“Where to next, eh?” he asked, wishing for a cigarette.
“I’m going to have lunch with my father.”
“You always have full days like this?” he wondered as they wandered down one hallway after another. How the hell did she not get lost? And why the fuck was he?
“I like to keep busy.”
“Angelus not keeping your time occupied?”
The moment he said it, he regretted it. Faster than he could regret it, however, he found himself against the wall, her small hand closed around his throat, eyes once more the miasma of green, silver, blue, and red. It was a fascinating and beautiful sight. Deadly.
“You will never,” she enunciated, “ever speak that way again. What happens between Angelus and me is not your concern.”
“It is,” he gasped as her fist tightened even further, “when you’re so damn miserable even the masses know it.”
He felt the blood seep down his neck, the copper tang of it scenting the air. What a way to die, in some anonymous hallway, killed by an enraged slayer. If he was going to Die-by-Slayer, the least she could’ve done was fought him.
As opposed to sneak attacking him.
No dignity this way.
“It is,” he continued, wishing he really could keep his damn mouth shut, “when you obviously need someone to talk to.”
“The last time I talked to anyone,” she said, never letting up, “all I got was that damned blessed sword to kill my lover.”
Spike blinked. He hadn’t known that. He’d always suspected that she hadn’t wanted to go after Angelus, but...actually, he wasn’t sure what was going on. Then or now. Completely confused, he was more surprised (and even more confused) when she released him.
Great, a compassionate slayer. Whatever happened to the old days?
And she was walking away from him. Shit.
“Slaye- godd –hell, Buffy. Wait. Stop.” She didn’t. He wasn’t surprised, and raced to catch up with her. “Buffy,” he said, cutting her off but not touching her. He wasn’t that stupid. Though you couldn’t tell by the fact that his mouth was still moving and words were emerging. “You can’t go by what those friends of yours said.”
Another stupid thing to say. Where was his suave? Where was his finesse? Where was his brain telling him to shut the fuck up?
She slowly advanced on him, eyes blazing. He was so in trouble.
“I know what they’re like. I know who they are. I’m sick and tired of people telling me to dismiss them outright. To forget about them. I’m quite aware of their limits and their shortcomings. End of discussion. End of story. There’s nothing more to say about this, understood?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed at that. Maybe he should’ve softened the word. “Despite your friends,” a wave of magick held him tight in its grip but he persevered, “you are miserable. Or maybe not miserable,” he hastened, “but you’re not happy. Talk to me; tell me why you’re not happy. What’s wrong between you and Angelus?”
“I believe I’ve told you once,” she snarled, and that magickal wave didn’t let up, “it’s not your concern. Drop it, Spike.”
“Believe me when I say I’d love to. I just can’t seem to.”
Buffy started walking down the hallway again. Stalked down was more like it. Through all of it, the twists and turns, around sharp corners, everything, she pulled him along. He floated centimeters off the ground, and when he slammed into a corner, Spike was certain she did it on purpose.
That was going to bruise.
Eventually they were in front of the dungeons, still guarded by one of Guius’ men, still looking about as uninviting as ever.
“Please bring my father out here,” she requested, calm and polite, smiling at the hulking demon. Who naturally hurried to do her bidding. Seconds later, Hank Summers was before them.
“Dad, I’m sure you remember Spike,” she said and turned to leave the area, Hank beside her.
“Uh, yes,” Hank said with a curious look at Spike.
“I’m in trouble,” he snorted. “And without a cigarette. She’s right pissed off, and justifiably. Maybe you can talk to her.”
“I can hear you, Spike,” Buffy said. But she didn’t turn around and Hank’s frown deepened.
No, Hank noted, she didn’t turn to look at the vampire though she did seemed to be…dragging him? Odd. Was this part of what Rupert Giles was trying to tell them? Before Angelus arrived, before Buffy overheard. When she was still his little girl and not some hybrid something or other. That she’d inherited or received or been cursed with…ah…supernatural powers? More supernatural than before, when she was just a slayer.
He was so confused. Falling back on the normal blindness was no longer an option.
But oh, how he wanted to.
“Buffy,” he began. But cut himself off when he saw her back. Tilting his head to the side he asked, “What’s on your-?”
“Hank,” Spike hissed and he turned to face him. The vampire was frantically shaking his head, and bizarrely enough, looked truly terrified. This day was not like all the others. It was, if such a thing was possible, even stranger.
“Agenda for the day,” he finished smoothly. Buffy turned to glare, but he smiled benignly and hoped for the best. “How about a nice walk?”
“Yes,” she said, and slowly relaxed. Shot Spike a mean look, but smiled warmly at him. He couldn’t believe how grateful he was that he wasn’t on the receiving end of that look. “Yes, that sounds lovely. Are you hungry, dad?”
“A little, yes. I’d love,” a drink. A nice stiff drink. But as Hank recalled, Buffy didn’t like it when he or her mother drank. Considering the state she now seemed to have found herself, he didn’t think that had changed. “Some of that fruit,” he finished.
