ONE NORMAL LIFE / TWO EXTRAORDINARY LIVES

CHAPTER 10 - A BUFFY BY ANY OTHER NAME...

As promised, a couple of months later, all the legal processing of the deed and will had been done and the house was now in her name.

As Buffy had said she would, she went about changing her name to Elizabeth Anne Worthington. A check had to be first done on Buffy Anne Summers to make sure that she wasn't a wanted fugitive or deadbeat. Once that cleared, it only took a couple of minutes in front of a disinterested judge to legally change her name.

She walked out into the sunny, late October afternoon with a new name and new identity. She took a deep breath of the fall air and felt a weight lifted from her shoulders. Buffy Summers was now dead. Well, not dead, she told herself, just officially retired.

And hopefully, forgotten.

Within another couple of weeks she'd had all her paperwork - driver's license, deed, accounts, etc., changed to her new name.

Now what was 'Elizabeth Anne Worthington' going to do for the rest of 'her' life?


Buffy kept in touch every other day or so with Dawn, who was now in her junior year of high school. She seemed to be doing well at the new school and with living with Hank. Every 2-3 weeks, Buffy would drive up to see them and they'd spend the day shopping, talking, visiting, having dinner with her dad. She even spent the night there a couple of times.

She convinced her dad to wire the money to her bank account, rather than sending a check, so she was able to keep from telling him and Dawn about her name change. She wanted to tell Dawn, but she never wanted to put Dawn in the position of having to lie to her friends about it. And she didn't want to tell any of her friends or former watcher about it. She'd never told Dawn or anybody what Spike's last name had been, and she was sure he hadn't. So, she was afraid if Dawn found out, she might figure it out. For now, it would hav have to just be between her and ...well...her.

Maybe someday.


She emailed Willow at least once every week at first, then it had become once every couple of weeks. She kept asking what Buffy was doing, what she was going to do, where she was living, and other questions. And through it all, Buffy felt bad for lying about living at this place or that, with this imaginary 'old' friend or that one. She was sure Willow knew she didn't have those sorts of connections outside Sunnydale, as she'd spent all her time there for the past 7 years. Soon, Willow stopped asking those sort of questions, figuring that sooner or later, Buffy would tell her that if she wanted to, so they mostly talked about Willow and Kennedy.

Willow and Giles had come up with an ingenious plan to contact the new slayers. The Internet! First, with a locator spell, Willow had been able to come up with an approximation of all the slayers that had been called, within a rough geographic location. Then it was narrowed down to approximately a 1-block area. Finding the Internet access of all people living within a one block. Once that was done, a carefully worded Spam could be sent out to all those within that one block area. Something along the lines of, "Do you feel different lately, since May? Did you all of a sudden feel a surge of power, a rallying of your inner resources? Did you feel the urge to make a difference in the world all of a sudden, but not know how to go about it? Want to know more about where your power came from and what it means?" Then there was an email address given out. There was an online quiz, to weed out the curious from the real, the wheat from the chaff. In fact, there were three such questionnaires, only those who passed through all the steps were given the real email to Willow or Giles for further assessment.

So far, the had at least 50 inquiries check out and of those, 43 girls were interested in furthering their education in England as soon as the 'school' got set up.

Willow and Giles were soon going to be extremely busy.

Willow was also enrolled in college, completing her studies. She was double majoring in computer programming and political science.

Strangely enough, but not totally unexpectedly, Giles had only emailed once. She'd emailed him about a month after she'd settled in, telling him she was alright, and making up the same stuff she'd told Willow and just to tell him she was alright. He'd told her he was glad to hear from her and that if she ever needed anything or wanted to help out in England, she was more than welcome. That had been it. She was sort of relieved. Their relationship had been strained over the past year, especially over Spike, and she'd not quite forgiven him for that, nor did she feel that what she did anymore was his concern.

Willow had mentioned to her often about how many girls were going to need guidance, and that maybe Buffy should consider going back to school for a degree in Psychology. She wasn't sure that appealed to her or not. She'd only been half okay at it, if she was honest with herself. And from what she understood, that would require a masters degree to actually become a psychologist, not to mention there was a lot of self-analysis involved. Buffy and self-analysis, not a good match, that she could see.

Buffy started looking into going back to school. She hoped that the few meager credits she had accumulated, from classes she'd actually completed might still be in a data base somewhere in the state of California.

Around the middle of November, she decided to call a local college and set up an appointment with a counselor.

She arrived at California State University San Marcos at 9:00am on November 20, 2003 and found the office of Ms. Linda Sexton without too much difficulty.

"Come in Elizabeth," Ms. Sexton told her, ushering her into her cubicle.

"After we talked, I was able to locate your old transcripts. Looks like you only had about 8 credits from U.C.S.D.,
she looked over at Buffy, "your grade point average wasn't very high," she said.

"But they count, right?" Buffy asked, knowing full well how low they were.

"Yes, but if you keep them, even if you get all A's and B's the rest of your college career, these will still bring your grade point average down."

"How much down?" Buffy asked.

"Well, let's see," she did some calculations.

"Say you got all A's, but with these factored in, the highest G.P.A. you could hope to get would be a 3.3."

"Which is?"

"A 3.2 is just over a B, on average, and that's if you got all A's and high B's."

Buffy looked at her; "I'll keep them. I think if I were to show that I was the kind of person to get all A's and B's from here on out, that should count for something, shouldn't it? Wouldn't it be enough?"

Ms. Sexton looked at the serious young woman sitting in front of her. A young woman who looked like she'd seen more than her fair share of life already, "Yes, I would think that it would be looked at very favorably if that were the case."

Buffy nodded, "Then that's fine. If afterward, I want to take them over, then I still can, right?"

Ms.Sexton, nodded, "Yes, that would be fine."

"There's just one more thing, I've changed my name," Buffy said.

"Oh, did you get married?" Ms. Sexton asked, "I know how that goes, I just got married last year, but I decided to keep my name, so much hassle with changing everything, everywhere.

Strange, but nobody had asked her before why she'd changed her name. They'd just changed it.

She cleared her throat, "Yes, I was married, but he...he died," Buffy said.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Elizabeth. That's so tragic, you're so young, he must have been so young!"

If only she knew.

"How?"

"Sunnydale."

"Oh," Ms. Sexton said.

It always shut them up.

"Now, let me show you what papers you'll need to fill out and the course selections."

END CHAPTER 10