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Author's Chapter Notes:
Time's interwoven throughout the story. Hope nobody gets confused. I'm excited.
One Year Ago

“Buffy?” Spike snorted in disbelief. “You’re parents must have been pissed off their rockers. Buffy… what were they thinking?”

“Oh yeah? Like Spike is so much better,” Buffy spat out in annoyance. She had known this guy for a whole of two minutes not counting their encounter the day before and already, she wished he was that cockroach that was currently scurrying across the room, trying to go unnoticed.

“What? It’s a nickname,” he defended. “Besides, it’s rather manly… just like Buffy.”

“Right… I don’t even want to ask how you got that nickname,” she shook the image out of her head. Spike smirked and leaned closer.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, pet?” he curled his tongue against his teeth and laughed when she blushed, disgusted and embarrassed.

“A world of no,” she shuddered. Spikey Spike parts… Absolutely disgusting. She was horrified and blocked the image from her mind. She muttered something along the lines of ‘perverted’ and ‘disgusting’ and Spike just laughed at her.

“Remember, it’s your own brain that conjured up those naughty thoughts,” Spike tsked, shaking a head at her.

“Don’t you have an elsewhere to be?” Buffy couldn’t believe that she had actually thought this guy was good-looking the other day. Well… there was no denying his hotness factor, but the lack of a decent personality allowed for one to overlook that little detail. He was the most infuriating, annoying, irritating, … and he was smirking at her.

“’Course not,” he plopped himself down at the piano bench next to her. “My house, innit?”

“I must say, William, it’s rather refreshing that you’ve finally decided to adjust and refer to this as your home,” an unmistakably British voice came from the door at the end of the room and both teenagers looked up in time to see Rupert Giles walk into the room, nose still buried inside the book he was clutching with one hand.

“I said house?” Spike rolled his eyes. “Never said this was my home now, did I?”

“Well in that case,” Giles lifted his head and closed his book, placing it on top of the closed lid of the Steinway, “I suggest you leave, as this is my home and I have a lesson. The door’s that way. See yourself to it.”

Spike glowered and slowly got up to his feet. Muttering unintelligible words under his breath, he exited the room with a swift swirl of his leather duster. Buffy felt the tension that had been building with that particularly crude conversation leave her body and she sighed in relief.

“Now, Miss Summers,” Giles smiled warmly at her and pulled up a chair next to her piano bench. “I hope you’ll excuse my nephew. He never did learn his manners.”

“It’s no problem, he’s fine,” she reassured him. Yeah… right. It was ‘fine’ to have one lousy conversation with a guy and have your hands turn into prunes from the profuse sweating from said conversation.

“So, Buffy… is it?” Giles asked her for the second time since he met her the day before. She nodded and he continued. “What would you like to start with this afternoon?”

“Um…” she bit her lip, suddenly nervous. “Would the Beethoven be okay?”

“Ah, Ludwig Van Beethoven, just the man I was reading up on!” Giles gestured towards the closed book on the piano. “Very well.”

He sat back to listen to her and she took a few deep breaths. If it were possible, her palms were sweating even more now. Buffy wasn’t one who liked to perform in front of an audience. She was most comfortable when she was alone in the privacy of her own home and was allowed to just play for herself. She lifted her trembling hands to the keys, closed her eyes, then started playing the Beethoven sonata that she had prepared for the lesson.

The first note startled her and she stifled the urge to groan. It had come out harshly, nothing like the quiet suspense that she had practiced for days on out. From there, it only got worse. Her dynamic range was nothing to be proud of, her notes choppy, her scales and runs had holes in them as she tripped over her own fingers. By the time she was finished, she wanted to crawl under the piano and die.

At the last chord of torture, she put her cold hands down on her lap and glanced quickly at Giles. He had his glasses off and was taking his time cleaning them. When he put them back on, he frowned, took them off, and cleaned them again.

She held her breath when he opened his mouth.

“It was very good, Buffy,” he muttered, “very good indeed. You play with command, you seem to know all the notes, you do everything that is written very well.” he paused and thought for a moment. “Tell me, Buffy, what do you feel when you play this composition?”

“Um… I don’t… I’m not sure,” she stammered.

“Tell me, what is it supposed to sound like here, in the beginning?” he pointed to the first line of music.

“Soft?” she ventured into the most logical answer. He shook his head.

“Yes, the dynamic level should be soft, but what does it sound like to you? Thunder? Lightning? A bird? An airplane? What feeling does it give you?”

“It’s… moving fast…” she tried again, but he interrupted her.

“Listen to this music in your head and picture what is happening. Just close your eyes and listen for a moment, Buffy,” he instructed her, closing his eyes himself.

Relenting, she closed her eyes and heard the beginnings of the soft drumming. Suspense. Thrill. Something lurking, sneaking around… It suddenly clicked into place.

“Now… start again,” he said, softly, eyes still closed.

………………………..

Present Day

The rest of the summer came and went. The days were blurred into each other and they floated past Buffy like a dream. A very unpleasant, sickly-feeling dream. Buffy felt like some kind of machine, waking up each morning, doing chores, walking around thinking about nothing in particular, smiling whenever someone talked to her but not hearing the words that were coming out of their mouths. The first few weeks were horrible – absolutely excruciating. She couldn’t even turn on the radio or walk past the music store without her stomach twisting and her eyes watering.

At first, her parents didn’t say anything about it and just avoided her. But soon, her mom had had enough and decided that it was time Buffy got over her loss and faced the real world. The world where she would study, go to a great college, become a lawyer, be rich and happy and die with millions of dollars. It was a morning three weeks before school was going to start when her mother marched up to her bedroom in the morning, yanked the sheets off, and threw an SAT study guidebook at her.

“God, Mom… We don’t take those for another year!” Buffy mumbled when she saw what had landed on her stomach.

“Stop it, Buffy,” her mother shook her head, “I’ve sat around and watched you mope about all summer. You’re in high school and you don’t have an entire to sit around and do nothing! Colleges will frown upon that. Now, I expect you to get up in ten minutes and I want a test done every week, understood?”

Buffy turned away and felt the tears start running down her face.

“Honey, you have to let the boy go,” her mom sat on the edge of her bed and ran her hand through her hair. “Remember what I told you when you started seeing him? It was his last year in high school and it was your first. What did you think he was going to do when he graduated? Sit around and wait for you?”

“Really… not helping mom,” Buffy muttered, wiping at her eyes. “It’s not that… it’s just that I always thought that… I don’t know.”

“That he’d be there?” Joyce sighed, pained that her daughter had to feel such hurt at such an early age.

“Yeah.”

“If it were real… he would have waited and given you the world.”

“I guess… I never was much for reality, was I?”


Buffy stood in front of her mirror, gazing blankly at the emotionless eyes staring back at her. Her hair was tied up and her bangs swept to the side. She fingered the collar of her white button-down uniform absently. The last time she had worn the uniform was the last day of school when Spike had practically grabbed her and swung her around, excited at the news he had for. The news that a record company was interested in the band and was going to fund a trip around the nation. She was excited for him that day and he had taken her out to dinner to celebrate graduation, happily detailing their future together with him being a rock star.

He had once told her that he loved the uniform, especially on her, and she had always blushed, pushing the thought aside as some sort of kinky fantasy that only he could conjure up in his mind. But, ever since he had told her that, she always felt excited when putting on the blue sweater, plaid skirt, and knee-high socks. Now, she felt empty. Numb.

Tearing her eyes away from the mirror, she grabbed her backpack and went downstairs; ready to face the public on her first day back in school.





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