moragmacpherson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moragmacpherson) wrote2008-03-28 06:05 am
moragmacpherson) wrote2008-03-28 06:05 am
Fic: Better With Two (5/??) (Buffy/DrWho)
Title: Better With Two (5/??)
Series: Tempus Frangit
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moragmacpherson
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: True sequel to Another Side of the Sky. Takes place during AU Buffy season 8 "The Long Way Home," approximately two months post Another Side for the Doctor.
Disclaimer: I make no claim to any characters contained herein, who are actually owned by big corporations filled with highly paid attorneys who know that suing me would be idiotic based on the fact that all I own are student loans and they wouldn't even be able to recover costs.
Archive: Here, TtH. If you'd like it, let me know.
Betas: Depending on the chapter, some combination of Arkaeus, LiastraLee, MissJulie, and/orbooster17
Summary: Great muppety Odin, Buffy misses the Doctor. She decides the time has come to do something about it.
Chapter Five - The Good Oft Interred With Their Bones
The Doctor pulled on last switch. “And here we are.”
Xander groaned. “Do we have to?” Renee jabbed him in the ribs, then held her hands up in a sign of truce.
“It was fun, don’t get me wrong Doctor, but I’ve been slaying for three years now and I’ve never had a month like this. I’m ready for a few nights sleep and maybe a couple of demonic hordes to clean the palate.”
“What about that pleasure planet Buffy mentioned?”
Renee pulled Xander’s collar down and whispered in his ear. “Don’t push this. He’s as ready to be home as I am. Go get the girls.” To her surprise, Xander bobbed his head and moved towards the back halls of the TARDIS.
“Sorry ‘bout that Doctor. Guy likes his spaceships, and you had to go and give him a taste.”
“Gonna be tough to keep him down at the farm now, in’it?” He smiled as the engines wound down. “Still, I hope you enjoyed it.”
“Oh yeah. But space is big.” Renee shuddered. “Really big. And I can barely deal with all the evil we’ve got on Earth. Finding out there’s even more evil out there, it’s a little intimidating.”
The Doctor chuckled. “You’re telling me. Still, it’s our job to be even more intimidating.”
“Your job maybe.”
“Don’t discount yourself. You’re one of the good ones Renee.” He smiled widely at her and despite his age and alien-ness, Renee understood then why Buffy would want to spend two life times with him. They moved towards the doors, the sounds of Xander and the other Slayers ringing from behind them as he pulled the door open for her.
Spike stood in front of the ship. “Bit late.”
“We’ve only been gone two weeks here.” Renee stepped out of the way of the two men.
“It was the wrong two weeks.”
“Spike, what the hell’s wrong with you?” Xander’s jaunty mood from earlier disappeared in the face of this greeting.
“It’s not what’s wrong with me. There’s been some problems. The alien needs to go see Buffy. You lot should probably get down to the control room, get briefed, seeing as you hate getting your news from me so much.”
Xander’s nose wrinkled and his whole face twitched. “Fine then. Ladies, out of the frying pan, into the fire we go. Hope you’re all still limber from Teclexhecfivven. Doctor.” Xander nodded at him but kept his eyes on Spike as he and the rest of the Slayers filed out.
“Where is she?” The Doctor’s lips were thin, and Spike nodded in understanding.
“I’ll take you. It’s going to be the infirmary.” He turned towards the door and the Doctor moved silently behind him. “No other questions? I expected you to be running your gob like usual.”
“Buffy’s in the infirmary, which means she’s been hurt or someone else has. She doesn’t get sick. And when she gets hurt, she gets better.”
“Is that right?”
“Eighty years now, it’s held true. I am sort of curious as to what happened while we were gone.”
Spike shook his head. “’The evil that men do.’”
The Doctor swallowed. Buffy was always at her best fighting demons, or Daleks, or Cybermen. She was fine with the soulless, even though he’d only just come to appreciate this, given that he’d only just begun to believe in souls. Well, accepting that there might be such a thing. He stared at the vampire ahead of him, and wondered at the real difference a soul, whatever it was, made. For Buffy, it was the world. This girl who’d merrily slaughtered the Chanruff cannibal berserkers then craved ice cream, at whose feet thousands of vampires had turned to dust, crumbled in the face of a soul’s death. Any time she killed something she thought had a soul, those were the longest nights in the world.
