Replacement by sus

Author: sus
Summary: They were meant to be. The council thought they knew better than The Powers, as well as her friends. An enemy from the future changes the past.
Author's Note:
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Violence, Adult Language, Sexual Situations


Chapter 4: Replacement

One night Kendra was trying to stop some vampires, from robbing a grave in a mausoleum. She wasn’t very successful. One of the vamps got away, with something pressed to his chest.

She went in to check how much damage, they had done to the place. Not that much it seemed, they could have done more. I'd better get a note to the caretaker about this.

She let her flashlight lighten up the hole the robbers had made in the wall. At the far end behind a little wall was something. An old cloth that had turned yellow, wrapped around something. She had trouble getting a hold of it, her arms weren’t that long. She had to give up. Looking around, she scanned the room for tools she could use. There, I can use that. She smiled and went over to collect the crowbar somebody had left there, maybe the vamps. She shrugged, it didn’t matter. She used it to knock over the wall. Like a hiding-place in a hiding-place. She laughed to herself.

After she had spent so much time with her new friends, Kendra had changed. She had become more relaxed, feeling more free maybe. She had learned not to take everything so serious, had learned to laugh. She used the crowbar to drag the packet towards her. It took some time, she didn’t want to damage it. Carefully she laid the packet on the sarcophagus. As she had learned by her first watcher, she started carefully to unwrap the packet. It was a book, no surprise there. She had guessed it by the shape of it. Well then, this is off to Mr. Giles, he would want to see it.

When Kendra came to Sunnydale, Giles was hired by The Council as her temporary watcher, until they sent her a new watcher.

She was right. Giles got excited. There were a few words he could translate right away. From what he could say here and now, was that it was written in several languages. And what he could read, was about a slayer. He spent the next weeks trying to translate the book, while Cordelia Chase finally got lucky to meet up with Angel at the Bronze. And Willow got a new friend, whom she hoped would be more than a friend with time. She was so excited she could hardly talk about anything else than Oz, and the band, he was playing in.

It took a lot of time, but Giles slowly started to translate a little. Enough that he started to understand some. What he got was, that it was about two slayers at the same time. But that didn’t add up, there had never been two slayers at the same time. Not even now, sort of.

There was Kendra and there was Buffy, but Buffy was not an active slayer, and the doctors said that she would never wake up. So there properly would never be two slayers in his time. As inevitably it was about an apocalypse, doomsday on earth if some things didn’t happen.

One sunny day Giles called around to the gang, to get them to meet at sundown at his home. Xander got the task to go to Angel and let him know. To call Kendra meant calling Joyce. As she didn’t think it was proper for Giles to have a young girl living at his home, Joyce opened her home to Kendra.

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It was Joyce who answered the phone, and she didn’t want to be left out, so she invited herself. Saying that it was better she brought the snacks than Xander. "You can’t live on doughnuts, even if Xander wants to. What time should we be there?" Joyce asked.

"Just after sundown, dear."

"We will be there."

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Joyce and Kendra were the first to come. "Sorry we’re early, but there were less people at the store than I counted on."

"That’s quite alright, Joyce. How are you, Kendra?"

"I’m fine, Mr. Giles."

"Will you help me with the snacks, Kendra?"

"Sure, Mrs. Su...Joyce." She looked down apologizing.

Joyce laughed a little and gave her the bags. "Will you take them to the kitchen? I’ll join you in a minute."

She allowed Giles to help her with her coat. "Are you okay, Rupert? You look tired."

"Just a little. I have been researching almost nonstop, for weeks. It’s so exciting. I didn’t think that it had anything to do with this time, maybe the past or far into the future. I’m not sure, that’s why I have called this meeting." He turned to hang up her coat.

"Then I think you should relax a little, while Kendra, and I make some snacks ready for the gang. They will be here soon. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"If you don’t mind?"

"Not at all. A cup of tea is coming right up." Smiling she went into the kitchen.

A little later the three of them were sitting in comfortable silence. Sipping warm drinks. On the table were plates with snacks.

