Successor (BTVS)

"You don't really know what you're capable of until they go after your family," Wilkins said sadly. He cheered up quickly though, "Gosh, I just think about what a wide-eyed kid I was a hundred years ago, we could've almost been friends, Buffy."

"But you were already planning to be a big demon snake, weren't you, right from the start. Somehow I think it might've stood between us." Buffy was back in her office again; she was probably dreaming in her office too, if her memory was any judge. Part of her wanted to force herself awake, but she'd probably need sleep for the battle to come. It was a good excuse; it's not like she could admit to herself she was curious what Wilkins had to say in here.

"Well, sure. But can you really say the people in power now are much better?" he asked, a grin on his face. "I kid, I kid, but really, this isn't a nice world. The darkness may have been forced back into the shadows with the departure of the Old Ones, but it's still the sort of place that they found hospitable to begin with."

"And so you decided better to bring all the bad things back into the light? Still not seeing it," Buffy said.

He shook his head, "You kids these days, you say sunlight disinfects. I really like that phrase, you know? After all, I told myself I wouldn't be bad. I'd use the power responsibly, and root out all the corruption and disease festering all over the place. Sure, some people would have to get eaten along the way, but my intentions weren't that bad, really."

Buffy raised an eyebrow, looking up from the desk with her chin on her hands. "You don't seem to have exactly left me a corruption-free legacy. I mean Bob Monroe?"

Wilkins shrugged. "Well, that's just what I was getting at. Do you think my Edna never got kidnapped? Forget the Hellmouth, it was the Wild West back then! And don't think I went easy on the people who did it." He laughed again, seeming genuinely amused. "You'd think that people would've learned eventually, but everyone thinks they're a special snowflake. So I kept getting more ruthless, and well, there you go."

"And that was it, huh? From a tortured idealist to corrupt powermonger in one easy step?" she asked.

"It's never just one step. But after you justify the first few, the rest are a lot easier. I can't say I regret it, but maybe I wish I could've seen a little bit further when I started," he replied. "You try to protect the people you love, and then when sometimes you can't, you start to hide them, and after too long, it's almost as if you never had any at all."

Buffy could see his face was wet, but she didn't say anything about it. "So are you saying that'll happen to me? I'll go all psycho-killer on the people responsible, and it'll lead me down some troubled path of dark power and dirty politics?

"Well, don't you want to?" he asked simply. "Kill them, I mean."

Buffy prevaricated, "Well, yeah. I mean, Shark Guy's just some demon, and Rack-"

"Rack, you can make an exception for, right?" he asked significantly. "After all, you can't treat magic users like ordinary mortals. We're more dangerous than most demons, really."

Buffy knew that was a slippery slope, but something about that logic was tempting. She decided to deflect from the subject. "You're not the only voice in my head talking about killing these days."

"You're talking about the vision you had? Did it trouble you?" he asked.

"I'm just not sure what it meant. I kind of thought I had these powers all figured out, but then they're all with the 'behind door number one'," she said.

Wilkins tilted his head, and gave her a naughty grin. "Sometimes you just have to read between the lines."

Buffy's eyes snapped open. She was ironically in more or less the same position she'd been in in the dream, with her arms down on the desk cushioning her head. Wilkins in her Slayer dreams twice in a row was a bad pattern, but she could worry about that after she saved her mom. It was already 11 AM; she'd spent too long sleeping. She reflected that all the times Wilkins was in this position might be why he had such nice bathrooms put in.

After getting herself quickly cleaned up, she was outfitted for the day and about to go out and do some more patrolling. She didn't have any real ideas, but she wasn't going to accomplish anything just fretting. She decided she would call up Xander and see how things were going with him; maybe she could help him cover some extra ground. Just in the middle of dialing though, she ran into Anya, who was carrying two big woven baskets.

"Mission accomplished," Anya said proudly, and showed her the insides of them. Unsurprisingly, they had kittens. "Who are the cute little hyperinflating circulation media? You are!"


"They cost a pretty penny, but these are the genuine article," she said. "My guy tried to cheat me with some ¾ mutts, but I'm not some youngster off the street, I've been exchanging kittens since before Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

"Good job Anya. It makes me feel a lot better that we have these ready if we need them." The kittens were cute, and Buffy felt a little bad about their possible fate, but if that was what it took to save her mom, Buffy would willingly become a horrible kitten slave dealer. She was starting to see what Wilkins meant about slippery slopes.

After thinking for a second though, Buffy paused. "Do we have kitten food? And litter boxes and things?"

"Already handled," Cynthia said, stepping in and taking one of the baskets from Anya. "We actually keep needful feline supplies on hand for occasions just like this. They'll be very well cared for as long as they're here."

Buffy nodded, both reassured and a little troubled that Wilkins had also apparently been a kitten dealer. Anya and Cynthia left with the kittens, and Buffy brought out her radio again, finishing her dial this time. "Xander, did you find anything? I passed out, but I can come out and search with you now."

After a slight pause he answered. "Umm, sort of. It's kind of a bad time Buffy, can you call me back?"

Buffy gripped the radio tighter and leaned into it, blood already racing, "Do you need my help? I can be there so fast that-"

"I'm pretty sure I have it under control, but it's in a pretty sensitive place right now. I promise I'll get back to you in a few minutes," Xander said.

Buffy forced herself not to backseat patrol. "OK. Talk to you in a few, Xand."

