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Fight
Red drips from my chin where I have been eating.
Not all the blood, nowhere near all, is wiped off my mouth.
Clots of red mess my hair
And the tiger, the buffalo, know how.
I was a killer.
Yes, I am a killer.
I come from killing.
I go to more.
I drive red joy ahead of me from killing.
Red gluts and red hungers run in the smears and juices
of my inside bones:
The child cries for a suck mother and I cry for war.
Carl Sandburg
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13. The General
-
Buffy's eyes snapped open. The face of the dying prison guard remained emblazoned on her mind. Had it just been a bad dream? She lay very still and shut her eyes tightly. If she could be very honest with herself—and these last few years had made her nothing if not honest—she knew she hadn't been dreaming at all. It was her destiny calling—something she had been expecting for quite some time now in the back of her mind. Somehow, she doubted the meddlesome higher powers had been getting their money's worth by allowing her to laze about for three months straight, doing little more than global Slaying tours whenever the mood struck her. The Slayer rubbed her face wearily with her hands. Buffy glanced down at her watch; it was only 10:42 p.m. She sighed and pushed aside the heavy Encyclopedia of Wandless Magic text that she must have fallen asleep reading.
She pulled herself up from the leather sofa and ventured barefoot through the open French doors onto the balcony. Buffy propped her elbows on the railing, taking in the spectacular view Angel's high-rise condominium afforded her. All of Paris glittered beneath her, a metropolis brimming with the hypnotic activity of life. It should have been a pleasure, but Buffy ignored it. The sights were what normal people could enjoy. Paris was a city for lovers, dreamers, aspiring artists and musicians, businessmen, tourists, and the like. It had been a long time since she had considered herself any of those things.
Buffy walked back inside, shedding clothes as she went. She stopped inside the master bedroom's closet, standing in front of the floor-length mirror in a camisole and underwear. Already, her arms and legs were wirier and her cheekbones more pronounced, Buffy observed absently while pulling on boots, jeans, and a light jacket. The petite blonde supposed the physical change was probably the result of a combination of her constant sleep deprivation and erratic eating pattern, however neither concerned her much. Unfortunately, a Slayer was made from tougher stuff. Buffy strode over to the chest at the foot of the bed and pulled out a sword, several knives, and half a dozen stakes. She waved a hand over them and stuffed the miniaturized assortment of weapons into her pocket. With a soft pop, she was gone.
Buffy showered and dressed quickly after apparating back into her Hogwarts suite. She figured she should make an appearance after a two week absence. Saying a brief greeting to Madam Puddlemere on the way out, the blonde Slayer left in search of food. Buffy gazed up at the enchanted ceiling as she entered. The sky was overcast with heavy, gray clouds, threatening a downpour. She drew many stares as she crossed the entrance. Harry and Ron waved her over from the Gryffindor table and Buffy joined them at the long wooden bench.
"Morning Eliza!" Harry greeted as she sat down next to him, trying very hard not to let his eyes drift over the blonde's crisp dress shirt, on which she had left the top two buttons temptingly undone.
"It's the first time we've seen you at breakfast," Hermione observed from across the table, peering over The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 7, which she had propped against a large pitcher of orange juice.
"I'm not a morning person," Buffy said simply.
"Where did you go off to again last week?" Ron asked after discreetly checking her out.
"Paris and Cairo mostly," Buffy replied while reaching over for the pot of coffee and pouring herself a cup.
"So you've been going out of the country then?" Harry inquired.
"Yeah," Buffy shrugged in nonchalance, "It's not like Dumbledore's holding me as prisoner here."
"Wicked!" Ron approved enthusiastically, remembering how much fun he'd had during his family trip to Egypt four summers ago.
"Your knuckles are bleeding!" Hermione gasped as Buffy raised the coffee cup to her lips.
"Oh."
