Chapter 2: Angry Teenager
Of all the people affected by Nikki and Ricky’s departure, Bianca took it the hardest.
But not the way Buffy expected.
The blonde fourteen year old, spitting image of her mother, fell into the very angry, very destructive, not talking mood that Buffy herself was very familiar with, having spent most of her parent’s divorce like that.
As Nikki packed and Buffy paced, Bianca stormed, refusing to address whatever it was that was bothering her.
Everyone tired to talk to her, but she wouldn’t open up. Completely not open Bianca.
“You know that just because Nikki is a potential slayer doesn’t mean we don’t love you any less,” tried Willow over frappacinos. Well, Willow had a frappacino, Bianca was coerced into a non caffeinated iced beverage.
Bianca sipped her drink loudly, refusing to look the witch in the eye. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“If you talk about it, you won’t be so cranky. A cranky Bianca is no one’s friend. Ooh, is it ‘cause you are losing a friend?”
“She’s going to come back. Nikki told me she’s going to come back,” Bianca responded.
“Well I’m tapped,” Willow said admitting defeat.
“What? That’s it?” Bianca asked. “I’m not even done with my iced beverage. You really aren’t ready for teenagers.”
“TJ’s only thirteen. I guess I have a bunch of stuff to learn. Experience, I lack it.”
“You could just go poof and be spectacular witchy aunty Willow with the knowledge.”
“Ya, I could but that would be misusing the whole power thing. Hey, I could try again. What‘s wrong?” Willow asked again.
“You think that just because you ask the same question twice I’m going to tell all? Besides you’ll just get mad,” Bianca said shaking her head.
“And why would I do that?” Willow asked, concerned.
“’Cause you are a special one, you are a witch.”
The next one to try was Dawn. There were still three days to go before the Harris’, Nikki, and Ricky left for England. No one wanted Bianca to let her friend leave without speaking to her about whatever it was that was bothering her.
“Nikki told me that you won’t talk to her,” stated Dawn bluntly. “What’s going on?”
Bianca looked up from drying the dinner dishes with a groan. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?” the watcher asked, flicking her long brown hair behind her shoulder and picking up another dish towel to help out.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Would Nikki understand? ‘Cause, hey, she’s the one you need to talk to.”
“I don’t know. She’ll just get mad.”
“Why?” Dawn prodded. “Why will she get mad?”
“She won’t understand.”
_________________________
“I think detached mom should step in,” offered Dawn to Buffy the next morning. “Everyone else has already tried.”
“Everyone else being you and Willow,” Buffy answered.
“Anya doesn’t think there is a problem. Gotta wonder who’s doing the parenting in that family.”
“I think Anya does lots of the parent thing. Kristina’s just inherited her sense of blunt from her mother. I don’t think that’s a family that’s going to have communication issues.”
“And Spike doesn’t seem to know what’s going on,” Dawn continued with a sigh.
“Are you kidding?” Buffy asked. “Most of the time I wish I knew as much as Spike does when it comes to B and Ro. I’m sure he knows exactly what’s going on.”
“What is going on then?” Dawn asked.
“I don’t think it’s our business,” Buffy responded wisely.
“Boys are so much less complicated than girls,” observed the younger sister. “So glad I’m done with having kids.”
“I bet you laugh on a daily basis when you think of me.”
“Sometimes twice daily, actually,” quipped the Key. “Can you please talk to your daughter?”
_________________________
Buffy ascended the stairs to the second floor of her house. The animated tones of Nicole Wood forced a smile on the Slayer’s face. Nikki been so hesitant about going to England and now just a day and a half away from her departure, she was so excited.
“And it won’t be all that long before you’ll see me again. Your birthday is in October, you’ll be fifteen and you can come be a potential like me!”
“What makes you think that I’ll be a potential?” Bianca’s voice asked back.
“Come on! We’re both daughters of slayers. How could we not be potentials?” Nikki suggested with enthusiasm, the complete opposite of Bianca’s voice.
And Buffy knew exactly what was wrong with her daughter.
