Chapter 1: The Thread That Unravels Everything
The Summers house sat quiet on this Tuesday evening, wrapped in the kind of peaceful suburban silence that made you forget Sunnydale perched on the mouth of Hell. Joyce hummed softly while sorting laundry in the kitchen, thinking her biggest concern was whether Buffy remembered to separate colors from whites. The melody drifted through rooms that smelled of lavender fabric softener and the lingering traces of dinner—chicken parmesan, Buffy's favorite, though her daughter had barely touched it before rushing out with vague excuses about studying at Willow's.
"Always studying at Willow's," Joyce mused, shaking out a wrinkled blouse. "When did my social butterfly become such a scholar?"
The washing machine hummed its familiar rhythm, a domestic symphony that usually soothed her. Tonight, though, something felt different. Maybe it was the way Buffy had avoided eye contact during dinner, or how she'd jumped when the phone rang. Joyce had learned to read her daughter's moods like gallery patrons read price tags—carefully, looking for tells that revealed true interest beneath polished surfaces.
She reached for Buffy's laundry bag, the canvas worn soft from months of use. Her fingers closed around something unexpected—hard edges wrapped in terry cloth. Joyce frowned, peeling back the towel to reveal smooth wood carved to a lethal point.
A stake. An actual, honest-to-God wooden stake.
Her breath caught. The piece felt solid in her palm, weighted with purpose. This wasn't some art project or drama prop. The tip gleamed sharp enough to pierce flesh, the grip worn smooth by repeated handling. Someone had crafted this weapon with deadly intent, and somehow it belonged to her sixteen-year-old daughter.
"There has to be an explanation." Joyce set the stake on the counter with trembling fingers. "Halloween costume maybe? Some sort of role-playing game?"
But her hands continued their archaeological dig through fabric, unearthing more impossible artifacts. Silver crosses on thin chains, their surfaces polished bright. Small glass bottles filled with clear liquid, each labeled in Buffy's careful handwriting: "Holy Water - St. Mary's - Blessed 10/15." A leather pouch containing dried herbs that smelled of sage and something sharper, more medicinal.
"What is this?" Joyce's voice cracked in the empty kitchen. "What is my baby involved in?"
At the bottom of the bag, her fingers found leather binding. She pulled out a journal, its cover dark brown and worn, fastened with a simple brass clasp. The first page made her knees buckle:
SLAYER JOURNAL - SUNNYDALE YEAR ONE - THE MASTER IS RISING
The words swam before her eyes. Below them, in Buffy's familiar script:
October 3rd - Patrol Route 7, Restfield Cemetery. Three fledglings near the Whitmore mausoleum. All dusted. Note: They're getting bolder, hunting closer to residential areas. Giles thinks they're testing our defenses.
October 5th - Close call at the Bronze. Vampire in the crowd, nearly fed before I could intervene. Nobody noticed the dust settling on the dance floor. Sometimes I wonder if we're fighting a war nobody knows is happening.
Joyce sank into a kitchen chair, the journal clutched against her chest. Her daughter's handwriting continued for pages—clinical descriptions of "patrol routes" and "vampire physiology," sketches of cemetery layouts, detailed accounts of something called "Slayer strength" and references to weapons training with someone named Giles.
"This is insane." The thought hammered against her skull. "Vampires aren't real. Monsters aren't real. This has to be some elaborate fantasy, some cry for help I've been too blind to see."
But the evidence spread across her kitchen table told a different story. These weren't the scattered notes of teenage fiction writing or the props of harmless games. They were the meticulous records of someone who lived a double life, someone who hunted in darkness while her mother slept peacefully upstairs.
Joyce's hands shook as she turned pages, reading accounts of battles fought in Sunnydale's shadows. Her daughter described combat with creatures that had "game faces" and "enhanced strength," detailed the proper technique for "staking" and the best ways to "decapitate" threats that wouldn't stay dead. Each entry was dated, organized, professional in its precision.