Harry grabbed her unused left hand and held it over the table, tenderly running over the bloody and bare knuckles with his thumb. "How did you hurt yourself?" he asked with concern; it was the second time he had seen her turn up with unexplained injuries.
Buffy was saved from answering by the rustle of fluttering wings as more than a hundred owls suddenly streamed into the Great Hall. She surreptitiously pulled her hand back from Harry's grasp as a tawny owl swooped over their heads and dropped a roll of newspaper onto Hermione's lap.
"Anyone die today?" Ron asked uneasily as Hermione unfurled a copy of the Daily Prophet.
"There's been a breakout at Azkaban!" Hermione yelped.
Hermione paled visibly as she cleared out a space on the table to spread the newspaper. Harry and Ron shared a worried look as they bent over the front page, which displayed a large photograph of an empty prison cell whose bars had been violently blasted apart. Buffy's appetite vanished. It was the same place she had dreamed. Several other Gryffindors leaned over and listened with anxious faces as Hermione began reading aloud the headline news.
DEATH EATER ATTACK ON AZKABAN: MASS OUTBREAK ENSUES!
Late yesterday evening, an undetermined number of Death Eaters stormed the
Azkaban fortress, the wizarding prison, inciting a mass outbreak. The Ministry
of Magic confirmed today that nine Aurors were killed during the incident (see
page 5 for details), many more injured.
"We ask the magical community to remain calm but cautious," said a grim-faced
Rufus Scrimgeour, the newly instated Minister of Magic, "and rest assured that
the Ministry is doing all it can to apprehend the perpetrators and fugitives."
The attack was allegedly led by former escapee and You-Know-Who's right hand,
Bellatrix Lestrange. Earlier this morning, Minister Scrimgeour's assistant secretary
issued a list of all fugitives at large (see page 3), the most notably dangerous of
whom were high-security Death Eaters caught last year at the London Ministry
of Magic. The Ministry explicitly warns all to avoid confrontation with said es-
capees and to contact its offices immediately in the event of a sighting.
"This is horrible," Hermione uttered unsteadily as she finished, locking reddening eyes with Harry and Ron.
"Check to see if Tonks and Kingsley are on the Aurors list," Harry urged gravely.
Hermione ripped open the newspaper to page five, which was filled by nine square black-and-white identity photographs with obituaries underneath, each showing a smiling or grinning witch or wizard. "They're not dead," she breathed after a hasty perusal.
"Well, at least that's good," Ron ventured on weakly.
Buffy pushed away her plate of syrup-smothered pancakes as Hermione turned to page three to inspect the mug shots of the escaped prisoners. The blonde Slayer glanced around the Great Hall to see groups of Hogwarts students huddled round various copies of the Prophet, most looking worried, scared, or both. Only the Slytherin table seemed relatively unaffected; Draco Malfoy and his coterie even appeared suspiciously smugger than usual. Finally, her gaze fell on the faculty table to find Dumbledore and McGonagall conversing urgently.
"Scrimgeour's about as useless as Fudge if he keeps telling people to rest assured," Harry snarled, his lips twisting into a dark scowl.
"Well, what choice does he have?" countered Hermione as she put down the newspaper with a note of finality. "He can't very well risk wide panic now when we're at open war. It's bad enough that people are already dropping left and right or running for the hills."
Harry let out a ragged breath, his green eyes darting around the Great Hall. Hermione was right; every House had lost students this term from over-worried parents or worse. His muscles clenched so taut that Buffy could literally feel him shaking against her with unspoken frustration. The black-haired Gryffindor felt like a helpless child tucked away in the safety of Hogwarts, while The Order members and Aurors were fighting for the cause out there and dying. He absolutely despised the feeling of being useless. More than anything, Harry was eagerly awaiting the day that Dumbledore discovered another of the three remaining Horcruxes. The Boy Who Lived just wanted it over with, all of it, so he could finally kill the wizard-gone-bad with a bloody Hitler complex and avenge his parents' deaths once and for all—that or die trying.
