We Try to Explain BtvS S7... The Fanfic
Mar. 16th, 2004 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookHuzzah, huzzah - the first two chapters of the WIP by the hubby and I are ready to roll. It's sort of a direct continuation of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's final season - like new episodes of what happend after "Chosen" rolled. Story and Plot are by the hubby, aka Chevy Impaler, aka ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
toysdream, as is much of the writing - I've contributed some bits here and there, along with general brainstorming. Our goal with this tale is to answer some lingering mysteries about the First Evil, its master plan, and why it was so interested in the Slayer line, among other things that seemed less than fully explained by the series' end. Please deluge us with any and all comments, as this writing-collaboration thing is brand-new on us, so we're very anxious to hear how well it's working (this post was edited on 3.20.04 to add the story title).
Hope you enjoy!
ACT ZERO: THE CUT
One week ago, in a crypt beneath unconsecrated earth, a woman, small and blonde, was killing a man. With a grunt, she swung the weapon she carried--part axe, part club, part stake--in an upward arc, cutting deep into gut and sinew and bone.
As the blade struck home, the man's eyes reflexively rolled up into his head--not with pain, which he wouldn't live long enough to register, but with simple shock. For a long couple of seconds, before the blade wrenched upward with a final jerk, time seemed to stand still. In his mind, the preacher felt the floor and the walls of the crypt dwindle away to nothing, leaving him awkwardly suspended in a vast, dimensionless space. In the boundless void, a small, harsh voice whispered in his ear.
"Don't look so surprised, little man. Didn't you see the inscription? It is not for thee..."
His lips twitched, and in his mind the preacher formed the words. "But how could we..."
"We? This was never about you, little man. You've played your part, and poorly at that. I exerted all my powers to even the scales for you, and you barely even challenged her. She kills gods, little man. You're not even a priest."
The moment ended, and the blade came tearing up through his belly. Darkness came, and the voice hissed in his ear one last time--mocking, spiteful, and cruelly feminine.
"Hush now, boy. You'll be in me."
ACT ONE: UNDER A WANDERING STAR
Alexander Lavelle Harris padded down the stairs. In the back of his mind, he registered the incongruity--these stairs, this house, the town itself, all had now collapsed into the earth. But the setting was familiar, and even with the lights off, the faint haze of illumination that filtered through the living room's curtained windows was enough for him to find his way down the steps.
In his socks, he padded down the final steps and turned towards those luminous curtains. The dim light reflected from a banner stretched across the room, and the words on it were familiar as well, though it took Xander a moment to recognize them. "Welcome Home," they proclaimed, but the last part was obscured in shadow.
Looking back towards the curtains, he could now make out something silhouetted against them. A figure, sitting on the sofa, its features a mask of darkness. Whoever it was, they were sitting stiffly upright, but wasn't there something wrong with the angle of the head? Xander opened his mouth to speak, but all that issued forth was a shrill chirp...
Nuts, he thought as he awoke. The phone again?
Xander reached up to rub his eyes, this time catching himself at the last minute and steering his knuckles away from the still-raw socket. Light streamed in through the motel room's windows; though the blinds were closed, the sun was clearly up and shining, and brightly at that. Fumbling for the phone's receiver, he peered around the room and noted the empty sleeping bags clumsily strewn about the floor. Guess the girls took off for breakfast, he mused. Good on them for not waking me up.
"Harris," he mumbled into the receiver.
"Xander, it's me again." Kennedy's voice was brusque as ever, but even groggy as he was, Xander could detect an increased note of tension. "Did I wake you again? You know it's past eleven."
"Us normal humans need our beauty sleep," he groused. "So, any luck getting through to England? Or LA? Or..."
"No luck. I guess nobody's answering their phones today." Kennedy took a deep breath. "Listen, Xander, could you just come down here? We're in room--"
"211, I know." He groaned, flexing his stiff limbs and idly envying those fabled regenerative Slayer powers. "Let me just wash up, and I'll be right--"
"Xander, could you please come down right now?" This time she was virtually pleading. "It's Willow. I think something's really wrong."
Oh well, Xander mused as he pulled himself up into sitting position. I wasn't loving that dream anyway...
............
A steady stream of traffic buzzed past the teenage girl standing on the shoulder of the highway. She aimed a listless wave at the three girls waiting on the other side, waited for an opening in the stream of cars, then loped slowly across, hands casually hooked in the back pockets of her jeans. An eighteen-wheeler blared its horn as she reached the gravel strip on the highway's edge, wind whipping her cropped purple hair as it passed.
"Sorry, Neena," she reported, flashing the plastic card in a ring-bedecked hand. "No luck with the ATM." She handed it off the tallest of her companions, who promptly tucked it into a small fabric wallet on a string as the remaining pair nervously watched the operation. "So, how much've we--"
"We have enough for breakfast," Neena answered. Her phrasing was formal as ever, with just a trace of a lilting Indian accent, but her companions exchanged glances at the uncharacteristic interruption.
A small blonde cleared her throat nervously. "So, uh... anyone coming down, or are we--?"
"Still asleep," the fourth girl reported. She was dark-haired, curvy. She hooked a thumb towards the motel behind them on the highway's edge. "I checked a few minutes ago."
"So let's go, then. I'm starving," the first girl announced, and immediately launched herself in the direction of the coffee shop adjacent to the motel. Lo wasn't tall, and her thick-soled boots looked huge at the ends of her skinny legs. Buckles and jewelry jingled on her small frame.
With Lo in the lead, Neena striding along behind her, and Bet and Graciela trotting in the rear, the four girls clattered into the Last Drop Coffee Shop. A stocky waitress waved them to a corner booth, where the newborn Slayers clambered into the warm vinyl seats and studied the laminated menus, more out of habit than anything else. They already knew the cheapest items by heart.
............
