Disclaimers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy & Fox. Numb3rs belongs to CBS. (NOT ME!!!)
AN: Thanks again to katgurl, for proof-reading this chapter.
First Meeting
Part I in Mathematics & Magic
By Jess S
Chapter 5: Demon Hunting
Part I
Streets, Los Angeles, California – July 3, 1996 – Late Evening
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"I'm...nobody."
Buffy sighed as yet another homeless old man turned from her and stumbled away, shaking her head. She'd been looking for clues on Lorne's tip for nearly a week now and had still yet to find anything other than a lot of sapped, hopeless old people that said they were either 'nobody' or 'no one,' all amounting to the same thing.
After a few minutes of following the old man to see if he'd go anywhere near the other victims, she shook her head as he continued to just wander in a daze and decided to head home for the evening.
The only vamps she'd seen recently had been in Caritas, which was a sanctuary for all. She knew that undoubtedly meant that they all knew she was hear now, and hoped that their knowing didn't equal the Watcher's Council knowing.
She was enjoying living with the Eppes family. She missed her own home, her mom and her friends, but the affectionate and welcoming atmosphere the elder Eppes provided combined with Charlie's curiosity, compassion and concern, offered enough contrasts to keep her comfortable.
And her dreams were slowly but surely improving...
Now instead of dreaming about seeing Angel again only to kill him she was just getting visions from the Powers That Be again...though that wasn't necessarily an improvement, she thought the change was a good thing. Cause the newer dreams didn't have her waking in tears and starting each day depressed.
Not working at Helen's Kitchen any more helped too. It hadn't taken long to realize that living with the Eppes and working at the diner weren't going to work very well. She didn't have a car, and though she could run to work in a little under an hour, the Eppes parents certainly didn't know that she could put a cheetah to shame without breaking a sweat. And Charlie, who did, didn't think it was good for her. Working at the diner or going there. So Mrs. Eppes had driven her there to drop her uniform off and turn in her ID a few days after she'd taken Charlie on patrol.
She'd thought about looking for another job, but when she brought it up at dinner a few nights back 'Maggie' Eppes always mentioned she could use a secretary for some of her work, if she felt up to it. So she'd be starting that tomorrow morning...and hopefully her new 'boss' wouldn't notice that she'd been out wicked late again.
Buffy glanced at her watch, which read ten past ten. If she ran, she might be back before 10:30, which was better than eleven o'clock, at least. And who knows, maybe this time Charlie had actually managed to keep his mother from noticing her late absence!
Eppes Craftsman House, Pasadena, California – July 3, 1996 – Late Evening
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"She just went out for a walk, Mom," Charlie protested, wilting back a bit at his mother's sharp look. "She... likes walking."
"I know that, Charlie," Margaret Eppes replied, shaking her head with a sigh. "But that doesn't mean she should just wander off in the middle of the night, no phone, no coat even." She protested, nodding to the jacket Annie usually wore when she went out, which was still hanging on the coat rack near the door.
"It's pretty warm out tonight," the mathematician pointed out, telling himself that his voice did not sound meek.
"That's not what your mother's angry about, Charlie," Alan Eppes called from his seat in the living room, where he was folding up the paper he'd been reading. "We're both thankful that she was wandering around late at night the night she found you, but it's not a healthy habit for a teenage girl."
"Walking?" Charlie forced a bit of skepticism he didn't feel into his voice, wincing back again when both his parents glared at him.
"Walking around the streets of Los Angeles in the middle of the night," Alan shook his head, his expression rueful. "A few years ago I thought that impractical habits like your ventures into math were a penalty of your genius, but it's starting to look like a flaw of your generation."
Charlie frowned, having trouble relating his in-depth explorations of complex mathematical expressions to Annie's demon-hunting patrols, but shook the thought off with the frown. "I thought you older people called those things the follies of youth, or something like that."
Alan Eppes laughed, shaking his head as he rose to follow his wife into the kitchen as the oven timer went off, with Charlie trailing a bit reluctantly behind him. "I would hope you might grow out of it, but I don't see that happening for you. And your brother says he's going for a career in the FBI and is currently tracking some of the country's most dangerous criminals. I guess I can hope that Annie, at least, will grow into common sense at some point."
