(8/28/2017) Hooray this took forever! Sorry about that. Former promotion was a fiasco, changed jobs completely to something completely awesome, and I'm not quite satisfied with how this chapter turned out. Good news is the next chapter is already in the works! Probably be up in less than a week.
The Buffy stuff is slightly out of order. Because.
Thank you thedarkpokemaster, RHatch89, jkmp28, the mystery guest Sage, and demon 19027 for the preliminary reviews! And all you favoriters and followers get shiny gold stickers!
Sam and Dean arrived early Thursday morning and, in order to facilitate the continued deception that Angel was still in Hell, took residence in the Summers' guest room. They each fell into their respective beds to sleep off the ride but were wakened a few short hours later by the delicious smells wafting from down below.
They had a wonderful, incongruently normal, Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was moist and filled with bread and cranberry stuffing. Biscuits and mashed potatoes were piled high. Gravy was poured on nearly everything. Buffy and Dean even partook of the green beans after a good deal of cajoling from both Joyce and Sam. Pumpkin and apple pie was had by all, with very little left over after Dean had gotten to the remainder. All in all the dinner was a merry family affair with thoughts of Heaven and Hell far from everyone's minds.
On Friday over breakfast, however, there was Sunnydale business to be taken care of. Buffy let her brothers know that the previous Tuesday night had seen the arrival of Gwendolyn Post, a woman that had ostensibly arrived to replace Faith's murdered Watcher. She'd turned out to be a fraud, having been debarred some months earlier from the Watcher's Council for practicing dark magic. Her goal had been the Glove of Myhnegon, a powerful artifact that could generate its own lightning. It had ultimately been the instrument of her downfall.
There were two issues that Buffy needed help addressing after the incident. The first was that the secret of Angel's return from Hell was out (making their cramped sleeping arrangements an unneeded farce) and her friends and Watcher were still furious with her. In her opinion, Dean was the best person to confront the others about the subject.
"Huh?" he asked confusedly. "Why me?"
"Because you know what happens to people in Hell?" Buffy replied. "Maybe you could, I dunno…"
"Get them to be sympathetic?" Sam offered.
"Yeah! That!"
Dean peered at the two of them suspiciously. "Is this some kinda trick to get me to talk about it?"
"No," Buffy said, a little too innocently.
Her eldest brother made a noncommittal noise, which was the most his siblings figured they would get for now, and asked what the second issue was. Apparently it was Faith.
Faith's final word regarding the false Watcher, a woman with whom she had apparently formed a bond, had been to rue the moment she'd allowed herself to trust Gwendolyn Post; to trust anyone for that matter. The girl had rebuffed any attempts to console her about the subject and had, so far, managed to completely avoid Buffy and any of her friends. Faith had even managed to check in with Giles without tipping off his other Slayer to her presence.
Worried, Buffy pleaded with her brothers to at least try to talk with Faith. The youngest sibling reminded them of the tragedy that had brought the second Slayer to Sunnydale in the first place and the fragile pretense Faith had erected to protect herself from the trauma. As far as Buffy was concerned, seeing as how her counterpart lacked any known parental figures, Faith's Sunnydale associates made up the entirety of her support system.
"I'm worried what she might do," Buffy said quietly.
"Why?" asked Sam.
"Because I've watched how the two of you react to bad things and I don't want to see her drink and screw herself to death!"
Sam grimaced and Dean frowned, both recalling the vices that they'd fallen to in their respective melancholies. Then the latter smirked. "At least the second way wouldn't be a bad way to go."
Buffy reached over the table and smacked him on the arm. "I'm serious!"
"Ow! Fine, fine!"
The rest of the weekend was spent on one or the other of the tasks that had been laid before them. Dean had the relatively easier task. He went straight for Giles rather than bother with the teenagers and impressed upon the Watcher the horrors of Hell. Whatever transgressions Angel had committed with a blackened soul had been paid back with interest in the Pit and made their resentment seem rather petulant.
In a moment of pettiness, Giles pushed for details. He was taken aback at being suddenly shouted at by an incensed, and heavily armed, hunter. As soon as Dean had slammed his front door (nearly rattling his windows from their frames), the Watcher called his Slayer to ask if she had any insights as to her brother's disturbing behavior. She clumsily evaded his probing and Giles decided to let it be for the time being.