Several rounds of pancakes later, the girls came marching back up to their third-floor room to see if Xander was awake yet. Since their chaperone was bereft of both their recuperative powers and their heroic new appetities, they'd decided it was best to let him rest for the time being, but now that the breakfast outing had consumed the last of their petty cash the girls found themselves out of entertainment options.
Neena had summed up their predicament with characteristic understatement. "One must admit," she said, "that a strip mall next to a Motel Eight is not exactly the center of the universe."
Her three companions duly admitted that this was the case. True, the circumstances behind their arrival in Sunnydale had left them with no prospect of returning home like the other former "potentials"; of course, they were properly grateful to Xander and friends for the food and shelter; and yet, it had been a week since the Hellmouth had swallowed Sunnydale and the battered band of heroes had disbanded, and the motel's scenic parking lot was not growing any more attractive with increasing familiarity.
When they found the room abandoned, with a hastily scrawled note informing them that Xander had gone downstairs to confer with Willow and Kennedy, a round of eye-rolling and theatrical sighing ensued. Lo, tossing her purple-dyed hair, announced her intention to use up the remainder of her pocket change on Kosmo Kombat 3K at the mall's dilapidated Game 'N' Bowl. The remaining three, after consulting the basic-cable channel guide, opted to follow their runaway babysitter downstairs and see what all the hubbub was about.
"I do hope nothing's wrong," frowned Bet, nervously fingering a stray curl of blonde hair. Graciela shot her a dirty look, but Neena was already striding out the door, and the others fell in behind her without additional comment.
A minute later, Neena was out on the second-floor balcony rapping briskly on the door to Kennedy's room. Nominally 211 was "Willow and Kennedy's room"--an indulgence justified by both their status as a couple and the fact that Kennedy's credit cards were covering the group's motel stay--but it had been days since they'd laid eyes on the room's second occupant. A moment later, they heard Xander call out "Just a minute," and then a distracted fumbling at the lock. The door yawned halfway open to admit them, and their chaperone's good eye swept distractedly across their faces. After an awkward pause, Bet dutifully volunteered the information that Lo was at the arcade, and Xander nodded in vague acknowledgement.
"That's good." Xander glanced back into the room's interior, then looked back at the trio of girls gathered at the doorstep. "Uh, things are a little busy right now. Are you guys okay just hanging out for a bit?" He reached into his pocket and extracted a couple of crumpled bills, all but tossing them to Neena. "I'll be a half-hour or so, tops. Just check back in an hour." Already turning his attention back into the room, waving them away, he swung the door closed.
A few seconds passed. Then, without so much as exchanging glances, the three girls lunged forward and glued their ears to the room's external wall. Even after weeks of practice spying on the secretive denizens of the Sunnydale household, they had to strain to make out the weak voice of the unseen Willow.
"It's just... it's just no good." The witch's voice petered out, and it took a minute before she gathered the energy to speak again. "I've tried simple little spells, the tiniest... But it doesn't work, or it comes out wrong, or..."
"Just rest, Will." Xander's voice was reassuring, but it was clear he was worried. "After what you did back there, it's only natural... Just give it some time."
"No, that's not it!" Willow's voice rose to an indignant squeal. "It was supposed to be all better. I felt all better. Everything was so bright and pure, and I felt so strong... everything was going to be okay again."
"Just rest, Red." This time it was Kennedy, firmer and more confident than Xander, or at least faking it more convincingly. "I've left messages for Giles, and with Angel, and one of them has got to know where Buffy and Dawn went. They'll hit those books of theirs, and they'll work this out. We'll work this out."
"They can't..." Willow's voice dwindled to a quiet whine. "I know what I need... what I need to do." Then, a flat statement, devoid of affect. "Kennedy, I need the scythe."
............
Somewhere on the highway, hands on the wheel, a blonde woman smiled. Her lips stretched wider in a taut smirk. Too quietly for the girl in the passenger seat to hear, even had she been awake, Buffy whispered to herself. "Not for thee..."
............
"Shouldn't we be checking in with Bosley?" Bet wondered. Neena, who had been craning her head around to monitor the progress the other girls were making with the pizza collection, turned back to regard her fretful co-conspirator. "I mean," continued Bet, "it's been three hours already."
"I am quite sure he has more important things on his mind right now," Neena replied. "Besides, it appears our food is ready at last."
After collecting Lo from the Game 'N' Bowl, the junior Slayers had commandeered a table at the adjacent pizza parlor for an emergency conference. After extended discussion, it was resolved that some lunch was in order, and a potential dispute was averted with the selection of two medium-sized pizzas so as to accommodate the vegetarian contingent. Returning to the table, Lo and Graciela carefully landed the platters and then steered the accompanying pitcher of root beer to a smooth touchdown.
"Hard to believe we just ate all those pancakes," Lo mumbled. "How come Charlie never mentioned this Slayer Super Metabolism in all of her long-ass speeches?"
Graciela rolled her eyes, and Neena assured her that her objection to the secret codename scheme was duly noted. "It was not my idea to go see that movie three times in one week. Nonetheless, I think it best that we maintain a degree of discretion for the time being."
"Uh, people?" Bet raised her free, non-pizza-bearing hand in an attention-getting wave. "Back on topic... what exactly are we hoping to accomplish here? I mean, they're already calling in all the big guns. Or their answering machines, anyway."
As Neena paused to compose a reply, Graciela jumped in. "First, they may be the grown-ups, but they haven't exactly established a great track record of cleverly resolving their problems. While we were all in that house, I recall a lot of shouting and sulking and voting people off the island. And second, if we're all so full of Slayer power now, it damn well better be good for more than just punching and breaking stuff. We're superheroes too now, aren't we?"
Lo hefted a mug of root beer in a mock toast. "Let's hear it for the super Slayer brains!"
