Chapter Twenty-Three
Buffy’s first thought when her brain came back online was that she was sick to death of hospitals. If she never had to smell the scent of chemical cleaning fluids and hear the constant beep of the heart monitors again, she would be a happy woman. Plus, the sheets were scratchy and the pillows were flat; you’d think they’d work on that. After all, people deserved to be comfortable in bed when they were in pain and/or dying.
Her second thought was of Spike. . . nothing coherent about him. . . just. . . She sat up abruptly and opened her eyes, opening her mouth to speak. No words came out as she scanned the tiny white room in search of. . . there was Willow sitting next to her, back straight, eyes round in surprise.
“Buffy!”
Buffy started to panic a little when the words in her mind refused to come out through her lips.
Willow placed a gentle hand on her forearm. “It’s okay. Breathe.”
Buffy commanded herself to inhale, and when air rushed into her lungs, she thought, “Go, me!” She focused on breathing for several seconds, the oxygen flowing in and the carbon dioxide flowing out, her chest rising and falling, and her heart rate slowing. She became aware that her throat was rusty with lack of use, and she tried to hard to clear it, her fingers on her neck.
Recognition lighting Willow’s eyes, she explained, “You’ve been out for a while, Buffy. That chip. . . Roxy. . . she flipped a switch in the chips somehow with magic, and while it reversed the effects of Stephanie’s hold on the kranooks for a period of time, it also. . . well, fried your brain.”
Buffy’s eyes widened. She was a Slayer, and Spike was. . . “S-s. . .”
“Spike’s. . . he’s alive.” Willow’s words were a relief, and Buffy sagged back against the flat hospital pillow. After Buffy felt like she wasn’t going to hyperventilate, Willow continued, “He’s unconscious though. Like you’ve been.”
Buffy gave up on speaking and discovered that her arms and hands worked better than her vocal cords. With urgency, she mimed writing with a pen, and Willow scrambled to find a small notepad and pen in her messenger bag. Uncapping the small instrument for Buffy, she handed the supplies over, and Buffy scribbled, “Can I see him?”
Willow opened her mouth and paused as if she was going to say one thing but changed her mind. “Let me help you.”
The witch pushed the right buttons to push the railing on the side of the bed down, and Buffy swung her legs over the side of the bed. She swayed a bit as she stood to her feet, not because her body wasn’t strong but because a wave of dizziness and bright sparkly stars shone in her vision. She accepted Willow’s arm of support until the vertigo passed and she could open her eyes without the world spinning. She smiled at her friend, grateful to see and feel someone familiar, and Willow smiled back.
Buffy held onto the I.V. and vitals machine pole, rolling it along as she moved with increasing surety into the hallway.
Willow held her hand up to stop her. “Let me check for nurses. It’s not that I don’t think you can handle it, but I’d rather not deal with a confrontation right now.”
After Willow looked both ways up and down the hallway, they ventured out of her room. Buffy gave her friend a questioning look, and Willow inclined her head to the left. “He’s next door.”
With no further prompting needed, Buffy pushed open his door and entered the room. She stared at his still form beneath the hospital blankets for only a moment before she was by his side, awkwardly pulling up a chair to perch beside him. She found his hand under the covers, not caring if the I.V. in her hand snagged. His palm was dry and heavy against hers. She closed her fingers through his and felt immensely relieved that she could touch him. With her mind, she willed him to open those beautiful blue eyes of his and call her stubborn or any other nickname of his choice.
Willow hung back a little and stayed silent but then said, “Buffy. There’s more you need to know.” Buffy briefly glanced at her friend and nodded before returning to watching Spike. Willow found a chair on the other side of the bed and sat. “The chips fried the kranooks’ brains, too. All of them died on the battlefield. . . they just collapsed and poof. Dead.” Buffy’s head went up, and Willow amended, “Well, not literally poof like vampire poof. They died though. You. . . you and Spike almost died, too. . . well, you would have died, but I-I felt it. . . the shift just before.” Willow shuddered. “Before I went dark and almost destroyed the world, I-I never felt the powerful shifting forces of life and death, but I’m glad I did because. . . . I-I’m sorry, Buffy, I couldn’t help myself. . . .” She trailed off as tears welled.
