Chapter Twenty-Four

Buffy was beyond thinking as she reached the factory. Beyond feeling. Beyond anything. For the first time in her life, for the first time since she’d learned of the destiny force down on her, she simply let go.

Buffy Summers was gone. Was distant background noise. She was the Slayer. She was violence. She was death.

She kicked the door in, strode inside and he was waiting for her, already armed. When he smiled, a cold parody of the warm smile of the the man who had once been her Watcher, she felt nothing. She raised her sword, and she kept walking, and she didn’t pause, she didn’t flinch when metal met metal. She simply fought.

Primal instinct, thrust and parry, go for the neck every chance you get. Which wasn’t many. He was skillful, and that, of course, was all part of the trap. He’d met her on his terms, with his weapon.

Cold clangs and shrieks of steel. Warmth rushing through her limbs, her body. Heat gathering in her muscles, her joints. The burn of activity. The burn of cuts where his sword glanced off her skin. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

He was dead.

She was dead.

This, this was all a farce, a ploy. Her own death... it wouldn’t matter. He would be stopped. If the spell worked. It had to work.

Because she was losing. She could feel it. She knew it. She understood it.

And it didn’t matter. Not anymore.

She was just so tired. So very tired.

Angel, Giles... and now Xander. Xander, who was probably dead, or worse, turned, because Giles knew that she would come anyway, come just because there was a chance he was alive.

So tired.

Then she made a mistake, and the blow came, a crushing impact of the hilt of his sword against her temple. The world darkened, contracted, and she felt the concrete floor hit her, hold her up. And then him lifting her, hands knotted in her shirt, shoving her back against something hard, with force enough to make her collarbone crack. Pain only adding to the dizzy disorientation. Limbs not following her commands, and mind not quick enough to issue any.

She’d thought that he would have something to say. They always did, some pithy final remark to breathe into her ear.

So it surprised her when he didn’t pause in his lunge. When the only thing she felt was his fangs, suddenly in her. His cold tongue pushing over her skin. Too dizzy, too tired, to move. But enough of her left inside to feel something. A twist of disgust, distant and vague, but still recognizable.

And then he stopped.

Just stopped.

Held perfectly, utterly still, his fangs still at her throat, his hands still pinning her down. Not moving.

And then he was gone, and she half-fell, just barely holding herself up against the pillar. Through a dizzy half-reality, her hand reached up to her neck and pressed over the wound there, felt her own blood, slick and hot.

And the the darkness of her vision pushed back, like parting a curtain, and she saw him, standing, staring at her, human-faced, mouth half-opened, eyes wide.

His eyes...

She gasped, suddenly, and air rushed into her empty lungs, and with it came something complex, but hesitantly good. Maybe... oh, god, maybe...

His eyes... his *soul*.

And then he was looking away from her, looking around, and she saw his gaze land on something, and when she turned her head, she saw it was Jenny. Who was staring back.

And as they stared at each other, Buffy saw Drusilla fleeing from the corner of her eye, saw Spike, seemingly caught in the middle, looking from Drusilla to Jenny to Giles and back.

And then Giles reached down, picked up the stake she’d lost during the fight from the floor, and began to walk towards Jenny. Just walking, at first. And then with each step, his pace increased, until he was running at her.

She just watched him, like she couldn’t tear herself away. And it wasn’t disgust that Buffy saw in her face, or fear, or anger. It was something like awe, like longing.

Then at the last moment, before the stake could fall, Spike shouted her name and, like she’d been broken from a trance, she ran.

Giles’s stake cut through air, and then he let it fall, as the three other vampires fled.

She waited, still watching, feeling her strength slowly ebbing back. He stood still for a long time, his head hanging. And then, at once suddenly and slowly, he crumpled. Sank to his knees and one hand on the smooth concrete. His long black coat, that had been, for her, so much the symbol of his new existance, now draped around him like a funeral shroud, now seemed too large, like he was a boy wearing his father’s clothes.

By the time she reached him, he was sobbing, and when she knelt in front of him, and touched his shoulder, he grabbed her, and jostled her broken bone, but it was all right, because he was just holding her, and crying against her shoulder, the one that was already damp from her blood. That was ok, too. She shut her eyes, and turned her faces towards him, felt his soft hair against her cheek, her forehead, her nose.

They cried, together, until the factory door opened again, and Oz peered in.

He saw them, and simply nodded to her, and then headed to the back, and five minutes later, emerged with Xander, and slipped out quietly.

She wasn’t sure how much longer she held him and he held her, but eventually, he pulled away, turned from her, wiping the tears away with a self-conscious hand.

“Sorry,” he said, and she knew he meant only for the tears, because everything else was simply too massive to even contemplate.

And then, they’d helped each other to their feet.

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