(quick note: switching POV's here, though that's pretty obvious…)
I heard Dawn – I was starting to think of her as Dawn now, it seemed – answer the telephone, but I wasn't really paying attention. I figured she must have called someone while I was in the shower. I'd staying in a long time, trying to scrub off the smell of hospital and blood and terror. You'd think that with a life like mine, waking up in an alternate reality would be par for the course, but I was still freaked. And worried about Dawn – my Dawn – and the kids.
I was trying to be as positive as possible, so I took the pizza with a smile, handing the delivery guy the cash with my free hand. I walked over to the bed, looking for a place to put the pizza down, and I saw her face. She looked scared, and she was blinking rapidly. My arms almost gave out then, and I had to recover quickly to prevent the pizza from spilling all over the bedspread. My Slayer reflexes hadn't slowed with age, luckily.
"Who is it?" I mouthed to Dawn. She didn't say anything, and instead thrust the phone at me. I took it, and sat down in the place she had vacated, which was still warm. The handset was sweaty.
"Hello?" I said cautiously.
"Buffy?" It was Giles. I would have recognized his voice anywhere.
"Giles!" I practically screamed. I sometimes forgot that he was old now. It probably wasn't a great idea to be yelling into his ear. "Sorry," I said, lowering my voice. "I'm just so happy to hear your voice."
"It's quite all right, dear. When William told me you'd called, I was furious at him for not waking me up."
This was weird. He was talking to me like my Giles might have. Well, minus the son part. Why did he care that I had called at all? Who was I to him in this world? I was about to ask him when he answered.
"I've been dreaming about you for almost thirty years. If I didn't know better, I'd think a figment of my imagination had called me." He chuckled at that last sentence.
My brain was working on overdrive now. He'd been dreaming of me. Part of my life had blended into this one, like watercolors on a canvas. It made me wonder how many of my dreams weren't creations of my own mind, or even Slayer Dreams, but snapshots of real people, worlds away. "You have." I stated it, didn't ask. "What about me?"
"Lots of things. Fighting vampires, mainly." That didn't surprise me in the least. I hoped he hadn't dreamed about me doing other things with vampires. I snorted at that thought, and I could almost see Giles looking annoyed with me.
"Buffy – the thing is, today I dreamed you died."
"I didn't. I've been dead before, and it's not like this. The art is much better, for one thing." I said lightly. I'd never quite gotten over the nervous tendency to kid my way through tense times. Dawn had once told me it made me seem as though I didn't care. Which was kind of ironic, because I tended to do it more in situations I cared the most about. "I'm sorry. I want to hear about your dream, Giles. Please tell me."
Giles took a deep breath. I could hear it from across the ocean. That always meant he was about to say something he didn't want to have to say. Like when he told me I'd have to kill my sister to save the world. I don't think I'd ever heard anything worse than those words, and I doubted anything he was about to say could top them.
"When I dream about you, it's like a window into someone else's life. They aren't like normal dreams, where pictures shift and scenes change while you glance down. My dreams are more grounded in reality. Like I'm a silent observer of whatever is happening to you. Today, when the dream started, you were in a car with your sister, and your niece and nephew." He paused, as if waiting for me to confirm that something similar had happened.
He was right, of course. It still scared me. If he knew we were in the car, he'd probably seen the accident. And if he'd seen the accident, and thought I was dead… My brain didn't want to go where logic was leading it. My thoughts were racing ahead of Giles's voice, and I had to slow down, stop panicking and listen to what he was telling me. That was a lot easier said than done.
I nodded silently. I sometimes forget that the phone doesn't allow for body language. "Yeah." I said, simply. I waited for him to tell of my doom.
"It was raining. You were behind the wheel. Dawn was sitting in the passenger seat, and her daughter was sitting in the front seat, between you. You told her she should sit in back and keep Henry company, but she told you she was four, and therefore old enough to sit in the front with the adults. When she said this, she was sitting on your lap, and you looked over her head at her mother and smiled," he said. He was getting all the details right, and he spoke of Kristin as if he knew her.
