Echoes from the Battleground

Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

the Day After

v

Giles had a book open in his hand when he answered the door, and he was very different from his usual tidy appearance; his hair was messily ruffled, he was coatless with his shirtsleeves rolled up, vest and collar unbuttoned, and … “You know,” Buffy observed, tilting her head to one side, “I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever seen you without a tie before.”

“I’m sure you have,” Giles said, stepping aside to allow her to enter. (Without, she noted, an explicit invitation. She doubted he’d done it deliberately, it was probably habit by now; still, with the rain and the overcast, not entirely un-apt.) “Given the varied events of the last few years, not to mention the crises mounting over the past several days.”

“But all good now.” She stepped inside, then stopped. Other books, piles of them, covered most available surfaces and barely left space to walk between the stacks. “Wow. I thought we’d put everything in my basement, at least till we could make better arrangements.”

“Oh, we did.” Giles glanced again at the open page before him, then dutifully returned his attention to his guest. “But there were some I didn’t trust out of my hands — too rare, or too dangerous — and others that were … well, while we were sorting through the volumes, I found myself setting aside those that caught my particular interest.”

Buffy found an open space, sat down. “All these? What, the Time-Life series wasn’t enough?”

He smiled, and found a seat of his own. “Surprisingly enough, they didn’t quite cover the subject matter in, er, definitive detail.” He indicated the book he still held. “This, for instance: when we set the spirit of Gabriela de Santos to rest, we thought that was the end of it, but this volume brings up some subsidiary matters we shall certainly want to address in due course. And there’s another I’ve been trying to find, as it might have some bearing on a call I received from the Council of Watchers some weeks ago, warning that there had been signs of a substantial invocation being made in this area to the demon Gluupthri. At the time I assumed it was connected to the Mayor’s plans for Ascension, but —”

“Giles,” she interrupted gently. “From the way you sounded on the phone, I’m thinking you didn’t ask me over so we could talk about this Gluestick guy.”

“No,” he agreed. He placed a bookmark, and closed and set aside the volume in question. “No, you’re quite correct.” He looked to her. “Have you visited Faith in hospital?”

“Only in my dreams,” Buffy told him. “She was a whole lot nicer there. Why mess with a good thing?”

Giles disregarded the forced flippancy. “I just wondered if you feel any …” He trailed off, searching for words. “If you might have … questioned your decision.”

Buffy’s expression firmed. “Not for a second.”

Giles went on, as if, once begun, he was determined to force through the subject. “You saw what happened to her, the psychological impact, following the accidental death of Allan Finch. I explained to you what can happen under such circumstances, the effect on a Slayer of going outside her mandate and killing non-supernatural entities. Yet you still deliberately set out to end the life of another human being.”

“Not a human being,” Buffy corrected, saying each word with distinct, biting precision. “Faith.”

Giles nodded. “I see. So Faith doesn’t qualify as human. Why?”

“Uh, well, let’s see.” Buffy waved her hands. “Because she’s a murderer? Because she betrayed us to throw in with Big ‘E’ Evil? Because she was trying to kill us, and probably the whole graduating class in the bargain?”

“All dreadful things,” Giles acknowledged, “and meriting stringent action in response. If you had killed her in the process of preventing those events, that would have been both understandable and justifiable. But you didn’t say that: you said ‘not a human being’. That is the reason I wished to speak to you, because I suspected such a, a cast of thought.”

Buffy made an impatient gesture. “What does it matter? We fought, she lived, we stopped the Ascension. That’s a win on all counts.”

“But you’ve not answered the question,” Giles insisted. “Do you truly see Faith as not human? And if so, why not?”

Buffy’s mouth set, and she leaned forward to speak, calm but clear. “Because she’s not one of the people we’re supposed to protect. Not defenseless, not innocent, and if you want to come right down to it, not normal. She’s in a different category. She’s a Slayer. She is a ‘supernatural entity’, and if she goes off the reservation, that makes her fair game.”

Rather than show unease or disagreement, Giles was nodding. “In point of fact, that precisely mirrors the Council’s thinking on the subject.”

Startled, Buffy sat back. “Then what’s with the whole intervention deal?”

