Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Oops I Did It Again

I’m trying to be good. I have a plan and everything. Screwing The True Chosen One’s man again wasn’t part of it. I didn’t think it was going to be a problem when we first met. I thought he was the safe nerd she married for money. That’s what little blond chicks do when they get old and have an empire to run, right? Well, my slow ass was wrong again, and now its naked.

I slowly slide out from under hubby’s sleeping arms. The fuzzy plush fibers of the carpet pleasantly tickle, giving me the opposite of rug burn. I’m sure there are a million comfy carpet fibers that will be forever a part of my back from when hubs hooked my legs over his shoulders to go deep into me. He asked me if I wanted it. As if I wasn’t the one who got us to the carpet in the first place. All he did was touch my hand and I jumped him and swallowed those full pink lips of his. I didn’t even have the excuse that I wasn’t getting any.

I’d been hooking up with this chick in my dreams since this started, she claims she’s the goddess of creation, so I call her Cree. The trauma therapist assured me Cree probably isn’t real. Still, she satisfied me most nights, with her light and airy dream sex. But, hubby hits different. He fucked like the gas-remote fireplace behind us. All hot and consuming me down to the bone but controlled.

The trauma therapist told me I’d make mistakes, and when I did, I should keep focusing on my plan. So, I won’t focus on how not screwing hubby was supposed to be the easiest thing not to do in this shitshow! This shitshow being: that I woke-up from another coma weeks ago and the last memories I have are around twenty years old.

I’m a little fuzzy on the exact year my last memories are from because at that time I had I just woken up from my first coma. What can I say? I’m a vampire Slayer and a party girl. I like to go all in and then I like to sleep hard. The last time I woke up from a coma I really decided to go all in. I became The Bad Slayer. It actually didn’t feel like a choice at all since there already was The True Chosen One, and she was The Good One.

 But, these past few weeks I’ve learned that’s what trauma does. It makes you feel like you don’t have choices. But you do. Trauma just keeps you making bad ones. The you here is me. And, if anyone had told me where my shit trauma choices would have led…well, I still probably would have made the same ones because I’d still be trapped by trauma. I never would have listened or believed. To be fair I don’t think anyone would believe that I’d wake up twenty years later in my 40-year-old hot milfy body, with everyone thinking I’m her, Buffy Fucking Summers. The True Chosen one, The (now) Mother of Slayers.

            So, I haven’t told them. I actually tried at first. I really did. It’s not like I want all these needy Slayers, and these other heavy hitters thinking I’m Buffy, needing me to be Buffy.

But, when I tried to tell them they all just thought it was the head injury talking. It didn’t help that I couldn’t seem to say my name or hers or hear anyone else say them. The trauma therapist seems to think that’s trauma too. Some think it’s magic. But, everyone including the therapist, thinks I’m Buffy. At this point telling them all would do more harm than good.

But, I have it all under control. My plan will make it right. I’ve already on my way as I’ve found my clothes. I step into my yoga pants and put on my bra. I’m grateful they finally invented sexy comfortable clothes. I’m also grateful they invented trauma therapists for Slayers and stuff like that, or I should say I’m glad Buffy invented it all. She probably couldn’t stand the idea of dealing with another piece of shit like me.

 I gotta say if the plan works, I will miss this “get-away” condo. The place puts anything my Evil-Sugar-Daddy-Mayor put me up in to shame. It has everything that came out in the last twenty years that I’ve missed, vegan-leather sofas, voice activated music, and of course a “smart” weapons cache. To top it off the place is decorated like a rich girl’s idea of a cozy hippy cabin.

I could just stay here and I don’t just mean here in the condo. Even though the fire is so warm. I mean I could probably stay here at SlaySafe and do some actual good. There’s this one angry little aged-out-of-foster-care-Slayer that was brought in and, she’s a total bitch but, I think I’m getting through to her...but probably not.

Then there’s sleeping hubby. He’s not like Buffy’s other guys, those strait-laced self-righteous meat-and-potatoes guys. He’s not stupid like them. My amnesia beyond Radiohead’s fourth album and Biggie being Born Again may be real. My trauma may explain my shittier life outlook. The therapist may be saying we need to go slow and he shouldn’t dump too much info on me. But, he’ll figure out I’m not Buffy eventually.

 The “Oops I did it again,” excuse won’t cut it.  Traumatized people repeat their mistakes, but so do assholes. I had pulled this exact shit before and no one would believe that I’m the right side n—Shit! Fuck! There’s a hard hand on my shoulder.

I gasp when I’m spun around. I don’t make a fist. If B has somehow come back in her body looking all hot enraged milfy blond at forty to finally kill me for good, so be it. But, I already know it’s not her. Even though I want it to be.

Even though I can’t remember what I ended up doing with her body when I switched it with mine, I know it has to be long gone. I never planned on being around that long in her body. I hadn’t made a detailed plan, but I had a lot of what they call “suicidal ideation.” Knowing how crazy I was and that she was coming for me I probably jumped into a meat grinder just to spite her.

As for why I ended up waking up in my body again after Buffy had made it her own and taken such good care of it these past two decades? I have no fucking idea.

 But it all points to one thing—head trauma. It was something that bitch god-Glory did to her, and I’m going to find that whore and make her put Buffy back. How? Again, no idea. But I know where Glory is thanks to my dream goddess, Cree. Even if she is just my subconscious, I figure she has some of Buffy’s knowledge in there too.

 So, I’m coming for that bitch armed with this crazy-awesome-Slayer-scythe weapon So, I just need that. It turns out it’s in my hometown of Boston, which is great. Except, I’m in Berkeley, California right now, in a condo in the hills, with her husband who I just fucked eight ways to Sunday. Who I think I mentioned isn’t stupid, and I know I have to fuck different than Buffy. Fucking Buffy, who I’m trying to save, and who he’s been hitched to her, for I dunno how many years. I haven’t even been trying to act like her.

I think I also forgot to mention hubby may not look all swole (as the kids say) but the dude has powers. I’ve seen what he can do when someone fucks with him and his.   So, I may be busted here, and as much as I hate to admit it, I dunno if I can take the dude in a fair fight now. Not that any of this is fair.

 Maybe I just can’t be good. I can only start with one word, his name:

“Connor--"

Chapter Text

Blame it on My ADD

“Connor—” I got out the name of B’s husband as he’s turned me around by my shoulder.

At least I’m wearing a bra. Apparently, my tits had gotten bigger over the years. Not that he complained. They’ve held up like the rest of my body, thanks to Ms. Queen Mother of Slayers, Buffy Summers. Not that she’d been keeping my body tight for the past two decades for me. She had been doing it for herself because she was stuck in it, and I can’t blame her because I put her in it. She even gave my hair cute little ashy blonde highlights as a homage to her old bod. She keeps it long and posts her haircuts on Instagram with adorable smiles with my face. Get this, her Instagram name is: LastChosenSlayerMama. Puke!

It makes me ready to die, again. That was the plan, again. Only I got sidetracked and fucked her man, again. We had gone to pound town several times and now I was facing him. Had he just figured out I wasn’t his wife?

I realize I had to come up with more words as his huge round baby blues peered into my brown ones. I know I should tell him the truth: Hey dude, the face you’re staring at now used to be mine. I’m Faith Lehane, you must have heard I was The Bad Slayer, like twenty years ago. But, when my evil-daddy left me a body swap device in his will I used it on Buffy, AKA The Chosen One, AKA The Mother of Slayers, AKA your wife. But, after that god-attack-thing I got put back in my body. I tried to tell everyone at first, but oopsie, I fucked you instead.

“Shit, dude,” is what actually came up with.

“Sorry,” Connor says and puts his hands up, “I am being a ‘dude.’ I had no right to do that.”

“Do what?”  

He has no right to look this good naked. He has that whole secret fit nerd Spiderman body thing going on. Smooth skin with just a bit of chest hair. Long lean muscles that he hides under sweatshirts. He’s not conventionally hot, and yet, all the young Slayers call him “zaddy” when they think he can’t hear. As for me I really should keep calling him “hubby” in my head to remind me the boy ain’t mine.

 I’m trying to be different and not be The Bad Slayer, I swear. It’s just taking me a second to get my bairings. The last memories I have, besides screaming because it felt like my head was being crushed, are from twenty years ago. I was partying like two-thousand-zero-zero was party over out of time because for me it was.

 I planned on going out in style in B’s body, and I can’t remember doing it but I’m sure that’s what I did. B got stuck in my body for these past 20 years, and the girl has been busy. I’m not surprised she beat my murder charges. She had magic, and friendship, and love, literally. I had a dead evil demon dad-figure and a worse live one somewhere. Anyway, now it’s the 2020s and things are different. They’re even better for Ms. Buffy Summers, who was married to Connor—Oh shit, what was his last name?

            “I have no right to touch you like that, grab you, without your permission,” Connor says, “Sorry.”

            “Um,” I say, “I gave you permission. Lots of permission, remember?”

Deep permission.  My cavern was yawning so bad I thought I might swallow him up. But, the dude has the stamina for twenty thousand leagues and then some. He seemed to know every way my body wanted to swerve and bounce, so after the first few times I let him steer. He led me to what I thought were some old destinations, but they turned out to be new. Of course, they were new…because he wasn’t mine.

            “I do,” he smiles and it’s a beautiful thing, “Very enthusiastic permission, but that’s over now and I didn’t mean--”

            “Um, aren’t I supposed to be your wife?”

            “B—” he almost says her name but he stops for my sake.

            Not because he has any idea, I’m not Buffy, but because on top off all the other fresh Hell, any time anyone says Buffy’s name, or I try to say it, I get this painful ringing in my ears, my head, my whole body. The sound blocks out her name, but I can always hear the first part of it.  The “Buh” the “B” to know who everyone is talking about, who I’m supposed to “be.” Ha, ha or LOL.

            “You’re not supposed to be anything except you, CO,” he says.

“CO” is what he’s been calling me instead of “Buffy.” It stands for Chosen One, of course. A bitter sound comes out of my throat before it tightens. I turn away from him to put on my/her super comfortable yoga T-shirt. I can’t do this. No, I can’t undo this, or anything I’ve done, but I can make it right. I will. I’ll get B back. I have the plan. The thing about complex plans I’ve always hated is you get sidetracked. Very badly sidetracked. Can I blame this on my ADD?

“I mean it,” Connor continues and I’m forced to look at him. He’s still naked and I’m dressed, “No one owns you. Especially not me. Remember, no one should lay hands on anyone unless—”

“Unless they’re a danger to themselves or others, or have consent,” I say, “Yeah, yeah.”  

            I can’t help but roll my eyes. Sometimes, hubby sounded like one of those “nice guy” Xander Harris types. They yap on about respecting women, and how they’d never hurt you like “bad” guys. Meanwhile, they’re worse than the “bad” guys, because they’re bullshitters.

“Yeah,” he grins as he puts on his tighty whities and jeans, “But, if you’re being the retro Lone Chosen One Slayer and sneaking out after sex, I can at least be the retro-entitled-fuck-boy and demand to know what I did wrong, right?”

But hubby is not a bullshitter pretending to be a “nice guy.” That would be me. I can’t stop myself from smiling as I retort.

“I’m going to go with the old standby answer of: ‘It’s not you, it’s me. Do I win retro bingo?”

“Nah, that’s way too obvious. Of course, it’s you. You have all the issues.”

“True,” I say, “But, with my particular issues shouldn’t I be a shoe-in to win retro bingo if we’re playing.”

I realize I’m not trying to sound like B. B would never say she had all the issues, or any for that matter. But, maybe I did sound like her a little. She was always competitive. I used to let her win in training exercises because she just cared so much. Believe or not we were friends once. Why wouldn’t we be? We were the Chosen Two vampire Slayers. But, in the end it was very clear Buffy had not chosen me. She chose to be the Chosen One. So, I had no choice but to become what she thought I was, a killer. At least that’s what I told myself then.

“See,” Connor turns off the fireplace, “That’s actually where I think it’s unfair. You’re already retro because you have retrograde amnesia.”

This condo he and B have here is nice. Not to mention all the other fixings they’ve procured. If I knew Good could pull in this kind of cash, I may’ve stayed on the right side. B hadn’t been this rich when I knew her, but she had no idea how good she had it. She could afford college. She had a closet full of not-stolen clothes and never once had to live on popcorn and Raman. They call that “privilege” now. Back then they called it “normal.”

“I guess that does give me an unfair advantage if we’re playing retro bingo,” I say.

But Buffy was never happy with the “normal” I would have (and did) kill for. The girl had gotten a hold of cash, lots of it. But instead of spending it on clothes and shiny weapons she had created a whole freakin’ Slaying Empire, a Slay-pire? No, those were Slayers who got turned into vamps. Apparently, the bitch had decided to turn every Potential Slayer into a freakin’ Slayer! Of course, she had to do it to save the world. She used her nerdy little witch-bitch Willow to do it. I can’t remember how The-Slay-All-Day-Empire makes money, but it does.

“Totally,” Connor retorted “You could kick my ass in 90s trivia too. Come to think of it, you’re like developmentally what? Nineteen right now? Twenty?”

“I can’t remember,” I shrug and tap my head and drawl out, “Amnesia. One of the biggest ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ issues.”

I’ve been keeping it real vague as to my memories for obvious reasons. Once I realized they all thought I was Buffy, I just told them I pretty much forgot everything after some college.

“Yeah, see. It is all you. Or. Wait. I seduced my brain damaged wife, who’s nineteen?” He looks shocked, but then he smiles and it’s a thing of beauty, “Shit. Wait. It isn’t you. It is me! I’m a dick. I cheated on my wife with my wife. I should sneak off in shame and give you all the money and the kids since you take care of them anyway.”

            He thinks he’s funny. He is. He’s as funny as fuck, as the kids say. In these moments I have no idea how he and B hooked up. She was way too uptight to laugh at herself, or much of anything. I guess she had twenty years to get the stick out of her ass, which was, and is, my ass now. I have to wait until I’m done laughing before I speak.

            “Are ‘the kids’ my special needs Slayers?” Because you can have them. Really.”

            I follow him to the sectional sofa. I know I should feel like shit, but Connor—hubby—is just too cool. He’s too easy to talk to… and screw. Hey, It’s not like I hadn’t been through shit.  It’s been an eventful two weeks for me and all I’ve had to learn. Hubby and a freakin’ team of trauma therapists caught me up on the world. No surprise it’s a total shitshow, filled with plagues and a reality show host demon just got done being president.

            “Don’t lie,” he says, “You like them.”

            He wasn’t wrong. I did like The Bad Girl Slayers. How could I not? For one thing they taught me about what’s really going on in the world: TikTok, Memes, Lil Naz X, Zaddies, Gender-fluid, Tinder, pansexuality, Instagram, hashtags, #MeToo, BLM, cancel culture, slut shaming, toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, toxic toxic-ness.

The whole Chosen One wasn’t a thing anymore. Now, there were thousands of girls (and other genders) who were Slayers. Thousands of them, who get a power they never asked for. But, B was on top of it. She had a whole new Council, there were new laws. She had a whole corporation EveryGen. Cute, right? But, where her heat really laid was with the most fucked up Slayers, of course, right?

She had hubby build this whole compound in the Berkeley Hills here. It had its own hospital and therapists and fucking horses! It was called SlaySafe, and apparently B lived here most of the time to work with them.

“Of course I like them,” I say, “I’m doing everything to help them, and if it doesn’t work I suck their powers out, right?”

The bitch just couldn’t help herself, I guess. She loved to give charity to us sad cases who didn’t have what she had. Unlike me these girls had to be her charity cases, if they wanted to keep their powers. No surprise, B was a bit of a fascist and I know who to blame…her. She never really wanted to be my friend, my equal, she used me to party and then when it got too intense, she… No, no! It’s my fault. All of this is because of me.

“That’s only a last resort,” Connor says, “and it’s better than the alternative.”

“Killing them?” I say.

Currently, there were 146 of Slayers at SlaySafe. They were the bad girls like me. Clearly, B didn’t want them running around wreaking havoc and whoring up the world with their crazy. Wait, “whoring up the world,” would be slut-shaming, “with their cray-cray” is mental illness shaming. 2020s B would never do that, apparently. Because it’s…wrong now. I lost count of how many times she called me a crazy whore, when her real “feels” came out. But, it wasn’t like she was wrong.

“No, prison,” Connor grabs the TV remote, “You really are stuck in the 90s. We don’t kill teenagers unless it’s kill or be killed.”

“And who decided when it’s kill or be killed with special needs teens?” I say.

The TV makes this “ba-bong!” noise the Netflix logo comes up. Netflix was the awesome thing where you pretty much can watch whatever you want whenever!

“SERC,” he says.

“The New Council?” I say, “and I’m the big boss of that.”

“There’s no big boss of that,” he says, “It’s like congress.”

“and who runs that?” I ask.

Of course, I already knew the answer. It’s B. I don’t sit too close to Connor now. We weren’t supposed to be sleeping together. We were supposed to be “taking it slow.” Hubby wasn’t supposed to be pressuring me. They clearly really thought I was Buffy. She always did stuff slow with dudes. She was fast with chicks though. It barely took her a year to hate me and slide the knife into my gut.

“They run themselves,” he says, “But we’re both apart of it. So, it might make our divorce due to my cheating on you with you awkward.”

“We can’t have that,” I smile.

“Yeah, you clearly still need me around to remind can’t call the Slayers ‘special needs.’ That’s offensive.”

“What? That one too,” I say, “Who doesn’t want to be all special, and have their needs met? Maybe you should take care of the juvenile delinquents and I’ll go back after that bitch-god that did this to me.”

The trauma therapists said I may not ever recover “my” memories. Again, they thought they were talking to B, and hubby, when they said it. What it had to really mean was B wasn’t coming back into my body unless I could get to Glorifucus (Glory) and force her to bring B back. Whatever Glory had done when she attacked made me come back, so that meant she could undo it. Gods could undo shit they did, they’re gods, I can’t. So, I was going to find her with the Slayer Scythe weapon, the weapon of all weapons B uncovered years ago, and use it on Glory, and make her undo her deed, and then I’m out. Easy peasey.

I did have some help there was this sexy chick in my dreams, Cree. She was a god too. Cree said Glory was weak from the battle with B and that she was hanging out in cave next to a hole in the world. So, I just had to figure out where that was, or if it was a metaphor from my quirky probably not real dream goddess. Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but that’s Slay life.  

“Yeah,” he says, “Speaking of retro, and no deal. Do you know the definition of insanity?”

“Um,” I say, “Is this a test? We’re not allowed to call crazy people “crazy” anymore. So, the definition is: mentally ill?”

He laughs.

“It’s doing the same shit over and over and expecting different results. Clearly, you’re not meant to fight gods. Let me--”

“But, this is different!” I say, “It has to be.”

B had been in my body for twenty years, and I was the one who put her there. The way I figure it, she has totally renter’s rights. I’m sure that’s the way hubby would think too. Yeah, sometimes I was bitchy and bitter about all of this. But, I’m not all bad. I’ve learned no one is, and getting B back into this body to prove that.

            “Yeah, because I’ll handle it. I kill gods. Something you seemed to forget before your head wound.”  

            “What?” I say.

            “Not important,” he says and looks at his phone.

            The thing about hubby is that he’s always busy, which is understandable. B wasn’t the best in school, or business management and stuff. Not that she was the worst, like me. But, I got the feeling as much as people were treating me like the queen of it all, Connor was the brains behind the operation. This isn’t my internalized sexism. If B’s friend Willow was still around, I’d say she was running it all.

            “It’s cool, if you have to go do something. I’m the one who had to turn it into Netflix and chill, which I’ve been told has nothing to do with Netflix or chilling. We, um, probably should listen to the therapists and not do it the sexy one anymore, right now.”  

            See, I can do this. Old me would have just jumped him again back when he made the joke about being a retro-fuck-boy.

“Okay, number one, I’m not going anywhere, at least not for the rest of the night,” he says, “And number two, we established I’m the asshole here, TCO. I seduced you with Netflix and Chill and if you don’t want that any--”

My laugh falls over his words.  TCO stood for True Chosen One, of course. Could I be anymore erased? Could she be any more right to erase me? Well, I wasn’t the one to try to kill her over a guy. I just tried to kill her guys and fucked them. Well, I only tried to kill one…and I tried to fuck him too, but he was a vampire asshole.

But, I was laughing at the idea that hubby seduced me. I wanted to fuck hubby so bad I felt from my gut to my pussy. I had been feeling it for days after he ripped that minion apart. He was also really cool with the screwed-up Slayers, and the nerdy magic-tech people, and the cleaning staff, and the horses. He wasn’t broody or preachy. He knew how to use words and he didn’t use his fists unless he had to and he meant it. In other words, he wasn’t an asshole. At first, I thought he had to be an asshole and was hiding something. Since that’s my usual type I tried not to be alone with him.

I told everyone it was “awkward” since I didn’t remember our whole Nicholas Sparks adventure of falling in love and getting married. At least that part was true. Then it got Nicholas Sparks X-rated. The second we were alone here and he touched me I jumped him. I worked my usual Slayer muscles in my pussy and got him off three times. It was good. I felt all the tingles of my usual orgasms that I have alone, or in dream sex. I’m also doing it with the goddess that’s helping me in my dreams. What can I say? She’s hot.

“Trust me,” I say now that I’ve stopped laughing, “You’re not the asshole. You’re a good man. Really good.”

“Sometimes,” he says, “But, I’m a lot of other things too. You’ll remember, or you’ll see if you don’t remember. I’m not perfect. Sometimes, I forget to focus on what’s important, like certain Slayers.”

            “Right,” I say, “I’m The Mother of Slayers, and, I have to take care of all the ‘at risk’ ones. Is it okay to call them that? You know they call you ‘zaddy?’”

            “I, um, was actually talking about you,” he crosses his legs and blushes.

            I get up off the couch because I suddenly feel antsy. Because I can’t seem to stop being flirty with him. I stretch.

            “I’m not at risk anymore,” I say bending my hips, “I’ve fallen off the risk cliff and I’m done. I just need to get back to being that way.”

            “What?” he says.

            “Never mind,” I say and start my walk back to the couch, “Let’s just watch some actual flicks on the net. That’s probably not how you say it.”

            “No,” he takes my arm and pulls me into his lap, “What did you just say?”

            What did I just say? Shit. I dunno, was it something that made him realize despite brain damage I’m not his wife? He pulled me into him and I’m sitting between his knees, and like I said, he doesn’t look like much, but I’m sure he could crush me with his legs.

Since I woke up I still have all my moves but my strength has felt a little off, especially after a strenuous activity like fucking. His arm was around me tight. If he knew he could just squeeze so tight me and I probably wouldn’t break, but he could hurt me.

To get out I’d have to hurt him back, badly. I saw him literally rip apart that minion of Glory’s that only got to the front of this place. SlaySafe is a compound. I know he wouldn’t give up If he knew I was The Bad Slayer. He’d do anything to get B back, but so would I. He wasn’t like B’s old guys- black-and-white meat-and-potatoes simple. Maybe I could explain myself to him, and he’d get that we were on the same side. Maybe he’d even understand why I couldn’t resist his touch, his body that looked like one thing but was another, but that I was also trying to do the right thing. Maybe I really could blame it on my ADD and PTSD, since people are much cooler about that stuff now.

Maybe I could even tell him giving thousands of girls (and others) power to save the world and ease your burden wasn’t wrong, but then deciding who got to keep it was. Maybe. I dunno. No, I probably shouldn’t say that.

…Or he could fuck me again like he did. I could feel his chest against my side. He hadn’t put his back shirt on. So, it’s his fault for dressing slutty. He’d get that was a joke. I should say that. I could feel his pulse in my bones, or was that mine? What did I just say? That’s what he wanted to know, right?

Chapter Text

A Changed Woman

“I said: it’s going to be okay,” I say.

I comfort the strapping young guy pacing in front of me.

Or I try to.

 Usually when I’m in a cave-like environment with a guy that looks like this, I’m not comforting them, or thinking of plans. Usually, I’m fighting them, and they’re usually demonic.

That’s how it works when you’re The Slayer, or that’s how it used to work.  But, things have gotten complicated over the years.

What do I mean by “complicated?”

For starters, right now I wasn’t in the right body, even though I was in my body. Don’t get me wrong. I love my right body, my Buffy-bod, face, and voice, and face, even if it’s not as firm as it used to be.

But, I’ve learned over the years sometimes you just have to be someone else. Especially when god-like forces of evil are trying to end you and everything you’ve built. I really want to tell said god-like forces that I didn’t need any help with that. I had already helped myself, or my friends did. But, it wasn’t all bad.

“No, it’s not! None of this is good,” The guy is pacing frantically his phone screen lighting his face.

 We also already killed God. Probably not the good main one, if there even is that, but the one that had been “helping” us and then really went nuts, and that’s why we’re here now.

“Where are we?” he demands, “I thought we were going to a literal safe-space. Not to some Dark Night Pit.”

I need to keep this guy calm. I watch him pace as I sit on a rock.

“I think we are in a safe-space,” I say, “There aren’t any demons here.”

“Your bar for a ‘safe space’ is really low,” he still paces, “and speaking of bars. I don’t have any.”

“It’s fine. This wasn’t what we expected. I just need to think of a plan. Well, another one.”

 The plan had been for me to stay in the other body. (Should we call them our Summer bodies, B. Get it? Summers Body? Well, it works for me.) The spell must have knocked me back into my rightful body. We thought I had to stay in the other body in order to get this guy to a place where it was safe to remove what was in his body before it ended the world. Right now, his body isn’t ending the world.  All he’s doing is pacing and looking at his phone. So, that’s good.

“Another plan? Come on we’re screwed,” he waves his phone at me, “We’re clearly in some kind of Hell dimension with no bars, and wasn’t I supposed to be with the se—" he stops himself, “the other one?”

“No,” I say, “It was always going to be me. Sorry, I didn’t have time for a sexy makeover before saving you, and she’s too old for you anyway.”

I didn’t mention the fact that it was me who had been “the sexy one” or “the other one,” and I had barely spoken more than a few sentences to him. It was the Slayer in this body, my damn sexy-enough body, who had built what they call rapport with him. So, you would think he’d want to be with me, or not me, but her, the one in my body, which was me now but... Oy! This is one of the many reasons we weren’t telling anyone.

Secrets are what killed my father, Buffy. They’re what killed Cordy, and if you don’t stop…

“Whoa! No!,’” he holds up his hands, “I was going to say ‘the sensible one.I have a girlfriend and you’re both old enough to be my moms.”

I didn’t believe him. I knew from my experiences in Faith’s body that it actually didn’t matter what I said, or didn’t say, or what I did, or didn’t do. When at work, men always seemed to think it was me who put out “sex vibes.” It wasn’t all guys, or even most, but it was too many.

Even one is too many, bae. You don’t have to put it up with it. Not anymore.

But, I did. We did. It wasn’t like we could stalk/arrest/kill every guy that said things like “the sexy one.” Of course, this did happen to me when in my own body too, but in Faith’s body nothing short of wearing baggy clothes and no make-up seemed to make a difference. Even being old enough to be someone’s mom. Wait, was I/Faith old enough to be this guy’s mom?

 “Um, no,” I say, “That can’t be right. How old are you again?”

“Eighteen,” he says, “You forgot?”  

Oh my god! He’s a teenager. I’m with an entitled good-looking teenage boy. Maybe I’m the one in Hell. It’s not that I hate teenagers.  They’re just so dramatic. One little teleportation trip where their phones didn’t work and it was the end of the world to them.

“Um,” I shake out my hair and stretch, “Yeah, sorry.”

When you become a Chosen One, they don’t tell you working with teens will forever be a job requirement.  Bad, traumatic, supernatural stuff happens to teenagers and twenty-somethings more. At least no one told me when I became Chosen in 19-nevermind. I was fifteen, way younger than this kid, whose life was probably normal before this. I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to read the file. I was kind of busy. I’m sure he felt like he wasn’t like other guys deep down before all this happened. That was how I felt as a teen too.

“It’s okay,” he says, “I know I look older. That’s part of why this happened. I got into that club and…”

“Yeah,” I say.

As The Chosen Slayer, I’d never get to age out of supernatural stuff happening to me.  So now I still didn’t feel like most women in their… my age. Don’t back away from it, B. We’re still hot chicks with superpowers. Fine… Forty. I’m forty, so I guess, I’m in my forties.

“I couldn’t be your mom, I was too busy making every other kind of mistake when I was younger,” I say to him.

 He smiles bitterly.

