Thine Own Self

By Gidgetgirl

Chapter Twelve

Kate crossed her arms over her chest as she listened to the momentary silence in the room.

Finally, Willow took a deep breath. Kate looked toward her, her chest tightening with anxiety. This was the last chance for Cale to have a normal life. In a lot of ways, Kate felt like this was her last chance too. She’d spent so many years hating vampires and other demons, that the stress of finding out her little boy was cursed to spend his life as a hybrid was nearly killing her. Deep down, Kate had always figured that it was her just reward for the way she’d treated Angel that her only son be afflicted.

Kate shook her head almost imperceptibly, pushing the thoughts out of her mind. She told herself for maybe the thousandth time that Cale was going to get better. That was all that mattered.

“See,” Willow was saying, “the deal with these balance prophesies is that they’re never located in just one place. The text cannot be translated without having both halves. I guess they felt all ironic-y the day they were writing these prophesies.” Seeing the tense look on Kate’s face, Willow got straight to the point.

“According to the balance tradition,” she continued, “the laws which govern our physical world also govern the universe on a mystical level.” Willow received several blank stares.

“Physics,” Fred supplied cheerfully. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, hence the whole ‘balance’ thing.”

Kate nodded. Willow had told her this before.

“Hence, human baby born to vampire parents yields vampire baby born to human parents,” Wes said smoothly.

“Connor and Cale balance each other,” Willow continued. “What I didn’t realize before is that this balance isn’t like putting two things that weight the same amount on opposite ends of a seesaw.”

At the word seesaw, the formerly quiet room came to life. Hopie turned to Cale, excited to have someone near her own age in the room. “I have a seesaw,” she announced proudly. “We can play on it, you and me, okay Cale?”

“Yup yup,” Cale replied happily. “Seeeeee-saaaaaaw.” The little boy tilted his head toward Connor, who was sitting quietly to the side, whispering softly to Dawn. He looked back at Hopie quizzically. The little girl sighed a very adult sigh.

“Connor won’t play right now,” she said. “He’s Dawn-ing.”

Cale nodded, and his hands had the sudden urge to play with Dawn’s long hair. It looked like fun.

“Come on,” Hopie said, pulling Cale’s hand. “Let’s go play seesaw in the basement.”

“‘Kay,” Cale said happily. “Bye bye, Mommy!”

Kate, still not very sure who exactly Hopie was, would have stopped him from going, but she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at Oz, and for a moment, she would have sworn that he smiled. Blinking once, she looked at him again, only to discover that his facial expression hadn’t changed at all, and she wondered if she’d imagined the smile.

Hopie happily skipped off, Cale running behind her on sturdy toddler legs.

Unwittingly, Willow’s hand had gone to her stomach, and she wondered if the little boy she carried inside of her would be as friendly and unabashed as Kate’s son.

Thinking of Cale, Willow continued. “It’s not like a seesaw,” she said. “It’s more like…” the wicca paused, trying to come up with an adequate metaphor. “It’s like the two poles of a magnet. You can’t just have a north pole. A south pole will always be created too.”

“And the poles are always connected,” Anni said softly. The others looked at her, and Anni gestured a bit listlessly toward the two texts she had been working with. “That’s what we didn’t understand about the Balance philosophies and prophesies,” the girl continued, her voice still soft. “It’s not just that Connor’s birth created Cale’s condition. The two of them are connected, opposite ends of a pole.”

Willow nodded. “Same for Chance and Little Faith,” she supplemented.

Dakota practically growled. “Don’t call me Little Faith,” she said. “My name is Dakota or Kody. Nothing else, and I’m not a part of anything. I’m not at either end of some metaphysical pole. I’m me. I’m not Faith. I’m not half of Chance. I’m Dakota. That’s it, end of story, and no offense, lady,” she said to Kate, “but if I were you, I’d worry about your little boy being half of some freak complex with Shaggy over there.” Kody jerked a finger toward Connor.

Completely oblivious, Connor continued whispering with Dawn.

“Gag me,” Dakota muttered.