It was slightly egotistical, but I favored Kristin over Henry slightly because she reminded me of myself as a little girl. Earlier, when she was on my lap, she'd been swinging her legs, and each time her legs would complete their arc, a small Mary Jane would slap against my calf. Her hands were sticky where they touched my arm, and her butt was surprisingly bony for someone so small. It was bliss to have her there. Kristin was wearing a pink dress, and red tights that she insisted matched. She smelled like baby shampoo.
"Henry started crying. Dawn turned around to see what was wrong." I wanted him to stop. If he didn't say anything, maybe it hadn't actually happened the way I remembered it happening.
Giles must have sensed my apprehension. His voice took on the tone of a loving father, trying to sooth his scared child. "Tell me when you're ready for me to continue."
It amazed me that he felt this way about me when, in this world, he hadn't ever even seen me while awake. At the same time, it didn't surprise me at all. He was Giles; of course he would love me. It was something that had always been constant in the chaos of my life. He was my north star.
"I'm okay, Giles." I said, and I was sure the quaver in my voice said just the opposite.
"When Dawn turned, there was a flash of bright light. You were blinded, and it scared you. You hit the brakes hard, and the car spun. Kristin screamed." His words were becoming choked now. He might be crying, I couldn't tell.
I took over.
"Kristin screamed, and I looked over at her. I shouldn't have. I looked away from the road at the most critical moment. There was a truck, and if I'd been looking, I might have been able to – to do something different. We hit. I remember. There were so many noises. The metal crunched, and there was breaking glass, and Kristin was still screaming, and Henry was crying, and Dawn was making a high-pitched noise that was verging on a shriek. The airbag inflated, and I didn't see anything after that." I was crying now. "There was a pain on my left side like nothing I'd felt before, and then everything went black."
I stopped there. Partially it's because I didn't have anything else to say, because, well, blackout. But also because even if there were more to say, I couldn't have said it. I was crying pretty hard. It was worse, not seeing what happened to them. When I closed my eyes, I saw tiny bodies covered in blood, baby blue eyes staring at me in accusation. I was supposed to protect them, not harm them.
If the accident had happened in movie slow motion, and I'd had time to think, I'm sure that instead of my own life flashing before my eyes, Kristin's and Henry's lives would have. A slide show in my mind of baby drool and icing in hair the texture of cotton candy.
When Kristin was born, I'd been there. Dawn wanted me in the delivery room. I stood holding one hand; Jack had the other. Spike and Xander were pacing a hole in the waiting room carpet. When it was over, Dawn held her baby and smiled. Jack went to tell the mother hens, and I stayed in the room.
"Buffy?" Dawn asked me, "What do I tell her about things that go bump in the night?"
It was a good question. If Kristin knew from the moment she could understand what people were saying that fairy tale monsters were sometimes real, would she grow up being afraid of her shadow? Would she cry in the night and never want to leave her mother's side? And if she didn't know, would she be in more danger? In the end, Dawn decided to play it by ear. She wouldn't ever purposely lie to her child, she was adamant about that, but she wouldn't go out of her way to explain ooglie booglies either.
I hadn't been there when Henry was born. I was off saving the world from something big and nasty. I knew Dawn understood, - how could she not have? – but she still seemed upset when I walked in the room. I supposed some of it had to do with the slime I got on the pretty blue baby blanket, too. It was things like that that made me glad I was an aunt rather than a mother.
Giles was still on the line. I don't know how long he waited while I cried, but I set the phone down after about a minute and curled up on the bed, letting the misery wash over me. I'd known from the moment I opened my eyes that it was going to hit, and it was almost a relief to be done waiting for it to come. I wanted to pick up the phone and tell Giles not to worry, that I'd be okay, but I couldn't even find the strength to roll over.
I felt a hand on my back. Dawn was rubbing circles on the terrycloth covering my shoulder blades. She was murmuring soothing words, as one would use with a hysterical child. She reminded me very much of, well, herself at that moment that it was both comforting and painful.
I somehow found it in me to sit up, and I threw my arms around her and hugged her tightly.
"Ow!" she said, suspiring us both. I guess Slayer strength is something that knows no universal boundaries.
