Twist of Fate: Chapter 10
by Lisette
Legalese: See Chapter 1 for disclaimers and ratings.
"Wonder Boy!" she cried out, her voice hard as she quickly stalked across the room and shoved the man back against the wall, easily pinning him with one hand around his neck. "What are you doing back in my town?" she whispered, her eyes glaring daggers into his. "In my living room, no less? I thought that you would have learned the first time that it's not a good idea to mess with me or my town," she continued, irritated by the way that his confident little smile never left his lips.
Struggling against the constriction against his throat, Lyle's smile grew even brighter. "Oh, I got your message the first time around," he managed to say, his eyes twinkling.
Pausing, Buffy shook her head at the stupidity of the guy. "Still searching for Jarod?" she asked, her gaze hardening as she thought of their sole common link, the man that had unknowingly brought them all together so many weeks ago. "If so, sorry, but haven't seen him."
"No," Lyle muttered, straining to get the words past his bruised windpipe, his eyes narrowed on the small girl before him. Because of her shorter stature, he found himself looking down on her golden crown of hair, bright green eyes glaring up from a deceptively young face. Eighteen. His sources said that this girl was only eighteen, yet she held him with a grip that spoke of men much larger and older than her. Despite the tapes and his previous encounter, it was nearly impossible for him to reconcile the small girl that stood before him with the strength that she displayed. "I'll leave catching Jarod to my sister," he finally continued, a smirk replacing his smile as he thought of his twin. "I have other... projects to see to."
"Really?" Buffy murmured, her voice like acid as her grip tightened once more. "More people to torture and lives to ruin?" she asked, Jarod's words coming back to her; his vague description of all that Lyle had done to him - the lives that he had so casually ruined. When Jarod had spoken of this man, there had been such hate and anger in his eyes... and fear. It was the fear that spoke to her more than anything. This slight man with the clean cut, even handsome features, immaculately dressed, was responsible for killing Jarod's brother and torturing Jarod for no other reason than his personal enjoyment. He was a monster - only this one hid its ugliness on the inside, where most would never see its hideousness. However, Buffy knew in that instant that were he a true monster, the kind that she fought on a nightly basis, he wouldn't be standing before her, smirking at her innocently for long. Instead, he would be staring down the business end of her stake. "Well, whose life is it this time?" she asked, getting back to their inane dialogue.
"Yours," came Lyle's short reply, relishing in the girl's evident confusion as his eyes turned away to stare deliberately at a point just behind her.
Instantly alert, Buffy was just beginning to turn as she felt a sharp sting on the back of her neck. Wincing, she quickly reached back and tightened her hand around a slim, metal cylinder. Frowning, she pulled the object from where it was embedded in her skin and brought it before her, her eyes widening slightly as she took in the small dart. Confused, she slowly turned her eyes back towards Lyle as a wave of weakness filtered through her limbs, causing her to stumble away and turn towards the entryway behind her, her eyes taking in the large man that stood there, a dart gun slowly lowering to his side. Trying to fight the drug that seeped through her veins, Buffy stumbled against the wall, watching as Lyle waved another man forward.
"What's... what's going on?" she murmured as the new man roughly jerked her arms behind her back, wincing as cold steel tightened mercilessly around her slim wrists.
"You know," Lyle began, drawing the girl's attention as he absently closed the distance between them, using one gloved finger to lift her chin and force her to meet his eyes, "I'm rather disappointed at how easy it was to capture the Slayer."
Freezing, Buffy felt her eyes narrow as she jerked away from Lyle's touch. "How do you-" she began, her mind awhirl at his words. She had never mentioned being the Slayer to him. Of that she was certain.
"Weve been watching you, Elizabeth Ann Summers," Lyle murmured, his voice low and seductive as he took a few steps back, his annoying grin replaced by a thoughtful expression that was somehow even more disturbing. "And Ive done my research."
"I don't understand," Buffy murmured, a chill sweeping down her spine as she began testing the strength of her bonds.
