The long shadows where undriven the dawn
Hunts light into nobility, arouse us noble.’
Buffy wriggled, the padded chair a poor answer to her restlessness and very full bladder. All of her years of slaying, all of the injuries she’d sustained, and she could barely remember an occasion when she’d been in greater discomfort. She was sitting in the waiting room of the X-ray Department of Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath. Spike was perched awkwardly beside her.
“You alright pet?” Spike reached out to grab her hand, but was warned off by the look of ill concealed irritation in her narrowed eyes. He grinned nervously at her.
“What are you smirking at?” she snapped, “And don’t ‘pet’ me. Of course I’m not alright! Why don’t you try consuming gallons and gallons of liquid and see how you’d feel. Oh, that’s right, Mr ‘I don’t need to pee ‘cos I’m a vampire’. I suppose you think it’s funny?”
“No Buffy,” Spike said slowly and carefully, “I don’t think its funny. And it’s only a pint Doc asked you to drink. Not long now pet and you can pee to your heart’s content.”
“Humph, well maybe I had a bit more than a pint, but just cos I wanted the pictures to be good,” she grumbled.
“Good morning to you both.” The voice startled them out of their little ‘discussion’ and they both looked up and into Cat’s smiling face.
“So, I see we have a pair of nervous wee campers this morning. And you look like your bladder’s fit to burst Buffy. Well come on through and we’ll get this scan done so you can make yourself a bit more comfortable.” She turned and headed towards a room across the hall, Spike and Buffy following as quickly as the Slayer’s bladder would allow.
Once in the room, Cat introduced them to a bubbly blonde woman. “Right guys, this is Alison. She’s the senior sonographer. She’ll sort you out.”
“Hi, Buffy and Spike, right? Okay, Buffy hop up on the bed here. Spike you sit next to the bed so you can see the screen.”
Buffy gingerly hoisted her self up onto the bed and carefully eased herself back onto the pillow. Alison worked quickly, lifting Buffy’s dress up and laying a spilt cloth over her, positioned so her still flat tummy lay exposed in the gap.
“Right, I’m just going to pop this gel on your tummy. It just helps conduct the sound waves and give us a better picture, but it’ll be a little cold.” Alison warned.
“Okay, now lets see what we’ve got.” Spike held Buffy’s hand as they both looked at the monitor. At first the picture, white shadows on a black background, didn’t look like anything recognizable, but as the technician moved the transducer around they began to see movement and a vague, fuzzy outline of a jelly bean.
“Ah, here we are, look here’s the head and the chest, with the little heart beating away. And if we move down here you can see the legs kicking about. Alright, I’ll just take some measurements.”
The room was quiet as Alison clicked on one spot then another. Lines appeared in between the two, then she clicked and started measuring elsewhere. Spike squeezed Buffy’s hand tightly, and she glanced at him, moved to see tears tracking down his cheeks. She tugged his hand closer and pressed a kiss into his palm. He gave her a wobbly smile and a soggy hug before turning back to the screen.
“Okay guys, everything seems just fine. Right Buffy, let me clean your tummy, then you can pop next door to the toilet. While your doing that, I’ll print out a few stills for your collection. There’s a DVD here of the whole production as well.”
Buffy saw to herself then met Spike back in the corridor. He held a large envelope in his hands and still looked rather shell shocked. Once he noticed her, he pulled her into a fierce embrace, burying his face in her hair. She was a little worried he was going to start up with the waterworks again, but he stepped back and stared intently at her.
“You have given me a gift greater than anything mere coin could purchase, more precious than the rarest of jewels. You have given me the gift of true immortality, wrapped up in our wee one’s heart beat. I love you Buffy, so very much.”
She solemnly returned his gaze and said, “I love you too William. I love you for helping create this precious life.” She took his hand and placed it on her belly.
He laughed self-consciously. “Yeah, well I am a sodding git, carrying on like that. No wonder you mixed me up with William.”
