It was a beautiful day and I enjoyed watching the sun rise above the field of buttercups in the distance. I smiled. Buttercups were Buffy's favorite flower as a child. They waved sinuously in the soft, warm breeze and the sound of children playing reached my ears.

When it happened, I knew. I felt a sense of great loss, of sadness in the pit of my stomach and I folded in on myself, as tears welled in my eyes...
My brave, darling baby...

I'd had such dreams for her, my beautiful girl. Since before she was born, when she had yet to move within me, I had planned a wonderful life for her. A life full of beauty and love and more happiness than any one child could bear. Her father and I, in the days before the Failure, would sit up until the earliest hours of the morning, making plans and eating the foods I was craving even that early in my pregnancy. Chicken tamales and pistachio pudding. I smiled, remembering the long-ago taste, alternately spicy and sweet on my tongue.

Hank wanted her to be a ballerina or a princess, girlish dreams for a pretty child. I wanted a doctor or a lawyer, an occupation that would prove she was the smartest of them all. What we got was so much different...

I peered off in the distance and I could see her, still in the teddy bear blanket the nurses wrapped her in before laying her in my arms. So tiny in the arms of an ethereal presence whose features were lost to me. They were still so very far away, deep in the field of buttercups, so I had time to reminisce...

The reality of a new baby was vastly different than the treasured dreams Hank and I had shared. Little Buffy Anne, so sweet and drowsy in the hospital, so compliant with the doting nurses, proved to be a handful beyond my wildest imaginings. Within days, she developed a set of lungs that would have done an opera singer proud. And she thought nothing at all of using them 24 hours a day. Hank, despite his frustration, laughed one day and said that perhaps we should donate her to the local fire department for a siren.

Deep in exhaustion, I found his comment...less than amusing. I held her, I rocked her, I sang to her, anything to make my newborn rest easy. It wasn't until her fifth week of life that Buffy and I stumbled upon a trick...or rather, a miracle...

She had been crying all day. Miserable and hot, she had sweat and pooped her way through four little bodysuits until I finally gave up and left her in just a diaper. I was hot too, and I begged Hank to watch her for just a while so I could take a bath. At the end of his own tether, he slammed out of the house and left me with an hysterical child I felt I could do nothing with.

Choking back sobs, I put Buffy in her carrier and brought her in the bathroom with me. She hiccupped in between bouts of crying and I was crying just as hard, if only slightly less loudly. I filled the tub with cool water and vanilla-scented bath oil and lit a few candles. As I stripped out of my shorts and tee-shirt, I looked down at my infant.

She looked so utterly miserable, I took such pity on her. Gently lifting her out of the carrier, I stripped her still-clean diaper off and, holding her close to my heart, stepped into the tub.

I shivered in delight as the cool water enveloped me. After the surprisingly steamy winter we'd been having, I felt like I'd been perpetually covered in sweat. Buffy lay against my chest, her tiny bald head cuddled against my neck.

As I settled back in the tub, she rooted for my breast and I let her have it. With my loose hand, I scooped up the scented water and let it trickle over her back and stomach. She raised red-rimmed eyes to me and for a moment, stilled her suckling. Our eyes met and in an instant, our bond solidified. She slowly resumed feeding and I carefully smoothed her tiny body with the cooling, vanilla-scented water. We spent over an hour in that tub, with not a single peep from Buffy aside from the rhythmic grunting of her nursing.

From that day forward, she became a model child, everything a parent could desire. Sweet and loving, she was the center of our universe.

A cool breeze lifted my hair off of my neck and on it, I could smell the salty scent of the ocean. I looked for my child and smiled when I caught sight of her, skipping joyously through flowers almost as tall as she was. Long silky hair as pale as platinum streamed out behind her and she whirled for her escort, a tiny ballerina pirouetting on tippy-toe. She wore a lilac flowered dress that I remembered well...

"Mommy! Look!" A childish giggle, loud and boisterous, caught the attention of the other restaurant customers. They smiled, as enchanted as I was by the beautiful little girl posing on her toes. She twirled, her lilac-colored sundress spinning out in a perfect bell shape, giving me a glimpse of her daisy-printed cotton panties.

"Buffy Anne, sit down and finish your lunch. It's getting cold." I nudged her seat, hoping that my five-year-old would get the hint. I had a brief flash of dismay as I thought of Hank's earlier displeasure. Oh, I had no doubts that he adored his daughter, but he hadn't a fraction of the patience I had for my little princess. And, she could be so bubbly...

I clapped my hands. "Beautiful, Buffy! You're the best ballerina of all. Now, let's finish lunch so we can go down to the beach."

We were on vacation. Myrtle Beach. We really couldn't afford it, but it was part business for Hank and he was so ambitious. He really wanted that promotion and when the partners' requested a vacation with family, he didn't dare refuse.

Of course, he hadn't counted on Buffy being...no, insisting on being the center of attention.

We had our first real fight about her the night before. Thankfully, we were in a nice hotel with good soundproofing, because he didn't hesitate to raise his voice. Or maybe the partners and their fashionable wives were too polite to mention overhearing a domestic dispute.

