Ten People (And One Robot) You Meet on Your Way to Heaven (3/3)

[kanedax]

Title: Ten People (And One Robot) You Meet on Your Way to Heaven (3/3)
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 (2/3) / Previous Chapters / Sires

Hot showers are magic.

Even when you’ve been in an epic battle against an evil goddess, saving your sister, your friends, and the world in general from hell on earth, before being sucked through a portal and into a mirror version of yourself in a world where half of your friends turned to vampire dust years ago, a big streaming stream of hot water on your head makes you forget about it all.

And when that hot water suddenly runs out, you’re smashed right back into reality.

“Oh shit!” Buffy Summers gasped, nearly tearing off the curtain of Rupert Giles’s shower as she escaped the icicles shooting at her from the showerhead. She grasped blindly for the towel rack, finally finding the warm fluffy towel and wiping the cold water from her arms and legs before wrapping it around herself.

She turned to the mirror and wiped the steam with the palm of her hand, finally allowing herself to look at herself… or… well… the herself that she was inhabiting for the first time.

The first things Buffy noticed were the scars. She didn’t have the bite mark from when Angel fed off her before graduation, that was true. But she had more than enough to make up for its disappearance. The most noticeable scar was on her face, at least an inch long, cutting vertically across her mouth. Another along the tip of her right eyebrow, reminding her vividly of the scar shared by Spike, and a third cutting diagonally across her forehead.

Her shoulders and chest were pockmarked with tiny nicks and gashes, healed quickly from her Slayer power but still leaving more evidence than she had ever received on her side of reality. She untied the towel from around her middle and opened it up to see another large scar running along her breastbone and across, within half an inch of slicing across her left nipple. Yet another puckered line along her abdomen, and she wondered how close her counterpart had come from having her intestines fall out in battle.

Turning around to get a better look at her back, it was more of the same: Slashes. Gouges. What looked like lash marks from a particularly brutal whip. One that may or may not have been made of barbed wire. Buffy decided she really didn’t want to know.

What I went through these last five years, she thought as she grabbed the hairbrush, must have been cake compared to what she went through. What has she been fighting? How many apocalypses has she averted?

Maybe it’s not that simple, another part of her mind retorted. Maybe she’s fought as much as you have. Maybe even less. But she was trained differently than you. She is different than you. More hands-on. Less style, more substance. More necessary to get in when the fight’s getting dirty.

More street.

More instinct.

Like Faith.

Buffy shuddered at the thought that this Buffy could have come out differently than she did. Was that even possible? They were the same person, for God’s sake…

…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?

Buffy, you didn’t have to kill… you could have let Ben go. I don’t think Glory would have come back, and we probably could have attempted some containment spells…

Buffy threw off the towel and grabbed the robe. Tying it around herself, she took one last look in the mirror (OtherBuffy needed to learn a little bit about proper eyeshadow application, but she decided in the end that she’d let it be for now) and returned to Giles’s guest bedroom.

“Sorry about that,” Buffy said quietly as she entered. “Took a little longer, hope I didn’t take all the…”

She clamped her mouth shut quickly as she heard the telltale snore emitting from the queen-size bed.

Same old Dawnie, she thought with a small smile. Same old earth-rumbling snore.

Instead of waking her up, Buffy decided that Dawn could use as much sleep as possible. She closed the door quietly behind her and tiptoed her way across to the large dresser. Pulling it open, she pulled out a decent set of underwear, a red blouse, and a pair of jeans. She dropped the robe and dressed, adjusting her hair before slipping back out of the bedroom and closing the door.

I’m too wide awake anyway, she thought. I’ll catch some z’s in a few hours, but I want to talk to Giles first…

But as Buffy wandered down the stairs she came upon a deserted living room. She heard the faint sound of water running through pipes and splashing against tile from the other bathroom.

Me and Dawnie aren’t the only ones in need of some hot water, she thought with a shrug. So Giles was out for now. And she wasn’t going to be going anywhere as long as Dawn was still here.

And even if you did, where would you go? she thought. What’s there to see? Who is there to see? Everyone’s dead.

She tried to push that thought as far back as she could. Her stomach rumbled slightly, but taking one look at the refrigerator she decided that this Casa Giles wasn’t her Casa Giles, and it would feel a little too much like stealing to slice up his Swiss Colony Beef Log.

She debated sitting on the couch and plugging in his television, but instead decided to wander back into the ground floor hallway. She walked past the closed bathroom door, the one where Giles had chained up Spike last year, and she hoped to God that Giles didn’t walk out in a Hugh Hefner robe.