“You’re Spike and William both and I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Buffy said as she reached up to press her lips against hers.
“Right, if you two have finished with the deep and meaningfuls, then I’ll take my leave of you,” Cat’s voice broke into their quiet contemplation. “I seem to be making a habit of interrupting your private moments.”
Buffy blushed, and Spike rubbed the back of his neck.
“Ah, do we need to make another appointment?” Buffy asked.
Cat laughed, a light, tinkling sound. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll need bother about that. Rupert rang me on Monday, and between all the bristling and blustering, I understand that my services are required tomorrow, overseeing the transport and arrival of a special patient. And after that, well, as indisposed as he is towards the idea, it’s likely I’ll be working there at least part time.”
Buffy nodded, not at all privy to the cause of the prickly undercurrents, but aware that Cat was the frontrunner for the medic’s job, and equally aware of Giles’ unreasonable but nevertheless violent objections to her appointment. She smiled politely, saying “Well we’ll see you tomorrow then,” before following Spike out to the car park.
The trip home was a quiet but happy one. Buffy looked over the scans of their little one while Spike drove. Just before they turned into their road, Spike flicked on the indicator, pulled into the Garden Centre at Wych Cross and parked outside the tearooms. Buffy turned and looked at him in confusion.
“Just wanted to extend the ‘me and you time’ a bit before we head back to the bloody bedlam. God knows what next week’ll be like, all those little bints shattering our peace and quiet. Thought we could have a bite of lunch, luv. What do you reckon?”
Buffy grinned and shook her head at him as they walked across to the tearooms and grabbed a table. “I thought you were bored with the peace and quiet Big Bad? Don’t tell me this Daddy bit’s turning you into Giles.”
“Oi, bite your tongue missy. I can handle the excitement. Just we won’t be getting much alone time from now on.”
Buffy nodded and waited for the waitress to set down the pot of tea and plate of sandwiches on the table. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s awesome that Svetlana and Aiko and Mai and Nisha and all of the other little lost sheep turned up safe and sound, dragging their Watchers behind them, but it sure has upped the busyness scale around the place.”
In fact, the arrival over the last three days, of nine Slayer/Watcher pairs from spots all over the world, including Tokyo, Rome and deepest, darkest Siberia had been a cause for celebration. The nine girls had been identified by the old Council in their early teens, and assigned Watchers. Most had continued to live with their families, explaining away the new adults in their lives as sports coaches or academic tutors provided free of charge by the schools they attended. As a bonus, two previously unidentified girls, rescued from the shadow of the Bringers’ carnage, had accompanied the Slayer/Watcher pairing from New Dehli.
In all cases, the Watchers were fluent in both English and the mother tongue of their charges. So too were the dozen other Watchers that had arrived from the far flung corners, less in triumph than in trauma having, like Ekrem from Istanbul or Lena from Dusseldorf, been witness to the slaying of their potentials. Yet all thirty, Slayers and Watchers alike, had continued to be active in the field, keeping their local areas free from vampires and demons.
These twenty-one field Watchers had kept in contact with the old Council, communications only disrupted for a few days after Headquarters had been razed. Once the survivors had re-established contact, the international contingent had followed the developments from afar, kept up to date via the Council network. All had responded immediately to the call home. And so they had turned up, the flotsam and jetsam of the First’s handiwork, washed up upon Ashdown’s shores.
Still, the Slayers themselves were well-trained, active warriors. All had used their potential abilities well, honing their skills and knowledge over time, using them to patrol alongside their Watchers.
These men and women were also a fit and active bunch, mostly in their twenties or thirties, often not long out of Sackville. Along with their skills and experience they brought a much-needed commodity, their linguistic expertise. The ability to communicate with different cultures was critical at the present time.
As such, both slayers and Watchers would provide a valuable boost to the Recruitment teams. In fact Nisha, the little Italian Slayer, had flown out this morning to meet Kennedy’s team in Milan, and would travel with them for the rest of the week.
