Ascension's Shadow
A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fanfiction
by: alan m rogers
Author's Note: This is an Alternate Universe Fanfiction that takes place directly after Graduation Day part II. I am writing the Buffyverse as a very dark, unpleasant place, and taking certain hints the show gave us and making them worst-case scenarios. Because of this there are a few minor changes in the paradigm you might want to know before reading: 1) Xander is already living in the basement -- the show is not clear on when he actually started living there, but I'm putting him there already 2) Buffy did not get accepted to college 3) the Watcher's Council did not roll over, play dead, and meekly accept the resignation of one of the most successful Slayers.
Rating: R, for graphic violence and some sensuality/sexuality
Disclaimer: I, Alan Rogers, do not in any way, shape, form or fashion own anything of or related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel the Series. Those rights are held exclusively by Joss Whedon, Warner Bros. Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Mutant Enemy, Inc., the United Paramount Network, and any other entities, corporations, subsidiaries, or groups not named here that have legal rights to aforementioned series.
All Original Characters (Charlie, Auric Ward, Kevin Mitchell, etc.) are the sole property of myself, Alan M Rogers.
This is a work of fiction. Some of the cultures and histories are based on real cultures, groups, events, etc., but MANY poetic liberties were taken. My apologies in advance to any who may be offended by my warping of history and culture.
Acknowledgments: To Joanne W, who made me love Buffy Fanfiction; Kimber, for showing me just how much fun it could be to create a wild Alternate Universe; to Gee, for endless support and actually finishing her series.
Dedication: To Kimber, for endless patience with my rambling and inspiring me to write this, no matter how bad it turns out to be.
Summary: The night of Graduation Day, Xander Harris returns home to have his life changed forever in the blink of an eye. But when Buffy is given a new Watcher , things start going from bad to worse.
Spoilers: Graduation Day I & II especially; Seasons 1-3 (minor) -- not much of seasons 4-5 because I'm changing so much.
Chapter Eleven: The Wiccan
Willow waited inside until they had stopped shouting to quietly creep outside into the sunlight. Every time she felt rays of warm sunshine on her face, she smiled. The sunlight was their refuge, their time when the monsters had to sleep.
But that early afternoon sunlight fell on a face streaked with tears.
I wonder what monsters hunt Slayers and witches during the day? Because I'd sure like to face one of them instead of this.
It hadn't taken her parents long to walk outside to 'talk' after Buffy and Willow had finished explaining; and it hadn't taken long after that before the shouting started. After almost half an hour, Buffy had snuck out the back door, citing that she had to go find Giles. Willow knew she was right; they needed Giles, and finding him, they might find Wesley and Cordy.
They were both too afraid to think that the disappearances might not be linked.
She stepped through the familiar red door, her lips pressed tightly together as if that would hold the sobs and the impending babble-attack at bay, her fingers nervously playing with her hair. Willow knew what was coming, and she knew it was her fault. It had been her decision, and she had made the wrong one.
Her sneaker-clad foot lightly touched down on the concrete porch, and she stared out, to meet the stricken eyes of her father. Locking eyes with his daughter for a long moment, he shook his head once before looking at his feet, his shoulders slumped in that way only a truly defeated man can hold himself. His gaze swept along the cracked sidewalk, gradually raising to watch her get in the car and leave.
The sound of keys brought Willow's tear-blurred green eyes around to watch her mother climb into Ira's beloved sportscar and close the door with an emphasis that made the word 'metaphor' take on new levels of meaning, none of them good. The engine growled like one of the hell-spawned predators the sunlight held at bay as the sportscar carried her mother away in it's innards, propelled away by the fiery explosions of gasoline and electricity.
Willow didn't remember her knees giving out, or falling towards the ground. She didn't remember her father catching her and cradling her like he had done every night when she had been a toddler in diapers.
She did remember that her mother hadn't even looked at her.
She did remember that her mother hadn't even said good-bye.
"I'm sorry..." Willow whispered to her father, pressing her face into his shoulder, trying to hide that she was crying. She didn't want to cry, not this time.
"Oh, god no, Willow. Don't be sorry. Don't be. Please." Ira paused and held his daughter at arm's length, meeting her eyes firmly. "This has nothing to do with you. It has to do with your mother and I. We've been wrong, about how we do things with you. How we try to raise you....
