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In Ev’ry Angle Greet
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Part VI
It was interesting to watch the way they dealt with the woman: courteous, cautious, restrained. Quite familiar, actually, though it had been years since anyone had treated her with any such deference. Not that it was difficult to figure out why: she had lost her power when she regained her humanity, whereas Catherine Madison currently possessed both.
The subject in question had gone through three cups of coffee, and was now finishing off a clutch of stale doughnuts Willow had unearthed from beneath the counter. She had also talked non-stop while gorging, mostly moans of pleasure and demands for more. “Those are terrible,” she said, swallowing the last bite and dabbing in the box for flakes of crusted sugar glaze. “God, those are terrible, it’s just heavenly. What else do you have?”
Wesley looked alarmed, Giles pensive; Buffy and Faith, in response to pointed glances and tiny hand-gestures from Giles, had faded back and were staying quiet. Which was logical enough: Buffy had trapped the woman inside some kind of little statue, Faith had killed her daughter to save Willow … with someone this powerful, everyone she might have a grudge against would have sense enough to keep their heads down.
Or not. “Um, I think I’ve got a PEZ dispenser here,” Xander offered, rooting around in his pockets.
“PEZ?” Catherine shivered rapturously and held out her hand. “Give.”
It was really very annoying, all these people standing around and no one willing to bring up the main thing on their minds. “All right, then,” Anya said. “Now that you aren’t a bowling trophy anymore, will you be trying to kill everybody, or did you have other plans?”
Xander froze with his hand extended, and Wesley looked as if he was choking on his own spit. Giles let out one of those deep, deep sighs. (What? somebody had to ask.) “Plans?” Catherine said, reaching out to take the PEZ dispenser from Xander. “Yes, I did mention plans, didn’t I? Right before I sent Mayor Dick and his X-rated vampqueen spinning down the trash chute to Hell.” She emptied the dispenser into her mouth, clicked it a few more times to be sure it was exhausted, and tossed it back to Xander. “Well, let’s see. I plan to go out and have a whole lobster in butter and four or five piña coladas, then watch movies until the theaters close, then find a motel and stand in the shower for an hour or two, then feed quarters into the vibrating bed and let my brain turn to marmalade. Oh, and I’m pretty sure there’s a monster banana split in there somewhere, and a day or so down the line I think I’ll lie out in the sun until I toast like a cinnamon bun.” She looked around with a smile that wasn’t especially nice. “I don’t have any particular plans to kill any of you. Oh, I’ll be happy to do it, if you’re feeling neglected, but now that I’ve lit up those other two, it’s just not at the top of my ‘To Do’ list.”
Anya could feel the others relaxing, and Giles began, “That’s, um, that’s very encouraging …”
“Except for him, maybe,” Catherine said, jerking a thumb at Xander. “I haven’t made up my mind on that one yet.”
Giles got that expression that said he was about to do the honorable thing and stand up for Xander despite his own feelings. Right. Anya cut in ahead of him. “I hope you decide not to,” she said to Catherine. “Don’t get me wrong, we’d love to watch you slap him around for awhile, but if you try to kill him we’ll all have to try and save him, and none of us really want to do that.”
Catherine laughed. “I can imagine. I’m, what, the only female in this room he hasn’t slept with and then blown off? I’m surprised you didn’t break out the tar and feathers a long time ago. So why should you care what I do to him?” She looked to Xander, her smile tightening. “Amy was one of his playmates-of-the-month, and she wound up dying for it. I wasn’t exactly the greatest mother in history, but it seems like I shouldn’t just write it off under the heading of These Things Happen.”
“Hey.” Xander stepped away from the others. “You want a whipping boy, here I am. I’ve earned it.”
“Be quiet, Xander,” Giles said to him without looking his way; then, to Catherine: “He behaved deplorably, none of us deny that, and he injured us grievously in the process. We’ve no way of knowing, however, to what extent he was acting of his own free will during the course of your daughter’s enchantment, and regardless of his personal behavior he has remained a steadfast ally. We won’t desert him, nor stand idly while he is singled out for vengeance.”
