*
It was always weird calling Giles. She never could remember what time it was in Bath, and she didn't want to call him too much, and the ringing was weird – like a cross between a busy signal and a real ring. She replaced the receiver after the first double-ring, taking another look at the clock. One in the afternoon… was it plus eight or minus eight? Did it matter? She picked up the phone and hit redial.
But something nagged at her. There was something weird, with daylight savings time – sometimes it was nine hours' difference. She hung up again, her hand clutched tight around the cordless. That would mean either four in the morning or ten at night, and she had a weird feeling it was four. Should she just wait another couple of hours, in case he wasn't up? But Dawn…
The phone rang in her hand, and she jumped a mile.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Buffy." The accented voice flowed like a tonic into her ear.
"Giles! I can't believe you called!" she exclaimed happily. Then, immediately suspicious: "Wait – why did you call?"
"You have an, eh - distinctive ring," he replied dryly.
"Oh," she said. "OH! Sorry!"
"Quite all right," he chuckled. On his end of the line, something fell heavily to the floor. "Lovely to hear from you, of course. I just got in the door – have you been ringing long?"
The reason for calling rushed back to her. "No, Giles, I just started. I'm sorry if I woke you up, but it's important."
"It must be, if you thought you were waking me – it's evening, by the way," he said quickly. She heard his quick steps across a wooden floor, and wondered again what his flat in England looked like. "Are you all well? Or is that why you're calling?"
"Kind of." Buffy leaned back against the wall. Poor Giles. She didn't call him enough to just chatter; something in her thought he'd find it silly, frivolous. But times like this, she regretted not calling him with lighter news. The sound of her voice must be permanently linked to his "danger" radar.
Not that that was anything new.
"It's Dawn, Giles."
The intake of breath was brief, but she heard it all the same. "Can you get a flight? Is someone with her?"
"No, no! Giles, she's here. Spike brought her home." Oh, crap. She winced, waiting for the blast.
But no blast. "He did." So low and cold, it nearly gave her a chill. Not good. So not good that images of Spike burning, dusting, scalded into oblivion by some far-off spell began to cycle through her mind, and she found herself rushing to get an explanation out, anything to stop Giles' vengeful side from awakening.
It tumbled from her, the whole sorry tale. She kept having to backtrack, confused herself about some of the sequencing, but Giles listened patiently through it all. She could hear the clink of ice in a glass, the unusual sound of his swallow, and she closed her eyes as she rambled. It was easier; with her eyes closed, she could imagine him sitting close, his expression serious and stern. And he'd fix it all.
"She's healing them, I think – but I she doesn't mean to do it, and it's hurting her…" Her throat closed up
"And how are you sure that Spike's recovery had anything to do with Dawn," Giles said. He was grasping at straws, she knew, but at least he was trying. "And you said the floor was littered – could she have slipped on the stairs, faltered on her bad ankle?"
"No, she wasn't on the stairs anymore, and her ankle was almost better. She did it; I could see it," she replied. And then she ground to a halt.
Buffy wasn't a particularly lyrical person, so it was hard to describe. But she tried, hoping some of the meaning would filter through.
"Well, the inside of the store was dark, so all the light was coming from outside, through the door. And you know when light picks up dust in the air, or whatever it is, that stuff that kind of glints? Like particles or…" she trailed off. "Oh, I don't know."
"No, go on, Buffy." He sounded urgent, but also understanding. Surely he'd tell her if she was just babbling, right?
Right. "Okay. Well, it all – moved. Like, sideways. Like – whoosh!" She unconsciously made a sweeping motion with her hand, realizing too late that Giles wasn't really here, wasn't really seeing her. Something in her stomach dropped a little, but she recovered.
"And it happened just before Dawn fell. She reached out, and there wasn't any wind, but all of the sparkly things in the air suddenly whooshed towards Spike." It had been so odd; like an invisible arrow shooting through a cloud, dragging mist or vapor behind it. Urgent and precise; and aimed directly at Spike.
"Indeed." He rumbled the word, half-reluctant, half-intrigued. She caught the tone; Spike still wasn't in Giles' good books, but even he knew that Spike would never harm Dawn. "Could it have been a spell that Spike did while he was alone in the shop?"
