Ten People (And One Robot) You Meet on Your Way to Heaven (2/3)
Title: Ten People (And One Robot) You Meet on Your Way to Heaven (2/3)
Fandom: Buffy/Angelverse
Spoilers: BtVS Season 5 (w/ 6 & 7 spoilers); Angel Season 1
Rating: PG-13 for minor language and implied violence
Summary: Sometimes Heaven’s not a straight trip
Notes: This is the first in what I’m hoping will be a series of stories dealing with this universe. But, in my wacky writing style, this chapter takes place at the end.
I don’t own these characters. They belong to Joss Whedon, Fox, Warner Brothers, etc etc etc.
Ten People (1/3) / My Fanfiction Page / Ten People (3/3)
The van came to a halt, and Oz and Wesley exited the cab. A few moments later, Oz opened the rear door opened, and Tara, Anya, and Dawn climbed out.
“Well,” said Buffy, following them behind and getting her first look at where they had stopped, “at least some things are the same.”
“Something look familiar?” asked Wesley.
“Yeah,” said Buffy, examining the complex. “This is still Giles’s, right?”
“It is, technically,” said Anya. “But it’s also White Hat Central.”
“White Hats?”
“It’s the name Harris and Rosenberg used,” Oz shrugged. “Kind of stuck.”
This is definitely a different world, Buffy thought as she followed the five into the house, watching Oz as she walked. No way my Daniel Osbourne would ever be so off-hand about Willow.
“Everything alright?”
Buffy jerked herself back to reality to see Oz looking back at her.
“No,” she said. “It’s… well, obviously not everything’s alright. but…”
Oz nodded. “You’re zoning,” he said. “It’s cool.”
At least Giles’s bachelor pad isn’t the only thing that’s the same in this world, she thought as they walked through the door. Oz may be able to talk ill about Willow, but at least he’s still as deadpan about it as he ever was.
As Buffy got her first glimpse of the living room, which looked strangely identical to Giles’s real living room, she saw that they weren’t the only ones in the room as yet another vaguely familiar man jumped up from the couch.
“Hey, you’re back!” he cried out, being very careful to set his glowing laptop down first.
“We’re back,” said Wesley, and Buffy could hear a note of distaste in his voice. Outside she could hear Giles’s van pull up behind their own.
“Did we win?” the boy asked. “Team Victorious?”
“We won,” said Tara with the same tone of discomfort, and as Buffy looked around she saw that Oz, Anya, and Dawn shared the same look.
“How’d she do?” he continued. “She do alright?”
“Kicked a lot of ass,” said Anya. “Just like a Slayer should.”
The boy looked at Anya with blank confusion for a few moments before shaking out with a nervous twitch and looked at Buffy, as if seeing her for the first time.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, right. I’m sure… I’m sure you did great. Go Slayer.” He emitted a nervous laugh and tapped Buffy playfully on the shoulder with his fist. With that laugh, that nervous twitch, Buffy finally recognized the tall, nerdy boy.
“You’re… You’re Warren, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Warren Mears sarcastically. “Me Warren, you Buffy. What’s the matter, Slayer? Get your noggin all knockered?”
“It’s a long story,” said Wesley to Warren. “One which we will explain in good…”
“Whatever,” Warren said, waving Wesley off. “Doesn’t matter. How’d she do?”
“Warren!” came a squeal from outside. The group turned to see the other Dawn run in with a big smile plastered to her face.
“Oh, right,” said Tara with a sigh. “She did fine.”
“Wonderful,” said Warren with a large leering grin that caused Buffy’s skin to crawl. But then things began to click.
“Oh God!” Buffy cried in disgust. “You made a Dawnbot?”
“Yeah?” Warren said, and Buffy wanted nothing more than to punch that shit-eating, holier-than-thou smirk off his face.
“You made a fucking sex toy out of my little sister?”
“Sex toy?” Warren exclaimed as Dawnbot, Robodawn, whatever, sat down on the couch beside his laptop. “Sex toy? No! No more sex toys!”
“You’d better have a damn good explanation for this,” Buffy growled, and both Dawn and Oz grabbed an arm to hold her back.
