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If she hadn’t been so focused on her friends’ peril below her, she might’ve missed the dim reflection in the window, so faint that she needs to turn all her attention on it to see what’s happening. A woman behind them, appearing as if from nowhere, disabling the guards so silently that none of the men even turn to see her. She casts a blue reflection brought on by her mass of Smurf-tastic hair, and Buffy’s never been so glad to see someone she dislikes (on principle) before.

Orkanel’s attention moves from Buffy to the arena. “And he keeps fighting,” the former warlock murmurs. “Impressive. Does the survival instinct leave when the soul enters?”

“Like you’d know,” Buffy mutters, twisting her neck to face her captor. As she’d hoped, he blinks down at her, the window- and the movements he might have seen in it- forgotten. “Aren’t you supposed to be about preserving life? There must be something in the Wicca handbook about murdering people you don’t like. Big no-no, I’ve heard.”

The distraction works, and Orkanel’s eyes are back on her. “My interests lie in the true scheme of things. I care little about individuals, particularly those so entrenched in your atrocities,” he says stiffly, shifting her chair so she can face him properly. Behind him, Illyria holds out a palm, reopening the dark portal that Buffy had seen her create before. “To destroy a band of abominations and the ones who would protect them is hardly more than a necessity to safeguard the balance. I do what needs to be done.”

“Right.” Angel emerges from the portal, glancing at her worriedly, and she nods, eyes still on Orkanel. “So do I.” Buffy pulls forward in a quick movement, propelling herself upward just long enough to smash her forehead against Orkanel’s skull with the force needed to sprawl him to the floor. The whiplash jerks her back against the window, stunning her momentarily, and when she blinks again, Angel is bent over her, untying her shackles with busy concern. 

“Thanks.” He releases the final chain around her legs and she stands, faltering a bit until he catches her in a steadying embrace. “How’d you get here?”

Angel squeezes her once in a quick hug before turning to the man unconscious on the floor. “The Mutari generator ran off magic. Since…everything, it’s been slowly feeding Illyria back her-“ She blinks at him. He shakes his head, bemused. “You didn’t call. I got worried.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for that.” Her smile is nothing if not hesitant, unused to emerging in his company. “When did-“

She stops. Illyria is reopening the portal, and there’s a girl coming through, with a frame slighter than Faith’s, if just by a little, and the shadows of other girls behind her, crossbows at the ready. And Buffy’s utterly dumbfounded.

“What?” Kennedy demands, scowling extra hard, and failing to hide a smirk. “You’re the one who told us to call him.”

And then there are nearly a dozen slayers swarming out to join her, Satsu and Rowena and others she recognizes from the old days, all armed and wary and ready to back up the vampire they’ve reviled to save the slayers who need it. And Buffy can only stare in wonder at the trust they’ve shown in her words, enough to climb through a portal to nowhere and wage war on the say-so of their most hated nemesis. After all she’s done, after all they’ve seen of her…

“How do we get down there?” Kennedy asks, her eyes focused on the arena where Xander’s trying to fight off a lamiabane that lumbers after Willow. 

“Door on the side, down the stairs, through the hallway,” Buffy tells her, eyeing a fallen gun beside one of the guards. 

Angel glances at them both, dismissive. “Go. I’ll take care of him.” Orkanel lets out a low moan, stirring restlessly.

It might be easier to let Angel do whatever he’s going to do, to run downstairs now to retrieve Spike and the others and never think of the man whom she’s left in the clutches of an angry vampire. It’d be simpler, to say the least, and she can see in Angel’s expression just how uncomplicated the decision is for him.

But that’s not what she does. “You go down. I’m going to help Angel.”

Kennedy looks from the vampire to the slayer, and there’s more in her narrowed gaze than Buffy can measure- respect, doubt, pity, revulsion. But she nods reluctantly. “Okay. Let’s go!” The girls tear off out of the room, leaving only Angel and Buffy and five unconscious captors, and a blue goddess crouched over the lamiabane in the corner with vague interest.

Satsu is the last to leave, inspecting something on the desk beside them; and when Buffy turns to inquire about it, there’s a smile on Satsu’s face that the younger slayer hasn’t shown her in over a year. “Hang on to this,” Satsu offers, tossing something red and curved and shiny in her direction.

Buffy catches the scythe, and it’s all back again, searing into her veins with potency and certainty that she barely recognizes anymore. There’s strength and fortitude and the power of the thousands who came before and the thousands that follow, the knowledge of rightness and the crippling responsibility that can’t allow her to obey said knowledge blindly.

It’s what had made her a leader of legions, what granted thousands of girls a choice even as it stripped them of others, a blessing and a curse and a weapon and a symbol all at once.

