"It's not working," Willow sighs, her eyes glassy with worry, strips of skin peeling from her almost bleeding lips after being repeatedly savaged by her teeth. Beside her Buffy uncrosses her arms, ineffectually waving a hand through the smoke gently curling off the stick of lightly smoldering herbs Willow holds loosely in her hand.
Well, that's not the bippity-boppity can-do attitude I was hoping for, she says, digging her metaphorical nails hard into the panic that's threatening to slip loose. It's been an hour of watching them light stuff and waft stuff and chant stuff, and still no miraculous bippity-bodily reattachment. She sighs bitterly.
Giles snaps the magic book in his hands closed with a huff.
"I can't understand why," he mutters, staring down at Buffy's body in dejection.
"Do you think the spell worked?" Willow asks. "The Tirer la Couverture?"
Something worked, Buffy mumbles to herself, petulantly kicking her ghostly feet.
"I've no idea." Giles reopens the book, flicking through pages as though they might suddenly hold the answers they'd previously been hiding from him.
"What was supposed to happen?" Joyce asks from the chair she's watching from, Dawn in her lap like an enormous toddler. "With the… terrier la whatever you said?"
"Performed correctly, it was simply supposed to reveal any spells currently active around the caster," Giles answers, raising his glasses to rub a knuckle into his eyes. "There's nothing within the bounds of the spell that should have caused this kind of a reaction."
"It's definitely the spell causing it?" Dawn asks quietly, her voice wet with tears and thin, concern clogging her throat.
Buffy casts a glance back at her, evaluating her sister as she sits up straighter, leaning forward to get a better look at the herb stick Willow is still painting sigils in the air with.
Buffy bites her lip.
Dawn's still flickering in and out every so often. There one minute, gone the next, leaving her mother's arms looped around nothing. Like static reception on a TV screen, it's hard to look at her for too long.
Maybe a good thump would knock that off? Buffy thinks to herself with a smirk, gallows humor taking the edge of the dread that's saturating the air of the hospital room.
"It's not like a…. a… medical type thing?" Dawn persists. "What if it's just a coma-coma? A real one?"
The room grows uncomfortably silent.
Well, me and my ghostly form are casting one vote for "not a medical type thing", Buffy answers.
"And what's the longest coma ever?" Dawn carries on as the room deepens in apprehension, her voice becoming frantic.
Years, right? Buffy answers with a sigh that despite her best efforts is ever so slightly tinged with panic.
…Faith was out eight months. Eight months!
Maybe she's got some handy being-in-a-coma tips? Maximize your astral plane. Pop yourself back into your body in these three easy steps…
"And… and h-how long before your brain goes all mush and—" Dawn continued, tears shining in her eyes.
"Dawn," Willow interrupts, shaking her head hard as Joyce visibly turns a sick white. "It's going to be okay. The spell went kerflooey, that's all. We'll… we'll un-flooey it, don't worry."
"I'll consult the books again," Giles says, wiping his glasses with his handkerchief. "There's surely something more substantial in some of the historical documentation regarding revelation spells. Something to work off of. General reversal spells aren't accomplishing anything, we have to start being more precise."
"Right." Willow nods and drops the burning stick of herbs into a basin of water. It hisses briefly, obscuring the sound of the room's door unlatching.
"Here for the long stay, aren't ya?"
Heads turn.
Buffy's mouth goes metaphorically dry. Mr Peters—the bedridden patient from down the hall—stands in the doorway, a shabby robe slung over his hospital gown as he stands with obvious instability, his hands gripping a chrome walker with white knuckles.
"Excuse me, this is a private room," Giles says, his stance rigid. Mr Peters ignores him, staring directly at Buffy with milky cataract-ridden eyes.
You can see me? she asks.
"It's not about what I can see," he replies in a harsh growl. "It's what you can see."
What I can see? Buffy repeats, stepping closer to Mr Peters. His half-blind eyes follow her.
"Mom," Dawn whimpers, shrinking further into her mother in fear.
"It's alright, baby," Joyce whispers back, holding her tighter. "He's just confused."
"There's something here," Mr Peters warns, his graveled voice becoming reedy as he breathes hard from the effort of standing. "Something big. Something wrong."
What? Buffy asks, the hairs prickling up on her skin. Tell me what.
"Willow, press the call button for the nurse," Giles commands and Willow scurries to hit the big red button by the bed. "We'll get you some help, sir."
"You'll know it when you see it," Mr Peters answers just as Nurse Hannah bustles into the room.
"Oh dear, what are you doing out of your room, Mr Peters?" She takes his arm and he almost collapses against her, panting and shaking as though the meager distance to Buffy's room was a marathon, and he'd only just managed to cross the finish line. "I'm so sorry, folks, he's a little disorientated today. He hasn't been out of his bed in weeks. Kind of a miracle really."
Wait, Buffy calls after him, moving to follow but she's snapped back to Giles' side as his hand clasps her body's limp one. WAIT!
She huffs in frustration as Mr Peters is led away, his shuffling gait inching down the hall in infuriating slowness.
Here for the long stay, she repeats, lips tight with repressed trembles as misery washes through her like a wave, absorbing the abundance of dread out of the air.
Great.