Disclaimers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer belongs to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy & Fox. Numb3rs belongs to Cheryl Heuton and Nick Falacci…I think. (NOT me!)
AN: *Tears* NUMB3RS Season 5 is over! Which means I have to wait more than three months for more! :-(
As a plus, though, the last few episodes were beautiful. :-D
The only thing I would've changed about the 'Angels and Devils' is I wouldn't have based the villain quite so much on Charles Manson. I mean, going so far as to name him "Mason" Duryea was a bit much. And I think he would've been much more interesting if the audience could see what was drawing all the girls in. A guy who actually came across at attractive and charismatic, not just a wacko with a bunch of crazy chicks for minions. Plus, James Callis definitely could've pulled it off.
But, then again, I guess the NUMB3RS writers have always gone out of their way to make sure their nastier bad guys come across as real bad (and unlikable bad) guys. Whereas Joss Whedon and the other Buffy writers delighted with playing with our heads when it came to the bad guys. Case in point: Spike. (To that, I'd also like to add that it was really weird seeing James Marsters on NUMB3RS as Damien Lake in S5E15 "Guilt Trip." A great kind of weird, of course, but I missed the British accent.)
...But I guess that's enough off-topic. Except for my rec!
OK, this time I'm going to recommend a HARRY POTTER fan fic that isn't a crossover but is nonetheless wonderful. I wouldn't think it'd need rec-ing, but I recently read a new fan fic where the author confessed to having never heard of it before their reviewers started comparing their fic to it. Therefore, I feel I must make it known to anyone who hasn't at least heard of it. Though, as a warning, it's more comedy than anything else. So, my rec for this chapter is: Make a Wish by Rorschach's Blot, on .
On that note, I'd like to thank my beta-reader, NeverTooOld for not only beta-reading this chapter, but also for actually responding to my request for fic recs. Seriously, does it take all that much work to think of a few of your favorites and give me a list of titles and authors? Nonetheless, THANK YOU NeverTooOld! ^_^
Warnings: Umm...So far we're up to spoiling Season 3 in Buffy. If you—for some inexplicable reason—haven't seen that yet and don't want it spoiled, don't read any further. Other than that, our lovable characters may swear a bit in this chapter, but that's the only thing I think I need to warn about. If you see something else, please feel free to bring it up.
A Call Away
Part II in Mathematics & Magic
By Jess S
Chapter 8: Mortal Peril
Part III
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Eppes' House, Pasadena, California – Sunday, October 6, 1996
Charlie groaned as the familiar sound of his mother's gentle knock on his bedroom door pulled him out of the wonderful world of sleep.
"Time to get up, sleepy head," his mother told him, a very clear note of amusement in her voice and—Charlie knew, despite not being able to see through the pillow he'd already covered his head with—that she was smiling. "Annie's been up for hours, you know. She's all packed and ready to go."
His desire to complain about Annie being super-human and not really needing sleep honestly surprised him, but Charlie didn't really need to bite his tongue.
"I made oatmeal, better hurry up though if you want it hot. Or at all." Now she did laugh. "Seems Annie's definitely recovered her appetite recently, she was starting her second bowl a few minutes ago."
Charlie winced as he realized the box of granola bars Collins had given Annie immediately after they returned to the truck to drive back into LA obviously hadn't been enough for the Slayer's post-slaying snacking. He'd have to remember that for future reference. Most of the times she'd gone on patrols this summer she hadn't run into anything—or she'd been going through clubs and grabbing snacks as she went—so it hadn't been as obvious.
Then again after watching Russell Winters' massive mansion go up in flames after an explosion set by the Watchers' team, food had probably been driven from even Annie's mind. Which was probably why she was so hungry this morning.
Realizing his mother was apparently waiting for an actual answer, he finally sighed.
"I'll be down in a minute, mom. Thanks."
"No problem, sweetheart. I'll just go get your bowl ready: before Annie eats it all."
Charlie heard the door close behind his mother a moment later, and waited several seconds more before reluctantly rolling to the side to flip his pillow back under his head. Then he stared at the ceiling for several more moments—wincing slightly as the sunlight that was streaming in through his windows stung his sleepy but sensitive eyes—before even more reluctantly forcing himself to roll out of bed. Once his feet were under him he looked at his bureau, but then shook his head and walked over to his closet instead, grabbing his bathrobe off of the hook it hung on the inside of the door and sticking his feet a little ways into the closet to slip his slippers on.
He really didn't understand how Daffy Duck could be related to math in any way, but Don had insisted that the Daffy slippers suited him perfectly for that reason. And Charlie had never really seen a reason to argue with him about it. They were comfortable slippers. And when the original pair—a weird birthday gift from his brother several years before—had worn out after too much use, the identical pair his mom had bought to replace them had been just as comfortable.
And it wasn't like he had to avoid letting Annie see them. She'd already seen them over the summer, and hadn't been able to think of anything she could say about them to tease him. Not that she hadn't tried. No, Charlie had seen the same concentrated look on her face, and the half-smile that indicated she was thinking, many times before she finally gave up.
Thinking of Annie again, however, brought a slight frown to his face. He could still remember Peter Caldwell's words quite clearly, 'At long as she survives past her eighteenth, she should be fine for a good while yet.'
That Watcher hadn't been willing to elaborate on that, and had all but ignored any question he'd asked to that effect thereafter. Then they were leaving and the mansion was exploding behind them before they were hurried back into the van and driven—at surprisingly legal speeds, thought Charlie guessed they wouldn't want to speed away from the scene of a crime, it'd look to suspicious—to the House, where the Watchers left them before disappearing down the road.
They'd probably send a report of some kind to Dr. Giles about all of this, but once the job was done they clearly didn't stick around. Though he supposed they could show up at the House today for some kind of follow up, but he didn't think that was likely.
He glanced at his bedroom door, then—still frowning—moved over towards his desk instead and opened the drawer that he'd placed Credere ab Memorae; roughly translated as 'secrets of the past'* or, as Annie had dubbed it: The Field-Watchers' Book. (1)
Charlie couldn't stop the frown that found its way onto his face as he opened the book. Even before he'd met any of the operatives, this book had bothered him.
And it wasn't just the fact that a bunch of parchment bound together with magic was able to act like a computer. It wasn't because the computer-like book that his was a copy of was created centuries before the United States of America came into being, either. That was actually pretty cool.
It was the data that the book contained that bothered him.
Turning to the Table of Contents, he tapped the little sigil next to Names, then the icon next to Callings, and then turned the page to watch as a list appeared on the formerly blank page. A list of more than a hundred names in one column, with dates two others. Flipping his laptop open, he hit the spacebar to wake it from sleep mode as he sat down, and impatiently waited for it do so. A few moments later, he opened a spreadsheet and quickly typed in the first twenty-five pieces of data. He followed the list in the book itself, which listed Slayers by their surname and then given name. Those that didn't have surnames were listed first, in alphabetical order according to their given names.
He was a bit amused to note that the book apparently knew nothing concrete about Sineya, but her name was obstinately listed nonetheless.
The mathematician blinked when he noticed that the names of Joanna Aiken and Eljorah Amsel were both italicized and underlined on the magical list, but reasoned he could investigate that later and kept going. After all, he'd undoubtedly need to input a lot more than twenty-five names and their corresponding dates before he really had anything to work with, but this was a good starting point...
After finishing that, he turned back to the Table of Contents and pressed the sigil for Names again and then the icon for Deaths, before flipping to the next page again. After a quick glance down the list to confirm that these were, in fact, the same Slayers as before, he nodded in approval and started adding the years to his list.
Then he returned to the Table of Contents to ask for the Slayers birthdates. As he went down the list adding this data to another column he'd placed before the Calling column, he added another column after the death dates, where he quickly calculated the girls ages at their times of death and morosely added that to the final column.
He also added Sineya's age—as the only piece of data available to him, with her confirmation—to her row.
NAME: __________ CALLED—DIED_____AGE|
Artemia: __________ 606 BCE—595 BCE___23_|
Dark of Moon:______ 1249 CE—1250 CE___21_|
Ejuk: _____________ 2702 BCE—2700 BCE___17_|
|Hashetsi: _________ 1530 BCE—1528 BCE___15_|
|Livia: ____________ 1536 BCE—1530 BCE___21_|
|Naayéé'neizgháni: __ 1838 CE—1841 CE___16_|
|Sineya: ___________ ? BCE—? BCE___15_|
|Raita: ____________ 1000 BCE—996 BCE___17_|
|Aarle, Mia: ________ 1751 CE—1755 CE___18_|
|Afranius, Gabriella: __ 1503 CE—1505 CE___14_|
|Ahmed, Mudiwa: ____ 1585 CE—1585 CE___15_|
Aiken, Joanna: _____ 1783 CE—1786 CE___18_
Albalf, Tariro: _______ 1654 CE—1656 CE___16_|
|Al-Dur, Shagrat: ____ 1242 CE—1246 CE___20_|
Alfarsi, Melek: ______ 1738 CE—1741 CE___17_|
Alim-ud-Din, Nasha: __ 1417 CE—1419 CE___16_|
Alkaev, Mariya: _____ 1835 CE—1836 CE___18_|
Allam, Subira: ______ 1475 CE—1476 CE___15_|
Allard, Maguerite: ___ 1793 CE—1795 CE___17_|
al-Mammun, Nawal: _ 1437 CE—1439 CE___15_|
Alvarado, Marta: ___ 1993 CE—1993 CE___16_|
Amsel, Eljora: ___ 1772 CE—1777 CE___19_
Appiah, Sethunya: __ 1372 CE—1374 CE___15_|
Arce, Frida: _______ 1800 CE—1801 CE___15_|
|ar-Rashid, Neka: ___ 1201 CE—1203 CE___16_|
Charlie frowned at the list as he finished it, not liking what he was seeing but also sure there was something he was missing. Glancing at Aiken and Amsel's bolded names again. He reached for Aiken's name, hoping that the information that called up would be enough of an explanation, but he was interrupted from a call up the stairs before his finger reached the name.
Charlie frowned at the list as he finished it, not liking what he was seeing but also sure there was something he was missing. Glancing at Aiken and Amsel again, he bolded those entries in his spreadsheet before going back to the book, he reached for Aiken's name, hoping that the information that called up would be enough of an explanation, but he was interrupted from a call up the stairs before his finger reached the name.
"Charlie!" his mother called, a clear not of exasperation in her still-gentle voice. "Your breakfast is getting cold!"
The mathematician glanced back at the list again, still frowning with his finger hovering over Aiken's name, but then he shook his head and closed the book. He placed the book back in the drawer with his own handwritten list on top and slid said drawer closed, then hit save on his computer before closing it and finally hurried down to breakfast.
He wasn't surprised to see Annie was a cheerful as ever when he entered the kitchen, even though a glance at the clock confirmed that it wasn't yet eight o'clock in the morning. They'd only gotten back last night just before 3A.M. And that was when they went over to Lily's to tell Denise the good news. Charlie was sure it was almost four by the time his head hit his pillow.
But he also knew that his parents had learned this summer that giving Annie too much caffeine was bad for their sanity. So the half-finished cup in front of her was certainly her first, and the only one she was getting. As the stimulating drink made her literally almost bounce off walls if she drank any more than that.
From what Caldwell had said, it wasn't likely that he'd see her like this again this time next year. She couldn't smile in greeting before turning her attention back to what was probably her fourth bowl of oatmeal—judging by the amazed looks his parents were sending in her direction—if she was dead.
If he wanted to be more optimistic about it, he could just take Caldwell's comment at face value and assume that he meant the Slayers that were good enough to survive that length of time were more likely to survive even longer. But that didn't feel right.
And it didn't help that he could feel Sineya's angry agreement with that thought.
Apparently Annie felt Sineya's anger and undoubtedly Charlie's worry, too, because she glanced back at him again a moment later, no longer smiling. Now she was worried. But his mom spoke up before she could say anything.
"Here's your oatmeal, dear. I just added some cream, but there's honey, syrup and sugar on the table so you can add whichever suits you," she told him, waving her hand towards the table where his father was seated across from Annie.
"Thanks, Mom," he murmured, placing a quick kiss on her cheek before nodding to the other two at the table. "Morning, Dad. Morning, Annie." Seeing the closest chair was obviously his mother's, as a half-empty coffee cup was sitting in front of it and it was the place nearest to the stove, Charlie slowly made his way around the table. He looked up as his mom started speaking over her shoulder, from the sink where she was putting a now empty pot to soak in soapy water.
"If you're not sure which one you want to try, you should ask Annie. She's tried all three this morning," his mom told him, a subtle note of teasing in her tone that was meant more for Annie than him.
Annie laughed softly at the surprised look he shot her. It wasn't that he was surprised the Slayer could eat that much with ease, he was just surprised she was willing to eat the amount of food she actually needed in front of his parents.
"Guess I was a little hungry this morning," the Slayer shrugged, smiling softly as she finished up her last bowl of oatmeal before rising to take it to the sink, picking up and throwing back the rest of her coffee to finish it along the way.
"Thank you, Annie."
"I can—"
"Oh don't be silly. Seeing as you're only staying one night, you can certainly enjoy the privileges of a guest this morning. Though I do wish you could stay longer."
Annie shook her head and sighed, still smiling softly as she replied. "I would, but that'd mean missing school."
"Which would be a bad thing, I know. Especially since your homecoming dance is at the end of the week." Charlie winced as he knew where his mother was going now, and sure enough she continued. "It was nice of you to think of Charlie. He didn't get to go to most of his high school dances. He didn't even go to his senior prom, because he got into a fight with his brother when he found out Don's date was—"
"Mom!"
Annie laughed, "You already told me this, remember, Charlie? So you can't really get mad at your mom for it." Then she turned back to his mother with a smile and one eyebrow raised, "Though he didn't give me any details."
Charlie groaned and his father shot him a clearly amused but still sympathetic look as his best friend moved off into the living room to chat about him.
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Lily's House, Pasadena, California – Sunday, October 6, 1996
Buffy couldn't help but stare as the Lincroft siblings completed their spell and her eyes follow the spark of glittery, golden light that shot from Giles book to the parchment and bottles of ink the pair had piled nearby. Then the parchment and ink gradually started glowing, brighter and brighter until she finally had to look away. When the light fade she turned back, blinking spots of left-over stars out of her vision as two identical copies of a book gradually stopped glowing.
The books didn't look much like the original, but she supposed that wasn't really important. Especially since the information was apparently enchanted into the book and magically called up when needed. Which was why she really hadn't wanted to type up all of the info. That probably would have taken months, if not longer. The copies the two mages had made were thinner than the original, and much more modern-looking.
"Well, what'd you think?"
Buffy blinked, but quickly looked up to meet Deborah's gaze, smiling as she did so. "They look great... You're finished, right?"
