A/N:Why was the title of the fic changed ?  fallen_angel didn’t like the original title.

Why is the fic being reposted? Certain facts in the previous chapters didn’t tally   with the things she wanted me to do with the story later on. I could have got DoS to fix them in the original and then linked mine to it but I don’t want fa to think that people have been altering the things in her account in her absence.

Will I be using her ideas or my own? She’s given me a basic framework and I’ll be following that and filling in the details. I’ve also got a number of OC’s. Some of them she has already developed and the rest I’ll be taking care of.

 

Hope all your questions have been answered and that you’ll give me the same support that you gave fallen_angel.

 

Thanks to my beta DoS. Without her I’ll be lost .

 

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Real loss only occurs when you lose something that you love more than yourself. -Vicci

 

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I have an apartment, which is of the good.

 

It has only two rooms, which is of the bad.

 

Sharing with Dawn is driving me crazy! When she told me that she wanted to go to the Academy, I thought she wanted to be a lawyer, and put it down to Gunn’s influence. Unfortunately -- for me -- the Academy shells out singers, actors, directors, choreographers etc, etc, etc…but no lawyers.

 

Apparently, lawyer jokes don’t count as entertainment.

 

Giles wasn’t happy. 

 

I know, I know, that isn’t exactly news, since lately he’s been in a constant state of British uptightness which can only be expressed by being exceedingly melancholy all the time. Seeing how I’ve quit slaying, and Faith’s off damaging teenage ears (while making parents, teachers, priests and all those Giles-like people who are too boring to live shudder in horror), Giles was obviously hoping that Dawn would be his watcher-disciple.  He tried to ‘reason’ with her on the phone, and after an hour she finally shut him up in that uniquely Dawn way by saying, “You can give the ‘Chief-Tweed-wearing –Bespectacled-Tedious-Wanker-Who-Tries-To-Boss-Around-Girls-With-Way-Better-Style-Sense crown to Xander, because I’d rather be signing autographs than watcher diaries!”

 

Giles concluded that it was all Faith’s fault, of course. That’s not true, though, considering that it’s classical music that my sister is “enraptured” with.  Just goes to show you that the world hasn’t been the same since Britney Spears decided to party without her underwear.

 

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“Giles is mad, isn’t he? Dawn asked. “Angry mad, not mad mad.”

 

“Yeah,” I answered, “but not at you. I’m thinking he probably had the phone pressed between his head and shoulders while he cleaned his glasses and when he tried to put them back on he dropped the phone on his toes.  He must be hopping on one foot and cursing right about now.”

 

“I’m going to Luzerne tomorrow with my friends. Sorry, I forgot to tell you before,” Dawn announces after ten minutes of silence.

 

“What about school?”

 

“Cutting. Duh!”

 

“Dawn!”

 

“Relax, I’ll catch up and besides, I’m an adult now. You can’t boss me around anymore.”

 

“You can’t go off with strangers!”

 

“Take a chill pill, mother hen. They’re strangers to you but I’ve known them for six years. You can trust them with the lives of every single person on this planet.”

 

Dawn hath spoken. 

 

Humph!  Where did she learn to be so bossy? And what on earth is a chill pill?

 

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I can’t wait for Dawn to leave.

 

Only twelve more hours, I tell myself.  If I have to put up with another second of Dawn’s torture of the violin, Mrs. Cadaver’ll have a suicide to gossip about—Dawn’s! If I ever get a hold of whichever friend of Dawn’s got her into the wretched Academy, I’m going to stick that much-abused violin up his…well, you get the picture.

 

Five minutes into Dawnie’s “concert”, I had a eureka moment. I’d live at Andrews until Dawn mastered her instrument. How long could it take?

 

Surely no more than a century or two. 

 

Andrew of course wasn’t created to make my life easier. He didn’t answer his phone. His secretary told me he’d been fired, and his landlady threatened to make me pay the rent he forgot to pay, if I bothered her again.

 

“Dear Diary,

 

I’m miserable today and it’s not because of Dawn’s music. That’s just slowly pushing me towards the brink of insanity. Here’s what’s really bothering me:

 

1>    I miss Spike

2>    I can’t understand half the people on this island. Spanish or French? Hindi or Urdu? How do you tell the difference? The few people who do speak English give me weird looks when they find out that I’ve got no clue who Shah Rukh Khan is, or what Flamenco is, and I’m not kidding when I say I’ve never heard any Arabic songs. Whose brilliant idea was it to cram so many cultures into one puny city anyways?

3>    I miss Spike

4>    I can’t get to work without getting lost. At work, I’m forced to doctor people who don’t know what’s wrong with them in the first place!

5>    Mrs. Cadaver is trying to convince everyone that I’m a psychopath who busted her boyfriend out of prison

6>    Someone (read Mrs. Cadaver) has been handing out fliers warning everyone about a witch (read Dawn) who will switch their gender.

