Breaking down the
Walls
TITLE:
"Breaking down the walls" Chapter 7 - 7/? - Rated R-13 - B/A Angst,
series 6 predictions
AUTHOR: Charlie/Selwyn29
EMAIL: selwyn29@ntlworld.com
DISCLAIMER: They're not mine, they're Joss's, I'm just making them feel
better. PAIRING: B/A, and loads more
TIMELINE: After end of series 5 Buffy, series 2 Angel
SPOILERS: Anything is possible... say all, up to B5/A2
SYNOPSIS: My take on series 6 and what should happen, please read Chapter One
or none of this will make sense.
FEEDBACK: Come on, give me some help here, do you like it?
RATING: PG CONTENT
DEDICATION:
To Trammie and Mark my Beta readers who I owe so much thanks to and Duck's who
without her epics I would never had started this one. Also to the Babble Board posters, who have been an inspiration
for some storylines.
Cordy let out a hoarse sob as
another stabbing pain shot through her head.
Angel sat on the floor in front of
the couch trying to calm her down.
"Cordy, please, I know it's
bad. But can you tell us anything
else?"
She concentrated for a second; the
strain showing on her already tired face.
"It's here, it's in Sunnydale."
"What is?"
"This…this...thing. I don't know, I can't tell what it is; I can
just feel it. Evil. It's like nothing
we've ever faced before."
"What, like fluffy and
harmless?" Spike jumped in with from
the kitchen counter.
"Back off Spike." Angel yelled, and turned his attention back
to Cordelia.
"Angel, you have to find it, you
have to find it, promise me you will!" Cordelia said, her voice weak.
"We will." he said, and placed the
cool towel on her forehead as she shut her eyes.
"Don't we need to call someone, a
doctor, maybe?" Willow asked.
"It was a vision." Wesley explained. "Cordelia was chosen to receive them from The Powers That Be, to
guide Angel."
"And that's how they choose to
guide him, by putting her through pain?" Xander yelled, agitated.
"Unfortunately, yes, but she won't
give them up."
"There must be something we can do
for her?" Giles asked.
"Rest is all she needs at the
moment. That wasn't the worst she's
had." Angel said, walking back over to
where Buffy stood with Dawn.
"I need to go out there." he
explained to her.
"I'm coming with you." she
replied.
"It might be best if a few of us
go." Wesley pointed out, from the
center of the room. "We have no idea
what this thing could be, what we could be facing."
"Giles, can you start with the
research? We'll call in when we find
out anymore." Buffy asked him.
"Already started." he replied.
"I'm coming with you, Buffy." Dawn started.
"You're most certainly not, young
lady." Giles said, in a voice so stern
that everyone in the room straightened up that little bit more. "It's a school night and you have to be up
in the morning and you've been allowed to stay up late enough already."
Dawn looked up at Buffy, pleading
with her.
"Don't look at me like that. I go with what Giles says, he's in charge."
"You're all so unfair. I'm not a little kid anymore." Dawn said, and stormed off upstairs.
"Wow, Giles! A full blown sulk, that must register
somewhere on the new parent Richter scale." Xander commented.
"At least I know she's in safe
hands." Buffy said, laughing at her
Watcher. "Right gang, lets get this
patrol on the road. Willow, Tara, I
think some magical help could be useful. Anya, you're the demon expert, I think you should come along. Xander?"
"I think I might sit this one out,
Buff, hone up on my research skills a little."
Anya turned to her fiancée. "You're not coming?"
"I'm just not in the mood for all
that fighting stuff tonight."
"I'll stay too then."
"No honey, you go, a night out
with the girls, it'll be fun. I'll stay
here and keep Giles and the books company."
Anya looked upset, but resigned
herself to the fact that Xander wasn't going to go. Buffy and her group made their way to the door.
Angel turned around to his
friends. Wesley and Gunn were already,
practically, by his side. Angel turned
to Fred.
"I think you'd be very useful
here, if you wouldn't mind?" he asked the timid girl. "I think Giles might need some help with this and I need someone
to keep an eye on Cordelia."
Fred nodded, and Angel, Wesley and
Gunn made their way to the door to join Buffy and the rest. As he got to the door, Angel turned around
to find Spike right behind him.
