A week had passed for Spike and Angel in Quortoth before they found any trail of the warrior they were looking for. The sun shined brightly on them as they moved through the forested area. Spike stopped suddenly, making a turn that was even more surprising than his pausing.
“Think I know where our boy is.” He didn’t wait for Angel to follow, looking for the last champion warrior. They needed to get ready for the fight against the First.
A human male with dark hair and light eyes jumped out at them. He had to at least be seventeen years of age as he held an advanced weapon that Angel doubted his world had found the technology for in his hands, aiming at Angel and Spike and switching between the two.
“I’ll shoot.” He warned.
Gunn carried Stacy Lynn through the back door of the Magic Box, careful not to increase the pain by jarring any of her wounds. He set her down on the mat.
“Hey…” he said when she blinked up at him, on the verge of passing out. “You’re okay now.”
“I feel…like shit,” Stacy Lynn muttered and Gunn smiled a bit. That was his girl. Can’t keep her down for long. Never.
“I’ll go get Margaret or Giles. I’ll be right back.”
Stacy Lynn nodded before her eyes slid shut as Gunn disappeared out the door. Everyone was still lounging around the store front, waiting for Angel and Spike to return, and they looked up when Gunn rushed through the door, blood on his clothing.
Buffy stood in concern, her brain starting to notice his girlfriend’s absence. “Gunn?”
“It’s Stace.”
“Oh God.”
Buffy wanted to follow Katherine’s lead as the blonde demi-god made a mad dash out the back door to empty her stomach in the alley. She instead remained a moment to watch as Margaret sat beside the brunette vampire, bandaging wounds with the help of Giles and Wesley.
Dawn was sitting on the stairs in the front of the shop with Gunn, Jonathon, Willow, Tara, and Anya. They’d all decided it would be better if Gunn hadn’t been in the room, though he made a move as if to bolt for the door every time she screamed.
Xander stood at Buffy’s side, looking very much as if he wished he’s stayed with everyone else in the front. And Buffy didn’t blame him. Seeing Stacy Lynn liked that was unsettling; at least the bastard that did it was dead.
“I’m going to check on Katherine.” She told her friend. He gave her a small nod and she turned her back on the scene of Stacy Lynn to find Katherine gagging as she attempted to vomit; there was nothing left but she continued anyway.
“Katherine, she’s okay.”
Katherine stilled. “I know.” She croaked. “Never actually bothered me before. Blood. Gore. Death. Maiming. And then-“
“Because it’s Stacy Lynn.”
“Yeah.” Katherine pushed to her feet slowly. “How’s Gunn?”
“Worried. Pissed. Worried.” Buffy shrugged. “Tara’s trying to give him a herbal teas and almost everyone else is in the front with him. Xander’s in the back with Margaret, Giles and Wes.” Buffy replied as Katherine rose to her full height, which wasn’t much but it was more than Buffy herself had.
“That’s good.” Katherine said absently. “It’s not right.”
“What’s not right?” Buffy asked.
“Something. I can’t…I don’t know, but I can feel it. When are Angel and Spike coming back?” Katherine abruptly changed topic and Buffy frowned in concern.
“In an hour or so tops.” Buffy said. “Katherine-“ the other blonde looked at her. “Get some rest. You seem…”
“Nutty?” Katherine guessed with a wry grin. “I feel like it. I’ll be okay soon. But I think I’ll take you up on that offer.”
Buffy nodded, her mind on Katherine’s comment about ‘it’ being wrong.
Stacy Lynn was being safely tucked into bed at her and Gunn’s hotel room when Margaret knocked on Giles’ office door. Then she entered. “Giles, right?”
Giles turned to face her, a large tome in hand. “I’d have to insist you call me Rupert. Only Buffy and her friends have taken to calling me that.”
“All right, then. Rupert. I presented a problem to Katherine. A…a possible threat.” Margaret said, moving farther inside the room. She’d been looking for the chance to talk to the watched and her vision had given her the perfect opportunity to…get to know him.
Giles put the puck down. “A serious threat?”
“Not really. But serious enough. There’s a chance of Turok Hans coming into the picture.”
“Turok Hans? They’re extinct.” Giles replied, rubbing his forehead. Things seemed to be becoming more complex and harder to deal with by the second.
“That’s true, Rupert.” Margaret agreed, trying to think on how she could get her point across. At that moment, Fred walked in.
“Maybe…I can explain the details…later…alone?” She smiled, slightly seductive.
