Disclaimer: I blame Kennedy on Joss

Author’s note: Beta’d by the wonderful Bloodytearsoflife.
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Chapter 53 : Exposition

Buffy stepped out of the tube station and glanced about her, trying to get her bearings. She had never really been able to orientate herself while underground and it took her a few seconds before being able to decide which direction to walk in.

Five minutes later she stood in front of a house she not seen in years. The outward appearance did not show the fact that it was uninhabited. No doubt Wolfram and Hart had kept a grounds keeper for the house all these years.

Digging into her pocket, Buffy brought out the key to the house. The key had been sitting in Arashamahar since the 70’s when it had been willed to her. This was Noël’s house, Christopher’s house. She turned the lock and stepped into the house, the dust that hung in the air immediately assailing her nostrils. Buffy sneezed.

The furniture was covered with sheets, but the items that rested on the fireplace mantel of the parlour were coated in dust. Buffy didn’t need to wipe the dust from the frames to know who graced the pictures. Noël had remembered every member of her family by their picture or portrait in that room.

Covered on one end of the mantel was a painted miniature of Elizabeth Underwood, age seventeen, a copy of the same one that had graced the walls of the Watcher’s Council. On the other end of the mantel was a miniature of William Fairchilde, age twenty six, a copy of the same portrait Spike kept hidden in his London home. In between were photographs, sepia, black and white, and a couple in colour of the members of the Fairchilde family: a sepia portrait of Buffy and Christopher when he was an infant; a photograph of Christopher, his wife Kristina and their three children; a black and white photo of Noël and her parents; a colour candid photo of Buffy and Noël the last time they had seen each other.

The house was full of memories. Noël’s life had been cut short, and cut off from her family. She had been as eager to find her uncle and aunt as Buffy had been. Noël would have been delighted to meet Liz and Dawn.

As Buffy wandered upstairs, she wished that she had had the presence of mind to tell the minions of Wolfram and Hart that she wanted the house cleaned up for her arrival. She was a client after all. Weren’t her millions under their safekeeping?

Upstairs Noël’s room was just as she’d left it, and Buffy steered herself away from the room and headed towards what had been Isabella’s room. It had been cleared of Isabella’s stuff when the teen had left for parts unknown with her brother. It wouldn’t bother Buffy as much to sleep in there. Most of the remaining bedrooms held some memory.

Buffy placed her suitcase in the room and headed downstairs to use the phone.

She immediately dialled a number and waited to be transferred to the person she wanted to speak to.

“Yeah, I know I was just in the offices of the LA branch but you are my branch,” she barked at the hapless lawyer assigned to her. “I would think that an all knowing law firm that just gave me back my solidity would realise that I wanted to go home, and that I wanted them cleaned. Yes all of them. You didn’t know where I was going? It could have been any of the four. I’m standing in my London house and it’s coated with dust! Ewww! And yes I meant four. I‘m William the Bloody‘s mate, meaning that what‘s his is mine. Yes, I want his London home cleaned too.”

Buffy listened to the apologies of the lawyer on the other end of the line. “I don’t care if you were out of the loop. You had just better hope that when I get my pendant back I have forgotten about this. I’m sure there is a child somewhere who wants you to suffer.”

There was an audible gulp from the lawyer on the other end of the line. “And I want a car, full tank of gas. Make it something sporty and cute. Something blue. Yes I realise that it isn’t inconspicuous! If I wanted to be inconspicuous do you think I would be living in one of my houses, yelling at my lawyer?”

She hung up the phone with finality and smiled to herself. No amount of slayering had made her lose her touch. Well, verbally anyway.

She knew that Spike wouldn’t have done anything so silly as to take Dawn to his London home, or the house in Kent either. The Immortal would be looking for people to start using those places. But getting the houses cleaned would send a message. That Erixel was back, in some form. Maybe it would even get back to Spike that she was alive and well.

Buffy was about to head out in search of a Safeway or a Tesco for groceries, ‘cause hey, human now, when she was interrupted by the phone ringing.

She raised her eyebrow curiously wondering who would be phoning her, after all the number was unlisted and had kinda not been answered in the last thirty years.

“Hello?” she asked speaking into the handset.

“Rixy, Giles wants to talk to you,” came Anya’s voice.

“Anya! What in Arashamahar are you doing phoning me?” asked Buffy.

“You think I can’t use modern technology? It was Xander’s idea. He doesn’t like all the burn marks from portals,” Anya explained. “Giles told me to tell you to get your ass back here.”

“Excuse me?” asked Buffy. “Since when does the mistress of Arashamahar take orders from a watcher?”

“Well seeing as you aren’t a demon and technically not my employee, I can’t make you do anything. Technically. However, you are a Slayer. That makes you an employee of the council of watchers again. Remember them? Tried to kill you?”

There was some shouting in the background on Anya’s end of the line.

“I’m told I shouldn’t have mentioned that. Whatever. Get back here.”

“And do they expect me to teleport there?” questioned Buffy.

“No silly!” the vengeance demon exclaimed. “Giles will send a car for you!”
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Buffy walked into the new Watcher’s Council building, looking at everything with curiosity.

“Excellent,” greeted Giles. “You are here.”

“Has ‘hello’ been replaced in modern slang since I was gone?” she asked annoyed. “I didn’t think I was gone long enough for slang to have evolved to such an extent.”

“Shall we retire to the conference room?” the watcher asked, politely, as if he was trying to mask his ire at being so rudely spoken to.

“Or we could not. I saved the world, I thought I was free from the little Scooby gang,” continued Buffy.

“Uh, you are a slayer Elizabeth,” responded Giles. “You belong with us.”

