Work Text:
"Ow!"
"See, what did I tell you?"
Anya ignored Willow, and glared balefully at the glowing red jewel in front of her. "It bit me!" she yelled. The gemstone merely flickered, apparently unconcerned with her annoyance.
It felt weird, the three of us standing there together. Willow and I hadn't done scooby stuff with Anya for so long that I'd forgotten what she could be like. We were really lucky that she had been able to come and give us the benefit of her millennium of experience with magical stuff, but she could be so self-centred at times.
I looked at Anya across the cave we were standing in, trying not to sound too irritable as I explained things again. "Look, Ahn, we've been through this. Wes said he thought the legend was gender-specific in the original whatever-the-hell-it-was. When it said 'The hand of mortal man,' it really meant—"
"So, basically you're telling me that the Worldmaker's Heart is a sexist pig. Apart from the whole 'being a solid expression of the abstraction of reality instead of an actual animal' thing, that is. Honestly, that is just so typical. Gods are always so thoughtless of a woman's needs."
Yup, that was our Anya. When she left for LA, life in the 'Dale got a lot less annoying. Apart from Cordelia, of course, and Parker, and the nasties who kept trying to take over the world, and Harmony Kendall of all people, and... OK, so maybe Anya wasn't all that bad.
"So, my turn then?" Riley's voice sounded bright and cheerful over the speakers, but as usual the girls didn't realise that he was joking. No one ever gets Riley's sense of humour except me, and I have an unfair advantage.
Anya gave us an irritated glance. "Don't be silly, Riley. If I can't touch the thing, you certainly can't."
Wills sounded more apologetic, as always trying not to hurt anyone's feelings. "Um, I don't think... I mean, after what Glory did, we're not even sure that you're mortal any more, never mind..." She trailed off as she looked at my face thoughtfully. "Is he kidding?"
I nodded and Riley spoke at about the same time. "I think I noticed that I'm not exactly human any more," he said dryly.
"I guess that just leaves me," I said, plastering on a patently false smile. I hate this sort of situation. I didn't want to be the only one out of our pitifully small group who could bring my buddy's girl back to him while still leaving him unable to hold her. I didn't want that sort of responsibility at all, because I always screw up. If I hadn't been such a klutz, Glory's ritual would have been stopped and Buffy wouldn't have had to die.
We both screwed up, Riley reminded me. I should have given you the edge in speed and strength. We should have been able to take that crazy old demon, but he tossed us off the crane and neither of us could stop him.
Yeah, I guess, I thought back. It's just... had you ever lost anyone you cared about before?
Forrest.
Oh fuck, yeah. I tried not to be too obvious about giving myself a mental kick in the pants. Ri had lost Forrest in about the worst way imaginable. There's nothing like having to shoot your best friend because he's been turned into a freakazoid.
Oh, like you never had nightmares about staking your friend, the class clown.
There are disadvantages to being in constant telepathic contact with a perceptive smart-ass, I thought. Then again, I could use a little advice; to be honest I wasn't dealing all that well with Buffy's death, while Riley was carrying on like a good little soldier.
How do you cope? I asked. I know losing Buffy hit you hard, she was...
...Everything. Yeah. I lost Buffy a long time before though, even before Glory let her twisted sense of humour out to play and made it impossible for me to be any sort of boyfriend. Without the Initiative's drugs I couldn't be what she needed.
Yeah, but even so... how do you cope?
He shrugged mentally. You just don't let it take over, I guess. Sure, you play over what happened, but only so you understand how to stop it ever happening again.
I was going to ask how the hell we could have stopped Buffy sacrificing herself for the greater good, but Willow interrupted our introspection. "Enough with the internal monologue," she said, then her Resolve Face dissolved into a frown. "Except I guess it's an internal dialogue, but don't pretend you aren't doing it, I know you too well, buster." She poked me hard.
"Guilty as charged," I said, raising my hands in surrender. "Give me a kiss for luck?" I put on my goofiest look for added sympathy, not that I really needed it. We liked kissing, any excuse would do.
"Love you," she murmured as we pulled apart.
"Always," I told her. It's a promise we'd both made more times than I can remember, but we still said it because we still meant it. I'll love my beautiful Willow as long as I live. Why else would I have asked her to marry me, knowing how easily the Hellmouth could kill us?