This afternoon they were holding an official welcoming ceremony for the group, followed by a detailed description of the prophecy, the events to date and their plans for the future. As members of the Board and only resident Slayer and Vampire, Buffy and Spike were expected to be there, although what they’d make of Spike was anyone’s guess.
Buffy popped the last mouthful of light, fluffy, cream and jam-topped scone into her mouth and washed it down with a final gulp of tea.
“Ready luv? Home to the chaos?”
The Slayer sighed and nodded, it had been a lovely morning, a real escape from the pressures and kookiness of life at Ashdown, a chance, for a short time, to just be a normal couple in love, giddy with the excitement and happiness that comes from having their first child.
Together, hand and hand, they headed out to the car. Time to head back to Ashdown, ready to face whatever mayhem it threw their way.
The afternoon sun slanted through the high windows. Dawn gently fingered the knife in her pocket, waiting nervously for everyone else to get ready. She was careful not to show her nerves, aware that Giles already had his doubts about the whole operation and that Buffy was doing her usual overprotective big sis thing, so it would take only the slightest hesitation on her part for either of them to call the trip off.
Dr. McNair, or Cat as she’d asked Dawn to call her, looked okay, maybe a bit hyper. She was wearing a white medical coat over her clothes and a stethoscope around her neck and you could see the outline of the two, capped syringes in her coat pocket.
They were about to ‘pop’ over to LA to ‘kidnap’ the psychotic slayer Dana Strassberg. Dawn’s role was to open a portal between here and Gateways Hospital in LA, where Dana was a patient. She and Dr McNair, Cat, would step through the portal, they’d sedate Dana and then bring her back with them.
Over the summer, she’d been researching and testing out her powers and she understood a little more of how it worked now than she had in the first weeks of her blindly ignorant experimentation. Bleeding on its own wouldn’t do anything. Of course, if you used the words to certain rituals, invoked at certain times, then her blood could be activated and begin to do its job.
But Dawn could do the same thing mentally. She just needed to hone in on the essence of a place or a person to create a connection first between the two places. Once the connection was up, she could open the portal. Opening the portal didn’t actually take any great effort at all, a quick slice across the palm of her hand or a prick of her finger and she was all good. She obviously had a high pain threshold and enhanced healing powers, because she barely felt the cut and it was usually healed within hours. Whether that was because she had inherited some of Buffy’s slayer abilities or it was just part of the Key package she’d probably never know.
No, the effort came in making the connection mentally and keeping that connection strong throughout the opening of the portal and the journey to the other side. It only took moments to step through a portal, no longer than stepping through a door, but the more people that passed through that door, the longer she had to keep it open. And making the connection did take some effort.
She’d practiced over the last few days, making small portals, just from one room to another, and losing the mental connection after she’d opened the door. It had snapped shut, just like that, every single time.
Of course she hadn’t tried stepping into the portal and then doing the forgetting thing, she wasn’t that dumb. God knows where she’d end up, and that was what worried her. Maybe when she got back she’d enlist Willow’s help and they’d try a few more experiments, using mice or wind up toy trains or something to see what happened.
But in the meantime, there was today, and she needed to be in top form. Focused so that she didn’t lose herself or anyone else. Luckily Faith was to be her anchor on the LA side. Creating a connection required a person or place that she knew, so that she could use their energy to anchor the connection on the far side. She had to keep both the place she was going to and the place she was coming from in mind or else the cord would unravel behind her.
The better she knew someone, the easier to create that connection, so Faith was a good target.
Finally, everyone was ready. Giles, who was in a very odd mood, either bossing everyone around or scurrying off to hide in corners, had just received a call from Faith. They were in position at their end. It was time to go.
