Into the Abyss
by Rainne
Chapter Two
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The first thing I was aware of was a terrible crick in my neck. I winced as I tried to straighten up, then felt a warm hand close on my neck and begin to rub gently at the sore spot. I smiled and opened my eyes to see a concerned Buffy sitting to my right, her left hand behind my neck, touching me gently. She had that little wrinkle between her eyes that told me she was worried about something, and I reached up with my index finger to smooth it away. Her face cleared, and then she smiled at me.
In the two years since Dakota left us, we had drawn closer together than either of us had ever thought possible. We had developed a mental and emotional bond that transcended any type of friendship we'd had before — a connection that we both felt deep in our souls. I didn't even need to ask her what she was so worried about. I knew.
"It's okay," I whispered to her, leaning back and snuggling into her shoulder. "I've made my peace. It's all right."
She looked me in the eyes, as though carefully gauging my words, and then she nodded. "I just —"
"Worry about me," I finished for her. "I know, baby. But believe me, I am all of the good."
She grinned then and kissed my forehead. I knew what worried her. Two years ago, after the destruction of the Watchers' Council by a demon posing as a Watcher, Dakota had left us because she felt that the relationship between Buffy and myself could not develop properly if she were in the way. I was angry at the time — so much so that I said some things that I really didn't mean. It took me some time to get over being angry at Dakota for leaving and realize that what she did was exactly the right thing. Between the three of us, there was a connection of friendship love, and certainly of lust, but of true romantic love, there was none. I knew it, Buffy knew it, and Dakota knew it, which is why she left.
She took Janna home to her family first. We received regular letters from our favorite Potential, updating us on the state of her truck-driving uncles, cotton-farming parents and the seven young scamps that were her little brothers. But after Dakota left Georgia, I had no idea where she'd gone. It wasn't until almost nine months later, when I had finally calmed down enough to ask Buffy if she'd heard from Dakota, that I learned she was in England running the Academy with Faith. Then, Buffy had taken a sheaf of letters out of the far back of one of her desk drawers to show me — letters from Dakota that included photographs of the various students and photographs of herself and Faith and the beautiful countryside.
There was one particular picture that I had taken out of the envelope and kept with me, eventually framing it and standing it on the coffee table, of Dakota and Faith, looking at each other with expressions of such love and devotion that I couldn't hold the anger in my heart any more.
The letters told of the building of the Academy, the recruitment of Potentials and Partners, of triumphs and tribulations. And the letters told of Faith. The letters were intensely personal at times, speaking straight from the heart about the struggles that Faith had in learning to trust — the girls, the staff, Dakota, herself. And the descriptions of her trials broke my heart. I read line after line of ink blotted with tear marks as the writer fought to correctly portray the agony of endless nights filled with nightmares and the screams of a guilty conscience; by the time I was done reading, I was crying myself and wishing I could do something to make up for my own mistakes as a friend.
Now, a little over a year later, I was going to have my chance. I looked out the window of the airplane and saw the lines of London beneath us. As if in response to my peek, the "fasten seatbelts" sign came on and the pilot announced our imminent arrival at Heathrow Airport.
I turned to Buffy suddenly, and she laid a finger across my lips. "It's taken care of," she murmured.
I smiled and kissed her gently. "You always know," I whispered.
"Of course I do," she responded, grinning slightly. "It's my job."
My ears popped as we came down, and we waited interminably for our plane to pull up to the gate. Out the window I could see a long line of planes waiting to arrive at the gate, and I rolled my neck, hearing the vertebrae crack. "I'm gonna be so glad to get out of this airplane."
"Right with you there, babe," she responded. "Fourteen hours in transit makes for a cranky Slayer."
"At least we had a layover," I commented. "Can you imagine if it had been a nonstop flight? Ten hours in the same seat without a chance to move around?"
She groaned. "That's pretty much my vision of hell."
I raised the armrest between our seats and snuggled up close to her, not caring what anyone around us might think. She pulled me closer to her and I reveled in the scent of her shampoo as her hair fell down around my face. "I love you," I murmured.
"I love you, too," she replied. "And I promise you that in between taking care of business, we are going to enjoy being in England. They have horseback riding and hiking and stuff at the Academy, and all these quaint little villages to explore, and London of course, once we're done with what we need to do."
I grinned. "Can we go to Buckingham Palace and make faces at the Queen?"
She laughed. "If that's what you want to do, baby, we'll do it all day long and twice the next day."
"I knew you were going to say that."
Probably forty-five minutes later, we were finally able to stagger out of the airplane, down the concourse and into the airport. Signs directed us to the baggage claim and we went there, Buffy craning her neck constantly for someone we might recognize. We had just snagged the last of our bags off the carousel when a young brown-haired girl, probably fourteen years old, presented herself in front of us. She was dressed in khaki pants and a blue Oxford shirt and had a pin on her collar of a gold cross and a silver stake. Her brown eyes were wide and excited. "'Scuse me," she began. "Buffy Summers an' Willow Rosenberg?"
I had to smile at her accent — she'd pronounced my first name 'Willa.' Buffy turned to the girl and smiled. "I'm Buffy," she replied.