"My daughter is either losing her mind," Joyce thought, "or she's been fighting monsters every night while I worried about her grades and whether she's eating enough vegetables."
She glanced at the kitchen clock: 11:47 PM. Where was Buffy now? Out with these weapons, facing whatever horrors filled these pages? Joyce grabbed her cell phone, dialing Buffy's pager number with fumbling fingers.
The device beeped its confirmation, but no response came. The seconds stretched into minutes, each one adding weight to the fear growing in Joyce's chest. She gathered the evidence—stakes, crosses, holy water, the damning journal—and carried them to the living room.
The darkness felt different now, pregnant with threats she'd never imagined. Every shadow could hide the monsters Buffy wrote about, every sound could herald something hunting her family. Joyce arranged the weapons on the coffee table with shaking hands, creating a display that looked like preparation for war.
She settled into her armchair, still wearing the yellow sweater she'd put on this morning when her biggest concern was a difficult client who wanted to return a sculpture. That life felt impossibly distant now, separated from this moment by the discovery that had rewritten everything she thought she knew about her daughter.
The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight. Then 12:30. 1:00 AM.
"Where are you, baby?" Joyce gripped a wooden stake in one hand and the journal in the other, weapons against truths she couldn't accept and fears she couldn't deny. "What kind of danger are you in while I sit here safe in our living room?"
Every creak of the settling house made her flinch. Was that Buffy coming home, or something worse? The rational part of her mind insisted this was elaborate teenage rebellion, some goth phase taken too far. But the mother in her, the part that had sensed changes in Buffy's behavior for months, whispered that everything in these pages might be exactly what it appeared.
The clock struck 1:00 AM, then 1:30. Joyce's coffee had gone cold hours ago, but she couldn't move from her vigil. Outside, Sunnydale slept peacefully, unaware that someone's daughter was apparently all that stood between them and an ancient evil called "The Master."
"This can't be real." But the stake in her hand felt solid, purposeful. The journal entries were too detailed, too consistent to be fantasy. And buried beneath her denial, a terrible recognition was growing—all those unexplained injuries, the late nights, the changes in Buffy's personality over the past months. The pieces were falling into place to form a picture Joyce had never wanted to see.
At 2:47 AM, she heard the front door's lock turn.
Joyce's heart hammered as footsteps crossed the foyer. Slow, careful steps that spoke of exhaustion and pain. She didn't turn on the lamp, didn't move from her chair. When Buffy appeared in the living room doorway, backlit by the porch light, Joyce saw her daughter clearly for the first time in months.
Buffy's leather jacket hung torn at the shoulder. A bruise was darkening along her left cheekbone, and she moved with the careful gait of someone nursing injuries. Her blonde hair was disheveled, streaked with something that might have been dust or ash. This wasn't the teenage girl who'd left for "study group" six hours ago.
This was a warrior coming home from battle.
Buffy froze when she saw her mother sitting in the darkness, her eyes dropping immediately to the coffee table display. The weapons and journal seemed to glow in the dim light, undeniable evidence of a secret that had finally been exposed.
"Mom—" Buffy's voice cracked, thick with exhaustion and something that might have been relief.
Joyce's own voice surprised her with its steadiness, though her hands trembled against the stake's wooden surface.
"Sit down, Buffy. Right now."
The authority in her tone left no room for argument. Buffy's shoulders sagged, and she sank onto the couch across from her mother. In the pale light filtering through the windows, Joyce saw tears beginning to track down her daughter's face—not from the bruise on her cheek, but from something deeper. The death of a secret. The fear of a mother's rejection.
Mother and daughter faced each other across the evidence of a double life, silence stretching between them like a wire pulled taut. Joyce held her daughter's gaze, seeing past the teenager to the warrior beneath, recognizing finally what Buffy had been trying to hide.
Whatever happened next would either destroy them or forge something unbreakable from the truth neither of them was ready to face.
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