"I was never with the Coup," Grace said, his eyes anguished. "I wouldn't
have done that -"
"Wouldn't you?" Melinda asked. "You don't get it. I still don't know who you were working for, and no matter what you say I don't think I ever will. You could have been a double agent - or you could have done it out of love - or you could have just realized that our side was going to win. Bottom line is, you betrayed me. And if there's one thing I can't take it's betrayal."
Anguished, Grace said, "I never would have hurt you, Mel. You know me better than that."
In a hollow, empty voice, Melinda said. "No, I don't." When Grace opened his mouth, Melinda said, "Don't. Just go."
"I thought you loved me," Grace said.
"I do." A moment of silence followed. "But I can't trust you." Then, bitterly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have some evil to stop." Melinda put her mask on, and as Freedom flew out the window.
Grace stood there watching her fly off into the darkness.
* * * * *
The TV screen went dark and the words "Created by Joss Whedon" flashed across it.
"Wow," Xander said. "That was good - guys?" And all around him, Tara, Willow, Buffy and even Anya were sniffling. "Man, I HAVE to get me some male friends."
"You have a heart of stone," Anya said. "And you're not getting any sex tonight."
"That might be a bit harsh," Willow said, still sniffling.
"Oh, he knows I don't mean it. We'll be moaning - wait. Xander, is this what you call too much information?" Xander nodded his head vigorously.
"Don't get mad at me," Xander said. "That was one of the best scenes ever in the show. Damn if I know what they're going to do with Grace now."
"Who's mad?" Willow said. "The only thing you cry at is A Charlie Brown Christmas." Buffy flipped off the TV set.
"Not just Grace," Buffy said. "Now that the Coup is officially over, they've still got Sunset and Freelance out there - and who's going to replace all those heroes who're dead? Captain Australia, the Alchemist, the Caiman . . . I mean, right now they've only got what, six heroes protecting the world if you count the ones who were killed or in custody."
Willow added, "And what's going to happen with Arna and Kai, for that matter. I don't trust the guy."
Tara said, "Um, well, we're going to have to wait a few weeks to find out - but I HAVE been checking out The Mask of Freedom recently -"
Buffy, Willow and Xander shouted "No!" at once. Anya gave everyone an odd look, to which Willow explained, "Mask is one of the best Freedom spoiler websites out there. Tells us in advance some of what's going to happen, almost never gets it wrong, and has this great message board where people can go to post rumors or speculation. But, well, Buffy and Xander and me and decided to go spoilerfree."
Tara smiled. "Cool. This means I'm one up on the rest of you."
Willow came over and hugged her. "It's a feeling of power, isn't it?"
Tara nodded. "I like it."
"So what?" Anya said. "Repeats for the next three weeks?"
"There are only 22 new episodes a year," Xander explained.
"Who thought of THAT system?" Anya demanded. "There should be new episodes every week."
"The actors deserve SOME time off," Buffy said.
Anya said, "Who says?"
"People who make your career as a vengeance demon look tame," Xander said. "Network executives." He grabbed Anya's coat and put on his own. This being the middle of December it had actually dipped down into the high 40s in Sunnydale.
"Wait," Willow said. "Aren't you guys going to stick around and talk?"
"Can't," Anya said. "Sex."
Xander groaned.
* * * * *
So next week on Freedom it was a repeat of the season premiere, Riverwide. Not one of the better eps - Arna and Topher had a huge fight that most Freedomites agreed was way out of character. But it was the one when Totem had been badly injured, so there was much worth watching in view of the Coup to come. Next two weeks were eps two and three, The Look in Your Eyes and Desire; the second one was one of the funniest shows they'd ever done, with everyone in the main cast except Topher falling under the influence of a pair of villains called the Charmers.
They all gathered round to watching, paying special attention to the mysterious figure in the shadows who'd tried to kill both Totem and Freedom - who'd later been revealed to be Sunset, one of the heroes of Europe. Also, they reanalyzed the mysterious conversation Grace had had in TLIYE.
It was a lot of fun. Willow and Tara went through the message boards later and got heavily into the arguing about whether Grace was really a good guy or a bad guy.
Then, finally, mid-January and it was time for "Disgraced," the new episode. Yeah, they'd enjoyed rehashing the older shows but enough had long since been enough. It was 7:55 on Tuesday night, the popcorn was popped, the vampires were on hold for an hour and the television was set to channel 54.
