Disclaimer/Summery: See Part 1
STARTING OVER
Faith stood huddled against Rebecca, with her head resting against her bosom, and tears running ceaselessly down her cheeks. Rebecca cried too.
Buffy, Willow and Tara stood around them, in the cold, empty room. No one spoke.
Rebecca noticed Gwendolyn's picture, set up on the floor. She crouched down, and picked it up.
Faith kept her arms around her, the whole time. She crouched when Rebecca crouched. She stood up when Rebecca stood up.
Rebecca looked at Gwendolyn...smiling in the backyard, on the swing set, in the sun.
"I saved it," Faith whispered. "When the house burned."
Rebecca caressed Faith's hair, and looked down into her eyes again.
"It was...it was...all I had," Faith said, her voice cracking.
"It wasn't all you had. You always had me, Faith," Rebecca said, and kissed Faith's forehead. "I never left you. I'll always be with you. And you've made me proud. You've made me so proud, darling."
Faith shook her head, and looked down at the floor.
Buffy wanted to go to her. But she knew she couldn't...not now. She wasn't what Faith needed now.
Rebecca wiped her tears away. And she wiped Faith's tears away too.
"Well, we're a frightful mess, aren't we?" Rebecca said, and smiled.
Faith smiled too. "Yeah. Guess we're a little on the frightful side."
"You're...really Rebecca?" Tara said.
"Yeah," Willow said. "She is. But...how did you get here? How did you...come back?"
"I told you, Willow," Rebecca said. "Faith needed me."
Rebecca turned toward the three of them, and regarded them. Faith still held on to her, with both arms wrapped around her waist now.
Faith didn't look at Buffy, Willow or Tara. She looked down at the floor. Buffy noticed Faith was still shaking, a little.
"Hello, Buffy," Rebecca said, and held out her hand, and looked Buffy in the eyes. "I'm Rebecca Greer."
Buffy shook her hand, and met her gaze. "Buffy Summers. You know me, right? I mean...from like Watchers files or whatever?"
"Yes." Rebecca smiled, and raised her eyebrow. "Somehow I thought you'd be taller."
"Yeah, I get that a lot," Buffy said.
"And you are...?" Rebecca said, turning to Tara.
"Um...Tara," Tara said, and smiled, and quickly looked away, avoiding Rebecca's steady gaze. "Tara Maclay. I'm a f-friend of Faith's."
Rebecca smiled at Tara, and tried to catch her eyes. It was like chasing after a bumblebee.
"It's very nice to meet you, Tara," Rebecca said, and held out her hand.
Tara took Rebecca's hand, and looked up at her--for a second. Then her eyes were immediately cast down again.
Rebecca raised her eyebrow.
"I won't give you the evil eye, Tara, if that's what you're worried about," Rebecca said.
Faith managed to giggle. "Nah, Tara's just shy." Faith seemed exhausted, and it gave her voice a debilitated, hesitant quality; she whispered.
"I see," Rebecca said, and released Tara from her gaze; she thought the poor girl looked like she might actually begin to melt at any moment. Rebecca turned to Willow. "And this would be our witch, Ms. Rosenberg."
"Got two witches," Faith said. "Tara's a witch too." Faith was starting to relax a little, Buffy noticed: she only had one arm around Rebecca now, and she was smiling, and she wasn't looking at the floor anymore. But she was still shaking a little, and she still whispered.
Buffy took Faith's hand, and caressed it.
"Faith, are you...okay?" Buffy said.
Faith pulled her hand away from Buffy, and nodded once, curtly. Faith still wouldn't look at her.
Buffy blushed. Rebecca knew there was something going on there, but finding out what it was would have to wait.
"Indeed?" Rebecca said, ignoring the situation between Faith and Buffy, whatever it might be, and concentrating for the moment on Tara and Willow. Willow presented a dilemma. How much did she know about the future? She seemed to know who Rebecca was, even though they hadn't met yet, and wouldn't meet, Rebecca knew, until Willow was much older...and she herself was much younger. Did she know, somehow, what she was destined to do someday?
"Never can have too many witches," Tara said, and smiled--still a little nervously, Rebecca thought.
Rebecca nodded. "You seem to know me, Willow, although I could swear we haven't met," Rebecca said, and raised her eyebrow.
"And you seem to know me, Becca, although I could swear we haven't met too," Willow said, and raised her eyebrow right back.
1972 was a can of worms. Faith didn't want to open it.
Rebecca would want to know how they knew about it. And Faith knew that if Rebecca found out about her relationship with Willow--the Willow from the future, the one she had loved --Rebecca wouldn't understand. And she wouldn't approve. Faith would tell her eventually, she never kept things from Rebecca--but not now. Not yet.
"Willow's got my memories," Faith said. "Magic thing." Her voice was still very soft. The words seemed to fade away the moment they left her, like breath turned to frost on a cold night, dissipating to nothing in the dark.
"Your memories?" Rebecca said. "What do you mean?"
"Faith was hurt last week and Willow did this spell to go into her head and find out how bad it was," Buffy said. "But something went wrong and she got Faith's memories."
"All of them," Willow said. "As if I lived through them...lived Faith's life. Her life...it feels...just as real to me as mine does."
Rebecca looked from Faith to Willow, and back again. "I see. Are you all right, Faith?"
Faith was still holding on to her. She was still looking down at the floor. She didn't say anything.
"Look at me," Rebecca said.
Faith looked up at her. Rebecca caressed her hair.
"I know what the First said to you," Rebecca said. "And I know what that vampire said to you. I love you. We're going to sort this business out, all right? You and me."
Faith nodded. "I love you too," she whispered, and started to cry again.
"It's all right, darling," Rebecca whispered, and held her, and kissed her hair. "It's all right, it's all right..."
Rebecca felt cold.
She had felt cold, from the moment she arrived there. The world was a cold place.
She had been in a warm place...and though she didn't remember every aspect of that place, she knew she was loved, there...she knew she was with Gwendolyn, there.
But even though she loved that place, Rebecca hadn't been truly happy there. She was happy to be with Gwendolyn, and Oliver too. But without Faith, Rebecca couldn't be happy.
She had watched Faith. Every moment since they were separated, Rebecca had watched over her. But when Faith's moment of crisis came, the moment when Faith was overwhelmed, and would have died, Rebecca couldn't sit back and watch anymore...she couldn't be in that warm place, when Faith was cold. She couldn't be with Gwendolyn, when Faith was alone.
So Rebecca left that warm place...she made a bargain.
Rebecca didn't remember much about the Goddess, now...but Rebecca remembered Her words, when the bargain had been struck...
"The universe, and everything in it, is part of an intricate balance, Rebecca," the Goddess had said, as She sat with Rebecca on the grass under the shade of a massive, towering ash tree whose innumerable, hoary old branches reached to infinity, and they looked out at a bright golden sun in an endless blue horizon. "Balance, balance, is my law, and every soul plays its part in the balance. If I grant you this, the balance will have to be maintained...there will have to be...a sacrifice. What's that old saying about me? That I give, and I also take away? That's just a way of saying the scales have to balance."
"What kind of sacrifice?" Rebecca had said.
"The only kind that matters, Rebecca. Blood. You want to be with Faith again, because you love her as a daughter. I understand that. And I'll send you to her, because she needs you now. Without you, she'll die, very soon, by her own hand, and that would break my heart. But you're already dead. So in order for you to return, and then remain with Faith, the scales will have to balance...there will have to be a sacrifice. And I'll have to be the one to make it."
"You?"
The Goddess could seem very human, sometimes, Rebecca had noticed...She could seem fragile. The Goddess seemed fragile, now. Like someone whose heart could be broken.
"Yes," the Goddess said, Her bright eyes downcast, Her voice, that had always sounded like music, reduced now to a mournful sigh. "I'm willing to make this sacrifice for Faith. I love her, and I know she needs you. But you must understand that once my sacrifice is made, and the scales are balanced, things will change. Some things may change for the better, others for the worse, but what is certain is that things will change."
"I...don't understand. What things? How will they change?"
"There's another saying I've always liked: all the world is a stage. I like that saying because it's true. Life is a great play, Rebecca, and I am its author, and human beings are its actors. And love and hate, joy and sorrow, bravery and cowardice, good and evil, life and death, sacrifice and greed, meaning and chaos, happiness and longing, and most of all passion, are its themes. I know the play, from the beginning to the end. I've seen it performed many times. But every time the play is performed, there are changes...surprises. Some are small things, while others can shake the world to its foundations. Every performance is unique. That's part of the fun. This performance was going a certain way, heading toward a certain final act...but now, when I send you back to them, things will change. The play will change, in ways I can't foresee."
"But there's nothing you can't foresee," Rebecca said. "How can you not know what's to come?"
The Goddess looked at Rebecca then, and smiled. It was like watching the sunrise.
"The play wouldn't be as much fun to watch if I peeked at the ending," the Goddess said.
Rebecca sat with Faith now in the living room, on the couch, and they drank tea together.
Willow had made it for them. Earl Grey, with milk and a dash of honey, just the way Rebecca liked it.
The tea helped somewhat, but Rebecca still felt cold. She ignored it, and drew the quilt up over Faith.
"Are you warm enough, darling?" Rebecca said.
Faith nodded.
Faith sat next to Rebecca, with her head on her shoulder. Rebecca stroked Faith's hair. Faith kept her arms around Rebecca, as if she was holding on, and thought she might fall. The picture of Gwendolyn was set up on the coffee table. Faith's butterfly knife and her stake were on the table next to it, by the teapot. The teapot and the teacups were Chinese porcelain, the tray and the spoons antique silver.
Rebecca had Faith's father's knife in her pocket.
"Well, Faith, it would seem we're in quite a pickle," Rebecca said. "The sun is gone, the world is overrun by vampires, and time is short. If we're going to turn this around we had better get cracking. But first you and I have to talk."
"You know about all that?" Faith said. "All the crazy stuff that's been going on?"
"Not every detail, but I've got the gist. I know what the First has done. And I know things look bleak. But we have to keep fighting."
Faith nodded. "I'll try," she said.
"Why did you believe her? I would never say those things."
"You...heard what she said? You heard all that stuff?"
"I've been watching over you. I don't remember all of it now...coming back here, I seem to have lost a great deal of my memory. But I remember some things...I remember some of your conversation with the First."
Rebecca stood up, and took in the room. She didn't like it. It was essentially a box constructed from unvarying gray stone and Rebecca thought it felt like a tomb. There were a few candles lit, but it was still dark as a cave in there, and cold. The floor was flagstone, the walls looked like granite. Their voices echoed. The grandfather clock echoed too, as it ticked the moments away in the dark. The world was running out of time. The Goddess had sent Rebecca back, but She hadn't made any guarantees. Rebecca knew, without being quite certain how she knew it, that if they couldn't turn this situation around, and quickly, hope would be lost...they would all die, and the world would die with them. She would have to watch Faith die.
Rebecca was aware of every second as it passed...they were like warm breaths turned to frost on a cold night, each breath floating up into the sky, making its mark on the world, and then slowly fading away to nothing in the cold, until only the black remained...moments they would never get back.
There was a big window on one wall; outside, the sky was black, dotted with red where the fires burned. The distant tongues of flame looked like red eyes, stalking from the shadows.
On the wall opposite the couch hung an old, faded tapestry, woven in coarse wools and delicate silks, which gave the room at least a modicum of color. It depicted a lioness at bay, surrounded by medieval hunters on horseback, in a little sunlit jungle clearing by a running stream, bordered by dense tropical foliage, and teeming with exotic birds. Delicate pink flamingoes waded daintily in the stream in their peculiar one-legged stance, their long, graceful necks bent to catch a morsel of food, while hawks darted through the air, swift and unerring as arrows shot from a bow, and parrots, vivid with color, peeked out from the shadows of the trees like little lurking rainbows. And the hunters hemmed the lioness in, their spears poised for the kill, and the lioness roared at their presumption, ready to spring, as the sun set in a fiery wreak, staining the little clearing blood red. In the far left pane of the tapestry, a crescent moon was rising to topple the sun from her throne, and the first few stars of evening were peeking out. The tapestry was ancient, and exquisite. Rebecca stood there looking at it in the candlelight, as she finished her tea.
"How could you think I'd say those things?" Rebecca said.
"I knew it was the First," Faith said.
Rebecca turned to her.
"And you believed her?" Rebecca said. "You believed I could ever think those...those horrible things?"
Rebecca walked back to the couch, and stood in front of her in the dark.
"I love you, Faith," Rebecca said. "Why can't you believe that?"
"I believe it," Faith said. "Guess I just...never understood why."
"Because you're my beautiful darling girl," Rebecca said, and sat down next to her again, and hugged her. "Because you're my daughter."
Faith nodded, and curled up in her lap.
"We didn't have enough time," Rebecca said. "If we only had more time. But I'm back now. I'm back, and I'll never leave you again."
"Okay," Faith said.
"You haven't slept, Faith," Rebecca said, and drew the quilt up over Faith again. "You look tired."
"Been a rough week," Faith said. "You saw the First talking to me? The stuff the First said...the stuff it did?"
"Not all of it," Rebecca said. "My memory is...rather out of sorts. I'm feeling a bit discombobulated. But whatever the First said, I know it lied. The only true thing it said was that I love you."
"I love you too," Faith said.
"You know, if you really thought about what it was saying you would have known it was lying. It said I thought you couldn't read. But you remember our first night, when I found you."
"Yeah?"
"I took you to that restaurant. I gave you a menu. Why would I give you a menu if I thought you couldn't read? And we used to read the Sunday paper together all the time. I knew you didn't like to read, but that doesn't mean I thought you couldn't."
"I beg your pardon?" Rebecca said, and frowned.
"Uh...I mean darn," Faith said, and smiled.
"Better," Rebecca said. "You let the First rattle you. You took its lies at face value. It said I had been looking for you and that I had talked to boys you let take advantage of you. That's not true. I know about what went on with those boys, but only because you told me about it. I did canvas the streets looking for you, but I went to the police, and they knew you from the picture I had of you, and they directed me to some of your hangouts. I started visiting those places, hoping you would show up. I kept just missing you. I would arrive someplace only a short time after you had left. And every night I would drive around Allston and Brighton and Brookline, going in and out of clubs and bars. But I kept missing you. Finally I found you with a locator spell."
"A locator spell? You can do locator spells?"
Rebecca smiled. "Blame daffy old Aunt Jane. I couldn't find you anywhere and the weather was just getting colder. So one day I finally said sod it, found a little shop in Chinatown that sold magic ingredients, and then I broke into your mother's house in South Boston praying I could find something of yours that I could use for the spell."
"You broke in? Was she there?"
"I waited in front of that wretched place for about ten hours that day before she finally left."
"You sat around the D Street projects in a Lexus for ten hours?"
"I met some of the local ruffians when they tried to sit on the hood of my car. We had a rather spirited debate after that, though I'm afraid I could only understand about every third word they said. Then I broke someone's arm. That ended the debate."
"What did you find in the house? Thought I took everything."
"Almost everything. I turned that place upside down for more than an hour before I finally found something of yours. It was a little blue plastic pail, the kind you take to the beach to build sandcastles with, buried at the bottom of your mother's closet. Thank goodness your mother saved it. And now, about that spending money I gave you every week. I won't dignify the ridiculous rubbish the First spewed at you, except to say this. If I was really afraid of what you would do out there, if I was really afraid you were that kind of girl, I never would have let you go out at night, Faith. But I did let you go out, anywhere you wanted with the single exception of the part of town where you ran into those vampires, and I trusted you completely. I always trusted you. And I killed those vampires by the way. Set the wankers on fire."
"What, you mean the ones who jumped me that first night?"
"That's why I was out of the house so often those first few months. I was looking for them. In March I finally found them in a dingy little hovel in Jamaica Plain. I gave them your regards while they were burning by the way. Let's see, what other nonsense did the First tell you...it said I didn't bring you out to Sunnydale while Buffy was contending with Angelus and Spike and Drusilla, and it tried to convince you that I kept you in Boston because I thought you were weak. More rubbish. What it neglected to mention was that Buffy defeated Angelus two days after you became the Slayer, and I didn't even find out what was going on out here until it was all over, because Giles hadn't been keeping the Council updated. If I had known what was going on I would certainly have come out here with you, immediately. In fact Angelus had been here for months by that point and Giles didn't even mention it in his updates to the Council. He didn't mention any of it until it was all over and Angelus was dead and Spike and Drusilla were gone. I haven't the slightest idea why Giles kept it from us, but it was bloody stupid on his part and he nearly got Buffy killed over it. I'm sorry Giles is gone because he seemed like a nice enough chap, but I'm also sorry because I would have very much liked to give him a good swift kick in the arse."
Faith thought she knew why Giles had never mentioned Angelus in his reports to the Watchers: if he did, he would have had to reveal Buffy's relationship with him. And Faith knew she would have to tell Rebecca about Angel soon...
And Rebecca would want to kill him.
Buffy sat with Willow and Tara in the room they were calling the kitchen, drinking. Tara had decided they all needed a drink, and Buffy had enthusiastically supported that decision.
"Um...so do we have any idea where Angel is?" Tara said.
"Well, I took down that energy shield I put up in front of him, but he wasn't in the living room anymore when I brought in tea for Becca and Faith," Willow said. "Lucky for us. If he ran into Becca that would've been...um...awkward. Like, Becca trying to kill him awkward."
"She'd really try to kill him?" Tara said. "She seemed nice."
"She's nice," Willow said. "As long as you're not a vampire who's killed thirteen-thousand people. Then she stops being nice. Here's hoping Faith can talk her down. If not, we're gonna have to make a choice. And I know you like him, Tara, but if the choice comes down to Angel or Becca, I'll pick Becca every time."
"Hopefully, it...won't come to that," Tara said. "I mean...we all decided, right? We decided we won't try to kill Angel ever again, unless he goes bad. Faith made it like a doctrine or whatever."
"That was before Becca," Willow said. "Becca changes everything, Tara."
Buffy drank her White Zinfandel, and wondered how much Rebecca would change things. They sat in the dark. Willow had tried to turn on the lamp, but Buffy liked the dark better. They lit Tara's incense candles instead.
"How's Annabelle?" Buffy said.
"I left her with Cordy," Willow said. "I checked on her, she's still asleep. But it'll be time for her breakfast soon. If I let her have her way breakfast would just be pop tarts. Actually, lunch and dinner would too. I'm thinking maybe I'll make French toast and sausages. I'm good with French toast. And I think we have strawberries in the fridge, better use them up before the ripeness window closes. It's funny. Cooking for Anna, taking care of her...it's just..."
Willow smiled, and there was a light in her eyes.
"It's just so awesome, taking care of her," Willow said. "I just love it so much. I wanna take care of her forever. And I wanna have kids someday."
"You'd be an awesome mom, Willow," Tara said, and squeezed her hand.
Buffy finished her wine, and poured herself another glass. It was her fourth. Tara and Willow were still working on their first drinks.
"So...people coming back from the dead," Tara said. "Freaky." She giggled. "But at least they're not zombies. Having Zombie Angel and Zombie Rebecca would be really freaky."
"I hate zombies," Willow said. "They always smell so bad. Plus, y'know, with the constantly trying to kill us."
"Wait. You guys have gone up against zombies?" Tara said.
"Few times," Buffy said. "Pain in the ass."
"They're stupid though," Willow said. "So that's good at least. Smart zombies would just be annoying. Why can't there be nice zombies? Y'know, like, bring some dead people back to life and they all decide to just eat ice cream or go bowling. That's what I'd do if I was a zombie."
"You've fought werewolves and zombies?" Tara said. "Next up you're gonna tell me you've gone up against the Creature From the Black Lagoon."
"We did, sorta," Willow said. "The swim team all turned into fish guys once."
"Okay, fine," Tara said. "Werewolves, zombies, Creature From the Black Lagoon. But no mummies at least, right? Because I really, really hate mummies. Mummy movies totally freak me out and--"
"Incan Mummy, last year," Willow said. "She was like this six-hundred year old teenage girl who kept herself looking pretty by stealing people's life force or whatever."
Tara folded her arms across her chest and glared at her.
"Frankenstein," Tara said. "You haven't gone up against Frankenstein. Don't even try to tell me you've gone up against Frankenstein because--"
"Well..." Willow said, and smiled. "There was this kid at school last year who brought his dead football jock older brother back to life by using parts he stole from corpses, and then he tried to make a girlfriend for his brother by killing me and Cordy and, um, combining our parts..." Willow frowned, and shook her head. "Me and Cordy, combined. It's just...so wrong."
"I hate this town," Tara muttered, and finished her drink, and made herself another.
Buffy finished her fourth glass of wine and poured herself a fifth. Tara took a sip of her second rum and coke. Willow was still nursing her first peppermint schnapps and Doctor Pepper.
"Goes without sayin' mummy girl had to date Xander," Buffy said, and laughed, too loud. It echoed, hanging there in the dark.
"Uh...yeah," Tara said, and glanced at Willow, and quickly changed the subject. "So... yeah, um, you guys sure have fought a lot of monsters."
"Comeshwidda terr'tory," Buffy said. "Our lives? Fucked up. Should prolly get the fuck outta here and not look back, Tara. Stuff we do'll fuck you up. Fuck you up."
Willow took Buffy's hand.
"Are you okay?" Willow said.
"Sure," Buffy said. "Right as rain. Fuck wouldn't I be?" She giggled. "Wait, wait. We all gotta say 'truck' now? Is 'truck' the word? Shit."
"You seem kinda...um...maybe a little on edge," Tara said. "Plus kinda bombed. We've got confirmed word-slurring."
"Con-what what now?" Buffy said, and gulped down half her wine. "Faith's got Becca back, I'm truckin' happy for 'em. 'Kay, only said it once, already totally sicka 'truck'. Back ta 'fuck' in three...two...one...fuck!"
"Buffy," Willow said. "Faith's gonna need time to adjust to this. She might not be... y'know...around for you as much as usual. But that's not--"
"Can we, for one fuckin' second, not talk about Faith?" Buffy said. "Can there be like one little tiny seconda life that isn't a big Faith thing? Tryinna drink a nice quiet drink here." She looked down at her wine. "You be quiet," she said, pointing at her wine and giggling.
"A nice quiet drink or five," Tara said.
"Buffy, I get that you're having a rough time right now with Faith," Willow said. "But--"
"Oh that's jus' great, let's jus' talk about, talk about...the whole fuckin' thing!" Buffy shouted, and stumbled out of her chair, knocking it over and nearly spilling her wine. Tara picked it back up. "Okay, I'm a sucky girlfriend! Let's have the Buffy's a sucky girlfriend convershation! Come on Tara, you're parta the group now, right? So let's talk about it! No secrets in the Fab Four!"
"Buffy," Tara said, softly, and took her hand, and caressed it. "Sweetie, Faith loves you. She loves you, Buffy, and that's never gonna change. Whatever's goin' on between you guys, you're gonna get past it. You just both need time. Faith just got Rebecca back, and you lost your mother, and Giles, and Xander...you just need time."
"Outta time, Tara," Buffy said, and picked up her wine and drained the glass. "Whole world's outta time. Wish my Mom came back the way Rebecca did. Guess my Mom jus' doesn't love me the way Rebecca loves Faith, huh? Guess I'm not worth a miracle."
They had a fire going now. Rebecca had noticed a fireplace behind the couch, which everyone had missed before because the living room was always nearly pitch black, and when Rebecca and Faith rearranged the furniture they found that there were logs already set up in the fireplace and a pile of old newspapers next to it to help get them burning, and the fireplace was clean and well-tended and looked like it actually worked. Willow had left Cordelia's lighter on one of the rocking chairs and Rebecca had gotten a good, crackling fire started with ease. It warmed the room, and its golden light sent the darkness scurrying away into the corners.
They sat on the couch now, watching the fire. Faith was curled up in Rebecca's lap, under the quilt. Rebecca stroked her hair.
The clock's chimes went off: it was seven in the morning. The melody was a jangling, shrill racket as it echoed through the room. It didn't fit in there, Faith thought. The sounds didn't fit with the darkness, and the warmth of the fire, and Rebecca's violet scent. The room was a warm, dark, silent place, a place for her and Rebecca and no one else, and the sounds were part of the world outside. The sounds were discordant.
"Could've chopped up that damn clock, used that for firewood," Faith said.
"Whittington chimes can be rather trying," Rebecca said. "You could shut off the chimes you know. There's a switch."
"Maybe we could like reprogram it with some of my tunes," Faith said. "It could be like, a hip hop grandfather clock. Every fifteen minutes we all drop what we're doin' and start shakin' our booty."
"Heaven forfend," Rebecca said.
They laughed, and watched the fire. Faith breathed in Rebecca's scent, and for the first time in months, she felt completely at ease...she felt like she was balanced, again...like she could finally rest for awhile.
"The First said I blame you for what Kakistos did to me," Rebecca said. "I don't. Nothing could be further from the truth."
"You should blame me," Faith said. "My fault."
"No," Rebecca said. "It wasn't. It was my fault. I was arrogant and stupid. I thought nothing could touch me. I knew Kakistos was out there somewhere and I knew he liked to go after Slayers. But the Watchers Council hadn't issued any warnings about him since he killed Madeleine Lambert a few years ago and so I had assumed he wasn't in the game. He takes vacations sometimes. He goes years under the radar sometimes, decades even. But that's no excuse. I should have been ready and I wasn't."
She didn't tell Faith the real reason Kakistos had caught her off-guard: in 1972, Willow had told her she would live to be their Watcher. Rebecca had therefore quite logically assumed that there was no way she could ever be killed before she met Willow in Sunnydale...but life was full of surprises.
"I should have been there," Faith said. "If I was there when it started it might have gone different. He might not have...he might not have..."
Faith sat up, and started crying. She held her head in her hands, hiding her face.
Rebecca hugged her, and tried to look at her face. Faith shook her head, and hid herself.
"Look at me," Rebecca said.
Faith looked at her. She was shaking.
"It wasn't your fault, Faith," Rebecca said. "You didn't know he was after us."
"I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!" Faith screamed.
Rebecca hugged her again. They were both quiet, as Faith cried.
"I couldn't...I couldn't call the hospital," Faith whispered.
"What?" Rebecca said.
Faith curled up against Rebecca's bosom, and held on to her.
"When you...when you...died," Faith said, crying. "I came out here to warn Buffy about Kakistos and after we took him down I decided to stay but...I wanted to know about...about your arrangements but...every time I picked up the phone to call the hospital, to ask...ask how to find out where they were burying you...I...I couldn't. I tried calling like, like a hundred times and... every time, I'd just start gettin' all, all shaky, like panicky and I'd start cryin' and...I just... couldn't. I couldn't."
Rebecca held her tight.
"It's all right," Rebecca whispered. "It's all right."
Faith shook her head, and cried.
"I'm here now," Rebecca said. "I'm here now. And I'm never leaving you again."
Faith nodded. She laid there, curled up against Rebecca's bosom, and breathed in her scent, and listened to her heartbeat, and felt her warmth.
"Faith, I'm your Watcher," Rebecca said, after awhile. "It was my responsibility to keep you informed of the threats out there, that's my job. That's what a Watcher does. And it was the Council's responsibility to keep me informed, and we all dropped the ball. We all let you down. And I'm sorry, darling. I'm sorry this hurt you."
Rebecca put her hands on Faith's shoulders, and looked her in the eyes.
"It happened, and neither of us can change that," Rebecca said. "We can cry over it. Or we can dust ourselves off and get back up."
Faith nodded.
"That's my girl," Rebecca said, and wiped Faith's tears away, and kissed her cheek. "That's my girl."
Faith nodded again, and curled back up against her.
"Besides, you gave the bastard one hell of a fight," Rebecca said. "Better than even I could have predicted. One newly-minted Slayer, alone, against more than a dozen vampires, and Kakistos? And you actually managed to take him down, and put a stake in him. I told you that you were destined for greatness. You proved it that night."
Rebecca smiled.
"I'm so proud of you, Faith," Rebecca said, with tears in her eyes. "I'm so proud."
Faith smiled too.
"And the way you and Buffy finally did dispatch him was nothing short of brilliant," Rebecca said. "A marvelous bit of creative planning there. You always were resourceful."
"You saw that?"
"I told you, I've been watching. I don't remember everything--in fact I seem to have forgotten quite a lot of it. But I remember some things. I remember you and Buffy taking Kakistos down. I remember the girls all voting you the leader. You're going to be a wonderful leader, Faith. You're smart, strong, and most of all, creative. You're a born strategist. I saw that early on in you, and I've done my best since you became the Slayer to bring it out. That's why toward the end I was always asking you to plan our attacks when we went out patrolling."
"You really think...I'm a good leader? You think I can be a leader?"
"I think you already are, darling. And the girls wouldn't have asked you to lead if they didn't think you could do it. I know Buffy, I've read her file, and every single one of Giles' reports. She's a brilliant Slayer, quite resourceful but rather moody and headstrong. She doesn't like being told what to do. She certainly wouldn't have asked you to lead if she didn't think you could do it. Neither would Willow. Actually, here's a funny story for you. I was supposed to be Buffy's Watcher."
Faith sat up. "Really? You're kiddin' me."
"Travers. He's that guy you said was like the head of the Watchers, right?"
"Yes, and although Quentin liked Giles well enough he was still worried about Buffy. According to Giles' reports the girl was becoming increasingly withdrawn. She was sullen, apathetic, obstinate."
"Intractable?" Faith said, and grinned.
"Yes, quite so," Rebecca said. "We've seen this before in Slayers. Some girls can become...disillusioned. They see the unending war around them, the war that regular people don't have to see, and they wonder why they should bother fighting what looks like an endless stalemate. They knock down one threat and up pops another, day after day, year after year, and over time some girls lose their will to fight. Death usually follows, very quickly. Quentin thought he saw Buffy heading that way, and he was worried. So he was going to send Giles off for a fresh start with a potential Slayer somewhere, and he wanted me to come out here and take over with Buffy and try to knock some sense into the girl."
"Why didn't you?"
"I had also just been offered my choice of a newly discovered group of potential Slayers, and your name was among them," Rebecca said. "I guess you could say...I had a feeling about you. And anyway I thought Giles had done a fine job--Buffy had saved the world, after all--so I was able to convince Quentin to keep Giles on. Quentin never really could say no to me."
"Wow," Faith said. "You and Buffy. And who knows, maybe G-Man would've picked me. That's just crazy. That's a trip."
"You were meant to be with me, darling," Rebecca said, and kissed Faith's forehead. "No one else but me."
"Yup," Faith said.
"By the way, I've been wondering, how did you find this mansion?" Rebecca said. "Is it yours? I don't know if you know this, but I left an inheritance for you. Did you buy this place? Or was it abandoned, with everything else that's going on?"
"Uh, I sorta bought it," Faith said. "Okay...I'm gonna piss you off now."
Rebecca raised her eyebrow. "You are?"
"Yeah. So...uh...I'm just gonna say this. And you gotta promise to chill when I say it and like, let me explain. It's gonna sound crazy but I've got an explanation."
Rebecca nodded.
"You trust me, right?" Faith said.
"Of course I do," Rebecca said.
"There's a vampire who helps us out," Faith said.
Rebecca was quiet for a moment. She looked straight into Faith's eyes.
"A vampire," Rebecca said.
"He's got a soul," Faith said. "He tries to help people now."
"Vampires don't have souls."
"This one does. Magic thing."
"I see. Rather a lot of that going around, isn't there."
"He helps us and you're gonna wanna kill him and you can't kill him. We need him."
"Who is this vampire? Where is he now?"
"He's here with us in the mansion. Actually it was his mansion, before he sold it to me for five bucks."
"He's here?" Rebecca said, and leapt up. Faith got up with her, and grabbed her arm.
"He won't hurt us, Becca," Faith said. "He helps us."
"Does he." Rebecca folded her arms across her chest, and studied Faith's eyes.
"Yeah." Faith endured Rebecca's stare, as best she could.
"He sold you this place for five dollars?"
"Didn't have time to go out to England to get my inheritance, things have been crazy. And we needed a place that was defensible, that couldn't burn, because the vamps out there are burning down houses. This place is all stone and it's mostly underground. It's got lots of places to hole up too. But the problem was--"
"The invitation magic," Rebecca said. "If this mansion belonged to a vampire the invitation magic wouldn't work, other vampires could just walk in. But if he sells it to one of you, the invitation magic goes into effect. Clever. And rather a bargain." She looked around the room. "I can't say I much care for the place though. It's cold, and gloomy. Actually it seems just the sort of place a vampire would live in. Like a tomb. A rather posh tomb, I suppose, but still. Who is this vampire?"
"You gotta promise not to kill him."
Rebecca looked at her again.
"I'll promise no such thing," Rebecca said. "Tell me who he is."
Faith turned, and looked at the fire. If Rebecca made her choose...Faith knew she would choose Rebecca. She would let Angel die, if that's what Rebecca wanted. But Faith knew it would be a mistake...and it would split them all, right down the middle.
She saw it, as she looked into the fire. She saw it all clearly. Willow would side with her, Tara would go against her. And Buffy would side with Tara. After losing her mother, and Giles, and Xander, Buffy wouldn't be able to bear losing Angel too, when he hadn't even done anything wrong...Faith knew Buffy wouldn't be able to forgive her. With Angel dead, Faith would be left with Rebecca and Willow and Annabelle. Buffy, Tara and Cordelia would leave.
Faith looked into the fire, and watched it all burn...
Then she turned back to Rebecca.
"Angelus," Faith said.
And then Rebecca did something Faith had never seen her do before. She looked afraid.
Rebecca's face went pale. Her eyes grew wide.
Then she picked up Faith's stake, and marched across the room, toward the hallway.
Faith ran in front of her.
"What are you doing?" Faith said.
"What does it look like?" Rebecca said. "Either help me or get out of the way."
Faith stood her ground.
"Not until you hear this," Faith said. "You said you trusted me. You either do or you don't. You said I'm a leader. I either am or I'm not. Whether I'm the leader of this group has nothing to do with me and everything to do with you right now. I'll always do what you say, Becca. You say we're dusting Angel then I'll lead you straight to him. But if you make me do that, I'm not the leader anymore. Because I was in charge when we all decided to trust Angel. You try to dust him now and that's saying to Buffy and Tara and Will that you don't have any faith in me, that you don't think I can lead."
"I'm doing this for you!" Rebecca shouted. "He's dangerous! You don't know him like I do, you don't know what he's capable of! I spent years studying him, learning about his every atrocity! Do you know how many people he's killed? More than thirteen-thousand! He's got you all fooled somehow!"
"He has his soul," Faith said. "He's had it a long time, for like a century. That's why he helps now. If you do this, if you make me dust him, it'll split us all up. Willow will stay with us, Tara will leave. Buffy will leave too."
"She'll leave for Angelus?!" Rebecca shouted. "Buffy tried to kill him six months ago!"
"He, uh, lost his soul again for awhile, went bad. Then when she killed him he ended up in a hell dimension. Just bear with me, it's all kinda complicated. Just before he got sent to the hell dimension Willow managed to re-ensoul him..."
"Re-ensoul? What the devil are you talking about?"
"When he got his soul back a hundred years ago it was some whacked gypsy curse. He killed some gypsy chick and her clan or tribe or whatever cursed him with his soul so he could feel guilty forever. Anyway after he lost it last winter Willow found like the original spell or whatever and she was able to give it back to him again. So now he helps us."
"Those gypsies couldn't have just killed him? That's what I would've done."
"I don't know, maybe it's gypsy logic. So anyway those gypsies cursed him with a soul like a century ago and he moped around for a long time after that feelin' guilty, hung out with Elvis a little, then fast-forward to 1997 and he meets Buffy and decides to start helping her. That thing with the Master? Buffy would have died for good if it wasn't for Angel. Plus he saved her a bunch of other times. Not just Buffy. He saved Willow too. And he's put himself on the line for all of us since then. Put himself on the line for me too. I trust him, Becca."
"Why do you call him Angel? Hold on. Elvis?"
"Angel's the name he goes by these days. He was tight with the Rat Pack and Elvis back in the sixties."
Rebecca frowned.
"Are you quite certain you're not high?" Rebecca said.
"You'd kick my butt if I was high," Faith said. "So anyway he lost his soul last January, Buffy took him down in May, and he got sent to the hell dimension. But then he got sent back here, no one knows how, he just like, showed up. And he had his soul again because Willow's spell worked. So now he's back to helping. If it makes you feel better, I almost killed him a few days ago."
"It does make me feel better, actually. How did he lose his soul? How can we know he won't lose it again?"
"The gypsy curse was meant to keep Angel feelin' all guilty. So if he ever has a moment of perfect happiness he loses his soul again. Angel and Buffy used to be a couple, and...uh... she gave him a pretty happy moment."
Rebecca's jaw dropped.
Then she laughed. Faith started laughing too.
"Brilliant," Rebecca said. "Bloody brilliant. A Slayer dating a vampire. Something's well and truly cocked up somewhere."
"Yeah, welcome to my life," Faith said.
Rebecca frowned. "You, of course, will not ever date a vampire."
"Not even if George Clooney becomes a vampire and invites me out for dinner?"
"Not even if Mel Gibson becomes a vampire and takes you out on his yacht."
"Harsh. Okay, guess I'll just have to deal. Once you get a look at Angel I think you'll maybe wanna cut Buffy a little slack though."
Rebecca put her hands on Faith's shoulders, and raised her eyebrow.
"You're certain you're not high," Rebecca said.
"High on life," Faith said.
"You nearly killed him?"
"Hell yeah."
Rebecca nodded.
"I trust your judgment, Faith," Rebecca said. "I always have. It's just that I worry about you. I always want to protect you."
"You wanna dust him, Becca, I'll back your play," Faith said. "I can't ever go against you. But it'll mean you think I can't do this. That's how everyone here will see it. And it'll split us up. It'll just be me, you and Will here because everyone else will leave."
"You can do this," Rebecca said, and hugged her. "If you say he's all right, I trust you."
Rebecca walked back to the coffee table, and poured herself another cup of tea.
"Of course I'll want to speak with him," Rebecca said.
"Figured you would," Faith said.
"And if the prat even looks at you the wrong way I'll shove this stake so far up his arse he'll have splinters in his teeth."
"Sounds like a plan."
"Could use some scotch in this," Rebecca sighed, and sipped her tea. "Now then. We've gotten this Angel nonsense out of the way. Assuming there are no other ridiculous things you have to tell me, like perhaps you've decided to join the circus or aliens from outer space have landed in the backyard, it's time we confront the elephant in the room. This business about your father and your mother."
"You heard it all?" Faith said.
"Yes." Rebecca looked out the window, into the dark. The red lights from the fires seemed to watch her, like eyes...like predators, stalking her. She had been dead, and now she was alive...
For just a moment, she was back in the restaurant...naked and bleeding and half conscious on the floor. Kakistos was on top of her...his weight was prodigious. It was like being trampled by a horse. His breath smelled like whiskey and blood. His body had a putrid odor, like some rutting animal. He dug his long fingernails into her scalp as he held her down by the hair. He was too strong...she couldn't move, no matter how much she struggled against him. He laughed, when she struggled. She felt a sting as he ripped her underwear down, and it cut her legs...then he grunted in her ear, as he forced himself into her from behind.
Rebecca dismissed the memory, and looked away from the window. Kakistos was dead. Faith had killed him. And Rebecca knew she didn't have time to be weak...to dwell upon things that frightened her, that shamed her. Faith needed her to be strong...so she would be. Every second.
"Nothing to confront," Faith said, and sat on the couch again, and sipped her tea. "My Dad was a lowlife scumbag who raped my mother in a bar and then she tried to abort me."
"That's a hard thing," Rebecca said, turning back to Faith. "That's a hard thing to bear."
"Did you know about it all, about my Mom trying to get rid of me?" Faith said. "Was it like in my Watcher file or whatever?"
"No. The Watchers were interested in you, not your family."
"Would you have told me, if you knew?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I can't bear to see you hurt. And because you're my responsibility, and I have to decide what's best for you. Knowing about this doesn't do you any good."
Faith nodded. Rebecca watched her. Faith still looked so young...she was still a girl. But there was something different about her, too, Rebecca thought. It was in her eyes...Faith's eyes had a new light in them, now. They were older.
"My father was a drunk," Rebecca said. "My mother divorced him because of it when I was very young, and then she died a few years later. My grandfather raised me. When I was a girl I would see my father sometimes, lying in the gutter outside some pub somewhere."
"Thought you guys were like, rich."
"We were. Rich people can waste their lives, the same as anybody else. Actually they get even more opportunities. My father was a weakling who crawled up into a bottle and never bothered with me. He was never there for my birthdays, for holidays, he never saw me off to school or read me a story or tucked me in at night. He never gave a damn about me, so I didn't give a damn about him. When he finally died of liver disease I didn't attend his funeral."
Faith nodded. "I won't attend my Mom's funeral either. Just dusted dear old Dad."
"When I was a girl, I decided I would be nothing like my father," Rebecca said. "I didn't even take his name. Greer is my mother's name, and my grandfather's name. That first time I saw my father in the gutter, covered in filth, stinking of whiskey, I decided I would never be like him. And I wasn't. "
"You were strong," Faith said. "You're always strong."
"And now it's time for you to be strong," Rebecca said.
Rebecca sat next to Faith again, and took her hand, and held it hard. And looked her in the eyes.
