Hello Mary Sue
by Shuvcat (c) 2000
"Mary Sue": "...a character based on the author, who is the center of the story by being better, stronger, more beautiful, etc. than all the regular cast and manages to immediately fall in love / defeat / humiliate / etc. the object of interest to the author." -- definition quoted from Philister, BTVS Writers' Guild.
This is a weird story. I was going through a crisis of faith (no not her) when I wrote it, questioning what made me write fanfic and why, indeed, any of us write it. I don't think this is an answer, either. I don't know what it is, really. Entertaining, I hope.
I have dedicated so many stories to Alan, but I have to give him props here too, for being my FreakZilla. (Well, one of them.) Also for MdKnight, who a long time ago begged me to write a story where I didn't brutally kill Willow. Behold! here she is, alive and magicking. :)
Joss Whedon, Fox, Mutant Enemy, and the WB own the characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Or do they?....just kiddin', yes they do, I own nothing except Mary. And it might be said she owns herself.)
It was two years after the Ascension.
Sunnydale had survived, miraculously. However, despite Buffy's valiant efforts, the demon Olvocan had killed nearly all of the senior class, parents, faculty, and nearby residents of Sunnydale High School before it finally ate its fill. And unfortunately, the consumption of so many human souls was exactly what the demon needed to make itself permanently invincible. Nothing they did would have killed it. So the Scoobies, after fleeing the massacre and meeting up blocks away, ran like hell for the only safe place they could think of -- Giles' home -- and waited for the worst.
Which had never come. The opening of the Hellmouth had not occured, neither had the fire from the sky or the rampage of demons or any of the other things the books had warned of. Not yet, anyway. What did happen was that the demon Olvocan, instead of going on to crush the town under its scales (the human Mayor had worked long and hard to get that town built, after all; no sense making a mess) burrowed itself deep into the earth at the foot of the Hellmouth, rooting its snakelike body into the earth, taking up permanent guard at the mouth of Hell. The terrified survivors thought for sure the portal was going to spill open and loose its unholy denizens on the earth. But this didn't happen either.
Instead, in exchange for keeping the Hellmouth closed, Olvocan began demanding sacrifices to keep itself fed. The Sunnydale survivors had to pick and choose who would live and die in order to keep the creature appeased. This was a purely barbaric ritual, as the demon no longer really needed to eat, it just liked being sacrificed to. Like any self-respecting male demon, it was partial to virgins.
The good citizens would be picked, one from every family, and those picked would compete in various picnic games; three-legged race, ring toss, duck-duck-goose and so on. The winners of these would then have their names put in a hat, and whoever was last to be drawn out would be bound, gagged (sometimes not, the screaming was always fun) carried up the hill, and abandoned beneath the weaving, towering snake demon, which would then dive down and gobble up the shrieking contestant alive. End of player, end of game.
The slaughter had been continuing for the past two years. Buffy and the gang knew the demon was preparing for something -- but whether it was the opening of the Hellmouth, or something even more horrible, if there was such a thing -- none of them knew, and they had had plenty of time to figure it out. In between graduation and trying to stay alive in the hellish place Sunnydale had become, Buffy and Willow had even managed to start college, in spite of rising numbers of demons to slay and the tragic death of Buffy's mother. Joyce Summers had been brutally murdered by Angelus, after he had returned from hell, summoned by the turncoat Slayer Faith. She had slept with him during Angel and Buffy's attempt to find out whether she was a spy for the Mayor. It had backfired horribly....and Joyce had paid for the charade with her life.
They hadn't seen the last of Mayor Wilkins, either. Shortly after the Ascension and the subsequent Rooting, Olvocan had split itself, projecting itself in its previous human form. So the Mayor -- the cornball politician part of him -- was presently across town in City Hall just like he'd always been, presiding over his fair, imprisoned (and completely renovated) city. Except now, where before he had been simply invulnerable... now he was transcendent. A being of thought rather than matter -- since he was a projection of the demon's mind -- he appeared solid, but could move through walls like a ghost. Bullets and swords went through him like air, and he could move with the speed of thought, across town in a second. The only reason he hadn't infiltrated Buffy's and the other's homes was because Giles had actually found a protection spell that was useful against keeping the spirit out. Plus, he was busy officiating the game-show voting used to decide who was given to his demon, and frankly, he didn't consider the Scoobies much of a threat anymore.
