Those They Left Behind:
Prologue
Author: Clarity
Disclaimer: Joss. Is. GOD. I just try to interpret his works.
Summary: What if Xander and Dawn didn't make it back to Sunnydale in time for the series finale? What would happen to them next?
Rating: PG-13, soon to be Rish.
Spoilers: Goes AU just before the series finale 'Chosen'. Anything before is fair game.
Author’s Notes: It's over. Six and a half years, two networks, about a hundred and fifty episodes, and tomorrow night it's going to be over for good. I want it not to be over. I want them to keep going, and when that's over I want them to come back and see what they've done. This is my eulogy for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Note that it will likely be longer than the series itself.
I miss it already.
|
May 19, 2053
Dear Buffy, Willow, Giles, Anya, Faith, Tara, Joyce, and the rest,
I am too old to be sleeping on the ground anymore.
I’m seventy-two. I’m old. And I still miss you every, every day.
Tomorrow’s the anniversary, then. Fifty years to the day. And here I am,
camping out with those of us that are left in the ruins of the ghost town of Sunnydale
where there hasn’t been so much as a squeak from the Hellmouth since you died. And
tomorrow, we’ll make our backwards pilgrimage to the most unholy place on this earth,
possibly barring New Jersey. You only think that’s a joke. I miss you so much.
We’ve got our sleeping bags spread out in front of the monument in Restfield
cemetery that’s been here almost forty-nine years. Joyce’s grave is a stone’s throw away,
Tara’s is in walking distance. If there had been a marker on Eve or Chloe’s grave I’d
have visited, but there wasn’t, just shallow ditches for a pair of beautiful girls that could
have made beautiful slayers, more young women to fight and die for the fucking Powers
just like they always have, just like Kendra, whose grave is marked but hidden because
who knew she existed in this town, this town that she saved, that she died to save? I
visited hers when I did the rounds earlier, everyone I knew in this town whose grave I
could find, stopped by Forrest’s--remember him? Riley’s friend, from the Initiative?--and
the kids from Graduation, and Johnathan’s once I found it, and Jenny Calander’s, and
even the stupid marker I put up for Jesse in sophomore year of high school when his
parents just figured he’d run away, and everyone else, the whole list. Too long a list, too
fucking long a list of people to visit and to write to and to be included in ‘and the rest’ for
the past fifty years I’ve been keeping these journals that are sitting in my trunk at the
other end of the memorial. Remember that trunk, Buffy? I carved it for you myself for
your twenty-first birthday when we got trapped in your house because of Dawnie’s wish
to Halifrek. I kept it but I couldn’t bear to keep weapons in it so it’s got all the unofficial
Watcher Diaries from the past half a century. I’m going to read them again. I think I
have to. I think...no, I know I need to remember, just for a while. I need to go back to
being twenty-two for a while.
Maybe it’s masochism, that I’m making myself do all of the mourning all over
again. All of you who died fifty years ago to the day tomorrow, and all of you who’ve
died in the past fifty years who can count yourselves included in ‘and the rest’ because
it’s just hurt too much to write down all of your names every single night, knowing that
you’re gone, and I’m still here. Old, rickety, and one-eyed, here I am, and I need to
remember you tomorrow night.
Tonight I’m just going to lie here in my sleeping bag, looking up at the stars
that are for one amazing night not obscured by smog, and sleep next to the statue that I
made Riley have put here after you died. The Slayer Memorial. It has all of your names
on it--all the Slayers and Slayers-in-Training on one side, all of the not-Slayers who
fought, and fought, and paid with their lives on the other. I’ve never been back here, but
I’ve made sure someone has, each time another one of you got added to that list that’s just
too fucking long already. Your names are on there, too.
I’m acting bitter. I shouldn’t. I know better, I do. If there’s anything I’ve
learned in the fifty years since I’ve seen you, it’s that everybody dies eventually. I’m old,
I’ve beaten the odds more than most do, but I came to terms long ago with the fact that I
will, too. The fact that I’ve survived this long just means that I probably have less time in
front of me. Which sounds bitter, too, but I’m okay with it. You were going to die
eventually. You were. And I’ve learned...forgive me, I’ve learned to live with it, with all
of you being gone. This is life, death is what makes life so precious. I just...I just wish I
could have shared more of it with you.
I love you all.
I miss you all.
Good night.