"We are," Deborah nodded, smiling as she and her brother finished putting their magical paraphernalia away. "Take whichever one you want, it really doesn't matter."
Buffy nodded again as she reached out to grab the original and one of the copies, stacking one on top of the other. "So these'll stay up to date, too, right?"
This time Deborah's brother answered, "Yes, everything that's in Dr. Giles book will appear in these two as well. So as long as his remains up-to-date ours will too."
"Great," Buffy nodded again, slipping said books into her shoulder bag before glancing towards the kitchen as Lily emerged with a tray of drinks she'd spent the last several minutes preparing while the Lincrofts had breezed through their spell. Honestly she was a bit surprised Lily hadn't stayed around to watch the spell, but the older blonde and her coven-siblings had all agreed that temptation was never a good thing when one first started out practicing, especially so late in life. That made sense, though it did make her worry a little for all the magic Willow had been getting into in the last few years, more often then not without any real guidance because Giles—after his 'tragic foray into the Dark Arts' as he called the time—wanted nothing to do with magic and only resorted to it when there was no other choice. Still, maybe she could talk Willow into coming to LA to meet with some of the covens, it'd probably be good for her. She smiled and nodded her thanks as she accepted the whipped-cream-topped mug of hot cocoa Lily handed her.
"Hot chocolate for you, and Charlie and me," Lily murmured, setting the additional two mugs on coasters nearest the coach Buffy was sitting on before setting two more mugs on coasters by the chairs Deborah and Richard had taken. "And tea for you. Cream and two sugars for Deborah, and just lemon for Richard."
"Thank you, Lily," Deborah chuckled, while her brother echoed her.
"Yes, thank you, Miss O'Connor."
Lily frowned at the older mage, but was stopped from complaining about his use of her last name by a knock on the door. She shook her head as she hurried out of the room, setting the tray down on a table near the doorway as she passed through. "Right on time, come on."
Even if they hadn't already known to expect him, Buffy had felt Charlie coming closer to Lily's house for the last few minutes, so she wasn't surprised at all when he joined her on the coach, eagerly picking up his still-steaming hot cocoa, a moment later.
"Everything OK?" the mathematician asked, glancing around after he'd finished his first sip of hot cocoa and then started on his second, not noticing when some of the whipped cream avoided entering his mouth by clinging to his upper lip.
"Everything went well, Dr. Eppes," Richard replied, apparently not noticing the annoyed look Charlie sent him or the slightly amused looks on all of the ladies' faces as he continued. "Honestly, I was expecting much more trouble—"
"I wasn't, Mr. Pessimism," Deborah cut in with a smirk as her brother ignored her.
"Considering the wealth of information this book contains. But our spells to catch rakbus* or stop any kind of self-destruct sequence weren't necessary. Nor are there any kinds of sansus* or alals* on the book." (2a/2b/2c).
"Except for the intricate weave of spells that connects the book to the Council's vast archives."
"How old is this book? The whole system, I mean?" Charlie asked curiously, sipping at his hot cocoa again before continuing after a glance at the old-looking tome. "Was it created in response to the Internet, or—"
"Oh no!" Deborah shook her head, her smiling softening her abrupt response. "No. Some of the covens have had books similar to this," she indicated the tome, "for centuries. And looking at all of the renewals on this, it has to be," she glanced at her brother in askance, "I'd say about eight-hundred years old, wouldn't you?"
Richard nodded his agreement while he finished the cookie he'd taken from the plate Lily had set on the table before they'd even started casting the spell. He picked up another cookie and held it out to his sister with a sharp glance, waiting until she took it and started eating to respond.
The action puzzled Buffy for a second, but then she remembered how tired Giles and Willow could get after casting a big spell and realized that the energy for the spell obviously had to come from somewhere. It only made sense that they should replace what they'd used after casting. Just like she usually needed to after patrol. Though she'd slipped into one of her bad old habits of not making sure she ate something last night, too shocked by needing to fight men—human beings—and the destruction the Council's operatives had left in their wake.
Charlie probably would've reminded her, but he'd been crashing from the adrenaline high all the fear and excitement associated with the hit had stirred up and had barely made it all the way to his bed before collapsing. The only reason he hadn't slept in his clothes from the raid was because she'd taken his shoes and socks off, and his coat, then put his PJs right next to him. Then she'd deliberately bugged him over their bond—which had actually been rather fun—until he'd finally roused himself enough to change and eventually thrown his clothes at the door. Then she'd thrown his clothes in his laundry hamper and tucked him in as he passed out again. The docile, caring acts—combined with the length of time and focus it had taken to see them through—had, more than anything else, really helped her overcome most of the residual tension and stress that had lingered from the shocking evening, and were probably the only reason she'd actually slept rather well last night.
"I'd say closer to a full millennium, myself," Richard replied once he was satisfied that his sister was eating.
Buffy had to smile at the shocked look that spread across Charlie's face as he stared at the amused pair of magical siblings.
"Eight to ten centuries?" Charlie shook his head in amazement when both mages nodded.
"What'd you mean by 'renewals'?" Buffy asked curiously.
Deborah finished off her cookie with a sip of tea and another annoyed glance in her brother's direction before replying "A spell this complex is very delicate, and constant use can wear at it over time."
"But it's supposed to be used, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course it is. But that's why it has to be renewed occasionally. The renewal is just the reapplication of the same spell over the one that was originally cast, and it keeps the original from fraying."
Lily was apparently very confused by this, and spoke up after a moment, frowning as she did so. "But wouldn't that corrupt the original spell?"
"If it was cast incorrectly. If the wrong ingredients were used, or the intent was impure, yes. It would be very easy to corrupt, or even destroy the original spell." Deborah offered the witch-in-training a kind smile, "That's why only masters of the art ever do any real work in the field."
"Oh," Lily nodded slowly as she considered that bit of information. Her eyes widened as her mind ceased onto more information. "The magic shop owner that Madam Dolin was so mad at—"
"Hasn't been taking care of the books in his care," Richard nodded. "Correct. That's why the Council will be having several words with him."
At the still slightly confused looks the younger faces in the room, Deborah elaborated gently. "Another reason the spells must be renewed, especially when a magic book is kept with other magic books, is to keep their enchantments intact and whole. To keep them form mingling and merging with potentially dangerous consequences." She shook her head, "As long as the spells are kept up-to-date, that isn't a problem. But if too many renewals are missed, the books begin to come undone. And in some cases that can be very, very dangerous."
"So all magic books need to be renewed?" Buffy asked, wondering if Giles had to do that occasionally.
"For the most part, yes," Richard confirmed again. "The more complex the spells, the more important timely renewals are. The only exception that I know of is family grimoires."
Buffy and Charlie both blinked at the new term, though only Buffy vocalized her confusion, "Huh?"
"The old spell books of magical families tend to inherit a bit of their owners power over time." Richard continued, his tone adopting that of a history teacher who was teaching interested pupils. "Many of the ancient books are at least somewhat sentient, and very loyal to their family."
As interesting as that was, Charlie honestly wanted to know more about the book he was planning to study in avid detail. "How do the renewals tells you how old it is?" he asked, nodding towards Giles' book. Even as he asked, his mind drew up dozens of possible comparisons from the mathematics he'd seen in studies ranging all the way from ancient archaeology to modern cosmology.
Deborah switched topics far more gracefully, apparently not remotely bothered by his abruptness as she replied, "Well, properly renewing the spell doesn't replace the first one, you see. It just overlaps it and thereby helps hold it together.'
"That's why the wards of estates that have been in a single family, or group, for a long period of time are generally much more powerful than newer wards," Richard offered, then shrugged with another correction. "Though there are always exceptions, of course. Wards cast by a particularly powerful mage—or just by someone who's very gifted in warding—will always be more powerful than wards cast by mages of lesser real power or ability."
"Yes," Deborah nodded, setting her empty tea cup down. She nodded again, in thanks, when Lily shot up to get her more, then continued. "But the point is there will always be at least traces of every proper renewal of this book, with each one bearing the unique magical signatures of their castors." She shrugged, but smiled again as Lily returned with her second fully prepared cup of tea. "A spell this complex should be renewed about four times a century to keep it functioning properly."
"And it's been renewed between thirty-two and forty times?" Charlie asked.
"Just about," Richard confirmed, shrugging again as his sister had earlier. But he shook his head when he set his empty mug down, waving Lily back to her seat. "We could scan it more closely to reveal the exact number if your interested, we didn't need to know it to copy the patterns and weaves when we were recreating the spell." He looked thoughtful for a moment, tapping his chin a few times, then continued. "Though we do already know that the Watchers Council really came into being—such as it is now—during Caesar the Roman Empire's Pax Romana—basically the imperial golden age. And these kinds of spells were fairly well established back then. Though only the elite could afford them."
"And that's when they'd really have needed it too," Charlie realized, nodding to himself even as Richard nodded his agreement. "As the empire expanded."
"Right, the Council spread with it. And it was much easier carry around one book that could magically summon information from thousands of others rather than carting a whole library all over the empire."
Deborah was smiling as she added, "That's also how some ancient texts that were supposedly lost with the Library of Alexandria have popped up over the years. Hundreds of these books were made and bound to that library, but when the source was destroyed, most of the magic books had to transform into the form they were most accustomed to."
"And skilled mages have been able to reconstruct much of the library over the years, using those books," Richard nodded again. "Because the spells really do remember, though they can't recall what they aren't directed to."
Charlie shook his head, his brilliant mind momentarily boggled by the thought of just how much history this spell could tell. After a moment he asked, "Who created it?"
Both Lincrofts shook their heads.
"No one knows precisely whom, though there are theories," Deborah told them.
Her brother continued, "Most believe that whoever it was must have worked in the court of Alexander the Great, though. As the oldest texts started appearing then." At the new round of astonished faces he smiled as he continued, "Alexander had many mages in his employ. More than almost any other king before him ever had, save for some of ancient Egypt's pharaohs. Though undoubtedly one of his greatest strengths was that he never became dependent upon them. He remained aware of them, certainly. And kept all the powerful ones he could find loyal to him. He didn't use them for battles and the like. But more importantly, he had more masters of different kinds at his command than ever before. As his empire grew, these masters met and amazing new feats of magic, such as this, were born. Feats born of human creativity and ingenuity, rather than worshipping demons."
Buffy and Charlie nodded together, not noticing the amused looks their perfectly synced movements received as they absorbed the fact that there was undoubtedly a lot of history they should probably learn outside of schooling. As history like this, the history of magic, wasn't something they'd be able to learn in school. But it could still certainly be important in their lives. And the war they were both now tied to.
Buffy blinked again as something else occurred to her, and frowned. "If Giles can call up any information he wants with this book, why did he bring so many books from England with him?"
Both mages stared at her for a moment. Then shook their heads.
"If he had this book with him, which he certainly should have, if he was assigned to Watch you, he certainly had no reason to," Richard replied, frowning in slight confusion. "Except perhaps, for a fondness for some of the specific texts."
After a long moment of silence, Charlie chuckled and then shrugged when everyone looked at him. He raised an eyebrow at Buffy, "Well, you did say he doesn't like using computers. Maybe this is too much like one for him." Then he smirked slightly, "Which could explain why he was so willing to part with it. Maybe he was hoping you'd ruin it somehow."
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Eppes' House, Pasadena, California – Sunday, October 6, 1996
Charlie shook his head and sighed at the—somehow strangely matching—stubborn expressions on his parents faces. "Really, you don't have to drive us. I mean, you're driving all the way to Washington next weekend."
"And the bus isn't that bad," Annie added, but her helpful comment fell on the same deaf ears his did.
"Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, Annie." His mother shook her head, her hair swaying a little more than it usually did because the hair-cut she'd scheduled for later that week was a few weeks later than usual. "It's only a two hour drive. An—"
"Four hours, since you have to drive back." Annie cut in, seemingly impervious to the looks both of Charlie's parents then sent her.
"Well, yes," the older blonde admitted, then shrugged. "But there's a nice shopping mall halfway in between here and there, and we've already agreed on stopping there. I need to buy a new outfit for the conference anyway."
"You're stopping there on the way back?" Charlie asked, frowning at the smirk his father set his way while his mother and Annie both rolled their eyes.
"Yes, Charlie. We're stopping there for dinner," his mother confirmed, then glanced at Annie. "Unless you'd like—"
But Annie was thankfully shaking her head, "No thanks, Maggie." She shrugged, smirking slightly at Charlie. "I don't want to subject Charlie to one of my shopping excursions just yet."
Charlie looked at her for a moment, considering, then nodded decisively, "Thanks, I think."
"Yes, thank you, Annie," his dad spoke up, smiling at the pair from over the morning's newspaper before turning his eyes back to the article he'd been reading even as he continued. "Now, shouldn't you two be packing?"
"Already finished," Annie shrugged at him. "Not that I had to pack much."
"No," Charlie's mom agreed, smiling at the younger teen before glancing at her son. "And you're all packed, sweetheart?"
"Yes, mom." Charlie confirmed with a sigh as he moved towards the sink to rinse his dishes from lunch off before putting them in the dishwasher. "I didn't have to pack much either, you know."
"No. But your tux—"
"Is still in the bag that you packed it in days ago, mom. I won't be taking it out until I need it in Sunnydale."
"The carrier should keep it from wrinkling, but you might need to iron it before the dance." His mom replied, frowning slightly as she thought of it and then glanced at Annie. "Do you—"
"My mom and I know how to iron, we have a board and everything," the younger woman reassured her with smile as she rose to take her own dishes to the sink only to shrug as Charlie stole them to put them in the dishwasher for her. "Thanks."
"Oh!"
The other three people in the room jumped as his mother suddenly shot out of her seat and out of the kitchen. They all stared as the kitchen door swung shut behind her and blinked a few times as they heard her rummaging around in the dining room. Comprehension dawned when she returned several moments later with a somewhat familiar bag in hand. The same bag that held the camera that had taken the picture Annie and Charlie both had several copies of in various places.
"You will be bringing back pictures, Charlie. I'd recommend taking pictures of the dance, as mementos, but at the very least you will take pictures of yourself and your lovely dates before you leave for the dance. Understand?"
But Charlie had to frown at her, shaking his head in bemusement as he moved back to the table and sat down between Annie and his dad. "I have to take a picture of myself? With a mirror or—"
"No silly," Annie said, hitting his shoulder lightly and smirking as she continued. "We'll let my mom take the picture. She'll want to anyway. And we can give Giles the camera at the dance, as long as he knows how to use it." She finished the last with a frown.
"I'm sure Dr. Giles has used a camera before, Annie." Charlie shook his head at her, then frowned at the look of doubt she sent him and the very honest doubt he was sensing over their bond.
"You haven't seen him try to open his email account."
