The plain-looking stone vessel resting among styrofoam packing peanuts in the box on top of the counter certainly didn't look like anything special. Sure it had some little hieroglyph thingies incised on its sides, but 'mystically powerful arcane relic!' didn't exactly leap to mind when you looked at it - 'Aunt Flora's old geranium planter' was more like it. Then again, he'd learned over the years that things - or people - with power didn't necessarily look the part. Buffy certainly hadn't...
He swallowed, fighting back the crushing sense of emptiness that came part and parcel with musing on a Buffster-free world. Damn... after all this time, I thought I was over the whole lump-in-the-throat thing.
"Yup," Anya said happily. "I had it authenticated - Hallie even managed to track down Hazar to double-check for me. He was really a dear about it, too - it turns out my dumping him really turned him around. Do you know he said that if it wasn't for me, he never would have straightened himself out enough to get Thazia to give him the time of day? We're invited to their 700th anniversary party, by the way, so we'll have to keep the third weekend in April free."
Xander gulped again, but this time the action had nothing to do with grief - he'd already met some of Anya's friends and co-workers from her vengeance days, and the prospect of meeting more of them was daunting. There was something about socializing with people - okay, not people, beings - able to disintegrate you on a whim that was more than a little off-putting.
"I'll try, but you know how work picks up in the spring," he said, thinking quickly. "Money to be made and all. But still, we should always make time for friends."
"True," Anya said with a frown, conscience clearly torn between free enterprise and good breeding. The two fought for dominance, but after Anya factored in possible overtime, the battle was won. "Well, if your work schedule is tight, I could go by myself - after all, friendship is about compromise," she mused. "I think they'd understand. And anyway, we can add them to our guest list, so they won't feel slighted."
"Guest list?" he repeated, puzzled.
"For our wedding," Anya said patiently. "We should really set a date soon if we want to book a decent hall for the reception, not to mention a romantic destination for our honeymoon. Ambiance is a contributing factor to superior orgasms, and is much easier to maintain when you have reservations at a nice hotel with room service. The reason I never brought this up before is that according to human customs, you shouldn't celebrate any festive occasions after a death unless you first observe a mourning period - the time varies, but I think six months is considered appropriate. Buffy's only been dead for a bit under five, but seeing as she won't be dead anymore in a few days, it seems kind of pointless to put it off any longer."
Xander could only stare, as his brain had frozen after the phrase 'our wedding'. He had proposed before the last apocalypse, and he'd meant it, too, but he'd sure never thought about any of the details. Like exactly when we would get married. At the time, the main concern was survival, and after that... well, he'd just assumed that when they felt the time was right, they'd go to a JP or something. Or something. Why, why do I always forget what happens when I assume?
"You're right, Ahn," he said at last. "We should set a date. And talk about what kind of wedding we want, and make a guest list, and... God, do a whole lot of wedding-related things I never even knew existed. But I think we should wait until after, you know?"
"After Buffy's alive again you mean?" she asked, cleaning up some of the packing material. "That makes sense - we'll all have to get used to her not being dead anymore, not to mention it'll probably take some time for her to readjust to this world. Once things settle down, we'll send out our announcements and start looking at halls. Buffy will be in the wedding party of course - remind me to check for her dress size..."
"Ahn," Xander said, interrupting the wedding talk before she could begin on floral arrangements, "what exactly do you mean about it taking time for her to readjust to this world?"
"Hmm? Just what I said - sudden dimensional changes can be pretty hairy, you know, even if the dimension in question isn't all that bad."
"I'm thinking Hell is pretty far up there on the badness scale."
"Depends on the one you're talking about," Anya said. "Some of them aren't - like the one where litterbugs are punished. There, they just have to pick up trash and trip over things that have been left around - it can be a little revolting, what with all the chewed gum everywhere, but it's more annoying than anything else." She frowned. "I wonder which Hell Buffy's in? I don't think Willow ever really specified."
