Taking My Likings

A/N: Thanks for your support. You get a cookie of your choice if you know where the chapter name comes from.

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Chapter Five

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I am what I am.

The first time I heard those words, they were the line of a bad actor in a dramatic movie with too little plot. I am what I am. It seemed basic to me, simple.

Who else would I be but me?

The answer? Anyone. I could be anyone if the chips had fallen someplace else, if the dice had rolled differently. A million little choices everyday, not nearly all of them mine, have made me what I am. And I can’t change that, can’t fight it, can’t do anything about it. I can’t escape it, no matter how much I may want to.

No-one can.

We are what we are.

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Taking My Likings

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It was almost ten o’clock when Buffy came home, wet from the rain, with a stack of papers tucked under her arm, talking animatedly on her cell phone. She announced her return by slamming the front door and then came marching into the living room.

Without hanging up the phone she waved at Melinda and bent to peck her father on the cheek. Then she suddenly straightened and sighed. “Look, Cal, I know you didn’t believe me, so I got proof. Now get your sexy butt over here and look at it. I was right. And we got trouble headed our way, alright? What…. Yes, of course. Remember the Darkling? Hello? Yes, bring the others. See ya in a few.”

She hung up with a frown, tucked the phone away in her too tight pants and grimaced at her father who asked mildly, “Are you in trouble, honey?”

Melinda blinked numbly at her husband. Trouble? What did Buffy need proof for? And what in God’s name was a Darkling? It sounded like something out of some demented fairy tale. Every time Melinda ran into her step daughter – not that that happened often, the girl seemed to come home only for fresh clothes and showers – she seemed to become more and more bizarre. And Hank refused to be alarmed. No matter how strange his daughter acted, he always looked at her like she could do no wrong. Like, by simply existing, she had already done some great feat.

Melinda understood the sentiment. Her husband was proud of his only child. But there was something not right about the way he smiled – like he was happy – when he asked his daughter if she was in trouble. Weren’t parents supposed to ask that question with severe expressions and a good scolding prepared?

But, sticking with the bizarre theme, Buffy simply shrugged. “Remember that new kid I told you about?”

Hank nodded.

“Yeah, he’s hiding something. I figured there was something off about him, but the boys didn’t believe me without proof. I got it now, so we’re having a…” She trailed off suddenly, looking at her step mother. She tended to do that. It reminded Melinda of –

- Dad said it was up to me how much I tell her. Guess he doesn’t want a repeat performance of Mom.

Tell her what? What was that big secret that the two were keeping from her? Before she could work up the nerve to ask what was going on, Buffy resumed talking. “The others will be here any minute. We’ll work something out, cool?”

Hank smiled. “Cool.”

And Buffy, shaking her head at her aging father’s antics, left the room just as the front door sounded. Melinda was never going to get used to the teenagers running around her house unsupervised at all times of the day.

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Fifteen minutes later found Caleb lying on his back in Buffy’s bed looking slightly worse for the wear. He’d been on a date with Sara earlier in the evening and he refused to share the juicy details with his best friend. So she had resorted to cheating and tickled the details out of him.

Tyler and Reid, joined at the hip as always, had come in sometime during the pitched battle and quickly taken up refuge against the far wall. Reid was sitting on a low bookshelf with his legs crossed and Tyler was sitting in front of him on the floor. Both watched in amusement. Pogue, too, had arrived and broken up the fight by simply throwing himself between the opposing parties. Which had led to his current predicament.

He was lying on the floor not far from the bed with a slayer sitting smack dab on top of him. He and Caleb were both breathing hard from wrestling with the tiny girl while the blonde herself just looked gleeful. She had been easier to mess with before she’d gained slayer powers. Suddenly she twisted and reached behind her to grab a few sheets of paper off the nightstand and smack them down on Pogue’s chest.

“What’s that?”

“Proof that Chase is one of us.”

The light mood throughout the room evaporated like smoke. Almost as one, the Sons all abandoned their perches to sit on the floor around Buffy and Pogue, who both sat up.

Caleb started leaving through the papers. They were copies of Chase’s school file. Including, “His birth name is Chase Goodwin Pope.”

“Meaning?” Reid asked. He’d never been one for names and stories. Tyler on the other hand, had never forgotten a thing he’d read.

“Meaning he is a descendant of Goody Pope. She lived during the witch hunt and was widowed. Accused James Putnam of knocking her up by taking on the form of her husband. Meaning, man, that the fifth male line didn’t end in Salem.”

“Meaning,” Buffy added into the ensuing silence, “That Chase really, truly, is a Son of the Covenant.” She nodded at the papers, “There’s more.”

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Half an hour later they had all had a look at the papers and what they knew made them shiver. Chase had killed his adoptive parents the day he ascended and probably the kid in the Dells as well. He also had to have been the one that sent Caleb that Darkling.

“What does that tell us?” Pogue asked when no-one seemed to have anything to say.

“It tells us that he’s not here by coincidence. He wants something from us.” Caleb shrugged and flung the papers in the middle of their circle.

