Fortress Around Your Heart - Part Two
DISCLAIMER: The title belongs to Gordon Sumner. The song playing in the flashback is 'True Faith', by New Order.
NOTES AND SUMMARY: Right. Sequel to *Waiting on a Friend,* set 5 years from now. It's all about London, people. When last we saw our heroes: Dawnie was getting on a plane to come home to London and the man she wants, Wes; Spike and Giles got into a spot of bother on patrol with Buffy and Wes, with Spike saving unconscious Giles from a balcony fall but getting a broken wrist for his pains. Mysterious Nullat demons in expensive trench-coats watched and took notes. And on to Part 2, where we get a flashback, and a new character, and exposition, and hugs, and...da-dah! the vengeance-demon you've all been waiting for! As Gordon Sumner might also put it, "It's a Brand-New Day."20 DECEMBER 2007. LONDON. MORNING.
Dawn smiled as sweetly as she could at the huge, pig-like Passport Control guy who’d been sweating over her document for ten minutes. She wanted to open a great big portal to a great big nasty dimension and send through an official helping of pork, but she knew that would be wrong. It was pretty to imagine, though, just for the moment.
"Welcome home, Miss Summers," the creature finally oinked, handing her the passport.
She hurried her steps toward the baggage reclaim. The past two months had seemed endless, and she couldn’t wait to get to her family. Her guy.
It had been ninety-six days since she’d seen him. As on a dozen Saturday nights before, Anya and Dawn had decided to go out clubbing, so that Anya could groove to her demon heart’s content and she herself could avoid reading about Capability Brown. Also like a dozen times before, Giles had decided to stay home with Lizzie. Oh, he’d said that it was because it was Nanny Tina’s night off and they couldn’t find a baby-sitter, but Dawn knew good and well that he just didn’t want to be assaulted by drum and bass. Still, he wanted his wife to enjoy herself.
Unlike any other time, though, Spike, Buffy and Wesley had decided that they’d go with. Well, what Spike actually had said was that he’d go just to "stomp the sodding synthesizers into the ground." Buffy had said back, in a weirdly seductive/menacing way, "Come on, Watcher. You know you wanna dance." And then they’d started laughing so hard, they fell on the floor. Bizarre yet typical.
Wes had merely smiled and said he fancied a family outing. Caroline, aka Girlfriend Number 12— he went through girlfriends at an alarming rate, largely because in Dawn’s estimation they were all totally unworthy of him— was an Ex-Girlfriend now, and he had been at loose ends. Why not go?
Except Wes hadn’t planned on dancing. She’d figured it out when they’d gotten to the East End warehouse serving as a club. He’d hung back like even now he wasn’t part of the group, watching Spike drag Buffy and Anya onto the crowded floor. She found this completely unacceptable. There was no way she was going to let him play Sociologist Moo Guy, she’d said, and she’d pulled him into the heaving mass of bodies.
Dawn blinked herself out of the memory when a hurrying man accidentally hit her with a laptop. A mild curse or two later, she went down the stairs to the baggage hall. The cold space echoed with the sounds of too many people— tourists, business travelers, students— and she could feel herself choking a bit. She found the carousel where her bags would be sent out and stood there. The conveyor belt was circling, circling…
Just like that night. There had been too many people in the overheated club, circling, jostling, making her dizzy. Wesley saw her distress— he always took care of her-- and found a darkened corner for them. He’d gotten her a glass of water and made sure she’d had some sips. Once she felt better, however, she’d said, "Come on, Wes, let’s stay here. You should dance more."
She was being generous, since he truly couldn’t master any rhythmic movement to music that hadn’t been composed in the pre-rock era. He knew it, too, and the grin he gave her was sardonic in the extreme. Still, he’d twirled her around in place and let her find the driving beat to the song.
The DJ had put on "something for the old people," a new remix of an 80s song. Dawn had started to move her hips and shoulders in time, feeling the music course through her. Smiling at her, Wes had started his painfully-white-guy twisting. Amazingly, he’d also begun to sing along: "I feel so extraordinary, Something’s got a hold on me…"
Amused, wanting to hear him, she’d spun closer. But she’d tripped off-balance and fell against him, chest to chest. His arms went around her to steady her. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t hugged her a thousand thousand times before, but this was different. She could feel him imprinting on her every molecule, could smell a scent of wood-smoke and sex that she’d never identified before but now always would associate with Wes. With desire.
