When I first saw him, I thought he wasn't real. He appear solid, standing
with his hand on his lean hips, staring at me with the same intense gaze
I'd become accustomed to. He was wearing jeans and a leather bomber. His
hair was dark where it should have been blinding white, but there was no
hiding those cheekbones, or those lips. It was Spike.
I knew I was going to cry. It was stupid, really. I'd cried so much since I'd found myself here that by now nothing should faze me. But there I was, looking into the face of my lover, a mask worn by another man. I felt a tear drop from my eye and slide down my cheek, and I licked it away, denying its existence. Though I knew it wasn't him, knew it couldn't be him standing in a beam of light, my lips said his name. "Spike?"
He didn't respond, really. Of course not; he's not Spike. He can't be Spike. I had been forming a theory that, in this word, there are no vampires. So Spike would have never existed. William the Bloody would have lived and died in England a century ago. And yet there, in front of me, was his doppelganger.
Dawn looked at me as though she were reassessing her view of my sanity. She knew who Spike was; she'd spent the last day and a half listening to my stories of him. "Buffy," she said in a voice eerily reminiscent of my Dawn in her teenage years, "This is William. Will – yum." She looked at Spike – William helplessly. I didn't know why she was so upset with me, but I wasn't very concerned about that at the moment.
"Sorry." I said to William. "You just look so much like…"
"Spike?" he finished for me. "I can't say that I get that all the time." He smiled, and I felt the tears coming again. This time I managed to control them.
"Buffy," said Giles, "this is my son, William."
Well, that was unexpected. I needed to sit down. My legs were all rubbery and I was losing my balance. I walked over and sat down on the chair next to Dawn. Spike was Giles's son. It made about as much sense as anything that had happened to me recently. William, Buff, I silently reminded myself.
Giles was concerned. I could tell he was hovering over me before I even opened my eyes. Then, suddenly, I couldn't open them.
A flash, and I was in the ground. It was dark and I couldn't open my eyes. I knew this feeling; it was something I'd never forget. I was in a coffin. I could feel the satin on my arms, and the dampness seeping into my skin. I felt heavy, like my veins were filled with mercury. I tried to lift my arms to pound on the lid but I couldn't. I tried to open my mouth to scream, but it was sewn shut.
Just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone again. I was sitting in the chair, by the baggage carousal, and Dawn, Giles and William were all standing over me. They wore identical expressions of concern, though Dawn looked more scared than the others. I realized it was only she who knew about the mental institution.
"Are you okay?" Dawn asked. I could tell she was partially blaming herself for being snotty.
"I'm fine," I said. "I mean, I think I'm fine. Something very freaky just happened. It was almost like a hallucination. I was in a coffin, buried alive."
"That's fascinating," said Giles, at the same time William said, "That's horrible."
"Let's get out of here," I said. "We have to figure out what's going on, and this is really not the place to do it."
There were only two suitcases left, and I assumed they must belong to Giles and William. I took one, and handed the other off to William. As we made the exchange, my fingers brushed his. It was so cliché and romance novelish. I felt something pass between us then. A spark of something. Lust or longing, or possibly understanding. He smiled.
Dawn stood by and watched. She seemed a bit jealous, and I remembered how she had once had a crush on Spike. A line I'd read somewhere popped into my head: Destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be. I felt like a puppet whose strings were being pulled in too many different directions. I'd never been a believer in destiny. Too many things had happened in my life to shatter such childish illusions. Even The Powers hadn't been able to control my life. Now I wondered if I'd just been fooling myself the entire time.
We made our way to Dawn's car in silence. Judging by the looks on their faces, I couldn't have freaked them out any more if I'd suddenly sprouted wings, or a third eye. I was still pretty shaky from the experience myself. I let Dawn drive; I didn't want to have another of those fun little flashes into the grave on the freeway.