“Well,” he says, “That’s how my parents had me.”

“That’s how most people get had,” I say, “and it turns out fine.”

I think of my sister and her amazing kid, who would never have to suffer like this. This boy here probably always feels how I felt- like he was really good at faking being like everyone else, but he didn’t feel like most teenagers. I hope he can just look back on this as a dark youthful misadventure. I had more than my share of those.

“I don’t think anyone would say I’m fine, or that anything is.” He has that sad bad boy smile.

He was tall and square jawed and looked twenty-four. He looked like so many cute tall boys I could have dated once. A bit too good looking to be the one I trusted too much once. He looked like he could be Angel’s brother, or son, or…the way I would have imagined Angel’s son would have looked, back when I was this boy’s age.  Back when I thought I knew what pain was, but it really was just teen angst. Not that there wasn’t real pain, there was.

But, it had been a simple single-celled pain, back when I realized that a lone Vampire Slayer girl (me) and a vampire with a soul (Angel) weren’t going to be together forever.  I never could have conceived of Angel’s actual son, Connor, then. All the space Connor would take up. All of the realities. To be fair, predicting Connor in 1999 would have been like predicting a self-driving pizza delivery car in 1890 in London. Even if you had some prophetic dream about a self-driving pizza car then your brain wouldn’t be able to make sense of it. But, I had come a long way since 1999.

I made perfect sense of Connor and how he paced when he argued just like Angel.

I’m not entitled, moose. I had no choice but to take everything my father gave me. You think that means I didn’t love him? Don’t you get that I had do something different, become something different, to save him, to save the people I loved, to save the world? Two out three isn’t bad, right?

I had come an even longer way since 2009.

“Don’t worry,” I have my own sad smile for this boy, “I’ll make it fine. I will think of another plan. It’s what I do.”

You are a good strategist, moose. Maybe even a genius one. I’ll give you that…

“If you want to,” the boy looked away from me.

If I want to? No, I didn’t want to. I had to. What I want, what I had wanted was to do this quickly and quietly so I could go back to my well-run normal life. But…

Bullshit! That’s not what you want. I may not know everything but I know that. I also know people who don’t know what they want never get it.  

The day they suss out what you want, they’ll probably be a parade.  

“No!” I shout and jump off the rock I was sitting on. It’s not because I’m remembering what man-like people have said to me about my so-called wants. I move so I can grab this boy-man’s arm to stop him from falling down a well-shaped hole in the middle of the rocky ground.

“Whoa,” he as he stumbles back his arm flies out, “What the…No!” His phone goes down the hole.

“Now, I know we’re in a Hell dimension!” he cries.

“No, we’re not. Your phone was going to be useless anyway.  See,” I say and gesture to the light shining ahead, “I already know it isn’t that bad. There—there’s literally light at the end of the tunnel.”

I guide him to walk around the hole. He follows me as I walk towards the greatest light source ahead. There is enough light coming in through various cracks to see glyphs and drawings on the cavernous walls.

“Seriously?” he says, “That’s all you’ve got? Something isn’t right with you.”

I don’t stop walking to turn to him. Something isn’t right with me? No kidding! I’m in my fucking forties with a teenager in a fucking cave I’m in the wrong body, my body, and yet, it’s still wrong. It’s all wrong! It’s been three years since—since everything. Well, not everything, but the rising of the old and new gods, and still, nothing feels right! And there’s no more time for me to make any excuses, no more time for me get things wrong.

“What do you mean?” I mutter as I keep us moving.

“I just didn’t think you were like the rest of them.”

“The rest of them?”  I turn to the ungrateful not-so-little-shit, “You mean, you expected me to be not like all the other girls lining up to save your life?”

 “No, I…”

I turn away from and stomp on. Kicking away memories of falling for the don’t be/you’re not like other girls line. He keeps talking but I tune him out. I’m trying not to remember all the times I’ve been in a cave with ungrateful people. You need to have gratitude to get it.

 I do have gratitude. I’m grateful that Connor isn’t here to tell me I completely screwed up again around god-stuff, and that I should have come to him. I’m grateful I don’t have to hear about how selfish I am because I couldn’t save the world without hurting people for the 37^th time.

Alone! You had to save the fucking world alone, because you bought into that Harry-Potter-with-girl-power-Chosen One shit! Because you’re just like him! You think you can fix everything with a dramatic grand gesture and everyone will think you’re the special hero! Why did I think you could change?

“I have changed!” I say out loud, “I did change. This wasn’t supposed to be—I didn’t do this alone!”

I just end always end up that way, and I hate it. I hate it so much.

“Okay,” the kid’s confused voice is behind me, “I know. You’ve been through some shit and this isn’t all about me. I know.”

“You do?” I turn to him again and after looking at the light ahead he seems shrouded in darkness.

“Yeah,” he says, “You told me, and I get it. That’s why I’m surprised you’re going with toxic positivity now?”

“Toxic what?”

“’There’s light at the end of the tunnel?’” he mimics me, “Seriously? How can you not know what toxic positivity is? Aren’t you, like, a therapist or something?”

 “No and no, I meant literally light is coming through,” I gesture to the light pouring in through the cracks of the cavern.

“Oh,” he puts his hands in his pockets, “I didn’t think you meant literally.”

“I said ‘literally.’ I said ‘There’s literally light at the end of the tunnel.’ ”

“Yeah,” he says, “but I didn’t think you meant literally-literally.”

I want to tell him he literally needs to get a better grasp of English. But, I didn’t want my Faith’s voice in my head calling me a hypocrite on top of all the man(ish)-splainers. Of course, it’s not her literal-literal voice trapped in my head, just the one I’ve carried for years. Longer than the others. I see some markings on the adjacent wall that make me cross to over to it. The boy asks what I’m doing and follows me.

There not glyphs that could mean anything but cave drawings. There are two large female figures facing each other in profile. I assume they’re female due to all the curves. One is curvier than the other with an ample side-boob and belly. A shadow comes out of her side-boob. It floats around various parts of the whole scene. The other has a curve in her chest with a flat stomach. She holds an ax.

 Between the two female figures is a big hot mess of smaller ones. They are in various states of disarray. Some of them bent over some lying down. A shadow hangs over them. It doesn’t come from the side-boob shadow. It comes from a larger figure next to them. This figure is slightly larger than the others. It looks like an explosion with two heads one round hairless and the other with long hair. Above the two women floats figure that seems ensnared by the larger growing shadow that comes from the explosion. I sigh. I don’t want to call it a sigh of relief, but the drawing makes me feel slightly better. Not because it showed anything comforting, but because it would seem that I—we—have already stopped it.   

“What’s this?” the boy says.

“Cave drawings,” I say.

“No,” he says, “I mean, literally, really literally, yes. They are. But, I can tell this is spray paint. So, it wasn’t done by ancient indigenous people…What? You think I’m just a dumb jock?”

 “No,” I say, “I just..”

Yes, I also realized I was waiting for him to say the female figures were “hot” and talk about the fog coming out of the boob. So, I could roll my eyes.

When you don’t have to put up with micro-aggression. It gives you more time to see other things.

But, this boy wasn’t a typical jock. Typical jock? You mean he isn’t our typical friend. He’s not Xander. But, Xander was our friend, Buffy, and despite everything… Despite everything Willow’s voice shows up in my head too now. This version of Willow’s voice on this subject is never helpful. She never understood I wasn’t angry. That was Connor. He had been the anger, so Dawn could be miserable, so Spike could be sensible.

I was just numb. Alone. Changed. Xander changed me more than any other man.

Maybe Willow was the denial. I never seem to remember what the real Willow really said, after “despite everything” or maybe her “despite everything” just wasn’t good enough. The actual Willow seems way too busy to care now, and that's good.

“I just—” I need to focus, “speaking of literally-literally I didn’t expect the prophecy to be so literal, but I think we’re at the hole in the world, which means we’re either in England or New Zealand.”

“Prophecies?” he says, “Since when do you care about that stuff? Why are you so different?”

“Hmm?” I say.

I pause and take out my phone. It has no bars but the camera works. I snap a picture. I really didn’t want to get into it with this kid. It wasn’t that he didn’t deserve to know about the real plan or the body swaps, it was that no one deserved to know, especially some eighteen-year-old boy that was too stupid to figure out god-magic was a bad idea.

“It’s not going to come out without the flash,” he says.

“I can’t remember how to turn that on,” I say, “Can you do it?”

He takes the picture with my phone, but his face is tight.

“You think this is a prophecy prediction? You’re into that shit? I thought the only people who believe that were…”   his body beds back and his sneakers scuffle on the floor.

“Also into internet conspiracies?” I finish, “I’m not saying I—”

“Oh—oh shit you’re her, aren’t you I knew one of you was her. I thought it was the other soccer mom. What was her name again? The sensible one who probably hauled ass back to the minivan, the second shit got real, but it’s you, isn’t it?”

I fold my arms.

“Neither of us have children or drive minivans,” I say, “and everything we did and are doing is to help you, mister.”

“No, it’s not. You were honest about that before. What’s your name again?” his hands are clenching and unclenching nervously now.

“What?” I demand, “You don’t remember?”

 I forgot what names we were using with this kid. We couldn’t really use our real ones for this. We didn’t exactly have time for formal introductions anyway. We had to act fast to help him, and as usual, save the world, because I wasn’t alone and I had changed.

Yeah, yeah. Faith’s voice arrives, Sure you have, B. Quick, what’s this kid’s name?

Okay, so I couldn’t remember this boy’s name. So what? He should remember our names. It’s not like he was the one saving me, or us.

Tell him that, B. Kids love hypocrisy. You’re doin’ great. This ‘ll show Connor you’re for real and get you forgiven. Not that you’re doing this for some dude. It’s all about us girls, right?  Hashtag feminism, right? You’re a changed woman!   

Faith’s voice could shut-all-the-way-up! It was so predictable. I didn’t need it.

Chapter Text

#

“You need to start talking to me,” my best friend tells me as walk up to where she stands.

Last night I killed Buffy Summers and I fucked Faith Lehane.

“I know,” I lean my hands on the wooden fence, “I’m guessing you heard about last night.”

I would have married Faith too, if I could have gotten away with it, and killed Summers a bunch more. Sadly, every place has rules, and rulers, and our residency in Dreamland was no exception. Faith had spent a week here in another coma. We were all relieved when she’d woken up and wasn’t stuck here. Now, like most of The Slayers out in the world, Faith could only come back when she dreamed.

There were currently 5,037 Slayers alive, active, and woke in the world. My BFF and I weren’t a part of them. We were part of the 100 down here in Dreamland. She and I stand at a wood-post fence. Beyond is a pasture of lush green rolling hills. My friend’s hair is longer than mine and it blows back in the breeze. It's a great day here. It usually is.

“I think everyone heard it here last night. You probably made the unicorns lose their innocence.”

“I dunno,” I said, “I think Dana made them. How innocent can they be? I mean they’re into rainbows way too much. I bet if you took a walk in the woods, you’d see they’re freaks.”

This was a good place. The guy in charge of it knows he and his loyal little fairies better keep it that way for me, and my best friend, and all the other Slayers given sanctuary here. I spot some the Slayers yards away in the distance past the pink and white cows. One is riding a unicorn and two seem like they’re engaged in a training exercise or maybe they’re just horsing around, having fun. As usual early Britney Spears is playing from some invisible source.  

Most of the Slayers here are First Gen Slayers. So, the youngest of them was 30, but none of that mattered here. In a lot of cases, they could be the kids they never got to be after that spell activated them. So much of being a Slayer, or any kind of super-being, is about having death and killing hoisted upon you when your way too young to know what you’re in for. On top of that this generation was constantly being told that they had this Chosen One to “thank” for it. All the burden of destiny with none of the feeling of being “special.” So, a lot of this Dreamland is literally gumdrops and rainbows because the Slayers just want to get away from all of that. Especially after what happened to them.

Except for me and my best friend. We’re not like the other girls here. I know everyone likes to think they’re “special” and that’s problematic, but, what can I say? We really aren’t like the other Slayers.

“I’m all about what you’re doing,” my friend says.

As a group of women walk by eating colorful bowls of halo-halo, a Filipino dessert that’s pretty much ice cream and happiness.

“You’re all about Faith,” I say, “Join the club. Just know that I’m the number one VIP member here.”

“Just remember,” she went on ignoring my joke, “It doesn’t matter where the Slayer thinks they are when they’re having a dream. If it’s big enough, or loud enough, it’s going to bleed over to this part of Dreamland.”

“You know us big, loud, and proud, baby,” I felt my face stretch into a grin.

“See this,” she waves her hand around my face, “All of this is why, people up there, hated you.”

“I know,” I say, “My look would change and it defied gender norms and it made people pee their panties. Well, that and the hit jobs.”

“Not that,” she says, “Well, yeah, of course that. I mean—”

“No, wait,” I say, “Now I remember. They hated me for the same reason they hated you.”  

“Our Hot topic meets Dolce fashion sense?”  

“No,” I say, “Try again.”

It not that we were the bad guys/girls/non-bines. But, we are the ones it’s still okay to hate. The ones that it’s okay to make fun, to not root for. We’re queer and we’re here, but we’re not the brand of queer they’ve been used to.

“Is it because I refused to keep my mouth shut and be treated like a sacrificed virgin for a cause that some rando Chosen One was running into the ground with blatant and blind nepotism?”

“Some of that,” I say, “Yeah, but there was the other thing.”

My bud and I were not the peppy sidekick that they need until they don’t. We don’t blush, giggle, or roll our eyes if some guy says we look hot together. We tell him we don’t screw each other because were too busy satisfying his ex-girl better than he ever could. In other words, we don’t lie to make everyone comfortable.

“Oh!” my friend snaps her fingers, “I was queer and unashamed and I openly went for a relationship with a consenting adult that was older than me. And, without playing games, I openly told them I didn’t want to be a sacrificed ‘virgin’ side-character in some Chosen One bullshit. Nor did I want them to be.”

“That’s the one,” I say, “Not to mention once we got too much power it wasn’t about us accepting them but them accepting us.”

To be fair, neither of us made it easy for even the wokest allies to like us.  Because our real gripes with them weren’t actually about how woke they were about us. I think they were surprised when they stopped getting credit for accepting us. I they were surprised when the rules changed and we don’t fade into the background. We didn’t suffer like we were supposed to. We really didn’t die like we were supposed to either. We took over, not because we wanted to, but because we had to, because the best intended wokeys were fucking it up. Okay, maybe we wanted to take over a little. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have.

“We didn’t have too much power,” she insists.

“You didn’t, but I—”

“You made one mistake! Okay, maybe more than one, but you weren’t like them. You didn’t use people like side characters and leave them behind, and not everyone hated you. Most people loved you. They still do. You didn’t force so-called ‘choices’ on them. And you want to know my favorite thing about you? You didn’t murder anyone for being a queer hero and say it wasn’t your fault because—evil witches!”

“You’re a good friend. Would it make you feel better if I told you that I killed Buffy in Faith’s dream?”

“Yes,” she says, “Yes it would. How did you do it?”

“Quick.”

“You did it quick? Why? You know she only did you like that because she was scared!”

 Best friends are funny creatures. She frowns, still angry over something that was 10 problems ago.

“No, you know why I did it quick, Kennedy,” I say.

“Tell me anyway,” she says.

 “I did it quick because none of it was about Buffy Summers. Dream or reality I couldn’t care less if she suffered. I just wanted her gone so I could get to doing what was really important. What I really wanted. What Faith really wanted in that fucking nightmare. What she’ll always want in that nightmare she has.”  

“She wanted someone to save her,” my best friend says, “Tell me how you did it.”

“Fast and furious in the beginning,” I say, “I took the knife out of Faith’s gut and I stabbed Buffy.  I swept Faith off her feet before the OG Chosen One’s body hit the ground. In one sweep, I carried her off to the castle—”

“--because in Dreamland there's always a castle to carry a girl to,” Kennedy sighed, “I gotta say as sucky things go, being stuck here sucks most of the time, but sometimes it the good kind of suck. What happened next?”

          “I—” I began.

            “Wait,” she says, “Before you go on. You know you know you’re not going to be able to rescue Faith in real life from this brutal sadistic amnesia thing with healing sex dreams, right?”

            “Watch me,” I say, “Or maybe not. That’s crossing a line, since she can’t remember you.”

            “Does she remember you at all?”    

Chapter Text

“I still don’t remember anything, doc,” I say, “I wish I did.”

I lean back on the velvet fuzzy therapy couch and look down at my Red Chuck sneakers. I realize that what is coming out of my mouth isn’t a lie for once. I don’t remember anything that’s happened in my life for the past twenty years, other than these few weeks, and I do wish I did. Even if all I’d remember was me ending my life while I was in Buffy “B” Summers’s body.

Instead, all I remember is stealing her body in 1999 and having a blow-up-her-life-party. Of course, she escaped the trap I laid for her while she was in my body. I knew she would. But, I didn’t realize she’d do it so fucking fast. So, if anything, it’s B’s fault I ran away in her body and she’s been stuck in mine for the past 20 years. Come to think of it, maybe it’s her fault I got brought back in my body now. Maybe B was messing around with shit she shouldn’t have been messing with, and now, it’s finally my fucking turn to live the sweet life! No. Fuck!

“That’s wrong,” I say out loud.

I’m trying really hard to be a better person and do the right thing. I know I was the Bad Chosen Slayer and she’s The Chosen Good Slayer. Now there are thousands of Slayers, but B and me, we were the last Chosen ones. It’s no surprise that I don’t like how she’s run some things around here. But, like they say on Reddit, I’m the asshole. I know me dying 20 years ago was right. I have a plan to get B back here and me gone. It was just going a little slower than I hoped.

            “B,” doc says to me, “Nothing is ‘wrong.’”

Doc is a handsome older woman with a grey trimmed afro. She calls me “B” because whenever anyone tries to say Buffy’s name there’s a horrible ringing in my brain, and my head wants to explode. Doc is a real chill shrink. She doesn’t want to push me. She allows me to put my Red Chucks on her couch. Technically, it’s EveryGen’s couch, since doc was flown onto the campus just for me and a couple of other headcases at SlaySafe, but she’s still chill.  She advised against any hypnosis, magic, or “dramatic” medical treatments for me to get my memories back. I think she might actually like me. Not the person who everyone thinks I am- Buffy Summers, Mother of Slayers, but me, Faith Lehane.

            “I dunno about that, doc,” I say, “Look at the Supreme Court, and, have you seen some of the latest fashion? Nap dresses? And onesies are back.”

Doc laughs. Of course, doc thinks I am B too. But, she’s only ever known me. I’m sure if doc knew who she was really talking to was a murderer, who punched moms like her in the face, she’d probably give me a disgusted look. The old me would have tied her down. Not for some nasty mommy issue thing. I’d just want to explain. I’d just want to tell her how much B actually sucked and how much I ruled. Yeah, I was pretty cray-cray. I’m better now. Maybe dying helped. I dunno. This time when I woke up from a coma people were there. I also remembered these really awesome dreams, which I’m still having.

            “I mean none of your feelings are wrong,” doc says.

Sure, they were and I knew it. I feel resentful as fuck! Buffy Summers had grown up to be some supernatural-Danielle-Steele-pseudo-feminist- 40-something- romance-novel character. She had her revolutionary Slayer Corporation, EveryGen.

She helped write fair and balanced supernatural laws. She helped vamps walk around in sunlight if they were willing to get their soul back, work for good, and never kill a human again, of course. Because didn’t vampires deserve a second chance after killing a bunch of people? Never mind that she gave me no chance after I accidentally killed one. So, I went evil/suicidal and she got rich and now has her nerd-sexy hubby, Connor, of course. “Connor” is pretty much the go to-nerd-sexy-white-guy name now. Not that I was mad at Connor. I liked Connor. The problem was I liked Connor too much. I had fucked him the other day.

 What really got me was that B was a social worker to boot. Her “passion project” was working with troubled young Slayers at her nonprofit SlaySafe. She mostly lived here on the huge SlaySafe campus in the Northern California Hills.  She basically was a perfect fucking saint.

It seemed like she had completely forgotten about me, and how she stabbed me in the gut so I’d die to save her shitty vampire lover. I know she hadn’t though. Why else would she be so obsessed with “troubled young Slayers?”  Like they needed her privileged girl pity. Only they did “need” it if they wanted to keep being Slayers, because otherwise she de-Slayered them. I had no idea how that was done, and I didn’t want to know.  Maybe that was the reason I fucked Connor. All the “troubled young Slayer” stuff.  

“Should we talk about what I do remember?” I look over at doc.

“I didn’t think you wanted to talk much about your past in Sunnydale,” she says.

  I didn’t. That was the last thing I needed. To have to try to remember what B’s perfect little suburban life was like back when she was some college freshman. Back when she was completely over her shitty vampire boyfriend, she tried to kill me for, and on to the next guy.

“I meant what I remember from right before the coma,” I say.

I really did try to tell people I wasn’t Buffy when I woke up here in the 2020s. But, it had been impossible. You try telling people you’re the original bitch owner of the body of The Chosen One while everyone around you is crying and rejoicing because they think she woke up. Try doing it with a terrible ringing that goes off every time you try to say her name.  

“You think you have a clear memory of Glorificus now?” doc asks.

I didn’t. I sigh and look up at the ceiling as a plane engine sounded above in the Northern California sky. I had to get to Boston soon to get the Slayer Scythe. But first I had to find Glorificus. I know she did this to B, and I know I have to find the bitch-god to fix it. I had been doing my own research and things lined up. Glorificus had a huge vendetta against B. Who didn’t? She probably did this because she knew it would be B’s worst nightmare. I almost had to admire the girl-god, but it was wrong. I didn’t belong here.

“No,” I answer doc, “but I remember searing head pain and my-what’s it called-flight response kicking in. That tracks.”

“People whose minds were penetrated by Glorificus went mad, B. They-”

“They didn’t have 20 years of memory loss,” I interrupt, “I know, but…”

 I hold up the pic I had printed out of Glorificus for my home true-crime board.

“…she does look familiar. Like an ex of mine. I mean—”  my body tenses! B didn’t have secret girl exes in high school. She was too busy living out Twilight before it was cool. She was a normal, sweet, suburban girl, who didn’t become a psycho-slut when she got power. I sit up.

--I mean an ex-mean-cheerleader I knew at Sunnydale.”

Doc looks nonplussed but I don’t think she’s on to me.

“After a trauma, memory can easily get jumbled up. I know about the hard time you had with Glorificus years ago.”

“Right, I mean, of course she looks familiar.”

Doc meant Buffy killed Glorificus years ago. Interesting fact: B actually died doing that. I had beaten her to dying by about a year in her body. I bet she looked just as dead in my body as I did in hers. But, her friends brought her back with magic.

 I bet they were so bummed when I died in her body. I bet they wished they could bring me back too, so they could give her back her tiny blondie body and kill me all over again. I wonder how long it took for them to get used to seeing my face when they talked to her. I’m guessing not very long.

After a brief period of acting like she wanted to be my friend after she gutted me, B told me they had forgotten all about me. They never thought of me at all. They let me rot in a hospital for eight months in a coma.

I had just done a check this week and I found out her old Watcher, Giles, was still kickin’ in London, but her little high school/college friends were nowhere to be found. I guess, that was adult life. You forgot about the friends you’d kill for in high school.  

I get why her friends hated me. I stole her away from them, and when she shut me out. I messed around with them and her boyfriends for spite, and it was fun. Making out with “Angel” Angelus was like playing chicken. He said later he was faking it but the chub in his pants wasn’t. I didn’t mind pushing up against it and making him squirm for me.

It was a game to Angel, of course, how dark he could “pretend” to be with me. I did think it was weird at the time that he wouldn’t fuck me. But, I thought that was all part of the game, and I wasn’t wrong. I was just wrong about the way the game was being played. I thought B and I were playing a game together, and Angel was just a pawn in it. But, it turned out I was the pawn.

B “made” him pretend to be into me, so I’d confess my evil plans. As if there wasn’t any other way she could have found out my plans. What I never told B, or anyone, was how I was kind of relieved. Because, as much as Angel did get me damp down there, I thought he was going to literally tear me up inside when he did fuck me. And, I couldn’t lose the game, so I’d have to grin and bear it. Good thing, B was just a PG-13 sadistic kinky bitch. But, when I upped the game, and tried to kill Angel, she quickly shifted me from a pawn to Angel’s not-so-virgin-sacrifice. She tried to make me her vamp’s chew toy to save his life. I know Angel’s vampire ass survived only to dump her and move to LA, like months later.

It seemed like grown-up B had stopped playing games. I checked and she really wasn’t treating all these Slayers too bad. But, somehow she’d left me again and I had to have serious game to get her back in it because I didn’t want to run this shit.

“Hello?” doc says gently and reminds me I’m in the middle of this therapy thing with her.

“Sorry,” I say, “I was just thinking.”

“About Glorificus?”

Right! I had to focus here! I had to get to Glory. Then it wouldn’t matter that I fucked Connor, and that I liked Connor, and that I was pretty good at playing social worker to these troubled Slayers. I just had to do the right thing and exit stage left.

“Yeah, I mean, it has to be this bitch Glory, doc. One of her minions made it through the wards of this place, and I wasn’t ready. It was a good thing hubby was.”

“Yes,” she says, “I heard Connor successfully defended the campus from a super-powered human that was reported to say they followed Glorificus. But it wasn-”

“’Defended the campus.’” I smirked, “The dude ripped the little turd in half, and why should it matter if he was human?”

“Should it?”

“No way! It didn’t. It doesn’t anymore! After everything she helped change all that.”

Whenever I look to the left doc’s painting of a lady beach-gazing is there. All you can see is the woman’s back and it’s filled with shades of blue.

“Are you referring to the SERC law that makes it legal for a supernatural being to kill a human if they are an immanent and immediate deadly threat?”

“Yeah,” I say quietly.

Why couldn’t B have seen it like that when I killed some humans? Only the people I killed weren’t all the fancy words doc just said. They were kind of weak losers, followers. I killed them because I was a follower too. But, I had felt strong.

“The world is a lot more complicated than you remember,” doc says.

“No, doc,” I lean over and start playing with the office sand tray, “That’s the thing. It was always this complicated. God or gods have always been kicking my ass one way or another. Now it’s just more obvious.”

“And if Glory did ‘kick your ass’ how do you think you’re going to win this fight and get her to just fix the damage she did? From what I know she was a very binary god. She destroyed. She didn’t recreate.”

  Glory would do it because she was weak, and injured in a cave somewhere. I’d have The Slayer Scythe with me. I had read all about the bad ass weapon. It’s what activated all the Slayers. It was pretty much the Slayer Ginsu knife of the 2020s.

            “You know Slayers have a sense.”

            “I know Slayers have prophetic dreams too,” doc says, “I also know it can be impossible to tell those dreams from your own subconscious especially after a trauma.”

            My cheeks feel hot. I really shouldn’t have told doc about my dream sex goddess.

            “I know,” I say, “Don’t worry about Cree, okay? I know she’s not real.”

            “Cree?” she says, “The woman in your dreams, so she’s been telling you Glory did this to you?”

            “No,” I say, “I know that bitch did this. I just—I do! Cree has been giving me info on Glory. For a price, but--”

            “For a price?” doc raises her brow.

            “Yeah,” I say, “But don’t worry it’s a good price. A real good one, and I know it’s all a dream.”

            “Oh?”

            Doc got up to make some tea.

            “I’m talking about sex, doc,” I say.

            “You have dream sex with this woman and she gives you info about Glorificus?”

            Doc turned on her tea pot and got her turquoise mugs out.

            “Cree is a goddess,” I say, “At least that’s how she identifies but don’t look so worried, doc. I can tell you I’m more than happy with our arrangement. She’s a giving goddess and like I said: It’s not real. It’s just—just my Slayer brain. We have strong sex drives.”  

            “That must be nice,” she says. The water in the electric kettle starts to rumble.

            “Actually,” I say, “Sometimes I wish a cup of tea would do it for me.”

            “No,” doc says, “I mean, it’s nice that she’s been giving and you're happy.”

           $$$$$

Nice? There isn’t a word for how it’s been with Cree. Maybe there are some words for the things we’ve done, the things she’s done to me, but I don’t know them. Is there a word for when someone catches you from falling with a knife in your gut; and sticks it in the gut of the person who stabs you? How about when they fly away with you in their arms and you can’t look back because your wound is healing, but it’s not just healing. It’s making you cum. It’s making you scream. They’re making you scream, because it feels like they have a hundred mouths kissing and licking you everywhere, while their arms hold you mad tight. Is there a word for that? If there was it had to be a doozy of a word.

