Chapter Four
A Stranger Among Us
The next morning Buffy walked into the
house on Revello Drive and slammed the door shut. She was in a bad mood.
After the dream, she had tried to lose herself in Riley but of course
that didn’t work. She did have an orgasm
but Riley was just Riley he certainly didn’t have the proper tools to satisfy
her. She was only able to cum because
behind her closed eyes it was the bastard that she was riding and that’s what
put her in a bad mood.
“Mom?” She called out. She walked
into the kitchen where she found Joyce drinking a cup of coffee “Hi
sweetie.” Joyce looked at her daughter
and saw the frown on her face “having a bad day?”
“You have no idea.” She grabbed a soda out of the fridge “I’ll
be up in my room.” Joyce watched her
walk away a frown settling on her face.
Buffy hardly spoke to her anymore; actually she hardly spoke to anyone
anymore. She rarely ever came home and
when she did she hid away upstairs in her room. She was worried about her maybe she should talk to Rupert. She looked at her watch; damn I’m going to
be late.
Grabbing her jacket and briefcase she
walked to the door “Buffy I have to go to the gallery.” She called out but no one answered. She then remembered that she forgot to tell her
the good news. She quickly climbed the
steps and made the turn towards Buffy’s room, she opened the door and was
stunned to see her oldest daughter with her hand around the neck of her young
sibling, holding her up against the wall with her feet dangling in the air.
“OH MY GOD! BUFFY WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Rushing into the room she ran over and tried to tear Buffy’s
hands off of Dawn.
Buffy sneered at her. “She was in my
room…” she banged Dawn against the wall “…going through my things!”
“Oh my God Buffy LET HER GO!” Joyce was earnestly trying to release
Buffy’s hold, but Buffy was so much stronger she had no problem shaking Joyce
off.
She leaned down into Dawns reddening
face. “Not until she swears to stay out of my room.”
Dawn was sputtering desperately trying
to breath. “I…swear…I…swear!”
Buffy dropped her like a rag doll and
turned cold empty eyes to them. “Good,
now get out and stay out of my way.”
She turned away from a coughing Dawn and a shocked Joyce and stared out
the window.
Joyce looked at the back of her
daughter who was this stranger? This
couldn’t be my daughter? Taking Dawns
shaking form in her arms she led her out of the room quietly closing the door
behind her.
**
“Rupert I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do! Not that I could have done anything. I tried, really I tried but she wouldn’t
budge, she barely listened to me.
What’s happened to her?”
Giles watched Joyce pace in his living
room his concerns clearly etched on his face.
He was also worried about Buffy lately she seemed so distant, so
cold. He had been watching her for
sometime now slowly sinking into an abyss of darkness. And he didn’t know what to do about it.
Now with this new occurrence he was
more than worried he was literally afraid for her soul. She seemed to be tumbling further and
further away from him and everyone she knew and he had no idea what to say or
do to help her.
“Joyce I know you are concerned, as am
I, but we need to calm down and think about this rationally.”
“Rationally…Rupert I really don’t know
if I can think rationally when my eldest daughter is clearly losing her mind!”
He took off his glasses rubbing them
with his shirt. “I don’t think it’s that serious Joyce. She’s not losing her mind I think that
perhaps she is going through something personal that maybe she is having a hard
time overcoming.”
Joyce scoffed. “Something
personal? Who are you kidding
Rupert? She’s been like this for six
months and it’s just getting worse. You
know the cause as well as I, I just wish I knew exactly what the hell
happened.” She smacked her fist into
her hands pacing back and forth, feeling righteous anger on behalf of her
daughter.
Giles looked at Joyce wondering how
much he should tell her. She had dealt with a lot the last couple of years and
unfortunately things were only going to get worse for her. He really liked
Joyce. In fact he would even go so far as to say that he had a crush on her.
Ever since the incident with the candy bars, he laid awake many nights
remembering their time spent together.
He wondered if she ever thought about it. Either way he had a strong emotional bond to this woman, which
sometimes made him uncomfortable. But
maybe the bond he felt with her wasn’t so strange considering he felt like a
father to both her children.
With all of these confusing feelings
toward her he didn’t like lying, but he decided that for the time being, the
least bit of information was best. “I spoke with Wesley right after she came
back.”
She stopped her pacing and looked at
him. “And what did he say?”
