DISCLAIMER: We both know I don't own Buffy, Faith, or any of the other characters that are making Joss Whedon and his corporate sponsors/affiliates rich. If I did, this whole college tuition thing would be much less of an issue.
Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 6:
STORIES OF BYGONE DAYS
An absolutely sickening stench filled the air in the room. Blood of three different colors from four different inhuman creatures was spattered on the walls and collecting in pools and cracks in the floor. The woman standing in the middle of it gave no sign of noticing anything out of the ordinary, however. Indeed, there was a smile on her face. She kicked the lifeless, eight-foot corpse at her feet to make sure it was indeed lifeless; then, as an exclamation point, she stomped her foot down on the massive claymore lying by the massive corpse's side, snapping it in two and leaving a shallow crater in the concrete floor underneath.
"Apology accepted, Rhyzie," she said. Then, a moment later, she realized that she had broken one of her stilettos off in doing so. "Oh, damn," she pouted.
She looked up a moment later, and her condescendingly cheerful composure was restored. "Now then, what am I going to do with you?" she asked, her eyes fixing on a short brown creature with long claws on his hands clenching and unclenching in pain; he was pinned to the wall three feet above the ground by a segment of lead pipe that had been driven through his shoulder like a spear. He was strong enough that he was not crying out in pain, but his teeth were clenched to hold it in and he was not about to give her the satisfaction of an answer, so all he could do was hiss.
"Now, now, Mister, that's no way to talk to a lady. Particularly one that's probably going to kill you in another minute."
Hascinth hissed again.
Suddenly, Glory's form blurred, and she vanished out the door of the basement faster than even Hascinth's eyes could follow. There was sudden petrified squeal, and a moment later, she returned, dragging a man with her, kicking and screaming but completely unable to break the Beast's inhumanly strong grip.
"Hi!" Glory said cheerfully. The man only gibbered more. "You don't look like a demon. But I'll bet you break just as easily."
"No!" the man cried, collapsing to his knees in Glory's grip, which caused his arm to bend backward, eliciting a fresh cry of pain.
"You could delay things a while by telling me why you're here, you know."
"Please!" the man screeched. "I'm ... I'm just a messenger."
"Well then, you might as well give me the message."
"It ... it was for the Order of Turaca."
Suddenly, with a feral snarl, Hascinth finally pulled the pipe loose. He dropped to the floor ungracefully, and dark, smoking blood dribbled from the wound in his shoulder, but he neither ran nor screamed, even though he knew he was powerless against the woman standing in front of him.
"I'm the last member of the Order here," he snarled. "So I'm the cell captain now. State your message. And die quietly."
"No! No, please!" the man screamed. Glory turned an appreciative smile at Hascinth.
"Yes, yes please," Hascinth repeated flatly.
"No!" the man repeated in an even more shrill and despairing cry.
"Haven't you people ever heard of mail?" Glory asked.
Hascinth ignored her. "I remember you," he said. "You're the liason from Sunnydale. I suppose you're here to finally tell us that the Slayer's dead. The news from there seems to be running a little late these days."
The man was shocked out of his fear for a brief moment. "Wha ... no, I was coming to tell you that she was alive."
"What?!" Glory and Hascinth responded in unison.
"And 'the book is open,' whatever that means," he added.
"Wow, that sounds fascinating," said Glory, in a voice that plainly indicated that she had no idea what the man was talking about. "But all this talk is making me hungry." Without another words, she plunged her hands into the man's skull; there was a white flash, and the man collapsed to the ground.
Glory rubbed her stomach wistfully, as though a portion had gone down the wrong way. "I hate cowards," she said, "they taste so greasy and thin. Seems like everything in this world tastes like chicken except chickens. That reminds me, have you eaten?"
"No, why?"
"We've got a trip ahead of us."
* * *
"OK, you know that part you warned me about where I get creeped out?" Faith asked. "I'd say it's here."
Janna, or Jenny, or whatever her name was, stood up from the bed. "I don't understand it all myself," she answered.
"Well, why don't you start telling me however much you DO understand," Faith retorted, "because right now, I'm not understanding anything."
Janna nodded. "Fair enough," she answered tiredly. She stood up and walked over to where Faith stood. Faith tensed as she approached, but she made herself not back up as the woman came closer. Then, as it turned out, Janna was not really approaching Faith at all. She passed her hands over her computer monitor, and the screen came to life. Janna turned to give Faith a wan smile. "A thousand years of fairy tales, and we've come from magic mirrors to this."
Faith might have laughed at that another time, but she was still tense at the moment. There was also the fact that, while Janna still did not seem overly threatening, she was able to call on supernatural powers with just a gesture. Even the redhead witch back in Sunnydale had needed incantations and ingredients and candles and all kinds of wiccan stuff like that. There were no sounds or lights accompanying Janna's gesture; she simply beckoned, and the monitor obeyed.
Then the images on the monitor caught her eyes, and Faith was drawn the sound of Janna's voice as she began to explain what had happened to her over the last four years.
"Before I went to Sunnydale, I was Janna Kalderesh of the Roma," she explained. Visions of the traveling people straight out of medieval times flashed on the monitor, with Janna among them. The scenes were clearly in modern America, too, except for the people themselves; they were passing a green road sign, and there was an interstate highway some distance in the background. "An entire sect of our clan wandered here to California all the way from Ireland after we cursed Angel. We were supposed to make sure that nothing ever happened to break that curse."
The monitor flickered, and the courtyard of Sunnydale High School appeared, once again with Janna, now known as Jenny Calendar, carrying a pile of books to class. "I was one of the more ... modern ... members of our clan," Janna continued, "and one of the more gifted with the old arts, so I got to play point. I took a job at Sunnydale teaching computer science. That was when everything got complicated."
She passed her hands over the monitor again, and the scene in the courtyard shifted. A familiar blonde was passing through it now, trailed by her faithful friends.
"B!" Faith laughed. "My God, she looks so innocent!"
Janna's expression became suddenly pained, and Faith turned to look at her for a moment, concerned. "Irony can be bitter," Jenny answered the unspoken question cryptically.
Faith understood. "Oh, this is back before ..." she cut off when Jenny nodded sadly.
"Complicated doesn't even begin to describe it," the former Gypsy continued. The monitor flickered again, to a scene of Buffy and Angel locked in each other's arms. "Angel falling in love was something we could barely conceive of. Falling in love with a Slayer was so insane, I had no idea how to react. Especially ..." her voice trailed off again, and she made another pass at the monitor. Jenny appeared on the screen again, wrapped in the arms of ...
"Giles?!" Faith burst out. She had somehow deduced that Janna had to have been connected to the Sunnydale gang somehow, but that was the biggest surprise she had had in weeks. *Giles had had a girlfriend?! Holy shit!* she thought to herself. She kept herself from voicing it aloud, though.
"A vampire in love with the Slayer, and the person supposed to watch the vampire falling in love with the person supposed to watch the Slayer," Janna laughed sadly. "Like I said, complicated."
The picture flashed again, and seemed to grow darker. Faith actually blushed as she realized what Jenny was showing her. "You weren't actually watching this, were you?" she blurted. Janna grinned, almost impishly, and shook her head. Then the momentary levity faded, and the former Gypsy was serious again. "I'll explain later," she said, and the steamy vision on the monitor faded, replaced by another scene in an even deeper darkness. Faith recognized it as Sunnydale High, long after dark. The lights were out. Jenny stood in the hallway, facing the silhouette of Angel with a large cross held out in front of her; Willow was in between them, walking towards Angel. Janna's lips moved, and suddenly, there was sound to go with the picture.
'Willow, get away from him,' Janna said.
'What ...?' the image shifted onto the red-headed girl, who stood between Janna and Angel and had been walking towards the
'Walk to me.'
'What're you talking ab ...' and suddenly, her words were choked off as Angel came up and grabbed her from behind. Janna let the entire fateful scene in the hallway play out--Buffy's arrival, Xander attacking Angel from behind with Janna's cross, the last, spiteful kiss before Angel vanished into the night. Then the picture melted into another, the school library.
'You didn't know he had turned bad?' Janna was asking Buffy.
Willow suddenly straightened, as though a thought had suddenly occurred to her. 'How did you?' she asked. 'You knew. You told me to get away from ...'
The vision blurred suddenly, and suddenly, it wasn't Willow asking the question, it was Buffy; and she had Janna pinned to her desk in front of her entire class.
'What do you know?' she demanded.
'Buffy!' Giles voice suddenly shouted from off the screen.
'Did you do it? Did you change him? Did you know this was going to happen?!' Buffy demanded.
'I didn't know ... exactly,' Janna answered. 'I was told ... I was sent here to watch you. They told me to keep you and Angel apart, they never told me what would happen. Angel was supposed to pay for what he did to my people.'
'And me?' Buffy demanded. 'What was I supposed to be paying for?'
'I didn't know what would happen until after, I swear I would have told you.'
'So it was me. I did it.'
'I think so.'
'I don't understand,' Giles interrupted.
'The curse,' Janna explained. 'If Angel achieved true happiness, even just a moment of ... he would lose his soul.'
