Part 8
Nemesis
When he woke up he wasn't downstairs anymore. He was in Buffy's room, on her bed. The room was empty, or so he thought. He couldn't really stand up, something seemed to block him. Had it been the magic? Or the fall? The truth of the matter was that he could look up and glance sideways, but he couldn't see the entire room. Soon he realized there was someone else moving around in the room and by the soft step, he figured it was a woman. He thought it was either Cordelia or Buffy. Maybe Willow. The figure neared him and he was shocked to see it was Joy holding a wet cloth in her hands. He wanted to stand up and push her away, but as he had discovered before, he could not move, so he sat there helpless while the girl sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed the cloth softly to his forehead.
"The first time I saw you, you came in the night," she told him, avoiding his gaze as she spoke and lovingly stroked his forehead with the cloth. She seemed odd and out of place, not the monster Wesley had expected to find. She didn't even seem wicked.... Was evil hiding under that vulnerable appearance? It could, for evil worked, as always, in twisted ways.
"We met?" he asked putting aside his doubts for the moment. He could do nothing now. Not while he still remained petrified in that bed. He suspected it was the girl's doing.
"You and I? Yes," she finally looked in his eyes and the ex-watcher thought those green eyes to be old and wise and identical to Buffy's. "You and I?" she asked again. "No."
"What does that mean?" Wesley didn't know which answer to believe.
"Both. You and I have met, but you don't know it. You and I have not met, not yet," she spoke and her words only confused him further. Maybe that was her game.
"I met you, yet I didn't," he concluded trying to make her see the confusing way she was expressing herself. She only smiled.
"That's right," it seemed correct to her.
"Are you holding me here?" he asked after a moment of silence.
"For your own good," she said unshaken by his question. "What would you do if you were free? Hit me? Knock me out? Use magic on me? Run off to Angel and tell him my dirty little secret?" she shook her head. "I can't let you do that, I'm sorry."
"So you're going to keep me here until you do what you were sent here to do?" he asked disgusted. "Or kill me?"
"No," she was amused by his disgust. "I'm going to keep you here until we sort things out," she paused, then added: "You had no right to go inside my head. Do you know how dangerous it can get?"
"Black magic always is," he said suddenly curious of what she wanted to tell him.
"It felt like someone twisted my brain in a knot," she recalled the horrible sensation she had had in the highschool hallways.
"Who are you?" he didn't listen to her complaints.
"Someone whose going to tell you an unbelievable story," Joy sighed. There was no other way. She knew how much Wesley could insist on a matter and she didn't want him to stop her from completing her mission.
"Who's Jacques?" he suddenly asked. He knew the name from somewhere, but could not recall where from. It had been one of those bits and pieces he had picked up as a result of the spell he had made in the warehouse.
"The mystic who got me here. From the future," she explained and Wesley wanted to laugh, but found that he could not. Joy did not want to hear it.
"The future?" he only managed to scowl.
"That's right. How else could I have met you, yet not?" she asked and Wesley could not answer. The statement itself was still puzzling. "The first time I saw you, you came in the night," she repeated the first phrase she had spoken. "You were carrying a boy in your arms and you were so miserable, so heartbroken that you could barely speak. My mother..."
"Buffy," Wesley realized and she smiled nodding.
"She took you in. She had heard about it...and she had tears in her eyes when she saw you. She wanted it desperately to be Angel...She thought he would escape. Angel always survived, it's what she used to tell me," sadness washed over her.
"Wasn't he your father?" he remembered the vampire from the visions.
"Spike is my father," she said and Wesley was shocked, yet somehow familiar with the revelation.
"What's *it*?"
"*It* was the day Los Angeles was leveled down. There was only rubble after that day. And the metal giant afterwards," Wesley felt a knot in his stomach. "I suppose I should tell you. One day there will be a great menace, one so large that it will shadow the world and humans will be aware of the demon threat. And this evil will seem unstoppable. No weapon will do, no hero. And its origins will be in Los Angeles. And you will all fight it and fail. But one day Fred, your darling Winifred, will come up with a solution. A plan that would put an end to the threat. She will call it the pawn theory," she smirked. "It was a chain reaction that would start from her and pass through every living person within Los Angeles and the life force combined would open an inter-dimensional portal into a void of such proportions that it would swallow the city whole along with the evil inside it. But the price was ultimate. The life of millions. A sacrifice she made without second judgement."
"It was a wise choice," Wesley thought. A few millions for billions of others was a fair price in his eyes.
"Not as wise as it was selfish," Joy stopped him from admiring the woman he loved. "Fred never intended to die along with the others. She was supposed to be the soul survivor of the massacre. The last one standing so she could have the glory she always dreamt of."
"No. Fred would never do that!" Wesley interrupted her.
"She'll become more bitter with time. And will dream of accomplishment, of praises. And she will get them. After she will die. She'll be everything but sanctified. She made a mistake you see. She told you," she smiled. "She wanted you to live as well, she could have saved another, maybe more, but she loved you. You refused to live while the others died, but not before she told you how you could save yourself. All you needed was an amulet and your own blood. Even if you knew, you didn't tell the others, you thought there was no other choice. The chain reaction would start with her and end with Angel. There was an exact number of pawns that was calculated at the beginning and because you refused her you were a part of it too. A number, a pawn. The white queen - the very first person in the chain survived. And that was Fred. But when it started and you saw the people dying around you, you pulled away. You wanted to at least save the children."
"I saved all the children in Los Angeles?" Wesley asked wondering how he could have done such a thing with a chain reaction already started.
"No. You wanted to save Connor and Cordelia's children, Celeste and Liam," Joy corrected him. Wesley was surprised that Connor and Cordelia would one day become a couple. Connor was too young and foolish for Cordelia. "Their parents had hid them somewhere in the Hyperion Hotel. Fred had told them she had let them out of the chain and that they would be safe. She had lied and you knew it. Everything that wasn't contained in the chain would be pulled into the void. No one would survive except her, that's why you pulled away, you loved those kids and you didn't want them to die. They were so young. But when you pulled away, the chain reaction had a pawn missing, but it did not stop - it was made that way, unstoppable, like evil - and it needed one last pawn. The white queen herself became a pawn and she died there along with so many millions of others. With Angel and Gunn, Cordelia and Connor, Lorne and Los Angeles the way you knew it. But the evil was gone as well and Fred became a hero. She was glorified..."
