FIC - Into the Abyss (6/10) - NC-17 - B/W; F/D

[<djgirl1978@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Into The Abyss
Pairing: B/W, F/Dakota
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: the usual.
Spoilers: none
Feedback: Yeah :)
Distribution: Ask first.
Summary: Next in the Daywalker Cycle. A minor apocalypse goes down at the Slayer Academy.
---
 
Willow was enchanted by the dining hall at the Academy, declaring that it looked just like the great hall at Hogwarts from the Harry Potter books; Buffy, who had been made to sit through the movie three times so far, thought privately that it did not in the least resemble Hogwarts, but she was willing to let this ride in favor of maintaining domestic harmony. Sometimes the smartest Slayer is the silent Slayer, she told herself as they were seated at the main table on the dais. Dakota and Faith were seated to Buffy's right and Miss Maisri and Mrs. Katherine to Willow's left, all six seats facing the rest of the large room, where two long wooden trestle tables sat waiting to be occupied by students.
 
A bell tolled the hour of seven somewhere in the building and when its tones died away, the main doors of the dining hall opened to admit two columns of girls walking well in step together into the hall. They marched up the center aisle two by two and the two girls at the heads of the columns stopped about four feet from the dais. When the sounds of footsteps had completely died away and every girl was standing straight and tall in the middle of the hall, Dakota stood. "Good morning, ladies."
 
"Good morning, Miss Dakota," they responded in unison, and their voices filled the room.
 
The headmistress smiled at them. "There are just a few announcements this morning. Inspections will be held as usual this morning at eight-thirty. Please make sure that your rooms are clean, and those of you who might be hiding contraband, Dawn, please make sure it's hidden better today than it was last week. Due to the special circumstances of the visitors we have this week, all non-language classes will be suspended for the remainder of theweek. Mrs. Katherine asks me to remind you that you all have exams today in Latin and to please be prepared because if she has to listen to forty-four people botch the ablative case, she might just go starkers." She paused, thinking. "Oh! One other thing, and then you can all eat. The kitchen respectfully requests that the midnight raids on the sweets cabinets stop, or at least radically taper off, before they're forced to start keeping a pit bull in front of the cabinet doors. Let's eat."
 
She sat back down and the girls broke ranks and swarmed the tables. Mealtimes were one of the few unregimented times at the Academy, and the studentswere permitted to sit wherever and with whomever they chose. Buffy and Willow were both surprised to see that they didn't voluntarily segregate themselves into Potentials and Partners, but instead mixed together as friends.They saw also that no girl sat alone. Everyone had someone sitting with them, and though there were a few sets of just two girls sitting together, they seemed to be having private conversations and not simply isolating. As they settled down, the kitchen staff streamed in from somewhere behind the dais, carrying steaming platters of food and pitchers of various different beverages. The noise level in the room abated somewhat as the girls applied themselves to their breakfast, and kept dropping as the girls, finishedeating, began slipping out in ones and twos in order to make sure that their rooms were ready for inspection.
 
Buffy was ravenous and fell to with a gusto she hadn't felt in quite a while. The food was excellent, and she wondered briefly if she hadn't ought tomake Faith go back to California and let her stay here for a while. She leaned over and mentioned this quietly to Willow, who burst out laughing andnearly choked on her buttered egg. Two of the girls nearest her pointed and teased her gently in foreign accents. She responded in kind and they bantered back and forth for a bit, until the girls were done eating and excused themselves "to go and hide our contraband."
 
At these words, Buffy poked Faith. "What's contraband around here?"
 
Faith shrugged. "Lotsa stuff, actually; more than you'd expect. Illegal stuff, of course. Drugs, smokes and alcohol are absolutely not tolerated. Anybody that we catch with 'em gets one warning, and that warning involves twenty licks and a month on kitchen duty; after that I don't know what we'll do. We've just had the one girl get caught with smokes, and she was smart enough not to get caught again. Can't very well expel a Potential, can we?" She shrugged. "Minor stuff that we can overlook sometimes... well, mostly food and stuff. We don't like 'em to have food in their rooms on account of mice and roaches. Dawn's got some nudie mags - Dakota found 'em pokin' out from under her mattress last week. We don't like 'em to burn candles in their rooms on account of Chimi once set her mattress on fire, and especially some of the younger girls are careless about things like that."
 
Buffy nodded. "Safety issues."
 
"You bet," Faith answered. "We're a little regimented, sure, but we're no military school. Most of what we do with the marching and stuff's just to build some discipline into these kids. 'Cause we know what happens when a Slayer gets out into the world with no discipline and thinkin' she's the shit, don't we, B?"
 
Buffy sighed. "Want, take, have."
 
