Chapter 16
The rest of the evening, as well as the following day went by in a blur. Buffy vaguely remembered when Giles pulled Lethe’s Bramble from a black velvet bag and burned it, and then chanting from a book and placing a white crystal over the flames that immediately turned black. She didn’t hear the words, hadn’t even registered that the spell was finished until he handed the crystal to her and she clasped it involuntarily, her mind still aching with the memories of her last moments with William. Then he escorted her to his hotel where she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, unable to do anything but think of the next morning, when William would awaken with no recollection of her.
Retrieving the urn was rather anti-climactic, having been guarded by two demons that she’d taken out effortlessly, without thought, purely a reflex from the abilities she’d possessed and honed over the years. Giles, for his part, managed an apologetic smile that went unnoticed as they climbed into the carriage he’d rented, heading back to London, to the portal, to the finality of her time there. She knew what he was thinking, what he wanted to say and thankfully he hadn’t. He wanted to tell her that all of this pain could have been avoided if she’d only waited for the portal to open all the way, that they were doing the right thing. She wondered if she should have had her memories wiped away as well so that she wouldn’t have to suffer the knowledge of having him only to lose him once more, but she soon learned what a masochist she truly was. Buffy needed the pain. Buffy needed the reminder of her mistakes, the folly of denying Spike what he’d deserved. In some small way, that guilt would help her go on.
As they drove down a heavily wooded trail, Buffy sat staring at the urn nestled between cushions on the seat across from her. She hated it. Hated seeing it, hated finding it so quickly, hated that it was the reason she’d been here, the reason she’d seen William. And maybe it wasn’t fair to be so angry at an inanimate object, maybe it was childish to want to toss it outside of the carriage and watch it smash to smithereens, perhaps it was irrational thinking to damn the apocalypse that it was intended to avert, damn the world that had never said thanks for the many times she’d sacrificed herself to save it, damn the future that held only a long road of solitude. She couldn’t help it, however, couldn’t help focusing on her anger, on her shortcomings, on the people around her that never really understood. She managed to keep the black crystal on her throughout the day and it brought her a bit of comfort. William’s memories, concealed in her hands, the last tangible thing she’d ever have of him aside from the ring which was as black as their past, framed in diamonds like the future they should have had together.
William awoke the next day feeling incredibly well rested. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d slept so soundly through the night. As his servants helped him into his light brown suit and trousers, his head turned sharply towards the hallway when he heard the frantic shouting of his maids. He pursed his lips in irritation and spoke to his servant as he made his way to the door, “See if you can locate my reading glasses. I might have left them in the library.” His servant frantically left the bedroom in search of his spectacles and William quickly knotted his tie as he ran to the hall, hearing Evelyn and Judith speaking near the guest bedroom as he drew closer, their voices dropping to a whisper when their master came into view.
“What is the matter?”
They bowed to William before Judith spoke. “Someone was in the guest bedroom last night. The bed hasn’t been made.”
“I swear it was made yesterday, sir,” Evelyn said nervously, afraid of being reprimanded for a task she was positive she’d handled the previous morning. No one had used that room in months but yesterday was Wednesday, and every Wednesday the sheets were pulled from every bed in the house to be washed, no matter if they’d been used or not. She was sure she had done it.
“You servants have perfectly equipped rooms of your own. Sneaking into our quarters and using our beds is unacceptable,” William said harshly and walked to the guest room to inspect it himself. He didn’t have time for this. He was supposed to be going into town that day to handle some business at the bank and to purchase some more stationery which he’d realized that morning he was out of. With a sigh, he walked towards the bed, eyeing the disheveled sheets that were a tangled mess. He quirked a brow when he saw his glasses laying on the night stand. “Strange.”
He put them on with a shrug before he yanked the sheets and blankets off and handed them to Evelyn who was standing nervously by the door. “See that they’re washed and that this doesn’t happen again. And clean up that fireplace.”
“Yes sir,” she said, thankful that she hadn’t been severely punished and managed to get off with a warning.
“I-I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he quickly added, feeling guilty that he’d been so harsh with Evelyn. “Be grateful it was me who discovered this and not my mother. She’d have your head.”
“Yes sir, thank you, sir,” she bowed and hurried away with the bundle of sheets, Judith following suit behind her.
William brushed past them in the hallway and down the stairs to the dining room for breakfast, shaking his head at the silliness of his maids, wondering why he’d been so curt with them. He smiled warmly at his mother as she awaited him near the table, and quickly sat down, joining her for their morning meal.
“I feel so well rested,” Anne said as she took a sip of water.
“I was thinking the same thing,” he smiled. “It’s a good thing, too, because I have quite a long day ahead.”
“William,” Anne shouted abruptly, swatting his elbow with a spoon when he placed it on the table. “Where are your manners?”
“S-sorry,” he stammered, lowering his head and removing his elbow in embarrassment when John rolled his eyes from his station in the corner.
“That’s a good boy,” she smiled. “Now, do you remember everything you’re supposed to take care of at the bank?”