She heard a series of clicks and beeps at the far end, in the bedroom where Warren Mears had done… whatever it is that people do with robots that need charging. Plugging them in, setting up their solar panel, whatever. Buffy prayed that he had given this group, the White Hats, a decent amount of reasons to trust him. She had only met him once before, but that one time had been enough for her. That leering grin alone…

To think that he had made a robot of Dawnie…

A shudder passed through her body, and she seriously contemplated following through with Dawn’s wish by going into that bedroom and smashing that robot to pieces, but her thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sound of retching coming from the other bedroom, Giles’s bedroom. That sound was followed close behind by something wet and chunky pouring into something metal.

The new Slayer, Buffy thought, her stomach doing a backflip. She hated listening to other people throw up. It only made her want to throw up herself. She checked the doorknob, anyway, and it turned beneath her grip.

“Hello?” she said quietly, poking her head into the bedroom, which was dimly lit, the shades covering the windows blocking most of the afternoon sunlight.

“Buffy?” came a female voice, weary and creaking from the recent regurgitation. Buffy could smell the faint odor of vomit, but it was bearable.

“Can I come in?”

The shape on the bed shuffled slightly, making room on the mattress.

“Yeah,” the girl said. “Sure.”

As Buffy walked in, closing the door behind her, the new Slayer switched on the lamp on Giles’s nightstand.

Buffy had had a lot happen to her in the last few hours. Obviously. Because of that, she hadn’t had an opportunity to actually meet the girl who was her replacement on this side of reality.

Her first thought, seeing the young girl sitting at the head of the bed, her legs crossed, the skin of her face blotchy with tears and sickness, was that she reminded Buffy achingly of Willow Rosenberg. Same short, red hair. Same style of dress, as the girl was wearing jeans patched with different-colored fabrics and a purple and white t-shirt with a Japanese-style cartoon panda dancing across the front. Same overall look on her face, the type of girl that would bring an average guy to think cute or adorable before hot or sexy, but would still knock them dead in the end.

“Wow,” the girl said, the croak in her voice disappearing after taking a sip of water from a glass sitting beside the lamp. “They really weren’t joking. You aren’t our Buffy.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Your hair’s down,” the girl replied. “And you’re wearing my shirt.”

Buffy looked down at the loose-fitting red top she had pulled from the dresser. “Sorry,” she said. “I can go change if…”

“No, it’s fine,” the girl said with a reluctant chuckle. “It looks better on you, anyway.”

“Thanks,” Buffy said with a small smile.

“Don’t mention it,” the girl said. “Our Buffy hates the way I dress. All of us girls, me and Tara and Anya and RoboDawn. She only wears greens and grays and khakis. Her old Watcher taught her that bright colors attract vampires. Your old Watcher, I guess. Merrick?”

“He was my old Watcher,” said Buffy, sitting down on the opposite end of the bed. “But he died before I even moved to Sunnydale. Giles picked me up after that.”

“Mr. Giles is your Watcher?” the girl asked with some surprise.

“Was my Watcher,” said Buffy. “It’s… It’s kind of complicated.”

“When isn’t it?” the girl said. “That’s so weird, though. He’s your Watcher on that side…”

“You mean he’s not my Watcher here?”

“He’s mine,” said the girl. “Mr. Pryce is yours. He and I both showed up at the same time. The Council found me about the same time that your old Watcher died. But I guess they decided they wanted to assign me to the veteran while they gave you the new guy and this is so weird that I’m talking about this with you, I mean, part of me’s saying that you know all of this stuff already but I just know that you’re not her, you don’t feel like her…”

“Take a breath,” said Buffy. “I know what you mean.”

“Am I really a Slayer?” the girl asked suddenly.

Buffy shrugged. “I couldn’t say for sure,” she said. “I haven’t seen you break anything yet.”

“I… I feel like I’m one,” the girl said quietly. “But… But I can’t be…”

“I know how you feel,” said Buffy. “Why me? Why was I the one chosen? I’m still young, I’m not ready, why me?”

“No, I mean, I can’t be because you’re not dead…”

Buffy sighed and shook her head.  “That doesn’t mean anything, either.”

“But Mr. Giles said that it never happened before,” the girl said with a note of panic in her voice. “All of the lessons said that there can only be one.”

“The books can be wrong sometimes…”

“Are we going to have to fight?” the girl said nervously. “Like, you know, fight to the death, ten paces at dawn, this town ain’t big enough for the both of us?”

Buffy snorted laughter. “No, we won’t have to.”

“Good,” the girl replied with a relieved sigh. “Cuz you’d kick my ass.”

“There can be more than one Slayer,” Buffy explained. “Hell, there’ve been two Slayers in my world since I was Chosen.”