"I'm not going to try to change what you are now, whatever that may be, but I feel deep inside if I had been there more, you might have been Jewish, not Wiccan."
Willow's mouth worked, but no sounds came out. Brushing her father's hands away, she stumbled backwards.
"W-what? Is this what this is? She's l-leaving because I'm not Jewish? How can you...? How can she...? Don't you believe me? Believe us? Haven't you listened? Haven't you seen? Don't you know what this gods-forsaken place is? We told you the truth! Buffy is the Slayer and I'm a witch and Giles is a watcher and Xander helps us out and he's been shot and Wesley, the Watcher who was Buffy's Watcher after Giles got fired is missing and Cordelia is missing and Xander has been shot and you don't believe me and mom left and all you can say is that you wish I was Jewish?"
His arms twitching like he was going to reach out for her again, Ira shook his head, shouting before he thought better of it. "No! This is only the smallest bit about that! But I have to start small and work my up this, Willow! I love you, and may God strike me down if I lie! You are my daughter, and because of that I believe you! I am willing to believe that vampires and demons exist and that I'm standing in a city that can become the mouth to Hell anytime some demon gets a wild hair up his ass! I am even willing to believe that your friend Buffy has been born for the express purpose of killing supernatural evil! All because you are my daughter and I trust you!"
Shaking his head, Ira wrung his hands and stared at the ground, his voice softening on each word.
"Never once have I doubted you! Never once have I ever stopped loving you! But I simply did not know, Willow! I had no idea of what I was doing to you, not until we rode back from the police station. I am not a superman. I am a man who made mistakes, and who wants to fix them, but who doesn't know how. I love you, Willow Rosenberg, and I want to make things right between us."
Tentative hesitation etched in every line of his body, Ira took a small step towards his daughter.
Mouth trembling, Willow's drew back into herself, shrinking away. "You...you believe me?"
Letting his daughter fall into his arms, Ira ran his fingers through her silken red hair, and nodded. "Yes, I do. And I want to help, any way you want me to."
This time, he whispered.
Drawing away again, Willow hugged herself, staring off at where the car used to be parked. "Then why...?"
This time, Ira was the one to sink to the ground. In a small voice, he answered. "Your mother thinks you and Buffy are delusional or liars, and either way, she knows you burned down the school."
Choking back a sob, Willow swallowed back her tears with the large lump settling in her throat and the bile that had rushed to her mouth. "W-why..." She took a deep breath and started again. "Why do you believe and she doesn't?"
Ira didn't look up, or even make an attempt to stand. "It's simple, really. I'm a scholar; I think things through and determine how and why they work, and then if I can, I take them apart to prove it. Your mother is a psychologist. Everything you and Buffy told us in there makes her think you're...deluded and hysterical from fear of 'the mob' or some other more mundane threat. I can see the threads of logic and the plausibility in this, at least enough to give you the benefit of the doubt."
Willow felt her stomach clench and burn as her head spun. "I need to sit down."
Her father caught her for a second time.
"I think you already are."
"Oh." Willow breathed. "Yay me."
~ * ~
Hospitals had never bothered him that much. He had been in a few for his share of accidents, and he had visited close friends and family who were dying or worse while they lay in hospital beds, but every time he came inside and breathed in the scents of human sickness and bleach mingling in a nauseating bouquet of science battling nature, he felt almost comfortable.
Except this time.
Slipping inside the room where Faith lay comatose, he looked around at the dim lighting and stared at the cords and tubes keeping her alive, the rhythmically hushed hissing of her breathing underscoring the overstated beeping of an EKG. Elegantly arranged flowers and stuffed animals decorated the room, clashing with a battered leather jacket hanging haphazardly off one corner of the chair next to her bed.
But it was the deep stillness of the room that made his stomach flutter.
"You know, I'm a nice guy who strives to be polite and set a good example of manners and civility, but you just barging in here really makes me kinda testy. This is a sick room for a very hurt girl, not a zoo exhibit for a Watcher with no Slayer."
St. Clair would have sworn that the man had not been there when he had walked into the room. He was an unassuming man in his middling years with thinning hair he made no effort to disguise and an out of fashion suit that somehow still looked good on him. Out in the daylight, he would have been one more businessman out and about his work, seen to be nothing more or nothing less than another passerby.
