Part 5

#

The primary personality matrix of Adam One appeared to them as a dark, forbidding fortress, all entrances shuttered, not a single light in any of the windows. Giles and the hulking monstrosity that was Angel stood before it, trying to figure out what to do next.

"We have to get her attention somehow," Anne told them. "You must snap her out of that self-destructive cycle she has locked herself in."

"And how are we to do that exactly?" Giles asked. "You said she has shut herself off from every outside input. I'm not a computer expert, but communication needs both a sender and a receiver, as far as I know."

Angel didn't say anything, just walked (or floated, there was no noticeable difference here) toward the edge of the fortress. One clawed hand reached out, fingers stained with the blood of innocents Angel always saw there, and touched the granite walls.

"Buffy?"

For a long moment nothing happened, but then Giles watched in awe as the wall where Angel touched began to ripple. How often had the Watcher secretly been amused by the silly name his charge carried, but it didn't sound silly when Angel said it. From his lips it sounded like a caress, like a soft lover's touch.

Suddenly Angel's image changed as well, even as the wall in front of him began to vanish and a portal opened. The vampire ridges on his face disappeared, the shadows surrounding him burned away in a ray of sunlight. It was a completely human Angel that turned around to look at Giles and Anne.

"I think we found our way in."

"What ...?" Giles began.

"We are on the edge of Buffy's personality matrix," Anne explained to both men, Angel only now noticing how he had changed. "Going inside, we are entering her world, everything is shaped by her perceptions. Including our own images."

This was how Buffy saw Angel then, Giles presumed. Human, beautiful, standing in the light. He wondered how Buffy could look past his darker side so easily. God knew Giles thought of Angel as a good man, an ally, sometimes even a friend, but there was always the painful memory of finding Jenny in his bed, her eyes staring at nothing, Angelus' gift to Buffy's Watcher.

Buffy didn't see the darkness, it seemed. Somehow his own inability to do the same shamed Giles.

"Let's go," Angel said, turning around again to walk into the fortress. Giles and Anne followed him while 112 shadows looked after them, silently wishing them the best of luck.

#

Beyond the walls the world changed. If Giles hadn't known better he would have sworn that everything here was real, not just some kind of computer- generated memory. They were walking across one of Sunnydale's many cemeteries, Restfield he believed, and the Watcher could feel the grass blades crunch beneath his feet.

"We're in," Anne announced happily. "Now we just have to find Buffy."

"I thought ..." Giles began, only to stop when he found no trace of Anne anywhere.

"Sorry about that!" Anne's voice came from a spot somewhere behind his right shoulder. "I'm afraid that Buffy knows me just as a disembodied voice, so ..."

"Ah, I understand. I think." Giles shook his head. This was certainly turning into a strange trip. "As I was saying, I thought everything here is Buffy. How are we supposed to ..."

"Look," Angel said, pointing.

Giles turned just in time to see a shape running past them behind a few tombstones. A shape with a mane of blond hair trailing after it like a comet's tale.

"Buffy?" Giles called out, beginning to move after her.

"Just a memory," he heard Anne's voice. The blonde girl in front of him stopped when a vampire stepped into her past and a furious fight ensued, ending quickly when she staked the demon through the heart.

"Buffy's memories," Angel murmured. "If she thinks she isn't Buffy, why is she replaying her memories?"

"I ... I'm not sure," Anne confessed.

The scene around them changed, quickly replaced by another battle. More vampires, chases through graveyards. Demons, many of them, appearing one after the other. Yet more fighting, familiar faces of both friends and foes.

Buffy fighting the Master and dying. The cruel taunting of Angelus, who bore almost no physical resemblance to Angel in this dreamworld. Faith and the Mayor, Spike and Drusilla. The Judge, Akathler, Luke, Darla, Mr. Trick, so many enemies, all closing in on her. Finally a squadron of Initiative soldiers, circling her from all sides, bright arcs of electricity burning into her flesh.

"What is she doing?" Angel asked Anne.

"I don't know, okay? I don't know."

The image of Buffy was fighting all of her enemies at once, all of them ganging up on her in one large swoop. Not only her enemies, also her friends, her loved ones. Giles could see himself among the attackers, screaming terrible things at Buffy. Telling her that she wasn't his Slayer, that she was but a lie, a puppet, nothing but a cheap copy of the real thing.

Everyone was screaming that at her.

"She is tearing herself apart," Anne whispered, horrified.

The image of Buffy began to burn, the entire graveyard going up in flames around them. They could see the skin peeling off her body, revealing crimson steel beneath it. And still her enemies and friends were attacking her, slashing at her with words and fists, taunts and claws.

"We have to go in there!" Angel did not wait for a reply and started running toward the fight.

"Anne?" Giles asked.

"I'm making this up as I go along, Giles. I have no idea what we should do now."

"Then I guess we improvise." A moment later Giles was running toward the fray as well, where Angel was already busy throwing demons and monsters away from Buffy as if they were so many puppets.

Giles found himself fighting a perverted version of Willow, screaming taunts at Buffy even when he tore her away from his burning Slayer. The enemies didn't even seem to notice them; they just tried to get past them to attack Buffy again. Giles suddenly found a fighting ax in his hands and didn't question it, just used it.

Angel was fighting like a man possessed, knocking the attackers away with a strength he didn't have in the real world. Again Buffy's perception of him, Giles wondered. His Slayer was always so strong, so independent. But maybe even someone like her wanted someone stronger than herself around, someone to take care of her once in a while.

Until the day he went away Angel had always been that man. And maybe she thought of him that way still.

After what seemed like an eternity the monsters and demons vanished, leaving only two tired warriors and what seemed like a mishmash of Buffy and Adam One, kneeling in the grass.

"Buffy?" Angel asked, kneeling down beside her.

The figure moved, a face that was half crimson chrome, half human flesh looked up at him, the one human eye full of tears.

"Buffy is dead," she whispered. "Buffy is dead."

TO BE CONTINUED