The Fallen Slayer | TVD {1}

It All Comes To A Head

MAY 30th, 2009 | SUNNYDALE, CALIFORNIA

Somehow in just a matter of two weeks, the Summers family had seemingly gone up in flames.
Death, heartbreak, and destruction had taken over Buffy and Joyce's lives.

For Buffy, she had been focused on trying to stop Angelus from destroying the whole world; sucking it up into hell. Her problems were mainly focused on the supernatural aspects of her life which had pretty much consumed her junior year of High School.

Between: constant fights, strange Hellmouth antics; the guilt over her boyfriend becoming the Big Bad, she had barely been able to keep up with the human side of her life.

She was almost positive she had flunked out of her classes this year and if Snyder didn't end up expelling her she would still be stuck repeating.

For Joyce, the Virginia-born middle child of three sisters, her life had come crashing down on the 23rd of May.

When her elder sister's car had gone off Wickery Bridge into the waters below. Killing not only the eldest Summers sister but her husband. Leaving their two children orphans.

The funeral had been intense and the meeting with the lawyers after had just made everything more complicated. 
Her niece and nephew were to be put into her younger sister Jenna's care. While Jenna had obviously been terrified, Joyce could understand Miranda's choice.

Jenna still lived in Virginia and keeping the kids' lives as stable as possible had to come first.

It would be cruel to send them across the country to California, after just losing their parents.

Now, two weeks after the funeral it had become crystal clear just how smart it had been to keep the Gilbert siblings in Mystic Falls.

The Supernatural and human aspects of Buffy's life had finally collided after almost three years of secrecy. Despite her attempts to keep her family out of it and to keep her mother safe, Spike and her staking a vampire right in front of Joyce had made keeping her mother in the dark far from possible.

Finally, the blowout between the mother and daughter, whose relationship was already strained had come.

The reveal of who Buffy really was and what she had been up to for the past few years had led to the pair screaming at each other in the kitchen. 

"I told you, I'm a Vampire Slayer." Buffy repeated for what felt like the tenth time as she and her mother faced off in the kitchen.

Her mother's obvious anger grew by the second, as her cheeks turned a bright red, attempting to keep herself from screaming at just how insane her daughter sounded.

All this talk about vampires, demons, and the end of the world had to be some kind of mental breakdown. It couldn't be real. The stories Miranda had told her during their childhood were just that...stories, fairytales.

"Well, I just don't accept that."

Buffy scoffed in disbelief "Open your eyes, Mom. What do you think has been going on for the past two years? The fights, the weird occurrences." Joyce's face faltered slightly at the rise of her daughter's voice "How many times have you washed blood out of my clothing, and you still haven't figured it out?!"

"Well, it stops now!" Joyce cried, mainly out of fear. If this really was true, how in the world was it fair that her 17-year-old daughter was the one getting dragged into this?

Knowing that she didn't have long till Angelus released Acthla, Buffy snapped in frustration, trying desperately to make her mother see the truth that was right in front of her eyes.
Her mom had been ignoring the truth for years, hell the first time she had tried to tell her parents they had thought she had lost her mind.

They had locked her up after she had begged for their help. Deciding she was sick rather than terrified out of her mind.

"No, it doesn't stop! It never stops!" Tears started to fill Buffy's eyes as she forced herself to keep from crying "Do you think I chose to be like this?"

It had never been a choice. 

It had been a curse forced onto her. A curse that could only be broken with death.

"Do you have any idea how lonely it is? How dangerous? I would love to be upstairs watching TV or gossiping about boys or, God, even studying! But I have to save the world...again."