lena7623

"Mistakes" 2/?

2008-05-11T09:14:37Z

I started this for winter_of_angel, but it kind of grew on me as I wrote it, and I didn't have enough time at the time to make it as long as I wanted, so here's part two of "Mistakes." I figured that I should work on one of my many WIPs before doing anything else for still_grrr, even though I love writing for it as well.

For those that care, as soon as it's beta-d, there will be another chapter of "Old Slayer" coming.

I have also noticed that I badly need at least one icon of Angel.

Title: "Mistakes" 2/?
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: Character Death
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Episode Rewrite: Ats Season Three, Episdoe 17 "Forgiving"
Summary: What if Angel succeeded in what he started at the end of the episdoe "Forgiving?" Spoilers for up to that episode.
Beta'd By: Just me this time.

Angel had taken his friend out of the hospital through the window and was now hidden away with him in a cheap motel room that wasn’t in the Hyperion. He couldn’t take Wesley back to the Hyperion. He couldn’t face the accusing stares of everyone over what he had done. He had both killed his friend and condemned him to a life that he would despise all in one night. If his friends didn’t stake him on the spot at this point, he wouldn’t be surprised.

He had laid Wes out on the lumpy cheap bed that the motel provided, both anxious for his friend to wake up and dreading it at the same time. He hadn’t ever sired a vampire while he had a soul. Well, there was the time on the submarine, but he hadn’t even stuck around long enough to find out what happened to the guy. He didn’t know if Wes would wake up as a rampaging vampire with a thirst for blood and the knowledge on how to get it, or if anything that was Wes would still be in there.

Angel knew that the smartest thing to do right now was to stake Wes. He had even carried along a stake, just for that purpose. However, every time that he got up to do it, he could only stare at Wes’s sleeping frame and would back down again and again. All that Angel really wanted to do right now was go stand on the roof of this building and wait for the coming sunrise, but he didn’t think that this decrepit place could hold his weight, and bringing the deaths of people by causing the collapse of a building was *not* what he needed right now.

Angel was actually starting to wonder why it was taking so long for him to wake up. It had been hours. If the sun rose, Angel was just going to tell himself that it didn’t work. It didn’t always take. Sometimes the demon couldn’t take a hold in the body for some reason or another. When he was Angelus, he figured out that it didn’t work with truly holy nuns and priests. He had tried, and they just wouldn’t wake up. God looking out for his own, possibly.

When Wes finally stirred, Angel nearly jumped out of his skin. He prepped the stake again. If he even showed a hint of evil soullessness, then Angel could stake him. He was sure of it. When Wes opened his eyes, it wasn’t hunger that he saw in them. It was anger.

Wes was on Angel before he had the chance to react, shoving him hard against the wall. Angel could have easily pushed him off, but the shock of it caused his inaction. “What in the bloody hell did you do to me, Angel?” Wes screamed at him, slamming him against the wall again.

Well, of all the scenarios that Angel had prepared in his head, this wasn’t it. He knew that he was staring at Wes, his Wes, and not some demon who had set up house in his body. That didn’t make sense. That wasn’t how it worked. He felt the stake slip from his hand as the words started pouring out of his mouth. “I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t thinking clearly, Wes. I didn’t go in there to kill you, I swear.”

Wes pulled away from him, shaking with anger. “That wasn’t what I was talking about, Angel. Why didn’t you leave me for dead? You should have left me dead!” Wes slumped down onto the floor. “I lost Connor, Angel. I deserve to be dead. I betrayed all of you.”

“We’ll get him back, Wes. We can fix all of this,” Angel said, trying to sound reassuring.

“Like you ‘fixed’ me, Angel?” Wes laughed bitterly. “I’m not sure how much I trust your ability if I’m your prime example!”

Angel sat down on the floor next to Wes, sighing as he did it. Sighing was a human gesture, but if there ever was a time that he felt vulnerably and stupidly human, now was it. “You’re really you, aren’t you?”

“In all my training in the Council I’ve never read of a vampire who’s soul survived the initial turning.” Angel couldn’t help but hear the scholar in Wes at the moment. If this was anyone else, Wes would be fascinated.

“It never worked on any of the nuns or priests I tried it on,” Angel offered. “I always figured that it didn’t work on holy people. They all just died, though. It was like their body rejected it completely.”

Wes snorted. “I’m far from what anyone could consider holy.” Wes pulled his knees up to his chest. “I remember something, though. It was like a nightmare. I was fighting with something, a demon, but it wasn’t any species that I was familiar with. I think I won, though.”

“Maybe that has something to do with it,” Angel said, sneaking a glance at Wes. Unlike every other vampire who had woken up that he had seen, Wes didn’t wake up with his vampire face on. Usually, you were so hungry when you woke up that it came up naturally.

“Do the others know anything?” Wes asked.

“I kind of stole you out of the hospital window, so I don’t think so,” Angel answered. Now he could see that he shouldn’t have went into that hospital room by himself. He should have taken Fred or Gunn up on their offer to go inside with him. Maybe with them in the room, he could have controlled himself.

“I’m sure that they know something by now, with the empty hospital bed,” Wes replied. “What should we do now?”

“I suppose we should tell the others,” Angel said, dreading it already.

“That’s going to go over well,” Wes said with a shake of his head.

Participation Banner from Still_Grrr

2008-04-30T06:47:45Z

They picked my favorite Wesley picture for it, so it had to be showed off. I mean, come on, who doesn't like a cute Watcher in leather?

Fic: What to Do 1/1 (Giles, Faith, and Wesley gen)

2008-04-30T06:32:52Z

Title: "What to Do" 1/1
Author: Lena aka Jess
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: None
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1707
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Summary: Set in an AU, Faith flees Kakistos with her Watcher, Wesley, to seek help from the Watcher in Sunnydale, Rupert Giles.
Beta'd By: Just me this time.

I wrote this for the tweedandtea Giles Hurt/Comfort Ficathon. Hope you guys like it.

Faith was in a panic. That showed Wesley just how bad the situation really was. He certainly felt like he was on death’s door. She always played the cool and confident bad-ass woman, even when he told her that the master vampire Kakistos was known to be in their area. She just kind of brushed his concern aside at the time. And yet, he knew that she could rescue him when Kakistos and his minions kidnapped him, as long as he didn’t die before she got there. It seemed as though Kakistos was saving the worst for when his number one lieutenant, Mr. Trick, brought in Faith to watch his torture and likely slow death from the injuries. It wasn’t as if Kakistos had waited for Faith to be brought in to get started: Wesley’s ten broken fingers and the numerous knife cuts covering his body were testimony to Kakistos’s inability to wait. However, he had been more than pleased when Faith had came flying in, killing more vampires left and right than he had thought possible. If he were in a more suitable state, he would congratulate her. Instead, all he could do was weakly thank her profusely for coming for him as she carried him out the door and into the coming sunrise. She had waited for the sunrise in hopes that they wouldn’t be followed.

Now, they were in a tiny hotel room outside of Boston, where Faith was trying her best to attend to his injuries, but only seemed to become more and more frustrated.