"Well I didn't understand at first, either," Lyle countered, his gaze sweeping around the deceptively normal looking room. "Here I was, finally about to capture that stupid lab rat when a girl lays not only my man flat, but myself as well," he murmured, a muscle ticking in his clenched jaw at the remembered encounter. "At the Centre, we're always on the lookout for anything that could bring potential profit, for anything that we could benefit from, and you caught my attention," he murmured, his eyes sliding over her slim frame. "I had a team sent down to keep an eye out, and in no time my men began giving reports of monsters that had fangs and drank people's blood. I saw surveillance tapes of demons that viciously attacked this small California town... and of the small girl that somehow managed to fight them all," he continued, watching as her eyes widened slightly at his words, as the realization that she had been followed all this time slowly sunk in.
"I didn't believe it," he added, his eyes returning to hers. "I couldn't believe it because it went against everything that I knew about this world - I couldn't believe that this kind of evil existed," he stressed, his eyes seemingly lost until a lazy grin suddenly lifted his lips. "I couldn't believe it until I realized that this evil you fight every single night - that you risk your life for in secret and that makes up your entire existence... it's nothing compared to me," he finished as he waved towards someone behind her.
Confused, Buffy followed Lyle's gaze and felt her breath catch in her throat as her mother was dragged into the room. "Mom!" she gasped, her muscles instantly straining as adrenaline coursed through her veins.
"Buffy!" Joyce cried out, her eyes wide and panicked as she took in her daughter's restraints, her eyes dancing back and forth between her and the man in the dark suit. "I didn't know," she babbled, struggling futilely against the two men that held her. "They were strangers, but I didn't invite them in! I didn't invite them in!" she gasped, her eyes wild.
Closing her eyes briefly against this gross display, Buffy finally felt her patience wane. Lifting her head, Buffy felt her eyes narrow into emerald slits as she met Lyle's gaze. "If you've been watching me," she began, "then the first thing that you should have learned is that you never touch my family or friends or I become very, very unhappy," she murmured, her smile turning hard as she suddenly jerked away from her captor, stomping on his foot and then sending an elbow to his throat that sent him gagging to the floor. In one fluid movement she then ducked the bumbling attack of the man with the dart gun, pivoting on her ankle and sending her foot crashing against his jaw.
As her attacker joined his friend on the ground, Buffy paused long enough to snap the cuffs as though they were no more than lengths of string. She then launched herself at the men holding her mother, crossing the distance between them faster than their eyes could follow and sending them both to the ground in seconds. "And you also should have learned," she continued, not even out of breath as she pushed her mother behind her, turning to Mr. Lyle once more with a small grin, "that Slayers aren't like other people. We heal quickly and drugs just don't affect us like normal people."
"Oh, I have," Lyle countered, quickly lifting a gun from the folds of his jacket and firing repeatedly, watching in satisfaction as all six darts hit their mark.
Startled, Buffy didn't even have a chance to voice her surprise as a weakness unlike anything she had ever experienced before burned through her veins. Groaning, she felt herself begin to fall forward, only to be caught and cradled by gentle arms from behind her.
"Oh God, Buffy," she dimly heard her mother whisper, a soft hand running across her face and through her tangled hair as she strove to fight the darkness that waited to claim her.
Seeing her daughter's struggle, Joyce felt the tears build in her eyes, trailing unbidden down her pale cheeks. Cradling her small form in her arms as though she were still the little girl that had grown up far too quickly, she pulled the many small darts from her daughter's form, tossing them angrily to the carpet beside them. "Buffy! Buffy, can you hear me?" she called loudly, brushing a hand over her daughter's cheek as Buffy blinked slowly in reply, obviously trying to focus on her mother.
"Mom?" Buffy murmured, her voice so young and lost that it instantly tore at Joyce's heart, brining fresh tears to her eyes as a man's laughter filled the room.
Torn from her thoughts, Joyce hugged her precious daughter closer to her and glared at the man that had brought this trouble down upon them. "Leave her alone!" she cried, trying to sound fierce and instead dismayed at the shrillness of her own voice. "Get out of my house and leave us be!" she cried again, watching as the man's smile only grew.
"Well, Mom," he began, idly passing the horrid dart gun off to one of his recovering goons as he flexed his leather gloves, "while I don't appreciate your tone, we will be following through with one of your requests. We're leaving. With your daughter," he added, almost as an afterthought as he waved his men forward, one roughly dragging Joyce away from Buffy while two others took the Slayer by each arm, hoisting her barely conscious form between them.
