WHO: Buffy Summers & Nikolai Lantsov WHEN: 6/26 WHERE: Louisiana! On the road. WHAT: Vampire slaying, oooo.
______________
Nikolai’s eyes drifted down to what used to be his immaculately-polished shoes. It wasn't that he didn't believe Buffy when she said that slaying vampires was the same as dusting them. It was more that he thought it a turn of phrase, really.
Even his general acceptance of chaos wavered when his hissing assailant -- upon prompt beheading by sword -- dissipated into a pile of on the ground. And, as it went, somewhat atop his right shoe. He shook the loose dust free, then looked over to where Buffy was handling two delights of her own.
“Would it be overly chivalrous if I asked of you needed help?” He called over to her, momentary surprise dropped clear from his expression in favor of a grin.
"One second please!" She had one throat pressed against the throat of a vampire who was pinned against a wooden fence. If she was lucky — and when was she — he'd stake himself on a giant splinter or something. It could happen. The other charged her and while he believed her to be too distracted by his pal, the last second saw her makeshift fence-stake puncturing through his chest and into the shriveled thing he called a heart. He burst into dust, the wind picking up the ashes and scattering them.
"I think I got a mouthful of dead vampire," she answered opening her mouth and sticking out her tongue as if to sick it up. The other vampire growled something along the lines that she would pay for it, but Buffy's foot only tightened on his throat, cutting him off. "Where did you come from? Who's your sire?"
She was met with gurgling sounds.
"Who is your sire?"
Somehow in the questioning, he'd gotten a good enough punch to her inner thigh, sending her reeling backward and into the fight. "Don't wanna talk, huh?" Over his shoulder, she saw a broken piece of the wooden fence, angled in just the right way. She grabbed him by the shoulders, headbutted him as hard as she could, then picked him up and slammed him against the fence. The look of surprise before he exploded was enough for her.
Nikolai hadn't expected that Buffy would need him, and so he'd lingered on the spot, his sword at his side as he watched. Besides, should there be a fourth or fifth, he felt it was only good manners to handle them. He stole a glance around, unable to stop a small hope that there was another lying in wait for him.
As it went, though, the immediate area fell quiet once the third vampire had been dispatched. Nikolai was the one to break the silence. “I'm not certain if dust is better or worse. Do you ever worry that you might inhale undead by mistake? Also…” He took a few steps toward Buffy, stifling the easy question of if she was okay. “Are there supposed to be vampires in this world? Those were vampires, yes?”
"Those were vampires," she agreed, looking down at the pile of dust and rubbing her hands together to get leftovers off her. There was an adrenaline rush from fighting, from slaying that felt good. It made Buffy feel like she had purpose. "My world's vampires too."
She turned to Nikolai with a frown. What were they doing here? Where had they come from? How had they gotten this far from Tumbleweed if Displaced showed up there first? Without anyone knowing? "I feel like I knew these guys. Like I've fought them before."
“If this was meant to be a reunion, I daresay the whole situation feels misread,” Nikolai remarked, frowning mildly at a bit of dust that still clung to his shoe. “Far too much in the way of biting for my taste, anyway.”
He closed up the space between them, and finally sheathed his sword. If Buffy was riding an adrenaline high, then Nikolai himself wasn't far behind on that rush. This felt more like the life he knew. Danger had been sorely missed.
“Do you suspect there may be more?”
"If there's three, there's probably a nest somewhere." She couldn't shake the feeling that these guys were vampires she'd dusted. There'd only been two she'd ever let escape, well, with any permanence. Angel and Spike, and those were special circumstances. There was something familiar — unhappily familiar with it all.
Buffy looked up at him, then dropped her gaze to his neck to make sure there were no puncture wounds that would need cleaning up. Nothing. That was a relief. Human boyfriend always meant there was a bigger chance of injury.
It clicked. "They knew me. They called me Slayer. How would they know to call me Slayer if they were sired here?"
He caught her searching for wounds, and offered an easy smile. “Don't worry. I've been in enough fights to know to avoid the pointy end of anything, teeth included.” Beyond that smile was a dark thought, however. There had been a time when his control was wrested from him, leaving him only shreds of his humanity, and even that nearly left him. Becoming a vampire seemed a poor life choice on the whole given how it echoed such a thing.
“Sired in your world then, and dropped here? I have my doubts that our military friends would let them wander free, if they followed us from Tumbleweed.”
There were no bodies to examine, no wallets or IDs or anything else to figure out if they were from here or if they'd stumbled from somewhere else. Buffy squatted, perching on the feet as she sifted through the remains. Sometimes an amulet or other mystical object would survive a dusting. There was nothing though except the soot on her hands.
"They weren't stalking us. I think we stumbled on them. I'm thinking we patrol the area, look for a nest and maybe some clue of how they got here?" She stood back up, failing to get all the vampire ashes from her hands. She wiped the back of her hand against her forehead, smearing a tiny amount of soot there. "What do you think?"
“I think--” Nikolai started, but he stopped, raising his hand and shaking his head. “Sorry, you’ve got a bit of vampire just here,” he told her, brushing the offending dust away. He patted the bit that stuck to his hand off on the side of his pants, and made an honest effort to not dwell on if that was perhaps eyeball dust or foot...
“I think,” he started again, “That sounds like a plan. We would be best served splitting up, though. If we find anything…” He held up his phone to indicate. “Wait for the other to catch up? I do love a good ambush.”
She didn't like the idea of stumbling on a nest of vampires with them separated. She'd done this a hundred times with Willow and Xander, but it was somehow different with Nikolai. In some ways, he reminded her of that first guy she went out with way back when she first got to Sunnydale. Showed the adventurous side of Slaying, got injured, but still wanted to go right on with it.
At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do to cut him off. He was too into it, and she was… Well, she was trying to be normal then. Now she knew there was no way to go back, and if she wanted people in her life, she had to cope with the potential injuries or worse.
"Let's go back to the car first; there's something I need to get from the trunk."