“Hey, hey, looklooklook,” Warren stumbled. “I only made the one sex bot, okay? Andandand she wasn’t even a sex bot, she was a girlfriend and you know that and you tore her head off and what the hell’s the matter with you, Slayer? You you you were on board with this!”
“As I said earlier,” Wesley grunted, joining Dawn on one of Buffy’s arms while a suddenly appearing Larry joined Oz on the other, “it’s a very long story, Mr. Mears, one which we will explain shortly and good Lord I forgot how strong Slayers can be…”
“You let him make a Dawnbot?” Buffy repeated. “After… after the robot he made for Spike?”
“Spike?” Warren said. “Who’s Spike? Slayer, what the hell are you talking about?”
“It was my idea, alright?” Larry cried, fighting a losing battle. “Buffy, would you just calm down?”
This isn’t your world, her slowly fading rational mind cried out. This isn’t the same Warren that built that perversion for Spike.
“Yeah,” Buffy muttered, pulling herself free from the quartet, “he just made something infinitely worse.”
“Worse?” Warren said, sitting down beside Robodawn. “What are you talking about, Slayer? This is my greatest creation!”
“You’d better have a good explanation for this,” Buffy said, grabbing Larry’s arm. “And someone had better tell me that you don’t let this freak alone with her!”
“Look, Slayer,” Warren said, pulling up the back of Robodawn’s shirt and opening a panel in her back, “I know I’ve explained this to you a dozen times already. But I’ll say it again…”
“She’s androgynous,” Anya interjected. “When we talked Warren into building her for us…”
“Yeah, talked me into it with your fists, more like,” Warren muttered under his breath, connecting a few wires from his laptop into the USB ports on Robodawn’s spine. “Arms up, babe.”
“Okay, Warren,” Robodawn said with the same perky attitude that Buffy recognized from Warren’s previous work.
“…We said it flat out. We needed a face, arms, legs, basic figure. That’s it.”
“See?” said Warren, and Buffy had to restrain herself again as Warren pulled Robodawn’s shirt off over her head. “Nothing to poke.”
But they were right. It had a navel, but otherwise could have just as easily been a Barbie doll or a department store mannequin.
A department store mannequin with realistic skin, but otherwise…
“But… But why?” Buffy asked, and she saw the real Dawn pointedly turn away from the scene. “Why would you make another Dawn?”
“To hide the real one,” said Larry. “Once we found out Dawn was The Key we thought it was the best plan.”
“We found Warren,” Anya continued. “Used our fists. Well, you and Larry did.”
“I helped,” said Doyle, who had appeared behind the others. “It was fun.”
“And he agreed to help us build another Dawn,” said Anya. “We sent it to the junior high in Dawn’s place while the real Dawn stayed here behind as many protection spells as we could muster.”
“You’re kidding,” Buffy said, glancing at the robot as Warren continued to tinker. “That was a convincing stand-in?”
“Okay, can I ask why everyone’s playing Basil Exposition with the Slayer?” Warren asked. “She knows this. She was a part of all of this.”
“It was better before,” said Larry, ignoring Warren. “It was programmed with Dawn’s personality, her mannerisms. Tara even transferred a small fragment of Dawn’s energy to the robot, in case Glory sent an empath demon after her.”
“Didn’t work, obviously,” Buffy muttered.
“Obviously,” said Doyle. “We still haven’t figured out exactly how Glory found out that she was a fake. But she did. And after that we decided that we didn’t need a second Dawn. But we could always use another hand in combat.”
“I reprogrammed her,” said Warren. “Wiped off most of the personality files. Kept simple language programs, plus some basic character traits: Love us, hate Glory, so she could tell the difference about who to punch and who to hug. Then pumped as much combat programming into her as her hard drive would allow.”
“So basically she’s not a Dawn look-alike so much as a cute little pint-sized Terminator,” said Doyle.
“I enjoy shooting things,” said Robodawn.
“She hasn’t shot anything yet,” Tara added quickly.
