Face to Face: Day 1 - The Message
by MattK
Gunn’s truck roared through the city. Cordelia and Joyce were crammed into the cab with him, while the rest rode in the back and cursed the fact that they’d chosen to walk to Caritas.

Most of the people in the back sat or crouched, holding on as best they could, but the Warriors were standing. Buffy stood between Riley and Angel at the front of the truck bed, where all three of them held onto Gunn’s roof lights. Angel’s face was grim and determined, and he leaned down low over the cab, ready to pounce. Buffy, on the other hand was almost smiling, and she was standing straighter, letting the wind blow in her face and whip her hair behind her like a banner. Riley *was* smiling. Broadly. It had been too long since he’d done this. There were no pick-ups in that Gucci-lined suburb he’d been living in, and he hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed them. Funny what reminds you of home. Hell, there was even a gun rack, even if that was an axe hanging from it. If this business wasn’t so serious, he would throw back his head and whoop.

Faith and Spike didn’t bother to hold onto anything. They simply stood in the middle of the truck bed, riding the swerving vehicle like the Banzai Pipeline, passing a bottle of Jim Beam back and forth between them and howling.

Suddenly, Angel started to growl. His lips skinned back from his teeth, and with each snarl, those teeth lengthened and sharpened. His brow grew more and more ridged, and his eyes shone a brighter shade of wolf-yellow.

Buffy noticed. "What is it?" She called, shouting to make herself heard over the engine and the wind.

"We’re getting close," He growled. "I can feel him again. I can see what he’s doing—oh, God, I can see what he’s planning!"

Gunn crested one final hill, shot across an intersection and screeched to a halt in front of the Benton Arms. Angel vaulted the cab and landed on the sidewalk in a hunting-panther crouch, his demon face fully manifested. He swung his head from side to side for a moment, as if trying to catch a scent, then his head snapped toward the alley beside the building.

The other Scoobies followed his gaze, and Gunn flipped on the lights in the overhead rack, just in time to reveal Angelus dropping someone into an open manhole. He turned toward them, grinned, and took a drag on a cigarette.

"No!" Angel shouted, launching himself toward the pure demon. Buffy and Faith were over the cab and only a few steps behind him, with their less athletic comrades pouring out of the truck behind them.

Still grinning, Angelus flicked his cigarette away and dropped into the manhole after whoever he’d thrown.

Angel abruptly reversed direction, spinning on his heel and running back toward the rest of the group, waving his arms and shouting "No! Run! He’s—"

That was all he got out before the basement of the Benton Arms exploded, sending up a fireball that engulfed the bottom three floors.

Most of the group was still in or around Gunn’s truck, so they either dropped to their bellies in the truck bed, or threw themselves to the ground behind it.

Angel was lifted and thrown by a searing blast of air. He went limp and let it carry him, rolling when he landed. He came to rest on his belly, covering his head with his arms. Glass, wood, and bits of brick rained down around him.

Faith and Buffy allowed the same blast of air to knock them over, falling backward and shielding their faces with their arms.

Miraculously, none of the Scooby Gang or Angel Investigations were hit by any large debris. Pieces of the building, the furniture and appliances within it, and even its inhabitants rained down into the street, but the worst any of them suffered were a few bruises or a nick or two from flying glass.

Angel was back on his feet as soon as the initial blast was over, racing back toward the fire. Unfortunately, he was helpless to approach any closer than thirty feet or so before the heat drove him back. He tried to push against it, but he felt his skin begin to sear, and he had to back away.

Then Buffy and Faith were there, pulling him back.

"What are you doing?" Buffy yelled over the roar of the fire. "You can’t go in there!"

"There are *people* in there!" He yelled back. "He’s blocked the exits—they can’t get out!"

"Oh, *shit*," Faith cursed, staring in horror. Then an idea hit her. "Look," she pointed. "The buildings are close together. One of us can jump that alley easy. We could go up the building next door, jump across to the roof, and get whoever we can out that way. "

Buffy nodded. "Good plan." She then turned to the arriving Scoobies. "Has anyone called 911 yet?" She asked.

"Cordelia," Wesley answered, pointing to where the visionary in question stood beside Gunn’s truck, her cell phone pressed to her ear.

"Good," Buffy said. Then she turned to Willow. "Can you summon water?" she asked.

"Yeah, I can, but not enough to put out something like this," Willow said, staring helplessly.

"I know. But can you hose us down?"

Willow stared at her in disbelief for a moment before saying "Yeah. Sure. I can do that."

Spike was a step behind Willow. "What do you need *that* for, Slayer? What’re you doing?"

"We’re going in," Angel announced. "And we need everyone without superpowers to stand back."

"You’ll need more than just three people, Big Man," Riley said, pulling a bandana out of his pocket and wrapping it around his face as he stepped forward.

"I’m in, too," Gunn agreed, pulling out a bandana of his own.

"Anyone got some handkerchiefs?" Buffy asked. "Faith and I need to breathe, too."

Giles and Wesley immediately offered theirs.

"Hey, Gunn, got that cool axe with you?" Faith asked. "We might need it."

"It’s in the truck," he answered, turning and dashing for it.

"Okay," Angel surrendered. "Riley and Gunn, but no others."

"No others?" Riley asked, looking at Spike. All other eyes turned to the blond vampire.

