Part VI
The dream was different this time. Buffy had had variations on the dream for years. It gained in complexity and intensity over the years, as her losses grew greater and greater, but the theme remained the same.
She was walking through the streets of Sunnydale, and at first it was warm and balmy, the way it used to be. She wasn’t alone — when the dream began, it was Kendra who walked with her. Then, as others died, others entered the dream. Some nights it was Willow, the sunlight gleaming on her red hair. Sometimes it was Xander, who was always laughing and usually eating something. Sometimes it was Mom, who had shopping bags in both hands. Very rarely, it would be Giles, quieter and more grave than the others. He spoke less. Buffy always felt, upon awakening, that it was as if Giles knew it was only a dream.
Faith came into the dreams too, but she was never like the others. The others were only there to be with Buffy, to keep her company or talk about the things they had always talked about, things Buffy almost didn’t remember anymore: school dances, bands at the Bronze, making brownies and watching Bollywood movies, or in Giles’ case, a new shipment of books for the library. They were always happy and carefree. Faith never was. When Faith was in the dreams, she was walking a little behind Buffy, calling for her to wait.
And, as happy as Buffy was in the first part of the dream, she could never wait. She could only cry out for Faith to catch up. Faith never did.
Angel was never in the dream — until this night.
Buffy turned her head to see him in the sunlight. She wrinkled her nose. “Aren’t you uncomfortable?”
“Not anymore,” Angel said. “I learned how to walk in the sun. Cordelia taught me how.”
“Why didn’t you ever show me before?” Buffy said.
“I didn’t know before.” Angel was smiling. “I kept waiting for you to teach me. But then I realized you didn’t know how either.”
“I’m in the sunlight right now,” Buffy said, holding out her hands.
But then the dream changed, as it always did. The sun began to set preternaturally fast. As it became darker, the snow began to fall. Buffy cried out in despair and looked back toward Angel — this was the part of the dream where the people she loved disappeared —
Angel remained. One single shaft of sunlight penetrated the growing darkness and the snow, illuminating the space around him.
“B!” That was Faith’s voice. She was farther down the street, her voice all but lost in the gathering winds. “I’m coming. I swear to God I’m coming.”
“I can’t wait for you,” Buffy said automatically. Her feet kept moving, almost apart from any conscious will on her part. Angel kept pace beside her. “I want to wait, but I can’t.”
Faith laughed. “I don’t need you to wait this time! I need you to run faster!”
“You need to run faster,” Angel said. He pointed to the horizon, where the faint red glimmer of sunset remained. “You have to reach the light.”
“Let’s go,” she said. “We have to hurry, Angel.”
He shook his head and smiled, so sadly. “You won’t get there with me,” he said. “That’s what I had to teach you. You have to go on your own.”
Buffy’s eyes filled with tears that threatened to freeze on her cheeks. “I don’t want to be alone,” she whispered. “I’m frightened of being alone.”
“You’re alone here,” Angel said. “You won’t be alone in that light. But you have to go there, Buffy. You have to go there on your own.”
She wanted to protest, to argue, to cry. Instead, she turned her head and saw that far-distant light.
Faith yelled, “Jesus, B, you deaf or something? Run faster!”
Buffy began walking faster toward the light. Then she started jogging. She glanced over her shoulder just once to see Angel standing perfectly still, framed in light. He raised his hand once in farewell. Buffy turned away and began running, full-out, all her Slayer strength flowing out of her as she went, faster and faster and faster, and oh, God, it felt like flying, and the sky suddenly opened up in a brilliant burst of light —
She gasped as she awoke, more from surprise than anything else. Buffy sat up in bed and clutched the pillow to her, trying to slow her breathing.
That dream had haunted her for years, but it had always ended the same way — with her alone in the dark, screaming in fear and pain, then awakening to find Angel’s comforting arms around her. Sometimes Buffy thought half the reason they’d been brought together was so that she could wake from that dream with him by her side.