Buffy somehow found her voice to reassure her friend, “W-willow. Don’t.”
“It’s not something I’d ever thought I’d do again. . . messing with someone’s brain like that with magic, but I was operating on adrenaline, and I. . .” Buffy watched Willow with complete compassion in her eyes. Willow kept going, “I dissolved your chips, or rather, I got yours but didn’t get Spike’s all the way except to keep him from dying.”
“Thank you,” Buffy said, her vocal cords clearer. “What else happened? Angel?”
Willow wiped her tears on the back of her hand. “Angel’s alive. He’s fine. He kept Roxy safe while she cast her last spell, but he couldn’t stop it from killing her. S-she destroyed her own chip, too.”
“Ohhh.” Buffy’s eyes filled with tears, glad that Angel was okay but surprisingly saddened by the witch’s passing. Perhaps it was because the young witch had such a tragic life.
“Stephanie’s dead.”
Buffy couldn’t banish the visual of Jon biting the vampire’s face off and shivered. “I remember that part.”
“Right. Well, we staked her for good measure.”
“Smart.”
“The vampires are. . . a lot of them escaped. But our team of Slayers, you’d be so proud of them. They staked a lot.”
Buffy giggled. For some odd reason, Willow’s choice of phrasing made her laugh. Maybe she was hysterical.
Willow smiled. “And I think the balance is restored. The tension lifted for now. The coven from England helped mask the city from human awareness ala Stephen King, but the city is still very much in our dimension until we figure out what to do with it.”
“Good.”
“Fred and Wesley organized a team of medical doctors and psychologists who are out there now helping with the human rehabilitation, and boy, is that going to take a while. Oddly enough, Harmony and Michael are helping out for now. We’ll see how it goes. Honestly, I think that Harmony just needs a direction of some sort like a not-so-bright puppy with pointy teeth. It’s weird to see her helping humans.”
Buffy felt a tinge of regret about Mary and the little boy from the hotel. “Did you see the C.B.S. and find all the locations? Stephan said there were a lot of them in the city.”
Willow nodded. “Awful. The whole city was weird and oddly horrifying with the modern conveniences for vampires. I think Wesley and Giles want to study the culture and try to understand it. For the archives, of course.”
“And Stephan thought it was a good thing. . . thought he was helping them be in less pain.”
“You know I feel about that,” Willow said. “It’s more with the brain manipulation. So not of the good.”
“Right. Like Dr. Kevorkian of the mind and spirit.” Running her thumb over Spike’s unmoving one, Buffy paused. “And the peeps from the other dimension. . . the alternative Angel, Spike, etc.?”
“The other Spike, Jenn, Angel, and I helped round up human Angel, Lorne, and Wesley. Between Jenn and I, we managed to open a portal back to their home place sans dimensional key because it got destroyed, too. By the way, I liked Jenn.”
“She’s got mad skills!”
“Yeah. That the other me taught her!” Buffy couldn’t help but share a brief laugh with her best friend, and then Willow kept going, “The other Spike. . . he insisted that they would deal with things there. . . that he had to be there for Celeste. Did you know you have a daughter?”
Buffy could still feel the little girl’s arms around her, hugging her like she was really her mom. “Well, other me did.”
“And other you died,” Willow said with sadness. “Again.”
“Yeah.” Buffy felt oddly detached from that fact. “I’m glad Spike. . . the other Spike is going to be there for her daughter.”
“Was it weird?”
“What?”
“All of it. Seeing Spike a vampire again? Seeing Angel human? Knowing you’re dead over there and that other you had a child?” Buffy noticed that Willow was always curious. . . unlike Xander, whose negative feelings toward vampires in general put an inevitable roadblock on any such discussions even now.
“Way weird.”
“Kinda like the time I met my vampire alter-ego?”
“Yeah! Exactly like!” They exchanged smiles. “And you know what? It made me grateful. Made me realize how I’m glad I made the choices that I did here. It made me think about myself, too.”
