Life's Not a Song (5/6) (Glee/Buffy Crossover)
Title: Life's Not a Song (5/6)
Author: lennoxave
Pairing,Character(s): BtVS: Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles; Glee: Kurt, Tina
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,249
Spoilers: Glee: Through 2.06, "Never Been Kissed"; BtVS: The whole series, and very vague ones for the set-up of the Season 8 comics, but they're vague because I've only read the first trade of Season 8 :) (And the story has nothing to do with the plot of the comics)
Summary: The Scoobies get called from the U.K. to Lima, Ohio to search for a missing book on raising the dead. In what is surely a coincidence, Kurt misses his mother more than ever.
Author's Note: Takes place after Glee episode 2.05, but before episode 2.06 (however, it brings up some things that occur in 2.06). As for the Buffy timeline, uh . . . sometime after the series ended, but before the comics started? Probably not too long before the start of the comics. But, yeah, the Buffy timeline's not going to make any sense, but that's okay. :D
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Nearly eight hours later, boredom had set in.
“I spy with my little eye something that is. . .” Willow started to say, but Buffy cut her off.
“I hate stakeouts,” she said. They had been sitting outside Tina Cohen-Chang's house since before dinner-time, with only a box of Krispy Kremes and a bag of Doritos to keep them company. “Why can't we just barrel in there guns blazing, again?”
“Because we still don't know for sure that she's who we're looking for?” Xander replied.
“Also,” Willow added, “the spell probably won't happen here. Not with her presumably conservative Midwestern parents around. It'll be too big for just her bedroom.”
Buffy pouted. “I still hate stakeouts.”
“I don't disagree,” Xander said. Suddenly, there was a flash of movement from the side of Tina's house.
“She must have snuck out the back,” Willow whispered. She eyed Tina's bulky backpack. “And it definitely looks like she has the goods to do some spell-casting tonight.”
“Okay, let's look alert, people,” Xander commanded. They watched as Tina got into her car and pulled out of the driveway. She didn't turn on her headlights until the car was safely in the street, the beams of light no longer in danger of shining into the windows of her house.
Xander started the car, but before he could start moving, a vehicle burst out of nowhere from down the street and screeched to a halt in front of their car, swinging around so that it blocked the entire road. They were cut off from following Tina.
“What the hell?” Xander asked.
“So, we meet again.” A familiar-looking track-suited body had emerged from the car in front of them. The Le Car in front of them.
“What are you doing?” Buffy shouted as she got out of the station wagon. Xander and Willow followed suit.
“Well, my tiny albino pygmy, you scrubbed my shrine off the wall.”
“. . . Your shrine to yourself?”
“Sure, some people might call it masturbatory, but I call it honoring the person who pleases me most.” Buffy, Willow, and Xander exchanged horrified glances at Sue Sylvester's words.
“Anyway,” she went on, “between that and Paul Blart calling half the school down to his office, I decided I wanted to keep an eye on what you people were doing.” She paused. “And apparently, what you're doing is creeping on students. Principal Figgins will not be happy to hear about this . . .”
“We don't have time for this,” Xander murmured. Buffy decided to take action.
“Shove it, lady,” she said, walking past Sue. It wasn't her best witty rejoinder, but the look on Sue's face when Buffy proceeded to swiftly push the Le Car to the side of the road totally made up for it.
“Who is your trainer?” Sue Sylvester asked.
“This guy in England. You couldn't afford him.”
“You clearly haven't seen my Cheerios budget.”
“Listen, Sylvester,” Xander said, “if you keep quiet about all of this, we'll send you all the information you need to know, all right?”
Sue considered the offer. “This could be the push my squad needs to unilaterally dominate Nationals this year. I accept your terms.” With a curt nod, she got into the Le Car and drove off.
Buffy looked at Xander questioningly. “And how exactly are we going to work that out?”
Xander shrugged and opened his car door. “We'll be long gone by the time anything could arrive from the U.K. by mail. We'll just send her some Tae-Bo DVDs. She will be so pissed.”
“Guys?” Willow said as they buckled their seat belts. “I hate to break up the scheming, but we've lost track of the girl.”
“I know,” Xander groaned. “Goddamn Sue Sylvester.”
“Well,” Buffy said. “It's a spell to raise the dead, right?”
“Yeah . . .”
“So it'll probably happen in a graveyard.” Buffy smirked as she pulled out her iPhone. “And guess who can look up all the cemeteries in Lima on her cell?”
Xander and Willow looked at each other. “Oh.”
“I told you phones were better.”
