Reponse to Cindy's half-hour challenge. Pretty much straight through.

Buffy opened the door slowly, the chain on, wanting to see before she was seen.

For a moment, she didn't quite believe it. "Wesley?"

He nodded. "Buffy, we need to talk."

"About what?" she asked.

"What's happening. The prophecy. Everything," he said, and leaned on the doorframe. "Can I come in, Buffy, please? I've been on the road for three days, looking for you."

"I didn't want to be easy to find," she told him, but she took the chain off and stood back. "Are you sure you're not a vampire?"

In silence, he walked past her. "It wouldn't matter if I was. This isn't your home."

"Closest thing I've got," she shrugged. "It does. Bed, chair, space to swing an axe in."

"You're still practising, then? That's good," he said, without waiting for an answer. "We'll need that."

"Okay, Wes. Square with me. What's going on?"

"Guess." She looked at him, taking in the unshaven chin, the haunted eyes, and the ragged clothes.

"Big war, lots of fighting, time for a Slayer to save the world?"

"That's right."

"Well, you can go and find yourself some other girl. There's thousands out there with Slayer powers now; I'm no better than any of them."

"None of them have your... experience."

"Then they can get some. I have stuff to do."

"Like what, Buffy? Stamp on cockroaches?"

"For example," she agreed, putting her booted foot on one that had haplessly crawled out from under a cupboard. "And a job to go to-- waitressing-- and a free evening class. That sort of thing."

Wesley simply looked at her.

"Nothing I can't leave if I have to, but I'd rather not. You never answered my question."

"I can tell you the details in the car. We have to be going."

"No, we don't."

"I'll never understand," Wesley sighed, "how Giles put up with you."

"He saw my inner light," Buffy said, facetiously.

"I'm sure. In short, then: Angel Investigations has taken over Wolfram and Hart. Angel can't deal with running something that large. Gunn's quit. Fred can't be dragged out of her lab. Cordy can't be dragged out of her coma. There's a prophecy that says Spike will come back from wherever he's gone. It goes on to say that he will cause an apocalypse, but it doesn't say how."

"I don't see what I can do to help." Buffy suddenly became aware that they were still just standing there, inside the door. She moved to sit down.

"No, Buffy," Wesley said, and she changed her mind, turning back towards him. "You can lead, Buffy. You can get the Watcher's Council to help us. You can get Willow to help us. The younger Slayers will follow you."

She shook her head, and flopped into the musty armchair. "Wrong, Wesley. I can't lead, they won't follow, Willow's gone her own way, and there is no Watcher's Council. Go back to your law firm and think of someone else to ask."

"Buffy, there is nobody else. You have to help me."

"No, I don't. You have to help you."

"I'm sorry?"

"You really aren't," Buffy said. "I mean, if none of the others can lead, then you'll have to. It's the only reason anyone's ever followed me: none of them could lead."

"I can't."

"That's what I thought."

"Okay, Buffy, you don't want to help, that's fine." He put his hand on the doorknob.

"You don't get it, do you?" Buffy said, standing again. "I am helping you. I'm telling you what I've learnt. You were in charge of Angel Investigations, weren't you? I remember Willow telling me something about that. You can take charge, if that's what's needed."

He nodded, as if he got it, and opened the door. "Will you come with me? Show me how?"

"I already did that," she said, and shut the door in his face.

edited following a spellcheck

nothing like the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack to kickstart a battle scene. Very close to the end now. Then I can start the sequels.

Giles blinked. "Ben's Glory?"

"Been there, done that," Buffy said.

"Do you have a plan for finishing this?"

She licked her lips. "No."

Glory charged Giles, ducking underneath the swordblade. He barely managed to roll out of the way of the claws that were aimed at his face.

Buffy ran to Dawn, who was still on the ground, staring in disbelief, and she yanked her sister to her feet. "Get in there," she snapped, pushing Dawn towards the chapel.

"Buffy--"

"Go! Go check on Mom."

Dawn gasped and nodded, then took off as fast as long legs could take her.

Giles spun and slashed at Glory. The blade caught her but did not break the skin. Instead of trying for cuts, Giles began using the sword as a very narrow club, chopping at Glory.

Buffy watched for several seconds, ramping up her perceptions from human to Slayer. Then she dove into the god vs. vampire brawl, landing a kick that knocked Glory straight into Giles' backhand slash. Glory turned on Buffy, giving Giles a clear shot at Glory's head. Glory stumbled, and Giles gave Buffy a tight smile. He'd shifted into game face, but she couldn't help grinning back. Then they moved in again.

Every time Glory tried to shift her attack, either Buffy or Giles countered her. Glory made no attempt to escape, wanting only to cause damage. She managed to get hold of Buffy's arm and twisted, driving Buffy painfully to her knees.

