“So here we are,” Buffy said after a long moment.
“Yes,” Belial agreed.
“You’ve taken me and my friends prisoner because you wanted to talk to me, and for some reason, we couldn’t just meet at the Espresso Pump.”
“That’s about right.”
This was making Buffy nervous. A devil with a reputation as a tempter and deceiver shouldn’t be so straightforward. Maybe he was more subtle than she realized. Maybe he realized that, despite all the things that she had been forced to conceal over the years, Buffy Summers was a basically honest person, and he was tailoring his approach appropriately. Most likely, he simply realized that certain things were so obvious that attempting to lie about them would only alienate her.
“So what was it you wanted to talk about so very much?” She demanded at last.
Belial leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. “Buffy,” He said earnestly, “I have an offer I’d like to make you.”
Buffy rolled her eyes and snorted. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Now, please, just listen to what I have to say before you refuse.”
“No.” Buffy answered sharply. “I’ve seen what happens when a Slayer goes over to your side. I’m not going to become Faith.”
“Faith? Pfft.” He dismissed her protest with a wave of his hand. “Do you think that psychotic little temper tantrum of hers had anything to do with us?”
“No, I think she was on a mission from God. Isn’t every rampaging psycho? Why not her?”
Belial shook his head. “No, the Tyrant didn’t have anything to do with it either, at least not directly. She was just out of control, plain and simple. And that serves no one. Not even us. The Opposition can afford disorder in the ranks even less than the Establishment. Too many revolutions have failed because of it.”
“Whatever. I’m not buying your lines, so you can just give up now.”
She crossed her arms and looked away from him. She expected a protest of innocence, a demand that she listen, or something like that. None of them came for a long moment, and finally her neck started cramping, and she couldn’t keep her head turned any longer. When she looked back, Belial was studying her.
Finally, he spoke again. “Your loyalty is...truly amazing. Especially considering how little the Powers deserve it.” He paused to allow that to sink in, and to allow her to reply. When she didn’t, he continued. “You see, I’ve watched you ever since you were Called—“
“You’ve been watching me for five years straight?” Buffy said scornfully, trying to keep her poker face from slipping. If that was true, it was bad. Very bad.
“Five years? I measure time in the lifetimes of stars. Five years isn’t even an eyeblink. Besides, anyone with any kind of interest in the fate of the world keeps an eye on the Slayer. And I must say, I have been *appalled * by the way the Powers treat their Chosen. How many times have you saved their little toy reality from getting broken? Five? Six? And how have the Fates treated you? You’ve had to give up all hope of a normal life. No children. No sunlight. No one who can ever really understand. Just night and dark, loneliness and violence until the night some demon gets lucky. And every time you think you might be able to find some oasis of peace or happiness in the midst of all this, you’ve had to give it up: Angel, your prom...”
Buffy swallowed hard. She was surprised how much the memories still hurt. Her “one perfect high school moment” had turned into a “last bittersweet goodbye moment that didn’t turn out nearly as bad as it could have.” She was in college now, and things were going well...at least, as well as things ever got for a Slayer on the Hellmouth (*But that’s his point, isn’t it? *)...but new good memories didn’t make old, bad ones go away.
“And the people!” Belial continued relentlessly. “You gave up your *life * for them. You gave it up to spend all your time saving them. You even *died * for them once. You save their world repeatedly, you save their individual little lives by the hundreds, and how do they thank you? At the absolute best, you get a little toy umbrella and a ‘Jolly Good Show’ from your Watcher. But usually, you don’t even get a ‘thank you,’ not even from the people who *do * know what’s going on. Usually, you’re treated like freak and a delinquent: persecuted at school, persecuted by the law, ostracized by your peers—and, oh, how the people in the know love to lay blame. You’re a bad daughter and a bad friend, while people who’ve done far, far less good for the world get parades and—“
“You can knock it off with the temptation pitch, nice as it is to listen to.” She smirked. “Keep showering me with compliments, and I might mistake you for a salesgirl in a clothing store.” He frowned. Good. She’d landed one. That was good...because he was rattling her pretty badly. He was voicing feelings that had been slowly growing and festering inside her since she became the Slayer: resentment for her fate, for God or the gods or whoever, and for the people she was supposed to protect. She gave so much, and got so very little in return. Sometimes she just wanted to leave them to fend for themselves, see how far they got without Buffy to kick around and save their collective asses. Sometimes, when the world had been particularly ungrateful, she’d wanted to kick some asses instead. Maybe take a little of what she was owed. But she’d never dared express these feelings to anyone. Not even Willow. Even she would never understand. Only Faith could possibly understand...and Buffy had seen what had become of Faith. And what had happened when she’d gone on her own “want, take, have” spree. It was better to just crush those feelings down and move on. Pretend they weren’t there. And this...evil guy was shoving them in her face. Better end this now. “Look, you make a very good sales pitch, okay? Bravo. But I’m not going to betray the world, and I’m not going to betray my friends. So you can just quit trying.”
