Chapter 2: Late Night Conversations
The problem with being in a place with a large group of people is that you tend to forget the limitations of your size. The house at Rovello Drive in Sunnydale had been ill-equipped to handle Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, Anya, Spike, Dawn, Andrew and about twenty five potential slayers. Nevertheless, for nearly four months that is what it had done. And while it had never been comfortable for everybody they had at least gotten used to it.
But now that the house (along with the rest of Sunnydale) was gone, the weary travelers were beginning to realize just how difficult it was going to be to find any place that could hold all of them. It was difficult enough finding a place that could hold them for one night. There were only six motels in the town of Nelson, none of which were equipped to hold thirty people. It did not help matters that they were mostly all teenagers and that both of the adults looked like they had gone the distance against Triple H. When Giles had tried to use the excuse that they were on a school trip, several of the motel owners reasonably asked why they hadn't made arrangements at some place to stay and the ex-Watcher fumbling attempts to come up with a reasonable explanation did not help matters.
Perhaps because they were all so worn out from the long ordeal of the past few months, it took Willow forty-five minutes and four motels later to realize the obvious: that since there was no longer a tremendous evil chasing them and (even if there were) all of the girls were now more then capable of fending for themselves that they all didn't NEED to stay at the same place. The group could split into smaller sections and each stay at a different place. When Giles questioned that since the motels were a couple of miles apart, Willow said that she had finally recovered enough from her magical overload to drive and Wood had said he could handle taking them the few miles.
So that was what they had done. Buffy, Dawn and Giles went with about six other slayers to one motel; Faith, Principal Wood and Andrew went with seven other slayers to another and Willow and Xander went with the rest of them (including Kennedy) to the last. They agreed that they would meet the next morning at the biggest restaurant in town the next morning after which they would decide what they would do now.
So that's where they were now. Xander had his own room for the first time in months, though he had offered to share quarters with any of the Slayers. All had refused rather than share with him. Of course Willow and Kennedy were together. She could have offered to share her room with Xander because she only planned on using one bed but it has seemed a little too porno for her to be comfortable with. Both the Witch and the Slayer had been very tired, but not too exhausted too have celebretory sex (or thank God we're alive sex; Willow was unsure of definitions of lovemaking other than make-up sex). Afterwards Kennedy had fallen asleep.
Willow however was still up an hour later. Maybe it was the magical energy that was still flickering inside her or maybe it was because the fight was over but she was having trouble falling asleep.
All of a sudden she heard a voice in her head: Will, you still up?
It was Xander. Over the last two years Willow had mastered magic to the point that she could think something and have it heard. She had taught Xander and Buffy how to do it, but they had rarely used it; partly because they were uncomfortable using magic around her, but mostly because it just weirded them out.
Nevertheless, here Xander was.
I'm awake. She thought. Pause.
Want to take a walk?
She hesitated for a moment, then thought Meet you outside.
It only took a second for her to put her clothes back on (We left Sunnydale with only the clothes on our backs, she thought We're going to need to buy some more) and then she was outside.
And there was Xander. Despite all the things that had happened over the past seven years, he was still her best friend. He never complained about being the only one without any real power or having to hang around a bunch of girls who, for the most part, would never give him a second thought. Willow had been in love with him for a long time, and even now, she still cared for him more than anyone else.Of all the people that she had been prepared to lose, she didn't know how she could have dealt with losing him.
Willow had a pretty good idea what was bothering Xander but she knew enough psychology to ask about it directly.
"You know, you think after a big battle like this something special would happen. " Xander said.
"I kinda think destroying Sunnydale qualifies as 'special'."
"You know what I mean. I keep expecting some announcer to come down and say "Buffy Summers, you've just defeated the greatest evil that the world will ever know. What are you going to do next?'"
"I don't think that Buffy has ever been to Disney World."
"It can't be that much better than Disneyland." Xander said coolly.
"Maybe they've improved things since we were nine."
"I find that difficult to believe."
"Hopefully the patriarchal system which makes Minnie and Daisy subservient to Mickey and Donald is no longer effective. "Both Willow and Xander smiled, but there was a certain amount of pain about it.The two of them had been friends for the better part of seventeen years yet even now there were certain subjects that the two of them had to tiptoe around. In all the years that Willow had known the Harrises, they had never seemed especially proud or very happy that they had a child. It didn't help matters that Xander had been one of those kids who had been struggling in school since first grade and had always had a reputation as a class clown. During the years that they had hung out together, Xander had tried to spend as much time as possible avoiding them. He had also avoided a lot of family gatherings such as Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Willow didn't know the details but she thought that Sam Harris had a drinking problem. She knew from what she had learned about his family that at least two uncles were heavy drinkers and she believed it carried over in families. She also knew from repeated visits to the Harris home that Sam had a very bad temper. There had been frequent arguments between the Harrises and it had an effect on Xander's mother and caused her to be somewhat overindulgent on her only child.
Sometimes Willow had tried to talk to Xander about his problems with his parents because she could sympathize to a certain extent. Both of her parents had been academics and Willow had the feeling more than once as a project rather than a daughter. Sheila and Isaac Rosenberg had left Willow alone so often that it bordered on neglect. Family dinners were something of a joke because her parents always seemed to have their noses buried in academic journals. It was in part because of this that she had become so fluent on computers and the Internet long before most kids usually did. When she was fifteen, her father had accepted a position of a sociology professor at Stanford. Rather than move them there, he had rented an apartment on campus and commuted there three or four days a week. Willow had expected her mother to raise some kind of fuss, but she never even got mad. She wondered if her mother even had emotions or if they had been removed after years of academia.
When she had gone to college, things had not changed much. Her selective amnesia whenever she practiced anything Wicca related continued. And while she had been going through the agonizing decision about her sexuality, she had never turned to her parents. Finally, after her freshman year of college ended, she had gathered the courage to tell her parents. After a lot of hemming and hawing, she finally put the words together:
"Mom... Dad.... I'm gay." There was a very long silence after this. Willow wondered whether her parents were shocked into silence or whether they were just pondering this.
Her mother spoke first. "But I thought you were dating that rock musician."
"I was but...we broke up... And now I'm seeing this girl from college."
Another pause.
"You're gay." Her father spoke. It wasn't a question.
Willow nodded.
"Oh. Well." said Sheila
"Oh.Well." said Isaac.
Willow wasn't entirely sure what to make of this. It wasn't the reaction she had expected.
"Is there anything else that we need to know?" said her mother.
"You're... OK with this?"
"Dear you're over 18. You really don't need to bring things about your life for our approval." Her mother then returned to the issue of Sociology Today that she had been reading.
And that was it.Willow wanted to think that her parents didn't have a problem with her coming out but at times she thought that they didn't really have an opinion about her one way or the other. It wasn't that her parents didn't love her; it was just that they had no way of showing emotions other than indifference.
Before Joyce Summers had died, Isaac had asked Sheila if she would like to move out to Stanford where she might be able to get some kind of teaching job. She had agreed and, almost as an afterthought, had asked her if she would like to finish out her college at Stanford. Willow had not taken long to think about it. Tara and her friends were here and she knew that Buffy needed her. If her parents had been disappointed they did not give any sign of it or of caring one way or the other.
From then on, Willow had been on her own. Her parents had called sporadically every couple of weeks with no more interest in what had happened at school or with her friends. She had not told them that she had been living at Buffy's house since Buffy's latest 'death' or that she had been descending into a fog of magic using and certainly not that she had nearly destroyed the world in a fury after Tara' death. Maybe if they had been around, they might have been able to provide enough support to see her through but it was more likely that she would have attacked them in her fury.
Xander's family had been even less helpful. Over the last three years he had been growing steadily more independent--- finding a steady job in construction, moving out of the basement of his parents house, settling down with Anya--- but it never seemed good enough. Maybe they were disappointed that he hadn't even tried to go to college, maybe it was because he had struggled for a year before finding his job--- but they didn't seem to approve of anything he did. Willow had never been able to get a clear answer from either Xander or Anya why he had called of his engagement on the day of the wedding. However she expected it had something to do with the general hostility between the Harrises and the demons who were Anya's friends, coupled with the fact that Sam Harris kept drinking and being abusive to his wife.
Several months earlier, when it was becoming clear what a dangerous place Sunnydale was becoming, Xander had begged his parents to get out of town. Perhaps it was because of the aura that the Hellmouth was creating but they had listened and had gone to live with Uncle Fred in San Francisco for a while.
"You want to know what scared me the most?" Xander said interrupting her reverie.
Willow desperately wanted to say something sarcastic but she thought that Xander needed to get through this on his own."What?"
"Two months ago when Mom and Dad left, my Dad took me aside.He looks me in the face and said: 'Alex'---- I usually minded when he called me that but not this time--- 'I know that I haven't been the best father to you and I haven't always been supportive of your choices. But what you have been doing with that Summers girl and her friends---- I'm proud of you.'"
"He really said that?" Willow was floored. She had not thought that Sam Harris was capable of being emotional or that he had any idea what was going on in SUnnydale.
"The second I heard that I thought I was going to die. It was every film cliche I'd ever heard."
"Doesn't that usually mean that the person who says it is going to die?"
Xander pondered this. "Guess he got out just in time." He paused. "I guess I should call them."
"Yeah, I should probably call my parents too." said Willow.
"It's just, how do you start that conversation. Mom, Dad, I'm OK but the town was destroyed along with our house and all our stuff. Your job is gone and our life savings have been wiped out."
"Oh their money is safe." Xander looked at Willow and she found herself blushing. "About a week ago, when everybody started leaving the town Anya got this bee in her bonnet about making sure that all of her money was safe."
"Well, good that she has her priorities straight." Xander said without real malice.
"Well I kind of thought that it made sense. I mean if everybody was leaving Sunnydale they might take all of their money with them. Anya could stomach the end of the world but she couldn't handle the idea of being in one destitute. So she asked me to transfer all the money in her account to an off-shore trust. And while I was doing that, I took all the money in my families account and yours and Buffy's and put it in there. So their money is safe."
"That's my girl. Always worried about stupid things." Xander paused again. "You know, I've been trying to figure out which would have been worse. Getting married to her, being happy for a little while and then losing her with her hating me or not marrying her and feeling like we still cared for each other."
"That's a tough one." Willow had more than an accurate idea of some of what her friend was feeling. "And I'm not the best person to deal with how to deal with the loss of a loved one."
"I never stopped loving her." Her normally sarcastic friend sounded like he was having one of those really sober moments. "It didn't hit me until just a little while ago. And now I keep regretting that I never told her how proud I was of her."