Turning to regard Graciela, Neena raised an inviting eyebrow. Taking her cue, Graciela leaned forward to begin her analysis. Bet poised her gel pen above a clean page of her notebook, ready to take minutes.
"Okay, let's start from the beginning. So there's this evil being, and one day it wakes up and decides that it wants to get rid of all the Vampire Slayers..."
............
Alexander Lavelle Harris padded down the stairs again. Into the living room, towards the figure which waited for him on the sofa, silhouetted by the dim light that filtered through the curtains. The banner fluttered, and now its entire message was visible, but Xander didn't need to look. He knew who waited for him on the sofa.
"Anya..."
The figure's outline shifted, and its head bobbed at a strange angle. Xander came to a stop a few paces short of the sofa. He waited with a detached calmness as the figure wheezed and gurgled, until at last it forced out a few bubbling syllables.
"Hell. Oh. Xan. Der."
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Xander knew he should be in motion--running in terror from the figure on the sofa, or rushing forward to scoop the pitiful remnants up in his arms. But this was a dream, and the logic of the dream controlled him. At a remove, he heard himself talking, babbling some typical witticism...
"You. Think. You. Save. Her."
"Her? Buffy doesn't need saving anymore."
"Can't. Save..."
"I saved the world. With my mouth and my yellow crayon."
Silence.
"Come on, An. I gave you an opening. Tell me I'm all talk. Tell me I just watch. Tell me... tell me I let you die. I know I did my best. I know we all did."
Silence. The figure shifted, settled slightly, but said nothing.
"You want me to apologize again? I'm through. You think you can come in here, and accuse me of all the same old..."
Quietly, the figure's head toppled over onto its shoulder. With a sound like rustling paper, it slumped and collapsed into itself. Dust pattered gently onto the floor, trickled onto the carpet.
"Anya? Say something. Say something! Please! Say something!"
Then Kennedy, shaking him awake. "Xander? Xander? Hey! Xander!" He started upright in the tacky cushioned chair. Across the room, Willow shifted under her covers, moaned, but did not awake. Kennedy's fingers eased their grip on his shoulder.
"I guess I'm still kinda beat," Xander sighed. "Maybe I should go check on my girls." Hands on hips, Kennedy regarded him and nodded assent. "I'll keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty. You go get some proper shut-eye."
By the time he'd mounted the stairs, fumbled for his keys, turned the lock, Xander's dream was already fading from his mind...
............
Later that night. Xander had turned in, leaving his four sleeping bag-enveloped rommates to conduct their whispered conference late into the night. Downstairs, Kennedy shifted in her cushioned chair, flipped through the pages of the LA Times, waited in vain for calls that never came, fitfully dozed.
Willow, pale and flushed, raised herself into a sitting position and regarded the diminutive young woman who sat perched on her bed. The visitor looked up and met Willow's gaze for a moment, then returned to contemplating the axe-like device she held in her lap. "Hey Will."
Willow's eyes narrowed. "You're not her, are you? I mean, not Buffy. The real Buffy."
The apparition didn't look up. "Not so loud, Will. You'll wake your girlfriend and I'll have to go. That would be a shame, wouldn't it? We never seem to talk anymore."
Willow's lips curled into a snarl. "I don't have anything to say to you. We beat you. You and your stupid demon army and your stupid Hellmouth."
The visitor glanced up again, smirking. "How are you these days? Goddess power treating you okay? 'Cause, frankly, you're looking a little peaked." Setting the axe aside, she swiveled towards Willow and held out her hands, wrists upward. "Need a pick-me-up? I don't mind helping you out again."
Willow shrank reflexively backwards. "Why are you doing this? Are you just going to follow us around being annoying forever?" Emboldened, she drew herself upright again. "I mean, that's a pretty sad hobby for the ultimate evil. And if I were you, I'd stay the hell away from me and my friends!"
The thing that looked like Buffy leered at her, stuck out its tongue, waggled its hands beside its ears. "Ooh, scary! Big bad dark Willow! Why don't you just lay a hex on me, little girl? Or did somebody forget to change the batteries in her magic wand?" Grasping the axe, the figure detached from the bed and began drifting slowly upwards, gradually fading into insubstantiality. "You think that was the end. But now that it doesn't matter anymore--now that the Red Queen is out of the game, now that you're off the board, now that you are done--I just had to come and tell you..."
"The end is only just beginning."
............
Upstairs, the young Slayers continued their discussions. The television quietly babbled on from its perch in the upper corner of the room, providing both cover for their whispered deliberations and a modest amount of illumination. Even had they been talking at full volume with the room lights blazing, they would have had a hard time interrupting Xander's deep sleep, but the setting suited their conspiratorial mood.
"I don't know," Bet frowned, sliding back a few inches into her sleeping bag. "There's definitely something wrong with Willow, but maybe it's just because she did such a big spell? We don't know anything about witches--I mean, real witches. Maybe it just, I dunno, takes a lot out of you."
"Yeah, but if it was always like this, wouldn't Xander say so? He sure seems worried. I really don't think this is normal." Lo, initially reluctant to take all this speculation seriously, was warming to the topic.
"Let's consider that one unresolved, then." Graciela held up the sheet of grease-stained notepaper and squinted at it. "Who knows how this magic stuff works? It's not like we can just look it up in some Harry Potter book."
"Poor Marie-Claire," Bet sniffled. "She was really looking forward to finding out what happened in the next volume..."
Neena swept her long hair out of her face with an absent-minded gesture. "Let's go over Caleb again." The others looked at her with interest, their eyes as wide as those of children anticipating a campfire ghost story. "If he had the axe all along, and he didn't want Buffy to get it, why did he tell her he had something of hers?"
"'Cause it was a trap, stupid." Lo, though then too inexperienced to join the vineyard foray, had been in Sunnydale long enough to become familiar with a couple of the girls who had died at the preacher's hands, and the painful memory spurred her to momentary vehemence. "He tells her he has something shiny, and she comes running and brings her gang along to get killed. We're just lucky it didn't work."