“The XM134’s my favorite,” it continued happily. “It can fire up to 6,000 rounds a minute without overheating.”
“Okay, then,” Warren said loudly, casting a nervous glance at Buffy. “I think that’s all for tonight. Little Dawnie needs to get her sleep.”
”I hate when he calls it that,” the real Dawn muttered into Buffy’s ear, and Buffy saw that her sister was avoiding even the slightest glance at her clone.
“Come on,” said Warren to the robot, picking up his laptop. “Let’s get you settled, and I’ll head home.”
“Okay, Warren,” said Robodawn, standing up. Still shirtless, the wires still attached from its back to the computer, it followed Warren through the hallway next to Giles’s kitchen.
“He keeps her in the back bedroom,” said Dawn. “The unoccupied one. To recharge. Do you think maybe we could just shut it down completely now that Glory’s dead?”
“I don’t know, Dawnie,” said Tara.
“It gives me the willies…”
A few seconds later it wasn’t Warren who re-emerged from the hallway, but Giles. Buffy took a quick glance back at the closed door before realizing that he must have slipped past while she was arguing with Warren.
“Well,” he said with a sigh, taking off his glasses and cleaning them in a way that gave Buffy a sudden burst of homesickness, “that was difficult.”
“How’s she doing?” asked Larry.
“Fine, fine,” said Giles. “As well as can be expected, at least. When Slayers are called it hits them in different ways. Some get blasted into a coma, while others just feel like they have to sneeze.”
Buffy nodded, remembering when she was called. She had wondered why her body was having a menstrual cycle a week after the last. At least that was until Merrick showed up and told her that she could punch holes in walls and catch knives with her teeth.
“In our case,” Giles continued, “we just left a big puddle of vomit behind.”
“Probably should have avoided that second helping of pancakes this morning, eh?” said Doyle with a chuckle.
“She’s resting comfortably,” said Giles. “We’ll start getting the rest of this straightened out later this afternoon. I’m sorry, Buffy, but I think we would have to agree that a short respite would be in order before we begin figuring out a way to get you home.”
“I understand,” Buffy said quietly. “We ended Glory’s plan on my end, too. I’m sure everyone’s safe. And if they’re not…”
“There’s really nothing we can do in the meantime,” Giles finished it for her.
“Well, I was going to say that they can handle themselves,” Buffy corrected. “They’re strong.”
“Afternoon sounds good,” said Larry with a stretch. “But until then, I need to go back to the dorm. I need to sleep. My brain’s so far from book mode right now it’s not even funny.”
“Oh, everyone’s such a spoilsport,” said Doyle. “We just had our big win! We need to go out and celebrate!”
“I’m up for it,” said Anya. “I need booze badly. Wes?”
“A pint would be lovely,” said Wesley, leaning against the wall. “But my back is finally telling me that I just fought a goddess and her minions. I think I’m just going to go back to my flat and soak.”
“Ah, come on,” said Anya. “Booze’ll numb that pain right out!”
“Please don’t tempt me, Miss Anya,” Wesley sighed.
“Alright, whatever,” said Doyle. “I’ll bring you a pint to drink in the tub. Oz, too, cuz he ain’t legal.”
“Thanks for the offer,” said Oz. “But I’m voting sleep.”
“Me, too,” said Tara.
“What… what about us?” Buffy asked Dawn. “Are we still on Revello?”
“Revello’s gone,” said Dawn. “Is that where we live in…?”
“In my world, yeah,” said Buffy.
“We live in an apartment on the outskirts,” Dawn explained. “You’ve been living there for about a year, and I moved there after Mom died.”
“You’re certainly welcome to stay here, however,” said Giles. “It is quite a drive, and you have been through an awful lot today. Both of you. I have a spare bedroom upstairs.”
“Is… is that okay?” asked Buffy.
“You do it all the time,” said Tara. “Most of us have stayed here at one point or another when we’re researching too late. I can show you where it is.”
“Yeah,” Buffy said reluctantly. “Yeah, that would be great.”
“Excellent,” said Giles. “So, then… Buffy and Dawn will stay here. I should expect the others back here at… oh… five? Six? Then we can begin researching our Buffy situation, any aftermath that we have to handle with Glory, and… well, much research.”
