Midnight Empire (1/?)
Midnight Empire
Chapter 1: It's a Bird, It's a Plane
Summary: When the Slayer and her gang come to New York City, they quickly discover what it's like to work the toughest demon beat on Earth, battling ancient prophecies, supernatural fiends, outrageously high rents and more. Unfortunately, nothing in the city is as it seems. The streets are paved with deadly secrets, and before long the Scoobies and their L.A. counterparts find themselves drawn into a thousand-year-old conspiracy that threatens to destroy the world.
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel
Season: Post-Chosen, Post-NFA
Chapters: ?
Word Count: ?
Rating: R
Warnings: Do not drink while operating heavy machinery, slippery when wet, beware of dog
Betas: dampersnspoons, aerintine
Disclaimer: The characters from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" are owned by Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, Mutant Enemy, Fox studios and maybe various other entities that I am unaware of but totally respect and fear. This story is not meant to infringe upon anyone's rights, only to entertain.
Author's note: This is a direct sequel to my fic, Clocks.of the Long Now, and picks up soon after that story's epilogue. While this new tale is very different, large portions of it probably won't make sense to someone who didn't already read the first story. So, I guess the above qualifies as my 'warning'. As far as explicit content (character deaths, violence, sexy times, etc), if you've read my other stuff then you probably know what to expect in this one.
Chapter One
It's a Bird, It's a Plane
Buffy Summers tapped the armrests with the tips of her fingers. The world outside the little window scrolled by in a blur of gray tarmac and turquoise sky. The stewardess was strapped into a tiny chair beside the cockpit door, and she was giving her the Evil Eye again. Buffy couldn’t find the heart to blame her, though. After all, it’d been a pretty long trip.
Flight attendant, she thought. Remember to say ‘flight attendant’ next time.
Don’t want to stir up that bees nest again.
She stole a glance at the man in the seat next door. His only remaining eye was closed for business, and a bead of cold sweat on his forehead bled down towards it like a tear.
Meanwhile, in the row behind them, a familiar voice kept going.
And going, and going, and going…
“… and, lo, the battle was joined. Mistress Kennedy was a steely beast, well versed in the deadly Slayer Arts. And all while we danced, the bomb kept ticking and ticking, the zero hour closing in like a fleet of Borg Cubes. All hope seemed lost. And yet, I had one final card to play…”
“Lemme guess,” Dawn deadpanned. “Bind of Galgamek?”
“The Bind of Galgamek!”
The story (or stories; as usual, there seemed to be more than one) was getting old: Andrew Wells conquers the Dread Queen Kennedy, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. It was très annoying, but lately Buffy had adopted a position on the matter similar to the one about babies and their bottles, or dogs and their days.
As the plane touched down, Xander Harris emitted some kind of snarling, grunting snore. His eye popped wide open. Snowball-skinned, cornflake-dry mouth hanging open, he might have passed for a convincing vampire.
“Marshmallows!” is what he said.
“Marshmallows?”
“Huh?” Xander shoved his hair back, straightened his collar. Peeked out the window. “Oh.”
“Yep. Guess we’re officially New Yorkers, now.”
“Not yet,” chimed a reedy voice from behind. “Still gotta get through customs.”
Buffy nodded vaguely, and stared out the window again. Compared to the spectacle of their final approach - when the city looked like some Lego Da Vinci masterpiece - the grounds-eye view was astonishingly blah. As they taxied toward the gate, a pair of blue luggage caterpillars crawled into view, silently ferrying a few thousand pounds of fashion statements to the baggage claim.
She timidly raised her hand again, but the evil Air Nazi just sat there, pretending not to see her. Thirty whole seconds ticked by before the woman finally stood and her long, slender finger jabbed a button.
There was a ding.
Buffy unzipped her purse. Grabbed the phone.
Pressed "redial."
***
She watched the carousel loop around again. For the third time, a lonesome beige duffel gaped back at her like a pound puppy begging to be taken home. It was this image that finally shook Buffy from her stupor. She started wandering in panicked little circles, unsure where to go, who to ask, what to what.
At some point, someone in official-ish looking duds strayed near. Dreamily, Buffy watched herself reach out for The Uniform. Surely, The Uniform would know what to do. Surely, there were Procedures and Protocols for this sort of thing.
