Parts: 51 - 60
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~Part: 51~
It was just past four in the morning when Spike and Willow left the club. They had been having such a wonderful time dancing and talking and laughing over dinner and then over dessert and then over drinks and then over coffee that they hadn’t noticed the time passing. They didn’t even notice when the rest of the crowd slowly filtered away, and the waiting staff started giving them dirty looks. They might never have noticed if Rick himself (who, sadly, looked nothing at all like Humphrey Bogart) hadn’t gone over to their table and personally and politely kicked them out. While Spike settled the bill, Willow had blushed and stammered and fallen all over herself apologizing for keeping them from closing up. Spike finally reached out one hand over her mouth, shook Rick’s hand with his free arm, and told him that they’d probably be back in another night or so. The waiter who had been glaring at them for the past hour was all smiles again as he showed them out (after noting the enormous tip that Spike had left) and in moments, they were back in L.A.
Spike had gotten them a two-bedroom suite so that they each had their own room. The idea had been to give Willow some privacy. (Well, the idea had been to keep Spike from having to sleep in a room with a window, but also to give Willow privacy) but the privacy idea was pretty much thrown out since she kept the door open to her room so she could talk to him while she got ready for bed. She talked to him while she carefully and reverently hung up her dress and put away her jewelry. She talked to him while she washed off her make-up. She talked to him while she took down her hair and brushed it out, and put on her pajamas, and she even managed to talk to him while she was brushing her teeth. Then she switched out the light and crawled into bed, and kept talking to him. His voice was the last thing she heard before she fell asleep.
Spike was surprised when he awoke to hear the faint sounds of the television coming from the living room, mingling with the soothing thrum of Willow’s heartbeat. He could feel that the sun was high in the sky, and he had expected Willow to be out sightseeing, like the eager little tourist that she was. Instead, he stepped out into the living room to find the windows heavily blocked, a soap opera in Spanish playing on the television, and a bright-eyed redhead still in her pajamas eating a sandwich and giving him an absolutely enormous grin.
“What are you doing here, pet?” he asked through a yawn as he ran his hand through his tousled hair.
“You brought me here, remember?” she answered, giggling as she watched him wobble his way into the room. Spike was always amusing to watch first thing in the day before his mug of blood. He woke up incoherent, but he got over that in five minutes or so. His sense of balance, on the other hand, took a while to assert itself, and he had the tendency to walk into furniture, and doorframes, and even the walls if he didn’t pay close attention to where he was going.
“Thought you’d be out seeing the sights,” he replied, stumbling over to the kitchenette where he had stashed his supply of blood in the mini-fridge when they arrived the night before. He could have sworn he could smell already warmed blood, but that simply wasn’t possible. Blood couldn’t simply warm itself. Or… perhaps it could. Because there, on the counter was an already heated mug of blood.
“I heard you moving around and knew you were about to get up, so I thought I’d have breakfast ready for you,” Willow called out without looking away from the television, knowing instinctively the cause of his sudden silence. “I hope it’s not overheated. You never can tell when you’re using an unfamiliar microwave.”
“It’s perfect, Red,” Spike stated, seating himself next to her on the couch while sipping the mug. “Thanks. So, what are we watching?”
“I have no idea,” she answered airily. “But the man in the dark suit keeps yelling at people and the woman in the blue dress keeps crying. I think her husband just died. Either that, or she’s in love with her daughter’s fiancé. Or maybe both. It’s hard to tell. I don’t speak Spanish.”
“If you don’t speak Spanish, then why are you watching it?” Spike asked, amused in spite of himself.
“Because it’s funny,” Willow replied with a grin. “Not as funny as Indian TV of course, but still. Funny.”
“So what are you doing cooped up in here anyways?” Spike asked after a minute or two of incomprehensible daytime drama had passed.
“It’s sunny outside,” she replied, as if that answered all questions.
“Did you pick up a new allergy to the sun in the past few days?” Spike prodded, waiting for the rest of the explanation.
“No, I’m allergic to dust,” she answered, “which is what you’ll be if I try to take you outside in the sun. I like you better non-dusty. You’re much more fun, and you don’t make me sneeze.”
“My sun problems are no reason why you would need to stay inside,” Spike pressed. He had brought her here to L.A. because he wanted her to enjoy herself. He didn’t want her to feel that she had to stay trapped inside all day just because he couldn’t go out. “Why not go out? Have some fun?”
“I am having fun,” she stated, smiling sweetly at him. “I always have fun when I’m with you. Sightseeing can wait until it’s dark enough for you to join me.”
Spike spent the next ten minutes trying to convince her that she would have a better time sightseeing during the day, when all the shops and museums were open, but she flatly refused. She insisted that it was her vacation and that she had the right to spend it anyway she wanted, and that she didn’t want to spend any of it without him. Spike, sap that he was, didn’t argue with her for long. He decided he rather liked her insistence that she spend all of her time with him. And he found that he definitely enjoyed having her all to himself, and not having to share her with Niblet, or the slayer, or research materials, or class. His Red was all his for the next few days, and he was more than willing to enjoy every moment.
When the sun finally set, Willow agreed to go out for a walk. As they walked through the streets, Spike also discovered that he couldn’t seem to stop smiling. It was kind of annoying, really. Even when he was human, he was never the type to wander around all day grinning like an idiot. And now, he was a demon. A cruel, vicious, evil demon. Cruel, vicious, evil demons don’t walk around with big, sappy grins on their faces. He tried to scowl, tried to frown, even tried looking expressionless, but it didn’t work. He just couldn’t stop smiling, mainly because he couldn’t stop himself from looking at Willow. And every time he looked at her, the grin just appeared on his face. It was totally out of his control. The most aggravating part was that whenever he was looking at her, he just couldn’t bring himself to mind.
She was, unquestionably, the best travel companion he had ever had. He’d never seen anyone approach a new city with such enthusiasm. To be sure, Spike had done most of his traveling with Dru who was, well, too insane to appreciate most of the places that they visited, but even if Spike was accustomed to traveling with the best and brightest society had to offer, they still couldn’t compare to Willow and the absolute unmitigated bliss with which she took in the streets of L.A. She looked like a kid in a candy shop. She just couldn’t seem to get enough of the stores and the streets and the crowds and the sights. Excitement positively radiated off of her skin.
Every minute or so she looked up at Spike with an enormous smile, or squeezed his hand, or stopped in the middle of the street and gave him a huge hug (her chosen alternative to thanking him every five minutes) and Spike simply couldn’t stop himself from smiling back. He hadn’t had this much fun in years. He was struck by the sudden thought of what it would be like to take Willow to New York, or London, or Paris and watch her eyes widen and her jaw drop as she took everything in. Damn, it sounded like fun. Maybe over the summer, when the demon activity slowed down, he’d talk the watcher into giving them a week long vacation.
They didn’t notice the elderly couples they passed who smiled indulgently at them, happy to see a young couple so obviously in love. They didn’t see the new parents with their baby strollers who winked and nudged each other as they looked at them, remembering that stage in their own courtship, or the new couples looked at them shyly, wondering if they would ever attain that comfort and happiness just from being together. Spike and Willow were simply too wrapped in each other to realize. It’s just as well. If Willow had noticed, she would have felt the need to explain, and that would have turned into something of a problem, because those happy couples would probably not have believed her if she told them that she and Spike were not in love.
Of course, if the couples knew the truth about Spike and Willow’s relationship; that he was an evil vampire who had forced her to enter into a metaphysical bond so that he could control her and her friends; there would have been several things about Spike and Willow’s story that they would have had trouble believing. After all, no one looking at them would have been able to guess at the lives that they normally led. None of the happy couples that smiled at them would have suspected that Willow was an exceptionally powerful witch who had recently summoned the First and Ultimate Good. They never would have dreamed that Spike was a vampire with over a century of age and experience in torture, murder and mayhem. They most certainly wouldn’t have thought that Willow was a lesbian who had recently been dumped by her girlfriend, or that Spike was miserably pining over a slayer who treated him like dirt.
But there’s always the possibility that even if they were told, even if everything was explained to them about vampires and slayers and Sunnydale and mystical bonds, they would still smile in that smugly superior way that couples have that showed that they had reached their own conclusions. After all, they might not have known vampires when they saw them, or witches, for that matter. But you didn’t need to know about those things in order to recognize a couple of people who had fallen in love.
Regardless, Spike and Willow didn’t notice, and went along their way unmindful of the people around them and the possibly inaccurate and definitely premature conclusions that they had drawn. They simply enjoyed the sights of the city and the pleasure of each other’s company. In their constant conversation, the topic of love was never even mention. Nor, interestingly enough, was the topic of Sunnydale, or demons. Or Buffy.
~Part: 52~
Buffy would always deny it, but the truth was, it took her a few days to realize that Spike and Willow had left town. Buffy cared deeply about Willow and would do anything to help her or protect her, but she didn’t *think* about her very often, unless Willow was right there in front of her. Buffy was a “seize the day” kind of person in more ways than one. The things that always interested her the most and held the majority of her attention were the things directly in front of her. She didn’t spend much time abstractly thinking about other people when her own day-to-day life took so much of her concentration. Seeing others was what usually brought them to mind and out of sight was, all too often, out of mind for Buffy. And since Buffy had been rather avoiding Willow’s house ever since Spike had moved in, and since Willow had been too busy with midterms to come to research sessions or join Buffy on patrol, it simply didn’t register with her right away that Willow wasn’t around. It took a few days and one rather sizeable problem for the realization to kick in.
The problem started Friday night when Buffy was on patrol. It had been a pretty slow night. She had only found three fledglings, and had dusted them almost ridiculously easily. She was just wondering to herself if three vamps were enough for her to call it a night and stop in at the Bronze before heading home when a figure stepped out of the shadows of the cemetery directly into her path.
Buffy tensed momentarily. The stranger was wearing a full-length dark cloak with a hood covering the head, making both features and form undistinguishable. Buffy sensed a strange sort of power emanating from the figure. Not exactly vampire, definitely not demon, but… not quite human. Something else. Something more. Buffy was busily running through the possibilities in her head when a pale hand reached up and pushed back the hood, the pale face reflecting the moonlight.
Buffy let out a sigh of relief. It was just a girl. A not-terribly-tall, not-terribly-muscular, not-at-all-intimidating, perfectly normal girl. She even wore glasses. Obviously, there was nothing to be worried about there. Buffy felt all of her usual confidence return to her in a rush. Along with it came her protective instincts. Obviously, this girl didn’t know the dangers of wandering around Sunnydale alone at night. Buffy took it upon herself to see that the girl was better informed.
“You shouldn’t be out here, you know,” Buffy advised. “It isn’t safe.”
The girl smiled slightly, seemingly amused by the statement. “*You’re* out here,” she replied, and Buffy caught the British accent. <Tourist> she thought to herself, shaking her head, wondering why on earth anyone would come to Sunnydale for a vacation. <No wonder she doesn’t know not to be out at night.>
“I can take care of myself,” Buffy answered.
The girl’s smile grew wider. “So can I, pet” she rejoined, circling Buffy slowly. Buffy started to feel a bit uneasy. The girl didn’t look quite so ordinary any more. Her appearance hadn’t changed, but something about the way that she moved made Buffy feel… oddly like prey. It wasn’t a feeling that the slayer enjoyed.
“Was there something you wanted?”
“I was just curious,” the girl answered, still circling Buffy with that same enigmatic smile that was really starting to get on Buffy’s nerves.
“Curious about what?” Buffy asked cautiously, discreetly palming her stake.
“Curious about *you*, slayer.”
Buffy froze. “Slayer? You must be confused. There’s no such thing as a slayer. I-I mean, I don’t even know what a slayer is.”
The girl rolled her eyes and looked briefly annoyed, and stopped circling, to Buffy’s relief. “In each generation there is one slayer,” the girl recited in a bored, slightly sarcastic tone. “She who has the power to fight against vampires, demons, etc. Great strength, agility and dubious fashion sense. Any of this ring a bell, honey?”
Buffy gripped her stake more firmly. <Dubious fashion sense?> she asked herself, and then shook her head abruptly. <Not the point.> “The only ones who know about the slayer are demons,” she retorted coldly. “So what does that make you?”
“Smarter than you, obviously,” the girl replied, “since I could name hundreds of humans who know about the slayer. Does the term ‘Watcher’s Council’ mean anything to you? You know, huge secret organization in England? Like the CIA but with more tweed and tea. They are, ostensibly, human, and knowing about the slayer is their life’s work. And I could name dozens of other humans who know about the slayer, as well. It just so happens that I’m not one of them.”
“Then what are you?” Buffy managed to ask through clenched teeth.
“Bored, pet,” the girl answered, with the grin fully back in place. “Fearfully bored. So were you planning on using that stake, or do you just enjoy rubbing something even vaguely phallic shaped?”
