A/N: One warning: This chapter is called "Depression" for a reason. (Chapters 1-4 updated 7/17/04).
Chapter Four: Depression
The first thing Spike noticed, after the smug wanker in the ugly suit delivered his ultimatum and stepped back to await an answer, was the trapped, distant look in Buffy's eyes. He'd seen that expression fairly often in the early days after her resurrection; seeing it again now made his borrowed blood boil with the desire to flatten the man who'd put it there.
Did the Powers honestly expect to strip their chief warrior of her defenses, when every minion of evil in the dimension knew exactly what she looked like and what she'd done to their fellows? The other girls had only started making a splash after Willow's trick with the Scythe, and for the most part weren't individually well known. They might be able to fade into the woodwork somewhere without making targets of themselves. For Buffy, though, it wouldn't be possible. The first time she heard a scream in an alley and followed her instincts toward the sound, she would be demon snack food, and that would be that.
She wouldn't see it that way, though. This was the girl who'd shut Giles down full-stop when he'd told her she might have to kill Dawn, the rest of the world be damned. This was the girl who'd balked at slaying an ex-lover -- two, if he were honest with himself -- no matter what they'd done to hurt her. This was the girl who'd held on to her family and friends no matter what the Council ordered. If it came down to a choice between giving up her power and condemning everyone to die -- well, he knew what she would choose.
The littler Slayers weren't making the choice any easier on her, either. He could see Willow, a few yards down the alley from where Buffy stood, trying to hold back her girl as Kennedy bit off harsh words about the eldest Slayer's decision-making skills. The others had begun organizing themselves in rough groupings, some behind Kennedy, some behind Buffy, all watching the argument with worried faces and muttering amongst themselves. Even Faith and the Bit were caught up in the tension; Dawn was pale as a ghost, hovering back behind Willow, and Faith was glaring at that Whistler chap with murder in her eyes.
"Right, then," he said, rolling his shoulders back, and started forward through the crowd. The tattered remnants of his leather duster fluttered like streamers as he moved, slinging drops of water and less pleasant things in fragmented arcs around him. Kennedy gave him a irritated look when he stepped into her visual range -- not-so-unintentionally blocking her view of the object of her wrath -- then did a double-take as she recognized him.
Willow turned quickly when her lover suddenly lost the thread of her tirade, a puzzled wariness wrinkling her brow, then widened her eyes in appreciation when she caught sight of his face. "Hey, Spike," she greeted him, lips curved in a tired smile. "Long time no see, you hero, you."
Spike nodded to her, coming to a halt within arm's reach. He'd always liked Red, even if they hadn't always been on the best of terms. It seemed fitting that the girl whose first instinct had been to comfort a biteless vampire should be the first Scooby to welcome him back. "'Lo, Red."
"Spike ..."
He turned a little to his right and found himself staring deep into his beloved's green-hazel eyes. The lostness had left them, undoubtedly locked away deep inside her where she thought no one else would find it; something frustrated and determined burned under the surface now instead.
"Slayer," Spike greeted her calmly, and reached out to lay a careful hand on the exposed, bloodied skin of her right shoulder. She trembled a little under the touch. It belatedly occurred to him that his being here would have reminded her uncomfortably of the First and how exactly it had been able to copy them; until he'd actually made contact, he could have been anything from malevolent entity to incorporeal ghost.
"What say we get in out of this rain, luv?" he suggested, pitching his voice so the others could hear him. "Peaches' hotel is just round the corner; you can get the wounded in out of the wet and have a quick shower while you think." For good measure, he gestured vaguely at the blood, slime, and decaying corpses piled around them, polluting the damp air with scents that were better left undescribed. Now that the action had quietened down, he had noticed more than a few of the younger girls fighting the gag reflex. This was not a good place to hash out an argument, or try to make any serious decisions.
