Chapter 2
Los Angeles
"Please tell me that they had a reason for not telling me," Angel said.
Once he had learned from Cordelia that Buffy was alive, Angel had almost felt like his heart was beating. He'd spent the last few months certain that he had managed to get past her death; the fact that she was alive proved he'd been fooling himself.
Then reality had set in. Cordelia and Wesley had been the funeral. There had been a viewing. Buffy had been buried and had been underground for at least two to three months. This was not the same as being dead for a few minutes. Angel knew that there were ways to bring someone back from the dead – Darla was just the most recent in a long line of examples - and he was well aware that all of them often made the 'beneficiary' wish they'd stayed that way.
Angel remembered he had read Pet Sematary and had come across the warning: "Sometimes, dead is better." For a long time he had wondered if Stephen King had some personal line to the supernatural that none of them had been aware of – Salem's Lot had been a twentieth century version of how vampires had destroyed small towns centuries ago, and the town of Derry had almost seemed like it was a New England equivalent of Sunnydale. This book had explained in the bleakest possible terms what happened when the dead were brought back to life – and Gage Creed brought up memories that were among the worst of his long life.
He would have thought that the Scoobies, having spent the past five years on the Hellmouth, would have learned that lesson by now. He had forgotten just how young they were, even by human terms. Perhaps that was why they had kept quiet all these months – as much as they knew how much Angel and his friends loved Buffy, they had known just as well how enraged they would be.
"Are there any reasons that would have been good enough?" Wesley was maintaining a calm façade, but it was clear he was as disturbed – and infuriated – by this as Angel was.
"I knew the lines of communication had gone down when they didn't tell me what happened to Harmony," Cordelia wasn't even bothering with the front. "I guess we should be grateful Buffy didn't just show up at the Hyperion shouting 'surprise!"
Fred, the only person who didn't know Buffy at all, was trying to maintain her scientific detachment. "Did they tell you how they did this? Please tell me they didn't…"
Cordelia calmed down a little. "Are you kidding? That was literally her worst nightmare. Even Xander would never be that desperate."
"It doesn't matter. The only way they could have brought Buffy involves the darkest of dark magic," Angel said softly.
"Are we talking zombies here?" Gunn was trying to put this into terms he was familiar with. "'Cause I'm pretty sure your friends would never go that far."
"She's not undead that much is clear," Wesley was turning into a Watcher more to direct his own rage than anything else. "But Angel's right. To do the kind of spell that is required here – it can be done, but there always long-term effect. And the longer that person's is dead, the more of their humanity they lose."
This would have been the point where both the old Wesley and the new one would have apologized to Angel for telling him such horrible things about the woman he loved. He would have offered assurances that Buffy would be fine, that there were treatments, even if he knew better.
The thing was, they all knew the truth. Buffy had been buried and interred for weeks, if not months before she had been…brought back. Nobody had been able to ask whether the Scoobies had even bothered to unearth the coffin before they had cast whatever spell they had; the fact that they had even thought this was a good idea meant that they hadn't been thinking at all.
And even if there were no physical effects, no one wanted to consider the psychological ones. Both Cordelia and Angel had been in Sunnydale when Buffy had died and come back the first time, and they had seen firsthand just how much it had taken for her to work through her trauma. And she'd only been dead a few minutes. All of them had been involved in the world of the supernatural for a very long time and none of them could begin to comprehend the level of PTSD Buffy Summers was going through right now.
What they all knew was very simple. Buffy would never ask for help unless she needed to before. And considering that she certainly hadn't asked for this, none of them wanted to think how much of an island she was now.
"She's going to need help," Angel said simply. Everyone knew he was referring to more than the immediate situation.
"Buffy wasn't good on asking for it before we graduated; I can't imagine things have improved since," Cordelia said.
"She wasn't there when you called," Gunn asked.
"Xander told me that she was tearing the town apart looking for Dawn. Given she's the Slayer, he may have been speaking literally." Cordelia said.
Gunn knew where Buffy was coming from. "Did they at least say they were coming here?"
"I told him that we were going to help find Dawn. I then made it clear that even if we found her before they got here, they were not going to leave until we had an informative discussion," Cordelia said calmly. "You know the kind of thing that one usually does before one raises the dead."
