“Janice is dead?” Dawn asked. “What do you mean, she’s dead? You don’t mean dead, do you?”

    “No, actually, I don’t,” Buffy said, looking at Dawn’s best friend. “She’s not dead enough, for my taste. You might want to look away, Dawn. This is gonna be ugly.”

    “What do you mean?” Dawn stared down at her best friend’s corpse. She and Janice had just gone out for a little Halloween fun! It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She’d just wanted to get away from the dark cloud that seemed to surround Buffy, and the constant squabbling that had popped up between Willow and... well, everyone, really, and Giles’s pain-meds, and the knowledge that there was no one you could count on. It was supposed to be a night away! It wasn’t supposed to get all... vampires and evil and... and....

    Dammit. She’d really liked Justin. It had been the first fun night she’d had since before Buffy had died. Having to dust him had felt very traumatic – up until this moment. This moment when she looked down at her best friend, and realized... she’d never hang out at her house again and help her mom make Mexican. Never eat too many nachos with her and get sick at the bowling alley. Never sleep over at her house and juice up on coca-cola and music videos and do each other’s nails and talk about boys. Janice was dead, just like Mom, and Spike, and Buffy....

    Though Buffy wasn’t dead anymore.

    Except... “What the hell are you doing?”

    “I said – you might want – to look away,” Buffy said, sawing through bone.

    “Stop it!” Dawn grabbed her sister’s arm and dragged her and the knife away from Janice’s throat. There was blood everywhere, saturating her sister’s sleeve, no less. Her sister was trying to decapitate her dead best friend! What the hell was wrong with her? “That’s Janice! Stop it!” Buffy tried to pull away, but Dawn fought her, desperate to stop her.

    Buffy slapped her. Dawn stopped dead and stared, her skin tingling, a bruise likely forming. Janice’s blood shone bright on Dawn’s pale face.

    “Her lips are stained with vampire blood,” Buffy said. “I can wait until she turns, and maybe catch her, or I can do this right now.” She hadn’t sent Dawn away. Just said, Look away and thought that would do it. She turned back to the slaughtered teenage girl and sliced through sinew and bone while her sister stood and watched in shock. Janice... her eyes staring... Janice... her face waxy and false... Janice....

    “You’re a monster,” Dawn whispered to her sister.

    “Just figure that out now, did you?” Buffy snapped. She tore off the head and kicked it into the shrubbery. It rolled down the cliff to splash into the creek. “There. It’ll take at least three days to find that, and by that time, there’ll be no chance of her turning vamp on us. Now go the fuck home.”

    Dawn stared at her sister. Not her sister. Who was this creature?

    Buffy was The Slayer. That was all she was anymore. Dawn hadn’t realized it until this moment.

    Her sister was still dead.
 

***
 

Buffy opened her mouth, and sang.

Life's a joke
And I’m the easy mark
Abandoned to the dark
Alone without a spark.
Nothing’s right
When death’s your only gift,
And your friends get all miffed
Because they left a rift

Raging at the skies
Breaking down that wall
One more creature down
One more time around
Again, again...
Bound to these wretched chains
A slayer’s blood inside of your veins
Don't give me lies...
Don't give me lies...

Give me goddamn truth for once!
I need the goddamn truth for once!

Life's a joke.
You don't get to pretend
You loved me till the end
When you won’t let me bend.
Say you’re my friends
But I say I’m a slave,
Unbreakable and brave.
Who’m I supposed to save?

The selfish little witch,
The whiny little bitch,
The stupid wacked out sitch.
Oh, that’s really rich.
You didn’t check to see
Didn’t give a shit about me.
You were afraid
So I have paid.

There was such joy
Such love, such grace
‘Cause I’d found my place
In Heaven.

That’s why I destroy
I’m bound for hell
Thanks to you I fell
From Heaven.

Well fuck your fucking heaven.
Hey, Mister Singer, you got it made?
Have a taste of my little blade.
 

The red-faced demon fell to pieces as Buffy hacked at it, over and over and over. He seemed surprised, as if sure his magic could whip Buffy up into a frenzy of emotion which would have him winning.

    That hadn’t happened. The rage had overcome all the magic. He didn’t watch the slayer burn. She was already burnt.

    “There,” Buffy said, splattered blood across her face. “That’s over. The lady has sung.” She glared at her so-called friends. “Anyone dare to call me fat?” She jammed her blooded sword into the stage and stalked out of the Bronze.

    The scoobies stared at each other. Most of them were crying. “Why is she so angry?” Willow asked.

    “It would be either pain or rage, with that kind of loss, Willow,” Giles said gently. He still wore a neck brace, but at least he was allowed to walk around now. “Right now... it seems rage is the stronger within her.”

    “But... but we meant well. We love her. We just wanted her back!”

    “What have we done?” Xander asked.

    “We didn’t mean to,” Tara said.

    “Well, we probably should have checked,” Anya said. “There were ways. Like that thing Spike and Dawn did. That would have been temporary. We could have made bigger plans after. Hell, even a decent seance.”

    “We didn’t think,” Xander said.

    “No. You didn’t,” Anya snapped. She had the strongest feeling that she’d been here before... and had thought the same thing then, too.

    Strange, that.
 

***

    Joan was already three sheets to the wind when she suddenly came to herself as Buffy.

    She’d been in the middle of trying to explain it to the bikers at the bar she was in. “I don’t know. I woke up with my head totally blank in some kind of magic shop. I didn’t give a shit about anyone there, and I was damn sure they didn’t give a shit about me, so I kinda took off.”

    “What do you think you were on?”

    “I dunno. Must have been something.” She took another drink. “Wish I had some more.”

    “Something like this?” The biker beside her slid a little bag of white powder into Joan’s hand.

     Joan’s first impulse was to ask, What is it? but her second one was, Who cares? “That’ll do.”

    She’d already taken two hits when the memories came back. Anya had had another one of her odd moments of deja vu and made everyone search their pockets. The crystal was discovered, identified from one of Anya’s magic books, and destroyed. The aftermath was exactly what Anya had expected, though it was a shame about Dawn losing Tara in her household – Dawn really didn’t have any reliable parental figures at all these days, bar Giles. And he was leaving tonight.

    But across town Buffy – now only Buffy – stopped responding to the men around her. She stopped answering their flirtatious jibes, stopped teasing them about their supposed prowess with violence or women. When one of them pressed another drink in her hand, she swallowed it without tasting it. When one of them made a suggestion that would have had her breaking his face on any other night, she simply nodded. And when four of them took her into the back room, she only stared up at the flickering neon light and let it happen. Over and over and over again.

    She was the slayer. She was powerful. She was strong. She was clever. She could have fought them off.

    She didn’t even say no.

    There are different kinds of powerless.

    When she felt ready to stand and dress and leave, one of the men was dead beside her. She had no idea how that had happened.

 

 

Chapter End Notes:

Lyrics to Something to Sing About by Joss Whedon shamelessly filked.