Giles wore a mask of concentration as he stood hunched over his desk, eyes poring over the books that were scattered on its top and not bothering to look up to as they entered. Her fathers scrolls and parchments were placed to the side in neat piles leaving no doubt in her mind that he had spent a long time sorting them back into their respective piles after she had so carelessly tossed them about in the early hours of the morning. She winced, feeling guilty at having made him endure the tedious task once again.
"Oh good, you're both here! It's quite remarkable really!" Giles traced a line from the thick volume in front of him before motioning them both over.
"What is?"
"Did you find something?"
Buffy came to a halt opposite Giles, finally able to see the complete mess that was his desk in its entirety. Books upon books were laid open and stacked on top of each other with scrolls spilling down the sides of his desk half unraveled while endless papers were scattered about underneath. Three parchments sat to the side with the rest of her fathers belongings perfectly placed apart in distance.
She knew these texts, the image of the first depicting 'The Becoming' staring back at her as her fingers reach forward to ghost over the drawing at its center. The drawing was simplistic and not detailed, but managed still to describe the event in such a way that words could not. With arms outstretched and energy rushing through the center of the picture she was taken back to the moment the event had happened to her. Her mother had once described her own becoming, explaining the blanket of comfort that seemed to embrace her afterwards and how protected she had felt.
She was finally part of something bigger. Connected to a whole bloodline of those that had been Chosen before her.
But Buffy had never felt any such connection after her own Becoming. She had been Chosen, but there was no blanket of warmth to embrace her afterwards nor was their protection. There was no comfort that would have come from her people had they been surrounding her. She was the last one left in a bloodline that had been erased from existence.
Still, she knew what it felt like to be wholly consumed and overwhelmed by such power that even now tensing and clenching her muscles she could feel the strength that was within.
The second text and image that her eyes stared down at had her stomach dipping in trepidation. The parchment had been carefully placed next to the first and for a few moments her eyes lingered on the image that depicted her death. She wondered if it would hurt, being stabbed in the stomach. Would she bleed to death? Would the instrument or weapon that killed her damage a main organ or hit an artery? Would her death be instantaneous? By the shadows under the drawing that seemed to represent a pool of blood she surmised that it would be a slow and painful death. Her fingers again ghosted over the image, the words 'Primal' in Latin etched on its page.
The infamous text connecting her to a primal ancestral line that had lain deep and dormant within only to be woken during her mating with Spike.
The third text had little written on it and no drawings at all. In fact, all that was written on its page were a number of question marks with a few quick scrawls beneath it, hand-writings she didn't recognize.
She had not seen this page before.
"Nothing since you left, but Buffy, we may have a theory about these texts." Giles gathered the three parchments up and turned them around to face her. "We think that there's more than one. See here your father's writings," he pointed to the scribbles around the images. "I think he means more than one prophecy."
"You would be correct in that assumption," Buffy said sadly while nodding, having already known for some time that there was more than one prophecy that could affect her life.
"Oh." The deflate in Giles was immediate and Spike's shoulders too seemed to sag in defeat.
"I've known for a long time there was more than one. How many in total I couldn't say." She shrugged and stared down at the images that faced her. "We never knew how many could affect me-"
"Did your father ever think that these prophecies could be linked together?"
"What do you mean?" Her brows furrowed.
"That instead of their being multiple prophecies these could all actually make up one big one instead." Spike rushed to explain at seeing the look of confusion on her face.
"We believe that these," Giles pointed to the images on the desk. "are all connected. That they come together to make one larger prophecy and not just multiple individual ones."
"It's possible, but" her frown deepened, unable to remove the image of the second parchment from her mind. "this depicts my death."
"And this prophecised your becoming." Giles turned over the first text to the image of a woman's face, her face. Still, his words did little to comfort her, the images before her burning into her retinas.
"I refuse to believe that this is your end." Spike covered the second image with his hand, taking a step closer to her.
"I know." She whispered, hearing the hope in both of their voices and wishing that she could feel it too.
"It's a theory at most, but one we must hope to be correct." Giles pulled the glasses from his face, cleaning them with the corners of his shirt, a habit that Buffy had started to recognize as a nervous tick. "I first believed that the prophecies may have come into fulfillment because of the choices you had made. That we'd all made." He placed the glasses back on his face and offered her a sad smile. "But, we didn't have much of a choice in separating your connection to Drusilla nor did you on the day you got your power."
"No I didn't." She sighed sadly in agreement.
"The first text has been fulfilled and the second only partly so. You've already shown signs of this primal side within, but are yet to unlock it in its entirety."
