authoressnebula, #79, The Missing Piece, 4/?, S/B/A, PG-13-R,

[authoressnebula.livejournal.com]

Um...yeah. I haven't touched this story in AGES. And I figured it was about time that I did.

Title: The Missing Piece
Rating: R to NC-17; PG-13 at the moment
Prompt: #79 - Marigold for tamingthemuse
Pairing(s): Buffy/Angel, Buffy/Spike, eventually Buffy/Angel/Spike (dominant pairing is S/B, though.) Other minor pairings to be announced as we go.
Chapter: Four of ?
Summary: There's a secret that fate wanted kept secret, and for many years, it was. Until it fell into the right hands of a Slayer who figured it out. As she searches for the missing piece to prove her point, there's a lot of people out there who want her dead because of it. Because this secret is going to change everything.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the ideas in my head.

A/N: Yes, this is the one that everyone's been waiting for. My apologies for this taking so so long.

Previous Parts Here


Pretty by sanity_oasis



They managed to get out of the city with little to no trouble. All the way out every pair of eyes was fastened to the back, save for Xander's. Buffy had no idea what the Council's cars looked like now, but she was fairly certain they'd be black. The Council never wanted to attract attention.

Dawn fell asleep when they took the car ferry across. Willow looked way too wired to sleep for weeks, and Xander was all nerves. Angel and Spike looked the perfect picture of calm, but she could feel the tension beneath their skin. If anything happened, they'd jump into the fight, completely ready.

Buffy felt like she was going to be sick.

Once they were off the ferry, it was only an hour or so to reach Giles. Xander made the call when they were twenty minutes out. “Hey Giles,” he said, faking cheerfulness. “How're things?”

“Xander! It's good to hear from you,” Giles said warmly, and Buffy's stomach only twisted further. She'd have to tell him, too. Oh god.

“Breathing generally helps,” Angel said quietly beside her. Buffy turned to glance at him and saw the obvious worry on his face. “Just breathe. You'll pass out at this rate.”

“Or make herself sick,” Spike joined in, his voice equally low. “Seriously, luv. Just take it easy. I don't think whoever the hell's chasin' us knows that you got out of Italy.”

“They probably do,” Buffy said, and then had to close her mouth again to keep her stomach settled.

“...midnight visit? Or, you know, a three in the morning visit?” Xander was saying. “Unless you've got other visitors.”

“No, it's just me, actually,” Giles said. “The school's closed for the weeks; slayers are home with their families for the break.”

Thank god. Buffy'd been worried about that. More slayers meant more in the way of harm.

“The Council giving you grief?” Xander asked in a joking matter, but the look on his face told everyone else otherwise.

There was a snort over the lines. “Of course. Bloody wankers won't let me be. How far off are you?”

“Not very,” Xander said. “Gimme fifteen, and we should be there.”

“Then I'll be waiting,” Giles said, before there was a pause. “'We'?”

Xander hung up. Giles would find out fairly shortly just how many of them there were.

Giles was waiting for them outside the main door, and when they slowed to a stop beside him, he got a good glimpse of who was in the car. He blinked once, then to his credit simply stepped backwards. “I appreciate being invited to the party,” he only said, raising his eyebrow.

“Trust me, it's not a party you want to be invited to,” Xander said as he stepped out of the car. Buffy slid out behind Spike, really seeing the building since they'd arrived.

It was wider than it was tall, and made of dark, red bricks. It wasn't centered directly in the city of London, but on the outskirts. It had been a school once, for boys if Buffy remembered right. They'd bought it cheap and had renovated it with all the modern comforts, and had turned it into a school for the slayers on the European side of things. The other school, the one in the States, was in Ohio. Never hurt to keep an eye on the hellmouth.

Of course, here the danger to watch out for was the Council, which had rebuilt itself fairly quickly. A little too quickly for Buffy's tastes. Of course, she hadn't minded at the time. She'd had no vampires to worry about.

Giles frowned. “What's the mat-”

“Inside,” Buffy said tersely, stepping around him. “Willow, is there a spell that you can do to block us from other spells finding us?”

“Um, yeah,” Willow said, quickly following behind her. Once everyone was out of the car, Xander slid back in and pulled it around to the side. “I'll need sage and marigold and-”

“Set it up,” Buffy said, pulling her hands into fists. She would NOT break down. She wouldn't. If she pulled into the General Buffy, she'd be okay. Stay in control. That was key.

As soon as she stepped into the main room and turned around, her eyes fell on Spike and Angel, who stopped as soon as she did. Following her no matter what, and her control fell as easily as it had come.

“Buffy, what on earth is going on?” Giles asked, fixing her with a puzzled gaze.

“You got a conference room or something we can do this in?” Xander asked, stepping quickly to meet them.

Giles looked at her know with worry when she didn't answer, but nodded to Xander. “It's down here,” he said, before leading the way.

The room was long and narrow, with a table to match it. There were tons of empty seats, which Dawn took. Buffy stood off to the side, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. The doors were closed, and she momentarily closed her eyes.

When she opened them, all eyes were on her. “Do you want me to get that spell done...?” Willow asked hesitantly, and Buffy wearily shook her head.

