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TITLE: Hitchhikers
SERIES: Casualties
AUTHOR: Peter J. Frigate
EMAIL: thetwis...gmx.de (thats my 'mostly spam' email, so I might miss your mail, if you want my personal email, just ask me)
FEEDBACK: Yes, please. Public, private, constructive, negative, I don't care. I don't even mind flames.
ARCHIVE/DISTRIBUTION: I post the chapters on the Buffy newsgroup, and usually a bit later on If you want to put my stuff on your page, I'll probably hug and kiss you, but you still have to ask first. I like to keep track of where my things go. In return, I'll offer to mail you any new chapters/stories or corrections.
TIMEFRAME: After the end of Season Six
'PREVIOUSLY ON': Dawn has found a spell to restore restore Willow, and convinced her sister to perform it. A call to Angel to come and protect Buffy's body left them stranded with Spike. Not having any other choice, they have decided to go through with the spell. The spell seems to have worked, but Spike and Anya were badly hurt during the days of defending Buffy and Willow. They managed to transfer the piece back and restore Willow, but the spell had some unexpected consequences.
Part 8 - Hitchhikers
"Tara?" Willow sobbed.
"Willow, get a grip of yourself. It's Buffy. It's just a residue of the spell, for crying out loud!" Dawn chastized the crushed redhead.
"Dawn, what's wrong with my eyes?" Buffy yelled, panic in her voice.
"What the hell is wrong with my eyes, Dawn?"
"They are green, Buffy. Your eyes are green."
---
"Is she asleep?" Xander asked with a worried tone to his voice.
"Yes, I gave her the sedatives the docs gave us. She was pretty upset"
Buffy sat down between Xander and Dawn. Anya sat in the chair opposing
to them, all of them rather beat. "So what's going on? Do I really have
green eyes?"
"Yeah, they look exactly like Tara's eyes." Anya explained. "It probably hurt Willow to see them and drove her insane."
"An, please. This is serious." Xander tried to stop his former girlfriend from escalating the situation. "Buffy, I think you need to tell them." He coughed. "No, actually I know you need to tell them."
"Alright, gang. Buckle up for the ugly truth." Buffy tried to brighten up the mood. "I didn't just bring back the part of Willow I was looking for."
---
"How many answers are you going to try?" Dawn's voice sounded through the mist. "You can't just guess your way out of this. Just turn around now, while you still can. The time in your realm is ticking away, much faster than here, you know?"
"Buffy!"
"What?" Buffy asked, startled by the different voice.
"I said that you can not guess your way out of this." The guardian repeated with Dawn's voice.
"No, I ..." Buffy paused. "There has to be a way past you. Can't you just tell me if I ask nicely?" She covered.
"No, sis. You can only pass the last guardian if you have a valid reason. I don't know of any, and I wouldn't tell you if I had one."
"Buffy, try to concentrate on my voice!"
---
"So you are saying that I tried to stop you from helping Willow?" Dawn asked, slightly confused and annoyed.
"Oh god, no, not at all Dawnie! As I said, they explained that they were guardians, just 'lending' a form from my world to communicate. I believe each of their choices symbolized what they stood for." Buffy tried to calm her sister down.
"Then why would they chose Dawn? She doesn't really fit in with the likes of Angelus, Warren and that demon." Xander chimed in, just as confused as Dawn.
"Easy, beady eyes. The demon stood for selflessness, Angel, not
Angelus, stood for humility, Warren stood for revenge. And Dawn, you
can relax, you stood for Willow's attack on innocents." Anya explained,
intrigued by Buffy's story and slightly annoyed that no one seemed to
follow it.
"Yes Anya, I think you are right, thats how it felt. Now for all the
other guardians, I could at least justify Willow's actions, but the
Dawn-guardian wouldn't let me pass. I tried dozens of answers, but I
couldn't come up with a way to justify Willow's attack on my own
sister." Buffy looked sad, having to tell some mystical being that it
was 'OK' to attack her little sister was hard enough the first time,
and reliving it wasn't particularily pleasant.
