A Little Buffy Backstory
Most people who have read my fiction are Buffy fans who know canon better than I do, usually. But some of my friends haven't seen Buffy before (those heathens!) or are less familiar with the history. So I wrote this little background for them to brief them on what they should know to follow my story. The sum total of people who know me and have read this is three. That's why I write under a pseudonym. But I have been coerced into sharing with a few others, so I decided to post this explanation of Buffy to help them out a little. If it helps out anyone else who happened to miss some episodes, then so much the better. -----------------
for You Newbies
Anyway, here is a brief synopsis of Buffy lore, so you can follow my story:The Characters
Buffy is the Vampire Slayer. There is only one at a time, and when she dies, the next is 'activated.' She died for a few minutes when she was 16 and activated her replacement, Kendra, who later died and activated her replacement, Faith, who turned evil and is now in jail. It's up in the air whether Buffy dying a second time would activate a new slayer. The Slayer heals quickly and is stronger and faster than vampires who are stronger and faster than people. Vampires can be killed by a stake through the heart, beheading, fire, or sunlight. Crosses or holy water will burn. They make a vampire by draining the person's blood, then having that person drink their blood. The person actually dies, their soul leaves the body, and now a demon exists in the body with all of that person's memories and experiences. But not that person, just a demon. When they're killed, they turn to dust. They usually look human, but when they turn into a vampire, their forehead gets bumpy and their eyes turn yellow. They can't enter a person's home unless they're invited. If they tried to walk through the door, it would be like an invisible barrier. Giles is the Watcher. Slayers have Watchers, who are sent from the Watcher's Council in London. As far as we've seen, all watchers are British. Watchers do the research, tell the slayers how to kill their opponents, help train them, etc... Like slayers, becoming a watcher is more a matter of destiny than choice. It is passed down through families, and they are trained from a young age. Giles had a dark past when he rebelled against his destiny as a watcher. He was quite the youthful offender and became involved in dark magic that got several people killed. Ethan Rayne was part of this group, but his friendship with Ripper, as Giles was called in his delinquent youth, fell apart about "the same time you started to worship chaos," Giles told him. After their friend Randall died during an Eyghon summoning party, Giles snapped back to the straight and narrow path his family had chosen for him, but Ethan moved in the other direction. Ethan showed up on occasion to shake things up for his old friend: turning the town into their Halloween costumes, spiking the high school's band candy, and turning Giles into a demon. Buffy loved Angel, who was a vampire with a soul, but with a catch. If he has a moment of happiness, he loses his soul. They had sex, guess what? He lost his soul and reverted to Angelus, the evil vampire he was before the gypsy curse. Angelus killed Giles' girlfriend Jenny and tortured him brutally for hours. Angel got his soul back and spent a brief sabbatical in hell before coming home. But he and Buffy could never be happy together, so he left for his own show. Buffy had a one-night stand with Parker, who never called her after they slept together. Then she got a new boy, Riley, who was part of a government monster hunting squad, the Initiative. She always held him at arm's length, so he fell in with a vampire 'brothel' and got addicted to vampire bites. He left to Central America with his soldier friends, and Buffy got to the helipad too late to stop him. On Buffy's 18th birthday, the Watcher's Council had a test, where they took her powers and forced her to face a vampire as a mortal. The head of the Council, Quentin Travers set up the test and warned Giles not to interfere. In fact, poor Giles was forced to betray his slayer and actually give her the injections that temporarily stole her powers. She passed the test, but Giles was fired because he loved her and helped her when it wasn't allowed. Buffy got a new watcher, Wesley, who she fired, and he went off to Angel's show. Giles only recently was reinstated as Buffy's official Watcher, when she made that a condition of helping the Council defeat Glory. Now he owns a magic shop, with a training room in the back for Buffy. Cordelia also moved to Angel's show. She used to date Xander, but after they all graduated high school, she moved to LA and works with Angel. Angel's old assistant, Doyle, got visions of people in trouble. Before he died, he kissed Cordelia and now she gets the visions. The whole LA gang was off in a separate dimension for the last few weeks of their season, so they missed Buffy's big crisis and death. Xander is one of her best friends and works as a construction worker. Anya is his girlfriend, who he proposed to in the finale. She's an ex-vengeance demon. She granted wishes to scorned women for a thousand years, but then lost her powers and became mortal. She works at the store with Giles. Willow is also one of Buffy's best friends. She's a powerful witch. She used to date Oz, a werewolf, but is no longer "driving stick" as Faith phrased it. Tara is Willow's girlfriend, also a witch. Hank is Buffy's father, who we've seen like twice. Mostly we just see the flowers he sends her when he stands her up for birthdays or visits. He's off in Spain and couldn't even be found after their mother died. Oh, by the way, Buffy's mom Joyce just died a couple months back. Spike is a bleached blond vampire who smokes. He was evil in the beginning of the show. At some point in time, the government monster hunters put a chip in his head, so he can't hurt anyone. Now he gets his blood from the blood bank and has slowly become good. At some point in time, he fell in love with Buffy, but it's not requited. He's also British. Dawn is Buffy's sister, but not really. Here's where it gets tricky. Dawn is the Key, living energy. The monks that were protecting her were about to be slaughtered, but before the bad guy got in the fortress, they cast a spell. They wanted to send the Slayer the Key and make sure that she would protect it with her life. So they transformed the Key into a living person, the Slayer's sister, and inserted her into their lives. Everybody has false memories of Dawn's whole life, including Dawn, who just thought she was Buffy's normal kid sister. Eventually, one by one, they each found out that Dawn was the Key, including Dawn. She has only been in their lives for six months, and all their memories before that are fake. But it doesn't change the fact that she still feels like Buffy's sister and everyone still remembers her that way. -----------------
