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banner created by AJ Hofacre © March 10, 2008

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...epilogue...
.:OCD watchers and really big rats:.

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It could have been rats.

Really, really big rats, like the kind that attacked Westley in the forest in The Princess Bride. Those were the kind that wanted to literally chew on you till you bled.

It should have been rats.

Dawn wished it was.

At least then, it would justify all the pounding -- er, banging... No, that isn't much better she thought, blushing.

Ah. Maybe rats would justify all the sounds that had been emanating from Buffy's bedroom all last night and early on this morning. Don't they ever take a break? she thought, using Spike's patented rolling-of-the-eyes.

It was quite likely that Spike and Buffy had not left Buffy's room at all within the last thirty-eight hours. Which kind of made Dawn's stomach churn. God, how much longer can they keep on going? Her sister and surrogate brother were like the Energizer Bunnies of Porn.

All of this, though, had been expected of them. Giles had dispatched Xander, Anya, Willow and Tara to take over patrol for Buffy and Spike while the duo were indefinitely, erm, indisposed. Dawn giggled out loud as she recalled the look on Giles' face as he'd given orders. It had kind of looked like a migraine had launched a full front attack on his head, while he'd been caught between stepping in something awfully rank and eating a really sour lemon. Poor Giles. First, he'd had to deal with the whole Romeo and Juliet thing with Buffy and the schmuck, then there had been Buffy and Spike's 'engagement' last year, and now he had to deal with the knowledge that whatever Buffy and her utterly devoted, soulless, chipless, slightly evil with a side of good Vampire were doing behind closed doors, it was most definitely not Tae-Bo.

Since the night that Willow, Tara and Dawn had unwittingly confirmed Spike and Buffy's relationship status, Spike had been chasing Buffy into her room after patrol, both of them flinging the door closed, and within minutes... there was howling. Dawn had no idea where it came from. She didn't want to know. For all the girl knew, Spike -- hell, even Buffy -- were possibly channeling an inner petting zoo. Neither her sister nor Spike were seen by anyone but each other.

Until now at least. The animal noises had finally ceased, and the Primitives seemed to finally be emerging from their cave.

Dawn wasn't alone at the moment. Willow and Anya were sitting up with her in the living room, watching the aforementioned Princess Bride. Tara was in the kitchen with Joyce, fixing more popcorn and snacks while the Slayer's mother ever so cheerfully attempted to block out the wild animal mating calls coming from upstairs in her own home. Xander had gone on a quick patrol with Giles, rounding up and cuffing -- or rather, staking -- any nasties that hadn't gotten the hell out of Dodge before the Hellbitch's rage had struck. He'd been paged for a Scooby Movie Night by none other than Buffy herself, who had taken out a rare fraction in time to inform him of it. Though why, how, and most importantly, why the thought had come to her was certainly anybody's guess. She had also ordered both Xander and Giles to bring the refreshments for the night before there had been suspicious male chuckling on the other end of the phone, and the Slayer had abruptly hung up.

Really, now that Dawn thought back on it, Spike and Buffy were sort of well-deserving with their inability to remain sated of each other, since two days prior to now, the shit had almost truly hit the fan. Glory had officially grown sick of waiting, and had taken the fight to them, blowing out the front window of 1630 in her rage. Several of the crazies that Glory had created from her compulsive brain-sucking had followed her. One in particular had noticed the green aura surrounding Dawn, and as such had completely blown the gang's cover. Glory, ecstatic that she finally knew who the Key was, wanted Dawn, and wanted to get home, and not even the combined strengths of a mated Slayer and vampire, and two extremely powerful witches had been able to keep the the goddess from hauling a terrified, screaming Dawn right down the street.

Frantic, and as close to hysterical as one could be without completely losing their head, Buffy had grabbed Spike and headed for the door; startled, he had snatched Willow's arm. Alarmed, the red-head had immediately grabbed her girlfriend, who, in her surprise, grabbed an irritated Giles. The Watcher had quickly urged Xander and Anya to hurry the hell up and grab Buffy before she got them all killed.

After a ten minute period in which Buffy violently lashed out and affectively alienated everyone around her except for Spike in the span of an hour, Giles had finally managed to talk her into being slightly rational when she fought Glory, and the group led the infuriated Slayer to the Magic Box.

When Giles had skimmed a few manuscripts left behind for them by the monks who had created Dawn, he realized that the girl's kidnapping did have some significance, after all. It wasn't that Glory was just bored -- well, not entirely, anyway. It was the fact that the ritual Glory wanted to perform to return to her dimension was scheduled to take place that very night at nine. The older (looking) Englishman revealed that the scripts informed that the Key was to be funneled into a certain place at a certain time, and since the Key had been made human, it was understood that the essence of the Key was in her blood.

A stunned Spike had then come to grips with the situation exactly: should Glory succeed, then Dawn would have to be cut. The Vampire's righteous fury, along with his mate's, grew when the Watcher said that the portal created from Dawn's blood wouldn't close until the blood stopped flowing.

