Title: Risky Business

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

Rating: PG-13.

Summary: B:tVS, Dresden Files. The day after my first meeting with Summers, Ramirez finally got my messages and called me back. 2000 words.

Spoilers: Fusion-fic; post-"Chosen" AU for Buffy, post-#7 "Dead Beat" for DF.

The day after my first meeting with Summers, Ramirez finally got my messages and called me back.

Some of what he had to tell me I would really like to have known before taking that meeting. The rest of it, I was just as glad I hadn't. For one thing, I'd have been a hell of a lot warier in those first moments if I'd known of her connection to Willow Rosenberg, or the bulky police record she'd accumulated-- or the rather sketchy nature of her love life.

I've never really understood why anyone sane, possessed of free will, and aware of the consequences would pursue a romantic relationship with a White Court vampire, not even after knowing Thomas; and she'd dated not one, but two of them. Rather than being broken by them, though, she'd ended up breaking them, in a sequence of Romeo and Juliet style dramatics fit to make a playwright weep. Any human being that could manage that practically demanded handling with the supernatural equivalent of asbestos gloves-- and that wasn't even taking into account her enhanced physical abilities.

Fortunately for me, I'd gone in only mildly alarmed, and treated her just like any other possibly dangerous potential ally. It had only taken one shared meal and conversation for me to realize just how disastrous it could have gone, had I greeted her layered in defensive spells and carefully chosen words. I shudder to think what she'd have made of, say, Morgan. Or the Merlin.

Ebenezar, maybe; the next time I ran into my former mentor on Warden business, I'd have to mention Summers to him. He might have been lying to me about what he really was for as long as I'd known him, but ironically enough, the fact that the only Council wizard with a license to kill had taken in a kid everyone else had already written off and trained him well enough that he was now an agent of the Council himself, made him more trustworthy in this situation, not less. Surely the Blackstaff had run into a Slayer or two in all his long years, and he'd be able to tell me if this one was as unique as she seemed, without my having to worry about him blabbing about her to either the Merlin's hostile little coterie or the Black Council lurking in the background. Ramirez had already made his opinion clear, and I wasn't sure who else among the White Council I could trust.

Even for you, Dresden, getting mixed up with this girl is risky business. She's pure poison for practitioners; every single one that's come into contact with her has been killed by vampires, turned warlock, shot, stabbed, or tortured at the very least.

She may have saved the world a few times, but she's seriously bad mojo, man. You'd better watch your back.

With that kind of opening, I'd known her official story was going to be interesting to hear; and it was. The Council's line on Summers, and her interdimensional hotspot of a former hometown, could be summarized like this:

There are certain times and places where the barrier between our world and the NeverNever is thinner than others. Halloween is one of the primary temporal examples of this effect; Warden Dresden, as observed by Wardens Ramirez, Morgan, and Luccio, provided a rather conclusive example of the phenomenon last autumn. At no other time would any wizard, much less a reckless amateur in only his third decade of practice, have been able to summon enough necromantic energy to pull an animus as old as that of a tyrannosaur back across the divide.

(Ramirez' words, from the official report regarding Sunnydale, not mine).

Locations such as the former town of Sunnydale, California, deal with that type of effect on a more permanent basis. The common term is Hellmouths; an appropriate reference to the chaos, fear, and death that such an overlap of energies tends to generate. Buffy Summers first moved to Sunnydale in her mid teens, the prime age for a young human with supernatural ancestry to begin to awaken to her powers, and promptly became the focus of a Watcher's Council group combating the local Hellmouth's effects on a nightly basis.

It is unknown precisely what heritage her ancestry includes, but its effects are clear: she is stronger than the average human, and much faster-- deadly and effective with any combination of weaponry and martial arts. Very effective. The collective opinion of the local Wardens had been to let her act, and to stay out of her way as much as possible.

(Surprisingly pragmatic of them. It was a pity most of them hadn't survived the recent Red Court attacks; it would have been helpful to learn the ropes from other Wardens who didn't toe the ultrarestrictive Senior Council line. Of course, if they had, I wouldn't actually be a Warden at all-- and I probably never would have met Summers in the first place.)

Unfortunately, Ms. Summers wasn't the only one in her circle of friends with supernatural ancestry. For a time, she was romantically linked with the White Court vampire known as Angelus-- an infamous member of House Malvora who'd taken the death curse of a dying Gypsy wizardess in the late eighteen hundreds and been compelled to feel guilt over every action he took to harm a human from that day forward. As Malvora are as sensitive to the effects of love as any other White Court vampire, his association with Ms. Summers eventually drove them apart and shattered the lingering remnants of the humanizing curse.