            “Well,” I’m cool as a cucumber now in doc’s office as I stretch my arms out on the couch, “I’m not complaining. But, if I want info about Glory I gotta work for it.”

            “So, Cree’s giving feels like work?” doc asks.

            The water boils in the kettle.

            “No…” I say and lean my head back for a second, “I don’t know how to explain it.”

            Again, there weren’t words for what it felt like. Cree was all about consent. I asked her if she’d help me find Glory and she told me exactly what I was in for.

             “I just find it interesting.” Doc puts two tea bags in the mugs

            “You have no idea,” I say.

Doc really had no idea:

“Quid quo pro,” I had said to Cree, “I know how this goes.”

            “No,” she strutted up to me with her dark good looks and intense eyes, “You don’t know how it goes with me, or you don’t remember, my baby chosen one. If it’s too much for you I’ll stop it.”

“Hey, I’ll do whatever it takes to get what I want,” I had said.

 At this point her plump lips were an inch away from mine and it felt too far.

 "No, you’ll be what it takes and you won’t want for anything.”

 “Huh? I missed Fairy-riddle day in school. You have to spell it out for me. I’m not—Uhh.”

I’d stopped talking because her lips were on mine. Her hands were roaming up and down my body. Her tongue danced in my mouth. Then she pulled her mouth away with a smack. Her hands still roamed around my body. I couldn’t tell you where we were in this dream. A field, a white Matrix Space, Fenway Park. Once she touched me, held me, all time and place stopped.

“You don’t have to do anything,” she had said, “You’ve done enough. You don’t have to do anything about Glory. She’s weak and dying in the hole in the world.”

She kissed me again and my toes curled. It took all my strength to pull back.

“But, but if I get to her with that—that Slayer weapon thing I can—hmm” I purred when she held my face and rubbed her thumbs gently across my mouth. It felt electric, like her eyes that pierced into me.

“I can get her to do what I want, right?” I said and willed myself not to look away from Cree’s beautiful face, “I can—” I swallowed a sob, “get back what she fucking took!”

“My baby,” Cree had said, “You can do anything you want with that weapon. It’s yours. But, you don’t need to do anything right now. You just have to be. Be what you want to be with me.”

Honestly, I didn’t know if I was going to be good for much of anything. My legs were turning to jelly.

“I—uh—I don’t want to be on the bottom. I mean- I’ll do it. But, I’m not good at bottoming.”

“And for the first time that you’ll remember you won’t be,” she had said, “You never will be on the bottom as long as I’m around. I’ll always hold you up. You’ll be saved.”

  I grunted because she gave my cooch a squeeze through my pants. I remember I was wearing pants. We both were wearing black and tight pants.

   “Oh,” I had joked, “This is how you get people in your churc—Uuuh.”

     I grunted louder because she squeezed my cooch again and this time a white warm buzz jolted up to my brain.

    “No church. No worship. I was never that kind of goddess. I don’t want anyone but my Chosen One,” she said as she pulled me into her, “But, I do want you to feel saved.”

            She squeezed me again and this time I groaned.

            “Rescued,” she squeezed, I whimpered.

            “Chosen.” She squeezed, I squealed.

            “My Chosen Faith,” she made my pants disappear and I threw my body around her.

And that was just the beginning…

 “B,” I hear doc’s voice. I hear her call me by Buffy’s almost-name.

 She puts the two mugs of tea on the table between us.

“Shit, sorry,” I say, “Yeah. What was I saying?”

 “You were talking about Cree,” doc says, “and you were saying something really interesting.”

“Right,” I say, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging. I’m sure you want all the juicy details of the sex, but it—uh—gets kind of fuzzy.”

 “No, it’s not so much about the details. You don’t have to share any of that. It’s—”

“Doc, you don’t have to worry about me running off with Cree in my brain or anything. I know she’s not real at all.”  

“As you keep saying,” doc says, “How do you know?”

“Because I’m not cra—I mean I’m not delusional,” I say, “She’s too perfect. Who knows? Maybe she’s some mash-up of you and Angelina Jolie, and my current girl crushes I can’t remember. Not that Angie can’t still get it.”

“How is she too perfect?” doc isn’t getting distracted.

I can’t say: She spins me around until I scream. She lets me just lay on her. She makes me feel like I want to be naked. That being naked makes me stronger, not weaker. That person doesn’t exist. Not for me. I don’t deserve it because I’m the Bad Slayer, Faith Lehane, and when I get naked, I’m not just weak, I’m evil and people die.

“She’s just—” I wave my arms, “She’s always doing things for me and she acts like—"

 I rest my head back on the couch. I remember Cree’s voice as she fucked me, kissed me, stroked me, held me. You are so fucking beautiful you know that? You have no idea what it’s like to be able to touch you. For you to want me to touch you. How honored I am.

I lift my head up and look doc in the eye.

“—like I’m so amazing when I don’t do anything for her. She has game.”

“She takes care of you and doesn’t ask for anything in return?”

“Yeah,” I say, “She has serious game and I have to be careful.”

“Be careful?”

“Yeah, so, I still I make sure I give back, ya know?”

I did give back to Cree. Sometimes. I had to fight through the pleasure to stroke her and kiss her. Luckily, she was an easy touch. She laughed after she came sometimes.

“Why?” doc asked.

“Huh?”

“Why do you make sure she’s climaxed too if she’s not real? I assume that’s what you mean. Does it make you uncomfortable to be taken care of?”

Doc is a savvy one. But, she didn’t seem to understand what ‘serious game’ meant.

“No,” I say, “I’m five by—I don’t—I’m all about my own comfort. I mean, it’s just that she has serious game and—”

“The most serious games are the ones we play with ourselves and it sounds like you’re really tired of losing.” doc says.

Okay, maybe doc did know what serious game meant.

“Yeah. Nothing is for free. Like, with SlaySafe the Slayers have chores and community service. We’ve gotten a lot of funding and grants and that means people expect stuff.”

“It sounds like you’ve really looked into that recently,” she says.

 “You gotta know who your backers are,” I cross my legs.

I can hear some girls chatting in the courtyard below. They could be my juvenile delinquents of SlaySafe or they could be just some regular old worker bees. That’s how well this place was run. No one was scared that some chick who went psycho and killed people would do it again here.

“Because they’ll always want something back?” doc asked.

“Exactly, everything she did seems pretty legit as far as I can tell. At least for SlaySafe.”   

“’She?’” doc says.

“Fuck,” I mutter. I turn my head to the side and see that woman on the beach painting again, “I mean me. What I put together before I got amnesia for SlaySafe seems legit. And I know, it’s not good progress that I refer to my future self in the third person. Or that I just referred to her as ‘my future self,’ and ‘her’ again because she is me. But--”

“No, she’s not,” doc says.

“What?” I say.

My fingers turn into fists. No. I’ve thought about this moment. I figured if anyone would figure me out it would be doc. I’m not gonna hit doc. I’m not. Not even if she’s on to me. Not even if she stands up and says:

I know you’re that murdering bitch- Faith Something.  And they all come in with tazers and batons or probably just handcuffs. They wouldn’t want to damage my body since it now belonged to Buffy. Of course, I’ll have to find a way to bust out. As far as the sex with Connor I’d just have to claim I was the evil slut that I am. Even though slut-shaming is out, sometimes it’s just true.

“None of us are who we were,” doc says “Most of us aren’t the selves we were two years ago before the pandemic. A lot of us became someone different after events in our lives both good and bad, and even if you get all your memories back you aren’t going to be the person you were before.”

  Oh. My fists unball as I pick up the existential track doc is throwing down.

 “In fact,” doc continues, “I’d understand if you didn’t even want your memories back.”

“No! That’s crazy,” I say, “I mean…No way! My life is clearly perfect. Why wouldn’t I want it all back? Everything I’m doing is for her, okay? I mean me, the real 40-year-old B--”

Everything stops and my body locks up. Fuck! I went to say it. I went to say Buffy’s name. All the doctors have figured out the ringing is in my head, but I’m not crazy because sometimes it’s so loud other people can hear it.

“That’s still so painful, isn’t it?” doc frowns, “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I can’t imagine what it’s like not to say or hear your name.”

It is painful. I haven’t heard or said my own name either, and it is painful, but not as painful as Buffy’s.

Doc puts her hand on my head for a millisecond.

“Why don’t you have some tea?”

Shit. She really does like me. Not B, but me. Of course, she only knows the me that’s trying her hardest to pretend to be B. Not that I’m trying too hard. I had to step up my plan and figure out where Glory was. Then I had to get to Boston and get that Slayer Scythe. Then I had to get to Glory and torture her until she brought B back. But first I had to finish up this therapy session and try harder at being B. What would B care about now? Oh! How could I be so stupid? Of course! B was a total hetero-norm.

“You—uh—don’t think I’m really gay, do you, doc?” I say, “I guess sexuality is all fluid now, right? So, we know this Cree thing doesn’t mean I’m ready to divorce the guy and move to the island of Sappho or anything. But maybe I better have sex with Connor, just in case. I know you said not to but—"

”I think sexuality has always been fluid,” doc says, “But—”

“Only if you’ve always been doing it right,” I say.

Doc laughs. It’s good when you can make your therapist laugh. For now she really was my therapist.

“For the record, I never said you shouldn’t have sex with Connor. I said you should take it slow and not feel obligated to have sex with him because he’s your husband who you can’t remember.”  

“Oh, uh, good, ‘cause I did already,” I say, “and trust me, I didn’t feel obligated.”

 Connor made me cum too. Not in a crazy dream sex way but he had intense eyes too, and stamina. And I hadn’t even been trying to play any kind of game. I wasn’t trying to fuck B over. He’d ask me to come watch Netflix with him, thinking I was his amnesiac wife, of course. I just thought I was going to spend the night pretending to be prissy shy B. Maybe it was true that older women had better sex. Maybe I was just a shitty person.

  “Are you sure?” doc asked.

  “Yeah, what can I say,” I give her a smile, “The guy turned out to be easy to talk to and funny. It looks like I finally learned how to pick em’. Should we talk about that?”

   “Actually, I want to go back to Cree for a moment.”

   “Oh,” I say, “So you’re more into my pillow princess dreams than my rich man’s wife reality. Got it.”

           Doc laughs again. Not that Connor acted anything like some rich asshole. Yeah, he was busy. But, he never made me feel shitty or however rich dudes made wives feel. The night we fucked I fell asleep in the middle of talking to him and he just let me. He had pulled me into his arms and I was afraid he figured out I wasn’t his wife. He hadn’t. If I was my old self, I’d say it was his own fault for not realizing it. But the dude hadn’t known B twenty years ago. He probably loved her so much I could say or do anything and he’d just take it hoping his wife would come back.

It’s not really about Cree or Connor or even Glory,” doc says, “I just find it interesting that you insist this cruel deadly god is back in your life. While you can’t even fathom the kind one that’s caring for you wants nothing in return. Everyone needs to be taken care of, B,” she stops to sip her tea, “But, I imagine, when you needed care it always came with a price, and the better it felt, the higher the price.”

“Isn’t that everybody?” I ask, “I mean, I know people love me, and want me better, but I’m sure being this major hero, Mother of Slayers, helped with that.”

“Just remember,” doc reminds me, “You don’t owe Connor or anyone your old self. With all you, and so many others have been through, maybe you owe yourself a new one.”

 I sip the tea. I want to yell: I’m not her, doc! I’m not Buffy! I am an asshole with some serious game and I have to make this right. Instead, I just say:

“Don’t worry, doc,” I say, “I promise in a few more weeks you’ll see a new me, and I’m sure you’ll love her.”

Chapter Text

Wouldn't Even Dream of It

“I love you, Buffy Summers,” Connor said to me in my dream.

It’s one of those dreams where I’m watching myself. I was in a pale pink Louis Vuitton dress with understated diamonds. They sparkle in the light of the rooftop party. I think Connor is in grey Armani. I’m watching him too.  Most of the partygoers are watching us both. Connor pulled me into dancing by the piano.  It was a small “relaxed” rooftop party with formalwear in Silicon Valley back when it was revving up. This rooftop party was “relaxed” with seamless security guards.

“You’re not even a little bit funny right now,” I said to Connor.

“You know I’m not trying to be funny,” Connor said.

The obvious on-lookers were mostly thin beautiful women. They were wearing dresses and jewels like me. In this dream one of them reminds me of an evil-bitch-god from Sunnydale. The not so obvious on-lookers were powerful men.

These weren’t wealthy people, like Giles, who could keep us afloat after the reality shift. These were ridiculously wealthy people, the one-percent of the one percent. There were so many names for them. Faith called them the “mad rich.” I think that label holds up.  

“You know I’m serious,” he said as he spun me, “That’s the problem.”

I remember the song. It was Royals by Lorde slowed down.

“Your problem is that you joke so much people can’t tell when you’re serious.”

“No,” he said, “Our problem is you know everybody loves you, so you don’t take me seriously.”

“No, you’re the one in love with me. I’ve learned that when someone is in love with me it’s not a ‘me’ problem or a ‘we’ problem. It’s the definition of a ‘you’ problem. I-I’m not some sad twenty-something suburban girl anymore.”

Connor frowned. Maybe he thought that was some kind of dig on my last boyfriend, his “brother.” It wasn’t. Was it? Why should I care? Even if Spike cared about me, he hurt me so much more than when he’d been soulless and trying to kill me.

 At least then he wasn’t just being a passive limp dick. Faith understood. Sometimes it felt like she was the only one. Of course, she understood. She had been the one who figured it out. In a way, she figured “it” out when we were teenagers. 99% of men only wanted one thing, and I should have fucked Xander back then and kicked him out. That’s dark, B.

“No,” Connor said, “You’re a woman and I know the last thing you need is a man. But, you’re not just any woman, you’re The Last True Chosen One, and I’m The God-Destroyer.”

I snorted as we danced closer.

“The God-Destroyer? You can’t just go around re-naming yourself.”

He pushed me back so he could look at me. We were barely swaying enough to call it dancing.

“I didn’t re-name myself. I’m not like my father or my brother. I don’t try to control how people see me. What I do, what I did, what I am doing, is something Angel and Spike can’t do. Something you always did. I’m defying my destiny.”

I snort again. Now that I see it, he really was amazing, laying it all out for them. Now that I see myself snort, I’m glad no one had their phone out to snap a pic. One ugly facial expression becoming one of those Internet sensations could have ruined everything. Or maybe I’m not sure how it looked at all, and this is just a dream.

“What you do and what you’re doing is the same thing you’ve always done,” I told him and everyone listening, “Working out your daddy issues on a woman who’s stronger than you. At least you’re putting your Ivy League English degree to use with those lofty sentences.”

“At least,” he grinned, “I can do more and use my other degree in physics.”

Now I was in my body. He picked me up by my ass and spins me around. I let out a little yelp. The first-person perspective didn’t totally suck. Connor wasn’t the best-looking guy, but he wasn’t the worst. He had his mother’s rounded feminine jawline and her genes probably made him almost short. But there was something, something about him, besides those wild James Dean baby blues, that drove people crazy, especially the “mad rich” self-titled alphas.

“You’re not funny,” I said with a laugh with my arms around Connor’s neck.

This night was a good one, from what I remember. We gave them quite a show. Our witty banter was spot on. I remembered these days, these nights. This was when the rumors were at their peak. I was the Fallen Chosen One, or maybe I had been a Goddess and gave it all up. Maybe I was just a crazy old ‘ho who loved screwing every guy in this one family of vampires/demons.  

No one was sure. They just knew I had something to do with wrecking reality in 09’. Faith said the “mad rich” always felt like they could figure out the truth, that they were entitled to it. That’s what made them so easy to lie to.

“Right,” he said, “I’m serious. I love you. You know it’s not just our ideas that will change the world. You know it has to be us together. We’re the ones who defied destiny.”

“You’re defying sanity. Put me down,” I said to him as I held tight to him and he did.

Connor and I weren’t these people anymore. I know he was never really this guy. In his first life Connor had been raised to track predators and make them prey. In my first life I had been raised to be the girl everyone loved. At this point we’d both stopped counting what life we were on. We knew that when we were together, we were irresistible.     

“Is he watching?” Connor whispered to me as the song ended.

I didn’t have to look over Connor’s shoulder to know that The Immortal, and every alpha male billionaire was watching. Everyone was turned towards us except one guy. His gaze was focused on the woman who looked like Glory. Her glare was focused on me. She was the evil bitch god I saved the world from.

 The guy was clearly a dream extra. He looked like the guy from The Cure, or a real-life anime character with his gravity defying spikey hair. I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe Jace was asking me if I was old enough to have liked The Cure before they were famous. Maybe he was like that random cheese guy.

As for Glory, she often made cameos in my dreams. If I ever went to therapy, I’m sure they’d say she represents death or loss or doubt…

Fucking Doubt. That was why I am doing what I’m doing now. What was I doing now? I know I wasn’t going to these hellish rooftop parties dancing with Connor anymore. C’mon, B, Faith would say, you know you love it. No, I hated it. Well, maybe not the clothes. Or the dancing, or the baiting and switching, or the looking good...But, what was I doing?

I had to do something! I was forgetting something. Something with Faith and Glory and that kid. What was his name? Ben! Who the fuck was Ben? Ben was the guy who was my mom’s doctor before she died. No, he’d worked at the hospital.

 The Cure guy turned his head in my dream, the dream of that party, and looked at me. His eyes had stars in them. He said or teleported/commanded to me:

STAY.******************

That was weird. I really didn’t like his tone, but sure. I mean, I had to do this. We had to do this. Of course, Connor got to do it in a jacket and I had to freeze in a dress once the sun set on these rooftop shindigs. But, we needed each other. We needed their money, but we also needed them. There is one big fish we needed in particular.

“The immortal?” Connor whispers as we dance to Royals, “Do we have his attention?”

“What do you think?” I liked that Connor had vampire hearing, so I could whisper so softly to him and he’d hear me.

The Immortal's eyes were on us. The socialite that looks like Glory starts towards the dance area. The Immortal stops her with words I can’t hear from 50 feet away, but his eyes are on me. The new song is latest Lady Gaga, so other people come out to dance.

“I think you should kiss me,” Connor whispers his face an inch from mine.

I don’t move in or back away from Connor. I keep my arms around him.

“I think you should be careful,” I say just for him, “The last thing you want is for this to get too real, buddy.”

I flick my eyes over to The Immortal. He looks different than I remember. He looked like the guy from The Cure, or rather how the guy from The Cure dreamed of looking. Actually, he looked different than what I thought, not remembered, since I never actually met him. I had good inside information that he thought the same about me, but he swore we had met and more. This was how we’d get him.

The Glory-looking girl glower moved towards us. She could scowl at me all she liked. She’d never be an evil-bitch-god I had to die to save the world from. She slinked over to the pianist to make a request. The violinist popped up beside the pianist, back from break, and joined in.  

“Speak for yourself, compadre,” he says, his eyes are so intense, “I’m good with however real you want it to seem.”

Should I do it? Should I kiss him? Was that going too far? Would that ruin it? I don’t mean for Connor and me. We’re adults. We knew it wouldn’t mean anything, besides setting things in motion to shift power in a sustainable way that would change the world. Besides that. It was surprising how few people were adults, and I’m talking about people with power.

I flashed back to him inside my San Francisco apartment: “No! Me and Natalie didn’t break up over a three-way me and my brother and my best friend had non-consensually in our dreams. Because we’re fucking adults! We don’t shame each other for things we have no control over. We find out who is in control, if anyone, and we stop them.”   

Was that the moment he stopped being Angel’s adorkable son to me? Not that I stopped thinking he was Angel’s son. But Connor had been in the only person, besides Faith, that had my back in San Francisco. Maybe we should kiss because we were adults and even it meant something it would be…Okay!  I was clearly losing my mind or going native.

Connor and I were NOT are not these people. We’re pretending to be the worst versions of what people thought we were: Hot young people with superpowers who had deep-seeded Freudian, relationship and trauma issues that thought that made them entitled to power.

In reality, we were the only adults in the room, or at least this party, that are trying to make this world a place where people wouldn’t have to be powerless or isolated so their power could be taken. We really didn’t get off on ‘keeping it in the family.’ He had my back, and so did Faith, and I wouldn’t let anything mess that up. We didn’t want to be anything like these rich and powerful drama-loving pseudo-moral morons. And no matter how sideways things went he’d always be Angel’s son and I wouldn’t even dream of it.

Chapter Text

Back in Her Body

I married the girl of my dreams. Marrying her was worth living through all my nightmares- even the daddy issues. She’s worth anything and everything I’m going through now. Her breasts are still tender and supple but that doesn’t matter. I’m just thinking of them because of a text she sent me hours ago- a pic of her in a sports bra.

            Trust me, it would distract gods.

I can’t believe it’s been a whole week since I swept my tongue over her sweet dark purple nipples. She shuddered and arched into my mouth like it was our first time…because, for her, it was.       

Long story. It begins with my wife, and how she was destined to be The Chosen One, The Vampire Slayer. Somewhere in the middle of the story is me, the human son of the vampire that broke her heart, who came packing super powers and a pre-destiny of my own that was creepier than anyone could imagine.

“I have The Last Chosen One’s full informed consent to speak with you.” Dr. Rhonda Abagun has a rich matronly voice. I cringe silently at the name my wife hates.

Once we were teenagers forced to fight literal demons. The powers-that-be often pitted us against the world we were trying to save. They wanted to use us quick so we’d die young. Now we’re all grown-up and we took control of our destinies and help others do the same in a sustainable way. Recently I’ve had to work a little harder to sustain it all.

“I’m happy to talk, doctor,” I say with my air pods in as I go find a T-shirt in my closet and put it on, “and please call me Connor. Contrary to rumor I’m not some cut-throat demon CEO. I’m just a person.”

When your whole mission statement of your corporation is that the old way of thinking of THE ONE was toxic you had to stay humble.

“Yes, a person who went through quite a trauma weeks ago,” the doctor reminds.

“Right,” I say, “But, all that matters is we got her back.”

“You may feel like you didn’t at times. She may never be the person you remember.”

“You mean she may not remember,” I say.

And now we’re up to the latest part of the story: My wife currently has head trauma/amnesia. It’s not rare for our line of work. She and I have shifted to more policy making and community building for supernatural souls, but there’s always going to be some frontline battle. And, my wife always ends up outdoing everyone. Not only did she wake up with amnesia; she can’t remember the past 20 years, give or take. On top of that every time anyone even tries to speak her name, or write it, or text it, things get weird and usually painful. More painful to her than anyone else.

“No,” Dr. Abugun says, “I mean she’s really not the person you remember her being. She—"

“But, she’ll always be the woman I know. Sometimes even more so.”

“Oh?”

“I just mean you don’t know my wife like I do. She’s the strongest person you’ll ever meet. Who else would go back to work with troubled youth with twenty years of amnesia? She can’t remember smart phones, let alone tiktok anime ap memes. Anyone else would be eaten alive, but she barely has time to text me back.”

I look at the pic she texted to me for the 10^th time. I sent two texts in response telling her I’m happy to be back from my business trip. Damn, I don’t know I how found the strength to leave her. I’d still end worlds to keep in the body she’s in. … Again, I don’t normally think like this, my overly horny demon teen days are over. But, her breasts are just pouring out of the sport’s bra in this pic. I text her one more time:

I know you’re working, but I do love this angle.

“That’s precisely what I mean,” the therapist says, “Sometimes amnesia is just as traumatic to loved ones than it is to the sufferer. Sometimes even more so. You remember what was lost.”

“I think you know my wife is literally in more pain than anyone with that fucking spell. I mean—sorry.”

“No,” she says, “I understand. The helplessness is hard.”

“It is,” I say, “of course. When she was missing, I had hope. When my brother found her in fucking London. I was desperate.”

I fell into despair. I mean, literally fell hard into Despair the other night, cock first. Her white dimpled thighs spread for me like a trap that I knew was coming- that I made cum. I have a better relationship with Despair than most people. When she whispered to me after I descended into the Endless mindscape of her room, I knew what she really wanted.

 “But, I’m not anymore,” I continued,  “The worst thing I could do is make it about me.”

Despair tried to suck me into guilt when she got me the last time.

“Just like daddy, just like daddy,” You’re gonna say you had no choiii-Ahh!"

 Despair’s words were cut off by her own scream when I bared my boney hips into her big soft body and bit her lip ring. I tugged on the metal enough for her lip to bleed. I licked the blood up as my tongue spun her lip ring. For a few tough pumps of my hardness, she squealed. Her Rubenesque body became rigid like a small mountain but her large legs lost a little of their grip on my ass. That’s when I leaned back. I kept myself inside her and circled my hips.

 I hoisted her rolls of thighs further up on me.

“Get some self-esteem ‘Pair,” I said, my voice tickled my throat, “If you don’t know I want to fuck you by now you never will.”

            Her screams of pain quickly turned to moans, into rolling waves of pleasure and flesh. You can’t lie to Despair and don’t even get me started on her twin.

I did like fucking her.

 I wasn’t a fan of her mindscape décor. The room she traps me in looks like Cronenberg partied too long in an abandoned Duran Duran music video set in 1983. But, I’ve actually taken the time to get to know her and all her curves and valleys. If I had known that I’d have this kind of relationship with Despair after I made my deal with The Dream King, I still would have done the deal, in all it’s ironic glory. When you make a deal with The Dream King you have to know his twisted Endless family isn’t ever too far behind. It probably isn’t even his fault. I know what it's like to try to keep family out of your dealings. You can’t.

But, I’m not going to tell my wife’s therapist that. I can’t. And not because it’s a Freudian field day, or maybe because it is, but I really can’t. It’s complicated. I know that’s what every fake-woke-boss-demon-fuck-boy says when he’s fucking other people besides his wife but…

“But, it does seem very personal, doesn’t it?” Dr. Abagun says this gently.

“What does?”

“This name blanking phenomena,” she says, “Putting pain in your head and the heads of others for even speaking your name. I can’t think of anything more…erasing. And given your history and--”

“You don’t think I realize that this is an indirect result of what I did years ago?” I say, “Everything is. That’s what happens when you change reality. But, unlike the whole The One thing I’m actually trying to get out ahead of it and not—not—act like it didn’t happen, but sometimes I--”

“I meant the history of you and your wife together,” she says, “The amnesia erased it.”

“Oh,” I say feeling like the piece of crap that I am.

I’m fully aware that I’m acting like a fake-woke-CEO-demon-boy-douche, and Dr. Abagun is more than earning her money.

I look in the mirror. Do I look like a fake-woke-CEO-demon-boy-douche? With my retro Blink 182 T-shirt and fair-trade jacket and jeans, probably. But, I look better than a lot of the tech ones. I lost the scraggly beard and I comb my hair.

“It sounds like you feel responsible for what happened,” she says.

“I—” I let out a sigh, “Does that mean I’m a narcissist?”  

            “I think all leaders have a healthy dose of it,” she says.

            “Or that’s just what narcissists say to themselves to justify their bullshit,” I say.

            It surprises me when she laughs.

“It had occurred to me” I say, “How personal this is. Actually, it occurred to someone else. I was too busy freaking out.”

“It does take a community,” she says.

“Is—does my wife worry about that? How it was personal? She—she still thinks that a god did this but…”

I trail off. Dr. Abagun doesn’t fill the silence. I pace towards the front door and back feeling the emptiness of this place. It’s only our campus house. The one we stay at when she wants to be close to the SlaySafe residents. I look at my phone and open my tracking ap.

“It—it’s good she’s working again,” say, “It—it’ll get her mind off of it.”

I see my wife’s green glowing dot in the west gym. She must be doing training exercises. She used to be so sick of them after 20 years.

“I think it was the best idea,” Dr. Abagun said, “Working with young people who she was once like will only make her realize how much she has to offer them and how much she’s changed on a bottom-up neurological level. It will also fully get her back in her body.”   

I looked down at our living room rug where I did my part to get my beautiful wife back into her amazing body. She hid her nervousness behind that stunning smile. She left her bra on and pinned my hands down over my head when I undid the clasp. I knew I was getting the gift of what it was like to be her prey when she was a young Slayer and feeling her new power. I knew she had memories of whatever my father had done with that power. I knew she’d need to pin me down and mount me like a bicycle to feel her power. So I came quickly and fiercely but not greedily. After, I slowly worked my hand between her legs while I kissed her.

            “Damn, you’re like fucking a girl,” she’d whispered.

            She trembled when I laughed.

