Title: From Here to Serenity
Author: Bastard Snow
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Buffy's fall through Glory's portal took her somewhere nobody had ever imagined. Now, it's up to Willow and Xander to get her back.
Disclaimer: I don't own either of these.
Author's Notes: Much, much thanks to Drake, without whom this story would not exist. Also, obviously, thanks to Joss Whedon for coming up with two universes that have nothing to do with each other. Makes it a challenge to make them have everything to do with each other.
Feedback: Yes, please!
"Xander, there's something banging and it isn't stopping."
Xander roused himself from his slumber. Sure enough, there was somebody knocking at the door.
"Go see what it is?" Anya asked.
Xander smiled. He remembered a time when that wouldn't have been a question. Xander slid out of bed, only to have Anya pull the covers tightly around her naked body. He pulled on his sweatpants before padding out of the bedroom barefoot, shutting the door behind him..
He opened the front door and found Willow, drenched to the bone and looking lost.
"Will?" Xander stepped back from the door in an unspoken invite. As always, he breathed a small sigh of relief when she entered. Xander headed for the bathroom. "Let me get you a towel."
Thunder boomed outside.
When he returned, Willow was pacing back and forth. He wrapped the towel around her shoulders, thankful for something that would cover her chest, so he wasn't tempted to stare at it. Her shirt was very wet. Xander flicked on some lights.
"Here, sit down," he said, guiding her to the couch. "What's going on?"
Willow looked straight into his eyes. "I found her."
Xander felt his eyes widen, and he was struck speechless.
Anya opened the bedroom door. "Xander?" She still had the comforter wrapped around herself. "Who is it?"
Xander and Willow looked up at her as one, and then back at each other.
"Oh, it's you. Can't you wait until the morning?"
"Ahn, honey," Xander said, not taking his eyes from Willow's. "You should put some clothes on."
Anya scowled. "Do I have to?" She sounded very disappointed.
Xander turned away from Willow and looked up at his fiancée.
"She found Buffy," he said. Anya looked down and saw his face.
She nodded. "I'll be out in a minute."
Xander watched her retreat back into the bedroom, then stared at his best friend for a few moments. He shook his head to clear his mind. "How?"
Willow glanced down at the floor. "Dawn," she said.
"Dawn? What do you mean?"
Anya walked out of the bedroom wearing a pair of Xander's boxers and a long t-shirt. She sat next to him on the couch. The rain outside the apartment grew heavier.
"Dawn," Willow said. "She knew we were looking for her, and she wanted to help. So, of course she can help. But I just had her looking things up, you know? No actual spellwork."
Anya nodded, knowingly. "Dawn can be quite resourceful."
"Right." Willow shivered a little and pulled the towel more tightly around her shoulders. "She showed me an entry she found in one of the books I had thought wasn't going to be helpful. It was about dimensional barriers. Then she showed me another entry, about magical connections between family members."
"You mean Argula's Third," Anya said.
"Right," said Willow. "Which, it just didn't occur to me in this situation."
Anya shook her head. "No reason it should, it's generally used to aid a loved one in finding their path in life. Like a job, or a pursuit of love, or the occasional hostile takeover. I don't see how it could be applied here."
"I know," said Willow.
"Glad somebody does," said Xander. "You guys lost me about a mile back."
"Argula's Third is the third in a series of really useful spells created by this guy back in the 10th century," said Willow.
Anya agreed. "It's actually what convinced William the Conqueror to invade England."
Willow looked very interested. "I didn't know that."
"It was very exciting," said Anya. "The Battle of Hastings gave me some very interesting ideas on pain, and suffering. Revolutionized the entire field. Argula's greatest legacy was the last successful invasion of England. Well, military invasion. McDonald's has done a pretty good job."
Willow shot Anya a terse smile and continued. "Anyway, I read the text of the spell, and the truth is that it can work. It says to help a loved one find their path, but it doesn't specify what kind of path. It can show us how to get her home."
"I thought there were prohibitions –" Anya started.
Willow shook her head. "Warnings. Not prohibitions. I can work around them."
"Wait," Xander interjected, "but, for Buffy to find her path, for the spell to work, wouldn't she need to be here? For us to tell her?"
Willow smiled and again shook her head. "That's what's great about the spell. The person it's being used for doesn't need to be present."