She nodded and slowed her pace. No longer were they racing through the halls, her heels tapping on the floor like a death knell. He watched her take a deep breath, watched the tension leech out of her shoulders. Another breath, another softening of her rigid stance. Five breaths later he could still see her anger, the tension knotting her shoulders, but she looked better.
“Tell me,” Hank started, mind racing wildly for a topic of conversation, “how’re things with you?”
“They’re okay,” she shrugged. “Same old.”
“Considering I don’t know what the old was like, why don’t you tell me?”
She looked startled at his question and Hank cursed himself. Not for the question itself, but the fact that he’d never asked it before.
He’d never cared what happened in school or her life – it truly was the same old. How many times could anyone talk about, let alone listen to, school was fine. They taught us stuff. I had a quiz.
And her friends were so vapid he couldn’t have cared less about what was happening in their lives. Jody broke up with Bobby to date James who is really in love with Wendy who may or may not be gay. Hell, she was so popular, he didn’t even know who all Buffy’s friends were.
Except for Pike. Pike he remembered. Hank remembered wanting to strangle Pike, actually. Whatever happened to the boy? Looking out at the red sky, he wondered if Pike had survived this. Did Buffy care? Did she know what happened to him?
“You really want to know?”
“Yes, Buffy,” he smiled down at her, forgetting all about Pike. “I really do.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated and felt like an idiot. “What do you mean why?” But of course he already knew what she meant. He just hated his answer.
“I mean,” she said slowly, walking to a break in the wall and leaning against it. She gazed out over the barren land, but he knew her attention was firmly on him. “Why do you suddenly care what happens in my life? You never have before.”
“Before your life was much the same as my own high school years – school, gossip, friends, getting one over on your parents. You didn’t do drugs, though I suspect your mother thought you were. And you got decent grades.”
“You always argued with me over my grades.”
He had to laugh at that. “I’ve recently come to realize that there are more things in this world, Horatio, than grades and school.”
She smiled, head half turned to look at him. “I wish you’d have taken such an interest in my life then. It would’ve made this a lot easier.”
“I wish I had, too,” he admitted. “But it’s easier to look back now and wish than it was to live in the then.”
She nodded and turned to look out at the world again. “I’d give a lot,” she murmured, “to be in school now. To learn about the War of 1812 and the Trail of Tears, to conjugate my French, to figure out my algebra. It wasn’t important to me then because I couldn’t imagine what I’d use it for. I was never going to live in France, and what real use is algebra unless you’re a math teacher?”
Shaking her head, Buffy laughed softly. “I had no real plan for my future. Then the slayer thing happened. I couldn’t tell anyone, this crazy old man told me not to, and who’d believe me anyway?”
“As I recall,” Hank said, winching at the memory, “we didn’t.”
“No,” she agreed, “and you wonder why I never told you anything. If you didn’t believe that, why would you believe anything else I’d said?”
“To be fair, Buffy, that wasn’t the type of thing most parents hear – pregnancy, drugs, alcohol, eloping with a much older man. Those were the confessions I was expecting. This?” he waved his hand to encompass everything, “certainly wasn’t it. So yes, we were horrible parents. I agree, we weren’t the best,” he told her, leaning against the stone but not looking at her. “I’d like to make up for it now.”
Buffy didn't say anything for a while, and he wondered if he’d lost her to her own thoughts, this new life of hers.
“You’re lucky I’m not scarred for life, dad. Any other world, and I might need therapy until I’m at least thirty.”
He laughed and felt a great weight lift from his chest. He hadn’t realized until she said those words how desperate he was to hear them. Or how badly he (and Joyce who was a different matter entirely) had fucked things up.
“Where’s Angelus?” he began again.
He was totally unprepared for her snarl of anger and the invisible wall of something that eerily echoed noiselessly around the garden.
Spike snorted. “Nothing’s wrong, eh, Pet?”
“Watch it, Spike, or I’ll send you flying over the edge.”
“Been there, done that, Pet. Have survived worse.”
“This,” she promised and turned to lock eyes with him, “you won’t.”
Slowly nodding, she folded his arms and watched. Hank returned his attention to his daughter.
“What’s wrong, Buffy?”
“Angelus is in England,” she said, “or what’s left of it.” She stopped, balled her fingers into tight fists. He could see the strain seep back into her body.
“The Council, the Watcher’s Council, they control the slayers. Or did.” She shook her head in dismissal. “Once upon a time a bunch of old men were scared of a little girl who was stronger than anything they’d ever seen.”
Neither of her audience missed the bitter sarcasm in her voice.
“They’d created her, but that didn’t matter. In order to control their fear, they needed to control her. In order to do that, they needed rules; lots and lots of little meaningless rules to make them feel better about themselves. And they needed to put their own fear into the girl. Only they forgot something.”
One of her hands unclenched, the other slowly following. Buffy didn’t seem to notice, and she didn’t stop her story.
“They’d used a demon – they forced this demon into the girl so that girl could have the strength to fight every other demon. The men, they didn't know who or what this demon was, where it came from, what it wanted. What powers it held, or what the consequences of melding with the girl would be.
“For a few thousand years it didn’t matter. The ancestors of those original three men maintained their power, held onto the fear of the world, and carefully cultivated one measly girl to do their fighting.”
