“The – the origins of the Slayer?” Giles echoed, a puzzled frown on his face. “What could that possibly have to do with the entity that’s attacking Buffy now?”
The sharp breath that Buffy drew in, the slight tightening of her arm around Spike’s waist as he opened his mouth to reply, drew his attention before he could. He looked at his mate with concern – and a sudden cold feeling of apprehension, as he felt the return of the malevolent force within her, struggling for dominance of her body and mind.
“Buffy?” he said softly, hesitantly, every instinct telling him to flee – but he knew better than to actually try it.
If he attempted to get away from her now, it could be just the catalyst the cruel being within her needed to regain control.
Fortunately, Dawn was immediately aware of the danger, and reached down beside Spike to clasp her sister’s hand at his side in hers.
“Come on, Buffy,” she whispered intently, solemn, wary eyes focused on her sister’s face. “Fight it. Fight it off.”
Dawn’s firm, steadying touch on her hand seemed to draw Buffy back from the edges of insanity, and she suddenly turned her hand under her sister’s to clasp it tightly, her eyes closed and her jaw set with determination as she struggled. Finally, the battle consuming her seemed to pass, and she opened her eyes, looking up and around the room at the others with a weak little smile.
Her words were directed at Giles, in response to his last question, as she remarked in a quiet, shaky voice, “I guess it has a *lot* to do with it, Giles. Because whatever this thing is – it sure doesn’t want Spike to tell us what he’s about to tell us. I know that much.”
She looked around the room again at them all, her eyes bright and clear and shining with excitement, as she realized aloud, “So I guess that means it must be true.”
She was quiet for a moment, as everyone took that in, processing the simple truth of her statement. If the mere fact that Spike was about to tell them caused the creature inside her to attack, then what he was about to say must pose some threat to it, some reason for it to want to stop him.
“I told you he was telling the truth,” Buffy reminded her friends in a voice of triumph tinged with resentment, before turning to meet Spike’s eyes again. “Go ahead,” she urged him gently. “What were you saying?”
She could not blame the vampire for his hesitation. His body felt so tense, tight and hard under her arm, as he gazed into her eyes, his own wide and searching, and full of an anxious, wondering fear that struck her again with a feeling of guilt.
“Buffy – are you sure? I mean,” he explained softly. “I don’t wanna get you – too upset. I’m not the only one you might go after, pet. Remember that,” he reminded her, his eyes solemn and questioning.
“Dawn’s right here. She’s holding on to me, and I’m gonna be fine. You have to tell us what you know, Spike,” Buffy insisted, gently but unyieldingly. “Obviously, it’s the key to beating this thing. We have to know.”
He knew that she was right. They wouldn’t have a chance of stopping this thing unless they knew what it was that they were up against. He had no choice but to tell them what he knew.
But the knowledge that the act of telling them was going to increase the chances of the entity taking her over again, with the full intention of stopping *him* from revealing its secret – well, it was quite simply – bloody terrifying.
“Come on, Sweetheart,” Buffy urged him gently. “It’s all right. Nothing’s going to happen.”
Her expression was calm and confident and reassuring, and Spike reminded himself that as long as Dawn was touching her sister, from what they had seen so far, it seemed that the entity could not resurface. He took a deep breath, looking down and nodding, a bit shakily, before turning to face the group again.
“Right,” he began nervously. “Okay, then. So – the first Council of Wankers – long time ago, dawn of time and all – they made the first Slayer…”
“*Made* her?” Anya echoed dubiously, a look of alarm on her face. “From – from what?”
Spike looked quickly to Buffy to gauge her reaction, and was not surprised to see that her eyes were wide, her expression slightly stricken, as she considered the implications that Anya had brought up.
“A girl,” he replied softly, holding her gaze with reassurance in his eyes. “Just a normal girl.”
“So – what did they do to this normal girl to make her the Slayer?” Willow asked, her interest in the situation drawing her out of her morose mood a bit.
“Um,” Spike began cautiously, clearing his throat. “see…that’s the tricky part. There was – a ritual. A rite they used to give her – power, strength, speed, instinct – all the things that make the Slayer capable of defending the world…of standing a chance against all the nasties that are out there…”
“What – sort of…of ritual?” Buffy asked, her words coming out at a slow, almost difficult pace.
Spike looked at her with a dark, wary look of alarm, watching as she shook her head as if to clear it, and then focused her eyes deliberately back on his, giving him an expectant look as she waited for him to go on.
“Well – they took – it was the essence of – of a creature…”
“What sort of creature?” Giles asked, his tone a bit sharp – but Spike was hardly listening to him.
The vampire was focused completely on the Slayer, who was closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the sofa, one hand to her forehead, as she fought for control.