Belial frowned more deeply. “Why are you so sure that working for me will be a betrayal of the world? Why do you assume that we’re ‘evil’? Do you think that the Powers or the Tyrant are ‘good’?” He pointed at the ceiling. “He’s not good, He just has good P.R. Something good happens, it’s His will. Something bad happens, He moves in mysterious ways. Have you ever read your Bible? Have you seen the kind of atrocities He’s ordered, and committed Himself? Hell, forget about that. Look at the world!” He indicated “the world” with a broad sweep of his arms. “How could we possibly do worse? I mean, never mind the fact that, for all your efforts, there are never any fewer vampires or demons. Never mind the fact that you’re going to sacrifice your life in a war that has reached stalemate and will never, ever get better. Forget about all that. Let’s talk about a whole world of evil that you can’t even begin to touch.” He leaned back in his chair. “Human evil, Buffy. It never goes away. Never. And I’m not talking about grandiose ‘I-Want-To-Be-A-Demon’ or ‘I-Want-To-Create-An-Army-Of-Half-Demonic-Super-Soldiers’ evil. I mean...do you even want to know how many girls were date-raped this year at UC Sunnydale while you were out protecting everyone from vampires?” Buffy stiffened. That was something she...didn’t like to think about. One advantage to being a Slayer, she conceded. Roofies couldn’t hope to penetrate her healing powers, and her strength ensured that “no” meant “no.”
“How many serial killers are out there who have a smaller body count than Angelus only because they’re mortal? How many abusive husbands and boyfriends don’t turn into killer robots, or Jekyll-and-Hyde monsters? Forget that, how about the big stuff? There are camps where women are raped until their attackers are sure they’re pregnant. Genocide is so common that it only makes the news if it happens in the right place. Female circumcision...” Buffy winced and fidgeted, crossing her legs like a man hearing a castration joke. Belial picked up on it. “...I see that I need say no more about that. Dictators torture their people daily, wars just never stop, and don’t even get me started on poverty, starvation, and disease. This world is a pit, Buffy.” He leaned forward intently and fixed her with his eyes. “And there’s not a single damn thing you can do. You just sit there and fight your life out every night, protecting a world full of murderers, rapists, torturers, abusers, racists, homophobes, liars, and thieves. But I can change that, Buffy. I can change it all. We—my colleagues and I—can remake the world. And you can get in on the ground floor. If you work for me, I can give you the power to make everything *right *. Think of it: all the vampires and demons gone, all of those evils you can’t fight—gone. A world at peace.”
Buffy stiffened at the last sentence. It had all sounded so reasonable. Reasonable? It was true. She fought supernatural demons day and night, while the world was just full of human ones. But she’d been on the lookout for tricks, and she’d found one. “Right—world at peace. You mean world dead, right?”
“I never said that,” Belial said, sitting back in his chair.
“Of course you didn’t.” Buffy smiled. “Look, it was a nice try, all right? But I have something that you’re probably not used to dealing with from other Slayers: my friends and my family. They’re my reason for fighting, and they’re my reward. And I’m not going to betray them. Now, why don’t you just drop it.”
To her surprise, Belial just smiled. “Your family and friends, eh? Let’s talk about them, then.”
*
The family and friends in question were all standing about watching a monitor in another room, which Angelus had mockingly dubbed “the Green Room.” Angelus himself was their sole guard, but he stood across the room from them, and Belial had armed him with a handgun. He had assured them that if anyone even twitched wrong, that they'd “get to watch Willow’s head explode.” He would then start working his way through the ranks of the mortals, so that by the time the Warriors got to him, there would be several more deaths on their consciences.
Everyone had been very careful not to make any threatening moves. Even Spike.
When Belial announced his desire to talk about Buffy’s family and friends, Angelus walked over, opened the door, then stepped back so his gun was still trained on his prisoners. “Alright, then. That’s your cue,” he grinned. “Willow in the back.”
*
Still grinning, Belial stood, walked across the library, and pulled the door open. “Come in,” he called.
Buffy sat bolt upright in surprise as almost everyone she’d ever cared about trooped in through the library doors: Angel led the way, followed by Faith. Buffy stiffened in her seat. *I should have known she wouldn’t stay in jail. So much for reform *. Next came Spike, Riley, her mother, Giles, Wesley, Cordelia, Anya, Xander, Oz(?) and Tara came in at the same time, each glancing worriedly over their shoulder at Willow, who brought up the rear. The doors closed behind them before she could get a good luck at the figure that was herding them, but it looked strangely familiar.
She did her best not to react beyond a smile of greeting at each of them. Except Faith and Spike, of course. She had the feeling that more than that would open up vulnerabilities to Belial. He didn’t need more help.
For some reason, they formed up in a line across the room from her. “Hmm,” Belial said thoughtfully, stroking his chin as he surveyed the line. “That’s odd...someone’s missing...ah, yes.” He nodded. “That’s right. Your father.” He smirked at her. “But then, you’re used to him not being there, aren’t you?” He shook his head in mock sympathy. “It’s just shameful, the way he treats you. He’ll probably show up halfway through your wedding, with a bouquet of flowers, asking to give you away.”
Buffy’s hands tightened on the arms of the chair, but fought down her reaction. *Don’t give him an opening, Buffy. *
Several members of the line tried to shout some variation on “How dare you,” but found themselves unable to speak.
Belial paced the length of the line once more, stroking his chin and examining the mortals assembled before him. Finally, he stopped and pointed at several of them. “You, you, and...you. Spike, Anyanka, Tara. Why don’t you go over there by the stacks and sit down. You’re no part of this. You, too, Mr. Wyndham-Price. You were never more than an annoyance.”
Spike, glad to hear this, went eagerly. Wesley followed, stiff with anger, defiantly refusing to look at the devil. Still, he’d seen Belial’s ruthlessness firsthand. Defying him now would be worse than useless. Anya, torn between her terror and former demonic selfishness, and her newfound love for Xander, wavered. She stood a few steps out from the line, her arm half-raised, as if beckoning Xander to follow. Tara, meanwhile clung tightly to Willow’s hand. She’d just spent an eternity with a gun pointed at her Willow’s head. She wasn’t going to abandon her now.
