disclaimer in part 1

Swan Song
By Diane
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THE SWAN

Dark.

Everything was dark.

And peaceful, and cold, and nothing, and everything all at
the same time. Her muscles were lax, nerve endings in a
drugged state of euphoria, halted there in suspended
animation as her life's energy poured out into a greater
task.

The void, it drained her.

Nothing. Nothing. She felt nothing -- senseless.

But a strange sense of urgency filled her, growing, and
growing, burbling out of her from every orifice, every pore,
every duct. Tears of strangled begging fell silently from
her. Please... Please... HURRY. From a millisecond,
stretched an eternity, and from an eternity, spread several
more eternities, into one long wail of endless, timeless
time.

Nothing. Nothing. She felt nothing.

Except everything.

The last vestiges of her gift were drawn from her, the
strength of the Slayer borrowed from her clutched grasp to
make something truly amazing. A real gift. But there was
that urgency again. Something had gone wrong. Something,
something, something.

Angel. WAIT!!!

Her mouth poured open, screaming endless frantic pleading
cries.

Wait! WAITWAITWAITWAIT! I'm NOT QUITE FINISHED!

Had it been too late?

Electricity jolted her out of her mindless confusion, and
her body whipped backwards and then righted itself as a
shiver of sensation flew through her tired, aching muscles.

"Your gift has been passed."

The echo of some greater power boomed around her ears,
rumbling and echoing against her, but was almost lost in the
din of the swirling, spinning, white vortex that hugged her
inside its tight embrace.

The energy crackled around her, and she spasmed in the
darkness, coming into the light like a child bursting from
the womb. Writhing, there was the sudden sensation of
freefall. She felt like vomiting as she plunged downward,
the ground rushing towards her as she committed to the
furious clutches of gravity.

Falling, falling, falling.

Ground.

The wind was the first thing to get knocked out of her in a
jarring, crunching, smack -- a wet fish flopping on the
pavement. Her ribs cracked with the impact-- a terrible
sound in her ears, like dry twigs being broken in half. Her
tailbone succumbed, followed by a few major internal organs.

She cried out in pain, but all that came was a gurgling,
bloody squeak. After several false starts, her diaphragm
corrected itself. The black stars fluttering around before
her got replaced by lightning streaks of pain as she
inhaled.

Gasping.

She couldn't move.

"BUFFY!" Giles screamed. "Xander, call the paramedics.
Willow, Tara..."

A shriek. Dawn.

Footsteps, running towards her, pounding on the pavement
like the beating of a dove's wings.

Echo. Echo. Echo...

"Bloody Hell, why didn't I buy a bloody cell phone, damn it,
damn it..." her watcher was cursing himself, his voice
shaky, terrified, as his body melted into her field of view,
but flamboyant shooting stars and visual screams of pain
blocked her sight, for the most part.

She arched backwards and began to choke.

"Giles..." she squeaked.

"Shhh, Buffy don't try to speak." Giles sounded frantic,
afraid. His hands were running lovingly through her hair,
as if he expected her to not really be there. "Don't move.
You've got broken bones..." His voice cracked.

She choked again, trying to get the words out.

Something she needed to say... Something, something,
something...

"SHHH, Buffy, stay quiet. Please, please, you'll be all
right... Bloody cell phone! Damn it, damn it, damn it..."

She didn't heed his begging, didn't listen. Had to...
"Get Angel, oh my God, Angel, call him... now..." she
managed to belt out, sounding like some sort of dying
accordion on its last breaths of musical greatness as the
air wheezed out through her perforated innards.

"Slayer! Oh my bloody fucking Hell, Slayer, Slayer, Slayer,
what can I do to help?" Spike was hovering above her.
"Giles, what can I do? WHAT CAN I DO?"

Why was every one so frantic?

"Angel, Angel, Angel, Angel," she chanted, shaking her head
back and forth, trying to get them to understand her. She
spasmed, arching backwards again, like a seizure victim.
Please, please, please, understand.

"The paramedics... are on... their way..." Pant. Pant.
Pant. The sound of Xander, frantic.

Every one. Frantic.

"Willow, do you know a healing spell? Anything that might
dull the pain?" Giles was asking.

Mumbled chanting, and Buffy saw a glow, feeling her pain
fade away into a convulsion of bliss. Her panic was slowly
leaving her, but she struggled to keep it close to her
breast. "Please, get Angel. Angel, Angel, Angel..."

"What's she saying?" Dawn's tiny hand had taken hers.
"Buffy, don't die now... don't die..." she was whispering,
tiny breaths of air puffing over her young, pale lips.

Somewhere, Buffy garnered the strength to squeeze the hand
wrapped around hers. "Angel," she tried one more time.

Finally, someone comprehended.

"Angel. She wants Peaches," Spike said, no hint of jealousy
or malice in his tone. He sounded oddly detached.

"Call him, call him, call him," she chanted.

"Shhh, Buffy, don't try to talk any more. We'll get a hold
of him," Willow assured her with a weak smile. "I cross my
heart and hope to die, I'll call him as soon as the
paramedics come."

