The Fallen Slayer {1}

Save My Soul

"Okay fake Jer..." Buffy huffed refusing to glance at him as he took his seat beside her, the two of them leaning against the metal bars "Me being in a cage feels oddly right." She hummed, her eyes glued to the darkness. If she looked at Jeremy she would crack "I kind of like it in here. I don't fit in with the Mystic Falls gang..." Truthfully she had always felt a little out of place in Mystic Falls, like she didn't belong there "I miss being me and not having to care what anyone else thinks."

The second the confession left her lips, Buffy cursed.

Even a hallucination of Jeremy was getting to her.

FUCK!

"Never mind, I kill them all anyway." She snarked, plastering a bright smirk on her lips as her nails tapped against her knee roughly.

Having Jeremy next to her wasn't getting to her.

It was.

Instead of starting some speech automatically, Jerey reached out and grasped Buffy's hand halting her tapping. Instantly, she tensed up at the contact, her eyes glued to the familiar hand gripping hers.

A dead hand that felt so alive.

"What do you have to prove Buff?" Jeremy whispered as he entangled his fingers with hers, holding onto her tightly.

"Expectations. The pressure is too much." Young Buffy's voice echoed through the cage.


As much as she tried to keep herself from carrying on the conversation, Buffy clenched her jaw and let out a frustrated growl "The pressure. Being the Slayer, being the balance for Klaus."

For years, she had not been her own person, she had been something for someone else. A weapon, a protector, a savior of a family...nothing but a piece to be wielded on a chess board.

Her literal existence was to be the balance to Klaus, to control him. Nature had created her to control their mistake.

Buffy Summers had never been her own person.

"Nothing hits as hard as life." Jeremy told her as he squeezed her hand tightly before forcing her to focus on nothing but him. Just him instead of the darkness around them that she was trying to drown herself in "This world as you know is a mean and nasty place. No matter how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there for eternity... if you let it." Jeremy hissed as his grip tightened on her hand trying to get her to see the truth.

That she could beat the hell that had been knocking her down time and time again.

She could take it all, she could take all the pain and beat it.

She was Buffy Anne Summers...she survived because she had something that she was fighting for.

She just needed to admit what she was fighting for now outside of everything everyone else had told her. Everyone else's opinions didn't matter, she was her own person no matter what anyone else said.

"But it isn't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep getting up. How much you can take and keep moving forward."

Buffy quirked a brow at his brows "Is this a penis metaphor?"

"Boxing." Jeremy corrected unable to hold back the snort as he nudged her shoulder "But not a big difference. Now big sister...I need you to do something for me." 


Slowly more faces started to appear around the outside of the cage like a swarm desperate to break in. Familiar faces perched between the bars causing Buffy's chest to constrict, her heart hammering painfully against her chest as all eyes focused on her

Eyes belonging to the dead in her life.

"Think about all the faces you have lost, think about all of the things you have done. Think about what you are fighting for."


Her family was staring at her from outside the cage, so close yet so far out of reach. The people she had killed, Warren, Connor, all the innocents she had killed in cold blood without remorse.

Instantly, her stomach plummeted and she scrambled back her eyes wide with horror as the hollow eyes continued to drill into her, seeping into her soul, tearing it at the seams "Stop." She uttered, her voice small as she pressed herself into the concrete floor in the center of the cage curling into a ball as her fingers pressed into her ears and clenched her eyes shut, tears of terror desperate to break through.

She needed the faces to disappear, for Jeremy's voice to go away.

But Jeremy just watched her from his seated position, his back still pressed back against the metal bars as Kendra and Vicki's faces hovered behind him from just outside the cage.

"You returned from the hell of war over and over again, only for your father to be brutally murdered, for me to be murdered, for Elena to shut down, to have your daughter ripped out of you. Of course, you forgot what good was. You spent years protecting humans, witches, and the souls of others only for a witch to carve you open sis. I know what you have done Buffy, but guess what...I love you anyway."