I let Giles sit in the front, which left William and me together in the back seat. He opened the door and held it for me. It was an unconscious gesture on his part, but still slightly unnerving. They was he did it was automatic, and it reminded me of Spike. I shook my head and silently berated myself. It was inevitable that I would start finding similarities even if there were none there.
I got in, slid over and buckled myself in. William got in and shut the door. Giles and Dawn were already situated, and Dawn was fiddling with the radio, looking for just the right bubble gummy pop song. I suddenly felt very old and tired. I sighed and slouched down as far as the belt would permit before it cut into my neck.
"Is everyone buckled?" asked Dawn. It was a simple question, something that Mom must have said to us a million times on family outings. It showed that this girl – my sister – cared about the safety of her passengers, and it made me glad she was driving. Dawn had been more than eager to learn to drive, and in Sunnydale, she'd gotten her license two full years before Spike finally convinced me to get behind the wheel.
When she was satisfied that everyone was secure, Dawn pulled out of the parking lot, and we were off. It would be at least a half an hour until we got back to our hotel. I wanted to take a short nap, but I was scared that if I closed my eyes I'd open them to the dark and cramped feel of death. I let my head fall against the glass of the window, and stared out as the cars rushed past us in a rainbow blur.
After I'd gotten off the phone with Giles the night before, Dawn and I had slept. Though I shouldn't have, I slept well, and without dreams. I woke early, and watched her sleep. She looked more like my sister than the Dawn I'd known in my other life. Her features had come from genetics, not from green energy and monk magic. I was glad she was there. I couldn't have faced life without a sister. I wondered how I'd ever been able to do it.
When she woke up, we went to breakfast. It was embarrassing, having to wear pajamas, but it was either that or the bathrobe, and given the choice, I took the jammies. Dawn told me that I was on the news as a probable abduction. I wasn't too worried about being found and taken to the police, though. They must have had more pressing matters than a middle aged chronically mentally ill woman to worry about.
I didn't have any money, of course. Dawn withdrew some from her savings, but she wouldn't tell me how much she had. She bought herself a few pairs of jeans and a sweatshirt, and gave me money to get my own clothes. I went casual, too, grabbing jeans and a few t-shirts. I'd outgrown my leather phase, thank god. I firmly believed that no one past a certain age should even be allowed to browse for leather pants. Unless, of course, that person happened to be a vampire.
I looked over at William. He was looking out the opposite window. Or, rather, his head was turned, and I assumed he was looking. He could have been sleeping. I didn't say anything to him, though I wanted to. There were a million questions in my mind. How old was he? Who was his mother? What did he do? Did he smoke? Was he both arrogant and unsure of himself? Would he kiss me like the world was ending, even when it wasn't?
Stop. I needed to stop this. No matter what I did, I would not make this man into Spike. And I would not, could not use him to ease the ache in my heart. If I truly was stuck in this dimension, I needed to feel my way around it slowly, and not crash into walls that broke hearts.
I turned back to my window.
Last night, I'd asked Dawn about Sunnydale. She'd told me that it didn't exist, and I, of course, didn't believe her. She was right, though. I'd looked at a road map when we'd stopped to get gas, and there was no Sunnydale on the map. There was no Sunnydale, but there was a Giles, and a Dawn. I wondered about Xander and Willow, and all the other people who'd lived in Sunnydale. Were they were, too, but scattered across the globe? I had no clue how to find them.
How many things were different here? I would never know for certain. What made a reality? What small choice had spun this one? It was dizzying to think about all the possibilities, so I tried not to.
I stared into space and thought of nothing for the rest of the drive. When we got to our hotel, Giles and William checked into a room two down from ours, and then went to unpack while Dawn and I waited. She flopped on the bed and grabbed up the remote, but I was too nervous to sit. I paced back and forth until Dawn told me to sit down because I was blocking her view.
I snorted at her, because she appeared to be watching some sort of infomercial, but I went into the bathroom anyway. There wasn't anything I needed to do in there, but I could pace without bothering Dawn. It was kind of tiny for pacing, but I'd make do.
