Part Five: Revolutions.
In which the training commences and flirting occurs.
Notes: Principal Wood will not be in this story. I just can't handle the stress that is his character. However, I offer another charming, mysterious, and morally ambiguous character in his place. This one, however, will not sleep with Faith. Because... no.
"It's good to see you too, Rupert," the man said, and came into the shop. Without the light behind him casting his face into shadow Buffy could see that the man had the dusky skin tone and hawk-like features that indicated desert lineage, with surprisingly bright blue eyes that sparkled with wit and intelligence. The simple black button-down shirt and jeans were perfectly normal, but the sword at his side was not. Still, he didn't look like any Watcher she had ever met.
"Blake, my man," Xander called. "You made damn good time."
"Don't I always?" Blake said. "And I brought you presents."
Buffy watched with fascination as Xander crossed the room with absolutely silent footsteps despite the heavy boots on his feet, Kel padding right on his heels. The man- or demon, Buffy still wasn't totally clear on the whole Hellbound thing- went right up to the two girls and examined them for a silent moment.
"Just what I wanted," Xander said.
"There were supposed to be three of them," Kel pointed out. Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged. "Well, there were."
Blake shook his head and clucked his tongue. "Terrible tragedy, that. Amanda was a delightful girl. But our first encounter with a Bringer, well, she took it into her foolish head to run like the charming rabbit she was, and got herself killed. So I'm short a Potential."
"Good to know you still care about your charges so much," Giles said, and hello, was that venom in his voice? Buffy decided for once to just stay out of it and watch the drama unfold in front of her instead of getting involved.
"Certainly I care," Blake said. "Just because I don't love the girls doesn't mean that I'm not distressed at losing one. Isn't that right, girls?" he asked the two that were standing next to him.
"Um," the younger one said. Another Brit.
"He's an asshole," the older one said succinctly in an accent that was pure American. "But he's good." With that rousing endorsement, she wandered over to the table where all the Scoobies were sitting and sat backwards in the only remaining chair. "Kennedy," she introduced herself, and then to all appearances ignored the existence of everyone in the room but the Potential she had arrived with.
"The lady speaks the truth," Blake said. "Besides, are you still holding a grudge after all these years?"
"No," Giles said. "I just don't like you."
"Fair enough," Blake replied, and turned to Kel. "And how are you doing, pup?"
"I don't like you either," Kel told him, and left Xander's side to sit at Dawn's feet instead.
"I'm wounded," Blake said. "Xander, you still like me, correct?"
"Sure," Xander said easily. "Though you are, indeed, an asshole."
"I'd be boring were I anything else," the man pointed out. "Ah well. I've delivered two of my three charming charges, and my duty is now complete. Bye now."
He turned to leave, but Xander snagged his arm. "Nice try," he said. "Sit down. Don't talk."
"That's asking too much, you know," Blake pointed out, but he did move over to a wall and lean on it, looking like some sort of overgrown cat with his grace and inherent sense of entitlement.
"Um, not to be annoying or anything," Willow said hesitantly, one hand in the air like a kid in class. "But, well... Who's he?"
Blake grinned- again, like a cat, Buffy thought- and opened his mouth to answer, but Xander made a dismissive gesture and he closed it again. "That's Blake," Xander said. "My Council contact."
"I'd picked up on that, yeah," Willow said. "But he doesn't look like a Watcher to me," she added, unconsciously echoing Buffy's earlier thought.
"I'm a wet works agent," Blake said, ignoring Xander's order to stay silent. "Or, in other words, I don't watch; I do."
"He does the Council's dirty work," Giles said with clear rancor from by the doorway, where he hadn't moved. "The people that were called in to round up Faith? Those were wet works agents."
"You flatter me, Rupert," Blake said. "I'd never be assigned to bring in a rogue Slayer."
"Because they don't trust you enough," Giles said. "You have a distressing tendency to play more than one side."
"Well, he plays mine, which is all I care about," Xander interrupted. Dawn gave him a speculative glance, and he growled at her, muttering, "Not that way, Dawn. Jesus, mind in the gutter, much?"
"I wasn't the one who spent the night in bed with- mmph!"
Dawn's voice was cut off by Kel's hand, which suddenly and neatly covered her mouth. "I think now would be a good time to get the Potentials settled in," Kel said calmly, completely ignoring the indignant sounds Dawn was making behind his palm. "Blake, do you know when the rest are arriving?"
"There should be six or seven trickling in over the next few days," Blake said. "Three more tomorrow."