Buffy stared at him a moment longer, several emotions - longing? despair? anger? - flickering through her expression. Finally, she sighed and looked away, distancing herself from him as effectively as if a wall had come down between them. "Do you know," she said quietly, "I told Giles once, I don't know how to live in this world if these are the choices. I still don't. What guarantee do I have, except his word, that we're all gonna die if I don't take him up on this? But if I don't, and I'm wrong ... A shower's not going to help me make up my mind. There's only two answers to the question, and I can't risk saying no."
"You can't risk it? What about us? Shouldn't it be our decision?" Kennedy exploded again, reminding Spike of the audience around them. "We took down the First Evil, Buffy. The First! What's a few more demons after that? Look around us! They sent a whole army, and we're the ones still standing! Why are you even listening to this guy? He's not even human!" She threw out an arm toward Whistler, her entire body vibrating with indignation.
Buffy looked up, and Spike could almost see the leader's mantle falling over her. Her spine stiffened, her face hardened, and any hint of despair or uncertainty disappeared from her body language. "It doesn't matter that he isn't human. What matters is why he's here. The last time I saw him, he told me that Angel should have been the one to stop Acathla -- but because I screwed things up, because I let my emotions get in the way of my duty, I was going to have to stop them both.
"Do you want to know what happened next? Or haven't you heard the story already? I stopped them, all right -- I shoved a sword through Angel and sent the man I loved to Hell. Decisions like this aren't easy, Kennedy, but someone has to make them, and whether you like it or not, whether I'm right or not, the Powers chose that someone to be me."
Several people flinched during her little tirade -- Connor, in particular, had looked more than a little shocked and intrigued -- but Kennedy didn't back down. "Did he say it had to be you? I didn't hear him say that. He just said he needs an answer. I think we should vote on it."
"Because the last time we tried that was such a wild success?" Dawn broke in, elbowing her way through to her sister's side. "God! Now I remember why I was so happy when Willow left for South America -- she took you with her!"
"Dawn!" Buffy reprimanded half-heartedly, her lips drawn in a tight, unhappy line.
"Hey, hey," Xander's voice came from the back of the crowd. "Come on guys. Look, the longer we stand here, the grosser this gets ... why don't we just do like the man said, and go inside. The last thing I want is to still be standing out here when the sun comes up."
Spike shot the one-eyed carpenter a quick look; he hadn't been expecting any help from that quarter, but Xander didn't look to be mocking him, and he could use all the help he could get. "Buffy ..."
She cut him off. "No, this has to be done now," she said. "Let me tell you why it has to be me," she spoke up, glaring at Kennedy, then sweeping her gaze over the crowd of younger Slayers behind her. "Because if he asked us all one by one, you'd say no, and you wouldn't be the only one. You think this power is something you deserve; you think it's your right, and now that you have it, you don't want to give it up. But you know what? That's all part of that job title you're so proud of. Whistler asked me a long time ago what I was prepared to give up. Well, I'm prepared to give this up, if that's what it takes to keep all the rest of you safe. Can you say the same?" She pulled a stake from her pocket -- Mr. Pointy, if Spike wasn't mistaken -- and balanced it across the palm of her hand.
The tableau held for a moment, as Buffy stared at the other Slayer and Kennedy stared right back. Then the silence was broken by a slow clapping sound. "Bravo, Slayer," Whistler said, re-introducing himself to the conversation. "So, is that your final answer?"
Buffy flinched and closed her eyes, refusing to look at him. For all her bravado, it seemed she still wasn't quite ready to utter the fateful word; not that Spike blamed her. He'd let go of her when she first turned to face Kennedy, but he reached out again now, settling a wide hand between her shoulder blades for support. "Do what you gotta do, luv," he said, quietly.
"Yes," she said hoarsely, then opened her eyes again, staring Whistler down. "Do it. Just ... could you tell them to wait five minutes so we can carry everyone inside? This isn't exactly ..."
"Sorry kid." Whistler shrugged, then looked up toward the sky as if communicating with someone unseen. "Now or never, like I said."
"No!" Kennedy yelled out, accompanied by a chorus of other young Slayer's voices, and the crowd started pressing in again.
