Chapter 32: Watchers and Wankers
Night had fallen again, Spike’s senses were telling him. Another night. The third one of his captivity.
One thing was sure, Soldierboy had absolutely no talent nor inclination for torture. The wanker had bloodied him a little the first day, supposedly to get answers to his stupid questions, but it had soon been clear that he was more relieving a few frustrations than really trying to get answers. It hadn’t been hard for Spike to hold his tongue. If a hell goddess hadn’t gotten a word from him, what were the chances of a human? The difference was that, back then, Spike hadn’t thought any help would come for him, and it had. While this time, he had been pretty sure his Childe wouldn’t take long to find him, and still, three nights later, she hadn’t come.
Apparently, the wankers had decided that they were in no hurry, and that hunger would make him talk. They hadn’t fed him, and since he had lost some blood he was getting weak faster than he should have. Which meant, no way to get out of these bloody chains. What he hated most, however, was that they left him by himself most of the time, checking only every few hours to see if he had decided to give up yet. Too much time with nothing to do but think. He had replayed his abduction countless times in his mind, the mere seconds during which a few humans had invaded his lair and taken him, a Master Vampire, as if he had been a simple fledgling. He blamed himself for his distraction, he had been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t reacted as fast as he should have. And what if he had called his Childe for help? Even with the water running, she probably would have picked up her name if he had shouted. She could have helped him, maybe. Or she would have been taken alongside him.
And again, his thoughts were back to Buffy.
What was she doing? Why hadn’t she come to his aid yet? He tried to find an explanation, but all the theories he could come up with were each worse than the last. Maybe she didn’t care. Maybe she had only shrugged at his disappearance and decided than she didn’t need him. Maybe she had even taken it as a blessing, since now she was free to do as she pleased. Maybe by now she had already killed the Scoobies, maybe she had even gone back to LA to finish her business there. Or maybe the Watchers had arrived already, and captured her. Not staked her, he would have known if she was dust. Or maybe they had given her her soul back, and she was horrified that he had let drink from someone.
Maybe.
Maybe he would never know unless he found a way to escape by himself. And maybe it was better not to know.
No. She was alive. She loved him. These two things he knew, two truths that were part of him. She would come for him. She would.
*****
It was the third time already that Manon had followed Buffy through the mostly deserted streets of Sunnydale. Followed, and did little else. A couple of times, she had helped dust a vamp, but Buffy usually did the questioning and the execution with the same alacrity. Her elder hadn’t said how she hoped to find Spike simply by walking around and asking questions that never got helpful answers, but Manon didn’t have a better idea, so she kept her doubts to herself. But, as much as she regretted it, she did have doubts. A lot of them. She couldn’t help worrying and imagining the worse about what was happening to Spike. And Buffy’s simple but unexplained reassurance that he was still alive did nothing to help. So much could happen, in three nights. She hadn’t been a Slayer for very long, but she had already seen more than once how different things could be at sunrise from what they had been at sunset, and vice-versa.
God, how she hoped he was alright.
Admitting she didn’t stand a chance was one thing. Not caring about what happened to him, a very, very different one. That’s why she was there, night after night. Not to keep an eye on Buffy, for she was sure that Buffy was way too distracted to hunt and feed. No, she came along to be there when the blonde finally found her Sire, so that she could start breathing normally again, instead of having that painful weight on her chest.
And now, there was something else. She had seen and heard enough since the Watchers had arrived to realize that the Scoobies’ fears were probably close to becoming true. That new Slayer, Chloe, had just been Called, but she had mentioned she had been training for years already, and she was better at fighting than Manon was. If she tried to take Buffy, she might – just might, with a lot of luck – succeed. Seeing how distracted Buffy was, it might be the best time ever to do it. And from a few words shared as they sparred, Manon had no doubt that the girl would do whatever the Council told her to. There was just no way Manon was going to do nothing but stand and watch Buffy get dusted. No way she would confront Spike, if he ever came back, with the news that she had let Buffy get killed. If that meant doing her best to protect a Vampire from a Slayer… oh well. After all, she did owe her life to one of these soulless creatures.
Slowly, the hours flowed away, and as sunrise got increasingly closer, Manon could see the change in Buffy. At the beginning of the night, she had been calm, obviously filled with a deep determination. Cracks had started to appear in the vampire’s façade sometime after midnight, anguish slipping slowly over her features as her pace quickened until Manon had trouble keeping up with her.
And again, it was morning, and they were back to Revello Drive, being nowhere closer to having found the man they both loved. Manon wished the despair she could see in Buffy’s eyes as she stared into her cup of chocolate didn’t seem even deeper than the morning before. She also wished she knew what to say to comfort the vampire in front of her. Weird, because she was supposed to stake vampires, not comfort them, not worry about them. As she left, she just repeated words she had said before, trying to believe them as much as she had the first time.
“You’ll find him, won’t you?”
There was a slight pause, and then a murmur.
“Yes. We will.”
*****
Andrea was pacing through the Magic Box, and had been doing so for a good half hour already, reconsidering over and over again her decision. Not that Manon had given her much choice to begin with.