Spike swung open the door to the infirmary, which was dark and silent. He tilted his head, and the Doctor went ahead. Buffy sat next to one of the beds, her head bowed. Adjusting his tie, the Doctor stood behind her and laid one hand on her shoulder. Buffy’s other hand shot out and squeezed it, and the Doctor held back a cry of pain and squeezed back.
Not quite able to look at the pair, Spike lingered in the shadows of the room. “Audra?”
“Gone. About an hour ago. Satsu took her to the morgue.” Her voice was low, husky.
“Ah. The crew in the box are all back safe. Sent the rest of them to Willow, she’ll let them know.”
“Thanks Spike.” The Doctor’s thumb brushed the juncture of Buffy’s neck and shoulders. Spike chewed the inside of his cheek.
“Do you need anything else?”
“No. Thanks Spike.”
After Spike left, the Doctor waited for Buffy to tell him what the hell was going on. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so still and angry. No, wait, he could. Kannemarra slave mines, after they’d beaten him within an inch of regeneration. But still and angry had only lasted about ten minutes there before she punched through a wall and got them out. Or maybe it had just seemed like ten minutes, he’d been a little out of it at the time. But he stood there with her for an hour in silence.
“Grier.”
“Grier?”
“The… man. His name was Grier.”
“‘Was’ Grier?”
Buffy shook her head. “Did you think I’d be here moping if he wasn’t already taken care of?”
He brushed his lips over her forehead. “No, of course not.”
She choked on a bitter laugh. “Let’s get some tea. Makes everything better, right?”
“Well, I’m glad I’ve managed to impart some tiny hint of wisdom to you over the years.” He steadied her shoulders as she rose, never relinquishing her hand. The Doctor kept his voice light. “A little cuppa, maybe a bath, moping might not be so bad.”
Buffy’s lips were thin. “Okay. We should stay in the castle though.”
“Okay.” He guided her through empty halls to the empty kitchens, grateful for the solitude but curious as to where everyone was.
“A lot of girls.”
“Oh?” He poured the water into the mugs.
“Forty-six.”
The Doctor nodded and replaced the kettle. “When?”
“Selene and Maggie were dead two days before you left. That’s how he got on to us. They found the bodies, I dunno, maybe on the fifth?” She tested the boiling hot tea with her tongue. “What day is it?”
“The eighteenth.”
Biting her lip, Buffy looked down. “Then yeah, the fifth. Word got here that morning. By then, Grier had already found Sheila and her group.”
The Doctor pulled out the jar of chocolate biscuits and pressed one into Buffy’s hand. Sheila Dwyer trained the Cadets, those girls who discovered their abilities under the age of fifteen but didn’t have safe homes. “How did he know to go from Saskatchewan to Minneapolis?”
“Maggie was mentoring one of the little ones. Zoe maybe? I’m not sure. Willow’s been putting it together. I guess there were letters, with addresses.”
“Motive?”
“Money. Lots of it. Three and a half million .”
Dollars. Seventy-six thousand eighty-six dollars and ninety-five cents per dead girl. “Weren’t there spells on the Cadet house?”
“Some. He didn’t seem to care. Technically he wasn’t a demon.”
“In the night?”
“Early morning. Before school.”
“Even though they were young, they were slayers…”
“‘This side towards the enemy’.” Buffy crumbled the remainder of the cookie. “Or sixteen young girls eating breakfast. Remind me why we never went back to assassinate the inventor of the claymore?”
Brown eyes caught green. Because it was such a dreadful idea that someone else would always think of it. Evil like that just hung in the air, waiting to be plucked out by whatever mind went by. Evil that could be designed by committee. Ingenious, inventive evil. The gaze broke.
“Those left, I guess he also had a shotgun.”
“Just one man?”
“At the sites, yes. Then there’s whoever paid him, and whoever the sorcerer was who got him to Rome. Or he may have just paid off the TSA screeners, Willow’s not sure yet.”
“How-“ The Doctor felt himself gagging. “By then you must have known.”