It’s not what she was made for, and she’s learned that lesson too well to forget it now.

“Satsu!” The girl turns, her hand on the doorknob. “Take it. Go kill some demons.” And Buffy tosses her the scythe and turns to the window where Spike is still fighting a losing battle, the smile on her face her only response to the other girl’s bewilderment.

Below, Kennedy bursts into the arena, firing a gun that she must have snatched from one of the guards and chasing the lamiabane that had been terrorizing Willow. Spike looks up, startled, and leaps back into the frenzy with a shout of bloodlust that makes Buffy grin.

“He’ll be fine,” Angel says, and there’s no anger in his voice, just quiet relief and maybe a hint of resentment that saddens her even as she understands implicitly. “We have work to do.” And he grabs Orkanel by the throat and shoves him into the wall, his restraints clattering in protest but no match against an angry vampire. “Call off your demons!” Angel orders.

Orkanel manages a smirk. “Impossible.”

Angel vamps out. “Make. It. Possible.” His fingers tighten around the man’s throat, and Buffy can see it purpling before she yanks at the vampire’s arm.

“Stop it! Angel, no!”

The vampire growls. “He’s trying to murder your people! He’s nearly murdered Faith already!”

“I know! You think I don’t know that?” She glares at the man, held in midair and staring down at her, hate and venom in his eyes. “But I don’t kill. Not like him. I don’t.”

“You won’t have to,” Angel rumbles through his game face, his visage cold and furious and frustrating weeks spent watching Faith’s descent toward death clear in his gaze. 

“I don’t,” she repeats, and there’s steel in her voice. She can’t afford indecision or ambiguous choices, not with this. She can’t become a monster, even if both the men who stand before her have already resigned themselves to such. And Spike would scoff, she knows, but at the same time, this has always been one of the reasons why he’s lov- respected- her, and it’s that respect that has defined so many of her decisions lately. She has friends- family- who trust her to do the right thing. And there’s no second option here.

It’s miraculous, really, the way that Angel listens even through his rage, the way he lowers the man reluctantly to the ground and his game face melts away. “You killed me,” he mutters, and there’s a pout in his voice that’s oddly reminiscent of the last time they’d met in Sunnydale.

She ignores it, but nudges him affectionately and turns back to the smug-looking Wiccan. “Call off the lamiabane, or I might change my mind.”

Orkanel scowls. “I don’t control them. I set them free where slayer activity is strong. If you want them dead, you’ll have to find them all and kill them one by one.” The skepticism in his voice is a clear indicator of how low he considers the odds of thathappening, and Buffy doesn’t object when Angel slams him against the wall again.

“You must have deployment plans,” Angel points out through gritted teeth. “Routes, drop-off points…”

“No records,” Orkanel spits out, but both his captors see the way his eyes shift to the desk for an instant before he speaks. 

Buffy moves to it, skimming through folders and documents and listening to Angel’s low threats with half an ear. “The antidote?” she calls out, frowning at a particularly scientific-looking sheet.

Orkanel doesn’t speak for a long time, not until there’s a sickening crack and Angel’s holding his limp hand and bending another finger back. “Yes! Damn you, that’s what you need!”

“Angel!” And she’s horrified but not nearly as surprised at she might have been a few years ago, not at the darkness on the face of the vampire she once loved more than anything or the naked terror on the face of his victim. “Angel, we can’t-“

“You won’t have to,” Angel repeats, but he drops the man back to the ground, swiping the side of his neck once to draw blood before he turns away. “We’ll need to develop this antidote,” he says abruptly, striding over to where Buffy is pulling open drawers in the desk. “I can work with the doctors in London to-“ He stops, his stare fixed on Buffy.

She raises the box she’s just found, within which fifteen needles are arranged, each full of the clear liquid that Orkanel had injected into her. “You might want to start with these,” she says shakily, handing them over to him. 

“Yeah,” Angel echoes, and he only casts one last glance at Orkanel before turning to the last conscious individual in the room. “Illyria?”

The god looks up from her new acquisition. “This beast is fierce and worthy,” she announces. “I will keep it as a pet.”

“Step up from your last pet,” Angel mumbles, ignoring Buffy’s curious look. “I need you to take me back to Faith.”

Illyria cocks her head. “As you wish. I will return for the beast and the warriors.” She throws out her hand again, reopening the portal and vanishing through it with Angel before Buffy can object.

And then Buffy’s alone in the room with Orkanel, unarmed and defenseless as the now-unrestrained lamiabane turns its attention to the rest of the people present. Buffy tenses, fists at the ready and the fear not nearly as strong now that Angel is in possession of the antidote. 

