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quinaraI seem to be eating a lot of Marmite today. This is not an exciting update. But this is (hopefully)!
Turn and Face the Strain.
[Sequel to The More Things Stay the Same and As Good as a Rest.]
When Buffy thought about falling in love again, she didn't expect it to be nearly so complicated as it actually turns out to be.
Also, she didn't expect it to be Spike. (She's not sure he did either.)
[Notes + Chapter One: I'm Not a Political Animal, But.]
/
[Chapter Eleven: You’re Not Taking the Pulse of the Public.]
.
Chapter Twelve: The Next Thing You Know You’re LBJ.
“OK. I am so hanging up now.”
“Oh, you are, are you?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, then.”
“Just ride careful, will you?”
“Ruff-ruff, Daphne.”
“…You’re so weird.”
“Yeah, well, you too, Summers.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“What’s what supposed to mean?”
“That. ‘You too, Summers.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I take what I can get from you. Far as it goes.”
“What does that… Whatever. You can get a lot from me, Spike; we’ve been over this.”
“I know I can. That’s why I take it.”
“What is it you want me to say? Do you want me to say I love you at the end of every conversation, is that it? Like we’re that couple doomed for failure in a romcom?”
“Well, it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Fine, then; I love you. Love love love.”
“Love you, too.”
“There, now we’ve both been sarcastic at each other. Feel better?”
“Yeah, actually. I don’t have a problem with sarcastic affection.”
“… I still think you’re freaking weird.”
“As long as you’re thinking of me.”
By the time Kate showed up, Buffy was seriously running low on small talk.
To start with, it hadn’t been so bad. The stealth in her conversation with Spike had been provoked all the way out of her, so, when she’d handed the cell phone back for the second time, Cordelia had looked at her with one raised eyebrow and asked what was going on. It had left Buffy defensive, which was never overly pleasant, but the general explanation of her and Spike had at least given them something to talk about. Apparently Cordelia had seen it coming a little bit, anyway, after she saw Spike and got ranted at by Dawn after she'd come to Buffy’s funeral, so that was another thing.
And it was touching; Buffy was touched. She made a mental note to make whatever trip was necessary to come and see Cordelia-call-me-Cordy one final time if the worst happened. Funerals were important, after all; it was important to accept death, allow people to move on from life when they were gone. Maybe she had been brought back and found her place back in the circle of life again, whatever it was they sung about in The Lion King, but Buffy was fully convinced it was important to let go.
A mutual appreciation of funerary rites of passage, however, was not enough to carry a conversation very far, so soon they just had nothing.
“Do you think Kate’s gonna be much longer?” Cordelia asked, apparently on the same wavelength – and less embarrassed about showing it.
That was a relief. “We kind of guessed what time my meeting would finish,” Buffy said, looking up and down the street with more obvious impatience, “but that was around now, so she shouldn’t be.”
“I still can’t believe she’s working in Sunnydale,” Cordy mused, like there was so little possible conversation left that they needed to go over old ground. Slightly distracting, gossipy ground. “And tracking demons… She always hated the supernatural world. I mean,” she qualified, explaining with a sidelong glance Buffy’s way. “Vampires killed her dad,” she said. It was a hesitant admission, like it wasn’t her story to tell – which it wasn’t, obviously. Buffy felt bad for appreciating the intel all the same. “She never trusted Angel after that – or any of us, really. I’m, uh…” Buying herself some time, Cordy cleared her throat before she finished, “I’m kinda surprised she trusts you.”
Well, huh. That was definitely something to think about. The suggestion came to Buffy as something of a surprise, because, after all, it was Kate who had come to her for help in the first place, but then, she supposed, there was no reason why that couldn’t have been necessity, rather than trust. She’d been looking to solve the case of Katrina’s murder and Buffy had been the one who’d reported the crime: there wasn’t any reason to think Kate had known she was the Slayer before she’d looked her up and tracked her down. “Huh,” she repeated out loud, wondering why she never gave much thought to these things before they became a problem. “To be honest, I don’t even know if she does.”
But that didn’t fit, did it? Not with everything that had been happening, not with Kate offering her a job? Looking out into the street at the cars rushing past, keeping an eye out for one red Hyundai sedan, Buffy wondered whether it even mattered. She only needed to work with Kate, after all, and she trusted her enough not to compromise any mission that they had.
It was always nice to be trusted, Buffy thought with a pang, thinking about Spike – but it wasn’t always necessary, not really.
When the detective herself finally showed up, however, coming on foot around the corner – presumably with her car parked elsewhere – Buffy definitely had some questions all the same.
“Hey,” Kate greeted as she walked up the sidewalk. Riley and Sam weren’t with her, but Buffy assumed that just meant they’d done the expected and jet-setted off somewhere glamorous again. “Why’re you waiting out here?” Also doing a double-take on Cordelia’s hair, then, her expression dropped from an easy-going smile to a tense almost-frown. “Oh,” she said, coming to a halt. “Hi.”
“Hey,” Cordy replied, looking equally awkward.
“So, uh,” Buffy mediated, throwing the question Kate’s way as a hint, “you guys know each other?” She tried not to get any accusation into her voice, because she liked Kate, didn’t she? She’d given her a job, which was what she really needed, and she’d fixed the Warren problem, even though Buffy was really, really not grateful he was dead.
Also, from the gloomy look of acceptance on Kate’s face, it really seemed like she needed a friend. “Yeah,” she said. “I probably should’ve mentioned that – but,” she defended, meeting Buffy’s eyes with that beguilingly clear blue. “I figured that was the last thing you needed to worry about, after Tara caught me up on where you were going. It didn’t seem like the time.”
Oh, Buffy thought. Well… That was nice, wasn’t it? Kind of thoughtful, really. It didn’t matter so much what had happened in the past, anyway, because they had a whole new can of worms to deal with now. From the non-committal look on Cordelia’s face, it didn’t seem like this was going to be a problem. “I guess it’s a small world, huh?” she went for, with a hesitant sort of humour, willing to let it go and move on.
But then: “It’s funny,” Kate agreed, smiling in the night time like she didn’t want to cause any trouble. “And, you know,” she offered, as if it was part of the same joke, “I think we might have even met once, way back when.”