“It looked bigger than that. We’ve been working on this for weeks now. But in the face of it, we figured, it must be bigger than just one man.” She drank deeply of the tea. “Faith called from the field. She and Giles had found Aisha and Mara’s bodies in Virginia.” Buffy’s voice cracked. “I wouldn’t take the call. Faith knew. Faith understood. I just couldn’t believe her.”
“How was he sneaking up on them?”
“Tricks. Guns. He just wasn’t something we were prepared for. Gilda’s body was shot four miles from the house, Annalise was on the other side of town.”
“How many out of Rome?”
“Annalise, Gilda, the Brumenfield twins, all of ‘em. Oh, Andrew and Leili and Mei Ling and four others had gone to Florence to work a deal with some Brakken demons, thank God. We got the call from the Immortal about the explosion.” Buffy scraped a knife along a cutting board. “It was kind of him. Everyone’s been so kind. And just two days after we’d lost the young ones, no wonder we were all scrambling.”
“By now we had a name. Michael Grier. Just Grier most of the time. He’d been military, Riley found the records, but so much blacked out that it was all useless. Dishonorably discharged, but I guess he found someone who’d still give him a job.”
“And now you knew what to look for.”
“Willow updated the security grid. Not just for demons anymore.”
“And you got him.”
“I did that.”
“Did you find out where the money came from?”
“No.”
“Ah.”
“Giselle was with me. She and Audra had been close, I was calling for medical assistance. When I turned around, he didn’t have a face anymore.” Buffy finished the tea. “She’s in a hospital down in the city now. The police let us keep Audra, there was nothing to be done, they understood, but Giselle had to go. She’ll be cleared, self defense and all, but she had to go with them.”
“When was all this?”
“Four days ago.”
“Audra?”
“Axe wound to the head. She lingered on, but… she wasn’t in there any more. Willow and her Slayer powers could have healed her body, but the damage to her mind was too much. We cared for her until she let go.” Buffy wiped her eyes. “How was your trip?”
“Good. It was good.” Rocking back on his heels, the Doctor stuck a finger in his ear. “Women Wept was an interesting case. Mu conquered her plant fear and proved a fine hand with a pair of shears. Renee’s got some natural leadership skills, she did very well. Xander was briefly turned into a garden gnome.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes.”
“Was he fishing or, uh, mooning or what?”
“Oh, he had a finger up his nose.” Buffy snorted tea through her nose, so the Doctor came up and wiped her face off with a towel. She grabbed his wrist and then buried her face in his chest, sobbing. “That’s right.”
“Can we go?”
“Go where?” He stroked her shoulder.
“Away. Anywhere.” Buffy hiccupped.
“Sure.”
“Why do you do it?” She was shaking a little.
“Do what?”
“Come back here. To this place. To this horrible little planet.”
“I came back for you.”
“I know. But, what about before?”
“Oh, I dunno.” He kissed her hair. “Buddy Holly on Ed Sullivan in 1957. Standing in Times Square on V-J Day. The Diere Art Festival in 2184. Remember that one?”
“Yeah.”
“It was fun, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She nuzzled his chest.
“Pasta in Florence, exploring the untouched Arctic, catching Monty Python performances before the audiences were saying all the words along. Not to mention the most brilliant, bravest, beautiful women, whom I encounter here with frightening regularity.”
“I failed them.”
The Doctor took her face in his hands, caressing her cheek with his thumb. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t know. You did your best. I would never ask anything more from you.”
Buffy pulled back. “But you can’t say I didn’t fail them.”
The Doctor looked down. “Some days you just can’t save them all. You know that.”
“I do.”
“Ahem.” Willow had been standing in the doorway. “Hi Doctor.”
“Hello Willow.”
“What’s up Wills?” Buffy pushed off from the Doctor to face her friend.
“I told Xander and the rest about our little situation. They’re taking it pretty hard, Rona and Sheila had been friends since just after Sunnydale.”
“Yeah, I remember. Thanks for taking care of that.”
Willow spread her hands, the Doctor noticing that her eyes flared black for just a moment. “Well, it’s been a long few days. I’ve had a little more luck with tracing the funds. I was wondering if the Doctor would be willing to give it a look?”
“I think I could help with that.”
“Good.” Buffy gripped the counter. “You should go do that. We need to find these guys.”
