Title: Summons
Author: Melpomene
Email: Melpomene@stories.com
Rating: R for mature themes
(see warning below)
Disclaimer: If I owned any of the characters from any of the
fandoms about which I write, the Stafford loan people would not own me as they do
now. Just remember, you only have to
pay back student loans after you stop taking classes--just don't ever stop
taking classes and you can defer those suckers and die without ever having to
pay back a penny.
Spoilers: We'll say up to just before The Body (I think that's the name of the ep), but after Out of the Woods, just to be on the safe side.
Characters: Mainly an Anya story; you anti-Anya fanatics have been
warned.
Author's Note: I feel that Anya is sorely neglected by the fanfic
community as so I decided to write this little tale. Not to mention, the whole idea has been bouncing around in my
brain for a while now.
Lisenka is a Russian form of Elizabeth.
WARNING: There will be
mention made of non-consensual sexual assault in later parts of this story. Do not read if this will disturb you,
please. Otherwise, consider
yourself warned.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Summons
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*********
the arrival
*********
Buffy looked up, intuitively
sensing something or someone approaching.
The sidewalk and street in front of the Magic Box was relatively quiet,
the rain having driven most of the pedestrians toward drier accommodations, most that was except for the group that
walked determinedly along the sidewalk toward the shop. If she didn't know better she'd have sworn a
Council of Watchers was descending upon them, much younger but every bit as
morose.
"So what's with the all dark
and spooky brigade?"
Willow and Tara turned from the
book they had been perusing to see what Buffy was talking about. By the time they saw them, the strangers
were at the door. Black umbrellas were
furled and dark hats were removed as the door was pushed open and the seven
people, in clothing that would do a morticians' convention proud, slowly filed
in.
Although Buffy's comment had
not drawn Anya's notice, the jangling bell on the opening door did and she
temporarily abandoned the previous day's receipts in the hopes of adding to the
till's current total. The pencil she had
been using for her calculations fell from numb fingers and clattered to the
floor, shattering the unnerving quiet that had descended on the shop with the
somber group like a suffocating cloak.
"Anyanka." It was a statement, not a question, and the woman
who uttered it stepped forward, leaving her companions where they stood,
dripping rainwater on the threshold and staring at the salesgirl.
No one else moved, not the rest
of the group of strangers or any of Anya's almost-friends. Anyone who knew her by that name was never
good news.
"What is it with all this running into people who know her as
Anyanka? You would think that her old
friends would be dead after a thousand or more years." Willow whispered.
"Shh." Tara continued to watch nervously as the stranger approached
Anya, concerned by the salesgirl's panicked expression.
"Well, you would, wouldn't you?
Like, what are the chances really for us to come across any of the
people Anya used to know, something like fifty trillion to one? With her kind of luck she should try the
lottery."
Tara shrugged and shook her
head as Willow redirected her attention to the scene that would undoubtedly be
played out right in front of them.
The woman stopped just short of
the counter Anya stood behind; long chestnut colored hair spilled over the
collar of her black leather coat and tumbled down her back in glossy waves and
long slender fingers reached up to unbutton the coat as she studied Anya with
eyes so dark they appeared to be black, causing her already light complexion to
seem almost deathly pale.
Buffy tensed at the motion of
the woman's hands. Anya might not be
her favorite person in the world but Xander had become exceedingly fond of her,
and after spending so much time with the other girl, she was finding her
personality much less irritating; at times her bluntness could be frighteningly
endearing. She'd miss her if she were
gone and the realization surprised her.
Besides, what kind of slayer would let someone simply walk in from the
street and off an ex-demon without a fight.
Reaching into her coat the
woman extracted a roll of parchment secured with wax and marked with a signet
seal. Without dropping her gaze from
Anya's eyes she extended the parchment.
Not much of a threat in a
rolled up sheet of paper. Buffy allowed
herself to relax again, but she kept her attention focused on the woman. Paper might seem harmless enough, but she'd
seen too much to take its benign appearance for granted.
"I'm not taking that." Anya's mouth was set in a firm line and she
folded her arms across her chest.
"Hey, Ahn." Xander bounded out of the back room,
oblivious to the tension that permeated the shop. "How about cutting out early
and going to see that new…" He cut
short his suggestion when he saw the frozen interaction between his girlfriend
and the dark haired stranger.
"Hello. Is there… a problem?"
"I'm not taking that." Anya nodded toward the parchment the woman
still held. She continued to watch her
warily, refusing to look away from the paper lest it miraculously find its way
into her possession.
Xander joined Anya behind the
counter. "Right. I'm all for the denial of gift acceptance
thing you've got going here, Anya.
Wanna fill us in on exactly what is it that you're not going to take?"
