The Two
by acs
Coffee and Two Wiccans to Go
[reviews]
TITLE: The Two (5/24)
AUTHOR: -Andy- (see2go4me@yahoo.com)
RATING: R (For future violence and Adult situations) - (though Parts 1 thru 12 just barely make it to a PG-13)
DISCLAIMER: This is a derivative work. All characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox Television, and others. I don't own any of this, just the words and plot.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
[1] Feedback is always welcome, preferably the kind that improves my writing.
[2][Revised: 11-Dec-2005]
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Chapter V: "Coffee and Two Wiccans to Go"
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Buffy spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the shops in Sunnydale, attempting to correct her lack of a wardrobe with her meager remaining funds. The feeling that she had no place was much like she'd felt the months after the Sunnydale hellmouth had collapsed. That time she'd also needed to start over and replace closets full of lost clothes but at least that time she'd had a much larger budget, thanks to Giles, and other people like her sister and Willow to shop with. Other people who had some vague idea of what she was going through.
As she carefully selected things she really needed and stared wistfully at things she couldn't justify, Buffy was finding that shopping alone could be boring, with no-one to share the experience or results with. The fun part of shopping, the social part, seemed to have deserted her, now that she was alone. It didn't help that she couldn't really buy everything she might need right away. She needed to be careful to save some of her money. If she found a job that required her to wear a specific style of clothes she needed to be able to purchase them.
But she did make an effort to at least find several things to wear that would lighten her image. Dark colors were fine if she was wandering around cemeteries, but she knew they wouldn't help her get a job. She'd noticed the wary looks thrown her way in a lot of the shops. She really needed to appear less threatening.
While she shopped Buffy kept thinking about her meeting with the Rosenberg woman with some bemusement. She couldn't get it out of her head, certain that she'd somehow bungled the meeting. It wasn't just that she'd neglected to find out if her name really was Willow, something she could have easily found out or even that she resembled a younger, more innocent version of her Willow.
No, what had really confused her was how just touching the redhead had been calming. The simple, brief physical contact had lessened some of the anxiety that had been slowly building in her mind over the past two days. She couldn't explain it but somehow she felt less lost, less disconnected than she had before their brief encounter.
And what mystified Buffy most about it was why she'd done it in the first place. The physical gesture had felt oddly appropriate at the time, even though she rarely touched anyone if she had a choice. Since coming back from the dead the second time she'd distanced herself as much as possible from any gentle physical contact. But for some reason she'd felt the need to physically connect with this person she'd just met. At least she hadn't given into the embarrassing impulse she'd had to hug her.
And while she hadn't explicitly offered to help the slayer, she might as well have. She knew the girl needed some kind of assistance. She obviously wasn't getting enough of the right kind of training from this coven. But Buffy's plan had not originally been to become involved herself. She felt it was too dangerous, in ways she couldn't quite articulate, to invest any of her own emotions in her. She was going to have to watch out for that impulse to jump in and interfere in the future. Hopefully it was only a brief moment of weakness on her part.
Noticing the time on a nearby clock, after finishing another round of trying to second guess her earlier behavior, Buffy brought her shopping trip to an abrupt halt. She had just enough time to take her things back to the loft and change into something more appropriate before her meeting. Fortunately she'd managed to find an appropriate outfit. She had no plans to try to blend into the background but sticking out was also not in her plans.
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Willow hadn't allowed Dawn to come with her, leaving her in a funk back at the coven's house. She didn't think the potentially explosive combination of her often temperamental slayer and this aggressive woman would provide her with any useful information. While she hadn't seen them together yet she had the feeling, from knowing her slayer and from observing the woman earlier, that they would clash. And not in a good way.
But Willow was able to convince a visiting member of the coven to attend the meeting with her. She'd been friends with Tara since college. They'd joined the coven at the same time and though they now lived in different towns they still worked well together. A well balanced practitioner, Tara was much better at reading people, both psychically and emotionally than anyone else she knew. And Willow felt she would need all of the help she could get to figure this woman out.
Normally, in situations where they worked together like this, they would communicate using telepathy. But from the few things Dawn had been able to tell Willow and what she'd observed herself, they were fairly certain this person was sensitive to such things. Walking from the coven house, Willow and Tara had both agreed that they didn't want to risk the possibility that she might hear them or become suspicious so they planned to keep their use of telepathy to a minimum.
