Alternity's Lieder
By Blair Provence

TITLE: Alternity's Lieder  (2/?)
AUTHOR:  Blair Provence
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  aggiemo@msn.com
SPOILER WARNING:  To third season, I suppose, up to the finale. An alternate future.  This story is a sequel to my fic "Alternity", available at the New Buffy/Giles Relationshippers and A Watcher's Love.
RATING:  NC-17 - (Buffy/Giles)
ARCHIVE:  The above two sites.  If anyone else wants it, let me know.
DISCLAIMER:  Everything Buffy belongs to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Warner Brothers.  He'd never let Buffy and Giles have *this* much fun, so I feel obligated to do so.
SUMMARY:  Buffy and Giles return home to try and rescue Willow, despite the danger posed by the Watcher Council's Tarakan Assassins and the return of Angel to their lives.  Sequel to "Alternity".  Beware of Angst.

FEEDBACK IS WELCOME AND APPRECIATED!

Alternity's Lieder (2/?)


     Cordelia Chase was bored.

     It wasn't an unusual state of mind for her to be in these days, and she'd become rather adept at hiding it from the people she'd met in Los Angeles.  Not that it took much effort to conceal her true self from them, really - the people she'd come to know while pursuing her non-starter acting career were generally too self-involved to notice her, and the ones she'd met while attending college part-time were...well, they weren't what she would call perceptive.

     Case in point - Stephanie Kanelos, perky new sorority sister, who'd been nattering on about interior decorating for over an hour as they stood in the upstairs hallway of their sorority house.  Cordelia had found it necessary to bite her lip repeatedly to keep from telling the girl that she didn't *care* what color the hallway was painted, or whether or not it would complement an Autumn skin tone.  Of course, Cordelia herself was a Summer and a Winter, which meant they could never agree, anyway.

     As her mind wandered, she began to consider just exactly when it was that she'd stopped caring about so many things that had previously mattered to her a great deal.  It had always been a dream of hers to go to college and join her mother's sorority, conquering the university campus as easily as she had ruled Sunnydale High.  It had *mattered* to her, in some indefinable way, and now suddenly it didn't, and she couldn't figure out why that was - she just knew that the realization of the change in her made her vaguely unhappy.

     <I've been hanging around Angel too much,> she chastised herself, frowning slightly at the mental image of her erstwhile boss.  She probably needed to start spending just a little more time around the living, but, unfortunately, she required a job in order to finance the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed, and he paid much more money for much less time and work than would any other boss she might be able to find.  That left her free to do other things - like attempt to become an actress, which hadn't worked out so far, or join her mother's sorority, which she had done.

     And, thus, her boredom.

     She sighed, mentally wishing that Angel would beep her and remove her from the vicinity of Stephanie's tedious ruminations - perhaps with some news on Willow's whereabouts.  He'd been in Sunnydale for several days now, doing what he could to aid the search effort.  Cordelia hadn't gone with him - mainly because he hadn't asked her, not because she didn't care.  In fact, she had found herself worrying about her former friend quite often in the past several weeks as the passage of days made it more and more unlikely she would be found unharmed.  Angel had informed her that Oz and Xander were going crazy with worry, an assertion that Cordelia had no trouble believing.  They'd all been insane enough after Buffy and Giles had left, and that hadn't even been a kidnapping.

     She wondered if Buffy and Giles knew about Willow.

     "Cordelia?"

     "Wh-hmm?  Did you say something?"

     Stephanie regarded her strangely.  "Are you all right?"

     "Fine," she replied impatiently.  "What is it?"

     Stephanie held up another paint sample.  "Well, I-"

     "Cordelia!" a voice called from down the hall.  She turned to see Karen Simmins rushing toward them.  "There you are! There's someone here to see you."

     Cordelia frowned at the brunette.  "Who?"