Belial smiled indulgently and waved them both toward the chairs where Spike and Wesley were already sitting.
Convinced, Anya left Xander with a last yearning look, and crossed to the chairs.
Tara looked past Willow, to Oz, who took Willow’s other hand. “He kills me first,” Oz said.
Tara nodded. She leaned forward, and pressed her forehead to Willow’s. “I love you, Silly Willy.”
“Love you, too.”
Tara crossed.
“Oh, please. Could the three of you get more melodramatic? You’re walking across a room.”
“It’s called love,” Buffy said softly from behind him. He turned to face her. “You don’t seem to know too much about it. That’s probably why you’re a devil.”
For the first time, Buffy saw real anger appear on the True Devil’s face. But it was gone as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by a venomous smirk. “Let’s finish talking about your precious friends and family. Then you can tell me how much of an asset love is.”
He took a step toward the line, then stopped short, looked at it for a moment, then gave a snort. “Tell me, Buffy,” he tossed over his shoulder. “How many times did you see them like this, lined up against you?”
Buffy looked away.
The smirk dropped from his face. “*How many *?”
“Couple,” she mumbled, still looking away.
He turned back to her, grinning smugly. “And when was that?”
Buffy looked up at him, her jaw stubbornly set.
He scowled. “*When *?”
Buffy tried to keep her mouth shut, but there was some sort of compulsion in Belial’s demands. She didn’t fight too hard, anyway. God only knew what he’d do if she frustrated him. “At the party, when I first got back, after I ran away,” she ground out. “And later, when they found out that I’d been hiding Angel.”
“I see.” He raised his eyes and tapped on his chin, pretending to consider this. “Now tell me if I have this straight: you’d been thrown out of your house, expelled from school, and charged with murder, all of which they knew. And they also knew that, since the world still existed, that you must have killed the body of the man you loved. Rather than fall on your sword, as I’m sure you must have been tempted to do—yes?”
Buffy didn’t answer, but she was staring at the floor and trembling. The old emotions were washing through her with a force that she didn’t think they still possessed. Those had been the most horrible moments—months—moments of her life. Some wounds had never quite healed. She’d tried to forget—after all, what was the point of holding on? But they were all coming back.
Satisfied, Belial continued. “Yes. Instead, you ran away. Then, after spending three months fending for yourself, you regained your sense of purpose after a visit to a hell. So you go home. And what greeting is awaiting you? This.”
He waved an arm at the line. Everyone except Angel, Faith, and Riley were fidgeting guiltily. “They don’t ask you what happened. They ostracize you, scold you, and then, in the middle of a party, when you can’t possibly defend yourself properly, they attack you. They never did apologize for that, did they?”
Buffy’s head was slowly rising. Another old emotion was returning. Anger. Resentment. “No, they didn’t.”
“But you apologized to all of them repeatedly, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It was like everything was my fault. I was Bad Buffy, and they were all...right. Never mind that I’d saved the world.”
“Exactly,” Belial agreed, nodding sympathetically. “And then, when they found out about Angel, they went and did it all over again, didn’t they?”
“I was afraid of how they’d react.” She cut a glare at Xander. “And, gasp of surprise, I was right. First thing they found out, they tried to kill him.”
*
*This is bad, * Giles thought. *Very, very bad. She’s warming to the subject. He’s starting to get through. *
“Wait a minute,” Xander protested.
*He’s letting us speak? * Giles thought. *Even worse. He must not fear anything we have to say at this point. *
*
“You have to look at it from our side,” Joyce said.
“No, I don’t.” Buffy snapped. Her mother blinked in astonishment. *That caught her off guard, didn’t it? Good. She’s not used to me standing up for myself. Maybe it’s time I started. * “You told me your side again and again. You never listened to mine. I think it’s about time.”
“One moment, Buffy.” Belial held up his hand. “We’ve only just begun. I’d like to go through and discuss each of them individually.” Buffy subsided and sat back in her chair. “Let’s start with the minor offenders, shall we?”
Belial walked to the end of the line where an impassive Oz had his arm around Willow, who was wringing her hands in an agony of terror and guilt, wavering between staring at Buffy and her own shoes. He circled behind them and laid a hand on each of their shoulders. Willow stiffened with fear. Oz tightened his grip. “Here we have Oz. Dependable, faithful...oh, wait.” He smirked. “Nearly got Willow—“ He patted Willow’s shoulder. “Killed two different ways when he sniffed another werewolf in heat, didn’t he? Then he runs away, and when he comes back, he’s welcomed with open arms! How fair is that?” He shook his head. Oz’s jaw tightened, and he stared straight ahead.
“And here,” He patted Willow’s shoulder. “We have Willow. Your best friend of all. The one who didn’t talk to you until it was time to yell at you when you came back from your summer away. The one who helped Cordelia with her homecoming campaign despite the fact that you didn’t have so much as a picture in the yearbook. The one who had you engaged to *Spike *.”
Spike opened his mouth to shout “Hey,” but thought better of it.
“And the one who believed him over you. Down there,” he pointed to Riley, who was near the other end of the line. His other hand remained on Willow’s shoulder. She was starting to tremble violently, and tears stood in her eyes. She tried to mouth ‘I’m sorry’ to Buffy, but Buffy just ignored her and looked where Belial was pointing. “We have your current boyfriend. Not much on his record. Freaked out a little from steroid withdrawal. Didn’t trust you when you went to LA. Screwed Faith. You know, small stuff.” He grinned. “Oh, I know. She was in your body at the time. But don’t you ever think that maybe he should have been able to tell? That the radical shift in personality, dress, and speech patterns, should have tipped him off that something was wrong? But then,” he chuckled. “The only person who *did * notice was Willow’s girlfriend. Who’d never met you before.”