Looking into his eyes, however, made the darkness that much heavier and the air that much colder. His eyes were a subtle, gentle kind of threat that slid inside the psyche like a surgeon's scalpel slicing open the skin. His gaze pried you open while his ingenuous smile relaxed you, making you feel right at home.
"Mayor Wilkins, I presume." St. Clair spoke, his clipped London accent, drawing out the last syllables as if he were narrating Masterpiece Theater.
"Former mayor, Mr. St. Clair. And this lovely and misunderstood young lady is Faith Wilkins." He paused long enough to stare into St, Clair's eyes again. "Faith. Such a beautifully ironic name, don't you think, Andrew?"
Coughing slightly, St. Clair nodded almost imperceptibly. "Well, yes. I suppose it is at that."
The Mayor's hand reached down to brush aside an errant lock of dark hair. "The Dark Slayer, they call my girl. No one believed in her, or saw who she was behind that tough-girl exterior." Smiling wistfully, he ran his fingers across her cheek. "Did you know that she used to lay around in her bed, eating licorice and reading comic books?"
St. Clair shook his head, raking his hand through his dark hair. "No, I didn't. There isn't much on her in our files, you see."
With an incredible and astounding tenderness, the Mayor of Sunnydale went about adjusting her covers and pillows until the expression on her face eased ever-so-slightly.
"I think the room you want is down the hall. They'll eventually come see him, and that will be as good a time as any to tell them who you are."
Staggered with shock, St. Clair braced himself against the doorjamb. "How did you know?"
"Andrew, it's my job to know what goes on in this town, supernatural or mundane. And the departure of Rupert Giles and Wesley Windham-Pryce was both very disappointing and extremely encouraging. They were both good men, and good adversaries. You, on the other hand, are proof that the Watcher's Council is going to make this easier than I thought."
St. Clair narrowed his eyes at Wilkins, fingering the small leather pack he kept in his jacket pocket. "Why aren't you killing me?"
The former warlock looked up at him, honestly surprised. "Why would I?"
~ * ~
Somehow, she had connived not having to put her shoes back on.
It seemed like a small, silly thing. Something trivial that an eighteen-year-old woman wouldn't worry about, or even do. For the most part walking around the city barefoot was often considered the domain left to hippies and hobos?
But there was something simply fun about it, too.
Smiling lightly, and for the first time since early childhood, unselfconsciously, Tara sat on the grass in the small park next to Sunnydale General hospital, reading a Mercedes Lackey novel Wilkins had bought her. She was leaning against an ancient tree, her toes curled around warm summer grass. She knew she was probably getting her new skirt and blouse dirty, but she also knew the mayor wouldn't mind. He liked it when she did silly little small things that were simply fun. His eyes would light up and sometimes he would even hug her.
And the best part was that her father wasn't even allowed to get mad when she was 'wantonly carefree'.
Stretching just a little, she settled back against the old oak, letting it's subtle strength mingle with the gentle energy the sun seeped into her bones, easing away aches and pains she had barely been aware of and replacing them with a warmth and comfort that bled the tension right out of her. Pressing one hand to the ground, her fingertips dug into the soft loam beneath them, her eyes drifting closed as the thrumming heartbeat of the world around her echoed in her ears, matching pace with her own pulse in a symphonic harmony no orchestra would ever be able to match.
With a deep breath in, she could feel everything around her, from each blade of grass soaking in the sunlight and drinking the carbon dioxide she exhaled, thin membranes of chloroplasts filtering pollutants and impurities, converting it into energy and oxygen that she drew in, filling her lungs and recharging that part of herself buried so deep she rarely allowed herself to feel.
Every insect, from the quietly chirping crickets to the spider lost in the artistic rapture of weaving a new web, and every bird, from the sparrow comfortably napping to the pigeon curiously wondering if she had any bread.
It was utter acceptance. It was peace.
"Wow." The voice was soft, and almost as timid as her own.
Blinking against the sunlight, Tara saw her first as a blur surrounded by a halo of glittering red streamers tugged by a breeze she had probably inadvertently summoned. As her vision and thoughts cleared, she shrank back against the tree, drawing her knees to her chest, trying to hide her bare feet under the hem of her skirt.
It took several attempts and several deep breaths, but she finally was able to stutter out a simple question. "W-wow?"
The petite redhead nodded, and whispered again. "Wow. I could never do anything like that."
