
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/3120551.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other
  Fandom:
      Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer, Angel:_the_Series
  Relationship:
      Rupert_Giles/Buffy_Summers, Brian/Joyce_Summers, Hank_Summers/Original
      Female_Character, Cordelia_Chase/Xander_Harris, Xander_Harris/Willow
      Rosenberg, Amy_Madison/Willow_Rosenberg, Wesley_Wyndam-Pryce/Original
      Female_Character(s), Ben_(BtVS)/Faith_Lehane, Harmony_Kendall/Spike,
      Principal_Snyder/Gwendolyn_Post, Faith_&_Douglas_Ericson_(OC)
  Character:
      Buffy_Summers, Rupert_Giles, Original_Watcher_Characters, Robson, Wesley
      Wyndam-Pryce, Willow_Rosenberg, Xander_Harris, Cordelia_Chase, Non-
      Canonical_Ancestors, Original_Vampire_Characters, Knights_of_Byzantium,
      Key_Guarding_Monks_(BtVS), Guardians_(BtVS), Spike_(BtVS), Vampire
      Harmony_Kendall_-_Character, Potential_Slayers_(BtVS), Faith_Lehane, Key_
      (Character), Glory_(BtVS), Ben_(BtVS), Mayor_Richard_Wilkins, Joyce
      Summers, Hank_Summers, Lilah_Morgan, Lindsey_MacDonald, Jessica_Harris,
      Mr._Miller_(BtVS), Weatherby, Minor_&_Original_Characters_having_a_field
      day_and_becoming_major_characters, Principal_Snyder, Gwendolyn_Post
  Additional Tags:
      Past_Incest, Past_Child_Abuse, Past_Domestic_Violence, Dysfunctional
      Family, Parent-Child_Relationship, ancestry, Fate_&_Destiny, Legacies,
      Religion, tradition, power, The_way_men_and_women_have_behaved_for
      centuries, Pregnancy, Childbirth, Magic, Animal_Transformation, Fpreg,
      Teen_Pregnancy, underage_marriage, Legal_Drama, incarceration, Juvenile
      Justice, Conspiracies, Massacres, Other_Additional_Tags_to_Be_Added,
      Wakes_&_Funerals, murders, Moving_Dead_Bodies, threats_of_suicide, What
      Doesn't_Kill_You_Can_Still_Seriously_Mess_You_Up, Racist_Characters,
      Racism, Genderism, Institutionalized_Prejudices, Implied/Referenced
      Alcohol_Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon_Character_of_Color, Wolfram_&_Hart,
      Episode:_s03e18_Earshot, Pagan_Gods, A_certain_God_who_shall_remain
      nameless, Gender_or_Sex_Swap, Existential_Angst, Living_Vampires, Secret
      Vampires, Body_Dysphoria, Bodyswap, Scary_Horrible_Watchers, Casual_Sex,
      Underage_Smoking, Vanity, Insecurity, Mirrors, Vampire_Technology,
      Vampire_Politics, Exes, Relationship_Revisionist_Disorder, The_Prom_Queen
      Within, High_School_Never_Ends, Class_Issues, vampire_ecconomics,
      Arranged_Marriage, child_bride, Polygamy, Islam, fake_religious
      conversion, Fundamentalism, Terrorism, what_you_pretend_to_be,
      Patriarchy, Afghanistan, Taliban_-_Freeform, Extremely_Dubious_Consent,
      Extremely_Underage, paternalism, Power_Dynamics, Family_Dynamics,
      Watchers_are_a_law_unto_themselves, Subtext_Becoming_Text, Forced
      Pregnancy, Betrayal, The_Talk, Bad_Parenting, Oh!_THAT_'Goddess_Hecate'?,
      Bisexuality, Sexual_Identity, Labels, Implied/Referenced_Rape/Non-con,
      Rituals, Miscarriage, Or...something, Episode:_s01e06_The_Pack,
      Transpossession, Weddings, Mpreg, Demon_Deals, Drug_Use, Wedding_Night,
      selfdelusion, Sexual_Abuse, Secrets, expect_sequels
  Series:
      Part 3 of All_Things_Proceed_from_Passion
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-01-05 Completed: 2016-10-19 Chapters: 14/14 Words: 75038
****** Whose Line is it Anyway? ******
by ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary
     The Follow Up to "Who Do You Think You Are?"
     Buffy comes from a long line of Chosen heroes. Giles comes from a
     long line of dedicated Watchers. Everybody seems to come from a long
     line of something. This is what happens when the lines start to blur.
Notes
     Chapters 1-5 make up Part I: "Peace, Love & Judgment". Chapters 6-14
     make up Part II: "Missing and Exploited Children"
***** Beyond Understanding *****
Chapter Summary
     As the Watchers and others bury their dead, the web of lies, scheming
     and manipulation that passes for life in a cold, dark, unforgiving
     universe goes on.
London, U.K., Monday, April 20, 1998
 
Heavy, somber organ music filled the church. Buffy felt self-conscious taking
up a place so near the front, directly behind the four rows reserved for
family. This spot should have been filled by an honest mourner. There were
other funerals they should have been at, or Giles should have anyway, of people
he actually cared for, or at least, didn't hate. For her part, Buffy had barely
met Micheal Dunstan, and yet he had been a bitter enemy. He had died fighting
to destroy their happiness. And now here she was at his funeral, standing
between his murderer's son and the son of a woman he had helped to murder.
Standing out of respect, as the family were ushered in. Respect she did not
feel. Not even a tiny little bit. The man was a piece of shit.
And someone who thought that should not get a seat so close to the front,
probably shouldn't be here at all, in fact. It wasn't right. But it was
appropriate. It was politic. It was bullshit. But it was bullshit that mattered
to the Council and therefore to Giles. Buffy felt a stab of something oddly
like guilt at the realization of just how deeply she resented the Council and
it's bullshit still mattering so much to Giles. She felt as if she wasn't being
loyal enough or understanding enough or something. There he stood on his
crutches, still injured, still hurting, still ruffled and red in the face from
having to vigorously insist upon being released from the hospital at the crack
of dawn to be here. Still tense as a bag of wet cats from having to stand next
to his father and not kill him.
At least the 'Grand Old Man' had shown up sober, which Buffy guessed was a
concession to the dignity of the occasion rather than a sign of any actual
respect for the dead, though he was certainly committing to his role as a great
big stoic, appropriate, politic chunk of granite. Regardless, under the
circumstance, Giles needed her support, Buffy firmly reminded herself, not her
judgment. But Buffy couldn't help feeling just a little bit judgey, surrounded
as she was by smug, self-important hypocrites and killers who stillthought they
had a right to punish her, who still thought they had a right to punish Giles,
who were planning a meeting tonight do just that. Yes, Buffy judged them. And
why shouldn't she? After all, dealing out judgment, punishment was what Slayers
did best. And Watchers too apparently.
But Giles had made it more than clear that she was to restrain herself today,
even verbally. In fact, she shouldn't even glare. She had to take whatever
these people dished out and be polite about it, even if they weren't. “I’ve
seen enough of vengeance for one lifetime,” Giles had said at the hospital the
night before, when she'd tried to bring up the subject of his mother's murder
and what, if anything, they could do about it. “I have given and received at
least my share of punishment in this world. I don’t want ‘justice’; I want
peace.” Buffy had said nothing in response. What was there to say? She was
trying to take his words at face value. She'd been trying all night and all
morning. He seemed sincere enough. And, as mentioned, he needed her love and
support. And it was his mother, not hers.
Besides, anyone could see that the Council was dangerously unstable already
from the sheer fact that there didn't seem to be a lot of mourning going on at
this funeral, at least not for the guest of honor. The faces were grim enough
overall, but actual tears were few and far between, and most of those were in
the eyes of people who'd lost someone else in Friday's massacre. Sly,
calculating looks and hurried, electrified whispers, on the other hand, were
not so rare. Everyone seemed to be working a plan or an angle of some kind, or
at least gossiping breathlessly about what everyone else must be planning. In
fact, about the only people not acting like they were working the crowd at the
last pep rally before the voting closed on Homecoming Queen were the Equals and
Heirs themselves. At that level, it was all about holding your rightful
position, literally as well as figuratively. Which was why the dregs and
therefore technically heirs of the House of Weregelder had no choice but to sit
together, very near the front, lest order be overthrown into chaos and the
heavens fall. See above re moral support needed to stand next to Andrew Giles.
But as she stood at her husband's side among all those rows and rows of
carefully arranged ladies and gentlemen (all so jealous and conscious of their
ranks and positions, whatever the circumstances) Buffy couldn’t quite shake the
feeling that the Watchers were circling the wagons. Closing ranks against the
outside world. And that there was no place inside that circle for savages like
Buffy Summers. Or like Dahlia Harrow.
                                     *****
The night before the first day of her more-or-less senior year of high school,
Willow sat up in her bunk, studying. Sort of. She was pouring over tomes of
magical and arcane lore. Trying to unravel a mystery. To her intense surprise,
her Computer Science final had been written just for her based on Ms.
Calendar's notes of what she could actually do, which for a double credit
advanced tutorial probably made sense, but it had taken a chunk out of her
Saturday, leaving her only a couple of hours of free time in the lab. Hours she
had tried to put to good use by emailing Xander, only to find that not only did
the JDC computers lack any sort of email client software, but access to webmail
was actually blocked. Of course, it was nothing she couldn't hack, but the way
it was set up, it seemed like it could take more than a couple of hours. It
would have to wait until Monday, Willow had decided.
But the connection and browser were working fine, and with a tiny glamor to
make it appear that she was still finishing up her test, Willow had set about
looking into things she felt she really needed to know. She had started with
the back issues of the local papers, researching the history of the Mayor’s
office. Everyone knew, of course, that the Mayor had always been a Wilkins. The
town’s Founder, Richard Wilkins Sr., had been elected on the very day that the
town charter was signed in 1899 and he or his son or grandson every seven years
thereafter right up to last year, usually unopposed.
Usually but not always. In ninety-nine years, only three people had thrown
their hats into the ring against an incumbent Mayor of Sunnydale. By election
day, each and every one of them had been dead. They were Ananias Gleaves (in
1906), Kasper Randolph (in 1941) and Sarah Levine-Grossman in 1962. The first
two campaigns had been extensively covered. To judge by the Times, Gleaves had
been the devil himself, while the Sun held him out to be little short of the
second coming. Neither had had anything very nice to say about Randolph, whom
they agreed was a Nazi sympathizer, but the Sun had made ugly though vague
insinuations about the manner of his death. Shortly before the editor’s widow
was forced to sell out to the Times.
But in Sarah’s case the consolidated publication had been eerily silent. There
had been a few vague references to ‘forces of instability even here in
Sunnydale’ in the Fall and Winter of 1961, references that seemed to suggest
without saying that there were Communists in town. In fact there had been a
brief mention in the spring of ’62 of a ‘Leftist’ who had filed for the office
but would be 'no match' for The Mayor. On July 5th, it had been reported that
the ‘Leftist Gathering’ that had been broken up the day before, had, despite
rumors to the contrary, involved only ‘professional dissenters,’ almost none of
them locals, certainly no Christian locals.
The reports of the Mayor’s death had made no mention of who his supposed
killers were at all except to darkly suggest that everyone already knew. Then
there had been the July 21st piece, the one that called all of the Levines
murderers and their fiery deaths a miracle of divine vengeance. No mention of
the election. In fact, no one could have learned from the Sun-Times that Sarah
had ever run for anything if it hadn't been for the reprint of an AP story:
“Dead Candidates Face Off In Small Town Contest”. Wilkins’s votes had been
counted for his son as if by right of primogenitor. There had been no mention
of what would have happened if Sarah had won. Both the fire and the death of
the previous Mayor Wilkins had been referred to as ‘accidents’.
Willow was still trying to absorb the fact that her ancestors had been mass
murdered over a small town election. Even in a place like Sunnydale, it made so
little sense. There had to be more to it. Didn't there? Of course, she had
reasoned with herself, it made more sense than enslaving and violating your
only child to become a cheerleader, or killing people you barely knew to become
a hyena. At least the Mayors office held a little power. And in a place that
was so much it's own world as Sunnydale was... maybe it felt like a lot. Maybe.
But whether any of that made sense or not, Willow had had no time to sit and
processes. With less than an hour of lab time left, she had swallowed her anger
and confusion and kept digging.
A quick search had found no indication of what had become of Sunnydale’s first
mayor. Where the Sun and the Times separately had referred to the Mayor simply
as Richard Wilkins, the Sun-Times referred to Richard Wilkins Jr., and that was
that. Then Willow had found an old tintype photograph of the Founder from 1899.
He had been the same age that the current Mayor was now. The resemblance
between them was more than remarkable, it was unbelievable. They looked like
exactly the same man. She'd found another photo of him from 1913 and one from
1918 and another, and another, right up to the election of 1941. In each of
these photos, he had been the same age that the current Mayor was now. The
resemblance between them was more than remarkable, it was unbelievable. They
looked like exactly the same man.
Willow didn't know exactly what it all meant, but it meant something. If Mayor
Wilkins was something other than human, then his wholesale slaughter of the
Levines had to be about more than who had control over fixing streetlamps and
putting in sewer lines. Willow had barely survived spending Sunday away from
the computer lab, unable to follow up. Other than the thirty minutes she'd
actually gotten to spend with Ms. Waddle, talking about next to nothing, she'd
been forced to spend most of the day outside in the tiny 'play yard' watching
other girls play volley-ball without the benefit of knowing any rules.
She'd spent her time snacking and cat napping, being actively unobtrusive. And
becoming more and more certain that her not-much-need-for-sleep spell was
wearing off. Now here she sat, ignoring her still grumbling, roiling,
inexplicably underfed stomach as she painstakingly paged through infinite
volumes of mystical texts looking for an explanation as to what kind of man or
beast could wear the same, unchanging, human face for a century yet never fear
the light of day.
Finally, Willow broke down and opened yet another packet of those odd tasting,
pretzelly textured snack crackers Ms. Waddle had brought her this morning.
She'd resisted for two reasons, having nothing to do with the fact that a
salted paper bag probably would have tasted better. First off, if she kept
eating them at this rate, she'd run out long before Sunday came again.
Secondly, they made her sleepy. And if there was one thing she didn't need any
more of, it was sleep. Besides, Willow just felt... weird about the crackers.
Ms. Waddle had said they would 'help keep her strength up', but then when
Willow had told her that she needed exactly that because she was 'sleeping a
lot more efficiently' thanks to some 'mutual friends', the Witch had suddenly
seemed to become nervous about giving them to her, warning her not to eat too
many at once.
Nevertheless, Willow was hungry. She took one cracker out, gingerly took a
bite. Soon she had devoured the whole package. Six packs gone of the fourteen
that were meant to last a week. And as soon as she had eaten them, she felt an
overwhelming desire to lay her book down, close her eyes, and sleep. As she
drifted off she thought, how strange that Ms. Waddle should know to bring her
these extra-nutritious snacks. She hadn't know of any particular reason why
Willow would need to 'keep her strength up' when she had packed them to come
here. Had she?
                                     *****
In the same row as Buffy and Giles, just on the other side of Peter and Elaine
Travers, stood Phillip Robson, looking polite and dignified. Robson's wife,
Lilith, was at his side, looking pained and strained as always. Their sons and
daughters were seated further back, among the mass of Watcher Folk. Milton
Crowne and Laura Sterling (together) rounded out the row. Laura's daughter,
Penny Hunt, stood directly behind her, sharing a row with Evan and Jacob
Crowne, as if it had just happened to work out that way. There was a whole
subcaste of speculators devoted to discussing the issue of whether or not Jacob
had squeezed Penny's hand in a way that seemed slightly more than friendly and
co-miserable at Jane Crowne's funeral yesterday and what it might mean that
they were standing near each other yet again. Across the isle from Milton
(seated directly behind yet more of Micheal Dunstan's innumerable descendants,
siblings, nieces, nephews and in-laws) Adam Davison and his wife shared a bench
with the sons, daughters-in-law and ex-wife of the late Virgil Gaudencio, who
was to be the first of many buried tomorrow. All of the most important funerals
were being held earliest each day so that the greatest dignitaries could attend
them and then get back to work. All the rest of the Ezarians sat in a little
clump behind Davidson.
Though there were a large number of Hippolytons seated in the next several rows
on both sides, their leader, Julian Wyndam-Pryce, was conspicuous by his
absence. It was understood; however, that this was not a slight to the Flavians
but a necessary distancing from the entire Council for the sake of outside
appearances. Julian's son, Wesley, was among a select few still being held by
the police pending the filing of formal charges for assaulting and battering a
number of police officers. Though it went carefully unstated by official
sources, he was still being investigated for any links to the 'hostage takers'
that hundreds of witnesses steadfastly swore had attacked the gathering and
fled before police arrived. It didn't help at all that said witnesses couldn't
agree upon whether their attackers had been Arab Muslims, Irish Republicans,
Chinese Gang Members, Maldivian Communists or shape shifting aliens from outer-
space.
That was certainly more than scandal enough without creating opportunities for
the Deputy Minister himself to be seen and photographed with others who were
present at that mysterious and ugly event. That most especially included Buffy
Summers-Giles, who was still facing charges and further investigation herself
and was free (if you could call being let out of a cage on the condition that
you surrender your passport and agree not to leave an island half the size of
California 'free') only because the Council had dropped a metric crap-ton of
cash to make it so. Although it would have happened anyway, it was a relief
that she had been let go so soon. Because apparently, there might have been a
whole new kind of trouble if she wasn't. Buffy had been shocked to hear through
Morrison how quickly her family had united and rallied to the cause of her
freedom.
Apparently, no one, not even Aunt Darlene, had suggested that Buffy probably
was responsible for any massacres that had happened when she was around or that
behind bars might be where she really belonged. No one had thrown up their
hands and said 'what can we do?' even. By the time the dust had settled on
Saturday, Grampa Wallace, with the support of both her mother and her father,
had apparently called Julian Wyndam-Pryce himself threatening a full-scale
Summers invasion of Britain (sure to include both legal action and extensive
press coverage) if she were not released at once. The old man had apparently
pulled out all the stops, even suggesting that he knew more than anyone wanted
to read in the newspaper about why the Deputy Minister was just the man to see
to Buffy's release. Even now, with her release secured, both Joyce and Hank
were making plans to fly to London (together even) before the end of the week,
just to 'make sure she was alright.' Buffy didn't know quite what to make of
all that, but with everything that was so wrong in this dark, cold, scheming,
whispering, universe that was her husband's family, Buffy decided to count it
as one thing going right.
As for the Watcher Clan, at least their actual, literal whispering died down a
little when the chief mourners were seated and the ritual finally began. Oliver
Dunstan, Micheal’s oldest son, seemed genuinely distraught if no one else did.
In fact, he seemed lost, broken. Emma, his wife, was at his side, leading him
by the hand, looking tired but strong. Dignified. Stoic. Like Andrew. Whom
Buffy tried not to think of as her brother, or her anything else. To have
looked at the pair of them, husband and wife, no one would have guessed which
of them had just left the hospital against medical advice with deep, life-
threatening wounds that were merely covered, not healed.
Of course, even Emma and Oliver had more to mourn than just the violent passing
of Michael Dunstan. They had also lost their only son. Graham. His body
remained unburied, one of a backlog waiting to be autopsied. Buffy ran the
fingers of her left hand half-consciously along the knuckles of her right. The
very slightly tender not-quite-bruises where her fist had made contact with
Graham's face were gone now. But she knew exactly were they had been. Maybe an
hour later he had died in battle at least metaphorically at her side, almost
under her command. And yet now, her family and his, laced together as they
were, remained as much enemies as anything. It was all so messed up. So
exhausting. There were too many sides.
And that made her think of Cordelia. What could she be thinking, feeling?
Should Buffy try to call her, to find out if she was okay? Probably not a good
idea considering that there was no way that call was going to start with, 'to
hell with Willow and Xander, I'm going to help you get through this,' which was
all she would have wanted to hear in Cordelia's place. Still, it seemed wrong
to say nothing, to act as if it were all okay. There was more to it than the
fact of a heart getting broken, though Buffy knew from experience that that was
enough. As much as she hated to admit it, Buffy sympathized with what it must
be like to have fallen from the heights that Cordelia had, to have made that
sacrifice for love, only to be dumped for a Willow Rosenberg. In Cordelia's
cosmology, which Buffy had pretty much shared until a year or so ago, Willow
was a 4-F, a noncombatant. It was like Juliet getting as far as Mantua only to
be told that Romeo liked her nurse better and to run along home and see if
Paris was still available. Cordelia wasn't going to take that lying down.
Something was going to happen.
Which pretty much summed up the overall uneasy feeling that Buffy had being
stuck in a room full of these Council people knowing everything that she now
knew about them and realizing just how much there logically had to be that she
still didn't know. This kind of a cauldron of betrayal and lies and emotions
and pride couldn't just be. It wouldn't just sit there and be okay, because it
wasn't okay. It was cancerous. It was festering. Something was going to happen.
                                     *****
For the fourth night in a row, Xander closed the store at midnight exactly and
drove straight to Willow’s house. Angel's forehead exploded. For the third
night in a row, he parked in her driveway and came in through the front door,
cross in hand, rather than availing himself of the relative safety of the
garage. Angel's forehead exploded. He just wasn’t up to going in there. Not
yet.
In his mind, Xander went through a checklist of everything he needed to do.
Angel's forehead exploded.He didn't have to get the mail or the newspaper. That
happened in the mornings. Because he was keeping the store open eighteen hours
a day with no help, his two daily trips to Willow's were only six hours apart,
but going eighteen hours between two pairs of visits still seemed like a better
plan than leaving the rats alone for twenty-four hours at a time. This trip he
needed to feed Amy, refill her water bottle, clean both cages and put in new
bedding. Then he could check his email. Angel's forehead exploded.He would
check his email, see that there was still no reply from Cordelia, and go home
and sleep for five hours. This time he was probably tired enough to do it.
The door was unlocked. Angel's forehead exploded. Xander had not left the door
unlocked. He never left the door unlocked. Willow had trusted him with the key.
In that much, at least, he had kept her trust. He stood perfectly still, barely
able to see or hear, let alone think, his heart was beating so fast. Blood
pounded in his ears. Angel’s forehead exploded. There was a sound of furtive
movement in the kitchen. A light shown under the door. With a noise that was
both a grunt of challenge and a scream terror, Xander burst into the kitchen,
cross held high. It was Angel! ...for the very tiny fraction of a second that
it took his brain to understand the fact that he had a strange woman in her
late thirties cornered, remarkably calmly, between his cross and the side of
the refrigerator.
“Blesséd be,” the woman greeted him just a little nervously. The strange
greeting sounded as natural on her lips as ‘good morning.’ Because she was as
used to saying it. Because she was a witch.
“Ms. Waddle?” The woman smiled and nodded.
“You must be Xander,” she seemed to explain. It was his turn to nod. Angel's
forehead exploded.
Xander's relief gave way to sheepishness. “I didn’t realize you had a key,” he
apologized.
“I just… she asked me to look in on the house tonight, make sure everything was
still okay,” she explained.
“Oh, right,” said the boy, realizing his thoughtlessness. “Sunday. Visiting
day.” Willow must have explained to him that the first day of the week was
reserved for 'parents' to see their 'children' at JDC and that Ms. Waddle, in
the guise of Sheila Rosenberg, would be taking full advantage of that
opportunity to give Willow a lifeline to the outside world. “How is she?” he
asked, with heartbreaking concern. But Ms. Waddle's heart didn't break that
easily. The last thing Willow needed was this boy getting any more involved in
her affairs or even staying as involved as he was.
“She’s… holding up,” Ms. Waddle assured him, choosing her words for
believability. “I’m sure it’s not that she doubts you’re looking after things
here…” she added after a pause, though he had expressed no such concern. “I’m
sure she just…” Ms. Waddle let her words trail off, choosing her guilty,
placating tone for lack of believability.
Xander’s shoulders slumped just a little. He gawked at her awkwardly,
embarrassed. “Excuse me,” he said. “I have to go feed—”
“Oh don’t worry,” Ms. Waddle cut him off, smiling benignly. “I took care of it.
I took care of everything.”
                                     *****
The night was black. The wind screamed. The vault of heaven had been ripped
open. The flood gushed forth upon the Earth like the wrath of an anguished god.
Like Demeter weeping for her missing daughter. Willow stood beneath the dark ,
churning sky, arms up-stretched, screaming in anguish. Lightning blasted all
around, but it didn’t dare to strike Her. The strobing flashes of electricity
distorted Her emaciated features, giving Her the appearance of a gnarled old
woman, or possibly an ancient tree. ...
“Heads up Rosenberg!” a guard shouted, waking Willow from a long, restless
night’s sleep filled with vague, half remembered dreams. Dreams of dread.
Dreams of pain. Dreams from which she awoke with an overwhelming sense of guilt
and despair. “Finally got you a roommate,” he half explained. Willow sat up and
looked around. How long had she been asleep? There was probably more than one
answer to that, she realized, but however you counted, it was still dark, not
yet Monday morning. It seemed like an odd time to be bringing in a new
prisoner. This wasn't the place they usually brought you in the middle of the
night until they could do something about you in the morning.
“Hey, Willow,” the girl said with gloomy indifference. It was Sheila Zucker.
Willow was shocked. Then she was terrified. She forced herself to try to remain
calm. A vampire. She was about to be locked in a six by eight foot cell with a
vampire. One who was bound to be in a hurry to feed and run. She had to escape
before sunrise, after all. There was a window in the cell, too small to climb
out of, but plenty big enough to fill the cramped space with sunlight.
“Sick!” Willow shouted with sudden inspiration. If she was sick they would have
to put her somewhere else. Somewhere for people who were sick! “I… I’m sick!”
The guard looked startled, then annoyed. Sheila gave her a wary, close-mouthed
smirk. It was a look that said, ‘I know you, I’ve known you all your life, I
see what you’re doing, I see why you’re doing it, I admire you for trying to
lie; but you know you’re just not any good at it.’
The guard sighed. “You’re sick, huh?” Willow nodded vigorously. “What’s the
matter with you?” he asked impatiently. She began speaking rapidly at an ever
increasing pitch and volume, describing a variety of symptoms, which she was
dimly aware didn’t really connect with each other, but she could barely hear
the steady stream of confused, panicked verbiage that issued from her lips, let
alone control it. What if it didn’t work?! What if she couldn’t convince him?!
What if it didn’t matter what she said at all because Sheila being here wasn’t
a coincidence but a plot by the Mayor and his minions to kill her and rid
Sunnydale of the descendants of Johanna Levine once and for all!?!
“Fine,” the guard grumbled, pulling her out of the cell by the arm and locking
Sheila in. “Come on and see the nurse.”
“Well I can tell you what you don’t have,” the nurse said snidely, after half
an hour of questioning and prodding. “You don’t have a fever, chills, sneezing,
vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, a convincing cough, ear, nose, throat, or
sinus infection, strep throat, mumps, measles or anything involving swelling or
spots. You also don’t have a chance in hell of switching roommates. This is the
JDC, not a college dorm. Now I’m going to send you back to get some sleep.
Breakfast is in four hours.”
“No, please!” Willow begged. “You can’t send me back, I’ll die!”
“You’re not sick,” the nurse repeated, “Guard!”
“No, you don’t understand,” Willow tried again, “It’s Sheila, she’s a… she’s
um… crazy! She’ll kill me! Please! You have to move her! I’ll be dead by
sunrise!” The nurse and the guard looked at each other. Either she was truly
desperate or she had suddenly become a much better liar. The nurse shrugged and
the guard sighed. Pain in the ass though she was, the last thing they needed
was for a bright, upper-middle-class kid with straight white teeth to be found
dead in her cell on a damned misdemeanor detention. And they had both known the
joy of dealing with Sheila Zucker.
But there had to be a reason, for the paperwork. Nobody had done anything to
warrant a disciplinary and there wasn’t a form for roommate requests. This was
the JDC, not a collage dorm. “We could put her in the suicide watch cell,” the
nurse suggested, “for what's left of tonight anyway.”
“I did hear her say she’d be dead by morning,” the guard agreed hopefully. They
both looked at Willow.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, averting her eyes, acutely uncomfortable in the knowledge
that she was about to have ‘a documented history of suicidal ideation.’ “I did
say that.” Having a ‘mental health history’ could be a serious problem on
college applications, but it was better than being dead.
                                     *****
This was the hard part. It was like the receiving line at a wedding. Except
instead of having to kiss the bride and make happy talk, hands or shoulders had
to be squeezed while everyone thought of something appropriately sad and
vaguely comforting to say. Buffy settled for looking grave and sympathetic. At
least she was going for grave and sympathetic. The way everyone kept asking if
she was sure she was alright and if she needed anything, she probably just
looked queasy. But however it looked, the look was the best she could do. She
had nothing to say to these people.
The Eulogy had been a long one (seemingly meant to give the impression that
everyone honestly thought the dead man had been the second coming of sliced
bread) and now everyone, especially the Dunstans, seemed tired out by the long-
winded pretense. Buffy shuffled along the line of family just behind Andrew,
with Giles leaning on her for support. At least having a hobbling husband
attached to her hip seemed to make people not want to keep her long, and the
way they were positioned gave the Dunstan clan a clearly welcome excuse not to
speak to Giles himself.
The hardest part, really, was having to witness Andrew's stiff, formal
interactions with everyone. Especially when the stiffness and the formality
didn't seem to come so easily. Andrew had been moving long the line at a brisk
pace, until he got to Emma. Then he stopped. His gaze shifted away from her
face and back again. He looked as if he wanted to say something important but
couldn't decide what. She looked him firmly in the eye. Someone with an active
imagination could have seen a challenge in that look. At last, he returned her
gaze just as firmly. “Mr. Giles,” she said with a stiff curt nod, in a way that
could have been taken as either polite or quietly angry, either respectful or
dismissive.
“Mrs. Dunstan,” he replied in exactly the same tone, nodding just as stiffly.
With another nod and an equally terse exchange of greetings to Oliver, Andrew
reached the head of the line at last. He cast no more than a quick, obligatory
glance at the shell of the man who'd caused him such misery before moving
briskly forward, out of everyone's way. Buffy and Giles followed, nearly
matching his pace. Buffy noticed a slightly relieved uptick in conversation as
they moved away. Peter did not keep pace. He and Emma seemed to be sharing a
moment of comparatively warm and genuine commiseration. Buffy didn't catch her
Watcher's quiet words of concern, only Mrs. Dustan's unconvincingly cavalier
response, “...Well, perhaps I'm merely tired of London.”
Andrew was waiting for Buffy and Giles outside the church. They tried to walk
past him without speaking, but it didn't work. “Rupert,” he insisted, stepping
into their path, “I'd like a word.”
Buffy opened her mouth to object, but Giles waved her to silence. “What is
there to say?” he asked stiffly.
“I... don't like the thought of your staying in a hotel in your condition,”
Andrew said, sounding like he was compromising between what he wanted to say
and what he hoped he could get away with. Buffy stared. Did he actually think
they would sleep under his roof, that that would be a good idea?
“I do have some experience at it,” Giles pointed out, though what he meant by
that, Buffy wasn't exactly sure until he added, with a slight squeeze to her
arm, “and if somehow we should fail to manage, we have an excellent second line
of defense. She's already killed very nearly every vampire in London anyway.”
“It isn't... just that,” Andrew finally admitted, sounding a bit frustrated,
looking a bit less stoic. “It's just... Rupert, please... can't we... discuss
things somewhere less...” he cast an eye about the crowd exiting this church
and let the sentence die.
“'Discuss things',” Giles repeated, his voice slightly bitter, almost mocking,
“Humph,” he snorted, followed by a short chuckle, shaking his head. Buffy
gripped his arm a little tighter in a way she hoped was supportive. She shot a
dark, warning glance at Andrew, who looked more defensive than chastened in
return. His eyes were still half begging, half insisting that he ought to be
given a chance to be heard. Could he honestly not see that Giles was on the
verge of collapse? Could he not see what it was costing him just to stand next
to his father and say nothing about the pain he was still in, had been in for
over forty years? Did he honestly think they were about to kiss and make up,
that he would be told all was forgiven? 'Gee, Son, I'm sorry I killed your mom
and buried her in the back yard like a stray cat.' 'Gosh, Dad, don't worry
about it. Everybody makes mistakes.' Did he think he had a right to ask that?
Already? Could a human being be that selfish?
“Look,” Buffy said, when it seemed to be taking Giles so long to find his
tongue that she was afraid Andrew might speak again, “Send it in a letter.
We're done here.”
Andrew opened his mouth to respond, but it snapped shut pretty quickly when
Giles looked up at him at last, steady if not calm and affirmed. “Yes. We are.
We're done.” Then he smiled in a way that Buffy didn't like at all and added,
his tone chillingly polite, even pleasant, “I shall look forward to seeing you
at the meeting this evening, Mr. Giles.” Andrew's eyes widened just a little
before he nodded stiffly and turned away. And that was that.
                                     *****
 At two a.m., Xander suddenly realized that he was awake.   Angel's forehead
exploded.   In his bed in his parent's basement, not standing behind the
counter at the Quick Mart.   Angel's forehead exploded.   Xander's heart was
pounding.    Angel's forehead exploded.   He was sick with the realization
that, whatever Willow or Ms. Waddle thought, there was something at Willow's
house that he   did   have to deal with, that no one else could possibly 'have
covered'.   Angel's forehead exploded.   He had to get rid of the body.
  All things being equal, the dead of night seemed like the right time to be
moving bodies around, actually. At least it was traditional. Not that that made
a  safe thing to do in Sunnydale. Not that it was actually ever a safe thing to
do in daylight anywhere. It didn't matter. It could have been noon.  Angel's
forehead exploded. Panic had set in. Evidence that could get him life in
prison, or death for that matter, was locked in a garage to which someone else,
someone he barely knew and certainly didn't trust, had at least as good of
access as he did. There was no way he would be able to rest, let alone sleep,
until he did something about it.
 
***** All in the Family *****
Chapter Summary
     As Willow and Xander separately struggle in the grip supernatural
     evils and the not-unrelated Del Bacco County juvenile justice system,
     Cordelia makes plans to capitalize on her new-found relative freedom.
     Meanwhile, the Council faces change with it's usual degree of open-
     mindedness and humanity.
The Inner Council met first, at ten a.m. There may have been a few subcommittee
meetings going on at the same time, but they were unimportant. The funerals
that were still going on were the unimportant ones as well. Relatively
speaking. Not the ones it was important to be seen at anyhow. Seven people sat
in seven chairs around an octagonal table, the eighth chair (empty at the
moment) reserved for one to entreat or to be interrogated by the Seven.
This was the Inner Chamber, situated within the archives rather than among the
offices and meeting rooms that surrounded the Council Chamber. This was the
place of the secret and the sacred meetings. Julian sat in his rightful place,
as did Milton, Robson, and Davidson. The other three were there to be
confirmed. All in a batch. It was an extraordinary procedure, but these were
extraordinary times.
 Twenty-two Watchers had been lost in Friday's fighting, counting the three
equals, but only two Potentials had died. The Inner Council needed to be
brought back to full strength immediately, to provide stability and get on
about the business of reassigning personnel and minting new Watchers.
For the Flavian House, there was Oliver Dunstan. No surprise. No controversy.
He was shaking, but that was unrelated. He was sedated, but not sedated enough.
His wife would give him more nice drugs and put him to bed right after the
meeting. She had made him a sheaf of notes so that he wouldn't forget what to
say or how to vote.
 Virgil Gaudencio had a son as well. Heathcliff. He was fifty-three, a well
respected Watcher, involved in the importation of Oriental Antiques, which
business afforded him many contacts very valuable to the Council. He had even
been Primary once. To Constance Gesh, in the last year of her life. The only
disquiet in his House had been whether he would accept election, given his
attachment to his current charge and his concern that her father would not
easily allow a substitution and was not the sort of man you could safely defy
by absconding with his daughter, however willingly she might go.
However, a 'solution' had been found to that dilemma that had left everyone in
the Inner Council scratching their heads about what was to happen in the latter
part of the afternoon. Now he was sitting here, tacitly challenging them to
approve his solution or not and to see how the House, with no one clear
alternative heir, might respond.
 But it was the third Elect who had everyone's attention. It shouldn't have
been a surprise, really. Quentin Travers had only one, fairly young, son. A
fairly young son who had only recently begun serving as Primary to a Slayer who
was close enough to the edge of rebellion without the Council trying to foist
yet another new Watcher on her.
The problem, of course, was that Quentin Travers had no brothers. He had
sisters, certainly, two still living, both of whom were Watchers. And the
Travers House was known to support the seating of females, in theory at least.
Of course, most everyone did nowadays. In theory at least. But with Laura
already waiting in the wings to be seated in the next decade or two, to have
nominated yet another woman to the Inner Council...
Well, she would have to have been a person of particular, unassailable dignity
and gravitas. And of the two, the one most closely fitting that description,
Emma Dunstan, would have been taking a Seat alongside her own husband, which
smacked of unequal representation of one House or the other. And while there
was nothing definitely unsuitable about Kay, the youngest of 'St. Peter's'
daughters, she was, like her sister, a matron in her seventies with all of her
obvious heirs Enrolled into her husband's House rather than her own.
And unlike her sister, she was so soft-spoken and accommodating that one could
actually conceive the fear that she might be ruled by her sons. Each of
Quentin's nephews was unsuitable in some way, once you sat down and got to
thinking about them one by one. If they were Watchers, they were not Jacobean
Watchers, or if they were, they were no older than his own son, or they were
known to be much too heavy drinkers, or beset by some such other frailty.
 There was simply nothing for it but to trace the Line further back, to search
for an heir among the collateral relatives of Peter Travers, the additional
descendants of his ancestors. Which of course, led to the opposite problem, too
many claimants rather than too few. Men and women of varying qualities and more
or less equal dignities each with his or her own faction to support (or to be
suspected of supporting, or accused of betraying) relative to the interests of
the House as a whole.
And suddenly then, it had become a matter of selecting not the best connected,
but the most isolated. Someone known to be wise, intelligent, hardworking, both
respectable and respected, experienced in the field, and yet so out of the loop
when it came to the internal politics of the House as to be considered, by
default, above the fray.
 And so it was that Samuel Zabuto (who was, like Quentin himself, both the son
and the grandson of a Watcher and the six-times great grandson of Sr. John
Travers, holder of the Travers Seat from 1791 to 1827) found himself sitting
across that ancient table from six deeply middle aged to slightly elderly white
men who looked as though they had never before in all their lives seen anything
so strange as a West Indian.
                                     *****
 Xander didn't go up the stairs. His mom slept like a cat on Ritalin.  Angel's
forehead exploded.  She'd padlocked the outside basement door, getting into her
role as enforcer of court orders, but that didn't matter. He climbed on top of
the washing machine and out the basement window.  Angel's forehead exploded.
Sheila's Lexis was parked on the street.  Angel's forehead exploded. He
wouldn't have dared to suggest that it needed the protection of a garage more
than his parent's '89 Ford. The Lexis at least had insurance.  Angel's forehead
exploded.  Xander put the car in gear and drove to Willow's house.
 The door was locked, this time, as it should be. That was okay. He had a key.
She had trusted him with it. Had? Past tense?  Angel's forehead exploded. It
didn't matter. The key was in his hand. Of course, he also had a garage opener.
Angel's forehead exploded. Technically, the garage was where he needed to go.
He didn't have any real reason to go into the house.  Angel's forehead
exploded. Except to avoid going into the garage. Which really seemed to negate
the point of being here. The point of being here was— Angel's forehead
exploded.  He went into the house. Fine, whatever, just... not yet.
 Even before he flipped the lights on, Xander knew something was wrong. So
wrong that it put him in an even bigger hurry to get the lights on. As his eyes
adjusted to the light, he realized that the sense of wrongness connected
directly to a very unpleasant smell, which was coming from the kitchen, and as
he instantly knew without having to look, from the garage beyond.  Angel's
forehead exploded. Maggots wriggled in his putrid flesh. The whole downstairs
of Willow's house was tainted with the smell of a decomposing body.
 Xander closed the door behind him over the protests of most of the committee
that made up his better judgment, brutally repressing the faction that was
calling for a quorum on a motion to run like hell. He pulled a cross from
beneath his shirt and held it before him as he slowly made his way through the
kitchen.  Angel leapt from the shadows in full vampface and went straight for
his throat. The kitchen was empty, but the door to the garage had been opened,
and not gently. It hung crookedly from its bent hinges.
The smell was fifty times stronger and more distinctly disgusting in the
kitchen than it had been in the living room. It was vomit worthy. Xander
blocked it out as best he could. The mind numbing terror actually helped quite
a bit with that. It was hard to experience anything else. He got close to the
broken door, but not too close. Just close enough to look in. Even from here,
he could see with his own eyes what his nose was already telling him. The trunk
of the White Lexis was wide open. He could not see from here that it was empty,
but he knew. The door had been forced from inside the garage.
 Oh God, now what? His first instinct when things like this happened, even
after more than a year of knowing better, was still to call 911. Xander was
startled by his own nervous laughter.   Hello police, I want to report a
missing dead body.  Even if he hadn't known better, he would know better. Which
pretty much looped right back to 'now what?'. 'Why?' And 'How?' Were also
screaming and banging on the windows of his train of thought, trying to climb
on board, but the train was already leaving the station, rolling through a
dense fog of blinding panic at the bottom of a canyon of dread.
If it had come in the house, then it wasn't a vampire. And why should it be? He
had shot a human being in the head. Angel's forehead exploded.That didn't lead
to vampires.
 God only knew what he was actually up against, Xander realized. Or if the
cross would protect him. He felt vulnerable. Helpless. And so, he thought of
Sheila. Xander hurried up the stairs, but the door to Sheila's room was locked,
as it should be. In fact, nothing upstairs seemed the least bit out of place.
In Sheila and Ira's old room, the rats were squeaking peacefully. Willow's bed
was exactly as unmade as they had left it, covers mostly in place but turned
down at a sloppy angle. Sheets not washed. There was one towel lying on the
bathroom floor, right where it had been.
Calming a little, Xander carefully made his way back down the stairs, his heavy
wooden cross held high and ready. Things downstairs had maybe been
straighteneda little, but that was probably the work of Ms. Waddle.
Ang—whatever it was—had not gotten into the house. Angel's forehead exploded.It
had tried. Angel's forehead exploded.It had succeeded in breaking the door
open, (Angel's forehead exploded)but not in walking through it. Definitely
vampire. But why? Angel's forehead exploded.How? Angel's forehead exploded. And
more importantly what now? Even more more importantly than that, where was it
at now?
Angel's!!! Forehead !!! Exploded!!! Murderer!!! Murderer!!! This doesn't make
sense! He's dead!!!
Xander didn't have to wonder long. The sound of feral growling snapped his head
in the direction of the broken open door. Standing almost but not quite in the
doorway was the deadest thing Xander had ever seen standing on it's own two
feet. There was very little blood around the wound anymore, though there was
some dried on the face. Shattered bone and softer, meatier substances in
contrasting shades of gray and pink crumbled loose from the foreshortened (see
above re exploding) forehead. The light in the demon's eyes was hungry,
vicious; but with none of Angel's eager, active intelligence. Those eyes! They
were frightening in more ways and for more reason than Xander could (or wanted
to) sort out. They identified him as an enemy, but there was no spark of
recognition.
Angel snarled and threw himself against the empty space where the door used to
be. Xander involuntarily backed up, crying out in terror, but he checked the
impulse to run. Fleeing this house was the most dangerous thing he could
possibly do. Angel's rough and ready lobotomy might have kept him from
understanding why he couldn't get into Willow's kitchen, but it wouldn't stop
him from crashing through the garage door and dragging Xander down on the front
lawn. Apparently, it also didn't stop him grabbing everything he could get his
hands on and hurtling it through the opening. With another short, sharp scream,
Xander dodged a flying tool box full of suddenly separately flying tools and
made a break for the stairs. He ran into the rat room and slammed the door. Now
what?
Now there was a sound of a car running and wheels on an asphalt driveway, that
was what. He parted the curtains of the bedroom window only slightly, but
enough to see an ancient mammoth of a Buick pulling into the driveway. It had
to be Ms. Waddle. Coming back to take or leave or finish something. Who else
would come here at this time of depends on your definition of morning or night?
Gears whirred and metal clunked as the garage door rattled up. Damn. Xander ran
downstairs, cross held high.
Screaming. High, panicked, pitiful screaming. Xander leapt from the kitchen
into the garage, fully expecting to find Angel standing over Ms. Waddle's
crumpled body. Only it was the other way round. She was standing, or leaning
more like, weak kneed, clinging to her own front fender, gazing in horror at
the very human looking corpse that was folded in on itself inside the open
trunk of Ira Rosenberg's car. Just as he had left it. Angel's forehead
exploded.
“Oh, I...” Xander stammered, but the look in her eyes stopped his tongue. It
was a look of indignation, of terror and yet somehow also of contempt. It was
the look of an innocent, law abiding citizen appalled to be addressed by a
murderer. Xander's panic, was too panicked to do anything about being panicked.
Too panicked even to run. Run! Gee, that was a good idea actually. Xander made
a firm decision to run. But somehow, his feet didn't get the memo. He remained
rooted to the spot, his eyes and those of the witch locked.
“Leave this town!” she said, her voice much harder, much harsher than he would
have thought possible from the way she'd sounded when he'd talked to her
before. “Leave tonight and never come back. Don't try to contact Willow. If you
are gone by morning, I will speak of this to no one!”