"So how did you pass her? hat answer did you come up with to get through?" Dawn asked, challenge in her voice, reminding Buffy more than ever of the guardian that blocked her path.
"That's just the thing. I didn't." Buffy said. "As I stood there,
realizing that I would not just randomly stumble over the correct
answer, I heard a voice. I think it was Tara's voice."
---
"Tara, is that you? Can you help me?" Just as the initial shock wore
off, Buffy put one and one together. "Are you another stupid guardian?
You have no right to use her form, no right!" A tear ran down Buffy's
cheek. How dare these mystical guardians used the voice of her friend?
Tara had passed away, and it seemed a travesty that they would invoke
her memories.
"Buffy, I am not allowed to tell you how to pass the last guardian. But I can help you. You just have to take my hand." Tara's voice sounded through the thick fog.
"Take your hand how? I can't see you, I can't see anything!"
"You just have to reach out, Buffy. Reach out and take my hand!"
---
"So Tara helped you?" Dawn asked, now understanding Buffy's sadness.
"How?"
"When I reached out, it worked, I could feel her hand in mine. I pulled her closer, and suddenly she was there, right next to me." Buffy swallowed. "And I could feel, I don't know how, but I somehow knew she could get us past the guardian. But there was more. It was like I was reading her mind, but not."
"How can you read someones mind and not? Was it like that time you were infected with demon blood?" Xander tried to follow.
"I could feel her emotions, her love for Willow, her worry about me being there, and her care for all of you." Buffy looked around. "But I couldn't read her mind. I didn't know what she was thinking, I couldn't hear her or anything. Oh god, if I did, I probably wouldn't have continued. But I didn't, and so we walked up to the point where the guardian waited, hand in hand."
---
"There you are again. Have you still not decided to turn around"
'Dawn's' voice sounded bored. "Come to try out some more ideas?"
"No." Buffy said with a firm voice. She didn't know the answer, but she knew that no one could stop her as long as she was with Tara. "I have come to pass."
"So, how will you answer to the accusation that Willow tried to hurt someone completely innocent? How can you justify that?" The guardian issued the same challenge again that Buffy had heard so often now.
"I can't. There is no justification for that." Buffy's voice sounded.
She recognized it as her own voice, but she knew it wasn't her
speaking, it was Tara. "No one could justify hurting an innocent out of
grief. But we aren't someone."
"So who are you, little slayer? Someone who can change the rules of good and evil?" Dawn laughed.
"No. We are someone who loves Willow. And that is our answer. Willow's actions can never be justified." Buffy felt herself being filled with confidence. "But we can forgive Willow."
"Very well. You may pass. You are truely worthy of reaching the
netherworld. You have both the strong understanding of right and wrong,
as well as the love and kindness to forgive the mistakes a human being
is bound to make in its life." And with that, Buffy was at her
destination.
---
"Wow." Anya's face had grown from shock over awe to open admiration.
"So Tara was in the spirit world with Willow. That is a big thing,
Buffy."
"Explain?"
"Well, the spirit world is a place where dead things go that aren't
complete yet. Like, for example, if you are brain dead, but your body
is still alive, then your soul waits in the spirit world. Or if you
die, but have your soul bound to something, then your body waits in the
spirit world for your soul. To have a person wait there for another,
that is truely outstanding. It doesn't happen a lot." Anya fiddled with
her casts. "Tara must have loved Willow more than we realized."
"You are right." Buffy's green eyes looked at the vengeance demon. "I can feel it. I can feel it in a way that I can't even begin to describe. And that's why my eyes are green, I believe."
Xander, who had paced the room during Buffy's story sat down next to her, giving her the comfort she needed. "Since Buffy came back, she could feel Tara inside her head. We believe it's because when Buffy was kicked out of the spirit world, she was still holding on to Tara. Ever since then their thoughts have been affecting each other."