“Really?”

“Really,” said Buffy. “The Master killed me, activating a new Slayer. Xander resuscitated me. I came back with all of my powers, but I was knocked out of the loop. I think…”

“So if you die, no one will replace you?” the girl asked.

“You’re my replacement,” Buffy shrugged. “No more Slayers until you… well…”

She could feel the girl tighten beside her, her breath catching.

“Sorry,” Buffy said quickly. “I didn’t mean… I mean, you’re going to do great.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” the girl said quietly. “Right now it just feels like I’m tossing a casino buffet’s worth of food into Mr. Giles’s garbage can.”

“You’ll do fine,” said Buffy.

“I’m just a kid!” the girl cried. “I just turned sixteen last week! I’ve only been training since September, I don’t know any of this stuff, I didn’t even know what a vampire was until Mr. Giles found me, I just thought it was just something you saw in bad Ed Wood movies on WGN at two in the morning, I’m not ready for this!”

“I know,” said Buffy. “I know you’re not ready. You’re never ready. None of us ever are. That’s the shitty thing about being the Slayer. We’re not volunteers. We’re draftees. Fighting until we die, and someone else comes along and picks up the stake behind us and keeps going.”

The girl sniffed, wiping her arm across her nose. “If that was supposed to be consoling it didn’t do very well,” she said dryly.

“It’s not supposed to be,” said Buffy, turning on the bed and crossing her legs so she was facing the young redhead face on for the first time. “It’s the truth. Which can be a hard thing to face sometimes.”

The girl nodded, but remained silent.

“But there’s more to it than that,” said Buffy. “There’s more to being a Slayer than just fighting until you can’t fight anymore. There’s faith. There’s trust. In your friends, in your teachers. You have a lot of people behind you right now, in Giles, and Tara, and Xander, and Willow, and…”

“Who?”

Buffy closed her eyes. “Sorry,” she said quietly. “Got ahead of myself. Just… Giles and Tara and everyone else who we’ll be seeing at the meeting tonight. They’re here for the same reason that you are. They’re here to fight. They’re here to win. They’re here to see evil get knocked down a peg. They’ll be behind you. They’ll be beside you. Don’t forget their strength.”

“But…” the girl stumbled. “But you always said that a Slayer fights alone. We… You’ve always said that in the end it doesn’t matter what we do. You’ve said it so often, you’re in it for yourself, we’re just along for the ride.”

“I’m apparently an idiot,” Buffy interjected. “Do believe in yourself. Do believe in the strength that you have inside you. There’s a lot there, you just have to recognize it. But don’t believe for a second that you’re fighting alone.”

“I won’t,” said the girl.

“Trust in yourself,” Buffy continued. She had never had the opportunity to mentor a Slayer before, and she could feel the words, almost helplessly, pouring from her mouth. “Trust in yourself, trust in your strength, but don’t rely on it. Don’t forget what it means to be human. Don’t think you’re better than the rest of the world…”

Buffy, you didn’t have to kill… You could have let Ben go…

That’s right, better, the words of Faith echoed through her head. People need us to survive. In the balance, nobody’s going to cry over some random bystander who got caught in the crossfire.

“…And don’t forget why you’re here,” Buffy finished. “Don’t forget why our powers exist in the first place, and don’t forget who it is you’re defending. Life is important, so don’t take it unless you mean it.”

The two women sat in silence. The young Slayer, who had turned to face Buffy during her monologue, broke her eye contact and looked off thoughtfully.

“Wow,” she said finally. “That’s… that’s more than I expected to hear.”

“Well, I can’t help it,” Buffy said with a shrug. “Kendra and Faith never wanted to hear lectures.”

“I don’t mind it, believe me,” the girl said with a shake of her head. “Just the thought of going toe-to-toe against a vamp gets my stomach all rumbly. I need as much pep talk as I can get.”

So much like Will, Buffy thought, chuckling sadly.

“Any other words of wisdom, sensei?” the girl asked.

“One more,” said Buffy. “Forget every damn thing I just said, Grasshopper.”

The girl met Buffy’s eyes again, this time with a skeptical arch of the eyebrow.

“I’m serious!” Buffy said, slapping the girl on the knee. “In the end it doesn’t matter what I say, what Giles or Wesley or any of the others say. In the end, you’re the Slayer. You have your own thoughts, your own beliefs, your own strengths and your own weaknesses. Embrace them, and don’t try to be anyone else. Because in the end, there really is only one of us at a time.”

“Well, there’s two of us, though,” said the girl hopefully. “Two Slayers, fighting side-by-side. I’m not going at this alone.”