"The memorial," he remembered one of the flashes he had back in the warehouse.
"Yes. And thousands of people attended her funeral, all the personalities of the known world were there to mourn her for her sacrifice. And you...you survived. Celeste died in your arms and you left her in her dead mother's embrace, so she may be buried next to her. Liam lived as well. No one knew that you and him were the soul survivors and you didn't want the world to know either. You had no place to go and then you remembered where Giles had told you my mother and father lived. In New Orleans. You came to us, in the night. Poor Liam didn't know what to think. He was barely 4. Me and Jacques slept in the same room with him that night and told him old tales of dead people who went on to better places. He understood what we meant,
and we seemed wise, but we were only 5 ourselves. The only thing he knew was that his mother, father and sister along with his aunts and uncles, had gone to a better place and had left him behind. I blame myself for letting him believe that. He...was never at peace."
"And I lived with you?" Wesley asked trying to push away the horrible future that stood in front of him.
"For a while, then you took up traveling. You couldn't forgive yourself for leaving everyone behind. You went back to Los Angeles. You searched for their bodies under the rubble, you made sure their graves had names, unlike hundred of thousands of others. Only Angel had become ashes, but you still had a grave made for him. My mother and father had gone with you. They left me and Liam in the care of a mystic - Remy, Jacques' father, a neighbor of ours. Mom cried for days after you returned. My father could only fall silent. I had never seen them so sad, so horrified. You left a few weeks later. You left Liam with us. The road was no place for a child. You needed to figure things out on your on. You met Willow in Brazil where she had gone for some spiritual guidance. You told her everything - she hadn't heard of the catastrophe, though she had felt something evil brewing. After your encounter, Willow started researching the event in every known way, until she found an answer. One that didn't imply the death of so many people. A light guarded deep within an underground world hidden in a vulcano in the Amazonian jungle. It hadn't been easy, but she had found it. She was furious that she did. So many lives wasted for nothing and a butcher glorified. In this state she wrote a thesis called "The Pawn Theory: Salvation or Genocide?" It sold out on the first day. But the few who acknowledged the truth didn't dare speak up, so the public and the press tore Willow apart, they exploited every single minute of her life into some twisted sordid way, but she didn't care. Someone had to tell the truth. At first you were mad at Willow for writing the book, for throwing mud over Fred's memory, but you knew it was true. You told her she should've let the dead rest and she said that was what she had done. Now all those who died in LA could rest."
"I can't believe she would do such a thing," Wesley was talking about Fred.
"Believe it," Joy sighed. "You're still alive, somewhere. We haven't seen you in ages."
"Why did you come here? Are you here to stop that...massacre from happening?" he asked suddenly feeling that he could stand. She now trusted he wouldn't attack her.
"No, not really. I'm here to stop something that hasn't happened in the future yet. Something I want to avoid. My mother and my father can't be together. He will die and she will turn into a monster and set out to destroy the world. A vampire," she told him, but Wesley could not go any further into shock. "And this place... Sunnydale will be swallowed by the hellmouth."
"And you want to stop that?" he asked misinterpreting her sad gaze.
"Oh, no. I want it to disappear, I want it gone, buried. This place should have never existed to begin with. It should've stayed dead, like it was before people came here and the way it's going to be after the city will be gone. I want it to disappear so my mother can move on like she's suppose to. "
"I know what you mean," he said rising off the bed. "What do you want me to do?"
"Don't speak a word of this. I want to reunite Buffy and Angel and I want to do it without the pressure of an apocalyptic future."
"But you can't. Not them. Angel's curse..."
"I think...I think that's something they should search a solution for. I know there are many, but it seems right for them to solve it themselves," she interrupted him.
"I suppose so," Wesley agreed. "So what do I do now?" he asked the teen as she stood up from the edge of the bed, but gave him no answer.
Meanwhile in another part of town, Buffy knocked on Xander's door. She knew it was silly to knock. Xander wasn't inside and Spike...she wasn't sure he was there either. She pulled out the key Xander had left him in case she wanted to check up on Spike, but as he put it 'not freak the daylights out of him in the middle of the night or do that thing he prefers to not name with Spike'. She smiled when she remembered his words as she slipped the key in the lock and opened the door carefully.
"Spike?" she called out as she closed the door. "Spike?" she moved towards the room he slept in, for some reason, as quiet as possible. She found the vampire stretched out on his bed, trying to sleep, but not managing to do so. He was too troubled by all he had heard that night. He turned his head to see who had come in.
"It's you," he said and Buffy crossed her arms over her chest.
"You were expecting someone else?" she asked.
"No. Just... not you," he didn't bother to stand up from the bed, still lost in thoughts. There was a moment of silence. She didn't know if he was okay. He was awkwardly silent which was, she supposed, a good sign. "Do you ever imagine what it would be like to have children?"
"Not really. Between one end of the world and the next, I barely have time for a life and a job. I kinda lost the dream phase somewhere along the way," she confessed as she neared the bed and pulled a chair next to it. "Are you okay?" he didn't answer. He stretched out his arm and touched her stomach. She pulled away, startled by the sudden contact.
"I think you'd look beautiful pregnant," he smiled.
"Is this about Connor?" she suddenly asked.
"Connor who?" He didn't recall the name.
"I thought maybe you sensed it or something," she explained. "He's Angel's son."
"The big poofer has a son!" he let out surprised and chuckled: "Is that why he's grumpier than usual?"
"Actually it's because he kinda found out about us," she said and Spike's lips curled into another smile.
"I figured," he brushed it off. "So whose the mother?'
"Darla."
