Chapter One Hundred and Thirty Four

Tribulatio

San Francisco, the world without shrimp - June 2006

Dawn had left her bedroom door open. The incessant squawking was coming from inside. There were boxes left all over the floor. Buffy poked her head inside the room and had a poke around. She'd just got in from work, something she'd picked up to devote her days to until she caved and fulfilled her pop-quiz destiny of joining the police force: supernatural division. The room appeared mostly empty, Dawn having taken most of her stuff to college that day. She knew Dawn wasn't here, she was just stealthily trying to check up on her. There was more going on with the Watcher's Council lately, even though it was more of Giles run business these days, she still didn't totally trust them. They didn't have the first hand knowledge to know what being the slayer was really like. Sure they had divisions of them all around the world, but they didn't know what being a slayer felt like? To feel the blood boiling under her skin, the slayer instincts taking over. The legacy passed down through hundreds of generations. It was innate, ineffable.

Buffy walked over to the bird cage sitting calmly in the corner of Dawn's room, unveiling the cloth over the top and revealing the source of the noise. "It's okay," she said nervously. Despite Dawn's insistent ramblings that Jeff the parrot was totally safe and not at all demony, Buffy wasn't totally convinced. But looking at him now, he looked so sweet on his little perch. "Hi Jeff," Buffy said, stretching through the bars of his cage and letting him nudge towards her finger. He stroked his beak along the length of his beak and he startled a little. But eventually he was leaning into her gentle caresses and started making a purr like noise. "Awe, you're just a cute little parrot." Buffy said, but boy was she about to be wrong.

Her finger slipped down just far enough to catch the opening in his beak, which Jeff didn't like particularly much and lashed out, opening his mouth to show Buffy well and truly that he was not in fact, a cute little parrot. His beak widened to reveal rows upon rows of vicious teeth. They were layered in a sort of circle, lining his entire mouth. Buffy had no idea what she was looking at, other than it was freaky. She retracted her hand with her slayer speed and ran out of the room. She'd talk to Dawn about him later - heck! She'd call Giles and ask him what sort of demon could seem like such a nice parrot. Or maybe Anya would be her best bet, she was the resident demon encyclopedia, Giles was good at the research and the slayer stuff. She couldn't ask Willow as she was out of town, visiting Angel. Either way, her plans were interrupted by the arrival of Dawn to the apartment.

New Sunnydale, the world without shrimp - July 2006

"See here," Leo pointed out, "these markings. I think the prophecy refers to souls. The transfer of souls." He continued, bent over the scroll. Dawn was beside him to the left, Giles on his right, Anya hovering about the shop somewhere. They'd come down for the weekend to get a second opinion on the scroll, from post-watcher expertise. Dawn wanted to prove herself, show the Council that she had her own resources. She thought that if she found out something from the scroll it would prove she was more than just a trainee, that her junior watcher status could be revoked. But with all her classes and training and sleepless nights from her squawking parrot, this was the first chance she'd had to visit New Sunnydale in person.

Giles picked up his glasses and put them on, leaning down to where Leo was pointing. "It's interesting," he said in a tone that made Dawn question whether it was meant to sound sarcastic. "Where did you find this?"

"It was just in one of the boxes Leo's mom sent over for us to check. Said she got them from a raid on one of the Council's abandoned buildings." Dawn chimed in, but Leo put his hand on her shoulders.

He squinted a little before saying, "that's not strictly true. I er well we, they were in the boxes, but the boxes weren't from a raid, mum found them in the attic, I um Dawn can we...?" He gestured for them to take the conversation somewhere else. She nodded and told Giles they'd only be a second. Dawn directed them towards the back of the shop where the storage was kept, Anya keeping an eye on them around her merchandise, still ever the prolific capitalist.

"Babe? What's going on? You said your mom's attic, I thought those boxes were official." Dawn laid into him, Leo rubbed the back of his neck, refusing to meet her gaze.

"Dawn, you remember me telling you that mother's on the cusp of getting thrown out of the Council?" Dawn nodded in reply, "well I never told you why." He looked down, his shoes increasingly becoming the most interesting thing in the room. "It's about my dad." Dawn's mind was officially spirally out of control, "Helen tried to keep it a secret from Wanda but she found out a few months ago. Mom and Helen tried to cover it up after I was born, but my dad he um, I don't exactly know him. He's supposed to be in South America, mum's out there looking for him." He was getting more and more irate, and starting to raise his voice. "Mum she- I don't know, has this idea that he's out there somewhere. I was supposed to go with her but then I was sent over her last year and I met you and ahh everything's spinning out of control." Leo slumped down the shelves and put his hands over his face.

Dawn rushed forward, "Leo, hun, stop it. Don't do this to yourself. Leo, look at me, whatever it is, it's okay." She crouched down beside him and took his hands away from his face. She traced a circle onto his palm, calming him down.

