Chapter 3: Galaxy News Radio
The lamplit darkness of the ancient train tunnels was almost pleasant after a week under the blazing sun, Buffy thought as she idly picked at the crumbling concrete by her feet. Willow and Xander sat nearby; having collapsed into an uneasy sleep soon after Buffy finally heeded their pleas to stop for a few minutes. She didn't understand how they could be so tired. Around every corner of the darkness was another threat to be neutralized, another adrenaline rush to ride. Every sound that filtered through the stale air was a monster sniffing out a kill, and the constant thrilling tension of the fight invigorated Buffy like nothing she had ever experienced.
Willow and Xander did not seem to share in her sentiments. They had been underground for about a day, having stopped for only a few hours at a time since they had left Megaton. Every violent encounter, and there had been many, seemed to leave them both drained and frightened. Xander had vomited the first time his assault rifle sliced through a rabid dog. Willow first kill had left her trembling so intensely that she couldn't hold her rifle for hours afterward. They were exhausted by the pace they were keeping, losing energy as fast as Buffy was absorbing it.
The silence and stillness was beginning to bore her. She fidgeted, shifting against pull of the coat across her shoulders with an exasperated sigh. She wanted to move; they were so close to the way out of the subway, so near the radio station where her father was headed. Underneath the growing pull of violence in her veins, even underneath the layers of hurt and betrayal she dared not dig through there was a single thought pushing her forward. Find him. Find him. Find him. Somehow, some way if she could find her father, this nightmare would end. She would wake up safe in the Vault with Willow snoring above her and Xander sneaking into their room with coffee and comic books.
A faint sound pricked the edge of her hearing, shaking her from her darkening contemplation. Straining, she heard footsteps approaching from a distance. Heavy, plodding footsteps. She fumbled her handgun out of the still-stiff holster at her hip, leaning into the wall while she pushed herself to her feet. She tapped Xander with the side of her foot, holding a finger over her lips to indicate silence as he jerked into consciousness. With careful, quiet steps, Buffy inched forward until she could peer around the corner of the tunnel. About fifty yards down atop a small incline, the source of the sound became clear.
It was a creature unlike any she had ever seen, and she was all but certain they had witnessed every available horror in this terrible new world. The monster was easily eight feet tall, a heavily muscled facsimile of a man with sickly yellow-green skin. Its loins were bound with stained cloth and a sledgehammer bigger than any weapon she had ever seen before was strapped to its back. Sniffing at the air, it rolled its bestial head in Buffy's direction, revealing bloodshot eyes and bared, yellowing teeth. Pulling in a sharp breath, she flattened herself against the wall and cast a warning look over at Xander and Willow. If she could classify the cold tingling under her skin as apprehension, then the looks on their faces would easily fall under the designation of terror.
"Hello?" the creature growled, craning its muscular neck to look down the passageway. "I thought I heard something." Buffy flattened herself further against the wall, taking slow, shallow breaths. Her blood was screaming for a fight but her mind could still understand the concept of relative size, and she was all but certain a monster of such magnitude would be able to toss her around like a ragdoll. She flexed her fingers against the cold, damp concrete, trying to breathe through the urge to attack even as her vision began to tunnel.
Time passed. It was impossible to tell if it went by in moments or hours, but during that time the creature released a bored grunt and trundled off into the darkness. When she could no longer hear the pounding of its feet, Buffy slid down the wall and pulled in a deep lungful of air. She heard Willow whimper from across the hallway and looked up to Xander's shoulders heaving as he took huge, gasping breaths. They needed to get above ground and away from whatever friends the monster might return with. Now.
"Let's move out, guys," she breathed, pushing to her feet and walking over to Willow and Xander to pull them to theirs.
The plaza was in chaos. Xander crouched down behind a sandbag barrier, pushing down the urge to drop his gun and cover his ears against the wall of noise. The sound of gunfire racketed off the stone walls of the Galaxy News Radio building behind him, bouncing endlessly around the enclosed courtyard. Around him, huge men in hulking grey armor bellowed out commands in metallic voices. Ahead of them all was a tide of monsters.
Before the battle began, Buffy had said they looked just like the creature they barely managed to avoid in the train tunnels. The leader of the armored men, a serious looking woman with nut-brown skin he was pretty sure was named Kendra from the roars of her comrades, had said they were Super Mutants. All he knew was the ogres seemed to have an unending supply of ammunition and explosives and he was on his last clip. There was a crack next to his ear, sharp enough to make it ring. Willow ducked down next to him, her rifle smoking in her white-knuckled grip.
"I got one!" she cried out over the pandemonium as her arms started shaking violently. The rifle dropped into her lap, the barrel hissing as it singed the fabric of her pants. "Will you look at that. I think my arms stopped working." Xander reached out to grasp her arm reassuringly, cursing his own unsteady hands when he wrapped them around his assault rifle and popped up above the barrier. He held down the trigger and prayed. The recoil of the weapon got away from him again, sending a wobbly line of bullets screaming across the ground as he fell backwards. The air was knocked out of him when he hit the soot-stained concrete. In the terrifying moments of breathlessness, the sounds of battle began to wane. By the time the hot, sulfur-scented air hit the bottom of his lungs again they had all but stopped, leaving an eerie silence broken only by the animal howls of the injured and dying.
Willow helped tug him to his feet. They stood close together and looked out over the carnage. He could not count the number of colossal mutant corpses, but he could clearly see the three unmoving figures in gunmetal armor. Buffy stood near the center of the plaza, spattered with blood and gore and breathing heavily. When she turned to face them the manic tension of battle started to visibly drain from her body, relief flickering over her face at Willow's weak wave. The faint hiss of hydraulic joints signaled the arrival of the Kendra person from the front line, but she stopped suddenly as a radio started squawking frantically.
"Mayday mayday, Behemoth approaching at three o'clock. Repeat, Behemoth incoming at three o'clock!"
There was a rhythmic rumbling, the crack of snapping concrete and the scream of twisting rebar. A sickly green foot the size of Xander's entire body thudded into their field of view, followed by a hulking mutant that towered easily twenty feet above the ground. The armored men sprang into action, opening fire in one ear-shattering movement. The beast roared even as most of the bullets bounced right off its hide. Xander pulled Willow back down behind the barricade, knowing they were both out of ammo. He tried his best to cover her body with his own and, huddled together, they waited for the end.
With his eyes shut tight against the dawning horror, Xander only heard the events that followed. Someone bellowed out something he could not understand over the sounds of the fight, and there was a flurry of movement around him as a handful of armored men rocketed towards the center of the fray. There was a cry, not of pain but of exertion, and in an unbelievable instant, the gunfire cut into silence. The creature drew a heaving breath, almost masking the click and slide of a low velocity projectile being launched. There was a whack against its skin, and the world exploded into light.
The shockwave rippled through the field knocked him to the ground. He twisted his body around to keep Willow covered as an indescribable heat shimmered over his back. Unearthly stillness settled over the plaza, and Xander took the chance of looking up from the ground. He pushed himself off of Willow and peered over the barricade at the smoldering pieces left of the monster. Over its corpse hung a thick cloud of white smoke, billowing up into the air and curling back in on itself. It looked almost like a mushroom.
As the surviving men in armor began to stir among the wreckage, Xander realized frantically that he could not see Buffy. He pulled himself to his feet, looking around wildly as he raced down the short flight of stairs to the courtyard. He froze when he found her, lying crumpled at the base of a supporting pillar on the far side of the building, a rail gun roughly the size of her body lying at her feet. Only when he heard Willow scream for her as she ran past him could he find the strength to move his numbed feet towards Buffy. She looked so small, so fragile. So still.
He knelt beside her body, gently moving her so she was leaned against her chest. Her eyes were open, staring blankly up towards the sky. "Buffy," he said quietly, feeling tears start to roll down his face. Without warning, her head lolled to the side, gazing straight at him. Something magically, unmistakably alive sparked behind her hazel eyes and a weak smile quirked up the edges of her mouth.
"That…was…awesome," she said hoarsely, and Xander wept with relief.
"Oh my god, that was so cool!" Willow tried diligently to ignore the small man bouncing around them, but it was difficult to tune him out for long enough to focus on treating Buffy's wounds. He was bounding around with such vigor that she couldn't even pin him down long enough to toss him a glare. His straw-blonde hair kept flopping into his eyes, and even the way he swiped it out of his vision was becoming annoying.
"You took down a behemoth, a behemoth by yourself! When the Brotherhood of Steel couldn't even give it a paper cut! You're like some kind of amazing super mutant slayer, wait," he paused, scratching his chin thoughtfully, "That's good. Slayer. Hmm…"
"Will you please shut up long enough for me to make sure she can keep slaying?" Willow snapped, feeling a touch contrite when the man seemed to wilt under the words. "Who are you, anyways?" Buffy asked, hissing dramatically as Willow jabbed the needle of a stimpack through her skin.
"Oh, I'm Andrew," the man brightened at the attention, "But everyone just calls me by my radio handle. Three Dog." Buffy looked up sharply, her arm jerking under Willow's grip. "You're Three Dog? A man in Megaton named Willy said my dad was coming to see you. His name is Rupert Giles; he's older, graying brown hair, glasses."
"A commanding voice that lends itself well to condescension," Xander added, wincing when Willow punched his shoulder. Andrew nodded enthusiastically. "I know Giles! He came by a few days ago. What a great guy, really fighting the Good Fight out there. I remember him saying he had daughters about my age." Buffy batted Willow's hands away as she tried to adhere a bandage to the skin above Buffy's collarbone. She stalked over the where Andrew was and began backing him into a darkened corner of the lobby.
"What did he say to you, what did he want, what did you tell him and where is he going," she growled, shoving Andrew against the wall. "In that order. Now." Andrew gulped, looking over Buffy's shoulder to where Willow and Xander were waiting with baited breath. "He said he was looking for someone name Jenny Calendar and I told him I know a lady scientist named Dr. Calendar and where she was when I last heard of her and I guess he went there to see her," he squeaked when Buffy grabbed the collar of his shirt and mashed him further into the wall. "Where. Is. He. Going." Buffy slammed Andrew against the concrete with every word.
"I want to tell you but I can't!" Andrew cried out, whimpering when Buffy released him with an incredulous grunt. "He said he didn't trust the Brotherhood," he whispered frantically. "I don't know why; they've done nothing but kept me from being a super mutant appetizer, but he said they wanted control over an old project of his and he made me promise not to repeat where he was going to anyone." Willow's heart fell as fast as her hope had risen. She glanced warily at the hulking armored Brothers of Steel, wondering what they had done to Giles to make wary enough to mask his path.
"I have an idea, though. Maybe if you help me, I can help you," Andrew said in a low voice, eyes trailing down to Buffy's hands. "Those are PipBoy 3000s on your wrists, right?" Willow nodded even as Buffy moved to shove Andrew against the wall again. "Wait, wait, wait, please don't hurt me again," he held up his hands in a gesture of defeat. Willow walked up behind Buffy and put a warning hand on her shoulder, nodding over at Andrew when Buffy fixed her with a frustrated glare.
"Look, I need someone like you to help keep the Good Fight going. I'm small and weak and get a little sick around blood so the only thing I can do to help anyone in this world is run this radio station," Andrew looked around the crumbling lobby with an almost fatherly pride. "On the radio I can be anyone. I can be someone who tells the truth about what's happening out in the Capital Wasteland, someone who shares the information that can save a life or even just the music that can make it worth living again. But that isn't happening anymore because an attack on the radio tower I set up on top of the Washington Monument knocked out the dish that bounces my signal across the whole Wasteland."
He looked up seriously at Buffy. "The Brotherhood can't spare the people to go fix it, and I'd be reduced to ground meat if I set foot outside this building. You're my only hope. If you promise to fix my radio tower, I'll program your PipBoy to release the coordinates of where your dad went here," he clicked a series of buttons and brought up a green map on Buffy's view screen, "When it can pick up my signal again. Your dad is a great man. Please say you're willing to help the Good Fight, too?"
Buffy looked over at Willow, anger and apprehension warring in her eyes. Willow felt it, too; the terrible sinking in the pit of her stomach that told her this was only the start of a long, convoluted quest. They were clearly being used as tools for some greater agenda they couldn't grasp yet, but they had little choice in the matter if they wanted to find Giles. Looking at Andrew's pleading expression, seeing the guileless hope shining in his eyes, she began to understand that even though they had to do this for him, it wasn't the wrong thing to do. Even if fixing the tower wouldn't help them, it would help others. They could do something to make the vast, unforgiving outside world safer for the rest of the people who clung to life in it.
Willow could see the same revelation dawning on Buffy's face, clashing with the primal anger she had been channeling into their search for Giles. As they were growing up, he had always, always taught them to do the right thing, and Willow could feel the surety of that truth in her bones. This was the right thing to do. Buffy crossed her arms and looked hard at Andrew.
"Alright. We'll help you."
The last mutant fell with a howl, its legs twitching spastically against the dusty floor. Buffy leaned against the stone railing, breathing hard against the visceral rush of the kill. The pounding in her ears began to quiet, the hard, black edges of her vision softened into the dark interior of the cavernous building. After two solid days of fighting their way through the subway tunnels, an entire afternoon navigating across the trench-pitted expanse of the National Mall and the majority of another day picking through the mutant-infested Museum of Technology, Buffy was running on adrenaline alone. The fear of running out of enemies felt far less disturbing than she intellectually realized it was.
"Xander, come here. There's another one of those number sequences," Willow called out from the ground floor, working a museum information terminal even as she glanced around wildly for another threat. Xander dashed down from the floor above Buffy, slowing as he passed her with scared, inquisitive eyes. She nodded slightly, patting him on the shoulder before he continued down the stairs. In their search for Andrew's alleged satellite dish Willow had mined every working computer they came across for more precise information on its location. There had been little success; almost every computer had identical information targeted towards tourists from the museum's golden days. Two computers had generated a list of random numbers after that data, clues left by a scavenger for his absent partner.
"Umm…113? Yes, definitely feeling 113." Buffy walked up behind Xander as Willow tapped several keys on the terminal. Everyone jumped when the machine released a high pitched beep before flashing 'ACCEPTED' across the screen in bold letters. Buffy heard the faint click of a door unlocking in a hallway behind them. Her knife found its way to her hand without a conscious impulse and she began edging towards the noise, the action seemingly unnoticed by Willow and Xander.
"I can't believe you guessed all three of those numbers. I'm way too tired to do the math but those odd are not generous, mister, believe you me," Willow frowned at the unresponsive terminal. "What can I say, the universe owes me more than a little luck at this point in my life. I wonder what I won," Xander stroked his chin thoughtfully, "A lifetime supply of Nuka Cola? The collected adventures of Grognak the Barbarian? The Even Bigger Book of Science, now with more irrelevant and incomprehensible factoids?"
Buffy moved slowly and soundlessly across the open floor, flattening her body against the opposite wall before peering around the corner. The hallway was unlit, but there was the faint outline of an open door standing out against the blackness. A harsh whisper in the shape of her name drew her eyes forward again. Willow and Xander stood tensed, staring at her with a growing fear. "I heard something," she said quietly, easing off the wall and moving to the mouth of the hallway. "Can a computer unlock a door?"
"Yes, if the lock is magnetic and a circuit between the two is intact," Willow reached over her shoulder with shaking hands to unsling her rifle. Buffy nodded absently, inching forward into the darkness. When she came to the door she found a narrow staircase leading up and around to a level hidden from view. The hairs on the back of her neck rose with the intrusion of Willow and Xander into her field of awareness, but the low hum of impending violence remained silent as they made their way up the steps. After two flights, the staircase opened into a security room with massive computers taking up one wall and floor to ceiling windows overlooking the museum making up the other. In the back corner, wedged up under a console desk was a squat, black safe. The square door hung open.
"Jesus Christ," Xander hissed as he knelt before the safe, scooping up a handful of its contents and showing it to Buffy and Willow. "There's got to be hundreds of caps in here." Good, Buffy forced herself to think through the rising tension tightening in her muscles. Caps meant food, food meant life. Life meant more death.
"Look," Willow called, squinting through the yellowed glass, "I think that's the Virgo Lander Andrew was talking about." Buffy walked over to the window, catching sight of the spindly metal construct posed dramatically on a rather plain platform of craggy grey rock. Willow sighed dreamily, "That went into space, came back from the moon. Can you even imagine?" Buffy could not. Her entire world had narrowed around the pair of super mutants who had plodded into the lower room.
"Give me the rifle, Will," she said, her voice cold and flat. Willow's eyes widened as she slowly complied. Buffy dropped to one knee, bracing the barrel against the surface of the desk. She took a hard look through the dirty window, waiting for that voice of instinct to whisper yes as she surveyed her targets. The world began to slow as the sight landed on the back of one of the beasts' heads. The action flowed through her whole body; squeeze, crack, kick, pivot, aim, squeeze, crack. The targets fell; thick, dark blood pooling around their massive bodies. She sat back on her heels with a lazy smile as satisfaction curled around her.
