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Author's Chapter Notes:
Giles was left in a mass of confusion and his desk in disarray after the whirlwind that had occurred in his library in the early hours of the morning. He stood in silence for a long while after having shouted at Spike to leave. Spike who had looked like he had just survived a massacre and barely walked away alive, covered in dried blood and bruises. A sight in which that had quite literally shaken him, even more-so when he had first laid eyes on Buffy to see that she too looked the same.

Scratched, bloodied and bruised and both sporting matching bite marks on their necks. The deed had been done. But at what cost?

"This is what you have just condemned me to."

He still held the fallen parchment in his hands as he stared down at the mess that was once again his desk. The scrolls and parchments that he had ever so carefully spent grueling hours putting in to separate piles were again tossed haphazardly across his desk and onto the floor.

"Go and clean yourself up and then we'll talk."

"I don-"

"I can't look at you while you're covered in the girl's blood!"

Giles fell back into his chair, tossing the parchment onto the desk in front of him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing the images of Buffy and Spike from that morning out of his mind, but it didn't work. Nothing could stop the sight of two bloodied forms from coming to the surface. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes again, blankly feeling for the handle to the drawer on his left. His fingers grasped what he was searching for and he let out a defeated sigh as he pulled the bottle to his mouth, pulling out the corkscrew before taking a large sip. He was tired, confused, weary and above all else, Giles couldn't stop the feelings of guilt that rushed to the surface.

The image of the woman bleeding laying face down on the ground from a stomach wound stared up at him from the desk and again he whispered.

"What have we done?"

The claiming bite was the only bite that was capable of breaking the hold Drusilla had over Buffy and it needed to be done, it had been done. But at what cost? Buffy seemed to think that she was now condemned to the future that lay drawn out in front of him and he had no answers. There was no response that he could give that would calm her doubts or ease his guilt. They had done this to her. They were no better than Angelus.

"I'm sorry dear friend." Giles took another swig of amber liquid from his bottle, sparing a glance at the roof in a silent apology to Hank.

Pulling the glasses onto his face, he set on the painstaking task of once again arranging the scrolls and parchments into their respective piles. Those written in Latin and directly relating to the main text, the prophecy itself outlining 'The Becoming.' This text was easily found and almost slipped from the pile, wishing to be found first. The parchment which Spike had first asked him to translate. The drawing on its front was of a woman with her arms thrown out wide to the sides. Lines were drawn vertically though her, to which he had assumed was light or power rushing into her body. The Becoming. Turning the parchment over there was another image, a portrait of Buffy's face, including the scar that trailed from her left cheek down to the bottom of her lips.

The Chosen One.

The Slayer.

The scrawled words that had been written around both images in a blurred rush were hard to read and Giles had to squint to make out the cursive script of his friends rushed writings. His eyebrows raised slightly as he read the words "more than one" and thought back to the conversation he'd had with Spike upon first translating the text. There had always been more than one of the chosen bloodline.

So what made Buffy so special?

The second pile consisted of texts about vampire lineage and the two fighting covens and the third pile he set aside to sort consisted of all Hanks notes, parchments which were easy to spot out against the others because his friend's peculiar writing scrawl.

Giles was broken from his musings by Spike's voice.

"Anything?"

"No actually, I've got nothing." He waited for a smart sharp remark back from Spike and was surprised by the silence he was met with.

Spike had cleaned himself up, fully clothed and covered from head to toe, including a jacket that nearly fell to the floor. It was snowing this morning, something which Giles often found quite cathartic to watch from his window-seat in the library, but this morning it had offered little solace. Still the coat was an unnecessary accessory for Spike as he didn't feel the cold, but Giles found it comforting that his friend had heeded his words and cleaned himself up, going over and above to make sure that none of his skin was visible.

"Right, I'll just-" Spike pointed to the spare chair that Tara had occupied earlier and sat down.

Giles dismissed Spike's odd and hesitant behavior and put it down to nothing other than the fact that he had yelled at him earlier. He shuffled around the papers in front of him and set aside the two parchments with the images, sighing and finally meeting Spikes gaze.

"I gather from your matching set of bite marks that you claimed the girl." He gave a silent nod of recognition to the bite that was visible on Spike's neck.

"Yes." Spike sat back in the chair, fidgeting slightly under Giles intense stare.

"Drusilla's claim over her will be broken then."

"Yes."

"I expect that she's not going to be pleased over the matter and we should expect action will be taken against us. That is of course, assuming Drusilla has indeed figured out that we're keeping the girl here."