            “I have hearing like a vampire,” I told her, “But, I’m warmer than one.”

            “Sorry,” she said, “You probably never heard me say that. I just—"

I kissed her before she could make an excuse or roll away. I said: “You don’t need to worry about saying or doing anything wrong with me. You just need to worry about what you want right now.”

            And I don’t know if that was the first time she remembers having an orgasm. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to push. I knew I shouldn’t. The mind is such a delicate thing, memories, identity. I know that more than most people.

            “She knows it’s her body now right?” I ask Abagun.

            “I’m sorry?” Dr. Abagun asks

            “There-uh-- had been some body swapping with her and the other one,” I swallow, “Before she died. It had started around the time she has her memories. She clearly doesn’t want to talk about it with me.”

            I didn’t want to talk about the other Chosen One. I didn’t want to talk about why we all did what we did with the Chosen bodies, even if I could. I just wanted the other one gone. Yes, we had been friends once. Of course, there were rumors of more, there are rumors of her and more with just about everyone. That’s not why she’s toxic.

            “I’m aware of the origins of the body switching.” I knew this was all Dr. Abagun was going to say “Were you referring to Glorificus when you said she was worried a god did this?”

“She wasn’t attacked by Glorificus,” I say, “We’ve confirmed that. Glorificus is a dead god. She can’t come back. She’s not the type, and I don’t mean she’s too classy for comeback tours. I mean, the types of gods who were returning were a totally different classification.”

“I understand,” she says.

“I’m sure you do,” I say, “I mean I know my wife must have Glorificus in her head because—because—”

I run my hand through my hair and pull.

“That’s what caused the first real death of The Chosen one,” she said.

“She never—she never really got over it,” I say as I look out the window of the green hills that have been warded off from any demons, “Even though she can’t remember it yet.”

“I can imagine it must be terrifying to think that Glorificus might have done this.”

            “We’ve dealt with worse,” I say.

            “More powerful gods,” she says, “Yes.”

            “No,” I say, “I mean yes. But really, they weren’t the worst. They just took credit for what we did to ourselves. How we betrayed each other. They pushed some people, but honestly if you’ve spent years living on a cliff with your eyes shut…”

            I trail off. She lets the silence fill, like a good therapist.

            “I just want you to know I-I’m so grateful she’s alive. Really alive,” I say, “I mean, I’m. sorry. Shit.”

            There were some other Slayers that weren’t so lucky. Another off shoot of the story, of consequences no one thought of.

            “No,” Dr. Abagun voice dips, “Of course you’re grateful for that. We all are. I mean…”

            “The last thing I want to do is make her feel like she owes me something. I guess it’s good she’s working and not texting me back.”

            “She does seem to care about the residents of SlaySafe.”

            “It was her dream job for so long before we made it happen,” I say, “It was worth all we did.”

            “She did so much to help the Slayers after her,” Dr. Abgun says, “Maybe now they can help her a little.”

            “I know my wife,” I say, “She’ll just end up helping them more.”

Chapter Text

I had to help this boy, and, I’ve been sleeping on the job. The Hole in The World turned out to be a surprisingly good place to rest.

Yes, even hot chicks with superpowers get tired. In my teens I had to save the world with my friends.

 In my 20s I had to change said saved world with my Chosen family.

In my 30s I had to shape the changed world and chose some new family, because the old fam had changed too much.

Now begins my 40s and I have to do a bit of maintenance on said shaped world. No huge remodels. (Never again! I, Buffy Summers, along with everyone else, promised.)  This is just a little touch up with my fellow Chosen One. Faith and I are just removing some returning nasty mold—maybe.

Just a quick job top secret job with The Slayer Scythe and a body-swap-swap. The ushe. We’d make it a girls’ weekend. Go down to the coast. Have a few laughs, and now we’re in The Hole with a “barely legal” guy. Literally.

There’s peace and quiet here with only  the occasional drips of cave water. No people demanding feedback, decisions, beatings, or slayings. No demons approaching. No phone reception, so no constant buzzing about the end of the world. But, I had to get up and back to work. The boy, Nate, approached me.

“Finally! How can you sleep here?” he says, “It’s cursed. It’s the pit from The Dark Knight,”

“You said that before. It’s actually The Dark Knight Rises,” I say, “and no, it’s neither cursed or a pit. I told you, we’re in The Hole in The World.”

And I slept better in it than I had in ages. I had dreamt.

They were the kinds of dreams where you can’t remember the details, but you knew what time period of your life they’d been about:  

2012 was epic after all the tragic. I discovered being in your 30s was far from old and/or gross. I’d danced/debated with Connor as he opened doors, but Faith and I were The Ones who walked through them. We were way more powerful as women then we were as girls.  

Being in Faith’s body- full dark hair and full everything else- (completely shaved in a black see-through dress.) We were finally really free! Faith and I got way more done in those backless Dolce dresses and Vuitton shoes than we ever did in Rave tank tops and combat boots. Yes, we were beautiful and deadly, but our true power wasn’t in our fists or our pussies, but in how we held our own bodies and voices and each other’s.

“Yes,” the kid drawled out the word with impatience, “You told me you thought we were in some hole near London or New Zealand. So, I don’t know what that means.”

“It means…” I paused as I get up.

It means the spell had some unexpected ramifications, but we’d expected the unexpected.

“…It means that this actually may be a good thing and you should get some rest here too.”

I rise with Faith’s long black Keanu-Matrix coat. It had made a good blanket. I’m glad she had been wearing it in my body before the spell switched our bodies back.

“I’ve been grinding all over this dank pit looking for Alex. Calling her name while you napped. She’s not here.”  

“Alex?” I murmur.

“I know you not her,” he folds his arms like he’s a genius as he looks down at me.  

Oh, right, he means Faith, “Alex” is her go-to alias for some reason. Mine is “Joan,” mostly because Joan of Arc was much cooler than people know.

“You switched bodies when we ended up here,” he continues, “Was that supposed to happen?”

It wasn’t. Faith and I were not supposed to be in our own bodies. I was in her body and she was in mine. The spell had switched us back. But, it wasn’t the end of the world… necessarily. Of course, I couldn’t explain the full story of our bodies to some boy. I could barely tell anyone. It isn’t like 2012, when it was both purposeful and fun. It’s life and death. Nate was so boy-genius-proud of himself he guessed. But, he had no idea I was back in my original Buffy bod and Faith was in her body. So, it was all good, if not complicated.

“Mmm. So, no luck finding her?” I say as I stretch my legs and put my hands against the stone-dripped wall, “Maybe she’s sleeping too.”

“Why would she be sleeping?” he demanded and then he cupped his hands and called “Alex! Alex! Alex?”

We walked forward toward the main light source.

“You’d be surprised how many times Alex has been unconscious in a cave. It comes with the job,” I say when he stops calling.

I hear Connor’s voice in my head: “Just because we’ve been given this amazing gift does not mean we can be reckless with Faith’s body or anybody.”

“What if—” he looks at me with big brown eyes filled with dread.

“She’s fine, she can’t—” I stop, of course Faith can die, “I know she’s fine. We just have to find her. I don’t think you realize how big the place is.”  

It’s just if Faith did die, I’d feel it and then a whole bunch of other cataclysmic-ish stuff would follow. So, Faith was fine. We joked about being “old” and fragile now. But the two of us were neither- not like that anyway.

Even if the spell knocked her out it wasn’t like I had to worry Faith would become a Slay-per* or anything. If we were going to come down with that disease that attacked mostly “older” Slayers it would’ve happen to us already. I didn’t tell Faith, but I knew it started happening to me, I wouldn’t become a Slay-per. I’d fight it and not because I hated the name Slay-per. (*Slay-per a combo of Slayer and sleeper. I know the name is almost worse than the idea. I had nothing to do with any of it. People think I run everything, but all I really want to do is slay and make sure evil doesn’t win.)

Going into a mystical/medical coma wasn’t just risky for the Slayers who did it. It had been risky for the whole Slayer Line. Every second they were in that literal Dreamland was risking too much, in my opinion.

 “We can’t stop other Slayers from doing what they want with their own bodies, B,” Faith had said, “We’re not Texas.”

It was actually Faith who tried to talk them out of it. Not me. How could I? They were already so angry with me. Some were angry at Faith too. As if we chose to be immune, and/or Chosen. As if we hadn’t sacrificed enough with the body switching, and now, we were doing it again. Not that it was just for The Slayer Line or that we told anyone. We couldn’t. Real heroes are unsung, and all.

“Alex!” Nate calls now sound frustrated again, not scared.

“Ou, Ou, Ou, my shiny baby! Mama missed you!” I wrapped my fingers around the handle and twirled it.

I instantly feel more complete than I did before. Like I found my lost phone. Only more so because I had my phone and it was useless here.

Nate stares at me like strapping jocks had in high school, like I’m a loon. Only this boy messed around with freaking god-magick and he knows I’m not a loon. He knows I’m a Chosen One, his savior! Again, I know I shouldn’t expect him to see it like that, but... Oh, who cares? Now that I have The Chosen One’s weapon everything will be fine.

. I’m really wondering where Faith is now though.

“How could you tell I wasn’t Alex anymore?” I ask Nate, not really caring about the answer. I just want a break from him calling out Faith’s fake name.

“Alex would never call that ugly ax her baby,” he says, “She calls it Dan.”

“She doesn’t call it Dan!” I say after a laugh, “She calls it ‘Damn’ as in ‘Damn what a power rush.”

“And she’d care more about finding you than it,” Nate mutters.

“What? I’ve known her for longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve been through things with her you can’t even--!” I’m yelling at a kid. I need to be the adult. I tell him how Faith and I are professionals or something.

“You were the one who said she probably left us in her minivan,” is what I say.

Real mature, B. I love you but sometimes you can be a woman-child.

“I didn’t realize what was going on yet. I still don’t.”

 Neither did I but I know Faith wouldn’t leave The Scythe any more than she’d leave me with Nate. Willow’s high school words about Faith pop into my head:

“Of course, she’d do that, Buffy. She’s the do-that girl.”

It is almost like Willow and Faith are the ones who switched places, not bodies, or even personalities, but places in life. It is too bad that they seem to go through each other’s hearts to do it.  Not that it’s that bad now, or bad at all now. All it took was time and a new tragedy with:

a lot of murder, a mistrial, a miscarriage, two resurrections, two no-comeback-deaths, or three really, with the slaughter the most-toxic-of-pseudo-girl-power-male- gods.

And it was worth it to get the family back that I did. But, of course, there was still some awkwardness.

Maybe that’s why you and I can never get along. There’s only supposed to be one. Faith’s comment set of a revolution. Which, I’m pretty sure really was my idea, not hers, but if it meant we could…  

“So, what is going on?” Nate demanded, “You needed to do a body swap to draw out this thing in me? I guess it kind of makes metaphysical sense.”

“Metaphysical sense?” I repeat.

“Yeah, right. I mean, this thing is female and it’s displacing me out of my body and it’s powerful. The two of you are these Chosen powerful women. You do both identify as women, right? So…”

I tune out his Hogwarts Freshman Philosophy. I can’t help but remember the time that my own friends, my family, didn’t know Faith had stolen my body ages ago. Back when she was The Bad Slayer and I was The Good Slayer, because when your young you can only see in black and white. Or maybe it was the era that could only see girls in black and white. Oh, the ancient days of the early 00s. I know things have changed. We changed them. I also know real sustainable change is slow and girls/women are still pitted against each other.

Just ask Beyonce and Taylor.

“Hello?” Nate calls me back to him.

“Huh?”

“So you are you going to use that ax thing to kill it once it’s out?” Nate looks at The Scythe.

“Not exactly,” I say.

“Well, what exactly? Shouldn’t I know?”

Not exactly.

Sometimes I wish certain change were slower. Now even the cool high school jock thought they knew all about magick. They could recognize a body swap and not be phased. But a little information is a dangerous thing.  There is no denying the world is a better and safer place when the majority of people are know-nothing muggles. I remember Faith and Connor getting into it about all that in 2012. It would be the first of many heated debates with them.

“We need to find…Alex,” I say and not just because Faith had become better at talking to wanna-be-half-gods, or however Nate identified.

He really was just a kid and a victim. He’s actually sweet. Before my nap we had a moment talking about life. I call out Faith’s name. Her actual name. Because all this alias stuff is just silly and not a matter of life and death.

 Or at least I try to call out her name. Do I? It seems like my call is echoing back on me in a too loud distorted way.

“…aith! Aith! Aith!”

Wait, what was I doing? Where am I again? I’m in some kind of cave and its dark. Crap! Am I under The Hellmouth again? Is it a school night? Am I supposed to be watching Dawn?

Watching Dawn? You’re dreaming again, old lady B.

Right, Dawn was a mom of a tween and almost on her second marriage. She’d been a single-mom like mom but now mom is…Never mind you’re an icon B, The Godmother of Slayers!

Right! I’m Buffy Summers. I’m (the second) oldest (True) Chosen One. I’m an underground icon. I’m a policymaker, business owner, and homeowner. Known to many, seen and loved by a worthy few. I not only saved the world; I helped remake it. And now we needed to protect our full baked cookie world.

That was why I’m with Faith and that kid what’s-his-name.  Or I was with what’s-his-name, but now I seemed to be falling, falling, falling with bits of dimly lit stone patterns passing before my eyes. I hear a scream. It’s too deep to be my own.

Faith? Faith is screaming! No, she wasn’t. That had been Dawn or was it me, hitting Faith in that ally on Divisadero Street?

Still falling, now darkness. I remember the huge hit that knocked me off Faith. Willow? Dawn kept screaming but the screams turned into words and she said... No! Skip to the end:

“Faith, I—I’m so sorry.”

“No! No, B! I’m fine. It’s fine-it’s all just, kind of funny, right.”  she’d said it like she was trying to cast a spell as a last-ditch effort to save the world—Our world, but really it had already been destroyed before Xander…

No, that’s over! So over. We made sure.. The scream sounds nothing like... It’s him. Xander? No, the boy we had to save.

Faith had called me and told me about him, or she hadn’t really told me about him. The kid himself. I’m sure he’s great, a human being with a favorite ice cream flavor, SAT scores, and people who love him. She did tell me he hadn’t assaulted anyone but himself with magic. But, Faith actually told me more about the bitch inside of him than the boy himself.

I know, we don’t call women bitches anymore, but if I was right about her this bitch had never been a woman. And I do NOT mean that in some hateful JK Rowling way! This was my chance to prove…

All of a sudden, I’m in a grassy quad with red brick buildings in sunlight. I totally forgot where I’d just been or why. Now, I’m The Sunnydale University campus. This is a dream. I don’t get to be in the fun happy Slayper Dreamland. That wasn’t the deal and besides, my biggest hater is there. And, I’m secretly glad- so glad- she’s away from Faith.

She probably doesn’t have enough inhibitions in Dreamy Land to not-real-life-kill me. That would be awkward and ruin things for all The Slayers, not just her precious Slaypers.  So, in my dreams I’m on my own, and that is the way I like it.

I’m alone now as the Sunnydale Campus is empty. I see the Scythe in my hands before I feel it. As soon as grip the mystical wood handle tighter I feel its smoothness. Then I feel the ground under my chunky black boots. That’s not all I feel, something is coming. No, someone is coming.

Am I going to have to fight a 20-year-old pissed-off Faith Lehane? What a nightmare! Or, maybe I can say something different this time:

“Don’t do this, Faith. I thought we could be friends.”

No, I’d said that before:

“Sorry, I tried to kill you. I put my Mister before my Sister, but it’s really a good thing neither of us ever fully killed Angel. He died to give us real free will. (We think) Long story.”

No, that was too big:

 “Angel saved you and me and he had a son who  grew-up to really change things with us. You guys used to be besties.”

Ugh! No! That was a Bechdel Test Fail. I could explain more about how it technically wasn’t. Or maybe it still was because--

 Focus, Buffy! What was that acronym? K.I.S.S.- Keep It Simple Slayer.

What would bad girl Faith want to hear? What could she hear? Oh!:

“I’m totally down with you being bisexual – or no! Pansexual,  and guess who else is? Willow! Well, she’s not pansexual, she’s a lesbian. But, she’s not the shy nerd you remember, she’s a total powerhouse and you and she..

End up having a relationship that makes mine with Angel seem healthy! A world of no! Come on, Buffy think! Maybe this is the nightmare.

 I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around ready to defend myself. I block with The Scythe.

“Hello to you too, Little-Miss-Peaked-in-High-School,” she says.

She’s blonde with permed hair and red lipstick against pink pale skin and a tight red dress. Not Faith.

“Are you here to deliver cookies to your kid in the dorm?” she cocks her head with pho-mean-girl-concern, “Are you one of those parents that just can’t let go?”

So not Faith.

“Hello, Glory,” I say.

I have The Scythe in my grip. I strike her with it. It lands In the top of her head. Now she has lots of red blood streaming down her head and face to match her lips and dress. She crumples to the bright green grass.

“I was really hoping to reunite with you. So, you could let go,” I say and I smile.  

Chapter Text

I squeeze my stake tight.

“You have 30 seconds to tell me where those kids went!” I threaten my potential informant.

He looks like the 90s actor Giovani Ribisi on a bad day until he goes into vamp face. I wonder if that guy is still acting now. I think I remember hearing he was in a cult.

“I told you, batgirl: I dunno,” Not Giovani Ribisi vamp says.

Police cars blaze by with sirens. Their red and blue lights tint the ally and the vampire’s eyes pick up a glow for a moment.

One thing that remains the same is the cops aren’t gonna help me, but at least now they’re not arresting me, or the Slayers I need to find…I hope. If that did happen there’s a whole new real-life Ministry of Magic called SERC but they actually do help.

But, they only got involved with big shit. Not SlaySafe stuff. SlaySafe was the most amazing group home for young Slayers who messed up and wanted a second chance. If it had been around in my day, I’d have messed up on purpose to go. But, now due to a bunch of stuff, I found myself being the Headmistress.

 One Slayer had already been missing from SlaySafe for days. I had to follow protocol and make a midnight curfew. After that, naturally, a few more had snuck out.

“Tell me what you do know,” I say to the vamp.

“I know I have rights. With a half-soul you can’t attack me unless I’m a threat. Besides, what are you, like 30? Aren’t you a little old to be kickin’ it or beefing with T and those chicks? T may be one of those vamps with souls, but he’s like 20. Maybe you should just let it go.”

I respond by punching him in the face. Just to hear the satisfying crunch of it. I used to be really good at letting stuff go. Before I got into the hero/mentoring part of slaying, life was just about Sex, Slaying, and Rock ‘n’ Roll. I was built to kill demons and feel the rush. Every time a vampire crumbled to dust at the tip of my stake, the weight of my past fears vanished.

“Vamps who know where underage Slayers in danger are and won’t talk are a threat!” I roar as I grabbed him by the throat and pushed him up against the brick wall.

Now, I couldn’t let anything go. Not this vamp’s throat or the backhanded compliment he’d unknowingly given me because I’m actually 41 now. Trust me, it’s more of a shock to me than it would be to him. I woke-up a few weeks ago in this 2020s Post-Chosen-One Slayer world with everyone thinking I was the blonde corn-fed Buffy Summers, even though I was in my still brunette light-olive skinned Faith Lehane body. Up until a few days ago I thought I understood why. But now that I have more of my memories back, none of it made any sense.

“So, you vamps take the progress that benefits you, but you’re so happy to stay in the past otherwise,” I say and punch him again.

I had progressed too. Way back in ‘99 the only Slayers were me and Buffy. I kind of went a little dark. I switched bodies with her with some Freaky Friday tech and tried to steal her life. At first, that was all I could remember, but now I remember so much more. Most importantly, Buffy and I switched back into our own bodies, and I willingly went to prison for my crimes, and made amends.

So, I have no idea why people think I’m Buffy when I’m in my own body now. Still, my mission remains the same, I was going to find the real Buffy, and get her back to her life.

I know if I told anyone the truth at this point, that I was Faith Lehane, the ex-con drop-out Slayer, and not Buffy Summers, the philanthropist True Chosen One Slayer, they’d probably lock me up. But, I had to take one problem at a time, just like the shrink said, and tonight isn’t about me or Buffy.

Tonight, I had to get these Slayers back safe into SlaySafe. They were too young to understand that having physical power didn’t make them invulnerable, in fact it was the very thing that could make them a target.

Tonight I hadda Slay!

“If I were a dude and a 200-year-old demon in love with a high school Slayer, I bet you wouldn’t blink an eye,” I continue to threaten the little vamp, “But, if I’m a grown-ass Slayer just looking for some Slayers, I’m suddenly an old hag!”

“You—” the vamp chokes out.

Tonight, I can feel the cool clammy skin of the vamp’s throat yield to my grip as I squeeze harder. It felt like a familiar comfort- like riding a biker. That’s what I said to Wes about slaying vampires again after he broke me out of prison. But, I’d been doing the right thing. It was so I could save Angel and the world by proxy.

I remember that now, so clearly, along with a lot of other things as I’m recovering from amnesia. How long had it been since I dusted a vamp? Too long. I used to think it was what I was literally born to do. Now I ease off  this vamp’s throat so he’ll tell me where T, Ramona, and Dom are.

“Besides,” I say, “I’m recovering from amnesia, and I can’t seem to remember what those pesky rights of yours are. So, talk.”

“Amnesia?” he says dubiously after I let go of his throat fully. People never believe me when I tell them the truth.

“Yeah,” I say as I take out my stake to pin him to the wall again, “But trust me, I remember how to get information out of vamps. I’ll be nice, and you can tell me where they might have gone, and I’ll believe it.”

Not that I’d believe my own story either. When I woke-up at Berkeley at The SlaySafe/EveryGen compound in the hills. I did try to tell everyone I was not Buffy Summers. But, they didn’t hear me. It didn’t help that whenever anyone or I tried to say Buffy’s name a painful ringing bomb went off in my head. It still does. So maybe some things have to be complicated, but having this vampire against the wall is the simplest way for me to feel like my old-Faith-Lehane-Slayer-Self.

“You must have amnesia if you think I’d rat-out T, to some ol’ Slayer when T is a Slaypire ,and twice as dangerous—Ow!”

“You have no idea how dangerous I am,” I say as I dig my stake into his chest, just to the right of his heart, “I’ve dusted vampires who shit bigger than you. I’ve fought The Origin of Evil.”

His yellow demonic eyes widen, “Wait. Are you one of those older ones they had to put to sleep?”

“What are you—?”

He interrupts me with piercing laughter.

“You mean you really don’t know,” he says.

“I told you. I have fucking amnesia! So, you’re gonna tell me what the fuck you’re talking about and you’re going to tell me where those kids are. And maybe I will only hurt you and leave you undead because I’m a rogue Slayer that doesn’t play by the rules.”

I move the stake to over his heart and dig in again.

“Christ!” he says, “Do you only remember bad 90s cop movies? Fine. I don’t even know if it’s true. But, there’s a rumor that alpha dude CEO put a bunch of you Slayer bitches into a coma, because you were getting early on-set Alzheimer’s or something.”

“Early on-set what-the-fuck?” I growled, “The oldest Slayer is—” I think the oldest Slayer is me, at 41, “—not old enough for—”

“That’s why I said early on-set!”

I shook my head. Why was I listening to a shitty vampire?

“Alpha dude” I say, “Are you talking about Connor?”

“That’s the man. You know there’s rumors he’s really a Slayer chick posing as a dude to get more—Ow!”

“You’re full of shit!” I say and hit him against the wall.

“I didn’t say I believed he was a chick. You know gender is fluid.”

“I know that! And if you really knew it you wouldn’t say—I meant the other shit.”

I know Connor isn’t a chick, at least not biologically, even if he did have the softest skin and full lips that kissed like a wicked M-16 with a bullet tongue made of rainbows. He spoke softly, but carried a big man-stick. And, while I like man-sticks as much as the next girl, they usually don’t get my motor humming on the first drive like his did. Actually, it was technically the second time around the block when my engine purred because the boy really new how to use his hands and fingers as well as any girl or guy I was ever with outside of dreams.

I knew it was wrong! I didn’t mean for it to happen! At least not this time.

Hey, Ms. ADHD, focus! I imagine B’s voice nagging at me, Deal with the fact that you screwed my husband under false pretenses later. This vamp has info that Connor has a dark-side.

"No,” I said out loud, “Connor is good. He’s the real deal. I’ve checked him out.”

He was also Angel’s kid! That was something I did not remember when Connor and I were knocking boots. I’d love to say I don’t know how Buffy ended up falling for her ex’s kid, but the boy had really grown-up to get some serious game, and B was always falling for the worst possible demon dude she could fall for. Unlike me, who just screwed them under false pretenses. But, like her voice in my head told me, I’d fix that later.

“You need to stay woke, girl,” a voice says from behind us and I turn abruptly to it. It came from a redheaded woman vampire in heels and a fur jacket, “It sounds like they caught you sleepin’ or maybe the man made you sleep.”

Another vampire comes into the light of the alley beside her, followed by two more. Two of them are dressed like Twilight extras, like the redhead. One of them has a goatee, the other has an afro. While the other one is just basic with a gold chain around his neck. With the Giovani Ribisi look-alike, it’s five on one, if they want to try to fight me, which they probably did, since they were all showing their fangs and demonic vamp faces.

“Okay,” I drawl with false ease in my defensive fighting stance, “So, I see what this is. An ambush. That’s what I get for searching for info on that Next Door ap.”

It’s only now I realize this is my first real trip outside of Slaysafe. I’d been training all the Slayers there, and not just physically, but psycho-socially too. I had to take over Buffy’s life while I made sense of everything so I could save her. I know she wouldn’t want everything to go to hell while she was gone. Yes, screwing her man was a huge nasty mistake. So, now I was just ghosting him since he got back from some business trip. It was all under control, until now.

“You were always so paranoid,” the redhead says, “This isn’t an ambush. Think of it more as a feminist intervention. You’ve been checking Connor out with your memories all wiped at that glorified prison compound SlayLame?”

The rest of the newcomer vamps flanked her. She was the leader. Good for her; girl boss! It usually meant she was the smartest. Regular people walked past the alley and their cars drove by without a clue.

“Trust me. It’s not a prison. Way better food and no guard beatings. How come it’s always girls who only hang out with dudes say they’re the real feminists?” I quipped.

“Tell me, have you seen any Slayers your age?” she gave her head a predatory tilt, “Where have you been, girl?”

“What are you talking about?” I say, “Of course there are Slayers my age. In fact, a few of them are just around the corner. Not that I couldn’t take you on all myself.”

Only, she’s right. I’m lying. I went out looking for these rule-breaking Slayers alone because I thought it would be easy. Also, I hadn’t seen any Slayers my age, or over 30. But, why would I? SlaySafe only helped troubled new called Slayers up to 25. Not successful Slayer women, which I apparently wasn’t.

The female vamp went back into her human face. It was pretty. She was older than I thought, but her skin was still smooth and ivory. It almost looked kind and kind of familiar.

“You really do have amnesia, don’t you? I wonder, did Connor give it to you because you found out about all his cheating and you tried to leave him; or did you get it by spending too much time breaking the rules in Dreamland yourself?”

Fuck! She knew me. No! What am I thinking? She knew Buffy and Connor. She knew they were together and she was saying things she knew would gaslight Buffy because that’s what smart soulless monsters did. I realize that’s what I did to Connor too. I let him think I was Buffy so I could screw him.

“You really think you could get me to believe Connor would do any of that?” I say.

“Which thing? Giving you amnesia, the cheating, or the whole Dreamland thing you can’t go to?”

I actually had very good dreams with lots of girl-on-girl sex. But I still felt like I needed to bang Connor because out here in RL, as the kids say these days, I still felt so alone, pretending to be what I was not— pretending to be B, The Good Mother of Slayers. Still, it’s not like I couldn’t have found anyone or anything else to feel less lonely. I had to try being The Good Wife Slayer too. This vamp chick can’t convince me Connor was the monster because I know I am.

” Every time with us is like the first time,” he had said, “So, I can wait as long as you need for the next first time.”

It was the day after we had sex. He’d just slipped it into the conversation we were having about the movie Inception because that’s how slick he was. No, that’s how earnest he was. I know I should have been consumed with guilt, but all I thought was: That’s a line from that 80s movie, Overboard, where Kurt Russell lies to Goldie Hawn. She got amnesia and he told her she was his wife, just for the free labor, but then, they really fall in love. I kept that, and the thought that we were living some twisted version of that very sexist 80s movie, to myself. That was when he put on a sheepish smile and said:

“Oh my god! Did I just accidentally quote an awful 80s movie where  Goldie Hawn had amnesia and Kurt Russell forced her to be his wife?”

