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fpb“What happens to the world, if all the heroes lose?”
(Jack Kirby – Captain America 211)
“I think we’ve managed it this time, Corny,” said Giles to the head in his fireplace, surrounded with flames. “Now that Sunnydale is destroyed, there is nothing to keep them here. And Willow has a clear idea of what her power can do, and is grateful for help with it. I didn’t even have to conceal my real goal.”
“Listen, Ripper,” said the head in the flames, “how many times have I told you not to call me Corny? Last time you did it, Sissilius and two of my secretaries heard it, and it was all over the Ministry by morning!”
“Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now, then, isn’t it?” said Giles with a delighted grin. They were old University friends and still tended to speak like undergraduates when with each other. Then Giles’ expression grew serious. “But really, Cornelius, what do you think about it?”
“I think we should have done it a long time ago. It must have hurt you not to be devious, though – Mr.I-will-get-it-done-and-you-will-not-see-how!” said Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
“I almost slipped in a lie or two just to keep my hand in. But, you know, one feels better not telling porkies to Buffy or Willow. They are so painfully honest themselves, it’s almost like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Americans. Though some Americans can lie like troopers… Anyway, you’ve got my entire support. If we had managed to get Miss Rosenberg to Hogwarts at the right time, we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”
“We might even have managed to hurt Voldemort, you know.”
“Corny” did not answer. His face took that typical expression that told his friend that he had stepped on sensitive ground, and he brought the conversation to a quick end. “Well, I’ll notify Dumbledore, then – though I don’t doubt he already has a good idea. Goodbye, Rupert.”
………………………………………………………………………………
Meanwhile, another conversation was taking place via a different kind of magic – namely, electro-magnetism.
“Are you trying to tell me there are more of them?”
“I don’t know how many there are, Riley. All I can tell you is that the spell is changed. All potential Slayers get activated now. Could be one, could be ten… could be millions.”
There was a silence at the other end of the line.
“Riley? Are you still there?”
“Buffy, the last time someone punched the wind out of me like that, it was a monster in Nicaragua. Do you realize what you’re saying?”
“I do.”
“Well, I’m not sure you do! Thousands of teen-age girls with super-powers? With nobody to teach, control, or even identify them? Duh, can you spell World war three?”
“Riley, it’s not as bad as that.”
“Too right it’s not! It’s worse! Just to contain that little maniac you knocked out for us yesterday is costing us a fifth of our allocated energy budget. Where are we going to find the resources to…”
“Just be grateful I did knock her out for you! Next time, I might not bother!”
“I’m not saying that, Buffy. I’m just saying that this puts us in an impossible position. We have no way to control these girls, no way even to know where or how one of them will come up. And we know from the case of Faith – let alone this other lunatic – that Slayers can and do go bad. We can now look forward to trouble breaking out anywhere, at any time, at the highest level of danger possible.”
“Well, I’m sorry! It wasn’t me who snuffed Council headquarters! Sorry I couldn’t do everything to make your life nice and easy for you!”
“Buffy, I really can’t believe your attitude. You of all people. I really can’t believe you’d be so irresponsible and self-centred.”
“Yeah, well, maybe there’s something wrong with the way you see me! I’m not standing on the pedestal you set me on, okay?”
“Pedestal?”
“Oh, don’t get me started. You remember when I met your wife? She spent half the time telling me how wonderful I was, how Riley spoke of me half the time, how I was his role model and how she felt humbled to be working near me! I nearly died of embarrassment!”
“Well, Riley, I’m not that! I’m not little miss perfect! Nine times out of ten, I can’t save the world or even my friends, and, frankly, I’m sick and tired of trying!”
“What do you expect me to do? To track down every Slayer there is and set up an Academy for Slayers? I can’t do it. It’s not a job for one girl. It’s a job for a government – a ministry – why don’t you get off your rear and do something about it, you and your Pentagon friends?”
Buffy was in a mood to let someone have it, and Riley had found himself in the path of the hurricane. She slammed the headset back into the cradle and splintered both. Oops, she thought. And then: thank God we are leaving in two days: I don’t have to worry about finding the money to buy a new one. She left so fast that she did not hear Dawn come down and set up a howl because her sister had broken the phone; nor Giles taking a brand new one from the store cupboard, kept in the expectation that sooner or later Buffy would do exactly what she had done.