Sam, however, had no success whatsoever. Faith stubbornly refused to answer calls or texts. She even deigned to answer her door even though the television audibly clicked off as soon as he began knocking. When he began to pick the lock, there was a loud thunk. He stepped back after finding two inches of serrated steel poking out from the wood near his fingers.
The three unanimously decided to give Faith a day or two more to sulk before trying again. Buffy's brothers weren't too thrilled to be stationary while they still had very little to go on regarding Lilith and the seals, but when she came home Monday after school with a box of chocolate bars as a bribe Dean capitulated.
Tuesday afternoon found a completely baffled Buffy sitting on the curb outside of school with her similarly baffled friends.
"First Ms. Barton," Xander murmured, "and then Mr. Park."
"I don't think I've ever seen a gym teacher that happy to play dodgeball," Oz added. "Like, actually on the floor playing dodgeball."
"My tummy still hurts," Willow said piteously as she rubbed the offending area. Her boyfriend gave her a comforting squeeze.
"You think that's bad?" Buffy asked. "I heard Ms. Bennett giggle because the textbook said 'Tricky Dick.' That's not even that funny."
Xander's snicker gave lie to Buffy's assertion. She threw him a withering look, then began to wonder, "Where's Dean? He said he was going to pick me up after—"
Her query went answered a moment later when the Impala came screeching around the corner and into the parking lot, did a donut on the pavement, then drifted to a stop a mere three feet away from where Buffy and her friends had scrambled to their feet. Dean promptly hopped out of his seat and onto the windowsill to bark, "Yo!"
When all he got were varying degrees of silent astonishment, he threw out his hands (dropping a candy wrapper out of one of them) and said, "What?"
"Dean," Sam whined quietly from the passenger side. "Come on, lets go."
Concerned, Willow peered into the car to gently inquire, "Sam? You okay?"
"Fine," he muttered. The hunter took a sullen bite of chocolate and stared down at his feet.
Buffy shrugged and opened the back door. "Can we go to Giles' apartment? He didn't show up today. Kinda worried."
"The old fart can take care of himself," Dean scoffed as he slid back inside the car.
Sam gave his brother an especially irritated glance before beginning to unwrap another candy bar. Frowning, Buffy asked, "You guys are going to give me money for all the extra ones you're eating, right?"
"Of course!" Sam cried indignantly.
Dean merely snorted before gunning the gas pedal and squealing out of the parking lot as loudly as he could.
Oz, Willow, and Xander all stared at the departing Impala. They winced as Buffy's screams drifted out from the open windows. As it vanished around a corner, Cordelia approached and peered down the road. "Was that Dean's car?"
"Yup," Xander answered.
"He's going to get a ticket or something," Willow said worriedly.
"Don't think so," Cordelia refuted. "Look."
The group of friends gazed in the proffered direction. There, under a shady tree, sat two uniformed policemen, their patrol car parked partially on the sidewalk, nonchalantly munching on chocolate. As the teenagers watched, the two entered some sort of disagreement, pointing upwards at a squirrel munching an acorn. When one stood, pulled his pistol, and directed it at the unsuspecting rodent, Willow immediately said, "Time to go!"
The four fled, along with the few remaining students, as the pair of law enforcement officials entered a spontaneous sharpshooter contest.
When an ecstatic Buffy came pelting out of Giles' flat, her mother's keyring in hand, her brothers gave each other startled glances and leapt from the car. Before their sister could unlock the SUV, Sam snatched the keys while Dean demanded, "Are you mental?"
"Mom said I could drive!" Buffy replied, exultant. "Sam, Gimme!" She jumped up and down in a futile effort to reclaim her prize from her much taller sibling.
"You don't know how to drive," Sam scolded. "It's too dangerous. I'm giving these back to your mom."
"'Too dangerous'?" his sister repeated incredulously. "This coming from the guy who was touting the goodness of demons the last time I saw him?"
Buffy was dumbfounded when her younger brother appeared to choke back tears, his head bowed and his face turned to one side. "Still not giving these back," Sam mumbled as he pocketed the keys.
"Oh for—" Buffy threw her hands out and let them drop. "Fine! At least let's go pick up Willow."
"What for?" Dean demanded sullenly.
"We need to study."
After another harrowing trip through the streets (during which a terrified Willow reconsidered taking up her grandfather's faith), Buffy decided that they needed to destress before diving into their math homework. An hour or two at The Bronze couldn't hurt in her opinion. Dean eagerly clarified that he was old enough to buy his own beer and agreed to the diversion.
