Buffy studied Giles' back as he looked out the window of his room. She
tried not to notice his mussed up hair or the rumpliness of his clothes.
Some things were just too icky to dwell on.
He'd been quiet and thoughtful ever since she and Willow had shared their insights with him. Buffy had tried to engage him in conversation a few times since they'd finished, but he would just nod absently and murmur something unintelligible. Anya was more vocal, unfortunately.
"Why do you always do this Buffy? Why do you serve as nothing more than a big happiness vacuum, determined to suck the joy out of everything? First it was with Xander and all the 'Blahdy blah she's not good enough for you blah'."
"I never said that!" Buffy defended, but Anya continued as though she hadn't said a word.
"Then you went through your weepy, 'I was in heaven let's all cry for me because life stinks' pity trip. Now it's, 'I feel left out because I'm not the center of everyone's world so why don't I just ruin everyone else's life?'"
Buffy gasped, "I can't believe you! I'm just trying to fix what's wrong!"
"What is wrong, Buffy? Tell me. Look around here and tell me who has a problem -- besides you, that is?"
"Anya, don't you remember the fight at the school?"
"Sure I remember. I was the one up there fighting with no superpowers because you insisted that I had to give up the vengeance gig."
"I did not! That was your decision."
"Whatever." Anya crossed her arms and turned her face away.
Willow cleared her throat and tried to reason with the woman, "Um, Anya, can you tell me what you do remember about the fight? What happened at the school and... and after?"
Anya spared one last acidic glare at Buffy before answering Willow. "Oh, I don't know. We were fighting with swords and there were Ubervamps and Bringers and Andrew was cornered, then..."
"What?"
"Then it was over and I was with you all and everything was great."
"How... how did you get out? Of the school, I mean."
Anya fidgeted. "I don't know. I must have been knocked out or something." She sat up and looked over toward Giles. "But then I was here with Rupie and we're happy and we're going to get married." She held up her hand. "See?"
"You're right," Giles said. He turned around, his hand massaging his forehead. "You're absolutely correct Buffy. None of this makes sense. I guess I was too tied up in my... in this situation. I just didn't want to question..."
"I understand," Buffy told him. "I only want to find out what happened."
Giles sat on the bed beside Anya and put his arm around her and kissed her temple. She seemed to melt against him. "I suppose we need to discover where this... this alternate existence... we need to know when it began."
"We've gone over the spell," Willow told him, "and it doesn't seem as though anything could have happened there."
"What about if we try to go back to the last time we knew things were..." she glanced at Anya, "the other way." Buffy thought back to the previous day. "I remember that I had the dream and we all talked about it."
"Yes," said Willow, "then we went to visit the memorials."
"The memorials? What memorials?" Anya asked.
Giles frowned. "It's where we all went to pay our respects..." He looked into the connected room. "Xander," he called, "would you join us?"
"Sure," he called back. Buffy heard his voice before he appeared on the doorway. "What's up?"
"Do you recall what we did yesterday?"
"Sure. Breakfast, lunch, visited the graveyard, dinner and spell." Andrew and Dawn had joined them from the other room and nodded their agreement.
"Great!" Buffy felt a wave of relief. "We're all on the same page with that."
"So then what?" Willow asked.
Giles tightened his grip on Anya. "That's why I wanted Xander in here. I believe that Xander visited..."
"Anya!" Xander's eyes widened as realization set in. "I wanted to say goodbye to her since I couldn't... after the school... I mean..."
Andrew patted his back reassuringly. "I remember too. We sang our song to Anya and Jonathan. It was a fitting tribute."
"'Crazy' is a fitting tribute?" Xander asked him. "And what's this we? I didn't sing. I..." He frowned.
"What?" Buffy asked him. "What did you do?"
"I just. well I talked. I looked at her ring. I tried to get Andrew to shut up."
"The ring," Giles noted. "What did you do with it?"
"I think it put it back in my pocket."
"No, you dropped it. You must have."
"Why?"
"Because I saw it lying there and I picked it up. It was in my pocket."
