Rory - Part 5

"Uh, I'll just go report in," her taller companion murmured, quickly disappearing into the main building.

"Chicken!" Vi said under her breath, even as she braced herself. She wasn't sure exactly when Dawn had decided to become her number one fan, but as soon as it happened the other slayers in her cohort had noticed, and she'd been on semi-permanent Dawn-duty ever since. It wasn't a bad thing but she was sure the only thing keeping her from losing her hearing was her slayer healing.

"When'd you get back?" Dawn asked excitedly, throwing herself at Vi. "Mom wouldn't tell me where she sent you. What's she got you guys doing?"

"We're just passing through. And when did the Boss start letting you call her that?" Vi asked.

"She hasn't," Dawn admitted with a grin, "But she's not here. She's off doing a meet-n-greet somewhere in Vermont or Maine or some place like that. So, what's she got you doing now?" she repeated, dragging Vi away from the wall and towards a shaded bench.

"Keeping an eye on someone," Vi said. "Making sure she gets home in one piece."

"Spy stuff?" Dawn asked. "Who's your Moneypenny? Can I be your 'Q'?"

"No. Just the usual unobtrusive shadowing," Vi said, shaking her head. "Isn't Andrew still 'Q'?"

"Nah. He tried to design a hi-tech stake and almost got Rona killed, so Giles demoted him back to archivist slash cook, where he can't hurt anyone."

"She should know better by now," Vi said, with an amused snort. "Didn't he almost get her killed with his last brilliant idea? I don't care if he can bake scones just like her grandmother, I wouldn't let him near any of my weapons."

Dawn laughed at her comment, and not the high pitched noise that caused everyone to cover their ears. It was a warm, deep throated laugh that sent shivers up and down Vi's spine whenever she heard it.

"So, who is it?" Dawn asked, after making an exaggerated search for eavesdroppers. "Anyone special?"

"No one you'd know," Vi said, with a shrug. "And how often does she have us shadow someone?" she asked. "Other than you, Mr. Giles, or Xander?"

"So, definitely someone special," Dawn said, nodding. "From where to where?"

"We picked her up in Vegas a couple weeks ago," Vi told her. "And she's ours until Buffy tells us to stop."

"Vegas? Did Buffy say why she wanted you to keep an eye on this 'her'?"

"Something about a demon sacrifice and a contract," Vi said, taking off her jacket and draping it across the bench.

"Oh... oh!" Dawn bounced excitedly to her feet. "What's she look like? Buffy didn't give us any pictures with her brief report."

"Like that," Vi said, pointing towards two women being escorted up the walkway from the small parking lot that was just inside the gate.

"Which one?" Dawn asked, squinting.

"It's the younger one. The older one's her mother," Vi told her.

"I wonder what they're doing here," Dawn whispered. "Buffy didn't say anything about her knowing about the Council before she left."

"They didn't give us their itinerary," Vi said, shaking her head.

"You could have bugged their car," Dawn said as they watched the two women disappear as they followed their escort up the walkway and around towards the front entrance of the main building.

"No, we couldn't," Vi told her firmly. "Buffy would have us hunting in the sewers in Mexico City for a month if she caught us doing something like that without her permission."

"Ick. I guess not then," Dawn scrunched her face up in disgust. "If you aren't bugging them, how are you following them so they don't see you?"

"Ancient slayer secret," Vi said solemnly, keeping a straight face at Dawn's giggle. "And who says they haven't seen us?"

"How'd that happen?"

"Buffy had to catch a plane so she had Jess drive the target to her hotel afterward," Vi said. "And then she noticed Jess a week later when we followed them to a buffet."

"Slayers and food. Why am I not surprised," Dawn mumbled. "Did you catch their names?"

Vi shook her head at Dawn's comment. "You don't think Buffy would have us following someone around without telling us their names, do you?"

"Well, she won't tell anyone details about Vegas," Dawn said, pouting. "How am I supposed to do a decent translation if I don't have an eyewitness account of the ritual?"