Connor looked up. “That can be arranged,” he said simply.

Kate thought on Dakota’s words. The solution seemed pretty simple in her mind. Cale was the way he was because of Connor. To make Cale better, she just had to get rid of the other pole of that magnet.

Dakota glared at Connor. Something about that kid just rubbed her the wrong way, and while she was at it, she thought that Dawn was very irritating too.

Lilah gritted her teeth, as Maddy fingered the permanent marker she’d somehow gotten a hold of again, a wicked gleam in her eye.

“Give it to me,” Lilah said, her voice pleasantly dangerous.

Maddy batted her eyelashes, Hopie style, at the older woman. “I just need something to hold in my hands,” she said. “Being kidnapped makes me a little nervous, that’s all.”

Lilah snorted. The girl in her office was a first class terror, and she didn’t believe a word the kid was saying.

“You know,” Lilah said conversationally, “you’ll work just as well as bait if you’re injured. In fact, as long as they don’t know you’re dead, you’d work just as well without a breath left in your little oversexed lungs.”

Maddy grinned at the word ‘oversexed.’ No one had ever called her oversexed before.

“That wasn’t a compliment,” Lilah commented.

“Neither was me telling you that your breasts were lopsided,” Maddy replied instantly.

Lilah narrowed her eyes at the girl. “You never said that,” she said.

Maddy shrugged elegantly. “I did just now,” she replied.

Lilah resisted the urge to look down at her chest. Instead, she leaned over and pressed the intercom button. “Delia,” she said to her secretary, “please bring me a knife.”

Maddy’s eyes opened more widely.

“We’re going to play hard ball now,” Lilah said in a sing song voice. She swung around in her swivel chair to look out the window. She smiled in the sunlight. It felt good to be the boss.

“I didn’t know you knew how to play any other way,” a smooth, low voice said from behind her.

“Right on time, Lindsey,” Lilah commented, swinging back around. “I knew you’d come in full force.”

The smug smile faded off of Lilah’s face as she saw the small group Lindsey had brought with him. Angel wasn’t there, and neither was Cordelia, Wesley, or that wretched child who had stolen her son.

Lilah looked the group over derisively. Lindsey had come to battle Wolfram and Hart with nothing more than three Potential slayers, a street hood, and a very pregnant slayer?

As her thoughts fully registered, Lilah stared at Faith. The slayer looked at least seven months pregnant.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Lilah muttered. “Now she’s pregnant too?”

Maddy grinned. “Maybe you’re not having sex in enough varied manners,” she said smoothly. “I’ve heard that variation is key in pregnancy, so maybe if you…”

“Madeline!” Clay said. Maddy stifled a grin. She’d known all along that her brother would come, and she’d known the instant she’d begun talking that he’d yell her full name in horror trying to get her to stop.

What she didn’t know was how in the world they were all going to get out of the mess they were in. Even as Lilah and Lindsey continued to banter, demons of all varieties were filling the room.

Lilah smiled smugly. “Lindsey, you of all people should know that here at Wolfram and Hart, we take security very, very seriously. I’d hoped to kill Hopie first, but I’m flexible.” She looked at the demon security guards. “Kill them all,” she said, her voice still pleasant. “Start with the pregnant bitch.”

Maddy’s eyes flashed. “Lady,” she said hotly. “You haven’t seen bitch yet.”

Ari closed her eyes for a moment. It wouldn’t be long now. She could feel the vampires, feel the way that they felt her presence in this world. A smile spread slowly across her face.

She’d been quite right to tell Wesley and company that she wasn’t Turot. She had Turot’s essence, her power, true enough, but beyond the power of the arch slayer, there were several differences.

She sat down on the ground, her legs crossed, looking for all the world like the twelve year old girl whose body she wore. In her mind, she called out to the vampires. I’m back, pets. She told them mentally. Come to me. At sunset, come to me, and by tomorrow, you need never fear the sunrise again.

She felt their responses, each and every one of them. There were those who were resistant to her pull, the independent vampires who told her mentally that they served no master.