Xander nodded, panic grabbing at relief that turned to dread at once. Leave
town, yes that sounded good, but leave Willow, leave Cordelia, not so much.
Come back for them! Yes, let things cool off, nothing said for long enough,
come back for just a little while and... what? Come back for who and do what
with them? Don't. Don't think about that now. No time. Time to panic. Remember
panic? Dead body. Eye witness. One chance. Get out of town.
At last Xander's feet obeyed him. At last he turned to run. He ran to the door
of Sheila's Lexis and opened it. His keys were not in his hand, not in his
pocket, not in the car. In the house? No, still hanging from the door knob,
where he had left them without a thought the minute that something had felt
wrong. Sighing, feeling a ridiculous mundanity set in, stealing the momentum of
his dramatic escape, Xander lumbered back towards the house. “It's alright,” he
called to Ms. Waddle, as he walked back past the garage where she was surely
watching him, “Just need to get my keys.” He'd hate for her to get the wrong
idea and call 911 after all. It was surprisingly generous of her not to do that
anyway. Very Surprisingly.
With his hand on the knob, pulling the keys out, Xander stopped, and for the
first time in half an hour, had a truly clear thought. There was only one
possible real reason for her not to call 911, and that was Sheila Rosenberg.
How did that change if he left town or not? More importantly, even if she
didn't call them, then what? It wasn't like the body would just go away. What
was she going to do, bury it herself? That seemed like a lot to do for someone
you didn't even like. Unless her whole goal was to keep him away from Willow.
Thinking back, maybe it had been that, all along.
Ready for a confrontation, tired of being lied to, damn well more than ready to
do his own grave digging if that was what it took for the choice of his next
move to be his own, Xander walked into the garage. Ms. Waddle was on her hands
and knees with a plastic box and a tiny hand broom, collecting a pile of dust.
The trunk of Ira's car was still open. The body was gone.
 “Hey!” Xander demanded, “What the hell is going on!”
                                     *****
 Robson, of course, didn't have a problem with it. It was the twentieth century
after all, and at that, only just. He was merely... concerned about what
difficulties could result if someone else had a problem with it. He sneaked a
look at Milton, hoping to find guidance or support or something. But the look
on Milton's face was hard to read.
 Milton, of course, didn't have a problem with it. The Inner Council already
held one Jew and one queer with a married woman heir waiting in the wings to
inherit his Seat. And apparently, at least until recently, quite a few Seats
had been held by outright, indisputable murderers. Why not a West Indian,
really? Besides, there was something about the way in which so very many of his
Brother Equals (and would be equals) seemed so uncomfortable with their own
discomfort that Milton found decidedly amusing.
 Julian Wyndam-Pryce was not uncomfortable with his discomfort. He was just
plain uncomfortable. Not that there was anything exactly wrong with being West
Indian, in theory at least. In theory, one Watcher, one decedent of a Line, was
as good as any other and it was up to the Watchers of each House to choose any
one of their number to lead and represent them. And, to be sure, there was
nothing to disqualify a bright West Indian from any of the duties he was likely
to be called upon to perform in the field, no reason why the children of such
intermarriages should not be Enrolled (as in fact they had been for many
generations) so long as they were able to succeed in training. But this was the
Inner Council. The body that defined and maintained the traditional, stable
character of the entire insinuation of the Watchers Council of Britain. It was
already beset enough by the innovationism, the worship of novelty that defined
the twentieth century, without making the whole thing look like an
advertisement for some kind of American style affirmative action scheme. Now,
especially now, they needed stability, certainty, not innovation. They needed
to project an image of timeless, unquestionable authority; not that of a 'Brave
New Council' under which any imaginable sort of change seemed possible.
 Oliver Dunstan was more than uncomfortable. He was horrified. The universe
seemed to be flying apart at the seems. His father had been murdered by an
Equal of the Inner Council, death by pushing and shoving on an icy sidewalk.
His murder could not be acknowledged, but must be denied for the sake of calm
and order at this delicate time. In other words, it was to be unavenged and
forgotten like the inevitable death of some unimportant person. His son was
dead, killed by vampires, a reality that made all of these meetings and
shuffling about of documents seem suddenly absurd. His grandson, and now
apparent heir, wore an earring, and Oliver could never remember which ear he
wore it in or which ear was the wrong one. Clara Font was privately insisting
to him that his own wife had all but confessed to committing incest and
infanticide and God knew what else with Andrew Giles who was suddenly known to
be her father's son, not that he dared question her about any of these
assertions. And now here he was about to be Seated alongside this large, wooly-
haired Negro dressed up in ridiculously perfect imitation of an English
gentleman, which was utterly at odds with his West Indian dialect, barely
resembling the Queens English. Oliver hardly knew whether to count himself
fortunate or unfortunate that he was not being asked to cast a vote on the
subject.
 Adam Davidson was neither uncomfortable nor amused. He was impatient. Both
with his 'Brothers'' moronic racialism and prudishness regarding the Travers
and Gaudencio elections and with the wasting of time in general. He was
watching Mr. Zabuto; however, in a way that probably didn't look much different
from the others, taking careful note of his reaction to the situation, which
seemed businesslike, utterly patient, and altogether acceptable.
 Sam Zabuto was neither particularly uncomfortable nor impatient, though he was
certainly not the least bit amused either. He was ready to get on with things,
certainly, but he could give these men their moment to deal with their
discomfort. It was certainly nothing he wasn't used to. And certainly nothing
that was going to stand in his way. His House had selected him. They had had
good reasons for doing so. Reasons which all of these men, whatever their
personal misgivings, could surely understand. To have rejected him would have
been too great an insult to the entire House, an affront which they could not
afford in these already unsettled times. He would be Seated, both an honor and
a sacrifice. He would live out his remaining years and die in this cold country
among these cold men, as his destiny required. Now that she was gone, it seemed
an oddly fitting end.
 Heathcliff Gaudencio was uncomfortable with his discomfort. So much so that he
said, though it was hardly in order for him to say so, “Well, why doesn't
someone go ahead and move to accept Sam and Oliver, since their claims are
straightforward enough, and then we can discuss my situation further if we need
to.”
 “An excellent suggestion,” Mr. Zabuto agreed in a bland, pleasant tone in
which those who wished to were sure to detect a hint of irony. Davidson found
it interesting to note that the group as a whole was so discomfited that not
even the usual suspects had the presence of mind or the will to object that it
was not a mere Elect's place to make such a suggestion. Interesting to note,
but not prudent to give the body time to contemplate. Davidson quickly moved to
accept the two uncomplicated nominations and Milton, laughing, seconded.
Robson's hand was up almost before the vote was called. There was only a slight
pause before Julian followed suit. And so Sam Zabuto and Oliver Dunstan became,
at one and the same moment, two Equals who would help to lead the Council into
the twenty-first century. Now Gaudencio was the odd man out, facing six Equals
to which he must explain himself and justify his scandalously unorthodox plans
for the training and education of a certain Potential Slayer.
                                     *****
 The night was black. The wind screamed. The vault of heaven had been ripped
open. The flood gushed forth upon the Earth like the wrath of a jealous God
raging at His wayward daughter. Willow stood beneath the dark, churning sky,
arms up-stretched, screaming in anguish. Lightning. Strobing flashes of
electricity distorted Her emaciated features, giving Her the appearance of a
gnarled old woman, or possibly an ancient tree. Her red hair flew around her,
blazing like fire despite the wind and rain.
Among the singed and smoking vegetation, vampires growled. No. Not vampires,
vampire. A dozen, a score, a hundred, a thousand. Of Spike. “Really, Willow
Dear,” they simpered and censured at the same time, “isthiswhat you want?” The
forest rang with the softly cutting echoes of Sheila Rosenberg's voice.
“No!”Willow begged, weeping now; suddenly very small, very young, a little,
little girl, chubby hands and chipmunk cheeks trembling, “Please, God, no!”
Willow's waking was as sharp and sudden as a bolt of lightning, but her memory
of what had driven her from sleep was hazy at best. It didn't matter. It was
morning. She couldn't see the sun from where she was, but the number and faces
of the staff members passing by the unspeakably open glass front of her
'observation cell' told her that the six a.m. shift change had already
happened. In fact, everyone seemed to be pretty well settled into their working
day. Willow felt a little twinge of panic at the idea that she might have
already missed breakfast, but she tamped it down and focused on the positive.
Sheila was gone! One way or the other. She had to be. And soon, with or without
breakfast, Willow would be on her way to the computer lab.
...Or so she thought until someone actually brought her a (late and light)
breakfast tray. “Am I going to be released after breakfast?” she tried asking.
But the guard only gave her a shrug and a non-committal noise before
disappearing again. Willow tried to be patient, figuring it was just a matter
of it not being the top priority of this probably understaffed institution to
get one girl where she needed to go. They didn't care if she was late to class,
Willow tried to tell herself, so why should she? It wasn't like the work was
going to be too hard for her to catch up.
But it's hard to be patient when you're hungry, and whatever was going on in
Willow's still mostly empty stomach felt very unpleasant. There was gurgling.
She wasn't used to gurgling. Even more than she wanted to get to the Computer
Lab in time to hack the webmail block, email Xander, figure out what the Mayor
was all about, and not get completely behind in her new classes the very first
day; Willow wanted desperately to get to her cell for a few minutes and eat the
rest of Ms. Waddle's crackers.
Minutes became hours. Hunger gnawed. The place looked anything but
understaffed. Willow felt so weak, so fuzzy-headed, that she was sure she was
imagining these symptoms. They seemed too pronounced after such a short time
without adequate food to be anything but the psychosomatic effects of
insecurity. Finally, she resorted to calling out to everyone who came anywhere
near her enclosure, making a general nuisance of herself until someone finally
answered her simple question of “when am I going to get out of here?”... Sort
of.
“Dr. Upton's no vacation until next Monday,” a sour-looking woman with a
clipboard (for checking off the fact that Willow had not hung herself in the
last fifteen minutes) explained impatiently, at last. “Someone will have to
come out from the Sunnydale Mental Hospital to evaluate you before you can be
taken off watch.”
“Do you know if they'll be here before lunch?” Willow asked, her voice rising
worriedly. She had an uneasy feeling the lunch tray might be as light as the
breakfast one was.
The woman actually laughed. “Lunch? You'll be lucky if they get here by lights
out, tomorrow,” she explained cheerfully, shaking her head. “They're a mess
over there!”
“Wait!” Willow yelled desperately when the woman turned to go, “I can't stay in
here like this! I'm starving to death!”
“You get the same rations as everybody else,” said the woman indifferently.
“And,” she added, in a slightly warning tone, “We are authorized to give you a
sedative if you get uncooperative.”
“But—!” Willow started to whine in protest. Her mouth snapped shut. If there
was one thing she didn't need, it was a sedative. In fact, she already felt
that she needed to lie down. Immediately.
                                     *****
 Cordelia was in a confident, powerful mood as she dressed and adorned herself
for school that Monday morning. Heck, she was downright cheerful. Even having
to retouch her makeup after a little bout of unexpected morning sickness could
not dent her happy, optimistic, take-charge, can-do attitude. After a whole
weekend of being locked in the house with nothing but the TV (or her parents)
for company, at last she was free to roll on her own four wheels to school,
where she could talk to actual humans. Besides, there was the computer lab,
which some coach or other would doubtless be keeping open, hopefully one
without a clue who was supposed to be in there or when. Finally, she could
email Xander! She laughed with quiet, superior joy. He'd probably sent her
about a million messages over the weekend, even knowing that she would have no
way at all to answer him until she got to school. Of course, there hadn't been
any when she'd check on Friday, but then there wouldn't be until he got off
work at whatever time of the evening, probably long after the infamous early
closing time of Sunydale High.
 And that was the other reason for Cordelia's good mood. Today she was looking
forward to more than just the chance to touch base with her boyfriend or even
the luxury of feeling like a free person again, at least during the day.
Because yesterday she had learned, from eavesdropping on her parents phone
calls in a way she hadn't had to do since she was twelve, that the school was
going to announce the end of the supremely unpopular 'Out By Four' Policy. From
now on, campus activities could continue until six-thirty p.m., which was not
quite as late as some of them had used to go, but it was long enough. What was
more, her father wasn't planning to stop her from attending evening practices
and games. He was hoping, in fact, that resuming a more normal social life with
the survivors of her old friends would keep her mind off of 'that boy' and his
'little harem of misfits.' Cordelia wouldn't have to be home until a reasonable
time after her scheduled extra-curricular activities were over, maybe sevenish
on days that they ran to the time limit.
 Therefore, starting today, Cordelia would be scheduling her cheerleaders, for
four solid hours of practice every afternoon from now until the end of school.
Every afternoon except the next two Tuesdays, which would be reserved for
tryouts to increase their numbers and add an axillary 'training' squad, which
seemed more than justified by the school's undeniably high mortality rate. What
was more, on Saturdays, the cheerleaders would host a 'Fitness Club' where they
would help other students to get in shape. And when she finished teaching them
all of the moves Giles had suggested for her to study, when they were able to
put all of the bits and pieces of all of her 'new routines' together... And
when she had separated the girls (and guys) who had or could get a clue about
what was going on in this town from the ones who would never see anything
bigger than high school football... Cordelia Chase planned on leading a lot
more than cheers. She would be leading an army.
                                     *****
 At this particular funeral, Andrew Giles was standing in the very back of the
church, several feet behind the last, mostly empty, row of pews. The central
figure wasn't even a Watcher, only a second or third cousin of quite a lot of
Watchers, so people could sit or stand wherever they liked. Phillip Robson came
in late and stood next to him. There was no one else terribly nearby. “It's all
sorted, or soon to be,” the elder Mr. Giles said coolly, without looking over,
the way people do in gangster films and spy dramas.
 “Your friends in Los Angeles?” Mr. Robson asked.
 Andrew shuddered a little. Andrew Giles. “Associates,” he muttered grimly. “At
any rate, they're sending two representatives to Arizona as we speak.”
 Robson sighed deeply. It couldn't be helped. “I do feel bad for old
Claybrooke,” he murmured. The older man gave him a very disproving sidelong
glance, as if to say that perhaps he was in the wrong line of work, which
truthfully, Robson thought he probably was. “Well,” Robson admitted glumly, “he
is the one who asked for a lawyer.”
                                     *****
Xander didn't go to Willow's first thing Monday morning. As the morning got
older, he rolled back over and still didn't go. Ms. Waddle had assured him he
didn't have to. He was no longer needed there. She was taking care of
everything. Willow had asked her to. Just to make sure it was being done by a
responsible person. Someone she could trust not to fuck everything up. A
grownup, in other words. Something which, in her mind, he still clearly was
not. Whatever she had said. Whatever they had done. He was still just a guy to
her, not a man. And that was without her even knowing about Cordelia. Let alone
Angel.
Angel... there was something there. Something Xander didn't feel like he was
quite remembering. Something that bothered him even though he knew it should
not have. Angel, the body, all of that was done and over with, taken care of.
He had a deep sense of assurance that it was taken care of. By someone who was
competent and reliable in every way that he was not. Besides, when Xander tried
to think about the subject, his head hurt and his mind looped back to the
realization that he wasn't needed at Willow's anymore.
Xander also didn't go to work. Mr. Garth didn't need him today either. When he
saw what had 'accidentally' happened to the security camera, that would
probably turn out to be a permanent thing. Which would make Xander one other
thing every great boyfriend and father should be, besides a felon, a dropout
and someone else's boyfriend. Unemployed.
Finally, around noon, Xander's stomach drove him upstairs. As he had dreaded,
his mother was up there waiting for him. She was sitting at the kitchen table
holding a short stack of paperwork. But to his surprise, she didn't say
anything about hearing him sneak out at two a.m. “Your probation officer came
by last night,” Jessica said frostily instead. “We have a court date May 21st,
to revoke your probation and send you to JDC. He wouldn’t say for how long.”
“What?” Xander was floored. “Just for being out one night after curfew?”
“It was four nights,” his mother reminded him. Of course, they had asked and
she had told. Why would he have expected anything else? “And you skipped school
and lied about it,” she kept on accusingly. “He also said if you break any more
of their rules in the meantime, they’re going to pick you up and hold you until
then, and don’t you dare expect me to cover for you!”
“Jesus, Ma, I told you I had to work!” Xander snapped. Without even knowing he
was about to, he banged the table with his fist. Jessica jumped and let out a
pitiful little yelp that made him feel every bit as guilty as if he had
actually threatened to hit her. “Oh, God, Mom, I… I’m sorry,” he stammered.
Jessica refused to meet his eyes. “You’re still driving that car,” she
observed, lips pursed.
Xander hung his head. “I’m checking on their house for them while they’re
gone,” he mumbled. She didn’t need him to point out that there was no other way
for him to get to school and her to still have a car to get to work. Neither
one sounded like much of a justification for continuing to drive Sheila
Rosenberg’s fifty-thousand dollar Lexis under the circumstances as he knew them
to be and Willow still didn’t. Besides, he wasn't checking on the house
anymore. He was sitting here not checking on it right now. Willow and her witch
friends had it covered.
“Is there something going on between you and Sheila?” Jessica asked abruptly.
“What? Something—” When he realized what she meant, Xander was honestly
shocked. “Of course not! She’s just… helping me out because of Willow.”
“Is shegoing to pay for that high-priced lawyer to go to court with you again?”
Jessica demanded harshly.
“I doubt it,” Xander admitted, not bothering to set her straight on who had
paid the last time. “I’ll just have to… figure something out.”
 Jessica pursed her lips again, by no means failing to notice the way her son
was evading her eyes, but she didn’t press any further. She wasn’t really sure
she wanted to know. They had all known Sheila (in so far as it was possible to
know  Sheila) since the kids were only five years old. She didn't  seem  like
the kind of person who could ignore something like that, but... you never knew
what you didn't know. Besides, Jessica had never felt like she was making a
complete connection when she spoke with the woman. Sheila seemed politely
indifferent to almost anything anyone had to say and then when she  did   say
anything of substance it was always something from way out in left field and/or
over everyone's head, not that Jessica was ever really sure which. How could
you ever possibly know what to expect from someone like that? And there had to
be some reason why she hadn't wanted any of them to come to Ira's funeral.
“You're dad has a job interview at 2:30,” Jessica said, changing the subject,
deciding maybe she didn't want to know. “Something Rory lined up out at the
Plant. You'll have to drive him. I'll be at work.”
“I have to be at school by one,” Xander reminded her. “I can't miss again. If I
don’t go, they're going to pick me up and hold me until May 21st, remember?”
Jessica was quiet for another long moment. “I have to get to work,” she
repeated at last. Xander shrugged and got up to pour himself a bowl of cereal.
Jessica left, shaking her head. Xander sighed. What did she expect him to do
exactly? He was in danger of being late as it was. He wolfed down the cereal,
got his books together, called Rory and left a message for him to please drive
Tony to his appointment. Xander knew it would never happen. Not in just two and
a half hours from now. Both of the brothers Harris would probably still be in
bed by then, each sleeping off his latest drunk. Yeah, sure, it happened even
in the finest of families. But it happened a lot more in families like
Xander's. Families that sucked. And hey, he though, raising his glass of orange
drink-that-is-not-quite-juice, here's to keeping the tradition going for one
more glorious generation(!)
 
***** Faithfully *****
“Rupert Simon Giles! Son of Andrew Patrick Giles, of the House of Weregelder
and of the Lineage of Radbert Weregelder!” a voice thundered from the dais
above. It was Robson's voice, but nevertheless, it thundered. Some trick of the
room's acoustics, Buffy guessed, though there had to be some tone work as well.
He hadn't exactly thundered at her the other night, though some of them had.
Especially two of the three that were now dead. Dead and replaced. How
'efficient' of them, Buffy thought, as the voice finished thundering. “You will
come forward and receive the judgment of the Disciplinary Committee!”
As far as Buffy could tell, 'Disciplinary Committee' referred more to an event
than a distinct group of people. It was the Seven Equals who seemed to have
done the judging, or maybe just the four who had been around to be in on the
deal making that had gone on over the weekend. At least assuming the judgment
was as expected. Both Morrison and Robson had told them what to expect, but
Buffy held her breath anyway. She wasn't feeling too inclined to trust even the
survivors of this bunch right now. Giles squeezed her hand and released it with
a look that was probably meant to be a lot more reassuring and less worried. He
took a deep, quiet breath and stepped carefully forward, leaning on his
crutches. The moment waited, their whole future hanging from it.
“Based upon the uncontroverted evidence of numerous witnesses and exhibits and
the evidence of your own tongue and hand, the Committee finds you guilty of the
following Transgressions. Firstly: Unauthorized Disclosure of Council Secrets
to discernible potential enemies of the Council (to wit: the Dusmanos Clan of
Kaldarash Gypsies; the Vampire Angelus; one Benjamin Francis Wallace, a known
former agent and persistent adherent of the United States of America, an entity
long known to be hostile to the Council; one Willow Rosenberg, a powerful
Natural Witch of unknown allegiance; and The Wizard Ethan Rayne, despite
previous warnings regarding same).” Buffy almost literally had to bite her
tongue at that. She had been warned that the findings of fact might not match
her view of reality and that they didn't have to, but still.
“Secondly,” Robson continued, sounding for all the world like the voice of
Condemnation itself, “Fornication and Defilement of the most vile type upon the
person of the Slayer, Buffy Summers, while in your charge as Primary Field
Watcher.” Buffy closed her eyes and counted backwards from one hundred, taking
care to keep her breathing slow, deep and even as Robson kept up the list of
'sins' Giles had committed. “Thirdly: Incitement to Insubordination in causing
the said Slayer to enter into the commitments of marriage and parenthood
without the leave of the Council. Fourthly: Insubordination in publicly
questioning and condemning the past actions of the Council and its agents in
the matter of the Slayer, Dahlia Harrow.”
There were gasps at that. Buffy's eyes popped open in time to see a look of
absolute shock and then of frightening anger flash across Giles' face before
being subsumed in an ironic expression that might possibly have been classified
as a smile. Finding that her hand had automatically strayed to the hilt of the
knife hidden in her waistband, under her jacket, Buffy forced herself to
release the weapon and partially relax as it became clear that violence was not
imminent, a realization that brought relief, but with a bitter aftertaste of
defeat. Until she had heard it with her own ears, Buffy would not have imagined
that anyone could have the balls (or the inhumanity) to reprimandsomeone for
verbally objecting to his own mother's murder. It was like all of the cliched
portrayals of Nazi bureaucrats she had ever seen, leaning (to the point of
absurdity she had once thought) on the 'banality of evil' theme. In her head,
she could almost hear the them music from Brazil. The thing was, these were
supposed to be the good guys, the leaders of Team Let's Not Destroy the World.
It was like finding out the Allies had had concentration camps too or
something.
“For the Punishment, Atonement and Correction of these Transgressions,” Robson
went on, his voice as harsh as ever, as if he had no doubt as to the justice of
the sentence, no sympathy with the defendant, “you are indefinitely removed
from consideration for active field service in any capacity as Watcher and
permanently reassigned to miscellaneous axillary service under the direct
supervision of the Inner Council to be performed without compensation, without
complaint and without question. Any failure to serve as instructed will result
in further discipline. You are hereby made a surety for the good conduct of
those to whom you have disclosed Council secrets and liable to be held to
answer for any hostile use or rediscloser of said secrets by any of the above
listed persons. Thus Sayeth the Disciplinary Committee on behalf of and with
the full voice and authority of the Watchers Council of Britain, having charge
and care of the Line of the Chosen, in accordance with our ancient and sacred
trust. What sayest thou, Brother Watcher, having heard our Judgment?”
“Truly,” Giles said, his voice hard, tense, violently polite, “This seemeth
more than just.” What he did next was noticeably more than a nod. It was an
actual fucking bow, though not a very deep one. Given the awkwardness of Giles
bending even slightly at the waist in his condition, there was no way of not
noticing it happening. Robson nodded, a deep nod, but a nod, bending at the
neck and not at the waste as Giles had. The room exhaled a collective sigh that
covered Buffy's intake of breath. When Giles walked back and stood next to
Buffy, she leaned into him and clasped his hand supportively, expressing only
one strong note of all the confusing things she felt. Resentment, anger, fear,
disgust; all these went unexpressed. He didn't need that from her right now and
there was no advantage in letting any of the rest of them see it either. No
wonder Giles was always so good at hiding and repressing what he was really
feeling, Buffy thought. A few days in Watchersville would teach anybody to clam
up in self defense.
It was Buffy's turn next, but she barely listened. All she was getting was a
reprimand and a caution to do whatever Peter said from now on. She wasn't too
worried about that, since Peter would have had to be the one to say something
about it if she didn't. As Robson droned on, her mind drifted to worries of the
Hellmouth variety, namely what all could go wrong in Sunnydale while she was
being held hostage by the Queen of England. Grampa Wallace, apparently with
some help from Giles, had figured out that there was in fact a Slayer called on
Kendra's death, one Quentin had known about and hidden from the Council all
along. Faith Ericson, a wanted serial killer, last seen fleeing Phoenix,
Arizona with her murder suspect father. Without his help, the Council might not
have known about her or about Travers' gang of rogue Council Agents now in
custody in Arizona. So of course, helping them find that out was one of the
many things for which Giles had just been officially punished.
“What say you, Slayer, having heard our Judgment?” Robson finally concluded.
Buffy looked up at the seven men seated there. She looked each of them in the
eye, before settling on Robson. She knew she shouldn't have, but she took a lot
of satisfaction in how unsettled they looked, how worried that she wouldn't
play along. “I accept your judgment,” she said simply, doing a damn good job of
keeping the bitterness out of her voice if she did say so herself. After all,
it was no use making enemies of the Council all over again. Like it or not,
they were all basically on the same side after all. When it came right down to
it, these were still the Good Guys even if they weren't always such very good
people.
                                     *****
“Lindsey McDonald,” She said, unleaning from the wall of the arrival's
terminal, long and thin and just a little bit beautiful. It wasn't a question,
more of an assessment. “Lilah Morgan,” she said with a slight smile, the kind
that said the appraisal was guardedly positive, shifting her briefcase to offer
her hand.
It was Lindsey's turn to smile. “I've had the pleasure,” he explained, taking
her hand. “It's good to see you again, Ms. Morgan.”
Lilah gave him a look, as though he'd intrigued or perhaps impressed her very,
very slightly. “I'm usually pretty good at noticing people,” she said, as she
ushered him towards exit. It was almost but not quite an apology, conceding a
point but not acknowledging a regret at the loss. “And I almost always remember
meeting another Sun Devil in the wilds of Los Angeles.”
“A couple of crowded meetings,” Lindsey replied with self-satisfied modesty, “I
was quiet. I'm pretty good at not being noticed until I want to be.”
That smile again. “You've been with The Firm eight months,” she not quite
asked. Lindsey nodded anyway.
“As an associate,” Lindsey confirmed. “But I clerked with Wolfram & Hart both
summers during law school. The Firm had had plenty of opportunities to test my
response to... complex issues of professional ethics, and I assure you—”
She favored him with a different smile this time; crueler, more amused but
still soft, charming. “We flew you out here on exactly no notice, in a mad
scramble to find another associate with an Arizona bar card, after Lee Mercer
balked at the last minute. Frankly, he may be facing termination. Do you really
think the ethical issue is going to be that complex? I assure you what you're
expected to do with Mr. Claybrooke is extremely straightforward. My
representation of Mr. Weatherby, on the other hand, could be a little tricky.
Especially the part where I actually have to represent him, a problem I assure
you, you will not have with Mr. Claybrooke.”
                                     *****
By the time the Council finally adjourned, it was nearly ten at night. Never
the less, Morrison was dispatched by Julian himself to go and meet with Wesley
at once at his place of confinement. When the elder Watcher explained why,
“Good Lord,” was just about all Morrison could think to say. He must have said
it one too many times, because Julian became impatient, defensive.
“What would you have us do?” the Seatholder demanded. “My son is a Watcher,
just like the rest of us. Sacrifices have to be made, and it so happens that in
this instance he is the one of us in the best position to make them.”
“No doubt,” Morrison agreed hastily, “no doubt.” He hung up and went to do as
he had been told.
                                     *****
“No, I haven't the slightest idea how long we shall want to stay,” Giles
blithely informed the desk clerk, an impatient, skeptical-looking young man who
was frankly better dressed than either of them. “I should think a month at
least.”
Buffy tried not to gasp. “Can we afford that?” she hissed, loudly enough to get
the young man's undivided attention and to affix an extremely sour look onto
his face.
“It's all being paid from the Corporate Account, Dear,” Giles reminded Buffy
sharply. His look and tone scolded her for her appalling lack of etiquette and
sophistication to the point that it almost made her want to embarrass him, just
for spite. He was tired, Buffy had to remind herself, and wounded in more ways
that one. He was entitled to be a little bit of a jackass at the end of such a
trying day. Not that she deserved to have to put up with it, but oh well.
Sometimes life just sucks... much the way a five start hotel in London doesn't.
The clerk stayed suspicious for a little while, but when he asked Giles where
he worked and heard the name of one of the Council's many shell corporations
roll easily off his tongue, he traded his suspicion for mere disapproval and
quickly, efficiently motioned for a bell hop to come remove them and their
sturdy, once-expensive-but-now-well-used luggage from his ultra luxurious five
star lobby. They were shown up to the fourth floor, to a surprisingly comfy
looking three room suite overlooking the Themes. “Are you sure about this?”
Buffy asked, sinking down onto a velvety green sofa that was like a bigger,
plusher version of the one they had at home. “After everything we've just gone
through, I don't want to piss the Council off over something as silly as a
hotel bill.”
“Nonsense,” Giles replied cheerfully, getting himself settled onto the couch
next to her and leaning his crutches against the end of it. “It is a
requirement when one is obligated to serve without compensation that all of his
or her traveling expenses should be paid in full when going about the Council's
business. The Quarterly Meeting certainly qualifies when one has been expressly
summoned to attend, not to mention the fact of your being detained in the
country indefinitely for actions taken in the direct line of duty. They
wouldn't dare refuse to honor that, it would disgrace them too much. If it
makes them uncomfortable, good. They need to know that just because we choose
to remain in their loyal service doesn't mean they can devalue us or push us
around.”
Buffy tilted her head and gave Giles an appraising look. If this was some sort
of sublimated vengeance, it was an odd way of going about it. Whatever; she was
tired and the room was nice. And at least here was some sign that he wasn't
going to just take every single bit of their bullshit lying down. Really, she
should just figure that Giles knew what he was doing and try to enjoy the fact
that the Watchers Council was apparently about to pay for the two of them to
have an outrageously expensive extended Honeymoon, whether they knew about it
yet or not. “Well, it can't hurt to stay here through the end of the Council
Meeting next week anyway,” she said, thinking that after that they could
probably go and stay at the home they apparently owned in Bath, which
fortunately was not the one where his mother was buried in the back yard.
“Oh no,” Giles corrected her earnestly. “You mustn’t talk that way, mustn't
even think it. The secret to living in hotels is to make oneself at home, quite
literally. Never think of it as only for a few days. Never commit to a
departure date if you can help it. Or nothing shorter than a minimum apartment
lease at any rate. An attitude of permanence, of taking up residence, is the
key to invitation control. And in hotels especially, but all rental
accommodations really, it is so important that those with the power to eject
you regard you as residing, rightfully, on their premises on a permanent basis.
An attitude of sufferance on the part of a superior estate holder (as opposed
to an acknowledgment of your rightful subtenancy) can prove deadly.”
Buffy almost laughed. He just looked so adorably serious. “Then I guess we were
taking our lives in our hands,” she teased, “checking into the Pacific Coast
Motor Lodge.”
“Not at all,” Giles informed her, eyes glinting with mischief, eager to share
the joke with her at last. “I gave them four weeks rent in advance and a
nonrefundable extended stay maintenance deposit. That's one of the reasons I
was so keen to use the card I'd had issued to Ethan.”
Buffy gave Giles a doubtful look that broke into a lopsided grin. “You're
really sort of a scoundrel, aren't you?” she said.
“Well, you can't honestly argue that he doesn't deserve it,” Giles pointed out
innocently/mock-innocently, his merry eyes betraying his otherwise deadpan
expression. And of course, Buffy realized, the same thing was true of the
Watcher's Council. That was the hard truth underneath the supposed joke. Giles
was not in the slightest above committing theft and fraud as a form of revenge
against a deserving enemy, a sort of partial repayment for all of the injustice
and indignity they had visited upon him. Not sure what to think about that
facet of his character, she decided to ignore it. If she could deal with the
fact that her husband was a murderer, not to mention a Watcher, she supposed
she shouldn't get too worked up about a little more or less justified thieving.
It wasn't as though she had never stolen anything herself.
“So...” Buffy said, slipping into a smooth, satiny bedroom voice, “Here we are
alone in this fabulous hotel suite... more or less on our honeymoon...”
“Yes,” said Giles, both his face and voice going suddenly grim, frustrated,
slightly angry. “Here am I , stodgy old thing that I've become, after mind
numbingly long years on my own, having just survived both the largest vampire
battle of the past generation anda Council Disciplinary Committee... Here am I
in this lovely suite with my beautiful, young, sexually-athletic bride... and a
broken hip.” And with that, suddenly, they were both laughing again, even
harder than before.
“This is what would happen if O'Henry tried to write porn,” Buffy agreed,
shaking her head as she wiped a few mirthful tears from her eyes.
Giles squeezed her hand affectionately, his own eyes smiling with a sort of sad
cheer. “To be honest,” he admitted, “I'm exhausted, and my hip really is
killing me. I think I'd best take something and then try to get some sleep.”
Buffy sighed and stood up, offering him a hand and a crutch. “Nothing like a
quiet evening at home,” she said as cheerfully as she could manage.
                                     *****
“Are you mad?” Wesley asked, when he had heard the plan.
“No,” said Morrison grimly, “and I fear, neither is your father, from whom I
have brought you these instructions.”
For a moment, no one spoke. “I see the advantages,” Wesley finally admitted.
“In all of it. For everyone but me of course, but then, that might be too much
to ask, sacrifice, being the watchword.”
“Well,” said Morrison grimly amused, “if you'll forgive my saying so, there may
be a couple of advantages in it for you. A beautiful young wife. A wealthy and
influential father-in-law...”
“Ah yes,” Wesley sneered, not taking Morrison's humor in good grace. “A pack of
blessing light upon my back(!) Allah Akbar! Why didn't I see it before? I may
be losing my identity, my reputation and my freedom, but I least I'm being
compelled to inter into an intimate relationship with a total stranger who's
probably too primed to expect a lifetime of sexual slavery to be quite suicidal
at the prospect! Bully for me(!)” Morrison gave him a patient look of mild
disapproval and even milder sympathy. “It isn't that I mind The Faith as a
whole so very much,” Wesley complained earnestly, “I mean, obviously Gaudencio
converted and it didn't kill him. Besides, the things we Watchers actually know
about the supernatural realms will hardly qualify as orthodox doctrine
anywhere, it's just a matter of adopting different ill fitting forms. It isn't
even just that I mind the fact of living in exile, though I do. It's that sect.
They're just so... anti-intellectual. I may never have a really decent
conversation again as long as I live.”
“But surely you see,” Morrison urged just as earnestly, “how neatly it works
everything out on all sides?”
Wesley sighed. He did see that. Of course he did. The Council would get a
Watcher in place for it's otherwise unreachable Potential. Heathcliff Gaudencio
would have someone he trusted to manage his extensive affairs in the East while
he was required to remain in London. The Council would have a plausible
explanation to present to the authorities as to what had 'really happened' at
the Allenby House to leave eighty-seven people (including twenty-two police)
dead and hundreds more injured. It would be an explanation that would neither
tarnish the reputations of the many other survivors, including the Slayer, nor
require the police to admit that they had been entirely mistaken and at fault
in conducting their mass arrest, because they would have taken the one guilty
man among all the others. More a dupe of terrorists than a terrorist, but
still, a guilty man. Even the Government stood to benefit by strengthening a
back door connection with a powerful South Asian warlord while at the same time
making that connection even more deniable. Ultimately, it was even probable
that his father's position within the Government would be improved in the long
run, though he would suffer a great loss of face at first. Even “terrorists”
did have a strange way of becoming rehabilitated when they had enough power in
their own territory and when enough money was involved. It was possible that he
might even be able to return to England someday, after the pipeline had gone
through and had made his new 'father-in-law' oh so imminently respectable
again.
Wesley even understood why it made such perfect sense that he should be chosen
for this assignment. Firstly, the police already wanted his head because he had
been personally seen to seriously injure several of their men. His was a
sacrifice they were not only prepared to accept but already demanding.
Secondly, he had studied the Muslim faith for a number of years with a keen if
entirely academic interest. He spoke Arabic, and a smattering of Pushtu. Of all
the young Watchers available, he would be among the most plausibly able to be
passed off as a sincere convert. And to this petty theocrat's way of thinking,
having gotten himself involved in a terrorist attack on a target in London
would help to prove his sincerity, though certainly not his good sense. He
would be presented as a young, over-enthused convert, a relative of
Gaudencio's, who had gotten himself into trouble with the Western authorities
by trusting the wrong sort of cleric and who needed both a place to hide and to
be trained up into a better path. At the same time, it would be made clear that
he was a wealthy and connected marriage prospect, who might actually be able to
have a quietly positive impact on finally bringing the pipeline project to
fruition. The fact that he was a part of the same secret society as Gaudencio
and could help to prepare this man's extraordinary daughter for the sacred duty
he already believed she had been called to by God, though not enough to justify
allowing a new, male non-family member to spend time with her, would help to
justify making him,as opposed to any other wealthy young Muslim man,her
husband.
Wesley's heart sank. He sat for a long moment with his face in his hands. The
whole thing fit together much too well to think of getting out of it. He'd have
nothing left. He was being asked to give all: his heart, body and soul. He
would lose his nationality and even his name. All in the service of the
Council. Which as a Watcher, he could hardly refuse to do. It was his destiny.
Sighing, he looked up at last and said, “Well, I suppose you can at least tell
me her name so that I can pick something suitable to go with it?”
“Aabirah,” Morrison said. Wesley smiled. It was an adjective, Arabic of course,
though the young lady herself was not. It spoke of all things fleeting and
illusory. An excellent name for a Slayer, a terrible name for a wife. But,
Wesley thought, if neither the marriage nor the lady was to last, even if he
himself did not long survive them; hopefully, the peace that the Council would
be thereby making with the police, the Government, and even the petty warlords
of Afghanistan might. And certainly, if he did this, no one could ever again
question his commitment to the cause. If he did this, no one could ever again
say what he knew for a fact they had all been saying behind his back nearly
every single day of his life: 'That Wesley is a nice enough lad and reasonably
bright, but when push comes to shove, he'll never make a Watcher. Hasn't got
the stomach for it.' No one would ever again whisper or joke about how pitiful
it was to see this trembling, clumsy, milquetoast, inadequate being that was
Julian's only son. If nothing else, that ought to make his father happy. God
knew nothing else he'd done in his life ever had. Though a moment earlier he'd
been afraid he might humiliate himself by bursting out weeping, Wesley suddenly
found that he was laughing near hysterically. 'Deny the father and refuse thy
name? Well maybe there was something to be said for becoming a man without a
country after all.
                                     *****
Joyce was quiet as she packed, thoughtful, subdued. Brian didn't like it. She'd
been like that too much since he'd moved in. “Are you sure you don't want me to
come with you?” he asked, for maybe the fifth time. Joyce sighed, not quite
exasperated just... unidirectionally tired. She didn't bother to try to explain
it again; that it wasn't that she didn't want his company, his support, that it
wasn't about what she wanted, that it was a family thing, and that while, yes,
he was family now, this was no time for Buffy to have to learn or deal with
that.
Time passed. Joyce kept packing. “But it's such a long flight,” Brian started
in again, trying another tack. “Don't you think you might—”
“Dr. Kim says it's perfectly safe,” Joyce countered what was not quite his
argument, cutting him off in mid-sentence.
Brian took a deep breath and reminded himself what he was doing here. This was
not a relationship that he was in just for the sake of being in a relationship,
and not one he could risk being thrown out of for insisting upon the respect
due a husband, which was exactly what he wasn't. “I'm sorry, baby,” he
apologized, walking up behind her, wrapping her in his arms, kissing her on the
back of the neck. “I just worry about you. That's all.”
Her reaction, he notice was not particularly mollified, more resigned. She felt
trapped, Brian realized, suppressing his own sigh of frustration. That would
never do. If this was going to work, he needed her to be hopelessly devoted, to
put all her faith and trust in him. He needed to turn up the charm. “Alright,”
he said. “I get it. You go do what you need to do and I'll... keep the home
fires burning. But don't stay gone too long or you might not recognize the
place.”
Her face softened from seriously worried to playfully wary. “And why's that?”
she asked, letting him embraced her and kiss her neck again.
Brian shrugged and gave her his best boyish grin. “I'm an antique dealer,” he
said. “Penelope weaves, I redecorate.”
                                     *****
Cordelia really didn't have much of a choice. It was twenty minutes 'til seven.
If she didn't get back soon, there'd be hell to pay one way or another. Maybe
even the kind that involved being sent to a Convent in Switzerland or
somewhere. That would be a real shame. Especially after how well the tryouts
had gone, how well every single aspect of her plan seemed to be shaping up in
fact. Still, soon was not the same thing as right now. She decided to take a
walk (or rather a sneak) around the grounds of the school and see if she could
spot any monsters. Not to engage, not all by herself. She wasn't crazy. Or
Buffy. But she wanted to test out the scouting and tracking skills she'd been
learning. And she wanted to avoid going home for another ten or fifteen
minutes. And she wanted to distract herself from Xander, from what her crazy
gut feelings kept telling her it meant that he still hadn't emailed her.
He was probably just putting on a brave face, Cordelia tormented herself. He
probably didn't really want to get married and have babies and stay together
forever. Why would he? He was a seventeen-year-old boy. It was frankly a crazy
thing to want. She wasn't even the least bit sure that she wanted it and she
was the one getting irrationally attached to the as yet almost unnoticeable
being living in her abdomen. Obviously, Xander didn't have that problem. He had
just felt obligated to say all that stuff about still loving her and wanting to
keep it because he didn't want her to have another abortion. Probably just
because it went against his losingclass religion and politics and his horndog
male instincts, that was all.
But no, Cordelia didn't really believe that. Or anyway, most of her didn't. She
remembered not only his words from the other night, but the way he had looked
and sounded saying them. Xander Harris was not that good an actor. He was
definitely in love with her, even if religion and politics might also be
getting in the middle of things. He wanted her,even if she came with marriage
and babies. He was probably just having trouble getting computer time. After
all, Sheila letting him hang around at all hours had had to end sometime, even
if she was missing Willow and helping him for her sake. There was only so much
'funny' Xander that such an uptight person could possibly take. He'd get in
touch when he could, Cordelia reasoned. She just had to be patient, that was
all.
Suddenly, Cordelia was knocked from her thoughts and nearly off her feet by the
appearance of a huge scaly demon! Out of nowhere! Inches from her face! A
scream curdling in her throat, she took a few quick, stumbling steps backward
and instinctively raised the cross in her hand, like a shield. The creature
batted it away, knocking her to the ground. Cordelia really did scream then,
but the demon remained eerily silent, not even crying out when it cut it's hand
on the sharp edges of the cross. Cordelia screamed even harder as she finally
processed the reason why. The thing didn't even have a mouth!
Injured as it was, the creature was still far stronger than Cordelia. It
grabbed her by the wrists and hauled her to her feet, all the time leaking some
kind of disgustingly viscus iridescent fluid from it's open wound onto her
skin. As the thing slammed her up against the wall of the gymnasium, her mind
flailed frantically for a plan of escape, but nothing came to her. She was
alone, unarmed, absurdly weak. She was starting to get why Giles's first answer
to 'how do I fight demons?' had been 'you don't'. She was beginning to think he
should have stuck to that. After all, what was the point of being older and
wiser if you were just going to surrender your better judgment to the
insistence of a stubborn sixteen-year-old girl?
Gunfire split the night, two shots in rapid succession. Close and impossibly
loud. Cordelia might not have heard the creature if it had cried out, but it
didn't. It crumpled and fell back, still clutching her wrists, pulling her down
on top of it. As she pulled herself free and staggered to her feet, Cordelia
looked up into the eyes of her rescuer. It was Mr. Miller, wearing and honest
to god trench coat and holding a great big cannon of a handgun. “What's the
matter with you!” Cordelia shouted over the ringing in her ears. “That thing
could have shot straight through that monster and killed me. Haven't you ever
read the Warren Commission Report!”
Mr. Miller grinned, shoving the gun back into his deep coat pocket. “You're
welcome,” he said. “Now get in your car and go home. You father will be
worried, and I sure as hell don't want him worrying at me.”
                                     *****
The night was black. The wind screamed. The flood gushed. Willow stood beneath
the dark, churning sky, arms up-stretched, screaming. Lightning blasted the
ground all around, setting trees and underbrush ablaze on every side, but it
didn’t dare to strike Her. The strobing flashes of electricity distorted Her
emaciated features, giving Her the appearance of a gnarled old woman, or
possibly an ancient tree. Her red hair flew around her, blazing like fire
despite the wind and rain.
“Enough already!” She shouted. “Yes, I screwed up! What do you want from me!?!”
The night was split by a piercing shriek of laughter or rage or both. The voice
was inhuman yet at the same time fiercely female. The monstrous cackle of a
goddess.