“He said that they argued over Faith
and then he told her to go home.” Giles
left out the last bit about how he told her to go home. When Wesley told him he had actually applauded
Angel for doing it so heartlessly because he believed that his Slayer would
finally get over the souled vamp and move on with her life.
Instead it backfired on all of
them. Because as soon as she got back
from LA she was a woman possessed, she wasted no time in going after Adam and
the Initiative, one by one. He could
easily remember the empty look on her face when she rammed her sword in to the
stomach of Maggie Walsh.
He was shocked that she could so
heartlessly murder a human. But she did
with no sign of showing any remorse.
She just pulled her sword out of Walsh’s gut, wiped the blood off with a
swipe against her leather pants and moved on to the next one.
After the total annihilation of the
Initiative, it was the Dracula incident next.
He still wasn’t clear about how Spike found out his information but he
said he saw Dracula sitting on the Slayer’s bed. One minute he had her in his
thrall, seducing her with his hypnotic gaze and moving in for the kill, when he
mentioned Angel’s bite mark on her neck. She snapped out of whatever thrall he
had her under and before Dracula knew what hit him, with lightening speed she
whipped out a stake and rammed it straight into his heart. She then casually whisked away his dust with
a flick of her wrist and went to sleep.
No Giles was deeply concerned because
after talking to Wesley it seemed that not only was his Slayer slowly slipping
away but Angel as well. He had returned
to his old habit of solitude. He rarely
spoke to them and there was a constant mix of guilt, anger and hardness in him.
He was slowly but surely turning into a callous being with not an ounce of
compassion.
So it seemed to both the disgruntled
ex-watchers that they had some troubling times ahead of them. With both of their champions running around
like lose cannons where did that leave them?
“Joyce I understand that you are upset
and I am in full agreement with you.
But we must proceed with caution.”
He put his arm on her shoulders and steered her toward the door “I want
you to go home and comfort Dawn. Let me think about this and I’ll call you
later tonight.”
Joyce looked at the man who had become
the surrogate father to her daughters and a good friend and her heart filled
with warmth. He had been so kind to her
and the children from day one and she honestly didn’t know what she would have
done without him. Sometimes when she
looked at him she got a warm fuzzy feeling inside. It would make her blush,
because she was not a schoolgirl. Grown
woman didn’t get feelings like that. So
she would just push them aside. Except
for that one night when they were both under a spell, she figured that he
probably didn’t feel the same and that it was best to keep her feelings to
herself.
“Thank you Rupert for everything you
do, for them and me.” She softly kissed
him on the cheek gave him a small sad smile and left.
**
Dawn sat on the back porch trying to
figure out what she did wrong and why her sister hated her so much. Something had happened to her since the last
time she had seen her and she didn’t know what it was. And it wasn’t like anyone would tell
her. Not little old insignificant me
she thought.
She had asked Willow what had
happened, but she only shook her head and told her not worry that Buffy would
work things out in her own time. Her
mom and Xander had all said the same thing.
Even though they wouldn’t tell her, she wasn’t stupid and she knew that
there was only one person in this world that could get such a reaction out of
her usually so controlled sister.
Angel.
She wished that she could talk to
him. She always liked Angel. He was always nice to her and treated her
like a person and not an annoying little girl.
Telling her stories of his adventures and all the marvelous places he
had been. Maybe he would tell her what happened.
She ran inside the house and upstairs.
Grabbing the phone she went into the bathroom and locked the door. She dialed the number that she had
memorized.
The phone rang and rang till someone
finally picked up. “Hello Angel Investigations we help the hopeless and we’re
willing to help you for the right price.”
Dawn snickered, the same Cordelia “Hi
Cordy.”
“Dawn? Hey what’s up?”
“Is Angel there?”
Cordy heard the unspoken plea in her
voice “I’m sorry Dawnie he’s sleeping.”
Dawn shoulders slumped “Oh…I really need
to talk to him, do you think you could wake him up.”
Cordelia huffed into the receiver
“Dawnie I like you but I don’t like you that much. He’s been seriously wacky lately and I try to avoid him as much
as possible.”
“Oh okay. Can you tell him I called?”
“Sure sweetie, I’ll talk to you soon.
Bye.” Cordelia hung up the phone with a
frown on her face. She looked up the
stairs towards his room and made a silent prayer that the souled vamp would
soon find his way out of the darkness that was slowly taking control.