Alexander LaVelle Harris
They’re old. Most of those that are here are old, and none can be called young.
But not one, not one is feeble. Those that hold canes hold them like weapons, like they’re
used to wielding swords and this is just a substitute. They walk slowly, yes, but more
reverently than painedly, as they follow their leader up the cracked and weathered stone
steps through the battered doors into the ruins of the building. He, too is battered, scarred
and one-eyed, but his gray hair still holds a touch of its old dark brown, and his steps are
confident. He moves without stopping, tracing a way that he has not taken in decades,
but still remembers clearly.
None of them speak as the man opens a steel door, the painted block letters
reading ‘BOILER ROOM’ long since faded away by the rain and sun pounding through
the hole in what was once a roof. Instead, they follow down rickety iron steps to a maze
of a basement. Finally they come to a halt, waiting. He turns his head left and right, for
the first time an expression of confusion coming to his face.
“I don’t...It’s been so long...I...” The oldest woman with the group, her white
hair tumbling softly to her waist, gently places a hand on his arm.
“I think I can sense it. All of that power...but do you want to--”
“I have to. Please?”
She closes her eyes, turning in a slow circle, before coming to a stop looking
down the left hallway. “I can feel it. I can find it. I don’t know if we can get to it, but-”
“Please.”
And no more is said as the woman leads the way down the hallway. Litter and
steel and broken stonework is strewn across the hallway, but every member of the party
picks their way carefully after her, and no one falls. Finally, she comes to a stop in front
of a heap of twisted rubble, past which a door can barely be seen.
“It’s through here.”
“Can you move it?” This, again, from the one-eyed man; aside from the woman
he is the only one who has spoken.
“Xander...”
“Can you?”
She nods, taking a deep breath and thrusting her arms out in front of her, lifting
the palms up as though she were raising something large. In front of them, the rock and
rubble shifts and moves, raising up off of the concrete floor away from the doorway. It
balances precariously in the hallway for a moment, then half of it falls to either side,
heaped sloppily but revealing the door. The man nods his thanks, then steps forward once
again, grasping the handle of the heavy fire door. The woman lets him, a look of
consternation on her face, and she squeezes her eyes shut to stop tears.
He opens the door.
“Oh, my God.”
Whatever the people were expecting to see, his tone of voice is pained and
shocked. Slowly, he steps into the room, staring at the cavernous space. The rest of the
group follows him.
In the middle of the room is a huge, bronze disc with a pentagram inscribed
onto it. At each point of the pentagram stands one person, statue-still, not even breathing,
hands joined with those standing next to them. Two men are the feet of the figure, one
graying and tweed-clad, the other dark-skinned in jeans. The young women who stand as
the upper arms are like night and day, one blonde as the other is dark, both beautiful. At
the very point is another young woman, her head thrown back, her hair a startling pure
white. Surrounding them is a dome, glowing opalescent rainbow, flickering as the man
stares at it. He appears stunned.
“What...” He has to stop as his voice cracks. “What did they do?”
The woman shakes her head, looking at least as dazed. “They...oh, Goddess.
They...they must have channeled the energy of the seal. Turned the pentagram...turned it
from a destructive symbol back into protection. Used the very energy of the Hellmouth
itself to...to seal it like that. With the shield. With their own...with their own life-forces.”
“Turned it from a destructive symbol?” This is one of the other members of the
group, another woman, but barely middle-aged compared to the two leaders. The man
nods.
“They...I get it. They used their own selves to turn it back to what it was
supposed to be. Fire and Earth grounding it, Spirit at the top.” He’s crying, now,
individual tears tracing slow tracts down a lined and weather-beaten cheek. “Giles is
Earth, of course, and Wood as Fire, and Faith is Water and Buffy is Wind and
Willow...God, she’s Spirit. She’s...look at her. She was so afraid she’d go black and
veiny again, but look at her. She’s...God. She’s beautiful. They’re all beautiful.”
The woman has closed her own teary eyes, and holds her palms barely
centimeters from the shimmering dome. Suddenly, she jerks back as though she’s been
burned, gasping, eyes flying open. “Oh, my God,” she breathes. “Oh my...oh my
Goddess.”
“What...what is it?”
“Xander...they’re alive.”
He whirls on her, the expression in his eyes barely suppressed hope. “Alive?”
he manages to croak. She nods.