They entered the 'Coffee Garten' several minutes early. Looking around they found her already there, sitting at a secluded table near the back. As they headed towards her, Willow noticed how she seemed to startle and pale slightly when she saw Willow's companion, recovering quickly as if nothing had happened. But she also didn't miss how she was dressed less aggressively, in softer colors than she'd worn earlier, and relaxed slightly.
The woman gracefully gestured towards the empty seats across the table from her. "Have a seat ladies. Let's get you something to drink." She turned in her seat as they gingerly sat down and motioned to a waitress to come over and take their orders. She raised an eyebrow at their choices and Willow wondered what she was seeing.
While they waited for the waitress to return with their coffee, Willow silently observed the small woman for a few minutes, not quite sure how to start. "Who are you?" she eventually blurted out when nothing else occurred to her.
With a slight grin, as if she was letting them in on a private joke, she replied, "Summers, Buffy Summers." her tone suggesting that they should already know who she was.
Willow was confused. While she knew she was missing something important, she could almost feel an implied title in the way this woman said her name. She glanced at Tara for a moment for inspiration but only received a thoughtful frown from her and took that as a cue to begin. Tara was obviously seeing something she wasn't.
"Okay... Buffy..." Willow wasn't sure this was really her name and couldn't keep the doubt out of her voice. "I'm Willow and that's Tara. You wanted to talk? Go right ahead. Now's your chance."
Buffy looked at both of them for a moment as if measuring them in some way. "I hate to interfere in something that shouldn't concern me but your slayer so obviously needs help that I can't stop myself."
Tara and Willow looked at each other in surprise, Tara shrugging at her before continuing in her role of silent observer. "Why do you think she needs help?" Willow asked her. "And why does it matter to you?"
"I've been watching her for a couple days now. From what I've seen so far, the first experienced vampire she runs into is going to beat her. She doesn't really have what it takes yet to fight a very determined enemy." She shook her head. "And why am I making it my concern? Does it matter? If you really need a reason, think of me as a very distant relative." She smiled at that idea as if it amused her.
"What's wrong with her fighting skills?" sputtered an offended Willow. "She's been trained the same way the Coven has trained slayers for centuries."
"And how long does the average Coven slayer live after this training?" Buffy asked with apparent interest.
"Most of them... that we have records of... usually survive into their late 20's."
"That seems a long time for a slayer." she mused quietly. "How many vampires and other demons does an average slayer kill during their career? They can't be running into that many if they live that long."
"No, they kill a lot of vampires." Willow protested in a hushed voice to avoid attracting attention. "If Dawn keeps it up she'll be one of the best in over a century. It's her first year and she has already staked 20 vampires. That's twice as many as the previous three slayers in their first year." The woman across from her had a sudden coughing fit at the pronouncement. Willow glanced at Tara who raised an eyebrow at this.
Buffy wasn't able to completely mask her surprise at this information. Once she'd moved to her Sunnydale she'd fought a steady stream of vampires and demons on an almost nightly basis until the town was destroyed. Twenty vampires would have been an average week there. Either the vampires and demons of this world kept a very low profile or there just weren't that many of them. Or the Powers That Be were coddling the slayers of this universe by keeping them away from evil. Though she felt that was unlikely given the tendency for the Powers That Be in her home dimension to throw slayers into suicidal situations almost on a whim it was still a possibility to consider.
But no matter what the reason, as far as Buffy was concerned, their slayer wasn't getting enough of the right experience. "I'm sure that is impressive but it really isn't a lot even for a town on a closed hellmouth. I've staked ten vampires myself since coming to Sunnydale. And I've been here less than a week. If the vampire population has increased so much that she's already run into twice as many as her predecessors your slayer obviously needs to be trained better to improve her chances of surviving."
Willow gasped. "Ten? In a couple days? Why isn't Dawn seeing them if there are that many. And what does the hellmouth have to do with it? It's been closed for over a century."
"Why hasn't she seen them?" Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Well... they've obviously been watching her long enough to know her patrolling patterns. They must be intentionally staying out of her way. Or they aren't locals. And the hellmouth here in Sunnydale? It might be closed but it still attracts more vampires to this town than you would find in one without a hellmouth." Buffy was amazed that they were so unaware of it. "Can't you feel it? The subtle hum? And even closed it is still attracting all sorts of nasty evil. Your slayer isn't going to be ready if any older vampires attracted here decide to attack her. They actually think first, have a plan. From what I've seen, she isn't prepared for that kind of vampire. And if there's an apocalypse she isn't the only one who'll die."