Only when they got there, the floor was filled with old people. A highly perplexed Oz was on stage with his band playing for an abnormally appreciative audience while Willow's physician and Buffy's elderly science teacher cavorted next to the guitarist like…
"Us," Buffy declared after observing the spectacle for several minutes. "They're acting like a bunch of us."
"I don't act like this," Willow replied confusedly.
"No, you act like that," Buffy retorted as she pointed behind her friend.
Willow swiveled around and beheld a hunched over Sam, his face in a mug of beer and one leg quivering with annoyed boredom, looking around the room with undisguised dismay. He glanced over at his sister pleadingly just as an drunken, half-dressed man collided into his back. Even more discomfiting was the sight of Principal Snyder, currently sitting across from Buffy's now beer moistened brother, pointing at Sam and gleefully chortling at the incident.
"Ha-ha!" Snyder crowed. "Loser!"
Willow and Sam's faces reflected the same disconcerted expression at the scene. At seeing her comment validated, Buffy allowed herself a moment of smug satisfaction. The feeling fell apart when she caught sight of her other brother feeling up some woman on the couch underneath the stairs. Brunette locks spilled out to the floor near his head and a shapely leg was gripping his back.
"Oh, for God's sake!" Buffy cried. She stomped over and yanked Dean up off of his paramour by the back of his coat. Over his protestations, she gasped out, "Miss Franks?"
Buffy's attractive, middle-aged math teacher sat up and patted her disheveled hair. She paid no attention to her confounded student; instead, she licked her lips lasciviously at Dean.
"Ugh, gross," Buffy groaned as she gripped Dean's wrist and pulled her now sexually frustrated brother away. On the way to the exit, her other hand snaked out and snatched Sam's collar. The Slayer weaved her way through a knot of high spirited grandparents, a pair of men who appeared to be fighting over a bored looking woman, and several more pairs of adults giving in to their libidos. A perturbed Willow followed.
Oz slipped through the door after his girlfriend and nearly shut it on Snyder's arm. "Hey!" whined the principal. "You guys aren't trying to ditch me, are ya?"
Buffy dropped one gloomy and one indignant brother on the pavement and whirled around to face her friends. "We should go back to Giles. He should know what to do."
"You ain't my mom," Dean grumbled as he picked himself up. "I don't got to do what you say."
The eldest of the siblings stepped back when his significantly smaller sister brandished a fist in his face. "You really want to try arguing with me right now?"
Dean glowered down at Buffy for a few moments. "Bitch."
It took all of Buffy's restraint not to plant her knuckles into her big brother's nose. Willow placed a cautious hand on her friend's shoulder. "It'll be okay when we can get to Giles'."
"Of course," Oz added soothingly. "I mean, even if he's sixteen, he's still Giles, right? He's probably a pretty together guy." When his girlfriend murmured something doubtful, he asked, "What?"
"Giles at sixteen?" Buffy clarified. "Less Together Guy, more Bad Magic Hates the World Ticking Time Bomb Guy."
"He was a witch?" Dean asked, disgusted.
After rolling her eyes Buffy ignored the query. "Let's go. I need you to drive."
"My Baby ain't a taxi!"
"Your 'Baby' is going to get keyed if you don't get your butt in the driver's seat and take us to my Watcher and my mother!"
"Bitch," Dean repeated and headed for the Impala. Sam followed afterwards walking awkwardly with his hands in his pockets. Before entering the car he nearly fell, his feet tangling with one another, much to his brother's amusement.
"I'm too tall," Sam whined. "My feet are too big."
"Well, you know what they say about dudes with big feet."
Beyond disgusted at this point, Buffy shoved Sam into the front seat and slid in afterwards. Willow and Oz clambered into the back with Snyder incongruently smashing himself in along with them. "Where we goin'?" he asked excitedly.
"Get the dork out," Dean demanded.
"No time!" Buffy objected. "Go!"
Grumbling, Dean revved the accelerator a few times before releasing the brake and squealing off. "Whoa, Winchester!" Snyder cried. "You drive like a spazz."
Giles' was empty, but the streets were not. It was past sunset and people, all of them well into their twenties, thirties, and beyond, were engaging in activities that fit neither the hour or their age. A group of men were standing in a clutch under a tree catcalling every woman that walked by. Several others had taken up the swings and appeared to be recklessly competing over who could go the highest. More than one pair were romantically entwined in various exposed places.
