“Gee, that explains it.” Kennedy huffed in sarcasm as she quickened her pace to catch up to Buffy and Spike.
Andrew and Xander walked hurriedly behind them, almost at a low jog as the Slayer and Vampire power walked up ahead. They were on their way to the Magic Box, hoping that the Master would be waiting in his children’s death bed. It was a long walk, and the wind was going against them. The slight rain that hailed down on them was enough to just be in the way. The first order of business was the Master, take out one of the pains in the ass, and they were under less pressure. Then they would work on the First.
Xander blinked, rain drops falling from his lashes and onto his cheeks. Glancing at his watch, he noticed that it was seven that night. Throughout the day of darkness and harsh rains, the coming of the night hadn’t shown itself. He looked up at the sky to find the moon, but it was nowhere to be found.
“No moon out.” He said.
“What does that have to do with wanting to die?” Kennedy asked him.
“Because she offered herself to the First, you bloody git!” Spike hollered as he whipped around and stopped.
Buffy turned with him, hand on her hips, a low glare in her eyes. Her jaw was clenched, easy for anyone to see, anger painted all over her face.
“I don’t have time to play mind games with you, Kennedy. Just accept it. Move on.”
“Where’s Willow?” Kennedy suddenly asked. “Why isn’t she here, just ‘accepting it.’ Huh? Is it because she knows that there is nothing to be worth accepting?”
“No.” Buffy said slowly. “It’s because she’s dead.” She turned and began walked again, only to be stopped by Kennedy’s hand on her shoulder, easily turning her around. Buffy’s shoulders slumped, her face fell into sadness as her eyes fell onto Kennedy’s stricken face.
“What?”
“The library. The building that was collapsed that we were just fighting in front of? Willow was in there. She left the hospital about an hour ago to go and research there. I’m…” Tears filled her eyes, fell down her cheeks, and the stake she had been holding so tightly in her hands cluttered to the ground. “I can’t…we can’t think about that right now because we have to…”
“Bitch!” Kennedy screamed at her. The potentials hand raced through the air, and collided with Buffy’s right cheek. Clear salty tears fell from her eyes, ran down her face, and mixed with the rain water coming down on them. “You wouldn’t…she’s alive! I know she is!”
“Kennedy…” Xander said, his eyes watering. “She’s telling you the truth.” He looked down at the ground, swallowing his throat. “But we can’t…we have other things we have to worry about.”
“Other things? Other things? How do you even know that she’s in there? That she isn’t alive?” Kennedy screamed at them. She turned and ran, her feet carrying her towards the U.C. Sunnydale library.
Xander turned to follow her, Buffy sobs stopping him.
“No…let her…let her go. We don’t…”
Spike’s hand found it’s way on her back, and pulled her small slim body to his.
“We uh…maybe we should…” Andrew started.
“No.” Xander stopped him. “We aren’t going back for her. We have to keep going. After the Master and the First are taken care of, we’ll have time to worry about it. But not right now.”
“How can you say that?” Andrew asked him. “Willow was your best friend! She was my friend, and she even tried to kill me! We owe it to her to find her…Kennedy’s right. We don’t know that she’s there.”
“I have to agree with Spock on this one…” Spike said, Buffy pulling away from him.
“What?” She wipped the tears from her shock written eyes.
“The Witch – she could still be alive. If she is, we need her. We could use her for this battle. Hell, she’s the one who practically bagged the First the…first time we bagged it.”
“How can you say that? Do you know how much it kills me to leave her there? I know that she’s dead Spike. I heard it happen. I know that she was in there. You even heard her say that she was…”
“You don’t know that!” Andrew yelled at her. “Neither of you do. She could have left there. What if she’s in trouble? What if she’s bleeding to death on the lawn across the street from the library?”
“And what if she’s already dead?!?!” Buffy yelled back, her voice high pitched, reeked with sobs. “You think I don’t know that she could be…dying in there? But I can’t worry about that right now. I can’t worry about saving my best friend when the world needs saved now!”
“Ya, your best friend.” Spike told her, his eyes pierced blue and hard. “Your best friend, who never once turned her back on you, not even when the world was at stake.”
“If it was the world or Buffy, she’d do the right thing.” Xander said, his voice small. “And that’s what we have to do.” He meet each one of their eyes. “The right thing.”
“Ya, Puppy Boy?” Spike asked him. “And what’s that to you?”
Molly bent over, hands on her knees, deep breaths inhaling themselves into her lungs. Selena and Anna stopped behind her, each in the same position. Ahead of them, Riley and Sam stopped at the disappearance of the potentials running footsteps. Sam walked over to them, Riley close behind.
“Come on.” He told them. “We have to find them.”
“Will you shut up about it already?” Molly asked, standing up straight. “We aren’t going to find them. They aren’t at the house, the library’s been destroyed, and the Magic Box is deserted still. We’ve got no where else to look.”
“They could have been on there way to one of them. We have to double back.”
“Then we would have found them.” Anna backed up her fellow potential.
“Not if they went another way.” Riley persisted.
“And if not?” Molly asked.
“Then…then we have to keep looking.”
“Because that’s done us so good in the past.” Selena said. “Look, I can’t even run anymore, I think I’m going to drop over dead.”