"Yes, because she was such a source of positive energy."
"Watch it Will, you're starting to sound like me." They both smiled. "But whenever an apocalypse came around she usually ran away. And here we were facing the greatest evil that the world has ever known and she had all those opportunities to get the hell out of Dodge and she stayed. What do you think it was that kept her here? Courage, love, or just stupidity?"
"I don't know. Probably some combination of all three."Willow paused, then added: "I know that combo was what kept me here."
"Same." Another pause. "Maybe its everything we went through, but it just doesn't seem to hurt that much. I mean,I'm sad, but I don't feel a lot of pain."
"I guess that's OK."
"You know what I feel? Upset. Not that she's dead, but that no one will ever know what she died for. No one is going to grieve for her except us. She died a hero and no ones going to know it."
"Well, no ones going to know what any of us did." said Willow.
"I know and that bugs me too. I don't care about credit for myself, but someone should know how valiant she was."
"Yeah, and probably all those friends that she had in the world of demons will think that she died a traitor. Where's the fairness in that?"
"I guess that we will have to tell the tale now." said Xander. "I mean what else are we going to do?"
"I guess you're right."
"No seriously Will, what are we going to do? Sunnydale wasn't fun city but I had built up a job there, you were going to college. Everything we built up there is gone."
Willow thought about this for a moment. "Well, we're alive. We're still young. And we have our friends. That should be enough. We've had to deal with far less under far more strenuous circumstances. We can get back to normal somewhere."
Xander pondered this for a moment. "Do all people who go to college sound like that because I feel very stupid at the moment."
Willow gently punched his arm. "Come on. I'm gonna call my parents and tell them that we're OK. And after that were going to do the same thing with your parents.Then we're going to sleep and tomorrow, we'll figure out what's next."
Xander sighed. "Well that's a plan." As they started towards their rooms, he spoke up. "You're sure that there isn't an extra evil we could fight before we call my parents?"
"Xander."
"How about letting me sleep in your room?"
"Watch it."
"Hey, we just beat the First Evil. Can't I just see you kiss Kennedy once?"
"You know you have a dirty mind."
"Hey I'm surrounded by scores of beautiful woman. Am I never to take any advantage of it?"
"Why don't you try another love spell? Cause that worked so well the last time."
The two of them bickered friendally as they walked back to their rooms.
When she had first met Buffy five years and another lifetime ago, Faith had made the rather brash comment that slaying made her horny. It had not dawned on her until several years later (in prison you get a lot of time to reflect upon the error of your ways) that might have been one of her bigger problems; that penting up sexual energy in connection with fighting evil could lead to trouble down the line.Perhaps it was the combination of sex and frenzy that had led her to slowly but surely fall under the lure of darkness.
In any case, she had somehow managed to get past it. Three years of having to be on a constant state of alarm in order to avoid being shanked will diminish anyone's sexual desires. And now that she had been out of jail for nearly a month (and basically in a constant state of ready for action) she could now say that she didn't get aroused by fighting. True, she had been biblical with Robin before the failed attack on the Bringers, but that had been different. There had been a kind of shared pain and understanding that she had not known from anybody in a long time combined with the fact that they, along with everybody else, been on the brink of death.
Now she had helped fight and beat (if you believed the press clipping) the greatest evil that the world had ever known. And now she was feeling something that she hadn't felt in a very long time.
Unsure of what to do next.
For most of her life, Faith had been driven by her impulses; something that will get you into trouble even if you aren't the one chosen in every generation.While this had caused her problems in the long term, it had at least provided her with a clear plan as to what to do next. First it had been fighting evil. Then it had been surviving prison and working towards redemption. Then when Wesley had come for her a month ago, it had been to stop Angelus and The Beast. Then back to good old Sunnydale to save the world, both goals which had helped her dodge the fact that she was a fugitive from justice. The question that now arose was: what's next? The police had not been on her trail since she had left L.A. with Willow but she had to assume that they would be.
Option one: she could go back to L.A. and finish serving out her sentence. Try and find redemption that way. Of course, the guards and warden would probably not be very happy that she had left and they might tack on another ten years to her sentence. And it wasn't like the last few years had exactly flown by.
Option two: make a run for the border and hope for freedom. The old Faith would have done that in a heartbeat. But the new one realized the problems. She'd be running for basically the rest of her life. More than that she thought that she would be letting down some of the few people who had any confidence in her. Plus, she didn't want to leave Robin who had been one of the first men in a long time who seemed to want to work past all the emotional and psychical baggage that she had. She thought that she owed him, even if she didn't owe everybody else she had fought with.
Option three: stay where she was and wait until Buffy and the rest of the Slayers planned to do next.This seemed to be the safest option especially since it seemed that the others finally had worked past all the bad feelings that they had towards her. Problem was what if they all decided to go back to living normal lives (something she certainly wouldn't blame them for wanting). Where would that leave her? Back with option one and option two.
With these thoughts in mind, she had been a little preoccupied the last couple of hours. She had taken a room with Robin, had helped him get undressed, examined how badly that he had been hurt (a lot of bruises and small wounds but he would be all right in a few days) then gotten him into bed. She had considered having sex with him, but could tell from his state that he wasn't in the best condition to handle Faith full on, so she had just held him until he fell asleep. Unfortunately sleep did not come very easily for her. Perhaps it was because the bed was so big and soft, something that had been missing from the bunks in the joint or those in Buffy's house. Or maybe it was because she felt unsettled that the battle was over and that she had all these choices left to make. Whatever it was, rest did not come for her.
After an hour or restlessness, she got up and decided to take a walk. However, she told herself that she would return to the motel and she meant it.
As she walked around the motel, she thought how long it had been since she had been able to walk around anywhere and not feel afraid or in danger. It was a strange thing for someone with her power to be feeling but she had been afraid for most of her life. Perhaps it was because she had sensed the darkness in herself and realized how close she was to it. Maybe it was because she had this great source of strength in her and she had no idea how to properly use it. But she had been afraid a lot.
On the long drive back to Sunnydale with Willow, she had expected the girl who had hated her for so long to launch into some kind of degradation of what a failure she was. To her immense shock, Willow told her that she had forgiven her. She then got a condensed version of what the witch had been going through the last three years topped off by the chain of events that started with Tara's death and had nearly ended with the destruction of the world.
"I finally understood what it was like to be evil and I finally got the reason it is so attractive for so many people." said Willow. "It has to do with power, but more than that it has to do with control. When I tried to kill... everyone, I realized that without someone to help control you to balance whatever power that you have you can hold peoples lives in your hands.It's frightening but there is a great rush. And that can be overpowering. On a smaller scale that is what happened to you. And I understand. I don't forgive you--- that's not my job--- but I do realize what you were going through."
Hearing this made her feel like she had gone through some kind of release. She had finally learned to control some of her power. The question was what did she do with it?
Caught in her thoughts, she didn't realize that someone else was behind her.Out of habit she whirled around ready to fight.
"Whoa. Sorry. I should have known what a bad idea it is to scare a Slayer." It was Andrew, the last person she had expected to see. During the past couple of weeks, she had taken the attitude that the nerdy hostage was only one step removed from being some kind of flake. She didn't know the whole story as to why Buffy and the Scooby gang were holding this geek prisoner, but she figured that he even more than her had reason to want to run away.
Faith relaxed. "All your time in Sunnydale, I figured you should have learned better then to sneak up on a Slayer."
"As the people at Buffy's house know, I kind of overlook certain things." He gave her a thin smile. It appeared that the nerdy kid had something on his mind; he did not seem to be his usual scatterbrained,pop culture quoting self.
"You couldn't sleep either?"
"I know, you'd think that since all the excitement is over and the battle is finished,nothing else to worry about, we'd all be exhausted."
"So why are you up?"
Andrew gave another thin smile. "I have something to worry about. That's kinda the reason I followed you. I am facing a major crisis and you may be the only person in this group who can really give me advice."
Faith was simultaneously moved and uncomfortable. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had asked her for advice about anything not relating to fighting. Yet she really wasn't sure if she was qualified to help Andrew out with any problem. Nevertheless, she decided to see if she could help him. "OK. What do you need to know?"
Andrew paused as if he was trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to say. "You were in prison for three years." It wasn't a question.
"Yeah." she ventured cautiously.
"How bad would you say it was for someone who wasn't a Slayer?"
To be honest, Faith had been wondering how long it would take for anyone to ask her what her time had been like. She had honestly not expected that this kid (not kid, he's my age, she thought) would ask her.
"Well, the food really sucks." she started. "The guards are told that we'd probably hurt them at a moments notice, so they're quick to beat some sense into us whenever we try something--- and sometimes when we don't . They tell us when to eat, when to sleep , when to exercise and they make sure that we don't do much else. This shortens the fuses of basically everyone who's doing time and they can use whatever opportunity the beat the living shit out of you. SO basically, you find yourself doing whatever it takes to survive. And if you're someone like me,someone who genuinely wants to change, your options become smaller and smaller. So what it comes down to is this, unless you really think that you have done something truly wrong, I would do anything in your power to try an avoid going there."
There was a long pause as Andrew basically took all this in. "That's what I thought. Thank you." He seemed like he was about to turn away when Faith knew that there was a lot more to this.
"Wait,wait. You don't just ask a question like that and then walk away giving nothing back. What did you do that makes you think you should go to the joint?"
"You mean no one's told you what a bad-ass I used to be?" There was some pride in his voice but mostly Faith sensed shame.
"Well, Willow told me that you and two other kids made yourselves out to be a bunch of supervillains."
"Yeah supervillains. " There was definitely pain in his voice. "We were just three nerds who had been sitting around in our basements watching reruns of Hackers and reading Harry Potter and figured that because we'd manage to pull off one big magic spell or taken metal shop that we could rule Sunnydale." He laughed bitterly. "We should have just stuck to comparing Star Wars to Lord of the Rings."
""So what did you do that was so terrible?'
"Robbed a museum. Stole a couple of jewels. Tried to rob a fair." Pause. "Killed a girl."
"Tara." Faith nodded.
"No. " He took a deep breath. "We invented this mind control device to work our wills on women. We tried it, it didn't work properly, so Warren killed the girl we tried it on." He swallowed. "AT that point Jonathan wanted out, but we convinced him to stay with us. Good for us."
"So Buffy caught you and Jonathan" ---Faith had a vague memory of that kid from Sunnydale High-- "but Warren got away." Andrew nodded. "Then he killed Tara and tried to kill Buffy. Which caused Willow to go mad and kill Warren."