“And beside him,” Belial continued, shifting his pointing finger. “We have Cordelia. With her, it’s mostly an accumulation of little things: a few semesters of persecution, that comment about ‘this conversation is for people who actually have a future’—“ He turned to Cordelia. “That was truly cold, by the way. It’s not often that a mortal’s cruelty impresses a devil.” He gave her the thumbs up. She took a sudden interest in her shoes. “Congratulations.” He turned back to Buffy. “I think the worst thing she’s done is make it so that the only sign you were ever in High School is a name at the end of the seniors chapter of the yearbook. Getting an icepack to shrink her pores was more important than telling you about photos.”
“Now,” he clapped his hands together, and started rubbing them eagerly. “Let’s move on to the big ones, shall we?”
He stepped over behind Giles and placed his hands on the ex-Watcher’s shoulders. “Here we have Rupert Giles, your Watcher. More of a father to you than the man who sired you. The one who only gave you a bit of a scolding for sheltering the man he blamed for his lover’s murder. And yet—“ Belial held up a finger. “And yet, he found it in his heart to poison you. Make you helpless and send you against a vampire in a test that he *knew * killed nine out of every ten Slayers who took it, just because a group of dusty old men hundreds of miles from the battle lines told him to.” He leaned forward. “You were only following orders, though, weren’t you, Rupert?” He whispered in Giles’s ear. Giles tried to lock his jaw, and keep it from quivering. Two years later, would that night never stop haunting him? “Let’s not even go into how he abandoned you in your time of need at the beginning of last year. It just...pales so, in comparison.”
He released Giles and walked past Xander, Joyce, Cordelia, and Riley, until he reached Faith. She tried to shrug off his hands when he took her by the shoulders, but he tightened his grip, and she found herself faced with the choice of holding still or having her shoulder bones crushed. She doubted that B would care either way. “And here we are. The person you hate most in the entire world.”
“That’s right,” Buffy said, rising from her chair. “What happened, ‘F’?” She asked as she took a few steps toward the line. “Decide that you were tired of the whole ‘being good’ thing? It got a little tough, so you decided to break out and make a few more messes for us to clean up? Cause me a little more grief?”
“Naw, B. It wasn’t like that. Your new buddy here kidnapped me from my cell.”
“Sure he did.”
“And why shouldn’t you hate her?” Belial continued, as if the exchange hadn’t taken place. “It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call what she did to you rape.” Faith froze, her eyes wide. *I never thought of it that way. Oh, God, B... * “Think about it: she invaded your body. She would have stolen it entirely and left you to spend your life dodging the Council and the police if it weren’t for Tara. She had your mother and your other friends at her mercy, and they didn’t even know the danger they were in. And you were powerless to help them. She took away so much of your power, your sense of control. She took Angel away from you. And she took something else.” He paused, savoring the juicy bit of information he was about to impart. “Did you know that the first time Riley said he loved you, she was the one to hear it?”
Buffy’s fists were clenched so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. “She was, huh?”
Faith’s hands and mouth were working helplessly. “B...I...if I could...”
“Of course you would,” Belial said patronizingly. With a pat on her back, he moved on to Angel.
“Wait a moment, now, Buffy. You’ll notice that I still have three more to go. Maybe...” He laid a hand on one of Angel’s shoulders. “There are some people you should hate even more than her.”
Buffy, who hadn’t even realized she’d started to pace up and down in front of the line, stopped. A faint suspicion returned to her face. “How do you figure that?”
“Well, he has caused you more suffering than just about anyone else, hasn’t he? But never mind that. That was always done with the best of intentions. He always broke your heart for your own good.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully with his free hand. “*Except * when he sided with Faith instead of you. After all, you were only the love of his unlife, and she’d only tried to kill him a * few* times. Why not?”
“Faith wins again.” Buffy agreed.
“Just so. But that’s neither here nor there. From some of these that have gone before, nothing upsets you more than when someone takes control of your life away from you. True?”
“True,” Buffy nodded.
“Well, our boy Angel here has made some fairly important decisions for you, without even asking for your input, hasn’t he? He dumped you right before the Prom—“
“Yeah. He couldn’t have waited another day. He had to get me out of his life as quickly as possible.”
“Buffy, it wasn’t like that—“
“Oh? Then what was it like? I told you that I wanted my life to be with you, and you said you didn’t.”
“I meant—“
“Who cares what you meant? You kept going on and on about the life I deserved, but you never asked about the life I wanted. I was eighteen, Angel. That’s an adult. And I’m the Slayer. I’ve had to deal with more responsibility than most people ever do. I think I know what I want out of life.” Angel’s head dropped in shame. Buffy didn’t notice her mother stiffen. A cruel grin crossed Buffy’s face. “That used to be you, Angel. Now it’s Riley.” Then her face clouded. “Or, it was.”
Again, Belial continued as if the interruption hadn’t happened. “He asked the Oracles to unmake the day that he was human.”
Angel’s head snapped up.
Everyone else’s head snapped toward him. “What?”
Buffy had gone very still. “He did what?”
“Oh, he still hasn’t told you about that, has he? When you visited him in LA last November, and the Mohra demon attacked, he didn’t kill it so easily the first time.”