“They’re not here,” she explained.
“Excuse me?”
“They’re… not here!”
“Calm down, miss,” replied the blue wool sport blazer. “Who’s not here?”
Buffy gestured at the Not-At-All-Merry-Go-Round.
“Everything,” she gasped.
Moving automatically, her hand shot out and clutched the blazer's sleeve. Its owner’s eyes burned back at her with sudden alarm.
Xander leapt into action. “It’s okay,” he said. “We… uh, we’ve had a recent loss.”
A few tense moments ticked by, then The Uniform kept walking, off to do something fully authorized.
“Xander,” Buffy managed to say. “My… everything.”
“That’s sweet of you to say, Buff. But Dawn says we gotta get going if we’re gonna beat the traffic.”
“No! Xander!”
She pointed again, just in time to see the sad little duffel loop past again. Xander stared at it for a long moment, and Buffy could almost hear the tiny gears grinding in his brain.
“Oh,” he said, getting it at last. “Ohhh. Okay. I mean, don’t panic. I’m sure just they’re just on a different, uh... chute. Or something.”
“No. I checked them all. They’re not here.”
Xander started whirling around frantically, falling into the very same hole she was trying to climb out of. He grabbed her hand and walked her over to a big, white desk with a sign that read 'Information' in six different languages.
“Excuse me,” asked Xander, in plain, old-fashioned English. “Who do we see about lost luggage?”
A pair of sleepy eyes regarded them for a couple of seconds, and for a moment Buffy was afraid he’d picked the wrong one. Then Information Man opened his wide, froglike mouth, and a very weird voice crawled out of it. “Yuz lawst yah baaags?” it said.
Xander held up both index fingers, striking the universal pose for let me clarify. “Well, no,” he said. “I mean they’re lost, all right. But we didn’t lose ‘em.”
The agent breathed out of his mouth a few times. Then he started posing more questions in his strange, underwater-y tongue, Xander nodding and asking for the occasional translation. Mostly unable and unwilling to follow along, Buffy whipped out the phone again and punched REDIAL.
Willow’s electronic message blatted back once more, as if to mock her. So far the only response was a lone Tweet that she was still waiting for a flight number, and that was eight hours ago.
Buffy turned to gaze at the carousel again. The beige bag seemed to be gone, now, along with most of the passengers.
She speed-dialed Dawn.
“Yello?!”
“Where are you guys?”
“New York!”
“Dawn…”
“We’re out in the limo with Admiral Ticklebelly. It’s pretty awesome here. You guys should swing by sometime.”
Buffy blew a sharp breath. “I still can’t get through to Will.”
“Probably just means they’re on their way.”
“And… I think the airline lost my bags.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I never kid about suede,” Buffy replied, regaining some of her composure. “Look why don’t you guys let Ticklebelly get motoring. Think we might have to stick around for awhile.” She stared back at the booth agent, who belched a word that sounded like wowlertz. “You know, fill out forms or whatever,” she added with a sigh.
“Buffy…”
“What.”
“Don’t worry so much, okay? It’s always darkest before the Dawn.”
***
The office was packed with about two hundred other angry, luggage-less people. Apparently, there had been some kind of Baggage Apocalypse yesterday. Buffy thought she even recognized a few of them from their flight. Some had already shouted themselves hoarse and now lay slumped over in their chairs, no doubt dreaming of garment bags and extra socks and all the cute vacation outfits they would never get to wear.
Buffy and Xander simply stared out into the terminal in quiet defeat. Together they’d vanquished monsters who could scare whole regiments of marines, had taken down vampires and mummies and mind-melting gods. Transatlantic travel, however, was proving to be a somewhat more implacable foe.
The Oh So Flawless plan began to come apart at the seams almost right away. Willow - in full “no-sweat, piece-a-cake” mode - had made all the travel arrangements for the body. Unfortunately, their little airfield of choice was closed for business - some kind of computer snafu, they claimed - and by the time they made the drive back down to Heathrow the virus had spread there too. What should have been a minor delay quickly snowballed into an avalanche of paperwork and standbys and quarantines that no mere magic could dig them out of. Buffy tried not to blame the witch too much. In their line of work, it was sometimes hard to remember how complicated a little thing like death still was for most of the world.