We tried never to fight in front of Buffy and we always kept it civil, but Hank was furious, embarrassed over what he perceived as my lack of control over our child. We argued heatedly into the night and once, I caught Buffy's expression in the mirror and I swore, never again. I never wanted to see that look of confusion and terror on her face again...even if I had to die to protect her.

She and I kept our distance from the rest of the party for the remainder of the trip. Buffy and I understood each other...we had a connection that Hank and I, and she and her father, did not have.

We were soulmates.

Time moved so rapidly. Before I knew it, a young teenaged Buffy was stepping out of the field of buttercups, still softly rounded with baby fat and waist-length curls spilling over her bare shoulders. She was still too far away for me to see her expression, but the sudden chill sweeping the garden told me what moment in Buffy's life I was reliving...

"She did what?"

Hank's voice betrayed his shock and disbelief. I stood just inside the living room door and peered out at the two police officers standing in the foyer. One of them, a young woman, glanced at me, then at my hands. I looked down and found that I was still holding a plate of biscuits for dinner. I set them down and walked out to join my husband as our world thundered down around us.

"Buffy's a good girl. She would never do anything like what you're suggesting." Hank was so angry, his ears were turning purple. He may have been defending her then, but given Buffy's behavior in the past few months, I could tell he didn't believe his own words.

"Mr. Summers, if we could just talk to Buffy, we could get this cleared up. Arson is a serious accusation and for her school to be making these allegations against her...well, we have to check them out."

"Arson? But, it's an old school...couldn't it have been the wiring? Or something?" I asked, pleading with the female officer, hoping she too had a young daughter for whom she would lay down her life.

"That's what we want to find out, Mrs. Summers. Please let us talk to Buffy."

Hank was shaking his head, his fists clenched at his side. "No, this is absurd. I'm not letting you anywhere near my daughter!"

"We can get a court order, sir..."

"Daddy?"

We turned as one body to see Buffy standing in the hallway. She had approached so silently I was shocked. Normally, she clomped around in her trendy platforms, easily heard throughout the entire house.

She had tears in her eyes, magnifying their color until they looked like emeralds. "I'm sorry...Mommy, I'm so sorry!"

Her little chin quivered and my heart broke for her. Gathering my now-sobbing child to my breast, I soothed her with meaningless words.

"It's going to be alright."

"Don't worry, honey, nothing is going to happen to you."

"I won't let them take you from me. Never!"

The officers of the LAPD let us bring her down to the station ourselves, as opposed to putting her in the back of a car that had carried criminals. And, my daughter wasn't a criminal. She was just young, scared, growing up in world that had led her astray.

Fortunately, Hemery High School chose not to press charges, since the fire that had destroyed the gymnasium did appear to be accidental and taking into account, I'm sure, Buffy's once-glowing progress. I brought Buffy home and Hank packed his bags and left that very night. The next day, he served me with divorce papers.

I never even cried. Not once. I'd seen this coming, in retrospect, since the day we brought Buffy home from the hospital, red-faced and squalling. Buffy locked herself in her room and sobbed for days, her heart breaking into a million razor-sharp pieces for the father that she felt had betrayed her love.

I didn't cry, but I certainly hated my husband for the briefest of moments. How dare he derail all the plans we'd made? How dare he destroy our daughter's trust?

She was so close now, I could've almost reached out for her. But this is where I need to wait, so I will.

Images were coming faster now, almost too fast to process. She was growing up before my very eyes. The events of our years in Sunnydale raced through my mind and I now could see them all for what they really were. My daughter's destined war against the forces of Evil. Her death at the hands of a vampire master. Her mental torture by the monster she loved. Their love, as well, forever frozen in a moment of stolen purity. Xander. Willow. Giles. A cast of hundreds spanning almost five years of my baby's life. A life full of unspeakable pain and staggering love. She'd lived it all and became a woman of grace and compassion for it. Or in spite of it, perhaps.

I watched as she held Dawn in her hands, hearing her goodbyes to the young woman who became her blood at the whim of some well-meaning monks.

I watched as she turned, the force of the Portal whipping long strands of golden hair across her face, obscuring her final thoughts from my gaze.

I watched as she fell willingly into the Portal, her slender body lashed by otherdimensional force, sacrificing her life in exchange for another day of life for the young girl watching in horror.

I watched as her soulless shell plummeted through empty space, to rest on a pyre of bricks and mortar, her friends, including a vampire who had pledged his love to her, looking on with poignant grief.

Turning away from that final, horrible scene, I stood up to meet my daughter.

"Mommy!"

I held out my arms and gathered her close to me, burying my face in her silky hair, marveling at how such a tiny being had grown up into such a beautiful woman. We clung together, our bond forging strong once more, after endless months apart.

"My Buffy...oh, how I've missed you," I cried softly as I held her close.

She took my hand, such a familiarity, and we turned together to look at my garden alcove. In place of the bench on which I had been sitting, a dark marble grave marker stood in its place. The last monument to a hero. My daughter, the vampire slayer.

Buffy smiled at me through her tears. I laughed then, as joy once more filled my heart.

"Oh, Buffy, I have so much to tell you..."

 

The End

 

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