They abandoned the Impala after watching the wreck that occurred after an impromptu drag race. Dean and Snyder had howled and guffawed at the results while Willow, Oz, and Sam wore similarly appalled expressions. Buffy merely sighed. Thankfully both drivers walked away with nothing more than a few scrapes but no one (particularly Dean) wanted to risk the Impala becoming the victim of a similar incident.
After spotting the chocolate bars being liberally consumed by both the strangers and the three adults accompanying them, Willow and Buffy came to the same conclusion: the candy itself must be cursed. Through some not so gentle coaxing Snyder revealed that the candy was being distributed out of a company a mile or so away.
A half hour's brisk walk later found them arriving at the shipping and receiving area. They found it clogged with adults clamoring for more chocolate bars. The six of them marched towards the crowd, Buffy in the fore, to confront whoever was behind this nonsense.
Only after several steps the Slayer stopped. Dean, who was on her heels, came to a halt as well and was plowed into by Sam and Snyder. The three pseudo-adults thumped to the concrete as Buffy, incredulous, stared at a passionately entwined couple off to one side. "Mom? Giles?"
"Go away," the disheveled Watcher mumbled into Joyce's lips. "We're busy."
Repulsed, Buffy pulled her mother out of Giles' embrace. "Hey!" cried Joyce.
The woman's daughter fingered the feathers that decorated her new sleeveless overcoat. "Where did you get that?" Buffy demanded. "Never mind. Listen to me—"
Giles interrupted the impending converse lecture by yanking his Slayer's arm and pointing viciously at her face. "Sod off!"
Buffy's rejoinder went unsaid as Dean promptly stepped into the fray and shoved Giles, hard. "Don't touch my sister, you British dick!"
The two grappled, much to the astonishment of the actual teenagers and the entertainment of the ensorcelled adults. Joyce yelled, "Kick his ass, Rupert!" much to the consternation of her daughter.
Dean was better trained and, warped candy notwithstanding, younger, but the fact that he was facing a human and not a monster had him holding back. A youthful Giles, however, had a propensity for dirty tactics and took the first opportunity that came to him to knee his opponent in the crotch.
The hunter bent over, a flurry of profanities erupting from his lips, as Giles stuck a cigarette in his mouth and declared, "And that's what you get, poncy little wanker."
Joyce let out a squeal of delight that became an alarmed shriek when Dean suddenly righted himself and planted his fist into Giles' gut. The Watcher bent over, retching, as the hunter snarled, "I've been to Hell, old man. You got nothing that'll put me down for long."
The standoff abruptly rose in potential violence when Giles pulled a gun out from behind his jeans (hidden, heretofore, by the flannel tied around his waist). Predictably, Dean followed suit with his usual ivory handled semi automatic. "Just give me an excuse," he growled.
Giles huffed out a wry chuckle. "Think you got the wrinklies to pull the trigger?"
"Oh. My. God." Buffy marched between the feuding pair, both of whom immediately pulled the barrels of their weapons into the air away from the girl. She faced Giles and held out her hand. "Give it."
"I am your Watcher and you do what I tell you," he snarled petulantly. "Its mine and I'm keeping it. Sod off!"
Finally fed up with the entire night, Buffy treated Giles to the same underhanded technique he'd used on Dean; she snapped her knee up between his legs. The gun clattered to the pavement as the Watcher folded down, groaning. Joyce rushed forward to comfort the man as Buffy snatched up the weapon, expertly relieved the item of its clip, and thrust the now unloaded gun at Sam.
"By the way," she said, "thanks a lot for your non-help."
"You were fine," Sam mumbled. "Dean knew what to do. He always knows what to do," he added virulently.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing."
"Okay, Mr. Liar Lyington."
"It's just—" Sam huffed out an exasperated sigh. "I didn't do anything 'cause I'm sick of being the stupid little kid that doesn't know enough and can't ever decide to do the right thing!"
"'Little'?" Buffy repeated incredulously.
"And… And I'm sick of being the freak. Why me, you know? I wish Azazel had just left me alone."
"It's not all bad," Willow said. She placed a hand on Sam's arm. "I mean, you got those super special demon yanking powers, right?"
"You mean the ones that my brother and sister hate me for?" he countered bitterly.
