
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/8385124.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi
  Fandom:
      Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer
  Character:
      Buffy_Summers, Whistler_(BtVS), Joyce_Summers, Hank_Summers, Spike_(BtVS)
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Time_Travel
  Series:
      Part 1 of Runes_(The_Zeppelin_Verse)
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-10-26 Updated: 2018-02-15 Chapters: 3/? Words: 4037
****** In Through The Out Door ******
by agoldenblackbird_(mass_hipgnosis)
Summary
     Buffy's resurrection ritual inexplicably and inescapably wound her
     own soul with the essence of the Slayer. When she dies stopping an
     apocalypse, she's sent back into her teenage body by the Powers. And
     she is Not. Pleased.
Notes
     Welcome to the Zeppelin Verse. Zeppelin verse is me having fun. It's
     me indulging my weirdest 'what ifs' and my fanon rants and my
     happily-ever-after daydreams. It's me turning tropes on their heads
     and borrowing clever ideas from other works (all neatly listed where
     applicable). Basically, if you are expecting a serious, tightly
     plotted fic, these are NOT the droids you're looking for.
***** Everything Old Is New Again *****
When Whistler gets to the small white waiting room that's part of Limbo, Buffy
Summers has already wrenched one of the metal legs off a chair and is swinging
it back and forth as though testing how effective it would be at bashing
someone's head in.
 
She whirls around the moment he appears. “Whistler.”
 
“Hey, Summers. Listen, you bought it in that last big fight.”
 
“I figured. We close the portal?”
 
“Yeah. Coven got it all squared away,” he assures her. It'd been one of the
apocalypses that were practically commonplace, nowadays.
 
She narrows her eyes at him. “So what's the deal, Whistler? Are you my ride to
the Good Place?”
 
He winces. “Not exactly.”
 
“Explain.” The glare she's leveling at him makes his stomach try to climb up
his throat and escape.
 
“Well, you see, what happened is-”
 
“Five. Words. Or. Less.” Her tone makes it clear they'll be revisiting the
whole ribcage-hat thing if he's not succinct.
 
“Rosenberg screwed up your resurrection.”
 
The Slayer slumps in one of the waiting-room chairs and puts one hand over her
eyes, even as the other hand and its' melee weapon beats an impatient tattoo on
the magazine-scattered coffee table. “Jesus Christ, of course she did. All
right, give it to me straight; what's the damage?”
 
“Okay, so there are different chunks that make up Buffy Summers. You've got
your soul, and your Slayer-demon, and your essence...your personality and way
of looking at the world and stuff like that. Normally, they're separate, they
fit together like puzzle pieces but they're distinct, and you can take one away
without damaging the others. That's how vampires get made, right, soul is
yanked away and the demon snaps into place next to it.”
 
Her mouth says “Go on,” but her eyes say, I already don't like where this is
going, and may yet kill the messenger.
 
“Rosenberg's spell mushed those three bits up together. In fact, the only
reason her spell to activate the Potentials even workedwas because Faith was
already a slayer. If she'd tried to pull that Slayer piece from you to start
the chain, it woulda been like yanking on a piece of concrete with your bare
hands tryin' to make it into water, gravel and cement. Ain't gonna happen. And
the Slayer part's immortal, even though your body isn't, which is why you're
here instead of the Good Place.”
 
She crosses her arms. The fact that she put down her weapon to do it doesn't
make him feel any safer. “So you're telling me I can't die.”
 
“Until we can figure out how to un-mix that concrete? No. And unless we're
going to fuck things up so spectacularly that the First Evil has a chance to
gain a foothold again, we need time to work that out. So right now, the plan is
to send you back to your body when you were first Called. And you need to stay
alive as long as possible. Longer than this-twelve years is not gonna cut it.
And no time-outs this time.”
 
“Me dyingwasn't a time-out,” she snarls.
 
“From a cosmic perspective, it kinda was-”
 
“Whistler. Stop talking before I put youin a cosmic time-out.” Her eyes are
actually glowing like a vampire's, but green instead of gold.
 
“Right, okay, shutting up.” He holds up both hands, palm-out, I come in peace.
 