"She broke us out of jail because she wanted to kill us herself. " He sighed. "We had another out then. Jonathan said that after the craziness ended we should go back to prison and do our time. I convinced him to run away with me to Mexico."
Faith nodded. She had gotten part of the story from Willow and knew what was coming next. But she knew enough about redemption to know that he had to tell her. "So in Mexico, the First came to you and told you and Jonathan to return to Sunnydale."
"All the way back, he kept talking about how he was going to help save all the people in Sunnydale that he knew, even the ones who hated him. I was so sure that Warren was really there that I barely listened to a word he said." There was a very long pause again. "SO we went to the basement, to the seal, and I...I ... Killed him."
Faith didn't know if she had ever seen a boy cry in her life, but Andrew looked like he was about to. She was feeling kind of awkward but she walked towards him and put an arm around him.He took a few very deep breaths and then seemed to get a hold of himself.
In an attempt to ease the tension, Faith spoke up: "I guess we have something in common."
"You know I always wanted to have something that I could share with a girl." Andrew sighed. "I just never thought that it would be premeditated murder."
"I guess that isn't the kind of thing that you tell your parents about." She gave him a small smile.
"You want to know what the Twilight Zone part is?"
"Well, I'm a little weak on that particular term but go ahead."
"I never expected that I would ever have to pay for my crime. Even after Buffy and her friends sort of took me hostage, I figured that they would use me as some force of good and that would redeem me."
That sounded a little weak to her considering what she knew about Buffy and her friends, but Faith decided to let this pass.
"And then after... the last couple of weeks, I sort of figured that I would be dead. That this would be my punishment for what I had done." Andrew laughed without much humor. "When they told me I was going to fight that last battle, I was positive that this was how I would meet my end. I figured that Anya was going to make it, not me. Never in a million years did I think that she would be dead and I... wouldn't be. And it just seems wrong. "
Faith remembered what Xander had said about survivor's guilt and it looked like he had a major case of it. "Hey, Anya had a good run. I don't think that you should feel that bad."
"But people miss her. She was loved or at least cared about. If I had been the one to die, who would have mourned for me?"
Faith was beginning to feel uncomfortable but she could also relate. When she had come out of her coma three years ago, she had wondered if any of the Scoobies or anyone else had cared if she was still alive. It was part of the reason she had been so bitter and angry against Buffy.
"I'm sure that your parents would have cared." she said weakly.
"My parents didn't even notice when I crossed to the Dark Side." he said bitterly. "Tucker was always the apple of their eye anyway. Even after he released the hellhounds at the Prom, they still thought that he was perfect."
"He what?" Faith had been near Sunnydale High back then but she had never heard of this little stunt.
"Oh he was pissed that no girl would go out with him. Hell, I saw that one coming. Tucker compared women in Star Trek categories, for Gods sake." There was a wistful look on Andrew's face. "Oh, Seven of Nine..."
"Excuse me."
"Sorry. Doesn't matter. Anyway my point is maybe he would have given a damn about what happened to me. But he's been at USC for the past three years. He doesn't even know that Sunnydale has been destroyed. He wouldn't care what had happened to me. He's got new friends. He's got something to hang on to." Another long pause. "I... killed... the one person who gave a damn about me." He sighed. "Maybe I should go to jail. AT least then I'd have something to hang on to."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." This was a subject that Faith could talk about with some experience. "Look, I'll admit. You have done something horrible.Maybe for that you should go to jail. But if you have to go with the hope of being redeemed. If you go in with an attitude that you have nothing to look forward to outside, that is a sure way to guarantee that you will end up dead. And I don't think you want that."
"How do you know?"
"I know." Faith gave a sigh. "When I woke up from my coma, at first all I wanted was revenge. But... Then I realized that I was a monster. And I couldn't take that. When I went to L.A., I thought I was going to get revenge. But he knew what I really wanted."
Andrew breathed. "You wanted him to kill you." Faith nodded.
"After everything that I had done to him, he still believed that there was something in me worth saving. That beneath the layer of bad that I'd had built, there was something fundamentally good still in me. That there was some hope of redemption."
"And do you think I have that something?" Faith knew how important the answer to this question was.
"I don't know for sure. But you fought against the First and survived. That has to count for something."
Andrew took all this in. "Faith, when the police came to take you in, you fought them off." She looked at him in surprise. 'Amanda told me about what happened when we left. Anyway, did you fight them off because you knew you were needed here or because you had no intention of going back to jail?"
"You're more perceptive then they give you credit for." Faith said. She sighed. "I don't know. If... what happened in L.A. Hadn't happened, I'd still be serving my sentence. But now that I've been out... I don't know. In fact, I was still trying to figure that part out when you came up."
"You were thinking of running.' Again the nerd had surprised her."Hey, it doesn't take a supergenius to figure out what you'd be thinking. "
"And you were thinking the same thing."
"Yeah, but there still is one difference between us. Actually two. The first is if I decided to run, you could stop me."
"And you couldn't stop me." said Faith. He gave a small smile.
"You could probably knock me cold with one of your eyebrows." The smile faded. "And you still have a reason to stay. The people here, they look up to you as a leader. You may not be the one in a generation anymore but you still have a lot more experience than they do. And I think the others have forgiven you, at least a little. They'd care about you if you went back to prison. I haven't done anything to merit that kind of respect or consideration."
Faith pondered this for a minute trying to figure out how she could comfort Andrew without sounding fake. Then she remembered something that she had heard one of the other girls mention. "Didn't you plan to tell the story of Buffy? The story of the fight against the First?"
Andrew looked up. "Yeah, but I wasn't really trying. I mean, that was my way of hiding my... Guilt. Anyway, I lost my camera."
"Look, maybe it didn't make much sense to do it when it seemed like we were all going to die. But we made it.Someone has to tell the story."
"Shouldn't Mr. Giles tell it? I mean after all he is the Watcher. This kind of thing is up his alley."
"Last I heard the Watcher's Council went up in smoke.Someone else should step up and tell the tale."
For the first time since the conversation began Andrew brightened. "Come to think of it, why should I stop with that story. I mean Buffy and her friends have been fighting vampires for seven years. There are hundreds of stories there all just waiting to be told. " He looked up. "I was just going to make some kind of videotape. If I were to write it down, it could corner the market on horror and fantasy!"
"Now lets not get carried away. Just focus on getting the story down." Despite this Faith was glad to see that some of the gloom had lifted from around the young nerd."
"You're right. A project like this, it could take years to get through.. Better just to start with one part and see where I can go from there. Besides I should probably get everybody's permission; after all this isn't my story alone. I'll have to talk to a lot of people." He began walking towards the motel then stopped suddenly.
"Faith."
"Yeah?"
"Is it... Would it be OK if I could tell... your story?
She felt a little uneasy about what he seemed to be asking. Andrew seemed to sense this.
"Look I'm not saying that I would ever publish it. But maybe writing it down would help show future Slayers how powerful the lure of darkness is and how redemption can be found even when you don't think that it's in you." As she considered this, Andrew added: "Besides, it might enable you to put the things that you did... Behind you.'
"I should never put them behind me. I need to remember them forever."
"And if I wrote it down, you would." Andrew replied.
Faith thought this over for several seconds. She wasn't wild about telling everything she had done wrong, yet she felt that maybe doing this would help her in the long run. "All right. You stay with the group, I will tell you the story. "
"Thanks."
"You know, it is pretty bleak."
Andrew managed a weak smile. "Mine isn't much brighter." They both started walking back to the motel when Andrew stopped her again."Faith."
"What else do you want?" There was a tiny bit of exasperation in her voice.
"What's your last name?" Her surprise must have shown on her face, because he added: "It's been nearly a month and I realized that I never got it."
"Do you know the last names of the other Slayers?"
"No, and in time I'll get them all, but .. You're the only important person whose last name I never got."
Faith thought about giving him some crap about how everyone who thought evil was important but then she realized she was simply dodging the question. "Wollenchek. Faith Wollenchek."
Andrew took this in for a moment. Then he stuck out his hand. "Andrew Grusynzki. Pleased to meet you."
Faith paused for a second, then smiled and shook it. The two of them stood there for a moment, taking in the absurdity and the darkness that surrounded both of them.
After a moment, Andrew turned around and started walking back to the motel talking about his new project. Faith stood there realizing that she hadn't made a decision about what to do next. Then she realized that, in a sense, Andrew had made it for her. She followed him feeling somewhat more certain about the future then she had in a while.
Considering that he had spent the better part of five months with his senses and all of his mental resources stretched to the limit, considering that he had just survived a battle that made Waterloo and Normandy seem like days at the seaside, and considering that he had spent much of the previous night up playing Dungeons and Dragons, one would have thought that Rupert Giles would have collapsed into a coma the second that his head hit the pillow. But then Giles had been through epic battles before (if not anywhere near this level of intensity) and he had found that coming down from the rush of adrenaline that came when you had fought to the limits of your abilities was a hard thing to come down from. Eventually, in the next couple of days, the body would finally catch up with his mind and he would probably sleep for days. But right now, all of his synapses were on fire and he was having an immense amount of trouble relaxing.
Strangely enough, it was not the concerns about what new evil might arise. He had accepted the fact that something bad probably was going to happen. Some new evil would arise to counter the good that had been released; it had been happening since time began and would continue until it ended. However,there would probably be a cooling down period of at least a few months, maybe even as long as a year before whatever it was that was next would arise. There were, of course, any number of minor evils that would probably arise, but compared to what they had just fought (and to some of the things that they had dealt with in the past) they were little more than blips on the radar. No, what was keeping him up was his uncertainty of what he was going to do.
When Buffy had told him how much she resented her job as the one of the generation, he didn't think that he had ever told her about how much he had tried to buck his own destiny. When he was Buffy's age, he had resented that his life had been chosen for him and that he was going to be one of the Watchers. He could understand her resentment because he had often wondered if this was all there was. (They had both rebelled against the boundaries of their jobs, but hers had involved nothing more than becoming a cheerleader, which, while unsettling was certainly better than experimenting with black magic.) Still, for the last ten years he had held on to being a Watcher. Even after Travers had fired him, even after Buffy had died, even when he had gone back to England, he had held fast to the idea that he was a Watcher.
But now he had to face something that he had managed to put of facing because of the upcoming apocalypse: he no longer had a profession. The Watcher's Council de facto no longer existed, its headquarters destroyed by the First. Of all the hundreds of watchers who had worked for them, only a few dozen were still alive. The three thousand year old institution was defunct. Even if Buffy had not released the power of the Slayer, he would no longer have been able to work with her; at least not without a salary. So now he had to face something even more frightening than a politician who had become a full demon, or a monster-cyborg bent on creating a demon race, or a hellgod determined to find her way back home.Finding a job.