Willow and the Doctor shared a glance. “It can wait till morning,” replied both.
“No. I want it done now. I’ll be fine.”
~*~
The furniture was old, and not terribly clean, evoking that kind of money that doesn’t need to take care of its hulking, expensive furniture. Its usual occupant stood clutching a poker ($6,500/ £3,261.41), having been startled from his reading by a most unusual occupant sitting on the desk ($27,000/ £13,547.38) who was tossing a paperweight ($8,375.88/ £4,202.64) from hand to hand, calculating the value of all the things in the room.
He already knew the value of its occupant.
“Hello Mister Banks.” Somehow V. James Banks knew that it was ‘Mister’ and definitely not ‘Mr.’
“Who are you?”
“Oh me? Just a visitor. Unimportant. Really, what's far more relevant right now is my wife, and what I'm willing to do for her.”
“Your wife?”
“Oh, she’s not here. She’s not even technically my wife, but if I’d said ‘girlfriend’ the line would have sounded silly. Of course, she’s used to that, with a name like Buffy.”
V. James Banks wet himself. Not a lot, just a dribble. He also furiously pressed a discreet red button beneath the mantle.
“No need to trouble yourself with that, you’ll find the alarm is not quite functional at the moment. Now, Mister Banks, because of your feelings and actions towards my dearly beloved, we’ll be having a little trip.”
“I’m not going anywhere. How the hell did you get in here? What the hell is that box doing behind the curtain?”
“Just step inside this door, you’ll see. I shant touch a single hair on your charmingly coiffed head. Promise.”
Still wielding his poker, V. James Banks nodded, and peered inside the box, before finding himself roughly shoved inside. “You said you wouldn’t touch me!”
“I lied.” The Doctor pushed past and headed towards the controls. “Of course, I didn’t pay a violent sociopath three and a half million dollars to murder a bunch of innocent young girls, so I guess we’ll each have to live with our own mistakes.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Now you’re a liar too. Of course, we can get into technicalities, and how the money actually belonged in a number of your employees retirement accounts, but really, the authorization, the will, was yours, and adding fraud to the list of your crimes is just a bit redundant.”
V. James Banks was disconcerted by his host’s cheer, so he shifted tactics and swung the poker at the Doctor’s head. It was easily blocked and yanked away. “If you can’t play nice, you can’t have nice things.”
“They weren’t innocent. There are demons inside of those women, and your woman the worst of them,” the man hissed.
“Yes, I know. A tiny little taint so they can defend our world. Takes a lot of willpower for them, not to let it take them over, to stay human. Strongest women in the world, in so many more ways than you’ll ever understand. Of course, Zoe King and Hayley Neulander were each only twelve, so I think calling them ‘women’ is sort of pushing the definition. But each of them far more human than you.” The TARDIS settled. “All right, nice chat, we’re done.” He flipped the poker over and handed it to V. James Banks.
“That’s it?”
“Oh yes. I don’t care to see you any more.”
“You’ll never be able to prove it in court.”
“I don’t need to, Vernon. I'm the court of final appeal, and I already know.” The Doctor pulled Vernon to the doors and pushed him out into the beach outside.
“What? How did we? Where are we?”
“This is Skalla. Sentient life will develop here in about three hundred million years. I think there might be some plant life somewhere on the planet now. Maybe in the islands out there. Maybe in those mountains. Probably some kelp in the ocean. Maybe. I leave you to it, good luck. Oh, here.” The Doctor tossed a heavy suitcase to Vernon.
“What’s this?”
“Three and a half million dollars. Or forty-six lives by your reckoning. I hope they serve you well here, as it’s all the life you’re getting anymore.”
V. James Banks pounded on the doors until the doors weren’t there anymore.
The Doctor reset the coordinates for the castle. “We moved.”
“Yes, a couple of times.” He turned towards his love as she emerged into the console room. “How are you?”
Buffy rubbed her head. “Tired. I think Willow drugged me.”
“She did.” Buffy scowled. “Just a little. For your own good. Oh, we got the money man.”
“You did?” He felt her arms wrap around his waist.
“Aye, I did. No more problems on that front.” Buffy’s palms flattened on his stomach. “Want me to take you back to bed?”
“Let’s take our time. Maybe go to Luss?”
