Chapter 35.

Back at the Bronze.

"I bet that didn't go over well." Buffy smiled, enjoying another of Glory's disappointments just a little too much.

"You're right, it didn't." Glory said bluntly, "Your mother's first watcher was very old school. He was in his late 50's and still lived in the past. He didn't believe in slayers having or needing help. He didn't believe in being friends with the slayer. He was a cold, unfeeling old man who demanded perfection from Joyce and yet was anything but perfect himself."

Buffy sat up as she heard about her mother's watcher, "I don't know much about her first watcher. I only know about Giles and I'm still trying to deal with that."

"I can tell you that Giles is a saint compared to Carlton Edwards III. He was a lazy man who enjoyed pushing Joyce to her limits. He spent his time pointing out her failings, yet never spent a second on all the things she did so well. Once he found out Joyce was working with someone, he was furious. At first he wanted to have her suspended for putting a human's life in danger, but then, he used one of his many contacts with the dark side to find out that I was a god."

"I knew it. You put my mom's life in danger. This is what I'd expect." Buffy jumped on the first chance she could to condemn Glory.

"Aren't we quick to judge? You sure want me to be the bad guy. Why is that?" Glory asked, stepping in front of Buffy.

Buffy was quick to get in Glory's face again, "I don't want you to be anything. I know what I've heard and I know I don't trust you. All I know is you put my mom's life in danger. Did you want me to smile and thank you? That's not how it works."

"I want you to listen to the whole story before you make up your mind." Glory said, resisting the urge to put Buffy in her place. "If I may continue, once Carlton found out I was a god he actually came to me and tried to buy me off. He was willing to give me money, secrets or anything else I wanted, just so I'd stay away from Joyce. I turned him down and told him to stay away from me or I'd get mad. He didn't take that well as you might expect."

"Not many people respond well to orders." Buffy added.
"Maybe not, but I wasn't concerned about his feelings. He was trying to keep me away from your mother and I wouldn't have it and neither would she." Glory paused as she thought about how Joyce used to defend her so strongly to Carlton, "It wasn't until Carlton saw us kissing one night that he really became incensed."

"Oh god, spare me the details." Dawn said as she put her hands over her ears.

"There's nothing dirty about a kiss little one." Glory smiled, "I'm not sure what motivated him the most, but he was determined to get me out of your mother's life, no matter what he had to do to accomplish it. Let me tell you something, Carlton Edwards is a very creative man."

"You say it like you're impressed by it." Buffy said, constantly looking for ways to pick at Glory.

"Yes, I was impressed, but only so I could understand him better. I had to learn what he was capable of before I could figure out a way to stop him." Glory explained, "I underestimated him. I wasn't prepared for the elaborate lengths he went to in order to discredit me and make me look bad."

"Awe, what did big bad Carlton do?" Buffy mocked.
"He created lies about me. Lies even I had trouble explaining. Even back then, 20 years ago, he had access to technology that allowed him to create some of the most elaborate and believable lies ever. It's something you both should hope never happens to you. Once the trust was gone, the relationship we had was gone with it."

Buffy was shaking her head, "I don't believe our mother would accept a lie about someone she trusted. She's the fairest person I've ever known. I just don't see her getting fooled by some made up story. It makes no sense."

"No, it doesn't make sense and I'll tell ya why, it all looked real. Everything they did. I couldn't explain it. I believed it was real and I knew it wasn't. I thought at first they had somehow cloned me or it was just a look-alike, but it wasn't. The voice was me, the body, the movement, everything. Using digital remastering, they were able to create a tape of me doing things I can hardly talk about even now. Even knowing they are lies and manipulations."

"How did one man do all this?" Dawn asked, opening up yet another packet up mustard for Sigmund.