With that, Buffy decided that small talk was definitely overrated, and charged. It didn’t end well. In fact, it ended with Buffy flat on her back with the wind knocked out of her in less than five seconds.
“Was that the best you can do, dear?” the girl asked, yawning delicately. “If so, this is going to be much less fun than I thought.” Buffy flipped herself back onto her feet and glared at the girl. “Is that supposed to be impressive?” the girl asked. “Because you might want to work a bit on your technique. Of course, you could also stand to work on your clothing ensemble. And your battle banter could use a bit of work, as well. Also—”
The girl didn’t get a chance to finish as Buffy, with an inarticulate cry of rage, charged yet again. Buffy did slightly better this time. She lasted nearly ten seconds before she ended up flat on her back again, and this time she pulled herself to her feet before her opponent got into lecture mode again. The fight lasted nearly half an hour. The girl seemed, at most, slightly amused. She fended off Buffy’s attacks as if she was swatting at a fly. Her fighting was practically effortless, and did not leave her with so much as a hair out of place. Buffy, on the other hand, had hair flying in every direction and liberally sprinkled with bits of leaves and dirt, and was panting like she had just finished a marathon. Meanwhile, the girl kept up a steady running commentary on Buffy’s fighting style. It wasn’t exactly complimentary.
It was a peculiar fight. The girl that Buffy had dismissed so easily was, by any standard of accounting, winning. In fact, it was fairly clear early on in the fight that if it had been a fight to the death, the slayer would have been down for the count within the first five minutes. However, the mysterious opponent didn’t seem very interested in doing an extensive amount of damage. Most of her moves were defensive, simply blocking Buffy’s attacks. Of course, every time Buffy’s attacks were blocked, the slayer got knocked to the ground very quickly, which meant that she would certainly be feeling the bumps and bruises for the next day or so, but her opponent managed to inflict all her damage without throwing a single punch. She didn’t seem to have any vested interest in killing the slayer, but she did appear to enjoy watching Buffy thrash around and struggle and get winded and sweaty and dirt-stained. Finally, Buffy had had enough.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Fayth, with a ‘y’ not an ‘i’, and I’m here on vacation,” she answered, glibly.
“That doesn’t answer my question!” Buffy yelled, frustrated and aggravated and tempted to charge the girl yet again. She forced herself to stay put. After all, she really didn’t want to get knocked the ground again. Even with slayer healing, she’d landed on her butt enough to cause bruising that would remain for days.
“Then you should have been more specific in your phrasing,” the girl replied calmly, removing a piece of lint from her cloak.
“Alright,” Buffy answered through clenched teeth. “I’ll try again.”
“Don’t bother, pet. Something leads me to believe that if I waited for you to question me properly, we’d be here all night. So I’ll explain this very slowly and very carefully. My family and I are here on vacation. We’re very busy in our line of work and wanted to take a week to soak up some sun, swim in the ocean, and absorb some energy from the hellmouth. We’re no threat to your precious town, slayer. Don’t worry about that.”
“So why did you come to the cemetery looking for me?” Buffy growled.
“What can I say?” her opponent grinned. “I’m a multi-tasker with a short attention span. Relaxing and recharging with fun in the sun is well and good, but I got bored. We had heard passing mention of you in the demon community, and we were all curious to see how much of the rumors were true. I remembered that you were based here, and thought I’d see for myself the separation between fantasy and fact.”
“And what have you decided?” Buffy asked, torn between annoyance and fear. She was here with her family? There were *more* of them like her?
“You’re amusing, slayer. Not very bright, and definitely not as skilled as I had expected. But… amusing, nonetheless. At least, that’s how you appear from my perspective. My sisters will have to reach their own conclusions. Which I’m sure they will do. Soon. You’ll be seeing us, slayer.” With that, the girl smiled again, and reached up to the neck of her cloak, which was fastened with a peculiarly brilliant silver brooch. She winked, and then vanished.
~Part: 53~
"Giiiiles!" Buffy called out as she entered the Magic Box. She had intended her tone to sound urgent and authoritative so Giles would realize right away that she needed to talk to him about something important, but it came out mostly whiny. She was sore, and tired, and aggravated and… well… sore. She was accustomed to tense, strained muscles after a hard patrol, but she wasn't used to being knocked on her backside quite so many times. It hurt. A lot.
Giles was watching the shop on his own, since Anya had absolutely insisted that Xander come with her while she tried on wedding dresses. Since she knew that it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride on the wedding day, she wanted to make sure in advance that she chose a wedding dress that turned Xander on, so she could count on lots of orgasms on her wedding night. After she explained her reasoning in excruciating detail to Giles, he was very willing to let her have the night off. In fact, he was very willing to do almost anything she asked, as long as she stopped talking about what she had planned for the wedding night. With a small smile of triumph (Anya may have been tactless, but over the past few years even she had learned a thing or two about how to use her tactlessness to get her way) Anya and Xander had left the shop hours before.
He had looked up with an eager smile as the door opened, hoping for a customer, but his smile was instantly replaced with concern as she saw Buffy limp in, covered in dirt and leaves and a very petulant expression.
"Buffy! Dear lord, are you alright? What happened?"
Buffy threw herself into a chair and crossed her arms over her chest, pouting. "Some girl beat me up," she answered. She waited for a sympathetic response, but when she looked up, she saw that Giles was waiting for her to continue. She realized that he was too intrigued by the prospect of a new enemy to listen to her complain at the moment so, with a sigh, she described the events of the past hour. Giles listened with rapt attention, and when she finished, he immediately sprang up and headed toward his books.
"Fayth with a `y' you said? British accent?"
"Yes," Buffy answered. "Yes to the name, yes to the `y', yes to the British accent, and yes to the girl who *beat me up*. I could be *dead* right now. Is a little sympathy too much to ask?"
Giles looked up from his books, startled. "Are you injured, then? Do you need me to drive you to the hospital?"
"Well… no, I don't think anything is broken. Just bruised and sore. Could you get me an icepack?" she asked hopefully.
"Did you bring back the icepack that you borrowed last time?" Giles asked absently, having returned to his book when Buffy admitted that she wasn't injured.
"No…"
"Then I'm afraid I don't have an icepack for you to borrow."
Buffy slumped back in her chair and returned to pouting. That was how she remained while Giles continued rapidly flipping through his books. For several minutes, the only sound in the room was the shifting of paper, until Giles dropped his book. It hit the floor with a resounding thud. Buffy had been about to fall asleep in her chair, but the noise made her snap awake instantly. She turned to face Giles, just in time to hear the familiar, terrifying statement, "Oh dear lord."
Buffy got to her feet and crossed the room to Giles, kneeling to pick up the book. "What are we `dear lord'ing about now?" she asked, handing him the book. "This chick Fayth isn't another hell goddess, is she? Because I've gotta say, hell goddesses are getting downright passé."
"Buffy," Giles stated, trying to sound calm, "the brooch that Fayth touched right before she disappeared, did it look like this?" He turned the book to face her and pointed to an image printed on the page. Buffy recognized it instantly. It was the same symbol that had been on Fayth's brooch: two intercrossed six-pointed stars with a tiny pentagram on each of the twelve points, and another pentagram in the center.
"Yup, that's it, alright," she answered. "So what does it mean?"
Giles' face practically lit up. "Buffy, you have no idea how thrilling this is," he replied, nearly bouncing with excitement. "The Sisterhood of Thirteen are, of course, legendary in demonic circles, but they're known for being fast, efficient, and terribly discreet. No watcher has laid eyes on them in over fifty years!"
Buffy rolled her eyes. Only Giles would get excited over something like that. "So what are they?" she asked, when she got tired of watching him shuffle through the pages and mutter about the people he needed to contact. "Demon hunters?"
"No," Giles answered absently, "in fact, they usually work for demons. They're a group of mercenaries."
"WHAT?" Buffy shrieked, in a tone that very nearly broke the glass in the windows. "You're telling me that some famous group of mercenaries `known for being fast, efficient, and terribly discreet' are after me? Don't you *remember* the last time mercenaries were after me? Angel and I were nearly killed!"
"Buffy, calm down," Giles stated soothingly, abandoning his beloved book to help Buffy back into her seat and rub her shoulder gently till she calmed down. "They're not here to kill you."
"How do you know?" she asked, nervously.
"Because if they were, you'd be dead," Giles replied. Buffy glared at the implication, but Giles went on to elaborate. "You stated yourself that Fayth told you they were just here on vacation. In the fight, you mentioned that she had you at a disadvantage several times" (Buffy had neglected to mention that Fayth had had her at a disadvantage the *entire* time) "and she made no move to kill you or even disable you." Buffy grudgingly conceded the point, and the look of panic slowly faded from her (dirt-stained) face.
"It is no insult to say that they could have killed you," Giles comforted, seating himself in a chair beside her. "They have killed slayers in the past, when it suited their purposes. They are extremely powerful, extremely skilled, and extremely practiced in the art of assassination."
"What are they?" Buffy asked, softly.
"Witches," Giles answered concisely. "A coven of witches known as the Sisterhood of Thirteen." Giles went on to explain their history. Apparently, it had started out in Virginia around 1725, with a witch named Kate.
Kate had lived in a small community with her husband and children and was well-known by her neighbors for her generosity, her affection, and her skill at witchcraft. The community, fortunately, was not terribly pious, consisting mostly of people looking to make their fortune in the new world. They did not object to her witchcraft, as long as it proved useful. And since the town had never had a reliable doctor, they came to depend heavily upon Kate's herbal remedies and healing spells. The women of the community trusted her absolutely, since she had delivered most of their children, and had led them through their childhood diseases relatively unscathed. The men of the community were far more dependant upon her… affection.
Kate was a loving, giving woman, who never saw the need to confine her affections to her husband. Since her husband showed no objection, she shared her affections with a series of lovers. She showed no malice in any of her affairs, actually leading many of the men to show increasing devotion to and understanding for the women of their family through her example of warmth and tenderness. Since all her actions led only to the increased comfort and enjoyment of the community, no one saw any reason to object to. Kate never even considered the possibility that her happy life could be disrupted.
She reckoned without Darius Clint. The small town where Kate lived had been his place of birth, where he lived as an orphan, neglected and mostly forgotten by the more upstanding members of the town. No one noticed when he left, moving down south to make his fortune. He had sworn to himself that one day he would be a rich man, and he would come back to that town, build himself a mansion, and gain possession of everything that he desired. True to his vow, Clint became rich and moved back to the town where he had a palatial mansion built. Eager to have the building constructed quickly, he worked the builders far too hard, and they soon grew ill. Through inquiry, Clint learned that Kate's medicine was trusted over that of the doctor, and sent for her to tend to his workers.
As soon as he saw her, he wanted her. Along with tales of her medicinal ability, Clint had also heard of her more amorous accomplishments, and he propositioned her the night they met. She refused. She may have been freer with her affections then the marriage laws allowed for, but she still bestowed them only where she saw fit. Clint's proposal held absolutely no interest for her. He wouldn't accept her initial, polite refusal. Attempting to bargain, he offered to pay her for her favors. In reply, she laughed in his face, and left. Clint, furious, swore that she would be his.
At first, he tried to woo her, sending her flowers and gifts, but she gave the flowers away, and returned the gifts to his home. Finally, he resorted to more strenuous means. He was not the only man in town who had been rejected by the beautiful woman, and through careful use of money and power, he managed to find a way to trap her. There was an old law on the books, set up by the founders of the town, which allowed prosecution and execution of witches, upon the testimony of at least three witnesses. The law had never been used and most people were unaware that it even existed, until Darius Clint started digging. He got together his (male, disgruntled, rejected) witnesses, and gave Kate one last chance. She had her choice: the jail cell (possibly to be followed by the execution block), or his bed. She told him that if they burned her for a witch, he would have to gather her ashes to spread in between his sheets, because that was the only way he would have her in his bed.
He accepted the challenge, and within a day, she was placed under arrest. Kate, naively trusting of her friends in the town, believed that she would quickly be released. After all, there was scarcely a family in the whole of the town who she had not befriended and helped, at one point or another. The possibility that anyone would stand as witness against her, or vote to convict her, was unfathomable to her. It did not take long for her to learn her mistake. Greasing palms right and left, Clint ensured that the trial was run to his satisfaction. Kate was tried of witchcraft, with half a dozen witnesses against her, and she was convicted with the sentence of death. The twelve men on the jury, with their newly fat bankbooks, did not flinch as they pronounced her guilty. Neither did the six witnesses, or the judge who sentenced her to death. Kate looked them over carefully, memorizing their faces.