"I have to say, in defense of all the men of my generation," Charlie's dad interjected, drawing all eyes to him, "One, cameras have been around a lot longer than computers." He held a finger up in Charlie's direction just in case he might comment, "For common use, at the very least. And they're a lot easier to use."
"So your Dr. Giles should be fine," his wife agreed with a chuckle. "He's your high school librarian, right?"
"And family friend, kind of a mentor to my whole group friends, too," Annie confirmed. "Willow likes to study and we hang with her, so we hang in the library."
"Oh?" Mrs. Eppes laughed, shaking her head when she saw her son roll his eyes. "I'm sure you do some studying, too?"
Annie shrugged, "Maybe a little. When I have to. But Willow actually likes it."
"Reading can be fun if you give it a chance, you know," Alan offered, shaking his head when both of teenager cringed. Though Charlie was quite capable of reading and writing beyond the college level—he did have a PhD and would soon be a college professor, after all—that didn't mean he liked reading in general. He'd always preferred raw statistics and numbers in any form to novels. Annie, on the other hand, always seemed to be too full of energy to sit still and read. Though he was sure that as soon as something caught her interest—or was necessary—she'd devour it.
"OK, now why don't you two load the car—"
"Mom—"
The lawyer shook her head, "Even if you take the bus, I'll still be driving you to the bus station, so there's no point in putting off packing the car."
"Yeah, but after you've locked us in the car there isn't much we can do to make you stop at the bus station, is there?" Annie asked, one eyebrow raised as the older blonde smirked.
"No, there isn't. And you'll save a lot of breath if you just accept that. Now go pack!"
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Mrs. Eppes' Car, a California Highway – Sunday, October 6, 1996
Buffy shook her head as she glanced over at her friend, who appeared to be quite content to stare out the window at the blue SUV in the lane next to them, which also wasn't moving. The genius had been staring out the window like that since they got on the freeway, after he'd finally relented and stop trying to talk his mom into turning around. Buffy had tried it for a while too, but it was pretty boring once the traffic had come to a dead stop.
A small frown sneaked onto her face as she noticed the dip the corners of his lips seemed to be taking, and concentrated on their bond a minute to see if the expression was an accurate depiction of his emotions. For the most part, Charlie had been fairly blank today. The shock and post-rush of last nights activities giving way to exhaustion last night and a little bit of apathy this morning.
That's what'd happened to her anyway, but now she wasn't sure if it was the same for him.
Maybe he was worried about visiting Sunnydale? He'd been there before, to drop her off when their bond and empathetic powers were much weaker, but she knew he hadn't been able to feel their approach to the negative area the way both of them now could.
The filthy feeling of all the negative emotions—lingering traces of years and years of terror interlaced with the trembling nerves of a cowed populace, broken up only occasionally by bouts of anger and real pain—all of it was terrible. And she was used to it. Charlie wasn't.
Still frowning slightly, Buffy closed her eye and took a soft but deep breath before opening them again, locking her gaze on Charlie's even though he wasn't facing her. Then she reached for their bond, trying to push her thoughts towards his. 'Are you OK?'
At the very least she knew he sensed her concern right away, because his head snapped around and his surprised gaze met her, eyes wide for a moment before his expression softened and he nodded. 'I'm fine,' a wave of warmth carried his reassurance.
Buffy cocked her head, brows furrowed as she pushed her thoughts towards his again, still not entirely sure he was getting the words with the feelings, but figuring it was worth a try. 'What's wrong?'
'Nothing,' Charlie shook his head, his brow furrowing slightly. He bit his lip and then suddenly reached for the notebook that was stuffed in the pocket on the back of the passengers seat—apparently a necessity of Charlie's was that there had to be notebooks everywhere, just in case, and his parents were happy to oblige—and he opened it, slipping the pen that was in it's sleeve out to write.
Nothing's wrong. I'm fine, Annie. Just thinking.
Still frowning, Buffy snatched the pen out of his hand almost immediately after he'd put down the last period, to write her rebuke underneath his comment.
You're not fine. What's bothering you?
The mathematician stared at her for a moment, then shook his head and took the pen back, tilting the notebook away from her as he wrote his reply, which he handed back to her a moment later.I'm fine. Some of the data in your Watchers' book is bothering me, but I can't explain why. Not yet. I want to ask Dr. Giles about some of it first.
Buffy considered that, not liking it at all, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt anyway. OK. You'll tell me soon?
Charlie nodded when she handed the pen back to him and scrawled out a quick reply.
As soon as I know what I'm looking at.
"Oh what's this?" Charlie's dad asked, smiling back at them with one eyebrow raised in amusement. "Should you really be in the practice of passing notes when you're going to be yelling at students for that in a few weeks time, Charlie?"
Buffy snorted, shooting Charlie a warm smile even as she answered Alan. "Just because he's gonna be teaching doesn't mean he can't pass notes."
"And why can't you just talk aloud like normal people?"
"Obviously because we don't want you to know what we're talking about," Buffy retorted with a smirk, the playful note in her voice successful dismissing the traces of tension that sprung up from the unexpected secrecy.
Charlie's wide-eyed look calmed as his parents burst into laughter.
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Mrs. Eppes' Car, Sunnydale, California – Sunday, October 6, 1996
Charlie shifted uncomfortably as his mother drove past the Sunnydale welcome sign. He tried to hide how agitated his empathetic senses were, whether it was from the Hellmouth itself or—more likely—from the effect the extremely negative location had on the human populace's emotions. He knew Annie was watching him with no small amount of worry.
And as that worry suddenly increased, he knew he hadn't been successful at concealing his agitation from her. Though to be fair, hiding his emotions was almost impossible when she was sitting right next to him.
A pang of concern along their bond carried the question 'Are you OK?' quite clearly through the silence, visible in her caring green gaze.
At the same time, his parents kept chatting about the town as they were seeing it, completely unaware of the countless dangers that lurked in the shadows.
After a moment, Charlie nodded and tried to send a general feeling of reassurance back to her. The wide range of extreme emotions was obviously very disquieting, but it wasn't really overwhelming. Not after a few deep, calming breaths with Annie's poignant presence and his parents familiar bickering and laughter to drown it out. 'I'm fine.'
Annie watched him for a few moments more, but then she nodded and leaned forward a little to look over his father's shoulder. "Take a left up ahead, Maggie. After Joey's Pizza."
"I know," his mom shot the younger blonde a small smile even as she hit her signal and started slowing down. "I dropped you off here just a few weeks ago, remember?"
"I remember," Annie admitted, sounding a bit sheepish. "Thanks for that, again."
Margaret Eppes sighed, "I already told you that thanks aren't remotely necessary, Annie..." Then an abrupt shift in her emotions—from slightly annoyed amusement to careful curiosity—made both Charlie and Annie look at the older woman more closely. "Would you prefer if we called you Buffy here?"
Annie blinked and stared.
Somehow both of them had forgotten till now that his parents had only known Buffy Anne Summers under the fake name of 'Annie' O'Connor, but being asked outright about it, when she'd never shared the fact that the hospital and the police officer had somehow just accepted her fake name.
"How did you—"
"I called in a few favors," Margaret admitted with a shrug.
Charlie glanced at his dad, who was still looking around, but it was obvious from his silence as the car cruised through Sunnydale's streets that he was already aware of Annie's real name too.
"Wasn't that hard. You two are listed in the phone book under this address. I wasn't sure why the police ignored your fake name, I was actually all ready to defend you in court. But I guess they just decided to let it go since you were being a good Samaritan, or something of the sort."
Alan snorted, "Or they just figured since they weren't going to bother investigating, why bother the person who saved his life?"
Charlie and Annie both blinked, a little stunned by both admissions.
"What police?" Charlie asked with a frown. He'd always wondered why the police hadn't interviewed him, but eventually let it go. Assuming that the syndrome that seemed to effect everyone who came into contact with the supernatural had effected the hospital staff too, and the police hadn't been called.
"They interviewed me while you were getting some tests done," Annie told him, shrugging at the surprised look he sent her.
"They were two days later then they should've been because the hospital hadn't even contacted them about your assault," his mother shook her head. "So I did. But I don't understand why they let the case go so quickly. They didn't even come by the house."
"Maybe there just wasn't any evidence for them to follow?" Annie suggested hesitantly. "I mean, I didn't see the guys that attacked Charlie, and they only stole a few things, right? Plus, Charlie doesn't know that many people for them to investigate, so—"
"Maybe," Charlie's mother cut in, then sighed as she shook her head while hitting her signal again for a right turn. "And if they'd reached that kind of conclusion after a bit of investigating, I might understand. I wouldn't be happy about it, but I'd have to let it go."
"But they didn't?" Charlie asked softly, wary of the simmering frustration he could sense from his mother as she made yet another turn.
"No. I called a friend in the LAPD a little over a week after your assault, and asked him to see if they were making any progress with the investigation." The aggravated lawyer shook her head again. "He called me back two hours later, said the case had already been put in with the cold cases, marked as random gang violence, or something similar. He didn't understand it any more then I did, but it was a completely different jurisdiction, so there wasn't much he could do."
"Well, whoever it was," Annie offered a little hesitantly, "I'm sure they'll get what's coming to them, if they haven't already."
Charlie blinked, a bit surprised at the Slayer's choice to continue to the discussion, but supposed it made sense that she'd tried to reassure his supernaturally-ignorant parents as best she could. And her comment immediately changed the suppressed anger he could feel coming off both his parents to slightly surprised confusion.
"What'd you mean, Annie?" Alan asked after a long second of contemplation.
"Well, they're bad guys, right? Bad guys always get what's comin' to them." Annie shrugged at the disbelief they could feel coming from his parents, just barely visible on the adults faces. "I mean, the world's not always fair, but I think that the bad people, at least, are eventually punished for their actions."
"Oh, so you don't believe in the balance of 'what goes around comes around'?" Charlie's dad tilted his head slightly as he spoke over his shoulder to her. "Just that the bad guys are eventually caught?"
"Somethin' like that, I guess."
"Why don't you think good actions come around, too?" Margaret asked after another moment's silence, though their empathetic senses were telling them that she unhappily agreed with the sentiment.
Annie shrugged again, "Seen too many bad things happen to good people. If the world was really fair, and both your good and bad actions eventually came back to you, that wouldn't happen."
"But you still think the bad'll come back to haunt you?" the lawyer asked curiously, shaking her head when Annie didn't immediately reply. "I'm really not trying to criticize you, Annie. It just seems like an interesting mindset."
"And one that you agree with?" Charlie asked, suppressing a smile at the immediate surprise both his parents radiating.
"I suppose I do." His mother's shrug was much less pronounced then Annie's had been as she hit the signal to turn again.
Charlie smiled a little at the relieved look that overtook Annie's face as they finally turned onto Revello Drive. Not that he blamed her. They had been stuck in the car for more than twice the amount of time they'd originally been expecting, thanks to a surprisingly massive number of accidents along their route. Two of the accidents hadn't been that bad, except for the fact that they'd blocked up a lane and slowed down the traffic even further due to gawking. The third accident, however, had been bad. Apparently some poor idiot had pulled out in front of a eighteen wheeler and forced it to swerve around it to avoid rear-ending—and quite possibly crushing—the smaller car. Luckily the semi hadn't then taken out several more cars when it rolled, but it had taken out several lanes for quite a while this afternoon. Add all of the other people that apparently wanted to get out of the city Sunday afternoon, and the purportedly two hour drive had become almost five.
And then this discussion had come up.
"I wish the world didn't work that way, but it is, generally speaking, how are society is engineered," Margaret continued.
"The bad guys that are caught go to prison, but good people can still end up starving on the streets," Alan agreed, his voice sad. Then a bit of pride worked its way in instead as he continued. "That's part of what makes the shelter you two helped set up so great."
"Yes," Margaret agreed immediately, smiling softly. "Hopefully we'll have a little more time to help out there in the coming months."
"I'm, uh, I'm sure Lily'll appreciate the help." Annie offered, "It's the one on the right, sixteen-thirty," she pointed out before continuing. "I know I'm hoping to help out more once the school year ends."
"You should look at some of the colleges in LA, too," Margaret suggested, ignoring the comment about which house it was, since she already knew and Annie knew that.
"We'd be happy to help. We certainly spent enough time looking at them a few years ago."
"You can pull in next to my mom's car. Your car should fit, right?" Annie asked, the slight uncertainty proving she'd never driven a car before.
And that she didn't have Charlie's ability to mentally measure space with ease, but he already knew that. Just like he knew he'd never be able to master any weapon half as well as she could handle it in an instant, and that despite the empathetic senses they both shared, he probably wouldn't ever fully understand what he was sensing like she did.
"It's fine," Margaret confirmed as she turned into the aforementioned spot.
Maybe it was because she had actually visited all the extremes, and frequently had more reason to with her Calling. Maybe it was because Charlie's nineteen years of life as a genius and a prodigy had just had him far more sheltered than most almost-twenty-year-olds would be. Maybe it was a bit of both, mixed in with many other things. But whatever the reason, she always seemed to understand exactly what they sensed, whereas he frequently had to analyze the feeling—specifically in relation to he was sensing it from—first. It made dealing with his parents much easier, as he knew them and had essentially analyzed everything he might need to know about their emotional ranges, any emotions outside of that were disconcerting but he could still handle them, carefully. Still, Annie didn't seem to need to analyze like he did, she could just react to what she was sensing, possibly because that was what she basically had to do as the Slayer, but he thought it was more than that.
"You comin', Charlie, or are you just gonna stay in the car while your parents meet my mom?" Annie's teasing voice drew him out of his thoughts. "'Cause for the visiting thing to work, you have to actually get out of the car."
Charlie blinked, then shook his head to clear it as he saw the car had been parked while he was thinking and his parents were both out, standing behind a smiling Annie, who'd come around and opened his door for him. "Sorry," he shrugged as he quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and slid out, noting as he did so that their bags had already been unloaded from the trunk, too, and quickly taking his from his amused mother. "I was thinking."
"Hazard of being friends with a genius, I know," Annie grinned as he rolled his eyes. "But we need your big brain right here now, k?"
Charlie laughed, "I'm here, Annie." He pointed out, glancing towards her home's front door. "Shall we?"
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Summers' House, Sunnydale, California – Sunday, October 6, 1996
Buffy glanced at Faith again, not able to stop herself from the sheer shock factor.
It wasn't that Faith had stolen one of her dresses that bothered her. That was a sisterly-like action that Buffy had actually gotten used to over the last few weeks and didn't mind, as long as the borrowed piece of clothing was returned undamaged. But the dress she'd stolen wasn't even one Buffy had picked out for herself, it was a present from her Great-Aunt Kristine*, the kind of clothing Buffy only wore to family reunions. (2)
It wasn't ugly, it just wasn't Buffy.
And it really wasn't Faith.