"But how –"
"Because it's a spell of personal responsibility," Anya said. "Advisors, who were often cousins of royalty, used it all the time, like with William the Conqueror. You think the French actually knew something about war? No, his advisors cast the spell, and then told him what to do. It would, I assume, work the same way here."
"Yeah," Willow said. "It basically gives me visions of what Buffy's supposed to do, and then it's my job to tell her."
"What if you don't?" Xander asked.
"If you don't, then nothing," Willow said. "Then you don't tell the person. They might not find their path."
"That's not entirely accurate," Anya said. "The spell balances by causing some fairly serious erratic behavior immediately, for about a day. Later, if the person doesn't deliver the message, there's a strong feeling of something left undone, and even some pretty heavy guilt. It goes away after a while."
"I didn't know that, either," Willow said, frowning. "How long of a while?"
Anya shrugged. "A couple weeks." Lightning tore across the sky, illuminating the night. Anya loved thunderstorms "Wow! You'd have to be crazy to be out in that."
Xander looked out at the thunderstorm, frowned, and looked at Willow's still-drenched form. "Yeah," he muttered, connecting some dots in his mind. "Crazy. Or, uh... Hey Willow?"
Willow leaned forward and kissed Anya on the lips. Anya pulled back in surprise as more lightning lit up the sky. The lights went out as the electricity failed.
Xander sighed and his shoulders sagged. "You didn't happen to already do the spell did you?"
He couldn't see it, but Xander knew she was grinning at him, innocent as could be.
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"Let me get this straight," Giles said, pinching the bridge of his nose. The entire gang, including Spike, gathered at the Magic Box to discuss Willow's findings. "You cast the spell, and found Buffy on Earth in another dimension?"
"Uh huh," Willow said. "It's more technologically advanced than this one. I can't tell by how much."
"Are we talking cars that fly?" Xander asked, doing his best to ignore the spectacle.
"And weird looking guns," said Willow. "And something that looked like a space station."
"Don't we already have one of those?" Xander asked.
"Yes, but this one seems to have constant service from the surface. And it's big."
"And how," Giles asked, "does this translate to you residing on my ceiling?"
Willow grimaced. "I can't help it?"
"It's Argula's Third," Anya said.
"Ah," Giles said. "Leaving out, for the moment, the question of how that particular spell would help, one would assume, then, that Willow did not know of the dangers inherent?"
"Nope," said Anya.
"You should've seen us trying to get her over here," said Xander. "It was a scene."
"When did she cast the spell?" Giles asked, looking to Tara.
"Hey, I'm right here, you know," Willow said indignantly. From the ceiling.
"I'm choosing to ignore that fact," said Giles.
"It w-was yesterday," Tara said. "Around nine?"
"In the evening?"
Tara nodded. Giles looked at his watch and sighed. "Another ten hours until it wears off."
"What does this all have to do with finding Buffy?" Spike asked.
Willow floated down from the ceiling. "Well, I can go into the specifics later, but basically the spell didn't just do what everyone thought it did. There was a subtlety in the wording that allows for different use."
Spike crossed his arms. "But you know where she is. How does that get her to us?"
"It doesn't," Willow said, smoothing her hair out, and taking a seat next to Tara. "But it's the first step. What we need to do is open a portal to that Earth, and then find Buffy."
"And that's where I come in," added Dawn. "Or, my blood."
"Will Dawn be in any danger?" Giles asked.
Willow shrugged. "I don't know. Which is why we haven't gone ahead. I… it's pretty clear I need to do more research."
"Quite," said Giles. "But this is promising. It is a lead."
"That means books," said Xander. He stood and climbed the ladder to the magical texts.
"Yes," Giles said. "Books. The Imperium Codex. The Diary of Ovid. Whisten's Treatise on Naturally Occurring Thaumatic Intervals. The Journals of Tolzar."
"What volumes?" Xander called down.
"All of them," said Giles. "Also Lazenby's Directives."
Xander grunted. He brought down an armful of books, then went back up the ladder for more. There were twenty-three tomes in all.
"Geez," said Dawn. "That Tolzar guy sure had a lot of journals."
Xander surveyed the load. "This is going to take a while."
Everybody picked a book and started reading.
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The Scoobies researched for two solid weeks, during which time Willow became less and less helpful. The guilt the spell laid on her kept her in varying states of disarray and inconsolability.
The twenty-three volumes the group started with turned out to be just that – a start. Late one night, when the research session had migrated to the Summers home (they had unconsciously stopped calling it Buffy's house), and Willow's guilt had begun to fade, Giles found what they were looking for. It was a method of opening portals to specific dimensions.
