Chronicles of the Avalonverse

Chrysalis

 Written by Charlie Schone  Schone23666@yahoo.com

Edited by Jack Caynon Jcayon@aol.com

Summary: Buffy Summers experiences a bizarre dream.  Is it a portent of things to come?

Spoilers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season one episodes “The Witch” and “Prophecy Girl” and season two episodes “Innocence” and “The Dark Age”

This story is rated for Mature Readers and depicts sexual situations and offensive language. It also hints at a Slayer/Watcher romantic situation.  If that bothers you, turn back now.

Disclaimers:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: All rights and properties belong to Joss Whedon, Fox Studios and Mutant Enemy, etc.

Witchblade: All rights and properties belong to Top Cow Productions and Image Comics.

The Avalonverse is the creation of Jack Caynon and Charlie Schone.

Any characters, whose names and descriptions are used, are the property of their original owners, and no copyright infringement is intended or meant.

No money can be made from this story. It may be distributed freely so long as it is kept in its entirety, with all notices and copyright information remaining intact.

Chrysalis

The woman-child dreamed.

Buffy Anne Summers, seventeen going on forty, found herself in the void where mortals venture when they sleep, a place filled with endless possibilities, and, on occasion, unspeakable horrors.  She had finally retired after a late night of patrol, protecting the mostly ignorant denizens of Sunnydale from the demons, vampires and other creatures from the pit of man’s fears that haunted the Hellmouth.  Tonight, the Vampire Slayer appeared to be in a twisting, turning landscape that had no rhyme or reason.   

Perhaps, she mused, it was understandable why she was so lost in this twilight outland.  Lately the good fight had taken its toll on her in ways her fertile imagination never could have imagined.  She had, of all things, fallen in love with a creature of the night, a vampire she’d known as Angel.  They had, by some odd, perhaps cruel twist of fate, been drawn together, until one night they’d made love only to lose it to his reemergence as the dark, soulless creature known as Angelus.  Now, despite her youth and her strength, she had lost a lover, a partner, and a friend and the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to bear the burden alone.  There were others who supported her, who made life a bit more bearable.   Willow , Xander, Oz, surprisingly, even Cordelia…but more than anyone else, it was her Watcher, Rupert Giles. 

She rolled her eyes inwardly at that realization.  She recalled how she’d been less than enthused with him on the occasion of their first meeting in the library.  She had quickly summarized what the tweed-clad Englishman had tried to impart to her about her destiny as “blah blah blah, yadda yadda yak.”  But it seemed that, no matter how often she tried to shirk her duty, he’d always stood by her side regardless. Whether it was when he tried to go in her place to face the Master, or place himself at risk to remove the curse that had been cast on her by Catherine Madison, or even simply to continue to give his support and respect after the debacle with Angel, he was her pillar of strength, of aid, of comfort.

But why, she asked herself.  Why did he keep doing it?  What had she done to deserve him? 

Perhaps her thoughts about him led the Slayer to emerge from the confusing dreamscape in the middle of her most desperate moment…

#

Once again, Buffy found herself on the Madison ’s couch, weak and powerless.  She couldn’t even lift a finger.  The spell from that witch Catherine was draining her life force little by little. 

Inwardly she screamed at being so helpless. 

She heard the tread of a man’s footsteps race down the stairs.  Buffy barely managed to focus enough to recognize that it was Giles.  He was clad in his usual tweed attire and clutched a dusty tome with his usual reverence for old, boring things.  She’d often teased him about it, as he seemed to know more about books than handling an impetuous youth.  But none of that mattered now and she regretted ragging on him. 

“Did we find?” she croaked weakly.

The Watcher nodded, his eyes filled only with sympathy and remorse for her. “We found. Come on.”

He gently helped her to her feet and she experienced his warmth, even through the fabric of her cheerleader outfit.  Somehow, minutely, it energized her and helped her hold on.  This close to him she could breathe in his scent and was comforted by the mix of old leather and tea she always sensed around him.