Something about her delicate face falling into an expression Tara had seen in the mirror every morning tugged, or rather, yanked at something in her gut. She saw the telltale flushed cheeks and puffy eyes that meant the girl had been crying a lot. Even now, her large green eyes were threatening to spill over. Tara found herself enchanted by those green eyes, silently wondering where the laughter and joy that belonged there had gone.
"Like what?"
Excitement rushed through her as she realized she had said a complete phrase without stuttering in fear once. Her voice had sounded soft, concerned, and she hadn't stuttered!
M-maybe she could sit with me for a minute? I'm supposed to talk to my friends, but I don't really have any except for him...
"Falling into it that way. I have to fight to touch it, to know it's there." The redhead hugged herself, hanging her head in what could have been shame, or heart-deep pain. Or both. "I think I should go now."
Her voice was a muffled whisper that Tara had to strain to make out.
"No..no...y-you don't h-have to. You can sit w-with me, and I can show you!" Her hand reached out of it's own accord, fingertips outstretched in a silent plea not to leave her sitting by herself. Hearing how she sounded, and knowing that the girl would never want to stay now, Tara bent her head, her arm drooping a little. "If y-you want..."
The redhead seemed to brighten just a little bit. "You don't mind?"
Tara looked up into her eyes, hearing the unspoken emotions, a need for something right then that maybe they could help each other with. "No. I don't."
The redhead took her hand, palms touching with the simple comfort of skin on skin as she sat down next to Tara, close enough they were almost touching.
"W-why don't you t-take off your shoes?"
Looking a little embarrassed and a little awkward, she sheepishly pulled off her sneakers and her socks, and found herself hugging her knees much like Tara was.
"Why do I need to be barefoot?" The redhead asked, her brow furrowing.
Tara smiled sheepishly and ducked her head. "So I wouldn't feel so silly."
"Oh." There was silent pause that was comfortably awkward and ended with Tara squeezing the other girl's hand as the redhead turned to look at her new friend. "What now?"
Breathing deep, Tara steadied herself, slowly forming each word to keep her stutter away. "Close your eyes."
Tara slid behind her and rested her free hand on the back of the redhead's neck, her light touch almost a caress. She marveled at the silk-soft hair and skin, warm under her fingertips.
This time she didn't go as deep. She let the other girl feel the first touches of the world around her on her mind, whispering to her with her own thoughts. Don't fight. Surrender. The power isn't yours, you just want to borrow it. Use it.
The slight link between the two deepened another level, and names were no longer a mystery. They were just there, in the other's thoughts.
Tara McClay
Willow Rosenberg
Next was emotion. Tara, full of nervousness and tense angst, fear and desperation for acceptance. Willow, a knot of pain and anguish needing to be soothed away, but like a cancer, it kept growing with every step forward.
"Are you all right?" Tara whispered her question, her hand moving to rest on Willow's shoulder.
"No." The wiccan shook her head. "But I have to go now." She stood and turned at the same time in a maneuver so clumsy and awkward it had a strange grace that allowed Willow's fingertips to brush Tara's cheek.
"Thank you."
The words meant more than just gratitude, but both of them were content to let the words stay where they were.
Tara leaned back against her tree and stared up at the clear sky, and looked for the face of a petite redhead in the wispy clouds.
~ * ~
Willow found the hospital to be very cold and harsh, especially after the warm grass and sunlight outside. I don't know who she really is or what that was about. But I needed it.
A tiny smile curled the corner of her mouth as thoughts whirled around her now almost clear-head, waking up emotions the fey blonde had put to sleep with her soft touch. Her whole body still tingled and thrummed from the brief connection to the magic. It had sang through her veins like it never had before, not even when she had Restored Angel's soul.
Power still rushed through her, better than any drug or any high she could have in an addictive sweetness that filled her to the brim and begged to be released in a burst of creative light that would blind everyone around her.
That was what being Wiccan meant; a connection to the world around you that transcended into a harmonious symbiosis that carried you into another level of thinking about and accepting the world. The strange witch had taken the edge of Willow's pain, just enough to let her think and react normally and Willow had given her a few brief moments of companionship. The girl had been there at the right place at the right time to give them both the opportunity to feel better.
She didn't even have to look as she dodged through the hospital hallways, her instincts taking her to her best friend.