Thoughts diverted, Buffy blinked. Really? she wondered. There were only a couple of times that could have been, unless Kate had been around that summer she’d tried to forget about, when she’d been Anne; or maybe when she was fourteen and there’d been that time at Bullock’s…
“Were you ever down here after a fugitive?” Kate interrupted her thoughts. “Teenage girl, wanted for murder?” She paused then, frowning as her joke went a little sour. Buffy knew exactly what she was feeling, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “I guess,” she began, looking at Buffy like she’d just realised they probably would have known each other a lot better than she’d thought. “She was strong, wasn’t she? Must’ve been…”
“A slayer,” Buffy filled in, the memories coming back with a dull thud in her mind. Oh yeah, that hadn’t been a normal case. “Faith.” She remembered that time in LA, the red-hot need for revenge she’d been filled with and then Angel… Eyes closed as it all came back, she could remember Kate, couldn’t she? Yeah, she realised: she remembered the blonde detective-bitch (as her mind had labelled her), the woman who’d been getting in the way of everything, who’d been about to ruin it all.
Startled, she shook her head, trying to clear it from that old rush of thoughts. Where was this coming from? Those impressions didn’t fit with the Kate she knew now, did they? The Kate back then had probably only been trying to get things done, but she’d been different, anyway, harder. Even if –
“Hang on,” Buffy said, pausing. There was definitely some accusation in her voice now. It was pretty much intentional. “Didn’t you try to kill Angel? Lock him up in a sunny cell?”
Cordelia coughed in surprise, but Buffy wasn’t distracted, met Kate’s eyes dead on as she looked back. As always, it was possible to recognise the steel of someone who’d shaken hands with death, only to walk away from it – but, this time, it didn’t make Buffy feel quite so reassured. “If a vamp had been playing you as much as he was me,” the cop said, lightly derisive, certainly not even ashamed. “You would’ve done the same.”
Now Buffy found herself thinking back to what the other woman had said in the sewer, about Warren. About necessity. About pulling the trigger on people when the time was right and you had to. It was a little bit frightening. In part of her brain, the ultra-deadly, cynical slayer part, she could see the logic of how Kate had thought back then: Faith had been dangerous in her eyes, a superstrong murderer out on the loose, and Angel had been looking after her. That had probably made him responsible, as far as Kate was concerned.
But Buffy – she could never have done what Kate had been going to do, could she? She didn’t like to think she’d be able to. Even with Faith and Angel, neither of whom she’d ever been able to think rationally about, make decisions about based on morals abstracted from feelings – neither of them had deserved to die whatever, right? That was what she believed? She valued life too highly. How else could it be worth it to do what she did – to die to save the world and all the crappy people in it?
She’d been wrong to want to kill Faith, Buffy knew. Hell, she hadn’t even been able to go through with it, at least when the bullets had started flying and it would have been possible to see Faith die. With Warren…
She wouldn’t have been able to go through with that, either, would she? That was why she felt kind of guilty that Kate had done in her defence, because, so she realised as she looked up, fresh eyes taking in Kate’s expression, she wouldn’t have been able to do the same.
“Hey,” Cordelia interrupted then, breaking the silence as it hung a few seconds too long. She looked bored. “Can we concentrate on what’s important here?” Apparently past attempts to kill Angel didn’t count; maybe she was too used to them? “We have one burnt-out hotel, no way of getting in contact with the guys and, I don’t know about you, but I am freezing my ass off. Let’s get this show on the road!”
“Huh?” Kate replied, her eyes then very quickly becoming comically wide as she looked in the direction of the hotel. In profile, she seemed as approachable as always. Buffy wasn’t sure what that meant.
Nonetheless, it didn’t really matter, did it? For god’s sake, get over it, Buffy told herself, well aware that this stuff wasn’t what they needed to worry about right now. No one was dying today, right?
On the general agreement that they were hungry, that they were going to be waiting for Spike at some point anyway, and because Cordelia really wanted a sweater before they spent the rest of the evening outside, the three of them headed back to chez Cordy as their first port of call. Food was had, complete with one ghost and one otherworldly boyfriend.
Said boyfriend seemed nice, if a little slow when it came to pop-culture references – including those Buffy had a feeling even Giles would have been able to understand. To be honest, most standard reference-references were a stretch as well, which got old fairly quickly. Buffy had a feeling it had moved on from old to absolutely ancient for Cordelia post-vacation, not least because she asked him to stay behind and guard the apartment when they’d all finished.
It did sort of make sense to have someone there in case the phone rang, Buffy supposed. But then…
“Are you sure you do not need my protection, princess?” he asked as they mounted up to leave. Yeah, Buffy decided. The made-for-TV-movie dialogue was seriously annoying. “If you encounter enemies before you find Angel…”
Maybe it was chivalry, but the look of it on his face made Buffy bristle. Ready by her side, Kate was already bristling. Cordelia looked at them both and apologised with a strained smile. “I’ll be fine, Groo,” she said, encouraging him to leave them alone. “Don’t worry. Buffy and Kate are – champions, really. Kate is, uh… She keeps order, like a sheriff. And Buffy – she slays wild beasts, like, all the time.” She ended a little desperately, “Drokken beasts included, even.”
“Truthfully?” Groo addressed Buffy then – and she had to admit he was very cute when he turned her way and she could see him face on. With the arms and the admiration and everything, he was definitely good-looking. In a disconcertingly Angel-like way. “I have never met a female drokken-lugg; we must hunt together, when this current peril has been resolved.”
And he was right back to being awkward. Buffy smiled as noncommittally as she could, certain that, whatever a drokken beast was, there was a long list of people she would ask to be her hunting partner before him.
“OK!” Cordelia declared, grabbing her jacket and opening the door. “Time to go. Keep safe, honey,” she called back over her shoulder as they left. Buffy let Kate lead the way out, forcing herself to act normally.
As they got into her car, Kate apparently couldn’t resist mentioning, “You know sheriffs do completely different things from what I do, right?” She was looking at Cordelia in the rear view mirror; Buffy got on with fastening her seatbelt in the passenger seat. Although, she did find the pedantry a little endearing. “Some duties overlap, but they’re different roles.”
“Yeah…” Cordy didn’t really agree as they pulled out of the complex’s parking lot. Apparently she was quite happy to treat Kate like something of an old, if distant, friend. “But, see, I’ve been explaining telephone lines by making comparisons with carrier pigeons, so I don’t think that was too bad.”
“What is a drokken beast, anyway?” Buffy asked, buckled in and keen to prove she could be part of a friendly group. Because she could, couldn't she? “Or whatever it was Groo kept talking about over dinner,” she finished, a little less than charitable. Not that she had been bored by Cordelia’s boyfriend. “I mean…”
“It’s just a demon, I guess,” Cordelia answered anyway as Buffy turned around in her seat. She didn’t seem to be taking it too badly. “Kinda nasty,” she added. “Killing one gives you major bragging points in Pylea – Groo’s home dimension. I figure they’re kind of like dragons.” She paused, shook herself. “And I have got to stop making analogies…”
“OK, so where am I going?” Kate asked as they apparently joined the freeway back into the centre of the city. The road was a hell of a lot more empty than on the way out.