“I was just thinking that too,” I said laughing, “But, I didn’t wanna say anything. It was one of the first sex scenes I ever saw as a kid. Do you think it rotted my brain?”

When I could’ve said: I’m not your wife! I’m a twisted combination of both those characters. I’m so sorry. You’re just the only person that just wants to hang out with me, but I know it’s not really me you want.

“No, it clearly rotted my brain,” he says, “I thought I was actually being original. All those supposedly ‘good memories’ I have crammed into my head to make a real boy. What if my personality is just 80s movies, Dostoyevsky, and My Chemical Romance Albums? You should run.”

“Hey,” I said, “Then you’re doing way better than me. I think mine is just a bunch of training montages, 80s rom-coms and 90s action movies now.”

“It’s a good think we’re not the people ensuring the supernatural world stays balanced,” he said, “Oh wait.”  

We both laughed and laughed, and I forgot my guilt. Then, he went on some business trip and I promised him I wouldn’t go fighting any gods. Yet, I swore to myself that I’d go to Boston and get the Slayer Scythe, find Glory, and get her to put Buffy back in my body. Then, I’d die again because I assumed I had died in Buffy’s body years ago.

Ten days ago was such a simpler time.

Right after that, I found out some Slayer had taken The Scythe on some undisclosed mission and everyone kept insisting Glory was dead, and there was so much shit to be done at SlaySafe. I convinced myself B would want me to take care of SlaySafe. Just like I convinced myself it would be fine to have sex with her husband because I was going to die and give my body back to her.

“You really don’t remember me at all? ” the redheaded vampire pulls me back into the present where I convinced myself I could take on vampires with almost two decades of memory loss, mistaken identity, and no support system.

“No. But, even if I did, you don’t know me or Connor just because you did a Google search.” I say.

I say it to remind myself that’s such a thing now. With my memories ending in 2003, I still remember people having things called private lives. I’m surprised one of the vamps wasn’t live-streaming this right now. Actually, I found out if anyone live-streamed supernatural stuff SERC usually put a stop to it for general safety.

“A Google search?” she says, “Oh, B-EEEEEP ”

A loud painful ringing goes off in my head like a bomb. It takes all of my strength not to stumble through the pain. Fuck! The vampire bitch had said Buffy’s full name. This is how it goes. I always hear the “B” sound and the rest of it set my brain on fire.

“What the—?” one of the vampires says.

All the vampires’ hands go to their ears too. It’s in their heads too? I step back and the vamp I had against the wall goes to grab for me. I ducked out of the way, but feel a pain in my shin and realized he kicked me. My body takes over before I realize I staked him. My stake is inside of him. He doesn’t turn to dust like all the hundreds, maybe over a thousand vamps, I’d staked in my life.

He cries out with my stake in his heart. My guts burn with panic. Have I killed another human being?

When I killed a man by accident before all my darkness took over. Faith, no!, Buffy screamed. She kept telling me I killed a man. I was a killer. She looked at me like I was disgusting in my crumbling hotel room while she was in her designer clothes. I knew she wasn’t going to cover for me. Unlike her I didn’t have a mom, or friends, or a Watcher who cared. I had gotten my Watcher killed. I actually got my mom killed too. Maybe I wasn’t just a Slayer, but a killer – a murderer.  So, I lied and I told Buffy I didn’t care and  I wanted to be a killer. I lied and lied, until the worst parts became true and I felt better because I felt nothing, until I crashed and felt everything. I thought I was doing better now, but I’m still lying and killing.

Suddenly, the body at the end of my stake becomes translucent. I see all of this man’s organs, the blood in his veins still in his body, with a grey dead heart surrounding my stake. Then all of his blood explodes out of his body and onto me. I yelped as a salty sour taste took over my mouth. Then he turned to dust and I coughed with ashes in my throat.

“You stupid bitch!” the goatee vampires yells. He comes at me and lands a good punch to my face.

I am a stupid bitch, and now I’m a stunned bleeding stupid bitch.

“Wait!” the redhead said firmly before the three remaining vamp dudes are about to jump me, “She’s not just any stupid bitch, you idiot. She’s B-EEEEEEP.”

She says Buffy’s name again and everyone winces in pain. So, it wasn’t just me. Demons heard and felt the ringing too when Buffy’s name is spoken. Maybe I’m a demon too, for real now.

“Ow! Stop that!”  the gold-chain-wearing vamp yells at the redhead.

“Interesting,” the redheaded vamp smiles with her fangs, “So, what price are we all paying for nepo-abomination-baby’s abuse of power now?”

“Don’t fucking call him that!” I cry.

I wipe the blood from my mouth. Maybe Connor isn’t human, but he isn’t like me. I knew that. If I live through this, I’ll tell him the truth. I’ll tell him everything I know, which is next to nothing, but maybe we can go to Angel and—

The redhead vamp snickers, pulling me out of my thoughts. She thinks she’s what’s getting to me.

“Shouldn’t you be asking what he wants us to call you, since we can’t say your name? And you have amnesia so you forgot it all. I’ll give this to him. He really knows how to strip a girl down.”

“You don’t know anything! He’d never hurt her!” I say, “I mean, he’d never hurt me. A god tried to kill me and I survived, so maybe you should just step off.”

Even though I had no memory of Buffy and I switching bodies again, let alone any clear memories past winning the big battle in Sunnydale, I knew I had amnesia because an evil god called Glory attacked me. I’m sure of that. Just like I was sure Buffy was off somewhere and I had to save her. The good goddess I was hooking up with in my dreams confirmed it. Okay, when I really think about it, I know it sounds-

“Step off?! Oh my god!” the girl vamp laughs but then her face goes back to demonic, “A god tried to kill you? Was it Willow again or him?”

“Willow or who?” I say.

“Clearly, you don’t know anything.’ Step off’,” she repeated my dated phrase and shook her head, “Do you only have teenaged memories?”

“No!” I say, even though that was mostly true a week ago.

Now I remember my 20s now, almost half of them anyway. Now I remembered Connor, all young and angry, his huge blue eyes filled with fury but wonder too. Why are all Slayers girls? He was so sure he wanted to kill his dad. I had to beat his ass and I knew we were both pulling our punches. All right. I get it. I messed up, was all he said, when he realized I was right, but his eyes told the full multi-chapter story of all his anguish.

I remembered him all the way to Sunnydale because all of his emotions were like a mirror for me. I’d asked him for his email address, and the son of two vampires who was about to usher in a chaotic god, had one. Of course, I may’ve only moved back to L.A. from a Hell Dimension for a few months, but I’m not Angel, I adapt. I laughed as Cordelia (who turned out to be an imposter demon-god) glowered at me, and Angel was lovingly flustered: I have an email address!

“Do you remember leading us into a death trap?” girl-boss vamp stepped closer to me, and I hold up my stake.

More police cars that go by the alley with their sirens blazing. It’s not helping the headache I still have from her saying Buffy’s name twice. My heart hammers in my chest.

 “He hasn’t even told you what happens when you kill a half-souled vampire!” vamp-girl gestures to where I dusted the half-souled vampire.

Does that mean I’m half a murderer? No, I’m already a murderer. You can’t be more than a murderer. You could be more of a lying whore though.

 “He’s keeping you locked up in that place with your brain damage, just like he tried to do to all of us! Like he is doing to most of us! Well, not me!”

 Girl-boss-vamp is still going on with her Connor-Hate-Campaign.

I scoff.

I felt a little relief because I’ve heard this stupid rumor. I calm myself and think what would Buffy do? She was always making truces and deals with vampires back in the day, and none of that had changed. She’d just had a lot better deals to offer them now. So, that meant I did.

“You should really stop reading fake news,” I say, “We do not keep vamps locked up at SlaySafe or EveryGen. We don’t do evil experiments on them. We just give vamps the opportunity to get a soul, and if they do, we have them check in every month. Then, they can get an injection so they can walk around in sunlight.”

“That’s fake news!” the gold-chain vamps says.

“I know. I thought that too,” I say as I make eye contact with his demonic eyes, “But, I’ve seen it.”

This was the future, and it was all true. Connor and Buffy were able to get the smartest people to do amazing things in their ethical magic corporation.

“Does it mean we get to date Slayers if we get a soul?” the gold chain wearer vamp asks.

“Anything is possible. I think it’s a great deal,” I say, “Maybe we can work something out here. We can call a truce and I can get you into the program and if—”

“Dude, she’s lying,” the goatee vamp says, “Everyone knows a soul castrates a vampire.”

“No,” I say, “You’re just thinking of Angel, and trust me, castration wasn’t the issue at all, and he got over it, way over it, and Spike, well, his soul gave him the stamina of—”

“Would you just shut the fuck up, you huckster whore!” the redhead growls at me in her demonic face.

“What did you call m--?”

“I wasn’t talking about the fucking vampires!,” she cuts me off, “I was talking about Slayers or ‘Slaypers’ as they’ve been so hideously branded. Connor messed around with forces he had no business messing around with. He couldn’t just stay dead after you got him killed, and all of a sudden, gods started rising up.”

”Gods? Like Glory or Glorificus?” I ask.

Connor, and a lot of people and EveryGen, tried to convince me Glory was dead when I told them all I could remember was that she attacked me and caused my 20 year amnesia. Connor was the most adamant about it. He also said he could kill gods. At the time I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I now remember he killed that god, Jasmine, in L.A. when no one else could, but he also had something to do with creating her.

“Gods like all of them, even The Endless,” she says, “Gods like him.”

“Him?” I asked.

“Connor, B—!” she goes to say my name and stops herself.

I mean, she goes to say Buffy’s name. Buffy’s! Not mine. Never mine! It shouldn’t be me here. Clearly, I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m over my head. Overboard at sea.

“Connor is a god?” I say.

“Really?” her face shifts to human, “Even with amnesia that’s all you fucking care about- your man and his power! Not all the Slayers who started dropping in our generation due to the imbalance of power he created? Not the hundred or so Slayers he has up there in comas for a year and change!”

“Vi,” the gold-chain-wearer looks at the redhead, but she only looks at me in her human face.

“Of course, it didn’t affect your Chosen ass. You were supposed to be the cool one! The one who looked out for us! The True Chosen One!” her voice breaks, “But you’re worse than him! You’re really the one who made it all happen. You probably gave yourself amnesia because you couldn’t live with yourself.”

“What the hell are we doing, Vi?” the one with the Afro finally speaks, “Let’s just take her. It’s obvi, she’s weak and I’ve heard aged Slayer blood is sweet.”

“Oh,” Vi went back into her demonic vamp face and licks her fangs, “I know it is. It runs through my veins and—”

“Vi?” I say aloud and all my memories come flooding back to me.

20 years ago In Sunnydale, she was the biggest scaredy-cat Potential Slayer. After B and I did the spell with Willow, and she became a Slayer she was the bravest. She was the cutest little D and D nerd and now…

“Vi, you’re a—”

“Slaypire, yes,” she says, “and you’re interrupting my villain monolog, B—EEEEEP.”

She says Buffy’s name aloud again and the moment the fierce ringing and head pain falls in on all of us, I don’t hesitate, I run. I run blindly with my pain, and as the wind makes my eyes tear, I want to keep running forever.

Chapter Text

I don’t have to run anymore. Glory is dead—again! All I needed to do was throw The Slayer Scythe at her in a dream, splitting her head in my old college quad. I did it! Or we did it! (Even though Faith freaked out and ran when Glory showed up in the waking world.) Still,without Faith, none of this would’ve been possible. I’ll make sure to mention that at the award ceremony.

This time, I didn’t have to die, and no innocent boy, or god, had to be murdered by anyone else! It didn’t turn into a nightmare. Wait… that was way too easy. Now I’ll see Glory’s body vanished like Michael Myers, right?

Before I can look I’m falling through dreamspace: weightless, almost giggly.

Then I smell her perfume: gardenias and battery acid. Glory floats in on swing, radiant in a gold dress, light bending around her.

“Hey, girl,” she purrs.

She jumps to the floor, red-nailed and predatory.

“Yeah, no one needs a sequel of you, Michael Myers,” I say, “Not even one with a good plot twist.”

“Are you sure?” she says, “Because this one is way more interesting than the recent one you ran from.”

She circles me in the dreamscape, a twirling razor blade as I'm paralyzed. The ground is a swirling mosaic of colors, shifting with her every step.

“I mean, I get why you did run. Sick old Slayers? Boring.”

“At least I’m not trying to make a sad comeback through a kid,” I say, “I know you’re weak. I’m not going to let you have him, Glory.”

“You’re not going to let me have him? Do you mean captain caveboy? Or Connor, because I hear he’s half the man he used to be, or is he all man and no god now?”

I swallow, and the bile in my throat has nothing to do with the dreamspace being shaky.

“Whatever your plan is, Glory, going through some innocent high school quarterback won’t get you there.”

“Oh, sweet girl. You really don’t get it.” Glory reaches out, her fingers trailing sparks, and pinches a lock of my hair between her nails. She twirls it once, twice, and lets go.“I didn’t come back to this dank-ass world to get a boy body or even to mess with your adorable retro existential crisis.”

She smiles. It’s like watching a meat grinder try to be charming. “I’m here to remind you of what you are,” she says.

I roll my eyes, which sets off a fresh round of vertigo. “Right. And what am now, Glory? Besides a middle-aged-loser? I can’t wait until you dream-drag me back to high school where I peaked.”

“You’re blaming me? No, hun. You built this labyrinth, Buffy—every stairwell, every closet full of teeth.”

The dream labyrinth unfurls in front of us like a scene straight out of a Tim Burton movie. It’s this mind-bending tapestry of twisty corridors and shadowy passages, with every turn promising a level of mystery and danger that would put Hogwarts to shame.

“I’m not this creative. If I designed this it it would be more minimalist.”

She snaps her fingers; the corridor pixelates then returns sharper than before.

“You’re not the Slayer anymore—you’re the System,” she hisses. “You body-swap with your little murder bitch over and over again to escape. You let them build an empire on the bones of girls you claim to save.”

“We did what we had to do there’s always a bigger monster,” I say and now I’m in a well-lit empty conference room.

It has a long table that seats about thirty and warped plexiglass window with blood smeared on it. I’m in the doorway. I don’t have to look to know I’m in Faith’s body. Not mine.

Glory laughs coldly from nowhere and everywhere, her physical presence gone. “Look around. You are that bigger monster now.”

Suddenly, the long table is full of people in stone-faced grief.I stand in the doorway my armpits prickle as sweat pools under them.

“You’re late,” Connor whispers as I sit.

There’s already unrest. A strikingly handsome man stands up from the table. He’s at center of the commotion, his chiseled features framed by tousled dark hair. A strong jawline accentuates his lips, which twist into a snarl as he raises his voice and says:

“Slaypers?!”

For a moment I think he’s having some kind of stroke, that he has the disease or whatever they’re calling it now. An illness. First Gen Slayer Illness, (FGSI.)

I had done my homework. Hence, my lateness. I knew that two Slayers were dead. Shannon Milano and Priya Radika, both had been in Sunnydale’s final battle years ago.

I knew all the possible stages of FGSI. I knew the five EveryGen executives, and the two SERC representatives sitting here, but I didn’t know any names of the twenty-something grieving family members. Including the man shouting a word that rhymes with papers.

“The term ‘Slaypers’ is just a placeholder,” my sister says with her amazing hair, “What’s important is we found a way forward.”

Dawn doesn’t just have amazing hair. My grown-up baby sister who I now have to share with everyone in the world, exudes confidence and calm.

“Branding is not a way forward,” Mr. Angry-Dark-and-Handsome says, “And I honestly don’t even know why you’re here. Are you a doctor? A Slayer? A disease specialist?”

My hand balls into a fist. I start to defend Dawn, Faith’s husky voice slipping out angrily, but Connor’s gentle squeeze silences me.

“Trust me, Dawn is more than qualified, Rick,” I hear my voice, see my body looking as smooth and relaxed as the leather jacket it adorns.

“When did Faith get here for this?” I whisper to Connor.

I know I’m dreaming what already happened, as if the first times was so great. This meeting was to propose putting The Slayers with FGSI into a medical/mystical coma to halt the illness until a cure is found. Things didn’t go according to plan. Some details are different. I don’t think Faith was wearing so much leather.

“Two days ago,” Connor tells me, “Don’t worry. Dest stabilized her after what she did.”

“What did she do?”

The dream shifts. The room tilts, walls expand, and the floor becomes a chessboard of glowing tiles. Each tile bears a name: Shannon, Caridad, Satsu, Dana, and many more. All Slayers I failed in some way.

Glory glides over the tiles to me. “You stepped on all of them, Buff. And the best part? You don’t even hate yourself for it. Not like you used to.”

I want to punch her. I want to reach into her chest and tear out the smug little demon core that powers her. But I can’t move. My feet are bolted to the names, and each name burns hotter the more I try to lift them.

“You used to save the world. Now you’re not even in it,” she says, “You’re not in your body. You’re not even in your own head anymore.”

Before my scorching feet make me scream, I’m falling, plummeting through impossible space.

“I mean who even are you?” Glory’s voice is an echo again, “Not this bitch.”

I’m Faith, in a sunlit house.I’m in the arms of a taller leaned-muscled woman. I want to be a bitch and tell her she shouldn’t have come. I woulda held it together if she hadn’t, but my throat burns with sobs.

People in hazmats suits roll out a body bag past us. It’s Shannon Benico. The Slayer I (Faith) rescued from Caleb, the psycho misogynist preacher, in Sunnydale. I know because I held her as she bled out of her eyes and her sickly discolored veins throbbed twisting her in pain. Her friends called her “Sha-ben”; to her kids she was just mom. She thought I was her mother and she screamed for me to help her.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

I know she reminded my of my own mother who I found dying at the bottom of the stairs. My mom quit drinking only to have her MS kill her, and I was alone, with Diana, a Watcher who was pushed into giving me The Torture Test early. Diana would die to save me, run in before Kakistos could rape me. I’d see her eviscerated. And, years later, I’d still think I was twisted and evil because I was so angry at her.

But I had, my true north now, I was never going to let some horrible bullshit like that happen to any other Slayer! But, I just did.

B and Willow took all the credit for The Slayer Sharing Spell and I let them.

I said: “There’s only supposed to be one (Slayer.) Maybe that’s why you and I never get along.”

Then B said: “You went crazy and started killing people.”

I said: “Then there’s that.” (or something like that, I can’t remember. I had to let B simplify it. I didn’t get to have excuses as the bad guy, not if I wanted to be a good guy ever.)

Then I said: “What if there was more than One Chosen one all the time? And not just two, but like—”

Buffy: “—like a whole army, that would be nice, especially now. (Then she got that look on her little pixie face) Actually, that would be world-saving right now. Faith, you’re a genius!”

Me: “Um, I thought you said I’d always been a little slow, but is this actually something Red could make happen? Whatever you need I’ll do it.”

I was desperate to pass the buck and not be alone. Now I'll watch my brain-children die, their children will be alone like I was. I can't fix it; I'm too weak. I'm crying so hard I forget my legs, and The Goddess holds me up. She lifts me effortlessly, takes me to a couch, and I quiet down. Because Deep down, Faith Lehane, The Dark Slayer feared by demons and cops, is really just a forty-year-old baby. Dest’s baby.

“Dest,” I say her name and revel in her scent, crisp Apples and seasalt.

“It’s okay,” she says her voice lightly gruff, “I mean, it’s not, but we’re going to figure this out together, Faith. Can I heal you now?"

I nod my consent for SERC protocol. She starts to glow and the power thrums through my body. I hadn’t realized all the injuries I had until Dest’s glow heals them. They were all from Shannon ripping and clawing at me through her pain.

I tear up again. My eyes stinging anew.

"Can I take you home?" she asks.

Dest's energy hums, a charged warmth surrounding us. It ripples through me, not demanding happiness but offering peace.

But, I shake my head. “I can’t go home.”

EveryGen employees tiptoe around us as they clean up all the blood, all of the life, that was once in Shannon. All the mess I made. They probably have a million things they want to ask me. SERC officials are here too and I know they have one thing they really want to ask: What did you do, Faith?

Always the bad girl wanting, taking, having, the more I try to give.

But, right now The Goddess literally holds me and no one would dare even look at us for too long. That’s the kind of power she has. She doesn’t rule with a big stick. She doesn’t need to rule and all.

“You can do whatever you want,” she says, “You’re the boss, remember?”

"I'm Faith Lehane, unhinged girl-boss," I say, pushing back her hair, "and you hold enough real power for both of us."

Even if she lost all her power, I'd still love her. I'd crawl through broken glass to be with her.

She shakes her head, "You stayed with a dying woman. I should've—"

"No," I stand up, "I wouldn’t want you to see that, and I'm not losing one more Slayer to this."

I return Shannon’s bedroom, where she died.

"Hey," I say to the hazmat cleaners, "Is there more to go through?"

Suddenly, the air in Shannon's bedroom shimmers like water, and I'm falling. NO! I need to keep working! I gotta figure out—

I crash-land, knees raw on concrete. I’m Buffy again, but Faith’s love and pain cling to me like grease. Before I can stand, Glory’s on a bone throne, slow-clapping.

“You finally cared,” she says, “You just literally had to be her. Ironic, isn’t it? Maybe you’ve really switched places for good this—”

I’m sick of this shit! I will myself to move. I lunge at her screaming. The world around me blurs and shifts, like a puzzle being rearranged. The colors change and twist, darkness seeping in and out like tar.

I gasp for breath. I’m at the meeting FGSI again. Only this time I’m in my body and Faith is in hers. Everyone is talking over everyone else, some are in their own conversations, like the teacher left the classroom and the kids are going wild.

The angry hottie, Rick, is talking to Faith, way less angrily, “I’m all the family Dana has.”

“Ricky,” Faith says, “Dana wants…”

I can't hear their conversation anymore over the louder, accusing voices: "Caridad didn’t want to be a Slayer, if these Chosen Two hadn’t..."

"Why is this happening to us and The Chosen Ones are immune?"

“Because they always are!”

I slap my hands on the table and stand.

“We could switch bodies!” I say

It momentarily halts the anger and blame, or at least it confuses it into silence for a second.

Connor’s sigh is audible.

“I’m sorry,” a dark-skinned woman in her 60s says, “You mean, you could let some of the Slayers inhabit your body while you go into theirs? I really don’t think that’s clinically sound.”

“But, that would save them!” a woman ringing a tissue says, “Because the two Chosen Ones are immune to the disease.”

“That might work,” a man says, “Who gets their bodies? I think my wife should get one.”

He looks Faith up and down in a way that makes me want to rip his eyeballs out.

“No. She means—” Connor begins

“I mean Faith and me,” I say.

Faith adds, “We’ve swapped before when the Slayer-Sharing Spell glitched. It balanced our power, though it didn’t last.”

Chaos explodes again—“What issues?” “What are they saying?” “This is so…”

Until Vi—Violet Day—stands and roars, “SHUT UP!” The room stills.

"You’re all sitting here whining, while we’re dying!" she declares with an edge of defiance.

“Vi,” Faith stands too, “Vi’s not herself. She—”

"I am myself. Take a good look at the real me!”

Her voice quivers with anger and despair as she wipes off her makeup with trembling hands, revealing veins twisted into a grotesque tapestry of black, sickly blue, and purple. Gasps of horror fill the room.

“This is what phase three looks like. This is what awaits you or yours. Nightmares that claw at your sanity and brain fog thicker than your most delusional Aunt Ida's ramblings. I couldn't even hold a violin, let alone play it. I couldn't write or think straight. And they want to put us to sleep!"

“Lehane, get her out of here,” Connor orders, and then he turns to me and asks “Buffy, could you please…”

He knows if he talks to me like I’m his employee I will make his life Hell, despite everything. I stand, approaching Vi as Faith does the same.

“We’ll all go back to the infirmary and talk,” I say.

“Vi, we’re your friends,” Faith says.

"No! You're not in control!" she snaps, "You both get amnesia every few years and think you're in charge and the best of us, but you're the biggest whores."

Though she's in stage 3 of the illness, I suspect something more. When she grabs my neck with unexpected strength, everyone gasps, thinking it's the disease. I know it's not.

“Shit,” Dawn says “She’s a —”

“I’m a Slaypire,” Vi says, “And you’ll never believe whose idea it was.”

“Violet,” Connor says, “It’s okay. We’ll figure this out together. Just let Buffy go.”

She tosses me against the window and I bounce like a ball against the plexiglass smacking my head.

“Buffy!” Dawn cries as I slide to the floor.

I’ll feel that for a few days but I rise quickly to ensure Vi doesn’t attack anyone else.

“Vi,” Faith says, “What did you do? You were supposed to get a soul too!”

This was Faith’s idea! What was she thinking? EveryGen didn’t turn people into vampires on request; they gave vampires souls. If a vampire chooses to get a soul, they can also get injections to walk in sunlight, which explained Vi’s presence, but clearly....

“Yeah,” Vi says to Faith, “I skipped the soul part. Trust me, you would too, slugger. But thanks for all the security codes to score UV injections. Maybe I’ll sell them to vamps for ozempic prices.”

“She was supposed to be turned by a vamp with a soul and then get a soul, B. I thought it would work.”

Faith looks at me like a guilty teenager who stole my car, not a grown woman with the craziest plan I’d ever heard.

“Jesus, Lehane!” Connor says, “Are you crazy?”

The table wasn’t running and screaming like in the good old days. They had notes:

“Crazy is an offensive term,” a woman at the table says.

“I actually don’t think it’s a bad idea at all,” Hottie-Rick looks at Vi fascinated.

“But it didn’t work,” another said.

They probably thought the building was protection warded, and it is, but that isn’t fool proof. Vi is dangerous.

“Don’t be so negative,” Vi says, “Sometimes you just have to manifest.”

Her veiny face makes the familiar squelching shifting sound into her vampire face that oddly is clear of veins. But when she shifts back, her face is free of any signs of disease, so are her arms.

“It worked. The disease is gone!” A woman gasped.

“The wards here only last so long, people. Meeting adjourned for now,” Dawn gets up, “Everyone out. Go, go, go.”

Dawn leads the twenty-something civilians out like a pro. Some of them are completely fearful. Others just look angry or sad. I can’t focus on them so much since I clearly have to fight a dangerous Slaypire.

"It's fine. Guard the door," Faith says to the four other Slayers, as they look to her for guidance.

They exit swiftly, the door slamming shut behind them, leaving Faith, Connor, and me to face Vi.

"For the record, it’s pretty far from fine, Le’Hanious," Connor grunts, ducking a punch from Vi.

"I don’t wanna hear it, kid," Faith retorts, blocking Vi’s kick with a swift arm movement.

"Well, answer for it then," Connor snaps, delivering a jab to Vi's side. "What were you thinking?"

Vi smirks, sidestepping Faith’s roundhouse kick. "She was thinking she knows how unfun comas are," she taunts. "I hope you’re not jealous that I went to her for help, Buffy. She is the stupid one."

"Or she’s too close to this,” Connor says as he ducks Vi’s fist, “You’re benched from anything having to do with this Slayper thing, Lehane."

“You can’t do that!” Faith says, landing a punch on Vi’s jaw.

“I just did,” Connor says as I block an attack from Vi with my forearm.

“You little shit! I—” With Faith distracted Vi kicks her in the chest and she falls back with a grunt.

I pull her up whole Connor takes a few punches from Vi to the face.

“Faith,” I say, “Maybe he’s right.”

“B—”

“See Faith, your brain doesn’t matter to either of them,” Vi says.

“That’s—” Connor begins

With a sudden surge, Vi grabs Faith and holds a knife to her throat. I don’t bother to ask where she got it. It could’ve come off from anywhere, but the style looked like Faith’s

"So, maybe. I should take you. Or at least your body," Vi says, eyes glinting with malice go to me and Connor. "Isn’t that what the two of you like to do? Your common interest that brings you together? You use all of our bodies. Tell us what we can do with them, but really Faith gets it the worst from both of you."

Faith has no snarky retort. She keeps her eyes shut not moving as blood spills down her throat. I open my mouth to speak—

Suddenly, everything freeze-frames 90s TV-show style, and Glory makes her entrance in a bold, patterned shirt tucked into stone-washed jeans. An invisible TV-audience cheers. I realize she’s dressed as Zack Morris from Saved by The Bell.

“Seriously,” I say to her, “You paused it right when I had the best joke that Vi was diseased and undead with too much power, like a republican.”

