Disclaimer: "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and all its characters are property of Joss Whedon, 20th Century Fox and Mutant Enemy and the UPN Network. "Too Many Hippies" written by Ginger, published by Copyright Control.
Summary: Things have been going just a little too well lately so there must be something wrong.
Spoilers: Up to and including "The Gift".
Distribution: If you want it, here it is, come and get it. But you better hurry 'cause it's going fast. Oh yeah, and let me know.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Author's Note: The name "Boffy" belongs to whomever came up with it. I believe it was somebody over at MightyBigTV.com.
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PART V
I WAS A TEENAGE "EVIL DEAD" EXTRA
***
In the garden of love there's a place you can
relax
Keeping misery and company from off of your backs
But the Devil below, and the angels above
Say there's something going on down the garden of love
--
"Too Many Hippies", Silver Ginger 5
***
The next morning things in Giles' apartment had improved only slightly. Willow and Tara had left in order to be home when Dawn got up for school. Thankfully they had also taken Boffy along with them. A decision had been reached to not tell Dawn about Buffy's return until more information on the exact circumstances involved could be gathered. Also, the effects of seeing her older sister as a walking half-decayed corpse on Dawn's young and impressionable mind would probably not have been altogether good ones.
And so the sun rose on another Sunnydale day that, just like the previous one, looked a little bit off. The day was just that little bit too nice, too pleasant to be entirely believable. The sky was of a color so deep and pure that it was giving blue crayons inferiority complexes and causing poets to throw in the towel by the hundreds. "I can't describe this," the poets were heard muttering as they balled up their papers and snapped their pencils in two in a fit of poetic pique. Not only was the sky of a color so unspeakable that I will not speak of it any further, it also had just enough clouds in it to make the weather seem interesting (which made many of the newly out-of-work poets take up meteorology). The clouds were perfectly formed and of such exquisite fluffyness that sheep below went "Baah!" at them in utter envy. The air was crisp and bore an ever so slight scent that, if it could have been bottled, would have netted the perfume industry untold billions. And the grass and trees were of a resplendent green so healthy that it seemed to be giving passing cars the finger.
The birds, being the astute observers that they are, had obviously noticed that things were off and were singing songs about how this day was so unbelievably nice that humanity was no doubt screwed. They were, of course, absolutely correct. But humans failed to take any notice since they had put only very little effort so far into communicating with their feathered cohabitants.
And so Xander and Giles started the day not knowing of humanity's impending doom, although they did have an inkling that something out of the ordinary was going on since they were talking to the half-decayed corpse of a vampire slayer who, contrary to popular belief, seemed to be not very dead at all. Even though they had not slept all night, they didn't feel tired. Their noses on the other hand had decided to pack it in and go off line until there would be other things to smell besides decay.
In the meantime Buffy's mood had failed to lighten. She was still confused and depressed by her sudden reemergence (no pun intended) into the land of the living. That and her favorite finger had just fallen off. It was the one that she usually used to point at vampires accusingly with, before making a clever remark and turning them to dust. And to top it all off she was feeling terribly foolish with the large number of air fresheners hung around her neck.
The problem that they were all pondering was what force could have caused Buffy to be revived after being dead for nearly a year. Resuscitation spells, where the person in question returns not as a zombie but as an actually functioning individual, were extremely tricky and dangerous affairs and could not be cast by just anybody with a magic wand, white rabbit, and a top hat. In fact these spells explicitly forbade the use of magic wands, rabbits, top hats, capes and also scantily clad assistants in the rituals, which made them really unpopular in the magic community. To cast a resurrection spell you not only needed a complete absence of wands and capes but also a vast assortment of complicated ingredients, some of which were rare, others extremely pricey and others still rumored to never have existed in the first place.
So to put it succinctly the slayer and her friends had nothing. And so they each sat on the couch in silence.
"What do we know?" Xander finally asked just to break the silence.
"Besides the fact that I'm sitting here talking to you when I really should be six feet below the ground of the local cemetery?" Buffy replied. "Not a whole lot."
"What about that spell Dawn used to try to bring back your mother?" Xander insisted. "Could Spike have helped her to try it on you?"
"Possibly," Buffy started to shrug, but considering the rate she was losing body parts, decided it would be a bad idea.