"Well, even if they assembled immediately it's at least eight hours before they'd get here," Wesley said looking at his watch. "How sure are we they'll even be in that location?"
Cordelia had also gotten a flash of a residence that was in Simi Valley. How it related to Dawn's abduction she had no clear idea of, but the owners didn't give much clarity – the house had been purchased just a month ago and it was still in escrow.
"None, but we have to chase it down anyway." Angel said. He looked at Wesley. "How do you think we should handle this?"
Wesley appreciated that even in the midst of what had to be an emotional turmoil for Angel, he was still acknowledging Wesley's role as leader. "I think Charles and I better handle this part of it," he said. "You're the official back-up at the first sign of death or the supernatural."
"Um, I realize this is a big deal and we have to prioritize, but how do you want to handle the situation with Faith?" Fred asked.
They all blinked. They'd spent the last hour dealing with the repercussion of the vision that they'd all understandably forgotten what they had been dealing with.
Angel, surprisingly, answered. "This doesn't change anything. If anything, I think we may need to move on it faster."
Gunn blinked. "We just found out Buffy's alive."
"And that makes Faith even more expendable," Wesley got it too. "The Council might have been waiting for the right moment before. When they find out Buffy's back in action if they haven't already, the target on Faith's back is going to be even bigger."
Cordelia, who had the most reason of the group to distrust Faith, couldn't disagree. "Fred I know you've been easing back into the crazy the last few months but I think this is where you get shoved in the deep end."
"I lived five years in an alternate dimension. Trying to get a Slayer out of jail barely rates the average Monday in Pylea," Fred reminded them.
"That prepare you for driving the freeway at dark?" Cordelia asked with a raised eyebrow. "We're going to have to go as fast as possible so we can give Faith the heads up."
"Legally possible." Fred countered. "Of course, maybe I'm being a little weird assuming that they might be watching us at speed traps in Santa Monica."
"Given Wolfram and Hart, I wouldn't put it past them to have set them up," Gunn acknowledged.
"Which means it's time we talk about the other elephant," Angel said.
The moment Cordelia had told them Dawn had been taken and was headed to LA, everybody thought that Wolfram and Hart had to have at least something to do with it. There were too many coincidences about the fact that Dawn Summers – sister of the Slayer and the Key - was heading to Los Angeles that their least favorite law firm did not know something about it, if they were not directly responsible.
"We could break the door down and pummel them senseless," Gunn said.
"We could do that anyway and just leave," Cordelia said. "Trying to get anything out of Lilah Morgan will lead us nowhere no matter what."
"How'd they handle things the last time Buffy was in town?" Fred asked.
"Not well," Wesley said with a visible shudder. "I won't pretend it's tempting just to tell her they have answers and lock the doors behind them."
"I tried something like that once. We all remember how well that worked for both us and them," Angel reminded them.
That wound was particularly raw for all of them.
"So how do we handle that?" Gunn asked.
"First things first," Wesley said. "We do exactly what we said we were going to do and we wait for the rest of our friends together."
"And then we take Wolfram & Hart apart brick by brick to find out what they know?" Cordelia asked hopefully.
"We'll call that Plan B." Angel said grimly.
SUNNYDALE UNDERGROUND
Spike had learned not long after he and Dru had come to Sunnydale where the Master had been freed the previous summer. He'd actually made what for him amounted to an homage to it early on – he had never met the Master but he knew that he was part of a line that was a direct connection to it and he thought it was worth seeing. Of course because he had no respect for his elders, he had done so after he had torched the Anointed One and had bragged that he was going to succeed where his descendant had failed. For obvious reasons, he'd never come back.
He imagined that Buffy had spent the last four years deliberately avoiding this particular stretch of Sunnydale, and he was just as certain she would come here now. He was not surprised to find out he was correct nor that she was basically standing over a large puddle.
Spike knew that Buffy was aware of his presence the moment he walked on to the scene. He also knew that in this case he had to let her make the first move. So he showed the patience that the Scoobies rarely thought him capable of and stood their silently for nearly three minutes.
"How did you know where to find me?" Buffy asked in the same flat affect she used far too often.