* * *
Tina was waiting for him at the entrance to the cemetery. “There's a gap in the fence behind the bushes,” she whispered. Kurt followed her through the landscaping and into the graveyard.
They were silent on the walk to his mother's grave. He was lost in his own thoughts, and Tina was clearly lost in her own, as well.
When they reached the tombstone, Tina set down her backpack and began pulling out jars and bags of things. She took a list out of her pocket.
“Don't you need the book?” Kurt breathed. Neither of them could speak in their full voices. It didn't feel right to, somehow.
Tina shook her head. “Not until the incantation. The instructions are in Basque, according to Google Translate, so I printed out the translation. I don't actually know what language the incantation is in.” She picked up a jar of sand. “Pour this in a large circle over the grave.”
“How large?”
“I don't know--large.” She must have caught the look of panic on his face, because she added, with much more confidence, “Big enough to cover the length of the casket.”
Kurt stood what he figured was seven feet in front of the tombstone; that seemed like it would be sufficient. He gripped the lid of the jar, but stopped just short of unscrewing it. He stood there frozen.
“Kurt?” Tina asked, looking up from the herbs and dried flowers she was grinding with a mortar and pestle. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
He looked down at the jar of sand in his hands. This all seemed so, so weird. What on earth was he doing?
He reached his right arm behind his back and pressed his thumb into the place where his bottom ribs met his spine. He winced at the pain that shot out of that spot. It was where his back had hit the lock on the locker when Karofsky pushed him; he had seen the bruise in the mirror when he was changing his clothes earlier. The pain strengthened his resolve.
“Yes,” Kurt said. “I just don't want to screw it up.”
Tina smiled comfortingly at him. “Magic doesn't need every little thing exactly perfect. It's more about intent and energy than the physical things.”
Kurt nodded and, taking a deep breath, unscrewed the lid of the jar. He walked in a circle, slowly letting the white sand fall to the ground, blocking the wind with his body so it wouldn't scatter too much.
They went through the motions of the spell, setting out candles and burning offerings and pouring pig's blood (“It's from the butcher's,” Tina told him when he made a face). Finally, the space was set.
Tina pulled the book out of her backpack. “Come sit in the center of the circle with me,” she said. She sat down with her back to his mother's tombstone, and Kurt sat across from her, with a candle burning between them.
“Now,” Tina said, “while I read the incantation, I need you to concentrate very hard on your mother. What she looked like, sounded like, smelled like . . . any and all sense memories you have of her. She needs to come alive in your mind.”
Kurt nodded.
“Once I've said the spell, the ground down the middle of the circle will start to crack open. That will be our cue to run.” Tina tried to smile, but Kurt could see the nerves in her eyes, and they matched the ones in his stomach. “The dirt will slowly dissolve away, leaving the casket exposed. Then, we hop in and--”
“Get my mother.”
“Get your mother,” Tina nodded. She opened the book to the page she had marked and took a deep breath. “Okay. There's just one more thing to do.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny bottle of rubbing alcohol, a cotton pad, and a small needle in plastic.
“My dad's diabetic,” Tina explained. “We need a drop of your blood to start the process. Don't worry, it's all sterile.”
“Okay.” Kurt held out his left hand and let Tina rub the tip of his index finger with the alcohol and prick it with the needle. She threw the supplies out of the circle.
“When you're ready, squeeze a drop of blood into the candle flame,” she said. “Good luck.”
“Good luck,” Kurt said back, almost automatically. He was wholly focused on the blood that was beginning to collect on his fingertip. He held his left hand over the candle and gently squeezed his finger with his other hand. A droplet of blood fell into the flame, sizzling and smoking a distinctly pink color.
Tina reached over and grabbed the hand that wasn't bleeding and squeezed. Kurt didn't know if that was part of the spell or not, but he was grateful for her touch all the same. Then she began to read from the book balanced on her lap.
For a few seconds, Kurt forgot what he was supposed to be doing. The language was nothing he had ever heard before, with the guttural consonants of German but the long, flowing vowels of the Romance languages. He was hypnotized by the way Tina spoke the words. There was no way she could have known the pronunciations, but she was speaking every syllable like it was her native tongue.
In the candlelight, Kurt caught a glimpse of her eyes. They had gone completely black, like something was possessing her. Maybe that was why she was speaking with such confidence.
His distraction only lasted for a few seconds, though, and then he remembered what Tina had told him to do. He closed his eyes and pictured his mother. That was easy enough; there were still pictures of her all over the house, all over his room. He tried to think of her voice next, but he faltered. He could remember it in general; it was high, and warm, and would go just a little off-key when she sang him lullabies. But it floated like a ghost in his mind--impossible to hold on to. What was the third thing Tina had said?
