Buffy
POV
“When
you cried, I’d wipe away all of your tears,
when
you’d scream, I’ll fight away all of your fears,
and
I held your hand through all of these years,
but
you still have,
all
of me.”
The
museum is just ahead. I walk the
streets, and even the other vampires clear out ahead of me. I’m not in my white dress any longer, no
longer decorated with their ash and the blood of my best friend, but they still
somehow recognize that if they come near me, I’ll be the one walking over their
dust.
In
front of the museum I see an odd sight.
A SWAT van is overturned and there are signs of vandalism. Y’know, Sunnydale vandalism. A splattering of blood on the walls. A body here. A shattered storefront there.
I didn’t even know we had a
SWAT team… As I get close, I can smell
the blood. And something else. Someone is alive in there. Without knowing why, I leap up onto the
passenger side of the van, now facing the sky and peer in. The driver is unconscious, arm apparently
pinned under the weight of the van. I
guess that’s why he couldn’t bleed to death.
I leave him for someone else.
He’s not the type of prey I hunt.
He’s
still alive.
I
hop down, regretting my choice of a skirt tonight. If I’m going to be jumping up and down, I need something that doesn’t
bind my legs. Note to future-self,
they’re called pants, get some. I’ve
heard of ‘dressed to kill,’ but I didn’t think it meant anything…
I’m
standing on the steps, checking it out.
Not really. Stalling, more like.
I
can’t do this. I can’t fool Giles. I can’t just expect to walk in and pull the
old, “Let me in, they’re after me!” routine, batting my eyes and waiting until
he takes me into his arms to attack.
He’s Giles. He’ll know. He’s the one person in this town I could
never fool. He’s been studying
vampires, studying us since before I
was born. How to recognize them, how to
out-think them, how to kill them. How
to kill us. I feel through my jacket
for a stake, find one, of several, and examine it. Fine craftsmanship, for a sawed-off bit of broomstick stolen from
the school dumpster. My hand flexes and
I tighten my grip, tighter, tighter. I
hear knuckles cracking. My fingers are
white from the pressure. There is a
muffled crack, and I open my hand to see a line down the grain of the
wood. It is still intact, mostly, still
looks pretty sturdy. It’s not much of a
plan, but Giles always said I had to work with what I had and improvise the
rest. Hopefully it was good advice.
The
museum has been broken into and thoroughly trashed. Why would a vampire care about anything here? Weird.
I check the kiosk at the entrance, which is flipped over, but still
readable, to find out where the vault might be. Great, they didn’t bother to put it on the little visitors
map. Useless. I do see that there are sections devoted to rare stones, which I
translate to mean ‘gems’ and ancient weaponry.
Two parts of my soul, if I still had one, war over which one I want to
visit first, the pretty, pretty gemstones or the cool weapons of intimate
destruction. Screw it, the people who
trashed this place had to think of
those two exhibits first, unless they were here taking their vampire
girlfriends to the Klimpt retrospective.
Shopping later, if there is anything good left. I need to focus, I am here for a reason.
I
note that a security camera is swiveling in one of the hallways. Odd that it is still working, but the
emergency lights at floor level seem to be still working too, so maybe there is
some sort of backup power. Or real
power, actually, it’s not like the Hellmouth opened under the power station,
streetlights are still on, after all… I
put aside the distractions, wave to the camera and keep looking. Eventually I find doors. Doors lead to corridors. Corridors lead to stairs. Stairs lead to store-rooms and some sort of
unpacking / shipping area.
Ooh,
I bet that big metal door would be a vault.
It looks vaulty. It also looks
like something I couldn’t rip open if I was a vampire elephant. And I smell blood.
Seconds
pass as I look around for the source of the smell, and I determine that it is
behind the door. Of course. Couldn’t be easy, or even possible, could
it? I wonder how hard this combination
could be? I give it an idle spin and
nearly get a 1200 lb door in the face when it pivots open smoothly, nicely
counterweighted so that it moves like it weighs nothing.