Charlie accepted a glass of milk and a small plate of oven-fresh chocolate chip cookies from his mother with a nod of thanks. "I really don't think we need to worry about Annie."
Alan took a bite of a cookie and raised an eyebrow as he chewed it and swallowed. "...We are talking about the same girl, aren't we? 'Bout five-two, petite with blonde hair, green eyes and pretty enough to model professionally?"
"Well, yeah," Charlie mumbled, swallowing the cookie he'd been chewing on before he continued. "But she's also a black-belt you know."
"That doesn't mean she should go looking for trouble, Charlie," his mother protested over his Dad's, "She is?"
"Yeah, in Aikido, Jijitsu, Karate and something called Krav Maga, I think," Charlie told his Dad before quickly continuing in response to his Mom's glare. "And I know that, Mom. And she knows that, too."
"Who knows what?"
All three Eppes jumped as the girl they were talking about was suddenly stealing a cookie from the formerly growing pile of chocolate chip cookies on a plate on the counter.
"Ooh! Cookies!" Annie cried happily, quickly taking and savoring a bite of hers as Mrs. Eppes, used to Annie's ability to seemingly appear out of nowhere and move without making sound after weeks in her company, sighed and also poured her a small glass of milk. "Thanks, Maggie... so, who knows what?"
"You're welcome, Annie. And Charlie thinks that you know better than to go looking for trouble, despite your skill in martial arts."
Charlie shrugged a bit sheepishly when Annie directed a raised eyebrow towards him.
"Well, yeah," Annie shrugged. "I probably know it's not a good idea, just as well as anyone else."
"Then why are you wandering around by yourself in the middle of the night, young lady?"
Annie shrugged again, this time to Alan Eppes. "I like walking. And it's really quiet at night."
"You don't like the quiet, Annie?"
Annie blinked at the older blonde woman. "No, I do, really." She frowned, setting her now empty glass in the sink, having already finished off the milk it'd contained. "I meant the streets are quiet at night. Really, they are." She protested at the looks both adults sent her. "It's nice."
"It's dangerous, Annie," Alan protested.
"I'm careful," Annie shrugged again. "Really, Maggie, Alan, Charlie," she nodded to each in turn. "You don't need to worry about me."
Charlie smiled slightly as his Mom caught the younger blonde and pulled her into a gentle hug. "We care about you, Annie," the older woman told her firmly. "Of course we're going to worry if you do things like this."
Annie seemed frozen in her embrace for several long moments, before she returned the hug, gently patting the older woman on the back. "Thank you, Maggie... but—"
She was cut off by the sound of the phone ringing and breathed a small sigh of relief as the older woman draw away slightly to watch her husband answer it.
"Hello? Donnie! Hi, how are you. Good, good. One second, here's your mother," Alan Eppes quickly gave up the phone in response to his wife's grabbing motion, "I'll just get the one in the living room, then."
Seeing his parents finally distracted, Charlie caught Annie's eye and nodded towards the back door with an eyebrow raised. Receiving a nod in response he turned and made his way out, hearing Annie open the fridge to grab two water bottles out of it and a few cookies off the counter as she followed him, and quickly grabbed a cookie for himself before leading the way out, holding the door open for her and quietly sliding it closed, hoping that his older brother's call would keep his parents distracted for a good while yet.
Eppes Back Yard, Pasadena, California – July 3, 1996 – Late Evening
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Buffy raised an eyebrow as she took a seat by the koi pond, smirking slightly as she took a bite out of one of her stolen cookies. "So I guess your distraction didn't work?"
Charlie shrugged as he also sat down next to the pool, his expression sheepish. "Well, she seemed interested... for the first half hour, at least."
"With what?"
"Gregoff's XXXXXXXXXXX Expression, Dr. Edgar Gregoff recently published it in the Glasgow Mathematical Journal* that explains—"
"Ah, ah, ah," Buffy waived her hand cutting him off and shook her head at the hurt expression that immediately settle over his face, drawing him closer to the side of the Koi pond and down onto the ground beside it, wrapping an arm around his shoulders as he submissively followed. "Charlie, as lovable as you yourself are I haven't even graduated high school, remember? And I'm pretty sure that even if I eventually do, most mathematics that you find interesting are going to be way over my head."