“First time?”
“Yes. The first time, you chased it into the sewer, and some of its blood mixed with Angel’s. It made him human, and you had one ecstatically happy day. In the end, though, he decided that he preferred being a superhero, so he had the Powers cause a temporal loop for him. Only he remembered the lost day, so he remembered how to kill the Mohra.”
Buffy was trembling again, but for a different reason this time. She slowly raised her fists to her face, and tears flowed down her cheeks. “Do you hate me that much?”
Cordelia and Faith both tried to protest, but found themselves voiceless, leaving Angel to try to defend himself. Something he’d never done well before. “Buffy, you don’t understand.”
“I think I do.”
“You can’t listen to him, he’s—“
“Lying? I haven’t lied to you once yet. Him? He didn’t even tell you that you’re married.”
“Married?” Buffy asked, breathlessly.
“Married?” Joyce demanded, outraged.
Riley said nothing. But if anyone had been watching him at that moment, they would have seen his heart break in his face.
“Absolutely. He never explained the whole truth about the Claddaghs to you. They’re Irish wedding rings. You exchanged the rings, and promises of eternal love, on the docks the night of your seventeenth birthday. Then, later that night you made love. Also known as exchanging vows and consummating the wedding. It was a warrior’s wedding, but a wedding nonetheless. You’re married. At least as far as I—and He—“ He pointed at the ceiling. “Are concerned.”
Angel’s face was a mask of shock. “I never even thought—I never realized—you have to believe—“
Buffy’s shook her head, the hurt written on her face. “No, you never did think, did you.” She began to turn away.
“Wait!” Belial called, holding out his hand.
Buffy looked back over her shoulder.
“There’s still two left.” He shoved Joyce and Xander forward. “They might be enough. After all, you have the bond of the only child of an only parent with your mother. And Xander has proven his willingness to go to the wall for you again and again. Surely, a family of one and one true friend are enough to fight for.”
“Oh, please.” Buffy turned back. “ ‘Bond’? Is that what you call it? Is that what you call never trusting me? Ever? Treating me like a delinquent and then throwing me out of the house when I have to save the world—again?” She strode across the room until she stood only a few feet from her mother, then put her hands on her hips. “You never apologized to me for that, mom. I apologized to everyone for months, and you kept rubbing it in my face how untrustworthy I was because I ran away, but you never owned your part in it. The closest you came was ‘I reacted badly.’ Yeah, you reacted badly—you threw me out, and then had the *gall * to act like it was all my fault that I ran away! And let’s not forget that you tried to burn me at the stake for my own good, mother. Is that a bond?”
Joyce was wringing her hands. “Buffy, I’m sorry, it wasn’t...it was—“
“The demon? Please. I know what someone fighting a spell looks like, and you weren’t it. Besides, you never listened to my reasons, why should I care about yours? And sorry? Now? We never talked about it at all. I just let it go, because you were so wigged and I didn’t want to make you feel worse. Not that that ever stopped you. Two years later is a hell of a time for sorry.” Then she spun on Xander. “And a true friend? In what alternate reality?” Xander looked shocked, but also...worried? Buffy didn’t care. She barreled ahead: “When Angel lost his soul, Xander, you...you *gloated *. You hated Angel so much that you didn’t care about me. You just kept pushing and pushing me to kill him, and rubbed my face in everything he did. As if I didn’t have enough guilt of my own. Then, when I finally do kill him—and I sure as hell didn’t want to talk to you then. You would have been *happy *—I run away. And when I come back, were you worried about me at all? Did you care about all the shit I went through? No, you just cared that I had ‘ruined your life’ for a summer that I would have been away anyway! Then when he comes back, you get everyone together to gang up on me and send Faith to kill him! Gee, why didn’t I want to tell you?” She was advancing on him now, and he was trying to back up, but somehow his legs weren’t working. “You are such a hypocrite, you know that Xander?” she said, her voice falling dangerously quiet. “I forgave you instantly for the Hyena thing, for getting me turned into a rat with that stupid love spell—everything you ever did I dropped. But every time someone suggested something other than killing Angel, you shoved Ms. Calendar in everyone’s face. Why? Willow and Giles loved her way more than you did. Why did you keep harping on it? Or were you just using her to manipulate them?” Xander was studying his shoes and squirming. “I mean, God forbid that anyone else should ever be forgiven, right?”
“That’s true,” Belial supplied. “A Harris doesn’t forgive. A Harris demands just punishment. Xander learned that at his father’s knee.” He grinned unpleasantly. “Didn’t you, Xander?”
Unconsciously, Xander’s hand strayed to his backside. When he realized what he was doing, he covered the action by inserting his hand in his back pocket.
“Why did you hate him so much, anyway, Xander? Is there a single part of your mind that isn’t made of jealousy?”
Belial cleared his throat. “I’m glad that your feelings on them are clear. Otherwise, I would truly hate to tell you what I now must. First, about Mommy dearest, here.” He hooked an arm around Joyce’s shoulders. “Did you ever wonder what happened the day that Angel dumped you? Why he went from perfectly alright in the morning, to dropping you in the evening?”
“Yes, now that you mention it.”
“While you were at school, your dear mother here went to him, and told him this:”
Joyce suddenly felt her mouth start to move. Sick terror flooded through her, and she tried to fight it. It had been the right thing to do, she knew, but she also knew that her daughter would hate her for it. But despite her efforts, she heard her voice saying “I don’t think I have to tell you that you and Buffy come from different worlds. When it comes to you, Angel, Buffy’s not a Slayer. She’s just like any other young woman in love. You’re all she can see of tomorrow. But I think we both know there’s gonna be some hard choices ahead. If she can’t make them, you’re going to have to. I know you care about her. I just hope you care enough.” Then she was silent. But it was already too late.