Even if he couldn't hear her, she really needed to talk to him. Talking to Xander always helped, even if he was asleep. She had done it often enough as a child -- it hadn't been his fault she had told him everything while he was asleep. She had timed it that way, so he wouldn't mention whatever she had needed to talk about the next morning.
Her hand wrapped around the doorknob, and she just knew. There was someone else in there with him, and Willow didn't know him. She could feel him -- dark, cold calculating. Not a doctor, or a nurse. A threat.
Despair, hopelessness, depression...all of the darker emotions that had been plaguing her all day suddenly crumbled away, burnt to ash in the hot rush of anger.
Anger that was cold, freezing out emotion and frosting her green eyes with a sheen of hard ice.
Anger that was hot, consuming emotion and making her stomach boil.
She knew that he was a threat. It hung around the room like a thunderhead about to rain on a picnic, laughing as life's simple pleasures were washed away by mother nature's bad timing.
Gathering what was left of the power she had felt in the odd trance outside, she stepped inside, mentally berating herself for forgetting even a stake. Giles and Buffy would be furious with her.
The man leaning over Xander was almost as tall as Wesley had been, but was lean, like Xander had been their sophomore year. Dark hair and dark eyes full of secrets beckoned her to take the next step inside. Charismatic and handsome, the stranger positively oozed intensity and arrogance.
That, and his tweed suit gave him away.
"New Watcher?" Willow practically spat the words.
He nodded slowly, turning to face her. "Yes. A new Watcher. I am Andrew St. Clair."
The door flew shut at his laconic gesture, his magic humming in the air, his arrogant display strumming the cords of power suffusing her inside and out.
Her eyes narrowed. Two thoughts sprang to the front of her mind, neon signs flashing on the main street of Willow Roesenberg's cerebellum.
Something tells me he knows where Giles is. And I want to know what he thinks he's doing in Xander's hospital room.
The Watcher's Council had never been one of her favorite institutions, not since she had found out about some of what they expected a Slayer like Buffy to be. She met St. Clair's eyes with a razor-edged scowl, and his mind flowered open to her. There was no probing, nothing more than an awareness of him and what he was thinking.
He wanted her. To take her into his hands, and to break her. Take away everything that made her Buffy Summers, one by one, and make her the Slayer.
No. I will not let you do this. I have to stop you. And someone needs to warn Buffy! How can I get to her? How can I warn her without taking him to her.
Damn it, this hero stuff is harder than it looks!
Her mind ran through different possibilities of escaping, but one glance at Xander, laying prone in the hospital bed chased those ideas right out of her mind. And one thought of this pretentious Watcher laying his grubby paws on Buffy Summers, hurting her mind, body or spirit drove something in her over the edge.
That cold rage ran like an avalanche through her blood as her eyes left his to stare at the floor for a minute. She knew what she wanted to do was wrong. She felt it in her bones.
"I think we need to talk, Miss Rosenberg."
His hand came up and he started to chant the words to a basic Truth and Binding Invocation -- a spell that would make her his creature, mind and body until something broke the link. Usually something fatal. Willow's eyes came up to meet his again, her face twisted into angry parody of her 'Resolve Face'. This was more like a 'I'm going choke you on your own innards' face.
Fine. You want to play with magic? You're mine, tweed-boy. Licking her lips, Willow took a deep breath and grasped at her power. Like a storm of lightning bolts, it seared through her, hot and furious, ready to explode from her fingertips at any second. A single thought and Andrew St. Clair would be a bad case of Wesley Windham-Pryce deja-vu, forgotten in the next breath that blew his ashes to the wind.
Sometimes the best thing to do wasn't always the right thing.
The lights flickered, and a slight breeze scattered papers across the room. Standing in front of the door, Willow's green eyes flickered with fey light. Her hands were at her side but her palms were facing out. Tangible energy crackled around Willow as she faced St. Clair, smiling sweetly.
"We do?"
Chapter Twelve: The Slayer
Part of what a Slayer did was hunt; a Slayer was a huntress, a predator -- first a foremost, the desire to stalk and kill her prey sang in the blood of a Slayer each time she picked up a stake or walked into a graveyard. Buffy felt that as acutely as any, but it became worse for her when her friends were threatened. When her friends were in danger, the instinct sang in her blood like a mad composer's masterpiece concerto, taunting her with visions of vengeance and blood.
The silence of a Slayer with her blood on fire is something that master vampires and demon lords alike listened for in the stillness of their inner sanctums, because that silence approaching behind them usually meant they were dead.