'B-but how do you know you were responsible for ...' Giles began, turning to Buffy, when suddenly realization dawned on his face, and he retreated with a muted, 'Oh.'
'If there's anything I can do ...' Janna offered.
'Curse him again.' Buffy's voice was adamant.
'No, I can't,' Janna answered, 'Those magics are long lost, even to my people.'
'You did it once, it might not be too late to save him.'
'It can't be done. I can't help you.'
Janna's gesture has she changed the scene in the monitor that time was much more abrupt, a lot less smooth, and Faith swore she saw a trail of moisture in the Gypsy's eyes. Janna, noticing where Faith was looking, gave a weak smile. "Practically everything you see in this apartment," she said, "began that very moment. I've never felt more useless or powerless in my life. I don't like that feeling."
"I hear that," Faith empathized.
"So I worked. I was always better than most with the old arts, and willing to try new things, but I had never been much of a student. Not much work ethic, I guess. That changed. I put in more late nights than any vampire after that. And I eventually rediscovered the curse. But," she added, with a suddenly sorrowful look, "I was a little late."
The scene shifted back to Sunnydale High, once again after dark, this time in Janna's classroom. Janna was there alone, working on her computer. She worked for a few minutes, then suddenly her face lit up as though she had suddenly received the greatest birthday present of her life. Janna smiled while something was printing, then suddenly became aware that she was not alone.
Angel was in the room, too.
"Do I want to guess how this ends?"
"If I don't have to show it, that would be nice," Janna answered somberly. "It isn't exactly the highlight of my existence."
"I can guess," Faith answered, and Janna nodded gratefully. She waved her hand one last time, and the screen went dark.
"So that's the first half of the story," Faith continued.
"Yes," Janna answered. "Now we're getting into the part that the others in Sunnydale don't know about yet."
"I'm still listening."
"Right," Janna paused and took a breath. "And we're also getting to the part where I have even fewer answers myself. I may die again before I do. Fair warning."
"Keep talking."
Janna took another breath. "I didn't move on to where others go, after Angel killed me, and believe me, no one was more surprised than me. I was only a half-believer in the old myths and legends at best. Anyway, for a long time, I drifted, in some kind of limbo. I might have been what you call a ghost, a spirit of someone who died with a critical task unfinished, but not quite. I have no idea what I was, but I was a spirit somewhere.
"Eventually, I felt a huge power source drawing on me, and I was drawn back into this world for a few brief minutes. I couldn't believe what was going on, but believe me, that little computer hacker at Sunnydale was somehow finishing what I started. When she used my translation of the old texts, she somehow invoked me, too. I'm still not sure if they've figured out that I was there or not. I spoke in the old language, through Willow, and we together we finished the curse. Angel was cured.
"Then I moved on.
"When I awoke next, I didn't know where I was again, but I felt more like ... myself, I guess, though still different. I looked like myself again at least. I had a form again, and all five senses, though they were working differently--like I was more than dreaming, but less than waking, is the only way I can describe it. I was in the middle of a forest, right by a small river, and completely alone. It was, to put it mildly, not quite like I had pictured the afterlife.
"It looked like that," she said, pointing to one of the pictures on the wall. "I painted that shortly after I came back, to help me remember, not that I needed any help."
"Anyway, I need to tell you a legend. More than a legend, I've learned now, but it's practically a myth to my people. The story goes something like this: centuries ago, sometime in the time before Rome came to the British Isles, a tribe of the Roma traveled there and mixed with some of the Celtic people of the Isles. While they were there, one of them, maybe more, took a faerie wife. The faerie blood is supposed to lie dormant in many of their descendants, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but there, giving us some kind of link to the Otherworld.
"Almost no one believed the legends, especially those of us that returned to Rumania after the Romans, and later the Christians, came to the Isles. But it looks like there was more to them than we believed--and it looks like the Old Blood ran a lot stronger in me than any of my tribe knew, since it somehow kept my spirit from going wherever it is that the rest of us go.
"To make a long story short, it wasn't long before a small group of them found me, and they welcomed me like a long-lost sister. They recognized me, somehow. I didn't believe them at first, but it didn't take long for them to convince me, considering that once they realized who I was, they brought me back to the queen on the back of a centaur. I think my reaction to my first sight of Herufel is going to be sung by bards for the next few centuries, but that's beside the point.
"So suddenly, I had gone in a few hours from being the local high school computer science teacher to the guest of honor of Titania at the palace at Llynarian."
"Titania?" Faith asked. It sounded like a cheap comic book superheroine, but she wasn't about to tell Janna that, since it was obvious that Janna held whoever she was in the highest respect.
"The Faerie Queen. And, apparently, my great-great-great-great aunt. With a whole lot more 'greats' thrown in." Faith was listening, but only just, because she had suddenly realized that Janna's mystical video presentation hadn't ended, it had only changed screens. The painting that Janna had pointed to had sprung to life, and suddenly the scene changed, even though it still somehow looked like a painting. It was a high, panoramic overhead view of what could only be described as a fairy palace, a tall, graceful structure rising from a large, flat rocky outcropping that jutted out into a wide silver lake. There were people moving around on the ground, but the view was too far away for her to see if they truly looked human or not. The place was bedecked as though for a festival.
"I ended up as a handmaiden to Titania, and she became my mentor. I have no idea why she took such an interest in me. It's probably because I was the first to cross the border the way I did in centuries, so that made me kind of unique, but I wonder if she somehow read more than that. Titania is a little ... eccentric ... sometimes, as most faerie nobility are, but she always seemed to have a way of not being surprised by anything. I'm wondering if she knew that I wasn't going to be with them that long.
"Anyway, I'll skip most of that, but let's just say I learned a lot over the last four years. I learned a lot more of the old arts that had been forgotten by my tribe, since a lot of them originally came from the Fae kindred, and a lot of the natural powers of the faeries that you might have read about."
"I haven't really read that much," Faith interrupted. "I guess you were right about Slayers and their study habits."
Janna laughed. "That's OK, I was never much of a student at your age, either, remember? Anyway, I'm near the end. About three months ago, some kind of ... ripple in reality, is the best I can describe it ... shot outward from this world. Normally, traveling between the Otherworld and Earth is impossible these days; the more the world becomes a world of cities and technology, the more we fade into the mists of myth. For one brief moment, though, the worlds suddenly jumped closer together. I had no idea how at the time, and I'm still fuzzy on the details, but as you've probably guessed by now, it was the day Buffy died, and the ripple came from Sunnydale."
"And so you suddenly found your way back here," Faith finished.
"Pretty much," Janna said. "I landed in the woods outside Sunnydale. It took me a while to figure out exactly where I was. I didn't know that Buffy had died until I managed to find my way into town just in time for her viewing. None of the others saw me. Then I went around to my tribe and a few other people in the area that I thought might be able to fill me in on what had happened over the last several years. That was when I learned about you. I came here to L.A., looking for Angel, but once I heard the state he was in, I figured that the last thing he needed at that point was to see me. You were still in prison and I didn't feel comfortable approaching you there, but I had a strange feeling that something was going to happen to you there, that Buffy's death was going to mean something for you. So I started putting down roots here, since I figured this was where you'd come if you ever came back, and started having the prison watched."
Faith's mind suddenly made a jump, and she was amazed that she hadn't made it earlier. "Sycamore," she said. "You sent Sycamore there."
Janna suddenly threw back her head and laughed uproariously. "Is that what she called herself? Makes sense, I guess. I didn't send her there, she already lived there. She was the spirit of one of the more ancient trees of the forst. A dryad, you call them. Though my point woman, if you want to call her that, was a lost member of our tribe ... her parents left the Gypsy life behind them several decades ago. She was the only one I was able to get inside the prison."
Faith's eyes widened. "Juniper?"
Janna smiled. "She doesn't look much like a secret agent, does she? She probably seemed really shy to you, but she got a real kick out of it at times."
"My gosh, Juniper," Faith said, reappraising the little community college coed in her mind.
Janna nodded. "I always wished I could have gotten someone ... well, stronger ... on the inside, but I had to make do. Dryads and nymphs can't leave the woods, and the only other eyes I could get inside were animals--hardly a match for the Order of Turaca."
"You can talk to animals?"
"Most of them," Janna admitted with a magnanimous grin. Her head suddenly perked up. "Speak of the devil," she laughed, walking to the window and throwing it open. A pair of sparrows were perched on the windowsill.
They chirped at Janna.
"Thanks!" Janna answered, pulling a few sunflower seeds from her pocket and handing them to the birds before they flew off.
Janna closed the window again. "Well, how are you feeling?"
"Pretty good ... you wanna skip right to the part where you tell me where this is heading?"
"They found the Order of Turaca lair near here. So I was wondering if ..."
"Let's go," Faith said, her eyes suddenly coming alight. She had done more than enough talking and reading and practicing. She wasn't sure how she felt about returning to the Slaying gig, but she was sure there wasn't going to be any better place to start.
"You sure you're up for it?"
"You ought to be asking them that."
