Chapter 30—Suspended Animation

Suspended animation, a state of bliss—Pink Floyd, “Learning To Fly”

The week flew by, it seemed, on fleeting feet as Buffy and Anya worked themselves to a tizzy on the wedding.

“I can’t believe he expects us to get this all done in a week,” Buffy grumbled good-naturedly as she and Anya visited the florist.

Anya ignored her, concentrating on the flowers. She handed a list to the florist, who was already intimidated by the determination in her eyes. “We want a bridal bouquet of blue anemones, white roses, and baby’s breath, with holly and ivy for the greenery. Is this something that you can provide?” she asked curtly.

The florist, a short woman with gleaming, greedy eyes, surveyed the list. “I have a lovely selection of lilies…” she began, and Anya snatched the list from her hand, startling the florist.

“There are specific meanings for flowers, and if you cannot provide them, we can go to another shop that can. You aren’t the only florist in Sunnydale, you know.”

“No, no, I can do that. I just thought—“ the florist stammered, and Anya waved her explanations away with a languid hand.

“We have specific needs here, and this is the list. A bridal bouquet, a bridesmaid’s bouquet, two boutonnieres, enough of the bridal flowers to cover a trellis, and a couple of floral arrangements.” Anya ticked the items off on her fingers, and the florist nodded, dollar signs flashing in her eyes.

“When will you be needing all these?” the florist asked.

“Saturday morning. Afternoon at the latest.”

The florist gasped, her eyes widening. “It’s already Tuesday. I don’t know if I can—“

Anya moved to take the list out of the woman’s hand, but she held it away from her. “I’ll see what I can do. There really isn’t much call for holly at this time of year, although I’m sure that my LA providers can get me some,” the florist assured them, nodding wisely.

After discussing the particulars of money, and Anya dealing the woman down to a fraction of her original quote, she and Buffy left the shop to go to the caterer’s.

“I don’t know why we are having this thing catered, not like the gang would be expecting more than a bag of Cheetos and a bottle of soda,” Buffy muttered, and Anya turned on her, exasperation on her face.

“Buffy, stop it. You either want a wedding, or just an everyday Scooby party. You can’t have both. If you want a wedding, then let’s go to the caterer’s, pick out three appetizers and a main course, or we’ll just go to the grocery store and buy your Cheetos. Think, though. This will be the only wedding that you and Spike will ever have. Do you think that he wants Cheetos at his wedding?”

Buffy dropped her gaze, and Anya was on the verge of apologizing when she raised teary eyes to look at her friend. “I’m sorry, Ahn. I don’t mean to be difficult. I just…what if this doesn’t work out? What if we do this and Spike realizes that he doesn’t want me?”

Anya pulled Buffy into a hug. “Buffy, Spike would want you if we dressed you in burlap and blood larvae. Speaking of, when is your final fitting of your dress?”

Buffy gave her a watery smile before sniffing loudly and composing herself. “About twenty minutes, so we better get to the caterer.” Buffy giggled, and she and Anya walked down the street to the building housing the caterer and the bridal shop. “What is the whole meaning of flowers thing? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Flowers have their own language. Anemones stand for undying love, which undoubtedly you will have, considering that Spike is a vampire. Baby’s breath is similar, indicating everlasting love, and white roses indicate eternal love. Most important is the greenery—the holly stands for defense, happiness and foresight, and the ivy is for fidelity and friendship. I know that you don’t have a clue about this, but Spike will understand. It was a very big thing in Victorian time.”

Buffy nodded. “Spike may not appreciate it, but the William within will. Knowing him, he probably knew all that stuff when he was alive.” She wondered for a moment if he had chosen bouquets for Cecily Adams, then shook off the feelings of jealousy that coursed through her suddenly. That was a hundred years ago, Buffy. He loves you now.

Shivers coursed through her as she recalled just how well he loved her and she smiled. Anya gave her a sidelong glance, and said, “Okay, just stop that right now. There will be no time to fantasize about orgasms until we get you married. There’s still too much to do.”

Anya's knowing look embarrassed her, and she blushed from head to toe. “How did you know?” Buffy asked, a sheepish look on her face.