"And the mother?" Willie asked, stepping beside Lyle as he absently massaged his aching jaw. "What do you want done with her?"
Sighing, Lyle paused briefly as his eyes flicked back to the struggling woman, her cries falling on deaf ears, and back towards the Slayer, her eyes locked on her struggling mother. "Well let's not repeat history, shall we?" he asked, reaching towards the Sweeper and taking his pistol from his shoulder holster, quickly twisting a silencer on the end. "I won't allow another Jarod," he murmured.
In that moment, it was as though a sudden stillness had fallen upon the room as Joyce was finally released from her captor. Surprised, she drew away, her back hitting the wall behind her as her wide eyes flicked from her daughter to Mr. Lyle and the gun that was now pointed in her direction. For the briefest of moments, a rush of adrenaline tore through her body, urging her to do something. She knew that if she was her daughter, the Slayer, she would be off in a flash, moving faster than the eye could follow as she hurled punch after kick at anyone that stood in her path, fighting even to the death to do something, just as long as she was fighting for something. But as quickly as the adrenaline rushed through her body, it was gone again as a heavy weariness crept through her limbs.
The truth was, she wasn't her daughter. She wasn't the Slayer. She was simply a weary mother who loved her daughter too much. A mother who could do nothing in face of these odds. A mother who knew her fate so clearly that it was as though her entire life had been leading up to this one moment. Calm, she turned her eyes away from the dark tunnel of the gun and instead focused on her beloved daughter. I love you, she mouthed, knowing that her daughter understood as hot tears burned down her pale cheeks.
And Buffy did understand, even through the haze of the drugs she understood. She understood all too well when someone was saying goodbye. She had done it too many times before in her short life not to understand. Not to understand that she was about to lose her mother and there wasn't a thing that she could do about it. For the first time in her life, the Slayer was powerless to stop it.
A second before Lyle pulled the trigger, Buffy swore that she could hear her mother's voice ringing in her ears: Look away. Baby, please look away.
But Buffy couldn't.
As two muffled thuds echoed in the small room, the slugs tearing through her mother's torso and tossing her back against the wall, Buffy couldn't look away.
As her mother left a trail of red as her lifeless body slid down the wall opposite of her, Buffy couldn't look away.
As Joyce Summers landed in a graceless heap on the wood floor, a bright pool of red forming beneath her unmoving body, Buffy couldn't look away.
To do so, she somehow felt as though everything that had led up to this point - all of the love and memories that had formed Joyce Summers' life would be meaningless. A null void that would somehow drown her in its angry maw. So Buffy couldn't look away.
Nodding curtly, Lyle lowered the gun and then tossed it to the surprised Cleaner, absently dusting his gloves against the neat press of his trousers. "Burn it," he muttered, waving at the body and the house around them, "and give her more - I want her out!" he hissed, his eyes narrowing on the Slayer who's eyes remained locked on her mother's body. Watching idly, he noted that she didn't even flinch, didn't move as Willie jammed a large needle into the girl's arm, emptying its contents into her system. Within seconds, the girl finally succumbed to the drugs, her head lolling forward.
"We have a plane to catch," he said, a smile once more returning to his lips as though nothing had happened - as though he hadn't just destroyed the Slayer's one blood link to this town, to this life... to her life. Turning, he walked calmly from the house and into the quiet night. With satisfaction, he noted that the street was deserted around him as Willie stepped outside, hurrying towards the car with the girl draped over one shoulder. Struggling for a moment with the door, the man dropped his cargo into the backseat of the car as though she were no more than a burden before sliding into the driver's seat. Seconds later two others joined the girl in the backseat, one taking to either side of her as Lyle settled into the front of the car.
Seconds later, the car backed from the drive as the orange ghost of flames began flickering behind smoky glass. As the flames quickly leapt up and caught the large drapes that framed the bay window, the dark car pulled away and sped down the street, disappearing into the dark night.
Alone, the house continued to burn unnoticed, the flames eating through each room of the house until its destructive force could go unnoticed no longer. Yet from the second that Buffy had stepped into her house, unaware of all that the night would bring, help was already too late. It was too late to save her house. Too late to save her mother. And most importantly, too late to save her.