CHAPTER 16 - FIELD MUSEUM

Buffy didn't sleep well that night, even though she had a more than comfortable king sized bed. Somehow, that made it all the more difficult. Too big, too lonely.

She got up and looked out at the city from her 20th floor suite. Beautiful city, beautiful lakefront.

She wondered who had broken into Prof. Lipton's apartment and had it anything to do with the amulet. Her senses were telling her that it did, although a part, a big part of her wanted to just think that it was a random theft, at a random apartment. But by the looks of it, whoever was responsible had thoroughly turned the apartment upside down looking for something.

The next morning, Buffy woke Dawn at 7:30am to get ready.

"Come on, Dawn, we've got to check out, go to the museum, and be on the flight back to L.A. at 5:00pm."

"Okay, okay," Dawn said, getting up.

They checked out by 8:30am and stored their suitcases with the hotel until later.

They walked through Water Tower Place stopping at the only eatery that was open for breakfast - McDonalds.

"I just love this, Buffy," said Dawn, "I come to Chicago, and where do I wind up eating? California Pizza Kitchen and McDonalds!"

"Well, we did go to Gino's East for pizza last night before we went back to the hotel, remember?"

"Yeah, guess the trip wasn't a total waste," Dawn said brightly, then looked at Buffy's face, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, we'll find out something today, promise!"

"Hope so," Buffy replied, looking downcast.

They grabbed a cab and were at the museum by 10:00am. "Wow, Sue!" Dawn said as they walked in, seeing the most complete T-Rex ever assembled. They paid their entrance fee and asked for the office of Donald Johanson. They were directed to an office in the basement.

They knocked at the door and a man in his late 50's wearing khaki pants and a mustard colored, rather wrinkly cardigan opened the door.

"Are you Donald Johanson?" Buffy asked.

"Are you THE Donald Johanson?" Dawn chimed in.

"Yes to you," he said to Buffy, "and no, to you. I'm a Donald Johanson, not the Donald Johanson who discovered Lucy, if that's what you're referring to," he said to Dawn.

She nodded, "Oh, sorry, just thought with the name and working at the museum and all that..."

"Wrong museum, wrong, department," he said, "now, what can I do for you..."

"Oh, sorry," Buffy said, "I'm Elizabeth Worthington and this is my sister Donna."

Buffy then explained about her correspondence with Prof. Lipton and the 'necklace.'

"Yes, I was very sorry to hear about Harold's death. Very surprising, very sad. Let me take a look at what's come in lately," he said, looking at a list of deliveries.

"Hmmm, not here. Let's go take a walk to his office, shall we?"

Buffy and Dawn followed him through some doors that were off limits to the public that took them to the other side of the museum basement.

"Oh dear," he said.

"What?" Buffy asked.

"Looks like Harold's office was one of those slated for remodeling," he said, as he pointed at the heavy plastic covering what was once a doorway. He drew back the plastic and shook his head.

"It's all been moved. Wait here, while I ask where it's all gone to," he said, hurrying off.

Buffy shook her head, "From bad to worse and the fun just keeps getting funner!"

Donald Johanson came back a few minutes later, "Found out where they put his office stuff," he said, smiling, "this way."

Another loop around the tunnels and they came to a double door with a keypad lock. Donald entered his code and they walked into an enormous warehouse that looked like it held a football field worth of cartons of all sizes. Shelves and cartons as far as the eye could see.

Buffy and Dawn just stood there with their mouths open.

Donald laughed, "Believe it or not girls, there's a system. He took out what looked like a calculator and entered a few things into it, "department + last name + month?" he looked at them.

"Do you know when it might have arrived here?"

"July, Prof. Lipton's assistant said she sent a box here for him a month ago," Buffy said.

"Okay. Department + last name + month = ...hmmm."

"What?" Buffy asked.

"Nothing's coming up. Let me change the month to August. He re-entered the information. "Sorry, still nothing."

"What about his office stuff that was moved, maybe it just got moved before it got time to be cataloged?" Dawn asked, hopefully.

"Well, everything that comes in is supposed to be catalogued, whether it's taken to an office, or if it's sent to storage," he said, gesturing around them.

He entered just the professor's name and they walked over to the section his 'calculator' told him it was at. They came to Section 504 and Donald Johanson, Buffy, and Dawn looked through the contents of his office for any signs of a small carton with the 'remains' of the Sunnydale dig in them. Two hours later they had gone through everything. Donald had actually left them for about half an hour while he had to attend to something.

Buffy stood still and tried to 'feel' where it was at, but to no avail, "Wish I'd called Willow, maybe she could have done a locator spell," Buffy said.