Faith nodded and turned back to her hotcakes. After a long moment, she spoke again. "I don't want any of these girls to have to go what you went through trying to control me, or what I went through trying to be me. Neitherone of us got the long end of the stick on that deal, did we, B?" When Buffy shook her head, Faith continued, "They don't know that I was the rogue Slayer." She said this quietly, and almost as though she were ashamed of hiding her past. "We were afraid that if they knew, they wouldn't respect me as much. And they have to, otherwise I can't keep discipline."
 
Buffy nodded and laid her hand on Faith's shoulder. "You're probably right," she said gently. "They don't need to know who it was. It's enough for them to know that she existed, what she did, and what happened to her. Besides," she added, squeezing the shoulder for emphasis, "the girl who did all those things is dead."
 
Faith looked up at Buffy then, and the blonde Slayer saw tears standing in her counterpart's eyes. "Thanks, B," Faith choked out, and the two Slayersshared an embrace that told them both all was forgiven.  
 
Across them, Dakota and Willow locked eyes and smiled.
---
After breakfast, I took Willow upstairs to the sixth floor, which was whereMaisri's magickal workrooms were. "I thought you might like to see these," I told her, which was true. "There won't be any students up here right now, because they're not allowed above the fourth floor and also because there's something we need to talk about."
 
She gave me the sort of quasi-innocent look that I've seen on many a student's face, the one that says 'I don't think I've done anything but oh, God, what have I done this time?' I shook my head, leading her into one of the private rooms. "It's just a concern that I have."
 
We sat down and she waited for me to speak. I debated for a few seconds how to begin and then just plunged into it. "That book. You've still got it."
 
She nodded. "I've been reading it. Most of it makes my skin crawl, but there's parts of it that are intriguing and that I think are worth a second look."
 
I shook my head. "It's dangerous stuff, Will. Someone was using it to tryand find a way to kill the current Slayer by using the magick of the Slayer line. I don't know who they were trying to target, but I'm not comfortable with that book being out of the tower."
 
"I'm almost done with it," she hedged. "I think it's important to know what he was trying to do, in case someone ever tries it again. We'd know how to counter them."
 
It was a logical argument. It made sense. And I still loved Willow and wanted to trust her. So I nodded. "Good point. Just don't let anyone else have it, okay? And when you're through looking at it, make sure it goes back in the tower?"
 
She nodded in agreement with me and we let the topic drop, going on with our tour of the magick floor and then catching up with Faith and Buffy to go on a riding tour of the grounds.  
---
When Kotie caught up with me and B, she had the look on her face that says everything's fine, but she had the ice in her eyes that says something's bothering her on a level where she might not even realize it herself yet. I knew she meant to talk to Red about that damn book when they were upstairs and I had to assume that was the problem, 'cause there was nothing else that could've been that kind of wrong. I couldn't think of any excuse to talkto her privately without seeming rude, though, so I had to let it go untillater. On our way out to the barn, the ice seemed to thaw a little bit, so I decided maybe it wasn't so much of an emergency, but I trusted Kotie's instincts. More so than that, even, I trusted that gift of hers that lets her see the future. I put my concerns on the back burner in favor of the ride we were about to take, concentrating on showing our guests the best that the Academy had to offer.
 
"So what's the name of the estate, anyway?" Buffy asked as she mounted Worrywart, a calm gelding who'd earned his name as a nervous little colt.
 
I gave her my best 'Huh?' look. "It's the Academy, B," I told her, wondering whether she'd lost her mind.
 
She rolled her eyes. "Don't all these places have names? Like Whoosit Estates and Whatchamacallit Place?"
 
"Kismet Manor," Kotie stated from atop Snack Pack, humor loud in her voice."Believe it or not."
 
"Kismet Manor?" Willow replied, nearly hysterical with laughter and trying to calm down before mounting Long Shot.
 
I frowned. "What's funny?"
 
Buffy shook her head at our laughing spouses. "Kismet is another word for fate or destiny," she told me.
 
"Oh!" That made sense. Then I glared at Kotie. "You're making that up."
 
"I swear I'm not," she responded, right hand in the air. "Slayer Scout's honor. It had that name before we took it over. I'm thinking some Council wag named it that forever ago."
 
"Smartasses." I rolled my eyes, tightening the girth on Texas Rose. I stuck my foot in the stirrup and mounted, feeling Kotie's eyes on my rear end as I did so. I turned and glanced at her.
 
Busted, she blushed and then grinned. She edged Snack Pack up next to me, grabbed me by the front of my shirt, pulled me forward, and laid one on me like she'd never done before. When she finally let me go, I couldn't breathe and I nearly fell off Texas Rose. Buffy and Willow applauded and then Igot embarrassed and I had to turn and mess with the saddlebags until they left me alone. When the red was gone out of my face, I turned back around and got us on the trail.
---

~~Rainne
******
Willow: [Spells] work, Riley, but they take concentration, being attuned with the forces of the universe.
Xander: Right. You can't just go 'Librum incendere' and expect - [book catches fire]
Giles: Xander, don't speak Latin in front of the books.
-- Superstar -- Buffy 4x17 --