Loving Eternally: Chapter 9
by Lisette
Legalese: See Chapter 1 for disclaimers and ratings.
Once Riley's breathing had returned to normal over seeing the hideous mask slip over their captor's face, he slowly nodded at the laughing creature. "What are you?"
"What does it look like I am?" Drusilla returned, her grin broadening as she flicked her tongue against one sharpened fang.
Drawing back, Will slowly closed his eyes before focusing back on the woman. "Like a vampire," he whispered, his voice hoarse. And for once, his friends didn't laugh at his wild suggestion.
"Smart boy," she whispered approvingly, licking her lips once more before shifting back to her human face. "Just like your mother," she laughed before straightening again.
"How do.. do you know our parents?" Alex asked, willing her voice to remain steady as she eyed the vampire with disdain.
"Oh, we're old friends, your parents and I," Drusilla smiled, bending down and slowly licking the bars that divided her from her prey. "They called themselves the Scooby Gang, and helped dear Buffy with her slaying-"
"What was she like?" Riley cut in, leaning forward cautiously as he searched the woman's face. "What was my sister like?"
At this, Drusilla laughed once more, the sound of it echoing off of the large, stone cavern. "Oh, you know," she laughed, waving her words away like smoke on the wind. "The heroine who was willing to risk life and limb to destroy the forces of evil with a wooden stake or her biting wit," she mocked, her eyes like fire. "So boring, really."
Sighing, Spike quickly reached inside his jacket and searched for his cigarettes - until he caught the slight shake of Joyce's head. Understanding, he scowled quickly before leaving them untouched. Turning, he met the Slayer's curious eyes. "After talking with you in France, I did some thinking," he explained. Then, feeling antsy at doing nothing, he quickly turned and began to pace in the small room, the others making way for his route. "I don't think that she was coming back here to Sunnydale for revenge at all - well, not totally," he amended as he absently rubbed his healing wound from where he had been staked by Dru just a few short weeks ago.
"Why not?" Buffy prompted, noting his movements.
"Well, a few months back Dru and I found a spell that could recreate the Hellmouth here in Sunnyhell," he explained, knowing that now he had everyone's full attention. "All that was needed was the blood of a slayer."
"Then why did she come back here?" Giles quickly interrupted, a frown spreading across his face. "Everyone thinks that Buffy is dead-"
"Do you know how impossible it is to find the Slayer nowadays?" Spike cut in, throwing a bemused glance at Buffy. "Ever since Buffy 'died', no one has been able to hunt the Slayer as before," he explained quickly. "In the past, the Slayer was always rooted to one location, making her a bloody sitting duck as she stayed to fight the good fight and protect whatever place needed protectin'. Now, this 'new' slayer is always on the move! By the time word reaches the Baddies out to get her blood that she's in one place, she's already gone again!"
At this, Xander slowly shook his head, his eyes narrowing into tiny slits. "So you were helping Drusilla hunt the Slayer to reopen the Hellmouth?" he asked in disgust, his fists balling up in anger.
"Well, yeah!" Spike agreed as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "And why not? I'm bad, you dolt!" he chuckled, rolling his eyes.. until he realized that he was the only one laughing. Clearing his throat, he quickly flushed as he shook his head. "Eh, well I'm here, aren't I?"
Sighing, Joyce quickly shook her head. "Well why take the kids?" she demanded, feeling her husband's arm wrap reassuringly around her shoulders.
Shrugging his shoulders, Spike slowly began to reach for his cigarettes once more until he remembered Joyce's earlier indication. "How should I know?" he muttered, looking for something else to keep his hands busy. "I didn't say that I thought she was here completely for revenge - bloody bat probably thinks that the blood of a Slayer's family would be enough."
At this, Joyce quickly put a hand to her mouth to stifle her gasp. "She's going to use Riley to try and open the Hellmouth," she whispered in sudden understanding.
"Not if I can help it," Buffy whispered, her eyes glinting with determination.
"Did you kill her?" Alex asked softly, feeling Riley stiffen beside her as she gently took one of his hands with her own.
"The Slayer?" Drusilla asked, her eyes focusing back on the trio as she straightened and slowly moved along the outside of the cage, her captives' eyes following her every step. "No, not yet," she whispered, her voice soft and musical as the world seemed to dissolve around them. "After she made this town all boring she left. Word is, she was killed some months later - all alone," she laughed as the group jerked back in surprise.
Sighing, Buffy slowly paced the darkened living room, noting idly how the debris from last night's battle had been cleared away, the windows boarded as it actually resembled someone's living space once more. Shaking her head slowly, her damp hair from her shower swirling around her, Buffy faced her friends and family. "We have to figure out where Drusilla's hiding out."
