La Belle Dame
Jan. 6th, 2012 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misseDisclaimer: Don't own or claim rights to Buffy the Vampire Slayer or These Old Shades.
Notes: This actually pre-dates Lady on the Hellmouth as it was my first attempt at the crossover. I was going through my files, found this, and decided to work on it again, as it amused me. It is an unrelated story, they just come from the same original works.
Notes: The Léonie figurine exists, and can be seen here
Notes: Dialogue (liberally used) taken from here.
When Ethan first saw the dress, he was reminded of a little figurine he had seen recently at his mother's house: a Georgian era woman, in a fluffy white dress, delicate white fan, and red hair. He considered the dress, turned it around to see if it fit his memories, and grinned. It was perfect.
~~~~~
Buffy spotted the dress while apologising to Xander. It was perfect. She drifted over to it, absently apologising again as she did so.
“It's amazing,” Willow whispered
Xander made a face. “Too bulky. I prefer my women in spandex.”
The shop owner came over, and started talking about hidden princesses, and offered to make a deal. By the end of it, she owned a spectacular white ball gown, red wig, and delicate white fan, and a character name of Léonie. She was going as an elegant French lady.
Buffy floated home on a cloud of dreams.
~~~~~
Léonie started, and closed her fan with a snap. “But where am I? This is not Versailles. Oh! It was that pig-person. He has done this, and now I am very upset. I hope that Monseigneur with beat him very hard with his stick.” She frowned as she considered that pleasant concept, then grinned. “Or if I see him first, I might stab him. If I had a knife. Which I do not.” Again she frowned.
It was then that she noticed the man and woman running towards her.
“Buffy,” the woman called out, and Léonie looked around to see if anyone else was responding.
The ill-dressed woman stood right in front of her, and spoke again. “Buffy, are you okay?”
“But who are you? And why do you call me that name? I am Léonie, ward of Monseigneur. I was at Versailles, but see that I am not there now. Do you know where I am?”
“You're French!” the other woman cried.
“But of course. But Monseigneur is very English. And very stern. You must take me back to him, you understand?”
Willow looked at Xander. “She's not Buffy.”
Xander frowned. “Who's Buffy?”
“Oh, this is fun!” Willow muttered. Turning to Buffy/Léonie, she asked, “What year is this?”
“The year of Our Lord, 1756,” the petite redhead replied scornfully. Willow rather thought that, had she a modern persona, the other girl would have added a 'well, duh!'
“And who might you be,” Buffy/Léonie asked with awful politeness.
“We're friends,” Willow reassured her.
“Mais non,” Léonie responded decidedly. “Lady Fanny is my friend, and also Jenny Merivale, though Monseigneur is not happy with this, neither is Monsieur Merivale, for they fought but many years ago, but you are not my friend. You I do not know at all,” she added, shaking her head.
“Are you sure the lady is your friend?” Xander asked, smirking.
“Yes!” Willow exclaimed, frustrated. You just don't remember because of the spell. It has to be magic. I dressed as a ghost, and now I'm a ghost. You dressed as a soldier, and she dressed as a lady, and you are both what you dressed as!”
A monster chose that moment to acquire an evening snack, but was quickly and efficiently rebuffed by Xander. When this was quickly followed by the sight of a SUV carefully driving passed them, Léonie announced to the world, “I am in a story land. That pig person has drugged me and taken me to a story land where there are monsters, and where carriages are now made of metal, and do not need horses.” She wrinkled her nose at the smell of the exhaust. “And they stink.”
Willow stared at her. For someone from so long ago, she was really taking this well. She shook her head. “We need to get inside. I know where we can go.”
~~~~~
Willow breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe in Buffy's house. Buffy/Léonie was wandering around, inspecting the premises, while Xander/Soldier Boy seemed to be making the place secure. Willow had made a fuss when he had seemed to threaten one of the children-turned-monsters, but he had simply fired his weapon to scare them off with the noise. It had also scared her, but she was determined not say anything. When she turned around to look for Buffy, she found the girl with a large and sharp-looking kitchen knife in her hand.
“Do you know where the pig-person is? I would like to kill him,” Léonie confided.
“Ah, no.” Willow gazed, horrified, at the big knife, “actually, I don't know who you're talking about. And should you really kill him? It's not right to kill people.”