Ari had one word for these vampires. Die, she told them. She smiled as she felt them explode into dust.

That was the true difference between her and the arch slayer who had first carried the essence. Turot had, in many ways, been a vampire princess, but she’d also been tied to them, made to serve the others.

Ari smiled and lay down on the grass, listening to the sounds of the little children laughing around her as they ran through the park.

The children wouldn’t be laughing for very long now.

Ari didn’t serve the vampires. The vampires served her.

There was less than two hours until sunset.

“When Cale and Connor met,” Willow continued, “it was like two opposite ends of a magnet meeting. First, they were attracted to each other.” Kate pictured the way that Cale had run up to Connor, gleefully counting to two.

“The force that drew them together, the energy between them, had its own balance,” Fred said, thinking out loud and biting her bottom lip in concentration.

“The little laser beam thingy,” Dawn guessed, her hand entwined through Connor’s.

“And the same thing must have happened for me and Dakota,” Chance said, looking at the other demi warily. She got a puzzled expression on her face after a moment. “But I’m not Dakota’s other half, not really I don’t think. I mean, Dakota and I were just used to balance out Dawn, weren’t we?”

Dawn, of course, thought that this was a very valid point.

Giles took his glasses off and cleaned them on his shirt.

“Dawn was made from Buffy and Faith, two slayers existing simultaneously in our world, despite the odds against it. Dakota and Chance were used to balance out Dawn’s creation. I suppose you could say Dawn is a balance in and of herself, part Buffy and part Faith.”

“Oh goody,” Dawn whispered to Connor. “I’m a balance in and of myself.”

Connor nuzzled her.

“Damn,” Dakota said. “Get a room.”

“That’s it,” Wes said.

Anni raised an eyebrow at him. “Connor and Dawn should get a room?” she asked.

“They sure as hell better not,” Spike said, coming into the room with Buffy.

“No,” Wes said, rolling his eyes at his younger sister. “A balance within a single person,” Wes said.

Willow understood what he was saying. “The balance within Anni,” she said. “She got caught in between the energies released by Chance and Little…er Dakota, and Connor and Cale, and somehow, it split the poles.”

Anni looked down. “I know,” she said. “She said she wasn’t Turot, and I knew she was telling the truth.” The others looked at Anni. “I knew that she was me, what I almost was. The rest of you never knew how close I came to letting myself become the arch slayer. I wanted it, the power, and I was so angry and hurt, and I could see Turot, standing in front of me, hurting the same way, and I remember thinking, in that instant, that she was a weakling. She let the vampires use her, control her, and I remember thinking that I wasn’t going to, that it was going to be different for me. I was going to control them, and I was going to control the world. And then I looked at Wes, and he was frozen to his spot, like the rest of you, and just as the vampire carrying the essence was about to bite me, I changed my mind.”

The others stared at Anni. “I meant to accept the power, the darkness, but at the last second, I pushed the part of myself that wanted to do that down, and I chose not to.” Anni lowered her face. “But even when I chose not to become that, I wasn’t sure. Part of me wanted to, and I’ve spent all this time pretending like that part wasn’t there, because I didn’t want that to be part of who I was.”

“We all have that kind of darkness inside of us,” Willow said softly, reaching over to take Anni’s hand.

“Not like I do,” Anni said, her voice catching in her throat.

Willow squeezed her hand. “Yes,” she said, thinking of her own days of dark magic, “like you do.”

Anni got a flash then and saw things through Ari’s eyes. She was lying on the grass, looking up at the slowly darkening sky. “Come to me. At sunset, come to me, and by tomorrow, you need never fear the sunriset again.” Anni spoke Ari’s words, and the others stared at her.

“Anni?” Wes said uncertainly.

“Die,” Anni said softly, still caught up in the flash. Tears filled her eyes, but they did not fall, as she broke out of the flash. “She’s gathering the vampires to her,” she said softly. “At sunset, she’ll have an army. If we can’t stop her before then…”

Anni trailed off.

“We’ll figure out how to stop her,” Buffy said, pulling Spike closer to her. “Can’t we use some sort of this balance mojo against her?”

