"Awfully quiet tonight, Slayer" he noticed as they made their rounds through the cemetery. Hadn't said a word since they lift the Magick Box.
"Just thinking. Stuff. Hellmouth stuff," she lied. He nodded. Knew she was lying. Didn't press the issue, though.
Dead things were in the air. He could smell them. Lots of unrest. But nothing wanted to rear its ugly head. Very odd. Very. Smells were muddled together as they patrolled the grounds of the unliving in search of the undead. Slayer has something on her mind. Wasn't talking, but he could see the wheels were in motion as he looked to her face from the corner of his eyes. Great Poof, no doubt. Only thing that she got that wound tight over. Bella had been sent to Sunnydale by Angel. Slayer was probably wondering what they'd meant to one another. If there was something more between the Guardian and her ex-demon-lover.
"Nothing happened," he heard himself say. Damn soul had made him take pity on the Slayer, the girl.
"What? What didn't happen?" she asked with a start as she was pulled from herself.
"'Tween Peaches and the Daywalker. Nothing. Happened."
Buffy continued walking gnawing softly on her bottom lip. She had crawled back into her own thoughts. Angel. And the Daywalker. Bella. No. Guess nothing could have happened. Could it?
"Slayer," he stopped and placed a well-meaning hand on her shoulder. "You read like a smutty novel." She looked at him like he was insane.
"Not blind, y'know. Could see the spark light up in your eyes at the mention of his name."
Buffy crossed her arms and shifted her weight to the right, pulling a little away from his resting hand.
"And just how would you know that 'nothing happened'?" she demanded, giving into her curiousity.
"Bella, she's not the kind of girl, Pet. Trust me. Great Poof just got lucky and stumbled upon mention of her from a mate," he told her, trying to set the poor girl's mind at ease. "Besides, think she's got better taste than the doom and gloom kind," he couldn't help but add in spite of the proximity of himself to the Slayer and her stakes.
They started walking again. Buffy'd had no remark after his final assertion. She just stared at him blankly and then turned to continue at her pace. He figured it was best to just walk quietly at her side. Said enough. Bella probably didn't want to whole world, living or demon, to know all of her business.
"You like her a lot," Buffy said, still patrolling. She wasn't asking. She was confident that she was right.
"Bella? Well, what's not to like?" He smirked. He let his machismo kick in a bit. "Hot little bint like that? Could make a dead man come," he quipped, ripping off a Stones song.
Buffy's nose wrinkled with an "Euw."
"Not too long ago you wouldn't have thought that, Love," he smiled. He was right. She'd made him come over and over and had loved every minute of it. Now she wanted to play the prude.
"Know you never loved me. Just a matter of convenience, " he told her.
"Something like that," the Slayer responded through gritted teeth.
"Something, yeah."
She went back into herself again. Looked like there was a lot going on in her Slayer head. End of the world, Angel, Hellmouth, witches, mind-blowing sex with Spike... Angel. Angel.
"It just surprised me. That's all."
"That I was that good? Pet, I have been around for quite a few decades -- "
"That's so not what I meant," Buffy felt the heat creep into her neck at the memory. Not love. No. But he was every bit as good as he conceded to be.
"Even after all this time, I still can't help but feel something when I hear his name."
Angel. Always Angel.
"He was my first love. You don't forget your first love, do you, Spike?" she asked.
Cecily Addams.
"No," he told her, "Not old romantics like us, huh, Pet?"
"Nope," she nodded.
"Thankyou ever so much for the drink, Master," the petite she-hound panted as Xander scratched her gently behind a floppy ear.
"Not a problem. As I was saying, I was writing a research paper about the instances of the... Hellmouth? Is that what it's called?" Xander paused, moving his hand to the Inuyasha's chin. Her tail began wagging briskly.
"Yes, Master. Yes! Yes! The Hellmouth!"
"Yes. Just what there is to know about the..." he searched for a scholarly word. "Phenomenon."
Anya gave him an evil stare from across the demon bar. She had him in her view as he handled the dog-demon. Seemed to be getting a little too chummy with the creature, though. She didn't like that one bit. She tried to get closer to them without disturbing the conversation.
"Hellmouth encompasses all evil," the Inuyasha told him. Her voice was dreamy as Xander continued to pet her. "Hellmouth... encompasses the First. The beginning of all evil. End to this earth."
Xander feigned surprise.
"End... how devastating! And there is no way to fight it..."