"Come on tall, dark and armoured," she said. "It's show time."
I gave her one last smile, then turned back to the jewel on the pedestal in front of us. The Worldmaker's Heart. A lump of odd-shaped crystal about the size of a baseball, glowing with a warm red light. It looked like any other mystical doodad.
I could practically hear Wesley's disapproving lecture, reciting yet more boring stuff from his dusty old books about how important this particular gem was, how the phrase 'mystical doodad' was inadequate to the point of insult, and how unwise insulting it would be. I wished he could stand here with us to trot out that reassuring drivel about how, if the Heart agreed that things were wrong, the world would just change... but standing wasn't on Wes' agenda any more. One more thing that couldn't be right.
Any more of this, I thought, and Wills will be prodding me again. I reached forward towards the Heart, but something stopped my fingers a few inches short. It felt like trying to push through a brick wall. Actually it was harder than that: I could push through a brick wall if Riley was really trying.
"Riley," Anya said warningly. I felt his embarrassment as I realised what was wrong as well. Riley's armour form may have saved my life more than a few times, but the gauntlets meant that something other than a 'mortal man' was trying to touch the Heart.
Quickly, Ri morphed away the gauntlet, leaving the rest of the armour intact. Without it, my hand encountered no resistance, and like the klutz I am fell forwards, grasping the jewel in my outstretched hand... and everything went red.
WHAT IS YOUR WISH?
The words weren't spoken, not even in my head, they simply existed. I just knew, without being aware how, that this question needed answering. I didn't respond immediately, since I was still busy freaking about how all that seemed to exist was me, the words and the redness surrounding me. I couldn't see or feel anything else, not even Riley. I was alone in my head for the first time in months.
WHAT IS TWISTED/BROKEN/WRONG WITH THE ALL?
OK, it was time for me to get my act together, even if I was more scared than when we faced Glory. I had the words all worked out, but as usual my mouth ran away with me.
"I wish we hadn't lost our heart. Buffy should be alive."
The Heart didn't reply immediately. I was about to apologise for babbling and try again when I got my answer.
THE SLAYER HAS NOT RISEN. THAT IS WRONG. YOUR SOLUTION HAS MERIT.
For a moment I was confused, until I realised it was talking about my wish. Then I was really confused. Buffy was dead, so I wished that she had survived instead. What was so clever about that?
ARE YOU WILLING TO LOSE THE THINGS YOU HOLD DEAREST?
That at least was a question I was ready for. The world needed Buffy, but only a handful of people would even notice if I died. Willow and I had talked about it and cried over it, but in the end we had to agree that Buffy was more important than any one of us.
"Yeah, I am." I was all ready to launch into my heroic self-sacrifice speech when I was cut off again.
WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOW IS/WAS/WILL BE.
There were overtones of both satisfaction and sorrow with that particular piece of knowledge, and the oddest sense of hesitation before I became aware of something else.
YOU WILL REMEMBER.
"I'll what?"
OUTSIDE THE ALL, YOU CANNOT BE REWRITTEN.
I tried to think quickly. I couldn't be 'rewritten', whatever that meant, so I was going to remember. Which kind of implied that I was going to be alive to do the remembering. With mounting panic I asked, "So what am I going to—"
"—lose?" Between one word and the next, without any warning, I was back in the real world. There was air and grass and sound and it was all beautiful except for a few small problems. Like standing in the middle of a cemetery. In Sunnydale. At night. Buck naked.
I didn't know whether to be embarrassed or terrified, so I did both. If a vampire came along, I was completely defenceless. If my friends found me first, I'd never live it down. God, what I'd give for this just to be my old nightmare of walking into class wearing only my boxers!
Riley? I tried not to let my thoughts sound like I was having the biggest panic attack of my life. Ri, this isn't funny.
Nothing. There wasn't even a hint of a response, no sense of connection at all with the man who had been bound to me body and mind for months now.
"Ri?" I said quietly, hoping against hope. I couldn't see him or feel his thoughts, but I couldn't quite accept that he wasn't there.