"Same thing with that bomb," Bet chimed in. "They were just trying to get rid of us, a few at a time."
Graciela stared fixedly at her notepaper, idly scratching her scalp. "Not that they were doing that good a job. I heard them talking afterwards about that thing at the vineyard, and it sounded like Caleb just let them go."
"It wasn't like that with the bomb," Neena replied, seemingly unruffled by Lo's outburst. "And then those creatures were waiting for us, to finish off the survivors. It was Buffy who saved us then--Buffy and that weapon."
"Madre de--" Graciela trailed off, stunned by a sudden realization. "The Turok guys that attacked you after the bomb went off. Where did they come from?"
"From the Hellmouth, of course." Now it was Neena's turn to snap, as a still-raw nerve was touched. "They must have performed one of those blood rituals, or--"
Graciela leaned forward, her eyes luminous. "But why just three?"
They exchanged puzzled glances, weighing the possibilities. Bet ventured that their adversaries had been unable to muster enough blood to fully open the portal, earning a derisive snort from Lo, but Neena's observation that for all they knew the forces of evil might be dependent on the alignment of the stars or the slow accumulation of mystical energy effectively ended this line of discussion. Their powers of concentration ebbing, the girls soon turned to idle speculation about the status of their absent comrades.
"Do you think Mr. Giles will come back for us, once he's finished taking all the others home?" Bet wondered.
Lo rolled over onto her back, gazing up at the ceiling. "What about Faith? You think she's gonna keep running, or turn herself in again?"
"I just wish someone would call," muttered Graciela. "It's like they all fell off the face of the earth..."
As if on cue, the phone shrilled, first once then twice. Rising to her feet, Neena strode over to the nightstand, then let it ring one more time before deciding that Xander was too deeply asleep to field the incoming call. She hoisted the receiver and ventured a tentative "Hello...?"
Xander stirred, opening a bleary eye. "Whuzzuh?"
Neena presented him with the phone. "For you, Mr. Harris. It's Kennedy."
............
Back in room 211 of the Motel Eight, Willow had gathered enough resolve to muster a weak smile, which she tentatively offered her two companions. "So, uh, you're probably wondering why I called you here today."
Xander was already shifting from happy relief at Willow's seemingly improved condition to anxious concern lest she overexert herself, but Kennedy flashed a quick grin and nodded encouragingly. Before her courage could falter, Willow plunged ahead to the main point.
"It was here. Earlier tonight. The First."
Xander half-rose from his chair, his knuckles whitening as they clutched at the armrests. "Wait a minute, Will. I know we've had a lot of stuff to process, and I haven't been sleeping that well myself. Are you sure you didn't just--"
Kennedy cut in forcefully. "If Willow says she saw it, she saw it. End of discussion." She swung her gaze back to Willow. "Go on, Red."
"That's about it, really," Willow pouted. "Same old rap about how this is the end and we can't do anything about it. I guess I'd know that bluster anywhere." Her brow creased, and she looked up at Xander. "And one more thing. It looked like... like Buffy."
Barely settled back into his chair, Xander shot up to his feet and stood for a minute in distracted concentration. "Whoa, wait a minute. I thought the First only took the form of..."
Willow nodded. "But I don't think that means anything's happened to her. I mean, anything else. She was kinda dead for a while, right? Until we brought her back. Maybe that's enough to allow the First to take her shape."
"Those who sleep in the earth... surrender their secrets to me." Kennedy's words were quiet, almost inaudible, as if talking to herself, and when both Xander and Willow turned to stare she seemed momentarily confused. "What? Oh, uh. I don't know. I think I must have heard that somewhere."
"Sleep in the earth? I guess that fits." Xander remained standing, his hand raised to his head as if about to slap his brain into proper working order. "But... what about Warren? Didn't Andrew say he saw it in Warren's form? I don't think there was enough left to bury after you-- uh, sorry."
Willow made a sour face. "Yeah, thanks. And what am I now, the resident First Evil expert?"
Kennedy leaned over the bed and stroked her cheek. "Remember, you're the only one of us who's actually seen it and talked to it. If it's really still in business, we're going to have to figure out as much about it as we can."
"Especially since Giles and everyone seem to have caught the train to anywhere else but here." Xander sighed. "Isn't Angel a private eye or something? You'd think he'd develop the professional skill of returning phone messages."
"We can't keep waiting here forever." Kennedy rose to her feet decisively. "I doubt this is something we can outrun, but staying put wasn't working too well for us back in Sunnydale. I vote we hit the road and see if we can pick up Buffy's trail."
Xander nodded. "Whatever's going on, I'll bet she's right in the middle of it. That seems to be rule number one in the Chosen One Handbook." He yawned and stretched. "Let me get a little more shut-eye, then I'll gather up the girl scouts. You feeling up for a road trip, Will?"
Willow grimaced. "I've felt better, but I don't think staying here is going to help any. Let's do it before I change my mind." She exchanged a feeble wave with Xander as he exited into the faint light of early morning. Kennedy was already bustling about the room, energetically cleaning out drawers and stuffing duffel bags, obviously glad to be taking action of some kind.
"You doing okay, Red?" Kennedy paused in her packing and cast Willow a quizzical stare. "I know we were looking forward to living long and happy lives without ever seeing this thing again, but believe me..."
"It's not that. Not exactly." By inches, Willow slumped against the wall at the head of the bed. "I'm not worried about the First... I mean, not really worried. I'm worried about me." She looked up at Kennedy, the tears already welling up in her eyes. "When I was holding the scythe, drawing out its power... I really thought I'd found something that was going to make everything better. Make me better. Make me okay again. I just..."
Kennedy stiffened, her face expressionless. "I thought that was what I was doing."