Kate’s eyes were still locked on Connor. Her fingers felt lightly the gun she still carried in the inside of her jacket. She knew that she could bring the gun out and shoot him before anyone could stop her.

When did I become a killer? She wondered. She knew the answer right away. She’d always had the killer instinct, and she’d become a killer in the same moment that she’d become a mother.

“Perhaps,” Wes said thoughtfully, “if we can manage to reverse the process, separate the poles, with Anni and Ari in the middle, we could recombine the two.”

“You want to put her back inside of me?” Anni said. In the exact same motion his cousin had used earlier with Kate, Jordy put a comforting hand on Anni’s shoulder.

“I can’t think of anything else that would work,” Wes said.

Kate’s fingers tightened a bit around the gun.

“I don’t even know if that’s possible, Wes,” Willow said. “The alignment would have to be perfect, and Balance Magic is almost impossible to manipulate.”

Fred bit her bottom lip as she did some quick mental calculations. “The chances of getting everything right: the timing, the angles, the force vector sums.” She trailed off. “The chances aren’t good,” she finished.

“We need a back up plan,” Buffy said. “I’m a big fan of the back up plan.”

“I know how to kill Ari,” Anni said softly. The others looked at her. Kate listened with half of an ear as she prepared to bring the gun out of her shirt.

It was for Cale, she told herself. She’d do anything for her son.

“To kill Ari,” Anni said calmly, “all you have to do is kill me.”

Kate paused a moment in the horrified silence that followed.

“No,” Wesley said, his voice rough and angry. “It’s out of the question.”

“There is no question,” Anni said. “Follow the logic. Ari and I are connected. If you eliminate one pole of a magnet, there’s resistance to depolarization, but if you manage it…” Anni took a deep breath. “Well, you can’t have one pole without the other,” she said slowly. “If you kill me, you kill Ari.”

Kate’s hand slipped off the gun. Oh God, she thought. That means that if I’d shot Connor, I would have killed Cale. I almost killed a human being, and because of that, I almost killed my own son. Kate felt the nausea rising in the back of her throat. She bolted from the room. Oz slipped out silently after her.

“That is not an option,” Wes said, his voice booming.

Anni stared back at him. “If we can’t figure out how to work Balance Magic in the next seventy-five minutes,” she said, “it’s the only option.”

A pained look came across Buffy’s face. This wasn’t the type of back up plan she’d hoped for.

“I won’t let them kill you,” Jordy said, his voice for once full of expression.

Anni stared blankly ahead, as if she’d gone numb. “If Willow’s spell doesn’t work,” she said, “I’ll kill myself.”

“You can’t do that,” Buffy said.

Anni stared at her. “You know better than anyone,” Anni said. “I have to.”

Kendall and Joss stared at all of the demons in the room. Kendall could hear Joss’s audible gulp.

Surprising herself, Kendall reached over and squeezed Joss’s hand. “It’ll be okay,” she said.

“It’ll be okay, Joscelyn,” the older girl promised, kneeling down to talk to Potential who was really just a little girl. “You’ll see. Other girls will come, and Mr. Travers will take good care of you until then.” Little Joss could tell that even the girl speaking didn’t believe her words. Joss knew the truth. It was never going to be okay again.

“It’ll be okay,” Kendall said again, vehemently.

“You don’t believe that,” Joss whispered back.

“Okay,” Kendall said. “It probably won’t be okay, but if I die here, I’m going to die kicking some demon ass, and that brunette lady next to Maddy is going down.”

Joss smiled a little. “If anyone ever deserved to be flounced,” she said, her voice quivering a little, “it’s her.”

“Your little ‘army’ doesn’t stand a chance, Lindsey,” Lilah said. “Those little girls couldn’t slay a newborn vamp,” she said speaking of Nic, Joss, and Kendall. “The boy looks like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” Clay gritted his teeth, his eyes still on his little sister. Lilah dismissed Gunn without saying a single word. “And,” the woman said finally, “looks like wife-y dear is a bit knocked up at the moment. Her stomach’s so big I doubt she could get near enough to a vamp to slay it.”

