The same teen like the group she hung out with- superficial and uncaring. It was an escape. No one saw how unhappy she was, how lost. The future loomed in front of her but something was missing an important part of her was missing and when she though about it she often cried knowing there was someone out there who she hadn't meet yet, but would die for her one day. She had no idea who the person was yet felt it and it kept her going through the show that her life was.

She did what was expected of her. Bright happy and innocent, a cheerleader dating a football champ, the All-American girl with the perfect family. A façade. She laughed at the idea of her 'perfect' life- a bitter cracked laugh- that sounded so strange coming from her youthful face, but quickly becoming tears, as she held her stuffed pig and wept. She wished she didn't care, could listen to them and not have it hurt her. But it always did.

Sometimes she liked to think that she had a destiny, a higher destiny and she was meant for something, Celia had told her that so long ago when they were children playing before … before Celia died. Fate controlling her life would be better than this… this lack of control. In a few moments she would get up and get ready for bed, her parent would never know she even heard them. But for now she cried just a little bit for her parents, her mother who gave up her dreams and her father who didn't want to be stuck with a wife and child.

Standing the girl walked into the bathroom, she swayed a little and out of her mouth came a hiss. "I am the Slayer." Shaking it off and continuing into the bathroom, the girl blocked out the memory of the screaming that was now silent "I must be going crazy, what the hell is a slayer?"

That night for the first time Buffy Summers, the Slayer dreamed of her fate- of the fate of the greatest slayer- and the others before her and felt the whisper of an Angel being called to her service by the balance.

The beginning