BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

“What is it, Buff?” Asks Will.

“Spike’s missing!”

“Didn’t you say he went to see Clem? Maybe he stayed over there.”

“No. I have a feeling something is wrong—dead wrong. We need to get to the high school—now!”

Both Scoobies and Potentials throw on clothes and pile into Xander’s and Gile’s cars. Is this the beginning? They all wonder it, even if no one says it. Within minutes they arrive at the high school. Early bird classes are about to begin and students are filtering through hallways.

Buffy sprints toward Robin’s office with the others close behind.

“Robin! Robin!”

She runs into his inner office and notices that his write-on board hangs ajar and that a long weapon is missing from the cabinet the board conceals.

“Robin isn’t there, and he has a weapon,” she reports back to her friends who are waiting in the hallway. “Something is definitely not right.”

“Well, yeah. That’s an understatement,” says Anya, rolling her eyes.

Buffy looks at the students for the first time. Some have plus-shaped cuts over their eyelids. Others are veiled in blank expressions. Even more are running like spiders trapped in basins near running water. “Xander! Fire alarm!”

She takes off for the basement as he goes to pull it.

Giles starts yelling, “We must evacuate! The school is on fire! Don’t panic. Just walk in an orderly manner!”

Once away from the Hellmouth they knew that the students should return to normal. They had after the previous week’s riot, the memory of it seemingly erased. It is apparent though that this will be the school’s last day open until the Revelation is decided.

It is about daybreak when Spike becomes conscious. He discovers that he is once again tied to a large token and dangling over the Hellmouth grate.

“So, you killed Clem,” he says accusingly to Clem’s form.

“Since the Slayer made Andrew cry, I had to have your blood again. Didn’t I?” Retorts The First.

“It was so easy!” It continues. “One night of chatting with Clem—posed as you—did it. Oh, you were a scoundrel, Spike! Having Clem look at himself in the mirror. Making fun of him, a demon with an addiction to reality T.V. and junk food. Saying how a homebody like him was worthless as a demon, how he was a human wannabe who never could be, and that it was obvious he would never find someone to breed with! He was ruined. Absolutely shriveled! Shot himself in the throat with a Revolutionary War pistol before I even reached the cemetery gate.”

Spike struggles hard against the chains that hold him, his eyes alive with loss-born hatred. But it is futile. All the while blood drips from cuts on top of his heart, making the lid to Hell glow and fissure.

“And finding demons who want you dead was as easy as laying raw meat before a hungry panther.”

The One smiles, satisfied, and then vanishes.

For a moment, Spike is alone.

Then Robin Woods waltzes into the room.

“Hurry! Get me down before it opens!”

But Robin strolls toward the helpless vampire brandishing a lance.

“The year was 1973.”

Spike’s expression changes from relief to wariness. “What about it?”

“You got the trench coat that you wear like a symbol of your badness.”

“How would you know what year I got it?”

“Because you stole it from my mother, the slayer, after you wrung her neck!”

“That was your mum? So sorry. Nothing personal now, mind you. I’m sure she—”

“Three! I was three years old!”

“I had no soul!”

“That means nothing to me!”

Robin stands directly beneath him on top of Hell’s cover. Blood drips upon his face, drop by drop, yet he does not blink. Spike can see that his eyes have begun to glow the smoldering orange he knows resides beneath the lid. Hell has already taken him.

Robin holds the lance up to Spike’s chest. Playfully, he puts the point of it into one of Spike’s lacerations and prods around, using slow and deliberate motions. The pain is searing but Spike will not flinch. He just keeps staring straight into Robin’s eyes. Then it happens. Robin pulls the lance from the wound, grabs it hard with both hands, and thrusts it upward with all of his strength.

At the same time, Buffy pushes Robin aside and the lance lashes out at air. Spike grins at her timing as fury pursues Buffy’s boss wearing her shell. But his smile fades as twin acts of calamity occur within seconds of one another. First, Giles enters the room just as Robin tries to flee it and is stabbed by the lance Robin is holding like a battering ram. The thrust is of such drive that it pierces Giles through the mid-section. As he slumps to the ground, his face wears an appalled expression but then dims to nothing.

“No!” Buffy and Spike scream in unison.

As Robin reels backward and, like cornered prey, seeks an option as-of-yet unrevealed, the pie-shaped metal pieces that form the Hellmouth entrance open—the second calamity. Having seen the fire inside of his eyes, Buffy doesn’t hesitate; she pushes Robin straight inside, and he is lost at once in the orange glow that pervades the hole. His scream becomes muffled as he falls.

By this time Xander has worked the pulley to the token that has Spike captive and is beginning to free him by hacking at the chains with an axe.

Willow walks toward the entrance and begins a wiccan chant. As she does, Anya haltingly approaches Giles’ body with tears brimming her eyes. He is the first human she has ever loved to die.

“Anya, look out!” Xander yells.

By now Buffy has taken the axe from him to make faster progress. She turns only soon enough to watch as an übervamp picks Anya up from behind and whips her slight frame into a wall like she’s a Raggedy Ann. Anya crumples to the floor as Xander jumps on the creature from behind using all of his weight and might. It lurches forward and he pummels it in the face but only for an instant before the vamp regains its footing and flips him over its head into a corner.

Buffy is the first to reach the übervamp, but Kennedy, Amanda, and Spike are merely paces behind. Together they bombard it and throw it off kilter just enough for their combined force to drive it back over the edge and into the hole from which it came.

