Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Season 8 Episode 17

Little White Lives

Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the Buffyverse, I am just a fan.

Summary: Buffy and Willow return home from LA and give the news about Fred and Cordelia. Buffy tries to mend her relationship with Giles by informing him about the Shadow Men Illyria said were coming. the troops rally and everybody puts their cards on the table including Faith who reveals what she knows and whether she took the Guardians offer. Dawn tries to mend her broken relationship with Chase with the advice of the only person who has ever been through what she was going through: Willow. She also confronts Katie.

Chapter 1

Buffy and Willow had spent the duration of the journey home composing theories about the Shadow Men and whether Illyria was telling the truth. But why would she lie? What would she to gain from lying? Neither Buffy or Willow knew the answer. They only knew that tomorrow morning was the time to call the scoobies to order and try to figure everything out from the Man in the suit, Amy, the sword Willow and Nicholas stole, the Arena of vampires, Buffy's dream, Faith's dream catcher tattoo and her new-found strange behaviour.

Buffy drifted to sleep on the plane consumed with thoughts of imposing battles and the greater good while Willow was consumed with feelings of dread and grief. Grief for Fred and grief for Cordelia. She worried about how Xander would take it after just getting his confidence back with Julie and becoming his old self again those past few months. She worried the news would destroy and cripple him but she knew that keeping it to herself would never work. He'd find out and even a friendship like Xanders' and Willows' couldn't survive such a betrayal.

They arrived back in Cleveland a couple hours after sunset and Willow turned her key in the Manor door. She pushed it open and was met by the awkward staring and silence of the entrance hall filled with 40+ teenage girls. Buffy had forgotten that Monday mornings equalled school. She shut the door behind Willow and pretended like the girls weren't even there. Instead she scanned the crowd of onlookers and found the faces of Dawn, Xander, Giles and Nicholas. Dawn got up from her seat at the dinner table, abandoning her carefully prepared waffles from Andrew and embraced her sister and Willow. "You're okay," Dawn stated as she released Buffy. The quiet sentence was made louder by the deafening silence of the newbie slayers.

"We're fine," Willow answered for Buffy who was clearly in pain from Dawn hitting her ribs.

"Well what happened…is Fred?" Dawn stammered. Buffy had forgotten that most of the girls in the entrance hall had all known Fred from their time spent in the Hyperion in L.A and would all be concerned. The two had tried to leave for L.A discreetly but word had obviously gotten around.

Buffy shook her head and darted her eyes to the ground. Willow did the same. Dawn's hands clasped her mouth and the teenage onlookers released a breath as they took the news…Fred was dead. The silence was welcomed now as people didn't want to utter a word.
The Manor door suddenly swung open and slammed shut as Faith exploded loudly into the room. She dropped her weapons on the ground unaware of the noise she was generating in the silent room and threw her, now ripped, bloodied and dusty, denim jacket to the couch. "Damn vamps are getting tougher I'm tellin' ya'," Faith said to herself. She looked up and met the leering gaze of the room. "What's with the doom and gloom?" Faith asked turning to Buffy. "Is Fred…?" Buffy shook her head again. "Oh," Faith responded. Everybody's eyes darted to the ground again.

"Look you guys," Buffy started as she moved to stand in the centre of the room. The girls that weren't in the entrance hall to begin with had gathered over the first floor landing accompanied by Vi, Rona, Simone, Andrea, Alicia and Kate and received the news. Buffy addressed them all and continued, "I know when you guys signed on to be trained you didn't expect to be burying bodies every other week. I'm sorry this has happened, I'm sorry for Alex, Bethany and Joy, for Wood, for Ana-Lucia and for Fred. You guys came here to learn, not to grieve. I just want to say thank you for all the work you've all put in with patrols while we've dealt with the losses. I know a lot of you have school in a little while so I won't keep you but be proud of yourselves and remember what we're fighting for. If not for yourselves, then for those who gave their lives for this better future we're trying to create."

"Now get to school," Faith said after a minute or so of Buffy's speech, "bus is outside."