“Maybe we should – should wait a bit…” he suggested softly, and there was no mistaking the fear in his voice as he shifted slightly backward across the couch, his body pulling against her arm around him, before he remembered that that was a bad idea, and forced himself to ease back toward her a bit.
“No!” Buffy looked up, forcing a smile, but her eyes looked a little hazy, and her voice was a bit labored, as she insisted, “No, I’m fine, Spike…we don’t have time to wait for anything…go ahead…what sort of creature, and what did they use it for?”
Spike was silent for a moment, swallowing hard before he replied. “A – a demon. They took the essence of this – this demon that they had trapped – and they…they put it…” He stopped, struggling over the words.
She was *so* not going to like this.
“Inside her,” he finally replied in a whisper.
The room fell silent for a long moment, as they all processed what he had just said.
And then everyone started talking at once.
“That’s preposterous!” Giles insisted, indignant. “How dare you suggest that the Council would ever…”
“How would putting a demon in her make her a warrior *against* demons?” Willow asked with a frown, considering the ramifications of what he had said.
“Wait – are you saying that there’s a demon in Buffy? Or that – that there’s *always* been a demon in Buffy?” Joyce asked, her eyes wide with alarm.
“No…”
The Slayer’s soft, horrified whisper somehow seemed to drown out all the other voices in the room – at least in Spike’s ears. He looked up at her with concern when he felt her arm pull away from him, and she drew back against the couch away from him, staring at him in shock and shaking her head in denial.
“No – that’s not possible,” she insisted slowly, standing up from the sofa, her eyes still focused on him.
“Buffy,” Dawn said, her voice trembling and urgent. “Calm down. You need to come back here…”
“Buffy,” Spike attempted, his voice trembling noticeably, his eyes downcast as he fought back a sick feeling of fear that rose in his stomach. He could feel the pain, the terror, the anger of denial, rising up in his mate – and Dawn was not touching her at the moment – and he just knew that something terrible was about to happen. “Buffy, please – that’s not what I’m saying…”
“Then what exactly *are* you saying?” she demanded defensively, backing away from him toward the center of the room. “They put this demon in this girl to make the Slayer – so – where does that leave me? What is *happening* to me, Spike?” By the end of her words, her voice had risen to an alarming pitch that revealed the strength of her painful emotions.
“Buffy…” Dawn had risen from the couch and was slowly, carefully moving toward her sister. “Buffy, please…you have to…you have to come to me…”
She reached her sister, whose attention was still focused on the increasingly terrified vampire on the couch, and reached out to grasp her arm gently. Buffy started to jerk away from her, but froze, listening, when Spike began to speak.
“They didn’t put the demon in you, Buffy,” he told her in a low, earnest voice, though his eyes were focused somewhere around her waist. He couldn’t quite bring himself to meet her gaze, afraid of what he might see there.
Buffy’s mind grasped desperately at that tiny seed of hope offered by his words. Maybe she had misunderstood…maybe it wasn’t so bad...so…so *sinister*. As she forced herself to calm down, she realized with alarm that the entity she was struggling against was roiling up inside of her, struggling with a greater strength than before to regain control.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm down, putting her arm gently around her sister, knowing that she needed greater contact. And amazingly, as her arm wrapped around Dawn, she felt the power of the force inside her ebbing away.
Recognizing that Buffy needed to be closer to Dawn, Spike scooted down the sofa a bit as the girls approached, so that when they sat down this time, Buffy was in the middle, with her mate on one side and her sister on the other.
“I – I’m sorry, Spike. Go ahead,” Buffy said, not looking at him, her eyes wide and still a bit shocked as she focused on the floor. “If they didn’t – put the demon in her – what did they do, exactly?”
“They couldn’t risk that…not a full-scale possession like that,” Spike went on, his voice low and trembling. “The demon they were dealing with – much too powerful – too dangerous. They had to keep the demon itself trapped…but they did a spell to release a part of its *essence*…and…and that’s what they put in the first Slayer.”
“Not the demon – but – it’s essence,” Giles echoed slowly, frowning slightly as he processed the words.
“What’s the difference – exactly?” Buffy asked, taking in a deep, steadying breath and leaning closer to her sister. She felt more in control, the closer she was to Dawn – and at the moment, though she could feel the thing inside her raging to get out – it was weak, and unable to overcome her.
“Quite a lot, actually. The essence of the demon included traits like – its strength, speed, agility – instincts that you use now to help you in battle. But the *actual* demon – its personality, its will – remained locked away.” He paused, looking up to meet her eyes, feeling a sense of relief when it was only his Buffy that stared back at him solemnly.
