Buffy leaned her head against the thick, mossy trunk of an old oak in the middle of the Lima cemetery. She wasn't very much in hunt-mode that night. Instead, she decided to let the oogly booglies find her. She was in no mood to patrol. She couldn't exactly explain her moroseness. Things were good. Besides the Winter break being over and having to go back to school, things were good. Her friends were happy. Rachel was over Finn, even if the others suspected he was not yet over her. Spike and Drusilla were gone. Will and Emma were happy together.
And yet Buffy found herself doing everything with a strange feeling of disconnection. Like she was watching herself play the part of slayer, daughter and friend but not actually being present. Why was it that even though she spent so much time wishing she was just a normal teenage girl, did she then react so indifferently to doing normal things? Shopping with her mom and having sleepovers with Rachel and Tina and performing in glee club. Going on dates with Sam. It all felt like it was meant for someone else. Not for her. Like she didn't fit.
She sat up a bit straighter when she heard footsteps on the wet grass. She looked up and had to blink several times before she recognised Santana. Something was different about the promiscuous vampire. She wasn't wearing a short dress or a leather jacket or Doc Martens - a look that Buffy had emulated herself. She strode forth in a pair of tennis shoes - tennis shoes - and black leggings, an oversized varsity sweatshirt draped over her thin frame. She looked much more pale without any makeup, but just as flawless as ever. Her dark, dark hair was bunched up into a ponytail and as she neared the oak tree, she must have registered Buffy's speechless gawking.
"A bug's gonna crawl up in that mouth, Slayer," she said, her face without expression.
Buffy blinked. "Sorry," she chuckled awkwardly, "Um, you just look different."
"Yeah, well..." Santana looked around for a moment before promptly taking a seat next to Buffy, leaning against the tree, "These are my period clothes."
Buffy glanced at her, trying not to look like she was staring. "Can you still...?" she trailed off.
"No," Santana replied simply, "Guess that means I can't have kids. Not that I wanted any. I just... It's one of those days."
"Yeah," Buffy said, as if she understood, "It's so quiet these days. I feel like I'm coming to the graveyard just to hang out."
Santana snorted. "I know what that's like. But you have better stuff to do. I mean, you still have school. And the boyfriend."
Buffy shrugged. "Well, you have Quinn and your... aunt? Mom?"
"Mom," Santana confirmed, "But we don't really talk about it."
"Does she know you know?"
"Probably. But, like I said, we don't talk about it. Everything's so messed up these days. No one ever just says what's on their mind. And I know, I'm not exactly Dr. Phil, but I feel like the less we tell each other the hard it is for anyone to... God, I don't even know what I'm talking about."
"Does this have anything to do with Brittany?"
Santana sighed heavily and closed her maroon eyes. "Everyone says that I can be her friend. That I don't have to be afraid to be close to her. But it just doesn't seem to be as easy as they think it is."
Buffy wrinkled her brow and silently thought for a few long moments. "Maybe you and Brittany can't be friends."
"What?"
"Well, when two people love each other and get torn apart by life, maybe they can't just go back to being friends and forget everything that happened between them. Because it did happen. And it hurts. It hurts because it mattered. I mean, do you really want to spend your whole life being Brittany's gal pal?"
Santana stared at the grass in front of her. "It kills me to see her with someone else."
"So, you have one of two choices. You get over her. You stop seeing her. You tell Quinn not to even talk about her. You forget about her and eventually, you will get over her. Or, alternatively, you tell her exactly how you feel. And you love her like you're always wanted to."
Santana blinked at the slayer, surprised. "What about the true happiness?"
Buffy wrinkled her nose. "What is true happiness, anyways? I mean, can sex and dating really invoke perfect joy? I'm dating Sam and I'm not perfectly happy."
A moment passed in awkward silence. Buffy couldn't believe she'd just said that.
"I mean, not that I'm not perfectly happy dating Sam. I am. I just mean, I don't feel like... Happiness is relative, isn't it?"