As the girls finished their toast and orange juice, got their bags and coats and headed for the bus, Buffy gave the signal to Xander, Nicholas, Giles, Faith and Willow to follow her through the old closed door to the library. Just as Willow was about to enter the corridor, Dawn grabbed her by the arm. "Dawnie you're gunn'a be late," Willow tried to say casually. She and Buffy had already agreed to keep Dawn out of what was going on as much as possible.

"I know but I need your help with something," Dawn pleaded.

"You coming Tabitha?" Nicholas asked tantalisingly.

"Dawn I have to go," Willow said turning back to Dawn.

"It's about Chase," Dawn said. Willow looked at her and breathed out. After her fiasco with Kennedy back in L.A, Willow questioned whether her help would be any good.

"Tell Buffy to start without me," Willow called back to Nicholas.

Dawn lead Willow to the couch and they both sat down. Willow could see the panic and worry in Dawns' eyes and her concern grew more noticeable as her eyebrows narrowed. "Am I really the best person to talk to about men?" Willow asked.

"You're the only one who can help me," Dawn replied.

"Well…what do you need me to do?" Willow asked.

"Help me!" Dawn said loudly, her patience reaching its end as she heard the bus pull away in the drive.

"With what?" Willow asked; eyes wide at Dawns' panic.

"Tonight's the first night of the three fazes of the full moon since Chase was…y'know," Dawn started. Willow felt like grabbing the letter opener that lay next to the telephone and running herself through with it at that point. She had completely forgotten about Dawn's boyfriend Chase becoming a werewolf and understood exactly what Dawn was going through. Willow had done it all before with Oz and was mortified that she could have forgotten about what Dawn was dealing with.

"Dawnie I'm so sorry I haven't been there to help you with any of this," Willow said sincerely.

"It's fine," Dawn said falsely, "I get that you guys are busy but with today being…y'know today I just don't know what to do."

"You've talked to him about it though right?" Willow asked.

"That conversation got to me coming right out with 'You're a werewolf'and him running off and not speaking to me for three weeks," Dawn replied. "The thing is it's not only him, Katie's still completely oblivious about what happened at the party and what she is and I can't leave them to change tonight…what if somebody gets hurt?" Dawn asked, her eyes filling up.

"Nobodies gonna' get hurt tonight I promise you," Willow replied grabbing Dawn's face in her hands.

"What do I do? He won't even look at me," as she said this, Dawn completely broke down.

"Listen to me," Willow asserted, "right now you're gunna go to school and keep an eye on them. Do your best to keep them out of the cafeteria and anywhere with food and try to convince them to come back here tonight," Willow advised.

"What're we gunna do when they get here, I remember what Oz was like as soon as the sunset and-"

"Let me worry about that, just try to get them back here," Willow interrupted her.

"What if they won't listen to me?" Dawn dried her eyes and composed herself.

"Do the talking thing or-or make something up?" Willow suggested sheepishly.

"Okay," Dawn agreed nodding her head convincing herself all she had to do was walk up to him.

Dawn left Willow on the couch and headed to school to a day that could turn out to be worse than when Tommy Gilligan put red paint in her hair in 2nd grade and the teacher thought she'd been bludgeoned to a pulp. Willow breathed out heavily and dropped her head in her hands. "How did we get here?" she thought to herself silently as she heard the iron gates grind to a close down the drive of the private estate.
Willow knew her day was only going to get worse, she would have to tell Xander about Cordelia, Buffy was going to have to try and mend her relationship with Giles and the meeting she was missing out on would no doubt scare her into heading for the hills if what was coming turned out to be a big bad.

Realising she couldn't hide forever, she picked herself up, wiped the flame orange hair from her face and made her way through the old closed door to the library. She pushed on the door and found everybody in a huddle around a centre table cluttered with books and volumes of all things bump in the night. Giles leant against the bookcase in a grey worn jumper with a cup of tea while everybody else stood tensely with their arms tucked in pockets or folded.

Buffy had just finished her audio reenactment of what happened with Illyria in the Special Projects building and in Valahanesh. The face of those hearing the story were conflicted, relieved that the great God-King Illyria was, for now, without an army but grievous that they had lost a friend. Willow could relate. Buffy went on, "…so we said our goodbyes and after what Fre-Illyria," Buffy corrected herself, "had said about the Shadow Men…something just clicked, about everything that's happened this past year while we've been in this place, since the Hellmouth."

