Author's Note: The Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reference borrowed from a reviewer; it seemed too apt not to use.
Disclaimer: The Buffy characters were created by Joss Whedon, the Veronica Mars characters by Rob Thomas, and the one original character by me.
X X X X X
That night, I dreamed of Lilly, briefly.
She was in my bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Ah, Veronica Mars, how you've changed."
"I usually do before bed," I said.
She laughed. "Funny. Anyway, much as I'd like to stay here and chat with you all night, I have to take you somewhere."
"I don't think I'm really dressed for going out, Lilly," I said.
"Don't be silly, Veronica." She touched me and abruptly I had on a bright pink shirt and blue jeans. "And now you look fabulous! Not as fabulous as me, of course, but then," flipping her hair back, "Who does?"
I followed her outside and down the stairs. When I started to go outside, she said, "Nope. He's down another flight." I looked down and son of a bitch if there wasn't another flight of stairs heading downwards.
The apartment building doesn't have a basement. But then, this was a dream, so I guess now it did. Lilly gestured for me to walk down and I did.
I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and there he was, sitting behind a desk. The Adversary. The one who sent me here. "Figures you'd be underground," I snapped. "What do you want?"
He laughed, "Not much, manhunter. Just to check on your progress."
"You mean you're not able to keep track of me every second of every day?" I asked acidly.
"My dear, I'm neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and you are not the only one I'm testing at the moment. As close as you're going to come unless you make it all the way to season seven."
"The First is hardly omnipotent. Or omniscient," I said.
"I never said I was talking about the First," the Adversary said. "Anyway, so far you've been living up to your end of the bargain."
"To the letter," I said. "And only to the letter."
"True. You came close to violating the agreement when you pointed your father in the general direction of Amelia Decompress --"
"I came nowhere close," I said. "That's a thought process. I didn't mention Abel Koontz's daughter at all."
"My game, my rules," he said.
"No. If you can change the rules in the middle of the game, there's no point in playing. You're as bound by the rules as I am, or otherwise, why test me?"
"You said you could change the Buffyverse for the better. I took you at your word and gave you conditions."
"You didn't let me not play."
"You could have not played."
"Yes. Because I so desperately wanted everyone I cared for to die horribly. That's a Hobson's choice and you know it. Now. Is that all?"
"No," he said, his face getting serious. "So far you've made things only marginally better."
"Sheila's alive. I'd say that's more than marginal."
"To her? Sure. In the grand plan of the universe? Let me put it this way. There's a Star Trek episode called The Doomsday Machine. It involves a planet-killing machine that Kirk needs to destroy, despite interference from another captain who lost his crew to the planet-killer. The name of the science officer on that other ship was Masada. Mentioned one time on one episode of a TV show. Sheila surviving is a thousand times more trivial than that." Then, sounding deadly serious, he added, "So you need to live up to your end of the bargain."
"I will." I didn't have a choice
"Good. Now --"
"Hold it," I said.
"Not many people have the courage to interrupt me," the Adversary said.
"As you've noticed, I'm not most people. Now. Next time, don't send Lilly. I don't want my thoughts of her corrupted with thoughts of you."
He said, "Very well. It's a small concession."
"Not to me."
X X X X X
Back when I went through these dreams of Lilly the first time, I woke up in the middle of the night anguished, anxious and with absolutely no shot of getting back to sleep.
Until now, I'd been spared that.
Damn the Adversary. Damn him for putting me through this. Damn him for putting everyone through this, up to and including Don Lamb. I had no use for Deputy Lamb, but even he didn't deserve to have his life played with like this, whether or not he was actually aware of what was going on.
Damn him for putting the Buffy characters through this. I thought -- I hoped -- I could make things better. But right now, the sum total of my improvements was that Sheila was still alive, and had cleaned up her act somewhat, making her somewhat less likely to end up vampire chow at some point in the future.
The problem, once again, was that I wasn't a vampire Slayer; I wasn't physically capable of changing things, beyond the judicious application of a little holy water. I've never lacked self-confidence in my ability to manipulate others when I had to -- I bow to no one except the illustrious Keith Mars in that regard -- but I've never had the stakes be quite this high before.
And I had to stay behind the scenes. If pressed, I could reveal to Buffy and company that I knew about vampires; a reputation for not being stupid would help me there. I could not reveal that I knew what was coming next. Not for love, not for money, not under a truth spell. (Did they exist in the Buffyverse? I couldn't remember.) So that made my job even more difficult.
If the Buffyverse was Hamlet, my world was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had secretly been more like Iago, than "attendant lords . . . that will do/To swell a progress, start a scene or two."
Yes, I am reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; why do you ask?