"Buffy-"
"No, listen, Sam is a great boyfriend. I can really see why anyone would-"
"No, slayer, look," Santana said, and nodded towards something in the distance.
Buffy looked in the direction she had nodded and saw someone just a few yards away, leaning against a mausoleum with a small sketchpad in their hands. Buffy squinted at the petite boy who looked like...
"Is that...?" Buffy said to herself, when the dark-haired boy realized he'd been spotted.
He widened his eyes, clutched his sketchpad and sprinted away.
"Catch that boy!" Buffy ordered to Santana, and the two girls shot up and after the boy.
It was really no competition; a vampire and a vampire slayer chasing after a five foot seven boy in a school uniform. Buffy and Santana both ploughed into the boy, knocking the wind out of him and sending his sketchpad and pencil sprawling to the ground. Santana got up and shook the grass off of her sweatshirt as Buffy straddled the boy, and flipped him over, pinning him down to see his thick, black hair mussed and his puppy dog brown eyes wide with fear.
"Blaine!" Buffy exclaimed, "What are you... I knew I recognised you! That's why you always act so shy around me!"
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Blaine, knitting his eyebrows together.
"You do, too!" Buffy said, pointing at him, "I saw you before! Spying on me in this graveyard! Before Kurt even met you!"
Blaine wriggled under Buffy's grasp. "Please, let me go. I won't come back, I promise."
"I want to know why you were here in the first place," said Buffy, frustrated.
"I come here to relax!" Blaine cried unconvincingly.
Santana leaned over and picked up the sketchpad, opening up the first page and frowning at it. She flipped it over to Buffy to reveal a full body sketch of the slayer, holding out a stake in a defensive stance.
Buffy gasped. "Ew! You were spying on me so you could draw pictures of me?!"
"That's not weird," Santana muttered sarcastically.
"I thought you were gay!" Buffy exclaimed.
"That old trick," smirked Santana, "Tell the girls you're gay so they'll take you bra shopping."
"Why are you obsessed with me?!"
"Pervert," Santana mumbled.
"I am not a pervert!" said Blaine, wriggling out from under Buffy and sitting on the grass, running his hands over his hair, settling it back into place, "And I'm not obsessed with you. And I am gay."
"Then why are you spying on me and drawing pictures of me?" Buffy raised an eyebrow, standing up.
"It's not about you," said Blaine, rising to his feet and snatching the sketchpad from Santana.
He flicked through it, displaying his sketches. Buffy watched with mild awe as he showed sketches of vampires and demons. He even had a rough sketch of Spike and Drusilla, and what Buffy thought may have been a werewolf, but couldn't be sure.
"This doesn't make me feel any better, Blaine," Buffy said, raising her eyebrows at the sketchbook.
Blaine closed the book and sighed. "It's just research."
"Research for what?" Buffy demanded.
Blaine shrugged. "Demonology. It's a hobby."
"Let me rephrase that. Why are you researching me?!"
"I know what you are," he said, meeting her unflinching gaze, "You're a vampire slayer."
Buffy's eyes widened. "How do you know that?"
Santana snorted. "It's not exactly a secret."
Buffy frowned at her briefly before turning her attention back to Blaine. "Well?"
"It wasn't hard to figure out," Blaine shrugged, "I'm not new to this stuff. Vampires. Demons. When I see a girl alone in a graveyard fighting three vampires at a time and winning... Well, vampire slayer. Obviously."
Buffy's mouth hung open. "Yeah. Obviously," she said sarcastically, "Blaine, I want you to tell me everything. From the beginning. How do you know this stuff? Does Kurt know you know?"
Blaine looked nervously between Buffy and Santana. "Do we have to talk about this now? Lights out in Dalton is at midnight and Westerville is like an hour and forty five minute drive from here."
Buffy and Santana shared a glance. "Fine," Buffy frowned, "I'm coming to Dalton tomorrow."
Blaine bit his lip. "What about my parents house? It'll be easier to explain everything there."