"Where do you think you're going?"
he growled at the younger vampire.
"Where the Slayer goes, I
go." Spike replied, grinning.
"You'd better make sure we're in
different patrols or you might find yourself coming home in an urn."
"Promises, promises." Spike whispered to himself, as they all
walked through the door.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The group walked out of Giles'
building and started along the street to the quieter areas of town. Angel and Buffy walked ahead a little.
"So Cordelia is your guide
then? Strange choice."
"She's a very good friend, Buffy,
and a huge benefit to the team."
"She must be, to go through that
for you."
"The visions aren't easy to deal
with, she's had some bad times with them. Doyle used to deal with it a little better. He was a half demon I met when I first came to LA, he had the
visions to begin with, and brought Cordelia and I together to form Angel
Investigations. The visions didn't seem
quite as detrimental on him, although I think that was more to do with the fact
that he tried to 'cure' them by downing whiskey."
"I can see him doing that." Buffy laughed to herself. Angel looked at her curiously for a second.
"Sorry," she said, "Doyle was your friend, who died, wasn't
he? I remember you telling me about
that, the night of the funeral."
"Yes, he died to save a lot of
people and before he went, he passed his visions on to Cordelia."
"You have an amazing group of
friends, Angel." Buffy said, and
briefly touched his arm in the darkness. He smiled down at her, but before anything else could be said, a shout
came from the back of the group.
"Oy, we're not exactly looking
inconspicuous, walking down the street like a bleeding mob. You might as well make us all hold hands and
form a crocodile!"
"Spike does have a point." Wesley said, reluctantly. "We might cover more ground if we split up."
"He's right." Angel said to Buffy.
"I know, and much as it pains me
to say it, I think we'd be best dividing it into Scoobies and your bunch. I can, however, offer you the loan of Anya,
for demon spotting abilities, 'cause I'm thinking giving you Spike would be a
very bad idea."
Angel softly smiled at her in the
darkness.
"You take the south side and I'll
head east." he said, "We'll meet up again at 3am to compare notes, at the entrance
to the cemetery."
"Be careful." he added, "You don't know your limitations yet, since
you've come back."
"I will be," she said, "and I'll let you check me over for damage
when this is all finished."
By this time the rest of the group
had caught up with them.
The large party soon split into
the two, more familiar, smaller ones, with the addition of Anya to the LA
group, and went their separate ways.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Scoobies found themselves
looking over old territory close by the old high school. Nothing had yet been built on the site where
the old one had burnt down on Graduation; it was now a haven for the homeless
and soulless, nothing truly lived there.
Willow was walking by Buffy's
side, as they patrolled the area, leaving Spike and Tara to silently bring up
the rear.
"I'm glad you made the choice to
come back." Willow said.
"Me too, Will, thank you for
helping me and for believing in me all that time." Buffy turned to look at her friend.
"And I have to thank you for going
to LA, and telling Angel." Tears
pricked in Buffy's eyes at the thought of her friend having to tell her lover
that she was gone.
"You don't have to thank me for
anything. You've always helped me out,
above and beyond the call of duty. And
I wanted to tell Angel. I guess I knew
that he was one of the few people who would really understand how I felt." Buffy took her friend's hand in hers and
squeezed it affectionately, as they paused in the road for a moment.
"And I'm guessing, with all the
chemistry that's sparking about at the moment, that you two didn't spend the
past 24 hours catching up on office gossip." Willow gave a little smile.
"Is it that obvious?" Buffy asked, with a groan.
"I'm your best friend, I have
special powers for these kind of things. And the fact that you two are all glowy and puppy eyes again gives it
away a little as well."
"I didn't think I'd ever be this
happy again. Especially not being
dead." She gave a little laugh.
"I'm glad. I did like Riley, but I know you never felt
the same way about him as you did about Angel."
"It's unbelievable, Will. Even though we've been apart for two years,
the feelings were always there, they never went away. And now, finally, we can release them and be with one another
again, and it's intense. It's just so
amazing. I want to spend forever with
him and he feels the same." Willow
watched her friend's eyes sparkle as she spoke of her lover. She smiled a little to herself.