"I'm sure she told the people who needed to know, like Giles and Willow," Vi said with a straight face. "The important ones."

"I'm important too," Dawn grumbled. Any further comments were halted by a faint buzzy sound. "Crap..." she said, pulling a small phone out of a pocket and looking at the display.

"One of your adoring fans?" Vi asked, winking at her.

"We've been expecting someone to pick up a book," Dawn said, shoving her phone back into her pocket. "Looks like they're here." She gave Vi an intent look. "Will you be here when I get back?"

"Depends on them," Vi said. "We leave as soon as they do."

"Okay. When are you going to swing back through here?" Dawn asked.

Vi shrugged. "No idea. It's up to Buffy."

"Well, that's not acceptable," Dawn grumbled as she stood up. "I'm going to have to talk with her about her tendency to monopolize your time."

"Dawn, don't..." Vi said, wincing internally.

"Don't worry about it," Dawn told her over her shoulder as she walked away. "I'll take care of it."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Vi whispered to herself. Sighing, she closed her eyes and tried not to think about the trouble Dawn could cause her.

"Interesting place," Lorelai murmured, as they followed their escort up the path.

"Very country estate-ish," Rory added.

"In a Harlequin romance kind of way," Lorelai whispered. "I wonder where the stables are. Do you think they have a butler with an English accent? Do you think he's a Wooster or a Jeeves?"

"Mom!" Rory made a shushing motion with her hand in the direction of their escort.

"What?" Lorelai gave her an innocent look. "Can't you just picture it? Riding bareback along the beach into the sunset?"

"There probably isn't a beach," Rory told her. "When we get home you're going cold turkey."

"But Rory..." Lorelai whined.

"Those books are going back to Miss Patty," Rory said.

"You're mean!" Lorelai grumbled.

"You agreed to the rules," Rory said. "You can only read them if you never, ever mention them in public in my presence. It's bad enough Paris knows about your Harlequin addiction."

"And how did she find out? Huh?"

Before she could go into a long rant, they reached the large building. Rory quietly breathed a sigh of relief as they entered through a large door into a cavernous lobby. If she were lucky, she thought, something would distract her mother from the topic until they got home.

They stopped next to their escort, in front of a receptionist on the other side of the large room. The sounds of their footsteps on the marble floor seemed to echo eerily for several seconds after.

"Wooster," Lorelai whispered, poking Rory with an elbow while their escort spoke to the receptionist.

She handed them small badges with their pictures and 'Guest' written on them in flowing script. After showing them where to pin the badges, their escort led them deeper into the building, up a flight of stairs and down a long hallway.

"I'll escort you back to your car when you're finished," she told them as she ushered them into a room where an older woman sat at a desk, guarding a door. "Eve will take care of you until then," she said, nodding at the other woman before leaving.

"Please have a seat. Miss Summers has been informed of your arrival," Eve told them. "She just stepped out for a moment."

"Miss Summers?" Lorelai whispered to Rory as they sat down. "Where have we heard that name before?"

"It's just a coincidence," Rory whispered back.

"If you say so," Lorelai said, giving her a wink.

"Can I get you something to drink?" Eve asked them.

"Coffee?" Lorelai asked eagerly

"For both of us," Rory added. "Please?"

Eve nodded. Picking up her phone, she spoke quietly into it for a moment.

"This isn't my best side," Lorelai muttered, glaring at her badge as they waited. "When did they take our pictures? Do you think they can take another one?"

Assuming it was a rhetorical question, Rory looked around curiously from her seat. There was a large window on one side of the room. Trying to look without appearing too nosey, she thought she could see down into another room full of bookshelves. She was about to ask Eve what it was when she had the strangest feeling, for a moment almost too fast to count, in the pit of her stomach.

"Did someone call for coffee?" A tall, casually dressed brunette just barely out of her teens asked, walking into the room carrying a large tray.

