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It Doesn’t End With a Wish by Sotia
 
13
 
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Chapter 13




Buffy couldn’t believe her ears. Spike had decided he needed a couple of weeks to himself, and he hadn’t even bothered telling her or William? What could he possibly do with that time?


“Where did he go, Wills?” She went for the puppy-eyed look, sure that no threat could make the Wicca give her information she didn’t want to. “Please, I need to know. Maybe he’s in trouble.”


“I—I can’t tell you. He made me promise not to. He—we were afraid it might be jinxed.” Willow felt nothing like the powerful witch she was, as she looked down at her shoes, wondering for the thousandth time what had possessed her to go along with Spike’s plan, and—even worse—to let the Slayer know about it in the middle of night.


Buffy could only hold back her anger for so long. “If you’re lying, if you or Giles have done anything to him, so help me God—”


This wasn’t the best time to admit to having done something to him, even something he’d asked for, so the redhead just settled for saying, “He’s fine. He’ll be fine. And Giles had nothing to do with it.”


William, who had been pacing behind the Slayer trying to send her soothing thoughts while concealing his own concern, stepped up and wrapped his arms around her. “We have to trust him, Buffy. He’ll come back, you know he always does.”


She turned to him and buried her face in the crook of his neck, feeling safe and loved, yet somehow… un-whole.


The vampire tightened his embrace then tilted his head to the side, narrowing his eyes at Willow.


She mouthed, “Trust us,” before sliding out the door. She had someone else to find now.



~~~~~*~~~~~



Kennedy had gone back to bed, hoping to sleep off the rest of the drug’s effects. She was now awakened by the sound of a very familiar British voice used in a very unfamiliar way. It was Giles and he was yelling.


“Don’t you realize that an entire universe is at risk, just because of your pettiness?”


Adalberto’s voice, calm as ever, floated to her ears. “It was not my pettiness, dear boy, but your Slayer’s sexual appetites that have brought us into this bind.”


Kennedy chuckled at anyone calling the new head of the Council of Watchers boy. Carefully, she got out of bed and tiptoed to the door. She didn’t really need to—the conversation carried perfectly to her—she just wanted to check whether she was locked inside again.


The doorknob turned easily and she sighed, not opening the door. Giles—at least—couldn’t possibly know she was listening, and she really wanted to hear how he’d choose to defend his beloved Slayer’s honor.


Not even once did the thought cross her mind that Giles could get her home, to safety, if she left that room.


“Buffy’s sexual appetites? Right,” the Brit snorted. “It wasn’t Buffy who brought Spike here from another dimension, was it now? If anything, she and all of us have been trying to get him back there.”


“She made the wish that brought him here, it wasn’t my own doing.” After a brief pause, the Immortal continued. “I was just bargaining for my life.” He raised his voice for the first time to add, “Which she threatened for no reason.”


“No reason? You’re a demon!”


“Her lovers are demons, Watcher. I’m not, and accusations such as this will get you no closer to your goal. If you require my assistance, I suggest you be civil.”


Kennedy could hear the indignation in Giles’ voice when he replied, “You are evil. You’re a bloody murderer!”


“I—” Adalberto’s voice was booming now, “-have never taken a human life. Can you say the same thing, little man?”


The brunette was sure Giles would just laugh the absurd question off, but the silence that followed was too long for comfort.


“I did what I had to do,” he finally said. “I always have.”


Kennedy backtracked to the bed, got under the covers and put the pillow over her head. She’d heard enough.



~~~~~*~~~~~



Sofia tried her best not to guffaw at her master’s declaration. It was true he’d never taken a human life. Not with his own hands. She guessed the phrasing he chose didn’t include all the death and mayhem he’d caused.


She was in the corridor outside Kennedy’s room—for it was Kennedy’s room now, the master would do anything to keep the Slayer, or at least make her return to him—listening to the argument that was unfolding in the living room. The Immortal had already won, and the Watcher had no idea. How she longed to burst in there and give the old man the ammo he needed to get rid of Adalberto once and for all.


She couldn’t, the bastard had made sure of that a long time ago.


