Although it was the universal strangeness of staring down someone you know to be dead - as well as, for said dead someone, the universal strangeness of staring back - that seemed to keep the three of them in stasis, it really wasn't what appeared to be on anyone's mind. What seemed to grip them, however, was an impromptu trip down Nostalgia Dr. courtesy their respective views on the awkward occurences in their lives, the current one not withstanding.
Angel himself found it all a little ironic. This was not an uncommon theme he'd observed in his two hundred and fifty-something year stint on God's green earth, in fact, it was getting just a tad on the stale side. Why was it he managed to wind up with ievery single/i skinny blonde with a tendency for resurrection? Sure, he was cursed with a soul and an inability to attain perfect happiness without going all homocidal and bloodlusty - but the bane of his existence had to be his choice in women.
And as far as his experience had shown, there were hardly any pros to exs coming back from the dead. The last time this happened the she in question ended up a vampire, once again, and he went into a deep depression, followed by the severing of ties with everyone he knew and cared for, the unceromonious slaughter of a large group of lawyers, and the occurence of an impossible pregancy for which he was partially responsible. To sum up, resurrected former flames lead to both lots of pain and single-fatherhood, two things he didn't need any more of.
Not to mention, this wasn't /ijust any/i dead ex. He may have spent a good century and change with the previously mentioned femme fatality, but this girl had been the love of his life. And that's a long damn life. It had hurt him more to loose her than anything he'd ever felt or inflicted, both when he left and when she died. It had taken him a lot of time, not to mention a summer in a Buddhist monastery, to let her go.
So this is where a problem arises. He loves someone else, the very someone else standing next to him; he has a son who thinks of said someone else as essentially his mother; he has a family, great friends; he's atoning for all those years of the rape-and-pillage gig; he should be good and moved on. He considered himself very moved on, looking toward the future, not wallowing in the past. He could teach the seminar on moving on, there'd be tapes, and tee-shirts with sayings that are only kind of funny. However, he'd never been very good at the game of forgive and forget, in fact, he was known quite well for his proficiency at brooding, and if he let her go like he claimed to, he was sure he wouldn't have had an unsettling need to believe she was really alive.
He smelt decay on her, looked her up and down to try and understand. Her hair looked dusty, her face a little worn. She was still wearing the dress she'd been burried in which sported various tears now. He couldn't place her expression. She seemed suprised, obviously, but it was more than that. Scared, maybe, and confused. If anything told him how real she was, it was the slight shake in her hand as it still held the door, and the utter bewilderment that galzed over her eyes.
Something moved. A cat on the street, a breeze - something. It disrupted the endless staring contest, knocking the three of them out of their hypnosis, and forcing them to recognize the movement of time. They weren't allowed an eternity of introspection in order to deal, each one needed to make a decision and act.
Buffy made it easy for the rest of them. A few short seconds after the noise, she took a clipped breath in, and ran back into the house and out the back door. Now, at least, there would be both something to react to as well as enough distance from it to remove that nagging sense of being overwhelmed.
"Did you see...?" Cordy breathed as she and Angel caustiously walked into the house.
"Buffy," Angel finished for her.
"Right, so that wasn't just me," she glanced down through the dinning room and into the kitchen, seeing that the back door was wide open. "... so our big loomy moster turns out to be a tiny dead slayer. Aren't we lucky."
- - -
"I don't understand," Xander announced, "just, ah, getting that out there." He didn't really have much to say besides that, it pretty much summed up his state of mind. He happened to be the lucky bastard without any otherworldly or supernatural powers. He was the average Joe, plain old Xander. He didn't know any spells, he couldn't levitate things, he couldn't kick ianyone's/i ass, let alone something twice his size sporting six claws per hand and the uncanny ability to spew acidic venom. He mostly knew how to be Emotional Support Guy, the provider of snacks and humorous entertainment - the best friend. Trouble was that people had learned to get their own snacks, his sense of humor was slipping away, and his best friends were both gone. So basically, he didn't understand.
"We don't have any answers," Giles said, appologetically.
Xander nodded. He sat at the table, slightly dishevled, in his pajamas, his coat thrown over them, his keys still in his right hand, his head resting on his left. Giles had called him shortly after he and Faith had discovered the grave and he'd left Anya to watch Dawn, meeting them at the Magic Box. It wasn't that he wasn't glad to be informed, but he wasn't under any delusion that he was needed at this impromptu meeting, not really. The truth was, it was just a reflex to call him, despite the fact that he would be of little to no use and they all knew it.