Buffy was shaking her head desperately. “No.”
“Buffy—“
“Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me he’s lying. Tell me he’s making you lie.”
“Honey—“
“*Don’t honey me *!” Buffy shrieked. “It *is * true, isn’t it? It *is *! Oh, God. Oh, *God *.” She bent double, looking like she was going to be sick.
“Honey, he was bad for you.” Joyce said weakly.
Buffy’s head snapped up. Her eyes held an arctic chill that Joyce had never expected to see in her daughter, certainly not directed at her. “How *could * you,” Buffy grated out. She straightened, and took a menacing step. “*How dare you *.”
Joyce’s first instinct was to try and assert her motherly authority. Subdue her first, explain second. Surely Buffy would understand if she explained, realize that her mother had been right to do what she did, settle down and be a good daughter again. But suddenly she remembered that night three years before, when Buffy had pushed her out of the way with a flick of the wrist. She was suddenly aware of just how powerful her daughter was, and she backed away.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Belial scolded. “No fair doing the finale before the show is actually over.” He hooked his other arm around Xander’s shoulders. “Here we have a lad that I must admit, I admire. His blind hatred, his disregard for the people he supposedly cares about. It’s beautiful. And he succeeded in doing something that all of the demons and devils in the worlds have been trying to do since the Dawn Times: he sent a perfectly innocent man to Hell.”
“What are you talking about?” Buffy demanded. “*I * sent Angel to Hell.”
“True. But did you ever wonder why Willow sent the message she did if she was making a second attempt to restore his soul?”
*
Willow had already put it together. “Oh, Xander, no,” she whispered.
*
Buffy wasn’t far behind Willow. “You don’t mean...”
“I do. Welcome to the single greatest lie in the history of creation. Perhaps the single most evil act of all time. What did Willow say, Xander?”
“Kick his ass,” Xander answered, no more able to stop his mouth than Joyce had been.
Belial stepped quietly back and out of the way.
His voice free, Xander tried to defend himself: “But if I’d told you, you might have let your guard down. He might have killed you.”
Buffy took a step toward him. “You knew.”
Xander took a step back. “He might have sent the whole world to Hell.”
Buffy took another step toward him. “You knew, and you lied.”
Xander took another step back. “He was a killer. A cold-blooded killer. He murdered Ms. Calendar! No one else seemed to want to remember that.“
“You knew, you lied, and then you had the sheer balls to give me a hard time when I got back.” Her voice was deadly quiet, enough so that it didn’t really interrupt him.
“I know you didn’t, you just wanted your boyfriend back.” Xander slapped both of his hands to his mouth. He suddenly wished to God that the Harris family method of defending by attacking had shorted out, just that once.
Buffy’s eyes flew wide, and blazed with a white-hot hatred that Xander had never seen in them, not even directed toward Faith.
With a shriek of rage, she lunged for him.
Suddenly, Xander found himself on his ass, halfway across the room. Riley and Angel each had Buffy by an arm, and they were desperately trying to hold her back, while she struggled to get to him, shrieking. “Let me go! I’ll kill him! I’ll fucking kill him! Do you hear me Xander? I’m going to break your fucking neck, just to feel your spine pop! I’m going to rip your throat out with my teeth, just to find out what your blood tastes like!”
Belial was laughing.
Despite the fact that their combined weight was nearly five times her own, Buffy was driving Riley and Angel back, step by step, by main force. She was a hundred-pound bulldozer. “Get out of my way! Why are you defending him?”
“You don’t want to do this, Buffy,” Riley said through teeth gritted in effort. “He’s your friend, remember? Belial is playing you.”
“*Don’t tell me what I want to do *!” She swung the arm that he hung on, and he found himself spinning across the floor, past Xander, until he crashed into the check-out desk. He lay there for a moment, taking a quick inventory of his limbs. At the same time, he was thinking about the fact that his girlfriend, who had taken apart whole Initiative squads for a simple workout, was more furious than he had ever seen anyone in his entire life. He’d seen people kill for less anger.
*We are in very, very serious trouble. *
“Are you on his side, now?” Buffy demanded from Angel. “Like you were on hers?”
Angel didn’t have to ask whose. “I can’t let you do this,” he answered.
In reply, she slammed her fist into the small of his back. He cried out in pain and staggered away. It was her chance to run for Xander, but her attention had turned to him. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Even better,” Belial murmured.
“You just ruptured Xander’s kidney,” Angel said.
“What?”
“If it had been Xander you’d hit, instead of me, you would’ve ruptured his kidney. He’d be bleeding internally.”
“So what?” She said coldly, advancing on him.
“Don’t say that, Buffy,” He pleaded.
She answered with a roundhouse kick to the face that nearly took him off his feet. “Don’t tell me what I can say.”
“You just broke his jaw and whiplashed his neck,” Angel replied. “If you do this, Belial wins. He owns you.”
“Shut up.” She punched him in the stomach.
“You just ruptured some of Xander’s guts—“ another punch. “—and broke some of his ribs,” he gasped. “Maybe some of them punctured a lung. I know we’ve all done you terrible wrongs. But try and remember the good. That’s what he’s trying to make you forget. Xander—“
“Shut up!” She kicked him in the balls, and as he bent double, she grabbed his hair and slammed his nose into her knee. “Don’t even speak his name, you traitor.”