"Once you die, you're drawn to where it happened," Spike said with no judgment or bragging in his voice. "You wouldn't go near your own grave so you went back to where it happened the first time."
"Do you know why I came here?"
"Because you're in a much darker place than you were then," Spike said. "From what I understand, after you were brought back the first time you were so focused on stopping the apocalypse, you ignored the fact you were dead. You spent the summer ignoring it and it took your friends being taken to make you realize just how badly you were dealing."
"I got over it."
"By grinding into dust the bones of the monster who'd killed you for the first time," Spike said. "I think that's why you tore down the pedestal Glory broken; some part of you hoped it would do the same thing. But it didn't."
Buffy finally looked up. "You got any solutions now?"
Spike thought for a moment. "Last year you asked me how I killed both of the Slayers. You didn't like what I had to say, but right now you can't say I was lying to you."
Buffy was silent for a long moment. Finally she shook her head.
"What I'm going to do no doubt breaks the unwritten code of vampire-Slayer relationship but since Peaches pretty much violated long ago, who gives a shit?" Spike asked. "When you did that little belly flop off the tower last spring, how much of that was to save the world and your sister?" He paused. "And how much of it was that death wish?"
Buffy looked a little indignant at this. "The world was about to end. All of them were about to end."
"The world's about to end, Buffy," Spike said simply. "It just usually doesn't decide to when the Slayer in question has had the kind of year that would drive a perfectly normal woman your age to desperation."
Buffy didn't say anything.
"Your mum gets cancer. You find out Soldier Boys been cheating on you and he tells you don't love him and skips town. Your mom begins to recover and you find her body on your living room couch. You have to put all of your dreams on hold to take care of your sister. That's a lot." Spike hesitated. "And you were already spinning well before Glory took her right from under your nose. I'm not shocked you went catatonic right then; I'm kind of shocked Red was able to bring you out of it."
"You're kind of taking all the nobility out of my big sacrificial gesture."
Buffy's tone hadn't changed, but the language was as close to the old Slayer since she'd come back to reality.
"I've known you too long to know that you'd never take the easy way out. But you've known since you got started that your job forces you to put everybody and everything ahead of your own needs. Maybe you thought that you were doing the second rather than the first when you jumped."
Buffy considered this for a moment. "You're surprisingly insightful for a vampire who got his nickname for shoving spikes through the heads of his victims."
"Maybe it just shows I'm good in getting inside people's heads." Spike winced. "Yeah, I know. Puns are your things."
It was worth it, because there was just the barest trace of a smile on Buffy's face for the first time in a while.
"I know the Watcher health plan is replace when used up, but they seriously don't think it's worth providing therapy?"
Buffy actually looked surprised at that. "You know, it never occurred to even ask," she said. "Of course considering that they're both ancient and British, I think it's a rhetorical question." She paused. "Though I'm not sure I would have been open to it if they had."
"I'd think you of all people would know better."
"I tried telling my parents once." Buffy said. "They put me in an institution for a month. I basically had to tell them I was lying before the doctors would let me out."
That explained a lot. "And I'm guessing Joyce didn't think of raising the subject again when she learned you were telling the truth."
"It took a lot for her just to accept what I was doing at nights anyway," Buffy said. "That said, considering not just me and how my fellow slayers got through life, it's a very sensible approach."
"Float it towards Rupert when you have a chance." Spike said. "And not just for you. Whole gang. Assuming you all survive Sunnydale, you're going to be dealing with shell shock for decades if you don't start dealing with it soon."
"I think it's called PTSD now," Buffy said.
"Name doesn't matter. Doing something about it does," Spike said. "Same when we find Niblet."
Buffy looked up. "You know where she is?"
Spike deflated. "It's a good news, bad news situation. Good news is, we know where she's headed."
"And you didn't lead with that because?"
Spike heaved a sigh. "It's LA. Which leads me to the really bad news."
Buffy began to blink. "Angel?"
"Actually that's only the slightly bad news. The really bad news is, they just found out that you came back from the dead. And it's six to five and pick 'em which one of your lot Cordelia is more pissed at right now."
Buffy actually looked even more upset. "No, you're wrong again. The truly horrible news is now I'm going to have to see Cordelia Chase again."
