Various Places and Times, then New York City, Early June 2003 (Wednesday Fandom Time)

[brat_inslayage]

The school bus broke down outside of Oxnard, a circumstance that prompted wry if exhausted laughs from Xander, Buffy, Willow, Dawn, and Giles for reasons that Kennedy was too tired to decipher.

The head rush of success and survival wore off a couple of hours later with the last of the adrenaline, after several people calling in a bunch of favors secured them a lift to Los Angeles, with no-questions-asked hospital stays for those who needed them (turned out Angel had some sweet hookups, which seemed to be a brand new development, because Willow was surprised, and Giles didn't seem to approve) and a weeklong checkin at a five star hotel for everyone else.

No one was entirely clear on how, exactly, what they’d done at the Hellmouth had stopped the apocalypse. Something about the First never being able to take corporeal form now that the army of Ubervamps was dust and couldn’t overrun the Earth. Look, it had worked, and the world wasn’t ending (this time, thank you, Giles, for pointing that out) so nitpicking the details was way low on everyone’s priority list for now.

The first couple of nights were spent in a haze of recovery and, once the shock dissipated, grieving: the Scoobies spent a lot of time sequestered in Giles's room or Buffy's, and with all the history they had together Kennedy didn't begrudge them that. She was, on the other hand, quietly glad to see that even if it was still a bit awkward, they'd included Faith in those gatherings.

That left her and the new Slayers to deal with the fallout in their own way, and that was cool; they were the next generation, and this was less the end of an era than it was a whole new start for them. There was a whole "sisterhood" sort of deal there that ordinarily would be more touchy-feely and sappy than Kennedy generally liked, but considering what they'd just gone through together she really didn't care if it was. The downer side of the aftermath didn't really sink in until the next day, after everyone had gotten some sleep and a meal that wasn't, for the first time in weeks, undercooked or overcooked or going slightly rancid because it had been scavenged from an abandoned grocery store.

That was when they had time to really take stock of their surroundings-- of who had been crashing in the next sleeping bag over on Buffy's floor for weeks but hadn't made it out of the high school-- and actually, finally process the battle they'd been through.

That could happen now: normal life began to seep back in, in all its stark contrast to the wartime mentality that had set in for all of them. Amazing what not having to share a bathroom with thirty other people and then go out and work on marksmanship could do for your daily routine.

Kennedy took all the girls up to Griffith Park on the second day, and made them hike the trail to the top of Mount Lee. The hike itself was meant to help them all get accustomed to their newfound strength, but she had a second objective in mind for when they got to the summit and took in the sprawling sight of the L.A. Basin below them and the Hollywood sign within their peripheral vision.

"So," she told them, looking around from one girl to the next in turn. "We made it, yeah? That's good. But I wanna take a few minutes to give a shoutout to every one of us who didn't."

They understood what she meant; after a few minutes of silence punctuated by the occasional sniffle, they started to speak up.

Kennedy listened without contributing her own commentary for the most part; to some of the girls she was still the hardass drill sergeant who made them flinch every time she opened her mouth, and now was a crappy time for anyone to feel uncomfortable. Besides, she wanted to hear what the Slayers had to say about each other as equals, and she'd always felt just a little bit set apart from them by virtue (such as it was) of age and experience. This... wasn't supposed to be about that.

But every now and then they would falter, because some of the fallen girls had barely been in Sunnydale long enough for anyone to remember much more than their names, and no one was quite sure what to say about them. That was when Kennedy would interject with something like "She was starting to pick up a pretty unique style with an axe," or "She wasn't the fastest runner, but damn if she ever quit trying."

Her training notes might be back in the rubble of the crater, but she remembered.

She spared a few moments to remember Spike and Anya, too; she'd really been hoping for a chance to introduce them to a few of her friends. Spike and Jono might have hit it off, and it was a shame she'd never get the chance to find out for sure.

***

They all couldn't stay forever, of course, and on the third day of the world without Sunnydale preparations began. Kennedy spent her time shuttling between helping the Scoobies figure out how to run things from here on out-- rebuilding the Council, finding all those other new Slayers, all that jazz-- and getting a sense of what the girls wanted to do with their lives. Almost everyone had families they hadn't seen in a while, so travel arrangements had to be made, and nobody would complain about letting Kennedy put her take-chargey impulses to work to that end.

