Chapter Thirteen

“He hung up on me!” Cordelia said, staring at the phone in her hand in disbelief. What, they hadn’t talked in a few years and suddenly she was someone Xander felt comfortable hanging up on?

Lorne clucked sympathetically. “Well, I’m sure he didn’t—”

“Xander Harris does not hang up on Cordelia Chase,” she announced irately, pressing the redial button. “Xander? Xander Harris, don’t you hang—son of a bitch!”

“Do it again, sweet cheeks?”

Cordy scowled at Lorne. “What do you think?” she snapped.

***

Xander came down the stairs so fast he stumbled into the living room. Andrew gasped as he watched Xander’s hurried descent, fully expecting the heart of the Scooby gang to be ripped out with a tragic fall which no magic, no matter how dark or forbidden, could repair. “Did you see that, Mr. Giles? Spike was right!”

“Spike is never right,” said Giles automatically.

“About the escalator, I mean—”

“We are not having an escalator installed.”

“Everything okay?” asked Dawn, ignoring the byplay. Xander looked kind of wild-eyed. Not really Xandery, actually.

The phone rang before Xander could reply. “I’ll get it!” cried Andrew. “It’s rung a bunch of times, I bet the phone company’s doing something—they’re just mad because I wouldn’t sign up for their DSL—I mean, it’s slow as molasses.…Hello? Oh, hold on! It’s for you,” he told Xander, holding out the phone. “It’s Cordelia Chase!” Andrew couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice; Cordelia had never spoken to him before. She’d been a cheerleader at Sunnydale High, and almost homecoming queen.

Giles and Dawn started in surprise. The last they’d heard, Cordelia was a vegetable. An impeccably groomed vegetable, gradually fading into memory.

Xander looked shocked as well. “You can hear her?”

“Yeah. And she sounds really mad,” added Andrew.

Xander took the phone as Dawn began chattering excitedly.

“Cordelia?” Xander asked gingerly.

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING, HANGING UP ON—”

Xander hastily pulled the phone back from his ear. “I was just, uh, a little surprised.”

“And surprise makes you hang up … twice? I didn’t think it was possible, but you’re even more spastic than you used to be.”

“I’m sorry,” Xander apologized, still feeling dazed by the whole dead girlfriend/not dead ex-girlfriend dynamic. “I just—the last thing I heard, you were still in the coma.”

Cordelia abruptly stopped raging. “You thought I was—they didn’t tell you?” Her voice dropped several degrees and promised heads would roll. Now she was just an afterthought, was she? That was it! “Look, I had a vision.”

“What—”

“About Kennedy.”

“What about Kennedy?” asked Xander in surprise.

“Kennedy—danger.”

“What else?”

“That’s it,” answered Cordelia. “Oh—except….”

“What?”

“Who’s Kennedy?”

Xander chuckled a little. The answer seemed so mundane compared to the rest of his life. “Willow’s girlfriend. Well, ex-girlfriend.”

“Oh. Okay, then. Just an FYI,” said Cordy absently, hanging up. A second later his statement sank in.

“Wait, did he say Willow likes girls?”

Lorne looked at her, bemused, and shrugged.

“Well, just how long was I unconscious?”

~*~*~*~

Giles decided to skip the aspirin and go straight to the Scotch. Yes, Cordelia was alive. It was fine news. He didn’t know why he’d been startled—people returned from the dead almost daily, it seemed; waking from a coma was barely worth mentioning, by comparison. News only fit for wrapping fish.

Besides, there was plenty more to worry about, if he was of a mind to worry. And it seemed he was.

Training had been a disaster. Which, admittedly, had been his fault. Of course, if anyone had bothered to tell him that Kennedy and Willow had broken up, he likely wouldn’t have asked Kennedy why Willow had spent the night at the house. And he probably wouldn’t have asked, when Kennedy told him they had broken up, where she intended to go. Which he had only said because he was surprised, and never dreamed she intended to stay if she was no longer seeing Willow. And which was a mistake.

Kennedy had bitterly accused him of hating her—him and Buffy and Xander and all the rest. Of not supporting her. Of not wanting her there.

The unfortunate thing was that she was right.

He didn’t hate her, of course. But he was becoming old for a Watcher, or at least he felt that way. He’d been shepherding Buffy for nearly seven years, her and her entire pack of friends. He’d lost his girl twice. Jenny had been stolen from him. He’d mentored and fought an unimaginably powerful witch, and suffered the loss of most of his friends and colleagues in the destruction of the Watchers’ compound. By the end of it he’d been reamed. He’d been offered the leadership of the council, but had turned it down. He was too exhausted to consider running it. The other survivors were training fresh blood—fresh Watchers, that was to say.

