Horace II
Strange - is it not? That of the myriads who
Before us passed the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the road
Which to discover we must travel too.
Buffy landed with a exhale of exhaustion. Her hands were sore from the rock’s abrasive surface and her waist was sore from the rope burn. She had passed Spike early on, but the rope had been out of reach of the clinging vampire.
“Okay, Will,” she shouted up, “your turn.” A muffled echo responded from above, and Willow started down.
When both Willow and Buffy had made ground-fall and they had managed to maneuver the rope near enough to Spike allowing him to grasp it, Buffy got a first look at their new surroundings.
A cave, imaginatively enough, but not dry and torpid like the others. There was a sense of daunting, lurking fear. The stagnant pools and mind-bending crystal latices jutting from the walls and ceiling should have made this place beautiful, but the rivulets of water covering the walls and the mold and cave slime on every rock forced from it any beauty. This was no lava tube. Brackish water dripped from stalactites hanging thickly from the ceiling. Some formed symmetrical columns where merged stalactites and stalagmites. The distant sound of dripping was heard above everything else.
When Spike finally landed with a huff, wringing his hands of the rope burn, Buffy took a really good appreciative look back up the shaft. “That’ll be a bitch to climb back up,” she muttered.
“Yes, I imagine it will be,” came an accented voice from behind them. Three heads whipped around.
“Giles?” Buffy’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “What are you-” she paused, rephrasing the question. “Who are you here to torment?”
“I’m not here to torment anyone,” he muttered, a frown creasing his forehead. “I thought you were here to torment me.”
“I wouldn’t mind a little Torment,” Spike mumbled, looking up the shaft at the distant golden glow, far above.
“I don’t get it,” Buffy said in quiet tones to Willow as they kept their respective distance from the Watcher. “What is he doing here? Why would they produce and image of him?”
“An image?" The watcher was taken aback. “I most certainly am not.” He removed his glasses and began to wipe them on the hem of his untucked shirt, realizing too late that he was merely smearing blood on the lenses. His button up shirt was stained thick with blood from the seven gunshot wounds that riddled his torso.
“Then tell us what happened,” Buffy challenged. She crossed her arms, favoring one foot in impatience.
“I came home from the airport, not an hour ago, and let me tell you, I bloody well would have been armed if I had known you had abandoned the place.” He replaced his glasses, ignoring the red smear. “I called out and got no response,” he said, “then went to Dawn’s room to find her-” he paused, quickly glancing down at the ground, then back up, his eyes hard, “crucified, hanging from her wall.”
Buffy’s suspicious glare never wavered. “Nice try, but this isn’t going to work.”
“What isn’t going to work? Buffy-” he said in a most disappointed tone, “sometimes I don’t know what gets into that... little brain of yours,” he snapped, “I was standing there in shock for a moment or so when they opened fire from behind me.”
“And it took you three hours to die,” Buffy asked, sarcasm searing her voice, covering her shame at what she had done to who she had thought was her sister.
“No, I died nearly instantly,” Giles answered, annoyed. “I want to know what the hell you’re doing here, not to mention where the hell ‘here’ is.”
“Well, Rupert, old boy,” Spike spoke up, “looks like you had a little bit of sin on you’re conscience, because this is as deep in Hell as we’ve seen yet.”
“You’re joking,” Giles said disgustedly. He paused for a moment as none of the other three said anything. “You can’t possibly be serious,” he argued. His face searched from one to the other. “You mean I’m really in Hell?” He demanded, bitterness washing over him. “What-” he stammered, searching for any kind of intelligent question with which to vent his rage. “What the hell are you three doing here?” He nearly shouted.
“Let’s go,” Buffy said, bitterness filling her own voice now. “Let’s let them know he was a waste of time.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Giles rebuked, “just walk away. Really, Buffy, I don’t know what I saw in you. You let Dawn be slaughtered, you got me shot seven times....”
As the three walked around the figure who was standing among the dank pools and flowing rocks, his voice became ever more accusatory.
“Any minute now, Xander and Andrew will be home. What do you think will happen then?”
Buffy ignored him, seeing a sort of pattern to the torment of this place. First despair, then sorrow, now spite.
“I always knew your stupidity would come back to haunt us. I don’t know why I bothered with you.”
Buffy clenched her jaw and felt Willow’s hand on hers. Spike’s shoulder brushed her own, comfortingly.
“You couldn’t save us,” her watcher shouted after them, “what makes you think you have any chance of saving yourself!”
Willow’s hand squeezed hers. Buffy wanted to give her friend a grateful look, but was afraid any movement now would result in her strangulation of the man they were leaving behind. The three walked on, the anger they felt subsiding as the darkness of the cave closed in around the small field of light produced by the flare.
“So you think this will be the Final Battle?” Willow finally asked Spike, when the need for hand squeezing had passed.
“If I had got my paws on that Cup, maybe so. Now we won’t know until this thing’s upon us.” He turned slightly to face the Slayer. “Which reminds me, what exactly did your scroll-deal say about this thing we were going to fight?” He resumed facing forward, not wanting to appear anxious. “I mean I’m always up for a good fight, but I get the distinct impression this isn’t just some gang of baddies we’re here to dust.”
“You’re right,” Buffy agreed. “But you don’t need to know right now.”
“You picked me for this for a reason, didn’t you?” He asked. “No simpleton goes off makin’ his lair in the deepest circles of hell and leaves somethin’ like the Cup of Perpetual Torment lyin’ about his front hall.”
“Right again,” Buffy said simply, taking care as they descended the rather wet stairs that led to a lower level.
“And if old Rupert, little bit and long-lost lover-girl are just distractions,” he continued, “there’s certainly no way we’ll ever be able to tell if we’ve found what we’re looking for.”
“You’re on a roll,” she said unenthusiastically.
“So exactly what kind of demon are we facing here, that you think we can outsmart, given it can make all sorts of things like that?” He indicated the direction from which they had come.
“Not a demon,” she answered. “Do you recognize the marks we got?” she asked, vaguely indicating the blackened flesh on all of their necks.
Spike frowned at the mark on the Slayer’s neck. Then he pulled his head back, his expression turning from one of mock concentration to utter seriousness.
“The Senior Partners?” He said quietly, stopping in his tracks. “You’re going after Wolfram and Hart?”
"We got these marks because they want us to find them." Buffy stopped ahead of him and turned. There was nothing even close to worry in her voice. “And we asked you to come along.”
Spike’s eyes shifted to one side, considering this. He considered their alternate choice. “Good enough for me,” he shrugged and the three started forwards again. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“We always do,” Willow put in.
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