Anya went back to her cleaning with a small shrug. Finding out which dimension Buffy's soul happened to be in was quite a simple thing to do. People with no magical ability to speak of could do it easily enough with the help of a half-decent medium. A witch of Willow's power (even a witch as careless as Willow could be) would be able to do it in her sleep. Once she'd figured out that Buffy was in Hell, Willow probably just hadn't bothered to find out which one it was. Like most mortals, the witch lacked an appreciation for the differences between the infernal dimensions. They think you've seen one Hell, you've seen them all, Anya thought with a disdainful sniff.
"Wouldn't the portal have just gone to the one Glory wanted?" Xander asked.
"Probably - but not necessarily," Anya said. "The problem was that Dawn's blood opened the walls to all dimensions, remember? There was probably a ritual used to set a primary focus on the dimension where Glory was headed, but all the others would still be there. So Glory's dimension is just the place Buffy's most likely to be - that's not to say it's where she actually ended up."
"Oh," Xander said, digesting that information. It gave him a sudden worry - what if the spell needed some kind of interdimensional version of a GPS to get a fix on Buffy? What if they had to know exactly where her soul was? Willow must have checked it out though, he thought, trying to reassure himself. When it comes to fact-checking, Wills is the poster child of anal retention. Even in third grade, she wouldn't start a project unless she had her cross-reference colour codes set up in advance. But still...
"Does the exact place where Buffy is now actually matter? To the spell, I mean?" he asked.
"Not at all," Anya said firmly, and he relaxed at her reply. "Mind you," she added consideringly, "if we knew exactly where she is when we do the spell, we might be able to take some steps to help her with the dimension change."
"Help? How?"
"Well, say she's been in the world without shrimp all this time - she might have a craving for some, and we could have it handy."
Xander reined in the sarcastic comment that leapt to mind, and concentrated not on how stupid her words sounded, but on what they indicated about his fiancée. Anya still had issues with empathy, sympathy and compassion - they weren't exactly required character traits for existence as a vengeance demon, and Anya had been one for over eleven hundred years. Two years of enforced humanity was nowhere near enough time to expect a sensitivity renaissance from her, but what Anya had said was a clear indicator of how far she had come. She was actually showing consideration for a non-Xander person - a female non-Xander person, to whom he'd always been attracted, no less. She's come a long way, baby. He smiled, reached out, and squeezed her hand.
"Good thought, honey - but if Buffy's been chez Glory instead of the world without shrimp, I don't think shellfish will be the answer," he said gently, as he released her fingers.
"It was just an example," Anya said, pouting slightly. "I guess it doesn't really matter anyway," she shrugged. "If she's been in one of the nastier dimensions, like Quor-Toth, there's probably not much we can do to help. Though we might have some tranquillizer guns or calming spells ready in case she attacks us in reflex."
"It's that bad?" Xander blurted.
Anya met his gaze, and he shivered. Though she looked no older than he did, there were times when he could see every year of her eleven centuries reflected in her eyes.
"None of you have any idea of what bad really is. Buffy made sure you never had to find out... that's why you and Willow and everyone helped Buffy for all those years isn't it?" she asked sharply, her face alight with sudden understanding. "That's why we're doing what we've been doing - to make sure no one ever has to find out..." her voice trailed off in wonder, and Xander nodded, puzzled at Anya's reaction.
"Yeah - that, and the whole we-get-to-live-for-another-day thing..."
"We're heroes, aren't we?" she asked in a hushed voice. "I've never been one before... I thought I was, when I was a demon, but I wasn't - not really." She looked stricken, as if a horrible truth had suddenly sprung upon her, and Xander could only watch perplexed as he tried to divine exactly to what revelation she seemed to have come. "I mean, sure, I avenged as many wronged women as I could... but vengeance isn't really heroic, is it? It makes you feel better for a while, but it doesn't change what happened... and it doesn't stop what happened from happening again. And that's what we're doing - we're trying to make it stop."