Then she heard Amy, trapped in the body of her mother, beside him. “But where are we going?”

“We’re going to school,” Giles said with an air of determination.  Then his soulful green eyes captured hers. He picked her up in his arms and made her feel like an infant, gently cocooned in the loving embrace of her guardian.  “And you’re coming with us.”

Had she not been so out-of-it, she would have smiled.

Some time later, she was vaguely aware of the sound of metal and glass being hastily swept off a table.  Then, moments later, she was tenderly placed upon a long slab of cold, hard wood.  Even though her mind was now feverish, she was able to determine that she was now in the school’s science lab.  Above her, her Watcher appeared to be blurry, constantly drifting in and out of focus.  She closed her eyes to shut out her disorientation.  She was so weak now…yet she still felt his warmth, his love all the same…

His love?  She reflected on that for a moment.  Then she smiled, acknowledging the revelation.  Well, duh, she admonished herself.  Why else would he try to protect her from the prophecy and go in her place to die at the hands of the Master?  Why else would he drag himself from the depths of his self-pity and guilt to selflessly trade his life to Eyghon for hers?     

“I’m going to stop this, I promise,” dream Giles said, recapturing her attention.  His voice sounded like it was a million miles away. “You just hold on.”

She could faintly hear Amy and Giles putting together various ingredients for the spell though she couldn’t make sense of anything they’d said.  It simply flowed in one ear and out the other like some heedless tidal wave in an ocean where she was drowning, sinking deeper and deeper into darkness from which only her Watcher could save her.

“Right, here we go!” Giles voice sliced through the haze in her mind.  Then she heard his voice ring out, strong and clear. 

“The Center is dark.  Centrum est obscurus. The Darkness breathes.  Tenebrae respiratis.  The Listener hears.  Hear me!”

Minutes that seemed like an eternity ebbed by, before she heard Amy’s excited voice flow from the body of her mother. “Oh, it’s…it’s working!”

The Watcher continued; hope building in his voice. “Unlock the gate, let the darkness shine, cover us with holy fear! Show me…”

“She’s coming!” Amy warned.

Dauntless, the Watcher pressed on, determined to save his Slayer. “Corsheth and Gilail! The gate is closed! Receive the dark! Release the unworthy! Take of mine energy and be sated!”
The Slayer heard the breaking of glass nearby and her barely conscious mind mused, only break in the case of an emergency, eh?  Well, 
I’d say we are way beyond that now!

“Be sated! Release the unworthy! Release!”

She now heard the sound of metal splintering through wood.   But she couldn’t even focus on that disturbing noise; everything began to fade away, everything…

“Release!”

Everything went dark…

“RELEASE!”

And then it all turned white. 

Something akin to a bolt of lightning lanced through Buffy.  It energized her, filling her full of purpose.  The Slayer rose from the ocean of darkness that had threatened to take her and felt both her body and soul return to the land of the living to protect the man who’d saved her from the witch’s curse, who’d ever be by her side, until death…

#

She blinked then rose from the table.  She was alone in the lab, alone except for her Watcher, Giles, who stood nearby.

Wait, she told herself, this isn’t right.  Where are Amy and Catherine?  Where’d they go?

“What happened?” she asked her Watcher who simply gazed at her with his witch green eyes.

He walked slowly toward her and gently helped her up to a sitting position on the table.  “Y-you won, you prevailed.  Just like you always do.”

Buffy shook her head gingerly.  “No, we prevailed.  You saved my life, you are a god!” she gushed.

Giles graced her with his shy smile then he raised his right hand and gently caressed her cheek.  Although surprised by his gesture, she didn’t resist him and moved into it like a kitten.  “Well, yes, b-but you’re the Slayer, the Chosen One.  You venture forth against the darkness armed solely with your strength and your courage. You make me proud to simply know you.”

The Slayer felt a lump in her throat and her emotions began to overflow.  A tear trickled down her cheek, then another, before the dam burst.  As he gently cupped her tears in his hand, the Watcher’s face fell. “Buffy?”

