Disclaimer: Joss, WB, UPN et al. own Buffy. George Lucas, LucasFilm,
LucasArts et al. own Star Wars. Timothy Zahn owns Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Squaresoft own Final Fantasy. No, this isn't a FF fic.
Title: For the Good of the Empire.
Author: Paradigm Shifter
Feedback: Yes! YES! Please?! Love to know what you think.
Rating: I'll go with PG for now. Be prepared for it to go up, though.
Grateful Thanks: Are sent in the direction of Teri, Trevelyan and Bobby Cox. More than anything else, though, that this is continuing at all is entirely due to Asbjoern. If it wasn't for his comments on this - and how I could get around where it had headed, this wouldn't be out now. Indeed, it would likely be quite a while before I worked up enthusiasm again.
So thank Asbjoern for this. And the way this chapter ends, too. ;-)
Written To: 'Burning From The Inside', Bauhaus.
Each person in the room would have different views of what happened in those ten seconds:
Angel, standing in the doorway was able to duck away from the blast; it merely gave his demon a happy surge of power: he vamped out involuntarily, his back fixed tightly to the wall as he fought within himself to regain control. He wasn't sure what happened, but at that moment, he didn't care... only beating back the beast was worthy of consideration.
Buffy felt the presence within her leave: her Slayer abilities charging to the fore in an attempt to protect her from the magical barrage that pounded her senses and assaulted her mind. But at the same time, there was emptiness: where the Noble had been was a void... and Buffy felt as if something was missing.
Ethan screamed as the Will of Janus beat against his mind. He would pay the price for the failure of his spell: Janus had been invoked for the night, and his early and abrupt departure had made the God far from happy.
Giles, as unconscious as he was, groaned as the surge rolled over him.
Mara, standing facing the bust as the power surge exploded out of it, caught it full in the face, and was sent flying possessed and possessor separating from each other in mid air. Each felt the confusion of the other, and Mara sneered at the weak power evident in what had been her body. She landed in a painful heap on a crate, smashing it to pieces, and continuing into the wall where finally she stopped. A low groan could be heard from the mess of splintered wood.
Thrawn, while not thrown as violently as Mara, crashed into the wall behind him and slid down, a smear of red marking where his head had impacted the wall and moved down. His red eyes closed slowly as the pain took control. The last thing he saw was the melted bust of Janus slowly dripping off the pedestal in cooling drops of stone.
Spike felt something change as his tormentor staggered suddenly. Seifer collapsed to the ground, holding his head and moaning in pain, before looking up and meeting Spikes gaze.
Spike knew at that moment that his tormentor was now within his power. And he had a lot to make up for.
Gripping the boys blond hair, he dragged him down the street. "Come with me," he growled, "I've got someone you might like to meet, yourself..."
Spike couldn't wait to see what Dru made of his new toy.
As long as she didn't kill him, his revenge would be most enjoyable.
Even the shadow that had been in his mind since that apparition merged with him was gone.
Now, he only needed his arm back, and it would be like nothing ever happened...
Jonathon screamed in fear as the blond vampire punched him in the face. Falling backwards, he slowly regained his feet before dropping to the road again as Spike kneed him in the groin.
"That hurts, doesn't it?" Spike whispered in the boy's ear. "Well, it'll hurt a whole lot more in a little while..."
Jonathon was knocked unconscious as Spike gripped his hair and beat his head repeatedly into the tarmac, before dragging the now still teen off to the warehouse:
and Drusilla.
Angel stepped back through the doorway, and the first thing he noticed was the smell.
Blood.
Someone, or multiple someone's, were bleeding. He looked around saw the red streak on the wall above Xander's head. The demon rejoiced at seeing his competitor injured, screamed at him to finish it. Fighting down the urge, Angel moved over to the unconscious boy and checked his head. Nothing seemed to be broken, and the blood flow as already slowing down: as profusely as capillary wounds bled, they also healed more quickly than other wounds. It was already close to closing up, as long as Xander didn't open it up again, he would escape with just a concussion as a reminder not to meet brickwork head first.
Moving over to Giles, he saw Buffy. Everything else flew out the window as he saw his love unconscious. He knelt by her side and gently stroked her head. She groaned, and started to come round.
The first word out of Buffy's mouth as consciousness returned and she realised her boyfriend cradled her in his arms was, "Angel?"
The vampire nodded his game face still on, but the yellow gleam in his eyes was weaker than it had been the evening before. Buffy groaned and shifted her weight, allowing her to see the prone form of Giles lying on the floor. She bolted upright. "Giles!"