In this case, stopped flowing meant Dawn dies.

No one had liked that situation.

Action had been effective immediately, and the group had set out after Glory and Dawn, essentially hijacking one of the lingering loonies and following them to Xander's construction site, where a very big tower had apparently appeared overnight.

Buffy had attacked Glory the second she'd appeared with a troll hammer that Buffy had stolen from an ex-boyfriend of Anya's (who had actually been the troll in question - ew), and the match quickly became one-sided, because Buffy was basically beating the shit out of the goddess with it. She managed to defeat Glory, but not before discovering that the leech's human host was the doctor that had been with Dawn when her sister had nearly been killed at the hospital. Ben had still been alive, but he wouldn't remain that way -- every impact that the hammer had made on Glory had been made on Ben, and the boy had been mortally wounded. He wouldn't have survived ten more minutes.

Meanwhile, Spike had spotted Dawn being forced up the staircase of the tower by a lizard-like demon named Doc. Giving a silent command to Giles, Anya, and Xander to back him up if necessary, Spike had grabbed Willow and Tara, who had then combined their powers; he catapulted himself through the throng of crazies as the witches blew them apart, parting them like some inane Red Sea. Shooting up the steps of the tower, Spike tackled Doc, receiving a knife in his gut for his troubles, but not before launching himself and the demon off of the tower to the ground. The schmaltzy little bastard had been preparing to cut Dawn with the knife he had stabbed Spike with, but no serious damage had been done to the girl aside from her terror at seeing Spike fling himself nearly two hundred feet down.

In a slow and painstaking way, Spike had taken the demon's knife and had proceeded to cut Doc's head off of his body, not trusting that the fall would have killed him. However, when he'd attempted to head back up the tower on a broken leg to check on Dawn, Doc had remerged with his head. Buffy, from across the construction site, had turned around to focus on her sister and Spike, had seen the unusual threat, and had screamed a warning to her lover at the sight of the really big plank spear in the demon's hand. Spike turned around, just as Doc shoved the relatively thin, but equally dangerous piece of wood through Spike's chest, missing his heart by scant inches. That didn't make it hurt any less, though, and with a roar of pain, Spike had turned enraged, disbelieving eyes to the demon.

It got sort of messy after that.

After they'd managed to separate Doc's pieces so he couldn't merge together again, and then got the piece of lumber out of Spike's chest, the vampire voiced his complaint: "When the bloody fuck am I gonna stop bein' used as a pin cushion?!"

At that point, Buffy had given him a wickedly suggestive half-grin, and had leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

After that, the duo had disappeared. Apparently, not even a 2 by 2 inch square through his chest could devastate Spike's sex drive.

The two were certainly here now, though, grinning and laughing together as they came down the steps. Spike threw an arm around her lovingly, leaning in and placing a kiss on her forehead, and Buffy leaned in to his touch, nuzzling her cheek against his chest. At the same time, Xander and Giles pushed through the front door. When Buffy and Spike noticed them, Spike's arm fell back to his side. Sheepish grins appeared on both Buffy and Spike's faces as the four stood there staring at each other. Xander gazed at them silently, then smiled, nodding his head. He snorted then and gave them both a thumbs up before wandering into the den, shouting, "I come bearing gifts of foodage; come and get it!"

Buffy's smile shrank off her face and she bit her lower lip as she watched Giles gaze at her proximity to Spike. This was the important one; she loved Giles like a father, and though he was well aware of what was between Buffy and Spike, it didn't mean she didn't long for his approval of it any less. She didn't have to turn around to know that Spike's smile had gone missing as well, but she relaxed a tiny bit when he gently squeezed her shoulder.

Giles took in the movement, then nodded to Spike slowly. "I trust you to take care of her?" he asked.

Spike moved down until he stood on the steps next to Buffy, replacing his arm around her. "Until she kills me."

Buffy scowled and jabbed him in the stomach, but succeeded only in making her mate smirk at her obnoxiously. Giles hid his own smile, then cleared his throat when Buffy glanced at him. "We need to tell you something, Giles," she said, her teeth gnawing on her lower lip.

The former Watcher tilted his head to the side, curious. "What is it?"

Spike glanced at Buffy, then spoke. "Uh, first off... she an' I are mated. Don't go getting all flustered, mate, it's not a bad thing -- at least to us it isn't." Buffy elbowed him again when she saw that Giles was gaping at them in disbelief. "But, uh, right. What we really want you to know, is that, uh... when time came for, er... Buffy to... to, uh, complete the claim... her eyes were glowin'."

At that, Giles straightened up and took notice, forgetting all about his shock that Buffy had mated herself willingly to a vampire -- for the moment. "Her eyes were glowing, you say?"

