![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedibuttercupM, Dresden Files x B:tVS; 4000 words. An interlude in the Handle With Care 'verse.
We both had entirely too many foes and entirely too little tolerance for powerful, controlling entities. We'd be lucky to make it through the next five years together, never mind the next four hundred and fifty. Might as well make the most of the time we did have, then.
Title: Chosen, Too
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: PG-13/T; het
Spoilers: B:tVS/Dresden Files; post-series; between "Small Favor" and "Turn Coat", in an AU fusion timeline
Notes: Because several people have asked how the Slayer thing actually works in the Handle With Care 'verse, and because the last few months have been stressful beyond belief: an interlude of cuddling leavened with plot, saddled with a punny title. [I haven't had much writing time lately, but what I have had, I've used to revisit some of my favorite universes. Hope you enjoy.]
Summary: We both had entirely too many foes and entirely too little tolerance for powerful, controlling entities. We'd be lucky to make it through the next five years together, never mind the next four hundred and fifty. Might as well make the most of the time we did have, then. 4000 words.
"There's a story," my fiancée said one day out of the blue, "about the woman who became the first Slayer."
We were at my apartment for the evening, a basement a under century-old wooden boardinghouse in Chicago. Buffy had acquired her own Windy City apartment-- and a Watchers' Council workspace in the same office building as mine-- after my mid-battle proposal a few months before. But after long days spent investigating magical problems and running supernatural nasties to ground, we still crashed at my place more often than not.
These days, Harry Dresden, Wizard for Hire, made enough in combined detecting and Wardening income that I'd finally replaced most of the worn second-hand furniture with slightly higher quality items. The décor even mostly matched-- not that I cared, but I hadn't minded at all letting Buffy do the shopping. The best part was the dark leather couch we were currently sprawled on: long enough to fit my NBA sized frame, deep enough for my girlfriend to fit on it with me, and almost sinfully comfortable. If we ever got our act together long enough to actually exchange vows, I was definitely taking it with me to whatever new place we picked out together.
Merging our professional lives had been a slower work-in-progress. Among the secrets we hadn't yet shared was what, exactly, it meant to be a Slayer. I knew the official wizardly line regarding the Watchers' Council: a group of lower-level practitioners and clued-in straights who'd been mucking around in the supernatural since the dawn of recorded human history. I'd also read Ramirez' report on the chaos that had gone down in Sunnydale. And I'd picked up a few more things from Buffy and her friends during my visits to Cleveland, not to mention all the times we'd fought at one another's sides. But she hadn't spilled every painful or confidential detail from her past, any more than I had told her every detail of my apprenticeship under Justin DuMorne or the secrets I was privy to as a regional commander of the White Council's Wardens.
We were two different people with separate lives and largely divergent responsibilities. It was going to take time to redraw the lines, and realistically, there would always be things it wasn't safe or necessary to share. But apparently, she'd decided that the truth of her nature wasn't one of those things.
She'd pillowed her head against one of my shoulders, idly tracing the line of white text printed across the black t-shirt I'd thrown on that morning with the fingers of one hand. I turned my head enough to press a kiss to her hairline and made a considering noise. "Some kind of mixed heritage, was my guess?"
"Most people's guess, I'm sure," Buffy said. Her gaze flicked up to meet mine, the fine lines around her green eyes crinkling slightly in amusement. "It's sort of true? But also not, in most of the ways that matter."
"Well, that clears things right up," I replied dryly.
I already knew there was something strange about her particular ancestry, given how rare Slayers were supposed to be, historically. The fact that there were currently several more of them-- one of whom I'd even met-- was apparently an outlier. Either their supernatural antecedent was considerably pickier than most of the beings who scattered scions and changelings in the human world at random... or there was something else at work there.
Given the usual run of things, I was betting on the something else.
Also in question: exactly what that ancestor might be, given that they were called 'thanatophages' by the scarier things that went bump in the dark. I'd never heard of any being, Faerie or otherwise, that went by that label. Entities that fed on fear or despair, sure; and I was related to one that fed on lust. But 'eaters of death'? Somehow, I didn't think that meant the kind of dead things you could buy from a butcher.
Buffy snorted, lips curving wryly as she turned her attention back to tracing the words on my shirt. They read 98% CHIMPANZEE: an unintentionally thematic choice. It had been my favorite t-shirt for years, though lately I'd been thinking hard about whether it was worth risking the inevitable jokes to ask someone to go online and order one of those paired sets that read 'I love you' and 'I know'. The exact dimensions of my nerditude and whether she'd be willing to humor me could wait for another day, though.
"I didn't find this out until, oh... years after I became one," she said. "Musty old books aren't really my thing, especially when they're written in an even mustier old language. But my sister found it and read it to me, and it made an uncomfortable amount of sense." She cleared her throat, then continued in a choppy, solemn tone.
"First, there was the Earth. Then, there came the demons. After demons, there came men."