"Miss Summers!" Eve stood up and reached for the tray while giving her a scandalized look.

"Eve," she said in the same tone of voice, relinquishing the tray. "We'll do this in my office," she said to them, following Eve into her office.

"Coincidence," Rory said in a low voice, giving her mother a smug look as they stood up and followed the two women into the inner office. "It's not her."

"Well, yeah." Lorelai said, as they stood there. "Not blonde."

"Have a seat," their host said, pointing at a leather couch next to the door. Sitting on the edge of her desk, she watched them intently while Eve poured coffee. "Could you let Vi know it'll be at least thirty minutes?"

"Yes, ma'am." Eve said, before leaving the room, closing the door behind her.

She shook her head. "Someday she's going to get herself fired."

"Rory could use a job," Lorelai said eagerly. "She can do that whole 'Girl Friday' thing. She's seen that Meryl Streep Prada movie at least a dozen times."

"Mom! I don't need a job. And why would Miss Summers fire someone for being so polite?" Rory said, dodging an elbow as she reached for one of the steaming cups on the small table in front of the couch.

"Dawn," she corrected with a slight smile. "Miss Summers is my neurotic, over protective sister. And I couldn't fire Eve even if I wanted to. She works for my sister."

"This is good," Lorelai said, leaning back into her chair with a contented sigh after a long sip of coffee. "Where'd you get the beans?"

"Couldn't tell you."

"Oh, it's a secret?" Rory asked, breathing in the wonderful aroma.

"No, it's a bribe," Dawn said, winking at Rory. "One of our overseas offices gets several pounds a month from one of the organizations they do business with and they send me some."

"Give the Eve chick back to your sister," Lorelai said. "Rory will work for coffee beans."

"What's your percentage?" Rory asked her mother with a resigned sigh.

"Commission or flat fee... hmm.." Lorelai pretended to think for a minute. "I think a commission works best. Eighty percent of any coffee beans you get?"

"As tempting as the idea is it wouldn't work," Dawn said, "No offense, but I prefer redheaded office eye candy. Assuming I could convince She Who Must Be Obeyed of the need for said eye candy."

"She could dye her hair," Lorelai offered. "Or you could dye yours blonde. Rory seems to have this thing for blondes lately, though you might be too tall. How tall are you?"

"Not helping," Rory muttered. "If you want to walk the rest of the way home it can be arranged."

"You wouldn't!" Lorelai said. "I know things..."

"Ahem!" Dawn cleared her throat.

"Sorry," Rory said, blushing in embarrassment. "She's been cooped up in the car all day. She's not normally this bad..." Rory looked at her mother, willing her to keep quiet. She was actually behaving normally but Miss Summers didn't need to know that, Rory thought.

"Not a problem," Dawn said. "I completely understand. My sister has the same problem with long exposure to cramped spaces. She goes a bit wonky." She watched them intently for a minute.

Blushing at the attention, Rory nervously sipped her coffee, wondering why it tasted so familiar. "Grandma said you have a package for her."

"Yes, Emily let us borrow a manuscript from her private collection," Dawn said, leaning back to pick up a brown package from her desk. "You didn't have to pick it up," she told them, holding it out. "We have a very trustworthy courier service."

"We were passing through anyway," Rory murmured, putting down her cup to take the package. "Grandma has a private manuscript collection?" she asked, glancing at her mother. "And why aren't you surprised?"

"It's a family thing," Lorelai told her. "It's not casual reading. Most of it isn't even in English. I was going to tell you eventually."

"Oh." Rory stared down at the heavy package, turning it over in her hands. It didn't feel like a book. "Can I see it?"

"It's sealed for travel," Dawn told her. "It's not going to turn into a pile of dust if you really want to look at it, but you should wait for Emily to open it."

"And we should get going, kid" Lorelai said, almost inhaling her coffee as she stood up. "She's expecting us for dinner." "Right." Standing awkwardly, Rory joined her mother at the door. "Thanks for the coffee," she said before exiting from the room.