Giles was surprised, recovering quickly by saying, “That sounds like…a terrific notion.”
Margaret brightened. “It’s a date.” She left.
Fred looked at Giles after finding her notebook. “A date? I think Margaret likes you.” She smiled good-naturedly and left.
Spike gave the boy a look. “Yeah, sure you will. Now, we’re here to help, but not if you keep threatening to put nice bullet holes in us. Get that, Connor?”
“Who are you?” Connor asked, still not lowering his weapon. Many years in this dimension had taught him to always be on guard.
“Spike. And he’s Angel. We’re going to get you out of here. But only if you point that at something else, preferably not me. Hell, point at a demon.” Spike said.
Connor let out a snort. “You’re both demons.”
“Immortal.” The bleached blond pointed at himself, then at Angel. “Vampire.”
“You’re not any different.”
Right, because the fact that he has the strength to kill the demons is just loads normal, Spike could hear Buffy saying in his ear. He had no doubt she’d say that if she was with him.
“You’re wrong.” Angel said, stepping into the conversation.
“Why are you two so special?”
“We work for the good guys.” Spike was being cheeky about it now.
Out of nowhere, Angel grabbed Connor’s gun and shot the attacking Harbinger clear in the chest. He flew back into a tree trunk and slid to the ground, dead. Connor looked at Angel, eyes slightly widened in a bit of surprise.
“Believe us now?”
Gunn let Stacy Lynn down on the bed of their hotel room. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’ll be fine in a few days. Don’t worry so much.” Stacy Lynn replied.
Gunn retorted, “Well, I do.”
Stacy Lynn laughed a bit. “You’ll get grey hairs.”
“Could you take this seriously?”
Gunn had come close to losing her today. She was there, hanging there, and bleeding and Gunn was sure he’d planned on staking her, and he hadn’t been able to save her. She could’ve died, and then where would he be then?
Stacy Lynn sat up. “I am taking it seriously. That’s the first time. I’ve ever lost in the past decade or so.”
“You have a hell of a nice way of showing you’re worried. I could’ve lost you today and you’re cracking jokes.”
“You didn’t lose anything.” Stacy Lynn said. “I love you too much to let myself get killed.”
“And I love you too much to not worry.” Gunn responded instantly.
The two paused as their words sank in. Stacy Lynn had the beginnings of a smile on her face as she said, “Did we…?”
Gunn returned it slowly. “I think we did.”
“Oh. Then come here.”
Gunn obliged and their lips met in a soft kiss.
A week later, Spike and Angel had finally, somehow, gotten through to Connor. Enough for him to trust what they told him and to agree to come back.
Amazingly, Angel and Connor had hit it off amazingly well, and Spike found himself making the two the butts of his jokes with various father/son comments.
Angel usually rolled his eyes and told Spike to shut up; Connor preferred to take the route that involved ignoring the bleached blond.
When Connor agreed, Spike had stood, grinning at his stony-faced companions. “Let’s get back.”
She was having a nightmare. She had to be; she was running down the street, so out of breath, and tired, and human. Stacy Lynn was a few paces ahead of her and led her inside a wood house. A house she vaguely remembered…
Katherine followed her inside the house, locking the door behind her. “Well, Stace, this is a fire trap; we can’t stay here.”
Stacy Lynn turned to face her, becoming Spike. Suddenly they were standing in an empty street. “Why not? Afraid to actually belong, Kat?”
“Or maybe…” Katherine swung around to face Buffy. “Maybe you’re afraid we’ll find out. Find out you still love my husband.”
“It’s all just a costume. Smiles and jokes. Costumes.” Dawn said. It was nonsensical, but made more sense than Katherine would ever care to admit.
“Why won’t you show us the real you, Katherine?” Anya asked. “I haven’t seen you since 1485, and now you’re letting love for a man control you. God, you’ve changed so much-“
“I don’t even know who you are anymore.” Darla said, blue eyes cold as ice. “It’s like the minute Spike walks into a room, you lose all concentration. Your attention deficit ruined our plan.”
Leave me alone, Katherine thought.
“We can’t. We won’t.” Three voices said as one. “You must learn.”
“Learn what?” Katherine asked, her voice echoing. “Leave me alone!”
“You must learn the present.” Dawn stepped to the side to show Willow and Tara setting up for the spell to return Spike, Angel and the warrior they found from Quortoth.
“You must learn the future.” Buffy let Katherine see a world where trees and all other life were dead. There was nothing but the demons that roamed the land-their kingdom.