Still nothing. OK, I decided, it was definitely time to panic. I was alone at night, with nothing to cover up with — damn it, why is there never anyone having a romantic moonlit picnic when you really need their tablecloth? The best thing I could think of doing was to grab something a half-blind vamp might mistake for a weapon.
I was halfway to the trees to find myself a makeshift stake when a quietly threatening voice stopped me. "Well, well, well, look what we've got here, boys." Three vamps stood there behind me, game-faces leaving me in no doubt that I was screwed. One of them up against me with a stake would be a fair fight. With Riley-boosted reflexes I could take two without breaking sweat. Three, with no weapons and no Riley, was overkill.
"Uh, hi there. I'm, um, nothing to worry about, I'm just out on the prowl, y'know. Nothing you want to mess with." I was babbling worse than Wills on a bad day, but at this point I'd do anything to buy myself a little extra time as I backed away. If I could just reach the trees, then maybe... maybe I could dust one of them before they drained me. Whatever I did it looked like I was going to lose my life anyway.
"Oh, I think we do want to mess with you," the lead vamp said, motioning his minions towards me. I turned tail and ran, but damn that vampiric speed, they were on me before I'd got more than a few paces. One of them grabbed me in an arm lock and pulled me round roughly as their boss stood right up in my face.
"Y'see," he said, "we mess with whatever we like. No one gets to tell us to stop. No one gets to say no. No one gets to run away once we've decided to mess with them. And guess what," he purred, "we've decided to mess with you."
"You practice that in front of a mirror?" I shot back, determined to get some hits in even if they were only verbal. "No, wait, that would be hard."
He back-handed me hard enough to rattle my teeth. "You're a mouthy one, aren't you?" he said. "I'm going to enjoy playing with you. By the time we're finished you'll—"
"I'll beg you to kill me, yeah yeah, heard it all before. Just get on with it before you bore me to death."
I knew I was behaving in a suicidally stupid way, but I couldn't bring myself to care anymore. I was going to die, there wasn't anything I could do about it, and it just wasn't fair. I wasn't even going to get to see Buffy again.
The head vamp laughed in my face. "You got balls, kid. Guess I'll have to do something about that." Then he leant over, grabbed my nuts, and squeezed.
I didn't scream. Just. Still, I was in no condition to do more than be held up by my captors when I heard a familiar voice.
"I know you guys are perverts, but can I be the first to say 'Ew' here?"
"You," the vamp spat, spinning round to face Buffy. "Tony, make sure our snack doesn't go anywhere. Jake and I've got a Slayer to kill."
"Oh puh-lease." Buffy rolled her eyes at macho-vamp's lame dialogue. "Can't you guys ever come up with something original?"
I was too busy gasping for breath to tell her that no, they hadn't come up with a single original line yet. Then it became irrelevant as Buffy launched herself at them. It was beautiful in a deadly kind of way; I hadn't realised how much I'd missed seeing her in action, never mind missing seeing her at all.
Eventually, about the time that Buffy dusted good ol' Jake, I recovered enough to figure out that I really ought to get out of fang-face's grip while his attention was still on the fight. It was always so embarrassing being saved by the Buffster, even if she was stronger and faster and just doing her job, sir. Besides, she'd rib me about not pulling my weight. So I tilted my head back rapidly, smashing into his face.
"Ow! By doze! You basdad."
"But the bumpy look is so not you!" I grinned at my opponent as I twisted free and started blocking his punches. I was woefully slow — too used to Riley's help these last few months, I guess — but I held my own. Honestly, I thought, vampires these days have got no idea how to fight.
That was the cue for Buffy's playmate to knock Mr Pointy out of her hand. I wasn't worried, since Buffy always keeps a few extra stakes hidden away, but I was distracted just long enough for Tony to land one on me.
I went flying. Of course one of the very first things Giles taught me was how to roll with a punch, so I wasn't too dazed when I hit the ground. This was of the good; I had landed near the stake and managed to grab it up before the moron with fangs jumped me. The look on his face when he saw the sharpened piece of wood waiting at the end of his leap was worth all the lumps I'd taken. "So long, sucker," I murmured as he burst into dust.
Sore and tired, I struggled to my feet in time to see Buffy whip a stake out of God knows where and dust the boss vamp. I grinned and tossed Mr Pointy back to her. "Nice moves, Buff. Good to see you haven't lost your touch."