“Then we’ll split up.” Riley told them. “I’ll go with…you and you…” He pointed to Anna and Molly.
“Ya, and while you go with Molly, the one with the English accent, and Anna, the other one, I, Selena, will go with Sam. What a perfect way to die.”
“Hey!” Sam shouted. “We aren’t splitting up, and we aren’t giving up either. If we want to win this, we have to stick together.”
“And if we want to stay alive,” Anna said dully, “we have to stock up on weapons and go into the fight blinded by stupidity.”
“She’s right.” Sam said, “We need to stock up on weapons.”
“Good.” Molly said, “So we agree. We can go back to the Summers’, stock up on weapons, look for Buffy on the way, and finally get in a good cry.”
“A good cry?” Riley asked.
“Ya.” Anna told him teary eyed. “Dawn’s dead. You said Willow had gone to the library to research, and now the building is gone. Destroyed, demolish, non-existent, surrounded by cops, whatever you want to say about it, and her dead body is probably still inside. So yes, I think a good cry is in order.”
“Amen to that.” Selena said sadly, grasping Anna and Molly’s hands in her own, squeezing them lightly. “Lets get on with it.”
“Then go.” Buffy told the blonde vampire. “Go and find Willow, tell her how I was going to just leave here there while I went to go save the world, and then come running back when she yells at you for not being my backup and getting me killed.”
“Fine. I will.” The vampire scorned at her as he turned and stalked off into the night, his shoulders taut.
“Me too.” Andrew said, his eyes cold. “And I thought you guys were her best friends. Spike, wait up!” He ran after the vampire, leaving Buffy and Xander to walk into the darkness alone.
“It’s just us then.” Buffy said once the two were out of sight. Her eyes meet Xander’s. “You ready for this?”
He nodded. “Ya…but then why do I feel so bad about not going with them?”
“Because you know that I do too, and that we’re doing the right thing. We can’t risk everything just for…Oh God, Xander. What are we doing? Are we so thick headed and heartless that we’re just leaving her? That we aren’t even going to look for her?” Buffy cried out.
“She’ll be alright – all the good she’s done…she’ll rest in peace, Buff…”
“Amen…” Her eyes were distant, almost nonexistent.
Around them, the rain started the beat down, large drops of water rushed at them through the raging wind.
“We should find somewhere to go.” Xander told her. “We need to get inside, it’s getting pretty bad out again.”
Lighting stuck a tree not fifteen feet away, the thunder from the sky drowned out the sound of the tree hitting the pavement. Buffy only nodded, grabbed his hand, and pulled him back towards her house. The five minute trek would be the longest one in her entire life.
“No,” Selena told Riley, “we are lost. And we have to get inside somewhere, now. It’s getting really bad out.”
Riley missed half of what she said due to the wind and sounds of pelting rain, but he figured it out by the movements of her mouth. Nodding, he pointed to his right at a house with a tree through part of it. It wasn’t the best, but it would do. He only hoped that the people who lived there weren’t home. He lead the potentials and his wife to the front door, kicked it in, and almost fell inside. Catching himself, he walked into the darkened room to his left. Thunder shook the whole house as the door was slammed shut by Anna.
“Are you sure this place is safe?” Molly asked, her eyes examining the room around her.
“It’ll have to be.” Riley said.
“Yet, somehow it isn’t.” A voice said, and through the darkness, his vampiric features were clear.
Buffy stumbled up the stairs and through the hallway, surveying the damage on her way. She hadn’t really gotten that close up of a look when they had she had come in for weapons, but now that she saw the damage, she wondered how the ones who survived the fall from Dawn’s room to the first floor, did. Xander breath was warm against the back of her neck as she walked past part of the broken hallway, past what used to be Dawn’s room, and into her own. Her legs wobbled as she made her way to her bed. Falling onto the soft mattress, her feet relieved, she chocked out a sob. Xander was at her side, his arms around her, his tears mixing with her own.
“Did we really leave her there to die?” She asked him quietly.
“She would have done the same if it meant saving the world.”
“But shouldn’t we have gone back there, and not come here?”
“Look outside Buffy…” He told her, pointing out her window. “We wouldn’t be able to see two feet in front of us.”
“Maybe not…but…Andrew was right Xander. We are her best friends, we are supposed to be at her side, looking for her.”
“Maybe…but maybe not. What if we went there, and the world ended? We’d go down in history as the Dumbies who saved their friend instead of the world.”
Water dripped off of his hair, and onto her clothes as he pulled back from their embrace. Their eyes meet, the tint of sadness in them catching each other. It was wrong, very wrong, and not the time, but it was the place. He leaned his head in, stopping for a moment to see if Buffy would pull away, but she didn’t. Their eyes were connected – friend to friend, Warrior to Soldier. Closing his eyes, Xander’s lips softly touched Buffy’s. Wrapping his arms around her waist, and trailing them up to under her arms, he drew her to him. She kissed him back, the need and want for fire and passion there, pushing the kiss into something more.
“Xander…” She moaned as his hands swooped under her shirt and fiddled with her bra strap.
“We…” He pulled back, his hands stopping their actions. “We should be fighting…looking for the Master…”
“Later.” She said, pulling him into another kiss, at least this would help her forget.
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