Work Text:
I'm the bad guy. Persona non grata.
There was a conference call. All of the central core, calling in. I should've begged off, called in sick. It had been a month from the mouth of hell. I bought a slayer off a tramp freighter about to take her and about 20 other girls to Bahrain, then found her somewhere to live after her family disowned her. I traveled hundreds of miles over unpaved roads. I had my passport stamped two dozen times, and crossed over borders nearly three dozen times. I had been humiliated by mistranslations in more languages than I knew existed. I had to be restrained from physically attacking three former Watchers, two Watchers' sons and one Watcher's daughter when explaining that the old ways were dead. I had drank Immodium like it was water and avoided water like it was poison to avoid needing more Immodium. I had switched planes in Paris, London and Riyadh because it's usually faster to do that than fly direct.
Then there was Ghana.
I was exhausted and distracted and not a little drunk from banana beer when I got the call.
First item of business was the alert about Angel. The big fight. The big chunk of LA that wasn't there anymore. Another thousand or so people on Angel's death toll, and Buffy and Will were all sad, arguing that maybe they should've done something. I kept myself quiet with the bottle, which might not have been smart.
Willow started with her nervous talk, sentences with repeated sounds that just never end. I forget the words, but the jist is this: since there's almost no Watchers left and those there are aren't trustable, she's been working on finding wizards and shamans to watch slayer babies and was suggesting it to the rest of us.
It was just after Ghana. I was drunk. I just couldn't turn it off.
I never poured it out at Will before. The words that came out of my mouth. The phrase "meat-puppet muscle for black-eyed spell-junkie sugar daddies" came out of my mouth.
This was not accepted with significant grace.
I didn't notice at first. I had heard enough, and it was the first chance I had to sleep in something other than a moving vehicle in weeks, so I hung up and slept. For nearly 18 hours. I was exhausted.
I woke up and the sat-phone just buzzed at me. I never finished checking the messages. The first three were enough. Giles, telling me how disappointed he was at me. Buffy, asking what the hell was wrong with me. Kennedy, with Willow bawling in the background.
I felt like l got caught in the tide and was getting pulled out to sea.
I left my gear in the safe house.
I'm hooked up with Save the Babies or something. I switch off on occasion, working with this group or that group. Mostly I lead work groups and such. Native, when possible. They call me Al. I call back to Ghana when I can. Afara's doing better. She can walk again, which is great.
It's a funny thing. What would Buffy do when the pressure from friends gets more than she could take? Cut and run, change my name. Maybe I'll get to the 'come back stronger' part of it someday.
It was a near thing. The wizard's magic was a magic of illusions and distortions, and he drew me into his turf.
Maria Elena's last three seconds on this earth were all firey death. That's bad, really bad, horribly bad, but hey, after the first second, the pain should've stopped because she had no nerve endings, and hey! No nerve endings, no pain.
They all died differently.
They all died the same.
Kennedy informed her parents, since she knows the language better.
Maria Elena and the mindbender in the Yucatan. Michelle and Jean-Claude the zombie master in Haiti. The dream-drinker and the twins in Honduras. Eight in all.
Warren and Rack in Sunnydale are one thing. Temporary insanity. Not remotely of the good, and it's kinda horrible to know there's a track from you through torture and killing to world destruction, but that's the worst of me. I made them. With Buffy's scythe, sure, but my magic. It's kinda like they're my children.
I've had to kill. Again. I've had to kill eight of my children. I've had to kill them because the people I chose to watch over them, people I talked to and found trustworthy, turned them into killers.
Worst. Mom. Ever.
Kennedy said "That was a hell of a thing" when I teleported us back, then locked herself in the bedroom.
I've tried to talk about it with Buffy, but she just sort of faded out after a while. Giles gives the war speech, saying that decisions have consequences and that as horrible as it may seem, people do die, and we should accept it and carry on.
I'm the villain of this story. I really am.