"Aren't you happy you're stuck with me?" Glory hissed into Buffy's ear, yanking on the arm. "I bet you'll come apart easier than a vampire."

"You'll not be finding out!" Giles kicked Glory in the side, and she fell back, but without letting go of Buffy. Buffy yelled as her shoulder was nearly dragged out of its socket. Before Glory could recover, Giles stomped with all his power on her wrist. Glory screamed in pain and let go. Giles grabbed Buffy and pulled her out of reach.

"Will you be all right?" he asked anxiously. She nodded impatiently, clutching her shoulder. They both looked up at a strange sound. Glory was whimpering in pain.

The hellgod sat on the ground, cradling her wrist. From the angle, it was severely broken. She stared at her injury, shaking her head. "You can't. It's impossible. You can't hurt me. You can't." Her body morphed several times to Ben's, and then back, the pain-filled voice shifting as well from male to female.

Giles nodded. "Excellent. She's beginning to lose hold. Let's finish this." He started to move, but paused when Buffy didn't move. "Buffy?"

She stared at her foe, watching the transformations. For moments on end, Ben's face stared at her, and she could only think of him shyly asking her out for coffee. Then Glory would be back, mad and desperate and needing to be stopped. "I don't think I can . . ."

"What?"

"He's Ben, he's human." She glared at him. "I'm not supposed to hurt humans, that's what you taught me. Can I help it if some lessons took?"

Giles started to argue, then thought better. "Well, then, you hit her when she's Glory, and I'll hit him when he's Ben. Buffy, we can't give her time to recover."

"I know . . ." She stared at his vampiric face. When he'd been a Fyarl, she'd known him by his eyes. It was his voice that confused her now, reasonable, concerned, Gilesian. He hadn't quite gotten the knack of sounding like himself past fangs, but he wasn't far off. She wanted to ask him to change back, but that was encouraging a lie. She needed to see this face and try to figure it out later, how his face could scream enemy while his voice still said friend.

"Buffy . . ." His voice was patient, but firm, sounding like a thousand training and consultation sessions.

She nodded and looked away, unable to listen to that voice from that face. "I know. Let's do it."

They moved. It was Glory, all pretense at rationality gone from her eyes, who rose to meet them, so Buffy hit first. Even a one-handed god still had some power, and she barely staggered as the blow landed. Two more punches brought out Ben, though. He saw Giles' sword coming and flinched, catching the edge on his shoulder instead of in the throat. Buffy grabbed his arms, gasping an apology as she tried to immobilize him. Glory reappeared and wriggled free, headbutting Buffy squarely in the nose.

Giles punched Glory in the belly, bringing his knee up to catch her face on its way down as she doubled over. More blood flowed, but Glory could do no more than gasp in horror before Buffy recovered and joined Giles. They drove Glory to her knees. Giles dropped his sword, the quarters being too close for decent swings. Buffy hesitated a little when Ben surfaced, showing the bruises of the beating Glory was taking, but Giles continued, never blinking as the face beneath his blows kept changing.

Then it was Ben's face that appeared and stayed as he slowly sank to his knees. Buffy managed to redirect Giles' fist as the young human man lay on the ground, whimpering on every breath.

"Enough!" she snapped, glaring back at yellow demon eyes. "He's down! She's gone!"

"No, she's not."

"She's gone enough! Look at him!" Maybe not the wisest of instructions to a vampire. Giles stared down at the bloody human, and Buffy could have sword she saw him lick his lips very briefly. "Anyway, even if she comes back, she's going to be too weak to do anything. You said it yourself, she's losing control. She won't be able to hang on to the form long enough to do anything. Besides," she added, "the sun's going to be shining in here before too much longer."

Reminded, Giles looked anxiously at the sky and winced. He glanced back at Ben, undecided.

Buffy crouched down closer to Ben. "I am so sorry," she said, trying to find an unbattered part of him to touch comfortingly. "But we had to stop her. We'll find a way for you to control her, I promise. She can't last much longer. Can you hear me?" She shifted position so he could look at her without moving his head. "We'll help you."

Ben might have nodded, he might have been trembling in shock. But he managed something approximating a smile.

She straightened with a wince and reached for her bleeding nose. "Ow." Then she reached for her shoulder. "Ow again."

"You should rest," Giles said quietly. "Get those injuries seen to. And I imagine someone's mother is rather anxious to see her daughter."

Buffy turned towards the chapel door, forgetting her wounds. Dawn and Joyce stood in the doorway, holding on to each other, looking both horrified and relieved. Buffy took a step towards them, then glanced back over her shoulder. "You should get under cover."

"I will. Go on."