“As soon as she gets her pendant back she belongs with me!” protested Anya.

“I thought you were on our side?” asked the vengeance demon’s lover.

“Of course I’m on your side Xander,” she placated him. “But she’s been a vengeance demon much longer than she’s been a slayer.”

“She was a slayer first,” argued Willow.

“But she wants to be a vengeance demon again. She doesn’t want to be your pawn,” countered Anya.

“Hey!” interrupted Buffy. “The Slayer-Vengeance Demon-Slayer-Ghost-Slayer would like it if you stopped talking about her like she wasn’t here. Just what do you want with me?” Buffy asked, glaring at the watcher.

“We want you to train the new slayers. We have slayers coming to us from all over the world. Liz is in Italy taking a much needed vacation, and Faith is in Cleveland protecting the Hellmouth there. We need someone with experience to do it,” he explained.

“’Cause I have oh so much of that. What’s wrong with Willow’s bed buddy? The one with the tongue ring and the attitude. Why can’t she do it?” Buffy asked.

The assembled Scoobies looked at one another, as if waiting for someone else to speak.

“Did someone finally give her the old heave ho?” asked Buffy hopefully.

“She uh, tried to stake Spike in his sleep. Dawn uh...” started Xander, looking at Willow.

“Dawn sent her to another dimension, accidentally,” finished Willow sadly.

“Dawn did what?” asked Buffy.

“She opened a dimensional gate and sent Kennedy into it. We don’t know what dimension she’s in,” supplied Anya happily.

“I’ve tried to find out where she is,” continued Willow.

“This was just after we arrived in England. Dawn, it seems, was rather angry that Kennedy decided to stake her guardian,” finished Giles.

“Well yeah!” exploded Buffy.

“Will you consider the offer?” pressed the watcher.

Buffy took a moment to consider it. She didn’t want to. That was that. She had plans and they didn’t involve being ordered about by a new council or training up little slayers she didn’t give a fig’s ass about.

“Sorry, but I have a vampire to find,” she said with finality. Buffy turned on her heel and strode out of the building without looking back.
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She was secretly delighted that Dawn had been the one to protect Spike. The extent of Dawn’s key powers were scary, true, but that was par for the course with their family. What could you expect from the progeny of a vampire and a vengeance demon/slayer?

Frankly she was surprised that no one else in the family was supernaturally inclined. A mystical key and a slayer was enough.

Buffy headed down the streets of London with one particular goal in mind. She wasn’t going back to Noël’s house right away; she had to see his house for herself.

If Spike and Dawn had been in London when the others had come over perhaps they had stayed at Spike’s London house before moving on. Perhaps they had left a clue.

Buffy walked into the house to see that the cleaners that Wolfram and Hart had hired had just arrived. The four women looked normal enough, but Buffy’s underused slayer sense told her that they were far from human. As they removed their equipment from the boot of their car, Buffy went in search of clues that Spike and Dawn had been there.

Walking through the house she had first seen as a girl, she remarked at how little it had changed from those days over a century ago. Much like Noël’s house, the furniture was covered in sheets and a thick layer of dust coated everything, though the dust was thicker here, there were places where the dust had been rubbed off entirely.

So someone had been there recently.

Buffy walked up the stairs to the second floor, eager to inspect the bedrooms. Spike’s mother’s room was untouched, which didn’t surprise her in the least. Spike had issues with his mother’s demise. No doubt her room brought back memories that he didn’t want to explore.

His own room provided the most evidence that someone had lived there recently, even if it was for a short time. The sheets on the bed were unmade, there was a rumpled black shirt on the floor, discarded, and an empty cigarette pack lay in the waste bin. Spike had slept here.

Buffy walked out of the room and into the room of Spike’s long dead sister, hoping to find evidence of Dawn in the house. Sure enough, there were strands of long brown hair gracing the pillowcase on the bed, so long neglected.

But where had they gone next?

Buffy stumbled down to the main floor again, and into the kitchen, expecting to find used blood bags and the remnants of chicken wings in the bin. What she did find astonished her. On the fridge (and yes there was a fridge, probably new when it was installed in the 70’s) was a newspaper clipping of the bomb that killed Noël. One phrase was underlined.

“The victim’s families can rest assured that we will get to this bottom of this atrocity,” said a spokesman for Scotland Yard. “We can only hope that there will be an end soon, and that the slain can rest in peace.”

Was it a clue? Buffy asked herself.

The cleaners burst through the door, carrying buckets and mops, apologizing for interrupting. Buffy shook her head, indicating that there was no need. She’d gotten what she came for here. She knew where they had gone next.
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The trains in England hadn’t improved much in later years. They were still boring, and painted odd colours. The seat in which she currently sat was a faded blue that was probably the height of fashion when it had been chosen, sometime in the 1980’s. She presented her ticket to the steward and laughed a little at the two girls that were hiding in the loo, trying to get a free ride.

As the English countryside flashed by, she wondered just how the village in which her country house was located in had changed. She hadn’t actually been there in a century. Not since Annette was taken. Not since she and Christopher had to live in Arashamahar.

Buffy curled up into the corner of the seat staring blankly at the window, not really seeing. Would she find Spike and Dawn? Would it be safe for her to stay with them? Would Spike want her to be a vengeance demon again? Would Dawn? Did she really want to go back to cursing unsuspecting parents?

Her life had had so many twists and turns recently. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Except find Spike and her pendant.

Spike and her pendant.

I guess those are really my priorities, she concluded.

Spike made her heart safe.

The pendant made her life safe.

But the realisation that everything else was secondary was frightening. She thought, in some small way, she had changed.

If it was between my pendant and Dawn’s life, what would I choose? she asked herself.
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tbc...