"Everyone deserves to find that
one consuming passion for, at least, a little part of their lives." she said,
and glanced back for a moment at Tara. Tara looked up at her from underneath her fringe.
"I need you to do something for
me…well, for us."
"I'll try and do whatever I
can. Would this happen to be something
to do with a certain curse and trying to find a way to get around it?"
Buffy grabbed Willow in a
hug. "I love you, you know that,
Will? You're family to me."
"I love you too, Buffy." Willow said, returning the embrace.
They held one another for a moment
and then let go. Buffy turned to see
where they were and caught Spike's eye.
"What are you looking at?" she
asked him.
"Nothing, just storing an image in
my head to bring out on future lonely nights." he said, grinning at the slayer.
"You're a sick man, Spike." Buffy said, and carried on walking down past
the school.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Angel, Gunn, Wesley and Anya found
themselves walking out towards the site where Buffy had faced Glory for the
final time.
Anya was shaking a little as they
entered into the site.
"Cold?" Wesley asked her.
"No, I'm at a perfect temperature
thank you. It's just this place, it
makes me feel strange, I don't like it."
The three men looked at her for a
moment, trying to work out whether she was actually sensing some evil
here. Anya saw the three of them
looking at her.
"I'm not mad. It's just…this is
where we fought Glory and where Buffy died. See, over there?" Anya pointed to a patch of land at the base of the
tower. "That's where she fell, when she
plummeted out of the sky."
Gunn looked up in the air, towards
the top of the tower.
"Off that thing?" he whispered, in
awe.
"Quite." Wesley added.
Angel just stood there silently,
his eyes never straying from the area Anya had pointed too. All he could see was the battered, twisted
body of Buffy lying there. The sound of
her bones breaking as she smashed to the floor. His mind played back nightmares he'd had, from months ago, where
he had been here, and had rushed forward to catch her, but had been too late
and she had smashed to the ground in front of him, or the worst ones, when he
caught her, but he'd dropped her.
"Angel?" Wesley asked quietly.
He shook his head, trying to clear
the morbid images from them, and looked up at his friend.
"I'm okay, Wesley."
"Best not to think about it. She's back now." the Englishman said, trying
to pacify him.
Angel nodded and began to walk
around the site. Now that he'd gotten
over the initial shock of what had happened here, he began to sense something
else. Something not quite human was
here. He looked around and saw
machinery left abandoned and partly dug trenches, but no sign that any work had
been done in a while.
"Is this site being used for
something?" he asked Anya.
"Xander's company was going to
build on it, but they started work and found the ground unsuitable. I don't really remember, he told me a few nights
ago, before we had sex, and I wasn't listening."
He crouched down near the ground
and ran his fingers through the sand that covered the earth. Wesley bent down close by.
"Magic, something magic has been
cast here." Wesley said.
"Oh yes, this is where Willow and
the others cast the spell to bring Buffy back." Anya explained.
"There's something else." Angel said. He reached into his duster and produced a small vial, which he filled
with some of the sand. "A darker
magic."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Buffy, Willow, Spike and Tara had
made their way down past the school and through a small bit of the town towards
the Bronze. It was getting on to
2:45am, at this point, and the streets were deserted. Even the late night revellers, who had been in the club, had gone
home by now. They walked quietly down
the alleyway behind the building. Everything seemed peaceful and still. They were about to turn around and head to the cemetery to meet the
others, when a slight movement caught Buffy's eye. She dropped slightly into a fighting stance and scanned the
alleyway once more. A figure moved
behind some bins up ahead. Before Buffy
could move forward, Spike rushed passed her and dragged a body out from the
garbage, kicking out at him. As he
dragged the squirming figure back towards the group, Willow could make out a
face that seemed familiar somehow.
"Damn human," Spike yelled, and
dropped his catch, as a searing pain went through his head.
As the figure landed on the
ground, the hood it was wearing fell back a little, revealing more of the face.
"Raven!" Willow exclaimed, as she recognised the young sorcerer.
Raven looked up at Willow above
them, his eyes hollow and dark, his skin pinching into his bones, pale skin,
now whiter than ever before.
"Willow." he whispered out,
hoarsely.
"What happened?" she asked him.
"Willow, do you know him?" Buffy asked.
