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She's Back, And It's About Time -- Part I
It begins with someone running.
A man. Young man, possibly still in his teens. Short, dark hair. Ears that stick out. He’s panting, trying to pace himself, trying to control the fear, since he knows what’s chasing him. He casts another terrified look over his shoulder.
The thing that used to be Ronald Barton grinned, effortlessly herding the boy towards the graveyard. Sometimes these kids were wonderfully stupid. There were a couple more vamps lying in wait behind the big crypt on the left. It was a jig they’d pulled plenty of times, always in different places so the Slayer wouldn’t catch on.
The kid reached the crypt. The vamps, O’Neill and Walker, sprang out.
Unexpectedly, the kid didn’t fall screaming to the ground. His head went down, his arms pumped harder, and he veered purposefully off to the right.
Where a blonde girl appeared. Barton growled, realising. Now that the Slayer was there, the kid suddenly seemed a lot more confident, yanking a stake from his sleeve. The Slayer took the lead, with a roundhouse kick at Walker’s face, which connected solidly. Walker was up again in an instant, swinging wildly. Barton had a split-second glance of the kid grappling with O’Neill, then he was on the Slayer.
He dove at her unprotected back, while Walker threw a flurry of punches at her. She deftly avoided or blocked each and every punch, twisted just enough so that Barton missed his target, then swung Walker into him as he lurched past. They collided heavily, Barton spinning off against the crypt wall. He slid down it to the ground, watching as his beautifully simple plan was turned to dust along with Walker. The Slayer raced to help her friend, as Barton tried to get up again. Might as well go down fighting, after all.
Then he went down more suddenly than he’d expected. A hand grabbed him and yanked him backwards, into the crypt. “Surprise!” He gasped, looking up at the girl’s upside-down face. It was the Slayer. But he’d just seen her outside the crypt?!
This couldn’t be good. Then he spied the stake sticking out of his chest. And all his troubles vanished in a puff of dust.
***
Buffy grabbed the vamp’s upper arms and held him steady for Xander. She could’ve finished him off by herself, but appreciated Xander’s help and wanted him to feel useful. Xander was bruised, but managed to mutter “I’m not proud!” as he grinned at Buffy and staked the vamp. He reeled backwards as the vamp exploded, coughing.
Buffy sensed the person behind her, and reflexively shot a fist back to where the face should be, at the same height as her own. The fist connected solidly. She grunted in satisfaction even as she turned to discover the identity of the now-unconscious person.
It was another blonde girl.
It was another Buffy.
Xander lurched towards her, and she automatically caught him. “Buff-” he looked at the ground, blinked, and did a small double take. “-y?!” He tried to stand by himself, but staggered again. “What’re you doing on the ground, woman?” He sat suddenly, as if all the air had gone out of his legs.
“Now this, I was not expecting,” Buffy said, astonished. She crouched beside – herself, and went to tuck back a stray strand of hair. She half-expected the figure on the ground to copy her, like a proper mirror image.
Xander rubbed his left shoulder slowly. “Well spank my butt and call me Charlie. This is weird. Though I won’t say I’ve never fantasized about it.” He wore a mock leer, desperately trying to find a note of normal in this weirdness. Weird even for a world which had vampires, demons, and Michael Jackson.
Buffy gave him the obligatory admonishing look, then swivelled back to the other girl, shaking her head in disbelief. “Not another alternate twin. I guess it was my turn.” She shrugged.
Now that he was closer, and the adrenaline from the fight had worn off, Xander could clearly see differences between them. The Buffy on the ground was older. Hair a little shorter, with lines of pain around her eyes and mouth. She was wearing a dark, hooded top with grey sweatpants, whereas ‘his’ Buffy’s top had no hood, she was showing cleavage – always a plus – and her pants were dark blue, not grey.
The other Buffy’s eyes opened. She looked at – herself, then Xander. “Ow. Hello,” she said softly.
***
“Giles, we need to talk. I have something to tell you.” Buffy pushed the door open without knocking.
Giles glanced up from his book. “Mm, come in, I’ll be with you in a moment.” He finished the paragraph then gestured to the sofa, forefinger marking his place in the book. “Sit down,” Xander looked pale. He was nursing an arm, and had a bruise on his temple. Buffy didn’t have a scratch on her. Giles stood, staring at Xander in concern “Do you need - ”
“No,” Xander quickly interrupted. “I’m fine, just fell badly. Nothing broken, not even my brain. Did I mention that I love your new dress, Giles? It really brings out the red in your eyes.” Buffy eased Xander down to a chair.
Giles harrumphed. “Now, you had something to say?”
Then Buffy came through the door.
