Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 9 - TRUE COLORS

I see your true colours shining through
True colours and that's why I love you
So don't be afraid, to let them show
Your true colours (true colours) are beautiful, like a rainbow.

(Cyndi Lauper, Album - 12 Deadly Sins and Then Some)




Chapter 9.01
Saturday, July 20th, 2002


Buffy was not-swimming. Why was it, she wondered, as she pushed off from the pool's edge and glided to the other side without so much as a single stroke, that an apocalypse could come and go and she would be able to sleep like the dead, but come the eve of the day she least wanted to look completely slagged, insomnia comes to call.

At the not-so-far end she twisted in the water and pushed off again. Whoever had taken the brochure photograph of the tiny pool, had obviously been lying down at its very corner and using some very specialised lenses. If she'd had running shoes she could have used the hotel gym, but she didn't think they'd let her use the treadmill in heels as high as those she'd worn for the battle, let alone the silk stilettos she had to go with her dress for tomorrow. She and Spike had gone back to both Revello and the council's school yesterday afternoon and managed to pack a few things for the honeymoon, hers in a neat, white suitcase, Spike's in an army surplus kitbag. Hence, she had had the bikini she was currently wearing, but she hadn't thought she would need running shoes, just some flip-flops for by the pool or at the beach and a selection of high-heeled sandals that would show off her ankles to best effect.

Perhaps if the pool had been a little bigger, she could have burned off enough energy to eventually fall into an exhausted slumber, but the all-too-brief interlude in the woods with Spike had simply left her wanting more. After she had retired for the evening she'd brought herself to the point of physical release over and over, hoping that this time it would be enough, but it was like being offered a tiny square of chocolate when what you wanted was the whole bar.

The bed had been too big, too warm; the sheets too stiff and then too rumpled, their clean, freshly-laundered scent just not right ; the pillows had been too high and yet too soft.

She looked at the clock, set against its background of blue and turquoise mosaic tiles. Four in the morning and she knew that if she could look into the blue of his eyes rather than the random tiles, if his cool firm chest could be her pillow, then she would be asleep in minutes... or enjoying herself too much to care. Tradition really wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

---

 

Dawn was taking her role as bridesmaid very seriously. It was her responsibility to make sure that Buffy was ready, calm and that everything that could be done to make her day perfect had been done. The teen absentmindedly spooned cereal into her mouth as she looked over her notepad. With her fluffy topped pencil, she added wax strips to her shopping list and adjusted the schedule she'd drawn up for the day, moving Buffy's bath forward half an hour to allow for the extra treatment.

If she could find someone to take her over to Ventura shopping for the necessary supplies... and someone to pay for everything... then they had until around two before they had to begin operations. Normally, she would call Spike but he wasn't allowed... Maybe she could meet him by the gates.

"What are you up to?" a voice asked just behind her as her aunt pulled out the nearest chair.

"Making a shopping list? But I don't know how I'm going to get everything. I mean this place is pretty cool... Just the whole hot water thing makes it ten times better than the house, at least until the utilities companies get their acts together, but it's so middle of nowhere it makes Sunnydale look like New York."

"May I?" Arlene asked, holding her hand out for the pad. Her eyes looked the list up and down. "You might want to get some confetti... What about the rhyme? Old, new, borrowed and blue."

Dawn had a sudden look of panic. "Her rings are old, and the dress and everything are new. I guess she can borrow my earrings and necklace... She talked about it when the two of them gave them to me. I don't know about the blue."

"Then, I guess we better pick up the traditional garter just in case. I'll call us a taxi."

---

 

Buffy pulled the pillows over her head and cursed whoever was on the other side of the door. So what if it was nearly two in the afternoon? She had hours and hours to get ready. What she needed was sleep, and she'd only just... finally dropped off when the hammering on the door had started. It wasn't fair.

"Buffy!" her sister's voice bellowed. "If you don't open up right now I'm going to go down to reception and tell them you were drunk as a skunk last night and that no one has seen you since and that I think you've choked on your own vomit."

The slayer let out a groan loud enough to be heard on the far side of the door and fumbled for her robe. She spared a glance in the mirror as she went past, thanking her lucky stars and her slayer powers that she didn't look like she felt.