“I should have come in sooner. If I had…” Faith looked to be on the verge of tears, something that Wesley thought that he would never see.

“If you had, then we both might be trussed up and being tortured slowly until we both died.” He tried to sit up, but Faith only gently held him down. If he sat up, he might bleed more. “You
did the right thing by waiting until near dawn. You were magnificent in there.”

Faith let out a shaky sigh. “What do we do now? As soon as Kakistos figures out where we are, he’ll just come for us again, won’t he?”

“Yes,” Wesley admitted, “but I have an idea. I think that it’s time for us to visit the other slayer in Sunnydale, California.” Hopefully they would be willing to help.

Faith thought that the drive would never end. To get them to Sunnydale, she had hotwired a car for them. Wesley had put up a weak protest, but he wasn’t in any condition to really complain about her choice in their mode of transportation. What she would have preferred to do was take him to a hospital, but Wesley insisted that the important thing to do was to go and see a Mr. Giles and Buffy Summers in Sunnydale. Buffy was supposed to be the wicked number one Slayer, but what kind of bad-ass Slayer had a name like Buffy? It sounded like the name of a cheerleader in Faith’s opinion.

Wesley wasn’t doing so good, either. He had this very big gash in his side that kept oozing blood. Faith kept bandaging it up, but it wasn’t healing right. Wesley kept mumbling something about it maybe being mystical, which put Faith even more out of her league. She was good at killing stuff, but she couldn’t keep a cactus alive, much less an entire human being. She just hoped that this Mr. Giles would be able to do something.

When they reached Sunnydale, Faith and Wesley checked into a hotel and, against Faith’s wishes, Wesley insisted that she go right away to Mr. Giles. She didn’t want to leave Wesley alone in a hotel. Vampires could enter hotels, and Wesley was in no condition to defend himself. Still, he insisted that she go right now, while it was daylight outside. After surrounding him with every cross that she could find, she set out for Sunnydale High School, where Wesley said that Mr. Giles was.

For a town that was full of vampires and other demons, Sunnydale High School had no security to speak of. Of course, maybe the reason that no one questioned who she was was because she was the right age to be a high school student. Of course, she got her GED months ago, so school wasn’t necessary for her anymore. She actually preferred it that way. Faith never had the patience for school anyway.

When she walked into the library, it was empty except for a lone man standing behind the desk, engrossed in a book. From outward appearances, Faith had to guess that he was Mr. Giles. He looked like a slightly older version than her Watcher; everything from the tweed to the glasses screamed ‘Watcher’ to her. It took a closer inspection to see the muscles underneath the white button-up shirt. She could also spy the weapons that were locked away in a cage across the room. Yeah, this was the right guy, alright.

“Hey, are you Rupert Giles?” When he looked up at her, she didn’t even give him a chance to respond. Something in her gut just told her that it was him, and her gut was hardly ever wrong.
“I’m in a tight situation here. I’ve got my Watcher with me, and he’s in wicked bad shape.” She looked down at her feet for a second and bit her lip. She was trying to push back the tears that were threatening to come forth. Wes was all she had and, if this guy couldn’t fix what was wrong with him, then she was fucked and she knew it. “His wounds keep bleeding. I don’t know why. I keep patching them up but they just keep bleeding.”

“Where is he now?” His voice made her look back up at him. He had moved from behind the desk to about a foot from where she stood. She realized that she hadn’t even moved from the doorway.

“He’s…well, just follow me.” She turned and walked back out of the door, only looking back once to make sure that he was following her.

Rupert Giles had been told about the Boston Slayer and her Watcher. This time the Council had the intelligence to inform him after she had been called and who had been assigned to her. He had even been sent a photograph of each of them, just in case one ever showed up, along with a little information about each of them. Now he was incredibly thankful of the Council’s foresight, because otherwise he would have been very confused by the teenager who had shown up in his library.

He ended up driving the both of them to the motel that the girl had told him about. Once she led him inside of the motel room, he could see why the girl was so distressed. He had met Wesley Wyndam-Pryce once or twice before, and was well acquainted with his father. Pryce had always looked to him like he had a stick shoved a little too far up his arse, but the man propped up on the bed before him was nothing like he had appeared a few years ago when he had met him.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” Giles said, trying to keep calm at the injuries that he saw before him. The man was lucky to still be alive.

“No,” Wesley coughed, and shook his head. “Anyone can enter a hospital. It’s not safe.”

“I kept saying that he should go to a hospital, too, but he won’t listen to me, either.” Faith looked over at Giles. “Will you please help?”

“If you won’t go to a hospital, then you certainly can’t stay here,” Giles replied. “Anyone can enter a hotel as well.” With some help from Faith, Giles managed to get Wesley into the car without hurting him further and drove the two of them to his home. At least there, no one was going to be entering the building at their leisure.

Once they helped Wesley into his home and onto his couch, Giles took apart the bandaging that covered the deep gash on his side. “He cut me….with some sort of sacrificial knife,” Wesley said as Giles cleaned the wound. “It’s not healing properly.”

“Do you remember what the knife looked like?” Giles asked.

Faith answered that one. “If it’s the one that I sliced Kakistos’s face open with, then it’s really old looking and it has ancient Greek symbols on it.” With a nod from Wesley to confirm Faith’s report, Giles finished up doing as much as he could with the wound at the moment.

“It sounds like a ritually cursed dagger,” Giles said, walking over to his bookshelf and started looking through the titles for the right one on ancient master vampires. He remembered that the entry on Kakistos mentioned something about a dagger that he liked to use on victims. After finding the book that he wanted, he pulled it from the shelf and flipped it open. “Yes….Kakistos has a dagger that he likes to use for special occasions. He had a witch ritually curse it hundreds of years ago just for him.”

“Can you….can you fix this?” Faith asked him. Giles looked up at her and could see the pleading in her eyes. From what little he knew about her from the file that the Watcher’s Council had sent him, she didn’t have any family to speak of. Her father died in an oil rig accident when she was five and her mother had been an abusive drunk until she ran away from home at the age of fourteen. The council had found her when she was sixteen, and she had been training with Wesley for the last two years. He had to be the only real family that she had.

“It will take a ritual to ‘un-curse’ the wound, so to speak, but yes, I believe I can fix this.” He was then practically bum rushed by Faith in a quick but tight hug.

She pulled away quickly, though, seemingly embarrassed. “Sorry about that, but thanks, you know?” She gave him a slight smile.

“You’re very welcome, Faith.”

Faith; pairing or gen; AU version of Season Three: Faith rescued her watcher from Kakistos' torture chamber, and shows up on Giles' doorstep on the run and with a badly injured Wesley in tow.

To whomever gave out this prompt, I hope that I did it justice.

Award for "Children of the Night"

2008-04-24T03:52:06Z

I seem to be getting good at this.

Roommates Suck 1/1

2008-04-23T20:01:08Z

This is for a prompt of crack!fic for still_grrr. This week you are supposed to insert yourself somehow. This is what I came up with.

Title: "Roommates Suck" 1/1
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: None
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 608
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Summary: Takes place near the end of season 1 of Angel. Cordelia, Angel, and Wesley get a very special visitor.
Beta'd By: Just me this time.