So far, it didn't sound all that unusual, as long as you interpreted 'demons' as 'beings from the Nevernever'. Possible, maybe even likely, given the source. Someone older and more experienced, from the Senior Council for example, would probably have given a much fancier, updated translation-- filtered through their own set of assumptions and prejudices. But in the end, it would've boiled down to the same thing.
The Nevernever's an alternate realm, alongside but not shaped exactly like the mortal world, that touches ours at places where resonances exist. According to what I've learned and experienced over the years, it contains Faerie and all the myth-inspiring afterlives within its borders. Very little that lives there feels all that benevolent toward humanity. And given how thin the barrier between our world and the Nevernever was supposed to be in Sunnydale and other places like it, it was easy to see how stories like hers might begin.
"Men found a girl. And men took the girl to fight the demon-- all demons." Buffy's voice grew sharper, tinged with bitterness, as she continued. "They chained her to the earth. Then filled her with the energy of the demon. Its spirit; its heart. Until it became one with her."
I wrinkled my nose, stomach turning at the implications. Whether it meant literally energy, or, you know. A more graphic definition of 'becoming one'. "No matter how you interpret that, it's a pretty ugly story. For the girl."
People who wanted to make others into their own personal weapons were a particular hot button of mine. Maybe there were more reasons than I thought for how well-suited Buffy and I were as partners.
And now I was really starting to wonder about the reorganization of the Watcher's Council that had brought her to Cleveland not long before our first meeting. Scattered worldwide explosions, according to Ramirez' report, followed by all those girls showing up on Buffy's doorstep-- end result, Slayers in charge. Not that I thought Buffy had employed my own burn first, bend never solution, but one couldn't help but appreciate the parallel karma.
She turned her head slightly toward me, pained gaze meeting mine. "Where were you when I first came to Sunnydale? It took most of my friends years to really get the badness."
I counted backwards on my mental fingers, and winced. Five or six years' difference wasn't that big a deal at our current ages; it was more about the mileage than the chronology. But back then, she'd been barely sixteen. And I'd been... well, I guess our maturity level probably hadn't been all that different, considering.
"Just started working for Ragged Angel, I think," I said, lightly. "Still being stalked by a wizard looking for an excuse to cut off my head. Hadn't started investigating magical murders, or crispy-fried any Red Court vampires yet." It'd be four or five years before any of that happened, and several more before Sunnydale sank into the earth. At the beginning of the experience upslope, for both of us.
Buffy made a face. "You'd have been another Wes, wouldn't you? God, never mind. That would have been a disaster."
The name struck a chord. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was an ex-Watcher who'd taken a leaf out of my book after being booted from their Council: he'd set up shop as a private detective in Los Angeles, specializing in the supernatural. Apparently, Buffy had had something to do with said booting; I sensed an interesting story there. But sometime after that, he'd crossed paths with a bunch of Wardens trying to take down a warlock in the city specializing in mind magic and grand-scale illusions. These days, he was working with Elaine and her people, another link in the chain of minor magical talents that made up the Paranet. So he must have learned fast.
I made a mental note to move up my next supervisory visit to Ramirez' turf, and made a scoffing sound. "You're saying I'm not still a disaster? I must be slipping. I thought your people had a whole meme about that."
She tried not to smile, but I saw the corners of her mouth tuck in. "Different kind of disaster entirely."
"I don't know whether I should take that as a compliment-- or a challenge," I replied, teasingly.
Buffy chuckled, then threw me a rueful glance. "If you have to ask...."
"Seriously, though." I sobered. She'd brought up the story for a reason, and we'd sort of meandered away from the topic. "Did the book say what kind of 'demon' it was?"
"It didn't say all that much, actually. But the illustrations... those were a little more... illustrate-y." She wrinkled her brow, gaze distant as she remembered. "As in, not long after Dawn started reading, there were sounds, and shadows, and then all the words turned to English and she couldn't stop. The last sentence she read was, 'See for yourself, but only if you're willing to make the exchange.' Then the air tore open, like a glowy window."
She sounded a lot calmer remembering it than I felt, hearing about it second-hand, and I wrapped my arms more tightly around her. A pre-set enchantment of some kind, bound to the book? A compulsion, and a portal to the Nevernever-- amid sounds and shadows probably meant to shift the nature of the environment enough to invoke a specific, normally harder-to-reach part of the Nevernever. That was crafting on a scale beyond anything I'd ever seen done, and flirted with breaking the Fourth Law of Magic. If it was as old as Buffy had implied-- either its creator predated the White Council of Wizards, or hadn't been human. Or more likely, both.
On the one hand, it was unexpectedly refreshing not to be the only person in the room ground under the wheel of prophecy and disastrous luck, these days. On the other, I now had a much better idea why my friends reacted to tales of my exploits with such aggravation. If Buffy's group had been poking around in books that old in the first place, something desperate must have been on the line, and I know what I'd have done if it were me.
