Tamika was strangely withdrawn as she and Buffy made their way stealthily into Watchers Headquarters. She’d seemed to be happy when there, and goodness knows she and Tom seemed to have hit it off, but now...
“Hey,” Buffy said softly as they made their way down the pristine corridor. “Are you okay?”
Tamika just nodded.
“’Cause if you want to talk...” Buffy tried.
The younger Slayer glared at her. “I don’t want to talk,” she practically snapped. “If you don’t mind, I just want to go to bed.”
“Hey,” Buffy said defensively. “You’re the one that asked for this little side trip. So don’t blame me if it put you in a pissy mood!”
“Pissy!” Tamika barked. “I’m not...pissy!”
“Well, it seems like that to me,” Buffy said. “You want to tell me what’s really going on here, or are we going back to avoiding each other like before you’re little revelation that I’m not such a terrible person.”
Tamika let out a sigh. “I’m tired, okay.”
Buffy looked at her oddly. “Why? We didn’t do anything much.”
“Not physically,” Tamika clarified. “Mentally.”
“Oh.”
“I just need to rest, okay?” she said a bit calmer as she reached the door to her quarters. “I...I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.”
Buffy looked at her, a bit doubtful. “Are you sure?”
Tamika nodded and opened her door, to find what they’d least expected and least hoped for.
“Castor,” Buffy said coldly.
Tamika just stood gaping with her mouth open.
“Where have you too been!?” the older Watcher barked.
Tamika licked her lips nervously, and Buffy answered. Or, well, didn’t answer. “We’ve been somewhere?” she asked falsely. “Huh. Well, now that we’re back, we’d really like to get some sleep. And unless there’s something going on between you and Tammy that neither of you has told me about...”
The dark haired Slayer swung on her angrily, and Mel Castor practically exploded. “How dare you?!”
Buffy smirked at him. “Well, you are in her room waiting for her,” she pointed out.
“I was waiting for you both,” he said, his anger turned cold. “You did not come to the training room this evening like you were supposed to.”
“Well, maybe we wanted to train on our own,” Tamika interrupted.
Buffy smiled to herself. The girl was finally showing some spirit.
“You know that it does not work that way!” he yelled at them both. He turned the force of his glare on Buffy. “You’re being a disruptive influence. Destroying the carefully established order...”
“Really?” Buffy asked in mock surprise. “And here I thought I was doing everyone a favor.”
The anger seemed to fade in Castor’s demeanor, to be replaced by something far more disturbing. He smiled very slightly, and there was a hint of cold malice in his expression. “I think,” he said calmly, “that you have proven that you need more structure in your life, Miss Summers. So tomorrow, you will both report to the training room immediately after waking.”
“Both?!” Tamika sputtered.
Castor raised an eyebrow at that. “The way I see it,” he said, “you’re in just as much trouble at the moment as your counterpart. You, after all, should have known better.”
Tamika just gaped at him.
“Your level of training will double as of tomorrow,” he continued. “When you are not eating or sleeping, you will be training. Which means, Miss Summers, that your visitation privileges have been cut off until such a time that you prove you deserve them again.”
“You can’t do that!” Buffy yelled furiously.
“You’ll find I can very much do that,” Castor replied with a cold smirk. He gestured imperatively at too of the guard types standing behind him. “Please make sure Miss Summers goes directly to her rooms,” he commanded. “She’ll want to be all rested for tomorrow.” He looked at her again. “I would not try anything if you want to see your vampire lover before the next millennia.”
Buffy could do nothing but glare at him in impotent fury.
She had never felt quite so tired in her life. Even when the battles in Sunnydale were at their worst she could not remember a weariness quite like this one. It wasn’t just the physical activity, though. It was feeling lost among a group of people who not only could not understand her, but made no effort to. The only one Buffy seemed to have begun connecting with, her fellow Slayer, had withdrawn within herself since the two of them had been punished. Buffy didn’t know whether she was resentful of the measures the Watchers took in light of their actions, or whether she was regretting that she’d ever disobeyed orders. Buffy had a feeling she’d never know.
