The Future Lies Ahead: Where Do We Go From Here?
Part One:
Life can be strange
Some things we forget or
Rearrange in time
Lose the past
Tell me the truth...
'Where do we go from here?' Vanessa Williams
Giles gave a cry of sheer desperation as he swung at the pendant. At the contact, the pendant cracked, spilling eerie green light. At the second swing, it shattered.
*****
Angel watched in horror as the vampire he knew as Xander went to attack Buffy. He knew he wouldn't be able to get to her in time-
"Behind you!" he screamed. Buffy whirled and plunged a stake in the vampire's heart in the same swift, graceful movement. The vampire turned to dust, but not before he'd stabbed her in the shoulder with his claws.
Angel was attacked from the side, and as he staked his foe, he caught a glimpse of two teenage boys dusting the resident mad genius, Xander's red-haired mate Willow. He couldn't be sorry, not after the way she'd made him 'bark'.
He risked a quick glance around to locate Buffy, and saw her fighting her way to the Master. He started to do the same, from another approach. Hopefully they'd be able to pull off a two-pronged attack. He wasn't going to let the Master live to see another sunset, even if it meant his own life. He wouldn't let him hurt Buffy, even if it meant his soul.
During two and a half years of captivity and torture, he'd used the image of her face as a talisman in the worst moments. Even when he didn't think he had any reason to stay alive, he'd clung to Whistler's promise of her coming to Sunnydale, and the hope it gave him.
He was within several feet of the Master, when Buffy attacked. The Master was never so vicious as when his plans were in flames, and this was the worst Angel had ever seen him. Buffy was his equal in skill, but the wound in her shoulder was affecting her.
*****
Buffy struck out at the Master with increasing fury, but he countered each move. She felt herself weakening from the blood loss from her shoulder wound, and put all she had into a last series of blows.
It didn't work.
The Master pulled her against him, and put her in a headlock. Buffy recognized the move; she'd used it herself on vamps many times. The Master was going to snap her neck. Her mental voice was dispassionate, as she thought <So this is how I fall. At least I took most of them with me.> Even more strangely, her last thought was of her bizarre companion, the Master's vampire prisoner.
Then the pressure on her neck dissipated, as the Master's arms vaporized. Buffy fell to her knees, not even feeling any pain as her knees struck the hard concrete painfully. She sensed, rather than saw, her companion kneel beside her, and slide a supporting arm around her. She looked at him in a daze, and asked, "The Master?"
"Dusted," he said, his voice hard and fierce.
"The rest?"
"Dusted or out of here. I'd say Sunnydale will be empty by dawn. Without the Master, they're not going to hang around. None of them will get up the courage to come back for weeks."
As he spoke, Buffy felt relief that her job was done, satisfaction at the deaths they'd dealt, and something else, something she hadn't felt for a long time, but was too weary to grasp.
"Good," said Buffy, before everything started to go black. As her head fell to the stranger's shoulder, she felt him pick her up in his arms, and deep in her subconscious she felt something shift and click into place, filling a void that she didn't even know had existed.
*****
Angel swept Buffy up in his arms, and started walking to the door. He saw two teenage boys approach, one with black hair, tall and husky, one fairly short and slim with spiky blonde hair.
"How is she?" asked the blonde.
"She's lost a lot of blood. It's not life-threatening, but we should get her to a hospital right now."
"My van's outside. Let's go."
Angel followed the two boys outside and into a van. He climbed into the back, still holding Buffy in his arms. He saw that it was full of holy symbols, and kicked out to clear a space big enough for him to sit, and checked the wall was clear too. The symbols would be uncomfortable, but he'd developed a much higher than usual tolerance for holy objects over the years. It had been a favorite tool of the Master's for his 'punishment', and you can get used to anything if it happens often enough.
He sat down, leaning his back against the wall of the van and settled Buffy on his lap, with her head on his shoulder. He felt the sheer grim purpose, the sky-high adrenaline levels drain away, taking his energy with it.