"You stepped through it, didn't you. What did it ask for in exchange?"
"Literally? My friends told me later that a demon-- or whatever you want to call it-- stepped through at the same time I did. Actually though? My humanity." A shudder wracked through her slim, strong frame. "I said no, but it was a pretty close thing. There were actual chains, and an old wooden box, and when they opened it... some kind of dark, shadowy energy form came out. They said it would give me more power, like it would make me even more the Slayer than I already was. But I just knew-- if I let that happen, what walked back out of that portal wouldn't be the me that walked in, and I couldn't risk that."
Maybe I was thinking too much about parallels, but all I could think of when she said they in that tone of voice was Mab, at the stone Table after Aurora's death, the first time she'd offered me the mantle of the Winter Knight. Accept that power. I'd said not only no, but hell no. Because I'd had the same feeling.
Power, waiting to be poured into a prepared vessel... could that be a factor? Not that Buffy didn't still have some kind of supernatural heritage-- the way she talked about her Slayer side sometimes reminded me of the way Thomas talked about his Hunger, and all the tales of her and her sisters spoke of them awakening to their power in their teens, like a changeling discovering the other half of their ancestry-- but that that heritage was only a box to be checked, the title itself resulting from a massive amplification of their innate strengths. Something that might neatly explain why there'd only ever been one at a time before Buffy. Like the Knights and Queens of Summer and Winter.
One of the terms I'd heard used in reference to Slayers was 'Chosen'. I'd also heard the term 'Potential' a time or three, in reference to the girls who'd swarmed to Sunnydale before its fall. That would also explain something else that had been bothering me for a while: why all those older male Watchers had been scattered around the world creeping on teenage girls. To shape candidates individually as potential vessels to accept an added layer of power and the mystical responsibilities that came with it.
That still didn't explain how there was more than one of them now. But if there'd been a way presented to Buffy to add to the Slayer's power? An extra mantle, held in waiting for who knew how long? If something had happened to disperse it somehow, and there had still been all those extra vessels waiting, then maybe....
"I don't blame you," I told her. "I'm more impressed that you made it stick. I saw the mantle of the Summer Lady pass once; it didn't ask permission before it took the nearest alternate vessel."
Buffy's eyes widened slightly at my admission. "What-- what did it look like?" she asked, startled.
I cast my mind back to the moment of Aurora's passing. I usually tried not to think about it, those moments when I'd knocked the Lady's fatally bleeding form away from the Table to keep her from permanently unbalancing the courts of Faerie, and ended up holding her close through her last breaths. She'd been beautiful, and so, so young, despite her inhumanity. The last words she'd spoken had been, 'I don't understand.'
I still didn't either, really. Too many other things had gone catastrophically wrong in my city since to believe it hadn't been part of some greater dark plot, but I didn't yet know the full shape of it. I did sharply remember the shape of the mantle itself, though: the winged rush of green fire that had risen from her fallen body, passing right through me to flash away toward the other side of the Table. It had immediately grounded itself in some other fallen form I couldn't see from my position-- Lily, I had later learned, who'd been Aurora's original, intended sacrifice. She'd already carried the Summer Knight's mantle; she'd later passed that on to a friend of hers, but that's how I knew it was possible for a single being to hold more than one, at least in the short term.
"I think what it looks like depends on the source. Aurora's-- it was a hawk, made out of Summer fire. The minute she died, it dove into the nearest body that could hold it, whether she wanted it or not. The Summer Lady was dead; long live the Summer Lady."
"I think...." Buffy bit her lip, looking troubled. "I think the ancient Watcher guys had some kind of control over the shadow thing; it wasn't that defined a shape. Just these shimmery, inky black tentacles, reaching for me. But when I screamed and started thrashing-- they seemed surprised that I didn't want the power, and it pulled back long enough for me to tell them what I thought of them. When I finally got free and broke their staff, it sort of went... poof." She made a bursting-open gesture with her fingers.
Not back into the box, then. "Is that when Faith became the Slayer?" I asked, curious.
She looked surprised that I'd asked, then snorted. "No-- this was only a few years ago. After Willow. When we were fighting the thing that called itself the First. Faith became the Slayer several years before that, after I died the first time. There was another girl before her-- Kendra-- but she died within a year, and then it was Faith. The Chosen Two, right up until we found the Scythe and figured out the failsafe."
Most of that was Greek to me, but one fact immediately stood out. "The first time?" Not the time she'd been resurrected? "How old were you?"
"That's what matters, not how I was still the Slayer when I'd already passed it on?" She raised her eyebrows.
Generally, people who bore mantles weren't around after their deaths to talk about the after-effects, but I'd figured-- in the case of her death fighting the being that called itself Glorificus-- that a mystical death wasn't quite as metaphysically final as a fatal injury somehow, explaining how the mantle had stayed with her then. Her successful resurrection had seemed to back up that view. If she'd already died once before, that was a weakness in my theory-- but no, it wasn't the first question that had come to mind.