She had looked into deep blue eyes, and, drunk on the new sensations of touch, scent, sight, leaned up and kissed him. Since he’d been singing, his mouth was open, and she could taste him. He was better, richer than chocolate.
He’d tasted like what she’d felt the first time she’d opened the portal on the Thames— he was possibility and power. Like that first night, the only thing that had anchored her to this dimension was the grip of his hands on her waist.
Then he’d tasted her back. Not at first, she remembered, but suddenly and deeply, as if he only would have one chance at what he’d been craving forever. The dark-chocolate flavour intensified, and Dawn had felt as if not one portal but a thousand had opened up, doors slamming open open open throughout the universes.
Then he stopped. "Oh, God, Dawn. Dawn. I’m sorry, that was unforgivable," he’d said in a voice she almost couldn’t recognize, and pulled away. She’d frozen in place, missing his warmth even in the split-second he separated from her. When she managed to protest, he’d laughed in the desolate way she hadn’t heard from him in years, then cut it off as if it hurt him to breathe.
"I used to think that the day would never come That my life would depend on the morning sun," the voice had throbbed through the speaker-bank nearby. And he’d run, and kept on running.
Dawn had stood there alone, hand to lips, until Anya had slipped her arm around her. "Don’t tell me that you two hadn’t figured it out before, Dawnie. Neither of you’s that stupid," she’d said.
The clunk of an oversize bag hitting metal brought her back to the present, to the baggage reclaim hall at Heathrow. And it was her bag, actually. She struggled to grab it off the conveyor, then headed off to the terminal area.
Dawn wondered who’d be there to pick her up. Buffy? Spike had the whole sunlight=combustion issue, but he probably would be at Moo People Central with Giles. Anya either would be buying and selling the equivalent of Third World countries or taking care of her daughter. So, by process of elimination, it would be Buff—
"Dawn." His soft, beloved voice sounded behind her, and she whirled. Wes stood there, so handsome, so hers, so… exhausted.
Dawn registered his bloodshot eyes, his day-old stubble, even as she leapt. She pulled him close-- home, this to her was home. He allowed the healing contact for just a second before his fingers went to her shoulders and put her an arm’s length away. "Wesley?"
"Let me take you to the hospital, dear. It’s Giles."
***
Oh bugger, his head hurt. And his arm. And every bloody nerve ending in his body, if that were possible.
It took an enormous effort to open his eyes, but he managed it. Hospital room: yes, he’d feared that’s where he was. Stupid thin gown, check; that foul antiseptic smell, check. And there, against the wall in those sodding uncomfortable chairs that hospital administrators insisted upon, his wife and his best friend sat vigil.
Most people would be frightened to find two demons at their sickbed, he thought. However, most people also led extremely constricted lives.
"Anyanka? Will?" he croaked.
Anya couldn’t have gotten to his side faster if she’d teleported. "Rupert, oh Rupert," she said into his ear, then sank to the floor as if relief had dissolved her bones.
"Get up, old girl," Will said, one strong hand lifting her. "Dad can’t see you if you’re lolling on the linoleum, blind git doesn’t have his spectacles on."
The retreat to his straight-out-of-Tottenham accent revealed the strength of his friend’s emotion, Giles knew. "Thank you for being here when I woke up, you little twerp." Will blinked several times, then actually pushed Anya into the hospital bed. Ho, he’d known the tosser was about to cry.
Of course, that might mean that he was more badly hurt than he’d originally thought. Giles fought to get his free arm around his beloved, and kissed her head. "Anyanka darling. Er, do I want to know what happened?"
She lifted her face away from his neck, where she’d been getting him all wet with her tears, and said, "You got hit on the head while on patrol, Rupert. Again."
"Yeah, mate, you need to find another hobby. This one’s hell on the family, innit."
"Was it a concussion?" Giles asked.
"Miraculously only a bit of one, yeah. We got you to Casualty, you opened your eyes, they shot you up with wonder drugs, and you went back to beddy-bye. Which was a concern, must say, with you well into double-figures with the head traumas and what all."