"Is he still on the phone?" I asked her, though there was no reason she should know better than I.
"I think so," she said. "Wouldn't it be beeping at us if there was no one on the line?"
There was no question about it. She was Dawn, always seeing the practical side of things, and often making me feel stupid in the process. I was supposed to be older and wiser. "Oh. Right." I said.
I picked up the phone. "Giles?
"Yes, Buffy?" He didn't even sound impatient. I loved him so much. "I think it would be a good idea for us to meet up. Would you be able to fly to London?"
"No. I have no passport, or any other identification on me, no money, and I broke out of a mental institution today."
"Oh. Well then, I'm coming there."
He asked me where I was, and how should he get there, what airport should he fly into, and how long would we be there in case he needed to call. I didn't know the answer to anything, so I handed the phone to Dawn, who looked at it as if it were a live snake. "Take it," I mouthed to her. She finally took it, but made sure I saw the glare she was giving me.
I faintly heard her giving Giles the information about where we were staying. I got up and went back into the bathroom. I'd just taken a shower twenty minutes ago, and I looked horrible. I wanted to get back in the shower and scrub away at myself until I didn't feel the impact of metal upon metal, but I resisted the temptation. Instead I splashed my face with cool water and blew my nose.
The body I now inhabited was my own, and yet it was not. It felt strange, but not so much so that I'd even noticed it when I first woke up. It was like that dizzy feeling of having slept too long in a bed that was too warm. Before I'd woken up, I'd had frantic dreams about being asleep, and not able to rouse myself. It felt almost as though I was still sleeping.
When I was in the shower, I'd examined myself. I'd lost muscle mass. I guess sitting around in a catatonic coma for thirty years doesn't really give a body much of a work out. There were scars missing, too. It was strange to see smooth skin where there should have been raised silver streaks. I liked my scars. They were proof I'd lived.
It occurred to me that while I was in this body, there was a Buffy in mine. And, if what Giles said about seeing me die was right… it meant that the Buffy who'd been living in this world had died in mine. And that left me trapped.
I heard Dawn – I was starting to think of her as Dawn now, it seemed – answer the telephone, but I wasn't really paying attention. I figured she must have called someone while I was in the shower. I'd staying in a long time, trying to scrub off the smell of hospital and blood and terror. You'd think that with a life like mine, waking up in an alternate reality would be par for the course, but I was still freaked. And worried about Dawn – my Dawn – and the kids.
I was trying to be as positive as possible, so I took the pizza with a smile, handing the delivery guy the cash with my free hand. I walked over to the bed, looking for a place to put the pizza down, and I saw her face. She looked scared, and she was blinking rapidly. My arms almost gave out then, and I had to recover quickly to prevent the pizza from spilling all over the bedspread. My Slayer reflexes hadn't slowed with age, luckily.
"Who is it?" I mouthed to Dawn. She didn't say anything, and instead thrust the phone at me. I took it, and sat down in the place she had vacated, which was still warm. The handset was sweaty.
"Hello?" I said cautiously.
"Buffy?" It was Giles. I would have recognized his voice anywhere.
"Giles!" I practically screamed. I sometimes forgot that he was old now. It probably wasn't a great idea to be yelling into his ear. "Sorry," I said, lowering my voice. "I'm just so happy to hear your voice."
"It's quite all right, dear. When William told me you'd called, I was furious at him for not waking me up."
This was weird. He was talking to me like my Giles might have. Well, minus the son part. Why did he care that I had called at all? Who was I to him in this world? I was about to ask him when he answered.
"I've been dreaming about you for almost thirty years. If I didn't know better, I'd think a figment of my imagination had called me." He chuckled at that last sentence.
My brain was working on overdrive now. He'd been dreaming of me. Part of my life had blended into this one, like watercolors on a canvas. It made me wonder how many of my dreams weren't creations of my own mind, or even Slayer Dreams, but snapshots of real people, worlds away. "You have." I stated it, didn't ask. "What about me?"