She and Willow made a good team that way, Willow working out the logistics of it all while Kennedy handled the phone calls and bookings.

One of her first calls had been to Portalocity, half just to see if she could actually get through to them. She did, and got the call escalated to a supervisor through the power of her own brattiness until she got a groveling explanation of how the entire network had gone down a few months back, and while most service was back to normal it'd be a little bit yet until the connections to her dimension were restored. To make up for that (or maybe because she was just not fun to deal with on the phone), they promised her a free first-class trip on the first portal out as soon as they were up and running again here.

That explained how she hadn't been able to get back to Fandom back in December, if she thought about it, but she wasn't going to push for compensation for that. All things considered, that had worked out for the good.

The downside to playing travel agent was that she ran her phone out of battery pretty quickly, and her phone charger was back in the crater. Luckily there were land lines for this sort of thing; it just meant that until she could figure out a way to get her phone re-juiced (iPhone cables not existing yet) she couldn't get in touch with anyone from Fandom.

That bothered her more than a little bit but as busy as they were, she didn't have the time to dwell on it much.

As soon as things settled down enough, she was so calling Dad's lawyer. For now there was work to do, including the not so pleasant, but necessary, task of finding and contacting next of kin for the ones who didn't make it.

That was the sort of sobering thing that made a girl really want to cling to what she had.

***

Two weeks into the World After Sunnydale they had a basic plan in place. Faith was going ahead to the Hellmouth in Cleveland and taking a couple of the new Slayers with her, and Robin would be joining them there as soon as he was medically cleared to travel. Giles was heading back to England to see what he could do about salvaging the Council's resources-- god knew, with this many Slayers to find, train, and equip, they were going to need them. He was bringing Andrew along, and that was the part that made everyone wonder, but, well, that knowledge about demon lore might as well be put to use.

Xander wasn't in any rush to find his family; no one could blame him for that, and he was still reeling from Anya's death. No one blamed him for that, either. He hadn't decided what to do yet, so for the time being he stuck around in L.A., and if Willow intended to be there for him until he was back on his feet it meant Kennedy wasn't going anywhere, either.

Buffy and Dawn would be heading off to go see their father, after which a long vacation was in order. They'd earned it.

...Kennedy's insistence on paying for the trip was her way of apologizing.

***

Kennedy almost forgot about her own twentieth birthday. She would have, too, caught up as she was in nightly patrols around West Hollywood (the club scene there made it prime vampire feeding territory), occasionally horrifying Wesley with stories about the Fandom version of himself, getting to go on actual dates with her girlfriend...

Oh, yeah, and the ongoing work of figuring out what to do about starting a new Watchers' Council. The Council's assets were still there, but it was going to take a lot of smooth talk on Giles's part and intricate hacking on Willow's to get a hold of them. It would be a while, and in the meantime they had needs that required funding; Kennedy had an idea for those, but first she had to harangue Portalocity into getting its act together.

It was Xander-- there to spend the day with them before he took off to join the Cleveland bunch at least for a little while-- who picked up the phone in Kennedy and Willow's hotel suite and got to hear the boisterous chorus of "happy birthday to you" from an overeager Jañe; he quickly handed the phone over to Kennedy and, while she was distracted by her sister's chattering, held a hushed conference with Willow.

A hastily ordered (and misspelled) cake after dinner, Xander who definitely counted as a friend by now, Willow, and a call from Dawn and Buffy in Genoa made for the smallest birthday party Kennedy had ever had, but she didn't mind. She got to tease Willow about giving her the best early birthday present ever, after all.

While Giles was on the line from England. Kennedy had meant the Slayer activation spell, but all the same they swore they heard him cleaning his glasses over the phone.

***

A month after the battle, nine days after leaving L.A. for a trip up to Willow's parents' post-Hellmouth refuge up in Berkeley, Kennedy was back in New York. Back in the early days of the Sunnydale siege, with Giles's help and her dad's, she'd managed to spin the damage the Bringers had done to her apartment into something the insurance company and property management would buy, but there were still a lot of explanations to make to her family, time to spend with her sister, things like that. Important things. Even her stepmother was glad to see her; okay, there had been the initial tirade about running off and scaring people half to death (that choice of words stung a bit) and leaving her father to clean up after her, but you couldn't have it all. Besides, that last bit, she was used to it by now.

