Summary: After overhearing a secret meeting, Buffy learns that Angel is not the only one who’s abandoned her. With her whole world turned inside out, Buffy finds an anchor in the least likely of places. A B/S Season 2 fic that goes vastly AU after the cupcake scene in Innocence.
Author's Notes:
Beta: The hyphen-loving, unfailingly supportive and brilliant angstchic. , who I owe so much more than this two-line thank you. Girl, you’re amazing.
Warnings: I don’t know all the cute “fandom” terms for these things, but there is lots of biting, lots of blood, lots of violence, and eventually some explicit sexual content in this fic. There is also a seriously hot Season 2 vampire with a bitchin’ leather coat. Mrrowrr.
No. Not Angel. She’d told that…that thing, wearing her boyfriend’s clothes and a twisted parody of his smile. That creature is a lot of things but it isn’t Angel. Either way, it still looks like him, and she told him, or it, or whatever, to give her time. But the truth is she doesn’t know if time, or anything else, is going to change a thing. It’s not like being jilted by your suddenly soulless vampire lover is covered in the junior year curriculum at Sunnydale High. And it’s also not like Giles is going to give her the brutally honest lowdown on demon she’s had sex with. And by the way, nice job, Buff. Talk about getting in bed with the enemy.
Buffy snorts irritably and shimmies through the library window she’s wedged open. She lets go and briefly enjoys the delicious weightlessness of falling before her feet touch ground. A glance up reveals that the window overhead slid shut sometime during her fall. Good. Less work if she needs to get out another way. And, hey, speaking of living up to Slayerly duties, how does breaking and entering your school at oh-dark-thirty for the express purpose of stealing a peek at your Watcher’s journals rank? And how much should it bother her that this is what she chooses to do when sneaking out of her house on her seventeenth birthday?
She slips through the shadows quietly, grateful for the moonlight that offers a bit of relief from the darkness. She moves behind the counter and to Giles’s office door, which is open, thank God. Then again, God probably didn’t have much to do with it because burglary and spying probably don’t rate real high on His list either.
Buffy fingers the light switch with a reluctant eye at the square fluorescents overhead. Flipping this switch will trigger about nine billion watts of light, effectively blinding her and sending a nice little “Here I am!” beacon to anyone that might be in the school. She passes on the light and pulls out the tiny flashlight on her house keys. Ah, yes. She’ll be able to illuminate three or four entire words at a time with this bad boy.
Buffy moves behind the desk with a sigh, searching the drawers until she finds the secret compartment that she’s seen Giles stash his journals in. Predictably, the most recent journal is on top. Buffy sits down in the chair and flips open the book. Now, hopefully she’ll be able to find something useful about Angel without running into creepy old man sex dreams or anything, because, ew.
She bends low over the journal and scans a few paragraphs of stuff so boring she couldn’t imagine actually reading it, let alone writing about it in teensy-tiny ultra-precise black handwriting. Her eyes pause and widen when she notices “particular concerns with regard to Angel’s background.” The library door groans open before she can read more. With her heart in her throat, Buffy slides from the chair onto the floor gracelessly, releasing her thumb from the flashlight and gripping the journal to her chest as footsteps tap their way inside. Even as she tucks herself into a ball beneath the desk, she realizes the only person likely to be in the library at this hour is Giles and it wouldn’t make much sense for him to not enter his own office.
Plan, Buffy. Need one. Time is a factor.
Maybe she should run. Buffy stands up in the still dark office. That’s when she spots Giles and…Willow? They’re settling in a pair of chairs at the table they always use for Scoobie meetings. Except nobody told her there was a meeting tonight, so that can’t be…wait a minute.
Buffy drops down again with a sick feeling curling in her middle. She’s not going anywhere until she figures out what’s going on. She scrunches up beneath the desk as a new set of footsteps plods into the room. After another scrape and rattle of a chair being pulled out, Xander speaks.
“So, we’re all here,” he says, and the others murmur a greeting while Buffy’s throat closes up and her stomach flips end over end. No, I assure you this isn’t all of us, she thinks mutinously as she glares holes into the desk.
