It was another night in the Summers’ house and Spike was slouched on the sofa beside Dawn. She was nibbling on her pizza while telling him about the adventures of Buffy Bot at the Back-to-School Parent’s Meeting. The teachers had apparently liked the bot, logical thing that it was.
“Makes sense, they responded to the bot because a robot is predictable, boring, perfect teacher’s pet. That’s all schools are, you know, just factories spewing out mindless little automatons…”
Dawn raised an eyebrow at him, as if to ask if he knew what he was saying.
He realized this wasn’t the best conversation to be having with the Bit, so he covered with, “Who go onto be very valuable productive members of society, so you should go. Buffy would want you to go.”
“Check! One mindless automaton coming up!” Dawn retorted with a sigh.
“So where is the bot?” Spiked asked, looking around. The thing unnerved him. He couldn’t stand to be around it, what had he ever been thinking having Warren build it? How could the bot ever begin to compare to Buffy? His actions made him sick and it physically hurt to be around the thing.
“Willow has her charging upstairs,” Dawn said, throwing her crust back into the pizza box, “she says she needs to work on the programing again.”
Spike nodded and walked over to the desk to fetch the deck of cards, “So what’ll it be today? Rummy?”
“Willow and Tara said it was going to be an early night, so you don’t have to stay. I’m fine on my own. I’m not even the key anymore, or even if I am I don’t open anything anymore. It’s over, remember?”
“I’m not leaving you here by yourself. So forget it.”
“I’m just saying-”
Spike slammed the deck of cards down hard onto the coffee table, silencing Dawn, “No! I’m not leaving you to get hurt. Not again.”
Not like last time. Not like when I got your sister killed.
*
Willow turned the Urn of Osiris over in her hands, “Wow.”
“I found it on eBay!” Anya said excitedly and she recounted how she found it. Willow held it, feeling sick and excited all at the same time. She felt alive with power.
“It’s the one. It’s time.”
Xander spoke up, “Are you sure?”
“I am. Tomorrow night, we’ll meet back here,” Willow told the group. Xander and Anya exchanged looks and started babbling about waiting and the time not being right. She didn’t have time to deal with this.
“It’s time we stopped talking. Tomorrow night we’re bringing Buffy back,” she paused and looked up at her best friend, “Guys I need you on board now.”
“It just feels wrong,” Xander said walking over to Willow.
Tara piped up, “It is wrong. It goes against all of the rules of nature and it’s practically impossible to do, but it’s what we agreed to. If you guys are changing your minds-”
“No one is changing their minds, period. I can do this, I promise but not without you,” Willow said. She needed them to be a part of the circle, she wasn’t strong enough to hold the power on her own, otherwise...
“Should we maybe tell Giles?” Anya asked, “It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”
“No, one else can know. Not Giles, not Spike, not Dawn. They might not understand.”
“What if something does go wrong?” Tara asked.
Frustrated, Willow said, “I’m telling you it won’t. Buffy didn’t die a natural death, she was killed by mystical energy.” Why wouldn’t they just listen to her?
“Which is why we have a shot,” Tara said, looking at Xander and Anya.
“It means more than that, it means we don’t know where she really is.”
“We saw her body, Will. We buried it,” Xander said and Anya rubbed his back, comforting her boyfriend.
“Her body, yeah, but her soul? Her essence? That could be somewhere else. She could be trapped in some hell dimensions like Angel was! Suffering eternal torment because she saved us and I’m not going to leave her there! It’s Buffy.”
That was it, that was all it took. Xander looked up at her, “What time do we meet?”
*
It has been nearly two months since Wesley had arrived in the states, and yet the slim girl remained in the coma as she had for the past four years. If being called as the new slayer hadn’t woken her, Wesley wondered if anything would. Perhaps Giles would find something to help, though he was starting to have doubts. It was probably for the best.
Wesley tried to imagine waking up and being told… Eleanor would have a hard enough time coming to grips to with what had happened to her and her mother, let alone the added pressure of being told you were the slayer. It would be too much for anyone to handle, especially someone who had gone to sleep a 13 year old and woken up as 17.
