Fic: Shanshu 45 - When You Have Neither

[dragonyphoenix]

Title: When You Have Neither
Fandom: BtVS
Prompt: 475 - Titanic
Rating: PG
Summary: Another chapter for Shanshu
Word Count: 2470
Note on scene title: When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler. - Al Gore

Millay didn't argue when Xander and Dawn had commandeered one of the vans so they could return to LA immediately. Anything that got her to Will sooner was okay in her book. The Slayers were staying to close the Hell-thingy, assuming there even was a Hell-thingy, but Millay had seen the creatures that had climbed out of the crater. Those monsters would put even Nosferatu to shame. She'd also seen them turn to dust when killed. If Hell-thingys did exist, then the more people making sure they were properly closed the better, but Xander said the Slayers had it covered and that was good enough. Millay might not believe in Hell-thingys and vampires, but she did believe in Will, who might or might not be in LA. If he was, she wanted to be there with him.

By the time they'd driven a half-hour, Millay had tried Will's cell ten times. “Why wouldn't he pick up?”

Dawn, driving, shared a glance with Xander.

“What?”

Xander turned around in the front seat to look at her. “You know those Hell dimensions you don't believe in?”

“I'm not saying I necessarily don't believe,” Millay replied. “I don't have enough data.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Well, time can move differently there. Angel was gone once for a whole glorious month only for him it was more like hundreds of years.”

Millay grabbed onto the armrest as the van swerved to the left. Note to self, wear a seat-belt when driving with any of this crew.

“Hey!” Xander shouted as Millay scrambled to buckle up.

“Sorry. Sorry.” Dawn righted the van. “I just realized Spike could be old, like real old.”

“I suppose.” Xander didn't sound particularly concerned.

Will. Old. Assuming any of this were true. Well, parts of it seemed true but Hell dimensions? That was just too weird.

“So anyway,” Xander added. “His cell might be out of power.”

“But if he thought to turn it off, then …” Millay thumped her head against the seat. “He wouldn't have thought to turn it back on. He's been a Luddite since day one.”

“Well, yeah,” Dawn chimed in. “If the Spike part of him was suppressed, more than his human memories I mean, then his most recent memories would have been from about a hundred-and-thirty years back.”

So Will, or Spike she supposed, now had over a hundred years of memories that he hadn't even known he was missing. Shit, that just made her head hurt. “I don't suppose there's Tylenol.”

“Back of the van. Med kit.”

Millay thought about unbuckling. After that display of bad driving, pain pills could wait. Millay mostly wished Dawn would speed it up. The sooner she was in LA to see that Will was okay, the better.

The rest of the trip did go by more quickly, largely because Xander suggested they play license plate games to pass the time, find all the different states, working through the alphabet using only letters on the plates, that sort of thing.

They left the car at the curb outside of the Jenkin's School with Dawn tossing the keys to a girl. A Slayer? Once inside, they followed the sounds of shouting to what was either a small library or a large office. The walls were lined with shelves and books but the desk looked like it belonged in an office. Buffy and the large guy she was shouting at each noticed them but didn't stop quarreling. “You said you didn't want it. You told me you'd be of more help to me as a vampire.”

Millay took a step back, which left her in the doorway to the room. Vampire? He didn't look like those creatures from the crater.

“Buffy, the world's at stake. Remember? Apocalypse?”

“This isn't about an apocalypse and you know it.”

“Oh, right, because only your precious Spike is allowed to be a Champion. Is that it?”

“Nuh uh, Angel. You're not distracting me with that. Tell me once and for all. Do you want to Shanshu?”

“Yes.”

Her tone grew cold. It was a lost scarier than the shouting. “Then why did you tell me otherwise?”

The big guy, Angel, was still shouting though. “Because that's what you wanted to hear. You didn't want a husband, someone you could walk in the sunlight with, someone who could possibly father your children …”

“Children? You mean I actually get to be an aunt?” Dawn squealed and ran at them, interrupting the fight. “Wait, Shanshu? How can Angel Shanshu?”

“He can't, or at least he's not going to.”

“You don't get to say what I can or can't do, not when it comes to saving the world.”