“We’re talking about a terribly evil creature, here, Buffy,” he explained softly. “Power mad and deadly to anything that crosses its path and dares to resist it. They couldn’t risk letting the actual demon free. No one would…deliberately.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Giles objected, anger and derision in his voice. “Bloody preposterous! Where did you get such nonsense?” He looked to Buffy for support, declaring, “He’s making this up, Buffy…he’s trying to deceive you!”
Buffy considered for a moment, taking in the earnest, anxious look on the vampire’s face, the violence trying to rise up within her, but suppressed by the strange power her sister held to control it.
“No,” she said slowly, calmly. “I really think not.”
“But – it’s impossible! The Slayer is a being of light and purity born to *rid* the world of such creatures – not by any means one of them…”
“I’m not.” Buffy frowned, suddenly alarmed. “A demon. Am I?” she asked, a bit anxiously.
“No,” Spike assured her. “You’re not. Having its essence just gives you its – its characteristics. Some of them. But it doesn’t *make* you a demon. You should never have even been aware of anything to do with it, if everything had gone as it was originally intended to. This demon should not have been able to take on its own personality through you, as it’s been doing. It should have just given you the strengths that belong to every Slayer, without ever actually – taking over, like it’s been doing.”
“The releasing spell,” Buffy said flatly, easily figuring it out.
Spike nodded. “Right.”
One by one, all eyes eventually fell on Willow.
“Whoa -- *no*!” she said in a forcefully defensive tone. “I did that spell right! There is no way that it should have made this happen!” She looked to Spike as she pointed out, “If Buffy’s ‘source of power’ is the – the *essence* of this demon thingy – which was so obviously already pretty much released – then how could the spell have had any effect on her? If Buffy was already using the essence of the demon to slay and all? How could something be released by the spell that was already free?”
“It wasn’t,” Spike explained wearily. “The essence of the demon – the part that’s in every Slayer – is not the *source* of Buffy’s power. It *is* Buffy’s power. The source of that essence – and in effect, of the Slayer’s power -- is…”
“The demon itself,” Buffy concluded quietly, closing her eyes for a moment, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the troubling realization.
“Good Lord,” Giles said softly, his eyes widening as he realized, reluctantly, that the pieces to Spike’s story seemed to fit together far too well to simply be coincidental.
“What…we’re not actually *buying* this crap, are we?” Xander asked incredulously, looking back and forth between the pale, shocked face of the Watcher, and the remarkably calm, accepting face of the Slayer. “He’s so making this up! There’s no way that Buffy’s power comes from a demon! She’s good!”
“It’s true, Xander,” Buffy said softly. “I know it’s hard to accept -- *God* do I know! – but – I would know if Spike was lying, like I said before. And he’s not. And besides…” She hesitated for a moment before finishing quietly, “I can feel it. I *know* it’s true.”
The firm conviction in her voice left little room for argument. She was the one actually experiencing it; none of them could credibly tell her what she was feeling. As hard as it was to believe, and as much as none of them wanted it to be true, they really had no choice but to believe it.
“Okay,” Buffy said quietly after a moment, looking up and around at the group, determination in her serious eyes. “So we finally know what this is. Now the only question is – how do I kill it?”
“See – there’s the thing,” Spike said slowly, a grimace of apprehension on his face as he met Buffy’s eyes with an apology in his own for what he was about to say. His voice was cautious, hesitant, as he went on, “We -- *can’t* kill it. It’s essence is bound to yours. Is – is a *part* of who you are. I we destroy the demon – it would – it would destroy *you* as well, pet.”
The room was silent for a moment, as they all took in the shock of that information.
Finally, Buffy spoke, her voice soft and carefully calm, though there was fear mingled with the acceptance in her eyes.
“This thing is pretty dangerous. We have to consider the possibility that – that maybe it’s – necessary. To stop it. *Whatever* the cost…rather than let it hurt – anyone. Than to let it get too much control…”
“Buffy, no!” Joyce gasped in dismay as she realized what her daughter was saying.
The thought of Buffy’s willingly sacrificing her own life to stop this demon was equally repulsive to Spike, but he was calmer than Joyce – because he already knew that it was not really even an option.
“No,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “See – it wouldn’t just be you that was sacrificed in the course of killing the thing, Buffy. This demon, as evil as it is – is the source of the Slayer’s power. *Every* Slayer. If the demon dies – then the Slayer dies, too, when the demon’s essence that’s a part of her is destroyed. And not only that – but without the demon’s essence to be passed on to the next girl…”
“…it’s the end of the line,” Giles concluded in a hushed, almost horrified voice, as he considered the ramifications of that idea.
Buffy’s eyes widened as she followed that same train of thought through in her mind, her voice finally coming out in a shocked whisper.
“No more Slayers -- *ever*.”
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