by
Margot Le Faye

    Buffy sighed. Reaching thirty…four more years of her continued existence. If there were any mercy left for her in the world, she wouldn't have to endure that. But she could hardly say that to Giles. For his sake, she attempted a light note.

"You mean there might be a Slayer retirement pension plan, and I could cash in on it?" she quipped.

"Not a pension plan, but a retirement option."

"An option?" she asked uneasily. Her nightly battles with evil had long defined her life. And since Angel had made his hatred of her clear, they had been the only purpose in that life, the only reason to continue the battle and not simply give up. Giving up meant evil won. Period. Another Slayer might be called, but why put another girl through all that? As long as Buffy could fight, she would. That was all. And with the hell her existence had become, she could at least comfort herself with the fact that however badly she had hurt Angel, she wasn't completely worthless. She did good in the world. Now, was Giles trying to tell her that even that tiny bit of consolation might be taken from her? Whatever he was trying to say, he, at least, thought it was good news.

"The writings seem to indicate that if a Slayer lives to be thirty, she will be replaced by a newer, younger Slayer, the one born for the new generation." Buffy's heart plummeted as her fears were spoken aloud. But Giles went on, oblivious. "That alone is very exciting, because it means that there would be, for the first time, an opportunity for a new Slayer to learn not simply from the Watchers who have observed Slayers, but from a Slayer skilled enough to survive all her battles. A way of handing down information from one generation to another. We've never had that before."

"Very exciting," Buffy managed.

"But there's more. The older Slayer will become the new Slayer's mentor, her teacher...but also one of the most powerful tools against evil ever devised. Rather like a…a super-Slayer, as it were, one not only able to fight evil on this plane, but to carry the battle into the demon dimension itself."

Buffy closed her eyes. Well, she hadn't wanted to give up the battle. But still, wasn't this just what every girl wanted to hear? That as a reward for risking her life every night of that life for fifteen years and living on a Hellmouth, she would get to take bigger risks in Hell, itself. Gee, she had only died by drowning in this dimension. What new, fun and totally appalling ways would they find to kill her in the demon dimensions? And Buffy's birthday curse strikes one more time, she thought ruefully.

"So, I just wake up the morning of my thirtieth birthday and start to train my replacement while packing my bags for the netherworlds?"

"Yes. No. Well, there seems to be a bit more to it. Some sort of trial or binding…a ritual? And something about a shield that will always protect you. The wording is odd: it seems to indicate that the shield will dedicate itself to your protection, as if the shield had some sort of volition in all this. Well, with mystic weapons, one never knows. And, sadly, the texts aren't clear. But now that you are twenty-six, the Council will have to take note of things. My contacts report that there have already been a few rumblings, as your birthday got closer. Reminders of the old prophecies, you know. Now that you've made it this far, several of them have realized that they ought to research the matter more fully. They will have to be prepared…especially if the prophecies indicate that the new Slayer will be in some way bound to you."

"Bound to me?"

"In some way," Giles repeated. "Again, it isn't quite clear how or why." What was clear to Buffy was that the good old WC was bound to have a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the Slayer who had fired them having any influence at all with a new Slayer. She remembered when one of their operatives had spat in her face, knowing she was Buffy in Faith's body, enraged at what she had done to the Council. Perhaps she really didn't need to worry too much about living to thirty, if the Council was going to involve itself. Aloud she said, "Well, that sounds good Giles. We'll see what the WC comes up with." He smiled, not realizing she meant something far other than he did.

A few weeks later, Giles sustained an unexpected visit. Cordy came by his apartment, asking to borrow a specific volume that Wesley thought would help with a case they had. She promised to have it back as soon as the case was concluded. She also made an offer of any of the volumes that they had acquired, and handed him a scrap of parchment carefully preserved between panes of protective glass.

"Wesley thought you might want this. It's something called the Tarquinia Fragment."

"The Tarquinia…? Good Lord, where did you get this?" Giles fairly snatched it from her hand, examining the artifact eagerly.

"One of our clients turned it over to Angel, saying it was an arcane text that might be of interest to him. Angel took one look at it, growled and handed it to Wesley without a word. Wesley got very excited. Just like you."

"Yes, well, it's a prophecy concerning the Slayer. Something to do with a shield that will protect her…. "  Giles voice trailed off as he hit a section of text for which he would need to consult his dictionaries. He wasn't all that fluent in ancient Etruscan.

Sensing that she had lost his attention, Cordy cleared her throat. "Um, Giles? The Leighton Journals?"

"Sorry?" Giles blinked up at her. "Oh, yes. The journals, of course." He retrieved the journals, which had been bound into a single volume for ease of reference, and handed them to her. They exchanged a few pleasantries, catching each other up on the latest news.