I took a deep breath, then admitted, "I was sixteen years old when my adoptive father, the only wizard I knew at the time, tried to enthrall me."
She sucked in a sharp breath, and I looked away as I continued, afraid of what I might see on her face. "The thing he sent after me when I ran-- I should have died. You can't have been much older."
"I was sixteen, too," she said, softly. "Sweet sixteen, all dressed up for the prom. Hypnotized by a Black Court Master, bit and dropped into a pool of water to drown. A friend gave me CPR a few minutes later, then I found Old Batface and paid him back in kind. Did you....?"
I winced. She knew about my time under the Sword of Damocles; that was why she'd approached me in the first place, as a Warden who might understand the grey areas necessity could sometimes lead to. But the identity of the man I'd killed, breaking the First Law of Magic, hadn't made it into the Watchers' files. "Yeah. That's how I ended up on my knees in front of the White Council."
"Oh," she replied, startled, as the penny dropped. Then I felt her fingers on the side of my cheek, turning my gaze back to meet hers.
"Seriously. Do the parallels freak you out sometimes, too?" she asked, unexpected humor dancing in her eyes.
I gave her a crooked smile. "All the time," I said. "Not that I'm about to argue with the results."
"Good," she replied, with a brief, bright laugh. "To answer the question you didn't ask, then-- Giles thinks because it happened on the Hellmouth, where the veil between our world and the other one's the thinnest, and that killing me was what broke the spell that kept Nest trapped there for centuries, there was a lot of extra power flying around that night. When Xander brought me back, the Slayer couldn't return all the way, so it tore-- and that magic sort of filled in the gaps. All I know is, I felt stronger, but I still felt like the Slayer; so your guess is as probably good as mine."
"And all the Slayers who aren't you or Faith? You said something about a failsafe?"
Her smile twisted, a faint shadow of grief passing over her expression, and she shook her head. "Can I take a raincheck on that story? It has to do with the Scythe, and the reason it was made in the first place, and Willow, too, a little bit; it's kind of... wrenching to tell, and I'm about out of spoons for one evening. Didn't we originally have other plans?"
"What, you mean this kind?" I teased, and lifted a hand to cup the back of her head.
It probably didn't really matter how closely the Slayer power paralleled the mantles I'd encountered before, anyway. Or what her dead warlock friend had to do with it. All preternatural communities had their own rules, and the unspoken question underneath all the other layers of my curiosity-- whether its side-effects, like a Faerie mantle, might extend her lifespan to match an average wizard's-- wasn't likely to matter in the long run, regardless. We both had entirely too many foes and entirely too little tolerance for powerful, controlling entities. We'd be lucky to make it through the next five years together, never mind the next four hundred and fifty.
Might as well make the most of the time we did have, then.
I pressed my mouth to hers, and shifted to a more conducive position on the couch as she moved to straddle my hips instead of sprawling full-length against me. Certain parts of me appreciated that positioning even more than the rest, and she laughed softly as she broke the kiss, planting her knees on either side of my hips.
"It's like you read my mind," she said, smirking as she leaned slightly backward. Then she grasped the hem of her wrap shirt and drew it up over her head.
She wasn't wearing a bra underneath. The zipper on my jeans was becoming acutely uncomfortable, but I wouldn't have moved for all the money in Marcone's bank accounts. I reached up to frame her breasts with my hands, teasing at the tips with callused thumbs, and felt her appreciative groan with every cell in my body.
One of these days, I was going to invent an undressing spell that wouldn't shred every piece of fabric within a dozen yards into a loose heap of threads. But taking our time had its benefits, too. She squirmed slightly atop me, sending sparks of heat and life sizzling through my veins, and I moved one of my hands to undo the button of her jeans, sliding long fingers beneath clinging fabric to rub at the juncture of her thighs.
Magic, as I experience it, is the fundamental energy of creation, generated by life-- and most of all by the awareness, intelligence, and emotions of a human being. Or more than one, working in concert. The arch of Buffy's back as she caught her breath at my touch, coming undone because of me, undoing me in turn: it was one of the purest forms of magic I knew. The low-grade headache that had been bothering me all day melted away; the last lingering disquiet from our conversation faded out of her expression, leaving only pleasure; and for the moment, nothing beyond the space we occupied together mattered.
She gasped, eyes fluttering shut as she arched atop me, and I withdrew my fingers to ease her down into a kiss. My scarred hand brushed over a knot of mostly-healed tissue on her flank, where the puckered mark of a bullet wound bisected an older, fainter line left by an enemy's sword. Slim, strong fingers grasped at the zipper of my jeans, and she laughed against my mouth as I tried to help, wriggling my way free.
She'd told me the first Slayer's story. But we had stories of our own, and new ones waiting to unfold, together.
