Chapter Text
It doesn't matter how serene her smile is. At the end of any battle, reality catches up with Buffy. There's a bus ride and a plane ride and another bus (it's not just in the movies, some of the buses are actually doubly decked) and suddenly they're all in Giles' homeland. The pavement changes to cobblestones changes to dirt roads. England is small. Tiny, in comparison to the land of the free and the home of the brave. The journey from Heathrow to the coven's commune only takes a few hours. Her smile has long since faded by then, but she's not sure what her expression is currently.
"I thought I told you to sleep on our ride here."
A reality: Rupert Giles will take any opportunity to mother hen (that's a verb, yeah?) anyone in eyesight. Some exceptions may apply, and Buffy is not included in them.
"Jet lag," is her only response. It's true, Buffy doesn't think she'll fall asleep any time soon, and it will be even longer before she can stay asleep enough to trigger a REM cycle. Buffy wouldn’t let herself sleep anyway, she had to turn around in her seat and do a headcount every fifteen minutes to ensure everyone was present and accounted for. Then she would count them again because the number always came up shorter than the goal. Then she had to subtract heads from her count in remembrance. Then she had to count them again. Her whole life is a word problem from her high school math class.
Add Potentials. Subtract Anya, but leave an algebraic numeral for her fate. Add Willow and Kennedy, placed together despite Buffy’s bewilderment. Subtract her sister, keep her in parentheses away from the rest of the equation with Xander as an addition. Add her sister and Xander back in. Subtract Potentials. Add Giles. Subtract Potentials. Subtract Potentials. Subtract Potentials. Subtract Spike.
”You’ll crash and burn if you don’t sleep eventually, Buffy.” Buffy can hear the beginnings of a lecture about adequate rest just about to crest in Giles’ voice. She’s heard it all before, and if the world stays the same sort of fucked up it always is, she’ll hear it again.
She doesn’t answer Giles until all the Potentials are off the bus and the head count satisfies Buffy’s math. “If I tell you I’ll sleep when I’m dead, would that be too on the nose?”
“Too macabre, actually,” is Giles’ quick response. Buffy smiles and her face hurts. It doesn't last long.
“Do you want some valerian root tea? I know it grows in the coven’s garden and someone—I could make some tea from it.”
Buffy turns her head to the sound of Willow’s voice. “Being in England changed you. I can’t believe I have another person in my life offering me tea in times of strife. You can’t gang up on a girl like this, I’m very fragile.”
“Joke all you like,” Giles quips. “In fact, keep joking, Joke as often as you want.” It’s a forced course correction, and not his most elegant. Not his most in-elegant, either. No one is on their best form right now.
At least they don’t have to be.
“So that’s a no on tea.” Willow nods resolutely to herself. “Probably for the best. Valerian root smells awful.”
”Show me,” Kennedy insists. “I wanna smell the awful tea.”
“Because?” Willow asks concerned.
“Slayer curiosity.”
Buffy can’t even deny it, she probably would have done the same thing at different times in her life. Not this one.
Everyone is being led to rooms by different coven members that Buffy is sure she was introduced to, but cannot remember the names of now. She’ll apologize and ask for their names another time, maybe once her brain isn’t running on a dangerously low battery percentage. She counts the girls as they disappear into rooms, bunking together and safe in their numbers. Buffy is led to a room with a single twin bed, the first time she’s been alone in a room in months. She doesn’t leave the doorway or close the door behind her until all friends and family and mentors and Potentials are accounted for. Even after that, she goes to every door one last time. Knocks, peeks in, counts, exits. She bids good night when she remembers to, during this task. She ignores Willow’s concerned look disappearing behind her closed door.
She finally shuts herself in her own room. She tests the door latch a few times, closing her fist around it to test its ability to move up and down up and down, the latch fitting into the doorframe the same way every time.
When she turns around to take a better look at her accomodations, Spike is staring back at her.
“No,” she whispers. She wants to yell, she wants to scream. The First is dead and defeated, buried with the bodies of ancient vampires. The First is here, taking the form of a vampire twice dead. She should warn the others. She should scream and warn the others and then get back on the bus and do another round of counting heads as they drive away from here. “You’re dead.”
“I could tease you about how obvious that is.”
Buffy shuts her eyes in since she can’t shut her ears. “You’re dead. You died. I buried you.”
There isn’t an answer for a few moments. Maybe she should have taken that nap on the bus after all. She’s hallucinating now, again. It’s been ages since she’s hallucinated, but this isn’t one she wants to give in to.
“Oh, Buffy.”
Spike’s voice in her ears, a masquerade mask on an evil she defeated. She squeezes her eyes more tightly together. She wants to place her hands over her ears, but she finds she can’t actually move them, frozen fists at her sides. Someone’s shaking is rattling the floorboards. “You can’t be here. I killed you.”
“It’s me, Buffy. It’s just me.” The voice is closer, no longer across the room. If someone is kneeling in front of her, the floorboards give no indication of it. “I’m not The First.”
“That’s exactly…” Buffy pauses. It actually isn’t something The First would say. Sure, they would pretend and connive, get as up close and personal to a person’s weaknesses as possible, but eventually they’d cop to their true nature. The First’s weakness was ego. An obsession with being known.
“It’s me, love.”
It’s not The First.
Buffy opens her eyes and knows that Spike will be kneeling in front of her. “You’re dead,” she repeats, softly. She doesn’t feel herself shaking, but she hears it in her voice and in the creaking of the floorboards. “I buried you.”
When she reaches out to touch Spike’s cheek, her hand goes right through him