Gamepost / Sunnydale AU: The Monday after

[mm_adiva]

Okay, say what you like about prom, but the clean-up committee did astounding work.

[ooc: The Sunnydale AU strikes again! This is the Monday after the demon prom. Or it isn't -- maybe it's just Monday at Sunnydale. Continuity is for suckers, obviously.]

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[border_prince]

James is mostly circulating the hallways when he's not in his classroom - there's too much to see and look for, too much mess to clear up (more metaphorically than literally; the clean-up crew really did do a great job) for him to want to stay still any more than he has to.

His ankle, however, though it's beginning to feel less stiff, will only take so much, so eventually he stops to rest for a moment or two in the faculty lounge.

It's mostly empty when he sits. Students aren't the only population at Sunnydale High that took a hit at the prom.

[border_prince]

"Sure," James says. "Thanks." It's been a little while since breakfast.

"I think I saw you at the prom, yeah?" he asks. "Before everything - well, went to hell, if you'll pardon the cliche?"

[stillbecoming]

"Wood got you too?" she says, juggling plastic cups. (Not literally.) "There were actually a lot of chaperones there. I think he's got blackmail material on half the faculty."

"-- Except me. You know, I volunteered out of the goodness of my heart."

[border_prince]

James chuckles at this.

"I volunteered," he says. "An event like a prom - well, historically, they attract less attention than you'd expect, but . . ." But it takes a certain level of activity for a supernatural hotspot, even a Hellmouth, to show up on Torchwood's scientifically geared radars. This one existed for a long, long time before Torchwood realized, not even a year ago, that it was there at all.

"It seemed more interesting than another night of wandering about looking for vampires," is how he actually finishes the thought aloud.

[stillbecoming]

Buffy ... blinks.

"Uh huh," she says, intelligently.

People! With the horning! And the turf that is hers! And -- no, those are bad thoughts. Unproductive thoughts. Besides, prom chaperoning is really, really not her turf.

"... You do that a lot?"

[border_prince]

James nods.

"Most nights," he says. "I get restless. Can't stand sitting around when there's something I could be doing."

Or even when there isn't. James doesn't deal well with inactivity.

[stillbecoming]

"You could grade papers."

She moves around the refrigerator, and holds out one of the plastic cups of orange juice. "I mean ... you are faculty, right?"

This better not be like that guy who randomly teleported into her office.

[border_prince]

[OOC: *facepalm* No, I'm still totally taking this thread seriously. Really.]

"Thanks," James says, accepting the cup. He takes a swallow of juice before saying,

"Oh, don't listen to the others, it doesn't take as long as you'd think." He pauses. "Or I'm doing it wrong."

Or he is, unbeknownst to himself, an artificial construction housing the consciousness of an alien prince, and has been provided with capabilities beyond those of the average actual human. But hey, what are the odds of that?

He shrugs. "The vampires take priority, anyway. Can't teach a dead student."

[stillbecoming]

Buffy takes a sip of her juice, listening. And then says: "Who others? There are others?"

She's so not on the ball. She's like five feet away from the ball.

"Can't teach a live student either, if you're aiming to slay every vampire first."

[border_prince]

"The other teachers," James clarifies. "They never do anything but grade, to hear them tell it."

It isn't that James doesn't take teaching seriously, exactly.

- he takes his classes more seriously that his students do, at least?

"No, I suppose not. There are worse trade-offs, though. I mean, if they live the rest of their lives not knowing their kingdoms from their phylums, they're still living the rest of their lives."

[stillbecoming]

"Oh."

Buffy tries to arrange her face into an expression that says: I know the difference between kingdoms and phylums.

"That's...true. Unless they find themselves in an unexpected life-or-death situation where the knowledge of --" Losing steam. "I guess that's not very likely."

"So how was the prom? Interesting enough for you?"

[border_prince]

It's okay. James only knows the difference himself because he taught that unit a couple weeks ago. (He teaches in kind of random order. Keeps things fresh.)

He chuckles a little into his cup of juice at Buffy's increasingly steam-free scenario, then sobers when she mentions prom.

"I certainly wasn't bored," he says. He glances at her. "Did you happen to meet the priest that was there? McKinley?"

[stillbecoming]

"I -- saw a priest," she says, after a moment's thought. "I didn't catch his name, though. Or meet him."

More juice. "I take it he was interesting?"

[border_prince]

James nods.

"He's a vampire," he says. "He was fighting the demons, though. We fought together for a bit before we got separated. He said he had a soul."

Despite the evidence, James sounds dubious. There aren't exactly a slew of ensouled vampires on record. Fighting against the demons isn't necessarily the same thing as fighting on their side.

And who's to say what he got up to after James lost sight of him?

[stillbecoming]

Buffy just stares at him, speechless.

Did Spike decide to dress up as a priest for some reason known only to insane, hallucinating vampires? She never did see his face --

Or was there some kind of buy-one-soul-get-one-free deal?

"A soul," she says finally. Not creative words, but words.

[border_prince]

"It's possible," James says slowly. "Theoretically. I've run across a couple mentions of a spell, or maybe a couple different spells - I don't know, I don't read that many languages, translations can be dodgy."

He sips his juice, taking a second to think. That glove, that thing that had driven Suzie mad, it had somehow had the power to put a dead person's - essence, soul, whatever you care to call it, back into their body. For two minutes at the most. If you were very good at using it. He can't help but wonder if it's a similar principle.

"It's not as impossible to reunite soul and body as some people think," he finishes.