Jañe and their father had just left after dropping off Bailey ("I'm sorry I can't introduce you to Anya," Kennedy had whispered into his fur) and Kennedy was on the couch in her newly fixed-up apartment, trying to relax. Willow had stayed back in Berkeley for a couple of days but was supposed to be flying in tonight to join her, and they had a whole meet-the-parents thing planned out in Westchester tomorrow, which, yikes. Pretty nerve-wracking. (Not to say that meeting Willow's parents hadn't been a cause for flailing, babbling, and minor hyperventilation either. But still. Yikes.)

The good: she'd found her spare iPhone cable, and her poor dead phone was finally charging up. When it got enough power to turn back on again, it nearly exploded from the influx of text messages, voicemail alerts, and emails that came flooding in.

Kennedy winced, but gamely started going through all the messages, laughing when she got to a cluster of drunken voicemails from Bobby and Warren. A quick call to Portalocity, coupled with a casual threat of a lawsuit and then some unabashed throwing around of her family's name and reputation, got her an assurance that service to her dimension was nearly restored and she'd be getting priority treatment on the first portal out when it was available.

That nagging worry taken care of, she sent out a quick text message.

Hey. Apocalypse averted. Sorry it's been a while but things just settled down. Coming back for a visit as soon as I can. Can't wait to see you guys. - K

And hey, look at that, it went through and everything. Now all she had to do for the night was wait for Willow's plane to get in. She considered, briefly, heading out for a couple of hours beforehand to get some slaying in, but that could wait. She had the rest of her life to do that; might as well take one more night of normal life while she could.

It was kind of underrated.

...in limited doses, anyway.

[[contains some after-the-fact reference to multiple npc deaths. nfb, but hey, that text message got through, so if you think you got it you did. communication is oh so conveniently back to normal, so post is totally open for return texts and calls. no visits though, heh.]]

Comments

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

Oh, Kennedy, you couldn't just expect to leave a message like that and not get a phone call.

So that was what you were getting. A phone call. Hi.

[brat_inslayage]

Watchers were so uptight like that. God, Wes.

"Holy shit, it worked." What a lovely phone greeting, Kennedy. "I almost forgot what my phone was like when it worked!"

Look. This was incredibly exciting, all right?

[wesleynotponcy.livejournal.com]

"Kennedy," Wes breathed, disregarding the lovely phone greeting in favor of, you know, relief that she was alive. Or just relief that he had something to do now other than go back to the less-than-exciting job search he'd been focusing on all afternoon. Who knew? "You're all right."

[brat_inslayage]

"Hey, Watcher Junior." Kennedy stretched out onto the couch and grinned up at the ceiling. "Yeah, alive and all right and all that stuff. I'm guessing none of my other messages got through, huh? My phone's been totally messed up for the last, like, seven months, and we still don't have portal service back. So if I freaked you out, um. Sorry?"

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

FINALLY!

Are you okay? Need any help? CALL ME!

[brat_inslayage]

It suddenly occurred to Kennedy that, if the long-delayed content of her phone's messages had been any indication, getting her family caught up on how she was doing had been a piece of cake in comparison. So much for improved impulse control?

Oh, well. Tapping Dinah's phone number to dial, then hearing it actually ring, was too cool for her to feel bad about that.

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

"KENNEDY!"

They heard you in L.A. in another dimension, Dinah.

"You're back! It's been four months what happened oh God I'm relieved!"

[brat_inslayage]

"Four months, really?" asked Kennedy, surprised. "Huh. Cute. It's been seven and a half for me since the last time I was in Fandom. Longest. Seven. Months. Ever.

Elaborate, Kennedy.

"Long story too, god. There was a whole... possible world ending thing I ended up helping to keep from happening." If she didn't sound all that cocky or bragging about it, the price had been pretty harsh. "I kept trying to call you guys but I guess something was messing up the connections."

[trigons_child]

Are you all right? We have been very worried! Apocalypse? :( :( :(

Stop abusing emoticons, Raven.

