A Few Key Sunnydale Alum

They're standing side by side, at an approximation of attention, backs straight, heads high.

(It's not as though they've been prisoners on the farm. They've had the run of the place; they've had trips to town for the asking, free time to spend however they like; they've had the option of going home anytime. Just say the word.)

Compared to the original hearing, this one's mercifully brief. The Council has already discussed the matter. They've each been given a chance to make a statement.

(They talked about it one night, the three of them, in whispers in their darkened bedroom. They could quit, and go home, and just ... be on their own. No more Council authority; no more fighting evil. Essentially the same deal Beth Lehrer got, only without being stripped of their powers. They'd be watched, of course, but ... )

Sara speaks a little longer, Tricia barely at all. Their statements are all more or less the same: we're ready to come back to the fold.

(In the end there really wasn't any question.)

Mr. Giles pronounces their sentence over, and welcomes them back to active Slayer duty.

And Jordie smiles.

There's no question of guilt. In either case. Only of ( sentence... )

There aren't any guards posted outside the doors of these rooms, just a single sentry at the end of the hall, and the doors themselves aren't locked. The three young women in the rooms are in a position somewhere between house arrest and honorable parole.

Jordie's in the second room on the right.

It's been nearly a year since the attack unfortunate accident, and the New York branch of Wolfram & Hart has moved back into its newly renovated office space. A handful of lawsuits in both directions have been quietly settled out of court (and, in one particularly thorny case, out of dimension; there are all kinds of places to refer angry relatives who just won't stop asking questions, if you have the resources).

In short, business is running smoothly. And, to ensure that business continues to run smoothly, security in the building is tighter than ever.

But security's not nearly so tight in the office building around the other side of the little park, and there's an unobstructed view from its roof to the front entrance of W&H. And Jordie knows this to be the case, as she spent a good part of Thanksgiving weekend finding out.

Today she sends a couple of text messages from her cellphone on the way up. The first one is very carefully timed:

cristofer - weathers bad here & my dads worried about the roads, wont be able 2 get back til tomorrow or maybe weds but didnt want u 2 worry - txt me if u need me. :)

The second one's quicker:

no sign so far, will be here till weds & keep u posted

There's a new text message waiting for her when she's finished sending the second, but it's not from her Watcher.

Jojo - we all missed you at Thanksgiving. Sorry you couldn't make it home after all. Maybe Christmas instead? Let me know. Love, Dad.

She studies it for a few seconds, then snaps her phone shut and pockets it.

Once on the roof, she settles in quickly. She's got a pair of gloves, a hat and scarf, a nonreflective sleeping bag for both warmth and camouflage, a digital camera with a zoom lens, a thermos of hot cocoa, five energy bars, and a foil-wrapped packet of turkey sandwiches.

And all day to see if a certain person goes in or comes out through those doors across the park.

It's final exams week at the Slayers' Academy. Which means that about five young women were called in by Sarge at the beginning of the week, and told something to the effect of Right, miss. Sometime this week you're going to get tapped by surprise and put through twenty-four hours of whatever we can throw at you. Can't say what day, can't say when, but you've got to outlast the clock and acquit yourself well, 'cos surviving unharmed by hiding under the bed's for pussies.

The workout rooms off the upper-level armory are usually deserted this late at night. But there's a light on in one of them, and a familiar sound coming from inside: the thrup-thud of feet moving rapidly from one stance to the next, the flat slap of wood or flesh against padding.
lord, give me grace and dancing feet / and the power to impress
Jordie's there, alone in the room, beating hell out of a training dummy with one of the practice fake-Scythes.
lord, give me grace and dancing feet / let me outshine the moon
Which is a circumstance that would make a lot more sense if she hadn't finished her exam about four hours ago.

Historically, as a rule, the funeral of a Slayer has been a quiet affair. On occasion there have been families to make the arrangements, but most of the time, the parents and (if any) siblings have long since lost all contact with their daughter, whether deliberately or not. The Council has always seen to it that the Slayer is given a decent burial: a hardwood box, and six feet of consecrated ground, and someone to say the words, and the Watcher as sole mourner.

This, like so many other things since the Call, has changed.



It's the first time they're all back together again in over a year, the women who came to Sunnydale as Potentials and fought the First Evil there as Slayers. Caridad and Chao-Ahn, Rona and Vi and Shannon, half a dozen others. Many of them died in the battle at the Hellmouth ... but Kennedy is the first of them to have died since then.

So they're here, and so are newer Slayers who had Kennedy as their first combat instructor, and field Slayers who had her as their team leader. And so are at least one ex-lover, and at least one current one. About four-fifths of the Slayers are in somber black; the rest are in equally somber white.

Kennedy's parents and her half-sister are here somewhere too, in the crowd. Buffy and Giles are talking to them.

Soon someone's going to stand up front and start the memorial service.

Gossip spreads pretty quickly in any women's dorm.

No one's seen Beth Lehrer since lights-out last night, and she wasn't at breakfast this morning. It's still early yet, but ... it's not like there are a whole lot of places she could have gone.

By ten o'clock, speculation's running rampant: maybe she went home for Christmas after all is the commonest suggestion, though without telling anybody? does make that seem less likely. It's not quite reached the level of worry yet.

The phone buzzes at the Wells farm, twice, three times.

When someone picks up, the voice on the other end of the line is thin and worried. "Is Spoon there, please?"