Childhood had slipped by while she slept and being called as the new slayer would keep her from reclaiming that.
Picking up Pride and Prejudice off the side table, Wesley took one of Eleanor’s hands and began to read again. He hadn’t gotten very far when he felt it, the grasp that he had thought he felt days ago. Elation bubbled up inside of him and he stood quickly, the book falling forgotten on the floor.
“Nurse! Nurse!” Wesley yelled, and moved to yell down the hall, but he couldn’t. The grasp on his hand tightened and wouldn’t let go. She was squeezing his hand! He yelled again, monitors going haywire in the background.
A nurse rushed into the room, two others following right behind her, “Sir, please step away.”
Wesley tried, once again, to detach from the girl, but she held tight.
*
Giles watched Anya’s retreating back. He was in the back of the Magic Box training with the Buffy Bot, not that it was getting much of a workout, but he sure was, working with a machine that never got tired, never needed to breath…
“Perhaps Anya is right, I am trying to teach you as if you were a-”
“Human?” the Buffy Bot supplied helpfully.
“Yes,” Giles said and walked over to the water bottles.
“I like your teachings. Every slayer needs her Watcher,” it recited.
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I just can’t help but wonder if she would have been better off without me,” Giles said.
“I don’t think that’s true. You were very helpful to her,” the Buffy Bot said.
Giles laughed disparagingly, “Right, I was a perfect Watcher. I did what any good Watcher would do. I got my slayer killed in the line of duty.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” the bot argued.
“Of course not, that’s just how all slayer/watcher relationships end. She’s gone. I did my job.”
“Then why are you still here?”
Why indeed. He would slip the note under the cash register where Anya would find it, hopefully when he was long gone. He wasn’t needed here and the last thing he wanted to do was get another one of these children hurt.
*
The group was circled around Buffy’s grave. It was nearly midnight and Anya was lighting the candles. Willow poured the milk of the mother unto the Urn of Osiris. This would work, it had to work. They needed Buffy, the group couldn’t keep the Hellmouth safe forever, and no matter how much she tinkered with the programing the Buffy Bot just wasn’t good enough.
“Osiris, keeper of the gate. Master of the fate, hear us,” she said and spread the blood onto her forehead and cheeks, “Before time and after. Before knowing and nothing. Accept our offering. Know our prayer.”
Willow could feel the beginning tendrils of magic flow through her. Strength and power. It grabbed her and she could feel lacerations form on her forearms. Magic curled through her, filling up all the empty spaces, she had never felt so full, so complete. She could smell and hear everything for miles. Xander and Tara were talking, but she didn’t focus on them, they didn’t matter, they weren’t important.
“Osiris, here lies the warrior of the people, let her cross over,” she continued and something else, something darker, crawled through her, leaving trails of its essence behind. She coughed, gagged, then fell on her hands and knees as something slithered up her throat. A snake tumbled out of her mouth and onto the grave.
The power lifted her higher and higher, reached a crescendo and then… nothing, the magic just fizzled out.
“No!” Willow screamed as the energy began to dissipate. Her body shook from effort, she had been full of power and magic and then nothing. Nothing. There was nothing to pull into Buffy’s body. Osiris couldn’t reach her, wherever she was. Buffy was gone.
“She’s not there,” she whispered, “She’s not where she’s supposed to be.”
*
Wesley knew it was late in England, but the news is too big not to share immediately. It was Kensington who answered the phone, but he was transferred to Travers instantly.
“What?”
“She’s awake,” Wesley said in a rush, excited.
There was a moment of silence, and then Travers said, “Bring the girl to headquarters as soon as possible. I’ll have a passport created for her.”
“Of course, sir! I’ll-” he stopped when he heard the dial tone.
*
Wesley walked from the payphone back to Eleanor’s room. Nurses were flitting in and out as the girl lay, almost boneless on the bed. He stood back and watched them work, measuring her blood pressure, breathing, heart rate. The girl must have felt like a pincushion with all the blood they had taken.