Ah...Season Three, my favorite. I popped the DVD of the second disc into the DVD player and settled back in on the couch. The roommates were gone, so I was left alone in the Buffy-induced bliss. I loved watching Giles in the library, doing his librarian thing and being all hot. Poor thing doesn't even get any loving this season, unless you count the one night thing he had with Buffy's mom, which I really don't. Unfortunately, I only got through about five minutes of the Homecoming episode before a scene that I didn't remember popped up on the screen.

I leaned forward a little, watching as the camera panned to the library, where Giles was sitting, alone, while reading a book. He had his tweed jacket off and his sleeves were rolled up past his elbows. Suddenly, he shut the book and looked...well, if I didn't know any better, he looked directly at the camera. The camera closed in on him, and he smiled and said, "Hello, Jessica."

I fell off of the sofa in surprise. Did the TV just talk to me?

"Jessica, I know you can hear me," Giles said.

"Um...hello." Have I cracked? Have the four years of college finally killed my brain? "How do you know my name?"

"I know all about you, actually. I know that you've been watching us a lot, but I'm sure that you didn't realize was that I was watching you back." Giles pulled off his glasses, putting them into his shirt pocket. "I'm a Watcher. That's what we do." He stood up from where he was sitting, coming even closer to the screen. "However, I've grown tired of just watching as of late."

"Have you now?" I asked, my voice shaking just a tad. Did someone just slip acid into my Coke while I wasn't looking? I mean, my roommates like playing pranks, but this is ridiculous. "How come?"

"Yes, I have. I want to meet you. Wouldn't you like to meet me? Come and be in Sunnydale?" He smiled at me again. Damn, his eyes were freaking hypnotic!

"Other than the fact that your town is crawling with vampires, sure, I'd love it," I admitted. "How can I do that, though? You're in the TV, and I'm...well, not."

He reached his hand out and suddenly it came right through the TV! I jumped back a little. "Don't be afraid, Jessica. Just take my hand and you can be here with me as long as you'd like."

Very tempting offer. School sucks, anyway. Just as I was reaching for his hand, suddenly the earth started shaking, and I was being pulled back. I reached out my hand as much as I could...

...and smacked my roommate Trevor right in the head. "Jessica, wake up. You fell asleep on the couch again."

"It's my damn couch, so I'll sleep on it as long as I like," I growled. He interrupted my favorite dream. "I thought that you weren't coming back until after two in the morning."

"Party died quickly. Another night of Buffy? Did you have that dream again where Giles asks you to join him in the TV?" Trevor grinned at me. My roommates know about my little Giles obsession. Trevor is the only guy I know who loves the show as much as I do, so he doesn't frown
upon my love as much as others do.

"Yeah, we had just gotten to the part where he reaches out his hand when you woke me up," I said, sitting up. "You couldn't have given me five more minutes?"

"Hey, what are roommates for?"

Roommates suck ass.

Still_Grrr Award!!

2008-04-14T03:37:00Z

I won an award at still_grrr ! *Does the happy dance*

AU Meme

2008-04-08T02:15:19Z

Taken from antennapedia

The Hypothetical AU Meme: Take any one of the fandoms you know I write in, and give me a type of AU (space opera AU, pirate AU, superhero AU, Ancient Rome, etc). I will then explain what story from your chosen fandom I would write for your chosen type of AU.

"Children of the Night," 1/1

2008-04-08T02:03:56Z

Another still_grrr ficlet.

Title: "Children of the Night" 1/1
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 660
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Summary: Takes place near the end of season 1 of Angel. Cordelia, Angel, and Wesley get a very special visitor.
Beta'd By: Just me this time.

Cordelia was sitting at the front desk when the most beautiful women she had ever seen walked in. Cordelia wasn't typically one to admit that another woman was prettier than she was, but this girl was model beautiful. Her luminous blond hair cascaded down to her waist. Her alabaster skin seemed to glow like a pearl. Her gray eyes seemed to hint at the stormy personality that was hidden within. She only wore a simple black strapless dress, but on her it may have well of been a Gucci original made specifically to fit only her.

Angel and Wesley seemed to have seen her as well from Angel's office, because they both came out and starred at her for a moment as well. The woman smiled when she saw Angel. "Father, it's good to finally meet you."

Hearing the name 'father' seemed to snap everyone out of their awe. "Say what? Vampires don't reproduce that way," Cordelia said. She now eyed the woman in suspicion.

"But I am! I am the daughter of Angel and his true and only love, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have traveled from the future to give you the utmost of important messages. I beg of you; you must listen to me," she said, tears brimming her perfect eyes. "My name is Aria Sorrow, and I am here to help with the coming trails and tribulations."

Cordelia could see that Wesley was starting to get suspicious as well. "And just how would you help us with these 'trails and tribulations?'" He took his glasses off to polish them.

"I am a dhampir, the child of a vampire and a human. I have all of the vampire's strengths and none of their weaknesses. I am strong and fast. I am immortal. Nothing can beat or hurt me. I am the chosen one picked by the gods to fight against the coming darkness."

"I thought I was the champion here," Angel mumbled. With an unnecessary sigh, he leaned against the wall. Cordelia could see that he wasn't buying this for a moment. "So, Wesley, should you take this or should I?"

Wesley seemed to catch what he meant. "Actually, I believe that Cordelia would be best for this." He turned to her and smiled. She now knew what he meant as well. "Cordelia, if you please?"

Cordelia stood up and walked around the desk. She walked over to Aria Sorrow so that they were face to face. "Now, let me tell you everything that is wrong with everything that you've said. First off, vampires can't have children. Technically, with the being dead and all, they really can't. Second, when Angel does do the nasty with Buffy, he goes all 'grrr' and evil. If he got loose like that again, I don't think that Buffy would live long enough to bear a child. And third, we all know that pretty people reproduce ugly children. Plus, Aria Sorrow? Who the hell named you? You can't exist!"

Aria Sorrow screamed in pain. "Nooo!!! Logic, my only weakness!" She spun in a circle and erupted into a green flame, only leaving behind a puff of smoke and a nasty smell. "Ewww, she smells like rotten eggs," Cordelia said, holding her nose.

"I think that might be brimstone," Wesley said, walking over to the scorch mark left by Aria Sorrow. "You didn't even mention that time travel is theoretically impossible."

"Next time you can tell the weird freak thing that they can't logically exist," Angel said. "I wonder who sent it."

"Probably Wolfram & Hart. You would think that that they would send something harder to vanquish." Wesley was still staring at the scorch mark on the floor. "I wonder how they did it."

"Well, they probably didn't expect me and my super powers of snarkiness." Cordelia sat back down at her desk with a grin, pulled out a can of air freshener from a drawer, and sprayed the room.

"Champion Thing" 1/1

2008-03-31T23:47:28Z

Last of three still_grrr ficlets for today.

Title: "Champion Thing" 1/1
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 434
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Summary: Angel is just lying around, thinking about life.
Beta'd By: Just me this time.

