SUMMARY: It's a post-Chosen road trip of redemption. This one is something of a sequel to my fic "Now Leaving Sunnydale", but you don't need to read that one to understand this one.
SPOILERS: The whole shebang, all seven seasons of BtVS.
'SHIPS: None, really. There are mentions of Buffy/Spike, Xander/Anya, Willow/Tara, Willow/Kennedy, but all of those are pretty small and/or oblique. And I'm assuming that Buffy and Xander are both mourning Spike and Anya, whatever their feelings were for them right before they died.
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: All characters, universe, etc, belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.
ARCHIVING: Yes, but ask first so I know where it is.
FEEDBACK: Please! Send to [email protected]
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Now Entering Elsewhere
by Annakovsky
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They dropped the last ex-Potential off at the train station two weeks after the earth opened and swallowed Sunnydale.
They were all taking a summer vacation, and the policy was that everyone who had a home was going there. Most of the ex-Potentials were glad, having spent the better part of the year being both homesick and terrified.
Kennedy was planning on staying with them, until she and Willow had a talk. They went on a walk, and when they came back Kennedy's lips were pressed together tightly and Willow looked apologetic. Kennedy immediately went back to their room and started packing. She was on a plane the next day.
"She was... well, rebound girl," Willow told Buffy, when asked what happened. "I like her and everything, but it wasn't serious. At least for me. I mean, no hard feelings, but, you know, once all the panicky 'Help, the world's ending!' lust-y feelings go away, well... she is kind of bossy."
They had carefully written down all the Slayer's addresses, phone numbers and email, so that they'd be able to get in contact with them when they started rebuilding the demon fighting brigade.
"But for now," Buffy told Rona on the train platform, "you're on a well-deserved break. I mean, sure, if you see evil, slay it, but you don't have to go looking unless you feel like it. Besides, I have the feeling this will be a slow summer for evil."
"Summers usually are," said Xander. "Must be the heat. Or else demons are scared of Summers, 'cause hey, she's one tough chick." Buffy raised an eyebrow. "It's a pun!" he explained.
"Oh, I got it," she said. She turned back to Rona. "Thanks for all your hard work. And... sorry. For everything."
"Yeah. No. I'm sorry. I gave you a lot of crap, but you pulled it off after all."
"We all did," said Buffy.
"Yeah, we did," said Rona, looking pleased.
"Well... have a good trip back!" said Willow. Rona smiled, and then gave them all hugs, to their surprise. Funny how averting the apocalypse together made you all feel like you belonged to each other. That special, destroying-a-small-town-to-close-the-Hellmouth bond.
With Rona safely on the train, they all turned and walked back to the hotel. The Sunnydale brigade were the only ones left, the homeless ones with nowhere to go. Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Dawn, Andrew, and Faith. They had lost Principal Wood, who had gone back to New York where he had friends to help him with the months of physical therapy ahead. "As appealing as a months-long cross-country road-trip in all the comforts of a school bus sounds," he had said, "I think New York might be better for my broken bones."
They hit the road a few days later, after wrapping up their dealings with the insurance companies and lawyers. They had all managed to get a decent amount of money from insurance on their destroyed belongings, as what had happened to Sunnydale qualified as an act of God. They didn't mention that it was really more the act of a punk-ass vampire, but laughed about it later. Every once in awhile they'd start playing a game they called "If Spike were God...."
"Joe Strummer'd be alive."
"Manchester United would win every game."
"Every restaurant would serve the flowering onion."
"Three words: bleach, bleach, bleach."
It was also weird how averting the apocalypse made everyone, in retrospect, feel a strange fondness for certain vampires that they'd spent a lot of time and effort disliking in the past.
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For the first hour or so on the road, having a whole school bus for just the seven of them felt kind of exciting. Dawn ran up and down the aisles, and sat upside down in a seat, her feet sticking up in the air. That got old fast, though, thankfully.
Andrew was busy in the back making something out of a sheet Buffy suspected he had stolen from the hotel.
"Did Andrew steal that?" Xander leaned over and asked her. Buffy sighed.
"I'm on vacation, so I'm prepared to let this little bit of evil slide for now. If anyone asks, I didn't see it." Xander gave a crooked smile and slumped back in his seat.
"Vacation feels good," he said.
At the next rest stop, Andrew announced his creation to the bus.
"Look, you guys!" He had draped the sheet over one of the seats in the back, to make it into a sort of isolation booth. He had also written "Cry Room" on it in permanent marker. Faith snorted.
"Cry Room?" she asked. "The hell?"
"See, we've all been through a lot, so I thought we should have a place to go where no one will bother us when we need to get emotional. Willow made it soundproof," he said. They all looked at Willow, who shrugged.
"I dunno. It's a really simple spell, so hey, why not?" Faith snickered and rolled her eyes.
"What are we, the Griefmobile?" she asked. Andrew gave an "If the shoe fits" kind of shrug, and the rest of them all avoided looking at each other. Faith looked thoughtful.
"Yeah, okay," she said, and shrugged. "The Griefmobile it is."
It was an unspoken rule that no one ever commented on anyone else's time in the Cry Room. If Xander went in there three or four times a day for the first week or so, it wasn't anybody's business but his. After all, if you made fun of him for that, your own frequent visit would then be fair game, and nobody wanted that.
Faith mocked the Cry Room in general (though no one's specific use of it), but at least one time when she thought everyone else was asleep, she may have made her own visit.
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Grief felt like a long black snake that had attached itself to Buffy's innards. Crying was pulling it out, uprooting it - she knew she'd reach the end of it sometime.
Other times grief felt like a shovel hollowing her out, or a rack stretching her. It was like it made her bigger, somehow, able to hold more, deeper. More happiness fit inside, more sadness. But hollow, too, like she might fold in on herself.
But grief was okay, she thought. Just feeling anything was sort of good, and she wasn't so scared of it anymore. She took deep breaths and faced the pain she'd been so afraid of for so long, her own final frontier. The girl who had fought hell gods and demons but was too frightened to face her rejections and faults and losses turned and stared them down, bold and strong, and the pains ran through her like ghosts and disappeared.
Every grief she experienced fresh brought back a piece of herself, arms and legs, ears and eyes, fitting her back together like a puzzle whose pieces had been missing for too long.
Her losses flashed through her mind in quick images. Spike, glowing with fiery light - her own hands bloody from digging out of her coffin - her mom's body, dead on the couch - Riley's helicopter flying away - Angel's face when she put a sword through him - her dad packing clothes in his duffel bag to move out. Too many hurts, building too many calluses.