“They’ve been...they’ve been in stasis. For fifty years, they’ve been here,
holding the shield, they’ve been channeling the whole force of the Hellmouth, and we
didn’t even know. We didn’t even know.”
“But...but they’re not even breathing. And they haven’t aged, and...and the
Slayer was Called. That only happens when the previous one dies, I’ve been doing this
for almost sixty years, I know that much. They can’t be--”
“Their hearts stopped. They’re completely shut off from the world, but if the
spell was broken they’d be right back here, just like...just like they were fifty years ago.”
“If...” He raises a hand to sweep back his hair in an unconscious gesture as he
begins to pace. “Can you?”
“Xander, are you sure this is a good--” But the other gray-haired man is cut off
sharply before he can even finish his sentence.
“Am I sure? My God, am I sure?” This brings out a harsh laugh that perfectly
matches his tense pacing. “I’ve never been less sure of anything in my life. But I’ve
spent...we’ve spent fifty years, living, dealing, and moving on, thinking that these five
people who I would have willingly died for, who I loved far more than life itself, were
gone. Only to find out that they aren’t. I would have done anything, given anything to
save them, and I’ve spent five decades wondering what I could have done that would
have. And now I can. Maybe.” He turns back to the old woman. “Can we? Can we
take the shield down and break the spell without opening the Hellmouth?”
“I...I don’t know. Maybe. I think...maybe. But every supernatural creature the
world over is going to feel it, and I don’t know how well I’d be able to protect us if we
were suddenly swarmed by a horde of demons.”
“Inside that shield are the five greatest warriors I have ever, ever known. I think
we’ll manage. Can you do it?”
“Give me a minute.” Closing her eyes again, she spreads her hands over the
crackling shield again. Finally, she nods, otherwise unmoving. “Today. It’s fifty years to
the day, and a lot of things are in conjunction. I can take it down today without killing
Willow. But are you sure-”
He turns to look at her, his single brown eye steely. “Do it.”
“Xander...”
“Do it.”
She nods. She bites her bottom lip in concentration.
A moment later, the shield disappears.
Willow Rosenberg felt the power pour through her, streaming through the circle
she stood in, up from the ground beneath her, impossible in its vastness, bending to her
will as she poured it into its fiery shield of life-energy itself. For one perfect, infinite
instant, she threw back her head and screamed in the joy and immensity of it.
And suddenly it vanishes, sliced deftly off from her, and she nearly collapses.
“Oh, Goddess...” she mumbles, shaking her head to clear it. “I’m sorry...I’m so sorry...it
must not have worked...” She blinks, raising her head to look at the four people around
her, all similarly dazed as they drop each others’ hands.
“Willow?” The vaguely familiar voice comes from her left, cracking with
sadness, and she spins, wondering how Xander could have gotten back here--and why he
sounds so odd.
“Xander, what are you-” Buffy begins from her right, then cuts off abruptly.
“Xander? What happened to you?”
Willow turns, taken aback by the appearance of her oldest friend. He really
does look like her oldest friend. His hair is gray, his face tanned and covered in laugh
lines and worry wrinkles, and his hands are age-gnarled. “My God, Xander!” she cries,
hurrying over to him. “What happened? Did you get hit with a spell? How did this
happen?”
He shocks her by laughing, and even more with the tears that she can now see
are falling freely. The moment she reaches him he sweeps her up into a tight bear hug.
“Oh, my God, Willow. I’ve missed you so much. Every day, I’ve missed you.”
“Um...yeah, not to interrupt the two-day reunion and all that, but we’re kinda in
the middle of an apocalypse here,” Faith points out. “And who’re all the old dudes?”
“Xander, where’s Dawn?” Buffy demands, glancing around at the group of
people. “And who are all these people?”
“Yes, and we really must find some way to stop the Hellmouth from opening,”
Giles adds, eyeing the Seal of Danzledar warily. “Can we perhaps explain things after the
world hasn’t ended?”
“It’s closed,” assures another familiar voice. Willow turns in Xander’s arms to
look at the much older woman, trying to figure out where she knows her from. “I
checked when I opened the shield. So much energy has been pulled out of it that it won’t
be opening for a long time yet. Not to mention none of the alignments are right.”
“Look, who are you people?” Principal Wood asks reasonably--if impatiently.
“What are you doing here, and what the hell did you do to Harris?”