"Your father was shit," Rebecca said. "Your mother was weak, and sick. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I won't insult your intelligence by pretending this is an easy thing. It's not an easy thing. It's a hard thing to bear. It's a lousy hand to be dealt. But here you are, Faith. You've been dealt this hand, and the weight is on your shoulders. All that's left is to decide where you go from here. But it won't be a difficult decision, and you won't even have to give it any thought, because I'm making it for you, and you're going to do exactly what I tell you to do. Do you understand me?"
Faith nodded.
"You're going to live, and be strong and happy, and I'm going to help you," Rebecca said. "You're never going to try to hurt yourself again. Do you understand me?"
Faith nodded.
"I could tell you that just because your father was a piece of shit, that doesn't mean you are," Rebecca said. "Just like my father was a weak fool who shirked his responsibilities, and I decided not to be. And I could also tell you that your mother was sick in the mind, that anyone who would hit a defenseless child needs to be locked away for psychological treatment. And that would all be true. But it wouldn't help you much. Because at the end of the day that's all just words, and having to recite a list of arguments to yourself in order to decide to go on living every day isn't going to work. You need to decide who you are, and what you want to do with your life. You need to burn your bridges, and start fresh...start over. Right now."
"Start over?" Faith said.
Rebecca took Faith's hand, and walked her to the fireplace.
"You need to leave your mother and your father in the past, and move ahead without them," Rebecca said, as they stood holding hands, looking down at the fire together. "Neither of them wanted you, and you don't want them."
Faith nodded.
Rebecca turned Faith toward her. Faith's eyes were golden in the firelight.
"They didn't want you, but I do want you," Rebecca said. "They didn't love you, but I do love you. You're my girl, Faith. You're my special girl. You're my daughter."
Faith nodded, and wept, and hugged her.
"I...I tried...I tried to kill myself before," Faith whispered. "A few weeks back. Things were...things were real hard and, and I was alone and...you were gone and...I didn't think... anybody would ever care about me."
Rebecca looked down into her eyes. Tears ran down Rebecca's cheeks.
"Tara saved me," Faith whispered.
"Tara? Tara saved you?" Rebecca whispered.
"I was...gonna jump, off this lighthouse in town. And Tara was there. She said her Tara cards told her to go there."
"Tara cards?"
Faith smiled. "Tarot. She got this weird card, 'The Lighthouse'. It was one of those special picture cards...major arcana."
"Faith...there isn't any Lighthouse card."
"I know. Tara said her deck is special...magical. It does weird stuff. It gave her a card that didn't exist in the deck. So she came out to the lighthouse in Sunnydale, Kingman's Bluff, and she found me...pulled me down. I stayed with her for awhile after that and we just...talked about stuff and...she made me realize...people could care. That I didn't have to be alone."
Rebecca nodded, with tears running down her cheeks. Faith wiped them away.
"You'll never be alone, Faith," Rebecca said. "You'll always have me. It would seem I owe Tara...more than I can ever repay."
Faith hugged Rebecca again, and Rebecca held her to her bosom.
"I almost...I almost lost my girl," Rebecca whispered, and cried.
"Never again," Faith said. Rebecca nodded.
They stayed that way, for a long time. They didn't talk. The silence never became uncomfortable.
Eventually, Faith looked up at Rebecca, and smiled.
"We're a frightful mess again," Faith said.
"Yes," Rebecca said, and smiled down at her, and caressed her hair. "I imagine we are."
They giggled, through their tears.
"Never again," Rebecca said.
"Never again," Faith said. "I love you."
"I love you too," Rebecca said, and kissed Faith's forehead.
And then Rebecca took Faith's father's knife out of her pocket. She flipped the blade open.
"This was your father's," Rebecca said. "It's the only thing you have of his."
Faith nodded. The blade glinted in the firelight. They looked at it together.
"But you're not his anymore," Rebecca said. "And you're not hers anymore either. After what they did, neither your father or your mother have any right to you anymore. As of this moment, you're starting over. You're beginning a new life, with me. You're not their daughter anymore. From now on, you're mine. I love you and you're mine."
Faith smiled.
"Okay," Faith said.
Rebecca threw the knife into the fire.
"You're a Greer now, Faith," Rebecca said, as they watched it melt away.
Buffy drank her wine. Willow and Tara kept an eye on her.
"Sweetie," Tara said, and took Buffy's hand, and looked her in the eyes. "Your mother loved you. We all love you. You're really special, Buffy. Yeah, Rebecca came back, but...Faith was about to hurt herself."
"Xander hasn't come back," Willow said. "Am I supposed to believe he never loved me now? Buffy, this thing with Becca...it's...a special case, I think."
"Think about it, sweetie," Tara said, and caressed Buffy's hair. "Someone's helping us. I got sent back just when Faith needed blood from a compatible donor. Angel got sent back just when we needed him to take out that wizard. There's an energy shield protecting the house just when the First is probably getting ready to come at us again, and Willow sure didn't put it there. And now Rebecca's back, just when Faith needed her. This isn't about who loves who more. Whoever's doing all this, it's about helping us win this fight. That's why Rebecca's back. And if we needed your mother to win this fight, if we needed Xander or Giles to win this fight, I'm sure they'd be back too."
Buffy drank her wine.
"Don't you think...maybe you've had enough wine?" Willow said.
"Nope," Buffy said, and finished her glass, and poured herself another.
"Hello, girls," Rebecca said.
Rebecca was leaning against the counter, watching them in the dark. Willow and Tara looked up at her. Buffy whirled around in her chair and nearly fell out of it.
Rebecca seemed ambiguous, somehow, as she stood there in that shadowy corner, tall and straight, shoulders back, her arms folded across her chest, yet still seeming perfectly at ease, watching the three of them now with a keen-eyed, inscrutable gaze; she seemed vague, insubstantial, like she might be part of the darkness that surrounded her. Looking at Rebecca then, unable to quite discern where the darkness left off and she began, Buffy, Willow and Tara thought she might have been an apparition, who had suddenly come to them from some nebulous, unknowable other realm. The darkness seemed like it might swallow her.
But the darkness couldn't swallow Rebecca's eyes: they gleamed in the candlelight, like the sun on a calm blue sea.
"Why didn't I smell you?" Buffy said.
"Perhaps you're distracted, Buffy," Rebecca said, and smiled...and left the shadows, and walked into the light.
Willow got up out of her chair. "You need anything, Becca? You want me to get you something?"
"Well, I was hoping for some scotch, actually," Rebecca said. "And then I thought we might all talk."
"We keep all the booze on the bookcase over there," Tara said, and pointed out the bookcase that squatted in the shadows, as Willow went to the cabinet above the sink and pulled down a tall glass.
"How's Faith?" Buffy said.
"Better," Rebecca said. "She's sleeping now, and I'd appreciate it if no one disturbed her for awhile. She needs her rest."
"I wanna see her," Buffy said, and tried to get up, stumbling out of her chair. Rebecca came over to her and put her hand on her shoulder.
"You can see her after she's slept, Buffy," Rebecca said. "She needs to rest. And we need to talk."
Buffy sat back down.
"Um, we don't really have like, shot glasses," Willow said, and moved to the bookcase. "We sorta went shopping in a hurry. Is this glass okay?"
Rebecca smiled. "It's fine."
Willow moved to the bookcase and inspected the assortment of liquors. She couldn't see the labels in the dark. She moved back to the table to pick up a candle.
Rebecca switched on the floor lamp that was standing in the corner. The room flooded with light. But Buffy thought the lamp's light was harsh, after the candles. Where the candles had been warm, this light was cold. Where the candles had been soft, and indirect, blanketing the room in a gentle golden radiance like the sun peeking out from the clouds, allowing the room to keep its shadows, but sculpting them into pleasing forms, the lamp's light was hard, and unrelenting. Where the candle had flickered, sculpting the shadows into new shapes every second, the lamp light was a steady, monotonous glare, and it banished the shadows, and the room was suddenly shorn of its mystery, and its warmth. It felt like an examining table in there now. Buffy squinted at the light, and frowned. She wanted to find a warm, shadowy place, where she could experience the world through her nose rather than her eyes, and curl up there with Faith in her arms.
Buffy wanted to growl at the light, and at Rebecca too, and she nearly did. She felt the beginnings of it, rumbling in her stomach. She stopped herself.
Willow came back to the bookcase and stood beside Rebecca. They looked at the rather large assortment of liquor bottles together.
Buffy watched them.
"So," Rebecca said. "You have Faith's memories. I would think that must certainly have been...an adjustment."
"Yeah," Willow said. "It's been kinda tough but...at the same time...it's been kinda good too. Feeling like I lived her life...it taught me stuff. It taught me about being strong. Faith hung tough out there."
"Yes," Rebecca said. "She did. She was always a strong girl."
"She gives me strength too," Willow said.
Rebecca smiled.
"Um...so which one of these is scotch?" Willow said. Are any of them scotch?"
"This one, unfortunately," Rebecca said, and pulled a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label from the shelf and frowned at it.
"Is scotch good?"
"Single malt scotch is excellent. Unfortunately this is blended. I suppose I'll have to muddle through."
Willow opened the bottle and started filling up the glass. Rebecca stopped her before the glass was half full.
"Good heavens, Willow," Rebecca said, and smiled. "I want to relax, not become comatose."
"Um, I'm not really, y'know, a liquor person," Willow said. "Caffeine's my thing. I'm all about super mocha cappuccinos. With caffeine it's all about quantity. Especially when we're in the middle of an apocalypse."
Rebecca sipped her scotch, and looked around the kitchen. "Why isn't there a stove?"
"Um...the guy who owned this place was kinda...strange," Tara said. "Stove's in a separate room down the other end of the hallway."
"Yes, I suppose Angelus wouldn't have much use for cooking," Rebecca said. "Odd that he has a microwave here though. Perhaps he likes his blood warm."
Everyone was looking at her. Rebecca raised her eyebrow.
"Faith doesn't keep things from me," Rebecca said. "I'm quite caught up on all the ridiculous things you girls have been up to. Which is why we need to talk. Willow, could I impose upon you to put on a pot of strong coffee?"
"Hokeley-dokeley," Willow said. "Be back in a bit."
"What?" Rebecca said.
"Uh, Simpsons thing," Willow said. "Y'know...the TV show?"
"Is that the cartoon with the yellow people that Faith always tried to make me watch?"
"Yeah."
Rebecca sighed. Willow giggled, and went to see to the coffee.
Rebecca walked back to the table. She took Buffy's glass away from her, and took the bottle away too.
"Hey! I was drinkin' that!" Buffy said.
"And now you're finished," Rebecca said, and put the cork back in the bottle of white zin, and put it in the refrigerator. Then she dumped Buffy's wine in the sink, and sat down across from her. Buffy sat back in her chair, her face red.
"Well, it's been rather an eventful couple of months, hasn't it?" Rebecca said. "Kakistos, the Vigil of Saint Vigeous, Spike and Drusilla, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Not to mention wizards, mercenaries, government soldiers...and the First Evil."
"They're probably gonna run into Godzilla eventually," Tara muttered.
"Never say never in this business," Rebecca said. Tara still couldn't meet her eyes.
"Are you going to be shy around me forever?" Rebecca said.
"Um...maybe, yeah," Tara said, and smiled.
"Zombies," Buffy said. "Zombies couple weeks back."
"Yes, zombies too," Rebecca said. "Like I said, quite an eventful couple of months. And of course, the apocalypse is here, and the world is ending."
"Buffy Summers, Slayer 'strordinaire," Buffy said. "Want somethin' fucked up, I'm your girl."
"Don't swear," Rebecca said. "I don't want you swearing."
"Hell difference does it make? Why can't I swear?"
"Because you're an intelligent, beautiful, exceptional young woman and swearing makes you seem coarse. And because I'm asking you not to."
The table was quiet for a moment. Buffy looked at Rebecca, and Rebecca looked back. Neither of them blinked.
Tara did enough blinking for the both of them. Sitting between them at that moment, Tara knew exactly what the Berlin Wall felt like.
"Faith told me you came within a second of preventing this," Rebecca said. "You fought your way through hundreds of vampires and you nearly managed to stop all this before it happened."
"Close jus' counts in...horseshoes...whatever the other thing is," Buffy said.
"Hand grenades. I'm sorry about your mother, Buffy."
Buffy nodded. "Hand grenades," she said.
"So you and Faith...talked stuff out?" Tara said. "She's gonna be okay now? She's not gonna...try to hurt herself?"
"She'll be fine," Rebecca said.
"Why'd you take my wine?" Buffy said. "Think you're like, my Watcher now?"
Buffy looked at Rebecca again. Her eyes were unfocused because she was drunk, but Buffy showed none of the unease, none of the hesitation Tara showed, Rebecca noticed. Buffy met Rebecca's unwavering blue eyes and didn't flinch from them.
"Yes," Rebecca said.
"Maybe I don't want you to be my Watcher," Buffy said.
"Tough," Rebecca said.
The table was quiet again. Buffy looked at Rebecca, and Rebecca looked back.
"Better watch it, Becca Greer," Buffy finally said, and looked away from her. "I get Watchers killed. Giles, plus the first guy...whatsisname, fat guy...Merrick. Xander too. Yup, Slayer 'strordinaire got 'em all killed. I'm like a cute, perky hand grenade."
"Buffy," Tara said, and took Buffy's hand again. "Sweetie, none of that was your fault. None of it."
"Tell that to the thirty zillion dead people," Buffy said.
"Okay, coffee's brewin'," Willow said, all smiles, as she practically skipped into the room. "I'm like Coffee Girl, so I grabbed us a bunch of awesome exotic blends from the Starbucks a few days ago. I've got some Jamaican Blue Mountain going right now."
"How come you wanna be my Watcher?" Buffy said.
"What?" Willow said, as she sat down next to Rebecca, on the opposite side of the table from Buffy.
"Two against one now," Buffy muttered. "Boston crew's all gangin' up on me."
"What?" Willow said, again.
Tara moved her chair next to Buffy's, and took her hand again. "How's this, sweetie. Better? I promise I won't let you sign any treaties that give away Alaska. We're not payin' any war reparations either."
"You wanna go ta 'laska? We should go ta 'laska," Buffy said, and closed her eyes and yawned, and leaned back in her chair and almost slid out of it. Tara propped her up, and Buffy fell against Tara's shoulder, and stayed there.
"We can go to Alaska anytime you want, sweetie," Tara said, and giggled. "We'll have our own little igloo."
"And...what are we talking about, exactly?" Willow said. "Can I get like a context-sensitive translation here?"
"We're babbling," Tara said, and looked at Buffy, and smiled. "Huh, sweetie?"
"Babble babble babble," Buffy muttered, and nodded her head. "Tired. Kinda drunk too. Why you wanna be my Watcher? I suck."
"Because I like you," Rebecca said. "And because you most certainly need one."
Buffy pulled herself up off of Tara's shoulder, and looked at Rebecca again. Buffy was swaying a little now.
"I don't," Buffy said. "Whaddayou guys do anyway? Sirround readin' books while you send us out to maybe die every other day. Cushy job. 'Sides, I'm a walkin' hand grenade anyway. You know me? Read my file? Know all my screwups? Faith told you about Angel, right?" She looked around the room, and frowned. "Where is he by the way?"
"You tell me," Rebecca said. "You should be able to smell him."
Buffy concentrated on her senses...then she frowned.
"What is it?" Tara said.
"She can't pick up his scent," Rebecca said. "Intoxication dulls a Slayer's senses. Which is why Slayers shouldn't let themselves become intoxicated. Faith told me Angelus is holed up somewhere at the other end of the mansion, a floor beneath us."
"Faith's the girl," Buffy said. "Slayer superstar."
"It's not a contest, Buffy," Rebecca said. "And I have read your file by the way, every word of it, including all of Mr. Giles' reports. I do know you. I know you've saved the world, three times. I know that everyone sitting at this table, myself included, owes their life to you. And I know you're a hell of a Slayer. But unfortunately you have a tendency to feel sorry for yourself, and it's rather tiresome to have to sit through." Rebecca glared her. "So pull yourself together."
"You can say 'hell' if you like," Rebecca said. "And hope is overrated. Having faith is what's important."
"Faith in what?" Buffy said. "The Easter bunny? The Great Pumpkin? Trickle-down economics?"
"How can you say 'trickle down economics' but you can't say Alaska?" Tara said. Buffy shrugged her shoulders.
"Okay, look, I don't wanna be all negative, Becca," Willow said. "I mean, we refused the First's deal, we're gonna try to fight this thing. But Buffy's got a point. Are we supposed to think this is all part of some divine plan? Yeah, there's some really out there stuff happening now, like that energy shield and ...well, you coming back...but I've seen bodies in the streets. I've seen people impaled alive on poles and left to die. Sunnydale's burning, millions of people are dead, the sun's gone. What kind of God could allow this?"
"I haven't the slightest idea, and it doesn't matter one whit, Willow," Rebecca said. "What matters is what we do about it. We have to have faith in ourselves."
"But what can we do?" Willow said. "It just seems like...there's nothing anyone can do."
"We can stand and fight," Rebecca said. "And we're going to."
"Sounds like a plan to me," Cordelia said, as she came in from the hallway. "So is everybody officially done screaming now? Annie and I were getting concerned. So you're this Rebecca person everyone keeps talking about. Well I'm Cordelia Chase, and I'm not part of the group so don't even think about trying to tell me what to do."
"I beg your pardon?" Rebecca said, and frowned at her.
Cordelia had Annabelle with her. Annabelle was wearing a red plaid jumper with a red turtleneck and white tights, shiny black patent leather Mary Jane's with sequin bows, red plastic bangles with little white hearts dangling from them on each wrist, and she had a tiny little red plaid purse on her shoulder that matched her outfit perfectly. Her hair had bangs now and it was pulled back into a French braid secured with a sparkly red ponytail holder.
Annabelle was pretty as a princess. Her hair was glossy and soft as silk. Her outfit was perfectly coordinated. She was minutely, precisely, fabulously accessorized. She stood with her little hands on her hips, looking up at everyone with the most adorable little pout on her face, and Willow thought she was more huggable, pound for pound, than all the puppies in Pennsylvania. Annabelle was a perfect storm of huggableness.
"You guys so need to get over yourselves," Annabelle said.
Everyone except Annabelle, who was still pouting adorably, cracked up laughing. Once she had her laughter under control, Rebecca walked over to Annabelle and stared down at her, with her hands on her hips and a raised eyebrow.
"And who is this impertinent person?" Rebecca said, in her most imperious tone.
"Imburpiment?" Annabelle said, and cocked her head at Rebecca, and squinted up at her like Rebecca was a commoner who had somehow gotten lost in her castle and was tracking mud all over the marble floors.
"Yes, quite so, young lady," Rebecca said, and crouched down, and squinted right back into Annabelle's eyes, and held out her hand. "What's your name?"
"Annabelle," Annabelle said, and took Rebecca's hand.
"Sorry, what was that?" Rebecca said, and held her hand to her ear. "Anna Jellybean?"
"Annabelle!" Annabelle said, and started giggling.
"Anna Bellybutton?" Rebecca said, and poked Annabelle's stomach.
"Annabelle!" Annabelle said, and poked Rebecca's stomach right back.
"Anna Banana?" Rebecca said, and picked Annabelle up in her arms. Annabelle nodded.
"Yup, she's definitely a banana," Tara said.
"Very nice to meet you, Miss Anna Banana," Rebecca said. "I'm Rebecca Banana."
"Becca Banana!" Annabelle said, and giggled again, and wrapped her arms around Rebecca's neck.
"Anna's my lil' tickle belly too," Willow said. "And she's gonna be getting totally deprogrammed in a little while," she added, glancing back at Cordelia. "One Cordy's enough."
"At least let her hold on to the fabulousness," Cordy said.
Annabelle was looking at Rebecca's face, and playing with her hair, and touching her cheek.
"You're pretty," Annabelle said.
Rebecca stood up, and held Annabelle very close to her, and stroked her hair, as Annabelle rested her head on her shoulder.
"Cordy, has she had breakfast yet?" Willow said.
"That's why we're here, actually," Cordy said. "I was gonna check the fridge and get cooking."
"Thanks, you've been awesome Cordy, but I'll cook," Willow said, and caressed Annabelle's hair. It was shiny and smooth and it didn't have a single split end. "I like cookin' for my lil' tickle belly. You guys can all eat with us if you want though. Is that okay, Anna? Can we all have breakfast with you?"
Annabelle nodded. "Willow Belly and Prebesser Tara and Bunny and Cordy and Faith Banana and Big Banana," she said. "And Becca Banana."
"Aw, you're such a sweetie!" Buffy said, and got up out of her chair and approached Annabelle, smiling, but listing a bit as she walked. "We can all have breakfast together, Annie?"
Annabelle wrinkled her nose, and frowned. "You need a bath, Bunny," she said.
Buffy blushed.
Tara took Buffy's hand. "She's just not used to alcohol, sweetie, that's all," Tara whispered in her ear.
"I bet someone's gonna want pop tarts for breakfast, huh?" Willow said, before the silence became uncomfortable. She smiled, and rubbed her nose against Annabelle's, and took her out of Rebecca's arms. Willow shook her head back and forth, as their noses touched. Annabelle nodded her head and giggled.
"Pop tarts!" Annabelle said, bouncing up and down in Willow's arms.
"Tickle belly's get French toast," Willow said. "Cordy, how did you make her hair so awesome? It's all like, so smooth and shiny."
"There's this miraculous new invention called conditioner," Cordy said.
"Pop tarts," Annabelle said, again.
"French toast," Willow said, and rubbed her nose against Annabelle's, and shook her head.
"Pop tarts!" Annabelle yelled, giggling now, and rubbed her nose against Willow's, and nodded her head.
"French toast and pop tarts," Willow said, and carried Annabelle out of the room.
Rebecca and Buffy walked into Angel's study. Rebecca kept her hand on Buffy's shoulder, to steady her.
The broken statue of Aphrodite was still in pieces in the corner by the fireplace. The wiring that had been part of the destroyed chandelier hung down from the ceiling. The antique bookcase was standing, but most of its shelves were broken, and all the precious things it had contained were gone now. Rebecca turned on the floor lamp that Buffy and Willow had brought back from the Wal-Mart, and surveyed the room.
"What happened here?" she said.
"Angel pissed me off," Buffy said.
"I see," Rebecca said, and set the coffee pot and the cups she was carrying on the little coffee table by the couch. The coffee table had a crack in it. "Have a seat."
Buffy sat on the couch. Rebecca sat next to her, and poured some coffee into one of the cups. She didn't add anything to it.
"Drink this," Rebecca said, and handed Buffy the cup.
"Don't usually take it black," Buffy said.
"With all that wine floating around in your system, cream and sugar might make you sick. Drink. You need to sober up."
Buffy sipped her coffee.
"I don't usually do this...get drunk I mean," Buffy said. "It's...sort of embarrassing."
"If I'd had the week you've had I'm fairly certain I'd have gotten good and pissed myself," Rebecca said.
"I don't know," Buffy said. "Too tired to be angry. More like...resigned. Gotta fight, gonna lose, nothin' much can be done."
"'Pissed' means drunk," Rebecca said. "I'm English, remember. And the easiest way to lose a fight is to believe you're going to lose. From now on, you need to believe we're going to win."
"Kinda like Santa Claus," Buffy said. "'Cept I haven't been good."
"You're right, you haven't," Rebecca said. "You've been exceptional."
Buffy was finished with her coffee. Rebecca refilled her cup.
"Buffy," Rebecca said, and took her hand. "You're a marvelous Slayer, one of the greatest who's ever lived. And I'm not just saying that to make you feel better. I never talk just to talk. You've saved the world, on three documented occasions. Actually I'm fairly certain it's four and Giles was just being coy about one of them in his report. So for God's sake, chin up, girl. Stop beating yourself up over things you can't control."
"People are dead."
"Yes, lots of people are dead. Your mother is dead. Giles is dead."
Buffy looked at her.
"Your friend Xander is dead, and Willow loved him very much," Rebecca continued. "Willow's parents are dead too. And something like twenty-million other people are dead, all over the world, and the number goes up every second. And I'm sorry all this is hard to hear. I'm sorry things are so hard for you right now. But the way I see it, you have two choices. You can sit back and get drunk and do nothing, or you can fight. And actually, you really only have one choice. Because I won't let you sit around drinking and feeling sorry for yourself like this anymore when there's a war going on. You're going to fight. But I'm going to help you."
Buffy sipped her coffee. She felt tired. For the first time in her life, she felt old.
She wondered if she had reached her limit. She wondered if there was a limit to the deaths one person could witness, the losses one person could endure. She didn't want to fight. She was tired of fighting. She felt old...used up. Like she simply had nothing left to give anymore...
She wanted to be lying in her bed with Faith's arms around her. It was the only thing she wanted. Nothing else in the world held any joy for her anymore. She had lost all the things that gave her joy...they had vanished, in the blink of an eye, taking their joy from her, just as completely as the sun had vanished, taking its warmth and light from the world...
She wanted to be with Faith...
But she wondered if she had lost her, too.
Faith woke up, and looked around. She was in the living room, on the couch, with the quilt over her. The fire was still burning. The room was still warm, and bright. She felt better than she had felt in a long time. She felt reinvigorated...rededicated.
But Rebecca wasn't there. The second Faith realized that, she felt a wave of panic rush through her. In the warm room, in the soft, golden light of the fireplace, Faith felt like she had been turned to ice. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe...her panic was a stalking wolf, with its jaws around her throat.
Faith fought it off. She reminded herself that she had started over: this was her new life. Panicking was something Faith Lehane might have done, but she wasn't Faith Lehane anymore. That person was gone. She was a Greer now. She stood up.
"I'm a Greer now," Faith said. Her voice echoed. The words had power, Faith realized. Saying them out loud gave them power. The words were powerful enough to crack the ice, to fend off the wolf.
She thought rationally. Rebecca had said she would never leave her again. Rebecca never lied to her. And it was a big house. Just because Rebecca wasn't in the room, that didn't mean she had left. She had said she wouldn't leave, and she never lied.
Faith reached out with her senses. A human scent wasn't nearly as strong to a Slayer as a vampire's scent. Even now, Faith knew, without even really having to focus in on him, exactly where Angel was. His scent was a lightning bolt in the dark. Compared to that, Rebecca's scent was a candle.
Faith reached out, looking for that soft, warm light...that beautiful violet scent...
"So how do we fight?" Buffy said. "What can we do?"
"We'll put our heads together," Rebecca said. "Me, you, Faith, Willow and Tara. We'll think our way out of this. We'll come up with a plan."
"Been tryin'. Hasn't worked."
"Have you been trying? The way Faith tells it, you people have been running from one crisis to another and you've hardly had time to catch your breath. Have you really taken the time to think this situation through, to really look at it from every angle, to really consider all your options?"
Buffy shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. Been sorta handlin' it the way we always handle apocalypses around here. Pull a plan out of my ass. Can I say ass?"
"Infrequently. What about Cordelia? Faith didn't say much about her when she was talking about your group."
"Sort of an outside advisor. An annoying, bitchy one. What about Angel?"
"I'm going to have a talk with him."
"Gonna try to kill him?"
"No."
Buffy looked at her. "But you want to."
Rebecca smiled. "Oh my, yes."
They were quiet. Buffy drank her coffee, and avoided Rebecca's eyes. Rebecca watched her.
"I know you dated him," Rebecca said. "I know you loved him...perhaps you still do."
"See?" Buffy said. "Told you I was a sucky Slayer. Still wanna be my Watcher?"
"Yes. I don't blame you for loving him, Buffy. We can't help who we love. And anyway you girls elected Faith your leader, and Faith says she trusts him, and I've always trusted Faith's judgment. She also said he isn't part of your group."
Buffy finished her coffee. She felt less sluggish now. She had felt clogged up before. Now things were starting to move again. Rebecca poured her another cup of coffee.
"Just the four girls," Buffy said. "We're the Fab Four. Formerly the Scoobies, but that doesn't really work with no guys in the group. I mean, who'd wanna be Shaggy? Not me. Rather be Scooby than Shaggy."
"I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, I'm afraid."
"You should prolly get used to that feeling. Weird American teenage nonsense. Anyway, now we're the Fab Four."
"Fab Five," Faith said, as she walked into the room. "Becca's in the group now too."
Buffy smiled, and her eyes lit up. She practically catapulted herself off the couch. Then she stopped.
"You're...you're...okay?" Buffy said. She wanted to run to Faith, and take her in her arms. But she didn't know if Faith wanted that...especially in front of Rebecca.
She didn't know if Faith wanted her anymore.
"Yup," Faith said. "Five by five now." She folded her arms across her chest, and leaned back against the wall, and looked Buffy in the eyes. "You've been drinking. Smelled it all the way from the damn hallway. You're drunk off your ass."
"Apocalypses can be rather trying, I hear," Rebecca said. "No harm done. You need more rest, Faith."
"Headin' to bed soon," Faith said. "Buffy didn't get loaded because of the apocalypse."
Faith looked at Buffy, and held out her arms.
"C'mere, beautiful," Faith said.
Buffy stared at Faith like a deer caught in headlights. She felt her tears coming, like an unstoppable eruption, building inside her...she felt herself shaking.
Faith looked back at her, and held out her arms, and waited. There was no hesitation, no equivocation, in her expression, in her eyes. Faith stood there with her arms outstretched, strong and resolute, as Buffy felt herself shaking.
Buffy glanced at Rebecca, out of the corner of her eye. Rebecca looked like she was in the middle of watching an incomprehensible foreign film and someone had suddenly turned off the subtitles.
Faith stood waiting, with her arms outstretched, as Buffy felt her tears coming.
Buffy ran to Faith, and fell into her arms, and cried.
"Buffy was drinking because of me," Faith said. "Buffy and I are a couple, Becca, and we've had a rough few days. But we love each other."
Crying against Faith's chest, Buffy nodded.
"I see," Rebecca said. "Well...color me flabbergasted, I suppose."
"Never thought maybe I'd go for girls?" Faith said.
"No. The thought honestly never occurred to me," Rebecca said.
Faith nodded. The First had lied. Faith realized now what a fool she had been, to even listen to anything it said. But that was the old Faith...Faith Lehane. Faith knew she'd be ready for the First now, if it came after her again.
"Me neither," Faith said. "Guess I'm full of surprises."
Faith caressed Buffy's cheek, and looked into her eyes.
"Rough few days, huh, honey?" Faith said.
Buffy nodded.
"We can make it better," Faith said. "Okay?"
"Okay," Buffy whispered.
Faith gave her a soft, gentle kiss. Then she took her hand, and turned her around, and walked with her, back to Rebecca.
"It's...important to me that...that we have your blessing, Becca," Faith said. "I love Buffy and it's important to me that you're okay with us being together."
Rebecca nodded, and stood up, and came around the coffee table. And looked Buffy in the eyes.
"Well that all depends," Rebecca said. "Does she make you happy?"
"Yeah," Faith said. Then she smiled. "When she isn't pissing me off."
"Buffy," Rebecca said. "Do you love Faith? Does she make you happy?"
Buffy looked up at Rebecca. She wiped her tears away, and smiled.
"Yes," Buffy said.
Buffy looked straight back at Rebecca the entire time and didn't blink.
The girl had some steel in her. Rebecca liked that.
Rebecca hugged her.
"Then you have my blessing," Rebecca said.
"Thank you," Buffy said.
"And now I think we all need some sleep," Rebecca said. "It's been an eventful day to say the least. And I'll definitely be needing some more scotch."
"Yeah, we're all beat," Faith said. "Buffy, you go on to bed. I'll catch up."
"Yeah," Buffy said. "After today I think I need to sleep until January."
Buffy hugged Faith, and kissed her on the cheek.
"Have two tall glasses of water before you sleep, and some aspirin," Rebecca said.
"Go on, hon, I'll be right there," Faith said. Buffy nodded, and left her alone with Rebecca.
Faith sat on the couch, and Rebecca sat next to her.
"Guess I keep droppin' bombshells, huh?" Faith said. "All the craziness goin' on around here, you must feel like you're in an episode of The Twilight Zone."
"You're takin' it real well...me bein' with a girl, I mean."
"As long as you're happy, that's all I care about, darling," Faith said. "Buffy's a good girl. And she's a strong girl. But she's in a horribly hard place right now, and she needs our support."
"Becca, Buffy and I are a couple and...we sleep together," Faith said. "We sleep in the same bed every night and...y'know...we're, uh...sexually active."
"I assumed as much," Rebecca said.
"You're okay with that?"
"Well, I won't have to give you the condom lecture at least."
"There's that."
"I will of course insist that you keep the noise down."
Faith smiled. "We'll be quiet as mice."
"And wherever I'm to be sleeping, it must be a good distance away from wherever you two are sleeping."
"You read my mind."
"And are you done surprising me, I hope? Willow has your memories, Angelus is helping you, you're dating a girl now. Are there anymore surprises I should know about? Have aliens landed in the backyard?"
"No aliens," Faith said. "Not joinin' the circus either."
Faith considered telling Rebecca the last surprise...that she knew about what Willow would do in the future, because she had been with that version of Willow...she had loved her.
But Faith decided that particular surprise could wait.
After Faith set up a room for Rebecca a very long distance from the room she and Buffy slept in--but not so far away that Faith couldn't instantly pick up Rebecca's scent--she found Buffy in their bedroom. Buffy was sitting up in bed in her nightgown, drinking water. The room was dark. There was only a single candle lit. They both liked it that way.
"Hey," Buffy said.
"Hey," Faith said.
"So...you're okay?" Buffy said. "That stuff you found out, talking about it with Rebecca, you're okay now?"
"Yup," Faith said. "I started over. My parents are in the past, I left them behind. What my father did to my mother, how my mother tried to get rid of me, none of it matters. I've started a new life. I'm with Rebecca now. I'm a Greer now."
"Okay," Buffy said. She knew that this new strength Faith had found was important, but that it wasn't something she was meant to understand. It was between Faith and Rebecca. It was something Rebecca had given Faith...it was theirs.
Faith sat next to Buffy, and took her hand.
"And...we're okay?" Buffy said. "You and me, we're okay now?"
Faith kissed her. It wasn't like the kiss she had given Buffy in the study, in front of Rebecca. This kiss had fire...Buffy felt it crackling through her...
"No," Faith said.
She got up, and stood in front of Buffy, and stared straight down into her eyes. Faith's eyes didn't catch the candlelight from where she was standing, but there was a golden light in them, nevertheless.
"What...do you mean?" Buffy said. "I thought...when you told Rebecca that we--"
"What you did to me, making Willow watch us, you treated me like shit," Faith said. "You hurt me real bad, Buffy."
Buffy nodded, and looked down at the floor.
"Look at me," Faith said.
Buffy looked up at her, with tears in her eyes now.
"People who love each other, they don't treat each other that way," Faith said. "You made me feel low. Like a skank."
"I'm sorry," Buffy whispered. "Maybe...maybe you should just...leave me. I don't deserve you."
"That shit's tired, Buffy," Faith said. "It's played out. You don't want me to leave and I don't want to leave either. So stop playing the frigging martyr. We got problems, we face them. We don't cut and run. We don't crawl into a fucking booze bottle either."
Buffy nodded, and blushed.
"I don't...have any excuse for what I did," Buffy said. "There's no excuse for that. I'm sorry, baby."
"You got excuses," Faith said. "You had reasons for what you did, and I understand them. Still doesn't make it right. The way you treated me, I don't deserve to be treated that way. And I won't be treated that way, Buffy. Not by you, not by anyone. Not ever again. I'm done hating myself, done thinking I'm some stupid skank, and I'm done letting people treat me that way. I deserve better than that."
"You deserve...you deserve...everything in the world, baby," Buffy whispered, and started to cry. "I love you and you deserve everything."
"I love you too," Faith said. "You're my girl. I can't even imagine not being with you."
"I can't imagine not being with you either."
Faith walked around the room, in the dark. She stopped in front of the antique mirror, and looked at her reflection in the candlelight.
"Used to think I'd die without you," Faith said. "Used to think I'd kill myself. Even tried, once. But now I know I won't kill myself. I know I can live without you if I have to. I don't want to. But I can. I'm strong enough."
Faith walked back to the bed. She stood in front of Buffy again, and looked down into her eyes again.
"And I will, if you ever treat me that way again," Faith said. "I'll leave you."
Buffy nodded. Faith sat next to her, and took her hand again.
"You and I are starting over too," Faith said. "I'm not taking anything for granted. I'm not making any assumptions about us. And you shouldn't make any assumptions about me. I'm different now. We're gonna be different now. Think of tonight as our first date."
Faith caressed Buffy's hair, and looked at her. Buffy looked haggard. There were bags under her eyes and her skin was too pale, and she seemed shaky.
"My girl's had it rough," Faith said. "Your Mom, Xander, Giles."
"Yeah," Buffy said. "I'll deal."
"Can I help?" Faith said. "Will you let me help you deal?"
Buffy smiled. "Yeah."
Faith hugged her.
"I think you have a problem with booze," Faith said. "You're leanin' on it too heavy. You've been drinkin' pretty steady the last few days, gettin' hammered a lot. I smell it on you like all the time now. It doesn't do you any good, doesn't do us any good either. We need to do something about it."
"I can...I can stop drinking if you want," Buffy said. "I'll never have another drink again, baby."
"Nah, that's not what you need," Faith said. "Just take it easy. Don't drink to get drunk, don't drink just because you don't wanna think about stuff. It doesn't have to be either-or. It doesn't have to be, either you're wasted all the time or you never have another drop. If you're wasted all the time you're letting booze control you, but if you never have another drink as long as you live that's letting booze control you too. Instead, I just want you to drink like a regular person. Don't let it control you. Okay?"
"Okay." Buffy curled up against Faith's bosom. Faith caressed her cheek, and Buffy looked up into her golden eyes.
"I love you, Buffy," Faith said.
"I love you too, Faith," Buffy said.
They kissed.
"So, this first date thing," Buffy said. "What do you wanna do? Bowling? Movies? Maybe go to the ice cream shop and order a chocolate malt with two straws?"
Faith took off her blouse, and unhooked her bra, and began kissing Buffy's neck.
"Miniature golf," Faith whispered in her ear.
REDEEMER
Buffy laid beneath Faith on Angel's bed, her green eyes shimmering in the candlelight, as Faith kissed her, and stroked her hair, and smiled down at her.
"Who's my girl?" Faith whispered.
"I am," Buffy whispered back.
Faith took off Buffy's nightgown, and licked her neck, as Buffy closed her eyes and moaned beneath her...
Faith took in Buffy's scent. The alcohol was polluting it. The alcohol smelled sour, and it made the sweet jasmine scent underneath harder to detect. But Faith found it anyway, as she kissed Buffy's breasts, and felt Buffy's heart beating beneath her lips, and then she licked her way down her hard, flat stomach, toward her panties...and Faith found the sweet scent of her love, and locked herself on to it...
"Baby...wait," Buffy whispered.
"What's wrong, beautiful?" Faith whispered, as she looked up at Buffy's eyes in the dark. She rested her nose, and her lips, on top of Buffy's panties. Buffy was wet there...she was ready.
"It's just...I'm all boozy," Buffy said, as she ran her fingers through Faith's hair, her legs spread beneath her. "I must not smell too great right now."
"You smell beautiful, honey," Faith said, and kissed Buffy's panties. "You smell like Buffy."
"Boozy Buffy," Buffy said.
Faith brought Buffy's legs up over her shoulders. She pulled off Buffy's socks.
She kissed Buffy's foot.
"You're my girl," Faith said. "It's all you are."
"You seem different," Buffy said. "Don't like, put too much stock in any of my brilliant observations tonight 'cuz I'm still kinda wasted but...you seem different."
"Yeah," Faith said.
Buffy reached up, and took Faith's hand.
"I don't mean it in a bad way, baby," Buffy said. "In a good way. Like...you've found something."
Faith nodded, and kissed Buffy's foot again.
"I did, honey," Faith said. "I'm gonna be okay from now on. But now I'm lookin' for you and me. It's gonna take some exploring...gonna be like, Indiana Jones, diggin' us up."
"Gonna find a Temple of Doom?" Buffy said, and moaned in Faith's ear, as Faith moved on top of her, and kissed her.
"Holy Grail," Faith murmured.
"Probably...all kinds of traps," Buffy whispered, as she spread her legs wider, and licked Faith's neck, as Faith began moving on top of her. "Probably like...rolling boulders...poison arrows from the walls."
"Germans," Faith said.
"I'm sorry, baby," Buffy said. "I'm sorry for what I did. More than anything else I've ever done, any mistake I've ever made, that's the one I wish I could take back the most."
"It'll make us stronger," Faith said. "We get knocked down, we dust ourselves off, get back up. We're gonna come out of this stronger."
"I'm sorry," Buffy said.
"I know, my love," Faith whispered, and kissed her. "Apology accepted."
Buffy unbuttoned Faith's jeans, and began pulling them down, caressing her ass as she did.
"I wanna lick your pussy, baby," Buffy said. "I wanna be on my knees for you tonight."
"Sixty-nine," Faith said. "Been too long since I tasted you."
Buffy smiled. "You're on top."
Faith smiled too. "Shit. And here I thought we were gonna be different."
"Just wait, baby," Buffy whispered in her ear.
"Hello, Angelus," Rebecca said.