"She's coming." Spike confirmed. "I can feel it through the sire bond." His fists tightened together. "It's weak, but there."

"Then there's the matter of this." Giles tapped the parchment in front of him.

"I don' bloody know what it means!" Spike growled out, frustrated.

"That makes two of us, but Buffy seems to think this is the fate we've now condemned her too."

"That I condemned her too." Spike sighed defeat in his voice, his demon whining inside at the thought of causing his mate harm.

"The claiming bite was a choice that we all needed to agree on and whatever path it has now put us on doesn't matter. It can't be reversed. What's done is done." Giles sat the parchment next to the one describing The Becoming. "What we need to do now is work out what we're going next."

"Something happened last nigh'-"

"I'll say." Giles muttered, glancing at Spike's bite mark before taking another sip of amber liquid.

"Not like tha' you berk. Ok, yes tha', but something else happened." Spike held his hand out for Giles to pass him the bottle. "Buffy was there one minute and then, somehow not herself."

"Can you explain?"

"It was primal. She was primal." He took a sip and closed his eyes as the liquid hit his taste buds. "I've no' ever experienced anything like it mate. It was a battle for dominance and my demon wasn' having a bar of it. She gave as good as she got though and those eyes, god-" another sip. "Those eyes undid me. Gold, sparkling flecks of sunlight. When I tried to explain it to her this morning she freaked out and bolted down here, searching for this." Spike tapped the parchment in front of him.

"A prophecy about a dying woman?"

"Doesn't make a lick of sense to me either." Spike continued to slowly sip the amber liquid while Giles stared at the parchment, reading the words in Latin that were scripted there.

"It talks about a woman with remarkable gifts that is capable of tapping into her inner strengths. Her primal ancestry so to speak." Giles read from the script for a few more minutes and perked up in his chair. "It uh, talks about a woman with golden eyes, one of the chosen who will fight in a great battle..." he trailed off and seemed to slip down in his chair again as dread covered his face.

"And?"

"And dies."

"Well that's a load of bullocks." Spike slammed down the bottle refusing to believe Giles words. "All these bloody prophecies. Screw the fates! I won't be ruled by a bloody piece of parchment telling me that my mate is going to die all because she tapped into her primal essence."

"Yes well, we don't know what will happen, but right now young Elizabeth believes that this is her destined fate."

Spike growled and pushed at the piles of papers on Giles desk with a glare, earning a tsk of disapproval from Giles. Giles rolled his eyes and set about straightening the piles again. His hands seemed to hover and linger on a page full of Hanks writings, one which he had read days ago and thought nothing of at the time.

"Isn't she golden,

Shining in the light

Drops are scattered by the harvest of gold

Passing through like morning sun

A waiting to be cast along

Sowing the grain

Fields of the same

Plant to grow

The deed is done."

The deed was indeed done and instead of a rushed scrawl in writing, Hanks words were specifically placed, neat and purposeful. Giles snatched the two parchments with drawings and turned one over to see his friends rushed words on the back "more than one."

"Multiple prophecies." He trailed off.

"What?"

"More than one. He wasn't talking about more than one chosen one, he was talking about more than one prophecy!"

"Who?"

"Hank, Elizabeth, er- Buffy's father. This is his writing! He wrote that there's more than one and I do believe he means multiple prophecies. What if and this is widely throwing it out there, but what if the multiple prophecies are different choices she makes?"

"She didn't have a choice to be chosen and she bloody well didn't have much of a choice to be claimed either. I don' think that's it."

"Y-yes well, what if perhaps then, that the multiple prophecies are becoming one large one?" Giles sat up rather excitedly and set aside the papers and scrolls on the vampire covens and his friends written works which just left the texts on prophecies on his desk.

"I'm listening." Spike sat up, intrigued.

"The becoming," Giles placed the prophecy on the desk. "then discovering her connection to primal ancestry-" He placed the second prophecy on the desk.

"Then death." Spike growled.

"No, not death." Giles grinned and met Spike's eyes. "We know Angelus had her for years for a reason. He was waiting for this to happen." Giles tapped the parchment on The Becoming. "He wanted to breed her all for a prophecy that he has possession of."

"So you're saying that all of these prophecies come together to make one mother of a prophecy?" Spike stared dauntingly at the stacks of papers and parchments in front of him.

"Exactly." Giles grinned. "This is not her end." He tapped the image of the woman laying bleeding from her stomach wounds. "It's merely another chapter."





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