"No, it couldn't have been that spell," Giles explained. "The spell Dawn used revives the body only and Buffy would have returned as little more than a walking corpse. They are more useless than a Celine Dion fan. Buffy seems to be mentally intact, so that spell is out."
"I don't feel like a zombie," Buffy commented, "even though I realize I look like one. I also don't have any kind of craving for human brains," she added with a shudder.
"Maybe," Xander said, "whatever it was that brought you back didn't come from this side but from wherever you were while you were…" Xander could not bring himself to finish his sentence.
"Dead," Buffy mumbled, sounding colder than she head meant to. "I was dead," she repeated, this time more softly.
"Well," Xander stammered, having picked up on Buffy's tone. "Do you remember anything from…" Again he hesitated. "You know, over there?"
"No, not a single thing," Buffy answered. "I know that I was, in fact, dead and gone but the last year is a complete blank for me. My last memory before coming to in my coffin, which if you're looking for something that will give you nightmares for the rest of your life I can highly recommend, was jumping off Glory's tower."
"This doesn't mean that your soul wasn't actually somewhere during the time you were dead," Giles clarified, "and that whatever was on the other side brought you back."
"Well, I guess this means heavy duty research, right?" Xander inquired, wringing his hands in mock excitement in a desperate plea to lighten the mood a little. "We really love some of that research, don't we?" he said in his best Ainsley Harriott voice. "Which comes at just the right time because my boss told me I don't need to show up for work if I don't feel like it. But I'll still get paid in full anyway."
"I thought your boss worked you guys like slaves," Giles said a little on the puzzled side.
"He does actually," Xander shrugged. "But ever since yesterday he suddenly turned into this incredibly nice guy." He thought about it for a moment and then shrugged again. "Maybe it's because of the trauma," he added. Xander noticed Giles and Buffy staring at him with befuddled looks. "You know," he explained tentatively, "my trauma?"
"Trauma as in gaping head wound?" Buffy wondered.
"No," Xander answered. "Trauma as in emotional."
"What trauma?" Buffy and Giles asked in chorus.
"Oh, yeah, with all the hubbub about Buffy coming back from the dead I forgot to mention that Anya and I broke up."
For a moment the room was silent. Then Buffy and Giles erupted in a good round of "Oh, I'm sorry's" with the odd "That's so terrible" or "It must be so hard for you" thrown in for variety.
"Why does everybody think it must be so hard for me?" Xander whined. "I'm fine, really." And the truth was that Xander really did feel fine about the breakup. And he felt fine about feeling fine about it. What he wasn't entirely sure about is why he felt so fine about it and why he felt so fine about feeling fine about it. Or something. Until the day before he could have sworn that Anya was the person that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. And there had only been one girl before that he had ever had such strong feelings for. And that other girl had been dead. Until yesterday. Xander briefly wondered if the breakup and Buffy's return were connected, but he wasn't sure how to broach the subject with Buffy present.
"You are fine?" Giles inquired, derailing Xander's train of thought.
"Yes. Absolutely," came the honest answer.
"You were with her for nearly three years," Giles insisted. "You were engaged to marry her."
"You were what?" Buffy interjected.
"You did love her, didn't you?" Giles asked.
"Oh yes, very much so." Xander responded, again honestly.
"But you broke up yesterday and now you feel fine about it."
"Yes, we just felt we didn't want to be together anymore."
"From one day to the next?"
"Yes, from one day to the next!" Xander explained, nodding eagerly in the hope of discouraging any more inane questions from Giles. "Look, it doesn't make complete sense to me either. But I do feel fine, my heart is still in one piece." Then something came up from the depths of Xander's memory and popped its head out of his murky sea of remembrance. "Anya did mention that she though that Buffy would get better soon."
"Maybe that's significant," Buffy quickly said, because she felt she should be part of this conversation and she hadn't said anything relevant in a really long time.
***
*Ring*
"Hello?"
"Anya?"
"Oh hi, Xander! How are you?"
"Fine, fine. Listen, I have to tell you something."
"I hope it's good news."
"Yes, well… Buffy's back."
"That's wonderful! I'm so happy for you Xander. Did you have sex?"