Oh, Anya... Colour it another case of Xander Harris ignoring the obvious, but he really should have known better than to underestimate her - Anya never did anything by halves. One sensitivity renaissance, coming up. "That's right, Ahn," he said, taking her into his arms, "we try to make the bad things stop. We can't stop them all, but we stop the ones we can."
"Then we are heroes..."
"I think we're just people trying to do the right thing. Buffy was the hero," he said sadly.
Anya leaned back to meet his eyes without breaking their embrace. "And Buffy was just a girl."
"Buffy was a Slayer..."
"And what's a Slayer, but a normal girl with super-normal power?" Anya demanded. "She was just a person trying to do the right thing too - it's just that her powers gave her an edge to get things done. If you ask me, I'd say we're as heroic as she is, even if we aren't dead."
Not for the first time, he was reminded of Buffy's final message to them. He'd thought he'd got it that morning, as Dawn had repeated her sister's words to them at the base of the tower - 'the hardest thing to do in this world is to live in it' - but he hadn't. It took Anya's epiphany today to trigger his own.
It was the easiest thing in the world to assume superpowers or incredible courage were what made a hero - but there were different types of power, and different types of courage. And sometimes ordinary people who were just trying to do the right thing every day, no matter how hard it was, were the biggest heroes of all.
"You know, Ahn," he said, pulling her back to him, "Somehow I think if Buffy was here, she'd say the same thing."
"Well, I guess we'll know for sure in a day or two. Remind me to ask her," Anya said, cuddling into his shoulder.
Xander smiled as he hugged her tight.
"I'll do that."
Tara had always loved ice cream.
When she was a child and her mother was still alive, on rare occasions they would have to run an errand that would take them into town. As compensation for having to get up even earlier than usual to catch the bus at the end of the road, her mother always made sure that after the bills were paid or the shopping was done, there was enough money left over for a stop at Gregson's.
Gregson's was the sort of old-fashioned ice cream parlour that you just couldn't find anymore. They didn't just make their own ice creams and sauces, they still served sodas, frappés and flips in every possible flavour, not to mention real chocolate and vanilla malts - Gregson's was the one thing that Tara missed about her hometown. Sunnydale's Baskin-Robbins outlet couldn't hope to compare, but whenever she felt like a treat, ice cream was still the first thing that came to her mind. So when she and Dawn had gone to take in a movie, Tara suggested that rather than snack on popcorn in the theatre, they could have ice cream after the show instead. Dawn had been more than agreeable to the suggestion, and once they picked up their orders (Dawn had a lavishly chocolate-themed banana split, while Tara made do with a large blueberry milkshake - the closest thing to a Gregson's Catawba Flip she was likely to find on the menu), they settled at one of the small tables in the store to indulge.
"I don't know how you're ever going to get to sleep tonight," Tara said, shaking her head as she watched Dawn dig into the mountain of caffeine and sugar on her plate.
"I'll sleep just fine, Mom," Dawn said, rolling her eyes. "And if I don't, it's not like it's a school night." She took a defiant spoonful of ice cream and crammed it into her mouth, closing her eyes reverently as she entered chocolate nirvana. "God, this is good," she muttered around the melting dessert. "Thanks, Tara."
"You're welcome," she smiled and took a sip of her milkshake - it was good, but Gregson's it wasn't. She gave a small sigh, and took another sip.
"Something wrong with your 'shake?"
"Hmm? Oh, no, it's fine."
"So what's with the sigh of disappointment?"
"It just made me think of a place I miss from my hometown, that's all."
"I didn't think there was anything to be missed about that place."
"Well, there was one thing," Tara said, and proceeded to tell Dawn about Gregson's, and especially her memories of trips there with her mother.
"We never really had anything like that with Mom," Dawn said, once Tara had finished speaking. "I mean, when we all hit the malls for something or other, we'd grab a treat at the food court every now and then - but we didn't really have a place that was 'ours' like that, you know?" Dawn paused for a moment. "I guess if there was a real mother-daughter ritual thingy we had, it was Mom making hot chocolate for us. Scrape your knee? Hot chocolate. Bad day? Hot chocolate. Get your feelings hurt? Hot chocolate." She smiled fondly. "If I hadn't already been in shock after I found out I wasn't always a person, when Mom offered me soup instead of hot chocolate, it would've been enough to send me there. I miss her."