It was a good thing that he had never had to look for some kind of job; the kind of resume that he had would practically guarantee that he'd never get a job anywhere. He imagined a smug old man interviewing him: Last place of employment? I owned a magic shop. I co-ran it with an ex-demon and it was destroyed by a grieving witch. These things happen, you know. He supposed he could get some kind of job as a librarian, but the fact was that particular job had only appealed to him when he had his own books to look at. And most of them were still in England.
He supposed that he could return to his homeland, where they tended to ask fewer questions about what a person had done. But he had never really readjusted to being back at England. In the year he had returned to London when he had thought that Buffy no longer needed him, he had felt off. Everything was normal and reasonable, but it no longer felt quite like home. More often then not he found himself missing Buffy, or Willow, or (Lord have mercy) Spike. Home is where you have people that cared about him, and that was here.
So he was probably going to stay here in America. But what would he do? What came next? Did Buffy still want to be a Slayer? Did she still need a Watcher? Where would he go now that his last two places of occupations had been destroyed? What would he do?
Interrupting his chain of thoughts was a knock on the door. "Giles, are you up?" For a moment, he thought of telling Buffy to go to sleep, then he decided that he knew what she wanted to talk about and walked to the door.
Buffy looked up. "Thanks, I wasn't sure...that you were still up." She entered the room.
"How's Dawn doing?"
"Oh, she fell asleep the second that her head hit the pillow. She hasn't gone through enough apocalypses to know about the adrenalin rush that comes with surviving."
Giles thought about telling Buffy how her sister had cried herself to sleep after Glory had tried to use her as The Key, but then figured that particular scenario had brought more then enough grief for everyone concerned.
"Is that what's keeping you up?"
"Well, part of me is afraid that if I go to sleep the Primeval force of the First Slayer will kill me as I dream, and that's never a good." Buffy gave a smile that Giles had not seen on her face in a long time. Only now did it strike him how much pressure and strain that she--- all of them-- - had been undergoing for the past few months. "But there a lot of little things that are keeping me up now. Is it good when you stop staying up nights because you're worried about if you're going to live the next day and start staying up because you don't know whether you're going to work tomorrow?"
"I would think worried about more mundane issues than life or death would be a relief."
"So would I. Except it isn't just the mundane thingies that are keeping me up." Buffy sighed. "And I'm not alone."
"Well, you forget I'm British. We are raised to be concerned." She smiled a little at that. "And sometimes we get worried about the wrong things." He took a deep breath.
"Buffy, I'm sorry... About what... I tried to do with Spike.I did what I should not have done. You were right about him and I was wrong."
She took this in. "Giles, it's OK. I know how I tend to get about..." long pause... "My boyfriends. And given some of my more recent decisions you had a right to be concerned. But.. I wish.. There could have been some other way to handle it."
"AT least he died a champion." The words seemed hollow, but they did seem to do some good.
"Anyway, now we can worry about other,less explosive, issues." She took a deep breath. "What kind of nastiness do you think that we let loose by releasing the power of the Slayer?" The expression of surprise on Giles' face must have been particularly evident, because she followed that by saying: "Hey I know what happens when we toy around a little with the natural order of things. And this one must have one doozy of a consequence."
"Buffy, I don't know what might happen. There's never been anything remotely like this done before. This is way out of anyones league. I couldn't begin to predict... What might happen"
"I was afraid of that."There still seemed to be a little level of concern in Buffy's face that Giles couldn't quite understand.
"But I don't think you should let these things concern you. You're no longer alone in this. I think you could relax a little."
Buffy smiled but this smile seemed to have a little bit of sadness in it." You'd think that I could too considering what's just fallen into my lap. I mean, all that I've wanted for...seven years has been to just be normal. To stop hanging around cemeteries. To stop having to face the big bad. To stop worrying that I'm going to die... And have it stick." They both shared a small smile at that. "I mean this has been all I've been doing for so long. But the fact is, doing this has always been something that I have been good at. I've been training for this for so long, it's helped me keep focused when I couldn't get readmitted to college, when I was working at DoubleMeat, when ... Mom.. " She stopped, then hurried on. " I'm not sure what else I can do. It doesn't help matters much that my college transcript and my past places of employment are now buried in the cold,cold ground. "
"I am sorry that the losses we suffered were so great. It occurred to me to take most of my books on the bus; I never thought that there were things from home that you might want."
"Hey, when you're trying to save the world it never occurs to you that losing anything except the lives of the people around you will turn out to be important. " Buffy sighed. "Funny, I lost almost everything that I owned and the only thing that I'm really sorry I lost was that trophy that Jonathan gave me for being Class Protector."
Giles smiled as he remembered it. Even now, nearly four years later, it had struck him as one of the most moving gestures he had ever seen a group of young people do. "I guess you would want to have that. To remind you of what you were."
Buffy nodded, then looked up. "Were?"
"I... I'm sorry. Perhaps I'm being a bit presumptuous. I kind of figured now that the battle is over and now that you no longer have to carry the burden of being the only Vampire Slayer that you would be... "
"Quitting?" she said.
"I think retiring would be a better term."
Buffy shook her head. "I keep thinking: what would Superman do?"
Of all the things that she could have said, this probably ranked about as far down the list as Giles would have thought anything would. "Would you mind elaborating?
"It's just all Superman ever wanted was a normal life. To be Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper. But being Superman was all that he knew how to do.And he always felt upset about not being everywhere at once. Everytime he saved the world, he went back to living both lives. Now granted, there was only one SUperman and there are now hundreds of Slayers, but am I just supposed to go back to being plain old Buffy Summers when there is still so much evil and pain in the world?"
Giles took all this in. "Buffy, I think you've been hanging around Andrew for too long." This did provoke the smile that he had hoped for. "Wanting to do something to keep doing good is all right. But you don't have to carry the weight of the world anymore. You are entitled to take a sabbatical if you want."
"I'm not Jewish."
"Buffy..."
"What? Just because I'm no longer the only Slayer doesn't give me the right to make bad jokes." She hurried on. "I'm all for chilling out for a while, but these problems aren't going to go away just because I'm taking time off."
Giles just stood there for a moment, marveling at what he saw before him.
"What I say?"
"I'm just amazed at how much you really have grown up." She smiled again. "You know, it occurs to me that we never even noticed your birthday this year."
"It's OK. Twenty two isn't as big a deal as twenty-one. Besides, I don't think that anyone was in the mood to celebrate."
"Well, given the propensity of your birthdays turning into disastrous demon-related events perhaps that was for the best."
"I don't know. It might have livened things up a little." They both pondered that. "So, if I was going to retire, what would you do?"
"Excuse me?"
"It's not that tough a question. If you didn't have me to watch, who would you work with?"
"Interestingly, I was pondering that very problem. It now occurs to me, with all the new Slayers that have been released, there is going to be a need to recruit a new group of Watchers."
"How many of the Watchers did the First kill?"
Giles shook his head. "Before the First's minions blew up Council headquarters, they did a pretty effective job of killing most of the Watchers in the field. The Council had several minor facilities set up in places like Switzerland, Italy and Australia all of which were wiped out. Those who weren't gathered in those places were hunted down along with the other potential Slayers."
"But you were in contact with some other Watchers. Willow got some call from a man named Robson in England...."
Giles sighed. "Most of the contacts I had went underground. If I had to guess, there are probably less than a hundred Watchers still alive."
"Shouldn't somebody assemble them and start reassigning them?"
"Yes someone should. The problem is that most of the resources that we had are gone. Even if we could get all of them together, there's no way that those of us who were left could possibly train all of the Slayers that we have released."
"So hire some new people."
"Buffy, you can't just take the average person in off the street and expect him or her to not only take on the assumption that there are such forces of darkness in the world but also to shoulder the responsibility of keeping track of a young girl who now has this incredible ability. It needs to be taught over a period of time."
"Yeah, because all of the Council's practice produced such fine work before."
Giles might have taken offense at this remark had he not remembered all of the difficulties that Travers and the Watcher's Council had put Buffy through.
"That's exactly the point. Even when the Council was at its peak, it relied on rituals that were archaic and borderline barbaric. The new ones will have to be brought into the present. Someone will have to do a lot of work screening them and making sure that they understand the importance not only of the Slayers and the Watchers, but about the relationship that needs to be built overtime. "
"Sounds like the kind of the thing that you would be good at." Buffy said. Giles stopped and realized what he was saying.
"Well, um it's not like I would want to do this, but..."
"Giles, you were always a good teacher. If you hadn't been so good at being able to adapt to all the things that the Hellmouth threw at us, we probably wouldn't have survived most of the monster attack that we had to deal with."
"I think you're giving yourself too little credit."
"I know, power of the Chosen one, sacred duty, yadda yadda yadda. But Giles without your help, there is no way that I would have been able to do a lot of what I did. You were very good and I can't think of anyone else who I would want to see teaching the new generation of Watchers."
For a moment Giles was afraid that he was going to start weeping. "Thank you. But even if I were to do that, I don't have anywhere near the resources or the people to start doing this."
Buffy took this in. "Yeah. That is a problem." She paused. Giles assumed she was done.
"Well, without breaking into song, where do we go from here?" Buffy remained silent. "Buffy?"
"Hmm. Sorry I... Something just occurred to me." She fell quiet again. "Giles, if I could tell you that I might know of a place where we can get the materials that you would need, would you be willing to try to start in?'
"I... Guess so." Giles said cautiously.
"And you wouldn't be concerned about where it came from, as long as it helped in the long run against the fight against evil?"
"I think so; what exactly are you getting at?"
"Something that Angel kind of implied when he showed up."
"This wouldn't have anything to do between him and you, would it?" Giles knew how dangerous the history was between the two of them.
"No." Buffy said quickly. "It probably wouldn't involve us at all." He considered pressing the point but decided not to yet.
"What's your idea?"
Buffy shook her head. "Not yet. First things first. For the next few days, we're going to relax and unwind. Then we're going to have a talk."
"You and I?"
Buffy nodded. "And Willow. And Xander. And Dawn. Maybe Faith and Robin, if they decide to stick around. I'm not entirely sure what I have in mind or if they will all want to go along with it, but if they do I might be able to come up with something that will help all of us figure out what we do next."
"You wouldn't like to drop a hint, perhaps?"
"You'll know soon enough. However,I think I know where the last stop on our tour is going to be."
"You mean..."
She nodded. "We're going to L.A.