She opened the door a scant six inches, intending to give her excuses and tell her sister to go away, though most likely not in those precise words. She stalled and her jaw dropped open when she found that it wasn't just Dawn who was waiting outside. Bee and Tara were both there, as was her Aunt Arlene. Her aunt carried a tray with several tall glasses, a bottle of either champagne or fizzy wine and a pitcher of what looked like freshly squeezed orange juice. Buffy's stomach rumbled and she remembered that she had let breakfast come and go as she tossed and turned in her sleepless bed. Right now orange juice seemed like a very good thing. Working out why everyone was wearing robes, carrying their wedding outfits and had wet hair and the heat-flushed, freshly-scrubbed glow of people who had recently left a shower could wait.

---

 

Buffy lay back in the rich bubbles and sipped at her orange juice. Dawn had a point. Maybe this was better than her fruitless attempts at sleep... though it would probably have been more relaxing if it wasn't for the sound of stereo hairdryers coming from the next room. Dawn, it seemed, viewed the wedding preparations as a feminine bonding ritual, something all the women should do together. Buffy's skin was just beginning to prune when there was more hammering on the door.

"I would have been here sooner but Xander decided he wanted to share my bubble bath and then we did the orgasm thing and then I needed to get washed again." Anya's voice carried clearly through into the bathroom as Buffy reluctantly pulled herself from the water.

"Alright for some," the slayer thought wryly.

---

 

"You need to eat something," Arlene insisted, pushing the plate of sandwiches back in front of where Buffy sat at the dressing table while Bee and Tara pinned rollers almost the size of soup cans in her hair.

"I'll have a bulge when I put on my dress," Buffy protested.

"Rubbish!" Her aunt raked her eyes up and down Buffy's figure underneath the scarlet satin robe that she wore. "You probably wouldn't even have a bulge if you were eight months pregnant."

"I'm too nervous to-." The bride-to-be's protests were cut off as her stomach gave a particularly loud growl.

---

 

"Owwww!" Dawn practically howled as Anya yanked off the wax strip with a savage glee.

"You bought them," Buffy pointed out from her seat next to her sister, almost completely disguising her own flinch as Bee performed a similar service for her.

"Well, it seemed more sort of 'grown up' than shaving. No one said that it was like being tortured by the Spanish Inquisition."

Tara gave a gentle laugh from the corner of the room, where she and Buffy's aunt had a pair of ironing boards set up. All the outfits had been hanging up, but they were giving them a quick going over with the iron just to make sure that they were crease-free. Tara had claimed that she had shaved last night and didn't need to join in the depilatory fun and games and Arlene had insisted that no one would be looking at her legs anyway. Buffy suspected that they both just had far more sense than to let someone yank all their body hair out by the roots.

---

 

"Delivery," declared the voice at the door.

When Dawn pulled it open she practically shrieked in delight. Kate, Spike's favourite florist, carried a wide shallow lidless box, in which rested a selection of bouquets and boutonnieres. The colours matched the outfits that were hanging from the room's stout wooden curtain pole perfectly, mostly long stemmed carnations, but with a few more exotic blooms in their midst, all except Rosa's diminutive posy, that was a simple sprig of wildflowers with jagged-edged petals wrapped with ribbons and lace.

"The church-," Buffy began.

"Is done," Kate replied, cutting her off before she could begin to get stressed. "The customary arrangements at either side and on the main altar inside the church and the planters you wanted all along the entryway, inside and out. All that's left to do is to drop off the boutonnieres for Spike and his best man. Any messages you want me to pass on?"

"Yeah," Buffy replied eagerly before her expression turned to one of slight embarrassment. "Tell him I miss him."

---

 

Buffy looked at the huge old-fashioned doctors' style case that Bee had produced with some trepidation. "I was sort of thinking of something a bit more subtle than bright red lipstick and black eyeliner... not that it doesn't work for you," she amended hastily, "but I've got these totally different skin tones..."

"What did I do for a living before I started working with Wesley?" Bee asked patiently.

"Well, I know you were an artist, but didn't you say that it was sort of touch and go whether you made a living?" Buffy stalled a bit more.

"That's beside the point. Who do you think made up my models? I can make you look anyway you want, from the exotic to the so-natural-you-almost-look-like-you-aren't-wearing-any-make-up-at-all. Trust me."

Buffy glanced up into the half-angel's face, momentarily taking her eyes off the almost overflowing, completely disorganised valise. To her surprise, her eyes locked with Bee's and at the sincerity she found there she couldn't do anything but nod her assent.