Buffy was silent. The funny smells when she walked in, the burnt offering, the books – he'd been so ill, she didn't think he could manage to pull off such complicated magic. But it was something to think on.
"Maybe," she allowed. She'd have to consider every possibility if she wanted to find a solution. "But it wasn't just one way."
"Oh?"
"A second after everything whooshed towards Spike and me, it went back to her."
A pause. "Really."
"The same way – except, more fractured, a little slower. It dragged, somehow." No arrow this time. A handful of pebbles, fighting its way against the tide of sparkly particles in the morning sun. "And then she fell down, and Giles – she broke."
"Buffy…" There it was. The way he said her name, full of sympathy and understanding, making up for every time he'd held back from hugging her, every time he'd kept a professional distance. It always made her choke up; today was no exception.
"Giles, I don't know what to do!" She said, crouching down against the doorjamb. The solid wood felt good against her spine. "I can't fight it, it's happening all at once, she's so hurt and she doesn't want me to worry…"
"But you do worry, of course you do," he murmured. She tried to breathe evenly, tried to collect herself, and Giles just waited on the other end of the line. Listening, as always.
Finally, she was able to speak without sounding strangled. "Giles, I don't know what to do."
The regret in his voice made her want to cry again; she knew what he was going to say, and didn't want to hear it.
"Buffy, I wish I could fly over… But there are things here I must attend to, an unusual situation…" He stopped, all too aware that the best excuse wouldn't help. "I'm so sorry, I really do wish I could be there. For you and Dawn."
But he couldn't. She understood that, on most levels. Giles had his own life, his own demons to fight. Cockney rhyming demons with bad teeth, she thought, scowling. And it had to be something important, she reluctantly admitted. He took his de facto parent status seriously when one of them was in trouble.
"Okay, I get it – but advice would be great, if you have any to hand out."
A rustling noise echoed down the line – not book-rustling, maybe paper? "I've been looking about, Buffy, and I might be able to get in touch with someone who can help. Will you be all right for a few days, or should I try and find a, a healer, or someone who might make her comfortable..?"
Buffy's voice hardened. "No witches."
"No, Buffy. No witches." He sighed a little, but she ignored it. This was one topic on which she wouldn't budge.
"I'll ring around tonight; hopefully, one of my colleagues will have connections." His voice warmed again, losing its business-like edge. "And Buffy – don't wear yourself down. I may not… appreciate Spike, but I believe he'll help you if he can."
"Okay." She smiled a little, scrunching further down on the floor. She'd never want to admit it, but it felt nice, having someone tell her what to do again.
"I'll call you as soon as I get any word. And you shall do the same?"
"I shall," Buffy replied teasingly. Then, softly: "Miss you, Giles."
"And I you, Buffy. I'll ring you."
"Goodnight." She felt lighter somehow, energized again. She rose from the floor in one swift movement. Hot chocolate. Dawn liked hot chocolate, especially in bed. She set the phone down on the counter, humming as she went.
Giles would help her fix it. Giles could fix anything.
The way was familiar. Down one highway until the huge Jack-in-the-Box drive-in, then a sharp right onto the interstate; Xander drove on autopilot, barely noticing the stunning scenery as it rushed by him.
The truck growled below him, as if it recognized the route as well. It should; they had certainly taken the trip often enough. Once a week had gradually slipped into once every two, something he'd felt guilty about. But then they'd both realized that the short, successive visits weren't as good as the distanced long ones, days spent together after weeks apart. And so he changed his pattern. About once a month, he'd wake up early, leave an ambiguous note on the counter and drive away from the rising sun.
He couldn't outrun it, of course. But it seemed appropriate somehow; racing away from the coming day, as though he was trying to steal back some of the time he'd lost to night.
The first time he had the thought, it hit him like a sledgehammer. He'd wrenched the truck to the side of the road, ignoring the blaring horns and glaring headlights, to tumble out of the cab retching. Trembling in anger, pain and grief, wondering why he'd ever let himself entertain the thought that this entire ritual was just a desperate attempt to travel back in time.
Because no one could travel back in time. Demons, sorcerers, witches; they could do all sorts of terrifying things, but none could turn back time. He'd give anything to find a way. Because then, that awful morning never would have happened. And all that followed? It would be wiped away.
He would erase the feeling of Willow shaking in his arms, too grief-stricken to be sick, too anguished to speak, clinging on to him as though his arms were all that kept him grounded. He would rub out the image of her disappearing with Giles in a flash of light, her form so much smaller and withdrawn than he'd ever known. He would remove the days he'd spent packing her things in huge cardboard boxes, keenly aware of Buffy's deliberate absence, of the way she refused to even glance at the forwarding address. And he could expunge any knowledge of a place called "Great Oakwoods" from his mind, and all the damning associations with it.
Buffy might know by now. She never drove the truck, but one glance at the odometer would tell of more than trips to the building site or Blockbuster's. He wasn't too sure of how much Slayer-senses amplified her hearing, if at all. He tried to call Willow from the office; the only number she had was his cell. He intentionally kept all emailing to his office computer, and they both tried to write more than speak. But every once in a while, he'd get a loaded glare from Buffy after a cell call, and it made him flinch.
He crested a hill, and his heart began to beat erratically. He always imagined he could see the development from here, though he knew it was still a few miles off. Small vineyards dotted the landscape in a way that made Xander think of Italy. He'd never been to Italy; this might be the closest he would get.
And Willow lived here now, all the time. Surrounded by rolling fields of green, orderly rows twined round with vines. She could wander around in the grass and breathe in the scented air, wander for miles without a soul in sight, she could lay on her back at night and see the stars of every constellation glowing down on her as though she were Eve in Eden.
It was a very pretty prison.
He tried to focus on the scenery as he approached the front gates. They swung open seamlessly, huge iron sculptures that looked more like art than functional. As Xander passed, Karl waved cheerily from the watchman's kiosk. Xander smiled a little as he waved back. He was one of the regulars.
His regular parking space was occupied, which was slightly unusual. Many of the Great Oakwoods residents were rarely visited by family and friends; the facility was pretty remote, and the drive was long. Other residents had come here for that exact reason – no visitors. Xander eased himself out of the cab gradually, shaking out his limbs. You had to be pretty dedicated to keep coming on back.
"Xander!" He turned to see a woman leaving her apartment. The two-level complex had something of the motel about it, though Xander had never seen any motel as well-kept.
"Hey, Nance!" He watched as Nancy locked her door and made her way down the stairs. Her clothes hung loosely on her body, bulky sweats with a jacket on top, white sneakers on her feet. It was her usual outfit; Xander saw her often on his visits. He looked forward to seeing her, actually. In contrast to many of the others, she was always eager to talk, and her wide, kind face always wore a grin. She jogged over to him.
"Haven't seen you around for a while, stranger. How's the big bad world?" She held her arms wide for a hug, and he complied. Carefully, though – beneath the voluminous cotton, Nancy's body was frail and fragile.
"Oh, bad and big, nothing interesting happening at all," he said, grinning back. She made a sarcastic noise and rolled her eyes. "How are you?"
"Same old same old, m'dear." She leaned against the door of the truck and he followed suit. "Paying for my earthly sins, as usual."
He looked at her, concerned. "So no change?"
"None whatsoever. The osteoporosis is totally irreversible, my insides are as worthless as those of an '83 Oldsmobile, and expected to last about as long. Probably lasted longer than I should, considering I wasn't fueling up the vehicle." She shrugged noncommittally, and Xander cringed. He couldn't tell whether he should applaud her realistic attitude or urge her to stay optimistic. She had been disappointed too many times.
"But nothing recently?"
She smiled at him. "No, I've been pretty good since last time I saw you. Knock on wood." She shoved away from the truck. "But you're not here to entertain me, are you?"
"Could be," he replied gamely, but it was just another old routine. Nancy waved him up the stairs.
"Off you go. Oh – and she got a haircut," she said in a stage whisper. Xander turned in time to see her smirk before she disappeared around the corner of the building again.