"Who would want Buffy's body?" Faith asked, "You said their were rituals, Giles, so what kind of voodoo are we talking about?"
"Necromancy, actually," Giles corrected, "their are hundreds of things a necromancer could do with the body of a slayer, however they mostly revolve around harnessing the powers of the slayer, the strength and prophetic dreams-"
"So we're not talking the end of the world, then," Faith broke in, "That's a relief. Start with that point next time."
"Not entirely," Giles replied, "there are numerous spells which I know of only vaguely, and most likely more than I'm completely unaware of. Until I make contact with the council, I believe we should be on guard, especially considering the choice of location our foe has made."
"How so?"
"There are more than enough dead slayers to choose from, the fact that the body stolen is so close to the Hellmouth could indicate an intent to use it."
"So this isn't about Buffy, then," Xander said, "You're completely ruling out the possibility that whoever took her body was after iher/i body specifically? I mean, maybe this isn't just about the slayer thing."
"Yes." Giles said, leaving it at that.
Xander gathered that this wouldn't be a topic left well alone. Buffy's enemy's had only ever wanted her dead, any individual with an interest in Buffy herself would have been satisfied in the fact that she was six feet under. No one would want Buffy out of that grave. Save for maybe one person, and it was that which Giles was no doubt avoiding a conversation about. Xander found himself more than happy to oblige, despite an underlying hope. The last thing anyone wanted at this point, when they were being drug back through the emotional muck surrounding Buffy's death, was to bring up another fallen friend.
- - -
Dawn slipped out from under the sleeping bag in the living room of Xander and Anya's place, keeping a careful eye on the snoozing mistress of the house as she slipped on her shoes and started tip-toeing to the door. This is what she'd come to. This is what she'd icome back/i to. And for what? So she could be graced with the honor of being the dumping grounds for several years of anger and regret? She could have done without, really.
Her journey to adulthood had come and gone and she was still sneaking out from under the baby-sitter because a few of her nearest and dearest have a terrible affliction of deja vu. She loved her sister, but she wasn't Buffy. Any blindman could see that. Unfortunately, she was dealing with the voluntarily deaf, dumb and blind: a complicated venture.
The plan was to get out, get a breath of fresh air, alone air. She wanted to go somehwere, the bronze, anywhere open, anywhere away. It was just too much. She had managed to be happy for most of the last three or so years, it still hurt sometimes, but for the most part, she'd managed to move on. And now she dropped right back into a time worp where everyone's acting like she died yesterday. Of course no one will talk about it, but everyone's thinking it. It felt like a fifty pounds of weight on her chest everytime someone looked at her. She wasn't even a person to them, she was just a piece of someone who was, a walking, talking reminder.
It had crossed her mind more than once that all these people wish it had been her. Wish she'd been the one to jump. And why not? She wasn't real, she was a lie they'd been made to believe. A construct. Her death would've been the price of Buffy's life, a fact that's not gone unnoticed. Of course, the Scoobie's way of dealing with the constant reminder of what Dawn had cost them manifest's itself in a severly over-attentive paranoia. Besides, Buffy would've wanted it.
Again, she loved her sister, but it was living under her shadow that was becoming unbareable. It wasn't in the "I want to outshine you" kind of way, either. Buffy's shadow was so incredibly huge (well, figuratively) that Dawn simply no longer really existed as anything but as what she was in relation to Buffy. All she wanted was to exist to these people.
At least she existed to Spike. Not that William the Bloody wasn't still weeping every spare tear for her dear 'ol sis, but he'd managed over his time with her to see her as something other than Buffy's remains. They were actually friends. In Spike's world she wasn't lost in the land of the immense Buffy-shadow, she was actually out with the sun, getting a tan. Well, again, figuratively.
She'd decided to take the graveyard route to the bronze. Not surprisingly, it was the route she had been most accustomed to, and for the moment she was choosing to ignore the fact that she had been in the company of several capable friends most every time. It had become second nature to be out at night, to be awake and alert, and graveyards didn't have the same spookiness they'd had when she was younger. Granted, she was still being cautious, but--
Dawn felt her foot get caught jump before she made a big thunk to the ground. Stunned, but not badly bruised, she sat up to her knees, dusting off her top before getting up. She felt odd all the sudden, something was familiar. Her haze moved a little in front of her and she read the gravestone. Then she looked to the grave itself, realizing it had been excavated. Her eyes widened and she took an involuntary deep breath. She saw a shadow grow acrossed the gravestone and she turned slowly to see who or what it was.
Dawn screamed with every atom of her body.