“Monseigneur would like to beat him,” Léonie smirked, “which would be good, as he does need a beating, but I would like to kill him. You see, he kidnapped me when I was in England, and forced me to drink his pig-drink, which he said was coffee, but it was drugged, and so I slept, and felt so ill, but I escaped, and Monseigneur found me, and took me to Paris, so I was happy. But the pig person is still evil, and I would like to kill him.”
Willow stared at her. She wasn't sure which was more impressive: Buffy/Léonie's babbling; or the fact that she seemed to have changed into a historical Slayer. “Um, well, if he's a human, you can't kill him. He is a human, right? 'Cause if he was a demon, or a vampire, you could kill him. But you can't kill humans.”
“I think he might be a devil,” Léonie mused. “But Monseigneur is called Satanas, so the pig person isn't the devil.” She thought about this some more. “If I say the pig person is this demon, can I kill him then?”
“Er... no. He actually has to be a demon, you can't just call him one,” Willow explained.
Léonie pouted at that, and wandered off to look further around the house.
It was at about this point that they heard another scream, and Xander/Soldier Boy bolted from the house. Buffy/Léonie came out of the room she had been investigating, and asked, “But where is he going?”
“Off to rescue someone. Oh, it's Cordelia,” she added as he escorted the brunette into the house. “Okay, your name is Cordelia, you're not a cat, you're in high school, and we're your friends. Well, sort of.”
“That's nice, Willow. You went mental when?” Cordelia snarked back.
~~~~~
The night started to head upwards after Cordelia had arrived. It was then that they were able to figure out that the trouble was based around the new costume shop, Ethan's. Willow, Buffy and Xander had bought their costumes there, while Cordelia, who had not turned into a cat, had bought her costume at Partytown. Willow, being the only person who couldn't be harmed by the monsters outside the door, made her way to Giles' place, to let him know what was going on, and see if he could help. It turned out that he knew Ethan, and was more than happy to deal with him.
Back at Buffy's house, Angel had arrived, to be met with disdain by Léonie, who had been rather hoping to see her Monseigneur, instead. The repentant vampire had nothing on her Satanas. When another vampire attempted to gain entry to the house, Angel shouted at Buffy/Léonie to kill it, so she plunged the kitchen knife into its chest, to no avail. Grimacing, Angel reached out and pulled the knife out of the vampire's chest, before booting it outside and shutting the door.
“What was that about? You don't use a knife on a vampire, you know that, Buffy,” Angel grumbled.
“Buffy might know that, but Léonie doesn't,” Xander explained.
“Who?” Angel asked, puzzled.
“I don't know what happened, but we used to be these people,” Xander held up a photo he had found, “and now we aren't.”
Léonie filched the photo out of Xander's hand. She looked at it carefully. “It is a very fine miniature. Very different from the likeness Monseigneur had taken of me. But this is not me. I have red hair,” she pointed out, handing the photo back.
“I don't know,” Xander countered. “Maybe you dyed your hair?”
Léonie gasped. “Me? I do not dye my hair!”
“Yeah, like you don't bleach, either,” Cordelia snarked from the background.
The two men grinned at that then Xander added, “It could even be a wig. You know, to go with the costume.”
Léonie frowned, and shifted uneasily. Wigs she knew about. She took back the photograph, and walked over to a mirror. Looking at the photo, then to her image, she mused, “It could be me. And you, of course, are the young man. And the unseemly-dressed spirit is that girl there. But you are not in this image,” she turned on Angel, “so you are not so great a friend it would seem. And neither are you,” she added, glaring at Cordelia.
“You got that one right, sister!” Cordelia was glad to confirm.
Léonie smirked. “So it is agreed. I, the low-bred girl, and this man here are friends, but neither you nor this other man who shouted at me are very close friends, n'est-ce pas?
“If you say so,” Xander shrugged. “Not like I can argue with that photo.”
“So what shall we do while we are waiting, then?” Léonie asked.
Xander rummaged around in the kitchen’s junk drawer for a few minutes before surfacing triumphantly. “Ever play poker, milady?”
~~~~~
The spell was broken, and the children (eventually) returned to the school, and all seemed to over. Giles did notice, however, a certain new flair had been introduced to Buffy’s sword-fighting skills, an elegance that spoke of an older style of fencing. Buffy simply shrugged it off, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like French under her breath.