Tonight he wasn’t there; she was alone in the tiny apartment she still thought of as Angel’s, despite the fact that she’d lived there with him ever since her mother’s death. She’d felt desperately alone all night, ashamed of her vulnerability but unable to deny it, and she’d thought she would never fall asleep.
But she had, and the one night she’d awoken without Angel was the one night she hadn’t needed him.
Buffy leaned against the headboard and went over the dream. I’ve always been most afraid of being alone, she thought. But when I was alone in that dream, it wasn’t frightening anymore. It was — beautiful, I guess.
Still slightly disoriented, she swung her feet off the bed and stood up, stretching out all her muscles. She hadn’t patrolled, of course; though she’d gone about alone before the Winter, she’d always considered it far too dangerous afterward. Angel and Wesley agreed, which was so rare that she’d decided the matter was beyond argument. Yet her body didn’t feel as though she’d been inactive; she felt energized, humming, as though she’d been in the thick of battle but was still ready for more.
She went to the window and lifted the shade. The sleet had stopped. Sunnydale was still and white, and so far as she could hear, silent. So much more is going on, she thought. So much more than even I know.
Almost without thinking about it, she grabbed her jeans from the rack and slid them on. Next came a T-shirt, then a heavy sweater. By the time she reached for her parka, Buffy knew what she was going to do: She was going to patrol alone, for the first time in two and a half years. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it, but she knew that, for some reason, she was no longer afraid.
***
“This feel weird to you?” said Doyle. “And what’s this rubbish in the tape deck — Enya? Who the hell put something that crappity in the tape deck?”
“That’s my cassette, actually,” Wesley said, casting a sideways glance at the man who was riding shotgun.
Doyle did not appear at all abashed. “I’d make fun of you if she weren’t Irish. As it is, I figure I share the blame for her with the rest of the motherland. And you didn’t answer me.”
Wesley tried to remember just what it was Doyle had asked him. In truth, he’d been paying more attention to what was going on in the rest of the SUV. At the very back, Lorne was trying to convince this Gunn person to submit to a reading, and insisting that rap generally didn’t work. Right behind him, Angel and Cordelia were riding in silence. Wesley was familiar with Angel’s quiet nature, but he remembered Cordelia as a talkative, lively girl. They’d just proved her words true, so Wesley had expected her to be jubilant and even a little self-righteous on the way home. Instead she said nothing, her silence strangely ominous.
“You have to know some songs,” Lorne insisted. “TV theme songs? A little Brady Bunch, perhaps?”
“I ain’t havin’ my soul pour out of any song about the youngest one in curls, you hear what I’m sayin’?” Against his will, Wesley found himself rather agreeing with Gunn.
Doyle prodded, “I said, this is weird stuff. I say that as a man who sprouts spikes when he sneezes, so I don’t go throwin’ the word ‘weird’ around lightly.”
“During my studies to become a Watcher, I found out about some unusual things.” Wesley confessed. “But this is unprecedented, at least in my experience. I — I beg your pardon — did you say something about sneezing and –” As he looked over, Doyle shook his head vigorously; his skin turned green and small points rose all over his face. “My word!”
“Whoa!” Gunn yelled from the back.
“Looking GOOD!” Lorne said.
“Oh, God,” Cordelia said. Her voice was raspy, as though she had been crying or struggling not to. “I even missed that, and I only saw it once. How pathetic am I, huh?”
Angel said, “I thought you didn’t smell fully human, but there were so many demons in the bar I couldn’t be sure. What are you?”
“Brachen demon on my dad’s side,” Doyle replied, his face shifting back to human. “Irish on my mum’s. That means I’m a terror in a fight, plus I can tell the difference between real beer and this American shite.”
“Man, my night took a weird turn somewhere,” Gunn said.
“Was that before or after the planned genocide?” Lorne said crisply.
An awkward silence fell over the vehicle for a moment. Then Gunn said brightly, “How about a little ‘New York, New York’ action?”