"Lots of things. Fighting vampires, mainly." That didn't surprise me in the least. I hoped he hadn't dreamed about me doing other things with vampires. I snorted at that thought, and I could almost see Giles looking annoyed with me.
"Buffy – the thing is, today I dreamed you died."
"I didn't. I've been dead before, and it's not like this. The art is much better, for one thing." I said lightly. I'd never quite gotten over the nervous tendency to kid my way through tense times. Dawn had once told me it made me seem as though I didn't care. Which was kind of ironic, because I tended to do it more in situations I cared the most about. "I'm sorry. I want to hear about your dream, Giles. Please tell me."
Giles took a deep breath. I could hear it from across the ocean. That always meant he was about to say something he didn't want to have to say. Like when he told me I'd have to kill my sister to save the world. I don't think I'd ever heard anything worse than those words, and I doubted anything he was about to say could top them.
"When I dream about you, it's like a window into someone else's life. They aren't like normal dreams, where pictures shift and scenes change while you glance down. My dreams are more grounded in reality. Like I'm a silent observer of whatever is happening to you. Today, when the dream started, you were in a car with your sister, and your niece and nephew." He paused, as if waiting for me to confirm that something similar had happened.
He was right, of course. It still scared me. If he knew we were in the car, he'd probably seen the accident. And if he'd seen the accident, and thought I was dead… My brain didn't want to go where logic was leading it. My thoughts were racing ahead of Giles's voice, and I had to slow down, stop panicking and listen to what he was telling me. That was a lot easier said than done.
I nodded silently. I sometimes forget that the phone doesn't allow for body language. "Yeah." I said, simply. I waited for him to tell of my doom.
"It was raining. You were behind the wheel. Dawn was sitting in the passenger seat, and her daughter was sitting in the front seat, between you. You told her she should sit in back and keep Henry company, but she told you she was four, and therefore old enough to sit in the front with the adults. When she said this, she was sitting on your lap, and you looked over her head at her mother and smiled," he said. He was getting all the details right, and he spoke of Kristin as if he knew her.
It was slightly egotistical, but I favored Kristin over Henry slightly because she reminded me of myself as a little girl. Earlier, when she was on my lap, she'd been swinging her legs, and each time her legs would complete their arc, a small Mary Jane would slap against my calf. Her hands were sticky where they touched my arm, and her butt was surprisingly bony for someone so small. It was bliss to have her there. Kristin was wearing a pink dress, and red tights that she insisted matched. She smelled like baby shampoo.
"Henry started crying. Dawn turned around to see what was wrong." I wanted him to stop. If he didn't say anything, maybe it hadn't actually happened the way I remembered it happening.
Giles must have sensed my apprehension. His voice took on the tone of a loving father, trying to sooth his scared child. "Tell me when you're ready for me to continue."
It amazed me that he felt this way about me when, in this world, he hadn't ever even seen me while awake. At the same time, it didn't surprise me at all. He was Giles; of course he would love me. It was something that had always been constant in the chaos of my life. He was my north star.
"I'm okay, Giles." I said, and I was sure the quaver in my voice said just the opposite.
"When Dawn turned, there was a flash of bright light. You were blinded, and it scared you. You hit the brakes hard, and the car spun. Kristin screamed." His words were becoming choked now. He might be crying, I couldn't tell.
I took over.
"Kristin screamed, and I looked over at her. I shouldn't have. I looked away from the road at the most critical moment. There was a truck, and if I'd been looking, I might have been able to – to do something different. We hit. I remember. There were so many noises. The metal crunched, and there was breaking glass, and Kristin was still screaming, and Henry was crying, and Dawn was making a high-pitched noise that was verging on a shriek. The airbag inflated, and I didn't see anything after that." I was crying now. "There was a pain on my left side like nothing I'd felt before, and then everything went black."
I stopped there. Partially it's because I didn't have anything else to say, because, well, blackout. But also because even if there were more to say, I couldn't have said it. I was crying pretty hard. It was worse, not seeing what happened to them. When I closed my eyes, I saw tiny bodies covered in blood, baby blue eyes staring at me in accusation. I was supposed to protect them, not harm them.