He stared. “Good lord.” Giles could muster nothing more coherent for the moment. Then he was overwhelmed by Buffy II: The Near-Fatal Embrace. The second Slayer threw herself on him and enveloped him in a giant hug. He fell back, his head colliding painfully with the wall. The book dropped unnoticed from his hand. His ribs cracked in a near-perfect C chord, he noted dazedly. “Uh, Buffy,” he managed, choking, looking helplessly from one to the other.
The girl on top of him sobbed once, abruptly, into his jacket, then pushed herself off him. “I’m sorry, Giles,” she whispered into her hands, which were clenched over her face. She was fighting to regain control, “I just thought I’d never see you – whoa.” She stopped herself, and straightened. “Time to be the Lady of Talknot.”
Giles shoved himself off the wall, and righted the fallen chair, tugging on the front of his jacket. He looked from one Buffy to the other. Xander grinned uneasily. “I know, I can’t stop doing that either. We have a matched set. I expect the steak knives to show up any second now.”
“Ah, I remember this. The witty banter.” The older Buffy’s face was unreadable. Then she broke into a wide smile. “I’ve missed it so much.”
Giles gestured to a seat next to Xander on the couch, and she sat. “Now, Buffy,” they both looked at him. “Uh, you,” he gestured at the older Buffy, “why exactly – oh, this is ridiculous. We can’t keep saying ‘you’ and ‘you’.”
“Call me ‘Anne’,” the older Buffy suggested. The younger Buffy winced, then managed a bittersweet smile. “I’ve come from the future. Five years, to be exact. There’s… uhh… something I have to do.”
“I’ll call Willow,” Giles said quietly. “She should be here too.”
Anne smiled. “Yes.”
Giles rang Willow’s number, while Xander desperately tried to make small talk. “So, two of you, eh?” he said weakly, and attempted to smirk.
“Xander,” the two girls reproved, then looked at each other and grinned.
Buffy said, snickering, “Doesn’t this remind you of the time when-”
Anne interrupted, “And what about that outfit!”
“Not that he could get past the cleavage!” They went off into gales of laughter.
“She’s clearly a bad influence on herself,” Xander muttered snarkily, sure that he was being maligned in some way. Though he was pleased to see Anne relax a little.
“Tara, hello,” Giles said suddenly into the phone. “Could you please come over to my apartment, with Willow? … Yes, we do want you as well. …Possibly the end of the world, yes. …Thank you.” He hung up. “Tea, everyone?”
Buffy stated, “Tea won’t do it, Giles. I’m going to need serious caffeination. More caffeine than the human body can bear. I need a real drink.” Anne nodded enthusiastically, then put a hand to her forehead.
“Are you all right?” Xander asked.
“Yes, yes,” she grimaced. “Just a headache. Left over from travelling back here. I’ll be fine once I have something.”
“Coffee, then,” Giles didn’t bother to hide his distaste, but gave way to the slight blonde girls. It was difficult enough to argue with just one Buffy. He measured coffee into the pot, added water, and put it on the stove. There were some doughnuts left in the bag on the counter. He arranged them on a plate together with the last of the shortbread, and brought it all over to the coffee table.
“All jellies?” Buffy noted.
“I like jellies,” Giles said defensively. He sat opposite the two girls, and reached over awkwardly to pat Anne on the shoulder. “Now, Anne, can you start to fill us in, before Tara and Willow get here?”
She was silent for a moment, staring down at her hands, folded in her lap. She looked up. “I’m here because – because it’s all gone horribly wrong. Sunnydale’s a wasteland in my time. Me and… we checked out all the prophecies for the Sunnydale area over the last thousand years. It took a long time, but we did it. Our future isn’t right. And we think we know where it went all, all unnnghh.” Words failed her, but the others nodded in comprehension. “So I’ve come back to stop it happening again.”
“But you meeting your past self – isn’t that breaking the first Law of Time or something?” Xander asked, fascinated.
Anne mouthed the last few words with him. “You told me you’d say that,” she said, grinning. “You’re probably right, but this isn’t Doctor Who. I don’t give a bad hair day about the integrity of the time stream.” Her voice hardened. “All I know is that my time wasn’t meant to happen. It’s wrong. I’m going to do my damnedest to stop it. I don’t care if I cause one of those things, um, those things you get when two things shouldn’t be together but they are anyway – ”
Xander interrupted. “An after-school special on naughty touching?”
Giles sighed, “I think you mean a paradox. So what happened, to make it all so dreadful? What are you trying to avoid?”
Anne
stood, restless, and moved into the kitchen. She picked up a saucepan, put it
down, then picked up a teacup. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t…
want to upset you.” The others exchanged grim looks. “I have to try to tell
you enough so that you can help me fight this, without… scaring you.”