“You just broke his nose.”
*
Across the room, the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations watched in horror as Buffy flew into a frenzy, shrieking “Shut up!” over and over again, battering Angel so fast that he couldn’t keep up with “Xander’s” injuries.
Riley and Xander tried to step forward, but Giles grabbed them both. “No.”
“Mr. Giles, we have to stop her. She’s killing him! And if—“
“Mr. Finn, take a good look at her. She’s berserk. Anything human that steps out there will be killed. Even a Slayer,” he called to Faith. “And then Belial will have her.” He snapped his head toward the members of the old Scooby Gang. “It seems Belial’s re-creation was correct in every detail. I see the weapons cage. Arm yourselves. Now.”
*
Belial ignored the mortal insects as they scurried for their weapons. The show he was watching was far more entertaining. Buffy was burying Angel under an avalanche of blows—here an elbow to the face, there a kick to the knee. The vampire, for his part, refused to defend himself. He stumbled blindly wherever the blows drove him, until he crashed against the library’s central table.
“Buffy, please listen to me. I’m not on Xander’s side. But if you’d started hitting him, you wouldn’t have been able to stop—“
Buffy didn’t answer. She dropped almost to one knee in front of him, then came up in an uppercut that came from her toes.
Time slowed.
Angel’s head snapped back violently.
“Angel!” Cordelia and Faith both cried.
Someone as small as Buffy shouldn’t have been able to move Angel’s formidable mass. But she was the Slayer, and the punch lifted him off his feet and launched him.
Angel arced across the large, circular table, until he crashed down on the other edge, rolled, and fell to the floor.
There was a long moment of silence and stillness, then Angel slowly rose to his feet. “There you are, then, Buffy. You did it. You just killed Xander. You beat him to a bloody pulp, then broke his neck and caved in his skull. All over something that happened nearly three years ago. A bad judgment call in a supremely bad situation, and you’ve murdered one of your best friends. Did it make you feel better?”
With an incoherent howl of fury, Buffy launched herself across the table and grabbed Angel by the throat, letting her momentum carry them both crashing to the floor. Wildly, she rained blows on his head, chest, and feebly raised arms. She wanted to make him scream, and bleed, and cry, and hurt as much she did, with all of her old half-healed wounds ripped open and bleeding and dripping their infected pus.
At the moment, he was only doing one of the four. Bleeding. He wasn’t even bothering to inhale anymore, so he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of grunts or cries.
Enraged at that final denial, she lunged to her feet, seized a chair from the table, and raised it high over her head.
(Across the room Cordelia cried no and started to run to save the big brother that her father had never sired and her mother never borne but the only Giles the only father who ever cared for her caught her by the wrist and would not let her go)
She brought chair down with a brutal cry and smashed it across his already-broken chest. Angel screamed as ribs pulped. With a gleam of unholy satisfaction in her eyes, Buffy twirled the broken piece of wood that remained in her hand, then dropped to one knee as she plunged the stake toward Angel’s heart.
Belial grinned in manic anticipation.
Cordelia strained against Giles.
Buffy stopped, the point of the stake just piercing the skin over Angel’s heart. They were frozen in that tableau for a moment, her kneeling over him, panting, her mad, blazing blue eyes burning their way into brown ones, which were in two kinds of agony. “Why?” She demanded. “I want to know that before I dust you like I should have years ago. Why?”
A chance. An opening in the blind fury that shouldn’t have been there. Anya had said that only someone with assistance from the Powers could resist Belial. Was this their assistance? Angel didn’t care. He had a chance, however small, and he was going to make the most of it.
Usually, when a vampire is hurt badly, that vampire gorges on blood. The blood is the life, and it worked to restore as well as maintain. There was even a trick that Darla and the Master had taught him: rapid healing. All one had to do was force all of the life that one had stolen into the task of healing. Angel had never done it; it left the vampire in question starved and exhausted. But sometimes, there was no choice. He couldn’t speak with his chest crushed, and he doubted that Buffy would ask again. But he’d already had to heal so much, and it had been so long since he’d fed...
Buffy gasped in astonishment as Angel visibly withered before her. His skin pulled tight to his bones, his eyes and cheeks grew hollow, and his hair was suddenly shot through with silver. But his chest suddenly filled out to its natural shape.
“Why? Why...Faith?” He whispered, unable to muster the air for more. “ ‘Cause she needed me. She was on the edge...trying to die. Everything else? ‘Cause I loved you. Always, always ‘cause I loved you. Sorry if I messed up...so sorry.”
The fire started to fade from Buffy’s eyes, and her stake arm relaxed.
“Remember the good, Buffy. Remember...” Angel’s eyes drifted shut.
Buffy stared for a moment, then shook herself, as if waking up from a doze. “Angel?” No answer. Her stake fell to the floor with a clatter. She grabbed his shoulders and began to shake him. “Angel? Angel, wake up!”
No response. He was limp.
She knew what she had to do. Only chance.
She forced her forearm into his mouth, grimacing as she jammed it against his fangs. “Come on, Angel, drink. You know it’s good for you, come on, baby, drink, drink...”
*
Angel dimly felt something forced into his mouth, a remote twinge of pain as his teeth were jarred.
Then he tasted it. The sweetest, most delicious nectar he had ever tasted, dripping onto his parched, shredded tongue and burning its way down his ravaged throat, leaving a trail of whole, healed flesh behind it. He suddenly realized what was happening. How could he not? Every drop carried her essence. He tried to spit her arm out, but she held it in.
