Introductions

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Part 9

Maybe ten minutes into her story, Hypatia had stretched out a bit until now, almost twenty minutes later, her bare feet were propped up on the coffee table, her head tipped back into the corner formed by the back and arm of the couch. Another beer was held loosely in one hand while she turned her head to arch a brow at the handsome couple sitting just a few feet away enjoying the opposite end of the sofa.

"All right," she said, taking a sip from the bottle that had been resting against her thigh, "where was I?"

Harris arched a brow and closed his eye, reciting. "Universe born in fire and ice, blah, blah, blah… the Powers saw it was good, yada, yada, yada…"

She couldn’t help laughing. "A bit simplistic, perhaps, but essentially correct. However, you’ve missed one very important part, Xa… Harris. The Powers saw that it was both good AND bad, which is of course the natural order of things. Without darkness there can be no light; without evil, no good. So there was a balance."

"Yah, right," the vampire grumbled, pulling his Claimed tighter into his arms and resting his chin on one strong, warm shoulder. "Balance. Sounds like your Powers are a great bunch of poofs ta me."

One sculpted black brow rose over an amused violet gaze. "These would be the same Powers who made you their bitch, Spike, so you might want to reconsider your position regarding them. But no matter."

"There was balance," Hypatia continued, her eyes becoming just a bit unfocused as she spoke. "And just as those we call ‘the Powers’ were forces of good and light, so there were other Powers, those commonly known as devils since the advent of man’s ascension to thinking beings. And THOSE Powers… oh, they were jealous."

"Why shouldn’t THEY have access to everything? Why weren’t THEY in complete control?"

She shook her head. "Man has wondered for millennia what the true definition of evil is, thinking it to be some convoluted and involved thing. But it isn’t. Evil… true evil, gents… is the desire to possess anything fine and bright and beautiful… and the glory in destroying it if it can't be yours. So yes, these ‘devils’ were and are evil."

Another slow sip of her beer and she closed her eyes for a moment. "There was… ‘war’ isn’t a strong enough word to describe it. I don’t believe there IS such a word in any language you’d understand. The… battle, as inadequate as that word is too, spread across the entirety of the universe, leaving shattered suns in its wake as the dark Powers sought to reign and the lighter Powers strained to maintain the balance."

"And from this… conflict… an accord arose."

She frowned slightly, opening her eyes.

"Yeah? And?" Harris demanded, pressing himself even closer to his claimed’s tense form as he tried not to shiver at some sense of… absolute verity in the woman’s voice.

Spike purred softly, trying to soothe his beloved. "Th’ constant pausin’ isn’t makin’ us feel any better about alla this, pet," he said after a moment, "An’ I think you might feel better if you just spit it out, yah?"

A small smile appeared on Hypatia’s lips. "I believe I could use another drink, actually. Something stronger, if you have it. I’ve… never actually tried to explain any of this before so I’m a bit… flustered."

Harris sighed and reluctantly pulled away from Spike before getting to his feet and going into the kitchen. He frowned, then quickly tossed a bag of blood in the microwave for his lover, then gathered glasses, a bucket of ice and a bottle of Jack while the cycle ran and finished. A mug came from a cupboard and was filled with the contents of the pouch before all the items were set on a tray and he returned to the living room, setting it on the table close to his and Spike’s spot.

He returned to his position against his vampire then passed the man the mug and poured straight Jack Daniel’s into the tumblers, adding a few cubes to each. "There. Something stronger."

Spike chuckled and pulled his human against him again, then drank a bit of the blood before spiking it quickly. "Ta, luv," he whispered, pressing a soft, slow kiss to his beloved’s neck. "As you were sayin’, pet?"

She took a large swallow of the amber liquor, breathing deeply as it burned coldly down her throat. "Yes… an accord."

"Both sides had lost too many, although being truly immortal, no Powers were actually dead. Simply… diminished. Thus, after many thousands of cycles, many of the original Powers on BOTH sides-and there are a truly enormous number-had lost much of their strength. It was when this was realized that the most powerful remaining of the dark and lighter Powers met in secret."