All ears perked up as Buffy,
Willow, and Tara joined the small group at the counter, waiting eagerly for an
explanation. Even though she was less
than secretive about the people she had extracted vengeance on or her methods
of doing so, Anya and her past were mysterious enough without a group of spooky
strangers wandering in and adding to the already questionable mix.
No elaborations seemed to be
forthcoming, at least not from their resident ex-demon. "Go away now. I'm not taking it,"
was all she would say. No one could
quite remember a time that Anya had been so mono-sentency, the girl would
often, under ordinary circumstances, carry on until she was forcibly shushed,
generally by her exasperated and thoroughly embarrassed boyfriend.
"Anyanka," the woman's voice
gently pleaded, "please. I don't want
to have to-"
"Yes you do. That's what you do, going around to
perfectly innocent people, forcing them to-"
"Wait a sec here," Xander cut
off Anya's terse reply. "You don't want
to have to what exactly? Force her to take a piece of paper?" his
voice relayed the skepticism he felt.
"What's going on here? Who are
you? And what is that?" He waved his hand toward the scroll only to
have Anya snatch his sleeve, pulling his arm back away from the roll of parchment.
The woman ignored Xander's
interruption, choosing instead to answer Anya's accusation. "First of all, those I enacted vengeance
against were no more innocent than your own victims. But that's beside the point because I don't do it anymore anyway." She dropped her gaze at last and set the
parchment on the counter while Anya took an involuntary step back. "You'd be surprised, Anyanka. The realm has gone under a lot of
changes. Just after you…" she paused
for a moment, searching for the right word, "…left… it would seem there was a
veritable plague of incompetence.
Amulets were destroyed, stolen, and even lost… We have our own opinions about that one though, how could a
vengeance demon just misplace the very source of his power? Anyway, quite a bit of death and destruction
ensued. You would have been quite
entertained; we were." She shrugged her
shoulders delicately as if she had been commenting on nothing any more
interesting than the dreary weather.
Anya's eyes narrowed. "I don't believe you."
The laughter startled everyone,
even the somber and silent companions who had accompanied the stranger into the
shop. A smile lit her eyes and the
corners of her mouth turned up steadily until her mouth curved into a
full-fledged smile. "You never change, do you? Not even after eleven-plus centuries. And to think that Olaf once believed he
could tame you." She laughed again shaking
her head at the very thought of the big oaf.
"Unbelievable."
"Olaf, as in big, hairy,
baby-eating, troll-guy trapped in a crystal by witches, Olaf?" Buffy asked.
"One and the same. I can't say the physical change was too
extreme though, it's not like he looked all that much different when he was
human."
"And the rolled up paper
thingy?" Buffy figured they had gotten
all the information they were likely to get out of Anya any time soon and since
their mystery guest had been willing to answer at least one of her questions,
she might as well give it a shot.
"A summons."
"A summons." Xander, like the rest of them, was
confused. "You mean like a court
summons?"
As if she had only just noticed
the presence of others in the room, the woman turned to face Xander with eyes
that were softer than he had expected.
No demonic forces seemed to lurk in their depths, just pervasive sadness
and the vaguest hint of something that looked like fear. The melancholy fled when she spoke, only to
be replaced with humor and sarcasm.
"Very like a court summons but you see, Anyanka risks much more than
merely contempt of court if she chooses to ignore it. The Higher Council of the
Order of Vengeance Demons takes their hearings very seriously."
"A council of demons?"
Willow's voiced piped up incredulously, "What do they do? Say 'you've
been acting too demony these past few centuries so you need to take a time out
in happy demon rehab'?"
The stranger grinned. "Something like that, only instead of 'happy
demon rehab' they get sent to a torturer's paradise. It would seem that Dante wasn't so far off in his version of hell,
he just didn't realize it was only a demonic realm rather than actually hell
itself." She turned back to Anya, her
voice lowered and filled with concern.
"And you know what will happen to you if you don't abide by the terms of
the summons."
Xander watched as a shiver
coursed down Anya's spine. Moving
closer to her and wrapping what he hoped was a protective and comforting arm
around her waist, he confronted the stranger.
"But Anya's not a demon anymore, she's human. Why would they wait so long to send a summons? What can they do to her now?"
"Plenty," the woman
answered. "But this hearing isn't
about Anyanka. She's only being called
as… as a witness of sorts."
"A witness for what?"
He could feel Anya tense in his embrace.
Her eyes dimmed again. "That's for Anyanka to tell. It's not my place."
"Let me get this straight."
Buffy drew the stranger's gaze away from the clearly uncomfortable Anya. "You're telling us that you demon types have
a whole court system worked out with trials and hearings and such? That seems a bit… I dunno, does the term
completely whacked-out ring a bell for you?"
"It would be those demon types, and yes they do
although it's mostly bureaucratic politics and similar nonsense. Haven't you ever heard that everything's
political, Slayer? Everything."