“I’m not the Slayer anymore,” said Buffy. “I’m out of that loop. Now I’m just a girl with kung fu grip.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” said the girl. “And… and I guess there’s no promise that you’ll be around much longer.”

“No one can guarantee tomorrow,” said Buffy. “But, hey, what did I say? It doesn’t matter if I’m here or not. You have plenty of others with you. You’re not alone.”

“Yeah,” said the girl with a reluctant nod.

“Here endeth the lesson,” said Buffy. “Feeling any better?”

“A little bit,” said the girl.

“Good,” said Buffy. “Because I think we could both use some rest.”

“Definitely,” said the girl. “I’m kinda barfed out, I think. My body’ll let me cooperate. What time is it?”

“About noon,” said Buffy. “Meeting’s in five hours.”

“I can handle five hours,” said the girl.

“Good,” said Buffy, standing up. “Get some rest.”

“Thanks,” said the girl, pulling the bed linens back to climb in. “Sleep well, Buffy.”

“You, too, umm…”

Buffy paused. All of this time, and…

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“You don’t know?” the girl asked.

“Sorry,” Buffy said with an apologetic shrug. “No one’s said it, and…”

“It’s okay,” she replied. “I just figured since you know everyone else…”

“Eerie coincidence, believe me,” said Buffy.

“It’s Violet,” said the girl. “But my friends call me Vi.”

“Violet,” said Buffy, tasting it in her mouth. “I like it. It’s a nice name.”

“Thanks,” said Violet. “But, like I said, my friends call me Vi.”

Buffy smiled. “Good to know I’m your friend, Vi.”

“The old Buffy, our Buffy, never called me that,” said Vi. “But, then again, she’s a tough girl to be friends with.”

“I’ve kinda gotten that impression,” said Buffy.

“Is it wrong to say that I like you more than I like her?”

“I don’t know,” said Buffy. “But I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“Good,” said Vi, breaking a large grin that once again reminded Buffy of a certain redheaded witch. “Gnight, Buffy.”

“Gnight, Vi,” Buffy replied, closing the door behind her as Vi, the new Slayer, began preparing herself for sleep. Buffy heard the shower still running, both on the ground floor and, as she climbed the stairs and returned to the guest bedroom, in the upstairs bathroom.

Dawn’s turn to shower, Buffy thought as she opened the door, and the guess was confirmed by the empty bed, pillow slightly indented where her little sister had been resting her head, but otherwise undisturbed.

Buffy flopped down on top of the sheets, thinking that she should probably find a pair of pajamas as she nodded off.

Her sleep was dreamless. No thoughts of the previous night, the previous week, the previous year.

This was blissful for her.

A hand touched her shoulder after what felt like a few moments.

“Mommy, I don’ wanna go to school,” she pouted.

“Neither do I,” said her sister’s voice. “Shove over, you’re taking up the bed.”

Buffy opened her eyes to see Dawn standing over her, now dressed in a t-shirt and boxer shorts.

“Sorry,” Buffy said thickly. “Sleep happened.”

“No kidding,” said Dawn, yawning as she lay down beside her sister. “I ran out of hot water, and I’m still exhausted.”

“What time is it?”

“One? One thirty?” Dawn said, sounding fairly mumbly herself as sleep started to take over quickly. “Giles never put a clock in here.”

“Okay…”

“They’ll come wake us up when the meeting’s ready to start,” Dawn continued, snuggling up beside Buffy.

“Okay,” Buffy repeated, on the edge of sleep. Despite everything that happened in the past few hours, this was the first thing that felt completely comfortable.

Of course it does, her mind said. Everyone here is different. It’s a Tara and an Oz without Willow. An Anya without Xander. A Wesley without Angel or Cordy, and a Giles without any of them. It’s a Buffy without her friends.

Everyone’s different than they should be.

Except Dawn.

Buffy cracked a small smile. That’s what it all boiled down to. That’s why she and Dawn never felt like they were strangers. The past five years in this world were different than the past five years in hers. Dawn was the only one who she knew before the change. The memories that they had of each other may be manufactured by monks, but that didn’t change the fact that they shared the same memories. Up to the point where Cordelia’s wish changed their fates, her memories of Dawn were the same as OtherBuffy’s memories of Dawn, and her sister’s memories were the same as this sister’s.

They were both born to the same Joyce and Hank Summers. Both raised in the same house in the same Los Angeles. Shared the same arguments, shared the same laughs, the same tears, the same…

Their time on the tower was so sudden. So short. She didn’t have enough time; there was never enough time, to tell her…

“I love you, Dawn,” Buffy whispered, running her hand along the back of her sister’s head. “Don’t forget that, okay? I’ll always love you.”

