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God Save the Queen by SRoni [Reviews - 0]	ChaptersStory Index1. Chapter 12. Chapter 23. Chapter 3 >>

God Save the Queen
by SRoni
Copyright June 2004

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss Whedon and the WB Network (and UPN, and Sandollar Productions, and whoever else has a legal claim that I don’t).

Spoilers: Season Two in general, but this is an AU.

Credits and acknowledgments: This story was inspired — to a point — by Mediancat’s “Dancing” series. Thanks also to Aadler for help and encouragement.

Feedback: Much appreciated, but no flames, please.

Chapter I

How? How could she decide? If she chose one, Willow died. The other, Xander died. If she just sat down and cried — which was what she wanted right now more than anything else — they both died. Could it get any worse? Yes, it could. Giles didn’t know what to do, either. Giles, Mister Man-With-a-Plan. Why did he have to spaz out on her now of all times?

They had wasted an hour, getting nowhere, before she just had to blow out of the library and clear her head. When Angel had called to let her know, he said she had until eight o’clock. He threw other stuff in as well, but she hadn’t gone into any of that with Giles. (And the only good part of this godawful mess was that Xander wasn’t around to rag on her for giving Angel a “big happy”, as he put it, and turning him from soulful-and-brooding to a guy who thought barbecued pets made a nifty greeting card.)

Should she call Kendra? No, there was no point, this would be over before Kendra could make it to Sunnydale. Besides, the last time she had tried to talk about it, Kendra had said the same thing as when they first met: “He’s a vampire. He deserves to die.” Well, duhh! Angel the sadistic torturer, sure. But how to get him without wiping out the Angel who had spent, like, eighty years trying to make things right?

She hated being the damn Slayer! Her life had been so simple before: clothes, guys, spreading misery among the socially untouchable… Now, instead of being the most popular girl in school, she was way down the road to least popular. And even if some gooney good fairy gave her the power to go back, she still wouldn’t be able to do it. She had seen too much. She had lost too much.

She forced her mind out of that blind alley and back to the basic problem. If she let Willow die, Oz would never forgive her. If she let Xander die, Buffy would never forgive her. At least she didn’t have to deal with that yet, there hadn’t been time to tell either of them …

Wait a minute.

The class bell had rung while she was flipping around with her mind in dark places, and now she hurried through the halls. There, yes: Buffy, just closing her locker. “Hey, Buffy, I need some help.”

The blonde cheerleader sighed, and reached into her notebook. “Yeah, I zoned in to that when you left to answer that pager call and didn’t come back. I have the notes here, if you can photocopy them before school lets out …”

“Not that. Well, sure, I’ll take the notes. But it’s about Xander.”

Buffy’s eyes went wary and a little cold. “What about Xander, Cordelia?”

The Slayer leaned wearily back against the row of lockers. Where was Midol when you needed it? She and Buffy might have been soul-sisters if not for Xander; as it was, the girl never could forget that she had been (to all outward appearance) Xander’s second choice, and she watched like a hawk for any sign that Cordelia might change her mind about going kissy-face with the Xandman.

“Angel has him,” she told Buffy, and saw the suspicious look vanish. “And Willow, too. Angel called to tell me that Xander’s at some rundown, abondoned old mansion, and Willow’s at another location, and Angel will call at a certain time to tell me where. If I rush over to save Xander, he’ll kill Willow. Giles thinks he probably has her at that factory where the Anointed One hung out, but we don’t know, we’re sending Marcy to check it out. Angel said they’d be killed at eight on the dot, OR if anybody but me showed up to save them. Whichever place I go, I get to fight through impossible odds, knowing one of my friends dies at the other location. Classic Angelus, according to Giles.”

Buffy clutched at the notebook, her face pale. “He’ll kill them both anyway,” she quavered.

“No, he won’t. That’d put me off the hook, wouldn’t it? He’ll stick to what he said just so I have to live with knowing I sentenced one of them to death.”

“So what do you want from me?” Buffy demanded. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but her voice was savage. “Help you make a choice? You know which way I’d go.”

“No, I want you to help me cheat the bastard.” Cordelia saw hope flare in Buffy’s face, and went on, “Look, you’ve kept up training with Giles and Willow even though you’re not a Slayer anymore, right? You’re better than me when it comes to technique —” (never mind that she no longer had supernatural speed or strength or the ability to heal from crippling injuries) “— and you’re the only one of the available Slay Friends who could take on a vampire solo and survive. I know how Angel’s mind works. He’ll have it set up so that whichever place I go, I’ll get to take my best shot, and if I get through, then he’ll have a call go to the other location.”

“So you want to hit both places at the same time,” Buffy said. “It won’t work, though, you said they’ll kill their prisoners if anybody but you shows up.”

“Right,” Cordelia replied. “So it has to be me in both places.”

Buffy’s eyes went blank, and Cordelia could all but see the thoughts racing behind them. The two girls began talking at once.

