Part Seven

"It's largely an exercise in visualization, really," Giles explained, once the group had gathered. I wasn't entirely sure it was a good idea to tell everyone about it…but what else was I going to do? Sneak off to another dimension in the middle of the night? They had as much right to know as anyone. Angel sat near me, by force of habit, and because Willow and Tara and Xander and Anya were so very couple-y.

"What does that mean?" I asked, a little desperately. He'd been trying to explain the whole thing, but I was lost.

"The spell opens a portal between dimensions, but it requires a ke—" Giles cut off abruptly, as my spine stiffened. He'd been about to say 'key.' I was about to get very upset at him. He amended his statement, "It needs something to work of off. A…a map rather. In the mind of the spellcaster."

"A map," I repeated warily.

"You would visualize your dimension…The differences, obviously, from this one, but also the things that are the same. The entire dimension. If you miss a detail, you may end up somewhere…somewhere more similar, but still different. There are, as Anya has pointed out to us, an infinite number of possibilities." Anya looked smug. I thought about the world without shrimp. "To complete the spell, you must be absolutely sure of where you wish to go."

"And if I miss a detail?" Giles shook his head.

"I don't know. The book doesn't include any examples of it actually being used."

"They never do," Angel put in, sharing a long look with my Watcher. He'd reverted…In the past two months, he'd become open, less guarded, not watching out for every little difference between me and…and me, I suppose. Her. It still came up, sometimes, but both of us had stopped looking for it, every moment. Now he was back in that mode, searching every word out of his mouth, with that heavy look in his eyes. Like he was going to lose me. Like he already had.

"So it's dangerous," I clarified. Con #1. And what was my Pro #1? Going home…back to a place where I didn't have to wonder if every memory I had was a memory my friends didn't have…going back to a place where Angel was still a vampire with a soul. Pro #1 and Con #2 then. I should start writing those down, I thought vaguely.

"Possibly," Giles agreed.

"What do you think?" Willow ventured, watching me closely. They all were. Oh, this was a Scooby Gang meeting. We would discuss, probably, weigh the influencing factors, the possible consequences…but it was my decision, and everyone there knew it. Ultimately, it was my life, no matter how many others I might screw up.

"I…I don't know," I said truthfully, looking around at all of them. They looked like my Scoobies. "I have to think about it."

"This is not a decision to be made in haste," Giles affirmed. Everyone made assenting noises, and looked away, as if released from their watch. Like they'd expected me to disappear right then and there.

"How does…how does the ritual work?" I asked, to make someone else talk. Giles began outlining the procedure, and I half-listened while I watched Angel, who was carefully not looking back at me. Angel. The one person who didn't look the same. Not at all. Oh, he was still *Angel*…and not that much older looking, years wise, but…but different. Human. *Living.* The difference couldn't really be expressed in words; it was in the way he moved, the tiny, fidgety movements when he was trying to sit still, the way his muscles jumped on their own voilition, the way he drew in breath when he was startled, because he needed it, not out of reflex. The fact that he smiled more. Not at that moment, but…more.

I loved watching him. Seeing him smile. And if I left, I might never have that again. But my other self could…

*

My room was a quiet refuge and I locked myself in there as soon as I could get away. Angel was downstairs cooking dinner with Dawn. In the past months we'd fallen into a routine; I'd make lunch, since sandwiches were something I could do very well, and Angel would make dinner, usually with help from Dawn. I did the dishes, or Angel and I did, or if I'd had any particularly grueling fights lately, Dawn would grudgingly do them. Breakfast was every man for themselves, except when Angel felt the urge to make us pancakes or waffles or scrambled eggs.

That was different here too. We ate a lot better with Angel around. He'd explained it to me once, how he'd stayed with this older woman for a while in the 1960's and learned how to cook from/for her. How he kept at it, afterwards, because it amused him sometimes and made him feel more human. Because it made him part of life.

I turned the lock on my door and closed my eyes until I heard it click. I just needed…needed to be alone for a little while. To think. How could I make this decision? So many people's emotions — even lives — depended on it, but only I could make it. Was that fair? No. Right? Maybe not…But that was the way it was. And I didn't know how to do it.