"What? Well, you and me did the night before last but I don't know if this is really the time to be talking about it."
"No, not us. You and Buffy, did you two have sex?"
"What? No!"
"Why not?"
"Because she just dug herself out of her grave last night and I think the last thing on her mind would be to… Why am I even talking about this?"
"Why? Don't you want to have sex with her?"
"No! Well, yes maybe, but…"
"Oh, I think you do. And I think you should go for it."
"Look, can we please talk about something else?"
"Okay. I made lots of money."
"What?"
"Do you know you say that word an awful lot, Xander? But, yes, I'm rich. Quite obscenely so."
"How did that happen? What did you do?"
"I'm not sure. All I know is that I get paid a lot of money for doing it, whatever it is. I love money."
"You must have done something to get all that money. I don't know, win the lottery or rob a bank?"
"Neither one of those. But you are talking to me in my brand new Lamborghini. I was thinking of a Porsche or a Ferrari at first but Lamborghinis are so much more exclusive, don't you think?"
"…"
"And now I'm going shoe shopping."
"Yeah, anyway. Listen, what I wanted to ask you: Yesterday at lunch you said something to the effect that Buffy maybe would have gotten better."
"Yes. And she did! Isn't that just great?"
"Yes, quite. Anyway, how did you know that?"
"That Buffy would get better? I didn't know it. I just hoped it would happen for you, because you two make such a terrific couple."
"But you had no idea it would actually happen?"
"None."
"Do you know what could have made her come back?"
"Her love for you?"
"No, I mean realistically."
"No. No idea."
"Hmmm."
"I'm sorry I can't help you with that, Xander. But I think you're overanalyzing all this. Buffy is back, just be happy about it. And tell her I said you two should have sex."
"Right. Well, thanks anyway. I'll talk to you later then."
"Bye, Xander. Okay, now let's see how fast this baby can go. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"
***
Xander reemerged into the living room feeling more confused than he had been before the call to Anya. He couldn't quite put his finger on why, but he felt like something strange was going on. And since strangeness was something that he and his friends dealt with fairly often he thought he had developed something like a sixth sense for it. And things most certainly felt strange to him right now.
It had all begun with that ridiculously large breakfast that Anya had served up to him just twenty-four hours earlier. Anya had always made a point of avoiding the kitchen, finding it a place that was not lucrative enough for her tastes. It had usually been Xander who had prepared the meals for them. And the few times that Anya did try her hand at the culinary arts it could have been considered a success if there had been no need to get the fire department involved. Still the day before she had suddenly metamorphosed into Betty Crocker on crack. And not only had she whipped up all those mountains of food in an improbably short time span but the food had also been very good.
And after him and Anya had broken up over lunch in an altogether too diplomatic manner for it being so sudden, Xander's boss had turned into Mother Theresa and given him all the time off that he wanted. Xander's boss had never been much the sentimental type and the only circumstances he seemed to be willing to give a worker time off was if that worker subsequently never returned. Now all of a sudden he had become the humanitarian poster boy and taken Xander and his colleagues out drinking.
That brought up another question: Considering how drunk Xander had been the night before, shouldn't he be just a tiny bit hung over by now? In all the commotion, he hadn't gotten around to drinking any water and he hadn't slept in over a day, nonetheless he felt fine, no tiredness and no hangover.
But all this oddity paled in comparison to the utter inexplicability of the fact that Buffy was sitting on a sofa just a few feet away from him. Okay, so she wasn't in the best of shapes and she kept deteriorating as more pieces of her fell off, but she had definitely ceased being dead. Xander wondered what it must feel like for Buffy to be alive again, yet trapped in a body so fragile and offensive that going back to living a normal life was impossible. Not that she had had much of a normal life anyway, but she couldn't even regain the little bits of normalcy she had been able to hold on to before.
Xander tried to look at the big picture, the grand scheme of things. Anya and him had just broken up in a very pleasant way. That in itself was not good, but if they had to break up it was better that it happened the way it did instead of a long, bitter, drawn out, I-hate-your-guts-and-want-to-hurt-you type of divorce later in their lives. Buffy was alive again. That was good. Okay, so she was a little decayed around the edges. And those were the good bits, because the rest of her was very decayed. But alive was an improvement nonetheless, right? Then Anya had made a lot of money. Since Anya really loved money that was good. The day that Xander could see through the window was excessively beautiful, which was always positive. No hangover. Good. No sleep, but not tired. Also good.