Among the singed and smoking vegetation, the vampire growled. A dozen, a score,
a hundred, a thousand. Of Spike. “Really, Willow Dear,” they simpered and
censured at the same time, “isthiswhat you want?” The forest rang with the
softly cutting echoes of Sheila’s voice.
“No!”Willow begged, weeping now, suddenly very small, “Please, God, no!” The
night grew darker still. The lighting ceased though the thunder continued. The
vampire ceased to growl but not to menace. They waited, watching, unseen. The
goddess shrieked once more in frustration or amusement and was gone.
Silence. Nothingness, of which gray or dark would have been too vivid a
description. Willow stood alone. Well, sort of. ‘Stood’ was an exaggeration,
imposing a false sense of form, of structure, of space and gravity where there
was none. Suddenly…or gradually… or all along(?) there was someone there
(‘there’ also being sort of an exaggeration) with her. “What?” He demanded
impatiently.
“Help me,” she begged. “Please? I’m sorry. I don’tlikethis anymore!”
“Humans!” He said with mild reproach, shaking His head, “You’re all alike,
always wanting something for nothing: Love without pain, life without death,
profit without labor, redemption without sacrifice, patience with tribulation,
victory without risk, signs without faith, food without calories, sex without
babies, forgiveness without repentance! Every single one of you! You never grow
up! You want the prize in the cereal box, but you don’t want the cereal.”
Willow found herself at a loss, blinking bewilderedly at this diatribe that
somehow she didn’t find quite as presumptuous as she thought she should have,
such gentle, affectionate scolding of the whole human race, and with such a
ring of truth and authority…“Who are you?” she finally managed to stammer.
“Wow,” said her companion dryly, “I never get tired ofthatquestion(!)”
“I mean…” Willow fumbled, “Obviously you’re a—well but I mean, are youThe—oh
God! Oh, no! I didn’t mean—”
“You know who I Am,” He reminded her impatiently. “You were the one who called
me, remember? Which by the way shows some serious chutzpah, under the
circumstance. I mean, for infinity’s sake, kid, what was thefirstthing I told
you to do?”
“Be fruitful and multiply?” Willow pointed out hesitantly, hopefully, just a
little apologetically for the act of pointing out.
“Don’t be a smart ass, kid. I have a thing for ordered relations. First is
first for a reason.”
“They were never...beforeyou, just... more convenient,” Willow mumbled, looking
in a way that might have been down if there had been a down to look.
He laughed. “That’s a good one,” He said. “Try that one on your friend Oz next.
Which reminds me, you're O for ten here, kid.”
“Wait just a minute!” Willow objected fiercely. “I’ve never killed anybody!”
But in the nauseous silence that filled with the unreal realization of who she
was yelling at, she thought of her mother and, without quite being able to
justify the assessment, of Amy.
He tilted His head from side to side like a metronome as if to say the point
was debatable. “Look, kid,” He said at last, “You want my help? We both know
what you have to do to get it. We both know you’re not there yet, not nearly.
In the meantime, you want miracles? You want to see signs and wonders? You want
all your problems solved for you? Try asking your ‘friend’ Hecate for help. See
if she makes you a better offer.”
                                        
 
***** The Real Me *****
Chapter Summary
     "In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear
     to have changed."
     ~Rupert Giles, "Lessons", BtVS 7.1
     "We aren't happy to see old friends(?)"
     ~Buffy Summers, "Faith, Hope, and Trick", BtVS 3.3
     "You can't trust people; you'd think I'd learn that by now."
     ~Faith, "Revelations", BtVS 3.7
The stares the long, lithe, brunette got as she disembarked at LAX were partly
appreciative and partly envious, depending on the perspective of the person
doing the staring. Bloody fools. Wouldn't they all be surprised to get what
they were wishing for? Ignoring the unwelcome attention as best he could,
Weatherby made for the trolly that would transport him to the next terminal,
where he would catch his flight for London. Unfortunately, there were certain
necessities that couldn't be avoided on the way. He felt self-conscious,
humiliated, but there was nothing for it. He passed up the Gents and headed
straight for the Lady's.
 When he was alone in the stall, he thought he might feel a little better, but
the reality of what had to happen in there was infinitely worse. He'd born
witness to a lot of ungodly occult phenomena during his years in the service of
the Council, but this? Perverted didn't even begin to cover it. He sat down on
the toilet and completed his unnervingly quiet business. He tried not to think
or feel too much (in more ways than one) as he completed the entirely necessary
hygienic procedure that followed. For once, he was loath to walk out of the loo
without washing his hands, but a dense flock of women crowed the sinks and
mirrors, and he didn't dare. He tried to tell himself he was imaging their
disgusted looks and disproving whispering, biting down on the galling
realization that he couldn't help but care.
 As he reached a bank of courtesy phones at last, the distorted glimpse of a
bearded, masculine face that he caught in the stainless steal partition between
phones reassured and steadied him, giving him the strength to dial the familiar
number and even to be bitterly amused at himself for needing something external
to steady him and give him strength. The word 'unmanned' kept hanging around
somewhere in the back of his mind but he didn't entertain it. “Mr. Giles,” his
call was answered perfunctorily by the men himself.
 “It's happened,” Weatherby informed him in a smooth, feminine contralto.
 “Several gentlemen of our mutual acquaintance will be relieved to hear that
the business is concluded,” Andrew assured him, sounding appropriately somber.
 “He had his affairs in order,” Weatherby answered back in that same satin
voice, “same as all of us. I'll just be glad to get home and to get back to
being more myself again.”
 He told himself he was probably imagining the subtle hint of amusement in
Andrew Giles' voice when he replied, “Indeed.”
                                     *****
Willow sat up with a start and nearly fell from her bunk. The dream had been a
bad one. That much she knew, but that didn't matter now.Finally, impossibly,
mercifully, it was morning again. Wednesday morning. Willow didn't get her
hopes up much at first, figuring this would be just another day of hunger,
boredom and disappointment, which was still better than another night of long,
tedious wakefulness punctuated by longer, even more unwelcome sleep and
frightful, half-remembered dreams. But beyond her greatest hopes, this was the
day that the nurse arrived to perform her mental health assessment, finally
having gotten permission on the grounds that the people from SDMH clearly
weren't coming and that Dr. Upton could always sign off on it when he got back.
Predictably, she concluded that Willow was right as rain and ready to get
cracking on her studies. This despite the fact that she was thin, pale,
shaking. Despite her stringy hair, haunted eyes and monosyllabic responses. In
short, despite the fact that she seemed exactly as if she had been locked in
solitary confinement on less than half rations, with no opportunity to shower
and plagued by unspeakable mental torment and lack of rest for at least two
weeks. “Knowing” as she did that this was all a ruse, the nurse saw what she
expected to see. After all, she was from Sunnydale.
Willow was given a few minutes to freshen up before her morning classes. She
didn't bother. She didn't feel like it. Instead she rushed to her cell to wolf
down the rest of Ms. Waddle's crackers, then spent her ten minutes in the
shower room on a brief incantation to help her appear freshened up and eight
and a half minutes of endless, restless sleep. Then it was off to the computer
room, where she had too much work to catch up on to worry about hacking the
webmail block, even if she hadn't still felt so exhausted, starved and
unfocussed. Maybe tomorrow. It was all she could do today to work in a little
surreptitious research, correlating the comings and (especially) goings of the
Mayor's early rivals, allies and enemies with the horrible supernatural
occurrences that always seemed to accompany them. That and a couple of
impromptu naps, which didn't help at all.
By lunchtime, Willow felt like a Zombie. Her aching, exhausted body was so
empty of nourishment and her mind so stuffed with dreadful knowledge that she
had all but forgotten her first endless, miserable night on suicide watch,
never mind why she had gone there in the first place. But in the dazzling
noonday sun that pierced the dining hall through a few high, narrow windows
stood a horrifying and confusing reminder. Sheila Zucker was still there,
wearing the same baggy jumpsuit as everyone else, her face and arms bare.
She was alive.
“Hey,” Sheila said, “Hey,Willow, where are you going? Sit with me.”
“Well I um, it’s just I…” Willow stammered.
Sheila smiled her one-lip-only-slightly-pulled-back-to-give-a-mere-glimpse-of-
teeth smile. “You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” she asked, amused at
Willow’s discomfort. Under the weight of a lot of staring, some of it pretty
official, Willow took a seat next to her acquaintance-so-old-she-almost-might-
as-well-be-a-friend. Sheila looked stealthily around. “I was,” she whispered.
“That’s the weird part. I was dead, and then I was a vampire, and then I was
dust. But I’m not anymore. I’m so frickin alive they’re trying to make me go to
school again.”
“The ritual!” Willow gasped, “The Healing of the Dark Moon!”
Sheila shrugged. “I guess,” she said. “That’s what Spike called it anyways,
something like that.” If Sheila noticed Willow’s wince at the mention of
Spike’s name, she didn’t let on.
“I’m such an idiot,” Willow said, thinking of the ass she had made of herself
Saturday night, the permanent damage she'd done to her on-paper reputation, for
a full ten seconds before being slammed by the much more profound implications
of all of this that she had once again somehow managed to miss. And of course
the fact that she really was pathetic, moronic and all things weak and useless.
And now she would have to wait until tomorrow to email Xander and give the gang
the heads up. Assuming something else didn't go wrong to stop her.
Sheila shrugged and went on eating; well, poking at her food anyway, as she
cheerfully described how much less boring she hoped it would be having Willow
'home' from suicide watch. She didn’t seem to be hungry, Willow noticed
jealously. “Are you done with that roll?” Willow asked hopefully, hating
herself even more.
Sheila shrugged again. She made a quick, furtive survey of which eyes were on
them, then delftly switched her nearly full tray for Willow's totally empty
one. “The food here doesn't agree with me,” she said, “help yourself.” Willow
smiled wanly as she thought, ‘this could be the beginning of a miserable
friendship.’
                                     *****
“Got a light?” the girl asked. Ben looked up into dark, tired eyes in a face
that somehow looked both tragic and casually beautifully. Like a hooker, only
not strung out. Then again, maybe they didn't all have to be strung out. She
was standing on the balcony next to his, a thin iron rail between them, at the
crappy ass motel between the bus depot and the airport that he had picked for
the sheer fact that he could afford to pay for it a month in advance and still
eat for a month on the money he'd gotten from his partial student housing
refund. Because, just for a little while, he needed to sleep in a bed that
Glory and her scabby minions hadn't paid for.
The girl's hair was as short as a man's with blonde tips and black roots, like
she had tried to cut all of the blonde out but just couldn't make herself cut
that close to the scalp. Wanna be ex-hooker maybe? Maybe she had a ticket on an
Eastbound anything, cutting her losses and going home. The way he had always
wanted to. If he'd had any home to go back to. Maybe. Her eyes were growing
impatient. She held out her unlit cigarette. “Those things will kill you you
know,” Ben said automatically.
“You know what? Screw you!” the girl half shouted, suddenly very angry, as if
she had been waiting patiently to be offended. She stomped over to the other
side of her balcony, shook a Zippo into her hand from the sleeve of her denim
jacket, lit up and stood smoking with her back to him, staring into the
electric twilight of the L.A. night.
Ben sighed, regretting the unpleasant realization that he had probably just
turned down free sex with a beautiful girl by being too dense to read her not-
at-all subtle signals. Besides the fact that it made him feel like an idiot, he
wanted to have sex. He suddenly realized how very much. Between working his ass
off for years for nothing and randomly truing into a crazy bitch at inopportune
moments, he really hadn't had the chance that often. “That's just something I
have to practice saying for medical school,” he tried to flirt, joke and
apologize all at the same time. “It's for 'how to be a pompous prick' class.
What do you think? Am I ready for my practical?”
She half turned back to him. Her small, cigarette-interrupted, almost smile was
knowing and skeptical. It was a start. “Yeah,” she said, “I almost thought you
were a real doctor. I mean ifall you had to be was a major asshole.”
She said it, Ben tried to reassure himself, in the nicest possible way. “I also
have really crappy handwriting,” he persisted, grinning boyishly for all he was
worth.
She leaned back against the side of the painted cinder-block building and
finished her cigarette. The night air was dry and cool. Cars rushed by on the
freeway, a continual white noise. “Alright,” she said, stubbing the butt of her
cancer stick against the wall and suddenly leaping onto and over the
interstitial railing, as lightly and as quickly as a cat, forcing him back a
few steps with equally catlike indifference, “That's enough small talk. Let's
party.”
                                     *****
“For God's sake, woman, stop fussing with your damned hair!” Spike all but
snarled.
“It just doesn't look quite right,” Harmony pouted, turning her head from side
to side in front of the closed circuit T.V. monitor. There was no living with
her now that she had the functional equivalent of a mirror again. And a little
status to protect. Spike sighed. He wanted her to look good, of course. He
needed her to. If he was going to sell himself as a rising king, he needed his
queen to be beautiful and imperious. But he didn't need her to be such a pain
in the ass about it. Drusilla had never needed a mirror. When he told her she
looked perfect, she had always taken him at his word.
Once again, Spike silently cursed the tech craze that was sweeping Paris, and
the mysterious name that was on everyone's undead lips because of it: “The
Trio”. If he didn't find out who those wankers were, and soon so that he could
dominate, co-opt, undermine, out smart and/or murder them; they would be the
rulers of Paris and Spike would have to find another sandbox to play in. For
now, it was easy to make fun of their silly looking sun-suits, and to kill any
of his lot he saw wearing one. But you'd have to be a fool not to see that the
idea had merit in the long-run. Just the thought of daytime freedom, of daytime
hunting, had gotten under everyone's skin. It was that he had to complete with
if he wanted any juice in this town. The Trio had a dream of blue skies and
sunshine to sell. Spike had to keep consistently delivering a reality of
bloodshed at all hours.
“Come on baby,” he said firmly, pulling Harmony to her feet. “Your sodding hair
is fine. Let's go round up the boys and drag the metro.”
                                     *****
Ben groaned with a pleasure so intense it was almost a species of agony. She
was on top for now, riding him hard and fast. He hoped she would finally finish
him off a second time, he begged her to in groans and broken fragments of
words, but soon they were changing positions again. He felt like they had
changed positions fifty times since that first, embarrassingly close to
immediate, orgasm he'd had when she'd knelt with her knees on either side of
his head, her warm dripping pussy swaying above his face and started sucking
his cock.
It was exhausting, all this constant shifting around. He was almost certain
that she meant it as a form of punishment for his initial speedy performance.
And yet, each and every one of those positions felt so damn good for the short
time she let him experience it that he found himself constantly thanking her
rather than complaining. The fact that he had given her at least three orgasms
worth shouting and screaming about didn't make him feel too shabby either.
This time she rolled onto her back, forcefully pulling him on top of her,
keeping him inside of her as they moved. He fucked her harder, faster, just as
she demanded. He was seconds away from coming (despite the aggressive,
genuinely painful way she was clawing and biting at his back and neck) when
suddenly she held  him still—her fingers biting into his shoulders, her cunt
gripping  his dick—and  made  him stop.
“I could kill you, right now,” she said. “Or make you come inside me. Or both.”
Her laughter was cruel, sardonic; but it was enough to hold on to if you wanted
her words to be a joke as badly as Ben did at that moment. She smiled broadly,
whispering somewhere between a purr and a sneer, “And people say God is a guy
(!)”
                                     *****
“This just counts as super ironic in my book!” the girl chattered, amiably
disgruntled, constantly sneaking glances at her companions to see that she was
being supported in complaining, not seeming to notice the difference between
encouragement and a polite bluff of neutrality, “I mean, you would think a
major airline could deliver people to the right country or at least to the
right landmass, I mean not that I haven't always wanted to see Paris...” Hank
was pretending not to notice the way she looked at him when she said that.
Joyce was pretending not to notice she'd said anything at all.
She should have know better than to let Hank make the travel arrangements
through his office, Joyce realized. Of course, they'd be seated together. All
three of them. Mom, Dad and 'Assistant'. Who takes an assistant on a one
meeting business trip incidental to a much longer, more personal trip he'd be
taking oversees anyway? Someone who sleeps with his assistants and screws with
his expenses, that's who. Alright fine. She wasn't his wife or his mother. It
was more or less none of her business. But on this trip? Really? Oh well, if
there was one good thing about this trip so far, it was starting to cure her of
the at-least-when-I-was-with-Hank-he-never-ness that had become a habit in her
day to day with Brian. Every relationship had problems. It was probably just a
matter of… adjusting to each other's expectations.
“It's fog,” Hank said finally, a good twenty minutes into Mitzie's soliloquy.
“I'm pretty sure the airline didn't arrange for it.” The girl closed her mouth.
She looked stricken. Enough for Joyce to feel bad for her and slightly more
nettled at Hank. But not enough to wish she would start talking again. It was
not a long hiatus. At last they landed, to the sound of immoderate ooing and
ahing over that fact that Paris actually looked like Paris from the air, with
an Eiffel Tower and everything. And of course, Notre Dame, which she pronounced
like the football team in her almost-but-not quite-exactly-what-you-think-of-
when-you-think-of-a-Southern-accent.
The minute the fasten seatbelts sign was off, Hank had his phone out,
instructing someone back at the office (or maybe at the office over here) to
arrange for three Chunnle tickets to London. They could have stayed the night
in the romantic City of Lights at the airline's expense, of course, maybe even
seen a few museums or the Arc de Triumph, or something. Mitzie really had
always wanted to see Paris, and to be this close... But Hank and Joyce had
things to do and Mitzie didn't dare to suggest it. She was the thirdest of all
third wheels and she knew it. And anything she said or did to try to engage
with them, either of them, only seemed to make it worse.
The most confusing part was that she had absolutely no idea why she was here,
though Joyce made it subtly clear that she thought she knew. Whatever it was,
it wasn't that. The more she went out of her way to be nice to Hank, the more
distant he was to her. It was like he was embarrassed for her to keep existing
after the things he had said to her about his family, like he hated to remember
that he had ever had a weak moment or a bad day. When he'd stuck his head into
her cube Tuesday at five and said, “Change of plans. I'm taking the London
meeting instead of Newmark, and you're coming with me,” those were the first
words he had said to her in a week. And the last until he'd met her at the
airport on Wednesday, negating her sleepless, agonizing night of what-does-
this-meaning by bringing along his ex-wife.
Mitzie just guessed she was eventually going to have to accept the fact that
she did not understand men. Or women. Or people in general. Most the time, she
felt like she was faking it pretty good. The grownup thing. The California
thing. The professional thing. The hair and makeup from the magazines. Nobody
actually laughed or pointed or threw things at her anymore. She hadn't been hit
on the head with a math book in years. But on days like this, especially on
days like this (when her life looked on paper like an exciting adventure that
everyone back at Northwood High would be jealous of, but everything she did or
said was still just as wrong as it had ever been and she still didn't know why)
she might as well be back there. She might as well be walking those same
hostile halls like the last four years never happened, frantically trying to
open her locker with the combination she was almostsure she remembered
correctlythistime but somehow still couldn't make work. On days like this,
however much she might appear to have changed, Mitzie Lovell knew that she
would always be the exact same girl she'd been in high school. And the
knowledge of who she really was haunted her like a ghost that would never fade
away.
                                     *****
“Excuse me,” Buffy said to the gate agent, pushing her way to the front of the
line with her eyes and her posture more than with her shoulders and elbows.
This was something she had learned to do long before becoming the Slayer. It
was the kind of pleasant but effective pushing that made you a Fiesta Queen and
a cheerleader leader, a sort of projected understanding that your questions,
ought, by right, to be answered first and that other people would, of course,
from sheer friendliness, basic politeness really, move out of your way. “Is
that right?” she demanded cheerfully, gesturing towards the Arrivals monitor.
“How do youcanceland arrival? I mean, they're in theair? What's the problem?”
“Fog,” the grim faced Indian woman explained perfunctorily. “They've had to
land in Paris, but the connection they were hoping to make back has been
canceled as well, because the fog is not lifting. We are trying to put everyone
onto afternoon flights, but they are already overbooked. It may be tomorrow
morning before your party arrives, and we won't be able to give you information
about the arrangements made for individual passengers. I'm afraid you'll simply
have to wait to hear from them when they arrive.”
“You mean that's it?” Buffy half pouted, genuinely disappointed. “There's
really nothing else you can tell me?”
                                     *****
“Hi,” Ben said, when he had finally lain still a few moments and was able to
catch his breath at last, “I'm Ben.”
“Congratulations,” the girl said, somewhere between mocking and indifferent.
Ben blinked at her, realizing that there was nothing in her tone or body
language to suggest good-natured teasing in any way shape or form. “It's been
real,” she said, a little more civilly at least, as she hopped up from the bed
and headed for the balcony, pulling on clothes as she went.
“Wait,” Ben called, flustered, “I don't even know your name! What if I want to
see you again!”
She stopped and looked back at him, seeming genuinely annoyed, as if he were
being an unbearably clingy wuss for wanting to know her name. “I live next
freakin' door,” she pointed out. “You can knock on the damned window. I'm gonna
hit the showers,” she said by way of parting words, “and see if I can catch a
few before my old man wakes up.”
“Hey, whoa, your what now?” Ben got to his feet, stark naked and followed her
to the balcony. He was shocked by how disappointed and angry he suddenly felt,
which pissed him off even more. He was supposed to be sport fucking this chick,
not feeling jealous and betrayed and half in love. Never-the-less, before he
knew what he was doing, knowing damned well that he had no right to demand
anything from her, he grabbed the girl by the arm and demanded, “you mean to
tell me you're with someone!?!”
The girl jerked her arm away so abruptly and so hard that Ben stumbled and had
to brace himself against the sill of the sliding glass door to keep from
falling on the floor. “Don't knock on my window,” she all but growled at him.
“You've been warned.”
The casual, confident menace in her voice sent a chill of horror up Ben's
spine. As she turned and began to pull herself up and over the rail, he felt
almost as if... “Oh God no!” he groaned. “Please, God! Not now!”
Faith turned with both hands and one foot on the balcony rail and looked back
at the guy, 'Ben', exasperated, wondering what the fuck he was up to with these
goddamned hysterics. She was used to men 'falling in love' with her, of course,
but she thought she had made it pretty fucking clear that that shit wasn't
going to work this time. What was he, slow or something?
“Oh, oh God!” Ben continued to cry out, sounding somewhere between getting
ready to come and waiting to throw up. Faith's exasperation turned to
confusion, maybe even worry. He fell to the concrete balcony floor, and
crouched there naked, on his hands and knees. Something was happening.
Hishairwas growing, his body was... pulsing? Fluctuating. April had assured her
that vampires were very, very real. And, at least from what Doug had been able
to dig up from haunting the public library, which admittedly was mostly
historical references to ancient rumors, the assholes that were chasing her
sure as shit seemed to think so too. She wished she had thought to ask either
of them about werewolves.
Werewolf! Faith's brain was suddenly screaming it. She turned and was in the
act of vaulting the rail, already rushing into her motel room in her mind,
already waking up Doug and frantically inventorying everything in the room that
could be used as a weapon, when she felt a hard, clawed hand catch her firmly
by the ankle and heard an amused, shockingly normal sounding, feminine voice
say, “Stick around, Honey! It's way too early to go home just yet.”
                                     *****
They usually stuck to the tourists on the metro. It took longer for anyone to
miss them, or to be sure where else they might have gone. At night, on the
surface, they went after transients, who no one ever missed at all. They
cleared them from the streets and gutters and took them down to the catacombs
to await their resurrection. If there was one thing Spike had learned from
living in and around Europe the last century and change, it was that the
dispossessed could make great fodder for a revolution of pretty much any kind.
They took their meals  by day in the metro, and like Robin Hood's Merry Men,
distributed the contents of their veins and their wallets to Paris's emerging
class of undead hunting poor.
That was the grand idea anyway, “the current fantasy,” as Reggie (a tall,
lanky, reasonably intelligent lieutenant of his, who had come of age in the
1960s) was wont to say. Not quite a week in, it was all so-far-so-good. They
had added a dozen new spawn to their ranks already, with two dozen more waiting
to rise, and there were still preexisting vamps from all over Europe joining
them every day. There were also a lot of freebooters and undecideds rolling
into town. And one by one falling under the techno-spell of the bloody Trio.
But at least today was shaping up to be another good day of hunting. On the
first train they scoped from Charles de Gaul airport, bound for the main
railway station, there was a car with only three people in it, a man and two
women, dragging much too much expensive luggage around, just begging to be
repurposed for the good of the masses. Spike signaled his crew to swarm the
crowded platform just as the doors were getting ready to open, to push and
jostle other would be passengers out of the way. Thirty vampires rushed inside
and jammed the doors shut. “Alright, nobody m—!” Spike started to shout. The
humans looked up worriedly. For a second, Spike felt almost as if his heart
would start. “Oh balls!” he cried out, “It's  you !”
                                     *****
Faith turned back towards the balcony where Ben had been and looked down,
impossibly, into the face of a beautiful naked woman. Golden curls crowned her
like a halo. Even in the dim glow of the distant streetlights, she was
luminous. Her skin was perfect, creamy, flawless. Her lips were redder than
cherries, redder than blood, as red as the  idea  of blood. Her long red
lacquered nails bit into Faith's ankle just a little harder before letting go.
“Let's chat,” she instructed with the glib confidence of one who has never been
refused.
She was obviously Ben's girlfriend, Faith instantly and firmly decided. And
that son-of-a-bitch had had the nerve to get possessive with  her .
Instinctively, leveling all the rage she suddenly felt towards Ben at his girl,
she gripped the railing with both hands, lifted both feet and kicked the woman
several times in the face. Parts of her protested that it was a crappy thing to
do, that  Doug  would think less of her. But then, the bitch had put her hands
on her. And anyway, why did she care what Doug thought? Besides, part of her
mind was still screaming 'Werewolf!' without knowing why.
Then, all at once, something was happening that Faith wasn't prepared to
expect. She was  upside down. Because the blonde bitch had  caught  her by the
ankle and  flipped her around. She was dangling three stories above asphalt and
old cars. “What the fuck!” she gasped.
The girl sighed boredly. “Are you why we're staying in this rat hole?” shed
asked. “I should have known even little Bennie couldn't just want to be in a
dump like this. You think if I drop you on your squishy little human head he'll
be ready to leave?”
Faith was barely listening. For the first few seconds she struggled to right
herself and/or land a blow, but even if she had succeeded in twisting herself
like a pretzel in mid air to punch her enemy in the guts, the most she could
achieve was to get dropped on her head sooner and for sure. Realizing that, she
shifted her efforts to trying to figure or even control were she might land.
The options, if you could even call them that, didn't look good.
It looked like a talking situation. Damn. She was a lot less good at those. And
she hadn't expected to ever have to do them again. “What are you?” Faith asked,
floored by the realization of the bitch's power. It was not that she had
suddenly become helpless. Faith knew with the certainty of death that her
strength was still with her, that she was no less superheroic than she had been
ever since being called to Slay. This...  thing was just plain stronger.
“You know, that's a good question,” the girl mused, seeming pleasantly
flattered and mildly contemplative, “I honestly don't think there's a human
word fabulous enough for me.” With the slightest of shrugs, her grip started to
lessen. Panic welled up in Faith's chest too quickly to be channeled into words
of protest, threatening to be released as a scream. “Well... unless you happen
to have seen my Key lying around...”
Panic clutched like fingers at the outstretched realization and grabbed hold.
Desperately, words finally began to pour from Faith's lips like a roaring
fountain, unfiltered by thought of any kind. “The Key is the Link!” She
declared, “The Link must be severed! Such is the will of God!” Time seemed to
stop. The Beast flung her, unceremoniously (and painfully) to the iron mesh
balcony floor. “Well... that's what that knight guy said anyway. Before I
killed him,” she added embarrassedly; resentfully,defensively, leaping to
distance herself from the spooky, cooky words that hung in the air, stinking of
religion and unjustified certainty.
                                     *****
Joyce was shocked. She was confused. But there was no time to be shocked and
confused. These were vampires. They knew her. She was pretty sure one of them
had been in Buffy's class at school and the leader himself was—There was no
time to be shocked or confused. Joyce pulled a cross from her large shoulder
bag and let the bag drop to the floor. “Get behind me!” she shouted to Hank and
Mitzie. “Back up to the door!”
Mitzie opened her mouth as if to protest the craziness of it all. For a moment,
Hank felt like doing the same thing. But he saw the look in Joyce's eyes. The
certainty grounded in knowledge and experience. Joyce Summers was not crazy.
This he knew if he knew nothing else. Moving quickly, before any of the
attackers could find a way to get around them, Hank grabbed Mitzie by the
elbows and pulled her behind Joyce. They backed up to the closest door on the
side of the car that had not met the platform and therefore not opened at the
last station. Joyce backed tightly against the others, shielding their little
knot of living humanity with her upstretched cross.
“How do we work this?” Hank whispered in Joyce's ear over Mitzie's shoulder,
not bothering with stupid questions like 'Who are these people?' or 'What the
hell is going on?' or 'Are you sure you know what you're doing?'
Joyce appreciated that about him, she really did. She wished Brian could be
that—Oh hell! Way to focus, Joyce(!) “I can hold them off with this for a
couple of minutes if we stay tight against the door,” she said. “But if we
don't pull into a station soon, or if the platform is on the wrong side. You'll
have to try and force it.” He didn't waste his breath saying anything like 'But
that will kill us,' either. Even Mitzie didn't say that, though Joyce half
expected it. Spike and his minions all had their game faces on now, snarling
and looking for an opening, to outflank the cross. Not even Mitzie had to be
told that falling to their deaths from a moving train was the least of their
worries.
“Bugger me for a sodding school boy,” Spike muttered, “It's not bloody worth
it. Everyone, hold positions!” he added in a louder, more commanding voice.
“Oh, come on Spiky, why not?” Harmony pouted, backed by a general (supportively
hostile) murmur. “I'm hungry.”
“Because, you stupid, bint,” he said ice-over-fire, pretending she was the only
speaker in opposition, “This she will come to Paris for!”
Spike's face softened to human. At his stern look, the others growled and
grudgingly did the same. Harmony was the last to convert, pouting more than
ever, arms folded. The train pulled into a station. The doors opened on Spikes
side. At his word, vampires parted, all unwillingly.
“My regards,” said Spike with a small bow, his voice straining to be pleasant,
“to your lovely daughter.”
                                     *****
“Where have you been?” Doug asked the minute Faith walked in, sounding way too
fucking much like a parent. “It's after one o'clock.”
She slid the glass door shut, thinking about not answering at all. Thinking
about packing. “I went out for a smoke,” she said finally. “And then I got
laid. That guy, Ben, next door.”
Doug rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. Then he made himself uncross then,
cracking an amused to be embarrassed smile. “Whatever,” he said. “I get it;
you're a big girl. Just, next time warn me if you're going to be gone a while,
alright.”
Faith felt a stab of something that she couldn't quite tell from affection or
from guilt. He really wanted to go all stern and fatherly protective on her, or
maybe even boyfriend jealous, but he was being cool about it instead, because
he knew better than both. In a weird way, it made her kind of like the guy all
over again, which made her feel like she needed to protect him. And then he
made it even worse. “Look,” he said, all serious, “I know its... lonely or
whatever. But don't let anyone get too close to you. It's dangerous, alright?”
Faith had to smile at that. As if. But then there was that feeling again.
Because it really was sweet of him to worry about her like that. Especially
after... everything.
Faith turned her face away, fiddling with the clock on her bedside table just
for an excuse not to look Doug in the eye. She tried to make her voice sound as
casual as possible as she said, “You know, I've been thinking. Maybe we should
check out that Sunnydale place after all.”
Doug gave her a suspicious look but seemed to decide against asking her why.
“Well, if you're looking to fight vampires,” he said, “now's the time.” He
handed her the paper from the day before. “Apparently those Council folks, at
least the one's that April actually met, are going to be in London for a
while.”
                                     *****
“I finally got a hold of Buffy,” Joyce said, walking back to the corner table
in the noisy train station bar. “She's coming to the station to meet our train.
Then we're all joining Rupert at their hotel for lunch.” Hank nodded, staring
at his half empty scotch, his second. He was almost amused by the fact that he
didn't have the emotional energy to be amused at the idea of his daughter's
creaky old husband breaking a hip. Mitzie sat huddled in on herself, silent.
She had refused anything but water, saying things felt strange enough without
further altering her perception of reality.
Joyce sat a while longer, head in her hands, drained.They had an hour left to
wait for their train to London. Half of it passed in numb, glorious silence.
“Joyce,” Hank said finally, wearily, “what the hell is going on?” Mitzie's head
popped up, quietly watchful. She hadn't dared to ask, but she definitely wanted
to know.
Joyce smiled tiredly, “It's really pretty simple,” she explained. “We are
living in one long, never ending apocalypse. Monsters and demons roam the
Earth, killing and pillaging at will. And the only thing they're afraid of, the
only thing that can stop them... is our little girl.”
 
***** This Is Only a Test *****
Chapter Summary
     Both Willow and Cordelia receive some unsettling revelations, Hank's
     ability to accept Buffy's destiny is tested, and several Watchers are
     called upon to do very shocking things to uphold their commitments to
     the Council. But the mission is what maters. Right?
“The Savoy?” Hank incredulously repeated Buffy's instruction to the cab driver
as they got under way. “You're staying at the Savoy?” he demanded of Giles.
“Why?”
“Because Claridge's is being renovated,” the smug son-of-a-bitch answered
dryly. When he'd heard Buffy was planning to meet their train on her own and
'let him rest', he'd insisted on joining her, saying that to have done
otherwise would be rude. Hank knew better, knew the type. Too stiff-necked to
show any weakness. Now he was being 'witty' for exactly the same reason; to
prove he was above caring what Hank's opinion of his conduct or character was.
Whatever had happened with his father to end that cozy little domestic
arrangement, he wasn't sharing, probably because it didn't reflect well on him.
So he was just going to act like it didn't matter that they were sleeping in a
place that vampire might be about to walk into. Bastard.
 “ How are you staying at the Savoy?” Hank persisted.
“Hank—” Joyce began, her tone a quiet admonishment for him to behave himself,
her hand on his arm feeling much the same.
“Joyce, this man has no job!” Hank cut her off sharply. “I want to know—”
 As Joyce opened her mouth to scold him further, Giles opened his too, but was
still groping for a sufficiently withering response when Buffy preempted them
both. “The Council is paying for it, for everything,” Buffy assured her father,
as if that fixed everything, made everything make sense. All that meant was
that Giles was hosing the Council for every nickle he could get, or more
accurately, putting Buffy up to doing that, since it'd be her expenses they'd
be paying, now that they'd canned his ass. “And anyways, what business is it of
yours where we get the money to pay for something,” Buffy kept on harshly, “I
mean, I'm a grownup now, and Giles is my husband, and if you think you can be
rude to him, then, I don't even know why you're here, because—”
Finally, Giles cleared his throat and squeezed Buffy's hand, both very
pointedly. That in conjunction with the worried looks that Joyce and Mitzie
were lavishing on both Buffy and Hank finally gave her the clue that he wasn't
too pleased to have his wife rushing to his defense. “I believe we've discussed
this subject enough,” Giles said tensely, when Buffy paused uncertainly. Hank
was tempted to keep pressing, especially on the issue of hotel safety, but then
he'd have been the one in the dog house for good and all. Joyce was already in
full see-no-evil-but-Hank, Buffy-Defender-Mode. She didn't even want him to
discuss the fact that Buffy was clearly not going to finish the eleventh grade
this year as Mr. I-Understand-the-Value-of-an-Education had promised. And She
had already made it clear that she had bought this 'Chosen One' garbage, hook
line and sinker. Just exactly the way she was now credulously swallowing all of
his lines about how a five start suite could be made into a home by the power
of possessive thinking.
Hank wasn't buying any of it. This man's way of scamming a living showed that
he couldn't be trusted and neither could this organization he'd gotten Buffy
involved in, the London Council of Stuffed-Shirt Punks Who Get Little Girls to
Do Their Fighting for Them. They'd obviously manipulated Buffy and who-knew how
many other girls like her into thinking it was their duty to put their lives on
the line more so than any of the rest of humanity, least of all the Council.
That was the kind of man Rupert Giles was. No wonder the fucker didn't see
anything wrong with marrying a seventeen year-old girl.
Hank couldn't believe how taken in he had been by this guy and his slightly-
grayscale-hero-recues-tough-chick-from-troubled-past act. The goddamned bastard
was the reason she was getting shot, stabbed and arrested in the first place.
Him and his fucking Council. Since she was in the ninth grade for God's sake.
And screwing her since the tenth grade, probably, whatever they'd told Joyce,
which had to be why this vampire he'd also let screw her (what to get his hands
on some old books?) had decided that killing his grownup girlfriend would be
the best way to get back at Buffy for whatever else her 'Watcher' had put her
up to doing. In fact, if it wasn't for this gang of glorified pimps, Buffy
would still be at Hemery High; ruling the school, making the grade, running for
Home Coming Queen and getting ready to apply to college. Safe. As safe as
anybody could be in this world. How did Joyce not get that? What exactly did
she think was going on here?
                                     *****
“We have a problem,” Andrew Giles told Phillip Robson without preamble as he
came to stand by his side in the back row of yet another funeral. He'd come
directly from the Thursday morning session of the Full Council, traditionally
the time for approving already decided matters of logistics. Attendance this
year had been even lower than usual. People were still burying their dead.
There was an epidemic of don't-give-a-fuck, a disease the Inner Council could
not afford to contract, though Robson was definitely feeling a few symptoms.
But he made himself pay attention to Andrew's revelations, as was his duty.
“It's Weatherby.”
“I'm shocked,” said Robson with tired irony.
“He's exceeded his instructions with Collins,” Andrew explained grimly. “There
is security footage. My associates in Los Angeles are not pleased.”
“I imagine not,” Robson agreed grimly. “Where is he now?”
“Still in route,” Andrew explained. “I've directed him to the same airfield
through which Heathcliff imports his 'Asian antiquities'.”
“Reasonable,” Robson agreed. “I'll inform the other six. We'll handle matters
from here.”
                                     *****
The atmosphere of Winifred Millhouse-Gaudencio's crowded table was getting to
be downright pleasant, almost festive, her son Heathcliff noticed
dispassionately, now that his father was two days in the ground. It was more
that of a family reunion than either a funeral or a Council meeting, all
nostalgia and funny stories. Even his ex-wife looked on with benign fondness as
his grown sons regaled their younger half brothers with tales of life at
Walsington, where they would shortly be enrolling. His younger brother Walter
and his children, grown and otherwise, all chimed in with their own opinions
and experiences. Well, most of them did.
If no one noticed that Heathcliff and his wife, Malalai, were more subdued or
that their daughter, Amal, had barely swallowed a bite or two of lunch and was
now only pushing her dessert around with her fork, that was probably for the
best. Except that maybe Winifred had noticed her granddaughter’s sudden
shyness, because she said, “Well what about you, Dear? Will you be going off to
school with your brothers and cousins now they've finally decided to begin
enrolling girls this fall?” Winifred nodded fondly at Julia, Walter's youngest.
The lanky, freckle-faced fourteen year-old continued to shove food into her
face at a near competitive pace, not looking up.
Amal flicked her eyes up in Winifred's direction and then made an effort to
smile, which didn't go very well. “I'm going home with Mother,” she mumbled,
looking back down at her plate.
“What, home to Afghanistan?” Dinah, Walter's wife, all but gasped, clearly
shocked. “Now?”
Malalai started in to her defensive plea that her country was 'finding it's
footing' engaging in much needed soul searching for which it would be stronger,
more free... eventually. It was an argument with which her husband was so
familiar that he could imagine every word she intended to say as well as what
she planned to leave out; the contempt in which she held her parents for
fleeing in the face of the Russian invasion, the loneliness and alienation she
had felt growing up in America, the guilt she carried for not feeling at home
in Kajaki or even Kandahar on her return. What had happened to her in medical
school as a result of trying to fit in to a culture that encouraged young
people, on certain occasions, to get very, very drunk. As it was, she hardly
got three words into the part she would have said, would have insisted was the
whole story.
“So what!?!” Julia shouted, getting suddenly to her feet, starling everyone.
“I'd rather go to Afghanistan than Walsington!” Her father started to scold
her, to tell her she didn't mean what she said, didn't understand, but she cut
him off sharply. “I do too! I won't be a Watcher!” She insisted, turning to her
mother, who was one of only three actual Watchers in the room. “I know what you
lot really do, and it's disgusting! I'd rather live in the desert, marry some
camel fucker who beats me for reading books, and die from having twenty babies
before I'm thirty-five than be a lying, murdering hypocrite like you! I HATE
THE COUNCIL AND I HATE YOU!!!” the girl shouted at both her parents and her
uncle, running from the room. Her mother quietly followed her while her father
sat back down at the table looking shaken and embarrassed but pretending not to
be. He wasn't good at pretending, and in fact could hardly put a coherent
sentence together when his mother tried to sooth him with conversation. Which,
Heathcliff realized, was why his bother was only a Could Have Been; because, in
all reality, he couldn't have.
Relieved as he was that the focus had shifted from Amal, Heathcliff, like
everyone else, was uneasy about what Julia had said and appalled by how she had
said it. With the recent bloodshed, the catastrophic losses; the bright
enameled surface of 'normal', 'modern' life was rubbing away from the
institution of the Watching Families. The issue of duty was being forced where
there might usually have been a choice. And the survivors, in their grief, were
talking, among themselves if to no one else, about things that were best not
talked about, both historical and ongoing. The Harrow matter. The Font Affair.
Girls who had had to be removed from obstructing parents by having them
unjustly taken into Care and by other means of coercion and deception. Even
Cruciamentum was being whispered about among people who were not yet
sufficiently initiated to be trusted to know of it. It was a dangerous state of
affairs for a secret organization, especially one with which so many minors
were involved one way and another. Necessary as it was, the sudden trend
towards 'encouraging' more young people to enter direct service would cause as
well as solve problems. Julia, like most reluctant Candidates, would come
around. Most but not all. Rebellion and breaches of security would increase.
And they would have to be dealt with. Sometimes in ways that would be difficult
for family members to accept. Which would create rifts between and within
Houses, just as the Font Affair had.
Malalai's quiet anger was for a different reason. She was a patriot, no
mistaking that. If there was one sentiment that she had internalized from her
years of unwilling immersion in American culture, it was this motto, 'My
Country; Right or Wong.' But she was not a fool and she was not blind. Despite
the deliberately ugly language she had chosen to use and her selfish reasons
for using it, there was some truth in Julia's assessment of the life Malalai
was choosing for her daughter by taking her home to Kandahar under present
political, social, and economic conditions.
“Amal should be in school,” she said finally, grimly half an hour later as she
and her husband drove with their three children to Virgil's house in Surrey,
which they judged to be just distant enough from Winifred and the rest of the
clan in Mayfair to guaranty them the privacy they would need tonight. “She is
only fourteen.”
Actually two weeks short, Heathcliff thought of reminding her, with bitter
amusement. But it wouldn't have be worth it. Under the circumstances, it just
wasn't funny. “Then move to London with me,” he said instead. It was a
challenge, a flat ultimatum. It was not being stated for the first time.
“I won't abandon my patients when there is no one to replace me,” Malalai
replied firmly, also not for the first time. “I won't abandon my country, just
because things are difficult right now. And I won't leave Aabirah defenseless
and alone in the hands of some man you yourself barely know just because he
happens to be a Watcher.”
“Then I don't see that we have much of a choice,” Heathcliff repeated, “Or do
you honestly think your cousin can protect you from a hundred miles away when
the Religious Police find out that the man you are living with in the sight of
God and all of Kandahar is no more to you than your first cousin's son-in-law
and your husband's distant cousin? What's going to happen to Julian's son when
he can't? What's going to happen to Aabirah!?! I've made my decision,” he added
sharply, cutting off debate before she could start on the familiar reiteration
of what his other choice could have been, earlier in the week if he had but
taken it. Anger flashed in Malalai's eyes, but she turned them to the window
and said nothing.
Heathcliff had had a choice, of course. He could have refused the leadership of
his House. He could have returned to Kandahar and continued as Aabirah's
Watcher. He could have attempted to arranged for her to marry one of their sons
before she became so old that her living with a group of mere cousins of both
sexes became truly scandalous, though that time was very near and their sons
still very young. And then his House would have suffered under less competent
and less agreed upon leadership at exactly the worst possible moment in
history. And the Council and the world been the worse for it. Not to mention
that he could still have hardly sent Amal away to school in a Western country
without making Aabirah's father suspicious of his true feelings about Islam and
his level of concern for young women's purity, which would have tempted him to
make her a different match and to rethink his hard won acceptance of her
destiny. And Aabirah would have been lost to the Council.
 Heathcliff glanced in the rear-view mirror at Amal. His heart swelled with
regret, sympathy and affection for his daughter, who was quietly attending to
this whole conversation, eyes darting between her parents' oblique profiles as
they discussed and decided her future without consulting her. This wasn't the
kind of father he had expected to be, growing up first with his mother and then
at Walsington, seeing his father the odd weekend or holiday. He'd imagined his
someday, intact family being different, better, kinder. Even after he had
failed once at that, he'd still thought he could get it right on the second go.
Love and experience would make it possible. But he'd been kidding himself. He
had the same duty, the same prior commitment to the Cause as his father. And so
did Amal.
