Chapter Text
It seems like the spell works.
At least, at first.
Admittedly, Xander’s not exactly an expert, but the cloud of lavender smoke and warm, candle-y scent are both good signs, right? If it’d gone wrong the smoke would be all — black, or grey, or maybe just an eviller, darker shade of purple.
But then the smoke starts to clear, the four of them standing around it, breath caught, and instead of revealing the super important book Giles and Willow have been searching for, it’s not a book, but a whole, living person standing there. Not for long, though, if the way she’s — and she’s definitely a she, although the last remnants of the lavender smoke cloud make it hard to make out much more than that — swaying on her feet is any indication. Xander moves forward to catch her without really making any conscious decision, his — shallowly, to be fair — buried caveman instinct kicking in seemingly on its own.
And then, for a few seconds, everything’s in chaos. Willow’s screaming at someone — him, Xander realizes belatedly; she’s screaming at him — to be careful, Buffy’s yelling at someone — Willow, probably, but Xander can’t exactly look over and check — to stay back, Giles is — well. Doing something, presumably. Xander doesn’t know, because whatever it is, he’s quiet about it, and Xander’s a little distracted, busy stumbling under the full weight of the alive human woman Willow’s spell just conjured. He’d love to say he catches her gracefully, romance hero style, but it’s more of a hands-under-the-armpits, hauling-a-sack-of-potatoes kinda deal.
It’s awkward, and the angle’s awkward, and also there’s a bunch of smoke in his eyes, so the rest of them get a good look at her long before Xander’s able to register anything more than oof.
There’s a very loud crash, and then there’s total silence, and then there’s Willow’s voice again. Not a scream, this time, but a choked little whisper.
"Ms. Calendar?"
In his shock, Xander nearly drops her. In her shock, the woman — Ms. Calendar, apparently, what the fuck — shoves herself free of his grip and pushes him backwards in one move.
It’s not really enough force to do much — whatever just happened, it obviously took a lot out of her — but Xander, moving through several rapid stages of shock as he processes first that he just manhandled a teacher, and then that he just manhandled a teacher who’s supposed to be dead, lets her go anyway.
It’s a mistake, obviously. She isn’t any steadier on her feet than she was when he grabbed onto her, and the effort of trying to push him off was more than she could handle.
But for a moment she’s just standing there, wavering on her feet but still upright. She looks like Ms. Calendar but not; Xander had never really thought much about how Ms. Calendar dressed, but he can tell she looks different, now. Different clothes, different hair. He doesn’t think she’s wearing any makeup; she looks more serious than he ever saw her.
Her gaze skids past him, eyes wild, as she takes in the rest of the group. Xander isn’t sure what he’s expecting, exactly; the evening’s gone far enough off-track that he isn’t comfortable predicting much of anything.
That being said, he’s definitely not expecting her to lock eyes on Willow, of all people, and go white, stumbling backwards in visible fear. Xander moves to catch her and then thinks better of it.
"What are you going to do to me?" she demands in a shaky voice, neatly breaking the silence that had fallen over the room.
She sounds like the real her, which only makes her reaction all the more jarring, because the real Ms. Calendar would never have looked at Willow like that.
And she is looking at Willow, because when Willow takes a step forward, forehead all knit together in confused concern, Ms. Calendar lets out a ragged gasp and moves backward again, hitting the edge of a table with enough force that it’s gotta hurt.
"Shit," Xander mutters, recovering his wits enough to reach for her elbow, since it’s obvious no one else is gonna do it. Willow looks like she just got punched in the stomach; Buffy looks like she’s bracing for a fight.
Giles looks — well. Giles looks like he’s just seen a ghost.
"What was the spell?"
Giles looks towards, but not quite at her; Xander can’t help but notice that he’s fixed his gaze on a point somewhere just past her left shoulder. Maybe-Ms.-Calendar obviously also notices, but she doesn’t let it dissuade her in the slightest — a pretty solid point in the Yes, it’s really her column, in Xander’s opinion.
"The spell," she repeats, nodding towards what’s left of the items they’d arranged so carefully. She kinda landed right on top of it, when she appeared; it’s pretty unrecognizable after that. "Obviously this — " she gestures towards herself " — wasn’t what you intended, so — what were you trying for?"
"It was, ah — " Giles falters and can’t finish, and for once Xander doesn’t even have it in him to tease him for it. The girls are still in the other room, recovering from Ms. Calendar’s freakout when she saw Willow. And, presumably, just kind of recovering in general; it’s not every day you accidentally summon your dead computer science teacher in the school library. "It was a retrieval spell," Giles manages, finally, still not actually looking at her as it says it. "There’s a volume — well. I supposed it doesn’t matter."
