[Reviews - 40] LikedPrinter
Summary: Buffy and the Scoobies enter the world of college and work and begin to see that nothing is quite black and white and much of what we are taught has flaws.
Rated: PG
Categories: General Fics Characters: None
Genres: Romance
Warnings: None
Challenges:
Series: None
Chapters: 16 Completed: Yes
Word count: 55762 Read: 19631
Published: 10/02/2007 Updated: 10/02/2007

1. Chapters 1 - 3 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 3] Liked (2484 words)
Early chapters are short and I will post those in clumps to make for ease in reading.

This tale is set in S4. Yes, it is Spuffy, but in keeping with the idea of new beginnings, it has a slow build, beginning with the internal life of the characters. If you are expecting a quick Spuffy fix, you might be disappointed, although your patience will be rewarded if you stick with it. There are 26 chapters.

One of the many lovely things about the world Joss and ME created was the use of metaphor, especially in the first three seasons. They took us through the high school years using their own special supernatural devices to deal with things we all experienced.

Season 4 was a perfect set up to continue that form of storytelling. The college years are the time when we re-evaluate all we have been taught up thus far. We experience the world and its people for ourselves, unfiltered. We experiment and challenge and grow. In the end we become our own selves. The Initiative, with humans at the helm and demons as their experiments, the introduction of a chipped vampire and a Slayer apart from the Council and its control were a perfect avenue to explore those parts of our lives in the same metaphor as the previous three seasons. At some point, for reasons I will never understand, they changed course and made it about Adam, a Frankenstein monster, instead of Buffy trudging into those gray areas of her world and grappling with the issues they presented.

In this story I am attempting to tell S4 in a way that might have continued the progression begun by ME in seasons 1–3. There is no Adam in my story, even though I do use canon here and there in the telling of it.

Hope you enjoy my submission of this alternate season 4.

2. Chapters 4 - 6 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (4569 words)

3. Chapters 7 - 10 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (4699 words)

4. Chapters 11 - 14 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (3662 words)

5. Chapters 15 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (2540 words)

6. Chapters 16 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 3] Liked (4093 words)

7. Chapters 17 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (3427 words)

8. Chapters 18 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (3235 words)

9. Chapters 19 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (3123 words)

10. Chapter 20 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (2646 words)

11. Chapter 21 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (4032 words)

12. Chapter 22 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (4063 words)
A/N: Some dialogue taken from “New Moon Rising” (s4) by Marti Noxon and “First Date (s7) by Jane Espenson altered slightly for my purposes.

13. Chapter 23 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (3369 words)
A/N : Spoiler for X-Files episode “Je Souhaite (The Wish)” (s7, aired May 2000, just as “New Moon Rising” was airing on BtVS)

14. Chapter 24 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (3212 words)

15. Chapter 25 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 2] Liked (3558 words)

16. Chapter 26 by pfeifferpack [Reviews - 8] Liked (3050 words)