Author's Note: I bought an electric fireplace for the hotel today! It was $35, which is more than I'm used to spending on interior design things I know nothing about, but I think it was worth it. I hope so, at least. I think it'll make the lobby really classy.

Anyways, enjoy this next short story!

(No summary, this time, because it's so short.)


Fly

.

"You know what's the most annoying thing about you?" said Glory, lunging forwards and plucking the Doctor out of his hiding place. "You never die. You're like that fly that keeps buzzing around that you just can't swat!"

"I'm a fly," the Doctor repeated. He nodded at the minions behind him. "And what are they, then?"

"My boys," Glory said. She gave a smile. "And they love me." She glanced over at them, her smile draining into something cold and icy. "Don't they?"

"Oh, yes, glorious, splendid, magnificent, all-exultant—"

"Bit fewer now than there were when we first met," the Doctor noted.

Glory gritted her teeth, because this had been something she'd noticed as well. Ever since the Doctor had come on the scene, a slow but steady trickle of her minions had been disappearing. Vanishing, as if into thin air.

"Some of us have turned traitor, and fled the power and might of our all-seeing, all-knowing Glorificus," said one of the minions. "But we know that our wondiferous, miraculous, imperial—"

"I know what you've been doing," Glory said to the Doctor. "Convincing my minions to leave me. Don't think I haven't noticed. When I'm a goddess, again, I'm going to hunt down anyone who's turned against me and make sure they die in the most horrible agony."

"Who?" the Doctor asked her.

Glory blinked. "What?"

"Who are you going to hunt down?" the Doctor asked, again. "Specifically, who? What are their names?"

"They don't have names!" Glory screamed. "Are you insane? They don't need names! They're just my minions!"

The Doctor glanced over his shoulder at the minions. "I suppose you believe they all look the same, too."

"Yes!" Glory snapped.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows at the minions. "See what she thinks of you? How's she going to know, when she punishes the ones who left? What if she punishes you lot, instead?"

"Our goddess is all-knowing!" one of the minions shouted.

"Doesn't know where the Key is, does she?" the Doctor asked.

The minions all hesitated. Glory, in a fit of rage, snapped the Doctor's neck. A flood of gold energy rippled across his skin, down her arms, and… no, no, it wasn't supposed to do that… it was rebuilding Ben, replacing her with him, killing her off bit by bit, burning her away, until…

Time reconfigured itself, and the Doctor was gone. And alive. As always. Everything was back to the way it would have been if the Doctor had never come to Sunnydale.

Except for Glory's minions.

There were still fewer.


"Why do you keep torturing me?" Glory demanded of the Doctor, as she strung him up and poked around at his insides, making him writhe in agony.

"I'm not coming back for you," the Doctor hissed, through gritted teeth. "You don't matter."

Glory twisted his respiratory bypass system in a way that made him howl.

That night, she was three more minions down.


"Why do they keep running off with him?" Glory demanded of her faithful minions.

"They simply do not understand the effulgent radiance of your sublime, resplendent—"

"I mean, I keep beating him," Glory interrupted, getting up from her couch and pacing the ornate room. "I keep hurting him. I keep killing him — not that that helps. But they just keep leaving me!"

One of the minions shuffled, slightly. "Well, maybe… I mean, not to put down your illustrious, marvelous, majestic—"

"Cut to the point, shorty," Glory snapped.

"He's sort of… well, nice," the minion admitted.

Glory stopped in her pacing. "Huh?"

"Not that I believe one word of his lies, or have even considered listening to his traitorous words, but… he asks us our names," the minion said. "He talks to us like we're real people."

"Are you stupid?" Glory demanded. She kicked the minion in the stomach, slamming him against the wall. "You're not real people! You don't have names! Your only purpose is to serve me!"

There was silence for a moment.

"I have a name," one of the minions on the far side of the room offered.

Glory spun around to glare at the minion that had dared to speak and defy her will. In two strides, she'd picked the minion up and snapped his neck. She looked around at the others. "Anyone else think they've got a name?"

And Glory had absolutely no idea why, later that day, she found ten more minions missing.


"You're not even making a dent in my minions, you know," said Glory, as she cut the knife blade across the Doctor's torso. "I've got tons more! And on my day of victory, I will crush you and all you've gathered against me."

"Been said before."

Glory thrust the knife blade deeper into his shoulder, until he hissed in pain.

"You just don't get that you're nothing to me!" said Glory. "Less than nothing! You don't matter!"

The Doctor just grinned. Because he knew she was lying.

And every second he kept Glory distracted was one more second that Buffy and Dawn weren't in peril. Every second he kept Glory fixated on him was one more second that Buffy and Dawn could live their own lives. Every second he kept Glory intent on making his life miserable was another moment less that she had to work out how to kill Dawn and end the universe.

And every second that Glory tortured the Doctor, she was making his point to her minions.

He always came back for them, those poor abused people that Glory employed as slaves. He would always keep coming back for them, giving them a chance to choose a better way, giving them freedom and happiness and a way to escape their Mistress. He would always return for them.

Because he was the Doctor.

And he could save them.