“You’d rather I came after the whole bunch of you?” Catherine turned her hands palms-up; no magical energies flickered there, but her point was clear. “I could take out the whole school, you know, bring it down around your ears, and none of you could stop me. Most of witchcraft is mental discipline, and I had plenty of time to work on that, so threatening me is a bad idea. You want him to live, you need to be giving me reasons why I should let him. And while you’re at it, bring me some more coffee.”
“Very well.” Giles nodded to Willow, who took the empty cup and scurried to refill it. “You look to Xander and see a pattern of behavior which you quite properly judge to be unacceptable. I am more inclined to view the results of Amy’s unrecognized spell-residue as a series of events, of which Xander was the primary instrument but not truly the cause. These events affected us all, for good or ill, and we all acted in response … again, for good or ill.”
He paused, and Anya wondered if he was thinking again of his voluntary staging of Buffy’s Cruciamentum. That, coming so soon after she had been haunted by the First Evil appearing in the image of an accusing Angel (and that following so close on her finding Willow and Xander in flagrante in the ruins of the factory), had been the trigger that drove Buffy away, and Giles had been seared by guilt ever since. Tiresome, though she had learned not to say so.
“The point,” he said, recovering himself, “is that we made choices. Xander may or may not have been fully responsible for his actions at the time, but we unquestionably were responsible for the choices we made in reaction to them. I … betrayed my Slayer’s trust, placing obedience to authority ahead of what I knew to be right. Wesley attempted magicks he didn’t understand, with consequences that were fortunate in the immediate instance —” (a nod toward Harmony) “— but could very well have been catastrophic. Faith used her brief telepathic abilities for amusement and petty gain before we could cure her, without regard for the feelings of those whose personal secrets she was plundering, and further exacerbated the rifts that had already begun to form in our group. And Amy, out of pride and jealousy and resentment, made a deliberate choice to ally herself with evil. She was one of us, and I grieve for her, and wish we could have seen the bitterness she bore and what it was doing to her … but in the end she died because of her own choices. Not ours, not Xander’s. Her own.”
Willow had returned with the coffee, and Catherine sat sipping from the cup as Giles concluded his statement. Something about her … Anya studied the woman more closely, trying to clarify whatever it was that was trying to get through to her. Catherine pondered for ten or fifteen seconds, then nodded slowly. “Okay. That’s not enough by itself, but we’ll call it a foundation.” She looked around. “Next?”
Willow looked like she had something to say, but Harmony beat her to it. “Hey, Xander doesn’t deserve to be charbroiled, even if he is a dick.” There was an embarrassed silence, and she frowned at those staring at her. “What? He doesn’t.”
Faith snorted. “She may be a ditzoid, but she’s got a point. I went in with my eyes open, and I mighta wanted to break his neck afterward, but I didn’t do it so that’s that. And Anya already knew he was a two-timing dog, she came to Sunnyburg in the first place ’cause he screwed B over so bad, so she was taking her chances just like the rest of us. We could see it and we still didn’t have any better sense, so how’s that his fault?”
“If I might …” Wesley cleared his throat. “The long and short of it is that all of us here either have been misused by the young man, or deeply care for someone whom he did so misuse. However the ladies might feel, I believe I speak for the men when I say we pity him more for what he lost, than resent him for the damage he did in the process.”
“Wait a second.” Buffy stepped around Oz, who had been trying to stay between her and Catherine, and to Xander she said, “You were with all of them?”
“Uh, well, yeah.” Xander had that rather-be-anywhere-else look, but he didn’t try to dodge it. “And … a few others besides. I was just this big Bug-Zapper o’ Love for mystical women. Well, and for Cordelia and Willow.”
Buffy took a long breath, and for a moment Anya thought she might launch herself at his throat; but then she relaxed and let the breath out slowly. “I never realized how bad it had gotten,” she said, looking to Catherine. “I knew that … that things had happened, and Wesley told us about them finding the spell and finally breaking it, but I didn’t know how deep it had all gone. Look, the Xander I knew might have hurt Willow without realizing it, but he would never have done it on purpose. That’s just not Xander.”