[brat_inslayage]

No apocalypse now! I'm okay, promise. And we so have to talk when I get back to Fandom.

Then, because she couldn't let the emoticons go without comment and because it'd been so long since she could say it:

God, Raven.

[trigons_child]

Your Apocalypse was not blue with markings on his face, was it?

Look, it was a legitimate question!

[brat_inslayage]

Look, Kennedy had already been out of touch when that happened! How was she supposed to know how legitimate the question was?

Okay, it was legitimate. Just weird.

No? Not actually sure what its actual face looks like. Looked like.

Just the ones it stole from people, if you wanted to go by the First=apocalypse logic.

[life_inshadow]

Wait, what? As much as Tara hated it, she had resigned herself to the strong possibility that Kennedy's dimension was permanently offline. So, amazing as it was to get the text, it was mostly utterly shocking.

... unless the message had been bouncing around the multiverse since November. So it was a cautious Tara who dialed Kennedy's number, half expecting it to be as dead as it had been for the last five months.

Huh. It rang this time.

[brat_inslayage]

Oh, as if Kennedy wouldn't pick up the phone when she heard that ringtone? She did catch herself glancing at the clock first, though, to see how much time she had, and there was a new consideration she hadn't thought of yet. (Mainly because it hadn't been a factor at all.)

"Hey, you."

This whole being able to make phone calls again thing was awesome</i..

[life_inshadow]

Oh, lord, that voice. You didn't need to still be in love with somebody to have her voice do funny things to you.

"Kennedy," Tara said, and swallowed before she said something stupid. "Hi. So -- what happened? You're okay?"

[brat_inslayage]

The last time she'd heard that voice, it'd been a trick, the First messing with her. So if there was a brief pause before Kennedy replied, it was because she had to remind herself that it wasn't a trick this time.

"I--"

That was actually a complicated answer, and the answer to the question wasn't the first thing that came to mind. "Can't believe I'm actually talking to you again," she concluded with a shaky laugh. "Wow. Was starting to think that was never gonna happen again."

[svetocha-blooms.livejournal.com]

Life in the Schola meant waking up for the day as the sun was going down. Habit and worry had Dru reaching for her phone as soon as she woke up, but finding Kennedy's message made her smile.

Good to know. I was getting worried. Another day and I would have started to rally the cavalry.

[brat_inslayage]

Kennedy grinned at the message, and sent a text back immediately.

Don't think the cavalry would've gotten through. There was a whole thing. Kinda thought of you a lot, though.

[svetocha-blooms.livejournal.com]

Obviously Dru was going to be late for breakfast this morning.

A Thing? Sounds ominous. But it's over now? Yes, Dru. Apocalypse averted and all that.

Good thoughts I hope.

[justwantsquiet.livejournal.com]

kjhfkjhgfkjhguf YOURE ALIVE!!!!!!!!!1111111!!!!!!!1

To be fair, Sookie couldn't be expected to text coherently most of the time, anyway.

[brat_inslayage]

The only reason Kennedy's texts were coherent at all was because of autocorrect. She wasn't going to judge.

I AM!!!!! Sorry to freak you. I didn't mean to!

[justwantsquiet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, okay, now she was totally calling. She had to duck off the floor to do it, but Sam had already noticed something was up and was waving her to the back, with a yell to Arlene to watch her tables. And now Sookie was letting herself into the little employee room while she waited for Kennedy to pick up.

[awakestheghosts]

Chloe had been worried about Kennedy, but had done a good job of keeping it filed away with everyone else when she was worried about. So when she got the text message, she had to blink her eyes a couple of times.

Don't do that again!

[brat_inslayage]

When that message came in, Kennedy looked at the caller ID and... went pale, for a moment, thinking of the other girl who'd shared that name and hadn't fared so well. (She never had quite shaken the idea that it might be her fault. Thanks, the First.)

So it took a few minutes to respond.

Do my best not to. Promise. You doing okay?

[awakestheghosts]

Completely unaware of the trauma she was causing, she responded pretty quickly.

Doing pretty well. I keep working out and I'm sure I'll have some questions for you the next time I see you. :) More importantly, though, how are you?