When she was returned to her jail cell, Darius Clint came to visit her one last time. He informed her that her husband had been placed under arrest as well, and that her children had been taken away. He told her that this was her final chance. Either she gave herself to him, right then and there, or he would see to it that her husband was convicted as well, and her children orphaned. She refused. The next day on the execution block, she cursed the town for their complicity in the crime. She called on the dark powers she was accused of worshipping, and they answered her call. There was a brilliant flash of light, and she disappeared. Within a day, Kate's husband and children mysteriously disappeared as well. The members of the town were shocked and uneasy, but they pretended to go on with life, as usual. Until the first body appeared.
The judge who had pronounced sentence on Kate, a man who had shared her bed a dozen times over, was found on the execution block. He had been stripped and castrated and had, by all appearances, bled to death from the injury. The word "guilty" was carved into his forehead. Two days later, the next body was found. Over the next few weeks, the bodies of nineteen men appeared on the execution block: the judge, the jury, and the six witnesses. The death of each was more spectacular than the last. Inscribed on each forehead was the single word, "guilty", in handwriting that the townsmen refused to admit that they recognized.
Darius Clint was last. She let him stew for nearly a month, wondering if each day was going to be his last. Finally, she poisoned him. The poison was slow, but treacherous, practically disintegrating a new part of his body each day, beginning (deliberately) in his groin and spreading out through his body. The stench of rotting flesh was so powerful that everyone refused to go near him. The doctor, finally bribed to his side at the price of an enormous fee, treated him with leeches and powders that exacerbated his wounds and brought him no relief. He was driven mad with pain before it ended. He was found on the execution block, like the others, with the same trademark word carved on his forehead, and his hands, tongue, and genitals lying in a pile next to him.
The townspeople waited anxiously for the rest of Kate's curse to be fulfilled, and for their town to be destroyed. Nothing happened. No more bodies appeared, and no more bizarre ailments erupted. Slowly, they realized that the root of the curse lay in themselves. The men who had been executed had been among the pillars of the town. Without them to supervise, business and trade languished. The prosperity of the town faded like a sunset. Children took sick and, without Kate to treat them, died or were disfigured by disease. Husbands gave in to the pleading from their wives to move to healthier communities and, little by little, the town collapsed from within. In ten years, it was a ghost town. Within fifty years, all the structures had collapsed. Within a hundred years, the town had been completely forgotten. That much was fact, recorded by the citizens of the town, and carefully compiled by the watcher's council. The rest of the record was the stuff of hearsay and folklore and legend.
Although Kate's trust in society was shattered, she never quite gave up her generosity, especially her habit of taking in strays. Myths spread around the colonies of the beautiful witch who traveled aimlessly, adopting women in need. She taught them how to cast spells, brew potions, take care of themselves, and never depend on anyone except each other. Kate would do a little business in town: pull together a little money, and find some tidy way to dispose of whoever had hurt the girls she adopted, and then she would move on. Most of the time, the girls stayed behind, starting over with the skills Kate had taught them. But every now and then, a girl would confess that she had nothing left to stay for, and every reason to go, and would join Kate and the others in their wanderings.
Lisa from Massachusetts was the first to join. Legend has it, Kate found her in a whorehouse since she was too broke to live any other way and far too proud to beg. The two of them picked up Mirabel in Maryland, rescuing her from an abusive husband, who shortly thereafter met a very tragic end. They found Jeanne in Connecticut, trying (and failing) to make ends meet. Heather was from Rhode Island, which she insisted on referring to as Rogue Island, and had some scars that she refused to talk about unless she was very, very drunk. The rest of the time, the other girls learned not to ask.
In Delaware, they found Robin in a cemetery, swearing revenge against the man who had financially ruined her lover and driven him to suicide. Bethany and Mary were twins from South Carolina whose father had them begging in the streets to get him more money to drink down the drain. They broke Janet out of jail in North Carolina, broke Ann out of a mental asylum in South Carolina, and broke Jami out of a convent in New Jersey. Inell joined up with them in Pennsylvania, but they didn't find her, she found them. She told them she'd heard of them, heard of what they had done, and she admired them for it. And, she said, she didn't want to be alone anymore.
Fayth was the last. They found her in New York, standing over a dead man's body with a gun in her hand. They asked if he deserved it. She told them that he did. They left the matter at that. The thirteen of them kept wandering, always managing to get by, until one day in the newly declared colony of Georgia, they were approached by a demon with a rather interesting offer. He was a benevolent demon who was physically incapable of causing harm to another, but he wasn't incapable of wanting revenge. He had heard rumors of what the girls had done to both humans and demons who had proven to be obstacles in their paths, and he offered to hire them for a job. If they took care of the object of his revenge, he promised them that they would be well paid. They took the job, performed it flawlessly, and were rewarded… with immortality.
~Part: 54~
When Giles finished explaining to Buffy the history of the Sisterhood of Thirteen, the slayer sat silently for a moment, absorbing all of what she had been told. It was a lot to take in. However, being Buffy, her silence didn’t last for too long.
“So what do we do?” Buffy asked.
“Do?” Giles asked, honestly bewildered. “About what?”
“About the Sisterhood! Big shot mercenaries who want to spend their vacation torturing me! Ring a bell?”
“Actually, they’re usually referred to as the Thirteen, not as the Sisterhood—” Giles interjected, referring back to the book in his hand.
“NOT THE POINT!” Buffy screeched in reply. “Mercenaries, Giles. That’s the point! Mercenaries who want to make my life miserable. We’re going to *do* something about it, aren’t we?”
Giles still looked bewildered. “I understand your concern, but they are simply here on vacation. Fayth told you that they were no threat to this town, and they’re all well-known for keeping their word. They’ll be leaving before long. Can you not, ahem, put up with them until they’re gone?”
Buffy pouted. “Can’t we do something to make them leave? Willow’s a witch. Maybe she could come up with some kind of spell?”
Giles considered the possibility for a moment, and then shook his head. “No, Willow won’t be back until the early AM hours on Tuesday. She wouldn’t be able to work up a spell until at least Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, and it’s possible they’ll be gone by then.”
“Tuesday?” Buffy asked, looking confused. “What do you mean she won’t be back till Tuesday? Where has she gone?”
“Her vacation,” Giles answered, looking surprised. “When you didn’t ask where she was, I assumed that you knew.”
“Willow went on vacation and didn’t tell me?” Buffy questioned, looking annoyed. <Willow should have mentioned something,> she thought, <so I wouldn’t worry when she disappeared.> Sure, she *hadn’t* been worried about Willow (mainly because she didn’t know that the girl was gone) but she *could* have been, and it was inconsiderate of Willow not to take that into consideration.
“She didn’t know. Spike planned it for her as a surprise.”
“Spike’s gone, too?” Buffy was shocked. And then it occurred to her. *That* was what had felt wrong with the fight the night before. That had been the source of that vague atmosphere of wrongness that she couldn’t quite place. She had felt that way because it had been such a very long time since she had gone into any fight without Spike there to back her up. She had always hated the thought of having him around, following her like some pathetic stalker, but it did make a difference to fight against someone alone, when you were accustomed to having someone with you who would throw himself in front of a bullet for your sake. When she fought against Fayth, she had been on her own.
Ever since he had formed his disastrous crush on her, Spike had never gone more than a day without coming up with some excuse to be near her. It wasn’t that she *wanted* him following her around like a lovesick puppy, but she had rather gotten accustomed to the fact that he was always there. She just assumed that he’d be backing her up on patrol, and keeping an eye out for Dawn and her mother for her, and being there as a convenient punching bag whenever she needed him to be. The thought of him ever voluntarily deciding to be anywhere else other than by her side or at her back had simply never occurred to her.
“Well, *he* should have mentioned something to me,” Buffy huffed.
“In the, ah, long, heartfelt conversations that you and Spike so frequently hold?” Giles questioned with his eyebrows slightly raised.
Buffy avoided eye contact. Alright, so maybe he had a point. Whenever Spike did try to talk to her, she had the tendency to brush him off. Buffy shook her head. Again, that wasn’t the point.
“Well, if Spike and Willow can’t help us get rid of the creepy witches, who can?”
“I’m afraid that no one can,” Giles replied calmly. Far too calmly, in Buffy’s opinion. He didn’t seem worried. He didn’t seem concerned. He seemed, honestly, almost *excited* at the thought of the Thirteen in Sunnydale. “If the situation becomes truly impossible, then we’ll look into further measures, but I do not believe that they represent any serious danger, either to the town as a whole or to you, individually. Just try to avoid losing your temper around them and wait it out, and they’ll leave soon enough.”
Buffy pouted, but eventually, reluctantly, agreed. After all, she had defeated the Master, kept her sanity intact through months of Angelus, ripped into the government on every end, and taken down a hell goddess. Surely she could deal with a group of whacked out witches on vacation. She repeated this to herself over and over again as she walked home from the Magic Box. She repeated it to herself a few more times the next day when she walked away from a fight with Inell with a pair of black eyes and a bruise on her stomach that made it hurt when she laughed. Not that she felt much like laughing. Inell had long brown hair that she had been braiding while she fought with Buffy and had effectively kicked Buffy’s ass with both hands behind her back. It was humiliating.
Of course, the humiliation had only begun. They attacked her at varying intervals through the whole of Saturday and Sunday. By the end of the weekend, half the joints in her body had been dislocated, the other half were sprained, and she’d been dumped in a dumpster, kicked into the gutter multiple times and dropped through a manhole into the sewer, ruining her new shoes. She had been knocked so many times on her backside that the bruising had become a permanent feature. She thought she had faced the worst of it when Janet ended her fight with the slayer by knocking Buffy directly on top of a pissed-off skunk, but she was wrong.
Monday morning, Buffy came bursting into the Magic Shop with smoke practically pouring from her ears.
“GIES!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. Anya gave her a disapproving glare from behind the register.
“Just because we don’t have customers right now doesn’t mean that you have the right to come in here and scream like a banshee,” she stated primly. “If someone walked in during that, you’d scare them off! Besides, his name is Giles, not Gies. You’ve known him for nearly five years. How could you forget his name?”
Buffy shot her a murderous glare. “I didn borgeh” Buffy hissed, or rather, tried to hiss, “I jus can’b alk wiwow my eesh!”
“I can barely understand a word you’re saying,” Anya replied calmly. Buffy screamed again. “Well, there’s no need to yell about it. I am standing right here, you know. If you can’t tell me what happened, you could always write it down. Oh! Or do you know sign language?”
Buffy clenched her jaw, but after a few deep breaths managed to restrain herself. She marched stiffly over to Anya and opened her mouth, so Anya could see where she had lost her two front teeth.
“Buffy?” Giles said as he entered from the back. “What seems to be the trouble?”
“She’s lost her front teeth so she’s talking funny,” Anya replied, forestalling Buffy’s (no doubt incomprehensible) explanation.
“What happened?” Giles asked, stepping closer so that he could examine Buffy’s teeth.
“Kay!” she yelled in reply.
Giles’ hand dropped away from Buffy’s jaw as he stared at her with a look of unmistakable excitement. “Kate herself? Really? How remarkable. The leader of the Thirteen! You must tell me all about it! Well, once we get your teeth fixed—”
“Did you say the Thirteen?” Anya asked, interrupting.
At Buffy’s vigorous nod in confirmation, Anya squealed and ran across the shop to the candles selection. Grabbing a specific one, she rushed it over to the counter where she lit it immediately and uttered a brief incantation in an unfamiliar language. Instantly, there was a huge puff of smoke in the center of the shop, and an amused voice called out:
“You rang?”
“Kate!” Anya squealed, rushing over to the puff of smoke and throwing her arms around the woman hidden inside.
“Anyanka?” the redhead asked, obviously surprised. “Why didn’t you let me know that you were in town? And what did you do to your hair?”
“They didn’t tell me you were here until this morning, or I’d have summoned you right away!” Anya replied.
“Let me get the other girls. They’ll be thrilled to see you again.” The witch snapped her fingers and in an instant, twelve other puffs of smoke signaled the arrival of the rest of the Thirteen. Anya looked thrilled. Buffy looked furious. Giles looked awed. The Thirteen mostly looked amused. Within seconds they had gathered around Anya, hugging and chatting and squealing and comparing notes.
“Ahem,” Buffy tried, wanting to get everyone’s attention. It didn’t work. “Ahem!” she tried again. “AHEM!” Finally, they looked over to her.
“Sounds like you’re choking, slayer,” Kate stated, smirking. “Ladies, did any of you poison the slayer?” The girls snickered and shook their heads.
“Not unless she choked on some of the garbage when I threw her in the dumpster,” Bethany replied.
“Did I tell you that she was still bitching about it when I ran into her last night?” Jeanne asked. “I cracked her jaw, hoping it would shut her up, but it didn’t work.”
“I had the same idea, knocking out her teeth,” Kate interjected with a grin.
“Well,” Bethany drawled, “her perfume made her smell like a trashy whore. I figured it was better just to smell like trash.”