Anyway, on to where my story begins:The Plot
There was a god, Glory, who was after the Key so she could open the gates of Hell and go home. Of course, Buffy is no match for a god. Thankfully, Glory has a weakness: she had been banished from hell by two other gods and forced inside a mortal prison. So there's this doctor, Ben, who is just a normal human, but has this god trapped inside him. So they morph back and forth like split personalities, but no one who sees this presto-chango can remember it until the very end when the spell dies. So the god can only be killed by killing the man she's trapped in. So Glory figures out who the Key is and is coming to collect. Buffy's no match for her, as we've said, so everyone piles in an RV to get out of town, pronto. Unfortunately, there's a whole army of human Knights who are also after the Key, so they can destroy it (kill Dawn) before Glory can get to it. They attack the RV. Big battle. Buffy wins. Everything seems fine. Until one of the Knights rides up to the front of the RV and drives a spear right through the windshield and right through Giles, about mid-to-lower left abdomen. He's understandably in a lot of pain and loses control of the RV, crashing. Through the course of that episode, the viewers are led to believe that his wound is near fatal. If he doesn't get medical help, he's going to die. This is the moment where my story begins. They're pulling him out of the RV. I'll fill in a little more. Since my story assumes the reader has seen all the episodes, my story only fills in the parts the show left out. So here are the events over the last three episodes of fifth season, which I left out of my story. They get to an abandoned gas station, with the Knights hot on their heels. Giles is pretty much unconscious for most of the rest of the episode, although there is a sweet scene between him and Buffy for which I filled in the subtext, but the dialogue is straight from the show. Anyway, he's unconscious, which is where I made up the torture delirium. What's going on while he's unconscious: the Knights attack. Willow casts a spell, making a barrier no one can pass through in either direction. The knights camp out, trying to bring it down and get inside. Buffy finds out what the Key, her sister, will do if Glory gets to use it. The Key opens the portals between all dimensions, allowing all manner of hell to escape into Earth. Basically total annihilation. Typical day at the office for the Slayer. She also finds out about the mortal prison thing: kill the man and you kill the god. But no one except us viewers knows who the man is. So Giles is dying. He and Buffy have their sweet scene, in which he basically says his goodbyes and looses consciousness again. Buffy decides she can't let him die. She gets the knights to agree to let her bring a doctor in for him. Rules of war and all that. So she calls Ben, who happens to not just have a god inside him, but is also the only doctor Buffy can think to ask for help. He stabilizes Giles, but wouldn't you know it? He morphs into Glory. Glory takes Dawn, busts through Willow's barrier, and kills the hundreds of Knights outside in minutes. Buffy breaks. Her mom just died, her sister's stolen. She goes comatose. Anyway, my story follows what happens to Giles after they leave the gas station; whereas the show focuses on Willow getting inside Buffy's head through a spell to snap her out of her coma. Buffy comes out of it, joins everyone at the magic shop. Giles has new information and tells her that the way Glory will use the Key is by bleeding Dawn. They have a big fight about it, but of course none of this is in my story, because it was in the show. Turns out that the ritual must be performed at a specific time and place, after that it won't work. Dawn's blood will open all the gates across dimensions and the gates will stay open until her blood stops flowing, i.e. until she's dead. The faster she dies, the faster the gates close, and the less hell comes into our world. Buffy won't consider killing her sister. If they can't stop the ritual in time, then they all die, "and I'll kill anyone who comes near Dawn," she says. The ritual is at a construction site, and they almost manage to stop the bleeding before it starts. Spike had a sexbot of Buffy (the Buffybot) from an earlier episode, because he's in love with her. They dress the robot up to fight Glory. They also had a god's troll hammer, and Buffy beats up on her for a while with the weapon of a god. Xander runs a wrecking ball through her. Eventually she morphs back into Ben, and Buffy can't kill him. So after she leaves, Giles does. Buffy gets to the top of the platform, maybe 10 or 20 stories up. But she's too late. Dawn is already bleeding, and the gates open. There are cool effects with cracks opening in the ground and sky, like a dragon flying by and demons and bolts of lightening and stuff. Dawn knows she has to jump into the gate and close it with her death, but Buffy stops her. Then she realizes that she and Dawn have the same blood. They're sisters. Buffy's blood will close the gates, too. So she makes this beautiful speech to her sister, then turns and takes a running swan dive off the platform, through the gate, and onto the ground. Dead. My story picks up again as everyone approaches her dead body, devastated. Anya is hurt and being carried by Xander, having pushed him out of the way of falling debris. Tara had been insane for a few episodes, after Glory sucked out the essence of her brain. But Willow did a spell to undo it. So Willow and Tara are holding onto each other. Spike is cowering in the shadows, trying to avoid the sunlight, and sobbing over Buffy's death. Dawn comes down the steps, safe. And they all gather around Buffy's body. Giles is standing alone and is the only one to actually walk up to her. The finale ends with a shot of her grave, headstone (cheesy text), and it looks like it has been there a while, with the grass over it and all. Anyway, my story continues on from Buffy's death, in an attempt to fix everything. So everything after her swan dive off the platform is what I made up. I hope it may be a bit easier to understand now. There are a lot of quotes and references to past episodes littered throughout the whole thing, so some of it you non-Buffy fans may not get, but I think for the most part the little background I gave you should be sufficient.Back Home DBC Home Death Brings Clarity - Chapter 1