Title: “Remittance”
Author: Bree
Series: Part one in the Persephone series
Category: AU
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: B/A eventually
Summary: Buffy didn’t die at the end of The Gift. She just wishes she had.
I. Xander
I never thought I’d have to see this again. And it’s worse, way worse, than the last time.
Dawn has come down from the tower and slipped in among us. I finally manage to tear my eyes away and look at her, dressed in some stupid purple open-the-Hellmouthy dress, hugging herself and bleeding. Just standing there, bleeding. She doesn’t look back at me, though. She’s looking at Giles. Strong, dependable, wise Giles, who is everything a kid like her would imagine a real dad should be. And he’s crying. Sobbing softly, with eyes as terrified as hers are. I wish he would open his big dumb mouth and tell her that everything will be okay. I wish I could open mine.
All I can think of is how beautiful Buffy looks laying there, in the midst of all this scary ugliness. Like Sleeping Beauty. Maybe that’s a sick thing to think, and maybe I’m missing the point, cause I usually do. But she doesn’t look like the Slayer. Buffy always thought, though she rarely said anything about it, that the Slayer was a killer, as violent by nature as any vampire. But she saved us. She gave us our lives and our world back. She doesn’t look like a killer at all.
We’ve been gathered here, listening to ourselves crying, for a long time now.
Surprisingly enough, Tara is the first one to speak. Maybe she feels like she should be strong when none of us can. Maybe she’s still a little bit in shock after getting her brain back from Glory’s clutches. But I’m grateful to her.
“Dawn’s bleeding. We need to get her to the hospital to be checked out.”
Giles raises his head, as if being shaken from a trance. “Yes, yes of course, you’re right.”
“I’m fine,” Dawn protests weakly.
“That’s a nasty cut,” Tara continued quietly. “You might need stitches.”
She probably had no idea what requires stitches and what doesn’t, she was just saying anything she could to get Dawn to back away from the scene, to think of something else. She squeezed Willow’s shoulder, then went to the kid and put her arm around her, leading her away from the base of the tower.
Spike had gone, thank God. I couldn’t control the anger I felt at hearing him sob over the body of my friend. He hadn’t earned the right to be here, I don’t care what he did.
Anya, overcome with emotion, grabbed onto Willow’s sleeve and pulled her to us, so that I was held by one of her arms and Will the other. Inspired by her, I reached out for Giles, and he creased his eyebrows at me with bewildered sympathy. His arm encircled my shoulder, and the four of us stayed silent, locked in an embrace.
But still, over their shoulders, I watched her. My eyes became transfixed by the cream swell of her hand, her limp wrist, white on charred black. It moved.
Buffy began to moan.
And that’s when it began.
II. Giles
I could hear Xander’s cry of happiness begin in the pit of his stomach and burst its way up through his throat. “Buffy! Buffy!”
It was he and I who rushed to her side, while the two young women watched, open-mouthed. I felt her wrist for a pulse, while Xander put his ear to her lips.
“She’s alive,” I murmured faintly.
“Giles,” Willow said warningly, and I knew I had to be sure.
“She’s alive,” Xander repeated, more firmly. “We have to get her out of here.”
It took me a moment, but I nodded. I had let myself believe it only for a second . . . that it was over. That my slayer was dead. That my cycle, my career, my destiny, had been completed. But Buffy was never an ordinary slayer. And to her was fated no ordinary death. There was more than this awaiting her. More life, more love, more tangible blessings that she’d never had the chance to receive. I was certain of it, more certain than ever before that she had conquered the darkness of this world.
I was so stupid.
III. Tara
I was already in the waiting room when the four of them came rushing in. The same waiting room where I had sat with Buffy not very long ago. If only she had known then how quickly she would follow her mother. I think part of her did. It was like death wrapped itself around Joyce, but then its long shadowy arms overlapped and reached out for her daughter, too.
Reached. And missed.
“Buffy survived,” Willow said to me, without preamble. She took both my hands in hers, and I could see more, as yet unshed, tears glistening in her eyes. “She’s gonna make it.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “We have to tell Dawn.”
“Tell me what?” said Dawn, coming towards us, a tall gray-haired doctor behind her.
The doctor spoke before any of us could. “She’s going to be perfectly okay. It’s a nasty cut, but it should heal fine. I still don’t know how you managed to do that, young lady.”
“Didn’t she tell you?” Xander spoke up. “I guess she’s embarrassed. As well you should be!”
Dawn gave him a look of utter contempt.
“They were playing Robin Hood. Hence the get-up. I guess one of her little friends decided a real knife would be more effective.”
“Aaah, well, try and be more careful, you could really get hurt,” said the doctor, stroking Dawn’s head. Then he addressed all of us. “I’ll try and see what I can find out about your other friend, the one who had the fall.”
He turned and headed back down the hall.
“That was the dumbest thing I ever heard,” Dawn said through clenched teeth.
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” said Xander.
“Wait,” she said. “What does Dr. Stephens have to find out about Buffy?”
I smiled at her. “How she is doing.”
Dawn frowned at me, puzzled. Then she figured it out, and her face lit up with joy. “How she is--”
I hugged her to me, and she threw her arms around my neck. Now she didn’t have to live with the pain, the guilt of knowing that her sister died to save her. Now she would have her family again, and Buffy would be there, always, to look after her. Or so I thought, in my blind optimism. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.
IV. Willow
Dr. Stephens didn’t come back. Instead, a woman doctor with long red hair came in his place.
“I’m Dr. Monahan. Buffy’s sleeping,” she told us. “She has yet to wake up.”
“Still?” Giles asked, concerned. “Shouldn’t she have regained consciousness?”
“Don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal. Her leg was broken in several places, and we gave her a sedative while we set it. Other than that, she has miraculously few injuries. I expect she will make a full recovery. She‘s incredibly strong.”