Now analogy-free, Cordelia got into the road trip spirit and directed them. “Uh… Let’s try Gunn’s apartment first,” she said, leaning forward between the front seats. “He’s not gonna be home, probably, but we can ask his neighbours if they’ve seen him or something. Then we can head to Wes’s place.”
And so they headed to Gunn’s apartment in its fairly unpleasant-looking neighbourhood. Not that Buffy could judge, of course; she had a feeling this was the sort of place she’d be living if she was in the city rather than in the house price black hole that was the town of Sunnydale. Kate definitely had her cop face on as they pulled over to the curb; Buffy made sure she still had her stake in her sock and the one inside her jacket. (Are you really so different from her? a voice muttered darkly in her mind.)
“I guess we try the buzzer, huh?” Buffy asked to fill the silence as they climbed out of the car.
“Yup,” Cordelia confirmed, not sounding very optimistic about it. Also letting the silence return.
The buzzer panel for the building had spaces for names next to the buttons, with various pieces of white, yellowed and, oddly, pink pieces of paper tucked behind little Perspex panels. In most cases, including Gunn’s from what Buffy could tell, the writing had faded beyond recognition if it had ever been legible at all, and, in the others, either the paper or the Perspex panel was missing entirely.
“Man,” Kate commented as Cordelia unerringly pressed a button next to its own slip of curled paper, ink long gone in the Los Angeles sunshine. “Angel really needs to pay you guys a bigger salary.”
“Ha,” was all Cordelia responded with, as they waited for a complete lack of answer. “The agency would need to earn some money first… And Angel doesn’t pay us, anyway,” she added with a glance over her shoulder. “When he came back after his whole mid-unlife crisis we made Wes be the boss. We have payroll software and everything.”
Unlife crisis? Buffy wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She didn’t really want to know anything anymore. “There’s no one home,” she observed, hoping to change the topic. From the look on Kate’s face, it was good idea. “Time for Plan B.”
Tilting her newly blonde head, Cordy waited a couple more seconds for Gunn not to answer, before she agreed, “Fine.” Instead of turning around then, however, she fearlessly jabbed the next buzzer down. “Here goes nothing.”
“What are you…?” Buffy began –
– but apparently the owner of 14E was waiting for a call, because they answered almost straight away. “Yeah?” the fuzzy voice came through the speaker, accompanied by the whine of old components.
“Hi,” said Cordelia, her ingratiating smile oozing from her voice. “I work with Charles Gunn, in 14F? He hasn’t been around and he’s not answering his buzzer; have you seen him?”
“I ain’t seen nothing,” the voice very quickly replied, sounding like they were about to get off the line as quickly as possible.
Cordelia was a moment quicker. “He’s not in any trouble. I mean, not that I know of. He’s my friend – I’m really worried about him.” And in an instant she sounded choked up; Buffy vaguely remembered that she’d gone to LA to be an actress, back in ’99. Maybe she was better at it than they’d all thought. “Please – if there’s anything you know, I’d appreciate it.”
The whirr coming from the speaker was the only indication 14E was still on the line. A few seconds more, however, and then they spoke, “All I know is he came home last week like hell was on his heels, packed a bag and was outta here. He’s gone. I don’t know no more.”
Buffy slumped as she took it in. Sighing, Cordy tried to say, “Thanks,” but the line was already dead.
“Well,” Kate summarised with the sarcasm Buffy really did find amusing. “I’m only a detective, but that seems suspicious to me.”
Yeah, she couldn’t even keep from snorting in agreement. “I guess we go to Wesley’s?” she suggested. It only brought silence as a response, but Buffy knew what the others were thinking. There wasn't really any point - if the gang was together, then Wesley's apartment would be just as empty as Gunn's. All the same, Buffy refused to worry about what they were going to do; she filled the silence. “If Gunn came home to get his stuff,” she added, trying to provoke the other two, “at least we know they went somewhere, got safe?”
“Yeah,” Cordelia at least replied, even if it was in a downbeat tone. Her frown as they walked away from the apartment building said it all. “Somewhere, in a city of four million people. This is gonna go well.”
Kate said nothing.
“Come on,” Buffy encouraged as they got back into the car, trying not to feel desperate. “You’re an investigator. Kate’s a detective. I’m a – me. It can’t be so hard.” In the gloomy silence, a mildly Spike-like thought crossed her mind, which she meant to dismiss but in the end decided to go with. If only because it cheered her up. “And, hey,” she finished, “if it all goes wrong we can always send up the bat signal… Don’t you guys have that lobster thing on your card?”
The clock in Kate’s car was still saying two twenty-three, but by the time they reached Wesley’s apartment, in a significantly nicer part of town, Buffy was sure it had to be about time for Spike to start showing up. The roads were emptier at this time of night, at least coming into the city, and they were right in the lull between workers travelling home from their nine-to-fives and shift workers clocking off at the end of the night. It was a nice time, this part of the evening; there weren’t too many vamps around, so you could enjoy it, take a walk. In summer it was when you could really feel the heat of the day easing off.
It wasn’t summer right now, so really what you felt was the harsher edge of the breeze setting in for the real cold around two AM, but they didn’t have to worry about that yet. Buffy wasn’t going to worry.
She wasn’t even going to worry about the fact that Spike wasn’t there at Wesley’s apartment, no matter that it was time for him to be. Maybe she couldn’t keep her heart from sinking, but there was no reason to be afraid.
In her mind, as they’d come around the corner, she’d seen him waiting for them on the sidewalk. His motorcycle had been cluttering up the path with its oily, stinky ways, but he’d been leaning against it, smoking, one eyebrow cocked as he asked her, non-verbally, what had taken her so long. Getting out of the car, she would have been able to tell him ‘nothing’, and he’d have spirited her away from the slow drag onwards of the night, convinced her it was all a misunderstanding. And she would have been feeling fine.
As it was, they pulled over to empty, shadowy darkness, headlights revealing nothing but asphalt and paving stone. “Well, it doesn’t look like Spike’s here yet,” Kate said, stating the obvious. Buffy’s shoulder was aching. “You sure he’s coming?”
“You can count on it,” Buffy replied, even as the first twinges of despair began to creep into her thoughts. She was sure about this part, after all; Spike would be there. “But he said he might look around the hotel first,” she explained, wishing for a moment that she lived in a world where they all had cell phones. Then she could send him a text message, use all that txtspk and stuff, like the smiley faces, find out where he was. “That’s probably where he is now.” She finished by repeating, “I’m sure he’ll be here soon.” It bore repeating.
