Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Authors Note; This is in response to a challenge, though I won't tell you which one, that would give away too much :D Details at the end.
She sat in her bed, still dressed in her pajamas, arms wrapped around her legs. Her head rested on her knees and her green eyes stared out into nothing.
Why did being depressed have to make her so sad?
She could hear her mother puttering around down in the kitchen, probably putting together some hot cocoa to bring up to her in a few minutes. She wondered what her reaction would be this time; it was different every night. Sometimes she would accept it and Joyce would sit beside her for a few hours, keeping quiet and running her fingers through her blonde hair. Other times she would stay catatonic and her mother would give up after about ten minutes, leaving with a heavy sigh.
Only two times had she gotten slightly violent and begun screaming until she was left alone.
Buffy leaned back against the cushions, wondering when her life had taken such a big turn... and why. She almost snorted when she thought of how often she had wished to be normal, since the moment she was Chosen.
It was the true irony of be careful what you wish for.
Six months earlier...
Her breath quickened and tears began to build in her eyes as she felt the cold hand wrap around her neck from behind.
She knew she was doomed and she had never been more afraid in her life.
The Master whispered in her ear and she felt so stupid; how could she be so trusting? How could she let Angel and Giles tell her of the prophecy and just believe it, without checking it out for herself? She was supposed to be the Slayer, the one in charge, the leader, and yet she allowed others to lead her instead.
And now it was too late to make the necessary changes.
She felt the pinprick of the twin fangs, before the searing pain set in and she felt her own lifeblood pour down her throat to rest just above her breasts. But the moment didn't last for long; the Master didn't feel like wasting his precious time on her, apparently, and let her body drop to the ground.
Head first into a pool of stagnant water.
As she felt the water quickly descending deep into her lungs, she heard footsteps in the distance. But she knew that whoever they were, they would be too late.
She drifted away slowly, her last thought on her destiny; one she would no longer get to fulfill.
And then she was gone.
Present Day
"Thought you could use something to keep you warm," her mother spoke softly as she stepped inside the dark room.
The same words she repeated every night.
"Thanks," Buffy whispered, sitting up in the bed and making room for Joyce.
The older woman mentally sighed in relief, happy to have her daughter in one of her better moods. "You're welcome, sweetheart."
They sat in silence, sipping on their drinks, not looking at one another. Things had never been this awkward between them before, but it didn't help matters that Joyce had no idea why certain things had been happening in the past few months.
Of course, that was just because she wasn't aware of who her daughter was.
Or, used to be.
Five months, three weeks earlier...
Buffy walked anxiously around the library, though others might deem it pacing, waiting for her Watcher to finish with his phone call. A demure and silent Willow sat at the table, eyes following her friend, while she, too, waited. Waited for Xander to come back from his snack trip to the vending machine in the hallway.
And while both girls waited, nerves were strung high.
The blonde was eying the dartboard hanging behind Willow's head, glaring at it as if that would change anything. She ignored the nervous steps coming from the office, the constant sighing of the redhead and the sound of coins hitting the ground from the hallway, when Xander dropped his change.
All she saw was that dartboard. All she heard were her own thoughts. All she felt was confused.
So confused.
The soft click of Giles hanging up the phone might as well have been an earth shattering boom to her, as her Watcher stepped back into the big room. He stayed silent, staring at her, until Xander joined the group, a lurking Vampire stepped out of the shadows, and Jenny sat down beside the teenagers.
Giles ripped the glasses off his face and frowned. "I spoke with Quentin Travers, head of the Watchers Council. It seems there is a reason behind your... um, lack of powers."
Buffy tapped her shoe against the floor, arms crossed over her chest; a clear sign for everyone to steer clear. "And? What does it mean?"
A sad look on his face, he answered her. "A new Slayer has been Chosen. It appears... the mantle has been passed on."