He settled Buffy's head more comfortably on his shoulder, and a whiff of her scent caught his nostrils. Unable to resist, he buried his face in her hair, dragging her scent into him, making it a part of him. He would probably never get the chance to do this again, and this memory would fuel his dreams for years.
He could feel his demon rise; his healing and senses were almost human-dull, after years of minimum rations. He shoved it away violently; he would feed after he knew that Buffy was safe. Leaning his head back and closing his eyes, he didn't notice the two boys exchange a look, and the blonde handing the brunette the keys. As the brunette started up the van, the blonde climbed in the back and before Angel could stop him, reached under his shirt where a few burn marks peeked, saying, "I'm pretty much the field medic-"
The boy stopped with his fingers on Angel's upper chest. "You're cold." Angel couldn't work up the will to stop the boy, as his fingers moved to his throat. "You don't have a pulse."
The brunette slammed on the brakes, and yelled, "He's one of * them *!"
"No!" Angel semi-growled. Just the thought of being mistaken for one of the Master's minions made him want to throw up.
"But you are a vampire," the boy in front of him stated, strangely calm as he gestured for the driver to keep going.
Angel squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then opened them and admitted, "Yes."
"So what's your story?"
"A century ago I killed someone that I shouldn't have. She was Romany - a gypsy - and her Clan cursed me with the return of my soul." Angel didn't have any idea how much the redhead saw in his eyes, as he added, "The perfect punishment. You have no idea what it's like to have done the things I've done...and to care."
Angel shook of the memory of that long-ago night, and continued, "I haven't fed off a human since. I spent decades just wandering, until a guy called Whistler found me. He offered me a chance to become someone, to do something with my miserable unlife."
He looked down at the white face of the still figure in his arms, and continued, "I accepted, and he trained me to help Buffy, then sent me here to meet her. To help her in her fight...but she never came." He didn't hear the catch in his voice, or the way his voice grew small as he added, "Whistler said it was her destiny to fight the Hellmouth, but she never came."
The boy nodded, and replied, "We think that we may have an idea about that, but we need to talk to someone. Larry's on the cellphone; he'll meet us at the hospital. What happened?"
Angel's voice was completely flat, as he said, "I tried to stop the Harvest, but I couldn't. I took out half a dozen guards, and got out about twenty people, but I couldn't stop the Master from freeing himself. I was captured, and the Master kept me chained in a cell as his pet ever since. Tonight, Buffy freed me."
"You staked the Master."
"I had to." Angel didn't realize how cold his voice was, or how grim his eyes were, as he added, "I wasn't going to let him live after what he'd done to me."
The boy nodded again, and said, "Cool. Good job. I'm Oz."
"Angel. How near are we to the hospital?"
"A couple of minutes. Are you hungry?"
"A little, the Master kept me on the bare minimum rations. I'll raid the blood bank when Buffy's okay."
"Giles and Larry will take care of Buffy. I know my way around the hospital, I'll help."
Angel smiled weakly and replied, "Not to mention, keep an eye on me?"
Oz gave him a tiny half-smile, and nodded.
*****
Oz sat in a chair in the library, and watched the newest recruit. Angel was sitting absolutely still in the chair, his hands on the armrests. It looked like a calm posture, until you saw the white knuckles, and the tension seeping from his body.
Oz had always had good instincts about people, and they had saved his life more than once, warning him about former classmates turned vamps; not to mention making him the star recruiter for the Scooby Gang, although Giles, Larry and himself were the only ones left. Right now, those instincts were telling him to trust this guy.
Giles was bringing Buffy here from the hospital; she'd been released today. Angel also said that he'd talked to a contact of his, and that hopefully the group could put all the pieces together.
Larry was munching on a high-energy snack bar and sitting on the counter, watching Angel and the door in turns. Which promptly swung open, to reveal a man in his early thirties, shorter than Oz, wearing a goofy hat and severely clashing clothes. He strolled past Larry and over to the table.
"Whistler," Angel said flatly from across the table. "About fucking time."
"Upset a little, are we?"