Buffy flipped it on and the gang waited for the commercials to end.
But then -
Nightmare.
A graphic flashed across the screen they'd never seen before. It showed a stylized man dunking a basketball with a KBTS-54 logo in the corner. And then, an announcer said -
Said -
"Freedom and Jack and Jill will not be seen tonight so that we may bring you Pac-10 basketball. Look for the normal Tuesday night shows Sunday at 4 PM."
Then a picture of the inside of a basketball arena, and a bass-voiced announcer saying, "Gooooood evening and welcome to PAC-10 Basketball. Tonight, we'll be watching the Arizona Wildcats face off against the Washington Huskies. I'm Don Gregory here with Adrian Branch and we'll be back after this."
Cut to a commercial for some kind of deodorant. They never found out which because Buffy switched off the TV and threw the remote across the room.
It shattered against the wall. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!!" Buffy yelled. Everyone around her was just as angry. Xander was ready to chew girders and spit out rivets, Anya looked like she was ready to murder someone, Willow looked as peeved as she ever gets, and even Tara seemed thoroughly pissed. "A BASKETball game? A damn basketball game?"
"And, and, and not even local colleges," Willow stammered out. "I mean, we don't live anywhere near those two campuses. UCLA and USC I could understand a little, but -"
"Why?" Anya demanded bluntly. "I can't. Basketball is stupid."
"I couldn't either," Xander said. "Critics rave about Freedom. It's got a fanatical following - including, may I say, the five of us in this room. No one - or certainly not nearly as many of us - give a good goddamn about most PAC-10 basketball games, and sure as hell not those from six hundred miles away in both directions. Their ratings are going to DROP because of this."
"They signed a contract," Tara said. "That has to be it."
"Why in the HELL would they sign a contract that made them show games no one around here cares about?" Buffy asked. She'd picked up the remote in the hopes of repairing it, but that was strictly a no-go. The remote was toast.
"Probably to get the games we WOULD," Willow said. "There are a lot of UCLA and USC fans around here." She pulled out her laptop and plugged it in. "I'm gonna check their website."
"It's still stupid," Xander said. "And why are they showing Freedom at four o'clock on Sundays? You'd think they'd want to show it as soon as possible. Like, say, as soon as the game was over."
"Oh, no," Tara said, "'cause then we'd miss their award-winning Channel 54 News at 10." Xander thought Tara was being sarcastic, but he couldn't be sure.
The KBTS-54 website had a terse comment that said the same thing the graphic had said ten minutes ago. Its programming schedule also didn't go past the current week, so there was no way to see if they'd stupidly contracted for any MORE games on Tuesday nights at eight o'clock. On a suggestion from Tara Willow went and checked TV Guide's site. The next two weeks, on Tuesdays when Freedom was supposed to be on, there was a two-hour block for PAC-10 Basketball. It didn't say which teams, but none of the gang really cared.
Buffy gave up on her attempts to fix the remote control and chucked it into the trash, salvaging the batteries. "I'm going to have to go out and buy a universal," she muttered to no one in particular. "Damn. So now what are we going to do for the night?"
"I'm telling you one thing," Willow said. "We're not watching basketball."
"Oh, that's for DAMN sure," Buffy said. "I have this sudden urge to go out and kill something."
Xander said, "Me too. Difference is, you can get away with it."
"Buffy, can I borrow your phone?" Anya asked.
"Of course," Buffy said. "But if you're going to try to call the station you're not going to get through."
Anya smiled. "Oh, no. Not the station."
Suddenly getting a horrid thought in his head, Xander said, "You're not calling a hit man?"
"Right," Anya said as she walked out of the room. "I was just going to check that up in the Yellow Pages under A for assassins." Then she vanished into the kitchen.
She poked her head out a minute later. "That was a joke. You may commence laughing."
Everyone did, a bit hollowly, because none of them, Xander included, were quite sure she'd really been kidding.
So Willow and Tara mumbled about "cursing" the person who'd made the decision - clearly just blowing off steam - while Buffy made dark noises about finding them and having a calm, reasonable discussion involving stakes shoved up portions of his or her anatomy that were never meant to have stakes go there. By comparison Xander felt civilized; all he wanted to do was yell a lot. About five minutes later, Anya came back in the room.
"Turn the TV back on," she said. In wordless response Buffy pointed to the trashcan and shrugged. Anya walked over to the TV and pushed the on button. "Was that so hard?"