The problem with being in a place with a large group of people is that you tend to forget the limitations of your size. The house at Rovello Drive in Sunnydale had been ill-equipped to handle Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, Anya, Spike, Dawn, Andrew and about twenty five potential slayers. Nevertheless, for nearly four months that is what it had done. And while it had never been comfortable for everybody they had at least gotten used to it.
But now that the house (along with the rest of Sunnydale) was gone, the weary travelers were beginning to realize just how difficult it was going to be to find any place that could hold all of them. It was difficult enough finding a place that could hold them for one night. There were only six motels in the town of Nelson, none of which were equipped to hold thirty people. It did not help matters that they were mostly all teenagers and that both of the adults looked like they had gone the distance against Triple H. When Giles had tried to use the excuse that they were on a school trip, several of the motel owners reasonably asked why they hadn't made arrangements at some place to stay and the ex-Watcher fumbling attempts to come up with a reasonable explanation did not help matters.
Perhaps because they were all so worn out from the long ordeal of the past few months, it took Willow forty-five minutes and four motels later to realize the obvious: that since there was no longer a tremendous evil chasing them and (even if there were) all of the girls were now more then capable of fending for themselves that they all didn't NEED to stay at the same place. The group could split into smaller sections and each stay at a different place. When Giles questioned that since the motels were a couple of miles apart, Willow said that she had finally recovered enough from her magical overload to drive and Wood had said he could handle taking them the few miles.
So that was what they had done. Buffy, Dawn and Giles went with about six other slayers to one motel; Faith, Principal Wood and Andrew went with seven other slayers to another and Willow and Xander went with the rest of them (including Kennedy) to the last. They agreed that they would meet the next morning at the biggest restaurant in town the next morning after which they would decide what they would do now.
So that's where they were now. Xander had his own room for the first time in months, though he had offered to share quarters with any of the Slayers. All had refused rather than share with him. Of course Willow and Kennedy were together. She could have offered to share her room with Xander because she only planned on using one bed but it has seemed a little too porno for her to be comfortable with. Both the Witch and the Slayer had been very tired, but not too exhausted too have celebretory sex (or thank God we're alive sex; Willow was unsure of definitions of lovemaking other than make-up sex). Afterwards Kennedy had fallen asleep.
Willow however was still up an hour later. Maybe it was the magical energy that was still flickering inside her or maybe it was because the fight was over but she was having trouble falling asleep.
All of a sudden she heard a voice in her head: Will, you still up?
It was Xander. Over the last two years Willow had mastered magic to the point that she could think something and have it heard. She had taught Xander and Buffy how to do it, but they had rarely used it; partly because they were uncomfortable using magic around her, but mostly because it just weirded them out.
Nevertheless, here Xander was.
I'm awake. She thought. Pause.
Want to take a walk?
She hesitated for a moment, then thought Meet you outside.
It only took a second for her to put her clothes back on (We left Sunnydale with only the clothes on our backs, she thought We're going to need to buy some more) and then she was outside.
And there was Xander. Despite all the things that had happened over the past seven years, he was still her best friend. He never complained about being the only one without any real power or having to hang around a bunch of girls who, for the most part, would never give him a second thought. Willow had been in love with him for a long time, and even now, she still cared for him more than anyone else.Of all the people that she had been prepared to lose, she didn't know how she could have dealt with losing him.
Willow had a pretty good idea what was bothering Xander but she knew enough psychology to ask about it directly.
"You know, you think after a big battle like this something special would happen. " Xander said.
"I kinda think destroying Sunnydale qualifies as 'special'."
"You know what I mean. I keep expecting some announcer to come down and say "Buffy Summers, you've just defeated the greatest evil that the world will ever know. What are you going to do next?'"
"I don't think that Buffy has ever been to Disney World."
"It can't be that much better than Disneyland." Xander said coolly.
"Maybe they've improved things since we were nine."
"I find that difficult to believe."
"Hopefully the patriarchal system which makes Minnie and Daisy subservient to Mickey and Donald is no longer effective. "Both Willow and Xander smiled, but there was a certain amount of pain about it.The two of them had been friends for the better part of seventeen years yet even now there were certain subjects that the two of them had to tiptoe around. In all the years that Willow had known the Harrises, they had never seemed especially proud or very happy that they had a child. It didn't help matters that Xander had been one of those kids who had been struggling in school since first grade and had always had a reputation as a class clown. During the years that they had hung out together, Xander had tried to spend as much time as possible avoiding them. He had also avoided a lot of family gatherings such as Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Willow didn't know the details but she thought that Sam Harris had a drinking problem. She knew from what she had learned about his family that at least two uncles were heavy drinkers and she believed it carried over in families. She also knew from repeated visits to the Harris home that Sam had a very bad temper. There had been frequent arguments between the Harrises and it had an effect on Xander's mother and caused her to be somewhat overindulgent on her only child.
Sometimes Willow had tried to talk to Xander about his problems with his parents because she could sympathize to a certain extent. Both of her parents had been academics and Willow had the feeling more than once as a project rather than a daughter. Sheila and Isaac Rosenberg had left Willow alone so often that it bordered on neglect. Family dinners were something of a joke because her parents always seemed to have their noses buried in academic journals. It was in part because of this that she had become so fluent on computers and the Internet long before most kids usually did. When she was fifteen, her father had accepted a position of a sociology professor at Stanford. Rather than move them there, he had rented an apartment on campus and commuted there three or four days a week. Willow had expected her mother to raise some kind of fuss, but she never even got mad. She wondered if her mother even had emotions or if they had been removed after years of academia.
When she had gone to college, things had not changed much. Her selective amnesia whenever she practiced anything Wicca related continued. And while she had been going through the agonizing decision about her sexuality, she had never turned to her parents. Finally, after her freshman year of college ended, she had gathered the courage to tell her parents. After a lot of hemming and hawing, she finally put the words together:
"Mom... Dad.... I'm gay." There was a very long silence after this. Willow wondered whether her parents were shocked into silence or whether they were just pondering this.
Her mother spoke first. "But I thought you were dating that rock musician."
"I was but...we broke up... And now I'm seeing this girl from college."
Another pause.
"You're gay." Her father spoke. It wasn't a question.
Willow nodded.
"Oh. Well." said Sheila
"Oh.Well." said Isaac.
Willow wasn't entirely sure what to make of this. It wasn't the reaction she had expected.
"Is there anything else that we need to know?" said her mother.
"You're... OK with this?"
"Dear you're over 18. You really don't need to bring things about your life for our approval." Her mother then returned to the issue of Sociology Today that she had been reading.
And that was it.Willow wanted to think that her parents didn't have a problem with her coming out but at times she thought that they didn't really have an opinion about her one way or the other. It wasn't that her parents didn't love her; it was just that they had no way of showing emotions other than indifference.
Before Joyce Summers had died, Isaac had asked Sheila if she would like to move out to Stanford where she might be able to get some kind of teaching job. She had agreed and, almost as an afterthought, had asked her if she would like to finish out her college at Stanford. Willow had not taken long to think about it. Tara and her friends were here and she knew that Buffy needed her. If her parents had been disappointed they did not give any sign of it or of caring one way or the other.
From then on, Willow had been on her own. Her parents had called sporadically every couple of weeks with no more interest in what had happened at school or with her friends. She had not told them that she had been living at Buffy's house since Buffy's latest 'death' or that she had been descending into a fog of magic using and certainly not that she had nearly destroyed the world in a fury after Tara' death. Maybe if they had been around, they might have been able to provide enough support to see her through but it was more likely that she would have attacked them in her fury.
Xander's family had been even less helpful. Over the last three years he had been growing steadily more independent--- finding a steady job in construction, moving out of the basement of his parents house, settling down with Anya--- but it never seemed good enough. Maybe they were disappointed that he hadn't even tried to go to college, maybe it was because he had struggled for a year before finding his job--- but they didn't seem to approve of anything he did. Willow had never been able to get a clear answer from either Xander or Anya why he had called of his engagement on the day of the wedding. However she expected it had something to do with the general hostility between the Harrises and the demons who were Anya's friends, coupled with the fact that Sam Harris kept drinking and being abusive to his wife.
Several months earlier, when it was becoming clear what a dangerous place Sunnydale was becoming, Xander had begged his parents to get out of town. Perhaps it was because of the aura that the Hellmouth was creating but they had listened and had gone to live with Uncle Fred in San Francisco for a while.
"You want to know what scared me the most?" Xander said interrupting her reverie.
Willow desperately wanted to say something sarcastic but she thought that Xander needed to get through this on his own."What?"
"Two months ago when Mom and Dad left, my Dad took me aside.He looks me in the face and said: 'Alex'---- I usually minded when he called me that but not this time--- 'I know that I haven't been the best father to you and I haven't always been supportive of your choices. But what you have been doing with that Summers girl and her friends---- I'm proud of you.'"
"He really said that?" Willow was floored. She had not thought that Sam Harris was capable of being emotional or that he had any idea what was going on in SUnnydale.
"The second I heard that I thought I was going to die. It was every film cliche I'd ever heard."
"Doesn't that usually mean that the person who says it is going to die?"
Xander pondered this. "Guess he got out just in time." He paused. "I guess I should call them."
"Yeah, I should probably call my parents too." said Willow.
"It's just, how do you start that conversation. Mom, Dad, I'm OK but the town was destroyed along with our house and all our stuff. Your job is gone and our life savings have been wiped out."
"Oh their money is safe." Xander looked at Willow and she found herself blushing. "About a week ago, when everybody started leaving the town Anya got this bee in her bonnet about making sure that all of her money was safe."
"Well, good that she has her priorities straight." Xander said without real malice.
"Well I kind of thought that it made sense. I mean if everybody was leaving Sunnydale they might take all of their money with them. Anya could stomach the end of the world but she couldn't handle the idea of being in one destitute. So she asked me to transfer all the money in her account to an off-shore trust. And while I was doing that, I took all the money in my families account and yours and Buffy's and put it in there. So their money is safe."
"That's my girl. Always worried about stupid things." Xander paused again. "You know, I've been trying to figure out which would have been worse. Getting married to her, being happy for a little while and then losing her with her hating me or not marrying her and feeling like we still cared for each other."
"That's a tough one." Willow had more than an accurate idea of some of what her friend was feeling. "And I'm not the best person to deal with how to deal with the loss of a loved one."
"I never stopped loving her." Her normally sarcastic friend sounded like he was having one of those really sober moments. "It didn't hit me until just a little while ago. And now I keep regretting that I never told her how proud I was of her."