Janna laughed. "All right, I guess you'd know better than me."
Faith grinned. Neither one of her former Watchers would *ever* have said that ... about anything. "Maybe I ought to stop by Angel's first," she suggested, "maybe Wes'll loan me a weapon, at least."
Janna's eyes suddenly widened, as though realizing she had forgotten something. "Oh, wait, here, I have one," she said, retreating into the bedroom. "I meant for you to have it, anyway, I just didn't think you'd be heading back into action so soon."
"Yeah, well, you know, I hate waiting. Most of us only get one life to live."
Janna's laugh echoed out through the door. "True." She returned a moment later. There was a short sword in a simple forest green sheath in her hands.
"This is Kalia," she said, handing it to Faith. "An old heirloom of my tribe. Hope you like it. It was a gift to my family a long time ago, but we never even used it. Gypsies aren't really warriors."
Faith took the sword and pulled it partway out of the sheath. For being as old and unused as Janna claimed it was, it was in perfect condition; the edges were bright and sharp, and the leather grip on the hilt was unworn. A slender design of two thorny brambles traced their way a few inches down the blade from the hilt, but it was otherwise unadorned. The hilt was simple and elegant.
"Not bad, Janna," Faith noted approvingly.
"Thanks," she said. She let out a tense breath a moment later. "You ready?"
There was something different in the way she said that than any of her former Watchers would have. "Are you coming along?"
"Do you not think I should?"
"Can you fight?"
"Not really. But I can hide. If I'm going to be a Watcher, I probably ought to Watch."
"Um ... suit yourself, but don't get in the way."
"I certainly won't try."
"All right. Just let me get changed, and we'll get out of here."
The Order of Turaca's lair was the basement of a nightclub called the Pendulum about two miles from Janna's apartment. It was already dark, but it was still a while before the club was opening, and the basement had a separate entrance in an alley in the back. Janna parked the car about a block away, and the two approached the alley.
As they reached the entrance of the alley, Janna suddenly straighened, as though she had seen something, and Faith's hand instinctively darted to the hilt of her new sword, but she couldn't see anything, and the alley was quiet. Then again, Janna apparently had other senses than Faith.
"Something's not right ..." Janna said. "But it doesn't feel like a trap."
Faith was feeling it, too, though how Janna could say that it wasn't a trap, she had no idea. "What is it?" she asked.
"I ... don't know. I'm trying ..." Her words suddenly trailed off, and her face blanched for a moment, though she covered it quickly.
"What?"
"Someone beat us here."
"What?"
"Let's go in. I think the place is empty ... sort of."
"Sort of?"
"There's something there I can't quite make out, but it doesn't feel demonic. Not strong enough."
"I think I'll be a little paranoid just in case."
"Yeah. Me too."
Faith inched her way towards the door that led into the basement, and found that it was hanging open. The lock had been bludgeoned off the door. Her eyes widened. Someone had beaten them here, indeed. She went in, down the stairs, around a corner, and found the remains of a wide double door. They had apparently been barred from the inside, but something had burst through them like a battering ram. One simply had a massive dent in it and the latch was beyond repair; the other had come free of its top hings and lay bent and twisted around the bottom hinge like tinfoil. A sickening stench wafted out of the room to Faith's nostrils as she approached.
There were four demons in the room.
They were all dead.
Faith fought down the urge to retch, and it had been a long time since that she had needed to do that. Someone had made quite a savage art project out of killing them, and it looked like that the demons themselves had had very little say in the matter. It looked more like a massacre than a battle. One had been cloven in half lengthwise; two others were missing limbs. One had been broken in half backwards at the waist. The last, a huge, hulking beast that looked to be at least eight feet long, was reasonably intact, but his skull and several points on his torso were terribly crushed, and his blood had dried in a pool around him, also filling a small crater in the ground next to him. An immense sword lay at his side, having fallen from his grasp, right next to the crater.
Janna emerged from the stairwell a moment later, and her face immediately went white, and she covered her mouth with her hands. With a gesture of her head, she signalled that she would wait outside, and quickly disappeared back through the opening.
Faith took another look around the chamber, and was about to follow Janna, when a faint sound caught her attention, and her hand flew to her sword-hilt. It had come from behind a stack of crates in the far corner of the basement.
"Who's there?" she called.
There was a muffled response, and it sounded almost like a whine, like whoever was there had only half-heard her, though she had called more than loudly enough.
"Hello?" Faith called again, inching towards the crates, circling around so that she would be sure to see whoever or whatever was behind there from a distance, giving herself room to move if necessary. When she finally did come into sight of the source of the sound, however, she relaxed. It was only a man.
"Hey, are you all right? What happened here?"
"Little girls," the man said. "Another little girl. Aren't you a little young? Yes, young. Deliciously young. Like the hills."
Faith's eyes narrowed, but she let it slide. "Come on, let's get out of here." She reached down to help the man to his feet.
"No!" the man squealed suddenly, backing away as far as he could. "You can't take me with you! I'm alive!"
"Yeah, I know, you're lucky. Come on."
"Darkling, fie on your blood and marrow! Get thee from this sacred ground, thou apostate wretch! Thy presence defiles the blessed soil where the Mistress' holy footsteps have trod, and whose offerings have graced the hallowed earth with their nectar! Shameful viper, unfit to cast thine eyes upon one drawn into the Mistress' embrace! Get thee gone!" Suddenly, he jumped to his feet and lunged at Faith.
Faith dodged aside, and the man threw himself headlong into one of the basement's support pillars.
The man rolled over onto his back. "Now what'd'ya go and do that for? What'd I ever do to you?"
"Think on it, it'll come to you," Faith responded, but the man was already unconscious.
Faith took one last halfhearted look around the room; only half her mind was on her search, as she didn't really expect to find anything she hadn't already seen, and her mind was occupied with what the man had said, wondering if there could be any sense in any of it or if, as seemed more likely, he had been completely driven mad by whatever had happened here. Suddenly, her eye did catch something, lying right next to the small pit in the floor that had apparently been crushed by whatever had broken the tall brute's sword. Curiously, she leant down to pick it up.
It was a broken heel from a stiletto-heeled shoe. On an impulse, Faith slipped it into her pocket.
Finding nothing else of any remote interest, she returned outside to the alley. Janna was waiting there.
"Hey," Janna acknowledged her as soon as she emerged from the basement door. "Who were you talking to?"
"There was some guy in the corner there. First he looked scared, then he just suddenly went crazy and attacked me. Knocked himself out against a pillar."
"And you just left him there?"
"Did I mention he attacked me?"
"Still, what if he had information?"
"Did I mention the whole 'crazy' bit?"
"Did he say anything you could understand?"
"Not really. Something about a holy mistress and me defiling the ground she had walked on, I can't remember exactly. Besides he talked like he was out of an ... what's wrong?"
Janna's face had gone as white as it had when she had first walked into the basement. "This could be ... bad."
"What?"
"I have an idea ... but I don't want to believe it."
"About who did this?"
"I'm going back in. Want to come?"
Faith was about to accept, but suddenly thought better of it. "I think I'll wait here. I need some time to think. I'll come get you if anything weird shows up."
"All right. I'll be back in five minutes."
Faith waited outside, trying to make sense of things. The cool night air allowed her to think a little more clearly than she could have in the stench of the basement, but she was still a long way from any answers. This mysterious Mistress that Janna apparently knew a thing or two about. The stiletto heel. Could a single person have done all of that? She doubted even she could have done all of that so graphically, and so apparently effortlessly, unless all of those demons had been a lot weaker than they looked, which she doubted. Then again, there was no reason this Mistress couldn't have brought underlings with her.
She suddenly had a feeling that she was being watched, and turned around to stare down the opposite end of the alley, away from the street, and she thought she saw something that could easily have been a woman's silhouette move there, but it was gone a moment later and did not return.
Janna emerged from the basement a moment later.
"You've got a 'this is bad' face going there," Faith said before Janna could even open her mouth.
Janna grinned. "Do I still get to say it?"
"Just skip to the 'what's bad' part."
"The evil hell-goddess that caused the disturbance that brought me back was here."
Faith's eyes widened. "And I'm gathering that you aren't really keen on meeting her to thank her."
"Not exactly."
Then Faith remembered something. "Wait ... didn't you say that you came back that the day that ...?"
Janna nodded grimly. "Buffy's killer was here."
* * * * *
Buffy crouched forward, staring intently at the tiny target sixty feet away from her.
"Focus," Giles said from behind her, in his usual Watcher voice. "I know you can do it."
"I am focusing," Buffy replied, squinting harder.
"And remember your footwork," Giles added, which earned him a sharp stare in rebuke, as Buffy had been about to start her move.
Buffy shuffled forward three quick steps. A brief rumble echoed through the chamber, and then ...
"And Buffy picks up another spare!" Xander announced with mock pride. "Putting her in third place with 108 with two frames to go, and a good 50 points up on me."
"Aww, don't sound so sad, Xander," Buffy replied, sliding back down on the bench next to him.
"No, don't you see, Buffy? Here I am, an American male, engaging in a classic American male activity, and not only am I in fourth, but I'm not even losing to one single other American male."