It took a bit of time, and they were still talking amiably a few minutes later when Buffy came by before patrol.

"…and you'd think he'd at least try to date, now that the curse is lifted, or, well, the part of the curse that turned him into a 'grr' whenever he got groiney with the Blond One," she heard Cordy say just as she opened the door.

"So Angel's soul is anchored?" Giles said interestedly.

"Solid as Gibraltar," Cordy confirmed. They hadn't noticed her. Buffy quietly closed the door and walked away.

Angel's soul was anchored. The issue that had stood between them for so long, had caused them so much pain, was no longer an issue.

Except that it no longer mattered. He hated her. She could never make him happy. It was almost cruel that something which would once have meant the world to them had only been given to Angel when it was too late.

Too late for you, the voice whispered. Not too late for him… Buffy closed her eyes against the images of Angel, laughing and happy with a series of women. He couldn't, wouldn't, be with Buffy ever again. But there was no longer any reason for him not to find companionship and love with someone new. Then she remembered Cordy's words, that Angel wasn't even trying, and relief washed over her. Until she remembered that that didn't matter, either.

Angrily, she dashed away her tears. Nothing had changed and she was a fool to weep for what she had known, for nearly ten years for one reason or another, could never be. She had a patrol to do, and she should just get on with things.

Which, as ever, she did.

Not knowing that she had overheard his conversation with Cordy, and deciding that there was no need to rake up a painful topic, Giles did not mention the news about Angel's soul. He did tell her about the Tarquinia Fragment. It did, indeed, concern the shield that was to protect the Slayer.

"It seems that the Shield isn't a weapon after all. It's another warrior, one who will bind himself --or herself, as Slayers are traditionally female-- to the Slayer to ensure her protection."

"Bind, how?" Buffy asked. They were in her dojo, and Buffy was attacking her punching bag while Giles consulted his translation notes.

"Oh, well, as to that…"

"Let me guess," she said with a trace of humor, "'the texts aren't exactly clear.'"

"Yes, well…they aren't," Giles admitted as she continued to pummel the bag with admirable results. "But there will be some sort of ritual involved. 'Eternity rests in' --something, Circles, perhaps?-- 'thrice blessed.'"

"Hmm. Sounds like one of Willow and Tara's wicca circles. There are levels, you know, and each one is called a circle. And they have this thing about threes, returning 'three-fold good for good' and stuff."

"Or it could be the group itself," Giles thought. "Except that this shield seems to be an individual, not a group."

"Well, maybe he or she is part of the group, and the group is blessed, or they give this Shield person their blessing." Buffy sighed. Not only would she get to go to Hell, she'd get to have to drag along someone intent on 'shielding' her from harm. Why did that not sound like fun, but instead like a colossal pain in the ass? The more she learned about what might happen if she lived to be thirty, the less enthusiasm she had for it.

"Possible," Giles admitted after he had weighed her last remark. But he didn't think they had all the answers yet.

Encouraged by Buffy's seeming interest, Giles renewed his contacts in the W.C. As months passed and Buffy continued to defeat every demon, vampire or other-dimensional threat ranged against her, currents began to shift in the Council. Traditionalists found themselves increasingly under fire from Modernists. The later group felt that if a Slayer who had broken from the Council survived longer than any Slayer who had worked under their auspices, perhaps the Council needed to reconsider the way it trained and assisted Slayers. The Traditionalists fiercely denied that such radical changes needed to be made, but a growing number of Neutrals began to think that Buffy's unprecedented longevity argued otherwise. By the summer of her twenty-sixth year, if the tide had not turned, the undercurrents were certainly beginning to make themselves felt.

Not long after, Rupert Giles received a message from one of his Watcher's Council contacts. It was taken from a text to which only top levels of the Council had access. The political implication of this was almost as exciting to Giles as the text itself. Buffy managed a convincing show of enthusiasm as he explained what he had.

This time, they were at her apartment, and she had made the tea. However, her scones weren't as dry as Giles', principally because she never bothered making them herself, having found a bakery that not only supplied the authentic treat, but little pots of clotted cream and jam with which to eat them. Buffy had developed a real fondness for clotted cream, and since her physical activity had increased over the past few years, not slowed down, she could indulge in it without ever worrying about putting on too much weight.

In fact, Giles thought as he glanced at her surreptitiously, it would be a good thing if the fattening treat would add a few pounds to her too-thin frame. But there was little he could do about that. Buffy didn't starve herself. Her meals were nutritionally sound. But her appetite had been on the meager side for years. Food didn't appeal to her the way it had in her teen years.