“I’ll bring Thai,” said Larry.
“Wesley,” said Giles as he attempted to leave. “If you could stay for a few minutes I would like to have a word with you.”
“Of course,” Wesley replied.
“See you at home later?” Anya asked Tara.
“Of course,” Tara replied. “Go out, have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Honey, if I did that I wouldn’t be able to do anything,” Anya said with a teasing smirk, and gave Tara a quick kiss before walking out the door with the men.
As Tara turned back to the Summers girls, she noticed Buffy give a quick shake of the head. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot you’re…”
“No, it’s fine,” Buffy said. “Just… Alternate realities, you know?”
“Well,” said Tara with a shy smile that reminded Buffy so much of Willow, “we’ll try to keep it to a minimum for your sake.”
“Make yourselves comfortable,” said Giles, entering the kitchen and filling a kettle with tap water as Wesley seated himself on a stool. “We can come find you when we need you.”
“Come on,” said Tara.
“Part of me wants to ask how you two got together,” Buffy said reluctantly as the three climbed the steps to the upper floor. “But the rest of me wants to avoid that topic at all costs.”
“It’s a long story,” said Tara. “So I won’t bore you with it. If you’re here for a while, I could tell you. Here’s your room.”
Dawn walked right in, like she had been here a million times (and she probably has), but Buffy froze in her tracks.
“What’s wrong?” asked Tara.
“This… this is the room where Miss Calendar died,” said Buffy quietly. “Where Angel… Giles sealed it off years ago.”
“Oh,” said Tara with dawning comprehension. “Miss… Jenny, wasn’t it?”
Buffy nodded.
“I think I know who you’re talking about,” said Dawn. “She was a White Hat years before you even came. But… But she died on patrol. Mr. Giles doesn’t like to talk about her very much.”
“Okay,” Buffy said, her throat suddenly dry.
“Buffy,” Tara continued with concern. “I’m sure Mr. Giles could spread out a blanket for you on the couch if you’re not comfortable. Or Anya and I have a spare bed at our apartment…”
“No,” Buffy said finally. “I should be fine. It’s just… I guess I just need to get used to the idea that this isn’t my place anymore.”
“It’s your place as long as you want it,” said Dawn with a sad smile. “You might not be my Buffy, but you’re a Buffy. I can handle that until the real one comes back.”
“You might have to get comfortable either way,” said Tara. “I’ll be completely honest with you, Buffy: This is going to take a lot of work.”
“Somehow I didn’t know it was going to be simple,” Buffy sighed, sitting down on the bed beside Dawn.
“Dimensional portals are difficult enough on their own,” Tara explained. “They take a lot of magical energy. And that’s after all of the locator spells we’ll have to cast to find your reality.”
“You couldn’t just, I don’t know, go back to the tower?” asked Buffy. “Will and Giles always talked about portals leaving some sort of trace?”
“Normally that would be the smartest option,” said Tara. “Unfortunately, the portal you jumped through was unique. It was the nexus of all realities. It was every portal.”
“Crap,” Buffy groaned.
“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Tara continued. “Because… well… do you know if have the same body as you did on your end?”
Buffy’s brow furrowed. “Whuh?”
“Well, quickest question would be if you’re wearing the same clothing that you were wearing before you jumped.”
“No,” said Buffy, picking at a pair of khaki pants that looked like they came straight out of Riley’s closet. Or went straight into his suitcase before he left.
Not the time…
“That might not mean anything, though,” Dawn said to Tara. “They could have, you know, just swapped bodies.”
“Do you have any distinguishing characteristics?” Tara asked Buffy. “Any unique scars, gashes, things like that, that you would have received at any time after you came to Sunnydale? Something that our Buffy might not have?”
“Probably one, yeah,” said Buffy, pulling down the right shoulder of her… God, was she wearing a military tank top, too? “Bite mark. Vampire.”
Tara and Dawn both leaned in. “Nope,” said Dawn. “Nothing there. God, you were actually bitten?”