Buffy studied Anya. "Then how did it get onto her hand? And why is she even here?"
"Hey!" Anya protested.
"It... it's a good question, dear. As much as it pains me to admit it, you really were... you were deceased."
Buffy looked toward Dawn, who was leaning insolently against the doorframe. "Dawn, you were with me at Mom's grave. Do you remember that?"
"Yes," Dawn said sullenly. She wouldn't look Buffy in the eye.
"So now we all know that was real," Buffy said. "And we came back here and did the spell that was supposed to make my dream more legit."
"Lucid," Giles corrected.
"Except I didn't have any dreams."
"No dreams at all?" Giles asked her. "Why, even I had a dream last night."
"Me too!" Willow said. "Mine was kinda scary."
"I had a great dream," Dawn said.
"Oh, me too!" Andrew said, "Xander and I were best friends and we banded together to rid the world of corrupt software distributors everywhere."
"Hey, I dreamed that we were business partners and had made a bundle designing X-Box games!" Xander added.
"That's so cool!" Andrew said.
"And it explains where all that money came from," Xander said.
"What money?" Buffy asked.
Xander threw his arm around Andrew's shoulders. "We're millionaires," he stated proudly.
"It rocks," Andrew added.
"I had a dream," Dawn added quietly. "I dreamed that I wasn't alone. I had a family. I had a father who really cared about me and I belonged and I was happy."
"That's a nice dream, Dawn," Willow told her.
"What about yours?" Buffy asked. "You said it was scary."
"Yes," Willow nodded, "I dreamed that I had to face these mystical judges over how I had abused my powers. They told me that I'd used what I had been given selfishly and that everybody in my life was doomed unless I changed. I had to start putting everyone else first."
"And for this you've turned into Susan Lucci?" Buffy rolled her eyes and turned to Giles. "And what about you?"
Giles removed his glassed and rubbed his eyes. "I dreamt that I had everything I ever wanted." Buffy couldn't miss the soft fragility of his voice. "I was in love and I had a family." His voice trailed off softly and he replaced his glasses. "I think... I think it was because of that ring. I remembered..."
"The other spell." Anya placed her hand over his. "You remembered the spell where we were engaged before.
"Yes, that's right." Giles looked into her eyes and a schoolboy smile crept across his face. "And now it's somehow true."
"I don't get it," Buffy said. "This spell was supposed to affect me, and it wasn't going to make my dream real. Willow?" she asked her friend.
"We've already gone over the spell, and there was nothing that could have gone wrong. Except..." She looked over to Giles. "Maybe the incantation?"
"I'll get the book." Giles stood and moved to a box positioned in the corner of the room. "Perhaps we can find some clue there."
As he thumbed through the pages Willow looked anxiously over his arm. They found the page that Giles had marked the previous day and scanned over the words penned there.
"The translation is clear," Giles said. "This was simple Latin."
"And I did all these things in the right order," Willow said. "Here are the ingredients and I put the oil on her forehead, then we sat in the circle..."
"What did you say?" Giles interrupted. "About the oil, what did you say?"
"I said I put it on Buffy's forehead. Like you wrote here." Her finger traced over the words Giles had scribbled by the original text.
"That doesn't say 'her forehead'," Giles stated. "It clearly reads, 'Put the oil on their four heads'."
Willow squinted her eyes and looked at the words again. "Giles, has anyone ever told you that your handwriting looks like mushy squiggles?"
"Often," he sighed. "Apparently we've found our problem."
"This was caused by oil?" Buffy asked.
"It's all in the placement, Buffy," Anya told her. "Oil on the head works as a mystical protectant - a sort of magic condom. The witnesses use the oil so that the spell is directed toward the right person. I always had to keep it on hand at the magic shop."
Buffy thought for a moment. "So the fact that I was smeared with this stuff and you guys weren't..."
"Means the spell affected the wrong people," Giles finished.
"And you were all in a circle with your hands joined," Willow added.