“What are we going to do until he gets here?” Cordy asked from the backseat, sounding like she was pretty despondent as well. “Wait in the car?”
Shrugging, Buffy didn’t have much of a plan. “We could ring on Wesley’s buzzer just in case?” she suggested, not seeing anything else outside that they could do. There was always the radio, but who knew what stations Kate was tuned into. Even with everything else, she gave off the (separately) worrying impression that she listened to mom music.
Kate herself was staring out of the windscreen, looking into the night as a sigh passed her lips. She had a slightly distant look on her face and Buffy wondered if she was remembering too many long nights back when she was a cop around here. It couldn’t have been that fun, in the end.
All in all, Buffy decided, trying to remember how not to give up, it was probably best if they kept moving. “Let’s try Wes,” she re-confirmed, undoing her seatbelt and moving to get out of the car. It spurred the others into action.
Whatever ‘burb (‘hood?) this was, it was pretty quiet, with no other cars on the road. The buzzers for the building were sheltered from the street by a brick porch, which had a light in it, yellow and bright over their heads. The panel itself was new-looking, in steel or aluminium or something else grey and shiny; Wyndham-Price was written in enviable fountain pen cursive on a non-curled piece of card, behind glass. Kate said what Buffy was thinking, “I think Wesley’s keeping too much money for himself.”
“Yeah, well,” Cordelia retorted, though not as if her heart was in it. “We didn’t actually get inside Gunn’s place. It might be nice.”
“Really?” Sure, Buffy could understand the idea of having cheap place with nice furniture – to be honest, that was kind of what she would prefer for her and Dawn – but Gunn’s area had not been a great place to be living. “Are you sure he doesn’t have debts instead?” she suggested, trying to think why he would be there. “It looked like a debtsy place to me.”
Cordelia, apparently their official button pusher, was already pushing the Wyndham-Price button by this point, but she kept talking anyway, clearly expecting as little as the others were. “I guess that could be it… But what debts is he gonna have? He was living at no permanent address or whatever before he started working with us. Now he’s, you know, solvent.”
“Uh, I don’t know, Cordy,” Buffy replied, feeling the slightest flare of the irritation she thought she’d left behind in high school. Dammit, but she was getting tired. “Life stuff debts? Hospital bills? Transportation?” The stuff you end up with if you don’t live in a swanky apartment rent controlled by a ghost who happens to adore you.
“Gee, I’m sorry,” came the unapologetic reply as Cordelia rolled her eyes. Maybe she was tired too. “I forget we added financial difficulty to the list of things you know best on.”
As Buffy was working a reply to that completely uncalled-for remark, however, there came a voice from the speaker on the buzzer panel. “Cordelia?” it asked, quiet and a little nervous-sounding. “Is that you?”
All three of them paused, turning to stare at the source of Wesley’s voice. Now that was unexpected.
“Wes?” Cordelia asked, raising her voice slightly for the microphone or whatever she was speaking into. She sounded perkier immediately, hope returning. “Are you – oh my god, Wes; I didn’t think we’d find you. Is everyone else there? I’m here with Buffy and Kate Lockley – you remember her, right? Is Angel OK? Connor? We saw what happened to the hotel…”
Maybe it was because she’d seen how much of a mess Wesley had been the last time she was in LA, but there was a sinking feeling in Buffy’s stomach as Cordelia trailed off to a very empty silence. Eventually Wesley spoke again, but it only confirmed what Buffy had feared. “The others aren’t here,” he said with short and brittle words.
Cordelia looked shocked. Kate looked at Buffy, seeming to assess her lack of surprise, which Buffy was sure showed on her face. He sounded like he had the last time she’d been in LA: overwhelmed by stress. Some of the stuff had been sorted out, she knew, with the prophecy and the chatty burger, enough that he’d celebrated his relief with them – but she also knew you couldn’t fix everything in a day, and it seemed inevitable now, depressingly inevitable, that Wesley had not. Just great. “Wes,” she asked soberly, “can we come in?” She wanted to tell him that they were going to fix things, but then, honestly, she wasn’t sure if they’d be able to. Some things were doomed to fall apart, weren’t they? “Spike’s on his way,” she went for instead, not that she had any reason to believe that knowing that would cheer Wesley up. It was mostly a reminder for herself. “I said we’d meet him here.”
For a moment Wesley didn’t reply. The quirk of Kate’s eyebrows made Buffy think she might have blown it, but then he was muttering, “Of course you did,” and the door started making a wonderfully annoying buzz.
Even in her shock, Cordelia immediately seized the handle and opened the door. “Thanks, Wes,” she said as they went inside, sounding more subdued. It looked like she really had been away for a long time.
The trip up the elevator was easy, pretty comfortable really. It wasn’t actually so luxurious inside the apartment building as the exterior promised – the paintwork in the lobby was a little old and there was dust in the corners of the car – but then Buffy couldn’t be certain whether she was only noticing because of the spotless Wolfram and Hart experience she’d had earlier in the day.
Wesley was waiting by his door when they came down the landing, but he mostly looked like a stain on the wallpaper. Dressed in grey, and definitely not a nice grey, he needed a shave just as much as he’d needed one two weeks ago, perhaps moreso, and his eyes behind his glasses were punctuated by dark circles and lines.
“Wes!” Cordy cried out, rushing to meet him. “Are you OK? What’s going on? You look terrible.”
More cautiously, Buffy approached with Kate not far from her side. “Are you all right, Wesley?” she asked herself, unnecessarily.
“Oh yes,” Wesley replied darkly, opening his door again behind him. “Angel and I had a minor disagreement, that’s all.” Even without her on-going training in British irony, Buffy had a feeling she’d have been able to catch the sarcasm there. It didn’t bode well. Though he still had the courtesy to add, “Hello Kate,” as they followed him through the door.
When they were inside the apartment, however, it became quite obvious what the disagreement had been about – and Buffy’s first thoughts were that Angel had almost certainly been in the right.
Cordelia’s mouth was open in shock. Buffy spoke for her. “What the hell is he doing here?”
Wesley didn’t stop moving, but continued to the dining table, picking up empty plates and taking them to the sink. “Now, Buffy, there’s no need for that,” he said. “He’s really not having a very good time of it at the moment.”
There was nothing Buffy could do but stare. There in Wesley’s apartment, politely stood up from the dining table and looking almost as haggard as his host, more haggard than he’d seemed earlier, was Captain Daniel Holtz.
.