She paces the small white room for a few minutes, but it doesn't seem to be
helping any. If the way the air is crackling is any indication, time to think
is making her more pissed off, and not less. Finally she says, “Are you going
to tell me that I can't change anything that happened in the first timeline?”
 
“No. First of all, we want you to not die, and the First to not rise, which
means you kinda haveto change some things. And second of all, there'd be no
point.”
 
“Explain.”
 
“See, the thing is, Summers, timelines are delicate. From a cosmic perspective,
you taking a step an inch ahead of where you did before can change just as much
as you going back to the start of things and having yourself a merry killing
spree. Even if you tried to stick to the previous timeline as close as you can
remember, things still wouldn't be exactly how they were before.”
 
She rakes her hands through her hair and looks like she's thinking. “Can I get
Called early?”
 
“What do you mean?”
 
“Well, you said I can't not be the Slayer, so can you send me back earlier, and
I can be the Slayer instead of the girls before me, so they get to live?”
 
That sounds like something his Bosses might go for. “How much earlier?”
 
“Let's say, three Slayers before me.”
 
Whistler considers that, gets a response. No explanation, because there isn't
usually. NO. “I'm getting a negatory on that.”
 
“Why?”
 
“Above my pay-grade. Must be something important that Carmen de la Cruz needs
to do, that you can't.” Two Slayers before.Whistler pictures it, Buffy Summers
getting Called at that moment.
 
Yes.
 
“How about two Slayers early? You'd get Called on March 20th, 1994. The Vernal
Equinox. And Svetlana Bogdanović and India Cohen will get to live normal
lives.”
 
“There won't be, like, local apocalypses that they needed to stop?”
 
“Summers, I know you got the impression that apocalypses happen at least once a
year, but it ain't usually like that. Before having more than one Slayer threw
off the Balance, they were every decade at best.”
 
“So when I died and came back and there were two Slayers, that threw off the
Balance, and suddenly we had apocalypse season. And then we activated all the
Potentials, and all of a sudden apocalypses were springing up all over.”
 
“Pretty much.”
 
"Well, crap. The Scoobies didn't throw things off?”
 
“Uh-uh. They didn't have any special powers, and they were doing it out of
their own free will. The Powers can only have so many Champions at one time.
Humans helping 'cause they want to isn't prophesied or taken into account by
the PTB's.”
 
“So Spike...”
 
“Once he got a soul? Threw things off more. Hel-lo First Evil,” Whistler
agrees.
 
“Because Angel was already doing the Champion-Redemption deal.”
 
“Yes.”
 
“But Spike before that, with no soul, was fine.”
 
“Before he got a soul, he wasn't a Champion according to their rules.”
 
“Their rules are stupid.”
 
Whistler pauses, then says, “That is the sound of no one arguing with you.”
 
“So you're going to send me back to my own body, at the moment that Svetlana
Bogdanović was Called.”
 
“Yes.”
 
“All right, I'm ready, do it.”
 
Whistler closes his eyes briefly. Thank the Powers, I survived this
conversation.“Done.”
 
