Two months had passed since she first arrived at Council Headquarters and life here had been surprisingly simple. A part of her understood now why the Council didn’t want their slayers to have families or any life outside of slaying, it complicated things. Life here was not complicated, each day was the same: wake, train, lift, study, patrol, sleep, and dream.

She was good at it all too. She enjoyed the training and the lifting, and found a propensity for studying and researching that she had never had before as either Buffy or Eleanor. It was like she had been built for this life, for slaying. She even enjoyed it.

Currently, she was in the training room with Wesley.

“Stop dropping your shoulder!” he yelled, frustrated at having to say the same thing over and over, but she just smiled. She was having fun. Buffy had always treated training like a chore, but since her only concern in the world was training and getting stronger, it was where she found enjoyment.

Her muscles had atrophied during her coma but her strength had come back and then some. Buffy had been appalled when Faith talked how she enjoyed slaying. Buffy hadn’t understood it, but she did. She wanted to be good at this, to be strong. It was all she had.

Nothing made sense, and her only sense of identity was slaying. She had no idea if she was Eleanor, or Buffy, but she knew she was the slayer.

“Excellent,” Wesley said after they finished, “You’ve made amazing progress in such a short time, if I didn’t know better I would have thought you had been training for years.”

Eleanor turned away, trying to keep her smile from showing, “I did take years of ballet. Maybe it’s something left over from that? Discipline, training and all that rot.” The last bit she said in a terrible British accent.

“You never mentioned the ballet before,” he said and tossed a towel at her.

She mopped her face then looped the towel around her neck, “I was really good. I was with a company in Philadelphia. I went on all sorts of trips across the US. It’s what I wanted to do with my life. My mom was a professional ballet dancer before she had me.” It felt weird, talking about Eleanor’s life as though it were her own.

“And now? Do you still want to dance?”

“Slayers don’t have lives and they don’t live very long,” she said coldly, all joy at the memory had drained right out of her. His question made her angry, even if ballet was still her passion, would the Council let her pursue it? No. So why had he even bothered asking?

“So, we going out patrolling tonight?”

Wesley didn’t answer right away, so she turned to look at him. His face was blank, guarded.

Finally, he said, “Early patrol, then we need to try a new meditation technique.”

Cruciamentum then, was it getting close to her birthday already?

*

Wesley made his way to Giles office where the man was waiting. He enter and closed the door behind him, “So, what did you think?”

He had asked Giles to watch their training session this afternoon.

“Her progress is astounding. She has excellent form overall, except she kept dropping her shoulder. Buffy did that all the time. I never did get her to stop. In fact, her style is very reminiscent of Buffy’s…” Giles trailed off at the thought of his slayer.

“Have you managed to dig up anything else on Eleanor? Not sure if it’ll help, but it sounds like she may have danced ballet professionally. She mentioned traveling the states performing.”

“I haven’t found much. I must say, it’s almost as if the Powers just dropped her into that hospital. I found some evidence that her father is alive, but you were correct, the trail of the trust ends with the lawyers. Eleanor’s birth certificate just lists her mother, and her mother was unmarried. It’s like her father didn’t want to have any ties to her.”

“Should we be worried?”

“I’m not sure yet. I don’t see anything malicious in her, but her circumstances… Do you trust her?”

“She’s keeping secrets, but she’s a teenage girl, that’s what they do.”

*

Wesley had gone with Eleanor on patrol in one of the newer graveyards in the city. When they first started going out, he had taken them to the older cemeteries where there were far fewer fresh burials to rise as vampires. There his new slayer hadn’t run into as much trouble, but she had proved herself time and time again so they had moved into more difficult areas.

Eleanor was currently sitting on top of a headstone, swinging her legs back and forth while she watched two new graves.

“Vampires do not rise from every grave,” he told her. To be honest, he was a little bored with waiting and the… disgusting task he had for them later was weighing heavily.

“Trust me, they’re both going to rise.”

“You cannot possibly know that.”

She smiled, and pulled a second stake from her waistband so that she had one in each hand. Several moments passed and she hopped down.

“Eleanor, we really should be-” Wesley stopped as hands began to push through the dirt. Eleanor looked back and him and winked.

The vampire on the left was out of the grave first and Eleanor had dusted him before the second one was even clear of the earth. She twirled and took the second one down with a well-placed kick. The creature stumbled back and she was on him in an instant, thrusting the stake into his chest.

She took both of them out with the ease and practice of someone who has done this before, Wesley thought to himself. He had seen her stake vampires before, of course, but two at once, without a grain of nervousness?