Angel let her go, and Buffy sank down next to Giles, crying softly. "Don't be dead... please don't be dead... don't..."
Taking her back up into his arms, Angel hugged her tightly. "He's not dead, Buffy. I can feel his heartbeat from here. He's just unconscious. We really need to get him to a hospital..."
Willow's shaky voice cut in. "Angel's right, Buffy. Ethan hit him with a cricket bat pretty hard."
Buffy turned round. "Willow!"
Willow just groaned. "Yes, Buffy?"
"Willow? Where are you?" Buffy looked round the room, but couldn't see anything. "Willow?"
"I'm over here, Buffy. In the wreckage of the crate." Willow raised a hand, and began to stand up. Reaching her feet, she turned to Buffy and smiled nervously. "Hi."
Buffy gasped, and Angel paled as they looked at the redhead. She was deathly pale, her skin had taken on a slightly grey tint and her eyes had lost the bright humour that they used to contain: the green orbs were dull with fatigue. She cradled her right arm, as if afraid to move it, and had most of her weight on her left leg.
"How's Xander?" Willow asked.
Angel looked at the still unconscious boy. "He'll live." Willow nodded, and tried to take a step forward out of the crate wreck.
Willow's leg gave out on her almost as soon as she stood on it, Buffy moving forward to catch her before she could fall completely. "We need to get you and Giles to the hospital, Will."
Willow couldn't disagree. She nodded unevenly as she passed out.
Buffy turned to Angel. "Angel, get Giles to the hospital. I'll get Willow."
Angel cast a look at Xander. "What about him?"
Buffy looked at Xander's unconscious form. "Damn. We can't leave him here..."
"We could take him to the hospital as well."
Buffy shook her head. "No. He hates hospitals. He'd walk out as soon as he was conscious."
Angel frowned. How did Buffy know something like that? She answered his questioning frown. "Willow told me. He's hated hospitals since he was younger. Like, five, or something."
"I think he needs to be checked out. He hit his head pretty hard."
Buffy sighed, but nodded agreement. "OK. Alright. Fine. Can you get Giles and Xander?" Angel nodded, and the two of them picked up their unconscious passengers, and headed out.
"Miss?"
Buffy looked up from her musing, to see a doctor standing in front of here with a tired expression. His surgical scrubs showed that he had been operating all morning.
"Yeah, doc?" Buffy asked, covering a yawn with one hand.
"Are you the next of kin of Willow Rosenberg, Alexander Harris, or Rupert Giles?"
"No, I'm not. But I'm friends with Wills and Xand, and Giles is librarian at my school. What's up, doc?" Her small smile at her humour slid from her face at the blank expression of the doctor. "Heard it before, huh?"
He acted as if she had never spoken. "Mr. Giles will be in hospital for some time, I'm afraid... whatever it was that hit him on the head cracked his skull quite badly. We want to be sure that he's alright before we release him."
"And Wills and Xand?"
"Mr. Harris will be alright... but his greasepaint seems to refuse to come off... it might have some sort of special solvent, which we presume he may have some of, at home."
Buffy ground her teeth. "And Wills?"
"Ms. Rosenberg has sustained some second degree burns, a broken femur and a fractured – but not broken – collarbone. She will be here for a few more days at least – we want to make sure that her burns are healing correctly."
Buffy shook her head. How was she going to deal with the fallout of this night, when three of the people she needed were in the hospital? Angel had retreated to his mansion two hours ago, when it was getting so close to sunrise he was almost stranded at the hospital anyway. Buffy hadn't been able to get through to her mother: the phone returned a busy signal, whether that was because Joyce or Dawn was using it, or because it was off the hook, Buffy didn't know. All she knew was that there was no answer.
She looked back up at the doctor. "Can I go see them, doc?"
The doctor nodded. "Certainly. Mr. Harris is in room 221, Mr. Giles in 222 and Ms. Rosenberg in 223. I just thought you might like to know that there were no... complications..." Even though Sunnydale as a community wouldn't admit it, Buffy knew he was referring to the regular mysterious loss of blood that people brought to the hospital had.
Buffy nodded her thanks, and walked away to the rooms, her Halloween gown swishing along the polished floor as she walked.
Xander groaned as he shifted. He rolled over, only to be met by a metal bar that stopped him from rolling off the bed he found himself on.
Then he sat up.
"I'm in a hospital." Xander looked around. "Damn. I'm in a hospital." He swung his legs off the bed, and stood up, before crouching in pain as his head swam.
"Woah." His face held in his hands, he could hear a voice through the wall. Buffy's voice.
"Willow... you've got to be alright. Come on. You can't do this to me. To us... to Xander."