"Oh, don't be such a chauvinist," Willow laughed as she darted forward, the ball streaking straight from her fingers like a cannonball, curving ever so slightly to one side at the last instant so as to broadside the ten pins waiting for it at the other end. "I do believe that's 270, right?" she asked.
"Why do I have a sneaky suspicion that all is not what it seems here?" Dawn asked.
"Dawnie!" Willow looked shocked.
"You don't get nine strikes in a row with trigonometry alone," Dawn replied. "Or I'd have gotten at least four or five by now. I'm doing pretty well in trig right now. Not like you, but not bad."
"Ah, well, keep studying," Willow said with a grin as she took a seat next to Tara across from Buffy and Xander.
"Willow, don't you think this is a little ... frivolous?" Giles asked as he got ready for his shot.
"Jealous?"
"Yes, but that's besides the point," he said, as he stepped forward. Giles' shot wasn't as pretty as Willow's, but it got the job done, and he stepped back to record another "X" in his ninth frame. It was his second in a row.
"Figures, he's the jealous one with 190. At least he gets a triple-digit number," Dawn said as she moved forward awkwardly for her own shot. "Do you see me being jealous? Do I look jealous?"
"Not at all," Tara reassured her. "Do I?"
"Of course not."
"Naturally," Giles responded haughtily. "No stress, no success."
"Giles!" Buffy burst out. "I can't believe you just said that."
It had its desired effect on Dawn, however. The slender girl turned around, her eyes suddenly glittering with ice, and launched her best shot of the evening, almost scoring her first strike.
"Seriously, Willow, you need to give this a break at some point."
"It's all right, Giles," Willow answered somberly. "I'll be fine. I need to warm up, actually."
Giles' shoulders sagged resignedly. "You've made up your mind about this, then."
"She has," Willow countered, nodding towards the summer-haired Slayer.
"You shouldn't need me to tell you this anymore, but be careful."
"I will. I promise. And Tara's going to help."
"Tomorrow morning, then?"
Willow nodded. "Sunrise, up at Kingman's Bluff; there won't be room for indoors."
Giles pressed his lips together. "Well, you know how I feel about this."
"I know. But she's strong, and not knowing is going to be as hard on her as knowing."
"Yes, we had this discussion already. So what are you going to do until then."
"Well, the whole idea behind this was to come out and relax for a little bit," Willow answered, suddenly grinning from ear to ear again and standing up. "So I think I'm going to pick up another strike."
"Oh, bloody hell."
* * *
It was less than fifteen minutes before dawn when Buffy ascended the last slopes to Kingman's Bluff. Willow and Tara were already there and waiting for her, setting up on a broad swath of grass nearly as flat as a table. Tara was marking a wide circle on the ground with a long staff of ash, and sprinkling some form of evergreen needle into the trench behind her as she did. Willow was sitting just to the west of the center of the circle; her eyes were closed, and her chin rested on her chest as though she were sleeping. In front of her sat a large silver-plated candleholder bearing a fat red votive with three wicks. Opposite the candle from Willow lay a long woolen pallet ringed with thin, braided branches of the same evergreen that Tara was sprinkling in the circle.
"Wow, that smells good," Buffy quipped as she approached. She wasn't kidding, actually.
Tara grinned. "It's juniper. Makes a good air freshener most of the time--as well as an ingredient in memory spells."
Buffy let out a tense breath, causing one of her bangs to whip up in the morning air.
"I still can't believe we're doing this."
"Uh ... wasn't it your idea?" Tara asked.
"Hey, don't confuse me!"
"I ... wasn't trying to."
Buffy nodded towards Willow, changing the subject. "What's Will doing?"
"Oh ... clearing her mind, getting ready, I imagine."
"Actually, just listening to you two at this point," Willow suddenly spoke, without moving an inch. "I think I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Sunrise is getting close, anyway."
"So what do I do?" Buffy asked.
"Just lie down on the pallet. Face the sunrise," Willow answered, still not moving. "And don't touch the circle when you cross it."
Buffy did as Willow instructed.
"All right," Willow breathed a moment later. "Here goes nothing."
Buffy tensed, and felt a thin ring of energy force its way past her skin, seeming to come through all her sides at once, as though the branches ringing the pallet had suddenly burst into flame and contracted around her. The energy quickly grew into a coursing wave that flowed up and down her body, and she began to squirm uncontrollably. It tickled.
"Keep control of yourself," Willow instructed. "And close your eyes."
Buffy tried as best she could, though the tickling sensation seemed even more acute when she shut her eyes, forcing her to concentrate on her other senses. Gradually, though, she reasserted control of herself, forcing her muscles to lie still and eventually relaxed. She was concentrating on this so hard that she didn't even realize that Willow had begun to chant.
"... deae cognitis, veni: Athena, mater erudis, in auroris veni. Ex incognitas libero ..."
And so it continued. The waves of power continued to build within Buffy's body, growing and swelling until it felt as though her skin were a failing floodwall trying valiantly to hold back a mounting typhoon. Her head began to pound as the waves began to reach up into her mind, and she began to see things, images like she had occasionally seen since she had returned, but only more vividly. They were no longer like remembered dreams, but nearly living memories.
She awoke in a dark cave with Xander and Angel next to her, knowing that she still had a job to do and suddenly feeling a rush of power sweep through her, like something was sustaining her and telling her what she needed to do.
She was in the high school, fighting off Spike ... Spike? ... that white-haired English vampire who had killed two Slayers in the past century, and something happened to him later but ... there was her mother, suddenly appearing from nowhere, smashing Spike out of the way with a fire axe. The image blurred and was gone.
There she was again, walking through the streets dressed up as a seventeenth-century noble, only perhaps even more so, seemingly lost and afraid.
She had just finished a rather substandard showing against the Judge and was crying in the arms of Angel for comfort, when suddenly something happened, and then more, and she didn't know what she was doing but simply didn't want to stop ...
Then she woke up alone ...
She was fighting Angel, now, not just training with him but really fighting him, in the corridors of Sunnydale High, and then later in an out-of-the-way place in Sunnydale's largest shopping mall.
There she was talking to Jenny Calendar ... Jenny who? ... Jenny Calendar, the old computer science teacher that Angel had killed ... Angel killed? Angel killed someone? ... about what had happened to Angel. In fact, she had Jenny pinned to her desk as she asked her.
The images went on and on and on. There were memories of people she knew were dead, even though she didn't remember them before the image flashed across her mind and hadn't seen them die yet; she could remember how the story ended once she saw them. Her mother. Kendra. Angel ... though he came back. Faith ... though she came back, too. Everything. Almost everything, anyway; she still could not remember anything beyond the images themselves about her supposed sister, or about what it had been like in the afterlife, or about what had happened in the Doppelganger world created by the wish or anything else that had happened in other times or dimensions. But a lot was coming back to her, and come back to her fast.
The waves of energy suddenly swelled to a fever pitch and then subsided, and she heard, as though at a great distance, Willow voice rising in pitch and pace with them. Then she felt the first ray of sunrise upon her face, and the waves subsided, as did the images, and the energy of the ritual. The loudest thing she could hear was her own breathing, or perhaps it was second only to Willow's.
She opened her eyes. "Wow," she said.
Willow was half-slumped over, crouching above her on her hands and knees. The candle had gone out. "Nifty, huh?" she asked, though it was plain that she was making a conscious effort to speak normally.
"Totally," Buffy agreed, "Though I think a lot of it is already fading."
Willow nodded. "It's going to be like that. You're probably going to remember things in stages, with things kind of popping back into your mind as you see other things that remind you of them. There's no way a human brain can handle getting four years of memories back in half an hour. It would be like trying to cram a whole year of school into a day."
Buffy nodded her understanding, though she was a little disappointed. She had already had so much shock in the past twenty-four hours, she would have much rather had everything at once and then hopefully been able to move on. Now it sounded like she was going to be remembering things without warning for months, maybe years. Nonetheless, it was better than not getting back at all, and it was also really something to see Willow at work. She had obviously learned a heck of a lot in four years, though Buffy would not have expected anything less. She just would have thought it would have been more about computers than conjury.
She forced herself a smile, and surprised herself with the fact that it actually didn't take much forcing. "It should make life interesting for a while then, shouldn't it?"
Willow suddenly brightened. "What, did you expect to suddenly wake up and be like 'I know kung fu?'"
* * * * *
COMING SOON: Chapter 7, "Putting the Pieces Together." Buffy and Faith, with the help of their various friends, are both trying to reestablish some feeling of normalcy while struggling with the different mysteries thrown in front of them. Willow's memory spell proves to have some additional side benefits, even if it didn't do everything it was supposed to. One or two more old faces may resurface.
Sorry it's been so long between updates; classes are done for the year now, so hopefully I'll have some more opportunities to sit down and write soon. I start work in just over a week, though, so I may not have much more free time than I did during the school year. I need to get back to writing, though. I've missed this.
Also, this is my first Buffy fanfic, so be nice.