"Do you have the incantation?"
Giles’ lips purse; it’s obvious he wants to tell her no, and just as obvious he understands that he can’t, because they do need to figure out what happened, and she’s almost definitely got information that could help.
"It should be here somewhere," he mutters, squatting down to rifle through the mess left on the floor. Xander hesitates, then crouches down to help him.
"She’s not going anywhere," he says quietly, when Giles shoots him an incredulous look, all why aren’t you watching the hostage, which, like — Xander gets it, alright, but they’ve established that Ms. Calendar’s not a vampire, and even if she does have some other nefarious purpose, frankly, Xander’s not that worried about that right now. She’s, like, half his body weight, and currently leaning against one of the bookshelves with a dazed expression on her face, kind of watching Giles sort through to find the spell but mostly just zoning the fuck out. Xander’s made that exact same face before, he’s pretty sure, losing track of time in the shower after his first apocalyptic near-miss.
Willow made a face like that when they found out about Ms. Calendar, but — yeah, no, Xander’s not thinking about that right now. Or ever, maybe. No matter that Ms. Calendar is — by all appearances — right here in the room with them. He’s gotten so good at repression; why give it up now?
"It’s here," Giles says, holding up a sheet of purple looseleaf paper, scribbled all over with a combination of old person cursive and Willow’s familiar rounded handwriting. Xander’s willing to bet Giles has the whole thing memorized, honestly, but still he squints down at the paper for what feels like an excessive amount of time before handing it over.
To Xander, not Ms. Calendar, like they’re in a relay and he’s passing the baton. Ms. Calendar’s hands are trembling, just a little, when she takes the paper, and now that Xander’s looking at her properly he can see scarring at her neck, an ugly mass right at the curve of her shoulder.
Ms. Calendar inhales sharply through her nose. Folds the paper in one quick, smooth motion and then hands it back to Xander, and this time Xander can’t tell if she wants him to pass it over again, or if she just wants to be rid of it.
"You know, don’t you?" she asks quietly.
Xander doesn’t know, obviously, but she isn’t talking to him. Giles’ mouth twists.
"That’s not possible," he says, voice dismissive, but even Xander, who doesn’t know anything, knows he’s full of shit. It is possible, obviously; either that, or they’re all experiencing an insane group hallucination. "I need to speak to Willow. You can watch her, right?"
It takes Xander a few seconds to realize Giles is talking to him, this time.
"Um," he says. Ms. Calendar’s face, when he glances back over towards her, is impossible to read. "Yes? I mean, yes. I can do that."
"Rupert, come on. Is that really necessary?"
Giles ignores both of them, mouth pressed together in a thin line, brushing past them towards his office. Xander, used to that kind of treatment from him, doesn’t take it too personally; Ms. Calendar, weirdly, doesn’t seem that offended either. Xander can’t get a read on her at all, actually, which he guesses makes sense. They still don’t actually know for sure that it’s really her.
Her eyes are sharp as she watches Giles leave, but she doesn’t shoot him one last barbed comment as he goes. The version of her Xander remembers would have done that, he’s pretty sure.
Pretty sure. Not completely.
"So," he says to Possibly-Ms.-Calendar, with his best attempt at a smile. "Are you a doppelganger? Malevolent spirit? Personification of evil itself?"
Her laugh sounds mostly like he remembers. Like he’s not quite in on the joke, but he’s welcome to laugh along, if he wants.
"I dunno," she answers, when she’s caught her breath. "Depends who you ask on that last one, I think."
"You do sound like her," Xander admits.
Or at least, he’s pretty sure she does. It hasn’t actually been that long since Ms. Calendar died; he’s startled by how much his memories of her have already started to fade. He guesses it makes sense. It’s not like he thinks about her often; he does his best to avoid it, actually. It messed Giles up so much. It’s still messing Giles up, maybe, but that’s something else Xander doesn’t really like thinking about. "But what do I know?" he adds, with a jolly, hollow-sounding chuckle. "I’m not the man with the plan."
"There’s a plan?"
The dry humour in her voice as she gestures towards Buffy and Giles, gesticulating wildly in his office — that does sound like her, definitely. The real her. The real, not-dead her.
("That’s your plan? Park yourself at the cemetery and wait?"
"It’s a little more complicated than that," Giles snipped, voice gone tight with that specific waspishness that he only picked up when Ms. Calendar was in the vicinity.
"Oh?" Ms. Calendar settled in against the desk, one eyebrow raised. "Please, enlighten me."
"Well, you see — it’s rather — that is, ah," Giles stuttered to a stop, blinking at the rest of them like he’d only just realized they were even there. Willow nodded at him encouragingly; Buffy fixed him with a judgmental stare. Xander, ignored in the corner, was content to sit and observe. He kind of wished he’d made popcorn or something.