Angel, sucking the life from her, being forced to feed so that he could live…
“Once,” she said quietly. “Long story.”
“Okay, so it’s not your body,” Tara sighed. “That makes things harder. Sending a body through a dimensional portal, or bringing a body back, is relatively easy. Switching souls between dimensions, tearing them free from a body and tossing them across… that takes a lot of power.”
Buffy nodded slowly. “I’ll do whatever I can,” she said. “I just want to get back. I need to make sure everyone’s safe.”
“And we’ll do whatever we can to help you,” said Tara, putting a hand on Buffy’s leg. “Not only to get our Buffy back, but… well, you’re still one of us, I guess. Your soul speaks volumes. I want to help you. We want to help you.”
“Thank you,” said Buffy.
Tara nodded, and then cleared her throat. “Anyway, I should probably get going,” she said, standing up and straightening her skirt (Still a skirt-loving girl, Buffy thought with some amusement). “You have a change of clothing in the dresser. Like I said earlier, Giles’s house is sort of the home base for the White Hats. Everyone’s stayed here at some point, and everyone keeps a change of clothing here just in case they sleep over or, you know, get them torn to shreds by a Chirago demon.”
Buffy chuckled. “Wish I had thought of that,” she sighed. “All of the years I had to sneak into my bedroom to hide the bloodstains, I could have just left a spare blouse at Will’s…”
“Bathroom’s across the hall, really nice shower.”
“Thanks,” said Buffy. “For everything.”
Tara shrugged. “It’s nothing. I just hope you’d do it for me if I end up on your side one day. I’ll see you tonight.”
“See you tonight,” Buffy replied as Tara left the room.
“So…” Dawn said. “You want to go first?”
“Are you sure?” asked Buffy. “I can wait…”
“No, you can’t,” said Dawn. “You’ve been brawling. I’ve just been strapped to a big tower. You’re definitely stinkier than I am.”
Buffy smirked and, standing up, walked to the closet and found a terrycloth robe that seemed to be about her size. “That sounds more like my sister.”
“Besides,” said Dawn. “Once I get under the shower I know I’ll wake up. I want to nap. You go. Take your sweet time.”
Buffy nodded but, as she approached the door, paused and turned around. “You’re taking all of this awfully well,” she admitted to Dawn. “Our Dawn would probably be… Well, my Dawn’s a little emotional.”
Dawn just shrugged. “Couldn’t give you a decent response, sorry,” she said. “I just am who I am. Besides, you’re still my sister, even if you’re not exactly my sister.”
“Monks made you out of the same flesh and blood,” Buffy agreed. “I guess if this is an offshoot of my reality, then your Buffy is the same as…”
“Same as?”
“Forget it,” Buffy said with a shake of her head. “All of this stuff is way too deep for me. Right now my brain’s still having trouble with anything beyond fire bad, tree pretty.”
“Lucky you,” said Dawn as she flopped down onto the bed. “I haven’t gotten to the tree part yet. Talk to you in a bit.”
“Yeah,” said Buffy, “talk to you in a bit.”
Buffy closed the door behind her and aimed towards the bathroom.
“How is she dealing with the situation?” Giles’s voice carried up the stairs. Buffy paused and tiptoed her way down the hall to get a better angle.
“As well as anyone can,” said Tara. “I told her what she should expect. She took it within stride. I can tell that she’s just like us, just like our Buffy. She’s been through a lot since she became the Slayer. There’s not much she can’t handle.”
“Excellent,” said Giles with a weary sigh, and Buffy could almost hear him cleaning his glasses.
“I think it helps that she knows all of us,” Tara continued. “I mean, she doesn’t know us know us. But she has versions of all of us in her reality, so it’s not like she’s been tossed in with a group of strangers.”
“God, this is so weird,” Buffy heard the voice of Warren Mears. “This is for real, right? A Buffy from another universe swapped with our Buffy?”
“You’ve only been with us a few months, Mr. Mears,” Buffy heard Wesley say. “After a while you’ll discover an entirely new definition of weird.”
“But that’s what’s happening, right?” Warren continued. “Like Havok in Mutant X?”