He heard a nurse whisper miracle. Internally, Wesley wondered. He believed in a higher power and he felt as this was just the beginning. Of what, he wasn’t sure, but the feeling was there, clear and strong.
His eyes moved over the slayer, when he reached her face, he noticed that she was staring at him. Calm steel gray eyes caught his and then the girl smiled, her lips turning up just a hint, before she closed her eyes.
The doctor he had spoken to ages ago, Dr. Rice, Wesley thought, stepped in front of him, obscuring his view, “We’ll give you some time with your niece in a moment, but then I’ll have to ask you to not stay long. As you can imagine, there are a lot of tests we’d like to do, and we will also be moving Eleanor into another room.”
“Of course,” Wesley said with a nod.
“But preliminary tests look good, great even. I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”
“Eleanor is something special.”
It wasn’t too much longer before they left Wesley and the girl alone. Away from prying eyes and ears he took his normal seat beside her and one of her hands in his.
“It’s nice to see you awake, Eleanor.”
“Wes,” she said, her voice hoarse.
Her words surprised him, she knew his name? But his mind caught up quickly, a nurse must have said something to the girl.
He nodded and wondered what she had heard or been told by the nurses. His ruse that he was family could easily collapse if Eleanor called him an imposter. How likely would it be that she would have an uncle that she didn’t know?
“I’m your Uncle Wesley. Do you know what’s happening?”
Eleanor tilted her shoulders upward in a gesture of maybe and then croaked out, “Slayer.”
Wesley’s eyes shot up, “How?” That was not something she would have overheard from one of the nurses. Had she heard him one of the times when he spoke to her? The girl gave him a small smile.
With a squeeze of her hand, Wesley spoke, “We will leave for England once you are well enough to travel.” She nodded again. He wanted to ask so many questions, but with Eleanor barely able to speak, it would have to wait.
He cleared his throat, “I’ve been reading to you, we are about halfway through Pride and Prejudice, would you like me to read to you? I can’t stay long, but I’m here until they kick me out.” With a nod of agreement from Eleanor, Wesley began, her hand still held tightly in his. She was not his niece, not really, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like she was his. His niece, his slayer, his.
*
Wesley’s voice washed over her, it was calm and steady. She closed her eyes and he stopped, so she gave his hand a little squeeze, reassuring him that she was still listening.
He continued on then and it gave her time to think, and she had a lot to think about.
She had a lot in her mind, two lives worth of thoughts, dreams, experiences, memories... Eleanor’s memories, and Buffy’s memories. It was odd though, there were no feelings, no emotions attached to either set of memories. She could recall, in great detail, the lives of both girls, but it was empty and disconnected, like she had watched both lives on a television.
Buffy was dead and Eleanor had been in a deadly car crash. Buffy’s and Eleanor’s mothers were both dead. Both had practically non-existent fathers, she had no clear memories of Eleanor’s father, aside from seeing him once, when she was very, very young and her mother had never talked about him, wouldn’t even tell Eleanor his name.
Everyone kept calling her Eleanor, but she didn’t feel like Eleanor, but she didn’t exactly feel like Buffy either. This was Eleanor’s body though, of that she was sure. But… If she was neither girl, was she someone new? Was she born the moment she awoke? The moment of Eleanor’s crash? The moment Buffy died?
And Dawn… something seized in her chest, what had happened to Dawn? And Glory? Well, the world was obviously still here, so the apocalypse had been averted, but… she would have to figure out what had happened to Dawn and her friends. Wait. Her friends? Or Buffy’s friends? Did it matter?
But Dawn, oh, Dawn.
The heart monitor chirped alarmingly and Wesley stopped reading. She opened her eyes and Wesley was there, looking worried, “Are you okay?”
No. No she wasn’t. She shook her head no.
Wesley nodded, “I’m sure it’s been a stressful day. Perhaps you need to get some rest.”
She nodded and stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling.