"I can get you out of here," quietly said Xander Harris looking down at the sedated woman strapped to her bed in a psychiatric ward.
Standing at the foot of this bed, Xander grimaced, showing off a quick expression of intermixed horrified sympathy and increasing urgency at how bad she appeared lying there, her gaunt face slack in a coma that might never end as a result of her shattered mind. Rubbing the silver bracelet clamped around his left wrist and absently feeling the runes carved onto the bracelet's surface which among other things were keeping their encounter secret from anyone who might come along even so late this time of the night, Xander tried once more.
"Please, I know part of you is hearing me, and there's no reason why you should trust a complete stranger! Not when somebody else you knew turned out to be a total bad guy! All I can say now is that it's true, honest. But you do need to agree to it. That's really important because of a bunch of stuff you'll probably think me to be crazier than the rest of the people locked up here combined when I tell you about it-"
Abruptly cutting himself off, Xander sighed sheepishly before beginning over again. "Uh, sorry, that didn't come out exactly the way I intended it. Anyway, there just isn't any more time. I have to leave in the next couple of minutes, with or without you. If you don't give me a sign - any kind, no matter how small - that you consented of your own free will to go with me, that's that. You'll have to stay and get better on your own, but from what I picked up snooping around, the doctors here aren't too optimistic about your prospects."
Xander eyed the supine woman for some kind of response to that harsh statement, but there wasn't any actual reaction. Gritting his teeth in frustration, Xander let a tinge of this impatience leak into his tone.
"Yeah, kinda blunt, wasn't it? Most of my friends would've delivered that bit of news to you in a much nicer way. Cordy and Anya, though, they'd be telling you instead to get the hell off your ass and grab with both hands your chance to survive this. Particularly since Cordy eventually died in her own coma, and Anya got killed herself later on."
Folding his arms across his chest, the one-eyed man glared at the psychiatric patient in her bed. "I'm not promising you'll completely recover. We've still got lots of experience at home with people who went through stuff even worse than you did, and they eventually got better with help from their friends and family."
An oddly bemused expression now flashed across Xander's face. "I'm not really sure how that's gonna work for you…we're talking major weirdness, see? How we found out about you, me coming here, but, look, that can be explained later, all right? What's important here is your choice. Believe me, I'm fine with bending every rule in the book, but that's a big one. It has to be a great capital 'Y' for Yes or not-so-fine No, and the time's almost up for this!"
Beginning to rub his bracelet in an increasingly panicked manner, Xander's next words rushed out from his mouth in a final appeal: "Maybe you're just too scared or don't want to come out from where you're hiding or you think my impossible offer's too good to be true, that you'll wind up paying too big a price for it?"
The silver bracelet started to vibrate under Xander's fingertips, slowly at first and then increasing in frequency. He half-shouted at the woman, "One more minute to go! Yes, there's a price! You'll have to leave your whole life here behind, and never come back! All I can say about that is because it's so big, we can balance your price by making sure the bastard who's responsible for everything will pay with all he's got!"
The bracelet turned warm.
"TEN SECONDS! Please! Nine-eight-"
Fighting through the severe cloudiness in her brain from both chemicals and mental instability, a former police investigator managed to work her neck muscles to weakly nod, once.
"Yeah, way to go, lady! Two for home, Wils!"
Probably the most unbelievable part of the entire situation afterwards was how a psychiatric facility thought they could get away with keeping the story quiet.
Riiiiiiight.
A missing patient? Who disappeared in the middle of the night without being detected by every bit of the security apparatus (cameras, orderlies, guards, etc.) on her way out of the facility despite suffering a massive psychotic break?
Even more incredible, this departed woman was replaced in her bed by the fresh (less than a few hours old) corpse of a man whom turned to be the serial killer of several children in the area. During her earlier ravings before being drugged to her eyebrows, the woman named this man as the prime murder suspect and also claimed she'd shot him and seen her victim fall into a river. Now, nobody could find this suspect or even confirm there was indeed a body in the river…
…Until a soaking-wet corpse with a bullet hole and a dreadful look of terror upon his face was found in the missing patient's bed. Who was herself never, ever seen again.
No one ever came up with any kind of credible explanation for that.
The authorities tried, definitely. So did most of the First World, along with a good deal of the Second World, and that part of the Third World reading the numerous translations in a dozen languages of a criminal case which fascinated the entire planet.
Even the scriptwriters responsible to the top of the line Hollywood film a couple years later, with Spielberg at the helm and a young actress making the battle of her lifetime to claim the role from her competitors, had to strain with all their ingenuity to the maximum possible to create a fairly plausible plot. But, well, that was the movies, not real life.
In accepting her Oscar for Best Actress at the ensuing Academy Award ceremonies, the winner previously known before for only several minor television and cinema characters gracefully alluded to how the mystery might never be solved to anyone's satisfaction. She still at the end of her well-received speech announced that wherever Megan Paige might be, it was to be hoped that happiness was hers.
"-and none of the girls since have had a Slayer dream like hers. Giles specially ordered the researchers to check in our records to see if the old Watchers ever learned from their Slayers that they'd been dreaming of their counterparts in another dimension, but there's been no luck so far-," chattered Xander, shooting a somewhat nervous glance at the woman he was escorting through the New Council's castle headquarters grounds in Scotland.
Megan absently smiled at how the man with an eyepatch was trying to fill in the time before her meeting today with the person responsible for the rescue for an immigrant from another reality.
It'd been a hard couple of months for Megan to regain her sanity, but magic could do wonderful things. It didn't hurt either that during this Megan learned the child-murdering bastard known as Richard Ledge finally paid in full measure for his abominable crimes.
Xander, on the other hand, felt like a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. He wasn't looking forward to what was about to happen, even if one of the people about to meet the other had agreed to stay away until permission was granted by the recovering woman at last up to encountering her exact double, down to possessing identical facial features.
Making their way through the castle gardens, the pair turned into a small park patch enclosed by hedges, where Faith Lehane was sitting on a wooden bench. Getting up to her feet, Faith locked gazes with a gal who could've been her twin sister.
The two women stood there, intently examining the other, while Xander experienced the sensation of being a fifth wheel in their silent communion. Just when this Sunnydale survivor was about to open his mouth to say something, he was interrupted.
"Beat it, boytoy. Me an' Megan, we're gonna have a long talk, 'kay?"
That last crisp statement had been sent from Faith who was still eyeing an accepting Megan beginning to have the corners of her mouth quirk upwards.
Xander himself was all too glad to obey. He stepped backwards, about to return to his regular job of New Council business when he wasn't visiting other dimensions to recruit people in hopeless situations to come work for a supernatural organization protecting the rest of an unaware humanity.
Before the man got out of earshot, he was told one more thing:
"Hey, Xan…thanks."
That was quite enough for Xander Harris.
Author's Note: This is part of my series "I Want YOU For The New Council".
So, basically, Megan Paige, as played by Eliza Dushku in the movie The Alphabet Killer, spends the whole 2008 thriller-horror film suffering through numerous nervous breakdowns and it all ends with her insane and the killer goes free.
Screw that.