"A little," said Angel, in a semi-growling tone that Oz could tell meant 'majorly, furiously, pissed'. "But the explanations can wait until Buffy gets here."
"And here I am," Buffy said, stalking through the doors, followed by Giles.
Whistler stood and waved Buffy, Giles, and Larry to sit at the table. As they approached, he sat and told everyone, "I know you guys want explanations, and I don't blame you. And you'll get them. But the thing is, I don't know everything, and I think this'll make a lot more sense if we take turns filling in the blanks. So let's have a summit meeting type thing."
Buffy gave a short nod and turned the chair next to Angel backwards and sat, leaning her arms on the back as she checked to make sure she had the door in plain view. Giles sat at the head of the table, opposite Whistler, and Larry took the seat next to Oz.
"First off, who are you?" Buffy asked. Oz had been wondering himself. "You make my spider-sense go crazy, but you're not something I've ever fought before."
"Spider-sense?" Giles asked.
"Pop-culture reference. When I was first being trained, I used it to refer to my Slayer sense of the supernatural, and it stuck." Buffy turned back to Whistler, and asked, "So what are you, some good demon who goes around trying to aid the fight between good and evil?"
Whistler looked impressed, and said, "Wow. Good guess."
Oz grew alarmed, and subtly groped for his blessed crucifix as he asked, "Wait a minute...you're a demon?"
"Hey, the term 'demon' refers to a whole race, okay? Just because the bad apples got all the publicity, don't assume we're all into destroying the world. I'm one of the good guys, and so are the rest of my brothers. Problem is, somehow we completely lost control of the Slayer situation after Buffy's first Watcher died, and we don't know how."
"Slayer situation?" Buffy snapped out.
Whistler took a breath, then said, "There's a lot of us, working for good. We're in brotherhoods, or committees. Mine works with the Slayer...she's the sword of God, after all. See, we're able to get a fairly good idea of the destiny of certain people, and influence it, but we can't act directly."
He frowned in thought, and, Oz thought, not a little puzzlement, and continued, "Buffy, Merrick was destined to die at Lothos' hands, just as it was your destiny to kill him. Then you were supposed to come here, with Giles as your Watcher. But you didn't, and we haven't been able to figure out why."
"I think we may have an explanation for that," Giles said, going into detail of how a girl named Cordelia had told him a story about some kind of one-wish genie, and how she'd wished that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale. He then explained how he'd summoned the evil genie, and managed to destroy her power center. "But we should have returned to the reality where Buffy did come to Sunnydale, and we shouldn't be here, discussing this."
"I think I may be able to help there," Whistler said. "Giles, how many blows did it take to destroy the pendant?"
"Two. The first cracked it, the second shattered it."
Whistler nodded wisely and said, "There's your answer. Anyanka's a kind of genie who becomes more powerful the more she grants wishes. Once you found out Anyanka's weakness, the timeline created by that wish narrowed to two possibilities, one that was destroyed when the pendant shattered, and this one.
"When her pendant was cracked, it released enough mystical energy to freeze this world into the timestream - all the possible time lines - at a crucial point; when it was shattered, it destroyed her power, leaving her mortal. If it's any consolation, the world that was destroyed because the pendant shattered with the first blow was even worse than this."
"How?" Larry asked with a disbelieving laugh.
"Buffy and Angel were both dead. Angel died saving Buffy from Xander's attack, and so he didn't save Buffy from dying at the Master's hand."
Buffy and Angel looked at each other, and Oz swore that he saw something pass between them; some kind of instinctive understanding. He filed the thought away for future reference, and turned his attention back to Whistler. He was just grateful that Giles had explained the whole Slayer/Watcher thing last night at the hospital, or he and Larry would have been more than a little lost.
Whistler continued, "Obviously, this wish made sure that Buffy never came to Sunnydale, by convincing the Watcher council that the Hellmouth was a myth. By the way, any idea why it didn't work on you, Giles?"