The pictures of me and Angel still littered the room, but I'd gotten used to them. The room wasn't alien to me anymore; it was mine. But it wasn't, really, was it? That was the question, and I really didn't have the answer…*was* it mine?

Restless, I prowled the room, picking up a shirt I'd left of the floor, a towel from that morning…I hung up the shirt, put the towel over the doorknob so I'd remember to take it to the bathroom when I…when I was finished? Whenever I got so sick of the room I couldn't stay there anymore, most likely. As on the night I'd first explored my room, looking for differences, my hands touched everything. Only now, even the differences were familiar. I couldn't remember the pictures being taken, but I knew what they looked like now…

At the top of my closet I kept all those little things I refused to throw away, but didn't want just sitting around…in my dimension, one of those boxes was devoted exclusively to Angel-reminders. The box I'd kept my claddagh ring in (the actual ring was lost…I'd never got it back after leaving it at the mansion two and a half years before. Was it still there? I wondered. Had Angel found it?); a dried rose he'd left on my windowsill once; the book of love sonnets he'd given me for my eighteenth birthday; the ticket stub to that semi-pornographic movie we went to; a drawing he'd done of me once (when he was himself. The ones Angelus did I burnt). These very same things could be seen around the room I stood in at that moment. The box was in my jewelry drawer. The rose, the drawing and the ticket stub were tacked on my cork board. The book was on my bookshelf.

So what was up there now? The same boxes sat there, but obviously they were filled with different things…I'd looked there before, I remembered, when doing my inventory, but I didn't remember what I'd found, exactly. I reached up and pulled them down, almost on top of my head, barely catching them as they fell. One turned out to have things from Hemery, and I put that aside quickly. One contained other high school momentos. One was things my father had given me. And the last one held my diaries.

I'd been too afraid to read them before. Afraid of…of what? That I wouldn't recognize what was contained in the pages? Of course I wouldn't…That it was private, not for my eyes? But it was my diary. My handwriting. Just not my memories…

I picked one up, a familiar journal. I'd started it the spring of my freshman year in college. Had she? I didn't mean to read it — I didn't want to read it — but somehow my fingers found the edge of a page and opened it anyway, to the middle. My eyes moved over the words without seeing them, taking in the pen — my favorite one that year — the unique handwriting — *mine*. My fingers flipped through the pages and paused finally, as a word caught my eyes. Angel.

Since Angel turned human, everything's changed. I look at the world with different eyes now. I used to think that I was independent, that all I needed was myself…and that's still true, in a way. It's not like I'm suddenly some mewling infant that needs to be spoonfed or something…But I do need more. I need him.

Oh, it sounds so stupid to write it out like that. I guess I'm still testing how it sounds. It's just…when I go to sleep at night, with Angel right beside me, holding me, all warm and real, it doesn't matter that there's bad things in the world. It doesn't matter that Willow's being distant (not to say I'm not worried…I am, but…oh, I am not going to argue with myself anymore. I'm trying to explain something. To myself. It occurs to me this whole journal-writing business is very weird. Oh well). Anyway…I can forget that there's this screwy army thing and a big monster I don't know how to fight…Because he's there with me. It's not like I expect Angel to protect me, or make it all okay (though he thinks he should, which is stupid)…but it's like it doesn't matter if it isn't okay, because I am. I'm okay.

Ugh. I can't explain, even to myself. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I don't think I could live without Angel. I mean…I wouldn't want to. What I've found with him is…it's better than all those romance novels (though some of them were pretty in-ter-est-ing…). It's not like I can't function without him, but he just makes my life so much more than just functioning. I feel like I'm really living every minute I'm with him. Like I'm…complete. I can't imagine going back to the way I was before, without him.

I closed the book, abruptly, unable to read anymore, though I was fascinated, in an awful sort of way. The writing sounded like me. Her words, her thoughts, the thing about the romance novels (a longstanding joke with Willow) were all me. But the rest was not.