She was breaking down the walls she'd put up, brick by brick, in every state they drove through.
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They hit Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Alamo. Saw a whole lot of nothing in Wyoming, potato fields in Idaho, Death Valley in Nevada. But they headed straight east after not too long.
"I'm sick of the desert," Buffy told Giles. "Can we go somewhere green?"
"Let's," he said. He was doing the bulk of the driving, as it was hard to depend on Xander's depth perception, Buffy's driving in general and Faith's tendency to try to make screeching U-turns that didn't really work so well in a school bus.
It felt like a whole new world for them, the old life in Sunnydale almost a blur. Buffy looked around the bus one morning at her friends. Willow was sitting in the seat right behind Xander, and the two of them were turned sideways, talking quietly and laughing. Willow rubbed Xander's arm. Faith was in the back, trying to teach Andrew and Dawn to play poker. "Naw, Junior, three of a kind beats two pair. Pay attention, chump, 'cause I'm definitely not playing any more Crazy Eights with you kids."
It was weird how good Buffy felt, how she felt like she loved all of them. She hadn't felt like that for a long time. It was like she was Spike that last time she had seen him, with light flowing through her and out of her. With the pressure off, her anger and fear had faded.
In Oklahoma, Xander plopped down next to her in the bus seat where she was staring out the window, a little broodily.
"Maybe we should form a support group," he said, a propos of nothing. "You know, for people whose ex-demon ex-lovers died saving the world right after we might have been getting back together with them." Buffy gave a startled laugh.
"Well, that's specific. God," she said, and shook her head.
"What?" he asked.
"Oh, it's just... I was sitting here thinking that no one understands what I'm going through, and, uh, I think I'm kind of an idiot."
"Eh," Xander said, and shrugged. "You're talking to the king of all idiots here."
"No... I'm sorry, Xander. For everything the past few years."
"You don't have to be sorry. I'm sorry. For...," he trailed off, not knowing where to start. And not wanting to name things, the resurrections and insurrections. "...yeah. Everything."
"No.... Oh, Xander. It's been a hard couple of years, hasn't it?" Buffy gave a choked kind of laugh, tears starting to well up.
"Hey there," he said, putting his arm around her. "You're not going to need to visit the Cry Room, are you?" She laughed through tears again, and hugged him, hard.
"Promise me if I start getting to be such a jerk again, you'll smack me upside the head," Buffy said, muffled in Xander's shirt.
"Nah, I think we're going to be okay, now. No smacking will be necessary."
"You know, I always thought that when people said that everything would be okay, they were lying, saying stuff just to make you feel better. But... maybe they weren't. Maybe everything really will be okay, in the end."
"The world looks better this side of Sunnydale, huh?"
"Yeah."
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Apologies went all around, in quiet conversations in the corners of the bus, until they came out of the desert. When they hit Missouri they ran into their first summer thunderstorm, at around four in the afternoon. The rain started pouring down until Giles pulled the bus into a rest stop in frustration, and they all ran to the buildings for refuge. Most of them headed to the bathroom or the vending machines, but Buffy, Dawn and Faith went to the covered picnic tables and perched on top of them, watching the lightning flash in the distance and smelling that wild, green thunderstorm smell.
"I love this," Faith said, almost inaudibly, sitting next to Buffy.
"Yeah?" said Buffy. "Me too. It always makes me want to run out barefoot and do a crazy rain dance or something."
"You should," said Faith. Buffy gave her a skeptical look. "Seriously, B, why not?"
"Well, for one thing I only have one other pair of jeans and they take forever to dry," Buffy said, suppressing a smile.
"So lose the jeans," Faith said, grinning. Buffy rolled her eyes and went back to watching the lightning. Dawn was standing close to the edge of the overhang and stuck her arm out into the rain, watching the drops beat down onto her dry skin, running off in rivulets of water.
"Rain feels so good," she said over her shoulder. "It doesn't rain enough in Sunnydale." There was a pause. "I mean, it didn't. Rain enough. Past tense."
Faith got up and stuck her arm out into the rain next to Dawn's, her palm open so it looked like she was trying to catch the water, hold it in her hand. "It does feel good," she said, glancing back at Buffy. Then she walked calmly out into the storm, rain drenching her instantly. Once she'd walked a certain ways out, she turned and faced them, arms out, soaked to the skin, and put her face to the sky. She yelled gleefully.
"You guys gotta get out here, this is fantastic!"
"Faith!" said Buffy.
"C'mon, B, the water's fine!" Buffy just raised her eyebrows, but after a second Dawn dashed out into the rain herself.
"Dawn!" Buffy said, surprised. Dawn squealed.
"This is awesome!" she said. She was jumping up and down a little bit, until Faith grabbed her hands and they started spinning. "We're siiiiiinging in the rain... just siiinng-ing in the rain! What a gloooorious feeeeling, I'm haaappy again." Dawn sang.
Buffy sighed and looked at them. Oh, what the hell, she thought, shrugged, and walked out into the downpour to join them. Her hair was matted to her forehead immediately by the water and she started shivering, but the rain felt amazing on her skin.
Faith hooted when she saw her, letting go of one of Dawn's hands and pulling Buffy into the circle. They spun around, laughing and shaking water out of their eyes. When they finally looked up, they saw everyone else standing at the edge of the overhang, staring at them like they weren't sure whether to laugh or to call the men in white coats.
Dawn and Buffy were giggling like crazy; Faith threw up her arms and yelled. They waved at everyone else to join them in the downpour.
When the storm stopped, all of them were soaked to the skin and muddy. Giles made them wash the worst of the mud off in the bathrooms, where they changed clothes, giggling and talking excitedly. They walked back to the bus arm in arm.
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Sometimes Buffy still had nightmares. She'd wake up sweaty, a hole of dread in her stomach, not knowing where she was. Even when she remembered she wouldn't always know exactly what state they were in, and she never knew what day of the week it was. There was an endless stream of anonymous hotel rooms and campsites, of tourist sites and water parks.
She'd wake up with an overwhelming feeling of loss. Symptoms include shortness of breath, headache, stomach pain, watery eyes, stuffy nose, general malaise, and dry mouth. Because everything has dry mouth.