“You need to hear this. It won't take long.”

“Buffy, pet, what the hell is goin' on here?” Spike asked, frowning. “I don't think I've ever seen you so bloody agitated. And over what, two books?”

“Books?” Giles asked, looking even more confused than before.

Buffy swallowed and pulled the two books from her back pocket. “In 1864, there was a slayer by the name of Christine Libet. She was graceful and beautiful, as recorded by her Watcher, Stephen Mallard. I...I don't really know where she was from, or where she served. He was a little vague on those details.”

Giles' eyes widened. “I thought I'd lost that book,” he said, shocked. “You stole it?”

“Borrowed it, at least the first time,” Buffy said softly. “Those first few months in Sunnydale, I was so confused about everything, about you, about where I stood. I didn't really know anything about being a Slayer. I thought it was...I thought it was your journal. I wanted to know what you thought of me. When I realized it was about a different Slayer, though, I still wanted to know.”

“Because you didn't know anything,” Angel said, and Buffy nodded.

“So...what's special about Christine?” Dawn asked, leading her sister back into the story.

Xander piped up, though. “Stephen thought a little too much about his charge. He fell for her. Hard. Except she sort of fell for someone else.”

“A vampire,” Giles supplied faintly, still looking shocked. “They met in secret, until Stephen found them. He wrote to the Council about it, tried to get her to change her mind, but she insisted she was in love with the vampire.”

“And then she died,” Buffy said quietly. “He'd warned her that it wasn't going to end well, and then she died. Stephen tells that he staked the vampire, and that was that.”

“So much for a happy ending,” Dawn muttered. Buffy closed her eyes.

“Okay, sad, yes,” Willow said, scrunching her face up. “Not something to panic over, guys.”

Buffy slowly pulled up the second book. “It does if you read this,” she said, even as Giles stepped forward.

“That's the 'History and Order of Vampires and Their Slayers'. I thought I'd ordered one of the last copies, but then it...” His gaze turned back to Buffy. “Disappeared,” he finished. “I thought it was stolen, along with Stephen's journal. It seems I was right. Just by the person I least expected to believe would steal it.”

“I'm sorry,” she said helplessly. He looked hurt more than angry, which she'd been expecting. “I wanted to tell you, but...I couldn't.”

“Last copies?” Xander asked. “The books says one hundred were published.”

“Most were destroyed in a fire at the publishing house,” Giles said slowly. “Only ten or so of them got out. The Council has been trying to get their hands on a copy ever since.”

“I bet they have,” Xander said darkly. Giles turned at the tone, frowning at him.

“Buffy, tell us what's really going on here,” Angel said quietly. He still looked-god help her, they both did-concerned more than anything else, and it was that fact alone that made her hang her head as she spoke.

“The book doesn't so much tell a timeline history as it does a...scientific sort of history,” she began. “About what makes them both so unique and so much alike. More alike than they want to know.

“When the Slayer was created, there were already vampires running all over the place. The first Council weren't stupid. They knew that they didn't stand a chance against these creatures of the night.”

“They decided to fight fire with fire,” Xander added. “Demon against demon.”

Buffy leaned back against the table. “They managed to capture a vampire and take its blood, then fed it to a girl. A man was the first choice, obviously, but the vampires would've suspected that. So they picked a girl. A woman, who in those times did nothing more than tend house and birth children. She didn't fight.

“It worked; she managed to take out the vampires, one by one. The people hailed her as their hero, and the Council became...afraid.” Buffy took a deep breath in. “This one little girl held more strength and power within her than the entire group of them did, and it scared them. She could take over; she could destroy them. They decided to take her out of the equation and created a spell that would take the blood of a vampire and this first girl, and insert it into a random girl somewhere in the world.”

The room was silent. Buffy couldn't even hear anyone breathing. “Through the spell, they were able to track and find the girl, who would be obviously confused and frightened. They trained her and used her, and when they were afraid, they simply sent her out into missions they knew she couldn't handle. This was their system for hundreds of years.”

“Buffy, you know I dislike the Council as much as you do, but to say they actually kill girls because they're simply afraid of losing power?” Giles shook his head.

“You agreed with me back in Sunnydale, when we needed information from the Council about Glory,” Buffy pointed out, raising her head briefly. Giles pursed his lips but said nothing more.

“A little disturbin', but nothin' too bad so far,” Spike said, but he looked as if he were bracing himself for something worse.

For all his talk and actions, Spike was a hell of a lot smarter than he let on.

“The system worked fine until, apparently, Roman times. The Slayer of then met with a vampire she couldn't seem to beat, but the vampire couldn't beat her, either. It was an uneasy stalemate, but it kept going on like that for months. The two started talking, and finally one day they stopped fighting and started meeting, just on their own.

“The Council, when they found out about what was going on...they killed them both. A girl with extraordinary powers was hard enough to rein in, but they'd managed it for hundreds of years at that point. A girl with powers like that, and a vampire to boot? No. Couldn't happen.