So, while Willow stayed behind to work out new accommodations for herself and her recently deceased ‘brother’, the rest of them had forged bravely onward.
A tad too bravely, in Buffy’s case.
In a moment of temporary madness, she skipped the carry-on inspection in favor of the shorter and seemingly more straightforward Pretty-Please Put Every Single Thing I Own in the World on the Correct Plane Line. A chilly finger poked her spine as she contemplated the silk checks by Burberry, the mélange wool flannel by Stella, the twill wrap-front by Reiss…
Not to mention a certain ancient, mystical axe-type-thingee, she mused.
Sorta doubt insurance is gonna cover that puppy...
After what felt like an hour, it was finally their turn to shuffle up to the desk and file their paperwork. The clerk handed them a well-practiced and robotic apology, and then they found themselves standing out in baggage claim again, sharing a dazed ‘what now’ look.
Via some mysterious feat of telepathy, it soon became clear that Xander thought it was pointless to hang around there, that it wasn’t going to make the second plane fly any faster, that it was like watching water boil.
And this all made perfect sense to Buffy. So they compromised.
(Translation: she got her way.)
There didn’t seem to be much to do besides kick around the concourse or sit at a bar, so they settled on the latter. Thanks to the cloudless morning sky that streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows (wall-dows?), the place conjured all the romance and grandeur of a Pizza Hut.
Buffy ordered a plate of eggs and toast, but after it arrived, she could only stare at it forlornly, occasionally stabbing the little omelet with her fork.
When this got dull, she took to people-watching. The bustle was a lot like any other airport - in places people actually want to go, at least. This crowd came in all shapes and sizes, hailing from every distant corner of the Earth. Still, there was something identical in their eyes that told the eternal tale of all travelers; that weird blend of anxiety and exhilaration that comes with arrivals and departures.
Even Xander had a bit of this look about him: quietly sipping his A.M. cocktail, fingers drumming the counter, lone eye bashfully flickering at the mirror above the bar every few seconds, as if to make sure that it was still really them in there.
“Cut it out,” he suddenly said.
“Cut what out?”
“C’mon. I know what you’re thinking.”
“Enlighten me, O’ Psychic One.”
“Coffins aren’t luggage, Buff.”
She let the words sink in. Staked the toast with her butter knife. “Fine,” she said, trying to convince herself that it really was. “Let’s get a cab.”
***
The ride into town was weirdly quiet and uneventful. Xander’s two trunks had left in the limo with Dawn and Andrew, so when the cab picked them up Buffy felt almost naked.
“No bags?” the driver asked, in a tone that was verging on suspicion.
The taxi zipped north along the Van Wyck Expressway, past what struck Buffy as decidedly un-New York-y scenery. Crisscrossing grids of row homes reminded her of stained brown teeth, better suited for chomping on Zagnut bars than Big Apples.
This trick of perception wasn’t her fault, really. Like most newcomers weaned on the movies, Buffy Summers had unwittingly built a version of the city inside her head, and it sure as heck didn’t look like this. As they slid onto Metropolitan Avenue, she began mentally cataloging this dream architecture and the strange beings that populated it: Big Ape climbs a skyscraper where sleepless Seattle dudes luck out; Panty-hosed Gladiators duel under Midtown glass ceilings while Wall Street vamps prowl the floor of the Stock Exchange.
Woody Allen stutters his way down Central Park West.
Ghostbusters bust ghosts in a snooty hotel.
Superman does something super in Times Square.
The dingy concrete sprawl outside the window seemed an unlikely home for such fantastic creatures.
Then: it happened.
They were about halfway across the intersection of Flushing Avenue when The City suddenly slid into view, looming above the grungy industrial pancake of Maspeth Creek like a gleaming fairytale palace. Manhattan’s profile was both unmistakable and bracingly new, like a poem stamped onto some unread page of her brain.
One glimpse and Buffy fell under its spell. She and Xander stared helplessly as it grew larger and closer and more real. All at once, the jumble of squat, grungy hives and empty truck bays outside seemed like the scruffy foothills of the City’s magnificent mountain vistas. She knew this part was true when she saw the bridge, spanning the East River like a drawbridge over a castle moat.
