. . . and miles to go: . . . and miles to go
by Gaius Petronius
" . . . and miles to go . . ." - Story 3 in the Time Shadows Trilogy
by Petronius
Season - AU
Rating - a little swearing and implied scenes so 13+
Disclaimer- BTVS and all its characters do not belong to me. I only borrow them, mess with their heads, make them cry and every once in a while, torture them.
Conclusion to "this darkest evening of the year" and "Time Shadows"
You do have to read these other short pieces to pick up what's going on here.
* * * * * * *
"OW!"
Xander yelped and squirmed amidst the covers as Buffy's wrist smacked him across the cheek. Fortunately her clenched fist, which left a deep depression in the pillow next to his face, just missed his jaw.
"Buffy! Wake up!" he shouted as he grabbed her flailing arms and drew her thrashing body in next to his. He held her close.
"Buffy!"
""Huh?" she muttered as her eyes fluttered open.
"Wake up. You're having another one of those dreams."
"Xander!?" Buffy called out and then realized he was lying right next to her, "Oh shit! Did I hit you again?!"
Xander released her hands.
"Oh my God!" she exclaimed as she reached out to caress the abrasion across his cheek. Quickly she put her face next to his, kissing the injury and allowing her long blond hair to spill down on his chest.
"It's okay."
"I'm soooo sorry!"
Xander put a pair of fingers up to Buffy's lips.
"Ssshh! It's okay, really!" he reassured her as he slipped on the dark eye patch from off the bedside table, "No damage, see! But we gotta do something about these nightmares. This is the third one this week and pretty soon that martial arts trained fist is gonna connect with my nose."
"You're right," Buffy replied humbly as she softly rubbed the bruise. She thought the dreams would go away after she and Xander began seeing each other again over a year ago. They were supposed to. Anya said they would if Buffy replaced the love from the other time with one in this time.
But it was December again, the season of the year when the nightmares intensified even though Buffy now understood what was causing them. Anya was right. It was something that happened around the winter solstice. It brought the universe that had ceased to exist somehow closer to the surface again and all the faint jumbled images came rushing back. Something still remained unfinished.
Often the dreams were filled with violence and terrifying entities only her late high school tutor and librarian could have identified. She wished she had kept in touch with Rupert Giles after graduation. He had died almost two years ago after a brief and agonizing bout with cancer. Anya said he understood the dreams, having many of his own, and often asked how Buffy was handling them. Mr. Giles had coined a name for them and the intensifying deja vu that accompanied them, Time Shadows.
They had started after high school over six years ago, and plagued her all through her acting career. True, Buffy had worked only the daytime soaps but it paid the bills and helped her cultivate the reputation in the industry as a confident and professional actress. In the last year, she had signed on to an edgy supernatural drama about a group of teenagers who battled the forces of evil while attending high school. Viewership was low but the critics liked the show and it was her first big break.
Doors were opening but the dreams held her back. Sometimes they could be debilitating, leaving her drained of energy for the whole day. More and more they put a serious crimp in her growing relationship with Xander. They had dated senior year at Sunnydale HIgh until Xander crossed the line on the commitment issue by saying the three dirty words. That plus the fact that he saved her life on prom night during a driveby shooting and lost an eye in the process sent the relationship into a tailspin.
It was more than Buffy could handle. She broke up with him on the steps of the Sunnydale Hospital the day he was released, and they went their separate ways.
Now, six years later Willow had brought both back together, Xander a successful construction contractor and Buffy a tough young actress on the verge of a breakout career. They traded nights at each other's apartments in Sunnydale and Los Angeles. The relationship had its ups and downs, mostly due to scheduling and professional commitments.
And the dreams were driving another wedge between them. It wasn't so much that Xander didn't believe in the alternate time line that Anya explained had ceased to exist but still lingered in wisps and deja vu. Actually he wasn't sure, but he supported Buffy and would do what he could to help her come to terms with the dreams.
Rather it was Buffy's obsession with the mysterious person named Angel that caused Xander's heart to cringe and the pit of his stomach jump whenever the name came up. There was an old song that said one lover loved the other more. That was Xander Harris. While trying to remain cool and always joking, he actually adored the ground Buffy walked on. His greatest fear was that Buffy would recognize it and pull another about face. Such an outcome would be enough to send him back to the sauce. He'd probably regain all the weight he had lost, too.
Still there was Angel from the supposed other time who had made the ultimate sacrifice for Buffy. Angel had returned to the past where he was still human in order to change a time line in which Buffy died young. The vampire thing, the evil world that the other time represented and how Buffy saved that world not just once but over and over, well it all made Xander's head spin. Not to mention the fact that in this alternate universe, he was just the bumbling side kick. Despite saving her life in that world too, Xander still never had a chance.