Angel was lying down on his bed, starring up at the ceiling. Tonight had been a good night. They had gone in, saved the innocents, and killed the bad guy. He couldn’t stop himself from being glad that they had done it and proud of how well it had went. Things were starting to become a science, really. Cordelia would have a vision, Wesley would research it until they knew exactly what they were dealing with, and then they would all go in together and kill it. Strangely, this was probably the happiest that he had been since being with Buffy in Sunnydale, but he still wasn’t ‘losing the soul’ happy. He still understood that they were really only making a small difference in the whole ‘good vs. evil’ war, and that seemed to be enough to keep him…him.

Cordelia ran into the bedroom, bringing him back down to earth and also reminding him why he wasn’t completely happy. It wasn’t his bed that he was really lying on, but Cordelia’s. He had been staying here until they got a new base of operations because Wolfram & Hart blew up his offices, which contained his apartment. “Hey, Brood Boy, I just had a vision. Want to come out and hear about it?”

“I wasn’t brooding,” Angel said, sitting up.

“No, you were just sitting alone, on Cordelia’s bed, staring up at the ceiling and not doing anything but being lost in your own thoughts,” Wesley said, walking into the room behind her, holding a large book in his hands. “That doesn’t sound like brooding at all.”

“I could just be thinking about other things than just brooding,” Angel said, swinging his legs off the bed and standing up.

“Well, whatever you’re doing, stop doing it and come do your job.” Cordelia put her hands on her hips and looked at him. “Now it’s the time to be all Dark Avenger or whatever you want to call yourself.”

Instead of responding to her, he just smiled and walked past her, the coat he hadn’t bothered to take off yet billowing out behind him as he walked. He’d never admit it, but he kind of liked it when Cordelia called him stuff like that. It was better than Brood Boy at any rate.

He could hear Wesley comment from the other room, “Does he just constantly have a fan blowing around him? How does he billow all the time?”

“I guess it’s a Champion thing,” Cordelia replied. Angel knew that it was going to be impossible for him to wipe the grin from his face now.

"Escape" 1/1

2008-03-31T23:43:31Z

Another still_grrr ficlet.

Title: "Escape" 1/1
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: Just a little bit of evil hand syndrome
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 276
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Summary:What Lindsey is thining about after walking out of Wolfram & Hart in "Dead End."
Beta'd By: Just me this time.

Lindsey left the office with a smile on his face. He didn’t actually think that he’d get away with this. He had shot up one of the main offices of Wolfram & Hart and had basically told the head honchos to take their promotion and shove it up their asses. He would actually be kind of surprised if he made it out of the building alive. He didn’t really expect to. However, if he was going to die, then he was going to die as an ex-employee of Wolfram & Hart, and not a current one. This place had messed with his head one too many times, and now he was done with it.

He was amazed when he actually got out of the building and into the daylight. Now that he wasn’t working for an evil law firm any more, maybe he could work on his tan or something. He really didn’t know what he was going to do with himself, but he knew that, if he wanted to live past today, then he needed to get the hell out of LA, and fast.

At least he got to grab Lilah’s ass before getting out of there. It had been something that he’d always wanted to do, and now he had an evil hand to blame it on. It was a nice and convenient excuse.

"Not Made for a Life of Leisure" 1/1

2008-03-31T23:37:59Z

Just one of a few ficlets that I put up at still_grrr.

Hope y'all like them.

Title: "Not Made for a Life of Leisure" 1/1
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: Character death
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 249
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Summary: What is going through Gunn's mind during the end of "Not Fade Away."
Beta'd By: Just me this time.

Gunn could still feel the blood seeping out from the wound in his stomach, even as he swung his axe at the first demon that came running his way. Illyria had said that he only had minutes to live. He wasn’t sure if he believed her, but he decided that, just in case that she was right, he was going to make sure that his last minutes counted.

The first demon went down easily, as did the next few. In his mind, Gunn was counting who each death was for: the first one was for Fred, the second was done for Wesley, the third for Cordelia, the forth for Alonna…the list just kept going on and on. If he had time to think about it, he would realize that they had lost a lot of people over the years. If he didn’t know any better, this might seem worthless.

But he knew better.

After the seventh demon, the blood loss got to him, causing him to lean against a brick wall, sliding down it until he hit the ground. As the world darkened around him, all he could do was think about how his life turned out. It wasn’t that he wished that he wasn’t here, that he had never met Angel. No, the only thing that he wished was that he could have done more. He smiled, thinking that he wasn’t really made out for a long life of leisure anyway. People like him didn’t just fade away.

"Mistakes" 1/?

2008-03-22T16:48:17Z

I wrote the first part for winter_of_angel, but I liked it so much that I'm pretty sure I'm going to continue it. I keep coming up with new starts. Wonder if I'll actually finish anything.

Title: "Mistakes" 1/?
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: Character death
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Episode Rewrite: Ats Season Three, Episdoe 17 "Forgiving"
Summary: What if Angel succeeded in what he started at the end of the episdoe "Forgiving?" Spoilers for up to that episode.
Beta'd By: Just me this time.

"This isn’t Angelus talking. It’s me, Angel.” Angel kept the calm look on his face that he had been forcing the entire time he had been in the room. He felt like he was going to explode at any minute, however. “You know that, right?”

Angel watched as Wes blinked once, the universal signal for people who can’t talk for ‘yes.’ *Blink once for yes, twice for no.*

“Good.” Angel snatched the pillow from under Wes’s head and pushed it down onto his face. He had so many things running through his head at the moment. How Wesley was going to pay for what had happened to his son. How Angel would never forgive him. There were many, many things that Angel wanted to say. Instead, he kept silent. He didn’t want anyone running in and stopping him from this.

Wesley struggled weakly, but he was already so helpless from the blood loss than it barely took a minute or so for him to stop struggling. Once Angel was sure that he was dead, he sunk down into the chair that was beside Wes’s bed. He was still holding the pillow in his hand.

It was suddenly as if Angel was hit by a brick wall of memories. Meeting Wes in the apartment in Los Angeles, with Wes all decked out in leather, trying be a ‘rouge demon hunter,’ and neither or nor Cordelia had the heart to tell him how ridiculous he actually looked. Seeing Wes tied up in the chair while Faith held the knife to his neck, and tasting the fear in the back of his throat that his friend might die. Seeing Wes in the hospital after the office blew up. Angel looking at him through the window briefly after he got shot. Wes begrudgingly forgiving him for firing all of them. Angel seeing him lead the people of Pylea in an uprising. More and more memories were popping up.

Oh God, what had he done? He had killed one of his closest friends! He had made a terrible mistake. He shouldn’t have done this. It was too rash. Wesley couldn’t have meant any harm to Connor. Angel knew how much he loved Connor. He loved Connor almost as much as Angel does. Now there was only one way to fix this.

It didn’t take much for Angel to drain the rest of the blood from Wes. The demon inside of him howled for more, but there really wasn’t much to take. It was still warm, so that gave Angel a little hope that this might work.

Angel tore his wrist open with his teeth, opened Wes’s mouth, and pressed his bleeding wrist to his lips. “Come on, Wes,” he said, feeling the tears start to fall down his face. “Please drink. I’ll do anything for you if you’ll just drink this.”