All this strange goodness could mean only one thing: Something was very wrong.
Xander suddenly became very aware that both Giles and Buffy were staring at him expectantly. Xander wondered how he was going to relate the bizarre conversation he had just had with his ex-fiancée to them.
"Well?" They prodded, when he didn't seem to be about to offer any information spontaneously.
"My ex-girlfriend is weird," he finally said tentatively. "Any of you ever notice that?" he added with a frown.
Nothing was said in response but there was a lot of insincere head shaking from Giles, and some very careful (yet no less insincere) head shaking from Buffy.
"But did Anya say anything that could be of any use to us?" Giles inquired finally.
"No, the only thing she kept suggesting is that Buffy and I…" Xander trailed off. "Er, never mind," he stammered lamely.
A moment of awkward silence settled on the room.
"Huh!" Xander huffed as if trying to clear his head. "Anyway, she seems to have no idea as to what's going on."
"Well, I guess we're on our own then," Giles said, getting up off the couch. "We have a lot of research to do. We can't go over to the magic shop because of…" He stopped and wondered what the most diplomatic way of explaining that the sight and smell of Buffy would be deeply offensive to his customers could be. He finally settled on: "Because I said so." He was aware of it being a cop out, but they had bigger fish to fry. "So we'll do our research here. I already told Tara and Willow to mind the shop," he continued, "so I'm just going to pop over there and grab some books that should be useful to us. Xander, you stay here and take care of Buffy."
"Wait a second," Buffy protested, "I do not need to be taken care of." Another one of her fingers dropped off her hand. "Okay, never mind," she conceded. "Xander, please take care of me."
"Will do, madam," Xander assured, performing what he hoped would be a graceful bow but ended up looking more like he'd been kicked in the stomach.
They watched Giles as he strode around the room, picked up his coat and car keys and finally made his way to the door. "Oh, one more thing," he said before leaving, "please don't open the windows. The smell would be sure to attract a lot of unwanted attention." And on that placid note he was off.
***
Xander sat down on one of the empty couches. Not too close to Buffy of course, he could still see the remnants of his last meal, which had by now congealed in her hair. They sat for a while in awkward silence, neither one really knowing how to begin a conversation.
How do you start talking to a friend who suddenly came back from the dead? Xander asked himself, but was not able to provide a satisfying answer.
Buffy on the other hand was worried about the fact that everybody's lives had gone on in the past ten months. They had made decisions that would shape their future, and she had completely missed out on all of those. For her, time had just stood still. On the inside she felt exactly the same person as the one who had jumped off Glory's tower to save her little sister. But the world around her had changed and she was scared that her friends would have found a way to live without her, and now they would not have any room in their lives to allow her back in the same way they had before.
And so they sat for a while longer in silence.
"So," they said finally, in unison, and then laughed. That seemed to break the ice a little.
"So you got engaged?" Buffy asked finally.
"Yes," Xander nodded. "I, Xander Harris, king of the underachievers, was actually on my way to getting married. Sounds pretty strange, doesn't it?"
"No, not really," Buffy countered. "I think you and Anya made a good couple." She paused for a moment. "Well, at least you made a couple. And of all of us it seems like you have your life together the most. You have steady job, a nice apartment, so marriage did seem like a good choice for a next step. I'm sorry to have to burst your bubble, Xander, but you're not an underachiever anymore. Your membership to that club had been revoked a while ago."
"Well, it's all academic now anyway," Xander shrugged. "I'm not engaged anymore."
"Do you mind if I ask what happened?" Buffy inquired.
"Not at all," Xander responded and then froze, not knowing how to continue. It had all come so suddenly, yet there was no pain, no sadness. There was just a strange sense of having done the right thing, of having played his part in the grand scheme of things. "I couldn't tell you what happened if I wanted to. Yesterday morning Anya and I seemed to be doing just fine, and then at lunch it felt like we couldn't get away from each other fast enough. But not in a negative way, we didn't fight at all about it. We just decided to break up."
"That's fairly odd," Buffy said frowning. "I wonder what's going on."
