Chapter 3: Truths


“Ok… Go ahead. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about where I was…”

Taking off his glasses, Giles went and sat down next to her at the table. Xander, Willow, Anya and Tara all put down the books they had been using to research and turned to look at Buffy. It wasn’t that they wanted to hear about the terrible things Buffy had gone through—this was their friend after all—but they were incredibly curious about the place they’d saved her from.

“Thank you, Buffy. I realise that this must be very hard for you, but anything you could remember would really help. We know that you were taken to wherever you were on the twenty-second of May, and Willow brought you back on the second of October.” Giles spoke of Willow’s spells with such disdain, it was clear he thought that something could still be very wrong after the spell.

“So, we are currently cross referencing which dimensions had portals open around those dates, but there seems to be a choice of hundreds. We need to lower that if we have any chance of helping you. You understand don’t you, Buffy?”

Buffy simply nodded.

“Well, as time travels differently in different dimensions, I guess it would help us reduce the number of possibilities if we knew how long you were where you were.”

“Umm, longer than I was away. I don’t know the exact time; time had no measurement, if you know what I mean. If felt like about 3 years. I’m sorry I can’t be more help, Giles. I just don’t know exactly.”

“Don’t be sorry, that helps. Willow, I will need you to cross-reference dimensions that move at a 1 to 7 ratio to our time scale. Now Buffy, I am sorry but I have to ask, do you remember anything being done to you?”

Once again Buffy just shook her head.

It was Anya that now spoke up. “Well that doesn’t mean anything. When I was a vengeance demon I saw a lot of death and destruction, and would see the people blocking it out of their memory, pretending nothing had happened.” She said it with such clarity, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I actually caused a lot of the trauma… this one time I made this man…”

“Ahn!” Xander cut her off before she could go into one of her speeches about the many men she had maimed and tortured.

Giles carried on before anyone else could interrupt, “Buffy, do you remember being in any pain while you were there?”

“There wasn’t any pain, Giles.” Taking a deep breath, Buffy looked her watcher directly in the eye, “I wasn’t in pain. I was happy.”

Silence followed Buffy’s announcement.

“Wow, we really did screw up.” Everyone looked at Anya. “What? I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking, right? Right, Xander?” Anya looked at Xander making him squirm.

“Anya, would you please just be quiet for a second.” Once again Giles took off his glasses to clean them. “Buffy, what are you actually saying?”

“You mean an experienced watcher like yourself can’t work it out? I was in heaven, Giles. At least that’s where I think I was. I don’t know exactly. What I do know is I was happy and at peace and I knew you were all safe. But then I was taken away from all that, Giles. Now I’m not there anymore. Now I know what pain is.” Buffy bowed her head and stared at the table.

Tears formed in Willows eyes as the words Buffy had said sunk in. She had torn her best friend away from paradise, without a second thought for what she might be doing. Without thinking about Buffy.

Xander stared in shock at Buffy. He had helped Willow, and this is what he had done. He had hurt his friend more than he could have possibly ever imagined. He couldn’t bring himself to think about what he had done.

Giles was speechless. His slayer had sacrificed herself and had been rewarded for it, but then, because her friends has been selfish and wouldn’t accept that she was dead, they had ripped away that privilege from her. He knew nothing he would say would stop the pain she must be feeling. He knew what Willow had done was wrong, he just hadn’t realised how much.

“Ok guys, someone say something.” Buffy looked into the face of each one of her friends; she had tears running down her cheeks, marring her face.

“Oh god, Buffy. I am so sorry. I didn’t know. We were so stupid, I’m so stupid. I thought I was helping. Oh, Buffy, I am so sorry.” Willow’s tears now matched Buffy’s as they poured down her cheeks. Standing up she went over to Buffy’s side of the table to go and give her a hug; she was shocked and hurt when Buffy flinched away from her.

“I’m sorry, I can’t… not yet.” Standing up, Buffy walked over to the counter where she started pacing. “Well Giles, any clue how to make me better then. You’ve got somewhere to start the research from now, right?”

“From what you have said, I think that you were in Eden. It’s a form of paradise. Very few can achieve such a state of paradise, you have to have been exceptional in life, but then again, I always knew you were. I’m sorry, this isn’t what you need to hear.”

