Gerard Roland leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, clad in a cobalt-blue chain-knit sweater and impeccable light-gray slacks. He nodded to the Slayer. "Hello. It's good to see you."
Buffy turned to Giles. "What gives? I'm feeling very out-of-the-loopy here."
Roland straightened. "Perhaps we should let Rupert finish dressing?"
"What's the obsession with Giles putting on a shirt with buttons?" The Slayer cast a glance at her Watcher, who responded by going up the stairs. She turned back to his comrade, who had stepped into the living room.
"Please have a seat," Roland said, extending a hand toward the sofa.
"For some reason, I feel like standing," Buffy responded. Roland frowned and half-stepped back.
"Excuse me?"
"I think I'll stand."
He shrugged and sat down in a chair. "Very well."
"What is going on?" Buffy turned; Giles stood at the bottom of the stairs, hair combed and dressed in a blue oxford button-down. "Is everything all right?"
Roland pressed his palms together and tapped his chin. "I believe the Slayer is upset with me."
"Buffy?" Giles's voice was as puzzled as his expression.
Her face darkened. "Why is he here now? We needed him after Lindsay died… when Faith… but he boned and bailed." She shot dagger-eyes at the Canadian Watcher. "Nice job."
"Buffy!" Giles's voice sharpened.
Roland stood up from the couch. "I'm afraid I don't understand. Ms. Maeda's death was a tragedy, no one disputes that, but she was an adult."
Buffy whirled, hair fanning out around her face. "Yeah, but you were an adult a lot longer. She needed the people she… trusted… to be there, not to leave her all alone."
Roland held up his hands in a 'what could I do' gesture. "She was not alone. Rupert was here, and I had my own responsibilities." He shook his head. "Her murder was shocking, but I don't believe I would have prevented it."
"You sonofabitch." Buffy took a hard step forward, and the look on her face caused Roland to go pale even as Giles stepped between them. "You wanna say that again?"
"Buffy? Buffy." Giles's voice was firm, but quiet and gentle. "Buffy. Look at me."
The Slayer shifted her gaze to her Watcher and realized that her vision was slightly blurry.
"Buffy." Giles put tentative hands on her shoulders. "Perhaps we should, as you say, take a beat here." He bent down and stared into her eyes. "Are you all right?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" She swiped at her nose with the back of a hand.
The librarian opened his mouth, hesitated, then made a patting motion in the air before he turned to Roland. "Gerard, emotions are obviously running very high. Perhaps we should… reset the board." He looked at the Slayer. "Attacking each other will accomplish nothing positive, agreed?"
Buffy glared at him for a heartbeat, then grumbled "Agreed. Under protest."
"All-All right, let's just have a seat… yes, Buffy, you over there, Gerard… Now…" Giles lowered himself onto an armchair. "Buffy, I apologize. I should have called you… or, at least, your mother." He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt sleeve. "If you had done something similar, I would have been very upset, so, again, I apologize."
Buffy's scowl deepened slightly. "Okay, but why the cone of silence?"
The Watcher took his time putting on his glasses. "Buffy, do you remember when I told you that the Council headquarters had been destroyed?"
The Slayer snorted. "Duh. Stuff like that doesn't vanish down the memory hole."
"Well, I may have… underplayed the situation."
"Underplayed… how?"
Giles concentrated on picking at some flaw in the fabric covering the arm of his chair. "It was more than just an attack. For all intents and purposes, there is no longer a Watchers Council."
"Wait, what? That's underplaying?" Buffy shook her head like a boxer just tagged with a hard left. "Aren't there, like, dozens of you guys? How big was that explosion?"
"A… A sizable number of Watchers were killed," Giles murmured. "And the survivors are… there is a great deal of mistrust."
"Well, then, why…" Buffy tipped her head toward Roland.
He leaned forward. "Our main repository of lore has been destroyed, and our remaining members are reluctant to share their personal volumes."
The Slayer turned to her Watcher. "But you've got books."
Giles shook his head. "I have almost no works on Jewish arcana. The majority of my collection contains no information on the Seal, and what I do have is mostly secondary reference."
"Okay, I'm going to just gloss over the geekness of an existential crisis caused by a lack of books and circle back to my original question… why is he here?"
Roland shrugged. "My friend asked for my help."
The Slayer's eye narrowed. "Don't you teach at a college or something?"
He waved a hand dismissively. "A short leave of absence was simple to arrange."
Buffy looked back and forth between the two men; Roland met her gaze directly, but Giles kept looking down at the arm of his chair. She stood and paused, but neither man said anything. "Well," she said to Giles, "I guess you're okay, so I'm not going to spend the rest of my Saturday here."
