Chapter 14: "But just true love can show her the right way"

"Buffy?" Dawn asked disbelieving and all the others looked also at the door and before anyone else could react, Dawn was jumping up and ran to her sister, hugging her tightly. "Buffy! You're back," she shouted happily, but Buffy just shoved her violently away, causing Dawn to fall on the floor.

"You're the Key… I'm sorry to tell you, but I have to kill you." Buffy said coldly, took out a knife and walked up to the girl.

"B? Buffy? What are you doing?"

"Oh, Faith, right? Oh, and look who we have here… Spike… I wonder how you managed to escape… well it doesn't matter anymore. And there's Angel, Cordelia, Wesley, Willow, Tara, Xander, Anyanka…" she said as she walked past them. They were all too shocked to do anything but stare at her. "Rupert Giles… I know you… You were at the Council to talk with Quentin. I saw you, but you didn't see me." While saying this she had a wicked grin on her face, clearly enjoying the shocked stares she was receiving.

"Buffy…" Giles said, but the woman ignored him.

"And Pan… do you know that you aren't a Slayer? We don't know what you are… but I don't care. And your little lover boy Trunks…  I know you all… But wait a minute, I don't know you," Buffy suddenly remarked, when she arrived at the Saiyajins. "Well, whoever you are, don't think that you'll be able to stop me… You know what? You all have something in common." She looked around, enjoying the looks of shock and surprise on the faces.

"And what should that be?" Vegeta demanded to know.

"You will all die now."

"You're kidding," Xander said. "I mean, you would never kill us, would you Buff? You're just trying to scare us. But hey, we're your friends and we're all glad that your alive and… Why should you want to kill us?"

"This question is easy to answer. I will kill you, because the Council told me to do so."

"Buffy…" Dawn said, after she got back up, feeling tears dwelling up in her eyes. It had been six months since her sister sacrificed her own life for hers and now she was finally back. "Tell me that you don't work for the Council and that you won't obey them. You've never obeyed them after the Cruciamentum and you've quit the Council, when they'd denied their help in healing Angel."

"Nibblet, stay away from her. She's not the Buffy we know. She's dangerous." Spike told her.

"Listen to him," Buffy said smirking. "He knows what he's talking about."

"Dawn, go," Faith said, realizing the danger the girl's in.

"Faith! It's Buffy!"

"I said GO!" Faith looked at Pan and Giles, motioning for them to bring the girl away. "Giles, Xander, Trunks, bring Spike also out of here."

"Faith, what are you doing?" Xander wanted to know.

"Well, Spike is right. This isn't the Buffy we know, that means I can fight her. This is my fight. The last fight, she won. And since the good side usually wins, I think that it is my turn this time."

"I don't know what you are talking about, but a fight sounds good. Slayer against Slayer, not a thing I experience everyday."

"Oh, you don't know how often I had a fight like this," Faith said and walked up to the other Slayer. Meanwhile Giles, Xander, Mirai Trunks and Pan brought Spike and a struggling Dawn to the outside, Pan motioning for the other Saiyajins and the LA gang to follow them, letting Faith the space she needed.

"Faith, when you need help…" Angel said, when he walked past her.

"I know, I'll tell you. Don't worry, Angel, I'll be fine. Just take care that Dawn won't come here. To get the Key, she has to get past the Slayer." She smiled at Angel and he smiled back, leaving her and Buffy alone. "Okay B, are you ready?"

"Always," Buffy said and the two Slayers lunged at each other.

Faith took a swing at Buffy and she ducked the punch, quickly slamming a fist into her stomach, following with a backhand with the same fist and shoved her against the shelves, letting a few books falling down. Taken aback by this, Faith barely managed to duck the following roundhouse kick, which destroyed the shelves completely and caused a few bottles to break and crawled behind Buffy, sweeping her legs out from under her. Faith quickly got up and used the chance to punch Buffy a few times in her face, but the blond Slayer was also able to hit the dark haired Slayer, letting her fall backwards.

Panting heavily, both Slayers got up, standing a few meters away from each other. Both had put a huge amount of strength in the fight. "Hey B, you know Giles would most likely want to kill you for destroying his shop," Faith said, wiping a bit of blood away from her lip.

"I'm sure he won't be able to do it anymore, once he's dead," Buffy answered smirking and cold as ice and got into a fighting stance.

"Remember as I told you that you were just like me? I've never thought that you really had the guts to do something like that. Kill all of your friends like it is nothing. That's not the Buffy I know."