There was only one in this horrible place that she could talk to about things. Only one in this world that understood everything about her, that was her past and her future. And he was the very one Buffy was forbidden from seeing.
A large part of her exhaustion came from lying awake at night, worrying that the Watchers had just decided to get rid of Angel, and that keeping her from seeing him was their way of keeping her from knowing the truth.
So Castor’s offhand remark had completely shocked Buffy after their last training session. He had stood at the corner of the room, watching Buffy and Tamika fight one another. When both could barely stand anymore, he spoke for the first time since he had ordered these extra sessions.
“That’s enough,” he had said.
Both Buffy and Tamika looked at him in surprise.
He did not elaborate, though. “Your break has been extended,” he said. “You will not be expected back here for two hours.”
And then his gaze locked with Buffy’s for an instant, and she knew.
He’d just given her leave to see Angel once again.
Buffy could not be bothered with lunch or anything else that usually made up her break between sessions. Barely cleaned of the morning’s sweat, she’d hurried to where Angel was held captive. Some part of her was afraid that Mel Castor would change his mind and she would be forbidden from seeing Angel once again. Or perhaps she would get there and she would find that she had misread the offer. Or perhaps all she would find was a pile of dust in an empty room....
She squashed all of these worries and strode right up to the cell corridor as if she belonged there. She did not speak to the Watchers that passed, and they did not speak to her. Some did go as far as to shoot her knowing looks, but she ignored them. She *would* see Angel today, one way or another.
It turned out ‘one way or another’ wasn’t necessary. As if she had never been forbidden from visiting, the door opened even as she approached it. And as always, it closed less than a second behind her.
Buffy thought at first that Angel had slept through her entrance. The thought made her smile. She doubted he slept any better than she did in a place like this.
But the details didn’t support that initial assumption. Angel was lying on the cot, on his side and turned towards the wall. Instead of being relaxed in sleep, he seemed inexplicably tense. As Buffy stepped closer, she could see that he actually seemed to be shaking.
“Angel,” Buffy said, softly but urgently. She was at his side in a moment, and reached out a hand to touch his shoulder. His muscles trembled under her hand. Still apparently asleep, he curled a bit tighter on himself.
“Angel!” she said a bit more urgently. She exerted a little bit of force on his shoulder, hoping to encourage him to roll and face her.
He only did so slowly. He groaned, his face tight with pain. “Buffy?” he mumbled. The painful wrinkling of his forehead seemed to accentuate the traces of his vampire appearance that remained.
She knew he was not exactly with it yet. “Yeah, it’s me,” she said quickly. “Come on, Angel, wake up.”
He blinked at her. For a moment, he licked dry lips and swallowed. “Thought you’d left...” he said softly.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave without you,” Buffy was quick to reassure him. She placed a hand on his cheek and felt the muscles twitch. “I just got in a bit of trouble and they wouldn’t let me come see you.” She ran her hand from his cheek up along his forehead and into his hair. It was longer than it had been ‘before,’ and Buffy had long since found she liked playing with it. Now, though, it seemed as lifeless as the rest of him. “What have they done to you?” she asked urgently.
Angel swallowed again. He uncurled slightly, relaxing into a more comfortable position. “Nothing,” he said thickly, reaching a hand up towards hers. As if to dispute his words, his hand was visibly shaking.
“Don’t tell me nothing!” Buffy nearly yelled.
Angel visibly winced, and she moderated her tone.
“There is obviously something wrong,” she continued. “Please, don’t tell me they didn’t do anything to you. I knew I shouldn’t have let them keep me away...”
“They didn’t...do...anything,” he interrupted her babbling, but his voice was obviously pained. It didn’t placate her.
“Then at least tell me what’s wrong.”