"Which means the power was magnified four-fold," Giles concluded. "The dreams didn't become more lucid, they became real."
"Wow!" Andrew exclaimed, "I can be what I dream!"
Buffy confronted Giles. "You did the translation and you didn't notice this little glitch WHY?"
"I was. um. distracted," Giles began. "I'd just realized that I still had Xander's ring in my pocket and I was trying to decided the most. er. prudent way to return it to him. Then we were onto the spell and I guess it just." Giles shook his head resignedly. "It just didn't register. I'm. I'm sorry."
Buffy softened in the face of his remorse. "Look, it's done. At this point it really doesn't matter how it happened. But now that we know what caused this we can fix it, right?"
"Fix what?" Anya interjected. "Exactly what is broken, Buffy? Are you upset that your friends are happy?"
"No!" Buffy protested. "It's just that." She broke off as Anya's words penetrated. They really were all happy, except for Willow. But Willow wasn't exactly miserable either. And how often lately had she worried about Giles being alone? He thought he kept it hidden, but she knew. She had seen it in the droop of his shoulders and the weariness of his eyes. Then there was Anya. They argued. A lot. But that didn't mean Buffy wanted her dead - or even gone, for that matter. Buffy turned and studied her sister's expression. Dawn looked frightened. Buffy knew that Dawn had worried that she didn't really belong. She watched as Giles crossed over to Dawn and placed his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, resting her head on his tweedy shoulder. In this reality Dawn had a real dad who really loved her.
"So what are we saying here?" Buffy asked. "Are you are telling me that we should just leave this alone? Can we leave it alone?"
Giles sighed heavily, "I'm just not certain at this point, Buffy. I'd. I'd like to think on it."
"What about you?" Buffy asked Willow. For the last year you've been telling me about what you learned from the coven in England - about how everything is connected and part of the bigger picture Like, somehow when I dust a vamp in California, an angel gets its wings or something. Right?" Buffy took a deep breath. "If that's how it is then what is this doing to all the big karmac reality? Shouldn't we fix it because it's the right thing to do?"
Willow's eyes were huge as she looked back at Buffy. "How can I, Buffy? How can I take this away from them?" Her chin wobbled and she looked as though she was on the verge of crying again, but struggling to control her emotions. "This thing that has happened to me, it's made me see that I can't try to control other people's lives like I used to do. They want it like this and it... it would kill me to change this against their will." Her voice shook. "Now you're getting upset and this is all my fault! I don't know what to do..."
"Willow," Buffy began.
"No, you don't understand." Willow was beginning to panic. "I can't stand it when I cause other people pain and what you're asking me to do..." She broke off on a gulp. "I. I just can't."
Buffy stood silently in the midst of the people she loved and studied their faces. "Then what you're all telling me is that this is the way it's going to be."
"Yes," Dawn said firmly. "It's what I want."
"And me!" Anya added. "This is definitely preferable to decomposing in the Hellmouth."
"What about you, Xander?" Buffy asked.
"Buffy, you guys are my family - way more than my parents ever were. And now I have money and a best friend."
"Aww," Andrew said. He moved over to the other man and wrapped his arms around his waist to hug him tightly. "I love you, Xander."
"You're okay too."
"Thank you."
"Uh, Andrew? You can let go now."
"Sorry."
"No problem."
"Please," Buffy begged. "We. we have to think about this. We can't just say that this is all right and it's how we're going to be now! I can't believe you are actually saying this. We have to consider changing it back, don't we?"
Willow dried her eyes and patted Buffy's arm. "It'll be all right. We're all here and we're all still together. That's what matters, isn't it?"
Buffy felt ill. This was completely out of her control. "Well, I guess we'll find out." She knew she'd failed to keep the resignation out of her voice. She wanted to be happy for her friends, but something inside of her couldn't let go of the knowledge that this was not the way things were supposed to be and that no good could come of it. For the past eight years she had fought as a chosen warrior against wrongness, and these people had been there with her through it all. If they felt so strongly that this was right then maybe it really was. If so, then why was she finding it so hard to convince herself?