“You don’t deserve me,” she wailed, her voice ragged as she struggled to choke back her sobs.

The Englishman’s eyes opened wide at that. “Whatever do you mean?”

Oh crap, she thought, that came out SO very wrong!  “I-I meant to say…y-you deserve someone better than me,” she stammered.  “You’re always there for me, no matter what.  You treat me like I’m the most important thing in your life.  And what’ve I done to repay you?”  More tears streamed down her cheeks, unheeded. “Nothing!  I’ve been nothing but a pain in your ass!  I’ve been nothing but…but a spoiled bitch.”

“That’s not true,” he hastened to disagree with her.

“It is true!” she wailed. “It’s because of me that Angelus is killing people, dammit!” Her culpability finally came to the fore. “I could’ve stopped him but I didn’t!  I was so, so fucking focused on my miserable hope of bringing him back the way he was, I refused to see the monster he’d become!  And look at what he’s done!  He’s killing my classmates, he’s after my friends!  He might even try to kill you!”

The Watcher shook his head. “He can’t destroy me, Buffy.”

The Slayer’s eyes opened wide in disbelief. “Giles, wake up and smell the coffee!  You know he’ll try it, he will!  And if he did, god…I couldn’t live with that.”  She gazed at him through eyes overflowing with tears.  “I can’t live without you.”

“And you shan’t,” he said, his voice sounding different than before, more confident.  Then, to her surprise, he gently placed a kiss on her forehead and rocked her world. 

She was unprepared for that, never having experienced this level of intimacy with him before.  She felt butterflies in her stomach, coupled with all sorts of fuzzy feelings she’d experienced only when she’d first become intimate with Angel, when their love had begun to blossom.  She savored the gentle coolness of his lips against her skin and closed her eyes for a moment, reveling in his touch.  A part of her wanted to recoil from him, but the part that was in charge sent the other off to the cheap seats in the back of her mind. 

“You shall never lose me, Buffy.  Never…just like those who came before you.  They didn’t lose me…neither will you.”

The Slayer’s eyes shot wide open at his eerie words.  What the hell?  “Giles?”

He took a step back from the Slayer in a calm manner and simply watched her.

“Giles?” she repeated before she hopped off the table and moved into a defensive stance.  Something wasn’t right about him.  Could he be a threat to her…

“There is no reason to fear me,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him.  “You’re not Giles,” she observed grimly.  Then she decided that a snarky response was in order.  “Oh, and no offense, but being cryptic then telling a girl not to be afraid is a lame way to scare up a date.” 

“Really?” he quipped in Giles’ soft sarcastic way, “it seemed to work quite well for Angel with you last year.”

She blinked twice then nodded begrudgingly to him.  “Touché,” she said, loving that Giles was the only one who could challenge her when it came to puns.  Then she remembered that this wasn’t her Watcher and shot a curious look at him.  “How can you do that, I mean, be Giles one moment, then not the next?”

The man chuckled warmly and said, “If I understand your question correctly, I access the part of him through the bond between you to help you understand all that I am.”

She scrunched up her face at that.  “I’m sorry if I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but what in the hell are you talking about?  What sort of bond do Giles and I share?”

“Did you know that the First Slayer did not have a Watcher?”

She brushed a strand of bottle blonde hair out of her eyes and sighed in frustration.  “I hate it when someone answers my question with a question.  And your point being…?”

“She was the ultimate hunter/gatherer.  Not only did she hunt her prey; she hunted for knowledge and weapons to help her survive.  After the Shadowmen turned her into the Slayer, she searched for a sorcerer, a learned man who knew the ways of magick and controlled demons to help her understand her enemy.  Then she found a weapon that would help her survive and defeat them.  She found me.” 

The Slayer’s eyes narrowed as she hardened her gaze at him. “Who or what are you?”

