“You know kid, sometimes the only way you can win is by giving in.” An unfamiliar voice called out to her through the darkness. Buffy didn’t feel like she was in her body anymore, didn’t feel like she was anything really.
“That’s right, you are the darkness.”
“No, I’m the things that fights it.” She shot back forcing her voice to be strong even thought everything about this place, this nothingness was creepy. It was like being in a large black room without even a pinpoint of light to guide you. For all she knew there could be no walls holding her in but the ones inside her mind‘s eye.
“Right again, you’re preconceptions are the things holding you here. You think you know what you are, what the Slayer truly is but you don’t. It’s not something that can be told to you, it cannot be shown. You cannot just watch, but you must see. See for yourself, that is why you are here.”
“All I see is darkness, so unless you turn on a light you’re wasting my time.” Buffy said falling back on sarcasm. Well all else fails, a witty remark tends to get the job done. Hopefully it would tick off ‘the voice’ and they’d fight or send her back. Well that or kill her, she amended but since she was already prepared to die, it wasn’t as scary as it once had been.
“You are the darkness Slayer, it is the source of your beginning and the well of your powers. To fight the darkness you must embrace it, know it as well as the light, so a girl was chosen and joined with the source of all darkness. Part of her humanity in exchange for the power and upon her death another was chosen, then another and another, until there was you.”
“Thanks for the history lesson but it would be so much more believable if it was coming from Giles. So why don’t you let me talk to him and then I’ll get back to you about this whole darkness thing?” Uncomfortable but determined not to show how his words had affected her, she started walking through the mass surrounding her. It didn’t feel like walking though, it felt like she was flowing though it and that only heightened her anxiety. She so did not like this place.
“You can’t run from what’s inside you Slayer, there is no sanctuary that can shelter you from your own presence.” The voice said in a soothing manner as her emotions filled the room. “This was not meant to be your place, your source of power, because you already had another destiny. It was untapped, just waiting inside you to be released and the power of the Slayer didn’t know that a part of your humanity had already been surrendered to it when the Watchers had selected you. They had witnessed to many slayers fall and decided to restore order to the line by selecting new candidates themselves, instead of allowing the power to chose.”
“Try again pal, they had no idea I was coming that’s why I wasn’t trained like all the other girls.” Buffy shot back.
“Their magicks felt your potential and they added you to the Slayer line, not knowing that your destiny had been claimed by the line of Immortals for the game. You were a baby being raised by the state and they planned on collecting you when you reached the age of five, just like all the girls before you. Due to a clerical error you were placed up for adoption and by the time the Watchers learned of it, it was to late. You had been legally adopted and they could not get to you without calling to much attention to themselves. So they sacrificed the Slayer before you when you reached the age of fifteen and channeled the power into you, thinking that your fear of your gift would make you obey them blindly.”
If she didn’t know better she would swear the voice was as amused by that little tidbit as much as she was but she doubted non-corporeal voices had a sense of humor. She’d already known she had been adopted so she couldn’t deny the scenario it had laid out but there was still an argument that she could make, one that would hopefully prove that this was all just a trick. “First of all the Watchers are suppose to guide the Slayer not kill her and secondly I’m not immortal, I died and everything. So if you're lying about both those things, then the rest is just a lie as well.”
“The Council of Watchers see the Slayer as nothing but a tool or a weapon to be wielded and it has been that way since the first Slayer was created against her will. The higher ups believed you would be more powerful than the girl before you, so they sacrificed the pawn in hopes of checkmating the queen. As for your first death, it was not your friend's breath that restored you to life but your first quickening as an immortal. You would have come back on your own, because the only way to see if you are an immortal is to test you mortality.”
“How do I know your telling the truth? how can I just take a strange voice’s word for it?” Buffy asked her voice still reeking of doubt. “I’m not going to kill myself just to see if I’ll come back or not…especially if I’m not even sure if it will be me that comes back.”
“Due to the power of your immortality, the essence of the Slayer within you has a form now. It is a demon in it’s own right because it’s essence was taken from the source of all evil but is not a malevolent being. Centuries of being a protector have overcome it’s beginnings and just like the Slayer herself, it is a protector. It’s has been merging with you slowly, it’s instincts guiding your own and in an effort to protect you it tired to become one with you. You are like three pieces of rope knotted together, the girl, the Immortal and the Slayer and now the mate of a vampire. That connection fed into your Slayerness giving you enough power to bring all aspects of your being into perfect harmony. By accepting his darkness your demon believed you would finally accept your own but you responded to it as an attack, thinking it was trying to overwhelm you, when it only wished to join with you.”
“Sorry but I don’t want to join with it.” Buffy said angrily, thinking back to those gore filled visions she had seen in the alley. “I’m not just going to let it take me over and control me! I am a person damnit, not a shell for some demon to just set up shop in…Slayer demon or not!”