So on things went, and on he went, his solid demon self eating and sleeping and eating, and his omnipotent human self busily preparing the town for God knew what, casting spells, hosting sacrifices, performing rituals. One of those rituals had just that morning involved the bloody sacrifice of the entire Sunnydale Ladies Zonta Club. They'd had it coming -- it turned out Zonta was an ancient African word for willing bloodletter -- but it had still been horrible. And like so much in the past two years, Buffy and the gang hadn't been able to do a thing to prevent it.
However, today they had assembled for the millionth time because, unlike all the other rituals, this morning's horror had ended with the Mayor announcing to the horrified onlookers that it would be the last, ever, of such sacrifices. No more lottery, no more games, no more feeding. And then he laughed. Not a friendly, gosh-you've-all-been-good-sports laugh. More a sinister, plotting, enjoy-it-while-it-lasts-because-the- next-course-is-gonna-be-a-killer laugh.
Now at the Magic Box, the occult supply store that Giles had bought when the previous owner had been sacrificed to Olvocan, the Scooby gang pored over papers, books, anything they could find to give them a clue as to what the Mayor could be planning, why he would suddenly stop the bloodshed, what in the world they were supposed to do now.
"Damn," said Willow.
Buffy stared. The redheaded wiccan had been acting very strangely all day -- outgoing and friendly, almost... loud and somewhat obnoxious. For some reason, everything Wesley said made her laugh uncontrollably, and she was ignoring poor Tara no end. Now this. Willow as a rule had a strictly PG vocabulary. This sudden inflection from her was completely out of character.
"Seconded, though slightly edited," spoke Giles, setting down the book he was reading with a sigh. He was unusually jittery too, unable to keep still long enough to study any of the tomes he owned. He took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead, worn out even though it was ten in the morning. "Right, then....what do we know, so far?"
"We know that several rituals require mass sacrifices over a period of time," Wesley jumped in. "The problem is that none of these have particularly earth-shattering results. The ritual to produce a blizzard in the middle of the desert, for example--"
"--Not exactly the stuff of boot-trembling," finished Willow, smiling at the ex-Watcher. Wesley, after being nearly trampled to death at Graduation, had done a stint in the hospital and been released from his duties by the Council, who had appreantly decided he was too pathetic even for their employ. Since then the humbled Wes had stuck around, helping Giles and the gang when he could, seemingly having no other purpose than to assist, be underfoot, and duck Cordelia when she inexplicably stopped by. At least today he was entertaining one of them -- Willow was hanging on his every word.
"Which leads us, again, to why," said Giles. "Why the Mayor, after dictating these ghastly displays every week, has suddenly stopped. It's too much to hope he's simply become bored with the process. Something terrible is going to happen." He shot a disgusted glare at Wesley, and then at the books. "And we are still no closer to finding out what."
"Well," said Willow abruptly, "I might have something."
Everyone looked. This was the first time any of them had come close to uttering those golden words. "Since when?" asked Cordy, present for once.
Willow gave her a very un-Willowy glare. "I, uh, just found it," she said. "A spell....it's a, uh, really old and really forgotten spell. I can maybe do it to him if I get close enough."
"What does it do?" asked Tara, leaning over to get a look in the book she was reading.
Willow leaned over it, as if to block her view. "Well, uh -- it's, it...has to be done close up, anyway," she muttered. "Oh, crap -- can't we just go to City Hall and you guys let me do it?!"
Everyone stared in amazement at the suddenly potty-mouthed witch. "Okay, who are you and what have you done with Willow?" Xander blurted.
The girl's head jerked up. Her mouth dropped open, and a little noise came out. "I-I'm Willow," she finally said, as if daring them to deny it. "S-see? I have....like, red hair? And tie-dyed skirts?" She gave them all a big, hopeful, very Willowy smile.
