Buffy the Vampire Slayer®
a Speculation by Bob Abrahams
Based on characters created by — and in appreciation to — Joss Whedon
Characters and material on which this is based ©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
Los Angeles: The Slayer is on patrol for vampires. She patrols mostly near where she used to live with her parents, and near her old school, Hemery High. There is very little left of her former self. About the only thing left is the ring she wears on a chain around her neck. The ring she was given by Angel.
This night she is surprised by someone. It's Whistler, the "good" demon. He has come from Sunnydale to find her. Even if Acaltha has been stopped and the Hellmouth appears to be closed, things are not going as he had planned. And there's something he wants to tell her about Snyder and something else about Angel, but they are interrupted by a group of vamps. Buffy goes about fighting and staking them. When she is done, Whistler is gone.
The next night, she is on patrol again, and she stops a couple of vampires attacking a man. She stakes them and goes to help the man. It's Giles!
He's weak and she takes him to her room at the boarding house where she is living. It takes a couple of days, but she nurses him back to health. They fill each other in on what's been happening. He tells her about what was happening in Sunnydale. She tells him about her deal with Spike, the final battle with Angel and her meetings with Whistler.
But where she used to be a wise-cracking teen, she is now an angry young woman. She is stoic and focused on her fighting, much like Kendra had been. As much as Giles had always wanted her to be more serious about her work as the Slayer, he is worried about what she has become.
Based on what she tells him, Giles feels there's a way to get Angel back. He's not dead. For one thing, she didn't stake him in the heart or decapitate him. And he's not really in Hell, but in limbo. As part of the ritual that closed the vortex, he should be somewhere caught between, somewhere in the gateway.
Buffy says she's not sure if it would be the right thing to do, to bring him back. Giles can tell that part of what's happening to Buffy right now is a great turmoil of emotions. She sacrificed Angel to save the world. But it was just after she had almost gotten Angel back. And how much of her decision to run him through was because of her feelings about his responsibility for the deaths of her friends?
Angel is still floating in the void, in more mental agony than ever.
Buffy and Giles need to find Whistler. They now go on patrol together. And this gives Giles the opportunity to help Buffy more. To educate her further in the ways of being a Slayer and to help her deal with her feelings. With Giles there, the fighting and staking have now become more exercises than venting of emotion.
Still no sign of Whistler, but now they find Xander and Cordelia, Willow and Oz. Or maybe the friends found her. It doesn't matter. They are so happy that she is okay. Or at least alive. It's getting a little crowded in Buffy's boarding house room, but they manage.
Buffy and Willow talk. Buffy tells Willow that the curse did work, that Angel did get his soul back, but that she had lost him again. Now Buffy breaks down, sobbing. Willow isn't sure what to do, so she just holds her. Buffy had always been the strong one, but now the roles seem to be reversed.
It's not quite like old times, but together again, they work as a team. Willow takes Oz along to the library to use a public Internet terminal to research recent phenomena in the area. Thankfully it's not around the full moon. She is looking for a clue to Whistler's whereabouts, his reappearance and re-disappearance. Xander and Cordelia follow other leads.
So Buffy has found her old friends, and now, with their help, she finds old enemies — Spike and Drusilla. Spike, sounding annoyed, asks Buffy if she is following them. She replies that the same forces must all be bringing them together. Spike complains that it didn't all work out as he had planned. Buffy sarcastically says, "My heart bleeds."
Spike says, "That can be arranged, my dear."
But in another fight, without Drusilla helping, Spike has to back off and leaves with Dru.
Buffy hears a noise and discovers Whistler bound and gagged by Spike. He had captured him and was preparing to do, well, something, to him because he had been a part of defeating the vamps in Sunnydale.
Whistler explains that Angel can be brought back from the vortex gateway with the right ritual, but that there will be three sacrifices. He says he can't tell her what they are. Buffy is angry: "What are you talking about ?? What kind of riddle is this? Who are you, Rumpelstiltskin? What are the sacrifices?"
"I can't say."
"Why can't you say?"
"Because I don't know."
Sunnydale: Spike has returned to his old stomping grounds. He had promised Buffy to leave and he had. So what if he came back? Maybe he did mean he would stay away from Sunnydale. So he lied. So what? This is where the Hellmouth is.