The nightmares varied. Sometimes the First Slayer was chasing her, trying to rip out her heart, overwhelming her. She often saw Anya being cut in half (even though she hadn't seen it in real life), and Xander's eye being poked out. Sometimes her dreams included Spike, in vamp face, trying to kill her. A few times he ripped her throat out, and another time he killed Dawn. Other times her friends were killing Spike, burning him alive or chopping off his head, and once she herself was the one who put a stake through his heart, watched him turn to dust. Sometimes it was her who was dead, lying in a coffin underground, unable to breathe or break her way out. Occasionally Willow was trying to kill her, all vein-y and black-eyed; another time Spike turned all her friends to vampires, and did her last. She looked in the mirror and saw nothing.
The violent dreams were almost better than the other ones, though, the ones where her friends wouldn't talk to her, or where she was trapped in a room and no one could hear her. Or sometimes it was just a dream of the world empty except for her, a barren wilderness of nothing that she had to wander through. Sometimes she couldn't remember what she dreamed but woke with dread, with a feeling of emptiness so severe she almost doubled over with it. She even missed Anya, couldn't believe she'd never be annoyed by her again – that Anya would never re-dye her hair or make another dollar.
The bus contained everyone who mattered to her, and it was horribly empty. There were places in the conversation where she expected Anya to make a sarcastic comment, or Spike to roll his eyes. They were re-making the world, rediscovering themselves, and those two were missing it. They'd never know who Spike and Anya would become, the kind of creatures they would be in ten years.
Buffy wanted her mom. She wanted Mr. Gordo. But her mom didn't even have a grave anymore, and Mr. Gordo's grave was five miles square.
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Some days they'd drive in silence, each sitting in their own seat, looking out the windows and thinking, listening to music. They'd gone to Best Buy and gotten five CDs each, to start out. It had been like one of those lists – if you could only take five CDs with you to a desert island, which ones would you take? They had made sure they didn't have any overlapping choices, so they could trade around for variety. Xander had chosen a lot of country; among her pop CDs, Buffy had thrown in the Ramones. No one commented, but some knowing looks were exchanged.
Other days they all seemed to need to be together, and they'd crowd into the first two rows of seats around Giles (or whoever was driving) and talk, laughing, about what they were going to do with the next year, or reminisce about old times.
"Remember that time Xander had to join the swim team?"
"Yeah, and had to wear that Speedo? Va-va-voom!"
"Hey, now, you're making me feel like a piece of meat. A sexy, sexy piece of meat."
"Whoa, whoa, Speedo? I never heard about this, why'd he have to join the swim team?"
"Fish monsters."
"Ah. Man, that's a wicked crazy town you guys had there."
They all laughed and then sighed, almost wistfully.
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A lot of nights, whoever couldn't sleep would end up down by the hotel pool, like that first night post-Sunnydale, talking in the dark.
One night Buffy, Willow and Xander sat dangling their feet into the water (Buffy and Willow on Xander's right, so he could see them), watching the ripples their feet made and talking about the Hellmouth.
"The weird thing about it," said Willow, "is how it gets inside you. Did you guys ever notice how, like, half the monsters we ever fought were our own faults? Like me accidentally casting that my-will-be-done-spell or Xander doing that botched love spell?"
"Hey," said Xander. "Cordy broke up with me on *Valentine's Day*." They both raised eyebrows at him. "Yeah, I know, I know."
"I know what you mean, Will," Buffy said. "It seemed like the longer we lived on the Hellmouth the worse we got."
"Are you guys seriously blaming the Hellmouth for our issues?" Xander asked.
"No-o," said Willow. She thought for a second. "It's just, the Hellmouth made problems so much more tangible, I guess. Like, most people get mad at their friends and just say things they don't mean. I said things I didn't mean, and made Giles go blind and you almost get killed by demons. So it's more that the Hellmouth makes the meanness already inside you into something that might actually kill people."
"Yeah..." said Buffy, thoughtfully. "Here's a question no one has to answer if they don't want to, but... what's the one thing you guys regret the most? Out of everything we did."
"Gee, out of my, like, three thousand top contenders of horrible things I regret?" asked Willow dryly. Buffy shrugged.
"You don't have to answer if you don't want."
"What, Will, trying to end the world doesn't immediately come to mind?" Xander asked lightly. Willow looked sheepish, but then serious.
"Actually... oh," she said, realizing what it really was. "It's mind-wiping Tara. That was the worst thing. I know it doesn't sound like it competes with trying to destroy everything or with killing people, but... well, I had motivation for all the Big Bad stuff that wasn't all evil, I guess. I mean, it was awful that I did it, I still have nightmares... but erasing her memories so she wouldn't be mad at me – that was just completely inexcusable and... that's the moment I look back on and I just know that I am a really bad person, deep down." Willow was staring hard at the pool, her eyes dry and empty. There was silence – Buffy didn't know what to say.
"Mine was one time at the Magic Box," Xander said unexpectedly. His voice had come out hoarse and he cleared his throat. "It was just an ordinary research session, no big deal, and Anya was making some suggestion or saying something that was kind of nonsensical or blunt or something, I don't even remember, but I said, 'God, Anya, could you just shut up for five seconds and let the people who aren't mentally challenged talk?' I might as well just have slapped her across the face, and she looked at me like she was a puppy I had just kicked for no reason, and... God, I treated her like crap. I acted like I was ashamed of her and she was stupid and didn't matter and... yeah. I'm an asshole." He too was staring at the pool, not meeting anyone's eyes.
"I beat the crap out of Spike," Buffy said, taking a deep breath. She sighed. "For no good reason. I just kept hitting him, over and over – I think if he had been a human I would have killed him, I was hitting him so hard. It was like all this hatred and anger came charging out of me and I couldn't stop it – he was a jerk and a vampire, but he loved me and I beat him senseless just because I felt like it. Afterwards I felt like the meanest, smallest, cruelest person alive, and I am." She exhaled. Now they knew what she really was, knew that she wasn't really a hero. It felt like a weight off – she felt small and vulnerable and tired, but free. She didn't have to pretend to be good anymore.
She risked a glance at her friends, and shrugged, hands out, tiredly. "I'm sorry I'm not... I know you want me to be the good guy. I'm sorry I let you down."
"Buffy," Willow said. "We all... you don't have to be...." She took a deep breath. "You haven't let us down. At all. We let you down. We're all just... I don't know, muddling along screwing things up and being horrible and... I mean, you heard what we just said, we're not any better. We're worse."
"No, you're not. I just... I feel like I should have my good guy credentials revoked or something. It's like... you know how those Bible-belt preacher types are always yapping about being born again or whatever? I finally get it, sort of, why you would want to be born again. To start over fresh."
"Maybe we are starting over," said Xander. "Right now."
"Yeah," said Buffy, looking at him thoughtfully. "Maybe we are." They sat in silence for a minute.
"Anyway, all our relationship problems are Buffy's fault," Willow said, finally, her tone back to light and teasing. "You jinxed us, remember?"
"What? I did not," she said indignantly.
"No, you did, remember after I fell for that Internet robot? And you guys were trying to console me and you were like 'None of us are ever gonna have a happy, normal relationship.!'? Totally jinxed us."
"Oh, dammit. It is all my fault." They all laughed.
Buffy had thought the walls between her and her friends were insurmountable, that she would never be close to them again after all that had happened. Now she found that the walls were only about knee-high, that you hardly noticed stepping over them. She didn't know if she had grown or the walls had shrunk.
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One night Buffy had a new dream. She was walking out of Sunnydale High, the old one that should have been blown up, to get on the Griefmobile (it was in the school bus bay with the others, but she knew it was their bus; it had the right number on the side and the dent on the front bumper from when Faith went off the road). But the bus wasn't nearly empty like she was used to, with only seven people rattling around in it. It was crowded and noisy, and the windows were full of shapes as she walked closer. She saw Spike's platinum head as he opened a window and poked his head out.
"Oi! Slayer! Took you long enough, we've been waiting." He smirked at her and pulled his head back in, turning to talk to someone beside him. She walked to the door of the bus, where Principal Flutie was standing with a clipboard.
"Miss Summers," he said, nodding. He ran his finger down the list on his board and checked her name off. "You're the last one, we almost left without you."
"Thanks for waiting," she said, and climbed the steps. Principal Snyder was driving, and gave her a dirty look.
"There's a seat in the back," he told her. She nodded and started walking down the aisle, when she realized that everyone she had ever known in Sunnydale was there, good guys and bad. She saw the Mayor and Larry and Doc and Amy and Ms. Calendar and Angel and Cordelia and Drusilla and Oz and Devon and the Master and her mom and Professor Walsh and Mr. Trick and everyone, all talking to each other like they were the best of friends. Tara and Warren were sitting in a seat together, holding hands.
"Tara?" Buffy asked. "What're you... he *killed* you!" Tara and Warren looked at each other and laughed, shrugging.
"Yup," said Tara. Buffy started stammering until Tara cut her off. "It's not like that here, Buffy. Lions lie down with lambs. We're all a part of this. We're all together." Buffy nodded slowly, as if that made sense to her, and kept walking.
Her friends were at the very back, and she slid into the only empty seat, next to Giles. Willow turned around to wave wildly at her as the bus started moving.
"Buffy, you're finally here! I can't wait to get there, we've waited for so long!"
"Where are we going?" asked Buffy. The bus was picking up speed and hurtling down the highway, getting faster every second.
"Out!" said Willow.
"But out where?"
"Out of Sunnydale!" chimed in Xander. "We're moving on!"
The bus was approaching a giant blank emptiness, where it looked like the highway and the world just ended abruptly in darkness. It was like they were in a picture, and about to go over the edge of the frame, where there was nothing.
"Uh, guys?" said Buffy. No one paid attention. "Guys! We're going to... we can't drive into that, what is that?!?"
"Who knows?" said Giles casually. "It could be anything."
"We have to stop the bus!" said Buffy.
"No sodding way," said Spike. "I didn't burn myself up so you could stay in bloody Sunnydale for all time." He lit a cigarette. "Relax."
The bus neared the edge and Buffy braced herself against the back of the seat in front of her, preparing for impact or for a fall. She saw the front few seats get engulfed by the darkness, which moved swiftly backwards towards her and Giles. It overtook them in a flash of black. Then Buffy had the impression of clear light, of wide open space. Suddenly she felt like she'd been confined her whole life, that she'd never really had room to stretch. There was the scent of green grass and a happiness so overwhelming she wanted to cry.
**
She woke up in a motel room in Kentucky, Dawn having kicked her when she rolled over. The sun had barely risen when she stepped outside the door of their room and went to the little mom and pop coffee shop next door to the motel. To her surprise, Giles was already there, at the counter with a cup of coffee and the morning paper.
"Buffy," he said, looking pleasantly surprised. "What are you doing up at this hour?" Buffy sat down next to him.
"Dawn kicks," she said. He smiled. "How about you?"
"Oh, early bird, et cetera," Giles said, folding up his paper. The waitress filled up Buffy's coffee cup, and she added cream and sugar. Her dream was bothering her.
"Giles, where are we going?" He looked surprised.
"East," he said, and shrugged a bit. "Elsewhere. Anywhere. I believe your exact words were 'We're on vacation, Giles, I don't want a plan.'"
"Yeah, no, I know, sorry. I mean... oh, I don't know what I mean."
He nodded slowly, and took a sip of his coffee. "It's rather a big world, isn't it?"
"Yeah," she said. "It really, really is." They sat drinking their coffee in companionable silence, and she felt better having him next to her.
That day she watched rolling hills and horse farms go by, a misty morning with purple-y tinted grass, and the world didn't seem so big. The bus didn't feel so empty. Happiness felt close by, like she might turn her head and find it at her shoulder, leaning in to show her a funny translation of one of the old manuscripts they'd picked up, or like it might be sitting a few seats behind her and throwing paper wads at her head.
You never knew. Hellmouths did have a tendency to make abstractions physical, and after all, you could take the girl out of the Hellmouth, but you couldn't take the Hellmouth out of the girl. And maybe that was all right.
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END
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Notes:
Many moments could probably be argued were Buffy, Willow and Xander's worst, but the ones I mention in the story are the three points when I liked them the least or felt the most bothered about their choices. It seems skewed that they're all in their romantic relationships, but I couldn't think of other things that bothered me more (that weren't things like Buffy's boring speeches, which were less moral flaws than flaws in writing or whatever). Oh, and the Xander one I made up as consistent with his other behavior to Anya, but as happening some time off-screen. So don't try to find it in the show or anything.
I feel like this fic could come off as a little random - it all makes sense in my head in a weird intuitive kind of way, and so hopefully it holds together as more than loosely connected episodes. Though maybe loosely connected episodes is an okay way to think of it.
Recommended listening for this fic (and my first post-Chosen one, "Now Leaving Sunnydale") is "Bowl of Oranges", by Bright Eyes, an amazing, hopeful song you should all run and download right now.
SPOILERS: The whole shebang, all seven seasons of BtVS.
'SHIPS: None, really. There are mentions of Buffy/Spike, Xander/Anya, Willow/Tara, Willow/Kennedy, but all of those are pretty small and/or oblique. And I'm assuming that Buffy and Xander are both mourning Spike and Anya, whatever their feelings were for them right before they died.
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: All characters, universe, etc, belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.
ARCHIVING: Yes, but ask first so I know where it is.
FEEDBACK: Please! Send to [email protected]
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Now Entering Elsewhere
by Annakovsky
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They dropped the last ex-Potential off at the train station two weeks after the earth opened and swallowed Sunnydale.
They were all taking a summer vacation, and the policy was that everyone who had a home was going there. Most of the ex-Potentials were glad, having spent the better part of the year being both homesick and terrified.
Kennedy was planning on staying with them, until she and Willow had a talk. They went on a walk, and when they came back Kennedy's lips were pressed together tightly and Willow looked apologetic. Kennedy immediately went back to their room and started packing. She was on a plane the next day.
"She was... well, rebound girl," Willow told Buffy, when asked what happened. "I like her and everything, but it wasn't serious. At least for me. I mean, no hard feelings, but, you know, once all the panicky 'Help, the world's ending!' lust-y feelings go away, well... she is kind of bossy."
They had carefully written down all the Slayer's addresses, phone numbers and email, so that they'd be able to get in contact with them when they started rebuilding the demon fighting brigade.
"But for now," Buffy told Rona on the train platform, "you're on a well-deserved break. I mean, sure, if you see evil, slay it, but you don't have to go looking unless you feel like it. Besides, I have the feeling this will be a slow summer for evil."
"Summers usually are," said Xander. "Must be the heat. Or else demons are scared of Summers, 'cause hey, she's one tough chick." Buffy raised an eyebrow. "It's a pun!" he explained.
"Oh, I got it," she said. She turned back to Rona. "Thanks for all your hard work. And... sorry. For everything."
"Yeah. No. I'm sorry. I gave you a lot of crap, but you pulled it off after all."
"We all did," said Buffy.
"Yeah, we did," said Rona, looking pleased.
"Well... have a good trip back!" said Willow. Rona smiled, and then gave them all hugs, to their surprise. Funny how averting the apocalypse together made you all feel like you belonged to each other. That special, destroying-a-small-town-to-close-the-Hellmouth bond.
With Rona safely on the train, they all turned and walked back to the hotel. The Sunnydale brigade were the only ones left, the homeless ones with nowhere to go. Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Dawn, Andrew, and Faith. They had lost Principal Wood, who had gone back to New York where he had friends to help him with the months of physical therapy ahead. "As appealing as a months-long cross-country road-trip in all the comforts of a school bus sounds," he had said, "I think New York might be better for my broken bones."
They hit the road a few days later, after wrapping up their dealings with the insurance companies and lawyers. They had all managed to get a decent amount of money from insurance on their destroyed belongings, as what had happened to Sunnydale qualified as an act of God. They didn't mention that it was really more the act of a punk-ass vampire, but laughed about it later. Every once in awhile they'd start playing a game they called "If Spike were God...."
"Joe Strummer'd be alive."
"Manchester United would win every game."
"Every restaurant would serve the flowering onion."
"Three words: bleach, bleach, bleach."
It was also weird how averting the apocalypse made everyone, in retrospect, feel a strange fondness for certain vampires that they'd spent a lot of time and effort disliking in the past.
*****************************
For the first hour or so on the road, having a whole school bus for just the seven of them felt kind of exciting. Dawn ran up and down the aisles, and sat upside down in a seat, her feet sticking up in the air. That got old fast, though, thankfully.
Andrew was busy in the back making something out of a sheet Buffy suspected he had stolen from the hotel.
"Did Andrew steal that?" Xander leaned over and asked her. Buffy sighed.
"I'm on vacation, so I'm prepared to let this little bit of evil slide for now. If anyone asks, I didn't see it." Xander gave a crooked smile and slumped back in his seat.
"Vacation feels good," he said.
At the next rest stop, Andrew announced his creation to the bus.
"Look, you guys!" He had draped the sheet over one of the seats in the back, to make it into a sort of isolation booth. He had also written "Cry Room" on it in permanent marker. Faith snorted.
"Cry Room?" she asked. "The hell?"
"See, we've all been through a lot, so I thought we should have a place to go where no one will bother us when we need to get emotional. Willow made it soundproof," he said. They all looked at Willow, who shrugged.
"I dunno. It's a really simple spell, so hey, why not?" Faith snickered and rolled her eyes.
"What are we, the Griefmobile?" she asked. Andrew gave an "If the shoe fits" kind of shrug, and the rest of them all avoided looking at each other. Faith looked thoughtful.
"Yeah, okay," she said, and shrugged. "The Griefmobile it is."
It was an unspoken rule that no one ever commented on anyone else's time in the Cry Room. If Xander went in there three or four times a day for the first week or so, it wasn't anybody's business but his. After all, if you made fun of him for that, your own frequent visit would then be fair game, and nobody wanted that.
Faith mocked the Cry Room in general (though no one's specific use of it), but at least one time when she thought everyone else was asleep, she may have made her own visit.
****************************
Grief felt like a long black snake that had attached itself to Buffy's innards. Crying was pulling it out, uprooting it - she knew she'd reach the end of it sometime.
Other times grief felt like a shovel hollowing her out, or a rack stretching her. It was like it made her bigger, somehow, able to hold more, deeper. More happiness fit inside, more sadness. But hollow, too, like she might fold in on herself.
But grief was okay, she thought. Just feeling anything was sort of good, and she wasn't so scared of it anymore. She took deep breaths and faced the pain she'd been so afraid of for so long, her own final frontier. The girl who had fought hell gods and demons but was too frightened to face her rejections and faults and losses turned and stared them down, bold and strong, and the pains ran through her like ghosts and disappeared.
Every grief she experienced fresh brought back a piece of herself, arms and legs, ears and eyes, fitting her back together like a puzzle whose pieces had been missing for too long.
Her losses flashed through her mind in quick images. Spike, glowing with fiery light - her own hands bloody from digging out of her coffin - her mom's body, dead on the couch - Riley's helicopter flying away - Angel's face when she put a sword through him - her dad packing clothes in his duffel bag to move out. Too many hurts, building too many calluses.