"Oh baby, I'm sorry. I didn't--"
She was busy again now, mechanically folding and packing, turning away. "Forget it, Red. Get some rest. I've still got some stuff to finish up here." By the time she looked back again, Willow was asleep.
toysdream, as is much of the writing - I've contributed some bits here and there, along with general brainstorming. Our goal with this tale is to answer some lingering mysteries about the First Evil, its master plan, and why it was so interested in the Slayer line, among other things that seemed less than fully explained by the series' end. Please deluge us with any and all comments, as this writing-collaboration thing is brand-new on us, so we're very anxious to hear how well it's working (this post was edited on 3.20.04 to add the story title).Hope you enjoy!
ACT ZERO: THE CUT
One week ago, in a crypt beneath unconsecrated earth, a woman, small and blonde, was killing a man. With a grunt, she swung the weapon she carried--part axe, part club, part stake--in an upward arc, cutting deep into gut and sinew and bone.
As the blade struck home, the man's eyes reflexively rolled up into his head--not with pain, which he wouldn't live long enough to register, but with simple shock. For a long couple of seconds, before the blade wrenched upward with a final jerk, time seemed to stand still. In his mind, the preacher felt the floor and the walls of the crypt dwindle away to nothing, leaving him awkwardly suspended in a vast, dimensionless space. In the boundless void, a small, harsh voice whispered in his ear.
"Don't look so surprised, little man. Didn't you see the inscription? It is not for thee..."
His lips twitched, and in his mind the preacher formed the words. "But how could we..."
"We? This was never about you, little man. You've played your part, and poorly at that. I exerted all my powers to even the scales for you, and you barely even challenged her. She kills gods, little man. You're not even a priest."
The moment ended, and the blade came tearing up through his belly. Darkness came, and the voice hissed in his ear one last time--mocking, spiteful, and cruelly feminine.
"Hush now, boy. You'll be in me."
ACT ONE: UNDER A WANDERING STAR
Alexander Lavelle Harris padded down the stairs. In the back of his mind, he registered the incongruity--these stairs, this house, the town itself, all had now collapsed into the earth. But the setting was familiar, and even with the lights off, the faint haze of illumination that filtered through the living room's curtained windows was enough for him to find his way down the steps.
In his socks, he padded down the final steps and turned towards those luminous curtains. The dim light reflected from a banner stretched across the room, and the words on it were familiar as well, though it took Xander a moment to recognize them. "Welcome Home," they proclaimed, but the last part was obscured in shadow.
Looking back towards the curtains, he could now make out something silhouetted against them. A figure, sitting on the sofa, its features a mask of darkness. Whoever it was, they were sitting stiffly upright, but wasn't there something wrong with the angle of the head? Xander opened his mouth to speak, but all that issued forth was a shrill chirp...
Nuts, he thought as he awoke. The phone again?
Xander reached up to rub his eyes, this time catching himself at the last minute and steering his knuckles away from the still-raw socket. Light streamed in through the motel room's windows; though the blinds were closed, the sun was clearly up and shining, and brightly at that. Fumbling for the phone's receiver, he peered around the room and noted the empty sleeping bags clumsily strewn about the floor. Guess the girls took off for breakfast, he mused. Good on them for not waking me up.
"Harris," he mumbled into the receiver.
"Xander, it's me again." Kennedy's voice was brusque as ever, but even groggy as he was, Xander could detect an increased note of tension. "Did I wake you again? You know it's past eleven."
"Us normal humans need our beauty sleep," he groused. "So, any luck getting through to England? Or LA? Or..."
"No luck. I guess nobody's answering their phones today." Kennedy took a deep breath. "Listen, Xander, could you just come down here? We're in room--"
"211, I know." He groaned, flexing his stiff limbs and idly envying those fabled regenerative Slayer powers. "Let me just wash up, and I'll be right--"
"Xander, could you please come down right now?" This time she was virtually pleading. "It's Willow. I think something's really wrong."
Oh well, Xander mused as he pulled himself up into sitting position. I wasn't loving that dream anyway...
............
A steady stream of traffic buzzed past the teenage girl standing on the shoulder of the highway. She aimed a listless wave at the three girls waiting on the other side, waited for an opening in the stream of cars, then loped slowly across, hands casually hooked in the back pockets of her jeans. An eighteen-wheeler blared its horn as she reached the gravel strip on the highway's edge, wind whipping her cropped purple hair as it passed.
"Sorry, Neena," she reported, flashing the plastic card in a ring-bedecked hand. "No luck with the ATM." She handed it off the tallest of her companions, who promptly tucked it into a small fabric wallet on a string as the remaining pair nervously watched the operation. "So, how much've we--"
"We have enough for breakfast," Neena answered. Her phrasing was formal as ever, with just a trace of a lilting Indian accent, but her companions exchanged glances at the uncharacteristic interruption.
A small blonde cleared her throat nervously. "So, uh... anyone coming down, or are we--?"
"Still asleep," the fourth girl reported. She was dark-haired, curvy. She hooked a thumb towards the motel behind them on the highway's edge. "I checked a few minutes ago."
"So let's go, then. I'm starving," the first girl announced, and immediately launched herself in the direction of the coffee shop adjacent to the motel. Lo wasn't tall, and her thick-soled boots looked huge at the ends of her skinny legs. Buckles and jewelry jingled on her small frame.
With Lo in the lead, Neena striding along behind her, and Bet and Graciela trotting in the rear, the four girls clattered into the Last Drop Coffee Shop. A stocky waitress waved them to a corner booth, where the newborn Slayers clambered into the warm vinyl seats and studied the laminated menus, more out of habit than anything else. They already knew the cheapest items by heart.
............
Several rounds of pancakes later, the girls came marching back up to their third-floor room to see if Xander was awake yet. Since their chaperone was bereft of both their recuperative powers and their heroic new appetities, they'd decided it was best to let him rest for the time being, but now that the breakfast outing had consumed the last of their petty cash the girls found themselves out of entertainment options.