"Alyssa will take you back to your car," Dawn said, leaning against the door to her office. She gestured towards their escort from earlier who was sitting primly in a chair next to the outer door.

There was a slight tugging for a moment at the back of Rory's throat when the door closed behind them. She took a deep breath to steady herself before following her mother and Alyssa down the hall.

"This isn't the way we came," Lorelai said when they stopped at the top of a circular stairway.

"No, ma'am. This is a shortcut."

"I'm all for shortcuts," Lorelai said. "Lead on Gunga Din."

"Kipling?" Rory muttered. "I'm definitely blocking PBS and BBC America when we get home."

"Hey, do you have a butler named Jeeves?" Lorelai asked eagerly.

"Mom!" Rory hissed. "Just drop it."

The hall seemed to go on forever, Rory thought, as they followed Alyssa, their escort. The package seemed to grow heavier with each step.

"What's this?" her mother asked as they entered a long, curved atrium. The outer, curved wall was a vast expanse of greenhouse glass. Stone benches, interspersed with large plants, lined it, looking inward. The floor was a mixture of marble and ceramic tiles like the hallway. Rory wondered why there was a podium at the center of the inner wall.

Their escort paused for a moment as if trying to decide what to tell them. Rory wondered if they were supposed to be there.

"It's a memorial," a soft voice said.

"Good afternoon, Miss Willow," their escort said nervously, turning to face the slight redhead who'd come up behind them.

"It's alright," she told Alyssa. "I'll take them back to their car."

"Yes, ma'am," she said, before hurrying out of the room in the same direction they'd entered. The way she happily bounded out of the room brought the image of a silent Tigger to Rory's mind.

"Everyone's so polite around here." Lorelai whispered to Rory.

"You're guests." Willow told them with a slight smile, overhearing her. "Don't worry, the next time you drop by they'll treat you like family."

"Next time?" Lorelai asked, looking at Rory in confusion. Willow just smiled at them.

"Memorial to who?" Rory asked, looking around curiously. It wasn't what she normally thought a memorial should be like. It seemed to be too pleasant, with none of that underlying melancholy most memorials seemed to have.

"To whom." her mother corrected under her breath.

"To them," Willow said, pointing at the the long inner wall.

Rory looked over at it for a moment before looking at Willow for permission to get closer. At Willow's nod, she walked softly to the nearest end of the wall.

It was covered with small brass plaques, enscribed with what Rory assumed were names, though she didn't recognize the languages. Reaching out to touch one, she jumped back in surprise at the images that flashed by in her head.

"Rory?"

"I'm fine," she whispered to herself, only partly believing it.

"Are you okay?" Her mother asked.

"I'm fine," she said a little louder as she continued to follow the wall. "Static electricity."

She tried to count them but gave up after a few feet. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of plaques she thought, looking further down the wall. She was sure her eyes were deceiving her. It wasn't physically possible to cram so many into such a small space.

As she scanned further down the wall she noticed that some plaques had a drawing or painting above them, and the languages started to seem familiar, though she still couldn't read them. Some were written in Greek, some in Latin, one or two in hieroglyphs, and several with Chinese pictographs. And some had recognizable numbers. She wondered if they were years.

She tried to look closely at all of them but there were just too many, most only getting a quick glance. Until somewhere in the middle she came to the painting of a young woman dressed like someone out of the Arabian Nights. She wasn't the first on the wall to be dressed in something exotic. There'd been one girl wearing chain mail, and another dressed like a medieval nun. That wasn't what halted Rory in her tracks. The girl could have been her mother's twin when she was that age.

"Mom?" Rory turned to her mother who was sitting on one of the benches, chatting with Miss Willow. "Come over here!"

"Hey babe, what'd you find?" she asked, hurrying over, followed by Willow at a more sedate pace.

"Who does that look like?" Rory asked them, pointing at the portrait.