It didn't look bad on her, of course. None of the women on her mom's side of the family—no matter what the generation—were completely lacking in taste when it came to fashion. It just looked strange because the colors were much more subtle, much softer than the flashy colors Faith usually wore with black. The soft, flower-printed skirt flowed all the way down to her knees in comfortable, summery style and the sleeves were similarly loose, draping lightly over her shoulders, half-way down to her elbow.
And none of Faith's cleavage was showing, which meant the fifteen-year-old* generally wouldn't even spare the article of clothing a brief glance. (3)
But she did look nice. And she'd still managed to make both Charlie and Alan blush several times with well-placed suggestive remarks that were just subtle enough to earn chuckles from the two mothers at the table, instead of glares.
Faith tended to act much more provocative and promiscuous then Buffy herself was comfortable being. The older teen had been wondering for a little while now if she should, maybe, look further into Faith's past—try to get her to talk about it—to understand why. But so far she hadn't seen a good opportunity for that kind of talk.
And she wasn't sure on how she was going to actually get Faith talking. The only thing Faith ever consistently said in response to questions of her health was that she was 'five by five.' And Buffy couldn't for the life of her figure out what that actually meant, other than it being Faith's unique way of saying 'I'm fine, end of story.'
She was jarred out of her thoughts by a mental jab of amusement from Charlie, and physically started when she glanced at him, to see that both he and Faith were watching her with grins that completely covered their faces.
"Who's spacing out now?" Charlie asked her, his voice barely loud enough for the two Slayers to hear while their parents continued their discussion of what colleges Buffy might be attending next year.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. and Mrs. Eppes knew a lot about just about every college in the state. Buffy was sure they'd looked at every one of them before accepting Princeton's offer, which had split their family in two for several years, but it had apparently been the best move for Charlie's education. The full scholarships had undoubtedly helped, too, but there was little doubt in her mind that Charlie had, in fact, received scholarships of similar value from every college he'd applied to. He was a real genius, after all.
Buffy shrugged, "Sorry," she replied with a small smile. "Just thinking." Glancing around the table, she took note of the empty plates and rose, grabbing hers and Charlie's before turning to their parental units. "Mom? You guys done?"
"Oh, yes, honey, thank you." Joyce sent both her daughter and Faith smiles as the two started gathering plates, raising an eyebrow when Charlie started to rise and both girls immediately waved him back to his seat. Raising an eyebrow at her daughter, she offered, "Margaret and Alan are right, you know. There are a lot of great schools in LA. You should at least look at some of them."
"Yes, you could even stay with us, or Lily, if you prefer," Margaret suggested, also smiling even as she raised an eyebrow at the number of plates and bowls both teenagers were collecting, obviously set on clearing the table all in one go.
"Absolutely," Alan agreed, shaking his head at the same thing his wife was eyeballing, but following her lead in staying silent as it apparently wasn't something that bothered Annie's mother.
Of course, neither one of Charlie's parents knew that both girls were Slayer and therefore much stronger, more agile and graceful then they could otherwise be expected to be. Though even Charlie was starting to wince at the precarious setup they had going.
"Are you sure you don't want he—"
"Nope!" Faith actually let go of her pile to wave one finger at him while balancing all of the fragile china on one hand. "Mrs. S and B didn't let me start workin' for my stay till I'd been here for more 'en a week. So you can't do anything on your first night, at least. You're still a guest."
"Two hands, please, Faith," Joyce requested, wincing at the sight even as the brunette shot her an apologetic smile while obeying, before dancing off into the kitchen. "Buffy?"
"Yeah, Mom?" the younger blonde asked, even as she deliberately focused all of her attention on putting one more dish on her stack, effectively making the pile just a bit higher than her head.
Her mother looked at her for a moment, eyeing the fine china warily, before shaking her head. "Never mind, go put those in the sink, we'll talk when you get back."
All three adults winced—though Charlie had to bite back a chuckle—when Buffy shrugged and nonchalantly made her way into the kitchen after Faith. Once inside, she carefully set her pile down, quickly unstacking it into a slightly less precarious pile. Then she and Faith both started moving quickly through the motions of cleaning off plates and silverware just enough to leave the rest to the dishwasher.
Both Slayers shot each other amused smirks when they heard the older trio all release little sighs of relief a few moments later when no loud crashes came from the kitchen. A moment later, even softer chuckles followed as they seemingly found amusement in their shared relief.
Sensing a little bit of loneliness along her bond with Charlie, and knowing it was because they'd all but abandoned him to the adults, Buffy sent a burst of warm thoughts along their bond, reminding him that the two Slayers were just one room away and could easily hear everything that happened around the dining room table.
Then Joyce rose, smiling at all three of her guests. "Well I have three choices for dessert. We have apple pie, chocolate cake, or vanilla ice cream. W—"
"Or a combination thereof!" Faith called from the kitchen, earning more chuckles from the grownups and a smirk from Buffy.
"Or," Joyce nodded again, "if you're like either of my two teenagers, whose stomachs seemingly know no end, you may have some of each, if you'd like."
Buffy smiled slightly when Faith momentarily froze, her cheeks reddening, and smoothly grabbed the plate the brunette had been clearing, snapping her out of her surprised daze and back into the motions of clean up. No matter how many times Buffy and her mom made a point of saying Faith was part of the family now, it pleasantly surprised the younger teen every time.
"Apple pie sounds wonderful, Joyce. May I hel—"
Joyce cut the other woman off, "No, Faith was right about that. You have to visit several more times before you lose the 'guest' status and are allowed to actually do anything. So we have one apple pie. And you Alan? Charlie?"
"I think I'll push my stomach a little more and try apple pie ala mode, Joyce. Thank you," Charlie's dad replied, a warm smile clear in his tone.
"I'll try some of the cake, please."
"Two pies, one with ice cream and one cake." Joyce nodded, still smiling widely. "Would anyone care for some coffee?"
Margaret sighed, "We don't usually drink coffee at night, but it's probably a good idea, considering we still have to drive at least two hours tonight."
"You could stay—"
"Thank you, but no." Buffy knew Margaret was shaking her head and wearing that same kind smile the teen was so used to associating with her. "I don't have to be into work till late in the morning, but I'd rather sleep in a bit then get up early to rush in."
Again, Buffy knew without even looking that Alan Eppes was shrugging and spreading his hands in a gesture of surrender as he murmured, "Where she goes, I follow." And earned chuckles of approval from both women.
"All right, two regular coffees, then. And you, Charlie?"
Nodding slightly, Faith stepped away from the sink for a moment, to start the coffee maker, which had undoubtedly been set to go hours ago. Then she was back at the sink just in time to finish off the last plate while Buffy finished putting the cups into the dishwasher.
Buffy moved away from the dishwasher, letting Faith finish the silverware as she started getting out smaller plates, mugs and silverware for dessert.
"Unless you have decaf, you don't want to give him anything," Alan spoke up before his son could reply, and Buffy had to suppress a chuckle at the jolt of surprise she sensed from Charlie at his father's words. "Cause any caffeine at this hour will have him bouncing till sunrise, at least."
Joyce laughed, "Well, he'll fit right in around here, then."
Both Slayers winced a little, knowing that Joyce Summers knew that Alan and Margaret Eppes were not, in fact, 'in the know' when it came to their nightly activities, but that comment wandered a bit too close for comfort.
"An—Buffy and Faith stay up late, even on school nights?" Margaret asked, and Buffy was pretty sure the older woman had an eyebrow raised as she asked the question.
There was bit of exasperation in Joyce's voice as she replied, "The hours they keep would kill me in a few weeks or less, I think. But maybe having another normal person around will moderate them a little."
Buffy nodded to the other Slayer as the younger teen grabbed a towel to quickly wipe down the dining room table, undoubtedly planning on shooing the party into the living room in the process.
"Don't count on it," Charlie shook his head when all three adults looked at him. "Even when we went to bed before midnight, I know Annie was usually still up till at least two or three in the morning."
His mother frowned, "But she was usually up before you were."
"B and I don't need much sleep," Faith remarked, her tone deliberately carefree. "We run on caffeine, sugar and exercise. And I'm running a bit late on my nightly sugar-dose, so if you guys'd move into the living room so we could finish clean up and serve dessert, I'd appreciate it."
This time Charlie and Buffy both chuckled with the adults even as the Eppes obediently rose and made their way towards the living room, already knowing where it was since that was where they'd been before dinner was served.
"I'll just get—"
"No, B and I've got everything, Mrs. S. Just tell us what you want for dessert and we'll take care of it," Buffy was pretty sure Faith had her hands on her hips as she deliberately blocked the older woman's attempts to enter the kitchen.
"That's alright, Faith, really I—"
"We've got it, Mom," Buffy called to her, smiling slightly. "Do you want pie, ice cream, or both?"
"Oh, I can't have cake?" the older blonde asked teasingly.
Buffy rolled her eyes, calling back in the exact same tone, "Since when do you eat chocolate cake?"
Her mother laughed, "I'll have a piece of pie, and coffee, please."
"Comin' right up," Faith immediately replied, and then Buffy just knew the brunette was actually making shooing motions at the older woman. There was nothing else that could explain the silent amusement and slight exasperation she was feeling from the pair. "Now go make sure our guests don't break anything."
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Summers' House, Sunnydale, California – Sunday, October 6, 1996
Charlie shook his head as he, along with all of the adults, watched the two Slayers polish off their dessert plates. They hadn't even tried to conceal how much they were eating by taking small portions! Though Charlie was fairly sure the pair had taken longer then they needed to come out because they'd also had more dessert before they'd brought out the coffee and dessert for everyone else.
"I used to be able to eat like that," Alan shook his head at the bemused looks everyone shot him. "What? I did, occasionally. Though I must confess I wish I still could, that cake looks just as good as the pie, which was fantastic."
"It was delicious, Joyce," Margaret murmured, and both she and her husband received a wide smile from their hostess in return.
"Thank you," Joyce nodded in return, smiling as she raised an eyebrow at them. "I could pack up some of the cake if you'd like?"
Margaret laughed, "That might be a good idea. Otherwise, I'll have to make some myself in the next few days, and without either of our boys home we'd actually have to eat it all." She shook her head at the two younger girls. "I wish I could eat like you two do, but I'd have to kill myself in a gym every day if I wanted to try."
"Oh I know," Joyce agreed, smiling as she rose and started collecting plates and empty mugs from all around. "Isn't it awful?"
"Oh, Joyce," Alan smiled apologetically as their hostess stopped, "I'm sorry, I meant to ask earlier: but you're in the antiques business, aren't you?"
Charlie covered a grin as his mother sighed.
"Oh Alan, you didn't."
"Yes, I am," Joyce confirmed with a smile.
"I have a few pictures in the car, if I left some of them here do you think you could maybe give me some ballpark figures on them. If you wouldn't mind—I used to go to a friend in LA, but he moved out East and—"
"Oh, I don't mind at all," Joyce shook her head, still smiling. "I actually like my job." She nodded towards the door, "If you want to go get them, I could probably give you the ballpark figures right now. Though a real appraisal would obviously take longer."
"Thank you, thank you," Charlie's dad nodded to her, before hurrying off even as his wife rose to firmly help Joyce with the dishes.
"Here, Joyce, let me help you with that," Margaret insisted, taking the last few plates from the teenagers as Buffy and Faith finally finished.
"No that's—"
"I insist. If my husband is going to actually bring work out tonight, the least I can do is help with the dishes."
"Well, Buffy actually wanted him to take a look at the attic later, but..."
As the two women moved off, both Slayers eyes were watching Mr. Eppes as he rummaged through the trunk of his wife's car outside. A vampire attack in a residential area wasn't as likely as it was in Sunnydale's so-called 'downtown' or numerous graveyards, but the sun had set hours ago, so it was possible.
"You want my dad to look at your attic?" Charlie asked, smirking slightly as Annie shrugged.
"Yeah. We wanna turn the basement into a gym, so the stuff that's down there needs to go somewhere. Attic seems like the best place, but mom doesn't think the perfectly stable floor can take it."
"How do you know it's perfectly stable?"
"Well, the house isn't that old, so it should be, shouldn't it?"
"I guess." Charlie shook his head, then fell silent when Annie sent a speculative glance towards the younger Slayer.
"So, any more luck on your Slay-mare?"
Faith blinked, looking away from where Charlie's dad was finally closing the trunk of the car to make his way inside, a lightweight box in his hands, to look at Annie. "Not really," she shrugged. "Hasn't happened again, I think. I haven't woken up, any way."
All three looked towards the door as it opened to admit Alan.
Charlie nodded towards the kitchen. "They're in there."
All three teenagers watched as the older man moved off towards the kitchen, and then silence fell over them again for several moments.
Finally, Faith spoke up. "All I can remember, still, is that some bad things are comin' our way." She shook her head. "Not bad like Kakistos, really, but worse then the nightly-vamp, you know?"
Annie and Charlie both nodded, though the action seemed to confuse the younger Slayer more than reassure her. It took Charlie a moment to figure out why. Logically, he shouldn't understand how the vision made her feel. He wouldn't—if he wasn't feeling it from her right now.
And he did find it rather interesting that, even in Annie's presence, Faith's emotions were still easily detected. Though he'd also noticed that whenever he and Annie were both focused on a specific person, they had no trouble reading them.
"Maybe you should try ranking them."
"Huh?" Both Slayers blinked at the math genius.
Charlie shrugged, "Your, um, Slayer-visions? They tend to be pretty vague and confusing, right?"
"Yeah," Annie replied slowly, while Faith nodded in agreement, though it was obvious neither were completely sure about what he was getting at.
"So maybe you should try ranking your past experiences, so that you'll have something to compare them against? Something like, um, if it's actually a threat to the world—"
"An apocalypse in the making," Annie suggested helpfully.
Charlie nodded, "Yeah, maybe those would always be six and up—or you could give them their own scale. But anything less than that would be five or lower." Seeing that Faith clearly wasn't following quite as well as Annie was, the soon-to-be-professor elaborated. "Like, um, Kakistos was a pretty bad vampire, right? But he wasn't trying to end the world, just targeting you. So he'd be a four or five, right? While a normal vampire might be a two or three."
"And a fledgling would be a one or less?" Faith nodded in understanding, then frowned again. "But what about demons, then?"
"You could rank them on the same scale, or a separate one, it's your choice." The mathematician shrugged, "It's just something you might want to keep track of, because that will help you judge your visions better. Maybe help you understand them."
Annie nodded slowly, "Cause like Faith said, she could sense that what's coming is bad—and there's several baddies—but they're not as bad as Kakistos was."
"Though that may just be because she feels more secure now then when she was fleeing Kakistos, it's still a good basis for analysis." Charlie agreed. "It means that your visions isn't foretelling an apocalypse—" here he stopped to shoot a smirk at Annie, "Which means you can't try to send me home with my parents tonight."
"I wasn't—" Annie started to protest, while Faith grinned, but Charlie ignored them both as he continued.