Giles looked slightly sheepish, and replied, "Well, up until now, I've been rather the black sheep of the Watchers. I had the bare minimum of contact with the council, which might explain why I wasn't...infected, shall we say, with the results of the wish. When I was unable to persuade anyone that the Hellmouth was real, I headed here myself, determined to help as best I could."
"Up until now?" Oz asked.
"Well, I've spent the past two and a half years trying to convince the council that there is a Hellmouth, it's here, and we needed backup. Now that I've been proved right, they seem rather grateful. And generous. Speaking of which, I've been appointed Buffy's permanent Watcher, and she's been assigned here, at least for now."
"That's another thing," Whistler said. "I thought something like this reality might happen, so I warned my brothers about the possibility of the energy of Anyanka's pendant being released. So we were able to harness a lot of the power."
"So what are you going to do with it?" Buffy asked, suspicion clear in her voice.
"This wish threw everything off balance, so we've been able to stretch the rules a bit. We've been in contact with the Watcher council, and used some of the power to help them."
"How?" Larry asked.
"As long as the Hellmouth is active, it needs a Slayer to guard it. My guess, in the non-Wish worlds, Buffy was killed by the Master in such a way that she could be resuscitated - medical science can work miracles, nowadays. So there's two Slayers. And we managed to do that here."
"What do you mean?" Buffy asked sharply. Oz thought that he could detect a little alarm in her voice, and he couldn't blame her.
Whistler didn't answer directly, instead he asked, "Giles, what happens when a Slayer hits retirement age?"
"Retirement age?" Buffy asked, sitting up ramrod straight. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Giles sounded slightly surprised as he asked, "Kevin Brownstone didn't tell you? Or Merrick?"
"No."
"Well, every so often, a Slayer lives until full womanhood. Apparently, once the Slayer is no longer a girl, the power starts to drain from her. It never goes away completely; for the rest of her life, the former Slayer has extraordinary senses and strength. But full power is passed to another girl."
"How often does that happen?" Larry asked.
Giles took off his glasses and wiped the lenses, as he said, "Approximately one in every hundred Slayers, usually about once a century. The last retired in 1849."
Angel's voice was hoarse as he asked, "What happened to the other girls?"
Giles kept polishing his glasses as he replied, "Most of the girls seem unable to cope with the loss of purpose, of being...ordinary. A few go on to live normal lives, about half of the rest become Watchers themselves."
"And the others?" Buffy asked, her voice flat. Oz had the feeling that she already knew the answer.
"They commit suicide. Usually within five years, never more than ten."
Buffy looked down at her hands on the chair back. Angel reached out and touched her hands, and Buffy shook him away. It had seemed to bring her out of her trance, though; she turned to Whistler and ordered, "That still doesn't explain what you did. Spill."
Whistler was unfazed by her tone, and grinned as he said, "When they get a retired Slayer, they cast a spell to activate the next one. It only works with retired ones though. What we did was use some of the mystical energy to power that spell. So you're not the sole Chosen One anymore, Buffy, you're Slayer Alpha."
Oz looked to see how Buffy was taking the news of a new chick on her turf, but she was silent and unreadable as Whistler continued, "You'll be permanently assigned to the Hellmouth from now on, until you're retired, or you fall. The other Slayer will be activated as usual, wherever she's needed most. You have first priority, you're the one in charge if you ever meet. If you have a top-level emergency, you can ask the other Slayer for help."
"Fine," Buffy asked, her voice tight.
"So, what now?" Larry asked.
"Now, we go back to the purpose of this discussion, and try to figure out how the wish affected things, and how we came to this," Giles said briskly. "I suggest I start. Anyanka's spell convinced the council that the Hellmouth was a myth, and so when Buffy's first Watcher Merrick died, she was sent to Cleveland and Brownstone became her Watcher. I also take it that the wish is responsible for the death of Buffy's parents in that car accident, otherwise one of them would have come here with her."
"Got it in one." Whistler said. Oz was the only one who seemed to notice the way Buffy flinched at the last part, until he saw Angel's fingers tighten on the armrest, as if with the effort not to touch her again. "Angel, I think you're next."