ANTI-DISCLAIMER (would that be just a "claimer?"): Some of these characters ARE my own creation, as well as many elements of the setting. Use your head. If it never appeared in anywhere in the Kenshin series, then it's probably mine. Not that anyone cares but me.
SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from Season 1 to Season 5 and Angel Season 1 to Season 2; this picks up after S5/S2.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 6:
STORIES OF BYGONE DAYS
An absolutely sickening stench filled the air in the room. Blood of three different colors from four different inhuman creatures was spattered on the walls and collecting in pools and cracks in the floor. The woman standing in the middle of it gave no sign of noticing anything out of the ordinary, however. Indeed, there was a smile on her face. She kicked the lifeless, eight-foot corpse at her feet to make sure it was indeed lifeless; then, as an exclamation point, she stomped her foot down on the massive claymore lying by the massive corpse's side, snapping it in two and leaving a shallow crater in the concrete floor underneath.
"Apology accepted, Rhyzie," she said. Then, a moment later, she realized that she had broken one of her stilettos off in doing so. "Oh, damn," she pouted.
She looked up a moment later, and her condescendingly cheerful composure was restored. "Now then, what am I going to do with you?" she asked, her eyes fixing on a short brown creature with long claws on his hands clenching and unclenching in pain; he was pinned to the wall three feet above the ground by a segment of lead pipe that had been driven through his shoulder like a spear. He was strong enough that he was not crying out in pain, but his teeth were clenched to hold it in and he was not about to give her the satisfaction of an answer, so all he could do was hiss.
"Now, now, Mister, that's no way to talk to a lady. Particularly one that's probably going to kill you in another minute."
Hascinth hissed again.
Suddenly, Glory's form blurred, and she vanished out the door of the basement faster than even Hascinth's eyes could follow. There was sudden petrified squeal, and a moment later, she returned, dragging a man with her, kicking and screaming but completely unable to break the Beast's inhumanly strong grip.
"Hi!" Glory said cheerfully. The man only gibbered more. "You don't look like a demon. But I'll bet you break just as easily."
"No!" the man cried, collapsing to his knees in Glory's grip, which caused his arm to bend backward, eliciting a fresh cry of pain.
"You could delay things a while by telling me why you're here, you know."
"Please!" the man screeched. "I'm ... I'm just a messenger."
"Well then, you might as well give me the message."
"It ... it was for the Order of Turaca."
Suddenly, with a feral snarl, Hascinth finally pulled the pipe loose. He dropped to the floor ungracefully, and dark, smoking blood dribbled from the wound in his shoulder, but he neither ran nor screamed, even though he knew he was powerless against the woman standing in front of him.
"I'm the last member of the Order here," he snarled. "So I'm the cell captain now. State your message. And die quietly."
"No! No, please!" the man screamed. Glory turned an appreciative smile at Hascinth.
"Yes, yes please," Hascinth repeated flatly.
"No!" the man repeated in an even more shrill and despairing cry.
"Haven't you people ever heard of mail?" Glory asked.
Hascinth ignored her. "I remember you," he said. "You're the liason from Sunnydale. I suppose you're here to finally tell us that the Slayer's dead. The news from there seems to be running a little late these days."
The man was shocked out of his fear for a brief moment. "Wha ... no, I was coming to tell you that she was alive."
"What?!" Glory and Hascinth responded in unison.
"And 'the book is open,' whatever that means," he added.
"Wow, that sounds fascinating," said Glory, in a voice that plainly indicated that she had no idea what the man was talking about. "But all this talk is making me hungry." Without another words, she plunged her hands into the man's skull; there was a white flash, and the man collapsed to the ground.
Glory rubbed her stomach wistfully, as though a portion had gone down the wrong way. "I hate cowards," she said, "they taste so greasy and thin. Seems like everything in this world tastes like chicken except chickens. That reminds me, have you eaten?"
"No, why?"
"We've got a trip ahead of us."
* * *
"OK, you know that part you warned me about where I get creeped out?" Faith asked. "I'd say it's here."
Janna, or Jenny, or whatever her name was, stood up from the bed. "I don't understand it all myself," she answered.
"Well, why don't you start telling me however much you DO understand," Faith retorted, "because right now, I'm not understanding anything."
Janna nodded. "Fair enough," she answered tiredly. She stood up and walked over to where Faith stood. Faith tensed as she approached, but she made herself not back up as the woman came closer. Then, as it turned out, Janna was not really approaching Faith at all. She passed her hands over her computer monitor, and the screen came to life. Janna turned to give Faith a wan smile. "A thousand years of fairy tales, and we've come from magic mirrors to this."
Faith might have laughed at that another time, but she was still tense at the moment. There was also the fact that, while Janna still did not seem overly threatening, she was able to call on supernatural powers with just a gesture. Even the redhead witch back in Sunnydale had needed incantations and ingredients and candles and all kinds of wiccan stuff like that. There were no sounds or lights accompanying Janna's gesture; she simply beckoned, and the monitor obeyed.
Then the images on the monitor caught her eyes, and Faith was drawn the sound of Janna's voice as she began to explain what had happened to her over the last four years.
"Before I went to Sunnydale, I was Janna Kalderesh of the Roma," she explained. Visions of the traveling people straight out of medieval times flashed on the monitor, with Janna among them. The scenes were clearly in modern America, too, except for the people themselves; they were passing a green road sign, and there was an interstate highway some distance in the background. "An entire sect of our clan wandered here to California all the way from Ireland after we cursed Angel. We were supposed to make sure that nothing ever happened to break that curse."
The monitor flickered, and the courtyard of Sunnydale High School appeared, once again with Janna, now known as Jenny Calendar, carrying a pile of books to class. "I was one of the more ... modern ... members of our clan," Janna continued, "and one of the more gifted with the old arts, so I got to play point. I took a job at Sunnydale teaching computer science. That was when everything got complicated."
She passed her hands over the monitor again, and the scene in the courtyard shifted. A familiar blonde was passing through it now, trailed by her faithful friends.
"B!" Faith laughed. "My God, she looks so innocent!"
Janna's expression became suddenly pained, and Faith turned to look at her for a moment, concerned. "Irony can be bitter," Jenny answered the unspoken question cryptically.
Faith understood. "Oh, this is back before ..." she cut off when Jenny nodded sadly.
"Complicated doesn't even begin to describe it," the former Gypsy continued. The monitor flickered again, to a scene of Buffy and Angel locked in each other's arms. "Angel falling in love was something we could barely conceive of. Falling in love with a Slayer was so insane, I had no idea how to react. Especially ..." her voice trailed off again, and she made another pass at the monitor. Jenny appeared on the screen again, wrapped in the arms of ...
"Giles?!" Faith burst out. She had somehow deduced that Janna had to have been connected to the Sunnydale gang somehow, but that was the biggest surprise she had had in weeks. *Giles had had a girlfriend?! Holy shit!* she thought to herself. She kept herself from voicing it aloud, though.
"A vampire in love with the Slayer, and the person supposed to watch the vampire falling in love with the person supposed to watch the Slayer," Janna laughed sadly. "Like I said, complicated."
The picture flashed again, and seemed to grow darker. Faith actually blushed as she realized what Jenny was showing her. "You weren't actually watching this, were you?" she blurted. Janna grinned, almost impishly, and shook her head. Then the momentary levity faded, and the former Gypsy was serious again. "I'll explain later," she said, and the steamy vision on the monitor faded, replaced by another scene in an even deeper darkness. Faith recognized it as Sunnydale High, long after dark. The lights were out. Jenny stood in the hallway, facing the silhouette of Angel with a large cross held out in front of her; Willow was in between them, walking towards Angel. Janna's lips moved, and suddenly, there was sound to go with the picture.
'Willow, get away from him,' Janna said.
'What ...?' the image shifted onto the red-headed girl, who stood between Janna and Angel and had been walking towards the
'Walk to me.'
'What're you talking ab ...' and suddenly, her words were choked off as Angel came up and grabbed her from behind. Janna let the entire fateful scene in the hallway play out--Buffy's arrival, Xander attacking Angel from behind with Janna's cross, the last, spiteful kiss before Angel vanished into the night. Then the picture melted into another, the school library.
'You didn't know he had turned bad?' Janna was asking Buffy.
Willow suddenly straightened, as though a thought had suddenly occurred to her. 'How did you?' she asked. 'You knew. You told me to get away from ...'
The vision blurred suddenly, and suddenly, it wasn't Willow asking the question, it was Buffy; and she had Janna pinned to her desk in front of her entire class.
'What do you know?' she demanded.
'Buffy!' Giles voice suddenly shouted from off the screen.
'Did you do it? Did you change him? Did you know this was going to happen?!' Buffy demanded.
'I didn't know ... exactly,' Janna answered. 'I was told ... I was sent here to watch you. They told me to keep you and Angel apart, they never told me what would happen. Angel was supposed to pay for what he did to my people.'
'And me?' Buffy demanded. 'What was I supposed to be paying for?'
'I didn't know what would happen until after, I swear I would have told you.'
'So it was me. I did it.'
'I think so.'