                                     *****
So lunch. Yeah. They had lunch. Hank methodically attacked his meal, a scowl on
his face, barely tasting it. The women talked with Giles in low whispers,
lapping up his all-knowing answers to their every occult question, as credulous
as little children, which was pretty close to the truth in two out of three
cases and, as far as Hank could tell, might as well have been in the other.
“Well, I'm just glad you guys are alright,” Buffy said as Joyce described their
ordeal on the train one more time in even greater detail. “All of you,” she
added, squeezing Mitzie's hand, trying to make her feel less deflated,
terrified, and alone than she clearly felt.
 “I... shouldn't even be here,” Mitzie mumbled, looking away. Great, now Buffy
was thinking exactly what Joyce had thought. Giles too, probably. Jesus, did
Mitzie  think he'd actually brought her here for sex? A girl half his age? At a
time like this? How long exactly would it be until his reputation recovered
from his ex-wife's suspicions and the rumors she had caused to spread in his
workplace a couple of years back with her 'subtle' inquiries that she still
denied making?
“What I don't understand is how that thing knew who we were,” Hank groused.
“Got any theories about that, Sherlock?”
“He knew me,” Joyce explained in an offhand way, as if it were unimportant.
“The leader, I met him once in Sunnydale. You'd remember," she said to Giles
conversationally. "At parent-teacher night.” Where you were the teacher, you
son-of-a-bitch, and you were the parent, you marshmallow, Hank was busy
thinking when he noticed that Buffy's eyes had widened to twice their normal
size and she and Giles were exchanging a look. “Was this, per chance, a very,
very blond vampire?” the Englishman asked Joyce in his very-worried-but-making-
a-drama-out-of-'trying-to-sound-casual' way. Joyce hesitated and stammered in
the affirmative, adding that he had had Harmony Kendall, a now undead classmate
of Buffy's, with him.
“Spike,” Buffy concluded bitterly.
“Spike,” her husband agreed darkly. Joyce nodded.
Mitzie, apparently the only person at the table besides Hank to which the name
meant nothing, looked from one to another of her companions nervously. “Is that
bad?”
                                     *****
Neither the growling nor the storm stopped. They merged, came to have been one
thing all along, the noise of the universe. Spike was the universe and Willow
was trapped in him, pinned beneath his weight as he slowly drew the life out of
her. He spoke in her head in her mother's voice as he drained her more than
dry, “Willow Dear, I know you can give me more than that!”
Willow sat up startled in the dark and almost clawed a desperate handful out of
the face hovering over her before she realized it was only Sheila. The other,
not-so-threatening, not-so-important Sheila. “Hey, Willow, you okay?” Sheila
asked with casual concern. “You were making weird noises and stuff.” It was
only then that Willow noticed her cheeks were wet. If she didn't get up and pee
soon, her sheets would be too.
“Close your eyes,” she advised/joked embarrassedly. It was too dark to really
see anything anyway, but she still felt extra weird; exposed, but also
disconnected, lightheaded. The skin on the back of her neck—or just below it
really, between her shoulder blades—was more than prickly; it was itchy,
slightly painful. Willow's mouth and eyes were very, very dry. After she had
washed her hands with soap and dried them on her jumpsuit for lack of a
dependably clean towel, she spent what seemed like at least five minutes with
the tap open guzzling water from her cupped hands, and maybe another minute
splashing water on her face, which felt flushed.
Sheila sat in her bunk and watched her, eyes glittering oddly in the dark. They
must have been catching a reflection from some little light somewhere, but if
so, Willow couldn't figure out where it was. Probably because she was so
sleepy. In fact, all this time she had been leaning on the sink for support,
and as she let go to walk back to her bunk, she realized she was not so very
steady on her feet... about a second before she stumbled and fell to the floor.
The concrete was cool against her cheek and she was vaguely displeased to lose
that source of comfort as Sheila lifted her easily in her arms and carried her
back to her bunk.
When Willow awoke again, a few minutes—or hours—later, Sheila was at her side
to help her to the toilet and the sink and to put her back to bed afterwards.
That might have happened two or three more times, maybe four. It was still dark
when Willow awoke to that same concrete coolness and the sound of Sheila
summoning the guards. “I don't know,” Sheila said, both a shrug and a smirk in
her voice, though obviously she had cared enough to say something, “I just woke
up and found her on the floor.”
                                     *****
“Heart attack,” Chief Detention Deputy Sparks declared, slapping down the
Autopsy Report on Mr. Claybrooke in front of Captain Bonner triumphantly. “Pure
and simple. Which is exactly what his lawyer... Mr....” Sparks checked the
report, “...MacDonald, said when he called for help.” Sure, Bonner thought, at
exactly the same time that his partner in crime (whose real name they still
didn't know) happened to be meeting with Ms. Morgan, the other lawyer from the
same law firm—the same tall-building, weird-reputation law firm— who just
happened to be seen an hour later on the hospital security footage entering the
room of the other surviving member of their gang. Probably a coincidence, just
like the fact that John Doe Number Two had suddenly developed bleeding in his
brain and was no longer expected to regain consciousness. And the fact that Ms.
Morgan had boarded a plane for London in the few hours between the time that
Claybrooke had died and when the FBI had swarmed in and taken over the Ericson
case. Which meant that when Claybrooke had been clinging to MacDonald for dear
life and gasping, 'my God, they've killed me,' he'd just been confused, right?
“Alright,” Bonner said, feigning bored, professional disinterest, “Thank you
for your time.” Whatever was going on here, it was obviously darker than
anything Sparks could or would shed any light on. Like Bonner, Sparks knew when
he was in over his heads. Unlike Bonner, he also knew when to swim for shore.
                                     *****
“It's a good thing Sheila found you when she did,” Dr. Wilkinson informed
Willow seriously. Willow nodded, still a little hazy as to exactly what had
happened, still a little embarrassed to ask. Especially since everyone seemed
to know and seemed to think it was obvious. Obvious and somehow her fault. It
probably was, in fact, Willow realized, though not for the reasons that
everyone seemed to think. It probably had everything to do with that sleep
spell, the one she still couldn't break. She would have to try to discuss that
with her 'mom' again when she arrived, as everyone kept assuring her that she
would at any moment.
Which was exactly when they told her she could have breakfast, ironically
enough, considering the main theme of everyone's 'words of wisdom'. “I know
that the food in the JDC may not be the most appetizing in the world,” Dr.
Wilkinson pressed, in the same lecturing tone that everyone was using, “but
hypoglycemia can be a very serious thing, and so can anemia. It's important for
you to eat regular, balanced meals and healthy snacks and to take all
supplements as prescribed, in order to keep your blood sugar and your iron
count up. Besides which, you should never allow yourself to become this
seriously under weight, especially now.”
“Okay,” Willow managed to mumble, tired of pointing out that she had been
eating every scrap of food she could get her hands on, and had not been
prescribed any supplements.
“Another important thing to keep in mind is that you ought to be upfront with
the JDC staff about all of your medical conditions so that they can get you the
care and nutritional support you need.” Again Willow nodded and murmured
assent. “Just remember, they are there to help you, but they can't meet your
needs if you hide them from everyone. And keep in mind that early and
consistent prenatal care is the best prediction of a safe and healthy pregnancy
for both mother and baby. And open communication with your mom and other family
members is key to building and maintaining a support system, which is something
all new mothers need, at any age.”
Willow frowned, puzzled. “Well, I'll keep all of that in mind if I ever get
pregnant,” she agreed, since Wilkinson seemed to be concerned about that for
some reason, maybe because they saw pregnant teens from the JDC a lot?
“Willow,” the doctor gently scolded her. “We know about your pregnancy. That's
one of the first things we test for in this type of situation with a girl your
age.”
“Wait, what are you talking about?” Willow asked, suddenly a bit more alert,
but maybe more confused than ever by what she was hearing. “That's impossible,”
she heard herself saying, even as she was in the process of realizing that it
actually wasn't, “you're test must be wrong.” What was today, the twenty-third?
Thirty-four days after the start of her last menstrual period. One—very
long—week after she had had sex with Xander, using the worlds most notoriously
unreliable birth control strategy. While also using a spell that seriously
altered all of her metabolic processes. Which probably meant that those thirty-
four days were more like forty or forty-five. More like six or seven weeks than
just five.
 And therefore, it actually made total sense when Dr. Wilkinson said, “No,
Willow, the test is not wrong. We confirmed it using ultra-sound.” What still
didn't make sense at all though was when she added, “Willow, you are just over
eighteen weeks pregnant.”
                                     *****
“No!” Giles insisted fervently, but quietly enough that he hoped their guests
(who had taken up residence in a suite of adjoining rooms that had temporarily
been made a part of Giles and Buffy's rented accommodation, under their
protection for invitation purposes) wouldn't overhear. “Buffy, you cannotgo to
Paris!” His voice was tensed, hard, shaking. Forbidding.
“Why not?” she demanded, her voice equally hard and quiet. But in response to
the look he gave her, her speech took on a more pleading, though still strident
quality. “Spike killed Kendra,” she reminded him. “He raped Willow, or that's
what it amounts to. I can't just sit here while he takes over a major European
capital and declares open season on human tourists!”
“Buffy, even if I felt it were wise to confront Spike at this time, on his own
territory, surround by a minimum of thirty minions,” he reminded her, “You
cannot go to Paris because you have no passport. You are only out on bond. At
least wait until—”
“He kills another hundred people and makes them into an honest to God army?”
Buffy cut him off sarcastically. “Giles, you said it yourself, 'through the
dark art of bureaucracy all things are possible'? If the Council can 'kill us
with the stroke of a pen', surely they can also get me a passport and/or sneak
me out of the country for a couple of days.”
“A couple of days!?!” Giles scoffed, forgetting for a moment to be quiet.
Remembering suddenly, dropping his harangue to a raspy, indignant whisper, he
added, “Need I remind you that you spent the better part of six months
trying—unsuccessfully, I might add—to kill Spike back in Sunnydale? The only
thing that's going to be different in Paris is that the territory is less
familiar to you, more familiar to him, and illegal for you even to set foot in,
so you can't even ask anyone for help without fear of being arrested. Besides,
you've got your first appointment with Dr. Altwerp tomorrow and a status
hearing a week from Monday. Trust me, Buffy, now is not the time for Spike.
Besides, the Council, without whose intervention you might easily be
rearrested, have forbidden you to violate your bond without express
instructions from your Watcher to do so!”
“Fine,” Buffy fumed “I'll just sit here and do nothing while innocent people
are condemned to fates worse than death, Council's orders(!) Now I seriously
feel like one of the family.”
Giles opened his mouth to make some scathingly superior response to that; Buffy
was sure of it, already getting angry in anticipation. Except that the phone
rang. She started to reach for it. But the only person who was likely to be
calling her was in the next room. As Giles picked up the phone and exchanged
stiffly 'cordial' greetings with whatever Watcher had called, Buffy quietly
slipped away to help her mother unpack. She had things to discuss with her
anyway. Besides, she was tired of listening to Watchers and their crap.
“Well, I've found you at last,” Julian said primly, almost but not quite
snidely, a bit too above it to be snide, in fact.
“Yes,” Giles replied dryly, “and me so cleverly hidden.”
“Well,” said Julian, his voice becoming a bit more crisp, “I had assumed you
might have taken some more reasonably priced accommodation.”
“I am required to serve without compensation, not without maintenance,” Giles
reminded him stiffly.
“Yes...” Julian agreed in a tone that suggested he, not Giles, was winning the
point, which was true, “without compensation and without question.”
“Or complaint,” Giles reminded him brimming with grim amusement. “What do you
need?”
Julian's laugh was a bit too dry, too knowing, too cruelly amused for Giles's
taste when he answered, “I require the assistance of an adult male relative who
is not too publicly associated with me, ideally one who has a name he doesn't
commonly use, and who can read, write, and speak fluently in Parsi. Well,
actually, not so much I as my son.”
                                     *****
When the guards came to get Wesley, to tell him that his astronomical cash bond
had at last been posted by a mysterious messenger and that there was a long
black car from a service waiting to take him to his benefactor, he wondered if
he should have acted surprised, but he didn't bother. What if it was
suspicious? He half hoped they wouldn't let him go. He signed out under his new
'Muslim' name (Alim Abd Al-Rashid) despite being booked in under his legal
name, but nobody raised an eyebrow at that either.
Of course, as Wesley was well aware, there was no real reason why a Muslim
convert had to change his name. Heathcliff Gaudencio certainly hadn't. But any
idiot who would listen to a cleric that suggested kidnapping an MP from a
public gathering in what amounted to a harebrained publicity scheme certainly
would have. And somehow or other, the rumors that this was how he had managed
to unwittingly set off a massacre were already in wide circulation among the
law enforcement community. Never mind that nothing had as yet been proven
against him even to investigative, let alone adjudicative, standards. The
confession he was to mail to his father from Lahore International Airport
should take care of that.
“I just got back from driving Malalai and the children out to Father's,”
Heathcliff apologized when he was five minutes late meeting the hired car in a
parking garage a few blocked from the lockup.
“I'm starting to feel like a shuttle driver,” he joked, as they got into his
unassuming, practical sedan. “Although, we won't be heading back just yet
because I'm still waiting on a call to tell me your first set of identity and
travel documents are ready. So, since we've got to hang around London for a bit
regardless, that will give us time for a nice long chat about our expectations,
and if you swear not to tell my wife, maybe even one small drink.”
Wesley wanted to have the sangfroid to make some cavalier response, like, 'only
if you promise not to tell mine,' but he didn't. “I think I could stand to kill
an entire bottle,” he informed Gaudencio more or less seriously instead, “for
the road, as it were.”
 “I'm afraid that won't be possible,” Heathcliff informed him with grim
sympathy. At least Wesley supposed it was sympathy, either that or he was
feeling a bit ill. “Malalai is Rajab's first cousin,” he apologized, “and
although she is aware of the motives for your very recent conversion she would
not sit still for Aabirah—or any of the women in our family—being married off
to someone who isn't willing to convert in good faith... erm so to speak, to an
Islamic life, regardless of his motivation for doing so. In fact, if you ever
need to ask what's haram or halal in a given situation, she's probably your
best source. Just remember, if you aren't fooling her, you aren't fooling him.”
“Fooling who, Allah?” Wesley asked, confused by such an odd idea.
Heathcliff laughed and gave him the kind of slightly worried look he was a
little too used to getting, usually without knowing why. “Rajab,” the
Seatholder clarified. “If he doesn't buy your conversion, this is all for
nothing, and that is exactly what your life will be worth as well.”
“Right,” Wesley something between gasped and whispered, swallowing hard. “Of
course.”
“Which is why I suggest that you let Malalai give you as much guidance as you
need,” Gaudencio reiterated.
“Well but how much opportunity will I really have to interact with her?” Wesley
asked/pointed out primly, throwing up walls of superiority with which to defend
himself. “Not that I think I'll really need any pointers to pass as a nascent
convert, mind you, given my years of academic study of The Faith, but I was
given to understand that I would be leaving the country in pretty short order.”
 “You'll be taking the train to Calais in the morning and flying out of   Caen
la Mer    tomorrow afternoon,” Heathcliff confirmed, looking quite ill indeed.
After a moment's hesitation (which might have been due to digestive discomfort
for all Wesley could tell) he added, “Malalai and Amal will join you in Morocco
tomorrow night, and from there the three of you will continue on to Lahore and
then to Kandahar.”
“Good lord, why?” Wesley gasped, startled, and following that, deeply puzzled.
  “Watch your language,” was all Heathcliff said at first, and that rather
crossly. He brooded for a moment. There was nothing else you could call it.
Finally, he spoke again, sounding very grave. “As Watchers we are frequently
called upon to do things that are very difficult,” he said. “Sometimes that
means doing things that are physically taxing or dangerous, such as training
the Slayer and even fighting at her side. Sometimes it means doing things that
are emotionally difficult like burying your Slayer or being separated from your
family....”
  Wesley had the uneasy feeling that the tasks were being listed in ascending
order of difficulty, that he was about to be asked to do something shockingly
unpleasant. Then again, he reminded himself, taking a little comfort, he
already knew that he was here to do several shockingly unpleasant things: i.e.
moving to Afghanistan, confessing to a terrible and embarrassingly stupid
crime, involving a teenage girl—his Potential Slayer no less—in an arranged
marriage. In fact, it was rather a relief to suppose that Gaudencio appreciated
how difficult these things actually were. “And sometimes,” he concluded,
seeming to confirm Wesley's thoughts, “we are called upon to do morally or
spiritually difficult things, things that may harm innocent people, even people
we care about very deeply, in order to achieve some important end in service of
the Greater Good. Do you understand that, I mean truly understand it?”
“Of course,” Wesley assured him, his own voice involuntarily softening in
response to the realization that Gaudencio seemed to be in genuine emotional
pain. He obviously cared very deeply for this girl, Aabirah, and wanted to be
reassured that he was doing the right thing. Which he was, Wesley suddenly
realized. Quite apart from his own difficulties with the situation, when one
had a Slayer or Potential Slayer in his care there was one overarching truth
that he must never forget, for her own good as well as the fate of the world, a
truth which Wesley now stated firmly, encouragingly, and with sincere
conviction, “We all do what we must to fulfill our sacred mission, regardless
of any personal cost to ourselves. The mission is what matters.”
“Good,” said Gaudencio, seeming both resolved and relieved. “You don't know how
glad I am to hear you say that. Because I need you to do something very
important both for me personally and for the Council before you can go to
Afghanistan and marry Aabirah, something essential to your ability to function
as her Watcher and to give her the support she needs.”
  “Of course,” Wesley assured him, more puzzled than ever and becoming quite
apprehensive once more, but still resolved, still willing to serve. “I'll do
anything that needs to be done,” he assured his superior with the extravagant
firmness of a very self-satisfied martyr. Once again, Gaudencio was quiet for a
moment. One might dare to say 'pensive'. “Erm... if I might ask...” Wesley
began to worry aloud in concert with the worry that he could feel creeping back
over his face, trying to sound casual, embarrassed by the knowledge that he
clearly didn't, “what is it exactly that you need me to do?”
Heathcliff sighed deeply and looked away. He might only have needed to keep
both eyes on traffic as he pulled from the street into the car park behind a
small, out of the way pub, as he was now doing, Wesley reasoned. There was no
reason to suppose that his orders were so unpleasant that he couldn't even look
his subordinate in the eyes and given them. “I think I could use that drink
now,” the older Watcher said as he put the car in park and engaged the break,
keeping his eyes trained on his hand as it performed these very important
tasks.
"For the love of— Allah!" Wesley started to gasps, then corrected himself,
embarrassed for more faults than one. More calmly, but also more warily he
asked, “Mr. Gaudencio, you aren't by any chance trying to work up the nerve to
tell me to kill someone?”
Gaudencio choked on a startled noise of deep shock that sputtered it's way from
a cough to a laugh. He shook his head, smiling at last in a way that was
somehow both sheepish and mildly pitying. He patted the younger man on the back
with almost fatherly affection. “No, I'm really not,” he said, still holding on
the the steering wheel with one hand, shaking with laughter, dabbing at his
eyes with his handkerchief. “Nauzubillah. I'm trying to ask you to marry my
daughter.”
                                     *****
Ting-tling-ling   the tiny bell on the glass and metal door tinkled. “Can I
help you,” asked an ebony skinned woman with large, honey-brown eyes, 'Xenia',
according to her plastic name tag.
“I hope so,” said Cordelia, just as politely, turning up the wattage on her
smile, tilting her head slightly, “I'm looking for someone who works here,
Xander Harris?”
  The woman looked doubtful. “I don't know anyone by that name,” she said after
a moment. Cordelia was not sure that she was telling the truth, but she also
wasn't sure that she wasn't. Either way, it was just a tad more evidence (on
top of the fact that almost a week of pretty steady observation by Aura and
various other cheerleader-leaders had turned up no sign of him) that Xander
really wasn't working here anymore. A new employee was not likely to know much
about a former employee unless he had been enough trouble that she didn't want
to get involved with anything to do with him. She'd just have to try Mr. Garth
one more time on the way to school and hope he picked-up, Cordelia thought as
she bought a pack of gum for an excuse to be there, already thinking about
checking her email.
While her money changed hands, Cordelia's fingers brushed against those of the
clerk for a moment. There was a sudden wave of... something. A jolt? A fever?
Something indescribably intense. Horrifying images flashed through Cordelia's
mind. Images of the clerk. As a child. As a victim. As... the opposite of that.
And as a vampire. Rushes and stills of idyllic and horrific scenes. Of simple
pleasures in rustic settings and of vile deeds done amidst disconcerting
opulence. Images of a bleak past and what she thought must be an even bleaker
future tangled together in Cordelia's head, all in period costumes that were
not at all right for the twentieth century or Southern California.
“Are you alright, Miss?” 'Xenia' asked worriedly, a dislocated moment later, as
Cordelia found that she was clinging to the sales counter to stay on her feet
and that her heart, which had been hammering, was just beginning to slow down.
Cordelia's scalp tingled. The patch of dry and flaky where a puddle of
iridescent demon ooze had gotten under her skin a couple of days earlier itched
like crazy. “I'm fine,” she mumbled distractedly, leaving the pack of gum on
the counter as she bolted for her car and hurried to school.
                                     *****
“Let me make sure I've understood you correctly,” Wesley repeated, clearly very
honestly shocked. He hadn't touched his shot of whiskey, though Heathcliff had
downed his in one gulp almost before the barmaid had set it down. “You want me
to marryyour thirteen-year-old daughter, in exchange for a couple of million
pounds worth of real estate, cash and annuities—which my fatherhas generously
agreed to provide, all untraceable to him of course—and to... to...” he dropped
his voice to a harsh whisper leaning in towards his companion, “to
consummatethis 'marriage' tonight? Here in London?” As unhappy as he had been
with the idea of marrying Aabirah, despite his having understood, within reason
that she was likely to be very young, that aspect of the situation hadn't
struck him quite so concretely until Amal had gotten involved.
“In Surrey,” Heathcliff corrected him bruskly, defensively, taking Wesley's
glass and draining it himself.
“Oh, well, then, in that case—” Wesley started to reply sarcastically.
“This is what needs to happen,” Heathcliff cut him off abruptly, angrily. “It
isn't as though I were turning cartwheels over it, you know. Aabirah needs
stability, continuity, companionship, family. She needs to be with people whom
she already knows and trusts who can reassure her that it's alright to trust
you. Some kind of half measure, some sham paper marriage is only going to make
everyone involved feel insecureas though none of this is real, especially Amal.
She needs to know that you've committed, that you can be depended upon not to
back out, and so does Malalai.”
“But surly—” Wesley tried to object again, “I give you my word as a Watcher—”
“I am entrusting you with virtually everything I own outside of England,”
Heathcliff cut him off sharply, keeping his voice low, “with the conduct of all
of my important business outside the Council, and with the livesof my wife, my
daughter, and my Potential Slayer!” His voice became lower still, and much,
much colder, “And I will not have you jeopardize my family by sending Aabirah
crying to her mother that whatever you want with her and Amal is some strange
thing other than marriage.” Wesley's mouth snapped shut. There was nothing he
could say. Unless he really was prepared to defy his father (and the Council)
and refuse the duty of his family's destiny—not to mention spending substantial
time in prison—he was well and truly stuck. And so were his two little brides.
Wesley almost ventured to ask why, if he was to do what was being asked of him,
should he not at least be allowed to do it in Morocco or Lahore, where it would
not have been unlawful, or at least would have been more difficult to prove so.
He didn't ask. Besides the feeling that it would be straining at gnats and
swallowing camels, that it would be an unmanly instance on his own safety
without regard to virtue, he suddenly knew the answer. He was meant to be well
and truly stuck. It wasn't Amal or her mother who felt they needed reassurance
of his level of commitment, or more accurately leverage to insure it. It was
the Council. It was his father.
***** Get Used to Disappointment *****
Chapter Summary
     As certain Watchers prepare for the secret wedding that will join two
     powerful Houses and (hopefully) solve a multitude of other problems
     in the process, the young bride tries to hold on the hope for the
     future, the Slayer and other important players have their own secrets
     and plans, Willow faces a shocking betrayal, and Hank and Mitzie are
     definitely not on a date.
Chapter Notes
     Part II: Missing and Exploited Children
London, U.K., Thursday, April 23, 1998
“Some ritual?” Hank repeated, astounded by Buffy's explanation of where her
husband had gone.
“Yeah,” Buffy confirmed, like it was the most normal thing in the world to say,
like she was irritated at him for expect more of an explanation. “And some
errands they had to do to get ready for it,” she added impatiently. “Peter came
in a cab and picked him up a few minutes ago. He said not to expect him for
dinner, that he'd be home late.” For a moment, Hank thought that she actually
did seem worried after all, but only for a moment. “Honestly,” Buffy added,
with steadfastly casual cheer, “Mom and I have some serious shopping to do this
afternoon, so it's probably just going to be you and Mitzie for while. Why
don't you take her out, show her the city.”
“Because we don't have that kind of relationship,” Hank snapped, losing his
temper a little. “I brought her here for work. Nothing more than that. The only
reason we are sharing a suite, even one this large and crowded—with your mother
I might add—is so she doesn't get killed by vampires! In fact, I'm putting her
on the first flight home after our meeting on Monday. Which is less than
twenty-four hours before she would have been going back all along!”
“No... I... of course...” Buffy stammered, embarrassed, “No, I didn't mean... I
mean I didn't really think....” she paused. “I didn't think,” she apologized
more firmly, “I'm sorry.” Then, after a beat, she added, “It still might be a
good idea to show her around. I doubt if she wants to be left alone right now,
and you know how you get if you stay cooped up for too long. Besides, we aren't
that far from Paris. I think I'd feel better if we all traveled in pairs from
now on. Safety in numbers.”
                                     *****
Amal sat alone on the bed in what she guessed was her grandparents' old
bedroom, staring out the window into the back garden. She folded her legs under
her and hugged a pillow to her chest, feeling sad and bored and scared, all at
the same time. And foolish for feeling all of the above. Her father hadn't even
been able to look at her when he'd told her to bring her things up here, not
with her mother standing there looking all stoic and disapproving. Everyone
else was one floor down, her parents in the guest room, her brothers in Dad and
Uncle Walter's old rooms. And here she was all by herself at the top of the
house in this huge master bedroom with it's en suite bath and big fireplace and
lovely view of the garden, nothing else up here but Grandfather Virgil's study
across the hall. It was the room her parents should have had, except that
tonight she was the one who needed it. For privacy. Privacy for having sex.
That was the expectation. Her father had made that one hundred percent clear
when he'd come upstairs to 'have a word with her' before bailing her intended
husband out of jail. The conversation had been frank and one-sided, but at
least it was an improvement over nobody talking to her at all. For the past
three days, everyone had been discussing her future as if she wasn't there. Her
father had told her mother that if she was going back to Afghanistan with this
'Wesley' person who was marrying Aabirah, then Amal would have to be married to
him too, and that was that. Even her mom hadn't actually asked her if that was
what she wanted to do, only argued that she shouldn't have to do it, then given
in and agreed that she was going to after all. And then the Big Talk from Dad.
Nothing along the lines of don't worry, everything will be alright. No, it was
a reprise of the 'this is what it means to be a Watcher' Talk she'd been
getting since she was eight, plus a little bit of added material about her
responsibility for Aabirah and the importance of continuing her studies in his
absence. Followed by instructions on how to 'handle' her new husband.
“According to Julian, he's terribly emotional,” her father had explained.
“Sentimental. And just a bit of a coward. We don't want him disappearing when
he gets off the plane in Morocco. And from what his father tells me, he's a
great deal less likely to run out on a person than a promise. He wants to be a
man of his word, but with a commitment this... difficult, it may take more than
words to bind him to the obligation, do you understand?” At first Amal had only
nodded. Honestly she'd assumed getting married would involve having sex, if not
today or tomorrow, certainly soon. Maybe sooner than she otherwise might have
liked. But her father was not content to leave it at that. “I need a little
more of answer than that,” he'd said, quite a bit more gently than he usually
spoke when instructing her on something Watcherly and important, almost
apologetically even. His tone rankled her somehow.
“You want me to fuck him,” she'd replied glibly, having a sudden,
uncharacteristic impulse to disconcert her father, or maybe to make him mad.
“So he'll feel too guilty to back out.”
For a moment her father had indeed seemed poised to respond with harsh words.
Then he had paused, nodded and pronounced very definitely, “And don't take no
for an answer.” And that was the end of the conversation. He'd stood up and
walked out. As far as he was concerned, she was ready to be married.
It was weird, knowing what was about to happen but still not really being able
to feel like it was definitely happening. Amal kept feeling like something
might change, some last minute twist of fate, and she might get back the life
she'd expected to have a week ago after all. The life she'd only ever talked
about with Aabirah, alone in their room at night. Going back to America. Going
to collage. Having a job that impressed people and made them listen to her.
Meeting someone. Falling in love with someone. Someone who was all hers. Which
was the one part of all of that that she knew for a fact Aabirah wanted too and
that it had seemed like even she might be able to have.
Things were different in Afghanistan than they were in St. Louis. Amal
understood that. And mostly it didn't bother her. Much. Or anyway it hadn't
until lately. Until things had started getting really bad. It wasn't that weird
for a man to have two wives, Amal tried to reason with herself. And at least it
meant she and Aabirah would never be alone, they'd be together. And plenty of
women she'd met from families like that seemed to love their husbands and each
other. But if you were talking about romance and the falling in kind of love,
it was hard to imagine anyone less likely to fall in love with than some guy
your parents had picked out for you sight unseen. Especially if he also
happened to be doing it—or at least eventually expecting to—with your best
friend. Or more accurately, your eleven year-old cousin.
                                     *****
“Ummm, are you kidding me? Eww(!)” Harmony proclaimed, gesturing in the general
direction of the flayed skins lying on the table in the basement apartment of
the two Triophiles their minions had just dusted.
“Harm,” Spike pointed out, irritatedly, “we are all walking around wearing dead
bodies already. Anyway, that's not the point. I don't think for a minute
they're planning to wear these. They'd just dry out and flake off, hardly
better than a blanket, never mind the smell. No, they wanted these to study
or... experiment on or something. And they've got more than one of their lot
gathering them up too.”
“Oh,” she said, smiling and shrugging. “Okay then. Do you want to go get
someone to eat?” She began walking back towards the sewer access tunnel their
victims had so generously maintained.
“Harm,” Spike all but growled. He was trying to be patient, he really was, but
did she have to be quite so bloody stupid? “Pet,” he added forcing a gentler
tone, “All of this means something. I need to talk it through with someone,
can't you just...” but how could he explain what he needed if it wasn't already
obvious? He never would have had to explain it to Drusilla. She had always just
been there, right there with him while he was figuring things out. She'd always
known exactly how to help. Even when she hadn't had a single buggering clue
what was going on around her, even when she'd been hallucinating or having
visions or whatever, at least she'd been there to listen. To bounce thoughts
off of, like a mirror, until he'd been able to see his own mind clearly. But
without revealing anything to anyone else. Someone who might betray him, might
have their own agenda, as most worthwhile minions usually did. She was like a
second self. Sometimes he needed that.
“Do you want me to go get Reggie?” Harmony offered cheerfully. “For you to talk
to about this icky skin stuff?”
Spike closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips to his temples, shaking his
head slightly. “Yeah,” he whispered bleakly, not that she seemed to notice, “go
do that.”
                                     *****
“I just can't,” Mitzie apologized. “It's too... Even if it is daylight, it's
not early. We could get stuck somewhere. I don't feel safe out there without
Buffy.”
Hank nodded. He understood. He really did. But he was restless. “Tell you
what,” he said. “Let's go downstairs and do the whole 'afternoon tea' thing.
Then we can have a couple of drinks and eventually dinner. We can make an
evening of it and never leave the hotel.”
“Alright,” Mitzie agreed nervously though (in a way that made Hank a bit
nervous) not at all hesitantly, “But at the first sign of trouble we high tail
it back to the suite.”
 “It's a deal,” Hank agreed, very deliberately extending his hand for her to
shake, in a 'this is not a date' sort of way. Which became an awkward,
ambiguous 'is this some kind of weird flirting after all' mess when he tried
for the full hand and she assumed the half and then they both switched in the
middle, each trying to accommodate the other. Great, now she was giggling. Hank
put his hands back in his pockets and tried not to look frustrated or mad, but
she made a disappointed face at him anyway. “My mother always said half
handshakes were for half people,” he not quite apologized. Mitzie didn't seem
quite sure how to take that. Even Hank wasn't exactly sure what he meant to
convey by saying exactly that now, but at least Mitzie wasn't still eying him
like she believed and hoped they might be on the verge of falling in love.
Oddly, Hank found that he didn't feel quite as pleased about that as he would
have thought, or would have liked.
                                     *****
“We're not really going shopping, are we?” Joyce finally asked, as they
switched subway trains for the third time, each previous train having taken
them to an increasingly seedy neighborhood.
“Nope,” Buffy answered laconically.
Joyce sighed and shook her head. “Just tell me we aren't going to Paris,” she
pleaded, only nine tenths jokingly.
“No, nothing quite that bad,” Buffy assured her smiling a little nervously. “I
just thought that while Giles is off with his Watcher pals doing whatever that
would give us a little quality mother daughter time to...” her causal tone
strained only a little but Joyce's trained ear picked it up and she readied
herself to follow that sentence wherever it was about to turn, “visit Ethan
Rayne at the address I got from a guy Grampa Wallace knows at Interpol and have
a chat with him about being on his best behavior now that the Council has said
they are going to hold Giles responsible for whatever he does?” Buffy smiled
more nervously still, in that guiltily innocent way of hers.
Shaking her head even more, Joyce gave her a look of grudgingly adoring
incredulity. Her, 'yep, that's my one and only Buffy' look. “By which you mean
you're going to physically intimidate and/or threaten to kill one of your
spouse's oldest friends in order to keep him out of trouble, hoping of course
that he never finds out about it,” she pointed out incisively. She didn't even
have to say, 'now where have I heard of something like that before.'
“I know what you're thinking,” Buffy complained/argued/admitted, “but this is
nothing like... what he did to Xander. It's not!” she insisted in the face of
Joyce's mildly amused, highly skeptical, vaguely censorious, slightly-raised-
eyebrow-including look. “In the first place, Ethan is evil. And they're not
even friend's anymore. And I'm worried about what Ethan is going to do
unilaterally, not what he's going to talk Giles into doing, so it's not a trust
issue at all, plus it's not a sex thing obviously, so... Oh, and, this is
something he might even ask me to do if it wasn't for the whole 'Guy Code:
fight my own battles' thing, so really all I'm doing is saving him
embarrassment by not mentioning something we both know needs to be done, so he
doesn't have to ask. It's just... polite like waiting for him to open the door
and letting him pay for stuff.”
Joyce didn't exactly say anything in response to that but her trying-to-be-a-
stern frown and her very slight eye roll, accompanied by the tell tale crossing
of the arms, made it perfectly clear what she wasn't saying. She also didn't
bother asking why Buffy had brought her along on this mission. Obviously she
was officiously rescuing her from having to spend the evening alone with Hank
and Mitzie. As if the three of them couldn't manages to be civilized for one
evening... which after the hours they had spent together on the plane and given
the stressful state they were just relaxing into post mortal terror, might
actually be true. She also didn't bring up any of the things she wasn't telling
Buffy that were at least as important as anything Buffy wasn't telling Giles.
Instead of any of that, she made a show of examining the subway map on the wall
of the train as an excuse to turn her face away and avoid scrutiny. “Is that
our stop coming up next?” she asked ingenuously, knowing perfectly well that it
was.
The two women exited the train at the next station, 'minding the gap' as they
were incessantly instructed, and walked up the street. Buffy pulled a scrap of
paper from her coat pocket, looked at it and found the right building pretty
quickly. “Now this guy can do actual magic she warned, plus he's a Grade A
creep, so stick close to me and follow my lead.” Joyce nodded and follow Buffy
into the building and up a flight of stairs. “Stand back,” Buffy warned and
positioned herself to kick in the door. Even with the advanced notice, Joyce
winced and maybe even jumped a little as the lock snapped and the door crashed
inward. Buffy leapt through the doorway without a moment's hesitation.
Ethan Rayne sat at the tiny counter between the living room part and the
kitchen part of the room, sipping a cup of tea. “Oh Bugger,” he cursed in what
sounded like only moderate annoyance, getting to his feet. He was wearing a
black and silver silk robe that fell only to mid thigh and was belted loosely
around the waist, showing most of his cleanly waxed legs and chest.
“Seriously?” Buffy asked of no one in particular. Then she got a much bigger
shock than the extent of Ethan's vanity. With a blurred hand gesture and a
mumbled incantation, the chaos mage flickered once like a hologram in a sci-fi
movie and disappeared.
                                     *****
No, it can't be, Willow found herself thinking yet again. Eighteen weeks? But
yet again she realized that, no, actually maybe it could. Because, if she had
been right all along about the time ratios of her sleep spell, considering all
the sleeping she'd been doing... but no, she did a little quick math and even
her most liberal estimations could only get her up to about ten weeks. There
would have had to have been something else in the mix, something that would
have more or less doubled the rate of her gestational development relative to
the already rapid pace at which she was living her life. Some kind of
magical... well... something from somewhere. But the only remotely magical
person with whom she had had any contact in the last week was—
The door to the hospital room opened. “Blessed be!” Ms. Waddle chirped,
disconcertingly looking and sounding everything and nothing like Sheila
Rosenberg. Then her smile froze on her face in a way that seemed much more
appropriate to the mask she wore. There was deep and sudden apprehension in her
eyes and the sing song warble of her voice faltered at little as she took in
Willow's angry, horrified expression. “Aren't you... feeling well dear?” she
asked very, very nervously indeed.
“Gee, 'Mom',” Willow nearly spat at her bitterly, “I feel just fine. I mean,
why wouldn't I. I mean, you know, other than the fact that I'm suddenly almost
five months pregnant?”
They were alone in the room for the moment. Seeming to steel her resolve, Ms.
Waddle closed the door. “You're angry,” she stated the obvious. “So why don't
you tell me... how you're seeing this and we'll work on how to get past it.”
 “Get past it?” Willow demanded. “You tricked me into eating those crackers,
which nearly killed me, and now I'm so pregnant that the hospital says it's
'against their policy' to do an 'elective' abortion.  Elective!  Like I wanted
any of this! Now I have to go to some place in L.A. apparently for a D&E,  if
I can even get an appointment in time, and  if  I can get JDC to arrange to
transport!!! Which will probably never happen fast enough because I'll be
another month pregnant next week, so I'll probably just get there and be told I
have to reschedule for a D&X, which they won't be able to do by the time they
get to it either!!! Which means basically, you're forcing me to have a baby I
don't want and I might just starve to death in the process!!! So that's 'how I
see it'; you tell me, how do we 'get past it'!?!”
“Willow,” Ms. Waddle remonstrated, in a please-believe-me kind of voice, “I can
see why you might think that, but the crackers where just charmed to help with
sleep and nutrition. If I had known—I had no idea there was a chance you might
be pregnant, but yes, the interaction of my charm and your spell does seem to
have had... unfortunate results. Still, there are worse states than motherhood
for developing one's powers as a witch,” she tried to force a segue, to get off
the subject of abortion, “and the Coven is here fo—”
“You know what?” Willow cut her off abruptly, “I don't believe you! Listen to
yourself; you're happy about this! Are you crazy? I'm seventeen! I don't want
to be a mother! And anyways I already have a huge family of rats to take care
of, and my Mom! My real Mom. Who by the way would never let something like this
happen to me in a million years! I mean, how dare you! How Dare You!!”
Willow paused, taking deep, anger controlling breaths. Ms. Waddle wanted to
respond but honestly didn't dare. For a moment, Ms. Waddle thought she heard a
low, slowly building rumble of thunder as Willow shouted, “We are putting a
stop to this!!! You are going to go home to your Coven and find me a spell to
make it so this never happened!!! Tonight!!! And don't even think of coming
back here without it!!! NOW, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY ROOM!!!!!!”
                                     *****
“We buried Quentin today,” Andrew said matter-of-factly at last. Emma still
didn't look up. She lay on her side in the hospital bed facing the wall.
“Graham's set to be buried tomorrow.” No response. “I know you're already aware
of that,” he went on. “Oliver told me that much.”
Emma turned to face him at last. “You talked to Oliver?” she said skeptically.
Then, with a snort of derisive laughter, turning back toward the wall, “he must
be getting truly desperate.”
“He is,” Andrew said calmly. “He thinks you'll be dead in a week the rate
you're going. I think less if you keep 'forgetting' how much medication you've
taken.”
“And why would talking to you make me want to live?” Emma asked, sounding both
worn out and annoyed.
“No reason I can think of,” Andrew admitted, his tone as cordial, as nearly
indifferent as before, but somehow not quite as convincing. “But if you're
going to die, it seems to me we have one or two things to talk about before you
go.”
“What is there to say?” Emma asked the wall.
“I'm sorry,” he said, “that it's been so hard for you. I'm sorry for the things
you've had to live with, because I do know what it's like, you know. And I'm
sorry that you lost your son.” He did not apologize, Emma noticed for
blackmailing her. Or Quentin.
“I don't suppose you'll be seeing much of Rupert anymore,” she observed coolly.
“Well I'd say that's my mess to sort out,” Andrew reminded her.
“Quentin,” she said, changing the subject, but sounding so pained, so genuinely
needing to know, that he could hardly fault her for it, “was he... how did the
funeral go?”
“Closed casket, of course,” Andrew said grimly. “They did shoot him in the head
you know. Peter and Gale bore it all reasonably well. No one is letting on
about Michael,” he added. “So at least he wasn't publicly disgraced. Patrick
Bell gave the Eulogy, though he despised him of course. Made him out to be the
newest saint in heaven.”
“In perfect Travers tradition then,” Emma said with a small bleak smile,
“Canonized in public and damned behind closed doors.” There was silence for a
moment. Andrew wondered if he should go. He was beginning to doubt this mission
had a point of any kind. It was all so long ago. But as he searched Mrs.
Dunstan's face, he caught a glimpse of Emma, hiding there, peaking out at him.
So long ago and yet.... “Poor Quentin,” Emma said, sounding as calm and
resigned as her companion now. “He hadn't a chance you know.”
Andrew smiled sardonically. “Still it did give us a chance to practice our
abominable parenting. Else we might not have perfected it so quickly.”
“Might have accidentally gotten a thing or two right,” Emma agreed, taking up
the thread of his black humor, still sounding well to the grim side of even the
bleakest amusement.
“Look,” Andrew said, his falsely light tone belying serious concern, “You've
got to sort yourself out, Emma. The Council's a mess, and you know Oliver can't
decide what to have for lunch without someone to hold his hand and tell him
what he thinks. We need you.”
“I suppose it is a bit late for a suicide pact,” Emma admitted, more or less
conversationally. “Back then it've been romantic. Now it'd just be silly.”
“Nothing we did was ever romantic,” Andrew pointed out, “And you'll notice you
don't her me volunteering.”
“What do you want from me?” Emma asked.
“What? I've told you,” Andrew insisted “The Council—”
“I mean besides your rather unconvincing bid to persuade me that I'm
indispensable,” Emma clarified tiredly. “What did you want to talk about before
I go?”
Andrew let out a frustrated sigh. This was how she was playing it. Stubborn
thing that she had always been. She might change her own mind, but he certainly
couldn't change it. Whatever he wanted to know, he had best ask. “I want to
know where my daughter is buried.”
Emma smiled at the wall, an ugly little smile. “I suppose there are other
people in the world who want that,” she replied sardonically.
“I suppose there are,” he agreed, his own tone stiffening a bit, not so much
friendly as polite now. “But I think we both know the complications involved in
that. Anyway, it doesn't change anything between us, does it?”
Silence reigned for a long moment. Andrew feared his audience was at an end. He
wondered again if he should just leave, but he honestly felt he needed to know.
“Father took her,” Emma said at last. “He took her body away from me and told
me to take a bath and go back to bed. I never asked him what he did with her. I
tried to ask him then what he was going to do, but he just kept saying, 'Don't
worry, it's alright.' Well it's been fifty-seven years and let me tell you, My
Dear, it is not alright!”
                                     *****
Finally, after she'd been sitting there alone for what seemed like forever,
Amal's mother knocked once and then came in without waiting for an invitation.
“Hi,” Amal said, putting her pillow down, trying to smile. This was it. The
other Big Talk. Malalai smiled back weakly, sadly and sat down next to her on
the bed, not making eye contact. Amal felt a sudden stab of anger. She wished
everyone would stop acting like they were sending her to her death. This was
supposed to be her wedding day, not a virgin sacrifice. “What am I going to
wear?” she asked, suddenly worried. When her cousin Fatima had gotten married
last month, she'd had a three day party with a different beautiful dress each
day and so much attention and presents that Amal had been jealous. Everyone had
kept telling her, 'you'll get your turn', but now she guessed she wouldn't
after all. Just one more item in the 'never' column.
“The blue dress you wore to the funeral will be fine,” Malalai said,
dismissively, “We'll lighten it up with a couple of pretty scarves. I wanted to
talk to you about something more important.” Still with the sad-serious voice,
and heavy looks. Fatima was only a year older than Amal, but she was fifteen,
because her birthday was sooner. Everyone had been happy for her. No one had
acted like they were doing anything wrong. Of course, she'd known her new
husband since God made dirt. And he was only nineteen.
“About... being married?” Amal prompted, wriggling uncomfortably, impatient for
the conversation to progress and to be over with.