She looked at me narrowly. "Are you OK?" she asked.
"Sure," I said. "I'm bruised but unbroken." Then I remembered what I wasn't wearing. "Uh, except for the obvious. I'll, uh, see if I can find anything in the bushes. Like some really big leaves, maybe."
Buffy got that cute wide-eyed look she gets when she's embarrassed and averted her gaze. Then she looked back at me, puzzled. "Do I know you?"
I gaped at her. Did she know me? I'd only spent the last five years as her trusty right-hand stake-swinger! I was about to ask when senility had set in when Willow burst into the clearing, dragging someone with her.
"Buffy, we heard...." Her voice trailed off as she stared at me wide-eyed. Which, OK, was weird given that I wasn't showing anything she hadn't seen before, but then she always did embarrass easily.
"Hey Wills, we did it. Except I think...." Then I recognised who was with her. "Tara! Warren and Andrew came up with goods, then?"
Tara just looked confused and clutched Willow's hand more tightly. That really was weird; I know she and Tara get on real well, but Willow's my girlfriend and she was holding on to Tara in a girlfriendly reassuring way. I should know, I've been on the receiving end enough times.
I was going to call them on it when another pair of uninvited guests turned up to embarrass me. It was Spike, who dammit was supposed to be back in Belize now unless there was something majorly apocalypsy going down, and with him was—
I rubbed my eyes, sure that I was seeing things. Nope, no change. He was still standing there, puffing and panting in one of those appalling Hawaiian shirts he used to love 'cos they made people notice him. My best friend since kindergarten. The man I killed more than five years ago.
Omigod.
It may have been a girly thing to do, but I'm not ashamed to say that I fainted. As I fell to the ground, I heard him shout my name with the same mixture of shock and fear that I felt.
"J-Jesse?" he yelped.
******
I woke up slowly, not sure what was going on. Faking unconsciousness more out of hope than anything else — one day I'll come across a demon that can't tell when someone's really awake — I tried to sort things out.
I was lying on a couch. Briefly cracking open an eyelid, I could see an unfamiliar apartment. Spike was lounging in an armchair like he owned the place, which wasn't very likely, while Buffy, Willow, Tara and Xander talked in hushed voices over the far side of the room.
Xander. I closed my eyes again and thought about that.
Xander Harris was alive. Well, maybe not alive alive, but he was walking and talking with the rest of us. That shouldn't shock me, I knew of two other vampires who had holidayed in a dust-buster but were back with us now. The thing was, from what little I knew neither return had exactly been a fun-filled time — hell, hearing about Angel had given me nightmares even from the safe distance of Sunnydale. And yet Xander was just standing there without anyone so much as twitching, something that had taken months to happen with the others.
What had happened? It had felt like I'd only been stuck in that red place for a couple of minutes, could it have been longer? Months longer? Did it really matter if we had Xander back?
Xander had been our third musketeer when Willow and I were kids. God, how I'd missed him and his clowning around. It didn't matter how many times Giles told me that Xan was gone long before I staked him, that it was something else walking about in his body, I still felt guilty for his death. I still had nightmares about that night.
"By the way, he's awake now," came a familiar snarky British voice.
Busted by Spike, I thought, and instead of figuring things out I'd been trying to out-brood Oz. I was such a dork. "Bloody vampiric hearing," I muttered, and opened my eyes to find Xander way too in my face.
"Aaaaah!"
I still maintain that screaming and scrambling away is a perfectly natural reaction to discovering a vampire inches away from your neck. It was pretty much what Xander did too, except that after flinching away he grabbed a hold of me. I struggled for a moment, grateful to whoever had thought to put a T-shirt and sweatpants on me, when it dawned on me what was wrong with the situation.
"Warm hands," I said, and grabbed his wrist. "Pulse." Wow. "You're alive, I mean really alive, I mean..." I trailed off, too dazed to work out what I wanted to say.
"That was my line," Xander said, looking at me with concern and amazement. "How come you're alive?"