Just as I was finishing my first lap around the tile, it happened again. My eyes didn't close this time, and I could see both the tile of the bathroom floor rising up to meet my falling form, and the darkness that surrounded me in the ground. I tried to catch myself, but wound up hitting my elbow hard against the toilet. My other hand hit the tile, and I was lucky I didn't bang my head on the bathtub. I was seeing stars as it was.
Hoping to block out the double vision, I closed my eyes. There was nothing to see. It wasn't a comforting darkness, like after the lights go out, and you know your eyes will soon adjust, and you start to make out faint shapes. It was dark light nothingness. A black hole, and I couldn't find my way out. I tried again to move my arms and nothing happened. I tried to open my eyes, because seeing double was better than seeing nothing, and I found I couldn't budge my eyelids.
I thought I was justified in panicking, then. I twisted and turned, trying to move my prone body. I screamed through my closed mouth. I was suffocating. I didn't know how to make it all stop.
Then, suddenly, it was better. I felt a hand on my shoulders, holding me still. I opened my eyes and saw William.
"You were screaming," he told me. "Screaming and thrashing about. You couldn't have hurt yourself."
So I had been moving myself, though I couldn't feel it. My body had worked on its own. It was all in my head; I wasn't buried alive again. I had plenty of oxygen, plenty of light. I was fine. Fine.
But something wasn't right.
I knew it. I knew I wasn't simply having flashbacks, or hallucinating. The first time, when Willow had brought me back, it was terrifying, but I was able to do something about it. I'd broken free. I wasn't passive. It wasn't a flashback because it wasn't the same. And though the signs seemed to point to it being a hallucination, I didn't think it was. Slayer sense or women's intuition or other sixth sense told me that it was more than that, and that I needed to find out what was making it happen.
"I'm fine." I lied to William. I got up on my own, ignoring his concerned look and outstretched hand. I had to talk to Dawn.
She was still on the bed, television flashing brightly in her eyes. I walked over and stood directly in front of it.
"Hey!" she said and looked petulant. "I was watching that."
"It happened again," I said simply. I need you to tell me exactly what happened before I woke up in that hospital.
* * *
I knew I was going to cry. It was stupid, really. I'd cried so much since I'd found myself here that by now nothing should faze me. But there I was, looking into the face of my lover, a mask worn by another man. I felt a tear drop from my eye and slide down my cheek, and I licked it away, denying its existence. Though I knew it wasn't him, knew it couldn't be him standing in a beam of light, my lips said his name. "Spike?"
He didn't respond, really. Of course not; he's not Spike. He can't be Spike. I had been forming a theory that, in this word, there are no vampires. So Spike would have never existed. William the Bloody would have lived and died in England a century ago. And yet there, in front of me, was his doppelganger.
Dawn looked at me as though she were reassessing her view of my sanity. She knew who Spike was; she'd spent the last day and a half listening to my stories of him. "Buffy," she said in a voice eerily reminiscent of my Dawn in her teenage years, "This is William. Will – yum." She looked at Spike – William helplessly. I didn't know why she was so upset with me, but I wasn't very concerned about that at the moment.
"Sorry." I said to William. "You just look so much like…"
"Spike?" he finished for me. "I can't say that I get that all the time." He smiled, and I felt the tears coming again. This time I managed to control them.
"Buffy," said Giles, "this is my son, William."
Well, that was unexpected. I needed to sit down. My legs were all rubbery and I was losing my balance. I walked over and sat down on the chair next to Dawn. Spike was Giles's son. It made about as much sense as anything that had happened to me recently. William, Buff, I silently reminded myself.
Giles was concerned. I could tell he was hovering over me before I even opened my eyes. Then, suddenly, I couldn't open them.
A flash, and I was in the ground. It was dark and I couldn't open my eyes. I knew this feeling; it was something I'd never forget. I was in a coffin. I could feel the satin on my arms, and the dampness seeping into my skin. I felt heavy, like my veins were filled with mercury. I tried to lift my arms to pound on the lid but I couldn't. I tried to open my mouth to scream, but it was sewn shut.