Buffy nodded. "Like a vampire's. And that's not even half of it. When I went to bite him, Spike says that I sprouted fangs. No bumpies, just fangs. Giles! I. Had. Fangs!"

Giles frowned. "I heard you, Buffy. However, I cannot even begin to say that I know what's happened. I've told you before, there are no records of any Master vampires being mated to a Slayer."

Buffy's eyebrows crinkled. "Well, yeah, I know, but aren't you even going to take notes? I mean... you're Watcher-Man. You... scold me on stupid behavior, and... mock my Californian upbringing... and yell at me when I pull a bad battle technique. And you take notes. It's what you do, you take notes! You're not gonna take notes?"

Giles chuckled, shaking his head. "No, Buffy, I'm not going to take notes. Tonight is a night for relaxation, after a particularly heinous battle. We will take a break tonight, and research this further tomorrow." He nodded for emphasis, then turned and took the drinks he'd brought with him into the kitchen, passing by Joyce and Tara on their way inside with the popcorn.

Spike looked down at Buffy, eyebrows raised. "Watcher's giving us the night off, pet, I say we take it."

Buffy nodded slowly, frowning. "Yeah, I agree. But still. Giles? Not wanting to do anything book-ish? This is so majorly of the weird."

Her vampire followed Giles's path with his eyes. "Yeah... you're right. But what can we do? If he doesn't want to research, then he's prolly just feeling ill." He shrugged and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "Now let's go get pizza before Harris eats it all."

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Inside the kitchen, Giles sorted through the soda bottles until he'd found the scotch that he had brought for himself and Joyce... and Spike. Peering at the entrance to the kitchen in an almost paranoid manner, he slid his journal out of his jacket, and took up a pen, quickly beginning to scribble in it.



24 May 2001

My Slayer and Spike have informed me that they are mated. I suppose it should be a tragedy to me; however, Slayers have been intimate with vampires in the past. Buffy is not as unique in that department as she would believe herself to be.

They've also told me that at the height of their... er, stimuli, and upon Buffy's apparently imminent reciprocation of Spike's claim, Buffy's eyes began gleaming, and her canines extended into fangs. There certainly is a need for research, here. However, I believe that neither Buffy nor Spike are in any danger from it.

Or so I hope.

It has been two days since the battle with the Hellgod, Glory, a battle that has left all of us utterly exhausted, and yet Buffy... Buffy continues to amaze me, and it seems that in her joining with Spike, she has become an even more irreconcilable force against the damned. She has defeated a god -- my dearest Buffy, with only the limited powers of the Slayer, has taken on a deity -- and she won.

Most Slayers' strengths were forged by impeccable detail in training, and cutting off all contact with the outside world, remaining in the underground to hone their skills. Buffy shunned the teachings of the Council, and surrounded herself with people that know of her duty and stand by her throughout it, helping her in her cause; they love her for, because, and in spite of it. Her strengths were forged from her emotions, as anyone who has seen her first three apocalypses (perhaps apocali?) can attest to. I take exceptional pride in her and what she has become.

Surprisingly, I am not as angered or fearful of the news that Buffy has taken another vampire to her bed -- as I had believed I would be. Somehow, I sensed that this would be the result of her three-year long... affair, shall we call it, with Spike. As I've said before, Buffy is not the only Slayer to bed a vampire, but of course, I am biased; I still hold her in higher regard than the others.

Buffy remains different from the other Slayers in that, while her predecessors had intimacy with vampires, they had never been claimed, nor had been mated to them; those vampires were usually their reason of death. With Spike, the very idea that he would place a claim on Buffy in the first place speaks volumes. Perhaps he had not meant to do it at first, but there is no doubt in my mind about him now -- Spike does care for her. I am certainly not in a place to judge that. And here in itself is where Buffy remains unique: she remains the only Slayer to have ever loved two vampires, to have ever had two vampires turn their backs on their clan for her; and she remains the only Slayer in history to be mated to a vampire, a vampire who is notoriously known in the underground as William the Bloody.

I have told her we will research the nature of the claim tomorrow. Tonight will be a night of enjoyment, only. She, Spike, and the others - particularly Dawn - deserve it after what they've gone through.

There will be more tomorrow evening.

Rupert Giles
Watcher


Closing the book with a small contented sigh, he turned to get out a few glasses. Filling them with ice and grabbing the bottle of scotch, Giles nearly dropped them when he heard two throats pointedly being cleared. He turned to see Buffy in the doorway and leaning against Spike, who was behind her with his chin resting on her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her waist. Both were smirking insanely. Buffy shook her head at the Watcher's journal on the counter.

"I knew it!"

Giles sighed and rolled his eyes.




Fin




Thank you all so much for reading and reviewing. I appreciate it more than you know ^_^ This story has so far been the first and only that I have completed -- but trust me when I say that it definitely won't stay that way. Again, thank you all so much for reading and enjoying and giving me so much encouragement. Spuffy fans are the best fans in the world!

All my love,
AJ