"You don't think that she'd be dumb enough to go back to one of her old haunts, do you?" Xander asked, raising his eyebrow skeptically from his seat on the loveseat, Anya snuggled up in his arms.
"But are any of them even still around?" the ex-demon asked absently.
"Anya has a good point," Giles conceded as he rubbed his brow thoughtfully. "The old factory was torn down many years ago..."
"Well if not any of the old hangouts, where else could she be hiding?" Buffy interrupted impatiently, stopping in her tracks as she readjusted her old, familiar white tank. She had just been lucky that her mom had never thrown away any of her old clothes, meaning that she had a wide variety of garments to pick from. Now, back in her familiar black pants and white tank, her slaying gear, Buffy was ready to go and get the trio back.. if they could only figure out where to look.
"They could be anywhere," Willow offered in a small voice, her eyes growing wide as Oz gently squeezed her hand.
"Yeah," Xander agreed, rubbing his head wearily. "Sunnydale has grown since you've left, Buffy," he admitted, meeting Buffy's glance, "and there's tons of places to hide out now - anywhere from over by the docks where you were last night to abandoned buildings, warehouses, caves, the forest..."
Sighing, Buffy slowly nodded her head. They were right. A lot had changed since she had last been in Sunnydale, but that also meant that a lot had changed for Drusilla too, since she had last been there. "Spike," Buffy called, turning to the vampire, "does she have to be anywhere special to perform this spell that you found?"
Shrugging his shoulders, Spike absently played with a lighter as he thought back to the spell. "I didn't exactly study the thing - it was Dru's pet project," he admitted.
Growling in frustration, Buffy shook her head sharply - and stopped as the vampire's words from the night before came back to her. "The doorway."
"Pardon me?" Giles quickly replied, his forehead crinkling.
"The vampire said last night that they were at the doorway-"
"What doorway?" Willow asked, puzzled.
"The door to the old Hellmouth makes the most sense," Spike cut in as a light bulb seemed to snap on for everyone in the room.
"Of course," Buffy muttered, snapping her finger absently. "The ruins to the old high school library," she nodded, burying her memories of the last time that she had been there... the time when Riley had died and her world had fallen apart.
"Um.. not anymore," Giles broke in hesitantly, frowning at his slayer. "The ruins were torn down long ago."
"Well what's there now?" Buffy demanded, certain that was where they would find the missing kids.
"Nothing," Oz broke in, shaking his head quickly. "Just a parking lot."
Sighing, Buffy quickly closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against her throbbing head. So much had changed... and without anything else to fear since the door to the Hellmouth had been erased, the city no longer needed such a reminder of what stalked the streets of their town. Then, her eyes snapped open as something else occurred to her. "Well, what about below it?"
Sighing, Alex quickly shook her head, waves of black hair silhouetting her proud frame. This was getting old - fast. "Well, what do you want us for?" she asked, getting right to the point. If she was just going to kill them, the least that she could do was get it over with instead of making them sit here and listen to her rant - even if they were learning stuff from it - knowledge that their parents never trusted them with.
Smiling, Drusilla slowly turned her eyes from one to the other until they rested on Riley's dark eyes. "For your blood," she whispered, freezing him with her glare.
Quickly the group set to work spreading aging maps across the dining room table, shoving placemats and decorations aside. "I always knew that these would someday come in handy," Giles muttered to himself, adjusting his glasses as he pored over the creased papers. "I made it a point to keep updated maps of the tunnel system that runs below the city... after you left," he added, meeting Buffy's hard green eyes.
"Well let's see what we can find," Buffy replied quietly as she tore her eyes away from all of the questions that she saw hidden in her watcher's eyes. Quickly she traced a slender finger along the length of tunnels until they rested on a long tunnel that seemed to end right before the place where the old library would have stood.
"Now who wants to bet," Xander asked, watching Buffy's thoughtful glance, "that there's a door at the end of that tunnel that opens up into Drusilla's new hideout?"
As everyone moved quickly around the house, readying the preparations for that night, Buffy slowly paced the quiet living room, her eyes skipping to the many pictures that dotted the familiar room. It had already been decided that that night, when darkness had fallen, Buffy would lead the others down into the tunnels. She couldn't convince them to let her go alone, and instead Angel, Spike, Giles, Xander, Willow and Oz would accompany her. Her mother and Anya would be waiting by the surface, the get-away vehicle ready to go in case a hasty retreat was needed. Now the others were just making the necessary preparations to make sure that the plan would go without a hitch.
But then Buffy's thoughts drifted away from the coming night as she focused on a smiling picture of Riley in a graduation cap, tucked between Giles and her mom and obviously taken those four years ago at his high school graduation. It was a picture that was never taken of Buffy. Her father hadn't even come to her graduation - probably didn't even realize that she was graduating, and she had made her mother leave town. It was the day that she blew up the school.. her second one in a number of years. In Riley's picture, they looked like the perfect, happy family.
