Heheheh. I'm surprised at how much fun I'm having with this one.

Tomorrow: Wesley and Fred hit Luis Vuitton and Fred feeds Wesley some ring.

(jeez, whan in sweet hell am I doing? Pornoshoppery?)

Conversation With the Monster

Conclusion: Goodbyes, of sorts

“I still don’t get it,” said Rosa, as Xander wound down his story. “Why was it that the First couldn’t defeat the Slayer? What was the force more powerful than it was?”

Xander regarded the woman gently, with all the patience of someone who’s spent nearly two decades teaching super-powered teenage girls.

“The First was never about evil,” said Xander. “It was about balance.” Rosa looked at him in disbelief.

“Oh, I don’t think it saw itself that way, but there’s evidence to support the theory. Before it all went down, we learned that Buffy herself had given the First the ability to act. We figured it was because of her resurrection, and that was part of it, true.”

“Oh, boy,” thought Dawn, “Here comes the Giles moment.”

“We should have really figured it out beforehand,” continued Xander, taking a last sip of coffee and resting his elbows on the table. “We should have figured it out the moment Kendra showed. It’s not that there’s never been two Slayers before—Giles was wrong about that. There have been. Wesley and I had a go at the Wolfram &Hart database a few years back, and there’s record of one dying, say, in Iceland, and then being resuscitated, and another popping up in Africa. No one noticed because Slayers didn’t used to last long. The situation corrected itself.”

“But Buffy was brought back,” said the young woman, appearing agitated. “Didn’t that break some cosmic rule or something?” “Sure,” said Xander. “But the real kicker was that there were now two Slayers who’d be sticking around. That’s what the cosmic balance took exception to. As long as Buffy and Faith both lived, one of them would figure out that there could be even more of them. That they weren’t bound by the Shadowmen’s rules forever.

“The First was free to act. It raised an army, murdered girls and destroyed the Council. And then, on one industrious day, it tried to talk Willow into killing herself, and manipulated Spike. It pulled Adam’s shade from Hell to seek knowledge, and projected itself back in time to take Angel from the picture before he interceded. In retrospect, we should have seen the universe was giving us a chance to pull this off. Two headstrong Slayers? Two ensouled vampires? That’s not coincidence. That’s a redundancy plan. Still got nothing on the snow, though.”

“Go back to that bit about…projecting itself through time?”

“Oh.” said Xander. “Like I said, the First doesn’t perceive time the way humans do, so it was nothing for him to be holding a conversation in its present while taunting Angel years earlier. It could be anywhere, anywhen it chooses, within limits I suppose.”

Xander’s face went serious. “It could be here right now.”

An electric shock washed down Dawn’s spine, but she only hesitated a second, reaching instinctively for the knife Faith had given her, years ago. Xander calmed her immediately by placing his hand on her shoulder, never once taking his eyes off the First as it morphed into Anya’s form.” “How long you known, Harris?” it said, a perfect echo of her caustic tone.

“Since the beginning. Like I said, I’ve been doing this awhile now. I generally know when evil things are hanging out.” There was a pause, and then Xander stated, plainly, “I’ve never forgiven you for killing her, you know. Not where it counts.”

“There’s fewer Slayers born every day, you know.” said the First, examining the replica of Anya’s engagement ring on its hand. “Nice touch,” thought Dawn, as she glanced at Xander. His face said nothing.

“I know. That’s OK, though. Fewer vampires.”

“The future will belong to me. When all of you are dead and gone, the wheel will spin around again.”

“Maybe. Or maybe someone will beat you back again. Did you learn what you came here to learn?”

“Not really,” said the First. “What is this source of power I’m incapable of understanding?”

Xander softened again. Dawn realized that, on some level, he was now talking to the part of the First that really was Anya, and that was a place that she not only couldn’t touch, but that she didn’t even want to try and touch. That little bit was his.

“What made Buffy keep fighting and Spike sacrifice himself? What made Faith escape jail and Angel create a ritual death for his son? What kept us together when Hell was literally looking to devour us? What pushes all of us forward through days that feel like straight razors?” Xander let out a small laugh. "It’s the only thing in this world more powerful than you, the only part of us that you have nothing to do with.

“It’s love. It’s the one thing you’ll never understand, and it’s the reason we’ll always win.”

The First glared, and began to fade out, without even a witty rejoinder.

“And the present?” said Xander, defiantly. "That belongs to us.”

Still got nothing on the snow, though.?

BWAH!!

?What is this source of power I?m incapable of understanding.?

Question mark?

I love your future, Victor.

