Next Installment of My Evil Fanfic
Mar. 15th, 2004 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWell, I worked hard and managed to finally get this next chapter written in my WIP, only been stuck on it for about a month now. Not sure if it works or not, I had to accomplish quite a few things plot-wise and all within the point of view of a character that I find tough to write for. Writing it forced me to try a few new things - which I haven't really done before, such as a fight scene. Hope it works.
Previous parts of MISS EDITH's REVENGE or what I like to call my evil fanfic, can be found here:
[http://www.livejournal.com/users/shadowkat67/37475.html#cutid1]
Warning: graphic violence and language, rated R,
no sex, no ships. Action takes place approximately two or three months from the last installment. Point of view - Buffy. Also completely un-betaed.
Chapter 3: Miss Edith Plays with Dolls
Rome, Italy (a couple months later)
Buffy loved the old chapel, which unlike most of the larger churches in Rome, was just her size. She had her sister, Dawn, to thank for discovering it. Before she brought Buffy here a little over three months ago, Dawn had uncovered every nook and cranny and was bursting to tell Buffy all about it. Buffy just shushed her, preferring to uncover these things on her own. She had so little privacy as it was, what with the slayers in training, Dawn, and her courses, that she liked these little moments all to herself. Sending Dawn off on that four-month Italian art field study course in Florence had been a stroke of genius, her younger sister’s enthusiasm and demands to be taught along with the other slayers was getting on her nerves, a little space helped them both.
She glanced up at the stained glass window, that towered above her and the frescoes on either side of it. Small and intimate, with walls of stained glass, the chapel emitted a warm glow. At twilight, sunlight shimmered through the glass making pictures on the marble floors and casting a rainbow of colors across the ornate gold and silver artifacts on the alter, protected on three sides by thick dark marble railings. A sliver cross hung from the ceiling above the table in the center, which in turn was covered with candles kept lit by the chaplain and attendants who lived next door. Candles also stood in rows below the altar, red and white glowing warmly, lit to remember the dead. The attendants had come in about two hours ago to light them, just as twilight began to hit the city, the sun creeping backwards bit-by-bit.
It was well past twilight now and the chapel was deserted, the attendants and other guests had gone home to prepare for the evening meal. Buffy had stayed too long, sketching one of the windows for an art appreciation class she was taking. Looking down at her work, she contemplated the blond angel that stood behind Mary Magdalene, Gabriel, whose image reminded her a bit of Spike or the way Spike looked when she last saw him, encased in a column of warm light, so bright, it almost blinded her. The light of his soul, she thought shaking her head, not wishing to dwell on it. Taking the pencil, she worked to blur the likeness just slightly – thinking about Spike just lead to other thoughts, thoughts she would rather not think about too hard, such as love, vampires, and souls. Metaphysics had never really been her thing. She preferred living in the here and now, what she saw, touched, felt – that was real, the rest? She didn’t know. Dawn called her an ag-nostic, whatever that meant. Dawn was always coming up with new words and meanings, the thinker in the family – the philosopher, was Dawn. More like Willow actually, so much so that Buffy often wondered if it had been Willow’s essence the monks took to make her sister, not hers. Buffy preferred action, the visible, what she could grasp with her senses and feel in her gut. Wasn’t much into the self-analyzing. She also liked her privacy, another thing neither Willow nor Dawn appeared to grasp. Too many years keeping things to herself, not letting the world know she was the “slayer” or that vampires existed – had made her instinctively secretive and private about things.
Dawn had asked her once, which vampire she loved, Angel or Spike. A question, Faith clearly wanted to ask but politely refrained from the last time they were together – over nine months ago at a hospital outside Sunnydale, or what was left of Sunnydale. One Spike, himself, had also refused to ask her, although she’d seen the question in his eyes the night before he…She shook her head. Faith reminded her too much of Spike and of course there was Faith’s newest conquest Wood, which Buffy could barely stand to be around since well, since everything. So they’d agreed to stay in touch, awkwardly embraced, and she watched Faith take off on a motorbike behind the newly recuperated Robin Wood. Be interesting to see how long that lasted, Faith wasn’t much into commitment, but then neither was she, Buffy thought. Holden Webster, that vamp shrink she’d staked last fall whom Spike had sired under the influence of The First, had that right enough. At any rate, she hadn’t answered Dawn’s question. Took a page out of Spike and Angel’s book and neatly sidestepped it. There was no point. Spike was gone. Angel permanently unavailable due to the curse and a whole host of other things she preferred not to think about, so he might as well be gone as well. Her experiences with Spike had unfortunately forced her to face certain things about Angel, which she realized she’d been repressing since she sent him to hell. How much of Angelus was Angel and how much of Angel was Angelus, she did not know and realized she did not want to. Ever. How, she wondered, was she supposed to continue teach people to hunt and slay vampires – if these damn metaphysical questions kept getting in the way? Better not to think about them. Thinking always got her into trouble anyway. She’d learned long ago that metaphysics and Buffy were non-mixy things. She was “action” girl. Always had been. Always would be. The hand.
Buffy stretched, comfortable in the silence of the church, the wind whispering through the eves. Tilting her head she listened to it gradually realizing that another sound, much fainter, that reminded her of laughter or the ghostly echo of laughter, accompanied it. Her spine tingled as she listened. That old familiar tingle, that started at the base of her spine and crept up her back, with her stomach cramping a little in response. It reminded her of how one felt when an ovary pulsed or whatever it was ovaries did according to that health class she took in high school, the same one that gave them those parasitic eggs. Fun times. Not. Giles described the tingling and cramping as slayer senses. Yeah, right, her ovaries pulsed whenever a vamp was near, she used to quip – until she discovered exactly how the slayer was created. Not so funny now.
She asked Spike once what he felt when a slayer was near – was it the same sensation? He’d tilted his head, he always tilted his head when she asked him a question and gave her that look – like she was some rare fruit he couldn’t quite figure out, considered, then leered at her, saying something crude about how her presence made his dick so hard it pointed directly at her like a bleeding divining rod. Buffy wasn’t certain if he was telling the truth or just baiting her. Spike was always baiting her back then. She’d asked Angel, but Angel artfully sidestepped it like he did most of her questions when they were together. All avoidy. Never explainey. It used to annoy her to no end. Like the amulet he thrust on her at the last minute – which ended up saving the day but destroying her…what to call him? She never knew what to call Spike. He wasn’t her boyfriend. Not lover – never that. Ex? No that would be akin to calling him boyfriend. Best friend? Confident? She didn’t understand her feelings towards him well enough to determine something so simple as a lable. Besides why did she need one? He was gone. Vampires. No matter where she went or what she did, they were always around just waiting to get beneath her skin.