But all that could wait for the morning. In the moment, as the lady said: we had other plans.
(read at AO3)
We both had entirely too many foes and entirely too little tolerance for powerful, controlling entities. We'd be lucky to make it through the next five years together, never mind the next four hundred and fifty. Might as well make the most of the time we did have, then.
Title: Chosen, Too
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: PG-13/T; het
Spoilers: B:tVS/Dresden Files; post-series; between "Small Favor" and "Turn Coat", in an AU fusion timeline
Notes: Because several people have asked how the Slayer thing actually works in the Handle With Care 'verse, and because the last few months have been stressful beyond belief: an interlude of cuddling leavened with plot, saddled with a punny title. [I haven't had much writing time lately, but what I have had, I've used to revisit some of my favorite universes. Hope you enjoy.]
Summary: We both had entirely too many foes and entirely too little tolerance for powerful, controlling entities. We'd be lucky to make it through the next five years together, never mind the next four hundred and fifty. Might as well make the most of the time we did have, then. 4000 words.
"There's a story," my fiancée said one day out of the blue, "about the woman who became the first Slayer."
We were at my apartment for the evening, a basement a under century-old wooden boardinghouse in Chicago. Buffy had acquired her own Windy City apartment-- and a Watchers' Council workspace in the same office building as mine-- after my mid-battle proposal a few months before. But after long days spent investigating magical problems and running supernatural nasties to ground, we still crashed at my place more often than not.
These days, Harry Dresden, Wizard for Hire, made enough in combined detecting and Wardening income that I'd finally replaced most of the worn second-hand furniture with slightly higher quality items. The décor even mostly matched-- not that I cared, but I hadn't minded at all letting Buffy do the shopping. The best part was the dark leather couch we were currently sprawled on: long enough to fit my NBA sized frame, deep enough for my girlfriend to fit on it with me, and almost sinfully comfortable. If we ever got our act together long enough to actually exchange vows, I was definitely taking it with me to whatever new place we picked out together.
Merging our professional lives had been a slower work-in-progress. Among the secrets we hadn't yet shared was what, exactly, it meant to be a Slayer. I knew the official wizardly line regarding the Watchers' Council: a group of lower-level practitioners and clued-in straights who'd been mucking around in the supernatural since the dawn of recorded human history. I'd also read Ramirez' report on the chaos that had gone down in Sunnydale. And I'd picked up a few more things from Buffy and her friends during my visits to Cleveland, not to mention all the times we'd fought at one another's sides. But she hadn't spilled every painful or confidential detail from her past, any more than I had told her every detail of my apprenticeship under Justin DuMorne or the secrets I was privy to as a regional commander of the White Council's Wardens.
We were two different people with separate lives and largely divergent responsibilities. It was going to take time to redraw the lines, and realistically, there would always be things it wasn't safe or necessary to share. But apparently, she'd decided that the truth of her nature wasn't one of those things.
She'd pillowed her head against one of my shoulders, idly tracing the line of white text printed across the black t-shirt I'd thrown on that morning with the fingers of one hand. I turned my head enough to press a kiss to her hairline and made a considering noise. "Some kind of mixed heritage, was my guess?"
"Most people's guess, I'm sure," Buffy said. Her gaze flicked up to meet mine, the fine lines around her green eyes crinkling slightly in amusement. "It's sort of true? But also not, in most of the ways that matter."
"Well, that clears things right up," I replied dryly.
I already knew there was something strange about her particular ancestry, given how rare Slayers were supposed to be, historically. The fact that there were currently several more of them-- one of whom I'd even met-- was apparently an outlier. Either their supernatural antecedent was considerably pickier than most of the beings who scattered scions and changelings in the human world at random... or there was something else at work there.
Given the usual run of things, I was betting on the something else.
Also in question: exactly what that ancestor might be, given that they were called 'thanatophages' by the scarier things that went bump in the dark. I'd never heard of any being, Faerie or otherwise, that went by that label. Entities that fed on fear or despair, sure; and I was related to one that fed on lust. But 'eaters of death'? Somehow, I didn't think that meant the kind of dead things you could buy from a butcher.
Buffy snorted, lips curving wryly as she turned her attention back to tracing the words on my shirt. They read 98% CHIMPANZEE: an unintentionally thematic choice. It had been my favorite t-shirt for years, though lately I'd been thinking hard about whether it was worth risking the inevitable jokes to ask someone to go online and order one of those paired sets that read 'I love you' and 'I know'. The exact dimensions of my nerditude and whether she'd be willing to humor me could wait for another day, though.
"I didn't find this out until, oh... years after I became one," she said. "Musty old books aren't really my thing, especially when they're written in an even mustier old language. But my sister found it and read it to me, and it made an uncomfortable amount of sense." She cleared her throat, then continued in a choppy, solemn tone.
"First, there was the Earth. Then, there came the demons. After demons, there came men."