SIMI VALLEY
"All right English this was one your specialty," Gunn said. "Why do you think they took her?"
Wesley had been trying to reason that out for the last few minutes. It might help them figure out who had taken her in the first place.
"Right now, it's depends on who they took: Dawn Summers or the Key." Wesley said.
"Well, if they took her because she's the Slayer's sister, it narrows it down a little," Gunn said. "They want to try and get at Buffy somehow. Either they want to manipulate her to get them to do something or they're trying to find a way to get to her personally."
Wesley nodded. They'd been through variations on that themselves when Wolfram and Hart had gone after one of them to get to Angel.
"The problem with this, if that's the case, whoever did it clearly has no knowledge of Buffy Summers personally," he told Gunn. "I may not have been her Watcher for long and I was clearly woefully inadequate at the psychological part of it, but it became clear very quickly just how fiercely Buffy goes after anyone who tries to get at someone she's cares about and just how much she loathes being manipulated in this fashion."
"This speaking from the perspective of her enemies or the Council?" Gunn asked.
"At this point I'd consider them both one and the same," Wesley thought for a second. "Which raises the possibility that they're the ones behind this."
"You told me they didn't appreciate Slayers; you really think they're this thick-headed?" Gunn paused. "This the kind of thing the older members would do."
Wesley appreciated how Charles was willing to talk around the fact of his father's involvement. This was a thing Roger Wyndham-Pryce would be more than willing to do if he thought he could get the Slayer back in the fold.
"I think it's unlikely but it can't be ruled out," he finally said. "And even if they wouldn't do it for that purpose, they might well do it in order to get control of the Key."
Gunn nodded. "Based on what you've told me I could them see them doing that," he admitted. "They knew enough about Glory so it figured that they had to know what the Key was for. Far as you know, Giles never told them the Key was Dawn?
Wesley shook his head. "Rupert said he would take his secret to his grave, and I know none of her friends would tell them. They were even more inclined to loath the council than Buffy was."
"All right, assuming that someone made the connection," Gunn said. "How the hell would they even use it? Granted I got this third hand but wasn't there a clock on Glory being able to use the Key and didn't it expire shortly after she did?"
"As far as Glorificus goes, that's correct. As far as the power of the Key…" Wesley trailed off. "From what Rupert told me, both the Key and Glorificus were an order so ancient they were beyond the era of written language. So much so that none of his books had anything on it. I don't know how the Council did, which would make them among the major suspects."
"And it would put Wolfram and Hart even higher up the list," Gunn admitted. "Given what we found when we were in Pylea, they might have the connections to find something in some plane of existence who might be able to put two and two together. That said, considering that they've spent the last two years doing everything they can to avoid Sunnydale and the Slayer there, everything we know about them says that they'd be lower on the list."
Wesley grew thoughtful. "Bear in mind, they are also attorneys. And even a mediocre attorney knows the best way to build up deniability is for the left hand to not know what the right one is doing."
"And that assumes most of their clients only have two hands to begin with," Gunn said. "Well, if I'm reading this right, we might be able to get a least a piece of the answer soon."
They had arrived at the house that Cordelia had seen in her vision. House was being kind, it was barely even a structure – which by their standards, meant it was the perfect place to try and hide someone.
"Angel's, what, ten minutes out?" Gunn asked. "Time to do some recon."
He gestured towards Wesley. "Not that I object, but I thought you'd be better suited to this."
"In this neighborhood, I'm more likely to get shot," Gunn said.
"And the kidnappers won't do the same if they see me?" Wesley said wryly.
"Not talking about the kidnappers."
Wesley got what he meant. "All right, but if this happens again, you're first on bedpan duty."
Gunn nodded.
The windows were broken and the paint was peeling on this house, which really did make it stand out. "Charles?" he said before he got a few feet. "You see this?"
For all the nonsense Gunn was only a little behind him, and it was standing out. It was a 'For Sale sign' with the Sold banner put over.
"Either the new buyers haven't owned this place or they've owned it for just long enough," Gunn reasoned.
Wesley had made it to the front door which looked similarly uninviting. "Well, this is why we're here after all."