Angel was sitting in the dark, in a tiny, cold, windowless room that looked like a stone shoebox, eating pretzels and watching television. The little television was a cheap off-brand model with a rabbit ear antenna and one of the knobs missing, with a VCR on the floor in front of it. The television stood atop an eighteenth-century mahogany Queen Anne candle stand which Rebecca estimated was worth approximately five-thousand dollars. Rebecca stood in the entranceway with her arms folded across her chest, and watched Angel, as he watched television. Angel didn't look up at her. His dark eyes seemed riveted on the television.
Who's the fella that owns this shithole? a voice from the television said. Rebecca could see part of the screen from where she was standing. Angel was watching a Western. Seedy men in shabby clothes stood in a dirty saloon, watching each other with hate in their eyes and death in their minds.
Uh, I own this establishment,
Angel sat on a sofa that took up the entirety of one side of the room, stretching from wall to wall, with a marble-topped table set up in front of it. The table was an eighteenth century French antique from the Louis XV period with gilt wood legs and elaborate carvings of cherubs running along the sides and Rebecca estimated its current value at approximately fifteen-thousand dollars. Angel had his boots up on the table. The sofa, actually a settee, was of Italian make, nineteenth century, with magnificent gold leafing, white damask fabric, silk trim and down filled cushions, and it looked rather like a cream puff. It was also worth approximately twenty-thousand dollars. There were pretzel crumbs in the cushions.
Just hold it right there, another voice from the television said. Hold it. Rebecca recognized the voice. It was Gene Hackman.
One of the characters in the movie shot one of the other characters. The sound of the gunshot reverberated around the little stone room like a grenade going off inside a steel drum.
There was a bowl of pretzels on the marble-topped table, along with the VCR remote and a stack of videotapes. There was nothing else in the room. Rebecca noticed the empty box for Unforgiven at the top of the pile of videotapes. She had seen that movie before: she had watched it with Faith. And now she recognized Clint Eastwood, as she looked at the screen. Eastwood looked old and rather haggard in this movie, Rebecca thought. And perilous.
"You're supposed to be dead," Angel said.
"So are you," Rebecca said.
Well, sir, you are a cowardly son of a bitch. You just shot an un-armed man, the television said.
Angel nodded. He still hadn't looked at her.
He held up the bowl of pretzels.
"Pretzels?" he said.
"No, thank you," Rebecca said. "You actually eat those?"
"Tara got me on to them. I like their texture. Make a good mix with blood. What do you want?"
"To give you a message."
You'd be William Munny out of Missouri, Hackman said to Eastwood. Killer of women and children.
Angel looked at her. "Name's Angel, by the way. Not Angelus."
That's right, Eastwood said. I've killed just about anything that walked or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.
"Or I suppose I could call you Liam," Rebecca said.
"Stopped being Liam a long time ago. What's the message?"
Faith was right about him, Rebecca thought: he was gorgeous. Angel wasn't Rebecca's type--he was too sullen, too brooding. He didn't look like much fun. But Rebecca could see how Buffy had fallen under his spell...Buffy, and all the others...
Rebecca raised her eyebrow.
"How do you get your hair to do that?" she said.
Angel frowned. "Just does."
"You're a rather poor liar," Rebecca said. "No wonder you were such a notoriously bad card player."
"You seem to know some stuff about me. How long were you on my trail?"
All right, gentlemen, he's got one barrel left, Little Bill said. When he fires that take out your pistols and shoot him down like the mangy scoundrel he is.
"You overheard my conversations with Faith, I take it."
"Didn't mean to, vampire hearing. She's gonna be okay now."
It wasn't a question. He was saying it as a statement of fact.
"Yes, she is," Rebecca said.
"Any idea how you were sent back?" Angel said.
"She needed me. I want you to stay away from her. She says she trusts you, and I trust her judgment. But what happened between you and Buffy won't happen between you and Faith. I won't allow it, Angelus. I won't allow her to see you."
"She's with Buffy. You already know she is, she told you."
"Nevertheless. I told Faith I wouldn't kill you as long as you don't attack us, and I meant it. I trust her judgment and she says you're an ally. But if you ever do attempt to begin a romantic relationship with her, if you ever try to take advantage of her the way you did Buffy, I will kill you."
"Think you can?"
William Munny pulled the trigger on his rifle. There was a click.
Misfire! Little Bill shouted. Kill the son of a bitch!
Rebecca smiled. "I suppose there's only one way to find out."
Everyone on the television screen started shooting. The little stone room rang with the sound of thunder.
"Gettin' kinda bored with people threatening me, actually," Angel said. "I've been kicked around since all this shit started. I'm not interested in Faith that way. I like her. She's a good kid. She's got a lot of charm, and a big heart. But I'm not gonna try to date her."
"See that you don't. Why are you here? Why are you helping?"
"Right thing to do. Nowhere else to go anyway. I like hanging with Buffy and Faith a hell of a lot more than I like hanging with the First Evil. What's the message?"
The gunfire stopped. William Munny surveyed the carnage all around him. The saloon was painted with blood. A group of men cowered by the bar, frozen and bloodless, like terrified field mice before a swooping hawk.
Rebecca met Angel's eyes, those two bottomless wells of black...
"It's a message from Genevieve Desmarais," Rebecca said.
Any man don't want to get killed better clear on out the back, William Munny said.
Buffy brought Faith to an orgasm, licking her pussy just the way she knew Faith liked it as Faith backed into her, moving back and forth on top of her, fucking Buffy's face in a gentle, steady rhythm. But Buffy didn't let Faith up after she came: instead she gave Faith a little kiss, somewhere she had never kissed her before.
Faith gasped.
Buffy kissed her there again, and then began gently licking her there. Faith began to moan, and started fucking Buffy's face again, in that same slow, steady rhythm.
"You like this, baby?" Buffy whispered.
"Yeah," Faith whispered back.
"Remember how I kept saying I always put you on top for a reason? This was the little surprise I've been saving. I've wanted to do this for so long, baby."
"But...are you sure it's...okay? I'm not like...all gross there or anything?"
"You're better than okay, baby, you're beautiful," Buffy murmured. "You're beautiful right here." Buffy closed her eyes, and moaned. "And your scent's driving me...fucking crazy..."
Faith moaned again, and licked Buffy's pussy lips, stretching out like a cat on top of her as she did. She concentrated on fucking Buffy's face...on feeling that soft, warm tongue as it darted beneath her, making her tingle...
Buffy went on licking Faith's ass, lightly flicking her tongue across the tiny opening, and gently darting it forward, penetrating it slightly. The opening was very small, about the size of a penny. It looked like a little pink star. At the same time she began stroking Faith's clit.
Faith began to whimper, and her legs began to shake.
"My baby likes this a lot, doesn't she?" Buffy whispered, as she began darting her tongue in deeper now, gently coaxing Faith's little hole to open wider.
"Y-yeah...yeah honey..." Faith whispered, and closed her eyes, and kissed Buffy's legs, and slipped a finger into Buffy's pussy.
"Love my baby," Buffy murmured, from in between Faith's legs. Faith's finger inside her, and her musky scent, were bringing Buffy closer and closer to an orgasm; Buffy felt it coming, steadily, relentlessly building inside her. She felt like gunpowder inside, and the musky scent between Faith's legs was the spark. Faith's pussy was dripping. Buffy's fingers were slippery with it.
"I love you, Buffy," Faith whimpered.
"Does my baby girl wanna come for me? Does she want me to make her come this way?"
"Yeah...yeah..." Faith moaned. Buffy could hear Faith's heart thumping in her chest...
A moment later, they came together.
Afterwards, they laid in each other's arms, kissing each other, as they drifted off to sleep.
"Well...that was sure different," Faith said, and smiled, as she curled up against Buffy's breasts, and Buffy wiped her tears away.
"You liked it, baby?" Buffy said, and kissed her forehead. "Can I do it sometimes?"
"Yeah. I wanna do it to you too."
"First sleep," Buffy said, and yawned. "We're both sleepy Slayers tonight."
Faith nodded, and yawned too, and kissed Buffy's breasts.
"I'm glad Rebecca's back," Buffy said. "I'm glad she's part of your life again, baby."
"You guys gettin' along okay?"
"We'll be okay."
"She's not Giles."
Buffy smiled. "Yeah. Figured that out."
"She likes you a lot, you know."
"Really?" Buffy said. "She likes me?"
"Sure. She always did. Even back before I met you, when she'd tell me all the stories about you. She always thought you were awesome. Okay, she thought maybe you're a little headstrong too, but..."
"Headstrong. That's me. Plus intractable."
"Immovable object."
"Yeah, and I just met the irresistible force. Things are about to get interesting."
When Faith woke up, Buffy was on top of her, looking down into her eyes and growling.
Faith couldn't see Buffy, but she felt her. She felt Buffy's hand, holding her by the hair. She felt Buffy's warm breath on her cheek. She felt Buffy's other hand, caressing her breasts. She felt Buffy's feet, rubbing against her own under the blankets.
Buffy's eyes had a light in them like two diamonds. They were the only things Faith could see.
Buffy growled again, louder, as Faith looked up at her. Faith felt Buffy's teeth now, on her neck. She felt Buffy's heart beating against her breasts. Buffy's jasmine scent, and the scent of her wet pussy, filled Faith's nostrils.
Faith took Buffy's hand from her hair, got it in a wristlock, flipped Buffy over, and moved out from underneath her. Buffy snarled at her.
Still holding Buffy in a wristlock, Faith sat on the edge of the bed, dragged Buffy over her knees, and spanked her hard, two times, once for each cheek. Then she let Buffy's wrist go, held her still by the hair, and slipped a finger inside her. Buffy was soaked. She stopped snarling, and moaned instead.
Faith yanked Buffy by the hair, as she held her finger inside her. Buffy snarled again, and tried to get up.
Faith yanked Buffy by the hair again, harder. This time Buffy whimpered, and stayed still for her.
Faith yanked Buffy's hair a third time. Buffy whimpered again, and stayed still.
Faith withdrew her finger from Buffy's pussy, and sucked Buffy's sweet nectar off of it. Then she got up, and found the bureau in the dark. The candle had gone out. The room was completely devoid of light.
But Faith could still see Buffy, when she came back to the bed carrying the strap-on dildo: she could see Buffy's bright, beautiful eyes.
Buffy was laying on her stomach on the edge of the bed, in the position Faith had left her, looking up at her. She didn't make a sound. Faith watched her, in the dark.
She looked into Buffy's eyes, and knew Buffy was hers. She had hunted Buffy, and captured her. They both knew it.
Faith rubbed the dildo against her pussy lips, to get her scent on it. Then she put it on, and walked back to the bed.
She sat on the edge of the bed again, and gave Buffy's ass two more hard spanks. Buffy stayed still for her.
"Bad girl," Faith said.
Then she brought Buffy's mouth to the dildo, and started spanking her again, steadily.
Faith didn't put the dildo in Buffy's mouth. She held it against her lips, under her nose, and waited. Buffy began kissing it, while Faith spanked her.
After a moment, Buffy took the dildo in her mouth, and sucked on it.
"Good girl," Faith said, as she spanked her.
Faith spanked her for a few minutes, until she felt the tears on Buffy's cheeks. Then she put her middle finger in her mouth, and got it good and wet. She stuck it up Buffy's ass, and gently fucked her with it, while Buffy went on sucking the dildo, moaning now.
After a few more minutes, Faith let Buffy up. Buffy crawled to the middle of the bed, and laid down on her stomach with her head resting on a pillow and her ass up in the air. And she waited.
Faith knelt behind Buffy, and kissed her ass, once for each cheek, and positioned the dildo against her pussy. Buffy's scent was strong; her pussy was dripping wet. Faith couldn't detect the alcohol scent anymore. Buffy's pussy scent was drowning it out.
Faith leaned forward over Buffy's back, and took Buffy by the hair, like reins.
"Who's my girl?" Faith whispered.
"I am," Buffy whispered back.
And then Buffy whimpered, as Faith rammed the dildo into her. Buffy was so wet that it glided straight in, but she was still tight; it still stretched her out.
Faith fucked her from behind, slowly, but filling her up, going as deep as she could. She pulled Buffy's hair as she did it, controlling her, making Buffy move all the way back, making Buffy fuck the dildo. Buffy came immediately, with a little scream, her body quaking, her toenails tearing the bedsheets to ribbons; she screamed into the pillow so no one would hear.
Faith kept fucking her, in a slow, steady rhythm.
Eventually, Faith bent forward, using her legs to spread Buffy's legs wider, and putting all her weight on Buffy's back, forcing Buffy down on to her stomach, until she was lying on top of Buffy as she fucked her from behind. She sped up, fucking her hard and fast now. She pinned Buffy's wrists down, and kissed Buffy's neck, and took in her scent, and listened to her moan.
"You belong to me," Faith said. "You're mine."
"I'm...yours...yours, baby," Buffy gasped, as Faith fucked her, tirelessly, relentlessly, her body moving like an oiled piston. Buffy felt herself beginning the climb back toward another orgasm, like the climb to the top of a roller coaster.
"I'm yours too, my love," Faith whispered, and dragged her teeth across Buffy's neck, and slowed down a little as she fucked her. "Give it to me."
Buffy moved her hair aside, and offered Faith her neck, as Faith fucked her, slowly now, gently now.
"Take it, baby," Buffy whispered.
"Who's my girl?" Faith whispered, as she bit into Buffy's neck...penetrating the soft, sweet-tasting flesh...finding the even sweeter taste just beneath it.
"I am," Buffy whispered back, and closed her eyes, and moaned, as Faith fucked her, and drank her...
Angel stood up, and leaned against the wall. He had seemed almost serene before. Now he seemed nearly agitated.
But all his movements were still precise and economical, Rebecca noticed. Unhurried. Graceful.
"Been awhile since I heard that name," Angel said. "How do you know about her?"
"You were my first assignment," Rebecca said. "I was a researcher when I started out with the Watchers. They sent me out to dig up everything that could be found about you. I traveled the world, traced your steps. I visited your father's old house in Ireland, and the pub you used to frequent. I found newspaper clippings, diary entries written by the families of your victims. I visited Drusilla's house too. I saw that closet you put her in. The bedroom you raped her in. The graves in the backyard, where her mother and her sister were buried."
You killed Little Bill, one of the few men left standing in the saloon said. He was a soft, flabby, foppishly-dressed little man; he looked like he was used to ordering people about. When he looked up at William Munny he began to sweat.
William Munny pointed his pistol at him, quick as a snake.
Sure you ain't armed? William Munny said.
No, the flabby little man said, and spread his hands, and showed William Munny the inside of his marvelous coat. Look, I'm not. I don't have a gun. I've never had a gun. I write. I'm a writer.
A writer?
Yes.
Letters and such?
"How did you know about Drusilla?" Angel said.
"Darla kept a diary," Rebecca said. "She lost it, about ten years after you turned Drusilla, when the two of you got into that feud with Kakistos and his followers. I recovered one of the volumes, in Poland. The volume I found covered the period you and Darla were back in England, roughly 1858 through 1861."
"Have it with you?"
"No. The Council has it. But it's been transcribed. If the Watchers database was still up and running, which I doubt, I could perhaps print it out for you, if I was so inclined."
Angel nodded. "Genevieve's message. When did you see her? Thought she would've been dead by the time you went looking for her."
Who'd you kill first? the flabby little man said.
Huh? William Munny said. He was reloading his rifle with practiced precision, standing in an abattoir. Surrounded by dead bodies, and paying them no heed.
When confronted by superior numbers an experienced gunfighter will always fire on the best shot first.
Is that so.
Yeah, Little Bill told me that. You probably killed him first, didn't you?
"She was on her deathbed," Rebecca said. "I found her a few days before she died. She lived her life, her entire life, terrified of you, Angelus. Terrified that you would return, to hurt her again. I found her in 1980. She was eighty-nine years old and dying of pneumonia. Can you imagine my excitement, when I found out about her? The only living witness to your atrocities. I didn't know then that you had gotten your soul back--no one knew. Faith says you got your soul back in 1898, but you went on murdering people for decades after that, so you certainly didn't seem changed at all. You finally dropped out of sight in the thirties, and no one had any idea where you were or what you were up to. There were rumors, but nothing solid."
"France. Fought the Germans."
"Indeed? How dashing. Darla went underground around the same time you did, though I have it on good authority that she spent those decades with the Master. Spike and Dru were their usual rambunctious selves, tearing across Europe, getting in scraps. But you were my only concern, you were my obsession, every single day for five years. The legendary Angelus. The most notorious, the most cruel, the most depraved vampire since Vigeous himself. The devil with the face of an angel. You were glamorous, in a way."
Little Bill had some life left in him yet. He twitched, laying in his own blood on the floor.
I don't deserve this, Little Bill said. To die like this. I was building a house.
Rebecca smiled.
"I wondered what would happen if I ever met you," Rebecca said. "Would you seduce me, with that beautiful face, those deep, dark eyes? Then I met Genevieve. She was in a hospice in Marseille, wasting away. She weighed sixty-seven pounds and she couldn't stop shaking."
Deserve's got nothing to do with it,
I'll see you in hell, William Munny, Little Bill said.
"Yeah," Angel said.
Yeah, William Munny said, and cocked his rifle.
"She told me you kidnapped her in 1896, but there were no articles in the newspapers from that time, no police records, and no living witnesses to corroborate it," Rebecca said. "Is that true? You kidnapped her in 1896?"
"Yeah," Angel said.
"So she would have been a five-year old girl."
Angel didn't say anything.
There was a gunshot. William Munny shot Little Bill in the head and the sound exploded through the little stone room, destroying the stillness, blasting it to pieces.
"Seeing her cured me of my little infatuation with you," Rebecca said. "I saw the fear on her face, Angelus, the fear of you. And I knew then what you really were."
"Not Angelus," Angel said. "Angel."
"Shut up!" Rebecca shouted, and moved in front of him, and looked straight into his eyes. "I have a photograph of Genevieve, a picture of her when she was a four-year old girl. She was bright and alive and smiling. She was beautiful. Her whole life was ahead of her. Then you found her, like the bloody pestilence you are."
All right, I'm coming out, William Munny growled, as he stepped out of the saloon, into the howling rainstorm, aiming his rifle at the rooftops and keeping under cover. Any man I see out there, I'm gonna kill him. Any son of a bitch takes a shot at me, I'm not only gonna kill him, I'm gonna kill his wife and all his friends and burn his damn house down. Nobody better shoot!
"That fear I saw on Genevieve's face, in her eyes, that fear you carved into her, it's the kind that comes from a lifetime of being afraid, every moment," Rebecca said. "She was a shriveled, withered old woman, entirely wretched and miserable, and in pain. And even then, even in her very last moments, she was still afraid of you. She could never let go of that fear. It was carved into her features, just as surely as if you'd taken a knife to her and cut her up. That fear was all she had ever known."
You better bury Ned right! William Munny shouted into the wind. You better not cut up nor otherwise harm no whores! Or I'll come back and kill every one of you sons of bitches.
"Yeah," Angel said.
"You could have visited Genevieve, after you got your soul back," Rebecca said. "Maybe you could have freed her from the terror she felt, every single moment. You could have at least tried. Maybe you could have given her some peace. You never bothered."
"I heard she was in a mental hospital. I thought...she'd be taken care of there. That I would just make things worse, seeing her."
"No," Rebecca said. "You were afraid to see her. You were afraid to see what you had done. You have a soul? Then it's the soul of a coward. You're a pathetic little man, Angelus. You're the same spineless waste of a human being you were when you were Liam."
William Munny got on his horse, bent in the rain, holding his frayed old coat around him to keep out the wind. He trotted his horse down the muddy, washed-out road, into the storm.
"Once Liam got some power, he decided to show the world it couldn't push him around anymore, didn't he?" Rebecca said. "But you were never strong, Angelus. You were just cruel. And no matter how far you run, no matter how many times you change your name, you'll always be that same little man Darla found in the gutter. That same, pathetic, worthless coward."
Angel looked back at her. He never blinked.
"Genevieve wanted you to know she was sorry for being a bad girl," Rebecca said. "Those were her exact words. She made me promise to tell you that, if I ever found you."
"And now you have," Angel said.
"I made another promise that day, Angelus," Rebecca said. "A promise to myself. I promised that I would kill you someday, if I ever got the chance. Unfortunately I also told Faith that I wouldn't kill you, as long as you never turn on us. And I can't ever lie to Faith. So my hands are tied, I'm afraid. Pity."
Rebecca took Faith's stake from her coat pocket, and held it up in front of him.
The people of Big Whiskey, Wyoming, averted their eyes as William Munny passed: when they looked at William Munny, they saw Death himself.
He rode away, without a backward glance, and disappeared into the dark.
"But I pray you do turn on us," Rebecca said. "Because the moment you do, I'll be there. And I'll be the last thing you ever fucking see."
She walked away, without a backward glance, and disappeared into the dark.
After Faith had fucked Buffy, and taken her blood, she sat on the edge of the bed again, and held Buffy curled up in her lap. She kissed her, and whispered secret, beautiful things to her, things only Slayers knew.
"I love you," Faith said.
"I love you too," Buffy said.
"Take me inside you now, beautiful," Faith whispered, and brought Buffy to her neck, and moved her hair aside.
Buffy bit down, and began drinking her, as Faith stroked her hair.
"My beautiful girl," Faith whispered, and closed her eyes, and moaned, as Buffy took her blood inside her. "My beautiful girl."
"Oh good, another visitor," Angel muttered, as he awoke from a fitful slumber, in the middle of a vaguely sinister dream he couldn't quite remember, to the sound of footsteps echoing down the hall toward the little room. He sat up, and rubbed his eyes, and wished he could yawn. He missed yawning.
He hadn't slept much and he definitely needed more rest. He wondered what the dream had been about. He wondered what time it was. He looked at the VCR clock. It was past eight in the morning, November 24th. Somehow, he had slept nearly sixteen hours without actually getting any rest. He was still exhausted.
He wasn't certain, but he thought the dream might have been about Willow.
He frowned down at the antique Italian settee. He thought a couch that was worth more than a car should at least be comfortable. He knew Tara was the one coming to visit him. He took in her scent, and waited, as the echoes of her footsteps grew louder.
"Hey," she said, a moment later, as she stood in the shadows at the entrance to the little room. Her pretty ginger scent was like perfume on the stale air. Tara lit up that gloomy place like a firefly in the dark.
"Hey," Angel said. He stood up, and stretched, and wished he could yawn. A yawn would have felt perfect right then. He turned, and looked at her. She was wearing a long flannel nightgown and gym socks. She didn't look like she'd gotten much sleep either: she had bags under her eyes. But she didn't seem at all annoyed about it, and she didn't even seem tired. She was smiling, that little knowing smile she did sometimes, and she even had a twinkle in her eyes. If he didn't like her so much, it would have been irritating just then.
"You just wake up?" she said.
"Yeah," he said, and held up the bowl of pretzels. "Uh, want pretzels?"
"I'm more a bacon and eggs girl. Your hair is still perfect. How is your hair still perfect? Do you put mousse in it while you sleep? Do little gnomes come in at night and style it?"
"It just does this. What's up?"
"So we're all like, havin' breakfast. Cordy cooked up a whole bunch of this awesome Spanish fried dough stuff. Why don't you come join us. We can like, all be tactical together. Maybe trade hairstyling tips." She giggled, and ran her fingers through her hair. "Do you think I should cut my hair shorter, maybe like, a bob? Actually I've been thinking about bangs too. Or I could get some blonde highlights..."
"You're really chipper today," Angel said, and frowned, and rubbed the back of his neck. After spending the night on the settee his neck felt like someone had jabbed a corkscrew into it. A hundred years ago his neck never ached. He slept in ditches in Austria when Holtz was hunting for him and his neck never ached. "What's Spanish fried dough?"
"Cordy can only cook Spanish food. They're called churros. She said people in Spain have them for breakfast all the time. I'm so gonna go live in Spain. Plus Willow made bacon and eggs so Annabelle could have real food. And Buffy's making waffles. And there are pop tarts of course. Annabelle has decreed there must always be pop tarts."
"That's okay," Angel said, and sat back down on the settee. "Got some movies. Pretzels too. I'm good here."
Tara sat down next to him, and took his hand.
"I know Rebecca kinda yelled at you yesterday," Tara said.
"You do?"
"Faith asked her if she talked to you, and Rebecca told us she threatened to kill you if you ever asked Faith out." Tara giggled. "Then Faith said something about how she heard Brad Pitt might be a vampire, but then Rebecca got that look she gets, where she looks right at you and frowns and raises her eyebrow and you could swear the temperature of the room just dropped thirty degrees? Then Willow asked if werewolves were okay because she ran into this cute werewolf once and Rebecca said she'd have to meet him first. I vote werewolves aren't okay, by the way. No matter how cute they are. I hereby decree there will be no cute werewolves. Plenty of pop tarts though."
"Rebecca tell you about Genevieve?"
"Who?"
"Forget it. So Faith's okay now?"
"Yeah. So I guess you heard all the drama yesterday with your awesome vampire hearing, huh? Crazy girls screaming and running around and getting drunk. We're like The Real World: Sunnydale. We should totally have our own Real World season. Seriously, our ridiculous chick drama? Ratings gold."
"Angel, we want you to have breakfast with us. It's just weird, you being down here, like closed off from the rest of the house. You can't stay down here forever. And Willow's sorry she did that energy shield thing at you."
"If she's sorry she can tell me if she wants. Doesn't have to send you."
He looked at her. She immediately looked down.
"That didn't come out right," Angel said, and squeezed her hand. "I like you, Tara. I consider you a friend. I just meant...I don't think Willow wants to talk to me. I don't think any of them do. Can't blame them."
Tara smiled, and looked up at him again.
"Actually Willow wanted me to come get you," she said. "Okay, yeah, she didn't say in like, so many words that she's sorry. But I can tell she's sorry."
"I'm not sorry, actually," Willow said.
Angel nearly leapt off the settee. Willow was standing in the hallway, wearing her cow pajamas with the feet sewn in, looking right at him. She looked like she hadn't gotten much sleep either, Angel noticed.
"Why the hell didn't I smell you?" Angel said.
"Glamour," Willow said. "Tara was helping me improve my technique with them last night and we've been practicing together. I figured you'd be a good test. Disguising my scent and my heartbeat and my breathing so vampires can't find me could come in handy."
"So why are you here?" Angel said. "Come to yell at me some more?"
Tara smiled. "He's Mr. Grumpypants this morning. Even though his pants aren't even wrinkled at all. How do you do that? Sleep on a couch in your dress pants all night and they don't even get wrinkled? Gnomes come in and press them while you sleep?"
Angel rubbed his neck again, and sighed. "You sure are chipper today," he said.
"I came to invite you to breakfast," Willow said. "Not my idea. But Anna misses you. She wants to know why you're not hanging out with us."
Angel nodded. He looked at Willow. She could never endure his eyes for long. She looked away.
"Look," Willow said. "I don't like you, Angel, and I don't trust you. And I never will. But I love Anna and I don't want her feeling uncomfortable. And when people are fighting in the house, she picks up on it, she's a smart kid. It took a lot of explaining last night for me to convince her that everything's okay with Faith now and you're an even bigger discussion. I'd rather not have the discussion. So I'm asking you to have breakfast with us."
"We're, um, all planning a Monopoly game sometime later...if, um, you wanna play," Tara said.
"Monopoly too," Willow said. "I want us all to be one big, happy family in front of Anna. Besides, you're smart and you can fight and I assume we're gonna want your input on this whole world ending thing at some point."
"And how much Clint Eastwood can one person watch?" Tara said.
"Clint's cool," Angel said, and picked up his bowl of pretzels. "Okay, I'll have breakfast. Figure everyone's had their turn threatening to kill me now so maybe we can all just have breakfast."
"I haven't threatened to kill you," Tara said, and smiled again. "Do I get to threaten to kill you?"
Angel's mouth moved; it was nearly a smile. "Sure, he said. "Wouldn't want you to feel left out."
"You better not bogart my churros, mister," Tara said, and stood up and squinted her eyes and shook her fist at him, and giggled. "You bogart my churros and it's on like Donkey Kong."
"Okay, no idea what you just said," Angel said.
"I can't believe it," Willow said, as Angel walked out of the room with Tara, into the torchlight. "Your hair's still perfect. Haven't you been asleep all night?"
"It just does that," Tara said.
"Got some magic beans I wanna sell you," Willow said.
They walked down the hall together. It was lit by torches about every twenty feet, but it was still dark, and cold. Their footsteps echoed. Angel ate a pretzel. That echoed too.
"I'm totally bogarting your pretzels," Tara said, and swiped a handful of pretzels. "But you still can't bogart my churros."
"What's bogart mean?" Angel said.
"I'm trying to figure out if Angel would be less annoying or even more annoying if he suddenly understood the way we talk," Willow said. "I'm thinkin' more."
"Y'know, this whole tough chick thing you're doing right now would really be a lot more effective if you weren't wearing cow pajamas, sweetie," Tara said, and giggled.
"She's got a point," Angel said.
"Plus we both know you're totally sorry about doing that energy shield thing to him yesterday," Tara said.
"Totally not sorry," Willow said.
"Totally sorry," Tara said, and smiled, and poked Willow's stomach. Willow smiled too.
"Not sorry," Willow said.
"So sorry," Tara said, and began tickling Willow around her waist. Willow giggled. Her giggles filled that cold stone tunnel like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.
"Not sorry!" Willow screamed, as Tara tickled her in earnest now. Willow shrieked with laughter, and jumped around like a bug on a hot skillet.
"Totally utterly sorry!" Tara screamed back, as she went on tickling Willow, and Willow tried in vain to escape her clutches.
"Uh...yeah," Angel said. "So I'm just gonna go have breakfast now. You guys, uh, catch up whenever." Then he kept walking.
"Vampires should be seen and not heard," Willow called after him, as he rounded a bend in the hallway and disappeared from sight, and she fell giggling against the wall with her arms around Tara.
The tickle fight lasted awhile. Tara eventually got the upper hand.
"Give?" Tara said.
They stood very close to each other, tangled up together. Their faces were red, and they were both very out of breath and in the throes of severe giggling fits.
"Give," Willow said. "I've been tickled into submission."
As their giggles subsided, and their breathing returned to normal, they looked into each other's eyes.
Tara caressed Willow's cheek. Willow caressed Tara's hair.
They kissed, their lips only just touching.
"We should...um..." Tara whispered.
"Yeah, we...should go have breakfast," Willow said.
They kissed, again. This time, their tongues touched, gently, haltingly.
"I'm in love with you, Willow," Tara whispered. "Baby, I...I love you, I love you."
Tara covered Willow's lips with her finger, before Willow could speak.
"But I don't want you to say it back yet," Tara said. "Not until you can really mean it, okay? I know you feel it, but those are still Faith's feelings. For now, let me just love you, and I can wait for you to love me. You're worth the wait, sweetie. Okay?"
Willow nodded.
"When we talked last night...what you said, about being everyone's second choice," Tara whispered. "Xander's, Faith's. Baby, you're not my second choice. You've been my first choice, my whole life."
Tears filled Willow's eyes.
"I thought...what you said in the hospital...I thought...you didn't want us to be a couple," Willow said.
"Can't help who you love, baby," Tara said, and smiled. "I can't help loving you. Can't stop loving you. Not even for a minute. Not even if Noah Wylie walked through the door."
"You don't...you don't like my cow pajamas?" Willow said.
"I absolutely adore them, sweetie," Tara said, and ran her fingers through her hair. "Especially the cute little butt-flap in back."
"Easy access," Willow said, and grinned. "All the guys love it."
Tara laughed. "Who are these guys? Where do they live? I'm gonna turn 'em all into toads."
"James, Ricky, George and Brad. I'll break it off with them. It's gonna be tough giving up Ricky though. He's sensitive, his feelings will be hurt. Plus he's hot. Volcano hot."
"Ricky Martin? Pretty sure he's gay actually."
Willow gasped. "He's not gay!"
"So gay. Sweetie, I want us to go slow with this. I want us to be friends first...I want us to hang out. When we talked last night, and did the glamours together and stuff, it felt like I was meeting you for the first time. And I liked it. I had a lot of fun. I liked hanging out with Willow. Can we do that? Just hang out and get to know each other?"
"Yeah," Willow said, and smiled.
"I want us to be a couple, sweetie, I do," Tara said. "What I said in the hospital...I was freaked out and angry and...I had just found out Faith was with Buffy, plus I just found out you had Faith's memories and Faith almost died and...it was too much...I just...wasn't thinking straight, sweetie. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was mean to you. But look, you only lost Xander just last week, and you need time. It wouldn't be right, for us to like, date each other now. It would be... inappropriate. And it would be taking advantage of you, and I love you too much to do that. I want us to hang out, and I want us to date someday too. But, what Buffy and Faith have, like, that big grand epic romance they're doing with all the crying and the screaming and the drama and like, professing their eternal love? I don't want us to be epic. I'm not really very epic at all."
Willow giggled. "Me neither."
"So let's hang out. Maybe tonight we can pop some popcorn and watch a movie? Angel's got tapes."
"Sounds like fun. Okay, need to get out of this hallway. My butt's cold."
They laughed.
"It's the butt-flap," Willow said. "It, um, can get kinda drafty."
"Your butt's cold," Tara said. "I bet you say that to all the girls. I bet it's like, your pick-up line."
"Yup. I'm all like, hey, I'm Willow, my butt's cold. Wanna warm it up for me?"
They started walking down the hallway again, holding hands.
"Pretty lame line," Tara said.
"So what's your sign, hotpants?" Willow said. "You come here often?"
"You forgot to ask me what my major is," Tara said.
"I seem to have lost my phone number," Willow said. "Can I borrow yours?"
Tara just shook her head and smiled.
"Do your wash your panties with Windex?" Willow said. "Because I can totally see myself in them."
Tara giggled. "You officially need to stop talking now."
"I'm new in town. Could you give me directions to your bedroom?"
"Oh, Goddess," Tara said, still giggling.
Willow stood in front of Tara, and took her hands in hers.
"Well, here I am," Willow said. "What are your other two wishes?"
"Okay, I will do anything, anything you want, if you stop saying these cheesy lines at me," Tara said.
"If I told you that you had a great body, would you hold it against me?"
"Anything you want. Just stop."
Willow pointed at Tara's butt, and smiled.
"Pardon me, is this seat taken?" Willow said.
"Stop stop stop!" Tara shouted, laughing now, and covering her ears. "Please stop with the cheesiness? I think the CIA does this to their prisoners."
"Said you'd do anything, huh?" Willow said.
"Anything," Tara said.
Willow whispered something in Tara's ear. Then she raised her eyebrow, and smiled.
"Okay," Tara said, and smiled back.
When Willow and Tara got to the kitchen, they saw Cordy, Faith, Angel and Annabelle sitting around the table, eating churros and bacon and eggs. Angel had his bowl of pretzels. Annabelle was sitting on Angel's lap, drinking orange juice and playing with her eggs. She was wearing a pair of cow pajamas with little feet and a butt-flap sewn into them that matched Willow's exactly.
"Moo!" Annabelle said, and giggled, when she saw Willow and Tara walk into the room.
"There's my lil' pop tart belly!" Willow said.
It annoyed her, that Annabelle was sitting on Angel's lap. But Annabelle seemed to want to be there. She let it pass.
"Moo!" Annabelle said, again.
"She's still mooing," Tara said.
"She's been mooing since I put her in the cow pajamas," Willow said.
"Moo!" Annabelle said.
"Is she gonna do this forever?" Cordy said. "Hey, not that every single thing she does isn't just the cutest thing ever? Just wondering."
"Moo!" Annabelle said, leaning across the table and giggling at Cordy.
"As long as we think she's the cutest thing in the world while she does it, she'll keep doing it," Tara said. "It's all about bein' a little attention gettin' cutie."
"Moo?" Faith said, and raised her eyebrow, and held out the big bowl of churros to Annabelle.
"Moo," Annabelle said, and nodded, and took one out of the bowl, and set it down on her plate.
"Can't beat 'em, join 'em," Faith said.
"Moo?" Annabelle said, and looked up at Angel, and offered him a piece of bacon from her plate.
"Uh...sure," Angel said, and reached out for it. Annabelle pulled it away, giggling.
"Moo?" she said, with added emphasis this time, and held the piece of bacon out to him again.
Angel sighed. "Moo," he said, and took the bacon, and ate it. It tasted like a crunchy, salty piece of nothing. But he liked the crunchiness and the saltiness.
Willow sat down next to Angel and Annabelle, and Tara sat next to her.
"Thought you guys couldn't really taste stuff?" Willow said.
"He's big into texture," Tara said.
"Okay, waffles," Buffy said, as she came into the kitchen with Rebecca, carrying a plate loaded with a mountain of waffles, and Rebecca carried a jug of maple syrup.
"Whatever they are," Rebecca said. "They look rather dodgy to me. Haven't you people heard of biscuits?"
"It's the beginning of your Americanization, Rebecca," Buffy said. "You're gonna get totally Americanized. Just embrace the ridiculousness teenage nonsense."
"Sure, B, that'll work," Faith said. "Becca's real adaptable that way. Bet she's gonna be putty in your hands."
"Yes, I'm sure," Rebecca said, and smiled.
Then she saw Annabelle in Angel's lap.
Rebecca's smile disappeared. Her posture stiffened. Her eyes became cold.
"What's wrong?" Faith said.
Rebecca pulled Annabelle from Angel's lap.
"Nothing at all," Rebecca said, and looked into Annabelle's eyes, and smiled as she carried her to the other end of the table, where there was another place set. "I just thought Ms. Banana and I might have breakfast together. Perhaps she could explain to me about these mysterious waffles. Help the Americanization process along."
"Moo?" Annabelle said, and looked back at her food.
"Yes, quite so," Rebecca said. "Willow, be a pet and bring Ms. Banana's breakfast over here, would you?"
"Hokeley-dokeley," Willow said, and grabbed Annabelle's plate and her orange juice, and set them up by Rebecca. Rebecca sat at the far end of the table from Angel, with Annabelle in her lap. Willow sat next to her. Buffy took the seat next to Angel, where Willow had been.
The room became quiet. Buffy didn't know Rebecca, but something was wrong; she was sure of it. Angel wasn't looking at Rebecca, and Rebecca wasn't looking at him. Annabelle seemed confused. She seemed to sense the change too.
Rebecca looked up at everyone, and smiled. "Now then," she said. "Let's try some of these waffles, shall we?" She looked down at Annabelle, and poked her stomach. "Shall we have some waffles, Ms. Jelly Belly?"
Annabelle giggled. "Moo."
"That means yes," Faith said. "Uh...means no too. Sorta means everything."
"I think in this case it means yes," Rebecca said. She looked up at Buffy. "Would you pass us the waffles, please, Buffy?"
Buffy didn't know what exactly had happened between Rebecca and Angel. She didn't know Rebecca well enough to guess. But she knew Angel. She knew Rebecca had embarrassed him. He was looking into the middle distance, his eyes unfocused. He wasn't making eye contact with anyone. She knew he wanted to leave, but he was trying to be polite in front of Annabelle.
Buffy had never been very good at hiding her feelings. She felt her anger, welling up now. And she knew she had a decision to make.
She didn't like seeing Angel embarrassed for no good reason. Rebecca had snatched Annabelle away from him as if she thought he might hurt her, which was ridiculous. But Buffy knew letting herself get angry at Rebecca on Angel's behalf would hurt Faith. She knew Faith wanted her--needed her--to make it work with Rebecca.
Buffy felt Faith's eyes on her.
Buffy looked up at Rebecca, and smiled, and passed her the waffles. "Can't be a real American without an appreciation for waffles," Buffy said. "Also, big cars, dread computers, baseball, Republicans, George Clooney, and nonsense in general."
"Well Mister Clooney isn't so bad, or so I'm told," Rebecca said, and smiled back at her, and took the waffles. She put one on Annabelle's plate, and another on her own plate.
She opened the jug of maple syrup, and gestured to Annabelle with it, and smiled down at her again.
"Moo?" Rebecca said, and raised her eyebrow.
"Moo," Annabelle said, and nodded her head, and giggled. Rebecca poured maple syrup on her waffle.
Breakfast became easier as it went on. Faith and Willow ran interference, and Willow could be relentlessly perky when she needed to be. Willow kept the conversation moving, and for her part, Rebecca seemed determined not to let the situation deteriorate. She acted as if nothing was wrong at all and Angel wasn't even sitting at the table. She sat there with Annabelle in her lap, caressing Annabelle's hair and saying 'moo' and making her giggle, and generally being effortlessly charming.
Buffy knew something was wrong. But the good thing about Rebecca was that she would tell her, and soon; Buffy was certain of it. Rebecca might be a lot of things, but Buffy had figured out very quickly that she definitely wasn't shy about expressing her opinion.
Cordy offered to do the dishes, and asked Annabelle if she could help, because doing dishes alone made her feel sad. Annabelle didn't like seeing Cordy feeling sad, so she said 'moo' when Cordy asked if Annabelle could dry while she handled the washing.
Then Rebecca thanked Cordy for breakfast, kissed Annabelle's cheek, deposited Annabelle into Cordy's arms, and stood up. She looked at Faith, Willow, Buffy and Tara. She ignored Angel.
"Come along, girls," Rebecca said. "Time to roll up our sleeves."