“Or skunk,” Janet muttered under her breath making the rest of the girls laugh.
Buffy screamed, her face red with frustration and started speaking rapidly. Of course, without the use of her front teeth, all that happened was that she made a lot of incomprehensible noise, and got a lot of drool all over her chin. This only made her angrier, and her face started to turn purple.
“You know, you should probably do something about that before she gives herself a heart attack,” Anya suggested.
“Oh, alright,” Kate grumbled. “Since you insisted.” She snapped her fingers. Buffy’s teeth stayed gone, but she was once again able to enunciate clearly.
“Anya, how can you be *friends* with these people?” Buffy hissed.
“It’s really not that surprising, slayer,” Mary answered. “We’re smart, funny, powerful, eternal, and know how to have a good time. We’re loads of fun at parties. You should see the stacks of invitations we get!”
“And unlike some people,” Ann added, running a critical eye over Buffy’s outfit, “we have good taste.”
“Yes. Thanks, I forgot that one,” Mary stated. “We have good taste,” she concluded, turning again toward Buffy.
“And good sense,” Heather threw in.
“We’re rich,” Mirabel suggested. “That’s always fun.”
“And generous,” Robin added. “Which goes quite well with being rich. We buy people really nice presents.”
“There are people who would kill to be on our Christmas list,” Jeanne confirmed. “Actually,” she grinned, “there are people who *have* killed to be on our Christmas list.”
“We’re well connected, own some fabulous houses across the globe, and throw some pretty terrific parties,” Jami contributed.
“Oh yeah, and we kick ass,” Fayth concluded with a grin. “Lots of ass. Lately, lots of your ass.”
“My question, Anyanka,” Inell asked, focusing on the former vengeance demon, “is why on earth you seem to be friends with *her*”?
Anya sighed. “She’s best friends with my fiancé,” she stated. “It’s one of those inherited things that comes with a significant other. Like in-laws and beer can collections.”
“Well then, you’re fiancé will be happy to know that we’ve gotten a job,” Kate said. “We’re heading out of town this afternoon.”
“No!” Anya cried. “But we haven’t been able to spend any time together! And I wanted you to meet Xander!”
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Kate replied, slinging an arm around Anya’s shoulders. “We might swing by later and finish our vacation.” The girls gathered around Anya, hugging her again and complimenting her one last time on her ring before touching their brooches and disappearing. Kate was the last to go.
“It’s been fun, slayer,” she smirked. “Thanks for providing us with some amusement. Watcher,” she continued, turning to Giles, “don’t look so downcast. I dare say you’ll be seeing us again.” She winked, blew him a kiss, then touched her brooch and disappeared.
~Part: 55~
After it was all over, Willow realized that she should have known better. You can take the girl out of the Hellmouth, but you can’t take the dirty, stinking, rotten Hellmouthy bad luck out of the girl. But she had let her guard down. She hadn’t expected it. She hadn’t been prepared. Everything had been going so well. Really, it had been the perfect vacation. Oh, things had gone wrong, of course. Things *always* go wrong. Willow had thrown up in the street after a stomach-churning dinner at a strange Chinese restaurant that they found. Spike lost a button off of his favorite shirt, and on their last day at the hotel, the maid who cleaned their room had discovered the stash of blood in the mini-fridge and had thrown it out. But they were able to laugh off those little problems. Willow had felt much better after throwing up the repulsive dinner, she had promised to sew a new button onto Spike’s shirt when they got back to Sunnydale, and Spike was certain that he wouldn’t have any problems finding a demon bar or even a butcher shop to serve him some blood.
He had left for that very purpose: he wanted to feed before they hit the road to head back to Sunnydale. He had insisted that Willow stay in the room where she’d be safe. She quickly agreed, feeling none too eager to go poking around demon bars, even with her own powers and Spike’s protection. While Spike was gone, she packed their bags and checked all the rooms to make sure nothing was left behind. Finally satisfied that everything was put away, she tried to sit on the couch to watch TV, but found that she couldn’t concentrate. She felt antsy and uneasy, and couldn’t sit still. Switching off the TV, she wandered around the room, checking yet again for anything she might have forgotten. Soon, she stopped even the pretense of searching the room and was flat out pacing, wondering what on earth was taking Spike so long. With every minute that passed, her fear grew as the ‘twenty minutes’ that Spike had promised he would be gone turned into several hours. Her face lit up when she heard someone at the door and she rushed over to open it for him, ready to yell at him for making her worry. She yanked the door open, and froze.
Spike fell into her arms, unable to hold up his own weight anymore. From the looks of it, he had only been able to make it down the hall by leaning heavily against the wall all the way from the elevators, leaving behind him a waist-high smear of blood against the light, expensive wallpaper. His face was a mass of bruises and scrapes bleeding profusely and he held his arm at a strange angle, but the real damage seemed to be to his stomach where his shirt was soaked through with what she soon realized was his blood.
“Sorry… took so long,” he managed to whisper into her ear as he wrapped his arms around her neck, trying to stay upright. “Had to…sneak past… downstairs. Don’t… think they’d’ve let me… up here… like this, if… seen me.” Willow wrapped her arms around his waist and he moaned aloud as her hands brushed against his injuries.
“Goddess, help me,” she murmured as she half dragged, half carried Spike to the couch. He hissed as his back hit the cushions, and tried to roll over to curl up on his side, but Willow forced his shoulders down, making him lie on his back so she could get a better look at his injuries.
They were bad. It didn’t take years of fighting demons and dealing with patrolling injuries to figure that much out. His chest and arms had a series of small, superficial slashes, but a knife had obviously gone deeply into his stomach, twisting there, doing as much damage as possible. Spike groaned as she examined him. Willow noticed the tears building up in his eyes, and the sight of it nearly made her break down in tears of her own. Spike *never* cried. If this hurt badly enough for him to be at the point of tears, then she couldn’t even imagine the pain he must be feeling.
With an angry sniff, she forced her own tears back. Now was no time to fall apart. Spike needed her. Mentally lecturing herself to remain calm, she ran over the situation in her mind. Spike’s wounds were bad, but the main danger of stomach wounds to human patients was damage to internal organs. Spike wasn’t dependant on his internal organs to keep him undead. That, at least, was a comfort. The more dangerous possibility was that Spike might bleed to death. Though vampires can last an indefinite amount of time without feeding, Spike had obviously lost a lot of blood already, just getting himself back to the hotel, and he was losing more blood every minute.
Willow had already taken some measures to slow the bleeding. Spike’s t-shirt had already been torn from the knife slashes covering it, and Willow had easily been able to rip it off of him when she examined his stomach. She tied the shirt around him, using it as a crude bandage to keep the wound closed. It would work for the time being, but Spike wouldn’t start to get better until the wound stopped bleeding, which it wouldn’t do until the skin healed over. And in order for it do that, Spike needed to feed.
There weren’t many options. Willow supposed she could drive him back to Sunnydale. Once they got to her house, there were bandages in the cupboard and blood in the refrigerator, but her house was a two-hour drive away on highways that hadn’t been repaved in years. Even if Spike lay down, stretched out in the backseat, every bump in the road would aggravate his injury. No, that wasn’t a possibility. Another option was that Willow could go out and track down a blood supply for Spike in L.A. That idea wasn’t any better than the first. She had no idea where to find a butcher shop or demon bar in the city, and even if she found one, eventually, she didn’t know that she’d be able to find her way back to the hotel. She didn’t know her way around the city at all, since she had let Spike choose their path whenever they went out. She could try a spell, but all the healing spells she had experience with were for humans. After the confrontation with Glory, Willow had looked up some demon healing spells, but she hadn’t had the chance to try any of them out. Never, *ever* would she risk Spike with a spell that she wasn’t certain of. She’d kill herself before deliberately hurting him. Setting her jaw firmly, she realized that there was only one real option available.
She went over to the desk and rummaged through it until she found the letter opener she had previously noticed inside. With a few whispered words, the letter opener turned into a wickedly sharp stiletto. She crossed back over to the couch and seated herself next to him. She shifted him slightly so that his head lay in her lap, and she stroked his hair gently, pushing it out of his face. He had been in vamp face the entire time and her fingers drifted softly over his ridges as he alternately whimpered and growled as blood soaked tears continued to leak, slowly, out of his eyes. Willow felt sick and heartbroken at the sight of him in so much pain, and she lost any hesitation she might have felt about the task she was about to perform. Her head was perfectly steady as she raised the knife to her wrist, and slashed down. Hard.
Blood instantly welled to the surface, and she shoved it over Spike’s mouth. His demon responded instinctively. He couldn’t bite her without causing himself more pain, but he could draw her wrist closer, sucking on it deeply to pull more of the delicious blood into his mouth and down his throat. Sire’s blood was best for healing injuries. Slayer’s blood came in a close second for sheer potency and power. Witch’s blood wasn’t far behind. Spike would have had to drain an ordinary human to get enough blood to heal himself. He was able to get by with a few pints of Willow’s blood.
As the healing started and Spike’s flesh began to knit back together, Spike’s demon slowly receded. Then and only then did he realize what he was doing. It took him a minute to reconstruct the events of the past few hours. He had gone out to get some blood, planning to be gone for only twenty minutes or so. He had only wandered for about five minutes when he came across another vamp who was able to direct him to a demon bar. He had nearly arrived at his destination, when they attacked.
Muggers. Of all damn things to put him in that position, he had been nearly destroyed by a trio of idiot, muscle-bound, brain-damaged muggers. Sadistic little bastards that they were, they had gone in swinging, knocking him to the ground and beating the shit out of him, wanting him defenseless so that they could rob him at their leisure. He tried to defend himself, but the chip got in the way. Between the chip and the injuries, the pain had been too much to take and he had dropped into vamp face. One of the muggers had been bringing the knife up to Spike’s neck to get him to hold still so they could search his pockets when his face changed. Startled at the sight, the mugger’s hand slipped and the knife was driven into Spike’s stomach. The muggers ran like hell, leaving Spike abandoned in the alley.
The pain had been nearly blinding, but Spike was too stubborn to give up. The first time he tried to stand up, he blacked out. Same thing happened the second time. The third time, he was finally able to get to his feet. Blood ran into his eyes that were swollen nearly shut. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, and he banged into walls and trashcans and light posts as he stumbled blindly down the streets, exacerbating his injuries. He probably would have stumbled into pedestrians as well, if the others on the sidewalk hadn’t been so careful to give him a wide berth. Fortunately, he was able to trace his own scent to get back to the hotel. Once he arrived, he managed to sneak in through the kitchens and up the service elevators so that he could get to his Red. The whole time, the only thought in his head was that he had to get to his Red. It wasn’t that he thought that she would make the situation better. In fact, he wasn’t thinking at all. Logic and rational thought were beyond him at the moment. All he knew was that he had to be with Red.
He remembered arriving at the door in front of the room that smelled like her, and then he was in her arms, surrounded by her warmth and sweet smell. Her scent was soon overloaded with fear, and Spike wished he had the energy to apologize. He didn’t mean to scare her; he just had wanted to be near her. And then the next thing he realized, she was seated on the couch next to him, with his head in her lap and there was blood pouring into his mouth and down his throat. Sweet, spicy, delicious, powerful blood that spread out through his dead veins and made him feel almost alive again. The desperate pain that had nearly broken him with its intensity began to fade and he was aware of his surroundings again. Aware of the feel of the couch under his back, aware of the soft skin of the wrist that was pressed against his lips, aware of the precise flavor of the blood in his mouth (AB+ with a heavy flavoring of magic: pure and sweet and rare and perfect, just like his Red) and, suddenly, aware of the girl holding the wrist to his lips. The girl whose blood was filling his veins. The girl whose heartbeat was starting to show the strain of losing so much blood all at once.
Spike immediately stopped sucking on the wrist, and sat up in a rush, heedless of his injuries, which were no longer dangerous or life threatening, but were still sore and exposed. He was too panic stricken to notice, appalled over what he had done to his best friend, to the *only* friend he had in the world. Willow looked frighteningly pale, but she smiled at him as she held the wrist back up to his lips. He shook his head, appalled at the thought of taking any more of her blood, but she pressed it insistently against him.
“It’s still bleeding,” she said softly, “you’ll have to clean it for me, so I can be sure it won’t get infected.” Spike’s hands shook slightly as he took the offered wrist, raising it back to his lips and laving it instead with his tongue until the blood stopped flowing. Once it began clotting, he pulled it away, raising his hand to her cheek.
