Catching our Breath
by Alixtii
She's been through more than her fair share of late. She just needs a chance to catch her breath. She'll be alright."
—Giles, in "Spiral"
Sunnydale, California—January 2001
"How is that report coming, Lydia?"
Lydia Chalmer looked up from her laptop at Quentin Travers, who had just entered her hotel room. "Almost finished," she responded. "Just give me another 5 minutes."
"Can you give me a preview?" asked Travers. "The main ideas."
"The Slayer's methods are highly unorthodox, but she is ultimately capable. Under proper guidance, her innovativeness could be made an invaluable asset. Everything we already knew."
"And you are wondering why we had to cross an ocean and a continent to find out nothing new."
"With all due respect, sir, yes, I am."
"Lydia, do you know Roger Wyndam-Pryce?"
Lydia did not allow herself to be taken aback by the apparent non sequitor. Travers would get to the point in his own time. "I've met him three or four times," she acknowledged. "As I understand it, he's rather highly placed in the Council. Like yourself."
"Like myself," Travers echoed. "Yes, indeed. And what are your impressions of Wyndam-Pryce? Please, speak freely. I want to hear what you really think."
Lydia considered. "He is…ambitious. Ruthless, even."
Travers nodded. "I would go so far as to say power-hungry. It takes something of the nature of a Machiavel to rise to such rarefied heights, I am afraid. Lord Acton was right: absolute power corrupts absolutely. But you'll learn such lessons before too long; yes, Lydia, I see in you the potential to go far in the Council, although I rather suspect you will not be proud of yourself by the end of it. But Roger. He is a man in love with power, and he sees the Council as a means to that power. After all, our influence spans the entire globe, does it not? And we have less subtle resources. It was he who ordered the strike on the rogue Slayer Faith two years ago. What you cannot control, you must destroy.
"But he ignores one thing: that in the end, we are powerless. Yes, Lydia: for all our playing and scheming we cannot change the simple fact that we are not the Slayer. At the end of the day, the fate of the world rests in her hands, not ours."
Lydia looked at her superior in shock. "But what about 'the Slayer is the instrument'?"
Travers smiled—a somber, almost sad smile. "That," he answered, "is the true test we have come over to administer. There is a lesson the Slayer must learn if she is too succeed, and Rupert Giles with all his damnable interference seems to be dead-set against letting her learn it."
Lydia did not speak to fill the silence which followed. She knew that Travers would explain himself when it pleased him to do so, in the manner that he chose. After a moment, he asked another a question.
"Do you know the purpose of the Cruciamentum, Lydia?"
"A test," she answered, "of cunning, imagination, and confidence. To evaluate the Slayer's abilities and those of her Watcher. It is a rite of passage, dozens of centuries old." And the reason why Rupert Giles was fired from the Council, why current arrangements with the Slayer are so strained.
Travers nodded. "Yes, it is all of those things. It is a test, just as this review is a test. But both tests are also lessons, that we are not her parents, not her friends, and not even necessarily her allies. She cannot always count to turning to us for help. Someday we will not be here, Lydia, and the Slayer will have to soldier on by herself. It is our job to prepare her for that day. Rupert seems unwilling to let her learn that lesson, insisting on loving her with a father's love. He doesn't seem to realize that the best thing he could do for his Slayer now is to get himself a one-way ticket back to England and return home. But I suppose we cannot blame Miss Summers for her Watcher's mistakes.
"Then you intend to give her the information she has asked for?"
Travers laughed. Like his smile, his laugh had a quality to it that was both sad and somber. "What else can we do?" he asked. ""As I said, we are powerless. In our hands this information is just another file in our already overfull vaults, useless to the world. In her hands, this information has the potential to save the world. But if she is going to do any good with it, she has to discover that she is the one with the power. That is the lesson this review will teach her: that in the end, there is only one Chosen One." He paused. "Well, two in this instance, but that's a special circumstance."
Travers let the room return to silence, as Lydia processed what he said. Such responsibility to be placed on a single girl without even her consent: the fate of the world.
"What do you think, Lydia?"
"About what, sir?"
"You've devoted your life to studying a vampire who was feared all through Europe. You are not unversed in the psychology—and the politics—of power."
Lydia nodded. "I met him, today, you know."
"I know." He said no more, letting her continue.
"As you said, I have studied this creature my entire life. And now, I see him, and he is so far from what I expected. Although in a way, that is what I expected. After all, my thesis emphasize how capable he was at adapting to new situations. With any other vampire, I would have said that what I saw today was impossible. With William the Bloody, it is merely implausible."