"I hate this," Ron grumbled, unwittingly vocalizing Harry's exact sentiments.
The remainder of the meal passed without any conversation between Buffy and the trio, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Buffy rose up abruptly from the table as the bell rang, signaling the end of breakfast. She had reached a decision.
Harry glanced up at her, startled by her celerity of movement, "Where are you going? Will you be in class today?"
"I have to talk to Dumbledore," she answered distractedly, "Don't know if I'll be in class."
Harry's watched puzzled as Eliza's petite blonde retreating form as he let himself be pulled along the tide of exiting fellow students. The girl seemed to take on a different personality with every encounter.
-
"Dumbledore, can we talk?"
Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall looked up at the sound of Buffy's voice. Buffy cast the Transfiguration Professor a smile and Minerva inclined her head in return.
"Certainly, my dear," said Albus, rising from his chair and bidding the various teachers farewell. "To my office, then?" he asked.
"Yeah," Buffy nodded.
"Now, what's on your mind?" Albus asked as the two seated themselves on opposite sides of his majestic office table.
"I want to join the Order."
The Headmaster's aged face registered surprise for a split-second, but he quickly recovered.
"How did you find out?"
"Don't worry, nobody blabbed. Despite being blonde, I can read, you know. I've been following up on your Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter, and Moldywart for a while now."
Dumbledore let out a chuckle at Buffy's priceless butchering of Lord Voldemort's name before saying evenly, "I cannot ask you to get involved in a war that is not your own."
"You're not asking, I'm offering," she replied, equally calm, looking him straight in the eye.
Albus studied the seemingly delicate blonde sitting in front of him, his penetrating blue eyes boring into her hazel ones. "Are you sure that you are ready? It hasn't been long since..."
It was so simple, just a mention of the event. Not even that, really. But Buffy felt hot tears sting the back of her throat. Her meticulously erected dam threatened to overflow. She tore her gaze away from the Headmaster. It was too much to have him look at her with those startling blue eyes, fathomless and wise.
Albus watched the flood of emotions play across the blonde Slayer's features as she studiously avoided his gaze. He understood it was difficult for Buffy to open up; that the harder things became, the more she withdrew into herself. Ordinarily, he would have let her be. But now was not the time.
"Buffy."
The soft utterance of her name reverberated throughout the circular office. It was disconcerting to hear her name spoken after so long. Buffy slowly met his gaze then, feeling at once the steadfast affection he felt for her. She was suddenly struck with the realization that Dumbledore was there. Buffy sat there for a long time, just staring at him in wonder while Albus waited. Then, she began.
"No matter how hard I try to hide it, I'm not okay. I know that you know. For the first few days, all I thought about was how I could finish myself off once and for all as a grand 'fuck you' to the Powers. And then you show up at the funeral and invite me to come here. And I'm thinking 'Hmm, I probably shouldn't commit suicide in front of him, it would be bad manners as a guest.'"
Buffy recalled with a grimace the look on Lorne's face the night he had found her passed out in his bathroom in a tub full of blood-tinted water. Her voice grew hoarse and so faint that Dumbledore had to strain his ears to make out her words.
"Most nights, I feel like the world is closing in on me and I just want to fade away into oblivion." Her voice broke.
"But I'm getting better," Buffy added a brief moment later. She did not want Dumbledore to worry about her unnecessarily on top of everything else.
Fawkes who had been observing the exchange intently, gave a soothing trill and landed lightly on her lap. Buffy stroked his feathers absently, feeling some of the emptiness leave her body upon contact.
"Where have you been disappearing off to for weeks on end?"
"Everywhere, really."
"Why?" Dumbledore prodded.
"To cope. I've kinda been wailing on every unlucky demon that happens to cross my path. The slaying—it makes things easier."
"I see," he paused. "Still, I must remind you that this is not a war waged against demons. Our enemies are our own kind. Are you prepared to take a human life?"