“Even for me it is difficult to say.  I can affirm that I have known all those who came before you, the other Slayers…and they have all known me, if only in their dreams.  I have known them all, loved them all, as I love you,” it said.  Then it began to transform.  To the Slayer’s unbelieving eyes, the image of her Watcher’s tweed suit, glasses, tie, and his face dissolved into a form that could only be described as something…mercurial.  Its form flowed like quicksilver as it twisted and turned into an infinite combination of metal spikes, tentacles and blades.  The entity possessed a brilliant golden hue and it caught and reflected the light from every blade and spike to shine upon her beautiful face.

“I am a living weapon, a being of power, like you,” it said in a voice like Giles’ but not.  It was a voice that belonged to something alien, powerful and immortal. “I am one of thirteen, born of a marriage of necessity between the light and the darkness.  I am ancient, far older than you could possibly imagine.  I existed before Atlantis sank beneath the waves and the Hyborean age began.  I knew the very First Slayer just as I have now come to know you.”  Then with that, the organism started toward her.

Alarmed, the Slayer raised her arms to defend herself.  Then she realized the futility of fighting such a creature.  When it came within a foot of her, it stopped. It stood there, a whirling mass of gold blades and talons that looked like it could easily cut her to ribbons.  Reason counseled that she should flee rather than face such a thing, but somehow…she didn’t feel threatened by it all.  She couldn’t explain why…she just knew.

“Please…do not fear me,” the thing pleaded gently. It inched forward slowly as the blades that danced around the mass of golden metal began to merge back into it and exposed a shimmering molten pool. 

“Touch me,” the thing whispered tenderly.

The Slayer blinked at its request.  “What?”

“Reach out to me, embrace me,” the thing whispered seductively.  “I am forever bound to your line, Slayer, like all who came before you.  But now, more than ever, we need each other.  You shall face dire threats to both yourself and your world soon.  Although you shall gain powerful allies, you’ve already been transformed and that will subject you to powerful enemies, some demonic and some Immortal.  However, if you choose to embrace me, you will survive; we will survive.  Only together will we be whole.”

“Whole?” she whispered, uncertain what to do.

“Whole,” the thing confirmed.  “I will work with you and Giles, protect you, integrate both his magick and the love your Bonded Watcher and I have for you, for he and I share a common goal; whatever the cost, you must survive.” 

Now it stood silent before her, a thing she couldn’t understand and yet…it beckoned her, almost hypnotically, and she couldn’t turn away.  She didn’t know how but she knew it spoke the truth.  She had to reach out to this thing, to merge with it, to become whole like it had said, to become something greater than either one of them could ever be…

“Yes,” the thing spoke gently, as if reading her thoughts.  “Reach out to me, trust me, become one with me…my love.”

The Slayer tentatively extended her hand and allowed her soft fingertips to brush against its cool, glittering metal.  Then she gasped as the metal flowed over her hand, encasing it in a cocoon of golden metal that streamed over her skin.  She glanced down and noticed that the metal began to pool around her feet, before it shimmied over her shoes, then cut through them like a knife through warm butter, obliterating them and engulfing her feet in fashionable organic metal boots.

The blonde Slayer nearly panicked until she heard the voice of the entity once more.  “Do not be afraid…lie down.”

“I-I don’t know…” she stammered but then noticed that the metal wasn’t harsh against her skin.  Indeed, it was rather….pleasant.  Actually, it felt wonderful!  Truly, it was hard to describe.  The metal stimulated every pore, every fiber of her being wherever it caressed her.  She gasped as it sinuously, sensuously traveled up her legs, stimulating her senses as it crept upward, ever slowly, enticing and pleasuring her in ways she’d never experienced before.  The Slayer’s chest heaved as she struggled to survive the incredibly sweet torture that gripped both her mind and body.

“H-how…?” she stammered, unable to complete her question.

Clearly, it had read her thoughts because it said, “I have accessed the passion and the love your Watcher has for you, only you.  The feelings that you experience are merely representative of how he would touch you.”