Pushing easily back to her feet, she was almost surprised to find Willow and Xander staring at her with a heady mix of awe and horror. On the surface she was disappointed with herself for causing them to be afraid, but deep down, firmly tucked underneath all thoughts spared on others, Buffy was growing angry. She was doing this for them, after all. They didn't understand that to keep them safe, to keep them whole she gave herself up to the darkness. She held hard to the cold self-righteousness, letting it cool the growing pleasure throbbing sickly in her veins.
"How do you even do that, Buffy?" Xander whispered. She gave him a wide, insincere smile.
"Magic. Now let's do get that dish thingame. I want to get to the Washington Monument before it gets dark outside."
As Xander made the final adjustments to the radio tower, Willow let herself slide down against the stone wall and watch the sun set over the wasteland. Her feet sang with relief as she sat, her arms and legs growing heavy with exhaustion now that they were finally allowed to rest. It felt as though they had been on the move for years, as if every morning she had ever woken up clean and safe and well rested was a distant dream. Even when she took stock of the painful dryness of her mouth and the needling emptiness of her stomach, she found herself too tired to even rifle through her backpack for the last of her food and water.
Buffy paced impatiently behind Xander, looking as charged as Willow felt drained. She knew Buffy had always been stronger than her, more physically resilient, but persistence of her vigor was beginning to trouble Willow. With each terrifying instance of violence they had fallen into Buffy seemed to slip into a sort of fugue state, reacting with deadly speed and instinct. Willow knew enough about brain chemistry to see the signs of adrenaline saturation and knew enough about Buffy to see her cling to that high as the only way out of her self-imposed emotional blackout. Willow longed to help, but had no idea where to begin.
"And that should do it," Xander declared, wiping the sweat from his forehead before tugging down a large lever. The machinery ground to life, metallic noise building steadily to a high-pitched whine as a red light began blinking softly under the newly installed dish. The PipBoy on Willow's wrist lit up abruptly, flicking to the map function without provocation. In a quadrant near the bottom right a new marker pulsed green on the bank of the river. "Rivet City," she read quietly, looking up to see Buffy and Xander staring at their own wrist computers. Her heart began to fall as the calculation of distance flashed on to the display. It would take weeks of snaking through the subway tunnels and crawling across the vast ruins to reach. Weeks.
The hiss of static filled the air. Willow looked up abruptly at Xander, who had switched his PipBoy to broadcast the available radio frequency. A deep, smooth voice that sounded only vaguely reminiscent of Andrew's whine became clear as the static faded. "That's right, from Megaton to Girdershade, Paradise Falls to the Republic of Dave, we're coming to you loud and proud with a special report. This is Three Dog," the voice paused to howl, "and we're back on the air! And you children are never gonna believe who's responsible; I tell you, I couldn't even make this story up. You all remember Giles, the mysterious man of science from Vault 101? And surely you remember my scintillating follow up story about the other poor slobs who managed to crawl out of the Vault right after him? Well they came to visit old Three Dog down at the lovely Galaxy News Radio HQ and you will never believe who they were. His kids. I know, right?! How crazy is that?"
"They selflessly volunteered to help Three Dog continue the Good Fight, going out into the ruins to repair the tower without a thought for their own lives." Buffy snorted; even Willow couldn't help but roll her eyes at the whitewashing. "And now they're off looking for the mystery man himself. I don't doubt that they're already hot on the trail, so let's wish them the best of luck, loyal listeners!" There was a brief, heavy pause. "Giles, if you're listening, your girls are looking for you. I hope you all find each other. This one goes out to all the Vault Dwellers; I think you'll like it." The opening chords of the song rang cold in Willow's ears and the whole world seem to stop as the voice began to sing.
"Oh my god," Buffy breathed as all the blood drained from her face. Xander looked frantically between the two of them, "What? What's wrong? You both look like you've seen a ghost." Willow swallowed hard, trying to form words as tears filled her eyes. Memories of Giles swelled up violently in her head; his sharp, gentle eyes, the rough warmth of his hands, the deep, clear voice in which he sang. "Giles would sing this when we were little," she whispered, watching Buffy physically crumble under the weight of sorrow and betrayal. Xander looked utterly confused. "But I've never heard this song before. It can't have been on the records in the Vault; we listened to them all a million times. How could he…"
"It means he was out here before," Willow answered before the question was finished, standing up only to crouch down against next to Buffy. She stiffened under Willow embrace, but did not make any move to break it.