“What if it takes more than that? Your grandmother was a slayer…”
“And your father is a vampire and your aunt is a key. You are so going to be a potential, like me,” Nikki said with pride. “We will have so much fun!”
“Ya, lots of fun.”
On the stairs, Buffy sighed. Ever since Nikki had been born Buffy had known her fate. For the longest time Nikki was just another little girl. Now, just hearing her speak about how much fun being a potential was going to be, she sounded a lot like her mother.
And that was frightening. How would Nikki react if she fell in love with slaying, but was denied being the true slayer, due to Buffy’s immortality?
The Slayer hoped whatever moral compass she and Spike had raised Nikki up with held true.
Buffy leaned against Nikki’s bedroom doorway. “It’s going to be different here without you,” observed Buffy to the potential slayer.
“I’ll be back,” Nikki responded with a smile.
“I know,” Buffy said, smiling back. That much Buffy was certain as well. According to Ariel, Nikki was buried in the cemetery across the street. “Dawn wanted to talk to you Nikki about your passport.”
Buffy followed Bianca out of Nikki’s room and into her own, but waited until Nikki was safely downstairs before beginning her conversation with her daughter.
“So I guess you don’ t want to be exactly like your mother then?” Buffy started. “I mean, hey, college drop out, works nights, not the lifestyle I hoped for myself.”
Bianca stared at the floor refusing to speak.
“What do you want to do with your life?” Buffy kept prodding.
“Oh, how about normal?” Bianca snapped back, venom in her voice.
“Fair enough. I thought you were the normal one here,” Buffy tired to joke.
“How can I be? Not living in this family, that’s for sure. You don’t know how hard it is to know about this side of the world when your friends are completely oblivious.”
That wasn’t true, but Buffy let Bianca rant.
“I live in a house with parents that everyone thinks are unemployed slackers, living off some dead relative’s money. None of my friends have ever seen my father. Why? ‘Cause he doesn’t leave the house, or take me shopping or do any of those dad daytime things that dads are supposed to do.”
“That’s not his fault, B,” Buffy interrupted.
“And then there’s you. You don’t look like a mom! You’ll never get old. Someday I’m going to look older than you! How is that fair? And now, Nikki’s convinced that I’ll be a potential like her, that I’ll be heading to England next year, to learn how to kill things with my bare hands. As if I’m not weird enough let’s disappear for two years! I’m sure that’ll start the rumour mill.”
Buffy gave her daughter a sympathetic look.
“I don’t want to be you, Mom. I don’t even want to be me! I want to be normal with normal parents who have normal jobs. I want to be embarrassed ‘cause you’re corny parent types, instead of making excuses for you when you do show up to things.”
“Hey, we show up!” countered Buffy.
“Like parent teacher night in September? When you spent the whole time in nostalgia land, reminising about the time when Dad crashed your parent teacher night and grandma hit him over the head with an axe? Or, or when you had to explain that Dad couldn’t be a parent volunteer on the zoo trip ‘cause of his skin allergy. Or how you spent 20 minutes telling my French teacher that you actually weren’t 23 like she thought you were. Or we could talk about the spring concert where Dad showed up an hour late ‘cause of sunset and a demon, with a broad sword hidden in his coat. So ya, you show up but you make it worse.”
“It’s not like we mean to.”
“You never mean to. The weird follows you. I want to be normal!”
Buffy moved towards Bianca as if to give her a hug, but drew back when B crossed her arms. “All of us not so normal people want to be normal or wanted to be normal at one point, B,” Buffy began. “And you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, even if you are a potential. It was Nikki’s choice to go. You are in charge of your life. Not the Council, not Giles, not Nikki.”
“And do you really think if I was a potential I could just turn my back on the massive responsibility to the world? Hello, living example of world savage standing right in front of me.”
“True. Look, I’m just saying that no matter what, you get to decide your own fate and if you tell Giles to shove it, even if you are a potential, then I’ll support you. That’s what mom’s do.”
“Thanks.”
“But you still have to talk to Nikki about why you are giving her the silent treatment. Or you know, cut it out.”
Bianca nodded. “Aunty Dawn and Aunty Willow sure are nosy.”