They had arrived.
Xander grinned. “New York, meet Slayer. Slayer, meet New York.”
Their driver slowed to a crawl as they hit a cluster of traffic near the bridge’s mouth. The city on the other side felt close enough to touch. There was no comparison to London or Rome or Cleveland. With her peaks and parks and ant armies of pedestrians, she looked like the capital of the world.
Suddenly - rudely - the car turned left.
“Uh,” said Xander. “Pardon me, sir. I know we’re new to town - but isn’t New York that-a-way?”
The driver’s dark eyes flickered at them in the rear-view window. “Uhn?” he said.
“New York. You know. Empire State Building? Broadway? Lots of loud, rude people?”
“Uhhhn?” he said again, strangling the sound under a thick accent. “You want go Broadway? You say Kent …”
“Right, sure,” Xander said. “Kent Avenue.”
“Okay! We go Broadway, then!”
The car made a few more twists, then they were easing onto a street named “Broadway” that did not look one tiny bit like the real, actual "Broadway." Through the window, twenty-somethings sporting bedheads and designer sunglasses dominated the sidewalks, swaggering past a gauntlet of vintage T-shirt shops, vegan sandwich joints and cafés with quirky names like “Mud en Chaise” and “Go, Run, Smell.”
Oh God, Buffy thought.
Hipsters.
“Xander,” she hissed, clutching his sleeve.
“I know. I see ‘em.” He leaned forward again. “Excuse me sir? Are you sure this is the right way?”
The eyes flashed back at them again, but this time no words followed. The taxi dragged onto Wythe Avenue next, rolling past battered storage sheds and old defunct factories, then turned again at 8th Street and parked alongside what appeared to be an abandoned bus depot.
The driver’s finger touched a button, and the meter spat out a crunching, gnashing sound.
“Forty five plus toll,” he muttered.
Xander fiddled with the little computer screen in the back seat, then peeled off some bills. Ten seconds later, they were standing out on a street corner in Brooklyn, staring at a building that some clip-boarded city official had obviously forgotten to condemn.
While Xander thumbed his phone to confirm that this was indeed their promised Dump of Destiny, Buffy made an effort to drink it all in. The place looked like a cross between an abandoned mattress warehouse and a Bed & Breakfast for the Criminally Insane. Twin roll-doors fronted a big garage, each sporting layers of overlapping graffiti. Above these, a crop of ominously slanted, ramshackle apartments bloomed like wilted flowers, their walls all slathered in a coat of gray, goopy pitch that reminded Buffy of a melting ice cream cake.
There was a merciless gravity about the architecture, like a big hand was pressing down on it. She stared at the face of her own phone again; the thing Spike had once called a “plastic leash.”
Nothing yet.
She tapped out one of her trademark texts:
???!
A moment after she hit “send,” something flickered at the edge of her vision. She looked up. In a small window on the top floor, a familiar face emerged from behind a curtain.
Nearly five months had passed since she’d seen it, back in the strange, tense aftermath of the London Apocalypse. Of all the man’s disappearing acts, this last one seemed the most sensible. Like an old shark on the open sea, Rupert Giles knew he had to keep moving if he wanted to survive.
For a long moment, he gazed down from his perch at them, squinting like a sniper on an enemy hill.
Then, he reached into his pocket. Put his glasses on. Smiled a toothy smile.
Buffy raised her hand.
***
“…and so -ha- then I said -ahaha- I said, ‘Well, the oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.’ Aheeheehahahahaha!”
A silent stare.
“You see -aheehee- he said ‘book butlers’…”
Sound of a beer cap hissing off. Sound of Xander slurping a brew-ski.
“Because… you see, Samuel Butler… the oldest books… Samuel Butler said ‘the oldest… em... books...'”
Silence.
“Well,” Giles sniffed, “I suppose you had to be there.”
“Oh, we’ve been there,” Xander remarked. “More than we’d like to remember.”