"Here, let me walk you to the gate." Giles scrambled out of his chair. Buffy gave him a slightly cock-eyed look as they crossed the room. The librarian opened the front door and they stepped out into the kind of spring morning that made moving to California part of the American dream.
"Are you quite sure that you're all right?" Giles said.
"Why do you keep asking me that?" the Slayer replied. "I'm not the one with the current case of flakeage."
Giles looked down as he scuffed his shoes. "It appears that you might be… conflating several situations."
"I'm not inflating anything, Giles. I'm telling it exactly the way it is."
He swallowed. "I mean that you seem to be mingling Lindsay and Faith's situations… with yours."
There was a moment of ozone-tinged silence, then Buffy rubbed her cheeks. "Okay, some spots might be a little… tender." She sniffed. "Maybe I was a little judgy."
Her Watcher nodded. "Yes, and… I do apologize. Not notifying you was… inexcusable."
Buffy frowned. "Giles, I was worried, but the Uriah Heep act is a bit much."
"I–" Giles looked up. "You've read David Copperfield?"
She rolled her eyes hard enough to sprain her forehead. "Are you still unfamiliar with the concept of movies made from books?" She headed toward the gate. Her Watcher followed.
"Of course." Giles bit his lip and stared at her until the Slayer felt slightly uncomfortable. "I… I wasn't quite honest with you, before." He took a shaky breath. "Gerard is here to provide research assistance, it's true, but that is not why he is here. He has uncovered information that he felt could only be delivered in person."
"We knew the Seal was a big deal." She placed her hand on the gate.
"It's not about the Seal. Buffy, some time ago, I became privy to information that suggested that a faction within the Council had manipulated the selection process." The librarian wrung his hands. "It seems that Lindsay was not meant to be Faith's Watcher."
Buffy stared into her Watcher's miserable face. "What? Giles, that means what happened was a set-up… they left her hung out to dry. Those–" She started to step around her Watcher, who moved into her path. She glared at him. "I take back what I said about being judgy."
"Gerard had nothing to do with it," the librarian said. "And, as terrible as that is, it may only be part of a larger pattern…"
"Giles, what's going on? The only way this could be more cloak and dagger is if you actually... wore a cloak and dagger."
"I am saying that it was not an isolated incident, that the Council seems to have been corrupt at a much deeper level, and it did not begin with Desmond Kirkland. Gerard has discovered evidence of… bribery, dabblings in forbidden magics, Slayers manipulated to act as agents of governments and corporations… horrible, horrible abuses of our trust…" Giles whipped off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Buffy stood rooted to the spot, thunderstruck. The Watcher replaced the spectacles, a grim expression on his face.
"Okay, Giles, so the Watchers don't have clean hands, but how–"
"In the seventeenth century, a Watcher accepted a bribe from the Dutch West India Company. The Dutch West India Company had jurisdiction over the Atlantic slave trade."
"Ick. You mean she–"
Giles nodded. "Yes. She trusted him, and she ended up a tool of slavers." He looked stricken. "That is only one example. There are many, many others. It was all a sham."
"What? Dramatic much?" Buffy spread her arms wide. "How many Slayers have there been in history? How many Watchers? Law of averages says there'll be some bad apples."
"Not when it's this important! Not when you hold a sacred trust! My family was dedicated to the Watchers for three generations. It was my purpose." Giles's words hissed out, his fist clenched in front of him as though he grasped a poisonous secret he would not release. "To find out it was all a lie–" His voice cut off and his expression turned grim.
Buffy looked quizzical. "Stop saying that. It wasn't a lie."
"But the Council–"
"So, the Watchers Council turned out shady. I didn't pay much attention to what they said before, so who cares now? You're my Watcher… and that's not a lie."
"But I–"
"Giles." Buffy ducked low so she could look up into his face, "you are my Watcher. I don't care what happened three hundred years ago, or three thousand. I live here, now, and for whatever reason, I've got these abilities, and if the Watcher's Council was nothing but a bunch of crooks, they still brought us together, and I don't know what I'd do without you. So, stop your sobbing and let's figure out what's going on. And don't leave me hanging again."
Giles nodded sharply. "The Pretenders?"
Buffy shrugged. "I guess."
"It was creepy," Buffy said. "No, it was beyond creepy. If creepy was here–" she held one hand directly in front of her "-then this was here." She extended her other arm as far as it would reach. The Slayer and her friend walked across the quad as the fountain gurgled merrily.
"Wow," Willow said. "So, Giles was really wiggy."
"Uber-wiggy. Nicolas Cage in Con Air wiggy."