She was breaking down the walls she'd put up, brick by brick, in every state they drove through.
***************************
They hit Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Alamo. Saw a whole lot of nothing in Wyoming, potato fields in Idaho, Death Valley in Nevada. But they headed straight east after not too long.
"I'm sick of the desert," Buffy told Giles. "Can we go somewhere green?"
"Let's," he said. He was doing the bulk of the driving, as it was hard to depend on Xander's depth perception, Buffy's driving in general and Faith's tendency to try to make screeching U-turns that didn't really work so well in a school bus.
It felt like a whole new world for them, the old life in Sunnydale almost a blur. Buffy looked around the bus one morning at her friends. Willow was sitting in the seat right behind Xander, and the two of them were turned sideways, talking quietly and laughing. Willow rubbed Xander's arm. Faith was in the back, trying to teach Andrew and Dawn to play poker. "Naw, Junior, three of a kind beats two pair. Pay attention, chump, 'cause I'm definitely not playing any more Crazy Eights with you kids."
It was weird how good Buffy felt, how she felt like she loved all of them. She hadn't felt like that for a long time. It was like she was Spike that last time she had seen him, with light flowing through her and out of her. With the pressure off, her anger and fear had faded.
In Oklahoma, Xander plopped down next to her in the bus seat where she was staring out the window, a little broodily.
"Maybe we should form a support group," he said, a propos of nothing. "You know, for people whose ex-demon ex-lovers died saving the world right after we might have been getting back together with them." Buffy gave a startled laugh.
"Well, that's specific. God," she said, and shook her head.
"What?" he asked.
"Oh, it's just... I was sitting here thinking that no one understands what I'm going through, and, uh, I think I'm kind of an idiot."
"Eh," Xander said, and shrugged. "You're talking to the king of all idiots here."
"No... I'm sorry, Xander. For everything the past few years."
"You don't have to be sorry. I'm sorry. For...," he trailed off, not knowing where to start. And not wanting to name things, the resurrections and insurrections. "...yeah. Everything."
"No.... Oh, Xander. It's been a hard couple of years, hasn't it?" Buffy gave a choked kind of laugh, tears starting to well up.
"Hey there," he said, putting his arm around her. "You're not going to need to visit the Cry Room, are you?" She laughed through tears again, and hugged him, hard.
"Promise me if I start getting to be such a jerk again, you'll smack me upside the head," Buffy said, muffled in Xander's shirt.
"Nah, I think we're going to be okay, now. No smacking will be necessary."
"You know, I always thought that when people said that everything would be okay, they were lying, saying stuff just to make you feel better. But... maybe they weren't. Maybe everything really will be okay, in the end."
"The world looks better this side of Sunnydale, huh?"
"Yeah."
******************************
Apologies went all around, in quiet conversations in the corners of the bus, until they came out of the desert. When they hit Missouri they ran into their first summer thunderstorm, at around four in the afternoon. The rain started pouring down until Giles pulled the bus into a rest stop in frustration, and they all ran to the buildings for refuge. Most of them headed to the bathroom or the vending machines, but Buffy, Dawn and Faith went to the covered picnic tables and perched on top of them, watching the lightning flash in the distance and smelling that wild, green thunderstorm smell.
"I love this," Faith said, almost inaudibly, sitting next to Buffy.
"Yeah?" said Buffy. "Me too. It always makes me want to run out barefoot and do a crazy rain dance or something."
"You should," said Faith. Buffy gave her a skeptical look. "Seriously, B, why not?"
"Well, for one thing I only have one other pair of jeans and they take forever to dry," Buffy said, suppressing a smile.
"So lose the jeans," Faith said, grinning. Buffy rolled her eyes and went back to watching the lightning. Dawn was standing close to the edge of the overhang and stuck her arm out into the rain, watching the drops beat down onto her dry skin, running off in rivulets of water.
"Rain feels so good," she said over her shoulder. "It doesn't rain enough in Sunnydale." There was a pause. "I mean, it didn't. Rain enough. Past tense."
Faith got up and stuck her arm out into the rain next to Dawn's, her palm open so it looked like she was trying to catch the water, hold it in her hand. "It does feel good," she said, glancing back at Buffy. Then she walked calmly out into the storm, rain drenching her instantly. Once she'd walked a certain ways out, she turned and faced them, arms out, soaked to the skin, and put her face to the sky. She yelled gleefully.
"You guys gotta get out here, this is fantastic!"
"Faith!" said Buffy.
"C'mon, B, the water's fine!" Buffy just raised her eyebrows, but after a second Dawn dashed out into the rain herself.
"Dawn!" Buffy said, surprised. Dawn squealed.
"This is awesome!" she said. She was jumping up and down a little bit, until Faith grabbed her hands and they started spinning. "We're siiiiiinging in the rain... just siiinng-ing in the rain! What a gloooorious feeeeling, I'm haaappy again." Dawn sang.
Buffy sighed and looked at them. Oh, what the hell, she thought, shrugged, and walked out into the downpour to join them. Her hair was matted to her forehead immediately by the water and she started shivering, but the rain felt amazing on her skin.
Faith hooted when she saw her, letting go of one of Dawn's hands and pulling Buffy into the circle. They spun around, laughing and shaking water out of their eyes. When they finally looked up, they saw everyone else standing at the edge of the overhang, staring at them like they weren't sure whether to laugh or to call the men in white coats.
Dawn and Buffy were giggling like crazy; Faith threw up her arms and yelled. They waved at everyone else to join them in the downpour.
When the storm stopped, all of them were soaked to the skin and muddy. Giles made them wash the worst of the mud off in the bathrooms, where they changed clothes, giggling and talking excitedly. They walked back to the bus arm in arm.
**************************************
Sometimes Buffy still had nightmares. She'd wake up sweaty, a hole of dread in her stomach, not knowing where she was. Even when she remembered she wouldn't always know exactly what state they were in, and she never knew what day of the week it was. There was an endless stream of anonymous hotel rooms and campsites, of tourist sites and water parks.
She'd wake up with an overwhelming feeling of loss. Symptoms include shortness of breath, headache, stomach pain, watery eyes, stuffy nose, general malaise, and dry mouth. Because everything has dry mouth.