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Buffy yelled and lunged again at Faith.

~*~

Mirai Trunks and Xander had laid Spike on a couch in the training room and Pan was still trying to stop an upset and angry Dawn to run right back into the fight. Angel was standing in the doorway, watching how Faith was doing, still shocked by the sudden appearance of Buffy, even if she had changed, a lot and for the worse.

"I don't understand why we just don't kill this woman. I could do it with my left hand," Vegeta said impatiently.

"We can't do that, because it's Buffy," Willow said. "She's our friend… We don't know what has happened to her, but we have to find out how we can help her."

"The Council…" they heard Spike saying, while Giles was checking his wounds. "The Council must've something to do with her change. She said that she was working for them. And didn't she say something about Pan not being a Slayer? So Quentin lied to us about her. Ouch, Watcher! That hurt."

"Sorry Spike…" Giles said and then turned to Pan and Gohan. "Do you still have some of those beans?"

"Dad?"

"Yeah, sure… Here." Gohan walked over to Giles and Spike and gave the former vampire one senzu, who was recovering immediately. Adding to that he felt a new kind of strength running through his body, similar to the power he had as a vampire but yet different and much more intense.

"Wow…" he said as he sat up. "What the hell was that?"

"That was a senzu bean. They're healing people," Pan explained. Dawn noticed that Pan didn't pay attention and had loosened her grip on her arm and the girl quickly used the chance to run back into the main room. "Oh shit, Dawn! Stay here!" But Dawn didn't listen.

"Nibblet!" Spike shouted and followed the girl.

~*~

Faith and Buffy had just broken apart again, both a bit injured, but still fit as Dawn came running into the room to Buffy. "Buffy!"

The blond Slayer looked around and found the girl standing right behind her. She threw a quick smirk at Faith, backhanded Dawn, pulled her back up by her neck and took out a knife, holding it at the girls' throat. "Well, seems like the main target will be my first kill."

Buffy moved the knife closer to Dawn's throat and the girl began to cry, not wanting to believe that her sister, who sacrificed herself for the girl, now wanted to kill her. "Dawn! No!" Faith shouted and at exact that moment came Spike from behind, pushing Buffy to the floor. Buffy let go off Dawn, trying to not to fall, but did eventually. The knife also fell down, sliding away from her. Dawn quickly ran up to Faith, who shoved the girl behind her.

When Buffy got back up, she turned to Spike, stunned that all his wounds were healed. "What were you thinking?" she demanded to know.

"I've promised to a certain Slayer to protect her sister till the end of the world, before she died. And I will keep it, even if that means to fight the one I promised this."

"How often do I have to tell you that I'm not that Buffy!" she shouted and lunged at Spike.

She did a roundhouse kick to his face, but he only flinched a bit. Spike swung at her, and she sidestepped the blow. She swung back, and he grabbed her arm, swinging her around and throwing her over the desk. She hit her thigh hard, but quickly got up again. He jumped over the desk, where she was already waiting for him. As soon as he touched the ground, she punched him again in his face and his chest. Spike got loose from her and could land a hit at her face. She got spinning down to the ground and lied there, momentarily stunned. "Well, seems like I'm still as strong as before. If not even stronger."

Buffy looked up at him, and saw that he was standing directly in the sunlight. "How comes that you're not burning?"

"That's easy, pet. I'm human. A human with the strength of a Slayer."

"But that must also mean, that you're mortal now," she said smirking, and pulled his feet away. While Spike was trying to get up again, Buffy jumped back over the desk, to have more space for the fight. Spike followed shortly after. But in the meantime Buffy had been able to get a hand on her knife and was lunging with it at Spike, but he stopped her arms, just a second before she could stab him. From that moment on, they wrestled about that knife, but since Buffy has already fought against Faith before, and no matter how strong she had become through her training with the Watchers Council, Spike was still fresh, and like he thought, somehow stronger than before he became human, he slowly got the upper hand and eventually got the knife out of her hand and pushed her to the ground, leaning over the Slayer, ready to stab the knife into her chest.

"Spike! NO!" Dawn shouted crying, fearing to loose her sister again. She wanted to run to them, but Faith held her back with all her might, knowing what Spike had to do, as hard as it was.

"Spike! I can't hold her any longer! Do it!" she shouted.

"You hear what she is saying," Buffy said coolly, ready to die. "Go on. But remember, when I'm dead, the next Slayer will come and hunt you down."