"And how do I do that? U-unlock it I mean?" Buffy stumbled over her words. "If I even want to unlock it at all." She shivered, remembering the growl that had escaped her when Tara had gotten too close to her bite mark earlier that morning.
"I don't know." Giles sighed in honesty, reaching for his glasses again. His habit extending to unanswerable questions.
"I only caught glimpses last nigh' during-"
"It happened again this morning!" Buffy rushed out, voice slightly raised in panic as she cut off Spike. She didn't want or need him to explain to Giles the intimacies that they had shared and what had caused her golden eyes and primal self to come forward. "I can't control it. T-this morning when Tara was helping me clean off all of the blood she got too close to these and I may have kinda growled and gone all golden-eyed-girl on her." Her hands gestured to her neck as her cheeks flushed red.
She didn't miss the look that crossed Spike's face when she mentioned cleaning off all of the blood from her body or miss the narrowing of his eyes when she had said that Tara had gotten close to his bite mark.
A mark that was his and his alone to touch.
On instinct he stepped closer, eyes seeming to darken as he leaned forward to sniff her. She was frozen stiff at his movements, eyes wide and heart racing. His hands reached out to touch her and the noise that came from her was not one she wished to hear again. A low growl that came from deep in her gut, her lips twitching up to bare her teeth. He would not lay a finger on her until she allowed it, her growl acting as a warning. Spike grumbled back a response, almost in a challenge that she would dare to stop him from being close to her.
"I can't control it." Buffy whispered, hastily taking a few steps back before the situation could escalate further.
"It's a part of you whether you like it or not, dear." Giles placed the glasses on his face yet again, for the moment not addressing the domineering display he had just witnessed.
"It's in my blood." Buffy numbly whispered back, hearing her mother's voice echo in her mind.
"I do believe that once you learn to harness the power within; opening that link so to speak that this prophecy will be fulfilled and the next will then roll into play."
"And then next one and the next," she growled in frustration. "When does it end? When do they become one giant prophecy? How long do the blasted 'Powers That Be' get to decide my fate?"
"That I don't have the answers to I'm afraid."
Buffy was silent and on the verge or tears, fingers running shakily through her hair as she brushed it off her face. Her life and destiny had never been in her hands to begin with. She was delivered into the world by parents who had tried their hardest to change her fate. What would her life have been like if she had only been born a son like they had hoped. Would her parents both still be alive? Were they both even really dead? She had never been given the chance to interrogate Riley, Spike having such a short temper and killing him first before she could question him. Would she have been raised on her childhood property surrounded by the love of two doting parents?
"Blood." Spike had been silent, watching their faces intently as they talked until Buffy had mentioned her blood. "It's always about blood."
"What?" She scrunched up her face, mistaking his words for hunger and not the revelation they had intended to be.
"The second text explains a link to your primal ancestry righ'?"
"Y-yes." Her eyes wandered to the prophecy on the desk.
"So where does that line start? Your power has to come from somewhere."
"Of course!" Giles grabbed her father's stack of parchments and divided them up between them. "Why didn't I think of that before? The answers we're looking for are within these texts, the truth about how to unlock your primal side within." The light in his eyes seemed to dim for a moment as he whispered. "They have to be."
"You know I can' read half of these." Spike growled, staring at the stack of parchments, the majority of the texts being written in Latin a fact that Giles knew all too well.
"That's why you have the texts in english." Giles raised one eyebrow, his teasing voice causing Buffy muffle her laughter. "The dividing of the major covens may hold little answers to our questions, but we have to look everywhere." He pulled a book from under the pile on his desk and lumped it into Spike's waiting hands. "Happy reading."
Spike growled low, eyes flashing before he took up the seat at the end of the desk. The papers Giles had given to Buffy were the texts written in Latin, something she was partly glad for as the pile Giles held; her father's writings, she had read many times before. She paused before stepping away from the desk, her hands hovering over a book that lay opened under the endless stacks, something drawing her to it. She didn't know what caused her to pick that particular book or explain why, but as soon as her fingers touched the worn leather of the spine she knew it had been calling to her. She gripped her small pile to her chest and made her way to the seats near the library's windows.
It was snowing again, the sky full of grey clouds that offered the window seats an even amount of shadowed light, just enough for her to read without struggling. Wearing Tara's gown that was too large for her she pulled the skirts up and tucked them over her legs like a blanket, cocooning herself in its warmth as she set about reading the texts in her hands.