“In a way,” Malalai admitted. “But also about... being strong in your faith. I
don't know, what your father has told you about The Council, about what it
means to be a Watcher.”
“Nothing,” Amal said with frustration she found it very easy to fake. “Less
than nothing. Just... someday you'll need to know important secrets. That kind
of thing.” Normally she wasn't a good liar, but this was an easy lie. It was
important. And her mother wouldn't understand. Besides, she had plenty to be
frustrated about. Plenty of things she wished it was possible to know. About
the future. Both futures, actually. The one she was about to have and the one
she wasn't.
“I don't know much about it myself,” Malalai admitted, “Expect that clearly
they are right about … vampires and demons walking the Earth, and also about
Aabirah. She is very special. But, I worry for you both, and for your brothers.
I worry what it is they mean to teach you. Just know this. Wherever this path
in life takes you. Whatever... secrets and mysteries you discover, nothing is
more important than your walk with God. Don't ever let anyone turn you from
that, not your husband, not your father, no one.”
Amal waited for her to continue. “Is that it?” she demanded when it didn't seem
like it was going to happen. “Is that all you have to say to me; be close to
God? I'm getting married in four or five hours to a man I've never met! You're
walking around acting like it's a fate worse than death, and I'm not even
supposed to have an opinion! I don't even get a new dress, and you're just...
telling me stuff I already know! I want you to tell me, I don't know, what to
expect!”
“Amal,” Malalai said her voice tight with impatience, looking down at her own
hands, embarrassed and maybe a little angry herself. “We've talked about sex
before...”
“We talked about body parts,” Amal corrected her, just as impatiently. “And
menstruation and ovulation and, and two dozen words on what goes where! But
not—What if he doesn't know what he's doing, or doesn't care? How do I know
what to do? What if it's awful? What if he's ugly or mean or hates me or it
hurts!?! And, maybeI wanted to be a doctor or fall in love or at least finish
school! But now I can't! And you don't care! You're just worried I'm going to
learn some secret anti-vampire whatsit and decide I'm not a Muslim anymore!”
There was silence for a moment. “I can give you something to take afterwords,
so that you won't become pregnant,” Malalai said finally. “But as for... the
rest of it? You are old enough, physically, if not by so much—I worry more
about Aabirah, which is something I suppose one of us is going to have to
discuss with him, but—sex should not usually be painful. Even the first time,
only very slightly. But it sometimes is if the man is not patient and careful.
I wish I could tell you.... There are some men, like you father, who are
naturally very considerate and some with whom you have to insist. I say this to
my patients all the time. Don't ever let a man, not your husband, not anyone
press you to do anything you're not ready for. You have to be strong, stand up
for yourself. Which doesn't mean that you have to challenge his authority. But
don't ever let a man hurt you. You have to be firm with them without...
insulting their egos. You have to be subtle, and yet, act always with
integrity. You have to both earn and demand respect in this life Alam, every
woman does.”
Amal nodded, swallowing hard. Translation? 'That's your problem, deal with it.'
“Well,” she said after a while, trying again to smile, trying to make herself
feel better and to maybe apologize to her mom a little for loosing her temper,
“Maybe I will fall in love with my husband. The name is a good sign, anyway,”
she added, sort of half joking and half hopefully.
Malalai gave her The Look. Ultra composed/dignified, hooded eyes, lips pressed
tight together. Amal didn't let herself sigh or roll her eyes, but her heart
sank and she couldn't help showing it. All American movies were unIslamic, of
course. Even though they had been fine in St. Louis. Even though her Muslim
grandmother had bought her a million of them on VHS to watch over and over and
her mom had never objected once. Everything was unIslamic now. Madhubala was
'unIslamic'. Welcome to the New Afghanistan. That's your problem. Deal with it.
 
***** The Name of the Rose *****
Chapter Summary
     As Buffy and Joyce make shocking discoveries in Ethan's London
     apartment, Giles shocks Wesley even more with his advice about
     destiny, fate, and what Watchers have always done to teenage girls.
     Giles thinks he's done being shocked, but he has yet to see all that
     London and The Council have in store.
“What, exactly, are we looking for?” Joyce asked tiredly as she browsed through
shelves full of thick, ancient-looking, leather-bound books with names like
'The Dodecanomicon' and 'La Mort du Roi de l'Enfer'.
“I don't know,” Buffy admitted. “But he's obviously coming back. He wouldn't
have left all of this stuff so easily otherwise. Or if he thought he didn't
have a choice, he'd have been more pissed about it. And he'd have at least
tried bluffing and trickery first. He's too full of himself to just assume I
would see through him and kick his ass. He's up to something, and before he
does come back, I'd like to try and figure out what.”
“It'll be getting dark soon,” Joyce pointed out.
Buffy less-than-shrugged. “This is still his place,” she said. “No vamps are
going to come in here unless he literally invites them himself, and as creepy
as he is, I still doubt he hangs out with vampires. I mean, he's evil, not
stupid.” Joyce raised an eyebrow. “What?” Buffy asked, honestly puzzled.
“That's an interesting statue,” Joyce said tactfully, approaching the first
striking object upon which her eye alighted. And it was. It was a classically
derived figure of Zeus (sporting a huge, erect penis, as was common in certain
time periods) shamelessly fondling a very happy-looking young Ganymede. They
were carved in unvarnished walnut, with accents painted over in bronze. Not
exactly as they might have been in an particular epoch of ancient Greek
history, but with a definite feel of pre-industrial mass artisanship, of an
inexpensive, everyday household icon.
The thirteen inch high figure sat, not on the mantel, nor one of the
bookshelves, but on a tiny, round marble table that looked opulent and out of
place in what was not quite the middle of the otherwise swank-less room, nor
quite tucked in a corner either. As if it's placement hadn't done enough to
reinforce the idea that this was an object of actual religious significance, it
shared the table with a smaller figure in clear blue glass, who had to be
either Leda or Nemesis, complete with swan. Between the two statuettes stood a
pair of once matching black and gold candles. One was burned to a charred wick
in a congealed puddle; the other appeared untouched. Joyce ran a fingertip
lightly over each double figure. The contrast between the two—masculine and
feminine, light and dark, color and neutral, pastoral and industrial, grainy as
life and smooth as fantasy—seemed deeply significant to her critically trained
eye, but the exact significance of the arrangement eluded her.
“Is that bird doing what I think it's doing?” Buffy asked, now standing at her
mother's elbow.
“Yes, Dear,” Joyce admitted, nodding embarrassedly, even blushing a bit. She
was as embarrassed by the fact of being embarrassed as anything else. Despite
herself, comfortable as she usually was with classical depictions of sexuality,
Joyce felt distinctly uncomfortable being asked exactly that question by Buffy.
Especially in that casually disapproving, quintessentially teenaged tone,
complete with squirmyness and nose crinkling.
“Jeepers,” Buffy said, as if to underscore the point that she wasn't mature
enough to appreciate this kind of art for what it was, “She's worse than the
other one was.” That this (understandably) childish reaction was coming from a
married, sexually active person (who was still her teenaged daughter) made
Joyce all the more uncomfortable. She wondered again if she'd made a good
decision or a cowardly one, letting Buffy marry so young. Especially to someone
whose experience of the world (in all its deep, dark shades of gray) was
clearly so very far beyond what her own limited experience could even begin to
comprehend. But that was like worrying how much water was in the pool after
you'd already jumped off the high dive. Or after you'd been pushed.
Joyce sighed. Even the gods don't fight against Anenke.“These are classic
depictions of Zeus and his … uhm, 'amorous conquests'," she explained. “Turning
into a swan was one of his go-to moves.”
“Eww,” Buffy chirped. “Note to self,allreligions freaky. Since always.”
“Displayed the way they are, with the candles...” Joyce went on, trying to keep
the conversation productive.
“This is his alter,” Buffy concluded firmly. “This has to do with whatever
magic, Ethan is up to. Magic is what happens when your gods actually listen to
you, apparently,” she explained matter-of-factly. “Unlike regular religion.”
“This is important,” Joyce agreed. “So what do we do now?”
This time Buffy's face crinkling was sheepish, apologetic as she explained, “I
think this might be the part where we have too look stuff up.” Nodding and
sighing, Joyce walked back over to the bookshelf and resumed reading the spines
of the volumes, looking for titles related to Greek or Roman myth, religion,
and history.
                                     ~~~~~
“I do believe this has got to be the single dullest stag night in the history
of mankind,” Peter tried to joke. The four Watchers had been sitting in grim
silence around a tiny pub table for far too long. He and Giles had brought the
contract, real estate deeds and other documents that Julian and Heathcliff had
asked them to pick up, but they were all still waiting for the agent who'd been
sent to obtain Wesley's first set of false travel documents to make contact.
“Hilarious,” Wesley snarled, and went back to sipping at a cup of black coffee
with a hangdog look, not appreciating his companion’s attempt at levity in the
slightest.
“Oh for God's sake,” Giles snapped, swallowing his fourth shot of Scotch in
half as many hours, more annoyed than ever. “Would you stop... carrying on as
if you were set to be hanged?” His hip was killing him. And besides which, he
thought it was awfully self-centered of Wesley not to at least try to be
considerate of Peter's feelings on today of all days. He had just buried his
murdered father, after all.
“Here, here,” Heathcliff agreed, raising his glass of water in mock salute.
“Should you be drinking that with your pain medication?” Wesley asked sourly.
“Humph,” Giles scoffed. “That rubbish they gave me at the hospital? Hyrocodone
(!) Might as well be aspirin. I've been taking twice what the doctor prescribed
and it isn't doing a goddamned thing.”
“Why didn't you tell them you had a tolerance?” Wesley countered.
“Because if they'd gotten wind of my 'history',” Giles explained impatiently,
“they really would have sent me home with aspirin. High-handed bastards.”
“Thinking you'd rather have some of Mr. Gaudencio's 'Asian antiquities', Peter
teased, mildly sardonic.
“Don't tempt me,” Giles grumbled dryly.
“Don't worry, I shan't,” said Heathcliff crisply. The look on Wesley's face was
acutely puzzled. He looked torn between enduring ignorance in silence and
speaking at the risk of proving himself a fool. Giles rolled his eyes. He was
tempted to enlighten the poor bastard, but then, he supposed Heathcliff could
have done that himself if that was what he'd intended. Besides, if Julian's son
was this down in the mouth over marrying a couple of young Asian girls, there
was no telling how he'd react to the news that the Council had arranged his
entry into a lucrative career as a heroin smuggler. Giles thought he might just
as well not be around to see the poor dear in tears. It'd be too embarrassing.
“In fact,” Gaudencio continued, still addressing Giles, “I wish you'd lay off
that stuff. You're already two shots ahead of me and Peter.” Wesley evidently
wasn't drinking this evening. Giles thought maybe he should be. It might
improve his disposition. On some level, Giles knew he was being a bit unfair to
the young man, mostly because he really was still in agonizing pain.
If he were being fair, Giles would have had to admit that at times in his life
he'd been at least as resentful and self-pitying as Wesley, even at times when
the Council had asked quite a bit less of him. After all, the whole concept of
a Watcher being allowed, let alone required, to have an intimate relationship
with his Potential Slayer was still new, still alien and horrifying to a lot of
people. Besides, he supposed any man had the right to resent being asked to
violate his conscious, his better judgment, and the odd fourteen year-old
Muslim virgin. But did he have to be so... dramatic about it? After all, it
wasn't as though anyone were being killed on this particular occasion.
When Peter went to the loo and Heathcliff stepped outside to take what must
have been a very private call indeed on his mobile, Giles finally decided to
see if there was anything he could do to help the poor fellow sort himself out.
“Look, I know we've hardly met more than to nod,” he half apologized, “and so
this may be none of my business...”
“Quite probably,” Wesley agreed tersely.
“But,” Giles continued undeterred. “I can't help noticing that you are
completely fucking miserable. Which is a condition I dare say I've had a bit of
experience in trying to avoid. Maybe I can help.”
“There's nothing for it,” Wesley answered sullenly. “Go on and have another
drink.”
“Well,” Giles persisted, “but what is it precisely that bothers you so very
much about this situation.”
“I'm expected to marry a thirteen-year-old girl whom I've never met,” Wesley
pointed out. “Tonight! I hardly think it's cause for celebration.”
“Yes, I realize that,” Giles probed, “but can you tell me why exactly that's
such a problem for you?”
“Well I certainly wouldn't expectyou to understand,” Wesley huffed, “But it so
happens that I'm not particularly attracted to children.”
Giles tried not to lose patience but it was difficult. “Nor am I,” he pointed
out, “but that's hardly the point, is it? She is fourteen or near enough, which
means she's bound to have more or less the right bits in the right places and
all the right hormones and what have you to give and receive an adequate sexual
response. Besides, I don't believe for a moment that you'd react this way if
you were merely being asked to marry someone you found unattractive. You'd
be... complaining, disparaging her perhaps, but this is different. I damn well
know guilt when I see it. So, you tell me, what do you feel guilty about?”
“What do I feel guilty about?!” Wesley was incredulous. Lowering his voice, he
hissed vehemently, “It's tantamount to rape!”
“How so?” Giles asked keeping his voice and features bland. Impassive.
“She hasn't even been given a choice!” Wesley bleated, nearly beside himself.
“Not that she could be reasonably expected to make her own choice at this age.
Especially knowing how strongly her father feels about it.”
“Well then,” Giles advised, keeping his voice even and businesslike, as if he
were perfectly serious, “If you feel that way about it, don't do it.”
Wesley shook his head in angry frustration. “It's not that simple,” he
objected. “I've been assigned.”
“So?”
“So!?!” Wesley nearly choked, “I can't defy the Council!”
“Why not?”
“Because it's the Council!” Wesley all but wailed. “Because—!” Suddenly
remembering to drop his voice again, he rasped urgently, a stifled whine of
petulance edging his voice, still struggling to be heard, “Because my own
father would disown me and the lot of them would have my hide!”
“And why would they do that?” Giles followed up, feigning the barest hint of
puzzlement, his voice otherwise mild, affable.
“Because they have—!” Wesley stopped abruptly, shaking his head. “Ha. Ha.” he
said dryly, bitterly. “How very clever. Well now, I certainly see the error of
my ways(!) Thank you for showing me the light, oh Wise Elder.”
“Why?” Giles persisted, his voice suddenly hard and sharp.
“Because there's no other way to get at this Potential Slayer,” Wesley admitted
crossly, “Because if she's called and we're not there to guide her, it might
literally be the end of the world, alright?”
“So why are you doing this?” Giles demanded. “And don't tell me you fear
punishment. Being Stricken and turned lose in the world with nothing but a
first rate education and your wits would be a relief compared to what you're
putting yourself through, and you know damn well Julian isn't going to let them
throw you in prison just for spite. Why are you doing it? Why didn't you tell
them to get stuffed?”
“Did you not actually catch the bit about the end of the world?” Wesley snipped
like the galling little priss that he was.
“So then, the real reason you're doing this is because you believe it is
necessary and important,” Giles pointed out firmly. “Because you think it's the
right thing to do, or at any rate, that it would be more wrong not to.”
“I suppose that's true,” Wesley admitted grudgingly.
“Which means there is absolutely no chance that you aren't going through with
it.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Then what exactly, might I ask, do you hope to gain by racking yourself with
guilt?”
Wesley sighed deeply, becoming all the more frustrated. “I don't hope togain
anything,” he explained.
“Well then you are a bloody fool,” Giles opined, “beating yourself up to no
purpose. It's not going to do her any good either, and that is experience I
have to admit. The last thing you want is to let your guilt make her feel like
a victim.”
“But she is a victim,” Wesley pointed out stubbornly.
“Says who?” Giles challenged. “Young girls have been getting married and
shagged and everything in between since God first made young girls. It may not
be the safest and healthiest practice on Earth but then, neither is slaying
vampires.”
“It's not even so much the... sex,” Wesley finally admitted, practically
blushing as he said the word, “though I think I could manage the rest a lot
easier if it wasn't for that.” Giles relaxed a little and leaned in at the same
time. At last they were getting somewhere. He let Wesley keep talking, keep
articulating the problem. “It's more... the whole business,” Wesley tried to
explain. Giles nodded thoughtfully and just a bit encouragingly. He could see
that Peter had left the loo and crossed to the bar to get more drinks, which
might take a few more minutes because there was a bit of a rush at the moment.
Good. He hoped Heathcliff would be similarly detained. They would only get in
the way at this point. “What I mean is, it's so unfair to her to have to
sacrifice her ability to choose the life she wants to have, the... partner she
might someday want to have, at this age just because it's—”
“—her destiny?” Giles finished dryly.
“For Aabirah, maybe,” Wesley admitted, “but Amal—”
“Is a Watcher,” Giles concluded firmly. Candidate was the technical term, but
Wesley wisely chose not to quibble over that.
“But she's still so young,” he objected instead, not quite ready to concede the
point.
“And how old were you,” Giles asked him pointedly, “when someone else toldyou
what you were going to be when you grew up.”
“I hardly think—”
“How old?”
Wesley looked down at his coffee cup a moment, then raised his head and met the
other man's eyes. “I was eleven years old,” he answered. It sounded very much
like a confession. To some extent, it seemed to unburden him in the same way,
and yet, it also laid bare the truth of how burdened he still was. “It was a
cruel shock.” the young Watcher all but whispered. “Sometimes I still feel...
I'm proud to be a Watcher, I don't mean to say otherwise, but... I feel...”
“Trapped,” Giles guessed, from his own experience.
“Angry,” Wesley countered in a slightly awed tone, a tone of sudden
realization. “Sometimes I just wish I was free to... well not so much to do
what I want as to... figure out what I want. To be... allowed to want what I
want. And I... Good Lord, I don't want to be responsible for putting someone
else in that position!”
“But you're not responsible,” Giles pointed out. “She's Gaudencio's daughter.
Even if she were staying in England, she'd be enrolling at Walsington this
Fall. She's one of us, for better and for worse, whether you marry her or not.
You can't change that by jeopardizing The Mission. And you certainly can't by
feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I know that,” Wesley admitted, still frustrated, though noticeably less down
in the dumps.
“So then, have a drink,” Giles advised. “One isn't going to kill you. Try and
relax. Hell why not celebrate a bit? You've just gotten an exiting, lucrative,
vitally important field assignment. And from the sheer size and utter
disproportion of the 'gifts' Heathcliff and Julian are providing to be
exchanged, it's clear they see this as a great deal more than providing an
adequate cover. There is an actual, substantial transfer of wealth from the
House of Hippolytus to the House of Gaudencio taking place. This despite the
fact that, from the point of view of the Council as a whole, you're the one
providing a service at Gaudencio's request.”
“Which means my father is basically buying me a wife from the very best stock,”
Wesley pointed out, threatening to laps into his previous, despairing tone
again.
“Which means,” Giles countered, “Julian and Heathcliff have their own ends in
mind, quite apart from and in addition to protecting the world from the Forces
of Darkness.”
“They're breeding us like horses,” Wesley agreed morosely
Giles sighed in exasperation. “They're cementing an alliance,” he clarified,
“Forming a bloc. Do year realize that thirty or forty years out you're being
set up to become First Among Equals with the strongest power-base that anyone
in the history of the Council has ever had? Two Hippolyton votes plus
Gaudencio's means a standing veto to anything. Your father must think quite a
lot of your talents to want to put you in a position like that.”
“Really,” Wesley murmured in a tone of sheer amazement. “I hadn't looked at it
like that,” he admitted.
“As for the rest of it,” Giles advised, “Don't be too hard on yourself or too
sorry for yourself either. It's quite possible that neither your life nor
anyone else's will be completely ruined by all this.”
“Completely ruined or not, they'll certainly be worse than they might have been
otherwise,” Wesley opined. “Mine, hers and probably the other one's as well.”
Giles shrugged. “Life has a way of being both better and worse than you expect,
no matter what you do,” he countered philosophically. “This girl, Amal, if your
going to do what your going to do with her, you've got to make her feel okay
about it; the sex, the being stuck with each other, all of it. Anyone deserves
at least that much. Fortunately, it shouldn't be too difficult.”
Wesley's brow furrowed. “And how is that?”
“Because she's a good, sweet, obedient young girl who's been brought up to
believe in fate,” Giles explained patiently, “and even if she wasn't, this is
really her only chance at love or happiness for the foreseeable future. She's
bound to be looking to like. Honestly, all you have to do is be kind to her and
she'll probably fall madly in love.”
“But what if she isn't,” Wesley worried. “Looking to like, I mean.”
“Well then,” Giles advised, “approach her the way you would a Slayer.”
“I think you and I might have different views of what that entails,” Wesley
replied primly.
“Imean,” Giles clarified, “make her feel that what she's being call upon to do
is right and important no matter how strange or frightening it might at first
seem. That it's what she herself would choose if she were being given a choice,
or better still that she is choosing it though (considering her righteousness,
courage, and wisdom) you have absolutely no doubt what her choice will be.
Honestly, aren't they covering cold approaches in Training anymore?”
“Cold in the sense of without preparation,” Wesley answered haughtily, “What
you're suggesting is cold in an altogether different sense.”
“Yes,” Giles agreed drily. “I'm suggesting that you callously manipulate a
young girl into accepting a destiny not of her own choosing by helping her to
feel both honored and obligated to do the best she can with it. Or don't you
know what it means to be a Watcher?”
Wesley was clearly shocked, his dignity blistered. “Being a Watcher does not
mean... taking advantage of young girls,” he began to argue. “It means—”
“Hell it doesn't,” Rupert argued back just as stubbornly, having half forgotten
why he'd started this conversation in the first place, feeling the effects of
his self-adjusted mixture of opiates and alcohol at last. “That's all we bloody
do is take advantage. Steal their power. Use them as tools, use them as cannon
fodder. And I don't just mean Slayers either. That's what we do with our
children, our eager little 'Candidates'. Always has been. Why should this girl
be any different?
“It isn't as though you'll have to lie to her either. Little as she's bound to
have seen of the world, you can probably sweep her off her feet with a line
like 'my don't you have nice eyes.' Honestly, half the reason this is illegal
is because it's too easy. Like shooting birds on the ground. Unsporting. Bloody
hell, when she sees you she'll probably think she's won the lottery anyhow.”
Wesley’s genuinely puzzled look was excruciating to behold. Giles rolled his
eyes. “I assume you can, see in a mirror?” he inquired sardonically. “I don't
need to check your pulse, do I?”
“I'm afraid I've quite lost the thread of what you're saying,” Wesley insisted
honestly seeming both baffled and annoyed.
“For the Love of Christ!” Giles more or less chided him, still not quite able
to believe such obliviousness, “Are you telling me that it has entirely escaped
your notice that you are one of the most attractive men in all of England and
quite possibly the world? My God, I'm surprised you can walk down the street
without someone trying to take a bite out of you!”
Peter appeared as if out of nowhere, laughing nervously. “Am I interrupting
something?” he quipped. “Because if you two want to be alone I could just...”
If that remark had been meant to lighten the suddenly tense atmosphere, it
didn't. Quite the opposite.
Rupert could feel his face flush. He had to avert his eyes as Wesley's
expression shifted from stunned blinking to horrified disgust edged very
slightly with contempt and embarrassment. He felt as much a fool for blushing
as for anything he'd said. Anyone with eyes could see that Wesley was a
handsome, well-formed man. And the circumstances of the conversation might
easily have justified pointing out that fact quite emphatically. If only he
hadn't reacted as though he'd been caught at something.
Which he hadn't. No matter how much he might feel that way. The feeling was
irrational, Rupert reminded himself firmly. The bastard child of anachronistic
prejudices and bad memories. Nevertheless, he found himself dangling his
glasses from one hand with exaggerated nonchalance while he rubbed his temples
with the other, over emphasizing his relatively mild headache as an excuse to
partly hide his face an completely cut off conversation. Without another word,
Peter sat the drinks he'd procured on the table; black coffee for Rupert and
Scotch whiskey for Wesley, though they'd requested the opposite.
Conditionally resenting what was either a poor joke or a sincere judgment that
was probably right for the wrong reasons, Rupert sipped the coffee. Shrugging,
affecting a sort of recklessly cheerful resignation, Wesley raised his glass.
“To fate!” he declared, sounding very much like a man amused to find himself in
the absurdest of all possible predicaments.
“And all she holds in store,” Peter agreed, raising his own glass.
“For better and for worse,” Rupert murmured, unable to suppress a small smirk
as he went on sipping his coffee.
“Mr. Giles,” Gaudencio said firmly, almost grimly, walking back into the pub,
approaching but stopping well short of the table. “Might I have a word with you
outside? There's been a change of plan,” he added to Wesley and Peter. "My son
David will be coming to collect you and bringing your documents. Rupert and I
will meet you at the house later.”
“What is it?” Giles asked worriedly when they were out of earshot as Gaudencio
clearly intended. He felt himself sobering slightly already. Their was a
heaviness to the air that told him that might be important, that he needed to
keep his wits about him.
“We're going out to an airfield near Reigate,” Heathcliff informed him grimly.
“to one of the hangers to which I deliver my 'antiquities'. Your old friend
Weatherby is meeting us there.”
“Bloody hell,” Rupert mumbled, somewhere between shocked and disgruntled.
Anything Weatherby was mixed up in had to be nothing good. Besides, he and
Giles were the last two survivors of the old Travers Set still working for the
Council, now that Quentin was gone and Gwendolyn nowhere to be found.
“Relax, Mr. Giles. It isn't as though we're going to be getting the old gang
back together and up to old tricks,” Gaudencio, 'assured' him, in a tone that
sounded oddly ironic. Bitterly sardonic in fact, which was enough to put Rupert
even more on the alert. His instinct was not wrong. “Mr. Weatherby has been
causing more than his usual amount of trouble,” Gaudencio went on explaining,
“even without Quentin around to put him up to it any longer. He's angered some
already uneasy allies of the Council by putting one of their operatives in
needless danger and attacked one of our own agents without instructions. And
so, we've got to deal with him. Permanently.”
“Right, of course,” Giles scoffed bitterly, shaking his head. He didn't
elaborate aloud. He didn't need to. His companion understood his not-quite-
complaint, even if he didn't sympathize in the least. One week. Rupert fumed
silently. He'd been back in town one bleeding week, back to being punished by
the Council for only two buggering days, and already his life was becoming
eerily familiar. Because here he was, back in bloody London.
                                     ~~~~~
“It might have been 1973,” Buffy read aloud from the last entry of the
handwritten journal they had stumbled across. From a quick thumb through, it
had seemed to be an account mostly of the spells he'd performed, not unlike the
ones Amy had kept of Katherine's, with maybe a few more than usual 'droll
observations of life' thrown in, because that was just Ethan's personality. But
this was different. Joyce was watching her daughter uneasily, in a way that
made Buffy uneasy right back. Her voice faltered uncertainly and she continued
to read. “Seeing Ri—Rupert,” she quickly amended for Joyce's benefit, “with his
latest... teenage trophy tart, made me a lot more j-jealous than I ever thought
I could be... after.... after so many years. Even when I was... was plotting to
amuse myself at his expense. And at the same time... remembering... remembering
what it was li—”
Buffy's eye darted along the next few lines of text. She slammed the book
closed. “You know what,” she said, brightly, almost frantically, “this doesn't
look like anything useful at all, so I'm just going to keep—” Joyce reached for
the book with a gentle, almost pitying look. But the force with which Buffy
held onto it and pulled it closer to herself, further from her mother, almost
pulled Joyce from her chair onto the floor. She had to let go to stay upright.
Joyce blinked in surprise and took a couple of deep breathes to still that part
of her confusion that wanted her to be angry, to resent Buffy's strength and
her willingness to use it against her.
Buffy looked apologetic, but in no sense relenting. Joyce gave her a patient,
corrective look. Buffy caved, sort of. She opened the journal, or what ever it
was and thumbed her way back a couple of entries until she found some recent
magic being described at last. She read through it hurriedly, to herself this
time, just in case of references, and then looked up at Joyce. “Mom,” she asked
worriedly, jerking her chin in the direction of Ethan's makeshift alter, “you
didn't touch anything on that table at all, did you?” Joyce's guilty look was
enough confirmation that she had. “Grab the candle!” Buffy half shouted,
jumping to her feet.
“Why?” Joyce asked, even as she moved to do exactly that.
  “Because,” Ethan explained with grim amusement, suddenly appearing between
the alter and the two women, “That little party game I arranged for Ripper and
Little Myra Gale the other night was   not   my revenge.” Ethan grinned
wickedly. “That was the bait,” he explained. “Now it's time for the switch.”
 
***** Switch *****
Chapter Summary
     Everything's changing. Or not what it seems. Or both. Mostly both.
“Let me make sure I've understood you correctly,” Rupert repeated, openly
mocking disbelief as a way of expressing his indignation. “You want me to
murderMr. Weatherby, whom I've known for over twenty-five years, in exchange
for your good report to the council that I'm behaving myself and following
orders like a Good German; and you somehow think the fact that both the Inner
Council and my fatherhave approved it, in secret of course, is going to make me
feel completely comfortable committing such a crime?”
Heathcliff sighed. Though Rupert's tone and inflection were very different, the
majority of his words and the entirety of his overwrought sense of moral
condemnation were so identical to those of Julian's son as to make the whole
conversation seem a tedious repetition from the outset. “Got it in one,” he
answered crisply, never taking his hands from the wheel nor his eyes from the
road.
  Rightly or wrongly, the Seat Holder found himself having much less patience
and sympathy with the older Watcher than he had with the younger one. While it
was true that Rupert literally was being asked to take a human life—the life of
someone he knew personally at that—well... it wasn't exactly an   innocent
life. And it was nothing he hadn't done before. Nor was he being asked to get
his hands dirty while his superior kept his clean. They'd be doing it together.
And Heathcliff's role could easily turn out to be the uglier of the two.
“No,” Rupert said, very carefully and deliberately. Several heartbeats passed,
but he said nothing more.
  Heathcliff whipped the car over to the side of the road and pulled to a stop.
He turned to face his passenger, hands still tightly gripping the wheel. “You
know better than this,” he said, his voice hard and flat. “Or at least, you
used to. You can lie to your wife about it if you want. God knows I do,
whatever fucking god you want to ask knows I do. But don't start lying to
yourself, thinking you can be some kind of comic book hero who only does good
things and still somehow wins all the time.   This   is how wars are won,
Rupert. By maintaining order and discipline so that the entire organizations
acts as a single being. By following the chain of command.”
Rupert stared back. Arms folded. Mind closed. Silently determined.
“Mr. Weatherby's lack of self-discipline, his disrespect for order and
authority—as well, I might add, for human life—threaten the structure and
functioning of the Council,” Heathcliff tried again. “It can't be tolerated. He
can't be tolerated.” He took a deep breath and twisted the knife. “Especially
in light of the way certain recent events have seemed to call into doubt the
Inner Council's ability to take a hard line against insubordination.”
  Rupert smiled grimly, pulling at his chin, nodding thoughtfully. “The appeal
to guilt was a nice touch, if a bit clumsily executed,” he opined dryly. “Shows
you do personalize your argument to your audience. Still, your duty, honor and
intellectual pride pitches were a bit better. Subtler. Obviously your go-tos. I
shouldn't wonder, dealing with Watchers or Rajab's lot either one. You didn't
make your threats to kill me or my wife explicit, and I appreciate that.
Because, really, under the circumstances, a word to the wise   should   be
enough. No need to be vulgar about it, which you weren't. Overall, I give you
fairly high marks, but then...” His smile widened, his eyes darkened, and he
made a sound that stood at the very edge of laughter, “I suppose   you   are
actually the one marking this exam.”
Heathcliff smiled back cruelly, more for deliberate effect than because there
was anything about this situation that actually made him feel like smiling.
“Got it in one,” he repeated, putting the car back in gear and continuing the
way they had been going.
                                     *****
 Ethan snapped his fingers. They gave off a flint on steel sound, like a
lighter striking. As if a switch had been flipped, the virgin candle sparked to
light on the table behind him. Buffy moved as if to lunge at him, but when he
raised his hand in a casual blocking gesture, suddenly, she found that she
couldn't. “I knew you were coming,” he pointed out, amused. “I did take some
precautions. Of course, I   thought   you'd come alone,” he half complained.
“You've rather ruined the poetic quality that all of this was meant to have,
actually. But still, a hostage is a hostage, I suppose. A pound of flesh, cut
near the heart and all that.”
  Ethan paused and smiled just a tiny bit self-mockingly. “You may even have
saved me from doing something very tedious and foolish to   do   just because
it would have been mind-blowing to   have done.    And unspeakably irritating
to....” At this point he actually sneered. There was nothing else you could
call it. “... our mutual 'friend'.” Though the rest of what he'd said made
little sense and clearly wasn't meant to, yet; there was no mistaking who or
what he meant by saying 'friend' exactly like that. Buffy only hoped it wasn't
as obvious to her mother as it was to her. Buffy felt like her knowledge of
what he was insinuating and her irrational certainty that it was somehow,
unaccountably true were written all over her face.
Dishearteningly, Joyce did look extremely uneasy. Maybe even physically sick,
in fact. And yet, she hardly seemed to notice Buffy and Ethan at all or to be
reacting to anything they had to say. It was as if she had been stricken by
something terrible and sudden and completely unrelated to what was going on
around her. Like a major migraine or an attack of appendicitis, only not. But
Buffy barely had a moment to notice, let alone deal with that possibility. She
certainly didn't have time to argue with herself that Giles was not and could
not possibly be gay given everything she knew for a fact he had done, said, and
felt about her and, to her knowledge, several other women. She still had to
focus on the very immediate threat posed by the clearly deranged wizard in
front of her.
“But, no matter,” Ethan went on, flippantly. He looked over at Joyce with
poorly feigned, theatrical indifference. “At any rate,” he said, “binding my
fate to yours should be enough to keep old Ripper off my back.” He nodded in
Buffy's direction. “As long as he's got that one looking over his shoulder,
anyhow.”
Enraged, unable to stand his smirking any longer, Buffy grabbed the nearest
heavy object (which happened to be a book) and threw it at him. Ethan reacted
on instinct, easily deflecting it with a casually magical wave of his hand.
Then his smirk became even wider. “On second thought,” he said, drawing what
looked like a ceremonial dagger from some impossible fold of his robe, offering
her the hilt. “Go ahead. I'm sure Mummy doesn't mind.”
Buffy wretched the weapon forcefully from Ethan's hand, despite his lack of
resistance. For a red-hot second, she was actually pretty close to stabbing him
in his seventies porn-star chest. “Careful dear,” he warned her, eying Joyce
just a bit too keenly. “You always hurt the one you love, you know.” She looked
worriedly at Buffy, her attention undivided at last.
The horror and disbelief written all over her mother's face would have been
enough to give Buffy pause, to make her hesitate and pull back from the edge of
mortal violence. Probably. But there was more going on here than that.
Something else making her hesitate. Ethan kept looking at Joyce eagerly,
expectantly in his 'I've got a secret' way. Dropping his little hints.
Buffy got it. Breathing out slowly, trying to rid herself of anger which now
had no safe object, she pocketed the dagger. Still, the young Slayer couldn't
quite rid herself of the nagging hope that he might be bluffing. That his smirk
was because he thought he was playing her, making her think she couldn't hurt
him when in fact she could, with impunity. Suddenly, her hand shot out and
grabbed Ethan firmly by the wrist, making both he and Joyce jump. But anyone
might have jumped at that. Buffy had acted so impulsively that she had almost
startled herself. Which was probably the only way she had gotten past Ethan's
defenses.
She still needed a test.
Just in case Ethan had some reason of his own for wanting a drop or two of his
blood shed by that particular dagger, Buffy left it in her pocket and drew a
small knife from a sheath inside her waistband instead. Still holding him
tightly by the wrist, she carefully poked the tip of his index finger until one
tiny red bead of liquid glittered on the surface of his skin. They both looked
at Joyce expectantly. She still looked somehow less than entirely well, but no
more so than she had a moment earlier.
“What is it?” she asked finally, when the others had stared a moment too long.
Both the Wizard and the Slayer shifted their weight and eyed each other
uncomfortably out of the corners of their eyes while continuing to watch Joyce
carefully. Buffy adjusted her grip on her knife, less Swiss-army, more ready
for trouble. “Mom,” she said carefully-calmly, “show us your hands.”
Joyce looked even more puzzled than uncomfortable. “What about them?” she
asked, holding them palms out, ten perfectly intact fingers waiving for all to
see. “My hands are fine. It's my... insides that feel... strange. It's as if...
oh Buffy, can't we just... I feel like... I may need a doctor.”
  “Oh Bugger!” Ethan gasped, eyes going wide, honestly astonished, maybe even
horrified. Then he disappeared from view again.
                                     *****
Cordelia tried to eat her lunch alone. She meant to hide in the computer lab or
somewhere. She thought it would be better. She still felt weird. Not like
talking. But it wasn't that easy, trying to be left alone. She had to say she
was not eating, and even then, way too many people kept asking her if she was
alright and if there was anything they could do. “All right,” she joked, when
Aura offered to not eat with her, “when did I become super-popular again?”
“About the time everyone who didn't think so died,” Aura said matter-of-factly.
“About the time we finally realized we needed our queen back to tell us what to
do about it.”
There was something a little too... formal or... earnest or... something about
that. Cordelia tried to laugh it off. “Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence
and everything, but I'm not technically the queen of anything for real.”
Aura leveled a deadly serious look at her. “No, you are,” she said. Deadly
serious. “This isn't a game. And it's nothing to do with cheerleading. People
are dying. And grownups are letting it happen because they're too afraid to say
the “v” word. But you're not afraid. You're helping us. You're showing us how
to defend ourselves, how to defend other people. You're getting it done because
that's what you do.” For once, Cordelia really didn't know what to say. She
didn't have to. Aura wasn't done.
“It's like... the fifth grade field trip, when Blaine Mall pushed Holly
Charleston down that huge water slide even though she couldn't swim? And Mr.
Daniels is totally panicked like threatening to leave and go 'get someone', and
Ms. Flocker is off smoking a cigarette or something God knows where, and this
whole process couldn't have lasted more than a minute and a half, because she
is falling and screaming the whole time, and you just grab Mr. Daniels by the
collar even though he's like two-hundred pounds, and you were like 'you're the
someone' and orderedhim to get in the pool, and he caught her and everything
was fine. And after, he was all like that was what he meant to do all along
because it was obvious, but that's not how it was. You made everything be all
right because you saw what needed to happen and made him do it.
“And then in the sixth grade when everything suddenly switched from being about
horses and best friends to being about boys and clothes, and it became not okay
to get straight A's; you told us we were all being a bunch of idiots, which we
were. And by the end of seventh grade, even me and Harmony quit hanging out
with you in public, which did us no good because Northside girls still totally
sucked and those bitches from Cherry Hill Elementary completely ran the Middle
School with Tiffanyas their leader.
“And then eighth grade started and you came back from freaking Milan or Paris
or some crap where you'd gotten your mom to teach you like, everything about
designer clothes and makeup in like two months. And the next thing anyone
knows, you're dating that guy on the Fondren High basketball team whose like
sixteen and has an actual car, and Tiffany and Blue and all of the rest of them
are kissing your ass, and we're begging you for the right to be cool again.”
Cordelia smiled, remembering. “You were such a sad, sorry bunch of traitors.”
“Yeah,” Aura agreed, seeming oddly fond of the memory herself.
“I did make you beg though, didn't I?” Cordelia teased, fully grinning now,
shaking her head.
“It was like six months of purgatory,” Aura agreed, “you not wanting to be seen
with us for a change. But the point is, when we all turned into a bunch of pre-
teen wannabitches, you were the only one who knew how shallow it was and tried
to stop us. And then when you couldn't, you didn't just give up. You took over.
You out Heathered every single one of us and all the Cherry Hill girls too. You
made yourself Queen C, starting from rock-bottom. By being better.” And by
having more money, Cordelia thought, amused as well as touched, but hey, who
was she to interrupt?
“And then all this vampire stuff started, or got worse or whatever. And instead
of burying your head in your pompoms like the rest of us, you actually joined
up with the one tiny group of people who was doing anything whatsoever about
it, boys-clothes-and-coolness be damned. And when you couldn't have it both
ways, you went the way that mattered. Because you're for real, Cordelia. You
have your shit together. Always have. And every time we haven't listened to
you, we've been wrong, and we've been sorry. You're our leader. You're the
smart one. You're the strong one. You're the Queen Cunt, and the forces of hell
are going to be sorry they pissed you off. So yeah, if you're having trouble,
if something's bothering you. I want to know. And I want to help.”
“Thank you,” Cordelia started to say, reaching out to touch Aura affectionately
on the shoulder. She was about to start explaining that she really was fine,
that she just needed a few minutes alone with her thoughts, to decompress. But
when her hand actually landed on Aura arm, when she touched her, flesh to
flesh, something completely different happened.
                                     *****
“Where are we meeting again?” Ms. Caramel asked rhetorically, disgruntledly.
“Sister said to meet her at The House,” Ms. Myrtle chirped, sounding oblivious
and indifferent, though they both knew damned well she was not. “She said she'd
have it safely opened by the time we got there.”
“Indeed,” Ms. Caramel muttered grimly. They both knew there was nothing safe
about it.
“It's an emergency,” Ms. Waddle argued, when Ms. Caramel pointed out, a few
minutes later, exactly how unsafe being here really was. “Besides, they've been
gone too long. There wasn't even a ward on the door. I literally got it open
with nothing but a crowbar.”
“Which is liable to become a permanent part of your anatomy when She find out
what we've done,” Ms. Caramel grumbled.
“Much as I hate to say it,” Ms. Myrtle tried to agree with what she hoped was
finally being said, “perhaps we should cut our losses and let Her be?”
Ms. Waddle opened her mouth to respond, but Ms. Caramel preempted her sharply.
“It's too late for that,” she stated bitterly. “We've already promised Her to
Hecate. And yet, our sister's recklessness has pissed Her off to the point that
She's actually less likely to become a true Acolyte than if we had never come
within a hundred miles of her. If we walk away now, we will face both of Their
wrath. What are we going to do? Call on Him for salvation? Even if we could
abase ourselves low enough to draw his attention, He'd destroy us without a
moment's thought to win Her loyalty.”
“No one is suggesting that,” Ms. Waddle pointed out shrilly, as if worried
Hecate would overhear them. As if She needed to, knowing the hearts of Her own
as She did.
Suddenly, Ms. Myrtle straightened her back and became very still. Both of her
companions turned their eyes to her expectantly, holding their breath. “We're
past all this,” she whispered after a moment. “The battle is already begun.”
                                     *****
Blood. Death. Aura, covered in blood. Still struggling to stand. Failing.
Falling. Looking up at the giant, monstrous snake roaring above her. A snake
which was somehow also the Mayor of Sunnydale. Golly Gosh Wilkins himself,
yammering about civic pride at high school graduation.
“Are you sure you're okay?” Aura repeated, more worriedly than ever.
“Pos,” Cordelia assured Aura and her other attendants for about the fiftieth
time. “I am totally, fine.” She tried to smile, but it was less than
convincing. She held the icepack to her head and waved several of the hoverers
away, not wanting to let anyone get too close. Needing for them not to touch
her.
What she'd already seen was too much. Her brain was seared. Things she'd always
known, never known, and not quite understood. About Aura. Her past. Her
present. Her darkly gleaming flash of future. Her ending, bathed in blood.
Cordelia wished she could tell herself that none of it was real. That it was
too absurd. That the visions were like dreams; maybe random, maybe symbolic.
But not real. It was exactly like what had happened with the clerk and the
Quick Mart. Which hadn't seemed to make a lot of sense.
But Cordelia knew the truth. She could feel it. In her guts. This wasn't a
dream. And it wasn't a nightmare, either. This was real life.
                                     *****
“Where are we?” Willow whispered.
The nebulous being made no answer that she could hear... exactly. But she had
the sense of a sardonic smirk as she came to know that neither space nor time
was exactly the word for what she now inhabited.
“Who are you?” she squeaked, on the knifes edge between panic and angry demand.
Monstrous Cackling. Willow knew Her name. Not that that was even the relevant
question.
Why are we here? Willow demanded.
A smile. Closer.
A Test. Willow felt definite about this.
That smile again. With more of a chuckle than a cackle backing it this time. A
chess board was present. A moment breathed. The concept of an arm extended from
the person of the Goddess and swept the piece aside, sending their tiny,
regimented world clattering into nothingness. She didn't play those kind of
games. This wasn't going to be solved by logic. By being clever.
How then?
Foolish girl! By faith.
                                     *****
“Lennette,” Doug sobbed in his sleep, not indistinctly enough. “Oh, God, no,
please don't! Lennette! Oh Lenn—oh God, God no!” Faith tried to keep her eyes
on the road and her ears closed. She turned the radio up. Trying to drown out
the tiny part of her that said he was faking, making her feel like shit on
purpose. And the not so tiny part that felt even more like shit for even
thinking that, after he'd fucking set fire to his life to be there for her.
Like he should have fucking done for the past twelve years but hadn't bothered.
She kept flicking her gaze like a snakes tongue over his face every ten
seconds. It was like it was part of her driving routine: look ahead, hold for a
while, check rear-view, check Doug's rapid eye movements for sighs of faking
it, look ahead again and—“Holy fuck!” Faith shouted, slamming on her breaks,
not quite getting stopped fast enough.
It was only a tiny bend in the road, but the sign was planted too fucking
close. It toppled with a noisy crash as she cut the motor and got out to check
her front end for any damage that might actually make it a problem to drive. It
didn't look too bad.