Laughter filled the room, a warm sound that seemed to hang in the air and lighten the mood. “It’s surrendering to you, your powers understand your will and have submitted to you as their master…the dominate entity. The Slayer demon combined with your immortal essence should have given it enough power to overtake you completely, making you a little more than an animal, but you some how managed to control it, even before you realized it was there. Now you will be controlling them, instead of the other way around and since you're only one part human anymore, that’s a pretty impressive feat kid.”
“It didn’t feel all that whipped when I was puking up blood in the alley.” Buffy said snidely. “And even though I can’t feel it right now, I’m pretty sure some, if not all of my bones are broken. So if I‘m the boss I should be able to tell it to leave me the hell alone instead of getting beat within an inch of my life.”
“You’ve got it all wrong, it is only defending itself and you.” The voice said growing serious. “If the power of the Slayer was something that could just be removed don’t you think the Watchers would have done that instead of killing the girl before you? Once its yours it’s a part of you, just like your hair color or skin tone so if it let you cast it out, you would die as well. The only thing that saved you was the fact your Immortal and so is it. Which is why fighting it is more or less pointless.”
“If it’s so pointless why are you, whoever or whatever you are, even here?” Buffy said finally hoping to find out what was going on. “Wherever here is.”
“Your corporeal body is in a deep coma and The Powers That Be have brought your astral body here to this chamber so I could explain what is going on. My name is Whistler and I am a balance demon for the Powers and we have been watching you for some time. I’m the one that sent Angel to you; we feared that your powers would overtake you but also wanted you to have a guide. Once you’ve joined with your powers it will still take some getting used to and since vampires are immortal and have their own demons to control, he seemed like the right guy for the job because he also needed guidance. So basically we were going for a you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours kind of arrangement.”
“Sure you did pal. I bet you sent the handsome vampire to me just so we could be battle buddies.” Buffy said quickly catching onto the game now. Apparently everyone from the Watchers to the Powers wanted a piece of her and that meant they wouldn’t do anything without having a hundred reasons behind it. Once he had mentioned he worked for the Powers Buffy realized that other than the prevailing darkness, this place wasn’t all a tingle with evil vibes. Which meant he might actually be telling her the truth but she wasn’t convinced yet. “So either you come clean and prove you're one of the good guys or I’ll go back to my little pointless battle. But since you seem pretty sure I‘m Immortal it might take awhile, so someone else will have to do the Slayer’s job in my absence. Oh that‘s right ONE girl in all the world.”
“You forget kid, one girl dies and another is called and like you said you died and everything. There has been two Slayers since your death at the hands of the Master. The first one Kendra, died less than four months after being called and the second one, Faith, is in Boston and you’ll be meeting her eventually.”
“Okay so if I’m not your Champion anymore, why are you here?” Buffy shot back.
“You have two destinies, the Slayer and your place in the Immortal game. Now I can’t tell you what the ultimate goal of the game is but I will say it’s in everyone’s best interest that the eventual winner is a good person like yourself. Now with that in mind, I’ll answer your questions for the sake of staying on your good side. Yes, we did hope that something more than a working relationship would begin between you and Angel but we didn’t interfere other than making sure you two met. Everything you feel for each other is real; we don’t mess with free will, it’s a big rule up here. Speaking of rules the game has some that directly conflict your first rule as a Slayer.”
“You expect me to kill humans.” Buffy said coldly, her voice as sharp as a stinging slap. “Boy did you all get your wires crossed on that one.”
“No, we didn’t and your answer just proved it.” Whistler said with a trace of relief. “The entire game is composed of killing off other immortals and strengthening their power with the opponents quickening but some start to like the killing a little to much and don’t blink at killing anything in their paths. They begin to believe that they are above the laws and ways of man and once you couple that with the fact that the only way to kill them is by taking their head, they are as dangerous as Angelus in his prime. No matter how much damage is inflicted on them, they will come back unless they are beheaded and the more powerful they are the quicker they heal. Plus it doesn’t help that dark quickenings can turn nice people like yourself into cold blooded killers.”
“Quickenings?”
“When an Immortal takes another Immortals head something called a quickening happens. Basically you take their life into yourself and their memories become your own, as well as recieving all their power. The atrocities of the crimes they've commited can sometimes taint the memories and power making it impure. During dark quickenings you don’t just take their powers and memories, they try to control you. It doesn’t happen very often but with all the power inside you, soon you’ll become a conquest for the consummate head hunters. That’s why we thought having Angel in your life would be a good thing. Should you ever experience a dark quickening his claim on you would help guide you back to yourself if you were taken over but that was before you dominated your Slayer demon. So now we know that if anyone can control themselves it will be you. But we also thought he‘d help you accept your demon as well as the fact you were now in a kill or be killed situation against others like yourself.”
“You mean the whole thing is just a bunch of people running around chopping each others heads off?” Buffy asked, not surprised that some of them became vicious killers. “First you put them in a ‘game’ where the whole point is to kill others and then you act all surprised when they suddenly decide killing isn’t wrong.”
