Afterlife
 by DarlaDru

Author Notes: This is set in Season Two. Anything in italics is Buffy’s present, everything else is her past.

It was getting harder to walk.
As her eyes watched her shaking feet, one pushing in front of the other, a cloud settled in her vision. The worse the trembling grew, the less she could see. Tears stung her eyes, and fell with each shaking breath. But she stumbled along until she fell to the ground, all of her strength lost to her.
She had once been strong, stronger than she should have been. A Slayer. But now, when she needed her strength the most, it was gone. As if someone had swooped a hand down and left her like this: an empty shell, confused, with swirling scattered thoughts and memories as her only company. Some of the thoughts weren’t hers. Some of the memories she could see with two minds. Her mind, and the mind of the demon that had tried to take her body.
A vampire.
Both of them remembered when they had become joined, it was a last try to hold on to life. Neither of them had expected this. The human part, Buffy had been her name, had been turned into this twisted shadow of a vampire. Buffy remembered the graveyard…

Black and grey surrounded her in the mist of night. A night so cold each panting breath had curled into the air as a silver mist, and touched the crystal stars.
Flashes of green blurred her vision as Buffy had tumbled over crumbling, moss-covered headstones. The air had left her then too, as her heart had thundered in her ears. Pain burst in fiery pinpricks in her head and for a while she couldn’t see. A Pitch black settled over her, until the piercing scream had torn across the graveyard. It had taken a second for her to realise the scream was from her own lips, caused by a new pain throbbing in her neck. All her heat had rushed to her neck, and just disappeared with her blood, and she had shuddered, both from the night and a primal part of her that had always longed for this moment.

Images flashed before her eyes, her blood boiled before it filled the mouth of the vampire pressed on top of her, and in one surge, Buffy had wanted to survive. More than anything she had felt ever before, it filled her. The urge pushed at her skin until it had felt like she would explode. Buffy’s hand found its way to the vampires shoulder, and as hard as she could, she dug her fingernails into its soft flesh. Buffy pulled herself close enough to taste the vampire’s blood in her mouth; it carried some of the heat from her own blood. The thick liquid filled her mouth until she thought she would drown, but as the dark blood had dripped down her chin Buffy had known she would survive. Then, as death started to close in around her vision, she lay back on the dew covered grass and rested.

But Buffy had been a slayer, and something had stopped her from becoming a true vampire. As she had lain lifeless, what had been the human didn’t fully leave her body, and the demon, which came to fill her, was forced to leave part of itself in the fired darkness from where it came.
With the pain of rebirth she had woken in the coffin, and panicked. One of her least favourite dreams, and worse fears, was being buried alive. Now she was, dressed in delicate white lace, in a suffocating silken coffin, deceptively soft. Her fingers were cut and bloody after she had clawed her way through the wooden walls and dirt. Caked in mud, and tired from the work, she realised there was still a gentle drumming of her heart. Something inside the demon curled in fear as they both realised the rhythm was supposed to be still. Buffy saw things through different eyes, felt the life of the earth around her. Before, Buffy had never wanted to become a vampire, but now she knew she had become something worse.
As she had stumbled, alone, from the graveyard, her stomach had twisted at the bloodlust; it made her feel sick when she had wanted to rip out the throat of a lone passer by and feel their blood fill her. The demon had pushed against her skin as she had watched the person walk away. Her teeth had grown with a twist of pain. Buffy lifted a shaking hand to her forehead, and ran her fingers over her own face. Buffy whimpered as she realised what she was in a sickening moment of clarity tugging at her stomach. A horrible feeling of being two things at the same time: not recognising the feel of her own face. Before she realised what she was doing, Buffy actually tried to hit her forehead back to the way it was with her palms. With a dark humour she wondered how to turn the vampire face off, if there were some button to press to make it go away.

Finally, feeling as if she were pulling the demon back into herself, she passed a hand over her head to find it as smooth as it had ever been. Internally, the fight became worse, she didn’t want to become a monster. A guilty part of her though, liked some of her new powers, being able to listen to the breathing of the creatures around and below her feet, and the demon whispered in clouded words to this guilty pleasure.
Then in a dizzy haze she had found her way into the library. Her friends had been there, they had been shocked to see her, crusted with dirt and dead, walking in as she had done a hundred times before. Also, mixed in, was happiness and relief that she had come back to them. A frozen tear ran down Buffy’s face as she tried to reach out to her friends for help. Willow had bounded towards her, wrapped her arms tightly around Buffy as if she would never let go. But the warmth of her, the smell and rhythm of blood flowing through Willow’s veins had been too much. She had tried to bite Willow, the demon part of her remembered the taste of Willow’s fear, and relished in it.

What had happened after that had been a blur of motion, and Buffy wasn’t sure what had happened, or what she had left behind her in the library. Fear squeezed at her stomach again, the demon remembered the coppery taste of warm blood, the feel of skin under fang. Had she killed them? Them, people who had loved her, people who she had loved. Them, who had been closer than her own family.
Buffy pounded a fist on the street beneath her aching body as she was wracked with sobs. She had lost control of her own body and mind, and for a moment, that was all she was: a heap of despair. Her vision clouded again, and she saw double. As she waited for the sun to rise over the Sunnydale skyline, her body began to break down, and in one last moment of clarity, she remembered her friends.
And at the end, her thoughts were of Angel.