[Chapter Thirteen: Handing the Keys over to Nixon.]
Turn and Face the Strain.
[Sequel to The More Things Stay the Same and As Good as a Rest.]
When Buffy thought about falling in love again, she didn't expect it to be nearly so complicated as it actually turns out to be.
Also, she didn't expect it to be Spike. (She's not sure he did either.)
[Notes + Chapter One: I'm Not a Political Animal, But.]
/
[Chapter Eleven: You’re Not Taking the Pulse of the Public.]
.
Chapter Twelve: The Next Thing You Know You’re LBJ.
“OK. I am so hanging up now.”
“Oh, you are, are you?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, then.”
“Just ride careful, will you?”
“Ruff-ruff, Daphne.”
“…You’re so weird.”
“Yeah, well, you too, Summers.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“What’s what supposed to mean?”
“That. ‘You too, Summers.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I take what I can get from you. Far as it goes.”
“What does that… Whatever. You can get a lot from me, Spike; we’ve been over this.”
“I know I can. That’s why I take it.”
“What is it you want me to say? Do you want me to say I love you at the end of every conversation, is that it? Like we’re that couple doomed for failure in a romcom?”
“Well, it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Fine, then; I love you. Love love love.”
“Love you, too.”
“There, now we’ve both been sarcastic at each other. Feel better?”
“Yeah, actually. I don’t have a problem with sarcastic affection.”
“… I still think you’re freaking weird.”
“As long as you’re thinking of me.”
By the time Kate showed up, Buffy was seriously running low on small talk.
To start with, it hadn’t been so bad. The stealth in her conversation with Spike had been provoked all the way out of her, so, when she’d handed the cell phone back for the second time, Cordelia had looked at her with one raised eyebrow and asked what was going on. It had left Buffy defensive, which was never overly pleasant, but the general explanation of her and Spike had at least given them something to talk about. Apparently Cordelia had seen it coming a little bit, anyway, after she saw Spike and got ranted at by Dawn after she'd come to Buffy’s funeral, so that was another thing.
And it was touching; Buffy was touched. She made a mental note to make whatever trip was necessary to come and see Cordelia-call-me-Cordy one final time if the worst happened. Funerals were important, after all; it was important to accept death, allow people to move on from life when they were gone. Maybe she had been brought back and found her place back in the circle of life again, whatever it was they sung about in The Lion King, but Buffy was fully convinced it was important to let go.
A mutual appreciation of funerary rites of passage, however, was not enough to carry a conversation very far, so soon they just had nothing.
“Do you think Kate’s gonna be much longer?” Cordelia asked, apparently on the same wavelength – and less embarrassed about showing it.
That was a relief. “We kind of guessed what time my meeting would finish,” Buffy said, looking up and down the street with more obvious impatience, “but that was around now, so she shouldn’t be.”
“I still can’t believe she’s working in Sunnydale,” Cordy mused, like there was so little possible conversation left that they needed to go over old ground. Slightly distracting, gossipy ground. “And tracking demons… She always hated the supernatural world. I mean,” she qualified, explaining with a sidelong glance Buffy’s way. “Vampires killed her dad,” she said. It was a hesitant admission, like it wasn’t her story to tell – which it wasn’t, obviously. Buffy felt bad for appreciating the intel all the same. “She never trusted Angel after that – or any of us, really. I’m, uh…” Buying herself some time, Cordy cleared her throat before she finished, “I’m kinda surprised she trusts you.”
Well, huh. That was definitely something to think about. The suggestion came to Buffy as something of a surprise, because, after all, it was Kate who had come to her for help in the first place, but then, she supposed, there was no reason why that couldn’t have been necessity, rather than trust. She’d been looking to solve the case of Katrina’s murder and Buffy had been the one who’d reported the crime: there wasn’t any reason to think Kate had known she was the Slayer before she’d looked her up and tracked her down. “Huh,” she repeated out loud, wondering why she never gave much thought to these things before they became a problem. “To be honest, I don’t even know if she does.”
But that didn’t fit, did it? Not with everything that had been happening, not with Kate offering her a job? Looking out into the street at the cars rushing past, keeping an eye out for one red Hyundai sedan, Buffy wondered whether it even mattered. She only needed to work with Kate, after all, and she trusted her enough not to compromise any mission that they had.
It was always nice to be trusted, Buffy thought with a pang, thinking about Spike – but it wasn’t always necessary, not really.
When the detective herself finally showed up, however, coming on foot around the corner – presumably with her car parked elsewhere – Buffy definitely had some questions all the same.
“Hey,” Kate greeted as she walked up the sidewalk. Riley and Sam weren’t with her, but Buffy assumed that just meant they’d done the expected and jet-setted off somewhere glamorous again. “Why’re you waiting out here?” Also doing a double-take on Cordelia’s hair, then, her expression dropped from an easy-going smile to a tense almost-frown. “Oh,” she said, coming to a halt. “Hi.”
“Hey,” Cordy replied, looking equally awkward.
“So, uh,” Buffy mediated, throwing the question Kate’s way as a hint, “you guys know each other?” She tried not to get any accusation into her voice, because she liked Kate, didn’t she? She’d given her a job, which was what she really needed, and she’d fixed the Warren problem, even though Buffy was really, really not grateful he was dead.
Also, from the gloomy look of acceptance on Kate’s face, it really seemed like she needed a friend. “Yeah,” she said. “I probably should’ve mentioned that – but,” she defended, meeting Buffy’s eyes with that beguilingly clear blue. “I figured that was the last thing you needed to worry about, after Tara caught me up on where you were going. It didn’t seem like the time.”
Oh, Buffy thought. Well… That was nice, wasn’t it? Kind of thoughtful, really. It didn’t matter so much what had happened in the past, anyway, because they had a whole new can of worms to deal with now. From the non-committal look on Cordelia’s face, it didn’t seem like this was going to be a problem. “I guess it’s a small world, huh?” she went for, with a hesitant sort of humour, willing to let it go and move on.
But then: “It’s funny,” Kate agreed, smiling in the night time like she didn’t want to cause any trouble. “And, you know,” she offered, as if it was part of the same joke, “I think we might have even met once, way back when.”