After a few moments of nothing, he started to feel a gentle pull at his wrist. He wiped his eyes with his free hand and saw Wes’s eyes flutter. Wes let out a soft moan.

“Yes, that’s good. Keep drinking it, Wes. Everything’s going to be ok.” To hell with the consequences: Angel couldn’t handle losing both his son and his friend in one night. Angel reached out to stroke his friend’s hair. He didn’t even register the manic tinge in his voice as he continued to talk to Wes while Wes continued to drink. “Everything’s going to be ok. We’ll find Connor together and we’ll fix everything. Everything’s going to be alright.”

"Bragging" 1/1

2008-03-16T06:00:12Z

Title: "Bragging" 1/1
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: None
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Summary: After a night of killing demons, Wesley listens as Gunn describes the night to Cordelia and Fred.
Beta'd By: Just me this time.

Wesley was sitting on the floor of the Hyperion, cleaning his weapon that he had used that night, a sixteenth century broadsword that Cordelia had given him for his last birthday. He listened as Gunn discussed the night’s activities with Cordelia and Fred.

“We were fighting these big purple dinosaur things in the sewers tonight. We followed them down from the park where they were trying to kidnap these people.” Gunn picked up a quarterstaff that was sitting in the weapons cabinet. “We starting fighting in the sewer, and one of them tried to get me, but then I stabbed him in the stomach like this.” Gunn demonstrated by jabbing the quarterstaff into the air and toward the wall.

Wesley managed to not roll his eyes at Gunn’s bragging, but he thought that it was a little silly. He wondered why he always felt the need to tell the women exactly how his martial prowess had once again saved the day, while Wesley was usually the one who got knocked into the wall or something. This is why the next thing that came out of Gunn’s mouth surprised Wesley a little bit.

“And man, you guys should have seen Wes tonight. He just ran straight up to the other Barney looking creature and lopped his head off like this!” Gunn swung the quarterstaff similar to a baseball bat, accidently taking out a vase along with the swing.

“Whoa, you just like, totally killed that vase, Gunn.” Cordelia sighed and walked over with a broom that she had gotten from the corner of the office so that she could sweep up the mess. “Good job with the demons, though. That’s two more evil creature things that we don’t have to worry about.”

Fred walked over to Wesley and sat down next to him. “Wow, so you really chopped its head off?” Wesley nodded. “That’s incredible. I could never do anything like that.”

“It was nothing, really.” Wesley wasn’t used to getting compliments on his fighting skills. It made him feel as if he was more than just a walking dictionary or something. He thought that he was worth more than just for his research skills. Maybe now others would see it.

“So, what kind of demon was it?”

Okay, so maybe his skills were really more of a combination of martial and research skills. Still, it made him feel good that the others were finally acknowledging all of his abilities.

"New Ideas" 2/2

2008-03-11T05:46:45Z

Title: "New Ideas” 2/2
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse
Warnings: Hmm…a little language. Dirty thoughts. Not too much badness going on. 
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is God, and I'm just a lowly worshipper. None of this is mine...blah, blah, blah.
Summary: After spending a lot of extra times with Giles for the first time in a while, Buffy realizes just how much her feelings 
for him have changed. The story starts just after Season 5, Episode 1 “Buffy VS. Dracula” but Riley left Buffy over the summer 
and Dawn doesn’t appear out of nowhere. 
Beta'd by: This is running way late, so it wasn’t betad. If you guys catch something, let me know and I’ll change it.

She woke up in enough time to run to her first class, and her classes blew by. She was nervous about seeing Giles for training at three o’clock. On one hand, she couldn’t understand how she could be nervous, because it was just Giles, but, on the other hand, it was Giles, and, with this whole new concept of having the hots for Giles, she didn’t know if she should dress up or just act like everything is normal. She decided to just try and act normal.

Giles seemed to sniff out that something wasn’t normal as soon as she walked through the door, however. She knew that she was acting a little strange. Well, it was either that or when she was distracted enough so that Giles managed to get one good hit against her with a quarterstaff (they were alternating weapons at the moment) and sent her flying into a bookcase.

Giles ran over to her as she stayed down on the ground for a moment. “Buffy, are you alright? I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

“It’s alright,” she said, lying without effort. It actually hurt like hell, but she knew that it would pass soon. Right now, though, it felt like a mule had kicked her in the stomach where Giles had hit her. “I’ll be fine.”

Giles helped her sit up and helped her get over to the couch. “Buffy, is everything ok today? You seem distracted. Normally, you would have dodged an attack like that.”

Buffy sighed, and then winced as the breath hurt the hell out of her. “I’m doing alright. My concentration is just a little off.” She looked up at him and smiled. “I think we’re done for the day, though. I have to work to breath here.”

“Are you sure you’re ok? Would you like some tea?”

Buffy laughed. “God, you British people and tea. Sure, why not. I’ll have some tea. Does it really fix everything, or do you just like to pretend that it does?”

Giles just smiled back at her. “Oh it does fix everything. Let me make you a cup and you’ll find out.” She watched him as he turned and walked to the kitchen, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking at his ass as he walked away. Now, for the first time, she understood the phrase ‘I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.’ All these years of fighting on the Hellmouth had done wonders for his body. She couldn’t see too much of it under the clothing that he wore, but, through his jeans, she could tell that he had a good butt. He could probably sell workout videos with that butt.

Then she looked away, mortified over exactly how much thought she had just put into Giles’s ass. Willow was right, she had it and she had it bad.

She was still trying to recover a few minutes later when Giles walked back in with a tray that had a teapot, two cups, and more things to put in tea than she thought was possible. He set it down on the coffee table in front of her, taking a chair that was cornered next to the sofa that Buffy was still sitting on. “So, what do you like in your tea?” he asked her.

Buffy just realized that, in the four years that she had known Giles, she had never sat down and had tea with him before. She wasn’t even sure if she had ever had ‘proper’ tea, as Giles would say. She shrugged at him. “Don’t know, actually. Why don’t you fix it the way you like it and we’ll experiment.”

She watched him as he poured tea into the two cups, and then put two cubes of sugar and some milk into both of the cups. She accepted the cup from him when he passes it to her, leaning back and taking a sip of it. She found that it tasted great. She’d had iced tea before, but never hot tea. It was like hot chocolate, but better, and she never thought that she’d be saying that anything was better than chocolate. “Wow, we should definitely have tea more often if it’s always this good.”

Giles smiled at her. She loved the way that his green eyes crinkled when he smiled. She couldn’t believe that she had never noticed that before either. She really was an oblivious person.

Soon enough she was so wrapped up in conversation with him that she could barely take the time to notice anything about his looks. She was able to talk to him in a way that she had never been able to talk to a boyfriend. Not Angel, not stupid ass-face Parker, and not Riley had been able to relax Buffy enough so that she could talk so freely. She didn’t feel the need to act or be a certain way. She tried to be as mature as possible with Angel, which had totally misfired in the worse possible way. Still so hurt from Angel, she was willing to be or do anything to be with Parker, and that was a terrible mistake. Riley had wanted her to be more normal than she could ever be. She had wanted normal with him, and she had gotten hurt again. She was starting to think that Willow may have had the right idea about rejecting boys forever before the idea of Giles hit her over the head like a ton of bricks.