How was I going to tell Dawn that I was leaving?

And there it was, just like that. My mind was made up. I hadn't even been conscious of it. There was no moment when I had laid out the options in my mind and chosen one over the other. But I had. I was leaving. Going back to my dimension.

My mind supplied the logic behind the decision; my unconscious filling in my conscious brain belatedly. I didn't need Angel. The thought of him human had filled my fantasies for a long, long time, and there was no question that if it had happened in any normal way, in my own dimension, I would have taken advantage of it…but it hadn't, and I hadn't. What it came down to was I didn't know what I was missing. She did. I did. The other me…the one that was not in this world, that was (perhaps?) in my world, knew what she was missing. And was, in fact, missing it. If she was alive, she could be depressed, even suicidal…I could go home, back to my dimension, and regret the chances lost. But not mourn. There was a difference. She would be mourning…

And if she wasn't alive? That made things even clearer. If she wasn't alive, my Dawn was all alone. Oh, she had Giles and Willow and Xander, and maybe even Dad…but no *family*. This Dawn had Angel. Technically, they weren't related, but I knew if I opened my bedroom door and walked down the stairs I would find them in the kitchen, laughing, teasing, a brother and sister or a father and daughter…Family, of some kind or another. Angel would take care of this Dawn the way no one in my dimension, if there was no other me there, would take care of my Dawn.

So I was leaving.

It took me awhile to move. I stood up, stacking the diaries neatly in chronological order. I put them back in the box, but I didn't put the box back up in the closet. I left it on the floor and went downstairs.

Angel was putting lasagne in the oven. I stood just outside the kitchen, watching he and Dawn talk about nothing, until he closed the oven and turned and saw me. Our eyes caught and his turned very, very dark for a moment. I ducked out of the way and listened to him excuse himself to Dawn. He appeared beside me and I led him to the back yard, closing the door behind us so Dawn wouldn't hear whatever it was we were about ot say.

"You've decided," he stated baldly. I couldn't even flinch at the tone.

"I'm going," I admitted. He deserved the truth, plainly. Nothing I could say could make it anything but what it was. Nothing showed on his face; he'd gotten better at hiding again, turned back to that self he had been for so long, that never showed any pain.

He didn't ask for an explanation, or argue, or…or anything. I almost wished he would. Part of me wanted him to deny my decision, to convince me that I should stay. But then, I'm sure he wanted the other Buffy back …why wouldn't he want me to leave? This was the best way for everyone.

"When?"

"I'm not sure. I…I have to talk to Giles, about what's needed. I'd like to try and go before school starts. It'd be…um, less disruptive I guess." And easier to start over in my own world.

"Do you want me to tell Dawn?" he offered. Yes! I wanted to scream. Yes, of course I did. I shook my head.

"No, it's my decision. My…my responsibility. I have to tell her."

"Are you sure?" he asked, looking human again for a moment, concerned. For me or for Dawn, I wasn't sure. I nodded.

"I'm sure. But…thanks, for the offer." I looked around, everywhere but at him. "Um, if you don't mind, I think I might go see Giles now, and figure out what's going on, and then tell Dawn. I don't want to lie to her anymore, but I want to have a…a timeline, before I tell her."

"Aren't you hungry?" Angel asked gently.

"Not really." It wasn't a lie either; I felt a little ill. "Thanks, though, for cooking…" He shrugged. I made myself say it.

"You'll take care of her, won't you? If the other me doesn't come back…You'll take care of Dawn?"

"Of course." I relaxed infintesmally and nodded, more to myself than to him.

"Okay. I'll go…go tell Giles then."

"Yeah."

We both hesitated, and then moved as one, neither looking at the other. We walked back inside and I went to grab my purse and keys. Dawn was giving me the weirdest look when I walked into the kitchen.

"I'm really sorry Dawnie, there's some slaying stuff I have to take care of. I'll be back later," I said…not exactly a lie, really. Dawn looked suspiciously from me to Angel, and then back again, but finally shrugged.

"Fine. But I don't see why you won't tell me about stuff now. I mean, it's not like I'm some innocent little kid."