"I think that only would work if was alive, Buffy," Dawn said, then for the second time that day, felt bad for saying something that made Buffy look sad. "Sorry Buffy, you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do, Dawn. It's not like I expected it to be 'alive' or something. I don't know what I expected, it's only that it shouldn't have survived at all, nothing should have, nothing did, but..."

"If it did, then there's hope?"

Buffy turned to look at Dawn. Was that what she was looking for? Hope? Stupid, waste-of-time, painful, stupid, hope?

"No, there's no hope, Dawn, no hope," she turned around so Dawn didn't see her eyes tear up. She was so angry with herself. What was she doing, coming all the way to Chicago on a wild goose chase?

"Well," Donald said, "guess that's it for Harold's things, I'm really sorry we couldn't find what you were looking for."

Buffy shrugged, resigned to the hopelessness of it.

"Look, if you find it, or anything related to Sunnydale, could you give Elizabeth or me a call?" Dawn asked, taking over, "here's our emails."

"Sure, I'll make sure to do that if it shows up. And you never know, it certainly might just do that, this is far from a perfect system, just the best one we've been able to implement," Donald said, showing them out.

It was noon as they stood outside the museum. Neither had much interest in actually seeing the actual museum after spending 2 hours digging through someone's office stuff. And there hadn't been a thing there about Sunnydale at all. Looked like he hadn't been at that office in ages.

"What time do we have to check in for the flight?" Dawn asked.

"4:00pm-ish, if we leave about 3:00pm-ish, we'll get there in plenty of time," Buffy said.

"I'd say that gives us plenty of time to shop, what say you?" Dawn asked, hopefully.

"I'd say, fuck yes to that!" Buffy said, in the overly cheery voice of the hopeless.

And so, they went back to the Magnificent Mile, (after making a short stop for lunch at the Italian Village downtown, and a quick zoom up to the top of the Sears Tower) and ran up their father's credit card bills at Sax Fifth Avenue, Banana Republic, and Prada on the Mile.

Buffy looked at the lights of L.A. as the plane started descending. They’d only talked a bit on the way back, with one or the other of them napping part of the time.

"You know, you never told me why you decided to change your name," Dawn said, looking at Buffy, who had only told her a few months ago.

Turning away from the lights of L.A, Buffy looked at Dawn, "I don’t suppose that you’d believe me if I told you it was a favorite author of mine," she replied.

Dawn looked at Buffy and saw the abiding sadness in her sister’s eyes, the sorrow and loss that Buffy had tried to mask for over four years. Whether it was that she was actually a part of Buffy, made from her when the monks had made her human, or because she was her sister, at that moment she knew.

Dawn just nodded at her, and at that moment, Buffy knew that she understood. Tears sprang from her tired eyes, unbidden. Dawn took her hand and they stayed that way until the plane came to a stop.

END CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17 - THE CLAUSE

FLASHBACK

MAY 21, 2003

"Angel, you're back!" Lilah said, looking surprised, as she walked into his office.

"Why wouldn't I be back, Lilah?" he asked her, suddenly suspicious.

"Thought you were going to be helping the slayer, that's all," she said, backing toward the door.

"No, that's not all, what is it?"

"Well, it's just..."

"Just what, Lilah?" Angel said, smiling, although his eyes were anything but.

"Nevermind, where's the amulet, Angel?" she asked, hand out.

"I gave it to Buffy, what did you think I did with it?" he asked.

"Well, we thought you were going to use it to help her. Didn't the dossier make that clear, that it was to be worn by a champion, but more than human?"

"Well, yeah it did, but Buffy didn't want me there...had someone else in mind, I guess," he said darkly.

"Well, guess that's too bad then," Lilah said.

"How do you figure? Since the world hasn't ended, I imagine that it worked pretty well for all of us."

"Well, for some of us," Lilah said, "not all of us."

Angel cleared the distance between them in lightening speed, "Whatever do you mean Lilah? And you'd better tell me the truth, or I may just have to tear your head off your neck once again," he hissed at her.

"Easy big guy, I'll tell you. You just gave away your chance to shanshu, that's all. Sure it will come again. Maybe in another couple of hundred years," she said, grinning.

"What the hell are you talking about? The prophecy? What's that got to do with...?"

"Ah....now you're seeing the big picture!" Lilah said, seeing Angel’s eyes get big, "too bad you didn't see it earlier, never took you for someone especially slow, but then again, you vampires..."

Angel was now squeezing Lilah's voice box as tight as he could, "You're going to tell me what this is about, or I swear I will burn down this whole place with you in it," he said, releasing her.

Gasping for air, she stumbled to the intercom, "Bring in the Shanshu Prophecy file to Mr. Angel's office," she said.

