Chapter Seventeen
Buffy woke up alone in the cool cave room. As she blinked away the heavy cloud of sleep and her vision adjusted to the dim light, she realized that she felt oddly rested, considering the overwhelming odds she and Spike faced.
With rest came some clarity, too, and she knew that her conversation with Spike was far from over. She owed him that much even if he chose differently than she did. First, she had to figure out what she truly wanted, and in her heart she knew the answer, but exploring it and talking about it with Spike. . . that would have to come after this next part.
First, they had to find out what Roxy was hiding. There was something about the witch that led Buffy to trust her, but she couldn’t be completely sure, and she knew that the others would be far less amenable unless there was a discussion.
Buffy hurried off the cot, pausing only to stretch her injured arm and test for weakness. Finding the muscles and tissue nicely healed, she pushed the door and re-entered the world of the kranooks. Firelight from torches lit her way, and she scanned the crowd of reptilian creatures, searching for Spike. She spied his white blonde hair across the room near the other Spike.
Michael and demon Spike each held onto one of Roxy’s arms, and something was crammed in her mouth to keep her from casting spells. Harmony stood at Michael’s elbow, and a young girl with curly hair whom Buffy hadn’t met yet stood next them. A demon loomed behind her.
Her Spike caught her eye and nodded as she hurried down the path to the central gathering space. She gave him a small smile in return and joined his side, careful to not touch him. She needed to focus.
Buffy crossed her arms and tried to listen to what Spike was discussing with the kranook leader, Jon.
“We really need to confront her now. Before things get so chaotic that we don’t have a chance,” Spike insisted, thumbs and forefingers hooked in the belt-less loops of his jeans. Buffy mused that he must have gotten the jeans from his alternate dimension self. They fit him well.
Jon’s snake-like pupils were narrow slits, his tail swished wildly, and his response to Spike had a hiss-like quality to it that made Buffy shiver, “We don’t have time. Stephanie’s forces are putting up a good fight in the city above, and if she succeeds, she’ll be coming here next. Once she invades every corner of this place, she’ll bring the Villa to fruition in your dimension and spread chaos across the land.”
“And Roxy may have the key to stopping Stephanie,” Spike retorted. “We can’t just ignore what Buffy discovered in Stephanie’s stronghold.”
Deciding that his last comment left her free to jump into the verbal fray, Buffy stepped slightly in front of Spike. “I know I’m coming in kinda late here, but I wanted to point out that – while I think we all have different motivations – we all have the same agenda.”
Caught off guard, Jon was visibly calmed by the calm firmness of her voice, and he regarded her with a serious expression. “Most of us do. We don’t know about her.” He reached over and pulled a rag out of Roxy’s mouth. “Speak your piece.”Roxy worked her jaw to loosen the stiffened muscles. “We all want to defeat Stephanie. The only way to do so is to work together like Buffy said.” Everyone stared at her, some with more malice than others.“That is the ultimate goal, right?””She’s right,” Spike acknowledged.”But first, we need to know each other’s motivations,” Jon insisted. “Trust will be of utmost importance to all of us in the upcoming battle.”
“Agreed,” Buffy said, “And if we’re all equals in this and trying to demonstrate trust, shouldn’t we untie Roxy?”
“No,” Jon stated flatly.
Roxy sighed. “I’m not going to cast any spells. You could kill me in a second if I tried. I’m not stupid.”
“Fine.” Jon nodded to Spike who deftly removed all the ropes but kept them in one hand. Buffy decided this was a smart move. “You have no right to know anything about us,” Jon hissed. “Until we know about you.”
“Okay,” Spike said with just a hint of annoyance, placing an arm between the kranook leader and the vampire. “We are not going to argue about who goes first with their cards. There’s no time.” Everyone focused on Roxy again.”Spill,” a young woman with dark curls demanded, hand on one hip. Buffy decided this was the young Slayer named Jenn that Spike told her about, and that must mean that the demon behind her was L’Gant – poker game L’Gant who’d humiliated the Harmony of both dimensions.
Roxy blinked and within the span of a few seconds, she seemed more resigned. “The truth.”