“What the hell?” Doug asked, suddenly standing beside her.
“Sorry. Musta dosed off,” Faith lied easily. Doug gave her a sideways look. He
was sort of getting to know her moves. The way guys do if you let them hang
around for too long. Especially if you let them hang around and don't distract
them with sex. Which she was like 95% sure was completely off the table at this
point, even from his point of view. Faith guessed that was basically good,
cause otherwise he'd be a scumbag, and a scumbag wouldn't be here. But it was a
major tool missing from the tool box when you had to 'relate to people' without
sex. Especially when it was already hard to tell who was more owed than owing.
“Well... I guess we're here, anyway,” he sighed. The sign said 'Welcome to
Sunnydale.'
Faith frowned and nodded. “Home sweet hell.”
                                     *****
The hanger was cold and damp. Uninsulated. Even if Giles hadn't known he was in
England, he'd have know he was in England. In California it would have been
sweltering. Or in Arizona, more to the point. “We need to raise the temperature
in here,” Heathcliff pronounced decidedly, as if reading his mind. “And lower
the humidity. The two environments need to be as similar as possible for the
spell we have to do.”
There is no 'we', Giles wanted to say. But he looked down at 'Weatherby'
(neither conscious nor unconscious, needlessly bound, skirt riding up around
the hips) and held his tongue. “We need to build a large fire,” he agreed aloud
instead. “Or several small ones. In barrels, perhaps?” Heathcliff nodded. He
called out to hired men, who quickly set about the work.
“Whatever it takes to do this,” Heathcliff said grimly, carefully, as if
working up to something, “it has to be done before midnight our time.” Giles
sharpened his focus, listening attentively, watching the other Watcher
carefully. “If not, Ms. Morgan may be attempting to complete the ritual as
originally planned, which will cause substantial interference.”
Giles waited patiently for the other shoe to drop. He already knew that instead
of sending the bodies of the two subjects winging in search of their souls as
originally intended, Heathcliff meant to pull both Weatherby's natural body and
the soul that now inhabited it through—or rather round—the substantial space
between Arizona and England so that Ms. Morgan could return to her own body
outside the custody of the aforementioned state and Mr. Weatherby could be
killed. By Rupert Giles. Whatever the other shoe was, it must be heavy.
It was.
“Whatever else happens,” Heathcliff explained,argued almost, “We have got to
keep this body anchored here. We can't let her get away from us. And there's no
time to undo everything that's been done up to now. If push comes to shove, if
the pull of the forces that have already been set in motion becomes too
great... radical action may be needed to counter that.”
Gaudencio was speaking so obliquely, that he might well have succeeded in not
being understood, but for the look of grim, determined, post-dated regret on
his face. Suddenly, Rupert understood. “Good Lord!” he gasped in shock. “You're
planning to rape her.”
Heathcliff dropped his eyes, but his voice remained hard. “If I have to,” he
admitted. “Come now Rupert,” he added, in response to Giles's horrified look,
assaying cool bravado with only modest success. “Don't be so shocked. I've
already made it clear that there is nothing I will not do to complete this
task. Which is altogether to Ms. Morgan's benefit. And we've both fooled around
with magic enough to know, there is nothing that anchors the human body in the
midst of a soul transference half so well as being in a state of sexual union.
What do you want me to do? Throw up my hands and risk letting her spend the
rest of her life in an American prison just because she isn't in a position to
assent to what is so clearly in her best interests?”
“The fact that you would thereby be acting entirely in the Council'sbest
interests and those of a certain transdimensional organization with whom they
wish to curry favor, being, of course, merely a fortunate side effect,” Giles
replied dryly.
Heathcliff snorted slightly, shaking his head. “Purse your lips all you want,”
he said. “This is what's happening. I hope it won't be necessary to go to such
extremes, but if it is, I shall. Meanwhile, as soon as Weatherby's sorry,
traitorous face is in sight, regardless of what I might be doing or what else
is going on, I expect you to put a bullet in it so that Ms. Morgan's spirit can
be released to reenter her body before the energy from the spell starts to
recede. And just remember, if you don't do itbefore I manage to expel
Weatherby's soul from her body, you will have killed this young woman. And by
the way, the word you meant to use was 'we', is that understood.”
“What?” Giles asked, startled. In his still less than entirely sober state, he
hadn't quite managed to follow Heathcliff round that last bend.
“'We',” Heathcliff repeted. “Not 'They'. You called The Council 'They', Rupert.
Don't let it happen again.”
***** They *****
Chapter Summary
     As some of our favorite Watchers strugle with doing their duty to the
     Council, the Slayers and Slayerettes are in for a few nasty surprises
     of their own.
                                        
It was a dark and stormy night. Especially considering the fact that it was one
in the afternoon. And the fact that it had been a bright, sunny Southern
California day only fifteen minutes earlier. Until the thunderheads had rolled
up out of nowhere, blotting out the sun. Now torrential rains were beating down
upon the earth, turning streets into creeks and ditches into canals. But even
in the midst of this downpour, the air remained heavy, expectant, like the lull
of a storm still waiting to be born.
“I don't like it,” Snyder pronounced with quiet ferocity. “They're up to
something.”
“Uh... they who?” Mrs. Haulk asked worriedly, looking at Snyder as if she were
worried about him, in fact. Snyder sighed. He's almost forgotten how dangerous
it could be to be frank in this town, how little anyone wanted to acknowledge
the truth.
“It's just an expression,” he dodged, to her immediate relief and acceptance.
“I meant the storm system. It's going to get uglier before it gets better. We'd
better cancel classes and get these kids home before the roads get too flooded
even for the buses.”
Mrs. Haulk nodded eagerly. “I'll make the announcement,” she volunteered. But
Snyder made no response. He had already pulled on his raincoat and was heading
out the door. He drove home like a bat out of Hell, eager to find Gwendolyn and
get her take on the situation, half afraid that she was somehow responsible for
the storm.
When he got home, he told her as much, which made her laugh. “Richard,” she
said, sounding about equal parts amused, flattered, and exacerbated, “your
estimation of my talents never ceases to amaze me.” His second guess, that some
local vampire has somehow procured this sunless afternoon in order to
facilitate a feeding frenzy, met with even less credulity.
“From what I've studied and observed,” she explained with fraying patience,
“conjuring a sudden storm of this magnitude would be even more difficult than
casting a spell to throw an unnatural shadow across the sun for an unscheduled
eclipse. And I never did meet a vampire who liked to get wet. No, I'd say this
is most definitely the act of God, or a god at any rate. And a decidedly
unhappy one. I'd wager that somewhere in this town is a Cleric or Acolyte who
has been very much favored by the deity in question and has failed to meet
expectations.”
“I wonder...” Snyder almost asked, but he let the sentence trail off and die
before it got too close to subjects that shouldn't be discussed, even with his
closest confidant outside the Administration.
Gwendolyn picked up on his meaning anyway. She was clever like that. “Well
really there's no telling,” she pointed out. “Not with all the powerful magic
that get's done in this town. But just to be safe, I don't think I'd stand too
close to your powerful friend until this lets up. Unless you want to find
yourself on the business end of a stray lightning bolt.”
                                     *****
Buffy must have banged on a dozen different doors. Frantic. Begging for help.
Or maybe demanding. Okay, sort of threatening. At least part of the time. She
needed help, damnit! But she'd settle for a simple piece of information, she
kept trying to explain. But no one opened up right now. Several people yelled
at her through the door, also beg-demand-threatening. To the tune of 'go away'.
'Fuck off,' was the common phrase, actually. She didn't know if it was because
it was London or just because it was a shitty neighborhood. She'd never gone
anyplace quite so hood-like in L.A.
Finally, after minutes that seemed like days, shouting and crying, with her mom
bleeding and moaning in her arms, she did 'kick this fucking door in.' There
was a family inside. Little children, wide eyed, clinging to a mom with
streaked hair and a ring in her nose. An impossibly young, skinny dad of some
indeterminate white-but-not-very ethnicity, covered in tattoos, tried to get in
Buffy's face and make her leave. Out of patience, she knocked him to the ground
with an elbow and held him there with a foot on his chest. She locked eyes with
his woman-girlfriend-wife, twentyish and terrified.
“Call an ambulance!” Buffy demanded. “I think my mom is dying!” She wanted to
explain, to apologize, but her blood was pumping too hard. She wanted to tell
them that she honestly meant them no harm. All she needed was 9-1-1. She just
didn't happen to know their number.
                                     *****
“What are we doing here?” Doug asked as Faith parked the car on the street in
front of a seedy looking down-town bar with a neon sign that read 'Willies', as
in I've got the. Thunder rolled and lightning split the sky, exactly has they
would have if Doug and Faith had been approaching an eery old castle in a black
and white monster movie.
“I'm getting us a place to stay,” Faith explained cryptically. She stepped out
into the downpour, opened her arms wide and lifted her face to heaven, letting
her red tube top get thoroughly soaked. Her hair, which was now short and dark,
clung in little wet ringlets around her face.
Doug shrugged into the beat up brown leather jacket he gotten from an L.A.
thrift store and followed her out. “How's that exactly?” He asked skeptically.
Faith teased him with a half a smile but only said, “You'll see.” She held the
door of the bar open for him like a gentleman would for a lady. He obliged her,
letting her have her fun. But he favored her with a look that said he
definitely got the joke and that it was laughable indeed. In the next moment,
he had cause re rethink that a little.
“Holy Shit!” Doug gasped as he got his first look at the clientele inside the
bar. Eyes turned to them. Inhuman eyes. Running the gamut from indifferent or
amused through annoyed and angry to murderously delighted. Doug turned as if to
leave exactly the way they had come, but Faith put her arm around his waist,
wedged herself under his arm, which she gently but firmly tugged into place
around her shoulders, and steered him to an open table in a way that probably
gave anyone watching the impression that he was steering her.
As he took his seat, she leaned down, pressed her lips against his ear and
whispered, “I'm gonna pretend to go get us some drinks and then flirt with that
vampire at the bar. Watch for a while and look pissed. Then come over all
jealous and ask him to step outside. I'll do the rest. Simple.”
But to Doug, this situation seemed anything but. “Faith, wait,” he demanded in
a harsh whisper, grabbing a hold of her arm to try and get her to pause and
think more carefully, or at least to explain what she was thinking. But she
pulled herself from his grasp so effortlessly that to the demons eying them it
probably looked like he had just let her go.
“That's sweet, Baby,” she said aloud, “But I can get them. You shouldn't walk
on that foot too much. I'll be right back.” She walked across the room and sat
down on a swiveling bar stool, wiggled her denim skirted ass shamelessly side-
to-side, 'getting comfortable'.
Her mark (a big muscular blond guy with no distinguishing features Doug could
see other than being built like a linebacker) definitely noticed. Although, if
he really was a vampire, Doug supposed what he might be seeing was a snack and
not... well... what Doug couldn't help seeing, no matter how much he told
himself he was a pervert for even noticing her that way at all. At least one
part of Faith's plan was a cinch. Doug couldn't help watching her or the way
Linebacker looked at her. Nor could he help looking uneasy and just a little
bit pissed off.
When Faith leaned over practically in the guy's lap and put her hand on his
thigh, saying something in a throaty undertone that made them both laugh, Doug
took that as his cue. “Hey asshole,” he shouted, getting to his feet, “The
lady's with me!”
With a deep, sonorous laugh, whatever man or beast he was stood to his full
height. Which was six and a half feet if it was an inch. “What lady?” he
demanded scornfully. “All I see's a bitch tryin'a hustle a free drink. Hell, I
was just about to find out what she's willing to do for one.”
“Alright,” Doug demanded, amazed that his voice wasn't shaking, keeping his
hands in his coat pockets, because they certainly were. “I think it's time we
step outside.”
At the sight of the grim smile this brought to the stranger's face, Doug caught
himself almost literally praying that Faith had a plan that would actually work
as well as she seemed to think. Just in case she didn't, he didn't wait for a
nod or any other formal signal of acknowledgment. He turned and exited by the
front door, walking in the direction of the car, moving smartly. If things went
downhill fast, he figured driving away, hopefully out of town, made a pretty
solid back-up plan.
Of course, Linebacker followed him out, with Faith at his heels. She was
begging the men to show restraint, but not very convincingly. Mainly because
she was hardly able to keep a straight face. Doug just hoped that when
everything was said and done the joke wouldn't be on the two of them.
And then it happened. Suddenly, Linebacker's face went from plainish ugly to
hideously demonic. Lightning struck overhead, casting the monster's craggy face
in garish relief. “Holy Mary Mother of God!” Doug gasped. But Faith only looked
a trifle uneasy though still very determined. She had obviously had some idea
of what to expect. But seeing was a whole new kind of believing, even for her.
Not that she was quaking in her stolen leather boots or anything, but she was
certainly no longer in any danger of laughing.
“Yeah,” the monster confirmed, grinning evilly, “The bitch was right. I am a
vampire. And guess what.” Suddenly four other figures every bit as big and ugly
as the foe they were already facing emerged from a couple of parked car to form
a semi-circle behind Doug and Faith, cutting them off from their car and all
other readily apparent means of escape. “So are they.”
                                     *****
The ancient grandfather clock in the front hall tick-tick-ticked. It had
already chimed nine and had just finished marking the quarter hour. “Do you
think they'll be much longer?” Wesley asked nervously. Peter shrugged. He
didn't ask which 'they'. The two young Watchers had arrived at Gaudencio's
house in Surrey nearly an hour ago, after a not-at-all short wait for and much-
too-long ride with an all but silent David Gaudencio. Then, without so much as
a 'make yourselves at home', David had disappeared to somewhere at the back of
the house, possibly the kitchen, with his young half-brothers and a hireling or
two. Presumably to make some sort of last minute arrangements for the makeshift
wedding feast.
In the time that the groom and his kinsman had been left in the front room to
sit like patients at the doctor's office, Heathcliff Gaudencio and Rupert Giles
had similarly failed to return. The young bride and her mother remained
upstairs. God forbid they might have been given a few minutes to get to know
each other, Wesley thought petulantly, even in the company of such chaperones.
When David and his little brothers finally returned, with strong tea and
unusual china, Wesley ventured to ask if it might be possible for Amal and her
mother to join them. “Call me old-fashioned,” he tried to joke, “but I feel
rather odd being engaged to someone I've never met.”
“You feel odd?” David rejoined, just a bit too sharply, “Bloody Hell, how do
you think I feel?” His words left a palpable tension in the air that the weak,
obligatory forced laughter of all present did little to ease.
“Come on, Dave,” Peter entreated on Wesley's behalf. “We're all family here.
Just go see if they want to come down.”
David glared at them both for such a long moment that it seemed as if he would
say something, and probably nothing nice. His two little brothers exchanged an
uneasy look. But at last he stood and without another word, tromped up the
stairs, still looking distinctly put upon.
David didn't return any too quickly. Minutes passed. More than a few. The two
young boys and the two grown men stared at one another across the coffee table.
“So....,” Wesley ventured at last, “what's the weather like this time of year
in Afghanistan?”
                                     *****
It was suffocatingly hot. Sweltering. “Alright,” Gaudencio called out to his
hirelings, “That'll do, thank you. You may go.” It was clear from the alacrity
with which they moved to vacate the hanger that they understood his 'may' to
mean 'must'. Plain to see Virgil's son was a man used to having his orders
obeyed, and probably for good reason. He was not likely to tolerate
insubordination. There would be consequences. Giles understood that. He
regretted it. But the situation was what it was.
At any rate, at least now they were alone. Unless of course you counted
'Weatherby'. Gaudencio didn't flinch as he sliced into the meaty part of his
own left palm with a pocket knife. Blood was required, naturally. They intended
powerful magics. Both of them did. Though not in quite the same way or to
entirely the same purpose. Giles only hoped their purposes were close enough
that the Council would accept as a fait accompli that which they would never
have authorized.
Truth be told, he almost wished they wouldn't. What Gaudencio had said earlier
in the evening about his telling use of the third person in reference to the
Council was essentially true. Though he had handily succeeded in retaining his
membership in the Outer Council, thanks almost entirely to Buffy, and though he
remained heir apparent to the Weregelder Seat, despite himself; Giles felt less
a part of the institution of the Watchers' Council of Britain than he ever had,
even during the months he'd long ago spent in London as it's most determinedly
prodigal son.
Knowing that they had willfully condemned his mother to death and that they
were more than ready to consign his wife to the same fate whenever it suited
their purpose, Giles felt more like a slave than a prince to this peculiar
little underground nation. As it was, the Council's power over him and
especially over Buffy gave him no choice but to do their bidding. A small part
of him couldn't help but understand that the only way he would ever be able to
free himself was if that same power gave him no choice but to disobey their
commands. That he was at the Council's mercy only so long as he remained their
humble servant.
                                     *****
“Dr. Wilkinson,” the young nurse squeaked worriedly, “I think you'd better have
another look at the Rosenberg girl. She's... well you'd just better see for
yourself.”
Miriam sighed and followed Clair into the patient's room. Where she saw the
patient, sound asleep. “Well?” she asked, frowning seriously at the young
nurse, “What's the problem?” Ms. Rosenberg was moving around a bit and
muttering unintelligibly in a mildly distressed tone, but it was nothing
alarming. Just the restless sleep of a very worried and confused young woman.
Miriam certainly hoped Clair had more to show her, otherwise she was prepared
to be frustrated with this waste of her time.
“We can't wake her up!” Clair explained, her tone becoming strident, almost
pleading. Her distress was so genuine that it gave Miriam pause. Clair might be
a little green but she certain wasn't prone to histrionics. The physician was
prepared to ask the nurse for further details when Clair volunteered, “But it
gets weirder. Look!”
Clair pulled back the sheet and lifted the patient's gown to expose a distended
abdomen. It was easily twice the size it had been when she'd been brought in
less than a day ago. But before Miriam could speculate about the cause, the
nurse showed her. Using her hand she put moderate pressure on the patient’s
abdomen and move it slowly over the distended area. Something, an utterly
unmistakable something, moved under the taunt skin, just exactly as if it were
fleeing from that compressing hand.
“Good night!” Miriam gasped, astonished. “We need to get some blood work, and a
new ultrasound. I've never seen anything like this.”
                                     *****
“How many weeks along did you say you thought you were?” the white-coated
youngster asked Joyce again, even more skeptically.
“6 weeks,” Joyce repeated. Buffy squeezed her hand, being silently supportive.
They were now well past the 'why didn't you tell me stage.' This situation was
much too serious for anything but total solidarity to prevail between the
Summers women. They both had too many years of the opposite to regret and make
up for already. A fact of which Joyce found she had to remind herself
repeatedly in the next few minutes.
“So,” the girl probed, clinically cool, but with barely suspended disbelief,
“that would mean your last menstrual period began what? March twelfth?”
“The tenth, actually,” Joyce mildly corrected and mainly confirmed, feeling
oddly scrutinized.
“Hmm,” the young woman said to the clipboard in her hand, not bothering to look
up. “Well, she conceded, your uterus isenlarged. That combined with the heavy
bleeding would more probably tend to suggest fibroids or some other type of
intrauterine growths, but your scans don't seem to show anything unusual. Or at
all really,” she all but mumbled, aside to her clipboard. “And of course, that
wouldn't really explain the delayed menstruation, but cycles do tend to vary a
bit more in length as we get a bit older, you know.”
Finally, Joyce thought she might be catching up, but she was far from sure. If
so, she couldn't believe what she was hearing, it hardly made sense. “Wait a
minute,” Buffy asked, clearly having the same thought and not at all respecting
the fact that the question wasn't strictly hers to ask, that the answer didn't
belong to her just because she wanted it, “are you saying she's not pregnant at
all?”
“Ms. Summers,” the young doctor stated firmly, pointedly looking at Joyce at
last, and even more pointedly not looking at Buffy, “We'll have the results of
your blood work back from the lab in a little while, but I'm afraid, as things
stand, I don't see any evidence of a recent, established, pregnancy. And while
false positive results are rare, even with home test kits, it seems likely that
what you've experienced is either a rare type of hormonal disturbance or
possibly what we sometimes call a chemical pregnancy. That's when a fertilized
egg fails to—”
“I know what it means!” Joyce cut her off indignantly. “But I already told you,
I saw a doctor! I heard the heartbeat! What do you think I did? Imagined it?
Made it up!?! You think I'm crazy or something!!!”
The young doctor took a small step back from her bedside and turned to Buffy.
Quietly, but not quietly enough she asked, “Does you mother have a history of
mental health problems, hospitalizations, anything like that?”
“No, not at all,” Buffy replied mock casually, her voice hard edged with
vicarious anger. “I'm the one with the psych records. Maybe you want to check
and see if I'm really pregnant too. Or,” Buffy went on, her tone hardening and
sharpening as suddenly as a cat pouncing, grabbing the other young woman by the
collar of her white coat “you could go and get a grownup doctor to help my mom
right now.”
When the doctor screamed for security, Buffy was taken aback, startled by her
over reaction. She didn't even register the fact that she had slammed her up
against the wall, was holding her there by her collar, until she heard her
mother pleading, “Buffy, Honey, no. Don't get yourself arrested again. Let's
just go.”
Buffy took a deep breath and set the doctor on her feet, she felt a slight wave
of dizziness overtake her, but she ignored it. “Go? Yeah,” she agreed, turning
to offer Joyce a hand up. “Right, let's go.” They ignored the young doctor's
bleating protests and the tromp of approaching security guards, making their
way to the nearest exit as quickly as Joyce could manage, which wasn't quickly
enough.
“Buffy, we have to stop,” Joyce pleaded, changing her mind. “They're catching
up. We'll only make it worse.”
“Wrong,” Buffy corrected, lifting Joyce off her feet and into her arms,
prepared to do the running for both of them. “If they catch me, I'll get
arrested. Then my bond will get revoked...” she let the sentence trail off as
they picked up speed and rushed through a nearby emergency exit, hopped over a
high stone wall and began running through a long trail of twisting back allies
into the dark London night. Joyce held her peace, understanding completely
where that chain of events might lead.
They had to get to a subway station and out of this neighborhood, fast. Little
enough had happened that if they got away, it would probably be left at that.
But if the police made actual contact with them in any form, that was a
downhill slide to Buffy ending up either a long term guest of the Queen or an
international fugitive.
“Look, there!” Joyce said, pointing out the station ahead, it's sign sticking
up from the huge square hole in the sidewalk. At the top of the stairs, Joyce
insisted on getting to her feet. There was not a policemen or security guard in
sight.
“You're weak,” Buffy tried to protest. But Joyce could feel her daughter
swaying with the effort of balancing so much weight on an uneven surface.
“I'm fine,” Joyce insisted, as Buffy finally relented and put her down. “I'm
not the one who's pregnant, remember?” Joyce wished she hadn't said that. She
felt a strange sense of panic. Was there something wrong with her perception of
reality? How could she (and her doctor) have been so mistaken?
At the bottom of the stairs, Joyce paused and looked back up. Buffy had made
almost no progress at all. She was standing just a few steps down from the
street. “Honey?” she called out worriedly. “Sweetie, are you alright?”
“I'm fine,” Buffy gasped breathlessly, still hanging on to the rail, clearly
needing it for support, still winded from taking a long distance sprint with a
full grown woman in her arms.
“Are you sure?” Joyce asked, becoming even more worried.
“Yeah,” Buffy began to insist, now impatient as well as winded, forcing herself
to take several steps forward, “I just... I need...” Buffy's head swam and the
world around her seemed to waiver unsteadily. She persevered, reaching out a
foot for the rippling step beneath her and a hand for the swinging rail at her
side. She missed both, and suddenly she was flying forward.
The beeping of the hospital machinery woke Buffy up. For a moment, she felt a
suffocating sense of panic, sure that she had been caught, that she would find
herself cuffed to a bed, awaiting a police escort to some seriously one star
accommodations. But she didn't feel any cuffs. And when she opened her eyes,
she didn't see any cuffs either. Besides the gentle, relieved tone in which her
mother was talking to her as well as the warmth and thanks she was sharing with
the people in scrubs pretty much proved they were not under arrest.
Clearly, they had made it to the underground station that Buffy remembered
Joyce pointing out in the distance. And after whatever had happened to put a
blank spot in her memory and give her a splitting headache, they had apparently
made it to yet another hospital. Having settled that issue in her mind, Buffy
asked the one other question that concerned her at that moment. “Mom, is my
baby okay?”
“Yes,” Joyce replied, suddenly seeming strangely nervous. “Honey, they are, and
that's the important thing to remember. They are both just fine.”
 
***** Mysterious Ways *****
Chapter Summary
     Unlikely heroes to the rescue? Maybe, maybe not.
The hot, close, dry air in the hanger was becoming hard to breathe. Heathcliff
mopped sweat from his brow and tried not to think too much, to keep his mind
focused on the task at hand, on preparing the incense, candles and other
necessary instruments of ritual, to ignore everything that came after that, in
the hanger and most especially in his father's house afterward.
But inevitably the moment arrived when no more preparation was possible. It was
nearly ten. Close to the time that Lilah Morgan would be preparing to perform
the now useless spell that would thwart their efforts to return her to her own
body. Too close. It was time for action.
“Well?” Rupert demanded dryly. His half-amused expression was nakedly, cruelly
ironic and contemptuous. Heathcliff tried to ignore him and keep an eye on him
at the same time. He doubted that Rupert would move against him overtly, but
there could be plenty of opportunities for him to 'accidentally' bollox this
up, which he'd certainly feel justified in doing, and would probably get away
with. As usual. The self-righteous git.
“Just you keep your eyes trained on thatspot and your gun ready,” Heathcliff
ordered the other Watcher harshly. With a frosty glare, Rupert obliged. For
now. At least it meant that he turned his back to Heathcliff and the body, that
he couldn't watch them disapprovingly. That should help a little in his doing
what he would almost certainly have to do. Heathcliff knew the forces he was
dealing with. And he couldn't afford to waste time having illusions that the
worst could be avoided.
He would wait as long as possible. That was the only decent thing to do. But
when the moment came, he had to be ready to act immediately. And for that, an
all together different kind of preparation was necessary. Thank God he'd been
paid in more than just cash for this latest load of heroin. He'd popped one of
those little blue pills—the ones boys back home in Kandahar were so crazy
about—as soon as they'd been delivered, knowing he'd probably need it tonight.
Now, as he began to chant the powerful incantations that would be necessary to
drag Lilah's soul and Weatherby's body across the aether and around the
boundaries of time and space to this sweltering simulated hell, Heathcliff sat
down in the middle of the sacred circle next to the woman's breathing body,
unbuckled his trousers and took himself in hand. He tried simultaneously to
think arousing thoughts and to keep his mind on the magic he was doing. It was
difficult and confusing.
He tried thinking of his penis as a magic wand, rhythmically rubbing it in time
to his chanting. But that only made him feel exposed and ridiculous. The two
things just didn't go together. Especially when murder was such a major part of
what his spell casting ultimately intended. There was nothing less sexy to
think about than murder. Unless it was rape.
Heathcliff closed his eyes and tried not to think at all, to exist only in the
physical, in the droning of his own voice, the stroking of his hand, the
response of his penis to his own caress. Finally, at least, it was responding a
little. And that was a good thing because the magical forces around him were
really gearing up now. Both the ones he was sending forth to seek the other
halves of this split being lying on the floor next to him and the contrary
forces that were working against him, working to pull her away.
Heathcliff wrapped his arms around Lilah's body and held her tight as he waged
war on those contrary forces, shouting his incantations to the heavens, his
tone somewhere between demand and supplication. It was working. He could see a
specter of Weatherby's form glimmering into view at exactly the spot he'd
intended. The spot Rupert was watching, gun in hand, features set and grim.
Very much as though he intended to go through with it. Thank God. At least
Heathcliff's degradation might not be for nothing.
Speaking of which, he had better get on with it. Lilah's body was... not
dematerializing exactly, but feeling less and less substantial in his embrace.
Meanwhile, there was no indication of Wetherby's soul coming forth from her at
all, and hisbody, even at it's most present moments, was nowhere near
substantial enough to take a bullet. Heathcliff knew he needed to step it up a
notch.
Chanting louder, harder and more passionately than he had ever done in his
life, infusing his words with his soul-deep determination to kill Weatherby and
to save Lilah, Heathcliff pulled the woman's blouse up over her face and tried
not to think of her as someone he might have worked with or met on a train. He
focused on her breasts in isolation, sliding his hands inside her bra cups to
squeeze them and rubbing his thumbs against her nipples.
The magic was working. He could feel it working. He just needed a little more
time. He needed Lilah's body to stay put and not to go flying off to Arizona in
search of her soul. He lay on top of her, holding her down, pinning her against
the hanger floor, trying to pin her to an exact moment in space and time. But
it wasn't enough. He knew what she really needed him to do. Fortunately, the
warmth and the feel of her body, combined with the headiness of the magic and
the effects of that little blue pill had made him ready to do what he had to do
to hold on to her.
The woman's body was sprawled on her back beneath him, legs wide apart in a
false semblance of invitation. He pulled her skirt up to her waist and hooked
his fingers inside her undergarments, ready to pull them down to her ankles.
Dear God he was hot for her, ready to be satisfied. Stuffing down the though
that his very desire alone made him every inch a rapist, Heathcliff pressed on,
anxious to commit the offending act, to have committed it, to no longer be able
to fail in this assignment because of his reluctance to commit it.
Trying not to think, 'Dear God forgive me' or any such nonsense, Heathcliff
pulled Lilah's nylons and nickers down along the smooth curves of her
unresisting body until at last her sacred secret parts lay exposed before him.
He could not help but think of the three other women he had seen lying thus
bared beneath him. Each in a separate previous life, in which each had been his
other half, one way or another.
Somehow, this seemed to make a lie of all that. Dorothy lying in his arms,
sharing the foolhardy optimism of their mutual youth, sure that everything
would work out for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Malailai
wincing as he gently touched the scars of other men's sins, coming to his
embrace gradually, learning slowly over time to trust hope and believe in love
again. Constance, more his partner than either of his wives could ever be, his
comrade in arms, clinging to him in the face of death, not desperately, but
defiantly, stealing as much life for herself as she could get in a Slayer's
brief time.
For a moment, these thoughts threatened to spoil everything. Thinking of all
those whom he had loved, to whom he had sworn forever and meant it every single
time; Heathcliff felt his carefully manufactured sexual arousal beginning to
wane. Steeling himself, determined to go through with it now, while there was
still a chance, he raised himself up onto his knees and pushed his trousers
further down to give himself more mobility. He fell back on top of Lilah,
breathless, determined, barely able to gasp out the words of his chant.
Suddenly, for a moment, Lilah seemed to grow more solid, more real beneath him.
She was the only woman in the universe, and he was the only man. This act was
all that mattered. If had to be done. He would do it. He must, though the
heavens fall.
“NYMBA YA SANAA!”The voice ripped through the hanger with all the rage and
authority of an offended god. Heathcliff's intended magic, in fact all of his
intentions, seemed to fall in upon themselves and crumple. Then the universe
went dark, and there was nothing.
                                     *****
“Now What?” Doug hissed in Faith's ear. He sounded pissed but his eyes were
filled with nothing but unmistakable terror.
Faith attempted to shrug, she really did. She even had a cool, unconcerned word
to go with it, 'improvise'. But she couldn't say it. Death in the form of five
massive vampires was closing in on them from all sides, and there was no point
in being cool anymore. No one to bluff. Even if she'd had a half decent plan
for this, she couldn't have told him so. Anything she said now was being
overheard by their demonic enemies, just something else for the bastards to
laugh about over their dead bodies.
This was it, Faith realized. To get out of this alive would take a miracle. And
somehow, she thought, if God was that interested in her, he'd have found a way
to show it before now. Weirdly, she didn't feel that scared, or even that
regretful. It was almost a relief.
Not that she minded being a hunted fugitive or even having Doug for a traveling
buddy. But Faith Whatevername being granted mystical super human powers and a
sacred, secret mission from the powers in charge of the universe? Come on. That
had to be a mislead. Especially after how she had used her powers so far. Dead
give away. Just a little something to keep the story from being too
predictable, from getting too boring. Now, with death staring her in the face,
Faith realized she'd half known it, had been waiting for the punchline or moral
or whatever all along.
A smile curled the the upper lip of the Not-So-Chosen-One. But that only lasted
a moment.
The vampires closed on them. The foremost easily blocked the blow Faith aimed
at his head and pulled her arm forward, yanking he shoulder out of joint,
making her drop her stake. Others seized her from behind. Faith cried out in
horror and pain as razor sharp claws and teeth tore at her flesh, slicing
through denim and skin like so many spider webs. She lost track of what was
happening to Doug, barely noticing when his screams stopped. “No-no-no-no-no!”
she keened, half praying, “Oh God, Oh God, please no!”
Then suddenly, new screams came, in a blaze of heat and light. Dust showered
down on Faith as she tried to wipe the hair and blood away from her eyes to see
what was going on. There was shouting and heavy footing fleeing. Was she being
rescued?
“The Beast,” she mumbled without really meaning to speak. It was the only
explanation. Who else would have enough use for Faith to want to help her out
of a jam like this and the power to actually do it. But when Faith's field of
vision cleared enough to recognize the face of the person standing over her,
ridiculously oversized weapon in hand, it wasn't Glory she saw or even Ben.
“Get up!” the little old man commanded, in a voice that somehow rang with
authority despite being gasped out in ragged breaths. “Help me get him in the
van before those bastards come back.”
                                     *****
Thunder. Lightning. Not fire. Not yet. But the thought of fire. It wasn't
exactly as though Willow and Hecate were floating through the world, seeing yet
unseen, like Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past. But, all things
considered, it was close enough.
Except that past, present, and future were even more mixed up, will-bes and
may-bes bleeding together in the overlapping shadows. And in those shadows,
Willow saw Flood and Fire. She saw blood. The blood of life and the blood of
death. A choice then?
The goddess smiled. Her smile was not kind, not beautiful. I was hard and
jagged like rough cut diamonds. Not just a choice. A bargain. A life for a
life? No. That would be too easy, the Goddess teased, and yet too hard. The
deal she offered would be harder to resist. The death of one who was all but
dead already would buy back a possibility. The life which was never intended
would not have to be ended or endured. It would never have existed to begin
with.
                                     *****
When Heathcliff finally awoke with a groan and found himself belted into his
own passenger seat with Rupert Giles at the wheel beside him, his first
utterance was a string of impressively colorful curses, followed by the demand,
“Rupert, what in God's name have you done?”
Giles smiled, amused at the phrasing, feeling quietly triumphant and deeply
justified. “I've just saved you from a fate worse than death,” he replied
dryly.
“If you don't begin to explain yourself this instant,” his superior replied
coolly, “we won't need to find a worse fate for you. Death will do just fine.”
“I found a way around our predicament at that the last moment,” Giles explained
stiffly, using half-truths and calculated indignation to project a thin veil of
palpably false innocence. “I'm sorry I didn't have time to warn you.”
“I'll just bet you are,” Heathcliff sneered. “Where's Weatherby?” he half
shouted.
“Regrettably, he escaped,” Rupert answered glibly. “After knocking us both
unconscious, of course. And you needn't be so indignant about it. Weatherby was
my friend once, or near enough; and we both know he's done no more to deserve
the Council's rough justice than you or I have. Who knows, the way things are
headed, we may need every hand we can find before all is said and done, even
his.”
“And the girl?”
Something about that exact labeling rubbed Rupert a bit wrong, but he couldn't
put his finger on exactly why, so he ignored the feeling. “Safely winging her
way back to California,” he said instead, “As I heartily wish I were. I think
I've had quite enough of London for one lifetime.”
“Yes,” Heathcliff agreed wryly. “I know exactly what you mean. But just so I
can explain it correctly for the benefit of my brothers on the Inner Council,
how exactly did you manage this heroic rescue of yours?”
Rupert affected a shrug. “In the course of my work back in the States, I
happened to come across an ancient Masai transpossession ritual. It was meant
for transferring the spirits of vicious predatory animals from one body to
another, so naturally I assumed it would work on both Weatherby and anyone
remotely associated with Wolfram and Hart. And happily, so it has. Problem
solved. But for Weatherby's regrettable escape, of course.”
But Heathcliff was far from satisfied. “I swear, Rupert,” he huffed, “I've
never heard anyone talk so much out of both sides of his mouth as you, and I'm
including in that all my brothers on the Inner Council. How can you defend
Weatherby with your sanctimonious there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-you-and-
I and then in your very next breath condemn him as a vicious, predatory
animal.”
“Huh,” Rupert rejoined, a filigree of feigned innocence overlaying his biting
sarcasm, “am I to understand that you see some contradiction in that? I
certainly wouldn't have thought so. Perhaps you can explain it to me on the way
to your daughter's wedding.”
***** Gifts and Bargains *****
Chapter Summary
     A wise man once said, 'you can't always get what you want'. But
     sometimes you can. And then you have to decide: What are you willing
     to pay for it?
Dinner managed to be late, cold and rushed all at the same time. And at that,
they had to eat without the father of the bride and one of the groom's
designated kinsmen. Possibly, their presence would have only made the meal more
awkward. But it was hard to imagine how.
Silverware clanked. Nervous conversation faltered. Every time Wesley dared to
say a word or two to Amal, her mother glared at him over her head while she
smiled unconvincingly and mumbled a polite, noncommittal word or two in
response.
“Ah... so, Amal,” he ventured again when the conversation between Peter and
David about the exchange rate between the pound and the dollar inevitably
petered out. “Your father tells me you lived in the United States for a time.
What was that like?”
For a moment, it seemed to Wesley as if he had broken the proverbial ice at
last. Alma's eyes brightened and a genuine smile crossed her face for the first
time. But the moment was short-lived. Amal lowered her gaze to her folded hand
in her lap, staring past her nearly untouched plate. “That was a long time
ago,” she said softly, sadly. Malalai glared harder than ever.
This time Wesley couldn't help but glare back. He was starting to hate this
woman. What did she want from him? How did she expect him to behave? It wasn't
as though he had climbed up the lattice to spirit the child away. They were
practically forcing her on him.
“Still,” Wesley persisted, “it sounds a bit of an adventure. I've never been
myself. Where did you live.”
Amal bit her lower lip and looked at her mother. That was supposed to be
alluring, the biting of the lower lip. Naked and half naked models did it in
the name of selling everything from designer clothes to pornographic magazines.
Some how on Alma, it looked a little too authentic. She wasn't teasing. She
really was a lost, overwhelmed little girl.
At last Malalai's frown softened. She raised her eyebrows a tad and cocked her
head as if to say, 'well why not at this point.'
“We lived in St. Louis,” Amal said, barely above a whisper, her eyes lighting
up again just a little. Her tone was mysterious and proprietary, as if she were
describing a secret, fairy country that she alone had discovered. And so it
began. She described her school, her friends, and (clearly first in her
affections) her grandparents. It was soon clear that, to her, their home was a
place of almost mystical happiness and security, a place to which she longed to
return.
Just as it was becoming subtly clear, without her having to say any such thing,
that she would never truly feel at home in Afghanistan. Malalai's frown was
deepening, becoming more worried again. Wesley tried to ignore her. He kept his
eyes focused on Amal, kept her talking. Encouraging her to share every
fascinating detail. And he was fascinated, listening raptly to each new
revelation, though it was hard to say if the expectant feeling growing in the
pit of his stomach was one of hope or dread.
But whatever he felt about what he was coming to know about his soon-to-be
wife, at least he was finally coming to know her a bit, getting a sense of her
as a person. And the person he was sensing was not so alien as he had feared.
Not a fanatical, subservient Wahhabi girl from Afghanistan, but a bright-eyed
kid from St. Louis who wanted to be famous and important and happy. Just like
every American.
On the one hand, he felt rather like Phileas Fogg finding out that the 'Indian
widow' about to be immolated in front of him was actually, for all intents and
purposes, an English schoolgirl. It strengthened his conviction that was what
happening here tonight was deeply, terribly wrong. At the same time, it was a
relief just to know that he would not be totally alone in Afghanistan, cut off
from anyone with a remotely western, or modern sense of the world.
Wesley seized upon Rupert's advice from earlier in the evening and tried to
nurture that sense of relief, to share it with her. He made the most of every
small point of common interest and experience, and then some. Laughed at film
references he only half understood. He did his best to reassure her that he too
was not so strange after all. What other choice did he have? He was not here to
save this girl from the fire but to jump on the pyre with her, to convince her
that staying there would somehow be alright.
“Wesley?” Amal said in a small, unsure voice, looking at him worriedly,
expectantly, her smile wavering. Damn. He had dropped his end of the
conversation. Retreated too far into his own head again.
“Oh... right, well... I'm sorry erm... darling...” the endearment was a
mistake. It sounded too stilted, too uncertain, too generic, too everything,
Wesley decided; as a wave of miserable self loathing washed over him. Why
couldn't he be good with people like his mother or at least good at moving them
around like his father?
“So... I...” he continued, still tripping over his tongue. Still hating himself
both for trying to smooth talk this poor, innocent girl and for failing. “I was
just thinking. I should give Rupert and He—my—er—Perhaps I should give your
father a call. See when they might be able to wrap up their... ah urgent...
erm... whatever it is.”
Amal's face crinkled into an unpleasant yet sympathetic expression. Everyone
else at the table just looked embarrassed, worried, or annoyed. Not Amal. She
felt sorry for him. Wesley sighed inwardly. At least it was a start. So they
weren't going to be Romeo and Juliet or even Rick and Elsa. At least they might
be able to manage a bit of genuine friendship. That is, a malign inner voice
taunted Wesley derisively, as long as she didn't mind being raped.
'Just don't think of it like that,' Peter had cautioned him in a low tone on
the drive down from London proper, echoing Rupert's advise and Heathcliff's
sentiments in one. The unanimous opinion of his fellow Watchers was that, Amal,
being so young and suggestible, would see the circumstances of their marriage
however he seemed to see them.
Wesley was no longer so sure that she would be quite as mailable as that, but
he had to try. If there was one thing he had learned from their brief
conversation, it was that Amal needed to know that she was not alone in this at
least as desperately as he did. She needed to feel that Wesley was with her,
that whatever they were going through was happening to both of them, and not
something he was ganging up with her parents to do to her.
It was plainly written on her face, Wesley realized, as he took her hand in
both of his and kissed it, despite the looks from her mother and brothers. As
he called her 'darling' far more convincingly and asked her to continue with
her tales of far, exotic Missouri. He saw what she needed to believe. What she
wanted this to be between them. That most American of dreams. Suddenly, against
all odds, at the darkest hour when all hope seemed lost, true love. The kind
that makes everything alright.
'Dear God,' Wesley prayed silently, but as sincerely as he had ever prayed in
his life. 'If I am to marry this girl, please let us be married. Let us grow to
love and depend on one another and never ever let her feel that what happens
here tonight is just a transaction or a sacrifice. Please God, whether our
fathers sneer or smile, in her eyes, if only in her eyes, just this once, let
me be the hero.'
                                     *****
“A hero? Don't make me laugh, Meatstick,” Glory pulled the wriggly coward in
his loud, over accessorized costume up from behind the garishly draped folding
table. His chair clattered to the floor as she held him aloft by the collar.
“You're nothing. An insect whose only significance lies in being in my way.”
“Look, Lady,” the gibbering fool managed to choke out, though he was near to
pissing himself with fear. “I know I'm not a hero! I'm an actor! It's just a
costume, you know, for their fun and my profit?” he indicated the stunned
silent crowd around them. “They're fans. Of my show.”
Glory rolled her eyes and tossed the idiot across the room. With so many to
choose from, she wanted a better brain to suck. Besides, the wet cracking sound
he made as he slammed into the far wall and fell lifeless to the floor served
as a perfect warning to the rest of them.
There was a general intake a breath. Some screamed, though most didn't dare. A
few fainted. There were always a few. Humans could be such wimps some times.
“Oh Most Magnificently Violent One?” A simpering, cringing minion mewled in her
ear, timorously seeking her attention. Well he wasn't getting it. Not right now
anyway. Mama had things to say, things that needed to get out.
Glory made a noise of frustration somewhere between a grunt and a growl.
“Comic-Con!?!” she shrieked, stamping her foot hard enough to crack the
concrete floor of the convention center. “Why would those Infernal Monks hide
my key in such a ridiculous place full of such annoyingly boring people? Just
to torture me by making me spend time with these losers among losers!?!
“They're like humanity squared, y'know? With their pathetic, insipid need to
feel smart and creative and special, to be excluded just so they can belong.
And why will that horrible grinding noise of bladed rain like diamonds on the
roof not stop and let me think my way out of this madhouse!?!”
Suddenly, or maybe not so suddenly, Glory became disoriented. The world swam
before her. Without being clear on the sequence of events leading up to the
moment, she found her fingers wriggling joyfully inside a common but mildly
interesting human mind. Sighing with relief, she looked around her. There were
more broken human bodies than she remembered, also more demonic minions
gathered around.
“As I was starting to say, Oh Glorious One,” Drek was prattling on, amused at
his own half-witted pun. “The uh... good news,” he steepled his grimy fingers
nervously, a fearful tremble underlying his cheerful, almost sing-song tone.
“Out with it!” Glory demanded, all patience gone.
“Well... we were able to apprehend the Monk whom we followed here, and to
ascertain that he is in fact the last of his kind....” Drek's voice trailed off
and he looked around as if for support. His brothers and sisters of the Order
of Scabby Filth studiously avoided his gaze, averting their eyes every which
way. One or two whistled or hummed softly.