"Oh, yeah, heard she was back. Is she..." he remembered Dru had mentioned it to him.
"Dead. Again. Hopefully for good this time," Buffy was a little exasperated. In her
little world some people just did not seem to die for good. There was another long silence.
"Did this girl...Joy strike you as odd?" he asked not managing to stop his curiosity.
"You barely saw her, threw her around a bit, I don't think you should judge her just yet," Buffy reminded him.
"I met her last night. She was walking around town, looking for something. I bumped into her. We...sorted out our differences. She reminded me of someone," he made up one lie after the other. "Well?" he still wanted an answer to his question.
"Come to think of it...yeah, she's kinda weird, but in a good way. She's definitely hiding a lot of things, but I don't blame her, at her age I did too. I just hope she won't turn out to be some superevil incarnated. I really don't feel like battling something that huge right now," she said tired. She looked up at the vampire and after a pause added: "You scared me back there. I don't like seeing you like that."
"I know what you mean," he let himself fall back down on the bed. "You look tired," he noticed. "If you want to sleep I can let you have the bed, I've been trying to doze off for hours, but I couldn't do it."
Buffy looked at him hesitating. She was really tired, but was still scared things would lead to something else. As if sensing her doubts the vampire rose from the bed, offering her his place.
"You can lock yourself in if you want," he said throwing her a key. "Xander sometimes closes it at night."
"No," Buffy decided against it. "I trust you," she had to start somewhere. He didn't say anything. He just stepped out of the room and Buffy laid down on his bed and was surrounded by his scent. It was tormenting, but in some ways soothing. She closed her eyes and fell asleep. As Spike walked through the shaded apartment, he suddenly began hearing a song coming from somewhere. It was hypnotizing and it urged him to enter his room again and take the slayer's life while she was still vulnerable. He covered his ears, but it still went on. He entered the bathroom splashing his face with cold water and suddenly the water tasted like blood. Her blood. Slayer blood. He closed the door of the bathroom and paced around the enclosed space, but the song did not stop. He hit his head on the wall, over and over again, but it would not stop the song. Then step by step the tune overpowered him and slowly he made his way to his room and kneeled down next to the bed, where the slayer was sleeping. He stroked her face so lovingly, his fingers entangled in her hair, exposing her neck. Buffy sighed under his touch, but did not wake. Suddenly he pulled away realizing in horror what he was about to do, but the song and voice kept urging him 'Go on, do it! You know she wants you to! You heard it!' He wanted to scream and he forced himself to leave the room and in a desperate attempt to escape this haunting he stepped outside on the balcony in broad daylight. He stretched out his hands and sighed relieved. The song was gone, but his flesh was beginning to burn. His right hand caught fire. Someone pulled him back inside.
"What are you doing?" Buffy asked him and he wasn't sure it was her. Maybe it was the apparition.
"I...I wanted to see the sun," he lied as he felt the burns on his face slowly healing.
"You're hurt," she noticed worried. "Wait here. I'll go get a bandage for your hand," he heard her entering the bathroom, but then a strange dizziness overcame him and he sat down on the couch. He didn't seem to feel the time pass by. He sat there for more than an hour, waiting for her, but she still did not come. He stood up and headed for the bathroom. It was empty. He entered his room again. She was still sleeping in his bed. She had not moved an inch since he had left her there. He took a few steps backwards. A lamp fell off a table and he turned his head towards it. There was another Buffy there, staring back at him. She smiled evilly and then disappeared. Spike closed the door to his bedroom and sat back down on the couch nervous that he might do something he didn't want to. Eventually he fell asleep. Even evil was tired on this day.
When Buffy returned home in the afternoon, she was surprised by what she found. Angel cooking Dawn something of an early dinner. Feeling frustrated after Connor and Cordelia had departed for Cordelia's old house in Willow's company, while Wesley, as much as he could guess was still ill and Joy still watched over him or slept, Angel had felt the need to direct all his attention in another place. And Dawn had been more than eager to be the center of his attention. Buffy found the whole situation amusing. Angel and food hadn't really gone together in her mind, but seeing him there in her kitchen, with a towel over his shoulder amidst all kinds of ingredients while Dawn drank some kind of strange looking cocktail and observed him happily, a smile couldn't help but appear on her lips.
"I'm gone for a couple of hours and I come home to find the kitchen turned upside down? You better believe you're cleaning it up too, mister," she said making her presence known, even if Angel had sensed her the moment she had been in front of the house. He returned her smile and invited her to take a sit.
"Hungry?" he asked as she sat herself down.
"Starving. I kinda skipped lunch," she had lost track of the time. She hadn't known she had been that tired. "What is that?" she pointed towards Dawn's glass.
"Angel's latest invention," Dawn giggled. "I call it superchocofantasticdelight."
"Okay. I believe you didn't name it," she addressed Angel and the vampire nodded.
"Let's just say it has a lot of chocolate. The strawberries kinda lost themselves in there somewhere," he said as he turned towards one of the pots.
"You got hidden talents. You cook, you blend..." Buffy pointed towards the dirty blender that served to make Dawn's superchocofantasticdelight.
"Don't overestimate my blending. Sometimes you get bored during the day. Cordelia got me a blender once. Didn't really think much of it, but then she started making these weird combinations with blood. Tasted pretty good," he explained and then added: "What I made Dawn I got from watching her."
"This doesn't have blood, does it?" Dawn had stopped her drinking, a little disturbed. Angel laughed and Dawn let out a sigh of relief. "For a moment there, I thought..." she shuddered and then resumed drinking from her glass. Buffy wondered why she hadn't thought of it too. Probably because Angel had never let her see him drinking, except that one time when she had been the drink. For a moment she hated Angel for putting up such barriers between them, but then thought the accusation to be ridiculous. She had found the whole drinking issue disgusting. Now she thought maybe her righteousness had been just a tad overdone.
"Where were you all day?" Dawn suddenly asked as Angel placed some kind of spaghetti and sauce in front of her. Buffy was about to lie and say she had been at school, but Dawn stopped her: "You weren't in your office. I went there and principal Wood came around asking about you."