A TV-laugh track laughs.

“Omigod, stop,” I squeeze the bridge of my nose, “The burning feet and falling were better.”

“How many times do I have to say: you’re doing this?” she says, “I was a god of infinite Hells. Do you think I want to be dressed like a privileged TV douche that aged poorly? Do think I want to be telling your thick-head this bitch is in trouble right now?”

She gestured to Faith frozen against Vi’s knife.

“Please, You’ve aged way worse than Zach Morris,” I say, and the the TV-recorded-audience goes “OooUUU!”

“and Faith is fine” I continue, “Connor went and got this thing, and it did a thing, and long story short, Vi got burned and ran out, and Faith was fine.”

“Uuuugh!” Glory groaned, “Short bus, I’m not talking about then. I’m talking about now. Right now.”

Off goes the laugh-track.

"Wha—" I start, but Glory tugs at the strings of the dreamscape and—zap—I'm in a new scene, like a tape skipping this time.

We’re on rooftops in downtown Berkeley. It’s nighttime. The city lights are a thousands of blinking eyes.

Below, Faith sprints across the asphalt, legs pumping, coat streaming behind her. Ten paces behind her: Vi, red hair, fangs out, eyes wild with the high of the hunt. She’s not alone;three other vampires are gaining, closing in fast.

I try to scream a warning but my voice is caught in the throat of the dream. Instead, Glory floats beside me smirking.

"Your girl’s tough," she says, "but not tough enough. She’s got amnesia. You think she’s gonna out-run her old reputation? Or your new one?"

“What?” I say distracted as I watch.

Faith climbs to the rooftop next to us and jumps to the one were on, but she stumbles, almost goes over the edge, only to catch herself with the grip of someone who’s fallen off a rooftop before. She pulls herself up but the vamps have followed her.

She curses, and pulls out a jagged stake. The first vamp, the one with the stupid gold chain, jumps her from behind. Faith twists, slams the stake through his gut, and rides him down to the gravel and stakes his heart. He explodes in a messy confetti of blood and bone. They say those half-souled ones die like that but that isn’t confirmed. No matter what he was evil and got what was coming to him.

Now Vi is on Faith. She punches Faith so hard she spins. Then, it’s a slow-motion ballet: Faith headbutts Vi, Vi recoils, but not enough to lose her grip. The two teeter together on the edge of the roof. The city spins beneath them, ready to swallow whole whoever blinks first.

I look at Glory. "Why are you showing me this? Is this supposed to be some future?"

“I told you, it’s now!” Glory says, “You really did need those friends of yours. Where’s the old guy who killed me? He was smart.”

No. I know this isn’t real. Faith and Vi are still fighting. Faith lets out a scream that 90% rage and 10% fear. I look away.

It’s not real. Faith is somewhere in The Hole in The World Cave, where I am, dreaming this crap. When Glory popped out in real-life Faith ran in the chaos, which didn’t make sense, really, why would she run? Unless…

“What did you do, Glory?” I demand, then I relax “No. This is bulllshit. You can’t teleport people wherever you want. You never had that power. You couldn’t have sent Faith to Berkeley from The Hole.”

“I couldn’t, but I could always mess with people’s heads and drag them out of a hole, and they can be found and brought back to a Slayer hospital. Remember Tara?”

I taste metallic panic in my mouth.

“You didn’t—” I demand. I try to grab her, shake her, but my hands pass through.

“Why?” I demand.

Glory shrugs.

“Maybe it’s because you thought you could protect her from me, with that body switch thing.”

She boops my nose like I’m a cute cat while my stomach twists in a vice of terror.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t know, Buffy?” she almost looks sad as she goes toward the edge of the rooftop, “The true blood source of my key. It’s actually funny you thought I’d still care. I’m already dead.”

She sits on the rooftop and dangles one leg over it in an empty city. Faith and Vi are gone, as is everything else.

“You seemed pretty lively to me out there and in here,” I say, “Why would you care who was in Faith’s body if it’s just about blood.”

And why wouldn’t she just kill Faith?

“Because it’s not,” she says, “It’s about who you, are and the worst nightmares are lived.”

The rooftop blurs The dreams pile up and collapse, and the city becomes a red smear of pain.

“Wait!”

Then someone is shaking me. Hard.

I wake up to Nate’s face, his hand on my shoulder, eyes big and scared. "Joan, are you okay? You were screaming."

My body aches, my throat burns, but the Scythe is still there, my hands wrapped around it so tight my fingers are white.

I look past Nate to the hole in the world, the stone walls slick with condensation. I can still hear the echoes of Vi’s laughter, the crunch of Faith’s fists, the intensity of her feelings, the sick joy of Glory watching.

"Yeah," I say, voice flat. "Just a bad dream."

Nate doesn’t look convinced. Maybe he sees the truth. Maybe I did. Faith is out there, running for her life, chased by a vampire she made out of desperation. Maybe none of it was real, but it still hurts like hell.

I stand up, dust off my jeans, and toss the Scythe over my shoulder. Nate stares at me, waiting for some kind of instruction, some plan. I give him nothing.

We start walking. My legs are shaky. The dream still with me. I wonder if I’m walking toward Faith or away from her. I wonder how I could know the difference.

“My name is Buffy. Not Joan, and the other Slayer is Faith,” I say to Nate, “We didn’t use those fake names, or switch bodies, to lie to you about who we are. We did it to protect the people we love.”

I do know all of what I said is true. I also know we have to find a way out.

Chapter Text

Shit! Shit! Shit!

A fucking Slaypire!

I run, the wind tearing at my face, tears shot from my eyes are blown to my temples before they evaporate. The blood on my mouth dries to sticky.

I can’t run out of Oakland fast enough. I run so hard I can feel my heartbeat rattling in my teeth.

I wish I could run out of this life, this decade, with this body because only this body is mine.

But I can only run down MLK to The Berkeley border. Years ago, I would’ve given anything for a new life where no one recognized me. Years after that, I fought inner and outer demons for a life that was worth something.

But something happened. A lot had happened!

And I don’t just mean currently, where I’m a shitty Chosen Slayer, who everyone thinks is The OG shitty Chosen Slayer, and I’m being chased by a Slaypire ( Slayer turned vampire) and her vampire minions. But, it was problem numero uno right now.

If they're even following me. The Slaypire had gripped my wrist, "You really don't remember me at all?"—She was almost right.

I have amnesia, which is way more common than ushe, in my line of work. I don’t have any clear memories past the early 00s. It gets pretty hazy at 2004(ish.) I did remember Little Miss Slaypire, her name was Vi though. In 03’ she was an innocent little redhead Potential Slayer, who we had to level-up into a Slayer, on account of needing an army for an apocalypse.

Shit! Shit! Fuck! They are following me!

Her and her two Twilight rejects and the gold chain guy who didn’t get the wardrobe memo. I’m far enough ahead that I can’t hear Vi’s full taunt: “…forget what you did!”

I dash through the homeless encampment. My thoughts as fast as my legs. Vi was right I’d been a naive idiot. Not for trying to play the role of Buffy Summers when I was just Faith Lehane. Vi didn’t know that. But, what I was so damn stupid for was believing Buffy Summers had created a Slayer Utopia for the last 20 years.

Of course she hadn’t! Buffy was a cop. She’d always been a cop. And, I didn’t have to stop running to read the Black Lives Matter stickers on the closed storefronts to know how cops really were.

I do stop to check behind me though. No one. Just cars driving by. But I can’t go all soft with relief yet.

I know Vi isn’t some goon. She’ll be a tactician, the type to flay you with words, hang back until you’re exhausted, then go for the jugular. I fought the worst of vamps like that and lived, but I’m not at my best here.

I take a minute under the neon glow of a billboard for condos. I feel like the world has gotten so much brighter since 2003, all the LED. My stupid cell phone keeps buzzing in my pocket. I can’t rely on reinforcements I don’t trust. What reinforcements?

None of B’s old pals ever called. I was relieved because I didn’t have to lie to them, or make their whiny asses feel better, but that should have been my first red flag.

It’s either Connor or Cassie buzzing my cell. Cassie is a non-Slayer teen who’s staying at Slaysafe because she has other wonky low-level x-men powers. She’s a bit of a ditz, but that’s because she’s 17 and loves sending memes. The girl had no friends ‘cause she was different, so I let her text me.

A noise of metal clanging on pavement sounds and I jump! Shit!

It’s just something falling off a moving truck. I try to get my shit together. But the headache from the last time Vi said Buffy’s name is still ricocheting around my skull.

Every time anyone says the bitch’s name a horrible ringing goes off in my head. I just found out it works on vampires too and that’s the only reason I’m still currently alive, but I still wanna  curse B’s name out loud right now, I really fucking do! If only I knew where she was I’d kick her ass. She left me with my body and her husband. My Body and Her Husband, that sounds like a 90s rom-com or maybe a cult classic.

B’s husband liked watching rom-coms and cult classics, but his favorite movie was Miller’s Crossing. He loved Arctic Monkeys and My Chemical Romance. How do I know all of this?

Because, Buffy literally left me with MY body and HER husband! I woke-up with 20 years of amnesia in my own body in her whole fancy-fake-fascist-Slayer-utopian-get-up and everyone thought I was her. I tried to tell them but it was hard with the name-migraine-spell. So, I fucked her husband.

And yeah, I used to feel shitty about it, until the Slaypire I’m running from dropped a truth bomb. And, no it wasn’t that B, me, and Connor are a happy throuple, or that they have an open relationship. B gets jealous if you look at her sandwich too long.

I’m not stupid. At least not when being tailed and not when it comes to believing every single thing a soulless Slaypire who’s currently tailing me says. I know Connor can’t be the one who gave me amnesia. I’m still pretty sure that was this Bitch-God Glory, who Connor’s been trying to convince me is dead.

Also Connor wouldn’t give me amnesia to forget his cheating and all the bad shit the two of us did because I’m not Buffy. Although Vi did say Connor was a god who made shady deals. I think of the 80s movie we joked about, Overboard. Could Connor have tried to give Buffy amnesia so she’d think she was his wife and he ended up with me? Okay, now I’m going crazy! Who can blame me?

But, what a lot of what Vi told me was too crazy to be some soulless manipulative lie, and it made too much crazy sense for my crazy sitch.

She said Connor and Buffy (who she thought was me,) had a whole bunch of Slayers locked up in  comas, “for their own good.” But, Vi wasn’t buying that. She said it was for Connor and Buffy’s own good.

I decide it’s time to move-out from under the billboard to see if it’s safe to double back to my car. Well, B’s car, or a company car, a blue 2022 Mustang.

I hadn’t been out here trying to take over B’s life. I’d been out here to find some young “at risk” Slayers who were out past curfew from Slaysafe. At least, there didn’t seem to be anything shady going on with Slaysafe. The Therapy Center B made, for young troubles Slayers. I mean, there were two missing Slayers, but I know B wouldn’t stoop that low.

Besides, she needed them, since The Slayers our age were getting sick. Vi said The Slayers were getting sick because, like his dad, Connor messed around with power he shouldn’t have.

Oh, yeah, Connor is my favorite vamp Angel’s son. And Angel, he’s nowhere to be found. Just like all The Slayers my age, along with Buffy’s blondie little 40 year-old bod.

I let out a crazed laugh as I walk through the Berkeley breezy night, trying to shake off the unease crawling up my spine. I can feel that they’re still on me. So, I start moving serpentine through the streets, my mind is on a similar path.

I’ve been making excuses for Buffy since I remembered Connor was Angel’s kid. But really how could she get with Angel’s son? Angel was her first. Although, She had gotten with Spike too, he was related to Angel- and hot. Maybe she just had to have every demon dude in that family. Collect them like pokemon. She was cold.

So was I, obvi (as they say these days) but I was only cold after someone hurt me. Maybe Angel and Spike hurt Buffy bad. Maybe Connor was revenge but he hurt her too.

The night air presses against me as I weave through the streets, trying to outrun my hunters knowing I can’t outrun these doubts, darting past bustling cafes spilling laughter and conversation onto the sidewalks. It makes me remember Connor. Who was cold now too.

I remember him as a sweet kid, especially after all Angel did for him. One night, we were at a dive bar with mismatched furniture, drinking craft beers—him in a flannel, me in a leather jacket. Throughout the night we talked about his very not-Buffy girlfriend and poked fun at Angel. It was clear he loved his dad. When the jukebox played Arctic Monkeys, we exchanged a glance and danced while we took down a couple of vamps, laughing the whole time.

Fast forward almost 20 years, I woke up with amnesia as Buffy Good Wife, he didn't even mention he was Angel's son.

The fact that he was like every other rich and powerful guy that cheated and manipulated Buffy, his trophy wife, was the least of it. Or it should be…to me. But, how could a guy act so sweet and be such a mofo? I know I’m twisted for feeling hurt about it.

I'm fine with being a hypocrite about the other lies. My therapist might suggest I show myself compassion. She may say I tried to reveal my true identity to Connor despite the name spell's block. She might argue I was powerless and scared, unlike him. More likely even she’d say I'm a psycho for letting her think I'm Buffy.

No! Fuck! The vamps have found me again. I see em’ across the expanse of Telegraph Ave right when I’m about to get to the car parked at The Jack in The Box!

I cut left at the second homeless tent on MLK and scale up a building. The air gets stale as I hit the roof, and that’s when I hear the rooftop door pop and squeak open.

Fuck It’s Vi’s minion vamps! Mr. gold-chain and Afro-guy. So where’s Mr. Goatee and Vi? I don’t stick around to find out.

I run across the roof and jump to the next building like Spiderman, only without a web. I jump and see the building speeding upwards because I’m going down, spirally towards the ground too-many-feet below. I reach and claw for the building just in my reach and my fingertips manage to grip onto the ledge. I literally yank myself up by my fingernails. Me and fucking rooftops do not get along.

I gaze at the dim city stars, struggling to breathe. I never imagined it would end this way: B married to Angel's son. While I have nearly two decades of amnesia and everyone believes I'm Buffy, which is partly my fault.

I inhale the cold air, feeling it sting a sore tooth—something new to worry about, but not for long. As I stand, Vi’s three vamp boys surround me: Mr. Goatee, Gold Chain, and Afro guy.

Fueled by adrenaline, I rush at them, leaving all clever comebacks behind. A raw scream bursts from my throat as I dive into the chaos, flailing wildly. Their hits slam into me, but I shrug off the pain, not bothering to protect myself. All my energy channels into one goal: the kill.

Someone grabs me from behind, pinning my arms, and I think of Kakistos—cold, wet, like a nightmare monster. He threatened to rape me, his fur-and-bone minotaur hooves and iron grip promising to split me in two.

My arms were pinned the same way they are now, and teeth clamped the same way too—on the trembling muscle just below the neck, pinching and twisting. Only then, I couldn’t even scream because I was already choking on my own terror. I was so scared my powers left me. I’d been feeling shitty for days, but that day I utterly failed.

My Watcher, Diana, sacrificed herself for me. She threw Holy Water at him and urged me to flee, claiming it was her fault. I knew it was mine because I ran, but not before witnessing her trembling in her yellow sweater, torn like paper, while his yellow eyes relished our helplessness.

Her last words were some Latin thing I never understood: “This was never a Tento di Cruciamentum. I knew it was a Keepers execution. Well, not today.”

Why did she claim it was her fault? Because: The Keepers forced her to drug me for Tento di Cruciamentum, even though I wasn't 18. My mind must be truly breaking, as I can't make sense of my own thoughts. I don’t know Latin!

I stomp as hard as I can on the vamp’s foot. He grunts in pain because he doesn’t have hooves. Not like Kakistos, whose ashes Buffy and I dumped in the harbor and she leaned on my shoulder and said:

“You’ve really been through it and you came through.”

I’m more than double the age I was then and today isn’t that day.

Those memories and the thought (The Keepers?)I literally can’t process births a fresh, raw anger—not at Vi, not at the other vamps, not even at myself right now. But for the part of me that keeps allowing myself to be disappointed.

I twist out of the vamp’s grip. I slams the stake anywhere I can on him which turns out to be his gut. He grunts. I throw my whole swinging body onto him and we crash painfully to the gravel. I stake his heart and he explodes into soupy guts

Another half-souled one? I’m not a fan. His viscera is wet and gross even if I can’t fully see it with this roof lighting. I hate it because it reminds me of what Kakistos did to Diana. Then all of the vamp’s guts turn to dust.

Vi's fist crashes into my jaw, and I watch in a daze as she defies gravity. It's a surreal moment, as if time has paused. Instinctively, I headbutt her, and she staggers but clings to my arm. We teeter on the edge of the rooftop, the city below a blur of lights and shadows. A storm of emotions battles within me—part of me wants to end it, but another needs to know more.

“The Keepers!” I say as she has me by my jacket.

She flinches like I said a spell that could kill.

“Are—were—who—Are they real?” I say, but I already have my answer and I know she won’t pass up the opportunity to mock me with more.

“Oh, did hubby tell you a wittle bedtime story about the brave girl you were when you decided to take on those Nazis when really all you did, all you ever do is get people killed!” she shifts into vamp face, her fangs are close and sharp, “Only that time it was people you actually cared about too— men. Daddy and that useless covert misogynist loser!”

I got what I wanted and it sucks.

“Xander,” I say, “Xander is dead!”

I feel the cold drop learning about death brings and I can’t bear to ask about the other one.

“Wow,” she tilts her head in that predatory way vamps do, “You figured that out so fast. Are you finally admitting what he was? Maybe I should clap for you. You did let your little sister marry him.”

If she lets go of my jacket to clap I’m falling 20 stories as I dangle over the edge of the roof. Less important. Neither I nor B have a little sister.

“No applause needed,” I say I’m not who you think I am. I ain’t her, Vi. It’s me. I know when a guy is gonna be trouble.”

Usually, I didn’t know with Connor.

She goes back into her human face, looks at me for a second and pulls me up.

“It is you,” she says, “Who you used to be. I never thought of that.”

Memories come back to me from when B’s house became The Potential Base. Not memories of training, but memories of going down at 3AM to sneak cereal and laugh at Willow’s vegan cheese. We were probably all gonna die and the witch was eating bricks of paste. But that’s not all she’s eating!- It wasn’t me who made the joke about Kennedy’s pussy. It was Vi.

“Well—” I begin. And the roof door slaps open.

“Oh, sorry,” an older pretty hot guy says, “I didn’t know y’all were up here. I just need some alone time with my podcast. The kids are driving me cra—”

He stops when Vi’s minions advance on him. I don’t have time to roll my eyes and sigh or wipe my bloody face. I was finally getting some info about what happened to my own fucked up life when a civilian had to interrupt and remind me I’m a superhero whose supposed to protect the masses.

I’m already on The Afro guy pushing him back from Mr. Zaddy who looks like that guy from that new zombie show. I realize he isn’t older. He’s probably around my age because I’m “older” too.

Older is probably another show to check out, if I live. This guy won’t live if he doesn’t get a move on. He’s digging in his pockets for his phone.

“Dude,” I say “What are you doing this isn’t a streaming event. Run!”

He takes his hand out of his pocket and throws something into the air and says some Latin words. All the vamps jump back including Vi with something in their eyes. Before they can recover I grab the guy by the arm and drag him into the building. We race down the endless steel steps and he’s panting like a dying dog.

“Here!”

I pick him up bride style—the quickest way to grab him. He doesn't react to being carried by a woman half his size; he just lifts his feet to help. I’m almost grateful, but annoyed because I was making progress with Vi and don’t want to babysit a zaddy-damsel, even if he is one. I'd rather face a monster who knows me than rescue a stranger. It's twisted, but so am I. Maybe this guy knows what Tento di Cruciamentum means if I say it aloud.

“I know—,” He pants in my arms as if he’s the one huffing it down the endless tall building steps. He better be saying he knows where an elevator is “I know I can’t say your name, and you don’t—You don’t remember me, but my name is Rick. I’m—”

That’s when Vi is waiting for us on the landing. She grins as I stop and her two remaining minions come from the stairs above. We’re cornered.

“Vi” I say putting the man, Rick, down, “We can work things out. I—”

Before whatever bullshit I was going to come up with on the spot comes out of my mouth the door to the stairwell opens and a small blond woman pops out. My insides churn with a million feels because—BUFFY?

I couldn’t see the blonde’s face from the stairs, but it could be.

And I can see me and B, taking down Vi. And B would confess she sent me into her life with amnesia. She’d beg me to forgive her and of course I would. She’s Buffy, and then I’d tell her “Oops, I did it again. I screwed your man.”Only this time she’d laugh because Connor was a cheating asshole and we’d go off together into the Slayset, totally over him.

But, of course, I’d never get that lucky. This woman isn’t tiny enough to be Buffy. But she’s tiny enough to be snapped like a twig by vamps.

“Vi,” I warn as Vi turns to the woman, all fangs, “Don’t!”

There was a blue flash that could’ve just been my headache or probably more like my concussion.

“Hey, girl,” the woman said. She looked at me, then at Vi, and then at the burnt-out edges of the opposite wall, where the other vamps were still recovering from her spell. “Are we done with the posturing, or do I need to start turning people into frogs?”

Vi softened. Not a lot, but enough for me to see the outline of the old Vi under the monster mask. “You’re not going to scare me, Tara.”

Tara? No, it had to be a different one. A different very similar looking one that looked to be the perfect age and aged perfect.

“I’m not here to scare anyone,” Tara says. “I’m here to protect my friends.”

Vi smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile. “You think this amnesiac bitch is your friend? Even if she is, she can’t remember you.”

I did remember her. I remembered that she was dead, but cool people don’t seem to stay dead. She hadn’t been that cool back in the day.

Now, Tara didn’t flinch. “I know this amnesiac bitch is my friend. I know she’s probably super confused because she thinks I’m a shy little witch who died a long time ago, but you know I’m not. You know I came from a world where all vampires walked in the sun, because I was the witch-goddess who let them. Then I burned them all.”

With that badass origin story, she stepped to my side, and it wasn’t until then I realized my hand was bleeding, and so was my lip. Tara reached over and touched my arm, and a wave of warmth rushed through me, closing the wounds. My headache was gone too or definitely my concussion! I didn’t realize how much it hurt until now. Vi saw the moment of weakness, but didn’t pounce. Tara shook her head. She looked at me and then at Vi again.

“And I know even with half her brain this amnesiac bitch could end you,” Tara says, “now that I’m here to help her. But, I also remember she’d want to give you a chance. Don’t make me forget that.”

Vi throws out something from her own pocket. I move to shield Tara and Rick from whatever fresh Hell Vi’s brings on next.

“You were so close,” Vi says to me.

She and her remaining two vamps go through a portal that spins with blue fiery edges that leads to a living room with an Evanescence poster. Then they and the portal vanish.

“Oh my god,” I say flatly.

“I know. Everyone’s got cheap portal magic now,” Rick says.

"Rick, she doesn't care about portal magic. She can't remember anything, Connor left for a business trip, and she nearly died," Tara says, hugging me.

It felt good, like I had a friend. A friend who wasn’t from here either.

“No,” I say, “I just can’t believe Evanescence is still a thing. I mean, that one song was badass but-”

Tara's melodic laughter lifts my spirits, making me smile.

“Teen angst never really dies,” Rick says, “It just grows up into something else. Whether it’s uglier isolation or deeper connection is up to you.”

Well, Rick is deep.

“What if I just wanna be alone with a wicked banger song that gets me?” I ask.

“You really haven’t changed,” Tara says.

She had no idea how true that was.

Chapter Text

Still Down

Connor:

Every rumor you’ve heard about me is true but not in every way.  I’d never cheat you, just the system.

“So, you won’t cheat anyone, just anything,” my wife would say grinning.

Now she doesn’t remember our jokes, or our anything, and I can’t say her name without hurting her due to some powerful spell. No one can. So, I don’t even think her name right now.

You’re always the overachiever, she’d say, I’ve always just been a Slayer, if not The.

She was The True Chosen One, and so much more, but it was her dream, her desire, to downplay, if not end, the title because it was a curse.

We had to fight so hard to be together. Nothing, not even death, can stop us loving each other. But, right now she needs space, and I have a lot to figure out and fix.

So, right now I’m trying to fix Desire’s hot little ass into my grip. We kiss like a war has ended. What war, I don’t know—but not the one I’m still fighting. It’s a secret war my wife went off to fight in and returned from shell-shocked, with twenty years of amnesia.

“You want this,” Desire hisses against my skin in the executive bathroom of EveryGen, where I’m CEO.

That hiss makes me (almost) forget where I really am in the waking world.

I won’t lie. Not in this quasi-lucid dream. Not to myself. Dez is so hot and just my type: Older. Way before their time, a real role-model trailblazer who never asked to be one. A bitch.

I slowly withdraw my mouth, still tingling from the heat of Desire's kiss, with a soft, lingering smack. My voice is slightly breathless as I offer my delayed response. "Not everything's a want, Dez," I say, my eyes searching zers. "Some things are just inevitable."

Desire’s deceptively delicate hands grip my face. Their nails drag down under my jaw. We move in a synchronicity , swaying gently as the world around us fades away, leaving only the electric spark of our kiss.

I’m actually tongue wrestling with Desire because I love my wife more than anyone or anything. It doesn’t mean Dez and I aren’t so good at the wrestling that it becomes a dance. I realize when they scratched my face, they drew blood as they now lay soft kisses on the wound.

They say I can’t turn down a dangerous deal. I made my first million before 30, but I’ve stayed a mere millionaire by choice giving back to the world. My mother gave up her life for me. My dad gave up so much more to give me a reality of good memories and a family to stay sane. After that I promised I’d never take the easy way out.

The first time I met Desire, and the rest of The Endless fam, I was in the reality where my best friend, my beloved, had been slain as a supernatural cop at 31. While her partner-in-fighting-crime, The Other One, came away maimed. And I’m not talking strong-disability-identity maimed.

I knew she deserved a better end than that; they both deserved a better reality. We all did. I wasn’t the only one who loved The True Chosen One. I had help from The Slayer Witch-Goddess, and The Key. They helped me get dressed up with all the bits of god-magic and alt.-reality I had in me. But, I was the one who knocked and demanded that reality bend, and change, and it was The Endless who answered.

"Darling," Desire purred, "if you didn't want this, your resistance would have killed me by now."

I trail my teeth along their jaw, tasting sweat and promise while I wipe the blood from my face. Then, I gripped their jaw, hard, my blood getting on their pristine face.

"What resistance? I’ll kill you myself If you did this to Her..."

“Her” was always my wife when Dez and I talked. Never H.E.R., the singer. My wife turned me on to H.E.R.- great songwriter, she understands herself within desire. As for my wife, she’d really outdone herself this time, coming home to me as a bruised young-adult version of herself.

I know she didn’t do that to herself on purpose. She wouldn’t. Despite our disagreements in business, our life was great. I knew some powerful forces were making my wife a play thing. And, not to be all Walter White, but as the one who knocks, I don’t take that shit.

Desire's sound in my grip was neither laughter nor moan, just a mocking shriek reminding me who was in charge, and it wasn’t me. It echoed my wife's private plea, "Please, Connor," the voice she used when we were truly alone. I'd do anything to hear it, and once I did, I'd do anything she wanted.

Still, I knew I had some power with Desire. I was just playing the game. The Endless game where you have to understand how they lie with you.

Dez slipped from my grip and pinned me against the cold sink tiles, pressing firmly against me, their throat brushing close to my skin.

"Maybe it’s not her. Stop behaving like your father," they murmur, their voice a soft yet pointed reprimand.

"Wha—" I start to protest..

"Be a good baby boi, and ask me what you truly want to know," they urge, their words both a challenge and an invitation.

"Why did my wife do this?" I demand, my voice rising with a mix of confusion and anger. "And don't tell me it's because of some bullshit prophecy I didn’t mention. Why would she lie and sneak off with that cow? I kn-" My words were cut off by my own sudden yelp as Desire swiftly spun me around.

My back was now to zer, and my stomach pressed against the cold, unforgiving surface of the sink. The chill seeped through my shirt, sending a shiver up my spine.

I know that Desire enjoys our lucid-dream encounters in my executive bathroom for a few symbolic reasons, but the tangible one is the opportunity to catch glimpses of myself and zer in the mirror. This time I perceive my features as they truly are.

My eyes, despite their large roundness hold a sharp blue fury that steals them of any innocence. My dark hair, tousled and wild, frames a mildly stubbled face that holds the history of battles fought and won.

