Order of Business

Author's Note: MAJOR WARNING for a possible clunky first person perspective. It's the only way I've ever read Anita so I wanted to try writing it that way also. We'll see how it turns out.

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I didn't like this idea. I was sure that Claudia and Lisandro liked it even less. Haven had my hand and was leading us down the hallway through a crowd of people that were so worried that depression and gloom came off of them in waves. How was I going to even do this? I had no idea why he was sure that I could, and just the thought of all of these crying kids judging me and pinning their final hopes on my supposed expertise was enough to make me want to go home now, not after I failed, but just go right now.

If the situation wasn't so grim, the amazed looks that Claudia was getting from some of these girls would have been funny; nothing causes more doubletakes than a six and a half foot tall muscle building beautiful woman in a tight sleeveless tee-shirt that radiated badass bodyguard, who was firmly squeezing the butt of her pistol because of her beast's reaction to all of the threats in the enclosed hallway. The reactions to the Latin heart-throb Lisandro were probably more primal, even in this tense situation. He was definitely feeling the visual inspections as he kept looking around him while his beast must have felt hunted by the other predator's interest in him. It's probably not nice to think it, but thank god we were here when all of these slayers had more pressing things on their minds.

"Here we are," Haven said, his voice a little out of breath as we walked through the last doors before coming to a waiting room.

"Are you sure about this?" I squeezed his hand and tried to get him to look at me but his attention was focused on a priest that was leaving a room a few doors down the hall.

He stopped and the speed of his movement had Claudia draw her pistol in reaction. I waved her down, he only had grabbed my face with his cold hands and pleaded with me, "Anita, please, please just try. What do we have to lose? you could save more than one life, because when she dies, I'm going to Paris and fuck the consequences. I'll be taking as many of those bastards with me as I can. Please just say you'll try. Please..."

"Alright, I wouldn't have come if I wasn't willing to at least try." He hugged me and I panicked, for a moment I lost control of my lioness and she raced to the surface to try to break free, but he felt it and his hot power that filled my nose with the smells of what I assumed were the African Savannah, encased me and pushed her back. He whispered to her and, I don't know, promised her dark little things, but she listened anyway. She always listened to Haven for some reason and I wondered what that meant for us finding a new lion as she slowly trotted back down into the metaphysical cave that all of my beasts shared. He felt her leave and he kissed my forehead and mumbled his thanks as he pulled me towards the room.

It didn't take anything as sensitive as a preternatural beast to feel the emotion in that room. As we walked in, the crowd of shellshocked people all turned to stare at me, but I almost didn't notice it; there were more multicolored candles with multicolored flames than I thought would be possible to fit in the room. They were everywhere, on every surface and lining thin shelves all over the walls. Even as I looked at them, a man was using a cordless drill to install another shelf and several young women were waiting with trays of lit candles to place on it.

I caught the last part of the Doctor's explanation to Haven about perforated intestines, septic shock and a whole list of other critical dangers. The surgeons had done everything they could, and judging by the amount of state of the art equipment operating in the room, I believed them. It was up to her ravaged body to either pull through or not. I looked closer at the woman in the bed and she didn't even come close to the explosion of life-force that she was the first time we met. Her closed and swollen left eye was the only visible part of her face and her sister's tears were streaking down it as Dawn kept kissing that spot on her.

Haven was talking to the witch I had met earlier, Willow looked as hollow-eyed as the rest of them and I had a sudden wave of doubt, sometimes it was just the person's time to go.

Princess was sitting in the corner, a bandage on her arm where they drew the blood from. Four empty syringes were on the nursing tray next to the bed. If she was going to catch Lycanthropy, then she already had it.

As they were all discussing how this would work, I lowered my shields a small bit and felt the sudden wall of force that the candles represented. I almost fell on my ass, but I steadied myself on the bed's handrail and slowly got accustomed to the energy around us. Everyone had grown silent at my stumble and Haven nodded to me to start, as if I knew how to just throw a switch and suddenly my pseudo-vampiric nature would be able to call lions. I wish it was that easy, I really did. Reaching out, I put my hand over her heart and let my power flow. I knew instantly that the spells were what was holding her soul in place. She had been or could have been dead several times already and I wondered if it was my place to play god, to make the decisions of life and death for someone I had only met once before.

