Title Leve the Evyl
Author Brutti ma buoni
Pairing/Characters Spuffy, Giles
Rating PG
Words 750
Prompt Sword in the Stone
Setting season 7, End of Days, a kitchen table breathing space that never happened between Spike and Buffy's hallway conversation and Buffy heading off to meet the Guardian
A/N This month is bringing out the Pretentious Title Lover in me. Thanks to William Caxton, for his prologue to the Morte D'Arthur, and to Malory, author of same, who lent the lines which end it.




It was in Rupert's voice, that tone that sent Potentials scattering like startled geese. The very words, "It is interesting to reflect, is it not…" barely enunciated before a whole bunch of "Gotta go" and "Training! Urgent! Now!" and "We must tend to the wounded. Again" broke around the kitchen table. Within a very short time, Spike was pretty much the whole of Giles's audience.

Awkward, obviously, what with the recent conspiracy to kill Spike, against the natural order of things. (Spike tried to remember the last time he'd been in on a plot to kill Rupert, specifically, as opposed to Scoobies in general, and failed. The one that stuck in his mind was the one where he'd been doing his best to save the idiot, from everyone that the old Spike had loved. Something wrong there.) Giles coughed. Spike examined his fingernails, which were suitably chipped and bad boy.

"Interesting?" he ventured, not really caring a toss. He needed time to process Buffy things, not Giles. What he'd just said, how nakedly he'd put himself at her mercy. And how she had halfway met him, and then not quite followed through. ("Does it have to mean something?" Fuck it, yes, it does.) And he hadn't begged, which was something. But she hadn't said more, and now she was about to head off to certain doom again, with him tagging along for a distant bodyguard, and they might actually not get to say it. Whatever it might turn out to be.

Anyway. A dose of Rupert on mystical whatnot was just what Spike needed to nod along with, before going off to be a hero.

"… almost, indeed quite explicitly, the equivalent of the sword in the stone myth."

"Axe, more like," said Spike, absently, and they exchanged a silent commiseration on existing among females who accepted that the object was a scythe. Which, clearly, not. Pfft.

Took more than that to knock Rupert askew, of course. "And yet, we must be aware of what that tale implies. It is not unalloyed good, to be the chosen one, is it? One draws the sword from the stone, and one is then the target for all sorts of unpleasantness. One may have one's acolytes, one's Round Table, but…" A genteel wave of the hands discounted their efforts.

"One, indeed." Spike sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose at the impending headache. Failing to think coherently about Buffy, again. "Always one. Always bloody one. Even with young Faith on the staff, it's still just one girl in all the world."

"It always has been," Giles said, a thought grimly. "No changing that."

"Isn't there?" The voice came from behind Spike, but he didn't need to see his Slayer to recognize her. "But we already did that. The Chosen Two. Why not the Chosen Thirty?"

Spike snorted, headache intensifying. "Why not the Chosen Three Thousand, come to that?"

There was a pause. "Yeah," Buffy said. "Why not?" There was a note there, the note of confidence she'd lacked the past few days, returning now she'd King Arthured her Chosen One's 'scythe' and got her planning head on. She rocked past the table, heading for the back door, miraculous weapon swinging easily in her capable hands.

"I'm going over to find out more about the scythe," she added. "And then we're going to talk power sharing, okay? Thanks, guys."

Spike sighed, looking after her as she left with that obscure speech. Girl on a mission. Sword-in-the-stone Chosen, and no mistaking. The rest of them just had to keep up where they could. And now wasn't the time to be enacting her a scene, much though he wanted it.

He tipped his chin at Giles, since between them they seemed to have given Buffy a new plan, and the old murder plot had to be got over sometime. Life was on fast forward for all of them, these days. "Seem to remember quoting old Harry at you, last time. Malory, now, is it?"

"Bloody hope not," said Giles, firmly. "Not the Morte de anyone, if possible. Certainly not the Chosen One."

"Bloody right," Spike responded, because Buffy not dying could hardly be more of his house policy. "Got to go," he added, and headed off. Unchosen, but still heroic.

Giles's voice followed him. "I understand ye must be king of this land. Wherefore I, said Arthur, and for what cause? Sir, said Ector, for God will have it so.

"Something like that," Spike replied. "But I'd bet on the Slayer to give fate a tweak, wouldn't you?"

***