Straightening, she opened her daypack and as inconspicuously as possible dug out the holy water and the stake. The sensation was getting stronger, which meant more than one, possibly three? Willow had the Scythe at the moment. So Mr. Pointy, her trusty stake, would have to do. Dawn called it her security blanket, since she never left home without it. Good thing too, considering the present circumstances. Her gut told her they were normal vamps, not an uber-vamp or old one like the Master, not that she’d seen many uber-vamps since the Sunnydale Hellmouth collapsed. The cramping was different for those, more intense somehow. She frowned, her eyes searching the shadows. There it was again. Soft. A giggle.
“You might as well come out, I know you’re here,” Buffy said, in a crouch, stake gripped firmly in her right hand, the other popping open the holy water.
More giggles. Scampering.
“Buffy…”
The sound made her freeze. Not that it said her name so much as the familiarity of the voice. Dawn? No impossible. Dawn was miles away in Florence, she’d just received an email from her.
“Buffy…have you spoken to Xan recently?”
Dawn’s voice or something incredibly similar to it, Buffy’s stomach tightened and the wood from Mr. Pointy cut into her palm. She heard the sound of something being tossed then bouncing, skittering across the marble until it slid to a halt beside her leather encased foot. She glanced down at it. It looked like a marble, tiny, made of glass, like the ones the kids in the squares played with. She bent, re-corking and pocketing the holy water as she did so, her eyes still watching the shadows as she picked it up. Smooth. Glass. Not a grenade or explosive device. Too dark to make out the design. Glancing around her, she noted the altar was to her south and the exit to her north, she stood halfway between both. She looked up; the ceiling was too high and didn’t have anything worth grasping, no crossbeams, just frescoes and murals about fifty stories above her head like most of the churches in Italy. She looked to the right and left, gauging how many vamps there were – she sensed at least four – two on that side and two on the other, yellow eyes occasionally blinking at her around pillars. They moved quickly and soundlessly. An ambush, she thought, they must have been tracking her and waited to make their move. It certainly explained how it knew her name, but not how it knew Xander’s. Her hand closed around the glass ball. It did not occur to her, until much later that it was the same size as an eyeball.
Whoosh…Buffy leapt as two vamps came at her from either side. Jumping up and behind one of them, she let them collide, although one seemed to catch her move at the last possible moment and sidestepped a direct collision with its partner. Well-trained these two, Buffy thought as she twisted around, stake ready and stabbed. She met air, as the vamp who had sidestepped countered her move, almost disarming her with a right cross. The other one still dazed from the averted collision, stood a little distance behind it. In the dim light she was able to make out that both were female, had long hair, and skimpy clothing, which allowed them to move almost unhindered. Buffy, on the other hand, was wearing a stylish leather skirt, long sleeved blouse, and leather jacket and felt bit more encumbered. They also both looked vaguely familiar in both face and movement, almost as if she’d fought them before or at least had seen them. They grinned at her, yellow fangs glinting in the candlelight, almost as if they sensed her thoughts.
Accents thick, they said in gutter Italian, which Buffy roughly translated as: “Like how we fight? You should…you trained us…hope we don’t disappoint.” Buffy shook her head, that couldn’t be right. Perhaps she’d translated wrong. Where was Dawn or Giles when you needed them?
They fought for a good ten minutes trading jibes in gutter Italian. Buffy had barely mastered the formal Italian, the slang was beyond her – but the tone and usage reminded her of something, someone. So she kept her mouth shut and focused on the fight, something she’d done increasingly in later years – the years of trading quips with her prey had ended with Spike’s death – none of the vamps she fought came close to his banter, and trading quips just made them feel more human to her somehow and her job that much harder to bear. A job she was trying to pass off to others more and more now, hoping to retire, do other things, less violent things. In this case her silence helped her, gave her almost zen like movement, anticipating their every move, she flipped, kicked, swished and swirled like a dancer between two shadows until finally her stake made contact and the weaker one dissolved into dust, its face transfixed for a second, almost human – it was then that Buffy with a gasp of surprise recognized her. “Marta?”
The other laughed. “So now you recognize us, eh?”
Buffy twisted, thrusting her stake into the other’s chest. With a gasp of surprise, the other one, whom Buffy had known as Julia, dissolved into dust. Buffy stared at its remains in disbelief. Slayers. They had been hers. Girls she’d found with her sister, just three months ago. Had trained. Closer in age to Dawn than herself, they’d bonded with Dawn. They’d even…Oh God, Oh God…they’d gone with Dawn on that trip to Florence several months ago. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t been worried, Dawn had at least four slayers with her.
“Now that wasn’t very nice, Buffy. You just killed two of my dolls. You’re always doing that, it’s annoying,” a voice, a young woman’s voice, hissed from the shadows.
Buffy turned towards the voice as her hand sunk into her pocket touching the marble she’d put there next to the small bottle of holy water. The marble she guessed had come from the voice in the shadows. “Dawn? Dawn, is…” She shook her head, pulled herself together. Lesson the first, have your weapons ready – I’ll already have mine, Lesson the second be on your guard …all I need is an opening then I have myself one good day… Spike’s words echoed inside her head. “What have you done with Dawn?”
Laughter, lots of laughter reverberating around the walls of the church came as a response and Buffy felt her stomach flip inside as if she were about to be sick, she caressed Mr. Pointy in her right hand, and tried very hard not to think. Don’t think. Just do. If you think, you’re dead.
“Enough games – show yourself!” Buffy shouted, hearing her voice echo in the silence that followed it.
A dark figure slid into view in front of the altar, candlelight glowed around it so Buffy could make out the edge of a sleeve or the rim of a boot, and the swish of long straight hair. It was sleek, moved like a cat, heels clicking on the marble, its skirt swishing against its knees. In its right hand, a zippo lighter flicked off and on with a clicking noise that echoed against the chapel’s marble and stone walls. The hand holding the lighter, was encased in red lace. The figure tossed the lighter to its other hand and Buffy saw in the flicker of flame that it was wearing a long leather jacket over a black dress, slit in several places to the thigh. The other hand was also encased in red lace. Magenta red. The color of blood. Thigh-high boots encased the legs, which were otherwise covered by a black fish-net stocking that the figure flicked the lighter against briefly, almost as if it were giving Buffy a show. The figure continued to flick the lighter across its body, lighting up its chest, its right arm, as it slunk seductively a little ways up the aisle, halting just five or six pews away from Buffy. As the lighter moved across it, Buffy glimpsed the low cleavage of the black dress, the lighter flickering in and out across it and the long neck just above.