A distinctly Willow-esque huff meets her ears. “I don’t like this. It feels ooky, you know?”
“I didn't even know 'ooky' was a word, so I'm quite sure I don't know,” Giles says wearily.
“Meeting here without her,” Willow clarifies. “It feels wrong.”
Buffy feels a surge of warmth for the girl, but tamps it down. She’s still here, isn’t she? Here in the meeting instead of at Buffy’s house warning her about this sinister plot.
Giles sighs. “I’m not enjoying this either, but there are things we need to discuss.”
“Angel things,” Willow says obviously, and Buffy’s fingernails bite so tightly into the journal that it’s going to leave marks.
Xander finally interrupts the long pause that follows, “You know...the tall, dark serial killer seriously obsessed with the Buffster?”
“Yes, I'm perfectly aware of Angel,” Giles snaps and Buffy hears a light batting that she can only guess is Xander tapping the table. Maybe he’d fidget his little fingers into a hole punching thingee.
“Okay, so do we have a plan?” he asks, the tapping turning to a slap at the last word. “Because I’m taking it from this little rendezvous that we might be going this one without super powers.”
“No!” Willow interrupts. “Don't say that! Buffy will come around. I’m sure of it!”
The silence now is for Giles, and Buffy knows it. They’re waiting for him while her gut ties itself into a series of knots, each one more complex than the last. Believe in me, Giles. Please.
“I'm not certain it's wise to assume that, Willow,” Giles answers. Buffy doesn’t flinch. Feels a little bit like throwing up, but she doesn’t move a muscle. “This is very complicated for Buffy. Her feelings are deeply invested.”
“But, still! She'll do the right thing. Won't she?” Willow’s voice warbles through Buffy’s spinning mind as she puts the journal down beside her so she can pull her knees further into her chest in the dark cubby beneath the desk.
Xander gives a caustic laugh. “Do you honestly think that she's going to be able to take him down, Will? Think about the way she looks when she sees him. Heck, think about the way she looks when we say his name! And you think she’s going to dust him?”
Buffy’s cheeks are burning and the anger swirling in her is nearly palpable.
“Buffy knows what she has to do,” Willow defends. “Right?”
Giles heaves another sigh. At least it sure sounds like Giles. “Unfortunately, there's a great gap between knowing and doing, Willow.”
“So what do we do?” Willow asks, sounding aghast. “Push her out?”
“No, never. I believe in Buffy,” Giles says and Buffy focuses a lethal glare on the chipped wood in front of her. Right, you believe in me so much, you decide to turn everyone I love against me. “I want to give her every opportunity to make the right choice.
“And if she doesn't?” Willow asks.
“I realize how difficult this must be for you and by all rights, you shouldn’t be involved in these matters at all,” Apparently ignoring Xander’s irritable huff, her Watcher continues, “But the fact remains…you are involved, and as such I need to know where you stand. Should Buffy fail to act appropriately on this issue…”
“Then we dust him,” Xander says matter-of-factly. A bolt of white hot fury buries itself in her middle.
“If it comes to that…” Giles offers quietly and Buffy blinks back furious tears.
“But we’re not there yet, are we?” Willow whines hopefully. “I mean, we still have time.”
“For now, we wait,” Giles agrees.
“And we watch?” Xander asks, but Giles does not respond.
“And we hope,” Willows says firmly.
“And if all of those things fail, then I need to know where you stand if the time comes to finish this once and for all.”
“I’m in,” Xander says, with nowhere near the hesitation Buffy would expect. Willow is slower to respond, and though she says nothing, her soft sigh of assent is all the answer Buffy needs.
“We should go,” Giles says softly. “We’ll meet again soon.”
Buffy sits in the shadowy alcove for another hour, until they share goodbyes and march their traitorous asses out of the library. Far off in the distance, she thinks she hears the soft roar of an engine coming to life, but still she sits. She sits until her knees and butt ache and then she finally crawls out from the desk. Tucking the journal into her jacket pocket, she walks out of the library and leaves the school through the front door. She doesn’t even bother locking it behind her. She doesn’t care. She just wants to go home.