Leo took a deep out breath and looked up through swollen eyes. "I'm a cambion Dawn, my dad I never knew him but he's an incubus. He's a demon Dawn!" Leo tried not to shout but his voice was getting raspy, he was talking through tears.

"Hey, hey," Dawn started, "Leo, I don't care that you're a demon. I-I love you." Leo sniffled and smiled weakly, he rubbed his eyes until they were sore and then let Dawn pull him back onto his feet. "Plus, Anya totally used to be a demon, Tara thought she was a demon for years, and my sister is dating a vampire, plus I used to be this big ball of energy thing. Did I ever tell you that?" Leo looked back at her perplexed for a moment, "I'll explain later."

Leo put his watcher face back on, "you know, I'm technically only a half-demon."

Dawn shot him back a look, "so the scroll?"

"Oh yeah. Mum found the boxes in the attic, they belonged to my dad, I don't know where he got it. But it could be really bad news Dawn, we have to let Helen know about this prophecy thing."

San Francisco, the world without shrimp - July 2006

Buffy stood, feet hip width apart, her arm out, her fingers twiddling a stake around and around. The vampire stared back at her. She was blonde, a little taller than the slayer herself and dressed in '60s-esque getup, her once pink funeral dress was now in zombified rags. She had a creepy grin on her face, a snarl setting in as she bared her fangs. She took a step forward, "aren't you a pretty, little thing." She said, aiming a punch straight for Buffy's throat. The slayer dodged it, instead thrusting her stake forward, but narrowly missing the heart.

"Goddammit," she said, spinning around and aiming again, but this time the vamp's fingers made contact with her cheek and sucker punched her into a nearby grave. In the few seconds it took Buffy to fall to the ground, a life flashed before her eyes. Not her life, mind you, the one of the vamp in front of her. A pretty life in a midwestern town, could've been anywhere. 1962, the air was crisp and smelled like cotton candy - no, that was just the county fair. Buffy wandered aimlessly through the girl's life, her friends, her watcher, her fighting her destiny until one day a vampire would get the better of her and decide to make her his mate. A familiar story, Buffy rolled her eyes as she watched the vamp-slayer's death, a bloodthirsty young boy-vamp clamped to her throat, blood dripping over her pretty dress.

She shook her head, wondering what'd just happened. But then she knew, they'd touched, their skin had made however brief contact. That was enough to share a dream, especially after all her years of contacting the first slayer and the shadowmen - all those months with the scythe. It'd gone mysteriously missing after Sunnydale was destroyed. Especially if the vampire was trying to reach out to her, somewhere in her deadness, the slayer line remained. This vampire had once been a slayer, like her, like the hundreds of girls now spread all over the world. Not a recent one though. She was at least half a century old.

As Buffy picked herself back up, and looked around for the unfortunate girl, she realised she was alone. Slayer speed. Even in death. She brushed off her hands and did a final scan of the cemetery for any sign of her, but there was nothing. Shame, she thought to herself, a few more joint prophetic dreams and they could have Dawnie's scroll all figured out.

When Buffy walked in the door of the apartment, she threw her stake onto the couch and slid out of her jacket. Her hunting jacket, as she called it, was brown leather, a slayer statement apparently. "Spike?" She called, expecting him to be here somewhere, it was his night off. Fridays were always the nights they spent together. In truth Buffy thought he was growing tired of it, same old routine. Or maybe she was transferring. "Spike?" She called again, weaving through the various rooms until she found him slumped over in the bathroom. "Spike?!" She said with a increase in urgency, crouching over him and taking hold of his face.

They were in the bathroom, he was dreaming. Buffy was screaming at him and pushing him as hard as she could but he was still trying to force her. How could he? How could he dare? He felt his soul squeezing. His guilt overpowering every other sense.

It was at times like these that she cursed his not having a pulse.

He couldn't be dead because he wasn't a big pile of dust. But he wasn't waking up either. She slapped him a few times but there was just nothing, no reaction. Maybe he was just asleep, he sat down here because he was tired? Her doubt was well placed, because it took an hour of patiently waiting by his side, and several violent attempts at waking him before his eyes finally opened.

"Buffy?" He said weakly, the dark circles under his eyes protruding as he spoke. Her cleared his voice and rubbed his eyes, "wha-what's happening?" He said, everything was hazy, was he really in the bathroom or was that his dreams coming back to him? Was he even awake? He couldn't remember anything, but the feeling of foreboding was ever present, and weighing on his conscience. He rubbed his head and looked up at the slayer. She helped him up and off of the floor, taking him into her bedroom and laying him down on the bed.

"And you really don't remember anything at all," Buffy said after he fully explained what'd been happening to him.

"Nope, nada, not a thing. It's like you might as well've just knocked me out."

"But you're just sleeping? I don't need to testing different songs for triggers again do I?" Spike shook his head, this was nothing like being a sleeper agent. The bloodlust was gone, there was just an empty feeling when he woke up, like he was missing something.