“They haven’t done anything,” Xander interrupted, in his too-old, too-gravely
voice. “They’re just here...well, they were just here to help me and Dawnie pay our
respects. Except apparently now they’re here to watch her do a miracle for me.”
“What the hell are you talking about, X-man? Cut the cryptic, why’re you so
old, and what’s with the crowd?”
Giles has a pensive look in his eyes. “My God,” he finally breathes. “The
spell... it did work, didn’t it, Xander?” Willow hasn’t stepped out of his embrace, so she
can feel his silent nod against the top of her head. She’s still trying to figure out what
Giles is talking about when the Watcher murmurs “Oh, dear Lord,” in his best stunned
tone. Finally he manages to ask, “How long?”
“Fifty years,” Xander says behind her. “Fifty years to the day. It’s May 2053.
We’re not old because of a spell, we’re old because...we’re old. We’ve been living...been
fighting, been trying to save the world, been thinking you all were dead, for fifty years.”
Buffy looks like she’s about to collapse. Faith’s eyes go wide, and she darts
glances around, like she’s looking for a physical sign of the truth or lie of Xander’s
words. Robin looks stunned for a moment, but believing; Giles nods. Willow knows her
own expression must be completely shell-shocked, but then the whole world starts to spin
and she doesn’t know anything anymore, because she’s unconscious.
Buffy lets one of the older people, the old people who are probably younger
than her because it’s 2053 she’s fifty years old, fifty years older than she was an hour ago,
she’s in her seventies oh God, lead her gently out of the room and out of the boiler room.
Xander--Xander!--all gray and grandpa-like, is carrying Willow in his arms and talking
quietly to another old man, while Robin is just walking along looking mute and
shell-shocked. And Faith is following, but she hasn’t let anyone get close no her, and she
eyes everyone with complete mistrust. Giles looks ill-at-ease, but he’s closely
questioning one of the old people, the middle-aged-looking woman. She looks at least as
old as Giles, actually, old enough to be Buffy’s mother, which is suddenly terrifying
because the dark-haired woman could be Xander’s daughter. Is young enough to be
Xander’s daughter. Xander, who is Buffy’s age, is old enough to have children that, an
hour ago, could have been her mother. Oh, God.
“You okay?” asks the old man at her arm. His hair is still blonde, although she
can tell it’s a dye, and despite the fact that his skin isn’t overly wrinkled his eyes are
incredibly old, and she knows she knows him, and suddenly it clicks.
“Andrew?” Buffy asks incredulously. It is and she knows it, but for the same
geeky Andrew who she tied up and tolerated though he annoyed the hell out of her to be
here, wizened and probably with grandchildren, is simply unbelievable. Is simply wrong.
He blinks at her a few times, surprised, then nods slowly. “Oh. Yeah. Hi,
Buffy. I, um, didn’t think you recognized me. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah.” She’s starting to get that, in the way he’s not gawky, or babbling, or
timid anymore. “So, um, how’ve you been?”
“Not bad. Kind of busy. My oldest granddaughter’s graduating in a couple of
weeks.”
“Oookay.” Buffy doesn’t speak again. This is just too, too bizarre. And
wrong. And she feels like she’s stepped into the Twilight Zone. No, sorry--just fifty
years into the future.
Out of the school, and Buffy’s started to realize that maybe, just maybe,
Xander’s right about the whole ‘fifty years in the future’ thing. The place is destroyed.
It’s not exactly a shock, since they just fought a major apocalyptic battle inside, but it
doesn’t have a ‘battleground’ destroyed look, it has an ‘old’ destroyed look. And so does
the rest of the silent ghost town as they walk through the evening dimness.
“We’re camping out,” Xander finally breaks the silence, startling Buffy out of
her reverie. “No one’s lived in Sunnydale since the battle, but we’ve got tents and
sleeping bags in Restfield.”
“You guys are sleeping in the cemetery?” Faith asks skeptically. Xander
shrugs.
“It’s not dangerous any more. There’s no vamps left in the town. There’s no
anything left in the town, except a lot of graves of people who died too young, and a few
monuments to people who shouldn’t have.” And suddenly Buffy can totally buy the
‘seventy-two-years-old’ thing, because her friend sounds old, sounds tired and broken as
though he’s seen too much and done everything and just wants to rest. And she shivers.