“Just tell me how to make me better, Giles. That’s all I need right now.” Stopping her pacing, Buffy looked Giles directly in the eye, ignoring all the other people in the room. Good tactic. They’re pains anyway!

“That’s what I am trying to say. I don’t think there is a way to make you better. While searching for the mystical we have managed to overlook the physical.” Giles stood up and walked over to the stairs leading up to the mezzanine.

Buffy just stared at him, afraid to think of what he was saying. “What are you saying, Giles? Just cut to the chase.” Buffy was starting to get angry now, why couldn’t he just say what he knew?

“I hadn’t thought that you had developed the tumour while you were on this plane of existence. I had believed that the tumour had come from the hell dimension you were sent to, but you weren’t in hell, Buffy. Eden is a place of great happiness; the tumour would not have developed there. The tumour was made and exists in this dimension.”

“No, no, no. There has to be something, something to stop the tumour. This can’t be the way it ends… it just can’t. The doctor said it was four months ago, that’s when it came… Giles, four months ago I was dead… I can’t have a tumour, I can’t… Please tell me I don’t…please…” Buffy’s voice rose an octave as she pleaded with Giles, but her words trailed off as her voice caught in her throat and tears ran down her face.

“I can’t do that, Buffy. I wish to God I could. I believe there is nothing mystical about this, Buffy. The tumour is family related, in all probability you developed it before you died. It will have lain dormant while you were dead and now that your body is functioning again, so is the development of that tumour. I’m sorry, Buffy. I really truly am.”

“No, no!” Buffy stared at Giles wide eyed, shaking her head in disbelief, tears flowing angrily down her face. With a final look at the Scoobies, she ran. The bell above the door jangled around the suddenly silent store. Everyone stared at the door as though imagining that Buffy would suddenly come back into the room.

Xander stood up first. “I’ll go find her.”

Giles stopped him. “No, Xander, let her go; she’ll have a lot to think about.” The room fell back into deathly silence; no one knew where to look or what to say. Everyone had a lot to think about, not just Buffy.

***
Buffy wandered around Sunnydale; she didn’t have a destination in mind nor did she care. Her head was full of unanswered questions. She had been so set on the idea that the tumour had developed when she had died and that they would find a cure, but now they were telling her that wasn’t the case. Her friends really had condemned her to hell.

Without realising it, her feet had taken her to Spike’s cemetery. Aimlessly she walked towards his crypt.

Pushing open the heavy door, she entered into the darkened room. Spike sat on the green chair drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Slayer?”

Buffy turned to face him and Spike saw that she had tears in her eyes. Eyes that were bloodshot and that clearly had seen a lot of tears that evening.

“You went away, why?” Buffy was speaking like a little child, reminiscent of when she had first come back and had come to his crypt.

“You mean at the hospital?”

Buffy nodded her head.

“Didn’t think you wanted me there, pet. You had the Scoobies round you. Didn’t need me.”

“Ok.” Tears welled in her eyes again. She didn’t want to think why what Spike had just said upset her so much. What gave him the right to think she didn’t need him anymore? He was the only one she needed. That’s what was scaring her the most; why she needed her mortal enemy more than her best friend.

This wasn’t the slayer that Spike recognised, she looked so vulnerable, all he wanted to do was hold her in his arms and take away her pain. “What’s wrong, Buffy?”

Buffy looked up into Spike’s face when he used her real name.

“There is no mystical cure, Spike. There’s no cure at all.” Fresh tears started to run down her cheeks.

“What do you mean, love? What did the doc and watcher boy have to say?” Spike knew the news wasn’t good; his slayer was so upset but he needed answers from her.

“I didn’t understand most of it,” she sniffled before attempting levity with a forced smile. “He used long words. But I understood just fine what he meant. I have a brain tumour, like what mom had. The only difference is mine can’t be operated on. It could have been caught and probably stopped a few months ago, but I wasn’t here, being dead and all. So now there is nothing that can be done. I’m just so tired, Spike.”

Spike had to admit that Buffy did look like she was about to collapse from sheer exhaustion.

What were the bloody doctors doing? Why couldn’t they bloody well help her? He held his anger at bay while he spoke; he didn’t want to scare her.

