Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 8 - IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL FINE)

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

(REM, Album - Document)




Chapter 8.01
Friday, July 19th, 2002


Faith skipped through the menus on her phone until she found the number for James' cell. It would have smacked too much of permanence if she'd put his number on speed dial. This thing was what it was, but soon James would be heading back to Britain. Even with her nice shiny new pardon, she doubted that a convicted murderer would be granted more than a visitor's visa. So she swore at the vehicle's movement, the miniscule buttons and their stiffness as she tried to find the 'U's.

Until Angel's voice had reminded her that she had the option to communicate, all she had been worried about was getting out. Now it seemed imperative that she should contact him , that he should be waiting for her, room key in hand, the second she stepped off this bus. Post slayage hunger ate at her on a scale she'd never before encountered and she realised that her craving wasn't just for sex... but for him. It was his arms she wanted to wrap herself in, his lips she wanted to plunder, his hips she wanted to wrap her legs around... him and only him she wanted to be with until the demon inside was finally assuaged and she could be a woman again.

As the revelation shook her to the core, a synthesised voice told her that the cell phone she was trying to contact was currently unavailable.

---

 

Buffy's eyes were searching the parking lot for the reception hall as soon as the minibus pulled in. They had been the last to leave but the number of minibuses looked to be four short. Marie waited, clipboard in hand and Rosa at her side, ticking off the names of the people from Faith's minibus. Before she opened the door Buffy shouted a reminder to everyone to make sure they saw Marie before they headed off anywhere.

Almost as soon as they began to get out Faith was there, but it wasn't Buffy she wanted. "Spike, I need your motorcycle."

The vampire recognised the pain and uncertainty in the slayer's eyes and didn't waste time with questions. He simply took the right key from his keyring and passed it to her. "Bring it back when you can."

---

 

Buffy took the double vodka and fresh orange Spike placed on the table in front of her and chugged a couple of mouthfuls as he passed out drinks to the other Scoobies and their extended family. She looked down at the list again. Once they had received calls from representatives in each of the four missing minibuses, confirming that they had headed straight for the hospital at Ventura and letting them know who was on board and who was healthy and who was injured, Marie had been able to complete her list. In addition to Bee and Tara, there were five slayers unaccounted for. They had brought out the bodies of ten more. Four watchers had been killed in the corridor alongside Oz, and some twenty-seven wounded had been taken to the hospital in Ventura. It was uncertain how many would make it. She knew them all... their names and their faces and their strengths and weaknesses, if not their favourite films or how they took their coffee. She knew she should feel their loss but there was just a massive sense of relief that so many of those closest to her had come through mostly unscathed.

"You alright, love?" Spike whispered as he settled onto the seat beside hers, drawing it close so that he could wrap an arm around her shoulders. "Know you all go way back."

Buffy smiled weakly, but her eyes were bright with tears, her voice low, so that only Spike and maybe a few of the other demons could hear. "Oz? Yeah... It's weird. Sorta like for months, without really being aware of it, I've been carrying around this weight because of Willow... and it's not that I won't miss him because I will... but it's as if I know now that they have each other. Wherever they are, they're not alone... and that weight isn't there any more." She gave a wry twist of her lips. "I just keep looking at everyone that's still here and thinking how lucky we've been... Does that make me Miss Self-Absorbed?"

"No, pet, it makes you human."

"You're sure?" the slayer asked again. "I mean, we've sent people off to take the rest of the slayers and watchers down to LA and to return the minibuses... and we've got people out looking for Tara and Bee, but we're sitting in a bar."

"Tara'll be fine," the vampire insisted. "There's no way The Littlest Angel would let anything happen to her."

"Then why haven't they called?"

"They're probably holding a private celebration." Spike raised a knowing eyebrow, the tip of his tongue pressing against his upper teeth for an second. "Rupes? How about you back me up here?" Spike requested.

"I'm sure everything that needs to be done is being done, Buffy. You don't have to do everything yourself any more. Besides, by the time you have a drink and some food, it'll be almost time to leave if you want to pick up your aunt from the airport."

"Oh my god! Aunt Arlene... What's she going to say when she sees that the town's gone?"

"She'll probably shrug her shoulders and say it's what happens when you live in South California," Spike assured her.

"Giles?" Wes spoke with a slightly raised voice to make himself heard from the other side of the table. "My mother would like to speak to you."

"Is something wrong with Lydia?" the watcher asked immediately, not waiting for the phone to be passed around the table to him.

"Lydia is fine, Giles. Mother said to tell you that she'll drive her back to Sunnydale in Spike's car."

"Penelope?" Giles asked anxiously as soon as he took the phone, convinced there could be no good reason that Wes's mother could wish to speak to him. When he passed the cell back toward Wesley several minutes later he still couldn't make up his mind whether he'd been right.

"Okay, Giles," Dawn demanded, "what's with the freaked face? I never knew you could have an entire conversation where all one person says is 'yes', 'no' or 'I see'."

Giles cleared his throat. "It appears that Quentin didn't let the executive committee in on his more nefarious plans. Now they've found out about some of them, he's been dismissed."

"Would it be bad taste to say 'Hip hip hooray'?" Buffy asked. "Really not seeing the problem... so long as the replacement isn't even worse."

"That, I suppose, would tend to depend on whether I accept their offer or not," Giles replied, still looking slightly shell-shocked.

---

 

"There is one thing that has me rather puzzled..." Giles hinted, looking at Spike.

"How I come to be so good looking and athletic?" Spike countered between mouthfuls of spicy onion rings.

"You could put it like that... I was going to ask why you aren't a large charcoal briquette."