"Wills?" Xander whispered to himself. "What happened? What happened to us? I... I don't..."
He straightened. "Oh God, I do!" He sat heavily on the chair next to the bed he should have been in. "I remember..."
He leaned his head against the wall, expecting a sting as his cut contacted with the cold tile. It didn't do so much as tingle.
Then he noticed his hands. "Why didn't they wash the greasepaint off?"
The open door looked so inviting.
"I don't want to be here."
Stepping toward the door, almost in a trance, Xander walked out of the hospital. No one tried to stop him...
It's called the Sunnydale Syndrome.
After seeing Willow, Buffy headed into Giles room. Which meant she wasn't there when Willow woke up.
"Xander?" Willow muttered groggily, before she realised she could remember. "Oh, that's bad."
She could remember Mara Jade... the woman who had been an assassin and enforcer for one of the most evil and hated men ever to be born. 'Um... imagined,' she corrected herself mentally, 'Palpatine doesn't exist!'
Something spoke inside her, a darker part of her memories: she couldn't just remember what had happened that last night... she could remember Mara's whole life, up to a certain point. Her style of dress and intention of acting like the Emperor's Hand would have done – rather than the Mara that existed later – had meant that the Mara she became was that Mara. Mara Jade, up to that point in her life. And the memories were not pleasant.
Palpatine did exist... in her memories, and in her mind, to a degree. She had not had the connection to him here, that she had had back in her real galaxy, but that did not mean that he did not exist.
Trying to sit up, Willow found she couldn't. Then she remembered something else: the aftermath of her foolish attack on the Bust. It had worked, but ouch!
Willow took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
Then she opened them again. "Huh... odd." She shrugged as best she could, given that both her shoulders were in a cast, and closed her eyes once more.
...
Again, they slammed open. "OK, this is... cool. In a 'what the?' kind of way..."
Willow went through a few memories of Mara, and found what she was looking for. "Oh, right. I... wow. I can still touch the Force. Wow."
She looked around the room, before speaking to the pot plant on the table next to her bed. "Did I mention, wow?"
She grinned as the air conditioning kicked in, and the plants leaves waved an affirmative in the updraft.
"Cool. Even the plants agree with me."
Feeling suddenly tired, Willow sighed a breath out slowly, and without thinking about what she was doing, sunk into a Healing Trance.
When Buffy got to Xander's room – 221 – she walked in, ready to breath fire, and stopped dead. Taking three steps back, she exited the room and checked the number, before frowning and walking back inside. Looking around, she shut the door behind her and looked behind it suspiciously. Then she checked in the small wardrobe – barely big enough to fit in for her, but Xander might have been playing tricks.
Buffy snapped an order to the empty room. "Xander, come out from where you're hiding right the hell now!"
It wouldn't do any good.
Xander wasn't there.
Buffy pushed open the front door to her house slowly, her arms aching from the effort it took just to move them. Closing it quietly behind her, she hoped that her mother was asleep.
No such luck.
Joyce descended on her daughter, practically breathing fire and steaming at the ears. "And what do you call this time, young lady?!"
Buffy blinked at her, tired eyes not fully comprehending what was happening. "Not now, mom."
Joyce stopped deadly still at being told what to do by her daughter. "Oh, no! You're not getting out of explain this that easily! Where have you been? What happened? Why did I get a call from your school Librarian at Ten O'clock yesterday? Why have you been gone all night?"
Buffy's tired mind only caught the first of the rapid-fire questions. "I've been down the hospital, mom."
That brought Joyce up short. "You weren't hurt, were you?"
Buffy sank tiredly into the couch, her hired dress had long since begun to irritate, but she couldn't do much about it in the hospital. "No, mom. I wasn't. Willow was. And Giles. And Xander."
"I expect your Mr. Giles to explain what happened tonight. I want to know. This was completely unacceptable: Mr. Snyder will be getting a letter of complaint from me about his organisational capability."
"Don't make waves, mom." Buffy snuggled deeper into the couch. "It'll only get him more antagonistic."
"Well, someone must be made aware of what goes on in this town! This is not normal!"
Buffy was getting tired of this. "Then write to the Mayor." She snapped, "I'll come visit you in the Mental Institute. Promise."
Joyce sighed. She realised that she wasn't going to get much more out of Buffy. Her daughter was almost as stubborn as she herself was. She just hoped that Mr. Giles wasn't quite so pig-headed. She sat down next to Buffy. "So... tell me what happened to Willow and Xander."