"Perhaps you had better fill me in on what you saw, Lydia."
Lydia paused, trying to decide how she could best explain what she had seen. "He seemed docile. A man who once cut a swath through Europe" (what was a swath anyway?) "is now acting as sidekick to the Slayer. He helps her kill demons, stop apocalypses. From his activities the last six months, one would never even guess he was an evil soulless creature."
Travers nodded. "Have you ever heard of Maggie Walsh?"
Lydia thought. "Wasn't she the daughter of John Walsh, the man who wrote the textbook on demon anatomy? Last I heard, she was teaching psychology at UC Sunnydale."
Travers nodded. "The professor has joined her late father, I'm afraid. She was acting as the head of the Sunnydale headquaurters of the States' Demon Initiative. Succeeded in implanting over two dozen Sunnydale vampires with a neuro-microchip which would emit an electrical shock resulting in extreme pain if a vampire attempted to harm a living creature. According to the intelligence the Council has procured, William the Bloody was number 17 in their project."
Lydia looked at Travers in shock. "Why wasn't I told of this?"
"The Americans do not take well to our distributing our knowledge of their classified activities at will. A certain level of discretion is required."
"But this information has to be integrated with the research we already have. The models need to be revised, we need to—" She trailed off. "And I know more about William the Bloody then anyone else in the Council."
"Which is why I am telling you this now, Lydia. Believe me, we have not forgotten you. It seemed to me that while it was needed to make this visit to Sunnydale, it would be worthwhile to perform some actual research--discretely--while we were here. Do you have a hypothesis yet?"
"No piece of electronics could turn William the Bloody into something he didn't want to be. It could act as the catalyst, certainly. But there's something more at work here. Something—" she trailed off.
"Yes?" Travers prompted.
"I don't know," she answered. "I'm going to have to go back to my research, see how this new information fits together. A vampire deprived of the ability of violence, it would have no reason to live. Chances were, it would go insane."
"Like—"
Lydia shook her head. "No, not like Drusilla, not necessarily. Drusilla's symptoms are of a severe schizophrenia, possibly dating back to severe stress she may have suffered as a human, prior to her turning. But all vampires are insane by human standards, the equivalent of a severe antisocial disorder, psycopathy, even. For a vampire to leave the vampiric norm and go insane by its own standards, we have no idea what that would look like. And this one has always been prone to obsessions, typically fixating all of his attention on just a few objects.
"We have no idea what he is capable of, right now. We need more research."
Los Angeles, California — December 2003
"You really don't have your own digs?" Faith asked as she entered her hotel room, followed by the vampire. He didn't need an invitation to enter a hotel room she'd only inhabited for a few hours, so she didn't bother to provide one.
"I only became solid again fairly recently," Spike explained. "Angel doesn't know what to do with me, and refuses to do anything which would imply my welcome. I've shacked up in people's offices, mainly. A couple of nights I even went so far as to sleep at Harmony's."
"Harmony?" Faith asked, processing the name. "Harmony Kendall, the stuck-up blonde from Sunnydale High?"
"None other," agreed Spike. "I forgot you hung out around there for a year—that on-again, off-again year I spent with Dru after Angelus and Acathla, God save me from the memory. She was turned the day of her graduation, I'm told, although heaven only knows what was going through the mind of the vamp who sired her."
Faith shrugged. "Probably looking for a fuckbuddy. I'm guessing your own visits were less than platonic? Or more?"
Spike nodded, distracted. "Harmony may not have much in the brains department, but she is good for some things. Just a little stress-relief, nothing more. Nothing like what I had with Buffy, even when I was without my soul. Just shag and move on, you know the drill."
"Hey," said Faith, "that's my favourite type of shag. And from what I can tell, Buffy isn't exactly waiting for you in Rome, either. Of course, she thinks you're dead, so her behaviour is probably slightly more excusable."
"Whatever happened to that guy you were with? The principal, tried to kill me?"
Faith shrugged. "Robin? I'm not big on the whole commitment thing. I got bored; he didn't. It was ugly for a while, but thing worked themselves out in the end, at least once Robin left Cleveland."
"That where you spending your days now? Cleveland?"
"The thrill of living on a Hellmouth. B's gotten her full, but I figure I've got some catching up to do, between prison and the coma and her getting there before me and all. It's not so bad. The big city, always something new to do, something to kill, someone to fuck. What more can you ask for?"
"So what brings you to L.A.?"