He rang the doorbell. There was silence. Both of them figured it was deliberately. "After you, Charles."
"Want to try the obvious before I strain myself?"
Wesley shrugged and tried the knob. The door opened without a problem. "This is never a good sign."
"Not on movies or the lives we lead." Charles agreed.
They stepped inside. The interior looked just as bad as the exterior – there was no wallpaper, the tiles were broken, but…
"Well, someone lived here," Wesley said when they saw that the electricity was working.
"It doesn't look like it was for long," There was an overflowing garbage can filled with takeout boxes and spoiled food. "This time Cordelia saw something that had happened recently rather than something that will."
"No kidding." Gunn pointed to the corner. There was a sofa, a couple of chairs, and some used rope and gags.
"Regardless of the condition of this place, whoever did this had access to funding," Wesley reasoned. "They went through the trouble to purchase this house for the sole purpose of holding Dawn for only a couple of days, maybe even merely a few hours."
"Which means that there was a lot of thought put into this," Gunn followed. "You don't go to the trouble of buying a safehouse if you snatch a kid off the street at the spur of the moment."
Wesley nodded. "This was in the works for a while."
"And they were ruthless."
Gunn and Wesley were used to Angel's stealth but they were still surprised to find him inside the house. They also fully understood the meaning of his presence. A vampire could not enter a house without being invited – unless the owner had died.
"They clearly killed whoever bought this place," Wesley said. "Which means whoever did it didn't realize he was being used until they slit his throat."
Gunn winced. "You think they used a civilian for this?"
"Given the level of organization you were talking about, I doubt it," Angel's ability to hear things was always creeping them out. "Probably some low level criminal that they promised a lot of cash if they followed through."
"Does that mean we're looking for evil demons or evil humans?" Gunn said. "I can see why demons would need a human front to buy real estate, especially in the Valley but unless we've been seriously underestimating the planning capabilities of them, most wouldn't even bother to buy a home. They'd just waste the previous owners."
"They could have been evil people working for evil demons," Wesley pointed out. "Based on what we're seeing this was a holding station. Which means that somebody else was here to take Dawn to another destination."
"Grabbing her in Sunnydale, taking her to Simi Valley just to take her someone else?" Gunn was shaking his head. "This is damn convoluted even by our standards."
"There's got to be something here that can lead us down the right path," Angel said. "Let's tear this place apart until we find what we need."
"Given the condition of this place, it's going to be hard to figure out what hasn't been already. But let's look anyway." Gunn agreed.
SUNNYDALE
Giles had told Buffy's friends that he had known where she was going but that had been mostly bluff. Even after five years the one thing he knew about her was that you can never be certain what she would do next.
In truth, he had mainly wished to get some air. In the midst of all the chaos that was unfolding around him, he felt the Ripper beginning to stir and while that was occasionally useful, he had been afraid of what he might say to Buffy's friends in their presence.
Since Buffy's return it had been extremely difficult for him to be around the Scoobies, particularly Willow. Of all of her friends, she had been the one he had been the closest too over the past five years; now he was beginning to wonder if he'd ever known her at all. He had known Willow to be reckless with her magic ever since she had begun to practice it; she'd more than demonstrated how dangerous she could be with it when she wasn't trying. Now she had done something against his wishes and it horrified him.
It wasn't just that she had utilized the darkest kind of magic; it was that she had lied to him that she was considering it. At one point Dawn had told him that Willow had helped point her towards bringing back her mother and that had been appalling enough, even if Dawn had repented of it at the last minute. Before Glory had attacked her Tara had confided in Giles that she was becoming concerned about how powerful her lover was becoming. He had hoped to have a conversation with her, but not long after that Glory had attacked her and everything had unfolded to quickly to react.
Even in the depths of his grief for his charge, he had been aware of the whispered conversations that were cut short whenever he entered the room. He knew that something was being planned and he suspected it was something that would lead to no good. However the Council, now that they had their hooks in him, had no intention of letting him remain in Sunnydale any longer. He had put off returning as long as he could but then Travers threatened to revoke his visa should he not return to England.
He was there just long enough to know he had to go back. Less than two days after he had returned, he had overheard a conversation that he knew he should not have been privy too. It was from the wetworks division and they were discussing plans on an extraction from a women's prison in Los Angeles.
