Come On
Chapter Three
London, 2006Wesley had finally sent her the samples of Dawn's hair and blood at her asking, hesitant until Giles had vouched for her. Ever the faithful Watcher to the one thing that had to be sheltered, he was becoming almost paranoid in his training and protectiveness of the younger Summers sister, wary whenever anyone connected to the new Council stepped forth for something from Dawn, unless Giles spoke up.
Not that she could blame him in the slightest, though, especially not with what those idiots at the Council had tried to do when they found out she'd begun to show symptoms of her true nature, something they were becoming obsessed with. After all, it looked like the era of the Slayers was ending now, after all these millennia.
Why wouldn't they want the Key?
In slacks and a long-sleeved top, she set the mug of coffee at the table before taking a seat and flipping through her notes, once again eying the test results. Same as before she noted with a hint of a smile, the beginning of delight making her eyes sparkle the smallest bit in the early morning.
Giles would have a right to be smug, she decided as the hint became a full-blown smile and she set the papers aside, leaning back in her seat and beginning to drink her coffee. There'd never been anything like this but it made sense didn't it? You couldn't create a life from just one source. It didn't work like that, something even the coven in Cleveland agreed with, sometimes with a hint of reluctance.
Now, the question was finding out who had been used to make Dawn with Buffy's essence.
Seattle
Setting the last plate on the tray, Maggie finally looked up at the eyes that had been watching her for the last ten minutes, never wavering no matter how often she had tried to throw him off. He didn't look the slightest bit ashamed that she had caught him at his stare, just lifted an eyebrow in amusement before wiggling two fingers in greeting.
With the tray against her hip, she headed over, noting the way he leaned more against the booth, hooking his arms across the back and regarding her with dark eyes that were carefully vacant of anything other than something playful and boyish, something harmless and innocent that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, not out of fear but of a wary warning to watch herself around him.
Dangerous.
It bloomed in her mind, bloomed until there was nothing else and she rarely had these moments, these heartbeats of absolute, almost frightening clarity that she'd never had before 2003, before the night that she'd woken up in tears, something dark and horrible tearing into her mind and her memories as she listened, shaking and shivering and sobbing in her bed, to the screaming.
Dangerous or not though, he was the customer and she shifted her weight, finally asking as lightly as she could, "Anything you need?"
"Nope." He nodded to the remains of some feast, two plates and three empty glasses, nothing left in or on any of them; without taking her eyes off him, she placed the tray on the table and began to clean it off, carefully stacking and organizing each as he motioned with his chin to what she hoped was her name tag. "Maggie, huh?"
"Yes." She lifted the tray again, balancing it carefully for a moment before relaxing, holding it easily with one arm, not a single shake or waver to show how heavy it really was, something she regretted when she caught the way he was looking at her arm. Pretending to be weak was something she'd never gotten the hang of and she found that most of her trouble was caused by people who got curious about her impressive show of strength.
"Isn't that heavy?" The remark, innocent as it sounded was anything but and she gave him a chilly look, brown gaze becoming wintry. He simply continued to regard her with that almost maddening playfulness, that disturbingly perfect innocence that was setting off every warning bell she had. "No, not really."
She left then, leaving him to sit there and took the dishes back to be cleaned and sanitized by Bill, still wary over him but knowing full well that she could break him as easily as a normal woman would break a pencil. But she still didn't come out from the back until he had left, dialing a number into his cell phone as he did.
"For the fifth time, yes, it was her," Jonathon snapped, becoming weary of the constant insistence that he could not possibly have met her in a restaurant with her flinging plates. Leaning against his car, hand in the pocket of his jeans, he eyed the outside of the restaurant with dark eyes, considering.
"Look, it was Maggie Stone, I'm sure of it— No, you idiot, it isn't the other one." He paused, and then rolled his eyes in disgust. "Have you forgotten the whole 'broken neck' thing, huh? This isn't Frankie. This is Maggie, the other one… yeah, the survivor… yes, I'm sure… I'd bet money on it…"
He fell silent listening for a minute or so more, his gaze still on the building and head cocked in thoughtfulness before he finally interrupted, voice sharper, edged, when he answered, "Trust me… I know" before snapping it shut and turning, opening the door to his car and dropping in, setting the phone aside.
He cast one more glance at the building, one last careful memorization of it before he nodded to himself and started the ignition, waiting for the return call and what it would provide for him. That was Maggie Stone, of that he had no doubt and, being a man of decisions, he made one now and began thinking up ways to find Maggie Stone outside of work.
Cleveland
"The Big Game?" he asked again, once more, just to be sure of what Faith was telling him. "Are you sure he wasn't talking about some baseball game or something? I mean, he was wearing a bathrobe and taking out his trash." At Faith's aggrieved sigh and muttered swear, he nodded to himself and quickly noted in the margins of the notebook 'Don't piss off Faith, even miles apart'.