"I..." it was pointless to lie, she thought. She had just cleared things out with Angel and didn't want to mess them up again. But what about Dawn? "I tried finding those gholas."
"Any luck?" Dawn asked as she struggled to roll the spaghetti around her fork. She had totally believed her sister, but Angel gave her a doubtful look.
"No, they probably went into hiding," she lied, but Dawn didn't even take that into consideration.
"I'm gonna go watch TV," Dawn said and headed for the other room. Even if usually she objected to this, Buffy let her go this time because she needed to tell Angel the truth. After the teenager with the plate of food in one hand and her superchocofantasticdelight in the other left the kitchen, there was a moment of silence while Angel placed some food in front of her and then leaned on the wall.
"You went to see Spike, " he said after a while.
"I was worried," she said not looking him in the eye. "I kinda fell asleep at some point. I didn't do anything else. I swear," she added quickly.
"I know you didn't," he smiled. "And even if you did, it's not really my business."
"I keep on forgetting that," Buffy chuckled. She tasted the spaghetti. "Mmm, this is so good!" Angel smiled again.
Meanwhile in her old house, Cordelia searched blindly for her past. Willow had convinced the current owners of the house to let them look around. If she had used magic or not, Cordelia didn't know. As she walked inside the huge house, she felt nothing. Only a gigantic blank. Connor stood by her side, observing this stray part of her past, surprised that once Cordelia had lived among such richness. Willow had left them alone, going on her way once she had gotten them inside. As Cordelia paced around, she felt despair creep over her. How could she not remember the house she had grown up in? At least the Summers home woke up some kind of shadow of remembrance, but this place...there was nothing. Not a room, not a view, not one emotion. She blamed this blank on the change of the house. Of course, it must have been changed when the new family had moved in. But yet...couldn't she remember at least one tiny detail? She was beginning to feel hopeless, like whatever she did was useless. This was her house! Her childhood was hidden somewhere inside it and she couldn't find it. If this place didn't make her recall anything, what would?
"It's very nice," Connor spoke feeling the need to break her out of her obvious misery.
"Yeah, it is. I guess," she said. "Let's go, I don't think this is working."
"You sure you don't want..." Connor insisted.
"No," Cordy shook her head. "It's pointless."
"I'll go call Willow," Connor offered.
"No, let's walk around town a bit. Maybe something'll jam my memory," Cordy suggested instead. Connor smiled. He liked that idea. They walked outside, leaving the house with all its big rooms, high windows and rigid atmosphere behind.
Back at the Summers house, upstairs in Buffy's room, Wesley slept undisturbed. Joy hadn't found an answer to his question so while she pondered it, she had used a spell to make him sleep. But while trying to find an answer to his question, she herself had fallen asleep in her chair with her hands still wrapped around the wet cloth and her head fallen on her shoulder. She had forgotten about her own tiredness. And in her sweet sleep the future molded itself around her. The old houses of New Orleans appeared before her, the old neighborhood as well as the metal monster beyond it. Even if they blended together in an awkward harmony, they still remained what they were: one part testimony to the past, one part testimony to the future. But in this city she called home she felt turmoil that ate away at its roots. And she knew what that turmoil was: a monster that was destroying everything in its path. A monster she once called mother. She still remembered her mother's first massacre, when she had killed a slayer and all those teenagers at some random highschool dance. Joy had wept for days. She had no one left. She had been alone. Her father had died. Willow had taken Jacques to Europe, while Remy was in some Asian desert at a reunion of mystics from across the globe. And poor Joy had been all alone...
But now, in her dream state, Joy pushed away the recollection. She could hear a fight somewhere. The sound of great power clashing with even greater power. And indeed, she had been right. Among the ruins of a warehouse, in a now deserted part of New Orleans, a struggle was in full proceeding. On one side stood Willow in all her might, with her eyes flaring black in the night, floating above the ground, concealed in a protective invisible cloak, while on the other side was her mother, in her full vicious vampire face, her hands dirty with blood, holding a shinning orb - it protected against magic, Joy knew - in one of them. And when they attacked, each fist, each blow was accompanied by light, by thunder. The battle seemed to have taken place before, in the past, but with powers less great and different sides. As Joy watched them - a silent observer - she saw the hesitant way her aunt Willow fought, how she feared to hurt her mother! But then something seemed to snap inside her and there were no more boundaries on both sides. There was only hate and pain. Hate for what Buffy had become, hate for not being able to stop it, hate for being a part of what made her that way. Willow was furious with the world, herself and Buffy. The fight became intense, bruising, but eventually Buffy had the upper hand, crushing Willow's right hand under her heels. The witch gasped from the pain, but with a last effort, Joy saw her eyes shinning blacker than before and there came a sphere of dark energy that hit the slayer sending her flying into the next building, taking the wall down. Joy looked over at the collapsed figure of the vampire, her features had turned to human and pain was written on them. A metal rod had skewered her chest.
"Joy?" the bleeding vampire whimpered thinking she had seen a glimpse of her mortal daughter.
"Mom?" tears filled Joy's eyes. The witch stood up holding her crushed hand and looked down at the vampire she had once called her best friend.
"There's no one here, Buffy. No one," Willow told her and Joy's eyes went wide. She heard the crack of bone and suddenly woke up panting desperate for air. It couldn't be true!
"Jacques! Jacques!" she cried out for the cajun to appear. "Jacques!" she collapsed back down in her chair, crying. "Jacques!" but her friend would not appear. Wesley suddenly woke up as if startled by the same visions. "Jacques..." she let out again and Wesley took her in his arms.
"Shh, it'll be all right. Everything's going to be fine," he rocked her in his arms. For some reason he felt the need to comfort her. She felt like family. Like ones blood inside another person must feel, he thought. He couldn't guess why she was crying, but he knew she would not shed her tears for memories or little things. Something had happened. In what time and in what way, he could not guess.