“Like what you see, Mio sorella ?” asked the soft voice over the flick of the lighter. “Xander did…well he did before,” she giggled, “I poked out his eye.”
“Xan…no,” Buffy whispered. “He’s in Africa.”
Another giggle. “Mio Sorella, I know.” The lighter paused at the figure’s throat – lighting a ruby that sat at the center of a pointed silver star, a red lace scarf was tied just above it, emphasizing the length of the swan-like neck, which Buffy recognized with a shiver. Dawn’s neck – she used to watch Spike’s eyes travel the length of that neck with apprehension. He’d screamed at Dawn once to cover it up before she went out, no reason to tempt the nasties.
The thing giggled again, as its left hand took something from a pocket in the leather coat, at least Buffy assumed it was leather. The object looked like a stick, slender, with something stuck on the end of it. The thing held the lighter against it, bending its head so that its hair floated like a veil over its face, and then stuck the other end in its mouth and puffed. A cigarette, Buffy thought, watching the smoke snake out from the stick. The thing lifted its head and pulled the cigarette free, flicking the lighter underneath its chin, so the lighter lit its face in a flicker of brief red flame.
“How do you like the new me, Mio Sorella? Do I please you?” Magenta painted lips smiled beneath wide set brown eyes and a long perfect nose, which Buffy had always envied, now perfectly preserved for an eternity. “I hope so, Mio Sorella, since I picked this outfit with you in mind. Even wore the boots you bought me – remember?” The figure delicately lifted one of hits boots into the flickering candlelight – and Buffy realized the boots were the magenta boots Dawn had lusted over and Buffy had finally bought her for her eighteenth birthday months before. Like the gloves and lipstick they also were the color of blood. The woman smiled flicking the lighter on and off and on and off until finally off completely. It, or rather the woman, pocketed the lighter and reached into her other pocket to pull out another object, which she took a moment to examine in the palm of her hand. Opening her palm, she lifted her head and appeared to be looking directly at Buffy, although Buffy could no longer make out her face. “Here, I’ve brought you a present, of sorts – something to match that little bauble in your pocket.”
Buffy dug her hand into her pocket as the woman lifted her palm and tossed in one fluid motion the object into the air, the candle-light from the chapel glinted against the shiny surface.
“Heads up, Mio Sorella, Slayer.”
Buffy leapt and caught the object before it hit the ground. The woman clapped in pleasure. It felt slick to the touch, and hard. Buffy stared at it and moved closer to the light of the votive candles behind the pews next to her.
“Oh poor thing. I forgot you can’t see in the dark, can you? I used to always be so afraid of the dark you know. Every time you left me by myself, I’d turn on every appliance in the house and every light – just to feel safe. But not you. You were the slayer. The dark never was a threat was it? You always seemed so comfortable in it. Never understood that until now.”
The woman gestured to someone in the shadows and in moments the lights in the chandelier above Buffy’s head glowed to life. Buffy glanced up at it. Still too high to really use in a fight, or was it? She glanced from it to a stained glass window perpendicular to it – and half-open. A potential escape route. Not that she needed one.
She looked back down at the object in her palm, it appeared to be laminated and the lamination glittered when the lights hit its surface, smooth and hard to the touch. She held it up to the light to get a better look and almost dropped it when the colored iris in the center, familiar brown flecked with green, stared back at her.
“Isn’t it just perfect? I really hope you like it, Buffy. I even had them laminate it for you – give you something to remember him by. Xander would have appreciated that, I think.” The woman tilted her head, her face lit now by the light glow of the chandelier. Wisps of straight brown hair drifted across her face.
“Whaaat…” Buffy took a breath. Pull yourself together, she thought. “What did you do?”
“He screamed when I plucked it out – sort of like a woman. Heh. Is that what he sounded like when what’s his – oh yes, your Preacher friend plucked out the other one?”
Buffy felt rage bubble up within, course through her veins at the thing that stood in front of her. All thought, all action became focused on one task – destroying that abomination that claimed to be her sister. She lifted the laminated thingy in her hand, she couldn’t bring herself to call it what it was, and with all her slayer strength thrust it at the figure standing in front of her.
Almost as if it had anticipated her action, the figure, without extending much effort at all, delicately lifted its hand and caught the object. Then with a thoughtful grin, crunched it effortlessly, tiny slivers of glass exploded outwards from its fist. It stuck the cigarette in its mouth again, took another puff.
“Temper, temper, Mio Sorella. Is that any way to treat a gift from your sister?”
“You are not my sister. And stop calling me that.” Buffy hissed – tossing the other bauble at the thing as well.
The thing tilted her head to one side, catching the bauble in its left hand. Then laughed. The laughter was Dawn’s. Light airy chuckle that reverberated off the chapel walls. “Actually, Buffy, I am or rather was your sister. I choose to be more than that right now. But I always chose to be more than “just” Buffy’s sister.” She studied the bauble for a moment, then cast her gaze back towards Buffy. “ See, Buffy, that’s something you never understood. About vampires. I am Dawn, more Dawn than I was before – that meek, whiny, weak little girl who depended on you or that bookworm with the great fashion sense but never the great fighting moves. Not Chosen. Not me. Thousands of girls you shared your power with, but never me. Always sent me off with trained guards or poor dear hapless Xander.” It studied the bauble between its hands, tossed it once, then smashed it like the other one in a puff of glass. “But all that’s changed now. I have power too – power you never dreamed of. It courses through me and connects me to others, like me. And…you want to know what the best part is, what makes me more powerful than you? No worries. No cares. I used to feel guilty about every little thing. But I don’t any more. I don’t feel guilty at all.”
“You may look like my sister, you may even laugh like her, but you are not Dawn. You’ll never be Dawn. You’re just her shell.”
“Really? Just a shell? Is that what you thought Spike was when you were screwing him or he was screwing you? Just a shell? Or how about your beloved Angel? Oh wait, I forgot he had a stinking soul at the time, didn’t he? They’re different with souls. All’s perfect if you have a soul…”
Buffy felt tears sting her eyes. The woman still smiling whirled around in a half pirouett, pulling the cigarette out of her mouth and twirling it.
“Lovely place this – with all the lovely glass – I especially adore the one you were sketching with the Angel Gabriel – is that how Spike looked before his soul burned him up from the inside because of that amulet you gave him? Or how Angel looked before you impaled him on your sword sending him into the mouth of hell? They both had souls then, didn’t they?”
Buffy launched herself at the thing that looked like her sister, that was responsible for her sister’s death – roaring at it, stake raised in her right hand.