I still manage to look ten years younger than my age. “Like Timothee Chalamet claiming he’s the messiah on very minor steroids,” my wife jokes sometimes.

I see myself. Even though I’m pinned by Desire with their mischievous smirk there's a strength in my stance, a restless energy that I tamed a while ago because I know who I am, I know my purpose, my place in this world because I helped make it in every way, it was with My Wife, for My Wife.

“I know,” I start again my voice almost steady, “She came back to me, even if she can’t remember. She’s still Her.”

“Really?” Desire says, “Then why are you afraid? After she so enthusiastically accepted all the changes you once had, and not just your body, but inside you, that you gave up.”

Before I could answer they slowly dragged their tongue from underneath my jaw, tracing the jagged, crimson scratches they had left behind, all the way up to my ear, leaving me tingling.

“You should never worry. Oh, how you are wanted, sweet baby boi, akin to the irresistible pull of Destruction or the inevitable force of Destiny.”

I twist around within their loosened grip to meet their gaze, feeling the subtle release of pressure around me, as if their hold had softened like melting wax. I gaze deeply into their dark endless eyes, unwavering in my connection, and wrap my arms around their taut body, feeling the tension and strength beneath their skin.

“Dez,” I sighed, “You know I can’t be that for you. I have a family who needs me. We made a—”

“You think I’m talking about how I want you?”

“Fine. Your brother and I have a deal! Half my power to help The Slaypers.”

“You did. You do,” Desire’s eyes widen with glee, “and now I get to have you with me whenever I want or at least when you sleep.”

They lift me up. My ass is in the sink until the tiles cool firmness disappears under me, and just their arms are holding me; and my legs are wrapped tight around them; and they’re kiss, kiss, kissing up my neck.

“Dez, please,” I beg as I shudder, “You can play with me here all you want and I’ll like it. You know I will. Just tell me what she wanted. Tell me why she’d do this.”

“How can I when you won’t accept, you’re the object and I’m subjective with Her?” Desire murmured, their breath warm and tantalizing against my skin. They playfully traced the contours of my ear with their tongue. A shiver runs down my spine, and I wrap tighter around them and moan.

Then, in a voice laced with allure, they added more words, "Hold on. You’re making this nightmare.”

Suddenly, I jolted awake, the abrupt shift jarring me back to reality as the plane landed with a thud. The flight attendant is welcoming me and a hundred others to New Zealand. I didn’t do the private jet for this. I wanted to lay low. I don’t know if I succeeded but I’m grateful for the book in my lap, All Thirteen; about a cave rescue. Even though I wish it were a little thicker, like my hard on that it’s hiding.

The 13-hour flight was done. Now just 5 hours of buses, a train and helicopter to go. I really missed teleporting.

Buffy:

“So,” Nate says, “Why haven’t they teleported us out of here already? Your people or whatever you have. I know they helped get us in here so…”

Nate threw out his well-muscled arms as he lay languidly on his sleeping bag, as if doing that may get him teleported out of here. Then he grabs another card from the deck and flips it into his baseball hat.

He had a deck of cards on him and he’s given up trying to teach me two-person card games, so now we’re flipping cards into his hat. Or he is, I’m still trying.

“Yep,” I say, “Something is obviously wrong and weird. The working title for my life.”

I'm trapped in a mystical cave with a teenager. We found his backpack, which has enough supplies for a sleepover. Our phones are useless—his fell into a hole. This isn't just any cave; it's The Hole in The World, stretching between England and New Zealand, full of mini-caves, paintings, graffiti, and surprise water sources. Maybe we’ll encounter a troll.

I wonder what I’d be doing right now if I’d done the right thing and never agreed to “In Glorious Bitches Mission.” That’s what Faith titled our little secret mission. Faith isn't here like she should be. Instead, she's in big trouble like she used to be. 7,000 miles away in Berkeley. So, I can’t be mad at her and yet I am , because I’m so worried. Instead of working with special-skilled Slayers, I find myself acting like their worried mother, or at least Faith’s.

“How long have we been here anyway?” Nate asks, “It feels like a whole day. Why am I asking you? You keep falling asleep. Falling asleep and fighting Glory, which I appreciate but didn’t you say we needed to get out of here?”

At least Nate had manners and appreciated my dream-warrioring.

“We’re in a suspended time vortex,” I tell him as I try to flip the two of diamonds into the hat and fail.

“Um, no we’re not,” he says, “We’re sitting here talking.”

“I didn’t say we’re frozen in time. I said were in a time vortex. That means we’re stuck here and no matter what we do we can’t leave, and it also means time is moving differently. I mean, have you felt really hungry or thirsty or really had to pee all of this time?”

It had to be a time vortex and not just because of the lack of hunger and bathroom needs. Glory showed me Faith out in Berkeley fighting for her life with Vi, The now Slaypire.

Glory told me she gave Faith amnesia, but “had her rescued.” Even if Willow or Tara teleported Faith back to Berkeley that wouldn’t have happened in one night. And obviously that wasn’t what happened because Faith was out there fighting Vi alone.  

“Oh my God!” Nate jumped up suddenly, “Are you saying we’re dead and we’re stuck here like in School Spirits where--”

“No,” I say, “We’re obviously alive. My sore back proves it. I mean were just stuck here.”

“So, we’re alive and stuck in it like Maddy in School Spirits.” His body deflated in relief.

“This happened to a friend of yours,” I say as a ready my wrist to flip a card, “Good. I mean, not good, but it’s easier to explain.”

“School Spirits is a show.” he sits on a flat rock and crosses his legs, “It’s actually pretty good. Believe it or not, Glory taking over my body, and trying to get followers as a god, is the only thing like this that’s ever happened to me. I mean, when someone says, ‘try god-magic,’ you usually don’t think it’s gonna end up like that. Like this. So, now we’re like Maddy in School Spirits? ”

“If Maddy in School Spirits is in one of those time distortion vortexes where time is moving forward faster out there. Not that it doesn’t feel—”

“No!” he’s up again, ”What if, like, a hundred years goes by and by the time I get out of here CC and my parents, and everyone I know is dead!”

He really did seem to care about his girlfriend and other people. Of course he did. I had cared so much about my boyfriend when I was 18, who was Angel, and he broke up with me. That was after I killed him. The summer I killed him, I stopped caring about other people, I ran away and l literally got trapped in a time vortex hell.

“Trust me,” I say to Nate, “I’ve been in that situation too. I mean, I saw it happen or I was told. Two young lovers in L.A. One got stuck in a Hell Vortex and came out old and dying. This isn’t that at all.”

“How do you know?”

“Because, I got stuck in the Hell Vortex too, in that hell I felt it. I got hungry. Starving, but they’d hardly let you eat. You’d have to pee but—Never mind. Oh! We should try to pee! If we can we know time actually is moving forward but slower maybe or…What?” He’s looking at me like I’m crazy. “I didn’t mean we should go pee together.”

“Your life, I didn’t expect it to be so—”

“What? Hard? So, Faith told you I had an easy life with a glamorous job where I’m constantly—”

“Weird,” he says.

“She said I was weird?” I ask.

“No,” he says, “I just didn’t expect your life to be so weird. Alex— I mean-Faith didn’t say you were weird exactly. But, you did suggest that we try peeing together.”

“What? No! Not together. I didn’t say together. I meant—” I see him grinning “Are you messing with me?”

“Okay,” he said, “Maybe Faith did say you were easy to mess with.”

“Great,” I say.

“But,” he looked down, “It seems like Glory found her easier to mess with that you.”

“Hey,” I say, “I know Faith is okay. We have a connection and I know she made it out. I think Glory just confused her. She can do that, Glory, I mean. But Faith is strong.”

Contrary to popular belief I’m not bad at comforting people. I’m telling him the truth or a bit of it. I do know Faith is okay(ish). Last I saw her in my Glory addled dream she was alive.

“Yeah,” Nate says, giving so much weight to the one syllable word it snapped. It’s a superpower teenagers have.

I’m not going to tell Nate that Faith was in trouble due to Glory. She’s been helping him. She was the one who found him, or she found Glory Part 2, Electric Boogaloo, (That was the name mission I wanted.) but I let her take the lead on this mission. For the past few years gods had been randomly popping up.

And when I say “randomly” I mean for a reason. We had to kind of reshuffle some things in the power deck. And when you reshuffle you lose track of all The Kings and Queens. Glorificus or “Glory” was the first dead one that had been removed from the deck to come back though.

“Really, the first, moose? You wound me. I came back in such style too.” I can practically see Connor smirking at me, leaning against a rock like it was a set piece just for him.

“You weren’t really dead and you’re not a god anymore, hun. That’s why I’m here. Don’t worry. I don’t expect a thank you.”

I don’t want Connor to thank me. I really don’t want him to rescue me. I want him to find Faith. Rescue her. I know he’ll be so pissed but he won’t hurt her. Tear her up with words and disappointment. Not with her amnesia. At least I hope not. I really hope he knows her well enough to know if he did that to her, he’d have a homicidal mess on his hands, or a suicidal mess, or some kind of more than idle mess.

“Speaking of weird,” Nate says, “Can you explain why you switched bodies and had aliases? You wanted to throw Glory off, protect people you care about, but you had to know it wouldn’t work. It’s cool if the real answer is you just like Mission Impossible.”

“I do like Mission Impossible and Freaky Friday,” I say.

“Freaky what?”

“You never saw Freaky Friday? How old are you? How old am I?””

“I’m 18, people my age die for nothing all the time,” he says, “Faith already told me the super secret part of the mission.”

“Oh. Good. Well, now, let me tell you everything, since you already know. Do you really think I’m going to fall for that?”

“I mean, she told me if this didn’t work and Glory turned out to be ‘The Real Glory,’ that would most likely mean she was an ‘imminent threat.’ She said you’d try a bunch of stuff, maybe in Berkeley, or Boston.  But if none of it worked, you’d have to kill me, and it could save the world and help with some other stuff, and she promised she’d help C.C.”

“What? She said we’d have to kill you!” I gasped.

Should Faith really be working with teens? Unlike you kids know when people are lying, B. We don’t have daddy-Giles to quiet smother him for us. I mean, we do, but he’s having such a good time in London with his football team. It doesn’t seem fair to call him in to kill a spider for us. You know, we’re almost the age he was when…

“No!” I say aloud to imaginary Faith.   

“Yeah,” Nate says, “She told me you’d probably be in denial about it but I get it. I mean, I don’t think it’s gonna go that way. You’re already wearing Glory down in dreams, right? Is this whole vortex thing her trying to fight back? I just wanted to let you know I knew, so you don’t have to keep not telling me stuff. I’m not…”

I’m not listening to Nate anymore. I mumble something about having to pee, and go to the nearest cave corner. I know I should be a good Slayer Social Worker, or whatever, but there’s a reason I’d been letting other people take over this type of work. It isn’t because I couldn’t kill Nate if I had to. It’s because I know I could.

I sit on a smooth stone and do my 4-7-8 breathing.

Faith had amnesia. Glory didn’t tell me how much of it she had and I didn’t get to ask, but what had Glory said. Your girl is tough, but not tough enough. Can she out-run her old reputation or your new one? Or whatever she said. I realize I may have to start remembering, as I think Glory is the one keeping us here. Or something controlling her, as if anything could. But, gods weren’t everything they used to be.

It’s funny, but I barely remember actually slaying Faith’s goddess. I remember being told her name was Dust. She had executed six wealthy families tied to Enhancements and one not-so-wealthy one. Six were children under 12, and it seemed Faith had been with her. During the slaying, I was terrified because she seemed like The Angel of Death with a freeway of fire around her. Until she disappeared after I scythed her in the back. No “Dust” remaining.

That was four years ago. And of course, I remember everything it had set off and how everyone said things were “better” for it now…besides the deaths and missing people every day. Some days without lunch breaks, or worse, not missing them some days, feeling relieved.

Now Faith was out there not-remembering.

 I don’t want to picture her that day. Not the day I murdered a goddess but the four days later. When I went to confront Faith at Spike’s apartment, Slayer Scythe in hand, and nothing going as planned, or even wildly imagined.

Whenever I thought of that day, it wasn’t remembering, it was like picking at a phantom limb because you couldn’t remember something you never forget.

I hear her raspy femme voice saying cruel things:

"Did you really think you were closing the deal? Helping make a new world?”

When I really believed there was no way for life to get any crueler. At least Faith wasn’t supposed to get any crueler because we had already spent hours talking out everything that happened in our teens to 30.

“…by Screwing The Immortal in my body and yours, by cock-teasing Spike and me. By trying coke? We let you think you were doing something, B because you needed it. Everyone was so surprised, but not me. I knew your B-User-Party-Mode."

And now, of course, I’d help her through whatever relapse of brainwash this was with Dust. Not because I bared any responsibility around what happened with her and Willow, but, damn, did it really seem like Faith had a type.

“Except when you made out with Connor. That one got me. Was it for the power? Or just to hurt people? I guess it’s one in the same, right B. Maybe you’re going for evil goddess now.”

But, it turned out the killer-goddess-groupie had a whole new round of bitterness for me.

I can’t hear my own voice but I know I became cruel too. I mention Willow and everything that happened. I mention that Faith is now a child killer, because I knew these kids were real and human like Dawn’s child Faith babysat for, and I was right. But so wrong. But, Faith doesn’t tell me that.

I see her not wanting to fight me, at least not with her body, that looked waxy and breakable in a Deftones T-shirt that I knew was Spike’s and her Boston Red Sox blue and red sweats. I feel myself dropping The Scythe to the floor and lunging at her as she sat on the red couch, and hitting her as hard as I could before The Scythe dropped to the floor with a thud.

I had totally forgotten that Spike, and what felt like a whole team of women, were also there. I forgot we were in Spike’s minimalist punk decor Oakland apartment on a rainy Tuesday.

 All I saw was Faith. This time when my fist connected with Faith’s face and bone popped, she cried out, like she was surprised. Like she hadn’t just at least been complicit in child murder days ago, like she hadn’t been touting that she wasn’t a victim, that Spike wasn’t one, that Dawn wasn’t one. And that I wasn’t one… because Xander didn’t make me leave Spike.

“Xander didn’t make you fuck Spike either!” I roared at her as Spike pulled me back, and the chorus of women were flabbergasted because I’d been…

“Hey,” a voice pulls me out of my replay so fast I jump, “Were you—?”

“Sorry,” Nate looks younger than ever as he raises his hands or one hand as the other holds The Scythe.

“You forgot this,” he hands The Scythe over.

 And, not for the first time I want to drop it and shed my skin, but at the same time I want to hug the boy for pulling me out of my horror review.

“Are you okay?” Nate asks.

I am. I was. Connor had come in to fix all of what happened, at least my part in what happened as much as it could possibly be fixed. He did what he does and yelled at me at first. That time I didn’t yell back, but then he downplayed it. Focusing on how I hit Faith, “unprovoked” at times.   

“I think we need rules about you keeping your hands to yourself and actual consequences if you break them.”

“I’ve been thinking maybe it’s good Glory trapped us in here,” Nate says, “At least she can’t hurt anyone else.”

I have to get out of here. I have to make sure Faith is at least safe with Connor at The EveryGen compound. I know we can figure out how to stop her amnesia or fix it. I know there were probably a million details with Glory I missed. We’d all worked so fucking hard. I have to at least get us back to where we are now! I can’t let Faith fall under the influence of a Hell-god. Not after everything that happened with her Goddess.

“Yeah,” I say, “It’s good.”

B! You’re really gonna keep lying.

He’s just a kid.

So were we all! I could hear Connor. Secrets aren’t going to save you, moose. They never have.

Screw you! I want to say, you kept a whole prophecy secret and so much more, Connor. I don’t care if you saved me before.

Keeping score will save you even less.

The body keeps the score so you don’t have to, B. But even it has to let go to heal. Switching it up helped us with that. So now you need to switch up what you’re doing.

Fine! But both of you suck.

“Unless,” I say and Nate turns, “Glory sent Faith out there as her minion. Or, no, not minion, Faith would never worship Glory even with total amnesia. She has nothing if not impeccable Goddess taste. Maybe she’s a brainwashed sleeper agent or something?”

“What?” was Nate’s rational response.

“No, Glory can’t do that. I don’t think. I mean has Glory ever done anything like that since she’s been—” I wave my hands around in his general area.

“Taking over my body at night,” he says, “Um, no. All she’s been doing is stealing CC’s clothes and trying to get followers and leaving nasty comments in my DMs about how my room decor and entire human existence sucks.”

“Wow,” I say, “The more things change.”

 “Why would you ask—What did you ask?”

“Glory gave Faith amnesia and now she’s in Berkeley fighting vampires or she was.”

“That’s what Glory told you in that nightmare you had?” he asked.

“She didn’t tell me. She showed me.”

“And you believe her?”

“I do,” I say.

“Why?”

“Because unlike a lot of gods, demigods, vampires, Slayers, men, and other people in my life, Glory never lied, even when she cheated.”

“So,” Nate says, “I guess you should sleep to find out more.”

Yeah, sharing is real helpful, but he’s not wrong.

Chapter Text

I want to murder Rory Gilmore. Yeah, that's her real name. And as Faith Lehane, The Murderer Slayer, it’d be a breeze. I could just brush it off as a casualty of Slayage, just another "accident," like the first human I took down. Only difference is, she'd be less innocent.

This bitch, with her air of sophistication, and her perfectly coiffed shiny-hair, and tailored outfits has been lying to me for weeks, and now she’s in my way.

“You’re the gatekeeper,” I say looking the bony beauty that is Rory Gilmore, “You’re who’s going to keep me from My Slayers. I don’t think so. You’re not one of us. If you were you’d be in a medical coma right now. You’re old, like me.”

“Listen—” my new not-bad-looking pal, Rick Cruz, tries to say something. My older full on hot new pal, Tara MacClay shook her head to stop him. (She’s not Willow’s dead mouse Tara, but an older way more bad ass version of her.)

“I’m 35,” Rory says with her chin-up. I almost expect her to be holding a clipboard.

“Yeah, like I said.”

Rory doesn't fit here. And even though I literally got pushed into pretending to be someone I’m not (Buffy Summers as usual.) I, Faith Lehane, DO belong here, at The SlaySafe Compound made for Slayers and by Slayers. I probably especially belong here at EveryGen Hospital (EGH, they love acronyms here), because I could be the only one who really gives a shit about these sick Slayers.

I stomp past Rory and down the hall in my blood-stained boots. Normally, I’m not the type that demands to be at a hospital. Usually when I’m in a hospital I don’t know how I got there. I had woken up here at EveryGen just weeks ago with 20-ish years of amnesia. I’d been so impressed with it at the time.

 Rory G was one of the many staffers I’d met that had been “accommodating.” I felt like I’d woken up in some sort of fairytale. Not just a state-of-the-art-hospital, but a whole campus just for Slayers called “SlaySafe!” The compound had been around for about 7 years after EveryGen, The Slayer Corporation, bought up about 700 acres of the UC Berkely Campus.  

Of course, with 20 years of amnesia, Netflix, Spotify, and Smartphones blew me away too, and everything seemed like a great idea. But, just like Facebook and Instagram a lot of things that seemed like a good idea in these times are wearing thin.

You can tell the kind of girl I am. I thought waking up in a good free hospital with general and mental healthcare where people weren’t openly trying to kill or jail me seemed like a fairytale. I’m an American working girl, I guess. A Slayer, like Dana Rewit, and the 99 others here.

I’d only recently remembered Dana, recently, like an hour ago, and now I wasn’t leaving here until I saw her.

“Not all The Slayers who came down with FGSI are first generation Slayers,” Rory was now trotting down the hospital corridor to keep up with me, “Though 90% of them are first generation Slayers who are now 30-40.”

“Yeah, that’s ancient in Hollywood and decrepit in Slayerdom, so I guess it was time to put us to sleep literally,” I muttered.

I strutted down the hall in Past the big rectangle windows that showed some part of the City of Berkeley and twinkling lights. Rick and Tara, were in tow too. They had saved me from Vi, a Slaypire, and her minions about an hour ago.

“You know that’s not what happened,” Rory huffed, “Even if you do have amnesia.”

When I woke up here weeks ago, I felt younger, both literally with just memories of my Bad Slayer days and metaphorically, foolishly thinking this whole EveryGen setup was a safe haven for Slayers just because Buffy Summers started it.

Now I'm swimming in memories up to, I don't know, when did Glee start airing? I wish TV was all I remembered.

It had been Vi who told me about the disease the “old” Slayers were getting and The Slaypers. It was Rick and Tara who confirmed some of the info Vi dumped on me while she almost dumped me off an Oakland rooftop. So, I raced here in The Mustang I was driving with them as they gave me the full skinny on the disease and a few other things.

“Anyway,” Rory with another huff as we turn a corner and get to the actual rooms, “Technically, it shouldn’t be called First Generation Slayer Illness, but like most illnesses it was named quickly with the knowledge that we had at the time.”

“So, Rory,” I stop and turn to her, “Who is ‘we?’ Who had this knowledge? Because I sure as shit didn’t.”

“You did,” she said with a stiff nod, “Of course you did, but you’re still recovering from amnesia and your recovery was fragile at first. So, it was decided to not share everything right away.”

“If I could—” Rick tries again.

“So, who are you, really, Rory?” I say her name with contempt, “The bitch who cleans up all his bodies? The one who helps him lie?”

The “he” here is my not-husband.

“No, Mrs. Reilly, I’m not Connor’s assistant. I’m—” Rory began.

“Hahahaha….!”

I can’t help it. I start laughing at the name she called me, because it’s so not mine. It’s a crazed kind of supervillain laugh that bubbles up my chest. Who knows? Maybe I still “really belong” in this hospital, because I’m crazy. They’re not allowed to say “crazy” anymore; they’d say I have mental illness. I’m lying about who I am while demanding to be let in here guns-blazing (not literally, I wish.) It’s more like I was Sally Field in a movie with a sick adult daughter being kept from me.

I guess I am old enough to have an adult daughter now, and I feel like I have 5000 of them that’s how many activated Slayers , and my not-husband put 100 of them into medical/mystical comas, the ones I remember, and lied to me about it.

But, I’m NOT the sell-out Chosen One trophy wife of my first lover’s son, Buffy Fucking Summers is. She was/is “Mrs. Rielly.” What Mrs. Buffy Summers Rielly had been doing in MY body 20 years after our body-swap-totes-my-fault-misadventure I didn’t know. And, now, I didn’t care!

When I first woke-up and 20 years had gone by, I thought I died in her body 20 years ago, and she’d been stuck in mine. I had all these Slayer blurry dreams and intuition that the Hell God Glory had brought me back in my body. I even tried to tell them I wasn’t Little-Miss-Buffy, but every time I said her name or mine a painful ringing exploded in my head. Even then, I had every fucking intention of finding said Hell God Glory and righting the situation and getting Buffy back to her life.

But, now I think I’ve gotten it all wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time or the 13th.

“I’m sorry,” Rory says at my laughter, “But, that’s the only one of your names that doesn’t activate the name-canceling-spell.”

“That’s why your sorry, huh?” I say and stop my hall-strut, “Not all the lying and cheating and making money off diseased Slayers!”

Now, I have dried blood on my jeans and boots from getting my ass handed to me by Vi.  I had to learn from Vi that First Generation Slayers were coming down with a fatal disease and my husband was putting them all into medical/mystical comas. My “husband” had weeks to tell me this.

He also gaslit me about the hell-god, Glory, I knew gave me amnesia, saying she was dead. He’d also failed to mention he was Angel’s son. Yeah, that one Vi didn’t tell me. I just remembered Connor on my own. Also, he was probably a cheater and a god maybe. So, it was a good thing he wasn’t really my husband, but Buffy’s. And before you think I’m a bitch they’d stolen my body! I didn’t know why. But, I was gonna find out and save all these Slayers somehow.

“No one is making money off—” Rory begins.

“Oh,” I say, “What a relief! So, you don’t get a six-figure salary for being Connor’s side piece? Because that suit—”

“How dare you!” she says, “I’m—”

“Rory,”, Rick Cruz says, “Why don’t we give-her- a moment alone with my cousin. You’ve already done so much, but it would mean a lot to me and Dana.”

My new pal, Rick Cruz, is actually Dana’s cousin, and, even though I know him less than an hour, I had every faith in him that he can charm a college girl. Rory Gilmore is way past college, but you can tell she went. She reeks of privilege.

“I’ll go with you,” My other new pal, Tara says, and she takes my hand like we’re old pals.

And I let her because I need any kind of pal right now as my heart feels like it’s suddenly choking my lungs at the idea of seeing Dana Rewit, The Vampire Slayer, in a hospital bed again.

Only Dana is no longer a Slayer, she’s now a “Slayper,” and I know she’d hate being called that. Being titled as some passive comatose limp body when your life was just beginning in your mid-thirties. Dana and I know so much about that as Slayers, even though our lives had been so different.

Dana was made a Potential thanks to men obsessed with young girls as Slayers. At 17, we thought we were powerful and sexy, but really, it was just easier for them to turn us into soldiers or vampire lovers, depending on who got to us first. No, wait. That was me, Faith Lehane, the 17-year-old with daddy issues. Buffy Summers too, but she was like Rory Gilmore—privileged and getting away with stuff. Buffy and Rory had their daddy issues and sexy times without hitting rock bottom or jail.

I made bad choices, but I didn't have anyone there for me like Buffy and Rory did. I got lucky with Angel; he pulled me back from the edge. Dana didn't even have the chance to make choices until she trusted me at about 25.

She never had a bunch of Nazi Watchers like The Keepers targeting her for her "impurity" as a Slayer. That thought hits me again, like a flash, more like a mental Google page than a memory. Is it real? Who knows.

“You don’t have to do this you know,” Tara says.

I stopped walking when she spoke, realizing how right she was. I didn't have to do this. I was Faith Mother-Fuckin’ Lehane! Not the "good" Slayer with the cheating husband. I avoided nurturing because I didn’t want to end up like B, stuck with some jerk and letting everyone down. I never did “friends” or “hope.”

But now I'm remembering I did do those things, even some “nurturing.” I "used" Connor to help Dana, but it failed. Connor married Buffy, and Dana, along with 100 Slayers, was put to sleep.

I could leave and start fresh or figure out my past. Since I’m not dead, I must've been doing something decent, right? Unless I was one of the Slayers Connor put to sleep, trapped in Buffy’s body for—

“Oh, my God! How could I be so fucking stupid!” I say aloud.

“You’re not stupid. You just wanted to see the truth, but you don’t have to go in,” Tara says mistaking my realization for anxiety.

Buffy came down with FGSI so she and Connor switched my body with hers and then put all the Slayers into medical comas “for their own good” just to cover it up. That little shit and Buffy…! I’d fucking kill them both! I will tear up this place and find her Sleeping Beauty body and end her!

“No,” I say to Tara as I wipe tears of rage from my eyes, “I do have to do this and not just for me, but for all of us.”

                                                        *

Connor:

I break through the vortex at The Hole in The World.

“Not only is this quest of yours misdirected it’s dangerous. It’s purposeless,” Dream’s voice echoes through the fractals as I fight to move forward in The Hole In the World.

Typically, The Hole in the World resembles a harmless, breathtaking New Zealand cave, a natural marvel. And for the most part, it still maintains that façade—until you venture too close to the entrance like I did.

Once I broke through, the illusion shattered; the block hadn’t merely appeared—it morphed into a million rainbow fractals, that shimmered with reflections from an unseen light source. I don't just see the block; I experience it. The temporal distortion wrapped around me, an overwhelming magnetic force, all exerting power to repel me, creating a sensation both disorienting and compelling. The power would repel anyone or anything in the wrong direction.

But I’m not just anyone, or anything.

For one thing, The King of Dreams talks to me if I piss him off enough.

“You need to cease, Connor,” Dream says as I try to push on.

Yeah,” I say, “That’s just what Cordy told me out there, but she doesn’t know you’re behind this and what a prick you are! So, I can’t now, can I?”

When he spoke, the cave shivered in response. A sliver of phosphorescence revealed him: a tall silhouette draped in a shifting cloak of starry void. He hovered fifteen feet off the ground, pale stardust tracing the angles of his smug-Goth face. I spring forward, boots scraping against crystalline edges. My fist cuts through a filigree of rainbow light—and Dream merely flickers, the shimmering fractals coalescing into a lance of blinding radiance that pins my shoulder to the wall. Pain blossoms, white-hot, as shards of fractal light splay across my vision.

“Show yourself!”

