For Good or Bad, The Memories Remain.

Chapter 16

Disclaimer- I don't still own Buffy and crew, I just use them in my writing, just for fun, never for profit "Because that'd be wrong!"

Spoilers- mid 4th season then everything takes a left turn off the charted path

Rating- May get to R eventually

She walked up to the door, wondering when she had swallowed the colony of butterflies that were furiously fluttering in her gut. She opened the door and walked right in. Giles was in the living room, looking at the door. Sasha was in the kitchen.

"Giles, I need to use your shower, I'm still cover in gunk." She said lightly.

"Buffy, we need to talk."

"I know, but first I shower. That will give you enough time to get the kettle on for some tea, Earl Grey preferably. Also, make sure Sasha is staying for this. I don't want to have to repeat myself" She walked slowly up the stairs.

Giles could hear the water running. He was at a loss for words for a moment. Then he began to pick up the clutter in the living room, including putting his tomes on the ghost in a different spot. He then called the hospital for an update on Tara. Tara. How was he going to break it to her that Willow was dead? From the look of her body when Buffy carried it by, she had gone down swinging. By the time he was off the phone, Sasha had brought the tea set in and had taken a seat in the corner of the living room closest the door. "God, she looks fragile today. Just yesterday she looked the epitome of a Slayer; tall, dark, powerful. Today it looks like she is ready to shatter into tiny pieces. It can't be the bloodshed. It has to be Buffy, but that makes no sense.' His reverie was broken by Buffy's appearance in the room. He didn't hear her enter, he just felt a strong presence. She was dressed simply; plain black cloth baggy pants like he had seen rock climbers wear, that whole freedom of movement thing he was sure. Above that, a plain red silk tank top, cut to flatter her slim figure, with a black short sleeved button up shirt loosely draped over her frame. He thought he saw a handle or hilt of something under the shirt once or twice as she passed by him to get a cup of tea. She moved back to the fireplace and began to sip her tea.

"Giles, how is Tara?"

""she is in recovery now. They had to operate to reassemble her arm, the bones were shattered. She now has two pins in them running the length of each bone. She will set off metal detectors the rest of her life I'm sure but the hand should still be functional."

"That's good. I was worried. Giles, sit down. This will take a while and please don't interrupt, this will be hard enough. "She stood there for a moment staring into her tea cup, gathering her courage. She could feel the imperfections in the rim, the heat transferred through the fine porcelain. Now that the moment had come, she wasn't sure she could do it. It had gone wrong so many times right after this point, could she risk that again? The silence stretched in the room til the tension was thick as liquid.

"Buffy? Are you all right?"

"Yeah Giles, it's just that this is the hard part; where to begin?"She spoke haltingly. She seemed to Giles to gather herself up into almost a fight or flight response. He wondered if she was going to go through with whatever she had to tell him.

She looked up at him, straight in the eyes, a firm conviction in the depths of her tortured eyes.