Giles also noticed that Buffy had turned to Xander as a comrade in arms, insisting that he also be trained in both armed and unarmed fighting, so that they might spar together. Occasionally, Giles was sure she slipped, and called Xander ‘Rupert’, which was beyond puzzling. Xander, on the other hand, took to the new training like a duck to water, and Giles was certain that the young man was retaining a great deal of his memory of the possession, which could possibly be helpful.
Willow was not neglected, but her relationship to Buffy seemed to have changed. Where Buffy once led Willow into girly, romantic things, gossiping about boys (especially Angel) fashions and other things, this new Buffy seemed to find other things more important. Now she encouraged Willow to be her own person, even if that person was not a clone of Buffy. As a result, Willow became more confident in herself, and more comfortable with the situation when a certain Senior began making his presence known.
Angel, it seemed, was destined to be the only loser in the whole situation, not that Giles minded over-much. Having had Léonie in her head had forced Buffy to compare the lovelorn vampire to Léonie’s Monseigneur, and find Angel wanting. She had very politely spoken with Angel, and had made it clear that while she valued his contribution to the Fight, she could not see him anymore. Of course, the fact that there wasn’t anyone in the school that did compare to Monseigneur did dismay her a little, but she decided to simply make it through school, having fun where she could, and doing what was necessary the rest of the time. This pleased Giles a great deal, as she was becoming more used to the idea of being the Slayer while hopefully retaining some of the joy he had seen in her prior to that cursed night.
As it happened, Ethan experienced a great shock when he attempted to kidnap Buffy when Eyghon came calling. Giles tried to be sympathetic, honestly he did, but the sight of Ethan, hog-tied and being threatened with a rapier while being cussed out in eighteenth century French was just too amusing.
When he finally finished laughing, Giles shook his head at Ethan. “You do realise this is all your own fault, don’t you? If you hadn’t cursed the costumes, she wouldn’t be shouting at you like this.”
Ethan could only whine at that, and Giles began laughing again as he picked up the phone to call his contact with the Council. After all, he couldn’t let the man loose on the world again, not after Buffy had so nicely tied him up for Giles. No, he really couldn’t.
Notes: This actually pre-dates Lady on the Hellmouth as it was my first attempt at the crossover. I was going through my files, found this, and decided to work on it again, as it amused me. It is an unrelated story, they just come from the same original works.
Notes: The Léonie figurine exists, and can be seen here
Notes: Dialogue (liberally used) taken from here.
When Ethan first saw the dress, he was reminded of a little figurine he had seen recently at his mother's house: a Georgian era woman, in a fluffy white dress, delicate white fan, and red hair. He considered the dress, turned it around to see if it fit his memories, and grinned. It was perfect.
Buffy spotted the dress while apologising to Xander. It was perfect. She drifted over to it, absently apologising again as she did so.
“It's amazing,” Willow whispered
Xander made a face. “Too bulky. I prefer my women in spandex.”
The shop owner came over, and started talking about hidden princesses, and offered to make a deal. By the end of it, she owned a spectacular white ball gown, red wig, and delicate white fan, and a character name of Léonie. She was going as an elegant French lady.
Buffy floated home on a cloud of dreams.
Léonie started, and closed her fan with a snap. “But where am I? This is not Versailles. Oh! It was that pig-person. He has done this, and now I am very upset. I hope that Monseigneur with beat him very hard with his stick.” She frowned as she considered that pleasant concept, then grinned. “Or if I see him first, I might stab him. If I had a knife. Which I do not.” Again she frowned.
It was then that she noticed the man and woman running towards her.
“Buffy,” the woman called out, and Léonie looked around to see if anyone else was responding.
The ill-dressed woman stood right in front of her, and spoke again. “Buffy, are you okay?”
“But who are you? And why do you call me that name? I am Léonie, ward of Monseigneur. I was at Versailles, but see that I am not there now. Do you know where I am?”
“You're French!” the other woman cried.
“But of course. But Monseigneur is very English. And very stern. You must take me back to him, you understand?”
Willow looked at Xander. “She's not Buffy.”
Xander frowned. “Who's Buffy?”