Quietly she left Giles' room and retreated to the stillness of her own.
*****
He'd been quiet and thoughtful ever since she and Willow had shared their insights with him. Buffy had tried to engage him in conversation a few times since they'd finished, but he would just nod absently and murmur something unintelligible. Anya was more vocal, unfortunately.
"Why do you always do this Buffy? Why do you serve as nothing more than a big happiness vacuum, determined to suck the joy out of everything? First it was with Xander and all the 'Blahdy blah she's not good enough for you blah'."
"I never said that!" Buffy defended, but Anya continued as though she hadn't said a word.
"Then you went through your weepy, 'I was in heaven let's all cry for me because life stinks' pity trip. Now it's, 'I feel left out because I'm not the center of everyone's world so why don't I just ruin everyone else's life?'"
Buffy gasped, "I can't believe you! I'm just trying to fix what's wrong!"
"What is wrong, Buffy? Tell me. Look around here and tell me who has a problem -- besides you, that is?"
"Anya, don't you remember the fight at the school?"
"Sure I remember. I was the one up there fighting with no superpowers because you insisted that I had to give up the vengeance gig."
"I did not! That was your decision."
"Whatever." Anya crossed her arms and turned her face away.
Willow cleared her throat and tried to reason with the woman, "Um, Anya, can you tell me what you do remember about the fight? What happened at the school and... and after?"
Anya spared one last acidic glare at Buffy before answering Willow. "Oh, I don't know. We were fighting with swords and there were Ubervamps and Bringers and Andrew was cornered, then..."
"What?"
"Then it was over and I was with you all and everything was great."
"How... how did you get out? Of the school, I mean."
Anya fidgeted. "I don't know. I must have been knocked out or something." She sat up and looked over toward Giles. "But then I was here with Rupie and we're happy and we're going to get married." She held up her hand. "See?"
"You're right," Giles said. He turned around, his hand massaging his forehead. "You're absolutely correct Buffy. None of this makes sense. I guess I was too tied up in my... in this situation. I just didn't want to question..."
"I understand," Buffy told him. "I only want to find out what happened."
Giles sat on the bed beside Anya and put his arm around her and kissed her temple. She seemed to melt against him. "I suppose we need to discover where this... this alternate existence... we need to know when it began."
"We've gone over the spell," Willow told him, "and it doesn't seem as though anything could have happened there."
"What about if we try to go back to the last time we knew things were..." she glanced at Anya, "the other way." Buffy thought back to the previous day. "I remember that I had the dream and we all talked about it."
"Yes," said Willow, "then we went to visit the memorials."
"The memorials? What memorials?" Anya asked.
Giles frowned. "It's where we all went to pay our respects..." He looked into the connected room. "Xander," he called, "would you join us?"
"Sure," he called back. Buffy heard his voice before he appeared on the doorway. "What's up?"
"Do you recall what we did yesterday?"
"Sure. Breakfast, lunch, visited the graveyard, dinner and spell." Andrew and Dawn had joined them from the other room and nodded their agreement.
"Great!" Buffy felt a wave of relief. "We're all on the same page with that."
"So then what?" Willow asked.
Giles tightened his grip on Anya. "That's why I wanted Xander in here. I believe that Xander visited..."
"Anya!" Xander's eyes widened as realization set in. "I wanted to say goodbye to her since I couldn't... after the school... I mean..."
Andrew patted his back reassuringly. "I remember too. We sang our song to Anya and Jonathan. It was a fitting tribute."
"'Crazy' is a fitting tribute?" Xander asked him. "And what's this we? I didn't sing. I..." He frowned.
"What?" Buffy asked him. "What did you do?"
"I just. well I talked. I looked at her ring. I tried to get Andrew to shut up."
"The ring," Giles noted. "What did you do with it?"
"I think it put it back in my pocket."
"No, you dropped it. You must have."
"Why?"
"Because I saw it lying there and I picked it up. It was in my pocket."
Buffy studied Anya. "Then how did it get onto her hand? And why is she even here?"