End Part 8
Nemesis
When he woke up he wasn't downstairs anymore. He was in Buffy's room, on her bed. The room was empty, or so he thought. He couldn't really stand up, something seemed to block him. Had it been the magic? Or the fall? The truth of the matter was that he could look up and glance sideways, but he couldn't see the entire room. Soon he realized there was someone else moving around in the room and by the soft step, he figured it was a woman. He thought it was either Cordelia or Buffy. Maybe Willow. The figure neared him and he was shocked to see it was Joy holding a wet cloth in her hands. He wanted to stand up and push her away, but as he had discovered before, he could not move, so he sat there helpless while the girl sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed the cloth softly to his forehead.
"The first time I saw you, you came in the night," she told him, avoiding his gaze as she spoke and lovingly stroked his forehead with the cloth. She seemed odd and out of place, not the monster Wesley had expected to find. She didn't even seem wicked.... Was evil hiding under that vulnerable appearance? It could, for evil worked, as always, in twisted ways.
"We met?" he asked putting aside his doubts for the moment. He could do nothing now. Not while he still remained petrified in that bed. He suspected it was the girl's doing.
"You and I? Yes," she finally looked in his eyes and the ex-watcher thought those green eyes to be old and wise and identical to Buffy's. "You and I?" she asked again. "No."
"What does that mean?" Wesley didn't know which answer to believe.
"Both. You and I have met, but you don't know it. You and I have not met, not yet," she spoke and her words only confused him further. Maybe that was her game.
"I met you, yet I didn't," he concluded trying to make her see the confusing way she was expressing herself. She only smiled.
"That's right," it seemed correct to her.
"Are you holding me here?" he asked after a moment of silence.
"For your own good," she said unshaken by his question. "What would you do if you were free? Hit me? Knock me out? Use magic on me? Run off to Angel and tell him my dirty little secret?" she shook her head. "I can't let you do that, I'm sorry."
"So you're going to keep me here until you do what you were sent here to do?" he asked disgusted. "Or kill me?"
"No," she was amused by his disgust. "I'm going to keep you here until we sort things out," she paused, then added: "You had no right to go inside my head. Do you know how dangerous it can get?"
"Black magic always is," he said suddenly curious of what she wanted to tell him.
"It felt like someone twisted my brain in a knot," she recalled the horrible sensation she had had in the highschool hallways.
"Who are you?" he didn't listen to her complaints.
"Someone whose going to tell you an unbelievable story," Joy sighed. There was no other way. She knew how much Wesley could insist on a matter and she didn't want him to stop her from completing her mission.
"Who's Jacques?" he suddenly asked. He knew the name from somewhere, but could not recall where from. It had been one of those bits and pieces he had picked up as a result of the spell he had made in the warehouse.
"The mystic who got me here. From the future," she explained and Wesley wanted to laugh, but found that he could not. Joy did not want to hear it.
"The future?" he only managed to scowl.
"That's right. How else could I have met you, yet not?" she asked and Wesley could not answer. The statement itself was still puzzling. "The first time I saw you, you came in the night," she repeated the first phrase she had spoken. "You were carrying a boy in your arms and you were so miserable, so heartbroken that you could barely speak. My mother..."
"Buffy," Wesley realized and she smiled nodding.
"She took you in. She had heard about it...and she had tears in her eyes when she saw you. She wanted it desperately to be Angel...She thought he would escape. Angel always survived, it's what she used to tell me," sadness washed over her.
"Wasn't he your father?" he remembered the vampire from the visions.
"Spike is my father," she said and Wesley was shocked, yet somehow familiar with the revelation.
"What's *it*?"
"*It* was the day Los Angeles was leveled down. There was only rubble after that day. And the metal giant afterwards," Wesley felt a knot in his stomach. "I suppose I should tell you. One day there will be a great menace, one so large that it will shadow the world and humans will be aware of the demon threat. And this evil will seem unstoppable. No weapon will do, no hero. And its origins will be in Los Angeles. And you will all fight it and fail. But one day Fred, your darling Winifred, will come up with a solution. A plan that would put an end to the threat. She will call it the pawn theory," she smirked. "It was a chain reaction that would start from her and pass through every living person within Los Angeles and the life force combined would open an inter-dimensional portal into a void of such proportions that it would swallow the city whole along with the evil inside it. But the price was ultimate. The life of millions. A sacrifice she made without second judgement."
"It was a wise choice," Wesley thought. A few millions for billions of others was a fair price in his eyes.
"Not as wise as it was selfish," Joy stopped him from admiring the woman he loved. "Fred never intended to die along with the others. She was supposed to be the soul survivor of the massacre. The last one standing so she could have the glory she always dreamt of."
"No. Fred would never do that!" Wesley interrupted her.
"She'll become more bitter with time. And will dream of accomplishment, of praises. And she will get them. After she will die. She'll be everything but sanctified. She made a mistake you see. She told you," she smiled. "She wanted you to live as well, she could have saved another, maybe more, but she loved you. You refused to live while the others died, but not before she told you how you could save yourself. All you needed was an amulet and your own blood. Even if you knew, you didn't tell the others, you thought there was no other choice. The chain reaction would start with her and end with Angel. There was an exact number of pawns that was calculated at the beginning and because you refused her you were a part of it too. A number, a pawn. The white queen - the very first person in the chain survived. And that was Fred. But when it started and you saw the people dying around you, you pulled away. You wanted to at least save the children."
"I saved all the children in Los Angeles?" Wesley asked wondering how he could have done such a thing with a chain reaction already started.
"No. You wanted to save Connor and Cordelia's children, Celeste and Liam," Joy corrected him. Wesley was surprised that Connor and Cordelia would one day become a couple. Connor was too young and foolish for Cordelia. "Their parents had hid them somewhere in the Hyperion Hotel. Fred had told them she had let them out of the chain and that they would be safe. She had lied and you knew it. Everything that wasn't contained in the chain would be pulled into the void. No one would survive except her, that's why you pulled away, you loved those kids and you didn't want them to die. They were so young. But when you pulled away, the chain reaction had a pawn missing, but it did not stop - it was made that way, unstoppable, like evil - and it needed one last pawn. The white queen herself became a pawn and she died there along with so many millions of others. With Angel and Gunn, Cordelia and Connor, Lorne and Los Angeles the way you knew it. But the evil was gone as well and Fred became a hero. She was glorified..."