Charlie frowned, then sighed and shrugged, looking down into the koi pond at the brightly colored fish that were swimming lazily around the pool. "I know... I just don't really know anything else." He mumbled, taking a bite of his cookie and accepting the water bottle she gave him with a nod, "Thanks."
Buffy raised an eyebrow, deftly reaching over to grasp his chin and turn his face towards hers again. "Sure you do. You know baseball don't you? You like basketball. You like the—" she nodded at the Koi pond, "fish. You like music, don't you?"
Charlie shrugged again. "Yeah, I guess. One of my counselors had me start listening to music when I was at Princeton... it helps me focus. Keeps the numbers from overwhelming me."
"Overwh—" Buffy blinked and shook her head. "What'd you mean?"
Charlie turned his head away and stared into the koi pond again, watching the fish unconsciously make lazy patterns in the water, or so he'd claimed the last she'd asked him why he found watching the fish so fascinating. When Buffy looked at them she really just saw pretty fish... but then she hasn't even started geometry yet and had slept through and skipped a lot of her algebra one class thanks to her destiny, so...
Finally, Charlie looked up again, meeting her eyes and thereby bringing her focus back to the immediate present. "I kind of... I tend to see numbers, see math, everywhere." He told her, his voice quiet. He nodded towards the house. "I look at my parents house, and my mind can't help but see height, mass...patterns."
When he was quiet for several long moments again, Buffy spoke up quietly, drawing his attention back to her. "I thought you liked that... Isn't that how you kinda, um, make sense of the world?"
"Yeah... and I do. Most of the time," Charlie murmured with a nod, then sighed again, finishing off his cookie with a few big bites before continuing. "Like now, I'm in a familiar environment and mostly relaxed... so the numbers don't bother me. But...when I went away to college, the only things I was familiar with there were my Mom and math. Made it really hard to stay focused, and I had to start seeing a psychiatrist for it. To help me focus. To keep things in perspective. I mean, Mom helped a lot, she really did... but she couldn't only do so much, you know? And I felt bad for taking her away from Dad and from Don."
"I thought Don went away to school too," Buffy murmured, finishing one of the cookies she'd stolen before taking another sip of water from her bottle.
"He did... I didn't say my guilt was completely rational. But sometimes I forgot that Don wasn't living at home still. And when I remembered I felt even worse for taking Mom from Dad, because that meant he was all alone...but he was at home, too."
"So you didn't have trouble with the classes really, just home sickness?"
"Yeah, I guess." Charlie tipped his head back slightly to take a sip of water himself before swallowing and shrugging. "I mean, I really loved a lot of the math classes, but... sometimes stuff would just build up and I'd start getting migraines and panic attacks." He shook his head. "I got those here, in high school too. Not many migraines but a lot of panic attacks... mostly from social pressures then too, I think. But it was worse at Princeton the first few years."
"That's understandable," Buffy murmured, her voice still soothingly quiet. "You were a long way from home and under a lot of pressure... and you were barely a teenager then, too. That's when most people are thinking about maybe going out on their first real date, not what they need to do to get their first doctorate."
"Yeah... Yeah."
"...But music helps?"
"Most of the time, yeah." Charlie nodded, seeming to shake off memories and force himself back to the present as he replied. "I don't know how but... it just helps me focus a lot of the time. I can work without it, but then I... tend to get distracted, or loose track of the time... and get attacked by vampires."
Buffy laughed, smiling slightly as she leaned against her friend. "I'm pretty sure that's the most extreme consequence you'll ever see cause of time lossage. And it shouldn't happen again. It was weird for them to stop here anyway, vamps usually don't spend much time in residential neighborhoods, since people are protected by their homes for the most part."
"So they usually don't go around tricking their way into houses to eat the residents?"
"No, not usually. I mean, you still don't want to actually invite anyone in after dark, but your house is far enough away from the city that it would be odd for you to see vamps here much. They tend to prefer clubs and dark alleys. And grave yards."
Charlie frowned, "There's a pretty big difference between clubs and grave yards, isn't there?"