“You better than anyone should know that immortality has it’s price. Vampires don’t just feed on humans because it’s fun, they do it to survive. But while you won’t be taking blood from your challenges, you will still be taking life from them and adding it to your own. Despite the name given to it by the players, it is anything but a game. It’s a test, not only of the skills of the competitors but also their wills and hearts.” Whistler said soundly a slight bit angry or possibly offended but without being able to rely on body language it was impossible for Buffy to know which. “When the game ends only one Immoral will remain and they will have all the power of all the Immortals. So naturally they have to prove that they are the strongest and as a Protector you should worry about what would happen if the wrong sort of person was the one to gather all that power.”
They’d do a helluva lot of damage, Buffy thought grimly feeling the hand of fate wrapping around her once again. She couldn’t let a cold blooded killer possess that kind of power, even if it meant taking human lives to stop them. It was the perfect card to play against her but it also made the idea of taking lives easier to bare. Just like she had wondered where Spike and herself were on the good vs. evil meter, killers with untold power weren’t exactly on the good side of things just because they were human. But she didn’t want to end up on the dark side either and it would be a fine line to walk. “So I don’t have to kill every Immortal I cross, just the bad ones? I mean if I play can I do it my way or are there rules. ”
“Most Immortals just try to live a normal lives, only fighting when they have no other choice, some even lock themselves away on holy ground and refuse to play at all but others, others seek to become the one. You alone have to decide which Immortals you will kill because even if you are attacked out of fear, you can allow them to walk away. But the game does have it’s own rules. You can’t fight on holy ground, all fights have to be one on one with no outside interference and you’re suppose to keep mortals from figuring out immortals exist. You‘ll be able to sense other Immortals, just like you sense demons and you will have to decide who are your friends or foes.”
Since she didn’t like how neatly he had trapped her into making the choice to play and accept her inner demon, she felt a very childish need to knock him off his pedestal. “Okay I’m in but I gotta say for supposedly all seeing beings you really suck at playing matchmaker. Angel’s own guilt would never allow him to be with someone who was taking human lives willingly, no matter the reasons behind it. Plus if you didn’t notice he’s not exactly in touch with his own dark side, he‘s big with the denial and he wouldn‘t have been able to convince me to accept my own demon. Truthfully I don‘t think he would have tried, he looks at me like I‘m the only pure soul left in the world and that doesn‘t really fit the image of a girl with her very own demon…even if it‘s a good one.”
Whistler sighed, knowing the girl had a point. “He has always had the potential to be a great Champion for the helpless because he understands their pain but I found him in an alley living off of rats and avoiding people all together. I had hoped that by putting you two together, even if it didn’t become more than a friendship, that he would finally be able to accept that while he had a great many sins to atone for, he wasn’t worthless. You can’t help others if you can’t even help yourself and while he’s already come a long way, he still has a lot to learn. He’ll never be a part of this world unless he learns to accept what he is and allow others to accept it as well. By keeping his emotions so ruthlessly contained and holding himself back when he should be reaching out he’s still living back in that alley so even if he couldn’t help you…you might still be able to help him.”
“I care about Angel but we’re never going to be more than friends and I doubt he’ll even want to be that when he find out about Spike. I’d love to help him, because personally I think he’s a great guy but he’s not going to let me back in…if he ever did to begin with.” Buffy said sadly, wondering if not being able to save everyone would always hurt so badly. Even when there was nothing she could do she still felt guilty when she opened the paper and read about people who had died while she had been patrolling somewhere else.
“He loved you the moment he saw you kid, I could see it in his eyes.”
“Thanks I needed another great big helping of guilt.” Buffy said glumly. While she didn’t see Angel in the same light anymore, it still hurt that she was suppose to help him just as much as he was suppose to help her. “I was falling for him but he wasn’t there to catch me.” She said thinking of Spike’s words to her. “I’m sorry my choices will hurt him but I can’t always put everyone else’s needs before my own. I’d hollow myself out and Spike fills all those empty places inside me that I‘ve already given up. I know he’s not perfect and everyone else might just see him as a monster but I love him.”
“I didn’t tell you that to make you feel guilty, it was his fault for not taking everything you tried to offer him. It might actually do him some good to see you and your mate because if you can see more than a monster when you look at Spike, maybe Angel will finally open himself up so that others can see there is more to him than just Angelus. We always knew that Spike was more than he appeared and while we had nothing to do with you two getting together, we’re pleased with how things worked out. Together you are strong; he will help you control and understand your darkness and you will help him to see the light. Which is why it’s time for you to go back, it was only because of his strength that this meeting was even possible because all of your power is focused on the fight and healing the damage. If it goes on much longer he’ll lack the strength to feed and become little more than a living skeleton.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that to being with?” She demanded her fear for him making her voice low and menacing.
“You had to understand for yourself, you couldn’t just be shown the path you had to decide to walk it.”
“Enough with the fortune cookie crap, send me back!” Buffy said impatiently already surrendering herself to what was to come. Immortals and demons and soon she would be both, it's not like my life could be even more complicated than it already was she told herself sarcastically.