Rebecca took them to the room with the stove first, after a quick stopover for Willow to change out of her cow pajamas, because cow pajamas might be cute, but they just weren't very tactical, and besides, Willow's butt really was cold. Rebecca put on a pot of coffee and a pot of Earl Grey tea, and then they all sat down and waited for them to finish.
"I take it we're gonna be needing caffeine?" Tara said.
"Yes," Rebecca said. "The five of us are going into the living room and we're not coming out until we have a plan. It's time to get to work."
"Should've brought Twinkies," Tara said.
"We'll grab Twinkies," Willow said.
Buffy was looking at Rebecca. Faith watched her.
"Wanna tell me what happened in there?" Buffy said.
"If you'd like," Rebecca said. "But what I have to say about Angelus might be hard to hear. Are you sure you want to hear it?"
"Yeah."
"Maybe you don't, honey," Faith said, and took Buffy's hand. "Becca's the Angel expert. She knows stuff you don't, stuff Giles didn't either. I wasn't blowin' smoke when I said she wrote the files on him."
"And becoming an Angel expert is bound to make anyone a little pissed at him," Willow said. "And this doesn't have anything to do with figuring out a plan. It's just another distraction. It's just Angel, getting between us all again."
Buffy looked straight at Rebecca. Rebecca looked straight back.
"You think he's gonna try to kill us?" Buffy said. "That was this is about?"
"If I thought Angelus was going to try to kill you we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it," Rebecca said. "I'd have killed him, or died trying. Faith says we can trust him. I trust Faith's judgment."
"You wouldn't have died," Faith said. "He doesn't get within ten feet of you when I'm around, Becca."
"Or when I'm around, either," Willow said.
"Great," Buffy said. "Let's all fantasize about how we'll kill Angel. I've seen this movie before."
"GQ doesn't go bad, I got no problem with him," Faith said. "We already all voted on this, we decided we're not gonna kill him. But Buffy's right. Let's get this conversation back on track. Becca, tell us what's up with you and Angel."
"As Faith said, I'm the expert when it comes to Angelus," Rebecca said. "I know more about him than anyone alive. I spent five years of my life following his trail. Angelus was--"
"His name isn't Angelus," Buffy said. "It's Angel. He's saved our lives. And he never did anything to you. I asked him about you. He's never even met you. He never hurt Faith either. So can you give him some frigging respect?"
"Buffy," Faith said, and looked Buffy in the eyes.
"It's all right, Faith," Rebecca said.
"It ain't all right," Faith said. She hadn't taken her eyes off Buffy. "Don't take that tone with Becca, Buffy. She doesn't swear at you. Don't swear at her."
Buffy's face was red.
"I love you," Faith said. "But Becca's a line you can't cross with me, Buffy. I never disrespected Joyce. Don't disrespect Becca."
Buffy nodded.
"Sorry," Buffy said.
Willow stood up. "Buffy," she said. "Can't you see it? Can't you see what he does? Angel destroyed you and Xander. He almost destroyed you and me. You gonna let him destroy you and Faith now?"
"No," Buffy said.
Faith squeezed Buffy's hand. "B and me can't be destroyed. What we have is too strong."
Buffy hugged her, and kissed her cheek.
"Yeah," Buffy said. "I'm sorry, Rebecca."
"Forget it," Rebecca said. "But you want to know why I don't respect Angelus? Why I won't call him by this new name he's taken? Well, perhaps I'm just a terrible old shrew. That's one possibility. But let me tell you a story. And then you can judge."
Rebecca pulled a wallet from her pocket. She opened it up, and took out a small black and white photograph, and set it down in the middle of the table.
The girls looked at it. It was a portrait of a little girl, perhaps four or five years old. She was pretty, with long, blonde hair, a winsome smile, and big, bright eyes that seemed full of life, full of promise. The photograph looked old.
"This is Genevieve Desmarais," Rebecca said. "She was four years old when that picture was taken, in 1895, in Fourvière, a small village in Lyon, France."
"Cute kid," Faith said.
"Yes, she was by all accounts a bright, beautiful, lively girl," Rebecca said. "She was always laughing. Her parents, André and Manon, adored her. And then, in 1896, she met Angelus."
The teapot whistled. The water was boiling. Rebecca got up, and shut off the stove.
"I joined the Watchers in 1977," Rebecca said, and poured two cups of tea, and added milk and honey. She set one cup in front of Faith, and sipped the other. "I was twenty-one, just finishing school. Quentin Travers was an old student of my grandfather's and he aggressively recruited me. Would anyone else like tea?"
"What kind?" Tara said.
"Earl Grey. I do it with milk and a dash of honey myself."
"Sometimes a dash of scotch," Faith said. "Goes good with rum too, actually."
"That's the Tara special," Tara said. "Yeah, I'll have some."
"Rum?" Rebecca said, and made Tara a cup of tea, and returned to the table. "I'll have to try that sometime. But no alcohol today. We're working. When Quentin finally got his hands on me, he stuck me in Research, which is where all the new people go, but he didn't want to risk me becoming bored and leaving for greener pastures. So he gave me quite a plum first assignment. Angelus. He had dropped out of sight a few decades before, and the Council didn't like losing track of him; it was worrying. A vampire that powerful, it's imperative we know where he is and what he's planning. My job was simple: find out anything and everything I could. Not just his current whereabouts, but his history as well, his family, his associates, his real name. We knew very little about him at the time, you see. We knew he was vicious, of course; his reputation for cruelty was legendary, mostly because he specifically cultivated it. Angelus wanted to be known. We knew he had been turned by Darla in Ireland in the eighteenth century, we knew he had once been part of the Master's Order of Aurelius, we knew he had been hunted by a man named Holtz for awhile. We knew he turned Drusilla, and Drusilla turned Spike. There was a photograph of him, and some old drawings, so we knew what he looked like. And that was all. But it was enough to go on, and I spent the next five years tracking his movements, and learning everything I could about him: his history, his psychology. Angelus was a puzzle to us, you see. Though you girls may think otherwise, vampires, as a group, are not quite evil as we would understand it."
"Um...they aren't?" Tara said. "Sure seem evil."
"More like animals," Buffy said.
"Exactly," Rebecca said. "But don't misunderstand me, Tara. Any vampire worth his salt would most certainly slice you open as soon as look at you. But evil is a human idea, and morality is a human way of looking at things. Vampires don't consider themselves human anymore, and they don't look at things the way we do. Why should they? They're immortal, unless someone stakes them. A lot of our ideas of good and evil are intimately connected with the fact that we will all die someday. We hope for an afterlife, in which we will be judged by the morality of our actions in this life, but vampires can live in this life, forever. Vampires have abandoned their humanity, and they live like animals, hunting and killing when they're hungry. A typical vampire doesn't wake up in the morning and think, How shall I be evil today? That would be thinking in our terms. Instead, a vampire thinks, What do I want today? And then he goes out and gets it, and morality simply doesn't enter into the equation. Vampires aren't trying to make our lives miserable. They aren't trying to torture us, to throw us into despair. They don't care about us enough to do that. They see us as prey, they hunt us and kill us, and that's the extent of their relationship with us, as a rule. But there are exceptions to that rule. Some vampires are visionaries. They see the big picture, and they hope to change it. The Master for example. He wanted to rid the world of human beings. Luckily for us he was rather an arrogant buffoon, and also that Buffy was here to stop him, or he might have managed it. Angelus was a visionary too. He had grand plans. But unlike the Master, Angelus' grand plans only involved himself. He wanted to cultivate his reputation as the most vicious and sadistic vampire in the world. And he wanted to hurt people. Not just hunt them for food. Hurt them."
"Yeah," Willow said.
"Angelus, psychologically, can best be categorized as a serial killer," Rebecca said. "And while all vampires are serial killers by definition, very few actually fit the psychological profile. Most vampires kill to eat, and for no other reason. They take pleasure in it, the way an animal would, the way any predator would, but the goal isn't to make their prey suffer, it's to feed. Angelus was different. Angelus wanted his prey to suffer; for him that was the whole point. For Angelus, killing was never the goal, it was only the last step in a process. Cruelty was the goal. Not just physical torture, but psychological torture as well. He wanted to break his victims down, to utterly destroy their spirit. He called himself an artist. He would give himself challenges, to keep from getting bored. He turned Drusilla in 1860, but before he did, he drove her insane, broke her mind, because he wanted to preserve her pain forever. He called Drusilla his masterpiece. Do you know how he did it? How he broke her?"
"Yeah," Buffy said.
"Part of the process he used with Drusilla involved what we would now term sensory deprivation," Rebecca said. "Angelus was ahead of his time. Put simply, he locked her in a closet, for more than twenty hours a day. But he only kept her in there for about four months. After he turned her, he decided he wanted to try the same trick on someone else...but for a much longer time. And he wanted a younger girl. Instead of breaking a grown woman's mind, he wanted to mold a girl from scratch. He looked for just the right girl, and he took his time. He waited thirty years before he found the next girl he would lock in a closet...Genevieve."
"He...he...locked her in a closet?" Willow whispered, and looked at the photograph again. "This little girl?"
"Yes," Rebecca said. "When she was five years old. He had a plan, and he followed it to the letter. He always did. He was always meticulous. He killed her parents in front of her eyes, but he took his time doing it. He tortured them for weeks, and made Genevieve watch it all. He raped the mother repeatedly, in front of Genevieve. The father he beat to death. He never physically hurt Genevieve. He just made her watch. When her parents were dead, he told her it was her fault, because she had been bad, and she had to be punished. Willow, are you all right?"
Willow's face was pale. Her eyes were focused on Genevieve's picture. Her hands were shaking.
Willow nodded.
"Tell the rest," Willow whispered.
Rebecca moved her seat next to Willow's, and held her hand.
"Are you sure, darling?" Rebecca said.
"Yeah," Willow said. She clutched Rebecca's hand, with both of hers. "Tell the rest."
Rebecca was looking at her.
"I'm okay, Becca," Willow said. "I can handle this."
"All right," Rebecca said. "Angelus put Genevieve in the broom closet in her house, and made her live in there. He only opened the door to feed her, bathe her, and let her use the bathroom. He stayed with her in that house, and kept her in that closet, for two years."
"Two years?" Tara said. "He...made a little girl...live in a closet for two years?"
"Yes," Rebecca said. "He talked to her, outside the door. He told her this was happening because she was bad. That he had killed her parents because she was bad."
Buffy was looking down at her hands. Faith put her arm around her.
Buffy giggled.
"Yup, that's my boyfriend," she said. "Anyone wanna have another vote?"
Then her eyes welled up with tears. Faith hugged her.
"I told you this would be hard, Buffy," Rebecca said, softly.
"Yeah," Buffy said. "Kinda par for the course around here. I'll deal."
The coffee was done.
"Um...time for coffee," Tara said, and got up. She poured coffee for Buffy and Willow, and added lots of milk and cream and sugar to one of them. "Buffy, how do you take yours?"
"A little cream, two sugars," Buffy said. "Thank you."
Tara made the coffee, and brought the two cups back. Buffy sipped her coffee. Willow didn't touch hers. She still held Rebecca's hand, with both of hers.
"You said...you wanted to find out Angel's real name," Buffy said. "Did you?"
"Yes," Rebecca said. "Didn't he ever tell you?"
"No."
"Liam Whelan," Rebecca said. "He was born in 1727 in Galway, Ireland. Darla turned him in 1753."
"Liam Whelan," Buffy said. She rolled the name around in her mind. Felt it on her tongue, heard it in her ear. It was strange. It didn't seem connected to Angel. She saw him in her mind, and thought of the name...the name didn't go with the image.
"This little girl," Faith said. "How'd you find out about her?"
"I was rather starstruck, when I first started digging into Angelus," Rebecca said. "I was still very young, and Angelus was exciting, charismatic. He was quite handsome, he had bedded thousands of women. Most of them he had raped of course. But not all of them. He could be quite charming, when he wanted to be. He beguiled women, seduced them. He was the devil with the face of an angel."
Buffy blushed.
"And of course, he was notoriously vicious," Rebecca said. "His exploits were legendary, his cruelty was legendary. Not long after he was turned, he was already being called the next Vigeous. But cruelty wasn't all there was to him. He wasn't merely another brute like Kakistos. Angelus was intelligent, he was subtle. Where Kakistos would walk into a town and simply start eviscerating people, Angelus always thought three steps ahead. He was a keen strategist. And also far more vicious than Kakistos ever was. But you have to understand, it wasn't the fact that Angelus was a vampire that made him so cruel. It wasn't the fact that he had lost his soul that gave him his endless appetite for depravity. That was always there. It was innate. Losing his soul didn't create that evil in him, it just allowed it to flourish. I didn't come to understand that until later, of course. In the beginning, for me, Angelus was a mystery, and no woman can resist a good mystery. I found him captivating...for awhile. Until I put a face and a name to one of his victims. I had been looking for a living witness to Angelus' atrocities for quite some time. I had despaired of ever finding someone, but then I learned about Genevieve. And that's when the bloom went off the rose for me. That's when Angelus stopped being captivating. Instead, I saw him for what he really was. I saw him, in Genevieve's blighted face, in her terror-stricken eyes. She was eighty-nine and withered nearly down to nothing when I met her in a hospice in Marseille. She was on her deathbed, and she couldn't stop shaking. But she agreed to talk to me, as long as I promised to get a message to Angelus if I ever saw him. Her bed was in a closet."
"In a closet?" Tara said.
"Angelus had stayed with her for two years, when she was a little girl, molding her, remaking her. By the time he was done with her, she was destroyed. She lived in a closet the rest of her life."
"You mean they...they never found her?" Tara said.
"No," Willow said. "That's not what she means."
"The authorities in Lyon found her after Angelus left her," Rebecca said. "Angelus called them himself, I believe. He didn't want her to die. He wanted her to live in terror of him, for a good long time. Genevieve was afraid to leave the closet, because Angelus had told her not to. He told her that if she ever left the closet he would come back and hurt her. So, every day of her life after that, for more than eighty years, she lived in closets. She was shuttled back and forth between hospitals and asylums throughout Europe, her relatives were well-off and they could afford to give her the best care. She saw the best doctors, the best psychiatrists. But she stayed in closets. Everywhere she went, every new place they set up for her, there had to be a small, dark closet for her to live in, or she would have hysterical screaming fits and panic attacks, and try to hurt herself. After nearly a dozen suicide attempts, the doctors finally gave in and allowed her to stay in a closet permanently. They stopped trying to reintroduce her to the outside world, stopped trying to bring her into the light. Instead, the doctors tried to get Genevieve used to a slightly larger closet, and a larger one after that, and so forth. It worked to a degree; when I found her, when I talked to her in her closet, it was just large enough to fit a small cot for her to sleep on. That was progress, I suppose."
"You said she was on her deathbed," Willow said. "She died after that?"
"Yes," Rebecca said. "Mercifully. She was dying when I met her, her body was simply falling apart. She couldn't see. More than eighty years in darkness had caused her eyes to atrophy. Her legs couldn't support her weight, because she hardly ever stood up in eighty years. Her growth had been stunted. She should have been about five-foot-four, based on her childhood height and her parentage. She was four-foot three. She weighed sixty-seven pounds, and she was constantly afraid, and she couldn't stop shaking. She had recurring nightmares about Angelus. The doctors kept her heavily sedated, most days, to help control her fear. And she smelled like urine, because she didn't like leaving the closet to go to the bathroom, and she often wet herself."
"What was...the message?" Buffy said. She had stopped sipping her coffee. She was spinning her coffee cup around in circles on the table. "You said...she had a message for him."
"When she consented to meet me, she went off her sedatives, so she could be lucid when we talked," Rebecca said. "She wanted to tell someone the story. She hadn't told the doctors much, just hints, because she was afraid Angelus wouldn't have wanted her to tell them, and they didn't believe her anyway. But I believed her. So she talked to me, on the condition that I would give Angelus her message, if I should ever see him. I gave him the message yesterday."
"What was it?" Willow whispered.
"She wanted Angelus to know that she was sorry for being a bad girl," Rebecca said.
There was a moment of silence.
Then Willow burst into tears, and slammed her fists down against the table. She knocked over her coffee and Rebecca's tea, and leapt out of her chair.
She turned away from everyone, and hugged herself, crying.
A second later, she felt Tara's arms around her. She felt Tara's hand, caressing her hair... Tara's lips, against her cheek.
She turned toward Tara, and buried her face against her chest, and cried.
"Sweetie," Tara whispered, and kissed her cheek, and held her tight. "My sweetie."
Willow cried. Tara held her. No one spoke.
"I gotta...gotta go...see Annabelle," Willow whispered. "Wanna see Annabelle."
"I'll come," Tara said.
Willow walked out of the room crying, with Tara's arms around her.
Rebecca got up, found some napkins, and cleaned up the mess. Then she sat back down again, and looked at Faith.
"He did something to her," Rebecca said. "Last year, when he lost his soul. This isn't just about Genevieve, how she reminds Willow of Annabelle. Angelus did something to Willow."
"Yeah," Faith said. "Didn't tell you because it's not my place. If Willow wants you to know she'll tell you."
Rebecca nodded.
"You still trust him," she said.
"Didn't have his soul when he did that stuff," Faith said. "Now he does. I trust him when he's got his soul. Believe me Becca, we've gone around and around on this. Buffy almost killed him a couple weeks back, when she found out what he did to Willow. I almost killed him too. Plus Willow almost killed him. Eventually we all took a vote, we all decided he gets a clean slate. And I told everyone when we voted that we're not going after him again unless he goes bad. I told everyone that we've decided now, and we gotta move on. The story about Genevieve was tough to hear but it doesn't change anything. He didn't have his soul when he did that. Now he does. Made my decision on him already."
Rebecca nodded. "Yes, and it would show poor leadership for you to reverse that decision now."
"You...agree with us?" Buffy said. "That we shouldn't kill Angel?"
"If it were up to me, Buffy, I would most certainly kill him," Rebecca said. "But you've all spent time with him, and I haven't. I'm the expert on him, but he's apparently changed. And at the end of the day, I trust Faith's judgment. If she thinks he should live, then he should live."
"Believe me, I'm not exactly dancing in the streets about it," Faith said. "Killing him makes things simpler. Last time I tried though, he got sent back, like you did."
"What?" Rebecca said. "Sent back?"
"Him being here, it hurts Buffy and Will too much and I care about both of them," Faith said. "So I decided GQ needs to go for the good of the group. I was about to stake him when he disappeared out of his clothes the same way people are all over the world. Then he got sent back just when we needed him, and he saved our butts. That's when I called a vote, decided to settle this Angel thing once and for all. I gave everyone one last chance to kill him, and if they didn't take it right there and then, they couldn't ever try to kill him again unless he goes bad. Angel was down, he said he'd let us kill him if that's what we decided. Figure he was gettin' pretty tired of bein' kicked around by us and he just wanted to get it over with once and for all either way. We all voted he gets a clean slate, that anything he did when he didn't have his soul doesn't count for us anymore. Willow voted he gets a clean slate too. She thinks he's meant to be here now...that there's some stuff he needs to do, that's why he was taken away before I could dust him."
"Maybe he can control his impulses when he has his soul," Rebecca said. "But those impulses are still there. That capacity for cruelty is still there. Mark my words, Faith. You too, Buffy. I know this is hard for you to hear, but you need to hear it. When I looked into Angelus' eyes yesterday, I saw a killer. Maybe he can control it. But it will always be there inside him."
"Maybe so, Becca," Faith said. "Guess we'll just have to see how it plays out. But in the meantime, I need you to do something."
"What?" Rebecca said.
Faith looked Rebecca in the eyes.
"From now, on, I need you to call him Angel," Faith said.
Rebecca looked back at her.
Faith could never endure Rebecca's eyes for long...but she had never really tried either. This time, she did. She stared right back at Rebecca, and didn't look away.
"Not for him," Faith said. "For me. I want you to do it for me."
Rebecca kissed Faith's cheek.
"For you," Rebecca said.
"Where's Angel?" Willow said, when she and Tara found Cordy and Annabelle playing Hungry Hungry Hippos in the kitchen, and eating pop tarts.
"Moping," Cordelia said. "I think he went back to that little room he hangs out in at the other end of the house. Probably watching movies. Look, I don't know what's going on between him and Rebecca and it's probably none of my business but--"
"Nothing's going on," Willow said, and sat down next to Annabelle, and lifted her up into her lap. "Everybody's happy." She kissed Annabelle's forehead, and smiled down at her. "Huh, sweetie?"
"Moo!" Annabelle said.
Willow hugged her. She held her to her bosom, and squeezed her tight.
"I missed...missed my lil' pop tart belly," Willow whispered. "I wanted to see my lil' pop tart belly."
Tears filled Willow's eyes. Her shoulders began to shake.
"Are you okay?" Cordy whispered, and touched Willow's shoulder.
Willow started to cry.
"Um...Rebecca told us exactly why she doesn't like, um, our friend with the cool hair," Tara said. "Thinkin' maybe we shouldn't have asked."
"Do I wanna know?" Cordy said. "I don't wanna know, do I?"
"No," Tara said.
Annabelle looked up into Willow's eyes.
"Don't cry," Annabelle whispered, and touched Willow's cheek. "Don't cry, Willow."
Annabelle's eyes started tearing up too. Cordy caressed Annabelle's hair.
"Willow, you're freaking her out," Cordy whispered.
"I'm not sad, sweetie," Willow said, and smiled down at Annabelle, and bounced her up and down in her lap. "I'm cryin' because I'm happy. These are happy tears, Anna. I missed my lil' pop tart belly, that's all. I love my lil' pop tart belly."
"I love my Willow belly," Annabelle said.
Willow kissed Annabelle's forehead, and hugged her again. Annabelle curled up against her bosom.
They stayed that away for awhile. Cordy and Tara sat next to them. Cordy caressed Annabelle's hair. Tara held Willow's hand.
"Moo," Willow whispered, and smiled again.
"Moo," Annabelle whispered.
"Moo," Willow whispered, and started tickling Annabelle around the waist.
"Moo!" Annabelle said, and giggled.
"Cordy, can you do me a favor?" Willow said.
"Hello again, Ms. Banana," Rebecca said, as Willow carried Annabelle into the living room, and Tara and Cordy came with her. "Moo."
"Moo!" Annabelle said.
Rebecca, Faith and Buffy were sitting on the couch in front of the fire. There was coffee and tea on the table in front of them, and a plate of Twinkies. Faith's butterfly knife was still on the coffee table, where she had left it the day before. Cordy was carrying Hungry Hungry Hippos, a jigsaw puzzle, a Doctor Seuss book and a videotape. Tara was carrying pop tarts and leftover churros.
"Will, are you...okay?" Buffy said, and stood up.
"Okay as I can ever be, I guess," Willow said.
They faced each other. Neither of them seemed to know what to say next.
"I'm...I'm...sorry," Buffy said. "I'm sorry, Willow."
Willow nodded.
"Guess I keep screwing up, huh?" Buffy said.
"No," Willow said. "Unless you mean blaming yourself for stuff he did? If that's what you mean, then yeah. You keep screwing up."
They stood on opposite sides of the coffee table, and looked at each other. Tara stood beside Willow, and kept her hand on her shoulder. Faith held Buffy's hand.
"You're my best friend, Buffy," Willow said. "That's not gonna change. I won't let him destroy you. I won't let him destroy us. He took Xander away from me. He won't take you."
Buffy nodded. "Yeah. I won't let that happen either."
"Don't be sad, Bunny," Annabelle said.
Buffy smiled.
"Okay," Buffy said. "I'll try to chill out."
"Chill out?" Annabelle said, and cocked her head at her, and squinted her eyes.
Buffy came around the table, and caressed Annabelle's hair.
"It means pulling myself together," Buffy said, as she ran her fingers through Annabelle's hair. She liked touching Annabelle's hair. It gave Buffy a warm feeling. "It means letting the past go. Appreciating what's right here in front of me, appreciating the people I love, instead of getting depressed about stuff I can't control."
Annabelle kissed Buffy's nose.
"Moo!" Annabelle said, and giggled at her.
"Moo," Buffy said.
"I think Anna just had the last word on the subject," Tara said.
"Wait, I'm confused," Cordy said. "Does this mean Buffy's actually gonna get over herself? My whole world just turned upside down."
"Okay, maybe I'm not gonna appreciate everything that's right here in front of me," Buffy said.
"Willow, are you sure you're all right?" Rebecca said.
"Yeah," Willow said. "Um, sorry I freaked before."
"Don't give it a second thought," Rebecca said. "I'm glad you're here. We need you here. If we're going to find a way out of this, we're going to need your help."
"I wanna be here, I wanna help with the plan," Willow said. "But I need Anna with me. I don't want her out there. Cordy's gonna play with her in here while we talk. We'll just need to keep our voices down, maybe talk in code a little. Is that okay?"
"Of course," Rebecca said, and smiled. "Ms. Banana's company is always appreciated."
"Guys like Kakistos are ampire-vays," Faith said. "When we talk about takin' someone down, we don't use the K-word that rhymes with fill. We say stuff like dust or terminate."
"Ampire-vays?" Rebecca said.
"Pig-latin," Willow said. "Get the first consonant sound in a word, put it at the end, add 'ay'. So like, banana would be 'anana-bay'. I'm 'Illo-way'."
"So for ampire-vays and emon-days we use pig latin," Faith said. "Everything else, just talk code words. We're G-rated."
"Pig-latin," Rebecca said. "How charming."
"Okay, so I'm now callin' this meeting to order," Faith said. "Lil' bananas gotta go play. Ecca-bay's got the floor."
"You are going to stop calling me that at some point?" Rebecca said, and raised her eyebrow.
"At some point," Faith said, and smiled.
"Ecca-bay!" Annabelle shouted.
"Op tart belly-pay," Willow said, and kissed Annabelle's nose. "Time to hang with Auntie Cordy now, sweetie."
Annabelle was restless for about thirty seconds, as she sat in Cordy's lap in the big leather recliner in front of the television in a corner of the living room and Cordy got The Little Mermaid ready in the VCR, because Rebecca, Faith, Buffy, Willow and Tara were obviously doing something secret and mysterious and fascinating and she wanted to know what it was. But then the movie started. The theme music swelled, the colors were pretty, the mermaid looked fabulous, and Annabelle might as well have been surgically attached to the television screen.
Faith and Buffy sat together on the couch, and Faith kept her arm around Buffy's waist. Rebecca sat next to them, and sipped her tea. Willow and Tara sat in the rocking chairs. But Tara moved her rocking chair next to Willow's, and held her hand.
"All right," Rebecca said. "It's time to get to work. We're going to sort this mess out, and the first step is to go over what's happened so far. Start from the beginning. Everything that's happened that has anything to do with this situation, with no detail left out."
"Giles brought me and Will and Xander into the library to talk about the Key," Buffy said. "That was November 13th. He said someone stole it from a museum in London after it was found in an archeology dig. He showed us this gross skin book with a picture of the Horsemen and he said he thought someone was trying to free them. He said they're indestructible."
"They are," Rebecca said.
"He said the Key was given to a Sumerian priest six-thousand years ago, during the flood, y'know, the Noah's Ark flood?" Willow said. "The priest performed a prayer ritual, begging the gods for forgiveness, and then the Horsemen were like, put in some kind of dimensional prison and the world was saved. Then an angel appeared with the Key."
"So I headed down to the local emon-day dive bar to beat up my snitch bartender and get a heads-up," Buffy said. "He said the Key was being sold that night in King's Park Cemetery. Then I grabbed Faith and Will and Xander and we were off to the races."
"Xander?" Rebecca said. "Why did you bring him?"
"Um...just kinda did," Buffy said. "Xander and Will always came along."
Rebecca nodded, and dropped the subject. "Go on."
"We got to the cemetery, staked it out," Faith said. "Buncha ampire-vays showed up, rowdy, drunk, carryin' the Key. They exchanged it with these four old guys dressed as priests, for a briefcase full of cash."
"Cash would have no value after the Key was used," Rebecca said. "Those...ampire-vays obviously didn't know what the Key was capable of. The priests they met were the same ones who performed the ceremony on the 17th I take it?"
"Yeah," Faith said. "The priests had a bunch of, uh, wolf ampire-vays with them, the Vigil of Saint Vigeous guys. Willow did this smoke spell that made it so no one could see us..."
"A prayer to Apate?" Rebecca said. "That's quite advanced, Willow."
Willow smiled. "How do you know about that spell? Aunt Jane?"
Rebecca nodded. "I always thought Jane was something of a loon, but then I met someone who impressed upon me the value of magic. After that I dabbled. So you retrieved the Key--or what you thought was the Key--from the Vigil of Saint Vigeous."
"Barely," Faith said. "Like a hundred of them came tearin' out of that crypt all of a sudden once the smoke cleared, there's tunnels under there. If Will didn't throw up a shield we would've been toast."
"Energy shields too," Rebecca said. "Well you have been doing your homework, haven't you Willow? And Faith said you called down a lightning bolt, when you ran into Kakistos. We're going to have to talk about your abilities, and yours too, Tara. So you took the counterfeit Key and came home. What happened next?"
Faith and Buffy exchanged a glance. Willow grinned.
"Um...well...fast-forward to the next night, we all met with Giles and talked about the Vigil of Sid Vicious, he knew a little bit about them, but not much," Buffy said. "He told us the ceremony to free the Horsemen had to be performed on the last day of the waning moon, which was the seventeenth. Then I went back to my bartender, to see if I could shake anything out of him about the Sid Vicious guys, and Faith went to the Bronze with Willow and Xander."
"The Bronze?" Rebecca said.
"Local club," Faith said. "Dump."
"You can say that again," Cordy said. "If someone ever opened a decent club in Sunnydale they could make a zillion dollars."
Everyone looked at her.
"What?" Cordy said. "I can't listen? If they just had Tara a few days earlier none of this would have happened by the way."
"Why is that?" Rebecca said.
"Tara can see through glamours," Willow said. "The fake Key was a brick disguised with a glamour."
"Ah," Rebecca said. "Well, there's no use crying over spilled milk. What happened with your bartender?"
"Terminated some of his customers, broke all his Johnny Cash records, crushed his hand, laid down the law," Buffy said. "He gave me the name of one of the ampire-vays who collected the cash."
"Meantime me and Will and Xander were throwin' down with twenty of the Vigil dudes at the Bronze," Faith said. "They asked me to give Willow to them, said they'd let me go if I did. I politely declined, we got down to it."
"They wanted Willow?" Rebecca said.
"Yeah," Faith said. "Called her 'the witch', but they knew her by name too."
"Anyway, we fought, Will and Xander had my back," Faith said. "I got my butt kicked."
"So didn't get your butt kicked," Buffy said. "You took out like almost all of them. By the time I got there, there were only four left."
"Faith was hurt though," Willow said. "We didn't know how bad, and, um, Faith didn't want to go to the hospital."
Rebecca nodded, and took Faith's hand.
"So...we took her back to Buffy's house and took care of her ourselves," Willow said. "Giles has first aid stuff, bandages, morphine. We basically let her Slayer healing take over, made sure she had enough food in her so she'd have energy to heal. But before we did, I did a mind-meld, trying to find where she was hurt, and how bad."
"A what?" Rebecca said.
Over by the television, Cordy sighed.
"It's this spell I can do, where I enter someone's head, and sort of like, go lookin' around," Willow said. "I was able to figure out how bad Faith was hurt. Um...but then something went wrong and I got her memories."
"Explains about Willow's evil Kennedy routine," Cordy said. "Does this mean Faith wants to push me out of a moving car?"
"Am I under oath?" Faith said.
"So anyway, we got Faith back home and I took care of her," Buffy said. "She spent the next day healing up and getting awesome birthday presents. Day after that Giles came back with this book the Watchers Council sent him that was all about the Key, plus it has the ceremony the Sumerian priest guy used six-thousand years ago to stop the Four Horsemen the first time."
"A book about the Key, and it contains the ceremony?" Rebecca said. "I didn't know such a book existed. There's a short entry about the Key and its history in Cultes des Goules, but nothing specifically about the ceremony itself. The Council doesn't have any such book in its archives."
"Um...well Giles said they sent it to him," Buffy said.
"Said it was recently acquired," Willow said. "Maybe they got it after...y'know. When... you weren't around?"
"I doubt it," Rebecca said. "A book of such importance wouldn't be allowed out of the archives before it was thoroughly examined first, not only by the Council's Research department but also by all the various mystics in their employ, and that process would've taken a very long time...months, even years. And even if they allowed Giles to see it, they certainly wouldn't have mailed it to him, or even sent a courier. They would have made him fly out to England to see it."
"Well...we were sort of in crisis mode," Willow said.
"But we weren't," Faith said. "We thought we had the Key, remember? As far as we knew we had plenty of time, as long as we kept the Key out of their hands. The priority wasn't finding out about the ceremony, we didn't think we'd have to do the ceremony. The priority was finding out how to stash the Key so no one could find it, and the book didn't help with that."
"Well, if you still have the book, there's a simple way to find out," Rebecca said. "Every book the Council acquires gets an extra page glued into the back with the official Council seal and a catalogue number the moment they receive it."
"We do have it," Willow said. "Hold on, I'll get it."
"It isn't one of ours," Rebecca said, a few minutes later, when Willow returned with the book. "See here, the inside back page, this should be a separate page bound in with the seal and the catalogue number. But the page is blank, and anyway it's part of the original book." She pointed it out, as the four of them all looked over her shoulder.
"Any way a book might not get catalogued?" Faith said.
"No," Rebecca said, as she began leafing through the book. "It's the first thing the Council archives does, without exception. This book didn't come from the Council."
"Giles said it did," Buffy said.
Rebecca looked up at her.
"Then he lied," Rebecca said. "The question is why."
"He was...a little strange, before the end," Willow said. "Buffy and I noticed stuff. He was...a little off."
"Off how?" Rebecca said.
"Little things," Buffy said. "Personal stuff, stuff he should've remembered, things he should've said. Plus he started disappearing, like wandering off, we couldn't find him sometimes. His scent was right, but just in case I had Tara check to see if he was like, someone else disguised in a Giles glamour or whatever."
"Um, he wasn't," Tara said. "No glamour."
"Did you sense anything odd in his thoughts?" Rebecca said.
"Um...what?" Tara said.
"Becca," Faith said. "Maybe we oughta...put off the whole Giles thing, get back to the Key and stuff."
"No, Faith," Rebecca said, and stood up, and looked Tara in the eyes. "This is a discussion we need to have now."
Tara was looking in every direction but at Rebecca.
"About time," Cordy said.
"You can read minds, Tara," Rebecca said. "You're pretending you can't, but everyone here knows you can."
"I can't," Tara said, and blushed. "That's all just...just a misunderstanding." She looked at Willow, then she looked away. Willow took her hand.
"We're your friends, Tara," Buffy said. "I don't know why you think you have to hide this from us, but you don't."
"I like you, Tara, very much," Rebecca said. "You're a good girl, and you've been a good friend for Faith...more than a friend. I would have lost Faith if it weren't for you. I owe you quite a lot, and I don't imagine I'll ever be able to repay you. So I really am sorry to put you on the spot like this. But the apocalypse is upon us, and people are..." She glanced at Annabelle. Annabelle was watching their exchange curiously. Cordy directed her attention back to the movie. "People are...passing away out there, every second, and I don't have time to coddle you," Rebecca continued, looking back at Tara again. Tara looked up at her, then immediately looked away again. "Your mind-reading ability could be very useful to us...it could help save lives. If you're going to refuse to use your power, then I'm afraid I'm going to require an explanation."
"Look, I don't know what, what you guys are t-talking about," Tara said, and tried to smile as if it the whole situation was absurd. "I mean...I'm not psychic, I'm just...this is j-j-just... look, can we just drop this?"
Rebecca was still looking straight at her.
"I mean, this is just, just ridiculous!" Tara said, and tried to giggle. But her lips were trembling now, as if she was about to cry. "I'm not...I can't read minds, okay? I can't."
"I can't either, sweetie," Willow said, and squeezed her hand. "But I can tell you're afraid right now."
"I'm n-n-not...not afraid," Tara said, and looked down at the floor. "Look, can I just...just go? This is gettin' completely ridiculous."
"Honey," Faith said, and put her hand on her shoulder.
Tara looked up at her.
"You are afraid, I can smell it on you," Faith said. "But you don't have to be afraid. Whatever this thing is that you're afraid to tell us, no matter how bad it is, we're your friends, Tara. We all care about you. We'd never think any less of you. We just wanna help."
Tara was able to look at Faith. But not at anyone else.
"Remember how we talked about secrets?" Faith said. "How we all decided they could hurt us, break us up, and so we wouldn't have them anymore?"
"Yeah," Tara said.
Faith held up her wrist. She was still wearing the friendship bracelet. She still hadn't taken it off.
"Tara, you know how I feel about you," Faith said. "Do you really think...anything you could say could make me change my mind?"
"I don't know," Tara whispered, as tears ran down her cheeks. "Maybe."
Faith kissed her cheek, kissed the tear.
"You gotta trust me now," Faith said. "You gotta trust that I care about you, that you're real important to me, and that I'm never gonna stop caring about you. You gotta...gotta...take a leap of faith."
Tara smiled, and sniffled, and wiped her tears away. "Yeah," she said.
Tara looked down at the floor.
"I'm...I'm...um...an emon-day," Tara said.
"What?" Buffy said. "What are you talking about?"
"My mother's side of the family, they're all...part emon-day. That's where I get my powers from, why I'm so good with magic, why I can read minds."
"Emon-day!" Annabelle shouted, and giggled.
"Sshhh," Cordy said, and directed her attention back to the movie again. "Look at the pretty mermaid! Isn't she pretty?"
Tara looked up at her.
"You're not part emon-day," Faith said. "If you were I'd smell it. I can smell emon-days, just like I can smell ampire-vays."
"She's right, Tara," Buffy said. "If you had even a drop of emon-day blood in you Faith and I would smell it. Slayers have a great sense of smell in general, but ampire-vays and emon-days are sort of our specialty. I'm telling you Tara, you smell like a regular human being to us. That's all you are, honey."
Tara shook her head. She stood there, separate from the rest of them, looking down at the floor. But Willow wouldn't let her go; she still held her hand.
"Tara, let me show you something," Rebecca said.
Rebecca picked up Faith's butterfly knife from the coffee table, and flipped it open with a series of easy, graceful movements. Then she walked over to the tapestry on the wall.
"Say what you will about Angel, but he has smashing taste," Rebecca said, looking up at the tapestry. "This tapestry for example. A lovely example of sixteenth century Flemish work, and exceedingly rare. Nicely preserved. Two-hundred-thousand dollars, easily."
Rebecca sliced the butterfly knife across the bottom of the tapestry, cutting off a long, horizontal strip. Then she turned, and smiled.
"But he wouldn't have paid for it, would he?" Rebecca said. "Nicked it from one of his victims, I'd wager."
She walked back to Faith, and tied the long strip of cloth around her eyes like a blindfold. Faith didn't move, or flinch, as she did it.
"Can you see, darling?" Rebecca said.
"Nope," Faith said.
"Good," Rebecca said. "Now, Tara. What Buffy and Faith told you is absolutely true. Slayers have extremely sharp senses in general, and their sense of smell is the sharpest by far. It simply isn't possible for you to be what you think you are, and for Buffy and Faith not to have noticed. But, let me give you a demonstration. Since Angel is an ampire-vay, I'm assuming he keeps some blood in the house. Faith, is there any blood in this house?"
Faith sniffed the air.
"Yeah," she said.
Rebecca smiled again.
"I assume it isn't human blood?" Rebecca said. She looked at Buffy. "Because if it is, I think we might have a problem."
"It isn't," Buffy said. "It's--"
Rebecca held up her hand. Buffy stopped talking. Everyone was quiet.
Faith tilted her head, and sniffed the air again.
"Not human," Faith said. "Smells kinda...like pork. Yeah. Pig's blood."
"Excellent," Rebecca said. "Now lead us to it."
Faith nodded, and walked toward the hallway. She moved confidently, finding her way around the obstacles in the room as if she could somehow sense them before she came upon them. When she reached the doorway, with Buffy, Willow, Tara and Rebecca following behind her, she sniffed the air again, and headed left, into the hallway.
Annabelle tried to scramble out of Cordy's lap; whatever they were doing, it looked mysterious and therefore fun. But Cordy held on to her.
"But I wanna play!" Annabelle said.
Willow came over to Annabelle, and kissed her cheek.
"It's not a game for lil' pop tart bellies," Willow said. "You be a good girl for Auntie Cordy, okay? And then later on we'll all play Hungry Hungry Hippos. Hungry Hungry Hippos is a lot more fun than the lame ol' game I'm playin'. Okay, sweetie?"
Annabelle folded her arms across her chest, and frowned. Willow thought it was approximately the cutest thing in recorded history.
"Annie, look!" Cordy said, and pointed at the television screen. "Look at how pretty Ariel is!"
Annabelle looked back at the television screen. The mermaid had human legs now, and she looked fabulous in them.
"Oooh, she's pretty," Annabelle said, her eyes glued to the screen again.
"Yup, gonna make a chick out of you yet, sweetie," Cordy said.
"She's always gonna be my lil' tickle belly," Willow said, and gently tickled Annabelle's stomach. Annabelle giggled and squirmed around in Cordy's lap. Then Willow kissed her on the nose, and walked away.