Buffy strode angrily down still-unfamiliar streets. There was something eating at her, and she could not put a name to it. She realized that she had been irrational; if, instead of looking for a fight, she had told Riley about the Corps of Aurors, they might even have taken steps to deal with the problem on an international level. Instead, she had behaved like a child.
But she couldn’t help it. Giles had given her a moment of warmth the evening before, when she felt that he was her real father; but that was yesterday, and that was Giles. Today, away from him, she was still enveloped in misery.
She sat down and tried to figure it out. Did she miss Sunnydale? Well, she was glad it was destroyed. Honestly. The place was horrible; it was one huge cannibal trap to devour people. From the moment she had come there, she had hardly spent one day without fighting. There had been no holidays, no intermissions (and then she realized, with a guilty start, that Sunnydale had a beach and she had never regretted not having anywhere to go). No, what she missed was her past. Her father had cut her off. Her mother was dead. Angel was gone, Cordelia was gone, Spike was leaving. Her cousin was dead – the first person she loved to die, but hardly the last. She had seen more death, more loss, and more cruel estrangement in a few years than anyone had a right to see in a lifetime.
No wonder, she thought, that she had fought so hard to save Willow – even when Willow had committed a murder, and, by the standards of Slayerness, should have been taken down.
Was she going to miss this? Oh, yes. She was a South Cal girl, born with the sun on her back and the ocean in front of her. She had never thought of it – indeed, she had sometimes whined or joked about her country – until now; but the thought of cold wet England – no mountains, no desert, and (*gulp*) no beaches… Well, there was the ocean; there should be beaches. But somehow, she did not associate the island country with suntans, beach ball and surfing.
“Oh, this is stupid”, she said to herself. She was being frivolous; her mind was running away from the real issues. She had to reconcile herself to losing things; she could not go on moping and hurting people, merely because of something that had happened to her.
Suddenly a horn honked beside her. She jumped, turned, and –
“Willow!”
“Hello, Buffy.”
“Willow! I didn’t even know that you could drive!”
“Yeah, well, my driving licence says I can. Take you for a spin?”
Buffy expressed her feelings by gripping the car door, vaulting over Willow in one perfect somersault, and landing with a thump beside her friend – to the astonishment of a couple of joggers and their dogs. The car roof was down, the weather was sunny but not too warm, it was a perfect day for a drive. Her depression lifted like early morning mist before the sun; and Willow had the radio on, blaring old love songs. They put on their sunglasses and headed out of town, smiling and chattering.
Well I’m in love, I’m in love, with a beautiful girl,
But she don’t care about me…
“The wheels are Kennedy’s. She’s kinda lent it to me as a sort of farewell gift…”
“Farewell? Oh, that’s sad, Wills”
“She can’t come to England with us, so it’s kinda like ‘hail and goodbye’. I could have gone for her, you know.”
Yesterday is dead and gone,
And tomorrow is out of sight.
It’s so sad to be alone;
Help me make through the night.
I don’t care what’s right or wrong,
And I don’t try to understand:
Let the devil take tomorrow,
‘cause tonight I need a friend!
As the road bent or went over some hill, one of them, Willow or Buffy, would point at some feature of the landscape, and they would both squeal with delight – all too conscious that they were soon to leave their native land. Buffy found herself wondering what it had been like for Giles, when he had had to leave England to mind a sulky, ungrateful, shallow local teen-ager with dyed blonde hair; until Willow told her to pull herself together and stop feeling guilty. “I’m not, actually,” Buffy grinned.
My hopes and my dreams come true,
My one and only you –
But it’s only make believe!
They dined on hot dogs at an ancient roadside joint half-way to the desert, wondering when they would ever do something like that again. If England or Scotland had hot-dog joints, neither Buffy nor Willow had ever heard of it.
They tell you you’re out of style
Unless you’ve three or four.
I’ve loved and lost again..
“Willow..”
“Yes?”
“Are we going anywhere in particular?”