She ran to her family. Joyce was incoherent with worry and happiness, trying to hug Buffy without letting go of Dawn. Dawn clung to her sister, not even bothering to try to speak as she cried.

Willow came up carefully, not wanting to interrupt but carefully reaching out anyway to touch Buffy's arm. Buffy looked up and blinked away tears. "Hey, Will," she whispered, taking her hand.

"Hey, Buffy. How was your trip?"

"Kind of dull, actually. How was your night?" Willow stuttered then went silent, but Buffy had already looked beyond Willow to Tara. "Hi. I got your call. I'm glad you're OK."

Tara smiled. "I'm glad it worked. We should pack your nose before it swells too much more."

Buffy almost reached for her nose, but it hurt too much to touch. "Is it broken? Am I going to look like a field hockey player?" Dawn giggled from where she was tucked in tight between her mother and her sister.

Spike stepped forward a little from the shadows, but not too far. "Nah, should be fine, but you'll bruise up impressively. It'll look like you went a few rounds with a god."

Buffy nearly smiled at him, then frowned at the bandage around his neck. "What happened to you?" She looked around the chapel. Xander was sitting in a front pew, staring at the floor in front of his feet and not paying attention to anyone else. She checked everyone again, worried now. "Where's Anya?"

Everyone went very still, then Spike took a slow, reluctant breath. Something outside caught his attention before he could speak, and his eyes went very wide. "What the hell?"

Giles glanced at the encroaching sunlight, gauging the time, then he went over and picked up his sword. He brushed the dirt off the grip, then cleaned the blade with a corner of his shirt. Holding it loosely, he walked back to Ben, who had managed to raise himself a few inches and was pausing to catch his breath.

"A noble soul, Buffy," Giles said. "She sincerely believes in the curative powers of hope. She will offer help to anyone, all they need to do is ask." He shifted out of game face as he gazed down at the battered human. "But sometimes there is no help, no hope. I think you know that."

Ben managed to look up at him. "I can try . . ."

"You can't control her, we've only driven her back. I have no idea how long it will take her to fade away. As you recover, so she will recover. And so she will be back. And she will try to kill my Slayer again, in revenge for everything that was taken away. No."

Ben barely had time to blink before Giles raised his sword and swung down.

"Giles!" Buffy shrieked from the chapel door, but the head was already on the ground, rocking slightly. Blood gushed out of the body as it convulsed and transformed one more time, leaving Glory's corpse laying in the dirt.

"Requiescat in pace," Giles said softly.

Buffy ran up and gasped in horror before she turned away with her hands over her mouth. "Oh, god, how could you? How could you?" The others were approaching, though more hesitantly.

"This doesn't require an audience," Giles called, cleaning his sword again.

Spike came up, looked at the pieces and shook his head. "You had to do this in front of everybody, Ripper? Come on, love," he said, putting his hands on Buffy's shoulders and urging her away. "None of your concern anymore, go on back in."

She pulled away and turned, tears on her face. "You had no right," she whispered. "We could have--"

Giles sighed and resheathed his sword. "Buffy, you are a hero. Your job is to save the world. And congratulations are in order, because, yet again, you've done just that. Well done." His tired smile was sincere. "But every hero needs a cleanup crew, people who will do the jobs the hero can't but which need to be done to make sure the hero's job stays done. I have always been a part of your cleanup crew, and as long as I walk this earth, I shall continue to be so. Whether you want me to or not."

She shook her head. "This was wrong. We might have been able to save him . . ."

"No. If there was enough Ben left to save, it wouldn't be Glory lying here now." He glanced up at the sky again. "I do apologize for leaving this mess for others to deal with, but time is against me." He looked at Spike and frowned. "What happened to you?"

Spike grabbed his arm to pull him towards the bus. "Long night, long story." He hesitated and turned back to Buffy. "I'd take care of this for you if I could, but . . ."

She shook her head without looking at him. After a moment he continued to the bus with Giles. Buffy kept her eyes away from Glory's body, but she couldn't avoid any of the other bodies lying around the courtyard. "It was supposed to be over," she whispered. "Now what do we do?"

just some loose ends to prune, a bit of foreshadowing angst to shade in, and we're there. Finally.

connie, that's fantastic. I love it.

Love this part Connie, and I can't wait to reread the whole thing as one piece.

One edit:

Giles stared down at the bloody human, and Buffy could have sword she saw him lick his lips very briefly.

Sworn?

weird, sick, mutant bunny(and Buffista RPF) starts here. Black senses of humor required [link]

Anya/Tara for the femmeficathon.