“Yes, Mother,” he said quietly, wanting to rush through his meal but knowing that if he took too large a bite she’d scold him for that, too. “But perhaps you should make a list in case I forget something.”
Anne nodded sternly, inwardly wishing that her son would grow up and take charge of their affairs without her constantly reminding him. Perhaps one day he would.
“Buffy! We’re so glad you’re back! How was the good ol’ 1800s?” Willow asked excitedly when she and Giles came through the portal.
Giles shook his head at the witch, as if to say, “Now is not the time.”
Willow frowned and took in Buffy’s downcast expression and then said softly, “You’re probably tired. I’ll just let you get some rest.”
“Yeah, I’m tired,” Buffy said sadly. “But first, I’m going to bask in the luxury of toilets with running water.”
Xander, who’d wisely stayed quiet as they appeared, couldn’t help it any longer. “What, you mean you didn’t enjoy squatting over a bed pan?”
She smiled slightly at him and walked towards the hallway. “I won’t miss it.” She lowered her eyes again and left them.
Giles removed his glasses and sat down on his trunk, running a hand down his face before he put them back on. “What day is it?”
“Tuesday. You were only gone a few hours,” Willow answered, desperate to find out why they seemed so upset but she bit her tongue.
He nodded somberly. “Then we have a few days to recover. That’s something at least. Here,” he reached down and lifted the urn and handed it to Willow. “Keep this someplace safe for the time being.”
Willow took the urn and walked out of the large room and Xander turned to Giles with a knowing expression. “Guess she found him.”
“Found him and stayed with him,” he said as he poured a much needed glass of scotch. “She’d lost her memory when she crossed over. Their emotional attachment… evolved rather quickly.”
Xander looked at the watcher in anger. Judging by the solemn expression on his friend’s face and the guilty one on Giles’, he had a seriously bad feeling about what went down. “What did you do?”
Offended by the tone Xander was using, Giles sat down on a chair and loosened his ascot, looking for a distraction. “I did what needed to be done. It was unfortunate, but it was for the best.”
“And again I ask…what did you do?”
“I had to perform the Tabula Rasa, which not only erased Spike, or rather, William’s memory of her, but the entire bloody town’s as well. She’d exposed herself to too many people. Buffy agreed to it, but it was incredibly difficult for her and I imagine it will be for some time.”
Xander sucked on his bottom lip and nodded, suddenly understanding the badness of the situation, but couldn’t help being a bit peeved with Giles for even allowing Buffy to go on the mission in the first place. If he’d used his head he might have remembered that Spike was alive then, that it would only be a recipe for disaster. Then again, when it came to Buffy and Spike, Giles often pulled the wool over his eyes, something Xander, too, had been guilty of in the past.
The day the Hellmouth collapsed, Buffy had been poignantly quiet, misty eyed at times but everyone assumed she was only mourning the loss of the town they’d all lived in. She’d held it in, never showed anyone what she was really feeling and it was Dawn who’d finally taken he and Willow aside and gave them quite a lecture about being insensitive when they cracked jokes about the vampire who’d sacrificed himself to save them all. He’d felt guilty for months, remembering how many times he’d brought him up in conversation around Buffy, hoping to make her laugh. She never laughed, though, and he’d inferred that her abrupt changes of subject were due to being irritated and not that she’d been biting back tears at the mere mention of his name. He never thought he was being insensitive, and if he’d been honest with himself, the fact that Xander constantly spoke of Spike was more telling than he was willing to admit. Spike, the one person aside from Angel that Xander hated…had saved the Goddamn world! It was mind boggling how selfless that act was and as many times as he’d ridiculed him in the past, both warranted and not, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been wrong about him. It certainly changed the way he viewed things and he made a conscious effort to be more open minded, though it was a hard pill to swallow.
When Dawn told he and Willow to zip it when it came to Spike, that Buffy loved him more than she was ever willing to admit, that it was partially their fault for being so judgmental, making it near impossible for her to ever feel like she could have what she always wanted, well…Xander was speechless. Actually, that wasn’t exactly true.
First he was defensive, then he was solemn, and then, when he finally realized everything Buffy had been through, he was speechless. As much as he missed Anya, at least he had one last moment with her before she died. Knowing that Buffy finally found the courage to admit to Spike how she felt about him, seconds before he died, only to be rejected with his disbelief, made him feel awful for her.
If he had respect for her before, he didn’t know what he had for her now. There wasn’t a word to describe the admiration he had for Buffy. First and foremost, she was the slayer above anything else, her own needs or her own desires falling to the wayside because she was a slave to her duty. How many times had he, Willow and Giles taken her for granted? How many times had they admonished her for making what they thought were bad choices, only to be proven wrong time and time again when she was inevitably right? How many times did they steer her away from her own happiness because they were too afraid to live in a world without her? They’d pulled her from heaven, the one place she found peace in, the one place she could be free from her duty, convinced her that loving a vampire was perverse and wrong, turned their backs on her…all of them turned their backs on her when she needed them most. Except for Spike, possibly the only one of them who ever treated her the way she deserved, like a person, an equal, a woman who wasn’t to be reckoned with, honored her for her calling, loved her for being a girl, proudly followed her wherever she would lead without question.