A light began growing in the alley, not bright enough to be the morning sun's first rays, but not artificial enough to have any human source. The Slayers gasped almost as one and stopped in their tracks, collapsing against walls or bending over, arms wrapped round their midsections. Some leaned against their Watchers for support; those without, sank slowly to the ground.
Buffy turned toward Spike again, the despair finally resurfacing in her eyes as shudders began to wrack her small frame.
He couldn't stand it any longer; he reached out toward her with both arms, pulling her against the grimy remnants of his duster, holding her tight as the magic ran its course. Whatever end he'd expected to this adventure when Angel had asked them if taking down the Black Thorn was worth dying for, this sure hadn't been it.
Illyria stared down at Wesley's body, at the hand still cupped over the killing wound and the lines that even death could not erase from his features. When she had heard the words of the Agent of Balance -- when it had spoken of the time barrier she had created as if it had arrested not only his body's decay but also his spirit's departure from this plane -- everything had suddenly seemed so clear. She had but to lift the stasis, to command the witch's healing powers to restore Wesley's damaged flesh, and this ordeal of grief would be over.
She had bolted away from her position in the alley while all of the others were still focused on the blonde Slayer and the decision to be made; the fates of a few lower beings were irrelevant to her plans. She had rushed into the hotel, falling to her knees beside the body of her guide, prepared to lift his still form and carry it out to the red witch. Wesley would be returned to her, as if his defeat at Vail's hands had not occurred; her world would resume its accustomed course, no worse the wear for her unexpected introduction to the putrid depths of human emotion.
And yet ... several minutes later, she knelt there still. If she herself had been frozen in time, she could not have been any more uselessly immobile. She knew what must be done; the sequence of necessary actions and their results was as clear to her mind's eye as the scene before her, but something - or, perhaps its lack - was preventing her from transforming thought into action. It was as though her very will had been broken.
What emotion, then, was this? The burning, tearing fire that had empowered her after Wesley's broken body had expelled his last breath had left her; in its place had crept a crushing blankness, a numbness that stole the inhuman strength from her limbs, leaving her weaker than even the shell had been when it had suffered the fires of her resurrection.
Than Fred had been, Illyria reminded herself, instinctively summoning the woman's features again to the fore. "Be blue," Wesley had ordered her, once; "Be anything. Don't be her." She had disobeyed him, at the last. She had promised him that this shell would join him again in the afterlife -- and he had smiled and spoken of love. "The most devastating power you have," the half-breed, Spike, had spoken of her mimicry; at the time, his words had puzzled her, but their truth was clear to her now. If this force, this unimaginable weight that pinned her down, could not be described as devastation then she did not know the meaning of the word.
She could waken him, yes. She could summon him back to the world of the living -- but he would not thank her for it. He would open his eyes and see only what she had found in her Vahla ha'nesh: the ruination of his dreams. He would look at her again, as he had used to, with hatred and despair ... and she did not think she could bear it.
How strange, to think of something insubstantial, without magic or shape to give it form or weight, as something that must be borne; yet indisputably, it was so. What these primitives lost in strength and size, they clearly made up in spirit. It was no wonder, then, that the Wolf, Ram, and Hart sought to crush them so vehemently when they refused to come to heel. A being that could feel thus stood in clearer opposition to the demonic lords and their goals for this world than even a god-king's armies would have been, had they survived her imprisonment in the Deeper Well.
Stranger yet that these emotions had infected her. She, Illyria, ruler of all that was, she who had bowed to none and cared not for the petty concerns of those beneath her. She knelt among the shreds of her dignity and hesitated over the mere prospect of rejection from the shell of a human. She did not understand - but it did not seem to make any difference.
"I am not what you want," she whispered hoarsely, remembering.
She would not wait for the witch, she decided suddenly. She would lift the time-barrier and let the human's mortal processes terminate completely, as they should have done hours before. She could not face his anger, and she would not bear this weight, this indecision one moment longer.
Illyria reached out toward Wesley one last time, stroking Winifred's soft fingers over the stubble on his chin. Then she lifted her hand, and a shimmer of energy distorted the air around him.
TBC (4/5)