Faith looked down at her stomach. She blinked once. In a matter of days, she’d nearly come to term. Were all slayer pregnancies like this one?

“Honestly, Lindsey,” Lilah continued, “I doubt the baby’s even yours. With a slut like her, it could be anybody’s. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, you know, and your dear wife is nothing but a nameless, nothing bastard, whose father couldn’t be bothered to stay around. He had better things to do, other daughters to have.”

“What are you talking about?” Faith asked.

Lilah smiled. “Oops,” she said, “now I’ve said too much.” She paused a moment and then spoke again. “Kill them,” she said again.

The demons moved menacingly toward Faith, and the slayer stood in a rather awkward pregnant fighting stance.

Lindsey held up a hand toward the demons. “If you’d give me a moment alone with my wife,” he said smoothly, “I’d like to say goodbye.” His voice was so polite and compelling, and he was so good looking, that even the demons couldn’t resist his request. They stood still for a moment, as Lindsey leaned into Faith.

“What are you doing?” she asked him softly. “I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet, and you can’t be either.”

“Of course not,” Lindsey replied. “But you looked so darned kissable.” His lips fell softly onto hers in a short, soft kiss.

“Darned?” Faith asked, her face still touching his.

Lindsey put his hand out, and reverently touched her stomach. “The baby’s listening,” he explained.

Faith grinned. “Didn’t you hear Hopie?” she asked. “She said ‘babies.’”

Lindsey, after one last small caress of Faith’s stomach, moved his hands to her back. “God, I love you, woman,” he said, dipping her back and catching her up in a passionate kiss that reminded her just how she’d come to become pregnant so quickly into their marriage.

After a long moment, he lifted his lips off of hers. “I love you too,” she said. “And now, I’m quite ready to kick some ass, thank you.”

Lindsey gestured to her stomach, and Faith couldn’t help but smile. “Fine,” she said, humoring him. “I’m quite ready to kick some bottom.”

“Hear that, babies?” Lindsey asked Faith’s stomach. “Mommy’s going to make all of these demons wish that they’d never set foot in this office, because that’s what being a slayer is all about. Then Daddy is going to explain some things to Lilah, and then we’ll all go home, okay?”

Lilah looked at the demons, still standing around. “What are you waiting for?!” she screeched. “Kill them. Kill. Them. Now.”

One of the demons sniffed a bit, wiping away a tear. “It’s so romantic,” the demon said. Lilah gritted her teeth. True evil was so hard to find these days.

The other demons were looking around uneasily. None of them had ever come up against a slayer before. Then again, the slayer was incredibly pregnant, so perhaps they stood a chance after all.

“Okay, babies,” Lindsey said, “buckle your seat belts. Something tells me this is going to be a wild ride.”

Faith met his eyes, and neither of them had to say a word in that instant before the fight began. They’d said all they needed to say.

Again and again, Kate gagged, clutching the sides of the toilet as she did so. She heard the door to the bathroom open softly as if from very far away. Silently, Oz knelt down beside her, gently gathering her blonde hair with his hands and sweeping it away from her face. He said nothing, he just sat there beside her, holding her hair out of her face and rubbing her back with calm, soothing motions.

She sat up after a moment, her eyes blood shot, but dry. She was determined not to cry. She’d spent so long holding the tears back in public, putting on a good face, that she wasn’t about to allow herself to cry in front of a man who’d just held her hair while she threw up.

Oz stood slowly, and without a word, dampened a wash cloth with cold water. He knelt back down beside her, stroking her face softly with the cool wash cloth.

“Better?” he asked.

She looked down. “It will never be better,” she said. “It can’t be better.” Oz said nothing, sensing that Kate needed to talk. “It’s because of me, you know,” she said. “The person I am, the person I’ve always been. I always make the wrong choices. Cale is the only good thing that’s ever happened to me, and he hurts, he’s different, because of me.”