"Yeah. But I don't encourage their habits. I just make note of them for future slayage prospects." Buffy smiled again. "And speaking of clubs, you didn't seem to mind dancing too much when we were looking for vamps."
"Umm, well... uh. You didn't really give me much choice, you know."
"I know. But you had fun, didn't you?" When she finally got a nod from him, Buffy grinned. "And you can deny it all you want, but you had to have liked the standing ovation you got at Caritas for your singing." She teased, watching in amusement as her friend's cheeks reddened.
"Well, I, uh. I guess I did..." Charlie shrugged, shaking his head again. "But I'm really not that good at singing. No thanks," he finished, waving away the cookie she was – reluctantly – offering.
"You've got a good voice," Buffy told him. "Just need to work on controlling your breathing. You could take lessons. Or just practice. Either way, Lorne's crowd loved you."
Charlie rolled his eyes. "Well they couldn't really have booed me out, Annie. They knew I was there with you."
"Sure they did. But that didn't mean they really had to stand up and clap and cheer for you at the end." Buffy smiled as a small smile worked its way across the genius's face.
"No, I, uh, guess they'd didn't." After a second of reflection he shook his head and turned his full attention to her again. "So, how'd it go tonight?"
Buffy sighed deeply and shook her head, taking another warm and gooey bite out of a cookie, savoring it and swallowing it, all the while looking down into the koi pond, before she replied. "Not well. Didn't run into any slayable vamps or demons, they're all hiding in Caritas or just plain hiding."
"What about the homeless people?"
She shook her head. "A whole lot of confused, old 'nobodies' that didn't even seem to notice my existence, or any of my questions. Seriously, I followed one guy around for nearly half-an-hour and the only times he looked at me was when I stepped right in front of him, and then he just blinked and stumbled around me... It's kinda creepy."
"Did you make note of the areas you found them in?"
"As ordered," Buffy nodded, reaching into one of her pockets to pull out a notebook the size of her hand with a small pen attached to it. "I still haven't seen anything, though. I mean, I've found about two-dozen of the old victims, but they're not hanging out anywhere or avoiding anywhere in particular."
Charlie took the notebook from her and began flipping through the pages. After a few moments of reading he nodded. "Not that you can see. But math is all about patterns, Annie. Identifying them, analyzing them, and making predictions about them. All of your victims are wandering around in the same general area, but are they avoiding the same general areas?"
"I...don't know."
"Neither do I," Charlie told her as he rose to his feet. "Yet."
Buffy watched him walk quickly back into the house, flipping through her mini-notebook again, his head already lost in the math and shook her head before washing down the last of her cookies with another sip from her water bottle. 'If he can actually do this,' she realized with a sigh, 'I'm gonna feel really, really bad the next time I have to skip a math class for Slaying...'
"Annie?"
Buffy winced as Mrs. Eppes call sounded from the house, clearly a bit worried. "I'm out here, Maggie."
A moment later the back door opened again and the older woman slipped out, a small package in her hands. She waived Buffy down and made her way over to unknowingly sit exactly where her youngest son had been sitting only moments before, and held the package out to the younger woman. "Here."
Buffy blinked at her and, after setting her now half-empty water bottle down, accepting the package with a confused frown. "What's this?"
"A gift," Mrs. Eppes replied with a warm smile. "Open it."
Buffy looked down at the package, which was wrapped in pretty green and gold paper. "But it's not my birthday, or—"
"I know. Think of it as a thank you present." Mrs. Eppes held up a hand to forestall Buffy's protests and shook her head. "It's a very practical one, Annie. Open it, please."
After a moment of silence Buffy sighed and obediently began to carefully unwrap the package, gently prying the tape up, not wanting to tear the pretty paper despite the fact that it would probably be thrown away soon after she finished taking it off her present. She blinked a few times as she finished, staring down at the small image on the side of the box. "A—"
"—Cell phone, yes." Mrs. Eppes finished for her, offering a small smile. "It's prepaid. You buy calling cards to pay for it, the directions are in the box. But Charlie figured it out for you yesterday, so you won't have to worry about resetting the minutes for at least a year." The older woman shrugged, still smiling slightly as Buffy remained silent. "Since you seem to like walking around in the middle of the night a lot, it would just make me, make all of us, feel better if we could reach you and you could reach us if you need help."
