The Man With A Thousand Faces: Twenty
by redmoon
Twenty
26 October, 2000, Los Angeles
Logan knelt by his great grandmother’s crypt. Stark and silent... read the inscription. He felt nothing as he looked at the decayed shroud that covered the corpse in the wall. He had never known her. His grandmother had been the youngest of nine children and his mother had been the youngest of six. All of them dead now, of course. But his great grandmother had died thirty years before he was even born. Before his carelessness could kill her.
He rose from his knees and reached into the recess in the stone wall. With subdued breathing he placed it at the back of the opening; the only thing that kept him sane, now. He would no longer need it. Where he was going was anywhere but a place for those still sane.
For two months he had tested, he had learned, he had toyed. Now he was ready. All the preparations were in order. All he needed was a place. And an opportunity. Presently he would have one, then the next would follow in time.
In his studies of the Dagon Sphere he had come to call the Now, he had discovered with some surprise and delight his ability, he presumed above and beyond the ability of its previous owners, to create hypothetical universes; what ifs which played out before his eyes, behind the glass of the sphere, the result of any alterations he fed into the time-line. It was an excellent learning tool. He found, for example, that by simply touching someone on the shoulder at exactly the right time, he could distract their attention and allow them to be run over by a truck. And while this altered the universe ever so slightly in the grand scheme, it served to show harmless comparison between what if and what was.
This hypothetical universe feature also prevented such nasty things as paradoxes, which Logan soon realized were a great deal more dangerous and likely than he had at first assumed. Now his thoughts were in order. His plan was set and his vendetta on course. He created destiny now. Blink or no blink, the Powers That Be couldn’t touch him now. He could go back and erase them if he was daring enough. He shook his head. No, he ammended, we tried that in a ‘what if,’ remember? He shuddered. The universe without Those That Be was not a pretty sight, even contained inside a glass sphere.
Logan now stood. First things first. He climbed the stairs to the entrance of the vault. Outside waited the man he had contacted earlier. He knew the man, but the man likely didn’t know him.
“Evening,” Loki greeting rather icily, wiping his dusty palms on his khakis, enjoying the feel of the cool night air through the silk of his shirt.
“It better be,” the man glanced at the horizon, “my doctor says sunlight’s not good for my health.” The tall dark haired stranger looked Loki up and down. “You’re Loki? Loki the demon-killer? Loki the soul-finder?”
Loki looked the tall man up and down. “I heard you help the helpless now. Much better direction than slowly ridding the world of rats.”
Angel frowned, crossing his arms. “Look, we can trade insults some other time. What is it you want?”
“I think we should work together,” came Logan’s simple reply.
Angel raised a surprised and immediately skeptical eyebrow. “What? Why? You and I?”
Logan cracked a small smile. “That’s pretty much the reaction I expected,” he said amicably. “You don’t trust me because you don’t know me. I don’t trust you because you’re a vampire. You distrust me more on account of I kill vampires, and you’re a vampire. I trust you less because you know I kill vampires, and you’re a vampire. And, naturally, you know this-”
“-Yeah, I get it,” interjected the vampire. “We don’t trust each other. What’s your point?”
Loki’s smile widened. “My point is,” he began, “there’s no way two distrusting people can get along and get any work done. But since I feel I just might be able to help you in ways you’ve never even conceived of before, I suggest an initial deal.”
Angel was shaking his head. “What kind of deal?”
“You know... I sharpen your fangs, you sharpen mine. Nothing big or important. Just to establish trust.”
“What do you want from me?” Angel asked suspiciously, instantly realizing this was just a ploy to get information.
“I’m looking for some things,” Loki said without missing a beat or reacting to the vampire’s altered tone. “Two things.”
“What things?” Angel prompted, crossing his arms. “I don’t have any mystical—”
“Names. That’s all,” Loki answered softly, raising his hands in peace. “Just names. Two of them.” Angel was frowning deeply now, exhibiting a deep broodiness that seemed to fit him like a glove. “I need the name for a face and the name of a place.”
“What makes you think I know these names?” The vamp asked, raising his eyebrow further.
“You’ll know,” the man nodded, convinced. “I need the name for this face,” he drew from his pocket the small picture of Hanna Kilpatrick, taken when she was thirteen years old for her school yearbook.
Angel took the picture, irritated at first, expecting it to be no one he recognized, convinced now that this stranger had mistaken him for someone else. As he looked at the beaming face, however, his eyes narrowed and his suspicion increased tenfold. What do you want with Dawn Summers? he had been about to blurt out, but realized of course this was exactly what this Loki person was counting on. “Never seen her before in my life,” he answered. He didn’t realize how true that was.
Loki nodded. “I know that. I just need you to name her.” At that instant, as the vampire’s eyes returned to the photo, betraying him completely, Logan reached out into his thoughts and pulled the name from his mind. Dawn Summers. He was silently gagging. They named you Dawn Summers?
“I’d name her Elizabeth, but she’s not my kid,” Angel answered dryly. “Really, I have no idea who she is.”
Loki shrugged. “Oh well, but I know you know the next one,” he took the photo and slipped it back into his pocket. “No picture. I need the name of the place where Spike hangs out.”
“Sunnydale,” Angel said without blinking. “And if you’re going there to kill him, tell him I said hi.”
Loki’s smile reached his eyes. “I’ll do just that,” and he turned to leave.