She caught up to Buffy and Tara and Rebecca as they followed Faith down the torchlit hallway, past the rows of mosaics along the walls, their footsteps echoing behind them. Faith seemed to be heading toward the kitchen at first, though Tara didn't remember seeing any blood in the kitchen. But then Faith turned down a long, very narrow, nearly pitch-black corridor none of them had ever used before, paved with cobblestone. Unlike the main hallway, the walls in this corridor had no decoration; there were no exquisite mosaics to break up the monotonous gray stone. There was a single torch on the left-hand wall that just barely mitigated the darkness. The corridor was cold, and covered in thick cobwebs. An icy wind was stealing in from somewhere. The torch flickered, casting strange shadows that seemed imbued with a life of their own: they crept stealthily forward, stalking through the dark, when they should have stayed still.
The corridor was a narrow tunnel, with a low ceiling. There was only room for two of them to walk abreast. The air was dusty and stale. To Willow, it felt like a tomb. She felt buried in there...closed in. She tried not to think about it.
The corridor curved around to the right as they all followed Faith through the shadows, their breath turning to frost in the stale air now. When Faith rounded the corner, a marble statue suddenly loomed up out of the dark; it was a woman, tall and noble and beautiful, wearing battle armor and a helmet raised high on her forehead. She wore a robe over her armor, and she carried a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, and an owl was perched on her shoulder. The statue was covered with cobwebs. It blocked Faith's path, but Faith paused before she could bump into it, and then skirted around it.
"How did she do that?" Tara said. "How did she know the statue was there?" Her voice echoed like she was standing at the bottom of a well.
"She's a Slayer," Buffy said.
"Hey...wait, that's Athena!" Tara said, her eyes lighting up as they passed the statue.
"She's beautiful," Willow said.
"Yeah," Tara said, and knelt in front of the statue for a moment. She kissed the statue's hand, before getting up again. "I'm gonna come back here and take those cobwebs off her. She shouldn't be neglected like this."
"You're right," Rebecca said. "It's a Velletri Pallas, a first-century Roman copy of the lost Greek bronze. It's beautiful. It should be seen. It shouldn't be stuck down here in the dark."
"It's Faith's house now," Buffy said. "We'll find a better place for Athena. Actually I'm thinking maybe the living room. We can take that tapestry off the wall since it's ripped up now, and put Athena there instead. I never liked that tapestry anyway. Something about it always annoyed me."
"It annoyed me too," Faith said, her voice drifting back to them through the dark. "Plus Athena's Tara's lady. Gotta treat her right."
Faith turned out of the corridor a hundred yards past the statue, and took a right into yet another corridor, then she led them down a steep flight of cracked, treacherous granite stairs. Rebecca took Willow and Tara's hands as they descended the stairs. But Faith was surefooted as she descended those stairs, toward a shadowy landing at the bottom, lit by a single torch. When she reached the bottom she moved through an open granite door. The door opened on to a short stone hall, with a small, dusty room that looked like an empty storeroom at the end of it. The room was dark. The light of the torch, more than twenty feet behind, only just touched it, transformed the unvarying black into a murky gray. There was a marble bench in there, and a cabinet built into one wall. There was nothing else.
Faith stopped in front of the cabinet, and pointed at it.
"There," Faith said.
Rebecca opened the cabinet. It was filled with bottles of blood. She pulled one out, and then she took off Faith's blindfold.
Rebecca held up the bottle of blood, and unscrewed the cap.
"Willow, Tara," Rebecca said, and held the bottle within a foot of them. "Can either of you smell this?"
"Nope," Willow said. Tara shook her head.
"Try," Rebecca said. She came closer, and held the open bottle beneath their noses now.
Willow and Tara both sniffed at the bottle. It didn't seem to have any scent. They shook their heads.
"I can't smell it either," Rebecca said. "We don't have the noses for it, I'm afraid. But Faith does. How far would you say we've traveled, Tara? Perhaps three-hundred yards?"
"Yeah," Tara said. "That sounds about right."
Rebecca put her arm around Faith. Faith leaned her head against Rebecca's shoulder, and looked back at Tara, from the shadows. There was a golden light in Faith's eyes, that shouldn't have been there as far as Tara could tell. The torch was twenty feet behind her, there was no light source for Faith's eyes to be reflecting. But the light was there nevertheless, and it was bright, in that dark room; in fact Tara thought the darkness seemed to make Faith's eyes shine brighter. Faith's eyes were cat's eyes, and they glittered like gold down there in the dark. Looking into them was like staring up at the sun.
When Tara saw Faith then, staring back at her from the shadows, it was as if she was seeing her for the first time. Faith looked different...alien. When Tara looked into Faith's eyes then, when she saw that golden light, she was reminded, more than anything else, of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. The intelligence in Faith's eyes was a predatory intelligence. The thoughts in Faith's mind couldn't be grasped by a human being. Faith was a hunter--a killer.
Faith looked straight back at Tara, from the shadows, with a strange lack of expression. And she never blinked.
When Tara glanced at Buffy, she had the same exact feeling, the feeling of being in the presence of some alien creature, some unknowable predator, except the feeling was magnified. Tara felt it, physically, like a tingling on her skin, like a chill wind that reached right down to her bones. As Buffy looked at her, Tara became frightened...for a second, before she dismissed the thought as ridiculous, Tara was actually afraid that Buffy might kill her.
But there was another feeling too, when Tara looked at Buffy--a feeling Faith didn't give Tara. Underneath the fear that clutched at her with icy fingers, underneath the feeling of wanting to hide from Buffy, to run in a straight line like a panicked animal, desperate to escape her at any cost, Tara felt warm...she felt it on her skin, like an unexpected caress. She felt like she was trembling.
Buffy was watching Tara with the same curious lack of expression Faith had. But there was a light in Buffy's eyes now, too...a white light, like diamonds...or the moon.
Tara remembered Buffy's eyes, when she had watched her breaking fingers a few days before...when she had seen the Slayer for what she really was, and had watched, entranced, unable to look away...
When Buffy had looked back at her, Tara had actually stumbled, and nearly fell.
Tara remembered the feeling of Buffy's hand caressing her cheek...she remembered Buffy's voice, a low whisper that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and her heart beat faster.
Tara, Buffy had whispered, and looked into Tara's eyes...
Tara had trembled at her touch.
I know you're a little afraid of me, Buffy had whispered.
As she looked into Buffy's eyes in the little storeroom now, Tara suddenly realized her nipples were hard. She blushed, thankful the room was too dark for her face to be seen clearly, and lied to herself: she blamed it on the cold.
Tara looked away from Buffy's eyes. She reached out, for Willow, and took her hand.
"Faith smelled this blood from three-hundred yards away and she led us straight to it," Rebecca said. "Buffy could have done it too, just as easily. Meanwhile, you and Willow and I can't smell it when it's right under our noses. That's because we're not Slayers. They aren't like us, Tara. They're hunters. It's what they're built for."
Faith was still leaning her head against Rebecca's shoulder. In that moment Faith seemed, for the first time since Tara had known her, perfectly at peace. But Faith's bright golden eyes still looked straight at Tara, and didn't blink...
"If Buffy and Faith tell you they don't smell any demon blood in you, they aren't just making an assumption," Rebecca continued. "They aren't making an educated guess. They aren't fairly certain, or even ninety-nine percent positive. They know, for an absolute fact. Because their lives depend upon them knowing, Tara. They need to be able to detect their prey, instantly, with absolute, unerring precision. If you had a single drop of demon blood in you they would have known from the very first moment they met you. Faith tells me Buffy's sense of smell is even a little better than hers. So let's put Tara's mind at ease, shall we, Buffy?" Rebecca smiled. "Give the girl a good sniffing. Tell us what's she's made of."
Suddenly, Tara felt Buffy behind her. She hadn't seen her move, hadn't heard her. Buffy was just suddenly there. Tara gasped.
Tara felt Buffy's hair, falling against her shoulder. She felt Buffy's nose, and her lips, against the back of her neck.
She felt Buffy's hand in hers...Buffy's hand was warm. She felt Buffy's body against hers now, as Buffy held her still.
She heard Buffy sniffing at her, as Buffy stood behind her, and held her hand, and brushed her nose against her neck, just below her ear. And Tara could just barely hear Buffy make another sound, as Buffy's lips moved close to her ear...it sounded like a cat's purr.
Tara felt her heart beating in her chest, and the blood moving in her veins. As Buffy explored her, sniffing at her neck, lifting her wrist to her nose now, and sniffing at that too, Tara was aware of herself, in a new way. At that moment, she was acutely aware of the wetness between her legs. And she felt like her nipples were about to burst through her bra. But she saw herself differently...the way she thought Buffy must see her. As prey.
Tara knew she had been captured...Buffy had taken her, as effortlessly as a lion might bring down a rabbit. For this moment, she was Buffy's...and if Buffy didn't let her go, she always would be. Tara knew it wasn't up to her. It was up to Buffy...Buffy had captured her.
Tara could smell Buffy's hair now, and her perfume...Buffy smelled like flowers.
"It's okay, honey," Buffy whispered in her ear, as she caressed her hand. "I won't bite." Then Buffy giggled in her ear, softly. Buffy's breath was warm against Tara's cheek. Buffy's fingers were soft, gentle.
Buffy took Tara's other hand, the one Willow had been holding on to, and lifted it to her nose, and sniffed at it. Tara had completely forgotten that Willow had been holding her hand. She had forgotten Willow even existed.
Buffy's hand was soft, and warm, but her grip was like steel.
Buffy held her...
And then, Buffy let her go. Buffy's fingers slipped out of Tara's, slowly, with a last, lingering caress.
Tara got herself under control. She wondered if Buffy and Faith could smell it...if they could smell her arousal. She thought they probably could. She was just thankful Willow couldn't. Tara blushed again.
"One-hundred percent Grade-A Tara," Buffy said, and moved away from her. As she did, she put Tara's hand back in Willow's. "No demon additives."
"Excellent," Rebecca said, and put the bottle of blood back in the cabinet.
"But...but...my D-Dad always told me...that my mother was part demon and...so was I," Tara said. "I just...don't understand."
"You told me your Dad was always mean to you," Faith said. "That he was like, real controlling. That you don't think he loved you, and that he didn't love your Mom either."
"Yeah," Tara said.
Rebecca put her hands on Tara's shoulders, and looked down into her eyes.
"Your father lied to you," Rebecca said. "I don't know why he lied to you, but he did. We never will, Tara."
Tara nodded. "But...I don't understand how I can read minds then," Tara said. "It's not like, I cast a spell. I just concentrate and...it happens. I know...some demons can do that."
"Yes," Rebecca said. "There are demon species that can do that. But you're not part demon, Tara. What you are, is a pure witch."
"A...pure witch?" Tara said.
"What's that?" Willow said.
Rebecca smiled. "You girls are so busy concentrating on magic spells that you've neglected studying magic history. You pay so much attention to what you can do, you don't know what you are. There are two types of magic-users. The first type, which ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of all magic-users happen to be, don't have much in the way of power. They're attuned to magic, they can sense it, and manipulate it, in ways a normal person couldn't. But their spells are simply prayers to various deities--like the prayer to Apate for example. When you cast that spell, Willow, Apate was doing all the work, not you. For this first type of magic-user to come into any real power, they have to bind themselves to a patron deity, allowing themselves to be essentially enslaved, and in return the deity imbues them with some of their power. That's why when you see an experienced witch or wizard, they nearly always have a collar around their neck. But there is another type of magic-user--one who is born to it. Born with the kind of power almost everyone else in the world can only acquire by allowing themselves to be enslaved. That's you, Tara. And you too, Willow. You're both pure witches."
"That sounds kinda cool," Willow said, and smiled. "Um...it's cool, right? Like, we're both gonna be Samantha in Bewitched? Just as long as we're not Carrie at the prom."
"It's not just cool, I daresay it's smashing," Rebecca said. "Every pure witch or wizard is different. No two are born with the exact same gifts. But some are born with the ability to read minds, Tara. And some, Willow, are born with the ability to control the elements, as you did when you called down that lightning, or when you threw those fireballs. The two of you will never need to bind yourselves to patron deities to acquire power. Not that I would ever allow either of you to do that anyway. And the more you learn, the more powerful you'll both become. You were both born with certain innate gifts, but you'll both find that if you work hard at your magic, there is nothing you can't do in time. You're already doing energy shields, Willow, and you, Tara are already doing extremely sophisticated glamours like invisibility. You'll both find certain areas of magic come easier than others eventually, you'll specialize. But no door will ever be closed to either of you, no spell will ever be out of reach if you work at it. You're both one in a million. Actually, it's closer to one in a hundred million. I doubt there are more than a few score pure witches or wizards in the world."
"Um...okay...wow," Tara said.
"You tryin' to make me and B jealous, Becca?" Faith said.
"I'm jealous myself," Rebecca said. "I can cast spells, I've dabbled in magic. But I could study magic every single waking moment for the rest of my life and not come close to what Willow or Tara will be able to do someday with one hand tied behind their back. Anyway, I believe we've spent enough time on this particular topic. We do have a world to save, after all. Come along, girls. Break's over."
"Okay, sure, me and Tara are all magical?" Willow said, an hour later. "But there's definitely something to be said for being able to lug an eight-hundred pound statue around like it's a cute little handbag."
"Plus I'm totally fab," Faith said, as they all looked up at Athena. The goddess stood upon her pedestal, against the wall in the living room where the tapestry had been, her sword ready, her shield raised, her demeanor serene and steadfast and unafraid, and without a single stain upon her magnificent, queenly features: Tara had meticulously cleaned the statue, removing all the cobwebs and washing away every single infinitesimal speck of dirt and dust and grime that had marred Athena's fair countenance. Rescued from the shadows, Athena fairly gleamed in the light of the fireplace now, as the warm, flickering golden fire played across the cold, sturdy white marble, revealing her beauty slowly, a bit at a time, seeming almost to revel in it. And Athena looked back down at the seven of them as they stared up at her, returning their curious, admiring looks with her own steady, clear-eyed gaze; her eyes seemed to follow them.
"Pretty," Annabelle whispered, and reached up to touch Athena's hair, as Tara held her up in her arms.
"Yeah," Tara said, and smiled. "She's beautiful, huh sweetie? She's my goddess."
"What's she the goddess of, exactly?" Cordy said. "Hotness? Awesome hair?"
"Wisdom," Tara said, and giggled. "And war."
"Looks pretty bad ass with the sword," Faith said. "I sure wouldn't wanna mess with her. But what's up with the owl?"
"It's a symbol of wisdom," Rebecca said.
"She's your goddess?" Willow said.
"Yeah," Tara said. "I mean, there's, y'know, the Goddess, with a capital G, but She never really speaks to us. I believe in Her, I believe she made the world, and I pray to Her, but it's sort of a one-way street. Guess that's where having faith comes in. But I've actually had conversations with Athena."
"What do you guys talk about?" Buffy said. "I'm trying to figure out what I would say to my goddess."
"I bet you'd just say your usual Buffy stuff," Willow said. "Y'know, talk about shoes and Faith, and how you really wanna get a tattoo, and then maybe ask the goddess if she's got the trig homework."
"Shoes, Faith, tattoo, trig homework," Buffy said. "You've pretty much covered all my obsessions. Think a goddess would be bored listening to me talk?"
"You can always talk to me, Buffy," Willow said. "I never get bored listening to you obsess about stuff."
"Plus you always have the trig homework," Buffy said. "Don't need a goddess when I've got my Willow."
"Yes, well, if Athena will excuse us, it's time we got back to work," Rebecca said. Tara handed Annabelle to Cordy, Willow kissed Annabelle on the nose, and everyone returned to their seats while Cordy and Annabelle went back to the television to finish The Little Mermaid. "Now then," Rebecca said. "We'll table the discussion about Mr. Giles' odd behavior for now. Let's get back to the sequence of events, in order. You left off with Giles bringing the book to you, which would have been on the sixteenth, the day before everything got royally bollocksed."
"Yeah, we basically sort of had a strategy session like this one, tried to figure out a plan," Buffy said. "We thought we had the Key and we were trying to figure out how to hide it."
"You wouldn't have been able to hide it," Rebecca said. "The Key was mystical, it could have been tracked. The only option would be to...terminate the people trying to get it."
"Yeah, that's the conclusion we came to," Buffy said. "We needed more info about the Sid Vicious guys if we were gonna go at them though, so Angel went out to track down our one lead, the ampire-vay my bartender told me about. The rest of us holed up at my place because we figured the Sid Vicious guys might try for Willow again."
"Giles told us a little about the book though," Willow said. "He tried to read it..."
"Tried?" Rebecca said.
"Some of it's in like this language he said he's never seen before," Willow said. "But he said according to the book the Sumerian priest guy who headed this stuff off six-thousand years ago was born to do it, and that there's always someone in the world who's born to do it, in case the Horsemen are ever released. He said the book mentions a test to find out who the right person is, but the test isn't in the book."
"So basically we have no way of figuring out who's supposed to do it," Buffy said. "Plus Giles said the ceremony the chosen person is supposed to do is in the book too, but it's in that weird language he didn't recognize."
Rebecca was flipping through the book. She stopped, at a point near the end.
"Yes," she said. "I see it here. I've never seen these symbols before. In fact I've never seen anything remotely like them. So what did Angel find?"
"Our ampire-vay, who led him to Spike," Faith said. "It took Angel awhile, he didn't get back until like early the next morning. The ampire-vay worked for Spike, Spike was the one selling the Key."
"Which was a fake," Rebecca said.
"Yeah," Willow said. "But Spike had the real one too. He was double-dipping on those priest guys."
Rebecca sighed. "Spike," she muttered. "I'm quite happy you killed him, Buffy. Ecstatic, actually. Bravo. Pity you couldn't have nicked his coat first though."
"His coat?" Buffy said.
"Belonged to a Slayer," Faith said. "Nikki Wood. He took it off her as like a trophy when he, uh, terminated her back in the seventies."
"Such an asshole," Buffy muttered. Then she looked up at Rebecca. "Sorry. Do I need a time-out?"
"Spike merits the insult," Rebecca said. "Of all the...ampire-vays I ever met, he was far and away the most tedious. Good riddance to bad rubbish."
"Wait, you met him?" Faith said.
Rebecca sighed again, and frowned. "It's a long story and I really would rather not get into it right now," she said. "Or ever, preferably. Perhaps if you girls ply me with scotch sometime. In my defense, I was nineteen. Moving on. Angel told you Spike had orchestrated all this nonsense with the Key. What did you do then?"
"Wait, you and Spike...what did you...?" Buffy started to say.
Rebecca fixed her with a glare that could have convinced a charging rhinoceros to be back about its business.
"Uh...moving on?" Buffy said.
"Moving on," Rebecca said.
"Moving on," Faith said. "So we had to go after Spike, but it was tricky because we needed to guard Will too. And we still thought we had the real Key, we didn't know we were working on a deadline. So we all went back to bed, planned on hittin' it fresh in the morning. We were gonna look for Spike while the sun was up, try to surprise him. Angel wouldn't be any good in the sun, so the plan was for him to hang back, and then either me and B would go after Spike together or just one of us would, depending on Will, if she was comfortable being with Angel alone. Plus we had Xan Man in the house, he kinda complicated things."
"Why?" Rebecca said.
"Wasn't a fan of Angel," Willow said. "And unfortunately he was about to complicate things worse. The First showed up, as Angelus. It bothered Faith..."
"What did it say to you?" Rebecca said.
"Said Buffy didn't love me," Faith said. "Said I was dumb."
Buffy took Faith's hand, and kissed it.
"Lied," Buffy said.
"Yeah," Faith said. "It tried to play me, same as always."
"Eventually it changed to Buffy, when we all showed up and interrupted its talk with Faith," Willow said. "It said...um...some stuff...hurtful stuff. It played on Xander's mistrust of Angel. Xander, um, quit the group, and said either I go with him or we were finished as a couple, because he couldn't protect me from the stuff we do...from monsters like Angelus."
Rebecca nodded. She knew there was something else there. For the moment, she let it go.
"You left with him," Rebecca said.
"Yeah," Willow said. "Dumb move. Giles let us stay at his place, so now we were separated into two groups, and we couldn't help each other. Xander had a grenade, he used to steal weapons from the military base because he had like, these soldier memories he got from a spell this guy named Ethan Rayne did..."
"Ethan Rayne?" Rebecca said. "You met him?"
"He made our Halloween costumes take over our personalities last year," Buffy said. "Almost got me terminated when I suddenly thought I was this Victorian gal who was big into corsets and knitting but not so much with the ampire-vays and then of course we ran into Spike. If Angel wasn't there we'd all be terminated. You ever meet Ethan Rayne?"
"Our paths have crossed," Rebecca said. "He's dangerous. Giles never mentioned you ran into Ethan in his reports to the Council."
"They were like, friends once," Buffy said. "I think he wanted to handle Ethan himself."
Rebecca sighed. "All right. Go on, Willow. You were saying something about a grenade?"
"Xander had one left over at his house," Willow said. "If we just stayed together that day, if Buffy had that grenade, she might have taken those priest guys out before they used the Key."
"Perhaps, but there isn't any use dwelling on it," Rebecca said. "We are where we are. Thinking about what we might have done differently only wastes time."
"Me and B went looking for Spike, couldn't find him anywhere," Faith said. "But Angel got a cell phone number for him from that ampire-vay. It was the guy's only way of contacting Spike, the guy didn't know where Spike was, didn't even know Spike's name. All he knew was that his boss was a Brit ampire-vay who terminated a couple Slayers way back when."
"Yes, that would be Spike," Rebecca said.
"Yup," Faith said. "So Will did her computer mojo, traced the address, gave us an apartment to go to when we called her later. Meantime the plot thickens, Tara comes into the picture."
"I showed up at Buffy's place looking for Faith, because I hadn't seen her and I was worried," Tara said. "I knew nothing about any of this stuff. Turns out I was being followed by, um, ampire-vays in a car with blacked-out windows because they were watching Buffy's house, according to Angel. Anyway, Angel told me everything, including the fact that he was an ampire-vay too, he generally scared the living crap out of me, and then we hung out and watched a Clint Eastwood movie and drank rum and coke and swapped sob stories. His story was a lot sobbier than mine. When he told me about the Key I asked to take a look at it, and I realized it was a fake. But this was like only an hour before sunset and we had no way to contact Buffy and Faith because you guys all ridiculously don't have cell phones. We tried calling Giles' place to talk to Will but the phone was busy."
"The line was down," Willow said. "I think someone cut it. The First had one of its ampire-vays hanging near the house."
"When Buffy and Faith came back from checking out that apartment Spike had been squatting in, it was like twenty minutes to sunset," Tara said. "I told them the Key was a fake, cue panic. At least, I panicked. Faith was awesome. She was like, completely tactical."
"I knew you guys would say it again eventually," Cordy said. "It's officially my least favorite word in the world now."
"Tackleble?" Annabelle said.
"Better that you don't know, Annie," Cordy said. "Look! Ariel's getting married!"
"We came up with sort of a desperation plan," Faith said. "Tara did a locator spell on...uh...something of Spike's..."
"His completely gross underwear," Tara said.
Rebecca sighed.
"So, uh, anyway Tara did the locator spell and we got a bead on Spike, he was at a cemetery close by," Faith said. "Me and B went to take our shot, I had Angel stay behind with Tara, and I told him if the thing went south, he should grab Willow and Xander and Giles and get someplace safe. Plus we called Spike, figured maybe he didn't know what the Key could do, maybe he'd help us."
"He didn't know what the Key could do, since he was asking for money for it," Rebecca said. "And Spike rather liked the world anyway. Beer, women, Manchester United, the Sex Pistols, and his shite poetry."
"And he did help, for like a minute," Buffy said. "But once things started going south he...wait a minute. Poetry? Spike wrote poetry?"
"Awful poetry," Rebecca said. "Horrendous poetry. I'll recite some for you sometime when we all need a good laugh, I've got a few memorized. He spouted some of the rubbish at me, and it's been seared into my brain ever since."
"Spike recited some of his poetry for you?" Willow said.
Rebecca frowned at her.
"Um...moving on," Willow said.
"Moving on," Buffy said. "Spike walked away from the fight once things got tough. If he had stayed we probably wouldn't be in this mess. I missed the last priest by a second."
"And then when the sun disappeared I sort of became very, very stupid and looked out the window at Giles' place to see what was going on," Willow said. "And then one of the Saint Vigeous ampire-vays pulled me out the window. I guess he was waiting there for me, and I bet he cut Giles' phone line too. He didn't grab Xander or Giles, just me."
"Twice," Rebecca said. "They tried to get you twice."
"Angel saved me," Willow said. "When he found me I was in like this underground tomb on a sacrificial altar. The First was there, and lots of the Saint Vigeous guys, and Angel said they were doing like this sacrifice ritual over me. They had a knife, and they meant to...um...terminate me, but it looked like they wanted to do a ritual first. And then..."
"Stop," Rebecca said, and held up her hand. "Cordelia, are you listening?"
"Sorta," Cordy said. "Why?"
"Because I'm going to teach you to appreciate tactical thinking, as Faith solves this puzzle for us," Rebecca said. "Pay attention. Now, Faith. Like I taught you. Everything we've heard, break it down for me."
"Wait," Buffy said. "Solve the puzzle? You mean...solve the puzzle? Like, come up with a plan? A plan to beat the First?"
"Yes," Rebecca said. "Go ahead, Faith. Like I taught you."
"Okay, this I wanna see," Cordy said, and turned around in the recliner, and focused her attention on Faith.
"Tackleble!" Annabelle said, and giggled, and watched Faith too.
"Okay," Faith said. "We start from the general, work down to the specific, look for stuff that doesn't fit a logical pattern along the way, and put ourselves in the bad guy's head. So we got our bad guy. We've got only one way we know of the bad guy can be hurt, and that's doing the Key ceremony. The bad guy keeps coming at us, which is logical because we're the good guys. But there's one part of the bad guy's behavior that doesn't fit. It came after Willow, twice. It didn't try to just, uh, terminate her right there, it tried to kidnap her, and it didn't care about the rest of us at all. At the Bronze the ampire-vays who work for it said they would let me go if I gave up Will. At Giles' place it took Will and left Giles alone. It only went after Xander when he got in the way. Terminating Will right off would have been a lot easier than kidnapping her. So why didn't they? They were doing a ceremony over her once they caught her, and Angel thought maybe that was to terminate her. But why? Why couldn't they just terminate her right off? Why the ceremony?"
Faith stood up, and started pacing.
"Putting myself in the bad guy's head," Faith said. "Seein' this thing from their point of view. If I'm the First, and I knew about the ceremony to pray for humanity, if I knew that was the only way I could be stopped, I'd try to do something about it. Just makes sense, right? It's our only shot, why not block it? Only problem is, we don't know who's supposed to pray for humanity. Giles said it could be anyone in the world, and we have no idea how to find out who."
Faith stopped in front of the statue of Athena. She looked up at the goddess, and met her eyes. Athena looked back. Faith felt Athena's eyes on her.
"The ceremony they did to try to terminate Will means Will is different, extra special, extra important," Faith said. "Extra dangerous, maybe, too. What could be extra special for the First? What could make Will different than the rest of us, more dangerous than the rest of us, harder to terminate so that there's gotta be a special ceremony? Sure she's a witch, but so is Tara. And as far as we know, Will can be terminated just like anyone else can. Knife, gun, game over. So why the special ceremony to terminate her? And still keeping it general, there are only two possible reasons a bad guy would kidnap someone anyway. Either the person they're taking can help them, or they can hurt them. This bad guy sure doesn't need our help. And..."
Faith stopped talking. Then she turned around, and looked at Willow.
"And there's only one way the bad guy can be hurt," Faith said. "Becca, lemme see that book. Where's the part in the language you've never seen?"
Rebecca handed Faith the book. "It's turned to the page."
"Yeah," Faith said, as she looked at it. "Can't make heads or tails outta this. But maybe I'm not meant to. Will, take a look at this."
Willow came over, and looked at the book.
"It's...it's written in English," Willow said.
Everyone came over and looked at the book then, even Cordy.
"English? Where?" Cordy said. "All I see are these dumb hieroglyphics or whatever."
"Right here," Willow said. "All this stuff." She started flipping pages. "These pages here are all in English, they're all about the ceremony...plus some other stuff...something called...The Path of The Goddess. It looks like the ceremony is a meditation ritual...and it has to be done on the day of the full moon."
"That's December third," Tara said. "Nine days from now. Um, none of this stuff looks likes English to me."
"Me neither," Faith said. "Because we're not meant to read it. Willow is. She's the one who has to do the ceremony to pray for the world. That's why the First tried to take her. She was the solution to the problem, she was the way for us to fight this thing, all the time. It was right here in front of us. Why the hell didn't we see it?"
Willow was reading the book. The ceremony to pray for humanity was a standard, if rather long, meditation ritual, but The Path of The Goddess was different...
"You were distracted," Rebecca said. "Think about it, Faith. The First kept coming at you all, not only attacking you but visiting you and trying to undermine your confidence too. It was keeping you off-guard, trying to make sure you didn't have time to think. Even when it gave you that three-day reprieve you told me about, it made sure you would all spend that time thinking about whether or not to take the deal it was offering. It kept you from seeing what was right in front of you."
"I don't believe it," Buffy said. "We...we can fight this thing now. There's hope. There's actually hope."
Rebecca nodded, and stood up.
"And that, Cordelia, is tactical thinking," Rebecca said, and smiled. "Any questions?"
"Okay, fine," Cordy said. "But can we at least call it something less lame? And by the way, Faith, nice work. You're completely Leader Girl."
"Thanks, Cordy," Faith said. "Wow. Y'know, it's the strangest thing. Suddenly I don't wanna push you out of a moving car. My whole world just turned upside down."
"That's progress," Cordy said.
Willow was reading the book.
She was reading about The Path of The Goddess...
...And feeling an icy claw clutch at her heart, and squeeze.
She made herself smile.
"Okay, um, I'm gonna curl up with this book and read it all the way through," Willow said. "You guys do me a favor? Make sure Annabelle...y'know. Becca, I need to read this book, and...I don't want him anywhere near her."
Rebecca nodded, and hugged her. "I understand, darling. You read the book, and let us know what you find. We'll see to Ms. Banana."
"Thank you," Willow whispered. She held on to Rebecca.
She didn't want to let go...
When she finally did let go, Tara was looking at her.
"I'll read it with you," Tara said.
"You won't be able to understand it all," Willow said. "A bunch of it's just, y'know, Willow's eyes only."
"I'm reading it with you anyway," Tara said.
Tara knew. Willow knew she knew.
"Okay," Willow said.
Willow read the book. Tara read with her. Most of the book was in English, even for Tara. Most of it was a history of the Key, and humanity's attempts over the years to use it, or hide it. But Tara couldn't read the last chapter of the book...the Path of The Goddess. That chapter was for Willow, alone.
"It scares you," Tara said.
They were sitting on the couch in the living room together with a pot of coffee.
Willow had decided she wanted Annabelle with her after all. Willow knew she would have to leave soon, and she wanted to spend every moment with Annabelle until then. Willow held Annabelle in her lap, and played with her hair, while Tara did the dinosaur jigsaw puzzle with her on the coffee table.
Athena watched over them, strong and steadfast, and beautiful in the firelight. It was the strangest sensation...sometimes, Willow could swear she felt the statue's eyes on her. She kept looking up at the statue, but she wasn't sure what she expected to find.
For her part, Athena was inscrutable. She kept her thoughts to herself.
In the last days, when the children of the Goddess have grown wicked, and Her grief overflows, She will take Her light from the world, the book said.
And then darkness will cover all lands, the kingdoms of men will fall, and the Horsemen, swift, terrible, invincible messengers of the Goddess, will carry Her wrath to every corner of the world...they will come to make an end to things.
Those blameless of Her children will be taken up to be with the Goddess, but the rest will be cast aside, prey for unclean creatures. Those who have been forsaken will lift their eyes to the blighted heavens, and lament their fate, and pray for deliverance, but She will not hear their prayers, for Her anger has grown great...Her light will be denied them. Her children shall walk in darkness.
But in those last days, one will emerge from that darkness to redeem them.
Willow knew Tara wouldn't read any of their minds without permission; Tara would have seen it as a violation of their privacy. But Tara was focused in on her mind now. Willow felt it. It wasn't an uncomfortable feeling. It felt like a warmth, in her mind...a caress. It was as if part of Tara was inside her.
Willow knew Tara didn't see her the way she saw everybody else...the way she saw Faith, or Buffy. Willow knew Tara thought of her differently...Tara was reaching out to her mind now, focusing in on her, coming as close to reading her as she could without actually reading her, because Tara thought Willow belonged to her.
They were meant to be lovers...they both knew it.
The crystal pendant Tara always wore sparkled in the firelight. It was a promise they had made to each other...and they both knew it would be fulfilled, someday.
But the Goddess will not hear the Redeemer's prayers, until the Redeemer sets out upon the Path that has been laid out for her...before the children of the Goddess can be saved, their Redeemer must walk The Path of The Goddess.
It will be a hard, treacherous path. It will task her. She will stumble, many times. She will fall into despair. No one will help her. She will be alone...
Redeemer, know that this is the path you must walk. This is the Path the Goddess has laid out for you:
You must give yourself willingly into the hands of your enemies.
"Relebation?" Annabelle said.
Willow kissed her cheek.
"Relebation," Willow said. "Look, isn't that part of the stegosaurus tail over there?"
Annabelle picked up one of the pieces, and added it to the puzzle.
For one-hundred and twenty hours, they will torment you.
They will keep you in a dark place, in chains.
Those who love you will seek high and low for you, but they will not find you. You must walk this path alone.
"Willow," Tara said. "I usually have to concentrate to read someone's thoughts, and even then I don't always get everything...it's kind of a crap shoot. But I can read emotions too, without having to concentrate...I always know how people are feeling, whether I want to or not. And when people have really intense feelings, sometimes stuff just...leaps out at me. What aren't you telling me?"
For five days and five nights, you will have no food or drink. Your thirst will not be slaked. Your mouth will be ashes. You will wither away...every moment will become an agony.
The children of the Goddess will deny you. Your enemies will bring them to you in their hundreds, and offer them a choice: to give you succor, and be cast out and hunted for daring to aid you, or to deny you, and be well fed and housed. They will deny you.
And they will scourge you. They will beat you. They will lash you. When you cry out for water, they will spit upon you.
Will you pray for them? Or will you deny them?
Willow looked up at her.
"I love you," Willow said. "That's what I'm not telling you. Because...because I'm not supposed to say it, right? But I love you, Tara."
"Oh, sweetie," Tara whispered, and hugged her, with tears in her eyes now. "My sweetie, my sweetie."
You will sit in darkness. You will be alone. Your enemies will tell you, 'See how they deny you. See how they beat you, and spit upon you, in exchange for their own comfort. So deny them. Do not redeem them. Do nothing, and this torment will be ended. You will have all the food and water you desire...we will give you everything you desire. Wealth. Power. Dominion over the whole world. Join us, and deny the children of the Goddess. The Goddess Herself has denied them. They are wicked anyway...you see how they are wicked. Let them die. Let them die, and everything you desire will be yours...'
And you will be tempted.
It can all be yours...all you need do is cast your lot with your enemies, and your torment will be ended.
Or you can stay on the path...
Not every tale has a happy ending. The ending of this tale is not written.
Only you can finish this tale. Only you can save the children of the Goddess. Only you can wash them clean.
Do you love them enough?
Do you love them enough to forgive them?
The last page of this book belongs to you. You, Willow Danielle Rosenberg, shall write it.
How will the tale end?
Willow smiled, and hugged her.
"And I love my lil' tickle belly too," Willow said, and kissed her forehead...and closed the book.
"Working theory? Had our heads up our asses," Faith said.
"The First kept throwing stuff at us," Buffy said. "Plus we all had our little personal dramas. But you know what I think it really is? We were just lazy. Sometimes you have to just do the work. We sat in there all morning and just went over everything, in order. We didn't skip stuff, we didn't cut corners, we just went over every single thing and thought it all through, and none of us ever really did that before. Standard operating procedure around here for apocalypses is we sorta pull a plan out of our asses. And rely on Giles to tell us what to do."
"We probably all needed to get over ourselves a little too," Faith said. "Too many personal dramas."
They were standing in the little room with the Italian settee and the French table and the mahogany candle stand. Angel had his bowl of pretzels on the table, and a bottle of blood.
Faith was leaning against the far wall, watching Buffy. Angel was looking into the middle distance, at nothing in particular. Buffy was looking down at the floor. She hadn't looked at Angel since they entered the room.
"How's everyone doing?" Angel said.
"Good as can be expected," Faith said.
"How's Willow?" Angel said. He looked at Buffy, then.
"Didn't much like hearing about Genevieve," Buffy said, and walked away from him. "Nice. Put a five-year old kid in a fucking closet for two years. Just what Will needed to hear with Annabelle in the house."
Angel didn't say anything.
"We don't have a plan yet," Faith said. "We know Will's gotta do the ceremony but she says it can't happen until December third."
"Full moon," Angel said, and picked up his bottle of blood, and drank some. "Cute."
"She's reading through the whole book, after she like gives us her book report we'll try to figure a plan," Faith said. "I'm betting it won't be some easy thing where she can just like hang here with that energy shield in place outside and say a quick prayer and then everything's cool again. Betting the First will find some way to come at us too, shield or no shield. When we meet again to figure a plan I want you in there."
"You sure?" Angel said. "Did okay without me today. What about Rebecca?"
"Becca doesn't like you, never will. But I'm in charge and she trusts me. You're our best fighter. I want you in on the plan."
Angel nodded. He looked at Buffy again, tried to catch her eyes. She was looking down at the little television, even though it wasn't on.
"Not gonna lie. The thing with the little kid, it hit everyone hard, Angel," Faith said. "Hearing that stuff, it threw us for a loop. Will took it real hard, she doesn't want Annabelle anywhere near you."
"Yeah," Angel said.
"But what we decided before still stands," Faith said. "The stuff you did when you didn't have your soul, it's in the past. The thing with Genevieve, you did that when you didn't have your soul. The Lehane Doctrine is still in effect. No one's gonna attack you unless you go bad. Anyone tries, they're out of the group."
Angel nodded.
"You're still leaving when this is done?" Buffy said. "Going to L.A.?"
"Assuming it's still there when this is done," Angel said.
"If it isn't there, find another place," Buffy said. "I don't want you in Sunnydale."
And she took Faith's hand, and they walked out of the room.
"Think I was bitchy at him?" Buffy said, as they walked back to their bedroom together, holding hands. "You have a soft spot for him, don't you? It's the hair."
"Nah," Faith said. "Just tryin' to see all the angles. Part of being cool and tactical is putting yourself in the bad guy's head. I try to put myself in Angel's head sometimes, 'cuz I've been tryin' to get a bead on the dude since I met him. Guy's complicated."
"Yup, and I think I've had my Angel quota for today," Buffy said, and flopped down on the bed, and kicked off her shoes. "Let's talk about uncomplicated stuff."
Faith jumped on top of her, and smiled down at her.
"Well here's something real obvious," Faith said. "Tara totally wants to boink you."
"Who? Me? Really?" Buffy said, and giggled, as Faith caressed her breasts over her blouse.
"Absolutely," Faith said, and kissed her neck.
"It's because I'm so fabulous," Buffy said, and pulled Faith's tee-shirt off.
"Actually, lover, it's because you're so scary," Faith whispered in her ear. "It kinda turns her on. Down there in that cellar before, I thought the girl was gonna cream in her pants when you were sniffin' at her."
"Are you gonna cream in your pants, baby?" Buffy whispered, and unzipped Faith's jeans.
"Maybe," Faith said, and dragged her teeth across Buffy's neck. "You gonna scare me?"
Buffy took Faith's hands in hers, and threw Faith off. Then she rolled Faith over on to her stomach, and laid down on top of her. She kissed the back of her neck, and purred in her ear.
"Think I'm scary, baby?" Buffy whispered, and took off Faith's bra, and cupped her hands under her breasts.
"Yeah," Faith whispered back.
Buffy rolled over, until she was on her side, curled up behind Faith.
"I don't want you to be scared of me, Faith," Buffy said, and kissed Faith's neck, and started rubbing her belly. "You're my baby girl."
Faith nodded. "Still scared of you sometimes anyway though," Faith said. "Not...not like in a bad way. I mean, it's a rush sometimes...it turns me on sometimes. Just...there's something about you...you're a little scary sometimes. But it's part of the package, y'know? The Buffy Summers package. You're my girl, every part of you. Every part of the package. Scary part too."
"Says the girl who totally made me her bitch yesterday," Buffy said, and licked her way down Faith's back, as she pulled Faith's jeans down to her ankles.
"You liked it, honey?" Faith whispered. She stayed perfectly still on the bed, as Buffy rolled her back on to her stomach, and pulled her panties down.
"Loved it, baby," Buffy whispered, and began kissing Faith's ass cheeks.
"You bein' a bad girl again?" Faith said.
"Absolutely," Buffy said, and began kissing and licking Faith between them, flicking her tongue back and forth across Faith's little pink star.
"Such a...bad girl," Faith moaned. "When am I gonna get to do this to you?"
"Never," Buffy said, and giggled, and started caressing Faith's clit as she licked her ass. "'Cuz I'm a bitch. Do you think it's weird that Willow wants you and Tara wants me?"