---

 

When Buffy was finally allowed to look in the mirror again, she wasn't sure that she recognised herself as the girl who had crawled out of bed at Dawn's knock. Her fingers and toes were painted with a translucent pale pink varnish, that lent them a soft sheen. Her eyes had been subtly highlighted with just a touch of metallic gold and tawny shades that blended so well with her natural skin tone as to be near invisible. Her lashes had been curled and slightly lengthened with brown mascara. The shading made her hazel-green eyes seem almost emerald in hue. All traces of her sleepless night seemed to have been magicked away so completely that Buffy wondered whether Tara had covertly lent a helping hand, and her lips had a neutral pink sheen that was only just too dark to qualify as pastel.

Her hair at the front was drawn back and held in place with a few unobtrusive grips at her crown, but, at the back it spilled loose, just as Spike liked it, flowing in soft waves down to just past her shoulders. At her neck and in her ears she wore the diamonds that Spike had bought Dawn for her prom, and if all the other primping and preening hadn't made her feel like a pampered princess, they would have done the job on their own.

Almost all that was left to do was to put her dress on and Buffy could feel her nerves coming back with full force until her aunt pressed a champagne cocktail into her hand and told her to drink it.

---

 

Buffy paced nervously as she waited for Tara to fetch Marie, Rosa, Giles and Xander, too worried about creasing the skirt of her dress to sit down. She wished that she had thought to do this last night while Spike would have been here to back her up but knew it was too late now for such regrets.

The cars were due to pick them up in twenty minutes and they had only time for finishing touches now. She pulled a large gift bag from the bottom of the wardrobe and began to remove black leather box after black leather box, laying them out unopened on the dresser.

Tara swept back into the room with a swirl of her Edwardian style black silk skirt. Bee passed her the richly coloured waistcoat that went over her ivory high-necked blouse as Giles followed her into the room, dressed in black trousers and frock coat, ivory waistcoat and cravat, with just a handkerchief and his buttonhole in the same vivid shade as Tara's waistcoat. Marie ushered in Rosa, in her ivory dress, gathered at the waist and then falling to reach her calves, its skirt embroidered in a similar fashion to Buffy's own, its sash the same shade as Dawn's bridesmaid dress. Xander brought up the rear in a simple black tux, giving his colourful cummerbund and bow-tie dubious glances as if he was unconvinced regarding their manliness.

Buffy cleared her throat and balled her fists to resist the temptation to wipe her slightly sweaty hands on her dress. The bright sheen in Giles' eyes when she caught his gaze did nothing to still her nerves, but at the same time gave her the will to continue.

"Spike should probably be here for this, but it was only when we were getting ready that I realised that we hadn't done it yet, and we sort of picked gifts that would go with the outfits, so you should probably have them before we leave for the church."

Buffy opened the first of the boxes, checking its contents before she passed it on, a cameo brooch, cream on black in the form of a dove and a ladies onyx watch with a glossy black leather strap. "That one's for Tara." Anya's gift was the same, except her cameo took the form of a puma and the watch was finished in yellow gold rather than white. Rosa received a gold locket with a five petaled rose engraved on the front. Inside it there were already two pictures, one of Marie with Wesley and one of Lily with Clem and Rosa's father. It came with a slender gold expanding bracelet with similar flowers engraved into it as if they sprouted on either side of a meandering vine. Xander and Giles each received the gents' counterpart of the watches Anya and Tara had been given along with monogrammed onyx cufflinks. The next box Buffy opened and then, blinking away a couple of tears before they could fall, she closed it again and set it to one side. In the last box was Dawn's gift, another pendant, this one in white gold, a cross, whose arms were all of equal length, each slightly flared at the end, with a square cut garnet at its centre and smaller diamonds set above, below, and to left and right of the central stone at forty-five degree angles so that one corner of each diamond touched the centre of each side of the garnet. On the back of each watch and each pendant were engraved the words 'With Love' and the date.

---

 

Giles waited in the hotel foyer until the other attendants had all left and only the cream-coloured open-topped Rolls-Royce that Spike had managed to scare up from who knew where - it wasn't even beyond the bounds of possibility that the vampire had had elegant vehicle in storage somewhere - remained waiting outside, before he told Buffy what he had been thinking ever since he had walked into her suite.

"I've always been proud of you. I've become used to the fact that every time I think it would be impossible to feel any more so, you find a way to prove me wrong, just like yesterday... I was quite sure, however, that you would never look more beautiful than you did at your Senior Prom. Today you've proven me wrong in that respect as well. I couldn't possibly feel more keenly the honour you-."

The chauffeur sounded the car's horn impatiently and Buffy cut her watcher off with a swift peck on his cheek. "I love you, too, Giles," she told him, bouncing nervously on the balls of her feet before she took the arm he held out towards her and they left the hotel.