...Dawn by her side...
Xander's car pulls up...And they can see a procession of Sunnydalers following Jonathan and Warren's van at a distance up the road...
"Xander...?" Tara calls to him from the open window as he emerges from his car...
He waves a bit...
Ummn...
"Buffy...?" Dawn calls.
Ummn...Guys...Xander calls back...
"Things didn't go so well between Willow and the mon...er Buffy..." he stares at Dawn.
"See...They had a little...Fight...And..."
The van pulls up...Jonathan, Warren, and several Sunnydale residents lift Willow's body out...Carrying it to the castle door on a stretcher...
"Oh, Heaven...What is this?" Tara cries. Turning and running from the room, downstairs to the great hall of the castle where Willow's body is being brought in. A weeping Dawn following…
Tara rushes to Willow, lying prone on a large table...
Xander silently embraces poor Dawn...
Anya comes running from the road to the front door...
"AHHH!" she yelps still...
"What the hell's with you...?" Warren beside Jonathan at the door eyes her...
"The monster...Buffy...She's alive! She wasn't burned up at all! She lived right through the fire! Ohhh..." Anya trembles.
She the old vengeance demon Harris is marrying...? Warren hisses to Jonathan...
Yeah...he nods.
Eh...They're all crazy...Warren notes.
"Hey wacko...We don't believe in ghosts here..." Warren sneers at Anya.
Yeah, right...Jonathan thinks...Just vampires, demons, werewolves, witches, and...Monsters.
Come on Jonathan...Warren calls. They leave her...
"Nobody'll believe me? All right...I wash my hands of it...Let them all be murdered in their beds...For all of me." Anya shakes her head.
XANDER!...she cries, hearing another noise and running in...
By the table on which Willow rests, the others mournfully stand by...
"Willow...?" Tara calls to her... "Speak to me."
"Oh...Tara..." Anya sighs, shaking her head. "She'll never speak again..."
Tara looks at her...
And turns back to Willow...Sighing...
"I was foretold of this...I was told...Beware my wedding night…"
Wouldn't that be tomorrow night...? Anya hisses to Xander...
Heck every girl gets that advice...Man of the world Warren hisses to his friend Jonathan...
My wife Katrina was told to run like Hell from our wedding bed...he notes.
Say...? Tara eyes Anya...
"You have had a doctor to see her?" she eyes Xander as well...
Ummn...Well...Things were kinda busy back at the burning mill...Xander notes.
"Fetch a doctor..." Tara calls to a servant...
As they back away to await the doctor, Anya is left by Willow...And suddenly sees her hand drop...
"Oh...My lady Tara!...Tara!" Anya cries.
"Look! She's alive...Alive!"
Hmmn...That's just the way Willow said it when Buffy came back to life in that horror of a body...Tara notes to herself. Rushing over...
"Tara..." Willow gasps...Touching her face gently...
"Willow...Oh, Willow..." Tara sobs.
You know...Rosenberg is kinda the cause of all this...Warren notes quietly to Jonathan...
"Well, you and your "low cost" organs for transplant didn't help much..." Jonathan hisses back.
God, taking them out of the folks you were supposed to be burying...he shakes his head.
"Hey...I'm just a supplier..." Warren replies. "Willow wanted anything I could get her...And I gave no guarantees the parts would work for something like this."
Lucky poor Buffy didn't wind up with a case of HIV on top of everything else...Jonathan harshly whispers back...
Hey...Everything Willow got from me worked...Right? Warren notes...
Well..Jonathan reluctantly has to concede the point...
Not my fault if crazy Rosenberg's surgical technique is lousy...Warren concludes.