Will grasped the foot of the hospital bed, and Giles noticed that he was favouring the wrist strapped in bandages. "What happened to you, old son?"
"Nothing. Broken wrist. Time already knitting up the raveled bones of care."
"Christ, Will, how many times does that make? If it weren’t for vampire healing, I’d recommend just cutting the bloody thing off." Will snorted. Giles then became aware of how badly his own biceps hurt. "By the way, why does my arm feel like it was caught in a vise?"
"Oh, sorry, sorry, that was me. Pulling you out of a dive off the Drury Lane balcony. Wasn’t as careful as I might be in less, er, fraught circumstances."
At the very mention of the danger, Anya couldn’t repress another sob. "Darling," Giles murmured, then kissed Anya’s temple. She made a token protest, then cuddled closer. "I’m sorry, dear."
"No, you’re not, you stupid Watcher." Anya hiccupped a bit. "But you damn well should be. Lizzie’s with Buffy, but you know she’ll be asking why you’re not at breakfast. And I hope Buffy tells her the truth about her idiot father."
***
"No, sweetie, not the—" Damn.
Buffy wiped the oatmeal off her face. She loved four-year-old Elizabeth Anne Giles, truly. Every once in a while, she’d pick up the little demon (half-demon, literally) and feel a maternal tug.
This, however, was not one of these times. Lizzie wanted her parents, and without their presence (or that of Nanny Tina, currently on holiday), she by God was going to wreak vengeance on the poor stupid woman who’d volunteered to take care of her on the second shift.
"Daddy! Mummy!" Lizzie demanded, banging her spoon on the table.
"Your mom will be back in a flash," Buffy soothed, crossing her fingers behind her back. She allowed herself a second to acknowledge her own worry and fear. The mental pictures of Spike and Giles hanging from the balcony, saved only by her husband’s strength and obstinacy, had clicked through her mind like a slide-show all night. The after-images weren’t any better. Giles had looked so pale, so much older, lying in the hospital bed, and Anya had clutched his hand as if the grip alone could keep him with her. She hoped Anya would be free to let go of him as soon as he woke up. Soon.
Another child-sized fistful of oatmeal struck Buffy in the shoulder. Lizzie narrowed her eyes in an all too familiar way, and said firmly, "Never mind. I’ll go find them."
"No, no, no. You wait here with me, sweetie," Buffy said. She frantically tried to remember what she was supposed to do if the little one tried to teleport— Give her Wesley Bear? Sing 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat' like her Uncle Will always did? Rope her down?
Oh, God. She wanted Spike suddenly and desperately, so he could wrestle her onto his lap or into their bed and reassure her that he was fine, Giles was fine, everything would be fine. In fact— she grabbed the spoon away from the child and banged it on the table herself, saying, "Spike! Spike! Spike!"
Lizzie stopped her tantrum and looked at Buffy curiously. "It doesn’t actually work, Aunt Buffy."
"No, it sure doesn’t." She put the spoon back on the table, and the older and younger females gazed at each other. Then Lizzie bounced down from her chair and up into Buffy’s lap.
"You wish for Uncle Will. I’ll wish for Mummy and Daddy," Lizzie instructed, then she closed her eyes tightly. "Mummy says wishes are powerful things."
Every once in a while, Buffy felt a maternal tug, and she felt it now. So she cuddled Lizzie, wishing hard for Spike to find her and soothe her with his love, and for Giles to wake up okay, and for destiny to rethink its decree that the oldest Slayer ever wouldn’t be able to reproduce before her inevitable early death.
At least she knew that one of her wishes would come true.
***
The information hardly seemed true, but there were witnesses and cross-references. The Nullat demons pored over the documents brought in by a suit-wearing human flunkey.
These Watcher-Slayer Files, really. Since the Council of Watchers had determined five years ago that the death of the Lady guarding the Thames Fissure would mean increased demonic and occult risks, it had stationed the legendary Slayer, Buffy Summers, in London. Three years later the erstwhile rogue Slayer, Faith, had been assigned to Sunnydale. The interim had been ugly, apparently, and involved frequent-flyer miles for the Summers and her team.