"I know."
The conversation stopped for a time as Dawn went to work on her chocolate fudge, chocolate peanut butter and chocolate toffee banana split before it could melt, and Tara sipped her milkshake.
"Do you ever think about going back home?" Dawn asked.
"Sunnydale is home - it has been for a long time now. But yes, I do think about going back to my hometown every so often - and not just because of the ice cream," Tara said, her voice becoming wistful. "I'd really like to go back with Willow someday, and visit my Mom's grave - my grandma's too. They never had a chance to meet her, and well... it'd make me feel like they'd at least been introduced, you know?"
"Yeah... it's kinda like how I wish Mom and Buffy could be around for my first date, stuff like that." Dawn looked up, her eyes pained. "Does it ever get any better? I mean, it's been months, and I'm dealing, but I just get so tired of dealing sometimes... and I don't want to take it out on anyone, so I try to suck it up, and that's not really working, either..."
Tara reached across the table, and laid her hand on Dawn's shoulder.
"I won't lie to you, sweetie - it never really gets better. What it does get is easier, but that takes time. And until time kicks in, the only thing you can do is deal, any way and any how you can."
Dawn gave a strained laugh.
"Guess it'll just have to be ice cream therapy in the meantime."
"It doesn't hurt. And your Mom was right - hot chocolate helps too," Tara said.
"So did soup," Dawn smiled weakly.
"Maybe not altogether, though," Tara said, deadpan.
"Ewwww..."
With that expression of disgust, Dawn resumed her attack on the remains of her banana split. She's so strong, so special, Tara thought, and she just doesn't realize it. Dawn may have looked to her for understanding as she too had lost a mother, but to lose what Dawn had lost, and to keep going... Tara couldn't comprehend it. She wasn't sure anyone could. Dawn was hardly the first person in the world to lose what amounted to her entire family, but few of those who had suffered such a loss were also encumbered with doubts of their own existence. I'd say if all she did after finding out she wasn't always a person was to cut herself that one time to see if she was real, she's more well-adjusted than all of the other kids in Doris Kroger's case load.
The witch finished her milkshake at about the same time Dawn finished her ice cream, and together they strolled out onto Sunnydale's main drag. As night had fallen, they made sure to keep to the well-populated and well-lit areas as they made their way home. Between the group's patrols and Spike's patrols (with and without the Buffybot), the town's more unsavoury night life was pretty much under control, but it always paid to be careful.
"Tara?"
"Yes?"
"Do... do you ever wonder about death?"
"Sometimes," she said carefully. "I think everyone does every now and again. Why do you ask - is there something specific you were wondering about?"
"Yeah, actually... Spike told me something once, when I was wondering what it - dying - was like." Dawn paused, gathering herself, before she blurted out her question. "He said that Death is a person, or okay, not a person, but like a person anyway - and that she holds your hand and talks to you when you die. Do you think it's true?"
Dawn watched her intently, waiting for her answer, but Tara was momentarily held speechless by a sense of déjà-vu. It was only a week ago that Willow had asked her a number of similar questions about the nature of death while they were working on the resurrection spell.
Tara had wondered about her lover's curiosity at the time, as once Willow knew the mechanics of a spell, she usually didn't tend to examine the... well, philosophical or ethical repercussions of it too closely. All too often for Tara's peace of mind, Willow saw magic as simply a means to an end, like a science experiment. She hadn't yet fully comprehended that like a science experiment, failure to define all your variables properly - or to plan for and safeguard against possible mistakes - could result in disaster. She's getting better though - she's starting to understand, Tara thought to herself. She actually asked some of the right questions this time.