"Well, duh!" I wasn't the one who had gotten himself turned and then been dusted by his best friend in the middle of the Bronze. "What... oh never mind. C'mere." I hugged him to me. I didn't want to question my luck any more, not when he was here in my arms. "Missed you, Xan-man."
"Missed you too, Jesse."
We just hugged for a while until a loud and obviously fake cough reminded us that we weren't alone.
"Loath as I am to break up the whelp's best chance for a shag in weeks, would anyone care to do the introductions?"
Xander leapt up like he'd been electrocuted. "Spike! We weren't... I'm not... You... Just shut up, fang-face."
I smiled as I stood up. Some things never changed, thank God. Good-naturedly flipping the bird at the vampire standing there with the girls, I realised he did have a point.
"Sorry, Spike, kinda got carried away there. It's just that I've known Xander here since we were knee-high to a stake, and... and it's been too long."
Spike nodded wisely then raised an eyebrow. "And you are?"
I goggled at him. "Dying has clearly rotted what's left of your brain. Or did Miller slip something into your blood this evening?"
"Miller?" he said, puzzled.
"Graham," Buffy supplied. "Riley's friend." Her face had that carefully expressionless look she always got around me after Glory tortured us.
"You know, tall, blonde, built like a tank, light of your unlife, other half of your lack-of-soul, am I ringing bells here?"
Spike's expression had switched from confused to angry and back to confused again as I spoke. This was pretty worrying from my point of view; if there was one person that Spike shouldn't have been able to forget no matter what, it was Graham.
"What is it with everyone's memories today?" I asked. I had a bad feeling I wasn't going to like the answer.
Buffy tried for humour. "Well, I'm sorry, but I only met you three times, and the third time you were a vampire so that doesn't count."
"Hey," said Spike, "none of that speciesist crap, young lady!"
I ignored him. "I... you mean... vampire?" I sat down heavily as it dawned on me just what had happened. I hadn't just wished Buffy back to life, I'd changed history. Five years ago, I had died instead of Xander... and the team hadn't lost it's heart. Oh God, I was such an idiot!
"So that was what it meant." I had lost the last five years of my life, in effect losing my friends as they were now. Shaking, I looked up at my Willow to see her holding Tara's hand tightly. Here, she wasn't my fiancee any more. Here, she hadn't been my Willow for years.
"Jesse, what's wrong?" she asked, her face screwed up in worry.
"I kinda screwed up, Wills," I told her, fighting down hysterical laughter. "I was just supposed to wish for Buffy to be alive again, which worked obviously, but I had to try and get fancy so now Xan's alive and I'm dead and you're with Tara except I'm not dead and it's all screwed up and it's my fault and—"
"Woah, Jesse," Xander said, breaking my flow. "Remember to breathe, bud."
"Yeah," Willow added, "and I'm not seeing the problem here. I mean, Xander being alive is good, isn't it?"
"I'm voting for 'good' there. I like being alive. Besides, we've got you too, that's got to be good."
"Yeah, but..."
Xander caught me looking at Wills, remembering the 'always' that I'd promised her just a short while and a reality ago. "You were going out with Willow?" For some reason this seemed to shock him.
"Not like it's a hardship, whelp. Red's a good-looking chit."
"We were going to be married," I admitted, ignoring Spike.
Xander looked even weirder. "It's not all it's cracked up to be," he said.
"What happened?"
"Long story. So how did you get here?"
"Longer story."
We were silent a while, sorting through what we'd said and heard, before Tara plucked up the courage to say something. "Maybe if I made us some tea then we could sit down and you could tell us what happened to you. Then we could tell you what happened to us. Uh, if you'd like, that is." We stared at her, and she squirmed under the attention.
Buffy shrugged. "Sounds like a good idea," she said.
"Yeah," Spike added, "warm us a mug of blood while you're at it."
After a brief argument in which I had little say, Spike was sent off to "fix your own damn food, Fangless," and to help Tara carry the tea things in. I settled down in what I was told was Xander's lounge, feeling embarrassed but grateful for the calming effect of this oh-so-familiar English custom.
"OK Jesse," Xander said, "talk to us."
"Are you sure you want to hear all of this?" I asked. Everyone agreed apart from Spike, who was promptly pummelled with cushions. "OK, well I guess I should start with the night after we met you, Buff...."