“Willow, I’m sorry, I—”
Her smile widened. “It’s not so bad as that, Spike. Not nearly so bad that you need to call me Willow. Really, it isn’t. And there’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Red, I… I need to get you to a hospital. I took a lot of blood. More than I meant to. Not that I meant to! It’s just I—”
“It’s alright, Spike. I promise. I’ll be fine. We don’t need to go to a hospital. I just need to lie down for a bit.” She shifted her body on the couch so that she was lying down across the length of it, and curled up on her side to look at him. He knelt on the floor by the couch, softly stroking her hair. “I did a spell,” she explained. “Years ago. On all the Scoobies. It causes our blood to regenerate faster than normal. It’s come in handy before,” she said, as she nestled her cheek against a cushion.
She saw the worry still clearly outlined on his face and raised her hand to lay on top of where his fingers were still stroking her hair. “It’s working already. I can feel it. Listen to my heartbeat, Spike. It sounds stronger than it did a minute ago, doesn’t it?” Spike listened and let out a sigh of relief. She was right. Her heartbeat did sound stronger. “It just,” she yawned, “makes me so horribly sleepy,” she explained and then yawned again, snuggling into the couch cushions and closing her eyes. “I’ll be fine, Spike. You don’t have to worry. I just need… to… sleep.” With that, she lost the battle against her eyelids as they drifted shut. Within moments, she was fast asleep. Spike sat by her a bit longer, continuing to stroke her hair and listening to her heartbeat as it’s slow steady rhythm grew louder and stronger. Finally content that she was alright, he yanked a blanket from the closet and covered her gently before heading back into his bedroom. He barely had the energy to yank off his boots before he collapsed on the bed, exhausted. Willow’s heartbeat was a comforting lullaby that soothed him straight to sleep.
He didn’t notice the ring on his finger: the one with the green stone that tied him to Willow. He wasn’t aware of the way it glowed slightly in the darkness of the room. The thought simply didn’t enter his mind that he should look. He never dreamed that Willow’s selflessness could have unexpected effects on the nature of their bond. It didn’t occur to him, or to Willow, that a bond created and sealed in blood to bind a soul to a demon would grow stronger and more insidious through blood willingly shed by the soul for the demon’s sake. Spike and Willow both slept peacefully and obliviously, unaware of the consequences of what they had done.
~Part: 56~
Willow woke after a few hours without so much as a headache. The spell she had used to automatically replenish her blood was one that she and Giles had carefully researched together in the summer before she and Buffy started college. After Buffy had nearly killed herself from using her potent slayer’s blood to banish the poison from Angel’s system, Willow and Giles had agreed that they needed to find something that would help them replenish their blood quickly. When you live on the Hellmouth, you can never be too safe or too careful. And speaking of careful and safe, Willow’s first action when she awoke was to check on Spike. She let out a tiny sigh of relief at the sight of him sprawled out over the bed, sleeping peacefully. The temptation to slide into bed next to him and go back to sleep was almost overwhelming, but Willow fought against it. Before she could sleep again, there were several things that she needed to do. She headed straight to the phone and began her phone calls.
The call to the receptionist desk came first. She needed to make sure that it was alright for them to stay in their room for an extra day. It was nearly dawn and Willow knew there was no way they could get back to Sunnydale before sunrise. Normally, Spike could just crouch down in the backseat of the car, but Willow didn’t want him to have to do that while he was still healing. Best to stay put, for the time being. Of course, that was only possible if the hotel would let them stay an extra night. Check-out for the hotel guests was scheduled for noon, and the last thing Willow wanted was for Spike and herself to be kicked out into the nice, sunny street. Once the hotel confirmed that the extra night’s stay wouldn’t be a problem, she dialed the next number.
“Hello?” a grumpy, sleep-muffled voice muttered when the phone was finally answered, after several rings.
“Giles, it’s Willow.”
Giles voice immediately grew alert and anxious. “Willow, are you alright? Where are you calling from? Is something wrong?”
Giles’ earnest concern nearly brought Willow to tears. <Is something wrong?> a sarcastic voice questioned in her head. <Gee, where to begin?> She seated herself heavily on the couch, bracing herself to begin her explanation, and winced when her hand brushed over something crusty dried onto one of the couch cushions. Her eyes dropped to the spot and she winced when she saw the source of the stain. Blood. Spike’s blood. She hadn’t been too concerned with protecting the furniture when she had led Spike to the couch, hours before, and his blood had dried onto it, staining the upholstery in several places.
She trailed her fingers across one of the bloodstains. <Spike nearly died here> she thought to herself. No matter how hard she tried to force her mind onto other thoughts, she just couldn’t seem to stop the words from running over and over in her head. He had nearly died. The permanent kind of dead. The no more pillow fights, no more hot chocolate, no more movies or Chinese food or swing dancing or compliments or cooking kind of dead. The kind of dead that made her feel sick and dizzy and caused her throat to close up just from thinking about it. She couldn’t bear the thought of Spike being really, truly, for ever after dead.
Because she loved him.
No, that wasn’t completely accurate. After all, she had loved him for weeks, now. He had firmly entrenched himself in the role of her best friend. But this was something more than that. She didn’t just love him. She was *in* love with him. It was pointless to deny it. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how surely she was setting herself up to get her heart broken, she was in love with Spike. It was awful, and wonderful, and terrifying and liberating and oddly inevitable, all at once.
She had realized it just that night. Since it was their last night in the city, Spike had insisted that they go back to Rick’s club for one more round of dinner and drinks. Willow had eagerly agreed. They had danced and talked and laughed for hours, just as they had their first night in the city. The only difference was that this time, Spike was very careful to pay attention so that he would realize when the singer announced her closing set for the night. Spike had had a whispered five minute conversation with the musicians when they had first walked into the restaurant, which appeared to end with Spike discreetly slipping some folded bills into the piano player’s pocket. The results of that conference were obvious when the singer closed her final set with the same Dinah Shore song that they had danced to the first time. Willow looked up at the opening bars of the music and then turned to Spike who, with a wide grin on his face, asked her to dance. She settled herself in his arms and fell in love with him.
She hadn’t wanted to fall in love with him. Honestly, she had fought against it as hard as she could. After working so hard to convince her friends (and herself) that she was totally and completely “gay now,” she had been genuinely bewildered to discover that a man could evoke such feelings in her. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. It *definitely* wasn’t supposed to be like that with a man who was desperately in love with another woman, who just happened to be her best friend. Besides, she knew that Spike was just a temporary fixture in her life and that falling in love with him would condemn her to another broken heart when he left her behind.
Still, she just couldn’t help herself. It was simply impossible to worry about future unhappiness when Spike in the here-and-now made her so unbelievably happy. When he laughed with her and spent time with her and took her all the way to Los Angeles just so he could take a few days to spoil her and spend money on her and make her silly wishes come true, she just couldn’t force herself to associate the thought of Spike with any kind of pain. Spike was the most wonderful thing that had happened to her in a very long time, and the longer she fought against loving him, the more she realized she was fighting a losing battle. The dance with him that night had been the final straw.
Truthfully, it was almost anti-climactic. There weren’t fireworks or explosions. The people around them did not freeze in realization, or stop and stare. Willow, herself, didn’t scream, or gasp, or even sigh. She fell in love without missing so much as a single step of the dance. Willow closed her eyes and reveled in the warm, sweet music, warm, soft lighting, and warm, certain realization that wrapped itself around her. She loved him. It was as simple as that. She stood on that dance floor, suddenly fully aware of the dress against her skin that he had bought her, the necklace he had designed to protect her, the club to which he had brought her just to please her and, most of all, the strong arms wrapped around her that always made her feel so safe, and realized that there was no place on earth that she would rather be.
She didn’t care that he didn’t love her back. She didn’t care that he’d break her heart. All she knew was that she was no longer capable of loving him with anything less than everything she had. If that meant that she would be risking pain in the future, then so be it. She would willingly put her happiness, her life, her heart and her very soul on the line for him.
It was easy being in love with Spike when she was wrapped in his arms in a dance club in an alternate dimension where there was nothing to hurt her and no one there but herself, the man she loved, a weary nightclub singer, the club owner, and various assorted members of the wait staff. It seemed so simple and obvious then. It was just as simple and just as obvious but considerably more painful in a hotel room with a knife in her hand slashing into her wrist, knowing that she’d willing give every drop of blood she possessed to save the person she loved. She knew it would be harder in Sunnydale. The Hellmouth spawned complications in every form. Most particularly a small, blonde-haired form named Buffy who would probably send Willow to an exorcist for depossession ritual if she admitted to falling in love with Spike. Going back to Sunnydale would make things messy. It always did. Just hearing Giles’ voice drove that home.
<You want to know what’s wrong, Giles?> that sarcastic voice in the back on her head chimed in again. <How many hours do you have?>
“I’m fine, Giles,” Willow replied, her voice breaking slightly. “There’s nothing wrong with me.” She forced herself to take a deep breath. <Pull yourself together, idiot. Now’s not the time to break down into tears.> “But Spike had some problems, and we’re going to have to stay here another day.”
“Is this a bad connection? Your voice sounds strange. What happened to Spike?”
“He got mugged,” Willow explained, after taking a few deep breaths. “Humans. They beat him up pretty badly. He’ll be alright, but he’s not up to traveling today. By sunset, he’ll probably be feeling more himself. We’ll head back then.”
“Very well, then,” Giles answered. “As long as you’re sure you’re alright.” They chatted a few minutes longer about her vacation before Willow started subtly hinting that she wanted to get some more sleep. Giles suddenly became aware of the still-ridiculously-early hour, and concluded the conversation. With a sigh of relief, Willow pulled out the yellow pages from a table near the couch. There was only one last thing that she needed to do before she could go back to sleep, herself.
The first three butchers that she called, asking if they would bring her a delivery of blood to the hotel, hung up on her. Not surprisingly, they assumed it was a prank call. The fourth butcher was either more trusting, or more experienced in what goes bump in the night, because he did nothing but quote a price and ask when she wanted it delivered. Twenty minutes later, she stored the fresh cow’s blood in the mini-fridge and put a “do not disturb” sign on the door. The last thing she wanted was for that interfering maid to come in to clean and throw out the blood again. With that final thing settled, Willow yanked open her suitcase, rummaging around until she found her pajamas. She changed into them quickly, and then started to head to her bedroom.
She stopped herself as soon as she reached the door. She wanted to sleep, yes, but she didn’t want to sleep in there. She wanted, no, she *needed* to stay near Spike and make sure that he was alright. She slipped into his room and pulled up a chair next to his bed. He slept so soundly, he didn’t even stir when her hand gently caressed his hair. Giving into temptation, she pushed the chair away and slid into bed beside him, cuddling up against his lifeless body. She smiled softly when his body immediately adjusted to accommodate her, shifting to pull her into his arms and settle her against his side. Snuggling just a little bit closer, she let her eyes drift shut. Within moments, she had fallen asleep.
~Part: 57~
<There’s something wrong with my Red,> Spike thought to himself, frowning as he watched her from across the Magic Box. Ever since they had returned from Los Angeles, nearly two weeks ago, there always seemed to be something on her mind. He caught a look on her face sometimes, when she thought no one would notice, a look of sad resignment that frustrated and infuriated him. Obviously, something had happened to upset his Red, and he wanted to do something about it. He wanted to find the idiot who had upset her and tear out the bastard’s spleen, or at the very least, hire someone to do it for him in a particularly slow and painful manner.
The glitch, of course, was that Spike had no idea what had happened. And for a girl who was appallingly bad at keeping secrets, Willow was being surprisingly closed-mouthed about it. No matter how cleverly or persistently or even downright annoyingly Spike questioned her, she could not be tricked or cajoled into admitting a thing. She always insisted that she was fine, that nothing was the matter, and that nothing had changed. It was a lie, of course, and they both knew it, but Willow stuck stubbornly to her story. In fact, she concentrated so hard on not admitting that anything was wrong, and in trying to put up a strong front of being “just fine” that Spike was the only one who realized that something was bothering her.
The only visible alteration in her behavior was that she started searching constantly for a way to remove or deactivate Spike’s chip. It seemed as if she spent every single spare moment that she had looking for a solution. She was rarely seen without a book in her lap of witchcraft, or computer technology. The gang as a whole had been puzzled by her new obsession. They knew that she had given her word that she would get rid of Spike’s chip once he got rid of Glory, but they hadn’t expected her to work so hard on it. They had all, Spike included, just assumed that she’d wait till summer. The long, sunny days and hot weather usually drove most demons out of Sunnydale, so summers were always slow on the slayage front. With fewer demons to research and no classes to study for, summer seemed the perfect time for Willow to concentrate on keeping her promise to Spike. After all, Spike had dealt with the chip for over a year. Surely, dealing with it a little longer wouldn’t make a difference.
Spike tried to tell himself that he was happy she was working on the solution. After all, getting rid of that blasted chip had been his most fervent wish every single day since it had first been implanted. He should be glad that Willow was working on a way to get rid of it. Except, he wasn’t. It was strange. He didn’t like this new obsession of hers with finding the solution right away. What was the rush? She even skimmed through the damned books when she watched TV with him, which annoyed the hell out of him. He quickly found dozens of effective ways to distract her from her books. He didn’t like it when she paid more attention to them than she did to him.