Her eyes closed to slits when she heard that.  My God, she thought, if he makes love like this, foreplay will kill me!   

The metal traveled further upward, embracing her thighs.  She panted and her mind was on fire.  She was completely focused on the sensations burning through her while she was still on her feet with her hand encased by the liquid metal.  Her shapely legs began to stiffen as she felt the substance moving closer, ever closer, now within inches of her womanhood. Breathless, she waited as the substance seemed to tease her, gently rippling against her creamy thighs that flowed into the paradise between her legs.  Her sex was wet with desire, a nearly unquenchable need that screamed for sweet release, a completion that only this thing could grant her.

“Embrace me, Buffy…join with me.”

“Yes,” she whispered and the metallic organism converged upon her womanhood…and everything in her world turned completely white.

Nothing existed except for the organism that now held her in its sensual grasp. She moaned wantonly as the extraterrestrial entity stoked the fire between her legs and granted her a release like never before.  Her legs nearly buckled from the intensity of her orgasm but she managed to avoid falling.  The metal held her aloft in its embrace, like an alien lover.

“Lie down.”

She nodded her acquiescence and the substance gently laid her down, until she reclined on something, or perhaps nothing, but it no longer mattered.  The entity latched onto her other hand, and began to slide up her arms.  She felt it travel further up her body now.  It flowed over her midriff, caressing it gently like the thousand soft fingertips of a thousand lovers before it enveloped her breasts.  Another low moan of indescribable pleasure escaped from her delectable mouth, as the substance oozed ever higher until it covered her from top of her neck to the tips of her toes.  Then it began again…

The Slayer gasped.  This time she wanted to touch herself, to bring her hands into play to alleviate the intense pleasure that flowed into her sex and throughout her entire being.  She cried out with desire as it caressed her small, perfect breasts, stimulated her nipples, traced endless circles of delight across her back and neck, and massaged her slender stomach.  It sent endless waves of mind-numbing pleasure through her legs like a conduit that flowed into her clitoris where it vibrated ceaselessly, numbing her mind to all else as an indescribable heat built inside her, this time even more powerful than before.

“I have loved all who came before you, Buffy,” the thing whispered in her mind as the metal pulsed against her heated core. “And I love you.  Give yourself to me…please.  Say it, Buffy…say it…”

“YES!!” she screamed and her vision turned white once more, as her climax exploded inside her like a supernova.  At the moment of her ecstasy, the entity finally flowed over her face, her ears, her eyes…even her hair, turning it along with the rest of her a golden hue.  That’s what she’d become…the Golden Slayer.  Somehow she knew this and as she felt her intense orgasm unite her with the cosmos, she knew she’d finally realized her destiny…

#

“Huh?” she blurted.

The Slayer blinked twice then looked up to see her wallpapered ceiling.  Then she darted her head from side to side, trying to ascertain where she was.  She was in a large, soft bed surrounded by stuffed animals that stared at her with innocent, though bemused eyes.  Sunlight filtered in through a nearby window, along with the chirping of birds that announced morning had arrived.

“Oh, man…I’m back in the real world,” she muttered.  It had been just a dream…or rather, a really, really weird and incredibly hot dream.  In fact, she had never remembered experiencing a dream quite as intense as that before.  Then she became aware of an icky feeling and glanced down at the crotch of her pajamas.  The garment was visibly stained there and it was so wet it stuck to her skin.  Buffy winced, threw off the rest of her covers and got out of bed.

“Weird frickin’ dream,” she mumbled to herself.  Although she might have to carefully edit some of her dream, it seemed to be prophetic.  She’d have to tell Giles about it, only she didn’t know quite what to say…about….

Okay, she thought, I’m SO not going there unless I want to sign up for years of industrial strength therapy!  

She sighed and blew strands of supernaturally golden bed hair out of her face.  Then, unaware of the subtle change, she began the process of dressing and preparing for yet another day at Sunnydale High School .