Despite everything that had happened involving Faith he had known he had to go back and warn Angel. Then he'd heard another conversation he shouldn't have – one he couldn't believe he'd heard.
He'd rushed back to Sunnydale, not wanting to believe his ears or his eyes. He'd thrown himself into training Buffy and looking after her well-being. But his Slayer was withdrawn, barely talking. He knew that she was lying about being in a hell dimension but he hadn't pressed on where'd she been. Part of his was due to his own fears – he wasn't sure he wanted to know what the afterlife was like.
The thing was, despite everything he knew about the supernatural and all the evils in the world, Giles didn't believe there was any counterpart. Why should he? The world had started out as a hell. There was nothing in all the lore he'd read to indicate that there was a heaven. In all his years in working fighting the forces of darkness, there had never been so much of a sign from the forces of good – certainly not in the five years that he'd been on the Hellmouth. The closest they'd gotten to it in that time was Whistler and even he would only describe himself as 'neutral.'
And it wasn't as if there was any argument of it anywhere else. During the drunken conversations he'd had with Wesley during what they called 'the wake,' Wesley had been very forthcoming that if there were forces on the side of good, they had basically decided to leave this dimension alone. He knew that there might be some things resembling 'higher beings' but based on what he'd heard, most of them barely tolerated the human race. Given how Angel was receiving his insight, it was looking like the only way to see it was through the kind of pain no human could endure. Wesley was beginning to think that there might not even be such a thing as true goodness anywhere, though even in his cups he had not wanted to tell Giles why.
He didn't need too. Giles had offered explanations as to why no one in Sunnydale acknowledged the horrible things that were happening in plain sight. It was clear that there had been other forces he hadn't been aware of at the time, both from within and without. But the truth was actually more banal and frightening.
People didn't care. Not on the Hellmouth, not in LA, not England. How many teenagers had died or disappeared all the years that he'd been in Sunnydale? Had any of them even gone to the funerals? How long was before their absences stopped being talked about in the halls of Sunnydale high? Did their loved ones ask questions about the horrible things that happened here at night?
Sunnydale was just the most supernatural version of what the real world was like. He'd wondered how so many members of the undead or demonic world could survive in the 20th century. It was simple. No one bothered to look up any more. The Council was no different in this regard, not viewing even the lives of the Slayers who were saving the world as anything more than a footnote in a journal.
There had been so many definitions of hell over the years but Giles could very well easily imagine what Buffy's was. Maybe all that happened when she died was that she had ended up in another Sunnydale, doing everything she had done for the past four years. Maybe she had gone into another dimension but it had been a universe with very little difference from the one she had spent four years in.
That was the real reason that he had never queried Buffy about where she'd been. He was terrified of what he'd learn.
He couldn't stall on that any more. When this crisis was over, he was ask the hard questions and damn the answers. Of course that assumed he could find her, which he hadn't.
He was now walking in to the Magic Shop uncertain of what he would say to any of them.
"I'm sorry I went AWOL."
It was a credit to how long he'd been doing this that he did not run into a wall.
"Buffy." Giles maintained his calm. "Where have you been?"
"Lost. Maybe I still am."
It was as close to acknowledging how broken she felt since he'd come back to Sunnydale. He was on the verge of asking the next question when he noted the group was all together – all of them.
"Glad you're back with us, Watcher. Cause we've gotta get on the road again."
Giles was still not inclined to trust Spike even after the last several months, but he was relatively certain that he was the reason Buffy was back here.
He played back what he had just heard. "Do we have a lead on where Dawn is?"
"We know where she's going. Whether she'll still be there when we catch up is an open question." Buffy said. She turned to Xander. "Did Cordelia tell you anything?"
"You know Cordelia. She tells you everything, whether you want to know it or not," Xander looked like he was in something of a daze. "Among the many, many things she said in such a short time was that Dawn was en route to LA and that she and that Wesley and Angel are trying to tracking her down."
"So in other words…" Spike said.
"It's the worst of all possible worlds," Xander said. "My ex, her almost, and Buffy's ex are working together to try and find a sister that none of them knew existed until a few months ago. Even by our standards, this is pretty messed up."