She put her radio back on her belt and waited at the main door, but before Xander called back she saw an exhausted looking Willow coming up the steps. Her head was hung low, and Buffy doubted there was good news to be had.

She settled on a "Hey Willow," and tried not to let the disappointment show in her voice.

"Hey Buffy. No dice on the tracking," she said glumly. "I even tried to run a trace from UC Sunnydale, but no matter how much computing power I shoved at the problem it didn't accomplish anything. Whatever he's using to cloak his tracks is like, the traveling salesman problem from hell."

"It's OK. You don't have to carry the team every time." Buffy gave her a hug. "Anyway, Xander might have some kind of lead. He was going to call me back in a few minutes."

Willow brightened a little at that. "Really?"

Buffy nodded, "He was seriously of the vague, but he sounded optimistic." She hoped she wasn't trying to fool herself.

"Well I'll do him one better then!" Amy looked a little manic, with frazzled hair and dark bags under her eyes, but she was brandishing something in her hands as if it was the holy grail. It looked like a shiny-looking bracelet with a big compass on it. "I've got Rack beat. This will cut through any cloaking spell he has, and point the way right to your mother!"

"Really?" Buffy grabbed for it, but quickly held herself back and extended a hand more carefully. "How does it work?"

Amy gave it to her and gestured for her to put it on. "It's a blood compass." She slid a latch on it, and the glass top of the compass popped up. Buffy saw that unlike a normal compass, there was no liquid inside, just a little needle lying there. "You fill it up with a little bit of your blood, and the sympathetic link between you and your mom should line the needle right up in the right direction."

"Are you sure it'll work?" Buffy asked, slipping the bracelet onto her left wrist. She fumbled in her pocket with the other for her trusty whittling knife.

"You aren't adopted or anything right? If she's your mom it'll definitely work," Amy said confidently.

"You're a lifesaver Amy! I owe you way big for this, just say whatever and I'll try to make it happen." Buffy passed the knife to her left hand and was about to make a small cut in her right for the blood to power the device, when a voice rang out.

Andrew was running down the hall screaming, "Buffy, NO! Don't do it!"

Buffy stopped reflexively, and looked back at Andrew, confused.

"Amy's a traitor!" Andrew declared. "She's working for Rack! She's one of his junkies, she knew about him the whole time!"

Buffy looked at her in shock, not sure what to think. Amy reacted quickly though. "That's crazy talk! Why would I do that? Willow's been my friend since forever, and Buffy's her friend. We're all friends here. Maybe you're the traitor!" she accused.

"I'm not the one who looks like he's in Melange withdrawal!" Andrew countered. "I called a few demons, and Rack screwed one out of a deal a few years ago, so he was eager to help us. He told me that Amy was a customer there even before she got ratted. She's a total magic addict, she might've even told him a bunch of our secrets and stuff."

"Maybe the demon was lying?" Willow said. "I mean, wouldn't we have noticed already if Amy was all addicted and treasonous?" Amy nodded along desperately with Willow's logic.

"Then why don't you take a closer look at that cursed item she just gave Buffy," Andrew said. "I bet it's some kind of a booby trap. It makes perfect sense, this whole kidnapping thing was probably a ploy just to get rid of her."

Buffy dropped the little knife from her hands, and carefully took the bracelet back off, handing it to Willow carefully. She kept her eyes on Amy the whole time. "Can you check it out Willow? Make sure it's everything she says it is?"

"Yeah!" Willow affirmed. "I mean, I don't specialize in stuff like this, but with the item right here it shouldn't be that hard to check for anything untoward. We can all go down to the clean room and I'll run a safe scan to take a nice close look at it. We'll get this all cleared up."

Amy didn't look very relieved by this idea though, and her eyes were darting back and forth like, well, like a trapped rat. Buffy moved forward to take her by the arm, just in case she needed some encouragement to come back inside the building with them, but she stepped back, avoiding her.

"OK, so I may not have been totally upfront," Amy said, holding up her hands. "I just didn't know how to tell you at first, and things may have gotten a little out of hand in the past few days-"

Seeing Amy all but admit her guilt, Buffy's reserve melted like frost on a hot day. "Out of hand?" Buffy screamed. "Things got out of hand and you kidnapped my mother?" Something was breaking inside her. She wasn't seeing red, she was seeing black.
KILL
"I didn't know he would!" She explained. "I just, I told him some things about what was happening at first. It seemed harmless."

Buffy was slowly walking forward, and Amy was still backing down the stairs. "And then afterwards when everything happened you didn't speak up? Because you didn't know how to tell us?"

"You don't know what it's like," Amy said desperately. "I needed it, how it felt. I was pathetic without it, I never had my mother's raw power. I would try and try and I could barely do anything. When I was a rat, I'd run myself out, I couldn't turn myself back and I was trapped. Powerless. He was the only one that could keep me safe." She saw Buffy wasn't stopping, and looked side to side again. The street had been bustling when she arrived, but it seemed all but abandoned now.

"Goddess Hecate, work thy will, before me let-"
KILL
Buffy hit her hard in the face.

Vote:

[] At the last second, Buffy pulled the blow, but the crack of Amy's broken jaw still rang out across the empty street.

[] Buffy didn't quite pull the blow in time. There was the crack of Amy's broken neck and then a consuming silence. (NOTE: Due to the effects of Buffy's {#(&!*^}, votes for this option are weighted at double strength.)