"We're gonna have a discussion about this while you're making me come? Kinda hard to organize my thoughts."
"We have some of our best conversations while we're getting each other off. And this isn't me bitching about you and Willow by the way. We're past that, baby, okay? I promise. It's just...I mean, you and Tara came pretty close to being a couple, and I know you had a thing for her. And I always had a thing for Will...and now it's like, we all switched up."
"Yeah. I just file it under 'My Life Is Fucked Up.' It's a big file. Got a lot of stuff in that file these days."
"Think maybe we should just get Will and Tara in here and boink the hell out of them and get it over with? Have like a foursome? Like, porno movie sex?"
Faith giggled. "Yeah, and then Becca walks in and catches us and I pack my things and run away to Buenos Aires."
Buffy moved up on top of Faith again, and giggled in her ear.
"Rebecca's hot," Buffy said. "Maybe I'll have her and Tara for a threesome."
"I'll kick that little butt of yours if you do."
"Will you kiss it?"
"If you let me."
"Never gonna let you. Just to be a bitch."
"You really think Becca's hot?"
"Volcanic," Buffy whispered, and sucked on Faith's earlobe, and giggled in her ear.
"Seriously, I'm curious," Faith said. "You think she's hot?"
"Yeah," Buffy said. "Um...that doesn't weird you out, does it?'
"Nah. I mean, I dig chicks now, I think some gals are hot, but I can never see Becca that way. It's just too weird. Get back down there and make me come, girl. Don't be a tease, now."
"Yes, dear," Buffy whispered, and giggled again.
She kissed her way down to Faith's ass again, and went back to licking her there, darting her tongue into Faith's little hole now, gently opening it, and stroking her clit at the same time. Faith's soft moans were a constant now.
"Gonna do that to you," Faith whispered.
"Never," Buffy said, and giggled again. "Okay, maybe when we have the foursome."
Tara slept with Willow and Annabelle that night. As Annabelle went to sleep curled up against Willow's bosom, Tara held Willow's hand under the covers, and they passed the hours looking into each other's eyes. Willow and Tara made love that night, doing nothing more than holding hands.
Willow hid her fear, as best she could. Tara was still focused in on her, without actually crossing the line of reading her thoughts. But Tara always read emotions, whether she meant to or not...Willow was sure Tara knew she was scared.
They hadn't really talked, after Willow finished the book. They had played games with Annabelle for the rest of the night instead, because Willow wanted to spend as much time with Annabelle as she could. Then it was time for Annabelle to go to bed, and Annabelle didn't like sleeping alone. And Willow didn't want Annabelle sleeping alone either. But she wanted to be with Tara too. Willow would have to leave soon...she wanted to be with Tara.
They talked now, whispering to each other in the dark, as Annabelle dreamed of blue skies and golden suns.
"You think...we can do it?" Tara said. "We can win?"
"I don't know," Willow said. "We'll have to spend tomorrow coming up with a plan. And I'm thinking the First won't just be taking the week off. The ceremony needs to be done on holy ground. We'll have to leave this place to do it...we won't have this super-duper shield to protect us. We'll need to find some place that's defensible, plus holy too. The ceremony will take a long time...maybe eight hours or so. So we'll have to find a way to hold off whatever the First throws at us while I'm doing it. And I won't be able to help, I'll be meditating. You need to learn energy shields, Tara. I showed you my spell book today, you need to start practicing shields."
"Yeah, I'll get started tomorrow," Tara said. "I've been practicing them on my own anyway, with some luck eight days will be enough for me to get good with them. You're still scared. Whatever scared you in that book, you're still scared of it."
"It's just...y'know...everything. Trying to save the world. It's a big responsibility. I guess I kinda got butterflies in my stomach."
"I haven't read your mind, sweetie," Tara said, and caressed her cheek. "I could. I could figure out exactly what you read in that book that scared you, but I haven't, because that would be...it wouldn't be right. But, sweetie...can't you just...tell me? Please?"
Willow leaned over, and kissed her.
"No," Willow said. "Wish I could, baby. But I can't."
Willow waited for Tara to sleep. It didn't take as long as it might have, because Willow had figured out how to do sleeping spells that day. She hadn't tried. The method had suddenly just...occurred to her. Tara had tried to stay awake as long as possible. Though she had kept her word, and not read Willow's mind, Tara still seemed to sense Willow's plan...she sensed something was wrong, without knowing exactly what it was. But from the moment the three of them got into the bed, Willow had been subtly affecting Tara's mind...putting her to sleep, but so slowly, and delicately, that Tara didn't notice. Tara would sleep straight through until morning and she wouldn't wake up for anything.
Once Tara was asleep, Willow stood up, took off her nightgown, and put on her clothes.
"I love you, Tara," Willow whispered, and kissed Tara's lips, and touched her hair. "Take care of my Annabelle."
Willow kissed Annabelle's cheek. "I love you, Annabelle," she whispered. "You be good for Auntie Tara, okay sweetie?"
Willow had tears in her eyes now.
Then she put Annabelle in Tara's arms, made sure they were both warm under the covers, cast a glamour around herself to disguise her scent, and walked out of the room.
As Willow passed through the energy shield that protected the mansion, she erected a shield of her own around herself. She knew how to keep it in place as she moved. The method had just...occurred to her. But the shield didn't help. She was still afraid.
The night air was cold. Her feet crunched dead autumn leaves as she walked down the street, alone. The sound echoed on the cold wind, and faded away. There were no other sounds. Walking alone down the deserted street in the dark, Willow felt like she was the last person left alive in the world.
She looked up at the sky. It was perfectly clear. The stars were bright. But the blood red moon was bright too; it marred the sky. It looked like an open wound.
Willow wondered how she would go without water for five days...she wondered if it would kill her. As a precaution, she had drunk as much water as she could tolerate that day; she had forced herself to drink more than a gallon. She had eaten a lot, too.
It was getting harder to breathe. She knew why. She was afraid. She turned the corner. Just before the mansion faded from sight, she took one last look at it. The energy shield hummed with power, and shimmered like starlight. She ignored her breathing, as best she could. She knew, intellectually, that a panic attack couldn't kill her. After she'd had the first one, a short while after Angelus had captured her, she had done some research. She was good at research. She might feel like she couldn't breathe, and her throat might even constrict as she began to panic, but her body would breathe on its own. If worse came to worse she would lose consciousness, the body's defense mechanism against suffocation. Her breathing would return to normal then. She was going to be there for five days...she would just have to ignore her fear, and her breathing, as best she could. Think about other things. There was nothing else she could do.
Willow ignored her breathing, and kept walking...
It was cold. She was dressed for it, but the cold found a way in anyway. Her hands already felt numb. The leaves crunched. The world was silent. Willow walked in the dark, past rotting bodies.
The fires had stopped, she noticed. Other than the moon, and the occasional working streetlamp, the darkness was absolute. But the fires had taken most of the town with them. Every other building she passed was a burned-out, gutted husk. There was ash, lingering on the wind.
Willow kept walking. She needed to be a good distance from the mansion, because if she wasn't, Angel or Buffy or Faith might smell the vampires, or demons, or whatever the First would send, when they came to take her.
She walked straight down the street, heading toward a little park she had always liked. And it was far enough away; eight blocks.
The First didn't appear. No vampires appeared, no demons. Willow assumed the First was aware of her plan and was waiting for her to carry it out.
Willow reached the park, too soon. She couldn't believe how quickly those eight blocks had passed. She had hoped it would take longer. But she was there, now...it was time to start.
She stood there, in the middle of the little park, by a bench under the bare, lifeless husk of a withered willow tree, and knew she would have to drop her shield, and begin...
She felt tears welling up in her eyes. She felt herself shaking. She wanted to be with Annabelle. She wanted Faith to suddenly arrive, and take her home, and protect her, and tell her everything would be okay...
"I'm afraid," Willow whispered, and sat on the bench, and started to cry. "Oh, Goddess, I'm afraid, I'm afraid."
She cried for a little while, sitting on the bench, under the dead tree in the dark, alone.
Then she stood up.
She thought of Annabelle. She had to do this for Annabelle.
She thought of Faith, facing twenty wolf vampires at the Bronze, fighting impossible odds when she could have just given Willow to them, and saved herself. Faith had nearly died.
"I'm not...I'm not brave like you, Faith," Willow whispered. "I'm just...scared. I'm scared all the time. I try to be strong but I'm scared all the time."
She remembered something Rebecca had said to Faith, once.
Being brave doesn't mean not being afraid. It means being afraid, and going on anyway.
Willow wiped her tears away. She looked down the street, and thought of Faith, running toward her, coming to save her...
But Willow knew she had to do this alone. She had to be afraid, and go on anyway.
"Hey, First Evil," Willow heard herself say. Her voice sounded weak. Feeble.
"You rang?" a voice said.
Willow turned, and saw Xander.
"Hey, cowgirl," he said. "So you read the book, huh? Learned the secret."
He had two vampires with him. They had snouts, pointed ears, and red eyes...the Vigil of Saint Vigeous.
One of the vampires carried a chain with heavy manacles at the ends.
"Yeah," Willow said.
Xander nodded. "Faith's gonna be pissed."
"Yeah," Willow said.
"You keep disobeying her orders," Xander said. "First you almost kill Angel, then you run to the Wal-Mart, now this. Sure you don't wanna reconsider?"
Willow waved her hand. Her energy shield flickered for a second, and disappeared.
She stood there, in the cold, and waited. She thought of Annabelle.
"Take her," Xander said.
The vampire with the chain moved forward. He looked at Willow, and growled. He smelled like urine. His red eyes were feral. There was nothing human in them. Willow looked away from them.
Willow's felt herself shaking now, all over; she couldn't control it.
She held out her shaking hands, and looked down at the dirt.
The vampire put the manacles on her wrists. They were heavy, and tight.
"What makes you think I'm gonna let you go after five days?" Xander said, and smiled...a smile devoid of warmth, or humanity.
Willow started to cry again.
The vampires dragged her away, into the dark.
CALL TO ARMS
Faith woke up in Buffy's arms.
She opened her eyes and looked around. She had fallen asleep curled up against Buffy's breasts, the way she loved to sleep. Buffy's body was warm against her. Buffy's arms, holding her tight, were strong. Buffy's scent was all around her, like a blanket of jasmine.
But there was another scent, now...it had awakened her...
Violets.
"Faith," Rebecca whispered.
Faith looked around again. The room was dark. But there was a soft, flickering light coming from somewhere...
Rebecca was standing outside the doorway at the other end of the room with a candle in her hand.
Faith was naked, and so was Buffy; they always slept naked together. Faith liked being able to curl up against Buffy's breasts, and to feel her legs tangled up with Buffy's. Rebecca hadn't ventured into the room, and she wouldn't be able to see them from where she was standing. Faith covered herself anyway.
"What's up?" Faith whispered, and moved her head away from Buffy's breasts as she drew the blanket over them. It had been a crazy few days, and she hadn't gotten much sleep, and as she tried to organize her thoughts her brain felt like a shopping bag with a hole in the bottom. Things kept falling out. She had to gather them up.
Buffy turned over in her sleep, curled up on her side, made that little sound she always made when she wanted to be held, and pulled Faith's arm around her.
"I want to talk to you both, in the living room," Rebecca said.
"Uh...now?" Faith said.
"Now," Rebecca said.
"Uh...okay, yeah, just...give us a minute," Faith said.
Faith felt Rebecca's smile without seeing it.
"It isn't going to be another talk about safe sex, if that's what you're worried about," Rebecca said. "Though perhaps you might look into soundproofing the walls in this room."
"Uh...perhaps," Faith said.
"Buffy knows about safe sex, doesn't she?" Rebecca said. "Does she need me to give her the safe sex talk?"
"Uh...no, don't think so," Faith said. "You gonna torture me much longer?"
"Well it is rather amusing. Unfortunately, the world's ending so I suppose not. The living room in five minutes."
"Wait," Faith said, squinting into the darkness. "Is that a Hello Kitty nightgown? Why you wearin' a Hello Kitty nightgown?"
Rebecca sighed, and walked away.
As Rebecca walked back down the hallway, Faith kissed Buffy's neck.
"Hey beautiful," she whispered in Buffy's ear. "We gotta get up."
Buffy shook her head, and held Faith's hand against her breasts, over her heart.
"You're my lazy girl, huh honey?" Faith whispered.
Buffy nodded. She turned over, and curled up against Faith, and rubbed her feet against Faith's under the covers.
"How come you're such a lazy girl?" Faith said, and kissed her forehead.
"Mmmm...always wanna sleep with my baby," Buffy whispered.
"We gotta get up, my love," Faith whispered.
Buffy shook her head again.
"Why we gotta get up?" Buffy whispered.
"Becca wants to talk to us, sounds important," Faith said.
Buffy sat up, and stretched, and yawned.
"Did she say what?" Buffy said.
"Nope," Faith said. "But she had that sound in her voice. It's important. Like, time to roll up our sleeves important."
"I'm sorry about what I said to her, Faith...how I raised my voice when we were talking about Angel."
"Water under the bridge. You've had it rough lately, honey. You're still tryin' to roll with the punches. Still gettin' acclimated."
Buffy kissed her.
"Rebecca's important to you, so she's important to me," Buffy said. "I won't ever be a bitch to her again. Not ever. Okay?"
Faith laid Buffy back down on the bed, and pinned her wrists. She giggled, and kissed Buffy's nose.
"You're always gonna be my lazy girl though, huh?" Faith said.
"Forever, baby," Buffy whispered.
Five minutes later, Buffy and Faith plodded into the living room in their nightgowns and bare feet, and squinted up at the light. Rebecca smiled at them. She was sitting on the couch, wearing a yellow Hello Kitty nightgown Willow had lent her, and holding a pot of coffee.
The television was on. It was saying something about an organized resistance in London.
"Is that coffee?" Buffy said.
"Yes, and you look like you need it," Rebecca said. "A little cream, two sugars?"
"Yeah."
Rebecca poured Buffy a cup of coffee, added cream and sugar, and gestured to the couch. She made a cup for Faith too, the way Faith liked it, and handed it to her. The three of them sat on the couch together, sipping coffee.
"What's going on in London?" Buffy said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and squinting at the television.
"Have a listen, girls," Rebecca said. "It's rather more interesting than the cartoon about the yellow people."
"Haven't really looked at the TV," Faith said. "News is always too depressing."
As Buffy and Faith watched, it looked like they were seeing a riot. CNN was showing an aerial view of London's East End, with the caption Resistance in London displayed at the bottom of the screen. For blocks, people were fighting: thousands of people. They weren't wearing uniforms...they weren't military. They were armed with guns, knives, clubs, spears, pipes...a few were armed with flamethrowers. Buffy and Faith both leaned forward and squinted at the television. it was hard to make out details...but some of the people in the frenzied mob didn't seem quite right...it was the way they moved. They moved too fast...
"Vampires," Buffy said.
The people with the weapons were fighting vampires. Faith did a rough count. The vampires were outnumbered at least ten to one.
"Those people out there are fightin' vampires," Faith said. "And they're winning."
"Resistance," Rebecca said. "Finally."
"Wait...people are fighting this?" Buffy said. "Really?"
"Yes," Rebecca said. "Not just in London. All over the world. There are reports now of organized resistance in Kyoto, Detroit, Houston, Leningrad, Capetown, Athens, Milan, Beijing, Nepal, Tel Aviv...people have started fighting back. I wonder how much longer the news will be broadcasting though. Now that people can see other people resisting all over the world, it's no longer to the First's advantage to allow the television networks to keep broadcasting. I believe CNN is broadcasting from a government bunker now, but I expect the First to direct its vampires to begin focusing soon on any reporters and camera crews they see out there."
"Does this resistance mean like, the governments are all finally gettin' off their butts all over the world?" Faith said.
"No, not generally," Rebecca said. "In England the military has been deployed, armed with flamethrowers, and also the Royal Family apparently went on the air sometime yesterday and rallied people to fight. But the British Isles have an advantage of geography, they're isolated. England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, if they coordinate their efforts, might actually be able to turn the trick and eradicate all the vampires and demons on their soil. But everywhere else, governments are still laying low. These are citizen uprisings, by and large...and they've all just started over the last few days. But, as gratifying as it is to see, that isn't what I want to talk to the two of you about."
Rebecca picked up the remote, and shut off the television.
"Those brave people fighting back around the world aren't the key to winning this war," Rebecca said. "We are. And as much as I wish we could all go out there and help, maybe save some people, maybe give them sanctuary here, that would be the wrong move. The resistance we're seeing all over the world might make some headway for awhile but it's ultimately doomed to fail. Without the sun, the human race will die. Our only chance--the world's only chance--is to perform that ceremony on December third. I'm assuming the First will try to stop the ceremony, and we'll have to be there to hold the line. Until then we can't risk ourselves in pointless skirmishes, no matter how many lives we might be able to save in the short term. We have to think in the long view. Until the day of the ceremony, none of us can leave this house. We'll rest up here, and make plans. Then on December third, we'll come out fighting."
"Okay, so this isn't the safe sex talk then," Faith said. "Just checkin'."
"No," Rebecca said. "I wanted to talk to you both about that book Willow's reading. I can't escape the feeling that there's something dodgy about the whole situation, and I simply couldn't sleep for thinking about it. And if I'm not going to be able to get any bloody sleep I thought I'd share the misery. So wake up and put your thinking caps on, girls."
"Your hair's perfect," Buffy said. "It's like, Angel perfect. You look like you're going out on a date. How do you do that?"
Buffy's hair was sticking out on one side like it had gotten caught in an electric socket, and it was crushed against her head on the other side like someone had stapled it there.
"Becca's round-the-clock fab," Faith said. "Middle of the night, first thing in the morning, doesn't matter. Always looks like she just stepped out of a Maybelline commercial. Stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago."
"Um...wait. You're wearing a Hello Kitty nightgown," Buffy said. "Are you aware that you're wearing a Hello Kitty nightgown?"
Rebecca frowned. "Yes, since I only have the clothes on my back Willow graciously lent me a few of her outfits. It was either this or the cow pajamas."
Buffy smiled. Rebecca kept frowning.
"The Hello Kitty look totally works on you," Buffy said. "Cuteness. Cuteness is totally your thing. You're like, the cutest English person ever."
"Yes, I'm sure," Rebecca said. "Now, about that book."
"You are so cute right now I just wanna pinch your cheeks. I have like this uncontrollable urge to just pinch your cheeks."
"I'd control that urge, Buffy, if I were you."
"Oooh! Did Willow lend you her reindeer sweater? You'd look awesome in the reindeer sweater. Plus maybe her pink sneakers..."
Rebecca sighed. Faith grinned and rubbed her shoulder.
"Gonna hook you up with some of my duds, Becca," Faith said. "Make you all sexy. So what about the book?"
"It just seems strange that we're taking everything it says at face value," Rebecca said. "Think about it. What do we really know about it?"
"Wait, so you're sayin' maybe Will's not supposed to be the one who does the ceremony?" Faith said.
"I'm not saying that," Rebecca said. "Someone has to perform the ceremony, that much can be confirmed in Cultes des Goules, a book I'm very familiar with and which I trust. And the fact that the First tried to take Willow, twice, is obviously a clue that she's special, that she's important to all this, that she can hurt the First. It makes sense that Willow would be the one to perform the ceremony."
"Plus she saw the symbols as English when she looked at the book," Faith said. "The rest of us couldn't make them out at all."
"That's true," Rebecca said. "But where did the book come from? Where did Giles get it? Why did he lie about it? If it came from the Council they'd have had some information about it at least, its origins, how they acquired it, but it didn't come from the Council and we know nothing at all about the book. Yes, Willow is important in all this. But it wouldn't be hard for someone to fake the book. Its age hasn't been verified, for all we know it was slapped together last week. And magical symbols that are keyed to be read by a specific person are rare, but not unheard of. There are witches out there who specialize in that sort of thing. One of them could have written that book."
"Yeah but...I mean, we're always getting stuff out of books," Buffy said. "Kinda like standard operating procedure around here. Bad stuff happens, Giles finds a gross skin book, it tells us what to do, we do it. If we're gonna start not trusting all the gross books then things are gonna get complicated."
"I would assume those books all came from the Council," Rebecca said. "I had a look through Giles' books today, all the books he had with him here with the exception of the one Willow read are standard texts from the Council archives. You can trust them, they've been verified by our researchers and have served us in good stead, some of them for millennia. But the book Willow read is new, I've never heard of it. Think about this. The book was written for Willow specifically to read, and Willow is the person the First most wants to get its hands on. If the book tells Willow she should jump off a bridge, do we let her?"
"Well...Giles brought it to us, and yeah, okay, he was acting kinda shifty," Buffy said. "But nothing that crossed the line into like, evilness. He wanted to stop this thing as much as we did. And I mean, if he wanted to help the bad guys win it was a pretty dumb move to get me and Faith involved in the first place, right? If it weren't for Giles telling me the Key had been stolen I wouldn't have even known any of this was going on. The world would have ended while I was doing my trig homework."
"Yes, you make a good point, Buffy," Rebecca said. "I'm not saying Giles was somehow trying to trick you. And I'm also not saying we should take what the book says with a grain of salt. But once Willow tells us what she's read in there tomorrow, we'll need to go into this with our eyes open."
"These dudes are pissin' me off," Forrest growled.
"What part pissed you off?" Riley said. "The fact that they're a bunch of demons or the fact that they're standing right outside like they own the frigging place?"
Riley, Forrest, Sam and Graham stood around Maggie Walsh's desk on the lower floor of the Initiative's sprawling complex a quarter mile beneath UC Sunnydale, looking up at the giant bank of monitors that received video feeds from hundreds of cameras hidden around the university. There were demons on the monitors. The demons--eighty-six of them by Riley's count--had taken up positions around the campus. They had a roughly humanoid physique, but their thick hides were covered in scales, and they each had distinctive patterns of coloring, like snakes. Their heads were humanoid in shape, but hairless, with red eyes like tiny sparkling rubies spaced very far apart on their skulls, hardly any nose to speak of, but rather a slight, scaly, mucous-covered protuberance in the middle of their faces, and mouths full of small, sharp fangs, with long, forked tongues. Their necks flared out around their heads like a cobra's hood.
Riley thought they looked tough enough already, so he could've done without the bone skewers the demons had extending from their arms. They held the skewers ready like swords as they stood watch, waiting.
Riley was waiting too. And he was tired of waiting. So were his men. They loitered around the monitor bank like hawks penned up in a chicken coop, more than two-hundred of them, plenty enough to give the demons a good fight, if Professor Walsh would have let them, glaring at the video feeds and guzzling coffee and marching around muttering to themselves as they checked their guns. The Initiative's research staff--scientists and doctors who didn't like guns very much, and didn't like soldiers very much either, and who were outnumbered by the soldiers five to one--were watching them with growing apprehension.
They felt it, and Maggie felt it too--a confrontation was coming. It was inevitable. The soldiers had been stuck down there for more than a week now while they watched the world go to hell up above; they had lost touch with their families. They wanted to fight. They wanted to kill something, and the demons outside made perfect candidates. The demons inside--the ones the Initiative had gone to great lengths to capture over the past year--also made perfect candidates, and even though it almost broke her heart to do it, after all the effort they had gone through to capture them, Maggie had allowed the soldiers to kill them all a few days before. Directly behind Maggie, Riley stood rigid as a stone, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes fixed on the monitors. She was depending on him: the soldiers respected Riley, and she needed Riley to keep them in check. But Maggie could feel the tension in him, that riptide inside him that was pulling him in two different directions, pulling him apart...
Riley kept opening and closing his fist, as he watched the demons on the monitors. His knuckles cracked.
"Polgara demons," Maggie said. "The bone skewers make them formidable but there's no way they can get in here."
"Unless they know the passcode," Graham said.
"Dude, why did you have to say that?" Forrest said. "And can we maybe change the channel? Gettin' tired of lookin' at these ugly snake dudes. Maybe put the news back on. Detroit, Houston, London, Leningrad...looks like some folks are finally fighting back up there."
"They are," Sam said. "And we're sitting here doing our nails. How long have those demon assholes been out there now?"
"Fifty-one hours seventeen minutes," Maggie said, and finished her coffee, and poured herself another, black. There was a pot on the desk and a lot more where that came from in the lab. She had been practically living on the stuff since everything had gone to hell up there, and unfortunately, the coffee was lousy. And the really sad thing was that she had just been about to requisition a new shipment of gourmet coffee grounds from a different supplier the military had started using and word was that coffee was supposed to be amazing. Then the world ended.
But at least the coffee tasted better to her now than it had a week ago. If she stayed there for a few more years, Maggie thought it might actually taste good. Though with any luck, they'd all die before then.
"And our plan is, we're gonna sit here," Riley said, and went on cracking his knuckles. "Because some suit in Washington, never been a soldier, never been in combat, never fought for shit, said so. We've all seen the news, there's a resistance forming up there. Government ain't doin' shit so people are picking up weapons and taking the fight to the vampires themselves. We should be up there helping them."
"Those people are taking massive casualties," Maggie said. "Yes, it's a wonderful, glorious, heroic battle their fighting. But it's a losing battle and by and large they're getting slaughtered. If you go out there you'll be slaughtered too. The government's going to fight back, we're going to fight back, but you have to give the President and the Joint Chiefs time to formulate a plan so all branches of the military, including us, can coordinate. Those demons outside can't get in here, Captain. And you have your orders, and you're going to follow them. You and your friends already went AWOL once. Try a stunt like that again and the four of you will be stripped of your rank and court-martialed."
Sam chuckled. "Yeah. Better not get court-martialed. What'll happen to my pension?"
"The demons aren't trying to get in," Riley said. "They're trying to keep us in."
"Gettin' kinda old, bein' cooped up in here, Cap," Forrest said. "Gettin' real played out, just standin' around lookin' at those ugly bastards out there. Look at 'em. They think we're nothin'. They're fuckin' laughin' at us out there."
"Yeah," Riley said. "Know what might be nice? To go out and stretch our legs a bit. Maybe get a little exercise."
Behind him, the soldiers grunted their approval.
"Heard that," someone said.
"Fuck yeah," another one said.
"We scared of demons all of a sudden?" another one said. "We're the fucking Initiative. We crack demon skulls."
They were getting surly now. It was getting out of control. It was obvious the demons were trying to keep them inside, though Maggie had no idea why those demons were bothering to stand guard over two-hundred and sixteen soldiers and forty-two scientists. And if those demons wanted to keep them inside, then standing guard outside was the worst thing the demons could have possibly done. If the demons had never showed up at all, the soldiers might have stayed quiet. Standing out there now, the demons were inviting a confrontation. Maggie knew she had to do something, if Riley wouldn't.
She stood up, and faced the soldiers.
"Listen to me!" she shouted. "You are United States Marines and you will follow your goddamned orders. We've all been ordered to stay here until further notice and that's exactly what we're going to do. This isn't fun. We'd all rather be someplace else. You think I don't have a family? You think I don't want to go to them? You think I like this frigging coffee? But this isn't about what I'd like, and it isn't about what you'd like either. It's about following orders and doing our duty. Anyone tries to leave, don't bother coming back. You won't be allowed in."
She turned back to Riley.
"There's nothing you can do out there, Captain Finn," she said. "The whole world's overrun, those people fighting out there might win a few minor battles but they'll lose in the end, and two-hundred and sixteen soldiers won't make a bit of difference. And you know it."
Riley looked up at the monitors, and cracked his knuckles.
"Those demons trying to keep us in here don't seem to know it though," he said.
Willow laid on her side on the cold floor in the back of the van, blindfolded, and in chains. They had connected the manacles holding her wrists to another chain on the floor; she couldn't move her arms at all now. And they had put something around her neck...she didn't know what it was.
Willow didn't know where they were taking her. But she knew what they would do...the book had told her that...
The van smelled like a carcass. Willow didn't have a Slayer's nose, but these vampires, the Vigil of Saint Vigeous, stank. At least two of the vampires were very close to her, and they kept their claws on her, and they smelled like they didn't ever bathe. She heard them snarling sometimes, close to her ear, but other than that, the van was quiet. She had killed a lot of vampires over the past week; Willow assumed they wanted to stay close to her because they were worried she might start casting spells. But she wasn't going to cast any spells...she couldn't. For one thing, her hands were chained, and she needed her hands to cast most spells. And she had to go through with this...the book told her she had to...
From her vantage point on the floor, Willow heard the road rushing past beneath her, felt every lurch, every bounce, every bump. She concentrated on her breathing, trying to keep herself calm. She thought of Annabelle...the way Annabelle laughed when she tickled her...
Someone laughed. It wasn't one of the vampires.
It was a man...it felt like he was right next to her.
"Yeah, so, I just gotta tell you this, Willow," a voice said...
Willow recognized the voice. Angelus.
He couldn't touch her. It wasn't really him. It was the First, taking his shape...Willow reminded herself of that. Made herself repeat it, over and over again in her mind.
It wasn't really him. He couldn't really touch her. She concentrated on her breathing.
"I mean, I just cannot contain myself here!" he said, still laughing. "I just gotta tell someone!"
He leaned in close to her. She felt it, somehow, even though he couldn't touch her...she felt it in her stomach.
"The book was a fake," Angelus whispered.
He waited for a reaction. The First was acting just like Angelus always had, Willow thought. All Angelus really was, was the effect he had on people. He had told her that, when he kidnapped her and made Drusilla rape her mind. He craved her reaction, needed it.
Willow didn't give it to him. She knew he was lying anyway. All the First ever did was lie...all Angelus ever did was lie. She laid motionless, felt the van's metal floor, dirty and cold against her cheek, heard the road rushing by beneath her...and concentrated on her breathing...
"Rebecca's wondering about that right now," Angelus said. "She's pretty smart for an English lady. Hot too. Great gams. She doesn't know you're gone yet, and boy, is she gonna be pissed when she finds out. Sad thing is, if you had just given her a little more time, she would've told you the book might be a fake, and that you all need to be cautious. But nope, good old predictable Willow had to go off on her own and do something stupid again. Dumbest smart girl I ever met. And it's awesome! Don't ever change, darlin'."
"Don't believe you," Willow said.
"Come on! Would I lie to you? After everything we've been through together?"
"All you do is lie."
"Okay, smart girl, how's this. I'll explain my whole dastardly plan, and you just try to keep up. There's one thing Angel forgot to tell you, one part of the conversation I had with him that he didn't mention when he first talked to you guys about me. I told him I can see the future. Not as well as Dru can, I can only see it in flashes. I have a general sense of how certain things might go. Case in point, how I told Mr. Mopey that one day either Buffy or Faith would kill him. Maybe that's why he never mentioned that I can see the future. He didn't like the context."
"You still talk a lot. Don't you...don't you ever get tired of listening to yourself?"
"Nope! And if you weren't pissing your panties right now the brave front might be more convincing. I can smell the fear on you, strawberry girl. If you only knew how much Angel wanted to fuck that sweet little ass of yours, even when he had his soul...but I'm getting off-topic. So, okay, try to follow this logic. I wanted to capture you..."
"Which means the book isn't a fake. I am the one who has to pray for the world. Or else why would you wanna capture me?"
"You're right, you are the one who was supposed to pray for the world, so I wanted to capture you. But, being able to see the future, because I'm so awesome, I knew in advance that you were gonna escape me. I also knew that sooner or later, Faith was gonna get her head out of her ass and figure out what's going on. Why do you think I went at her so hard? The thing with her Dad, that was me trying to take Faith off the board. Gotta admit, I didn't see Hot Legs Rebecca coming, that was out of left field. She almost ruined things...like I said, if you just gave her a little more time, she would've prevented this. So I knew you were gonna escape me, but what could I do? Well...there was this book my priests had found...the book you've been reading. And you're absolutely right, strawberry. Part of that book was written for your eyes only. Those mystical letters, they aren't some hack wizard's work. One of my priests was pretty good with magic and he was pulling his hair out trying to read them. Which is why we didn't know that you were the one who was supposed to pray for humanity until a couple of weeks ago, or we would've grabbed you sooner. We never did manage to read what those mystical letters say, they really are meant for you alone. But once we found out you have to pray for humanity, we could guess what they said. We knew the prayer is some long bullshit magic ritual, blah blah blah, boring. But the book conveniently had a bunch of blank pages at the end. So...I had my priest add some stuff."
Willow felt her heart stop. Angelus laughed again.
"Lightbulb's finally going on now?" he said. "Yup, you were supposed to pray for humanity. But that's it. The book must have the magic ritual in there, that's the stuff with the secret letters. But this whole Path of The Goddess thing, this whole thing where you have to give yourself up to me, and be tortured? We wrote that part."
"You're...you're lying," Willow whispered, and felt tears welling up in her eyes...and she winced, as one of the vampires grabbed her by the hair, and the other one wrapped a rough claw around her neck.
"Afraid not, cutie. Think about it. I was having the damnedest time getting my hands on you. You trust the book, because, well, you're just smart enough to be dumb and you'll believe anything some bullshit magic book says. So what better way to guarantee I'll capture you than convincing you to turn yourself over to me? 'Redeemer, know that this is the path you must walk. This is the Path the Goddess has laid out for you: you must give yourself willingly into the hands of your enemies.' Sound familiar? After that it was just a matter of arranging for the book to fall into your hands...that took some doing, and it was short notice too, we only had like two days to arrange this whole thing. But seeing the future came in handy. I found a guy who knew a guy who knew a wizard who's always in the market for rare magic books, and I knew that wizard would pass the book on to my old pal Jeeves, though I didn't know exactly why." He chuckled. "Speaking of fake-outs..."
"I don't...don't believe you," Willow whispered.
"Sure you do, strawberry. Y'know, you've got all these Faith memories now, but that doesn't make you Faith. She's got a better head for this stuff than you. She never would've run off half-cocked like this, she never would've been such a fucking sap. A few hours from now Becky Boop's gonna notice that the magic letters in the Path of The Goddess part of the book are a little different than the other magic letters...they're just standard magic characters that any witch, or defrocked priest sorcerer guy, could write. They don't match up to the other letters. Because they were added in, by us. The five days of being tortured, all that stuff, that was all me comin' up with crazy Biblical type stuff, it just felt right. Actually some of the writing was kinda amateurish, I thought...that whole part where it's like, 'The last page of this book belongs to you. You, Willow Danielle Rosenberg, shall write it,' that sounded really over the top and lame to me, especially putting your name in there. It's hard to get just the right pompous tone without going overboard, there's an art to these kinds of books, y'know? But we needed you to be convinced that this was definitely all about you. And you sure fell for it! For a bookworm geek you're not much of a literary critic."
Willow just shook her head. Angelus saw the tears running down her cheeks now.
"So anyway, kind of a good news bad news thing here," Angelus said. "Good news is, you're not gonna have to go through that whole five days of torture thing I made up. Bad news is, I'm just gonna kill you instead. And this time no one's gonna be coming to your rescue. The chain around your neck? Nifty little doodad called a talisman of Ikonn. Prevents locator spells from detecting you. Once we get where we're going, we'll just pick up where we left off with that ceremony we were using to soften you up last time we had you, and then, hasta la vista, baby! But hey, I'll miss you, Willow. I never got to fuck you. It's really kind of a shame."
"You said...said...you wouldn't," Willow whispered. The vampire holding her by the hair kept her still. The one with his claw around her neck squeezed a little tighter. She wouldn't be able to erect an energy shield around herself while they were in contact with her. There was nothing she could do...she was helpless.
Willow was sobbing now. "You said...you wanted us alive."
"Yeah, but that was when I was Buffy," Angelus said. "Girls can be so frigging emotional. Plus I was hoping maybe you guys would take my deal. That ship's sailed now. With Becky of the glorious gams running you guys, you're all gonna fight until there's nothing left to fight for. Dumb. But once you're dead I'll probably leave your pals alone though. For one thing, without you, that's the ballgame. The world can't be saved if you aren't here to pray for it. But mostly I'll leave your pals alone because I'm really looking forward to watching them trying to cope with my new world. I bet Buffy will do her big martyr routine. Who knows, maybe she'll find a nice warm bathtub somewhere and try to cut herself open again. That would be fun to watch. Anyway, I'm gonna take off for awhile. Long car trips bore me, and I've got some demons that need looking after. Time for you to take a nap."
One of the vampires forced a vial between Willow's lips. Willow screamed, as the warm, sludgy liquid filled her mouth, and a claw under her chin held her mouth closed, while another claw squeezed her nose, forcing her to swallow it...it tasted like bile.
"And that's that," Willow heard Angelus say, as she felt everything starting to spin around, and her limbs becoming numb. "Game over. The world ends, because of you. But don't worry, it won't hurt when we kill you. You're gonna sleep right through it, darlin'."
Willow felt herself spiraling down...she felt like everything was bleeding out of her. She drooled on the cold metal floor, and tried to move, and couldn't.
"I'll tell Annabelle you said hi," Angelus whispered in her ear, and laughed again...and then there were no more sounds.
When Buffy woke up on the couch in the living room, she found herself curled up against Rebecca's shoulder, with Rebecca's arm around her.
Buffy didn't remember exactly when they had fallen asleep, but the three of them had spent hours going over everything again, and they were all tired. They had gone over every single thing that happened since the day Giles had first told her and Willow and Xander about the Horsemen, and the Key, in the library at school...it seemed like a lifetime ago now. Laughing in the library with Xander, thinking of it as a game, not taking it seriously, assuming Giles would find their answers for them, that it would all work out somehow, that they would find a way to win, because that's what they always did...it all seemed like someone else's life.
They had gone over everything again, because Rebecca still thought there was something they might have overlooked...and, inevitably, the conversation had turned to the people they had lost. Buffy had talked about Xander, and Giles...and her mother. She hadn't meant to. It just... spilled out of her.
And then Faith had talked about that terrible night in the Prudential building, when she had lost Rebecca, and her whole world with her...and then she had to let Evan go, too...and she had thought she would always be alone.
It was late, and none of them had slept much, and it just seemed like the right time to talk about these things...the things they never talked about. Buffy hadn't been allowing herself to think much about Xander, or Giles, or her mother...it was too hard, and it hurt too much, and she needed to focus. But she let herself think about them when she talked to Rebecca...
Faith fell asleep first, curled up in Rebecca's lap. Rebecca pulled the quilt over her, and stroked her hair. But Buffy and Rebecca had stayed up for awhile longer, talking quietly.
Buffy had talked about losing Angel, when he went bad...and she had even talked about her father, too. When things had fallen apart out there, Buffy hadn't bothered to check on her father, to find out if he was okay. She wasn't sure if he even still lived in Los Angeles, anyway. And then Rebecca had talked about her own father...how she had lost him to alcoholism, and his own weakness, when she was only a little girl. How he had never been there for her, and how she saw him sometimes, drunk, stumbling out of some pub, or lying in the gutter. She had cut him out of her life, because he had cut her out of his life. Because he had never loved her.
And then Rebecca had looked at Buffy, focusing in on her with those deep, dark, seemingly endless blue eyes...and smiled.
"It would seem the two of us share some common ground after all, Buffy, besides the obvious," Rebecca had said, as she ran her fingers through Faith's hair. "We're both rather stubborn, for one thing. For another, neither of us have much use for arseholes."
They laughed. Buffy got a fire going in the fireplace again. And they went on talking quietly, as Faith slept, and the fire crackled, filling the room with a warm golden light...
Sometime later, Rebecca talked about watching her boyfriend Trevor die, in the Prudential building...she talked about the day she got the news that Oliver had died, killed by vampires at the Reading Festival...along with Gwendolyn.
Rebecca cried, as she talked about Gwendolyn. And then Buffy cried too...it was late, and neither of them had slept much, and it all just seemed to spill out of them...
Buffy and Rebecca cried together, for all the people they had lost. And then, at some point, they fell asleep on the couch.
Rebecca and Faith were still asleep now. Faith was still curled up in Rebecca's lap, under the quilt.
As Buffy focused in on her senses, she smelled rotten meat...
Faith's head suddenly shot up out of Rebecca's lap. Her body suddenly taut, all her muscles tensed, Faith reached out with her senses...she sniffed the air.
Buffy heard Faith's stomach rumbling, as Faith caught the scent...it was the beginning of a growl. Instantly, Faith got her legs underneath her, bent forward, and crouched like a cat, ready to spring.
"Buffy," Angel said.
Angel was standing in the doorway. Buffy watched Faith. The rumbling sound in Faith's stomach was louder, now. She was looking Angel in the eyes. She remained crouched beside Rebecca, ready to leap, like a cat stalking a mouse. It was a big living room; Angel was thirty feet away. But Buffy knew Faith could clear the entire room in a single jump and be on Angel in a second. Faith's legs were quivering. Buffy knew she wanted to spring...
"Faith," Buffy said, and took her hand. "Baby, it's okay."
Faith growled.
"Faith," Rebecca said, and put her hand on Faith's shoulder. Faith stopped growling.
Rebecca stood up. Buffy and Faith stood up with her.
"What do you want, Angel?" Rebecca said.
"We have a problem," Angel said.
The First stood by the altar, set up now in the stockroom of a supermarket in Pasadena, in Angelus' skin, looking down at Willow. Willow was unconscious, naked and cold on the black stone; her body was covered with goosebumps. The First had made its vampires transport the altar, a six-ton block of stone cut from a meteor, all the way from Sunnydale, because everything had to be just right for the ceremony. The stone was decorated with strange symbols, and inscribed with words in a language that existed before humanity, all freshly painted a few hours before in blood. Willow's abdomen was painted with that same blood, in the shape of an ouroboros, a mystic symbol of death and rebirth, endings and beginnings. With Willow's death, there would be a new beginning for the world: Angelus was going to see to it.
