Gene:
Things have been very quiet down here since they carted Jericho away. Nobody really cares about me, I guess. I wish I could pretend to be one of those people that craves peace and thrives in places like this, but I think it's more likely that I'll be driven to insanity by the solitude and all I'll end up being is a guy in a cage that people occasionally use to answer questions.
Oh, what a coincidence, there's a party outside my door. I sit up on the cot and look over at them.
"To what do I owe this pleasure?" I ask. They're all wearing their serious faces, but not all of them can pull it off.
"We need information."
"Is that so?" I let the pause hang in the air, then lean forward slightly. "First I'm going to need better treatment."
"No." Hm. I shrug and lie back down.
"Fine. Goodbye."
"What do you want?" asks Angel. At least he understands how this works. I sit up again.
"Well, I've got no money and you terminated my home and place of business. I have no intention of living in this cellar for the rest of my life, so what I want is a guarantee of shelter. I want to be moved upstairs, to a room with a decent bed. Keep a guard on me, I don't care. And I want two meals a day. Good ones." Matt rolls his eyes.
"You've got to be kidding me. We'll bring you food down here, how about that?"
"If I'd wanted a negotiation, I'd have asked for more. They're fair terms, and they allow me to ask for more when you need something else. So either accept this, or leave me alone." Matt, and Edward for that matter, still looks unconvinced, but fortunately they're not running the show any more.
"Deal," says Buffy. "Now tell us what BC&N kept in their vaults."
"You own the building, don't you know?"
"They were emptied."
"All of them?" They pause, and look at each other.
"No, just one."
"Which one?" Buffy scrunches up her face before attempting to answer.
"It was on the thirty… uh…"
"Third."
"…third floor."
"Oh shit."
"What? What is it?" I hesitate.
"You know the Wall that surrounds the city? The force field that keeps out all the creatures of the wasteland?"
"Um… sure."
"Well Burnett, Clarke & Nicholls provided it. And that room contains all the information we had on it."
"So what can she do?" She?
"There's no off switch, no giant button marked 'self-destruct', but my guess would be that she plans to bring the whole Wall down."
"How?"
"Most people think that the Wall is constructed solely from technology, but that's not completely true. The people that built it wove in some fairly potent blood magic. Actually, a lot of it came from about your time, Angel." He looks at me quizzically. "Some Hell goddess tried to bring down the barriers between dimensions."
"Glory…" whispers Buffy, shocked. Of course, she came from the same time too.
"Yeah, that's it. We used similar spells but did the opposite. We strengthened those barriers in certain places. Made them completely impenetrable. If she could undo those spells… and it probably wouldn't take much… then she could destroy not only the Wall around this city, but all connected barriers protecting every city on the planet."
"Another war…" I nod.
"If I was you, I'd try to find her very quickly."
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Jericho:
That poor girl… it would be better if I'd just killed her, for everyone… Spike should have killed me all those years ago. Or he should have let me die. He cared so much that he was blinded to the consequences. I wish I could use the same argument for my own actions. I can't.
There is a quick knock at the door before it opens regardless and Angel stands framed in the doorway. There is a look of sympathy on his face, but he tries to hide it.
"It's time to make use of that soul," he says, then withdraws and closes the door behind him.
I wipe my face. I've done fewer terrible things in my time as a vampire than many have, but I'm still a long way from being okay about it. I read Angel's file, and I can't even imagine what he must put up with every day of his life.
I strap on my daisho. With these two weapons of war, I have done unspeakable things, and now I must use them again. I want nothing more to do with them, but they are necessary. I think I can understand finally why Spike stopped fighting. In combat, it must be all too easy to think about your past, to reflect on previous instances in which you did this, or pulled that manoeuvre, or went through such-and-such a routine. I shake my head. I don't have the luxury of being able to think about this. There is a job that must be done.