"Wills has got some pretty bad burns and Xander... I dunno. He was out cold, but he's gone missing from the hospital. They're hunting for him now. I was beginning to get on their nerves, I think. One of the doctors told me to go home and get some rest, or he'd sedate me. I took the hint."
"Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"
Buffy shook her head. "Nope. Not one. I suppose Wills would know better than me... I mean, she's been his friend since, like, forever!"
Joyce smiled slightly, before shrugging. "Well, I suspect that anything further will have to wait for a later date. Go to bed, honey, you look dead on your feet."
Buffy got up tiredly, and walked like a zombie up the stairs to her room. "Thanks, mom."
She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
Willow awoke to a doctor standing over her, scribbling furiously on a clipboard, his face screwed up in concentration. He apparently hadn't noticed her wake, because he jumped when she spoke.
"That bad, Doc?"
"Oh! Oh, Ms. Rosenberg. You gave me a start." He hung the clipboard back on the end of the bed, and reached for her arm to check her pulse. "You do realise that there must have been some sort of error when you were brought in, yes?"
Willow maintained a carefully blank expression. "Gee, Doc, I dunno. I was kinda... unconscious, wasn't I?"
The Doctor nodded absently as he released her wrist and plucked a penlight out of the breast pocket of his white coat to test her pupil responses. Willow blinked and looked away as the light did its job, and the doctor clucked at her before testing the other. "Second degree burns do not heal overnight. And when the nurse changed your dressings this morning, it was as if you had never been hurt. We ran you down to X-ray, to see if your collarbone had healed as quickly, and it is like it was never broken. Now, whatever happened is quite incredible! We must run some tests on you, and I am sure that several of my colleagues would like to see this... this simply astounding case, but... I am quite confident that we can let you be released tomorrow, the next day at the latest."
Mara's personality slipped through for a second. "Am I, or am I not healed, Doc?"
"You are in perfect health, my dear, but I am afraid that alone is not good enough – we must decide how this miraculous healing occurred!"
Willow didn't feel all that enamoured of being a lab rat for however long they wanted to keep her here. "What would you say, Doc, if I said the words, 'Gangs on PCP'? Ring any bells?"
The change was dramatic. It was – as the doctor had described before – astounding. He backed away hurriedly, grabbed the clipboard like a defence against the dark, scribbled a quick note on it, and was out the door before Willow had time to blink. Willow just had the chance to catch a choked, "You can sign out when you feel ready!" before he vanished completely.
Willow swung her legs off the bed, and stood up. Unconsciously, she was adopting the pose she had worn all of the previous night: the swayed hips, the hand resting within easy distance of her thigh mounted blaster – if she had been wearing it, of course – and the tilted head with a half smirk that told anybody willing to listen that she found the world one tremendous joke: and it was funny.
She ran a hand through her mid-back length hair. "First order of the day: get a haircut." Willow caught a glance of herself in the mirror. Her reflection had changed since the last time she had seen it: it wasn't just the confidence... Mara had had a physical effect on her as well as a mental one. She licked her lips subconsciously. The she saw the hospital gown she was standing in.
"Oh, Force! If the Emperor could see me now, I'd never live it down!"
Willow shuddered slightly as those words came out of her mouth. The Emperor didn't exist dammit!
Giles woke up two days later, and the hospital discharged him the next day. He walked out into the sunlight wearing a pair of completely black sunglasses – the only thing to show that he had visited the hospital at all; except for the large prescription for painkillers he had been given. The sunglasses were a nod to the fact that he had had a concussion: Giles wasn't still completely comfortable in bright light, it gave him severe headaches. Nothing to worry about, though... the Doctors said it would go away in a few days, maybe a week, and then he would be as good as new.
While Giles knew that he healed faster than normal as a result of his misguided youth, he refused to push himself further than recommended for once. He had been very lucky that Ethan's little trick hadn't cracked his skull in a rather more terminal fashion and sent his brain oozing across the floor.
He hailed a taxi and tried not to doze off as he was taken home.
Xander stood staring at the stone work.
"Not been here for a while, have I, buddy?" he asked with a self deprecating grin. "I didn't forget about you, y'know... it was just... I was... just..."
He trailed off as the stone remained as still and as silent as it always was, and always would be. Xander sighed, defeated. Jesse now had the ultimate poker face: it didn't matter how hard he tried, even if he could lie to himself, he couldn't lie to the small stone that was all he had to 'see' Jesse. It was like a lie detector, but without the side-effects of sodium pentathol.
"OK, I can't tell a lie to you, Jess... I forgot. I'm sorry." Xander swallowed a lump. "But I need help. I'm in trouble, Jess... trouble I can't get out of on my own. I don't know what to do..."
