Run

Dawn disappeared, a radiant flash of white against the empty blackness of the abyss. Buffy ran toward the edge, but
Jonathan and Andrew caught her. The pit exploded in a shower of sparks and dust that erupted forth and tossed them
violently to the cement.

They raised their heads to witness the walls begin to fracture apart. The floor tilted and rocked beneath them. Jonathan
scrabbled to his feet and helped pull them both upright.

“Buffy,” he said. “We have to get out of here.”

She willed her legs to move, but all she could think was how Warren had described Sunnydale and the San Joaquin Valley as a
side dish to the beast that was hiding out in the abyss into which Dawn had just leapt. Into which Dawn had leapt, and Buffy
had been unable to stop her.

“There was a monster,” she murmured.

“All the more reason to haul collective ass,” Andrew said, tugging on her in a vain effort to get her to move.

Buffy shook her head. “Dawn’s the Key,” she said. “Her blood closed the doors. She’s saved us.”

More chunks of stone sheared off from the walls and ceiling, thundering into the abyss. Buffy risked a glance upward into
the cavernous gloom, and through the gaps in the rock, she saw starlight.

Sorrow overwhelmed her, and with it, understanding. “My sister saved the world,” she said through her tears.

Jonathan and Andrew followed Buffy’s gaze, but instead of stars, they noted with mounting unease at how rapidly the
structure was coming apart around them.

“Not to… detract from your moment,” Andrew said. “But this place is busy imploding, and will keep doing so with or without
us.”

Buffy swallowed her tears. There’d be time enough for those, she knew. “We have to get out of here,” she said.

“Let’s,” Jonathan said, and they ran for the door.

Unfortunately, Ripper and the Coven were on the other side.

Buffy raised the Meltinator and blasted his mutilated face off.

“That was for Warren,” she snarled.

That left the 12 black-robed witches of the Coven standing between them and the way out. Buffy did the quick mental
calculation: Slayer, two geeks, and the Meltinator vs. 12 uber-evil witches.

Buffy passed the Meltinator to Andrew and attacked the nearest witch before the first of them had the chance to put up a
defense charm. A few managed to throw some spells, and one put in a pretty impressive fireball, which Jonathan deflected
into a pair of witches who ran screaming like a pair of bottle rockets into the dark corridor.

After Andrew lased his fourth witch, he yelped in pain and threw the Meltinator into the witch’s circle.

“What did you…?” Jonathan shrieked, but then his eyes widened. “Run!”

Buffy had just snapped the spine of one witch, and used that witch’s body to block a nasty-sounding curse from another.
Andrew and Jonathan tackled Buffy, dragged her around the corner and up into the stairwell. The detonation filled the
corridor with a lurid yellow glow and a resonate hum like an army of a billion angry bees.

The explosion jarred their bones and rattled their teeth. The acrid, stinging smoke of burning flesh assailed them, rendering
them for a moment completely incapable of moving.

Slowly, consciously, Buffy wrenched her fingers free from the guardrail of the stairs, which she hadn’t even realized she’d
been gripping.

“That was close,” she said.

Andrew grimaced, apologetic. “The Meltinator kinda melted,” he said. He held up his palms. The top layer of his skin had been
singed pink.

“It could have been so much worse,” Buffy said.

Andrew sniffed. “It was,” he said. “For them! Bump knuckles…” He tried to make a fist; thought better of it. “Better make
it ‘air five.’”

Jonathan was busy ignoring him. “Speaking of so much worse,” he said. “You guys hear that?”

Buffy could hear lots of things. She heard the clamor of her beating heart. She heard their rabbiting breath. She could hear
the constant and continued clunking of the stonewall landsliding apart. But beneath that was a hissing sound.

Like water.

Buffy got the clear visual image of the capsule-shaped tanks, acres and acres and acres of them, full of enough water to
contain a truly Old One. Since this place had recently gone to structurally unsound, those tanks would be bursting. All that
water was going somewhere, most like flowing to fill up the chamber that was rapidly collapsing behind them.

She looked up at the boys and understood that they were reaching the same conclusion.

“Oh, crap,” Andrew said.

“Up is good,” Jonathan said.

“Yeah…”

“I’m guessing the service elevator is a bad idea?” Andrew asked hopefully.