"Here," she said, throwing it at him, after a lackey brought it in, "maybe you should have read the first one I gave you."

There in black and white (and probably red, too) was the whole story about the amulet and the prophecy. Angel was paler than normal as he read it, a broodier expression than he normally wore, creased his brow.

"So, what you're telling me, is that had I helped close the Hellmouth, that I would be standing here today all human?"

"That's what it says," Lilah nodded, "we were prepared to intercede, to, er, speed things up, and to do away with a certain clause that's in there. For you. Figured you'd earned it.

"Damn right I earned it after almost 300 years!" Angel said, angrily, still reading.

All of a sudden, he burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?"

"Doesn't matter, I can't lose," he said, grinning, "There will always be another apocalpse I can wait for, when this shanshu ends abruptly."

"Oh, I see you read the catch..." Lilah said.

"Yeah, it's so funny, it's beautiful! I can hardly wait to watch this! Hell, I'm going to love this," he said, sitting back in his big swivel chair, thinking of the possibility, or rather, the impossibility, "I wanna see how it ends!"

END CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18 - LETTING FRIENDS BACK IN

Buffy returned home and to her new job at Santa Ysabel Montessori, after finishing up her two-week training course. She taught 4th and 5th graders in a small, self-contained classroom. All specials were off campus, with generous learning trips to local museums, art galleries, zoos, and nature centers, and the local YMCA for gym. All in all, it was a good place to work, with less stress of a big, public school, and more leeway for individual teaching and learning.

She tried to put the amulet, that is, the missing amulet, out of her mind.

It was around Valentines' Day that following winter, always a particularly hard time for Buffy, that she awoke trembling, heart pounding. She had stopped having either dreams or nightmares of Spike after a couple of years, so she was painfully aware that this was not just out of the ordinary, it was something much more.

She had lost contact with Willow over the past couple of years, but that following evening, after endless pacing and endless debating with herself, that she decided to try the old number. After about 10 rings, a groggy Willow answered the phone.

"Hello?"

"Will?"

"Buffy? Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me. Sorry if I woke you?"

"That's alright. What's up? Is something wrong?" asked Willow immediately.

"No, just calling to see how you were," Buffy hedged.

"Buffy, I haven't heard from you in almost 2 years, and all of a sudden you're calling me in the middle of the night to find out how I am?" Willow laughed.

In the background she could hear Willow telling Kennedy, "Just an old friend, hon, go back to sleep."

"I'm sorry...I shouldn't have called, sorry..."

"Wait," Willow said, taking the phone into the living room, so as to not disturb Kennedy, "Buffy! I'm glad to hear from you, no matter why you called! I know that you've been busy with school and all that. You graduated, right?"

"Yeah, last May."

"That's great, Buffy! Did you go to commencement?"

"Yeah, Dawn and my dad were there. I even have a job and everything," she said, and went on to tell her friend a little bit about her new position.

"That's great Buffy, I'm proud of you. I always knew you could do it," Willow gushed, "you just never had the time before.

"Yeah," Buffy said, "that was it. No time."

"Yeah," Willow said, then paused.

"Buffy?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you happy?"

Buffy paused, not knowing quite how to answer that.

"I'm happy to not be fighting an apocalypse every other day, if that's what you mean. I'm happy to have been given a chance to..." she paused remembering who gave her the chance. "I guess I'm not complaining."

"Oh...I see," Willow said, not sure how much she should pry, now that they weren't as close as they once were.

"Willow?"

"Yeah?"

"I need to know something. It's about the amulet...the one that Spike..." Buffy swallowed, trying hard not to lose it just by saying his name, "the one that Spike wore. There was an archaeology professor who was digging in Sunnydale, and he found it."

"Holy shit!" Willow said, using a word Buffy had never heard her say. "He did? It survived?"

"That's about what I said when I saw a picture of it in a display case at school last summer."

Buffy went on to tell Willow how her and Dawn had gone to Chicago, but that they hadn't been able to locate it at either his apartment or the museum.

"When Angel brought it to me," Buffy explained, "he thought he was going to be the one to wear it. He said his sources told him it had purifying or cleansing power or something. What I want to know is how it survived...when Spike....didn't. I mean, Willow, those last minutes, Spike was channeling all that light, all that energy, right through that amulet. It was him and he was it, so what does that mean? Is it just some useless bauble now? Is there some...." she couldn't finish.

"Some connection to him?" Willow asked, gently.

"Yeah."

"Why now?"

"Huh?" Buffy asked.

"Why didn't you call last summer, when you found out about it?" Willow asked.