Oz shook his head slowly. Kate nodded, a lone tear streaming down her cheek. “He is,” she insisted. “We were in there talking about balance,” she said. “How’s this for balance? I hurt Angel more times than I can count. There were times when I would have gladly killed him, when I almost did, just because of what he was. There’s some justice in the fact that his son is human and mine isn’t, don’t you see? The way Cale is, it’s my fault. It always has been. My husband knew it. He left us because of it, because I’d contaminated his son. Cale’s first word was Daddy. Did you know that?”

“No,” Oz answered simply. “I didn’t.”

“His father was already gone, but his first word was Daddy. I almost died when that bastard left us, but I knew that it was my fault, and I swore that I’d make it up to Cale. I did everything I could to find a way to make it right for him. I brought him to Willow and then to L.A., even though this was a place I’d spent three years running from.” Kate’s voice caught a little as the tears began streaming down her cheeks faster and faster. Why was she saying all of this? And to a complete stranger at that?

Oz said nothing. He just listened.

Kate continued. “I did everything I knew how to do. I guess I always thought that if I changed, if I was just good enough, that Cale would get better, but I just realized. I haven’t changed at all. I’m still the same cold and calculating shell of a person I always have been.”

“No you’re not,” Oz said softly.

Kate looked at him, her face hard despite the tears that just kept coming. “I almost killed Connor,” she said simply. “I had made my mind up to kill him. I thought it would help Cale, and it didn’t matter to me at all that it would have meant taking another human life. I almost killed Connor, and I almost killed Cale.”

“I know,” Oz said. Even in human form, being a werewolf kept his senses sharpened. He’d felt her move toward the gun, heard her hand close around it, and smelled the scent of flesh on metal.

Kate looked at him, thrown off her guard. “You know?” she asked. He nodded.

“Let’s just say that I’m special, kind of like the way Cale is special,” Oz said, expecting Kate to recoil from him. She didn’t.

“Were you going to stop me?” Kate asked, sounding like a little girl and not the hardened cop she’d defined herself as for so long.

“I knew I wouldn’t have to,” Oz replied.

Kate looked back at him. “How?” she croaked, her voice almost gone.

“I heard you take all of the bullets out of the gun last night,” he replied.

Kate’s heart stopped beating for a moment, and she realized that he was right. The gun hadn’t even been loaded. She’d made sure of that last night, not wanting to do something stupid.

Somehow, that pushed her even closer to the edge, and seeing Oz staring at her, that blank expression on his face that seemed somehow tender, she lost it.

She broke down and cried, sobbing into his chest. Wordlessly, as he watched her tough exterior crumble, Oz put his arm around Kate, and the two of them sat there on the bathroom floor in silence, listening to each other’s hearts beat as her tears dampened his shirt.

“I won’t let you,” Wes said firmly, completely in older brother mode. “You’re not going to scamper around throughout your teenage years barely clothed, you’re not going to stay out past curfew, and you’re simply not going to kill yourself to destroy Ari. Case closed.”

Anni looked back at him. “I’ve been inside of her,” she said. “She’s been inside of me. If we can’t kill her before the sun sets… you have no idea what she’s capable of. We’ll all die. All of us, and all the world. I know her, Wes. I am her, and…”

“You are not her,” Willow replied, her voice low and angry.

“For all intensive purposes,” Anni said, sounding like the over-educated British Miss she had been when she’d arrived, “I most certainly am. We only have an hour and ten minutes now until sunset. Don’t ask me how I know that. I just do.”

“What do we do?” Chance asked out loud.

“We prepare to fight,” Buffy said. “And they research.”

“And,” Spike said, “Poof Junior gets his hands away from Dawn before I have them chopped off and Lil’ Faith over there loses her lunch.”

Dakota gritted her teeth, but she said nothing. She’d deal with the ‘Little Faith’ issue if and when they’d averted this apocalypse.

Angel came in and immediately noticed the somber faces. “I take it things are not going well,” he said.

“We have a plan,” Anni said softly.

Angel nodded. Cordy came in behind him, her face flushed a bit. She smiled brightly, trying not to look at Angel and wondering if anyone could tell by the looks on their faces that while everyone else had been discussing, the two of them had been caught up in a bit of impromptu grown-up time.

