Ch 15 of Edge of Sorrow, Heart of Truth (Ensemble, Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

[feliciacraft]

Disclaimer: Joss's characters; not mine (except the OC).
In this chapter: (Season 6 AU) The first day after Buffy's resurrection continues. Everyone has a mission of their own (and possibly a theory or a lead). Buffy confronts the Scoobies. (If you've never read this story, this is actually a good point to come in. Enough context is given in this chapter to get you all caught up.) :) Or, if you want: Previously on AO3
Beta: The wondrous All4Spike!
Feedback: Yes, please! (I'm a big girl; I can take it.) Specifically, who's your favorite character in this one? (Anya? The Buffybot? Lol...)

Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence.
...
I am here
or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

-- T. S. Eliot, East Coker


1.
Anyaka bolted upright in bed, breathless, shaken. What a terrifying nightmare! She’d been reduced to a mere mortal in her dream! A stinking, powerless human! She shuddered in remembrance, a bitter aftertaste forming in her mouth at something so vile, she wouldn’t even joke about to Hallie.

She frowned, the hand cupping her throat trembling: her pendant-was missing.

Even more disturbingly, she appeared to be garbed in some rudimentary and ill-tailored form of clothing-with a drawstring!-that failed to provide sufficient cover for all her…assets. The bed sheets beneath her bare legs were of low-grade cotton worn thin by repeated washes. And the interior decor of her lodging was most distasteful, all institutional green and medically sterile. Yuck.

She would have to pretend to assimilate until she could fully assess her situation. She poked the guy snoring softly in a rigid chair next to her bed.

“Fellow human! Wake up!”

“Huh?” The man rubbed his drowsy eyes, then sat up straight. “Anya! How you feelin’?”

Anya. An-ya. Her assimilation name unleashed a rush of memories-utter nonsense, a bag of confusion, the stuff that nightmares are made of-back into her head. Xander was leaning forward, his own hospital-issued gown, the same shade of despair, parting over his widespread legs. His gaze mapped over her every inch, as if accounting for salvageable parts. Gasp! Her short-lived, breakable human parts, some of which-she reassessed-would fetch a pretty penny on the black market in the demon part of down. Oh, Lord of Arashmaharr! She was one of them!

“I- Wh- I demand an explanation!” A headache more persistent than the after effects of teleporting was hammering her skull, merciless as her work ethic. Given the human body’s abysmal capacity for toxins, was it any wonder that she was hung over? She couldn’t recall a thing from last night, but she wasn’t D'Hoffryn’s favorite for nothing. She could think on her feet, and…off her feet, too. Clearly, this had been a wild party that ended with…role playing? But of course! “I know you have a thing for nurses,” she grumbled, relieved that something finally made sense. “But this uniform is hardly sexy-”

Xander laughed, a half cough. He cupped her cheeks tenderly and pulled her into a bear hug. “Oh, thank God you’re all right. My Anya…”

Anya didn’t mind the hug. He had nicely-sized arms, toned, and pleasant to the touch. She remembered him, of course she did. Just…not everything at once. And the part of him traditionally concealed on a fully grown human, but not so much by the awkward hospital gown at present, well, she recognized by sight, and granted renewed approval in her head.

Because humans had a thing for interrupting couples at their most intimate, there came a knock at the door, and a tentative, “Hi…”

Anya peeked from under Xander’s arm. “Oh, hi, Buffy!”

See? She remembered names. It was the Buffybot, whom Anya liked the best of the bunch. Predictable, straight-forward, cheerful and similar to her, frequently and unfairly called out as an habitual offender of social faux pas. Trailing behind her, with eyes averted, was Willow’s girl wrapped in an oversized bathrobe so big she threatened to disappear into it, whose name started with a T. Tina or something.

“How you feeling?” said the Bot, looking uncomfortable, probably confused by Anya’s display of human frailty. Who could blame her?

“Good!” she said, palms smoothing the pilling polyester blanket draped over her lower body. The inexpensive texture was all sorts of wrong. Could they see through her fake cheer? Just to be extra convincing, she amended, “Terrific!”