Neena had summed up their predicament with characteristic understatement. "One must admit," she said, "that a strip mall next to a Motel Eight is not exactly the center of the universe."
Her three companions duly admitted that this was the case. True, the circumstances behind their arrival in Sunnydale had left them with no prospect of returning home like the other former "potentials"; of course, they were properly grateful to Xander and friends for the food and shelter; and yet, it had been a week since the Hellmouth had swallowed Sunnydale and the battered band of heroes had disbanded, and the motel's scenic parking lot was not growing any more attractive with increasing familiarity.
When they found the room abandoned, with a hastily scrawled note informing them that Xander had gone downstairs to confer with Willow and Kennedy, a round of eye-rolling and theatrical sighing ensued. Lo, tossing her purple-dyed hair, announced her intention to use up the remainder of her pocket change on Kosmo Kombat 3K at the mall's dilapidated Game 'N' Bowl. The remaining three, after consulting the basic-cable channel guide, opted to follow their runaway babysitter downstairs and see what all the hubbub was about.
"I do hope nothing's wrong," frowned Bet, nervously fingering a stray curl of blonde hair. Graciela shot her a dirty look, but Neena was already striding out the door, and the others fell in behind her without additional comment.
A minute later, Neena was out on the second-floor balcony rapping briskly on the door to Kennedy's room. Nominally 211 was "Willow and Kennedy's room"--an indulgence justified by both their status as a couple and the fact that Kennedy's credit cards were covering the group's motel stay--but it had been days since they'd laid eyes on the room's second occupant. A moment later, they heard Xander call out "Just a minute," and then a distracted fumbling at the lock. The door yawned halfway open to admit them, and their chaperone's good eye swept distractedly across their faces. After an awkward pause, Bet dutifully volunteered the information that Lo was at the arcade, and Xander nodded in vague acknowledgement.
"That's good." Xander glanced back into the room's interior, then looked back at the trio of girls gathered at the doorstep. "Uh, things are a little busy right now. Are you guys okay just hanging out for a bit?" He reached into his pocket and extracted a couple of crumpled bills, all but tossing them to Neena. "I'll be a half-hour or so, tops. Just check back in an hour." Already turning his attention back into the room, waving them away, he swung the door closed.
A few seconds passed. Then, without so much as exchanging glances, the three girls lunged forward and glued their ears to the room's external wall. Even after weeks of practice spying on the secretive denizens of the Sunnydale household, they had to strain to make out the weak voice of the unseen Willow.
"It's just... it's just no good." The witch's voice petered out, and it took a minute before she gathered the energy to speak again. "I've tried simple little spells, the tiniest... But it doesn't work, or it comes out wrong, or..."
"Just rest, Will." Xander's voice was reassuring, but it was clear he was worried. "After what you did back there, it's only natural... Just give it some time."
"No, that's not it!" Willow's voice rose to an indignant squeal. "It was supposed to be all better. I felt all better. Everything was so bright and pure, and I felt so strong... everything was going to be okay again."
"Just rest, Red." This time it was Kennedy, firmer and more confident than Xander, or at least faking it more convincingly. "I've left messages for Giles, and with Angel, and one of them has got to know where Buffy and Dawn went. They'll hit those books of theirs, and they'll work this out. We'll work this out."
"They can't..." Willow's voice dwindled to a quiet whine. "I know what I need... what I need to do." Then, a flat statement, devoid of affect. "Kennedy, I need the scythe."
............
Somewhere on the highway, hands on the wheel, a blonde woman smiled. Her lips stretched wider in a taut smirk. Too quietly for the girl in the passenger seat to hear, even had she been awake, Buffy whispered to herself. "Not for thee..."
............
"Shouldn't we be checking in with Bosley?" Bet wondered. Neena, who had been craning her head around to monitor the progress the other girls were making with the pizza collection, turned back to regard her fretful co-conspirator. "I mean," continued Bet, "it's been three hours already."
"I am quite sure he has more important things on his mind right now," Neena replied. "Besides, it appears our food is ready at last."
After collecting Lo from the Game 'N' Bowl, the junior Slayers had commandeered a table at the adjacent pizza parlor for an emergency conference. After extended discussion, it was resolved that some lunch was in order, and a potential dispute was averted with the selection of two medium-sized pizzas so as to accommodate the vegetarian contingent. Returning to the table, Lo and Graciela carefully landed the platters and then steered the accompanying pitcher of root beer to a smooth touchdown.
"Hard to believe we just ate all those pancakes," Lo mumbled. "How come Charlie never mentioned this Slayer Super Metabolism in all of her long-ass speeches?"
Graciela rolled her eyes, and Neena assured her that her objection to the secret codename scheme was duly noted. "It was not my idea to go see that movie three times in one week. Nonetheless, I think it best that we maintain a degree of discretion for the time being."
"Uh, people?" Bet raised her free, non-pizza-bearing hand in an attention-getting wave. "Back on topic... what exactly are we hoping to accomplish here? I mean, they're already calling in all the big guns. Or their answering machines, anyway."
As Neena paused to compose a reply, Graciela jumped in. "First, they may be the grown-ups, but they haven't exactly established a great track record of cleverly resolving their problems. While we were all in that house, I recall a lot of shouting and sulking and voting people off the island. And second, if we're all so full of Slayer power now, it damn well better be good for more than just punching and breaking stuff. We're superheroes too now, aren't we?"
Lo hefted a mug of root beer in a mock toast. "Let's hear it for the super Slayer brains!"
Turning to regard Graciela, Neena raised an inviting eyebrow. Taking her cue, Graciela leaned forward to begin her analysis. Bet poised her gel pen above a clean page of her notebook, ready to take minutes.