Truthfully, nothing appealed to her as it had then. She used to go dancing with her friends at the Bronze on an almost nightly basis. There were still places where a young woman her age could go dancing in Sunnydale, but Buffy almost never went to them. In her teens, she had liked shopping. She had enjoyed makeup. She had taken time to manicure her nails, whenever she got a chance. Now…she made do with workout clothing and the occasional dress for formal events, such as a new opening at her mother's gallery. Only then would she bother with make-up, and if she remembered, her nails. Her hair… he wondered when she had last troubled to have it properly cut and styled. Most often, she simply braided the long mass of it to hang down her back. Practical and attractive enough. But perfunctory, as if Buffy no longer particularly cared how her hair looked.

Those weren't the only changes. Once, Buffy had had friends. Willow and Xander would have done anything for her, and they naturally drew others into Buffy's circle of Slayerettes. They still would do anything for her, Giles was certain. But they had made their own lives, Willow on the verge of achieving her doctorate, while Xander was rising in the ranks of the military. Oz had long since left Sunnydale, moving to New York after he split from the Dingoes and carved a solo career for himself as a solo musician. He and Willow remained friends, but she was committed to Tara, now. Xander and Anya were engaged, and planned to marry the following spring. Seeing their happiness, Buffy had not wanted anything to tarnish it. More and more, she kept her remaining friends out of the darkness that consumed her life.

There was only one thing that gave Giles hope, one thing which told him that however unhappy she was, her spirit was not totally crushed or obliterated. About once a month she touched up her hair, maintaining the glorious blond color she had chosen in her teens. It wasn't much, but as long as she kept making that one gesture, Giles believed there was hope for her.

Giles sighed. He felt so helpless in the face of Buffy's unhappiness. He knew, of course, why she was unhappy. But there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

Was there?

     A flicker of resentment crossed Giles mind, along with a host of painful memories and a glimmer of ---not so much an idea, as a fantasy of something he would very much like to do. Giles shook off the idle fancy and turned his attention back to the matter at hand, reading aloud the lines from the text he had received from his WC contact.

"Well, that's nicely cryptic," Buffy said as she smeared raspberry jam atop the cream on her scone. "What the hell does it mean?' She took a bite.

"I'm not really sure," Giles admitted. "According to the note sent to me with the text, these lines were written by a 5^th century Tibetan Buddhist nun --one of the earliest, since the religion had only been introduced to the country a few years before. She was in a trance at the time. When she came out of her trance, she couldn't read what she had written, because the language wasn't Sanskrit, the only form of writing known in Tibet until the 7^th century. Remarkably enough, she had written those lines in what would prove to be modern English…which wouldn’t come into existence for another thousand years, and at the other end of the world."

"Wow," Buffy said, genuinely impressed. "But, how do you know this applies to the Slayer?"

"Because the nun who created it said it did. She knew it would be important. She left instructions with her order as to how to preserve the text and to whom it should be given. Some eight hundred years after her death, it made its way to the Council…with the message that it would be of great concern to a future Slayer."

"Interesting," Buffy allowed. "But there's still no guarantee that this applies to me."

"I rather think that the fact that the text is in modern English is telling," Giles said dryly. "Buffy, for the ten thousand years that the Council has records --records older than civilization-- no Slayer has ever lived to be twenty-six. And language is constantly evolving, changing. This prophecy was clearly intended for a Slayer who will live to be thirty and whose native tongue will be modern English. The odds of that being anyone but you are so close to nonexistent as to be nonexistent."

Buffy smiled, not arguing the point. Perhaps Giles was right, perhaps not. It didn't really matter to her anymore. But, if it made him happy, she would play along.

"So, in the six or seven centuries since modern English got here, did anyone try to figure out what this means?"

"Any number of people," Giles said, his eyes lighting on the book he had brought with him. The volume was very, very thick and very, very dusty. Buffy eyed it warily.

"And?" she prompted.

"Well, the prophecy has intrigued scores of prominent members of the Council, our top men and women, over the years. Quite a few put forth their thoughts on the matter." His gaze returned to the book.

"Let me guess," Buffy said. "Those are their thoughts?"

"Compiled chronologically," Giles confirmed.

"So, what you're saying is, six hundred years of professional watchers couldn’t figure it out? And we've got, what, three years and five months? Not liking the odds, here." Buffy shook her head and reached for a second scone.

"That's rather the nature of prophecies, I'm afraid," Giles said as he removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, as he often did when under stress. "Until the circumstances present themselves, prophecies are open to any number of interpretations."

"So, what you're suggesting is, I should wing it," Buffy concluded. "Cool. I can do that."

"Buffy…"

Eventually, Giles persuaded her that she should at least familiarize herself with the lines, of the prophecy while he worked his way through six centuries of WC theories on the subject. With a sigh, Buffy agreed.

FEMFIC       PART 1        PART 3       FEEDBACK