Xander motioned Millay out of the room. “They're not going to stop arguing any times soon.”

“Xander, in the van the Slayers said there can be only one Shanshu. Will's it. He's the Shanshu. If he's alive, then how could this Angel become the Shanshu?” Oh Goddess, and now she was acting like she believed it, but maybe that didn't matter. They believed that 'there can be only one' nonsense and they believed Will was that one. Was Will dead?”

“Hey.” Xander rested his hand on her shoulder. “Will's not dead. They'd have told us.” The weight of Xander's hand was comforting, but it didn't reassure her. “Come on, we'll find someone who'll talk.”

They found Andrew in a a library, this one larger than the first, three stories tall. Another man and a bunch of teen girls, Slayers?, were lost in musty old books. Actually Andrew had been reading as well, but he did more than glance up and she followed Xander in. “Hey Xander. Hellmouth closed?”

“We left the Slayers on it. What's this with Angel Shanshuing?”

“Oh, well, that's …”

There was a loud shushing sound from the other man. “We're researching here. Take your chatter outside.”

They stepped into the hall and before Xander had finished closing the door behind them, Millay asked Andrew, “Where's Will?” She didn't care about this Shanshu shit, even if it was real.

“Willow? Well …”

“No, William. You call him Spike. Where is he? Is he alive?”

“Well, yeah, of course.” Will must be okay. Andrew looked surprised that she'd even asked. “He ran off after Willow. They're arguing about the Shanshu.”

“Who isn't?” Xander asked. “We caught a bit of it from Buffy and Angel. What's up anyway? I thought the Shanshu was a 'there can be only one' deal.”

“Yeah,” Andrew replied, “but it doesn't always have to be the same one.”

“Huh? You lost me there.” Good, at least Xander was as confused as she was.

“Well, see, if the Shanshu is a vampyre who's recently gotten his soul back, as in got his soul with the Shanshu, which is how you'd actually expect it to go although that's not what happened with Spike, anyway then he'd be sort of unstable, psychologically. The same goes for Spike because even though he's had his soul, he hadn't had his memories until recently so his psyche's unstable sort of like when he first got his soul and he was all crazy only it's not as obvious right now. But Angel, he's had his soul for ages and he's had all his memories all this time so the Shanshu won't mess with his mind.”

“So, you don't want Spike to remember who he was.”

“That would be one fix because then his psyche would be a lot more stable than it is now. I don't think anyone's suggested it thought. Maybe I should fill Wesley in.”

“Oh no you don't.” Xander grabbed Andrew before he could get back into the library. “We still don't know what's going on.”

“But I told you. When we transfer the Shanshu, Spike should keep all his memories, assuming he survives that is but there's a good chance he will, or we think so anyway. Oh, I guess I didn't fill you in on this part. So we can't destroy the artifacts, or at least not yet. So more demons could come and grab Spike and try to end the world but that kind of apocalypse only works if the Shanshu in question has an unstable psyche. So if we did transfer the Shanshu to Angel then the world would be all safe. It's not a complicated spell although we do need titanic metal, and not as in from the shipwreck of the Titanic but as in some kind of alloy of titanium, and I'm not the only one who asked about the Titanic. Buffy did too and I beat her to saying jinx but then everyone started arguing and the whole jinx bit sort of got lost …”

“Wait.” Xander was holding onto his head as if it hurt. “You're saying that Angel, Mr. Broody McBroody, is the most stable vampire we've got?”

Great. Neither of them were making sense and Millay still hadn't seen Will. But, wait, she had her GPS tracker. Ah, quite close. Xander waved but kept talking with Andrew as Millay followed the signal. She made a few wrong turns because the signal didn't take hallways into account, but as she got closer, the shouting led her to him.

“You want to die.” It was the voice of a woman. Big surprise, that, around here.

“I bloody well do not.” The voice was Will's but he accent and the phrasing were off. “You heard Wes. There's a better than even chance I'll survive.”

“Great. Only a forty-nine percent chance that you'll die.”

Millay peeked through the door. It seemed to be a classroom, biology based on the skeleton at the back. Will was dressed as she'd last seen him although his clothes were much dirtier, as if he'd been living in them for weeks. The woman he was shouting with, a pretty little red-head, was almost as dirty as Will.