Cat had moved over to stand next to her, and Dawn had grabbed her hand. She hoped her own wasn’t too sweaty. There were cries of ‘Good luck’ and ‘Safe travelling’ but Dawn blocked them out as she began to seek out Faith’s essence. It came through strong and clear. Locked in, Dawn dropped Cat’s hand for a moment and pulled out her pocket knife. A quick swipe, a drop of blood and the portal popped open, a faint green glow in the centre of the room.
Focussing intently, she grabbed Cat’s hand again and took a step forward.
The next moment they were standing next to the sink in a bathroom, the sweet, sickly scent of hospital disinfectants perfuming the air. Faith stood with her arms folded, grinning wildly, a wide-eyed Latina girl standing behind her.
“Wow, that is bitching brat. You’re really pulling your weight these days. Playin’ with the big guns.”
Dawn beamed delightedly, her self-esteem fuelled by Faith’s praise. “Hey Faith, this is Dr McNair, Cat. Cat, Faith.”
“Hey Doc. You’re an interesting looking one. Don’t know how we’ll go palming you off as one of the resident quacks. You don’t look like any doctor I’ve ever spotted around this place but we’ll give it a go. Little Chiquita behind me is Soledad. Chick this is Dawn and Cat.”
The girl smiled shyly at them, then followed Faith’s lead as she turned and headed towards the door. Dawn and Cat followed behind. Once outside they found they were in a corridor. Either Lisa or Leslie, she could never remember which was which, was stationed beside the door they’d just exited. Dawn nodded and followed Faith, too intent on the mission to worry much about etiquette.
“This is the secure wing. Dana’s room is just along here. We don’t actually get to visit with her unless a guard is present. So we’ll have to wait for the guard, get him to let us in and then knock him out and leave him tied up inside the room. I’m not too keen on doing that to Jerry, he’s a good guy, but needs must huh?”
“Hold off for a minute, there might be another way,” Dawn said. They’d stopped outside a room and Faith had nodded at Dawn’s look. A small window was set into the door in front of her. She peered through and could see the plain white room beyond, a girl sitting slumped on the single bed. Focusing hard, she pulled up a connection to the girl’s room, and whipped out her pocket knife. A drop of blood later and the portal was up.
Dawn nodded at the others and everyone except for Lisa hustled through, leaving her to take up the rear. Once in the room, she cut the connection and heard the cord snap in her mind as the portal slammed shut, the sound reverberating through her brain, leaving behind the soft throb of a slight headache.
Faith and Cat were milling around the bed, the slayer speaking in a quiet, gentle tone that seemed to soothe the agitated patient. “Hey baby girl, how are you today? I brought some friends to meet you. It’s all good, they won’t hurt you.”
Cat stepped back and Dawn got her first good look at the girl. Dana was wearing a hospital gown, and her long, dark hair was tangled, partly obscuring her face. She looked so young, like a little girl, nowhere near the 25 years her records stated, frozen in time by the shadows of the traumas she’d faced. Suddenly she looked up, straight at Dawn. She seemed to be entranced, staring at Dawn as if mesmerized. Suddenly, it struck Dawn why that was, the memories of the crazies in Sunnydale and their reactions flooding over her.
“Pretty,” Dana said, reaching her hand out towards Dawn, but then shrieking when her fingers encountered the Key’s warm skin.
“Quick,” Faith said, “we need to get her sedated now. Once she starts going off, it’s almost impossible to calm her down.”
Cat stepped forward, one of the precious syringes in her right hand. It was already preloaded with the rare elixir Interfector infirmitatem, the infamous Slayer’s Bane used so notoriously by the old Council as part of the Cruciamentum trials. Cat was about to uncap the syringe when Dana spotted her. Shrieking in fear and anger, the deranged girl charged at the doctor, flinging her into the door.
Faith and Soledad leapt up, restraining Dana as Dawn ran over to Cat’s side.
“It’s okay Dawn, I’m okay,” she said as she allowed Dawn to pull her up. But Cat didn’t look okay. There was a nasty gash on her forehead, and blood was dripping down the side of her face. Her eyes looked clear though. And determined! “Come on, let’s do this.”