“Once again,” she heard Wesley say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s a graphic novel,” Warren explained. “One of the X-Men gets caught in an explosion of a time machine at the same time that a version of him gets killed in another reality. His soul switches to that body, and he leads a team in the alternate reality for a few years before Marvel retconned him back to the 616.”
“It’s like you’re speaking in tongues,” Wesley sighed. “As per usual…”
“But it sounds fairly accurate,” Giles conceded. “From what this Buffy said, she jumped through the portal at the same time as our Buffy did…”
“They were expecting to die,” Tara said quietly. “But this happened instead.”
“So,” Wesley said, “in this… Good Lord, are we actually comparing this situation to a comic book?”
“Graphic novel…” Warren corrected.
“I suppose we are. Oh, well. In this graphic novel, what happened to the soul that the character replaced?”
“Died, I think,” said Warren. “I gave up on the series after Storm turned Gambit into a vampire. But knowing Marvel, they probably brought him back some way or another. Everyone comes back from the dead in graphic novels. Except Bucky.”
“And, once again, you’ve slipped into another language…”
“But it does raise some rather difficult questions,” said Giles. “This entire time, we’ve been thinking that our Buffy has been switched with this Buffy. But how do we know it’s a switch? How do we know that our Buffy even exists anymore, and didn’t simply perish?”
“She has already been replaced,” said Warren. “Proof positive is crashed out in your bedroom, British Man.”
“Or, if she still is alive,” said Tara, “how do we even know that it was a simple two-way switch? Buffy… Buffys… fell through the nexus. Their souls could have been thrown in an infinite number of directions. For all we know, there are dozens, hundreds of Buffys going through the same situation that she’s going through.”
“As difficult as it is for us to accept,” said Wesley, “that isn’t anything we can think about. Right now our primary directive is to deal with the Buffy that we have in front of us. We have to find a way to send her back to her own world. If that brings our Buffy back to us, then so be it. If it doesn’t…”
“We’ll at least have a starting point,” said Giles. “Something from which we can act.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” said Tara. “There’s a possibility that Doyle could get a flash from the Powers. Something related to this…”
“As lovely as that would be,” said Wesley, “right now I’m not willing to stake our hopes on deus ex machina.”
“Maybe she’s supposed to pull a Sam Beckett,” said Warren.
“She’s supposed to write postmodernist drama?” asked Giles.
“Is your television even plugged in?”
“Of course it isn’t…”
“He’s talking about Quantum Leap,” said Tara. “I watched it when I was growing up.”
“Guy leaps from body to body,” Warren explained. “Solving people’s problems. Once he solves it, he leaps to another body, in another time, to solve another problem. Maybe Buffy’s supposed to do something while she’s here.”
“Like what?” asked Wesley.
“Hell, I don’t know,” said Warren defensively. “Save someone from a house fire, reunite Larry with his long-lost diabetic cousin, toss Timmy down a well, fuck if I know. It was just an idea.”
“Not a very likely one,” said Wesley. “But the brainstorming is appreciated.”
“More brainstorming will be to come, I’m afraid,” said Giles, and Buffy heard the couch springs squeak as he stood. “Everyone go home. Get some rest. Clean yourselves up. We’ll reconvene tonight.”
There was another couch squeak, as well as the general rustle of bodies preparing for departure, which was the cue for Buffy that the meeting, and any information she could gather, had come to an end. She sighed in frustration and returned to the bathroom.
Why am I here? she thought aloud as she turned on the hot water and stripped off her clothing.
This Buffy’s definitely a fan of the military surplus store, she thought, tossing aside the olive-green tank before reaching around to unclasp her...
And why am I going commando?
She shook it off quickly as she stepped under the steaming water, pulling her hair out of a tight ponytail.
Solves people’s problems, she heard the voice of Warren Mears echo through her mind. He leaps from body to body, to solve another problem.
Is that why I’m here? she thought.
Or is there more to this ‘Death is your gift’ thing than I thought?
Ten People (1/3) / My Fanfiction Page / Ten People (3/3)