I was turning to tell Haven that I couldn't do it and my eyes locked with the sister. She knew what I was thinking, I'm sure she did. She stared at me and refused to blink or back down. I shut my eyes and turned back to Buffy's side.

As soon as I tried to call her little fuzz of energy into the shape of a lion, her slayer answered me. It came and I had the image of green eyes in my mind, studying me, seeing me for what I was and then it just let me in. I wasn't expecting this and I fell right through her mind. I couldn't slow it down. I watched every moment, every fight, every horror, and every lost loved one. The green eyes appeared again and drifted towards me, for a frightening moment I thought she was marking me somehow, marking me like she was a vampire. I back-peddled and fell in her memories again. I watched Haven over me for the first time, his absolute gentleness a welcome surprise. I watched Joyce as she made me pancakes. I watched Angel standing by my window and Spike leaning on a tree in the yard. I watched Dawn's face glow as she married Xander, dressed in an antique gown that had taken Giles, Faith, and I seven months to track down. I watched Willie, only seconds old, open his eyes for the first time and look at his mother while I cried behind the video camera.

I knew the slayer wanted to live and it was fighting the hardest it had ever fought to keep her alive but it was slowly slipping away, frantically grasping the magical ropes from those spells. I told the slayer, without words, that the little bit of energy trying to become a lion beast could help heal her. It looked at me, no green eyes, no body, no anything, but I knew it was staring at me. It knew I was asking to let something dangerous invade it's territory and didn't want to allow it, but the ropes kept slipping away so the green eyes left mine and I felt my lioness, my own beast, walk to the fuzzy ball and it was like a mother licking it's cub to take it's first breath. The energy took shape as she groomed it. It grew as my beast fed it with her own energy. We had thought that my ability to call was our only choice, but once the slayer let me in, it was like my lioness knew instinctively what to do and I felt the newborn beast open it's green eyes and look at us.

At that moment I knew two things for certain: we would always look at the cub as our offspring, daughter was too powerful of a word for my human mind, but my lioness liked it, and Haven's male was lost to us forever. The small golden cub, our cub, squared her tiny shoulders and informed us with a squeaky growl that Haven was her king, she was his Queen, the pride was theirs, and they would fight for it all.

My lioness and I had a moment of loss, knowing that it could have been us but then the slayer came back through the darkness, and my lioness didn't want to be there anymore and withdrew back to my body, back to her den.

Shadowed hands reached down and picked the kitten up and held her to it's chest. I listened to the surprisingly loud purr for a moment before kissing her little furry face and then just like when I fell in, I fell out and the lights of the room were harsh to my eyes.

I was wrapped in someone's arms as everyone was yelling and the doctor was trying to get space around the bed.

The doc's commanding voice yelled, "Her temperature is spiking!" The gloom and dread of the room burned away, replaced by renewed hope.
Everyone listened as Haven told the him that it was a great sign and he sent Walker to go get the rest of the pride.

"Lions and slayers," I said as loud as I could.

The whole crowd looked at me and Haven responded, "Why both?"

"Because her slayer and her lion can both use the warmth, the energy," I told them as Giles wrapped a blanket around me. "The slayer sees the other slayers as her cubs now, she's not a loner anymore. I felt her belief change as she held the cub. Cover her in both." Why did I always end up shivering when the power that I was just bathed in was so hot?

Haven and Giles both explained to the doctor that all of the equipment and her bandages and air-casts had to come off. It wasn't an easy sale.

Even with everything that had happened, I couldn't help but laugh out loud at some of their reactions when Princess slipped out of her clothes and climbed onto Buffy's bed. It was an even harder sale to get them to ask the teenage slayers to volunteer to do the same.

Xander immediately began constructing a frame to drape a sheet over, so there would be privacy on the bed as Buffy's body would be raw and couldn't handle even a sheet being on her.

Kennedy, Rami, Jenn, and Blake were the first slayers on the bed, chosen by Dawn and Giles from the initial pool of volunteers.

So many slayers and lions volunteered that they rushed to get a much larger bed. Jean-Claude donated his massive custom-made one from the circus and within an hour, Xander and an army of helpers had it taken apart, moved, and put back together, right in the middle of Buffy's cleared out office.

Much later, she would be very unhappy that nobody thought to disable the security cameras.