She recognizes the cemetery, barely. She thinks she knows some of the
tombstones lying, haphazard and broken, around the ground. The most bizarre addition
to the picture is the RV-like thing, all chrome and metal, sitting on the street. Buffy can’t
help but wonder if it can probably fly. Fifty years into the future, it’s like living a sci-fi
movie. Where are all the robots walking around? She really doesn’t like robots much.
Andrew leads her by the arm to a huge stone monolith that she knows wasn’t in
Restfield two days and fifty years ago last time she patrolled. It’s like the Vietnam
Memorial, a chunk of stone polished shiny and engraved with names and names, and she
can’t help pulling away to get a closer look and then she realizes that the first name on the
side facing her, right below the capital letters that say ‘THEY SAVED THE WORLD,’ is
hers. ‘Buffy Anne Summers--1997’, and right below that is ‘Kendra--1998’, and then her
again, ‘Buffy Anne Summers--2001’, and then she sees Eve, and Chloe, and realizes that
this is all the slayers and potential slayers that died and she can’t read any more. She just
dares one glance, to see if her name is on there a third time, and there it is, ‘Buffy Anne
Summers--2003’, right above Faith and a list of Potentials that makes her wince because
they’re all on there, every last girl.
“Oh, God.” And if it were her voice that sounded so horrified she could
understand, but it’s Faith and Faith sounds just as shocked and hurt as she feels. “What...
what is all this?”
“Slayer Monument,” the old woman says eventually after it becomes clear that
Xander’s too busy laying Willow down on one of the sleeping bags strewn around to
answer. “It’s been here since...Xander got Riley to put it up decades ago. It’s got all the
Slayers and Potential Slayers that we’ve...lost...on it.” She places one hand against the
names, gently, and closes her eyes. And Buffy...oh, she knows, she’s known since they
were in the boiler room, but it’s so hard to admit...
“Dawnie?” Her voice wavers pleadingly. Her little sister, her
sixty-five-year-old little sister, turns around and smiles at her.
“Guess we didn’t really loose you after all, huh?” And then suddenly she’s
enveloped in a hug, her head buried in the chest that could be her grandmother’s, crying
because in the instant they’d thought Xander had gotten hit with a spell she’d been sure,
so sure, that her Dawn was dead, and now she’s not, she’s just like Grandma, and it’s so
right for Buffy to hold her and close her eyes and pretend that it’s just the sixteen-year-old
Dawnster again, annoying and bratty and stealing her clothes and the only family she has
left and loved so dearly for it.
“Oh, God, Dawnie, look at you. You’re all grown up...you’re so grown-up.
You’re so...I don’t know what to say. I...I missed so much, didn’t I? So...you’re so
different.” And then she’s pulling back to look into those eyes that are exactly the same
except for the laugh lines and worry wrinkles creasing the skin around them. “What have
you done in your life? What have you seen? Are you...are you married? Do you have
kids? Are you...God, do you forgive me for not being there?”
Dawn, old, old Dawn, is smiling and crying all at the same time, which is okay
because Buffy is, too. “Forty-nine years ago, big sister. I missed you so much...I love
you, Buffy. I missed you.”
“Did Xander take good care of you? He’d better have taken good care of you.”
She shoots a warning glare over at the old man, who’s got a bottle of water in one hand
and is offering it gently to Willow, neatly ignoring the fact that the woman standing
before her is far and away old enough to take care of herself.
“He took great care of me, Buffy, he was great, he’s this great
grandfather-father-teacher-figure-person, he took care of all of us. He’s the reason we
made it. He’s...well, he’s Xander. Our Xander. You know?”
Buffy nods, realizing exactly what her sister must be talking about.
“Yeah...God, that’s Xander all over. Always trying to take care of ev--did you say he was
a great-grandfather?”
Dawn laughs. “No, I said he was a really great grandfather. Although--hey,
Xan! Did Becky have the baby yet?”
“I have no clue. I’m going to put a crossbow bolt through Dave’s shoulder
when we get home. He promised me hourly updates.”
“Oh, calm down, Xan,” Andrew is scolding gently, shocking Buffy to realize
that, somehow, in the past half a century of life that she’s missed, her dear friend has
gotten almost familial with their ex-hostage. “You hit him there, he’s not going to be
able to hold the kid, and do you really want to make Becky carry it all the time?”
“Yeah, aim for the other part,” Dawn suggests. “That way he won’t father
another one to not tell you about.”