She drank again, sipping this time as her voice became more contemplative than before.
"I BELIEVE that what happened was meant for the best. It certainly slowed the clashing between the factions." Her head dipped slightly in a mostly internal nod. "They met in secret, as I said, and they reached… an agreement."

"They would combine their strengths, working together for the first time since they’d been brought forth from that fire and ice, and they would create something new. Something outside of their conflict. They would distill their natures, combine them, and make a being… an entity… which existed solely as the perfect balance of light and dark. And that entity would, by holding so much of the strength of both sides, be inert. Neither good nor bad, but… the ultimate shade of grey. It would have no thoughts, no emotions; it would be a being of PURE balance. And as such, it would restrict the degree of… damage which could be inflicted by either side."

Her eyes sharpened a bit as her face became slightly pinched and she slammed down the rest of her drink then filled the glass to the top with liquor, ignoring the ice and the two staring men.

"Unfortunately, they failed to consider all the possible outcomes of their act and when they had finished… they were confronted with not one but THREE distinctly separate beings."

Another long swallow of booze and Hypatia frowned. "They had achieved their ultimate goal. They had created their ‘balance’, their ‘null’. But they had also created a force of pure evil… and one of pure good. Light and dark… and the space in between." She sighed, drinking again.

"The saddest part of all of it, though, was that while their ultimate shade of grey was exactly as they’d hoped-- unthinking, emotionless, virtually inert-- the other two…" she frowned, looking at the blond and brunette wearily. "They were not. They felt. They thought. And although they had no physical form, they yearned."

"And thus it was for millions of years, until fire and ice erupted across the universe again, this time giving birth to demons as the dark Powers sought to upset the balance once more. Because evil makes its own rules and the fighting had lessened. They saw their chance and they took it."

Hypatia shrugged slowly, staring into her nearly empty glass. "Perhaps they’d forgotten what had happened before. It might be possible. But demons came forth and existed in mayhem and destruction for tens of thousands of years, and then…" She looked at Xander. "And then your remote ancestors began to evolve. I believe the lighter Powers had a hand in that. You evolved and crawled from the slime of beginning and… you made this corner of this dimension your own."

"THIS dimension?" One deep brown eye stared, looking both curious and… fearful.

"Of course THIS dimension," Hypatia said with a bitter laugh. "This is the one where you succeeded. There are myriad others in which humans… well, let’s just say that your kind… OUR kind… aren’t the dominant species."

Spike frowned and held his slightly shivering Claimed closer still, nearly pulling the warm human into his lap. "An’ much as I appreciate the history lesson, luv, what th’ bloody hell does this have ta do with you an’ Trev, ‘ey?"

The woman tried to smile although it ended up looking more like a sickly sneer. "The entities of dark and light, Spike…"

"Yah? What about them?" the vampire demanded, feeling an odd sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

"They ended up in this dimension… working together at the place which became Wolfram & Hart after a few thousand years." She let out one shuddering breath. "Because even though they were entirely different beings, they knew they were once together and as time passed they’d been drawn closer, needing each other, needing to be one again. And the senior partners, as they came to be called, gave them that. It bound them into one being, both dark and light but aware, able to act, unlike their poor ‘sibling’."

"I… WE remember you. You came closer to us than you know so many times… before you regained your ability to function in phase with this world. You almost walked in on us more often than you can imagine. It was only through vigorous warding that we managed to keep you out of our home… our White Room."

Her nauseated smile shook a bit and she looked away from the men. "As for that third entity I mentioned… you know it, as well. A mystical key that could open the portals to Hell… until it was stolen away and given form and function and life... and a family, friends, a world in which to live, a world it could touch and feel and… be human in. And you can’t know how much we envied her."

"Shit," Harris whispered.

"Niblet." Spike murmured, knowing it was true.

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(A/N: Yes, I know... my explanation isn't exactly canon. So sue me. Um, not really cuz I don't have anything anyone would want. LOL

Thanks to TheShadowCat (twice) and RemityGirl for taking the time to review. And yes, I also know you probably have more new questions than ones which were answered in this part. Bear with me. *grins* More soon.)