“All of it,” Harmony piped up, and Buffy vaguely wondered which dimension this particular Harmony came from. “Who do you work for?”Buffy could answer this one, so she did. “She works for Wolfram and Hart.”Demon Spike snorted in disgust. “Figures.”
“It’s not like I’m happy about it,” Roxy said with more than a touch of weariness that Buffy could relate to.
Spike glared at his counterpart and focused on Roxy with a gentler tone, “What do you mean?”
“Would you want to work for Wolfram and Hart?” Harmony asked her ex in a voice dripping with sarcasm.
No one listened to Harmony, and she huffed and rolled her eyes when Roxy continued, “It’s not something I wanted to do. It’s a long story. The short version is that I’m a witch. . . I’m not really a vampire. Wolfram and Hart wanted me to work for them. I refused. They sent demons after my family. In exchange for sparing my family, they forced me to work for them.”
Michael emitted a low whistle and looked her up and down. “Damn. I knew there was something off about you.”
Roxy nodded. “Same technology that made Buffy, Spike, and Angel appear to be vampires.”
“You got a chip in your noggin’?” Spike asked.
“Yes.”
“What were you sent here to do?” Buffy met Roxy’s eyes, and she saw the witch’s hesitation begin to dissipate. Holding Buffy’s gaze, Roxy said, “Guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
“About what?” Harmony asked, clearly mystified by the witch’s indecision.
“About telling us, you half-wit,” vampire Spike muttered.
Michael lunged at him across Roxy, but Harmony held up a hand in demon Spike’s face. “He’s not worth it,” she sniffed.
“And?” Jon prodded Roxy, tail swishing again.
“And I was sent here by the senior partners to infiltrate Stephan and Stephanie’s operation and prevent them from attempting to bring the vampire city into the dimension you belong to.”
“Whose dimension?” Jenn asked in confusion.
“Ours,” Buffy inclined her head toward Spike, remembering what Stephan told them. Spike’s eyes flicked to hers for a brief second. “It’s ours.”
“Right,” Roxy confirmed.
“That doesn’t make any sense, pet,” Spike said. “Why would they want to prevent it? Seems to me the senior partners would want more vampires around and in both dimensions, what with all the Slayers running around the planet.”
“It involves us, doesn’t it?” Jenn added to Spike’s question. “Our dimension.”
“Right,” Roxy repeated.
“This story is going on longer than she said it would,” Harmony whined, studying her fingernails.
“She’s right,” Jon growled. “Get on with the point.”
Buffy crossed her arms, trying to think of how this made sense with everything she knew already.
Roxy didn’t show signs of losing her temper. “Bottom line? Wolfram and Hart screwed up in your dimension, Jenn. That’s your name, right?”
Jenn dipped her head once.
“With the First Evil’s defeat in Sunnydale and Willow’s spell using Buffy’s scythe, all the girls who would be Slayers became Slayers. The Powers that Be chose a vampire champion to become human in each dimension as well, and when the vampires fled the Earthly plane for the space between dimensions, the balance of good and evil shifted toward good, creating a tension – an imbalance across dimensional lines. Although the imbalance toward good was not so helpful for the senior partners in the short term, it was ideal in the long term. The longer the force of evil – the force of vampires clustered in the space between. . .”
“The more the tension built,” Buffy interrupted. “And continues to build.” Her heart sank at the realization. Here was yet another ramification of magic. Magic she’d helped invoke.
“Which is why they didn’t want the vampire city to cross dimensional lines,” Spike finished for Buffy. They exchanged a comfortable smile, and she was again glad that he’d opened up to her. Jenn frowned. “But I still don’t understand how they screwed up in my dimension.”
“Good thinking,” Roxy said. “They messed up because they put a human in charge of the law firm. Angel was chosen as champion. . . not Spike. Angel was in charge of Wolfram and Hart in your dimension as well. Human Angel was more corruptible than vampire Angel.”
“Because he’s human with a soul. That’s interesting,” Demon Spike said thoughtfully. “And because the Slayer. . . Buffy. . . passed in my dimension. . .”