"I don't know what to do..."
A firm voice in the back of his head spoke to him. "I do."
Review, please! :-)
Title: For the Good of the Empire.
Author: Paradigm Shifter
Feedback: Yes! YES! Please?! Love to know what you think.
Rating: I'll go with PG for now. Be prepared for it to go up, though.
Grateful Thanks: Are sent in the direction of Teri, Trevelyan and Bobby Cox. More than anything else, though, that this is continuing at all is entirely due to Asbjoern. If it wasn't for his comments on this - and how I could get around where it had headed, this wouldn't be out now. Indeed, it would likely be quite a while before I worked up enthusiasm again.
So thank Asbjoern for this. And the way this chapter ends, too. ;-)
Written To: 'Burning From The Inside', Bauhaus.
Each person in the room would have different views of what happened in those ten seconds:
Angel, standing in the doorway was able to duck away from the blast; it merely gave his demon a happy surge of power: he vamped out involuntarily, his back fixed tightly to the wall as he fought within himself to regain control. He wasn't sure what happened, but at that moment, he didn't care... only beating back the beast was worthy of consideration.
Buffy felt the presence within her leave: her Slayer abilities charging to the fore in an attempt to protect her from the magical barrage that pounded her senses and assaulted her mind. But at the same time, there was emptiness: where the Noble had been was a void... and Buffy felt as if something was missing.
Ethan screamed as the Will of Janus beat against his mind. He would pay the price for the failure of his spell: Janus had been invoked for the night, and his early and abrupt departure had made the God far from happy.
Giles, as unconscious as he was, groaned as the surge rolled over him.
Mara, standing facing the bust as the power surge exploded out of it, caught it full in the face, and was sent flying possessed and possessor separating from each other in mid air. Each felt the confusion of the other, and Mara sneered at the weak power evident in what had been her body. She landed in a painful heap on a crate, smashing it to pieces, and continuing into the wall where finally she stopped. A low groan could be heard from the mess of splintered wood.
Thrawn, while not thrown as violently as Mara, crashed into the wall behind him and slid down, a smear of red marking where his head had impacted the wall and moved down. His red eyes closed slowly as the pain took control. The last thing he saw was the melted bust of Janus slowly dripping off the pedestal in cooling drops of stone.
Spike felt something change as his tormentor staggered suddenly. Seifer collapsed to the ground, holding his head and moaning in pain, before looking up and meeting Spikes gaze.
Spike knew at that moment that his tormentor was now within his power. And he had a lot to make up for.
Gripping the boys blond hair, he dragged him down the street. "Come with me," he growled, "I've got someone you might like to meet, yourself..."
Spike couldn't wait to see what Dru made of his new toy.
As long as she didn't kill him, his revenge would be most enjoyable.
Even the shadow that had been in his mind since that apparition merged with him was gone.
Now, he only needed his arm back, and it would be like nothing ever happened...
Jonathon screamed in fear as the blond vampire punched him in the face. Falling backwards, he slowly regained his feet before dropping to the road again as Spike kneed him in the groin.
"That hurts, doesn't it?" Spike whispered in the boy's ear. "Well, it'll hurt a whole lot more in a little while..."
Jonathon was knocked unconscious as Spike gripped his hair and beat his head repeatedly into the tarmac, before dragging the now still teen off to the warehouse:
and Drusilla.
Angel stepped back through the doorway, and the first thing he noticed was the smell.
Blood.
Someone, or multiple someone's, were bleeding. He looked around saw the red streak on the wall above Xander's head. The demon rejoiced at seeing his competitor injured, screamed at him to finish it. Fighting down the urge, Angel moved over to the unconscious boy and checked his head. Nothing seemed to be broken, and the blood flow as already slowing down: as profusely as capillary wounds bled, they also healed more quickly than other wounds. It was already close to closing up, as long as Xander didn't open it up again, he would escape with just a concussion as a reminder not to meet brickwork head first.
Moving over to Giles, he saw Buffy. Everything else flew out the window as he saw his love unconscious. He knelt by her side and gently stroked her head. She groaned, and started to come round.
The first word out of Buffy's mouth as consciousness returned and she realised her boyfriend cradled her in his arms was, "Angel?"
The vampire nodded his game face still on, but the yellow gleam in his eyes was weaker than it had been the evening before. Buffy groaned and shifted her weight, allowing her to see the prone form of Giles lying on the floor. She bolted upright. "Giles!"
Angel let her go, and Buffy sank down next to Giles, crying softly. "Don't be dead... please don't be dead... don't..."