So far, it didn't sound all that unusual, as long as you interpreted 'demons' as 'beings from the Nevernever'. Possible, maybe even likely, given the source. Someone older and more experienced, from the Senior Council for example, would probably have given a much fancier, updated translation-- filtered through their own set of assumptions and prejudices. But in the end, it would've boiled down to the same thing.
The Nevernever's an alternate realm, alongside but not shaped exactly like the mortal world, that touches ours at places where resonances exist. According to what I've learned and experienced over the years, it contains Faerie and all the myth-inspiring afterlives within its borders. Very little that lives there feels all that benevolent toward humanity. And given how thin the barrier between our world and the Nevernever was supposed to be in Sunnydale and other places like it, it was easy to see how stories like hers might begin.
"Men found a girl. And men took the girl to fight the demon-- all demons." Buffy's voice grew sharper, tinged with bitterness, as she continued. "They chained her to the earth. Then filled her with the energy of the demon. Its spirit; its heart. Until it became one with her."
I wrinkled my nose, stomach turning at the implications. Whether it meant literally energy, or, you know. A more graphic definition of 'becoming one'. "No matter how you interpret that, it's a pretty ugly story. For the girl."
People who wanted to make others into their own personal weapons were a particular hot button of mine. Maybe there were more reasons than I thought for how well-suited Buffy and I were as partners.
And now I was really starting to wonder about the reorganization of the Watcher's Council that had brought her to Cleveland not long before our first meeting. Scattered worldwide explosions, according to Ramirez' report, followed by all those girls showing up on Buffy's doorstep-- end result, Slayers in charge. Not that I thought Buffy had employed my own burn first, bend never solution, but one couldn't help but appreciate the parallel karma.
She turned her head slightly toward me, pained gaze meeting mine. "Where were you when I first came to Sunnydale? It took most of my friends years to really get the badness."
I counted backwards on my mental fingers, and winced. Five or six years' difference wasn't that big a deal at our current ages; it was more about the mileage than the chronology. But back then, she'd been barely sixteen. And I'd been... well, I guess our maturity level probably hadn't been all that different, considering.
"Just started working for Ragged Angel, I think," I said, lightly. "Still being stalked by a wizard looking for an excuse to cut off my head. Hadn't started investigating magical murders, or crispy-fried any Red Court vampires yet." It'd be four or five years before any of that happened, and several more before Sunnydale sank into the earth. At the beginning of the experience upslope, for both of us.
Buffy made a face. "You'd have been another Wes, wouldn't you? God, never mind. That would have been a disaster."
The name struck a chord. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was an ex-Watcher who'd taken a leaf out of my book after being booted from their Council: he'd set up shop as a private detective in Los Angeles, specializing in the supernatural. Apparently, Buffy had had something to do with said booting; I sensed an interesting story there. But sometime after that, he'd crossed paths with a bunch of Wardens trying to take down a warlock in the city specializing in mind magic and grand-scale illusions. These days, he was working with Elaine and her people, another link in the chain of minor magical talents that made up the Paranet. So he must have learned fast.
I made a mental note to move up my next supervisory visit to Ramirez' turf, and made a scoffing sound. "You're saying I'm not still a disaster? I must be slipping. I thought your people had a whole meme about that."
She tried not to smile, but I saw the corners of her mouth tuck in. "Different kind of disaster entirely."
"I don't know whether I should take that as a compliment-- or a challenge," I replied, teasingly.
Buffy chuckled, then threw me a rueful glance. "If you have to ask...."
"Seriously, though." I sobered. She'd brought up the story for a reason, and we'd sort of meandered away from the topic. "Did the book say what kind of 'demon' it was?"
"It didn't say all that much, actually. But the illustrations... those were a little more... illustrate-y." She wrinkled her brow, gaze distant as she remembered. "As in, not long after Dawn started reading, there were sounds, and shadows, and then all the words turned to English and she couldn't stop. The last sentence she read was, 'See for yourself, but only if you're willing to make the exchange.' Then the air tore open, like a glowy window."
She sounded a lot calmer remembering it than I felt, hearing about it second-hand, and I wrapped my arms more tightly around her. A pre-set enchantment of some kind, bound to the book? A compulsion, and a portal to the Nevernever-- amid sounds and shadows probably meant to shift the nature of the environment enough to invoke a specific, normally harder-to-reach part of the Nevernever. That was crafting on a scale beyond anything I'd ever seen done, and flirted with breaking the Fourth Law of Magic. If it was as old as Buffy had implied-- either its creator predated the White Council of Wizards, or hadn't been human. Or more likely, both.
On the one hand, it was unexpectedly refreshing not to be the only person in the room ground under the wheel of prophecy and disastrous luck, these days. On the other, I now had a much better idea why my friends reacted to tales of my exploits with such aggravation. If Buffy's group had been poking around in books that old in the first place, something desperate must have been on the line, and I know what I'd have done if it were me.