'I don't understand,' Giles interrupted.
'The curse,' Janna explained. 'If Angel achieved true happiness, even just a moment of ... he would lose his soul.'
'B-but how do you know you were responsible for ...' Giles began, turning to Buffy, when suddenly realization dawned on his face, and he retreated with a muted, 'Oh.'
'If there's anything I can do ...' Janna offered.
'Curse him again.' Buffy's voice was adamant.
'No, I can't,' Janna answered, 'Those magics are long lost, even to my people.'
'You did it once, it might not be too late to save him.'
'It can't be done. I can't help you.'
Janna's gesture has she changed the scene in the monitor that time was much more abrupt, a lot less smooth, and Faith swore she saw a trail of moisture in the Gypsy's eyes. Janna, noticing where Faith was looking, gave a weak smile. "Practically everything you see in this apartment," she said, "began that very moment. I've never felt more useless or powerless in my life. I don't like that feeling."
"I hear that," Faith empathized.
"So I worked. I was always better than most with the old arts, and willing to try new things, but I had never been much of a student. Not much work ethic, I guess. That changed. I put in more late nights than any vampire after that. And I eventually rediscovered the curse. But," she added, with a suddenly sorrowful look, "I was a little late."
The scene shifted back to Sunnydale High, once again after dark, this time in Janna's classroom. Janna was there alone, working on her computer. She worked for a few minutes, then suddenly her face lit up as though she had suddenly received the greatest birthday present of her life. Janna smiled while something was printing, then suddenly became aware that she was not alone.
Angel was in the room, too.
"Do I want to guess how this ends?"
"If I don't have to show it, that would be nice," Janna answered somberly. "It isn't exactly the highlight of my existence."
"I can guess," Faith answered, and Janna nodded gratefully. She waved her hand one last time, and the screen went dark.
"So that's the first half of the story," Faith continued.
"Yes," Janna answered. "Now we're getting into the part that the others in Sunnydale don't know about yet."
"I'm still listening."
"Right," Janna paused and took a breath. "And we're also getting to the part where I have even fewer answers myself. I may die again before I do. Fair warning."
"Keep talking."
Janna took another breath. "I didn't move on to where others go, after Angel killed me, and believe me, no one was more surprised than me. I was only a half-believer in the old myths and legends at best. Anyway, for a long time, I drifted, in some kind of limbo. I might have been what you call a ghost, a spirit of someone who died with a critical task unfinished, but not quite. I have no idea what I was, but I was a spirit somewhere.
"Eventually, I felt a huge power source drawing on me, and I was drawn back into this world for a few brief minutes. I couldn't believe what was going on, but believe me, that little computer hacker at Sunnydale was somehow finishing what I started. When she used my translation of the old texts, she somehow invoked me, too. I'm still not sure if they've figured out that I was there or not. I spoke in the old language, through Willow, and we together we finished the curse. Angel was cured.
"Then I moved on.
"When I awoke next, I didn't know where I was again, but I felt more like ... myself, I guess, though still different. I looked like myself again at least. I had a form again, and all five senses, though they were working differently--like I was more than dreaming, but less than waking, is the only way I can describe it. I was in the middle of a forest, right by a small river, and completely alone. It was, to put it mildly, not quite like I had pictured the afterlife.
"It looked like that," she said, pointing to one of the pictures on the wall. "I painted that shortly after I came back, to help me remember, not that I needed any help."
"Anyway, I need to tell you a legend. More than a legend, I've learned now, but it's practically a myth to my people. The story goes something like this: centuries ago, sometime in the time before Rome came to the British Isles, a tribe of the Roma traveled there and mixed with some of the Celtic people of the Isles. While they were there, one of them, maybe more, took a faerie wife. The faerie blood is supposed to lie dormant in many of their descendants, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but there, giving us some kind of link to the Otherworld.
"Almost no one believed the legends, especially those of us that returned to Rumania after the Romans, and later the Christians, came to the Isles. But it looks like there was more to them than we believed--and it looks like the Old Blood ran a lot stronger in me than any of my tribe knew, since it somehow kept my spirit from going wherever it is that the rest of us go.
"To make a long story short, it wasn't long before a small group of them found me, and they welcomed me like a long-lost sister. They recognized me, somehow. I didn't believe them at first, but it didn't take long for them to convince me, considering that once they realized who I was, they brought me back to the queen on the back of a centaur. I think my reaction to my first sight of Herufel is going to be sung by bards for the next few centuries, but that's beside the point.
"So suddenly, I had gone in a few hours from being the local high school computer science teacher to the guest of honor of Titania at the palace at Llynarian."
"Titania?" Faith asked. It sounded like a cheap comic book superheroine, but she wasn't about to tell Janna that, since it was obvious that Janna held whoever she was in the highest respect.
"The Faerie Queen. And, apparently, my great-great-great-great aunt. With a whole lot more 'greats' thrown in." Faith was listening, but only just, because she had suddenly realized that Janna's mystical video presentation hadn't ended, it had only changed screens. The painting that Janna had pointed to had sprung to life, and suddenly the scene changed, even though it still somehow looked like a painting. It was a high, panoramic overhead view of what could only be described as a fairy palace, a tall, graceful structure rising from a large, flat rocky outcropping that jutted out into a wide silver lake. There were people moving around on the ground, but the view was too far away for her to see if they truly looked human or not. The place was bedecked as though for a festival.
"I ended up as a handmaiden to Titania, and she became my mentor. I have no idea why she took such an interest in me. It's probably because I was the first to cross the border the way I did in centuries, so that made me kind of unique, but I wonder if she somehow read more than that. Titania is a little ... eccentric ... sometimes, as most faerie nobility are, but she always seemed to have a way of not being surprised by anything. I'm wondering if she knew that I wasn't going to be with them that long.
"Anyway, I'll skip most of that, but let's just say I learned a lot over the last four years. I learned a lot more of the old arts that had been forgotten by my tribe, since a lot of them originally came from the Fae kindred, and a lot of the natural powers of the faeries that you might have read about."
"I haven't really read that much," Faith interrupted. "I guess you were right about Slayers and their study habits."
Janna laughed. "That's OK, I was never much of a student at your age, either, remember? Anyway, I'm near the end. About three months ago, some kind of ... ripple in reality, is the best I can describe it ... shot outward from this world. Normally, traveling between the Otherworld and Earth is impossible these days; the more the world becomes a world of cities and technology, the more we fade into the mists of myth. For one brief moment, though, the worlds suddenly jumped closer together. I had no idea how at the time, and I'm still fuzzy on the details, but as you've probably guessed by now, it was the day Buffy died, and the ripple came from Sunnydale."
"And so you suddenly found your way back here," Faith finished.
"Pretty much," Janna said. "I landed in the woods outside Sunnydale. It took me a while to figure out exactly where I was. I didn't know that Buffy had died until I managed to find my way into town just in time for her viewing. None of the others saw me. Then I went around to my tribe and a few other people in the area that I thought might be able to fill me in on what had happened over the last several years. That was when I learned about you. I came here to L.A., looking for Angel, but once I heard the state he was in, I figured that the last thing he needed at that point was to see me. You were still in prison and I didn't feel comfortable approaching you there, but I had a strange feeling that something was going to happen to you there, that Buffy's death was going to mean something for you. So I started putting down roots here, since I figured this was where you'd come if you ever came back, and started having the prison watched."
Faith's mind suddenly made a jump, and she was amazed that she hadn't made it earlier. "Sycamore," she said. "You sent Sycamore there."
Janna suddenly threw back her head and laughed uproariously. "Is that what she called herself? Makes sense, I guess. I didn't send her there, she already lived there. She was the spirit of one of the more ancient trees of the forst. A dryad, you call them. Though my point woman, if you want to call her that, was a lost member of our tribe ... her parents left the Gypsy life behind them several decades ago. She was the only one I was able to get inside the prison."
Faith's eyes widened. "Juniper?"
Janna smiled. "She doesn't look much like a secret agent, does she? She probably seemed really shy to you, but she got a real kick out of it at times."
"My gosh, Juniper," Faith said, reappraising the little community college coed in her mind.
Janna nodded. "I always wished I could have gotten someone ... well, stronger ... on the inside, but I had to make do. Dryads and nymphs can't leave the woods, and the only other eyes I could get inside were animals--hardly a match for the Order of Turaca."
"You can talk to animals?"
"Most of them," Janna admitted with a magnanimous grin. Her head suddenly perked up. "Speak of the devil," she laughed, walking to the window and throwing it open. A pair of sparrows were perched on the windowsill.
They chirped at Janna.
"Thanks!" Janna answered, pulling a few sunflower seeds from her pocket and handing them to the birds before they flew off.
Janna closed the window again. "Well, how are you feeling?"
"Pretty good ... you wanna skip right to the part where you tell me where this is heading?"
"They found the Order of Turaca lair near here. So I was wondering if ..."
"Let's go," Faith said, her eyes suddenly coming alight. She had done more than enough talking and reading and practicing. She wasn't sure how she felt about returning to the Slaying gig, but she was sure there wasn't going to be any better place to start.