Glass House

(Bargaining, Season Six)

Tara walked Anya home after dinner. It was one of their little rituals, like Buffy, Willow, and Xander's Oreo-and-popcorn movie night, or Dawn reshelving books every Saturday from the unsteady towering piles they ended up in throughout the week. Unspoken, but necessary for the stability of their world. Tara and Anya began it shortly after they'd both been left to twiddle their thumbs for the umpteenth time while the others took care of some crazy thing.

They'd spent the evening eating bruchetta and delicate clam linguini, talking about the summer and how things had changed the past three months. More and more they found themselves talking about Willow and Xander, how invested they were in this plan and the possibility of ruining the delicate balance they'd all achieved over the summer.

As they walked, they overheard a loud couple talking about their sex life, and the irate boyfriend yelling, "Sex is like Chinese food! An hour later you can always do with more!" They both burst into giggles and had to sit down to hold their sides.

Later Tara would think about how great it was that Anya finally got the jokes, was beginning to understand humanity again after being so detached from it for thousands of years, but at the time they just leaned against each other to hold up their weight and looked out on the peaceful Sunnydale night.

For some reason Sunnydale was always easy in the summer, less strained with the burden of its destiny. It was as though it knew, come fall there would be an overflow of craziness and evil, and took some measure to just calm down.

The result was that people were friendly and open, willing to share hellos and help strangers on the street. Even those lucky few in ever-constant denial seemed touched by the feeling as well, and smiles were brighter and shoe sales more frequent.

The heat was clear and dry, and their fingers brushed as they ambled home. They were unlikely friends, made less so by the positions they were put into by their lovers. Bonds were easily formed and strengthened in Sunnydale, where the collective terror of just living hung over the town like a shroud, and they both knew what they had, even if they never spoke of it.

When they walked past the Espresso Pump the smell was too tempting to avoid, so they slipped onto the high stools in a corner of the open area and listened to the live musicians weave violin and guitar together, perfectly complementing the night. They ordered frosted mochas and talked about the small things that had happened throughout the week: a new shipment of books from England, a guy slipping while playing hackysack at the college, the new secular bookstore that opened down the street.

Tara saw a guy from her women's studies class and spent a few minutes talking to him while Anya watched on, sipping her mocha and tracing the pattern of the tile on the table. He made some joke about the Lord of the Rings movie, and Tara laughed, high and sweet, when Anya's head shot up at the mention of Legolas.

The guy left, and they finished their mochas in companionable silence, listening to the music and commenting lowly on occasion about passerbys or the new movie at the theater.

When they left, it was late, and Anya offered to walk Tara back to Revello first, taking a cab home, but Tara declined, saying she wanted to enjoy the evening before they all disappeared.

The walk was easy--Xander's apartment building was close to town, and the subdivisions not much further from it.

They got to the door and hugged warmly, Tara pressing a soft kiss to Anya's lips. She waited on the stairs until Anya was safely inside, turning to go back down.

Loose thoughts flowed through Tara's head as she walked home. Three months made such a difference. How strange was it that she could not pinpoint a happier time in her life than after the loss of Buffy? It was almost macabre, she knew, but she saw more and more how her death had served to pull the rest of them together, move past their annoyances and troubled relationships to be a family.

Tara felt that, now, she had a family--though she'd considered the Summers and Xander so for a long time. She had Willow, too, the love of her life. What they had was forever, she knew it in her bones. But even more than that, she had a friend. Anya filled that last part of her dream, and there were times when she felt so overcome with joy she would sit curled in a chair for hours, staring at nothing but reveling at the amazing turn her life had taken.

Where she was now was because of Buffy, in more ways than one, and every day she thought of her and wished her peace--she found it hard to believe that Buffy's sacrifice would be rewarded with torment, despite Willow's insistence and Xander's blind belief.

The whole plan disturbed Tara more and more, and though she knew it was deeply selfish, she feared that any attempts at changing the outcome of the events of last May would destroy them all, destroy what she had so stumblingly acquired.

When she came home, she found Willow's things strewn across the kitchen table in a quiet house. Her computer was still on, parts of the translated spell littering the screen. Tara's fingers danced across the screen, following the words, and her hand fell to lie on the keyboard.

Before she quite realized what she was doing, she felt heat on her hand and a crackling strength pulling through her body from her toes to her forehead. A quiet, powerful ball of energy hit the computer, shorting it out.

She stepped back, looking at her hand with surprise. Then she carefully stepped over the cords on the floor to reach into the kitchen and turn off the light, going up the stairs to sleep at Willow's side.

Nice, SA. I really like that. It makes Tara less the perfect victim. I always disliked that Tara never seemed to make a mistake, didn't seem to have human impulses.

One thing:

lowly on occasion about passerbys

Lowly made me think of low company rather than quiet conversation and the last word should be passersby.