“Here, pet, you go and lie down. There’s a bed downstairs. You should sleep, you look completely knackered, love.”

Nodding, Buffy walked over to the hole in the floor “Spike?”

Looking up he stared into emerald eyes, that were glassy from the tears already shed.

“Would you stay with me, please?”

Silently Spike nodded. Buffy had just uttered the words that Spike had longed to hear, but he knew this wasn’t their happy ever after, there was no happiness here, that thought alone made his dead heart break. He knew his slayer would die, and that none of them could stop it. For tonight though he would be here for her.

Together they walked down to the lower level, where Buffy slept soundly on his bed; it had been a long and tiring day. Spike watched over her while she slept. It was the most she had slept in a long time, feeling safe in his presence.

Spike laid thinking of the ways he could help her. Just watching as she slept.

***
Willow walked back from the bathroom. Placing her hairbrush she had been carrying on the dressing table, she went and climbed into bed next to Tara.

Tara, who had been slowly dozing off, stirred slightly as the bed shifted as Willow got in. “Hey, Baby.” Tara voice was groggy from sleep. “How are you doing now?”

“I’m doing ok.” Willow lay next to her lover, feeling warm in her embrace. “Tara? Why didn’t she tell us? Don’t you think that that is something we should have known? Do you think she doesn’t trust us?”

“Oh Honey, I think maybe she was scared. She didn’t want to scare us too. I think we need to stop obsessing about this. Buffy is going to need our help dealing with everything. This must be very hard for her, especially after everything she has been through.”

Suddenly Willow sat bolt upright in bed, causing Tara to jump.

“I can help. I know a spell. I can make her better, I just need…”

“No!” Feeling Tara’s hand on her arm stopping her from getting out of bed, Willow looked at her. “You can’t do that, Willow. That isn’t why we have the gift we have; we’re supposed to respect life and death. Willow, you know that.” Tara’s voice was soft but she tried to stress the importance of what she was saying, she had to get through to Willow.

“But I can’t just lie here knowing what I have done and not do anything about it. I can’t, Tara.” The redhead could barely see her girlfriend through the sheen of miserable tears, and no matter what Tara thought, she couldn’t just shot off the guilt-motivated catalogue of possibilities that might reverse the damage she’d done to Buffy. Nothing could replace Heaven, but she could try to make things better.

Tara looked at Willow sadly, peering into her wide eyes. “I know this is hard, baby, but you have to try. You can’t do anything. We have to just help Buffy deal with everything now.”

Willow could understand what Tara was saying, they couldn’t use their power to play God and decide who lived and who died. Yet at the same time she could, and probably should, help. “Ok, Baby. We’ll sleep now and deal with this is the morning.”

Lying back down she allowed Tara to snuggle up close to her. “I promise we can get through this. Buffy’s strong, Willow, and so are you.”

Willow lay still as Tara drifted off to sleep. When she was sure that Tara was fully asleep, she wriggled out of her grasp, being carefully not to wake her. Slipping out of the bed, she went to the chest at the end of the bed where she kept her more potent spell book. Looking through the pile until she came to the specific book she was looking for, Willow pulled it out. Sitting cross-legged, she read the list of dangerous ingredients she would require.

***

Buffy awoke in the early hours of the morning gasping for breath. Clutching her chest, she realised with a sinking feeling that her ‘dream’ had been her reality. Each night she had the same dream of waking up in a coffin and having to claw her way out.

Feeling a soothing hand on her back, she glanced to her right to see Spike sitting next to her, rubbing her back.

“You’ll stop waking up like this eventually, I promise. I know what it can be like,” Spike confided, his voice soft and soothing.

“Will it stop before I die again?”

“Hey!” Spike stopped rubbing her back and placed his hands under her chin, turning her head to look at him. “Look, just because the doc and Rupert said nothing can be done, doesn’t mean we stop looking. We may just have to look at more unorthodox methods, pet. I am not about to lose you again, Buffy.”

Buffy smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Spike.” Deciding she needed to change the subject, Buffy quickly turned her eyes away from him. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she slipped her feet back into her shoes. “I should get back to Dawn. She’s been on her own all night.”

Spike nodded. “Ok, love, I’ll take you home.”

Silently they walked back to Revello Drive.