Apart from this familiar outbreak of librarian vaudeville, the strange, outer-spacey feeling of Buffy’s new surroundings hadn’t yet worn off. While the base was a smidge more homey on the inside, it still wasn’t exactly what she would call ‘deluxe accommodations’. The walls and floors had the same unvarnished, work-in-progress feel of the facade. In the center of the space, a half-circle of mismatched furniture seemed almost accidentally arranged. An old jumbo TV set sat on a squat shelf up in front of it. With its huge black eye, it reminded Buffy of a doomsday prophet addressing its flock.
To be fair, the place wasn’t all so crappy. The communal den managed a delicate tightrope act that let it seem spacious without feeling cavernous, and the chilliness of the eighteen-foot ceiling was softened somewhat by a quirky, Sound-of-Music-esque mezzanine. Plus, a central island in the open kitchen sported a gleaming marble top with built-in sandwich boards, and an array of dinged-up but cheerfully polished pots and pans sitting nearby. While the work was far from finished, it was clear someone had shown this little corner of of their new world a little love.
In this case, the ‘someone’ in question had just gone back to fussing with a party-platter of epic proportions. There was something weirdly thrilling about watching Rupert Giles in his machine-washable V-neck sweater, pouring Chex Mix into a pink plastic tub. It was like watching God go boogie-boarding.
“Well, the pay is decent, in any case,” Giles said, “and it’s convenient for research, of course.”
Xander took another long pull from his beer. “Yeah, about that,” he said, “Not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s this little thing we got now called the Internet. Maybe Will can show you, when she gets in.”
“Yes, what happened there, exactly? Some trouble with customs?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Xander shot Buffy a wary look. Changed the subject. “So, where’s Faith?”
“I don’t think she’ll be attending, actually. She’s had quite a busy schedule, as of late.”
“Boy, this is turning out to be some welcome party! When do the clowns get here?”
It was a little pathetic: the three of them standing there, feasting on cheese doodles and micro-brews. Dawn and Andrew couldn’t be bothered to hang around waiting for stragglers, what with all that New York-i-ness out there to explore.
Or Brooklyn-i-ness. Or whatever.
The conversation slowly fizzled into boring bits. Rent. Rooms. Bills. Jobs. Rent. Blah.
With nothing to unpack, Buffy snagged a Pepsi from the fridge and plopped down on the less yard-sale-ish of the two couches. The old gray matter was begging for some time off, so her hand absently fished out the remote from between the cushions and took it for a spin:
---
ANCHORMAN: …and more talk of scandal at Gracie Mansion this morning, as the Mayor sets out to quash rumors of an extra-marital affair with fashion mogul Lydia Lyle.
(Mid-fifties, pudgy, gray suit, blue tie. Looks kinda P.O’ed.)
MAYOR-LOOKING DUDE: You know, with all that’s going on in our fair city, it’s a little, uh, distressing that you guys can’t find anything better to do than gossip about people’s private lives.
MAYOR-LOOKING DUDE: There’s nothing going on. There is no impropriety. Ms. Lyle is a good friend. End of story.
---
News. The only thing more dull than library humor. Buffy tried pressing more buttons, but the remote was a bit new-fangly, kept asking her if she wanted to ‘Record this show?’
Um, no thanks…
---
ANCHORMAN: While the election is still months away, some sources inside City Hall are saying that these allegations could seriously damage the Mayor’s campaign. Jane?
JANE: And in other political news, District Attorney Roger Clayton confirmed today that he will not be pursuing the nomination for Mayor, clearing the field for a run by dark horse candidate Stella Cahill in the Fall.
(White pantsuit, red blouse, crazy eyes, mom hair. Some kind of rally.)
Although the controversial ex-Senator hasn’t announced any plans yet, several polls suggest she would be the front-runner if she declared her candidacy today.
ANCHORMAN: Things really could get interesting here.
JANE: This could turn into a real war in September, John...
---
“So,” Xander announced, “think I’m gonna go scope out upstairs. Maybe sleep off some of this awesome jet lag.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Buffy. C’mon you stupid thing. Work…
“Don’t you… wanna see your room or anything?”
“No, I’m good.” Is it the batteries?
“Uh, look, I’ll just leave my phone down here with you guys. Just in case we get a call from… you know...”
“Uh-huh.” Change! Change!