“And he fell in love with Buffy the first time he ever saw her,” Willow added softly. “Once they were together, he wouldn’t have thrown that away … not for me, not for anything. Amy’s spell had to have been messing with his mind as much as with ours. You can’t blame him for that.”
“Can’t I?” Catherine turned to Anya. “So far most of the others have said their piece. Do you have anything to throw in?”
“Yes,” Anya said. “How long are you going to keep jerking us around?”
Again the pained sigh from Giles, and Catherine’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, you think I should just jump directly to incineration?”
Anya sat down across from her at the broad table. “You’ve deceived these others, but I’m a different matter. I was a vengeance demon for a thousand years, and I may have lost my powers when Buffy made that pitiful wish about never coming to Sunnydale, but I still know the look of a woman seeking retribution. You had it when the Mayor first brought you back; it isn’t there now.” She shook her head. “You don’t intend to do anything at all to Xander, do you?”
Catherine laughed. “No, I don’t. It was a thought, but I was never really serious about it.” She turned her head to smile at the others. “Not that I haven’t enjoyed watching you all tiptoe around me, and then scramble for reasons why I shouldn’t fricassee the little crumbball, but it’s time to get down to the real business at hand.”
Giles coughed delicately. “And that would be …?”
“Right.” She looked back to him. “That end-of-the-world stuff you’ve been planning? You can forget about it. Not only is it not necessary now, you’ll find it isn’t even possible.”
“I, um, I don’t …” Giles stopped, peering at her warily. “Would you care to, er, to be more specific?”
“Sure. Just don’t interrupt.” She leaned back, stretching until muscles cracked audibly. “Aahhh! Okay, you already understand that we’re in a parallel timestream. It always amazes me that people talk about things like that as if they understand them. It’s ‘parallel universe’ this and ‘alternate timeline’ that, they take the concept for granted and never stop to ask themselves basic questions … such as, what made it split off to begin with? and if it’s separate now, why is it still linked to the original?”
“Hold on there,” Anya said. “I understand those things, I used to work with them, so you don’t need to be patronizing.”
“Really?” Catherine looked mildly interested but not particularly impressed. “Then maybe you can follow along with me here. The two questions I was talking about? the answer to both of them is the same: me. This whole separate universe exists because of me, and I am — or was — the reason it was on the brink of tumbling down before Mayor Dick stepped in and saved the day.”
“Saved you, you mean.” Anya shook her head. “You’re very conceited. I’m told people find that unattractive.”
Catherine’s laugh was sharp and contemptuous. “No, he really did save the world, the slimy bastard. Didn’t know he was doing it, and I’d have burned him regardless, but with the worst of intentions he did exactly what was needed to set everything straight.”
She stood up and began to pace again. “You have to remember, I was always aware of where I was. For three years and nine months, day in and day out; I didn’t even sleep, sleep is a bodily function and I didn’t have a body. For the first year I raved and plotted revenge, and a fat lot of good it did me. Then Amy started exercising her talents, calling on her birthright and some of my old spell materials, and I could feel it tickling at me but I couldn’t get hold of it. When your oversexed friend blackmailed her into doing the love spell, though … that was a major undertaking, and I locked onto it and wouldn’t let go.”
“I think I see,” Anya said. “Except for scrying and divination, almost all spells operate at the probability level. So if you caught that one at the moment of casting —”
Catherine nodded. “Exactly. With no voice and no hands, the only effect I could have was by way of sheer mental pressure, but I gave that everything I had. I couldn’t take the power for my own, I couldn’t reshape the spell to suit myself, all I could do was push and hope that it would somehow work out to my advantage.” She sighed. “And I guess it did, in the long run.”
“You created a contingency vertex,” Anya said. “Except, one of those will collapse back in on itself if left unattended.”
The answer to that was a derisive snort. “Unattended, nothing! I could feel the shift, and I wasn’t about to turn loose. It was all I had, it was the only thing I could even try, so I poured all my concentration into it. Day after day after week after month … I channeled every wisp of stray energy I could snatch from the Hellmouth, kept up the pressure and added to it every way I knew how.”