“Yep,” noted Buffy. “Always have been. Probably always will be.”
“Sorry if I don’t jump for joy.”
“You do know that it’s the prerogative of all parents to embarrass slash freak out their kids, right?”
“Sadly.”
“Good, now I need a hug.”
“A hug?”
“Further embarrassment of you.”
“Gotcha.”
_________________________
Confident in her ability to be a mom, Buffy descended the stairs to the living room and walked into her dining room where Dawn and Xander had set up their pre trip preparations. Passports, citizenship cards, landed immigrant cards, birth certificates were all scattered over the polished wood table.
“Don’t touch anything!” Dawn warned her sister. “One wrong move and my system will be all messed up.”
“It’s a messed up system…” muttered Xander earning him a glare. “Which I love, oh love of my life,” he back pedalled.
“Aren’t you bloody well trained,” added Spike from the door leading to the kitchen.
“She says jump, I say how high…” Xander agreed.
“You do not,” Dawn countered.
In the den, attached to the dining room, two brunette and two red headed children turned towards the door and shushed the whole group of adults.
“You’re interrupting!” Jesse Harris piped up.
TJ was, however, the most vocal protester.
“Hey! We are trying to get in as much American TV as we can before we go home Aunt Buffy!”
Buffy nodded acknowledging TJ’s concerns. “We’ll try to keep it down.” Then something occurred to the slayer. “Where are your parents?” Buffy asked looking at both TJ and Danny.
Danny shrugged, but TJ was more than willing to speak up.
“Dad’s out catching up with some wolf friends he has here, while Mom’s visiting Aunty Tara.”
Buffy gave the teen a perplexed look.
“Teleportation,” TJ supplied.
“Bianca’s right. Our families are complicated,” Buffy muttered to no one in particular.
“Yep,” noted Dawn. “Did you talk to Bianca?”
“Yes.”
“And? Did you find out what the problem was?” Dawn persisted.
“Yes.”
“There was a problem?” Spike asked.
“What was it?” Dawn asked, ignoring Spike’s apparent ignorance.
“She’s promised to talk to Nikki about it. Can we just leave it at that?” Buffy asked her sister before heading out the door into the kitchen.
Without a word, Spike followed his wife through the kitchen and down to the training room in the basement.
Once there Buffy turned on the baby monitor to Rowan’s room, keeping an eye out for the napping four year old.
“Bianca doesn’t want to be part of the whole ‘save the world’ club,” Buffy explained.
“Knew that, pet.”
“She wasn’t talking to Nikki, Nikki told Dawn. Dawn told Willow, Dawn told me. It was a whole tattling fest in here.”
“Bianca’s scared. Right she should be. Being a slayer’s rough. Faith bought it. The Brat…” answered Spike.
“And I’m immortal,” Buffy sighed. “If I wasn’t I probably would be here at all. You’d be all single parent. Beating off the single moms with a stick.”
Spike caught her up in his arms. “Only the mother of my own children.”
“All eleven of them,” Buffy giggled before she sobered up. “Do you think B can have a normal life?”
“Didn’t the Nibblet?”
Buffy gave him a look.
“Okay, aside from the Glory thing and the key business…”
“If Bianca wants a normal life, shouldn’t we try to give her as normal a life as possible?” Buffy asked worried. “Nikki thinks that Bianca is going to be a potential but Ariel didn’t say anything about Bianca. Just Nikki. And we saw Victoria.”
“Just because Ariel said, luv…”
“I’m getting my hopes up aren’t I?”
“It’s one of the things that I love about you, slayer,” he said with affection.
“I want to know, Spike. I don’t think I can wait until October. I need to know if she is a potential,” Buffy declared.
“And what good would that do now?” Spike asked hugging his wife close. “They might even take her away sooner.”
_________________________
Tbc…
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Disclaimer: Buffy, Spike and the Original Scoobies aren’t mine. All their kids...you bet.
Author’s note: Thanks to the lovely Bloodytearsoflife for the beta.
Author’s note: Thanks to the lovely Bloodytearsoflife for the beta.