ONE NORMAL LIFE / TWO EXTRAORDINARY LIVES

CHAPTER11 - BECOMING

Buffy started school in January. It wasn't too far from home, yet far enough away, to still keep her living arrangements private.

She took a full course load that winter, and also took both Summer 1 and Summer 2 classes, so she could begin her sophomore year the following fall. She signed up for work-study, that had her working at the school's nursery and pre-school, an on-campus site, for students with small kids. It was her interaction with the kids on a day to day basis that had her deciding by her the end of the summer, to apply to the education department to become a teacher. She'd never before really felt particularly interested in children or their education. Heck, she didn't even know if she liked them, but being around them all the time, she felt she had a natural affinity with them. And they seemed to adore her. Soon she was looking forward to that as the best part of her day. There was just something giving about small children, and also, demanding, that left her little time for feeling sorry for herself, and that's how she wanted it.

Between a full load of classes, late night studying at the library, and working 24 hours a week with the kids, she barely had time to do anything other than eat and sleep while home, and that suited her fine. She 'lived' at the house, but was barely there. She even considered selling it, and just getting an apartment in San Marcos, but she knew she was kidding herself...she just couldn't, even if it meant really moving on...

Buffy also took a self-defense course, just to keep in shape. After a while, the teacher she was taking the class from moved, and the students suggested to the owners that she become the new teacher, but she declined. She knew she should be flattered, but somehow, it was too much like days of old. She just felt like to become too involved in self-defense would be to give too much of herself away. Already, her teacher and other students had even asked her where she'd learned the moves that she had. She soon found another exercise regimen that didn't have to do with self-defense. If she could do a kick-ass aerobics routine, she doubted anybody would wonder where she picked that up.

She did however, pic a p a punching bag and a 'horse,' and have Clem install that in her garage.

Clem was living there almost full-time now. He would leave every now and then to spend some time in San Diego with other kitten-poker-like-minded-friends, but he always came back. In the winter he would, however, usually go away for a month or two, to ‘some place warmer’ he would tell her.

That’s when she missed Spike the most. In the winter. Every winter she would once again make a Snowman Spike, complete with the original ‘burnt wood’ teeth that they’d used from their fire that first night. Snowman Spike would be her sentry on and off over the couple of months when it snowed in Julian. If it snowed, she would make him. Buffy also took long walks in the woods, often visiting The Tree. Seeing their initials carved on the back always brought it all back to her. That weekend. The weekend she’d known that she really was in love with him.

But she never went back to the Hot Springs, as lovely as it was, it would have been just too painful. They’d had the most perfect time there. The memory deserved to stay with her the way it was. She never wanted a memory of going there without him. And so, for the most part, she avoided the trail that lead there altogether.

After a nearby forest caught fire, and fearing she might be in the same situation some day, she read some books that Spike had in the house on land management and also called The Department of Forestry with some questions. She told them only that she was doing research for her Geology Class. She even was allowed to visit them and witness a prescribed burn. After seeing this, her and Clem would take to doing this once or twice every spring, a different area every time. They did it very carefully, on a very small scale, and only after carefully clearing out a wide area around the area to be burned, and on a very calm day. She felt it was the best wor tor them to not lose any of the land due to Mother Nature’s whims. She thought Spike would be proud of her for this, indeed, she felt rather proud of herself.

And so the years passed. Buffy’s life had a rhythm, if not a rhyme. School, work, homework, home, and even occasionally working a weekend at The Rittenhouse, or doing some paperwork for her.

Dawn had graduated a couple of years ago and was going to UCLA, majoring in Archeology and Ancient Languages. She had also taken summer ses,ses, so was into her junior year already.

Xander had met a girl in New Jersey through his cousin and had gotten married that first year. Buffy had only heard about it through Willow. After his big not-a-wedding fiasco with Anya, he didn’t feel he could go through that kind of stress again, or put his friends through it either. Xander and his fiancée, Angela, had just quietly slipped away to Atlantic City, and gotten married over a weekend. They now had two kids, a three-year old boy, Alex, Jr., and a little baby girl, Ann.

Willow graduated from college in England and she was working at her first real, well paying job at the offices of the rebuilt watcher’s council, of which Giles was the head. It was not just a council, but a high school for the 75 or some girls who wound up there and a slayer school as well. Watchers themselves were being recruited from a variety of interesting places. They were much more relaxed in their relationship to the slayers as had been their predecessors. That was one thing that Buffy could be thanked for, her unorthodox methods had brought about rapid change that centuries hadn’t that and the sudden, unexpected deaths of dozens of both potential slayers, and their watchers.

Andrew had shown a flair for both storytelling and filmmaking, with the emphasis on storytelling. Prior to graduating, he’d been hired by The National Sun, a slightly less tawdry rag than The Enquirer or The Star, but still a bit with the fantastic headlines that weren’t quite what they seemed.

Buffy was in her last year of schand and was doing her student teaching in Escondido at an elementary school, teaching fifth graders. It was a large class, at least 30 of them, but this time she felt connected to those in her charge and this time, she knew all their names.

She also dated on and off. Her last boyfriend had lasted six months. Almost a record for her, but she wouldn’t let herself get too involved. Never, ever brought him or anybody else, for that matter, to the house, making him suspicious that she might be married. And, except for some kissing and mild petting, (which she abhorred) never let him in, never let him close. Like all the other guys who she casually dated, this got old with him fast. Although Darrin had been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, give her time, he soon realized that Elizabeth Anne Worthington wasn’t going to change any time soon and he soon opted out, finding a more willing and open girlfriend in a matter of weeks.

And so, for four years, almost to the date, Buffy had her more-or-less normal life.

END CHAPTER 11