I managed a smile, though I don't think it was very convincing. "I'll tell you about it later," I promised, and escaped while I still had control of my limbs.

Part Eight

Giles took it well, or if he didn't he never let me see. Maybe he went closed the door behind me and screamed for hours. Maybe he got really, really drunk after I left. Whatever he did alone while I was there he nodded calmly and agreed that was probably best for all concerned.

This Dawn, losing me, would still have Angel. But this Giles would only have what the other Giles had — nothing. Why should there have to be a choice? Why did one have to lose? Maybe neither did, maybe there was another me, one that belonged there . . . maybe not. I tried not to think about it too much.

Giles and I made a timeline — two weeks, to prepare for the ritual and get all my affairs in order, just in case . . . I didn't want to go home, but I did finally, taking a detour to the graveyard, to see if there were any vampires around. There was one, but I couldn't kill him.

"You don't look so good," Spike said frankly. My lips twisted.

"Don't you think compliments would help you more?" I asked. He didn't let himself be distracted.

"What's the matter?"

I swallowed and looked everywhere but at him. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. What, now I was worried about hurting *Spike*? "I'm leaving."

His brow furrowed. "Where the hell are you going?"

"Home. It's . . . it's complicated. Ask someone else sometime, after I go. And don't . . . don't revert just 'cause I'm not here to know the difference, okay? You're actually doing pretty well, for a monster. Almost . . . almost human." My voice quavered a little, at which point I knew I was *way* too tired and emotional, and I needed to get out, stat. I waved him off. "See ya 'round Spike." After all, *I* would see *him*. There was a Spike in my dimension too.

I went home, finally, and peeked in the window. Dawn was asleep on the couch, her head on Angel's lap. He looked . . . he looked like he was crying. I sat down on the steps and waited until I heard him carrying her up the stairs to go inside. I heated up leftover lasagna and sat quietly. He didn't come back down. When I went upstairs, I found him sitting by Dawn's bed, dry-eyed, watching her sleep.

"I'll find her," I promised in a whisper from the doorway. He started, turning to look at me. "I promise I'll send her back to you." He nodded, and crept out of Dawn's room and we stood staring at each other until our mutual nerve broke and we went to bed. I didn't sleep though. Couldn't sleep. Angel did, a little, on the floor beside the bed, and each breath, steady, reassuring, echoed inside my head. All I could think was that in two weeks that sound would be lost, and I would never hear to him breathe again . . .

*

At four thirty I finally fell asleep, restlessly, and dreamt of a world where everyone I knew was undead, cold, emotionless, never looking right at me . . . I woke myself at nine and stumbled into the shower, unable to think or feel. I pressed my forehead against the wall and gripped my hair at the roots, fingernails digging into my scalp as if demanding to know what exactly I thought I was doing.

I emerged from the shower a little less groggy and dressed, blow dried my hair and applied make-up like any other day. Dawn was still asleep, and Angel had already left for the gallery. I made waffles and when Dawn came downstairs in her pajamas I presented them to her with strawberries and whipped cream, like it would somehow make what I was about to say alright.

"What'd you do?" she demanded warily around a bite. I sat down across from her and folded my hands on the table and tried very hard to open my mouth. She watched me for a minute and then shrugged and turned her attention to the food. I watched her for any differences I might have missed, but she was exactly the same as I remembered. When she finished eating she pushed the plate aside, folded her hands on the table, mimicking me and said, "Well?"

"I have to tell you something," I sighed. Her eyebrows arched.

"Come on. It can't be that bad. I already know I'm not human. You told me when Mom…well, just spit it out."

If she only knew…but she would, soon enough and I hated that thought. I didn't want her to know. I wanted to keep her safe inside a protective cocoon and never tell her…only I was leaving, and I had to tell her. I had to.