“What concerns me are the underlying implications of your attitude.” He could see bewilderment in her face, and he went on: “As you said, Faith is a Slayer. So are you.”

“Uh-huh,” Buffy said, a tiny frown showing that she still didn’t understand.

“You are a Slayer,” Giles repeated. “That is a high and terrible calling … but it does not mean you are less than human, or even other than human. I would be the instant enemy of anyone who tried to claim that it did, so you can see that I would wish to be certain that you hold no such opinion.”

Comprehension showed at last, but Buffy’s eyes were troubled. After long moments, she said in a low voice, “The Slayer’s power comes from darkness. That’s what your books say, and I’ve always been able to feel it in myself.”

“We all fight the darkness inside,” Giles said. “Some of us more successfully than others; you’ve had ample opportunity to see examples in our various experiences here. But you —” Now he was the one leaning forward. “You are not simply human, you are the best of humanity. I’m proud of you, and proud to serve alongside you. It is of utmost importance that you know that.”

Most of the shadows left Buffy’s expression. Most. “The ‘best of humanity’?” she repeated, one eyebrow raised.

“The best of the things that make us human.” Giles shrugged. “Of course, I wouldn’t point to you as an exemplar of grammar, or scholarship, or even suitable dress, but on the whole —”

That brought the laugh he had hoped to elicit, but it stopped after a few seconds. The Slayer looked at him with eyes that were deep and ancient, and she said, “I hope you’re right.” Again, more quietly: “I hope you’re right.”

vi

It was raining at the rubble where the high school had stood. (Well, all over Sunnydale, but this was where Walt Burrows happened to be standing at the moment.) Downside: it was raining, the kind of slow drizzle that looked like it might continue all day long. Uncomfortable, inconvenient, and demoralizing. Upside: the intermittent downpour seemed to keep down the smell, at least a bit.

Beside him, the California Emergency Management Agency representative wrinkled his nose and observed, “God, what a stink. What do you think? underground gases venting?”

Burrows gave the man a sidelong look. “Could be,” he replied cautiously. “There are a lot of caverns running under Sunnydale, and every now and then something comes up to the surface.”

“Nasty stuff,” the state man agreed. “Hallucinations are nothing new, I hear about that a lot, but explosion? Not so often.”

Burrows wasn’t quite sure what to make of this character: Heckledorn, that was the name. They’d crossed paths now and then in the course of business, but never before dealt with each other directly. Considering how things were usually done in Sunnydale, the man had either been assigned to this town because he was too incompetent for anything else, or was taking payoffs to not ask awkward questions. Heckledorn had a way about him, though, a way of looking over a situation and then making the right noises while a saturnine cast to his face all but openly ridiculed the things he himself was saying …

“I leave that to geologists and whoever else,” Burrows said. “Me, I just deal with construction.” And, in this case, demolition as well; there was a crapload of wreckage that would have to be cleared away before anything new could be built here.

“We’ll see,” Heckledorn answered. He surveyed the smoking ruins. “How many fatalities from this mess?”

“I don’t have the official figures —” Burrows began, and Heckledorn waved it away, saying, “Just what you know. I’ll get the official tally from … well, whoever winds up in charge, with the mayor dead and no new deputy mayor appointed yet.” He looked to Burrows. “So?”

“I’ve heard about thirteen bodies,” Burrows admitted. “Mostly neck or head trauma, they say. And there are other people the witnesses swear are dead — the Mayor, the school principal, several students — even though we don’t have bodies for those.” He didn’t look directly at the other man. “Crushed in the wreckage, maybe, or vaporized in the explosion. Maybe even lost in the shuffle in some of the local mortuaries, I hear that’s happened a few times.”

“So we’re likely to get our best casualty count from how many are still missing once survivors are accounted for.” Heckledorn tapped his foot, peering through the steady, dismal rain. “Any lasting effects from the, the ‘fumes’ —” (By God, Burrows could hear the quote-marks in the other man’s voice!) “— that had people raving about a giant snake?”

Burrows was becoming more and more uncomfortable. “That’s … I mean, you’d have to talk to the hospital —”

“Damn it, Walt,” Heckledorn snapped, “just tell me what you know. I’m trying to pick out a starting-point here, and I can’t do it with everybody tap-dancing.”