It was with that silence and that deadly intent that Buffy prowled the sunlit streets of Sunnydale, her dark jeans and too small top making her appear nothing more than a teenage girl enjoying her summer vacation. But people didn't see her. Each step she took hinted at a sound or a motion, but the light grace that carried her towards her first stop seemed to meld her with her surroundings.
She reached Angel's apartment quickly, trying to ignore the twinges of guilt burning in her stomach. She had left Willow alone, with her parents arguing outside, her oldest friend still unconscious, and her boyfriend MIA.
At least I'm trying to do something about the MIA part. But I have to find Giles. I have to. He'll know what to do, or who's out there making my Slayer-sense go haywire.
Angel opened the door before she could knock, shaking his head in rueful amusement.
"I knew it would be you." His quiet voice always sent a thrill down her spine. Dark eyes found hers and drew her in, his gentle, almost sardonic smile causing her to smile back before she could even think about it. He left his while silk shirt unbuttoned, revealing a pale expanse of tautly muscled flesh.
"How?" She whispered, stepping closer to him, her hand reaching up to rest her fingertips on his chest. His body was cold again, but she was warm every time she was close to him. Breathing in his scent of silk and leather, she resisted the urge to collapse into his arms. She couldn't afford to be comforted now; there would be time enough for that later, when everything was under control.
"When a Slayer is hunting most demons can feel it. A general feel of doom approaching from every direction and the panic that comes with it." He smiled again. "But I knew it was you, lover. I always know when it's you."
His inscrutable eyes narrowed, and he stepped a little closer, blocking the doorway. "And I always know when something's up. What's going on?"
Forcibly reminding herself that even if he had come back for her, things weren't all worked out and it was dangerous to even kiss him, no matter how much her lips could almost taste him. Running her tongue around her lips, she took a step back and set her shoulders.
"Giles, Wesley, Cordelia and Oz have all disappeared. My Slayer-senses are off the scale and I can almost feel that impending doom. I'm going to need some back-up on patrol tonight."
Angel nodded slowly. "It's covered. Just let me know about Giles and the others. I'll tell you if I find anything out of the ordinary."
Breathing a slow sigh of relief, Buffy nodded. "Thank you. I'm going to Giles' place first, then Wesley's and Cordy's. I'm going to take Willow with me when I look for Oz, but something tells me he can take care of himself."
Angel nodded grimly. "He's resourceful, I'll admit. A lot more so than I would have first guessed."
Buffy frowned and tilted her head to one side, blonde hair draping over one bare shoulder. Was that chagrin she heard in his voice? "Yeah...it's kinda surprising the skills a guitarist can pick up places."
She would have sworn Angel almost laughed as he shrugged away her comment. "How's Xander?"
"Not so good." She let out a slow, frustrated breath. "They want to bring him around tomorrow morning, but they're not sure they can. He lost a lot of blood and they've had to wait to see if they can wake him up."
"Right. I'll check on him tonight after patrol, make sure nothing nasty pays him a visit. Least I can do."
Buffy was getting more and more confused. With each statement, Angel was getting more and more tense, and he hadn't even invited her inside. It seemed a small thing, but this was the first time in a long time he hadn't invited her in. Even after her birthday, he had always let her inside his sanctum, almost like a metaphor for what they still have between them.
Butterflies dancing in her stomach, Buffy nodded. "Thanks. Are you okay?" Her fingertips ran down his chest, her heart-shaped mouth twisting into a concerned frown.
"I'm fine, lover. Just a little tired." Grasping her hand tightly in his, his thumb stroked the back of her hand. "And if I'm going to patrol alone tonight, I need my rest. I'll find you later, I promise."
Kissing the back of her hand, he slipped back into the darkness of his apartment and closed the door in her face.
~ * ~
Daniel Osbourne frowned at the menu and wished he had taken French instead of German back in high school. He wasn't sure he trusted the man sitting across from him to order for them both.
A waiter brought them their wine, and leaving the bottle, departed as silently as he had arrived. After the first perfunctory sip, the man across from him smiled broadly and gestured widely at him.
"Now then, Mr. Osbourne, what brings you to England seeking a secret meeting with me of all people? Not that I'm not glad you came to me, I would assume you would naturally seek out Mr. Giles or Mr. Windham-Pryce before you would think of me."