“Let ‘er rip,” Lorne said, apparently content to be doing his job once more.
As Gunn began singing, Wesley heard Angel murmur to Cordelia, “Are you okay?”
“I just need a few minutes,” she whispered back.
Wesley caught Doyle smiling at him knowingly, apparently aware of his eavesdropping. He forced himself to concentrate on the conversation he’d been having before. “This must be far stranger for you than for any of the rest of us,” Wesley said. “Knowing — that you would be dead in another reality.”
“Yeah, that was a kick in the ribs,” Doyle said. “Trying not to think about it, to tell you the truth. But fact is, I’d had a kind of a premonition.”
“You mean, the visions that Cordelia spoke of? The ones where you saw us before we met?”
“No,” Doyle said. “Those just showed us all fighting like hell on the same side. I mean something less clear. Just — a feeling I had, you know? There was a time, a few years back, when I had a chance to be brave. And I wasn’t.” Wesley had only known Doyle for a couple of hours, but he could already tell the gravity in his voice was a rare, and important, thing. “I always knew I was gonna have to make up for that someday, and that it was gonna cost me dear. I just been waiting for the occasion to arise, and looks like today’s the day.”
Wesley considered what Doyle had said. “Whatever you may have done before — surely you needn’t die to make up for it.”
“We’re on the same page, brother,” Doyle said. “But looks like those Powers that Be have another plan.”
“I want to wake up in the city that doesn’t sleep –” Gunn warbled, more than a little off-key.
“Sounds more like Sunnydale to me,” Angel said. Wesley laughed, less from the joke itself than from the surprise that Angel had said it.
“To find I’m king of the — FUCK!” Gunn yelled. Wesley turned to see what had changed — just in time to see the Borca demon ram the side of the SUV.
Cordelia screamed, and Doyle did something very like it. The SUV swerved wildly out of control, and Wesley struggled to keep them from plunging into a ditch. The icy curbs sent them careering this way and that, people knocking into windows and seats and each other as they went. “Hold on!” he cried, knowing it was futile.
The SUV slammed into a lightpost, sending Wesley and Doyle flying into airbags. For one moment, Wesley was too stunned to think. Nobody spoke. Finally, Angel said, “They must have staked out the highway. There will be others.”
Gunn coughed. “Knew I was gonna be killin’ demons tonight.”
“Just keep it to the ones outside the car,” Doyle said, pushing himself back from the airbag. “We’ll work on the finer points of your moral education later.”
“Cordelia?” Angel’s voice was concerned.
“I’m good.” To Wesley’s surprise, Cordelia’s earlier gloom and shock were entirely gone. When he turned, neck aching, to look at her, she was grimly determined. “Wesley, you are Mr. Prepared. Tell me you packed weapons.”
Outside, he could hear the crunching of demon feet in the snow. “Oh, yes,” he said. “We’re armed. Give me the crossbow, will you, Angel?”
Quickly, they got their preferred weapons. Gunn’s machine gun was a more welcome sight in his hands now. Wesley pulled out his trusty crossbow; he hadn’t used it in actual combat much — well, ever — but it remained the weapon he felt best with. Doyle and Lorne helped themselves to stakes. Angel got his usual sword, and to Wesley’s astonishment, Cordelia took one as well. When Angel looked at her curiously, she smiled — a strange, tight little smile. “You want to see a few things you taught me? Keep watching.”
“Don’t tell me,” Gunn said. “We gotta go out there to them.”
“It’s that or wait for them to tear their way in here,” Angel pointed out.
Wesley took a deep breath and tried to size up the situation outside. Unfortunately, their wreck had disabled the streetlight. “Are they close, Angel?”
“Close enough,” Angel said.
“Right, then,” Wesley replied. “On my mark — go!”