"What I miss?" Willow whispered quietly as she stood next to Xander.

"Not much, stuff you probably already know," Xander replied.

"I didn't know how it's connected, still don't, but I know it is," Buffy went on, "I went to see Illyria. After a lot of cryptic she told me about how the Primitive died and that-that the Shadow Men played a part in it." Buffy turned to Giles now and spoke to him only, but loudly so that everybody heard, since she'd left for L.A, "they're coming Giles. Because of the spell we did on the potentials, like the First Slayer came after the joining spell, it's like the messages have been saying, somebody is coming and now we know who."

"But you can't be sure," Giles replied.

"I couldn't be anymore sure," Buffy said confused with a narrowed brow.

"Buffy, it goes against everything we believe in, everything the council believes in. The Shadow Men started the protection of humanity by creating the First Slayer, it can't possibly be them," Giles said in disbelief.

"But-"

"Although, if the are 'coming'," Giles said the word in insulting finger quote marks, "it can't be for anything bad."

"How can you be so small minded?" Buffy asked rhetorically.

"Small minded?" Giles replied angrily. Buffy knew it was happening again, just like last time, she'd take charge because somebody had to and everybody would disagree with her, they'd kick her out and she'd have to swoop in at the last minute and save everybody. Except she didn't know if she had the emotional strength to come back again this time.

"Let's not turn this into clash of the titans," Xander stood in, "nothings for definite this is just a group of friends putting their heads together and trying to figure out what terrible thing is going to try to kill them all again."

"What I don't understand is that in every message we've received whether it be from a dream of not is that, somebody more commonly reffered to as him, is coming and she won't be here fast enough. Who's the she in the equation?" Nicholas inquired.

"I don't know," Buffy admitted dropping her head.

Faith's body began to twitch as she was the only one in the room who now had all the pieces of the puzzle, some of the pieces had jagged edges that she could easily smoothen out with a scoobies style research montage, but all the pieces were there. Her instincts told her to say nothing. If they knew what she had learned from the Gauntlet, about who 'she' was and what 'she' had to do with her, Faith worried how they'd react. Like Buffy, she too feared that a Slayer might be evicted tonight. Whether it was to be one or both remained to be seen.

"So you admit that you can't be completely sure about what's threatening us? There are a lot of powerful demons that would be angry about the spell we did; maybe it's one of them," Giles suggested hurriedly and harshly.

"And maybe it's not!" Buffy exclaimed back at him. Silence filled the room as the Watcher and his Slayer fought a battle with each other through the intensity of their gaze. Faith, Willow, Xander and Nicholas bowed their heads and contemplated the flooring of the Manor's library in a failed attempt to become an unseen wallflower.

"Backing up," Xander said stepping in again, "these Shadow Men guys made the First Slayer thousands of thousands of years ago right? And the tips kinda' in their name, Shadow Men, shouldn't they be dead by now?" Xander asked. Xander looked at the comprehensive expressions on everybody's face which also emitted confusion. "Yeah, be stumped by the logic of Xander," he thought to himself.

"Obviously extensive research is going to have to be done," Giles said outright.

"You and I both know Mr. Giles that anything you find on these men won't be anything you don't already know," Nicholas chimed in.

"Nicks right, we're tapped out," Buffy exhaled heavily.

"Maybe not," Xander added. He grabbed a pen and a bunch of sticky notes from a countertop and dropped them on the table, everybody huddled around. "What happened first?" Xander asked.

"The Old Ones," Nicholas added proudly.

"No not in general, with us since Sunnydale," Xander corrected. Nicholas stepped back.

"We moved into the manor," Buffy suggested. Xander wrote Manor on one sticky note and stuck it to the table.

"Then?" he asked.

"Uh, there was Rona and Amalia in the cemetery, the night we lost eight girls to that guy in the suit," Faith put forward.

"And the dreamcatcher tattoo," Buffy added.

"Next?" Xander went on as he scribbled everything down in a timeline on the table.

"Erm, Willow and Hecate and Osiris," Giles said as he cleaned his glasses.