“Not that I know of… I just thought we’d take in a bit of God’s country before we leave.”
“Yes… because if that’s so…”
“Yes?”
“Can we go to see Dad, please?” That came out in a rush.
“Well, if you want…”
“He’s in LA, so we could… besides… I kinda feel I owe it to him…”
“Sure we can, if we make a start.”
Mention of Buffy’s errant parent put a definite damper on their mood. It lifted again as they drove through the afternoon – through Palmdale, around the San Gabriel Mountains, and down towards Burbank – hours of open road and the wind in their faces and sunshine and music. But it went down as they met the city traffic and the smog, and the sun started to go down. They got there later than they wanted, and knew they could not make it to Santa Coleta that night.
……………………………………………………………………………
Though not without its rough patches, the visit had been less bad than they had thought. Dad’s girlfriend – soon to be his second wife, they heard – was fortunately in Spain; he had made a full apology about not being there for Joyce’s funeral (he’d been ill himself, it seemed – Buffy made the appropriate sympathetic noises), told her that he was (as she had guessed) the source of the anonymous flowers that turned up every now and then on her grave, and told some touching anecdotes of their early days. He had been mightily impressed by Willow (whom he had never met before) going to Oxford, and both astonished and amused at his daughter’s choice of profession. “Law enforcement?”, he had almost laughed; but in an admiring way. “I’d’ve thought you’d be too small… don’t get me wrong… small and cute, honey. I always thought you’d be an ice skater, or an athlete anyway… You know, Willow, she used to be very athletic, ice skating and cheerleading and God knows what.”
“She still is, Mr.Summers. When she got into the car this morning, she somersaulted right over me.”
“Is that right? Well, maybe she’ll dazzle the bad guys with acrobatics? But I’m still surprised you’d have to go all the way to London for a law enforcement job…. I’d’ve thought there’s enough bad guys right here in LA.”
“Well, Dad, it’s kinda specialist…”
“And secret, hey? All right, I think I get your drift. Won’t ask no more questions.”
Shortly after, they left with a kiss-and-hug from Buffy, and a handshake from Willow. But it was his last words that really shook her to the core. “Goodbye, honey, and good luck with your law enforcement. Maybe we’ll meet in Europe – I’m in Spain often, anyway… I’m glad I got to meet your girlfriend.”
It was impossible to mistake his meaning.
…………………………………………………………………………………
“Maybe we shouldn’t have been holding hands?”
“Maybe I should have kept him up to speed with Angel, Riley and Spike.”
“I know. Geez, Buff, I’m really sorry. I didn’t think I had gay sticking out of me like that.”
“Are you? Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Wills. I’m not!”
Willow turned towards her friend. They had been driving rather aimlessly, in the general direction of Santa Coleta.
“Buffy, what do you mean?” – and there was something almost like fear in her voice.
“Just what I said, Wills. I’ve been asking myself and asking myself, and the result is that I cannot find a single thing to stop me loving you. You remember when you first told me? I told you I wasn’t creeped out… and I wasn’t. It really is the same thing to me.”
“I’d never have got between you and Tara. But, darling, Tara is gone and Mom is gone and all my loves are gone. And you are the dearest thing that I have.”
“It’s a different world, Wills – you and I have changed it. In some ways, it’s worse than it was when all the Big Bads focused on one spot, and we were there to deal with them; but now there’s no more Council. We don’t know where we are going, and I don’t want to do it without you.”
Buffy was tired – tired of fighting alone, tired of relationships that fail, tired of men who never come up to expectations, tired of solitude and failure and dreariness. The future stretched out in front of her, long, lonely, and dusty; a fight after another, a return to a cold empty bed every day, until the day when a vamp strong enough or fast enough or lucky enough finally put an end to it. Was it so wrong to want warmth and company? And Willow was a girl – she did not have all those strange hang-ups and unspoken demands and general nonsense that boys had. She was at home with Willow. She rested her head on her friend’s shoulder; and suddenly she started sobbing.
“Please…” she stuttered, her nose and forehead nestling between Willow’s neck and collarbone, warm skin to warm skin, “please, Will, don’t turn me down now…”
“I won’t” said Willow Rosenberg; and she touched her furrowed forehead with soft lips.