They all spilled out of the vehicle — Gunn, Doyle and Lorne on one side, Cordelia, Angel and Wesley on the other. Wesley glanced over at the others; Angel looked as prepared for battle as ever, and Cordelia was standing in perfect fighting stance, her grip on the sword a professional’s. “They’re coming,” Angel said quietly.
In the white drifts of snow, Wesley could make out a few sand-colored shapes lumbering toward them. “I see them now.”
“Borca can only be killed one way,” said Cordelia. “Beheading. Well, beheading or this particular magic spell that requires one of the Great Pyramids, and I haven’t got one handy. So we should only stab to weaken.”
Wesley stared at her. “How did you know that?”
She smiled bleakly. “You told me.”
“Heads up!” Doyle yelled, just as the beasts attacked.
One of the Borca lunged toward them, and Angel swung his sword with deadly speed. He missed the neck by a fraction, but the resulting gash sent reddish-purple blood gushing into the snow. The Borca bellowed, and Cordelia sent her sword flying towards its neck. Her blow struck true, and the demon’s corpse collapsed, sending snow and ash pluming into the air.
Great God, Wesley thought. Cordelia’s a fighter.
He had no more time to watch her; another Borca was coming into sight, snorting through its row of tusks as it sighted Wesley. Wesley brought his crossbow to bear. For a moment he was nervous — he’d only used this in practice, never for real — but then he found himself remembering something Cordelia had said: “Anything to do with aiming, you’re good at.”
She said it, so she must have seen it, Wesley thought. If what Cordelia believes to be real WAS real, then I can do this.
The Borca leapt toward Wesley. He fired instantly, and the arrow sank deep within the demon’s chest. It bellowed and collapsed into the closest snowdrift. Cordelia jumped forward and brought her sword slashing down; this Borca, too, collapsed into dust.
“Hey!” Doyle yelled over the sound of Gunn’s automatic-weapon fire. “We’ve no beheading thingamajigs over here!”
Cordelia looked toward them in fear, but it was Angel who yelled, “I’m coming!” He jumped atop the SUV, then disappeared out of sight on the other side.
“They’re still coming,” Cordelia said, wheeling around. Sure enough, two different Borca were lunging through the snow toward them. “Take the one on the right!”
Wesley wheeled right. The Borca’s pale shape was almost invisible in the snow, but not quite. He brought the crossbow back to his shoulder and fired again. It howled, struck badly if not fatally; Wesley reloaded faster than he’d known he could and fired again, sending the Borca flopping into the snow. “Cordelia!” he called.
“Hang on!” He looked over his shoulder to see, to his astonishment, Cordelia spinning around in a roundhouse kick that landed squarely on the other Borca’s nose. It yelped, perhaps as much in surprise as pain, and in that moment Cordelia brought her blade slashing down again. The demon’s head rolled away, to vanish like the rest into so much ash. She then tossed her sword at Wesley. “Take him!”
Wesley dropped his crossbow and caught the sword as much by accident as anything else. He fumbled for the right grip, but the moment he had it — the moment the Borca in front of him began to stir — he swung it downward. The strike was unwieldy but accurate; the Borca dissolved in an instant.
He stared down at the indentation in the snow where it had been. Behind him, he heard Angel’s guttural attack cry, then whoops of victory from Doyle and Lorne. It was Gunn who called, “Anything else out there?”
Wesley scanned the horizon, but he could sense no motion. He called, “Angel? Do you hear anything else?”
“No,” Angel said. “No. That’s it.”
“Yeah!” Gunn yelled. “We kick ASS!”
The others started laughing, and Wesley found himself chiming in. The sword in his hands didn’t feel so awkward now. “We did it,” he gasped. “I never thought we could. Angel, perhaps –“
“We can do it,” Cordelia said. “We always could.” She alone did not share in the general jubilation. Her face was pale and drawn as she shuffled through the thick snow toward the SUV.
Thinking that perhaps she wanted some of her well-deserved recognition, Wesley called, “Angel, did you see Cordelia? What a fighter this girl is! And you trained her?”
