“Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.” - David Hume

Near Kyoto, Japan: Genroku Year 4

They danced. Amidst the raining blood and scales, they whirled and sliced and wove a pattern of pain for the demon lord. Kaede swung onto one massive coil and sliced through the stalk of Orochi’s nearest neck, severing a third head. She was tossed from her perch as the serpentine stump thrashed in agony. The slayer landed heavily on her back, but was up in an instant, sword leading the way as she plunged back into the tangled snarl of scales.

Takeshi fought beside her, his dark armor stained with demonic blood. Every silver arc of his blade left destruction in its wake. He had been a skilled warrior as a human, peerless in the art of kenjutsu. As a vampire, he was awe inspiring. In the back of her mind, the part that was not solely concerned with survival, Kaede recognized him for what he truly was: her fighting equal.

A fourth head soon came crashing to the ground, and a fifth. Kaede and Takeshi darted in and out of the giant coils, aiming for the remaining three heads, but landing heavy blows against whatever part of the demon presented itself. The mass of coils and writhing flesh that was Orochi shivered and convulsed, showering the warriors with scales and blood. Deep, rippling cries of pain, so low as to almost be felt instead of heard, came from the gigantic beast.

Takeshi leapt for one of the remaining heads. Focused on his goal, he never saw the barbed tail that slammed into his back, but Kaede did.

With an incoherent cry of rage, Kaede attacked Orochi with a flurry of rapid cuts and stabs, her katana flickering silver in the bright moonlight. She tore into the mass of scales, severing another head and slicing deep gashes in the looped flesh and darting tails that came within striking distance.

Kaede stood over Takeshi as he regained his feet. Slayer and vampire stood back to back as Orochi’s loose coils closed in a ring around them. Everywhere she looked, Kaede saw death waiting.

There were too many coils to watch, too many targets and potential threats. Kaede took a steadying breath and let herself fall back into her training. Pain, worry, doubt: she let it all fall away. Thought followed until there was nothing left to clutter her mind. Kaede existed in the moment, with nothing to distract her from the battle at hand, a heightened state of awareness called zanshin. The moon seemed brighter, color crisper, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. She watched one of Orochi’s bladed tails dive towards her head, only to be intercepted by her blade. She watched her katana, a wedding gift from her father, dive into the throat of one of Orochi’s heads. Her body acted upon pure instinct, her eyes taking in her surroundings and reacting without any conscious guidance.

She sensed rather than saw the dark power behind her. It mirrored her movements, moving with a grace and fluidity only matched by her own. Wrapped in the stillness of the void, Kaede knew without knowing that dark entity behind her could be trusted with guarding her life, her very soul.

Her katana sliced through one throat just as the last head fell to the ground behind her. The malevolent energy of the giant serpent flared in sudden brilliance before collapsing in upon itself, leaving the barest glimmer of life behind.

Kaede let her sword tip drop to the ground. She released the calm emptiness and allowed conscious thought to flood back into her mind. Time returned to normal, and she became intimately aware of her own condition. Nicks and scratches covered every inch of her body. A deep gash cut across her ribs, but she could not remember when she had received it. Her clothing had been reduced to shreds, she was covered in sweat, and without the emptiness of zanshin, all of her stress and weariness returned in force.

Kaede looked across the field of battle. Orochi lay in loose coils all around her. Pieces of demon, some identifiable, some not, were scattered across a wide area, marring the white perfection of the snow. Steam rose from the torn body of the demon, covering the field with a hazy mist.

Even though her blade was clean, protected somehow by the potion that coated it, Kaede performed a quick chiburi, a formal blood shedding technique, before sliding it back into her scabbard. The action, smooth and silent, was comforting in its familiarity. She took solace in the long practiced actions, trying to find an anchor for her mind amid her confusing emotions.

She could sense the vampire, no the man, behind her. Her thoughts were a tangle: love and fear, caution and wild relief. She took a steadying breath and turned to face Takeshi, the man who had been her husband.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

Buffy nibbled at her chocolate chip cookie disinterestedly. She tried to pay attention to Giles’ droning explanations, she really did, but her eyes kept going to the sullen vampire on the other side of the room. Spike was nursing his mug of blood and pretending to not watch the people gathered around Giles’ bookshelf.

Buffy thought about her time under Willow’s spell. It had been strange, her behavior and thoughts had been guided by the conjured “love” from the magic, but she had still been Buffy at heart. Her actions had still been her own, which led her to the question: were Spike’s actions indicative of his true nature?