“I’m a woman too, Buffy, or did you forget?” Anya gibed good-naturedly. “Sometimes remembering orgasms is the only way that I can make it through a boring day. Thinking about money is another thing that brings that look to my face.” Anya steered her inside the caterer’s door, and they looked over the menu possibilities as they waited for him to finish with another customer. “Not to mention, you’ve been drifting since we started this wedding planning,” Anya whispered. “You know, it may not be a bad idea for Spike to restrain his sexual impulses until the wedding night.”

“What? Why?” Buffy whispered back. Anya was the last person she expected to tell her to stop doing anything that had to do with sex.

“Well, to uh…build stamina. Keep the mystery. Um…D'Hoffryn’s balls, Buffy, I don’t know!” Anya stammered, suddenly embarrassed herself.

Buffy linked her arm with Anya's as they bent their heads together over the printed menu flyer. “Don’t worry about it, Ahn. I’m sure that Spike still has a lot of tricks up his sleeve that I don’t know about.” Buffy had a thought, and went with her impulses instead of ignoring them. “Anya, is everything all right between you and Xander?”

Amazed, Anya stood and turned to look at her. “Everything’s fine. Better than it was before. Sometimes, though….” She let her voice trail off, and Buffy picked up the thread of her thought.

“You’re wondering if he respects you as a person.”

“Exactly!” Anya slapped one hand against the other. “I mean, he listens to you and Willow, but whenever I open my mouth, he just cringes, and I think that he isn’t sure about what’s going to come out of it. I know that I’m too frank for Xander, and that bothers him. How do you get over some of that stuff, Buffy?” Buffy's heart went out to her as she stood there, her eyes revealing how frustrated she was and how hard she was really trying.

“To be honest, Ahn, it comes with time. Either he gets over it, or you do. You know, it took me a long time to respect Spike for what he is and how far he’s come. Even without the chip, he doesn’t want to maim and slaughter anymore. For him, that’s a biggie—I never expected that, honestly. I thought that once the chip was out, all bets were off, but that’s not the way of it anymore.” Buffy smiled dreamily. “He loves me. Really loves me and that amazes me sometimes. I’ve never had good luck with love, you know.”

“I know. You were an anti-love magnet. Now, it seems different. You seem different.” Anya nodded to the man behind the counter, and they moved up to speak with him.

It wasn’t until Buffy was standing in her dress with pins poking her all around that she was able to answer her friend’s observation. “I am a different person now, Ahn. I would have never gone against the grain like this before I died.” She ignored the fitter’s startled look, and went on. “I would have just let them rule my life and tell me what to do, no matter how unhappy I was, just to keep them my friends. I guess I finally figured out that if they were my friends, they would love me no matter what. And if I have to sit through one more intervention, there will be bloodshed,” she finished with a wide grin.

Anya looked at her standing there in the Victorian dress that Buffy had chosen and smiled. “I can understand that. I never did like the intervention thing myself. D'Hoffryn tried that once or twice, and didn’t like the results.”

“Oh, yeah? What did you do?” Buffy asked as she turned for the still startled fitter, completely oblivious to her puzzled looks.

“Wake up with snakes and gollith worms in your bed, and see how much you like it,” Anya replied, grinning herself.

Buffy laughed and it made her seem younger somehow. “Anya, you are priceless.”

The fitter, still shaking from comments she’d overheard, interrupted them. “You can go take the dress off now, Miss Summers.”

As Buffy stepped off the platform, she took a double glance at the figure walking outside the window. She looked familiar, yet didn’t. “Anya, is that Willow?”

Anya turned, and said, “Buffy—you’d better come closer and take a good look.”

Buffy moved toward the window and looked closely at her longtime friend. She was paler than a vampire, and gaunt, like she hadn’t eaten for days. Dark rings rimmed her eyes, and her eyes…her eyes themselves were completely black. As Buffy and Anya watched, they noticed her weaving gait, and then Willow stumbled out into the busy street, nearly falling in front of a car and never once flinching.

“Anya, go grab her. I need to get out of this dress.” Buffy ran to the dressing room and removed her wedding dress as quickly as she could, then went back out into the main part of the shop. She listened with half an ear to the fitter’s instructions, and watched out the window as Willow and Anya seemingly argued, Willow shaking Anya's grasp off her arm.