“I saw,” Angel said as he came around the front of the vehicle. “Cordelia, that was amazing.”
“Yeah,” she said dully. “I’m so Xena.”
Wesley glanced over at Angel, who also looked concerned. Cordelia could only look at Doyle, who was doing a little dance in the headlights. Lorne said, “Well, this has been a charming winter sojourn, but what say we get to this Sunnydale hamlet you folk have been talking about? I’m all for carnage before breakfast, but I’m all for breakfast after carnage. Get my drift?”
Doyle said, amiably, “Eggs sound nice right around now.”
“Cordelia?” Angel stepped toward her, but she seemed to shrink back.
“Let’s get back in the car,” she said. “You think it’ll still start, Wesley?”
He appraised the damage. “Most likely. Angel and I should push it back onto the road, though. Put it in neutral.”
As the others clambered in, and Wesley and Angel took their places near the bumper, Angel said, “Wesley, she fought — I mean, that was amazing, wasn’t it?”
“Amazing,” Wesley agreed. “But — she is no Slayer.” As Wesley had intended, the words made Angel looked abashed and ashamed. “Angel, believe me, I know how — seductive — the world she describes can be. But we are still in this world. You are still with Buffy.”
“I know that. God, Wesley, I would never –” Angel put his hands against the bumper, more for support than for pushing. “Wesley, I love Buffy. Cordelia — what’s happening here — it’s not –” He struggled for words, and for the first time ever, Wesley found himself feeling something other than fear and tempered dislike for Angel. He felt a kind of empathy, unusual but undeniable. “I’m just looking out for her. I’m just — looking.”
“Every man’s prerogative,” Wesley said. “But I warn you. I am Buffy’s Watcher, and I won’t see her hurt.”
To Wesley’s surprise, Angel smiled. “She underestimates you.”
“Okay!” Doyle said. “Push!”
***
“I hear something,” Faith said for the eightieth time. Riley looked around them, but he could see nothing in the snowy night.
“We’re okay,” he said. He’d thought Faith’s terror would subside a little once they made it out of the confines of the Initiative compound, but even as they stumbled through the snow, she was still jittery and ill-at-ease. Not that he could blame her.
She was wrapped in the Initiative cold-weather coveralls he had stashed away for her; they were too big, but they were white, which was the main thing. They blended into the surroundings as well as they could hope to do. What he hadn’t counted on was the pure, visceral shock for Faith; she’d never actually seen the Winter, only heard about it, and the reality of it had proved overwhelming for her. More than that — she hadn’t been unconfined for years, and the mere fact of being in open spaces had clearly thrown Faith off.
Even now, as they tried to make their escape, she kept stopping and looking upward. “Stars,” she whispered. “Lee, I can see the stars.”
“They’ll still be there tomorrow,” he pointed out. “Tonight, let’s hurry, okay?”
“We gotta get to the library,” Faith said, focusing once more on the reality of their situation. “I don’t know what’s going on with them anymore, but there’s gonna be somebody in the library. All the time. As long as there IS a library, anyway.”
“Lead the way,” Riley said. “And when we get there, mention I helped you, okay?”
For one moment, Faith looked like herself as she smirked at him. “Maybe.”
A few feet away, some twigs snapped — a normal enough sound, but it made Faith wheel around in fear. “What was that?”
Riley opened his mouth to tell her it was nothing, then he heard it again. Closer. He pulled a stake from his belt and handed it to her wordlessly. Her eyes were wide as took it from him, her grip unpracticed and uncertain. Can a Slayer lose her edge? he wondered. I think I’m about to find out.
The vampires came swaggering out from the hedges, each of them in full demonic visage. They were stronger that way. Riley got his own stake ready as he counted them. Five. Okay, maybe he and Faith could take five — she might be out of shape and out of practice, but she was still a Slayer. “Well, well, well,” said one vampire. “Initiative types out for a stroll. We just love you Initiative types.”