"Yes, because she was such a source of positive energy."
"Watch it Will, you're starting to sound like me." They both smiled. "But whenever an apocalypse came around she usually ran away. And here we were facing the greatest evil that the world has ever known and she had all those opportunities to get the hell out of Dodge and she stayed. What do you think it was that kept her here? Courage, love, or just stupidity?"
"I don't know. Probably some combination of all three."Willow paused, then added: "I know that combo was what kept me here."
"Same." Another pause. "Maybe its everything we went through, but it just doesn't seem to hurt that much. I mean,I'm sad, but I don't feel a lot of pain."
"I guess that's OK."
"You know what I feel? Upset. Not that she's dead, but that no one will ever know what she died for. No one is going to grieve for her except us. She died a hero and no ones going to know it."
"Well, no ones going to know what any of us did." said Willow.
"I know and that bugs me too. I don't care about credit for myself, but someone should know how valiant she was."
"Yeah, and probably all those friends that she had in the world of demons will think that she died a traitor. Where's the fairness in that?"
"I guess that we will have to tell the tale now." said Xander. "I mean what else are we going to do?"
"I guess you're right."
"No seriously Will, what are we going to do? Sunnydale wasn't fun city but I had built up a job there, you were going to college. Everything we built up there is gone."
Willow thought about this for a moment. "Well, we're alive. We're still young. And we have our friends. That should be enough. We've had to deal with far less under far more strenuous circumstances. We can get back to normal somewhere."
Xander pondered this for a moment. "Do all people who go to college sound like that because I feel very stupid at the moment."
Willow gently punched his arm. "Come on. I'm gonna call my parents and tell them that we're OK. And after that were going to do the same thing with your parents.Then we're going to sleep and tomorrow, we'll figure out what's next."
Xander sighed. "Well that's a plan." As they started towards their rooms, he spoke up. "You're sure that there isn't an extra evil we could fight before we call my parents?"
"Xander."
"How about letting me sleep in your room?"
"Watch it."
"Hey, we just beat the First Evil. Can't I just see you kiss Kennedy once?"
"You know you have a dirty mind."
"Hey I'm surrounded by scores of beautiful woman. Am I never to take any advantage of it?"
"Why don't you try another love spell? Cause that worked so well the last time."
The two of them bickered friendally as they walked back to their rooms.
When she had first met Buffy five years and another lifetime ago, Faith had made the rather brash comment that slaying made her horny. It had not dawned on her until several years later (in prison you get a lot of time to reflect upon the error of your ways) that might have been one of her bigger problems; that penting up sexual energy in connection with fighting evil could lead to trouble down the line.Perhaps it was the combination of sex and frenzy that had led her to slowly but surely fall under the lure of darkness.
In any case, she had somehow managed to get past it. Three years of having to be on a constant state of alarm in order to avoid being shanked will diminish anyone's sexual desires. And now that she had been out of jail for nearly a month (and basically in a constant state of ready for action) she could now say that she didn't get aroused by fighting. True, she had been biblical with Robin before the failed attack on the Bringers, but that had been different. There had been a kind of shared pain and understanding that she had not known from anybody in a long time combined with the fact that they, along with everybody else, been on the brink of death.
Now she had helped fight and beat (if you believed the press clipping) the greatest evil that the world had ever known. And now she was feeling something that she hadn't felt in a very long time.
Unsure of what to do next.
For most of her life, Faith had been driven by her impulses; something that will get you into trouble even if you aren't the one chosen in every generation.While this had caused her problems in the long term, it had at least provided her with a clear plan as to what to do next. First it had been fighting evil. Then it had been surviving prison and working towards redemption. Then when Wesley had come for her a month ago, it had been to stop Angelus and The Beast. Then back to good old Sunnydale to save the world, both goals which had helped her dodge the fact that she was a fugitive from justice. The question that now arose was: what's next? The police had not been on her trail since she had left L.A. with Willow but she had to assume that they would be.
Option one: she could go back to L.A. and finish serving out her sentence. Try and find redemption that way. Of course, the guards and warden would probably not be very happy that she had left and they might tack on another ten years to her sentence. And it wasn't like the last few years had exactly flown by.
Option two: make a run for the border and hope for freedom. The old Faith would have done that in a heartbeat. But the new one realized the problems. She'd be running for basically the rest of her life. More than that she thought that she would be letting down some of the few people who had any confidence in her. Plus, she didn't want to leave Robin who had been one of the first men in a long time who seemed to want to work past all the emotional and psychical baggage that she had. She thought that she owed him, even if she didn't owe everybody else she had fought with.
Option three: stay where she was and wait until Buffy and the rest of the Slayers planned to do next.This seemed to be the safest option especially since it seemed that the others finally had worked past all the bad feelings that they had towards her. Problem was what if they all decided to go back to living normal lives (something she certainly wouldn't blame them for wanting). Where would that leave her? Back with option one and option two.
With these thoughts in mind, she had been a little preoccupied the last couple of hours. She had taken a room with Robin, had helped him get undressed, examined how badly that he had been hurt (a lot of bruises and small wounds but he would be all right in a few days) then gotten him into bed. She had considered having sex with him, but could tell from his state that he wasn't in the best condition to handle Faith full on, so she had just held him until he fell asleep. Unfortunately sleep did not come very easily for her. Perhaps it was because the bed was so big and soft, something that had been missing from the bunks in the joint or those in Buffy's house. Or maybe it was because she felt unsettled that the battle was over and that she had all these choices left to make. Whatever it was, rest did not come for her.
After an hour or restlessness, she got up and decided to take a walk. However, she told herself that she would return to the motel and she meant it.
As she walked around the motel, she thought how long it had been since she had been able to walk around anywhere and not feel afraid or in danger. It was a strange thing for someone with her power to be feeling but she had been afraid for most of her life. Perhaps it was because she had sensed the darkness in herself and realized how close she was to it. Maybe it was because she had this great source of strength in her and she had no idea how to properly use it. But she had been afraid a lot.
On the long drive back to Sunnydale with Willow, she had expected the girl who had hated her for so long to launch into some kind of degradation of what a failure she was. To her immense shock, Willow told her that she had forgiven her. She then got a condensed version of what the witch had been going through the last three years topped off by the chain of events that started with Tara's death and had nearly ended with the destruction of the world.
"I finally understood what it was like to be evil and I finally got the reason it is so attractive for so many people." said Willow. "It has to do with power, but more than that it has to do with control. When I tried to kill... everyone, I realized that without someone to help control you to balance whatever power that you have you can hold peoples lives in your hands.It's frightening but there is a great rush. And that can be overpowering. On a smaller scale that is what happened to you. And I understand. I don't forgive you--- that's not my job--- but I do realize what you were going through."
Hearing this made her feel like she had gone through some kind of release. She had finally learned to control some of her power. The question was what did she do with it?
Caught in her thoughts, she didn't realize that someone else was behind her.Out of habit she whirled around ready to fight.
"Whoa. Sorry. I should have known what a bad idea it is to scare a Slayer." It was Andrew, the last person she had expected to see. During the past couple of weeks, she had taken the attitude that the nerdy hostage was only one step removed from being some kind of flake. She didn't know the whole story as to why Buffy and the Scooby gang were holding this geek prisoner, but she figured that he even more than her had reason to want to run away.
Faith relaxed. "All your time in Sunnydale, I figured you should have learned better then to sneak up on a Slayer."
"As the people at Buffy's house know, I kind of overlook certain things." He gave her a thin smile. It appeared that the nerdy kid had something on his mind; he did not seem to be his usual scatterbrained,pop culture quoting self.
"You couldn't sleep either?"
"I know, you'd think that since all the excitement is over and the battle is finished,nothing else to worry about, we'd all be exhausted."
"So why are you up?"
Andrew gave another thin smile. "I have something to worry about. That's kinda the reason I followed you. I am facing a major crisis and you may be the only person in this group who can really give me advice."
Faith was simultaneously moved and uncomfortable. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had asked her for advice about anything not relating to fighting. Yet she really wasn't sure if she was qualified to help Andrew out with any problem. Nevertheless, she decided to see if she could help him. "OK. What do you need to know?"
Andrew paused as if he was trying to figure out exactly what he wanted to say. "You were in prison for three years." It wasn't a question.
"Yeah." she ventured cautiously.
"How bad would you say it was for someone who wasn't a Slayer?"
To be honest, Faith had been wondering how long it would take for anyone to ask her what her time had been like. She had honestly not expected that this kid (not kid, he's my age, she thought) would ask her.
"Well, the food really sucks." she started. "The guards are told that we'd probably hurt them at a moments notice, so they're quick to beat some sense into us whenever we try something--- and sometimes when we don't . They tell us when to eat, when to sleep , when to exercise and they make sure that we don't do much else. This shortens the fuses of basically everyone who's doing time and they can use whatever opportunity the beat the living shit out of you. SO basically, you find yourself doing whatever it takes to survive. And if you're someone like me,someone who genuinely wants to change, your options become smaller and smaller. So what it comes down to is this, unless you really think that you have done something truly wrong, I would do anything in your power to try an avoid going there."
There was a long pause as Andrew basically took all this in. "That's what I thought. Thank you." He seemed like he was about to turn away when Faith knew that there was a lot more to this.
"Wait,wait. You don't just ask a question like that and then walk away giving nothing back. What did you do that makes you think you should go to the joint?"
"You mean no one's told you what a bad-ass I used to be?" There was some pride in his voice but mostly Faith sensed shame.
"Well, Willow told me that you and two other kids made yourselves out to be a bunch of supervillains."
"Yeah supervillains. " There was definitely pain in his voice. "We were just three nerds who had been sitting around in our basements watching reruns of Hackers and reading Harry Potter and figured that because we'd manage to pull off one big magic spell or taken metal shop that we could rule Sunnydale." He laughed bitterly. "We should have just stuck to comparing Star Wars to Lord of the Rings."
""So what did you do that was so terrible?'
"Robbed a museum. Stole a couple of jewels. Tried to rob a fair." Pause. "Killed a girl."
"Tara." Faith nodded.
"No. " He took a deep breath. "We invented this mind control device to work our wills on women. We tried it, it didn't work properly, so Warren killed the girl we tried it on." He swallowed. "AT that point Jonathan wanted out, but we convinced him to stay with us. Good for us."
"So Buffy caught you and Jonathan" ---Faith had a vague memory of that kid from Sunnydale High-- "but Warren got away." Andrew nodded. "Then he killed Tara and tried to kill Buffy. Which caused Willow to go mad and kill Warren."