"NOW!" she grunted, her breath coming in short, painful,
gurgling gasps.

Willow's smile slipped into a frown, and she turned to look
at Xander and the others.

"Where'd you find that bloody payphone, wanker?" Spike
asked.

Xander cleared his throat, not responding to the insult.
"Just down that way, two minutes if you run..."

He pointed somewhere. She couldn't see.

She couldn't see.

"All right, Slayer. I'll go ring him up."

Spike disappeared.

That was all she needed.

Relaxing into the comforting circle of her closest friends,
she let the blackness slip towards her and take her in its
womb.

*****

He sat there, staring. Listening...

Soft breaths came from her pale, broken body, and her face
was smooth and relaxed with sleep. Her chest rose, and
fell. Rose, and fell, with each, shallow inhalation of
life. Life that was monitored with the repetitive, hollow
beeps that echoed through the room, bouncing off the walls
and into the depths of the surrounding silence. But he
didn't pay much attention to them. All that they monitored
was the powerhouse that was her heart, and he didn't doubt
any longer that it would fail to keep her there with them,
to live, breath... To slay.

Practically his daughter.

That's what she was.

Practically his daughter.

He took her warm hand in his own, and just sat there, gazing
at her with aged, weary eyes. He was firmly convinced this
was a miracle from above, because he had seen her face going
into that battle. He had touched the hopelessness that had
dripped off her skin in suffocating sheets. He had seen its
chokehold on her heart.

< It doesn't matter. If Dawn dies, then I'm done with it.
I'm quitting. >

For all intents and purposes, she should have been dead.

Should have...

The portal was closed, all the remnants of Hell that had
spewed forth with it retreating back into the void, and from
what Dawn had told him through heaving, choking, hysterical
sobs, that Summer's blood was the cure, and that Buffy had
intended to take Dawn's place in order to close it, the
wrecked, but surviving young girl who lay deathly still before
him _should have_ been dead.

Buffy had been slated to die for Dawn, he was sure of it.

< The Spirit Guide told me that death was my gift. >

More sure than anything ever in his life, and yet, here was
Buffy, in stable condition, injuries healing inexplicably
fast, and too exhausted to stay awake despite her previous
distress over Angel. But in stable condition. No portal,
no world being sucked into Hell. Just a very tired, very
weak, Buffy, cocooned in an immaculate swell of white
sheets. A mummy. Dead to the world, but not dead.

It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. None.

And then there was Angel. Buffy had been frantic, not
allowing herself to fall asleep again until she was sure,
absolutely positive, that someone was going to get him. He
had never seen such unchecked panic--it had been bleeding
off of her and strangling the air around her in a thick,
dismal cloud of confusion. Panic.

What did Angel have to do with all of this?

Save for the passing mention, she never talked about him.
No one did. For two years, she had talked about Angel so
infrequently that he could probably count the number of
times on his own two hands, if it even required that much.
She had simply shut down when he left.

< I sacrificed Angel to save the world... >

It was the first time she had really talked to him about it,
since then... Since graduation...

"Giles?"

Her voice was cracked, and barely there, but he heard it,
and he snapped out of his confused daze.

For a moment, he was silent. He could feel the need to
speak bubbling inside him, ready to spew forth, until
everything dumped out of his memory registers at once.
"Buffy! I'm here, every one made it, we're all fine, the
portal is closed, Glory is dead. Dawn is still very shaken,
but she's coping, nothing to worry about," he summarized
before the questions could even begin tumbling from her pale
lips.

His response drew a weak smile from her, and he felt her
lightly squeeze his hand, but, that look of strange panic
began to cloud her eyes again. They widened as she got a
good grasp of her sterile surroundings.

"Angel," she gasped. And the questions began. "Is he
coming?" They started slowly at first, but then they were
releasing themselves with abandon, cascading from her mouth
as though she had lost all control of her verbal functions.
"Is he all right? Where is he? You did call him, right?
Why isn't he here yet?"

Giles looked down into his lap, unsure about what to tell
her. He took a deep, calming breath, trying to summon the
strength to tell her what she probably least wanted to hear.
"Spike said that no one at Angel Investigations was picking
up the phone."

Buffy crumpled. She looked as though he had actually taken
a hand and struck her with it, abusive, cold, and uncaring.
He felt terrible. "He and Willow started driving to Los
Angeles the second the doctors said you were going to be
fine."

His words, which were meant to be comforting, weren't
interpreted nearly as such. She crumpled more, her pale,
ashen face drawing into a pained, grim look of hopelessness,
her weak grip on his hand going completely slack. "I was
too late."

"Buffy," Giles began, knowing this wasn't the time to bring
questions before her on a heaping platter, but too curious
to let them wait, "What happened?"

She shook her head, wet, fat tears forming in her pained,
doe eyes. "I don't know. I don't know! I died, and you
all had my funeral, and I just knew that if Angel could wait
long enough, I could give him my gift. I visited him --
Giles, he was so sad. So lonely. And he just broke. After
I was gone, he just broke, into a billion, tiny, shattered
little pieces of himself. I tried to get him to wait, but
he wouldn't listen. He just..."