Xander shot her a look that would’ve earned him an evisceration had she had her powers. “Anh… You were knocked out.” He waved his giant hands vaguely in the air, as if they were a pair of sea stars wrestling with something invisible but strong. “So was I. You can’t possibly be terrific.”

Tina had sidled up to Xander with a whispered, “Are you OK?” and other inconsequential trivialities about mortal pain and such. So boring, Anya didn’t bother to eavesdrop.

She whipped her head to face Buffy, testing the limp flatness of her bed hair in a covert flip. The liftless brush against her shoulder confirmed her horror: she was sporting a two-day old hairdo. “What brings you here, Buffy?”

Never in a thousand years could she have foreseen the Bot’s response. “Trying to figure out how I’m alive,” said Buffy, the corners of her lips doing that ambiguous Mona Lisa thing, a half smile enveloped in a downturned shadow. “As in, not dead anymore. Since last night. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Okay, not the Bot? Yet her glare sweeping over the room was machine cold.

It was at the tail end of the fourth ring, when Giles dreaded the soft click of the answering machine, that the phone was picked up on the other side.

“Evening greetings,” came the calm voice, the end rising slightly with hope and infinite possibility.

Giles let out a breath he didn’t know he had held. “Eldrida.”

The slightest pause preceded hearing his name in return. “Rupert. I hope I have not kept you waiting. I’ve just concluded this evening’s civil twilight celebration to end the day in peace.”

Giles automatically glanced at the sweeping second hand on his watch, its chronometer-certified precision applying ridiculous and meaningless accuracy to the measurement of human activities. Should the earth one day fall to an apocalypse, he would be able to pronounce and chronicle its doom to the precise half second for later generations that wouldn’t exist.

He cleared his throat. “And what a day-given the news from Sunnydale. Buffy-the Slayer, is resurrected.”

Another thoughtful pause, then Eldrida continued, “The full moon. Mercury in retrograde. We’re transitioning from summer to winter, day ceding to night. Ah, of course, you know what this means.” Her voice remained composed, unvarying, as if she’d been given nothing more than a routine weather report, instead of earth-shattering news, the kind that made or broke prophecies.

“No, I don’t bloody-” Giles curbed his outburst, shaking his head to clear it. “For Heaven’s sake, will you for but one brief moment quit thinking like a Wiccan Elder and look at it as a human being!”

“And allow my judgement to be clouded by emotion, as you have?”

Giles pounded his forehead with a fist that trembled with restrained power. Her even-tempered voice fed his fury in a way that frightened even him, so he held his tongue.

Eldrida sighed, as if to concede his point. “I’m aware of your history with the young woman in question, Rupert. You have my sympathy on this matter. However, you know as well as I do that my assistance-which you seek-is most valuable without the impediment of emotional attachment. While we walk on a common Earth, the Coven has pledged our resources to the Council out of a sense of duty-”

“No! Not the Council. Until I know more about the situation…” How would the Council react to the resurrection of the Slayer that’d been a persistent thorn in Quentin’s side? Giles shuddered, then pleaded again, “Not the Council.”

“A personal favor off the record?” Eldrida’s voice dropped to a mere whisper. She sounded amused. “You possess the Talent. You know a Reading performed with concealed intent may very well distort the results. We may be granted only a touch, a single tap into the magical energy that turns the universe, an eternal life force that goes in cycles, a rhythm beyond the understanding of you and me. It rises, it falls, with no apparent regard-”

“Please!” Giles tried to ignore the rhythm of the pulsing vein at his temple. “Eldrida, please, will you help?”

Dawn dredged her spork through the tomato alphabet soup in search of the next letter. Everybody knew that alphabet soup should be consumed in alphabetical order for maximum fun. The letter D was particularly tricky because the squishy, broth-softened letter often resembled the O, or the number 0. Such a shapeshifting pretender.

Speaking of pretenders… Dawn peered at the Buffybot from under her lashes, the arson report from the Sunnydale Herald fresh and heavy on her mind. Did the Bot do it and…forget…or neglect to mention it? Was a machine capable of deception?