“Dawn!” Buffy yelps. “That’s...you’re not supposed to be talking like that,
young lady!”
“Er...B, I don’t really think she’s that young anymore,” Faith points out.
“You’re...what, sixty-five now? Damn, Dawnster, looking good for your age.” And
she’s right, because other than the white hair Dawnie doesn’t look a day over fifty, but
God. She’s fifty. She’s so old.
“Yeah, Dawnie’s quite the looker of the elderly set. None of the men at weekly
bingo can keep their eyes off of her,” Xander agrees with a grin. Dawn rolls her eyes.
“Unlike some of us, who would still dress in colors that were out in the nineties
if our spouses let us. Not that I’m naming any names of course...”
“Yeah, that’s Xander,” Willow says hazily from where she was lying on a
sleeping bag. “Um, Xander? Speaking of clothes? What do we do now?”
“Quite,” Giles has been looking around, probably cataloguing everything he’s
seen since they left the boiler room, but this is the first time he’s spoken. “I suspect
everything we had here fifty years ago, apart from being old fashioned enough to attract
all manner of unwanted attention, is probably worn beyond all recognition by now.”
“You girls can probably fit into something of Dawn’s or Magda’s. And Giles
can borrow something of mine...you too...Wood, right? And we’ll see what we can do
once we get you home with us.”
“Woah, woah, woah, hold your horses, cowboy.” Faith holds up a hand. “Who
said anything about going with you anywhere?”
Xander sighs. “Faith, it’s 2053. You don’t legally exist anymore. You have no
home, no money, nothing but the incredibly vintage clothes on your back, and everyone
you thought you know is either dead or in their seventies. We’ve got...well, not
Watcher’s Council-level resources, but we’ll be able to take care of a pair of Slayers, a
witch, a freelance demon hunter, and a Brit Watcher. We can...whatever. You want to go
to college, we’ll put you through school with some of our kids and grandkids. You want
to go Slay, we’ll train you and show you where you’re needed. You want to never see me
again, that’s fair, just come with us long enough for one of the Super-Hacker Twins to get
you some kind of actual ID. Either way, trust me, okay?”
“Of course we trust you, Xan, it’s just...” Buffy struggles for a moment to find
the words before Robin cuts in.
“Hard to take in. When we woke up this morning, it was 2003. Give us some
time.”
Meanwhile, Xander has moved over to a wooden box at the foot of the
monument that Buffy recognizes as her old weapon’s chest. “I know. I know,” he agrees
as he rummages through in search of something. “That’s why I’m looking for--here!”
Triumphantly, he pulls out what Buffy realizes is nothing more than an ordinary
notebook. “I knew I kept these for a good reason.”
“Xander, you’re brilliant!” Dawn is, for some reason, thrilled. “They’ll be
perfect! I’ve seen some of your entries...you spent four pages bitching about the GSCO
bill. If you put that on the AI and have them listen, I’ll bet they’ll be into the twenties
before we’ve even left.”
“Um, Xander? What’s with the book?” Faith sounds curious if wary. Giles is
looking downright intrigued, Willow has propped herself up on one elbow to look over,
and Robin has a definately interested expression on. Buffy herself is just confused.
What’s in a book that could be so wonderful?
“A couple of days after...it...happened, I decided someone should probably
restart the whole Watcher Diary records for posterity. It took me about a week to realize
that I sucked at it, and Dawn took over the official writing, but it turned out it helped me
figure things out if I could write to my friends and ask for advice--even if my friends were
dead and had no chance of ever writing back.” He’s standing up now, facing the four of
them with a sort of sad, hopeful smile on his tired face. “So I’ve got about five decades
worth of daily diary entries all written, ironically enough, to you. If we actually tried to
sit down and explain everything that happened, we’d probably take forever, and leave out
half of what you need to know just because we’ve forgotten. This way, you find it all out
as it happened. Easier on everyone.”
“But...Xander, that’s your diary,” Willow points out, shocked, from where she’s
lying behind him. “We can’t--”
“Sure you can. I have,” Dawn butts in. Xander grins.
“She’s not lying. It’s really okay. Occasionally I’m stupid, or blind, or just
plain wrong, and occasionally there’s stories in there that are a little embarrassing, but
you’re some of the first people in the title line for a reason. I was always writing to you.