“What about you?”
“That all my choices don’t have to be so profound. That I need to do things for me, too. That it’s okay for me to have a life outside of all the Slayer stuff. Somewhere along the way I forgot that.”
“‘Bout time you realized that.”
“And that Spike is important to me. That I can’t leave him again.” Her heart tugged at the thought of even considering leaving his side. “I love him so much, Will.” Tears blurred her vision as she studied his peaceful face. “Do you think he’ll wake up?”
“I don’t know, Buffy,” Willow said gently. “The other thing you should know is. . .”
“Buffy!” a familiar voice called out from the doorway.
Before Buffy could turn around, the owner of said voice threw her arms around her neck. “Oh thank god! You woke up!”
Buffy tugged on her sister’s arm and mock choked. “Dawn.” She gave her little sister a motherly frown. “How come you’re not in school?” She took in her sister’s short hair. “And what happened to your hair?”
Tears fell over Dawn’s cheeks as she patted up on her short bob. “Do you like?”
“I do. It’s a good look.” She paused. “Copycat.”
She blushed. “Hey! Couple of margaritas can sometimes make you do funny things.”
“I so don’t want to know about that. And school? What’s with the not being in it?”
“The semester’s over, Buffy. Don’t worry, I got all A’s. The teachers let me study from a distance so I could be here with you, and well, maybe my chemistry professor took pity on me and gave me some extra credit.”
Buffy tried to absorb what Dawn was saying, “Wait. What?” She glanced at Willow.
“That’s the other thing I was about to say,” the redhead said softly.
“How long have I been unconscious?”
Willow shrugged and not very reassuringly said, “Not as long as Faith was.”
* * *
Buffy was roused from sleep again by a gentle hand shaking her shoulder. “Buffy?”
She opened her eyes and groaned. Although her new awakening was less striking, she was greeted with a huge crick in her neck. Opening her eyes from where her head rested on Spike’s bedside, she saw Angel bending over her, his brown eyes concerned and kind.
“I heard you woke, and I came as soon as I could get away from the firm.”
Rubbing her neck, she eased up and stretched. “I’m here.” Normally, she would have greeted him with a hug or in the past, maybe even a kiss, but not now. Instead, she smiled. “And you’re okay, too.”
He ran a hand over the back of his head and sat in Willow’s vacated seat, Spike’s sleeping body between them. “I am.” She noticed that he didn’t take his eyes off her, as if he was trying to assure himself that she was really awake and talking with him. “Even though they’ve been telling me that your vital signs were improving, I’ve been worried about you. How are you feeling?”
“As okay as I can be considering I was out for so long. Willow filled me in on everything.”
“I heard.”
“I-I don’t know why Spike’s not waking up though.” She didn’t say how scared she was because that felt more than a bit awkward.
Angel studied his grandchilde’s face, and not for the first time, Buffy wondered how Angel really felt about Spike. She decided there was something beyond past jealousies. “Probably because he’s human now.”
“I hope he wakes up soon.”
“Me, too.”
Buffy remained comfortably silent with Angel for several minutes, as was always their way with one another during emotional times.
“What do you think about the prophecy since all is said and done?” Buffy finally asked.
Angel was thoughtful. “Well, we fulfilled it, I think.”
Buffy frowned. “Yeah, we did, but I was expecting something more.”
“Prophecies are usually a letdown.”
“True.” She then added. “Spike and I decided it was a red herring.”
Angel laughed. “That makes sense.”
Buffy emitted a small sigh. “The other dimension thing was weird. I mean, I was dead there.”
“I’m glad to be in this dimension.”
“Really? It’s ‘cause I’m alive, right?” she joked.
He gave her an even look. “That’s obvious. I mean, I’m glad to be here for another reason. I met the other me. . . the human me, and I didn’t like him very much.”
Buffy raised her eyebrows. “I forgot that you had to hang out with him with Stephanie.”
