Six times Luke couldn't hold Julie's hand, and one time he could.

In 1998, Rose the Vampire Slayer and her Watcher Luke Patterson die saving the world. 17 years later, the ghost of Luke comes back to find that he has a new calling: protecting and mentoring the new Slayer, Rose's daughter Julie. But it turns out that the only thing harder than being a Watcher is being a ghost Watcher who's only corporeal to demons and is in love with his Slayer. There really needs to be a quick-start guide for this.

Buffy fusion fic, but you don't need to know anything about Buffy. Basically just a vehicle for exploring a different take on Luke as a ghost and the "they can't touch" thing.

CW: Grief/mourning, depression, mild fight scenes

(There's also a lot of fluff and banter, and this is definitely Angst with a Happy Ending, but CW so no one gets surprised by potential triggers.)

Title from "Rollercoaster" by Bleachers; Chapter title from "Run Boy Run" by Woodkid

There's no Carlos because the timeline won't allow. I'm so sorry, Carlos. (If you're familiar with Buffy, he gets the Dawn treatment starting in chapter 7, but I wasn't able to fit that into this story, so you'll only get Carlos in this fic if you read later works in the series.)

January 1998

What is it they say? Into every generation a Slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number—

Yeah, Luke's always thought that was bullshit.

They mention that she'll be born; they never mention that she'll die. That every single one of them will die, decades before their time, brutally and painfully on the frontlines for a humanity who will never know who they were or what they did.

They mention that she'll have powers beyond any other mortal; they really downplay the fact that the fate of the world is her sole responsibility, which means that ultimately she is always alone… and always on call.

"But Rose, you just gave birth!"

Ray Molina watches with horror as Rose awkwardly maneuvers herself out of her hospital bed and places the bundle that is their newborn daughter in her husband's arms. He glares at Luke, who stands awkwardly in the doorway with a duffel bag that Luke knows Ray knows is full of weapons.

"Can you not handle it for one day, instead of just Watching on the sideline?" Ray snaps. Ray has always hated the term "Watcher" and he's spent the entirety of Rose's seven-month tenure as the Vampire Slayer making snide comments to Luke about his title.

To be fair, Luke agrees. The name is awful, and just emphasizes exactly how awful the role is: the scholar who watches from afar, training the Slayer and researching her foes. Sending her into battles he's unable to really fight in and just hoping every time that she doesn't die.

But the reality is that Luke is just a normal human with decidedly mortal arm strength. "If it was just one vampire, then I could, but this isn't just one vamp."

Rose ties her hair back and grasps her husband's face firmly. "This isn't Luke's fault, mi amor. This is the apocalypse, and if we want Julie to have a world to grow up in, then I need to stop it."

Ray's fearful tears mix with the joyful tears that had been running down his face just minutes ago as he celebrated the birth of his daughter. "Promise you'll come back to me."

Instead of making a promise she knows she can't keep, Rose kisses him deeply. Luke quickly steps into the hallway to give them privacy. Of all the practical things the Watchers' Council failed to train him on, the one he struggles with the most is the awkward proximity he has to the Slayer's personal life. He didn't want to inform Rose that she'd been called as the Slayer at her wedding reception, and he didn't want to barge into her hospital room hours after she'd given birth to announce a surprise apocalypse, but here he is.

The lights around him flicker multiple times and go off. There are no shouts of alarm—it's one of the things he likes best about Sunnydale, California. While none of its residents actually know that they live on the mouth of hell, they tend to sense when supernatural happenings are afoot. Probably without being able to explain to themselves why, all non-essential doctors, nurses, patients, and visitors have left the hospital.

Ray hurries out of the room and rushes past Luke without making eye contact. Rose appears in the doorway, her eyes shiny but her chin determined. She's put on loose pants under her hospital gown.

"Um, we don't have a lot of time, but you could probably change your shirt."

She waddles over to him and starts searching in his bag for her weapons. "I'm hoping the blood will make me look intimidating." She pulls out her favorite hand axe, whose wooden handle is sharpened into a stake. "What do you think?"

"I mean, he's a vampire, so he's probably gonna be more intimidated by the pointy wood than the blood, but still a strong look."

"You have the Hand of Ortega?"

Luke holds up a small, shining blue ball of light and slaps it on the end of the stake. The wooden handle glows for a moment, then fades to its normal appearance.