Xander shrugged. Buffy frowned, but she knew Will was probably as stressed out as they were. And she would have let it go right there, except that the bell over the shop's door suddenly chimed and a familiar voice, plugged but still unmistakable, sounded in the room. "Hi, guys, sorry I'm lade. I think I'm cubbing down wid subthing," said a very congested Willow as she walked into the shop.
Every member of the gang stared at the Willow who'd walked in the door in dead, shocked silence. Then they turned their heads and stared at the Willow who was sitting in their midst.
"Hey!" Cold-flu Willow, catching sight of herself for the first time, stared. "Who -- huh??" She gasped.
"Good sum-up, Will," murmured Xander.
In her chair, the other Willow looked shocked for only a moment. Then she let out a sigh, the smile dropping off her face. "Aw, hell," she grumbled, rolling her eyes. "You 're supposed to be home in bed."
At this, the gang seemed to snap out of it. Wesley leaped to the fore, grabbing a Celtic cross candle off a nearby table and holding at arm's length. He remembered the last time there had been two Willows to contend with, and since vampires couldn't get colds, that made the question of who was who quite clear. "How did she come back?!" yelped Cordy, hiding behind the hemp curtains.
"Find a stake!" Giles looked around.
Buffy had one handy of course. She was all set to jump across the table and use it when Willow -- the one in the chair -- shook her head. She cringed, closing her eyes -- but it wasn't like she was afraid, more as if retreating into herself, concentrating.
"No," she said quietly. "Everybody freeze."
And they did.
Buffy was halted before she began her jump. The others were frozen where they stood. None of them could move or blink or breathe. If a pack of vampires had suddenly burst in the shop, they would have been dead, unable to defend themselves. They were totally helpless.
The Willow sitting in the chair got slowly to her feet. She cast the frozen group a long, not-entirely-friendly look. "Well, I guess you'll listen now," she said ominously.
No answer. "I'm sorry to do this," she went on. "I don't have a choice." And before everyone's eyes Willow suddenly melted, like dust being knocked off an antique.
The girl standing where Willow had been seconds before looked at them almost nervously. She was plain -- brown haired, somewhat mousy, with pale beady eyes that shone out of her sallow face. She wore a baby tee that read Diva on it and ill-fitting stretch jeans. "Okay," she said, voice slightly breathless. "You can see I'm not a vampire, can't you? Buffy?" She gazed long and hard at the Slayer. "Okay. I promise I'm not here to hurt any of you. Can I trust you not to jump on me if I let you go?"
Silence. Something apparently made the girl feel she had a favorable answer. Because all at once it was like whatever held their limbs let go and the gang was freed, allowed to walk and move again. Tara left the seat she'd been in and went to Willow's side, as far across the room as they could get.
Buffy set the stake carefully down on the table. "Who are you?" she asked the obvious question.
The strange new girl's brow furrowed. She bit her lower lip childishly. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I swear, left to my own designs, I wouldn't have come like that. Willow was just the portal, because I relate to her most, but I probably could have been anybody. I wanted to be Faith--"
On the name her form shivered and changed, and suddenly Faith -- the turncoat Slayer, who had been lying in a coma in the hospital across town for the past two years -- was standing where the girl had been, black eyes and leather and glistening lipstick and all.
About the only thing that could startle the group more than a vampire was the appearance of the dark Slayer. Everyone jumped. Xander backed clear into the wall.
Faith gazed sadly at them. Her perfect lips lifted in a sad smile. "Except that," she said. "Plus she's in a coma. Couldn't really walk around unnoticed like this for long." With a little sigh, Faith blew away like a dusted vampire, leaving the mousy girl standing there once again. "At least I could write Willow home with the flu and pretend I was her. But you--" she gave Willow a sad smile "--you just can't stop Nancy Drewin, can ya?" She smiled sadly at her own lame quoting.