"You forgot that we're about to travel to LA to meet up with them," Willow said.
Giles was processing exactly what he heard. "Dawn's headed for Los Angeles."
"They know that. What they are really upset about is the other stuff we haven't exactly let them on the last few months," Anya said. "Clearly D'Hoffryn made a mistake when he tried to recruit Willow as a vengeance demon."
"No, actually that was an act of wisdom on his part," Willow said in a detached fashion. "A year, two at most as a vengeance demon, Cordelia would be in charge of her own hell dimension."
"And you don't want to know what she'd do to those people who wore white after Labor Day," Xander told them.
Tara shook her head. "That was in high school. I'm sure she's matured since then."
"She's been working with Angel for the last two years," Xander told her.
Tara thought for a second, then shuddered.
"Hey, you'll be all right," Anya said. "You're the only one she doesn't remember from high school. I'm sure you'll be fine when we get there. You know, probably just a mere caning as supposed to the rest of us who will be lucky if we are only boiled in oil."
"Or melted lead," Giles muttered to himself.
"Bow, bow, to the vicious bitch elect," Spike clearly not only overheard Giles but got the reference. "Well, now that the gang's all here, is there a single Mystery Machine we can all ride in or are we going to need separate cars?"
"I'll ride with Giles," Buffy looked at her Watcher. "I need to update him on a few things."
"I assume that even in a crisis no one wants to ride my car," Spike said to the group.
"You're going?" Anya asked. "I thought you could have lived the rest of eternity without seeing Angel again."
"He's not going to be thrilled to see me either, which in itself will make the trip worth it," Spike said. "But this is an all-hands-on-deck scenario, and LA is his territory. He'll compromise, and I'll took my best not to piss him off." He paused. "Much."
"Actually that might make the trip worth it for me, too" Xander said.
"You're assuming the moment Cordelia looks at you, you won't burst into flames," Willow said.
"That would save her the pleasure of tearing you down and actually not having the worst reason to do it this time," Xander said bitterly.
Giles expected Willow to reply with the same indignation she had for the last two months.
"This would be the first time I'd deserve it." Willow said.
Buffy looked at her friend with something close to her old fondness. "You did what you thought was right," she told her best friend.
"I also have a habit of screwing everything up regardless," Willow said. "You'd think given my SAT scores and growing up on a Hellmouth I'd have learned something by now."
"There's always room for improvement," Giles said softly. "As long as we acknowledge our mistakes."
Willow looked at her mentor. "Better late than never, I guess."
And even though Dawn Summers was still missing and he was about to have to spend a lot of time in close proximity to a vampire who even after more than two years he had never truly forgiven what had happened to Jenny Calendar for, Rupert Giles felt something he hadn't felt since he'd first come back to Sunnydale.
It was something close to hope.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Given how close so much Stephen King's prose is close to so many of the situations in Buffy and Angel, I've been meaning to get a reference to this in. And there may be more relevance than just the story I mentioned. If you know the world of Stephen King as well as the Key, you might have an idea where this story is going.
I think its pretty much canon among Buffy fans that her action at the end of Season 5 was essentially a suicide as much as a sacrifice. Spike is just pointing out what none of her friends or Giles were willing to say out loud. When you consider that as much as how she was brought back, that would explain a lot of her behavior in Season 6. But this is an alternate universe and she's going to face her demons, which includes bringing up why she would be so reluctant to go into therapy. (Seriously, the Scoobies needed some time with a shrink.)
Gunn and Wesley are working through why Dawn might be kidnapped. I'm not ruling anything out yet, but neither am I ruling anything in.
Giles might very well have been an atheist. I find it very easy to believe than anyone who deals with hell everyday would have a very hard time believing in anything resembling heaven. The first five seasons of the show would give him nothing to argue with.
Spike and Giles are being British and making a reference to Gilbert and Sullivan, and frankly it astonishes me that with all the British characters in the Buffy-verse we never got a single Gilbert and Sullivan reference. I'm actually thinking of a story taking place with Spike and Angel go to the Savoy. Maybe some day.
Like I say, everybody's working through their crap. Who knows, maybe Anya and Xander will get married later on?
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