Buffy bristled. "...Fine. Give me the address. I'll be there after school."
xxx
Kurt wriggled in his bed. The sheets were hot on his skin, but he didn't wake. He allowed the sensation to blend into his dream. Blaine was there, picking up where he'd left off in the last dream, telling him he knew him better than Kurt knew himself.
"I see you," Blaine said without moving his smiling lips, "I see right in here."
He tapped Kurt's pale chest, and Kurt looked down to see he was wearing his mother's necklace. The one with the silver 'S'. But it didn't quite fit him right.
"You don't have to worry about that," said Blaine, and easily removed the necklace.
He and Blaine shared a kiss, but it was a bland one of the bad imagination. Blaine disappeared and Kurt grew uneasy. Then the dream turned into a nightmare. A vampire's fangs gnashed right in front of Kurt's face and it nails scratched a scar into Kurt's arm - a jagged line on his forearm that ended at his elbow. He cried out and it was the sound of a child crying. He realized it wasn't really him, but a younger version of himself, maybe two or three.
Suddenly, the vampire was gone and in it's place, his mother smiled reassuringly at him. She wore a white dress and even her normally dark blond hair was completely white. His cut stopped bleeding, but the jagged scar remained. Then, everything was plunged into darkness.
Kurt sat up straight in his bed, drenched in sweat. He threw off the sheets that clung to his hot legs, breathing heavily. He reached for his phone to check the time. It was barely midnight. He sighed, feverishly. Just a dream. Just a dream. But something about this dream...
No, it was definitely just a dream. That didn't mean it didn't bother Kurt. Kurt switched on the lamp on his nightstand and inspected the scar on his forearm. It was a pale, crooked white line that ended at his elbow, stretched from time and growth. His dad said he got it from when he'd been playing around in the tire shop at the age of three and got cut by an open, jagged can of motor oil. He didn't remember it. Of course he didn't. He'd been three.
Kurt opened a message on his phone.
- U awake?
He didn't know why he was texting Blaine. He just wasn't in the mood to go back to sleep and Blaine had become his closest friend at Dalton Academy. As he awaited a reply, he silently wished his dream of kissing Blaine hadn't ended, no matter how much it paled in comparison to a real kiss.
- Ya, just got back from Starbucks :)
- U caffeine junkie ;)
- U know it! Whats up?
- Can't sleep. Bad dreams.
- What kinda dreams?
Kurt smirked and decided to skip over the part where he and Blaine got their smooch on.
- That I was attacked by a vampire when i was lil. I know, I've been watching 2 much vampire diaries!
Blaine took a long time to reply.
- Then wat happened?
- Then it was gone and my mom was there. She was all in white. Then it was over.
Again, Blaine took his time replying. Kurt wondered if he'd made Blaine uncomfortable by bringing up his dead mom. People didn't generally want to talk about their friend's deceased parents. But then Kurt's phone buzzed just as he was about to nod back to sleep.
- Text me whenever u get a bad dream, buddy. I'm here to listen :) Get some sleep, Hummel. We'll talk at the back of first period tomoro. Night night.
Kurt read the message three times, smiled and fell asleep.
xxx
Buffy gathered with her friends in the biology lab on Monday morning, while a bunch of other kids from their first period class flooded into the room. She and Sam took one of the marble lab tables at the very back, with Tina and Mike occupying the table in front of them. Rachel leaned against Buffy's desk, listening raptly to her friend.
"He says he researches it as a hobby," Buffy divulged the details of last night to her friends, "What kind of freak studies slayers and demons for fun?"
The scoobied shared an awkward glance.
"Well, it's not the same. We do it for justice!" she said.
"Yeah, you're right," Sam agreed, "We save people. What's Blaine's deal?"
"That's what I'm going to figure out today," said Buffy, "Blaine gave me his address. I'm going there after school today to find out exactly what's up with him."
She didn't care to mention that she'd asked Santana to go with her. Partly because Blaine could easily be more than he appeared to be and she may need backup, and partly because Santana needed something to distract her from crawling back to Brittany. Apparently she'd chosen to try to get over the blond cheerleader, and Buffy thought that she had chosen correctly.