"He wasn't acting alone. He had the help of the Watchers Council. They did not like your mother working with me any more than Carlton did. They helped create all this. It took them months to set it all up and then they brought in Joyce to see their little show. I can't imagine how seeing all that must have hurt her. They were so cruel in what they did. It was malicious. It was designed to hurt Joyce. It did. It was designed to make her lose trust in me. It did. It was designed to make her hate me and want to destroy me. It did all that."

"You still haven't said what they showed her. It had to be pretty bad for my mom to believe it and then turn against you so quickly. Didn't she give you a chance to explain?" Buffy asked, hoping to hear a yes in Glory's response.

"Yes, she did ask me to explain, but at the time I had no idea what she'd seen. She kept saying it was too hard for her to even think about. I just knew it was bad. She asked if I knew some names she tossed out. I didn't. I'd never met the people she mentioned, but of course she'd seen me on tape with these people so it looked like I was lying. Worst of all, they had created a tape of me in bed with Spike. She knew of Spike, she talked about wanting to be the one who stopped his reign of terror and make sure he never killed another slayer. Sadly, the Spike tape wasn't even the worst thing they had me do."
For a moment, both Buffy and Dawn felt sorry for Glory, but neither wanted to show it. Buffy did want to hear more though, "What was the worst thing they had you do on these tapes?"
Glory paused and sat down beside Buffy, "I don't know if I can talk about it. It shows the depth of depravity that people will go to just to get their way. It's the worst side of humans. What they showed me doing was something I still can't believe happened."

"I think we need to know everything." Buffy said softly, "In order to understand what went on with you and my mother, we both deserve the truth; all of it, even the not so nice parts. If you don't think Dawn should hear this, then I'll have her leave the room."

Dawn's face turned red with anger and she got to her feet and stomped then on the floor in front of her sister, "Oh no you won't. I'm not a child. I want to know what this is about as much as you do.

"I think she can hear it, it's not the worst thing in the world, it's just horrible that they would have me do this. I saw the tape afterwards and I don't know how they did it, but I swear, it was real, except I was never with this person." Glory said, looking at the faces of the two girls across from her, "Okay, they had me in bed with a younger girl, someone about your age Buffy, or maybe even closer to Dawn's age, she was certainly underage. Apparently, she was a neighbor's daughter, someone your mother took care of when she was younger. So the fact your mother knew her and loved her almost like her own just made it even sicker for your mother to see."

"You didn't sleep with this girl?" Buffy asked, just to be sure."

"No I did not sleep with her." Glory shouted, offended she had to answer that after her emotional speech just moments before, "I was in love your mother then, I wouldn't do that to her. I was experiencing something I'd never thought I'd get a chance to. Feelings, emotions and I was so happy when this all started. I wasn't sure what I was feeling until I started losing your mother to these lies and rumors. But the thought of not being with her was the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life. It was unbearable and it still is, because I've never seen her since. Some of it was my choice, but most of it was part of an agreement I made with this company I began working for. I wasn't allowed to have contract with your mother ever again. At the time I signed the contract, I didn't think there was any hope for us and yes, I was still angry that she believed all those lies."
"Sounds like you gave up on my mom." Dawn said, almost upset at the idea.

"There's still some things you don't know. Like why your mother banished me for all those years. At first, she just wanted me away from her. It was too hard for her to see me, so I moved out. That wasn't enough for Carlton, he wanted me dead and gone. So he took his little plan to the next level."

"How much worse can he get?" Buffy asked.

"Much worse." Glory answered as she began pacing back and forth in front of the two girls, "Joyce's mom and dad moved to Washington and they would fly up for the holidays and I even met them once at Thanksgiving and they were really nice people. It was a couple weeks before Christmas and her dad called and said they had to come early because he would be out of town on Christmas day. They arranged to visit on the Friday before Christmas and since your mother was so upset about everything, this was a perfect time for her to see them again. Only it never happened. They died in a tragic plane crash that killed everyone aboard. She thought it was an accident for the first couple weeks, but then Carlton came to her door and spun a much different story."