*
Buffy smiled and wept with wild relief as Angel began to revive and struggle. He wasn’t taking much at all, a bare trickle compared to the time he’d been infected with Killer of the Dead, but her potent blood was healing him like a draught from the Holy Grail. His limbs straightened, and his flesh filled in like he was an inflating balloon.
“What are you doing? Finish it!”
Belial. She’d forgotten.
“No.”
“I said finish it!” There was a compulsion in his voice. She felt a sudden, wild, surge of rage, and the stake was back in her hand somehow. But if the big...liar thought that he could force her when convincing had failed, he was wrong. It was just a question of channeling the rage...
“I said no!” She yelled as she leaped to her feet and flung the stake at him.
He caught it between the tips of two fingers, and his expression iced over. He stretched out his free arm.
Buffy suddenly found herself hurtling across the room, kicking and flailing for purchase in the empty air until her throat slammed into a hand like a piece of iron, that closed around her neck like a vice. She beat on the arm that held her and kicked at her assailant’s chest desperately, with force that would have shattered human bones.
Not even a flinch.
As she began a frantic attempt to pry the fingers from her throat, Belial twisted his hand slightly, to force her to look into his eyes.
Buffy gasped in horror. Belial’s eyes were beautiful, a clear, ice-crystal blue. But they were full of nothing but pure, untinctured hatred. A hatred that was older than time and deeper than the world, a hatred that she couldn’t even begin to imagine. If every moment of hatred ever felt by the entire human race were brought together and condensed into one instant, it would be just a drop in the ocean of the hate Belial felt for her, personally. Just because she was human. Just because she still had love, and hope, and purpose.
His hand tightened, his fingers digging into her neck like steel prongs. Her struggles started to weaken. Her chest burned, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t force air into it. But she knew she wouldn’t have time to strangle.
“One dies,” Belial whispered. “And the next is called. Perhaps the next will be more reasonable.”
Then Faith slammed an axe into the crook of his elbow.
Buffy dropped to the ground. Gasping and whooping in precious air, she scrambled away across the floor, clutching her throat.
Belial’s head snapped toward Faith, who was staring in awe at the still-attached arm. His eyes flared, and twin lightning bolts slammed her into the wall, thirty feet away, beyond the stacks.
Riley flew in from the other direction and broke a baseball bat across the back of the True Devil’s neck. Not pausing to marvel at the broken weapon or the foe that didn’t even seem to notice being struck, he immediately shifted to trying to stab with the broken ends.
Then the Scooby Gang, minus its three injured Warriors, piled on.
For a moment, Belial was at the center of a flurry of medieval hand weapons: Giles thrust with a rapier, while Wesley laid on with a war-pick, Xander swung a mace, and Oz drove in with a spear. There were a number of knives in evidence, including a ninja punch-knife. Joyce even found a fire-axe somewhere...
It didn’t work, of course. After the first round of attacks bounced off skin and cloth that showed no sign of injury, Belial flung his arms wide, and they were all hurled away across the room by a tornadic blast of air.
“You...you insects!” He spluttered in outrage. “You disgusting, upright blobs of slime! You dare to raise your filthy monkey paws to someone you should be groveling on your bellies and worshipping? I have faced the wrath of the Tyrant, and you think you can hurt me? You aren’t even insects to me. You aren’t even microbes. You are...dust motes bouncing off my skin. You are—“
“Yeah, yeah. Foolish mortals. You dare to challenge my awesome power, blah, blah. We’ve heard it before and we’ve heard it done better.”
All heads turned to Buffy, who stood beside the table, a stake in her hand. Angel stood beside her. Thin, and wounded, his hair still salted with silver, but standing nonetheless.
“That’s my girl,” Riley grinned, climbing to his feet.
Belial looked around at the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations as they all followed suit.
“I think it’s time,” Belial said in a dreadfully quiet voice. “That you see just what it is that you challenge.”
He raised his arms again. And he started to grow.
The cloth of his navy-blue suit merged with his skin, and the color spread to his face and hands.
Seven feet tall. Growing.
His silver hair rushed forth from his head and down his back like a waterfall, stopping just below his shoulder blades.
Eight feet tall. Growing.
His eyes, already the size of the palms of Buffy’s hands, became twin pools of swirling color, and began to blaze with light.
Ten feet tall. Growing.
Twin panes of light like stained glass wings coalesced at his back.
Twelve feet tall. Growing.
“I take back what I offered to you.”
Suddenly, the library was as they all knew it to be: a burnt-out husk of charred boards, shattered windows, and splintered furniture. Belial stood on air above a gaping hole in the floor that hadn’t been there a moment before.
Fifteen feet. Growing.
Awe filled them, not just at the True Devil’s size, or heartbreaking beauty, but at his overwhelming grandeur. He had once been an angel—they could believe that, now—and he was glorious even in ruin.
A star appeared on all each side of his head, then expanded until the points touched.
*A halo, that’s his halo, I never imagined, it’s nothing like the pictures * Giles babblethought.
Averting her eyes, shielding her face, Joyce slowly dropped to her knees.
Anya followed.
One by one, the Scooby Gang succumbed. Some resisted, some just fell, but all were driven to their knees by the crushing majesty of the fallen angel.
Finally, he spoke. “Bow down to me.” His voice had changed. It was the most beautiful thing any of them had ever heard. The instant the sound was gone, they wanted it back. But then the import of the words penetrated their minds, and they raised their heads to look around.
Buffy, Angel, and Riley.
The Warriors were still standing.
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