“We can do that.” He pulled her around and dipped his head to hers. “I love you.”
“I know.”
Next
Series: Tempus Frangit
Author:
moragmacpherson Rating: PG-13
Timeline: True sequel to Another Side of the Sky. Takes place during AU Buffy season 8 "The Long Way Home," approximately two months post Another Side for the Doctor.
Disclaimer: I make no claim to any characters contained herein, who are actually owned by big corporations filled with highly paid attorneys who know that suing me would be idiotic based on the fact that all I own are student loans and they wouldn't even be able to recover costs.
Archive: Here, TtH. If you'd like it, let me know.
Betas: Depending on the chapter, some combination of Arkaeus, LiastraLee, MissJulie, and/or
booster17 Summary: Great muppety Odin, Buffy misses the Doctor. She decides the time has come to do something about it.
Chapter Five - The Good Oft Interred With Their Bones
The Doctor pulled on last switch. “And here we are.”
Xander groaned. “Do we have to?” Renee jabbed him in the ribs, then held her hands up in a sign of truce.
“It was fun, don’t get me wrong Doctor, but I’ve been slaying for three years now and I’ve never had a month like this. I’m ready for a few nights sleep and maybe a couple of demonic hordes to clean the palate.”
“What about that pleasure planet Buffy mentioned?”
Renee pulled Xander’s collar down and whispered in his ear. “Don’t push this. He’s as ready to be home as I am. Go get the girls.” To her surprise, Xander bobbed his head and moved towards the back halls of the TARDIS.
“Sorry ‘bout that Doctor. Guy likes his spaceships, and you had to go and give him a taste.”
“Gonna be tough to keep him down at the farm now, in’it?” He smiled as the engines wound down. “Still, I hope you enjoyed it.”
“Oh yeah. But space is big.” Renee shuddered. “Really big. And I can barely deal with all the evil we’ve got on Earth. Finding out there’s even more evil out there, it’s a little intimidating.”
The Doctor chuckled. “You’re telling me. Still, it’s our job to be even more intimidating.”
“Your job maybe.”
“Don’t discount yourself. You’re one of the good ones Renee.” He smiled widely at her and despite his age and alien-ness, Renee understood then why Buffy would want to spend two life times with him. They moved towards the doors, the sounds of Xander and the other Slayers ringing from behind them as he pulled the door open for her.
Spike stood in front of the ship. “Bit late.”
“We’ve only been gone two weeks here.” Renee stepped out of the way of the two men.
“It was the wrong two weeks.”
“Spike, what the hell’s wrong with you?” Xander’s jaunty mood from earlier disappeared in the face of this greeting.
“It’s not what’s wrong with me. There’s been some problems. The alien needs to go see Buffy. You lot should probably get down to the control room, get briefed, seeing as you hate getting your news from me so much.”
Xander’s nose wrinkled and his whole face twitched. “Fine then. Ladies, out of the frying pan, into the fire we go. Hope you’re all still limber from Teclexhecfivven. Doctor.” Xander nodded at him but kept his eyes on Spike as he and the rest of the Slayers filed out.
“Where is she?” The Doctor’s lips were thin, and Spike nodded in understanding.
“I’ll take you. It’s going to be the infirmary.” He turned towards the door and the Doctor moved silently behind him. “No other questions? I expected you to be running your gob like usual.”
“Buffy’s in the infirmary, which means she’s been hurt or someone else has. She doesn’t get sick. And when she gets hurt, she gets better.”
“Is that right?”
“Eighty years now, it’s held true. I am sort of curious as to what happened while we were gone.”
Spike shook his head. “’The evil that men do.’”
The Doctor swallowed. Buffy was always at her best fighting demons, or Daleks, or Cybermen. She was fine with the soulless, even though he’d only just come to appreciate this, given that he’d only just begun to believe in souls. Well, accepting that there might be such a thing. He stared at the vampire ahead of him, and wondered at the real difference a soul, whatever it was, made. For Buffy, it was the world. This girl who’d merrily slaughtered the Chanruff cannibal berserkers then craved ice cream, at whose feet thousands of vampires had turned to dust, crumbled in the face of a soul’s death. Any time she killed something she thought had a soul, those were the longest nights in the world.