"No, no," Ms. Calendar said. Her voice was sharp, but there was a slight sparkle in her gaze as she fixed it on Giles’ face, like she was enjoying the disagreement more than she wanted to let on. "Do continue. I want to see where this goes."
Xander watched, equal parts fascinated and disgusted, as the back of Giles’ neck flushed a dull red, feeling kind of like he was watching some kind of nature documentary. When they were kids Willow’s mom only let them watch TV if it was educational; as a result he has way too many not-quite-fully-repressed memories of sitting stock-still next to Willow on her parents’ ugly green couch, the two of them red-faced and unable to move as they watched chimpanzees get, ah — familiar — with one another in the wild.
Not that Giles and Ms. Calendar were getting familiar with one another, so to speak. Not in the school library, anyway.
God. Xander hoped. That was a connection he regretted as soon as he’d made it.
Well, kind of. Ms. Calendar was pretty — )
"Xander."
Xander blinks back to the present.
"You look like you were thinking something I’d have to give you detention for," Ms. Calendar says dryly, a look on her face that says she’d follow through with that and worse. Xander laughs, shocked.
"You really are her, huh," he says, with no small amount of wonder. He glances again towards where the others are still gathered in Giles’ office, their urgent conversation fallen into tense silence. Buffy’s arms are crossed against her chest; Willow’s chewing desperately at her nails. Giles has one hand pressed to his mouth, the other resting on his hip. He’s tilted away from the window, like he can’t even bear to make himself look.
"Xander," Ms. Calendar says again, more serious this time. "Where am I?"
"Um." Xander laughs nervously, making a show of looking around. "The library? Do you not — "
"No, I know that," she snaps impatiently. "I mean, where am I? If I’ve traveled to another — reality, or a pocket dimension, or — where’s the me who was already here? There was a me already here, right?"
"Um," Xander says again. The back of his neck starts to prickle with sweat. He doesn’t — what’s the protocol, here? He’s never had to tell someone they were dead before. It wasn’t something he ever anticipated coming up. For a bizarre handful of seconds, he wishes Cordy were here — she’d just spit it out, no problem. No hesitation. She’s never once bothered with concern for how another person would take bad news. "Um, you’re — well. You were — "
Ms. Calendar blinks, suddenly, her expression clouding, and Xander can tell that she gets it.
"Oh," she says, very quietly. "Oh, that’s — how?"
Xander doesn’t want to talk about this. He wants Giles to come out of that goddamn office and do it himself.
Giles, of course, does nothing of the sort. Xander wets his lip uncomfortably, bracing his hands on his hips.
"Angelus, he — "
"Angelus?" Her entire body has gone very still. Xander wonders, vaguely panicked, if she’s going to — cry, or scream, or something. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if that happens; yell for one of the girls, maybe? Except Ms. Calendar’s scared of Willow, and Buffy never liked her all that much, and Giles, in addition to being very much not one of the girls, is obviously not doing too well about the whole situation. "That’s — he didn’t. Did he bite me?"
The dread in her voice is palpable, and Xander finally catches up to what’s freaking her out so bad.
"No, he, um." God, why is it so hard to just say it? "He didn’t turn you or anything, I think it was — I think it was quick."
"That’s — that’s good, I guess."
Her voice is distant, faintly agitated. She doesn’t seem to know what to ask next, which Xander guesses is pretty fair. He doesn’t know what he’d be asking in that situation, either.
"Is everything — are the rest of us the same? Where you came from?"
Her head tilts at the question.
"I wouldn’t know, would I?" she says, after a few seconds’ deliberation. "It’s not like — you haven’t exactly told me much."
"But we’re alive? Me, Buffy? Giles?"
He doesn’t ask about Willow. His stomach squirms with discomfort every time he thinks about Ms. Calendar’s reaction when she saw her, that visceral, animal fear.
There’s this picture of the two of them from when they were kids. They were at someone’s birthday party, maybe, back when the whole class always got an invitation — they’re probably seven or eight, real little. One of their classmates’ moms must have taken it; Xander can’t imagine either of their moms were in attendance.
Anyway.
In the picture Willow looks like — well, like Willow. Purple dress, rainbow tights, bright yellow party hat. Xander can’t remember anything about the day the picture was taken, can’t remember whose birthday party, or what they did. He remembers the way she was looking at him, though: laughing unselfconsciously, open-mouthed with joy, both arms flung open. Or maybe he doesn’t remember that, either, and he just knows it happened because he’s seen the picture so many times. It doesn’t actually matter.