"Who are you?" Buffy repeated, a little unnerved by the sudden glimpse of Faith. Two years had passed since she had stabbed the evil Slayer with her own knife, since Faith had thrown herself off that building into her coma, and the whole horrible mess still felt like it had happened yesterday.....
The strange girl began to walk back and forth, trying to put her thoughts in order. "I don't know how well I can explain this," she started, "but I'll try, ok? I'm sorry I had to freeze you, but you probably would have tried to stake me next. No, I'm not a vampire. I'm not a demon, or a witch, or a warlock either. I'm not really sure what I am. But one thing I know... I'm the cause of all the troubles you've had this past year."
She stopped pacing and looked directly at the Slayer. "I can't tell you my name," she said. "Because that would ruin everything. But you can call me..." She uttered a self-conscious laugh, "--call me Mary Sue. It sounds dumb, I know... but trust me, it's appropriate. Now, next question, what am I doing here?"
She fell quiet again for a while. A long time. She sat down on the chair again, frowning, trying to sort out what she wanted to say. "I'm from.... another dimension," she said carefully. "And I'm part of this group....you can call us the Bards. We're on the net, we have meetings....I can't tell you what all we talk about, but it's...uh...." She looked at them guiltily. "We kind of....watch you."
Silence. Mary Sue suddenly giggled, a breathless, nerdy laugh. "No --" she exclaimed, hearing Xander's thoughts "--no, not like that! We're not the Watcher's Council either. We just...watch....and we write."
She stopped laughing, trying to focus. "Okay, try to think back to the old days, when the bards used to walk the earth and tell tales about Hercules and Jason and the Argonauts...each minstrel told a different version of the old legends. One has Hercules lifting the pantheon, one has him eating the heads off snakes...you get the idea. The point is, all these different storytellers were taking liberties on their favorite characters, changing them, making them good or evil.....that's kind of what we do. That's why we took our name -- the Buffy Bards. Each of us tell stories about you -- all of you -- but not all of us tell the same things." She looked to Xander. "Remember last year when you broke your leg? In other stories, that never happened. In other stories, some of you have dated each other...different from who you usually date. Some of you have turned evil. And some of you..." she looked sheepish "...are dead."
"Like my mother," spoke Buffy aloud.
The silence was incredible. Mary Sue nodded sadly. "Yes," she whispered. "Like your mother." She looked at Buffy entreatingly. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't cut it." Tears were forming in Buffy's eyes. "Angelus killed my mother and you let it happen." As unbelievable as the tale Mary Sue told was, Buffy could follow it perfectly. Joyce was dead, and this....girl...had had the power to make it all different, and she had just let it slide. "You let my mother die!"
"If she hadn't died," Mary Sue pointed out quietly, "--you never would have found the Scroll of Samhain. You never would have saved Willow -- the real Willow. You never would have sent Angelus back to hell and none of you would have survived the Swarm." She looked about to cry too, but her voice was firm. "It was a good series. I'm sorry Joyce had to die. She was one of my favorite characters--"
"Is that all we are to you?!" Buffy snapped. "Fun characters? A good story?!"
"No!" Mary Sue looked indignant. "No way! Don't you have any idea how important you are? I know people -- some of them are my best friends -- whose lives have been saved because of you. Not because you slayed a vampire, either. They were able to act out their passion, their baser instincts, their sorrow, their rage, their confusion -- all through you. All of you." She looked around at the gang. "I mean sure, there's some people who just want to see how many different erotic pairings they can make, but--"
She stopped short at their looks of confusion. "....and... that's probably enough of that subject," she said abruptly.
Xander raised his hand. "I move for a recount," he grinned.
Buffy gave him a glare. She turned her attention back on Mary Sue. "So tell me," she said. "How did you get here? More importantly, how do we get rid of you?" The revelation about her mother was still stinging, and she wasn't about to let the self-described bard off easily.
Mary Sue shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. I was writing this --" she waved her hands around, indicating the shop. "All of this. I've been working on it for months. It's really tiring. There's people demanding to see the end and I'm having a lot of trouble.....well...anyway, I guess I was concentrating too hard." She looked sheepish.