"I admit to being completely baffled by whatever this is. I mean, the Big game? It makes no sense to me but when does anything ever make any sense—don't answer that," he added quickly, hearing the sharp intake of breath and knowing that she would just to try to make him cringe.
"Aw, Rupert, you know me so well."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" He hesitated, considering before cautiously asking, "What have you done to Andrew now?"
"What?" she asked and the innocent act was so apparent that his fillings begin to throb in irritation, and he rubbed his face in annoyance, gathering his wits before he replied with a rather rude snap of, "He called up a few nights ago in tears and babbling something or other about how you went after his D&D game?"
A long silence, and he knew full well that the young woman was fighting too keep from laughing out loud at the expense of the young man no doubt listening in. "I didn't know he found that yet. I decided to do a sneak attack and went after that stupid game and the costume the same night. So he found the game… where?"
"Under his bed. You hid it under his bed, Faith?"
"Uh-huh."
"Faith…" He stopped, flustered before forcing himself to grind out, "You are a Slayer and a good one at that, even when you are slightly homicidal—"
"Thanks for that."
"The point is, Faith, that you are a Champion, a fighter for the good, not a high school student enacting out the Battle of the Nerds. Just because Andrew has the maturity level of a five year old does not mean that you have to sink to his level. My God, you're as bad as Xander… is it any wonder Willow and I had to separate those two like we did?"
"I'm not gonna be enacting the scene from 'Weird Science' anytime soon with a bra on my head, Giles."
Quickly squashing down that disturbing and all-too fresh memory in his head, Giles cleared his throat once or twice before managing to choke out, "Be sure you don't!" before slamming the phone down, wishing there was some way to shove the young man on someone else. He would die before he let Xander get close to him again because that, with the bras and the chanting in Klingon…
With another shudder, he began to come up with names and numbers of contacts, anyone who could help him figure out the meaning of this 'Big Game' and why Buffy needed to be told about it… only he could retire and end up with more work than ever before.
Seattle
Erica had accepted, after many weary hours of arguing and bickering that Bianca had been right in her decision to move back to Seattle, and not just to attend Travis' funeral. She hadn't been there when her father had been killed and for that, she'd always be sorry, sorry she hadn't made it to the hospital in time to say good bye, the only one of his children to not say good-bye.
When Erica had announced that she was going to open a new branch of Enchantment in the city where Bianca had lived, she had seen right through her mother's defenses and, while she'd been a bit weary of the Kane's real motives, she had taken her mother's offer to keep hold on that branch.
Under Bianca's control, and of course with Greenlee and Kendall's tutelage in the background, the investment her mother had made had paid off beyond her wildest dreams and she was fast making her mother's every dream and hope for her come true. And, on some level, she was enjoying it as well, just not as much as her mother.
The original terror felt when she'd realized just what it was she was undertaking had acted almost like a drug, keeping her border-line excited no matter how calm she felt and each early decision, even knowing that Greenlee and Kendall had given her the right hints, had filled her with a tightness in the chest and a tingle in her skin until she heard that it had been a success.
Now, though, Bianca found herself feeling mired, felt like she was stuck in one place, tied down and helpless while her entire life passed her by. She was still young, not yet in her prime and she was already terrified of being nothing but a cog in the machine, something that could be replaced as easily as some old piece of equipment when she stopped doing what she was supposed to do.
Now, sitting at her desk, arms folded and head resting on them, eyes closed, she had kicked off her pumps and shed her blazer, dropping it to the side as she dropped her head softly to the desk. She hadn't moved in an hour, at least, and while she knew she had better things to do then mope, she couldn't quite gather the attention to get up and about.
The headache, a dull throbbing at the edges of her consciousness growing with each faint beat, wasn't helping matters and she was unwilling to take another pill for it. She'd thought that the headaches she'd suffered as a child were bad but they were nothing compared to the ones she got these days, monstrous things that she could feel coming on hours in advance but could do nothing to prevent.
Between the pain and the dreams, she was not going to tell Dr. Jameson anything about the people, she was finding herself talking to in the middle of the day. She wasn't crazy, wasn't mentally incompetent and the thought of someone throwing her in a rubber room and throwing away the key was almost more than she could bear.
With a grimace, but propelled by that disturbing thought, Bianca raised her head from the table slowly, swallowing as her world tipped and swayed in warning. Finally, with her back against her chair, she let out her breath, the pressure easing for a moment or two in her skull when she stilled. It wasn't much, not nearly enough, but she took the chance she had and picked up her phone, dialing quickly before once again closing her eyes to the bright lights of her office.
"Fusion, this is Simone speaking."