The thing clicked its tongue, skipping just out of reach. Then said several things in rapid Italian and Spanish, too quick for Buffy to follow. In moments, four women darted in front of it, all in vamp face, all crouched in battle formation, all carrying sharp knives. Fighting them reminded Buffy of fighting Faith, actually four Faiths at once. Every move she did, they countered almost perfectly. They pushed her back towards the front of the chapel, away from the thing calling itself Dawn. The thing sat giggling behind them on the altar railing swinging its feet.
“How do you like my slayers, Buffy? You should – you trained them after all. Nice of you to send them with me. We had such a lovely time…dying.”
“Who…Who did this? Dawn? Who?” Buffy gasped in between flipping backwards and countering three knives being thrust at her at once. One tore the fabric of her jacket. Another slashed across her wrist. A third dug into her shoulder, she wrestled for the hilt, pulled it out and did a roundhouse kick to the gut of the vamp on her left. She flipped again, grabbing her holy water, since they appeared to evade her stake with little effort.
Dawn studied her nails, the cigarette holder resting across her knees. She looked up at Buffy, pushing her hair out of her eyes for a moment, their eyes locked and Buffy realized she had to escape, now. That thing had planned this carefully and if it had been Dawn, then it knew more about this chapel than Buffy did. This battle she could not win. Not with these odds. She needed help.
“Actually that’s another thing that’s sort of changed, Buffy. My name. While I am still Dawn, I don’t go by that name any more. I’ve been christened with a new name – a much classier name – I think.” She paused, eyes sparkling. “Miss Edith. Suits me, or the new me, don’t you think? Mio Sorella?” Miss Edith rose from the railing and lifting herself by her hands she got up on it. Delicately balanced on the edge by the spiked heels of her boots. More graceful than Dawn had ever been in life. She lifted her arms outward in a gesture of supplication, one hand still holding the cigarette holder, echoing the posture of the figure on the cross that dangled directly behind her.
The gesture reminded Buffy of someone, someone she hadn’t thought of for a very long time. Dark hair. Dark bird-like eyes. A high child-like voice. “Dru?” she breathed, launching herself upwards towards the chandelier, grabbing hold of it and swinging towards the window she’d seen earlier, her only possible exit route at this point since the vamps had found a way to surround her. Drusilla – the figure in front of her reminded her so much of Drusilla and a memory flashed through her head – an old memory, four, five years back, when she was a junior in high school, in love with Angel, and Dru and Spike stood on an altar much like this one conducting some wicked ceremony to bring Dru back to life. Oh my God…Dru. Buffy thought, kicking herself for not killing the bitch when she had the chance. Dru must have gotten hold of Dawn and Xander? No, no, can’t think about that now. Must focus on getting out of here. Her arms ached, particularly the shoulder which seemed to be leaking blood. They’d come armed with black knives. Another had gotten her in the thigh. Thank the powers or whatever was up there for slayer strength and rapid healing abilities. She felt them all gathered beneath her, felt them watching waiting for her to drop. One actually leapt and almost grasped her ankle, she wriggled free, feeling the chandelier begin to crack free of it’s molding. She stared at the window and swung a second time, no not high enough. One more time – if the chandelier would just hold long enough for one last time – she lifted her feet, tightened her fingers around the steel which cut into them and swung with all her might towards that window, hearing the chandelier begin to tear free as she did it. She let go, sailing through the air feet first, heels crashing through the window, she had missed the opening by a centimeter. Slivers of glass dusted her hair, she had wisely closed her eyes and mouth as it exploded around her. Flipping in mid-air so as not to fall on her pelvis, she somersaulted to the square below, landing half on one knee, but more or less intact. Unsteadily she pushed herself to her feet, facing the dark shadow of the chapel. The chandelier must have crashed to the ground behind her, because the chapel was completely dark now. No light emanated from its windows. She hoped the chandelier impaled one of the vampires standing beneath it.
Shaking herself free of the slivers of glass that still dusted her hair and limbs, she checked herself. No broken limbs. Lots of scrapes and a couple of deep knife wounds, but that was nothing new in her line of work. Also her favorite leather jacket had been ruined. Not that she really cared. She had also lost Mr. Pointy. Great. She glanced back again at the chapel and felt her stomach heave. Fist to her mouth she ran forward and leaned over a nearby trash barrel. An old woman stopped next to her and asked in Italian if she was okay. Buffy nodded, wiping her mouth with the handkerchief the old woman gave her. Then shrugging off the old woman’s concern, she turned her back on the chapel and walked as quickly as she could home. She had to call Giles or Willow. No Willow was somewhere in Nepal – talking to spirits, completely unreachable. She’d call Giles. It was the only thing she let herself think about until she reached the two-story flat she had shared with Dawn. Her sister. Mio Sorella. She entered it, unlocked the door, and headed to the top bedroom. The one that had been Dawn’s. She stood there for a moment staring at the empty room. At Dawn’s things. The things she hadn’t taken with her to Florence. Then crumbled in the doorway, staring blankly at the wall as the tears slid down her face.
Let me know what you think. Thanks!
Previous parts of MISS EDITH's REVENGE or what I like to call my evil fanfic, can be found here:
[http://www.livejournal.com/users/shadowkat67/37475.html#cutid1]
Warning: graphic violence and language, rated R,
no sex, no ships. Action takes place approximately two or three months from the last installment. Point of view - Buffy. Also completely un-betaed.
Chapter 3: Miss Edith Plays with Dolls
Rome, Italy (a couple months later)
Buffy loved the old chapel, which unlike most of the larger churches in Rome, was just her size. She had her sister, Dawn, to thank for discovering it. Before she brought Buffy here a little over three months ago, Dawn had uncovered every nook and cranny and was bursting to tell Buffy all about it. Buffy just shushed her, preferring to uncover these things on her own. She had so little privacy as it was, what with the slayers in training, Dawn, and her courses, that she liked these little moments all to herself. Sending Dawn off on that four-month Italian art field study course in Florence had been a stroke of genius, her younger sister’s enthusiasm and demands to be taught along with the other slayers was getting on her nerves, a little space helped them both.
She glanced up at the stained glass window, that towered above her and the frescoes on either side of it. Small and intimate, with walls of stained glass, the chapel emitted a warm glow. At twilight, sunlight shimmered through the glass making pictures on the marble floors and casting a rainbow of colors across the ornate gold and silver artifacts on the alter, protected on three sides by thick dark marble railings. A sliver cross hung from the ceiling above the table in the center, which in turn was covered with candles kept lit by the chaplain and attendants who lived next door. Candles also stood in rows below the altar, red and white glowing warmly, lit to remember the dead. The attendants had come in about two hours ago to light them, just as twilight began to hit the city, the sun creeping backwards bit-by-bit.