What matters is that no one else has ever looked at him like that, Xander’s pretty sure. Never in his whole life. Willow keeps the picture framed on her desk.
He can’t imagine ever being afraid of her. His brain fuzzes and shorts out every time he tries.
"You’re alive, yes." Ms. Calendar’s speaking very carefully, all of a sudden, watching for his reaction the whole time. "Rupert’s — Rupert’s alive."
She stops, then, the third subject of Xander’s inquiry left very noticeably unaddressed.
"Shit," he says uneasily. "So Buffy…?"
He thinks back to sophomore year, Buffy face-first in sewer water, and feels sick to his stomach. Was that how it happened, in this Ms. Calendar’s universe? What, was that other Xander just not fast enough? Or did that other Xander just not try?
Fucking chump.
"Buffy," Ms. Calendar agrees, mouth in a thin line. "Sounds like Angelus played some different games, over here."
Xander thinks about what happened to Ms. Calendar, about how messed up Giles was afterward. He thinks about the terror they’d all felt, waiting for one of them to be next. He thinks about dragging Giles out of that mansion, about his fucked up fingers and the fear in his eyes when Xander had appeared in front of him.
Games. That’s one way to put it.
"Is he the one who — "
Xander gestures feebly at his own neck, the same spot where Ms. Calendar’s is marred by that ugly, jagged bite. It takes her a moment to get it, like maybe she’d forgotten about the bite completely. One hand drifts up to cover it, fingers rubbing at the ruined skin.
"No," she says, after a silence just long enough to border on uncomfortable. "That's what I was most afraid of, you know. Him biting me. Turning me."
"But he didn't," Xander ventures, although he doesn't get the impression, by her tone, that she's particularly comforted. Which means whatever did happen was worse, which means —
"No," Ms. Calendar answers, with a smile that isn't really a smile at all. "He didn't. Turns out I was afraid of the wrong thing."
If he wants to know, he's going to have to ask her directly, Xander realizes. Nearly simultaneously, he realizes that he really, really doesn't wanna know.
"I know how that feels," he tells her. He's aiming for humourous and lighthearted, only his throat kind of sticks on the words. "All that time I spent worried about clowns, wasted."
There's that smile again, a weak echo of the real thing.
And Xander does remember the real thing. The more he watches her — her expressions, her mannerisms — the more he remembers. There was a time when she smiled a lot.
Then again, he supposes, the same could be said about him.
"What do you think they're talking about in there?" he asks, then, mostly just looking to fill the silence.
Ms. Calendar spends a long time thinking about that one, for some reason. She's still got her arms crossed, one finger tapping against the fabric of her oversized denim shirt. Her fingernails are totally fucked up, he realizes, now that he's looking closer. Torn to shreds, like either she's been chewing on them constantly, or maybe —
She is kind of dirty, Xander thinks. He'd chalked it up to like, spell residue, but the black smudges all over her clothes could also be —
"How to send me back, probably," she answers, voice disturbingly nonchalant, completely unaware of Xander's spiraling thoughts. "Either that, or calculating the risks of letting me stay."
"So where were you, exactly," Xander ventures hesitantly, really not sure he wants to her to answer. "Like, the moment of the spell. Did we interrupt your dinner, or — "
The flat look she levels him with says she definitely wasn't eating dinner. More importantly, it says she knows that he knows that she wasn't eating dinner.
"Sorry," he says, with a nervous laugh. "I'm not really good at stuff like this."
"And what kind of stuff would that be, exactly?"
"You know, that's a really great point," he babbles, never once able to just take the hint and shut the hell up. "And before you ask, the answer is yes, I do know how much more uncomfortable I am making this situation, and you would think that would mean I'd be able to stop talking, but — "
"Xander."
Ms. Calendar's voice is quieter, this time, and her judgmentally raised eyebrow has finally been lowered.
"It's fine," she says, still in that real grown-up voice, the one Xander's really too old to be comforted by. "Okay? Whatever needs to happen, we'll figure it out."
"And if what needs to happen is we send you back to…."
He swallows, hard, and can't finish the sentence. Somehow, Ms. Calendar doesn't look even the slightest bit disturbed by the possibility.
"Then that's what we'll do," she says, voice still very even. "And it will be fine. I promise."
Literally nothing about that is fine, actually, but he kind of gets what she's saying. It'll be fine because it has to be fine.
It'll be fine because there's nothing else they can do.
"Okay," he says, proud when his voice only shakes a little bit. He barely sounds like a pathetic scaredy-cat at all. "Well. While we're waiting — wanna play some cards?"
Ms. Calendar laughs — for real, this time, almost like she doesn't know she's doomed at all. Almost like she doesn't even care.
"Gin rummy or bust."