"You stepped through it, didn't you. What did it ask for in exchange?"
"Literally? My friends told me later that a demon-- or whatever you want to call it-- stepped through at the same time I did. Actually though? My humanity." A shudder wracked through her slim, strong frame. "I said no, but it was a pretty close thing. There were actual chains, and an old wooden box, and when they opened it... some kind of dark, shadowy energy form came out. They said it would give me more power, like it would make me even more the Slayer than I already was. But I just knew-- if I let that happen, what walked back out of that portal wouldn't be the me that walked in, and I couldn't risk that."
Maybe I was thinking too much about parallels, but all I could think of when she said they in that tone of voice was Mab, at the stone Table after Aurora's death, the first time she'd offered me the mantle of the Winter Knight. Accept that power. I'd said not only no, but hell no. Because I'd had the same feeling.
Power, waiting to be poured into a prepared vessel... could that be a factor? Not that Buffy didn't still have some kind of supernatural heritage-- the way she talked about her Slayer side sometimes reminded me of the way Thomas talked about his Hunger, and all the tales of her and her sisters spoke of them awakening to their power in their teens, like a changeling discovering the other half of their ancestry-- but that that heritage was only a box to be checked, the title itself resulting from a massive amplification of their innate strengths. Something that might neatly explain why there'd only ever been one at a time before Buffy. Like the Knights and Queens of Summer and Winter.
One of the terms I'd heard used in reference to Slayers was 'Chosen'. I'd also heard the term 'Potential' a time or three, in reference to the girls who'd swarmed to Sunnydale before its fall. That would also explain something else that had been bothering me for a while: why all those older male Watchers had been scattered around the world creeping on teenage girls. To shape candidates individually as potential vessels to accept an added layer of power and the mystical responsibilities that came with it.
That still didn't explain how there was more than one of them now. But if there'd been a way presented to Buffy to add to the Slayer's power? An extra mantle, held in waiting for who knew how long? If something had happened to disperse it somehow, and there had still been all those extra vessels waiting, then maybe....
"I don't blame you," I told her. "I'm more impressed that you made it stick. I saw the mantle of the Summer Lady pass once; it didn't ask permission before it took the nearest alternate vessel."
Buffy's eyes widened slightly at my admission. "What-- what did it look like?" she asked, startled.
I cast my mind back to the moment of Aurora's passing. I usually tried not to think about it, those moments when I'd knocked the Lady's fatally bleeding form away from the Table to keep her from permanently unbalancing the courts of Faerie, and ended up holding her close through her last breaths. She'd been beautiful, and so, so young, despite her inhumanity. The last words she'd spoken had been, 'I don't understand.'
I still didn't either, really. Too many other things had gone catastrophically wrong in my city since to believe it hadn't been part of some greater dark plot, but I didn't yet know the full shape of it. I did sharply remember the shape of the mantle itself, though: the winged rush of green fire that had risen from her fallen body, passing right through me to flash away toward the other side of the Table. It had immediately grounded itself in some other fallen form I couldn't see from my position-- Lily, I had later learned, who'd been Aurora's original, intended sacrifice. She'd already carried the Summer Knight's mantle; she'd later passed that on to a friend of hers, but that's how I knew it was possible for a single being to hold more than one, at least in the short term.
"I think what it looks like depends on the source. Aurora's-- it was a hawk, made out of Summer fire. The minute she died, it dove into the nearest body that could hold it, whether she wanted it or not. The Summer Lady was dead; long live the Summer Lady."
"I think...." Buffy bit her lip, looking troubled. "I think the ancient Watcher guys had some kind of control over the shadow thing; it wasn't that defined a shape. Just these shimmery, inky black tentacles, reaching for me. But when I screamed and started thrashing-- they seemed surprised that I didn't want the power, and it pulled back long enough for me to tell them what I thought of them. When I finally got free and broke their staff, it sort of went... poof." She made a bursting-open gesture with her fingers.
Not back into the box, then. "Is that when Faith became the Slayer?" I asked, curious.
She looked surprised that I'd asked, then snorted. "No-- this was only a few years ago. After Willow. When we were fighting the thing that called itself the First. Faith became the Slayer several years before that, after I died the first time. There was another girl before her-- Kendra-- but she died within a year, and then it was Faith. The Chosen Two, right up until we found the Scythe and figured out the failsafe."
Most of that was Greek to me, but one fact immediately stood out. "The first time?" Not the time she'd been resurrected? "How old were you?"
"That's what matters, not how I was still the Slayer when I'd already passed it on?" She raised her eyebrows.
Generally, people who bore mantles weren't around after their deaths to talk about the after-effects, but I'd figured-- in the case of her death fighting the being that called itself Glorificus-- that a mystical death wasn't quite as metaphysically final as a fatal injury somehow, explaining how the mantle had stayed with her then. Her successful resurrection had seemed to back up that view. If she'd already died once before, that was a weakness in my theory-- but no, it wasn't the first question that had come to mind.