"You sure you're up for it?"
"You ought to be asking them that."
Janna laughed. "All right, I guess you'd know better than me."
Faith grinned. Neither one of her former Watchers would *ever* have said that ... about anything. "Maybe I ought to stop by Angel's first," she suggested, "maybe Wes'll loan me a weapon, at least."
Janna's eyes suddenly widened, as though realizing she had forgotten something. "Oh, wait, here, I have one," she said, retreating into the bedroom. "I meant for you to have it, anyway, I just didn't think you'd be heading back into action so soon."
"Yeah, well, you know, I hate waiting. Most of us only get one life to live."
Janna's laugh echoed out through the door. "True." She returned a moment later. There was a short sword in a simple forest green sheath in her hands.
"This is Kalia," she said, handing it to Faith. "An old heirloom of my tribe. Hope you like it. It was a gift to my family a long time ago, but we never even used it. Gypsies aren't really warriors."
Faith took the sword and pulled it partway out of the sheath. For being as old and unused as Janna claimed it was, it was in perfect condition; the edges were bright and sharp, and the leather grip on the hilt was unworn. A slender design of two thorny brambles traced their way a few inches down the blade from the hilt, but it was otherwise unadorned. The hilt was simple and elegant.
"Not bad, Janna," Faith noted approvingly.
"Thanks," she said. She let out a tense breath a moment later. "You ready?"
There was something different in the way she said that than any of her former Watchers would have. "Are you coming along?"
"Do you not think I should?"
"Can you fight?"
"Not really. But I can hide. If I'm going to be a Watcher, I probably ought to Watch."
"Um ... suit yourself, but don't get in the way."
"I certainly won't try."
"All right. Just let me get changed, and we'll get out of here."
The Order of Turaca's lair was the basement of a nightclub called the Pendulum about two miles from Janna's apartment. It was already dark, but it was still a while before the club was opening, and the basement had a separate entrance in an alley in the back. Janna parked the car about a block away, and the two approached the alley.
As they reached the entrance of the alley, Janna suddenly straighened, as though she had seen something, and Faith's hand instinctively darted to the hilt of her new sword, but she couldn't see anything, and the alley was quiet. Then again, Janna apparently had other senses than Faith.
"Something's not right ..." Janna said. "But it doesn't feel like a trap."
Faith was feeling it, too, though how Janna could say that it wasn't a trap, she had no idea. "What is it?" she asked.
"I ... don't know. I'm trying ..." Her words suddenly trailed off, and her face blanched for a moment, though she covered it quickly.
"What?"
"Someone beat us here."
"What?"
"Let's go in. I think the place is empty ... sort of."
"Sort of?"
"There's something there I can't quite make out, but it doesn't feel demonic. Not strong enough."
"I think I'll be a little paranoid just in case."
"Yeah. Me too."
Faith inched her way towards the door that led into the basement, and found that it was hanging open. The lock had been bludgeoned off the door. Her eyes widened. Someone had beaten them here, indeed. She went in, down the stairs, around a corner, and found the remains of a wide double door. They had apparently been barred from the inside, but something had burst through them like a battering ram. One simply had a massive dent in it and the latch was beyond repair; the other had come free of its top hings and lay bent and twisted around the bottom hinge like tinfoil. A sickening stench wafted out of the room to Faith's nostrils as she approached.
There were four demons in the room.
They were all dead.
Faith fought down the urge to retch, and it had been a long time since that she had needed to do that. Someone had made quite a savage art project out of killing them, and it looked like that the demons themselves had had very little say in the matter. It looked more like a massacre than a battle. One had been cloven in half lengthwise; two others were missing limbs. One had been broken in half backwards at the waist. The last, a huge, hulking beast that looked to be at least eight feet long, was reasonably intact, but his skull and several points on his torso were terribly crushed, and his blood had dried in a pool around him, also filling a small crater in the ground next to him. An immense sword lay at his side, having fallen from his grasp, right next to the crater.
Janna emerged from the stairwell a moment later, and her face immediately went white, and she covered her mouth with her hands. With a gesture of her head, she signalled that she would wait outside, and quickly disappeared back through the opening.
Faith took another look around the chamber, and was about to follow Janna, when a faint sound caught her attention, and her hand flew to her sword-hilt. It had come from behind a stack of crates in the far corner of the basement.
"Who's there?" she called.
There was a muffled response, and it sounded almost like a whine, like whoever was there had only half-heard her, though she had called more than loudly enough.
"Hello?" Faith called again, inching towards the crates, circling around so that she would be sure to see whoever or whatever was behind there from a distance, giving herself room to move if necessary. When she finally did come into sight of the source of the sound, however, she relaxed. It was only a man.
"Hey, are you all right? What happened here?"
"Little girls," the man said. "Another little girl. Aren't you a little young? Yes, young. Deliciously young. Like the hills."
Faith's eyes narrowed, but she let it slide. "Come on, let's get out of here." She reached down to help the man to his feet.
"No!" the man squealed suddenly, backing away as far as he could. "You can't take me with you! I'm alive!"
"Yeah, I know, you're lucky. Come on."
"Darkling, fie on your blood and marrow! Get thee from this sacred ground, thou apostate wretch! Thy presence defiles the blessed soil where the Mistress' holy footsteps have trod, and whose offerings have graced the hallowed earth with their nectar! Shameful viper, unfit to cast thine eyes upon one drawn into the Mistress' embrace! Get thee gone!" Suddenly, he jumped to his feet and lunged at Faith.
Faith dodged aside, and the man threw himself headlong into one of the basement's support pillars.
The man rolled over onto his back. "Now what'd'ya go and do that for? What'd I ever do to you?"
"Think on it, it'll come to you," Faith responded, but the man was already unconscious.
Faith took one last halfhearted look around the room; only half her mind was on her search, as she didn't really expect to find anything she hadn't already seen, and her mind was occupied with what the man had said, wondering if there could be any sense in any of it or if, as seemed more likely, he had been completely driven mad by whatever had happened here. Suddenly, her eye did catch something, lying right next to the small pit in the floor that had apparently been crushed by whatever had broken the tall brute's sword. Curiously, she leant down to pick it up.
It was a broken heel from a stiletto-heeled shoe. On an impulse, Faith slipped it into her pocket.
Finding nothing else of any remote interest, she returned outside to the alley. Janna was waiting there.
"Hey," Janna acknowledged her as soon as she emerged from the basement door. "Who were you talking to?"
"There was some guy in the corner there. First he looked scared, then he just suddenly went crazy and attacked me. Knocked himself out against a pillar."
"And you just left him there?"
"Did I mention he attacked me?"
"Still, what if he had information?"
"Did I mention the whole 'crazy' bit?"
"Did he say anything you could understand?"
"Not really. Something about a holy mistress and me defiling the ground she had walked on, I can't remember exactly. Besides he talked like he was out of an ... what's wrong?"
Janna's face had gone as white as it had when she had first walked into the basement. "This could be ... bad."
"What?"
"I have an idea ... but I don't want to believe it."
"About who did this?"
"I'm going back in. Want to come?"
Faith was about to accept, but suddenly thought better of it. "I think I'll wait here. I need some time to think. I'll come get you if anything weird shows up."
"All right. I'll be back in five minutes."
Faith waited outside, trying to make sense of things. The cool night air allowed her to think a little more clearly than she could have in the stench of the basement, but she was still a long way from any answers. This mysterious Mistress that Janna apparently knew a thing or two about. The stiletto heel. Could a single person have done all of that? She doubted even she could have done all of that so graphically, and so apparently effortlessly, unless all of those demons had been a lot weaker than they looked, which she doubted. Then again, there was no reason this Mistress couldn't have brought underlings with her.
She suddenly had a feeling that she was being watched, and turned around to stare down the opposite end of the alley, away from the street, and she thought she saw something that could easily have been a woman's silhouette move there, but it was gone a moment later and did not return.
Janna emerged from the basement a moment later.
"You've got a 'this is bad' face going there," Faith said before Janna could even open her mouth.
Janna grinned. "Do I still get to say it?"
"Just skip to the 'what's bad' part."
"The evil hell-goddess that caused the disturbance that brought me back was here."
Faith's eyes widened. "And I'm gathering that you aren't really keen on meeting her to thank her."
"Not exactly."
Then Faith remembered something. "Wait ... didn't you say that you came back that the day that ...?"
Janna nodded grimly. "Buffy's killer was here."
* * * * *
Buffy crouched forward, staring intently at the tiny target sixty feet away from her.
"Focus," Giles said from behind her, in his usual Watcher voice. "I know you can do it."
"I am focusing," Buffy replied, squinting harder.
"And remember your footwork," Giles added, which earned him a sharp stare in rebuke, as Buffy had been about to start her move.
Buffy shuffled forward three quick steps. A brief rumble echoed through the chamber, and then ...
"And Buffy picks up another spare!" Xander announced with mock pride. "Putting her in third place with 108 with two frames to go, and a good 50 points up on me."
"Aww, don't sound so sad, Xander," Buffy replied, sliding back down on the bench next to him.