“And you must learn the past you will fix.” Spike said. She saw the moment she walked up to Spike, fading away into the moment she stopped the fire from coming through the windows, before grabbing Stacy Lynn’s hand and disappearing.
“I don’t understand!” Katherine screamed, shouting at the top of her lungs.
“Fix it,” Spike said. Buffy echoed him. As did Dawn, Willow, Tara, Angel, and countless others. “Fix it; fix it; fix it…”
Katherine shot off the reading table and toppled backwards out of the chair, landing flat on her back. She stared blankly at the ceiling. Fix what?
“Katherine?” Margaret called out, leaning over the table and appearing just on the edges of Katherine’s vision.
“I’m good down here, thanks.” Katherine replied. She stayed there for a while longer; Margaret raised an eyebrow, looked at Katherine as if she’d begun the process of losing her mind and then pushed herself back onto the other side of the table.
When Katherine finally pushed herself to her feet, Willow was grabbing the crystal off the counter as it began to glow a solid green color. It was the signal that Spike and Angel had found the warrior and were ready to return.
“Tara,” she called out to the witch on her left. “They’re ready.”
Dawn sat down next to Katherine as the reversal spell was done and the portal opened. Spike came through first, followed by Angel and lastly by a really good looking dark-haired boy.
Dawn followed him with her eyes, unable to stop admiring his looks. Total hottie.
Connor saw Dawn too, and he himself couldn’t take his eyes off her. He’d met people over his time in Quortoth, but never anyone near his own age. She was stunning, beautiful. He wanted to talk to her, learn everything about here, and in return form a bond. Why he wanted this, he didn’t know. He only knew that he did.
Spike raised an eyebrow at the two teenagers who seemed frozen in time. He was ten seconds away from a smart comment about it, knowing everything that they both were thinking and feeling-but he actually let it go. Only because of something he remembered Katherine saying about a year ago.
She’s not eleven years old anymore.
The First paced the lair in the form of Spike, angry that its plan hadn’t worked. Caleb had been his best officer and now he was dead. “Block my hard work?” It said to itself. “Fine. I’ll show you how destructive I can be. You won’t even know what hit you.”
Sine Buffy wouldn’t let go of Spike for anything, Angel had volunteered to patrol alone. Giles had said something about returning to the basics in the heat of the end of the world-a way to stay sharp and take a break from worrying about upcoming wars.
He hadn’t thought about things much these days. Truthfully, he didn’t even think he had the time to. Things were happening so fast in this fight against the First; Angel was pretty sure Giles may have been right when he said it could end in two days for all they knew.
“Oh…so much muck.” She slipped out of the shadows, slowly, calmly. “It’s dirt…crawling all over my skin. Get it off for me, daddy? Before it sinks in?”
Angel let out a bit of a sigh, meeting Drusilla’s eyes. She let out a whimper. “Not daddy…never daddy.”
“Drusilla.”
“I can see it. It’s not now.” Drusilla stepped forward, her voice lowering. “The time is not now, the time is not soon. But it will come. Most will be ashes. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…and you will lose the game. Game over, play again.”
There was something about the way Drusilla said it that put him on alert. “Dru…what are you talking about?”
“Put the pieces together…just in time.”
As quickly as the vampire had appeared, she was gone and Angel was alone.
Margaret smiled at Giles, mostly as an attempt to relieve his nervousness at the situation. She had no idea what Fred had said to Giles, but whatever it was had made him nervous, more so than she usually noticed.
And she had noticed. She’d noticed that the only time he usually “cleaned his glasses” was when Xander and Anya, or Spike and Buffy, did the couple public display of affection things in front of him. He only rubbed his nose when he was angry and her pinched the bridge whenever Xander said something stupid, or when Spike or Katherine interrupted him. He usually took of his glasses when the others weren’t being serious enough for him, and sometimes when reading a text.
Truthfully, she couldn’t rightly say what attracted her to him, but there was just something about him. And she was very determined to find out what it was that made him so special, so desirable.
“We’ve been sitting here for a half hour. Saying nothing. Am I making you nervous?” Margaret asked. “Because, we’re only here to discuss Turok Hans, if you remember.”
“I remember. It’s just-“
“Fred said something. Well, let’s put it out in the open now.” She sat forward and looked at him very seriously. “I like you. Maybe it’s in the romantic sense naturally inferred, maybe it isn’t. Now, if that’s done, you said you believed they were extinct. If that were true, than there’d be no need for me to have seen the hellmouth.”