"She broke us out of jail because she wanted to kill us herself. " He sighed. "We had another out then. Jonathan said that after the craziness ended we should go back to prison and do our time. I convinced him to run away with me to Mexico."
Faith nodded. She had gotten part of the story from Willow and knew what was coming next. But she knew enough about redemption to know that he had to tell her. "So in Mexico, the First came to you and told you and Jonathan to return to Sunnydale."
"All the way back, he kept talking about how he was going to help save all the people in Sunnydale that he knew, even the ones who hated him. I was so sure that Warren was really there that I barely listened to a word he said." There was a very long pause again. "SO we went to the basement, to the seal, and I...I ... Killed him."
Faith didn't know if she had ever seen a boy cry in her life, but Andrew looked like he was about to. She was feeling kind of awkward but she walked towards him and put an arm around him.He took a few very deep breaths and then seemed to get a hold of himself.
In an attempt to ease the tension, Faith spoke up: "I guess we have something in common."
"You know I always wanted to have something that I could share with a girl." Andrew sighed. "I just never thought that it would be premeditated murder."
"I guess that isn't the kind of thing that you tell your parents about." She gave him a small smile.
"You want to know what the Twilight Zone part is?"
"Well, I'm a little weak on that particular term but go ahead."
"I never expected that I would ever have to pay for my crime. Even after Buffy and her friends sort of took me hostage, I figured that they would use me as some force of good and that would redeem me."
That sounded a little weak to her considering what she knew about Buffy and her friends, but Faith decided to let this pass.
"And then after... the last couple of weeks, I sort of figured that I would be dead. That this would be my punishment for what I had done." Andrew laughed without much humor. "When they told me I was going to fight that last battle, I was positive that this was how I would meet my end. I figured that Anya was going to make it, not me. Never in a million years did I think that she would be dead and I... wouldn't be. And it just seems wrong. "
Faith remembered what Xander had said about survivor's guilt and it looked like he had a major case of it. "Hey, Anya had a good run. I don't think that you should feel that bad."
"But people miss her. She was loved or at least cared about. If I had been the one to die, who would have mourned for me?"
Faith was beginning to feel uncomfortable but she could also relate. When she had come out of her coma three years ago, she had wondered if any of the Scoobies or anyone else had cared if she was still alive. It was part of the reason she had been so bitter and angry against Buffy.
"I'm sure that your parents would have cared." she said weakly.
"My parents didn't even notice when I crossed to the Dark Side." he said bitterly. "Tucker was always the apple of their eye anyway. Even after he released the hellhounds at the Prom, they still thought that he was perfect."
"He what?" Faith had been near Sunnydale High back then but she had never heard of this little stunt.
"Oh he was pissed that no girl would go out with him. Hell, I saw that one coming. Tucker compared women in Star Trek categories, for Gods sake." There was a wistful look on Andrew's face. "Oh, Seven of Nine..."
"Excuse me."
"Sorry. Doesn't matter. Anyway my point is maybe he would have given a damn about what happened to me. But he's been at USC for the past three years. He doesn't even know that Sunnydale has been destroyed. He wouldn't care what had happened to me. He's got new friends. He's got something to hang on to." Another long pause. "I... killed... the one person who gave a damn about me." He sighed. "Maybe I should go to jail. AT least then I'd have something to hang on to."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." This was a subject that Faith could talk about with some experience. "Look, I'll admit. You have done something horrible.Maybe for that you should go to jail. But if you have to go with the hope of being redeemed. If you go in with an attitude that you have nothing to look forward to outside, that is a sure way to guarantee that you will end up dead. And I don't think you want that."
"How do you know?"
"I know." Faith gave a sigh. "When I woke up from my coma, at first all I wanted was revenge. But... Then I realized that I was a monster. And I couldn't take that. When I went to L.A., I thought I was going to get revenge. But he knew what I really wanted."
Andrew breathed. "You wanted him to kill you." Faith nodded.
"After everything that I had done to him, he still believed that there was something in me worth saving. That beneath the layer of bad that I'd had built, there was something fundamentally good still in me. That there was some hope of redemption."
"And do you think I have that something?" Faith knew how important the answer to this question was.
"I don't know for sure. But you fought against the First and survived. That has to count for something."
Andrew took all this in. "Faith, when the police came to take you in, you fought them off." She looked at him in surprise. 'Amanda told me about what happened when we left. Anyway, did you fight them off because you knew you were needed here or because you had no intention of going back to jail?"
"You're more perceptive then they give you credit for." Faith said. She sighed. "I don't know. If... what happened in L.A. Hadn't happened, I'd still be serving my sentence. But now that I've been out... I don't know. In fact, I was still trying to figure that part out when you came up."
"You were thinking of running.' Again the nerd had surprised her."Hey, it doesn't take a supergenius to figure out what you'd be thinking. "
"And you were thinking the same thing."
"Yeah, but there still is one difference between us. Actually two. The first is if I decided to run, you could stop me."
"And you couldn't stop me." said Faith. He gave a small smile.
"You could probably knock me cold with one of your eyebrows." The smile faded. "And you still have a reason to stay. The people here, they look up to you as a leader. You may not be the one in a generation anymore but you still have a lot more experience than they do. And I think the others have forgiven you, at least a little. They'd care about you if you went back to prison. I haven't done anything to merit that kind of respect or consideration."
Faith pondered this for a minute trying to figure out how she could comfort Andrew without sounding fake. Then she remembered something that she had heard one of the other girls mention. "Didn't you plan to tell the story of Buffy? The story of the fight against the First?"
Andrew looked up. "Yeah, but I wasn't really trying. I mean, that was my way of hiding my... Guilt. Anyway, I lost my camera."
"Look, maybe it didn't make much sense to do it when it seemed like we were all going to die. But we made it.Someone has to tell the story."
"Shouldn't Mr. Giles tell it? I mean after all he is the Watcher. This kind of thing is up his alley."
"Last I heard the Watcher's Council went up in smoke.Someone else should step up and tell the tale."
For the first time since the conversation began Andrew brightened. "Come to think of it, why should I stop with that story. I mean Buffy and her friends have been fighting vampires for seven years. There are hundreds of stories there all just waiting to be told. " He looked up. "I was just going to make some kind of videotape. If I were to write it down, it could corner the market on horror and fantasy!"
"Now lets not get carried away. Just focus on getting the story down." Despite this Faith was glad to see that some of the gloom had lifted from around the young nerd."
"You're right. A project like this, it could take years to get through.. Better just to start with one part and see where I can go from there. Besides I should probably get everybody's permission; after all this isn't my story alone. I'll have to talk to a lot of people." He began walking towards the motel then stopped suddenly.
"Faith."
"Yeah?"
"Is it... Would it be OK if I could tell... your story?
She felt a little uneasy about what he seemed to be asking. Andrew seemed to sense this.
"Look I'm not saying that I would ever publish it. But maybe writing it down would help show future Slayers how powerful the lure of darkness is and how redemption can be found even when you don't think that it's in you." As she considered this, Andrew added: "Besides, it might enable you to put the things that you did... Behind you.'
"I should never put them behind me. I need to remember them forever."
"And if I wrote it down, you would." Andrew replied.
Faith thought this over for several seconds. She wasn't wild about telling everything she had done wrong, yet she felt that maybe doing this would help her in the long run. "All right. You stay with the group, I will tell you the story. "
"Thanks."
"You know, it is pretty bleak."
Andrew managed a weak smile. "Mine isn't much brighter." They both started walking back to the motel when Andrew stopped her again."Faith."
"What else do you want?" There was a tiny bit of exasperation in her voice.
"What's your last name?" Her surprise must have shown on her face, because he added: "It's been nearly a month and I realized that I never got it."
"Do you know the last names of the other Slayers?"
"No, and in time I'll get them all, but .. You're the only important person whose last name I never got."
Faith thought about giving him some crap about how everyone who thought evil was important but then she realized she was simply dodging the question. "Wollenchek. Faith Wollenchek."
Andrew took this in for a moment. Then he stuck out his hand. "Andrew Grusynzki. Pleased to meet you."
Faith paused for a second, then smiled and shook it. The two of them stood there for a moment, taking in the absurdity and the darkness that surrounded both of them.
After a moment, Andrew turned around and started walking back to the motel talking about his new project. Faith stood there realizing that she hadn't made a decision about what to do next. Then she realized that, in a sense, Andrew had made it for her. She followed him feeling somewhat more certain about the future then she had in a while.
Considering that he had spent the better part of five months with his senses and all of his mental resources stretched to the limit, considering that he had just survived a battle that made Waterloo and Normandy seem like days at the seaside, and considering that he had spent much of the previous night up playing Dungeons and Dragons, one would have thought that Rupert Giles would have collapsed into a coma the second that his head hit the pillow. But then Giles had been through epic battles before (if not anywhere near this level of intensity) and he had found that coming down from the rush of adrenaline that came when you had fought to the limits of your abilities was a hard thing to come down from. Eventually, in the next couple of days, the body would finally catch up with his mind and he would probably sleep for days. But right now, all of his synapses were on fire and he was having an immense amount of trouble relaxing.
Strangely enough, it was not the concerns about what new evil might arise. He had accepted the fact that something bad probably was going to happen. Some new evil would arise to counter the good that had been released; it had been happening since time began and would continue until it ended. However,there would probably be a cooling down period of at least a few months, maybe even as long as a year before whatever it was that was next would arise. There were, of course, any number of minor evils that would probably arise, but compared to what they had just fought (and to some of the things that they had dealt with in the past) they were little more than blips on the radar. No, what was keeping him up was his uncertainty of what he was going to do.
When Buffy had told him how much she resented her job as the one of the generation, he didn't think that he had ever told her about how much he had tried to buck his own destiny. When he was Buffy's age, he had resented that his life had been chosen for him and that he was going to be one of the Watchers. He could understand her resentment because he had often wondered if this was all there was. (They had both rebelled against the boundaries of their jobs, but hers had involved nothing more than becoming a cheerleader, which, while unsettling was certainly better than experimenting with black magic.) Still, for the last ten years he had held on to being a Watcher. Even after Travers had fired him, even after Buffy had died, even when he had gone back to England, he had held fast to the idea that he was a Watcher.
But now he had to face something that he had managed to put of facing because of the upcoming apocalypse: he no longer had a profession. The Watcher's Council de facto no longer existed, its headquarters destroyed by the First. Of all the hundreds of watchers who had worked for them, only a few dozen were still alive. The three thousand year old institution was defunct. Even if Buffy had not released the power of the Slayer, he would no longer have been able to work with her; at least not without a salary. So now he had to face something even more frightening than a politician who had become a full demon, or a monster-cyborg bent on creating a demon race, or a hellgod determined to find her way back home.Finding a job.