The stockroom didn't have much in the way of ambience. The overhead lights were annoying. Angelus wondered why he had picked the supermarket. A church, or a tomb, would have been better. But for some reason, this place just seemed...right.
The long silver dagger that laid between Willow's naked breasts glimmered in the light.
Willow's breathing was shallow, and her heartbeat was slow. The drug had done its work well. This time, Willow had been given a double dose. Angelus had no idea how Willow had awakened the last time she was drugged and lying naked on this altar, but she wouldn't be waking up this time.
The ceremony was done. The Powers' hold was temporarily broken, their protection gone. Willow could be killed now.
Angelus looked down at Willow Rosenberg...looked down at the world's last hope, naked and helpless before him. He had always thought there was something special about her... something he couldn't quite put his finger on. But, seeing her now, she just looked like a girl. Just the latest in a long line of them...he remembered all their faces. He remembered every hunt... he cherished those memories.
The hunt would last awhile...he always played with them for awhile. But in the end, the hunt always ended this way. The girl, whoever she was that day, naked and helpless before him.
Angelus wished he could touch Willow...he wished he could rape her.
The First melted, changed...to Xander.
Xander looked down at Willow. His vampires, sixty members of the Vigil of Saint Vigeous, stood around him in their ceremonial robes.
It was done...Willow could be killed now...
"It is done, most high," one of the vampires said, and bowed to him.
"Yeah," Xander said. "I know."
The vampire took the dagger from Willow's breasts, and held it above her heart.
Xander knew Angel had just found out Willow was gone. They hadn't even had time to start looking for her yet. They wouldn't be able to anyway. Demons were heading for the mansion. With Willow dead, that energy shield would fall...Xander was certain Willow hadn't created the shield, but it was obviously meant to protect her. She wasn't supposed to leave that haven until December third, when she would pray for the world. Now, once she died and the shield fell, the demons would invade the mansion, and either kill or capture everyone there.
There was no reason to leave any of them alive, really. With Willow dead, what was the point? But Xander thought he might like to leave Buffy alive.
Xander knew it was over. He had won. It didn't feel the way he had thought it would.
He looked down at Willow...and remembered her touch. The way she laughed, too loud... the kindness in her eyes. He remembered the night they both got drunk on Cosmopolitans and Willow had nearly started a nuclear war between France and China when she hacked into France's military computers on a dare. They had watched that Matthew Broderick movie; that's what gave them the idea.
He remembered her smile, the night she knocked on his basement window at four in the morning, silhouetted by the moon, and he realized he loved her...he remembered the light in her eyes, as she stood by the window in Cordy's room, in the sunlight, and he told her.
Standing there in Xander's skin, the First had his memories...and it seemed strange to the First at that moment, that Xander had never realized the obvious, had never seen what was right in front of him. Willow was in love with Faith. She had been, from the moment she met her. It had just taken her awhile to realize it. All those times she dragged Faith out to the Starbucks, or hung around with her in her motel room, or took her to the Bronze, or tagged along when Faith went on patrols, Willow was realizing it. Sometimes Faith wouldn't talk much, but Willow didn't care. Willow just wanted to be close to her.
The day Willow and Xander had started dating, the day they told each other they loved each other, was also the day Willow met Faith for the first time. From that first day, until the day Xander died, Willow had actually spent more time with Faith than she had with Xander.
It hurt, the First realized. Willow had cared about Xander too, even loved him. But she had loved Faith more. And it hurt him. The First thought it was ironic, that in this moment of triumph, he should feel pain.
The First thought Xander would have let Willow go and be with Faith, if Xander thought it would have made her happy. If he had only known...if he'd only had more time. But as much as he loved her, Xander didn't really know her, the First realized. Xander loved a memory of Willow...an idea of Willow. But Willow had changed, grown...she had grown past him.
It was the reason Xander had broken up with her that last day, the First knew...because he had realized Willow couldn't be happy with him. He would just be holding her back...
The First felt trapped in Xander, tangled up...these feelings, these regrets, they were like chains, binding him, keeping him from acting, weighing him down...he needed to abandon Xander, become Angelus again. He needed to stop thinking about things that didn't matter.
He needed to become Angelus again. The First knew that was exactly what he needed to do now.
"Light-bringer, stretch out your hand, and take this offering," the vampire said, and raised the dagger for the killing stroke...
Xander remembered her smile, the night she knocked on his basement window at four in the morning, silhouetted by the moon, and he realized he loved her.
"Stop," Xander said.
The soldiers were getting worse by the second. Maggie realized she wouldn't be able to control them. A lot of them were talking out loud about leaving now, getting themselves worked up, not caring that it was a direct violation of their orders, that it was insubordination, while Riley just stood there like a statue, with his friends Sam and Graham and Forrest beside him, looking up at the monitor screens, cracking his knuckles, and weighing his options...
The fury that had been simmering beneath the surface of these soldiers as they remained cooped up down there for more than a week now, watching impotently as their world fell apart up above, as the people they loved died, was finally boiling over...
"Fuck this!" a soldier shouted. "I say we leave! I say we go out there and fight!"
"We scared of them? We can take those motherfuckers!" another soldier shouted.
"We're going!" a third soldier shouted. "Who's with me? Who wants to crack some skulls?"
Maggie knew she had lost them.
Soldiers started collecting their gear, and heading for the door...
Sam, Graham and Forrest didn't cheer. They didn't speak, or move. They watched Riley.
"No one's doin' shit," Riley said.
Riley didn't shout. He didn't have to.
The soldiers, every last one of them, stopped moving. They watched Riley.
Riley watched the monitors, and cracked his knuckles.
The soldiers waited. Maggie waited. This, right now: this was why she had chosen him. This was the reason he could be her Super Soldier...not his physical prowess, not his combat skills, not his keen intellect, not his gift for tactical thinking. This. This moment.
Riley turned to the soldiers. He took his time, looking at them. He met their eyes, before he spoke again.
"We go when I say, and where I say," Riley said. "As of now, Professor Walsh has been relieved of command. Washington's burning, the government's hiding out in some bunker somewhere and they're not even trying to fight this thing. They're leaving people to die up there, they're abandoning people up there, and it isn't right. The government's job, the military's job, our job, is to protect people. And we're gonna start doing our goddamned jobs. People have started fighting back up there and we're gonna help. But we gotta be smart about it. So I'm making all the decisions from now on. Anybody got a problem with that? Speak up now, so I can get the ass kickings outta the way."
Everyone was quiet.
"I have a problem with it," Maggie said.
"Thought you might," Riley said, and turned to her, and smiled. "I'm not gonna put you in the brig or anything. What I am gonna do is politely ask you and the eggheads to maybe spend a little time trying to come up with ways to get the world out of this, instead of sitting on your asses watching the monitors and drinking coffee."
He turned again, and looked at the research staff. The researchers were all huddled together in one corner of the room like a bunch of ragged, forlorn castaways that had been shipwrecked on some god-forsaken island a thousand miles from anything.
"This isn't Lord of the Flies," Riley said. "You guys can relax. No one's gonna be hurt, no one's gonna be thrown in the brig. What's gonna happen is, we're all gonna work together to do something about what's going on up there instead of sitting on our asses hoping the Slayer gets it done for us. I'm taking my men out into the field. This place is gonna be a sanctuary from now on. Any survivor we find out there, we're gonna bring them back here, and you're gonna patch them up and take care of them. Meantime, you guys are all supposed to be smart, right? Harvard, M.I.T.? Put your heads together, think outside the box. Everything's gone to hell up there and we need ideas. Plus I'm gonna be wanting a whole shitload of kick-ass prototype junk. That energy shield, for starters. I'm gonna want more of those, with better batteries, so get started on that now. And--"
"Who the hell is that?" Sam said.
Everyone turned. Sam was pointing up at the monitors.
A rider on a white horse was galloping through the campus...
He was heading straight for them.
"What the hell do you mean, she's gone?" Rebecca said, as the four of them ran down the long torchlit hallway toward Willow's bedroom. "How could someone get in and take her without us knowing? Even if someone somehow managed to sneak through that shield out there you or Buffy or Faith should have smelled them! "
"No idea," Angel said. "But I got up to get a snack and I realized I suddenly wasn't picking up her scent anymore. I checked her room, Tara and Annabelle were there but Willow wasn't. Did a quick check around the mansion, she's not here."
"Angel's right, I'm not picking her up now either," Buffy said.
"I heard Willow talking with Tara in her bedroom just a few hours ago," Angel said. "I know she was still here at four because I was watching the news then and the station had the time down in a little corner of the screen. I remember the screen said 4:02 a.m. Pacific Standard Time the last time I heard Willow talking."
"So she could have left perhaps three, three and a half hours ago," Rebecca said.
The bedroom was spacious, constructed entirely of granite, and it had a connecting bathroom with a sunken bath. There was a short, squat oak bureau directly beneath the window with a little mirror set on top, a rickety, lopsided bookcase stuck in a dusty corner that was sagging under the weight of all the various books and magic trinkets, including Barney the lucky goblin, that Willow and Giles and Tara had brought with them, a floor lamp Willow and Buffy had brought back from the Wal-Mart, and a box spring and mattress that served as a bed.
There was no closet.
Tara was asleep in the bed, under the covers, holding Annabelle in her arms.
"Tara!" Rebecca shouted.
Annabelle woke up, rubbing her eyes and frowning. Tara didn't. Rebecca, Faith and Buffy ran to the bed. Angel kept his distance.
"Hello," Annabelle said.
"Hello, darling," Rebecca said, and smiled, and kissed Annabelle's cheek. Then she shook Tara. "Tara. Wake up."
Tara didn't move.
"Her heart's beating," Angel said. "She's breathing. She's okay."
"Where's Willow?" Annabelle said.
"She's fine, sweetie," Buffy said, and smiled, and ran her fingers through Annabelle's hair. "We just need to talk to Tara now."
"Tara!" Rebecca shouted, shaking Tara now. Tara wasn't moving.
"What the hell's going on?" Faith said. "Why won't she wake up?"
Rebecca turned Tara over, and opened her eyes.
"Jesus," Faith whispered.
Tara's pupils were two tiny dots of blue floating in pools of white. Each of her pupils was no larger than a pinprick.
"Magic," Rebecca said, as Buffy picked Annabelle up, and held her so she couldn't see.
"Magic?" Faith said. "You mean we got another wizard to deal with?"
"No," Rebecca said. "Willow did this."
When Willow woke up, she was cold. She looked down at herself. She was naked, and she was still in chains. But the manacles on her wrists were attached by another length of chain to manacles around her ankles now, so she couldn't move her arms or her legs. She covered herself with her arms, as best she could.
She noticed there was a chain around her neck, with a little carved red crystal talisman dangling from the end...she recognized it. It was the same kind Angelus and Spike and Dru had worn, to hide themselves from her locator spells the previous spring. And she noticed the chain was attached to the chain around her wrists...it would be impossible to remove the necklace.
She remembered the van. How Angelus had said he would kill her...she didn't understand how she was still alive.
"Hey, Will," Xander said.
She looked up, and saw him standing over her.
"Where's this...where'd you...take me?" Willow said. Trying to talk, to put coherent sentences together, made her realize how groggy she still was. The drug was still lingering in her system. She felt like she had been hit over the head with a shovel. She tried to focus.
"Supermarket," Xander said. "Don't ask me why. Just felt right. You cold?"
He was frowning down at her. Willow couldn't really decipher his expression. He looked angry...but a little sad, too...
She looked around the room again. It didn't look like a supermarket. The room was cavernous and gloomy and cold, and the air was dusty. Boxes, lots of them, were piled up in orderly stacks. The ceiling was high. The stacks climbed a long way into the shadows overhead. There was a forklift parked across the room.
"Said...you were...gonna kill me," Willow said. "If this is the afterlife...it's kinda... disappointing." She gathered her courage. She wasn't as afraid now as she had been in the van... she knew it was because she was talking to Xander now, not Angelus.
"Me and you, together forever, that's disappointing?" Xander said, and smiled. "Okay, Will, that hurts."
"If you were really Xander...it wouldn't be disappointing." The more she talked, the easier it became. It was getting easier to concentrate, too. She felt like she was turning a corner. "I'd be happy staying in some dusty old cellar with Xander forever."
There was a bright light coming from beneath a door at the other end of the room, in the shadows. Willow wondered where it led to. Maybe this really was a supermarket...maybe this was a stockroom, she thought. She had worked in the Foodland supermarket in Sunnydale as a cashier one summer when she was fourteen...Foodland had a stockroom like this one...
She tried to read the labels on the boxes. She couldn't make them out. The overhead lights, old fluorescent rods that made an annoying buzzing sound, were working, but they didn't do much to dispel the gloom.
"You really took me all the way out to some supermarket somewhere?" Willow said. "Why? Where are we?"
A plan was beginning to form in her mind. She realized now that she had been the world's biggest idiot, running off the way she did...
But Tara could read minds.
If Willow could find out where they had taken her, and then keep the thought in her mind...maybe Tara could find out, too.
"I don't know, this supermarket just sorta felt right," Xander said.
She didn't know what the First's plans were for her, or how much longer she had to live. She decided that if she was going to die, she was going to do it with dignity. She was going to die fighting.
She thought about Rebecca...what Rebecca had taught her...what she had taught Faith.
Know your enemy.
Get inside their head. See things the way they do. Almost no one who does evil things actually considers themselves evil.
What do they want? What's important to them? What are they afraid of?
Who do they love?
Angel always said the First liked him, it followed him around as Darla and kept almost like hanging with him. What if it really did like him? What if it liked him because it was Darla?
She looked at him. His expression was difficult to read. He could be that way, sometimes...he held things in, hid his feelings. Right now, Willow thought he seemed angry, and a little sad, too...and there was something else...
He acted like Xander, had his memories, and maybe his feelings.
And maybe his weaknesses. Willow had loved Xander dearly, but he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed...
"I'm glad you're Xander now," Willow said.
"Yeah?" Xander said.
Willow knew Xander didn't just hate Angel. He was jealous of him.
"Yeah," Willow said. "I don't know if you're gonna kill me or what, but I want to be with you, not Angel. Same as always."
Xander smiled.
"Yeah, the killing you plan's out the window," he said. "Just can't do it, cowgirl. But, hello? Still the First? Still like, evil. Can't let you stop me either."
"So you took me to the Foodland supermarket?" Willow said. "You're gonna ply me with Oreos?"
"We're not at the Foodland," Xander said. "Oreos, maybe. We'll see."
Willow saw vampires, moving through the shadows around her...dozens of them. And her hands and feet were bound. She needed to be able to use her hands to cast energy shields. She could control fire without using her hands, but there wasn't an open flame anywhere near her.
She'd have to use her head. Stall, until Faith could rescue her.
With the talisman around her neck, Tara's locator spell wouldn't work. If she was far enough from the mansion, and she probably was, she couldn't be tracked by her scent, either. That left Tara's mind-reading...if it even extended over long distances. And if she could trick Xander into revealing where she was...
Sunnydale only had one supermarket. If she wasn't at the Foodland, she wasn't in Sunnydale. Which only made sense. The smart move would have been to take her a good distance away from Sunnydale. But how long had they traveled for?
"What time is it?" Willow said. "How long was I asleep?"
"Almost seven-thirty in the morning," Xander said. "So what am I gonna do with you, cowgirl? Maybe we can pop some popcorn and rent movies?"
Willow knew she had left the house at twenty past four, and then she had walked for about fifteen minutes. How far could they have taken her in three hours?
She looked at the boxes again. If one of them was labeled with the name of the supermarket...
She couldn't read them. And if she asked Xander what supermarket she was at, he would get suspicious. Xander wasn't smart, but he wasn't dumb, either.
Sometimes price tags had a supermarket's name on them...
"So you just had a feeling about a supermarket, huh?" Willow said. "Well if I gotta be here, how about you grab me a bag of Oreos. Double stuff."
"Actually, I have a better idea," Xander said. "You believe in the Goddess, right? Y'know, all that magic bullshit that broke us up?"
"Yeah. I didn't want it to break us up. Angel broke us up. Because you were right about him. We never should have trusted him."
Xander looked at her with an expression of mingled sadness, and longing...and anger.
"Actually, Will, I'm thinking Faith broke us up," he said. "But that topic's sorta painful, so let's talk about other things. Like magic...like the Goddess."
"Wait. Why...why do you think Faith broke us up?"
"Because you're in love with her. The thing you're doing with Tara right now, the little almost-hookup you had with Buffy, that stuff was all because you have Faith's feelings tangled up in your head and you get confused. You don't love Tara or Buffy. You care about them, as friends, even sisters. But your true love, your real love, is Faith. I saw how you looked at her when I took you out of Buffy's house...I saw the light in your eyes, the light that used to be there just for me. And hey, how about you don't bother denying it, okay? We're having a nice conversation here. Let's skip the drama and move on. So...the Goddess."
Willow made herself focus again.
"What about Her?" Willow said.
"The saying goes, nothing can be done out of Her hand. You believe that?"
"Yeah."
"So anything I do to you, it was meant to happen. Maybe that's even why I haven't killed you. Because the Goddess doesn't want you to die."
"Or maybe it's because...because Xander loved me. And I love you."
"You love Faith. Also, you're playing me. Can't say I blame you. I'm Xander, but at the same time I'm still me, still the First. So I know Xander wasn't as smart as Angelus or Buffy or Darla or Rebecca. You see an opening, you're taking it. Smart move. But even though Xander wasn't so much with the fancy book learnin', he was shrewd. He could smell bullshit a mile off. If Xander was the one this whole save the world thing revolved around, no way would he have run off like you did and blundered into this trap. And just so you can stop wasting time, I'm gonna tell you upfront that I'm not gonna give you any more answers that can tip you to where you are so then Tara can maybe read your mind at a distance. Not that it would help. Feel free to keep thinking the word 'supermarket' in your head over and over again if you want, but I'm willing to bet my near-mint copy of Amazing Spider-Man number fourteen that Tara's mind-reading doesn't extend over this kind of distance. Okay, back to the Goddess."
Willow considered her options.
Xander was right. He wasn't really dumb. The problem, Willow realized, was that she was dumb. Just smart enough to be dumb. And reckless. And arrogant...just arrogant enough to doom the whole world.
At times like this, Willow always thought about what Rebecca would say. Ever since she'd gotten Faith's memories, Rebecca's voice was always in her ear...
We are where we are, Rebecca would say. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Fight.
"The Goddess wants you to pray for Her children," Xander said. "You've been chosen, out of everyone in the world. But you came pretty close to taking my deal before. And if nothing can happen out of Her hand, that means whatever you do is what was meant to happen, right?"
"So?"
"So if you decide, of your own free will, not to pray for the human race...not to pray for them, because they're a bunch of degenerate savages who don't deserve to be saved...then that's what was meant to happen too."
"I'll never decide that."
Xander smiled.
"You sure?" he said.
He looked at the vampires. One of them came over to the altar, and stood over Willow, snarling.
"What...what are you doing?" Willow said.
"There's a little utility closet back there in the corner," Xander said. "No food, no drink, chained up in a dark place...sounds like a plan."
"What?" Willow said, and then she screamed, as the vampire grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to her feet.
The vampire dragged her toward the other side of the room by the hair. She could hardly move her feet; she could only take baby steps, because of the chains.
She realized again that she was naked. She blushed, and tried to cover herself as she stumbled along. Her eyes welled up with tears.
"Wait! No! Don't...don't!" Willow pleaded...
And she saw the closet up ahead...one of the vampires was opening the door.
It was small, and dark. There was nothing in there.
The vampire dragged her to the closet, and held her still. Xander met her there. They looked into the darkness together.
"Not sure how long you can survive without food or water," Xander said. "Guess we'll find out. If the Goddess wants you to live, She'll save you, right?"
"Don't...don't do this to me Xander, please, please?" Willow said, and felt herself beginning to tremble now, as she looked into that closet...
There was a clock on the wall above the closet. Xander looked up at it.
"7:42 in the morning, November 25th," he said. "Who knows, maybe your friends will save you in exactly five days. Wouldn't that be something?"
Willow screamed, as the vampire pushed her into the closet. She tumbled to the floor in there, and fell on her stomach.
She looked up at Xander, crying now.
"Please don't do this to me?" she said. "Xander, please? PLEASE! PLEASE!"
"Maybe Faith will save you," Xander said. "She's the one you love, right? Not me."
Xander walked away from her, and the vampire shut the closet door...
Willow cried, alone, in darkness.
"Okay, are we sure she left on her own?" Buffy said, as she marched back down the hall with Rebecca and Faith. Angel was already out trying to track Willow's scent.
"Yes," Rebecca said. "That sleep spell requires very close proximity to the target. If Willow didn't do it then we'd have to believe someone managed to get through the energy shield undetected by you or Angel of Faith, sneak into her room, and then put Tara to sleep and capture Willow without waking anyone in the house. It's that bloody book. Willow read something in that book that made her think she has to leave. When I find her I'm going to give her the arse-kicking to end all arse-kickings."
"How long until Tara wakes up?" Faith said. The three of them marched into Rebecca's room. It was one of the nicest rooms in the mansion, stuffed full of antique furniture, including a four-poster canopy bed, and it had a big window with jasmine growing along the sides and a nice view of the courtyard. Faith had picked it out for her.
"Maybe minutes, maybe hours," Rebecca said. "But we need to begin the search now."
"How?" Buffy said. "Where do we look?"
"We figure an approximate time Willow left and decide the maximum distance she could have traveled," Rebecca said, and moved to the bureau. Gwendolyn's picture was there on top of the bureau, frozen in that one moment, smiling in the sun.
Rebecca pulled clothes out of the bureau, a pair of Willow's jeans and one of her sweaters.
"We draw a circle on a map that extends about sixty miles for every hour she's been gone since we can't rule out the possibility she used a car, or was captured by the enemy and they drove her off in a car," Rebecca said. "From what Angel says, we'll call it about three and a half hours to be on the safe side, so let's make it two-hundred miles. We can try a locator spell, but that might not work."
"Why not?" Faith said.
"There are ways to block locator spells," Rebecca said, and turned her back to them, pulled off her nightgown, and changed into the clothes. Looking at Rebecca in her underwear, Buffy was struck by how fit she was. Faith had told her Rebecca worked out, that she ran and lifted weights and knew how to fight, but actually seeing Rebecca's body was different. There wasn't any fat on her, anywhere. She was lean, muscular, broad-shouldered, her back tapering down in a perfect V-shape to a tiny waist. Her legs were long and powerfully muscular, like a gymnast. Her arms were much bigger than they had looked when Rebecca wore her suit. Her triceps muscled swelled up like balloons as she pulled on the sweater, and her forearms looked twice the size of Buffy's. She was perfect, Buffy thought...she looked like a marble sculpture of a woman...she could have been Athena.
"A little trinket, easily acquired, called a talisman of Ikonn can do the trick nicely," Rebecca continued, as she shimmied into Willow's jeans. The jeans were tight around her legs but loose around her waist, and they only reached to the middle of her calves. "Maybe Willow put Tara to sleep because she didn't want her casting a locator spell, but then she should have put me to sleep too. I can cast locator spells and Willow knows it, we talked about magic last night when I came by to say goodnight to Annabelle, and Willow asked me what kinds of spells I can cast. She wanted me to be specific and list them all. She must have already been planning to leave then, that's why she wanted to know. I'll cast a locator spell in just a moment. But if Willow was captured by the enemy all bets are off. She's escaped the First twice. If the First is smart it won't make it so easy for us to find her this time. It's got all the vampires in the world at its beck and call. They can find a talisman of Ikonn."
"So if you try a locator spell and it doesn't work then that means we need to search everything for two-hundred miles?" Buffy said. "The four of us?"
Rebecca pulled on a pair of Willow's boots, and took one of the radios Riley had left behind from the bottom drawer of her bureau.
"Two-hundred and four," she said. "Time to call your friend Mr. Finn."
The rider had galloped straight up to the dormitory building that stood above the Initiative's underground complex, decimating the Polgara demons that tried to block his path without even slowing down. The rider lashed out with his sword with such incredible, inhuman quickness that Riley hadn't even been able to tell at first exactly how the rider had killed the demons. There would be a flash of white light, and then another Polgara demon would suddenly be cut in half. Riley only noticed the sword when the rider finally put it back in its scabbard.
The rider had cut down nine of the Polgara demons on his way to the dormitory, and the rest had finally decided to retreat and let him pass. They stood together by the library at the other end of the campus, hissing like snakes, their red eyes ablaze with rage and terror. The rider ignored them. He checked his horse when he finally reached his destination, and looked straight into one of the cameras...
And then everyone standing around the bank of monitors in the Initiative complex finally saw the rider's face: it was a skull.
"Dude ain't winnin' no beauty contests," Forrest said.
"Sure knows how to win fights though," Graham said.
"He's...it's like he's...looking right at us," Sam said.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Samantha Beaumont," the rider said, and chuckled...
And then, one second later, the rider galloped straight down through the ceiling like it wasn't even there, passing through it as if he were an apparition, and reined in his horse by the water cooler.
He was a skeleton in a black, hooded robe. His horse was tall and proud and pure white. A silver trumpet hung from its bridle, and next to that, a great sword in a worn leather scabbard. A dazzling radiance emanated from the sword, lighting up the room for a good space around the rider and his horse, as if the rider kept the sun in his pocket.
"Top o' the mornin', folks," the rider said.
"Jesus H. Christ," Sam said.
And then every single gun in the room was aimed straight at the rider.
The rider chuckled again. Those guns aimed at his head might as well have been dandelions in the breeze, for all the effect they had on him.
"No one fires without my say-so," Riley said.
Riley stepped forward, his sidearm drawn, and approached the rider. The rider sat tall in the saddle, and watched him. The rider's eyes were two diamond points of white shining forth like stars from two black sockets, but Riley could have sworn he saw amusement in them.
"Think that's enough gun, Captain?" the rider said. He seemed to have a Southern accent. The rider's magnificent white horse, its dead eyes two sockets like those of the rider, watched Riley indifferently.
"Maybe not," Riley said. "Lucky me, I got two-hundred and fifteen more."
"You do, for a fact," the rider said. The horse, not particularly unnerved by Riley's threat, swished its tail.
Everyone else was quiet. The soldiers, every last one of them, aimed their guns straight at the rider. The researchers remained huddled together in a corner. Maggie stood in front of the monitors, watching events unfold, powerless to affect them in the slightest. The rider remained amused.
Riley looked at the rider. The rider looked back at him. So did the horse. Two-hundred and sixteen guns hung in the air, like thunderclouds gathering to blot out the sun.
"Who are you?" Riley said. "Why are you here?"
"When your father took that bullet in the back, you sat by his bed and prayed for three days, Riley Finn," the rider said. "I'm the fella who listened."
"Don't know that Christ ever rode a horse," Riley said.
"All kinds of things you don't know, Captain," the rider said. "And I surely don't got time to teach you. There's work to be done. But, just so's we're properly introduced..."
The rider trotted his horse across the Pit, past the monitor banks and the examination tables, past the scores of soldiers who couldn't meet his eyes. His horse, tall and proud and powerful, moved unhurriedly, gracefully and with dignity, its tread heavy, its every step booming through the room like hammers falling as it picked its way around the soldiers and their guns, unconcerned, and stopped beneath an American flag that hung down from the wall.
"Once, when I had a name, I fought in the great Civil War that nearly destroyed this country," the rider said. "Company F, Ninth Tennessee Cavalry."
The rider looked up at the flag.
"I fought for my home, for my family," he said. "And I lost them both."
The rider looked at the soldiers then, his eyes very bright.
"Since then I've seen every conflict men have ever fought, all those that came before and all those after," he said. "Now, finally, comes the last. And you good folks are the soldiers called by fate to fight it."
"Fightin' for something sounds good to me," Forrest said. "You one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or whatever? Sure look the part."
"Reckon I am," the rider said.
"Thought you dudes were supposed to be the bad guys," Graham said. "Thought you're the reason everything's gone off the rails. News reports say you guys have been showing up all over the world, killing people."
"Had a change of heart," the rider said. "Decided I was sick of doing what I was told. Sick of watching a damned slaughter. So you could say I went AWOL. I've been out ridin', north, south, east and west, rallying the troops. Waking people to great deeds." He looked back at Riley again. "How about you, Finn? You had enough of takin' orders from cowards in fancy suits? Had enough of standing by while people get cut down out there and the world burns? You about ready to stand up and fight?"
"Yeah," Riley said.
"How about the rest of you folks?" the rider said, and looked out at the soldiers, and met their eyes, each and every one. "You want to be soldiers again? To fight with valor and conviction, for an honorable and just cause? There surely ain't many wars that can be described in such fashion. This one can."
Riley lowered his pistol. He put it back in its holster. Then he turned, and looked at his men.
He met the eyes of the men and women under his command: his soldiers, every one.
"I'm in," Riley said. "Who's with me?"
The soldiers lowered their weapons.
"Hell yeah, Cap!" Forrest shouted, and raised his fist. "Hell yeah! Hell yeah!"
"HELL YEAH!"
Maggie and the researchers stood apart from them. They didn't understand this...but they knew they weren't meant to.
"I ain't guaranteein' you'll win," the rider said. He spoke softly, but his voice cut through the screams and the laughter and the revelry like an air raid siren. The soldiers became quiet again. "Not by a long shot. You'll be outnumbered somethin' fierce, and you'll be up against the worst lot of savages to make old Hannibal himself quake in his boots. But the world needs you. You are its last hope."
His horse reared up on its hind legs, restless, wanting to ride.
"You ask who I am?" the rider said, as he sat tall in the saddle beneath the American flag. "But I say you already know me. I am the heart of this country. I am its great, conquering spirit. I am WAR, and you are my children. All the angels in Heaven have their eyes on you this moment. And I know you'll make me proud."
War raised his sword. It shone like a beacon.
"Those demon rabble outside think you're afraid!" War shouted. "They think you ain't got the stomach to face them! What do you SAY TO THAT?"
War spurred his horse.
"Saddle up," he said. "Let's show these bastards our steel."
"Okay, what the hell weirdness is going on now?" Cordy said, when she found Rebecca and Faith and Buffy in Rebecca's bedroom. "Annie's all freaked out, she's saying something about Willow being gone and Tara not waking up."
"Where's Banana now?" Faith said.
"She's still in bed with Tara, she's trying to wake her up. What's happening?"
"Will took off," Faith said. "We think maybe she read something in the book that made her think she had to leave. We're about to start looking."
"And she did like a Rip Van Winkle spell on Tara to make her sleep," Buffy said. "But it's temporary."
"Okay, if you guys are gonna be like, an actual team you're gonna have to do something about how Willow keeps on pulling this shit," Cordy said. "You all agree on a plan and then she just throws it out the window and does whatever the hell she wants. She'll probably try to kill Angel again the next time he looks at her funny."
"Takin' Will out to the woodshed once we find her," Faith said.
"And I'm really gonna have to lend Rebecca a few of my outfits," Cordy said, frowning at Rebecca's clothes. "Those jeans are going way beyond high-waters, the boots look like you swiped them from a lumberjack and that sweater is ridiculous even for Willow. What are those things on the sweater? Are those reindeers?"
"Cordelia, we're going to need you to take care of Annabelle, and keep her calm," Rebecca said. She looked down at the radio, switched it on and started fiddling with it. "All right, what was that frequency? With any luck, two-hundred extra hands might just be enough for us to--"
Buffy and Faith were sniffing the air.
"Uh-oh," Cordy said.
Buffy and Faith ran to the window in the living room, with Rebecca and Cordy following close behind.
When they looked out the window, they saw more than sixty Polgara demons standing around the mansion, just beyond the energy shield.
"Dudes are here to stop us lookin' for Will," Faith said.
"This just gets better and better," Cordy said. "Tell me you guys have a plan."
"Do we know what kind of demons they are?" Buffy said. "What are we up against?"
"They're Polgara demons," Rebecca said. "Reptilian creatures. Lethally quick. They've got retractable bone skewers in their forearms that they use like swords, and they're quite deadly with them. Luckily for us, they're stupid as the day is long."
Rebecca handed Faith the radio.
"Faith, call Riley," Rebecca said. "Buffy, where are we keeping the guns and armor you took off the commandos?"
"Little storeroom at the end of the hallway with the paintings on the walls," Buffy said.
"Get all of it, bring it back here," Rebecca said.
Buffy scampered out of the room quick as a jackrabbit. Faith fiddled with the radio.
"Now we wait for Riley and his men to get here, right?" Cordy said, hopefully.
"Riley," Faith said, into the radio. "You copy, dude? We got kind of a situation here."
"That's what you're going to do, Cordelia," Rebecca said. "I need you to stay with Annabelle, keep her calm, and make sure you cover her ears. Faith and Buffy and I are going to make those Polgara demons' acquaintance."
"Cover her ears?" Cordy said.
"Things are about to get loud," Rebecca said.
Buffy and Faith laid flat on their bellies on the roof of the mansion with a radio in between them. They wore kevlar armor over their jeans and sweaters and they each carried an M-16 rifle.
"I wanna go automatic," Buffy said. "How come she won't let us go automatic? The switch makes them automatic, right?"
"M-16's aren't too accurate firing in bursts from a distance, and our ammo's limited," Faith said. "And make sure you use the scope. We gotta play this like snipers."
"You're like, gun girl. When did you become gun girl?"
"I was always gun girl. Becca did some work for the British military, she was in like some kinda British Black Ops for awhile. That's how she got so tactical. She knows guns, taught me all about 'em. She hung out with the Brit version of Riley's guys when she was in her thirties, sort of a top-secret government demon-hunting crew."
"Get out! Rebecca was a black ops demon hunter? That is the coolest thing I've ever heard."
Buffy looked through the rifle's scope. She ran her fingers along the barrel. The metal was cold and hard and smooth to the touch. She liked the way it felt in her hands.
"I think I'm a Republican," Buffy said. "Riley said he's coming?"
"Said he had kind of a demon-related situation of his own to deal with," Faith said. "Looks like the First was thinking ahead, trying to keep him and his guys out of the fight too. Said he'd be along after he took out the trash."
"It'll be really annoying after all this effort if it turns out bullets can't pass through the shield from our side," Buffy said. "I might start pouting. Plus it's cold up here. It would mean I got all cold for nothing."
"The plan doesn't work, then we wait for Riley," Faith said. "I'll warm you up."
They kept their eyes on the demons. The night was chilly. The roof, constructed from concrete tiles, was cold beneath their skin. Less than ten feet above them, the energy shield hummed with power, as pulses of light coruscated back and forth across its surface like moonlight on the ocean, shimmering silver-white in the dark.
"This remind you of anything?" Buffy said, and caressed Faith's cheek.
"Yeah," Faith said. "Kakistos. The day we took him down. How we were all like, tactical and cool on the roof."
"Tactical and cool and horny."
"That too. I love you, Buffy."
"I love you too, Faith."
They kissed.
"Is that an assault rifle in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" Buffy said.
"One way to find out, lover," Faith purred.
"Perhaps you girls should remember that our radios are on an open channel," Rebecca said, her voice filtering pertly through the radio between them. "Now then. Do we all remember the plan?"
"Um..." Buffy said. "Buffy isn't here right now. Please leave a message at the beep."
"Uh, yeah," Faith said. "Plan is, you shoot, if it turns out bullets can make it through the shield then we start shooting too."
"Remember, if this works, take head shots only," Rebecca said. "Their hides are thick and their internal organs have built-in redundancies. Also, their skin can change color to match their surroundings. Once they get under cover they can be hard to spot."
"Uh, built-in redundancies, camo skin," Faith said. "Got it."
There was a pause, while Buffy and Faith's faces went on deepening in color to a rich crimson hue. Somewhere in the house, Rebecca raised her eyebrow.
"Buffy, are you sure you don't need the safe sex speech?" Rebecca said. "I'm really quite good with that speech."
"Buffy isn't here right now," Buffy said. "Please leave a message at the beep."
"You about done torturing me yet, Becca?" Faith said.
"I suppose," Rebecca said. "Let's get on to torturing these Polgara ponces, shall we?"
Willow concentrated on her breathing.
She hadn't been in the closet long, but she had already lost track of time.
The closet was small and dark, and the floor was sticky and dusty against her naked flesh. It smelled like bleach.
She had spent a long time crying. Then, she had become increasingly afraid, as she thought about the fact that the First apparently didn't intend to give her food or water...just like the book had said. Except for one important detail: the book had said her ordeal would last five days. But the First had made all of that up. Willow knew that unless Faith found her somehow, her ordeal would never end...
Eventually Willow made herself stop thinking about food and water, because she wasn't hungry or thirsty yet, and she didn't want to speed the process along by dwelling upon it. She stopped thinking for awhile.
But that made it worse, because when she didn't occupy her mind, she noticed the closet. It was very small, and cramped. She couldn't see, except for a ribbon of light that crept in through the keyhole below the knob. She had pushed at the door, but it was locked, shut tight. She had tried to stretch her legs out, and she couldn't. There was no room. When she noticed the closet, the fact that it was small and dark, the fact that it was really just a box she had been closed up in, it became harder to breathe. So she tried to stop noticing the closet. She started thinking about things again...
Now, she was thinking about Faith. She saw her in her mind's eye, bursting into the room like a cyclone, screaming as she fought her way through the vampires, utterly obliterating them, until she finally made it to the door...then Faith would tear the door from its hinges and fling it away, and take Willow into her arms, pull her out of the darkness and carry her back into the light... Faith would have tears in her eyes, and Willow would too.
"I love you," Faith would whisper in her ear, as she wrapped a blanket around her and carried her out of there. "I love you, I love you, Willow..."
"I love you too," Willow whispered, in the dark, as her tears came again.
"Hello, boys," Rebecca said, as she strolled into the courtyard wearing kevlar armor over the jeans and the reindeer sweater, her hands held behind her back. The Polgara demons standing at the top of the steps leading to the courtyard, just a foot away from the shield, hissed at her.
"Can I just say that she looks fabulous in kevlar?" Buffy said, watching Rebecca from the roof as she held her rifle ready.
"Can I just say the radios are still on an open channel?" Faith said, as she watched the Polgaras through her rifle's scope, and started picking out targets.
"Shit," Buffy said.
"This goes the way we hope, let's you and me concentrate on the ones that are a good distance from the house," Faith said. "The demons can't get to Becca through the shield, so she can handle all the ones that are close by. But we don't wanna give any of them a chance to escape, we don't wanna leave any of these guys alive to maybe ambush us out there when we're looking for Will."
"So I was wondering if perhaps you boys might help me test a theory," Rebecca said, and pulled an assault rifle from behind her back, and shot the closest Polgara demon through the shield, dead center in the forehead, with a crack that cut through the stillness and echoed around the courtyard and all the way down the street.
The Polgara's head exploded into golf ball-sized wet chunks that rained down to the pavement in a fountain of thick, viscous white blood. The other demons hissed. Rebecca smiled.
"Excellent," she said, and began firing, cutting the closest demons down like so much wheat before a thresher, as Buffy and Faith fixed their sights on the demons furthest from the house and began firing at the same time. There was pandemonium in the street outside the mansion as round after round of rifle fire cracked and boomed and thundered through the night air like fireworks going off, sending the defenseless demons scurrying for cover.
"Don't let up!" Rebecca shouted into her radio, as she went on firing, stalking back and forth in front of the shield and picking her targets, every one of her shots a perfect head shot, dead-center. "Don't let ANY of these bastards escape!"
Buffy wasn't bothering to use her rifle's scope. She was taking aim at the demons by simply sighting along the barrel. Every time she fired she was perfectly on target. Every time she fired she put a round dead center in a demon's forehead and smiled as it exploded in a white cloud of blood and brains.
"Yup, I'm a Republican," Buffy said, as she decided to see if she could start putting bullets through the demons' left eyes. Their foreheads were too big; they weren't challenging enough targets. Their left eyes, roughly the size of a penny but glowing red, were just right. She took aim at a demon who was crouching behind a car, hissing at Rebecca as she glared at him and tried to shoot him, but unfortunately for Rebecca the granite columns at the top of the stairs leading to the courtyard were in her way and she couldn't get a good bead on him.
But Buffy could. The roof gave her a clear view of the entire street, and besides, she could smell the demons; their scents were beacons in the dark to a Slayer. She aimed along the barrel, squeezed the trigger, and put a bullet straight through the left eye of the demon Rebecca had pinned down behind the car. The demon's head exploded with such force that it took the car's passenger side window with it.
"Smaller government, tax cuts, I'm down with it," Faith said, as she followed one of the Polgara demons through her scope, moving the rifle in a slow arc in front of her as the demon raced away from the battle, trying to escape this killing ground it had stumbled into. Its skin black now to match the shadows, it kept low, worming through the gutters across the street, slithering along behind parked cars like some loathsome black eel, making its way silently through the filth toward a manhole cover, hoping to escape into the sewers. There was a crack, and the demon stopped moving a second later, without a head.
"We gotta destroy the rainforest though, I think," Buffy said. "Plus we have to listen to like, country music."
"I gotta make a principled stand and draw the line at country music," Faith said. "How come you're not using the scope?"