The Bot was whistling while folding fresh laundry at the end of the dining table, covering the hardwood surface with neat piles. It took Dawn a moment to recognize the familiar, upbeat tune; it was Whistle While You Work.

“Sooooo…” Dawn gave the soup another stir, aiming for casual. “Did anything memorable happen last night? You know, on patrol?” She gulped down a spoonful of soup, slurping on the word patrol. It came out sounding suspiciously like parole. Her face flushed.

The Bot shrugged. “It was a quiet night. No vampires to be seen in Shady Hill or Sunnydale Main.” She folded a t-shirt from the laundry basket in one slick move, some trick she’d picked up from a Japanese video on YouTube that Dawn just couldn’t get right no matter how hard she tried.

Both Shady Hill Cemetery and Sunnydale Cemetery were nowhere near the warehouse district where the arson took place. Wait, no vampires? Dawn frowned. “Like, zero? Is that typical?”

“Nope. I average 9.621 vampires and 0.833 demons per night. The median is 7 vampires and 0 demon. Would you like a full report of my Slaying records database? I can calculate the standard deviation for both categories if you’re interested.”

“Uhm, no thanks.”

The Bot folded a pair of Dawn’s knee-high socks into an impossible origami square, and added it to a stack. Okay, maybe impossible was not the right word, for a robot. The Bot didn’t act like she was hiding anything, so Dawn decided to try a direct approach.

“You didn’t…I mean, by chance, see the fire. Did you?”

“It wasn’t visible given my relative location,” said the Bot, folding a couple of towels into a stuffed dog, clearly having watched too many instructional videos online. “Fire is dangerous. The first step after discovering a fire is to evacuate the area, and contact the local fire department.” Her hand plucking the ears of the towel puppy stopped abruptly, hovering above the left ear. “Oh!”

The spork dropped out of Dawn’s hand. “What?”

The Bot leaned over the table, towel puppy punctuating the air with each syllable as she said, “Never use the elevator in a fire. Take the stairs.”

Dawn snickered, relaxing. “Thanks for the PSA.”

“You’re welcome,” smiled the Bot brightly.

The soup had gone lukewarm. Dawn sucked down the rest of the tomato goodness in one go, then pushed the bowl aside. Try as she might, she couldn’t let the matter go. She leaned back, folding her arms over her chest to show her determination in getting to the bottom of the matter. “Okay, calculate this. If you didn’t do it, and Buffy was home all night, then who’s the woman in the police sketch?”

“Well, it’s not something you can calculate. It’s more of an inference, but Occam's razor indicates…” The Bot froze for a moment, expressionless while Dawn could practically hear the microchips churning away under her silicon skin. “Does your sister suffer from somnambulism?”

“Some what?”

“Also called noctambulism, it’s a disorder that falls under the parasomnia family. While asleep, patients are able to perform activities that usually require a state of full consciousness. Oh!” She brightened. “You may know it as sleepwalking.”

A vamp could get around Sunnydale in broad daylight just fine, if he was thus inclined, and creative. And Spike was-on both accounts. Especially armed with the trusty blanket he’d newly enhanced with triple layers of lightweight, high-SPF, ripstop tent fabric. (He’d always prided himself on learning and adapting, taking advantage of new technology.) So after he watched the Witch’s mum drive off with a pensive Buffy, heading to the hospital for the Slayer and the Slayerettes’ little I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-the-Bot reunion (still not convinced she was right in insisting going without him as backup), well…the last thing he wanted to do was to sit idly by on his two hands.

For one thing, they itched for action. Granted, some of the actual itching could be attributed to the healing-magic silently flowing through the borrowed blood in his veins to mend torn flesh and bruised bones-but the urge for violence remained the same. He’d fared worse from a bar brawl, but the bloodied reminder of the events of last night-trauma from finding his beloved Slayer brought back to life in her coffin, exhuming her tooth and nail, literally-tormented him in a way that begged relief with whatever means necessary. As a rule, he wore battle wounds and scars as proud badges of honor and proofs of an unlife lived to its full potential. Even so, regrowing fingernails that’d lifted clean off? Hurt like a bitch.