“The Council started adamantly telling their Slayers that vampires were bad, that vampires were monsters, weren't human, and the Slayers believed it. Until one day, about a hundred years after that Roman Slayer, a Slayer in Russia met with a vampire who was cursed with a soul. He had his morals and his conscience in tact, and except for the sun and the blood, she saw him as human. Too much so, in fact. The two were drawn together, and the Council ended the both of them.”

She let the red book fall open, then began searching for the passage she knew by heart. “'The Slayer is not immune to the vampire in more ways than one. There IS a connection between them that goes deeper than predator and prey',” she quoted. She closed her eyes and tried to speak again, but her voice failed her.

Xander again stepped in to her rescue. “You ever wondered why, out of all the nasty things a Slayer faces, she can only sense a vampire? See, when the Council made the Slayer, they used that vampire blood, and it's still inside every single Slayer around the world right now. The oldest of vampire blood. That draws her to a vampire. And then, when a vampire's more human, say with a soul, they're drawn by more than that blood. They're drawn by fate.”

“Are you trying to tell me-” Giles started, but Spike finished it for him.

“Slayers and vampires are supposed to be together?”

Dawn sat straight up in her chair, her eyes as wide as saucers.

“The author hints that...that if a vampire and a Slayer were to come together and stay together, they'd be more than an unstoppable force,” Buffy managed to get out. “They'd be whole. One single person, sharing all the strength, all the power, everything. The Council wouldn't be in control anymore. There'd be no need for them.”

“So when Christine fell in love with the vampire...” Willow trailed off, looking stunned.

“You're trying to tell me that the Council killed Christine? That Stephen may have killed Christine?” Giles said angrily.

“The Council's killed Slayers before,” Xander argued. “You know it. I know it.”

“Yes, when they've gone rogue!” Giles exploded.

“Who decides when they go rogue?” Xander shot back. “What's the Council's definition of 'rogue'? Probably a hell of a lot bigger than you'd like to think.”

“Slayers and vampires are supposed to be together,” Spike repeated in a monotone voice, and Buffy bit her lip.

“Is this true?” Angel said, his voice low. “Buffy, is this true?”

Silence filled the room, choking the air from her. There was enough in her lungs, though, for a single, tiny word.

“Yes.”

She dared to raise her head, and what she saw made her want to step back even further. Willow cleared her throat, her face clear from the anger on everyone else's. “Dawnie, could you come help me with that spell?” Willow said, aiming for cheerful and falling flat on her face. Dawn managed a nod and rose slowly, following Willow out of the room. The door shut quickly behind them.

Smart woman.

Buffy winced at the angered shock on Giles' face and turned to see two faces with emotions just as strong. “You didn't think we deserved to know this?” Angel said, his voice dangerously low.

Spike just stared at her, looking utterly devastated and crushed. A few moments later, it began to melt into a burning rage. “I had to keep it to myself,” Buffy whispered, trying to say or do anything to get that look off his face. Once, she wouldn't have cared, but now, it was scorching her soul and destroying her heart, and she couldn't take it. “If you'd have been in my position, you would've done the same thing.”

“If I'd known about it, and known that you cared for me, I would've told you,” Spike said, his voice practically a growl.

“You knew,” Angel hissed. “You told me we'd never work, that we had to live our own lives, and you knew that it was supposed to be the other way around.”

“If I'd told either of you anything, the Council would've killed you!” she cried. “What part of that don't you understand?”

“You told me it was disgusting and wrong,” Spike said, his voice lower than she'd ever heard it, and full of dangerous promise. Buffy felt tears burning in her eyes. “I asked for once, just once, for you to tell me that you loved me. I knew you did; I could see it on your face, but you wouldn't say it to a monster like me.”

“You were offering everything I ever wanted,” she whispered helplessly. “I pushed you away to save you. Spike, I'm sor-”

Spike held up his hand, before slowly shaking his head. “Don't want it, don't need it,” he said, before turning and walking out the door.

Buffy glanced over at Angel, pleading silently with him to understand. “I'm agreeing with Spike,” he said, glaring at her. “If you'd loved us enough, you should've told us, not kept it from us. Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is power.”

“If you'd known, we would've tried to work something out,” Buffy said, blinking away tears. “And then the Council would've known, and I wasn't going to risk your life because I loved you. I didn't want to lose you.”

“Well.....you did,” Angel said, turning around and slamming the door shut behind him.

Buffy buried her face in her hands.

She heard quiet steps as she tried to choke back her sobs, and Xander's arms came around her. He said nothing, merely letting her lean into him.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

Giles' whispered question had her clenching her fists. He sounded defeated and so hurt, and it killed to know it was because of her. “The Council was still keeping an eye on you,” she managed to get out. “And I didn't...I didn't want you dragged into this, didn't want to put you in more danger.”

“Giles, she didn't want to tell me,” Xander said softly. “I made a careless joke and found out everything. She's hated having me involved.”

“Giles, I'm so sorry,” she whispered.

Giles raised his gaze to meet hers, and after a moment, he simply nodded. “I know,” he said quietly, before leaving the room.

The door had barely shut before the sobs she'd stifled came through.





< --- >

So? Should I scrap it? Let it go? Or actually finish the stupid thing?



~Nebula