He climbed the stairs quickly; this part was like pulling off a band-aid. The quicker he did it, the less time he had to think, and that meant it hurt less. He reached into his pocket for the key she'd given him. "For emergencies", technically, but he'd grown accustomed to using it. For the first few months, he'd had to use it all the time.
But he hoped he wouldn't need it now. He let it dangle from the fingers of one hand as the raised the other to knock on the door. Three shallow knocks, so as not to carry to other rooms.
"Come in!" Xander took a deep breath and tried the doorknob: unlocked. He pushed, and walked into a cheery living room.
"Xander!" She rose from her desk, startled. Her hair was pinned on top of her head with a pencil; it hadn't been long enough to do that last time he saw her. She hadn't dyed it again either. At the time, Xander had wondered if it was some bizarre masochism – letting the red grow out, a stark contrast where it met the natural auburn. He had never asked.
"Hey, Will." And then his arms were full of affection-starved girl. She buried her head in his neck, the bridge of her nose pressed hard against the place where his throat met his shoulder. He rocked slowly, side to side, hands pressing tight against her back; he narrowly avoided getting blinded by the pencil in her hair.
"Nice haircut."
"Thank you!" She hesitated. "…for the compliment that you never would have noticed. Nancy?"
He grinned sheepishly. "Yeah."
"She SO doesn't know you as well as I do." Willow smiled quickly, a furtive tug on her lips that vanished quickly. She gestured to the couch and he took his usual seat, tossing a couple of the more elaborate pillows out of the way. Willow darted back to the desk and quickly typed something on her laptop before shutting it down.
"I was just writing you an email! I'm sorry I didn't reply to the last one – I got all caught up in the argument with some physics student about wave-particle theory." She scowled. "I think he knows he's wrong, and he's just trying to piss me off now."
"Damn physicists."
"You have no idea. Drink?" She didn't wait for an answer, darting into the tiny kitchenette joined onto the main room. Along with the shoebox bedroom, it made up Willow's world. He could see her over the divider, her head dipping as she searched her fridge for the beer she usually saved for him.
"But I wasn't debating physics all the time, I promise. I found a bunch of stuff about bones. There's a huge site about osteogenesis imperfecta." Xander looked at her helplessly. "Brittle bone disease, basically. It's got something to do with protein structure abnormalities in kids' bones – but you'd know from birth, it's not something that you can get later in life." She came back into the room, a beer in one hand and her soda in the other. She held it out to him, but he shook his head.
"No, Will – I can't stay too long." He watched her face fall, but she masked it quickly.
"Oh. Okay, then… how are you?" She didn't want to know. He'd asked her to look up brittle bones and she had. He did that sometimes; sent her an email asking for something weird or obscure, but always science-based. Astronomy, chemistry, physics, medical studies – for a year and a half, she'd combed the web for him. Never asking why, never needing a reason. Just getting it done.
"Not so good, Will." Xander stopped, unsure of how far he should go. Willow stood in front of him, rooted to the spot. Waiting.
"It's Dawn – I wanted to know about the bone-thing because Dawn came back hurt." He watched her gasp, guilt and horror flashing across her face. He leaned forward to take her hand; she snatched it away before he got there, unconsciously.
"Oh my god – why? Did someone hurt her? Oh god – Buffy." The beer slipped from her fingers, thudding on the carpet. She paid no attention, too wrapped up in the possibilities flashing through her mind.
"No! Will, Will, stop!" He jumped up, grabbed her by the shoulders. He would shake her out of this if he had to. But the anguished expression lifted, and Willow came back.
"I'm all right, okay, okay." But she clutched his hand with trembling fingers; all her attention was focused on him now. She bit her lip. "Can I do anything? I mean, I only looked at a couple of sites, they're all in your email…" Her face clouded.
"But Dawn was never fragile before. The kids with the disease can break up to 100 times – oh." Her mind was working fast now, jumping from place to place. "But she wasn't a child. Xan, I don't know if that makes a difference, but I can look more!"
She was so desperate to help, she needed to help. Xander watched her as she twisted away, practically running the few paces to her laptop. He'd never told her the full reasons for anything she'd researched; he couldn't. But she had to know that she was helping them, just as Buffy had to know where all this mysterious information came from. But they pretended for such different reasons.