"Okay, let's start from the beginning. So there's this evil being, and one day it wakes up and decides that it wants to get rid of all the Vampire Slayers..."
............
Alexander Lavelle Harris padded down the stairs again. Into the living room, towards the figure which waited for him on the sofa, silhouetted by the dim light that filtered through the curtains. The banner fluttered, and now its entire message was visible, but Xander didn't need to look. He knew who waited for him on the sofa.
"Anya..."
The figure's outline shifted, and its head bobbed at a strange angle. Xander came to a stop a few paces short of the sofa. He waited with a detached calmness as the figure wheezed and gurgled, until at last it forced out a few bubbling syllables.
"Hell. Oh. Xan. Der."
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Xander knew he should be in motion--running in terror from the figure on the sofa, or rushing forward to scoop the pitiful remnants up in his arms. But this was a dream, and the logic of the dream controlled him. At a remove, he heard himself talking, babbling some typical witticism...
"You. Think. You. Save. Her."
"Her? Buffy doesn't need saving anymore."
"Can't. Save..."
"I saved the world. With my mouth and my yellow crayon."
Silence.
"Come on, An. I gave you an opening. Tell me I'm all talk. Tell me I just watch. Tell me... tell me I let you die. I know I did my best. I know we all did."
Silence. The figure shifted, settled slightly, but said nothing.
"You want me to apologize again? I'm through. You think you can come in here, and accuse me of all the same old..."
Quietly, the figure's head toppled over onto its shoulder. With a sound like rustling paper, it slumped and collapsed into itself. Dust pattered gently onto the floor, trickled onto the carpet.
"Anya? Say something. Say something! Please! Say something!"
Then Kennedy, shaking him awake. "Xander? Xander? Hey! Xander!" He started upright in the tacky cushioned chair. Across the room, Willow shifted under her covers, moaned, but did not awake. Kennedy's fingers eased their grip on his shoulder.
"I guess I'm still kinda beat," Xander sighed. "Maybe I should go check on my girls." Hands on hips, Kennedy regarded him and nodded assent. "I'll keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty. You go get some proper shut-eye."
By the time he'd mounted the stairs, fumbled for his keys, turned the lock, Xander's dream was already fading from his mind...
............
Later that night. Xander had turned in, leaving his four sleeping bag-enveloped rommates to conduct their whispered conference late into the night. Downstairs, Kennedy shifted in her cushioned chair, flipped through the pages of the LA Times, waited in vain for calls that never came, fitfully dozed.
Willow, pale and flushed, raised herself into a sitting position and regarded the diminutive young woman who sat perched on her bed. The visitor looked up and met Willow's gaze for a moment, then returned to contemplating the axe-like device she held in her lap. "Hey Will."
Willow's eyes narrowed. "You're not her, are you? I mean, not Buffy. The real Buffy."
The apparition didn't look up. "Not so loud, Will. You'll wake your girlfriend and I'll have to go. That would be a shame, wouldn't it? We never seem to talk anymore."
Willow's lips curled into a snarl. "I don't have anything to say to you. We beat you. You and your stupid demon army and your stupid Hellmouth."
The visitor glanced up again, smirking. "How are you these days? Goddess power treating you okay? 'Cause, frankly, you're looking a little peaked." Setting the axe aside, she swiveled towards Willow and held out her hands, wrists upward. "Need a pick-me-up? I don't mind helping you out again."
Willow shrank reflexively backwards. "Why are you doing this? Are you just going to follow us around being annoying forever?" Emboldened, she drew herself upright again. "I mean, that's a pretty sad hobby for the ultimate evil. And if I were you, I'd stay the hell away from me and my friends!"
The thing that looked like Buffy leered at her, stuck out its tongue, waggled its hands beside its ears. "Ooh, scary! Big bad dark Willow! Why don't you just lay a hex on me, little girl? Or did somebody forget to change the batteries in her magic wand?" Grasping the axe, the figure detached from the bed and began drifting slowly upwards, gradually fading into insubstantiality. "You think that was the end. But now that it doesn't matter anymore--now that the Red Queen is out of the game, now that you're off the board, now that you are done--I just had to come and tell you..."
"The end is only just beginning."
............
Upstairs, the young Slayers continued their discussions. The television quietly babbled on from its perch in the upper corner of the room, providing both cover for their whispered deliberations and a modest amount of illumination. Even had they been talking at full volume with the room lights blazing, they would have had a hard time interrupting Xander's deep sleep, but the setting suited their conspiratorial mood.
"I don't know," Bet frowned, sliding back a few inches into her sleeping bag. "There's definitely something wrong with Willow, but maybe it's just because she did such a big spell? We don't know anything about witches--I mean, real witches. Maybe it just, I dunno, takes a lot out of you."
"Yeah, but if it was always like this, wouldn't Xander say so? He sure seems worried. I really don't think this is normal." Lo, initially reluctant to take all this speculation seriously, was warming to the topic.
"Let's consider that one unresolved, then." Graciela held up the sheet of grease-stained notepaper and squinted at it. "Who knows how this magic stuff works? It's not like we can just look it up in some Harry Potter book."
"Poor Marie-Claire," Bet sniffled. "She was really looking forward to finding out what happened in the next volume..."
Neena swept her long hair out of her face with an absent-minded gesture. "Let's go over Caleb again." The others looked at her with interest, their eyes as wide as those of children anticipating a campfire ghost story. "If he had the axe all along, and he didn't want Buffy to get it, why did he tell her he had something of hers?"
"'Cause it was a trap, stupid." Lo, though then too inexperienced to join the vineyard foray, had been in Sunnydale long enough to become familiar with a couple of the girls who had died at the preacher's hands, and the painful memory spurred her to momentary vehemence. "He tells her he has something shiny, and she comes running and brings her gang along to get killed. We're just lucky it didn't work."
"Same thing with that bomb," Bet chimed in. "They were just trying to get rid of us, a few at a time."
