About A Girl
Part 4: Unexpected Arrivals, Another Prophecy, and the End of the World
By
Anessa Ramsey
(Disclaimer in first part)
Angel was stunned by the appearance of a man who'd been dead for two years.
"Aye, Angel, yer not hallucinating. It's me."
"What…?"
"I'm here for the same reason you are." He looked at the motley group behind Angel and then to the new slayer locked in a kiss with William the Bloody. It seemed the kiss was not going to end anytime soon. "So are ye just going to stand there gaping at me or are you going to introduce me?"
"Right. Introductions." He turned to the gang. "This is Dawn, Willow, Tara, and Michael," he said, pointing to each in turn, "The two kissing are Liz and Spike. And that's Xander, Anya, Giles. You know Buffy."
"Tha's right! Yer the lass who stole Angelus' heart."
"Angel's not Angelus'."
"Don't ye go believin' that tripe. The demon loved ye. Maybe not as much as the soul did, but it was there none the less. Why do ye think he tried so hard to destroy ye?" He turned away from a very shocked Buffy to look at Liz and Spike. "Ye might want to do somethin' 'bout that. Can't talk to them if they're no' payin' attention."
Angel grabbed Spike and Buffy took Liz whose hands were clapped over her mouth in shock. She was blushing profusely. "Hello? He's a soulless vampire, Liz! You're not supposed to kiss them." Xander looked at Buffy ready to say something but she cut him off. "Angel has a soul. It's different."
"Ye know, you watchers really screwed up the job that ye were given. Ye were just supposed to help them, not brainwash them. The slayer is the warrior for the Powers not the tool of the Council." Doyle looked at Buffy and Liz. "Where do ye think ye come from? The speed? The strength? Those are all traits of a vampire."
"No, we'd know if she was…it would be in one of the hundreds of books we've used for research, wouldn't it?" Willow asked, looking at Giles, who was not looking at anyone.
"It's not true is it Giles?" Buffy asked.
"The Council has long disputed it, but there are tomes, ancient texts, hidden deep within the Council vaults that make such claims. Of course no one can access them anymore. They are kept under constant lock and key because it suited the Council to keep them there, to keep the origins of slayers a secret. I don't even know the true origin of the slayer."
Xander's mind was whirling. He didn't know what to think. That the part of Buffy that was the slayer was made from a vampire scared him. It would mean she had some of the darkness that she fights against within her.
"The slayer was created by the Powers through the mating of a male vampire and human female. The outcome of that union was a daughter. She was the first and when she died they harnessed her soul, her essence, and poured her into the next chosen one to continue the line. And so it has been for thousands of years."
"Oh god. Does this mean that I…we could be evil?" Buffy asked looking at Liz.
"No. A slayer is chosen for many reasons. Her capacity for good is one of them. And you should know better than anyone that things that contain darkness within them are not always evil. Or if they are they can make the conscious decision to change." He glanced at Spike.
"Mr. Doyle, I hardly think that Spike is an accurate example of that concept."
"It's just Doyle, and the Powers believe he is."
"But the chip…?"
"Made it so that he can't hurt you. It didn't make him like you. A piece of plastic isna capable of that and ye are fools if ye believe it to be."
"Oh." Buffy's whole belief system was slowly being dismantled.
"I'm not sayin' that all vampires and demons are capable of change. We all know that without the soul, Angel is nothing more than a Master Vampire determined to destroy all he touches…or all that touched him. I'm just sayin' that ye should lighten up on William and docile demons. They're just tryin' to exist, like I was when I was alive, nothing more. But that is not why I'm here."
"Then why?" Tara asked, speaking up for the first time.
"Something's coming. And it's big."
"Apocalypse?"
Doyle nodded. "I can only tell ye to check the Codex. I've got to be going. Tell the Princess I love her." He turned to Buffy. "Don't try to stop things from happening just because ye don't like it. It could be fated…or not, but they need to find out for themselves. Train her well…and quickly. There's not much time." He vanished then, gone back to wherever he'd come from.