With the teenager's question now, Tara wondered anxiously if Dawn had overheard them, or if she had really talked to Spike as she had claimed. No, she couldn't have eavesdropped on us, Tara realized, relieved. She was at Janice's sleepover that night - plus if she had overheard anything, she would have confronted us then...
"Well, compared to Spike, I can't say for certain, not having... been there... myself," Tara said, "but what he told you tallies with what I do know."
"So... what is it that you know?"
"Okay, I wouldn't say I know it, but it's stuff that my grandma told me after my mom died. She'd caught me... about to do what you were going to do after your mom died."
"You were gonna try to bring her back?" Dawn asked.
"Yeah," Tara breathed. "I'm not sure what you remember about my folks, but... Mom and Grandma were the only ones who made living there bearable. Grandma was dying already - we'd found out about a year before - and with Mom gone... I just didn't think I had anything to hold onto anymore, you know?" Dawn nodded, and the witch continued, her voice trailing off as she remembered. "I don't know how she knew, but she'd figured it out, and she was waiting for me at the grave..."
"I'm not going to ask you what you're doing," her grandmother's voice startled her in the darkness, "because I reckon I know that as well as you do."
"Grandma?! What are... I mean I'm..." she stammered.
Slowly, the older woman stepped toward her, grimacing. Between the arthritis, the damn cancer, and the knowledge of what her baby's baby was thinking to do, there was too much pain for her to ignore. She held out her arm.
"Give an old woman a hand, sweetheart." Tara quickly took her grandmother's arm, supporting some of her weight. The older woman indicated the bench near the pathway, and the two made their way there. "Sit with me." Tara complied, and her grandmother took a deep breath before speaking.
"If it worked the way you think it's going to work, baby girl, I'd have done it already myself," she said gently. "But it don't. Grave dirt, a bit of your blood, and the other bibs and bobs you've got there will bring something back, all right. But it won't be your Mama, and it won't be my daughter."
"But... but the spell said..."
"I know damn well what that spell says," her grandmother hissed. "And I also know that with magic, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. There's always a price. If you learned nothing else from me and your Mama, I hope you learned at least that! Do you really think that a bit of blood and dirt is a big enough price for a life?"
Tara tearfully shook her head. "No! But... with Mom gone, and you... it's not right! It's not fair!" She broke down, sobbing, and her grandmother held her close, rubbing Tara's back until her tears slowed.
"You're only half-right, child," she soothed. "It's not fair, sure - but it's not unfair either. Just like it's not right, and it's not wrong - it just is. Now sit yourself up, and let me tell you something else."
Tara did as she was told, still sniffling, and looked at her grandmother expectantly.
"You've got your Pa talking scripture at you often enough," she said with an exasperated shake of her head, "so I'm not going to go on about the third Ecclesiastes. We both know that the words are true, but they can still ring damn hollow when it's one of your own that's reached the time to die - or at least they can when you don't really understand Death."
"W... what do you mean?"
"People are always afraid of Death, because she marks an end to what they know. What people forget is that there's always things that you don't know - and it's just as natural to die as it is to be born. You've heard that the angel of Death comes to collect you when it's your time to leave this world - did you know that she's there when you come into it too? Life is a circle, baby girl, and a circle always comes around. Now listen, and I'll tell you more..."
Tara had learned many things from her grandmother that night - a little about Death, and a lot about life - and the long hours of talking had marked the beginning of her recovery from the loss of her mother.
"... needless to say, she stopped me." Tara said, finally finishing her sentence as she came back to herself. "Anyway, after she calmed me down, we ended up talking all night - mostly about dying, but about other things too. She always referred to Death as a person - a girl - and said that she wasn't scary so much as, well... necessary."
Dawn looked at her quizzically, and Tara elaborated.
"Like, she's doing a job that needs to be done, and she cares about the people she meets while she's doing it. If Spike says the same, then I'd say it must be true. Did you think he was lying to you?"
"No! Well... maybe not lying so much as... fibbing," Dawn admitted lamely.
"Ah... so you thought he was lying, but with good intentions?"