As the bell rang, Tina and Mike turned back into their seats and Rachel returned to her seat in front of them. The rest of the biology class flooded in and bustled around in their seats, talking to their seatmates before the lesson started. Quinn was swept in with the rest of them in her Cheerios uniform, and searched for an empty spot to sit. In freshman and sophomore year it was always her and Finn, with Santana and Brittany behind them. Oh, but how times had changed. Now, Finn was sitting next to some guy on the football team and Brittany had wheeled Artie next her behind them. Now, the only free seat was beside her.
Quinn didn't know why she was so tentative about sitting next to Rachel Berry, or even looking at her. Maybe it was because whenever Rachel looked at her, Quinn wasn't sure at all how she was supposed to feel. Were they friends? Was Quinn supposed to laugh at her jokes or smirk and call her Man-Hands? So many dynamics had changed, and she wasn't sure where she stood with Rachel. She knew she cared about the girl in some way. Liked her, even, maybe. So why did it feel so much more complicated than that?
"Do you mind if I sit here?" she asked softly, leaning over the desk.
Rachel looked up at her, pleasantly surprised.
See, that was another thing that bothered Quinn. For a year and a half of high school, Quinn terrorised Rachel Berry. She almost got her killed on one occasion. So why did Rachel always look so freaking happy to see her? She was clearly a masochist.
"Of course, Quinn."
Quinn smiled stiffly and set her book down on the table, taking the seat. Or maybe what bothered her was her guilt. After everything they'd been through, Rachel Berry was always the nicest person to Quinn. She was nicer to Quinn than Quinn's own friends. She almost wanted to shake her and say, "Stop liking me so much!" It was so much more easier and comfortable and uncomplicated when she and Rachel hated each other. Now, everything was thrown out of balance. Quinn used to make fun of Rachel's pathetically geeky cable knit tights. Now, her eyes lingered at the edge of Rachel's knee-high socks that hugged her pale, slender legs.
"Sex!"
Quinn's attention was snapped back to the front of the classroom, where their biology teacher, Mr. Whitmore, wrote 'SEX' in big capital letters on the marker board. She felt her cheeks grow pink as she and her classmates were jolted out of their thoughts by their unorthodox teacher.
"The sex drive in the human animal is intense," said Mr. Whitmore, "How many of us have lost countless productive hours plagued by unwanted sexual thoughts and feelings?"
Puck's hand shot up at the back of the class. The football jocks clamoured in laughter and Quinn just rolled her eyes in embarrassment.
"It was a rhetorical question, Mr. Puckerman," Mr. Whitmore frowned, "Not a poll. Of course, for teenagers such as yourselves, these feelings can be overwhelming. With all sorts of hormones surging through your bodies, compelling you to action, it's often difficult that there are negative consequences to having sex. Would anyone care to offer one such consequence?"
Morgan Ru's hand shot up. "That depends. Are you talking about sex in a car or out of a car? Because one time a friend of mine - not me - accidentally kicked the gear shift on a Miata on the top of a hill-"
"Uh, I was thinking of something a little bit more... commonplace, Ms. Ru. Anyone else?"
Quinn sighed internally and raised her hand. "Pregnancy?"
She had already felt the eyes on her, waiting for her to say it. So she said it. She wasn't going to pretend it never happened. She may pretend, however, that she didn't notice the look of admiration on Rachel's face.
"Thank you, Ms. Fabray," said Mr. Whitmore, "As discussed last week, I've devised an exercise for you kids to demonstrate the ups and downs of being a teen parent."
Whitmore moved to the corner of the classrooms and flourishly removed a sheet from a full crate of free range eggs.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, your offspring. You will split into pairs. You and your partner will each share in the responsibility for the daily care of your egg baby. I want you to record every aspect of your parenting. If your egg breaks, your baby is dead. Obviously, this will affect your grade. Pair up and take your children."