She didn't finish, and he stared at her, mouth tipping open
into a gape. For so many words of explanation, he was more
confused now than before. "What are you talking about?" he
asked, daring to ask her what she clearly did not want to
answer.

She blinked, turned her head toward him a subtle millimeter
or two, limp blond hair falling over her in flaxen
waterfalls. The heavy breath she sucked in made it look
like she was slowly being suffocated. "Angel."

Giles shook his head, trying with all his might not to
descend into a panic as well. Panic that Buffy was ill in
some way, that she had lost her mind... "I gathered that
much for myself, thank you." With pleading eyes, he prodded
her onward.

Exhaustion crept across her face, and she let loose a little
sigh. Her eyes closed for a moment. "While I was in the
vortex, Angel died."

She sounded so certain... "Buffy, has it occurred to you
that all that power running through your system made you
hallucinate? Perhaps it was just a dream," he tried to calm
her, tried to think of more reassuring things to say. Angel
was most likely fine, but there weren't very many ways to
convince her of that unless Angel showed up in person to
tell her.

"No, something happened. It was real. It was real, and I
was dead the first time." She peered at him, haunted,
tired, cold. Sad. Her tiny hands curled into fists, and
she looked like she wanted only to flee. To hide under the
immaculate sheets and disappear into nothing like the Hell
portal had.

He felt his innards freeze in fear. She sounded so
certain... So very certain... "The first time?" he asked,
warily.

She looked away. "The first time I fell."

"Buffy, you simply _must_ have been dreaming. I don't
remember this at all, and time simply doesn't rewind when
things go badly..." He tried to excuse it away, to dismiss
it. It was ludicrous. Time couldn't simply--

Could it?

"I don't know what it was, but it was real. Angel died.
When I was falling, They said my gift had been passed."

Giles wanted to believe her, her really did. "They?
Death?"

"I don't know! I don't know... I just know that while I
was making it--"

"It?"

"The gift. While I was making it, it felt like it was going
to be different. But the Guide was right. It was just...
death. And I gave it to Angel... If I had only known, I
wouldn't have done it. They made it seem so special..."
The final admission silenced her. She started to shiver
slightly. "I killed him..."

He stared at her, at her trembling hands, cold fingers. She
was so small... So small, and alone, and he couldn't bring
himself to doubt her anymore. Even if she was wrong, _she_
believed it. And, until Angel turned up, he would have to
believe it, too. Because she was his Slayer, his daughter,
and just about everything else in his life that mattered.

There was no one else.

He leaned back in his chair, saying nothing as the tears
started streaking down her face in thin tracks, glittering
under the soft fluorescent light. If what she said had
truly occurred, and Angel had died... How would that have
closed the portal? Summers's blood. Summers's blood. That
was the key, he knew it.

He looked down at her face and wiped away her tears with a
soft brush of his hand. "Buffy, don't think the worst until
we're sure..." he said.

She shook her head. "I _know_. I watched him turn to
dust..."

"But that was in the alternate timeline," Giles protested.
"Perhaps he's fine now, and he just wasn't at his desk when
Spike called him. From what correspondence I've had with
them, I received the distinct impression that things were
very strained down there for a while."

Again, she shook her head. "I just _know_. You know that
tiny place you tuck away for someone special? That place
right here?"

She raised her palm to her chest, despite the pain the
movement caused her. Sucking in a breath, she peered at
him. "I can't feel it anymore... He's not there..."

And even though Giles had never really grown to like the
souled vampire after the mess with Angelus and... Jenny,
even despite that, he felt his heart break for her, and for
him. The look on Buffy's face was that devastating.

"I can't feel anything at all..."

He slumped in his seat. "I'm sorry, Buffy." There was
really nothing else to say.

How were you supposed to offer comfort for something like
that?

He stared at her. The hand that lay over her heart didn't
move, she just left it there, as if she were trying to feel
her own heart beat. Like she didn't expect to find a
telltale thumping, just underneath the warm, California-
tanned skin.

A wrenching sob hitched through her chest, and her entire
body bucked with the force of it.

And again, he floundered.

How were you supposed to offer comfort for something like
that?

What were you supposed to say to someone who's soulmate had
just died...

And then he froze.

Despite Buffy's cries of distress, he just sat there,
frozen. Still. Unmoving. Absence of all muscle function.

Soulmate.

Summers's blood.

If the sister of the Key would suffice, what more powerful
bond could be exploited but soulmate's blood, as potent as
Buffy's herself... Death was her gift... The energy
required to close the portal had been taken elsewhere.

Angel.

Buffy's gift.

Angel's death had saved both Buffy and Dawn.

And Buffy had been left behind with the heart wrenching blame
of herself for whatever the powers existing above had deemed
necessary. That the greatest Slayer in history be saved to
fight another day, and that the souled vampire wasn't
valuable enough to keep.

His head collapsed into his hands and his own body heaved.

Another sob wrenched itself from Buffy's spasming torso, and
he peered at her through blurring, watering eyes.

He didn't know whether to thank Them, or damn Them.

continue