“The tension the senior partners could siphon was disrupted, and the vampire city had little potential power to destroy if brought into your portion of the plane,” Roxy explained.
“And power is everything,” vampire Spike said bitterly.
“Power is everything to the senior partners,” she amended.
“So what does this power differential mean now that Angel’s lost his soul?” Buffy asked.
“Nothing yet, but if Angel permanently loses his soul, it means that the senior partners lose ground. It means that they will want more than ever to prevent Stephanie from moving Vamp Villa until tension is restored. They want to be able to harness the power that comes with that tension, so the only option is to keep the tension present with the plane where Buffy lives. If the vampire city moves into that dimension, there would be a greater balance of good and evil. The senior partners wouldn’t have a source of energy they could draw upon to do whatever it is they do with that kind of power.”
“They want us to destroy Stephanie,” Spike said, starting to put the pieces in place. “That’s why Lilah said I needed to watch out for Angel. She didn’t want him to lose his soul. She said he’d find something out. . . something that would make him not care if he lost his soul.”
Roxy shrugged. “I don’t know what that could be.”
“I do,” demon Spike spoke after having been silent. All eyes swiveled to his grim face. “He would find out that Buffy chose him in my dimension.” He inclined his head at his twin. “The senior partners thought that would make him not care anymore. That it would make him vulnerable to evil.”
Buffy raised her hand. “Excuse me, but I don’t think my choice could cause him that much distress. . . not now. Years have passed; he’d deal. Plus, Angel’s not an idiot. He’d understand that the people in your dimension were different than him and me and Spike.” As she said the words out loud, she realized that maybe this wasn’t completely true because she hadn’t dealt very well with knowing the differences.
“He didn’t deal real well in my dimension,” the vampire muttered in return.
“He’s right,” Jenn agreed. “Angel – human Angel didn’t deal real well with Buffy’s decisions in our timeline.”
Buffy frowned. “Well, obviously, he’s not made the best choices, but what do you mean?”
“I don’t see how this has any relevance for our upcoming fight with Stephanie,” the kranook leader interjected, forked tongue sliding over his lips as he spoke.
“It has a lot to do with it,” vampire Spike countered.
“It has to do with how Buffy. . . your Buffy died,” Roxy guessed.
Now Buffy was intrigued, and she narrowed her eyes at demon Spike. “Explain.”
“The bint’s right. Suffice it to say that. . .” Tears filled his eyes, and for the first time, Buffy felt compassion for Spike’s alter.
“Tell us,” she urged gently.
Vampire Spike looked to Jenn for help and then bowed his head.
Jenn touched his shoulder in understanding. “Our Buffy died. She died because she chose to sacrifice herself so that he might remain.”
“Who might remain?” Michael breathed, and Buffy realized they were all caught up in wanting to know the answer.
“Me,” Spike’s counterpart admitted, lifting his head. His cheeks were damp with tears. “She died saving me.”
Buffy couldn’t help herself. She mentally and physically took a step back, trying to fathom what demon Spike had just revealed. In the end, she. . . or rather the other Buffy had chosen Spike’s life over her own. Instead of Spike dying for the world, the alter-Buffy had died for Spike.
Her heart beating in her throat, she met vampire Spike’s clear blue eyes as if seeing him for the first time. “Why?”
“She. . .” Demon Spike couldn’t keep eye contact.
Jenn spoke for him, filling in the blanks, “She believed in him. . . believed that he would stay behind and fight for Angel. . . fight to help him rally back from the evil that was starting to consume him through Wolfram and Hart.”
Buffy glanced at her Spike, who was staring at his twin, and for some reason, she longed to reach out and touch him. Just to reassure herself that they were in a different place than the Spike who remained a vampire. Without a word spoken between them, he caught her looking at him and read her thoughts. He moved closer to her so that she felt the warmth of his comfort, and she relaxed so that her back touched his arm.
“I still don’t see what this has to do with anything,” Jon snarled with more volume than his other interruptions.
“He’s definitely repeat-o boy, but he’s right,” Harmony said, fluffing her hair and staring off into space, as if bored by the entire conversation.