Quinn wasn't sure why she even bothered to look around the room to who paired with who. It was already a given. Buffy with Sam. Tina with Mike. Brittany with Artie. Morgan Ru with Dave Karofsky, even though he clearly wasn't into her. It wasn't until Quinn looked at Finn that she felt a little uneasy. He was looking determinedly at Rachel. Oh no, thought Quinn.
"Rachel," Quinn said quickly, "Do you want to be my partner?"
Rachel blinked at her. "You want to raise an egg baby with me?"
Quinn couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so."
Rachel broke out into an ecstatic smile. "I'd love to be your partner, Quinn."
Quinn smiled, and glanced back at Finn. He'd obviously seen their exchange, and was looking away, disappointed, trying to get one of the Cheerios to pair up with him.
She turned back to Rachel. "Great."
"One thing," said Rachel, "I'd like to name our egg daughter Cosette."
"Um, that's fine."
"And I'd prefer if we raised Cosette to be Jewish. That doesn't mean you're obligated to convert."
"Sure, Rachel."
xxx
The taxi pulled up on a curb of Worthington Road. Buffy had planned on taking the bus, because neither her nor Santana really drove, but Santana was disgusted by the idea of public transport so she dished out on a taxi ride from Lima to Westerville. Sometimes Buffy forgot that Santana used to be a privileged Fabrette.
The girls walked up to the house that was supposed to be Blaine's. It was one of the nicer houses in the upper class neighborhood and Buffy couldn't help but feel slightly intimidated as she sounded the musical doorbell.
It was a man who Buffy assumed was Blaine's father who answered the door. He was petite, too, but handsome in a different way from his son. He was rugged, with salt and pepper hair and dark stubble, his tie loosened under the collar of his striped business shirt.
"Mr. Anderson?" Buffy raised an eyebrow.
"You must be friends of Blaine," Mr. Anderson smiled slightly, a twinkle in his dark brown eyes, "Please, come in."
Santana and Buffy were ushered into the warm house. It smelled like Yankee candles and looked like an Ikea catalogue.
"Blaine," Mr. Anderson called up the spiral staircase, "Your friends are here."
Buffy could hear Blaine's quick footsteps rushing to the top of the staircase. He sprinted down the stairs and reached the end with a big smile, slightly out of breath.
"Hi," he smiled happily, like he'd truly made new friends and was excited to play with them, "Uh, Dad, this is Buffy and Santana. They go to high school in Lima. Can we go up to the study?"
Mr. Anderson gave Buffy and Santana a once over before winking at his son. "Sure. It's late, though, remember to be back at Dalton before curfew."
"Yes, sir," he said, and grinned at the girls, "Come on, I'll show you my study."
He sprinted back upstairs and Buffy and Santana glanced at each other, taken aback, before following him up. They silently followed him to the end of the hall and into a bedroom-sized study with a modern desk, laptop and two opposite walls of bookshelves.
"This is my study," said Blaine, shrugging with a smile on his face.
"You have your own study?" Buffy raised an eyebrow at the clean room.
"It used to be my brother's room before he moved to California. This is where I keep all my research and my sketches," said Blaine, "You wanted me to explain why I know the things I know. It's because of my parents."
"Your parents?"
Blaine nodded. "They've always studied demonology."
"What, are they demon hunters?" asked Santana, wrinkling her nose.
"No," said Blaine, "My dad is a professor at Ohio State. He teaches Psychology, and Classical Mythology as a minor elective. He doesn't like to advertise his beliefs, but... well, he believes. Vampires. Demons. Spirits."
"Slayers?" asked Buffy.
Blaine frowned. "No. Not slayers."
"Your dad doesn't believe in slayers?"
"He always thought they were a myth to scare vampires. He thought I was crazy when I started studying them. I thought maybe I was crazy, too. But then I saw you."
Buffy furrowed her brow. "When did you see me?"
"Fighting. In the graveyard."
"Why were you at the Lima cemetery?" asked Santana, "I mean, it's almost two hours away from Westerville."
