Chapter Ten - Separation

The next few weeks passed in a daze for Buffy. She looked after the house, she took care of Dawn, she patrolled at night, but it was as if part of her was gone. She started having weird dreams – not nightmares – just dreams where everything was dark and quiet and then a hint of grey water, an endless expanse of grey water under a dark sky. They weren't happy dreams, in fact they seemed incredibly sad, but they were definitely not frightening.

Her friends were becoming more and more concerned about her. They tried just about everything they could think of. They joked with her, prodding her to 'snap out of it'. They got angry with her for no longer seeming to care, they reasoned and cajoled, but it made no difference.

"It's like she's had an anaesthetic which only affects her feelings," Willow explained to Giles one evening at the Magic Box. "She's going through the motions, but she's not really there."

"Yeah, and Dawn isn't coping too well with it," added Tara. "I think maybe we've got to give her some more time," countered Giles. "She's been through some really life-changing things lately, things we can only comprehend from outside. She's strong, though, I'm sure she'll be ok if we stick with her."

He walked over to the counter where he'd left some notes. "I asked you to come here so I could share what I learned from the Greek original of the legend of Derabala, but I'd prefer to wait until Xander gets here and Buffy finishes her work out so I don't have to repeat myself." At that moment, Buffy walked into the shop, towelling her hair and Xander came through the door. "Good," said Giles, turning his attention to Anya, "Put up the closed sign now, please, I'd rather not have any interruptions."

"I'm not going to bore you with a word for word translation. I'll stick to the salient parts, if you don't mind. First, the legend implies that this place – Derabala, works pretty much as Dawn told us."

Buffy gave him her best "I told you so..." look.

"There are some other details, in a variety of languages which have been gathered over a very long time which seem to refer to specific instances when this method was used to 'right some sort of wrong' – very often instances where someone chose to give their life for the 'greater good' – just as was the case with Buffy. But there, the similarity ends. It seems that very few of these instances actually resulted in the resurrection of the 'lost soul'. There seems to be a lot of evidence that there is a natural refusal for one body to be inhabited by two souls. If the first stage was successful, where the two souls remained together for longer than three days, the host and the awareness both became incurably insane. Now, I know that was hinted at - it was stated as one of the possible side effects - but I can find no instance where 'cohabitation' continued for longer than three days without this effect. How long were you and Spike, eh, together?"

Giles looked at Buffy, who had been looking at the floor. "Eh, just over a month, wasn't it?" she replied, looking at Giles.

He nodded, "So, that's the first inconsistency." Giles continued, "In the few cases where soul transfer was successful, most of the resurrected people lasted only days or hours, and no obvious cause of death was found. I found only one instance where the whole procedure worked and the two people involved went on to live normally – that was a case involving sisters – identical twin sisters."

There was silence for several minutes, broken only by Buffy standing and saying, "Time to patrol," as she got up and left the shop.

Once she had gone, the discussion started. "You mean, either there's a problem with the story," summarised Willow, "or, there's something special about Spike and Buffy."

"Well," Tara pointed out, " we already know there were special conditions here. First, Spike is a vampire. He didn't even have a soul until shortly before Buffy's soul joined him. Those would obviously affect the situation."

"The problem is," replied Giles, "Everything I've seen would suggest those conditions should make success even less likely. I mean, Spike's body has been without a soul for over a century – even taking on one soul should have been difficult. I have to say, I don't know what to make of this."

Buffy headed towards the cemetery. It was a month since she'd seen Spike. She still missed him so much she felt she was missing a limb. She knew she had to sort herself out, had to make herself get on with her life, but somehow, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't do it.

That night, the dream changed. She saw a view over a city. Lights and traffic and buses – red buses. For the first time she saw someone in the dream. At first she didn't recognise him – he was dressed in blue – jeans and a t-shirt - and his hair was dark, then she realised it was Spike.

Next morning when the mail arrived, Willow brought a bill to Buffy's attention. Buffy hadn't taken too much notice of the bills that seemed to be coming into the house so far, but when Willow bullied her into taking a look, she realised that she was running out of money fast. When she asked him later for advice, Giles was concerned, and gave her enough to tide her over, but the problem remained. She needed to have more money coming in than Willow and Tara paid in rent. Buffy realised she'd have to give up her albeit vague plans to go back to college and find a job.