Title: Five by 5: Slaying– third in the Five by 5 series.
Author: Xionin
Rating: G
Pairing: Buffy/Spike implied.
Feedback: Pretty please?
Thank you: Maribel, I'm running out of words to describe how wonderful you are! ;]

=Five by 5: Slaying=

It is such a rush. I've never felt so alive!

I've been preparing for this all my life. Training with my Watcher; sparring.
Getting strong. Getting ready. And now it's here. It's

I love it. This, right here? This is what I was born to do. I'll be damned if I'm not gonna enjoy every moment of it.
And hell, I think I could be as good as Buffy one day.

Maybe even better.

With Willow by my side? Definitely better.

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To be completely honest, it makes me sick to think of the way the Council manipulated the Slayers over the centuries. What makes me even angrier is the fact that I so blindly followed their rules without ever really questioning their motives or methods.

Over these last seven years, however, my eyes have slowly been opening.

Buffy was never one to follow orders, and I am damn glad she didn't. Her headstrong ways have saved us all time and time again and this latest battle was no different. Her plan was bloody brilliant.

Should've been done ages ago.

I have beenextraordinarily fortunate to have Buffy as my charge. Of course, at times, I wasn't always so appreciative of herindependence, but I have learned so very much from her. Quite often it was difficult to discern who was the student and who was the teacher.

Our relationship is very unconventional, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't think that I will ever have any children. And even if I do Buffy will always be a daughter to me. I'm extremely proud of her.

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How do I feel about slaying? Well

It'sscary, but kind of a thrill. I don't know if I can handle this much power. It's really overwhelming.

I guess it takes some getting used to. I meanKennedy? She's beenof all this. Not like the rest of us.

God! If someone had told me that vampires were real and, not only would I end up sort of living with onen-not that Spike wasn't cool and allbut if someone told me I'd be part of some super army fighting against a horde of vampires? I'd have laughed myself silly.

Now, thoughgeez.

Yeah, I think it'll take some getting used to.

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Sometimes it's a burden on yourconscience, taking a life. But you can't think of it as 'life' or else you'll go insane. All I think is 'evil.' Evil must be destroyed. That's my job, mycalling. I alone.

Only I'm not alone anymore.

I know I wasn't completely alone, not with Willow and Giles and Xander there to back me up. Butwell, Faith and I were talking about it theother day; a slayer is always alone.

No one can understand what youor what you don't feel, I guess. And even with Faith in the world, I was still alone. Well, aside from the obvious reasonsI suspect we didn't get along because we weren't supposed to. We weren't supposed to be here at the same time. So now that we have all these little slayers all over the place, what now?

I know what we did, spreading the power around, was a good thing. It wasn't right to withhold it from all of those girls born into this. ButI wonder if given the choice what those girls, the ones that weren't in the Hellmouth with us, I wonder what they would have chosen.

We took a vote. 'Power by proxy', Kennedy called it. I guess that's what it was. We asked the girls if they would choose. And they did. They chose for everyone.

Godtalk about your trial-by-fire. But they did good. They reallyhelped. In the end though, we wouldn't have been enough to stop it. We gave it all we had. Everything we had. But in the end it was Spike. He came through.

How ironic is that, huh? I'm a vampire slayer. We. We are vampire slayers and we owe our lives, and the lives of millions and billions, to a vampire.
A very specialvery uniquevery much loved, vampire.

There was never anyone like him, and there never will be again.

It'll be hard, I-I think it'll be hard for me to slay. Every one of them I kill, his name will echo in my head. And that's bad, Andrew.
That's reallyreally bad.

Maybe I'll just help with the training and stuff. II don't think I'll ever be in top form again. Too much has changed. Too much was lost. I think I'll just concentrate on me and on Dawn.

I couldn't stand to lose any more.

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"Slaying is a superpower, for sure. And now I'm surrounded with all of these powerful women, it's really exciting."

"Yeah it is, Andrew, but they're not superheroes."

"Of course they are, Dawn! Godyour sister? There's a wonder woman if ever there was one."

"Uh, well, yeah: Buffy's different. She's earned the title, I suppose. But the others? I mean even Faith hasn't really paid her dues. She has a lot to make up for, all the bad she did. But she'll be a bona fide, white hat, heroine if she stays on the right path. The rest of them? They have to earn the right to be called a slayer, in my opinion. And work really hard to ever be called a 'hero'. I hope they don't think they got a free pass just because they got the power. They have to learn how to use it and then earn the right to use it."

"I guess you're rightI guess we have our work cut out for us too."

"We?"

"Wellyeah. I wanna help. I have some atoning to do too, you know."

"That'sthat's very admirable, Andrew."

"Shucks, wellyou know me: noble miscreant-turned-sidekick. I'm willing to fight the good fight."

"I'm glad you're sticking round."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

-fin-