The Immortal had the ability to read minds, but only when people agreed to give him access to their thoughts. That wasn’t the case with Sofia. Her, he owned. It wasn’t a bargain she’d entered willingly; it was just the way it had been with the women of her family for a long time, ever since her grandmother’s great grandmother, Beatriz, was called as a Slayer.


She had heard the story from her mother, how the villagers had attacked the supernaturally strong girl, how a striking stranger had ridden through the village and saved her from the lynching mob by hauling her onto his horse.


Her mother hadn’t told her everything.



~~~~~*~~~~~



He took the girl to his castle, and kept her as his lover, training her so her skills could be fully developed and making sure all her wishes came true. It felt like a fairy tale for her, and when she asked what he wanted from her in return for all he’d done, his answer seemed all the more romantic.


“Your soul.”


She didn’t realize she was condemning her entire family line when she replied, “Yours.”


Beatriz was living a dream, one only shadowed by Adalberto’s rueful admittance that he couldn’t father a child. On her eighteenth birthday he told her he’d decided to bestow upon her the greatest gift. Motherhood. She questioned him, and he replied that just because the child wouldn’t be his biologically, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t be a proper father. He refused to answer any more of her questions. That night a handsome man joined her in bed. She protested, but Adalberto showed up by her side and held her hand while the stranger took her.


Nine months later she gave birth to a baby boy that she was told was stillborn. As if in a dream, she remembered hearing the baby cry through the haze induced by what her lover had given her to ease the pain, but she didn’t question him. She never saw her son’s body; the Immortal had decided to save her the heartache and dispose of it.


Two months later another handsome man appeared in her chambers. This time she didn’t even try to protest. The pregnancy was harder than the first one, but in the end she had a beautiful baby girl, Magdalena.


Five years later Beatriz disappeared, leaving behind her daughter and her diary.


The Immortal took great care of the girl, ensuring she received the best education possible. He was like a true father to her until the night she turned sixteen.


It was then that he gave her a choice, instead of a present. If she agreed to serve him unquestioningly, to become his in every respect for the next ten years, and pledge her soul to him, he would—at the end of those ten years—free her mother’s soul.


Magdalena was taken aback. She had always found it weird that her
guardian didn’t age, but hadn’t associated him with anything supernatural. Now she had before her a monster with glowing yellow eyes, demanding her body and soul. She asked for time to think about things, but he warned her that Beatriz’s soul would be consumed in the fires of Hell if she didn’t give in to him. Frightened, she reluctantly agreed.


He was gentle with her, and she grew to accept him in her bed, but never allowed him entrance to her heart. When she was eighteen, she was given to one of his guardsmen to impregnate. The man was beautiful and a great lover, and Magdalena never got over the night they shared together. She sought him out when she found out she was pregnant, having forgotten the vow she’d given Adalberto and how her mother’s soul was at risk, and meaning to escape with the father of her child. The man tried to resist her, but her beauty and her desperate pleas got to him.


They began meeting regularly, becoming all the more careless as their passion consumed them. They made plans of leaving, had everything figured out, but he never showed up at their arranged meeting place on the night they’d agreed to make a run for it.


For hours she stayed there, in the dark, hoping against hope that he’d come for her.


When she finally returned to the castle, she was faced with a horrid sight. A mummy like creature, with the glowing yellow eyes she’d seen once before, was waiting for her. He grabbed her by the arm and hissed in the voice of Adalberto that she was lucky he was magnanimous enough to not damn her mother’s soul there and then. “Now you’ll see how I feed,” he told her.




~~~~~~*~~~~~~



Magdalena had never managed to reconcile the loving man she read about in her mother’s diaries with the one that ruled the rest of her life. She kept her own diary, hoping to prepare her own daughter for what was to come.


Adalberto had found the diary when Magdalena was killed at his orders after turning twenty six. He gave it to her daughter himself when she turned sixteen and had to make the same choice her mother had. The girl had tearfully accepted his bargain, and made her best to serve him for the rest of her short life.


It was the same diary that he’d handed Sofia, generations later, when he’d asked her to become his lover and so much more. She hadn’t shed a tear, instead accepting her fate bravely.