"Ew." Willow shuddered.
"Indeed." Buffy put a light hand on Willow's arm. "But, total honesty, it might have been a little bit my fault."
"How so?" Willow wore a navy blue ringer tee with red trim. Her hair was held back by matching butterfly barrettes and it swung around her neck as she looked over at the Slayer.
"Well, you know how Roland and Lindsay did the deed?" Buffy made a regretful face. "I went there." The Slayer's hair was up in a loose topknot; she wore a lilac blouse over a black skirt. White canvas sneakers completed the outfit.
"Ew," Willow repeated. "Uncomfortable much?"
Buffy's eyes opened as wide as possible. "Much. Muchly. Much-est."
"Well, why did you do that?" Willow hugged her textbooks and cast a sidelong glance at the Slayer.
Buffy shrugged and kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk. "Giles pointed out that I might, maybe, be confusing what happened to them with my… misadventures."
"You think that's right?" Willow cast a skeptical frown toward her friend.
"I don't know." The Slayer threw back her head and sighed. "I think I'm dealing, then something happens and… boom, psycho killer, I mean, full-on Talking Heads."
"Any particular triggerage?"
"Not that I can tell. It sneaks up on me." Buffy shook her head. "You'd think it'd be about… you know."
Willow nodded, her eyes narrowed in concern as she scanned her friend's face. "Uh-huh."
"But it's not… not that that's not a thing, but… I think about Faith, how alike we are and how she must feel, because I felt that, and how we both ran away, and I wonder if she'll ever come back, and if she doesn't... why did I?"
"That's a freight train full of fear," Willow acknowledged.
"Barrelin' down the track," Buffy sighed.
"It's like that poem we read in English 3," Willow said.
"Which… poem?"
"Design. Robert Frost?"
Buffy shook her head. "The bell, it is not ringing."
"You know, the one about the spider and the moth on the white flower?"
"Oh, yeah, that one."
"And what was the theme?"
"Something about… I don't know, okay?" The Slayer wrinkled her nose at her friend.
"Frost wondered what caused the moth to land on the flower to get killed by the spider."
Buffy stopped and turned to face the redhead. "And am I supposed to be the spider or the moth?"
Willow sighed. "Neither one. The question is why did the spider and the moth end up on the flower, or is there even a why? Which is worse, a universe with a plan that ends up with a dead moth, or a universe where a moth just ends up dead for no reason?"
"I know I shouldn't ask this, because I'm going to hate the answer, but again, me, how?"
"Well, it's scary either way, isn't it? If there's some sort of plan, why you but not Faith? And if there's no plan, same question?" Willow's eyes widened and her mouth turned down. "Spookage either way."
Buffy squinted. "Well, thank you, philosophy girl, for not helping at all."
Willow grinned and her eyes crinkled. "I try."
Willow glanced up and down the hall. Student traffic was fairly light, and no one paid any attention to her. She tried to look as nonchalant as possible as she eased open the door, then slipped inside.
The computer lab was empty, and Willow exhaled in relief. She had prepared an excuse just in case the teacher was there, but it was his prep period and the classroom was empty. She hurried to a terminal and fired it up, then quickly tapped in a web address. Images flashed onto the screen and she bent forward for a closer view–
"What are you looking at?" Indali Patel leaned over Willow's shoulder. The redheaded witch jumped, startled.
"Oh, nothing," she said. "Or, something, but something totally not shady. You just scared me a little."
"Is that a Pantone color chart?" Indali leaned closer to the monitor, then looked back at Willow. "You must explain this."
"You should explain why you're in the computer lab," Willow retorted.
"I became suspicious when I glanced through the window and saw a monitor was turned on. That, and the shadowy figure lurking in the dark." Indali raised her eyebrows.
"Okay, bluff called. It's actually a Rit chart." Willow blushed.
Indali waited, but no further information was forthcoming. "And?"
"I'm dyeing my shoes for prom." Willow's shoulders hunched ever so slightly.
"You're dyeing your shoes for prom."
"I already said that."
"I know. I just wanted to make sure I heard it. Why? Can't you just buy shoes?"
"It's a thing," Willow said. "I've got a pair of white Converse and I'm dyeing them to match my dress."
"Sneakers and a prom dress."
"Like I said, it's a thing."
Indali nodded. "So… what is the thing?"
Willow thought, her face twisted in concentration. "It's not, like, a manifesto or anything. I just wanted to do something a little different… and I hate heels."
"I get that." Indali sat in an empty chair. She wore a cream-colored polo over black slacks. "They're really bad for your feet. So, you're looking to shake it up a bit, but not too much."