Unlike all previous Slayers who’d worked solo, Summers had assembled a superior group to assist her. She was occasionally aided by Anyanka Giles, justice-demon, but it was her Watchers who were infamous in the underworlds. Rupert Giles, swordsman and sometime-sorcerer, accompanied her on many of the missions and advised her on all of them; Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, researcher and a mean man with an axe, pitched in when not on field-assignment elsewhere; always at her side was her husband Will Bennet (aka Spike, once William the Bloody), ensouled vampire and warrior.
It had been Rupert Giles and Will Bennet who’d defeated the Lady in the first place, when the Wolf of the Deep had attempted to drown London.
The Nullats munched on a plateful of bones (kind of their employers to provide the snack) as they flicked through the records. Three interdimensional hot spots cleared in Scandinavia. A demon rebellion crushed in Algiers. A couple of attempts to open the Thames Fissure foiled. And that didn’t count the innumerable small evils and vampires slayed or dusted.
As one, they set aside the piles of paper and nodded at each other. They’d seen for themselves: it clearly was imperative to destroy the Watcher-Slayer group before proceeding with the rest of their employers’ plans to open the Fissure. Yet it would be impossible to do so with them as a unit, as their teamwork in Drury Lane had shown.
"We’ll need to take them one at a time. Perhaps we should start with Rupert Giles, who’s now in hospital and therefore vulnerable?" Burberry said at last to the supervisor of their project.
The project manager turned from surveying the winter sun glinting off the grey Thames, which flowed fifteen floors below their riverside office building. "Mr. Giles would be an acceptable first choice, and you should implement an immediate strategy there. However, one of the other team members might be a weak link."
The file of Wesley Wyndham-Pryce was pushed across the table to Aquascutum. He put a claw on the firm’s insignia embossed on the folder. "Do you have a plan?"
"Yes. He’s got a dark side we might be able to use against the others. We’ve tried to recruit him before; once he’s captured, I’ll try to turn him. I don’t count on it, however. Otherwise, torture until death would do well, giving them first a distraction from our real work and then grief to work through. His battered corpse would be quite a statement, wouldn’t you say?"
The Nullats nodded at the supervisor’s words. It was a pleasure to do business with the likes of these evil humans.
***
Anya felt an overwhelming rush of pleasure when she saw her Lizzie, sitting on Buffy’s lap. "Good morning, darling girl," she announced.
"Mummy, mummy, I wished for you!" her daughter shrilled. The tiny terror flung herself at Anya, and she caught her close. This, and Rupert, were what she needed.
"Hey, Anya. Is everything…."
"Just fine, Buffy. He’s awake, likely going to be released as soon as the doctor makes his next rounds. It looks as if he’s come through yet another injury without permanently damaging his stupid self."
Buffy grinned. "We are married to idiots, aren’t we."
Anya stood up, Lizzie clinging to her neck. "In a word, yes." She looked around the messy kitchen and frowned. "Thank you for taking care of Lizzie. But– what happened here? Were you Slaying hot cereal?"
"Funny." Buffy got up, stretched, then went to her coat which was lying on the counter. "I probably should go collect my husband before he gets impatient or hungry and starts to walk home. You know, sunshiny day, dusty spouse."
"Will’s okay– I got him some blood earlier. He’s sitting with Giles, waiting for Wes and Dawn to arrive," Anya said. Buffy jolted, scattering the contents of her coat pockets all over the kitchen. "What’s the matter? You weren’t satisfied with the original mess?"
"I forgot all about Dawn coming home today!" Buffy wailed. She knelt, picking up the bits of coin and paper she’d dropped.
"Well, Wes didn’t. He went to Heathrow to get her," Anya said.
Lizzie leaned over her mother’s arm, looking at the things in Buffy’s hands. "Is that a doggie?" she asked, pointing to a torn card.
"No, it’s a wolf, I think," Buffy said. She looked at the image again. "A wolf and a deer or something?"
"It should be pretty, but it’s not," Lizzie pronounced.
Anya and Buffy looked at each other. The card seemed wrong, somehow. And both of them suddenly felt chill and dark invade the warm, cozy kitchen.
Outside the Cheyne Walk house, the wind gusted off the river. It was full of ash and smoke, and it smelled of blood.