She picked up her syringe, popped the cap off and ejected the first few mils, all before heading over to the prostrate slayer. Faith and Soledad held her face down on her bed and Cat quickly jabbed the needle into the girl’s immobilised arm, injecting the fluid into her muscle. Intravenous would have been quicker, but there was no way they’d locate a vein on this screeching, squirming banshee, so intramuscular would have to do.
They just needed a few more minutes to keep Dana calm while the drug took effect. Luckily, the girl’s agitated state worked in their favour, her elevated heart rate pumping blood through her muscles at a rapid speed. Slowly, she started to relax, whimpering still, but pushing against Faith and Soledad’s restraining hands with less and less force.
“Okay, I think we might be good to go,” Faith said, slowly straightening up. But as soon as she let go, Dana started thrashing around again and it took all of Soledad’s strength to hold her down until Faith added her muscle to the mix.
“Shit, this chick is strong,” Faith sighed. “Do you have any more of that juice Doc?”
Cat responded right away, preparing the second syringe and plunging it into Dana’s arm. “That should be enough to weaken a baby elephant,” she said, concerned about the effects of an overdose on the frantic girl.
Slowly, Faith stepped away from the bed. Dana immediately started struggling, but she seemed to have little strength in her. The senior slayer nodded at Soledad, who gently released Dana and stood up. Once again, Dana began thrashing about on the bed, as weak as a kitten undoubtedly, but by no means calm and compliant. They sat her up on the bed and she lolled there, barely able to support herself, but still keening and writhing and lashing out with her hands.
Faith frowned, things weren’t panning out quite as they’d foreseen them. Finally she nodded and turned towards the others.
“Okay, we’re almost out of time. Jerry’s due on his rounds any minute, so we have to do this now. We can’t afford to wait for the drugs to kick in any more. Dawn, you need to open up a portal through to the corridor to let me out, then you need to get the four of you back to Ashdown.”
“W-what?” Soledad said nervously.
“Chick, I want you to go with them. The Doc is hurt and Dawn needs to concentrate on keeping the portal open. You’ll need to carry Dana, she’s not going to be able to stand on her own or move without thrashing about. You’ll be fine. They’ll look after you there and send you back here as soon as they can. I’m counting on you to do this.”
Soledad straightened her shoulders and nodded once, before turning to pick Dana up of the bed, cradling the struggling girl gently in her strong arms.
Dawn’s brow was furrowed and a green glow filled the room as Faith quickly stepped through, her words of good luck cutting off part way through as the door snapped shut behind her.
Cat stood behind Soledad’s back, lightly clasping the young girl’s jacket. Beside them Dawn sighed rubbing her forehead before closing her eyes, sending her senses out across the ocean, seeking her sister’s essence.
There, she could sense it, pulsing strong and bright through the void. Dawn locked on, sliced and pushed the other women ahead of her as she heard the sound of a key jingling in the door behind her.
The next thing she knew, she was stumbling to her knees, limp and panting. She lifted her head and looked around. The room was filled with noise and confusion. Dawn blinked and looked again, sighing in relief as she recognized the lounge room of the Lodge. Willow, Rowan and Xander were kneeling or standing next to a highly distressed Dana, Buffy was helping Soledad and Giles was hovering over the injured Cat, wringing his hands and looking uncharacteristically distraught.
“Well done Bit, sounds like you saved the day.” Spike’s voice was a very welcome sound amongst the pandemonium. “Here, hop up and you and me will head down to my place for a spot of tea. You look like you could do with a strong, sweet cuppa, and I need to get outta here, I’m setting that poor bint off more than she is already.”
Spike’s long white fingers reached out to grab hers and she clutched them in relief, a solid presence in an afternoon full of shades. Together, she and Spike slipped out of the room, leaving the chaos for the others to sort out. She’d done her bit for the day, and she was happy to slip back into the background for a while. It was hard work being a hero.