Buffy licked her lips slightly, blinking back tears for a few moments before murmuring, "Thank you..."
"You don't need to thank us, dear," Mrs. Eppes told her as she rose to feet, bunching the used wrapping-paper up in one hand before pausing for a moment to place a warm, gentle hand on the younger girl's shoulder. "Just keep it with you when you go out, especially at night, all right? That'll be thanks enough."
"Yes, ma'am." Buffy nodded in response, watching the older woman walk towards the house for a moment before calling, "Maggie?" she continued when the older woman looked back. "I really am sorry for worrying you."
The older woman shook her head. "I know what it's like to need to get away from things, dear." Raising an eyebrow she gestured towards the nearby garage. "Personally, I usually just hide out in the garage for a bit, sometimes go for a drive. But to each their own, and I guess you don't have a license, so driving is not really an option."
"No," Buffy nodded in agreement, looking down at the box in her hand then up at the other woman again. "Tha—"
"I'm going to head up to bed now, Annie. You should soon too, all right?" Mrs. Eppes smiled, shaking her head slightly as she turned walking back towards the house again, calling, "Good night," over her shoulder before stepping back inside.
"Good night," Buffy called back, shaking her head as she looked down at her present again.
Streets, Los Angeles, California – July 4, 1996 – Late Evening
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Charlie shook his head as he followed Annie through LA's darkening streets once again. He'd marked out the area they were now wandering through as part of a potential 'hot zone' that all of the victims seemed to be moving away from, so here they were, searching for something Annie could slay. A part of his still couldn't believe he was actually following her on one of her... 'patrol's' again. An even larger part couldn't believe he'd actually wanted to go with her enough to convince her to take him along. "I, um, I thought you said this was too early for your patrols," he brought up after a few moments of silence in the darkened streets.
Annie turned her head towards him slightly, shrugging even as she gracefully evaded a break in the sidewalk followed by a piece of litter that a normal person would have tripped over, not seeming to even notice her subconscious sidestep or the utter grace and silence of her movements, made all the more obvious by his efforts at quiet, careful steps. "Well, yeah, it is. But we're not looking for vamps, Charlie. We're looking for victims to this aging thing. And the human victims are homeless, so they're out at all hours... And according to you there she be a lot of them around her, right?"
"Well, yes." Charlie nodded a little bit unsurely as he looked around the mostly deserted streets. "From the data you gave me, this should be the area they all have in common."
"Yeah, so—"
"Buffy?" a hesitant, female voice interrupted them, making Annie freeze in her tracks and causing Charlie to stop and look at her a bit unsurely before turning with her to look at the teenage girl that was approaching them, looking directly at Annie.
Charlie looked between the two, frowning at the slightly frightened look on the Slayer's face and the nervous expression on the other girl's. "Can we help you?" he asked, after the girl had stopped a few feet away from them and tucked her hands partway into too-small pockets of her jeans.
The blonde – who looked like she was older than Annie but still a teenager and probably not as old as him yet – blinked and looked at him for a moment, before shaking her head. "I'm sorry, I, uh, I wanted to talk to Buffy."
"I'm going by Anne now," Annie broke in, her good humor gone and her eyes a bit despondent as Charlie frowned at her but remained silent, quickly realizing that he was apparently going to learn more about his friends past now, and hoped she was ready for that.
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Buffy frowned slightly at the blonde girl that knew her real name. When she'd first heard it, she hadn't been able to place her voice, but half of her had expected to see either someone from Hemrey High, the other half was expecting someone from Sunnydale. But the timid, insecure blonde wasn't someone she knew... her face looked a little familiar, but only just.
"...I, uh. I guess you don't recognize me?" When Buffy continued to study her the older girl shrugged a little, looking down uncomfortably as she continued. "I was... In Sunnydale. I was in this cult that... kind of, worshipped vampires. Lame, I know."
"Chan...Chantarelle?" Buffy murmured after a moment's consideration, a foggy memory of the girl introducing herself coming back to her.