"My real true name is Genvieve Elisabetha Dwyer, I was born in the year 1276 in the little village of Tiszta-Berc at the base of the Carpathian Mountains. I have been alive for over 700 years. I am Immortal. I grew up a blacksmith's daughter. When I was 10, my village was overrun by creatures of the night, demons, werewolves, vampires ect. I and a few other children survived and made it to the next town. There I scrapped and scraped to get by. I have been dodging demons and vamps for as long as I can remember. It was hard on the streets. No one would take us in, which left us more vulnerable to be prayed upon by any and every one who could. Many horrible things happened; most of the horrible things you could imagine being done to a ten year old girl were done. When I was twelve, a remarkable thing happened one evening when I was fighting off an attacker when I became dizzy. He tried to take advantage of it and pressed his 'intentions'. I promptly threw him through a stable wall. I had become the Slayer. Bad thing was, I didn't know for quite a while what was going on. When my first watcher found me and explained what was going on, I took to the whole concept like a horse to grain. I couldn't get enough. For several years I traveled with my watcher through several of the towns and cities in the Carpathian Valley. I carved a blazing path through the local vampire population and had become quite a hindrance to their operations. All this success caught up with me one night. I was cornered by a good fifteen to twenty in a tower. I wasn't about to let them have me, especially since they had proclaimed that they would turn me to prove their dominance. I figured I would refuse them that victory. I leapt from the tower to my death. "She paused to refill her tea cup, having drained it. She looked as if this telling of her tale was as painful as any torture could be. She didn't even look at Giles while she was telling it. She was staring over his head at the bookcase behind him. There was deep pain in her eyes as she continued. "The night they drove me to jump, they were unable to find my watcher, thank goodness. He escaped to tell the tale of my death. The next morning I awoke in the hog pen I had landed in. I had no idea how I had lived. But I knew I had a screaming headache. As I sat up, a man at the rail spoke to me 'you might not want to do that' but it was too late. I was violently ill. He took me in. He began explaining about what had happened. I was now Immortal. I would never age, disease wouldn't kill me, and violence would not kill me, even though it still hurts. The only thing that would end my life would be beheading. He went on to explain that there were other Immortals, and that there was an eternal struggle among the Immortals. You see, when one of us is killed, all his accumulated knowledge and power is released. If it's another Immortal they will receive it and grow stronger and more knowledgeable until in the end there is only one, with all the knowledge and power of all the Immortals. Such power makes you able to heal quicker, move a little faster, have sharper senses. We are equipped with an internal sense for detecting other Immortals so we may prepare for combat if the other has come seeking our heads. There are rules for such combat as well; all combats will be one-on-one, no outside interference and never on holy ground. There are Immortals who are in a constant search for others to kill to increase their power. There are others who want nothing to do with this 'Game'. I have a few natural advantages. I never lost my Slayer strength, reflexes, ect. This made me quite a formidable opponent right out of the gate. But I wasn't interested in the 'Game'. I had Slayer work to be done. The Immortal that found me told me he had been many things and I had to learn my battle skills better so I could survive the occasional Immortal challenge as well as increasing my lethality for Slayerness. I spent the next twenty years with him trying to wring every drop of knowledge about armed and unarmed combat out of him. He was a good teacher. His knowledge was exhaustive in all things of warfare. He taught me the way of the short sword. He said it was the perfect killing tool , especially for my size. I asked him where he had learned it, he told me he was once in the Roman Legion, and later a Gladiator in Rome. Since then he had wandered the northern reaches, learning long sword and axe. He was about Oz's size but built like a fireplug, all muscle. His grip was brutal. But he also taught me that Immortality was also a key to knowledge. He taught me to speak and write Latin and Greek, and encouraged me to learn as many languages as I could since I would want the ability to blend in wherever I traveled. He taught me the signs to look for to track down other Immortals, how to take the long view on money, land, possessions. I took all his lesions to heart. Many of the later things I survived were due to his lessons." Once again she paused for a few minutes. Giles sat and tried to get his brain to process everything he had learned. Some of it sounded a bit beyond what he could grasp, but he was adapting and changing, an ability quite necessary for survival in Sunnyhell. She was looking at her feet now, she seemed to not want to continue with this part. "My moral compass wasn't the most accurate or consistent. Lets just say there were things I did that were not in the best interests of the side of goodness. I also saw so much violence and blood shed over the years. Since I still concentrated on the Slayer thing, and most of those times are spent in cemeteries, I didn't get challenged by other Immortals as much as many others. Eventually it all got to be too much which is a story for another time. I contacted an Immortal Witch named Cassandra. "Giles jumped to his feet.

"Cassandra! The Spirit of the Glenn! She's real?"

"Yes she is. I told her of my weariness and described what I wanted to do; return to just a Slayer and forget the weight of my years. This had several inherent dangers. One of the dangers was I would not remember any of the enemies I had made over the years who would want to get their revenge. Another was I wouldn't remember my Immortality and would run the risk of being discovered by accident. Cassandra devised a cloaking spell to dampen my Immortal signature so I wouldn't be detectable by them. The down side was it worked both ways; I couldn't detect them if I wanted either. I did the research and laid it all out in advance of the spell being cast. There were things I set out to give me a decent start. Watcher records were doctored to make it seem as if I had just been called. Faith is the true Slayer of this time, a problem for another day. You were selected specifically as my Watcher because of both your and your father's obsession with the mythical Immortal Slayers, as a hedge against this very day. Sunnyhell was the site where if a few extra weird things went on, it would blend into all the other crazy shit going on here, as well as benefiting from and unkillable Slayer. I didn't know how long the spell would last. Cassandra is supposed to return or track me down in 25 years to check on the return of my memories. Willow's spell overrode it. So here we are.........hand me that whiskey, I need a drink!" She said as she collapsed into a chair. "I haven't revealed as much to someone in over four hundred years. Now you know the truth. Hopefully you realize that you must keep this secret. I cannot and will not allow this to be revealed, for both our safety as well as yours. "

When she collapsed in the chair, he was struck by how fragile she still looked. She was just a little girl, and has had to endure all the world could throw at a slayer for hundreds of years. How he wished his father was alive to sit here with her. He was right all these years. It made him sad. The council retired him because of his beliefs or as the council put it 'obsession with mythological Slayers, there are no Immortal Slayers', well here he was sitting with two of the most mythological Slayers. He stood up, walked over where Buffy was sitting with the bottle of whiskey, poured some in his tea cup. He raised it high in the air.

"Father, you were right" He said to the room, before downing the cup like a shot. He hung his head for a moment before looking over at Buffy. "Buffy, what's next?"

To Be Continued

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