From beneath you it will devour.

All present hear this bodiless voice.

Willow ignores it as she finishes her chant, her opaque brown eyes seemingly omnipresent. The metal pie pieces fold back into place. As they do, Buffy rushes to Anya with Spike close behind as Kennedy and Amanda approach Xander. Buffy places two fingers on Anya’s neck. There is no pulse. Her eyes tear as she looks from Giles to Anya and then to Xander. Xander has regained consciousness. Amanda and Kennedy are on each side of him. He stares in disbelief as Buffy shakes her head “no.”

“No!” Xander screams.

“I’m sorry,” she mouths without voice.

But the Hellmouth is not, nor is it done. The fissures have not disappeared and within minutes, orange light seeps through them. Then the flaps begin to re-emerge.

Willow shakes her head as she backs away. “I don’t understand,” she murmurs.

But Little Andrew has positioned himself by the edge as well. He looks resolute as he takes two balls from his coat pocket—spheres made of computer parts.

“This is for Jonathon!”

He throws one ball into the middle of the cover, and it, too, causes the orange glow to lessen and the fissures to shrink. But then, with all of the Scoobies and Potentials looking on, and as though Satan, himself, is just beneath and ready, the Hellmouth is again revealed. Andrew walks closer, staring in.

“Jonathon, I see you! I’m coming!”

He jumps in heading toward a form of Jonathon that vanishes amid his fall. Willow, who tries to grab him, almost tumbles in with him but manages to steady herself.

“Ex inter!” She commands instantly, and Andrew’s body reverses polarity, landing beside her. He’s still gripping the remaining sphere. But the damage is evident. As Buffy, Spike, Xander, Dawn, and the Potentials gather round, they see the spirit of Andrew’s eyes absent from catatonia. Buffy pries the ball from his palm and shoves it into her pocket.

“I smell ‘em.” Spike announces.

He is standing near the rim with his hands tucked into the pockets of his trench.

“The übervamps. Their lines are endless.” He continues, stepping even closer to Hell’s well for a better whiff. “About a mile away and marching steadily.”

“It has to be sealed from the inside!” Buffy insists.

“No!” Responds Willow. “There must be another way!”

“Will—we don’t have time.”

Buffy looks into her eyes as she states this, determined yet empathetic, and Willow knows that what she’s hearing is true.

Xander volunteers, “I’ll go with you.”

His voice is as room temperature as Spike’s blood.

“No, Xander! You may think it is, but your life up here isn’t over yet. You’re still needed here.”

His eyes succumb. He knows that she won’t let him join her. Instead, he exits his own grief just enough to reach out and embrace her, hard for a moment, and then gently, much like the past they had known together.

“No, Buffy,” whispers Dawn. Her lips tremble like a little girl’s, as though she’s being unfairly scolded.

“Dawn—you know I have to do this.”

Dawn does know. Ever since she lost Buffy, who died to save the world from Glory, Dawn has known this day would again come.

“I love you so much!”

“I love you too, and I’ll always be watching over you. I couldn’t have asked for a better sister. Continue to make mom and me proud.”

They hold one another for a long moment.

When they do let go Spike, who has been waiting patiently, interjects, “My life up here is done though.”

Buffy mumbles “no” quickly. “I can do this by myself.”

“I know you can, slayer-love; it tisn’t a question of ability.” His eyes are actually jovial as he says this. “It’s that you’re not saving the world without me this time! I won’t let you!”

His jaw juts slightly, and he locks eyes with her.

“But-but who’s going to take care of Dawn?” Buffy argues hastily.

“Willow can watch over Little Bit.” He continues, “If you were to go alone I would stake myself in the heart. The world would be found again, but I would be eternally lost.”

She looks at him and sees in the recesses of his blue water-colored eyes someone with ages behind him, but even more, the strength of a love for her that is complete. The eyes tell her that he has planned all along to die by her side, whenever she should happen to die, and with whatever method he would have to use to do so.

“Okay, then. Let’s do this.” But then, “No, wait!”

Buffy turns to Willow, the friend who loves her so much that she once brought Buffy back from the dead.

There are no words, only a hug that makes years of connection and warmth compact.

As she does this Dawn runs up to Spike and throws her arms around the closest thing to a brother she’s ever known. Spike kisses her on top of the head and gives her a quick hug.

Once Dawn step away Buffy clasps Spike’s hand. They walk to the edge. He brings her hand up to his mouth and kisses it with tenderness such as only a true companion could muster.

“Ready William Jacob?”

“Yes, pet. Let’s give ‘em bloody hell!”

Swords drawn, his in his left and hers in her right, they leap feet first into the recess.

From above, Willow and Xander watch, linked together in a limp embrace, knowing full well that should the plan fail they will soon be overrun by vamp’s but that it just has to work because Buffy and Spike are in charge of destiny. Kennedy has her right hand on Willow’s shoulder and the other around Dawn’s waist—Dawn, whose body racks with the violence of silent, cascading tears. And Amanda, to Dawn’s left, has her hand. The remaining Potentials have closed rank around them.

After some minutes pass, perhaps five, perhaps 55, the seal before them not only folds in its triangular flaps, but its fissures meld to nonexistence. As the entrance closes each friend hears, although they will never speak of it, an English voice claim, “24 was best.”