Angel groaned, and as Buffy watched in surprise his face shifted. His face had gradually been returning to its human features, and so this was the first time that she’d been able to actually see a change. His brow shifted from its nearly smooth features to those she recognized for a vampire. His eyes flashed yellow from their warm, human brown. A vampire’s face, and a clue to Angel’s current state.
“Have you fed?” Buffy asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
Angel’s wince looked odd with his demonic countenance. “No,” he whispered back.
Buffy swallowed and thought. How long had it been? “Can I...” she began.
He shook his head vehemently. “The Watchers...”
Buffy fought the initial impulse to curse. If she offered her own blood to Angel – and she would do so, freely – the Watchers would likely interpret it as an attack and kill him. But lack of blood seemed to be their way of slowly and painfully killing him, instead. No win situation.
“It’s not just that,” Angel said abruptly.
“Not just what?”
He sat up slowly, trying to better face her. “I’ve survived on less blood before,” he said. “I...this isn’t...” He gasped and curled in on himself again.
“Lie back down,” Buffy scolded, helping him back to his resting position. His face returned to near human as he quite obviously made himself relax. “What is it, then?” she asked once he was lying down again.
“I don’t...” a small whimper emerged from his throat, “know.” His shaking abruptly increased.
“Shh,” Buffy urged him, leaning over his chest. “It’ll be okay,” she added nonsensically.
He just blinked at her.
“Somehow,” she said, feeling it in her bones, “it will be okay. I’ll make it okay.”
Angel gave her a ghost of a smile. “Yeah,” he said weakly, “you’re good at that.”
Buffy returned the smile just as weakly. “Rest,” she prompted him. She leaned over to place a small kiss on his lips, feather light. “I’ll find a way to fix this,” she whispered her promise.
“Thank you,” he whispered back. Already she could tell he was fading back into unconsciousness. He was asleep before Buffy made her way out the door.
If she had been determined on her way to see Angel, the Slayer who was now leaving the prison corridor was even more so. The expression on her face must have been something, because any Watcher or guard that noticed her stepped quickly out of her path. She did not stop her determined walk until she reached Tamika’s door. In her rush, she forgot about the door chime and simply pounded on the entrance with her fist.
It opened quickly, and the younger Slayer blinked at her in surprise. “What...?”
Buffy didn’t even hesitate. She strode into the room, already talking. “I don’t know what your problem has been the last couple of days,” she said, “and I don’t care. I need you to decide right now where your loyalties lie. Because I have given these Watchers of yours a chance...”
“They’re your Watchers, too,” she interrupted.
“And they ruined it!” Buffy finished unheeding. “One way or another, you need to decide now.”
Tamika looked startled and confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Your Watchers,” Buffy hissed. “They have decided to see what it takes to starve a vampire to death.”
Tamika gasped. “They promised!”
Buffy blinked at the seeming change in the conversation. “Promised? Promised what?”
She swallowed. “I knew Angel wasn’t being fed when I saw him. I confronted Mr. Castor about it. He promised me that he would ‘correct the oversight’!”
Buffy frowned. “Yeah, well, he lied.”
“But...but that’s...” Tamika seemed at a loss for words.
“I’ll tell you what that is,” Buffy declared. “That’s purposeful cruelty.”
“But...they wouldn’t... Angel’s on our side!”
Buffy didn’t have time to smile at Tamika’s abrupt acceptance of the souled vampire. “Yeah,” she agreed. “He is. And right now there is something wrong with him aside from starvation. So you have a choice to make.”
“A choice?”
Buffy nodded. “I’m getting him out of here, one way or another. You can tell the Watchers that, and you’ll probably never see either of us again. You can do nothing and say nothing. Or you can help me, and leave this place forever.”
Buffy’s heart sunk when the dark haired Slayer made no reply. She frowned. “Well,” she said after a moment, turning for the door. “It...has been nice knowing you.”
“Wait!”
Buffy turned slowly.
Tamika hesitated. Her voice when she spoke was an uncertain half whisper. But it was a start.
“You’ll never manage without my help.”
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