I started at the beginning, with the speech I'd been rehearsing in my mind since I found myself in this alternate dimension. For all the time I'd spent composing it, it was an awful speech. There really wasn't a good way to say this. "When Doc opened the portal with your blood, it created a pathway between this dimension and every other one. That's…that's not just Hell, Glory's dimension and a couple other ones. There are an infinite number of dimensions, all right…right next to each other, you might say. Sometimes they overlap, there are doorways between them…Some of them are completely different than ours, like Hell, but some are very, very similar. Almost identical. You could, for instance, have a world exactly like this one, except in that dimension there are no shrimp." Yes, I used the shrimp reference. So shoot me. "Do you understand?"

"Infinite numbers. Some like ours," Dawn repeated in a 'what does this have to do with me?' tone. I nodded. Now the bad part.

"Well, when I jumped into the portal I…I came out in a different dimension than the one I left. I came out in this one. Dawn, I'm not…I'm not exactly the Buffy you knew. I'm not from here. The other me, the one that is from here, went somewhere else, probably to where I left…"

She was staring at me like I was crazy. I probably was. "This is some kind of sick joke, right? What, do they not have shrimp in *your* world?"

"It's not a joke Dawn," I assured her, and saw the words penetrate. She shook them off like stray rain drops. "And they don't have…I don't have…Angel. I mean, Angel is there, but he's not…he never turned human in my world. He still lives in LA. That's why he slept in a chair that night, and why he went to his apartment the night after that, and why he's been sleeping on the floor ever since. Because Angel and I are just…are just friends in my world." That was a lie, in a way, but I couldn't open my heart to her now, pour out all the bitter pain of leaving what was, perhaps, but one chance for happiness. She had enough pain of her own coming.

"It's not a joke," she whispered. I shook my head.

"I didn't want to tell you, because I didn't want to disturb you. But I have to now because…because I'm leaving." I looked down, unable to watch her take the words in. "I'm going to try to go back to my own dimension. I don't fit here and…and I want to find the Buffy that does belong here, your Buffy, and send her back. This is where she should be. You should have her back."

Dawn was smart, too smart maybe. "You weren't dying when you jumped into the portal, were you?" she asked, her voice cry and cold and utterly without emotion. I shook my head, throat too tight for words. "So she might not be in your world. She might not be alive."

I couldn't bring myself to acknowledge the truth of her words. I just stared, my eyes acknowledgement enough. "I'm sorry Dawnie, but I have to…" I whispered finally, reaching for her hands across the table. She started, pulling back and stared at me.

"How can you not be you?" she whispered. "You are! I know you, you're her, you're my sister!"

"You're mine," I admitted, "I don't know if I'm yours. If I'm the same."

"You are to me," she murmured, but it was more of an accusation than anything else. How can you leave me…?

"Dawnie…"

"No!" she shouted, and after all the whispering, the words rang through the house, inside my head, like a cannon. "That's what she called me! You can't be her! She would never leave me! She wouldn't leave me alone!"

You'll have Angel, I said inside my head, repeating it over and over, like a mantra, the only thing that kept me from crumbling to the floor. You'll have Angel, he'll take care of you. You'll have Angel. You'll have Angel.

And a tiny, selfish part of me was jealous of that.

*

I didn't say goodbye to everyone, because saying it would be an acknowledgement they were losing me. I told myself they weren't. I told myself they were getting me back, the real me, the me they knew. I told myself I didn't need to see goodbye.

The ritual was fairly elaborate, and required finding a place where the barrier between the worlds was already weak. Not surprisingly, it turned out the Hellmouth was one of these places. Though the door that existed there only opened to one dimension, the very existence of that door meant there was a possibility to open others.

We didn't talk about it beforehand. Angel, Dawn and I ate breakfast in silence, and then the Scooby Gang arrived, one by one. Anya and Xander were supposed to have a meeting with the wedding planner that day, but they canceled it. Not postponed. Canceled.

"We want to wait," Xander mumbled when I asked him why. "Till we know…" I nodded understanding and he stopped gratefully. Till they knew if I was coming back, if I was going to be there.

Angel cooked us a huge lunch. It gave him something to do, I think. I helped a little, but he kept giving me these looks when my back was turned and I couldn't take it. Willow took my place and left me to try and talk to the people I was leaving.