"This is Raven, he helped me with
the spell we cast to bring you…the spell we cast."
Raven looked up at Buffy for a
moment, a strange look on his face. Buffy found she couldn't hold the stare and turned away. When she turned back, Willow was talking to
him once more.
"What happened?"
"It's Rowan." he replied.
"Rowan?" Willow asked.
"My girlfriend, she was with us
that night."
"Oh yes, I remember." Willow replied.
"She's gone."
"Gone? She vanished?"
"Not exactly, she just started to
change, you know, after that night at the building site. And then a week ago, she just vanished and I
can't find her anywhere."
"Maybe she went back home? Or went to another town?" Tara asked, from the background.
"No, she'd run away from home to
come here with me, she'd never go back there."
"Did you have an argument?" Willow asked, carefully.
"Nothing like that, she just
changed, started to become obsessive about her magic, wanting to do more
powerful magic. When I tried to stop
her, she used to turn on me. Then one
day, I woke up and she had gone, taking her magic books with her."
"Maybe she just needed a little
space." Buffy offered, a little bored
now.
"She kept saying something about
pleasing him, pleasing the master, she had to please the master."
"We'll keep a look out for her,
Raven, I promise." Willow said, trying
to reassure the boy. "We'll come by
your place later on this week and see what else we can find out."
The boy got up and ran off into
the darkness then.
"Did I miss something, or did we
suddenly become the bloody Samaritans?" Spike scoffed in the background. "We're supposed to be looking for some big bad evil, not doing friends
and family reunions."
"We should help people." Tara said, trying to stick up for Willow.
"We'll try and do what we
can." Buffy said to Willow. "But we need to move ourselves and get to
the cemetery before the others start to worry."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Giles sat at one side of his desk,
hunched over a pile of books with Fred sitting opposite him. They had been looking for information on
Cordelia's vision all night, but they had very little to go on. Cordelia had tried, as hard as she could, to
remember more details to give to them, but that had only succeeded in giving
her more of a headache than she had previously.
Instead, they had begun to look
into the mysteries concerning Buffy's return and new status as immortal. Giles wanted to make sure that both himself
and his slayer were prepared for any 'differences' there might be. However, this was also a slow arduous process
and so the morale in the room was beginning to drop.
Fred had been helping out as much
as she could all night and she was finding that she enjoyed working with
Giles. She liked this older man sitting
in front of her. He had the same
clipped accent as Wesley; so different from the way the others spoke. She enjoyed Wesley's company a lot, but this
man, he made her feel so comfortable. He had told her how he used to be a librarian and it had made her feel
some connection with the past. This was
the kind of man she used to work with in the library in LA, someone who
understood the true value of books and learning. And he seemed such a kind man, who obviously doted on the group
of young adults he had around him, but wasn't overly emotional about it, in his
British way. She had watched the
youngest girl angrily running upstairs, earlier, after the argument. Then she had watched closely, as Giles had
prepared a hot chocolate drink and a plate of biscuits and gone up the stairs
and come down a moment or two later with a smile on his face. Obviously the young girl had forgiven
him. Fred smiled to herself at the
thought. She was trying very hard to
help this man find the information he was looking for, but they didn't know
what they were looking for. They were
trying to work out Cordelia's vision, but they had drawn a blank earlier in the
evening. Now they were looking into the
resurrection of the Slayer, the one they called 'Buffy'. She gave a little sigh that made Giles look
up briefly and catch her eye. He smiled
at her, making her grin back at him and then they turned their eyes back to the
books before them.
Xander woke up, sitting in the
armchair with a book across his lap. The same book he'd had, in fact, for the majority of the night. He looked around quickly to see if anyone
had noticed his small nap. Giles and
Fred had their heads bent low over the desks, he assumed Dawn was still in
bed. Cordelia had been lying on the
couch with an ice pack on her head, but now, the couch was empty and she was
nowhere to be seen. Xander eased
himself up from the armchair and walked across the floor of the apartment. He noticed the front door slightly ajar, the
cool breeze drifting in from outside. He pushed it open a little more and saw Cordelia sitting on the edge of
the fountain, in the courtyard, her back to the door, staring up into the
sky. As quietly as he could, he walked
across and sat down next to her. She
looked up at him, her dark eyes on the edge of tears.