It was well past twilight now and the chapel was deserted, the attendants and other guests had gone home to prepare for the evening meal. Buffy had stayed too long, sketching one of the windows for an art appreciation class she was taking. Looking down at her work, she contemplated the blond angel that stood behind Mary Magdalene, Gabriel, whose image reminded her a bit of Spike or the way Spike looked when she last saw him, encased in a column of warm light, so bright, it almost blinded her. The light of his soul, she thought shaking her head, not wishing to dwell on it. Taking the pencil, she worked to blur the likeness just slightly – thinking about Spike just lead to other thoughts, thoughts she would rather not think about too hard, such as love, vampires, and souls. Metaphysics had never really been her thing. She preferred living in the here and now, what she saw, touched, felt – that was real, the rest? She didn’t know. Dawn called her an ag-nostic, whatever that meant. Dawn was always coming up with new words and meanings, the thinker in the family – the philosopher, was Dawn. More like Willow actually, so much so that Buffy often wondered if it had been Willow’s essence the monks took to make her sister, not hers. Buffy preferred action, the visible, what she could grasp with her senses and feel in her gut. Wasn’t much into the self-analyzing. She also liked her privacy, another thing neither Willow nor Dawn appeared to grasp. Too many years keeping things to herself, not letting the world know she was the “slayer” or that vampires existed – had made her instinctively secretive and private about things.
Dawn had asked her once, which vampire she loved, Angel or Spike. A question, Faith clearly wanted to ask but politely refrained from the last time they were together – over nine months ago at a hospital outside Sunnydale, or what was left of Sunnydale. One Spike, himself, had also refused to ask her, although she’d seen the question in his eyes the night before he…She shook her head. Faith reminded her too much of Spike and of course there was Faith’s newest conquest Wood, which Buffy could barely stand to be around since well, since everything. So they’d agreed to stay in touch, awkwardly embraced, and she watched Faith take off on a motorbike behind the newly recuperated Robin Wood. Be interesting to see how long that lasted, Faith wasn’t much into commitment, but then neither was she, Buffy thought. Holden Webster, that vamp shrink she’d staked last fall whom Spike had sired under the influence of The First, had that right enough. At any rate, she hadn’t answered Dawn’s question. Took a page out of Spike and Angel’s book and neatly sidestepped it. There was no point. Spike was gone. Angel permanently unavailable due to the curse and a whole host of other things she preferred not to think about, so he might as well be gone as well. Her experiences with Spike had unfortunately forced her to face certain things about Angel, which she realized she’d been repressing since she sent him to hell. How much of Angelus was Angel and how much of Angel was Angelus, she did not know and realized she did not want to. Ever. How, she wondered, was she supposed to continue teach people to hunt and slay vampires – if these damn metaphysical questions kept getting in the way? Better not to think about them. Thinking always got her into trouble anyway. She’d learned long ago that metaphysics and Buffy were non-mixy things. She was “action” girl. Always had been. Always would be. The hand.
Buffy stretched, comfortable in the silence of the church, the wind whispering through the eves. Tilting her head she listened to it gradually realizing that another sound, much fainter, that reminded her of laughter or the ghostly echo of laughter, accompanied it. Her spine tingled as she listened. That old familiar tingle, that started at the base of her spine and crept up her back, with her stomach cramping a little in response. It reminded her of how one felt when an ovary pulsed or whatever it was ovaries did according to that health class she took in high school, the same one that gave them those parasitic eggs. Fun times. Not. Giles described the tingling and cramping as slayer senses. Yeah, right, her ovaries pulsed whenever a vamp was near, she used to quip – until she discovered exactly how the slayer was created. Not so funny now.
She asked Spike once what he felt when a slayer was near – was it the same sensation? He’d tilted his head, he always tilted his head when she asked him a question and gave her that look – like she was some rare fruit he couldn’t quite figure out, considered, then leered at her, saying something crude about how her presence made his dick so hard it pointed directly at her like a bleeding divining rod. Buffy wasn’t certain if he was telling the truth or just baiting her. Spike was always baiting her back then. She’d asked Angel, but Angel artfully sidestepped it like he did most of her questions when they were together. All avoidy. Never explainey. It used to annoy her to no end. Like the amulet he thrust on her at the last minute – which ended up saving the day but destroying her…what to call him? She never knew what to call Spike. He wasn’t her boyfriend. Not lover – never that. Ex? No that would be akin to calling him boyfriend. Best friend? Confident? She didn’t understand her feelings towards him well enough to determine something so simple as a lable. Besides why did she need one? He was gone. Vampires. No matter where she went or what she did, they were always around just waiting to get beneath her skin.
Straightening, she opened her daypack and as inconspicuously as possible dug out the holy water and the stake. The sensation was getting stronger, which meant more than one, possibly three? Willow had the Scythe at the moment. So Mr. Pointy, her trusty stake, would have to do. Dawn called it her security blanket, since she never left home without it. Good thing too, considering the present circumstances. Her gut told her they were normal vamps, not an uber-vamp or old one like the Master, not that she’d seen many uber-vamps since the Sunnydale Hellmouth collapsed. The cramping was different for those, more intense somehow. She frowned, her eyes searching the shadows. There it was again. Soft. A giggle.
“You might as well come out, I know you’re here,” Buffy said, in a crouch, stake gripped firmly in her right hand, the other popping open the holy water.
More giggles. Scampering.
“Buffy…”
The sound made her freeze. Not that it said her name so much as the familiarity of the voice. Dawn? No impossible. Dawn was miles away in Florence, she’d just received an email from her.
“Buffy…have you spoken to Xan recently?”
Dawn’s voice or something incredibly similar to it, Buffy’s stomach tightened and the wood from Mr. Pointy cut into her palm. She heard the sound of something being tossed then bouncing, skittering across the marble until it slid to a halt beside her leather encased foot. She glanced down at it. It looked like a marble, tiny, made of glass, like the ones the kids in the squares played with. She bent, re-corking and pocketing the holy water as she did so, her eyes still watching the shadows as she picked it up. Smooth. Glass. Not a grenade or explosive device. Too dark to make out the design. Glancing around her, she noted the altar was to her south and the exit to her north, she stood halfway between both. She looked up; the ceiling was too high and didn’t have anything worth grasping, no crossbeams, just frescoes and murals about fifty stories above her head like most of the churches in Italy. She looked to the right and left, gauging how many vamps there were – she sensed at least four – two on that side and two on the other, yellow eyes occasionally blinking at her around pillars. They moved quickly and soundlessly. An ambush, she thought, they must have been tracking her and waited to make their move. It certainly explained how it knew her name, but not how it knew Xander’s. Her hand closed around the glass ball. It did not occur to her, until much later that it was the same size as an eyeball.