"Well, at least she got that part of Willow right," observed Cordelia cuttingly.
Mary Sue looked at the former cheerleader. "You know, I never liked you," she said icily. "You remind me of this girl I knew at my school. I don't even know why you're in this story."
Cordelia blinked. "Well, I would have a snappy comeback, but my imported pantyhose are really riding up, so I'm going to go dig them out. Later, people." She turned around with perfect dignity and stalked out of the shop.
Mary Sue was giggling. Like somebody who had just played a perfect practical joke. Buffy didn't like this, as funny as it was. "How did you do that?" she asked.
Mary smiled. "I can do it to anybody," she said. "I'm the writer."
"That doesn't answer anything," Buffy said. "I want some ID. How do we know you're not some shapeshifty tricky thing?"
Mary Sue shrugged again. "I'm telling you, this is the truth," she insisted. "I was at my job -- I'm a cashier at Marty-Mart in....ugh, anyway, it's boring work. You get into a rhythm and your mind wanders and this is about what I do with my day -- think up stories. And I went on break, I went to the restroom. I was thinking really hard about this plot point I'd been having trouble with. And when I came out of the restroom... I wasn't at my job anymore. I was in a store, in a mall, that I had never seen before.
"I just wandered around for like half an hour, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I walked through a clothing store, and I just happened to walk in front of a mirror, and I looked --" Willow's physical form briefly shimmered over the girl's face and hair like a mirage "-- like this."
"You can try to imagine how freaked out I was, seeing a reflection that wasn't mine, but that moved and walked and talked when I did. The clerk though I was nuts, raising my arms and turning my head....anyway, after some more walking around, I finally realized where I was -- Sun Mall, over on Quaker Street." She beamed. "I created that mall. It didn't exist originally. I wrote about it in Cutting The Ribbons, where the Mayor --"
"--let loose a bunch of killer store mannikins on the town," finished Buffy, wide eyed. She remembered fighting the plastic demons, which had ultimately been killed by burning them all in a huge, ozone-depleting bonfire. She had won that battle, just barely, last September.....
Mary Sue was nodding and smiling. "Yes," she said, almost excitedly. "I wrote that. I made that! And to you guys, it was real! It really happened!" She laughed, that jittery giggle again. "And that's when I realized.... I was in Sunnydale. My Sunnydale!" She actually squeaked with excitement. "I was actually in the world I'd been writing! I knew it was mine, not the other bards' -- I could recognize things I'd created, stuff I'd written. And that wasn't all, either. I could make people do things. I made this pair of skateboard guys start an argument -- they almost started socking each other -- and then I made them stop." She was smiling, she couldn't believe it. "They did everything I wanted them to and they said everything I told them to say. It was so cool -- like Sim City on superengines."
To Buffy, it sounded frightening. "How powerful are you?" she asked. "I mean can you just do whatever you want to whoever you want?"
Mary Sue shook her head. "I can control the weaker ones." She looked to the Scoobs. "No offense."
None taken, except by Xander. "Why's she looking at me?" he asked no one in particular.
Mary gave him a smile. "I can completely control the bit players, and you secondary ones are more or less easy. But my control over you magical ones--" she looked to Giles, Willow, and Tara "-- is scattershot." She frowned. "I think it's because magic is so unpredictable. FreakZilla -- he's this other writer in the club, he writes Faith -- he's way better at nailing down the rules of magic than me. I get hung up on the small stuff. There's so many different things that can happen. I don't know half the time how the story is going to end. You for example--" She gave Buffy a confused look. "You haven't done almost anything I've tried to make you do since I got here. You're not frozen anymore, for one thing." She looked a little nervous. "I guess it's because you're a Slayer. I hope so, I hope it's not.... because...some things...." the mirth completely left her "....some people I can't control at all now." She looked scared.
"Like who?" Buffy was absolutely sure she didn't want to hear this.