"Ways, yes. But not without much sacrifice. Not without much loss." Her puppy-dog eyes filled with tears.
Xander looked past the demon, her head still bent as he softly stroked the top of it. Anya was just a few feet away. The jealous glare had been replaced with concern and fear.
The first thing Buffy noticed was the look of pure glee in Dawn's eyes. The second was the derangement of the Magick Box. Looked like a great wind had come in and thrown the place into a shambles.
"What... what happened in here?" she asked, quietly ushering Spike into the wreckage.
"Maui happened! And he kicked ass!" Dawn was bouncing with energy usually acquired in the form of a Slurpee and a couple of chocolate bars Spike would sneak to her.
"Maui? The island?" Anya asked, following behind a wide-eyed Xander. And just who was going to clean up this mess?
"Maui. The hottie in the form of a seven-foot-tall power-god," Dawn told them fervently.
Buffy surveyed the shop. Nothing really broken. More like wind-blown and cluttered. Maui. Hot god. She had a feeling she was just going to love this story.
"Bella totally invoked him! Tell her, Bella! Tell her what he said!"
Bella lit a smoke. She was looking mighty calm and collected among the rubble. And was that some sort of priggish pride dancing in her eyes? Buffy wasn't sure she wanted to know. She wasn't sure she wouldn't try to dust Bella right then for possibly endangering Dawn.
"Baby sister is fine," Bella told the disgrunted Slayer. "Got to see what happens when magick is handled responsibly. She's already knee-deep in the muck, Buffy. She needs to worry a little less about Algebra and a little more about anihilation... or there won't be any Algebra to worry about."
Buffy tried to keep her anger in check. She had a hard time listening to reason coming from someone else after all of her years of being the voice of reason. But Giles had told her, if this was going to work, she would have to part with some of her sovereignity of the Scoobies. Angel sent her, she told herself.
"Tell me, then."
"Ah, no big really. We were scoping things out on the internet and then I just figured 'screw it.' If you want to know how the mountain came to Mohammad, you have to just ask the mountain, y'know?" Bella put it simply.
"So... you went to the mountain, Pet?" Spike laughed through a cloud of smoke.
"Oh. Not went to the mountain. Mountain... it came here," Willow gleamed. She'd been oddly silent since the arrival of the Scoobies and the inquisition that followed.
"Yeah... Maui... he's all wrapped up in wind and wrath and stuff," Bella was being annoyingly cheeky as far as the Slayer was concerned.
"Can you just--" Buffy heard herself yelling and took it down a notch. "Can you just cut to the chase?" She tried to gain some composure as she sat next to Willow at the round table.
Scoobies were all sitting, save for Dawn flitting around in a state of excited agitation and Spike hanging maudlinly in the doorway. Bella had taken perch on the counter next to the cash register.
"Listen, Buff," Bella began, carefully choosing her words. "I know you don't know shit about me... other than I'm chock full of demony goodness... badness..." She cockled her brow, tapping her chin as if she was conflicted. "Goodness. Definately goodness... even though that totally sounds like an oxymoron... I mean, who ever heard of demony goodness, right?"
Buffy stared with a get-on-with-it look.
"Right... boils down to I'd never do anything to endanger Dawn. And I didn't. I went to the source, is all. Hellmouth. Hawaii. Wanted to know how they'd closed it. And how much it cost."
"A lot," Xander murmured.
Bella turned to him, remembering that he and the power-stripped vengeance demon had hit the demon bars for info. And apparently had something.
"What'd you find?" Her look was serious and hopeful.
"After plying the Inuyasha with drinks and belly-rubs, we were able to get just a little info," Anya told them with a mixture of resentment and resignation.
"Big bad. Definately coming. But she said there are 'ways' to stop it. She didn't tell me much else."
"Other than?" Buffy asked Xander, knowing there was more.
"Other than," Xander's voice became constrained. "She said that there would be much sacrifice... and much loss."
She knew that much. Still, it grabbed her tight around the heart every time it was spoken. Sacrifice. Loss. People could die. She could die.
"What did you find out from Maui?" she asked Bella, hoping that the Daywalker would have something a little more favorable.
"Maui said that the only way to close the Hellmouth is with the blood of the First Evil." Buffy caught the meaning behind the implication. In order to seal it, it had to be defeated. Or at least bled to some extent.
"Nobody has been able to defeat it before," Bella told her. "But they've done enough damage to bloodlet the beast enough to send it back to Hell."
"But..." Buffy knew that there was always a but.