"That should cancel out the indestructibility spell and let you get the stake through his heart." He nods toward the stairwell and they start hurrying down the stairs, Rose walking more gingerly than him.

"So, normal staking?"

"Yeah, just one of your classic post-birth fights with an indestructible vampire. Oh, and…" He pulls a locket out of his pocket. "Protection amulet I got from a warlock at the Bronze. It's for Julie, but I'm sure she won't mind you borrowing it."

Rose shoots him an unimpressed look. "If protection amulets actually worked, the Watchers' Council would give them to every Slayer. You keep your superstitious crap, mijo," she says fondly.

"She fights vampires and demons and the forces of darkness on the daily, but she doesn't believe in protection amulets."

"I don't believe in your 'warlock at the Bronze.' That automatic stake you got me nearly stabbed me in the heart."

"Sorry for trying to lighten the slaying load when you were eight months pregnant." He holds the amulet out to her. "Come on, what's the worst thing that can happen?"

"Being stabbed in the heart, raising an army of the undead, summoning a demon who tries to kill everyone with the power of music…?" A hot flush of shame warms him. Yeah, he's tried a lot of stuff to make Rose's life easier, and honestly, he's pretty consistently just made it worse most of the time. She pushes his hand back to him. Still determined to make the most of the (honestly embarrassing amount of money he spent on the) protection amulet, he pulls it over his head anyways and sticks his tongue out at her. She shakes her head, exasperated. "With age comes wisdom. I guarantee in five years, you too will be saying that protection amulets are superstitious crap."

She stops short with a loud groan, clutching her lower belly and leaning heavily on the banister of the stairwell.

"Are you okay?" he asks. She glares at him and gestures at her hospital gown.

"Honestly, I know maternity leave in this country is short, but this seems a bit extreme." He bites his lip, not feeling like he's allowed to laugh. Her eyes dance with mirth as she looks up at him. "Luke, it's the end of the world. We might as well laugh about it."

He searches her face for a sign of how she's actually feeling. Rose is tough and rarely admits when she can't handle things. Always with the flippant jokes. Case in point—she notices him looking at her, and shrugs. "I said I was looking forward to seeing what slaying was like when I wasn't pregnant, but I didn't mean it needed to be immediate."

Rose's pregnancy is probably the reason Luke is even a Watcher to begin with. His parents are Watchers—he's been trained since birth to be a Watcher ("his sacred duty," they said) and had only just gotten his formal qualification when Rose was called as the Slayer. She was 22, which for a new Slayer is considered geriatric, and pregnant. They'd tasked the green, seventeen-year-old Watcher with an assignment they'd assumed would be short term so they didn't have to relocate one of their more senior Watchers. Seven months later, Rose has outlived their assumptions, but Luke is all too aware that the Council means for his presence by her side to be an insult to her rather than a compliment to him.

As they reach the end of the staircase at the basement floor, he pulls his stake from the duffel bag and dumps the bag on the ground. A second later, he feels a deep vibration under his feet and hears a loud scream. Rose's face pales. "They've already started." She reaches for the stairwell door. He slams his hand on the door, holding it shut. She's stronger than him, could open it easily, but he usually doesn't disagree with her, so she's not expecting it.

"We should scope out the situation first—"

"They are trying to open the mouth of hell in the town where my family lives. We don't have time." Flinging open the door, she runs into the basement. He has no choice but to follow.

A trio of vampires stands in the middle of the storage area. They've flung aside hospital shelves to make space for themselves in the exact center of the room. The concrete floor has been ripped up, revealing an ancient seal. One of the vampires, dressed in a black robe, holds a doctor over the seal with a knife to her throat, about to unleash her blood.

The lead vampire, glowing purple from the effects of his indestructability spell, looks up and grins. Rolling his head casually, his face morphs into his vampire face: bumpy ridges on his forehead, fangs, yellow eyes. "Slayer, I'm glad you got our invitation."

Rose scoffs at his pathetic line and immediately springs into battle. She sweeps her axe, taking off the head of the vampire holding the doctor, and then jerking the handle back around to drive the stake into the heart of the other vampire. They both immediately crumble to dust. Triumphant, she grins and whirls on the lead vampire.