Vampire Spike ignored her, “Only, I failed to bring him round. He sank further and further into the clutches of the evil and corruption that came with working for the law firm, and there was nothing I could do but watch. And I only stayed around to watch because of. . .”
“Celeste,” Buffy supplied, memory forever imprinted with the image of the little blonde-headed girl who’d called her “Mommy.”
Demon Spike nodded. “Right. Had to make sure she was safe from the evil. And because Angel slipped further, that must mean that the tension across dimension lines was lessened.”
“I don’t understand how this tension could be affected so much by one being,” Jenn looked thoughtful. “You think there’d be enough Slayers to keep the tension going.”
Roxy shrugged. “Not all the Slayers are major players in the battle between good and evil. . . no matter what we or they might like to think.”
“It comes down to you three for some reason,” vampire Spike suggested, nodding at Buffy and Spike in turn. “You two and your Angel.”
“Again, I ask how this relates to my people,” Jon spoke. He was starting to sound like a broken record. . . a deadly broken record that hissed and packed quite a wallop in his attack.
“It relates because you want to stop Stephanie, too,” Roxy replied. “The senior partners want to temporarily stop Stephanie so the power differential can continue to build.”
“We want to kill Stephanie,” Jon corrected. “Doesn’t matter how many of us die in the process. We want her dead for what she has done to us. . . making us slaves to the magic through the chips in our head.”
“Never said the senior partners didn’t want her dead,” Roxy added quietly. “I don’t think Stephanie’s high on anyone’s save-the-vampires list.”
Harmony nodded. “Michael and I want her dead for what she did to Stephan. She ruined everything for us; we were set in the city.” She sniffed delicately. “She burned down my shop!”
“Wait a minute. There’re chips in brains involved?” demon Spike scoffed a bit belatedly. “Well that just makes everything all grand.”
Everyone stared at him. Apparently, he was over his tears of a moment ago. Buffy surveyed him and decided that wasn’t accurate. He was just putting up his bravado again.
“What? Just glad they’re not in my noggin.”
“But it’s okay for them to be in ours?” Jon leered at the vampire, but the kranook leader seemed more placated now that the subject was on something he cared about.
“I’m not saying that,” vampire Spike said with his hands up.
“Oddly enough, I think they could be the key to everything,” Roxy whispered, but Buffy didn’t have time to ask about this because badness was about to go down between the kranook and vampire. Roxy concluded, “So the best plan is to help Stephanie bring the city out of the space between and to then kill her.”
“Thus satisfying everyone here except the Senior Partners,” Harmony summarized with astounding clarity.
Roxy sighed, clearly giving up having any semblance of control in the conversation.
“And the prophecy about us defeating the vampires?” After everything they’d been through, Buffy had her suspicions about the so-called prophecy. Half the time they were open to interpretation, and she admitted to herself that half the reason she jumped on it was probably a subconscious excuse to see Spike again.
“We will defeat them,” Jon hissed. “Stephanie will die.”
“We need Angel back on our side. Otherwise he could cause trouble,” Spike commented.
Harmony looked confused. “And why did we take his soul from him?”
“To save his life from kranook poison!” Roxy gritted her teeth.
“Well, now he’s batting for the other team.” Buffy’s eyes rounded, and someone snickered. She thought it was demon Spike. “That came out so wrong.”
“And now, we can use that to our advantage,” the witch assured them.
“How?” Spike asked. “He’s kind of. . . well, evil now. Doesn’t seem like much of an advantage to me.”
Roxy nodded. “Which is why we give him his soul back from afar, and then, we have an ally close to Stephanie.”
“Hey! You said you couldn’t do a gypsy curse,” Buffy reminded her. “And won’t Stephanie notice that Angel’s re-ensouled?”
“I can’t. But Willow can.” Buffy opened her mouth again, but Roxy spoke before she could utter a sound. “And I have a way that you can contact her. Meanwhile, the rest of us will give Stephanie and her vamps the fight of her life and hope she’s too distracted to notice that Angel has a soul again.”