Mary Sue looked at her, eyes shiny, like she was a mouse hiding in the grass, afraid of being caught. "So I'm in the mall," she suddenly blurted out, "and I'm walking around, and I'm Willow, and I'm still writing things, affecting reality, and I'm thinking this is pretty much the coolest thing that's ever happened to me....and then I realize. The other thing." She looked around. "What if you suddenly found yourself on the Titanic, hours before it was about to go down? Would you be excited at first? Sure, here's this piece of history that you get to look at up close. You get to see whether Captain Smith knew about the iceberg, whether the band really did play on until the end. But then it hits you -- you're on a sinking ship. A historic ship, yeah -- but it doesn't change the fact that you're about to die."
She just let that sentence go. The gang looked at each other nervously. "OK, we have our new spooky person," said Xander.
"Sunnydale," said Mary Sue, "is about to be destroyed."
Silence. "The Mayor is going to kill everybody in this town," she went on. "I know, cause I've written it already. It's at home -- wherever my home is -- on my computer, it's all saved on my hard drive. The town will be destroyed. All of you will be destroyed. And me--" she swallowed hard "-- I'll be destroyed, too."
She looked at Buffy. "That's why I came here, why I pretended to be Willow. I have to get home so I can fix this. I need help -- magical help, and no offense, but none of you witches are strong enough to help me, not even together. There's only one person who can do what I want, and you're right, Buffy, you're not gonna like this--
"Help with what?" asked Buffy impatiently.
Mary Sue took a deep breath after her nervous ramble, gathering her courage, what there was of it. "I need you to take me to the Mayor."
Silence. "The Mayor?" repeated Xander. "Hello? Current bad guy of the month? Villain status, trying to kill us for most of three years?"
"I know." Mary looked miserable. "I write him."
More silence.
The girl shrugged in an I-can't-help-it way. "He's my favorite," she said, as if that explained everything. "I like him. His schemes, his power.... I've been writing it all year. I wrote him becoming a demon, I wrote him doing all the horrible things he's been doing to you all. He is what he is because... I wrote him that way."
Buffy couldn't believe the girl's flippancy. "He's evil."
"I know."
"He's killed dozens of innocent people. He sacrificed the entire senior class!"
Mary Sue actually rolled her eyes. Her head dropped back, a look of exasperation scrunched her face. "God, come on, will you people quit it with the Graduation thing already?! Were you awake during high school?! Can you honestly say you weren't wishing he'd stomp the college while he was at it? I was!"
Buffy was horrified. "You're insane!" she whispered.
Mary rubbed her nose again, giggling nervously. "I'm warped, at the very least," she agreed. "I'm sorry, Buffy, I was a total geek in school. When it turned out he was gonna eat the school....I was laughing out loud, I really was. I guess I just don't have much sympathy for.... high schoolers."
Buffy just stood there, unbelieving. Mary Sue shrugged. She looked adequately sad, but not repentant. "Sorry," she offered again.
The naive, don't-blame-me look on the girl's face made Buffy sick. "No deal," she said, turning away.
"Buffy--" Giles started.
"The girl let my mother die, Giles!" Buffy reminded him. "She let hundreds of kids be eaten! It's like Faith all over again!! For all we know the Mayor probably sent her!"
"It's not like that!" Mary blurted. "I've come here to help you! Don't you get it? I can control him in my world, but here everything's different! You think I wrote the stuff that happened this morning? The sacrifice, the bloodletting? No! God, I'm sick, but I'm not that sick!"
"You just admitted you don't care about hundreds of people dying!" Buffy stared the bard down, angrily. "Give me one good reason why we should trust you!"
"I'll give you about 50,000 good reasons," said Mary. "But in case saving every man woman and child in this town doesn't rock you, here's another: If you don't help me, and if the Mayor succeeds in what he's trying to do, and if he destroys Sunnydale, and if I die in this world.... then everything I created -- the state of California, the United States, the continent, the planet Earth, any neighboring solar systems out there, everything I dreamed up inside my insane little head -- all die too."
Perfect, horrified silence.
Mary Sue stared directly at the Slayer. "What's it gonna be, Buffy?" she asked, somewhat ominously. "The deaths of hundreds? Or the deaths of planets?"
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