"Yeah! Yeah, that was my name then... I go by Lily now. It's...from a song. Rickie, my boyfriend, Rickie, he picked it." The blonde shrugged again, tucking her hands into her pockets uncomfortably. "I'm always changing it anyway. Chantarelle was part of my exotic phase."
"It's, uh, nice," Buffy murmured after another pause.
"You named yourself after a mushroom?" Charlie's abrupt, clearly surprised question drew their attention back to the genius and Buffy couldn't help but squirm a little bit uncomfortably even as the other girl frowned at him.
"I did? It is?" 'Lily' asked, a clearly startled expression on her face, followed by embarrassment. "That's really embarrassing."
"Um, well," Buffy spoke up before Charlie could speak again, "it's gotta be an exotic mushroom, if that's any comfort."
'Lily' sighed. "Well, before that I was following this looser preacher and calling myself 'Sister Sunshine.'" She shrugged again. "I guess that's why the vampire stuff seemed so appealing then. 'Xact opposite, you know?"
Buffy nodded, still a bit confused at why the girl would approach her but decided to keep going with it. "What'd they call you at home?" She blinked as the other girl looked down and stayed silent, but shook her head after a few moments of total silence. "I like Lily."
"It's cool for now," Lily replied with another shrug. "Hey, do you have any money?" She held her hands up before Buffy could respond, looking somewhat mortified. "I didn't mean that like... Well, I just mean... I know this guys, he's gonna have this kinda rave thing in his basement. We could go. I mean, I could show you guys if–" she broke off with a gasp as an old man suddenly bumped into her from the side, nearly bowling her over as he stumbled down the sidewalk between them. "Hey! That's not very polite."
At Lily's outraged remark the old man stopped and turned to look at the three of them, and Buffy saw the same expression that was becoming increasingly familiar for her to see on old homeless people as of late as he stared at them.
"Are you okay?" Charlie asked, stepping forward slightly and frowning in concern at the much older man, his mind undoubtedly making the connection to the victims Buffy was trying to avenge but not able to suppress the concern he felt for the old man.
The man made a strange jerking motion as he stumbled back away from them and declared, "I'm... no one," before turning and stumbling across the street.
"Okay..." Lily's comment barely registered in Buffy's mind as she noticed a truck speeding down the road towards the old man that was crossing said road. "That was a bit weird..."
Not even giving it any conscious thought, Buffy dropped her bag and ran after the old man, reaching him just seconds before the truck, giving her enough time to shove him out of the way but not enough to avoid having the truck slammed into her, sending her flying down the street ahead of it even as it came to an abrupt, squealing stop in response to the driver's panicked braking.
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Charlie could only gape in horror as he watched his small friend flew through the air and smashed down onto the pavement several feet ahead of the truck that had just hit her.
"Buffy!" he heard Lily cry as she started to run into the street, and Charlie followed a few steps behind her even as statistics ran through his head.
'Eighty-five percent chance of death if a pedestrian is hit by a car traveling forty miles an hour or faster. Forty-five percent chance at thirty miles per hour. Five percent chance as twenty – How fast was he going?!' Charlie wandered as he and Lily reached the Slayer's side just as she was starting to push herself up. *
"Are you okay?" he hears Lily ask, her voice as panicked as his mind presently is even as he kneels down beside his friend to place a gentle, hesitant hand on her arm, as much to comfort her as to reassure himself that she really was all right.
"Geez, I didn't see you," Charlie glanced up to see a middle-aged man with a large mustache standing stumbling closer to them, clearly having come from the truck, as the driver's side door was sitting wide open and the expression on his face screamed a combination of shock and remorse.
Charlie looked back at Anne as he felt her start to push herself up more forcefully. 'Or is it Buffy?' he wondered again, his confused mind still remembering what the other girl kept calling his friend, and remembering hearing her tell the other girl that she 'went by Anne now,' meaning she hadn't always.
"May-Maybe you shouldn't move," Lily protested.
Charlie nodded in agreement, gently grasping her shoulder and rising with her even as he also protested, "Yeah, Annie, you sh—"
"Maybe you should lie down," The driver broke in, his voice a bit frantic-sounding even before he raised it to call. "Somebody call an ambulance!" He ordered, looking around at the crowd of bystanders that was building up around them, undoubtedly summoned by the sound of screeching brakes moments before.