Taking her back up into his arms, Angel hugged her tightly. "He's not dead, Buffy. I can feel his heartbeat from here. He's just unconscious. We really need to get him to a hospital..."
Willow's shaky voice cut in. "Angel's right, Buffy. Ethan hit him with a cricket bat pretty hard."
Buffy turned round. "Willow!"
Willow just groaned. "Yes, Buffy?"
"Willow? Where are you?" Buffy looked round the room, but couldn't see anything. "Willow?"
"I'm over here, Buffy. In the wreckage of the crate." Willow raised a hand, and began to stand up. Reaching her feet, she turned to Buffy and smiled nervously. "Hi."
Buffy gasped, and Angel paled as they looked at the redhead. She was deathly pale, her skin had taken on a slightly grey tint and her eyes had lost the bright humour that they used to contain: the green orbs were dull with fatigue. She cradled her right arm, as if afraid to move it, and had most of her weight on her left leg.
"How's Xander?" Willow asked.
Angel looked at the still unconscious boy. "He'll live." Willow nodded, and tried to take a step forward out of the crate wreck.
Willow's leg gave out on her almost as soon as she stood on it, Buffy moving forward to catch her before she could fall completely. "We need to get you and Giles to the hospital, Will."
Willow couldn't disagree. She nodded unevenly as she passed out.
Buffy turned to Angel. "Angel, get Giles to the hospital. I'll get Willow."
Angel cast a look at Xander. "What about him?"
Buffy looked at Xander's unconscious form. "Damn. We can't leave him here..."
"We could take him to the hospital as well."
Buffy shook her head. "No. He hates hospitals. He'd walk out as soon as he was conscious."
Angel frowned. How did Buffy know something like that? She answered his questioning frown. "Willow told me. He's hated hospitals since he was younger. Like, five, or something."
"I think he needs to be checked out. He hit his head pretty hard."
Buffy sighed, but nodded agreement. "OK. Alright. Fine. Can you get Giles and Xander?" Angel nodded, and the two of them picked up their unconscious passengers, and headed out.
"Miss?"
Buffy looked up from her musing, to see a doctor standing in front of here with a tired expression. His surgical scrubs showed that he had been operating all morning.
"Yeah, doc?" Buffy asked, covering a yawn with one hand.
"Are you the next of kin of Willow Rosenberg, Alexander Harris, or Rupert Giles?"
"No, I'm not. But I'm friends with Wills and Xand, and Giles is librarian at my school. What's up, doc?" Her small smile at her humour slid from her face at the blank expression of the doctor. "Heard it before, huh?"
He acted as if she had never spoken. "Mr. Giles will be in hospital for some time, I'm afraid... whatever it was that hit him on the head cracked his skull quite badly. We want to be sure that he's alright before we release him."
"And Wills and Xand?"
"Mr. Harris will be alright... but his greasepaint seems to refuse to come off... it might have some sort of special solvent, which we presume he may have some of, at home."
Buffy ground her teeth. "And Wills?"
"Ms. Rosenberg has sustained some second degree burns, a broken femur and a fractured – but not broken – collarbone. She will be here for a few more days at least – we want to make sure that her burns are healing correctly."
Buffy shook her head. How was she going to deal with the fallout of this night, when three of the people she needed were in the hospital? Angel had retreated to his mansion two hours ago, when it was getting so close to sunrise he was almost stranded at the hospital anyway. Buffy hadn't been able to get through to her mother: the phone returned a busy signal, whether that was because Joyce or Dawn was using it, or because it was off the hook, Buffy didn't know. All she knew was that there was no answer.
She looked back up at the doctor. "Can I go see them, doc?"
The doctor nodded. "Certainly. Mr. Harris is in room 221, Mr. Giles in 222 and Ms. Rosenberg in 223. I just thought you might like to know that there were no... complications..." Even though Sunnydale as a community wouldn't admit it, Buffy knew he was referring to the regular mysterious loss of blood that people brought to the hospital had.
Buffy nodded her thanks, and walked away to the rooms, her Halloween gown swishing along the polished floor as she walked.
Xander groaned as he shifted. He rolled over, only to be met by a metal bar that stopped him from rolling off the bed he found himself on.
Then he sat up.
"I'm in a hospital." Xander looked around. "Damn. I'm in a hospital." He swung his legs off the bed, and stood up, before crouching in pain as his head swam.
"Woah." His face held in his hands, he could hear a voice through the wall. Buffy's voice.
"Willow... you've got to be alright. Come on. You can't do this to me. To us... to Xander."
"Wills?" Xander whispered to himself. "What happened? What happened to us? I... I don't..."