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter by agoldenblackbird_(mass_hipgnosis), mass_hipgnosis
Chapter Notes
     The whole Carmen de la Cruz / Svetlana Bogdanović thing is from my
     own personal headcanons, wayyyy back in the dark ages, pre-comics,
     when Buffy was still on the air. I'd written a fic that never saw
     daylight about Buffy making a wish to go back with her prescient
     knowledge and be Called early, and spare the two Slayers before her
     (that fic got kinda mashed into this one). Even now that we know
     about India Cohen, I've had that in my head as btvs prehistory, so I
     bumped them in before Cohen, and and had India last three months
     instead of three years to make the numbers work.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Buffy opens her eyes and sees her childhood bedroom in the house in LA. She
looks at the bedside clock-11:48 p.m. Makes sense; it's the moment Carmen de la
Cruz died facing off against a drug-dealing vampire gang in Bogotá. She was
thirteen, and only lasted seven weeks, poor kid.
Buffy sighs and gets out of bed, sneaks downstairs and gets a knife, a box of
salt and four emergency candles out of the pantry. She uses her nail file to
carve the appropriate runes into the wax, slices open the pad of her index
finger to charge the runes with her blood, then climbs into the jacuzzi bathtub
in her ensuite and opens the window. She melts the bottoms of the candles and
sticks them to the tiled tub surround, then pours the salt in a circle around
her bare feet.
It's supposed to be blessed salt, not table salt. At least the candles are
white, although they're supposed to be beeswax and not paraffin, not so good.
She's already had a front row seat to the Willow Rosenberg Show as ample proof
that DIY rituals with sketchy last-minute substitutions tend to go kerplooey.
But. She doesn't want Merrick to die for her again, and she doesn't want the
Council poking around in her business right now, either, expecting her to be
all scared and confused and newly-Called. She doesn't know exactly what they'd
do if they thought she was not who she appeared to be, but it being the
Council, she can probably rule out 'something good.'
At midnight, she lights the four candles, counterclockwise starting with the
one in front of her, and says, “Goddess Hecate I beseech thee, aid a daughter
of Sineya, conceal me from the men-who-watch, and bar the sight of all those
seeking the Chosen One.”
The candleflames turn red. The salt turns black. The candles sputter and go
out. Buffy gets out of the tub, hides the candles at the back of her makeup
drawer, and washes the salt down the drain. It's a simple spell, one she had to
renew monthly in the future, to allow the Buffy-decoys to do their work.
She'd been shocked to find out that she could cast magick. The Devon coven had
educated her. Not everyone had Willow's intrinsic skill and raw power, but
anyone who was willing to learn could do simple rituals, and Buffy, after
learning how to tap into her Slayer power, is capable of more than that. It
hadn't gone over well with Willow, who still had too much of her self-worth
bound up in her magickal ability.
Okay, stop dwelling, Buffy, she chides herself. That Willow no longer exists,
anyway, and it's time for bed. She sets her alarm for four-thirty and hides the
clock under her pillow so it won't wake her parents. Sunrise isn't until around
7, she can do a sweep of the closest cemeteries before dawn and pass it off as
a run.
===============================================================================
Buffy wakes at the warning click-bzzz before her alarm starts blaring, and
fumbles to switch it off. Right. Pre-dawn cemetery sweep. Still half-awake, she
reaches for her phone, planning to use Google Maps to lay out a route, the way
she always does in an unfamiliar city, before remembering.
It's 1994, I don't have a cell phone, and Google doesn't even exist yet. Crap.
So once she's dressed in the least-heinously ugly running clothes she can find,
she sneaks into the garage and looks at the map of Greater Los Angeles that her
mom keeps in the glove-box of her car, and plans her patrol.
When I was first Called, Merrick clocked me at 30 mph, she considers. Before I
died this last time I could do about 60 mph at a sustained sprint of an hour,
faster at shorter speeds. Assuming the worst, that I'm back to where I was for
speed and strength, and allowing pauses for traffic lights and slaying, I
better do a small loop.
She works out a route that will allow her to hit five cemeteries, the UCLA
campus, and the beach so she can get sand on her sneakers as part of her cover.
She discovers, happily, that not only is she as fast and strong as she was
before she died, her Slayer spidey-sense is also as sensitive as she's used to.