“Oh, this is fun!” Willow muttered. Turning to Buffy/Léonie, she asked, “What year is this?”
“The year of Our Lord, 1756,” the petite redhead replied scornfully. Willow rather thought that, had she a modern persona, the other girl would have added a 'well, duh!'
“And who might you be,” Buffy/Léonie asked with awful politeness.
“We're friends,” Willow reassured her.
“Mais non,” Léonie responded decidedly. “Lady Fanny is my friend, and also Jenny Merivale, though Monseigneur is not happy with this, neither is Monsieur Merivale, for they fought but many years ago, but you are not my friend. You I do not know at all,” she added, shaking her head.
“Are you sure the lady is your friend?” Xander asked, smirking.
“Yes!” Willow exclaimed, frustrated. You just don't remember because of the spell. It has to be magic. I dressed as a ghost, and now I'm a ghost. You dressed as a soldier, and she dressed as a lady, and you are both what you dressed as!”
A monster chose that moment to acquire an evening snack, but was quickly and efficiently rebuffed by Xander. When this was quickly followed by the sight of a SUV carefully driving passed them, Léonie announced to the world, “I am in a story land. That pig person has drugged me and taken me to a story land where there are monsters, and where carriages are now made of metal, and do not need horses.” She wrinkled her nose at the smell of the exhaust. “And they stink.”
Willow stared at her. For someone from so long ago, she was really taking this well. She shook her head. “We need to get inside. I know where we can go.”
Willow breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe in Buffy's house. Buffy/Léonie was wandering around, inspecting the premises, while Xander/Soldier Boy seemed to be making the place secure. Willow had made a fuss when he had seemed to threaten one of the children-turned-monsters, but he had simply fired his weapon to scare them off with the noise. It had also scared her, but she was determined not say anything. When she turned around to look for Buffy, she found the girl with a large and sharp-looking kitchen knife in her hand.
“Do you know where the pig-person is? I would like to kill him,” Léonie confided.
“Ah, no.” Willow gazed, horrified, at the big knife, “actually, I don't know who you're talking about. And should you really kill him? It's not right to kill people.”
“Monseigneur would like to beat him,” Léonie smirked, “which would be good, as he does need a beating, but I would like to kill him. You see, he kidnapped me when I was in England, and forced me to drink his pig-drink, which he said was coffee, but it was drugged, and so I slept, and felt so ill, but I escaped, and Monseigneur found me, and took me to Paris, so I was happy. But the pig person is still evil, and I would like to kill him.”
Willow stared at her. She wasn't sure which was more impressive: Buffy/Léonie's babbling; or the fact that she seemed to have changed into a historical Slayer. “Um, well, if he's a human, you can't kill him. He is a human, right? 'Cause if he was a demon, or a vampire, you could kill him. But you can't kill humans.”
“I think he might be a devil,” Léonie mused. “But Monseigneur is called Satanas, so the pig person isn't the devil.” She thought about this some more. “If I say the pig person is this demon, can I kill him then?”
“Er... no. He actually has to be a demon, you can't just call him one,” Willow explained.
Léonie pouted at that, and wandered off to look further around the house.
It was at about this point that they heard another scream, and Xander/Soldier Boy bolted from the house. Buffy/Léonie came out of the room she had been investigating, and asked, “But where is he going?”
“Off to rescue someone. Oh, it's Cordelia,” she added as he escorted the brunette into the house. “Okay, your name is Cordelia, you're not a cat, you're in high school, and we're your friends. Well, sort of.”
“That's nice, Willow. You went mental when?” Cordelia snarked back.
The night started to head upwards after Cordelia had arrived. It was then that they were able to figure out that the trouble was based around the new costume shop, Ethan's. Willow, Buffy and Xander had bought their costumes there, while Cordelia, who had not turned into a cat, had bought her costume at Partytown. Willow, being the only person who couldn't be harmed by the monsters outside the door, made her way to Giles' place, to let him know what was going on, and see if he could help. It turned out that he knew Ethan, and was more than happy to deal with him.
Back at Buffy's house, Angel had arrived, to be met with disdain by Léonie, who had been rather hoping to see her Monseigneur, instead. The repentant vampire had nothing on her Satanas. When another vampire attempted to gain entry to the house, Angel shouted at Buffy/Léonie to kill it, so she plunged the kitchen knife into its chest, to no avail. Grimacing, Angel reached out and pulled the knife out of the vampire's chest, before booting it outside and shutting the door.
