Chapter Text
It doesn’t take long to find out what happened, even with the worldwide chaos.
“It’s intergalactic, actually,” Giles says, face as long as it always is these days. When is the last time he smiled? When is the last time any of them did? “The mad Titan destroyed half of all life throughout the universe.”
“How? It had to be some kind of spell, right?” Buffy glances around to make sure they’re all on the same page.
“Hard to think of what else could’ve wiped out half of all life,” says Xander.
“I’ve never heard of a spell like that,” Willow says. “But I don’t know what else it could’ve been.”
“He had some sort of artifact—artifacts,” Giles corrects himself. “They were apparently called Infinity Stones. When combined, they gave their bearer the ability to do anything.”
“Why do I get the feeling it’s not going to be as easy as getting these Stones ourselves?” Xander asks.
“Because the Stones have been destroyed,” Giles says. “As thoroughly as the lives they took.”
That can’t be it. Giles’s voice is cold and final, meaning he doesn’t see any other way to deal with this, but Buffy refuses to accept that.
“What did the Stones do, exactly?” she asks. “Destroy half of all life, yeah, but—the grass isn’t withered. It can’t be half of all life. So, did everyone it took die? Where did they go?”
“Does that matter?” Giles asks, and the only reason he’s that harsh is because he knows it does. “They’re gone, Buffy. You, of all people…” He cuts himself off, shaking his head, which is the only reason she doesn’t immediately shout back at them for the words he didn’t say.
“Yeah, me of all people. Are they in some weird Hell dimension? Are they just—where they would’ve gone, eventually?”
“I can look,” Willow offers. “Not do anything else,” she adds quickly, off of Giles’s forbidding expression. “But see if we can learn where any of them are. What if they were just taken somewhere else? Transported to some other dimension?”
“You can’t tell me we’re going to just take SHIELD’s word for it that they’re gone,” Xander says.
“Fine,” Giles says. “I know I don’t have to tell you that there are some things magic cannot fix.” For a moment, Buffy wonders who’s going to explode first. Maybe all of them at the same time. “But if there is anything that we can do,” he adds, easing the tension, “then you must know that I’ll help in any way that I can.”
“Yeah,” Willow says, offering him a half-hearted smile. “I know.”
--
In theory, a vengeance demon could undo what was being called “The Snap.” In practice? Not so much, apparently. It took long enough to track down a vengeance demon who was willing to talk to them—after what happened to Anya and Halfrek, being willing to associate with the Slayer was considered very bad for business.
“Worse than if I broke your amulet?” Buffy asked sweetly. The demon they’d finally caught sighed.
“Look, do you really think we haven’t tried? Pretty much the whole world wants revenge on that Thanos guy, and most of them have made the same wish. No go.”
That didn’t bode well for finding any other means of undoing The Snap. And what a stupid name that is for such a horrible thing. Apocalypse at least sounds big and important. The Snap sounds like some kind of mall kiosk selling some weird thing she’s about twenty years too late to care about.
Almost nine months in, Willow’s the one who calls another meeting.
“I can’t find any record of anything like this,” she says. “The spirits I’ve been able to call upon… Some of them know about the Stones. Well, knew, before this.” At this point, pretty much everyone is aware of the Infinity Stones, even if they know nothing more than the name
and the last catastrophic effect. “But they couldn’t tell me much more than we already know.”
“Were you able to find the people he took?” Buffy asks before Giles can interrupt.
Willow shakes her head. “Everything that I’ve tried—everything that anyone has tried—just shows nothing. Like they never lived or died.”
“Their souls are gone?” Xander asks, sounding as sick as Buffy feels and Willow looks. Willow nods.
“No,” Buffy says. And everyone who was stolen away, who was destroyed, is their own individual tragedy. She knows that. But in that moment, all she can think of is Dawn asking if she’s real, is how Spike risked everything to get his soul back. “There has to be a way.”
“There is,” Willow says. “I think.” Her eyes flicker nervously to Giles, then go back to Buffy. “Time travel.”
“Time travel?” Giles echoes.
“Hear me out,” she says.
“Absolutely not.”
“Giles. I’m not a scared twenty-year-old dancing in magic I don’t understand. The magic, the universe, is screaming. Me resurrecting Buffy was unnatural. It was a bad idea.” She shoots an apologetic glance at Buffy, shrugging just a little as she does. And for all that Buffy still doesn’t know that she’ll ever be over it, she’s more or less forgiven Willow for it. “But this… This is the opposite of that. Evil was able to take advantage of that, to leverage it for its own good. Everything was out of balance, then, and it’s gone out of balance the other way, this time.”
“How do you know that you’re not just seeing what you want to see?” Giles asks.
“Everyone I’ve talked to has said the same thing. They may not understand it, or have the words for it, but they’re all seeing what I am.”
That’s not the end of it. There are a few more consultations, another shouting match or two, but what it finally comes down to is exactly what Willow said.
Time travel.
She can only send one person back, and it cannot be her, because she has to anchor the spell.
“What happens if they succeed?” Buffy asks, as if she doesn’t already know who’s going.
“Then that’s it. This won’t have happened. This isn’t creating an alternate reality. Only the person who goes back will remember.”
Which sounds incredibly lonely, but then again, she’s pretty sure it’s still not going to be as bad as her second resurrection.
And on the topic of that resurrection, she thinks about every Potential and Watcher and innocent, human or demon or both or neither, who died because Buffy was brought back to life.
“How far back can I go?”