“Buffy?” Giles’s voice brought her out of her thoughts. “Are you sure that you’re feeling ok? You still seem a little distracted.”

“Well, let me put it this way. I think I just figured something out.” She smiled at him.

“Oh? Is it a good or a bad thing to have figured out?” Giles smiled back at her.

“I’d call it a good thing, a very good thing.” She looked down at her watch. “I kind of need to run. I need to do some homework before patrolling tonight. So, are we meeting tonight at ten o’clock still?”

Giles nodded. “Yes, in the same cemetery that we started in the night before.” He stood up and walked her to the door. “I shall see you tonight, then.”

Before she left, Buffy stood up on her tip-toes and kissed him on the cheek again, but this time hung around for the extra second to check his reaction. She was pleasantly surprised that he didn’t look horrified by it like she had feared he would. “See you tonight,” she said, practically floating out the door afterwards.

That night, Buffy had gone through a little extra effort to get ready for patrol. Of course, she couldn’t exactly go out in a skirt and heels, but a little extra make-up and curls in the hair wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion, would it? She ended up picking out a silk blouse and a good pair of jeans to go out in, with a pair of black boots. She knew that all of these nice clothes would probably be covered in dirt before the end of the night, but the she figured that the thought still counted.

She met Giles out at the cemetery at the appropriate time. He smiled at her when she walked up. “You look nice tonight. Is there anything that you’re celebrating?”

She smiled when he complimented her. “Well, I’ve got something that might be worth celebrating.”

“What would that be?”

“If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a surprise.” She started to walk through the graveyard. “I’ll tell you about it later, okay?” She hoped that she would be doing some celebrating tonight, anyway, and not crying on Willow’s shoulder about how Giles rejected her and how she could never face him again.

He nodded, and they started patrolling through the first of what would be six graveyards tonight. It was impossible to hit all of the twelve graveyards in one night and still get enough sleep to function the next day. What Giles had thought of was to check which ones had burials in them the day before and go to those. That usually got them going to six a night, sometimes more, and sometimes less.

That night was far busier than the night before. The night before, they had only found three vampires in five graveyards. Tonight, they found a large group of vampires in the first graveyard, preparing for something or another that looked like it could be important. Buffy wasn’t really interested in the why or how, as much as how great these vampires would look as little piles of ashes under her boots.

She watched Giles in action. He had brought an axe tonight, and she could barely stop watching him swing it to lop off the head of a vampire to do her own duty. When she finally managed to turn her head away from him, she came face to face with a vampire. With a few kicks and a nicely placed piece of word to shove through his chest, he was quickly dust.

“So Giles, how are you doing over there?” Buffy asked after that vampire was dust, glancing over at him for a second before turning her attentions to the next vampire that came toward her.

She saw him aim his axe at another vampire’s head, taking it off in one clean swoop. “I’m doing just fine over here, Buffy.” Without missing a beat, he swung the axe again into another vampire’s chest, bisecting him. “I actually have something that I need to ask you.”

Buffy launched a series of punches at a vampire, sending him sprawling onto the ground. “Are you sure that this can’t wait?” What could be on his mind that he needed to ask now? “I mean, life and death peril here.”

“The problem with that scenario is watching you right now…I was wondering if I could…maybe we could get a cup of coffee after we’re done here?” Even though he was sparring with another vampire who had thought to bring a sword to the battle, Buffy could see the slight blush in his face.

“Wait…are you asking me on a date?” She paused just for a second too long, taking a roundhouse kick to the chest that sent her falling to the ground. She watched as Giles dispatched the sword vampire with an axe to the head, while Buffy used her stake to throw into the remaining vampire’s chest.

She stood up and brushed herself off, not even looking as the vampire turned to dust. “That’s what you get for getting my shirt dirty,” she snapped at the pile of ashes. “I try to look nice and they still kick me around.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” Giles walked over and brushed some of the grass off of her back. She closed her eyes and smiled at the sensation of his hand brushing down her back gently to get the blades of grass off. “Ever since we made up with each other earlier this year, I’ve…I’ve basically dug my head out of my arse and noticed how much you’ve grown. You’re went from the flighty teenager that stayed in the library to begrudgingly train to a responsible woman who juggles both college and slaying with seeming ease.”

“I juggle this because of my fabulous Watcher, Giles.” She turned to look at him. “And I’m juggling with good grades this year, I might add. I’d like to think that I’ve dug my head out of my ‘arse’ as well.” She tried to mimic his accent with the last sentence, and failed miserably, which caused Giles to laugh. She then smiled coyly at him. “You don’t ask a girl out on a first date for coffee, Giles. Maybe a dinner tomorrow night would be more appropriate, don’t you think?”

She watched as a broad grin swept across his face. “I do believe you’re right. Dinner it is.”

For: secondalto / Katy
The request: patroling with banter, Scooby involvement (choose your
Scoobies), tea.
Unwanted: OOCness, major character death
Highest rating preferred: any

"Alyson" 1/?

2008-03-09T06:04:56Z

Okay, this is the start of a story I wrote a few months back, hoping to finish "Old Slayer" before posting it. However, realizing that I may not quite finish "Old Slayer" until this summer, I figured I could go ahead and post the first chapter of it. Here it is.

Title: "Alyson” 1/?
Author: Lena
Fandom: Buffyverse *Technically Angel*
Warnings: Well, the new slayer is foul mouthed, so language.
Rating: R, for language.
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon is God, and I'm just a lowly worshiper. None of this is mine...blah,
blah, blah.
Summary: It starts after the end of Season 2 of "Angel." Buffy is dead and Faith soon follows,
so a new Slayer is called, and she is in Los Angeles. Can Wesley be a proper Watcher to her?
Beta'd by: It was looked over by lauratew , who told me that it was pretty good. I like it,
and I hope it develops. If you guys see any huge mistakes, point them out and I'll fix them.

**Something went wanky with the text. Converting from microsoft word '03 to '07 sucks ass.**

She was standing at the top of some strange type of
structure. Alyson knew that she was dreaming, because she would never stand on
something so high and unstable. She had such Acrophobia that it caused her to
have height Vertigo. When she got too high, things started spinning and she
would have panic attacks. At the moment, however, she felt strangely calm.

She was
talking to someone. It was a pretty girl a little younger than she was; she had
long brown hair. She was wearing an outfit that looked somewhat medieval. The
girl was crying, pleading for something. It sounded like Alyson was underwater,
though. She couldn’t understand anything that was being said. She turned around
to face a ledge. She could see something under it; it looked kind of like a portal.
Things occasionally were coming out of it. She was certain than she even saw a
dragon flying around.

Suddenly
she was running for the ledge. Alyson could see wisps of blond hair flying
around her head. That told her that it couldn’t be her. Alyson had black hair
with pink tips. She jumped. Suddenly she was flying, no, falling, down into the
portal.

She felt searing
pain. It was like she was being torn apart. She almost thought that she could
feel hands pulling her.