Buffy appraised the steel structure of the TriadCorp industrial service elevator that ran up the center of the vertical
corridor, and around which the stairwell wound. The elevator was a hydraulic-powered metal cage on which Buffy had ridden
with Ripper on their way down to Room 900. From her experience – and not just Slayer experience, but life-in-general
learning – she knew that in cases of emergency, people were advised to avoid elevators, since they were prone to dropping
from great heights at inopportune times.

“Up the stairs, fanboy,” Buffy urged.

They began to climb the winding stairs up. With every flight, Buffy was sure that the rushing water sound was growing
louder and louder.

On the fourteenth flight up, they collided - very stooge-like - with Angel and Spike, who were on their way down.

Breathless, Buffy flung herself into Angel’s arms. “You’re alive!” She gushed. Then she whirled on Spike. “And you!” she
shouted. “You bit me…”

Spike retreated one step. “About that.”

“There’s really no time,” Angel interrupted. “We were tailing Ripper…”

“Dead,” Jonathan said.

“And the Coven?” Angel asked.

“Also dead,” Andrew supplied.

Deep below, a muffled groan rocked the stairwell, causing the entire foundation to sway.

“But Dawn! Was she here?” Spike asked. “Cordelia phoned and…”

Buffy was shaking her head. “I don’t know how, but she
was here, Spike. And she…”

“She jumped,” Andrew said.

Spike rocked back on his heels, but caught himself on the handrail. “Oh God,” he said. “We were too late.”

Buffy gripped Spike’s arm and gave it a comforting squeeze. “Spike…”

Angel cut in, “Guys, can we take this upstairs? Wesley and the rest are waiting, and I’m not counting on this place lasting
much longer.”

“Right,” Spike said.

A fissure sprouted in the concrete wall several inches above Andrew’s head.

“Um…” Jonathan said, but that was the only warning he managed before a torrent of water burst forth. The water knocked
him off his feet and sent him sliding back down the steps. Buffy dived after him, while above, the cracks spider-webbed along
the wall and into the foundation of the stairs.

Buffy caught up to Jonathan on the next landing. The water was pounding down now, spraying through a half dozen holes.
Andrew clung to the handrail, his screaming drowned in the thunderous thud of the punishing flow. Angel and Spike linked
hands to form a chain, and Angel was reaching for her.

Jonathan, sputtering and flailing, his sopping hair in his eyes, was not much help, but he was light enough that Buffy could
easily drag him along. She struggled with every step, closing the distance between them.

At last, she gathered Jonathan in front of her and launched him into Angel’s arms. Buffy tried to catch herself, but with the
shift in her momentum, and the water coursing down on her, she went under.

The current was unbelievably strong. It swept her downstairs, spinning and whirling her, until, blindingly, she snagged the
base of the guardrail.

Buffy pulled herself above the torrent. She clung to the rail by looping one leg through the metal rung. She found herself
completely disoriented. The others were gone, and all she could see was the swirling rush of water gushing over the top of
the stairs.

Then she understood. She’d been swept around the landing and down the next flight of stairs. She could hear nothing over
the growing rush of the water’s flow. As she struggled to keep her hold on the handrail, she tried to figure a way to climb
back up. There was no handrail on the landing – just the metal mesh of the elevator door, which meant she would have to
reach the opposite side of the stairwell, without getting swept down again.

No problem, she thought. Except that she’d fought demons, monsters, and vampires, but the one thing (other than herself)
that had taken her down in the past… was water.

Buffy allowed herself a private laugh at that. Then, she unhooked her leg from the railing. Taking a deep breath, Buffy leapt
for the opposite side. The water caught and tumbled her end over end, plunging her deeper and further away, until purple
spots appeared before her eyes and her breath ached in her chest. She stretched her arms in an effort to catch something,
anything…

And from the darkness, a hand caught hers.

Suddenly, Buffy was lying on her back on the metal floor of the elevator, with a drenched and relieved-looking Spike
crouched beside her. She coughed, violently, and it hurt, but after vomiting about a gallon of water before she felt better
and was able to pull herself upright.

In only a few moments, Buffy realized that they’d been granted a short reprieve at best. The water still thundered down the
stairwell, sloshing over the walls to douse the open elevator shaft. The metal platform was lodged precariously in the shaft
between floors, having dropped during one of the earthquakes they’d felt. And since earthquakes were still a possibility,
given the webwork of tiny cracks lacing through the concrete structure, they could become dislodged again and plummet to
their deaths.