"I guess." Willow twisted in her chair to face the other girl. "So, are you going to prom?"
"What, me? God, no." Indali shook her head.
"Oh, why not?"
Indali laughed. "Let's see… I'm Hindu… my skin color isn't from a tanning bed… and I'm smart." She flashed a snarky smile. "The trifecta of undesirability."
Willow frowned, her nose wrinkling. "You could just go."
"Yeah, right." Indali laid a hand on Willow's arm. "It's okay. I'm not angry or jealous or anything. Prom's just… not something that's on my bucket list." She stood up. "You have a good time… and rock those sneakers."
Willow watched Indali leave, then turned back to the computer and powered it off.
Michelle Michaels floated through the hall surrounded by a halo of golden light: the fluorescents really lit up her hair, her beautiful, beautiful hair, thick and straight, just a smidge darker than true platinum, and falling to the small of her back…
Which was, admittedly, not a long fall, because, one a warm day with maximum expansion due to heat possible, Michelle stood a shade over five-two. Her standard response to observations about her height, or lack thereof, was "I gotta be short, because if I was five-seven, the world couldn't stand all this fineness."
She was between classes, but she had to use the bathroom and, even if she was tardy, it wasn't like it mattered; the most she would get after offering a regretful smile and a winsome "Sorry I'm late" was a stern (!?) 'Don't let it happen again". Which it would, but who cared?
As she put her hand on the bathroom door, she shivered just a little. An off-kilter keening hummed through the bathroom door. Michelle's lips puckered as she pushed the door open. Her foot slipped on something gritty and she glanced down. Crappy school: the janitors couldn't even sweep the floors properly. She looked around and sniffed. There was a funky odor in the air, but not bathroom funky… more like mushrooms (which wasn't that odd, come to think of it). The sound wasn't any louder, but it seemed more penetrating. It seemed to be coming from one of the stalls near the back of the room. She bent over, but couldn't see any feet. She frowned and stopped at each stall, listening. The sound grew, until Michelle stood at the last stall. The flesh on her arms and neck prickled, her scalp felt tight, yet she could not restrain herself from reaching out and pushing open the door.
The girl sat on the toilet, knees pulled up, long dark hair over her face. The sound filled the air as Michelle opened her mouth.
"Hey, she said, "are you all right?"
The girl's head snapped up and what burned in those eyes froze Michelle Michaels for a heartbeat before she spun to run out of the bathroom, but the heartbeat and her hair were her undoing. As she took her first step, a strong hand grasped the thick blond locks, twisted, and yanked. Michelle flew backwards, and stars exploded in her vision as the back of her head smashed into the tiled wall, then the hand jerked, snapping her head forward like a cracking whip, and she saw the corner of the stall door rushing toward her, and felt a grinding snap in her mouth as her face slammed into the post. A brilliant white starburst of pain detonated inside her head and a strange looseness overtook her body, and as the blackness rose up to swallow her, her last thought was I've broken a tooth and peed my pants. This is awful… and then she went dark.
The scream snapped Buffy out of her lecture-induced torpor. As one, the class rose and surged toward the door, but before the teacher could admonish everyone to stay seated, the Slayer was out the door. She turned left, the scream had come from that direction. As Buffy sprinted down the hall, the bathroom door flew open. Cordelia tore into the hallway and their eyes met for a split-second, then the brunette was past her, running toward the office. Buffy hesitated, then pushed through into the restroom.
She had seen the girl lying on the floor, at the dress shop, Willow said her name was… Michelle. Michelle was in a world of hurt: one eye was swollen shut, and the services of Sunnydale's finest medical professionals would be required to fix those shattered teeth and straighten that broken nose. Blood oozed from a gash on her forehead, but she seemed to be bleeding from the back of her head, too. She was semi-conscious, but she moaned as Buffy knelt beside her.
"Michelle!" The skin crawled on the back of the Slayer's neck, but she didn't look up or around. "What happened? Who did this?"
The tiny blonde girl's eyes tried to focus, but only succeeded in pointing in slightly different directions. "Hair." Her words were slurred and fuzzy. "So much hair. So long. So dark. Roller skates. Cordelia." Her eyes rolled up in her head just as Buffy heard Principal Snyder's voice.
"This is Principal Snyder. I am about to enter the girl's restroom. The school nurse is with me." Buffy kept scanning Michelle's slack body, looking for clues until she heard Snyder say, "Oh, I'm… wait, Summers? What are you doing in here?"
The Slayer got to her feet and turned toward the principal. Adopting her sweetest voice, she said, "Oh, you know... girl stuff."