"Yeah, Daywalker, what's up with this picture?" Xander chimed in.

Spike tossed the last onion ring up into the air and caught it in his mouth before he reached under his coat and unfastened his belt, slipping the end back through several belt loops before he produced a familiar looking pouch. He double checked he wasn't in the path of any direct sunlight before he put it down on the table.

"Aren't those The Orbs of the Nezzla Khan? Didn't we give them back?" Wes asked, looking puzzled.

"They are," Spike replied, "an' we did, but the old demon guy promised I could borrow them for the honeymoon... Paid him a visit yesterday afternoon, in between all those other jobs I had to do. That whole Nile cruise, Pyramids, Red Sea diving experience would be a lot less appealing without them."

"Why didn't you tell anyone? And how did you know that they'd be enough to protect you?" Giles asked, his curiosity piqued.

"Figured the fewer people knew, the better. The way The First gets inside people's heads I might have had a target painted on my back if it was common knowledge, so we did our best to make everything look normal, right up to the end. And in answer to your second question, we didn't. Just had to trust that that vision of the wedding that we had back when Buffy first claimed me was the truth. Had to trust in it and keep our fingers crossed... an' if all else failed I'd stashed a blanket in the basement."

Spike's cell picked that moment to ring, its version of 'London Calling' still sounding rather ill. "Yeah?" he grunted. For almost a minute he seemed to listen to whoever was calling before he spoke again. "Good work, love. I'll leave money behind the bar for you all to have a drink an' some food when you get back."

Everyone stared at him expectantly as he returned the phone to his pocket.

"Spike!" Buffy's voice came out in almost a growl. "Care to share?"

"It's nothing much," he said stony faced. "Just Amanda ringin' to say they've found Tara an' Bee an' they're both alright." He couldn't hold his joy in any longer and he broke into a grin, scooped Buffy from her chair and spun her around several times before he stood her back on her slightly unsteady feet. "Reckons they'd passed out, but they came to alright when they got the smelling salts out. She also says that the house is still there, so's the church and most everything outside the town centre. Looks like you get to have your happy day, just like you planned."

---

 

Faith had to work hard to resist the urge to simply let the motorcycle fall over on its side as she jumped off. Only the thought of the potential arguments with Spike, who had after all given her his keys 'no questions asked', made her take the extra seconds to set the cycle on its stand. She dashed to the reception desk, only to end up nearly climbing the walls as she waited for the nurse there to finish dealing with the person in front.

"James Roderick Urquhart," she threw the name at the second nurse who made her way behind the desk before she could even set down her coffee cup and clipboard. "Brought in from Sunnydale this morning. Animal attack."

Faith shifted her weight nervously from foot to foot as the nurse coaxed her PC out of hibernation and asked how exactly you spelled that surname. She watched as the nurse put on her best professional manner.

"I'm sorry, miss. Mr Urquhart is still in surgery. Are you his next of kin?"

"I'm his girlfriend. His family are in Scotland. Should I be trying to get in touch with them?" Faith waited, dreading a reply in the affirmative.

"I really couldn't say," the nurse answered, using the meaningless doublespeak that hospital staff always seemed to favour, always so conscious of the possibility of lawsuits that they would never give a straight, 'yes' or 'no'. "If you want to go up to the third floor and speak to the receptionist there, then maybe one of the doctors will be able to spare a few minutes to speak to you. It has been a very busy morning, though..."

Faith didn't bother to wait for an elevator.

---

 

By the time she made it to the second receptionist, she'd slipped a ring over from her right hand to her left and upgraded to fiancée. Girlfriend sounded too flimsy, too easily dismissed. The receptionist took her details, made notes of the extra information that she was able to provide for them, even surprising herself by coming up with a date and place of birth.

None of it made the news come any quicker. She was forced to pace the cramped waiting room, with only attitude to keep the clergymen, who had accompanied some of the wounded, at bay. She didn't want their comfort, their kind words. She didn't need them. She just needed to stay cold, keep it frosty. She couldn't afford to let anyone in now or the whole house of cards might come tumbling down. Another hour and a half crawled round by the glacier-slow waiting room clock before anyone deigned to approach.

"Miss Lehane?" The doctor was dressed in scrubs and he was still removing his mask as he made his way toward the slayer.

"That's me."

"We're moving your fiancé to one of our recovery rooms now. The surgery went well. He's lost a lot of blood and the incisions were rather deep but he's young and fit. Barring any complications he should recover just fine. It'll be at least an hour or two before he comes out of the anaesthetic."

"Can I see him?"

"There really wouldn't be a lot of point right now. Maybe you should take a break, get something to eat, maybe a shower and a change of clothes and then when you get back..."

"No offence, Doc, but my clothes were back in Sunnydale. I don't even know if where we were living is still in one piece and I'm not going anywhere until he tells me to."

"At least get something to eat," the doctor offered by way of compromise. "The hospital canteen does a passable lasagne."

"I'll grab something from one of the vending machines on my way past." Faith made her final offer. "Room number?"

The doctor raised his eyes heavenward. "I'll make sure the nurse lets you know as soon as they finish getting him settled in."

---

 

Faith pulled the back-breaking plastic chair as close to the bed's side as she could, listening to the comfortingly regular beeps of the monitors that were attached to the unconscious watcher.

She took his left hand between both of hers. "Don't you know you're meant to keep your guard up?" she asked in little more than a whisper, her thumb rubbing back and forth over his knuckles. "You guys are meant to be the brains. We're the cannon-fodder... You do something this damn stupid again and you're out on your ear... You hear me?"