Gradually, Spike realized that he was a little hurt at how hard she was working to find a solution. Did she want to get rid of him? Was she that eager to have him out of her life? She didn’t *seem* to want him to leave. She spent just as much time with him as she had before, watching TV with him and spending hours scouting through Blockbusters, working their way through all the ‘classic’ movies that she said he just *had* to see. She still teased him and told him stories and listened to his stories and they still cleaned the house together, stopping at intervals to dance to the music on the radio. She was developing into a very good dancer. Spike would occasionally bring up the idea of returning to L.A. and going to Rick’s again, or maybe trying a new place next time. Rick’s had the ambiance and the history, but West Coast Swing was very popular, and there were clubs for it all over California. They could go anywhere they wanted. Willow merely smiled in response, and gave no other reply.
If anything, they were spending more time together than they had before. Part of the reason for this was that she had convinced him to teach her how to cook. It was actually during that conversation that Spike finally reached his breaking point. He remembered it clearly: he had announced that he was going to make her lasagna for dinner, and she had insisted that she wanted to learn how.
“Come on, Spike,” Willow had begged, looking up at him with those big eyes and trying to hide her grin so that she could look sufficiently pleading. “Show me how to make it for myself? Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on top?”
“You could make it pretty please with blood on top and it wouldn’t make a difference, pet,” Spike had replied. “There’s no need for you to learn how to make it. That’s what I’m here for. I do the cooking. That was the deal.”
Willow pouted, hoping that that would break his resolve. Really, he was impossibly stubborn when it came to ‘pulling his share’ in the household chores. “Well, when I get rid of that chip and you leave, I’m going to have to go back to just sandwiches and cereal because they’re all I know how to prepare, and it will be all your fault, you know!”
Silence was the only response. After a moment, Willow looked up. All traces of amusement had disappeared from Spike’s face. Willow’s expression immediately went from teasingly pouting to genuinely concerned.
“Spike, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“You never used to talk about it,” he replied softly. In response to Willow’s confused expression, he elaborated. “Getting rid of the chip. You never used to talk about it. But now you bring it up all the time. You’re always talking about when the chip comes out. You have computer books and spell books lying all around the house.”
Instead of getting rid of Willow’s confusion, Spike’s explanation only increased it. “But I thought that that was what you wanted,” she said. “I promised you I’d get that chip out for you if you held up your end of the bargain, so now I’m just trying to hold up mine.”
“Do you want me to leave?” Spike asked, his voice so soft it was barely audible as he studiously avoided eye contact. “Is that why you want to get rid of the chip right away? Do you not want me around anymore?”
Whatever reply he had anticipated, he certainly didn’t expect the one that he got. Willow was in his arms in less than a second, wrapping herself around him and holding him desperately close. “Never, *ever* think that,” she whispered fiercely in his ear. “You’re my best friend, Spike, and the day will *never* come when I want to be rid of you.” She pulled away slightly, still holding him tightly but tilting her head back so she could see his face. “You believe me, don’t you? Don’t you? Spike, please tell me you believe me. I couldn’t stand it if you thought that I wanted to be rid of you.”
Spike smiled a bit at the obvious sincerity in her voice and wrapped his arms around her, in turn, settling her in his arms and pulling her head back down to lay on his shoulder. He rested his cheek on top of her head and rocked her gently. “Alright, Red. Alright. I believe you.” She responded by cuddling closer, nuzzling his neck.
“But if you want me to stick around,” he continued, “then what’s with the rush on getting rid of the chip?”
“I just want you to be happy,” she murmured, her lips tickling against his ear. “More than anything in the world, I want you to be happy.” It wasn’t until he felt the wet warmth soak through the fabric of his shirt that he realized she was crying.
Truth be told, Willow was scared. Ever since L.A., it seemed like her bond to Spike had grown stronger. Her awareness of him was fine-tuned, now. She sensed not only his presence, but his emotions and sometimes she even picked up on traces of his thoughts. She assumed that she was simply more aware of him now that she had fallen in love with him. Her increased perceptions didn’t bother her, but her increased dependence on them *did*. She was starting to like being bonded to him far too much. She was starting to depend on the warm fuzzies she got from being near him, and the comforting hum of his thoughts and feelings in the back of her head. She was falling more and more in love with him with every hour of every day that passed, and it scared her.
Never in her life had Willow broken her word. Her late grandmother, who she had adored, has raised her to believe that a promise was a sacred thing. The thought of breaking her word to someone that she cared about, someone that she loved, absolutely horrified her. Willow had never even considered going back on a promise. Until now. She had promised Spike that if he did the ritual and defeated Glory, she would release him from his chip. And now she wanted to break her promise. She wanted him to keep the chip so that he would stay in Sunnydale forever, near her. The fantasy of Spike staying with her kept her up nights, thinking about what it would be like to have Spike in her life indefinitely. But Willow combated her selfish thoughts the only way she could think of. She devoted all her spare time and energy to finding a way to free Spike. She *had* to free him, as soon as possible, so that she wouldn’t give in to the temptation to keep him forever.
She hadn’t realized how much she was bringing it up in conversation. In an attempt to force herself to get used to the idea of Spike leaving, she mentioned it all the time: constantly talking about what would happen when she finally managed to get rid of the chip. Spike, of course, had drawn the dead-wrong conclusions. That day in the kitchen as Willow buried her face in Spike’s shoulder, she wondered what would happen if she told him the truth. How would he react if she admitted that she was working so hard to get rid of his chip because she was so in love with him and wanted to keep him so badly, she was afraid that if she didn’t release him soon, she never would? No, she couldn’t tell him that. So she told him the only truth that she was willing for him to hear. She was doing it because nothing mattered more to her than his happiness. Getting rid of the chip would make him happy, so getting rid of the chip is what she would do. Her own sick despair at the prospect of her life without him didn’t matter, even though just the thought of it made her start to cry.
Spike had brushed away her tears with incredible gentleness. “Here now, no more of this,” he said lightly. “We have lasagna to make.”
“*We* do?” Willow asked, with the start of a smile.
Spike sighed in mock annoyance. “Yes, it would appear that *we* do. Now get an apron and dry your eyes.”
“Yes, Spike!” Willow replied excitedly, bouncing across the kitchen to grab an apron.
“And don’t ever let me hear you talk about living on cereal and sandwiches again, is that clear?” Spike asked, attempting to sound stern.
Willow rolled her eyes as she walked back over to him, her hair falling into her face as she fastened the apron around her waist. “Yes, Spike.”
“My Red deserves better than that,” he said, smiling at her as he tucked a strand of soft red hair back behind her ear.
Willow smiled back and nuzzled into his hand, but he saw a flash of that newly familiar resigned sadness in her eyes as she replied. “Yes, Spike.”
That had been three days ago. Spike growled softly at the memory as he stared at Willow, seated next to Dawn across the room from him. He watched her smile at the girl as she finally caught on to the math concept Willow had been carefully explaining and thought again how very nice it would be to slowly dismember whoever had put that trace of sadness into her smile. As long as he imagined the possibility that it could have been a demon, his chip didn’t fire off. Carefully concentrating on the possible demon who had hurt his Red, he settled himself into some lovely blood-filled thoughts and wondered how he could find out who it was.
Meanwhile, in a detective agency in Los Angeles, a brunette seer’s hand jerked across the table, knocking over her bottle of nail polish, as a vision hit her hard and fast. Five minutes later, after a halting explanation of what she had seen, punctuated with requests for aspirin and queries as to whether or not she could be reimbursed for her nail polish as a business expense (after all, she wouldn’t have knocked it over if it hadn’t been for that stupid vision, would she?) one of her co-workers, with a grim expression on his face, picked up the phone and dialed a number he had obviously memorized. A perky female voice answered on the other end.
“Magic Box. Anya speaking. How may I help you spend money today?”
“Anya, this is Angel. I need to speak to Giles. We have a problem.”
~Part: 58~
After Anya announced loudly to the entire gang that Angel was on the line and wanted to speak to Giles, the room practically exploded in questions and exclamations ranging from “Damn, aren’t we ever going to be rid of him?” (Xander) to “Are you sure he doesn’t want to talk to me?” (Buffy) to “Miss? Miss! Do you think you could ring me up now?” (Random Customer) Anya immediately lost all interest in Angel and began ringing up the customer, but the rest of the gang was not so easily distracted. Claiming that the phone in his office had better sound quality, Giles ducked away as quickly as he could, pointedly ignoring their questions.
“Angel? This is Giles. What’s going on?”
Giles’ voice sounded worried, and rightfully so. The vampire and the watcher had kept in touch for the past two years in a superficial manner, just checking in on each other every couple of months, but the phone calls were always from Giles to Angel. Angel never called the Magic Box or Giles’ apartment. In the beginning, it was because he didn’t want Buffy to pick up the phone and realize that he was checking on her. He was afraid that she would be angry. Later, it was because he didn’t want Buffy to pick up the phone and stir up troubling feelings again. He had started to move on from his post-Sunnydale depression, and catching up with his former love was not something he felt any inclination to do.
More recently, he avoided any situation where Buffy might answer the phone because he didn’t want her to draw any conclusions from his phone call. He had finally managed to move on, and form a life with work and friends and purpose to his days. It wasn’t just that Buffy was eclipsed as the center of his world; she was, in fact, removed from it entirely. She would never cease to be an important part of his past, but she just wasn’t part of his present anymore. Therefore, although he had the number to the Magic Box memorized in case of an emergency, he had never used it.
“It’s serious, Giles. Cordelia had a vision.” Angel went on to explain in greater detail. There was a clan of vampires that had been terrorizing segments of L.A. for quite a few years. They had established themselves long before Angel arrived in the area, and had not bothered to put any kind of rein on themselves even after his arrival. Angel had tried to track them down numerous times, but they were crafty and well-organized, and had always managed to avoid detection. Recently, Angel had gotten a tip about their location, and was planning a raid to take them out. Fortunately for his sake, Cordelia had a vision before he could go.
“Based on reports, I thought there were only twenty to thirty of them,” Angel stated. “That’s a bit much for Gunn, Wes and I to handle on our own, but I figured we could count on some help from Gunn’s old gang and take care of the problem. But it turns out they’re more discreet than we realized. Cordelia’s vision showed their numbers to be closer to a hundred. Even with Gunn’s gang we couldn’t handle that many. Cordelia said that in her vision, it appeared to be a close fight, even with extra reinforcements. I don’t think we could pull it off without every person that was fighting in her vision.”
“And who exactly did she see in her vision?” Giles asked, catching on. Obviously, someone from Sunnydale had been in the vision, and Angel felt awkward about asking them to come to L.A. to fight with them.
“Buffy,” Angel answered, and Giles nodded to himself in comprehension. Yes, that explained Angel’s hesitation in answering. “And Spike,” Angel continued, causing Giles’ jaw to drop in shock.
“A-are you *quite* certain?” Giles stammered.
“Cordelia was positive when she gave her description. She says that in her vision, she clearly saw their faces. It’s Buffy and Spike. We need both of them here as soon as possible. It will take us at least a day to prepare for a fight on that scale, and I want to get this done with as soon as I can. This nest has been a problem for far too long. So can you spare them?”
“Well, I suppose… I mean, that is to say… Whether or not we can *spare* them is not really… Rather, we have finished with our resident problem for the time being but… Angel, I’m going to have to call you back.”
“Of course, Giles. I understand. Sorry to put you in this position.”
“Quite alright, Angel. No need to apologize. I will, ah, get back to you soon.”
Giles hung up the phone and mentally debated the wisdom of having a shot of scotch before going back out into the shop. With a reluctant sigh, he decided against it. Convincing Buffy to go to L.A. with Spike would be hard enough stone cold sober. He shuddered at the thought of what it would be like it he were drunk.
The questions started as soon as he exited the office. Giles didn’t even bother listening to them. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes and patiently waited for silence. After a few minutes, it was quiet again.
“Angel’s seer had a vision of Angel and his associates engaged in a raid on a nest of vampires,” he announced, carefully avoiding mentioning that Cordelia was the seer. He had a feeling that that wouldn’t go over terribly well. Buffy would, of course, find out when she reached L.A., but there was no reason why Giles had to be the one to tell her. Bad enough that he had to tell her that he was sending her to L.A. with Spike. “According to Angel, the seer described it as a very close fight, and Angel believes that he will need every person that the seer saw in the vision on his side in order to win.”
“Does he need us to help him find someone?” Buffy asked, still uncertain why Angel had called… and why he hadn’t wanted to talk to her.
“Or was one of us in the vision?” Willow asked, catching on quickly.