***
As they approached the house, Spike’s vampire hearing picked up the sound of Willow inside muttering and cursing. Something was definitely wrong with the interfering witch.

“Pet, you just stay here. I’ll come and get you in a second. Yeah?” Spike pleaded with her.

Buffy looked at him dubiously.

“Buffy, promise me.” His subtle command got through to her finally and, pouting, she slumped onto the bench on the porch. “Good.”

Giving the pouting girl one last glance, Spike entered the house.

He found Willow in the kitchen, making a god-awful mess as she rummaged through the pantry.

“Red?” Spike said in a warning tone, making Willow jump and suddenly look up, stopping what she was doing. “What the hell are you up to?”

“Oh, Spike, you scared me. I was just looking for a spell ingredient I knew I had down here.” Willow once again resumed her search for the elusive ingredient that she was sure would make everything better.

“At three o’clock in the morning, while Glenda and Nibblet are tucked up safe in their beds? Why don’t I believe you?” Spiked stared at Willow with a look of disbelief.

“It really is for a spell, Spike. It’s to help Buffy. I can make the tumour go away. Spike, I can make things better. I have to make things better. I can’t carry on feeling this way. I can make it all go away.” The witch looked desperate and crazed as she spoke, she truly did believe this spell would work.

Spike took a step towards her, invading her personal space. He had to make her understand what she was messing with. He felt his temper rise again. “Red, you don’t know what you’re bloody messing with. You’re actually standing here, willing to risk your best friend’s life again? Just to make yourself sodding feel better? Buffy trusted you once, Red, and now…”

“Spike.” Hearing the small voice behind him, Spike turned to see Buffy standing by the open door way. His anger immediately vanished.

“Buffy?”

“I heard what Willow said, Spike. Will it work? Will it make it go away?” Buffy looked at her quiet friend and was terrified that magic might hold the answer. Terrified to trust her friend to do the spell correctly and maybe truly give her life back.

Before Willow could say anything, Spike strode over to Buffy. He spoke in a hushed whisper. “It’s not safe, pet. Magic always has consequences, always. Red knows that – she’s just not telling you that bit.”

Buffy looked into his eyes. “Spike, you’re the one who said we’d find a cure – and here it is. Please, this is the only way.” Buffy then looked past Spike, who just bowed his head in submission, and looked directly at Willow. “Will, do you really think it will work?”

“There are some ingredients I need – but yeah, I can’t see why it won’t. Buffy, I promise I can make things better. I can make you better.” Willow looked at Buffy, trying to smile for her friend’s sake. The slayer, however, just kept a stony face.

“Fine. What ingredients do you need?”

“I need the blood of an x-nar demon. I don’t know where to get that – I could substitute for a different…”

“No!” Spike heaved a sigh through clenched teeth. Willow and Buffy looked at him. He spoke directly to Buffy. “You sure you want to do it this way?” Buffy just nodded. “That’s what I thought.” Turning round he looked directly at Willow. “If we are going to do this we are going to do it bloody well right, less chance of things going wrong. I can get you the blood. Anything else you can’t get hold of? If you bugger this up, Red, I’ll have your guts for garters.”

“I have everything else. Trust me, Spike, I’m not going to mess this up. I know what I’m doing, I promise.” Willow still looked nervous but now she knew she had her friends support she seemed just that little bit calmer.

“Fine, I’ll do this, but I’m not trusting you, Red. Magic isn’t to be trusted.” Turning away from Willow, Spike looked back at Buffy. Taking her hand he led her over to the settee. Sitting her down, he sat on the coffee table opposite her. “Look, love, I’ll be back in an hour, max… you sure you definitely want to do it this way? You know things could go wrong.”

“Spike, I know you’re looking out for me, but we have to do this. Please?”

“I’ll do it. You stay here. Don’t go anywhere. Red will do the spell and we will have you good as new.” Spike forced a little smile. Standing up he strode over to the door and walked out without a second glance at the two girls.

Buffy and Willow looked at each other before sitting in complete silence. Nether looked or spoke to each other as they waited for Spike to return. The only sound heard in the whole house was the clock ticking in the hallway; it ticked away the minutes as the tumour carried on growing. Ticking away until Spike would return.

TBC…