“And what?” Tyler and Reid both demanded at the same time.

Buffy leaned against Tyler and told them, “Think about it.”

The boys all just looked at her so she straightened again and explained, “Think about how he grew up. He never knew his birth father so he probably didn’t have a clue what happened when he turned thirteen. Imagine if no-one had told you and suddenly you had all those freaky powers.”

“You think he used without knowing the consequences,” Caleb picked up the thought. “You think he’s addicted.”

Reid snorted and ran a hand through his hair. “Man, we’re all addicted.”

“Yeah,” Pogue argued, “But we have each other, right? And we knew from the beginning how things can end if we’re not careful.”

Buffy nodded in agreement. “Chase is here because he somehow found out about the Covenant and he wants what every junkie wants.”

They all looked at each other as understanding dawned and horror followed quickly on its heels. In sync they all breathed, “More power.”

This time it was Tyler who snorted. When Reid gave him a sideways look he offered, “Well, he obviously missed some math classes. The books all say that the power in limited only by your body and your imagination. Right? That means it’s basically infinite. And infinite power times two is still only infinite.” He looked around, “More power won’t help him shit to feed the need.”

“So what do we do?”

It was Buffy who spoke first, her voice hard as stone. There would be no argument over this. They were a democracy most of the time but not here, not tonight. “We fix him. We show him what it means to be Covenant.”

A long silence followed as all five of them tried to work through the implications of helping someone like Chase. They knew addiction and they knew what it did to people. Knew that the only thing an addict cared about was the drug and their drug was power. Chase’s was too, only he didn’t understand the power, didn’t know how to Use it properly. Didn’t know how a touch of another Son or Daughter could silence the craving, didn’t know how one of them Using could feed them all. He didn’t know that underneath all six of them were the same, red and black, hell in human packages.

He didn’t know what he was.

“What if he doesn’t want us to help?”

A snort from the only girl in the room. “Baby boy, how could he not? We are the power.”

Power and each other, each other and the power, the power in the others’ veins and the fire in their eyes, it was all the same, all good and warm. Sliding softness as it went down the throat, pooled in the dip between hipbones and wrapped around your spine, taking you over, ripping you away on a flood of ecstasy. Oblivion. Satisfaction. Home. Warmth. Satiation. The only kind they knew.

“So what? We approach him, tell him how it is?”

Caleb, always the logical one, shook his head. “It won’t work that way. We have to wait for him to make the first move and then we take it away from him. If it’s power he’s after then he’ll go after Buffy or me, after my birthday. We let him. And then we knock him down, tie him up and –

“- teach him a lesson,” Pogue finished, a look of anticipation in his eyes.

“Yes.”

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Melinda was making tea in the kitchen when the herd of rampaging teenagers came back downstairs and stormed the living room. She shook the teabag one last time so it wouldn’t drip and quickly disposed of it before grabbing her mug and quietly making her way down the hall. It had become a habit of late, this sneaking around in her own home. She felt like a spy in some bad action movie, listening at doors, hoping for the shred of information that would make sense of everything she was seeing and hearing.

A father who seemed on the one hand completely uncaring of his daughter and on the other, insanely proud. A teenaged girl who had no trouble at all looking after herself and acted well beyond her age but reverted to kindergarten behavior as soon as her friends showed up. Cryptic conversations all around, stopped mid sentence when she stepped into a room.

It had gotten old after a week. So old in fact, that Melinda had seriously considered calling Joyce Summers to try and found out what she knew. Only the fact that Joyce was bitter enough to lie to her just to spite her ex husband had kept her from picking up the phone.

“Hey, Mr. S.” That was the long haired one, Parry.

Hank grinned at the five teenagers as Melinda rounded the last corner and stopped in the doorway, not hidden, but unnoticed as of yet.

“Hello boys,” her husband said. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Caleb, the polite one, retorted.

“Buffy said you had trouble?” The girl in question rolled her eyes where her father couldn’t see.

Caleb caught the look and was quick to placate his friend’s father. “Nothing we can’t handle. I’ve got to go, I promised Sarah I would call.”

That earned him a very teenage macho boy fist in the shoulder and a hoot from the bleach blond.

Hank’s face fell a bit. “Oh, are you all leaving?”

“Caleb and Pogue are, Dad,” Buffy offered, “Reid and Baby Boy are staying over.”

“Too much time in the dorms is bad for us,” Reid – the blonde – said with a straight face. Melinda noticed that neither of the kids were even remotely asking for permission. They were staying. End of story. She didn’t know what to think about two boys staying with her step daughter over night. But then she told herself that she was thinking the worst possible thing and that wasn’t nice.

As the two leaving boys said their goodbyes, both of them pecking Buffy in a very comfortable way usually not seen in boys their age, Melinda stepped into the room and asked, “Do you want me to make up the guest room?”

Hank jerked a bit, but none of the younger generation seemed surprised to see her. It creeped her out.

“Thanks,” Tyler, the youngest if memory served, declined, “We’ll crash in Buffy’s room. We always do.”

Oh.