The nightmares varied. Sometimes the First Slayer was chasing her, trying to rip out her heart, overwhelming her. She often saw Anya being cut in half (even though she hadn't seen it in real life), and Xander's eye being poked out. Sometimes her dreams included Spike, in vamp face, trying to kill her. A few times he ripped her throat out, and another time he killed Dawn. Other times her friends were killing Spike, burning him alive or chopping off his head, and once she herself was the one who put a stake through his heart, watched him turn to dust. Sometimes it was her who was dead, lying in a coffin underground, unable to breathe or break her way out. Occasionally Willow was trying to kill her, all vein-y and black-eyed; another time Spike turned all her friends to vampires, and did her last. She looked in the mirror and saw nothing.
The violent dreams were almost better than the other ones, though, the ones where her friends wouldn't talk to her, or where she was trapped in a room and no one could hear her. Or sometimes it was just a dream of the world empty except for her, a barren wilderness of nothing that she had to wander through. Sometimes she couldn't remember what she dreamed but woke with dread, with a feeling of emptiness so severe she almost doubled over with it. She even missed Anya, couldn't believe she'd never be annoyed by her again – that Anya would never re-dye her hair or make another dollar.
The bus contained everyone who mattered to her, and it was horribly empty. There were places in the conversation where she expected Anya to make a sarcastic comment, or Spike to roll his eyes. They were re-making the world, rediscovering themselves, and those two were missing it. They'd never know who Spike and Anya would become, the kind of creatures they would be in ten years.
Buffy wanted her mom. She wanted Mr. Gordo. But her mom didn't even have a grave anymore, and Mr. Gordo's grave was five miles square.
***************************************************
Some days they'd drive in silence, each sitting in their own seat, looking out the windows and thinking, listening to music. They'd gone to Best Buy and gotten five CDs each, to start out. It had been like one of those lists – if you could only take five CDs with you to a desert island, which ones would you take? They had made sure they didn't have any overlapping choices, so they could trade around for variety. Xander had chosen a lot of country; among her pop CDs, Buffy had thrown in the Ramones. No one commented, but some knowing looks were exchanged.
Other days they all seemed to need to be together, and they'd crowd into the first two rows of seats around Giles (or whoever was driving) and talk, laughing, about what they were going to do with the next year, or reminisce about old times.
"Remember that time Xander had to join the swim team?"
"Yeah, and had to wear that Speedo? Va-va-voom!"
"Hey, now, you're making me feel like a piece of meat. A sexy, sexy piece of meat."
"Whoa, whoa, Speedo? I never heard about this, why'd he have to join the swim team?"
"Fish monsters."
"Ah. Man, that's a wicked crazy town you guys had there."
They all laughed and then sighed, almost wistfully.
****************************************************
A lot of nights, whoever couldn't sleep would end up down by the hotel pool, like that first night post-Sunnydale, talking in the dark.
One night Buffy, Willow and Xander sat dangling their feet into the water (Buffy and Willow on Xander's right, so he could see them), watching the ripples their feet made and talking about the Hellmouth.
"The weird thing about it," said Willow, "is how it gets inside you. Did you guys ever notice how, like, half the monsters we ever fought were our own faults? Like me accidentally casting that my-will-be-done-spell or Xander doing that botched love spell?"
"Hey," said Xander. "Cordy broke up with me on *Valentine's Day*." They both raised eyebrows at him. "Yeah, I know, I know."
"I know what you mean, Will," Buffy said. "It seemed like the longer we lived on the Hellmouth the worse we got."
"Are you guys seriously blaming the Hellmouth for our issues?" Xander asked.
"No-o," said Willow. She thought for a second. "It's just, the Hellmouth made problems so much more tangible, I guess. Like, most people get mad at their friends and just say things they don't mean. I said things I didn't mean, and made Giles go blind and you almost get killed by demons. So it's more that the Hellmouth makes the meanness already inside you into something that might actually kill people."
"Yeah..." said Buffy, thoughtfully. "Here's a question no one has to answer if they don't want to, but... what's the one thing you guys regret the most? Out of everything we did."
"Gee, out of my, like, three thousand top contenders of horrible things I regret?" asked Willow dryly. Buffy shrugged.
"You don't have to answer if you don't want."
"What, Will, trying to end the world doesn't immediately come to mind?" Xander asked lightly. Willow looked sheepish, but then serious.
"Actually... oh," she said, realizing what it really was. "It's mind-wiping Tara. That was the worst thing. I know it doesn't sound like it competes with trying to destroy everything or with killing people, but... well, I had motivation for all the Big Bad stuff that wasn't all evil, I guess. I mean, it was awful that I did it, I still have nightmares... but erasing her memories so she wouldn't be mad at me – that was just completely inexcusable and... that's the moment I look back on and I just know that I am a really bad person, deep down." Willow was staring hard at the pool, her eyes dry and empty. There was silence – Buffy didn't know what to say.
"Mine was one time at the Magic Box," Xander said unexpectedly. His voice had come out hoarse and he cleared his throat. "It was just an ordinary research session, no big deal, and Anya was making some suggestion or saying something that was kind of nonsensical or blunt or something, I don't even remember, but I said, 'God, Anya, could you just shut up for five seconds and let the people who aren't mentally challenged talk?' I might as well just have slapped her across the face, and she looked at me like she was a puppy I had just kicked for no reason, and... God, I treated her like crap. I acted like I was ashamed of her and she was stupid and didn't matter and... yeah. I'm an asshole." He too was staring at the pool, not meeting anyone's eyes.
"I beat the crap out of Spike," Buffy said, taking a deep breath. She sighed. "For no good reason. I just kept hitting him, over and over – I think if he had been a human I would have killed him, I was hitting him so hard. It was like all this hatred and anger came charging out of me and I couldn't stop it – he was a jerk and a vampire, but he loved me and I beat him senseless just because I felt like it. Afterwards I felt like the meanest, smallest, cruelest person alive, and I am." She exhaled. Now they knew what she really was, knew that she wasn't really a hero. It felt like a weight off – she felt small and vulnerable and tired, but free. She didn't have to pretend to be good anymore.
She risked a glance at her friends, and shrugged, hands out, tiredly. "I'm sorry I'm not... I know you want me to be the good guy. I'm sorry I let you down."
"Buffy," Willow said. "We all... you don't have to be...." She took a deep breath. "You haven't let us down. At all. We let you down. We're all just... I don't know, muddling along screwing things up and being horrible and... I mean, you heard what we just said, we're not any better. We're worse."
"No, you're not. I just... I feel like I should have my good guy credentials revoked or something. It's like... you know how those Bible-belt preacher types are always yapping about being born again or whatever? I finally get it, sort of, why you would want to be born again. To start over fresh."