But the lamiabane doesn’t charge for the slayer first, not when it’s easily distracted by the scent of blood emanating from its master’s neck, the blood that Angel must have- no, he couldn’t, but she can’t force herself to believe it- drawn with this in mind. And Buffy can’t stop it in time when it charges for Orkanel and bites into his fragile, human skin, too quick for even the slayer to pull it away.

She jumps onto it anyway, beating at it with the automatic need to protect that comes built-in even with the bad guys, but by the time it turns around to snarl at her, Orkanel is gone, fallen in the place where he’d sought to destroy her family instead.

She closes her eyes and moves to the door.

She isn’t a killer. But she won’t mourn this time.

--

Downstairs, the lamiabane are mostly subdued, their attacks rendered harmless against that many armed defenders. Dawn and Xander are both injured, but only slightly, and Buffy is automatically apologetic to see that three of the slayers also sport nasty-looking lamiabane bites. “We’ve got an antidote,” she assures Kennedy, who’s staring at her gnawed arm with morbid fascination. “Angel’s going to develop more.”

In front of them, Satsu slices open a lamiabane with the scythe, her elegant grace stopping the few remaining demons before they can move any closer to the other girls. “We’ll need to find all the slayers who’ve been hurt,” Kennedy says, her eyes on the last slayer still fighting. “And the other demons need to be destroyed before they can bite anyone else. Andrew has a pretty good system, though. He’s the one who helped us collect all the lost slayers after last year.”

“I’m glad.” And she is, glad that Kennedy is so capable now, that the slayers are moving on with leadership that isn’t going to break them, that the hostility she’d come to accept as a given is finally gone. “Illyria’s coming back, I think. You can look through all of Orkanel’s documents while you’re waiting for her, see where he sent out all the demons. I don’t think they travel far from where they’re dropped.”

“Yeah.” And Kennedy gives her a grudging nod, one that isn’t quite acceptance but is far from resentment. “Thanks. For getting us here.”

It’s easier than it’s ever been to smile at the slayer she’d never gotten along with. “Thanks. For getting us out.”

“Yeah.” Satsu strikes down the last demon, and Kennedy barks out an order to regroup upstairs.

Buffy catches up to her before she leaves through the open arena door. “Listen. Um…there might be…the demon…” She doesn’t know how to explain Orkanel’s death. There’s justification, of course, but she’s never been one to fall to easy answers when a human is dead on her watch. No matter how much the human might have deserved it.

“I got it.” Kennedy looks perturbed for a moment before she nods slowly. “We’ll look out for those guards. They might not have weapons, but they’re still pretty nasty looking even without their boss.” She wrinkles her brow. “Do you guys have a way out?”

“The code still works,” Willow speaks up from where she’s standing by the elevator, the doors open again and the light above it blinking. She smiles tentatively at them both. “We’ll meet you at Angel and Faith’s?”

Kennedy nods at her ex, and there’s a meaningful silence that has Buffy feeling out of place, suddenly. “See you.” She steps through the arena door, last among the slayers to leave.

Willow’s smile vanishes immediately. “Buffy, I’m so-“

“Don’t.” And it’s so simple to hug her once-best friend, to assure her that they were all duped and it isn’t her fault- because it isn’t- to say all the things to Willow that Willow had said to her a year before, back before things had soured. And things aren't okay yet, because maybe they never will be, but it's a start, one that they've both sorely needed. And after that, she moves to Xander and Dawn, checks them over carefully, ignores Dawn’s eyeroll and assurance that she’s fine, and helps them all to the open elevator.

And then, finally- finally!- she runs to the one she’s been worried about most, where he’s slumped against the wall and covered in blood that she’s relieved to discover is mostly not his. “Spike. You with me?” Heedless of the goo and gore, her hands are running over his body, scrutinizing him for injuries and meeting his eyes with sudden nervousness as she recalls their last exchange.

He blinks up at her uncertainly, and she can sense his indecision and a startling amount of fear. Is he afraid of her?

Of course he is, after all that’s come before, after words spoken and retracted and hidden out of insecurity last time, and here they are again, her admission hanging between them. 

She takes his face in her hands, unperturbed by the sticky mess that it’s become, and kisses him softly and poignantly. “I love you,” she reaffirms, pulling away to help him stand, turning away from him when he doesn’t speak in return. What she wants…can it really be that far away, when she feels so connected to him? But his silence seems a cool indication, a simple rejection that staggers her even now.

There’s a muffled sigh from beside her. “Bugger this,” Spike decides, twisting her around and yanking her back to his lips, tangling against her with all the fierceness that she’s remembered of him for years now, and for a moment, everything is forgotten but his mouth against hers, his acceptance and affection and- dare she presume?- love overwhelming her in a sea of never-ending kisses that leave her no choice but to accept him gladly, in any form she can.