“What about my key!” Glory demanded, stomping her foot again so that the floor
shook, wares fell from stalls and tables, and there was a general sound of
miserable apprehension from the masses of captive humanity.
“He did not appear to have it with him, Oh Breathtakingly Beautiful and also
Literally Breathtaking One. Upon vigorous inquiry, he represented to us that it
had been sent far from the monastery days, possibly weeks, before we arrived
there. He did not admit that it was near here, but the horror his eyes betrayed
him when I suggested it. Even more so when I suggested that it might have been
made human and that the Slayer was somehow a part of hiding it.”
“Of course it's near here!” Glory fumed. We're what? An hour's drive from the
Very Spot?”
The foul minion tilted his head back and forth like a metronome. “A bit less,
I'd say. Perhaps forty to fifty minutes depending on traffic. Although, maybe
at the peak of rush hour—Gahg!” Drek gurgled in astonishment as he was caught
by the throat in Glory's powerful grip.
“Not the point,” she chided him coolly. Not enraged, just annoyed. “The point
is that she lied to me. To me!” Glory's emotional state turned on a dime and
soon she was punctuating her sentences with blows and thrown objects again.
“She swore! To me, that she knew nothing about the Monks, or where my key was,
that she'd only heard about it from those Retro-Geek Knights! She promised
she'd come down to Snoozydale to help me look for it, that she'd lure the whole
Slayer/Watcher Whose-it into taking my side against the other end and the
middle!
“And she was working with them the whole time! That ungrateful little nothing!
Well, fine then, stab me in the back, will ya? That's okay. Prick all you like
Slayrunt because this girl does not bleed.
“Drek! Bring me what's left of that Monk! I'll ring everything he knows about
the Slayer and where she's gone with my key out of him if I have to pull out
his intestines inch by inch and stretch them from one end of this Coliseum
knock off to the other. Then I'm going to go get my key back and put my fist
through The Slayer's heart. And I dare any so called 'Hero' on this miserable
little mudball to try and stop me!”
                                     *****
Doug's eyes opened in the dimness and slowly began to adjust. Not much to see.
There was some kind of rough carpeting under his face. It Chafed against his
skin every time the floor was jostled up and down or side to side. Which was a
lot. He groaned miserably, more because the world sucked than because of how
much his entire body hurt. Which was also a lot.
“Hey, what's up doc?” Faith asked, trying to sound flip, but actually sounding
both relieved and worried.
“Well, let's see,” he grumbled, “I thought I might have died, but since your
here too, and it's not hot...” In fact, Doug noticed, it was a bit chilly.
“Hmm, don't suppose this might be purgatory? I mean, I've heard of Hell on
wheels...”
“Asshole,” Faith said. But there was a smile in her voice when she said it.
“Okay, now what?” asked another female voice, “Where are we going?” The voice
was high and pinched. In some way that was difficult to articulate, it
communicated both superiority of rank and helpless dependence. It was almost
but not quite the demanding interrogative of a spoiled child.
But it wasn't Doug or Faith she was depending on or making demands of. “We'll
go to Rupert's,” a winded, reedy male voice gasped out; exhausted, but suffused
with comfortable, well worn authority. The coughing fit that followed sort of
undercut that a little. But Doug was in no shape to play whose in charge and
why. He didn't even ask who the Hell Rupert was. He was so tired. He needed
medical attention he realized vaguely, and possibly blood.
Doug's eyes popped open and he struggled to set up. Wasn't there a St. Rupert
of something? “No hospitals!” he insisted emphatically, fighting bone-deep
terror. Being identified would spell death for the Ericsons as surely as any
gang of vampires.
Faith helped Doug sit up, but when he tried to make his way towards the front
of the van, she held him back. Gently. Effortlessly. “It's okay, Doug. Just
chill. These guys are on our side.”
Doug groaned and rubbed his head. But it hurt to move his arm, enough that he
stopped rubbing and let it fall limp at his side. “Our side of what?” he half
demanded, feeling annoyed with her cryptic, somewhat amused tone.
“Of the Battle between Good and Evil?” said the other girl, the driver, “I
mean, hello? Duh!” From where he was sitting, Doug couldn't see her roll her
eyes, but the harsh edge to her voice and the toss of her sable mane made the
same point clearly enough.
She was a cheerleader. High school. Had to be. She wore the outfit and the
attitude. The contrast between her and the man riding shotgun (actually it
looked more like a spear gun) couldn't have been sharper. He seemed as old,
tired, and calmly certain as she seemed young, hyper, and defensively brash.
“Yeah,” Doug grumbled, feeling a little bit pissy himself, “but which side are
we on?” Okay, more than a little bit. Doug felt distinctly disgruntled, but for
reasons he couldn't quite pin down. Although, having no idea what the hell was
going on definitely had something to do with it.
Evidently, though, he was the only one bothered by that. Faith was kicked back
like they were among old friends. A first in his experience. “Hey,” she
corrected him sharply. “Don't be such an asshole.” This time there was no smile
in her voice. “These people just saved our asses. The least you can do is not
be a dick, alright?”
Doug settled back against the wall of the van, closed his eyes and sighed.
“Right. Sure. Sorry,” he mumbled. “Getting my ass kicked puts me in a crappy
mood, that's all. You know what would make me feel better though? Hearing who
you are, where we're going, what you actually want with us, and why I should
believe that you're on 'our side'.”
                                     *****
“I'm afraid what you ask is too much.” the voice boomed sonorously, like a
cheap special effect.
“But surely, for someone of your magnificent powers...” Ethan felt the smile
tighten on his face as he struggled to find the words to get what he needed so
desperately.
“Silence!” the Demon commanded him theatrically. Against the inclinations of
every fiber of his being, Ethan shut his mouth. “I did not say I was unable,”
It fumed. “But why should I do such a thing for you? What can you possibly give
me that is of comparable value.”
“Well, I...Truly...” Truly he realized, there was nothing he could offer that
would even come close. But, of course, he couldn't say that. The Demon waited
expectantly. Ethan smiled as best he could. The effect was weak at best. “There
is one thing,” he finished his haltingly begun sentence much more smoothly, “or
'person' if you prefer.”
The Demon sighed impatiently. “Thing will do fine as far as I'm concerned, for
you too as far as that goes,” he drawled out boredly. “Not that I'm saying I'll
take it. But it does have uses I suppose. Especially considering the bloodline
it comes from. I'm sure I could find some ritual purpose for blood from the
veins of the Council of Rome. Very well, I will take the child and you will
have what you ask for.”
“Oh, thank God!” Ethan exclaimed without thinking. His heart squeezed itself
into a tiny knot of panic, but the Demon only laughed. “Sorry,” Ethan said
somehow both brashly and sheepishly, a little ironic smile playing upon his
lips. “Force of habit.”
                                     *****
Buffy was quiet on the drive back to the hotel. For once, Joyce didn't even try
to draw her into any conversation. What was there to say? This situation was
imposable. And yet it was. Besides, it was nearly midnight and they were both
exhausted anyway.
As the taxi drove away and the two women turned to go inside, though, Joyce
realized there was one thing she did have to say after all. “Lets not tell your
father about this,” she suggested with a desperately sunny casualness. As if it
were a small, friendly request. “At least not right away. He's had so much to
process, and I think he's already not handling things well.”
There was a moment of not-talking as they dragged themselves into the elevator
and waited for the aging doors to lumber together and shut. Joyce began to
worry that her daughter might disagree. But no. Buffy was just weary of her
mother's needless advice. “Mom,” she replied at last, in a voice like tired,
heavy eyes rolling impatiently, “Believe me, that's the last thing I would ever
want to do. I'm not even sure how I'm going to tell Giles.”
Which was a good point. In more ways than one. For the first time all night,
Joyce had an actual though about Brian. And what she felt was so much relief it
curled into guilt around the edges.
It wasn't as though she could tell him what had actually happened, even if she
wanted to. He certainly wouldn't have believed her. The only part he could
possibly comprehend was that she was no longer pregnant. There was no way to
explain that his child was, nevertheless, coming into the world anyway.
Which meant she didn't have to. She was free to invite him to take his antiques
and leave without ever having to see him again. Hence guilt. But also, and even
more deeply, relief.
It was as though she'd been given her life back, Joyce realized. She hadn't let
herself understand just how little she wanted a life with Brian after all until
it had suddenly become possible to have the opposite of that without breaking
commitments and expectations for which she could be judged.
But this gift of freedom that had been given to her did not come free to
everyone. Buffy was only seventeen. Giles was at a dead end in his career and
far too old to be starting over from scratch. The last thing they needed was a
second child to raise. They hardly needed the first.
The thought of adoption fluttered through Joyce's mind. But the idea made her
feel so tired. It was scary enough facing motherhood again at her age when she
had expected to have a loving (or even grudging) partner at her side. The
prospect a being a single mom all over again, from square one, was more than
Joyce could handle, and she knew it.
But, she would be a good grandmother, Joyce resolved. The best in the world.
That would be enough, wouldn't it? It had to be. It was what she could do.
And, after all, she persuaded herself, if there was anyone who owed her such a
enormous favor as to take on that responsibility on her behalf, it was Rupert
Giles. And Buffy, well... Buffy was Buffy. If there was one thing she could do
it was to handle very strange and difficult things.
“It's all going to be fine,” Joyce said aloud, probably more than once, still
working on her sense of conviction. She stopped short of asking if Giles really
needed to be told the truth at all. She knew better.
“Well, thank God we made it home without any creature sightings anyway,” Buffy
half agreed, half grumbled as they stepped into the suit and heard the heavy
door shut reassuringly behind them. “If there is one thing I don't need tonight
it is one more surprise to deal with.”
As she said this, Joyce saw something that took her... well... by surprise. And
then she was aiming impatient, imaginary eye rolls at herself. What was so
surprising? She should have expected this.
Hank and Mitzie's clothes were scattered all over the living-room floor. Of
course they were. Where else would they be? Bothering to put them anywhere else
would have been a sign of concern for the feelings of others or courtesy at the
very least. That wouldn't be like Hank at all.
Hank Summers had the amazing ability to sail through life never fully taking
into account how his actions might affect anyone else. Always letting you know
he could 'feel your pain' while at the same time doing exactly what worked out
best for him. It was a gift really. One Joyce had never possessed and sometimes
envied.
Realization settle heavily across Joyce's shoulders. One of the children
growing inside Buffy's body was not Buffy's child or Giles's either. It was
Joyce's. And with or without Brian, regardless of whether she was called 'Mom'
or 'Grandma', hell and gone from any consideration at all about what Hank was
doing with Mitzie or what anyone had previously done to whom, she had to
shoulder that responsibility.
“Oh great,” Buffy groused, catching sight of the scattered clothes at last,
each set complete enough to leave nothing to doubt. “Just what this family
needs. More drama.”
Joyce yawned deeply and authentically. “There doesn't have to be drama.” She
pointed out. “We could both just go to bed.”
“Ah,” Buffy agreed with a mixture of genuine relief and ironic cheerfulness, “a
sensible solution. Score one for Team Mom.”
Team Mom. It had a nice ring to it. Speaking of sensible solutions. A
recollection of the roadside restaurant psychic and her wedding day prediction
intruded upon Joyce's thoughts, but she set it forcefully aside. Even if Buffy
and Giles really were headed for an eventual divorce, that was a problem for
another day. It was like her Grandfather always said. 'Never borrow trouble.
Just about anybody will give you more than you want of that for free.'
                                     *****
She was dressed about the way you would expect a Parisian Vampire Queen to be
dressed. A red and black motif. Sweeping velvet cape. High winged collar. Tight
bodice. Sheer stockings. Yards of old-fashioned lace. Her blond hair was piled
high enough to hide a birdcage inside, finished off at the ends with tight,
bouncy little curls, looking very late Versailles. For the love of Christmas!
She even had a little black silk fan. Too perfect.
Warren looked up from the security monitor. “Show her into the East Reception
Room,” he instructed a minion haughtily. “And see that she is offered anything
she needs but kept waiting without it anyway.” He managed to keep a straight
face until the servant had gone to do as he was told, but the minute the door
closed, he couldn't stand it any longer. He turned to his two companions
grinning, rubbing his hands together with glee.
“I knew this day would come!” he exclaimed, followed by a long peel of what
could only be described as evil laughter. Chris and Trina exchanged an open
look of skepticism. “All right,” Warren admitted, “Not 'knew it' in the sense
of having the slightest idea that it would ever actually happen, but still...
This is just plain perfect. All mightier than thou and here she comes crawling
to me for what Mister Bleach-Blond Victorian Relic can't give her.
“I think I'll keep the Prom Princess waiting about half an hour, maybe forty-
five minutes. By then she'll be itching for what I've got so bad she'll beg to
serve my every whim just to get it. And then, Spikey Boy, it's payback time!”
“Yeah, well,” Trina said grimly, “just don't forget what the whole point of
this is and ruin it by trying to make her suck your cock or something.”
Warren made an unconvincing show of pshawing that idea. Implying that the very
suggestion was absurd. His two partners shared a much more serious look of
disbelief behind his back. They both knew him better than that. Warren was
every kind of greedy and selfish. And as long as he was in a position to let
his appetites rule their joint destiny, their rise to the top of the vampire
world could never be anything but short-lived.
“You see?” Trina said pointedly the moment Warren finally left the room. She
pinned Chris with her gaze.
He dropped his eyes down and to the side to avoid hers. “You're right he
admitted. There's no more time. We need to meet with Spike. And fast.”
                                     *****
Lighting flashed. Thunder rolled. A tree limb broke loose and clattered to the
balcony with a horrible crash, knocking a deckchair forcefully against the
glass, shattering it, sending it tinkling to the floor inside and out. Shutters
banged. Curtains blew.
“Hey!” Willow shouted at the goddess inside her room inside her head. “What's
the matter with you!?! Now the whole rooms gonna get soaked.”
The goddess was impatient. Unconcerned. Annoyed. Almost bored. She was ready to
have an answer.
“Don't rush me!” Willow shouted. “I need to think!”
No good. This could not be solved by thinking. It was about desire, need. More
than that it was about taking sides. Which would it be? Grasp the power to
order the world as she desired or cling to His childish notions of what was
right?
“But this has nothing to do with Him!” Willow objected. “It's me! I can't just
let my mom die to get something I want.”
But you do not love her. So why not?
“Because! She doesn't belong to me! Her life is not mine to give! And she's my
mom!”
Then you have decided? I should depart and leave you with the both of them? The
sense of tone behind this last idea defined disingenuous. The goddess was
mocking her, but her threat of abandonment was also serious.
“Wait! What? No, no, no, I—I'm thinking!”
The goddess laughed at her inconsistency. Willow could hardly blame her.
The storm continued to rage impatiently. Elsewhere in the house the rats
squeaked nervously in their cage, all crowding close to their mother.
The goddess smiled unpleasantly inside Willow's consciousness. Here. Let me
make it easy for you. Suddenly, a horrible bolt of lightning split the night
sky. Turning at an improbable angle, it shattered the window of the former
spare room in which Sheila now lay in her unnatural repose.
“No!” Willow screamed, a second before the massive electrical current struck
her mother's limp body, making it arch and flop against the bed. When it
stopped, a few seconds later, Willow was still screaming.
There, the goddess informed her smugly. Now you don't even have to make a
choice. Your mother is dead. I'm willing to accept her sacrifice as the basis
of a covenant between us and to give you the additional blessing of never
having gotten pregnant in the first place. And that in itself is quite a gift,
considering that that wretched fetus has already grown to the point that it
could be born right now and live to be a Supreme Court Justice.
“You killed her.” Willow was not disbelieving. It was a matter of fact
statement. It was just that in light of that fact, nothing else seemed
important enough to say.
Hecate was unapologetic. Gods could do that. Say yes, she advised calmly. The
price has already been paid. I stand ready to take away your mistake and all
it's consequences. I'm offering you salvation from a situation you have brought
entirely upon yourself. All you have to do is accept it. All you have to do is
say yes.
***** But Thinking Makes It So *****
Chapter Summary
     On the night of Wesley and Amal's wedding, the 'happy couple' as well
     as other people and things find themselves in dificult but perhaps
     not entirely negative circumstances. Or maybe that's just the only
     thing they have left to tell themselves. Maybe.
Wesley hardly paid attention to the ceremonies as such. The contracts, which
were in Farsi, he signed without reading, almost faster than Rupert could shove
them under his nose and imply that he was a fool for not taking the time to
hear a quick translation. These implications were rather louder and more
pointed than Rupert seemed to realize; only one of many evidences that wherever
he and Heathcliff had been, they had celebrated in a manor quite unseemly for
the members of a good Muslim wedding party.
Well that was just smashing! Wesley really couldn't care less about their
recreation or their blathering or their bloody contracts. It was nothing but
land and money. Hang it all! Who could think about money at a time like this?
Nonetheless, he did think it rather unsporting of them to stay out getting
pissed or stoned or whatever they were until his one measly drink had worn off
and he was required to endure this burlesque of a wedding entirely sober.
Of course, he wasn't the only one in that position Wesley reminded himself. He
looked over and caught Amal's eye with what he hoped was a look of sympathy or
solidarity or something similarly positive and appropriate. She colored deeply
but did not look away. She even tried, valiantly to smile. Wesley almost loved
her just for that. If she had looked angrily at him in that moment, he might
not have been able to go on.
As he listened to David droning on in Arabic just closely enough to know when
to repeat qabul “I accept”, three times; he kept eye contact with Amal, wishing
he could have stood closer to her, close enough to hold her hand. To comfort
and reassure her. True, they were in far closer quarters (men and women all
gathered in one small room) that was traditional in a lot of Muslim cultures,
especially the infamously conservative Wahhabi sects of Afganistan. But they
were still positioned a good ten feet apart, with David, Heathcliff, Rupert,
and Peter in between.
Amal radiated a sort of quietly nervous energy. Calm stoicism stretched tight
over desperate hope and near panicked dread with a transparent gloss of
cheerfulness hastily brushed on, fooling no one. When it came time for her to
say her 'qabuls' her voice broke and quavered far more than could be explained
by her uncertain grasp of Arabic, but she got through it without shedding tears
or breaking eye contact with Wesley.
She was so sad and so brave. Wesley wanted to hold her in his arms and tell her
everything would all be alright, that she was safe in his hands. And he'd get a
chance to do that shortly, of course. The bigger problem was, when he told her
she was safe, love, protected; he wanted that to be the truth.
                                     ~~~~~
From nowhere, from the dark, something divinely cool graced his forehead. But
the rest of his body was still hot all over, sticking to what must have been
sheets and one very sweaty pair of underpants. A cold compress against a
fevered brow. That was the answer to the riddle. 'Clever' Doug thought dryly.
'Only took the great genius Dr. Wunderkind about five minutes to work that one
out'. At this rate he'd be adding two plus two within the hour.
Doug tried to sit up, but small firm hands shoved him gently downwards. That
undeniably female touch on his bare, burning shoulders sent an electric thrill
down his spine and straight to his penis, which apparently didn't care that the
rest of him felt like shit. Selfish prick.
“Whoa there, Doc,” Faith's voice was strangely gentle, only slightly mocking.
For a moment Doug silently panicked, sure that he'd been caught in this seedy
sin of pitiful, unactable lust. But no. She only meant that he shouldn't try to
sit up. “You're weak.” Her words were almost a caress. She was worried for him.
That didn't inspire a lot of confidence in a favorable prognosis.
“Am I still dying?” he asked, neither seeking nor avoiding emotional drama,
just wanting to know.
“Not sure yet,” Faith answered. Her face was barely a silhouette, a moving
shadow in the darkness; but there was a serious frown in her voice. “Here,
drink this,” she added. Doug felt the cup of water she was tilting to his lips
and sipped it gratefully. Her arm behind his back, holding him up was firm and
businesslike, as no-nonsense as any nurse. Again, not a good sign.
Faith talked a little more. A lot for her really. Telling him important things,
like the exact ways in which their new friends were somehow but not really
connected to the High Royal Council of Lime Sucking Assholes, and how that was
a good thing.
Doug tried to keep up with her, but he was so, so tired. At one point there may
have been mention of Gods and Goddesses. Then again, that may have just been
the fever talking. It was nothing he'd expect to hear from Faith. Then what?
Something about ordering blood like pizza?
It was no use. If there was a tomorrow for him, he could figure it all out
then. Either way, he didn't really have the energy to care. Doug slipped
quietly back into the darkness.
                                     ~~~~~
“Doctor! Dr. Wilkinson!” Clair screamed frantically down the hallway. The kind
of frantically that made Miriam come running without hesitation or annoyance,
just concern. “Doctor, I don't even pretend to understand this, but this
girl... her pregnancy isn't just progressing quickly, it's actually speeding
up! And on top of that she's showing sings of early labor! She's having
significant contractions about every half-hour now. And look, at her cervix!
It's actually starting to dilate!”
And on top of all that, what didn't even have to be said at this point, was
that, equally unfathomably, still, Willow Rosenberg slept. She wasn't in a coma
or a vegetative state either. EEGs, CAT Scans, MRIs, the tell tale twitching
beneath her eyelids; all said the same thing. This girl was far away in
Dreamland, so far she couldn't seem to find her way back.
For all of those reasons, this time Miriam didn't even think of arguing or
questioning Clair any further. She rushed into the room and began yet another
quick exam of the girl before grabbing her ultrasound wand and doing another
scan. What she saw was impossible. But frankly, that was consistent with every
thing that they'd seen so far. At least if you thought in terms of consistent
acceleration of the development of the Rosenberg fetus rather than consistent
development as such.
Did that make any sense? No, but it was just how it was. Miriam was on longer
worrying about why and how this could possibly have happened. You could drive
yourself crazy in this town worrying about things like that. Her job now was to
keep this girl and her baby alive. For that she had to deal with what was, not
what should have been.
And that was that this fetus, which had measured only eighteen weeks at
admission less than twenty-four hours ago was now measuring thirty weeks. If
growth kept accelerating at the current rate and this girl didn't wake up in
time to push, then in a couple of hours, they were going to have a life
threatening crisis on their hands. Besides which, if it kept cannibalizing her
tissues faster than they could pump her full of glucose and vitamins, she might
starve to death in any case. She was dangerously low on both fat and muscle
tissue as it was.
“Call downstairs and see if they have an OR available,” Dr. Wilkinson ordered.
“If not, tell them to bump something that can wait. This can't. Meanwhile get
her started on Tocolytics and increase her ACSs. And before I forget—” Miriam
stopped short. Clair's eyes were wide as saucers. An orderly cursed in
surprise.
Miriam turned in time to see her patient sit bolt upright in bed and begin
shouting (raving really) at the top of her lungs. If the sounds pouring forth
from her mouth like a mighty river were even words, Miriam was none the wiser.
And yet, there was something strangely humbling in the atmosphere that seemed
to form around the girl as she spoke. Her red hair flew around her pale,
emaciated face as though she were some ancient mad woman; yet, she seemed not
so much delusional or disoriented as fierce, almost commanding.
It was only when the orderly responded, in a soft voice, “Barukh ata Adonai
Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam, bo're m'orei ha'esh,” That Dr. Wilkinson realized her
patient wasn't just 'speaking in tongues' after all. She was speaking Hebrew.
She still didn't know exactly what was being said, on either side. She wasn't
exactly sure she wanted to know.
Willow rose to her feet on top of the hospital bed, both her hair and her gown
flying about her now, stirred by a wind only she could feel. Her next sentence
might or might not have been Hebrew. The only word Miriam recognized was
'Hecate'. She said the name almost as a term of address. A challenge?
The Orderly bobbed his head, something between a nod and a bow, and fled the
room. There was really no other word for it. Clair looked a Miriam worriedly
and mumbled something about getting a psych consult, her eyes begging for
permission to leave, to get out of the now dreadfully tense atmosphere in that
tiny room. Miriam nodded.
Now that there were only two of them in the room, Willow looked down into
Miriam's face for a moment. Her expression was odd. Quizzical. Her hair and
gown stopped blowing as, with a sheepish half smile, she went through awkward
series of movements necessary to first sit and then lie back in bed.
“Okay,” Willow said finally, squirming in embarrassment. “That was a little
strange, but, hey... all better now. All unstrange. So no need to, you know,
call guys in white coats. I'm fine, you know, just getting over the shock of
finding out, I'm, you know, so far along, but, hey, I've still got a few weeks
to play with here, right? No Big.”
Dr. Wilkinson sighed. “I wish I could agree with you,” she said, sounding like
she really, really meant it. “But I think we both know better than that; don't
we?”
Willow recalled something Hecate had said just before she'd finally summoned
the strength to get over herself and call for backup to back the Witch-Goddess
down. ...That wretched fetus has already grown to the point that it could be
born right now and live to be a Supreme Court Justice.The choice of imagery was
deliberately mocking. Apparently, Hecate still kept up with politics.
Willow put her hands on her huge, impossibly swollen abdomen. “Oh my God!” she
gasped in numb, utterly neutral amazement, “I'm going to be a mom?”
“Mozel Tov,” Miriam said, with just a bit of a wry smile, more relieved to have
Willow out of her deathlike trance than anything.
Mozel Tov. Most gentiles though it meant congratulations, and that was close
enough for all practical purposes. But when it came right down to it, Mozel Tov
didn't so much declare what was happening to be a good thing as express hope
that it might be. It was more a statement of intention than fact, like 'good
morning', or 'happy birthday'.
“Mozel Tov,” Willow repeated quietly. Her situation was not fair. She had been
robbed of the choice she needed and deserved, both with regard to her late
mother and her soon to be child. Hecate and her minions had forced Willow down
a path that was not of her choosing. Yet and still, here on this path, she had
a choice.
Suddenly, Willow realized there were tears rolling down her face. It was like a
great ball of pain burst in her chest. Suddenly she was sobbing in Dr.
Wilkinson's arms. With every sob, she choked out one word, “Mom.” It was a
question and an answer, an accusation and a defense, a plea and a judgment.
At that moment Willow loved Sheila Rosenberg. She love the tiny child who had
danced in the surf alongside her mother. She love the little eight-year-old
girl who had watched her mother, grandmother, aunts and cousins burned to death
at the hands of their 'Christian' neighbors. She loved the cautious, studious
teen who had probably never meant to love another human being again. She loved
the young woman who couldn't help but fall in love with Ira Rosenberg anyway,
because who could?
She loved the young mother who just couldn't find it in her broken soul to love
more than one person, even if that person was her own child, who didn't have
the strength to form the very bond that had so crippled her a second time. And
she loved the woman who got up every morning and made sure that her daughter
had everything she needed and every reasonable thing she wanted, who never
begrudged her her fathers love and attention and rarely spoke a harsh word to
her in seventeen years; not because she loved her, but because it was the right
thing to do.
Willow loved the mother who, though it would have been easy to do, though she
had been helpless in her power; had never taken from Willow the one thing
Sheila herself had been deprived of, the ability without reservation or
limitation, to love. With that, the choice was made. Willow wasn't just going
to be a mother; she was going to be a mom. And for that, finally, she loved her
own mother, with all her heart.
Caressing her swollen belly, feeling the movement within, Willow felt so much
joy that she couldn't even find it in her heart to wallow in guilt and regret
that this epiphany had come too late to save her mother's life. All curses and
spells were broken. Sheila and Ira were both at peace, hopefully somewhere
together. In a few short weeks the child inside her would be ready to be born.
And Xander would be by her side. It was time to love forward, not back. It was
time to bring life into the world. What could be more beautiful, more worthy of
congratulations, than that.
                                     ~~~~~
The human half growled half grunted low in the back of its throat, like the
animal it was. Then it let out its breath in a slow, deep syncopated hiss
before beginning the process all over again, teeth gnashing all the while.
This thing was a ridiculous spectacle, really. Grimacing and tensing, trying to
change reality by not admitting to it. Shadnoir couldn't help but let out a
deep belly laugh that shook him to the bottom of his deepest stomach. The angry
shame that flared in it's eyes at that was even more amusing.
“What's the matter?” Shadnoir taunted playfully, as if he were not fully aware
of the agony that must be caused by the rapidly growing creature writhing
within the human's guts.
“I dislike what I fancy I feel!” it ground out between clinched teeth, each
word dripping with venomous, contemptuous sarcasm. It actually wished to do
Shadnoir serious harm. This thing; with it's brittle, bunted little claws and
it's tiny, boxy little teeth! It was all just too cute for words.
“Just cut me already!” the thing spat. “It's bound to be big enough by now!”
“Oh?” Shadnoir feigned puzzlement ever so thinly. “I thought perhaps that would
not be necessary. From the sound of your kitten-like mewling, I thought surely
you had grown a vagina.”
                                     ~~~~~
Spike drummed his finger impatiently on his ornate mahogany desk. Spike was not
impatient. He was nervous; both apprehensive and excited. He could not, in fact
hold his hands still or keep his face entirely straight. But he could move his
fingers in a rhythm that suggested bored, confident superiority while smiling
only the thinnest and most cryptic of smiles.
This was it. He was on the verge. Make the right moves now and this City was
his. Day and night. Sod London. Double Sod Sodding Sunnydale. Spike was about
to be crowned theSun King. Here in the very shadow of Versailles no less. It
was just too perfect.
And that, of course, was what made him nervous. In both the positive and
negative senses. Few Englishmen and fewer Americans these days knew the full
meaning of the word 'jeopardy.' From the French, meaning that moment when the
dice are in the air and it's anybody's game, the instant before fate shows the
cards it's been holding all along, like the one about the bloody cat-in-a-box.
And now here it was; that moment.
“Okay, fine,” Spike exhaled with an exquisite semblance of exasperation. “I
guess I can spare a minute or two. But make it snappy, yeah? The football'll be
on here in just a bit.”
The Vampire he faced across that imposing desk remained calm. Not cocky about
which way the dice would land. Just patient with fate. Spike had a strong
impulse to kill him just for that, but he forbore. A cool head and a reserve of
inner fortitude were after all, better qualities in an ally than in an enemy.
But they were that much worse in an in-house rival. And uncommon in a minion,
for all the obvious reasons.
Still, Spike heard his guest out. The alternative was almost too horrible to
contemplate. He'd be damned to any heaven or hell in the Multiverse before he
would scrape and bow before the likes of Warren Meres. Fortunately, Chris was
not so bent on on being the Top Dog.
“So, let me get this strait,” Spike probed when Chris had more or less finished
explaining what he and his squeeze brought to the table, “Your looking for
what, equal partnership? Everything done by committee, that sort of thing?” He
wasn't having to fake his annoyance quite so much at that.
“Yeah,” Chris said carefully. “That what I said. Why? What did you have in
mind?”
“Well,” Spike's tone was oh so deliberately causal. “I was more thinking you'd
work for me.”
“It would have to look that way in public,” Chris surprised him by half
agreeing. “Image thing. That's fine. But behind closed doors, we'd have to
agree on the important things."
It was then Queen Katrina piped up, “It would be a true partnership. In every
aspect of life and business. Something like a marriage.”
Spike smiled slowly. “Well now, that is exactly what I'm looking for.”
Marriage, another fine institution that feminists had only half succeeded in
ruining. An excellent mechanism whereby a man could make someone his bitch for
all eternity just by calling her his 'partner'. 
***** Stuck *****
Chapter Summary
     Okay, so about what I said in the last chapter summery... actually
     these circumstances are all pretty negative.
Mitzie lay in the darkness alone with the sick, uncertain feeling that filled
her stomach and spread through her chest, like retroactive panic radiating out
from the tangled ball of hope, dread, and conditional regret that had formed
inside her. Hank was still there of course. In the bed beside her. Their bodies
were touching. But his deep, even breathing spoke of untroubled sleep. In her
turmoil, she was alone.
The clock by the bed flashed 1:00 pm, but she'd been watching it for hours.
Long enough to know exactly how wrong it was without doing the math anymore. It
was 2:00 in the morning, or close enough. The clock was either eleven hours
fast or both an hour slow and entirely wrong, however you wanted to look at it.
Either way, no new light had touched the windows yet. Dawn would be a long time
coming if sleep didn't arrive first.
But Mitzie's mind, like her stomach, was too tied in knots for sleep. How
exactly had this happened? she wondered. He'd kept saying it wasn't going to,
and she'd accepted that, honestly feeling more relieved than not. And then he
had made his oh so casual offer. To take her out without going out. To 'make an
evening of it'. And they had.
There was wine of course. But not very much, and they'd both had some. It had
made her feel happy and bold, but how much exactly that had contributed to this
result, she didn't know. Had she truly overcome Hank's reservations or had he
been playing for this outcome all along. Either way, how would he feel when he
awoke and found her there? What would happen when they got home?
Would he decide she was a conniving slut who'd made him do something he
regretted? A chump he'd cleverly succeeded in seducing? A stupid bimbo who'd
been a sure thing all along? Or would he expect her to be in love with him, to
plan her life around his from now on.
Mitzie knew that last one ought to sound like the best possible outcome. But
when she thought about spending the rest of her life or even a hand full of
years with this guy, a guy she suddenly realized she barely knew; all she could
hear was the sound of a heavy metal door clanging shut.
                                     ~~~~~
Wesley had the feeling he ought to have carried Amal across the threshold. The
inevitable end of their brief, tepid wedding celebration seem scandalously
unceremonious. They just walked up the stairs while the mother of the bride
rushed her remaining children off to bed and everyone else made a bee line for
the front door. Like accomplices fleeing the scene of a crime.
But as best Wesley could remember on four or five long used up hours of
jailhouse sleep, Muslims didn't carry their brides away. That was a Roman
custom. The gesture of a people who had once prided themselves on their skill
as ruthless marauders. The Islamic world had it's own little ceremonies for
times like this speaking less of conquest than of consent. In form at least.
Still, Wesley struggled to recall precisely what those customs were. Sprinkling
water around the room perhaps? They did love a good ritual cleansing, even more
so than Christians or Jews, if that were possible. In fact, a wide, shallow
bowl of water had been provided. So, yes, definitely sprinkling. And, of
course, a prayer.
Amal stood awkwardly in the center of the room, smiling weakly and searching
her husband's face for reassurance. Wesley turned and closed the door, both to
shut out the household that was holding it's collective breath below them and
to avoid her gaze for a moment so he could think. He rummaged around in the
small Arabic section of his brain and found the right words, which he recited
dutifully, touching his trembling hands to Amal's face at what he was pretty
sure were the correct times.
The feeling of unceremoniousness, of anticlimax was entirely gone now. When his
skin touched hers, alone in this small universe of a room, there was something
electric in that contact. Whether the feeling was positive or negative was hard
to say, but it was powerful. The air was heavy with significance, with
intention. Wesley's chest was tight and his throat felt swollen.
Amal's eyes were soft and patient now, sad but calm. His heart nearly stopped
when the traditional blessing he was reciting touched upon the subject of
children she would bare to him. Amal didn't react at all to those terrifying
word. Wesley wondered for the first time whether she even spoke Arabic.
Probably not. Certainly not much.
Regardless, he had said every appropriate prayer and blessing of which he could
think. The time for words was passed. Eventually, he was going to have to do
what he came here it do. And he was running out of eventually. As much as he
wanted to tell his young bride that there was absolutely no rush, that they had
all night and longer if she needed it; given his state of near exhaustion and
his early morning flight, that wasn't the truth.
Suddenly, they were back to the familiar awkward standing about. Which reminded
Wesley of every remotely similar situation he'd even been in. Not that any of
them were really even remotely similar. It wasn't as though they'd just gone to
dinner and a show and come back to her flat for a night cap. It wasn't as
though they'd spent three months passing longing looks across a classroom or a
cafe either.
He couldn't quite summon up the audacity to suggest to Amal that they should
move to the bed now. And thinking of that, it was hard to imagine even kissing
her. Not that she didn't look... kissable. Well to some extent. If it wasn't
for those baby seal eye. Her eyes were beautiful actually, attractive even. But
the way she looked at him... Serious. Hopeful. Uncertain. It was not the look
of a lover.
Wesley went and sat down on the bed himself without a word. He supposed without
really thinking about it that Amal would take the hint. When he looked back at
her, she was still standing in the same spot. He must have looked at her
expectantly, in her view, perhaps even impatiently, because her self-
consciously casual posture suddenly straightening in surprise and her eyes
widening still further.
Wesley was sure then that he had made a mistake. Somehow, already, he'd
frightened her. He was never going to manage to get through this without
scarring her for life, whatever Rupert and his kind thought. But then again,
she didn't look frightened exactly. Her expression moved from surprised through
quizzical to embarrassed-to-cause-embarrassment as she asked, “Aren't you going
to wash my feet?”
                                     ~~~~~
“Holy Christ!” Xander shouted, as he struggled to keep the Lexis on the road.
He'd been punching it to try to get back from Fondren before curfew, when he'd
been blindsidedby his own past. Memories spewed, and bubbled and exploded up
from the dark, hidden depths of this brain like tons of ash and molten rock
escaping a volcano. The rock-hard blocks and stopages that had been put into
place to hold them down crumbled to dust as suddenly and completely as any
vampire.
He had he killed Angle. Not in a dream, in real life. And speaking of life, the
one he had taking from Angel had seemed awfully human, beating heart and all.
Then, for no good reason he could think of, Angel had turned into some kind of
vampire/zombie thing. Zompire? Whatever.
That was when Willow's sneaky witch friend had caught him trying to move the
suddenly uncooperative body. She had dusted what was left of Angel and tried to
cover the whole Vampire thing up. To make Xander fear that there was still a
body to be found. To get him to leave town. And then he had caught her at that
and just... forgotten and gone home convinced that Willow didn't need him
anyone or really even want him around.
Which wasn't true! That was the best news in the world. One ray of light in the
darkness of everything he was remembering. Until he realized everything it
meant. The problems it unsolved. The whole impossible mess of being exclusively
committed to two girls who thought he was their boyfriend. One who was pregnant
and one who was Willow.
But what the hell had happened? Ms. Waddle must have put the whammy on him.
That much was obvious. You didn't just forget stuff like fighting the dead body
of your own murder victim or the fact that your girlfriend needed you to look
after her furry little offspring and their rat of a mother.
But why was the spell suddenly broken now? Not nearly enough time had passed
for Waddle to think she'd gotten what she wanted as far as keeping him from
Willow. Hell, she was still in jail and he'd only missed a couple of days
checking on the house, hadn't he? That part, the time he'd been under the spell
was till just a bit fuzzy.
Either way, their was no reason for the older witch to have broken her own
spell or let it expire or whatever. Which meant that she had been opposed and
defeated. Either someone had gotten a hold of Waddle's books and made with the
hocus pocus or.... She was dead.
“Damn,” Xander cursed aloud again. He just hoped she hadn't died at Willow's
house. Because he'd just realized he was on his way over there right now to
check on Sheila and the rats, curfew be damned. And if there was one thing he
definitely didn't need to find there, one thing he could frankly go his whole
life without having to deal with ever again, it was another dead body.
                                     ~~~~~
“I'll be back,” Wallace announced curtly, poking his head into the room. “Got
to drop Cordelia back at her car.” The golden, comparatively bright light of
the hallway made his silver hair shine like a halo. That made Faith's shields
want to go up big-time. It made her want to snap at him that she didn't need
the play by play on his whole miserable existence. Instead, she just nodded and
went right on changing Doug's bandages.
She knew he wasn't doing it on purpose, not trying to sell himself as a hero.
It was just a bad reminder of what kinds of people really existed and what
didn't. It wasn't like he was being overly sweet or anything creepy like that
either. But she was always on edge around people she hadn't known long enough
to figure out what their bad qualities were. Whatever people like to tell
themselves when they were screwing each other over, it was the things you
didn't know that could hurt you the most.
Truthfully, if it hadn't been for Doug, Faith doubted she would have been there
when the old man got back. Sure he had saved her life. But how he'd known when
and where to save it and what he was saving it for; these questions were still
unanswered.
He wasn't exactly part of the Council, or so he said; but he knew them and
worked with them, especially the one who lived here. The one who had married
his Slayer, the old guy's great-granddaughter who was only about a year older
than Faith. The one who was apparently recruiting and training high school
cheerleaders to pitch in and help battle the forces of darkness. All of which
sounded pretty hinky as far as Faith was concerned.
On the other hand, well... there was Doug. If he hadn't been a fugitive, he'd
be in a hospital right now. And young and strong though he might be, he didn't
have a Slayer's healing powers. His wounds would have to mend the long, slow
way. Which meant they were stuck here in Helltown whether they liked it or not.
So, considering that everyone from the vampires to the cops wanted them dead,
giving up a decent hiding place and two probable allies who could handle
themselves in a fight wouldn't have been the smart move.
Besides, for all Faith knew, Doug might still have internal bleeding. He might
need yet another transfusion. And somehow she didn't think Blowtorch Barbie was
going to divulge the secrets of who she had called to get that little cooler
full of Red Cross blood bags delivered right to their front door or what her
end of that bargain was exactly.
Faith knew all that, had weighed it all, considered it. And she'd come to the
same conclusion that had lead her to push Doug in the direction of this bleak
little flyspeck of a town in the first place. She couldn't afford to just take
off and run this time. She couldn't run far enough or fast enough. She was
committed, aka trapped. This was the only place that she could make her stand
against that blonde thing that even a vampire would have been scared to face
alone. The only place where she might find anyone useful to stand with her.
There was on hope in running. Running was not an option. Which made Faith's
feet itch to run.
                                     ~~~~~
“Be careful,” Wallace said as Cordelia hopped out of the van in the school
parking lot. Not in that just-being-polite way most people do. It was gruff and
remindery, like 'don't for get the lock up when you leave' or 'don't leave the
cap off the toothpaste.' In other words, he meant it.
“You too,” she said seriously. “Get back inside before that sunset finishes
setting and stay there, alright?”
“Thanks,” Wallace said with a small smile and an even smaller nod. Cordelia
noticed how much of an answer that wasn't, but Wallace was about a million
years old, so she guessed he could do what he wanted. It wasn't like he was
some frail old thing that couldn't look out for himself either. He'd proven
that today well enough.
“Kay,” Cordelia said with a little wave out the open window as she got back
into her own car and slammed the door. “Ciao.”
That got a slightly bigger smile, verging on a laugh. “Just don't get yourself
killed,” the old man warned, warmly and seriously at the same time, the way a
real grandfather probably would. One who didn't spend all his time drinking at
the country club while his wife pretended to believe he was playing golf.
Still, on general principals, Cordelia made a show of rolling her eyes as she
pulled away, leaving the old guy grinning and shaking his head as he climbed
back into the van.
After he had turned away, Cordelia smiled too. B.F. Wallace was without a doubt
the coolest person over seventy that she had ever met. Which might not be
saying much, she guessed. But she could definitely see the Buffylike toughness,
resourcefulness, and general good-guyishness shining through the old-
geezeriness. You couldn't help but like him, the way he managed not to be
bitter and useless despite clearly living close enough to death come over and
borrow a cup of sugar.
In fact, even as creaky and slow-moving as he was, Wallace complained a lot
less about the work that went into both the figuring things out and the actual
fighting part than Buffy did. Maybe the whiny genes came from her father's side
of the family, along with that thing on her face and all that untreated
combination skin, and the lack of will to treat it. Not that you needed perfect
skin to catch a tweedy old librarian, she guessed. Not even one who was
relatively easy on the eyes if not the ears and clearly loaded.
Whatever. Regardless, running into Wallace, today of all days, had been beyond
lucky. That and the fact that the vision thing had actually happened at in a
way that (in addition to being head-splitting) was actually clear and useful
for once. And really, that was sort of down to Wallace too. He was the one
who'd recognized Faith just from Cordelia's description of her vision, though
she had been the one to recognize Willies and to figure out that the dark she
had seen there was not the actual dark of night.
Which was actually just barely starting threaten to close in right now,
speaking of. Still, it was only a little after six. Technically, Cordelia was
not 'late' getting home until sevenish... as long as her father didn't know
that school had been closed half the day. And if he did, she was already
massively late anyway.
Anyway, none of that mattered. She couldn't resist. Cordelia drove by Xander's
house just to see the Rosenbergs' car parked out front and be reassured that he
was home and safe. Except, it wasn't there. Cordelia's chest tightened for a
moment but before she even had time to imagine the specifics of every
conceivable kind of trouble that could mean; the much more breathe-through-able
truth dawned on her. Xander wasn't late until seven either. He'd probably
stopped by Sheila's to finally send her an email.
And sure enough, there it was. Parked on the curb in front of Sheila's house.
Willow's house. The front of which looked normal as ever not counting a few
tree limbs on the lawn and one shattered window, which was about par for the
block. But in spite of that, something felt the exact opposite of right about
the place.
Maybe it was an after effect of all of this vision stuff, or maybe there was
something a little off about the shape of the roof line. Cordelia couldn't say
for sure. But by the time she had circled the block twice, she knew that she
was going to stop and go inside. And she was pretty sure that her desperate
desire to see Xander again was only part of the reason.
                                     ~~~~~
Amal sat on the cushioned half-hexagon that filled the recess of the deep bay
window from floor to windowsill. Wesley knelt at he feet with the tiny basin
and a soft washcloth he had found in the bathroom. Not that her feet weren't
perfectly clean. He probably could have fulfilled his ritual obligation simply
getting her feet wet and massaging them a little with his fingers.
But his hands were shaking enough even with the washcloth as a barrier. He'd
never in his entire life touched a woman's naked feet with his bare hands, wet
or dry. It was ridiculously personal. Intimate. And yet, almost anti-sexual.
Like something a mother with do for a child.