All of Giles’ nervousness dissipated. “The hellmouth.”
“Yes. They seemed to have been banished. Thousands of them. Hungry, strong, waiting.
“What for?”
“They’re waiting for the moment the mouth opens and they’re once again free. To swallow us whole. The worst part is that this time they’re waiting for the very near future.”
Buffy was punching the bag rhythmically when Faith entered the training room, Kennedy, Gunn and Connor on her heels. Buffy stopped what she was doing, turning to face them and raising an eyebrow in question. “What’s going on?”
“Hey, B. You up for testing the potential slayer and hell boy here?” The brunette layer asked.
“Nothing to better to do.” Buffy replied. At least until Spike shows up, she added to herself. “Who’s first?”
“Me.” Kennedy stepped up confidently to face off against the slayer just as Spike entered.
He gave a little smirk. “Looks like the slayer in training has a pair.”
“Yeah. How long ‘til B crushes ‘em?” Faith responded.
The two laughed, momentarily forgetting that one tried to kill the other nearly a year ago, before looking at each other in surprise. “I’m sorry about…before. I’d have said it sooner, but I didn’t think it’d matter, make it better, you know?”
“You’re forgiven, Faith.” Spike said, watching as Kennedy was forced to go on the defensive by Buffy, attempting to block all the blonde’s attacks.
Faith felt as if Spike didn’t realize that being forgiven was a big deal for Faith. That is struck a cord within her, made things a bit better in her outlook on life.
The dark slayer nodded, trying to keep any emotion out of her voice as she said, “Yeah. Okay.”
What she didn’t know was that Spike knew first hand what she felt. And that was exactly why he forgave her. Because he could feel that she needed it, to be forgiven. It wasn’t because she deserved it. It would never be because she deserved it.
Spike turned to look at Faith before turning back to watch in time to see Kennedy’s back meet the mat.
“You’re okay. You need to improve on some things, though.” Buffy told the potential.
“Like what?”
“You dropped your right shoulder the entire time and you don’t actually have a technique.”
Faith whistled. “Someone needs to train…”
Buffy came to stand by her husband, watching as Gunn and Connor sparred, and as Faith gave Kennedy further pointers.
“You think we can win this?” Spike asked, giving her a look before focusing on Gunn and Connor.
“It’s possible.” Buffy said.
“Connor!” Dawn called out, racing down the block after him. He stopped and turned to look at her as she caught up. “Where are you going?”
“Cemetery. Patrolling.” Connor replied, not looking at her as much as he wanted to. She made him nervous inside. He always anxious. Especially at the meeting the other day when he got the chance to just watch her.
“You fight?” he looked over at her quickly before turning his head.
“Yeah.” Dawn only frowned a bit. She wished he’d walk slower and stop acting weird. The whole jog to keep up thing was getting annoying. “So, um…a hell dimension? How did you end up there?”
“I don’t remember. Quortoth is the only place I’ve known.” Connor replied as they entered the cemetery. He spared a glance at her and then looked away, his cheeks turning a bit red.
Dawn noticed, and looked away herself. “Oh. So, then, you don’t even remember your parents.”
“No. But if it’s like that guy…Jeeves-“
“Giles.”
“-Giles said, they’d be expecting a newborn baby to return to them, not a teenager.”
Dawn wrinkled her nose. Connor thought it was cute. “I think I like you like this more. It gives me something to think about.”
She paused when he looked at her in amusement, and some embarrassment. “Did I just say that out loud?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “How many points did I just lose?”
“None, really. I’m starting to like that…you say your thoughts without thinking. It’s cute on you.”
A bright smile lit up Dawn’s face just as a vampire flew out of the bushes ahead of them. Dawn got to it first, lashing out at it with a kick to the face. It punched her back in retaliation and she stumbled back.
Connor was ready to step in when she attacked the vampire with two punches to the face. He froze to just watch her as she proceeded with a spin kick to the vampire’s gut and pulled a stack out of her jean jacket, embedding it in the demon.
It fell to ashes and Connor watched as she turned to him, her face flushed, eyes bright and twinkling as she grinned at him.
“I probably would have had this really cute quip like Buffy always manages to pull out of her ass, but I had no time. Maybe I should go home and make a list for future reference.”
Connor grinned back at her, and it was this really dopey grin. Anyone but Dawn could tell the boy was falling in love.
. t o . b e . c o n t i n u e d .