With the Buffybot dogging his steps and rubbing that oblivious smile in his face, he’d had to restrain himself from forcibly wiping it off her plastic face with his fists. It didn’t take long for his patience to wear thin. Then he left Little Sis in the safeguard of the Bot and headed straight for the warehouse district.

The destruction was, he admitted with begrudging admiration, devastating and complete. Elegantly executed. With surgical precision. No tell-tale blackened exteriors to shock and awe casual passers-by, no smoldering half-structure to be salvaged, with wafts of smoke to add dramatic flair. No singed antique furniture to stand stoically against a backdrop of carnage. No evidence to sort through, either.

This was no common arson. Like the other classical elements, fire was notoriously hard to control or even predict. What it incinerated, what it spared...yielded to no human will, but took on an almost-organic form in its destructive path. Retrace its progress in reverse, like following a leaf on the vine to its root, and you’d eventually discover the fire’s origin, the destruction’s epicenter. But this...looked like no earthly fire. It looked simply as if the entire block had ignited at once, consuming everything within neatly drawn property lines. There should be something left of the block-two-story-high metal beams, remnants of fireproof furniture, trinkets as proof of lives disrupted-perhaps misshapen and blackened from heat, but certainly not consumed in their entirety. But everywhere he looked, he found only an ocean of ashes.

Hang on. Not just ashes. A hundred years of seeking out worthy opponents in a fight and disposing unworthy ones without blinking an eye, he knew vamp dust when he saw it.

From the shelter of his vamp-special blanket, Spike closed his eyes and inhaled sharply, filling his lungs to capacity, even sticking out his tongue for good measure. The real sport was in teasing apart the myriad layers of smells: artificial, metallic, and organic; smoky, pungent, sweet. Sorting out what mattered, discarding meaningless distractions. Finally, he latched onto a familiar scent that made him nauseous: Willy, the treacherous coward. Regrettably, the two-faced vermin’s human soul might restrain Spike’s fists, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to get his just deserts.

Trying to figure out how I’m alive. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?

With Buffy’s question hanging in the air, for a moment, everybody just stared.

Saying something would be of the good, except Xander wasn’t sure which of the words-there were many words, right?-applied to the situation at hand. His memories were all a jumble, but he distinctly remembered burying her-in one of Joyce’s crisp dresses, in a coffin hastily made but made with love by him, in a quiet patch of green at the edge of town, fit for eternal rest for Sunnydale’s best. Yet here she stood, if not kicking, still very much alive. His brain saw it fit to regurgitate a flashback to high school, calling up Mrs. Franklin’s disapproval over his failed pop quizzes, her lips pressed thin and resolute, a permanent frown carved into the space between her eyes. Buffy’s penetrating gaze swept over them in quiet judgement in a similar fashion, and Xander swallowed, hard.

Not even the all-encompassing Hallmark cards-his go-to source for everyday wisdom-had a line for this occasion. Should one say, “Happy resurrection”? Or, more to the point, “Sweet Mother of God, are you real? And not evil, right? Sorry but I have to ask”?

Just before the silence grew awkward, his girl spoke up. “I didn’t do it,” Anya said flatly. “That’s the truth. Not even vengeance demons have powers of resurrection. It’s easy to take a life, sure, and lots of ways to do it. But restoring one? Never been done.”

He blinked. What?

Catching Xander’s look-he couldn’t even begin to imagine what funhouse mirror distortion his face sported by this point-Anya chuckled nervously, then added in a rush, “Before-I meant before I lost my power. Obviously. Now I just sell ingredients for lesser spells to warlock-wanna-be’s, and price-inflated crystals as lucky charms to the superstitious. All for human money.”

But those were the wrong words. Xander was sure of it. Was nobody going to welcome Buffy back? In a few strides he’d crossed the room and thrown his arms around his friend, not caring that he’d upended the chair in his rush to stand up, the dull thud but a faint echo comparing to the booms thumped out by his heart. “Buffy! You’re...back!” At the tentative pat from Buffy, he tightened his arms around his friend. Slayer, class protector, favorite superhero-was she always this small? He thought he heard Anya mumble, “I thought I was the girlfriend”, but he was determined not to let any of Anya’s crazytalk ruin the moment. “God, am I glad to see you!”