"The memorial," he remembered one of the flashes he had back in the warehouse.
"Yes. And thousands of people attended her funeral, all the personalities of the known world were there to mourn her for her sacrifice. And you...you survived. Celeste died in your arms and you left her in her dead mother's embrace, so she may be buried next to her. Liam lived as well. No one knew that you and him were the soul survivors and you didn't want the world to know either. You had no place to go and then you remembered where Giles had told you my mother and father lived. In New Orleans. You came to us, in the night. Poor Liam didn't know what to think. He was barely 4. Me and Jacques slept in the same room with him that night and told him old tales of dead people who went on to better places. He understood what we meant,
and we seemed wise, but we were only 5 ourselves. The only thing he knew was that his mother, father and sister along with his aunts and uncles, had gone to a better place and had left him behind. I blame myself for letting him believe that. He...was never at peace."
"And I lived with you?" Wesley asked trying to push away the horrible future that stood in front of him.
"For a while, then you took up traveling. You couldn't forgive yourself for leaving everyone behind. You went back to Los Angeles. You searched for their bodies under the rubble, you made sure their graves had names, unlike hundred of thousands of others. Only Angel had become ashes, but you still had a grave made for him. My mother and father had gone with you. They left me and Liam in the care of a mystic - Remy, Jacques' father, a neighbor of ours. Mom cried for days after you returned. My father could only fall silent. I had never seen them so sad, so horrified. You left a few weeks later. You left Liam with us. The road was no place for a child. You needed to figure things out on your on. You met Willow in Brazil where she had gone for some spiritual guidance. You told her everything - she hadn't heard of the catastrophe, though she had felt something evil brewing. After your encounter, Willow started researching the event in every known way, until she found an answer. One that didn't imply the death of so many people. A light guarded deep within an underground world hidden in a vulcano in the Amazonian jungle. It hadn't been easy, but she had found it. She was furious that she did. So many lives wasted for nothing and a butcher glorified. In this state she wrote a thesis called "The Pawn Theory: Salvation or Genocide?" It sold out on the first day. But the few who acknowledged the truth didn't dare speak up, so the public and the press tore Willow apart, they exploited every single minute of her life into some twisted sordid way, but she didn't care. Someone had to tell the truth. At first you were mad at Willow for writing the book, for throwing mud over Fred's memory, but you knew it was true. You told her she should've let the dead rest and she said that was what she had done. Now all those who died in LA could rest."
"I can't believe she would do such a thing," Wesley was talking about Fred.
"Believe it," Joy sighed. "You're still alive, somewhere. We haven't seen you in ages."
"Why did you come here? Are you here to stop that...massacre from happening?" he asked suddenly feeling that he could stand. She now trusted he wouldn't attack her.
"No, not really. I'm here to stop something that hasn't happened in the future yet. Something I want to avoid. My mother and my father can't be together. He will die and she will turn into a monster and set out to destroy the world. A vampire," she told him, but Wesley could not go any further into shock. "And this place... Sunnydale will be swallowed by the hellmouth."
"And you want to stop that?" he asked misinterpreting her sad gaze.
"Oh, no. I want it to disappear, I want it gone, buried. This place should have never existed to begin with. It should've stayed dead, like it was before people came here and the way it's going to be after the city will be gone. I want it to disappear so my mother can move on like she's suppose to. "
"I know what you mean," he said rising off the bed. "What do you want me to do?"
"Don't speak a word of this. I want to reunite Buffy and Angel and I want to do it without the pressure of an apocalyptic future."
"But you can't. Not them. Angel's curse..."
"I think...I think that's something they should search a solution for. I know there are many, but it seems right for them to solve it themselves," she interrupted him.
"I suppose so," Wesley agreed. "So what do I do now?" he asked the teen as she stood up from the edge of the bed, but gave him no answer.
Meanwhile in another part of town, Buffy knocked on Xander's door. She knew it was silly to knock. Xander wasn't inside and Spike...she wasn't sure he was there either. She pulled out the key Xander had left him in case she wanted to check up on Spike, but as he put it 'not freak the daylights out of him in the middle of the night or do that thing he prefers to not name with Spike'. She smiled when she remembered his words as she slipped the key in the lock and opened the door carefully.
"Spike?" she called out as she closed the door. "Spike?" she moved towards the room he slept in, for some reason, as quiet as possible. She found the vampire stretched out on his bed, trying to sleep, but not managing to do so. He was too troubled by all he had heard that night. He turned his head to see who had come in.
"It's you," he said and Buffy crossed her arms over her chest.
"You were expecting someone else?" she asked.
"No. Just... not you," he didn't bother to stand up from the bed, still lost in thoughts. There was a moment of silence. She didn't know if he was okay. He was awkwardly silent which was, she supposed, a good sign. "Do you ever imagine what it would be like to have children?"
"Not really. Between one end of the world and the next, I barely have time for a life and a job. I kinda lost the dream phase somewhere along the way," she confessed as she neared the bed and pulled a chair next to it. "Are you okay?" he didn't answer. He stretched out his arm and touched her stomach. She pulled away, startled by the sudden contact.
"I think you'd look beautiful pregnant," he smiled.
"Is this about Connor?" she suddenly asked.
"Connor who?" He didn't recall the name.
"I thought maybe you sensed it or something," she explained. "He's Angel's son."
"The big poofer has a son!" he let out surprised and chuckled: "Is that why he's grumpier than usual?"
"Actually it's because he kinda found out about us," she said and Spike's lips curled into another smile.
"I figured," he brushed it off. "So whose the mother?'
"Darla."