A faraway look drifted over Buffy's features as her mind traveled back to another time and place.
"She's not the Anya that you knew, Xander. She's a demon."
"That doesn't mean you have to kill her," Xander returned, becoming very bothered.
"Don't act like this is easy for me. You know it's not," the Slayer tried to reason with him.
"There are other options," he pointed out.
"I've considered them," Buffy said quietly but with an air of finality.
Xander appeared extremely upset then, his volume increasing incredulously with each word. "When? Just now? Took you all of ten seconds to decide to kill one of your best friends?" He was yelling by the end.
"The thought that it might come to this has occurred to me before. It's occurred to you, too," the blonde stated with the characteristic stoicism she had developed over the years.
The brown-haired man shook his head helplessly, feeling completely useless as he frantically tried to prevent one of his best friends from killing the love of his life. "But we can change what she did. Fix it. These are mystical deaths, right? There has to be something," he protested, looking towards his other best friend sitting on the couch with pleading eyes.
She realized then that she was antagonizing one of the closest people she had left in the world, and she hated herself just a little bit more for it. Still, she persisted, because if she didn't take a stand, no one would. It didn't matter that Anya had been a peripheral member of the Scooby gang for years now or that anyone could plainly see Xander was still in love with the flamboyant Vengeance Demon, because this went beyond the bounds of friendship. As the Slayer, Buffy did not have the discretion of granting personal favors to her friends or even her family. Especially not as the Slayer. No one else, maybe except for Faith, knew how precariously she balanced on the edge of doing what was right and doing what she wanted. There was great darkness lying within her, Dracula had not been wrong about that, and it was becoming harder to ignore everyday. It would have been so easy to stop fighting as hard, to stop caring as much.
Shaking her head resolutely, Buffy pushed away that temptation. She couldn't afford to slip into that place again, not now—not ever. "Xander, I know this is hard for you to hear, but it's what I have to do."
He scoffed bitterly at that, spitting out his words. "Hard for me to hear? Buffy, you wanna kill Anya!"
"I don't want to," she protested earnestly.
"Then don't! This isn't new ground for us. When our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them," he pleaded.
"It's different," Buffy sighed.
"Because you don't care about her the same way I do. Buffy, I still love her," Xander argued back, his voice strained as he spoke the last words.
Buffy's faced softened momentarily in response, but she refused to be deterred. "I know. And that's why you can't see this for what it really is. Anya's a demon."
"And you're the Slayer," Xander bit back acerbically. "I see now how it's all very simple," he added in a scathing drawl.
"It is never simple," Buffy returned, becoming frustrated by their escalating argument. She didn't have time for this.
"No, of course not." He rose from the couch and commenced to pace in angry, stilted strides. "You know," Xander began, turning furious eyes on the blonde, "if there's a mass-murdering demon that you're, oh, say, BONING, then it's all gray area."
Buffy flinched at his dig. His careless words always cut her so deep. "Spike was harmless. He was helping."
"He had no choice."
"And Anya did! She chose to become a demon. Twice," she argued back. Even he couldn't deny that fact.
"You have no idea what she's going through," he protested weakly.
"I don't care what she's going through!" Buffy said as she rose to her feet as well, exasperation showing in her voice.
"No, of course not. You think we haven't seen all this before? The part where you just cut us all out. Just step away from everything human and act like you're the law," Xander shouted in an accusatory tone. "If you knew what I felt—"
"I killed Angel!" Buffy silenced his ranting. "Do you even remember that? I would have given up everything I had to be with— I loved him more than I will ever love anything in this life. And I put a sword through his heart because I had to," she said in a pained voice.
"And that all worked out okay," Willow muttered from the couch, trying futilely to break up some of the tension that had settled in between the pair.
"Do you remember cheering me on?" Buffy continued, her hazel eyes boring into Xander's brown ones. Far be it for her to dig up the old skeletons in the closet, but she had to make them see. "Both of you. Do you remember giving me Willow's message: kick his ass?"