"Hey!" Anya protested.
"It... it's a good question, dear. As much as it pains me to admit it, you really were... you were deceased."
Buffy looked toward Dawn, who was leaning insolently against the doorframe. "Dawn, you were with me at Mom's grave. Do you remember that?"
"Yes," Dawn said sullenly. She wouldn't look Buffy in the eye.
"So now we all know that was real," Buffy said. "And we came back here and did the spell that was supposed to make my dream more legit."
"Lucid," Giles corrected.
"Except I didn't have any dreams."
"No dreams at all?" Giles asked her. "Why, even I had a dream last night."
"Me too!" Willow said. "Mine was kinda scary."
"I had a great dream," Dawn said.
"Oh, me too!" Andrew said, "Xander and I were best friends and we banded together to rid the world of corrupt software distributors everywhere."
"Hey, I dreamed that we were business partners and had made a bundle designing X-Box games!" Xander added.
"That's so cool!" Andrew said.
"And it explains where all that money came from," Xander said.
"What money?" Buffy asked.
Xander threw his arm around Andrew's shoulders. "We're millionaires," he stated proudly.
"It rocks," Andrew added.
"I had a dream," Dawn added quietly. "I dreamed that I wasn't alone. I had a family. I had a father who really cared about me and I belonged and I was happy."
"That's a nice dream, Dawn," Willow told her.
"What about yours?" Buffy asked. "You said it was scary."
"Yes," Willow nodded, "I dreamed that I had to face these mystical judges over how I had abused my powers. They told me that I'd used what I had been given selfishly and that everybody in my life was doomed unless I changed. I had to start putting everyone else first."
"And for this you've turned into Susan Lucci?" Buffy rolled her eyes and turned to Giles. "And what about you?"
Giles removed his glassed and rubbed his eyes. "I dreamt that I had everything I ever wanted." Buffy couldn't miss the soft fragility of his voice. "I was in love and I had a family." His voice trailed off softly and he replaced his glasses. "I think... I think it was because of that ring. I remembered..."
"The other spell." Anya placed her hand over his. "You remembered the spell where we were engaged before.
"Yes, that's right." Giles looked into her eyes and a schoolboy smile crept across his face. "And now it's somehow true."
"I don't get it," Buffy said. "This spell was supposed to affect me, and it wasn't going to make my dream real. Willow?" she asked her friend.
"We've already gone over the spell, and there was nothing that could have gone wrong. Except..." She looked over to Giles. "Maybe the incantation?"
"I'll get the book." Giles stood and moved to a box positioned in the corner of the room. "Perhaps we can find some clue there."
As he thumbed through the pages Willow looked anxiously over his arm. They found the page that Giles had marked the previous day and scanned over the words penned there.
"The translation is clear," Giles said. "This was simple Latin."
"And I did all these things in the right order," Willow said. "Here are the ingredients and I put the oil on her forehead, then we sat in the circle..."
"What did you say?" Giles interrupted. "About the oil, what did you say?"
"I said I put it on Buffy's forehead. Like you wrote here." Her finger traced over the words Giles had scribbled by the original text.
"That doesn't say 'her forehead'," Giles stated. "It clearly reads, 'Put the oil on their four heads'."
Willow squinted her eyes and looked at the words again. "Giles, has anyone ever told you that your handwriting looks like mushy squiggles?"
"Often," he sighed. "Apparently we've found our problem."
"This was caused by oil?" Buffy asked.
"It's all in the placement, Buffy," Anya told her. "Oil on the head works as a mystical protectant - a sort of magic condom. The witnesses use the oil so that the spell is directed toward the right person. I always had to keep it on hand at the magic shop."
Buffy thought for a moment. "So the fact that I was smeared with this stuff and you guys weren't..."
"Means the spell affected the wrong people," Giles finished.
"And you were all in a circle with your hands joined," Willow added.
"Which means the power was magnified four-fold," Giles concluded. "The dreams didn't become more lucid, they became real."