She zig-zags along chasing the tingle of it, and by the time the sun's coming
up she's staked eleven vampires, as well as bagging a Polgara, three Myanoks
and a nest of Suvoltes.
===============================================================================
“Buffy? Honey, are you up yet?” Joyce bumps her daughter's door open with her
hip as she's fastening her earring. “Remember, I need to drop you off early
today because I have an appointment at the gallery. Honey?”
But there's no Buffy in the tangle of covers. The bathroom door is open, so she
isn't showering.
Joyce's runnning down the stairs, hoping to find her in the kitchen, when she
hears the front door open, and in comes a very sweaty and disheveled Buffy, in
pink sneakers and black spandex shorts and a pink and white polka-dot t-shirt.
She's wearing a purple fanny pack. “Hey, mom!” she says cheerily as she bounces
in the door, heading straight for the kitchen where she drinks three cups of
water from the tap.
“Where have you been?”
“I went for a run.”
“A run.”
“Well, more like a jog. Just down San Vicente to Palisades Park and back.”
“What on earth posessed you to go out at this hour?” She doesn't think Buffy's
lying, exactly, but it's just so unlike her.
“Woke up early. Major case of the fidgets. Figured if I went for a run, maybe I
can actually sit still and pay attention in class. What a concept, right? I
better go shower and get dressed, don't wanna be late for school.” She puts her
used cup in the dishwasher without being asked and presses a kiss to Joyce's
cheek on her way out of the kitchen. “You look nice today.”
She's back down within twenty minutes, wearing jeans, the red Converse sneakers
that had been sneered at just two months ago when she got them as a birthday
present from her Great-Aunt Norma, and a long-sleeved navy and white breton-
stripe shirt that looks...very familiar.
“Is that my shirt?”
“Yeah, you don't mind if I borrow it, right? Thanks, Mom! Meet you in the car!”
She plucks a pear and a banana from the fruit bowl without being prompted to
eat something healthy, doesn't even glance at the coffee-maker, and bounces
toward the garage, damp ponytail swinging. She's wearing the denim mini-
backpack with embroidered butterflies that had been a birthday gift from Gramma
Summers, and also sneered at.
Joyce just shakes her head wearily. “Teenagers.”
Chapter End Notes
     I mentioned in the last chapter that Buffy is getting Called on, and
     essentially going back to, March of 1994. So canonically, she's
     thirteen and in the last semester of grade seven, and has one more
     year after before she starts Hemery. It is pretty young (though not
     the youngest Slayer in this AU by a long shot, which I will cover
     later as Buffy delves more into Slayer history throughout this
     series). The dissonance between her physical and mental ages is also
     going to cause her some problems down the road. I picture this Buffy
     looking pretty similar to how SMG did on AMC, a.k.a. could pass for
     an adult with the right clothes and makeup, because I have known
     thirteen-year-olds who could pass for twenty, as well as thirteen-
     year-olds who couldn't even pass for thirteen (that was me, actually.
     I'm 32 and I still get very suspiciously ID'ed when I buy lottery
     tickets).
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Notes
     I AM NOT DEAD AND I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN ABOUT THIS FIC. Promise. It's
     just my tendency to not write in a linear fashion biting me in the
     ass.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
“Nice backpack, Summers!” Corey Matthews sneers when he passes her in the hall.
“Thanks!” Buffy replies brightly. She remembers him now; he'd made her life
absolute hell all through middle school, until she'd been fortunate enough to
escape him by going to Hemery. He'd been in the district for Bronson Alcott,
and had become someone else's problem. “Hey, too bad about your face.”
He blinks at her. Not the brightest boy, that Corey. “What about my face?”
Buffy sucker-punches him. Not hard enough to break anything, but his nose is
bleeding and he'll have two stellar black eyes by tomorrow. “That.”
There are never any teachers in the hallways, so she swans away to her next
class, sure that she won't get in trouble. After all, it isn't likely Corey
will tell anyone he was beat up by a girl.
===============================================================================
“Summers! I can't believe you gave Matthews a black eye!”
Buffy blinks at him. Who is this guy? Am I supposed to know him? “I don't know
what you're talking about,” she says blandly, and loudly enough for Mrs. Harker
to hear from where she's coming up the aisle and handing back their math tests.
“I would never hit somebody on school property. That's against the rules.” Mrs.