Luke grabs the doctor and pulls her away from the fighting. The last thing they need is a human's blood on the seal, opening up the entrance to hell. He shoves her into the stairwell. "Run."

Then he hears a scream. He spins around to see the lead vampire kick Rose in the lower belly. She crumples to the ground.

"Rose!"

Then he suddenly feels a grip at the back of his neck and he's lifted off the floor.

"It's the baby Watcher," a voice croons in his ear. Of course there aren't just three vampires. The vampire sinks her teeth into his shoulder. Luke tries to wriggle free, but he doesn't have any supernatural powers. He's just a seventeen-year-old mortal boy. Just a Luke. He feels his stake slip through his fingers and clatter noisily on the ground. His eyes struggle to focus on the fight in front of him, but he's only in time to see the lead vampire wrench the axe away from Rose and smash the blade into her chest. She shudders and stumbles backwards, blood starting to drip from her mouth.

She stares down at the axe, disbelieving, then wrenches it out of her body.

"You Slayers, you're all the same," the vampire grins. "So fragile."

Rose lifts her eyes to lock with the vampire's, her face glowing with stubborn, brave power. "Yeah, well, you vampires are all the same." She spits the blood out of her mouth. "Afraid of a little splinter."

She slams the stake into his chest. With a surprised scream, he bursts into dust. She spins around, and with the fury and skill of centuries of Slayers, she flings the axe toward Luke, slicing the head off of the vampire holding him. Luke falls forward the instant the body disintegrates.

Their eyes lock across the room. They've won. But they also know they've lost. Rose stumbles back onto the floor, and Luke collapses. The last thing he sees before everything goes black is her eyes going glassy.

The best way Luke can think to describe what happens next is that it's a bit like a night of dreamless sleep. The only things you technically remember are being awake on each end. But a part of you remembers the grey void of sleep in between, knows time has passed even if you don't know exactly how much.

?

It feels a bit like trying to wriggle out of a sweater that's too small for you. But, like, if every single one of your atoms is trying to do that and also like the sweater is made of knives and also like everything's on fire.

Luke falls to the ground with a scream. His fingers dig into the grass, feeling moist dirt under his fingertips.

Grass? Where's the concrete of the hospital? He jumps backward, trying to get to his feet, but his whole body feels wriggly. What the hell?

He suddenly becomes aware of the fact that the screaming that he thought was coming from him is still going on. In reality, it seems to be coming from a teenage girl who is currently lying on the grass and trying desperately to crawl away from him. Her necklace is glowing.

"What the hell is going on?" he asks, even though the girl's screams should really clue him in that she's not the person around here who has information. "Is this heaven?"

Whatever the girl is expecting him to say, it's not that. "You… think this is heaven?"

He glances around him. It's a cemetery at night. A tragically familiar view for a Watcher. "I mean, I would have preferred more of a Glastonbury vibe, but I did spend a lot of my life in graveyards, so this tracks."

"This isn't a graveyard, it's a cemetery." She replies on autopilot, not really seeming invested in the discussion. Her gaze is technically resting on him but not really focusing on him. "Um, I'm not quite sure how to tell you this, especially because I don't know what your deal is, but I think there's a, um, a vampire behind you."

Luke whips around. Sure enough, there's a vampire crawling out of a grave about a hundred feet away.

He stumbles back, searching his pockets for his stake. But of course, he dropped it back in the hospital. He starts backing away from the vampire, and the girl scurries to her feet to join his retreat.

"Do you have a pencil?" he asks her quickly.

"A pencil?"

"Yeah, you look like you're still in school. Don't you have a pencil?"

"I maybe have a mechanical pencil somewhere, but—"

The vampire seems to have gotten his foot stuck in his coffin, which is at least buying them some time. But not much.

"No, a wooden pencil."

"Why would I have a wooden pencil?"

"Okay, do you have something that can be used to behead someone?"

"Yeah, I have a machete in my purse."

"Great, give it here!"

He registers her sarcastic tone when he realizes that she is 1) not handing him a machete (which, rude), and 2) staring at him, bewildered. "Who do you know who carries a machete?"

"Lots of people. Do you have fire?"

"Yeah, I have a torch in my purse."

Luke exhales loudly. "Dude, I get that this is a super confusing situation, but we can't actually kill the vampire with sarcasm."