"She looks sort of like a third cousin of mine. Francine? No, Fredericka. She had this thing for dates or maybe it was pears. She ran away from home to live in a kibbutz to get closer to God."

"Where'd she get the idea from?" Rory asked. "That's a very un-D.A.R. W.A.S.P. thing to do."

"The Sixties were over and all the communes in Oregon were closed?" Lorelai said with a shrug. "You'll have to ask your grandmother."

"Who is she?" Rory asked, resting her hand next to the picture. "And why does she look like my mother?"

Willow leaned in to read the plaque below the picture. "Asima el Rahman," she read. Stepping back she looked at Lorelai for a minute and then at the portrait again. "The resemblance is striking, but it's probably just a coincidence."

"Okay..." Rory murmured, before moving on, absorbed in examining the remaining plaques.

"We'll just be over there," Lorelai said loudly, "while you completely ignore us."

"The wall affects some people that way," Willow told her. "There's something fascinating about all of those names and pictures."

"Are they all girls?" Lorelai asked, dropping back down onto the bench she'd been sitting on earlier. At Willow's nod she continued. "And you've managed to avoid telling us who they all are."

"You don't need to know," Willow said, gazing intently at Rory as she stopped at the end of the wall in front of a group of three portraits. "For a lot of them we only have their names. Only a few did anything considered important enough to be recorded in our archives. This is the only place they're really remembered."

"I ran away from home when I was sixteen because of Rory. I never completely believed my mother's stories of heroic women who always died young were real, but I wanted no child of mine to a part of it," Lorelai told her, watching Rory.

"You know what we do then," Willow said, turning to look at her.

"Looking at that wall I can make an educated guess," she said, grimacing. "And Emily Gilmore wouldn't let you borrow one of her precious manuscripts on a whim. It may be selfish but I don't want Rory involved. We won't be back."

"She'll never have her name up on that wall," Willow said.

"Good," Lorelai said. "Rory knows I ran away because of her but she doesn't need to know the truth."

"Does she remember anything about Vegas?" Willow asked.

"She's mentioned a mysterious blonde, and she has a phone number but she claims to have forgotten almost everything else and won't call her." Lorelai looked at Willow. "How do you know about Vegas?"

"The so-called 'mysterious blonde' owes me a copy of her complete report on what happened to Rory in Vegas." Willow said. "I suspect she skipped town to avoid turning it in. Typical Buffy."

"You know her?" Lorelai asked eagerly.

"You met her sister earlier," Willow said. "Buffy's shorter but they are obviously sisters."

"Hah! I knew it!" Lorelai said.

"It looks like she's done," Willow said, pointing at Rory who was now looking in their direction.

"Huh." Standing up, Lorelai hurried to the end of the atrium where Rory was standing in front of a portrait of a blonde woman. "Hey," she said. "Ready to go?"

"Hey," Rory returned in a strained voice. "Yes."

Lorelai looked at Willow who was looking at Rory, a concerned look on her face.

Rory stepped off the path halfway to their car and, ignoring her mother's concerned look, sat on the grass and took her shoes off. She desperately needed to feel something living under her feet. She now knew her mysterious blonde's name, but the shock of seeing her up on that memorial wall hadn't gone away and she suspected it would be a while. Their encounter had only been days ago. She shouldn't have been on that wall.

Just thinking about it made her feel nauseous for some reason. She couldn't help feeling that Buffy wasn't dead and her presence with all of those dead girls was a mistake of some sort. But she didn't know how to prove it. Or why it even mattered.

Tucking her socks in her shoes Rory stood up, balancing carefully with the package and her shoes in her hands. Taking a deep breath she looked at her mother. "All set," she said, staying in the grass, feeling the blades rubbing against her feet as she walked towards their car and home.

• Not sure where the whole Dawn/Vi thing is going. But I blame Dr. Horrible.

© Copyright 2009 Andy Stoffel. Last update: 7/19/09; 10:51:28 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.