And as selfish as it sounded, he’d only ever been Buffy’s Watcher, and that was how he wanted it. She would be the last Slayer for him—first and last. It was a system rooted in control and manipulation, an endless cycle of planning and fighting, and he was weary of it. He was an academic, not a drill sergeant, and he was weary of betraying his nature to fulfill his family’s traditions.

Maybe Buffy had been right about letting the girls train as they wanted, not indoctrinating them as the earlier Slayers had been. The way Kendra had. The way Buffy would have, if she’d been found earlier.

There’d been too many blank-eyed automatons forced to fight and die.

He’d remain with Buffy—he wouldn’t desert her again—but that was the end of it for him. He would take on no further responsibilities. God, sometimes he felt so tired. Like it was no use anymore. Like giving up. Sometimes it was almost irresistible. He had to fight against it, and sometimes he was just so weary of fighting. Giving up was so tempting.

He should have been hopeful, now. He’d been trained—raised—to view good versus evil as an eternal struggle. But now there was an army of Slayers, and so much could be done. Evil could be fought on so many fronts, in so many ways. For the first time, the possibility of crushing darkness seemed viable. Maybe not soon, but someday.

Yet for some reason, it didn’t excite him.

Yes, he was indeed growing old. Too old for this foolishness, this soap opera. Too old for it all.

~*~*~*~

Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing’s going to happen, Willow told herself over and over again. Because if she said if often enough it would be true, right? Kennedy was not possessed by the thaumogenesis demon, and she didn’t want to kill Spike; Buffy wasn’t going to kill Kennedy in a righteous rage, or be killed by her instead. Nothing was going to happen. Nothing.

Willow turned back to the house and opened the front door disconsolately—then jumped aside hastily as Spike fell back, almost smacking into her. He’d been leaning against the door, apparently. Probably listening. God, what is it with Buffy and lurky guys? Willow wondered.

They traded suspicious looks. “What are you doing?” Willow asked.

“What are you doing?’ returned Spike.

“…Waving goodbye to Buffy?” suggested Willow after a minute. “You didn’t hear anything, did you? Not, uh, that there was anything to hear,” she added hurriedly.

Spike’s mouth tightened, and that was enough of a giveaway. “You know!” she blurted out. “Oh no, Buffy didn’t want you to know—she’s gonna be so angry!”

“Just because I found out your bird’s looking to kill me?” Spike asked dryly. Seemed that he was the one who should be upset, not Willow. She always had been a little dramatic, though—what with casting spells over old boyfriends and trying to end the world over dead girlfriends and who knew what else.

On second thought, maybe he should try not to piss her off.

“She’s not trying to kill you—probably,” Willow denied. “Just maybe. We don’t even know if she’s the demon.”

“So, maybe Kennedy’s the demon, and maybe she’ll try to kill me, and if not, it was all just a big misunderstanding?”

“We don’t even know she’s the thaumogenesis demon!” repeated Willow in frustration. Why didn’t they listen to her?!

“Kennedy’s the thaumogenesis demon?” exclaimed Giles, standing in the doorway to the living room, his fingers clasped tightly around a glass of something brownish that Spike suddenly, desperately wanted a gulp of. “And she wants to kill Spike?”

“We don’t know that,” rushed out Willow as Spike swore. “But, uh, she might be, and, uh, she might be under the impression that killing him is the way to go. But she might not!”

“Why the devil wasn’t I told this earlier?” demanded Giles, incensed.

“Jesus, Will, you told him?” said Xander, shouldering his way out from behind Giles.

Spike felt tension ripple down his forehead and tensed in anticipation of vamping out. But nothing happened, and the realization that it was just a miserable headache—a hangover, followed by an unexpected and not especially welcome update on his mortality—only made him feel worse. Biting something had never sounded so tempting. “Why don’t you just call the others and make it a convention?” suggested Spike cautistically.

The others ignored him. “You knew?” said Giles to Xander, sounding aggrieved. “Did everyone but me know that that Kennedy wants to kill Spike?”

“Kennedy wants to kill Spike?” repeated Andrew, hidden behind Giles. “I mean, I knew she didn’t like him, but she doesn’t like anyone—my god, are the rest of us in danger?”

Beside Andrew, Dawn clapped her hand over her mouth; she recalled, suddenly, why Buffy had killed the thaumogenesis demon years before. Because it was going to try to kill her in order to stay alive.

“Is she the thaumogenesis demon?” blurted out Dawn, nudging Andrew and Giles out of the way to stare at Spike. He’d just come back, and she was losing him again. If it were a couple of years earlier, the thought would have terrified her. But that was before he slept with Anya, before he attacked Buffy. Before he came back quiet and timid with his soul. Before he died. Back when she still thought she knew him, and he’d teach her the finer points of shoplifting and iambic pentameter.

She didn’t know why the thought of losing him again upset her, but it did.