After sparring with Chloe for a little while, her Slayer had calmly announced, a few minutes before sunset, that she needed to go patrol with Buffy. Unfortunately, the High Council was in the training room then. So even though Andrea had very much wanted to forbid the child to join the vampire, she had not said a word, and only given a short nod of agreement. If she had pointed out that Buffy was too unpredictable for Manon to trust her now, it might have raised a few questions as to why she had insisted that a chance be given to the ex-Slayer. And she couldn’t actually answer that she didn’t want to see her lover’s heart broken by the early staking of his Slayer, could she? That wouldn’t have sounded serious at all. And yet, it was exactly what she was doing. Jeopardizing her own Slayer’s safety because Rupert trusted Buffy could control herself or be controlled. Of course, Manon had survived two nights alone with the vampire already, there was no reason for anything to go wrong now. Or so she prayed for.
The Scoobies, or rather the Witches, were still talking with the Council’s magic crew. From the drawn faces, it didn’t look like the discussion was going anywhere, but then, it had been almost a given that the intervention of the Mage would be necessary. These two young girls, barely half a century together in age, knew more about their art than the three persons in front of them, who together were probably three times their combined ages. The Harris couple had bailed out a moment before, Anya having declared she didn’t feel well, but Andrea suspected that had been an excuse to escape the imperturbable gazes of the nine High Council members.
The bell rang softly, and Andrea turned to the door, glad that Rupert had returned unharmed, disappointed that Manon, and Buffy, weren’t with him. He gave her a small smile as he stopped in front of her.
“Manon is with her,” he whispered.
“I know,” she replied just as quietly.
“You let her go?”
A hint of surprise in his voice, though it didn’t appear on his face as he absently rubbed his glasses clean. For any of the persons at the back of the room, they probably appeared to be talking of unimportant matters.
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” she said with a forced smile. “I can’t say we have to trust Buffy one day, and then the opposite the next.”
“Don’t worry. She’s safe.”
Andrea watched his back as he walked toward the Council, and she couldn’t help but wonder who was safe. A light shiver ran through her, and she crossed her arms, trying to warm herself, as she followed to hear what he was going to tell them.
“She will meet you tomorrow,” he said calmly, his gaze traveling on the grave faces in front of him. “She is ready to have her soul restored, but there is a condition. She needs our help to find Spike.”
Eyebrows had risen with the word ‘condition’, and heads started shaking at Spike’s name. As usual, it was Maryan McNeely who, as the oldest, expressed the opinion of the Council, though for once she didn’t need to confer with them first.
“Not only do we have to pay, and dearly, for a vampire to regain her soul,” she said, unconvinced, “but you expect us to accept her conditions? We have no use for her Sire. He, for one, doesn’t have a soul, nor has he expressed the desire…”
“You don’t understand”, Giles interrupted her, his voice steel. “We are not talking about two vampires randomly chosen among thousands of others. We are talking about a young lady who is still a Slayer and as such under the protection of the Council. We are talking about a man who, even without a soul, has been fighting our fight and redeeming himself for years.”
“We know very well who we are talking about,” Maryan said sharply. “But you seem to forget too easily they are still vampires, despite everything they have done in the recent past. And the Council’s role is still to protect the world against them and their kind.”
From where she stood a little behind him, Andrea could not see Giles’ face or his expression. She could see, however, his fists close and his body tremble. She could also hear the anger, although tightly controlled, in his voice.
“The world,” he said slowly, very low, “would not be as we know it if not for them. All of us would either be dead, or in hell and wishing we were dead. So when the girl who prevented more apocalypses in her short life than all the Slayers in the previous hundred years needs your help, you get off your collective behind, you put down your tea cups and you do everything, everything , to give her what she wants. And what she wants right now is Spike.”
There were heated protests, both about the tone he had used, the words themselves and the general idea, but he did not move from his spot in front of them. Unconsciously passing her tongue on her dry lips, Andrea moved forward to stand by his side.
“This is ridiculous,” Maryan said, incredulous, having finally found her voice. “You’re not even a Watcher, and you pretend to give us orders?! Do you somehow think you’re the Head of the Council?”
“It wouldn’t take much for him to be,” Andrea said coolly. “A few phone calls, and before you can even get back to London your chairs will have been voted to other Watchers, and they will have elected a new Head, instead of… waiting for things to happen.”
She had been about to say ‘instead of sitting on their collective behind’, but that would have probably taken away from her mild threat. As it was, Maryan seemed ready to have an attack of apoplexy, and two Watchers looked as if they had just seen their own deaths. But the most interesting was that four more looked more worried than angry, while the remaining two had already picked up that the wind was turning and were talking quietly between themselves.
Although she was observing the persons in front of her, Andrea could see, from the corner of her eye, the research table and the five persons there. They had stopped talking about magic and spells, and were all staring at what was happening between the High Council and the determined couple who had already caused the fall of a Head Watcher.
One of the youngest High Council members finally cleared his throat, getting the attention of everyone else, and requested a formal private meeting. All nine of them were soon hurrying in a more or less dignified way to the back room, and more than one glanced back at Rupert and her before they disappeared.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, turning to her, as the door had finally closed.
“That was me using my father’s methods,” Andrea replied with a small smile. “That’s just about what he did to be elected in 1979. I can’t say I’m very proud of it, but the only thing I hurt was a few people’s pride. And if it works, you just might find yourself Head Watcher when all of this is over, Mr. Rupert Giles.”
As he stared at her, his eyes widening comically, she let out a little laugh. She had been thinking about this for a few days, since it had started becoming clear that, left to do what they wished, the members of the High Council would probably decide that they didn’t need a Head Watcher above them. She had already whispered the idea into a few receptive as well as decisive ears, but she hadn’t planned to do this so soon or without telling Rupert first. Yet just to see his face right now it had been worth it.