Oh, right. Smell.
And all of a sudden, his mind was heady with her perfume, the thing that comforted him most, and he remembered being at the park with her, before she got sick, when she was pushing him on the swings, and he could feel the weight of her hands on his shoulders, and hear her high, clear laugh, and see the smile on her face when he turned around to tell her he was going to jump off now.
She was alive again, more than just memory, and it had to be the magic making everything more vivid but Kurt felt like he could reach out and touch her if he could just lift his arm up off the ground. He was distantly aware that Tina had stopped speaking, but this was the closest he had felt to his mother in years and he didn't want it to stop and if he could just let go of Tina's hand he could grab Mom and--
The image abruptly vanished as the ground beneath him began to shake.
“Now, Kurt,” he heard Tina yell, and she was already on her feet and dragging him along behind her. He stumbled his way upright, and they both jumped out of the circle as a crack appeared across its diameter.
Kurt and Tina grabbed each other in fear and excitement, and watched as the size of the crack grew. They were doing this. He felt his friend turn her head away, but he couldn't imagine what could be more amazing than what was happening right in front of them.
“Oh,” she said, and she started shaking.
Still unable to take his eyes off of the grave, Kurt asked distractedly, “What?”
“Oh my god,” she said. “What did we do?”
* * *
Even with the magic of technology, they weren't as well off as they would have been without Sue Sylvester's interference. Lima had eight different cemeteries, and there was no way of knowing which one Tina Cohen-Chang was headed to.
They got it right on their third try.
“I see them!” Willow called from where she was floating in the air.
“Them?” Xander asked.
“Yeah, she's with someone. It looks like they've already--”
Suddenly, the ground beneath them shook violently, knocking Xander into Buffy.
“That's not good,” he said.
“Status report, Will?” Buffy shouted over the rumbling of the earth.
“The graves are cracking open. All of the graves are cracking open.”
“Dammit!” Buffy cursed.
Willow closed her eyes and began to concentrate. “There's more.”
“What?” Xander and Buffy exclaimed together.
“I can feel it. Every corpse in the city is waking up.”
Xander's jaw dropped. “We are so screwed.”
Author: lennoxave
Pairing,Character(s): BtVS: Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles; Glee: Kurt, Tina
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,249
Spoilers: Glee: Through 2.06, "Never Been Kissed"; BtVS: The whole series, and very vague ones for the set-up of the Season 8 comics, but they're vague because I've only read the first trade of Season 8 :) (And the story has nothing to do with the plot of the comics)
Summary: The Scoobies get called from the U.K. to Lima, Ohio to search for a missing book on raising the dead. In what is surely a coincidence, Kurt misses his mother more than ever.
Author's Note: Takes place after Glee episode 2.05, but before episode 2.06 (however, it brings up some things that occur in 2.06). As for the Buffy timeline, uh . . . sometime after the series ended, but before the comics started? Probably not too long before the start of the comics. But, yeah, the Buffy timeline's not going to make any sense, but that's okay. :D
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Nearly eight hours later, boredom had set in.
“I spy with my little eye something that is. . .” Willow started to say, but Buffy cut her off.
“I hate stakeouts,” she said. They had been sitting outside Tina Cohen-Chang's house since before dinner-time, with only a box of Krispy Kremes and a bag of Doritos to keep them company. “Why can't we just barrel in there guns blazing, again?”
“Because we still don't know for sure that she's who we're looking for?” Xander replied.
“Also,” Willow added, “the spell probably won't happen here. Not with her presumably conservative Midwestern parents around. It'll be too big for just her bedroom.”
Buffy pouted. “I still hate stakeouts.”
“I don't disagree,” Xander said. Suddenly, there was a flash of movement from the side of Tina's house.
“She must have snuck out the back,” Willow whispered. She eyed Tina's bulky backpack. “And it definitely looks like she has the goods to do some spell-casting tonight.”
“Okay, let's look alert, people,” Xander commanded. They watched as Tina got into her car and pulled out of the driveway. She didn't turn on her headlights until the car was safely in the street, the beams of light no longer in danger of shining into the windows of her house.
Xander started the car, but before he could start moving, a vehicle burst out of nowhere from down the street and screeched to a halt in front of their car, swinging around so that it blocked the entire road. They were cut off from following Tina.
“What the hell?” Xander asked.