“Right,” Anya said, her voice quickening. “The Hellmouth itself is a locus of probability flux, and you used it to set up a bare-bones feedback loop, and the overflow from the loop to shunt power and substance to a shift gradient. You stretched the probabilities out of shape —”
“— and then one day the accumulated potential crossed a threshold,” Catherine finished for her. “Just like that, it snapped from what-really-really-could-be to what-sort-of-is-now.”
“Uh, excuse me,” Xander said. “It’s really bracing, listening to you two ladies talk shop, but … are you saying that you’re the one who made Amy’s spell go wrong? That all the craziness we went through, you did that?”
Catherine glared at him. “Don’t press your luck with me, boy. I may have mellowed some while I was stuck inside that God-damned trophy case, but your life is still hanging by a thread as far as I’m concerned. Amy cast the spell, you took what it gave you and ran wild with it. All I did was push it up a slope and hope that, when it started down the other side, I could hang on and be pulled out of where I was. I didn’t know what would happen with the outside world, and by the time I did, there was no way for me to stop it.”
“Ignore him,” Anya said, flicking one hand dismissively. “What you’re saying is that this timeline was created by your attempt to escape. And the common thread that held the two realities together, that threatened to destroy them both …” Her eyes narrowed. “That was you, too, you say?”
“Bingo!” Catherine snapped her fingers. “I was the link, locked inside the cheerleading trophy; I was still part of both universes, and the farther they diverged from one another, the more stress the link put on both of them. I didn’t understand it at first, but I could feel things getting more and more strained, and finally I could see it wouldn’t be long before the foundations cracked. I was ready to give up and let it go, let the two universes pull back together and merge —”
“— because what’s the use of escaping if there’s no world left to live in?” Anya supplied for her.
“Exactly! Only right about then, Mayor Dick broke out his communing crystals and started priming me as a weapon to use against the bunch of you. That’s when I knew I was home free, and …” She leaned back and spread her hands. “Here I am. I believe applause is in order.”
Giles harrumphed! “What you say is, um, it …” He stopped, and did what he always did when he needed to gather his thoughts: he took off his glasses and began to polish them with his handkerchief. “It’s, it’s deeply interesting. If I understand you properly, you are maintaining that …?”
Catherine cut him off with an impatient wave. “I’m saying that, with me out, it’s all over. No more crisis. You might not be ready to take my word for it, but look it over for yourself. Read all the signs again, recheck your measurements, do whatever it takes to satisfy you; you’ll see that I’m right. This is a new creation now, and we all have the rest of our lives ahead of us.” She stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear some cherries jubilee and a full-body massage calling for me. Bottom line? stay the hell out of my way or I’ll make you sorry you didn’t. Otherwise, enjoy.”
“Please don’t consider this interference,” Giles said, “but you’ve been, er, incommunicado for quite some time. And, given what disappearances in Sunnydale usually mean, I’m sure you were officially declared dead some time ago. Do you think you might need anything? transportation, financial assistance while you … readjust?”
Catherine stopped at the double doors. “Funny. You’re funny. No, thanks, I’d say I have that covered.” And she passed through the doors and was lost from sight.
They looked to one another, hesitantly, as if afraid to hope, and Oz was the first to break the silence. “I don’t want to commit to anything,” he said, “but this is good news, right?”
“I believe her,” Anya said. “She’s very knowledgeable, for a mortal.”
Giles’ voice could have been that of a ghost. “So it would seem. We, um, we of course must confirm the salient facts, but … yes. So it would seem.”
Xander rolled his eyes. “Whoa, careful there, G-man, the British government will revoke your citizenship if you don’t rein in all that wacky exuberance. Me, I just want to ask one question.”
He swung his arm in a wide gesture that took in the broken furniture, the tumbled shelves, the intermittent heaps of gray-brown ash. “Be straight with me, I can take it: do I know how to throw a party, or what?”
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