"No!" Annie – for that was who she really was to Charlie, at least – immediately protested, "I-I'm okay. I just—" she shakes her head, pulling out of Charlie's gentle grasp much more firmly and steadily than anyone who'd just been hit by a car should be, though her voice was shaking a bit. "I-I need to go." And then she somehow forced her way through the concerned crowd, running down the street far faster than any normal person could move.
"Annie?!" Charlie cried as he ran after her, ignoring the crowd of idiots that parted for him. He saw her turn a corner several blocks down and tried to quicken her pace, somewhat desperately hoping she'd stay on that street long enough for him to see her when he reached the corner.
As it turned out, he needn't have worried. Because when he rounded the corner he saw she'd stopped for some reason and was looking at a flyer a man had given her just around the corner.
"—Then why are you here?" the man was asking, his head cocked to the side a bit in disbelief. "This is not a good place for a kid to be. You get old fast her. The thing that drains the life out of them is despair. I mean, kids come here, and they've got nothing to go home to. This ends up being the last stop for a lot of them. It shouldn't have to be that way... but it is."
"Not for Annie," Charlie broke in, finally coming up to them with a frown on his face as he wrapped an arm around his friend's shoulders and the man stepped back, returning his frown for a moment before it seemed to disappear behind a fake smile.
"Guess not..." the man acquiesced, before nodding to both of them. "Still, don't be shy about stopping by. We're interested in more than just feeding the body and putting roofs over heads. You might find something you're missing, still."
And then he was walking away from them, and Charlie was taking the flyer he'd given Buffy from her with a small frown on his face. "What's this?" he asked, even as he quickly read over the printed lines:
Come Home to
FAMILY HOME
In Our House, The Light Is Always On.
"Some kind of homeless shelter, I think," Annie muttered, shaking her head even as she tried to pull away from Charlie and looked up at him as his one-armed grip suddenly tightened.
"Are you okay, Annie?" Charlie asked her, unable to keep a strong note of concern out of his voice.
"Y-Yeah." The Slayer reassured him after a long moment of silence. "I'm fine, Charlie... Superhero, remember? And a healthy one, too, thanks to your family. Some of the bruises I've got now will be gone after a good night's sleep."
"Then why don't we head back so you can get that sleep?"
"But—"
Charlie glared at her and after a moment she sighed in defeat.
"Fine. I guess we can go home early... Rather not have your Mom call us back, anyway," she confessed, waving to the cell phone that he was hanging from a clip on his belt, set on vibrate.
"You know you really should find a place for that, Annie." Charlie told her, even as they slowly started to make their way down the street towards Pasadena, all the while keeping an eye out for an available cab.
"I will, I will." The blonde agreed, shaking her head in amusement as their pace slowly increased, though Charlie's arm remained firmly around her shoulders.
"By the way," Charlie asked after a few minutes of walking. "Should I be calling you Annie?"
0 0 0 2 2 1 6 6 2 5 0 1 9 0 0 0 1 6 1 5 9 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 0 2 7 9 5 2 3 0 0 0
Buffy flinched a little, glancing up at his neutral expression before shrugging. "What'd you mean?"
"Lily called you 'Buffy," Charlie reminded her, "and you told her that you were 'going by 'Anne' now... And from your conversation with her, I don't think you change names a lot like she apparently does. So is your name actually Buffy?"
Buffy bit her lip and looked down, before sighing and nodding her head. "Yeah, it is... But Anne is, too. It's my middle name."
"And O'Connor?" Charlie asked, drawing another wince.
"That... That was Angel's name, when he was...human. Liam O'Connor. There... He had someone put a spell on it that would make whoever used that last name go unnoticed a lot..." she shrugged again. "I don't really know how it works. But I needed to give a name at the hospital, and I didn't want to give my real one, so I... said my name was Anne O'Connor. And I guess the spell took care of the rest."
"...What's your real name?"
"It's... Buffy. Buffy Anne Summers." She told him, looking down at the sidewalk as they kept walking, only to be forced to stop when her friend did.
