Disclaimer: All the characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy and all those folks, not me. Beta work as always by Sanity Fair. Awesome reviews kindly given by my awesome readers.
 
Chapter 17 – A Week in the Library
 
It was a complete understatement to say that things were tense at Revello Drive during the week following Jenny’s spell. Riley got up, went for long morning runs, and tried in general to be out of the house before Buffy woke. When they were at the breakfast table together the atmosphere was chilly. He worked long hours and retreated with a beer in front of the TV at night.
 
For her part, Buffy was on a mission. She got up every day and went to the Magic Box, helping out when the store was busy, but every spare moment was spent poring over books. The others seemed surprised. Apparently she wasn’t known to be any more of a scholar of magic in this world than she had been before – but thankfully left her to her own devices for the most part. Once or twice Tara or Willow asked if they could help, but after being politely rebuffed enough times they got the hint.
 
There has to be a way. Having experienced time travel, Buffy knew it to be possible. There had to be a means to travel to Spike’s time. There were numerous ways to contact the past, through trances and spells, or by being a medium. But physically traveling to the past seemed to be another matter altogether. After a few days she paid a visit to Giles and Jenny, asking to use some of their books.
 
“What exactly are you looking for?” Giles asked curiously after ushering Buffy into his apartment. Jenny was still a teacher at the new Sunnydale High, but Giles seemed to spend most of his time in scholarly pursuits and consulting with the Watcher’s council in England. His home library was small but contained many obscure texts that the Magic Box lacked.
 
“Well…:” Buffy thought for a moment on how to spin this. Finally, she decided some form of the truth would be useful. “I was wondering about parallel realities. Is it possible to travel to another time or place that’s a lot like ours, only different?”
 
Giles was clearly surprised by the question. “Is that what you think happened? You’re somehow in the wrong reality?”
 
“I know it’s far-fetched,” Buffy backpedaled. Giles’ tone held a hint of that concern for her mental state that she was becoming quite familiar with from this crowd. “It was just an idea that occurred to me while I was researching, and I got curious. There’s nothing much in the Magic Box collection about that sort of thing.”
 
“That’s because that sort of thing is very serious and difficult to achieve,” Giles replied in a sober tone. “Moving between worlds and realities requires an intense amount of magical power to open a portal between where you are and where you wish to be. Moreover, these things are notoriously difficult to control. There have been only a few cases in recorded history where people attempted it and managed to actually return to their starting point in one piece. For most it was a one way trip or a terrible tragedy.”
 
“Oh,” Buffy said. But although her exterior betrayed no particular emotion, inside her heart beat faster. It’s possible. It’s actually possible. And one way trip? No problem! Exactly what I want! She knew that she was going to have to find someone to help her with the portals and all that, but it was possible, and for the first time since this whole adventure started she felt a glimmer of real hope.
 
Giles took her silence for something else, however. “Buffy, I know you are tempted to return to a time when things were simpler, in your mind at least. Many of us would like to go back to when we were younger or when… when someone we loved was still alive. But returning to when Dawn and your Mother were alive would carry no guarantees. You could very well lose them again or lose someone else you cared about. Altering the past can bring very serious consequences.”
 
Tell me something I don’t know. Aloud she said, “I know. You can’t go back. I just… I just wanted to learn more about it. Maybe someone else tried something like that with me, and that’s why I can’t remember.” She prayed silently that Giles would buy it.
 
He stared at her for a moment, hesitating. “It is highly improbable. But I suppose we should leave no stone unturned.” He turned to his bookshelves and started scanning titles. He pulled down a stack of likely tomes onto the dining table, passed a few over to Buffy, and they got to work. Some of the texts were in Latin or ancient Greek, which didn’t help Buffy at all, but Giles translated bits and pieces for her. The parts that she did understand didn’t give Buffy a lot of hope. If she was going to do this she would need Willow, Tara, Jenny, and Giles to help in all probability – the magic was extremely powerful and risky for the practitioner. Moreover, she would have to explain exactly where and when she wanted to travel, which would lead to the whole unopened can of worms dealing with who should and shouldn’t really be alive right now. At some point, Jenny called to ask Giles a question, and the soft, happy tone of his voice as he exchanged pleasantries with her spoke volumes. Giles had never been so relaxed and contented in her world. How could she explain that the original version was a version in which Jenny had had her neck snapped by a vicious vampire whom Buffy had been dating? Could she really explain what she wanted to do in a way that didn’t sound incredibly irresponsible and selfish?
 
