Not to fear. Spike makes his appearance soon ~Desi




They had been driving for about 2 hours when they came upon a stretch of road that seemed as if the world had forgotten about it. Nothing but scrub brush and limp looking cacti littered the landscape as if just flung there and forgotten about, and Buffy recognized the stretch of road they traveled on in a big yellow school bus. If anyone else noticed where they were, nothing was said as the interior of the SUV remained as silent as the proverbial tomb.

With every mile, her stomach tightened; her insides feeling tangled. The closer they got to what was left of Sunnydale, the more voices started to whisper; ghosts of regret, both old and new, haunting her mind and emptying her heart. She closes her eyes, feigning sleep, unable to control her thoughts as she watches memories play like old movies inside her head, the narrator having a voice very much like the one responsible for the crater known as Sunnydale.

‘A hundred plus years, and there's only one thing I've ever been sure of -- you.’

‘Trust is for old marrieds, Buffy. Great love is wild ... and passionate and dangerous. It burns and consumes.’

‘Why does a man do what he mustn't? For her. To be her's. To be the kind of man who would never...be a kind of man...and she shall look on him with forgiveness and everybody will forgive and love and he will be loved.’

‘Love isn't brains, children, its blood...blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.’

‘I've lived for-soddin'-ever, Buffy. I've done everything. Done things with you I can't even spell. But I've never...been close; to anyone; least of all you. Til last night. All I did was hold you, watch you sleep. And it was the best night of my life.’

‘I know you'll never love me, I know I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man…’

Trying to swallow around the knot that formed in her throat, she feels the warm hand still holding hers tighten around her fingers. Opening her eyes slowly, she looks to her left at the silent redhead still holding her hand. Seeing the worry across her best friend’s face and the way she stared straight ahead made Buffy turn her head to look at what Willow was staring at. Off in the distance there’s a lit area that stood out against the barren expanse of land they drove through; a soft glow that seemed all the brighter when paired against the smoky darkness of the night, seeming to swallow the road they were driving on. Realizing they must be coming up on the excavation site, formerly known as Sunnydale, Buffy’s jumbled thoughts and tangled nerves solidify into one huge knot in the pit of her stomach.

Closer and closer it looms, the glow becoming brighter and brighter and a faint humming is heard, the only sound heard inside the interior of the car they were in other than the slight whispering sounds of their breathing. They continued on, passing brightly coloured pylons and signs with detour and road out and construction pained on their reflective surfaces and still they move ahead, the brightness lightly illuminating the cab of the SUV.

Buffy can feel her hand being squeezed firmly now and she silently wills her support back to Willow with a gentle squeeze in return. Xander fidgets and the weight on the back of her shoulders is lifted as he removed his arm from across the back of their seat; the only sign of his distress is the fisting of his hands in his lap. Slowing down, the somber group comes upon a roadblock, and Angel pulls up slowly to the 2 men guarding it with rifles held loosely at their sides. Rolling down his window, he speaks quietly to one of the men.

Buffy was unable to comprehend the short exchange, her blood roaring through her ears and drowning out everything around her, even the loud humming of what sounded like a dozen lawnmowers, and then the guard was moving back and pushing the wooden arm so that it swung open, granting them passage to the crater beyond. A makeshift road formed at the edge of the crater and they waited for a dump truck to pass by before they slowly made their way down its sloping depths, the silence of the passengers finally broken by a gravelly voiced Xander.

“Welcome back to Hell.”


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She sat on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest as she leaned sideways against the toilet, arms folded on top of her knees with her left elbow resting on the lid and her face pressed against said elbow. The dark curtain of her hair shielded her face from the seeming too bright light overhead, and Faith sat quietly, unknowing if she was shivering from the cold tile floor upon which she sat or from the shock that sent her mind reeling.

’Oh my God! Pregnant! I’m fucking pregnant! What the hell am I going to do? Robin! Oh my God, Robin! What am I going to tell Robin? He’s going to leave me. I just found him and now he is going to leave me. Fuck! Fuck!’

Biting her lip to keep from crying, Faith turned her head and rested her cheek on her arm, her mind a whirlwind of recriminations. A thump on the wall behind her made her jump and she spun around on her butt looking for the source of the sound, her golden-brown eyes wide and startled. Seeing nothing but the wall behind her, she remembered the ‘slayerettes’ shared the bedroom on the other side of that wall. Letting out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, she shook her head at her jumpiness and gathered up the pregnancy test and the booklet in one hand, slowly picking herself up off the floor to sit on the toilet once more.

She looked around the bathroom as if she were seeing it for the first time. The pale grey tiles that divided the walls in half, lead around from one wall in 2 straight lines to the next wall that housed the shower. The shower door was left open, allowing her to see that the entire shower area was covered with the tiles in the same silvery-grey that matched the now standard-sized bathtub that you couldn’t take a proper bath in because it just wasn’t deep enough. Her lips pursed slightly, the left corner of her mouth quirked down as she thought about how she tried to take a bath in it when they first moved in.

’Ugh! If I ever move again, I want a REAL bathtub.’

She noticed a bottle of shampoo that didn’t belong to her sitting on the bathtub ledge and a solitary eyebrow shot up, her head cocking to the side when she suddenly remembered that Dawn had used her shower earlier since the other bathroom was occupied by the dusty slayerettes that had returned from patrol. Smiling, she remembered the fun she had earlier in the evening when she arrived with Andrew, backpacks and sleeping rolls in hand.