Just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone again. I was sitting in the chair, by the baggage carousal, and Dawn, Giles and William were all standing over me. They wore identical expressions of concern, though Dawn looked more scared than the others. I realized it was only she who knew about the mental institution.
"Are you okay?" Dawn asked. I could tell she was partially blaming herself for being snotty.
"I'm fine," I said. "I mean, I think I'm fine. Something very freaky just happened. It was almost like a hallucination. I was in a coffin, buried alive."
"That's fascinating," said Giles, at the same time William said, "That's horrible."
"Let's get out of here," I said. "We have to figure out what's going on, and this is really not the place to do it."
There were only two suitcases left, and I assumed they must belong to Giles and William. I took one, and handed the other off to William. As we made the exchange, my fingers brushed his. It was so cliché and romance novelish. I felt something pass between us then. A spark of something. Lust or longing, or possibly understanding. He smiled.
Dawn stood by and watched. She seemed a bit jealous, and I remembered how she had once had a crush on Spike. A line I'd read somewhere popped into my head: Destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be. I felt like a puppet whose strings were being pulled in too many different directions. I'd never been a believer in destiny. Too many things had happened in my life to shatter such childish illusions. Even The Powers hadn't been able to control my life. Now I wondered if I'd just been fooling myself the entire time.
We made our way to Dawn's car in silence. Judging by the looks on their faces, I couldn't have freaked them out any more if I'd suddenly sprouted wings, or a third eye. I was still pretty shaky from the experience myself. I let Dawn drive; I didn't want to have another of those fun little flashes into the grave on the freeway.
I let Giles sit in the front, which left William and me together in the back seat. He opened the door and held it for me. It was an unconscious gesture on his part, but still slightly unnerving. They was he did it was automatic, and it reminded me of Spike. I shook my head and silently berated myself. It was inevitable that I would start finding similarities even if there were none there.
I got in, slid over and buckled myself in. William got in and shut the door. Giles and Dawn were already situated, and Dawn was fiddling with the radio, looking for just the right bubble gummy pop song. I suddenly felt very old and tired. I sighed and slouched down as far as the belt would permit before it cut into my neck.
"Is everyone buckled?" asked Dawn. It was a simple question, something that Mom must have said to us a million times on family outings. It showed that this girl – my sister – cared about the safety of her passengers, and it made me glad she was driving. Dawn had been more than eager to learn to drive, and in Sunnydale, she'd gotten her license two full years before Spike finally convinced me to get behind the wheel.
When she was satisfied that everyone was secure, Dawn pulled out of the parking lot, and we were off. It would be at least a half an hour until we got back to our hotel. I wanted to take a short nap, but I was scared that if I closed my eyes I'd open them to the dark and cramped feel of death. I let my head fall against the glass of the window, and stared out as the cars rushed past us in a rainbow blur.
After I'd gotten off the phone with Giles the night before, Dawn and I had slept. Though I shouldn't have, I slept well, and without dreams. I woke early, and watched her sleep. She looked more like my sister than the Dawn I'd known in my other life. Her features had come from genetics, not from green energy and monk magic. I was glad she was there. I couldn't have faced life without a sister. I wondered how I'd ever been able to do it.
When she woke up, we went to breakfast. It was embarrassing, having to wear pajamas, but it was either that or the bathrobe, and given the choice, I took the jammies. Dawn told me that I was on the news as a probable abduction. I wasn't too worried about being found and taken to the police, though. They must have had more pressing matters than a middle aged chronically mentally ill woman to worry about.
I didn't have any money, of course. Dawn withdrew some from her savings, but she wouldn't tell me how much she had. She bought herself a few pairs of jeans and a sweatshirt, and gave me money to get my own clothes. I went casual, too, grabbing jeans and a few t-shirts. I'd outgrown my leather phase, thank god. I firmly believed that no one past a certain age should even be allowed to browse for leather pants. Unless, of course, that person happened to be a vampire.