Now she was looking for a way out of that fate. The fact that she was already well beyond eighteen and he hadn’t tried to have her birth a child showed she was probably the last of her line he meant to have. She supposed that was good, but it suggested that nobody would save her soul after she passed away, and she had to do something about that. Sure, she knew more of his secrets than most of her predecessors, having been there for him after the Los Angeles near-Apocalypse, but the problem remained that she didn’t know how to use them against him without her master knowing.



~~~~~*~~~~~



Willow had fallen asleep sometime after four in the morning—at least it was four the last time she checked her watch, wondering where on earth, literally, Kennedy could be.


The forceful slamming of the Mansion’s door disrupted her slumber suddenly, making her heart speed in her chest. She raised her head from the notes on which it had dropped when she had no longer managed to keep her eyes open, and carefully peeled a piece of paper off her cheek. She really hated it when she drooled in her sleep.


“Ken?” she called out, hoping to hear her ex’s voice.


It wasn’t Kennedy, but Giles, that stormed into her room, cursing a blue streak.


“I guess—things didn’t go all that well, huh?” she asked groggily.


“The pillock made demands. Demands.” Giles threw his arms up. “I was there threatening to find a way to destroy him if he didn’t return Spike to where he came from, and he demanded that Buffy be returned to him and that we grant him pardon.” His voice sounded choked with emotion that Willow guessed went way beyond wrath.


Suddenly, all that emotion seemed to seep out of him, making his shoulders sag and his face look ancient. “Maybe we should give up on the idea of Spike going back. Maybe—” He took a deep breath and slumped into a chair opposite the redhead. “I should talk to Spike. Is it too early in the day for me to go by Buffy’s?”


He’d never shown such sensibilities in the past and it made Willow smile—however briefly—that he was concerned with waking up the vampires and Slayer now. “You wouldn’t find him, Giles.”


“Are they out? The sun is still up, and will be for hou—”


“He’s gone,” she cut him off. “Will be gone for a fortnight, if all goes well.”


“Oh, this is bloody priceless.”



~~~~~*~~~~~



It seemed there was no way for Buffy to stop her old Watcher from his rant.


He’d stormed into her apartment—after having banged on the door repeatedly, like he meant to break it down—dragging Willow behind him, and yelling I knew it.


It had taken her and William a while to make sense of his angry ramblings, but in the end they’d realized he was convinced that Spike had run away to escape going back and dying at the Hellmouth.


No matter how many times Buffy repeated that Spike was the one determined to go back, the man refused to listen. He insisted it was all a ploy to make them think that was what the vampire wanted, so that this silly excuse of a witch would help him run away.


William finally silenced him with a well placed punch to the nose that sent the man’s glasses flying without breaking them.


“Shut your gob,” he ordered as Rupert cupped his bleeding nose and crouched down to retrieve his glasses. “He would never run away from this. I would never run away from this.” He pointed at Buffy. “From her.”


Folding his spectacles into his breast pocket, Giles drew in a breath from his mouth and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to see if it was broken. “I apologize,” he said.


Slayer, vampire and wicca stared at him wide-eyed, so he repeated his words.


“I apologize. It’s my failing that made me come down so hard on Spike.” He wiped some blood off his upper lip with the back of his hand. “Even if he were here, the Immortal has refused to help us unless Buffy went back to him,” he added apologetically.


“All is solved then,” the blonde chirped with a grin. “I will go back to him. I’ll go back and kick some immortal ass.”


“And if Spike doesn’t come back?” Wisely, Giles decided to whisper his question.


“Then I’ll go in his place.” William squeezed his mate’s shoulder when her head snapped towards him. *He’ll be back*


Her eyes shone with unshed tears. *I know he’ll want to, I just hope he makes it*



~~~~~*~~~~~



Willow and Giles had just returned to the Mansion when the front door opened and Kennedy waltzed in. She seemed perfectly fine, and the afternoon sun pouring in after her dispelled the worst of Willow’s worries.


Before the redhead could find a way to ask where she’d been without alerting the Watcher to the fact that she’d been missing for more than a day, the Slayer winked at her and said, “If anybody wants me, I’ll be in the shower.”



Tbc.
 
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