I
see him propped up against the wall and the smell of blood is
overpowering. It occurs to me that I
should have considered, especially after smelling the blood, that he might have
killed himself. But he looks so sad, so
pathetic, clutching the crossbow weakly, propped on his knees, and holding a
bottle of, something, I think it is brandy, in his other hand. His eyes are bloodshot and his face is a
ruin. He hasn’t shaved in a day or two,
and his clothes are rumpled. He looks
like hell.
His
friend in the corner, the one that ate a bullet? He looks worse.
I
look at Giles, trying to ignore the crossbow, trying to make eye-contact. He smiles, but it isn’t the sort of smile I
wanted to see on his face, not ever. It
is the same smile I saw on Gram Matheson when the cancer finally stopped
hurting and she knew she could rest soon.
He’s
given up, sitting here drinking with his dead friend, waiting for me to come
and kill him.
“I
couldn’t stop him, Giles.” I say, tentatively, looking down, as if
ashamed. I wonder if I am acting. I don’t feel like I am acting. This feels real to me. “I tried, but he was too strong. He had powers. I couldn’t… I couldn’t
resist.” I hear his breathing catch, like
a sob, or something. I look up and
don’t even have to act like I am apologetic, like I am sorry, because I
am. I wanted to win. He deserved for me to win. I deserved a chance to make him proud.
He
looks down, now he can’t meet my eyes.
Part of me exults. Part of me is
shamed. “I’ve been killing them as fast
as I can, but there are too many. I
can’t keep up. I’m so tired…” my breath
catches. I even believe me. How is it that I am lying to him so badly,
and yet been telling the truth?
He
looks up, too shocked, the expression in his eyes, hope. Oh, I’ve got to hurt him now. “Buffy?”
I
step back, just realizing what he thinks.
I can’t do this. He’ll
know. “No. She’s dead. I’m
dead.” Hope is dead. I watch it die. I might as well have stomped on it with my boot. “I just don’t know anything else. I still kill them.”
He
looks up, confused at my words, I press on, trying to sound like Buffy. But I am Buffy, mostly, so that makes it easier,
“I guess I still don’t play well with others.”
Twist the knife. “I always was a
crappy Slayer, couldn’t follow orders, couldn’t do it right. Now I’m a crappy vampire…” His face breaks, “No, Buffy, you’re an
amazing Slayer, better than I could have ever wanted, better than I
deserved. You should have had a better
Watcher, the best the Council could train…”
This
is too cruel. Even for me. Who knew evil had limits? I just want it to be over already. He’s crying. “God, don’t cry Giles, not for me. I don’t deserve this…
Please, you can’t….” The words
just pour out of me, and a distant part of my mind, a cold part, watches the
crossbow settle to the floor as his hands cover his eyes and he sobs
uncontrollably, absorbed in blaming himself for my death. Giles trained me to notice stuff like
that. Weapons moving out of accessible
range. Targets obscuring their vision, restricting
the movement of their arms.
I
had a whole schpiel to break him down, I was going to tell him that mom was
dead, and Angel, and Willow, and Xander, that I had no one left to fight for,
but that he couldn’t give up on me now. That
I needed him to be strong, one last time, for me, because I couldn’t fight
this any longer. It was hard enough,
too hard, when the monsters were outside, but now it was impossible, because
the monster was inside of me. I was going to give him the stake, the one I had broken, and tell
him
It
was a good plan. But I don’t need it
now.
I
move to him, absently noting the gun next to his thigh on the ground. I hold him as he cries. He doesn’t flinch away, doesn’t recoil. He welcomes this.
Once,
I got the impression from him that Watchers don’t really live long after their
Slayers die. I see that now. I wonder how many times this has
happened. I make it quick. He doesn’t deserve for it to be cruel. In a way I’m glad that I didn’t have to
betray him, didn’t have to see his face when the stake broke against my chest
and I moved in for the kill.
This
way is easier for both of us. I lie
down beside him, pull him to me like a big floppy blanket and draw blood from
my palm, the way the Master fed me, and end up dripping it all over his face,
and my shirt. Messy. Oh well, it’ll get easier, and I’ll run out
of white blouses soon enough, so that won’t be a problem. I fall asleep with him draped over me.