Harker passes her desk and she winks at him.
“Hey, so a bunch of us are going to see Ace Ventura this Friday, wanna come?”
His smile brings back dusty middle-school memories.
Oh, right. Jason something. Whitman, Whitechapel? No, Whittaker! Jason
Whittaker. There was a time when she would have cheerfully killed someone for
Jason Whittaker to talk to her. She'd almost flunked math class, the semester
he sat next to her – that was why she remembered Mrs. Harker and the Parent-
Teacher-Conference of Buffy Is Grounded All Summer. Wait...Ace Ventura? Ew. “No
thanks.”
“Not a Jim Carey fan?”
“Not so much.”
“Well, we could see something else.” Again with the smile.
“That's okay, I have plans on Friday.”
“Oh. Right. Some other time,” he suggests, looking baffled at being turned
down; he's cute and popular enough that it's probably never happened before.
“Sure.” Oh God, I have to do this for five more years? I was out of my mind to
suggest it.
===============================================================================
That night, Buffy's planning a late patrol. She wants to hit Hollywood
Boulevard, Piggyback Yard and downtown, as well as a demon bar in Santa Monica.
So she washes off her makeup, hides a change of clothes in her bathroom, puts
on her pajamas, and curls up in her bed with the book they're studying in
English: Lord of the Flies.
When her mother knocks on her door at 10:01 and comes in, Buffy asks her with a
huff, “Why do we have to read horrible books about kids killing each other?”
“Because life is hard, dear,” her mom says with a wry smile.
“Seriously, though! I'm trying to read ahead because I don't get it when we
read it in class, Mr. Hill is always going on about symbolism and...alligators?
No. That thing where a story about something is really a message about
something else.”
“Allegory.”
“That. But as far as I can tell, it's just a book about kids on a deserted
island being cruel to each other! I don't get what's supposed to be so great
about it. I guess I'm just stupid.”
“Buffy. You are not stupid!”
“Then why don't I get this stupid book?”
Her mom moves to sit on the side of her bed. “A lot of people don't like
classic novels. I had to read Lord of the Flies in school, and I didn't like it
either. I think partly because it represents something I didn't like to think
about.”
“People are inherently cruel.” Her mom looks at her sharply and she says,
“Quoting Mr. Hill. I don't always get what he's saying, but I do pay
attention.”
“You don't think people are cruel?”
“No one who watches the news could argue that. I guess...I guess I just don't
think that's all they are.”
“In that case, you'll feel better when you get to the end. Which won't be
tonight; it's time for bed.”
“Ooh, but I'm hungry! Wanna have peanut butter toast with me?”
Her mom rolls her eyes. “All right, but after that, bed.”
“Promise.”
They go down to the kitchen, and Buffy scarfs down two pieces of toast with
peanut butter, a chunk of cheese, and an apple, before being banished back
upstairs by her mom. Just enough resistance to bedtime to keep her mom from
being suspicious. She brushes her teeth, turns off her lights, and curls up
under the covers.
She lies still and breathes with the huff through her nose that Spike had told
her she did in her sleep, when Mom opens the door to check on her twenty
minutes later. And then she gets up, scrunches up her bed with pillows to look
like someone's sleeping in it, retrieves the Barbie Make Me Pretty Styling Head
that she'd dug out of her closet and arranges it at the top with the blankets
mostly pulled up, goes into her bathroom, puts on jeans and a black tank top
and a push-up bra, french braids her hair, puts on heavy black eyeliner, and
carries her boots as she climbs out the bathroom window and down the oak tree.
Hollywood Boulevard is a big fat nothing, although she does run into one hooker
with fang scars on her neck. Buffy explains to Charisse that she'll be around,
and any of the girls can come to her if they hear anything about girls going
missing or turning up dead with fang marks, or Johns who aren't human. She has
to pull a parking meter out of the concrete before Charisse will believe her,
but in the end, they make a deal.
She takes out a nest of two dozen vamps at the train yard, and her sweep of
downtown nets her five muggers, three would-be rapists, and another ten
vampires. She's warmed up and feeling good by the time she strolls into The
Loan Ranger.
A whole table full of Vahralls book it out the fire exit as soon as she walks
in. “Wow. Was it something I said?” Buffy asks the weaselly-looking human
bartender.
“You didn't say anything,” he points out nervously. He has thinning, slicked-
back dark hair and a hooked nose, and he's wearing a sweat-stained white
undershirt under a loud Hawaiian shirt. Like if Willy the Snitch gained a