"Wow!" Andrew exclaimed, "I can be what I dream!"
Buffy confronted Giles. "You did the translation and you didn't notice this little glitch WHY?"
"I was. um. distracted," Giles began. "I'd just realized that I still had Xander's ring in my pocket and I was trying to decided the most. er. prudent way to return it to him. Then we were onto the spell and I guess it just." Giles shook his head resignedly. "It just didn't register. I'm. I'm sorry."
Buffy softened in the face of his remorse. "Look, it's done. At this point it really doesn't matter how it happened. But now that we know what caused this we can fix it, right?"
"Fix what?" Anya interjected. "Exactly what is broken, Buffy? Are you upset that your friends are happy?"
"No!" Buffy protested. "It's just that." She broke off as Anya's words penetrated. They really were all happy, except for Willow. But Willow wasn't exactly miserable either. And how often lately had she worried about Giles being alone? He thought he kept it hidden, but she knew. She had seen it in the droop of his shoulders and the weariness of his eyes. Then there was Anya. They argued. A lot. But that didn't mean Buffy wanted her dead - or even gone, for that matter. Buffy turned and studied her sister's expression. Dawn looked frightened. Buffy knew that Dawn had worried that she didn't really belong. She watched as Giles crossed over to Dawn and placed his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, resting her head on his tweedy shoulder. In this reality Dawn had a real dad who really loved her.
"So what are we saying here?" Buffy asked. "Are you are telling me that we should just leave this alone? Can we leave it alone?"
Giles sighed heavily, "I'm just not certain at this point, Buffy. I'd. I'd like to think on it."
"What about you?" Buffy asked Willow. For the last year you've been telling me about what you learned from the coven in England - about how everything is connected and part of the bigger picture Like, somehow when I dust a vamp in California, an angel gets its wings or something. Right?" Buffy took a deep breath. "If that's how it is then what is this doing to all the big karmac reality? Shouldn't we fix it because it's the right thing to do?"
Willow's eyes were huge as she looked back at Buffy. "How can I, Buffy? How can I take this away from them?" Her chin wobbled and she looked as though she was on the verge of crying again, but struggling to control her emotions. "This thing that has happened to me, it's made me see that I can't try to control other people's lives like I used to do. They want it like this and it... it would kill me to change this against their will." Her voice shook. "Now you're getting upset and this is all my fault! I don't know what to do..."
"Willow," Buffy began.
"No, you don't understand." Willow was beginning to panic. "I can't stand it when I cause other people pain and what you're asking me to do..." She broke off on a gulp. "I. I just can't."
Buffy stood silently in the midst of the people she loved and studied their faces. "Then what you're all telling me is that this is the way it's going to be."
"Yes," Dawn said firmly. "It's what I want."
"And me!" Anya added. "This is definitely preferable to decomposing in the Hellmouth."
"What about you, Xander?" Buffy asked.
"Buffy, you guys are my family - way more than my parents ever were. And now I have money and a best friend."
"Aww," Andrew said. He moved over to the other man and wrapped his arms around his waist to hug him tightly. "I love you, Xander."
"You're okay too."
"Thank you."
"Uh, Andrew? You can let go now."
"Sorry."
"No problem."
"Please," Buffy begged. "We. we have to think about this. We can't just say that this is all right and it's how we're going to be now! I can't believe you are actually saying this. We have to consider changing it back, don't we?"
Willow dried her eyes and patted Buffy's arm. "It'll be all right. We're all here and we're all still together. That's what matters, isn't it?"
Buffy felt ill. This was completely out of her control. "Well, I guess we'll find out." She knew she'd failed to keep the resignation out of her voice. She wanted to be happy for her friends, but something inside of her couldn't let go of the knowledge that this was not the way things were supposed to be and that no good could come of it. For the past eight years she had fought as a chosen warrior against wrongness, and these people had been there with her through it all. If they felt so strongly that this was right then maybe it really was. If so, then why was she finding it so hard to convince herself?
Quietly she left Giles' room and retreated to the stillness of her own.
*****