"Willow, we don't think it's the disease anymore; that's what the doctors told us yesterday, but something's changed."
She turned to him again. "What? Is it physical?"
He shook his head. "It's something else."
"Oh." And she didn't ask. She turned her head away for a moment, eyes squeezed shut. One, two, three – counting to a thousand, if need be. Focusing on numbers. But she didn't need to go far; at twenty-seven, she turned back.
Xander was perched on the arm of the couch, anxious. She tried to flash him a reassuring smile, but those didn't come as easily as they used to.
"But she's okay right now?"
Xander nodded again, relived. "Yeah, she's in bed. Buffy's with her."
"Good."
Xander shifted uncomfortably. There was something still to do, and he thought he knew what the reaction would be. He cleared his throat. "Will, I need to ask you something…"
"Yeah, anything!" But then something tweaked in her head, and she wondered aloud: "How did she get home?"
"Spike brought her."
Willow's eyes flashed black, and it happened.
Xander watched as his best friend crumpled to the ground, her elbow striking the desktop loudly. He knew what had happened; he'd seen it too often to mistake it. She never meant to; he knew that too. But no matter how hard he tried to avoid it, no matter how carefully he watched his words – there would be that one phrase or word or movement that sent her mind down a forbidden path.
The path strewn with spells and magic, filled with dangerous herbs and ancient runes. And she would rush along that path in her mind, thrilling at the draw, compelled by the power it held. Sweep along in an ecstasy of energy, a thrill that set every nerve on fire.
Only to slam against the burned-out patch, a scorched wasteland she couldn't pass, which nothing could heal. The ravaged place in her brain that had died when her own terrible power backlashed, when she'd reined in the flow of tainted magic, drawn it back into herself. It struck her forcefully, a blow to her psyche, a painful piercing into her mind. Robbing her of reason and body and sense, sending her to the floor again.
Xander rose from the couch heavily, his question unasked. He'd hoped to avoid it, hoped to keep her whole. But here she lay, once again, splayed out on the carpet of her tiny apartment of the assisted-living facility. The prison of her mind catching her once more, bodily shutting her down every time her thoughts strayed.
"You know," he said as he gathered the girl up and carried her to her bed. "This never stops being scary. Scary because I'm afraid you've hurt yourself this time," he whispered as he laid her down, smoothing her brow. His voice was sad, tired. "And scary because I don't want to know what the hell you were thinking of to set you off."
Buffy paused at the door of her room, mug of cocoa held still.
Dawn was buried under a pile of covers in her usual sleeping position – dead center of the bed. It was all too familiar to Buffy, who remembered countless family vacations when she'd been shoved out of the hotel double by a fully asleep Dawn. But Spike probably didn't know about it; thin though he was, he was hard-pressed to find room for himself next to the fidgety teenager. She smiled.
He, of course, had heard her coming. He was propped against the headboard; his eyes had been on Dawn when Buffy arrived, but now he was looking straight at her. He'd move if she wanted… but she didn't want him to. She walked to the dresser and put down the steaming mug. No use in waking Dawn up if she was asleep.
"Giles?" He spoke low, a not-quite-whisper that seemed to reverberate in his chest forever. She walked to the other side of the bed, leaving Dawn between them.
"Researching." She shrugged – what else? He chuckled faintly and closed his eyes, tilting his head back against the wall.
So he felt, rather than saw, Buffy climb into the bed. She salvaged a bit of sheet from Dawn's mummified state and gently eased herself onto the remaining chunk of mattress. Dawn murmured a little in her sleep and twisted, edging towards her sister's body.
Spike's hand was still on the pillow above Dawn's head; the fingers that brushed the back sent sparking electricity through him, and he opened his eyes again.
Buffy met his gaze evenly. Her head on the pillow, her sister curled close, she allowed the tips of her fingers to linger on his wrist.
Then she closed her eyes, Dawn shifted one last time, and Spike felt the shower of fiery sparks fall to earth, kindling an entirely different sort of blaze. Warm and gentle, tingling as it spread through his limbs, unknotting his tense muscles and tired mind. And before he knew what was happening, he drifted into the only peaceful sleep he'd ever known.
TBC