"Maybe we are starting over," said Xander. "Right now."
"Yeah," said Buffy, looking at him thoughtfully. "Maybe we are." They sat in silence for a minute.
"Anyway, all our relationship problems are Buffy's fault," Willow said, finally, her tone back to light and teasing. "You jinxed us, remember?"
"What? I did not," she said indignantly.
"No, you did, remember after I fell for that Internet robot? And you guys were trying to console me and you were like 'None of us are ever gonna have a happy, normal relationship.!'? Totally jinxed us."
"Oh, dammit. It is all my fault." They all laughed.
Buffy had thought the walls between her and her friends were insurmountable, that she would never be close to them again after all that had happened. Now she found that the walls were only about knee-high, that you hardly noticed stepping over them. She didn't know if she had grown or the walls had shrunk.
***********************************************
One night Buffy had a new dream. She was walking out of Sunnydale High, the old one that should have been blown up, to get on the Griefmobile (it was in the school bus bay with the others, but she knew it was their bus; it had the right number on the side and the dent on the front bumper from when Faith went off the road). But the bus wasn't nearly empty like she was used to, with only seven people rattling around in it. It was crowded and noisy, and the windows were full of shapes as she walked closer. She saw Spike's platinum head as he opened a window and poked his head out.
"Oi! Slayer! Took you long enough, we've been waiting." He smirked at her and pulled his head back in, turning to talk to someone beside him. She walked to the door of the bus, where Principal Flutie was standing with a clipboard.
"Miss Summers," he said, nodding. He ran his finger down the list on his board and checked her name off. "You're the last one, we almost left without you."
"Thanks for waiting," she said, and climbed the steps. Principal Snyder was driving, and gave her a dirty look.
"There's a seat in the back," he told her. She nodded and started walking down the aisle, when she realized that everyone she had ever known in Sunnydale was there, good guys and bad. She saw the Mayor and Larry and Doc and Amy and Ms. Calendar and Angel and Cordelia and Drusilla and Oz and Devon and the Master and her mom and Professor Walsh and Mr. Trick and everyone, all talking to each other like they were the best of friends. Tara and Warren were sitting in a seat together, holding hands.
"Tara?" Buffy asked. "What're you... he *killed* you!" Tara and Warren looked at each other and laughed, shrugging.
"Yup," said Tara. Buffy started stammering until Tara cut her off. "It's not like that here, Buffy. Lions lie down with lambs. We're all a part of this. We're all together." Buffy nodded slowly, as if that made sense to her, and kept walking.
Her friends were at the very back, and she slid into the only empty seat, next to Giles. Willow turned around to wave wildly at her as the bus started moving.
"Buffy, you're finally here! I can't wait to get there, we've waited for so long!"
"Where are we going?" asked Buffy. The bus was picking up speed and hurtling down the highway, getting faster every second.
"Out!" said Willow.
"But out where?"
"Out of Sunnydale!" chimed in Xander. "We're moving on!"
The bus was approaching a giant blank emptiness, where it looked like the highway and the world just ended abruptly in darkness. It was like they were in a picture, and about to go over the edge of the frame, where there was nothing.
"Uh, guys?" said Buffy. No one paid attention. "Guys! We're going to... we can't drive into that, what is that?!?"
"Who knows?" said Giles casually. "It could be anything."
"We have to stop the bus!" said Buffy.
"No sodding way," said Spike. "I didn't burn myself up so you could stay in bloody Sunnydale for all time." He lit a cigarette. "Relax."
The bus neared the edge and Buffy braced herself against the back of the seat in front of her, preparing for impact or for a fall. She saw the front few seats get engulfed by the darkness, which moved swiftly backwards towards her and Giles. It overtook them in a flash of black. Then Buffy had the impression of clear light, of wide open space. Suddenly she felt like she'd been confined her whole life, that she'd never really had room to stretch. There was the scent of green grass and a happiness so overwhelming she wanted to cry.
**
She woke up in a motel room in Kentucky, Dawn having kicked her when she rolled over. The sun had barely risen when she stepped outside the door of their room and went to the little mom and pop coffee shop next door to the motel. To her surprise, Giles was already there, at the counter with a cup of coffee and the morning paper.
"Buffy," he said, looking pleasantly surprised. "What are you doing up at this hour?" Buffy sat down next to him.
"Dawn kicks," she said. He smiled. "How about you?"
"Oh, early bird, et cetera," Giles said, folding up his paper. The waitress filled up Buffy's coffee cup, and she added cream and sugar. Her dream was bothering her.
"Giles, where are we going?" He looked surprised.
"East," he said, and shrugged a bit. "Elsewhere. Anywhere. I believe your exact words were 'We're on vacation, Giles, I don't want a plan.'"
"Yeah, no, I know, sorry. I mean... oh, I don't know what I mean."
He nodded slowly, and took a sip of his coffee. "It's rather a big world, isn't it?"
"Yeah," she said. "It really, really is." They sat drinking their coffee in companionable silence, and she felt better having him next to her.
That day she watched rolling hills and horse farms go by, a misty morning with purple-y tinted grass, and the world didn't seem so big. The bus didn't feel so empty. Happiness felt close by, like she might turn her head and find it at her shoulder, leaning in to show her a funny translation of one of the old manuscripts they'd picked up, or like it might be sitting a few seats behind her and throwing paper wads at her head.
You never knew. Hellmouths did have a tendency to make abstractions physical, and after all, you could take the girl out of the Hellmouth, but you couldn't take the Hellmouth out of the girl. And maybe that was all right.
******************************
END
******************************
Notes:
Many moments could probably be argued were Buffy, Willow and Xander's worst, but the ones I mention in the story are the three points when I liked them the least or felt the most bothered about their choices. It seems skewed that they're all in their romantic relationships, but I couldn't think of other things that bothered me more (that weren't things like Buffy's boring speeches, which were less moral flaws than flaws in writing or whatever). Oh, and the Xander one I made up as consistent with his other behavior to Anya, but as happening some time off-screen. So don't try to find it in the show or anything.
I feel like this fic could come off as a little random - it all makes sense in my head in a weird intuitive kind of way, and so hopefully it holds together as more than loosely connected episodes. Though maybe loosely connected episodes is an okay way to think of it.
Recommended listening for this fic (and my first post-Chosen one, "Now Leaving Sunnydale") is "Bowl of Oranges", by Bright Eyes, an amazing, hopeful song you should all run and download right now.