“Yeah…uhm,” said Buffy, her back stiff. “Not sure how I feel yet. I’m still miffed to be here at all.”

Xander let go of her at those words. She might look small and frail, but she sure knew how to land a hit where it’d hurt the most. Regardless of how she came back, wasn’t it a good thing that she was back? What was with the accusatory tone?

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, Buff, but we’re not doing so hot ourselves. Waking up in the hospital ranks pretty low on Xander’s old fun-o-meter. But I sure am thankful that I did wake up. How about you not look a gift life in the mouth, huh?”

Oh, if looks could kill. “A...gift,” Buffy repeated. “You calling my resurrection a gift? What gave you the right to decide who lives, who dies, who rests in peace, and who gets yanked back to another non-negotiable term of Chosen duty? You presumptuous-”

“Whoa, whoa!” The quick escalation shocked him, and even as his stubborn mouth wanted to press forward, his feet were in full retreat mode, and he had to flatten his palm against the cold hard wall for support. She’d rather be dead? And she blamed… He tried not to take her words personally, brushing aside memories of the other time that he’d revived her, in Old Batface’s underground lair, back when they were only sixteen. Had she harbored some inkling of resentment against him this whole time? No. Not possible. The room seemed to pulsate with each breath he struggled to take, the walls leaning in. “Now hold on a second-”

“Excuse me!” Anya had sprung up from the narrow hospital bed and pushed between them, one fist tight around a side-tie on her faded gown, looking at Buffy like a con artist appraising her new mark. “I’m sensing a lot of anger here, like you’ve been wronged. And I’m not sure I get the whole story, but I understand that uhm…not having your postmortem wishes respected and carried out to be very upsetting. Do you wish things were…perhaps…different?”

Buffy scoffed, holding up her hands, palms out in the universal sign of “back off”. “I don’t have time for this.”

Xander, too, had just about enough of Anya’s missed-the-mark humor. Unclenching his fingers that wanted to tighten into fists, he spun Anya around by the shoulders and nudged her toward the bed, ignoring her protest. “Anh, maybe you should lie back down.”

Because there were important matters at hand, he couldn’t just let it drop. Grabbing Buffy by the wrist, he pressed, “Speaking of presumptuous, how did you know we were the guilty party behind this evil ploy to resurrect a Slayer? Huh? I’m happy you’re alive, Buffy, but at which point did the trail of evidence begin to point to the loyal Scoobies?”

So maybe he was disappointed when Buffy didn’t even blink. “There’s a… a notebook with the spell, and a sand circle at the Magic Box-it matched the diagram in the notebook. Look, Spike found it, and your names-Willow, Tara, Anya, and you, Xander-were labeled around the diagram.”

Well, that explained a lot. Seemed like a certain vamp’s name always came up whenever things went off-kilter. The rage he’d been suppressing latched onto it as an acceptable focal point, and the intensity made his voice quiver. It boggled his mind that Buffy still refused to see that Spike was not to be trusted. “That’s just perfect! I was wondering when Sir Bleach-a-lot might enter the stage on this little spin-an-evil-tale. You know, I bet this is all part of his grand scheme. Resurrect the Slayer, blame your friends, isolate you, be hero of the hour until you fall into his ready lap. Mighty convenient to accuse the Unconscious Four while we’re laid up all defenseless at Sunnydale Memorial, don’t you think? That’s a new low even for an evil soulless-”

“Wow,” Buffy cut in, clearly not ready to face the facts. “Still singing this old tune about Spike? Only you seem to know a lot about how evil thinks. With zero proof. There’s a witch right here in this room.” He glanced at Tara, who blushed. “And the last time I oh-so-tragically landed in Spike’s lap? It was thanks to a spell done by her girlfriend.”

Automatically, Xander launched into a defense about his best friend. “Willow would never…” Except-he swallowed-Willow…would.