(Jack Kirby – Captain America 211)
“I think we’ve managed it this time, Corny,” said Giles to the head in his fireplace, surrounded with flames. “Now that Sunnydale is destroyed, there is nothing to keep them here. And Willow has a clear idea of what her power can do, and is grateful for help with it. I didn’t even have to conceal my real goal.”
“Listen, Ripper,” said the head in the flames, “how many times have I told you not to call me Corny? Last time you did it, Sissilius and two of my secretaries heard it, and it was all over the Ministry by morning!”
“Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now, then, isn’t it?” said Giles with a delighted grin. They were old University friends and still tended to speak like undergraduates when with each other. Then Giles’ expression grew serious. “But really, Cornelius, what do you think about it?”
“I think we should have done it a long time ago. It must have hurt you not to be devious, though – Mr.I-will-get-it-done-and-you-will-not-see-how!” said Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
“I almost slipped in a lie or two just to keep my hand in. But, you know, one feels better not telling porkies to Buffy or Willow. They are so painfully honest themselves, it’s almost like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Americans. Though some Americans can lie like troopers… Anyway, you’ve got my entire support. If we had managed to get Miss Rosenberg to Hogwarts at the right time, we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”
“We might even have managed to hurt Voldemort, you know.”
“Corny” did not answer. His face took that typical expression that told his friend that he had stepped on sensitive ground, and he brought the conversation to a quick end. “Well, I’ll notify Dumbledore, then – though I don’t doubt he already has a good idea. Goodbye, Rupert.”
………………………………………………………………………………
Meanwhile, another conversation was taking place via a different kind of magic – namely, electro-magnetism.
“Are you trying to tell me there are more of them?”
“I don’t know how many there are, Riley. All I can tell you is that the spell is changed. All potential Slayers get activated now. Could be one, could be ten… could be millions.”
There was a silence at the other end of the line.
“Riley? Are you still there?”
“Buffy, the last time someone punched the wind out of me like that, it was a monster in Nicaragua. Do you realize what you’re saying?”
“I do.”
“Well, I’m not sure you do! Thousands of teen-age girls with super-powers? With nobody to teach, control, or even identify them? Duh, can you spell World war three?”
“Riley, it’s not as bad as that.”
“Too right it’s not! It’s worse! Just to contain that little maniac you knocked out for us yesterday is costing us a fifth of our allocated energy budget. Where are we going to find the resources to…”
“Just be grateful I did knock her out for you! Next time, I might not bother!”
“I’m not saying that, Buffy. I’m just saying that this puts us in an impossible position. We have no way to control these girls, no way even to know where or how one of them will come up. And we know from the case of Faith – let alone this other lunatic – that Slayers can and do go bad. We can now look forward to trouble breaking out anywhere, at any time, at the highest level of danger possible.”
“Well, I’m sorry! It wasn’t me who snuffed Council headquarters! Sorry I couldn’t do everything to make your life nice and easy for you!”
“Buffy, I really can’t believe your attitude. You of all people. I really can’t believe you’d be so irresponsible and self-centred.”
“Yeah, well, maybe there’s something wrong with the way you see me! I’m not standing on the pedestal you set me on, okay?”
“Pedestal?”
“Oh, don’t get me started. You remember when I met your wife? She spent half the time telling me how wonderful I was, how Riley spoke of me half the time, how I was his role model and how she felt humbled to be working near me! I nearly died of embarrassment!”
“Well, Riley, I’m not that! I’m not little miss perfect! Nine times out of ten, I can’t save the world or even my friends, and, frankly, I’m sick and tired of trying!”
“What do you expect me to do? To track down every Slayer there is and set up an Academy for Slayers? I can’t do it. It’s not a job for one girl. It’s a job for a government – a ministry – why don’t you get off your rear and do something about it, you and your Pentagon friends?”
Buffy was in a mood to let someone have it, and Riley had found himself in the path of the hurricane. She slammed the headset back into the cradle and splintered both. Oops, she thought. And then: thank God we are leaving in two days: I don’t have to worry about finding the money to buy a new one. She left so fast that she did not hear Dawn come down and set up a howl because her sister had broken the phone; nor Giles taking a brand new one from the store cupboard, kept in the expectation that sooner or later Buffy would do exactly what she had done.