7>    I miss Spike

 

Buffy”

 

I close my diary and focus on Willow who just appeared at the door…wearing a fuzzy purple sweater!

 

“Let me guess. Kennedy didn’t like whatever you got for her last Christmas, and this is her revenge.”

 

“Something like that. I’m starting to fear hearing loss. Can we go out so Dawn can practice in peace?”

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I love cities at night. 

 

The cool air, the dancing lights, the chatter and everything that makes them peaceful and alive simultaneously. We window shop mostly, and Willow keeps up a continuous chatter about Kennedy. Somehow, her monologue lacks that hidden spark that her tales of Tara always inspired.

 

I wonder if I sound passionate and proud and giddy and totally in love when I talk about Spike. I remember then that I don’t talk about Spike at all, and stop wondering.  At that precise moment I hear it. That song! The one that has the images of a blond vampire hijacking a funeral attached to it in my mind.

 

I died, so many years ago; but you can make me feel that it isn’t so…

 

It’s a blind chase. Follow the voice. Follow the voice. Down one road and then another. A right turn and then a left one. Suddenly strong arms grab me and I’m pulled into a dirty alley.

 

“Well, lookie what we’ve got here, boys…”

 

The voice that speaks isn’t the one I was chasing. It belongs to a dark-skinned, curly haired vampire. Behind him I can see six others, all dressed in classic vampire attire.  Yup, you guessed it. Tons of leather and styles that haven’t been in since the last century. 

 

I curse myself for not carrying a stake and for not training once in the past seven years. Hey, and let’s not forget the classic slays-free spell: don’t wanna slay any baddies no more? No problemo! We’ll do a spell so they can’t sense you, and you can’t sense them anymore. They live without your death giving them an I killed a slayer status, and you live guilt free about the fact that they are alive.

 

Perfect, right?

 

Right.

 

The leader circles around me. Is this supposed to scare the shit out of me? I let him complete two circles before casually twisting his head off. I use the split second advantage his death gives me over the shocked vamps to dispose of another one, and then it’s me against the five of them. They’ve all got their weapons, but I can’t reach for mine.

 

I fight. 

 

I punch, I kick, I dodge and I realize my reflexes aren’t what they used to be. I don’t hit as hard, nor am I as fast. Why oh why did I give up slayer training? A normal life doesn’t mean that a girl shouldn’t know how to defend herself! An hour a day is all it would have taken. I resolve to buy a punching bag and to spar with Dawn daily, provided I get out of this alive – a task quite difficult when my windpipe’s being crushed. 

 

I don’t want to to die in an alley.

 

I don’t want to die after coming so close to finding Spike again. 

 

I don’t want to die. Period.

 

Willpower kicks in and the vamp gets kicked across the alley – but he never lands.

 

I take deep necessary breaths and finally my vision clears. There’s a guy standing before me, while in the background a woman is fighting the last vamp standing. The guy is cute, but not gorgeous. His head is shaved but it seems his face hasn’t been for a few weeks. He’s wearing a black tank top and black cargo pants out of the pockets of which several guns, a stake and a knife are sticking out. He’s not a muscle-god, but not badly built either.

 

“You’re Buffy,” he tells me. “I’m Psycho. It’s just a name, not my mental state. The lady over there’s Mchumba.”

 

One of Dawn’s friends then. She never mentioned a Macho-whatever though. The girl’s done too, and now both are standing before me. She’s similarly dressed, and I wonder if it’s a slayer-watcher duo I’m looking at.

 

“I’m Maura.”

 

“The guy said you were Maachombaa.”

 

“Mchumba. MCHOoM-bah. It’s a difficult pronunciation and highly unadvisable if you need help fast. So, you can call me Maura. It means dark-skinned so Sp…ow…my friend thought it’d suit me.”

 

The girl did have dark skin, the color of freshly dug soil, and her brown hair put me in mind of vines wrapped around a tree. An unconventional beauty. I felt like I could tell her all my secrets, and she’d guard them with her life. She just gave off those warm, affectionate, friendly vibes.

 

At first I don’t know what to say and then spoke without thinking, “Where the freakin’ hell is Andrew?” It’s been a wreck of a day and pummeling Andrew or at least yelling at him will make me feel better.

 

“My place. He’s broke, unemployed and homeless at the moment but Hitler…I mean, Lottie will fix him. I’ll get him to call you. Try not to die. My pal Sp-Dawn won’t appreciate it. Here, take my gun.” He grabs Maura’s hand as soon as he’s done speaking, and just like that they’re gone.

 

Willow comes running. She’s suitably frazzled and out of breath. “Why did you …” Pant. “Run?” More panting.

 

Giles’ voice from long ago echoes in my head: I don't understand. Who did this?

 

I answer her like I answered him.

 

“Spike.”

 

tbc

 

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