"So on the massive scale of, uh—"
"Badness?" Faith suggested.
The mathematician winced, but nodded reluctantly. "OK, so on the scale of badness, whatever's coming is, at worst, a four, right?"
"Because it'd have to be apocalypse-related to be a six or higher and it's not as bad as Kakistos, who was a five?" Annie asked, head cocked slightly to the side in careful consideration.
"Right," Charlie confirmed, though his eyes were locked on Faith as she thought it through. "Does that help you at all?"
Faith blinked, before nodding quickly. "Uh, yeah. I guess it does." She smiled slightly as she shrugged. "I mean, at least it tells me we can handle what's coming, right? Cause we took care of Kakistos, and this isn't as bad as him."
"Right so—" Charlie stopped abruptly as they heard the familiar voices of their parental trio returning from the kitchen.
"So it is worth looking into, then?" Alan was asking Joyce, while his wife shook her head fondly as she followed both of them.
Joyce laughed, "Of course it is. There really aren't too many tables from that era still around in California today. If it's genuine, it could be worth a lot of money. Maybe not enough to solve all of your friend's troubles, but it should definitely help." She shook her head, then glanced at the teenagers still sitting in the living room. One eyebrow rose as she continued, "You know, when you fall silent just before we come into a room, it kind of makes us wonder what you were talking about."
"Much more than we probably would if you just kept talking," Margaret agreed.
Annie and Charlie blinked at them, but Faith's grinning reply came immediately. "Anybody want to play poker?"
This startled the adults into silence for a moment, before Charlie's mother started shaking her head. "We really do need to get onto the road soon—" she stopped when she met her husband's eyes, one eyebrow shooting up like Joyce's had a few moments before. "You don't want to?"
"You said yourself that you only have two meetings tomorrow. The one that's late in the morning will probably cancel, and the other ones around three in the afternoon." Alan shrugged, "Plus you can always cancel that meeting yourself if they don't."
"I don't—"
"When was the last time you canceled on that jerk?"
"I haven't—"
"And how many times has he canceled on you?" Seeing his wife's expression reluctantly folding at the points, he added. "Plus it'd be a lot easier for me to properly inspect the attic in the morning anyway."
Mrs. Eppes sighed and nodded, turning to Joyce again. "You're sure you won't mind—"
"As long as Charlie doesn't mind spending his first night here on the couch, the guest room's yours." Annie's mom cut her off with a warm smile.
"Actually this couch is very comfortable," Charlie reassured them, earning smiles from all around.
"So I guess we're playin' poker then?" Faith asked, darting over to the bureau that contained the Summers playing cards before she even got a response from any of the others.
Margaret shook her head as she and other two adults claimed seats around the coffee table. "Have you played against Buffy before?" at the surprised look Faith sent her, she explained. "I don't think she and Charlie cheat. But I can't beat either of them."
"Better poker than bridge, though," Alan shuddered, while his wife nodded in agreement as they both glanced at the teenagers in question. "You two are uncanny then."
Annie and Charlie's practically synchronized shrug didn't seem to make the elder Eppes feel better.
And indeed, almost all of the hands went to either Annie or Charlie. Though Faith was able to win a few times. Most of those times, both empaths folded after sensing the younger teen's carefully concealed excitement, but she did manage to beat them a few times on pure luck when they didn't fold. Still, when the clock struck eleven a few hours later, the disgusted adults were very glad they weren't actually playing for money. Because they would have lost a lot. And they were equally glad that neither Buffy or Charlie could legally enter casinos yet. (Because while Charlie was legally old enough to gamble, most casinos wouldn't let anyone under the age of twenty-one enter.)
"You realize this means my mom won't be able to stay up waiting for Faith and I to get back from patrol, don't you?" Annie asked, her tone light as they listened to the adults move around upstairs.
Faith was smirking even as Charlie nodded. "I figured you might like that. Though it does mean you'll have to sneak in and out through your bedroom windows."
"You say that like it's hard," Faith protested with a quiet laugh.
Charlie shook his head, "Please don't let my parents catch you. I'd really rather not try to explain the supernatural to them any time soon."
Annie and Faith both laughed while the blonde replied.
"I've had a lot of practice sneaking out, Charlie. And it's actually easier from Faith's room than it is from mine."
"Be careful, okay?"
Both Slayers smiled at him, bending down to press light kisses on his cheeks before dancing off towards the stairs.
"Night Charlie."
"Sleep tight, C-man."
6 1 9 2 0 8 1 9 0 0 0 1 6 1 5 9 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 0 2 2 9 5 2 3
Summers' House, Sunnydale, California – Monday, October 7, 1996
Faith spun quickly to jab a stake in the back of a retreating vamp, effectively ending the much-too-brief scuffle they'd had with four vamps. The only vamps they'd seen since they started patrol just before midnight, a few hours after Mr. and Mrs. Eppes had gone to sleep.
Seeing that Buffy had taken a few moments more to dust her two, the Faith blinked as she realized that though the elder's slaying-ability clearly wasn't affected by it, the blonde's thoughts were definitely elsewhere.
Deciding to fish a little, Faith arched an eyebrow at the older Slayer, "So? How'd it go?"
Buffy blinked, then rapidly shook her head before turning her gaze towards the amused brunette: effectively confirming the other Slayer's suspicions that the blonde's attention was elsewhere. "Hmm? I'm sorry, what?"
Faith chuckled, deciding a comment about blondes probably wouldn't be the best of things to say right now, and instead elaborated on her question. "The trip to LA? Rich vamp? He's dust now, right?"
"Oh, yeah," Buffy nodded firmly, through her mind still seemed to be focusing on something other than their conversation. And it wasn't their half-hearted patrol. No, her thoughts were turned inward. "Yeah. He was kinda pathetic, actually."
"A vamp that relies on modern technology and human guards, pathetic? Who woulda thought?" Faith grinned at the older Slayer, then shook her head. "So he didn't have much fight in 'im?"
"Not even more then a fledgling," Buffy snorted. "I just threw the stake at him, and he dusted."
"Man. How old was he? That usually only works on newbies."
"I think Giles said he was turned in the fifties or sixties." Buffy sighed, then shrugged. "But maybe he was a rich guy then, too. I mean, he was pretty comfy in his lifestyle."
"So? What's the long face for, then?"
Buffy was quiet for several seconds more before she finally replied. "Have you worked with the Council's, um, 'teams' before?"
"You mean before they came here? No. Why? Were the ones in LA just as bad?"
"No," the blonde shook her head, and sighed again. "No, they seemed to be really good, actually. Very thorough."
"...But?"
Buffy shook her head, "After I dusted Winters, they said there was a meth lab in the basement, and that it'd make clean-up easier. Then we had to go."
Faith cocked her head to the side in slightly confusion, sending a quick glance around them to make sure they were still safe taking here before asking, "Clean up?"
"Yah. They wouldn't tell me what that meant. But one of the teams stayed behind for it, while we left."
"Somethin' happen to them?" Faith asked, still not sure what to make of the older Slayer's discomfort with this clean up issue.
"No. They were fine. They met up with us later, when the first team dropped all of us off at the house."
"But I take it there clean up didn't involve a vacuum and tellin' the cops about the meth lab?"
"N-No. They blew it up."
"Blew—You mean the lab?"
"I guess. But it destroyed the whole mansion. We could see the flames, the wreckage, from miles away."
"Whoa, musta been a pretty big lab. Cause his mansion was huge, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah it was"
Faith nodded, cocking an eyebrow as she persisted in trying to figure out what was bothering her sister Slayer so much. "So what was wrong? Did they leave the security thugs there, or somethin'?"
"I... I don't know. I-I don't think so." Buffy shook her head. "They were supposed to hand them over to the, uh, army, I guess. But I don't know how that worked."
"Huh." The younger Slayer considered that for several long moments, then shook her head. "Well, even if they did die there, B, it's not like they were innocents. They worked for Hell Incorporated, right?"
Buffy nodded, "But they were human. We're supposed to protect them."
Faith shrugged, "Can't save everyone, B. 'Specially those that don't want savin'." She looked around, trying to reach out with her senses again then finally shook her head, sighing as she suggested. "Seems pretty quiet tonight. Wanna head home?"
"Yeah. Sure," Buffy agreed half-heartedly.
As it happened, the graveyard they were in just then was the closest to the Summers' home, so it was only a matter of minutes away. Faster if they felt like running, but B's mind was still back in LA, so Faith didn't think that was the best of ideas.
After a few long moments of silence, the brunette spoke up again. "So what'd C-man think of the Council guys?"
Buffy blinked, frowning slightly before he expression cleared as her mind connected the dots to figure out who Faith was talking about. "Charlie?" she thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know. He seemed to like the guys he spent time with."
"You didn't ask him?"
Again, the older Slayer shrugged, but this time remained silent.
After a few more moments of silence, Faith spoke up again. "You know, before Di, um, before she started home schooling me, I went to public school for a bit." She continued hesitantly, even as she felt the other Slayer's eyes turn to her. "Di had a huge load a classes at Harvard when the Council first told her to take me on, so when she asked if I wanted to keep goin' to the same school, sayin' yes just seemed easier. Crappy place, though. I got suspended a few months later, and that was the first time she actually went into the building there. She was kinda mad at me for not tellin' her."*(5)
"Sounds like she cared about you."
"I guess," Faith shrugged, blinking rapidly for a moment at the memory of the first person who had given a damn about her. "But, um. Anyway, before he suspended me, Principal Martin gave me this whole long lecture on bad apples. Said we just ask for bad things to happen to us. That we kept gettin' stepped on, spit on and skipped over in the line of life because we provoke people." Faith jumped as Buffy's arm suddenly looped through hers, locking at the elbow in what was starting to be a familiar, vaguely comfortable connection.
"Angelus had this whole tirade about choices and consequences," Buffy offered, shrugging slightly when Faith looked at her. "And maybe he was kinda right, but he was twisting the truth to suit him. I'd say your Principal Martin was too."
Faith shrugged again, "Maybe." Then she winced in surprise as Buffy suddenly jabbed a finger into her side. It didn't really hurt, but she wasn't expecting it.
"No, seriously. You're not a bad apple, Faith." Buffy raised an eyebrow at her. "I don't really agree with the Powers That Be's idea of putting the weight of the world on one girl's shoulders, but do you really think they woulda picked you, trusted you with the survival of the human race, if you weren't a good person?"
The younger teen blinked at that, eyes going to the ground in contemplation even as she trusted Buffy to keep their feet moving in the right direction as she considered something she hadn't really thought of before. She looked up as the older Slayer started talking again.
"Still, maybe you're right about some people just being bad. I told Charlie's parents earlier today that I thought bad people usually get what's coming to them. Mostly cause they're really angry that whoever assaulted Charlie was never caught by the cops, and I can't really tell them that Mrs. Eppes probably vacuumed Charlie's attackers up before Charlie and I were even out of the hospital, so... yeah."
Faith chuckled, "So you think bad people usually get what's comin' to them?" she cocked her head to the side. "Maybe bein' the Slayer's some kind of punishment, then? We can't exactly expect long life and happiness, can we?"
"Maybe not long life, though I hope not." Buffy sighed, shaking her head again. Her eyes locked with Faith's again. "So you think I'm a bad person? That my mom is?"
"What? No!" Faith stopped abruptly, pure horror taking over her expression as she rapidly shook her head. "No! 'Course not. Why—"
"You can't say that they made you the Slayer to punish you for something if that wasn't true for me too, Faith. If it's a punishment, they're punishing me and everyone who cares about me, about us, too." Again the older Slayer shook her head. "I don't like that idea. I much prefer to think that we were—unfortunately—somehow worthy of protecting everyone. That they knew we could do it. That we would do it."
"Or die tryin'?" Faith raised an eyebrow as they skirted along the side of the Summers' driveway, she slid to the side so that they could bypass the cars without unlocking their elbows.
"Something like that," Buffy agreed quietly, before nodding as she slipped her elbow out of Faith's hold and crouched down before leaping up to catch the edge of roof, pulling herself up onto the slanted surface with the ease of long practice.
Faith saw the older Slayer glance back even as she pulled herself up onto the roof and moved to her own open window, their movements easily silent thanks to their supernatural abilities. As she slipped inside the window, she nodded in response to the older Slayer's downward gesture. Finally inside she carefully slid the bug screen down—though the spell Willow had tried out a few weeks ago would keep bugs out anyway—and then turned to make her way out of the room. She wasn't to surprised to find Buffy waiting for her at her door.
However, both were a bit surprised when they reached the bottom of the stairs and saw one of the lamps in the living room still on, with their genius-friend typing away on his laptop.
"Hey Charlie, what're you still doing up? It's gotta be after two already."
"Unlike you, I don't have to wake up early to go to school in the morning," Charlie shrugged, smiling softly as he set his portable computer aside. "I told your mom I'd wait, and wake her up if you needed anything. It was the only way I could get her to go to bed at a reasonable time, anyway." He frowned softly, quickly looking both of them over. "You don't need anything, do you? You're both all right?"
Faith felt another unexpected bit of warmth in her chest at the clear concern in his regard and shook her head, more then a little amazed by just how generous he could be, to be so worried about someone he only just met. Even when she was standing right next to B, the Slayer he'd been friends with for months already, his eyes still went to inspect her to. "Five by five, C-man."
Two large, chocolate-brown eyes blinked at her, before his warm smile made the edges crinkle, "I'm, uh, glad you heard me clearly, but that's not quite an answer."
Both Slayers blinked and replied in unison, "Huh?"
Charlie shook his head, still smiling slightly. "That's what that phrase is generally understood to mean, you know. It refers to the signal of a broadcasting radio in NATO countries, where the signal is measured for strength and clarity both scales ranging from one to five. "Five by five" means that the signal is strong and clear, as understandable as it can possibly be. Many cell phones actually still function with the same scales." *(6)
"Huh. I just liked the way it sounds." Faith shrugged after a moment of thought. "I'm fine, thanks for askin'."
"My pleasure," Charlie chuckled, meeting Buffy's eyes for a moment but for some reason not pushing the question with her.
Again Faith kind of got the feeling that the two of them were somehow communicating in a way that she couldn't follow. But then both of then both of them were turning to her with smiles while their visiting genius spoke up.
"Joyce finished baking some chocolate chip cookies a little while ago, if you're hungry."
And all thoughts of secret signals were driven from Faith's head as Buffy's arm slipped out of hers and the two were suddenly racing—on still silent feet—for the kitchen.
2 2 1 6 6 2 5 0 1 9 0 0 0 1 6 1 5 9 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 0 2 2 9 5 2 3
Summers' House, Sunnydale, California – Monday, October 7, 1996
Buffy grinned a little at the sight her friend made, somehow sprawled on the living room couch, which didn't look big enough for that term to be applicable, but somehow the teenage boy managed it. "Charlie... Charlie... Time to wake up, Charlie."