"Oh, yeah, heard she was back. Is she..." he remembered Dru had mentioned it to him.
"Dead. Again. Hopefully for good this time," Buffy was a little exasperated. In her
little world some people just did not seem to die for good. There was another long silence.
"Did this girl...Joy strike you as odd?" he asked not managing to stop his curiosity.
"You barely saw her, threw her around a bit, I don't think you should judge her just yet," Buffy reminded him.
"I met her last night. She was walking around town, looking for something. I bumped into her. We...sorted out our differences. She reminded me of someone," he made up one lie after the other. "Well?" he still wanted an answer to his question.
"Come to think of it...yeah, she's kinda weird, but in a good way. She's definitely hiding a lot of things, but I don't blame her, at her age I did too. I just hope she won't turn out to be some superevil incarnated. I really don't feel like battling something that huge right now," she said tired. She looked up at the vampire and after a pause added: "You scared me back there. I don't like seeing you like that."
"I know what you mean," he let himself fall back down on the bed. "You look tired," he noticed. "If you want to sleep I can let you have the bed, I've been trying to doze off for hours, but I couldn't do it."
Buffy looked at him hesitating. She was really tired, but was still scared things would lead to something else. As if sensing her doubts the vampire rose from the bed, offering her his place.
"You can lock yourself in if you want," he said throwing her a key. "Xander sometimes closes it at night."
"No," Buffy decided against it. "I trust you," she had to start somewhere. He didn't say anything. He just stepped out of the room and Buffy laid down on his bed and was surrounded by his scent. It was tormenting, but in some ways soothing. She closed her eyes and fell asleep. As Spike walked through the shaded apartment, he suddenly began hearing a song coming from somewhere. It was hypnotizing and it urged him to enter his room again and take the slayer's life while she was still vulnerable. He covered his ears, but it still went on. He entered the bathroom splashing his face with cold water and suddenly the water tasted like blood. Her blood. Slayer blood. He closed the door of the bathroom and paced around the enclosed space, but the song did not stop. He hit his head on the wall, over and over again, but it would not stop the song. Then step by step the tune overpowered him and slowly he made his way to his room and kneeled down next to the bed, where the slayer was sleeping. He stroked her face so lovingly, his fingers entangled in her hair, exposing her neck. Buffy sighed under his touch, but did not wake. Suddenly he pulled away realizing in horror what he was about to do, but the song and voice kept urging him 'Go on, do it! You know she wants you to! You heard it!' He wanted to scream and he forced himself to leave the room and in a desperate attempt to escape this haunting he stepped outside on the balcony in broad daylight. He stretched out his hands and sighed relieved. The song was gone, but his flesh was beginning to burn. His right hand caught fire. Someone pulled him back inside.
"What are you doing?" Buffy asked him and he wasn't sure it was her. Maybe it was the apparition.
"I...I wanted to see the sun," he lied as he felt the burns on his face slowly healing.
"You're hurt," she noticed worried. "Wait here. I'll go get a bandage for your hand," he heard her entering the bathroom, but then a strange dizziness overcame him and he sat down on the couch. He didn't seem to feel the time pass by. He sat there for more than an hour, waiting for her, but she still did not come. He stood up and headed for the bathroom. It was empty. He entered his room again. She was still sleeping in his bed. She had not moved an inch since he had left her there. He took a few steps backwards. A lamp fell off a table and he turned his head towards it. There was another Buffy there, staring back at him. She smiled evilly and then disappeared. Spike closed the door to his bedroom and sat back down on the couch nervous that he might do something he didn't want to. Eventually he fell asleep. Even evil was tired on this day.
When Buffy returned home in the afternoon, she was surprised by what she found. Angel cooking Dawn something of an early dinner. Feeling frustrated after Connor and Cordelia had departed for Cordelia's old house in Willow's company, while Wesley, as much as he could guess was still ill and Joy still watched over him or slept, Angel had felt the need to direct all his attention in another place. And Dawn had been more than eager to be the center of his attention. Buffy found the whole situation amusing. Angel and food hadn't really gone together in her mind, but seeing him there in her kitchen, with a towel over his shoulder amidst all kinds of ingredients while Dawn drank some kind of strange looking cocktail and observed him happily, a smile couldn't help but appear on her lips.
"I'm gone for a couple of hours and I come home to find the kitchen turned upside down? You better believe you're cleaning it up too, mister," she said making her presence known, even if Angel had sensed her the moment she had been in front of the house. He returned her smile and invited her to take a sit.
"Hungry?" he asked as she sat herself down.
"Starving. I kinda skipped lunch," she had lost track of the time. She hadn't known she had been that tired. "What is that?" she pointed towards Dawn's glass.
"Angel's latest invention," Dawn giggled. "I call it superchocofantasticdelight."
"Okay. I believe you didn't name it," she addressed Angel and the vampire nodded.
"Let's just say it has a lot of chocolate. The strawberries kinda lost themselves in there somewhere," he said as he turned towards one of the pots.
"You got hidden talents. You cook, you blend..." Buffy pointed towards the dirty blender that served to make Dawn's superchocofantasticdelight.
"Don't overestimate my blending. Sometimes you get bored during the day. Cordelia got me a blender once. Didn't really think much of it, but then she started making these weird combinations with blood. Tasted pretty good," he explained and then added: "What I made Dawn I got from watching her."
"This doesn't have blood, does it?" Dawn had stopped her drinking, a little disturbed. Angel laughed and Dawn let out a sigh of relief. "For a moment there, I thought..." she shuddered and then resumed drinking from her glass. Buffy wondered why she hadn't thought of it too. Probably because Angel had never let her see him drinking, except that one time when she had been the drink. For a moment she hated Angel for putting up such barriers between them, but then thought the accusation to be ridiculous. She had found the whole drinking issue disgusting. Now she thought maybe her righteousness had been just a tad overdone.
"Where were you all day?" Dawn suddenly asked as Angel placed some kind of spaghetti and sauce in front of her. Buffy was about to lie and say she had been at school, but Dawn stopped her: "You weren't in your office. I went there and principal Wood came around asking about you."