Spike backed away, shaking his head. "Uh-uh. Put it out of your mind, mate. I came here for the violence, and I’ll join you for that, but I’m not running into a fire. Bugger that."

Most of the humans looked disgusted, but Angel just nodded. He understood. His own demon started howling in terror whenever he even looked at the burning building. All vampires are afraid of fire to some degree.

Buffy took Tara by the shoulder as Willow prepared to summon the water. "I need you and Willow to keep an eye out. We may need to go out a window or something, and even if we don’t, there’s liable to be jumpers. You’re our safety net."

"Ok-k-k-" Tara paused, took a deep breath. "Okay. We can do that."

Then Buffy did a strange thing. She took Tara’s head in her hands, pressed the larger girl’s forehead to her own, and heaved a deep, shuddering sigh. "We’re counting on you," Buffy said.

It was then that Tara realized that this young woman, this girl that she’d always thought of as so brave, so righteous, so powerful, so raging; this blond-haired force of nature; was afraid. And she was really a very tiny girl after all. "We’ll be there," she answered softly.

Buffy straightened, nodded her understanding, and turned back to where the other Warriors stood. Willow had just finished her preparations. "Alright," Buffy barked, the fear gone from her voice and the general back. "Let’s move."

*

The five Warriors who rushed into the seven-story pyre that had been the Benton Arms apartment building were very brave people. But courage is not the absence of fear. It is doing what must be done in spite of one’s fear. All of them were used to fighting enemies: other beings that might strike and hurt them, but could be struck and feel pain in their turn. Fire felt no pain. It felt no fear. Fire raged and hungered and devoured more thoroughly than any monster. They could fight demons and monsters and even fallen angels, but they couldn’t fight fire. Not with the weapons they had; not at all. They could only hope to survive. They knew this as they leaped across the gap from the safety of the roof of the nearest apartment building, and they were afraid.

There are times when fear grows so great that the mind throws its circuit-breakers, shutting off all but the most necessary functions in the hopes of avoiding total shutdown and collapse. So it was that, although the five Warriors descended into the blazing hell that had once been people’s homes with a kind of emotionless clarity, later on they would remember little.

They remembered a moment or two of silent horror, like the moment when Angel kicked in an apartment’s door and was already a few steps in before he realized what his ability to enter meant, and he emerged with blood-tears streaming down his face.

They remembered a few moments of screaming panic, like the moment that the fifth-floor hallway collapsed beneath Faith’s feet. She caught herself, and her feet hung for an eternal moment in the crematorium that was the fourth floor before Buffy pulled her to safety.

For its sheer unexpectedness, Riley remembered the moment when he emerged onto the roof with a child under each arm and found Spike standing on the roof of the building they’d jumped from, holding out his arms and shouting "Throw the little beggars to me! Hurry, Cornbread!"

The moment when a burning piece of debris struck Angel and knocked him down, setting his coat on fire, and Riley and Buffy pulled the debris off and smothered his back.

The moment when Gunn had to chop his way through a wall to where Faith had found a little girl hiding in a closet, but was trapped when the apartment behind her filled with fire.

Outside, Willow and Tara stood at the forefront of the Scooby Gang, hand in hand, catching and hoisting as many to safety with their magic as they could.

The moment they would always remember would be the moment that they saw a young family pressed against a red-litten window. They lifted the wife to safety, then lowered the baby gently from his father’s arms to his mother’s, but then they heard a crash and the mother started to scream, and when they looked back at that window, there were only flames billowing out where a young man had been just a moment before.

The other members of the Scooby Gang stood behind them, watching and praying.

Except for Oz. Oz was across the street, curled into a ball, holding his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to keep out the screams. But he couldn’t close his nose, and what he would always remember would be the smell of burning flesh.

The fire department arrived fifteen minutes after the initial explosion. By then, it was already over. Everyone who was going to get out alive already had. The five soot-stained Warriors were across the street. Angel had cast his ruined coat into the fire as he fled the building, and now he paced back and forth, staring at the ground and punching his fist into his open hand. Over and over again. Gunn and Faith sat leaning up against the wall of a building, leaning against each other. Riley had taken a solid swallow of smoke, and Buffy was helping him walk around and catch his breath. Though none of them noticed it, all five of them were weeping.

Tara was, too. As soon as it had become patently obvious that there was no one else to rescue from the furnace that the Benton Arms had become, she had turned and begun sobbing like a child into Willow’s shoulder.

Willow was crying, too, and she had little comfort to offer. Then she felt an arm wrap around her. She looked, and it was Oz. He pulled them into himself and she reached out to both and Tara was held in between them like a crying child being comforted by her parents, and for the second time in as many days there were no old and new lovers. There was just love, and fear, and pain, and comfort.

*You’re the brother she should have had, Oz* was Willow’s thought as all three of them clutched each other tight.

It was Giles who finally suggested that they return to the Hyperion to recover, regroup, and plan their next move. Not even the Mayor’s Ascension had cost this many lives. It was the greatest defeat they had ever suffered.



Wolfram & Hart

Angelus strode into Lindsey’s office, covered in soot and sewer-muck, but grinning. "Message received," he gloated. "Did you make those phone calls like I told you to?"

"Yes, sir," Lindsey answered. "They’re on their way.

"Perfect."



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