Spike swung open the door to the infirmary, which was dark and silent. He tilted his head, and the Doctor went ahead. Buffy sat next to one of the beds, her head bowed. Adjusting his tie, the Doctor stood behind her and laid one hand on her shoulder. Buffy’s other hand shot out and squeezed it, and the Doctor held back a cry of pain and squeezed back.
Not quite able to look at the pair, Spike lingered in the shadows of the room. “Audra?”
“Gone. About an hour ago. Satsu took her to the morgue.” Her voice was low, husky.
“Ah. The crew in the box are all back safe. Sent the rest of them to Willow, she’ll let them know.”
“Thanks Spike.” The Doctor’s thumb brushed the juncture of Buffy’s neck and shoulders. Spike chewed the inside of his cheek.
“Do you need anything else?”
“No. Thanks Spike.”
After Spike left, the Doctor waited for Buffy to tell him what the hell was going on. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so still and angry. No, wait, he could. Kannemarra slave mines, after they’d beaten him within an inch of regeneration. But still and angry had only lasted about ten minutes there before she punched through a wall and got them out. Or maybe it had just seemed like ten minutes, he’d been a little out of it at the time. But he stood there with her for an hour in silence.
“Grier.”
“Grier?”
“The… man. His name was Grier.”
“‘Was’ Grier?”
Buffy shook her head. “Did you think I’d be here moping if he wasn’t already taken care of?”
He brushed his lips over her forehead. “No, of course not.”
She choked on a bitter laugh. “Let’s get some tea. Makes everything better, right?”
“Well, I’m glad I’ve managed to impart some tiny hint of wisdom to you over the years.” He steadied her shoulders as she rose, never relinquishing her hand. The Doctor kept his voice light. “A little cuppa, maybe a bath, moping might not be so bad.”
Buffy’s lips were thin. “Okay. We should stay in the castle though.”
“Okay.” He guided her through empty halls to the empty kitchens, grateful for the solitude but curious as to where everyone was.
“A lot of girls.”
“Oh?” He poured the water into the mugs.
“Forty-six.”
The Doctor nodded and replaced the kettle. “When?”
“Selene and Maggie were dead two days before you left. That’s how he got on to us. They found the bodies, I dunno, maybe on the fifth?” She tested the boiling hot tea with her tongue. “What day is it?”
“The eighteenth.”
Biting her lip, Buffy looked down. “Then yeah, the fifth. Word got here that morning. By then, Grier had already found Sheila and her group.”
The Doctor pulled out the jar of chocolate biscuits and pressed one into Buffy’s hand. Sheila Dwyer trained the Cadets, those girls who discovered their abilities under the age of fifteen but didn’t have safe homes. “How did he know to go from Saskatchewan to Minneapolis?”
“Maggie was mentoring one of the little ones. Zoe maybe? I’m not sure. Willow’s been putting it together. I guess there were letters, with addresses.”
“Motive?”
“Money. Lots of it. Three and a half million .”
Dollars. Seventy-six thousand eighty-six dollars and ninety-five cents per dead girl. “Weren’t there spells on the Cadet house?”
“Some. He didn’t seem to care. Technically he wasn’t a demon.”
“In the night?”
“Early morning. Before school.”
“Even though they were young, they were slayers…”
“‘This side towards the enemy’.” Buffy crumbled the remainder of the cookie. “Or sixteen young girls eating breakfast. Remind me why we never went back to assassinate the inventor of the claymore?”
Brown eyes caught green. Because it was such a dreadful idea that someone else would always think of it. Evil like that just hung in the air, waiting to be plucked out by whatever mind went by. Evil that could be designed by committee. Ingenious, inventive evil. The gaze broke.
“Those left, I guess he also had a shotgun.”
“Just one man?”
“At the sites, yes. Then there’s whoever paid him, and whoever the sorcerer was who got him to Rome. Or he may have just paid off the TSA screeners, Willow’s not sure yet.”
“How-“ The Doctor felt himself gagging. “By then you must have known.”
“It looked bigger than that. We’ve been working on this for weeks now. But in the face of it, we figured, it must be bigger than just one man.” She drank deeply of the tea. “Faith called from the field. She and Giles had found Aisha and Mara’s bodies in Virginia.” Buffy’s voice cracked. “I wouldn’t take the call. Faith knew. Faith understood. I just couldn’t believe her.”