Giles scrambled to find the book of prophecies that Angel had provided him with several years ago. Intent on completing his task, he sat down at the table and ignored everyone else. Buffy and Spike took Liz in the back room and began to work with her, teaching her basic defensive moves and some offensive ones as well. Michael watched them from a sofa on the far side of the room with Angel. Willow and Tara were looking up a couple of spells that they were interested in doing and Dawn was sitting with Anya and Xander in the front room talking. It was two hours before Giles found what he was looking for.
"I found it!" he called from the front room.
Everyone gathered round the table and waited for him to read the prophecy. In a very serious tone, he began;
In the dark of the night, under the Harvest moon
In the year of the true millenium
The four of royalty with powers untold
Not of this earth but of earth
Shall go to war with the Chosen by their side.
From distant worlds they shall come
A race of people that are not people
Led by the sister and her love
The general and the queen.
In the barren land the battle will rage
The Last will give her life for love
Or humanity will be lost
And the price will be the world.
"Well that's in no way ominous or anything," Buffy snapped, confused by the lack of a direct message. She really hated prophecies.
While everyone else looked at each other and began talking about research, Liz and Michael locked eyes, both startled by the fact that they knew what the prophecy was about and that it was actually in a book centuries old.
"So any ideas?" Willow asked everyone hopefully.
"From distant worlds…a race of people that are not people," Xander said, "I'm thinking aliens." Everyone laughed.
"Yeah right. Aliens," Buffy scoffed.
"You're one to talk. You are a vampire slayer. You fight demons, vampires, and things of myth every night. If they exist why can't aliens?" Dawn asked innocently.
Michael and Liz looked at each other and he shook his head no. They couldn't risk revealing anything. Not even after hearing the prophecy about the Royal Four and the Chosen. It was too soon to trust these people with the information. They didn't know them well enough.
"That's different, Dawn."
"How?"
Buffy looked to Giles for help but received nothing but a slight raising of an eyebrow and she knew she was not going to get him to help her.
"I was in Roswell in '47," Spike said casually. Michael's head snapped up and he stared at the vampire worried that he might know something. "Didn't see a damn thing but a bunch of people speculatin' over some weather balloon that fell outta the sky. The place became a freak show after that. I dragged Dru out of there when she started goin' on about some Royalty that was going to help defend the planet. Didn't think anything of it at the time." He smiled. "She was completely daft you know. Always talkin' to her dolls and whisperin' about the stars talkin' to her." That brought a scowl to his face. He glared at Angel. "You were always a right bastard and should feel guilty for a lot of stuff, but Dru is the one thing you should never be able to be redeemed for." Angel didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say. He'd told Buffy once that of everything he did, Dru was the worst, and that hadn't changed.
"Huh?" Michael said, wondering what they were talking about.
"Dru was my girl for a hundred years. Peaches here was her sire. He was obsessed with her, so he stalked her, made her think she was evil because she had visions, killed her family and left them for her to find, and when she sought sanctuary in a convent, he killed all the nuns on the day she was to take her vows, then he turned her. She was mad as a hatter by then." Angel cringed and couldn't look anyone in the eyes. Spike took a puff on his cigarette and exhaled.
"You're one to talk Spike, you killed two slayers."
"Did it nice and quick though, didn't I? Angelus always had to make a show of everything. His favorite was lovers…leaving one dead in bed and setting up romantic scenes in the house so when the other came home they thought that their lover did it. Watchin' their reactions when they found their lover dead. Make them happy just before you destroy them."
Giles stood abruptly and walked into the training room. "What?" he asked when Buffy glared at him. It didn't take long for him to figure it out. "He did it to the watcher didn't he?" He tried to think of who it had been. It didn't take long. "The gypsy." Buffy nodded and Willow tried to hold back the tears.
Xander was the one who broke the silence with his practical words. "This isn't important now. What's important is figuring out the prophecy, cause I for one don't want to die."
"Xander's right. If we're dead there'll be no orgasms."
Anya's words brought forth laughter that had been missing for several minutes and they went back to work on trying to decipher the prophecy, not noticing that Liz and Michael weren't researching very hard, and ignoring the looks that Spike and Liz kept sending at each other.