If the accident had happened in movie slow motion, and I'd had time to think, I'm sure that instead of my own life flashing before my eyes, Kristin's and Henry's lives would have. A slide show in my mind of baby drool and icing in hair the texture of cotton candy.
When Kristin was born, I'd been there. Dawn wanted me in the delivery room. I stood holding one hand; Jack had the other. Spike and Xander were pacing a hole in the waiting room carpet. When it was over, Dawn held her baby and smiled. Jack went to tell the mother hens, and I stayed in the room.
"Buffy?" Dawn asked me, "What do I tell her about things that go bump in the night?"
It was a good question. If Kristin knew from the moment she could understand what people were saying that fairy tale monsters were sometimes real, would she grow up being afraid of her shadow? Would she cry in the night and never want to leave her mother's side? And if she didn't know, would she be in more danger? In the end, Dawn decided to play it by ear. She wouldn't ever purposely lie to her child, she was adamant about that, but she wouldn't go out of her way to explain ooglie booglies either.
I hadn't been there when Henry was born. I was off saving the world from something big and nasty. I knew Dawn understood, - how could she not have? – but she still seemed upset when I walked in the room. I supposed some of it had to do with the slime I got on the pretty blue baby blanket, too. It was things like that that made me glad I was an aunt rather than a mother.
Giles was still on the line. I don't know how long he waited while I cried, but I set the phone down after about a minute and curled up on the bed, letting the misery wash over me. I'd known from the moment I opened my eyes that it was going to hit, and it was almost a relief to be done waiting for it to come. I wanted to pick up the phone and tell Giles not to worry, that I'd be okay, but I couldn't even find the strength to roll over.
I felt a hand on my back. Dawn was rubbing circles on the terrycloth covering my shoulder blades. She was murmuring soothing words, as one would use with a hysterical child. She reminded me very much of, well, herself at that moment that it was both comforting and painful.
I somehow found it in me to sit up, and I threw my arms around her and hugged her tightly.
"Ow!" she said, suspiring us both. I guess Slayer strength is something that knows no universal boundaries.
"Is he still on the phone?" I asked her, though there was no reason she should know better than I.
"I think so," she said. "Wouldn't it be beeping at us if there was no one on the line?"
There was no question about it. She was Dawn, always seeing the practical side of things, and often making me feel stupid in the process. I was supposed to be older and wiser. "Oh. Right." I said.
I picked up the phone. "Giles?
"Yes, Buffy?" He didn't even sound impatient. I loved him so much. "I think it would be a good idea for us to meet up. Would you be able to fly to London?"
"No. I have no passport, or any other identification on me, no money, and I broke out of a mental institution today."
"Oh. Well then, I'm coming there."
He asked me where I was, and how should he get there, what airport should he fly into, and how long would we be there in case he needed to call. I didn't know the answer to anything, so I handed the phone to Dawn, who looked at it as if it were a live snake. "Take it," I mouthed to her. She finally took it, but made sure I saw the glare she was giving me.
I faintly heard her giving Giles the information about where we were staying. I got up and went back into the bathroom. I'd just taken a shower twenty minutes ago, and I looked horrible. I wanted to get back in the shower and scrub away at myself until I didn't feel the impact of metal upon metal, but I resisted the temptation. Instead I splashed my face with cool water and blew my nose.
The body I now inhabited was my own, and yet it was not. It felt strange, but not so much so that I'd even noticed it when I first woke up. It was like that dizzy feeling of having slept too long in a bed that was too warm. Before I'd woken up, I'd had frantic dreams about being asleep, and not able to rouse myself. It felt almost as though I was still sleeping.
When I was in the shower, I'd examined myself. I'd lost muscle mass. I guess sitting around in a catatonic coma for thirty years doesn't really give a body much of a work out. There were scars missing, too. It was strange to see smooth skin where there should have been raised silver streaks. I liked my scars. They were proof I'd lived.
It occurred to me that while I was in this body, there was a Buffy in mine. And, if what Giles said about seeing me die was right… it meant that the Buffy who'd been living in this world had died in mine. And that left me trapped.