"An apocalypse? Here?" Willow shuddered at the thought. "Why?"
"Yes here. If you look closely I'm sure you'll notice the signs." Buffy knew she was making a big assumption. She hadn't exactly been looking for such signs herself. She'd been too busy. But there had to be a reason she'd ended up in this Sunnydale. Her life really didn't have room for coincidences and an apocalypse seemed like the most likely candidate for her being there. "Don't know why, yet." She admitted.
"Are you offering to help with her training?" asked Willow. "If you don't think she's good enough to stop an apocalypse..."
"While I do plan to stick around for a few months, I don't recall volunteering to fix her problems." Buffy grimaced. "But if you need help with other things I'll be around."
"And how can we trust what you've said? That there is something bad coming?"
"I'm sure your silent friend can tell if I'm lying." Buffy gestured at Tara, who'd managed to keep quiet so far.
Willow blinked in surprise. Tara's ability to read other people wasn't known outside of the coven. There didn't seem to be any possible response to the revelation that this Buffy knew she was being tested so she ignored it. "If we took you up on your offer of help what exactly would you be offering to do?"
"Just lend an extra hand to help your slayer survive what's coming."
"What do you mean 'what's coming'?" a confused Willow asked her. First a mention of an apocalypse and now this?
"An apocalypse doesn't just happen on its own. Something evil is headed your way and your slayer needs to be ready. I can't tell you what it is yet but it's too quiet around here. Those vampires the other night were just the beginning." They didn't need to know she was making it up at this point. While her inbuilt slayer skepticism was insisting that something bad was going to happen she didn't have any proof yet. "But from what I've seen in the past that level of attention from vampires passing through won't last for long. It'll get much worse. And I'm sure somewhere in your books you'll find a prophecy predicting death and destruction in the next couple months. Something has to be drawing these vampires to your closed hellmouth."
"Why a prophecy?"
"Because there's always a prophecy." she said sadly. Her life seemed to revolve around them but she wasn't about to tell these women about that. "And it almost always predicts the death of the slayer or end of the world. If you're lucky you'll have enough time to prepare her for it and you can stop it from happening."
"If there is really an apocalypse coming what makes you think we can stop it?"
"You don't think your slayer being here at this time was a coincidence do you? It really doesn't work that way. And besides..." she grinned mischievously at them "you have me now and I never lose." Okay Summers, that was a bit much, Buffy berated herself. Not only are you trying to scare them when you don't know if something bad is going to happen yourself, but you are promising to help them. "You'll fix up your slayer, we'll fight some evil, save the world, party, and I'll go home."
Willow wasn't quite sure what to make of all of this. She didn't seem to be bragging so much as stating a fact. She filed her words away for future consideration when she had the time to really think about them. For now she needed to learn all she could about this Buffy person if she was going to be around for the next few months, possible apocalypse or not. And the easiest way to start was to involve her in the coven in some way. If she was evil or a danger to them it would be a lot easier to deal with her there. "I'm not sure if you are interested but we have training sessions at the coven house after school every day. Unfortunately you've missed today's." Willow looked at Tara, receiving her silent approval at the idea before continuing. "But if you would like to come with us now we can show you around."
"Where's your slayer at this time of day?" Buffy asked curiously.
"By now? She should be at home. After her training session, she spends the evening with her sister. We've tried to interfere as little as possible in her regular life."
"Good! Family is important. Gives a slayer incentive." Buffy hoped she didn't sound too enthusiastic. "Does her family know about her being the slayer? And what it really means?"
"Sort of. Her only family is her older sister. She knows that Dawn does things with the coven that requires her to spend a lot of time with us. But she hasn't been told exactly what. Her family has had connections to the covens for centuries so I'm sure she suspects some of what is going on." Willow shrugged and got up from the table. "But Dawn doesn't think her sister knows anything about the coven or its real purpose."
Buffy looked up at her quizzically. "I'm assuming you don't want me to say anything to Dawn about this."
"Correct." Both Willow and the still silent Tara nodded. "We don't try to keep many secrets from slayer families. It's just too destructive in the long run. But in the beginning we don't intentionally involve their families. They don't need the added stress of their families worrying about them while they are first learning. We'll have to sit down with both of them and explain it eventually. But for now that's just the way it is." She gestured towards the door in invitation.
Getting up from the table, Buffy and Tara followed Willow out into the sunlight.
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Continued in "Singing the Blues at the Poetry Slam"
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