"Right," Xander said, taking control of the conversation again. "Fair to say that training starts the day after tomorrow, then? The Scoobies will take the Potentials, and Blake will stay with us." Buffy didn't miss his unintentional statement of alliance- they were the Scoobies, and he was not. It still hurt, even after these years. "The mansion has the best space for training- bring the Potentials there.
"And for now, I think we'll head out. Head home, get Blake settled, and then take patrol for the night." Buffy gave him a sharp look, and he just shrugged, not apologetic in the least at usurping her duties. "You have enough on your plate," he told her, and she gave him a half-hearted glare, knowing the truth in that.
"Blake, we're out of here," he said, and Blake detached himself from the wall to come over and stand by his side. Kel moved over immediately, releasing Dawn, who hunched back into her chair with a scowl, and the three of them moved towards the doorway.
Xander paused at the threshold and looked back over his shoulder and across the room. But who was he looking at? Unless-
"You coming?" Xander said, and without hesitation- or even a word to the rest of them- Spike jumped down from the ladder and crossed the room to Xander's side.
And just like that, Buffy knew that she'd lost him.
Three days later, watching the Potentials training in the spacious grounds behind the Crawford Street mansion, Buffy was still thinking about it. It wasn't that she wanted Spike to be hers. In fact, she'd fought long and hard against having him be hers in the first place.
But then he'd tried so hard to save Dawn when Glory had her, and when Buffy had been brought back from the dead he'd been the friend to her that none of the others could be. There'd been a time when she'd thought about it- couldn't seem to stop herself. But she'd realized that it was just her self-destructive instincts working overtime, and so she kept herself from acting on it, and their half-flirting friendship had mellowed into something oddly like she had had with Xander, years before. Not the same personality at all, of course, but the sense of camaraderie and ease of companionship- that was the same.
And just as it had been with Xander, she hadn't realized just how much she'd relied on that relationship, that friendship, that- say it like it is, Buff- devotion, until it was gone.
Yeah, people always fell in love with her, were devoted to her. Until something better came along.
He'd drifted from her in the past month or so. He'd helped her by tracking down Warren while she lay in the hospital, and had caught the little bastard and thrown his ass straight to the cops while Willow and Tara hovered at her bedside and bolstered her Slayer healing with spells. But then he'd been gone for days at a time, and then she'd seen neither hide nor hair of Spike since he'd followed Xander out of the Magic Box three days earlier. And when she'd showed up at the mansion that would, in her mind, always be The Mansion Where Angelus Was, Kel had told her that Spike was asleep in the master bedroom. He'd had taken the seven Potentials, even poor Chao-Ahn, who couldn't speak English, out back and started doing drills.
Ten minutes after that, Xander came out of the master bedroom, and went out to join them.
She was trying to decide how she felt about the whole thing when she suddenly became aware of someone standing right behind her.
"It looks as if we're readying for a war," came Blake's drawling voice, before she could spin around and confront whoever it was. Jesus, he was quiet. She thought that he was human, but she had never heard any human- even herself- walk that quietly.
"Aren't we?" she said, not turning to face him. "And I don't know. It looks to me like we're the hopeless revolutionaries about to storm the armies of the all-powerful empire."
"Ah, but they're the revolutionaries," he pointed out, and she turned around at last to look at him. Those blue eyes were so damn startling, even after she'd braced herself against their impact. "They're the ones who want to remake the world into something evil. We're just trying to defend the status quo, such as it is."
"I notice that you didn't try to challenge the "hopeless" part of that statement."
"Hadn't gotten to it, but rest assured, I hadn't forgotten. I don't think we're hopeless." He shook his head at her, as if chiding her for even thinking it. "This is just the beginning of our forces, you know. And just think how much worse it could be."
"Yeah?" she challenged softly. "How much worse could it be?"
"You could be on your own," Blake said. "No witches. No Watcher."
"No," Buffy said, thoughtfully. "I don't think I could be."
"Fine, then," Blake said. "You could be without Xander, at least. And trust me, Miss Summers, that would be a very bad way to be."
"Yeah?" she said again. "Why?"
He looked at her as if she was mentally challenged. "Not only is that man your strongest flank, he's making all your other flanks stronger," he said. "He's a deadly fighter, but he doesn't just bring himself to the table. He brings in Kel, who is no one that anyone in their right mind would want to come up against, and he has visions to boot. Which means that the Powers that Be are behind Xander. He's got even closer ties to Angel and company down in LA than you do. He had friends and allies scattered all over the country, and a few in other countries. And you'd better believe that when he calls them, they will come. We all believe in him too much not too."
"We?" she said, and he gave her a little half-smile.
"I'm a very self-serving man, Buffy Summers. I would never set foot in this town, especially not with the First here, except for loyalty to him."