She woke up
screaming. She couldn’t stop, not even when her mother came into the room,
trying to soothe her, to calm her down, not even when her father came in,
trying to ask what was wrong. She had screamed her throat raw before she
stopped. She cried for another hour after that.

She stayed
home from school the next day. She kept having more nightmares. They were all
different girls, but almost all of them involved something supernatural. It was
like all of the things that she had read about in books and watched in her
favorite movies. One girl in medieval clothing was burned at the stake after
saving a town from vampires. Another girl looked as if she was living during
the French Revolution. Another who looked like Foxy Brown had her neck snapped
by a bleach blond Billy Idol wannabe. There was only one girl who wasn’t killed
by something supernatural. It was another dream that made her cry.

She looked
older than Alyson by a few years. Alyson was seventeen, and this girl looked
about twenty, maybe nineteen. Instead of going to college, she was in a prison
cell. She was staring at someone through plate glass. It was a handsome guy,
around thirty, with dark hair and beautiful blue eyes hidden behind glasses.
Whatever he was telling her was causing the other girl to cry softly, with
tears running down her face but not making any noise.

She walked
back to her cell after the visit was over. In her cell, Alyson caught a glimpse
of her in a polished steel mirror. The girl had long brown hair and big brown
eyes. She had skin that would be tan if she got to see more than an hour of sun
each day, but now it just looked a little yellow. Her hair was frizzy, as if it
hadn’t seen a comb in days.

Alyson
watched as her hands tore the sheet off of her bed and fashion a noose out of
it. Alyson screamed for her to stop, but it seemed as if she couldn’t hear her.
Alyson could feel the sheet around her neck. It was rough and scratchy, as if
the sheet was years old. It seemed at if she had tied it to the bedpost,
because Alyson could feel her legs slide out from under her, and she suddenly
couldn’t breath. She started choking. It almost took a full minute for her to
stop breathing.

She woke up
screaming again.

“Are you
sure it was suicide?” Wesley couldn’t believe what the prison warden was telling
him. Less than two days after he had went to tell Faith about Buffy’s demise,
he had received a call at the Hyperion that Faith had hung herself inside of
her cell, only minutes after his visit. He knew that Angel should have been the
one to tell her, but he left soon after Willow
informed them all of Buffy sacrificing herself to keep their dimension from
being pulled together with a hell dimension.

The warden
confirmed to him that yes, it was suicide. She had been found during the next
fifteen minute round, hanging from her bedpost. She didn’t have a cellmate at
that time, so it was highly unlikely that it could be murder.

This meant
that they were without a slayer. He wondered who would be the next one called,
where she would be, who she would be. Another poor young girl set on the road
to an early death. He hung up the phone, put his head on his desk, and started
to cry.

Alyson had three days worth of
nightmares before she could finally go back to school. She felt different
somehow. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she wasn’t the same as she was
before she started having the dreams.

Alyson went to one of the high
schools in Los Angeles.
Her parents could easily afford to send her to a private school, but she didn’t
want to have to wear a uniform involving a skirt. Alyson didn’t even own a
skirt. She would like to keep it that way. She preferred to wear jeans and
metal band t-shirts to plaid skirts and blazers.

She didn’t have too many friends.
She wasn’t the most popular girl in school. People didn’t pick on her, but they
didn’t seek her out for fashion advice, either. Usually, when she did see
someone getting picked on, she looked the other way. She always figured better
them than her.

That day was different. Four
football players had cornered this little geeky guy after school. He was one of
the few kids that she considered cool at her school. She even played
Vampire: the Masquerade with him a few
times. She handed her backpack off to another friend and walked over to the
jocks to make them stop. They only laughed at her. When she insisted again, one
of them shoved her. Normally, one shove would have sent her stumbling and
crashing to the ground. She was incredibly clumsy. Today, however, the football
player’s shove felt like little more than leaves blowing on her.

She grabbed his hand, twisted, and
pulled him away from her friend. She was positive that she heard his wrist
snap, and he went down, howling in pain. Another one turned to try and slap
her, and she reared back her fist and punched him square in the nose. It looked
like she had broken it. The other two grabbed their friends and ran away.
Alyson could only look down at her hands. She hadn’t even broken a sweat and
she had broken one boy’s wrist and had broken another’s nose. Her hand didn’t
even hurt from the punch like she thought it should. Her friend, the geek,
thanked her profusely for helping him. He had already been beaten up last week
by those guys.

She got called to the principal’s
office the next day. Apparently, the boys had told their parents about the
fight, and their parents had gone to the school. Alyson was actually surprised
that the boys had admitted that they were beaten by a girl. The principal told
her that fighting would not be tolerated at his school. She was suspended for
three days. The only reason that he could even suspend her was that it happened
on school grounds, even though it was after school was over.

A few days later, she was walking
from a friend’s house to her home. About a block from her house, she felt as if
she was being followed. She could feel all of the hairs stand up on the back of
her neck. When she would look behind her, nothing was there. She finally broke
into a run when she finally caught a glimpse of what was following her. It
looked like a monster. Its face was all bumpy and messed up. It had fangs. She
couldn’t believe it, but it looked like a vampire!

She finally reached her front yard,
but the thing caught her by the ankle, bring her down. “Slayer,” it hissed,
salivating. She managed to reach for a large rock that her mother kept in her
rock garden. She had always wondered what exactly a rock garden did, but now
she was grateful that her mother had her odd hobbies.

She grabbed the rock with one hand,
bringing it down on its head. It screamed in pain, rolling off of her. She
jumped up and ran for a tree, yanking a branch off. She had read in different
novels that wooden stakes through the heart would kill vampires. Some, however,
would say that it didn’t work at all, or it had to be from a certain tree. She
only hoped that it did work.

The vampire stood up, looking a
little shaky. He laughed when he saw her with the stick. “What are you gonna do
with that, little girl?” It turned away from her as her mother and father ran
out of the door, obviously coming to see what the commotion was. Her mother
screamed as soon as she saw it. “Oooh, looks like a family reunion.” He almost
looked like he was drooling.

Alyson gave a roar unlike anything
she had ever done before. It sounded like a mother lion defending her cubs to
her. She ran as fast as she could toward the vampire, punching him in the face,
possibly breaking his jaw. Before he could react, she kicked him in the groin,
causing him to double over. One more punch to the head sent him tumbling to the
grass, unconscious. Before her parents could react other than stare in shock,
Alyson reached down and plunged the stick through its heart.

It immediately exploded into a
greasy dust, getting in her clothes, hair, and mouth. She stood back up, in
shock. She let the stick fall down to the ground.

“Alyson?” Alyson heard her mother
talking to her. “Honey, what just happened? What’s going on? Was that a
vampire?”

In response, Alyson promptly
fainted.

Wesley was sitting at his desk in
his office at the Hyperion. It had been less than a week since Faith’s death,
and he was still distraught. However, he knew that if he dwelled inside of his
apartment, he would only slowly kill his liver with scotch. Instead, he came to
work, hoping that he could do some work.