Yes he had teased her and made sarcastic comments to her friends, but he had also lavished praise upon her fighting skills and beauty, speaking the kind of words that could even make a slayer blush. He had worried aloud that he would not be able to protect her in that crypt, a gesture that had been equal parts touching and irritating. When the chips were down, he had jumped to her defense, discovering that the governmental programming did not keep him from hurting demons, by attacking one of the creatures as it had stood over the prone slayer. When the last demon had been defeated, he had scooped up Buffy in his arms and twirled her around the crypt, kissing her all the while and jubilant that he could join her on patrols. Buffy couldn’t help but wonder if that had been the real Spike, the one that was usually kept under layers of bravado.

Willow had appeared and broken the spell, sending the two old enemies back at each others’ throats, but Buffy had noticed something right before her closed fist had slammed into the vampire’s sharp cheekbones. She thought she had seen a hint of sadness, of regret in the vampire’s blue eyes.

“Buffy, have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?” Giles’ voice cut into the slayer’s line of reasoning, yanking her back into the present. Two sets of eyes pinned her to her chair, ironically the same one that she and Spike had shared while under Willow’s spell. Buffy cast about, trying to sift through her preoccupation and find the thread of the conversation once again. Failing miserably, she offered up an apologetic smile that she knew did not look very sincere.

“How about one of you introduce me to my new weapon and just point me in the right direction?” She tried to joke, but her words were lost on her watcher.

Giles gave a long-suffering sigh and removed his glasses to pass a hand over his eyes. “We have to call Angel first so that we can see if the swords will accept both of you.” He replaced his glasses and pinned Buffy with a pointed look. “Which you would have known, had you been paying the slightest bit off attention.”

“Okay, okay. Just call me attento-girl from here on out.” Giles’ eyes told her what he thought of that statement, and Willow snickered. “I’ll call Angel as soon as we’re done here,” she heard a growl from the far side of the room, but chose to ignore it. In truth, she wasn’t very happy about the situation either. Angel’s last stint into stalking, followed by his strange behavior and stilted dismissal in L.A., had driven another wedge between the slayer and the subject of her high school infatuation. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the dark, brooding vampire anymore, but she was pretty certain that is wasn’t in a consorty way. That way held badness, and she had been trying to sever her heart’s ties to Angel ever since his departure from Sunnydale. It was strange how successfully she had been. Buffy sometimes wondered why their estrangement didn’t hurt more.

Willow spoke up then. “Giles, could we go ahead and look at the tangs? I know that we’ll have to anyway before Angel and Buffy use them, but I would love to take some time to study the inscriptions there.” The redhead’s eyes were wide and guileless. “It sounds like a binding of some kind, and they just don’t make those like they used to.”

The watcher smiled slightly at the redheaded witch. “I believe that we could both profit from learning what kind of magic was used when the swords were forged. Give me a moment.” Giles went to his weapons chest and rummaged around in it before returning with a small rectangular box. From it he produced a small brass implement that screwed apart into a small peg and hammer. He unsheathed the blade in the lighter scabbard and used the small tools to remove two wooden pegs from the sword’s hilt. With practiced ease, the handle, hand-guard, and a wide array of smaller bits and pieces were removed and arranged on the table, leaving the blade bare.

A faint white glow emanated from the archaic Japanese words that decorated the length of the tang. “That is odd,” the watcher murmured.

Both Willow and Buffy leaned in to get a better look. “I thought you said the letters would only glow when Buffy and Angel were both here?” asked Willow.

Giles peered at the tang in confusion. “They shouldn’t. I don’t understand why Kaede’s blade is reacting.” He looked at his slayer. “Buffy, please come here for a moment.” Sure enough, when the slayer rose from her chair and walked to within touching distance of the katana, the carved calligraphy burst into brilliant light.

A worried, disdainful expression crossed the watcher’s face. “The letter said that the swords will only react when the slayer and the vampire who is destined to help her fight Orochi are both near?” His question was rhetorical, but the two girls nodded anyway. Giles continued with a decidedly unenthusiastic tone of voice. “As much as I do not want to bring up the possibility, what if Angel is not the vampire we should be looking for?”

As if by some unspoken cue, everyone in the room turned to look at the one vampire present. Spike, who looked like he was still attempting to ignore the proceedings around him, finally met their weighted stares with a defensive snarl.

“What now?”