Dawn lay beside Buffy, her head resting on her shoulder, and for a moment Buffy thought that Dawn had fallen asleep.

“I love you, too,” said Dawn quietly.

Buffy kissed her sister on the top of the head and closed her eyes.

“Thank you,” Dawn whispered.

Buffy didn’t know who fell asleep first. It could have been Dawn, could have been her. But in the end it really didn’t matter.

This time she did dream. She wouldn’t remember the dream later, nor would she remember the time she spent in this universe created by Cordelia Chase and the demon Anyanka.

The time that Buffy would soon spend in a paradise dimension, and the shock that would strike her when she would awake in a coffin, digging herself out of six feet of dirt only to find herself in what felt like Hell. The time she would spend singing her feelings, saving her best friend from destroying the world, and eventually changing the world by making every Potential Slayer, including Vi, into a True Slayer…

Well, after all of that, who could remember a few hours spent with people were somewhat like the ones that she knew? It would be like a dream of a dream.

She wouldn’t remember when her vision was lit with a bright glow.

Or when her mother appeared before her.

It’s time, Buffy.

Mom?

You’ve done well, dear, Joyce Summers said, although her lips never moved. You’ve saved your world, and put others on the path to save theirs. It’s time to receive your gift.

And Buffy Summers took her mother’s hand.

The clock in the corner of Warren Mears’s laptop read 4:30 PM.

Almost time to head back to the Watcher’s house.

Time certainly does fly when you’re having fun, Warren thought as a series of numbers flew across the screen. He was sitting in his mother’s basement, cross-legged on a ratty couch, the laptop resting comfortably on his knees.

Most wouldn’t know what to make of these numbers.

They didn’t know about the data Warren had gathered from Buffy Summers’s fight with his ex-girlfriend.

Or the data RoboDawn collected as she battled the psycho goddess and her minions.

And the data she collected while being used as a sparring partner, both with Buffy and with the new Slayer.

They were all so narrow-minded. The witches and the demons and the Watchers with their books and their swords and their hoodoo. They didn’t understand technology. They didn’t know about the tiny sensors, no larger than a fleck of lint, which Warren Mears had planted on each of them. About every available piece of information that he had gathered on spells, on tactics, on dimensional rifts.

“I can do this,” Warren muttered with a twitch of his lip. “I… I’m like Batman. I know all of the Justice League’s weaknesses. I can… I…”

I could be rich, he thought. Lord knows there have to be demons who are dying to know this stuff. Dying to take out the Slayer.

His eyes widened with shock, and his gaping mouth broke into a gigantic grin.

“I could do it myself,” Warren Mears said in an awed voice. “I have the tools. I have the talent.”

He closed his laptop.

“I could be a supervillain.”

Dawn Summers’s eyes were dry when Rupert Giles entered the guest bedroom just before five.

She was still laying beside her sister, but sat up when Giles entered.

“Dawn?” Giles asked in response to the grave look on her face.

Dawn had had a feeling that it was coming. She knew that it wouldn’t last forever. She knew that this Buffy wasn’t her Buffy, and she also knew that it wasn’t a certain chance that they’d get their Buffy back.

As Giles approached the bed, looking down on Buffy’s closed eyes, the satisfied smile on her face, Dawn thought back to that morning. Sunrise on the tower. Dawn strapped to the end of the platform, her blood dripping down into nothing and everything. Oz standing at the staircase, holding his arm. Her sister between them, fighting that creepy old man that had cut her earlier, starting this whole mess.

Watching Buffy swing her sword, slicing the old man in half.

Watching her lose her balance. Watching her fall off the edge, and through the portal.

Watching the body land limp on the ground below.

And, as Oz cut her free from her restraints, knowing in her heart that she would never be able to tell Buffy goodbye.

“She’s gone,” Dawn said quietly, thanking God for the afternoon that she had spent with her sister. Thanking God that she had been able to tell Buffy that she loved her, and that Buffy, for the first time since she had left her family all those years ago, had been able to say it back.

Knowing that her sister was in a better place. And happy.

And that she, Dawn Summers, would now, finally, be able to live.

---------------------

Wait, didn't Buffy die in The Wish?

How did Anya and Tara end up together? And what’s Doyle doing in Sunnydale?

What about Mayor Wilkins? Riley Finn, Adam, the Initiative? Wolfram & Hart?

Just how far do the ripples of Cordelia Chase’s Wish stretch, anyway?

Welcome to Portal.

Ten People (2/3) / Previous Chapters / Sires