The quiet didn’t last long. The sun went down, and Xander stormed through the door half turned to Willow, who followed him. In a slower pace followed Oz and Cordelia.

"Yeah! Healthy snacks," he said out loud while rubbing his hands.

Joyce looked smiling up at him. "It’s good for you, Xander. You are starting to get a belly. It doesn't become you."

Xander looked and felt at his stomach. He sat down. Not saying anything about the snacks for the rest of the evening.

Joyce offered tea or cocoa. Willow helped her make it. She loved spending time with Joyce. Willow frequently wished that her mom was a lot more like Joyce. The same wish had Xander, but he was trying to be manly. He would never admit it, not even to himself. What they forgot, was that it was only recently she had let others do the traveling. She was more together with Buffy now, then before she landed in the hospital.

They were all calming down with their hot beverages, when Cordelia broke the silence. "So why were we ordered here on a perfectly fine evening, until you called. I was out shopping for a new outfit for a party my parents are giving in a week."

"We are waiting for Angel."

"Why did you invite him?" Xander, spat out.

"We need him, Xander."

"We don’t need him. He is not part of this group." Xander looked as if he had just bit into a lemon.

"He has lived for a long time, Xander. He knows a lot more than we do," Giles explained.

Xander looked down on his hands, that was squeezed in his lap. He didn’t reply. There was nothing to say. Giles was right.

"Excuse me, but who is this Angel?" Joyce looked around at the surprised faces.

Giles got her attention by touching her hand. "You mean to say that you don’t know Angel. That you haven’t met Angel?"

"No, I don’t think so."

"He is a bloodsucking evil disgusting thing, not to be trusted." There was no doubt of the disgust in his voice.

"Xander! Stop it." Willow stroke his arm to calm him down.

Joyce looked confused at them. She didn’t know what to think.

Giles cleared his throat, took off his glasses and started to polish them. "Well, you see, Angel is a vampire. He works with us.

"But vampires are evil!" Joyce glared shocked at Giles.

"Just what I said." Xander smiled big.

"Mrs. Summers, Angel has a soul. He is good," Willow hurried to tell, before Xander started up with his harassment. She knew him, had for years. Thanks god, I got over my crush on him. Oz is so much better looking.

There was a knock on the door. The last awaited guest had arrived.

Giles opened the door. "Angel, come in." Angel immediately walked over to Joyce.

"Mrs. Summers, I’m Angel. A friend of Buffy’s." They shook hands.

"I didn’t get your last name?"

"It’s just Angel."

"Or Angelus part of the scourge of Europe. Evil undead. Killer of thousands," Xander informed Joyce maliciously.

"That’s enough, Xander. If you can’t at the very least be polite you can leave." Giles was angry at Xander for his rudeness. The Scooby gang was used to it, but not Joyce.

He looked hurt. "But..But."

"No, Xander, no more," Giles said firmly. "Either you sit down and keep quiet, or you leave."

He started to open his mouth.

Giles raised his hand. "No."

He sat down, head bowed. He realized that if he wanted to stay, he had to shut up. For now.

"Do you want a cup of tea or cocoa, Mr. Angel?"

"Just Angel, Mrs. Summers, and no thank you." He took a seat. As far away from Xander as possible.

"Now that we’re all here we can start." He leaned over to take a packet. "This is a book that Kendra found a couple of weeks ago." He put on gloves. "I have been trying to translate it, since Kendra brought it to me. It’s very old and a bit fragile. That’s why it’s only me who will touch it.

Understood?" He looked around . "It is in several old languages. It has been a tough job just to translate some of it." He closed the book and lay it carefully down on the cloth on the table. "I have written some examples down on the languages. I was hoping that you could recognize some of them, Angel." He handed the sheet of paper over to Angel.

"I’m sorry. I don’t recognize any of them." He gave the paper back to Giles.