Thoughts diverted, Buffy blinked. Really? she wondered. There were only a couple of times that could have been, unless Kate had been around that summer she’d tried to forget about, when she’d been Anne; or maybe when she was fourteen and there’d been that time at Bullock’s…
“Were you ever down here after a fugitive?” Kate interrupted her thoughts. “Teenage girl, wanted for murder?” She paused then, frowning as her joke went a little sour. Buffy knew exactly what she was feeling, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “I guess,” she began, looking at Buffy like she’d just realised they probably would have known each other a lot better than she’d thought. “She was strong, wasn’t she? Must’ve been…”
“A slayer,” Buffy filled in, the memories coming back with a dull thud in her mind. Oh yeah, that hadn’t been a normal case. “Faith.” She remembered that time in LA, the red-hot need for revenge she’d been filled with and then Angel… Eyes closed as it all came back, she could remember Kate, couldn’t she? Yeah, she realised: she remembered the blonde detective-bitch (as her mind had labelled her), the woman who’d been getting in the way of everything, who’d been about to ruin it all.
Startled, she shook her head, trying to clear it from that old rush of thoughts. Where was this coming from? Those impressions didn’t fit with the Kate she knew now, did they? The Kate back then had probably only been trying to get things done, but she’d been different, anyway, harder. Even if –
“Hang on,” Buffy said, pausing. There was definitely some accusation in her voice now. It was pretty much intentional. “Didn’t you try to kill Angel? Lock him up in a sunny cell?”
Cordelia coughed in surprise, but Buffy wasn’t distracted, met Kate’s eyes dead on as she looked back. As always, it was possible to recognise the steel of someone who’d shaken hands with death, only to walk away from it – but, this time, it didn’t make Buffy feel quite so reassured. “If a vamp had been playing you as much as he was me,” the cop said, lightly derisive, certainly not even ashamed. “You would’ve done the same.”
Now Buffy found herself thinking back to what the other woman had said in the sewer, about Warren. About necessity. About pulling the trigger on people when the time was right and you had to. It was a little bit frightening. In part of her brain, the ultra-deadly, cynical slayer part, she could see the logic of how Kate had thought back then: Faith had been dangerous in her eyes, a superstrong murderer out on the loose, and Angel had been looking after her. That had probably made him responsible, as far as Kate was concerned.
But Buffy – she could never have done what Kate had been going to do, could she? She didn’t like to think she’d be able to. Even with Faith and Angel, neither of whom she’d ever been able to think rationally about, make decisions about based on morals abstracted from feelings – neither of them had deserved to die whatever, right? That was what she believed? She valued life too highly. How else could it be worth it to do what she did – to die to save the world and all the crappy people in it?
She’d been wrong to want to kill Faith, Buffy knew. Hell, she hadn’t even been able to go through with it, at least when the bullets had started flying and it would have been possible to see Faith die. With Warren…
She wouldn’t have been able to go through with that, either, would she? That was why she felt kind of guilty that Kate had done in her defence, because, so she realised as she looked up, fresh eyes taking in Kate’s expression, she wouldn’t have been able to do the same.
“Hey,” Cordelia interrupted then, breaking the silence as it hung a few seconds too long. She looked bored. “Can we concentrate on what’s important here?” Apparently past attempts to kill Angel didn’t count; maybe she was too used to them? “We have one burnt-out hotel, no way of getting in contact with the guys and, I don’t know about you, but I am freezing my ass off. Let’s get this show on the road!”
“Huh?” Kate replied, her eyes then very quickly becoming comically wide as she looked in the direction of the hotel. In profile, she seemed as approachable as always. Buffy wasn’t sure what that meant.
Nonetheless, it didn’t really matter, did it? For god’s sake, get over it, Buffy told herself, well aware that this stuff wasn’t what they needed to worry about right now. No one was dying today, right?
On the general agreement that they were hungry, that they were going to be waiting for Spike at some point anyway, and because Cordelia really wanted a sweater before they spent the rest of the evening outside, the three of them headed back to chez Cordy as their first port of call. Food was had, complete with one ghost and one otherworldly boyfriend.
Said boyfriend seemed nice, if a little slow when it came to pop-culture references – including those Buffy had a feeling even Giles would have been able to understand. To be honest, most standard reference-references were a stretch as well, which got old fairly quickly. Buffy had a feeling it had moved on from old to absolutely ancient for Cordelia post-vacation, not least because she asked him to stay behind and guard the apartment when they’d all finished.
It did sort of make sense to have someone there in case the phone rang, Buffy supposed. But then…
“Are you sure you do not need my protection, princess?” he asked as they mounted up to leave. Yeah, Buffy decided. The made-for-TV-movie dialogue was seriously annoying. “If you encounter enemies before you find Angel…”
Maybe it was chivalry, but the look of it on his face made Buffy bristle. Ready by her side, Kate was already bristling. Cordelia looked at them both and apologised with a strained smile. “I’ll be fine, Groo,” she said, encouraging him to leave them alone. “Don’t worry. Buffy and Kate are – champions, really. Kate is, uh… She keeps order, like a sheriff. And Buffy – she slays wild beasts, like, all the time.” She ended a little desperately, “Drokken beasts included, even.”
“Truthfully?” Groo addressed Buffy then – and she had to admit he was very cute when he turned her way and she could see him face on. With the arms and the admiration and everything, he was definitely good-looking. In a disconcertingly Angel-like way. “I have never met a female drokken-lugg; we must hunt together, when this current peril has been resolved.”
And he was right back to being awkward. Buffy smiled as noncommittally as she could, certain that, whatever a drokken beast was, there was a long list of people she would ask to be her hunting partner before him.
“OK!” Cordelia declared, grabbing her jacket and opening the door. “Time to go. Keep safe, honey,” she called back over her shoulder as they left. Buffy let Kate lead the way out, forcing herself to act normally.
As they got into her car, Kate apparently couldn’t resist mentioning, “You know sheriffs do completely different things from what I do, right?” She was looking at Cordelia in the rear view mirror; Buffy got on with fastening her seatbelt in the passenger seat. Although, she did find the pedantry a little endearing. “Some duties overlap, but they’re different roles.”
“Yeah…” Cordy didn’t really agree as they pulled out of the complex’s parking lot. Apparently she was quite happy to treat Kate like something of an old, if distant, friend. “But, see, I’ve been explaining telephone lines by making comparisons with carrier pigeons, so I don’t think that was too bad.”
“What is a drokken beast, anyway?” Buffy asked, buckled in and keen to prove she could be part of a friendly group. Because she could, couldn't she? “Or whatever it was Groo kept talking about over dinner,” she finished, a little less than charitable. Not that she had been bored by Cordelia’s boyfriend. “I mean…”
“It’s just a demon, I guess,” Cordelia answered anyway as Buffy turned around in her seat. She didn’t seem to be taking it too badly. “Kinda nasty,” she added. “Killing one gives you major bragging points in Pylea – Groo’s home dimension. I figure they’re kind of like dragons.” She paused, shook herself. “And I have got to stop making analogies…”
“OK, so where am I going?” Kate asked as they apparently joined the freeway back into the centre of the city. The road was a hell of a lot more empty than on the way out.