“Oh, bloody hell,” barked Spike in frustration. He’d thought the Scoobies bad before, but now they were worse, the whole lot of them, living together and in each other’s pockets the whole time. Couldn’t keep a secret, couldn’t have a good row, probably couldn’t shag without the whole company listening in. No privacy, someone’s finger in your pie every minute of your life until you were ready to go insane. The rest of them watching you like a bug, a science experiment, and Spike had already had plenty of being a goddamn experiment. Gotten sick of that quite a few years ago, as it happened, and had no intention of being a fly under their thumb—a butterfly under their micro—whatever the hell those things were, god, did becoming human kill his brain cells somehow?

“That’s it,” Spike muttered, swinging away from the others and heading out the door. Someone put a hand on his arm, but he shrugged it off without even a glance. “I want a bloody drink,” he grated. “Alone.”

~*~*~*~

The house was loud and buzzy for several minutes after Spike’s dramatic exit. People talked, Dawn fussed, Giles lectured. At his insistence Willow revealed the texts she’d made invisible. The look he’d given her—so disappointed, so distant—when she’d made his books reappear had made her want to cry. Now everybody knew what Buffy had wanted to keep hidden, and god knew what was happening to Kennedy.

Giles was poring over his books, a stormcloud over his head, when Willow slipped away. She tried to suppress the feeling that she was doing something wrong. It wasn’t wrong. Couldn’t be. Could it? She was protecting Kennedy. And protecting people from Kennedy. That couldn’t be wrong, could it?

Her fingers shook as she lit the little brazier. She hadn’t bothered to take it with her when she moved into the apartment, months ago—she had plenty. And maybe if she didn’t move all her stuff, maybe she was really still here, and just spending nights at the apartment.

Maybe she’d known, deep down in her heart, that it wasn’t going to work between her and Kennedy.

But that didn’t mean she’d stopped caring about her.

“Stay their hands, and still their hearts,” she murmured softly. “Let them do no violence this night.” She reached for the bags of herbs she’d placed beside her, but her hand stilled. Was this … it? What Tara had warned her about? Why she left her? Using her magic casually, selfishly?

But it wasn’t selfish, was it? And it wasn’t casual. If it protected Kennedy (…or Spike, or Buffy, thought Willow), it wasn’t casual. Maybe it was selfish, but Willow couldn’t believe it was wrong. Tara had been right about it, then.

But this was now, and Willow had to find her own way.

For a moment Willow wondered if they’d still be together if Tara hadn’t died. After a moment the thought sunk in and she shoved it aside, reproaching herself bitterly. Of course they would still be together. Of course. Their love was eternal.

Like her and Oz? Or Buffy and Angel?

Maybe nothing’s eternal, thought Willow, disheartened. Maybe it’s all an illusion.

But even if it was, it was still all they had.

Willow dropped the herbs into the flames, and they crisped and smoked as she repeated the magical words. The smoke wisped above her head and dissipated in the cool autumn air allowed in by her open window. It was done.

It was all she could do. Now she could only wait and—

“Willow?” Giles’s sudden question made her jump. “What have you done?”

~*~*~*~

Kennedy smacked at the punching bag moodily. If she could work up a little rage it would help, but at the moment she just felt like laying down and crying. At first she’d told herself that Willow would change her mind, that it was a weird little Scooby thing/Wicca thing/who-the-hell-ever thing, but she’d been kidding herself. Willow wasn’t going to change her mind; she was back in the smothering bosom of her friends, content to be merely a sidekick. A supporting player. How was it that Willow couldn’t see she deserved more?

It was them. The others. They hated Kennedy. It had to be them. She loved Willow so much—the strong, powerful parts, and the sweet, shy parts—Willow had to know that, had to see. Had to feel how much she loved her. But she cared about them more.

God, it hurt to come in second.

Salt stung her eyes, and she sucked in her breath, forcing the tears back. She didn’t want to be sad. Sadness didn’t help anything. She wanted to be angry, because then she’d have something to fight against. Thank god for the thaumogenesis demon.

Christ, did she just thank god for a demon? She really had gone off the deep end.

She thought back on what Fred had told her—supplementing the little Buffy and Willow had seen fit to share; Kennedy had known immediately it had to be more than they said. It could assume any form it wanted, create weird illusions … and live in this reality permanently if it killed the one the magic that created it was done for. In this case, Spike.

Looks like Buffy was protecting her boyfriend again. It was a little thing she did, thought Kennedy bitterly, punching the bag harder. Protect her boyfriend, and keep things to herself. Just some of the little things that made Buffy Buffy.

God, she didn’t even know why Willow liked her. “Buffy, Buffy, Buffy,” Kennedy spat, punching harder and harder. “Why is it always about Buffy?” She pulled back for a killer punch, but it never connected. As she swung, a strong hand caught hers in an ungiving grip, holding it immobile.

“Looks like you get your wish,” Buffy said with a dangerous smile. “Because this one’s all about you.”