“Hold on, there,” Dru’s Dark Prince crooned in her ear. Dru halted her progression up the hill.
“Got me a funny feeling about this, darlin’. No need to rush ahead.”
Dru listened, waited, watched. The humans continued up the hill, her army of vampires on their heels, just far enough in the distance to remain out of sight.
The ground shifted, groaned, and the lovely blue light that had illuminated the hilltop suddenly flashed bright, then began to sputter, like a dying candle.
“God dammit!” her cowboy shouted. “Those mother-whoring bastards!”
“William?” Dru asked.
“Something has come along, Dru-girl. Something that we didn’t expect and I reckon the best thing to do now is skedaddle.”
The ground beneath her feet rumbled a warning. Dru turned and scrambled down the hill, pushing past her climbing fledglings.
The earth shifted and shook, harder this time, sending stones and dirt down the hill. Dru looked over her shoulder to see that the climbing mob had stopped halfway up the hill. Weapons lowered, they turned to exchange puzzled looks with one another.
‘Where? Where should I go?” Dru asked her Dark Prince.
“Go to ground, sweetheart. Run to the mines. The tunnels’ll be fallin’ in on each other to be sure, but you can always dig your way out. Dirt’s better than burnin’.”
Dru scrambled to her left and ran down the path toward the mine entrance. It was no simple task, between the large stones that bounced across her path and the steady stream of humanity that was now pouring down the hill.
Behind her, she heard someone scream. It was a thin, reedy sound and she turned to look. One of her fledglings had the preacher by his throat. The thin man’s legs beat out a steady rhythm against the hard-packed earth as the young vampire drank deeply.
“The sun, Dru. Keep a-going. Daylight, as they say, is burnin’.”
The earth groaned, and emitted another prolonged shudder. Two humans were blocking her way; she shoved them to the ground and rounded the corner, seeing, at long last, the entrance to the Sunnydale Mine.
On the far side of the mine entrance she could see a river of a different sort; the Chinese men were fleeing toward the fields. The earth shook, even harder this time, knocking Dru to the ground. She watched a large boulder bounce down the hill and smash through a fence. Its splinters flew past her face.
She climbed to her feet and dashed inside the mine entrance just as the sun’s rays began to spill across the fields.
“Further, darlin’. Go on now. I won’t leave you.”
She scrambled backwards into the tunnel just as the ground gave the largest jolt yet. As the earthen tunnels collapsed around her, she couldn’t help but wonder what had gone wrong? What kind of thing had the power to undo all their carefully laid plans?
Then the walls fell in on her and all went dark.
~*~
Sunnydale High School, 1997
A small historical marker sits just to the left of the main entrance.
This is the site of the former Sunnydale Silver Mine, which was operational from 1872-1878. After the close of the mine, the area became known as Sunnydale’s Chinatown. The area was destroyed by an earthquake on August 25, 1880. Since there was a prolonged amount of seismic activity prior to the collapse of the tunnel system, there were only four recorded deaths.
Folklore quickly spread regarding the event. Chinatown witnesses told of being saved by a man and woman, who were called the great ‘ying xiongs’ – the Chinese word for ‘hero.’ Local legend told that by stepping through Heaven’s Gate, they moved the sun in the sky, turned monsters to dust and caused the ground to swallow up the evil surrounding the mine.
Chinatown was destroyed in the event and in 1978 ground was broken on Sunnydale High School.
“That’s weird,” the petite blonde mumbled. “Don’t remember seeing this here before.”
Then the bell rang and she dashed off, late for class again. She forgot about the marker entirely before she even reached the door.
---------
Final author’s note:
You may be asking ‘what happened to William and Buffy?’ I don’t blame you – it’s a good question and I’ll get to it in a sec.
This was a story about journeys – and not just the ones they took over sea and land. It was about the journey our girl took from Elizabeth to Buffy to Slayer. It was about William’s continuing journey into being the man that he’d hidden away for most of his life. It was also about the journey they took as a couple – seeing that a fully human William could be the perfect partner for a slayer. (It was even about Dru’s path and seeing that with a nurturing lover, like Billy, her madness took a different turn than it would have under a monster like Angelus or Warren.) And at long last, it was about the journey our couple took back to where they began. Because Buffy and William have always been heroes at their core, willing to sacrifice their lives for others.
Those journeys and this tale are done.
Where did they end up? I honestly don't know. It could be anywhere, really. But my guess is that they’ve ended up sometime in the 1990s, right back in Sunnydale. That scar on William’s eyebrow make him the spitting image of Spike, which provides for lots of interesting opportunities. And that worrisome cough he’s developed over the last half dozen chapters – well, if it means what I think it does, he’d need some modern medicine to set him right. The Powers That Be can’t be douche bags all the time, can they? They might even be doing our couple a favor.
That tale isn’t one I can tell right now. I don’t have a story for it, frankly. If I ever do one day, I’ll be back. In the meanwhile, I’m going to spend some time reworking “Yours” and possibly even work on a few Billy the Kid tales that won’t leave my head. I can’t really post those on a Spuffy forum tho! When I do have another Spuffy tale, I’ll be back.
In the meantime, thanks for everything and I hope to see you soon.