Whoosh…Buffy leapt as two vamps came at her from either side. Jumping up and behind one of them, she let them collide, although one seemed to catch her move at the last possible moment and sidestepped a direct collision with its partner. Well-trained these two, Buffy thought as she twisted around, stake ready and stabbed. She met air, as the vamp who had sidestepped countered her move, almost disarming her with a right cross. The other one still dazed from the averted collision, stood a little distance behind it. In the dim light she was able to make out that both were female, had long hair, and skimpy clothing, which allowed them to move almost unhindered. Buffy, on the other hand, was wearing a stylish leather skirt, long sleeved blouse, and leather jacket and felt bit more encumbered. They also both looked vaguely familiar in both face and movement, almost as if she’d fought them before or at least had seen them. They grinned at her, yellow fangs glinting in the candlelight, almost as if they sensed her thoughts.
Accents thick, they said in gutter Italian, which Buffy roughly translated as: “Like how we fight? You should…you trained us…hope we don’t disappoint.” Buffy shook her head, that couldn’t be right. Perhaps she’d translated wrong. Where was Dawn or Giles when you needed them?
They fought for a good ten minutes trading jibes in gutter Italian. Buffy had barely mastered the formal Italian, the slang was beyond her – but the tone and usage reminded her of something, someone. So she kept her mouth shut and focused on the fight, something she’d done increasingly in later years – the years of trading quips with her prey had ended with Spike’s death – none of the vamps she fought came close to his banter, and trading quips just made them feel more human to her somehow and her job that much harder to bear. A job she was trying to pass off to others more and more now, hoping to retire, do other things, less violent things. In this case her silence helped her, gave her almost zen like movement, anticipating their every move, she flipped, kicked, swished and swirled like a dancer between two shadows until finally her stake made contact and the weaker one dissolved into dust, its face transfixed for a second, almost human – it was then that Buffy with a gasp of surprise recognized her. “Marta?”
The other laughed. “So now you recognize us, eh?”
Buffy twisted, thrusting her stake into the other’s chest. With a gasp of surprise, the other one, whom Buffy had known as Julia, dissolved into dust. Buffy stared at its remains in disbelief. Slayers. They had been hers. Girls she’d found with her sister, just three months ago. Had trained. Closer in age to Dawn than herself, they’d bonded with Dawn. They’d even…Oh God, Oh God…they’d gone with Dawn on that trip to Florence several months ago. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t been worried, Dawn had at least four slayers with her.
“Now that wasn’t very nice, Buffy. You just killed two of my dolls. You’re always doing that, it’s annoying,” a voice, a young woman’s voice, hissed from the shadows.
Buffy turned towards the voice as her hand sunk into her pocket touching the marble she’d put there next to the small bottle of holy water. The marble she guessed had come from the voice in the shadows. “Dawn? Dawn, is…” She shook her head, pulled herself together. Lesson the first, have your weapons ready – I’ll already have mine, Lesson the second be on your guard …all I need is an opening then I have myself one good day… Spike’s words echoed inside her head. “What have you done with Dawn?”
Laughter, lots of laughter reverberating around the walls of the church came as a response and Buffy felt her stomach flip inside as if she were about to be sick, she caressed Mr. Pointy in her right hand, and tried very hard not to think. Don’t think. Just do. If you think, you’re dead.
“Enough games – show yourself!” Buffy shouted, hearing her voice echo in the silence that followed it.
A dark figure slid into view in front of the altar, candlelight glowed around it so Buffy could make out the edge of a sleeve or the rim of a boot, and the swish of long straight hair. It was sleek, moved like a cat, heels clicking on the marble, its skirt swishing against its knees. In its right hand, a zippo lighter flicked off and on with a clicking noise that echoed against the chapel’s marble and stone walls. The hand holding the lighter, was encased in red lace. The figure tossed the lighter to its other hand and Buffy saw in the flicker of flame that it was wearing a long leather jacket over a black dress, slit in several places to the thigh. The other hand was also encased in red lace. Magenta red. The color of blood. Thigh-high boots encased the legs, which were otherwise covered by a black fish-net stocking that the figure flicked the lighter against briefly, almost as if it were giving Buffy a show. The figure continued to flick the lighter across its body, lighting up its chest, its right arm, as it slunk seductively a little ways up the aisle, halting just five or six pews away from Buffy. As the lighter moved across it, Buffy glimpsed the low cleavage of the black dress, the lighter flickering in and out across it and the long neck just above.
“Like what you see, Mio sorella ?” asked the soft voice over the flick of the lighter. “Xander did…well he did before,” she giggled, “I poked out his eye.”
“Xan…no,” Buffy whispered. “He’s in Africa.”
Another giggle. “Mio Sorella, I know.” The lighter paused at the figure’s throat – lighting a ruby that sat at the center of a pointed silver star, a red lace scarf was tied just above it, emphasizing the length of the swan-like neck, which Buffy recognized with a shiver. Dawn’s neck – she used to watch Spike’s eyes travel the length of that neck with apprehension. He’d screamed at Dawn once to cover it up before she went out, no reason to tempt the nasties.
The thing giggled again, as its left hand took something from a pocket in the leather coat, at least Buffy assumed it was leather. The object looked like a stick, slender, with something stuck on the end of it. The thing held the lighter against it, bending its head so that its hair floated like a veil over its face, and then stuck the other end in its mouth and puffed. A cigarette, Buffy thought, watching the smoke snake out from the stick. The thing lifted its head and pulled the cigarette free, flicking the lighter underneath its chin, so the lighter lit its face in a flicker of brief red flame.
“How do you like the new me, Mio Sorella? Do I please you?” Magenta painted lips smiled beneath wide set brown eyes and a long perfect nose, which Buffy had always envied, now perfectly preserved for an eternity. “I hope so, Mio Sorella, since I picked this outfit with you in mind. Even wore the boots you bought me – remember?” The figure delicately lifted one of hits boots into the flickering candlelight – and Buffy realized the boots were the magenta boots Dawn had lusted over and Buffy had finally bought her for her eighteenth birthday months before. Like the gloves and lipstick they also were the color of blood. The woman smiled flicking the lighter on and off and on and off until finally off completely. It, or rather the woman, pocketed the lighter and reached into her other pocket to pull out another object, which she took a moment to examine in the palm of her hand. Opening her palm, she lifted her head and appeared to be looking directly at Buffy, although Buffy could no longer make out her face. “Here, I’ve brought you a present, of sorts – something to match that little bauble in your pocket.”