It’s just...really good to know you’re going to get to read it. I want you to. Please?”
“Well, if you’re sure it won’t be an invasion of privacy...” Giles offers
tentatively.
“It’s not. Just promise you won’t repeat the story about the zoo in DC, the
Komodo dragon, and the corn dog in front of my grandchildren, and it’s all yours.”
And Buffy can’t help but smile at that. One way or another, it’s still the same
old Xander deep down. “Scouts honor. Gimmie the book.”
Dawn laughs at Buffy’s impatience. “Here, Xan. I’ll queue it up on the AI in
the bus for them. You going to do dinner?”
“Yeah, I’ll bring it in. Go set it up. I think Lin went to go track Dave down and
see what’s up with Becky, and Andrew’s off talking to Spike, and God knows where the
others all went to. I’ll find them and head in a little later.”
“Um...who’s Becky?” Willow asks as Dawn helps her to her feet. “And
where--wait, Spike? He’s still alive?”
“Becky’s Xander’s step-grand-daughter-in-law. She was Daphne’s daughter.
Spike’s fine, he and Angel are both in Texas with us, and they both still look like they’re
in their twenties damn them.” She grins. “And it would take about forever for you to
actually read all of the diaries, plus the last thirty years or so are on disk anyway, so if we
put the book into the AI and hook you up to the headsets, it feeds the language directly
into your brain. Pretty cool, actually. The latest tech.”
“Er...is this entirely safe?” Giles asks warily as they follow Dawn towards the
silver, space-age looking vehicle. Dawn makes a dismissive gesture with her free hand
that immediately has Buffy deeply worried.
“Yeah. It’s just like the JVX 4900, except the upgrade’s got the InstaDef
feature and the doubletime neuroconcentrator that’s taken right from Gates MediTech.
It’s completely harmless.”
Everyone is entirely silent for a few moments.
“Um...if you say so, Dawnie,” Willow finally passes verdict as resident techno
expert. “Hey...wait a sec. Gates MediTech? As in Bill Gates?”
“Yeah, they make everything from stethoscopes to RRD’s to spinal implants.
They’re about as rich as God, too.”
“Figures. Fifty years in the future, and Microsoft still has a computer
monopoly.”
“Um...Dawn, I don’t know about this,” Robin puts forth warily. “I heard about
the Initiative’s work...”
Dawn snaps her fingers. “Initiative! That’s it. I told Xander it couldn’t have
been ‘the Alternative’, but he wouldn’t ask Lexie, and there you go. Men. Anyway, it’s
nothing like that at all. Completely different tech.” She presses her hand on a keypad,
which glows briefly, and the airlock door slides open. “Hop on in and find a comfy seat.
Even with the neuroconcentrator, this is going to take a while.”
The interior of the bus is lushly done, to say the least. Every seat is a ‘comfy
seat’, since it’s set up more like a living room, with sofas and love seats, than an actual
bus. Obediently, Buffy snuggles into one corner of a couch; she watches with a smile as
Robin joins Faith on the other. Oh, there’s definately something going on between the
two of them. Willow curls up in a chair-and-a-half, and Giles, of course, seats himself
properly on the old wingback. Dawn ducks into the closed-off area in the front of the
vehicle, and emerges carting a stack of headsets but minus the notebook.
“Okay, these fit over your heads so the little sensor at the front here goes right
in the middle of your forehead, and the pointy bits that look like a claw touch the skin at
the nape of your neck, see?” She demonstrates with one of the heavy plastic-and-metal
contraptions. “It shouldn’t break the skin, but it’ll prickle a little bit. Make sure they’re
snug and your hair’s not in the way.”
Dubiously, Buffy brushes her hair off the back of her neck and settles the
helmet-thing over her head. Suddenly, she jerks in shock as the metal contracts to fit the
size of her skull. Glancing around, she notices that the same has happened to her friends.
“What the fuck?” Faith demands. Dawn looks nothing but startled at their
startlement.
“That’s just the auto-sizer. It’s totally standard. Relax, would you? You’re
worrying me by getting so worried. You can trust me. Just sit back, close your eyes, and
the thing will start playing. I’ll stop it when it’s dinner, okay?”
A little warily, Buffy lets herself settle back into her corner of the couch. A
final glance at Dawn to make sure her little sister knows what she’s doing, and Buffy
closes her eyes.
NEXT
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