“How was he sneaking up on them?”
“Tricks. Guns. He just wasn’t something we were prepared for. Gilda’s body was shot four miles from the house, Annalise was on the other side of town.”
“How many out of Rome?”
“Annalise, Gilda, the Brumenfield twins, all of ‘em. Oh, Andrew and Leili and Mei Ling and four others had gone to Florence to work a deal with some Brakken demons, thank God. We got the call from the Immortal about the explosion.” Buffy scraped a knife along a cutting board. “It was kind of him. Everyone’s been so kind. And just two days after we’d lost the young ones, no wonder we were all scrambling.”
“By now we had a name. Michael Grier. Just Grier most of the time. He’d been military, Riley found the records, but so much blacked out that it was all useless. Dishonorably discharged, but I guess he found someone who’d still give him a job.”
“And now you knew what to look for.”
“Willow updated the security grid. Not just for demons anymore.”
“And you got him.”
“I did that.”
“Did you find out where the money came from?”
“No.”
“Ah.”
“Giselle was with me. She and Audra had been close, I was calling for medical assistance. When I turned around, he didn’t have a face anymore.” Buffy finished the tea. “She’s in a hospital down in the city now. The police let us keep Audra, there was nothing to be done, they understood, but Giselle had to go. She’ll be cleared, self defense and all, but she had to go with them.”
“When was all this?”
“Four days ago.”
“Audra?”
“Axe wound to the head. She lingered on, but… she wasn’t in there any more. Willow and her Slayer powers could have healed her body, but the damage to her mind was too much. We cared for her until she let go.” Buffy wiped her eyes. “How was your trip?”
“Good. It was good.” Rocking back on his heels, the Doctor stuck a finger in his ear. “Women Wept was an interesting case. Mu conquered her plant fear and proved a fine hand with a pair of shears. Renee’s got some natural leadership skills, she did very well. Xander was briefly turned into a garden gnome.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes.”
“Was he fishing or, uh, mooning or what?”
“Oh, he had a finger up his nose.” Buffy snorted tea through her nose, so the Doctor came up and wiped her face off with a towel. She grabbed his wrist and then buried her face in his chest, sobbing. “That’s right.”
“Can we go?”
“Go where?” He stroked her shoulder.
“Away. Anywhere.” Buffy hiccupped.
“Sure.”
“Why do you do it?” She was shaking a little.
“Do what?”
“Come back here. To this place. To this horrible little planet.”
“I came back for you.”
“I know. But, what about before?”
“Oh, I dunno.” He kissed her hair. “Buddy Holly on Ed Sullivan in 1957. Standing in Times Square on V-J Day. The Diere Art Festival in 2184. Remember that one?”
“Yeah.”
“It was fun, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She nuzzled his chest.
“Pasta in Florence, exploring the untouched Arctic, catching Monty Python performances before the audiences were saying all the words along. Not to mention the most brilliant, bravest, beautiful women, whom I encounter here with frightening regularity.”
“I failed them.”
The Doctor took her face in his hands, caressing her cheek with his thumb. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t know. You did your best. I would never ask anything more from you.”
Buffy pulled back. “But you can’t say I didn’t fail them.”
The Doctor looked down. “Some days you just can’t save them all. You know that.”
“I do.”
“Ahem.” Willow had been standing in the doorway. “Hi Doctor.”
“Hello Willow.”
“What’s up Wills?” Buffy pushed off from the Doctor to face her friend.
“I told Xander and the rest about our little situation. They’re taking it pretty hard, Rona and Sheila had been friends since just after Sunnydale.”
“Yeah, I remember. Thanks for taking care of that.”
Willow spread her hands, the Doctor noticing that her eyes flared black for just a moment. “Well, it’s been a long few days. I’ve had a little more luck with tracing the funds. I was wondering if the Doctor would be willing to give it a look?”
“I think I could help with that.”
“Good.” Buffy gripped the counter. “You should go do that. We need to find these guys.”
Willow and the Doctor shared a glance. “It can wait till morning,” replied both.
“No. I want it done now. I’ll be fine.”