Present Day
And just like that, Buffy was a normal girl again. This time she really did snort, out loud. Joyce hid her surprise and left her daughter to her spinning thoughts.
Normal.
What a joke.
She had come back from the dead, rising from the dirt of the cave, and immediately gone after the Master. Only to find herself bruised, battered and forced to lean on Angel, who took out his Grandsire at the last moment, before she died all over again.
One week of tests. Of throwing stars in the dartboard, dummy workouts and sword training. Nothing.
No aim, no strength, no destiny.
No more Slayer Buffy.
And at first, she was relieved. Happy, even. Perhaps annoyed at the sudden swiftness of it all, but mostly, happiness. She went to the Bronze with her friends, had awkward, stilted conversations with her crush and went to school without emergencies hanging over her head.
But then the real changes began.
Five months earlier...
Buffy pushed her way through the swinging doors, heavy books weighing her down, and came to a sudden and full stop when she looked up and realized that her former Watcher wasn't alone.
"Oh," she brilliantly said, eying the dark-skinned girl standing by the table.
"Buffy," Giles replied, equally brilliant, as he looked over at her. "You're here."
"This is she?" The strange girl said, speaking with a strange and thick accent. "The former Slayer."
Buffy did not appreciate the way she was being stared at, so she walked further into the room, depositing her books on the counter. "And who are you?" She bit out, voice full of attitude and arms crossed.
Giles cleared his throat and stepped up to the blonde. "This is Kendra, the new Slayer. We were just getting acquainted." He both looked and sounded awkward, all around.
Buffy's eyes widened, though she had somewhat figured it out already, from the girl's words. "Gotcha." She walked over to the table, passed Kendra and sat down at the desk. "So, what's up?"
Suddenly her friend and mentor appeared uncomfortable, as he began to fidget. "Uh, Buffy... the thing is... Kendra and I have... Slayer business, to attend to..."
The rest went unsaid but Buffy got the gist. Her heart beat hard in her chest as she realized the truth. She wasn't wanted here anymore.
She had no purpose.
"Right, sorry," she muttered, rising quickly from her seat, grabbing her books and running out, without looking anyone in the eye.
She ignored Giles' calls for her to stop.
What could he possibly say now, to make things better?
At least she still had her friends.
Four months, two weeks earlier...
Summers were quiet on the Hellmouth, Buffy noted, as she walked home from the Bronze after dark. She hadn't come across a single Vampire or Demon, which was probably for the best in her new state, but still weird.
She smirked, wondering just how bored Kendra must be.
Serves her right for taking her place.
Wrapping her arms around herself when she heard a low growl, she had a quick flashback of the bat-faced monster that destroyed her, before a fledgling Vampire stepped out from the shadows.
Before she had time to try and defend herself, or scream and run like any normal girl, Kendra jumped down from one of the surrounding buildings, silent and deadly.
Buffy stood back and watched as the Slayer took care of the creature; noting how long it took her and how sloppy her kicks were. She wondered how long this one would last and then winced at her thoughts.
She was once like that and it upset her, the lack of emotion it arose from her.
When the dust finally settled on the ground, she was surprised to see two familiar shapes join her and the Slayer, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
"Wills, Xander, what are you guys doing here? I thought you were supposed to meet me three hours ago?" She said, annoyed at the time she'd wasted at the club, watching the clock turn.
The two teenagers shared a look and then the redhead stepped forward. "We were coming to see you, but then we ran into Kendra and Giles, and he asked me to help him with some research, and Xander stayed with me, cause we didn't think it would take long, but then time suddenly flew by, and then Kendra offered to walk us here, hoping we could catch you before you left, and then with the Vampire and, now we're here," Willow spoke in one, long breath, pausing only when she was done. "Are you upset?"
She was. "No, of course not, I was just... curious," she replied, throwing a glance and glare at the silent Slayer.
And then rolled her eyes when Kendra offered to walk her home.