"I think I may be able to shed some light on that," a voice said from the door.
Both Buffy and Xander jumped out of their seats, alarmed by the sudden intrusion of an outsider. In the doorway stood two figures, silhouetted by the bright sun that shone outside. The figures moved inside the apartment and shut the door behind them, turning from two-dimensional outlines into two people, a man and a woman.
The man was tall and slim, with longish black hair and piercing blue eyes. He wore a dark blue shirt that was not tucked into his black jeans, a leather jacket and combat boots. The woman was a good deal shorter, with curves in all the right places and dyed dark red hair that reached to her shoulders. She was clad in a knee-length black and white stripey skirt, a black top, and high-heeled sandals.
"Who are you?" asked Buffy in full defiant mode, even though she knew perfectly well that the state her body was in prevented her from doing any kind of actual defying. But she figured that these two people were actually way too stylish to get into a physical fight. They looked more like the kind of people who prefer the use of magic or hordes of minions.
"My name is William Zaphod Bubb," said the man and then pointed to the woman beside him, "and this is Lucinda Sebrina Fehr."
"No relation to the actor," the woman added.
"To whom?" Xander and Buffy asked in a puzzled, yet grammatically correct, manner.
"Exactly," the woman smiled. "But please call us Bill and Lucy."
Xander and Buffy looked at each other for a moment, seemingly trying to decide what to make of the intruders. They had not liked the way that the two had just burst in without invitation (at least that and the sun shining outside ascertained that they weren't vampires), but they did not seem to be in any way aggressive or dangerous. Which in itself made red flags jump up all over the place. Also they seemed not to be appalled or shocked by Buffy's half-decayedness, which made the red flags that had just sprung up wave frantically. But by now even if the red guy with the horns, the pointy tail, the cloven hooves and the big bottom had shown up and said he could shed some light on what was going on Xander and Buffy probably would have heard him out.
"What do you want?" Xander asked, after a pause.
"We came to help," Lucy said. "In case you haven't noticed, things right now are not the way they should be and it is of utmost importance to the human race that this situation be rectified."
"What do you mean by things not being the way they should be?" Buffy inquired.
"Do I actually need to point out that you're standing in front of me asking that question?"
"No, I guess not," Buffy whispered, suddenly embarrassed. "Point taken."
"And you know what it is that is being not right?" Xander asked.
"Yes, indeed we do."
"And you are here to help us set things straight?" Buffy added.
"Again, yes," Lucy answered.
Buffy looked over at Xander who just looked back at her and shrugged his shoulders.
"Works for me," Buffy finally said. "Why don't you have a seat and tell us what's going on."
"Oh, well," Bill said sheepishly, "I think we'd rather stand. Right here by the window. It's such a lovely day outside isn't it." Lucy stood next to him nodding with an insincere grin on her face.
"You don't want to come over here because I smell like the half decayed corpse that I am, right?" Buffy deduced.
Lucy considered being brave and sitting on one of the couches, while Bill was more inclined to outright lying in order to justify staying as far away from Buffy as possible. But by the look Buffy was giving them Bill and Lucy could see that she had them figured out. So they just put on embarrassed grins and stayed put.
Just then Giles burst through the door muttering something about having forgotten his wallet and not wanting to be caught driving without his license. Apparently the police looked down on such behavior. He froze when he noticed the strangers standing by his front window. He said nothing, and just gave Buffy and Xander a questioning look.
"Oh, Giles," Xander jumped into action. "These are Bill Bubb and Lucy Fehr. They say they can shed some light on what's going on."
Bill and Lucy held out their hands for a shake but Giles just took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
"Xander, Buffy," he finally said, "what did I tell you to do when somebody from hell comes knocking on my door?"
Xander and Buffy looked at each other in confusion. Finally Buffy answered helpfully: "Um, not let him in?"
"Right, yes," Giles nodded and then just raised his eyebrows and asked, "Well?"
For the umpteenth time that day Xander felt himself drowning in confusion, but then he slowly pieced everything together. "Bill… Z… Lucy… F… Oh, boy." He slumped back onto the couch. "I knew this was all going a little too well," he mumbled.
"See?" Bill whispered to Lucy, "I told you we shouldn't have used our real names!"
***