"Sam," Buffy said quietly. "I don't hate you."
"Yeah? Then how come you can't forgive me for the last summer?"
"That's different," she replied airily.
"Uh, Dean?" came Oz's voice. "Where are you going?"
Buffy and Sam snapped their gazes over to find their brother hoofing it to the dock. "To go look for the motherfucker that started all of this and show him what I learned in Hell," Dean called back.
The other two siblings glanced confusedly at each other. "'Learned in Hell'?" Buffy wondered.
Several gunshots rang out as Dean announced his presence to what turned out to be the warehouse's vampiric guards. "We better go before he shoots someone that isn't going to walk away afterwards," Buffy said, sighing.
They discovered an old antagonist, Ethan Rayne, behind the cursed candy, who had taken the assignment for monetary gain and the opportunity to spread chaos. Apparently the entire event had been orchestrated by the vampire, Trick, as a city-wide diversion. For what exact purpose the witch didn't know, only that it was to collect tribute for an Egyptian pagan god, Apep. As this tribute consisted of five human newborns Ethan had been told to make the event as encompassing as possible.
Apep evidently enjoyed the sewage underneath the city and had been residing there for some time (Giles would later postulate that as the antithesis for good and light, the toxicity of the water as well as the proximity of the Hellmouth made for an attractive nesting spot). After dispatching Oz and Willow to the library in order to find Apep's weakness, the group headed for the hospital.
Unfortunately the babies had already been stolen by then, but the manhole across from the hospital yielded the desired results. In a rousing show of heroism, Buffy, her brothers, and Giles defeated the vampires; Joyce and Sam protected the infants; Dean torched Apep (Willow having found out that light was its Achilles' heel). Together they returned the babies to the maternity ward.
Sam mentioned quietly that he thought he'd seen an additional person slinking away as the fight was beginning. Figuring it for a vampire with the good sense not to tangle with the Slayer, no one considered the revelation worrisome.
Fortunately and unfortunately the morning saw all the adults returned to their normal states. Joyce was back to being her responsible, matronly self; Giles was back to being a stiff backed Watcher-librarian; and Snyder was back to his vitriolic ways. Dean had both his id and libido under control and Sam was no longer staring at his feet while he talked.
After being forced to scrub "KISS ROCKS" off of a set of lockers (a bit of vandalism to which Dean vehemently denied any involvement), Buffy joined her brothers at Angel's mansion to have a few drinks on the couches and commiserate over the previous day's events. For a bit it felt like old times, before Dean's sojourn into Hell, as Sam and Buffy ridiculed their big brother over his shenanigans and Dean gloated over his fistfight with Giles.
Bringing up that encounter shattered the veneer of normalcy that they had so tenuously wrapped about their conversation. "You said something," Buffy said suddenly. "You said you were going to show Ethan what you had 'learned in Hell.' What did that mean?"
An uncomfortable silence descended. Sam and Buffy looked expectantly at Dean as he quaffed the last of his beer. He put the bottle down and reached for another without speaking.
"Dean," Sam said quietly as his brother popped the cap. "If you don't want to talk about it—"
"Uh-uh!" Buffy interjected. She slammed her bottle of Coke onto the coffee table. "I'm sick of dealing with this macho suppression thingy. We are discussing this now."
"Oh, screw you, Buffy," Dean snarled. He stood up, fully intending on stomping out the front door, only to be yanked down back into his seat.
His sister leaned in, her preternatural strength nearly tearing his arm from its socket. "Now," she repeated.
Dean glared right back. "You first."
"Me first what huh?"
"You! Him!" The eldest sibling gestured between his younger counterparts. "I dunno, man. I've been watching the two of you be dicks to each other ever since I got back. It… It sucks!" Dean gave an exasperated sigh. Then, in a surprisingly wretched voice, he asked, "The hell happened between you two?"
Buffy and Sam stared at one another. The girl looked down, a pensive frown on her lips, as Sam wiped a hand down his face. "It's my fault," Sam finally uttered, reiterating what he'd told Joyce several months before. "It started after we left Sunnydale…"
Acknowledgement : Some lines of dialogue are taken directly from the episode, "Band Candy" (BtVS 3.06).
Author's Note : "Apep" is apparently Egyptian god that was directly opposite of "Ra", the sun god, and was depicted in serpentine form. Figured that worked out pretty good for baby eating snake demon.