All this was according to Anya, who, by the way was also convinced she was a Vengeance Demon.
"So what's the schedule?" Xander asked Buffy nonchalantly over coffee in her bright kitchen.
"I called into the studio and they're rearranging the script conference today for later in the afternoon," Buffy replied as her nostrils swept up the steamy stimulating aroma from her mug.
"You can't keep doing this, Buff," Xander said delicately, "This is your big chance. I don't want you to blow it with all these no shows."
"That's the last one," Buffy answered firmly as she sipped her coffee, "This has got to stop. I'm going to see Anya again tomorrow."
"You really think she's got the answer?" Xander replied, trying to disguise the unease in his voice. He realized the two were going to discuss both the dreams and Angel.
"I know she does," Buffy said with conviction as she reached her hand across the table, taking Xander's in hers, "Trust me."
"I do. You want some company?"
"That's okay," Buffy grinned.
"You sure? I'll dust off the Corvette. You can drive," he smiled back hopefully. The last time Xander let her behind the wheel of his prize automobile, Buffy sideswiped a jersey barrier in the parking lot of the Sunnydale Mall.
"Xander," Buffy said as she squeezed his hand hard, "It's all right. I'm with you. I want to be with you. That other world, that other time, it doesn't exist. Whatever happened then, between Angel and me, between you and me, if it ever even did happen at all, it's gone forever. It can't come back."
Xander glanced down nervously at the table.
"I'm sorry, Kendall," Xander replied affectionately using her soap opera character name to keep the conversation light, "You can't blame me for being a little jealous, though. I mean you are still a hottie from LA and I'm just a lowly contractor."
"Hey, . . . Jack Sparrow," Buffy said softly as she leaned forward, pressing her lips against his with her hand caressing his cheek under the eyepatch.
"You took me ice skating . . ." she said with the faintest smile, then stopped in mid-sentence as if the rest were best left unspoken.
"I did, didn't I," Xander replied more easily.
"You better get going," Buffy glanced up at the kitchen wall clock.
"Yow, I gotta be in Sunnydale by 10:30!"
Xander quickly rose from the kitchen table. As he headed for the door, he glanced back over his shoulder at Buffy.
"I'll call you!" she said emphatically before he could speak.
Xander nodded as the door slapped shut. Buffy heard his footsteps echoing in the hallway and down the stairwell which he always used instead of the elevator.
She imagined she could still feel his lips pressed against hers and his arms wrapped strongly around her waist from last night.
" . . . and I love you, Jack Sparrow," she said softly to herself, completing her unfinished sentence from a moment before.
* * * * * * *
"Anya said I'd find you here," Willow said softly so as not to startle Buffy. The brilliant southern California sun shown down on the sloping hill in the Sunnydale cemetery where Buffy sat quietly beside the modest gravestone of Rupert Giles. She glanced back over her shoulder as Willow approached.
"Hi," Buffy said as she turned her head to stare out over the hillside once more. Willow settled down in the lush green grass beside her high school companion.
"Whatcha thinking?" she asked.
"Just," Buffy replied with a sigh, "How much I miss him, and I never even realized it. Mr. Giles was kinda like my mom, I thought he was always going to be there."
"I know," Willow replied, following Buffy's gaze, "I used to see him all the time in the Magic Shoppe, scolding Anya for one thing or another. The place just isn't the same."
"I didn't realize how much I missed him until I came back last December. I hadn't seen him since graduation but I guess we were pretty close . . . in the other time." Buffy looked down at the ground. "I should have returned sooner, but I didn't know."
"None of us did, Buffy."
For a few minutes, both sat silently soaking up the rays of the sun.
"So," Willow said with a conspiratorial grin, "How are you and Xander getting on?"
Buffy said nothing for a moment, then nodded with the faintest hint of a smile.
"We're good," she said with warmth in her voice, "We're real good. He's all clingy and everything but I understand why. I guess I'm a little clingy myself right now. Thanks, Will."
"For what?"
"For giving me back something I thought I had lost."
Willow's grin broadened from ear to ear.
"What?" Buffy asked.
"Oh, Buffy! You and Xander, you're high school sweethearts!"
"Yeah, it's so cute it makes you wanna barf!" Buffy smirked, shaking her head at the same time.
"No!" Willow protested as she put her hand on her friend's shoulder, "It's beautiful. Maybe it'll last, maybe it won't, but right now you guys have something that many people only dream about."