"It means he was never from the Vault."
He lied. From the time she knew how to ask about his life, her mother's, her own, he had lied. The force of emotion she had held down from the moment Cordelia had set them on this path in a place and time that felt worlds away was clawing at her throat. The grief of losing him was torn anew, magnified by the thought of the man she knew was nothing more than a construct. Was he even a doctor? Was he even her father? She was lost within the betrayal, drowning in sorrow and panic and fear of the exponentially growing unknown. The last link to reality, the only sensation keeping her head above the water was the tight, damp warmth of Willow's hand wrapped around her own.
She could hear Xander talking quietly, the words muffled and distant. She could tell she was being lead somewhere, but couldn't tear herself from the thick, suffocating emotions for long enough to ask where. The killer's instinct hummed low and insistent under her skin, but even that icy clarity could not penetrate the pain. She heard Willow's voice more clearly, soft and scared and tugging her attention back to the outside world.
"Buffy, Buffy look at me. Please." She turned her head to meet Willow's eyes, vaguely aware that the familiar green was glassed over with a silvery blue by the dim light. "Buffy, we need to find somewhere to hide for tonight. There's something moving around under the Mall and I really don't want to find out what. Xander says that when we were back in Megaton Gob told him about a ghoul city in the Natural History Museum, which is right over there. Gob's mom is there and she could give us somewhere to sleep. We're going to go there, ok?" The words made sense, so Buffy nodded. Willow's hand was hot against her cheek.
"We'll talk. I promise. We're going to find somewhere safe, we'll sleep and then we'll talk until this makes sense."
"It will never make sense," Buffy heard herself say. "He lied. He's a lie. I'm a lie."
"Stop it," Willow hissed, jerking them to a stop around the corner of a dark, stone building. "You are not a lie. You know who you are. You're Buffy, you always will be no matter who Giles is, or was." Buffy stared at her blankly.
"She's right, Buff." Xander's hand was solid and warm on her back. "Focus on the truth, on the real. You really kneed Percy in the nuts when you saw him beating on me after school, and then threatened to do the same to me when I tried to be Mr. Macho afterwards. You really spent three hours explaining to us how to properly accessorize a work jumpsuit. You really took the time to help anyone who asked you for something, no matter how little or pointless it was." She did remember these things, even if they were long ago and far away. Willow nodded frantically, tugging her forward through heavy metal doors.
"You really got into a fight with Cordelia when she started picking on me for raising my hand in class. You really came up with pranks for us to pull on the Overseer when he got too high and mighty sounding. All those things really happened and that's who you really are. That's the truth." Memories began to push back the choking confusion. She noticed the stale smell of dust and mold, the smoky crackling of burning paper, the loud echoes of her own steps in a massive, enclosed space. "This is real," she murmured to herself, watching Xander nod enthusiastically as he passed her.
"The realest, Buffster. You don't need anything more than what you've done to know what you are. You're the Good Guy, and Will and I are your plucky sidekicks. And that's…really creepy," he trailed off, staring up at something above them. Buffy followed his line of sight only to find a carved stone skull the size of several men looming over another set of metal doors. A fire burned in a metal canister to the side of the doors, casting nightmarish shadows across the room.
Xander started talking again as he tentatively lead them through the entrance, but Buffy could not hear him anymore. As the feelings she had held back for so long began to ebb, the uncounted physical trials she had put her body through flooded into awareness. She hurt everywhere; every muscle burned with strain, bruises throbbed darkly under her skin and her feet were on fire. The dim, orange lighting of Underworld's lobby enveloped her, washing long ignored exhaustion into her eyes. She did not fight when her knees started to sag.
Arms cinched hard around her waist, holding her above the ground until they let her down on a cold bench. She opened her eyes to see Willow kneeling in front of her, felt fingers against the skin of her neck and registered Willow's sigh of relief before letting them close again. Someone sat beside her, pulling her head onto a familiar shoulder. Xander's shirt was rank with fear and exertion, but the rise and fall of his chest was slow and steady and unquestionably real. Willow's slight weight pressed gently down on her own shoulder and, surrounded by safety and at last returned to herself, Buffy Summers slept.