I took a deep breath, then admitted, "I was sixteen years old when my adoptive father, the only wizard I knew at the time, tried to enthrall me."
She sucked in a sharp breath, and I looked away as I continued, afraid of what I might see on her face. "The thing he sent after me when I ran-- I should have died. You can't have been much older."
"I was sixteen, too," she said, softly. "Sweet sixteen, all dressed up for the prom. Hypnotized by a Black Court Master, bit and dropped into a pool of water to drown. A friend gave me CPR a few minutes later, then I found Old Batface and paid him back in kind. Did you....?"
I winced. She knew about my time under the Sword of Damocles; that was why she'd approached me in the first place, as a Warden who might understand the grey areas necessity could sometimes lead to. But the identity of the man I'd killed, breaking the First Law of Magic, hadn't made it into the Watchers' files. "Yeah. That's how I ended up on my knees in front of the White Council."
"Oh," she replied, startled, as the penny dropped. Then I felt her fingers on the side of my cheek, turning my gaze back to meet hers.
"Seriously. Do the parallels freak you out sometimes, too?" she asked, unexpected humor dancing in her eyes.
I gave her a crooked smile. "All the time," I said. "Not that I'm about to argue with the results."
"Good," she replied, with a brief, bright laugh. "To answer the question you didn't ask, then-- Giles thinks because it happened on the Hellmouth, where the veil between our world and the other one's the thinnest, and that killing me was what broke the spell that kept Nest trapped there for centuries, there was a lot of extra power flying around that night. When Xander brought me back, the Slayer couldn't return all the way, so it tore-- and that magic sort of filled in the gaps. All I know is, I felt stronger, but I still felt like the Slayer; so your guess is as probably good as mine."
"And all the Slayers who aren't you or Faith? You said something about a failsafe?"
Her smile twisted, a faint shadow of grief passing over her expression, and she shook her head. "Can I take a raincheck on that story? It has to do with the Scythe, and the reason it was made in the first place, and Willow, too, a little bit; it's kind of... wrenching to tell, and I'm about out of spoons for one evening. Didn't we originally have other plans?"
"What, you mean this kind?" I teased, and lifted a hand to cup the back of her head.
It probably didn't really matter how closely the Slayer power paralleled the mantles I'd encountered before, anyway. Or what her dead warlock friend had to do with it. All preternatural communities had their own rules, and the unspoken question underneath all the other layers of my curiosity-- whether its side-effects, like a Faerie mantle, might extend her lifespan to match an average wizard's-- wasn't likely to matter in the long run, regardless. We both had entirely too many foes and entirely too little tolerance for powerful, controlling entities. We'd be lucky to make it through the next five years together, never mind the next four hundred and fifty.
Might as well make the most of the time we did have, then.
I pressed my mouth to hers, and shifted to a more conducive position on the couch as she moved to straddle my hips instead of sprawling full-length against me. Certain parts of me appreciated that positioning even more than the rest, and she laughed softly as she broke the kiss, planting her knees on either side of my hips.
"It's like you read my mind," she said, smirking as she leaned slightly backward. Then she grasped the hem of her wrap shirt and drew it up over her head.
She wasn't wearing a bra underneath. The zipper on my jeans was becoming acutely uncomfortable, but I wouldn't have moved for all the money in Marcone's bank accounts. I reached up to frame her breasts with my hands, teasing at the tips with callused thumbs, and felt her appreciative groan with every cell in my body.
One of these days, I was going to invent an undressing spell that wouldn't shred every piece of fabric within a dozen yards into a loose heap of threads. But taking our time had its benefits, too. She squirmed slightly atop me, sending sparks of heat and life sizzling through my veins, and I moved one of my hands to undo the button of her jeans, sliding long fingers beneath clinging fabric to rub at the juncture of her thighs.
Magic, as I experience it, is the fundamental energy of creation, generated by life-- and most of all by the awareness, intelligence, and emotions of a human being. Or more than one, working in concert. The arch of Buffy's back as she caught her breath at my touch, coming undone because of me, undoing me in turn: it was one of the purest forms of magic I knew. The low-grade headache that had been bothering me all day melted away; the last lingering disquiet from our conversation faded out of her expression, leaving only pleasure; and for the moment, nothing beyond the space we occupied together mattered.
She gasped, eyes fluttering shut as she arched atop me, and I withdrew my fingers to ease her down into a kiss. My scarred hand brushed over a knot of mostly-healed tissue on her flank, where the puckered mark of a bullet wound bisected an older, fainter line left by an enemy's sword. Slim, strong fingers grasped at the zipper of my jeans, and she laughed against my mouth as I tried to help, wriggling my way free.
She'd told me the first Slayer's story. But we had stories of our own, and new ones waiting to unfold, together.
But all that could wait for the morning. In the moment, as the lady said: we had other plans.
(read at AO3)