Victor, I love it. A few typos: t editor

What kep tus together

"kept us", and speech marks needed here

defiantly. That

and here

small laugh. It’s the only thing

And a couple of places where new paragraphs for a new speaker-- in the seventh and eighth paragraphs. t /editor

But... I like. I like a lot. It's clever, and funny, and plausible.

Typos fixed, but SA? I'm not getting those weird question marks you're showing on my screen. Weird.

Hope people enjoy!

Those are probably because you're using Smart Quotes in your word processor, and in plain text they read as weird characters.

But what I really mean was it seems like "What am I incapable of understanding" deserved a question mark, as it was a question and had a period.

“What is this source of power I’m incapable of understanding.”

Victor, looks like this needs a question mark still, on my screen anyway.

Very nice. I think I shall point amyth to this.

The First never did *get* love, did it? Even in "Touched," when it expressed a desire for physical contact, it only wanted to kill. It didn't understand that the touching going on was an expression of love in some of its many forms. Eeeeenteresting...

eta x-post w/ SA. hi, SA!

The question mark has been fixed! Thanks!

For you and that kind of fic, I would fix innumerable typos. Mwah!! Not that you have innumerable typos. You know what I mean. I hope.

Okay, so that LJ challenge (from dreamtree, I think?) got me started. I'm a bad girl who starts more fics than she has time to write. Anyway. Post-Chosen.

- - -

Heat. There had been heat; unbearable, scorching heat.

He'd been dust. He knew for a fact that he'd been dust, and it had hurt.

The pain was still there, a distant memory intruding under his skin—and there was heat, too, but that didn't seem to be internal.

Spike opened his eyes, and found that he was staring at the sun. He shut them again quickly.

Pain. Pain was good, it was something he could hold on to, fight with, revel in.

There was a stone digging into his lower back. Footsteps sounded around him. Voices spoke ("poor guy… drink? drugs?… sunstroke, at least") and moved on past—he could practically see people trying to look at him without showing their curiosity.

No reason to move presented itself, and so he lay there, sun-bathing, pain-bathing, sure that this was hallucination or purgatory. He was, after all, dead.

The sun went down. The people went. Demons moved past—only some were walking—and they ignored him, too. Until… "Spike?" said a voice, a knowing, cheerful voice.

He opened his eyes again, trying to identify the newcomer.

Skin—lots of skin, folded and creased enough to hide playing cards or kittens or possibly a small Eiffel Tower in—a smile, wide and cheerful and always optimistic; and breath, real, living-person breath than smelled of Kentucky Fried Chicken and cooked onions.

Carefully, Spike put the jigsaw pieces together, and enquired, "Clem? What the…"

"I, err, hear you saved the world," Clem said, conversationally. "Shall we—have a drink? I don't really want to be hanging around here for long."

"Yeah," Spike said. There didn't seem to be a lot of choice.

"Are you—you know, *okay*? I mean, lying there isn't getting us out of here, actually."

In a spirit of scientific experimentation, Spike sat up. His head swam for a moment, and his heart thudded.

He did a swift double take.

One hand on his chest, he looked up into Clem's face—though he couldn't exactly tell if the lines were a frown or just Clem's normal look. "Weird," he said.

"Right, man. Weird. Can we just get out of this place?"

"Why?" Spike asked, and then took the time to look around. Demonsville, the bad side of town—whatever town this was—and things that had ignored him earlier were starting to pay more attention. "Okay."

Carefully, he stood up, and Clem began to lead the way out of the alley, walking at first, but then starting to run, as the things behind them took more notice.

They ran in silence for a while, until the bigger, nastier demons seemed to have been left behind, and those that were around ignored them. Then, breath catching in his throat, heart pounding in his chest, Spike stopped, and gasped, "Where are we, anyway?"

Clem shrugged. "No idea. Well…" he looked around in the darkness, looking for any sort of clue, "we're only a hundred yards from this town's zoo."

Spike raised an eyebrow. "The *zoo*?"

"That's what it says," Clem replied, pointing at the sign. "One Hundred Yards To The Most Biggest Collection of Animals Since The Ark!"

"That doesn't exactly help us," Spike said. "We might as well go on and look for…"

"Why?" Clem asked. "Let's go to the zoo."

Spike didn't have to voice the thought. 'You must be crazy' said his face, his newly-human body, in fact everything about him, up to and including the leather duster.

Clem had only just noticed the duster. He wondered briefly how it had survived, and then put it down to some sort of after-death Darwinism. Survival of the fittest, and all that.

"Suit yourself," Clem said. "I'm going. I like to see the big cats." He turned and started walking down the road, not looking back.

For a moment, Spike simply stood there, undecided; then he followed Clem. Nothing wrong with being crazy, after all. He'd heard it was in fashion this year.