All they needed was a catalyst. Something that could open holes in the fabric of reality. It wasn't, Giles said, something you just found lying around everyday.
"Well," said Willow. "That kind of depends on how you look at things."
"I don't follow," Giles said.
Willow looked at the ceiling. Giles followed her eyes, and her meaning occurred to him.
"Of course," he said. "But can we –"
"It's Buffy," Willow said. "Dawn's been nothing but eager to help."
"Yes, but helping never involved donating blood," said Giles.
Willow shrugged. "She was willing for Argula's Third. This won't take much more than that."
Giles nodded. "Yes, of course. I imagine she'll be… most eager. We should gather everyone first thing in the morning, and explain to them what has to happen. Decide things like –"
"Who's going to go?" Willow asked.
"Precisely," Giles said.
"Okay," Willow said. "Can you get home okay?" She and Tara had moved into the Summers' home to live with Dawn for a while.
Giles smiled at the young woman. "I'll be fine," he assured her. Giles left and drove home, feeling good about the morning.
When morning eventually came, Willow and Giles gathered the whole Scooby gang at the Magic Box and laid out their findings. Everybody was very pleased, but not quite sure how to react.
"So," Xander said, "what does this mean? We open up a portal on that Earth and just kind of hope Buffy jumps through it? 'Hey, there's a portal, let's see where it goes?'"
"It's not very likely," Anya said.
"Our, um, intention," Giles said, "is to locate Buffy, open the portal near her and… well, and send someone through to get her."
"If it doesn't take more than a few minutes, I can hold the portal open," Willow said. "Or, well, I'm pretty sure I can."
"However, in the event that it takes longer, we can have a pre-scheduled time to re-open the portal. That way, whomever goes through can be there waiting, and just bring Buffy back," Giles said.
"Two problems," Xander said. "How do we know time runs at the same speed there?"
"Why wouldn't it?" Spike asked.
"Buffy once traveled to a hell dimension where a hundred years passed there during one day here," said Dawn.
"Sounds like fun," Spike muttered.
"So?" Anya asked. "How do we know that?"
Giles and Willow looked at each other. "Well," Giles said. "I suppose we don't."
"Okay," Xander said. "And my second problem, who's going through?"
"That was one of the things we were going to talk about," said Willow. They all looked at each other for a few seconds, each cataloguing the others' strengths and weaknesses
"Me," Xander said after a minute.
"Xander, no!" Anya said.
"Ahn, it makes sense," he said.
"Oh, and why, exactly, is that?" she asked.
"Well… a couple of things. I'm uh… I'm pretty good thinking on my feet," he said. "Not, you know… not the best, but not bad. Also, I can hold my own in a fight. Not, you know, like against a demon, but pretty good. We need everyone else to protect the Hellmouth."
Anya frowned. She wanted to argue his points, but found it difficult. Willow and Giles were needed on the Hellmouth, especially since Buffy was gone. Tara, while a lovely girl, had virtually no chance of interacting with strange, new people in a confident and forthright manner. And Anya, who had no actual intention of volunteering, wouldn't be able to care for herself as well in a fight, if the situation came to that, as Xander would.
Spike, of course, was liable to burst into flame if he stepped onto another planet. There was no telling what time of day the portal might open onto.
"Also," Xander added, "I've read way more sci-fi."
"Oh, and how does that matter?" Anya asked indignantly.
"Adaptation," Giles said. "It is likely that, with more… familiarity with technology similar to that which he will see, Xander would integrate into a more technologically advanced society better than any of us."
Anya frowned. "I hate logic."
"It is my enemy also." Xander rubbed the small of Anya's back. "But it sometimes comes in handy."
"And anyway," Willow said, "it shouldn't be for more than a few minutes. And if it is more than that, not more than a day at the most. And if I do the spell right, he'll be with Buffy the whole time, so it's not like he'll be in danger."
"Unless Buffy's in danger, which she has this habit of being," Anya sighed. "But you're right. Xander is the best person to go. That doesn't mean I have to like it."
Xander pulled Anya towards him and kissed the top of her head. "Thank you, baby."
Spike clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "All right then. Let's get this show on the road."
Willow nodded, and handed a list of ingredients to Tara, who started gathering them from around the store, and turned back to the group. She looked at their youngest member and smiled. "Dawn," she said, "we need some of your blood."
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End Chapter 3