As Giles returned to the table, a thought occurred to Buffy. “Does Wesley Wyndham-Price still live in the U.S.? Isn’t he an expert in a lot of this demonic dimensional stuff?” She had seen his name mentioned in Giles’ diaries, but his fate had been unrecorded.
 
Giles looked surprised. “He quit the Council of Watchers when he didn’t approve of their tactics. He lives somewhere in Los Angeles and calls himself a free-lance demon hunter now, but I don’t think we want his help.”
 
“Why not?” Buffy wondered. There seemed to be a touch of animosity in Giles’ voice.
 
“He parted ways from the Council because he insisted that some demons and possibly even some vampires might be capable of fighting on the side of good. The official Council teachings deny this.”
 
“And what do you think?” Buffy asked. His answer would tell her a lot about what she could expect if she explained the real situation.
 
Giles polished his glasses thoughtfully. “If there are benevolent vampires out there, I have never met one. Some demons are probably harmless enough, but it seems foolhardy to discuss their motives in the heat of battle.”
 
“So it’s better to slay a harmless creature than to risk letting a harmful creature go free?” Buffy asked incredulously.
 
“Well, yes, of course.” Giles’ tone of voice seemed to imply that this should be obvious to her.
 
“But…if we applied that to humans, you’d call it barbaric, wouldn’t you? I mean, I can’t go around killing people because some might be murderers!”
 
“Well, of course not. But demons lack souls. It is not the same thing,” Giles insisted.
 
Buffy shook her head. “What do souls have to do with it? Plenty of murderers and rapists and dictators have souls. How could a harmless demon be worse?”
 
Giles replaced his glasses and fixed her with a stern look. “We cannot risk seeing our quarry as anything other than a force for chaos and evil. If you hesitate, you will fall, like other Slayers before you.”
 
“I can’t believe this!” Buffy said, getting up. “Is this the way I’ve always worked? Everything black and white, no shades of gray, no what-if’s? A blind, dutiful little killing machine?”
 
“I don’t understand where these notions are coming from,” Giles interjected. “But I can assure you, you have never been simply a mindless killing machine. You are a weapons expert, an excellent tactician, and...”
 
“And I’ve done whatever you say without question,” Buffy finished quietly.
 
“I wouldn’t say without question,” Giles said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But we’ve always managed to come to an agreement on what needed to be done.”
 
Translation: You’ve always managed to wear me down until I do what you want. She could completely see how that would be possible. She remembered that horrible year after she came back from the dead, when it was easier to go along with almost anything rather than argue. True, some of the experiences she had had due to her associations with Angel and Spike had been harrowing, but she had emerged stronger, more assertive in the end. Clearly, that hadn’t happened this time around. She looked at Giles as if seeing him for the first time. He was stuffy, British, steeped in Slayer tradition, and seemed utterly hidebound. The same experiences that had broadened her mind before had affected him in the previous reality as well. Without them, he lacked some of the nuanced perspective of the Giles she remembered, and it saddened her in an undefinable way. “Look, I’m sorry I brought it all up. I’ll get out of your hair now.” She turned to go, gathering her bag from the chair as she went.
 
“Buffy,” Giles said in a gentler tone. She turned to face him. “I don’t want you to see me as an ogre or a dictator. I want you to be able to ask questions freely. My opinions on demons and their motives come ultimately from a desire to keep you safe. You’ve always been like the daughter Jenny and I never had, and the idea of you getting hurt or killed because you hesitated in battle is extremely disturbing to me. I’m sorry I came across so harshly.”
 
“I understand, Giles.” The thing was that she did on some level. But Giles had used the excuse of Watcher’s Council tradition to put her through the Cruciamentum, and Giles had tried to kill Spike behind her back in the interest of keeping her safe. This Giles seemed just as likely to go against her wishes in the interest of what he thought of as her well-being. “I’ll see you later,” she said, giving him a half-hearted smile as she turned and walked out. As she made her way home the thought was crystal clear: if she was going to get back to Spike, it would have to be on her own.