"Well, I'm pleased to meet you, Buffy. I'm Charles Edward Eppes."
"I kn—"
"Now do you want me to call you Buffy or Annie?"
For the second time in two nights Buffy sniffed a little as she found herself blinking back tears of gratitude and after a few moments of silence she looked up and met her friend's warm chocolate-brown eyes. "I'm...going by Annie, here." When Charlie nodded in response she continued quickly before he could reply. "I was going to tell you. All of you. Really, I was. I just... I just wasn't ready yet. I j—" She stopped in shock as Charlie drew her into a hug.
"It's okay, Annie," the mathematician told her, his voice warm and firm and he slowly started rubbing circles in her back when she began to tremble.
"It... It is?"
"Of course it is. We're friends, aren't we?"
"Y-Yeah."
Charlie leaned back a little and gently made her look up at him with a hand under her chin. "I get that you needed time, because of what happened with Angel... and I get that you probably haven't told me everything that happened, okay? I can wait." He shook his head in bemusement. "I mean, you saved my life at least twice already, Annie. The least I can do is be a little patient with you."
"I didn't—"
"Uh-uh," Charlie stopped her by transferring the finger that had been holding her chin up to her lips. "What did my Dad say about modesty when it comes to having saved my life?" When she just frowned at him, he shook his head. "Just nod and say you're welcome, remember? You did save my life, Annie. And you're my friend..."
"Yeah... I guess. But don't you want to know about...?"
"Oh, I'm as curious as I can possibly be, Annie," the genius replied with a warm smile. "But I'm willing to wait. Just tell me when you're ready, okay?"
After a moment Buffy nodded. "Okay..." she looked down with a smile, but frowned as a surprised thought crossed her mind. "You know... You don't seem too surprised...about my name?"
Charlie laughed. "I knew that wasn't your real name, Annie. My parents suspect it too, but they can't figure out how you fooled the hospital. I just figured it was some kind of magic-thing, and—Ooh!" Charlie released her suddenly to step closer to the road and wave his arm around. "Taxi!"
Buffy giggled at the image the older teenager made and shook her head as he held the taxi door open for her. "Thanks, Charlie." To the driver she gave the Eppes' address before leaning over to rest her head on her friend's shoulder and start to doze off as he wrapped his arm around her again, knowing that he'd wake her when they got there and she'd be safe with him. "Oh, and Happy Fourth of July."
"You too, Annie. You too."
End Chapter 5: Demon Hunting.
AN: Well, how was this chapter? Not as dramatic as some of the 'Your name is Buffy?!'-parts I've seen, I know. But it seemed to fit really well with the episode... I wanted to find more statistics for Charlie to think about, but that was the best I could do for the moment, at least. Maybe I'll add more later on... Feel free to suggest some, if you already know some that fit.
Some notes from within the chapter itself:
(1) The Glasgow Mathematics Journal is a journal that mathematicians publish research papers on pure mathematics and applied mathematics, published in Cambridge, England. And that's all I know about it... just enough to know that it is something Charlie would probably prescribe to.
(2) The statistics Charlie thought about for pedestrians getting hit by cars were taken from John Bisnar's California Pedestrian Accident Statistics, posted on .
And that's all I can really think of at the moment... Hope everyone liked it. And hopefully I'll be able to get through my most recent bout of research papers quickly so I can work on the next chapter soon.
I don't think the research will slow me down too much. I'm more than halfway through writing most of the papers and honestly I barely need to study for the tests I have that are coming up... which aren't finals. No, my professor's just want all the final projects and term papers more than a month before the term ends... And I still have a final in all but one of my classes plus the projects and papers! It's really not fair. Don't they know they're supposed to pick? Still, other than the upcoming due dates I have enjoyed all my classes this semester so I suppose should suck it up and count my blessings...
Anyway, this shouldn't slow me down too much on this story in the series at least, because this story has been coming to me with barely any work, which is nice. So hopefully you won't have to wait more than a few days longer than you have the last few times.
Let me know what you think! (hint, hint – that means REVIEW! PLEASE!)
Bye for now! ^_^
Jess S
NEXT: Chapter 6: Demon Hunting – Part II.