Worse than that, though, was seeing the creeping floodwater steadily rising up beneath them.

Buffy pushed the wet hair from her face and wiped the water from eyes. “Just so we’re clear,” she said. “We can either die
by drowning, by being crushed by metal elevator apparatus, or by… drowning.”

Spike let his eyes slip closed. “You’re welcome, Buffy,” he said.

“The boys?”

“Angel’s got ’em,” Spike said with a shrug. He opened his eyes, and for a moment, the emergency lighting fell into his irises,
turning them that clear and startling blue she knew and loved so well.

Buffy sat back on her heels and sighed. She ran her hands over the swell of her belly, and a sob broke like a wave inside her
heart.

“We almost made it,” she said in a strangled whisper. “Oh, I wanted so many things for you, and now…”

Buffy lifted her eyes to the spindly framework of the elevator shaft. “I just want to go home.”

Spike stared at his hands. For a moment, he seemed to struggle, but finally he said, “Tell me what it was like?”

She drew a pained breath and said, “Oh, where to begin?” She laughed, then, because she knew exactly where her story
started. “We left Rome in June because of a demon attack that Giles felt was too close to home. He bought a house for us. In
London. We moved in, and Dawn started school. Andrew came, too; he was working for the Council, and before long, Xander
and Willow had moved in as well…”

“Big house,” Spike said.

Buffy smiled again. “It was, but Giles called it a Flat. Some British thing, I guess. But it was beautiful – three stories, with a
garden in the back, a big basement, and a dining room full of books. I guess you could say it was cramped, with all of us living
there. And since we lost everything in Sunnydale, all our stuff had been donated to us by the families of Watchers, so all the
sheets and towels were really old, and none of the cutlery matched. But it was… nice.”

“Sounds it,” Spike said, his nose wrinkled in mock-disgust.

“It was,” she said, choking down another sob. “But it wasn’t home. Not until…” Buffy brought her eyes level with his. “Not
until you arrived.”

Buffy thought she’d never hit Spike so hard, not literally, not figuratively. He leaned forward, his head shaking in denial.
“What?” he asked.

“You,” she said, finally letting her tears flow. “You were home for me. William.”

Spike recoiled, standing too quickly, and the cage of the elevator lurched dangerously. He spread his arms to stabilize it,
but the cables continued to jangle unnervingly long after the elevator settled.

Buffy had to will herself to ignore the rising water in the shaft, alarmingly close now. She focused only on Spike, and on the
weight of the child within her.

Spike’s jaw clenched the way it did when he was angry and hurt.

Finally, he said, “The doctor called you Ms. Pratt.”

Buffy hugged herself. “He did,” she said.

“And this other world. Your world,” he said. “It’s better than here?”

She answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

Spike gripped the wet collar of Buffy’s shirt and pulled her forward. He kissed her, then, long and fierce and desperate.
Then, just as quickly, he shoved her against the metal mesh of the elevator’s platform. He leapt up to grasp the elevator’s
cable and used it to swing himself down onto the landing. The raging water threatened to topple him, but clinging to the
chain, he held firm.

Buffy tried to climb toward him on the platform, but it bucked uncertainly as he twisted the cable around his arms.

“What are you doing?” she shouted.

“I can’t drown, Buffy…”

“But the wreckage will crush you. Spike!”

“I can do this,” he called up to her. To illustrate this claim, he strained against the cable and the metal platform swung up.
He heaved down again, and the elevator ascended several feet into the shaft.

“You were right, Buffy,” he said, tugging again on the cables, so that she rose again, meter by meter, into the elevator
shaft. “You don’t belong here. You belong where it’s safe. You belong at home.”

Buffy lay flat on the metal mesh floor of the elevator, watching him grow smaller and smaller beneath her. She watched his
upturned face and knew that he was smiling.
.home.
.acknowledgements.
.awards.
.links.
.contact.

Submit a Review
.Chapter Index.

Anywhere Out
of This World

Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time  
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call
Time Is Running Out
Primal
Hopeless
This Is How the World
Will End
Run
The Angels Sing
Epilogue
.next chapter.