Faith had spent an unaccustomed evening doing things she never thought she would do before.

She participated in a slumber party.

It was Dawn’s idea. The slayerettes had arrived back at the house after Dawn and Andrew showed up and getting the ok from Faith and Robin, they all squealed in excitement, including Andrew who sounded more feminine than the girls did. Even Robin joined in, poking fun at the high-pitched girly shrieks while Faith stood there and wondered what in the hell she just signed up for. Shannon and Dominique decided to run to the store with promises of icecream and popcorn while the other 2 girls were showing and cleaning up. Rhona and Vi decided they were on movie patrol and ran to the video store, Vi already clad in pajamas whose pants were adorned with yellow care bears. Andrew and Robin made it official with ordering pizza. At first she seemed out of sorts, never having done this before, but when Dawn came out of the bathroom and found her sitting on the bed looking unsure, she took Faith by the hands and took over. Pulling her to her feet, Dawn turned and made her way over the dresser and started pulling open drawers until she found where Faith stashed her pajamas, or at least what she used as pajamas. Mostly she used to sleep in a tank top and panties, but lately she had been sleeping naked with Robin curled up around her, so really she didn’t have much in the way of pajamas.

“You don’t have any pajamas,” Dawn asked, her brow scrunched up in confusion as she looked at Faith over her shoulder.

Faith shook her head no and Dawn just shrugged.

“No big. We’ll improvise,” and went back to digging through the drawers, pulling out a white tank top and tossing it over to Faith before closing the drawer and disappearing into the bathroom. She returned a moment later with a pair of plaid drawstring pants in varying shades of purple, black and white and handed them to a shell-shocked Faith.

“What am I supposed to do with these,” she asked incredulously.

“Um, duh?!? You wear them,” the younger brunette snarked back at her.

“But, these are yours,” Faith replied, meekly, ducking her head so Dawn couldn’t see her blushing.

“Well yeah, but I brought 2 pairs of pjs with me and since I have a pair on and you don’t have any, you can use those,” and with that Dawn turned to go back into the bathroom once more, saying over her shoulder, “You and I are about the same height so they should fit ok.”

Faith looked down into her hands, the corners of her mouth tugging up slightly at the easy way Dawn had handled her un-suredness. She was treating her like borrowing and lending clothes was a regular thing for them, not knowing that it was the first time ever for Faith.

“Its just that I’ve never been ‘just one of the girls’ before,” she said quietly enough for no-one to hear as she set the clothes down on the bed before reaching up to pull her shirt off, grabbing her white tank off the bed in front of her and pulling it over her head. Kicking off her jeans, she pulled on the pajama bottoms and tired the drawstring lightly. Turning around, she walked towards the closet and the mirror that hung on the back of the door, her smile getting wider as she looked at herself in her borrowed pajamas.

“Ok, hair is detangled,” Dawn’s voice preceded her entry back into the bedroom. Faith turned to face her and saw that Dawn was advancing with a hairbrush. “Ok, cmere. Let’s do the hair.”

Walking over to the younger girl, Dawn grabbed her hand and tugged her over to sit on the trunk at the foot of the bed. Quickly she brushed Faith’s hair and pulled it up in a ponytail before shaking her hair and tugging the elastic out of her hair. She then pulled up the sides and shook her head again, frowning in concentration. Finally she parted the long, golden-brown tresses down the middle and twisted each section into a loose braid which she secured with elastic at each end. Stepping back, she grinned at Faith and declared them ready.

She followed the exuberant teen down the stairs, Rhona and Vi coming in the front door at they reach the bottom step and they all headed for the kitchen.

“Oh my God, Faith! Your hair is so cute like that,” Violet said excitedly, her soft normally timid manner seeming to have vanished and hinting at a Texas accent.

Faith smiled shyly, looked at the pink-cheeked redhead, noticing that she had added poofy looking barrettes, pulling the sides of her short hair up so it looked as if she had mini hair explosions over each ear.

Robin walked into the kitchen just then, his eyes registering his surprise at the braids hanging over his girlfriend’s shoulders.

“Well, now don’t you just look perky? I’m liking the pigtails baby,” he said, his teeth flashing in a grin.

Unable to help herself, Faith grinned back at him and let herself be carried away by yet another ‘normality’, a universal tradition of sorts throughout the transition of girlhood to womanhood that she missed out on growing up and gave in to the laughter and silliness of the slumber party and found a part of herself that she didn’t know existed. She ate pizza and crumbled brownies into her ice-cream and was chased by Dawn with whipped cream and then they in turn chased Robin, Andrew and the girls around with the cans of spray whipped cream. She even teamed up with Andrew threw popcorn at the TV during the cheesy parts of the silly movies they watched and more than once throughout the movie-fest and pig-out, she wished that she had a sister like Dawn.


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They bumped along the man-made road slowly, driving further and further down. All of them stared with wide eyes at the destruction of the town they lived in for so long. Broken buildings were smashed to pieces; various oak, spruce and birch trees were splintered like toothpicks, jutting out the rubble haphazardly, their giant root systems tangling themselves over jagged rocks and crushed cars. Shattered glass twinkled deceivingly in the headlights, seeming from a distance that someone had scattered diamonds throughout the dust and grit. It looked exactly like what it was.

A war zone.

And as they drove along, Buffy felt herself become a little more lost with each passing mile.