“Your fangs are plenty sharp,” Angel commented, loud enough for Loki to hear as he walked away, “but what about mine? What did I get out of this?”
“Watch out behind you,” Loki said over his shoulder as he disappeared behind a broad tree.
Angel turned around and caught the vamp by the neck, driving a stake through his heart. He turned back but Loki was gone. Brushing the dust from his jacket he shook his head. “Thanks,” he muttered.
What If 23 May, 2001, Sunnydale
Spike fell from Glory’s tower, letting out a brief shout of anger and frustration. He hadn’t been able to help little bit. Goddamn Doc, he thought as the wind rushed through his ears. He prepared himself in the brief moment he had for the terrible pain of hitting the ground. The fall, he knew, probably wouldn’t kill him. But it would hurt like a mother f—
Spike’s body landed with a puff of ash on top of the upward pointing wooden splinters of a broken crate, at the bottom of the tower.
“Spike!” Willow started to charge forward from her cover, then stopped, realizing that of course, nothing could be done. Before any of the minions spotted her, she dashed back to Tara who lay out of sight.
From her high vantage point at the top of the sacrificial tower, Dawn witnessed the death of her would-be savior. Her partner in crime. Her secret crush. Her friend. There was no air to breathe now. No time to think. It was all wrong.
“Shallow cuts,” a voice near her said. Then there was a burning across her stomach...
Loki gazed into the sphere as the universe played itself out before his eyes. “The ritual was still completed,” he muttered under his breath. It was the first of May today, and he had seen the ritual play out many times, each time slightly differently. The problem with killing Spike, Loki had realized, was that Spike and this Dawn Summers somehow knew each other and it seemed that she counted on him to protect her.
This relationship had worried Loki immensely to begin with. It was now incredibly difficult to find a time to kill the vampire and still keep the girl out of harm’s way. She was so volatile, Loki thought, disturbed. Hanna had never been that way. She had been well adjusted. Then again, Hanna had never been told she wasn’t actually real.
After getting over the shock of finding out his two goals in life were actually friends, Logan had managed to conclude that the perfect time to kill Spike with little physical risk to Dawn and no traceable link to himself was just after Glory was through with the Key, and just before the death of the slayer. After that battle, there was very little that Spike seemed to do besides watch television and play board games, none of which offered convenient wooden points.
Loki watched as the slayer fell from the tower, dying as she had many times before in these hypothetical universes. Sometimes she died in battle with Glory. Sometimes she died actually preventing the ritual, but always she died. Logan’s brow furrowed in a distant worry as the combatants gathered around the slayer’s body. Always she died, he thought.
He had never given much thought to the slayer that apparently lived in Sunnydale. He had known a slayer, loved a slayer and watched a slayer die. No one knew more intimately than he the terrible existence that followed these cursed ones around. More cursed even than a specter.
But always she died... Logan blinked. What if, he pondered, just suppose, ignoring the inevitable paradox, Glory never existed. What if this Ben person were killed as a child. What would the twenty third of May have looked like?
Logan watched with a looming sense of dread as the universe began again. Since the recent, unrelated death of her mother, the slayer was patrolling more and more frequently. With no sister, since there had been no need to hide the Key, the slayer had been left all alone in the world and was now assailed by a gang of vampires led by none other than a very bitter William the Bloody.
Still inhibited by the chip, Spike merely directed the attack, luring the exhausted, battered slayer into his carefully laid trap. So simple it was difficult to watch, but Loki could not take his eyes away. He hoped with all hope that this slayer, whose name he couldn’t even remember at the moment, would kill the bastard who stood now at the edge of his own trap, but dreaded that she herself would be slain.
He watched with chagrin as she turned unawares to fight a vamp behind her and stepped off the edge into an empty grave. At the bottom was prepared a bed of blades, piercing her in many places.
Loki drew his hand tiredly down his face. Always she died he realized. There was no way in hell he was going to outplay the Powers That Be. They had planned everything, in every possible future, to work against him.
Loki returned to his original what if, now convinced there was some catch, some reason he should be seeing why killing Spike would be a terrible idea.
What If 2 August, 2001, Sunnydale
Dawn stood atop the tower once again. Her eyes stung from months of crying. Her sister was not coming back. Spike was not coming back. Her mother was not coming back. The wind ruffled her hair. No one even knew she was here.
Tara and Will had stayed with her for the first few weeks, then checked in every other day, then once or twice a week. Now she was all alone. It felt unnatural, the grief that had a hold of her. Like it wasn’t her own.
She didn’t know why, but Spike’s death had been incredibly difficult to bear. Naturally it had all been her fault. No one had ever been able to satisfactorily convince her otherwise. She had spent the summer sitting alone with her despair, watching reruns and B movies in Spike’s old crypt, a part of her feeling like he was there with her. The rest of her knowing he was gone.
“I’m sorry, Buffy,” Dawn whispered into the wind as her bare toes gripped the edge of the tower’s long platform. “I tried to be brave. I really did.” She felt her throat knot up again. The only place in the whole universe she wanted to be was where Buffy and Joyce were right now. Would Spike be there? He had once told her that like her, he wasn’t good, but he was okay. Did ‘okay’ people go to heaven?
Dawn drew in a small breath and let her center of mass carry her over the point of no return. She fell.
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