“Hi, Angel Investigations, we help
the helpless. How can I help you?” He heard Cordelia chirp from the front room.
Someone had obviously come inside. He knew he should get up and greet whoever
it was, but he hung back until he knew he was needed.

“What’s a slayer?” It was a girl’s
voice, almost a woman. He knew now that he was needed. He got up from his desk
and walked into the front room, standing behind Cordelia at the front desk.

The girl was about five feet and
eight inches tall. She had shoulder-length black hair, with pink tips on the
bottom. She had bright blue eyes that were filled with questions. She looked to
be about one-hundred and forty pounds, somewhat muscular. She was wearing an
old Van-Halen t-shirt that looked older than her, torn jeans, and high-top
sneakers. Her eyes were rimmed with black eyeliner and she was wearing a shade
of dark red lipstick.

When she saw him, her mouth
dropped, as if in shock. “You!” She raised her hand and pointed at him. “You were
in my dream?”

“Excuse me?” He usually wasn’t the
one that girls dreamed about.

“You were visiting a girl in a
prison. You told her something that made her cry, and then she hung herself in
her cell. It was the girl with brown eyes! What did you tell her?” she asked
accusingly.

Cordelia turned and looked at him,
in surprise. There was no way that this girl could have known this, unless she
was called. He knew that some slayers had dreams of slayers past. He took a
deep breath. “I….I told her about a friend of hers who died.” Buffy and Faith
were hardly friends, but he wasn’t sure what to tell this girl yet.

The girl stood there for a moment,
lost in thought. Finally, she asked, “Did her friend have blond hair? And did
she have a sister? It felt like a sister anyway, I’m not sure.” The girl had
started pacing nervously.

This girl had to be the next one
called. “What makes you think that?” Cordelia asked her. Wesley had been
rendered speechless by all of this.

The girl stopped pacing. She looked
and Cordelia and said, “She was the only other modern girl I dreamed about. The
others were from way long ago, like,
one was a medieval girl who was burned at the stake after rescuing this town
from vampires. Another girl was a Native American. There was this other girl
who I think was in the French Revolution.” The girl looked past Cordelia and at
him. “It is her, isn’t it?” She collapsed down to the floor, sitting on the
hard, cold floor and starting to cry. “What’s going on here? What’s wrong with
me? A vampire attacked me last night! A fucking vampire! I didn’t even think
they existed! I even staked it with a tree branch! It wanted to hurt my
parents! It called me a slayer! What the hell is that?”

Wesley walked around the desk to
the girl, sitting down on the floor in front of her. “What’s your name?” he
asked her.

“Alyson Ouseley.” She looked up at
him. She seemed to calm down a little. Maybe he was helping her. “What’s
yours?”

“Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. That’s
Cordelia Chase.” He pointed to Cordelia, who waved as if merely saying hello.
“I think we can help you. Where are your parents?”

“Dad’s at work and Mom’s at home.
They don’t even know I’m here.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a
flyer. It was an Angel Investigations flyer. “It’s says you help the helpless.
I’m feeling pretty damn helpless right now.”

“Let’s call your parents and get
them here. This is something they need to hear.”

Mr. Pryce called her parents after
she gave him the number. She almost fainted on the spot when she first saw him.
It seemed to validate her even more than just seeing the vampire the night
before. If he was real, then her dreams meant something. If they meant
something, then she wasn’t just crazy.

When her parents arrived, the first
thing they did was to scold her about coming here alone. They were grateful,
however, that they hadn’t experienced some mass hallucination the night before.
Alyson had really killed a vampire.

They were sitting in his office,
waiting for him to begin telling them just what was going on.

“Into every generation, a Slayer is
born. One girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one with the strength and skill
to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil ways, to cease their
destructive manners, to prevent the end of the world. When one Slayer dies, the
next one is called.” Everything that Mr. Pryce was saying sounded like a fairy
tale gone wrong. It would sound like a bad movie if she wasn’t going through
it.

“Recently, there were two slayers.
One died, but she was resuscitated. However, since she was clinically dead, so
another was called. There were two slayers, but both of them died recently.”
Alyson looked down when he said that. She could clearly remember seeing both of
them die. “You daughter seems to be the next slayer called.”

“Is there any way that she can not
be a slayer?” Her mother had always wanted the perfect daughter. They got along
fine, but Alyson wasn’t exactly the blond cheerleader that she expected.

“Mom, I don’t think that you can
just turn off destiny,” Alyson snapped. “If there were, don’t you think the
last girls and all the girls before wouldn’t have turned it off?”

Her father raised up his hand,
trying to pause the two of them from going on. “What do we do now? That thing
last night followed her home! She’s not safe!”

“No, sir, she’s not safe. She may
never be safe again.” Mr. Pryce took off his glasses, wiping them and putting
them back on before continuing. “What we can do for her is to train her to
properly defend herself and to fulfill her calling.”

“You can’t be serious?” Her
mother’s shrill voice cut Mr. Pryce off. “The last girl who fulfilled this
calling died, and all of them before her! Why on earth do you thing that I
would let my daughter do this? Are you…”

Alyson interrupted her. “I want to
do it, Mom.”

Her mother stopped screaming, and
turned back to look at her. “Honey, you can’t be serious.”

“Mom, trust me, I know more than
anyone that all of these girls died.” It was haunting her dreams. Of course,
she understood. “I want to do this, though. It’s what I’m supposed to do.
You’re the one who keeps saying that I have no direction in life. Isn’t this
the biggest direction I can find?”

“Alyson, this isn’t what I meant.”
Her mother sounded on the verge of crying.

“But it’s apparently what I am. I
can make a difference in people’s lives. I can save people.” She remembered how
good it felt to help her friend against the football players.

Her mother sighed, defeated. “If
that’s what you really want, then fine.”

It wasn’t really what Alyson
wanted, but she felt that it was something that she should do. It was her
destiny, after all.

After Alyson and her family left,
with the first training session scheduled for the next afternoon, Wesley walked
back into his office, feeling a bit numb and wanting to be alone.

Cordelia didn’t seem to get this
message, for she followed him into his office, talking the entire way. “Can you
believe it? I can’t believe that the next slayer is actually in Los Angeles. How is Angel
going to feel about this? I think he’s going to freak.”

“If we could get in touch with him,
I would inform him immediately, but he deemed us unworthy of contact with him,
since he didn’t leave a phone number.”

His snippiness didn’t seem to faze
Cordelia at all. “Do you think the Watcher’s Council knows about her? Are they
going to come for her and take her away?” She actually sounded concerned.

“If they knew about her, they would
have already contacted her. I think that we should keep this between us for
right now.” He thought about asking Giles about it, but that would only remind
him of his lose, so he decided against it for right now.

“So, do we tell the taco-loving
girl, Gunn, and Lorne?” It seemed that Cordelia had once again forgotten Fred’s
name.
“We probably should. Who knows how
Fred would handle having someone else introduced at this point.” Wesley wasn’t
sure if Fred was ever going to recover from her time in Pylea. When he had last
checked on her, she was writing complex quantum physics on her wall. “If I can
find a way to get in touch with Angel, we should let him know, too. Wouldn’t
want him to come home to such a big surprise.”