"Because I'm awesome," Buffy said, and decided to try shooting the demons through their left eyes without sighting along the barrel. She took aim at one who was running down the street, squeezed the trigger, and shot it through the bridge of the nose. As its head vaporized and rained down to the street in a fountain of white blood and brains, she frowned.
"Missed," Buffy muttered. "Bullcookies."
"What are you talking about?" Faith said, as she rattled off two quick shots in succession, killing two demons who were pulling up a manhole cover so they could try to slither into the sewers. "You killed the hell outta that dude."
"Wanted him through the eye," Buffy said. "Oooh! That one way down the street, the one who's all like ducking and weaving behind the cars. See him? He's so mine."
...And saw Angel. He was running straight at a group of three demons who were scrambling to make it around the corner. He had an axe in his hand. He met the demons without giving an inch, smashing into all three of them like a tidal wave capsizing a rowboat, beheading one, elbowing another in the face as it slashed at him with its bone skewer, spinning around and kicking a third in the chest and sending it flying across the street.
Buffy stopped aiming at the demon who was ducking and weaving behind the cars, and took aim at Angel instead.
She looked through the scope. She watched him fight...
There was a crack, as Faith took out the demon Buffy had been aiming at before. It was a hell of a shot, too, Buffy thought; Faith had shot the demon through a car window. It was a tough angle, and she had still managed to hit the demon dead-center in the forehead.
"Nice shot, baby," Buffy said.
Buffy watched Angel through the scope. She had him lined up in her sights, following along as he moved...she could put a bullet through his left eye. It would be easy.
Faith was watching Angel now, too. The rest of the demons were close enough to the mansion that Rebecca had clear shots at all of them, and she was taking them down with brutal efficiency. The crack of her rifle was a constant now, a steady drumbeat. So Faith took a moment to watch Angel fight...and to watch Buffy watching him.
"Dude can fight," Faith said, as Angel ducked one of the Polgaras' bone skewers, spun, and grabbed on to the skewer as the Polgara swiped at his head with it again. Angel broke the skewer off in his hand. The Polgara shrieked, and Angel beheaded it with his axe, and turned to face the last one.
"Yeah," Buffy said, as she kept her gun aimed right at Angel, and continued following him through the scope, never losing sight of him for a second as he fought. "Better than me. Ever wonder what would happen to a vampire if his head exploded?"
"Huh?" Faith said, and shot a Polgara who was sneaking up on Angel from behind with three of his friends. "Thanks!" Angel shouted, and waved in her general direction without seeing her, and faced the other three demons.
"I mean, it's supposed to be like, only sunlight, stakes, fire, or beheading can kill them, right?" Buffy said. "Or maybe holy water if you've got like a Super Soaker full of the stuff. But what if I put a bullet through Angel's eye right now? If I take half his head off, how is he supposed to survive that? Are we supposed to believe it would all just like, grow back? I bet a bullet can kill a vampire if it takes enough of his head off."
Faith looked at her. Buffy hadn't shot a Polgara in awhile. She was aiming through the scope, but she wasn't taking shots...
She was aiming at Angel, Faith realized.
Buffy had a strange little half-smile on her face. Her lips were trembling. Her eyes looked shiny and wet.
"I mean...if I pull this trigger...what happens?" Buffy said.
"What are you doing?" Faith said.
"He hurt Willow," Buffy said. "He killed those little girls and sent me the pictures. He... he put that little girl Genevieve in a closet. She lived her whole life in closets. We all...we all saw her picture. And he...he..."
"He didn't have his soul, Buffy."
Buffy watched Angel through the scope.
"We're all acting like, like we have a chance here, and we don't," Buffy said. "Willow's gone, we're not gonna find her. They have her, I know they do. You heard Rebecca. They could be two-hundred miles from here by now. The First, it won't be stupid. It'll, it'll make sure we can't find her this time. I'm never gonna see Willow again."
Buffy's smile disappeared. Her face crumpled up in tears.
"I'm never gonna see Willow again," Buffy whispered.
"We don't know that, Buffy," Faith said.
"He raped her," Buffy whispered. "And now...now she's dead."
"We don't know that!" Faith shouted.
"She had to live with that," Buffy said. "With those memories he made Dru give her. Dru's memories of him...raping her. Memories of...of being in a fucking closet for four months. Willow had to live with Dru's memories of Angel raping her every single day and now she's dead. Willow had to live the last part of her life in pain. Because of him."
Buffy watched Angel through the scope. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
"Because of me."
The shooting stopped. Faith looked down at the courtyard. Most of the Polgaras were dead, their headless bodies scattered all over the street in puddles of white slime, but there were still at least fifteen more to be dealt with. Angel was still fighting with three of them, but he seemed to have the situation in hand. The rest were hiding behind cover.
Rebecca had stopped firing. She was looking up at the roof.
"Faith, keep firing, get the rest," Rebecca said, her voice filtering softly through the radio Buffy and Faith had on the roof between them. "I want to talk to Buffy."
Faith took aim at the Polgara demons again, and started firing.
Buffy watched Angel through the scope.
"Yeah?" Buffy said.
"You know the radios are on an open channel," Rebecca said.
"So? Okay, I think you're hot. I'm gay. Sue me. Faith was totally crushing on Giles before I got him killed."
"You wanted me to know what Angel did to Willow when he lost his soul. Now I know. But it wasn't your place to tell me."
Buffy watched Angel through the scope. He had taken down another of the Polgaras by cleaving its head right down the middle with his axe. As she watched him now, he tumbled to the street as the other two Polgaras leaped at him, and flipped them both over his head with his legs. He jumped back to his feet and stood to face them with his axe ready. Another Polgara suddenly came out of nowhere, springing at him from behind; there was a crack as Faith shot it out of the air, then went back to targeting the Polgaras who were ducking behind cover.
"You can't kill him," Rebecca said.
"Sure I can," Buffy said, her tears running down her cheeks now. "Five bucks says I can put a bullet through his left eye."
"Buffy. If we're going to find Willow we need him. He's our best tracker."
"She's two-hundred miles away. We gonna search every single house for two-hundred miles? She's probably already dead. And I never listen to my Watchers. I'm intractable."
"You need to start listening now. I know it would be easier for you to believe Willow is dead. Easier to give up all hope, rather than holding on to a small hope. But you need to hold on, for Willow's sake. We need Angel to help find her. You're not going to kill him."
Faith went on firing, the steady crack of her rifle echoing for awhile, lingering on the air, and then fading away.
"Are you flirting with me?" Buffy said. "Already got a girlfriend. He killed eighteen little girls and sent me their pictures. Because of him Genevieve spent her life in a closet. Willow, she told me...she told me...she gets really scared sometimes, y'know? She, she has panic attacks sometimes. She feels like she can't breathe sometimes. Because of me."
"Willow is stronger than you think, Buffy. Trust me. She's not dead. We have to believe that. We have to."
Buffy watched Angel, through the scope. He was moving around a lot, but she kept the sight on him...she was sure she could put a bullet through his left eye. Though Buffy noticed her hand was shaking now...that would complicate the shot.
"It's...it's my fault," Buffy whispered. "If I had just...just done my frigging job. If I had just killed him when I first met him, instead of...instead of..."
"Instead of loving him," Faith said, and put her hand on Buffy's shoulder. "But you can't help who you love, honey."
"He wouldn't have," Buffy whispered, shaking her head now. "If I had just killed him back then...he wouldn't have. He wouldn't have. Willow, and those little girls. He wouldn't have. He...wouldn't have."
"You're right, Buffy," Rebecca said. "If you had killed him back then, if he had never lost his soul, those things wouldn't have happened. But you didn't kill him. And those things did happen. And crying about it won't make it go away. Killing Angel now won't make it go away. There are no shortcuts in life. There are no easy ways around pain. The only way past this for you is to go through it. I'm your Watcher. I'll help you through it. But first, we need to look for Willow. And maybe there isn't really any hope, but we're going to look anyway. We're going to look, and we're not going to stop looking until we find her. Hope isn't what's important anyway. Having faith is what's important."
Buffy watched Angel through the scope. She cried. Her hands shook.
"You have to make a decision, Buffy, and you have to make it right now," Rebecca said. "Who's more important to you? Willow? Or yourself?"
Buffy watched Angel through the scope. Faith went on firing, one-handed now. Faith kept her hand on her shoulder.
"Killing Angel would make you feel better for awhile, and make it harder for us to find Willow," Rebecca said. "And yes, you're right. She might be dead. If I was the First I would kill her, it's the smart move. Looking for Willow when we think maybe all we'll find is a body will be hard. It will take days, maybe weeks. Every minute will weigh upon our souls. Every minute will hurt us...hurt you. Is Willow worth it to you? Can you take that pain for her? Or would you rather make things easier on yourself, and shoot Angel, and give up on Willow?"
The crack of Faith's rifle droned on, steadily. Angel fought the Polgara demons. Rebecca looked up at the roof. Buffy watched Angel through the scope.
"Decide, Buffy," Rebecca said. "Who's more important?"
Buffy lowered her rifle.
"Listen to your Watcher," Rebecca said. "Just this once. Try it out, see what happens."
"Why...why do you wanna even, even be my Watcher anyway?" Buffy said. "I just...I just fuck it all up."
"Because you're a special girl, Buffy," Rebecca said. "And I'm not saying that because you're a Slayer. I'm saying it because you're Buffy Summers. I know you feel overwhelmed now. I know you've felt this way for a long time. It happens to all of us. It happened to me, when I lost my Gwendolyn. When I lost Gwendolyn, I crawled into a goddamned bottle for a year. But I climbed back out again. Just like you're going to climb out of this. I'm going to help you. If you'll let me. I told you when we talked for the first time that I was going to be your Watcher and I didn't offer you a choice. But that's not how it works. I can't do this without you, Buffy. I'd be honored to be your Watcher...to work with one of the best damned Slayers that's ever been, but more than that, to work with you. Buffy Summers. If you'll let me."
Buffy smiled, despite her tears.
"You're good with speeches," Buffy said. "Totally better than Giles. He always sorta stuttered and used weird words like 'berk'."
"My speeches work so well because I always mean every word," Rebecca said. "How about it, Buffy? Can I be your Watcher?"
"Yeah," Buffy said.
Rebecca raised her eyebrow. "Which means you're going to have to listen to me, including my occasionally horribly tedious speeches, I'm afraid. Can you do that?"
"They're not that horribly tedious," Faith said.
"Guess I can try," Buffy said. "You really...think we can find Willow?"
"Yes," Rebecca said.
"Alive?"
"Yes."
"Why? Why, when the smart move is for the First to kill her? Why, when she could be anywhere within two-hundred miles and it'll take days, weeks to find her? When...when there's no hope?"
Rebecca smiled.
"Let me whisper this in your ear," Rebecca said. "This may be hard to believe, but in 1972, when I was sixteen, Willow used her magic to travel back in time and save my life. She was older than she is now, she was twenty-eight. If she's dead now, she'll never have a chance to go back in time and save me, and therefore I will have died when I was sixteen. Now I won't pretend to really understand any of this time travel nonsense, though I suppose it's no more ridiculous than any of the other nonsense, Polgara demons for instance, that we have to deal with as a matter of routine. But in any event, you'll notice that I'm still standing here. If Willow was dead now, I really shouldn't even exist. So chin up."
"Hey," Buffy said. "That's...wait a minute, that's..."
Buffy smiled. Faith smiled too.
"You have to have faith, Buffy," Rebecca said.
Willow remembered Faith, smiling in the hotel room. Eating double chocolate fudge brownie ice cream while they watched movies together on the couch. Dancing barefoot in front of the radio, with the sun shining in through the window, glimmering like gold in her eyes. Faith always loved to dance.
From Willow's perspective, it was days ago. But it had been twelve years...and now Faith was dead. Everyone was dead.
She sat in Thor's bedroom, in his great ebony chair, her feet resting on the footstool carved in the likenesses of Fenrir and Jormungand, and looked out the window. It was spring in Asgard, but then it almost always was when she was there, since Thor controlled the weather and he knew Willow liked spring. It was a glorious new morning, and the sun was shining. The sun had disappeared from the Earth, but here in Asgard, it was bright and beautiful and it claimed all the sky for itself, cast out the clouds, burned them all away until finally it stood alone, rising golden and triumphant as it voyaged across that endless ocean of blue, smiling down upon Asgard's bountiful fields and its beautiful gardens, its lush meadows and its dark, serpentine forests, its clear, shimmering lakes and its roaring rivers, its gentle green hills and its towering mountain peaks like a queen upon her throne, surveying her dominion.
The robins were singing, and from her seat by the window Willow could see the hoary old branches of Yggdrasil, the great ash tree that served as the very pillar of the universe, swaying in a gentle breeze as they climbed up into the clouds. Thor's gardens stood nearby, a glorious, chaotic jumble of lush flowers growing wild, in a heady mix of vibrant colors and perfumed scents; the breeze wafting in through the window was intoxicating.
For Willow's birthday, Faith bought her a dozen roses. It had only been four months ago.
The robins sang. They always sang for Willow, when she visited. They perched on the windowsill, and serenaded her. But they couldn't raise her spirits this morning...they couldn't make her heart sing. Willow knew her heart would always be silent, now.
Willow didn't cry. She had spent the previous day crying. Now, she just felt empty.
She looked at the tapestry Thor had commissioned for her...the one that showed her when she was much younger, and was still foolish enough to have some hope in her heart, sitting cross-legged beneath Yggdrasil, with Asgard, and the Earth itself, held in her hands. She had always wondered what the image meant...now she knew.
"I dropped it," Willow said.
She went back to looking out the window. It was nice, by the window. The sun felt warm, the garden smelled sweet. The robins serenaded her. They could be stubborn. They were going to stay there and sing for her, Willow knew, until she smiled.
Willow thought about Faith. Thought about her dying at the fort in 1998...that's how her life had gone now, how all their lives had gone. Somehow, they all died in that battle, when before, in the original history, they had won it...Willow didn't even understand how she was still alive. The changes in the time line should have erased her from existence. She wished they had.
Loki had gone to Odin's war council. He had made some noise about stopping the First somehow and saving the world, and had nearly, though not quite, gotten Willow's hopes up. Then, once he had summoned that vampire from the Vigil of Saint Vigeous, and the vampire told him the First's inability to touch anything was the result of a magic spell, Loki had seemingly lost interest. He (actually, she) had sent the vampire back to 1998 with a snap of his (actually, her) fingers, and then he had turned himself, thankfully, back into a man, and headed out to the war council as if nothing had happened. When Willow asked him what he was going to do now, Loki had said, "Why, nothing at all, my dove," and smiled, and left her there.
It was just another one of his pranks, Willow had realized. Loki was a liar, and a mischief-maker, and he enjoyed pulling her strings...he enjoyed hurting her. He always had. He had gotten her hopes up, just for the hell of it, and then dashed them again. He didn't need the Earth, he didn't care if humanity lived or died. He had Asgard.
And he was evil. And he was a liar. Willow cursed herself, for having forgotten that.
He was a lot like Angel used to be, Willow thought. Or rather, he presented the same problem Angel always presented: he was just so beautiful, you couldn't help but forgive him, no matter what he did....you couldn't help walking right into his trap again.
Angel was dead. Unfortunately, she was stuck with Loki. But she wouldn't let herself fall into his trap again.
Willow had fumed for awhile after Loki left, pacing around the bedroom trying to come up with schemes to hurt him, or at least embarrass him, since she wasn't actually physically capable of hurting him. But then she had just run out of energy. It didn't matter, nothing mattered. Everyone was dead. So Willow sat in Thor's chair, and fell asleep looking at the tapestries, and woke up again with the sun.
And now, looking out at the sun that shined only here, and nowhere else, she knew there was nothing to be done. So she went back to thinking about Faith. How they would lay together on the couch in the hotel room, eating ice cream and watching movies, and Faith would hold her in her arms...
Willow almost smiled. Faith loved movies. Faith tended to think in terms of movies. Whenever she was trying to make a point, she would invariably illustrate it with a scene from a movie...
Terminator 3, Willow thought. That's what this whole thing is. The future can't be changed...Judgment Day has to happen...the bad guys win.
She knew, as she did it, that it was ridiculous. But she had always been this way. In the old days, whenever they were up against some new Big Bad, some new apocalypse, she always ended up spending a lot of time thinking about something ridiculous. It relaxed her. It made it easier for her to focus. "You work in mysterious ways," Xander had said to her, once.
Willow sat in Thor's chair, in Asgard, in a castle in the sky, and looked out at the sun, and listened to the robins sing, and allowed herself to work in mysterious ways. She thought about Terminator movies. It was less stressful than spending the whole morning being miserable and pissed off about having fallen for yet another of Loki's heartless pranks.
In the Terminator movies they were always trying to prevent Judgment Day, the day the machines took over, but Judgment Day had to happen because it was always meant to happen, Willow thought. No matter how many robots got sent back in time to kill the kid with the cool hair, no matter how many robots got sent back in time to protect him, none of it ever mattered. Nothing really changed. Judgment Day always happened. The kid was only born because his future self sent a soldier back in time to protect his mother from Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the soldier got his mother pregnant and turned out to be his father. Judgment Day had to happen because if it didn't, the kid with the cool hair would never lead the resistance in the future and then send one of his soldiers back in time, and the soldier would never get the kid's mother pregnant, and therefore the kid would never even have been born in the first place. But the kid existed, therefore Judgment Day had to happen, so the kid could bring himself into existence by sending his own father back in time. It was all just a big...
Willow's eyes grew wide.
"...Loop," she whispered.
She leapt out of her chair. She saw herself in the tapestry...holding the world in the palm of her hand.
"It's all just a big loop," she whispered again...and smiled. "We gotta complete the loop."
Then she giggled.
Then she laughed, loud and long, laughed so hard that her face turned red and her cheeks hurt, laughed so hard that she had to bend over at the waist, gasping for air.
Then she stood up. She looked down at the robins on the windowsill. They seemed happier, now. They had gotten a smile out of her.
She kissed one of them, right on the beak.
"Guys, I am the world's biggest idiot," Willow said, and ran out the door.
"Hi," Xander said. "Uh, can I ask you a question?"
The teenage boy with the guitar slung across his back looked up from his meal. He was sitting on the floor in the soup aisle of the supermarket, wearing a ragged old vintage army coat with a camouflage pattern, ripped jeans and Doc Martin boots. He was eating Dinty Moore beef stew straight from the can with a plastic spoon.
"Shoot," the boy said.
The boy seemed familiar somehow. But the First couldn't place him. He wondered if Xander had met him before...or maybe Buffy had. Sometimes the memories got mixed up.
But the First knew, as he stood there wearing Xander's skin, that he couldn't let himself take Buffy's form again. If he did, he'd let Willow out of the closet. He could barely resist the urge to let her out of the closet now. He knew the smart move was to become Angelus. But if he was Angelus, he would just kill Willow...and he couldn't bear to let himself do that.
"What's up with the guitar?" Xander said. "The world's ending and you're carrying a guitar around?"
"It's a pretty nice guitar," the boy said.
"Most of the people I see out there are carrying like, essentials. Food, clothes. You're carrying a guitar."
"Guitar's pretty essential. I'm Oz by the way."
"Oz? What kind of a name is Oz? Short for Ozymandias?"
"Short for Osbourne. As in Daniel Osbourne. Never much liked the name Danny though. I had red hair and freckles growing up, people kept calling me Danny Partridge. That got old fast. Not that Danny didn't rock out on the bass. But I just do my own thing."
"You in a band?"
"Yeah, before everything got strange out there. Dingoes Ate My Baby."
"They did?"
Oz smiled. "That's the name of the band. It's a dumb name. But easy to remember."
"I completely don't own a guitar," Xander said. "Always wanted to buy one, but then there was that whole not having any talent problem. What kind of music did you guys do?"
"Anything with three chords or less. Kinda alternative, but I hate that word. You really can't dance to us, which I always thought was sad."
"Guys really shouldn't be dancing anyway," Xander said. "It just leads to unfortunate... dancing incidents. Maybe I should rephrase. Guys like me, who can't dance, shouldn't dance."
"Sure you should. So what's your story? You're the first actual living, breathing person I've seen in awhile."
"I'm Xander. Short for Alexander."
Oz stood up. "Well look, not to get all male bonding or anything, but maybe we should stick together. End of the world's easier with a bud. And it's a big supermarket. Just don't bogart the ring dings. I'm all about ring dings."
"I won't bogart the ring dings," Xander said.
"So you from around here? I was sorta just passing through on my way to a gig in L.A. when this strangeness went down."
"I'm from Sunnydale." Xander started walking toward the other end of the supermarket, where the stock room was. Oz fell in beside him. The boy was small, Xander noticed; he looked about eighteen but he couldn't have been taller than Willow. He looked a little pale, even sickly, as if he never saw the sun, but it had been a rough week for the human race and the boy might have just been stressed. Xander thought Oz had amazing hair though. He couldn't really describe it, since he was being Xander at the moment and style wasn't Xander's forte, but he was certain Buffy would have a lot to say about it if he allowed himself to take her form again. Reddish blonde, thick and cut short but nevertheless wild as a lion's mane, just barely tamed with a liberal application of hair gel, Oz's hair seemed to defy categorization, and it nearly approached Angel's in its complexity, Xander thought. Xander was actually a little jealous of it. He thought Willow would really like Oz's hair, and the thought annoyed him. And then there was the guitar.
"Sunnydale's a pretty crazy town," Oz said. "I played a few gigs at a club there called the Bronze last year, got caught up in all kinds of strangeness. Sort of like a junior version of today's strangeness actually. How'd you end up in Pasadena? Long way from Sunnydale."
"Well, I'm trying to destroy the human race so I can start civilization over again and I just captured the one girl in the whole world who can maybe save everyone. I have her locked in a closet in the stockroom. Though actually I have no idea why I'm in Pasadena. For some reason this supermarket just...felt like the right place to be."
They walked on in silence for a moment.
"Has anyone ever told you that you've got a weird and inappropriate sense of humor?" Oz said.
"Yeah, actually," Xander said, as they turned out of the aisle, and the two vampires he had mentally summoned to his side a moment before suddenly appeared in front of them, springing into view by the deli.
Oz froze.
"But I wasn't kidding," Xander said.
"Thought you guys needed our help?" Sam said, as she stood in the street in front of the mansion with Riley, Forrest, Graham, and over two-hundred restless soldiers, looking around at the demon corpses. It was like standing in a bowl of leftover tapioca pudding. The street was smeared with white slime for a block in either direction. Faith, Buffy, Rebecca, Angel and Cordelia stood in the slime with them. "Looks like the demons were the ones who needed help."
"We definitely need your help, Sam," Faith said. "Just not with the demons. Willow's disappeared, we need to find her. The more people looking, the better."
"Faith says you told her you have heat sensors that you use to track vampires by their body temperature, Captain Finn," Rebecca said, walking straight up to Riley and looking him in the eyes. "We'll all need to split into teams and cover everything within at least a two-hundred mile radius. What's the effective range on those sensors, and how many do you have with you?"
"Who's this lady again?" Forrest said.
"Rebecca Greer," Rebecca said. "Time is short, Captain. We need to find Willow, now."
"Will's the one, Riley," Faith said. "The one who's supposed to pray for the world."
"Wait, really?" Sam said, her eyes lighting up. "Are you sure? But how did you figure it out?"
"We don't have time for this!" Buffy shouted. "We need to start looking for her!"
"She's right," Rebecca said. "I just tried a locator spell but it's being blocked. We think Willow's been captured. Our only choice is to do this the hard way. But those heat sensors will help immensely, there are hardly any humans left out there and I assume you can set the sensors to detect human readings. How many do you have?"
"It's standard gear," Riley said. "Every one of us has one. We'll need a lot of teams, each sensor only has a five-hundred meter range. If we deploy our guys just right we can do this. You're sure it's Willow? Sure she's the one?"
"We're sure, okay?" Buffy said. "We're not lying."
Riley smiled. "Relax, Buffy. We'd help even if she wasn't the one. She's a good kid."
"I don't really know how to say this politely so I'm just gonna say it," Graham said. "If Willow's the one who can save the world and she was captured like four or five hours ago what makes you think she's still alive?"
"If she was dead the spell would have felt different," Rebecca said. "She's alive, at least for the moment. The question now is, how do we deploy our teams to search. The smaller the teams are, the more ground we can cover with the heat sensors. But the smaller they are, the more vulnerable they are too."
"Teams of two," Riley said. "Everyone gets someone to watch their back."
"Two?" Forrest said. "Against all the shit goin' down out there? Cap, anyone gets jumped they won't have a chance!"
"No, I concur with the Captain," Rebecca said. "We have to find Willow, she's the world's only chance, but there's so much ground to cover that we have to take risks. We need to cover the most ground in the shortest possible time and two-man teams are our best compromise between safety and efficiency. As long as we avoid drawing attention to ourselves we can--"
"Lady, I don't give a shit what you concur with," Forrest said. "Who the hell are you to be actin' all like you're in charge anyway?"
"HEY!" Faith said, and grabbed Forrest by the throat and threw him against a parked car.
More than two-hundred guns were instantly pointed straight at her. Faith ignored them. Rebecca moved in front of her.
"You don't fucking talk to Becca that way!" Faith shouted, jabbing her finger in Forrest's face. "Got it?!"
Forrest tried to pry Faith's fingers from his throat. It was like trying to bend a steel rod.
"Anyone pulls a trigger and I fucking guarantee they're dead one second later," Buffy said, moving herself next to Rebecca and shielding Faith with her body, and aiming her rifle at the soldiers. "I'm real good with this gun."
"Shit," Graham said, as Angel snatched his rifle away, his hands moving faster than Graham's eyes could follow. Angel moved to cover Faith from the other side.
"How did I know this would happen?" Cordy muttered.
"Everyone stand down!" Riley shouted. "Faith, this isn't helping."
The soldiers lowered their guns. Buffy and Angel didn't lower theirs. Rebecca stood in front of Faith, glaring at the soldiers with her arms folded across her chest. Faith kept her hand around Forrest's throat. He struggled to move on top of the car's hood, and couldn't.
"Forrest has a big mouth," Riley said.
"Fuckin' right he does, Joe," Faith said. "Gonna get him in trouble one of these days."
Faith looked right down into Forrest's eyes as she held him in place.
"But he's a good soldier," Riley said. "And a good man. Which is why he's gonna apologize for being a butthead, and then we're all gonna look for Willow."
"Faith," Rebecca said.
Faith let Forrest up.
"Shit," Forrest muttered, rubbing his neck.
And then they heard someone crying.
It was a soft, steady wailing, but it seemed loud in the night air; it carried.
When they all turned toward the sound, they saw Tara standing in the mansion's courtyard in her nightgown and socks, holding Annabelle in her arms. Annabelle was crying. She was trembling, and tears were running down her cheeks.
"What the hell is going on?" Tara said.
After they explained it to her, Tara calmed Annabelle down as best she could, and made up a lie about Willow. Then she gave Annabelle to Cordelia, went back into the house, and tried to cast a locator spell.
It didn't work. She tried it again, two more times, and it still didn't work.
As they were all forming up into teams and Riley and Rebecca brought up a California map on Willow's laptop and separated it into grids and handed out assignments, Tara sat cross-legged on the floor in Willow's bedroom, her candles and her tupperware bowl of magic blue powder and a lock of Willow's hair all arranged in front of her, and did her best to control herself. She didn't know what she was feeling more: scared or angry. For that moment, she settled on angry. Willow had tricked her, put her to sleep, treated her like a child. Run off without even telling her why...
Tara took a breath, lit the candles again, and centered herself. She performed the locator spell again.
It didn't work.
"GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!" Tara screamed, and flung the bowl across the room. It collided with the bureau and sent a cloud of blue powder flying all over the place.
"No dice, huh?" Faith said.
Tara turned, and saw her standing in the doorway.
"No," Tara said. "But Rebecca was right at least, Willow's definitely not dead. The spell failed but it didn't fail the way it would've if she was dead. It's just being blocked. Probably a talisman of Ikonn. Hate those fucking things."
"No luck with the mind-reading?"
"I never like, practiced it," Tara said. "Never, y'know, tried to get good at it. I can read people at a distance, but not much of a distance. I haven't been able to get a fix on Willow at all. I'll keep trying, but...unless they're holding her right here in town somewhere, I don't think we're gonna find her that way."
"Then we'll just have to find her another way," Faith said. "We're all heading out, here's how we're playin' it. I need every available body to search, but I need someone in charge here I can trust too, someone to protect Banana and Cordy, and that's you. If Will's been captured she knows we'll try to find her with a locator spell. And she mentioned something about talismans to me when she was talking about how Angel went bad last year, she said he had some kinda talisman thing that hid him from her."
"Had to be a talisman of Ikonn."
"If that's true and they put one on her she'll know what it is and what it can do. If she gets a chance she'll try to take it off. That means you gotta keep doing locator spells. I don't know how many freebies you got built up with Artemis but it's time to cash out."
Tara nodded. She stayed on the floor. She thought about how angry she was...it seemed almost from the moment she met her at the hospital, Willow had been pissing her off.
She thought about how angry she was, and realized how scared she was instead. She started to cry.
Faith knelt down beside her.
"Why does she have to be so...why does she always have to..." Tara started to say, but she just kept crying...she couldn't stop crying. She was angry but she couldn't stop crying.
Faith hugged her.
"Why couldn't she just talk to me?!" Tara screamed. Why couldn't she just talk to me..."
"Will's kinda stubborn," Faith said. "Likes goin' with her feelings, but she doesn't always think stuff through first. But Becca's gonna knock that shit out of her. Willow needs to learn to be disciplined, and Becca's gonna teach her. But first we gotta find her. You know how to use the radio, in case you get a bead on her with a locator spell?"
Tara nodded. Faith held her, and kissed her cheek.
"Faith, are we gonna...are we gonna find her?" Tara whispered.
Faith looked Tara in the eyes.
"Yes," Faith said.
"I gotta...go to the bathroom," Willow whispered.
Willow had slept for awhile. She had no idea how long. The closet never changed. The darkness always looked exactly the same. But Willow thought she had slept for a few hours at least, because she had to pee now.
She had slept, because her breathing had been getting bad, and one of the tricks she had learned was to breathe deeply, and make herself yawn. It had the side-effect of making her tired, which usually helped. Sleep always took her mind off her breathing.
Her breathing was good now. For the moment.
A moment later, the closet door opened. The light was blinding. Willow squinted up at a loping, silhouetted form. A dirty plastic bucket fell to the floor beside her with a thump.
The closet door closed. The darkness returned, slithering over her again like a snake devouring her, taking her inside itself.
"I gotta...go like this?" Willow said. There was no answer.
Xander had been there for awhile at first, listening to her outside the door, but now he apparently wasn't bothering.
Willow didn't want to go in the bucket. She held it in.
She knew it was a losing battle. She knew she'd go in the bucket eventually. She knew there was no reason to hold it in now, to cause herself more discomfort...
She held it in.
An hour later, Willow peed in the bucket. She cried, when she did it. When she was done, the closet smelled like urine.
"So the problem with keeping a girl stashed in a closet is, it gets kind of old after awhile," Xander said, from the other side of the door. Willow jumped. "And I really never did have much of an attention span. It's been eight hours. Ready to kick it up a notch?"
"What...do you mean?" Willow said. "What are you gonna do?"
"Remember that time when we had to read Moby Dick and I got the cliff notes?" Xander said. "The cliff notes were way too long. So then I rented the movie, but then I fell asleep twenty minutes into it. Finally I ended up reading a movie review and writing my report based on that. Well, that plus the one reference they made to it in that Star Trek: The Next Generation movie."
"Captain Ahab has to go hunt his whale," Willow said.
"Yeah. Seriously, that Next Generation movie gave me some good insights into Moby Dick. But anyway, I'm just bringing that up because I wanted you to know that things are about to get less boring. Remember that Path of The Goddess stuff I added to the book you read, the part about the children of the Goddess denying you? 'Your enemies will bring them to you in their hundreds, and offer them a choice: to give you succor, and be cast out and hunted for daring to aid you, or to deny you, and be well fed and housed.' Remember that?"
"Yeah."
"Well y'know, it's funny. I just made that stuff up, I wasn't planning on doing any of it. I was planning to just kill you when I caught you. I don't even really know why I wrote some of that stuff. Getting you to turn yourself over to me was all that mattered, all the stuff about torturing you was just to make it sound real. But that stuff...it all just...felt right, y'know? It felt right when I had my priest guy add it to the book. So hey, why not do it? I've got you here, we might as well have some fun. I told you I want to make you understand that humanity isn't worth your sacrifice. I want to make you understand that this whole thing where you're supposed to pray for them isn't the only way this can go, it isn't the only option available to you. You can choose not to pray for them. You can let them die, and take my deal. The offer's still open. A hundred-thousand people, Chicago, starting over. No more fighting. No more vampires, no more demons...no one will ever attack you or your friends again."
"No."
"Yeah, thought you'd say that. That's why I brought some people for you to meet. This thing where you're trying to save the human race...well, maybe you should meet some of them first. The last eight hours, my vamps have been rounding up people to see you. We've got hundreds of them here. We didn't pick them, I just told my vamps to round up anybody they found out there. A random cross-section of humanity. Black, white, yellow, brown, young, old, skinny, fat, tall short, Republican, Democrat...they're all here. They all want to see you."
"What is this? What are you doing?"
Willow realized she was thirsty. She thought about asking him for water.
"Showing you the people you're so gung-ho to save," Xander said. "I'm giving them a choice. They can stay here, in the supermarket, with all the food they want and my guarantee that they'll never be hunted and that they'll survive all this, or they can be sent back out there to fend for themselves. It's up to them. I'm not threatening them in any way. If they get sent back out there they'll be no worse off than they were when my vamps found them. They'll just have to go back to trying to survive and hope for the best. But if they want to stay here with all the free food and my guarantee that they won't ever be hurt, they each have to hurt you...deny you."
"Hurt me?"
"Not like, life-threatening. But, yeah. And I'm encouraging them to be creative. They can punch you, kick you, choke you, piss on you, spit on you...whatever. No touching you in your swimsuit areas though. There are some rules. I was your boyfriend after all."
"Can I...can I have some water?" Willow whispered.
"No," Xander said. "So here they are, Will. The human race you want to save. I say they're a bunch of savages who deserve to be swept into the dustbin of history. I say they're gonna prove it to you. I say they'd just love to kick the shit out of some innocent, scared girl who's chained up naked in a closet as long as it'll keep their bellies full."
Willow saw someone approaching the closet. A shadow moved in front of the door. The little ribbon of light disappeared.
"Let's see who's right," Xander said.
The closet door opened. Willow looked up, squinting. She covered her breasts, and held her legs together.
A fat, middle aged woman with a beehive hairdo was standing there.
"My name is Betty Moss," the woman said, and kicked Willow in the ribs. Willow yelped, and curled up into a ball on the floor.
The closet door closed.
Willow laid on the floor, curled up in a ball. Her side was throbbing.
Fifteen minutes later, the closet door opened again. Willow looked up into the light, still curled up into a ball.
"My name is Earl Flack," a man said. Willow couldn't see him very well; he was silhouetted by the light. He was tall and thin, and he smelled like cigar smoke.
He came closer to her, bending down to get a good look. Willow felt him looking at her, felt his eyes on her naked skin. She turned away from him, and tried to find a position that didn't show too much. The way she was curled up, he could see all of her butt, but if she moved he would be able to see between her legs. She was covering herself there with her hands, but she still didn't want him to see.
The man looked at her. He took his time. Willow looked away from him.
"You're pretty," he said, and smiled, and touched her leg. Willow screamed, and tried to move away from him. But there was no room in there.
"Remember the rules, Earl," Xander said, from somewhere outside.
Earl nodded, and spit in Willow's face. Willow screamed again, and tried to wipe it off, but her hands couldn't reach her face. She cried, with his spit dripping down her nose.
"Can I get something to drink now?" Earl said, and closed the door. "I'm thirsty."
"Sure, drink up," Xander said, as Willow returned to the dark.
When Willow arrived at the door to the Hall of Warriors in nothing but her nightgown, the burly guard with the massive shoulders, the black hair done in dreadlocks, the long, droopy moustache, and the winsome blue eyes--Brandir, Willow recognized him, she had met him before at parties--smiled, bowed, and said, "They are expecting you, milady." Then he took off his fox pelt coat, and draped it over her shoulders. It reached down past her toes and trailed on the grass around her.
"Um, thanks," Willow said. "Brandir, right?"
"Aye," Brandir said. "'Tis spring, Willow, but not so warm yet for us to go frolicking about in our sleeping clothes, I think."
Willow giggled. "Yeah, um, I was kind of in a hurry. They're expecting me? But why? No one told me I was summoned."
"In truth, I know not. I know only that the All-Father told me to send you in immediately, once you arrived."
Willow looked up at the Hall of Warriors. It was a vast marble dome, bigger than a football stadium, topped with a giant marble carving of an Asgardian soldier, standing ready for battle, holding his sword and shield high. Willow had never been in there before. Civilians weren't normally allowed in, only warriors. Looking up at it, Willow felt just like she had on her first day of high school. The Asgardians were the seniors.
Brandir raised his eyebrow.
"Milady?" he said.
"Um...are there any kind of like...special rules I need to know about?" Willow said. "Y'know, you guys, with all your traditions...I don't want this to be like that time I went to Odin's palace for a banquet and I forgot to do the toast right." The marble soldier atop the dome seemed to disapprove of her, she thought. She didn't have a sword or a shield or armor. She wasn't tall and massive and strong. She was a girl in a nightgown.
"Also, you were rather drunk, or so the tale is told," Brandir said. "What was that toast you made?"
"Over the lips, through the gums, watch out tummy, here it comes," Willow said. "I didn't know I was supposed to make a toast! I didn't have a toast prepared! Everyone was suddenly just all, makin' toasts! Um...anyway...is there anything I need to know here so I don't make an ass of myself again?"
"It is customary to bring the guard, stalwart, long-suffering, uncomplaining soldier that he is, a mug of mead on your way out," Brandir said, and stood aside, and opened the massive marble doors for her. Willow was certain each of those giant doors weighed as much as her 1966 Mustang convertible. But Brandir looked like he worked out. Inside, Willow saw a narrow corridor, with rows of marble statues lining the walls, and torches hanging between them. The statues were warriors. All the statues in Asgard were warriors. The floor of the hall was paved with gold. But that was pretty typical too.
"A mug of mead?" Willow said.
"Aye, milady," Brandir said. "They save the finest vintage for the Hall of Warriors."
"Okay," Willow said, and walked through the doors. "Thanks."
She traveled a few steps down the hall, then turned.
"You're completely kidding me, aren't you, Brandir?" she said.
"Aye, milady," Brandir said.
"Bringing you back some mead anyway," Willow said. "I'm a rebel."
The Council Hall itself was typical Asgardian design, Willow thought, as she stepped into the room at the end of the hallway and looked around, and the assembled warriors all looked back: simple and to the point, with lots of shiny things thrown in for show. It was a massive circular room with a giant wooden table in the middle. The table had at least eight-hundred chairs and nearly every one was taken. The walls and the ceiling were solid marble and the floor was gold. There were hundred-foot long tapestries on the walls depicting Asgardian warriors kicking the holy bejeezus out of the usual suspects: goblins, trolls, frost giants, demons, evil dwarves, evil elves, dragons, witches, wizards, fairies, mermaids, leprechauns, evil Greek gods, good Greek gods, and, occasionally, Loki.
Loki was sitting at the table, on Odin's left side. If he was offended by the tapestries, he wasn't letting on. He smiled at Willow, stood up with the rest of the warriors, and bowed to her.
Thor was sitting on Odin's right side. He bowed lower than the rest, and held the bow longer. He smiled. Willow waved to him.
Odin didn't bow. Odin never bowed. He was Odin. He was wearing his battle armor today, Willow noticed. He looked like a shiny silver Sherman tank.
"Sit, Willow Rosenberg," Odin said, when the warriors were all seated again. "There is a place prepared for you." He gestured to Thor's right. There was an empty chair there, and a mug of mead and a plate heaped with mutton set on the table in front of it. Willow walked around to it. It took awhile. It was a big table.
"Do you wish to address this council, Willow Rosenberg?" Odin said.
"Um...yeah," Willow said. It always unnerved her, talking to Odin. Thor took her hand. Willow took a sip of the mead. "I know what we have to do. I know how to fix this."
Shouts went up from the assembled warriors; they slapped each other on the back, they slammed their fists thunderously down on the table, they hugged each other, they swore solemn oaths, they drained their mugs of mead and refilled them and drained them again. Some of them pulled out their swords and marched away from the table ready to do battle that very moment, but they were drunk and their friends brought them back and pointed out that Willow hadn't actually told them who they were supposed to be fighting against yet.
Thor kept his reserve. He always did. Loki, for his part, was inscrutable. Willow couldn't read the expression on his face.
"About time she figured it out," Loki muttered into his mead, as the warriors went on shouting and rejoicing and drinking all around him.
Odin held up his hand. The room fell silent. Then Odin nodded, as if he wasn't surprised at all by what Willow had said.
"Stand and speak, Willow," he said.
Willow stood up.
"Willow, are you saying you know how we can save the mortals? How we can save Midgard?" Thor said.
Willow looked out at the assembled warriors, and met their eyes.
"Yup," she said.