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A/N All opinions on the name Liz are held by Dawn and Dawn alone. Please do not take offence if your name is Liz. I meant none.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“So, what’s the sitch?” Xander asked, rubbing his hands together like he hadn’t been near an apocalypse in the last three days. “Got any Big Bads for the Xander-Panda to rough up and take down the slippery slope of death?” His eager eye swept over his friends and then to the familiar ginger-haired guitarist staring strangely at him from where he stood behind Willow. “Hey! It’s Oz! How are you, buddy?”

“Good,” Oz replied, his voice free of inflection. “You? I see you’re not dead.”

“Me?” Xander grinned. “Only in one eye.” And he pointed out his festive pirate patch for those in the room who were blinder than him.

“Cool,” Oz responded, and Buffy rolled her eyes. Of course there’d be male bonding over the eye patch. It all made perfect sense.

Willow hesitantly raised her hand, waiting for Xander to turn back to her, and once he had, her shoulders slumped dejectedly. “You got any more rousing crayon speeches? I’m kind of all out,” she admitted with a voice saturated with failure.

Xander’s eye widened dramatically. “There’s an evil Willow on the loose?”

Buffy nodded. “And it gets worse. She’s apparently boinking Riley.”

The bulging one-eye trick really shouldn’t have been anything but gross, and it was, though it utterly fascinated everybody in the room.

“I’m seeing this as not being a good thing?” Xander guessed correctly and then grinned at Willow’s acute embarrassment.

“Believe me,” she muttered, her voice almost failing with fatigue and humiliation. “So not.”

“So what are we looking at here exactly?” Angel stepped forward, unused to being in the back of the pack and rather eager to do what needed to be done so he could get back to his own world. He still had a post-apocalypse girlfriend to find. He only hoped she hadn’t run off altogether.

“We’re looking at a megalomaniac witch who’d fry you soon as look at you,” Spike reported drolly. He uncurled himself from around Buffy, happy at the lack of reaction from Peaches so far but unwilling to push his luck. “The bint’s lost it; all her marbles rolled south for the winter. Saw her buddy and her mentor murdered and now thinks she has to control the world—she’s not off to a bad start, either. Got it in for Liz bad and my guess is she’s probably trying to get the resources of the Initiative behind her.”

Xander blinked his one good eye and Angel, Giles and Dawn looked around for an unfamiliar face. “Who is this Liz?” Giles asked on behalf of all of them. It was irritating to get the story late as it was without even knowing who all the characters were.

“That would be me,” Liz said with distaste as she finished descending the stairs and enlightenment broke out on three faces at least.

“Liz? What kind of crappy name is Liz? What was wrong with Anne? Or Elizabeth—I like Beth. That would have worked,” Dawn advised, completely missing Spike’s irritated expression.

“Your sister’s boyfriend came up with it,” Liz confided with a dirty look to the vampire. “Ask him why he figured he’d give me such a name. I am supposedly the love of his life.”

“Not quite, pet. You jus’ look like her. There’s a difference, see,” Spike justified, and then bestowed a loving look on his glowingly gorgeous girl.

“Whatever,” she replied, suddenly more chirpy than she’d been mere seconds ago. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder why she felt no connection at all with this Spike, or why Buffy hadn’t felt the need to rush to Will’s side with more than friendly affection. Now that it did, Liz found it suited her more than a little that the respective vampires seemed perfect for just one slayer—whether she had an identical face or not. Nothing threatened the closeness she’d shared with Will when she hadn’t known who he was but relied on him anyway.

“So, do we have a course of action yet?” Liz finally looked her fill of Xander and Giles—and felt nothing. Nothing past the longing ache in her chest at least. There was no devastation that made it hard to breathe—no uncontrollable urge to have back what she’d lost at any cost. Just like she’d been able to accept the sight of her own face walking around her house, so had she mentally placed these doppelgangers in a segment of her brain that didn’t release memories too hard to cope with. They were here and she was okay with it, seeing them and not the Xander and Giles she’d shared smiles with and spilled heartbroken tears for.

“Not as such, no. What exactly is the objective here?” Giles inquired as he removed his glasses and rubbed the back of his aching neck.

Spike glanced at Willow and hoped she would one day forgive him for his matter-of-fact views on the situation. “To take out the witch.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

He recognised this house.

It felt like a lifetime ago, but when he’d first come to Sunnydale he’d glimpsed a girl that he had no choice but to follow. She’d been small and golden—even in the moonlight—and so fast and strong that taking on a vampire twice her size and yet coming out on the undusty side had seemed like child’s play. His equipment had told him she was human and so he’d left her alone—having no reason to approach her without revealing who and what he was. She was poetic in the way she moved in the dark and even then he’d known she was a force of good. He was intrigued and smitten.

But she wasn’t for him.

It had saddened him at the time, but then he’d met Willow and he’d forced himself to get over it—and he had. He’d fallen in love with the redhead and if all went according to plan, they’d have an announcement within the next six months he could be proud of.

But that hadn’t wiped away his shock that she was turning this girl in for being a slayer. A slayer. One girl in all the world, chosen to fight vampires. It read like a fairytale and Riley Finn wondered how it could possibly be true. And even if it were, wasn’t she still human? Her blood was warm and she wasn’t possessed with anything but extra-strength and an uncanny ability to kill monsters that little girl’s like her were supposed to be afraid of. Was it right for Maggie to want her for observation? Was it right for Maggie to want to cage her and study her like an animal?

He wasn’t going to lie to himself. He knew deep down the kind of woman Maggie was, and on some nights it was hard for his conscience to accept his seemingly blind devotion to her. The woman was cold and cruel—she’d rewarded him and his men with her own form of affection but he suspected that was more for what kind of creatures they brought her than for care on her part for any of them.

That Willow wasn’t displaying any kind of remorse for what was going to happen to this Buffy terrified him. Sometimes he would catch a glimpse of her black-eyed determination and nearly pee his pants in fright. But every time he’d convinced himself it was nothing. And he had apparently been right, because she never said a harsh word to him—never belittled him or patronised him despite her obviously encyclopaedic knowledge of the shadowy realities of this town.

“I’m picking up three hostiles on the infra-red,” reported a voice on his radio and Riley clenched his jaw. He had to force his mind onto this mission—at the very least they needed to recapture Hostile 17 and according to Willow, he was more than likely in this house.

“Copy that,” he confirmed and breathed hard. This was it, the moment he hadn’t been waiting for. Willow was anticipating God only knew what in the car down the street with the professor, claiming to be able to neutralise this slayer as soon as she passed beyond her front yard. He couldn’t see how, but the professor trusted his girlfriend in ways he’d never seen her trust another before.

“All units advance on my signal. Isolate the insurgents and wait for my command. Do not destroy. This is a recovery mission. I repeat, do not destroy.” He waited a beat till all radios had crackled their understanding of orders, then with a sinking heart and adrenaline fuelling his body, he held his radio close to his lips and barked the final order.

“Move in.”





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