Present Day
The doorbell rang downstairs and Buffy smiled ironically as her mother stood to go let whoever it was in. But the blonde girl knew who it wouldn't be.
Xander and Willow.
They had abandoned her.
She doubted they had meant to; at first. But as the summer passed, they had slowly started to pull away, spending more and more time with Kendra, Giles and Ms. Calendar, and less time with her.
It had made her realize something startling and unnerving; they had only been her friends because of the excitement and thrill of who she was. Of the fighting, the status of saving lives and stopping apocalypses. And now, that mantle lay with Kendra.
So they followed her.
By the time school started back up again, she was all alone and back to square one. Friendless; only this time without the Calling to keep her busy.
Cordelia wouldn't even speak to her, though part of her counted that as a blessing.
She had tried, at first, to talk to Xander and Willow, explain how dangerous it was. But they just said that it had been dangerous when they had fought with her, too, and she had no right to tell them how to live their lives.
Xander had even glared at her.
Her!
Apparently his crush on her was also due to her status as the Slayer.
And he wasn't the only one.
Four months earlier...
She stepped around the corner, lips around the straw as she sipped on her mocha latte. Buffy wasn't the kind of girl who let a little loneliness get in the way of having a life and she wasn't going to sit around in her house all day, moping about everything that had happened lately.
When she noticed a familiar figure, hulking in the shadows across the street from her, a small smile replaced the drink on her lips. He'd been starring in her dreams a lot lately, along with the fantasies she indulged in during class. It had been a while since she'd seen him and she took a step forward, wondering when he would notice her presence.
And then she looked closer.
A frown passed over her face as she realized what he was doing. She spotted Kendra, the Vampire Slayer, walking ahead of him, as he lurked behind her like he used to do with her.
Once again, she'd been replaced.
Buffy saw the look on Angel's face and things suddenly became clear to her; he wasn't watching hers or Kendra's back... he was stalking them.
And that knowledge creeped her out.
Instinct cried out and made her take a sudden step back, as if someone had poured cold, ice water over her. Everything she'd thought they had, every future scenario she had dreamt up of the two of them, all gone in the blink of an eye.
Angel wasn't who she thought he was and that thought terrified her. With everything else in her life being ripped away, why couldn't she be allowed to keep one tiny thing.
As if her fears, haunting every second of her day, wasn't enough, now this.
Uncertainty.
Disgust.
And a small amount of hatred for the so-called Powers That Be that stole something from her that she hadn't even known would be missed.
Why was this happening to her?
Present Day
Buffy heard the familiar voice speaking to her mother downstairs and the first true smile of the night grew on her face. With everything she had lost, at least she had gained something in return.
Something real.
More real than anything else she had ever had, she felt. More real than the monsters she once fought, more real than the friendships she'd had, more real, even, than her past in Los Angeles, before she was Chosen. And what made it more real than anything else, was that it was hers, and hers alone.
Not even the Powers could take this from her.
And if they tried...
She heard more tinkering in the kitchen and rolled her eyes, knowing without doubt what was going on below her room. It struck her sometimes, how different some monsters were from others.
Like the differences between Angel and Spike.
One soulless and one not.
And yet...
Three months earlier...
"Heard a rumor," a voice spoke beside her, as she sat in the darkness of a corner booth.
"Yeah?" She replied, not even looking up.
"Heard you used to be the Slayer. Thought only dying stopped that." The British male sat down beside her and she felt the couch dip.
Buffy shrugged her shoulders, still staring into her drink. "Things change."
"Is that so?" The tone of his deep voice finally caught her attention and she looked into blue eyes and a raised, scarred brow.
"Why are you so interested?" She asked, while assessing him. She quickly realized that, even without her Calling, she knew that he was a Vampire.
And yet she didn't feel threatened.
It was his turn to shrug his leather-clad shoulders. "Don't rightly know. Figured there was a good story behind it."