At my roar, the cave walls shift. Panels of stone rise and fall like breathing ribs. Dream steps forward, the starfield in his cloak pulsing; galaxies rotate in the folds of fabric. I lunge at him only to find him standing over me, unattainably distant and yet looming large, as if gravity itself bowed to his will.

“You can’t—” he begins with his smug smirk.

I scramble up and punch him, making contact with that pale stardust smug-Goth face. Instead of recoil, his cheek ripples like liquid light, reforming before my hand can register impact.

“Are you forgetting who I am? What I am?”

My words echo back from fractured walls. Normally, I hate being so main-character melodramatic, but it took me 17 hours to get here. A plane, a train, a bus, and finally a car. I had to leave behind my traumatized, amnesiac wife, along with other things so precious in my life.

“No, mostly-mortal,” Dream says as he pushes me into something hard that feels like a cave wall. The stone flakes under the force, crystalline dust drifting like snow.

Not to mention there’s a 30-something mystical-quantum physics team out there along with a lot of my family. I have a “family” member trapped in here along with an innocent kid. And he’s not a teenage-dirtbag-world-ending-kid like I’d been in most of reality. He was a well-loved suburban darling kid, like I’d been for some of reality. So, the longer this takes the more of a lawsuit we have. My brother, Spike, had retrieved my wife’s unconscious body right outside of here. She was dealing with 20-year amnesia, so there was so much I couldn’t tell her yet. But, I was never going to leave here with nothing. And, I couldn’t help but hope if I rescued The Other Chosen One and the kid that my wife’s memory might come back.

“I have not who you are,” Dream says, “So, I’m here to guide you.”

My feet skid on rainbow glass. Dream raises a hand, and tendrils of violet energy snake from his fingertips, wrapping around my wrist like living lightning.

“I have Cordy for that, and my wife, with no thanks to you,” I say.

“Cordelia Chase, Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane, Spike, Drusilla,” he says. The cave trembles with each name. “My sister Death has been so kind to you, Connor, and yet, you literally run into the abyss.”

“That’s the thing,” I say, pulling free of his violet coils with a wrenching twist. Cracks spiderweb across the floor. “It’s not supposed to be a fucking abyss—it’s supposed to be The Hole in The World, and clearly, you have trapped Faa*#&”—"

 I go to say The Other Chosen One’s name and a horrible ringing comes out of my mouth and it resonates in my head, making it want to explode. Once I stop the pain ends.

“Oh, c’mon!” I say, “You just spoke their names. Is that what she feels when she tries to say her own name? Do you know how much she’s suffering? What am I saying? Of course you do!”

Dream’s eyes narrow. The fractal block behind him pulses, warping the air. “Actually, I do not know how much either Chosen Slayer is suffering. This is why I’m here. You see, somehow one of them slipped into The Slayer Dreamscape and the Other—”

“What?” I say, barreling forward despite the dizziness, “You’re saying The Goddess of Slayer Dreams has my wife now and you’re pissed about it? And that’s why you--”

“No,” he says, stepping aside so smoothly I stagger as the ground shifts, “She has—It matters not. But, what is occurring technically violates our agree—”

I charge him roaring and I feel an invisible shield break. The walls implode in a silent blast of fractal light. When the glare fades, there’s nothing—no Dream King, no shifting cave, just pitch black. I did it!

I broke free and I’m in The Hole in The World. Time to find The Other Chosen One. She's not going to be thrilled to see me. She’ll gripe about the whole body-swap-promise, like it wasn't the best move for my wife and her.

At least Spike will appreciate that I saved her. Everyone will, really, but I'm allowed to be pissed since she got my wife to lie for this mission. It's not her fault my wife has amnesia, or that too much info triggers it again. Maybe if I keep repeating it in this darkness, I'll buy it.

                                                *

Faith:

“Cassie,” I say to the screen to the tearful teenager, “It’s not your fault.”

I was supposed to be storming the castle here at EveryGen Hospital, but I had to stop and deal with this situation of some Slayers sneaking out past curfew and Cassie calling to snitch to me that they were at some place in Fremont called The Juicebox.  

“It is my fault!” the teenage girl says, “Can’t you see? I—I got upset and I fried Pj’s phone. It was a totally accident. But, I did it. And that’s when he, Dom, and Ramona made-up the excuse that they all needed to go to the Version store. But, I knew they were just going to go out and look for Jenn and Tiga. Everyone knew.”

Apparently, The young Slayers didn’t sneak out just to party and slay all night at The Juicebox. They’d gone to go look for these two missing Slayers. Kids these days, all responsible!

Meanwhile, I was in the hospital room of an “old” Slayer.  The room was like a damn freezer, all sterile with the constant buzz of medical junk. Dana Rewit was just lying there, barely moving on that tiny hospital bed, surrounded by those annoying beeps from the monitors. Her face looked all pale and hollow, her skin stretched tight over her cheekbones, making her seem older and more fragile than I remembered. The tubes and wires were practically swallowing her up, reminding me just how much she'd shrunk. I watched those tubes tucked under the sheets, flashing back to my own coma days, tied down to the machines that kept the body going. It's the kind of crap TV doesn't show you – being hooked up to those things for the most basic stuff like peeing and crapping, a silent war beneath the clinical front.

 I should be hell-bent on tearing through every damn room until I found Buffy Summers' body lying there in a coma, just to back up my theory. Ever since I woke up with amnesia, I couldn't wrap my head around why everyone insisted I was her. I wasn’t in her body. At first, I tried to set 'em straight—I wasn't Buffy. But now, I get it. Buffy and her hubby stuck me in her body 'cause she had this First-Gen-Slayer-Disease, and they knocked me into a coma to shut me up. And it wasn't just me—99 other sick Slayers were stuck in comas, all under the pretense of treatment. I had to put on the Buffy act to keep this ruse going.

Buffy literally called herself The Mother of Slayers and ran a giant group home called SlaySafe for young Slayers (and other powered) in need. Cassie Carpenter was always in need of a lot.  

“Cassie—” I tried to get a word in edgewise with no luck.

“I should’ve said something right away, but I don’t want to be even more hated. SlaySafe isn’t like Prescot! Everyone at Prescot like neurotypical cis girls that couldn’t help but meet beauty standards, but here—I’m just basic. I know, it’s hard to believe, but I—I used to be popular.”

“Trust me, it’s not,” I say, “I’m sure you’ll be on top again in no time.”

This girl is my worst nightmare right now. She’s like a combination of an entitled teen Buffy and an emotionally spastic Willow. But it really wasn’t her fault.  

“Should I go out and help you get PJ, Dom and—"

“No way. I just have to finish up here and I’ll go get ‘em.”

“Please, don’t say I said anything,” she says, “I really don’t need anyone hating me more. I mean, unless they’re dead. Oh god!”

PJ Williams, Dom Sanchez, and Romona Wu were worlds more street smart than Cassie. I actually should just let them cook. They’ll probably find those two missing girls faster than I could.

“Something tells me they’re fine,” I say, “Just read go read Sassy or something.”

“What’s Sassy?” she asked, “Is that the new alpha-werewolf novel. Those aren’t really my thing. I like BLB Manga.”

  Yep. Nothing like 20 years of amnesia to make you feel old.

“Cool,” I drawl, “Go do that and get some rest. I think you’re with the horses tomorrow.”

“Yes! I really have to get there early or else Wanda will still Sugar, just because she knows I like him and I rode him first.”

Yeah, part of me wants to say, I know the feeling only with me it’s Buffy and cock.

“Okay,” I say, “I gotta go now. Just remember it’s not your fault, okay?”

I hang up the phone and stuff it in my pocket relieved you could block people’s calls. I had blocked Connor’s

“You’re a busy woman,” Tara says to me.

Yep, she was still here in Dana’s room with me, while Dana’s cousin, Rick, was talking to Rory Gilmore who had been hiding The Slaypers from me.

“Yeah,” I say, “I actually still need to get those kids. I can’t believe it’s only 9:30”

Who even am I? Not Buffy Summers. The Buffy I remember still struggled with being aware of any feelings, including her own and she wasn’t about troubled Slayers.

When me and Dana teamed up for the second time. Man, I literally just starting remembering those San Francisco days, but they feel like a lifetime ago. Dana was still awkward as hell, but she’d learned to throw down like a pro beside me. We took on the vamp threat head-on, saving a terrified kid from their nasty grip. Spike, with his bleach-blond hair and leather coat, leaned coolly against a wall and smirked, saying I had a knack for keeping Dana in line. Willow, with her fiery red hair and gentle touch, gave me a playful nudge, backing up Spike’s comment, while Giles did his usual nod, looking all thoughtful and wise.

In the midst of this camaraderie, Buffy stood by Spike, her fingers intertwined with his, a mix of pride and a hint of jealousy flickering in her eyes. "I guess I'm just not cut out for the 'crazy whisperer' role," she admitted. “You’re really not, love,” Spike had said. Buffy attempted to mask her envy with a laugh, “It’s good we have you, Faith.”

Bitch! It was so much easier to think about that than the first time I met Dana.

There’s a tiny nothing in the way Dana’s face moves, some phantom micro expression, a quiver in the skin, that I would’ve missed pre-FGSI.

“None of this is your fault either, you know,” Tara says to me.

“You don’t know that,” I say, “Even if you think you knew me before. You didn’t.”  

“Does anyone really know anyone?” she says.

“Well,” I say, “I know Connor did this just like Vi said. And thanks for telling me the truth about it.”

“Rick did too,” she says, “You do remember what Rick said, right?”

“He’s Dana’s cousin but he couldn’t find her for years because we—Or should I say—Slayer Incorporated moved her to England after she busted out of a mental hospital in L.A. At least I’m not responsible for that fuck up.”

I was actually in Cleveland at the time, it was Angel, and Spike, who first found Dana. But, I’d gone after her the second Angel told me about her. Not only that I made him and Spike come with me…Along with Connor.  

The place that had Dana in England was a crazy quilt of genteel and clinical: chintz curtains framing one-way mirrors, board games and flat-screen TVs clustered next to stainless-steel “ethical” restraining chairs. The scent of disinfectant mixed oddly with lavender sachets in the halls.

When I stepped through the door to Dana’s room she was in chains—plain metal cuffs around her wrists—but she beamed at me. I sat on a visitor’s stool and she dead-lifted me without warning. I grunted as her muscles flexed, the chain rattling. She swung me over her shoulders like a burlap sack of flour and spun, faster than any WWE champ I’d ever seen. My head spun, but adrenaline sharpened everything: the metallic taste in my mouth, the faint hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. I laughed—light, careless laughter—because I knew she wouldn’t hurt me and I wasn’t about to hurt her.

She set me down on a beanbag chair surrounded by faded stuffed animals and said, breathless, “You’re beautiful.” Her grin was wild.

I waved off a couple of slow orderlies hovering nearby. “I only let my specials dates taking me dancing like that, but that won’t get you out of here,” I teased.

She threw her head back and said, almost matter-of-fact, “You let a demon cum inside you.” I blinked. She wasn’t angry—just curious.

“No,” I corrected her, rising from the beanbag and brushing dust from my jeans. “That’s Buffy. I’m Faith. Faith Lehane. I let… needy beefy men cum inside me—sons of Slayers—and then they tell me how I could be better. Not sexually, because there’s no improving perfect, but just… human stuff.”

My voice softened as I watched her tilt her head. She was Arabic and I was Albanian/Irish. Her olive skin was a shade deeper than mine, and her round eyes made me think maybe there was a genetic connection somewhere in The Slayer code.

“Robby?” she whispered. “You—you have my baby boy? You’re taking care of him?”

“I am,” I said, lifting a strand of hair from my face. I was about ninety percent sure Dana’s mind held Nikki Wood’s clipped memories—not Nikki’s soul. I didn’t mention that Wood’s son, Robin, and I had split two years ago and that he’d moved on with some suburban Slayer. It didn’t matter here.

She sank to the plush carpet in a cross-legged lotus. “But he hurt you,” she said softly.

“Nah,” I told her, smirking. “He’s a good guy. There are lots of good people out there—mostly. But today, I thought we could talk about some… triggering ones.”

I stepped aside to let Spike slip in—punk-blonde hair, polite now, shoulders relaxed as he closed the door so gently it sounded like a whisper. He’d just showed up at Giles’s house in London, where Angel and I had been crashing. I don’t remember why he showed, only how he hit on me and I leaned in and said to him: “Getting laid won’t get you over Buffy, but getting over Buffy might get you laid.”

Then he’d disappeared for a few hours with that blond vampire girl Angel claimed was harmless, but I’d gotten him to agree to show up here, along with some other surprise guests I for Dana. It seemed like a good idea at the time, until it didn’t.  

As soon as Dana saw Spike, she lunged forward with a roar: “You mothafucka! You killed me!” She’d gone full Nikki Wood—at least, whatever memory of Nikki she held.

Spike held up his hands, apology etched in every line of his pale face, but he didn’t say a word, for once, and I really appreciated that.

I stepped between them and wrapped Dana in a bear hug, pinning her flailing arms, still chained at the wrists, to her sides. “Easy, kiddo. You’re not Nikki, and you’re not Xing. You’re Dana Rewit.”

Her struggle slowed. I let her arms go. Her dark eyes found mine. “Dana Rewit?”

I leaned closer. “Yeah. You’re a Slayer, but you’re also your own person.”

Dana’s chained wrists slowly slid up my body. Then, without warning, her hands closed around my neck. She squeezed her chains clinking. A cold panic slid up my spine—memories of Kakistos, of Diana’s final gasp. I froze.

“No!” Dana’s voice trembled. Tears welled in her eyes. “No, no! Dana is dead. The man killed her!”

That’s when I knew this was probably a huge fuck-up and I was in over my head.

To Be Continued! 

Chapter Text

Buffy: Freefall

"I still gotta breathe, B!" Faith broke away from my kiss, her lips dark red like a real cherry. She was in a tank top and dark jeans,"I'm not one of your vamp boys who can go all night without coming up for air."

“You mean one of our vamp boys,” I say.

Her grin spreads across her face like spilled honey—slow and dangerous. She looks like her 18 year-old-self in this lucid dream. Or this quasi-lucid dream where some of my inhibitions are asleep.

“Sharing is caring,” Faith says.

But it's not only my inhibitions that seem looser. Faith's amber eyes catch the dim cave light, pupils wide with wanting. Her hair falls straight around her shoulders— like in her Sunnydale days when she'd iron it in that grimy motel bathroom, cigarette smoke mixing with steam while I slept on clean sheets across town.

Things could've been so different if I'd just reached out my hand sooner or more often.

It was over 20 years ago now.

Why I am I going so far back? There are so many more recent regrets. It’s because Faith is appearing as 18 or 19. I wonder if she’s doing that on purpose or if this is just how she sees herself. Which is odd because Faith has changed more than anyone, for the better at least.

"Sorry, if I got too… experimental," I say, fingers tracing the curve of Faith’s jawline, "I was just so happy to finally lucid dream you and not Glory. She’s been—”

“Haunting your dreams while you’re trapped down here with the kid?” Faith says. She takes my hand that traced her jaw.

We’re just two friends holding hands. Faith has changed more than anyone and she wouldn’t want this dream to go too far. We have work to do.

Nate Bucci was the 18 year-old “kid” Faith and I had been trying to help. We had brought him here, to The Famous Hole in the World because it was supposed to be a stable mystical space that created balance. And Nate needed balance, we were pretty sure he had a hell-god was using his body. Like with Glorificus (Glory) and Ben all those years ago in Sunnydale.

Back in the day, Ben was just a doctor with a secret roommate in his head—Glory, a hell-god who'd transform his body into hers whenever she wanted to torture humans or search for her dimensional key. That key turned out to be my sister, Dawn. Glory wasn't one of those benevolent deities you read about—she was pure malice in a bad perm.

Faith couldn’t help because she was in prison battling her own demons and more. (We weren’t exactly friends then.) I died saving Dawn and the world from Glory.Obviously, my friends brought me back, and we all paid a high price for it. I had no idea that the price would be a lifelong struggle with addictions, control, and power, for Willow and Xander. I also didn’t know, my more-than-Watcher-father-figure, Giles had to murder Ben, an innocent, in order to ensure the world was safe from Glory.

We wanted it to be different this time.

No, it HAD to be different this time!

There was more at stake than just the world! That’s the thing about being a 40 year-old Chosen one, your world becomes even more dependent on you that “The World.”

“Yep," I said to Faith, my fingers tingle as I held her hand, the hand of the only other person who understood the pressure of being Chosen, "So you're all caught up. Glory keeps saying I have the key to get out. Which I doubt. but I can dream. Literally. Like right now. This is the first time she hasn’t shown up with all her symbolism that’s as subtle as Fox News.”

Faith and I weren’t surprised when the hell-god inside of Nate was the actual Glory. A lot of gods could and did rise again. We just didn’t expect Glory to pop out so fast and be on the offensive.

The Hole in the World had the right kind of magic inside it to extract Glory (or any hell-god) from Nate. The plan had been for Faith and I to extract and kill Glory. But, when does anything go as planned?

“Well,” Faith chuckles, “She is evil. It sounds like we weakened her, and she’s locked you in here like a kid’s soccer team because she can only get to you through nightmares.”

Maybe we had weakened her. She hadn’t made an appearance in real life outside of my dreams since she switched our bodies back to the OG setting and locked down the cave with Faith outside of it. But…

“That’s the thing,” I say.

"There’s a thing?” Faith says.

“There are so many things, as you know, but this thing, is a new thing,” I say, “Glory isn’t good. I mean, she told me she gave you amnesia and somehow you’re back in Berkeley? That’s true, right?”

“As far as I know,” Faith says, “Is that the thing? Because that is something.”

“No, I mean, it’s a thing, but I’m sure you got to EveryGen and they’re treating you, right?”

“What’s the thing, B?”

“I don’t know. I just get the sense that Glory doesn’t want to be doing any of this. Like, she always says I’m the one making these dreams and I have the key to escape, like she really does want me to get out. I mean, she’s still a vicious Mean Girl, but—”

“But,” Faith says, “Nothing else is working so, what else are you gonna do?”

“Yeah,” I say, “You know I'm not good at lucid dreaming—my brain's more the apocalypse-nightmare type. But, I'm here and, now, so are you."

I have so much to ask her. How did she actually make it back to Berkeley? How weird was it to have amnesia and see everything that had changed? How much of a dick is Connor being over this? Did that horror movie reboot come out yet?

"I’m not actually here yet,moose,” she said, “But, I'm comin' for ya."

Faith's grin shifts, the honey-sweetness curdling into something that doesn't belong on her face. Her lips twist into a crooked, cocky smirk I know too well. The cave air suddenly feels ten degrees colder.

Shit! Balls! Doodie!

"Screw you, Connor!" I say, shoving hard against Faith's shoulders. Her eighteen-year-old body—all lean muscle and dangerous grace—stumbles back, but those aren't her movements.

He laughs, a sound that ripples through Faith's form until it peels away. Connor slowly materializes, his features sharpening in the ethereal blue light that makes the cave walls glisten. The shadows carve hollows beneath his cheekbones, giving him that haunting, roguish look.

"I don’t think it’s me you want to screw now. Have you ever kissed me like that?" he says, eyes glittering with something between hurt and triumph.

“Connor, I promise you. I don’t really—” I began.

“Don’t worry, killer,” he says walking back up to me just as close as he was when he was pretending to be Faith kissing me or I was kissing him, “I’m not taking it personally. Remember our rule. D—”

“Don’t go off and on missions alone,” I say, “But, we didn’t. Faith and I are doing this together! We just—”

“I was going to say dreams don’t count as cheating,” he says and then he morphs back into Faith. Only now it’s present day Faith, simply more beautiful with age without 90s makeup and resting bad-girl face.

“I mean,” he continues with Faith’s voice, a voice I admit I love having when I’m in her body, “You know how much I love this body and it’s perks. That’s why we agreed, no more switching, right?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes and turned away from him and looked at the cave walls that I’d memorized so well I could see them in my literal dreams now. My actually body was sleeping around here. Wrapped up in Faith’s coat and Nate’s shirts.

Faith and I switched bodies years ago, because The Slayer Power-Sharing Spell was getting wonky and Faith and I switching bodies balanced the power somehow. Then, it kind of became easy and fun to switch sometimes. Especially after all the crap that had happened in San Francisco. Who wants to be THE Chosen One all the time?

But, afew years ago, after the whole Willow-AI/Xander-Cyborg thing, Connor felt it was safer for us to keep our bodies where they were for now, and he was right for so many reasons.

“Like I said,” finishing my little pacing circle and folding my arms to look Connor in the eye. He’d morphed back to his own form, “Faith and I are doing this mission together and how we do it is our business.”

I convinced Faith to re-switch because we really needed to make sure The Slayer Line was powered up for this InGlorious Bitches Mission, because it isn’t just about Nate and Glory. It’s about hopefully helping around a hundred Slayers with First Generation Slayer Illness (FGSI) and Connor too. Who was acting like such a man-baby around getting help lately. (It had also been about protecting Faith, but that hadn’t actually gone to plan either.)

“Cool. So how’s that going?” he says.

“Better than if we told you. I’m sure. You have Faith, right?”

“Not right now.”

“What?” I say panic rising in my chest.

“I mean, faith has to be earned, Buffy,” he says and I groan, “Neither of you told me about this mission. But, don’t you worry. We’ll work it out in couple’s therapy later,” he pats my arm, “As far as my faith in you now though, I’m sure you had back-up for if and when something went wrong here, like now, right?”

“Actually,” I say, “We do have—”

“I’m not talking about some side-witch who knew where you were going glamping in The Hole in The Fucking World with some kid, and Faith,” his voice starts calm but ramps up to a yelling finale, “I mean the actual Faith Lehane, that you know we can not lose right now. I’m talking about a team of people that can pull your ass out BEFORE things go sideways, Buff!”

His yelling echos off the cave walls. My throat constricts. I hate arguing with Connor. Arguing with Connor always makes me miss arguing with Spike and Angel.

When arguing, Angel would hurt you when he was hurt. Whether Spike is dishing it out or taking it, he gives you everything he has no matter how much or little you give. Win or lose, seen or unseen, you know he loves you. It’s the same with Faith.

“You’re such a hypocrite,” I spit, “You know why we didn’t tell you? You were lying and keeping secrets, Connor! You held on to The Last Generation Prophecy and you were—”

“And why would I do that?” he says, “It’s not like prophecies have ever been misread, or made up, and ruined lives…over and over. And now Faith has amnesia and you’re here dreaming alone on Mission Glory Days.”

But, when Connor cuts into you he never does it to hurt you because he wants you to love him. He’s always right in some way and even if you are right too, he’s always righter. Or maybe things just get more complicated when your older. Maybe love shrinks to survive. Actually, I know it does.

“The Mission title is InGlorious Bitches,” I corrected, adrenaline and hurt fueling my voice.

He laughs: his deep, honest laugh. It vibrates through the cave.

“You don’t have to tell me which bitch came up with that name,” he says, his voice bouncy and boyish.

“Careful,” I say.

Of course, it was Faith.

“I am careful, killer,” he says, “even if I’m less of a bitch than you these days.”

We both smile for a beat.

“You do have the actual Faith?” I ask, “At Slaysafe, right? Glory showed me Faith was back in Berkeley and had a run in with Vi. Glory also told me she gave Faith amnesia, but that she was okay. Don’t be too mad at her, okay? Faith, I mean, depending on her amount of amnesia, I’m sure she’ll be at least a handful and a half that you’ll get to finally truly experience. It’s good you have staff to help with her. I didn’t as a senior on high school, you know.”

Connor's gaze drops to Nate, who is a senior in high school,m curled in his sleeping bag. The kid's face is peaceful in sleep—no scowl, just parted lips and dark lashes against pale cheeks. Blue cave light makes his hair gleam. He looks so young it hurts.

“So,” he says, “You’re really trusting Glory now. The OG goddess that got you killed. The goddess I assume you were trying to slay and somehow save this kid. This kid, huh? He does look like he could be president someday.”

Fighting with Connor is like being a lion and fighting a lion tamer. He always makes you work for what you want after giving you a smile. You can always smile back at him, but if it’s not real, you both know when you’re baring teeth.

“Glory actually prefers the term god, not goddess. Both terms don’t have to be about gender, even though they can be.”

“Sorry,” he says, “We both know how important pronouns can be, or is it nouns? Or is it when gods are good or evil?

I baited him and he hit me.

“Connor,” I say after I feel the sting of his subtle whip, “I wish I could change things. But unlike you I don’t have the power to reset reality. So—”

"Hey," he says, his voice softening as he reaches for me, fingers brushing my shoulder with that familiar warmth that makes my chest ache. "No one is asking you to change anything. And you know I didn't reset reality alone. Dawn's blood opened the portal, and Willow channeled enough power to blind a small city."

“And now you get to make deals with The Endless while Dawn is a single mom and Willow has to curb her power. I’m not saying it’s—”

“Dawn’s about to get married to Gunn who will take care of Jace forever, and Willow is an indie tech-witch that keeps tech bros from ending the world.”

He morphs into Faith's body again, his masculine frame dissolving into her curves like melting wax. This time she—he—looks positively sultry: dark hair tumbling in glossy waves over bare shoulders, red lips curved in that signature Faith half-smile, body draped in something black and silken that clings to every curve.

"So what if Red got more second chances this body would get at an Equinox gym," he says in Faith's husky drawl, crossing those leather-clad arms over her chest. "She's all reformed and powerful again. Just keep her magic fingers off this hot package, and we're five by five."

I sigh. Not wanting to think of Willow with Faith and San Francisco.

“Don’t be crude,” I say.

“But I have to be crude,” he says still as Red Carpet Faith, “With all my Endless deals. You say it doesn’t bother you. But we both know that's a lie. You don't trust me anymore. That's why you snuck away with Faith and this kid. To the other side of the planet. Where no one could find you."

A laugh escapes me—an undignified snort I can feel vibrate through my sinuses. He’s so wrong, and something about that feels like winning.

"This is payback, isn't it?" He stalks back and forth, Faith's hips swaying unnaturally beneath the silky dress. "You're wrapping it up in some noble mission, like always. But let's call it what it is—punishment because I'm supposedly the vilest creature in existence. Not a mass murdering raping vampire, not Evil itself, not even a Fox news child-raping-genocide apologist : but, an unfaithful husband."

"Is this your audition for daytime television? If you're going to throw these ridiculous accusations at me, at least wear your own face while doing it," I say, crossing my arms.

Faith's borrowed features harden as he leans closer.

"You've never understood what it costs to be someone other than Buffy Summers," he says, Faith's crimson lips forming each word with deliberate precision, "What the rest of us sacrifice while you're busy saving the world. Everything I did that makes you think I’m a monster, I did for—"

”No, Connor!” I say, “You can have Endless sex dreams with every single one of those horny en carnates. I really don’t care, but do not say you’re doing it for me and do not say it posing as Faith!”

“I did it for all The First Gen Slayers,” he still sounds and appears as Faith before the illusion dissolves—features shifting, shoulders broadening, jaw hardening—until he’s himself again. His voice solemn, “And you know the sex dreams are just the pesky side effects for the real sacrifices I made. I can’t dream of anything else or anyone else.”

“You’re dreaming this-me- right now,” I say, “and even if that’s true, so what? What you really miss is all the god power you had to give up. Even though you still have all the power in the room, Connor. Boo-hoo, you went from being a god to a demigod that everyone still listens to, and you can only have lucid mostly-sex dreams.”

“Who listens to me?” he says, “Not you. I just told you I can’t dream of loved ones. Living or dead. I didn’t realize how hard that would be.”

I feel like there’s a knife in my throat a second before I fully understand what he means.

He always wins.

“Connor, this body-switch… it wasn’t just—. We hoped it’d cure FGSI—wake the Slaypers—and you…” My words trailed. My voice broke. “Faith—Did Faith tell you anything? How bad is her amnesia? She must remember something.”

He shook his head slowly and placed his hands on my shoulders. Stone-cold reality pressed in through the dream. “I don’t know. I’m just a dream. I only know what you know.”

“No,” I swallow, “You—you’re a lucid dream. You’re Connor. It’s not like I don’t know you. So stop—”

He shook his head again and squeezed my shoulders, “I’m just the embodiment of all you know of Connor. I hope I’m not nearly this obnoxious.”

“No! You—you need to at least tell me—”

“The real me is trying to reach you, Buffy. But you have to open the door first.”

He leaned in, lips brushing my temple—brief warmth before he shoved me. The force cracked through me, and I tumbled backward into a void of pure black. No light. No floor. Nothing.

What the…