"How are you feeling?" he asked.
"A little better, the headache's
gone now."
"That was pretty scary for a
while."
"I'm used to them now, they get a
lot worse." she said, sadly.
"Wow, so Vision Girl. Doesn't that interfere with the acting
career? You know, unless you always go
for parts that need you to collapse in pain."
"No, it doesn't affect it."
Cordelia said through her teeth.
"So are we going to see you in
anything soon? The next blockbusting
movie opposite Reef Sledger or whatever he's called."
"Heath Ledger. I don't think I'll be doing any movies
anytime soon."
"Aw come on, Cordy, don't be so
hard on yourself, that big break is there, just waiting for you."
Cordelia paused for a moment and
then couldn't hold back any longer, all the resentment and bitterness from the
past two years just built up inside her and bubbled over the edge.
"I'm never going to be in movies,
or on TV, I'm never going to be an actress! I don't even go to auditions anymore. I work as Angel's receptionist and I have these visions, these agonising
mind bending visions, which guide Angel in his work. I work mainly at night and I'm so damn exhausted, that I sleep
most of the day, in an apartment where my only friend is the poltergeist, who
died when his own mother bricked him up inside my wall. I don't go out, I don't date, I don't do
anything, I'm not anything." she screamed and started to sob. "So go on, go tell everyone, the
indisputable Queen of Sunnydale, Cordelia Chase, is another LA nobody, worse
than that, she's a recluse, who spends her life sitting behind a desk in a dark
dusty old hotel talking to dead people!"
Xander looked momentarily shocked,
but then came to, edged closer to Cordelia and tentatively wrapped his arms
around her. She sank into his shoulder
and sobbed quietly while he gently stroked her hair, trying to calm her
down. After a few moments she lifted up
her head.
"Thank you." she whispered.
"I'm the last person in the world
who is going to take pleasure from your situation, Cordy. Look at me; I'm still here, hanging with the
gang, bumbling along. Willow's a mean
Wicca now, Buffy's powers get stronger every day, Tara is coming on with the
witchcraft, Anya has her ex-demon legacy and Giles, he holds it all together,
even Spike helps out 'cause of his chip. Then there's me, I just go for doughnuts."
"Just like me." Cordelia said.
"We're important though, all the
same. We help people, in our own
ways. I keep the gang entertained, I
get snacks and drinks, I keep everyone going on the long nights of researching,
I try to help out every way I can. And
look at you, look what you do. Without
you, Angel wouldn't get his guidance from whomever he does; he wouldn't know
what to do. It's obvious to see how
fond they all are of you, and how important you are to them. So you don't act, you're not the star you
wanted to be. Actresses are a dime a
dozen in this world, they act out saving the world to entertain others. We're the ones helping the real heroes in
this world, the ones actually doing something. So don't tell me you're nothing. You have a special job to do, that's worth a hundred movie roles."
"If Angel didn't have me, there'd
be someone else for the visions. I
didn't have them to begin with, his other assistant, Doyle, had them."
"So why have you got them now?"
"Doyle…Doyle killed himself to
save a lot of people and before he died…he kissed me, and I didn't know it at
the time, but his visions transferred themselves to me."
"He must have thought you were a
pretty special person to transfer them to you, he could have picked anyone."
"He did like me…used to call me
his 'Princess'." Cordelia explained,
her eyes tearing again at the thought of Doyle.
"Cordelia, you are a special
person. Just look at you, look at the
person you've become, you've changed so much from the Sunnydale days. It's like every tiny bit of your personality
that I fell in love with in high school, every little bit you tried so hard to
hide, has suddenly come into its own. Never put yourself down. Angel
and the rest of them are damn lucky to have you on their team."
Cordelia looked up at her
ex-boyfriend, a smile on her face, truly grateful for what he said, but unable
to resist.
"You're not trying to chat me up,
are you?" she asked, jokingly.
"Hey, come on, 'engaged to be
married man' here. I think the tragic
love story of Xander and Cordelia should stay dead and buried."