The girl's eyes, if possible, got even wider, and she stuttered hard before taking a very deep breath to calm herself. "I'm Kimberly Little," she finally was able to say. "Partner Trainee from Kiowa, Oklahoma. It's a real honor ta meet yew, Miss Summers, Miss Rosenberg. If ya wanna come with me, we've got a car waitin' on ya out front."
Behind her, a skycap came forward with a cart to take our luggage, then she led us through the maze of the airport and out into the London morning. A Mercedes car was idling at the curb and she opened the back door for us while the skycap loaded our luggage into the Mercedes' trunk. Once we were in, Kimberly shut the door and climbed into the front seat with another girl, a blonde, blue-eyed ice princess in a red shirt who introduced herself in a Slavic accent as Ivanka Kolenitska, a Slayer Potential from Warsaw, Poland. Both girls acted incredibly star-struck at being in the same car with the incredible Buffy Summers, and I poked Buffy in the ribs a couple of times, trying to get her to make eye contact with me. She steadfastly refused, and I knew that it was because if she did, we would both burst out laughing.
The ride to the manor was long, but it was up hill and down dale and through some of the prettiest country I had ever been privileged to see. The Cotswolds are a lovely place full of antique villages and country people and I was captivated by nearly everything I saw. Almost before I realized it, we were heading down a long road between two almost-mountains and Kimberly was turned around in her seat, telling us that this was the entrance road to the Academy. Then we rounded a bend in the road and the Academy was laid out before us in the valley floor.
I nearly lost my breath, it was so beautiful. The "manor" to which Dakota so often referred in her letters was really more of a small castle — six or seven stories with turrets on either end and broad lawns stretching out in either direction for hundreds of feet to meet the forest on three sides and the mountains on the fourth, where we came from. On the opposite side of the castle from us was a huge garden with a creek running through it which sparkled in the sunlight as we came down the mountain and into the valley of the Academy.
We rounded the castle to its west side, where we could see a troop of ten girls standing in quasi-military formation, dressed in what was apparently the uniform of the Academy: the same khaki pants and Oxford shirt that Kimberly and Ivanka wore. Five of the girls wore the same red as our driver; the other five wore the deep royal blue. Kimberly explained quickly that all Potentials wore red and Partner Trainees wore blue, so as to distinguish a student's designation at a glance, and that all students wore the cross-and-stake pin to identify themselves as Academy students. Ivanka drove the car to a rectangular, gravel-paved parking area and Kimberly scrambled out to open the door for us. We climbed out and were greeted by the sight of the ten girls near the door marching up to us in precise formation, executing a complicated choreographic maneuver, and ending at parade-rest in two rows before us, alternating shirt colors and looking very fine.
Buffy nudged me with her elbow as the two girls in the center stepped forward. One wore blue and one red, they wore the cross-and-stake pin on their right collar and both wore starburst pins on their left collar. They stood at absolute attention, strode right up to us, stopped, and bowed. "Welcome to the Academy of Slayers and Partners," the Potential girl said clearly in a German accent.
The Partner girl, in an accent that could be from nowhere but Brooklyn, followed her up with, "We are pleased to greet you as representatives of the student body and welcome you on behalf of our fellow students and our instructors."
"My name is Krista Leichtermann," the German potential stated. "I am the current Head of House for the Potential Slayers."
"My name is Kate Miglione," the New York girl threw in. "I am the current Head of House for the Partner Trainees."
"My Partner and I are pleased to inform you that you are invited to attend a midafternoon tea in the Great Parlor, after which certain entertainments have been arranged for your pleasure," Krista said.
"We should be pleased to escort you there now," Kate added, "or if you are fatigued from your journey and wish to rest, we can guide you to your apartments where you may take your ease."
They stopped then, obviously waiting on our response. I was too impressed to say anything, so Buffy answered for both of us, telling the girls that we'd be pleased to attend tea in the Great Parlor.
Krista turned slightly to her left. "Langley and Cage, you will take Miss Summers's and Miss Rosenberg's bags to their apartments please." At these words, the two girls at the end of the line broke away and moved to the trunk of the car.
Kate turned slightly to her right. "Velasquez, Nguyen, you will escort Miss Summers and Miss Rosenberg to the Great Parlor, please, while the rest of the platoon prepares for the afternoon's entertainment."
Two more girls stepped forward and bowed slightly to us, and the troop executed another complicated maneuver which ended with all the remaining Partners on our right and Potentials on our left, forming a sort of column for us to walk through as the two girls, stiff with pride, led us into the main entryway of the castle and down the hall, ostensibly toward the Great Parlor.
Two more girls stood at the doors to the Great Parlor, uniformed and at attention, a Potential and a Partner. When I saw them, I realized that everything was done two-by-two, a Potential and a Partner together. These girls were being carefully trained to work together as elements of a team, rather than as superior and inferior the way Watchers and Slayers once had. I liked it.
Our escorts led us up to the door. The doorkeepers bowed to us and opened the double doors for us, and our escorts led us into the huge Great Parlor. As we walked in, I would have been dazzled by the opulence if, in the dead center of the huge, richly decorated room, had not stood Dakota, in black denim jeans, a green turtleneck and her favorite Doc Marten boots; and Faith, in blue jeans, a white silk shirt and white high-topped sneakers. They both wore huge grins that I know were matched by the grins on mine and Buffy's faces, as the four of us met in the center of the room to hug one another as hard as we could.