Now analogy-free, Cordelia got into the road trip spirit and directed them. “Uh… Let’s try Gunn’s apartment first,” she said, leaning forward between the front seats. “He’s not gonna be home, probably, but we can ask his neighbours if they’ve seen him or something. Then we can head to Wes’s place.”
And so they headed to Gunn’s apartment in its fairly unpleasant-looking neighbourhood. Not that Buffy could judge, of course; she had a feeling this was the sort of place she’d be living if she was in the city rather than in the house price black hole that was the town of Sunnydale. Kate definitely had her cop face on as they pulled over to the curb; Buffy made sure she still had her stake in her sock and the one inside her jacket. (Are you really so different from her? a voice muttered darkly in her mind.)
“I guess we try the buzzer, huh?” Buffy asked to fill the silence as they climbed out of the car.
“Yup,” Cordelia confirmed, not sounding very optimistic about it. Also letting the silence return.
The buzzer panel for the building had spaces for names next to the buttons, with various pieces of white, yellowed and, oddly, pink pieces of paper tucked behind little Perspex panels. In most cases, including Gunn’s from what Buffy could tell, the writing had faded beyond recognition if it had ever been legible at all, and, in the others, either the paper or the Perspex panel was missing entirely.
“Man,” Kate commented as Cordelia unerringly pressed a button next to its own slip of curled paper, ink long gone in the Los Angeles sunshine. “Angel really needs to pay you guys a bigger salary.”
“Ha,” was all Cordelia responded with, as they waited for a complete lack of answer. “The agency would need to earn some money first… And Angel doesn’t pay us, anyway,” she added with a glance over her shoulder. “When he came back after his whole mid-unlife crisis we made Wes be the boss. We have payroll software and everything.”
Unlife crisis? Buffy wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She didn’t really want to know anything anymore. “There’s no one home,” she observed, hoping to change the topic. From the look on Kate’s face, it was good idea. “Time for Plan B.”
Tilting her newly blonde head, Cordy waited a couple more seconds for Gunn not to answer, before she agreed, “Fine.” Instead of turning around then, however, she fearlessly jabbed the next buzzer down. “Here goes nothing.”
“What are you…?” Buffy began –
– but apparently the owner of 14E was waiting for a call, because they answered almost straight away. “Yeah?” the fuzzy voice came through the speaker, accompanied by the whine of old components.
“Hi,” said Cordelia, her ingratiating smile oozing from her voice. “I work with Charles Gunn, in 14F? He hasn’t been around and he’s not answering his buzzer; have you seen him?”
“I ain’t seen nothing,” the voice very quickly replied, sounding like they were about to get off the line as quickly as possible.
Cordelia was a moment quicker. “He’s not in any trouble. I mean, not that I know of. He’s my friend – I’m really worried about him.” And in an instant she sounded choked up; Buffy vaguely remembered that she’d gone to LA to be an actress, back in ’99. Maybe she was better at it than they’d all thought. “Please – if there’s anything you know, I’d appreciate it.”
The whirr coming from the speaker was the only indication 14E was still on the line. A few seconds more, however, and then they spoke, “All I know is he came home last week like hell was on his heels, packed a bag and was outta here. He’s gone. I don’t know no more.”
Buffy slumped as she took it in. Sighing, Cordy tried to say, “Thanks,” but the line was already dead.
“Well,” Kate summarised with the sarcasm Buffy really did find amusing. “I’m only a detective, but that seems suspicious to me.”
Yeah, she couldn’t even keep from snorting in agreement. “I guess we go to Wesley’s?” she suggested. It only brought silence as a response, but Buffy knew what the others were thinking. There wasn't really any point - if the gang was together, then Wesley's apartment would be just as empty as Gunn's. All the same, Buffy refused to worry about what they were going to do; she filled the silence. “If Gunn came home to get his stuff,” she added, trying to provoke the other two, “at least we know they went somewhere, got safe?”
“Yeah,” Cordelia at least replied, even if it was in a downbeat tone. Her frown as they walked away from the apartment building said it all. “Somewhere, in a city of four million people. This is gonna go well.”
Kate said nothing.
“Come on,” Buffy encouraged as they got back into the car, trying not to feel desperate. “You’re an investigator. Kate’s a detective. I’m a – me. It can’t be so hard.” In the gloomy silence, a mildly Spike-like thought crossed her mind, which she meant to dismiss but in the end decided to go with. If only because it cheered her up. “And, hey,” she finished, “if it all goes wrong we can always send up the bat signal… Don’t you guys have that lobster thing on your card?”
The clock in Kate’s car was still saying two twenty-three, but by the time they reached Wesley’s apartment, in a significantly nicer part of town, Buffy was sure it had to be about time for Spike to start showing up. The roads were emptier at this time of night, at least coming into the city, and they were right in the lull between workers travelling home from their nine-to-fives and shift workers clocking off at the end of the night. It was a nice time, this part of the evening; there weren’t too many vamps around, so you could enjoy it, take a walk. In summer it was when you could really feel the heat of the day easing off.
It wasn’t summer right now, so really what you felt was the harsher edge of the breeze setting in for the real cold around two AM, but they didn’t have to worry about that yet. Buffy wasn’t going to worry.
She wasn’t even going to worry about the fact that Spike wasn’t there at Wesley’s apartment, no matter that it was time for him to be. Maybe she couldn’t keep her heart from sinking, but there was no reason to be afraid.
In her mind, as they’d come around the corner, she’d seen him waiting for them on the sidewalk. His motorcycle had been cluttering up the path with its oily, stinky ways, but he’d been leaning against it, smoking, one eyebrow cocked as he asked her, non-verbally, what had taken her so long. Getting out of the car, she would have been able to tell him ‘nothing’, and he’d have spirited her away from the slow drag onwards of the night, convinced her it was all a misunderstanding. And she would have been feeling fine.
As it was, they pulled over to empty, shadowy darkness, headlights revealing nothing but asphalt and paving stone. “Well, it doesn’t look like Spike’s here yet,” Kate said, stating the obvious. Buffy’s shoulder was aching. “You sure he’s coming?”
“You can count on it,” Buffy replied, even as the first twinges of despair began to creep into her thoughts. She was sure about this part, after all; Spike would be there. “But he said he might look around the hotel first,” she explained, wishing for a moment that she lived in a world where they all had cell phones. Then she could send him a text message, use all that txtspk and stuff, like the smiley faces, find out where he was. “That’s probably where he is now.” She finished by repeating, “I’m sure he’ll be here soon.” It bore repeating.