Giles
POV
“My
immaculate dream,
made
of breath and skin,
I’ve
been waiting for you.”
I
wake to the scent of her. I can’t
feel my body yet, can’t see or hear, but she has a distinctive smell, faintly
bitter, ever so slightly sulphorous. It
smells comforting, I know that whatever has happened, I am safe with a Slayer
watching over me.
I
remember Mrs Timmins, at the Academy, telling me about this distinctive smell
that an experienced Slayer will often pick up, and her personal recommendations
as to scents to mask it, not out of any desire to worry about a young girls
smell, she hastened to point out, but simply to avoid the girls odor becoming
a warning beacon to the undead that she has dusted so many of their kind that
her skin and hair and clothing now indelibly reeks of their destruction.
My
other senses come alive. Touch it
seems is next, but only because there is no sound, no sight, it is dark and
silent as a tomb, so all I have to go on are scent and touch. I feel heavy, stiff, and find myself to be lying on her, on Buffy
curled up like a little child in her lap, a preposterous image, as she is
half my size, lying against the wall, propped up and smoothing my hair, eyes
vacant, staring ahead. If they weren’t
open, I’d think she was sleeping. If
her hand wasn’t moving, I’d think she was dead. I can feel her beneath me, breathless and cold. My head rests on her chest, her heart does
not beat. I feel my own body, as cold
and lifeless and deafeningly silent.
I
freeze as she looks to me, her eyes barely visible points of light in the
gloom. Her whisper seems to fill the
small room, “Make it stop, Giles.” I
feel one of my hands move, almost as if of it’s own free will, tangling itself
in her hair. “I don’t want to be dead,”
plaintively, desperately. I clumsily
pull myself up, or her down, and for a time, we are alive again.
Buffy
POV
I
watch, his jacket draped over me, as if I could possibly be cold, as he paces.
He is strong. Sure. Beautiful.
He woke up hungry. Hungry for blood. For knowledge. For me.
I
can’t get enough of his confidence. He
tells me of Lewiston, his friend in the corner, how he had been researching
Sunnydale for years, and how no one believed him. He had kept his studies secret even from Giles, never considering
that someone might take his theories about the ‘Master Vampire’ or the ‘Hellmouth’
or the ‘Earthquake’ seriously. His
notes are scattered around the floor and Giles has been in full lecture mode,
explaining to me that the Master never wanted to open the Hellmouth (complete with a tangent
about how demons look down on vampires and no sane master vampire would choose
to open a portal to Hell, and a caveat about how ‘sane’ master vampires seem
to be thin on the ground), he simply wanted to harness its power for himself,
to make himself unstoppable. But he
miscalculated it’s strength, and his own, and instead of absorbing it into
himself, he was sucked into it, trapped, managing only to incorporate a merest
fraction of its unimaginable power. Beeg words, Giles. I got it. He tried to eat
it. It was the bigger fish and it
et him.
He
tells me, eyes afire with the lust for knowledge, the excitement of his calling,
how the Master has been seeking enough external power for decades to break
free, meditating and hoarding his own strength against that day. He finally seems to note the glazed look in
eyes (Hey, I normally have donuts to keep me awake! Giles lectures just aren’t the same without the sugar rush.), and
cuts to the ‘good part,’ where he produces Lewistons' notes on the exact ritual
by which the Master attempted to tap the power of the Hellmouth, and then
the really, really ‘good part,’ where he mentions how that power can, in turn,
be taken from him…
Forty-eight
hours ago, this information was irrelevant, as no mortal could internalize
that power. But it has aged well,
as it now will allow us to own this town.
Listening
to him prowl about, the fire, the energy as he talks about the Master and
the Hellmouth and taking that stolen power from him, taking this stolen town
back from him, taking our stolen lives
back from him, I am comforted to know that I have chosen right. Giles knows what to do, as he always does.
Giles will take care of everything.
Giles will make the hard decisions.
Giles will make it right.