     Karen shrugged.  "She wouldn't tell me her name.  Kinda creepy, though.  Wouldn't think that *you'd* hang with someone like that, but, well..."  Her voice trailed off suggestively, and Cordelia bit back an icy retort.  Karen had never made a secret of the fact that she didn't like Cordelia - her attitude reminded Cordelia eerily of Harmony - and they never let a chance to snipe at each other pass by unremarked.

     But the characterization of her visitor as 'creepy' had Cordelia thinking about weightier matters than Karen's bitchy attitude.  Angel had insisted on bodyguards for everyone in the weeks after Buffy and Giles had disappeared, concerned that the Tarakans would make an attempt to use their friends to draw them out, but as the months had gone by the protection had fallen to the wayside.  Cordelia had railed against having her own protectors from the very beginning, arguing that anyone who knew the slightest bit about her relationship with Buffy wouldn't think harming *her* would bring the Slayer back.  They'd be more likely to target her mother, or Angel, or Xander...or Willow.   

     She'd been proven right, hadn't she?  They'd gone for Willow, hadn't they?

     So why was she suddenly wishing for a stake or a cross or even a watergun full of Holy Water...though they would probably be useless against a non-vampire foe, anyway, come to think.

     "Where is she?" she asked, her tone resigned.

     "In the lounge downstairs."

     Cordelia turned her back on her 'friends' and descended the staircase, trying to mentally visualize the lounge's interior and any knickknacks that might be used as a weapon.  But the room was empty when she entered.  "Hello?"

     And suddenly she was *there*, appearing as if from thin air.

     "Hello, Cordelia."

     Cordelia felt her heart stop for a brief moment.  "Buffy?" she whispered disbelievingly.

     Buffy smiled thinly.  "Yeah.  It's me.  How are you, Cordy?"

     "Better than *you*," Cordelia automatically replied with her customary tactlessness.  She wasn't trying to be insulting, however; the visible changes in Buffy were startling to see.  Her slender frame, never robust even in the old days, was now painfully thin.  Her skin was pale and makeup-less, dark circles shrouding her eyes, and her blonde hair was done up in a haphazard ponytail.  She wore a skintight baseball shirt with the number twelve printed across the front in large blue type and a pair of well worn black jeans, topped by a battered leather jacket.  Scuffed Doc Marten boots completed the look, and Cordelia suddenly understood why Karen had thought her 'creepy'. Buffy looked, for the first time in Cordelia's recollection, overtly menacing.
    
     And rather impatient.

     "Seen enough?" Buffy asked, arching an eyebrow.

     "Um, I guess so."

     "Good," she replied.  "We need your help, Cordy."

     Cordelia blinked - of all the words she had never expected to come from Buffy's mouth...."My help?" she squeaked.

     "Yes," Buffy replied, glancing behind Cordelia through the doorway.  "We can't talk about it here, though.  Your 'sisters' seem to be very curious."

     Cordelia turned to catch a glimpse of Karen and Stephanie before they disappeared from view.  <Dammit.>  "All right, fine. Where do you want to meet?"

     Buffy seemed to appreciate her quick understanding of the gravity of the situation.  "Somewhere nearby, but a place you don't go usually.  A pancake house or something - Giles and I haven't had breakfast yet."

     Cordelia couldn't squelch a sudden grin.  "Giles is with you?  He's all right?"

     A strange little smile ghosted across Buffy's lips.  "He's fine - but we thought he wouldn't blend in Greekville.  He's waiting in the car.  Can you think of a place?"

     Cordelia frowned.  "Yes, I-..."  She walked over to one of the wall cabinets and extracted a phone book.  "Here we are," she said, pointing to an entry without naming it, in case curious ears hadn't really departed.  "Do you want me to write it down for you?"

     Buffy glanced at the entry.  "No, I've got it, and I can find it, no problem.  Ex-L.A. girl, remember?  We'll drive around a bit, make sure neither of us is being followed, and then meet you there...uh, that is, if you can get away right now?"