He glanced down at the yard. "In time, there will be many more of us. In the end, you may be right. We may be planning a revolution, for a better world." He looked back at her, and there was an oddly intense look in those damn blue eyes of his. "But right now we are only beginning."
He sketched a little bow to her at the end of these words, and faded back into the shadows of the house as silently as he'd arrived. Buffy watched him go, unable to shake the feeling that while Blake might have been saying one thing, he was trying to tell her something else altogether.
Down in the yard Kel took a break to sit at the base of the tree in the yard while Xander worked the girls. Because he had been watching the little interaction between Blake and Buffy he saw Dawn come to the doorway, say something to her sister, then spot him and walk outside, making a beeline straight for him.
"You haven't been around the past few days," she accused, as soon as she was beside him. He looked up at her, one hand against his forehead to shade against the sun, and smiled at her.
"Sorry. The mansion was kind of a wreck, though, and the three of us were trying to get it habitable. Your house won't be able to hold everyone, and we're using the place as training central, besides."
She slid down the
tree truck to sit companionably next to him.
"The three of you, huh? What
about Spike?"
"I meant Spike. Blake, doing housework? Not freakin' likely. He'd been hitting the weapons dealers around
town, of which there are quite a lot for this town's population, since Xan and
I didn't bring enough with us to arm a bunch of Potentials."
"What's Blake's deal, anyway? He seems charming, but he also kinda gives me the creeps. I get the feeling that all that charm is surface, and inside he is a deeply scary person."
"You're right," Kel said, glancing over at her in surprise. "I can't believe you caught that. Most people listen to him and think he's harmless, and he's not."
"So what is he?"
"Oh, he's human," Kel said, deliberately misunderstanding, and got a smack on his arm for it.
"He really is a Council wet works agent," he said, relenting. "But he's more than that. He's also a genuine fighter- most of the year he travels third-world countries and 'teaches the demons some respect for civilization,' in his words. The Council only uses him for assassinations- usually demons or other otherworldly bad guys who are in some high position or other. He's not always the most mentally stable guy, and even on his best days he's an asshole, but you gotta say this for the bastard- he is the best."
"I can't tell you how comforting that isn't," Dawn said, but she didn't seem unduly worried. She nudged him with her elbow. "Stop by next time, will you? It's no fun. Buffy's all uptight, Willow and Tara aren't much better, and it's hell having to share my room with the Potentials. Especially since I got stuck with Kennedy and Molly, and Kennedy totally has a crush on Molly, who doesn't have a clue but seems to be attracted to her anyway. The sexual tension is driving me nuts. I wish they'd give it up and kiss already."
He chuckled, and she grinned at him. "I mean, come on. It's all innuendo, and longing glances, and staring at each other when they think that no one will notice."
"You're free to come by any time," he told her. "If, you know, you need to get away for a while."
She leaned over and kissed him, a quick brush of her lips against his, and while he was blinking with surprise, she leaned back and got to her feet.
"I may take you up on that," she said with a private sort of smile, and wandered back towards the mansion.
Kel watched her walk away, and then smiled to himself before he got up to take his turn at training Potentials.
Xander flopped onto the bed and sighed as some of the tension he'd been carrying all day started to leach out of his frame. "Long fucking day," he said to himself.
"Caught some of it," Spike said, and Xander rolled his head to the right so he could watch the vampire enter the room and start to take of his clothes. "You're gonna need to start taking them on patrols soon."
"You take them," Xander said. "I think I'm dying. I haven't been this tired since that time I got caught in the middle of a war between two demon clans."
"I'd be happy to," Spike told him, tossing his duster over the chair his boots were already next to and starting on his shirt. "But they all seem to look up to you." He paused, schooling his face into serious lines. "Daddy."
"Bite your tongue," Xander said.
"You do it for me," Spike said. "Though it's not like you can get me pregnant, even if we were doing anything interesting."
Xander turned his head away as Spike lost the pants and crawled into bed next to him. "You know why I'm waiting," he said, hating the way that his voice sounded so weak. Yeah, as weak as his will was after three nights of sleeping wrapped around Spike's cool body.
"Yeah, I know," Spike said, burrowing his head into its accustomed place in the hollow in Xander's shoulder that could have been shaped by the Powers specifically for him. "The end of the world, blah blah. I'm going to wear you down yet, just you see."
Minutes later, when Xander was sure that Spike was asleep, he whispered, "That's what I'm afraid of."
Across town, in the basement of the Sunnydale High School, blood dripped from the sacrifice down onto the exposed seal and it slowly unfolded, allowing a single clawed hand to thrust its way free.