"I don't know what to tell you. I don't even have a purse."

The vampire appears to have finally freed his foot and is digging himself out of the dirt.

The girl takes another step back and a loud crack echoes through the cemetery. She jumps, then looks down at the stick under her foot. "You wanted wood?"

He grabs for her hand, intending to steer her behind him and pick up the stick, but his hand passes right through hers.

She screams and scrambles away from him. "Are… are you a ghost?!"

"… Fuck."

He tries to pick up the stick, but his fingers go through that too. It feels a little more… not solid, exactly, but instead of his fingers passing through air like her hand, it feels more like they're passing through water. Probably with practice, he could pick it up, but now is so not the time.

"Who's supposed to kill the vampire?" Panic takes over her face. He realizes that her flippancy, which he'd taken for shock, has been partially fueled by thinking that he'll be able to take care of the situation. She stares at him, shaking. "What do we do? Do we run?"

Luke glances over at the vampire. He's finally pulled himself completely free of the grave and is stumbling towards them, eyes full of hunger, picking up speed.

"No, he can outrun us." Luke turns back to her, suddenly struck by how much she reminds him of Rose when she faced her first vampire. "Look, you can do this. New vampires are strong, but they're super hungry. They're not focused, and they don't have any martial arts skills yet."

"Yet?"

"Just dodge him, and drive the branch into his heart with all your strength. Right here." He thumps the middle of his own chest, trying not to notice his lack of a heartbeat. "You can rock this." Honestly, he's not entirely sure of that, but regular humans can and do kill vampires. It's harder, because shoving a piece of wood through an undead rib cage takes arm strength that Luke himself doesn't always have, but he knows that there's a lot of power in sheer adrenaline and just fucking believing something might be possible.

"But I'm just a girl." Her whole body trembles, and he feels a strange, impossible urge to squeeze her hand reassuringly.

"I'm not bullshitting you—more vampires have been slain throughout time by 'just a girl's than by literally anyone else. I promise, you got this."

She is still shaking like a leaf, but she grabs the stick and turns towards the approaching vampire. Sure enough, he lunges at her with a hungry scream of rage. She ducks and tries to slam the stick in his chest, but she stabs too far to the left. Rookie mistake. The vampire flings her to the ground, but she jumps back up, surprisingly resilient. She smashes the heel of her left palm into the vamp's nose, yanks the stick out of his chest with her right hand, and then slams it back in. This time, it hits home. He bursts into dust.

She stumbles backwards.

"Holy shit." He stares at her. That was… not normal human strength.

"Okay, what the fuck is going on? I was just trying to visit my mom at, admittedly, an inadvisable time of the night…" She gestures widely toward a nearby grave. He glances at it on auto-pilot, and stops cold. The name is too far away to read, but the top of the headstone is adorned with a large dahlia. Feeling detached from his body, he drifts towards it. "And then suddenly a vampire is crawling out of the ground and then my locket starts glowing and then a ghost appears out of nowhere and now you're not even listening to me?"

He stares at the name carved on the headstone. Rose Molina.

"What year is it?"

"Um, 2015?"

Seventeen years.

Seventeen years, and his best friend in the ground the whole time. He puts a hand on her headstone and sinks down into a crouch. "I'm so sorry."

Confused, the girl glances between him and the headstone. "Did you… know my mom? Cause you look… too young to have known my mom."

A lifetime of grief sits in his throat, desperate to come screaming out, but there is a terrified girl next to him whose entire understanding of the world has just been ripped away and there's no one in this moment who can help her except for the worst Watcher in the history of Watchers.

"It's Julie, right?"

She backs away from him, holding the stick in front of her. "How do you know my name?"

"We've met. You were, like, a couple hours old at the time, so it's cool if you don't remember me."

"Could you say something that isn't terrifying, and instead actually answers some questions?"

"Probably not. Your life is about to get… super weird." She lowers the stick as he stands up. At least honesty seems to have won him a little trust. "Do you know what the Vampire Slayer is?"

"I read Anita Blake—"

"Not vampire hunter, Vampire Slayer."

"No, why?"

He sighs heavily. "Because you are one. The one."

Episodes of Buffy referenced in this chapter:
• "Dead Man's Party"
• "Once More With Feeling"
• "Lessons"
• "Becoming"