I walk into the room where the others are gathered. They are talking before I enter, but I am not listening, and when I appear they all fall silent and look at me. To them, nothing has changed in the brief time since I last met them. They have no reason to treat me any differently, to trust me any more or less. For me, the entire world is new and old again. Everything is different. I hate it, but I must be strong, just for a little while.
"What's going on?" I ask them, trying to hide the agony I feel inside.
"We were explaining what we know," says Buffy from Angel's side. It is incredible that she can accept him even though she is fully aware of what he's done. Perhaps there's hope for me, though it has been many centuries since he first gained a soul. I hope I don't have to wait that long.
"And?"
"We think Jackie is intending to collapse the Wall, and let chaos destroy the city. We don't know exactly what she's got planned, but she's probably going to be quite close to the Wall itself in order to do it."
"But the Wall goes around this city for hundreds, if not thousands of kilometres," inputs Edward.
"Yeah, but she's not going to travel halfway across a continent when she could just as easily go to the part of the Wall nearest us. That gives us only a mile or two at most to search."
"Search how? For all we know she could have her ritual in progress already, and we have no idea how far away from the Wall she'll need to be. There is no way for us…"
They are silenced once again by the appearance of Kass at the back end of the room. Her eyes are red from the tears, but she has made an effort to hide this beneath cosmetics. She stares at me from across the room, and I try to communicate to her mentally how sorry I am for what I did to her and her daughter. Edward, concerned, quickly moves over to her.
"Kass, you shouldn't be here," he says softly. Angered, she rounds on him suddenly, and he backs up hastily. Her voice is loud, albeit slightly cracked, as she advances on him.
"Edward, if you think I'm going to wait here while my little girl tries to destroy the world, you've got another thing coming!" He holds up his hands before him as if that'll calm her temper, and luckily for him it does.
"Okay, Kass. Okay." She looks back at me and makes for me. I don't move. She's tried to kill me already, and a part of me hopes that she'll try again. I won't stop her. I look down, unable to make eye contact with her.
"Jericho," she says simply when she'd standing in front of me. "Jericho, look at me." I gather the courage to face her and bring my gaze in line with hers. "Jericho, I've thought hard about what happened. I'm not happy about it, but you could be helpful, and I think I'm almost ready to forgive you for what you did."
I look at her hopefully, hardly daring to believe what she is saying. The tremendous slap she gives me sends my eyes rolling in my head and my ears ringing. I can feel the scratch marks from her nails, but I don't smell any blood. I don't reach up to my cheek, merely turn my head round again so that she could hit me again if she wished. It's less than I deserve.
"Almost," she repeats a moment later. I nod once. That's fair.
I stand there for a while, letting the pain in my cheek distract me from the pain in my soul even as it reminds me of it. Kass stands like a statue, though maybe time has stopped moving for me for just a second.
I'm brought out of my concentration by the arrival of someone else at the entrance of the shop. It's not surprising that I didn't notice him approach, but from the looks of it, nobody else did either.
"I don't mean to interrupt your little bonding session, but I thought you might want to know where your wayward vampire-Slayer is." I don't recognise him, but the others do. Angel steps forward.
"Whistler? What do you know?"
"Willow went looking for her, despite my objections. Jackie's hiding in one of the old government buildings in the Franklin neighbourhood. It's abandoned, and the Wall cuts right through it. Should be obvious." He turns to walk away.
"Wait, aren't you coming?"
"You know me better than that, Angel. Besides, I have to go look after Willow."
"How is Willow?" asks Buffy nervously. I wonder if this person they're discussing is yet another old acquaintance of Spike's. They seem to be cropping up all over the place.
"Not well," says Whistler sadly. "These last few days have taken a lot out of her. We'll be rooting for you." He moves to walk off again, but Matt runs forward, unwilling to let him go.
"Hey, wait a sec." Whistler looks back over his shoulder.
"Thank you," says Matt with as much sincerity as I've ever heard from him. "For everything." Whistler, who I now guess is the one that knocked some sense into Matt before this whole Jackie thing started, nods quickly then disappears into the night.