Charlie groaned and rolled over so that he was facing the couch, his back to her as he dragged his pillow out from underneath his head to slam it over said head instead.
"Oh come on, Charlie. My mom's making pancakes and I have to leave for—"
"One," the math genius mumbled from beneath the pillow, "you know I don't like pancakes. And two, I'm not going to school with you. Faith and I are meeting you at the library afterwards."
"But Miss Glenn would—"
"Undoubtedly be pleased to meet me, when it won't interfere with her lesson plan. Ask her to meet us outside the library if you want me to meet her so much," Charlie shook his head, sighing tiredly as he swung his legs out of bed, knowing he was too awake now to just fall back asleep.
"OK, I guess. Faith—"
"Will take me to the library this afternoon, yes. We discussed this already."
After a moment, Buffy sighed in mock-surrender. "OK. But your mom wants to leave soon, so you really should get up to say goodbye." She smirked as she turned away and moved back towards the kitchen, where everyone else was gathered for an informal breakfast around the kitchen counter. She and Faith had forfeited the three stools that were by the counter to the adults, perfectly comfortable with finishing their massive stacks of pancakes while on their feet, despite the Eppes' protests.
"If he was up as late as you two think, he's not gonna be getting up any time soon, An—Buffy," Alan offered as the kitchen door swung shut behind her.
Buffy shrugged, knowing he was wrong as she could sense his son grumpily forcing himself to wake up. She suppressed a laugh as she replied, "I think he'll want to say 'bye' to you guys."
"We can wait," Margaret shook her head. "As Alan pointed out last night, Mark cancels on me more often then not. And usually on fairly short notice." She sighed as she glanced towards the clock, which told Buffy that it was almost time for her to leave for school. Especially since the Eppes didn't know she could get there on foot a lot faster than a normal person could. "Though I really don't understand how you two can be up and awake so early, if you were up that late, too."
Faith was grinning as she replied. "We've got our sugar and caffeine, don't we?" she asked, indicating the syrup she'd smothered her pancakes with and her half-finished cup of coffee. Her half-finished, third cup of coffee.
Everyone turned towards the door as Charlie came into the kitchen, rubbing blearily at his eyes.
Buffy smirked as she moved over to the coffee pot to acquire her peace offering. A spoonful of sugar, a little milk and coffee, coffee, coffee. She nodded in thanks to her mother as the older blonde directed the only-just-awake-Charlie to the formerly occupied stool, and set his coffee cup in front of him.
It took several sips of coffee to manage it, but after several long moments of sipping, Charlie finally woke up enough to look around. And blinked as he saw everyone was watching him.
"Good morning, sweetheart," Margaret broke the silence, smiling at her clearly exhausted son even though she was clearly very surprised he was actually up at all.
Honestly, Buffy was a bit surprised too. But now that she thought about it, Charlie didn't seem to need as much sleep as either of his parents did. Not for as long as Buffy had known him anyway. He still needed more sleep than she and Faith did, but he was able to stay awake longer and wake up a lot sooner, operating on much less sleep than was considered normal.
Possibly another side-effect of their bond? Or just more changes made by the Slayer-blood that had flown through his veins for an indeterminate amount of time, potentially changing more then they'd initially realized...
Buffy blinked as a faint wave of curiosity hit her, and glanced over at Charlie to see that he was watching her even as everyone else kept chatting away around them, apparently having overcome the surprise at Charlie being awake and semi-functioning at the early hour. After a second of thought she shook her head and mouthed 'later', towards him.
Charlie blinked, but then nodded and picked up one of the pieces of toast from the plate that had appeared in front of him—undoubtedly her mother's doing, since Charlie's mother was still sitting down and enjoying her own breakfast while Joyce Summers had finished hers and was puttering around the kitchen—while Buffy was thinking.
Glancing at the clock again, Buffy sighed. Normally she wouldn't even bother leaving for another ten or fifteen minutes, but...
"Well, I've got to get goin'." Buffy spoke up loudly enough for everyone else to hear. She moved quickly over to the two Eppes, drawing both into welcomed hugs, "Drive safe, okay?"
"Of course, Annie." Margaret favored her with a warm smile, which was echoed on her husband's face.
"And even if you don't plan on going to school in LA next year, you should come visit us as much as possible. All of you should," Alan nodded to include Faith and Joyce. "It'd give us an excuse to try some of our bigger recipes."
"I'd like that," Buffy agreed, smiling as she leaned out into the dining room to pick her bag up off the floor, before making her way to the kitchen door. "Bye."
"Have a good day, honey," her mom called after her, and Faith followed suit.
"See ya later, B."
3 8 1 1 8 1 2 9 5 0 1 9 0 0 0 1 6 1 5 9 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 0 2 2 9 5 2 3
Summers' House, Sunnydale, California – Monday, October 7, 1996
Charlie sighed after several moments of silence. Apparently Faith wasn't going to start talking—despite the questions he could sense simmering behind her curious stare—so he'd have to open the conversation. "Can I help you with something, Faith?" he asked, keeping his tone light and not looking up from his notebook, pencil still whirling through calculations even as he sensed the Slayer start.
"Huh? Oh, sorry. Am I bothering you?"
"Not really," the mathematician half-truthed.
He wasn't really bothered, per say. But it was hard to work with the younger teen staring at him and radiating curiosity just as clearly as if she was shouting questions at him. Not that he could blame her. She didn't know that he couldn't not sense her emotions.
"But you've been sitting there for a while. Watching me," Charlie finished with a gentle smile, hoping that'd be enough to offset her nervousness.
Instead it seemed to embarrass her, because although it was only just visible in her eyes, the self-doubt that was suddenly clashing with her curiosity was a bit bewildering considering how the girl usually acted.
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," the brunette offered, shaking her head. "I was trying to figure out what you were doing."
"You could just ask."
"You looked busy," Faith shrugged. "Didn't want to bother you."
"I'm not bothered," Charlie told her, though he was a little exasperated at having to repeat that fact again. "Besides, I'm going into teaching, remember? Annie thinks I need to get used to being interrupted. I'm surprised she didn't tell you to, actually."
"Why do you call her that?" Faith asked, her head tilting as she took them off on a tangent. "She's never said."
Charlie blinked, then his quick mind made the connection, "Oh, Annie?" he shook his head. "That's what she wanted me to call her this summer, and I think she likes to be reminded of her time staying with us..." then he shrugged. "And it's what I'm used to."
"Oh. So it's not that you just prefer her middle name over her first name?"
"No. Though I'm not sure what Joyce was thinking when she named her daughter."
"Mrs. S told me it was her favorite aunt's nickname, and Aunt Buffy died just a few months before little B was born, so..." Faith grimaced, but otherwise didn't give any outward sign about the dark turn her emotions were taking as she continued. "Better than my back story, anyway. My mom just told the doc that delivered me to pick a name for her."
Charlie winced at the bitter resentment he could sense stirring in the Slayer. "It's a pretty name," he offered gently, and suddenly the anger vanished. To be replaced by embarrassment again.
"Thanks," the younger teen nodded slightly, her cheeks definitely turning a little pink for a moment, then she was shaking her head and raising her eyes to meet his again. "We should get going soon. B's last class gets out around one-thirty,"
And a glanced at the wall confirmed she was right about needing to go, then. Since it was already five past one.
2 2 1 6 6 2 5 0 1 9 0 0 0 1 6 1 5 9 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 0 2 2 9 5 2 3
High School Library, Sunnydale, California – Monday, October 10, 1996
Buffy shook her head as Willow babbled on. It was hard to be annoyed with the redhead, since she was so obviously nervous about meeting Charlie, which was why she'd tried to compensate by researching him. But the Slayer had lived with the math-genius for months, so she already knew everything Willow had found.
"And he started high school when he was ten. He joined the sophomore class then, and graduated when he was thirteen before going to Princeton. He was fourteen when he published his first important paper, in the spring of his Freshman year." Willow was frowning slightly as she shook her head. "But Oz and I couldn't find out why he joined the tenth grade and spent the full three years in high school, though. I mean, he probably could've skipped them, he shot right through college, but maybe his parents—"
"He didn't want to graduate before his brother."
Willow blinked, "Huh?"
"Charlie's brother, Don Eppes, is five years older than him. They graduated high school on the same day. The school had wanted him to graduate early, he probably could have finished high school in half the time, but he didn't want to graduate before Don. Even though Don didn't really like going to school with him, Charlie wanted to. So he did."
"He graduated with his brother?" Xander asked incredulously, shaking his head. "That's gotta put a weird twist on the whole sibling rivalry thing."
Buffy shrugged, "As far as I can tell, Don's pretty smart. I mean he's an FBI agent so he has to be of fairly high intelligence, right? And their parents are smart people, too, so it makes sense." Then she shook her head, "And while I'm sure they have some kind of sibling rivalry stuff between them, I really don't think Don could ever make the mistake of trying to out-do Charlie at math."
"Why? I mean, if his kid brother's good at it—"
"That's the thing, Xander. He's not just 'good,' at it. He practically lives and breathes it. He can see everything in numbers and patterns. Says math can apply to everything, but he actually sees it without looking for it most of the time." Buffy shook her head.
"Yes, from what I understand, Dr. Eppes is a highly skilled mathematician," Giles put in when his Slayer paused. "Truly, the work he did to help us was probably elementary to him. I doubt it took him long at all. Once he'd gathered the necessary data."
"Why?"
This time Willow answered Xander's question, while Giles read the information on a card from the library's catalogue before disappearing into the stacks. "Because we could follow it, Xander."
Xander frowned a little, "We could?"
"If you paid attention in math class more, you could. I mean, some of the variables he threw in I had to research to understand, but I could have done the basics myself." Willow shook her head, "I mean, the basic point was that wolf-Oz can only travel so fast, which mean he couldn't have gotten from point A to point B in between the time I left and when Orkin was attacked. That's high school math. Before he threw a bunch of other variables that I didn't quite get in."
"At least you could figure it out," Xander shook his head. "Looked like gibberish to me. Though, obviously I liked the results." He paused for a moment, before frowning at Buffy. "Isn't he a little old for you, though?"
Buffy blinked, honestly startled. "Huh?"
"I mean, obviously he's not as old as Angel, which is good, but he's a college professor, so—"
"Xander," Oz cut him off. "He's my age."
The other boy blinked, "B-But he's a college teacher, right? So—"
"He was a genius, child-prodigy," Willow cut him off this time, shaking her head. "He got his doctorate when he was seventeen. That was two years ago. So he's only a year older than Buffy."
"Why does that matter?" Buffy shook her head in confusion, cocking her head to the side when everyone looked at her. "Even if he was a few years older than us, I could still be friends with him. I mean, Giles is a lot older than us and he's our friend."
"Well, yeah, but you wouldn't say Giles is in our dating pool, would you? No offense," Xander finished quickly, when Giles came out of the stacks with a new book in hand.
"None taken," the Englishman shook his head, clearly amused by the turn in the conversation. "Though I do not believe Buffy and Dr. Eppes are, um, dating."
Buffy started. "Dating?! Charlie? What—" She shook her head in confusion, "Why would you think—We're not dating. We're just friends. Really good friends, but—"
"You're not dating?" Willow blinked at her, shaking her head at Buffy's amazed look. "Really?"
"Then why all the secrecy?" Xander asked, still obviously confused. "If he's just a super-smart guy-shaped version of Willow?"
"You guys haven't wanted to talk about my time in LA, and that's when I met him, so—"
Buffy stopped, her eyes going heavenward in thanks a moment before the library doors finally swung open to admit Faith and Charlie. Though she frowned as she took note of the clear embarrassment she could sense from Charlie, which was probably why Faith was laughing.
"Sorry we're late, B," Faith shook her head after a few more laughs, strolling over to the table to drop into one of the empty chairs, deliberately leaving the empty one by Buffy free. "Apparently your boy here has some fans."
"I don't—" Charlie shook his head, frowning at Faith as a distinct note of displeasure came across their bond in the wake of the strange relief he'd been feeling a few seconds earlier as they came through the doors. "Mrs. Stevenson isn't—"
"She asked for your autograph, Charlie." Faith smirked at his exasperated look even as she started ticking her points off on one hand. "Then she wanted a picture. Then she followed us halfway here. And if that other teacher hadn't distracted her, she probably would've followed us all the way here." That finished, the brunette waved her hand, still clearly amused. "So I think we can label her a fan girl. Or a math-groupie, if that floats your boat better."
"Mrs. Stevenson asked for your autograph?" Xander interrupted, a clear note of disbelief in his voice. Then, without waiting for Charlie to respond, he turned to Willow. "Is he really that famous? I mean I've never heard—"
As Willow looked about ready to bite their friend's head off, Giles apparently decided it was a good idea to intervene. "I doubt you pay attention to the circles Dr. Eppes is renowned in, Xander. Other than myself, I don't believe you know anyone of the higher academic circles, and my specialty obviously has nothing to do with mathematics. Which is entirely besides the point," the older man shook his head as he moved towards Charlie, who had just put his bad down next to the chair beside Buffy. "Good afternoon, Dr. Eppes. I'm Dr. Rupert Giles. We spoke not too long ago on the telephone."
"I remember," Charlie replied, making an obvious effort to warm up to the watcher even as he shook off his surprise from his earlier encounter. "It's nice to finally meet you in person. And please, call me Charlie."
"Isn't Mrs. Stevenson, like, seventy or sixty—"
"Xander!" Willow snapped, shaking her head when he looked at her. Then she, too, turned her attention to Charlie. Shooting to her feet to reach out and start shaking his hand. "Hi Dr. Eppes, I'm Willow. Willow Rosenberg. I tried to read some of your work after Buffy told us about you. I think I understood some of it, but a lot of it is kinda beyond what I've been studying in math. I've been focusing on magic and how it ties into science more, since I met Buffy. Though I'm still pretty good with computers. I wanted to read your work more because of the work you did to help Oz, which I can't thank you enough for. He's my boyfriend, you know. So thank you, for helping him, I mean. And—"
"Willow, breathe." Buffy cut in with a smile, shaking her head a little as the redhead shot her a surprised look. "And Charlie might want his hand back some time soon."
The redhead quickly released Charlie's hand as she obediently took a deep breath, then frowned at her boyfriend while she moved back to her seat. "You're supposed to stop me when I babble."
Oz shrugged, smiling slightly as he rose. "I like watching you babble, it's cute." He extended his hand towards Charlie before his girlfriend could reply. "Hi Dr. Eppes, I'm Oz. And like Willow said," He continued as they slowly shook hands, "Thanks."
"I'm glad I could help," Charlie offered in return. "And it's nice to meet both of you. But please, call me Charlie. That's for everybody. I'm not even a teacher yet."