Buffy ran out of the shop to where her friends were indeed arguing on the corner. Anya was saying, “But Willow, you look terrible! We need to get some food into you, and get you cleaned up.”

Willow sneered at her. “I don’t want your help, or need it either, Anya. Let me go, now.” Willow's eyes turned to Buffy, and she gave her a cool look. “And I certainly don’t want your help, you traitor.”

“Traitor?” Buffy felt rage rising, and tried unsuccessfully to tamp it down. Something snapped inside her, and she let the floodgates open. “Traitor. You drag me out of heaven and back to this godawful town to do a job I always hated just because you didn’t want to grieve, and you call me traitor?” she cried indignantly, her voice rising as her feelings became more heated. “I was always your friend, Willow. Always. No matter what mistakes or choices you made. And you have the balls to stand here, looking like some kind of homeless street person, and call me a traitor? That’s rich.” She grabbed Anya's arm, and pulled her away from what was her best friend.

Almost as a second thought, she turned back to where Willow stood, weaving slightly, and said, “You know what, Will? Losing your magic was the best thing that could have happened to you. You were getting in over your head, and you could have hurt all of us in a bad way. If that’s being a traitor, then thanks, I’ll stay one, because me? I liked you without the magic. You were my friend before you had the magic. Too bad you can’t see that.”

“With friends like you and your little bitch sister, who needs enemies?” Willow started to follow them down the street, screaming as she walked. “I never abandoned you, and you’ve abandoned me. Thrown me away, like I was some piece of trash. Well, no more, Slayer. If you think that I’m just going to lay down and die, you’ve got another thing coming. I’ve got friends, powerful friends, and they’ll make you pay, I swear it.”

Buffy dropped Anya's arm and turned to confront the redheaded ex-witch. “If you do anything, and I mean anything, to hurt me and mine, I will kill you,” she said in a flat, deadly voice. She saw Willow cringe, and she knew that her threat had penetrated her fog of self-pity. “Now, get away from me, and don’t ever let me see you around here again. It might be a good idea for you to leave Sunnydale altogether, you know? Make a new start, somewhere you don’t have to run into us, because we’re not going anywhere.”

Willow stood shaking, Rack’s magical infusion wearing off as they spoke, and her defiance crumbled as she felt herself getting weaker and weaker. “Buffy,” she whined, falling to her knees. “Buffy, I’m sorry. Don’t leave me.”

Buffy and Anya continued on to the Magic Box, ignoring the pleading, sobbing woman on the sidewalk behind them. Anya started once to turn around, and Buffy yanked on her arm. “Don’t. Just don’t, Ahn. It isn’t worth it,” she forced out through the growing lump in her throat.

“Buffy, she was your best friend…” Anya started, and Buffy interrupted her.

“Was being the key word in that sentence. She isn’t now, not if she can blame Dawnie for her mistakes.” She looked at Anya and saw Willow getting to her feet out of the corner of her eye. “And threatening us? So not good. I wonder who her powerful friends are now?”

“I don’t know Buffy, but there are a lot of bad elements in town who would love to see the Slayer go down in flames, and you know it.”

Buffy shrugged. “Yeah, and vamps too, but when have I ever given in to defeatist thinking like that?” At Anya's pointed look, Buffy laughed. “Okay, maybe once or twice in my life. Not anymore. Different Slayer. Retired Slayer.”

“Hey, I wonder if you could push the Council into some monetary remuneration for the work that you’ve done. A pension, or something,” Anya said, her eyes gleaming at the thought of money and how to procure it from the greedy Council.

“Maybe. Maybe I’ll just have to settle for not being killed or attempts on my life on a regular basis.” Buffy grinned, and opened the door to the Magic Box. “That would be of the good for sure, and lengthen my life by quite a bit.”

Giles looked up from his book on the countertop and removed his glasses. “What would lengthen your life, Buffy?”

She swung her legs around the chair at the ‘war table’, so named after the last year’s battles with Glorificus. “Being retired.”

Relief was visible on his face. “Er, yes, that would definitely prolong your life expectancy, Buffy. How are the wedding plans coming?”

She shrugged, and glanced at Anya. “Fine. Ahn’s a whiz at this stuff. We saw Willow,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“Willow?” His glasses were in his hand in the space of a heartbeat, his nervous scrubbing at the lenses second nature. “What happened?”