“So, we meet again.” A familiar-looking track-suited body had emerged from the car in front of them. The Le Car in front of them.
“What are you doing?” Buffy shouted as she got out of the station wagon. Xander and Willow followed suit.
“Well, my tiny albino pygmy, you scrubbed my shrine off the wall.”
“. . . Your shrine to yourself?”
“Sure, some people might call it masturbatory, but I call it honoring the person who pleases me most.” Buffy, Willow, and Xander exchanged horrified glances at Sue Sylvester's words.
“Anyway,” she went on, “between that and Paul Blart calling half the school down to his office, I decided I wanted to keep an eye on what you people were doing.” She paused. “And apparently, what you're doing is creeping on students. Principal Figgins will not be happy to hear about this . . .”
“We don't have time for this,” Xander murmured. Buffy decided to take action.
“Shove it, lady,” she said, walking past Sue. It wasn't her best witty rejoinder, but the look on Sue's face when Buffy proceeded to swiftly push the Le Car to the side of the road totally made up for it.
“Who is your trainer?” Sue Sylvester asked.
“This guy in England. You couldn't afford him.”
“You clearly haven't seen my Cheerios budget.”
“Listen, Sylvester,” Xander said, “if you keep quiet about all of this, we'll send you all the information you need to know, all right?”
Sue considered the offer. “This could be the push my squad needs to unilaterally dominate Nationals this year. I accept your terms.” With a curt nod, she got into the Le Car and drove off.
Buffy looked at Xander questioningly. “And how exactly are we going to work that out?”
Xander shrugged and opened his car door. “We'll be long gone by the time anything could arrive from the U.K. by mail. We'll just send her some Tae-Bo DVDs. She will be so pissed.”
“Guys?” Willow said as they buckled their seat belts. “I hate to break up the scheming, but we've lost track of the girl.”
“I know,” Xander groaned. “Goddamn Sue Sylvester.”
“Well,” Buffy said. “It's a spell to raise the dead, right?”
“Yeah . . .”
“So it'll probably happen in a graveyard.” Buffy smirked as she pulled out her iPhone. “And guess who can look up all the cemeteries in Lima on her cell?”
Xander and Willow looked at each other. “Oh.”
“I told you phones were better.”
* * *
Tina was waiting for him at the entrance to the cemetery. “There's a gap in the fence behind the bushes,” she whispered. Kurt followed her through the landscaping and into the graveyard.
They were silent on the walk to his mother's grave. He was lost in his own thoughts, and Tina was clearly lost in her own, as well.
When they reached the tombstone, Tina set down her backpack and began pulling out jars and bags of things. She took a list out of her pocket.
“Don't you need the book?” Kurt breathed. Neither of them could speak in their full voices. It didn't feel right to, somehow.
Tina shook her head. “Not until the incantation. The instructions are in Basque, according to Google Translate, so I printed out the translation. I don't actually know what language the incantation is in.” She picked up a jar of sand. “Pour this in a large circle over the grave.”
“How large?”
“I don't know--large.” She must have caught the look of panic on his face, because she added, with much more confidence, “Big enough to cover the length of the casket.”
Kurt stood what he figured was seven feet in front of the tombstone; that seemed like it would be sufficient. He gripped the lid of the jar, but stopped just short of unscrewing it. He stood there frozen.
“Kurt?” Tina asked, looking up from the herbs and dried flowers she was grinding with a mortar and pestle. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
He looked down at the jar of sand in his hands. This all seemed so, so weird. What on earth was he doing?
He reached his right arm behind his back and pressed his thumb into the place where his bottom ribs met his spine. He winced at the pain that shot out of that spot. It was where his back had hit the lock on the locker when Karofsky pushed him; he had seen the bruise in the mirror when he was changing his clothes earlier. The pain strengthened his resolve.
“Yes,” Kurt said. “I just don't want to screw it up.”
Tina smiled comfortingly at him. “Magic doesn't need every little thing exactly perfect. It's more about intent and energy than the physical things.”
Kurt nodded and, taking a deep breath, unscrewed the lid of the jar. He walked in a circle, slowly letting the white sand fall to the ground, blocking the wind with his body so it wouldn't scatter too much.
They went through the motions of the spell, setting out candles and burning offerings and pouring pig's blood (“It's from the butcher's,” Tina told him when he made a face). Finally, the space was set.
Tina pulled the book out of her backpack. “Come sit in the center of the circle with me,” she said. She sat down with her back to his mother's tombstone, and Kurt sat across from her, with a candle burning between them.