"Yeah, what dreams . . ." Buffy trailed off as her gaze returned to the soft grass at her feet, "My dreams are full of monsters, me as a super Xena saving the world, and some hunk of a guy who has the hots for me but has been dead for over two hundred years! My therapist is having a field day."
"It doesn't exist, Buffy," Willow said, trying to be reassuring.
"It doesn't?" Buffy asked as she looked back up directly at Willow, "Anya says they were real."
"Even if we all had the same dreams," Willow answered firmly, "Even if we all saw them, that still wouldn't make them real."
"I still can't remember any of it," Buffy went on, "I see it all happening in the dreams, it's familiar and all but I don't remember any of it. I don't want to feel it. But it's affecting me anyway."
"That's because it didn't happen to you," Willow explained carefully, "It happened to someone else who's a part of you, but isn't you . . . because that time no longer exists."
"I want it to stop, Will."
Willow didn't answer.
"It's going to hurt someone I love very much."
"So what are you going to do?"
Buffy paused for a moment.
"I had a long talk with Anya today. She said there's something lingering from the other time," Buffy finally replied, "And I'm going to finish it one way or the other."
* * * * * *
The light in the lead gray sky dimmed as the sun slowly sank behind the snow laden clouds. Buffy and Xander drove down the Irish country road outside Dublin. Stone walls, forests and rolling fields crept right up to the edge of the narrow gravel pavement. Every once in a while, they had to pull off to the side of the road to allow a car to pass traveling in the opposite direction.
Both were silent on the drive back to their rooms at the Inn. The whirlwind trip to Ireland had been Anya's idea to bring things to a head. December wasn't the high point of the tourist season but Buffy jumped at the chance to chase down what could be the root of her dreams in the countryside that the mysterious Angel had once frequented.
Close to two hundred and fifty years had passed but his presence still loomed large in the county records and the area's collective memory. Buffy and Xander spent several days combing church documents and area land deeds. They lingered for hours visiting the burial plot at the local churchyard, saw his stone and that of his wife and family along with the markers of dozens of descendants.
Even one of their guides named Elizabeth Ann was a great great something or other of Angel. Buffy stared into the young woman's deep brown eyes every chance she could get, trying to spot something familiar, a link across the centuries that would tell her more.
According to local legend, one evening Angel, drunk and in a rage at his father, stormed out of his family home for a night of carousing in Dublin. He disappeared for several days and returned a changed man. No one could understand the sudden conversion, and Angel never spoke in specifics, but all agreed that the good deeds he worked so hard to accomplish in the ensuing years, spread outward from himself and his family to the county at large and beyond. It seemed Angel even traveled extensively across the continent but the nature of those journeys and what goals they were meant to accomplish were lost to history.
But the net results from all this research had been one big nadda. Although she now had a whole head full of facts and dates (Xander insisted they write things down since both he and Buffy flunked history in high school), Buffy realized she was no closer to an answer for the nightmares that plagued her.
By late afternoon they were returning to Dublin along the country road from the churchyard where both had stood for close to two hours before the ornate stone that marked Angel's grave. Gazing at the elaborate celtic carving, Buffy shivered in the cold wind, trying to sense something, to make contact with anything that would lead her to a surviving presence of Angel. Nothing.
At one point, she squinted and grit her teeth so hard Xander thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.
"Damn, you!" she finally yelled out in frustration to the biting wind.
"Easy, Buff," he said calmly as she gave up and wrapped her arms around him. He held her tightly, imaging his grip could absorb the emotions tormenting her, even through the layers of her thick storm coat.
"Let's get outta here," she finally muttered.
"You sure?"
"Yeah," Buffy replied as she surveyed the crowded field of ancient stones surrounding them, "This is a waste of time. . . . There's nothing here."
Xander drew in a deep breath. He knew Buffy never took defeat well. So they were quiet, traveling over the miles back to Dublin in the fading afternoon light.
Suddenly, Buffy sat bolt upright and stared out into the passing forest. The trees were mostly birch and stood out like florescent bony fingers in the advancing dusk. Xander instantly sensed her focused attention.
"What is it, Buff?"
"Stop here," she answered firmly.
He was about to protest, complain that night was approaching and there wasn't a building for miles, but the intensity in her gaze told him to stay silent.
Xander pulled the car into a rutted pathway made by the passage of carriage wheels over the centuries and now returning back to nature from disuse. He guided the vehicle carefully amidst the looming birch trunks until they could proceed no further. Here the overgrown trail was completely blocked by fallen limbs.