Graciela stared fixedly at her notepaper, idly scratching her scalp. "Not that they were doing that good a job. I heard them talking afterwards about that thing at the vineyard, and it sounded like Caleb just let them go."
"It wasn't like that with the bomb," Neena replied, seemingly unruffled by Lo's outburst. "And then those creatures were waiting for us, to finish off the survivors. It was Buffy who saved us then--Buffy and that weapon."
"Madre de--" Graciela trailed off, stunned by a sudden realization. "The Turok guys that attacked you after the bomb went off. Where did they come from?"
"From the Hellmouth, of course." Now it was Neena's turn to snap, as a still-raw nerve was touched. "They must have performed one of those blood rituals, or--"
Graciela leaned forward, her eyes luminous. "But why just three?"
They exchanged puzzled glances, weighing the possibilities. Bet ventured that their adversaries had been unable to muster enough blood to fully open the portal, earning a derisive snort from Lo, but Neena's observation that for all they knew the forces of evil might be dependent on the alignment of the stars or the slow accumulation of mystical energy effectively ended this line of discussion. Their powers of concentration ebbing, the girls soon turned to idle speculation about the status of their absent comrades.
"Do you think Mr. Giles will come back for us, once he's finished taking all the others home?" Bet wondered.
Lo rolled over onto her back, gazing up at the ceiling. "What about Faith? You think she's gonna keep running, or turn herself in again?"
"I just wish someone would call," muttered Graciela. "It's like they all fell off the face of the earth..."
As if on cue, the phone shrilled, first once then twice. Rising to her feet, Neena strode over to the nightstand, then let it ring one more time before deciding that Xander was too deeply asleep to field the incoming call. She hoisted the receiver and ventured a tentative "Hello...?"
Xander stirred, opening a bleary eye. "Whuzzuh?"
Neena presented him with the phone. "For you, Mr. Harris. It's Kennedy."
............
Back in room 211 of the Motel Eight, Willow had gathered enough resolve to muster a weak smile, which she tentatively offered her two companions. "So, uh, you're probably wondering why I called you here today."
Xander was already shifting from happy relief at Willow's seemingly improved condition to anxious concern lest she overexert herself, but Kennedy flashed a quick grin and nodded encouragingly. Before her courage could falter, Willow plunged ahead to the main point.
"It was here. Earlier tonight. The First."
Xander half-rose from his chair, his knuckles whitening as they clutched at the armrests. "Wait a minute, Will. I know we've had a lot of stuff to process, and I haven't been sleeping that well myself. Are you sure you didn't just--"
Kennedy cut in forcefully. "If Willow says she saw it, she saw it. End of discussion." She swung her gaze back to Willow. "Go on, Red."
"That's about it, really," Willow pouted. "Same old rap about how this is the end and we can't do anything about it. I guess I'd know that bluster anywhere." Her brow creased, and she looked up at Xander. "And one more thing. It looked like... like Buffy."
Barely settled back into his chair, Xander shot up to his feet and stood for a minute in distracted concentration. "Whoa, wait a minute. I thought the First only took the form of..."
Willow nodded. "But I don't think that means anything's happened to her. I mean, anything else. She was kinda dead for a while, right? Until we brought her back. Maybe that's enough to allow the First to take her shape."
"Those who sleep in the earth... surrender their secrets to me." Kennedy's words were quiet, almost inaudible, as if talking to herself, and when both Xander and Willow turned to stare she seemed momentarily confused. "What? Oh, uh. I don't know. I think I must have heard that somewhere."
"Sleep in the earth? I guess that fits." Xander remained standing, his hand raised to his head as if about to slap his brain into proper working order. "But... what about Warren? Didn't Andrew say he saw it in Warren's form? I don't think there was enough left to bury after you-- uh, sorry."
Willow made a sour face. "Yeah, thanks. And what am I now, the resident First Evil expert?"
Kennedy leaned over the bed and stroked her cheek. "Remember, you're the only one of us who's actually seen it and talked to it. If it's really still in business, we're going to have to figure out as much about it as we can."
"Especially since Giles and everyone seem to have caught the train to anywhere else but here." Xander sighed. "Isn't Angel a private eye or something? You'd think he'd develop the professional skill of returning phone messages."
"We can't keep waiting here forever." Kennedy rose to her feet decisively. "I doubt this is something we can outrun, but staying put wasn't working too well for us back in Sunnydale. I vote we hit the road and see if we can pick up Buffy's trail."
Xander nodded. "Whatever's going on, I'll bet she's right in the middle of it. That seems to be rule number one in the Chosen One Handbook." He yawned and stretched. "Let me get a little more shut-eye, then I'll gather up the girl scouts. You feeling up for a road trip, Will?"
Willow grimaced. "I've felt better, but I don't think staying here is going to help any. Let's do it before I change my mind." She exchanged a feeble wave with Xander as he exited into the faint light of early morning. Kennedy was already bustling about the room, energetically cleaning out drawers and stuffing duffel bags, obviously glad to be taking action of some kind.
"You doing okay, Red?" Kennedy paused in her packing and cast Willow a quizzical stare. "I know we were looking forward to living long and happy lives without ever seeing this thing again, but believe me..."
"It's not that. Not exactly." By inches, Willow slumped against the wall at the head of the bed. "I'm not worried about the First... I mean, not really worried. I'm worried about me." She looked up at Kennedy, the tears already welling up in her eyes. "When I was holding the scythe, drawing out its power... I really thought I'd found something that was going to make everything better. Make me better. Make me okay again. I just..."
Kennedy stiffened, her face expressionless. "I thought that was what I was doing."
"Oh baby, I'm sorry. I didn't--"
She was busy again now, mechanically folding and packing, turning away. "Forget it, Red. Get some rest. I've still got some stuff to finish up here." By the time she looked back again, Willow was asleep.