Ignoring his wine and setting aside the menu, Oz nodded to the well-dressed man. "You're more convenient."
Stroking his beard and taking another sip of his wine, the older man shrugged. "Fair enough. Why are you in England, Mr. Osbourne?"
Letting one corner of his mouth quirk up into a half-smile, Oz didn't even blink. "To talk to you."
Just because he needed the pompous windbag didn't mean he had to make it easy on him.
Obviously fighting to maintain a composure suited to the dim candlelight, fire-warmed ambiance of the French restaurant on the outskirts of downtown London, the older man conscientiously smoothed his napkin and straightened his silverware, taking deep, calming breaths.
"Why do you need to talk to me?"
The irritation in his voice made Oz's small smile grow a fraction of an inch. "Because the Mayor of Sunnydale isn't dead, and I'm working for him."
Spluttering on a sip of wine, the gentleman lowered his glass with a trembling hand. "Would you care to elaborate on that, Mr. Osborne?"
Oz nodded once, and leaned back in his chair nonchalantly, well aware of the attention his worn overlarge jeans and faded Ozzy Osbourne t-shirt provoked as his dyed hair and goatee came into the light filtering in from the window. "Mayor Wilkins is not dead, and he has geased me into working for him."
This time, the other man drained his glass and poured himself another. Tugging nervously at the lapels of his coat, he stared hard at the young man. "I thought the Slayer dealt with that problem."
"She did." Oz shrugged this time, "Buffy stopped the Ascension. But without help from the Council, she didn't have all the information. The Mayor is alive and is a demon lord, but he's trapped on Earth in a human body."
Squaring his large shoulders and sitting a bit taller in his seat, the gentleman glared imperiously down at Oz. "That was Miss Summer's decision."
"If you say so, Mr. Travers." Reaching into his pocket, Oz slid a carefully folded sheaf of yellowed paper towards the Watcher and stood up.
"Thanks for the wine."
Before he could get two steps, Travers gestured discreetly, and two men fell into either side of the guitarist.
"My pleasure, Mr. Osbourne. My pleasure. Now if you would allow me to take care of your accommodations as well?"
~ * ~
Some things never changed in Sunnydale, and the home of Rupert Giles seemed to have become one of those permanent monuments to the strangeness that permeated the California town.
Her knuckles wrapped on the door five times. Buffy's hyper enhanced senses allowed her to hear the sound echo inside Giles' house while she waited for a response. Seconds later, she heard it. The sound of light footsteps on tile, then carpet as they approached the door, but each step was hesitant and quiet.
Sounds like a woman's footsteps. Did Giles get laid last night and that's why no one can reach him? Even as she thought about it, she dismissed it. He'd never not answer his phone, even if he was blowing a load.
Blushing at her own crude thought, Buffy shrugged. I can stab a blood-sucker in the heart with an overgrown toothpick and wade through knee deep demon gore but I blush at the thought of sex. How quaint of me.
But the bottom line is that Giles isn't here.
Buffy Summers grinned coldly as her hand wrapped around the doorknob, thinking about the time Willow had told her about a spell that could unlock doors. Glad to know the Slayer package comes complete with built-in lock picking powers.
She almost laughed. Whoever it was in Giles' house was waiting for her just inside the door. Buffy could smell leather and steel and assumed it was probably one of the longswords her watcher favored for bladed combat.
Her hand wrapped around the doorknob.
With a savagely controlled jerk, the door swung inward as Buffy's foot snapped up in a front kick that caught the woman under her ribcage, throwing her into the air to land in a gasping heap in the middle of the living room. Dark hair hid her face, but Buffy recognized the sword as the one Angel had pulled from Acathla.
"That's my sword, bitch."
Brandishing the blade, the woman stood and stared at Buffy. "I'm sure it is."
Buffy felt more than heard him. Lightning fast, she dropped into a spinning sweep that sent the wiry balance demon falling to his back with a solid thud. The woman looked up at Buffy just as she caught sight of Whistler.
Gaping in shock, the Slayer groaned. "Doesn't anyone stay dead anymore?"
For those of you who know this story, this is a new ending to this chapter...hopefully, sometime by the end of Christmas break, I'll have some new stuff up here. I can't promise frequent updates, but I can promise that there will be new stuff more often.
Thanks,
~ alan m rogers