How could she not love someone like that? How could any of them begin to apologize for the millions of things they’d denied her, done to her, or said to her? There wasn’t a well deep enough to fill it with Xander’s guilt. And now, she’d had a taste of heaven again, a small token of peace, a chance to live the life she’d always wanted…and she gave it up for her calling, for her friends, for the world, yet again.
It wasn’t fair. Who cared if the world ended that day because she’d stayed behind with William? Didn’t they all deserve penance for the hundreds of times she’d saved their asses? Xander didn’t have much to live for these days anyhow, and if he had to go out, then he would’ve preferred sinking into that hole of a town he’d lived in his entire life. But she’d sacrificed her happiness so that they could all, what? Keep on fucking up her life? Continue to live footloose and fancy free while she busted her ass to keep them all alive? Sure, there were hundreds of slayers to help out, but every single one of them turned to Buffy for advice, even Faith, who’d humbly taken a back seat to her fifteen minutes of fame and leadership when she realized that Buffy was, and always would be, the chosen one. As long as good and evil existed and fought for dominance, she’d never find rest.
A small part of him wished that Buffy would have stayed back in time, gave them all the finger and went about her life the way she wanted to. They didn’t deserve her, and Angel certainly didn’t deserve her sacrifice. According to Andrew, who’d been strangely secretive about his conversations with Angel, the vamp had gotten himself involved with some seriously bad law firm. It just figured. Xander always hated that guy, and the second he got a little bit of power, his true colors started to show. He didn’t know how much Buffy knew about that particular mission, the next one on her list of things to do, and he didn’t know how much he wanted to tell her. Not that he knew much about it anyway, but it didn’t seem right that she’d sacrificed her happiness to get an urn that would help out the bastard who left her all those years ago.
“I’m going to talk with her,” he finally said.
“I think she’d rather be alone,” Giles finished off his scotch and stood, ready to get out of his breeches and into a nice pair of Dockers before taking a much needed nap.
Xander huffed and flung his hands in the air. “You’re an idiot. I may not know much, but the last thing Buffy wants is to be alone.”
Giles sighed dejectedly as Xander left the room and lugged his trunk down the hall to his bedroom.
“Buffy?”
She was sprawled on her bed on her back, arms spread wide, ankles crossed, looking like the martyr she was yet feeling completely pathetic when she heard Xander’s quiet voice from the other side of her door. “Come in, Xan.”
He silently walked in and sat beside her on the bed, unsure of what to say. Luckily, she spoke first.
“Do you ever feel like you’re sinking?”
“Sometimes,” he said with a tiny smile and reclined on the bed, propping his upper half on her pillows by the headboard. “Usually I just feel unnecessary rage. And sometimes a little horny. Mostly it’s just rage, though.”
She chuckled quietly, offering him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. In one hand she held the blackened crystal, twirling it in her fingers. “You know what I want?”
“Enlighten me,” he grinned, glad to see her opening up and he rolled onto his side to face her as she stared up at the ceiling.
“I want a full body massage. With oils,” she added quickly with a pointed finger. “Then I want about seventeen days of sleep and a really obnoxiously large chocolate milkshake.”
“In that order? Because I could imagine after sleeping for seventeen days that you’d probably be hungry.”
She tapped her forehead with the crystal and nodded. “Always thinkin’, I am. Planning ahead, that sort of thing.”
“You’re a regular Boy Scout, Buff.”
She sighed long and heavy and craned her neck forward to look at the crystal that she’d laid on her stomach. “I’m not doing so hot right now.”
“I know. If you want to punch someone, you can punch me. Just mind the good eye. And the danglies.”
“Xander,” she smiled, “I’d never touch your danglies.”
He laughed. “I don’t know, Buffy…they’re pretty awesome. Anya called them my old men and their walking stick. If that doesn’t paint a sexy picture, I don’t know what will.”
She rolled onto her side to face him and frowned. “She loved you, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said sadly. “I loved her, too.”
She gave him a watery smile and closed her eyes. “I don’t know how,” she sniffled and her voice dropped painfully low, “I don’t know how to go on, Xander.”
He pulled her against him and sighed, offering what little comfort he could when she started to cry. “The same way you always have, I guess. But this time, you can talk to me, ok? I won’t be a bastard about it, I promise.”
She nodded against him and let out a shuddering sigh, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Thank you.”
“It’s the least I could do.” After a few moments of silence, he felt her stirring and he said, “Do you want me to leave you alone for a while?”
“No,” she said abruptly and then took a breath to halt her panicking. “Please stay here.”
“Ok,” he smiled crookedly.
“Tell me a story or something. I don’t want to think about this any more.”
“Have I told you about the time Andrew and I snuck away from the house to go look at comic books when we were dealing with the First?”
She giggled. “No, but it sounds promising.”
“Oh, it is,” he grinned and started telling her the tale, both of them laughing as the story got weirder and weirder. Even though her heart was still breaking and she knew it was only a temporary reprieve from the pain she’d surely feel as soon as Xander left, she was grateful that he was there now, making her smile, being her friend.