“What are we going to do until he gets here?” Cordy asked from the backseat, sounding like she was pretty despondent as well. “Wait in the car?”
Shrugging, Buffy didn’t have much of a plan. “We could ring on Wesley’s buzzer just in case?” she suggested, not seeing anything else outside that they could do. There was always the radio, but who knew what stations Kate was tuned into. Even with everything else, she gave off the (separately) worrying impression that she listened to mom music.
Kate herself was staring out of the windscreen, looking into the night as a sigh passed her lips. She had a slightly distant look on her face and Buffy wondered if she was remembering too many long nights back when she was a cop around here. It couldn’t have been that fun, in the end.
All in all, Buffy decided, trying to remember how not to give up, it was probably best if they kept moving. “Let’s try Wes,” she re-confirmed, undoing her seatbelt and moving to get out of the car. It spurred the others into action.
Whatever ‘burb (‘hood?) this was, it was pretty quiet, with no other cars on the road. The buzzers for the building were sheltered from the street by a brick porch, which had a light in it, yellow and bright over their heads. The panel itself was new-looking, in steel or aluminium or something else grey and shiny; Wyndham-Price was written in enviable fountain pen cursive on a non-curled piece of card, behind glass. Kate said what Buffy was thinking, “I think Wesley’s keeping too much money for himself.”
“Yeah, well,” Cordelia retorted, though not as if her heart was in it. “We didn’t actually get inside Gunn’s place. It might be nice.”
“Really?” Sure, Buffy could understand the idea of having cheap place with nice furniture – to be honest, that was kind of what she would prefer for her and Dawn – but Gunn’s area had not been a great place to be living. “Are you sure he doesn’t have debts instead?” she suggested, trying to think why he would be there. “It looked like a debtsy place to me.”
Cordelia, apparently their official button pusher, was already pushing the Wyndham-Price button by this point, but she kept talking anyway, clearly expecting as little as the others were. “I guess that could be it… But what debts is he gonna have? He was living at no permanent address or whatever before he started working with us. Now he’s, you know, solvent.”
“Uh, I don’t know, Cordy,” Buffy replied, feeling the slightest flare of the irritation she thought she’d left behind in high school. Dammit, but she was getting tired. “Life stuff debts? Hospital bills? Transportation?” The stuff you end up with if you don’t live in a swanky apartment rent controlled by a ghost who happens to adore you.
“Gee, I’m sorry,” came the unapologetic reply as Cordelia rolled her eyes. Maybe she was tired too. “I forget we added financial difficulty to the list of things you know best on.”
As Buffy was working a reply to that completely uncalled-for remark, however, there came a voice from the speaker on the buzzer panel. “Cordelia?” it asked, quiet and a little nervous-sounding. “Is that you?”
All three of them paused, turning to stare at the source of Wesley’s voice. Now that was unexpected.
“Wes?” Cordelia asked, raising her voice slightly for the microphone or whatever she was speaking into. She sounded perkier immediately, hope returning. “Are you – oh my god, Wes; I didn’t think we’d find you. Is everyone else there? I’m here with Buffy and Kate Lockley – you remember her, right? Is Angel OK? Connor? We saw what happened to the hotel…”
Maybe it was because she’d seen how much of a mess Wesley had been the last time she was in LA, but there was a sinking feeling in Buffy’s stomach as Cordelia trailed off to a very empty silence. Eventually Wesley spoke again, but it only confirmed what Buffy had feared. “The others aren’t here,” he said with short and brittle words.
Cordelia looked shocked. Kate looked at Buffy, seeming to assess her lack of surprise, which Buffy was sure showed on her face. He sounded like he had the last time she’d been in LA: overwhelmed by stress. Some of the stuff had been sorted out, she knew, with the prophecy and the chatty burger, enough that he’d celebrated his relief with them – but she also knew you couldn’t fix everything in a day, and it seemed inevitable now, depressingly inevitable, that Wesley had not. Just great. “Wes,” she asked soberly, “can we come in?” She wanted to tell him that they were going to fix things, but then, honestly, she wasn’t sure if they’d be able to. Some things were doomed to fall apart, weren’t they? “Spike’s on his way,” she went for instead, not that she had any reason to believe that knowing that would cheer Wesley up. It was mostly a reminder for herself. “I said we’d meet him here.”
For a moment Wesley didn’t reply. The quirk of Kate’s eyebrows made Buffy think she might have blown it, but then he was muttering, “Of course you did,” and the door started making a wonderfully annoying buzz.
Even in her shock, Cordelia immediately seized the handle and opened the door. “Thanks, Wes,” she said as they went inside, sounding more subdued. It looked like she really had been away for a long time.
The trip up the elevator was easy, pretty comfortable really. It wasn’t actually so luxurious inside the apartment building as the exterior promised – the paintwork in the lobby was a little old and there was dust in the corners of the car – but then Buffy couldn’t be certain whether she was only noticing because of the spotless Wolfram and Hart experience she’d had earlier in the day.
Wesley was waiting by his door when they came down the landing, but he mostly looked like a stain on the wallpaper. Dressed in grey, and definitely not a nice grey, he needed a shave just as much as he’d needed one two weeks ago, perhaps moreso, and his eyes behind his glasses were punctuated by dark circles and lines.
“Wes!” Cordy cried out, rushing to meet him. “Are you OK? What’s going on? You look terrible.”
More cautiously, Buffy approached with Kate not far from her side. “Are you all right, Wesley?” she asked herself, unnecessarily.
“Oh yes,” Wesley replied darkly, opening his door again behind him. “Angel and I had a minor disagreement, that’s all.” Even without her on-going training in British irony, Buffy had a feeling she’d have been able to catch the sarcasm there. It didn’t bode well. Though he still had the courtesy to add, “Hello Kate,” as they followed him through the door.
When they were inside the apartment, however, it became quite obvious what the disagreement had been about – and Buffy’s first thoughts were that Angel had almost certainly been in the right.
Cordelia’s mouth was open in shock. Buffy spoke for her. “What the hell is he doing here?”
Wesley didn’t stop moving, but continued to the dining table, picking up empty plates and taking them to the sink. “Now, Buffy, there’s no need for that,” he said. “He’s really not having a very good time of it at the moment.”
There was nothing Buffy could do but stare. There in Wesley’s apartment, politely stood up from the dining table and looking almost as haggard as his host, more haggard than he’d seemed earlier, was Captain Daniel Holtz.
.
[Chapter Thirteen: Handing the Keys over to Nixon.]