London, October 2001: a resurrection
It's cold. The ground feels like muddy ice under his knees, and it's getting colder by the second, as though this little patch of soil is tumbling out through the atmosphere, falling into the absolute zero, absolute emptiness, of space. Falling out of life, out of the possibility of life.
It's dark, too. He can't see a thing, but he knows what's there, so close he can feel the extra chill of it. The granite slab with Buffy's name, with those awful dates, so final and so close together. With Dawn's words, the ones that made her giggle and then start to cry again: She saved the world. A lot. Giles knows Buffy's gravestone better than anything, better than his own body. He ordered it, after all, chose its every detail.
Cold, dark, and he doesn't even shiver, doesn't wish for light. He's waiting.
Under him, deep in the frozen earth, he feels a stirring. Rougher than worms, more purposeful than the scrabble of rats. And now he knows what he's waiting for, where the heat has gone, and the light.
Her.
She's coming back, or something like her, something wearing her half-rotten flesh, something animated with stolen heat, stolen life.
A monster, or his Buffy, his brave brilliant girl, and he won't know until he sees what digs its way out of this grave.
She's closer, Giles can hear it now. Any second a hand or a claw will break through the dead ground, any second she'll lift her head and shriek, and shriek-
It's not cold, and not so very dark. Giles is in his own bed, with a warm duvet over him and Oz's warm body against him, and he can just see the shape of Oz's sleeping face. He's in London, not Sunnydale, and Buffy is dead.
The warmth of the bed makes him shiver, makes him gasp for air, and Giles slides carefully out from under Oz's arm and gets up. Oz murmurs vague syllables and rolls over into Giles' space, but he goes quiet again when Giles bends and kisses his cheek.
The room really is cold, which feels righter, in the dream's sick aftermath, than warmth and comfort did. Giles, with shaking fingers, fumbles into his bathrobe and goes to pour himself a scotch.
But of course there's no whiskey in the house, as he remembers once he's picked his way to the sitting-room shelf where he used to keep the bottle. Cocoa, he thinks, and he's on his way to the kitchen when the telephone rings.
Before he even answers, before Willow's nervous voice says, Umm, Giles, sit down, okay?, he knows that the dream was no dream. Those fools, those children, have tried to undo natural law and bring her back.
When Willow's half-heard explanation is over, all he can say is, "Are you sure it's her?"
"Of course I am!" Offense is palpable in Willow's voice as she launches into a long description of the books, the spell, the care she took.
Giles says something, apologizes, babbles about schedules and airline reservations and how it'll be a day or two before he can be there, and then Willow's rung off and he's just standing, staring down at the receiver in his hands. After so long, he should be used to impossible things, but he's blank and motionless as the world shifts around him, reforms to its impossible shape.
Buffy is alive.