“Alright-y then. I’ll, uh, see ya later.”
---
JANE: There was another sighting of the vigilante known as ‘Nocturne’ last night. This time, the notorious crime fighter was spotted outside the Club Bravado in Tribeca, chasing down a pair of suspects in last week’s daring armored car heist.
(Series of grainy, blurry photos of a mysterious, shadowy figure. Ooohkay)
JANE: The NYPD confirmed they have both men in custody now, and at a press conference this morning, Police Commissioner Tom Mulray had this to say.
(Tough guy, forty-something. Bald. Bad suit. 'New Yawk' accent as thick as his neck.)
COMMISSIONER: These arrests came as the direct result of an ongoing investigation into a city-wide armed robbery ring.
COMMISSIONER: As far as reports of goblins, spooks, spacemen and things that go bump in the night, our department’s official position has not changed. And that position is - grow up.
JANE: Despite the Commissioner’s comments, news of the sightings touched off a Twitter storm, with people claiming that superheroes have returned to New York City.
JOHN: Fascinating stuff, Jane. Coming up next, what a new study says about the effects of excessive cell phone use...
---
Giles was sitting on other end of the couch now. There were four chairs and two couches, all totally available, but he picked hers. He set the bowl of snacks on the coffee table, crossed and recrossed his legs, the way people do when they want to seem more comfortable than they actually are.
“So, how have you been?” he said.
“Fine.”
“Oh. Good.”
They sat there for awhile. The news folks gabbed about Nocturne some more, mentioned something about a transit worker strike, showed a story about a dog who could read sheet music, then it was on to the weather. Cloudy with scattered showers.
“So… Dawn tells me you slew a Grindylow!”
“Hmm?”
“A Grindylow! They’re quite rare, you know.”
“Yeah, well. It was bugging me.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean…”
The TV was still playing, rattling off sports scores now. Buffy looked at him. His hair was getting shaggy and a little longish in the back, the tufts there mostly gray with a mild chestnut glow. The royal blue sweater and pressed jeans completed the image of a guy who was trying a little too hard. His eyes confirmed this theory. They twinkled earnestly at her, just like his…
Is that…
“Is that an earring?”
Giles clutched at the little stud reflexively, like a bee stung it. “Oh. Yes, well… Yes.”
“Why are you wearing an earring?”
He laughed, and looked away. Shook his head. “I honestly don’t know,” he admitted.
Things were quiet for awhile. She stared at the phone again. Pressed the little plastic buttons. It wasn’t like when she was young, when the game was Phone Tag. Back then, you had to plan everything. Nowadays, everyone carried their immediate futures around in their pockets. The future was just a little plastic button away.
“Buffy…”
“Think I’ll go have a look at my room, now.”
She was halfway to the staircase when she felt his hand on her shoulder.
“Not that way,” Giles said.
***
Xander put down one trunk and then the other. He was a packing expert, these days. The first trunk was for Clothes, and the other trunk was for Non-Clothes. Simplicity was God.
His new room was a teeny weeny studio. Xander did a quick check of the walls and floors, and he figured out the score right away. These second-floor “apartments” were once a single unit, probably the management offices for the once-upon-a-time machine shop below. Then, some clever landlord hires a few guys to throw up some gyp board and a little paint, and presto! One crappy commercial deathtrap becomes five “econo” pads at eight hundred bucks per slice. Evil came in so many forms.
Xander popped open the Non-Clothes trunk, plugged in his little alarm clock, took off his shoes, and plopped down on the top sheet. Through a little storm window he could see the fingertips of the Manhattan skyscrapers on the far side of the river.
He’d read somewhere that there were around ten million warm bodies in the city on a slow day. In any other game, ten million-to-one was terrible odds, and at twenty-seven Xander would be starting the rat race at the back of the pack. It was a little scary, but in the good way. For most of his life, it had been the other kind of scary.
The little lamp on the nightstand was off, and he left it that way. The initial shoebox feel of the room slowly gave way to something cozier. It was like a cocoon, and he was the beautiful butterfly about to…
No. Scratch that.
It was like a little dark cave at the edge of a riverbank. The cold, dry season had reached its end, and inside the cave a giant was about to awaken, transformed and rejuvenated by a long, long slumber.