It wasn't like there was any reason to keep things secret, not anymore. So Buffy introduced herself, found out the Vampire's name and told him what had happened.
She didn't expect him to be shocked, at least not at the part where it occurred.
"They just abandoned you like that? Just because you weren't, what, supergirl anymore?" His tone was harsh and she felt surprisingly soothed.
She shrugged again and asked him why it was such a big deal, especially to someone as evil as him. And that's when he told her his story.
"We'd been together for more than a century, you know? We had something bloody good. But she blamed me for Prague and wouldn't let me hear the last of it. Told me that it was my job to get her a cure and, when I did, she just ran out on me. Bloody bint," he murmured at the end, not looking at her or anything else.
The next two hours were filled with both awkward conversations and comforting words. Buffy couldn't understand why she didn't feel afraid of him, and she didn't care to find out. So, when Kendra and her little posse stepped inside the Bronze, she convinced Spike to sneak outside with her.
They continued their talk as he walked her home and then they said goodnight.
But it wouldn't be the last she saw of him.
Not even close.
Present Day
Her bedroom door slowly creaked open and in the light of the hallway stood a black-clad, bleached-haired Vampire. Her smile grew the closer he walked, until he sat down beside her and wrapped his arms around her body.
This was when she felt the safest.
"'Lo, pet," he whispered in her ear and she could hear the smile in his voice.
"Hi, baby," she replied, also in hushed tones as her mother closing the door for them went unnoticed.
The couple got comfortable on top of the covers and Buffy began telling Spike all about her day. How boring school had been, the taunts Cordelia and her groupies had thrown her way and the stellar way in which her former friends ignored her, while they rushed off to fight some kind of evil that had apparently cropped up.
And Spike told her about the robot he had taken out a few hours ago, which just happened to be the same one the gang had been looking for. That made her smile turn into a smirk, as she continued to listen quietly to his story.
What kind of robot name was Ted, anyway?
As they often did when they were together, they spoke of the future. Not necessarily theirs as a couple, but just the future in general. Spike told her how networking with the benign Demons in town were going and she offered ideas as to how he could continue to stay under the radar of the Slayer.
She refused to let him fight Kendra, even if she was only half as good as Buffy herself had been.
Her time with Spike had opened up possibilities that she hadn't considered, since losing her powers. He had helped her work through her anger and fear, dating back to her death by the Master. The betrayal by her supposed closest friends and almost-lover. And, most importantly, her loss of status.
It still hit her, not being the Slayer anymore, but she was slowly beginning to accept it.
Sparring with her lover helped, as she had realized that just because the power was gone, didn't mean that the moves weren't still in her head. She may not have the strength to overpower a Vampire anymore, but she could still fight them.
That made her feel better.
Just as it had the first time it happened.
Two months earlier...
They walked down the dark streets of Sunnydale, one with eyes on the shadows surrounding them, and one with eyes only for the cone of cold ice cream in her hand. No longer a Warrior, she let her partner do the watching for the both of them.
Especially since they had finally become an official couple; she trusted him completely now.
They passed the time with mindless chatter about their individuals days, something they often did at this hour of night, as they slowly made their way through the town they called home.
Only Spike's sudden growl informed Buffy of what was happening in time to duck the killing blow to her head.
She turned to find five Vampires, in full game face, standing behind them, eyes on only her.
They were there to kill her.
Buffy glanced at her lover and wondered, for a moment, if five was too big of a number for him; especially if he would, at the same time, be keeping one eye on her, to make sure she stayed safe and out of harms way.
Overprotective fool.
She stood a few feet away, tense and nerves steeled, as she watched the battle commence. One of the Vampires slipped past Spike's defenses and made a run for her, before the bleached blond had even noticed it, embedded as he was in his own battle against the remaining four.
Buffy's eyes widened and she instantly dropped the cone to the ground and tried to think of ways to stay alive. Suddenly she saw stars as she realized that the Vampire had jumped on her, knocking the back of her head into the harsh cement sidewalk beneath her.