"Amen to that." Cordelia said and hugged him once more.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Angel breathed a small sigh of
relief as he saw the figure of Buffy walking towards where they stood at the
entrance to the cemetery. It was
getting on for 3:15am and he had begun to worry what had happened to her.
She walked up to him and saw the
look in his eyes. She took his hand
into hers for a moment and squeezed it.
"I'm OK." she whispered, just so
he could hear.
The others came up behind them, so
Buffy dropped his hand and began recounting the events of the evening, about
running into Raven near the Bronze. Angel went over their trip to the building site and the feeling they had
experienced of dark magic. Buffy's eyes
never left his face as he spoke of walking into the site, she could see the
pain behind them, and felt the tears behind her own eyes as she thought of all
the events that had happened there. They both finished their reports and were all just deciding to head back
to Giles' with the little information they had, when the wind picked up,
swirling around their feet. The eight
of them automatically moved closer together, the fighters amongst them dropping
down into ready positions. But as soon
as it had begun, it ended, and the night was peaceful again.
"I guess we'd better go back to
Giles." Buffy started.
"He might be able to make sense of
some of the things we found." Willow
added.
"What, a hobo human and a little
parcel of sand? What is he, Mystic
Meg?" Spike scoffed. "The two greatest warriors on the planet at
our disposal and we're going back with sweet F.A. Come on, Peaches, this is what redemption is all about? This is what you fight for? Jesus, the Hardy Boys could do a better
job."
"You were there Spike, couldn't
you have done more?" Angel asked.
"Yeah and miss out on ol' Buffy
doing the Nancy Drew thing? See, I just
don't get it. I thought you'd moved on,
found yourself a life in old LA, but here you are, trying to get back into the
knickers of the one girl who you dumped."
The others stood around the two
vampires, too shocked to move. Buffy
stood in the middle of them all, pleading silently for Angel to walk away and
not to rise up to Spike's taunting.
"And the funny thing is, even if
you did get back in with Buffy, you couldn't do it anyway. The dreaded curse. Oh you can look, but you can't touch, can't make her breathe in
that short, heady way she does, can't make her shout out your name in
pleasure. It's a damn sad story and
one, I'll bet, can't be cured with Viagra."
Angel snarled at his offspring.
"Don't you *dare* ever speak about
Buffy like that again." he growled.
"I'll speak about her, however the
damn well I like." Spike said. "I'm the one who's been watching her back
for the past two years, helping her out when her little gang couldn't. And you, you just roll back here, with your
long dark coat and your, 'I'm so hard done by routine' and think you can take
back your place in her life. Don't work
like that, Peaches. She doesn't want
you, she's got another vampire in her life, one that can satisfy all her
needs."
Buffy stepped forward to say something,
a look of pure anger on her face, but she was stopped in her path by Angel.
"This is my fight, Buffy." he
said, and as he looked into her eyes, his face changed into full vampire
mode. He spun round and hit Spike
around the face, knocking the younger vampire to the ground.
"Oh, hit a nerve did I?" Spike spat back, as he stood back up again
and threw a punch at Angel. Angel
blocked the first move, but was too slow as Spike brought his hand up and
caught him full on the jaw. The two
then began to lay into one another, yells and shouts coming from each of them
as they fought.
"You don't deserve her, you walked
away from her."
"To give her a better life!"
"And you think you can give her
that now? Face it mate, you had your
chance."
"Stay away from her, Spike, she's
mine, my mate. And nothing is going to
come between us this time." Angel
screamed this last part as the two men pummelled at each other on the ground.
"Yeah right, like you're in it for
the long haul." Spike hissed back.
"I should have staked you a long
time ago." the older vampire replied.
The fight was getting more and
more heated as the wind picked up once more. Buffy stepped forward to separate the two, but as she did, Willow pushed
in front of her, her eyes each a deep pool of darkness. She muttered some words under her breath and
threw her arms out. Angel and Spike
were propelled from the ground and each pinned against the cemetery wall. Both struggled like mad, but were unable to
move, due to some invisible force. The
wind dropped again, suddenly, and the two vampires dropped from their bonds on
the walls. Willow's body went limp and
she slumped towards the ground, to be caught by Tara. She opened her eyes and looked around her.
"Wow, what was that?" she asked.
"Are you OK?" Tara asked her, concerned.