It was a stark, unsettling contrast the involuntary shutter of anticipation
that had passed through him when she'd lifted the hem of her long, dark,
funereal dress away from that tiny bit of water. All that had been revealed was
lower curve of her calves. She had not bared her knees to him, let alone her
thighs. But it was enough to remind him that they were there. Which only made
him feel like an absolute pervert.
Amal laughed nervously. “I think that's enough,” she said. “You can leave the
skin on.” Wesley dropped the rag in the water and she nudged the bowl aside
with her foot. She stood, pulling him, unresisting onto his own feet.
Her wet toes made little damp spots on the carpet, making Wesley wonder if he'd
committed some terrible breach of etiquette by not having a towel there to dry
them. The fact that he was still wearing his own shoes seemed suddenly
unacceptable, as if thatwere the source of the imbalance of power and
vulnerability between them. It wasn't, but he kicked them off anyway and,
strangely felt a little better.
And now here they were again. Standing about. Amal looked at Wesley
expectantly, her lower lip caught be tween her teeth. “Well...” he said at
last. The poor girl practically snapped to attention, ready to hang on his
every word. The only trouble was, he couldn't seem to find another one. Dear
God, he was supposed to be the one that knew what to do.
                                     ~~~~~
There it was. The body. The moment he walked into what was left of Willow's
house, Xander had known that he was going to find a body. Maybe more than one.
The roof was torn open, letting in the sky through an opening that could be
seen even from the ground floor if you looked directly up the staircase in the
living room. The jagged sections of roof that hung through the gaping hole
looked singed, the carpeted stairs below, soaked.
Xander had taken the steps two at a time, not stopping to wonder if they were
safe to climb. There was more charring and far less ceiling up here. All of the
carpets were sodden. The interior doors had been blown open, breaking their
latches and in some cases the hinges too.
Ms. Waddle's corpse was not here. But Sheila Rosenberg's was. She was lying on
the bed in what used to be the guest room, the room she had been locked away in
like a sleeping princess for weeks. There was a huge hole burned through her
chest. Yet the bedclothes had barely been ignited before being doused with
enough rain to knock the world back to two of every animal.
It looked like she'd been struck through the heart with a bolt of lightning.
Xander decided not to think too much about that. There were lots of powerful
people and things in Sunnydale. Some of them were bound to have had better
motives and opportunities to have done this than... Well, there was Ms. Waddle
for one. Maybe Willow had been getting close to working through her issues,
waking her mom up, and spoiling the witches plans. Maybe this murder was the
cause of whatever form of smackdown had lead to Waddle's spells being broken.
Regardless, there was nothing he could do for Sheila now, and if he stayed here
in this tiny room with her for one more second, he felt like he would
completely loose his mind. He whirled on his heals and bolted from the room,
slamming the door behind him, ignoring the fact that it didn't stay shut.
The rats. He had to check on the rats. He thanked God as he got close enough to
Sheila and Ira's old bedroom to hear the squeaking. If they'd all been drowned
in their cages, he wasn't sure Willow would have ever forgiven him.
The door sagged open at a lopsided angle, but at least this room still had a
roof over it. The carpet was wet, but not soaked like it was in the room where
he'd found Sheila's body. There were no squelching sounds, no feeling of
walking through a bog that was trying to pull him down by his shoes. All of
which seemed like hopeful signs to Xander.
And sure enough, there they all were. Fourteen little pink noses and
(presumably) two-hundred and eighty little pick toes, all safe and sound in
their cage on the dresser. The cage litter needed replacing and they could
probably use more food and water, but for now at least, they seemed alright.
Xander was glad somebody was at least. He sat down on the reasonably dry bed
and went back to thinking about other problems. Like whether it made sense to
call the authorities or just get the hell out of here and let them find Sheila
when they found her. He'd have felt a lot better doing either if he could have
talked to Willow about it first.
If he could have gotten some reassurance that she had nothing to do with this
and some clue about who did, then he might know what to do. Or he still might
not. It seemed like any way you sliced it he was probably going to end up
facing some tough questions about finding this and/or not sticking around
afterward. Either way, he might be screwing things up for Willow. And knowing
that, he decided to go with the only thing that for sure seemed right, which
was that Sheila needed to be buried promptly and with respect, not left here to
rot until someone showed up to check out the smell.
He reached for the phone on the nightstand, but the line was dead. Of course it
is you idiot, he berated himself silently. Every wire in the house must be
fried. It probably wasn't even safe to be up here.
He needed to get the rats out of here and then get to a phone. But this wasn't
exactly the kind of neighborhood were it was easy to find a payphone. There was
some kind of zoning rule that said all these doctors, lawyers, and professors
were too good for that. Was this a run-next-door kind of emergency? After all,
there had sort of been a fire. And maybe he wouldn't seem too axmurdery if he
knocked politely and tried to sound calm.
Yeah. That would be okay. People would understand, would help. Probably even
the people in this neighborhood. He could just put the rats in the car and then
go next door and—“Aaaaaahh!” A high wordless scream of terror, so high it could
havebeen from a giant rat, rang out below, echoing up the stairs.
The scream snapped Xander to his feet and set his heart racing, but the voice
that followed almost drove him to his knees, almost stopped his heart right
there. “Xander!” Cordelia shouted, sounding more scared than he had ever heard
her, more scared than he had ever thought she could be, “Get out! The house is
falling down!”
That was all the prompting Xander needed. He hadn't noticed a single sign of
the house falling, other than the fact that most of the roof already had. But
what did he know about houses? It didn't matter. When Cordelia sounded that
serious, she was that serious. Which meant you had better listen. At least he
knew that.
Xander grabbed the cage full of rats and made his way down the stairs as fast
as he could with it, which was not really all that fast. The cage wasn't really
that heavy, but is was pretty cumbersome, especially with fourteen agitated
rats running around inside.
When he got to the foot of the stairs, there she stood, glaring at him
impatiently. “Ish,” she said wrinkling up her nose. “Why do you have a huge
ball of rats in a cage?” But when he opened his mouth she said, “No. Stop. I
don't want to know until we get outside.”
Cordelia spoke in the same casually dramatic voice Xander was used to hearing
when she held forth on everything from what an annoying waste of time traffic
law were to the global economic importance of lip gloss. But at the same time,
she cast a wary eye up the stairs at the gaping hole full of sky and held her
hands tightly together in front of her, neither griping her hips nor gesturing
for dramatic effect. In other words, she was still really worried for their
safety.
Xander nodded and they both made for the already open front door. “Call 911,”
he told her as they went, remembering why people who lived in these types of
neighborhoods didn't need pay phones. “Sheila's dead upstairs.”
“Oh God!” Cordelia half-whined/half-empathized, throwing her arms around Xander
the second he set the rats down on the curb next to the Lexis. He hugged her
back automatically until it became more than automatic. Everything was terrible
and confusing. It felt good to have her in his arms. It felt safe and sanity-
making.
Cordelia held on just as tight, breathing in the strong, male washed-but-still-
sweaty scent of her precious, irreplaceable mate. Her head was still reeling
with the horrifying vision of the whole house toppling down which she was only
now finally realizing might not be destined to happen in the next hour or even
the next day.
And just because she was glad he was alive and that she was alive to be with
him, she grabbed Xander's face in both hands, pulled his mouth to hers and
kissed him as deeply and as passionately as any Soap-opera diva ever to grace
the sordid screen. She kissed him with everything she had and he kissed back
with his whole being, like pouring the essential truth of his soul and of his
whole past present and future down her throat. Until she choked on it.
Xander was so lost in the kiss that he didn't seem to notice when Cordelia
moved from tenderly embracing him to clutching at his shoulders just to stay on
her feet in the grip of her head-splitting vision. Images forced their way
explosively into her mind.
Xander and Cordelia screaming at one another in a squalled little apartment. A
filthy dish shattering against the grimy wallpaper, while in another room a
wailing infant goes unanswered.
Xander gripping Willow's cold dead hand. Her hair is entirely white while he
seems much less old. Real tears. Not a friend's tears. A lover's.
Willow and Xander making love. It this house. The one her actual eyes would see
if she opened them. Sex but not just sex. Definitely love. There is not a
goddamned thing wrong with the roof and not a sign that it has been repaired.
Willow and Cordelia, in that creepy mansion on Crawford Street. Somehow, this
is also Willow's house. It still looks as creepy as ever but they don't feel
that way. They love each other, are almost in love, sort of. There are babies,
one for each and all for Xander. And to their amusement and delight, the house
is crawling with hundreds of rats. From the inside of the vision all of this
somehow feels mostly right, but from the outside it feels all wrong.
Disgusted, hurt, angry, confused, Cordelia pulls herself from Xanders arms. She
surprises him with a hard right hook that bloodies his nose. They both stagger
backward but don't quite fall. “Hey,” he shouts, “what was that for!?!”
Cordelia can't answer, she turns and runs. She has to make it back to her car
before he sees that she is crying.
                                     ~~~~~
Still as a statue beneath his oppressive weight, not struggling anymore, not
even breathing, she is as ridged as any corpse. She shows as little reaction to
his repetitive, penetrating thrusts as if her body were truly an empty,
inanimate vessel. There is little pain in it for her, but no pleasure. This is
the way he likes it, and gods and demons is it boring!
Katrina waits impatiently for Warren's orgasm, glad, at least that this is the
last time she will have to endure his attentions. At last, with a groan of
satisfaction, his arrhythmic pricking ceases and for an instant his body goes
as ridged as hers. His inert, useless seaman spurts and dribbles from him
against her cervix, the portal to her equally useless womb.
She feels a strange, muted sort of pity for the girl it had belonged to, the
girl Warren had killed before she'd even had a chance to decide if she had any
use for that part of her self in the first place. How strange it still feels to
be dead and yet live to witness it!
But this is a problem Warren no longer has. Because in that moment, he is
distracted, as distracted as any man (or beast) can be. This is Katrina's part
in the plan, and now Chris performs his just as well. He rises swiftly from his
chair beside the bed and lets the camera he hasn't even bothered to turn on
fall to the floor as he pulls the stake from his sleeve and plunges it into
Warren's back, straight through to the heart.
                                     ~~~~~
It was the most amazing kiss in the history of kisses. Perfect. Passionate. The
pure and simple essence of true love. It was enough to make Xander dare to hope
that he could tell Cordelia the truth after all, and that the truth would be
that they belong together, even if that meant his friendship with Willow would
take years to mend.
That was, until she surprised him with a hard right hook that bloodied his nose
causing him to stagger backward and nearly off his feet. “Hey,” he shouted,
“what was that for!?!” Cordelia didn't answer. She was already running for her
car. He had to lengthen his stride to catch up with her, barely managing to
throw himself in front of her driver-side door before she could escape.
“Hey, come on,” he begged, “what's the matter? Talk to me.”
“What's the matter!?!” Cordelia demanded, “What's the matter? Gee, I don't
know, maybe the fact that you're fucking Willow Rosenberg?”
Xander was a lot more shocked than he probably had a right to be. He had no
idea how Cordelia knew what she knew, but she was smarter than him (like most
people) so that happened a lot. “Yeah but see, that's all over now,” he
stammered. She was too sure for him to dare deny it. “It was just—you weren't
talking to me—and—and I'm sorry.”
“Well you should be!” Cordelia shot back. She elbowed past him and tried to get
her door open, but he grabbed her around the middle and pulled her back from
the car. She bruised his shins with kick and dug her nails into his arms, but
he didn't let go. He just kept shouting at her for hurting him and begging her
to listen to his excuses.
She must have had both feet off the ground kicking him when the cop car pulled
up along side them and stopped with a single whoop of it's siren; because when
Xander let go of her she tumbled to the pavement.
Thank God it was a woman cop. Somehow, that made it easier to explain that she
had just been defending herself, and pretty successfully; to lodge her
complaint and demand that Xander be arrested without having to feel humiliated
and rescued.
Inside a minute, Officer Ankara had him cuffed and shoved into the back of her
car. “Now,” she said, turning to Cordelia, “why don't you tell me exactly what
happened.” Cordelia hesitated, not sure what not to say first. The visions, the
body, the hitting him first all seemed like good places not to start. “No,
wait,” the officer amended. “I bet I can guess. You tried to dump this total
loser for—I'm just gonna go out on a limb her—being a lying cheating puss-
pocket; and he tried to hold you here against your will to listen to his
excuses. Am I warm?”
“Like toast,” Cordelia agreed curtly. She didn't feel guilty either. Something
had snapped. The love he'd taken from her was gone, but at least it didn't
belong to him anymore.
“Men!” the officer sighed commiserably, “Don't you just wish we could given
them what they really deserve, instead of a few hours in jail until some other
man lets them go for a few dollars and a promise to be good?”
Cordelia shrugged. “If you wanted to give him a few taps with your nightstick,
I wouldn't object. I saw him resisting, I wear.” She said it like a joke. And
it was. Sort of. Anyway, Ankara laughed. It wasn't really a mean laugh though.
It was... supportive. It gave Cordelia the courage to say out loud what she was
thinking.
“You know what I wish, what I really wish? I wish, like for just a few
days—like maybe a thousand—he could be the one suck with my life, he could be
the one pregnant and alone and cheated on and left with nothing but trouble and
I could have all of his so called problems!”
And suddenly, Officer Ankara's laughter stared to sound mean after all. Her
face blurred and cracked. Cordelia didn't know at first if what she was seeing
was here-and-now-real, or part of a vision. By the time she heard the throaty,
demonic voice croak out, 'wish granted', it was coming from far away, on the
other side of thick glass.
Nothing she had witnessed or experienced in all her sixteen years growing up in
Sunnydale, not even being half eaten by a vampire or menaced by a werewolf had
filled Cordelia with the kind of Twilight Zone horror that gripped her as she
looked out the back glass of the police cruiser and watched Officer Ankara
still deep in conversation with Cordelia Chase.
 
***** Whatever Gets You Through the Night *****
Chapter Summary
     It's Wesley and Amal's wedding night and they will do, say, or
     believe whatever they have to to get through it. You have been
     Warned. Also, watch out for Giles, he's acting a little strange.
“Well, uhm, Yes, well, I uhm... so what do you... that is to say... erm...
would you like, to... to...oh, bloo—blessed...” Trying to speak was almost as
excruciating as the silence that fell between them when he stopped trying.
Wesley's desperate eyes cast about the room as if for inspiration.
When he didn't look not at his wife, the knowledge that (as he had noted
earlier) she did in fact have legs and thighs under that dress and everything
that went with them only made him more nervous. Personal, legal, and ethical
considerations aside, this was as close as he had been to having sex in quite
some time. It was as close as he had ever been to having sex with someone who
wasn't likely to disappear, if not by morning, then certainly by the end of the
semester.
It wasn't meant to be this way. He should be calmingly confident and
reassuringly in control. He was twenty-six, nearly twice Amal's age. He'd spent
most of the last decade at university in one capacity or another. One's
university days were traditionally assumed to be replete with opportunities to
gain sexual experience.
And it wasn't as though he hadn't had any experience with women. But the times
it had gone past a little mutual fondling he could still count on one hand, and
he'd never gotten the impression that any of his partners had found the
endeavor to be a raging success from their point of view. Although in at least
one case and probably more the complaint had been more about his 'emotional
availability' than his actual performance.
Women weren't interested in a man who kept his thoughts to himself and
studiously avoided unfairly giving the false impression that he expected his
post-university life to include them. So mostly, he had found it easier just to
concentrate on his studies. He'd found that it was extremely difficult to
contract a social obligation if he never spoke to anyone about anything beyond
his various studies, and so he hadn't. Which had been working alright in a
dreary sort of way, until now.
At last, Wesley's eye lighted on an old turntable set on a small table near a
shelf of old vinyl records. “Dance!” he said quite as suddenly as a Pentecostal
speaking in tongues. Amal blinked at him in surprise. “Would you like to dance
with me?” he clarified, indicating the musical equipment with a wave of his
hand.
“Oh! Yes,” Amal breathed out sounding very relieved and slightly excited. And
then, embarrassedly, she added, by way of explanation. “I'm just—nobody ever
asked me to dance before.”
Wesley laughed in relief and stifled the small voice in his mind that said he
shouldn't feel relieved at all because all they were doing was stalling. “Well,
then,” he offered bowing in a way that he hoped she would take as gallant
rather than mocking. “Pick out any record you like, and that will make it our
song. Maybe we can even take it with us.”
“Yeah,” Amal mumbled, breaking eye contact, visibly deflating.
“Oh, my word,” Wesley worried allowed, venturing to move much closer to her but
resisting the impulse to lift her chin in his hand. “Was it—I didn't mean to
say anything upsetting.”
“Oh, it's not that,” Amal assured him looking up with tears in her eyes. “It's
just... You do know music is illegal where we're going?”
Now it was Wesley's turn to blink in surprise. “What, surely not all music?”
Amal nodded, her big, sad, serious eyes never leaving his. Such a thing seemed
imposable, and yet he had no cause to doubt her. What on earth had he let the
Council get him into, he wondered yet again, newly terrified. It was almost as
if he were being banished to another dimension, it was so alien there.
“But we can dance now,” Amal reminded him, struggling to be cheerful and
reassuring. Suddenly, on impulse, he pulled her into a hug. They clung to one
another fiercely, as if anchoring each other against gale-force winds that
threatened to sweep the away. Amal sobbed against Wesley's shirt front while he
stroked her hair, blinking back more than a tear or two himself.
Finally, Amal composed herself. “You pick the music,” she said. “Something
romantic. I wouldn't know where to start.” It didn't take Wesley long to spot
it. It's gentle rhythm was easy to dance to. It would require her to learn
nothing more than to sway in time as he held her in his arms. And thematically,
it couldn't have been more right.
Certain in his choice, Wesley stopped to make himself a little more
comfortable, a little more approachable before setting the record spinning. He
took off his jacket and tie and kicked out of his socks. His barefoot bride
smiled at him encouragingly, and walked into his arms as soon as he had dropped
the needle into the grove.
It wasn't the oldest version of the song, and arguably not even the most
romantic; neither the most wistful nor the most passionate, but it was slow and
rich and smooth and simple, steering clear of science and politics and anything
else that could anchor it to a particular time or place.
♫ You must remember this ♪
♫ A kiss is still a kiss ♪
♫ A sigh is just a sigh ♪
Sinatra's gentle voice caressed them with Humpfeld's humble arguments in favor
of surrendering to moments of honest passion despite all possible external
circumstances.

♫ The fundamental things apply ♪
♫ As time goes by ♪
And with a shudder of release, Wesley let go of something he had been holding
on to ever since this whole mad scheme had been revealed to him. He stopped
struggling, with his conscience, with his fate, with all of it. He let the
question of whether the girl in his arms ought to be his lover fall to the
floor unanswered. He held her close and breathed her in, matching the swaying
of her body with his own and accepted the simple fact that she was.
                                     ~~~~~
“It's this house,” Heathcliff muttered by way of explanation, long after Rupert
had stopped expecting an answer to his question. Which had only been why they
should have to go out into the chilly night air to smoke their cigars. “The
things that happened here when we were children. You may not have any memories
of it, but I have too many. I'll always feel like a child in this house. And
not a happy child either.”
'We'. Heathcliff could have meant himself and his brother, but he clearly
didn't. Giles took another puff and considered how to respond. He'd agreed to
stay for a smoke for only two reasons. First because Heathcliff had seemed so
alarmed when everyone else begged off en mass, and second because he thought he
might work the conversation around to getting something a little stronger. But
reminiscences about the distant past, about living here with his mother; that
was more than he'd expected. Maybe more than he was prepared to deal with right
now.
But there was one thing he couldn't help asking. “What was she like?” he asked
abruptly.
Heathcliff shrugged. “I was a child,” he said. “Five years old for fuck's sake.
She was a girl. Very pretty. Mostly kind. And very deeply sad. When she first
moved in I liked her a lot. She was the only quasi-adult I knew that wasn't too
'dignified' to get down on the floor and play with me.
“I worried about her though, because she was always crying and saying she
wanted to go home. She missed her parents. I heard her yelling at Father once,
begging to go home just for a visit. She said they probably thought she was
dead.”
Rupert stared at Heathcliff. It was hard to process what he was hearing. Or
maybe he just didn't want too. If he felt disconnected from the narrative, as
though he were hearing about just any young girl who had been spirited away by
strangers and kept from her family, maybe that was for the best. He could feel
himself getting angry on her behalf as it was, but he knew (for this at least)
any anger he felt towards Heathcliff would be entirely misdirected.
“Needless to say,” Heathcliff went on, “I found the whole thing very upsetting.
Mother told me to ignore her, that she was just spoiled. That stuck in my head
because it was so clearly wrong. I was young, but I wasn't blind. I could tell
she was really suffering. I don't think I ever really trusted my parents after
that. Not until I was an adult anyway.
“It's strange to remember all this now, after all the years I spent hating her
guts, and then not being able to bear the thought of her at all,” Heathcliff
concluded darkly.
For a moment, Rupert was confused, and prepared to be very angry indeed. “But
why would you—” he started, then banged up against the obvious answer and
sighed deeply. “That was around the time your parents separated, I suppose.”
“You moved in,” Heathcliff confirmed, “and six months later we moved out.
Naturally I assumed the two events were connected. For that matter, there were
times Mother came fairly close to saying as much. At any rate, I hardly saw my
father afterward. I guess I've spent most of my life hating you for that.
Ridiculous as it seams now.”
“I don't suppose logic really enters into it,” Giles offered graciously. Not
that he really felt all that gracious, just tired. Emotionally drained. The
last thing he needed was to get into a pointless argument with Heathcliff over
who had gotten the worst of the never ending disaster that was childhood in a
Watching Family. After all, he was only here to keep the poor SOB company, to
give him something to do other than listening to Julian's son deflowering his
pubescent daughter.
“I feel entirely too sober,” Rupert murmured.
“Too bad I haven't got anything here,” Heathcliff commiserated.
“Like hell you haven't” Rupert scoffed.
“Well, no alcohol,” Heathcliff conceded, “not that you need any more of that
with those pills your taking, I guess. I've got some hash if you want.”
Rupert's expression hardened. It was late. He was in pain. He was tired. And
they were already much too far beyond the current moral boundaries of Western
Civilization to start being delicate now. “You know what I want,” he said.
“This hip hurts like hell and the only thing for it is to walk on it and hope
it get's stronger, which only makes it hurt worse in the meantime. I don't need
any more of that glorified Tylenol they gave me at the hospital or one lousy
bowl of hashish either. I want heroin.”
                                     ~~~~~
The song was romantic, but too short. The guy on that old record of
Grandfather's kept singing, moving on to other songs. Some nearly as romantic
as the first, but most not so much.
Wesley had been moving his hands around in a weird sort of massaging way on her
lower and lower back but never quite her bottom. Now he stopped and just held
them pressed flat against her back. She guessed that had been her cue to
respond and she'd blown it. Now, what?
If he didn't make some more definite kind of a move soon, they were going to
run out of music and everything was going to get super awkward again. Which
meant, Amal realized, her heart thumping like crazy, that if he didn't she was
going to have to. Her father had been extremely clear about what he expected of
her. She was not to let Wesley leave this room until they had had sex. No
rainchecks, no delays, and no excuses.
Kiss him, she thought. Duh. That was the most natural, most obvious, most
unmisreadable way to declare her readiness to get on with it already. But he
was so ridiculously tall that she didn't think she could kiss him without
asking him to bend down first. In which case she guessed she just about might
as well say, 'Hey, Mister, why don't you screw me already and get it over
with?' This might not be TrueLove™ but surely it could be a little more
romantic than that.
Instead, she kind of snuggled up closer to him and laid her head against his
chest. She'd seen women do that in movies. It usually meant they were in love.
Wesley's heart was beating even harder than hers. Amal guessed that was a good
sign. At least it meant he was excited. After all, he was a tall, dark, and
hansom man who'd been trained to fight monsters, so it didn't exactly seem
likely that his heart was racing for the same reason hers was. He didn't have
any reason to be scared. Certainly not of a little girl, who didn't have fangs
or anything.
He was probably just being careful not to rush her, Amal decided. He needed a
clearer sign that she was ready. So this was it. No more playing around. She
closed her eyes, wrapped her arms even more tightly around him, and said his
name, “Wesley,” as lovingly as she could. As she said it, she tried to imagine
that it was a magic word. In fairy tales, names were always magic. If she said
it just right, if that made him want to kiss her, and if he did kiss her, just
right; maybe they would fall in love.
Wesley stopped and took half a step back, tilting his head and looking at her.
He looked... sort of confused, but something else, something that was really
heard to read. And then he smiled and moved in towards her again, bending way
down, his head still tilted at an angle that told her which way to tilt hers.
She stood on her tiptoes for that first kiss, but the foot of difference in
their heights still left him bending down at an awkward angle. Still, their
lips met. Physically, this was less interesting than Amal had imagined. But the
fact that it was happening, to her, was amazing and exciting. Somehow, it made
her less scared.
Kissing, unlike sex, was something she'd actually spent some time imagining.
Something she felt pretty ready for. Maybe if she just focused on the kissing,
it would lead more or less naturally to everything else and she would find that
there was nothing to be scared of after all.
But the angle thing just wasn't working for Wesley. He was having to sort of
half lift Amal off the floor, and he seemed to be getting just a little bit
frustrated. “We should sit,” she whispered, then silently panicked when his
happily startled look made her realize that she just invited him to join her on
the bed.
For a second Amal felt like she couldn't move, like she couldn't even breathe.
But she didn't have to move. Wesley swept her up in his arms and carried her
across the room, laying her down on the gold embroidered bedspread and lying
down next to her, all in one smooth, uninterrupted flow of motion that ended
with him leaning down over her, propped on his left side with his right hand
resting on her back, not exactly pulling her to him, but encouraging her into a
position that was not pulling away.
Amal took a deep, steadying breath as Wesley leaned in to kiss her again. She
was the one who had deliberately moved to pick up the pace. And it had worked.
Quickly. That was a good thing. This was what needed to happen. It was nothing
to be upset or worried about. But it was hard to keep telling herself that,
hard to believe that the fact that she was about to have sex with this guy was
perfectly fine when she was just in the process of discovering that even
kissing might not be something she was old enough to really enjoy after all.
The first kiss had been alright. Nothing amazing. Lips pressed to other lips
the same as you would press them to a hand or cheek or whatever. Just plain
physical affection. But now they were getting into the real, grownup kind of
kissing. His mouth was open and she tried to open hers the right amount to
match, but it always seemed a little off. One or the other of them always
seemed to have their lips in the other one's mouth and she really didn't know
if that was what it was supposed to feel like or not.
And then there was the tongue thing. This, she knew, was a normal part of
passionate, grownup, romantic type kissing. People talked about it enough. But
it didn't feel normal. Having someone else's tongue in her mouth felt and
tasted really gross. Besides which, she really didn't know what she was
supposed to do with her tongue while he was doing that. She was just glad
Wesley had his eyes closed so that he couldn't see how uncomfortable she was.
Because apparently, the kissing was really doing it for Wesley. He was
breathing harder and making lots of positive sounding noises. When Amal felt
his hand creeping up her leg under her dress, she tried making similar mms and
ahs of encouragement. Truthfully, his hand on her leg felt a lot better than
his tongue in her mouth; weird, but not exactly bad. But she couldn't help her
sharp, startled, in taking of breath when that hand got to the top of her leg
and started wriggling it's way inside her underwear.
If Wesley noticed that, he didn't give any indication that she could tell. He
just reached right on in and squeezed her bottom, bare skin on bare skin. Amal
felt like she wanted to make an objection, but she didn't know what it would
be. He wasn't hurting her and she certainly didn't want him to stop and stare
at her for another hour. Her skirt was bunch up almost to her waist now, and
her legs were cold, but that didn't seem important enough to interrupt him.
“Oh, yes,” he sighed, practically in her ear as he massaged her bare backside
with his fingers and used the same strong arm to pull her closer to him. He
leaned in towards her more and at a slowly declining angle, becoming more and
more on top of her and less and less beside her, while still arranging for the
bed to bare almost all of his weight.
Finally he pushed her gently onto her back, propping himself above her with one
arm. This was no reason at all to feel trapped. She was not actually pinned
down or anything. Although she could not have gotten up and left without his
cooperation either. But it wasn't like he wouldn't have let her up if she
asked. Probably.
Anyway, he was still just kissing her, mostly. Only he was kissing more than
her mouth now. He kissed her ears, her neck, and the small gray area between
her chest and her neck that peeked out above the top of her very modest dress.
All of that was at least interesting, way better than the tongue-in-mouth
routine.
Amal was pretty sure she felt something now, something besides the fear and
discomfort. Something sexual? She supposed so. The closest she'd ever been to
sex before was having a guy she kind of liked sort of smile at her, but some
things were hard to mistake for anything else. Like the fact that, when Wesley
pulled her panties down to her knees and started touching then rubbing her
private parts, only half of her wanted him to stop, no matter how weird the
whole situation felt.
“So soft,” he mumbled, stroking the sparse coat of fine dark hair that covered
her pubic area. It sounded oddly like a question. Amal squirmed just a little
unable to hide her discomfort. I mean, what could you say to that? She couldn't
even tell if he thought it was a good thing or a bad thing. She had to bite her
tongue to keep from telling him that she didn't need to be remindedthat she
didn't have a completely grown up woman's body, especially if he thought that
was a compliment.
Suddenly, Wesley backed away towards the edge of the bed and sat up. “I'm
alright,” Amal assured him, thinking that she had put him off with her silent
disapproval. “Keep going,” she urged. He seemed uncertain for a moment.
“Please,” she added quietly, dropping her eyes, embarrassed to have to say all
that in so many words.
“Oh, no, I—” There was a smile in Wesley's voice bordering on a laugh. “I
didn't intend on stopping. I was just—” now it was his turn to be a bit
embarrassed, “I was just thinking we might like to get all of these clothes out
of our way. If that's alright.” He added hastily.
Amal squirmed a little more at the thought. Talking had been a mistake she
thought. It was all too real this way. She didn't think she wanted to have to
watch him undress and she certainly didn't want him staring at her while she
took the rest of her clothes off. “Under the covers,” she said finally, “with
the lights off.”
Wesley nodded and said, “Yes. Yes of course.” He seemed disappointed, or
reticent, or something. He was neither pleased nor angry. Other than that it
was hard to tell. Regardless, he got up and turned all the lights off except
the one coming through the open bathroom door, leaving the room closer to dark
than bright, though Wesley's returning form was still somewhat more substantial
than a shadow among shadows.
Amal crawled under the bedspread, not bothering with the very tightly tucked in
top sheet. She lay on her side, facing away from Wesley and reached behind her
back to unzip herself. Wriggling out of her dress while lying down under the
covers was a little trickier than she'd imagined, but it didn't really take too
long either.
In the process, her panties has worked their way down to her ankles. She kicked
them off like socks and turned to look over her shoulder. She wanted to make
sure Wesley wasn't already finished undressing and standing there staring at
her. She had that creepy feeling of being watched, covers or not.
But Wesley wasn't watching her. He stood with is back to her, his bare back, as
she could plainly see, even in the dim light. He was maybe two feet away from
her, inches from his side of the bed. She could have stretched out her arm and
touched him. It was a strange thought, one that made her feel oddly pleased,
like someone with an amusing secret.
And then, all at once he dropped his trousers and pants, baring his behind. It
was not ridiculously hairy, but neither was it completely without hair. He was
a grown man. He was maybe two feet away from her, inches from his side of the
bed. She could have stretched out her arm and touched him. It was a strange
thought, one that made her feel deeply unsettled. Like someone learning a
terrifying secret.
'This isn't happening,' she thought, 'This is insane. I don't belong here.
Where is my life? This is not it.'
Wesley stepped out of his trousers and turned toward the bed. Amal thought that
she should look away but she didn't. It wasn't that she wanted to see him from
the front exactly, but suddenly she found it difficult to make a decision, even
one as simple as move or don't move, look or don't look. He started just a bit
when he saw her staring at him in the darkness. She wanted to say that she
hadn't meant to watch him, but it would have been a waste of breath.
Truthfully, in the dark, there wasn't that much to see. She could tell that
there were body parts there, dangling between his legs, and about the right
shape that they reasonably ought to be. It and the stuff around It. It wasn't
as large as she would have thought, nor sticking out in front of him the way
she might have imagined. But maybe that was because she hadn't done whatever
she was supposed to do to get it to do all that.
Not that she'd have to wonder long, Amal realized. Wesley lifted up the edge of
the bedspread and climbed into bed. He reached for her, pulling her naked body
into his naked arms, holding it against his own. He buried his face in her hair
and let out a sound between a sign and a moan. He ran his hands up and down her
body. She felt his penis twitch against her thigh.
Amal shuddered. Whether it was a good or a bad shudder was a complicated
question. Mostly, she was scared, but it was hard to untangle the black, ugly
fear of being trapped in bed with a naked stranger from the light, giddy fear
of stepping into an unknown adult world rumored to offer pleasures more intense
than any mere child could possibly imagine.
And then there were the parts that weren't really fear at all. There was bone-
deep embarrassment, bordering on disgust that made her want to clench her legs
together and keep them that way forever. But there was also a physical
sensation permeating her vulva and all the surrounding area, an almost electric
tingling that wanted to be touched like he had touched her before. The tips of
her nipples, pressed against his bare chest shared this desire. Which for lack
of a better explanation, she would have to call lust.
Wesley pulled back from her just a bit. “Are you alright?” he asked, sounding
truly worried, “you're shaking.”
Amal, suddenly found it impossible to speak. The attempt would have lead to
tears. She shook her head instead, meaning to dismiss his concern. He couldn't
really see her, but it didn't matter. He was close enough to feel her head
shaking. Except that was the wrong answer, to what he'd actually asked.
She could feel him starting to back off a little more. That was no good. The
last thing she wanted was to cause yet another delay. She was tired and
confused and terrified of screwing things up. She didn't care about love or
romance anymore. Not right now anyway. She wanted to get this over with.
She still couldn't speak. There were tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat
that wouldn't quite go down. Which was stupid. Like it or not, this was her
husband. The only one she was ever likely to have. All he wanted to do was have
sex with her. He wasn't going to kill her. Sex was supposed to be one of the
good parts of life. She should just do it and maybe it would turn out to be
great and everything would be all better.
But there was one problem with that. She had let too long a moment pass, and
now Wesley was really pulling away from her, his worry deepening. “We don't
have—that is to say... I'm not in a hurry,” he tried to reassure her. But he
sounded disappointed. Even if she could manage to speak now, Amal realized, it
would take more than words to reassure him.
This was a time for action. She moved towards him. Put her arms around him.
Pulled him to her. She grabbed him by the behind, the way he had done to her
earlier. “Oh my!” he gasped, pleasantly shocked, and started kissing her again
with his tongue in her mouth. He really was on top of her now. She really was
pinned beneath him. There was no way she could have possibly pushed her way out
from under him if he didn't want her to. His body was hot and heavy, even if
the bed was still supporting most of it.
The feel of Wesley's naked, sweat-damp flesh pressing down on every inch of the
anterior surface of her body defied categorization. It felt too real and yet
too alien, as though Amal were viscerally experiencing something that clearly
must be happening someone else, to some adult or nearly adult woman whose body
she suddenly found herself inhabiting. A woman whose unaccountable inclination
was to cling even tighter to the man on top of her as Amal's terror and
confusion increased.
Welsey had his hands all over her body now, and his face too. He squeezed her
small breast in his hands and rubbed her nipples with his thumbs while he
kissed and licked and nuzzled her neck and shoulders and ears, all of the time
moving and groaning and breathing heavily as he sort of rubbed his stiffening
penis between their two bodies. She supposed that answered the question of what
she was supposed to do to get it ready. Just laying there and not complaining,
making noises that sounded like the ones he was making, seemed to be working
just fine.
Amal even though she might technically be enjoying it. She was definitely sure
she felt something down there now, and not just the occasional brush of a
penis. It was a swelling, tingling sort of sensation, related to but not the
same as the feeling she felt in her breasts when he touched them not only with
his hands but with his mouth. Which he was doing more and more now, sucking
first one and then the other as far into his mouth as it would go, rolling his
tongue over her nipples. Her deep, ragged breathing and rapid heart rate were
unquestionably for more than one reason now, not only fear, but at the same
time genuine excitement. She hadn't know the two could coexist so well.
Still, however much Wesley was enjoying his own exploration of her body, Amal
was sure some sort of reciprocation was expected. She'd spent the last several
minutes with both hands clutched tightly in the same place, holding onto his
back a few inches below the shoulder blades. Now she made a conscious effort to
move them around more, sliding them along his back and sides and even his
backside.
That was pretty much the limit of her active participation. She couldn't reach
his legs and she didn't think she would have had the nerve to reach for his
private parts even if it hadn't meant awkwardly trying to reach into the
complete lack of space between their two bodies. Instead, she tried kissing him
on the neck and chest and shoulders, which were all the parts her mouth could
reach.
Something she was doing must have been working because Wesley's breathing got
even heavier. “Oh, oh my!” he sighed/gasped/quietly-shouted. “You are eager,
aren't you!” He slipped a hand between their bodies and down in between her
legs. Apparently, from on top, it wasn't that awkward a maneuver.
Amal squirmed at little, just a bit uncomfortably. Somehow the controlled,
willful explorations of his fingers felt a little more invasive than the
rhythmic rubbing of his penis had. Not to mention less stimulating. Mainly
because the fingers were tending to focus lower down, fiddling among her labia
near the entrance to her vagina rather than in the general area of her
clitoris, which she hadn't quit realized was getting so thoroughly rubbed until
the rubbing stopped.
Amal bit her lip for a moment, not wanting to make any noises of discomfort or
embarrassment. But she couldn't help giving a startled gasp when Wesley
actually slid first one and then two fingers inside her, carefully,
experimentally. As if testing her reaction.
Amal fought down panic. Physically, what he was doing was only a little bit
uncomfortable. Besides, it probably meant he was getting ready to finally start
the actual sex part of the sex, which meant he was getting closer to being
finished. She should be encouraging him, not wimping out. But the annoying,
prodding feeling of his fingers inside her wasn't making her look forward to
being penetrated by anything larger. Not even a little bit.
                                     ~~~~~
The garage was converted from an old barn with a hayloft that had once been
converted into a one room flat (presumably for a chauffeur) but was now more of
a storage space again, apparently. There was still an electric light, which
Heathcliff switched on. It didn't take him long to find the box, which he
handed down to Rupert before climbing back down himself. It was the size of a
large briefcase and made of dark wood, intricately carved in geometric
patterns. It smelled of resin, dust, and time.
“Pity you can't come up,” Heathcliff said. “We used to play up here, Walter and
I.” Rupert ignored that. He'd talked as much as he wanted to about old times.
He opened the passenger door of Heathcliff's car and got in. No one needed to
say that the porch wasn't safe, that they couldn't risk Malalai seeing what
they were up to. To have met her was enough.
Heathcliff got in too, and nodded his permission for Rupert to open the box. It
contained a great deal more than Rupert had expected. Not only a larger number
of small bags of pale brown powder but also a complete rig for injecting it,
including several unopened syringes, still in the plastic. Besides that there
were at least a dozen different kinds of pills, each in an unlabeled bottle
with a different colored cap. Not to mention at least an ounce of hash and two
quart bottles of good whiskey.
There were bundles of cash too; US, British and Afghan currencies, several
thousand pounds worth of each, in large bills. But what jarred Rupert a bit
were the crosses, Eucharist wafers, vials of holey water and several small,
softcover books, including at least one bible, well worn from the look of it.
Heathcliff followed his gaze and smiled towards a laugh. “You'd be surprised
what you crave when someone tells you can't have it,” he said.
“This is your personal stash then?” Rupert asked, a bit worriedly. “You aren't
using this stuff every day are you?” It was clear that he meant the heroin.
Heathcliff frowned. “Do you want it or not?” he asked.
Rupert sighed. “I want it. Very much,” he admitted. Who was he to judge
Heathcliff's choice of vices. Or anybody's. After all, the man looked as though
he were keeping himself together alright. If this evening was an example of
what his life was like, small wonder if he needed a bit of chemical assistance
with that.
                                     ~~~~~
Sex. Here it was at last, what Wesley had been telling himself he didn't really
need, didn't really miss, could do just as well for himself, and that
infrequently, lest it take time away from anything truly important. But the
taste, the smell, the surge of lightning in his veins, the relief of throwing
logic and ethics and circumstances to the wind and letting desire swallow him
whole, was indescribable. Hardly a thing to be classed in the same category
with his mechanistic, bimonthly auto-erotic release. No more than an ape was
like a god.
Amal's body took some getting used to. She was so much slighter than any woman
he had ever been with though only a bit shorter in stature. The hair on her
body was soft and fine with no sign of being shaped or managed in any way. Her
kiss was uncertain and her hands hesitant upon his skin. Her hips were not so
round as he might have liked; but her small breasts were soft and round as a
woman's should be with nipples that stood up firmly against his tongue.
Best of all, she seemed genuinely pleased with what was happening between them.
Her sounds of pleasure nearly matched his own and if her movements were clumsy
and uncertain, they were none the less eager. Despite the fundamentally
unbalanced power dynamics between them, he was finding it easier to accept
Rupert's suggestion that what he was doing was nothing like rape, or at least
it needn't be. Rape seemed like too harsh a word for introducing someone to
pleasures she simply hadn't previously realized she wanted. Needed even.
Encouraged by her little sighs, her moans, her heavy breathing, Wesley moved a
hand down between her legs. Her sexual parts felt softer, wetter, and hotter
than when he'd first laid hands on them a few minutes ago, still fully dressed
on top of the covers. Her vagina was opening up to him, like a flower, he
thought, smiling at the image. There was something paradoxically sweet and
sordid in the idea of having a virgin bride of his very own to deflower at
that.
Wesley was ready. Oh God was he ready! He had never been more ready for
anything in his entire life than he was to have sex tonight. He couldn't help
but smile at the gasp that Amal let out when he slid first one and then two
fingers inside her. “Yes,” he breathed as he took a moment to explore her with
his fingers. She felt so perfect. As hard as his cock was already, it somehow
manages to get just a bit harder.
“Oh, yes,” Amal agreed after a moment, there was a tremulous quality to her
voice as if she were amazed by, perhaps even just a bit afraid of her own
desire. Wesley kissed her mouth, deeply, passionately, reassuringly. From the
way she kissed him back, from the way she moaned low in her throat as his
exploring tongue plunged into her mouth, Wesley know that this was the moment,
that she was as ready as he was.
A scrap to Jewish Scripture fluttered through Wesley's brain.And they shall
become one flesh.No ancient sacred text had ever seemed so right or
soimportant. “It's time,” he whispered between ragged breaths. Amal was too
overcome to speak, but she sighed and nodded and moved her legs just a bit
further apart. He reached down and repositioned them a little more, tilting her
hips to a better angle, one learned from experience.
When his penis finally sank inside her, the pleasure and excitement were so
excruciating that he didn't dare move for fear that he would come at once. Amal
went suddenly still beneath him, as though unsure what to do. Wesley shushed
the inner voice that said of course she was unsure, nothing in her experience
had prepared her for this, and she was still so very young. He couldn't think
about that now. His cock with inside her, sheathed tight inside her. And all it
wanted was to thrust.
In moments it was over. It might have been two thrusts or two-dozen. He was
beyond that ability to count. Amal continued to make little noises of pleasure
and excitement, though nothing to match his own suddenly uncontrollable shout
of delight. “Oh, Yes! Good Lord, yes! Oh, God, I love you, My Darling!”
One became two again. Wesley's heart rate slowed. Amal lay beside him with a
strange, unreadable expression. Relief might have been part of it. And maybe
regret. Perhaps it hadn't been all she'd hoped? Despite seeming pretty turned
on through the whole proceeding; if she had come, he certainly couldn't tell
when it was.
He was tempted to reassure her that it would be better next time. But that
seemed to be putting too fine a point on an embarrassing subject. Instead, he
just held her in his arms, glad to know that there probably would be a next
time, that their marriage might be a comfort to them both rather than an
onerous obligation.
If she rested there beside him only for a moment before jumping up to hop in
the shower, that was no cause for alarm. It was a religious obligation after
all. She was devout.
                                     ~~~~~
Rupert tried to slip into bed without disturbing Buffy, but that was as
hopeless a cause as, well, sneaking up on a Slayer. “'time's'it?” she murmured
sleepily.
“Too near morning,” he answered with a yawn, sliding under the covers, where
Buffy snuggled against him, carefully avoiding his injured hip without having
to be asked. He smiled. She really was a hell of a girl. He was a lucky, lucky
man, broken bones not withstanding.
He continued to think so even after she gave that familiar, pensive sigh that
told him he wouldn't be allowed to sleep for at least a little while yet.
“If you had any secrets left,” she asked worriedly, “I mean any big secrets,
you'd tell me wouldn't you?”
“Of course, Darling,” Giles assured her tenderly, convincingly. It was an easy
lie. One he had told to many people many times. Mostly it was a lie people
wanted to be told, wanted to believe. It saved them from having to feel that
they should have pushed harder to learn things they were better off not
knowing, shielded them from having to believe things they actually knew.
“Oh good,” Buffy yawned. “I mean, not that I thought... but it's good to know
there aren't going to be anymore huge surprises.”
Giles laughed. “I don't know about that,” he said, “but from now on, hopefully
we'll be surprising each other with our future rather than our pasts.”
“I love you,” Buffy mumbled, snuggling even closer.
“ I love you too, Darling,” Giles assured her, kissing her tenderly before they
both drifted off to sleep.
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