"You start teaching at the California Institute of Science this spring, don't you?" Willow asked, shrugging slightly when everyone looked at her. "I Googled* his name, and CalSci was advertising." (7)
"They are?"
Willow blinked at the math-genius. "You didn't know?"
Charlie looked at her for a moment, before slowly asking, "When you say advertising, do you mean an announcement, or—"
"Yeah, there was an announcement on their homepage. And in just about every major newspaper in the country. It's in a lot of the chat rooms for high school students that are looking into college now too."
At the lost feeling she was starting to sense from her curly-haired friend, Buffy spoke up quickly. "But that just means most of your students will know you deserve to be teaching them, Charlie. Cause they'll be smart people like Willow, who know about these chat rooms and news articles and stuff." She blinked when Charlie, Willow and Giles all shot her identical looks.
"You're smart too, An—Buffy. We talked about that already, remember?" Charlie shook his head. "You can do things—completely unrelated to your superpowers—that I'm not remotely capable of."
Before anyone could respond to that the doors to the library swung open again and everyone looked up to see Cordelia walking in.
"Oh, Charlie this is Cordelia Chase. She's Xander's girlfriend." Buffy spoke up quickly, seizing the diversion to move away from the former topic—and unknowingly proving Charlie's point in the process. As she was much better at thinking quickly on her feet, diversions and similar tactics, then the math genius was sure he could ever hope to be. "Xander's the other guy here, hiding behind Oz, who hasn't introduced himself yet. Cordy, this Charlie Eppes."
"The math guy, right? By the way, I love your hair." Cordelia smiled brightly as she shook Charlie's hand, before moving off to sit by her boyfriend. "Say 'hi', Xander."
"Sorry, I'm still trying to get the picture of Mrs. Stevenson chasing you down the hallway out of my head. She's one of the strictest teachers in the school and she's been here forever." Xander finally rose, shaking his head as he extended his hand across the table. "I'm Alexander Harris. Friends call me Xander."
"It's nice to meet you, Xander. And Cordelia." Charlie nodded to both of them, before sitting down again, smiling as Buffy shifted her position a little so that she could comfortably hold his hand.
After a moment of silence, Xander spoke up again. "You're really not dating?"
6 1 9 2 0 8 1 9 0 0 0 1 6 1 5 9 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 0 2 2 9 5 2 3
Summers' House, Sunnydale, California – Friday, October 10, 1996
Faith sighed, shaking her head in annoyance. "Pretty quiet tonight, ain't it?"
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Buffy replied with a laugh.
"Well it is, isn't it?" Faith grumbled. "I mean, yeah, it's good we won't be bruised or banged up for the dance. But you said yourself that if we wanna not patrol tomorrow, we should patrol more tonight. And so far we've seen a grand total of three vamps."
"Four."
The brunette wrinkled her nose a little as she thought back on their patrol thus far, then shook her head. "Four?"
"Yeah. I got three at the Bronze. Though they might as well have counted as one altogether."
"Yeah, the Bronzer I got sucked, too." The younger Slayer agreed, before shooting her elder a sidelong glance. "Again, emphasizing the fact that the vamps we have seen tonight were all at the Bronze. So why are we wandering around Sunnydale's cemeteries for the fifth time tonight?"
"Vamps are occasionally inconsiderate enough to pass through areas we've already covered, remember?"
"Yeah, that's why C-man, Red, X-man and Wolfy—"
"Please tell me you don't call Oz that to his face."
"Of course not." In response to the skeptical look on the blonde's face, she continued, "Really, I don't."
After a moment, Buffy sighed. "Yeah. That's part of the reason they're doing that perfume...thing."
"Think it'll work?"
"Don't know," Buffy shrugged, then added curiously. "What'd you think about the computer program?"
"The one C-man and Red are working on?"
"With Giles, yeah," Buffy added, before laughing at the bemused look that Faith immediately sent her. "Though he's probably not doing much more then acting like sounding-board-guy."
"He's good at that."
"Yeah, he is." The older Slayer agreed again with a nod. "And their program is basically supposed to do what has always been the Watchers most important job."
"Watchin' the vamps. Helping us keep track of them and fight them."
"And demons, yeah."
"Not sure I get how a computer's s'posed to do that for us, but I guess we should take any help we can get, right?"
Buffy nodded, then suddenly shook her head. "No—well, yes, we can use all the help we can get, but the programs more than that. I mean, just think about it. All the work they do tracking vamp activity—if Charlie and Willow can actually get all of that fit into a program, a program that'll tell us not just when and were new vamps'll rise, but where vamps really are based on their kills. Kills that all the law enforcement agencies around the world keep track of, even if they can't stop or find justice for them. That program will tell us where we're really needed."
"And the Watchers are just gonna ask the police to start telling them about people being killed with barbeque forks? I can't see that working in Sunnydale—let alone anywhere else."
Buffy grinned, "That's why it's a good things we've got Wills. Charlie says she's a wicked good hacker-girl."
Faith gave that several seconds more thought then she'd given any of the earlier bits of information, before responding slowly. "She's gonna hack into the government's computers? She can do that?"
"Yeah, I guess she's been doin' stuff like that for a while. Just lookin' at stuff, though. It's not like Wills would hurt anyone."
"No, but... couldn't she get busted for that?"
"Huh?"
"If the cops catch her, they'll arrest her. Throw her in jail, right?"
Buffy sighed, "Probably. But Wills is really good. And she's a witch, too."
"What's that got to do with anything? I thought she just dabbled?"
"She's getting into more magic now. Especially since Charlie's put her in touch with a bunch of the coven members in LA." Buffy shook her head. "I think that's part of the reason she's really started thinking about applying to CalSci."
"She does like listenin' to C-man. Course it helps that he's cute." At the sharp look the blonde sent her way for saying that, she laughed. "What? He is. 'Specially when he really gets goin' in his math-mode."
"Math-mode?"
"Well what'd you call it when he's obviously not with us, too busy thinkin' up something brilliant?" Both girls chuckled for a moment, then Faith shook her head. "So, Red's gonna use mojo to help her hack into the government computers and—what exactly?"
Buffy sighed. "Wills has kinda been doin' this on a small scale for a while. She says that the cop's all log their data from crimes—especially how the vic was killed—in a federal database*. Probably to help the feds watch out for serial killers, or something like that." (8)
"And vamps gotta qualify as serials."
"Exactly. Whatever it is that makes normal people ignore the supernatural obviously effects the cops, and the feds. So they don't make the connection. But all the information for the victims are still put into the system*." (8)
Faith nodded, as better understanding dawned. "So if Red can hack that, their program can go through it all to find the vics of the supernatural?"
"Yeah," the older Slayer nodded. "And she's gonna try to combine that with hacking the stuff for Missing Persons—"
"Cause that's another sign of vamps and demons, got'ch'ya." The brunette cocked her head to the side even as she deftly swung the cemeteries gate open, holding it for her friend before closing it just as easily. A feat only a Slayer could handle, considering how heavy the thing was. "But ain't all of that stuff wicked protected? Secure networks, and all that?"
"Willow thinks she can handle it," Buffy shook her head again, pausing suddenly and holding a hand up as she listened carefully for a moment, before shaking her head and starting off again. They did that occasionally, and sometimes it led to pursuit of another vamp or demon. More often then not, though, they just kept patrolling. "And obviously it'll give us a lot more info then the Watchers have been able to get from the newspapers and stuff. Charlie says something like this wouldn't have been possible even a decade ago—all of this wasn't as computerized as it is now."
"But all of the law-people are moving into the modern age with us, so it should work?"
Buffy shrugged, "We definitely hope so." Then she stopped suddenly and stamped one foot in frustration. "Where the hell is everyone tonight?!"
Faith laughed, "Probably gettin' ready for the dance." She held her hands up in surrender as they older Slayer shot her a glare. "Maybe the vamps realized we'd be hittin' them harder tonight and decided to lay low?" She shrugged and shook her head. "Can't really tell, B. But it was quiet last night too."
"Yeah, I know." Buffy sighed, shaking her head again. "Is it really too much to ask that we be allowed to enjoy one nice—demon-free—night?"
"Well Debs' and the other mojo-girls from LA already put a bunch of protection spells around the Bronze, day before last. That's why the vamps we got 'round there couldn't get in. So the dance itself should be safe, right?"
"I hope so."
After a moment of silence, Faith shook her head again. "We've already been over the whole town ten times, B," she glanced at her watch and shook her head again. "And it's almost four in the morning. Why don't we call it a ni—?"
She was cut off by the sound of a scream tearing through the night—or, more accurately, early morning—air.
Shaking her head, the younger Slayer took off after the elder, muttering "Figures," before she lowered her head and laid on the speed.
3 8 1 1 8 1 2 9 5 0 1 9 0 0 0 1 6 1 5 9 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 0 2 2 9 5 2 3
Summers' House, Sunnydale, California – Friday, October 10, 1996
"Charlie, girls tend to take a while getting ready for stuff like this." Joyce Summers shook her head, smiling slightly as she set a mug full of hot chocolate down in front of the young genius.
"I know," Charlie sighed. "But they've been up there for hours."
"The limo won't be here until five-thirty, right? And the dance doesn't start till six, so they still have time. Drink your cocoa."
"Yes, ma'am," the mathematician obediently began sipping at the hot, chocolaty beverage. It'd kind of surprised him, how easily he'd gotten along with Annie's mom. But then, the older woman was so much like her daughter—and, in other ways, so similar to his own mother—that it was hard not to.
It'd certainly helped that his parents obviously loved her too. Though both he and Annie had easily been able to sense their confusion on that matter. What with Annie running away from home just a few months before, and not wanting to go back, they hadn't been expecting a woman as wonderful as Joyce Summers to be here. And she, Annie and Faith were obviously getting along fabulously, so the question going through their minds was: why did Annie runaway?
They knew Annie well enough to know that she really wasn't the kind of person to run from her problems. But that was what she'd done. And the problems she'd been running from weren't things his parents could know about. So they'd been left confused on the matter even as they left the next morning.
The familiar sound of his ringing cell phone drew Charlie out of his thoughts, and he looked around a little frantically as he tried to remember where he'd placed it to charge several hours before.
"Here ya go," Joyce was smiling as she handed him the briefly missed devise.
"Thanks," he nodded to her before flipping his phone open, "Charles Eppes."
"Hey Buddy."
Charlie blinked in surprise, then a smile slowly spread across his face. "Don?"
"What, does someone else call you that?" His older brother joked lightly, before continuing, "Yeah, it's me. How're you doin'?"
"Fine. Great, actually." Charlie shook his head, his smile getting a little bigger. "I'm just waiting for Annie and Faith to finish getting ready for the dance." He nodded to Annie's mom again as he watched her slip out of the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
"Yeah, mom said you were going to Annie's homecoming dance. Faith a friend of hers?"
"Umm, yeah. Well, they're more like sisters, actually, but—" Charlie shook his head abruptly and asked, "Is everything all right, Don?"
Don sighed over the phone, before replying slowly. "This dance, where is it?"
Charlie blinked again, "Um, a place called The Bronze. Annie said they rented the club for the night, because they didn't want to have the dance in the school gym. What—"
"Wait." Don cut him off abruptly, a sharp note of worry entering his voice. "The Bronze?
This is in Sunnydale?"
And again, Charlie blinked in surprise, "Yeah, it is. That's where Annie lives. What does—"
"You shouldn't go."
At that, Charlie had to blink several times before he could muster a reply. "What?"
"Don't go to the dance tonight, Charlie. Take Annie and, um, Faith I guess, out somewhere nice and—"
Charlie cut him off, a bit of outrage seeping into his tone as his incredulousness gave way to aggravation. "Don, we already have the tickets, rented the limo, I'm wearing a tuxedo and Annie and Faith have spent the last three—no, four—hours getting ready for this dance. During which time I've all but been banished from the upstairs." He shook his head, "I can't just call it off. Annie and Faith have really been looking forward to it. I've been looking forward to it. You know I didn't enjoy any of our high school dances. Why would you—"
"I know, Buddy," his brother cut him off, and the sincere notes of worry and regret in his tone made Charlie stop to listen. "But there was a prison break at Kern Valley two days ago."
"...And what does that have to do with whether I can go to a school dance or not?"
"Four lifers* got out. Billy and I are trackin' 'em. We caught one in Ventura. He said two of the others are headed towards Sunnydale."
Charlie shook his head, "So? It's not like they'll be going to the Sunnydale High Homecoming Dance, Don."
"Charlie, Sunnydale's not that big a town. And The Bronze—that's where the dance is, right?—is the only major club there." He could clearly hear the frustration seeping into his brother's tone, not quite managing to hide the worry that was lingering in the background. "We're not even sure on why they're headed there. But the guy we caught thinks they're responding to a hit that was put out on someone there. He thinks it's a teenage girl, and that there's a lot of money involved. That's why two of the others are going there first, instead of just running for the border."
Charlie shook his head, though he really didn't like where this was going. "So—"
"So most of the teenage girls in Sunnydale are gonna be at this dance, right? They might attack there! Billy and I are on our way with another team and the local LEO's are staking out the club, but—"
"So it should be perfectly safe for me to go."
"Charlie—"
"Annie's really been looking forward to this, and I am not going to ruin it for her," Charlie shook his head, glaring ahead of him as though his brother was standing there. "It's not like they're after me, or anything." Years of experience at being the baby brother—rather than his empathetic senses, which really only worked with Annie at long distance—had him quickly finishing the call before Don could really get going. "I'll see you later tonight, okay?"
"Charlie—"
"Bye Don." The genius hit the 'end' button on his phone, then pressed it down until it shut off. With a sigh, he slipped the phone into his pocket before finishing off his lukewarm hot cocoa and putting the empty cup in the sink and heading out of the kitchen.
He found Joyce Summers waiting in the living room, comfortably ensconced in recliner with her current book open. She glanced up as he came in, smiled, and slipped her bookmark into the novel before setting it aside.
"How's your brother doing?" Joyce asked, cocking her head to the side slightly in friendly curiosity, the familiar motion he was used to seeing Annie use making him smile slightly. "He call to wish you luck or tease you?"
"Uh, yeah," Charlie nodded slowly as he dropped down onto the couch. "Something like that."
Joyce chuckled, "I hear big brothers can be a pain sometimes," she jerked her head towards the stairs. "I'm only just getting used to handling those two, together all the time. And they didn't even grow up together."
"Yeah, Don teases me. But he can be a bit overprotective sometimes too."
"Well," Joyce shook her head. "I never had any older siblings, I'm afraid. All that Buffy has for aunts and uncles on my side of the family are really my cousins and their parents. But isn't that a big-brother's prerogative?"
"I guess," Charlie shook his head.
"What's he being over protective about this evening?"
Charlie glanced down for a moment, then looked up again as he replied. "He doesn't want us to go to the dance."