~*~
The furniture was old, and not terribly clean, evoking that kind of money that doesn’t need to take care of its hulking, expensive furniture. Its usual occupant stood clutching a poker ($6,500/ £3,261.41), having been startled from his reading by a most unusual occupant sitting on the desk ($27,000/ £13,547.38) who was tossing a paperweight ($8,375.88/ £4,202.64) from hand to hand, calculating the value of all the things in the room.
He already knew the value of its occupant.
“Hello Mister Banks.” Somehow V. James Banks knew that it was ‘Mister’ and definitely not ‘Mr.’
“Who are you?”
“Oh me? Just a visitor. Unimportant. Really, what's far more relevant right now is my wife, and what I'm willing to do for her.”
“Your wife?”
“Oh, she’s not here. She’s not even technically my wife, but if I’d said ‘girlfriend’ the line would have sounded silly. Of course, she’s used to that, with a name like Buffy.”
V. James Banks wet himself. Not a lot, just a dribble. He also furiously pressed a discreet red button beneath the mantle.
“No need to trouble yourself with that, you’ll find the alarm is not quite functional at the moment. Now, Mister Banks, because of your feelings and actions towards my dearly beloved, we’ll be having a little trip.”
“I’m not going anywhere. How the hell did you get in here? What the hell is that box doing behind the curtain?”
“Just step inside this door, you’ll see. I shant touch a single hair on your charmingly coiffed head. Promise.”
Still wielding his poker, V. James Banks nodded, and peered inside the box, before finding himself roughly shoved inside. “You said you wouldn’t touch me!”
“I lied.” The Doctor pushed past and headed towards the controls. “Of course, I didn’t pay a violent sociopath three and a half million dollars to murder a bunch of innocent young girls, so I guess we’ll each have to live with our own mistakes.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Now you’re a liar too. Of course, we can get into technicalities, and how the money actually belonged in a number of your employees retirement accounts, but really, the authorization, the will, was yours, and adding fraud to the list of your crimes is just a bit redundant.”
V. James Banks was disconcerted by his host’s cheer, so he shifted tactics and swung the poker at the Doctor’s head. It was easily blocked and yanked away. “If you can’t play nice, you can’t have nice things.”
“They weren’t innocent. There are demons inside of those women, and your woman the worst of them,” the man hissed.
“Yes, I know. A tiny little taint so they can defend our world. Takes a lot of willpower for them, not to let it take them over, to stay human. Strongest women in the world, in so many more ways than you’ll ever understand. Of course, Zoe King and Hayley Neulander were each only twelve, so I think calling them ‘women’ is sort of pushing the definition. But each of them far more human than you.” The TARDIS settled. “All right, nice chat, we’re done.” He flipped the poker over and handed it to V. James Banks.
“That’s it?”
“Oh yes. I don’t care to see you any more.”
“You’ll never be able to prove it in court.”
“I don’t need to, Vernon. I'm the court of final appeal, and I already know.” The Doctor pulled Vernon to the doors and pushed him out into the beach outside.
“What? How did we? Where are we?”
“This is Skalla. Sentient life will develop here in about three hundred million years. I think there might be some plant life somewhere on the planet now. Maybe in the islands out there. Maybe in those mountains. Probably some kelp in the ocean. Maybe. I leave you to it, good luck. Oh, here.” The Doctor tossed a heavy suitcase to Vernon.
“What’s this?”
“Three and a half million dollars. Or forty-six lives by your reckoning. I hope they serve you well here, as it’s all the life you’re getting anymore.”
V. James Banks pounded on the doors until the doors weren’t there anymore.
The Doctor reset the coordinates for the castle. “We moved.”
“Yes, a couple of times.” He turned towards his love as she emerged into the console room. “How are you?”
Buffy rubbed her head. “Tired. I think Willow drugged me.”
“She did.” Buffy scowled. “Just a little. For your own good. Oh, we got the money man.”
“You did?” He felt her arms wrap around his waist.
“Aye, I did. No more problems on that front.” Buffy’s palms flattened on his stomach. “Want me to take you back to bed?”
“Let’s take our time. Maybe go to Luss?”
“We can do that.” He pulled her around and dipped his head to hers. “I love you.”
“I know.”
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