I looked over at William. He was looking out the opposite window. Or, rather, his head was turned, and I assumed he was looking. He could have been sleeping. I didn't say anything to him, though I wanted to. There were a million questions in my mind. How old was he? Who was his mother? What did he do? Did he smoke? Was he both arrogant and unsure of himself? Would he kiss me like the world was ending, even when it wasn't?
Stop. I needed to stop this. No matter what I did, I would not make this man into Spike. And I would not, could not use him to ease the ache in my heart. If I truly was stuck in this dimension, I needed to feel my way around it slowly, and not crash into walls that broke hearts.
I turned back to my window.
Last night, I'd asked Dawn about Sunnydale. She'd told me that it didn't exist, and I, of course, didn't believe her. She was right, though. I'd looked at a road map when we'd stopped to get gas, and there was no Sunnydale on the map. There was no Sunnydale, but there was a Giles, and a Dawn. I wondered about Xander and Willow, and all the other people who'd lived in Sunnydale. Were they were, too, but scattered across the globe? I had no clue how to find them.
How many things were different here? I would never know for certain. What made a reality? What small choice had spun this one? It was dizzying to think about all the possibilities, so I tried not to.
I stared into space and thought of nothing for the rest of the drive. When we got to our hotel, Giles and William checked into a room two down from ours, and then went to unpack while Dawn and I waited. She flopped on the bed and grabbed up the remote, but I was too nervous to sit. I paced back and forth until Dawn told me to sit down because I was blocking her view.
I snorted at her, because she appeared to be watching some sort of infomercial, but I went into the bathroom anyway. There wasn't anything I needed to do in there, but I could pace without bothering Dawn. It was kind of tiny for pacing, but I'd make do.
Just as I was finishing my first lap around the tile, it happened again. My eyes didn't close this time, and I could see both the tile of the bathroom floor rising up to meet my falling form, and the darkness that surrounded me in the ground. I tried to catch myself, but wound up hitting my elbow hard against the toilet. My other hand hit the tile, and I was lucky I didn't bang my head on the bathtub. I was seeing stars as it was.
Hoping to block out the double vision, I closed my eyes. There was nothing to see. It wasn't a comforting darkness, like after the lights go out, and you know your eyes will soon adjust, and you start to make out faint shapes. It was dark light nothingness. A black hole, and I couldn't find my way out. I tried again to move my arms and nothing happened. I tried to open my eyes, because seeing double was better than seeing nothing, and I found I couldn't budge my eyelids.
I thought I was justified in panicking, then. I twisted and turned, trying to move my prone body. I screamed through my closed mouth. I was suffocating. I didn't know how to make it all stop.
Then, suddenly, it was better. I felt a hand on my shoulders, holding me still. I opened my eyes and saw William.
"You were screaming," he told me. "Screaming and thrashing about. You couldn't have hurt yourself."
So I had been moving myself, though I couldn't feel it. My body had worked on its own. It was all in my head; I wasn't buried alive again. I had plenty of oxygen, plenty of light. I was fine. Fine.
But something wasn't right.
I knew it. I knew I wasn't simply having flashbacks, or hallucinating. The first time, when Willow had brought me back, it was terrifying, but I was able to do something about it. I'd broken free. I wasn't passive. It wasn't a flashback because it wasn't the same. And though the signs seemed to point to it being a hallucination, I didn't think it was. Slayer sense or women's intuition or other sixth sense told me that it was more than that, and that I needed to find out what was making it happen.
"I'm fine." I lied to William. I got up on my own, ignoring his concerned look and outstretched hand. I had to talk to Dawn.
She was still on the bed, television flashing brightly in her eyes. I walked over and stood directly in front of it.
"Hey!" she said and looked petulant. "I was watching that."
"It happened again," I said simply. I need you to tell me exactly what happened before I woke up in that hospital.
* * *