Sighing, Buffy sensed another enter the room and move silently until they were standing beside her. "What's he like?" she asked, knowing that her mother knew who she asked about.
"Your brother is wonderful," Joyce murmured, her voice filled with obvious love and pride. "He's twenty-two now, the same age as you when you left - a senior at the University of California here in Sunnydale. He's majoring in art-"
"Art?" Buffy asked, surprise registering in her voice.
"Yes, and he's quite good," Joyce continued quietly, pride at her son's accomplishments filling her voice. "I suppose that he inherited it from me-"
"But what's he like?" Buffy asked again, turning to meet her mom's sparkling eyes, her face expressionless.
Nodding slowly in understanding, Joyce took a deep breath before looking at the photographs that lined the walls once more. "He's a perfectly normal young man," she whispered, tears burning her eyes. "He's so kind and so smart - very quiet at times, but he loves his friends so much..." Here, Joyce chuckled quietly as she wiped away her tears. "Oh, Will and Alex have been his best friends ever since they were in diapers - before that even. It was a great surprise to find out that I was pregnant, an accident that we've never regretted, right around the same time as Anya and Willow, but somehow it just seemed right..."
"Like the next generation of us?" Buffy whispered, her eyes moving from one happy photo to the next. "Where they were able to have everything that we didn't," she added, tears filling her own eyes as once more she realized that this brother of hers was everything she wasn't - everything she couldn't give to her mother was born in this child. Not only did he follow in her footsteps with his love of art, but he was normal. How many times, after first learning of her destiny, had her mom begged her to just turn her back on it - to just be normal? But she wasn't normal - she never could have been.
Sighing, Joyce slowly nodded her head. "A normal childhood and adolescence.. a normal life," she agreed. "Buffy," she continued, turning to face her daughter as she gently took her hands into her own, "when I opened your letter a part of me died that day," she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. "Riley was never meant to replace you. Nothing could ever have replaced the hole that your leaving left in my heart - but his presence helped to ease the pain and remind us that there was still a life worth living for."
"But they said that you never spoke of me to him," Buffy whispered, her own tears burning behind her eyes as she turned to survey the dark room. "And there are no pictures..." as if I was some big, dark, horrible secret, Buffy continued silently to herself. As though she were a part of Sunnydale's deep secret that no one ever spoke of, her memory buried away like yesterday's trash.
"We didn't speak of you to anyone, including each other," Joyce admitted, kneading her lip with her blunt teeth as she slowly shook her head. "But Buffy, how could we?" she asked, forcing her daughter to meet her gaze once more. "When you left you took so much of each of us with you that it was too painful to even mention your name."
"I'm sorry," Buffy whispered, the tears burning at her eyes. And then, as her mother looked at her as only a mother could, a look filled with compassion, understanding, and a never-ending love, Buffy felt the brutal dam that held her emotions crack slightly, letting just a little of the pain that she had always felt since leaving trickle past. "I'm sorry," she sobbed. Instantly her mother wrapped her arms around her and sheltered her from that pain as only a mother could. And in that instant, with her face pressed against her mother's chest, her tears soaking through the thin material of her shirt, and as her mom's scent filled her nose, Buffy knew that it was worth it.
"I know, baby, I know," Joyce shushed, oblivious to everything but her daughter's pain. "I am, too," she admitted as she hugged her closer. "I'm so sorry that you had to spend over half of your short life alone, while we went on without you, filling our homes once more with love and laughter," she whispered, the tears streaking down as her baby pulled away and stared at her mother in confusion. "It makes me feel like a horrible mother," she half sobbed, half laughed as Buffy grinned broadly, wiping her own tears away.
"No," Buffy countered, reaching a hand up to gently wipe away her mom's tears, "you're a wonderful mother. You were doing just as I asked of you."
Smiling, Joyce slowly nodded her head in agreement. While she knew that a lot of the hurt couldn't be erased in a single afternoon, she also knew that she and her daughter had come to an understanding. Buffy left because she felt she had to, in order to protect all those that she loved. And while she lived alone in pain and suffering, she did it so her family could be happy and lead new lives. It was a sacrifice she made and the reasoning behind letting them think that she had died. For otherwise, they never could have gotten on with life without her. "Well," Joyce conceded as she gently smoothed her daughter's beautiful blonde hair, "just remember that you're not alone any more."
"I know," Buffy whispered, capturing her mother's hand and squeezing it gently with her own. And then, as Xander's laughter could be heard from the other room, a mischievous glint entered her eyes that hadn't been there for many years. "So... whose idea was it to name my brother Riley Giles, anyway? Poor kid," she snickered, her eyes twinkling. "He was beat up a lot as a child, wasn't he?"