Buffy shrugged again. “Not much. She looks like a homeless person, her eyes were pure black, and she threatened me and told me that she had ‘powerful friends’. Don’t know who, but it obviously wasn’t me. Called Dawnie a bitch and me a traitor.”

He stared sightlessly down at the frames in his hands. “I see. So, she has definitely left our organization, then.” He was silent for a moment, and Buffy could see worry building in the lines on his face. “She could be very detrimental to you, Buffy. She has knowledge of our practices—“

“So, we change our practices, right?” She got up, and grabbed Giles, hugging him close. “Don’t worry about it, Giles. I’ll be careful, and you stop fretting about it. Willow won’t get to me. I guarantee it,” she said with an assured nod of her head.

Giles patted her shoulder awkwardly. “I simply do not understand what she is thinking right now, Buffy.”

She bounced away from him, and sat back down. “She always needs someone else to blame. It’s a Willow thing. Take the easy way, don’t suffer, and blame anyone but yourself. She’s always been that way, Giles. Think about it. The ‘will be done’ spell? The overuse of magic? The resurrection spell? Easy way out of grief, work, anything that made her life too hard for her to handle.”

“Yes, I believe that you are correct, Buffy. Although I’m only surmising from hindsight, I can see where you would draw that conclusion. Willow did habitually use of magic for mundane tasks, and as well as those tasks that were more complicated.”

Buffy turned to Anya. “See? Take a complete, simple sentence, and Giles can turn it into a British version, complex and so not understandable.” Her infectious grin made even the Watcher smile briefly as he wondered how she would handle his impending departure, although he still had not informed her as of yet.

As she moved around the shop, Giles watched her feline grace that seemed reminiscent of another less alive than she, and he thought on the many changes that had occurred since her resurrection. He had no qualms about leaving her in Spike's hands; on the contrary, it seemed that Buffy's maturity was a definitive reflection of the vampire’s influence, and he pondered speaking to Spike of the same before their wedding on Saturday.

His contemplation of recent events was interrupted by the arrival of Dawn and Tara. They glided into the shop together, unmistakably together in a couple sense, but not touching. Their movements seemed choreographed, although there was no verbal communication between them, and he observed them quietly as they interacted with Buffy and Anya over by the counter. It was much like watching a pair of dancers or figure skaters during a performance, he thought, as they walked in tandem, stopped at the same time, even using the same hand gestures and facial expressions.

He could also tell, without seeing their auras or even a glimpse of affection between them, that they had started a sexual relationship as well. As he mused on the energy that sparked between the slight brunette key and the dark blond witch, the front door of the Magic Box crashed against the wall with the tinkling of breaking glass, and Willow stood there, rage pulsing through her body, fairly vibrating with it. Evidently he was not the only person who noticed the lovers.

“You bitch! Not only do you steal my magic from me, now you’ve stolen my girlfriend as well!” Willow advanced on Dawn with fire burning deep in her eyes, and Giles was surprised to see Dawn standing her ground.

Dawn didn’t have the chance to answer the accusation, however; Tara did. “She didn’t steal anything from you, Willow. You lost it all on your own, including me.” Her voice was strong, not the quiet, soft-spoken tone it usually was.

Willow turned teary eyes to look at her ex-lover. “Tara, baby, you don’t have to stay with this little thief and her sister. Come with me, baby. We can be happy together again.” She reached out a clawed hand to paw at Tara's arm, and Tara slapped it away, a grimace on her face.

“Do you think that I could ever be with you again, after all that you’ve done? Must I spell it out to you, Willow? I. Don’t. Want. You. Is that clear to you now?”

Willow's face crumbled further, and Giles couldn’t help the ache in his heart for what was once a vibrant young woman. She turned and ran from the shop, her heart-rending sobs echoing behind her long after she was gone, and he watched the group of young women that stared at the closed door, a mix of expressions on their faces.

Buffy broke the silence, finally, and turned to the remaining girls, a false smile pasted unconvincingly on her face. “Who wants to know about the wedding planning?”

That shattered the uncomfortable silence, and Giles observed Dawn's arm creeping around Tara's shoulders in a comforting gesture. He listened to them chattering like magpies, and wondered what would happen to the ostracized redhead now.