Spike didn't say anything, just raised his arm, but when he looked at Buffy, the girl he loved so much, the girl he though he would never see again, he let the knife falling out of his hand, feeling tears in his eyes. "I-I'm sorry. I can't do this." He shook his head, got up and turned around, ready to leave the room. "I can't kill you, luv. It just wouldn't be right. Leave us now, with the knowledge that you're alive and do never come back."

Buffy stared at his back, confused. He did have the opportunity to kill her, but he spared her. There it was again. This feeling she had right after the kiss, and suddenly there were scenes flashing in front of her eyes. She and Spike were standing in some alley.


"Who are you?" she saw herself Spike asking.
"You'll find out on Saturday," he answered.
"What happens on Saturday?"
"I kill you."

Buffy groggily got up and picked up the knife, going after Spike, but in the meantime she had another flash, this time she, Spike and some woman, she somehow knew were standing in front of a house.

"Buffy, terrible things have happened. What were you doing?" the woman wanted to know.
"What, your mum doesn't know?" Spike asked and she saw herself glaring at him.
"Know what?" the woman asked confused.
"That I'm uh,…in a band. A-a rock band with Spike here," she answered.

She then saw how the woman, she saw before was lying lifeless on the couch and the next flash were pictures of a funeral, where she saw this girl, Dawn, standing crying next to herself. Buffy shook those pictures off and pushed Spike to the ground, finally wanting to get rid of him, when suddenly Dawn was leaning over him, to protect him. She hadn't even seen how the girl had suddenly gotten there. She must have been able to free herself from Faith's grip, as she saw how Buffy wanted to attack Spike. At that moment to more scenes were flashing in front of her inner eye. The first one was showing her and some of the people she had to kill sitting or in her case standing in the shop, the Magic Box.

"If the ritual starts, then every living creatures of this and every other dimension will suffer unbearable torment and death…" Giles, the one who said this, looked up at her. "Including Dawn."

"Then the last thing she'll see is me protecting her," Buffy saw herself stating as if it were the most important thing in the world that the Key should live.

 In the next scene she could see herself standing on the stairs in some house that seemed awfully familiar and Spike standing at the bottom of the stairs.

"I'm counting on you… to protect her," Buffy heard herself telling Spike.
"Till the end of the world. Even if that happens to be tonight," he answered.
"I'll be a minute," she said.
"Yeah." Buffy saw herself turning around and walking up the stairs, but she was stopped by Spike's voice. "I know you'll never love me." She paused on the stairs and looked back to Spike. "I know that I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man. And that's…"

Buffy felt tears dwelling up in her eyes, after this image faded, suddenly not being able anymore to kill the ex-vampire. "Spike…" she whispered, almost inaudible. She dropped the knife and raised her hand to her mouth, when suddenly everything came back to her. Those flashes were memories, her memories. "Oh god…" What had she done? What had gotten into her? Those were her friends and she tried to kill him.

"Buffy…?" Spike asked disbelieving.

"You are not a monster, Spike…" was the only thing she managed to say after having this last memory flash, trying to understand what had been or was still happening to her. Tears started to form in her eyes and she fell down on her knees, burying hear head in the palms of her hand.

"Buffy, luv…" Spike said, got up and hugged her tightly, feeling her tears through his ripped shirt and started to cry as well. While he was slowly stroking her back, the memories of before she jumped off the tower flashed in front of her eyes.

"Dawn, listen to me. Listen. I love you. I will always love you. But this is the work that I have to do… Tell Giles, tell Giles I figured it out, and, and I'm okay… And give my love to my friends. You have to take care of them now. You have to take care of each other. You have to be strong. Dawn, the hardest thing in this world… is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me."

"Buffy?" Dawn asked, slowly getting back up and carefully approaching her, still afraid that this might be some kind of plan of her. But when she saw the tears, she saw that they were real. She touched the shoulder of her sister, and Buffy turned around.

"Dawnie." They hugged each other tightly, never wanting to let the other go again.

"Buffy… You're back…"

"Oh my god Dawnie… I'm so sorry for not remembering you, all of you… for wanting to kill you… I don't know what has happened to me… This is so confusing. So sorry…"

"Shh, Buffy…  not now… later," Dawn soothed her big sister, having a huge smile on her face despite the tears.

Faith looked stunned, but relieved at the happenings in front of her. Something made Buffy remember. All the others also emerged out of the training room and were now staring in surprise, disbelieve and delight at the sisters.