Blaine opened his mouth and closed it again, looking guilty. "I was making a visit."
"To who?" asked Buffy.
"To... find a woman. I found all of these newspaper articles about this woman who lived in Lima and... it sounded like she could have been a slayer."
Buffy raised an uncertain eyebrow. "Me?"
Blaine shook his head. "Older newspaper articles. I thought if I went to Lima and found her..."
"Did you find her?"
"No," Blaine looked regretful, "She died just a little over ten years ago. I never really got to know if she was a slayer or not. I don't know why, but I felt like I had to see where she was buried. So I went to the Lima cemetery."
Buffy felt lightheaded. "There was a slayer in Lima before me?"
"The slayer before the slayer before you, I should think," said Blaine, "I'd given up researching her. Until now."
"Why do you suddenly care about her again?" asked Santana.
Blaine wrung his hands together and stared at the hardwood floor of the study. "Because her name was Elizabeth Martin. Until she got married. And then her name was Elizabeth Hummel."
Buffy's eyes widened. Her stomach turned for many different reasons. "Are you saying...?"
"Porcelain's dead mom is a dead slayer," Santana said bluntly.
Blaine put his hands under his thighs and nodded, looking much younger than he was. "I think so. I have the newspaper clippings if you want to see them."
"No," Buffy waved her hand at him, feeling ill. Not only was one of her friend's unaware that they're mother had a secret identity - a secret life - but it was also opening Buffy's eyes to a topic she'd never given a thought. A vampire slayer with kids? Elizabeth Hummel wasn't just a slayer, she was a mom.
"Does Lady Lips know about any of this?" Santana asked what Buffy was thinking.
"Kurt? No... I don't think he knows his mother was a slayer. I don't even know if he knows about vampires."
"He does," said Buffy, to Blaine's surprise, "He knows about me. But he definitely doesn't know about his mom. He would have said something. He told us she was killed in a car crash. When he was six."
Blaine looked uneasy. "The autopsy report says she was drained of blood."
Buffy held her hand to head. "You have to tell Kurt."
"I don't feel like I should be the one to do that," said Blaine, "What about his father? Did he even know?"
"I don't think slaying is the kind of thing you can hide from your husband," said Buffy.
"Why not?" asked Santana, "You hide it from your own mom. Then again, you couldn't hide it from an entire high school glee club, so-"
"It's not the whole glee club," said Buffy, "But Kurt has to know. You have to tell him."
Blaine frowned. "He has dreams. He tells me how vivid they are. They sound alot like slayer premonitions."
Buffy shook her head, recollecting the very rare occasions when she would have a scarily vivid dream about danger that was near to come. They were almost always extremely vague and exclusively a slayer thing.
"Kurt can definitely not be a slayer," said Buffy, "It's kind of a girl thing."
"No, I know," said Blaine, "But do you think he could be having premonitions?"
Buffy clenched her jaw. "Doubt it. What does he dream about?"
"Vampires. One time had something to do with eggs. Rotten eggs with... tentacles."
Buffy wrinkled her nose. "It sounds like your average bad dream. Keep in mind, Kurt grew up on the Hellmouth."
Blaine nodded. "I guess."
"Either way, Kurt should know the truth about his mother. It'd be better if it came from his dad, though. Do you think you could talk to Mr. Hummel?"
"Me?" asked Blaine, suddenly intimidated, "Why me?"
Buffy rolled her eyes. "I don't know. You're the slayer expert, apparently."
"I wouldn't say expert-"
"Tell him, Blaine. Or I will. And trust me, he's not going to like knowing you knew this whole time and didn't say anything. He'd probably kill me if he heard me saying this, but Blaine... He really likes you. And he trusts you."
Blaine blinked at her, looking somehow sad and hopeful at the same time. "He does?"
"Of course he does," Santana rolled her eyes, "Do you know how many pocket-sized uniformed pony boys goes to McKinley High? Zero."
Blaine paused. "Well... I like him, too."
"Then tell him the truth."