"I never said that—" Willow protested from her spot on the couch, glancing at Xander suspiciously.
"This is different—" Xander interrupted quickly, not wanting either of the girls to discover his little act of deception.
"It is always different! It's always complicated," Buffy countered, her voice forceful before it slowly turned somber as she put into words what she had realized long ago, but had never wanted to admit—not even to herself. "And at some point, someone has to draw the line, and that is always going to be me. You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the Slayer is always cut off. There's no mystical guidebook. No all-knowing council. Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law."
She remembered the look of ensuing hurt and betrayal flickering in Xander's eyes as clearly as if it were yesterday. It was one of those few moments during her friendship with the Scoobies when she hadn't bothered to hold her tongue in check. She had told them a little truth that night, and it had been apparently too much. It was so easy for them, because they were so young and innocent in a way. Xander had never killed another human being before. And Willow—Willow wasn't really herself when she had flambéed Warren nor when she had attempted to end the world—or at least that was what they had all told themselves. Prepared to take a human life? God, she had been prepared to sacrifice anyone against The First. She remembered denying to Spike at one point that she was a killer. Buffy harbored no delusions about that fact now.
When Buffy's eyes refocused on Albus again, they were cold and hard. The very air around her seemed to shift. Fawkes stirred and retreated back to the relative safety of his perch. In that moment, Buffy Summers was beautiful and terrible to behold. Had it been any other wizard sitting in the Headmaster's position, he would have found it very difficult to fight the urge to look away. When she spoke again, there was a hard edge to her voice that he was unaccustomed to hearing.
"I know that I have the power to destroy. At the end of the day, I'm the one who has to make a cold-blooded decision about who to kill and who to spare. I've lived with that responsibility for eleven years now—knowing the world is affected by the consequences of my actions. So, yeah, I'm prepared to do what's needed. And it's not like I've never killed a man before."
Then almost as an afterthought, she added, "Besides, I dreamt about the prison break last night. I must be here for a reason."
Dumbledore leaned backwards in his chair, running a hand over his silver beard pensively. He looked hard at the tiny blonde, marveling at the nobility of her spirit and the generosity of her nature. Years of adversity and heartbreak had tempered her into an indomitable warrior. What was miraculous was that she had somehow managed to hang on to her sanity and capacity to love through it all. Albus realized then that it had been foolish to ever believe himself capable of sheltering the dear girl from the world, even for a little while. At last, he understood that Buffy Summers would stumble, and hurt, and be tested beyond human endurance just by the very nature of who she was and what she did. Regardless of the friends and lovers that surrounded her, in the end she still had to go it alone—always alone. So Albus resolved to do the only thing he could. He would be her good friend along the way.
"It's settled then," he relented. "I admit that we are in desperate need of help, and yours would be an invaluable asset. There will be a meeting tonight to address the Azkaban outbreak, I shall introduce you then."
He paused, eyes softening. "You must know that when I invited you here, I had no intention of involving you in any way. I just wanted to help," Albus said sincerely.
Buffy smiled, touched, "People like me don't have the luxury of sitting idly on the sidelines. I'm a Slayer, Dumbledore. Giles trained me to be the general—and now I can't seem to get out of that role."
"I don't suppose I need to spell out the risks involved in becoming a member?" he deadpanned, grinning.
Somehow, Dumbledore always seemed to know exactly what to say to cheer her up. And for that, the blonde Slayer was exceedingly grateful. A hysterical bout of laughter burst forth and lit up Buffy's face, and she looked once more like the carefree teenage girl he knew she was not. Fawkes ruffled his feathers approvingly on his perch. When Buffy finally caught her breath, she gazed back at the wizened wizard with bright eyes, her mouth curling up into a half-smile. It felt good.
"I've died three times, Dumbledore. You're not gonna scare me off with a few fun facts on occupational hazards."