As if by magick their fruit arrived, a lovely tray with colorful choices that contrasted with the dimness of the day. The being (Hank was never sure if they were human or vampire since vampires could look just like humans and he had no idea how to tell the difference) bowed low, and left the tray on the bench Buffy stood beside. A moment later, another being arrived with a tea tray.
Spike suddenly dropped to the ground, released from whatever Buffy had held him in. He stumbled once, snickered as he brushed his shirt off, and went to pour the tea. Hank didn’t even want to know how the vampire knew what to do or why he did it.
Going with the flow was turning out to be a lot easier than he’d thought.
“When Acathla opened his mouth and breathed,” Buffy continued once Spike poured her tea, “the Demon in the Slayer line awoke, too. It wanted more.”
“You mean it wanted to take over the world, too?” Hank asked and accepted a plate of fruit from Spike. The vampire maintained an amused expression, as if he knew something Hank didn’t. He was certain that was true on more than one front.
“No. It wanted completion.”
“I don’t understand,” he began, but then he did. “You mean,” he said as the full impact of her words registered, “that the demon in the slayer – the demon in you – wanted to…join?”
“Something like that.”
“Something? Or yes?”
“Something,” she repeated. “There isn’t just one slayer any more. There are two. Faith…when Kendra died, Faith took over.”
“Who’s Kendra?”
“Kendra became to slayer when I died,” Buffy said quietly, looking into her tea cup as if it held this Kendra’s face and she wanted to memorize it.
“You died?” Hank demanded.
“When’d that happen?” Spike asked at the same time.
“Last year. Or,” she shrugged, “about a year before all this. The Master,” she told Spike with another shrug.
“Ah,” he said, and nodded. Then, standing to pace along the path, “It makes more sense now. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill you. I thought – well then it was wrong and now I thought it was. And it was, wasn’t it. But no, he already saw you dead. Couldn’t deal with that again. Soul or no, he’d experienced it.”
Turning back to Buffy he smirked, “I bet Angel went berserk when you died.”
Hank shuddered, but steered the conversation back to the topic. “Buffy, it doesn’t matter. You’re still my daughter, and I still love you. I may not have been the best father this last year – or whatever – but none of this matters now.”
That hadn’t been what he’d wanted to say. He wanted to hear more, for her to finish the story. He wanted to know about the demon and this Faith and where she was and why Angelus was in England (if there was anything left of England, and he highly doubted it). And if his beloved daughter really did love Angelus or if she was with him only to save them all. He wanted to know so much that he wasn’t certain she’d tell him.
In fact, he knew she wouldn’t. And he knew that no matter what Willow or Joyce said, Hank suspected Buffy truly did love Angelus. Wasn’t that what he’d always hoped for? That she’d find someone to love, to spend her life with? To care for more than herself, and who loved her just as much in return?
“You’re still you. Demon or no, powers or no, I know you’re still you.”
The change that overtook her was phenomenal. Ever ounce of stiffness left her body, it was as if all her muscles suddenly relaxed, and she collapsed to the bench.
“Do you mean it?”
Hank hated that she had to ask that. “Yes, Buffy,” he said, sitting beside her. “I mean it.”
“It’s just,” she paused, and didn’t look at him. “With so many changes,” she began again, “everything’s happening so fast. With having to change myself…I feel sometimes like I’m loosing the parts of me I don’t especially want to loose.”
She did turn then, looking somberly at him. Her eyes swirled in a multicolored dance. What did she hide behind those eyes? What powers, what secrets? What pain?
“And it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
Hank brow furrowed in concern. “What do you mean?”
She looked at him with eyes that saw too much and were much too weary for her age. Did this world do that to her? Or had it been like that since her calling. Over the last summer they’d spent together when he’d assumed it was typical teenage angst that had her distant and snappy.
“Angelus has gone to deal with the Council so there will be more deaths.”
Hank nodded. “Ah, you mean you have to stop him. Slayer and all. All couples have conflicts of opinion, Buffy.”
She tilted her head to the side studying him intently. “No.”
“I don’t understand,” he shook his head tiredly, wishing for the fermented version of the delicious fruit beside him. “Aren’t-”
Her expression smoothed became impassive but the eyes, those beautifully colored eyes, flashed fire.
“There must be balance,” she said, “a priced paid for the years when there was none.”
“What do you want?” he asked, because he had no idea what that was.
“I want vengeance. I want the killing to stop. I want to live in peace with the man I love and not worry about people trying to kill me because they think I caused this. I want my family and friends out of cages but I can’t trust them on their own.”
“What do you want,” he repeated, seeing a pattern here, “for yourself?”
“Me?” she asked blankly. And that look, the one that had seen and done too much was suddenly just as blank.
“I want,” she said slowly, “I want the peace that comes with happiness. I want quiet, I want to sleep for a thousand days in Angelus’ arms. I want to learn everything I never did because I was fighting the things that now worship me.”
“Is that all?”
“What I want,” she shrugged, “is to live.”
“Then do so. Do what you want, be who you are. Don’t let anyone, not us, not Angelus, not the masses who worship you dictate that.”
“I’m not sure I know how.”
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