"I need to keep a watch on Angel," Faith answered. "Some of the Council seem to fear he may lose his soul soon."
"Any idea why?"
Faith thought. She wasn't supposed to alert Angel of her presence here, in part because of his connexion with Drusilla. But Spike shared that same connexion; she was his sire, and had been his lover for over a century. "No clue. That's the Council for you, tell you only what they think you need to know."
"Bloody bureaucrats," Spike agreed.
Faith sighed, relieved that she had gotten away with her lie. "Hey, I need to take a shower. You okay out here? The TV has pay-for–porn, feel free to use it; supposedly the Council's covering our expenses on this mission, which pleased G' to no end."
"I'll manage," answered Spike. "You go do what you need to do."
Somewhere in Romania...
"Dawn?" cried out Buffy. "Can you hear me?"
Where had her sister gone? And how could Buffy have let that happen? Why did she let Dawn talk her into sleeping? It was her duty to protect her sister, not the other way around. And now she had failed. "Dawn!" she cried out again, making her way through the forest. If anything had happened to the girl, she'd....
Suddenly, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. As she came closer, she realized it was two people, half-naked, their bodies in tight embrace as they made out quite passionately. As she came even closer, she realized it was two women, and furthermore she recognized the two women: it was Dawn and Drusilla. And hands! In places!
"Dawn?" she asked. "What are you doing?" Those hands...in those places...
Dawn didn't answer, as if she hadn't heard. After a while, Buffy heard Dawn moan, "Amanda."
Amanda? What the—? "Dawn, it's not Amanda," Buddy urged her sister. "Amanda died, last August, in Sunnydale. She was broken in half by a Turok- han. Incinerated when Sunnydale blew up! It's Drusilla, she must have hypnotized you. Please, listen to me!"
Still, Dawn made no indication of having heard her sister, but Buffy just stood there for several moments more, just watching, dumbfounded, in morbid fascination as her sister and the vampire went at it.
Enough, she finally thought to herself, and went to the pair and threw Drusilla off Dawn.
Somewhere in Africa...
Riley Finn plunged his sword into his wife's side, thinking of how much she was going to kill him when she got her body back. The action resulted in the desired consequence, however; distracted, the demon dropped Catelyn and turned towards Riley. Obviously weak but still alive, Catelyn pulled herself off the floor and spoke a few more syllables in a language Riley could not understand before she collapsed back to the floor.
"No!" the demon raged. "You think you can trap me on this pitiful plane? I am Yr-a't-kr, transcending time and space!"
"You used to transcend time and space," corrected Riley. "Now it seems to me you're pretty much the ordinary guy, just like the rest of us."
"Not quite," the demon corrected as it effortlessly caught Riley's sword with its left hand. He swung it, sending Riley into the colonnade once again. Another column broke, and the temple began to shake as the weight of the dome began to shift. Riley ran to Catelyn's side, pulled her out of danger as the dome came tumbling down.
"Riley?" Catelyn asked.
"I'm here," Riley said, leaning down to check her for injuries. She had some large bruises, some internal bleeding, but mostly it seemed that her current debilitated state was due to the demon sucking all of the life out of her. "We're safe . . . for now."
"I need to . . . do the exorcism," she managed to get out, although every word was very clearly a struggle. "Get that . . . thing . . . out of . . . Sam."
"You're too weak," said Riley. "You need to rest."
She was already unconscious.
Somewhere in Romania...
Dawn and Amanda were, well, getting reacquainted, when suddenly someone came up and threw the two apart. Dawn's eyes refused to focus on the person for a moment, although she seemed eerily familiar, until Amanda said "It's Drusilla, Dawn," and then Dawn realized her friend was right.
Wondering for only a moment how Amanda even knew what Drusilla looked like, Dawn reached for her machete. "She's killed Slayers before," she told Amanda. "Be careful."
"I'm not worried," answered Amanda as she dodged the dagger in the vampire's hand. "I have you to watch my back."
"Damn right," agreed Dawn as she swung her machete at the vampire. Drusilla effortlessly stepped out of the weapon's reach, as if she had been able to predict Dawn's attack.
"Dawnie, it's me," said Drusilla, but Amanda interrupted.
"Don't listen to her! She'll use her thrall!" Drusilla responded by unleashing a ferocious backhand, knocking Amanda several feet. "Come on, Dawn," Amanda cried, "we have to get out of here!"
As Dawn and Amanda ran away from the vampire, Dawn could see out of the corner of her eye a figure set upon by a pack of wolves.