Buffy dug her hand into her pocket as the woman lifted her palm and tossed in one fluid motion the object into the air, the candle-light from the chapel glinted against the shiny surface.
“Heads up, Mio Sorella, Slayer.”
Buffy leapt and caught the object before it hit the ground. The woman clapped in pleasure. It felt slick to the touch, and hard. Buffy stared at it and moved closer to the light of the votive candles behind the pews next to her.
“Oh poor thing. I forgot you can’t see in the dark, can you? I used to always be so afraid of the dark you know. Every time you left me by myself, I’d turn on every appliance in the house and every light – just to feel safe. But not you. You were the slayer. The dark never was a threat was it? You always seemed so comfortable in it. Never understood that until now.”
The woman gestured to someone in the shadows and in moments the lights in the chandelier above Buffy’s head glowed to life. Buffy glanced up at it. Still too high to really use in a fight, or was it? She glanced from it to a stained glass window perpendicular to it – and half-open. A potential escape route. Not that she needed one.
She looked back down at the object in her palm, it appeared to be laminated and the lamination glittered when the lights hit its surface, smooth and hard to the touch. She held it up to the light to get a better look and almost dropped it when the colored iris in the center, familiar brown flecked with green, stared back at her.
“Isn’t it just perfect? I really hope you like it, Buffy. I even had them laminate it for you – give you something to remember him by. Xander would have appreciated that, I think.” The woman tilted her head, her face lit now by the light glow of the chandelier. Wisps of straight brown hair drifted across her face.
“Whaaat…” Buffy took a breath. Pull yourself together, she thought. “What did you do?”
“He screamed when I plucked it out – sort of like a woman. Heh. Is that what he sounded like when what’s his – oh yes, your Preacher friend plucked out the other one?”
Buffy felt rage bubble up within, course through her veins at the thing that stood in front of her. All thought, all action became focused on one task – destroying that abomination that claimed to be her sister. She lifted the laminated thingy in her hand, she couldn’t bring herself to call it what it was, and with all her slayer strength thrust it at the figure standing in front of her.
Almost as if it had anticipated her action, the figure, without extending much effort at all, delicately lifted its hand and caught the object. Then with a thoughtful grin, crunched it effortlessly, tiny slivers of glass exploded outwards from its fist. It stuck the cigarette in its mouth again, took another puff.
“Temper, temper, Mio Sorella. Is that any way to treat a gift from your sister?”
“You are not my sister. And stop calling me that.” Buffy hissed – tossing the other bauble at the thing as well.
The thing tilted her head to one side, catching the bauble in its left hand. Then laughed. The laughter was Dawn’s. Light airy chuckle that reverberated off the chapel walls. “Actually, Buffy, I am or rather was your sister. I choose to be more than that right now. But I always chose to be more than “just” Buffy’s sister.” She studied the bauble for a moment, then cast her gaze back towards Buffy. “ See, Buffy, that’s something you never understood. About vampires. I am Dawn, more Dawn than I was before – that meek, whiny, weak little girl who depended on you or that bookworm with the great fashion sense but never the great fighting moves. Not Chosen. Not me. Thousands of girls you shared your power with, but never me. Always sent me off with trained guards or poor dear hapless Xander.” It studied the bauble between its hands, tossed it once, then smashed it like the other one in a puff of glass. “But all that’s changed now. I have power too – power you never dreamed of. It courses through me and connects me to others, like me. And…you want to know what the best part is, what makes me more powerful than you? No worries. No cares. I used to feel guilty about every little thing. But I don’t any more. I don’t feel guilty at all.”
“You may look like my sister, you may even laugh like her, but you are not Dawn. You’ll never be Dawn. You’re just her shell.”
“Really? Just a shell? Is that what you thought Spike was when you were screwing him or he was screwing you? Just a shell? Or how about your beloved Angel? Oh wait, I forgot he had a stinking soul at the time, didn’t he? They’re different with souls. All’s perfect if you have a soul…”
Buffy felt tears sting her eyes. The woman still smiling whirled around in a half pirouett, pulling the cigarette out of her mouth and twirling it.
“Lovely place this – with all the lovely glass – I especially adore the one you were sketching with the Angel Gabriel – is that how Spike looked before his soul burned him up from the inside because of that amulet you gave him? Or how Angel looked before you impaled him on your sword sending him into the mouth of hell? They both had souls then, didn’t they?”
Buffy launched herself at the thing that looked like her sister, that was responsible for her sister’s death – roaring at it, stake raised in her right hand.
The thing clicked its tongue, skipping just out of reach. Then said several things in rapid Italian and Spanish, too quick for Buffy to follow. In moments, four women darted in front of it, all in vamp face, all crouched in battle formation, all carrying sharp knives. Fighting them reminded Buffy of fighting Faith, actually four Faiths at once. Every move she did, they countered almost perfectly. They pushed her back towards the front of the chapel, away from the thing calling itself Dawn. The thing sat giggling behind them on the altar railing swinging its feet.
“How do you like my slayers, Buffy? You should – you trained them after all. Nice of you to send them with me. We had such a lovely time…dying.”
“Who…Who did this? Dawn? Who?” Buffy gasped in between flipping backwards and countering three knives being thrust at her at once. One tore the fabric of her jacket. Another slashed across her wrist. A third dug into her shoulder, she wrestled for the hilt, pulled it out and did a roundhouse kick to the gut of the vamp on her left. She flipped again, grabbing her holy water, since they appeared to evade her stake with little effort.
Dawn studied her nails, the cigarette holder resting across her knees. She looked up at Buffy, pushing her hair out of her eyes for a moment, their eyes locked and Buffy realized she had to escape, now. That thing had planned this carefully and if it had been Dawn, then it knew more about this chapel than Buffy did. This battle she could not win. Not with these odds. She needed help.
“Actually that’s another thing that’s sort of changed, Buffy. My name. While I am still Dawn, I don’t go by that name any more. I’ve been christened with a new name – a much classier name – I think.” She paused, eyes sparkling. “Miss Edith. Suits me, or the new me, don’t you think? Mio Sorella?” Miss Edith rose from the railing and lifting herself by her hands she got up on it. Delicately balanced on the edge by the spiked heels of her boots. More graceful than Dawn had ever been in life. She lifted her arms outward in a gesture of supplication, one hand still holding the cigarette holder, echoing the posture of the figure on the cross that dangled directly behind her.