Angel leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table as he started, "After the minions became convinced that I wasn't going to escape from the cell, they spoke around me freely. I didn't have the chance to do much but think, so I'm pretty sure that I can tell you most of the Master's side of things. What I suppose most of you already know - or would, eventually, anyway - is that Whistler sent me to Sunnydale to help Buffy. I waited, but she didn't come. We all know why, now.
"I guess I should tell you why the Master came here in the first place. It was to open the Hellmouth, and bring the demons back. That was sixty years ago."
"Wait a minute...where was he between then and when he started to rule Sunnydale?" Larry said.
"Opening up dimensional portals is very tricky, especially so because Nature herself really doesn't approve. That's what foiled the Master. An earthquake hit, and he got stuck in the portal. He was there until two and half years ago. What you may not know is that the day he escaped was a special night, called the Harvest."
"Yeah, you said something about that before." Oz remarked. "What's with that?"
"Once a century comes a night called the Harvest. It's called that because a Master can form a psychic link with one of it's minions, enabling it to harvest power from the minion while it feeds. The Master formed this bond with a minion called Luke, who went to the Bronze to get lots of fresh blood."
Angel looked down at his hands on the table, as he continued, "I tried to stop the Harvest, but as you can tell, I failed. I managed to get in the back way; I took out half a dozen vamps and got about twenty people out before they caught me. After the Master rose, he decided to keep me. You see, one of the vamps I staked was my sire, Darla. Killing your sire is one of the greatest sins of the vampire community, and the Master was offended. What really made the shit hit the fan, so to speak, was the fact that Darla was one of the Master's progeny, and his favorite for centuries. He decided to keep me as all-around whipping boy and pet."
****
Angel took a deep breath, and Oz wondered at it, thinking <I guess it must be sheer nervous habit. Funny.>
"If you want to know about the factory, I guess I need to backtrack a bit, here. The night before the Harvest, Luke sent out a few vamps to get the Master some food. Two teenagers were brought back. The boy became a meal, but the Master realized that the girl, Willow, was extremely intelligent. It leaves a certain tang in the blood."
"How do you know?" Larry asked.
Angel looked at him, and had a ghost of a smile on his lips as he asked, "Do you really want to know?'
Larry blanched and shook his head, and Angel continued, "Every so often, I could catch a glimpse of what Willow was like before she was turned; I think I would have liked her. From what I figured out later, she'd been in love with her best friend Xander for years. Even right after the change, she managed to persuade the Master to let her turn Xander instead of just letting him be a meal. From what I could tell, they were a couple from the night of the Harvest until last night, when the Master died."
"What happened then?" Giles asked.
"Larry and Oz staked Willow last night," Angel turned to Buffy and told her, "Xander was the one that wounded you. Willow became the resident mad genius, so to speak. She was the most intelligent vampire around, the factory was her idea. She and Xander supervised the construction."
"So, the Master got out of the Hellmouth, and took over. What else?" Buffy asked.
Oz noticed that Angel and Buffy were slightly turned towards each other, as Angel started to explain, "Well, a Hellmouth usually draws people to it as a sort of self-defense mechanism, because it's only fully active with a certain amount of life energy around. That's why there are so many wealthy people from Sunnydale. But the Master's rule kept the human population down to such an extent, that the vampires were the only supernatural creatures around. The Hellmouth's influence did stop too many people from leaving, though."
"So no one ever challenged the Master?" Buffy asked. "What about this Luke guy?"
"Funny you should mention that. About a year and a half ago, did you notice a drop in the vampire attacks?"
"Yeah, I remember that," Oz remarked.
"That's because the Master had serious trouble with a vampire couple called Spike and Drusilla. Drusilla was very weak, after being attacked by a mob in Prague. Spike thought that living on the Hellmouth might help, and they came here."
Oz thought he caught a trace of a smile on Angel's face as he continued, "Spike was the type who didn't bow to anyone; he promptly got into a power struggle with the Master. He managed to take out about half the inner circle, including Luke, before he and Drusilla were killed."