“If we would all take a moment to think…” Tara ventured, and he was so taken back by the commanding clarity of her voice that he forgot to argue. “Does anyone remember what we did yesterday? Especially last night?” Her hands fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, rolling and unrolling it, but she held her chin high.

“Well, we… Uhm…” He must’ve gone to work; the boss had been imposing mandatory overtime in an effort to meet the project deadline. Except he couldn’t recall what exactly he must’ve done at work. And afterwards… Afterwards… He rubbed his forehead, then drew a wide arc with his arm, trying to shape air into the elusive memory. It was at the tip of his tongue, but the more Xander tried to grasp it, the more it slipped away, like that wiggling catfish from the one and only time his father had taken him fishing, leaving behind a vague sense of regret and the sharp pain of what could’ve been.

In despair he looked to Anya for help, who, leaning against the bed, was nodding at him encouragingly. “Tell her, Anh! Tell her what we did last night!”

Anya’s eyes widened to saucers, then frantically darted from left to right, as if the right answer was somewhere in the room. “Last night, we uhm…” Suddenly her eyes lit up, as if she’d just spotted a loophole in the fine print of a contract, and her lips curled into a sly smirk. “But I thought I shouldn’t talk about our night activities in public…”

“What I’m trying to say is…” Tara’s voice trembled uncertainly, then resumed when, for a change, nobody else clambered to finish her sentence for her, “We can’t answer you, Buffy. Because…well, we simply don’t remember anything about yesterday. Do we?” She looked to Anya, then Xander, as if daring them to contradict her. While technically correct, that was some twisty logic, proving nothing. Biting his tongue, Xander stubbornly held her gaze. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Anya shrug noncommittally.

A tentative truce established, Tara approached Buffy, picked up her hands that’d been balled into fists at either side of her body, and enclosed them with her own. As if she hadn’t expected Buffy to be real but now could no longer refute the evidence within her hands, she mumbled, “It would’ve been truly powerful magic… Dark. Dangerous.” Then she shook her head, and spoke more optimistically, “We’ll figure it out. Together. Okay?”

Buffy’s warrior face softened at that, the fierce departing, leaving only sadness behind. A shadow passed over Tara’s eyes as she struggled with her own anguish. “Willow’s still unconscious. Is Dawn all right?”

At the mention of her sister, Buffy relaxed into a smile, tight but genuine. “She’s home. Safe.” She looked like she might add to that, but she only looked down, and a wisp of hair slipped from behind her ear to conceal her eyes.

After a moment of peace, Buffy gently withdrew her hands from Tara to tuck loose strands of her hair behind her ears, visibly pulling herself together. “Look,” she said, but avoided meeting any of their eyes. Stupidly, Xander-in fact, they all-looked at her, as if the understanding they all yearned for was written on her face. “I need to know. Why now? Why am I back? Is there an apocalypse? A disaster on the horizon? Is Glory back?”

He tried to stay mad at her, but his eyes stung at those words. The cold implication was too much: Buffy’s belief that she’d been brought back simply because an apocalypse needed a Slayer; that she was the secret weapon laid to rest after a crisis but reactivated from her grave in an emergency. Yet he had no words of comfort to offer, no reassurance to the contrary. Dumbly, he shook his head.

Denied immediate purpose, Buffy looked deflated. And Xander, for the first time, was struck by how desperate his friend looked, how forlorn, how big of a knucklehead he’d been. This was no way to treat a hero who’d sacrificed herself to protect the world, protect them all. She should’ve been greeted with a freaking parade in front of city hall, a hero’s welcome full of medals and salutes; not interrogated in a standing-room only hospital room in dire need of a fresh coat of paint. He pushed off from the wall. “Hey, Buffy. About what I said-”

“Right, I’d better get back.” Buffy smiled shakily, letting Xander’s words fade into the background unacknowledged. “You should’ve seen Dawn. Hovering over me in full mom mode. I might get grounded if I’m out too long. All of you…get some rest. We’ll catch up later, okay?”

Then, without waiting for a reply, she slipped out the door and disappeared into the hospital hallway, beyond the reach of unvoiced apologies and swallowed regrets.

(To be continued...)

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