Far Too Long

by Cynamin

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Buffy: The Vampire Slayer or Highlander. Only characters and events you don't recognize do I own.
Author's Notes: The "100 Years" series continues. This is a sequel to my short Buffy/Angel story "Long Time No See." This will make sense if you don't read that, but it will be better if you do. Just so you know, the year is 2099, and Buffy is Immortal. Any comments are more than welcome.
Spoilers: All events through "Graduation Day" are fair game.

Prologue

The day the Immortal Slayer was found the Watchers were in a state of chaos. No one had really been searching for the missing Slayer anymore, though there was officially a researcher assigned to finding any record of her. After all, it had been one hundred years since the Watchers had lost track of her. It was mere coincidence that one researcher keeping track of paranormal and vampire related activity and one Watcher assigned to several younger Immortals had shared information and discovered that their attention had recently turned to the same person.

The two young researchers and members of the Watchers had both been doing some research in one of the headquarters’ extensive libraries. One of them was looking at reports on paranormal activity in the Washington D.C. area. Though there wasn’t too much to start with, vampiric activity had dropped significantly in the last week. To try and figure out why this had happened, he was looking at any information the Watchers had gathered in the area.

One of the things he was looking at was a number of photographs taken at magic supply shops in the area. In order to track paranormal activity and those involved with it, the council had taken to monitoring places where such people might be found. He was looking at the records for a pair of customers when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

A young woman had been walking behind him, carrying some records when the woman on the computer screen had caught her eye. "Excuse me," she said, "but I was wondering if you could tell me who that girl is."

The man looked closely at the record included with the picture. Aside from date, time, and purchases there was no information. "Sorry, it doesn’t say."

The woman muttered something under her breath, then sighed. "Thanks anyway," she said. Halfway to turning away, she looked back at the screen curiously. "You know, I don’t believe I’ve seen this picture before, and I’ve been trying to identify this girl for a month."

The mystery suddenly grew. "Why are you looking for her?" he asked.

"A bit over a month ago she defeated a very strong, very evil Immortal, much to our surprise. The thing is, no one seems to know who she is."

"Immortal?" the man asked, surprised. "She’s an Immortal?"

The woman was surprised at his response. "Yes! Isn’t that why you’re looking at her?"

He shook his head. "This is from the Slayer database, several days ago. I was doing a paranormal activity survey."

Intrigued now, the woman pulled up a chair. "Strange that our research should overlap. Do you have any way of identifying who she is? The Immortal records have been turning up nothing."

The man shook his head. "Whoever entered this information had no record of her. I only stopped to look at it because it lists several vials of holy water among the things these two purchased. I’m trying to find the cause of a drop in vampiric activity in the area, and I thought she might have something to do with it."

Leaning forward, the woman looked thoughtful. "They might only have been looking in current records. Is there any way to search this database for older information?"

The man had an idea. "I could try entering her image into the identifier program, but tell it to find the oldest record to display. It’s not really set up to do that, but if she’s in there. . . ." He typed quickly. "This may take a moment," he said.

It was faster than he thought, and the two of them looked at their find in surprise.

Finally, the woman spoke. "Does the council know about this?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I never heard about an Immortal Slayer."

The two of them rose and left the room with their discovery. Smiling, an Immortal watched them go. He knew how to hide among them; he had been one of them before, a researcher researching himself. Now they overlooked him again as he worked in the headquarters’ libraries. Sometimes that meant he was the first to hear information like this.

Methos smiled, and awaited the Slayer’s return.



On to Part One

Feed my habit - send me feedback!
Back to Cynamin's Fan Fiction ------------0xKhTmLbOuNdArY Content-Disposition: form-data; name="userfile"; filename="" 1