“If I'm the Shanshu, the world's at risk. You know I'm barely holding myself together.”

“Oh yeah, but what if we give the Shanshu to Angel and them someone kills Buffy. Are you saying after that he'd be anything close to stable?”

Will ran his hand through his hair and half-twisted around, enough to see the doorway. “Millay!”

“And don't you throw your girlfriend, even if she is your ex, in my face.”

“No, her, by the door, that's Millay.” He made introductions as he walked over. Even the way he moved seemed different. “Willow, Millay. Millay, Willow. What are you doing here?”

What was she doing here? Really? “Helping save you from a Hell dimension.”

“Oh, that, well, uh … It's complicated. I take it someone filled you in?”

“So it's true?” Millay asked.

“Most likely. Who'd you talk to? It wasn't Andrew, was it? Because he's not the most reliable …”

“Buffy. Xander. Maria. Yakone.”

“Oh, okay.” He looked a bit astounded. “They'd have given you the straight ticket.”

“Maybe you can convince him to not kill himself,” Willow called out from across the room.

Will turned back as if Millay wasn't even in the room. Huh, he cared for her then. “It's not killing myself. I went out as a Champion at Sunnydale. If I do die, and that is an if no matter what you seem to think, it'll be the same thing here.”

“You've already given up your life. You shouldn't have to die again.”

“If I do have to die, better to do it passing the Shanshu rather than being killed by some demon using the Shanshu to end the world.”

“Andrew said you could keep the Shanshu if you didn't have your memories.” And what the hell had prompted her to say that?

“What?” They both turned on her.

“Andrew,” Millay explained. “He said if you didn't have your memories, you'd be psychologically stable and the demons couldn't use you that way.”

They both looked stunned for a moment but then Will shook his head. “No, won't work. It was too easy to revive my memories. I'd be even more of a risk than I am now because I wouldn't know to be careful.”

“You see? You do want to die. You're not even considering an alternative.”

“What is this die thing?” Millay asked before they could get going again. “Why would he die?” She addressed Willow, figuring if this had to do with Will dying, she'd get a more honest answer from the woman.

“Shanshu takes a vampire and makes him human, alive again. If we transfer it, then the original Shanshu, the one who's giving it up, would become dead.”

“Or become a vampire again,” Will added.

“You don't know what it will do,” Willow accused.

“Neither do you.”

“Hey,” Millay shouted. They turned to stare. “Will, let me talk to her.” He looked like he was about to argue. “William Edmund Pratt.”

He walked off, shaking his head as he left.

“So, you're Will's hacker girlfriend, ex-girlfriend.”

“And you're Spike's hacker witch.”

“He told you about me?” Her words ran together quickly, as if she was excited, and then slowed down. “Oh, wait, he couldn't have. He didn't have his memories when he knew you.”

“Two and a half hour trip on the way to the Sunnydale crater. Xander, Dawn, and Buffy filled me in.”

“Oh, that's good. Uh, wait, Dawn? Shouldn't she be in classes on the other side of the continent?”

“I didn't quite follow that bit. Something about her flipping through dimensions to find Will.”

“Oh.”

Millay hopped up onto the desk at the front of the room. “So, this spell that's going to kill Will. How do we stop it?”

“Oh!” Willow started pacing, quickly walking back and forth, but her gait slowed as she spoke. “We could, uh, that is …” She stood still and stared at Millay without speaking.

“That's the crux right there. You can't stop Will when he knows he's right.”

“So I just have to go along with it.” Willow sounded bitter and Millay didn't blame her.

“You like him.”

“Well, we were together for about a week. I mean, I don't like like him, but maybe I pre-like like him? I could be coming to care for him.” She sighed. “Which means I can't control him. Or, uh, not that I would even if I didn't like him, I mean I just can't stop him from risking his life just because I like him.”

“Or maybe you should be brainstorming,” Millay suggested.

“Huh?”

“Andrew said that amnesia would stabilize his psyche. Maybe something else might. It doesn't seem as if you've searched outside the box.”

“Oh. Oh!” Willow jumped to her feet. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“To the library. Research.”