"I think so, it's just like, I
just felt like some great power went…went…"
"…went through us." Angel completed.
"Like I wasn't in control." Willow finished.
"You felt this too?" Buffy asked, as she walked over to where he was
picking himself up.
"Something went into me and I had
no control over what I was doing."
"So that grand display of
testosterone wasn't willing?" she asked him.
"I am sorry for that. Well, a little. Sorry you had to see it."
"Don't tell the feminists, but
there was a *tiny* part of me that
kinda liked it," she said, smiling at him. "thank you, for defending me."
"Hey, come on. How about me?" Spike asked, from his position slumped on the floor. "I was taken over by some weird thing as
well, I was out of control too."
Buffy walked over to where he was.
"Yes, but Angel defended me. You just attacked!" Buffy said, indignantly.
Before the argument could go any
further, Wesley jumped in.
"Quick, look up on the rooftops."
He pointed over to the houses close
by the cemetery. It took them a little
while, but soon they could all make out the black shape, jumping from rooftop
to rooftop. It didn't even seem a solid
object, more shadow-like, as it pounced between the buildings.
"We'll trail it some more." Angel shouted across to Buffy. "You guys head back to Giles and give him
all the details. Better take Anya with
you too."
"Good plan, I've had far too much
detail for one night and I don't even know this Xander guy." Gunn said.
Anya strolled over to where the
others stood.
"You need me with you." Buffy said.
"We're only going to follow it,
it's too close to sunrise for anything else. You need to go back to Giles and rest." he said, and the three of them took
off down the street following the leaping creature.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Cordelia and Xander were still
sitting on the edge of the fountain in the courtyard.
"We made a good team together,
didn't we?" Xander said.
"Yeah, excellent team, oh yeah,
until you were caught kissing Willow, and I got impaled on a very nasty spike
and spent days in hospital."
"Of course, but then along came
Wesley and swept you off your feet with his stuffy English ways." Xander quipped back. "How are you two getting on anyway, not
mixing business with pleasure?"
"Oh come on, give me some taste, I
was young and on the rebound then! Anyway, if it hadn't have been for me, you would have never met your future
wife."
"That reminds me, I almost forgot
to thank you for wishing us into an Alternative Reality Universe where the
vampires ruled and we were all dead."
"Oh, you were so not dead, porno
vamp!"
Xander sat back and looked at her
closely.
"It's just like old times." he
observed.
"Thanks for tonight." she replied,
and she pulled him into a hug once more. At that point they heard voices coming up the stairs and quickly pulled
apart again. They were sitting on the
fountain, side by side, when Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies appeared in the
courtyard.
"Hi guys." Buffy said, as she saw the two sitting at
the top of the stairs.
"We were…" Cordelia began.
"…just waiting for you to come
back." Xander finished, a little
guiltily, when he saw his fiancée in the background.
"How are you feeling now?" Tara asked Cordelia.
"Better, thanks. But no more information."
"Well, we're here to give Giles
all the information we've found so far."
"Are Angel and the guys OK?" Cordelia asked, noticing the bloodied state
of Spike's face.
"They're fine, he's fine. They just went off to track something we
saw, then they're going back to the mansion." Buffy answered.
"I might head back there
then." Cordelia replied.
"Anya and I can walk you, it's on
the way to our apartment." Xander
jumped in.
"It's not, it's a good six blocks
out of our way." Anya began to
complain, but Xander nudged her and she stopped.
"We'd better go and tell Giles
everything we know, before people start to head home." Willow suggested.
They all trooped inside the
apartment to find Giles and Fred still looking through books.
"Did you find anything?" Giles asked. "And what happened to Spike?"
"Her bloody boyfriend, that's what
happened to me, randomly attacking me in the street." Spike spluttered.
"Something strange passed through
us, while we were out patrolling, about 3am. Wind picked up, the boys started fighting, Willow went all funny-eyed,
cast some spell and they were split apart, then the wind passed through again
and everyone was back to normal." Buffy
relayed.
"Willow?" Giles asked.
"She's right. It felt like something was inside me,
controlling me. The spell was like
nothing I've ever cast before, but it felt really powerful."
"Did you happen to see what did
this to you all?"