She didn't even have time to think, much less express her pain out loud, before she felt the hauntingly familiar sense of fangs at her throat; that's when her internal instincts woke up and took notice of the precarious situation she was in.
Her hand reached up and grabbed hold of the Vampire's shoulder and, only the shock of a human fighting back, ensured that she managed to push most of his weight off of her. She didn't pause to admire what she had done, kicking him as hard as she could in the stomach.
And spraining her ankle in the process.
But she muddled through with a right fist to his chin, before Spike came to her rescue, having dusted the last of his opponents. She lay there on the ground, covered in the dust of her own enemy, eyes wide and only one thought in her throbbing head.
She may not be able to kill easily anymore, but she can still hold her own, when it comes down to it.
She can still protect herself.
And for the first time since the Master killed her, she felt the fog lift in her mind.
And she sighed in utter relief.
Present Day
Buffy looked out over the chaos in front of her; she'd never seen anything like it, even if she counted her life as the Slayer.
And the day had been so normal up until now.
She had gone to school, met up with Spike in the basement for a quick but passionate make out session, done surprisingly well on her English test now that there was no nightlife to distract her, and even had a somewhat friendly conversation with another student, Emma.
Then, she had been knocked over the head and awakened in a closet, a trembling egg lying beside her.
From then on, things had only gotten weirder. She really hated no longer being in the loop about the supernatural of the place she called home.
After managing to kick open the door, despite the acute throbbing in her ankle, she followed the signs down to the basement, through a hole in the wall, and into a deep cavern that held most of the students and teachers of the school, along with a few stragglers.
Like Kendra, her mother and Spike.
And two cowboy hat-wearing Vamps.
Now, Buffy stood off to the side, watching it all. Because that was all she could do anymore... watch.
Watch as Spike dusted the last of the Vampires, as Kendra fought against those she called her friends, as Giles rose from the ground, a pick-ax aimed for the Slayer's head. Buffy watched all of this, removed from it emotionally.
Because there was nothing she could do.
And then her eyes traveled back to her lover and a scream rose in her throat. An enormous creature beneath the rubble of the ground had spotted the leather-clad Vampire and decided that it was hungry; it wrapped one long tentacle around his jeaned leg and started pulling.
Buffy saw red... and that's when it happened.
She felt it, deep down inside. A power, once so familiar, began to slowly burrow its way to the top. And she welcomed it, as she rushed forward, to protect the one she loved.
And as she allowed herself to be swallowed, only to destroy the beast from the inside, she realized that she had been wrong.
They had all been wrong.
She had never stopped being the Slayer.
And she never would.
The End
Challenge;
When Buffy dies at the hands of the Master, her Slayer side goes into shock and hides. This makes everyone, even the Council, think that she has lost her powers. Her friends and Giles draw away from her so that she can have a 'normal' life and to protect her from everything. Letting Buffy see that all they really liked about her was her Slayer side.
Kendra is sent to Sunnydale to replace Buffy and Angel starts to stalk her instead of Buffy, allowing her to see how creepy that is. Buffy becomes depressed, and realizes that she liked being the Slayer, but that everything she thought she knew about her life and her friends was wrong.
Enter Spike, who hates Dru a little because the whole Prague thing only happened because Spike finally broke up with her. And Spike feels that she let herself be hurt knowing Spike would have to stay and look after her.
Spike and Buffy meet both a little depressed and angry at how their lives are at the moment. They become friends and Joyce finds out the truth about Vampires and the supernatural from Spike.
Spike shows Buffy all the grey in life and that there are good Demons.
Buffy's Slayer side comes back just in time to save Spike from... something.
Spuffy in the end.
Authors Note; Obviously I changed a few minor things from the challenge, like Joyce still being ignorant, but with an OS that was unfortunately necessary. Hope the author of the challenge won't be too disappointed.