hundred pounds. After a moment of study, Buffy realizes she recognizes him;
he's ten years younger, of course, but Jimmy McKinley had taken over running
Caritas when Lorne left for Las Vegas.
“All right, well, now I am. I'm the Slayer. And you're gonna want to put the
word out. I don't have any quarrel with the peaceful and neutral demons, like
Kimowji and M'gla'breks and Xorlanx. They can even come to me if they need
help. And I'm willing to make treaties with peaceful individuals from warrior
species if I ask around town and their rep is straight up, or they can make a
magical vow. But anyone or anything that preys on humans should leave the state
if they like having their heads attached. Got it?” Buffy demands at a near-
yell.
The previously-silent bar is filled with murmurs of assent.
“Good. See you around, Jimmy.”
She's home in bed by three.
===============================================================================
Joyce doesn't know what to think. It's like Buffy has aged ten years overnight.
She dresses more maturely, her makeup is subtle and elegant, she's even changed
how she styles her hair. She does chores without being asked. Her grades have
gone up. She goes running three mornings a week. She's started going to bed on
time; Joyce checks on her at ten and finds her either in bed with the lights
out, or in bed reading ahead in her textbooks. Most often it's a combination of
the two, and she's fallen asleep reading.
She can hardly complain about it, but it still makes her worry. It's just not
normal.
===============================================================================
“Hey, Summers.”
“Hey, Ford.” Buffy hadn't considered this part of time travel; she still goes
to the same school as Ford and he still thinks they're friends.
Buffy would say that people who have tried to kill her don't get to stay her
friends, but, well, she kicked down that boundary shortly after her eighteenth
birthday.
Maybe people who have manipulated and lied to her don't get to....wait.
Why is she mad at Ford, again? He just lied to, manipulated and left her to die
once. She's slept with people who've done worse.
“What's up with you?”
“How do you mean?”
“You punched Corey Matthews in the face, Jason Whittaker asked you out and you
turned him down, and you're dressed like Goth Barbie.”
Buffy looks down at herself. She'd dressed on autopilot this morning, and she's
wearing combat boots, old jeans with the knees ripped out, and a burgundy tank
top under a black zip-front hoodie. She shifts and fights not to blush when she
realizes she's got the knife she took off an M'Vashnik demon on patrol the
other night strapped to her calf with grip tape, along with a stake at the
small of her back, both in makeshift cardboard sheaths. It's not the most
comfortable, but needs must, and 'makeshift' was pretty much her watchword
during her Sunnydale years; she didn't have the money for custom rigs.
Still, though. Way to take weapons to school, Buffy. Not gonna wait to burn
down the gym to get kicked out?
Annnd Ford is still waiting for an answer.
“You really wanna know what's up with me?”
“Yeah...”
“Kay. Tell your parents you're staying over at whoever's, or something, and
meet me at the main gates of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery at sunset, and I'll
show you.”
“The parental units are in Hawaii. Dad's day-drinking and playing golf, Mom's
day-drinking and doing the poolboy...you know, a typical vacation for them.”
Buffy sighs. Really, it's no wonder Ford's moral compass was a little bent at
eighteen; his parents are terrible people and he was pretty much raised by a
succession of underpaid and overworked housekeepers. The fact that he'd
expressed regret at trading her for his own life (and she gets, now, that
there's enough of the person left behind with the demon that he really was
trading for his own life) is actually a pretty major accomplishment considering
what he was raised with. “Even better, no need to make excuses.”
“Sure. I'll see you there.”
Great. This won't go badly at all.
Chapter End Notes
     me: What a sweet review! I think I'll reply to it.
     social anxiety: ORRRRR
     me: hoe don't do it
     social anxiety: ORRRR we could be an awkward turtle and overthink our
     response for TWO MONTHS and then not reply at all because it's been
     too long and we made it weird! And then stress out about how we
     didn't reply and it made us look rude and ungrateful!
     me: ugh why are you like this
     social anxiety: AHAHAHA
     I am trying to be better about responding to ALL messages, from
     internet-folk and IRL peeps...it's actually my NY's resolution for
     2018. But. It's very much a work in progress. So if you get a
     response in your inbox to a review you left many months ago, that's
     why.
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