Flinching at the noise, Bianca yanked her phone over and fiddled with the side, finally managing to turn it down to a bare murmur, just enough to hear but not enough to do that to her head again. "Simone, this is Bianca. Is Greenlee there? I need to talk to her." A moment or two of silence and then Simone's chipper response of "Yeah, let me go get her" followed by another, longer pause before she heard Greenlee finally pick up.
"You wanna talk to Kendall?" Even over the phone, her voice was a mix of boredom and annoyance, no doubt tired of being interrupted in her work of throwing paper airplanes with Kendall and then getting in a fight over her made the better one. Bianca knew this for a fact, having been attacked by one of Greenlee's planes several months before when visiting the older women for a day of shopping and lunch.
It had taken a good fifteen minutes for all three of the cosmetic connoisseurs to get the folded paper out of Bianca's dark mane of hair and then another ten minutes to get her eye, struck badly by the nose of the doomed flight, to stop tearing up. The rest of the day had been spent listening to them snark at each about how it was, of course, the other woman's fault. "No," she started quickly, "No, I actually need David's work number. I mean, I can't reach him at your place and he isn't answering the cabin number."
"He went to work early this morning. One of the other surgeons is out and there's this big surgery on some old guy," Greenlee commented lightly and Bianca found an edge of amusement further easing her headache at how she said 'old guy'. "Plus, he's still recovering from that convention thing too."
"Convention thing?" Bianca echoed, slight curiosity brightening her effectively from her mood just a few moments before and deciding to keep it as long as she could.
"Yep." Bianca heard the click of heels and then a smack and a yelp that was without a doubt Simone. "Don't roll you eyes at your boss, employee. I'm telling you Bianca, trying to find good workers these days… Anyway, David was the guest speaker and everything and he got this plaque."
"Well, he is world-famous," Bianca noted absently, thumbing the cord of the phone thoughtfully, "So, can I get his number or can he call me tonight?"
"Yeah…" Yet another pause and then her voice came back and Bianca would bet money that the petite woman was nodding to herself. "He usually calls me when he gets out of surgery so I'll tell him that you called. You know he'll get back to you as soon as he can."
"Yeah, of course… just please don't forget…"
"Don't worry, I won't," Greenlee assured her and then asked, definite curiosity in her voice, "you feel okay? I can track down Kendall if you want. Want me to?"
"No, no… no, I'm fine, really, just don't forget to tell David I called… I gotta go, back to the daily grind so…"
"Yeah, of course—"
Bianca hung up, sitting back in her chair and staring at the phone for long moments, biting her lip. Life in Pine Valley had gone on without her, marriages and divorces and break-ups and everything else and she found herself oddly hurt by it. Sure she visited every once in a while and god knew her cousin and sister took every chance they had to come to the Seattle stores but the point was, she still felt oddly alone.
"Well, you wouldn't have to if you'd talk to me."
Bianca snapped her head up, staring at her for long moments, glaring, and finally snapped, "You're not real, okay? David's gonna figure out what's wrong with my head and fix it and you won't exist anymore. Not that that's saying much because you don't exist now."
"Just because a girl's dead doesn't mean we can't be useful, productive members of society, you know." Standing before Bianca's desk, she regarded Bianca with a mix of frustration and anger, arms crossed over her chest and eyes narrowed. "You might be able to scare away those others but I'm the long haul, baby and you're stuck with me."
Bianca slammed her hand down on the table, gasping at the pain but not any less angry. "Only until I figure out what's wrong with me. It's probably some kind of weird imbalance or something, something chemical maybe and I'll fix it. And when I do, you will show yourself to be exactly what I tell you, you are a figment of my imagination."
"Isn't it funny how now that I'm here that headache got better?" she snapped, and the smirk on her face was both pleased and angry, moving her hands to her hips and leaning back, stepping around the desk to observe Bianca more easily. "You're fighting us and we are going to keep fighting back and those headaches aren't going to stop until you stop being like this."
"You're not real!"
"Really, you're a doll, you know that? Here I am, trying to help you and protect you and what do I get? Yelled at…" She turned away, slinking around the table, although her gaze never left the young woman glaring at her in the chair. "I am trying to help you, why won't you believe that? You, what you're doing right now? All you're doing is hurting yourself, okay? If you keep doing this, some really unpleasant things are gonna worm their way into that pretty little head of yours and do some really unpleasant things."
"It's a headache," Bianca ground out but the woman, the thing that looked like a woman, snorted quietly. "And it keeps getting worse. The harder you fight us, the more damage you do to your head. It's something about your brain cells or something… I don't know exactly, Cordy just said that you have to let me help you. Hey, at least I'm good-looking; she wanted to send some Irish guy with bad fashion sense."
"Go away!" she shrieked and threw the phone, the heavy plastic machine hitting the carpet hard enough to send bits of white pieces scattering across it. Falling back into her seat, she swept her eyes around the office; searching for any hints of this 'person' and finding none, something that made her eyes close in quiet relief.
Five minutes later, her headache came back.