"I would have gotten around to that - eventually!" Buffy protested. No one answered, and everyone's attention became riveted on the television.
"Alright," Xander said. "What was that phone call?"
"Shh," she said. "Just watch."
The basketball game was somewhere in the middle of the first half, with Arizona leading by five. After a few minutes the Wildcats were up eight points and nothing had happened. "Did you suddenly discover a passion for basketball?" Buffy asked.
"Shh," Anya repeated.
And finally, five minutes after THAT, during a commercial a rather bedraggled looking bald man with red blotches on his face came on the screen. Anya clapped her hands and said, "Here we go."
"Uh, I'm Jim Danziger, director of programming for KBTS-54. Due to the, uh, volume of calls we have received on the, uh, subject, Freedom and Jack and Jill will be seen in their, uh, entirety immediately following the game, as well as 4 o'clock Sunday afternoons for our, uh, younger viewers. Stay tuned after the shows for our, uh, award-winning newscast. Now, please, stop calling." He looked desperate. "Please?"
And then we cut back to the basketball game, and Anya walked over to the set and turned it off. "Well?" She said after turning around. "Where's the thank yous?"
Skeptically, Willow said, "That didn't come from any one phone call."
Anya nodded. "Yes, it did. I called in a favor."
Tara said suspiciously, "It didn't have anything to do with those blotches on his face, did it?"
"No," Anya said, frowning. "That was just acne."
"So who was the phone call for?"
"Someone who owed me a favor from long ago - a cephalus demon. Eight mouths, each one with a different voice, and a large family scattered around the area. They made several hundred phone calls in the last ten minutes and promised more if they didn't show Freedom the second the game was over."
"Several . . . hundred?" Willow said in disbelief.
"She has a large family."
"Well, then, what do we do for the next hour or so?" Buffy asked.
Anya pointed wordlessly at the trashcan.
"I'm on it," Buffy grumbled. "I'm on it." She grabbed a coat and left.
After Buffy was gone, Willow turned to Tara. "What do you know from Mask of Freedom that you can tell us? No spoilers."
"Well," Tara started. "This is largely Grace's show, as he goes around trying to prove to everyone that he really wasn't a traitor. The villains are just a bunch of no-name thugs . . ."
"Wouldn't you?" Melinda asked. "You don't get it. I still don't know who you were working for, and no matter what you say I don't think I ever will. You could have been a double agent - or you could have done it out of love - or you could have just realized that our side was going to win. Bottom line is, you betrayed me. And if there's one thing I can't take it's betrayal."
Anguished, Grace said, "I never would have hurt you, Mel. You know me better than that."
In a hollow, empty voice, Melinda said. "No, I don't." When Grace opened his mouth, Melinda said, "Don't. Just go."
"I thought you loved me," Grace said.
"I do." A moment of silence followed. "But I can't trust you." Then, bitterly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have some evil to stop." Melinda put her mask on, and as Freedom flew out the window.
Grace stood there watching her fly off into the darkness.
* * * * *
The TV screen went dark and the words "Created by Joss Whedon" flashed across it.
"Wow," Xander said. "That was good - guys?" And all around him, Tara, Willow, Buffy and even Anya were sniffling. "Man, I HAVE to get me some male friends."
"You have a heart of stone," Anya said. "And you're not getting any sex tonight."
"That might be a bit harsh," Willow said, still sniffling.
"Oh, he knows I don't mean it. We'll be moaning - wait. Xander, is this what you call too much information?" Xander nodded his head vigorously.
"Don't get mad at me," Xander said. "That was one of the best scenes ever in the show. Damn if I know what they're going to do with Grace now."
"Who's mad?" Willow said. "The only thing you cry at is A Charlie Brown Christmas." Buffy flipped off the TV set.
"Not just Grace," Buffy said. "Now that the Coup is officially over, they've still got Sunset and Freelance out there - and who's going to replace all those heroes who're dead? Captain Australia, the Alchemist, the Caiman . . . I mean, right now they've only got what, six heroes protecting the world if you count the ones who were killed or in custody."
Willow added, "And what's going to happen with Arna and Kai, for that matter. I don't trust the guy."