"It's like sometimes, Tara is in the background, and sometimes, she's
in the foreground. I found myself looking at Willow and thinking .
thinking non-straight thoughts." Buffy blushed a little bit. "And I
have heard myself say things that didn't come from me."
"So is she trying to take over?" Dawn asked worriedly.
"Oh god, no, she tries to stay in the background as much as possible.
But it's getting harder and harder for her, I can feel it." Buffy
looked irritated. "I don't know what will happen if she runs out of
strength to stay in the ba..." Mid-sentence, she suddenly slumped
against Xander, her body turning limp.
As everyone rushed towards her, she opened her eyes, now hazel brown again. She looked down on the floor, her hair falling over her eyes.
"I g-guess we k-k-know now."
---
"Tara?" Xander looked at Buffy's body pained. "Oh god, I have so many things to say to you, but first, are you hurting Buffy by being in control?"
"No, she can come back w-w-whenever she wants. She's keeping back right now because she k-knows I c-c-c-couldn't hold it anymore." 'Tara' said softly. Even her voice sounded like Tara. "You can see who's at the h-h-helm by looking at our eyes, they take the color of who is in the background." Her eyes suddenly flashed green again. "And don't you dare make any jokes about butch and femme, no matter who's in control, this body still has slayer strength and is able to hurt you!" Buffy's voice sounded through the room, before the eyes flashed back to brown.
It was eerie to watch when the control changed. The entire body language changed with the eyes, switching from a stiff, controlled pose to a less confident, soft pose. Of course, it was made more obvious because of Tara's behavior to let her hair hang over her eyes and face.
"I shouldn't be here, I forgot to tell Buffy to let go of my hand
before she ..." Tara started and was interrupted by Dawn lunging
towards her, clenching to her chest in a tight embrace. As the teenager
dropped the strong facade she had held up for the past two weeks and
burst into a quiet sob, Tara gently stroke her back and her hair.
"Sssh, ssssh, I missed you too, Dawnie."
Struck deaf by his emotions, Xander moved over to Anya, puttign his arm
around his ex fiancé, avoiding to look at the two crying women.
Spotting a tear on Anya's cheek, he wiped it off with a cushion. "Dust
in your eye, huh?" Before she was able to shoot a cruel response, he
added: "Must be something in this room." Anya had never seen him cry,
but as she looked at him now, she noticed a blink around his eyes that
she had never seen before.
---
In the basement, Spike enjoyed the moment, knowing no one would come down to check on him now. His 'new soul' had made him unexpectedly emotional, and when he first heard that the shy blonde scoobie died, he had to use all of his self control to keep a straight face. He had always liked Tara more than the rest of the scoobies, because unlike them, she didn't treat him with disgust in her eyes. Just like with Joyce, he had little history with her, allowing them to connect on a much more casual behavior instead of the black and white way he was treated by the rest of the scoobies. Hearing what he just heard from upstairs had come to a shock to him.
He tried to focus his mind, he had a lot to think about. What he was about to do would cost him more than he had ever freely given, at least knowingly. What he went through when getting his soul back would seem like a cakewalk compared to it. And he also knew that while he just wanted to leave right now, he could never ever come back if he went through with his plan.
Unconciously he stroke his chest over where he imagined his soul sat,
and sighed. If he was going to do this, he needed an escape plan, so
that he could leave before the scoobies realized what he had done.
He walked up the stairs and into the living room, heavily leaning against the walls and other things to relieve the burden on his still healing legs. When everyone in the livingroom noticed him and looked at him, he swallowed and then said what he came to say.
"I believe I know a way for Tara to get a new body to put her soul into." He had to surpress a smile as he could tell by the hopeful look on everyones face that his plan was going to work out perfectly. Now all he needed was a way to get far out of town and a place to stay once he was done. He knew the slayer would do everything in her power to find him and come after him after what he was about to do.