To Conquer Death
by Rainne
Interlude: Slayer in Training
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Janna went to sleep in the back seat with her headphones on, and Dakota and Willow began swapping out every hour of driving. There was no way they could sleep the night anywhere with the Council hot on their heels. They needed to get back to Sunnydale as fast as possible so that they could be firmly entrenched before the Council arrived. Therefore they were driving hell-bent-for-leather west to California. The sun was coming up as they crossed the county line, and by the time they pulled up to Buffy's house, Janna was waking up, much against her will. Willow smiled at her. "We're here, Janna," she told her. "Don't worry about your bags, we'll come back for them later."
They shuffled Janna out of the car and up to the porch, where the younger girl felt much as though she were meeting the Queen. She found herself quite tongue-tied, and the women laughed gently at her as Buffy took her inside and tried to ease her nervousness. She finally got the girl to calm down by asking questions about her trip, which brought on a full-scale epic narrative that came to a grinding halt in a truck stop bathroom. Janna's eyes went wide and she dashed out of the house, went rummaging through her bags in the back of the Jeep, and dashed back in again, carrying a wooden box.
"These are the glamours Linda gave me," she explained. "I forgot to take my scar off." She did so, then, and then rubbed the spot briefly where it had been, grinning. "It itches."
"I imagine it does," Willow said kindly. "May I look at your box, there?"
Janna offered it to her. "Keep it. I won't need it any more, now that I'm here, and you're a witch, right? So maybe you can use it."
Willow smiled gratefully and began rummaging through the box, examining each little bag carefully. Janna resumed her narrative. "That's when the Boudreaux found me," she explained. "Boy, were they weird! But my Watcher always said 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth,' and I guess they were my gift horse, because did you see all the stuff they bought for me? Plus putting me up in the hotel with them and taking me all the way to Fort Worth. I was a little creeped out at first — they could've been ax-murderers or something — but they turned out to be just... well, eccentric, I guess."
Buffy nodded and then sent the girl upstairs to get some sleep. Once they heard the snick of her door closing, Buffy and Willow looked at one another. "Does it just seem to you like this trip was way too easy for her?" Buffy commented.
Willow nodded. "In great literature they call it the deus ex machina — god in the machine. It means basically that divine intervention steps in to make sure that certain things happen. Like Janna getting here before the Council to warn us that they're coming after Dakota."
Buffy nodded. "Well I wonder which deus is trying to get involved in our machines?" she mused. "This makes a Slayer very nervous."