Buffy strode angrily down still-unfamiliar streets. There was something eating at her, and she could not put a name to it. She realized that she had been irrational; if, instead of looking for a fight, she had told Riley about the Corps of Aurors, they might even have taken steps to deal with the problem on an international level. Instead, she had behaved like a child.
But she couldn’t help it. Giles had given her a moment of warmth the evening before, when she felt that he was her real father; but that was yesterday, and that was Giles. Today, away from him, she was still enveloped in misery.
She sat down and tried to figure it out. Did she miss Sunnydale? Well, she was glad it was destroyed. Honestly. The place was horrible; it was one huge cannibal trap to devour people. From the moment she had come there, she had hardly spent one day without fighting. There had been no holidays, no intermissions (and then she realized, with a guilty start, that Sunnydale had a beach and she had never regretted not having anywhere to go). No, what she missed was her past. Her father had cut her off. Her mother was dead. Angel was gone, Cordelia was gone, Spike was leaving. Her cousin was dead – the first person she loved to die, but hardly the last. She had seen more death, more loss, and more cruel estrangement in a few years than anyone had a right to see in a lifetime.
No wonder, she thought, that she had fought so hard to save Willow – even when Willow had committed a murder, and, by the standards of Slayerness, should have been taken down.
Was she going to miss this? Oh, yes. She was a South Cal girl, born with the sun on her back and the ocean in front of her. She had never thought of it – indeed, she had sometimes whined or joked about her country – until now; but the thought of cold wet England – no mountains, no desert, and (*gulp*) no beaches… Well, there was the ocean; there should be beaches. But somehow, she did not associate the island country with suntans, beach ball and surfing.
“Oh, this is stupid”, she said to herself. She was being frivolous; her mind was running away from the real issues. She had to reconcile herself to losing things; she could not go on moping and hurting people, merely because of something that had happened to her.
Suddenly a horn honked beside her. She jumped, turned, and –
“Willow!”
“Hello, Buffy.”
“Willow! I didn’t even know that you could drive!”
“Yeah, well, my driving licence says I can. Take you for a spin?”
Buffy expressed her feelings by gripping the car door, vaulting over Willow in one perfect somersault, and landing with a thump beside her friend – to the astonishment of a couple of joggers and their dogs. The car roof was down, the weather was sunny but not too warm, it was a perfect day for a drive. Her depression lifted like early morning mist before the sun; and Willow had the radio on, blaring old love songs. They put on their sunglasses and headed out of town, smiling and chattering.
Well I’m in love, I’m in love, with a beautiful girl,
But she don’t care about me…
“The wheels are Kennedy’s. She’s kinda lent it to me as a sort of farewell gift…”
“Farewell? Oh, that’s sad, Wills”
“She can’t come to England with us, so it’s kinda like ‘hail and goodbye’. I could have gone for her, you know.”
Yesterday is dead and gone,
And tomorrow is out of sight.
It’s so sad to be alone;
Help me make through the night.
I don’t care what’s right or wrong,
And I don’t try to understand:
Let the devil take tomorrow,
‘cause tonight I need a friend!
As the road bent or went over some hill, one of them, Willow or Buffy, would point at some feature of the landscape, and they would both squeal with delight – all too conscious that they were soon to leave their native land. Buffy found herself wondering what it had been like for Giles, when he had had to leave England to mind a sulky, ungrateful, shallow local teen-ager with dyed blonde hair; until Willow told her to pull herself together and stop feeling guilty. “I’m not, actually,” Buffy grinned.
My hopes and my dreams come true,
My one and only you –
But it’s only make believe!
They dined on hot dogs at an ancient roadside joint half-way to the desert, wondering when they would ever do something like that again. If England or Scotland had hot-dog joints, neither Buffy nor Willow had ever heard of it.
They tell you you’re out of style
Unless you’ve three or four.
I’ve loved and lost again..
“Willow..”
“Yes?”
“Are we going anywhere in particular?”
“Not that I know of… I just thought we’d take in a bit of God’s country before we leave.”
