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And With This Power

Chapter Four: Righting Future Wrongs


“Slayer…I mean, um…Buffy?” Warren covered up when he saw Buffy on his front porch. Andrew and Jonathon came to the door also, and stood wide-eyed.

“Andrew, Jonathon. Get in my car,” she says, still looking at Warren. When they don’t move, she adds, “Now!”

Jonathon and Andrew slowly make their way to her car, not knowing what’s going on. Buffy punches Warren, which sends him back in the house and on the floor. She walks over to him, kneeling beside him. “Now, Warren,” she said slowly. “You think you’re gonna play games with me? Get inside my head?” She shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think so. You’re gonna stay away from me and mine…and never go near Jonathon or Andrew again.”

Warren shakes a little, and realizes that playing the innocent card is lame. “They’re in this as much as I am!” He yells in his defense.

“No. They aren’t.” She stands up, making sure he stays down. “Being a slayer gives a girl abilities. I had these visions of you and your trio gang. I know what you plan to do these next few months, and I’m stopping you,” she partially lied. She hadn’t had visions, but she did get to see while she was in Heaven. She continued with, “I will always be watching every move you make from now on. No matter where you go, who you’re with, or what you do. I will be watching. And if you screw up. One. Freakin’ time…you’re gonna see a slayer’s strength first hand.”

Without even waiting for a reply, she walks out of his house, slamming the door. When she gets to the car, Jonathon and Andrew are in the backseat looking terrified. She says nothing, but starts the car and goes home.

[Later that night, Buffy’s kitchen]

“So, you just had a vision about these guys…and you stopped them before they could do anything?” Dawn asked with a raised eyebrow. Xander, Willow, Anya, and Tara looked to her for an answer.

“Yeah,” Buffy answers softly.

“And now you have two of them chained in our basement, and Warren is long gone?” Willow asked.

“Yep.”

“Well…why are they down there, but you made Warren leave?” Tara asked softly.

She couldn’t tell them all the bad things that Warren had planned to do. They’d figure out that she’d seen the future, and she didn’t want them to know that. It was okay if they just thought she had a vision, though.

“The other two…weren’t as bad. Warren…he murdered people…” Buffy finally answers.

Dawn’s eyes widen and the rest of them are wondering the thing she asks out loud. “Does he kill one of our gang?”

Buffy thought. Why should she pain them with the truth when she was changing fate anyway. “No, of course not,” she answers with a sincere look. “Just one of his exes…he tried to hurt me…but failed.”

“Buffy?” Buffy spun around in her seat at the voice.

“Giles?” Without saying another word, she runs forward, taking him in a lung-crushing hug. “Sorry…forget my own strength,” she said pulling away.

“Quite alright,” he said, still disbelieving that she was standing here, even after he’d seen her mangled body.

[Later, Buffy is outside on the back porch, Willow and Giles are having the familiar argument.]

“You’re a very stupid girl,” Giles says, and the statement shocks Willow.

“What? Giles…”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? The forces you’ve harnessed, the lines you’ve crossed?!”

Outside, Buffy feels tears in her eyes. She can’t help it. She hated this conversation the first time she overheard it too. Somehow she was going to have to stop Willow’s overuse of magic.

“Hey, Spike,” she says, greeting him the same way.

“You hear all that noise?” Buffy nods, but just smiles. She’s not going to waste her time moping this time around.

“They don’t mean anything by it,” she says with a shrug. She realizes that she hasn’t told Spike about Heaven yet, or the others. The first time this happened, she’d already told him. After a long pause, he grins.

“Wanna ditch ‘em for a while? Get out, go somewhere?” He suggests.

A small smile creeps on her lips and she descends the steps to him. “Sounds like fun.”

[In the basement]

“I’m hungry,” whines Jonathon.

“Shut up, Hairball,” Andrew mutters with an annoyed frown. “You know. This is like the time Superman tried to defeat-”

“Shut up…” He barely mutters. “The slayer caught us before we could do anything. Now we’re gonna die.”

[The cemetery, Spike and Buffy]

As they were walking, Buffy finally turns to Spike. “This is your idea of getting out? You need a life,” she jokes playfully.

“I don’t know. Always enjoy watching you…fight,” she said with the raise of an eyebrow. Buffy should’ve replied with a punch or slight kick, but she had stopped a few feet back, staring a headstone. “What is it, luv?”

He backs up, and sees that she’s staring at her own headstone. The dirt is still disturbed from her crawling out of it. Tilting her head to the side, she just stares.

“Buffy…”

“False advertising,” she says suddenly and turns to him.

“What?” He asks as if she’s insane.

“People always use the phrase ‘six feet under’…but, ya know…I crawled outta that thing, and I could almost bet it was at least eight feet.” She pauses. “So, isn’t that like false advertising? I mean, couldn’t I sue?”

Spike smiles at her ability to joke when seeing her own grave. But the smile is bittersweet. He doesn’t want to hear about her crawling from her own coffin.

Before he can reply, Buffy takes her foot and smashes the tombstone so it’s nothing but a crumble of rocks. Smiling, she turns to him, and then walks away.

“Buffy…”

She turns to him and smiles a little. “Yeah?”

“About what you said the other night…” He pauses and sighs. “I think you forget that I don’t have a soul Buffy. I’m not your sweet Peaches. I’m a soulless thing; remember? I love you; you know that. And there’s things I do that I’m not proud of…but it’s the bloody demon, Buffy…this chip in my head is the closest thing to a soul I’m ever gonna have…you’re expecting things from me that I can never give,” he said softly.

When he looks up, she’s near tears and doesn’t say anything for a long while. If she said what she was thinking, he’d be blown away, considering she’d hated him when she died. But she didn’t care. He needed to hear this.

“Spike…that’s the attitude I’m talking about. You underestimate yourself and how good you can be.” His eyes widen and become glossy. “You’re not a soulless thing, Spike…you are so much more than that, I don’t know why you can’t see it. I know you can be a good man, Spike.” She just called him a man? Spike now had one tear on his cheek. “I believe in you.”

She gave him one last smile before walking back toward her house, leaving him in the cemetery.





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