Categories: Season 4, Alternate Reality, Episode Rewrite
Characters: Buffy, Faith Lehane, Giles, Sineya, Spike, Willow, Xander
Summary:
This is an idea that originated from a conversation about how badly the Initiative/Adam stuff in Season 4 was resolved and how to make it better, the conclusion of which was that the easiest way to fix it, seeing that the actress who played Walsh was not available for the whole season, would have been to simply shorten the Initiative arc, make Buffy and the Scoobies defeat them earlier with the Enjoining Spell and then have the rest of the season be about them being hunted by the First Slayer in their sleep.
So that's the challenge, have the events of Primeval happen sooner ( I was thinking around the time of Goodbye Iowa but it's up to you ) and then Sineya would haunt Buffy, Giles, Willow and Xander in their sleep.
Some Ideas:
The nightmares start as soon as they defeated the Initiative.
Giles theorizes the spirit of the first Slayer is angry because they disrupted her rest and she'll probably stop hunting them after a few days. He is wrong.
At first, Sineya can only control their dreams and show them confusing visions they don't fully understand, after a while they realise she is also able to control their bodies while they are asleep, they try not to panic since it seems that her control over them is superficial and they wake up a few minutes after she moves their bodies but within days she starts to secure that control and the Scoobies notice they are sleeping for longer periods of time. They fail in the not panicking department.
Giles and Willow try to exorcise the first Slayer both separately and together, it only makes her angrier.
Willow doing magic on her sleep, waking up to see all the furniture in her room floating and Amy switching back and forth between human and rat.
Xander falls asleep on the couch, dreams he is falling, wakes up on the roof, covered in sweat wearing clothes that aren't his and with no idea of how he got there, there's blood on the couch.
Giles falls asleep while researching about the first Slayer, the few books that mention her are vague and contradictory and he is starting to suspect the Council is purposely hiding something about her, he wakes up with a terrible headache, all the windows and mirrors have been smashed and the front door is wide open, his books are nowhere to be seen.
Spike takes to follow the Scoobies at night, at first it's because he finds them entertaining in their odd behaviour, soon he starts stepping up when they do something stupidly dangerous, not because he cares about them mind you, but because he is sure the Slayer would find a way to blame it on him if her precious friends get killed, besides if anyone is going to eat the watcher, the witch and the wimp is going to be him, not some random fledge.
Buffy goes to sleep on her own bed, wakes in the middle of the cemetery, still in her pyjamas, a stake in hand and several piles of dust around her and Spike watching her in awe from the top of a mausoleum.
Buffy doesn't attack Spike while possessed by the first Slayer because he is eating nothing but animal blood at this point and therefore does not register as a Vampire in her radar ( bonus points if Angel shows up and Buffy tries to kill him because he IS full of human blood )
Sineya shows Buffy visions of her life, her childhood in a time humans worshipped the Old Ones, how her family was brutally killed by demons, the Shadow Men kidnapping her and forcing the demon into her, the years she spent living outside of human civilization driving the Old Ones away, even her death, but the more she shows, the more Buffy feels like there's something missing, something the First Slayer doesn't want her to know, at least not yet.
The revelation that Slayers are part demons takes days to sink in and when it does, it shakes Buffy to her core.
Faith is in some of Buffy's dreams, it's not clear whatever it's a fragment of her imagination or the real Faith who is also dreaming.
Sineya calls Buffy and Faith her daughters.
She also tries to convince Buffy not to trust her friends, calling not only Giles but also Xander and Willow Shadow People and telling Buffy they just want to control her.
Spike realises he is in love with Buffy sooner.