"The Sunlight resistant vampires," Nicholas said.

Xanders' timeline stretched across the table from the point of the scoobies move to the Manor to Buffy and Willow returning from L.A just half an hour ago. "Now what?" Nick asked.

"Well, look for anything that doesn't make sense, if Buff's right then all of this should be connected somehow," Xander said.

"The sword," Willow and Nicholas both said together, "The one we got from Amy and the guy in the suit," Willow went on.

"What about it?" Buffy asked.

"Exactly, we don't know anything about it no matter how much research Mr. Giles and I conduct," Nick explained.

"They went to a lot of trouble to get it and protect it," Willow said remembering Nicholas being thrown into a shard of glass from a smashed mirror and impaling himself.

"He was the first to mention the fact that somebody's coming to Faith and me," Buffy added. She turned to Faith, "guess it's time we go back to that arena."

"R-right," Faith said nervously; still holding her cards close to her chest.

"You guys can't go by yourselves, Faith said it was crawling with vamps," Xander warned.

"We'll pick up Chris from the Warehouse and take whatever of the new recruits from upstairs that aren't in school," Buffy said, "we'll be fine," she reassured him.

"And what if that doesn't work?" Giles jibed.

"I'll make a few discreet phone calls to Wolfram & Hart and try to contact the senior partners," Nick offered.

"I'll hit the local dive demon bars and see what I can bribe out of a few of the patriots," Xander added too.

"I suppose the coven might know something we don't," Giles said quietly feeling defeated.

"Good, you guys this is good, everybody get on that. We can't let anything else distract us now that we're so close to figuring all of this out," Buffy smiled.

The scoobies scattered all around the Manor and the city. Xander grabbed his coat and headed straight downtown to the Cleveland undercity, Buffy asked Faith to grab the sword from the basement, Giles headed to his office to contact the coven in England until finally all who was left in the library was Buffy and Willow. "Will I hate to ask," Buffy began weary.

"What?" Willow asked.

"Maybe Hecate or Osiris know something?" Buffy thought aloud. Willow's eyes widened. The memory of being thrown across purgatory by what looked like her dead girlfriend and werewolf ex-boyfriend and being dragged through time forced to see what she wished she'd never set eyes on. Kakistos raping Faith's watcher came to mind and to nightmares.

"Buff I- I don't know about this. I mean I wouldn't have the first clue how to contact them and for good reason," Willow stammered.

"I know its scary Will but we have to try everything," Buffy pleaded.

"I can't Buffy, I'm sorry," Willow replied. Buffy nodded disappointedly. "I uh, I gotta run, I need to get supplies for Dawn from the Magic Box."

"Dawn? W-what about Dawn?" Buffy asked frantically, her concerned sister face becoming apparent.

"Don't freak out," Willow said.

"Y'know saying don't freak out tends to make the other person do exactly that," Buffy gave a weak laugh and smiled falsely.

"Tonight's the first night of the three stages of the full moon," Willow announced timidly.

"So?" Buffy asked confused. Buffy reaction made Willow feel a little better about herself. Even Buffy had forgotten all about Dawn and Chase in the midst of the impending doom.

"Y'know, Dawn's boyfriend, Chase-"

"Oh my god I'm an awful person. I'm an awful sister. I'm an awful parent," Buffy said, her eyes fixated on Willow's as Buffy realised what was happening.

"I forgot too, she came to me about it before she left for school and I said I'd do everything I can," Willow explained.

"Which is?" Buffy asked.

"Hopefully somebody at the Magic Box can help me out with that," Willow said. Even though Oz was a werewolf and she a witch, she didn't know much about the magic behind the whole thing.

"Well what can I do?" Buffy asked.

"At the most? Stay by your phone tonight and try to get the girls out on patrol or something. I told Dawn to try to get Chase and Katie back here tonight so they can make the change here and we could lock 'em up but if that doesn't work out we might need some good old fashioned Slayer smash and crash," Willow advised.

"And in the meantime?" Buffy worried.

"Go and figure all this stuff out with the Shadow Men. I can handle this," Willow reassured her.

"R-right," Buffy agreed before leaving Willow alone in the library to find Faith.