"We're not sure, we saw some
creature jumping over the roofs of people's houses after everyone had come
around, so Angel and the rest have carried on following it, to see what they
can find."
"Excellent. Can you describe what you saw so far?"
"It looked like a shadow, to be
honest, not quite there, it just pounced from one rooftop to the next, kind of
flowing."
" I suspect we will know more when
the others return. For now though, I
think you should all go home and get some rest."
Willow, Tara, Anya, Xander,
Cordelia and Fred all walked out towards the doorway, shouting their goodbyes,
leaving just Buffy and Giles in the flat.
"Has Dawn forgiven you for yelling
yet?" she asked him, a smile on her face.
"Yes, I think she has. I thought being a Watcher was difficult, but
being a parent…"
"Just that little bit tougher."
Giles went and sat on the back of
the sofa and took his glasses off, gently rubbing his eyelids.
"Buffy, tonight, once Fred and I
had found what little we could about Cordelia's vision, we began to research
your situation."
"And?"
"We haven't exhausted the topic
yet, but we have found out a few facts for you."
"Go on…."
"When was the last time you ate?"
"I think it was earlier yesterday,
I had an apple at lunchtime. But apart
from that, I can't really remember."
"From what Fred and I have managed
to find on the subject of resurrection, it is unlikely that you will have to
eat, your body, apparently, no longer needs the nutrients, however, it does
still require water, more so than before, to stop your skin from dehydrating."
"Thanks for that," Buffy said
sarcastically, "maybe I need to moisturise more now."
"There isn't much written on this
topic, but, it seems, you are fairly invulnerable to any kind of stabbing,
cutting, shooting etc. Your skin should
heal itself fairly quickly before any damage can occur."
"Hey this is like being a
superhero!"
"These gifts come with a price
Buffy, you are immortal now, very little can kill you, there are some things,
but we are still trying to find out about those. However, for the moment, you are faced with the fact that you are
going to be around for a very long time, longer than any of us. Are you prepared for that?"
"Giles, for once, I'm taking my
slayer duties seriously and I'm going to rid the world of evil. It's not going to be easy, living like this,
but I have all of you to support me, and I have Angel. Just try and find out whatever you can. I mean, do I need to breathe? Why doesn't my heartbeat?"
"I can answer one of those
now. You don't have any need for
breath, it's just an automatic response. However, I would advise that you try and carry on 'breathing' so to
speak, in case any strangers get too close to you."
"Great, now I actually have to
*think* about breathing!"
"As for your heartbeat, I assume,
as you don't require oxygen or nutrients, that your heart no longer needs to
beat, hence doesn't. The heart is the
pacemaker of life, should it beat, it would have a lifespan, hence you wouldn't
be immortal. We'll carry on looking
into it."
"Thanks Giles, just one more
thing. I'm kind of homeless, you think
I could borrow your couch, just for a rest until the others check in?"
Giles smiled at his Slayer. "Of course you can."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It was almost sunrise when Angel
came to Giles' apartment. He had let
the others head back to the mansion and was going to follow shortly. He explained to Giles what they had seen
jumping over the rooftops, but that they had been unable to get close to
it. Angel sensed a great evil from it,
very dark and had felt a dark pull when the wind had appeared and he had
started fighting Spike. He also
explained that the spell Willow had cast had very dark magic undertones to it,
nothing like he had seen her cast before. He gave Giles the vial of sand from the building yard for further
analysis. He walked over to where Buffy
was now asleep on the sofa. He gently
touched her face and bent down to kiss her and then headed towards the door.
"I'll be back at sunset tomorrow,
I'll try and find out what I can from the underground before then. Tell Buffy I've gone back to the mansion,
when she wakes up."
"Of course." Giles replied, and then almost as an afterthought
continued, "She's been through a lot,
Angel, things I can't even begin to get my head around. She needs stability and guidance in her
life."
Angel looked at the man in front
of him.
"I love her, Giles. And I am going to do everything I can to help
her through all of this, and *nothing* is going to make me walk away from her
again."
Angel turned and walked out of the
door.
Giles turned and looked down at
the sleeping form of the Slayer and smiled, then turned the light off and went
to his bed.
END OF CHAPTER 7