Oz couldn't figure out what the trace of emotion in Angel's voice was. Satisfaction, or...pride?
"So what happened then?" Whistler asked.
"The Master did his master vampire thing. A few weeks ago he tried to open the Hellmouth again, but it failed spectacularly. Crispy-fried about two dozen minions. I assume that finally got the attention of the Watcher Council?" Angel asked Giles.
"Yes, finally. After several long arguments, they eventually decided to send Buffy here. The rest...we were there for."
Buffy voiced the question in everyone's mind. "Where do we go from here?"
Whistler leaned his chair on the two back legs, and looked thoughtful. "Okay, here's the sitch. You're still the Slayer, now permanently on the Hellmouth and with Giles. However, the Master's been absorbing all the Hellmouthy energies pretty severely, so you've got a bit of breathing room." Whistler thumped the chair on the ground again, stood, and walked to stand beside Buffy, who stood to face him.
"The Hellmouth won't be able to draw enough people here to boost itself up to full capacity for a good six months. You can't retire from the fight between good and evil, but you've got a vacation. You've been given a second chance, kid. I suggest you milk it for all it's worth."
Buffy gave a bitter laugh and said, "A second chance for what?"
Whistler's voice was gentle, as he told her, "To become someone else. To become the woman you would have been, if it wasn't for that dumbass wish. To become the woman you should be."
Buffy looked him in the eyes, then hung her head as she looked towards the floor. "I don't know if I can."
"You can, Buffy. You can, and unless you fight it all the way, you will."
Oz looked at her sympathetically. She may have become this icy badass chick because she had to, but it wasn't natural, and she obviously knew that too, but didn't know any other way to be anymore. Maybe that's part of the reason she was sent here; he, Giles and Larry were living proof that you could fight evil and still be human.
Oz interrupted his train of thought by sitting up straight, as he realized that they had all forgotten something. "Wait a minute, what about the rest of the power you hijacked? Do we get a tiny wish each, or what?"
Whistler nodded towards him, and said, "It's a good thing you brought that up, because it's important. We found another glitch in the timeline, and we used the power to fix it. I suppose you know about Angel's curse?"
"Yeah, it was a bunch of gypsies." Larry piped up.
"Well, they added a little loophole."
"Loophole?" Angel asked, springing to his feet and knocking over his chair. "What kind of loophole?"
"They put in a clause which meant that if your soul ever knew a moment of true happiness, it would be ripped from you."
"What a bloody stupid idea," Giles exploded. "If you're trying to get an enemy out of the way, you make sure they can't come back after you."
"Well, I managed to persuade most of the clan of that, too. So, we used the rest of the power to fix it. Congratulations, Angel, you've now got your soul free and clear." Whistler shifted his weight and added, "The Elders did insist on something though."
"What?" Angel growled. Oz tensed, then realized that Angel had a perfect right to growl, considering.
"They want to send someone to keep an eye on you, and make sure the curse doesn't break anyway. Kind of your own Watcher." At Angel's stony glare, Whistler babbled, "Don't worry, I checked her out myself and she'll fit right in with the rest of you guys. She's kinda a black sheep, herself; she's into computers and jeans, and that sort of woman doesn't exactly fit in with a Romany family. You'll like her, I promise. Really."
Angel picked up his chair, flopped back into it gracefully, and glared some more. Buffy, who had been silent all this time, sat beside him again, and told him, "Hey, at least you know that she can't do anything to you compared to the Master."
Angel grinned wryly at her and replied, "There is that, I suppose."
Their hands moved towards each other on the table, and for a moment Oz could have sworn he saw something pass between them. It was gone a second later, but Oz couldn't help but get a strange idea. It was pretty wild, but so was their situation, and Angel was probably the only one around who was as emotionally scarred as Buffy, not to mention being a predator with a conscience...
Oz realized that Whistler was talking again, and filed the thought away while he listened. The thought never went away, though, it just bubbled for a while....
The End