"What?" Joyce blinked at him, then a deep frown overtook her face. "Is the FBI—"
"He's tracking a bunch of convicts through Ventura. He thinks they might be coming through Sunnydale."
"Convicts?" That didn't seem to reassure her much. "Human convicts?"
"Yeah. They broke out of North Kern Prison." Charlie thought about telling her about the supposed hit they were coming to Sunnydale for, but then shook his head. There were other teenage girls in Sunnydale, it didn't do anyone any good jumping to conclusions and it would only make her worry. "But they already caught one in Ventura."
"Oh...that's good. But why are they coming to Sunnydale?" Joyce shook her head again. "It's not like they can disappear here. Most of the people that do vanish are taken by the vampires and demons. And the police don't pay attention to that anyway."
"Yeah, I—" Charlie stopped as a sudden rush of excitement shot across his bond with Annie and turned towards the stairs just in time to see the two Slayers reach the bottom. He rose at the same time Joyce did, but stayed in place as Annie's mother moved around him, two cameras in hand. His mothers and her own.
Both were wearing long formal gowns that flowed all the way down to their ankles. Faith's was mostly black, but had a shimmery-blue-look to it when she moved. Annie's dress was almost identical, except the base color was a pale blue and it seemed to shimmer a glittery silver hue.
"Oh, you two look beautiful. Here, Charlie, come over here so I can take your pictures—"
"Mom, you know they do this at the dance, too, right?"
"Parents are entitled to their own candids, also, Buffy." Joyce primly informed her daughter, while continuing to wave Charlie over and then positioning him between the two girls.
"You want the stairs as bac—"
"Smile!"
2 2 1 6 6 2 5 0 1 9 0 0 0 1 6 1 5 9 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 0 2 2 9 5 2 3
In The Moving Limousine, Sunnydale, California – Friday, October 10, 1996
Buffy tilted her head a little to the side as she regarded Charlie, who after several days of practice was doing a lot better at handling Faith's fairly gentle teasing. "You OK, Charlie?"
Both of her friends stopped to look at her.
"Huh?"
Buffy shrugged, "I don't know. You seemed worried earlier." They really should tell at least Faith and her mom about the bond. If not all the Scoobies. But she hadn't yet thought of a good way to open the topic. Let alone explain the whole thing.
"Oh, sorry." Charlie shook his head, looking a little sheepish. "My brother called a few minutes before you came down. He was kind of giving me a hard time."
"You want us ta beat him up later?" Faith offered, grinning when both of the older teens turned incredulous looks towards her. "What?"
"He's an FBI agent," Charlie pointed out slowly.
"Yeah. So if B and I get dressed up in skin-tight black outfits that don't hide our gender, with gloves and masks and everything we can beat him up."
"How do you figure that?" Buffy asked, smirking slightly even as she suppressed a giggle at Charlie's bewilderment, which she felt over their bond but could just as clearly see on his face.
"He's a big, tough guy, right?" Faith raised an eyebrow at Charlie. "Probably works out a lot, and he's got some training in how ta fight, yeah?"
"Um, yeah. I-I guess."
"So do you really think he'd report getting beat up by two girls? Especially since I'm only a little bigger than B, here, and we'd have no trouble overpowering him?"
Charlie blinked again at that while Buffy finally started snickering.
"I think that might count as an abuse of our powers, Faith," she pointed out quietly. Mindful of the limo driver, who supposedly couldn't here them through the dark screen that was up, but you could never be too careful.
"Well, yeah, but—"
"I don't want you to beat up my brother," Charlie finally put in, shaking his head. "I happen to like him," he pointed out, then rethought the statement and quickly added, "Most of the time."
Both Slayers laughed, wide smiles lighting up their faces as their laughter filled the limo.
As their amusement finally faded a bit, and Buffy spoke up again, raising an eyebrow at her best friend as she did so. "So what was Don being all over-protector about?" She couldn't stop her eyes from narrowing a bit as Charlie shifted uncomfortably. "Charlie?"
3 8 1 1 8 1 2 9 5 0 1 9 0 0 0 1 6 1 5 9 1 4 2 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 0 0 0 2 2 9 5 2 3
In Moving Limousine, Sunnydale, California – Friday, October 10, 1996
Charlie sighed, and shook his head. "He and his partner are tracking some escaped convicts. And they think they're coming to Sunnydale, if they're not already here."
"Wait," Faith was frowning at them. "Why's he trackin' them?"
"He's in fugitive recovery."
Faith blinked, "I thought you said he was in the FBI. Don't they catch, like kidnappers and bank robbers?"
"No. Well, yes the FBI does do that, but Don is actually assigned to Fugitive Recovery, and escaped prisoners is something that he works on, even if it's from a state prison."
He's a cop?"
"Oh," Faith thought about that for a second, then shrugged. "OK, I'll try not to hold that against him if we ever meet." She raised an eyebrow at Charlie, "Are we? Gonna meet 'im?"
"Um, I don't know. I guess. He'll be in Sunnydale but," Charlie shook his head a bit sheepishly, his cheeks warming a little when both girls chuckled. "He didn't want us to go to the dance, since that might be where the convicts are headed—"
"Why would they go to The Bronze?" Faith interrupted, while Annie just frowned her displeasure. "I'd think they'd be high-tailing it for Mexico if they wanted to avoid goin' back to prison."
"Well, Don says most criminals really aren't that smart, but," Charlie wetted his lips, "they might be here hunting someone."
"Hunting someone?" Annie asked, one eyebrow arching up again. "Who?"
"They caught one of the four guys, that's how they know they're coming here. I guess someone helped them break out and now they're supposed to kill someone in Sunnydale." Charlie bit his lip at the angry expressions that immediately overtook the Slayers faces.
"I don't like the sound of that," Faith muttered darkly.
"Me neither," Annie agreed, shaking her head. "Specially with the Slay-mares you've been having."
Charlie blinked, sheepishness giving way to real concern, "Slay-mares? You mean those dream-vision things you get?" He shook his head, "But they're human. I didn't think—"
"We've already seen that demons can hire human-thugs," Faith pointed out. Before frowning as she called up towards the driver. "Hey! We really didn't want the scenic route, we kinda just want to get there." At the amused looks the two older teens were sending her, she shook her head. "What? Even with C-man we woulda been at the Bronze faster on foot. He's gotta be drivin' us all over the town, or something."
Annie opened her mouth to respond, but stopped as the car came to a halt. "Well, looks like we're here." She sighed as they heard the driver's door open and shut. "I guess we'll talk about this later, OK? I mean, it's not like they'll attack us at the dance, right?" she glanced at Charlie. "If the FBI knows already, they'll probably have it protected somehow?"
"I think so," Charlie agreed, then frowned as the distinct sound of running feet, running feet moving away from the limo was heard.
"Weird," Faith shook her head. "Aren't they usually s'posed to let us out?" She glanced at Charlie, "I really hope you got a discount or something for this."
Charlie shrugged even as he hesitantly followed Annie out her side of the limo, while Faith exited on the other side. They paused, looking around in confusion as they found themselves in the middle of a heavily wooded area rather than Sunnydale's very small downtown.
"What the hell?" Faith muttered, even as she circled the limo to come up beside them.
A pang of worry along their bond made Charlie look at Annie, and then follow her gaze as she spoke.
"What's massively wrong with this picture?" Annie asked, staring at a small television set up that was set up on big boulder, obviously plugged into some kind of big battery.
Wetting his lips again, Charlie hesitantly followed the two Slayers over to the small setup of modern technology in the middle of nowhere. As they walked around to the front of the TV, they could see a VCR off to the side, with a big yellow sign that bore the words 'PRESS PLAY' in capital letters.
Annie stepped forward and did so, before stepping back so that she and Faith were both flanking him again even as a black man in a bright red suit came on the screen.
"Hello, ladies. Welcome to SlayerFest'96."
Charlie sensed both Slayers stiffen and look at each other, but kept his own eyes fixed on the man in the monitor.
"What is a SlayerFest, you ask? Well, as in most of life, there's the hunters and the hunted. Can you guess where you two fall? From the beginning of this tape, you have thirty seconds—" he glanced at his watch and shook his head, "no, that's seventeen now—to run for your lives. Faith. Buffy." He nodded on each name, as though he was really talking to them, and his smile actually widened into a creepy impression of Batman's arch-nemesis. "Have a nice death."
Then the picture faded to black, replaced by a word appearing in red and white: SlayerFest, but it also faded away a moment later.
After a second of silence Faith summarized all of their thoughts in one not-so-eloquent word: "Shit."
End of AN: Yay! I got to use the cliffhanger I wanted. A little childish, I know. But I have to keep my muses happy. :-D (Otherwise they might runaway and hide. That'd be bad. Very bad.)
Sorry, but this is the part I actually wanted a chapter to stop at in Mortal Peril. Plus I'm well-over my self-imposed pages-per-chapter-limit (I almost doubled it, actually), so Mortal Peril is officially a four-part piece.
Hope that doesn't bother any one.
OK, first off I'm going to explain why this chapter took a bit longer than normal. One, you'll notice that it's rather long. That was part of it. Then there's the end of this school semester. Final papers. Final projects. Final exams. Ugh. _
I also started Charlie's research into the history of the Slayers, and as part of that I had to make a LOT of it up. Essentially, I spent about two weeks figuring out just how many Slayers the Council had known about/worked with. How might the Slayer line have jumped around? Even in canon they weren't all Called in the same area, so logically there has to be a specific reason they were Called. So that meant Slayers from different countries. So I figured out their origins, when they were Called, etc. Then I named ALL of them... and that took FOREVER. I realize I was probably being massively over-organized, but in the long run this will help me write about Charlie analyzing it. And this is just the way my mind works sometimes, sorry.
Along that line, I did include every 'canon' Slayer I could find any mention of. From the comics, from books, from Joss's site, etc. I had to assign dates and origins to some of those, but I included every one I could think of. Then I added hundreds of others. And you will notice that when Charlie is entering them into his computer, he's doing so alphabetically, by name. First all the Slayers with just given names, then all of the Slayers by surname. As you only see the first twenty-five names on this list, you're really not seeing everybody. And the list as I'm seeing it is a table in Microsoft Excel, but won't carry that, so I had to improvise. And that's all I'll say on that (for now, at least)...
From within the chapter itself:
(1) "Credere ab Memorae" = "secrets of the past" is a very rough translation and may be grammatically incorrect. I just went to the University of Notre Dame's very handy English-to-Latin translator and looked the words (and some others) up until I could put together a reasonable-sounding title. I took Spanish in school, not Latin, and never had the chance to study to any degree of fluency, so my interpretation of the grammar may, once again, be incorrect. Feel free to correct me, if you have any suggestions.
(2 (a/b/c)) OK, all of the spells the Lincrofts mentioned were in Sumerian, which I found in the Sumerian Dictionary available under the Necronomic Research Group's Information Texts. (URL: .). Are these absolutely accurate? I really have no idea, but they sounded neat, so I hope so. If you actually know and think it's worth more research on my part, please say so.
Anyway, they translate as follows:
(a) Rakbus = Messengers (or spells to detect any kind of magical breach on something guarded by these magical messengers).
(b) Sansus = Tells (or spells that report what's occurring and who's responsible).
(c) Alals = Destroyers (or spells that attack offenders).
All of these were things the Lincrofts were expecting, but surprisingly didn't need to deal with when copying Giles' Council book.
(3) I couldn't remember if Buffy having any actual relatives in the canon was ever mentioned, though I think a few might have been. But couldn't figure out where. Therefore, the random 'great-aunt' on Joyce's side of the family got the first name 'Kristine', after the actress who played Joyce: Kristine Sutherland.
(4) I decided to go with Eliza Dushku's birth date as Faith's, and was honestly surprised when I learned that it was December 30, 1980. I was going to change the year, to make Faith sixteen—assuming Eliza was actually older—but decided the age gap between Buffy and Faith's Callings wasn't too bad. And it actually means that they were both the same age when they were Called in my storyline: 15. Buffy's age in canon confuses me at several points, so I was going more with what seems to be popular in fan fiction, that Buffy WAS 15. Not 16, which I don't think is shown in Season 1. But, anyway, that's why Faith is fifteen here.
(5) This is a paraphrased piece—some of it word for word—right out of Go Ask Malice by Robert Joseph Levy. I'll be using some of that for Faith's back-story in Mathematics & Magic, but probably not all of it since I already changed how long Faith was with Diane Dormer. Still, it seemed like a good place to start working on, so there it is.
(6) I honestly had no idea what "five by five" supposedly meant until I decided to Google it and got a link to that exact phrase on Wikipedia. Like most Buffy fans I just assumed it was weird Faith-ism. But after reading the bit on Wikipedia it seemed like the sort of thing Charlie might know, so... yeah. (URL: .org/wiki/Five_by_five)
(7) Yes, I know Google didn't exist when I've placed the storyline. They would have had to make use of Yahoo! instead. But I like Google more, so that's just another bit of writers license. (pg43)
(8) OK, all of the info from the FBI and the police being on computer networks, that's all based on the NUMB3RS episode 100 or S5E21 "Disturbed," which opened with that kind of data being put into a network that then got back to Charlie, and helped him find a serial killer that nobody else had noticed. Personally, that's probably one of my favorite NUMB3RS episodes to date, though the season 5 finale "Angels and Devils" was pretty great too. The idea of a network like that made perfect sense to me. Do I know how any of that would actually work, how easily—or not easily—Willow'd be able to hack it, or even if the exact same network would've been up and running in the late nineties? No, to all. But it just fit so well into an idea I'd already been working on, that I had to go with it. Hope it doesn't bother anyone too much.
Oh! One more random comment: I recently finished reading Christopher Golden's Dark Congress. It's probably my favorite of any of the Buffy-novels I've read so far. Though I'm only mentioning it because quite a bit of what occurs in it will probably be alluded to in (if not a huge part of one of) Mathematics and Magic. So anyone who hasn't read it might want to. Though it's not required. I'll probably summarize the whole thing before I go into actually using it. Which won't be for a while. It's set several years after the end of the series, and we're still, obviously in Season 3. And anything I'm going to do with it is well after that.
...And other than that I can't really think of anything to say.
I hope everyone liked the new chapter and apologize for the wait. Though, to be fair, I just finished my classes for this semester, with the exception of one more final this week. And, as I mentioned earlier, this chapter is almost twice the size it's supposed to be.
On the plus side, I'll have a lot more free time very soon—at least until I start working more for the summer—so I should be able to get more updates out faster. As a minus, though, I have several other fics I'll also be focusing on. But this one is my current favorite, so it'll probably get a lot more attention.
As always, REVIEWS ARE APPRECIATED!!!
Bye for now! ^_^
Jess S
NEXT: Chapter 9: Mortal Peril – Part IV.