“Don’t worry, dear. They’ve been doing this since they were toddlers. No reason to get worked up.”

Melinda bit her tongue hard and did not say what she thought about toddlers sleeping in one bed as opposed to teenagers sleeping in one bed. He husband grinned first at her and then at his daughter and her friends.

“So you have a plan? Everything sorted?” he asked Buffy, his eyes sparkling.

The blonde tensed, unnoticed only by her father. The boys turned to her, expressions worried. She waved them off and nodded stiffly at Hank. “Yes, Dad.”

Melinda watched her husband, caring and well meaning but sometimes very, very oblivious, as he nodded back, seeming distracted and excited. “Well then, I suppose you’ll be off having some adventure in the next couple of days?”

Buffy turned to stone as she repeated, very slowly, as if in disbelief, “Adventure?”

Melinda almost dropped her tea as the ice in her step daughter’s voice sliced through the room. Hank furrowed his brows, confused.

“God, Dad, when are you gonna get it? This isn’t an adventure. It’s not some grand game. It’s my life. And sooner or later, it’s going to kill me. So I’d really appreciate it if you could stop acting like you have the slightest fucking clue what it’s like to be me. It’s not cool and it’s not fun and it’s not… fuck. This isn’t a movie! It’s –“

“Buffy.” That was Tyler, his hand on her arm, trying to stop her before she said too much, presumably. It didn’t matter thought because Melinda had stopped listening around ‘going to kill me’. What the hell was going on? What secret were her husband and his daughter keeping? Why didn’t seem anyone in the room surprised? Or worried? Or… scared? Because she was sure this time, absolutely sure, that Buffy’s eyes had just flared black.

She shook the well meaning hand off, took a step forward, two steps back, ran her fingers through her hair. “Fuck,” she said finally. “Fuck.”

Was she sick? No, that wasn’t it. If she’d been sick, Hank would have been worried. And she seemed so lively, so healthy. Was it something to do with the boys? Was there something wrong with them? No, that wasn’t it either. Melinda remembered then, all those fairy tales she had refused to listen to, to believe. The stories about the Sons of Ipswich that could make things happen, could kill a man with a look. Of old families that had been hit hard by the Salem witch hunts. Stories about people that were more than they seemed and the four boys that were Buffy’s best friends – their descendants.

Stories, she remembered, about terrible powers that came with a terrible price. But Melinda didn’t believe in horror stories, didn’t believe it witches and demons and monsters.

She didn’t.

But she remembered a sunny afternoon and five teenagers sprawled right there on the living room floor, watching an action movie. Remembered the door slamming in her face and a glimpse of black eyes, just like now. Just like….

Melinda didn’t believe in witches.

She didn’t have to. Because now, looking back on the past few weeks, she knew. The room was suddenly too small.

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The boys somehow managed to position themselves on either side of and slightly in front of Buffy. Ready to stop her from attacking her father, Melinda realized and suddenly felt the urge to giggle. She had dropped into Twilight Zone, no doubt about that.

Finally Buffy sighed and waved a hand at her father, sitting shell shocked and very silently. “Sorry, Dad. It’s just… you’ve been acting this way ever since I got back and… it’s been a long day. Sorry for yelling.”

Hank nodded and took a deep breath, trying to take it all in. Trying maybe to understand what he had failed to for the past eighteen years. That his daughter was not a girl with some fancy skills but something else entirely. A wolf. “It’s alright honey. I know I don’t understand all that’s going on in your life. But I’m trying, okay?”

“I know.”

He stood, waiting for the boys to fall back, wordlessly acknowledging that they had some sort of authority that he did not have. Funny. Here was a successful businessman in his forties, deferring to a pair of teenaged boys in torn jeans. He stepped forward, placing his hands on Buffy’s shoulders with a smile. “I’m so proud of you. Of who you have become. Of how you’re using your gift.”

Buffy, relaxing slowly, tensed up again at the last word. But she didn’t start yelling again. Instead she asked, almost whispered, “Gift? Who called it that?”

“William did.”

She snorted and Tyler and Reid smiled strangely. “Well, William is dead.”

With that Buffy pecked Hank on the cheek and let herself be pulled from the room by two of her best friends. Hank stayed standing in the middle of the room, staring at nothing and Melinda wondered when her home had become a haunted house.

It had to be.

There were so many ghosts.

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I am what I am.

I can’t change that. What I am is neither good nor bad, neither perfect nor broken. It’s not ugly and it’s not pretty. It’s just that. It’s me.

I’ve had a long time to get used to me. My whole life in fact. I’m okay with it. I mean, I have great family. I have the Covenant and my father and I have unlimited power. So what if it will kill me one day? So what if there’s a monster sleeping right under my skin. Nothing’s perfect and everything has to end one day.

All in all, it could have been worse. I could have been a brunette.

But… there’s that part of me. The part that remembers how life was like before the fire came. The part that liked living in Sunnydale, being almost normal. The part that is sorry for hurting Angel, for my mother’s bitterness.

I am what I am.

But that part of me wishes I could be someone else.

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