Dawn was visibly angry at the things Carlton had done, "I hate this guy already and I don't even know him. How did he get to work for the Watchers Council, aren't they the good guys?"

"Even good guys can do bad things. It's what makes humans so unpredictable." Glory said as she looked over at Dawn, "Carlton tried to console your mother, but she wasn't happy to see him. He told her that it was it me who caused the plane to crash and that I did it out of anger and for revenge for her kicking me out of her life. They had created yet another lie of tape where it showed me tampering with the plane's engines. I mean, it was so diabolical, in many ways it was pure evil genius."

"I still don't understand how this could happen to a god." Buffy said, as she tried to comprehend everything Glory was telling her, "Couldn't you just zap your hand and make it all go away? What powers do you even have? It doesn't seem like you did a thing to help yourself. You just let this guy railroad you out of town without a fight. I don't get it."

"I guess that's where the emotions came into play. I didn't see the tapes until years after, but at the time I couldn't imagine what they showed her that could make her lose trust in me so quickly. I was hurt. I felt like she didn't give me the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't used to feeling these things. I was used to being in control. I felt weak and I didn't handle the situation very well, but once your mother felt I was responsible for killing her parent's, she wanted me to pay. I couldn't fight back, not like I used to. I didn't want hurt her. She was a victim of a sick game, but I couldn't bring myself to use my powers on her. In the end, I let her banish me."

"So she banished you where?"

"Into another dimension. Even the other gods couldn't reach me for over 15 years. I was stuck in space. Time moved faster in this dimension, but it was still a long, long, time in the middle of nowhere. All's I could do was think. When you think for that long, you tend to go a bit crazy. I lost track of reality and even when I was released, I was still not quite there, you know. I needed time to clear my head and while I was clearing my head, Wolfram & Hart approached me about joining them."

"You, a bit crazy? Say it isn't so." Dawn said with a sarcastic smile, with Sigmund rolling over laughing at Dawn's little dig.

Buffy didn't smile, she was too busy focusing on the law firm Glory just mentioned, "Wolfram & Hart? We've just found out that they're an evil law firm that is not to be trusted and you worked for them? Tell us how you're not evil again?"

"Just to set the record straight, I didn't work for them, I was and still am the CEO. Technically, they worked for me. Glad we got that out of the way." Glory said calmly and kept on going, "I still find it amusing and more than a little annoying how you ignore most everything I just said and pick out one little thing you don't like, just so you can paint me as evil. That's fine, but I'm not gonna deny working there, but it doesn't change a thing that happened before your mother banished me. I still don't if she knew the truth about the tapes being manipulated. Now that I do, I wanted to show her that she was wrong about me."

"I don't know if she knows about the tapes either, but that's between you are her. Why did you come to us? Why not go directly to her?" Buffy asked, still unclear about Glory's motives.
"Well, I thought your mom was going to be home today, so I had no idea you were here." Glory responded as she stood up and looked out the window, "I am glad I got a chance to talk to you about all this. It was good to get it all out in the open.

"I still have no proof any of what you said really happened, so I will treat you like an evil god until someone can confirm any of this story of yours. Now, get out." Buffy ordered as she walked up to the much taller woman.

Glory smiled at Buffy, and looked down at her, "Out of respect for your mother I will refrain from squashing you, for now, but if you continue your insolent behavior, that will change in a heartbeat."

"Goodbye Glory." Buffy said, holding in what she wanted to say.

"Yes, goodbye Buffy and it was nice meeting you Dawn. You're such a pretty young woman." Glory then turned back to Buffy, "I'm sure we'll be meeting again. Tell your mom I stopped by. Thanks, bye now."

Buffy held Dawn close and watched as Glory disappeared from the room.

"She said I was pretty. Maybe she isn't crazy after all." Dawn said with a smile.

"What am I gonna do with you?" Buffy grinned and began tickling her sister.

End of Chapter 35.