And five minutes later, even after Xander Harris fell asleep, his heart raced in his chest.
***
When Dawn looked up, Andrew was still thrumping his fingers on the counter.
“I’ll have a… Tuxedo Mocha,” he finally said.
“Excuse me?”
“One Tuxedo Mocha, please.”
The counter guy just stared blankly, glanced up at the menu, then stared again.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Andrew. “I guess you guys call it a Zebra out here. One Zebra, kind sir. Tall.”
“A wha?”
“Oh, I think you heard me...”
Dawn Summers watched this tragic skit play out from her seat by the window. At the next little table, an Alpha Nerd was surfing his iMac, all intense-looking. Outside, twenty-somethings strolled like fashion models on an invisible runway. They wore porkpie hats, skinny ties, tight jeans, tracksuits, trucker caps, jumpers, midriffs, thigh-high boots, giant Boho sunglasses, neck tattoos, bedheads, mowhawks, dreadhawks, fauxhawks.
Dawn imagined they all had really cool jobs, too. They were all skateboard engineers and edgy performance artists. Even Alpha Nerd probably had some cool job. Like, he was a database admin, but he was a database admin for some kind of crazy, virtual reality porno site. The fuzzy orange sweater and the horn-rimmed glasses he wore seemed to confirm this. Alpha Nerd probably dressed like that on purpose, advertising his Alpha Nerdiness. It was like everyone in this neighborhood was a little kid, wearing a Halloween costume of what they wanted to be when they grew up.
“It’s an off-menu item,” said Andrew. “Don’t they teach you guys this stuff out here?”
“What do you mean, ‘you guys’?”
“Oh, man,” Andrew huffed. “Tuxedo Mocha. Half white chocolate, half regular for a sweet twist on the classic Mochachino. Add some chocolate sprinkles or chocolate chips to the whipped cream for standby dessert on a cold night. Starbucks Secret Menu. It’s totally on the internet.”
Dawn’s mind kept wandering back to the Big Reunion Party That Wasn’t. Rupert Giles opens the door, and then he’s just standing there, all real and everything, and needing a haircut. Andrew hugs him, in a show of commendable impropriety. But the whole time Rupert just stands there and Dawn Summers just stands there, and they silently measure each other…
“Dude, this isn’t a Starbucks.”
“Oh. Well in that case, I’ll just have a water.”
After the initial standoff at the doorway ends, another tense stage play ensues. They are offered drinks. They are offered snacks. They are shown to rooms. All the time a secret conversation was taking place, in between the lines and underneath the words. And all that long ago and far away stuff suddenly seemed so close and new and big.
“That’ll be two-sixteen.”
“Excuse me?”
This little club of theirs had a strange membership policy. But now that Dawn was a gold card member it meant she had to start paying all those awesome dues. There would be steely sarcasm and ambiguous subtexts and uncomfortable silences, all boiling in a stew of feelings no one fully understood or dared to talk about.
And yet, they couldn’t leave this little nest Rupert set up for them. Not right away, at least. They were like plane crash survivors whose planes kept crashing over and over.
And after every crash, Dawn thought, no matter how battered and cracked and torn up you are, you can’t help but stand up and say:
“Whew, that was a close one. We’re lucky to be alive!”
“Look how lucky we are together!”
She shook her head and whipped out her phone. No messages yet. The little square there was like a window into the clear blue sky.
She decided that this latest reunion was kind of a bust, so far.
Then again, she thought, we always sucked at parties.
And she suddenly wondered if Buffy was faring any better.
***
“Watch your step,” the Watcher said. “Some of these are a bit warped.”
Buffy did, watching each boot creak off an unpainted board as she followed him down the twisting stairwell. The path was not exactly inviting, sealed on both sides by a muddy, gray brick that looked hundreds of years old.
“Still quite a bit of work to be done, I’m afraid. Of course, now that Xander’s here…”
The passageway emptied into a pitch black room.
Then, Giles flipped a switch.
Her brain whirred for a few seconds, trying to wrap around what she was seeing.
Buffy hadn’t given much thought to this part, she realized. Not because she didn’t care. It was one of those things that she was hoping would just magically sort itself out, somehow.