He and I exchanged knowing smiles at that remark. Of course Buffy was strong. Her slayer strength had saved her, we knew that instantly. That, and her will to go on.
“Can we see her?” I asked.
The doctor nodded. “Just one of you at a time, though. It’s after hours.”
I looked back at the others eagerly, ready to do my usual routine and step aside for someone else to be the one. Dawn, I guess. But it was Dawn who smiled at me with uncharacteristic selflessness. “You go, Willow.”
“A-a-are you sure?”
“Yeah. You go first.”
Dr. Monahan led me down the hallway to her door. “Just five minutes,“ she said kindly.
I slipped into the darkness of the hospital room, afraid to disturb Buffy’s sleep. But Buffy was not quiet. The side of her face was bruised and swollen, and she flailed about in the bed making incoherent noises, frightened noises.
“Nightmares,” I whispered to myself.
String she certainly was, but I tried my best to calm her movements. I put a hand on her forehead. “Buffy, you’re dreaming,” I said. “You can wake up now, it’s all over.”
But she didn’t wake up. I’m not a doctor, but it didn’t make sense that someone who was heavily sedated could be acting like this. “Buffy, it’s me, open your eyes!”
Her colorless lips parted, and she began to moan pitifully. I yanked my hand away as if she was dangerous, and then I felt guilty for it. None of us knew what the Hellmouth had done to her, or what she might have seen or felt before she came crashing down. We didn’t know anything at all. Except standing there in that dark hospital room, I knew deep in my gut that Buffy couldn’t open her eyes and look at me. She just couldn’t.
V. Dawn
Five days went by, and nothing. Sometimes she shook really badly, sometimes she cried in her sleep, and a couple times she just started screaming like someone was hurting her really badly. But never, not once, did Buffy wake up. And Giles and the others took shifts, so they were sure.
At first, they didn’t even want to let me see her, because they thought she would scare me. But that made me mad, and I told them I’d never speak to any of them ever again if they wouldn’t let me see my sister. My sister who is alive. So they did. And it didn’t scare me, it just made me feel horrible.
I’ve been wondering, ever since I found out about the whole Key thing, what would have happened to me if I hadn’t come to Sunnydale. It’s weird, you know, thinking about having a life before my life, trying to push aside all those memories that aren’t real. But if it wasn’t for me, none of this would have happened. I told that to Tara, and she said if I hadn’t been Buffy’s sister, Glory would have found me a lot easier, and the whole world might be in hell. It very nearly was. I guess Tara’s right, I don’t know.
She and Willow have been staying at my house . . . our house, and I love having them there, honestly. They like to make pancakes for breakfast and watch old videos until late at night. Nobody has made me go back to school, so that’s okay. They even brought Kitty Fantastico, who is so cute, even though I’m allergic to her. Except I’m not. I can’t be, can I?
Sometimes I sit with whoever’s turn it is to watch Buffy. I don’t understand why the hospital lets one of us be there at all hours. Giles just says he knows someone on the staff, and I shouldn’t worry about it. But I think Willow did some sort of spell to keep the nurses from knowing just how strange my sister’s condition is.
The others who are not watching her go to the Magic Box, where Giles has put them in full research mode. There are always piles of old books on the table, which they all pour over with scrunched-up, frustrated expressions. It took five whole days for them to figure it out.
“Of course,” Giles whispered, marking his page. “The Passage of the Soul.”
“Is that the new Enya album?” said Xander, looking up from his own musty book.
Giles grunted softly at him. “It’s what the Hellmouth does to slayers. A slayer is possessed with a supernatural strength, more powerful than the energy of any other dimension. It can’t kill her. But it can take her soul, like a vampire’s mortal soul is taken from it at creation. And that’s . . . much worse.”
Anya nodded emphatically. “So her soul is in hell, and her body is on earth. Only happened once before, that I know of. In Germany.”
Xander hung his head, and Giles muttered something.
“You heard of this before, and you didn’t say anything?” Tara asked Anya. Willow was the one at the hospital.
Anya blinked her eyes innocently. “I was hoping it was something else.”
“Like what?” said Xander.
“I don’t know!” She stood up from the table and folded her arms indignantly. “Snapping at me won’t make this any better.”
I had stayed quiet so far. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could Buffy be in hell when she was right here?
“How do we get her back?” I asked, my voice a lot more quivery than I wanted. “What do we do?”
Giles glanced at me, but I knew he didn’t know what to say. He turned his attention back to Anya. “Please try and remember, what happened to this slayer in Germany? Was she . . . was she killed?”
My mouth opened in shock as I imagined somebody having to go into Buffy’s hospital room, hold a pillow over her face, and suffocate her just to keep her from hell. There had to be another option.
“Don’t you know? You’re a big important watcher and everything,” Anya said. Her feelings were hurt by almost anything.
“There was a slayer in Germany in the fourteenth century,” said Giles, through clenched teeth. “But there is no account of how she died.”
“Well, we can’t kill her,” said Anya. “Won’t help. Her soul is in hell no matter what happens to her body.”
Though it seemed weird, I breathed a sigh of relief. “So what did they do?” I demanded. “They helped her, right? She lived?”
Anya frowned. “You don’t want to know what they did.”
Giles might have been annoyed, but when he saw Anya’s face get clouded over with fear, he was more gentle with his words. “We do want to know. Please.”
“I can’t tell you in front of Dawn.”
“Yes you can!” I practically yelled. “You have to! What can we do to help Buffy? What happened to the German slayer?”
Anya sighed deeply. Then she went to her beige leather purse and dug around for something. It was an address book.
“Her name is Greta,” she said. “And why don’t you call her and ask her?”
To be continued . . .