"But... well, you know the buts, Slayer. But there will be a lot of death and destruction. But all of us might not suvive. But we could fail and the world as we know it will end. Always a but," Bella toked on the cigarette. Nearly down to a stub. "But, we could also get lucky. We could go in there with a well-planned arsenal. Send the mother fucker back to Hell so that it won't ever want to surface again."
"I like that 'but' the best," Xander nervously smiled.
"God... I so do not want Dawn to be a part of this," Buffy suddenly sighed.
"Buffy," Bella went to her and knelt beside her chair. She looked up at the Slayer with compassion in her eyes. "She already is a part of this. Wouldn't you rather that she was well-prepared instead of kept in the dark? The more she knows..." she trailed off.
Buffy's jaw had set. She knew. She knew already. Didn't mean she had to like it or even agree. But she knew that if she kept trying to keep Dawn out of this, it could be the death of her.
Bella began pacing. Annoying habit of Spike's that Buffy had never liked. Now there were two pacy, snarky undeads. Spike was still in the doorway. Had anyone even invited him in? Not that he should need it anymore. He was told that this was a public place and that he had an open invite. Sometime she thought he did things just to be a pain in the ass.
"You gonna stand there all creepy-like all night?" she heard herself ask him.
Bella stopped and looked at him standing there. He was all wrapped up in his own thoughts. Never failed. Slayer comes around and he got all weird and all of the warmth she had seen in his eyes just disappeared. Must have something to do with their history beyond the old me-slayer, you-vampire thing. Too much tension between them, Bella sensed. Like there was more to their story. But she also got that this story had been ended for awhile.
"Quit looking all evil-dead and get in here," Bella sighed. "You're scaring the children."
Bella glared at him for a second and shook her head. She searched her pockets for a pack of smokes. Just three left. He'd been helping her kill them off rather quickly. She lit up and smoked and paced, paced and smoked. Spike sat on the counter next to the register. Nobody said a word.
"Okay. Listen, this is... this is really getting under my skin. If any of this is going to work, all this bullshit between you guys and him," she pointed at Spike, "it's got to stop. I don't know what the Hell went on before I got here, but every time he's around any of you, he shuts off. Gets all weird... weirder than usual. And I'm not liking it. I'm feeling a very not-like-y vibe here, you get?"
Buffy did not want to do this. Not now. Not ever. And she could see that Spike was loving it. Someone on his side for a change. For a change. She heard the words in her head and felt the pang of guilt that immediately followed.
Xander was mumbling something to Anya. Bella could hear the hushed words and could see the sarcastic sneer he was wearing. She snapped his chair away from the table and was in his face in a flash.
"Okay. Guess some people need it spelled out for them," she was clearly pissed. And Xander was scared. Why wasn't Buffy getting Bella off of him?
"Let me put this in terms a four year-old could comprehend," she took a drag on her cigarette and breathed out a culpable stream of smoke in the trembling boy's face. "He's not the enemy. I'm not the enemy. You keep causing dissension among the troops with your smart-ass comments and your whole he's-a-vampire-so-he's-beneath-me attitude and you're gonna make me think that you're the enemy. And then I'll have to end you, won't I?"
Buffy sat, arms crossed. She could feel all eyes on her. She knew what they were all thinking. Why was she letting Bella do this? Why wasn't she taking up for Xander? Why was she letting this creature defend something as unforgiving and dubious as Spike? Why did she sit and not question everything Bella said and did? Why, indeed.
She stood and walked over to Bella who was still crouched angrily above Xander. She put a hand on Bella's back and asked her to please take a seat. She knew that Bella could have been a bitch about it, but she wasn't. She went to the counter and hitched herself up next to Spike.
Xander was still shaking as he moved his chair back to the table and next to Anya. Giles wouldn't have put up with that shit, he thought. Then again, he hadn't thought that Buffy would either. But she hadn't stopped Bella from getting right up in his kisser just moments ago. He wasn't sure what was going on. Was this what Bella was talking about? The First fucking with him?
Willow and Dawn were still busying themselves with the laptop, trying not to get sucked into argument around them.
"I have something I need to say. And I need for you all to listen, and not just listen but hear me and understand me," Buffy took a ragged breath and rubbed her head. Her mind was so full. Too much stuff going on that they didn't get.