"I don't know, just wanted to check it out for myself first, I guess. Afterward, I tried, have been trying to put it out of my mind again...you know, get on with my life, new job and all that. I mean, I just went through 5 years of schooling in about 4 years, heck, I even have classes toward my masters," she paused. "But lately, more and more, I'm feeling something...I don't exactly know what, then last night...I had this dream about Spike, it was so real. Willow, I haven't dreamed of him or seen his face in my dreams in more than two years, and last night was like he was in the same space as me, he was..." she stopped.

"He was what Buffy?"

"Real, Willow. He was real."

"You mean, you felt he was real? " Willow asking for clarification."

"No, Willow. He was real. But, not yet…I can't describe it," Buffy said, anguished.

"I don't know either, but I believe you if you say it’s so. I'll get right on it, I promise, Buffy, if there's something to this, I'll find it out for you."

"Thanks, Willow. Oh, can you not mention this to anyone?"

"You mean Giles? Wasn't going to, anyway. Him and I haven't seen eye to eye for a while."

"I'm sorry," Buffy said.

"I'm not, I just don't think that through all this, that Giles has learned his lesson in how to handle the new slayers. Think he’s trying to control them in ways he never could control you, hoping to keep them safe. It’s making them rebel and when they do, sometimes it puts them into dangerous situations, just to spite him. He should lay off a little."

Buffy was quiet for a minute, "Kinda ruined that Slayer/Watcher expectation of his, didn’t I? I sorta thought he’d been proud of me, back when…"

"He was, he is…just you were…different than these girls are. He’s just afraid. He’s older now, too, Buffy. Just think he’s less willing to take chances than he was before."

"You mean the ones I forced on him, don’t you?"

"Tomatoes, Tamatoes, same diff Buffy, we all just worked together as a certain kind of dynamic, that’s all. Your personality, Giles’, ours…"

"Yeah, dynamic. That was us," Buffy replied, lost in her own memories of all the years they’d spent together, growing up and fighting demons. One big, happy family.

They spent a few more minutes talking about Xander, his new family, Anya, and Andrew.

"Well, I'll let you go then," Buffy said, "say hello to Kennedy for me, but don't let on about..."

"I will and I won't," Willow said. "Oh, and Buffy? Could you send me a copy of the newspaper clipping that you first saw the amulet in?" she asked.

"Yeah, I’ll fax it to you right now, ok? What’s your fax number? Okay, got it."

"Okay, talk to you as soon as I find something out!"

"See ya!" Buffy said, hanging up.

She closed her eyes, as she leaned back on the couch, feeling better than she had in a while. She'd been separate and apart from her friends for a long time now. Maybe it was time to let some of them back in.

END CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19 - TUCKER’S BROTHER

Willow had called Buffy back almost immediately after receiving the fax from her.

"Buffy?"

That was quick.

"Willow?"

"Yeah, it’s me!" Willow said, excitedly. "Did you see who the article was written by?"

"I dunno, some guy, didn't recognize his name," Buffy had replied.

"Andrew Wells," Willow said slowly, letting it sink in.

"So?"

"Tucker Wells was in my Algebra class, Tucker! Andrew's brother!"

"You mean, that's our Andrew?" Buffy finally sputtered.

"Yes, our Andrew!" Willow said, then asked, "did Andrew know anything about the amulet?"

"I don't think so, he never saw it, but he was living with us afterward, it may have been mentioned by one, hell, by any of the potentials, er, I mean slayers. They all saw what happened with it," Buffy said, remembering herself.

"But would he have recognized it?" Willow asked, "I mean it looks just like you said, an old, sort of gaudy necklace."

"I don’t know, but that’s possible…that he didn’t know what it is he was looking at," Buffy said, trying to think of the possibilities, "with Andrew, who knows?"

"So why didn't he call any of us anyway? I mean here you are doing a story on what was once all of our homes, wouldn’t ya think…?" Willow asked.

"I don't know," Buffy answered, "maybe he tried, I've been...well, I'm not exactly listed in the local phone directory. Dawn's off in school, I don't think he knew Hank's first name and there's got to be thousands of Summers in Southern California. You and Giles are back in England. Wait, did he have anybody's email address? You'd think he would've."

"I don't think I exchanged emails with him, did you?"

"No, I know I didn't. Didn't even think about it," Buffy said.

"Something else has been bothering me, too," Willow said.

"What's that?"

"I don't know, it may be nothing. But the paper he works for, I did a search them and their parent company is this firm in L.A. called Wolfram & Hart," Willow said.

"So?"

"Something about that name keeps nagging at me, something I almost remember having heard, but for the life of me, I can't remember where, but I'll keep on working on it and let you know, okay?"

"Okay, Will," Buffy said.

"Bye, Willow."

"Bye, Buffy, talk to you soon."

END CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20 - ANGEL & ANDREW