“We ain’t with them,” Faith said. “Don’t mean we won’t kick your butts.”
“Don’t mean we like you any better,” said the leader vamp. He had on a Subway jacket and hat, which made Riley think some very strange things about sandwiches. “Don’t mean you’d be any less fun to eat.”
Riley said, “It’s better for you to walk away now.” The vampires just laughed. They had a good handle on the situation, Riley thought.
“Seven words,” Faith said, stepping closer to the leader vamp. When he raised an inquisitive eyebrow, she said, “Six-inch turkey on wheat, spicy mustard.”
“SHUT UP!” the vampire bellowed. “I am a SANDWICH ARTIST!”
Faith plunged her stake into the leader vamp, and the Subway hat fell alone into the snow. Unfortunately, the other vamps weren’t quite as slow. Even as Riley spun around, one of the vamps was tackling him, and they rolled into the snow. “Faith!” he yelled. “Faith, run!”
Maybe they’ll take me — maybe they’ll take me and let her go —
“Get back!” Faith cried, and she began battling one of the other vamps, a female. She was strong; he could see the blows landing on Faith’s body despite her best moves. Riley writhed in the snow, trying to push the vampires on him back to staking distance — or, failing that, to keep him from his neck —
Suddenly, one of the vamps shrieked, then faded into dust. Riley watched its face turn to nothing, then saw behind it — “Buffy Summers,” he said.
“Bingo was his name-o,” Buffy said, then struck at the vampire still hanging onto Riley’s back. It was nothing immediately. Buffy whirled toward the two vamps attacking Faith. Faith didn’t see her, just realized that her attackers were distracted. Even as she staked one, Buffy sent a flying side kick into the other, then staked it dead.
For a few moments, they all stood there silently in the snow. Riley wanted to say something, but he had a feeling nobody would hear him. Faith was looking only at Buffy, Buffy only at Faith. At last, Faith said, “B?”
Buffy was shaking her head, whether in wonder or disbelief, Riley couldn’t say. “Are you — are you a ghost, or a vision –?”
“Ghost, SHIT. B, it’s me. It’s Faith. Is it you?”
Buffy’s body began to shake, and Riley realized she was crying. “I ran toward the light,” she said, which made no sense, because it was still completely dark out. “I ran toward the light to find you, and you’re here. Oh, God, Faith, you’re here.”
“The Initiative had me — I thought you didn’t look for me — but you thought I was dead?” Faith was beginning to cry now too. “Oh, Jesus. B, don’t you know? Don’t you know I couldn’t leave you that easy?”
With a wordless cry, Buffy embraced Faith, and they held onto each other, sobbing, for a long time. Riley lay there, uncomfortable physically and mentally, but unwilling to intrude on the moment in any way. We made it, he thought, but the fact held little satisfaction. What they’d accomplished was only the first step. Riley couldn’t forget the stony face of Acathla grimacing down at him, promising doom for them all.
At last, Buffy pulled back from Faith slightly and scowled down at Riley. “You say they held you prisoner?”
“Lee’s okay,” Faith said. “He kinda looked out for me. He’s the one got me outta there. Took his own damn sweet time — but hey, better late than never.”
Riley pushed himself up from the snow. The cold had numbed him and made him clumsy, but he could still speak. “We’ve got trouble, courtesy of Adam,” he said. “We need to find your — what is it, a Watcher? We have to research this thing.”
Buffy was still sniffling, her arm still around Faith, as they all began walking in what Riley figured was the general direction of the library. “What thing is that?” she said. Then she half-laughed. “Don’t guess it was called Naiura.” Riley froze in place. Buffy’s eyes went wide. “You have GOT to be kidding me.”
“Lee, make a joke?” Faith shook her head. “You guys don’t know each other that well.”
“We have to hurry,” Riley said. “We don’t have any more time to lose.”
“Before what?” Buffy said.
“How does the end of the world grab you?” Faith said.