He straightened. "Oh God, I do!" He sat heavily on the chair next to the bed he should have been in. "I remember..."
He leaned his head against the wall, expecting a sting as his cut contacted with the cold tile. It didn't do so much as tingle.
Then he noticed his hands. "Why didn't they wash the greasepaint off?"
The open door looked so inviting.
"I don't want to be here."
Stepping toward the door, almost in a trance, Xander walked out of the hospital. No one tried to stop him...
It's called the Sunnydale Syndrome.
After seeing Willow, Buffy headed into Giles room. Which meant she wasn't there when Willow woke up.
"Xander?" Willow muttered groggily, before she realised she could remember. "Oh, that's bad."
She could remember Mara Jade... the woman who had been an assassin and enforcer for one of the most evil and hated men ever to be born. 'Um... imagined,' she corrected herself mentally, 'Palpatine doesn't exist!'
Something spoke inside her, a darker part of her memories: she couldn't just remember what had happened that last night... she could remember Mara's whole life, up to a certain point. Her style of dress and intention of acting like the Emperor's Hand would have done – rather than the Mara that existed later – had meant that the Mara she became was that Mara. Mara Jade, up to that point in her life. And the memories were not pleasant.
Palpatine did exist... in her memories, and in her mind, to a degree. She had not had the connection to him here, that she had had back in her real galaxy, but that did not mean that he did not exist.
Trying to sit up, Willow found she couldn't. Then she remembered something else: the aftermath of her foolish attack on the Bust. It had worked, but ouch!
Willow took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
Then she opened them again. "Huh... odd." She shrugged as best she could, given that both her shoulders were in a cast, and closed her eyes once more.
...
Again, they slammed open. "OK, this is... cool. In a 'what the?' kind of way..."
Willow went through a few memories of Mara, and found what she was looking for. "Oh, right. I... wow. I can still touch the Force. Wow."
She looked around the room, before speaking to the pot plant on the table next to her bed. "Did I mention, wow?"
She grinned as the air conditioning kicked in, and the plants leaves waved an affirmative in the updraft.
"Cool. Even the plants agree with me."
Feeling suddenly tired, Willow sighed a breath out slowly, and without thinking about what she was doing, sunk into a Healing Trance.
When Buffy got to Xander's room – 221 – she walked in, ready to breath fire, and stopped dead. Taking three steps back, she exited the room and checked the number, before frowning and walking back inside. Looking around, she shut the door behind her and looked behind it suspiciously. Then she checked in the small wardrobe – barely big enough to fit in for her, but Xander might have been playing tricks.
Buffy snapped an order to the empty room. "Xander, come out from where you're hiding right the hell now!"
It wouldn't do any good.
Xander wasn't there.
Buffy pushed open the front door to her house slowly, her arms aching from the effort it took just to move them. Closing it quietly behind her, she hoped that her mother was asleep.
No such luck.
Joyce descended on her daughter, practically breathing fire and steaming at the ears. "And what do you call this time, young lady?!"
Buffy blinked at her, tired eyes not fully comprehending what was happening. "Not now, mom."
Joyce stopped deadly still at being told what to do by her daughter. "Oh, no! You're not getting out of explain this that easily! Where have you been? What happened? Why did I get a call from your school Librarian at Ten O'clock yesterday? Why have you been gone all night?"
Buffy's tired mind only caught the first of the rapid-fire questions. "I've been down the hospital, mom."
That brought Joyce up short. "You weren't hurt, were you?"
Buffy sank tiredly into the couch, her hired dress had long since begun to irritate, but she couldn't do much about it in the hospital. "No, mom. I wasn't. Willow was. And Giles. And Xander."
"I expect your Mr. Giles to explain what happened tonight. I want to know. This was completely unacceptable: Mr. Snyder will be getting a letter of complaint from me about his organisational capability."
"Don't make waves, mom." Buffy snuggled deeper into the couch. "It'll only get him more antagonistic."
"Well, someone must be made aware of what goes on in this town! This is not normal!"
Buffy was getting tired of this. "Then write to the Mayor." She snapped, "I'll come visit you in the Mental Institute. Promise."
Joyce sighed. She realised that she wasn't going to get much more out of Buffy. Her daughter was almost as stubborn as she herself was. She just hoped that Mr. Giles wasn't quite so pig-headed. She sat down next to Buffy. "So... tell me what happened to Willow and Xander."
"Wills has got some pretty bad burns and Xander... I dunno. He was out cold, but he's gone missing from the hospital. They're hunting for him now. I was beginning to get on their nerves, I think. One of the doctors told me to go home and get some rest, or he'd sedate me. I took the hint."
"Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"
Buffy shook her head. "Nope. Not one. I suppose Wills would know better than me... I mean, she's been his friend since, like, forever!"
Joyce smiled slightly, before shrugging. "Well, I suspect that anything further will have to wait for a later date. Go to bed, honey, you look dead on your feet."
Buffy got up tiredly, and walked like a zombie up the stairs to her room. "Thanks, mom."
She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
Willow awoke to a doctor standing over her, scribbling furiously on a clipboard, his face screwed up in concentration. He apparently hadn't noticed her wake, because he jumped when she spoke.
"That bad, Doc?"
"Oh! Oh, Ms. Rosenberg. You gave me a start." He hung the clipboard back on the end of the bed, and reached for her arm to check her pulse. "You do realise that there must have been some sort of error when you were brought in, yes?"
Willow maintained a carefully blank expression. "Gee, Doc, I dunno. I was kinda... unconscious, wasn't I?"
The Doctor nodded absently as he released her wrist and plucked a penlight out of the breast pocket of his white coat to test her pupil responses. Willow blinked and looked away as the light did its job, and the doctor clucked at her before testing the other. "Second degree burns do not heal overnight. And when the nurse changed your dressings this morning, it was as if you had never been hurt. We ran you down to X-ray, to see if your collarbone had healed as quickly, and it is like it was never broken. Now, whatever happened is quite incredible! We must run some tests on you, and I am sure that several of my colleagues would like to see this... this simply astounding case, but... I am quite confident that we can let you be released tomorrow, the next day at the latest."
Mara's personality slipped through for a second. "Am I, or am I not healed, Doc?"
"You are in perfect health, my dear, but I am afraid that alone is not good enough – we must decide how this miraculous healing occurred!"
Willow didn't feel all that enamoured of being a lab rat for however long they wanted to keep her here. "What would you say, Doc, if I said the words, 'Gangs on PCP'? Ring any bells?"
The change was dramatic. It was – as the doctor had described before – astounding. He backed away hurriedly, grabbed the clipboard like a defence against the dark, scribbled a quick note on it, and was out the door before Willow had time to blink. Willow just had the chance to catch a choked, "You can sign out when you feel ready!" before he vanished completely.
Willow swung her legs off the bed, and stood up. Unconsciously, she was adopting the pose she had worn all of the previous night: the swayed hips, the hand resting within easy distance of her thigh mounted blaster – if she had been wearing it, of course – and the tilted head with a half smirk that told anybody willing to listen that she found the world one tremendous joke: and it was funny.
She ran a hand through her mid-back length hair. "First order of the day: get a haircut." Willow caught a glance of herself in the mirror. Her reflection had changed since the last time she had seen it: it wasn't just the confidence... Mara had had a physical effect on her as well as a mental one. She licked her lips subconsciously. The she saw the hospital gown she was standing in.
"Oh, Force! If the Emperor could see me now, I'd never live it down!"
Willow shuddered slightly as those words came out of her mouth. The Emperor didn't exist dammit!
Giles woke up two days later, and the hospital discharged him the next day. He walked out into the sunlight wearing a pair of completely black sunglasses – the only thing to show that he had visited the hospital at all; except for the large prescription for painkillers he had been given. The sunglasses were a nod to the fact that he had had a concussion: Giles wasn't still completely comfortable in bright light, it gave him severe headaches. Nothing to worry about, though... the Doctors said it would go away in a few days, maybe a week, and then he would be as good as new.
While Giles knew that he healed faster than normal as a result of his misguided youth, he refused to push himself further than recommended for once. He had been very lucky that Ethan's little trick hadn't cracked his skull in a rather more terminal fashion and sent his brain oozing across the floor.
He hailed a taxi and tried not to doze off as he was taken home.
Xander stood staring at the stone work.
"Not been here for a while, have I, buddy?" he asked with a self deprecating grin. "I didn't forget about you, y'know... it was just... I was... just..."
He trailed off as the stone remained as still and as silent as it always was, and always would be. Xander sighed, defeated. Jesse now had the ultimate poker face: it didn't matter how hard he tried, even if he could lie to himself, he couldn't lie to the small stone that was all he had to 'see' Jesse. It was like a lie detector, but without the side-effects of sodium pentathol.
"OK, I can't tell a lie to you, Jess... I forgot. I'm sorry." Xander swallowed a lump. "But I need help. I'm in trouble, Jess... trouble I can't get out of on my own. I don't know what to do..."
"I don't know what to do..."
A firm voice in the back of his head spoke to him. "I do."
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