Angelus then went on a bloody rampage, drinking in all the fear he'd been denied the pleasure of causing for over a century, and was only brought up short months later by the death curse of another member of his most famous victim's clan. Janna Kalderash had been one of the rare practitioners able to reign in her power effectively enough to operate modern technology, and the Wardens had inserted her into the local school system in an effort to keep a covert eye on Ms. Summers' operation.

(So much pain compressed into so few words. Summers hadn't discussed any of that with me directly, but my half-brother was a Raith; I knew enough about White Court vampires now to understand just how deeply the emotions involved must have run. The part of me that still mourned my separation from Susan ached just thinking about it.)

Ms. Kalderash's lover-- who was also Summers' mentor, and a minor practitioner himself-- never quite recovered from either her deception, or her death. Nor did Summers. And things worsened as the years progressed. She faced down several powerful warlocks who'd caused significant trouble before the White Council could intervene, including the one whose partnership with an unspecified minor deity apparently led to the town's destruction; she thwarted an ascension akin to the Darkhallow Kemmler's disciples attempted to initiate in Chicago; she tamed Angelus Malvora's grandson, William, when he came to town intent on taking control of the Hellmouth's supernatural community; she even went willingly to her death in the process of defeating another capricious minor deity attempting to use the Hellmouth in a ritual to restore itself to its former heights of power. And that was when the worst happened: one of Summers' friends broke the Fifth Law of Magic in a successful attempt to bring her back.

(I'd already heard about the rest of Rosenberg's downward spiral; most of the White Council had, though Summers' name, and the fact that she'd miraculously survived her own resurrection in more or less perfect condition, had not been widely publicized. Probably to reduce the chances of some other kid with more power than sense being inspired to try it.)

After Rosenberg's execution, Summers' group grew even more insular than before, and until the astonishing explosion of magic that first ripped, then reknit the fabric of the NeverNever in Sunnydale and collapsed the town in the process, very little is known about her activities that year. A number of deaths and explosions world-wide unlinked to the ongoing war with the Red Court seem to have coincided with the migration of new associates to the town; but as most of those young women were apparently killed in the final confrontation, and no Council wizard has managed to successfully integrate with the group since Ms. Kalderash's death, it seems unlikely that the full story will ever be known.

Exteme caution is advised in any future contact with this so-called Slayer or her companions.

Listening to Ramirez' report was like staring at that picture of the vase that was also two faces; I could see why the Council was so paranoid about this Slayer, despite-- and also because of-- her impressive record, but trying to match that image with the young woman I'd met and broken bread with threatened to cause severe cognitive dissonance. It just didn't fit.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd had so much fun simply talking shop with someone other than Bob involved in the preternatural community. It was so easy to get all caught up in treating magic, and all it could do for both good and ill, as simply a tool, rather than what it actually was: the stuff of life itself, generated from the interaction of nature and the elements, and from the energy of all living beings. That might be half the trouble with the White Council, actually, right there.

For all her failures, and all the pain lurking in the shadows of her moss-green eyes, Buffy Summers was still capable of passion, respect, and even laughter for the complicated workings of the supernatural world. She had taken her cursed, unwanted heritage and gradually turned it from the bludgeon against all things other the old Watchers had intended her to be into a scalpel, trimming away the truly harmful beings she encountered and leaving the entities and practitioners of murkier allegiance alone. She was willing to reach out and accept the help of almost anyone who might assist her in the name of justice and preservation of life, regardless of official disapproval or personal pain.

I could respect that even in an opponent, never mind an ally. And it certainly didn't hurt that this ally came wrapped in a petite, lithe, well-dressed form that'd had the other patrons in McAnally's drooling and giving me envious glances all evening. Long acquaintance with Murphy had taught me to look at the face before the cleavage when speaking to a woman worthy of respect, but that didn't make me blind, and Summers, from carefully-coiffed hair to littlest painted toe, was more than pleasing to the eye.

Maybe she had been bad luck for the wizards who'd helped her in the past; but then, much the same could be said for my non-wizardly acquaintances, and that hadn't stopped either of us from doing our jobs. It would take time before we could trust one another fully; but in the meantime, I'd gained a strong enough sense of her principles and abilities to strike a tentative agreement with her.

From now on, when I discovered something "Hellmouthy" in my territory, I'd give her a call; and if she ran into anything that fell on the wizardly side, she'd forward it on. With negotiable additions of "monster-fighting backup", to use her words, when and if events slid into a lull for either one of us.

It would be nice to have a seasoned, formidable fighter-- and potential friend-- on call that wasn't Kincaid. I had to say, though, the thing I looked forward to most was the look on Murphy's face the first time she and Summers were in the same room. Either the universe would explode from so much pocket-sized badassery in one place, or they'd become immediate best friends; I wasn't sure which potential outcome scared me more.

Either way-- I had a feeling my world would never be the same.

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© 2009 Jedi Buttercup.