The gesture reminded Buffy of someone, someone she hadn’t thought of for a very long time. Dark hair. Dark bird-like eyes. A high child-like voice. “Dru?” she breathed, launching herself upwards towards the chandelier, grabbing hold of it and swinging towards the window she’d seen earlier, her only possible exit route at this point since the vamps had found a way to surround her. Drusilla – the figure in front of her reminded her so much of Drusilla and a memory flashed through her head – an old memory, four, five years back, when she was a junior in high school, in love with Angel, and Dru and Spike stood on an altar much like this one conducting some wicked ceremony to bring Dru back to life. Oh my God…Dru. Buffy thought, kicking herself for not killing the bitch when she had the chance. Dru must have gotten hold of Dawn and Xander? No, no, can’t think about that now. Must focus on getting out of here. Her arms ached, particularly the shoulder which seemed to be leaking blood. They’d come armed with black knives. Another had gotten her in the thigh. Thank the powers or whatever was up there for slayer strength and rapid healing abilities. She felt them all gathered beneath her, felt them watching waiting for her to drop. One actually leapt and almost grasped her ankle, she wriggled free, feeling the chandelier begin to crack free of it’s molding. She stared at the window and swung a second time, no not high enough. One more time – if the chandelier would just hold long enough for one last time – she lifted her feet, tightened her fingers around the steel which cut into them and swung with all her might towards that window, hearing the chandelier begin to tear free as she did it. She let go, sailing through the air feet first, heels crashing through the window, she had missed the opening by a centimeter. Slivers of glass dusted her hair, she had wisely closed her eyes and mouth as it exploded around her. Flipping in mid-air so as not to fall on her pelvis, she somersaulted to the square below, landing half on one knee, but more or less intact. Unsteadily she pushed herself to her feet, facing the dark shadow of the chapel. The chandelier must have crashed to the ground behind her, because the chapel was completely dark now. No light emanated from its windows. She hoped the chandelier impaled one of the vampires standing beneath it.
Shaking herself free of the slivers of glass that still dusted her hair and limbs, she checked herself. No broken limbs. Lots of scrapes and a couple of deep knife wounds, but that was nothing new in her line of work. Also her favorite leather jacket had been ruined. Not that she really cared. She had also lost Mr. Pointy. Great. She glanced back again at the chapel and felt her stomach heave. Fist to her mouth she ran forward and leaned over a nearby trash barrel. An old woman stopped next to her and asked in Italian if she was okay. Buffy nodded, wiping her mouth with the handkerchief the old woman gave her. Then shrugging off the old woman’s concern, she turned her back on the chapel and walked as quickly as she could home. She had to call Giles or Willow. No Willow was somewhere in Nepal – talking to spirits, completely unreachable. She’d call Giles. It was the only thing she let herself think about until she reached the two-story flat she had shared with Dawn. Her sister. Mio Sorella. She entered it, unlocked the door, and headed to the top bedroom. The one that had been Dawn’s. She stood there for a moment staring at the empty room. At Dawn’s things. The things she hadn’t taken with her to Florence. Then crumbled in the doorway, staring blankly at the wall as the tears slid down her face.
Let me know what you think. Thanks!
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Thank you...
Date: 2004-03-17 11:35 am (UTC)Glad you're enjoying it. And thank you so much for the feedback. It's helpful.
Re: Thank you...
Date: 2004-03-17 01:52 pm (UTC)The problem with Dawn is combining the voice/personality of a very young woman with the influence of the vampire and the influence of Dru. Remembering VampWillow and Xander, it twisted their most unique qualities in evil ways. Xander's passivity became voyeurism, Will's openness regarding sexuality became depravity, etc. But they still sounded like themselves, only more so. Will's dialogue was a twisted version of her normal way of speaking. And siring seems to regress the personality--Dawn might be more child-like rather than less, especially if taught by Dru. Dawn felt slighted by the others' importance, and you did a good job of showing that in VampDawn.(Just thinking aloud.)
Dru can see into people, so she would have a great deal of insight into Dawn (and therefore Buffy) and would know just how to twist Dawn to hurt Buffy the most. (Assuming that that is her goal, and not just the elimination of slayers in general.) In fact, it really goes back to Angelus, doesn't it, if Dru is out for revenge.
I"m sorry, I'm afraid I'm not terribly coherent here. :)
No, actually you're very coherent and helpful
Date: 2004-03-17 02:34 pm (UTC)I have a tendency to automatically rewrite fanfic in my head, and didn't want to start doing that. Usually within a few paragraphs I'm saying, "Do your characters do anything, or are they just going to endlessly talk about their long-repressed feelings?"
You too? I do the same thing. It's why I don't respond to a lot of fic I read, because of this tendency, especially when the fic has over 50 positive comments.
(Although I did find myself thinking that Buffy would say "glasses" instead of spectacles....)
I used spectacles? Oops. You're right - glasses makes more sense. Buffy would never use the other. I think spectacles. Buffy wouldn't. Good catch.
The problem with Dawn is combining the voice/personality of a very young woman with the influence of the vampire and the influence of Dru.
Exactly. Also Dawn has an interesting sexuality/sensuality that is very different from Buffy's, almost Faith-like. Yet very similar to Dru at the same time. Sleek - like a cat almost, which I was trying to show - because I think when you become a vampire, all your sexual inhibitions go out the window. They also get somewhat perverted. But I didn't want to do a sex scene because I suck at sex scenes. I think deadsoul820 and herself nyc might be the best at the perverted sex scene.
Dru can see into people, so she would have a great deal of insight into Dawn (and therefore Buffy) and would know just how to twist Dawn to hurt Buffy the most. (Assuming that that is her goal, and not just the elimination of slayers in general.) In fact, it really goes back to Angelus, doesn't it, if Dru is out for revenge.
Oh good, you're hitting on it. Yes - Dru is actually more into hurting Buffy and Angelus, actually Angelus, than eliminating the slayer line. Also in Dru's point of view, and this is very important Dru isn't eliminating slayers (she really isn't interested in 'eliminating the slayer line' nor does she see things quite like that), she's merely bringing them over to her side and getting back at Buffy and through Buffy, back at Angel or at least that's the idea.
Trying desperately right now not to give into the urge to go to the corner store and buy brownie mix and whip cream, having a horrible craving for hot brownies and whip cream. What is it about snowy days that makes you want to eat things that are bad for you?
Re: No, actually you're very coherent and helpful
Date: 2004-03-17 04:17 pm (UTC)I think there's a lot of possibilities in the fact that Dawn's Buffy's sister, Angel killed Dru's sisters, and the new slayers might be like a sisterhood.
I haven't seen more than a dusting of snow since I lived in North Carolina and it had a freak snowstorm. I think we have a built-in craving for fatty foods during cold weather. Which doesn't explain why I have pastry cravings in summer, however.
Hmm, I think I'll go make dinner.