"Exactly! And I know, hello, vampire, good intentions, not likely, but this is Spike. I know he wouldn't lie to me, but I know he wouldn't say anything to hurt me either. I thought he might have been going for the 'humour the kid, tell her something she wants to hear, so she won't have to know the awful truth' sort of thing. I had enough of that last year," Dawn said with a scowl, then her expression softened. "He never did that to me then, and I didn't think he'd start now, but you've seen how he is with me. He's so... protective... like he's afraid I might break or something."
"Well, like you said, he is a vampire. He's immortal, and we aren't - to him, we're all pretty breakable."
"I guess... anyway, I didn't know if he could be honest with me about this, not if he thought the answer wasn't something I wanted to hear. So I decided to ask you, to try and make sure."
"Well, it's not like I was able to tell you much."
"Maybe not," Dawn said with a small smile, "but it was enough. Now I know he was telling me the truth about the other stuff. Spike can only lie if he lies big - he's even worse at telling little lies than Buffy was, and that's saying something." Dawn's eyes shone. "And it's good to know that they weren't alone."
Dawn hadn't specified who she meant, but she hardly needed to.
"Yes," Tara said softly, "it is."
As they climbed the steps to the house, Dawn turned to Tara.
"Speaking of being alone, I just wanted to say thanks for making sure that I'm not. I don't know what I would've done without you and Willow."
Tara gave her a quick hug.
"You would've figured something out, and made it work," the witch said, smiling. "You're a Summers."
An answering smile slowly spread across Dawn's face.
"I am. Thanks Tara."
They went into the house, and as Dawn went upstairs, Tara locked the door behind them. Wearily, she leaned against it until she heard the teenager's footsteps die away. Then, after slowly peeling herself from the door, she went into the kitchen to brew the calming tea her sleep had come to rely upon in the last few months.
I should be glad that grandma's stomach remedy worked, or chances are I'd have an ulcer by now, too...
Tara hated dishonesty at the best of times, but being dishonest with people she cared about was the worst. Willow had tried to ease her conscience on the matter, pointing out that weren't actually lying to anyone - it was more like a strategic withholding of information - but it had been to no avail. They might have been doing it by omission rather than by commission, their intentions may have been good, but they were still lying - after a fashion, at least. And since of all the Scoobies, Tara spent the most time with Dawn, the blond witch was forced to it most often. At least I'm good at it, she thought humourlessly, as she collected the herbs and put the water on to boil. Living with Dad taught me that much.
As she waited for the kettle, her thoughts wandered over her long-ago talk with her grandmother, the conversation she had had with Dawn, and the spell the group was going to attempt. It isn't the same, she told herself. Mama died, but she died naturally - there was never any question of where she was. She is dead, but she's not suffering - Buffy is. It's not like we can call her soul back from Hell without a vessel - and leaving her in an Orb of Thessulah, or just drifting in the ether for eternity isn't much of a step up from Hell. Bringing her back - really back - is the only way to rescue her.
Tara had stopped voicing her doubts to Willow. The redhead always had a sympathetic ear, but she had enough responsibility on her shoulders, and Tara didn't want to burden her love further. Besides, she'd tell you that this is just coming from self-doubt again - and she'd probably be right. She has enough to worry about without having to hold your hand every time you feel insecure, she told herself firmly. The spell is dangerous, but we're doing it for the right reason - to keep Buffy from suffering. We're not bringing her back for the sake of bringing her back - that would be wrong.
With that thought, the witch made her tea, and after letting it steep for a few minutes, she drank it down. Getting up from the kitchen table, she thoroughly rinsed out her mug in the sink, removing all trace of the herbs, then went upstairs to bed.
Maybe sleepless nights are just a trade-off you make when you try to do the right thing - because you have to work out what the right thing is, and you can't ever be sure you were right until you look back on things after they're over and done.
Buffy had had plenty of sleepless nights and for exactly those reasons, Tara knew - but in the end, the Slayer had almost always been right.
I just hope that we are too...