Burrows sighed, took a deep breath, and said, “I understand they’re having to treat some for hysteria, but I haven’t heard of any lasting physical effects.” He shook his head, and added casually, “Funny thing, most of the hysteria seems to be in the parents. The high school kids themselves are holding up pretty well.” (Translation: keeping their mouths shut.) “And most of them aren’t mentioning any giant snake, either.”

“Yeah,” Heckledorn said. “Funny thing.” From his voice, he didn’t see the humor. Maybe the body-count had jolted him out of his normal attitude. After a few more silent minutes, he said, “If you already had the plans, and a go-ahead, how long would it take you and your crews to build a new school?”

Burrows thought about it. There had been a lot of financial incentives available for construction companies willing to operate under the hazards found in this city; if Richard Wilkins really was dead, would that still hold? On the other hand, Wilkins’ departure might actually reduce those hazards, once word got around … “If the permits go smooth,” he said, “and we don’t get bogged down in lawsuits or environmental impact studies … I’ve got some good people, and we know a lot about how to deal with the kinds of complications you run into in Sunnydale … I’d say two, maybe two and a half years. Give or take.” After a moment, he qualified, “Just from a quick run-through, while we were checking for survivors in the wreckage, I saw a lot of, um, unidentified biological material. A lot. We’d probably want to take extra precautions with that.”

Heckledorn didn’t ask for clarification, which confirmed some of Burrows’ suspicions. After more minutes of consideration, he said, “Start working out how you’d deal with it. Start getting plans drawn up with the city council and the school board. Take your time, because I’m sealing this place for six months, minimum.” He turned to Burrows. “If nothing new crops up, if no people or pets die from ‘toxic materials’ left over from the explosion —” (there were the quote-marks again) “— I’ll probably sign off to allow new construction.”

Heckledorn looked back at the reeking rubble before them — Will six months be enough for that smell to go away?, Burrows wondered — and added, soft-voiced, “Though why anyone would want to send their kids to school in this hell-hole, God only knows.”

vii

The city stretched out below him, a diamond latticework of light and life and movement. From the height of the observatory, Angel could see the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, and all the way to the horizon at the southeast. He had driven to the city the previous night, in Mayor Wilkins’ own vintage 1967 Plymouth Belvedere GTX convertible, and spent the day in the lower levels of a parking garage. Tomorrow night he would begin the process of locating more spacious lodgings. (As a vampire, he didn’t require heat or water, so any number of vacant or abandoned buildings would have sufficed … but he didn’t feel like living in a dark hole, and he’d need power to keep blood refrigerated, so the process would require at least a modicum of time and care.) For now, he wanted only to look out over the city that would once again be his home, and try to reconcile himself with the events that had brought him to this place.

It didn’t have to be Los Angeles … but this was the best compromise of far enough from Buffy to no longer endanger her, and close enough to go to her aid if the need was urgent enough to justify his cursed presence.

— It’s just good to know that when the chips are down and things look grim, you’ll feed off the girl who loves you, to save your own ass. —

He had wavered in the weeks before graduation, presenting a stoic, determined front while agonizing over the temptation to stay. Her mother had made a convincing case, and his own experience with the brevity of human life (never mind a Slayer’s!) made him all too aware of how much greater would be the quality of any life that didn’t include him. But the need, the need to be with her, to protect her, to find meaning of his own in the purpose that drove her …

And then Faith’s poisoned arrow had shown him the truth.

— It’s just good to know —

A poison with only one cure: to drain the blood of a Slayer. And he had taken that cure.

— that when the chips are down and things look grim —

Even if he had taken it from Faith, it would have been unforgivable. From Buffy, it should have been unthinkable, literally impossible for him to hold in his mind.

And yet …

— you’ll feed off the girl who loves you, to save your own ass. —

No. This was where he was now, this was where he would follow out the desecrated parody of his life. Making such inadequate penance as he could, eternally and irreparably apart from Buffy and everyone else he had known in Sunnydale.

Alone.

As it should be.

As he deserved.
 

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