“Yes, and he was pretty bitter. He lost you. . . the you in his universe, and he didn’t handle that very well. I think being human made him vulnerable to losing sight of himself. . . of who he fought to be, and I think who Liam was before he was turned and re-ensouled didn’t really help. Liam was not a nice man. Long story short, I’m glad I remained me here.”
Although Buffy was surprised that Angel was glad she hadn’t chosen him, she didn’t ask him to explain. She was afraid he’d stop talking, and she wanted to hear what he had to say. He was quiet again, and she felt like she was holding her breath.
“I’m sorry. . . sorry that you had to be. . . see Angelus again. You know that the things he said and did. . . I regret that you got hurt.”
Buffy wasn’t sure she was quite ready to forgive that aspect of what happened just yet. “I might need some time.” He looked wounded, and she found herself quietly adding, “I’ll get there, I promise, but I need you to respect that.”
He nodded in acceptance, and together, they watched Spike breathe for a few more minutes. Buffy focused on each inhalation and exhalation as if she could will him to keep breathing. . . to wake up.
Her silent meditation was broken when Angel spoke again, “You know, Buffy, I am proud of Spike. . . the person he’s become, and I’ve been thinking about what you said before we went on this mission, about how Spike didn’t have it so easy even though it sometimes seemed that way.” He paused. “You were right.”
Buffy thought about saying that that was easy for him to say now that Spike was unconscious and might not ever wake up, but she was too exhausted to pick a fight with her ex, and she could tell that Angel had more to convey.
“He and I. . . we have a long history,” he caught her expression, “that you know all about. But what you don’t know is what he’s been like since he came back. . . since he’s been working with me and my team.” Angel played with his fingers for a moment. “He drove us all crazy at first with his snarky comments that were a little too honest for comfort, and he never said it, but if I’m honest with myself, I know he had a hard time being human. He’s always loved the fight. . . relished his strength and enjoyed a good challenge. I suppose being human was one of those challenges.” Angel took a deep, unneeded breath and sat forward with his elbows on Spike’s bed. He didn’t look at Buffy. “And when it came down to it, when our backs were to the wall, he was on our side. He worked just as hard as the rest of us, and he earned everyone’s trust even though there were a lot of dissenters at first.”
“He had a lot of those in Sunnydale, too,” Buffy admitted, feeling guilt wash over her for how she treated him when he was trying to do the right thing.
Angel let her comment slip by without acknowledgment. “And Buffy, he never stopped loving you.”
Buffy’s eyes brimmed with tears yet again.
“At first, he didn’t talk about you at all except to make sarcastic comments about you and me and our relationship. Then, as he softened up. . . .well, when we got drunk together a few times, I thought he had you on this pedestal. I thought he saw you as this angel of unwavering goodness, kind of like how. . . kind of like how I saw you when we were together.”
Buffy was surprised by this admission, but something about it rang true. “First loves are like that sometimes.”
Brown eyes knowingly met green ones, and Angel gave her a small smile. “Yeah.”
“But Spike doesn’t see me that way.”
“No, No, he doesn’t. He sees the whole of you. He loves the whole of you.”
“Even the not so nice parts.” In the past, she would have ducked her head in shame at the remembrance of her past behaviors, but this time, she recognized that she loved Spike for himself, flaws and all, too.
“Even the not so nice parts.”
“You care a lot about him,” Buffy observed. She was struck by how grateful she was that Spike had had Angel and his friends over the last three years.
“And you.”
“You should tell him.”
“What?”
“When he wakes up, you should tell him what you just told me.” She knew the advice applied to herself, too, but she didn’t say it to Angel because it wasn’t his to hear. She paused and then added, “Tell him again.” At the question in his eyes, she continued, “I heard you when you thought I was asleep at Stephan’s. I heard you talking with Spike about me. Well, at least the end of your conversation. You said that you wouldn’t stand in the way of us.” She paused until she knew he was following her. Then, “You knew.”
“Knew what?” Angel sounded tired.
“That I love Spike. . . that I’d choose him.”
His smile was sad. “You already had. It’s just that neither of you knew it yet.”
Angel stood then and rounded the end of the bed. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, but then, he kissed her on the temple and quietly left the room.