"I can't keep doing this by myself. And I think Angel knew that. I haven't said a whole lot about the way Bella does things, because I know that Angel would never send anyone to me who didn't have my best interests at heart. Angel... I called him last night," she admitted. "I needed to hear it from him that this was... that Bella was the One," Buffy couldn't help but tremble just the slightest bit when she said his name. Angel. Angel who had loved her. Angel who had vamped out after they consummated their love. Angel who left because he knew it was the best thing he could do for his Slayer. Angel who was always finding ways to take care of her, even now.
She looked over at Bella and Spike. And she saw them. Really saw them for the first time. They were vampires. They were the Big Bad that she had been fighting for seven years. Yet, they weren't. She thought about how much they had all changed. She thought about Willow. Willow. She hated to bring it up, but she needed to make a point.
"Will," she looked to her friend. She could still see Willow Rosenberg, all purple overalls and orange hats the first day she came to Sunnydale. Sweet, gentle, unassuming Willow. And in a split second, she could also see Willow the Witch. Black hair, demon eyes, veins everywhere.
"Will, I'm not bringing this up to hurt you... but you aren't who you were when we first met. And you aren't who you were when you witched out on us either."
Willow reddened. No, she wasn't that person. She wasn't that Big Bad she had been just after Tara died. She was actually afraid to use even the simplest magick. She'd become someone she hadn't even known. Someone none of them had recognized. Someone that they had even been forced to hunt.
Willow nodded. She understood.
"Chip... soul..." she sighed. Bella had given this speech already. Why couldn't they just have listened to her. She straightened up and felt anger rising.
"Fuck this. Bella said it the other day. She already explained it to you. And because she's not the Slayer, because she's something different, you can't believe her? Fuck you. Fuck ALL of you," she was shaking, eyes glistening with unshed tears of disbelief. "How DARE you second-guess me. I've never put myself before any of you. I've protected all of you. Loved you," she looked to Willow, sadly, and then to Xander and Anya. "Trusted you when maybe I shouldn't have," she told them, remembering how they had ripped her from heaven. "And when I came back, I thought I'd come back all wrong. And the only one who made me feel right was Spike." She heard a couple of gasps. A murmer or two.
"Yeah," she felt empowered now. "Spike. He was the only one I could go to. The only one I could trust. The only one who made me feel anything." He looked stunned at her admission. And Buffy noticed that Bella looked a little taken aback, but not as surprised as she might have been. Had he already told her? Or was it that demon-sense of hers that had already clued her in?
"This is the end of the world, boys and girls. Big Bad is ready to take it all away from us. Ready to crush us like tiny, little, insignificant bugs. And when it comes for us, it isn't going to be picky about who it kills first... Spike, Xander, Willow, Bella... me. We're all equally useless to the First. None of us have anything to offer it."
They were all silent. Nobody wanted to be the first to speak. Buffy was upset, irritated. Fed up.
"I'm with Bella. This doesn't happen any more. And that goes for me, too." She turned to Spike. He was still sitting in a state of surprise. She noticed that he'd leaned back a bit so that his arm was kind of around Bella. She discerned this as a protective posture. She'd once been a ward of his physical ballast herself. "Spike... I am... sorry. For the way I've treated you. For the way I've acted like you were.... were..." she searched for the word. "Like you were..."
"Beneath you," Bella whispered, knowing exactly how Spike felt. She rested a hand on his jean-clad knee.
"Beneath me," Buffy finished, trying to ignore the catch in her throat at the sight of Bella's closeness with Spike. "I'm the one... we're the ones who are beneath you. We think we know it all. We're human and we're alive and we have souls and we have this great purpose, or so we think..."
"I don't," Dawn said quietly.
"Don't what, Niblet?" Spike asked her softly.
"I don't think you're beneath me. I've never thought you were beneath me. I don't have the right to think that about anyone... I mean, I'm human... now," she said in such a voice that inferred she was afraid that if she thought about what else she was, she'd be beneath them, too.
"Niblet, no. You've been a gem. Always have. Always there with your hugs and smiles. And chocolate," Spike teased. "Shared chocolate is definately the glue that binds a true friendship, Bit." He felt Bella affectionately squeeze his knee when he said that. Could even feel her smile radiating as she looked at him with something... something like love.
"We keep wasting all this time warring within our circle. We're giving the First what it wants. No more," she told them. She looked to Bella and Spike. "No more them and us," she said referring to Spike and Bella and the rest of the Scoobies. "No. It's them and us. And by us, I mean us. All of us. Slayer, Vampires, Witches, Key, Vengeance Demon, Watcher... and Xander."