Giles took up residence at his desk, eyes fixed on his dear friends scrawled writings.
Hours seemed to pass with little success on finding out the answers they needed, each too lost in their own texts to glance at the other. The room was silent, every now and again the whooshing of pages turning could be heard along with the muttering Spike was doing under his breath. Buffy closed her eyes and opened their link, curiosity getting the better of her and not wanting to ask what it was that he found so displeasing to read. She knew a little of the vampire covens and the war that had separated them; Drusilla being the main villain in that tale, but the lineage and description of their heritage she knew nothing about. Spike though, seemed quite annoyed at the book's depiction of his kind.
The emotions she got through their link were a mixture of anger, loathing, disdain with flashes of hatred coming through before an overwhelming inadequacy hit her. She glanced up from her book to look his way, the pain she felt through their bond was visible all over his face. Loneliness and self loathing smacked her in the gut hard before slipping in to hope as his eyes met hers causing her heart to stop. Her cheeks flushed red and she whipped her head back down towards her book, not wanting to know what it was exactly he had read to cause such an array of emotions to flood towards her.
She had long ago put the texts written in Latin down and picked up the book she had taken from Giles' collection that thumping feeling within drawing her to it's pages. It turned out to be a journal written by a man called Elian. He wrote his name above each entry. The dates on its entries were hard to make out, being were so faded that she had to squint to see their outline. The entry that she was currently reading was from nearly two hundred years ago. Although the dates on each entry were worn the main writings for the most part had been extremely well-preserved.
Elian
I fear that our time is almost at an end. Our people are all but gone with only a few dozen left. My family has been taken from me, my wife and children murdered before my eyes by a beast that hunts us in the night.
The creature is strong. It must be kept in darkness until we are ready.
It has taken us five days to track the creature to it's nest where it took nine of our people to finally capture it. With arrows and spears we have finally bent the beast to its knees, bound it with rope and have brought it back to what remains of our village. There are those with powers that want the same thing, peace among our kind. We wish to no longer be food, but masters of those that wish to see us gone from this world.
Many we have lost, but determined are we to harness the creature's strength. Our people will finally be able to protect themselves during all hours of the night. We will rebuild.
We must.
The men with the power, the Shadow Men as we have come to call them ensure us that the strength of the beasts essence will continue down our line. They call it a demon, a creature so foul that even hell spat it back out to walk this earth in darkness.
We must sacrifice one for the greater good of the many.
Buffy's heart raced as she turned the pages, eyes continuing to read as her mind almost wished to not find the answers to the questions she sought. What had they done to the creature? It was a vampire she was sure, but what sort of spell could they have cast to save their people? What kind of horror had they done to imbue them all with such strength?
Strength that was in her blood.
What was she?
Elian
It is time.
Three days have passed since my last entry and the creatures capture. We needed to ensure it's weakened state before the ceremony begins and I fear we have no more time to wait. Elowyn has passed on during the night from a fever leaving only Sineya to ensure our people's continued existence.
She is so young, a girl of only fourteen that I would never have wished this task upon, but she is our last hope.
The Shadow Men have taken her to the caves where the beast is kept. I do not wish to watch the ceremony, but the Shadow Men need the last of our people around Sineya to draw energy from.
They tied her to posts on the groun-
Buffy's hands shook as she squinted to make out the next sentence, heart hammering away in her chest, her breath coming in short. It was illegible and she had to move down a few sentences before the faded pages became clear again.
I can still hear her screams.
The beast is too weak to fight back. Once the Shadow Men started chanting a light covered the demon and Sineya and began merging their essences together. The demon howled and fought against it's bonds, but after a few long moments it simply dissipated into dust. I've never seen anything like it before.
Sineya lie still of the floor for a long while after the creature died.
Golden eyes shone bright against the darkness of the cave when Sineya finally woke with what is left of our people surrounding her. She made growling noises and fought back against us. She is not the same as before and I fear that we have done the wrong thing. Elowyn had chosen this fate, she was prepared to sacrifice everything for the greater good of us all.
It was not supposed to be Sineya.
I ran from the cave like a coward tonight, refusing to watch as my people tied Sineya to the posts the beast had once been chained on. The Shadow Men call her the Slayer, one alone in each generation that will fight against the darkness that wishes to destroy us all.
Imbuing the heart, soul and spirit of the demon in a girl so young was a terrible mistake.
What have we done?"
The book fell from Buffy's fingers and clattered to the floor with a bang, eyes wide is sheer terror and shock at what she had just read.
She was in essence, part demon.
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