He visits Joyce. He had been invited in once and can continue to come into her home. Dru has not been invited in and so she has to wait outside, fuming and muttering. Now he's starting to have fun again. Giles had told Joyce that Spike was a vampire. She's afraid, but she tries to be strong. Buffy has not been seen for months and she won't be there to help her. What good will it do to panic?
Dru thinks Spike is inside having a good time — whatever that is — without her. She starts to go into a rage, and she enters sort of a trance state. Now it appears that Dru cannot only read the future and influence others' minds, she is also a powerful psychic transmitter.
Los Angeles: Buffy is fighting a lone vampire. Suddenly she stops mid-lunge. "Mom?" The vamp takes advantage of this break and goes after Buffy, knocking her down. But Buffy clears her head and stakes the vamp.
She calls for Giles, who is nearby, and tells him what she felt. Clearly it's back to Sunnydale for everyone.
Sunnydale: Buffy and Giles go to Joyce's house. Willow, Xander and the others head to the school to continue their research. Xander would prefer the action part, but Buffy is trying to keep her friends away from the actual battles.
Buffy forces Spike to leave and then uses the spell needed to revoke Spike's invitation into her home. Buffy and Joyce start to talk, but their relationship has been very strained. It will take a long time to make it right. This is not the time.
Willow figures out that freeing Angel will open the Hellmouth again — not the vortex that would suck the whole world to Hell, just the "ordinary" Hellmouth that was created years ago, that attracted so many vamps and demons to Sunnydale in the first place. Xander argues against this. He doesn't like Angel anyway, for many reasons. "Why make these sacrifice to get Angel back? What are these sacrifices, anyway? Do we have to find three virgins and put them on an altar?" Willow says she doesn't know, but she doesn't think it's that kind of sacrifice.
"Why don't you know?" Xander counters.
"Well, if it was that easy, anyone could do it."
"Good thing they can't," says Oz.
Cordelia isn't sure what they should do, but she says she thinks that Angel has suffered enough and besides, he will continue to suffer even if he is brought back. And she doesn't think it's fair that her friend Buffy should have to suffer. Her friend! How amazing! It wasn't that long ago that Buffy was just someone to be made fun of, along with her weird friends. And now she thinks of Buffy as her friend, Willow someone she respects and Xander,... well, there's always the closet.
Willow is very excited. She has found the ritual that will free Angel from the gateway limbo. She volunteers to take care of this, saying that she has gotten pretty good at spells. But no, it says it has to be done by the one who put him there. "That's Buffy, isn't it?"
So Buffy goes to the old mansion, back to the still-frozen Acaltha, to free Angel. It's really a very simple ritual she must follow, but she hesitates. What about the sacrifices? She touches the ring on the chain around her neck.
Never mind. She must do it. A few Latin phrases, a candle or two and Angel emerges from the statue that once was a world-sucking demon. They look at each other. They don't touch. They don't speak.
It's night now. Back at the school library, the gang waits for Buffy and Angel to return. Cordelia realizes that one of the three sacrifices is to accept the return of the Hellmouth to Sunnydale, not that things were all so great in the last few months. But what about the other two sacrifices? What will happen?
"Well," says Giles, "Buffy must make the sacrifice of being both Slayer and girl. She's wanted it one way and then the other, but she can't have that. And now she has to realize that. And live with it."
"And the third sacrifice?", Cordelia asks.
"I know," Willow volunteers. "Angel and Buffy can never really be close again. Angel would lose his soul again. That is a sacrifice I hope I never have to make."
"Yes," Giles replies. "Buffy has lost her love and gotten him back, but she still can't have him. I can only understand this a little. She's the Slayer. I'm only the Watcher."
Buffy and Angel stand out in the dark, looking at each other. That's all they can do. Buffy puts the ring on her finger.
And all returns to what passes for normal in Sunnydale.
The End
So how will Buffy and her mother work things out? What is the secret about Principal Snyder? And what about Buffy's having been expelled? She can't show up in the school library when anyone can see her. How can this work out? Well, you have to leave something for future episodes...