“I’m afraid Willow is correct,” Giles replied. “In the vision of Angel’s seer, there were, actually, two members of our group who were joined in the fight.”
“Well, me, obviously,” Buffy stated. Despite her best attempts to sound nonchalant and business-like, her voice inevitably betrayed some of her eagerness. It had been nearly a year since the last time she had seen Angel. And that last time she had seen him, it… it hadn’t gone well. It had started in L.A. with Faith and assassins and council members trying to shoot them on rooftops and Angel saying that Buffy didn’t have the right to tell him how to lead his life, and then it came back to Sunnydale with the Initiative making a mess of everything and nasty rumors splitting up the group (and hey, that was something else that was Spike’s fault. Buffy mentally reminded herself to berate him more for that) and Angel beating the crap out of Riley. Repeatedly. Yeah. Not good. Great, big, heaping quantities of not good.
But so many things had changed since then. She definitely wasn’t the same girl she had been just one year before. When Buffy had gone to see Angel in L.A., she had enjoyed telling him off, letting him know that she had moved on from him and that she had someone new in her life who made her happy. It had seemed true at the time. She had honestly thought at one point that she and Riley might have that forever after, white house, picket fence kind of happy ending that she had always secretly craved. Angel had left her so that she could find that kind of happiness, and she had taken a twisted pleasure in rubbing it in his face that she had succeeded. She hadn’t realized what it would be like, having a boyfriend who wasn’t as strong as her, wasn’t as capable as her, wasn’t as dark as her. She hadn’t realized that the nice, All-American, sweetly old-fashioned boy would start to bore her after a while; that he would be unable to hold all of her interest or all of her heart. She hadn’t realized that she would spend all of her time with Riley silently measuring him up against Angel in all the aspects of their relationship, and that he would constantly come up short in the balance. She hadn’t realized that things with Riley were pretty much doomed to failure.
And now Riley wasn’t an issue any more. He had made it very clear that he never intended to be an issue in her life again. And since he had left, the only things that Buffy had had in the way of romance were Spike’s disturbing attentions and the beginnings of a flirtation with Ben-who-turned-out-to-be-Glory. Buffy was starting to feel a little lonely. Sure, she had her family, and her friends, but she wasn’t used to going so long without a boyfriend to make her feel special. She missed feeling desirable. She missed walking into a room and seeing some man’s eyes light up, knowing he had been watching the door for her, that she was the only one he wanted to see.
Angel had always given her that. Even when they weren’t together, even when he was soulless, Angel always made her feel vitally important. Willow had said it herself during that slumber party night after her fish had been killed: Angel and Angelus were completely different, but in either form, she was still the only thing he thought about. In the fall-out of Riley leaving and angst with Dawn and dealing with Glory (not to mention Ben) Buffy craved the certainty of Angel’s love and the way it made her feel. She missed knowing that she was the most important thing in his world: the thing he cherished and prized and desired above anything else. She wanted someone to make her feel beautiful and desirable again. She wanted to look into Angel’s eyes and see the warmth and passion that they always held when they looked at her. Yes, this trip to L.A. was exactly what she needed. She and Angel would be fighting side by side, just like the old days. She could barely restrain a grin.
“You,” Giles agreed, “and Spike.”
And as quickly as that, the urge to grin disappeared. For a moment, there was dead silence in the room. Buffy looked around, waiting for someone to take up her cause and say that she couldn’t possibly go to L.A. with Spike. No one did. Willow, for some insane reason, actually liked Spike and would never say a word against him. Anya and Spike had formed some kind of weird We Were Mean And Scary For A Long Time, And Therefore Will Watch One Another’s Backs Now That We’re Weak And Helpless agreement. Giles and Spike had a similar We’re Both British In This Strange, Foreign Land understanding. And Xander, once her constant support in all things Spike-bashing, had recently become almost civil to the blonde vamp. Something about the night of the fight against Glory that no one ever wanted to talk about with her had caused Xander to lose a lot of his hostility toward the vampire. Buffy was the only one left who still really hated Spike.
Buffy did not allow this in any way to influence her opinion. Her reasons for hating Spike were deeply rooted in bad memories and her own insecurities, and she saw no reason to even try to overcome them. Instead of wondering why she was the only one who hated Spike, she was far more likely to wonder when everyone else was going to come to their senses and return to hating Spike with her. They didn’t, of course, but she never stopped expecting it. As a result, when Buffy looked around, waiting for someone else to protest, she was only met with silence. Then a customer exited the shop, causing the bell over the door to ring. As if that was a signal, Buffy’s screaming began.
“SPIKE?” Buffy shrieked. “HE’S the one who has to come with me?”
“Buffy, you must consider—” Giles tried to explain, but Buffy obviously wasn’t interested in listening.
“Do you honestly expect me to go to L.A. with Spike?” she ranted.
“Buffy, please, if you’d only think—”
“NO! It won’t happen! I refuse!”
“Try to be reasonable—”
“That seer will just have to check the crystal ball again because there’s no way in HELL that I’m going to—”
“Buffy, *enough*!” Giles shouted, losing his temper at last. He knew that Buffy despised Spike; she had, after all, taken every opportunity to make that perfectly clear. Her constant harping on his faults grew annoying after a while, but Giles, along with everyone else, had grown rather accustomed to just blocking it out. Buffy’s personal feelings were her own concern. Giles was too essentially British to interfere in such matters. However, slaying was Buffy’s sacred duty. When she allowed her grudge against Spike to make her turn her back on her obligations, Giles lost what remained of his patience. With the Ripper expression clearly evident on his face, he spoke again in a low, strained tone that even Buffy knew better than to interrupt.
“You have exactly two options. Either you can go home, pack an overnight bag, and come back here in one hour to leave for L.A. with Spike, or you can get on the phone right now and tell Angel that you aren’t coming to L.A. because you’re too busy pouting like an ill-mannered child. Those are the only two options. If you have any complaints to make about traveling with Spike, keep them to yourself. He’s no more of a danger to you physically than an overcooked scone.” (Spike showed signs of protest at this remark, but Willow placed a hand firmly over his mouth to keep him from responding. She had seen Giles get like this before, and knew the foolishness of drawing his attention at such a moment.) “The very worst he could do to you is annoy you to death, and if you can’t handle a two hour drive with an aggravating vampire, then it’s high time you learned. I do not want to hear any excuses or complaints. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, Giles,” Buffy answered meekly.
“So what choice have you made?”
“I’ll go to L.A.”
“Fine. Go home and pack a bag. Be back here in an hour. I’ll call back Angel and let him know to expect you.” Buffy nodded obediently and slipped out, carefully shutting the door very quietly behind her.
~Part: 59~
The room was eerily silent after Buffy left. No one wanted to draw Giles’ attention when he went into Ripper mode. Xander was about to pull Anya to the side and to start trying to convince her to go ahead and leave early, letting Giles close up for the night, when the silence was unexpectedly broken.
“I could come, too,” Willow said, her soft voice echoing surprisingly loudly through the silent room. She blushed when everyone turned to look at her, but forced herself to keep speaking. “I mean, if I went along with Buffy and Spike, they would have someone to sort of act as go between and, you know, keep them from killing each other and hey! Added bonus is that I could help out with the vampire raid! Because from the way you described it, it sounds like Angel could use all the help that he can get and I know that I could be helpful, really I could, and—”
Ripper faded into Giles as the man’s face softened at the classic Willow babble. The girl always had the most extraordinary ability to diffuse tensions and calm the tempers of all the members of the group. It was truly remarkable. Almost as remarkable as her ability to talk continuously without pausing to take a breath. Giles could tell that Willow was really starting to warm up to the topic, so he was careful to cut her off at that point before she grew dangerously short on oxygen.
“Willow, while I’m sure you’d be very helpful to Angel and his associates in L.A., the fact remains that with Buffy and Spike out of town, you are our most capable and resourceful fighter, should any danger arise before they return. I’m afraid I couldn’t allow you to go with them.”
“Oh,” Willow said, wilting visibly. “Yeah. I… I guess that makes sense.”
Giles crossed over to her and patted her gently on the shoulder. She smiled weakly up at him, hiding her disappointment. Giles smiled back at her before turning to head to his office to update Angel.
“Well,” Willow stated, turning back to Spike and forcing a smile to her face, “I guess we’d better get you home and get you packed as well, right?” Her attempt at cheerfulness was unconvincing. She didn’t like the thought of Spike going to L.A. without her. Angel had a long history and centuries of experience in being a thorn in Spike’s side. Willow still remembered every detail of that night when Spike had kidnapped her and Xander, and cried on her shoulder over Dru. She knew that the only thought that had been of any comfort to Spike when he thought of the way that Dru left him for Angel over and over again was that Spike, at least, was still a real vampire, a true master without a soul to get in the way. He had been so confident that he could torture and kill and brutalize his way back into Drusilla’s heart.
Now that Spike was chipped, Willow knew that he felt even more worthless and undesirable, and Angel had always been an expert at exploiting those emotions in the younger vampire. And he wasn’t exactly likely to have anyone else in L.A. to turn to for comfort. Buffy would relish the opportunity to be with a group of people who hated Spike as much as she did. It was no secret that the slayer was starting to get annoyed at the way the other Scoobies accepted Spike. She would be in her glory in L.A. where everyone still thought of Spike as either evil or dispensable.
Besides that, Willow quite simply worried about Spike. The gang in L.A. would see him only as a means to an end. As long as he fought in the raid like he was supposed to, they wouldn’t really care if he came out of the battle still undead. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone would take the trouble to watch out for him, and make sure that he didn’t get hurt. Willow knew she was being paranoid to worry about Spike being able to take care of himself in a fight. After all, the blonde vamp positively gloried in a good brawl. But she couldn’t help but worry.
The last time he had gone to L.A., he had nearly lost his life to those idiot humans who had attacked him in the alley. Willow shuddered to think what would happen to Spike if muggers attacked him once again. Even in her most generous thoughts towards Buffy, she couldn’t imagine the slayer cutting her own wrist to save Spike’s life. She couldn’t even imagine Buffy spitting on Spike to save him if he were on fire. The thought of Spike in a dangerous situation with no one near him who cared whether he unlived or died made it hard for her to breathe. Willow loved him so much… she hated the thought of him going into any fight, any danger without her near him to help him, watch his back, and save him if she possibly could. She was so caught up in her own fears for Spike that she didn’t notice the worried look on his own face until he spoke.
“We’ll go in a minute,” Spike replied, looking distracted and slightly uneasy. “First, I have something I need to ask the Watcher.” Spike headed toward the back office, ignoring Willow’s protests that it would be smarter to leave Giles alone for now. He pulled open the door without bothering to knock, not at all surprised to see Giles knocking back a shot of scotch on the other side of the door.
“What is it, Spike?” Giles asked wearily as Spike stepped inside the office, shutting the door behind him. “Are you going to complain about going to L.A., as well?”
“Well, now that you mention it…” Spike began. After all, he wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect of seeing the Poof again. They hadn’t really chatted since that whole Gem of Amara incident, and while Spike had certainly enjoyed tying up the prick and watching him get tortured with a variety of painful instruments, Angel was the type to hold a grudge when it came to that sort of thing. Not to mention the fact that it would be… awkward, for lack of a better term, to be working with Angel and his gang with that blasted chip. The Sunnydale group was used to it, and they always arranged their attacks taking it into account. The L.A. gang probably never had to consider it before. Spike didn’t know if Angel even knew about it. For a moment, he allowed himself to wonder if Angel would even care: if it would even bother him to think of the vampire that he had trained by hand being forced to drink out of blood bags and lying on the ground, incapacitated with pain if he so much as stepped on an old woman’s toes.
But that wasn’t why Spike had gone to talk to Giles and when Spike saw Giles pour himself a rather large shot into his glass in preparation for Spike’s rant, Spike realized he had best get quickly to the point. He wanted to be sure that the watcher’s mind was clear and working logically when he answered Spike’s question.
“Since I bonded to Red, I haven’t gone a day without seeing her.” To Spike’s relief, Giles understood the implied question immediately, and put down the glass.
“You’re concerned that the bond will, perhaps, cause her some degree of discomfort while you’re gone?”
Spike nodded.
Giles seated himself at his desk and thought carefully before answering. “Have you ever seen a Tzeranza bond in action before?” he asked, at last.
“Saw the final stages of one,” Spike answered. “A demon got bored with the chit he’d bonded to and abandoned her. She was two steps away from death when one of my minions found her on the street and brought her to our lair.” Spike shook his head at the memory. “She was in a coma by then. I put her out of her misery. Her blood… tasted like fire. Never tasted any like it before or since.”
“Do you know how long she had been abandoned?” Giles questioned.
“I knew the bloke who had claimed her,” Spike answered. “He had left town about two weeks before we found her.”