"I..." it was pointless to lie, she thought. She had just cleared things out with Angel and didn't want to mess them up again. But what about Dawn? "I tried finding those gholas."
"Any luck?" Dawn asked as she struggled to roll the spaghetti around her fork. She had totally believed her sister, but Angel gave her a doubtful look.
"No, they probably went into hiding," she lied, but Dawn didn't even take that into consideration.
"I'm gonna go watch TV," Dawn said and headed for the other room. Even if usually she objected to this, Buffy let her go this time because she needed to tell Angel the truth. After the teenager with the plate of food in one hand and her superchocofantasticdelight in the other left the kitchen, there was a moment of silence while Angel placed some food in front of her and then leaned on the wall.
"You went to see Spike, " he said after a while.
"I was worried," she said not looking him in the eye. "I kinda fell asleep at some point. I didn't do anything else. I swear," she added quickly.
"I know you didn't," he smiled. "And even if you did, it's not really my business."
"I keep on forgetting that," Buffy chuckled. She tasted the spaghetti. "Mmm, this is so good!" Angel smiled again.
Meanwhile in her old house, Cordelia searched blindly for her past. Willow had convinced the current owners of the house to let them look around. If she had used magic or not, Cordelia didn't know. As she walked inside the huge house, she felt nothing. Only a gigantic blank. Connor stood by her side, observing this stray part of her past, surprised that once Cordelia had lived among such richness. Willow had left them alone, going on her way once she had gotten them inside. As Cordelia paced around, she felt despair creep over her. How could she not remember the house she had grown up in? At least the Summers home woke up some kind of shadow of remembrance, but this place...there was nothing. Not a room, not a view, not one emotion. She blamed this blank on the change of the house. Of course, it must have been changed when the new family had moved in. But yet...couldn't she remember at least one tiny detail? She was beginning to feel hopeless, like whatever she did was useless. This was her house! Her childhood was hidden somewhere inside it and she couldn't find it. If this place didn't make her recall anything, what would?
"It's very nice," Connor spoke feeling the need to break her out of her obvious misery.
"Yeah, it is. I guess," she said. "Let's go, I don't think this is working."
"You sure you don't want..." Connor insisted.
"No," Cordy shook her head. "It's pointless."
"I'll go call Willow," Connor offered.
"No, let's walk around town a bit. Maybe something'll jam my memory," Cordy suggested instead. Connor smiled. He liked that idea. They walked outside, leaving the house with all its big rooms, high windows and rigid atmosphere behind.
Back at the Summers house, upstairs in Buffy's room, Wesley slept undisturbed. Joy hadn't found an answer to his question so while she pondered it, she had used a spell to make him sleep. But while trying to find an answer to his question, she herself had fallen asleep in her chair with her hands still wrapped around the wet cloth and her head fallen on her shoulder. She had forgotten about her own tiredness. And in her sweet sleep the future molded itself around her. The old houses of New Orleans appeared before her, the old neighborhood as well as the metal monster beyond it. Even if they blended together in an awkward harmony, they still remained what they were: one part testimony to the past, one part testimony to the future. But in this city she called home she felt turmoil that ate away at its roots. And she knew what that turmoil was: a monster that was destroying everything in its path. A monster she once called mother. She still remembered her mother's first massacre, when she had killed a slayer and all those teenagers at some random highschool dance. Joy had wept for days. She had no one left. She had been alone. Her father had died. Willow had taken Jacques to Europe, while Remy was in some Asian desert at a reunion of mystics from across the globe. And poor Joy had been all alone...
But now, in her dream state, Joy pushed away the recollection. She could hear a fight somewhere. The sound of great power clashing with even greater power. And indeed, she had been right. Among the ruins of a warehouse, in a now deserted part of New Orleans, a struggle was in full proceeding. On one side stood Willow in all her might, with her eyes flaring black in the night, floating above the ground, concealed in a protective invisible cloak, while on the other side was her mother, in her full vicious vampire face, her hands dirty with blood, holding a shinning orb - it protected against magic, Joy knew - in one of them. And when they attacked, each fist, each blow was accompanied by light, by thunder. The battle seemed to have taken place before, in the past, but with powers less great and different sides. As Joy watched them - a silent observer - she saw the hesitant way her aunt Willow fought, how she feared to hurt her mother! But then something seemed to snap inside her and there were no more boundaries on both sides. There was only hate and pain. Hate for what Buffy had become, hate for not being able to stop it, hate for being a part of what made her that way. Willow was furious with the world, herself and Buffy. The fight became intense, bruising, but eventually Buffy had the upper hand, crushing Willow's right hand under her heels. The witch gasped from the pain, but with a last effort, Joy saw her eyes shinning blacker than before and there came a sphere of dark energy that hit the slayer sending her flying into the next building, taking the wall down. Joy looked over at the collapsed figure of the vampire, her features had turned to human and pain was written on them. A metal rod had skewered her chest.
"Joy?" the bleeding vampire whimpered thinking she had seen a glimpse of her mortal daughter.
"Mom?" tears filled Joy's eyes. The witch stood up holding her crushed hand and looked down at the vampire she had once called her best friend.
"There's no one here, Buffy. No one," Willow told her and Joy's eyes went wide. She heard the crack of bone and suddenly woke up panting desperate for air. It couldn't be true!
"Jacques! Jacques!" she cried out for the cajun to appear. "Jacques!" she collapsed back down in her chair, crying. "Jacques!" but her friend would not appear. Wesley suddenly woke up as if startled by the same visions. "Jacques..." she let out again and Wesley took her in his arms.
"Shh, it'll be all right. Everything's going to be fine," he rocked her in his arms. For some reason he felt the need to comfort her. She felt like family. Like ones blood inside another person must feel, he thought. He couldn't guess why she was crying, but he knew she would not shed her tears for memories or little things. Something had happened. In what time and in what way, he could not guess.
End Part 8