In the hospital she made some comment about not even death would release her from her destiny… could she be a slayer, returned? Brought back from the grave? The thought felt perfect, and the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Her knowledge, her skills, her acceptance of her destiny. A reincarnated slayer.

Wesley looked up to see that Eleanor had continued down the path and was tussling with another fledgling. For a moment he thought this one might be giving her some trouble, but then he realized, she’s just playing with him.

*

The walk back to headquarters was quiet. Wesley was normally chatty, asking all sorts of questions, but this time, he left her to her thoughts.

The slaying, the killing, she felt real during the nights. The training had charged her, but this, she smiled, this was good. Not that tonight had been a challenge, but it was better than going an entire night and only facing one fledgling.

Is this why the Powers brought me back? A tool to kill. A tool to the Council. Perhaps even a tool to Wesley.

I wish I mattered because of who I am, not what I am. But who am I? Am I Buffy, or am I her memories? Does  having Buffy’s memories, make me Buffy? Do I have Buffy’s soul, or Eleanor’s? I don’t feel like Eleanor, but is that because of some kind of slayer magic? All Buffy’s memories downloaded into Eleanor? I wish I could ask Willow for help, or Tara, or Giles…

Although she hadn’t seen him, she knew Giles was back with the Watcher’s Council, and she knew he had an office somewhere in the building. She could seek him and out talk to him. She glanced over at Wesley. She wished she could talk to him, but he didn’t know Buffy like Giles did.

*

When they reached headquarters, Wesley followed Eleanor up to section of the training room where tables were set up for research. He sat the crystal in front of Eleanor for the meditation. The poisoning.

“You did a good job tonight, Eleanor. I’m proud of you. You have made remarkable progress and you’ve taken everything in surprisingly well.”

She shrugged, “This is all I have, being the slayer, I might as well be the best I can be.”

“You won’t always live here. Once you’re training is complete we’ll be sent somewhere and maybe… you mentioned ballet… perhaps you could…”

Eleanor put a hand on Wesley’s arm, “That’s sweet of you to say, but neither of us believe that there will be anything in my life aside from slaying.”

Wesley put his hand on hers, “Eleanor…”

She shook her head, “Just tell me what this meditation technique is.”

*

Wesley felt sick as he made his way to Giles. He stopped in the hallway, sure he was about to be ill. His body shook and he sank down to the floor. He felt as though he was betraying his slayer, and he was so sure that she knew what he was going to do and she was letting him. That made it even worse. And her voice… the sound of her voice when she said that slaying was all it would be. The guilt he felt now was unbearable. He was disgusted with himself.

He let himself cry. But was he crying for himself? Or Eleanor? Or Sarah? What would she think of him now?

It was a hard cry, but short lived. Wesley was thankful it was late and that there was no one around to witness his breakdown. He removed a handkerchief from his jacket and cleaned himself up. It was time to talk to Giles.

*

Although the majority of the building was dark and quiet, Giles’ office was still aglow at the end of the hall. Giles was reading when Wesley entered, his head down in a book.

“How did-” he stopped when he looked up and saw his colleague's face, “What happened?”

“Cruciamentum.”

Giles nodded, “You’re in a precarious situation right now. I don’t agree with the practice but Travers does seem to like this slayer more than… others, so I do not believe that-”

“I think Eleanor is a slayer reincarnated,” Wesley said, cutting him off.

“What?”

Wesley began to tick off his reasons on his fingers, “She accepted that she was the slayer without question. She is entirely too good, too talented. She knew exactly where two vampires would rise tonight- that kind of skill takes years to hone. She is unconcerned about anything outside of slaying. And… in the hospital she made some comment that dying wouldn’t release her from her destiny. She has to be a previous slayer reincarnated.”

Giles nodded, “The idea has merit, and would explain a lot, but why? To what end? Why would the Powers bring back a previous slayer instead of calling a new one? And if she is a previous slayer, which one?”

“I wonder if there is a prophecy about some circumstance like this. Maybe a strong slayer was brought back to stop something big?”

“Have you asked Eleanor about any of this?”

“No. I think she likes me well enough, but she seems so disconnected, I just don’t know how she’d respond to this kind of questioning.”

“Well, we can start looking into possible prophesies to see if we can figure out who Eleanor is,” Giles said, then asked, “Do you think Eleanor knows something is amiss? If she is… someone else, would she have reason to think you know?”

“I don’t think so, but I don’t know. She rarely opens up to me, and ever when she does she shuts down afterwards.”

“Let’s see what we dig up, but we may, in fact, need to ask her. She might be as confused as we are.”