"No, don't you see, Buffy? Here I am, an American male, engaging in a classic American male activity, and not only am I in fourth, but I'm not even losing to one single other American male."
"Oh, don't be such a chauvinist," Willow laughed as she darted forward, the ball streaking straight from her fingers like a cannonball, curving ever so slightly to one side at the last instant so as to broadside the ten pins waiting for it at the other end. "I do believe that's 270, right?" she asked.
"Why do I have a sneaky suspicion that all is not what it seems here?" Dawn asked.
"Dawnie!" Willow looked shocked.
"You don't get nine strikes in a row with trigonometry alone," Dawn replied. "Or I'd have gotten at least four or five by now. I'm doing pretty well in trig right now. Not like you, but not bad."
"Ah, well, keep studying," Willow said with a grin as she took a seat next to Tara across from Buffy and Xander.
"Willow, don't you think this is a little ... frivolous?" Giles asked as he got ready for his shot.
"Jealous?"
"Yes, but that's besides the point," he said, as he stepped forward. Giles' shot wasn't as pretty as Willow's, but it got the job done, and he stepped back to record another "X" in his ninth frame. It was his second in a row.
"Figures, he's the jealous one with 190. At least he gets a triple-digit number," Dawn said as she moved forward awkwardly for her own shot. "Do you see me being jealous? Do I look jealous?"
"Not at all," Tara reassured her. "Do I?"
"Of course not."
"Naturally," Giles responded haughtily. "No stress, no success."
"Giles!" Buffy burst out. "I can't believe you just said that."
It had its desired effect on Dawn, however. The slender girl turned around, her eyes suddenly glittering with ice, and launched her best shot of the evening, almost scoring her first strike.
"Seriously, Willow, you need to give this a break at some point."
"It's all right, Giles," Willow answered somberly. "I'll be fine. I need to warm up, actually."
Giles' shoulders sagged resignedly. "You've made up your mind about this, then."
"She has," Willow countered, nodding towards the summer-haired Slayer.
"You shouldn't need me to tell you this anymore, but be careful."
"I will. I promise. And Tara's going to help."
"Tomorrow morning, then?"
Willow nodded. "Sunrise, up at Kingman's Bluff; there won't be room for indoors."
Giles pressed his lips together. "Well, you know how I feel about this."
"I know. But she's strong, and not knowing is going to be as hard on her as knowing."
"Yes, we had this discussion already. So what are you going to do until then."
"Well, the whole idea behind this was to come out and relax for a little bit," Willow answered, suddenly grinning from ear to ear again and standing up. "So I think I'm going to pick up another strike."
"Oh, bloody hell."
* * *
It was less than fifteen minutes before dawn when Buffy ascended the last slopes to Kingman's Bluff. Willow and Tara were already there and waiting for her, setting up on a broad swath of grass nearly as flat as a table. Tara was marking a wide circle on the ground with a long staff of ash, and sprinkling some form of evergreen needle into the trench behind her as she did. Willow was sitting just to the west of the center of the circle; her eyes were closed, and her chin rested on her chest as though she were sleeping. In front of her sat a large silver-plated candleholder bearing a fat red votive with three wicks. Opposite the candle from Willow lay a long woolen pallet ringed with thin, braided branches of the same evergreen that Tara was sprinkling in the circle.
"Wow, that smells good," Buffy quipped as she approached. She wasn't kidding, actually.
Tara grinned. "It's juniper. Makes a good air freshener most of the time--as well as an ingredient in memory spells."
Buffy let out a tense breath, causing one of her bangs to whip up in the morning air.
"I still can't believe we're doing this."
"Uh ... wasn't it your idea?" Tara asked.
"Hey, don't confuse me!"
"I ... wasn't trying to."
Buffy nodded towards Willow, changing the subject. "What's Will doing?"
"Oh ... clearing her mind, getting ready, I imagine."
"Actually, just listening to you two at this point," Willow suddenly spoke, without moving an inch. "I think I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Sunrise is getting close, anyway."
"So what do I do?" Buffy asked.
"Just lie down on the pallet. Face the sunrise," Willow answered, still not moving. "And don't touch the circle when you cross it."
Buffy did as Willow instructed.
"All right," Willow breathed a moment later. "Here goes nothing."
Buffy tensed, and felt a thin ring of energy force its way past her skin, seeming to come through all her sides at once, as though the branches ringing the pallet had suddenly burst into flame and contracted around her. The energy quickly grew into a coursing wave that flowed up and down her body, and she began to squirm uncontrollably. It tickled.
"Keep control of yourself," Willow instructed. "And close your eyes."
Buffy tried as best she could, though the tickling sensation seemed even more acute when she shut her eyes, forcing her to concentrate on her other senses. Gradually, though, she reasserted control of herself, forcing her muscles to lie still and eventually relaxed. She was concentrating on this so hard that she didn't even realize that Willow had begun to chant.
"... deae cognitis, veni: Athena, mater erudis, in auroris veni. Ex incognitas libero ..."
And so it continued. The waves of power continued to build within Buffy's body, growing and swelling until it felt as though her skin were a failing floodwall trying valiantly to hold back a mounting typhoon. Her head began to pound as the waves began to reach up into her mind, and she began to see things, images like she had occasionally seen since she had returned, but only more vividly. They were no longer like remembered dreams, but nearly living memories.
She awoke in a dark cave with Xander and Angel next to her, knowing that she still had a job to do and suddenly feeling a rush of power sweep through her, like something was sustaining her and telling her what she needed to do.
She was in the high school, fighting off Spike ... Spike? ... that white-haired English vampire who had killed two Slayers in the past century, and something happened to him later but ... there was her mother, suddenly appearing from nowhere, smashing Spike out of the way with a fire axe. The image blurred and was gone.
There she was again, walking through the streets dressed up as a seventeenth-century noble, only perhaps even more so, seemingly lost and afraid.
She had just finished a rather substandard showing against the Judge and was crying in the arms of Angel for comfort, when suddenly something happened, and then more, and she didn't know what she was doing but simply didn't want to stop ...
Then she woke up alone ...
She was fighting Angel, now, not just training with him but really fighting him, in the corridors of Sunnydale High, and then later in an out-of-the-way place in Sunnydale's largest shopping mall.
There she was talking to Jenny Calendar ... Jenny who? ... Jenny Calendar, the old computer science teacher that Angel had killed ... Angel killed? Angel killed someone? ... about what had happened to Angel. In fact, she had Jenny pinned to her desk as she asked her.
The images went on and on and on. There were memories of people she knew were dead, even though she didn't remember them before the image flashed across her mind and hadn't seen them die yet; she could remember how the story ended once she saw them. Her mother. Kendra. Angel ... though he came back. Faith ... though she came back, too. Everything. Almost everything, anyway; she still could not remember anything beyond the images themselves about her supposed sister, or about what it had been like in the afterlife, or about what had happened in the Doppelganger world created by the wish or anything else that had happened in other times or dimensions. But a lot was coming back to her, and come back to her fast.
The waves of energy suddenly swelled to a fever pitch and then subsided, and she heard, as though at a great distance, Willow voice rising in pitch and pace with them. Then she felt the first ray of sunrise upon her face, and the waves subsided, as did the images, and the energy of the ritual. The loudest thing she could hear was her own breathing, or perhaps it was second only to Willow's.
She opened her eyes. "Wow," she said.
Willow was half-slumped over, crouching above her on her hands and knees. The candle had gone out. "Nifty, huh?" she asked, though it was plain that she was making a conscious effort to speak normally.
"Totally," Buffy agreed, "Though I think a lot of it is already fading."
Willow nodded. "It's going to be like that. You're probably going to remember things in stages, with things kind of popping back into your mind as you see other things that remind you of them. There's no way a human brain can handle getting four years of memories back in half an hour. It would be like trying to cram a whole year of school into a day."
Buffy nodded her understanding, though she was a little disappointed. She had already had so much shock in the past twenty-four hours, she would have much rather had everything at once and then hopefully been able to move on. Now it sounded like she was going to be remembering things without warning for months, maybe years. Nonetheless, it was better than not getting back at all, and it was also really something to see Willow at work. She had obviously learned a heck of a lot in four years, though Buffy would not have expected anything less. She just would have thought it would have been more about computers than conjury.
She forced herself a smile, and surprised herself with the fact that it actually didn't take much forcing. "It should make life interesting for a while then, shouldn't it?"
Willow suddenly brightened. "What, did you expect to suddenly wake up and be like 'I know kung fu?'"
* * * * *
COMING SOON: Chapter 7, "Putting the Pieces Together." Buffy and Faith, with the help of their various friends, are both trying to reestablish some feeling of normalcy while struggling with the different mysteries thrown in front of them. Willow's memory spell proves to have some additional side benefits, even if it didn't do everything it was supposed to. One or two more old faces may resurface.
Sorry it's been so long between updates; classes are done for the year now, so hopefully I'll have some more opportunities to sit down and write soon. I start work in just over a week, though, so I may not have much more free time than I did during the school year. I need to get back to writing, though. I've missed this.