“Where’s Hopie?” Cordy asked.

“She and Cale went down to play with the seesaw in the basement,” Willow said absentmindedly.

Cordy tilted her head. “We don’t have a seesaw in the basement,” she said, puzzled.

After a split second, Connor, Angel, and Cordelia ran out of the room, past Lorne, Xander, and Anya, who were caught up in some kind of heated discussion on the merits and atrocious downfalls of Britney Spears.

“I don’t like her,” Anya was saying. “She has some of the best paid breasts in the music industry, and they aren’t even real.”

Lorne, seeing Angel and company rush by, gave up the conversation and followed them. Anya and Xander, shrugging, did the same.

Cordy threw open the basement door, and rushed in to see Cale and Hopie sitting on what appeared to be a seesaw fashioned from a training dummy, several oversized swords, and a great deal of electrical tape.

“Hope Chase Angel!” Cordy, Connor, and Angel yelled at once.

Hopie, sitting on the handles of several of the broad swords, grinned sweetly up to them. “Don’t worry,” she said. “The pointy parts are in the middle, and the tape will come off.”

Cordy took in a deep breath, looking at the precarious looking contraption, and she barked out, “Off of it, both of you, right now.”

Both children complied, and Hopie sighed. No one else ever understood that weapons had many, many uses.

“Momma,” Hopie said in her best little girl voice, “would you make us some peanut butter sandwiches?”

Cordelia sighed. Cale reached up and tugged on Hopie’s shirt. The little girl leaned over and listened as he whispered something in her ear.

“Peanut butter and raisin sandwiches,” she corrected herself. “With juice boxes and blood to drink.”

“Hope,” Angel said seriously. “We don’t play with weapons, remember?”

Hopie wrinkled her nose. “Unless we’re playing slay time or battle or training,” Hopie recited. “And there has to be an adult there.” She looked down, a sad look on her face.

“And you have to be careful around little ones,” Cordy said, gesturing toward Cale.

Hopie nodded seriously. “We have to take care of babies,” Hopie said.

“That’s right,” Cordy said, thinking about the day when Hopie might have a little brother or sister of her own.

“I’m not a baby,” Cale said. “I’m a monster duck. Quack grrrrrrr quack!”

Hopie giggled and looked up at her parents. “And sometimes,” she said softly, “babies take care of us.”

Angel walked over to the seesaw-ish configuration. It seemed surprising sturdy considering it was held together only by a great deal of electrical tape. “Where did you get the tape?” he asked curiously.

Hopie grinned. “In Kendall’s bag,” Hopie said. “She left it here when she went with Uncle Lindsey.”

Connor said out loud what the rest of them were thinking, “What would Kendall need that much electrical tape for?”

Ari rolled over and looked at the children. “Laugh while you still can,” she told them. “The darkness is coming, and then I’ll be the only one laughing.”

Fred began diagramming the positions each of the children would need to take for the spell to work, down to the tenth of a degree. Willow made a list of ingredients she would need to increase her strength.

“Laugh while you still can,” Anni said out loud, echoing Ari’s words. The others stared at her. Only this time, Anni wasn’t just repeating Ari’s words. She was saying them back to her other self. Deep down, Anni knew that before sunset, neither she nor Ari would be laughing. They would both be dead.

Willow continued making her list, and at the bottom, she listed the most important ‘ingredient’ she could think of.

Hopie.

Hopie was the only one of them that had magic older and more powerful than the balance magic they were trying to tap into. Willow knew that she would need the little girl for the spell.

Hopie hopped up the stairs, careful not to look at Connor, because he was still glaring at her. She sang softly under her breath.

“The ants go marching two by two

Hurrah. Hurrah

The ants go marching two by two

Hurrah. Hurrah

The ants go marching two by two

The little one stopped to tie his shoe

And they all go marching down, down

To get under the ground, to get out of the rain.”

Lorne raised his eyebrows. “People,” he said. “There’s something I should probably tell you.”

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