“Now,” Tina said, “while I read the incantation, I need you to concentrate very hard on your mother. What she looked like, sounded like, smelled like . . . any and all sense memories you have of her. She needs to come alive in your mind.”
Kurt nodded.
“Once I've said the spell, the ground down the middle of the circle will start to crack open. That will be our cue to run.” Tina tried to smile, but Kurt could see the nerves in her eyes, and they matched the ones in his stomach. “The dirt will slowly dissolve away, leaving the casket exposed. Then, we hop in and--”
“Get my mother.”
“Get your mother,” Tina nodded. She opened the book to the page she had marked and took a deep breath. “Okay. There's just one more thing to do.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny bottle of rubbing alcohol, a cotton pad, and a small needle in plastic.
“My dad's diabetic,” Tina explained. “We need a drop of your blood to start the process. Don't worry, it's all sterile.”
“Okay.” Kurt held out his left hand and let Tina rub the tip of his index finger with the alcohol and prick it with the needle. She threw the supplies out of the circle.
“When you're ready, squeeze a drop of blood into the candle flame,” she said. “Good luck.”
“Good luck,” Kurt said back, almost automatically. He was wholly focused on the blood that was beginning to collect on his fingertip. He held his left hand over the candle and gently squeezed his finger with his other hand. A droplet of blood fell into the flame, sizzling and smoking a distinctly pink color.
Tina reached over and grabbed the hand that wasn't bleeding and squeezed. Kurt didn't know if that was part of the spell or not, but he was grateful for her touch all the same. Then she began to read from the book balanced on her lap.
For a few seconds, Kurt forgot what he was supposed to be doing. The language was nothing he had ever heard before, with the guttural consonants of German but the long, flowing vowels of the Romance languages. He was hypnotized by the way Tina spoke the words. There was no way she could have known the pronunciations, but she was speaking every syllable like it was her native tongue.
In the candlelight, Kurt caught a glimpse of her eyes. They had gone completely black, like something was possessing her. Maybe that was why she was speaking with such confidence.
His distraction only lasted for a few seconds, though, and then he remembered what Tina had told him to do. He closed his eyes and pictured his mother. That was easy enough; there were still pictures of her all over the house, all over his room. He tried to think of her voice next, but he faltered. He could remember it in general; it was high, and warm, and would go just a little off-key when she sang him lullabies. But it floated like a ghost in his mind--impossible to hold on to. What was the third thing Tina had said?
Oh, right. Smell.
And all of a sudden, his mind was heady with her perfume, the thing that comforted him most, and he remembered being at the park with her, before she got sick, when she was pushing him on the swings, and he could feel the weight of her hands on his shoulders, and hear her high, clear laugh, and see the smile on her face when he turned around to tell her he was going to jump off now.
She was alive again, more than just memory, and it had to be the magic making everything more vivid but Kurt felt like he could reach out and touch her if he could just lift his arm up off the ground. He was distantly aware that Tina had stopped speaking, but this was the closest he had felt to his mother in years and he didn't want it to stop and if he could just let go of Tina's hand he could grab Mom and--
The image abruptly vanished as the ground beneath him began to shake.
“Now, Kurt,” he heard Tina yell, and she was already on her feet and dragging him along behind her. He stumbled his way upright, and they both jumped out of the circle as a crack appeared across its diameter.
Kurt and Tina grabbed each other in fear and excitement, and watched as the size of the crack grew. They were doing this. He felt his friend turn her head away, but he couldn't imagine what could be more amazing than what was happening right in front of them.
“Oh,” she said, and she started shaking.
Still unable to take his eyes off of the grave, Kurt asked distractedly, “What?”
“Oh my god,” she said. “What did we do?”
* * *
Even with the magic of technology, they weren't as well off as they would have been without Sue Sylvester's interference. Lima had eight different cemeteries, and there was no way of knowing which one Tina Cohen-Chang was headed to.
They got it right on their third try.
“I see them!” Willow called from where she was floating in the air.
“Them?” Xander asked.
“Yeah, she's with someone. It looks like they've already--”
Suddenly, the ground beneath them shook violently, knocking Xander into Buffy.
“That's not good,” he said.
“Status report, Will?” Buffy shouted over the rumbling of the earth.
“The graves are cracking open. All of the graves are cracking open.”
“Dammit!” Buffy cursed.
Willow closed her eyes and began to concentrate. “There's more.”
“What?” Xander and Buffy exclaimed together.
“I can feel it. Every corpse in the city is waking up.”
Xander's jaw dropped. “We are so screwed.”