As the car crept to a stop, Buffy climbed out and walked slowly in between the white trunks. Xander slammed the car door and followed. Buffy hadn't progressed more that twenty yards down a path into the forest when suddenly she halted and stared straight ahead into the tangled sea of white shapes.
"Talk to me, Buffy," Xander pleaded, trying to control the tension he felt mounting in his voice. He pulled his coat collar up tighter against the deepening chill.
"It's here, Xander," she said almost sadly, "We were completely wrong back at the church. It's out here where it happened."
"What happened?"
Buffy didn't answer but turned her head up to the leaden clouds.
"What do you want with me!?" she shouted furiously at the gray sky.
Xander restrained the urge to take her in his arms. He knew this was what Anya meant was unfinished, and it had to come out.
"You gave me back my life!" she yelled, her voice seething with resentment, "and maybe I owe you but it's all different now! I'm different! That's part of the deal!"
A cold breeze swept through the forest causing the limbs to click noisily against themselves. Buffy, her coat flapping open to the rushing chill, felt nothing.
"I know what I did then was important, what we had was . . ." she couldn't finish the sentence, "but it's all gone! Don't you get it! This world is different! I'm different! You changed it! It's what you wanted!"
"Buffy!" Xander stepped up by her side. She turned to face him. He saw an expression on her face, a glow in her eyes that he didn't recognize. Instantly, he knew it could only be from the "other" time.
"Buffy!" he repeated as forcefully as he could to try and draw her back. She studied him as if she were drifting somewhere between this world she had now and one from out of an unknown past that she was afraid would return to wipe away everything she held dear.
"Buffy, listen to me."
Buffy, her head cocked slightly to one side, stared at Xander as if he were a stranger.
"Maybe, this Angel guy wants you to remember for another reason! Maybe that's why you're having the dreams, because you're blocking something that has to be part of you! You need to know what he did for you."
"But I don't want to remember!" she suddenly exclaimed, and he heard not only his own Buffy's voice but also, for the first time in the many years he'd known her, her fear.
"I don't want to remember, Xander!" she repeated, "Because if I do, I'm afraid . . . afraid I'll lose you!"
"But you'll never be whole if you don't remember," he replied, tossing all caution to the wind," Whatever you were in that other time, BTDS, Buffy the Demon Squasher, whatever, that was you too. For you to end this, you have to accept that."
"But this is my life now!" she yelled at the deepening dusk circling in closer around them, "However I got it, whether it was given to me or not, it's mine! I'll do with it what I want!"
She reached out and touched Xander's face.
"I share it with who I want . . ."
Her fingers tips were hot against his skin. Suddenly, a spot of cold hit Buffy's forehead, melted and ran in a tiny rivulet down her face. She looked up towards the sky that was only minutes away from night. The first individual flakes descended between the outstretched arms of the trees.
Slowly at first, then more steadily, the snow swept down from the steely clouds, dusting her and Xander in a soft primeval blanket. Delicate flakes slipped by their faces and tangled in their hair. Cleansing, the cool moisture settled on their exposed skin, melting instantly on contact and sliding away.
Buffy held out her arms letting her unbuttoned coat open wide to the falling snow.
"I remember . . ." Buffy said quietly but resolutely to the flurries now adhering to her arms and blouse, "I remember but it's still mine . . ."
Unrelenting, the snow coating the birch forest hovered in a near silent hush.
" . . . it's all changed now. . . ," she said drawing from her dream memories, "Your promise is fulfilled."
Here, over two hundred years later on the darkest evening of the year, the snow blanketed birch forest waited for her to finish her sentence.
" . . . now you must let me go . . ."
The gentle breeze weaving among the snow laden branches slowly ceased, allowing the individual flakes to descend unimpeded to the ground. At the same time, Buffy pulled the flaps of her storm coat in tightly around her, securing the toggles. She then wrapped her arms around Xander, drawing him in closely for warmth. He held her as tightly as he could as both stood motionless on the edge of night.
"He understood," Xander said.
"Yeah," she replied in a tone of voice that made Xander sigh with relief.
"We better get back," he urged gently as he glanced in the failing light over his shoulder up the path they had come.
Buffy nodded while the melting snow wet the tips of their hair. But before Xander could turn towards the car, Buffy delicately placed her lips against his, sweeping them back and forth as she drank in the ghost of his breath, and he did the same with hers. When they finally drew apart from each other, he recognized the familiar glow in her bright blue eyes.
Both walked slowly through the accumulating snow up to the waiting car for the miles long ride back to the Inn.
"Jack Sparrow," she said with her arm squeezed tightly around his waist, " . . . take me ice skating . . ."
* * * * * * * *
12/6/05
pax,
Petronius
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