Giles nodded. “That concurs with the research that I have done. I’ve never seen an example of the bonding before, but evidence shows that it takes ten to twelve days to reach that critical stage. Someone with exceptional health or some type of accelerated healing might last a few days longer. Headaches and restlessness begin to develop after twenty four to thirty six hours of separation. A slight fever will begin after three days. The fever escalates from there and delirium usually sets in by the fifth or sixth day. By the eighth day, the bonded human will be drained of energy and unable to move, and usually drifts into a coma by the tenth day, and into death shortly thereafter.”
Spike couldn’t repress a shiver at the thought. Even the idea that something like that could happen to his Red was enough to turn his stomach. But he was reluctant to end the bond. His claim on her had proven useful on more than one occasion. He knew that she was powerful enough to be able to take care of herself, but he also knew that she was much trusting for her own good. It was far too easy for something malicious to catch her with her guard down. If Spike couldn’t be there at her side to take care of her, he liked knowing that his claim on her would protect her from the other creatures of the night. But if the watcher told him that leaving her behind in Sunnydale with the bond still in place would hurt her, he’d remove it without another thought. Nothing was more important than making sure his Red was safe. The original plan to remove the bond when Willow removed his chip had stopped mattering to him a long time ago.
“But that won’t happen to Willow,” Giles continued, his voice surprisingly gentle as he attempted, in his own slightly stuffy way, to alleviate the fears of the obviously worried vampire. “Angel is confident that if you and Buffy leave for L.A. immediately, you will be able to fight the nest of vampires tomorrow night. You should be back in Sunnydale by the day after tomorrow. The worst Willow will suffer through is a headache and perhaps a very slight fever. With her accelerated healing, it’s possible she won’t even feel as much as that.”
Spike nodded slowly. “Alright, watcher,” he replied. “You’ll… keep an eye on her for me while I’m gone?” he asked quietly. Gods below, how he hated asking for anything, especially from one of the bloody Scoobies. But it was for his Red, and he could do this if it would ensure her safety.
“Of course I will,” Giles answered, his voice still holding that same gentle understanding. “We all will.”
“Good,” Spike replied, turning to the door. He waited until his back was to the man before saying, softly, “Thanks.” Giles harrumphed slightly in reply, knowing it would embarrass Spike to have his thanks acknowledged verbally, and returned to his glass of scotch. “Oh and watcher?” Spike said, turning to face him again as he held open the door behind him.
“Yes?”
“‘No more danger physically than an overcooked scone?’”
“I found it to be a rather apt parallel, actually,” Giles retorted with a grin. “If you were to attack her, she would feel only a slight amount of pain while you would fall apart utterly and completely.”
Spike rolled his eyes (something he had picked up from Willow), gave Giles the two-fingered salute, and exited, shutting the office door behind him. A moment later, he heard Willow squeal in surprise, followed by Spike’s laughter and then a lecture from Willow on why Spike should stop sneaking up behind her. Giles listened to the two of them with a smile on his face as he sipped his glass of scotch.
~Part: 60~
Buffy showed back up at the Magic Box an hour later with a packed duffel bag, her mom’s car, and her stubbornness back in place as she insisted that she drive. Spike, for once, didn’t really feel like arguing. He hugged Willow hard and told her to be careful while he was gone and made her promise that she’d tell the watcher to sod off if he tried to convince her to put herself in a dangerous position. She laughed and nodded and hugged him back just as hard, and hoped that he didn’t notice the hint of tears in her eyes. She mentally scolded herself for behaving so immaturely: practically crying like a spoiled child just at the thought of going home without him. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to let go of him and he didn’t pull away until an aggravated Buffy cleared her throat, reminding Spike that she wanted to hug Willow herself, and that they should really be going, anyway. Five minutes later, they were on the road.
Spike couldn’t stop himself from sneaking looks over at Buffy. He didn’t get many opportunities to be this close to her without her protesting. Of course, even now, when he was perfectly justified in being close to her, he could tell that she was looking for some excuse to yell at him. She usually was, when it came to him. Honestly, it was one of the things that had drawn him to her. He appreciated her stubbornness in her likes and dislikes. After over a century with Dru who changed her mind at the drop of a hat for no discernible reason, he appreciated a woman who knew her own mind and was not easily swayed. Buffy’s love might be difficult to earn, but once it was earned, she wasn’t the type to go back on it.
But then there were so many ways in which she reminded him so very much of his dark goddess. Neither was the type to work behind the scenes, as both relished the spotlight and the attention they could draw. They both took great satisfaction in being unusual and varying from the stereotypes that others would expect. They both possessed incredible strength and ability, coupled with a vulnerability that brought out all his protective instincts. And though their features and figures were different, they were both held that unquestionable sort of beauty and desirability that made them both so bewitchingly confident. Spike’s own confidence had always been mostly for show, and he couldn’t stop himself from admiring the two women who were so supremely self-assured in their own desirability.
And they both looked down on him. Both women had no problem with using him whenever they needed something, and then discarding him immediately afterwards. It wasn’t a very good reason to love someone, but there is no doubt that the scorn and condescension with which Buffy treated Spike felt almost comforting in its familiarity. Half of refined London had used William as the butt of their jokes during his lifetime, and the role of scapegoat hadn’t left him with his soul. Angelus had used him as a personal punching bag from the moment of his turning, and even when the bastard was gone, Spike had spent a century being used and put down by Drusilla. It had become almost habit by that point. The human part that was still inside him that remembered his life <“Stupid William,” “Clumsy William,” “You’ll never be worth anything,” “Your father and I used to have such high hopes for you,” “Can’t you do anything properly, William?” “You’re beneath me”> could never manage to believe that he deserved anything better.
As a man, he had tried to create something beautiful, but even his best efforts earned him nothing but ridicule. As a demon, he chose to concentrate on destruction. If he couldn’t make something beautiful, he could, at least, control beautiful things: bend them, mold them, twist them, destroy them. All he knew how to do was destroy. It wasn’t so surprising, then, that he didn’t know how to build a healthy relationship, or put together a beautiful love. His feelings for Drusilla and his feelings for Buffy were self-destructive and that, in itself, was probably the reason.
But Spike didn’t realize this as he sat in the passenger seat, sneaking shy glances over at the slayer. All he thought was that she was beautiful, and desirable, and that loving her was breaking his heart, yet again.
“What are you staring at?” Buffy asked, clearly aggravated, breaking into his thoughts.
“You,” Spike answered, honestly.
“Don’t you dare stare at me!”
“Makes you nervous, does it?”
“Disgusted, is more like it.”
“Disgust makes your heart rate pick up like that?”
“You’re a pig, Spike.”
“I’m a man, baby. What would you expect me to be paying attention to? Signs advertising the nearest McDonald’s?”
They continued arguing most of the way to Los Angeles. Oddly enough, Buffy found herself relaxing as the argument continued. Things had been so strange lately, with Spike and Willow going out of town without telling anyone, and those horrible witches showing up to vacation in Sunnydale, and now with Angel calling up and saying that she had to drive Spike all the way to L.A. Arguing with Spike while Spike focused all of his thought and attention on her was comfortable and familiar.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles…
“I don’t understand why I have to stay here and wait up for them,” Cordelia whined as she carefully applied the nail polish Angel had just bought for her. She hid a smirk as she looked down at the nail polish bottle Angel had been all too willing to buy for her. The new wardrobe he had given her had earned her forgiveness already, but he was still so adorably eager to do anything to atone for the way he had treated his friends during the whole Darla fiasco. Cordelia just loved having a co-worker with some money to spend and a guilty conscience. She had grown up a lot from the spoiled girl she used to be, but she still hadn’t grown *that* much.
“Because,” Wesley explained, not even bothering to look up from his book as he answered her question for the third time, “you were the one with the vision and they might have some questions about specifics that the rest of us would be unable to answer.”
“What’s the problem with waiting up for them?” Gunn asked as he continued carefully cleaning an axe. “It’s not like we’re keeping you from sleeping. You’re usually up at this hour, anyway.”
“I believe her reluctance stems from a disinclination to see Miss Summers again,” Wesley stated. He always reverted to pompousness when he was nervous, and the upcoming raid on the vampire nest definitely made him nervous. And Spike made him nervous, as well. Very nervous.
“And what is that translated?” Gun asked, turning to Angel.
“She doesn’t want to see Buffy,” Angel explained.
“What’s your problem with slay-girl?”
“I don’t know,” Cordelia answered slowly, concentrating very carefully on a particularly tricky spot on her pinkie nail, “maybe it has something to do with the fact that she’s a vain, empty-headed, inconsiderate bitch?”
“Cordelia!” Angel and Wesley called out in protest. Gunn, on the other hand, laughed.
“Well, princess, don’t hold back. Tell us what you really think.”
“Well, if you insist,” Cordelia replied, sealing up her nail polish and focusing her full attention on Gunn. “For Buffy, the only thing that matters is Buffy. Sure, she has friends, but she doesn’t hesitate to use them whenever it suits her purpose. Whenever anything went wrong in her life, she had people bending over backwards to make things easier for her, but when something went screwy in one of our lives, she couldn’t be bothered. Things went sour with me and Xander and she didn’t even come visit me in the hospital. I had a *pipe* go through my stomach and I nearly *died*, but little Miss High and Mighty was too busy to send some damn flowers. But when things went sour with her and Angel and she ran off to L.A. for three months, leaving the rest of us to take over patrolling the Hellmouth.”
As a rule, Cordelia tried to avoid talking about Buffy. There were too many bad memories and too many negative emotions crowded around her perception of the slayer. Besides, talking about Buffy made Angel all moody and depressed, and the guy wasn’t exactly Mr. Sunshine to start with. Saying anything to him that actually *increased* the angst factor was usually considered a bad idea. But Gunn had asked her what she had against Buffy so for once, and *just* this once, she was finally going to say it.
“Another thing about Buffy is that it’s never enough. She was the slayer. *The* slayer. The one girl in all the world chosen by the Powers That Be. Wouldn’t you think that that would be enough? But no, she couldn’t just be the slayer. She also just *had* to be a cheerleader, and the May queen, and the girlfriend of whomever she damn well wanted, no matter who it hurt. Well, I *was* a cheerleader. And the May Queen. And I was the girlfriend of whoever I chose before she showed up in town.” Cordelia forced herself to take a deep breath. She still got emotional when she thought about this and about how her picture perfect life shattered when the slayer came to Sunnydale.
“But suddenly she was there and demons were coming out of the woodwork, and she made me feel guilty for not doing more to help stop them. Hypocrite that she was, she wanted my life, and then made me feel guilty for living it. So I became one of the damn Scoobies and I patrolled and I researched and I killed demons and almost completely lost my popularity, just because I thought it was the right thing to do. And here she was, with her powers and her watcher and her *God-given destiny*, for crying out loud, and she’s whining that she doesn’t want to save the world anymore, that all she wants is a normal life. Well, tough shit. There *is* no such thing as a normal life, especially on the Hellmouth. I was *born* there. I should know.”
Angel, Wesley and Gunn listened to Cordelia, enthralled. Inwardly, they were all ashamed of the way that they had underestimated her. They had never stopped to wonder how she had ended up in their world. None of the rest of them had had much of a choice about getting involved in the fight against evil. Angel fought to make atonement for his sins. Wesley had been raised to be a watcher and guider to the slayer. Gunn grew up in a rough neighborhood where defending yourself was automatically a part of your way of life. But Cordelia had been born to a life of privilege and luxury, in a town where people raised denial into almost an art. It would have been so simple for her to bury her head in the sand and say that monsters didn’t exist and that even if they did, it was someone else’s problem, not hers. But that wasn’t the choice she had made.
“None of us *want* to spend all our time fighting demons and keeping the world from ending,” Cordelia continued. “It’s not *fun* to constantly ruin your clothes, or lose your social life because you spend all your nights researching, and it certainly isn’t enjoyable having skull-cracking visions on a regular basis, but none of us are in it for the joy of it. We do it because it needs to be done. And we do it without a watcher specifically designated to teach us everything we need to know, or super powers to protect us as we fight it out. So if Miss I’m The Slayer So I’m The Only One Who Really Matters is waiting for me to show her some sympathy, she’ll be waiting a very long time.
“Hear that, slayer? Guess you shouldn’t hold your breath,” an amused voice with a British accent announced from the doorway. Angel and Wesley wore matching expressions of shock and embarrassment as they turned toward the door to see Spike and Buffy standing silently in the doorway. Gunn merely returned his focus to the axe he was polishing in his lap, keeping his face tilted down to hide his smile. Cordelia reopened her bottle of nail polish, and returned her attention to her manicure.
“Hello Buffy, Spike,” she said, carefully applying another coat to her glossy nails. “Welcome to L.A.”