"It was worth a try." He replaced the paper with a pad. "The book is mostly about a slayer, I haven’t found out who, yet. However, I’m confident that it’ll be clearer with time, the more I get translated the more clues I get. But there are two prophecies in the book. One might have Kendra in it. He looked up. There was only silence, not even Kendra said anything. They just sat there waiting for him to continue. "What I have is:

Slayer------Dark----
-------------------island.
-- -------------------------
Work---------------------
-----------------------light.
----------------------------
----------------------------
----------------------------
The slayer----------dead.
---------------------slayer.

"This is all I got. I think it might be important, I’ve worked on it for weeks. The other prophecy, I think can wait, since it talks about a golden haired slayer. And as we all know Kendra is dark haired. I would like your help to translate the rest of the prophecy."

Kendra was the first to talk. "Am I going to die, watcher?"

Giles took off his glasses with his free hand, rubbing his brow with them. "We will do our best to not let that happen. As we know from recent conversations, a prophecy can be changed."

Joyce laid a comforting hand over Kendra’s. "I can’t research, but I can keep food and drinks coming."

"We should start right away," Willow said smiling.

Xander jumped in. "Where is the book's G-man?"

It didn’t take long before they were covered in book’s. They had to stop early, had to attend school, or they would have Snyder on their backs. When school was out they gathered at Giles’ place. Joyce had already been there with snacks. Then she went shopping for dinner, for all of them.

When dinner had been served, and the washing up taken care of, she left to pay Buffy a visit as she did every night, alone. Nobody accompanied her. After her goodnight-wishes to Buffy, she returned to the research party. The last thing she did before driving home, was to find out how far they had gotten. If she needed to come the next day.

They found at the very least two words a day at the start. Then Xander started to guess. Fantastic enough it helped. Xander guessed and they checked the words, and half the times he was right.
In under two weeks they finally got it. They found the last words:

Slayer with dark skin.
Coming from the island.
Came out of sleep.
Work together.
With The Eternal Light.
Close to the changeling.
Forever will stay gone.
The slayer is dead.
Long live the slayer.

Kendra was scared. She believed that she was going to die in some battle. They all tried to comfort her, not very successfully.

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They all agreed to take the weekend off, before they started to decipher the text. Oz had a gig with his band the Dingos at the Bronze, Willow and Xander went there too. Willow to gaze at her boyfriend. Xander hoped to bump into some beauty on the dance floor.

Later in the evening Cordelia joined them. Hoping that Angel would come to the bronze. The first words she said when she joined them at their table was: "Have you seen Angel tonight?" Her second was: "Do you know if he’s coming tonight?"

Joyce spent an hour longer by Buffy’s bedside. She used the extra time to brush her hair extra good, and lubricating her hands with a good lotion. Her skin had started to become a bit dry.

Giles went out to get some adult company, and a drink or two with a high alcohol percentage.

Giles could only keep himself away from the prophecy for a couple of hours, before he started working with it again. He was a true watcher. Parts of it was embarrassing simple to discover the meaning of, but the rest was a mystery. He hoped the others could help him with the parts he had difficulties with.

He felt chagrin that a group of kids often were very good at finding the answers to strange questions. He had to have patience. The gang would not be there until the school was out. Not even Kendra. Joyce had forced through that the slayer was enrolled in school.

Giles couldn't sleep. He turned from right to left, time and again. He kept on trying to figure out what it all meant.

It was almost light outside when he jumped up from the bed with an idea. The other prophecy might hold the key. Maybe they are linked. He got dressed and put the kettle on, then found his papers and the book. Settled down at the table and forgot about his morning tea. He got startled when the kettle whistled. He made a cup of tea and forgot it promptly.

He started to compare the translated prophecy, with the one that he had put aside for later. It would take ages to translate the second one. It was three or four times longer than the other. I don’t think we’ll ever get it translated without more help, and then we will need to understand it. Why can’t The Powers get them written in plane English, or at least in one language? Why in God's name does it have to be in riddles? Giles felt like throwing the book into the wall, but as the proper Englishman that he was, he restrained himself.

Soon the others would come, and he didn’t know what to do, what to tell them. He hoped they together could come up with an answer. He had a bad feeling about this. A feeling he had felt before, when he read about the master killing Buffy. The feeling that everything was about to change, yet again.