“You’re taller than me —”

“— but you wear those big clunky heels —”

“— hair, there’s time to get mine dyed dark —”

“— or a wig, my mother has one you could use —”

“— I’d have to wear your clothes —”

“— and weapons, lots of weapons, you’ll be facing heavy odds and you don’t have the Slayer deal going for you —”

“It’s not gonna work.” Buffy said. The eagerness faded from her expression, and she slumped. “Even if we go in at the same time, we can’t guarantee to win at the same time. We’d be racing each other, and the loser would be the one to blame for whoever died. It still comes out the same, only the guilt is different.”

Damn it! “No,” Cordelia said. “No, I won’t let him do this to us. Okay, how about this way: I get myself set up at the mansion, and if Willow’s at the factory, you go there. You start first, do the ninja thing, sneak in slow and careful. Find Willow, stay in position. We’ll carry cell phones, you give me a call when you’re ready. Then I’ll start tearing through the mansion. I’ll have your number on speed-dial, I’ll call you the second I reach Xander. Then you hit ’em with everything you have, death in all directions, toss some of the weapons to Willow and try to hold out.”

“Me and Willow,” Buffy said without enthusiasm.

Cordelia ignored it, she was riding the wave. “I make a second call to Giles, he and the others come in after you, the vamps in the factory will be fighting on two fronts at once. And if we finish quick enough, you can all retreat into daylight where they can’t follow you.”

“Why not me at the mansion?” Buffy asked, a little plaintively. “No offense, Cordy, but … you don’t really play well with others. I mean, you’re a one-woman wrecking crew, but teamwork isn’t exactly your strong suit. Willow could keep up with you a lot better and help you more than Xander could, and the Slay Friends could fight their way to us a lot faster at the mansion than they could at the factory. Xander needs me.”

Still doing her Xander-obsession thing! Cordelia clamped down on the bite-her-head-off impulse that struggled to get out. “Maybe, we can talk about that as we go. But I really think you’ll have to take the factory, it’s just so much easier to sneak around there. The mansion is better for smash-and-grab … and hey, you know Cordy, mindless destruction is even more fun than shopping!” It took concentration, but she forced her voice to be gentle. “I’ll be careful with him, Buffy. I promise.”

Buffy didn’t look pleased, but she apparently decided not to push the argument just yet. “If we try it the way you said, there’s no point in me dressing like you.”

“Probably we should anyway.” Cordelia headed for the parking lot, motioning Buffy to follow. “I mean, if anything goes wrong and they spot you, they have to see the Slayer or they’ll kill their prisoner. We’d still be back in the race you talked about, but at least we’d have a chance of saving them both.”

They could have gone to the library to let Giles know, but time was short. They headed for Cordelia’s house, Buffy putting in a call to the library on the way. No answer, they could call again later. It was a quarter to three when they arrived. Luckily her mother wasn’t home, she just wasn’t up for another parental lecture right now, and Mom had gotten really big on the mother-daughter involvement thing after Daddy ‘disappeared’.

Before that, she’d loved being the Slayer. ‘Queen C’ by day, the Chosen One by night, and naturally she ruled at both. She and Angel, side by side, scourge of the Netherworld … What hurt most was that, looking back, she still didn’t really have a clue as to when Spike had made her father a vampire. Carlton Chase was seldom home before dark anyhow, too many connections to be made and deals to be finalized (and secretaries to meet after hours? those were the rumors, at least). It could have been weeks before Spike decided the time was right for them to strike, though she really didn’t see him having that kind of patience.

The invaders had hit too quickly and ruthlessly for her to have any time to wonder how they had gotten into her house without invitation. She had battled from room to room, herding her father ahead of her while she fought a vicious rear-guard action (Thank God her mother had been in L.A. for the opera that night! Even if it had hurt that on her 16th birthday, the opera was more important. But hey, she was used to it by now.), and she would have been one very surprised, very dead May Queen if Angel hadn’t slashed his way into shouting distance just as her father, behind her, had let his demon face come out and gone for her throat.

Some vampires dusted faster than others. It never took more than four or five seconds, but sometimes they had time to get out a few words. Carlton Chase went almost instantly, but she would forever choose to believe she had heard him say, “Good girl,” before he shimmered into ash around the stake she had thrust reflexively into his heart. Cordelia had gone insane then, killing eight more vampires in the next twenty seconds before the rest fled in terror, leaving her only to scream and weep.

She had thought that was as bad as it could get. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She had clung to Angel, grief and guilt and pain and the aftermath of battle bringing down the last barriers between them, and fallen asleep in his arms. She awoke alone in the wrecked, dust-strewn house, and even then she didn’t know that the nightmare had only begun, that she had lost the two men she loved in the same terrible night.

So, no more best-of-both-worlds. She was pure Slayer now, and Harmony reigned in her place, laughing and making little quips about falling off the social ladder whenever they passed in the halls. Fine, she could have it, and Buffy was welcome to try and keep up the separate day/night lifestyle thing. Cordelia had other priorities … like working out a going-away party for Spike that involved chains, garlic paste, a propane torch, and mirrors to direct the sunlight just so.

He was going to learn the hard way: you don’t mess with the queen.


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