To flush such depressing thoughts from my head -- and you know how much luck I've had avoiding being cynical in the past -- and continued to read Eliot. About a half hour or so before I was scheduled to wake up anyway, I went into the bathroom and had a nice, long soak in the tub, before taking Backup out for a walk.
Yes, I realize the order should have been reduced, but I needed the relaxation more than I needed to be absolutely clean when I got to work. And Backup, while an energetic dog, wasn't the type to go dragging me hither and yon if I clearly was in the mood to hustle back to the apartment. I promised him an extra-long walk later.
He gave me a doggie look that indicated he was going to hold me to the promise.
School, honestly, was kind of a blur. Part of me was dealing with the Adversary showing up again; part of me was dealing with what I was going to say to Warren Mears.
And yet I still got 100 on a pop quiz in chemistry. Go figure.
I did notice a couple of signs of Reptile Boy going on around me -- if I remembered correctly, this was the night of the big party.
I had figured out what I did that had changed history, slightly: Xander had run off before the end of the scene, and I think in the episode he stuck around to spy on all of Buffy's interaction with the frat guys. This time around, I drove him off.
I hoped that didn't have any long-term repercussions. I couldn't see how it would, but I've been in the detective business long enough to get the law of unintended consequences.
In any event, I'd been avoiding direct interactions with the Scooby Gang all day, just to be on the safe side.
After school, I headed over to the Mears residence. No one was home -- of course, since Warren was at the private school. It would probably be at least another twenty minutes.
So I went back to my Norton's Anthology. I hadn't really been much on poetry, but it gave me something different to do while I waited.
After twenty minutes of skimming through Yeats, Auden, and Matthew Arnold, an old-style station wagon came up. A woman who had to be Warren's mother got out of the front seat; Warren himself got out of the back.
The back? Odd. Usually when there were two people in the car the passenger sat next to the driver. If Mommy dearest was making him sit in the back, that spoke to some serious psychological problems in that family.
Not that that excused anything. Logan had grown up with a sociopath abuser as a father; and while he had and always would have mental issues, he was neither sociopath nor abuser. You could transcend your past. This might be explanation, but it was not excuse.
I got out of my car after Mrs. Mears had entered the house, but before Warren had. "Warren Mears!" I called. Out.
He looked up at me. "Yeah? What do you want?"
"I want to talk to you."
"Well, that's obvious, blondie; if you wanted to shoot at me you'd have done it already."
"You have a lot of people wanting to shoot at you?" Somehow this didn't surprise me.
"No. Look, I've got a lot of homework to do. So ask your questions."
"You were at Cordelia Chase's Christmas party."
"I was, and that isn't a question."
Ah. Difficult by definition. This would be loads of fun. "Do you remember seeing me there?"
He thought for a second. "Yeah. You were the drunk chick, weren't you?"
"Drugged, not drunk. But yes. Your memory is working perfectly so far. Let's see how well it keeps working."
A voice came from inside the house. "Warren?"
"I'll be in in a minute, ma," Warren said. "Keep going, blondie. I don't have all day."
"Later on in the evening, the two musicians carried me into one of the back bedrooms after I essentially passed out to stop me from embarrassing myself."
"--okay. Yeah. I remember you disappearing. I was kinda disappointed -- looked like it could be fun. No offense."
"None taken," I said dryly. "So. How'd you merit an invite? You're not exactly one of the cool crowd. No offense."
"One of the benefits of having a rep for being a big brain," Warren said. "Neighbors who attend that hellhole ask me for . . . academic help."
"Tutoring, right?" I asked innocently. He gave me a don't-be-stupid look, which I took to mean that he was writing papers. Not clearly enough that I could use it to blackmail him, unfortunately. "Okay. That's not really important. And one of the conditions of some of your recent . . . help, was that you get an invite to the hottest party of the year. How'm I doing so far?"
"Yeah, that's pretty much how it happened," he said. Good. That part matched up.
"And now for the important part," I said. "I've got a couple of different reports that say you were seen lingering around the door to the back bedroom I'd been dumped in. Now," I said in my most pleasantly phony voice, "What were you doing there?"
He shook his head nervously. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Bzzzzt!" I barked. "Sorry, Warren, that's the wrong answer. Would you like to try again? And note that saying that you don't know what I'm talking about is not an answer."
He sighed. "Alright, alright. I watched, okay?"
"Watched what?"
"I watched you and Duncan Kane going at it."
"Is that it?" I asked.
"Well, I would've taken pictures if I'd had a video camera," he said sharply. "Otherwise, no. Nothing else happened."
"Warren!" the voice from the house came, more firmly this time.
"We done?" Warren said.
"For now," I said. I didn't have enough to get him on anything more than being a sociopathic little pervert. Which, let's face it, I knew going in. If he raped me, I wasn't going to prove it here and now.
"Good." He turned around and left.
So. Now what?