It didn’t look so much like a cellar; not one she’d ever seen, at least. As she roamed through it, the frazzled, unvarnished state of the loft upstairs suddenly made a lot more sense. Someone had focused all their attention down here, spent all their spare time cleaning and polishing and sealing and sanding and painting and furnishing.
Lush red carpeting invited her to explore. There was a pool table and an entertainment center, a bookshelf and La-Z-Boy, an antique coffee table and a loveseat and a pair of tall, gooseneck lamps. The walls of the bath had graduated glass tiling that glimmered like jewels. In the bedroom: a queen-sized bed.
“No windows,” Giles said. “Obviously. But I think the recessed lighting gives off a somewhat natural effect, don’t you think?”
“Giles…”
“And the electrical isn’t quite finished yet. Rather difficult to acquire an honest contractor in this city, especially without the proper permits…”
“Giles.”
“Oh!” His eyes shot cartoonishly wide, and he made a dash for the bookcase. When he got there, he shot back an impish grin. “Last but not least,” he said, and pulled a book from the second shelf.
Buffy waited expectantly. Nothing happened.
“You’ll have to imagine this part for now,” Giles explained. “There’ll be a sort of rumbling sound, gears turning and such. Budget’s a bit tight at the moment, I’m afraid.”
He trotted over to a wall, put his shoulder to it, and gave it a shove. It swiveled sideways to reveal a secret passageway, straight out of some corny old mystery flick. Buffy could only stare at him and it, slack jawed and speechless. He motioned for her to follow and then vanished into the darkness.
Buffy felt her way along the passage, listening to the Watcher ramble on some more about electrical permits. The tang of salt spray rose in her nostrils with each step, and at about the ten yard mark she felt a cool breeze blow, and heard the gentle lapping of water against pilings.
As she turned a corner, she was met with a hard blue rectangle of Manhattan skyline. As her eyes adjusted, the details of a small dock popped into view, encased on three sides by blasted limestone.
Tethered to the pier was a pair of black jet skis. Their feline curves reflected a midnight sky back at her.
Giles tossed her the keys. “Private entrance,” he said. “For when you and … for when you, ah, patrol. Can't have you mucking about in the subways with the end of the world afoot.”
She stared at the keys. Gripped them until they pinched the skin of her palm. The tears didn’t come easily. They pounded and squeezed their way out, fought for every inch.
“Bought them at a police auction,” Giles continued, oblivious. “Got a fairly good price, actually…” He looked her right in the eyes, and stopped dead.
“Thanks,” she said.
They stood there together for awhile, his long arm draped around her shoulder, Slayer and Watcher at last. Spread out before them like a banquet feast, New York City gleamed and tempted, tantalized and tormented.
It wasn’t like this on the plane, or back in the cab. Those introductions were too normal, and normal wasn’t something she was very good at. But now she felt it; the sudden, stabbing kinship with every immigrant who’d ever arrived before her. For those guys, the moment was the sight of a giant iron lady with a torch, guiding them towards their strange new futures. But, as she stood inside the little cave on the shores of Brooklyn, Buffy Summers was sure she felt that same exotic rumbling in her chest.
This was the dawn of her new beginning - the first day of the rest of her life.
And, right on cue, something began to purr and sing in the back pocket of her slacks.
She grabbed the little phone and flipped it open.
“Hey Buffy!” Willow said. All cheery.
“Will! Where the heck are you guys?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah, we’re still over here.” The connection was spotty, full of strange interference. Buffy could hear some kind of crashing, crunching noise, too. And…
Screaming?
“We’re fine, though. Everything’s totally cool. Uh, how are you?”
“Willow…”
“Just had a, uh, little snafu in the ol’ travel plans. Trying to sort it out now.”
“Where is he? Let me talk to him.”
“He -uh- he can’t come to the phone right now. He’s a little busy.” More crashing sounds, and this time the unmistakable jingle of a fire alarm.
“Fine. Whatever. Just tell me you’ve got a flight number.”
“Flight?” The witch tittered nervously. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure ‘planes’ are out of the question, right about now…”
Chapter 2: Technical Difficulties