     Oh, well, she didn't really like psychology class anyway. "Sure, no problem."  The Slayer turned to leave, and a sudden horrible thought occurred to Cordelia.  Was she going to have to break the news to Buffy?  Or was Willow's disappearance the reason for Buffy's *re*appearance?  Angel or Spike certainly would have discovered if the Tarakan contract had been canceled. And if it hadn't...well, Willow was one of the few people who could bring them back out of hiding, wasn't she?  "Buffy? Is...is this about Willow?"

     Buffy's shoulders tensed visibly.  "Yes," she said, turning back, and Cordelia flinched at the dark pain in the Slayer's eyes.  "Don't call anyone, all right?  We need to talk first."

     "Sure, okay," Cordelia agreed, suddenly unwilling to let Buffy leave quite so soon. "So, um, tell me something - how did you know I'd be here?"

     Buffy's expression softened a little, as if she understood Cordelia's mixed emotions upon seeing her again.  "Well, Xander told me this was where you were going to school before we left, and I remembered you talking about joining your mother's sorority, so we took a chance."

     A dim memory emerged from the back of Cordelia's mind - a cold winter afternoon inside the library, Buffy training with the attack dummy, Xander telling stupid knock-knock jokes...and Cordelia doodling greek letters on a notebook.  And Buffy had remembered that?  Abruptly Cordelia felt slightly ashamed.  She'd always assumed that Buffy had only heard about one quarter of the things she'd said and then dismissed them as pointless babble. Had she misjudged *everyone* she'd known in high school?  "Oh. Well, look, I'll do whatever I can to help you, okay?"

     Buffy nodded, offering Cordelia a wan smile of gratitude, before slipping from the room, her steps silent on the thick carpet. 

     Cordelia exhaled gustily as she felt her heart begin to beat again.  "Oh, my *God*," she muttered, swaying back against the arm of one plush couch.  Buffy was back - Buffy was *here*...and she needed Cordelia's help.  The thought was staggering.  "Wow."

     "Old friend?" Karen's voice interrupted snidely. 

     Cordelia looked up to find the other girl lounging in the doorway, sporting her usual sneer, but for the first time since Cordelia had met Karen, she felt absolutely no desire to insult her.  Because she wasn't important - Cordelia had better things to do.  "*Good* friend," she corrected, brushing past the other girl.  "See you around, Karen." 

*****

     Willow Rosenberg was bored.

     If anyone had ever asked her what her state of mind would be in the event of being kidnapped by fiends bent on murdering her and her friends, bored wouldn't have even been on the list. Terrified, horrified, fearful, frightened, panicked, petrified, paralyzed...and all accompanying synonyms, yes, but definitely not bored.

     But she was.  She was even desperate enough to wish for Quentin Travers to return to issue another round of vague but ominous threats, just so she'd have someone else to talk to.  She had long since exhausted her personal repertoire of happy thoughts, and had even grown tired of her gloomy ones.  Plus, she was suffering from internet-withdrawal, Oz-withdrawal, and magick-withdrawal, not necessarily in that order.  Travers' compatriots had done something to her holding cell, and none of the spells she had tried had worked, not even partly.

     She'd been locked in that room for three weeks, two days, and fifteen hours.  Travers had last visited her two weeks, one day, and ten hours ago - when he had departed in a huff after she'd thrown her tenth shepherd's pie at him, in a fit of both personal and culinary outrage.  He hadn't visited her since that day.  Meals appeared through the slot in the door every few hours, the private bathroom took care of her other needs, and she'd watched so many hours of mindless daytime television that she was actually beginning to *care* whether or not Bo and Hope Brady got back together.

     <I've got to get out of here,> had become her mental mantra - except when other, more frightening thoughts crept in, like the ones concerning her second deepest fear - that Buffy and Giles would find out what had happened and come back to try and save her.

     The only thing she feared more was that they wouldn't.

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