Tara said, "Um, well, we're going to have to wait a few weeks to find out - but I HAVE been checking out The Mask of Freedom recently -"
Buffy, Willow and Xander shouted "No!" at once. Anya gave everyone an odd look, to which Willow explained, "Mask is one of the best Freedom spoiler websites out there. Tells us in advance some of what's going to happen, almost never gets it wrong, and has this great message board where people can go to post rumors or speculation. But, well, Buffy and Xander and me and decided to go spoilerfree."
Tara smiled. "Cool. This means I'm one up on the rest of you."
Willow came over and hugged her. "It's a feeling of power, isn't it?"
Tara nodded. "I like it."
"So what?" Anya said. "Repeats for the next three weeks?"
"There are only 22 new episodes a year," Xander explained.
"Who thought of THAT system?" Anya demanded. "There should be new episodes every week."
"The actors deserve SOME time off," Buffy said.
Anya said, "Who says?"
"People who make your career as a vengeance demon look tame," Xander said. "Network executives." He grabbed Anya's coat and put on his own. This being the middle of December it had actually dipped down into the high 40s in Sunnydale.
"Wait," Willow said. "Aren't you guys going to stick around and talk?"
"Can't," Anya said. "Sex."
Xander groaned.
* * * * *
So next week on Freedom it was a repeat of the season premiere, Riverwide. Not one of the better eps - Arna and Topher had a huge fight that most Freedomites agreed was way out of character. But it was the one when Totem had been badly injured, so there was much worth watching in view of the Coup to come. Next two weeks were eps two and three, The Look in Your Eyes and Desire; the second one was one of the funniest shows they'd ever done, with everyone in the main cast except Topher falling under the influence of a pair of villains called the Charmers.
They all gathered round to watching, paying special attention to the mysterious figure in the shadows who'd tried to kill both Totem and Freedom - who'd later been revealed to be Sunset, one of the heroes of Europe. Also, they reanalyzed the mysterious conversation Grace had had in TLIYE.
It was a lot of fun. Willow and Tara went through the message boards later and got heavily into the arguing about whether Grace was really a good guy or a bad guy.
Then, finally, mid-January and it was time for "Disgraced," the new episode. Yeah, they'd enjoyed rehashing the older shows but enough had long since been enough. It was 7:55 on Tuesday night, the popcorn was popped, the vampires were on hold for an hour and the television was set to channel 54.
Buffy flipped it on and the gang waited for the commercials to end.
But then -
Nightmare.
A graphic flashed across the screen they'd never seen before. It showed a stylized man dunking a basketball with a KBTS-54 logo in the corner. And then, an announcer said -
Said -
"Freedom and Jack and Jill will not be seen tonight so that we may bring you Pac-10 basketball. Look for the normal Tuesday night shows Sunday at 4 PM."
Then a picture of the inside of a basketball arena, and a bass-voiced announcer saying, "Gooooood evening and welcome to PAC-10 Basketball. Tonight, we'll be watching the Arizona Wildcats face off against the Washington Huskies. I'm Don Gregory here with Adrian Branch and we'll be back after this."
Cut to a commercial for some kind of deodorant. They never found out which because Buffy switched off the TV and threw the remote across the room.
It shattered against the wall. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!!" Buffy yelled. Everyone around her was just as angry. Xander was ready to chew girders and spit out rivets, Anya looked like she was ready to murder someone, Willow looked as peeved as she ever gets, and even Tara seemed thoroughly pissed. "A BASKETball game? A damn basketball game?"
"And, and, and not even local colleges," Willow stammered out. "I mean, we don't live anywhere near those two campuses. UCLA and USC I could understand a little, but -"
"Why?" Anya demanded bluntly. "I can't. Basketball is stupid."
"I couldn't either," Xander said. "Critics rave about Freedom. It's got a fanatical following - including, may I say, the five of us in this room. No one - or certainly not nearly as many of us - give a good goddamn about most PAC-10 basketball games, and sure as hell not those from six hundred miles away in both directions. Their ratings are going to DROP because of this."
"They signed a contract," Tara said. "That has to be it."
"Why in the HELL would they sign a contract that made them show games no one around here cares about?" Buffy asked. She'd picked up the remote in the hopes of repairing it, but that was strictly a no-go. The remote was toast.
"Probably to get the games we WOULD," Willow said. "There are a lot of UCLA and USC fans around here." She pulled out her laptop and plugged it in. "I'm gonna check their website."
"It's still stupid," Xander said. "And why are they showing Freedom at four o'clock on Sundays? You'd think they'd want to show it as soon as possible. Like, say, as soon as the game was over."