“Yes… because if that’s so…”
“Yes?”
“Can we go to see Dad, please?” That came out in a rush.
“Well, if you want…”
“He’s in LA, so we could… besides… I kinda feel I owe it to him…”
“Sure we can, if we make a start.”
Mention of Buffy’s errant parent put a definite damper on their mood. It lifted again as they drove through the afternoon – through Palmdale, around the San Gabriel Mountains, and down towards Burbank – hours of open road and the wind in their faces and sunshine and music. But it went down as they met the city traffic and the smog, and the sun started to go down. They got there later than they wanted, and knew they could not make it to Santa Coleta that night.
……………………………………………………………………………
Though not without its rough patches, the visit had been less bad than they had thought. Dad’s girlfriend – soon to be his second wife, they heard – was fortunately in Spain; he had made a full apology about not being there for Joyce’s funeral (he’d been ill himself, it seemed – Buffy made the appropriate sympathetic noises), told her that he was (as she had guessed) the source of the anonymous flowers that turned up every now and then on her grave, and told some touching anecdotes of their early days. He had been mightily impressed by Willow (whom he had never met before) going to Oxford, and both astonished and amused at his daughter’s choice of profession. “Law enforcement?”, he had almost laughed; but in an admiring way. “I’d’ve thought you’d be too small… don’t get me wrong… small and cute, honey. I always thought you’d be an ice skater, or an athlete anyway… You know, Willow, she used to be very athletic, ice skating and cheerleading and God knows what.”
“She still is, Mr.Summers. When she got into the car this morning, she somersaulted right over me.”
“Is that right? Well, maybe she’ll dazzle the bad guys with acrobatics? But I’m still surprised you’d have to go all the way to London for a law enforcement job…. I’d’ve thought there’s enough bad guys right here in LA.”
“Well, Dad, it’s kinda specialist…”
“And secret, hey? All right, I think I get your drift. Won’t ask no more questions.”
Shortly after, they left with a kiss-and-hug from Buffy, and a handshake from Willow. But it was his last words that really shook her to the core. “Goodbye, honey, and good luck with your law enforcement. Maybe we’ll meet in Europe – I’m in Spain often, anyway… I’m glad I got to meet your girlfriend.”
It was impossible to mistake his meaning.
…………………………………………………………………………………
“Maybe we shouldn’t have been holding hands?”
“Maybe I should have kept him up to speed with Angel, Riley and Spike.”
“I know. Geez, Buff, I’m really sorry. I didn’t think I had gay sticking out of me like that.”
“Are you? Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Wills. I’m not!”
Willow turned towards her friend. They had been driving rather aimlessly, in the general direction of Santa Coleta.
“Buffy, what do you mean?” – and there was something almost like fear in her voice.
“Just what I said, Wills. I’ve been asking myself and asking myself, and the result is that I cannot find a single thing to stop me loving you. You remember when you first told me? I told you I wasn’t creeped out… and I wasn’t. It really is the same thing to me.”
“I’d never have got between you and Tara. But, darling, Tara is gone and Mom is gone and all my loves are gone. And you are the dearest thing that I have.”
“It’s a different world, Wills – you and I have changed it. In some ways, it’s worse than it was when all the Big Bads focused on one spot, and we were there to deal with them; but now there’s no more Council. We don’t know where we are going, and I don’t want to do it without you.”
Buffy was tired – tired of fighting alone, tired of relationships that fail, tired of men who never come up to expectations, tired of solitude and failure and dreariness. The future stretched out in front of her, long, lonely, and dusty; a fight after another, a return to a cold empty bed every day, until the day when a vamp strong enough or fast enough or lucky enough finally put an end to it. Was it so wrong to want warmth and company? And Willow was a girl – she did not have all those strange hang-ups and unspoken demands and general nonsense that boys had. She was at home with Willow. She rested her head on her friend’s shoulder; and suddenly she started sobbing.
“Please…” she stuttered, her nose and forehead nestling between Willow’s neck and collarbone, warm skin to warm skin, “please, Will, don’t turn me down now…”
“I won’t” said Willow Rosenberg; and she touched her furrowed forehead with soft lips.