“What was that about? You don't use a knife on a vampire, you know that, Buffy,” Angel grumbled.
“Buffy might know that, but Léonie doesn't,” Xander explained.
“Who?” Angel asked, puzzled.
“I don't know what happened, but we used to be these people,” Xander held up a photo he had found, “and now we aren't.”
Léonie filched the photo out of Xander's hand. She looked at it carefully. “It is a very fine miniature. Very different from the likeness Monseigneur had taken of me. But this is not me. I have red hair,” she pointed out, handing the photo back.
“I don't know,” Xander countered. “Maybe you dyed your hair?”
Léonie gasped. “Me? I do not dye my hair!”
“Yeah, like you don't bleach, either,” Cordelia snarked from the background.
The two men grinned at that then Xander added, “It could even be a wig. You know, to go with the costume.”
Léonie frowned, and shifted uneasily. Wigs she knew about. She took back the photograph, and walked over to a mirror. Looking at the photo, then to her image, she mused, “It could be me. And you, of course, are the young man. And the unseemly-dressed spirit is that girl there. But you are not in this image,” she turned on Angel, “so you are not so great a friend it would seem. And neither are you,” she added, glaring at Cordelia.
“You got that one right, sister!” Cordelia was glad to confirm.
Léonie smirked. “So it is agreed. I, the low-bred girl, and this man here are friends, but neither you nor this other man who shouted at me are very close friends, n'est-ce pas?
“If you say so,” Xander shrugged. “Not like I can argue with that photo.”
“So what shall we do while we are waiting, then?” Léonie asked.
Xander rummaged around in the kitchen’s junk drawer for a few minutes before surfacing triumphantly. “Ever play poker, milady?”
The spell was broken, and the children (eventually) returned to the school, and all seemed to over. Giles did notice, however, a certain new flair had been introduced to Buffy’s sword-fighting skills, an elegance that spoke of an older style of fencing. Buffy simply shrugged it off, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like French under her breath.
Giles also noticed that Buffy had turned to Xander as a comrade in arms, insisting that he also be trained in both armed and unarmed fighting, so that they might spar together. Occasionally, Giles was sure she slipped, and called Xander ‘Rupert’, which was beyond puzzling. Xander, on the other hand, took to the new training like a duck to water, and Giles was certain that the young man was retaining a great deal of his memory of the possession, which could possibly be helpful.
Willow was not neglected, but her relationship to Buffy seemed to have changed. Where Buffy once led Willow into girly, romantic things, gossiping about boys (especially Angel) fashions and other things, this new Buffy seemed to find other things more important. Now she encouraged Willow to be her own person, even if that person was not a clone of Buffy. As a result, Willow became more confident in herself, and more comfortable with the situation when a certain Senior began making his presence known.
Angel, it seemed, was destined to be the only loser in the whole situation, not that Giles minded over-much. Having had Léonie in her head had forced Buffy to compare the lovelorn vampire to Léonie’s Monseigneur, and find Angel wanting. She had very politely spoken with Angel, and had made it clear that while she valued his contribution to the Fight, she could not see him anymore. Of course, the fact that there wasn’t anyone in the school that did compare to Monseigneur did dismay her a little, but she decided to simply make it through school, having fun where she could, and doing what was necessary the rest of the time. This pleased Giles a great deal, as she was becoming more used to the idea of being the Slayer while hopefully retaining some of the joy he had seen in her prior to that cursed night.
As it happened, Ethan experienced a great shock when he attempted to kidnap Buffy when Eyghon came calling. Giles tried to be sympathetic, honestly he did, but the sight of Ethan, hog-tied and being threatened with a rapier while being cussed out in eighteenth century French was just too amusing.
When he finally finished laughing, Giles shook his head at Ethan. “You do realise this is all your own fault, don’t you? If you hadn’t cursed the costumes, she wouldn’t be shouting at you like this.”
Ethan could only whine at that, and Giles began laughing again as he picked up the phone to call his contact with the Council. After all, he couldn’t let the man loose on the world again, not after Buffy had so nicely tied him up for Giles. No, he really couldn’t.