It was a good thing that he had never had to look for some kind of job; the kind of resume that he had would practically guarantee that he'd never get a job anywhere. He imagined a smug old man interviewing him: Last place of employment? I owned a magic shop. I co-ran it with an ex-demon and it was destroyed by a grieving witch. These things happen, you know. He supposed he could get some kind of job as a librarian, but the fact was that particular job had only appealed to him when he had his own books to look at. And most of them were still in England.
He supposed that he could return to his homeland, where they tended to ask fewer questions about what a person had done. But he had never really readjusted to being back at England. In the year he had returned to London when he had thought that Buffy no longer needed him, he had felt off. Everything was normal and reasonable, but it no longer felt quite like home. More often then not he found himself missing Buffy, or Willow, or (Lord have mercy) Spike. Home is where you have people that cared about him, and that was here.
So he was probably going to stay here in America. But what would he do? What came next? Did Buffy still want to be a Slayer? Did she still need a Watcher? Where would he go now that his last two places of occupations had been destroyed? What would he do?
Interrupting his chain of thoughts was a knock on the door. "Giles, are you up?" For a moment, he thought of telling Buffy to go to sleep, then he decided that he knew what she wanted to talk about and walked to the door.
Buffy looked up. "Thanks, I wasn't sure...that you were still up." She entered the room.
"How's Dawn doing?"
"Oh, she fell asleep the second that her head hit the pillow. She hasn't gone through enough apocalypses to know about the adrenalin rush that comes with surviving."
Giles thought about telling Buffy how her sister had cried herself to sleep after Glory had tried to use her as The Key, but then figured that particular scenario had brought more then enough grief for everyone concerned.
"Is that what's keeping you up?"
"Well, part of me is afraid that if I go to sleep the Primeval force of the First Slayer will kill me as I dream, and that's never a good." Buffy gave a smile that Giles had not seen on her face in a long time. Only now did it strike him how much pressure and strain that she--- all of them-- - had been undergoing for the past few months. "But there a lot of little things that are keeping me up now. Is it good when you stop staying up nights because you're worried about if you're going to live the next day and start staying up because you don't know whether you're going to work tomorrow?"
"I would think worried about more mundane issues than life or death would be a relief."
"So would I. Except it isn't just the mundane thingies that are keeping me up." Buffy sighed. "And I'm not alone."
"Well, you forget I'm British. We are raised to be concerned." She smiled a little at that. "And sometimes we get worried about the wrong things." He took a deep breath.
"Buffy, I'm sorry... About what... I tried to do with Spike.I did what I should not have done. You were right about him and I was wrong."
She took this in. "Giles, it's OK. I know how I tend to get about..." long pause... "My boyfriends. And given some of my more recent decisions you had a right to be concerned. But.. I wish.. There could have been some other way to handle it."
"AT least he died a champion." The words seemed hollow, but they did seem to do some good.
"Anyway, now we can worry about other,less explosive, issues." She took a deep breath. "What kind of nastiness do you think that we let loose by releasing the power of the Slayer?" The expression of surprise on Giles' face must have been particularly evident, because she followed that by saying: "Hey I know what happens when we toy around a little with the natural order of things. And this one must have one doozy of a consequence."
"Buffy, I don't know what might happen. There's never been anything remotely like this done before. This is way out of anyones league. I couldn't begin to predict... What might happen"
"I was afraid of that."There still seemed to be a little level of concern in Buffy's face that Giles couldn't quite understand.
"But I don't think you should let these things concern you. You're no longer alone in this. I think you could relax a little."
Buffy smiled but this smile seemed to have a little bit of sadness in it." You'd think that I could too considering what's just fallen into my lap. I mean, all that I've wanted for...seven years has been to just be normal. To stop hanging around cemeteries. To stop having to face the big bad. To stop worrying that I'm going to die... And have it stick." They both shared a small smile at that. "I mean this has been all I've been doing for so long. But the fact is, doing this has always been something that I have been good at. I've been training for this for so long, it's helped me keep focused when I couldn't get readmitted to college, when I was working at DoubleMeat, when ... Mom.. " She stopped, then hurried on. " I'm not sure what else I can do. It doesn't help matters much that my college transcript and my past places of employment are now buried in the cold,cold ground. "
"I am sorry that the losses we suffered were so great. It occurred to me to take most of my books on the bus; I never thought that there were things from home that you might want."
"Hey, when you're trying to save the world it never occurs to you that losing anything except the lives of the people around you will turn out to be important. " Buffy sighed. "Funny, I lost almost everything that I owned and the only thing that I'm really sorry I lost was that trophy that Jonathan gave me for being Class Protector."
Giles smiled as he remembered it. Even now, nearly four years later, it had struck him as one of the most moving gestures he had ever seen a group of young people do. "I guess you would want to have that. To remind you of what you were."
Buffy nodded, then looked up. "Were?"
"I... I'm sorry. Perhaps I'm being a bit presumptuous. I kind of figured now that the battle is over and now that you no longer have to carry the burden of being the only Vampire Slayer that you would be... "
"Quitting?" she said.
"I think retiring would be a better term."
Buffy shook her head. "I keep thinking: what would Superman do?"
Of all the things that she could have said, this probably ranked about as far down the list as Giles would have thought anything would. "Would you mind elaborating?
"It's just all Superman ever wanted was a normal life. To be Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper. But being Superman was all that he knew how to do.And he always felt upset about not being everywhere at once. Everytime he saved the world, he went back to living both lives. Now granted, there was only one SUperman and there are now hundreds of Slayers, but am I just supposed to go back to being plain old Buffy Summers when there is still so much evil and pain in the world?"
Giles took all this in. "Buffy, I think you've been hanging around Andrew for too long." This did provoke the smile that he had hoped for. "Wanting to do something to keep doing good is all right. But you don't have to carry the weight of the world anymore. You are entitled to take a sabbatical if you want."
"I'm not Jewish."
"Buffy..."
"What? Just because I'm no longer the only Slayer doesn't give me the right to make bad jokes." She hurried on. "I'm all for chilling out for a while, but these problems aren't going to go away just because I'm taking time off."
Giles just stood there for a moment, marveling at what he saw before him.
"What I say?"
"I'm just amazed at how much you really have grown up." She smiled again. "You know, it occurs to me that we never even noticed your birthday this year."
"It's OK. Twenty two isn't as big a deal as twenty-one. Besides, I don't think that anyone was in the mood to celebrate."
"Well, given the propensity of your birthdays turning into disastrous demon-related events perhaps that was for the best."
"I don't know. It might have livened things up a little." They both pondered that. "So, if I was going to retire, what would you do?"
"Excuse me?"
"It's not that tough a question. If you didn't have me to watch, who would you work with?"
"Interestingly, I was pondering that very problem. It now occurs to me, with all the new Slayers that have been released, there is going to be a need to recruit a new group of Watchers."
"How many of the Watchers did the First kill?"
Giles shook his head. "Before the First's minions blew up Council headquarters, they did a pretty effective job of killing most of the Watchers in the field. The Council had several minor facilities set up in places like Switzerland, Italy and Australia all of which were wiped out. Those who weren't gathered in those places were hunted down along with the other potential Slayers."
"But you were in contact with some other Watchers. Willow got some call from a man named Robson in England...."
Giles sighed. "Most of the contacts I had went underground. If I had to guess, there are probably less than a hundred Watchers still alive."
"Shouldn't somebody assemble them and start reassigning them?"
"Yes someone should. The problem is that most of the resources that we had are gone. Even if we could get all of them together, there's no way that those of us who were left could possibly train all of the Slayers that we have released."
"So hire some new people."
"Buffy, you can't just take the average person in off the street and expect him or her to not only take on the assumption that there are such forces of darkness in the world but also to shoulder the responsibility of keeping track of a young girl who now has this incredible ability. It needs to be taught over a period of time."
"Yeah, because all of the Council's practice produced such fine work before."
Giles might have taken offense at this remark had he not remembered all of the difficulties that Travers and the Watcher's Council had put Buffy through.
"That's exactly the point. Even when the Council was at its peak, it relied on rituals that were archaic and borderline barbaric. The new ones will have to be brought into the present. Someone will have to do a lot of work screening them and making sure that they understand the importance not only of the Slayers and the Watchers, but about the relationship that needs to be built overtime. "
"Sounds like the kind of the thing that you would be good at." Buffy said. Giles stopped and realized what he was saying.
"Well, um it's not like I would want to do this, but..."
"Giles, you were always a good teacher. If you hadn't been so good at being able to adapt to all the things that the Hellmouth threw at us, we probably wouldn't have survived most of the monster attack that we had to deal with."
"I think you're giving yourself too little credit."
"I know, power of the Chosen one, sacred duty, yadda yadda yadda. But Giles without your help, there is no way that I would have been able to do a lot of what I did. You were very good and I can't think of anyone else who I would want to see teaching the new generation of Watchers."
For a moment Giles was afraid that he was going to start weeping. "Thank you. But even if I were to do that, I don't have anywhere near the resources or the people to start doing this."
Buffy took this in. "Yeah. That is a problem." She paused. Giles assumed she was done.
"Well, without breaking into song, where do we go from here?" Buffy remained silent. "Buffy?"
"Hmm. Sorry I... Something just occurred to me." She fell quiet again. "Giles, if I could tell you that I might know of a place where we can get the materials that you would need, would you be willing to try to start in?'
"I... Guess so." Giles said cautiously.
"And you wouldn't be concerned about where it came from, as long as it helped in the long run against the fight against evil?"
"I think so; what exactly are you getting at?"
"Something that Angel kind of implied when he showed up."
"This wouldn't have anything to do between him and you, would it?" Giles knew how dangerous the history was between the two of them.
"No." Buffy said quickly. "It probably wouldn't involve us at all." He considered pressing the point but decided not to yet.
"What's your idea?"
Buffy shook her head. "Not yet. First things first. For the next few days, we're going to relax and unwind. Then we're going to have a talk."
"You and I?"
Buffy nodded. "And Willow. And Xander. And Dawn. Maybe Faith and Robin, if they decide to stick around. I'm not entirely sure what I have in mind or if they will all want to go along with it, but if they do I might be able to come up with something that will help all of us figure out what we do next."
"You wouldn't like to drop a hint, perhaps?"
"You'll know soon enough. However,I think I know where the last stop on our tour is going to be."
"You mean..."
She nodded. "We're going to L.A.