"Oh, no," Tara said, "'cause then we'd miss their award-winning Channel 54 News at 10." Xander thought Tara was being sarcastic, but he couldn't be sure.
The KBTS-54 website had a terse comment that said the same thing the graphic had said ten minutes ago. Its programming schedule also didn't go past the current week, so there was no way to see if they'd stupidly contracted for any MORE games on Tuesday nights at eight o'clock. On a suggestion from Tara Willow went and checked TV Guide's site. The next two weeks, on Tuesdays when Freedom was supposed to be on, there was a two-hour block for PAC-10 Basketball. It didn't say which teams, but none of the gang really cared.
Buffy gave up on her attempts to fix the remote control and chucked it into the trash, salvaging the batteries. "I'm going to have to go out and buy a universal," she muttered to no one in particular. "Damn. So now what are we going to do for the night?"
"I'm telling you one thing," Willow said. "We're not watching basketball."
"Oh, that's for DAMN sure," Buffy said. "I have this sudden urge to go out and kill something."
Xander said, "Me too. Difference is, you can get away with it."
"Buffy, can I borrow your phone?" Anya asked.
"Of course," Buffy said. "But if you're going to try to call the station you're not going to get through."
Anya smiled. "Oh, no. Not the station."
Suddenly getting a horrid thought in his head, Xander said, "You're not calling a hit man?"
"Right," Anya said as she walked out of the room. "I was just going to check that up in the Yellow Pages under A for assassins." Then she vanished into the kitchen.
She poked her head out a minute later. "That was a joke. You may commence laughing."
Everyone did, a bit hollowly, because none of them, Xander included, were quite sure she'd really been kidding.
So Willow and Tara mumbled about "cursing" the person who'd made the decision - clearly just blowing off steam - while Buffy made dark noises about finding them and having a calm, reasonable discussion involving stakes shoved up portions of his or her anatomy that were never meant to have stakes go there. By comparison Xander felt civilized; all he wanted to do was yell a lot. About five minutes later, Anya came back in the room.
"Turn the TV back on," she said. In wordless response Buffy pointed to the trashcan and shrugged. Anya walked over to the TV and pushed the on button. "Was that so hard?"
"I would have gotten around to that - eventually!" Buffy protested. No one answered, and everyone's attention became riveted on the television.
"Alright," Xander said. "What was that phone call?"
"Shh," she said. "Just watch."
The basketball game was somewhere in the middle of the first half, with Arizona leading by five. After a few minutes the Wildcats were up eight points and nothing had happened. "Did you suddenly discover a passion for basketball?" Buffy asked.
"Shh," Anya repeated.
And finally, five minutes after THAT, during a commercial a rather bedraggled looking bald man with red blotches on his face came on the screen. Anya clapped her hands and said, "Here we go."
"Uh, I'm Jim Danziger, director of programming for KBTS-54. Due to the, uh, volume of calls we have received on the, uh, subject, Freedom and Jack and Jill will be seen in their, uh, entirety immediately following the game, as well as 4 o'clock Sunday afternoons for our, uh, younger viewers. Stay tuned after the shows for our, uh, award-winning newscast. Now, please, stop calling." He looked desperate. "Please?"
And then we cut back to the basketball game, and Anya walked over to the set and turned it off. "Well?" She said after turning around. "Where's the thank yous?"
Skeptically, Willow said, "That didn't come from any one phone call."
Anya nodded. "Yes, it did. I called in a favor."
Tara said suspiciously, "It didn't have anything to do with those blotches on his face, did it?"
"No," Anya said, frowning. "That was just acne."
"So who was the phone call for?"
"Someone who owed me a favor from long ago - a cephalus demon. Eight mouths, each one with a different voice, and a large family scattered around the area. They made several hundred phone calls in the last ten minutes and promised more if they didn't show Freedom the second the game was over."
"Several . . . hundred?" Willow said in disbelief.
"She has a large family."
"Well, then, what do we do for the next hour or so?" Buffy asked.
Anya pointed wordlessly at the trashcan.
"I'm on it," Buffy grumbled. "I'm on it." She grabbed a coat and left.
After Buffy was gone, Willow turned to Tara. "What do you know from Mask of Freedom that you can tell us? No spoilers."
"Well," Tara started. "This is largely Grace's show, as he goes around trying to prove to everyone that he really wasn't a traitor. The villains are just a bunch of no-name thugs . . ."