The ritual took all afternoon, and required lots of chanting and herb-waving and all those things spells normally require. I was supposed to sit in the middle of a circle and think about my world. The actual spell stuff was left to Willow, Tara and Giles…my job was to find the world we wanted to open a portal to.

Angel and Dawn held hands like the world was about to end all around them. Anya stood in the circle of Xander's arms and for once didn't say a word. Every time I closed my eyes I saw them all, standing there. Where I was going, they would still be there, except for Angel. But for them, I would be gone. Forever? For a day, a week, a month? They were losing me and I couldn't say goodbye to them, couldn't tell them everything they meant to me, because it would mean I wasn't coming back. *I* wasn't. But maybe she was…maybe…

"Buffy, you have to concentrate," Giles said slightly reproachfully. I nodded, muttered, "Sorry," and closed my eyes, picturing my life. I started with the differences; with my room, as it had been, without the pictures of Angel and I, or the presents he'd gotten me. Then the rest of my house. The street I lived on. The block. The city. LA, with Angel in it, just the way he had always been; brooding, taciturn, cold to the touch. Not the Angel that stood in that cavern with me, warm, alive, praying. I didn't let the ache settle into my stomach, but turned back to my task, stretching out my perceptions to include the feel of the dimension I'd left, all the thousand details I would never know.

And then the chanting stopped and Willow whispered, "Now," and I opened my eyes to see the world I'd known.

It was barely perceptible, but there; a slight shimmer in the air in front of me. If you looked straight at it, there was no difference between it and the room around it, but it caught at the side of your eyes, teasing, testing.

I stood up and turned, knowing there were a million things I needed to say before I stepped through. My eyes found Giles first and I stepped into his arms, closing my eyes and pressing my head into the crook of his shoulder. What would I want Giles to tell me if I was never going to see him again? What words would possibly make it okay? "Thank you," I murmured, pulling away. For everything. Thank you for everything. I turned to Willow and kissed her cheek and tried to pretend there weren't tears on it.

"I love you," she told me fiercely. I tried to picture the Willow I'd first met being fierce, and hugged her tighter at the thought. My funny, sweet, fierce Willow…

"I love you too," I replied. "Don't give up on me, promise?"

"I won't."

Xander was crying openly and I kissed his tears and his mouth and promised myself I would not, *not* cry. It wasn't as if I was losing anything…I would still have Xander, I wasn't losing his grin or his jokes or his absolute, complete love, a loyalty and devotion that I have never told him how much I depended on.

"Be strong," I told Dawn, and hated myself as I said it. How could I tell her that, expect that of her, when I had hated hearing it so much myself? Be strong. But what else was there to say? I'm sorry I need to be with another Dawn, that you aren't as important to me as she is? It was untrue, I loved this one just the same…she was my sister, and I would kill for her, or die for her, but I had to leave, because, because…

Angel. The one that wasn't going to be where I was going. The one that I wouldn't be able to embrace and laugh with and love after I went through that portal.

"I'll send her back, if I can," I promised, my voice breaking despite all my efforts. If she was there, she was luckier than I. If she was there, she would get to come back to this, to him, and I would be left with nothing…No, I told myself firmly, not nothing. My life. But compared to the reality of a human Angel, it seemed like very little.

What was I doing? What I had to do. I always did what I had to do…

"I know," Angel managed, his eyes devouring me. I drew closer, unable to help myself.

"I want you to know, if I…if I don't come back…that I…I love you," I whispered, unable to look away from his eyes. One of my hands drifted up and touched his chest. I could feel his body heat, and the faint thump-thump of his heart. "In this world, in the other one…I love you."

"Buffy…" his voice was strained, harsh, low, "I know you think it's better this way, and it probably is but…but I love you, just you. Whatever dimension you're from. Whatever your memories. You're still you and I…well, if you ever wanted to come back…"

My mouth and mind crumbled, and the tears came in a rush, and I was lost in that declaration…I had to go, I *had* to, it was better this way…I didn't belong in this world, I belonged in mine, this wasn't my destiny, wasn't the way it was supposed to be, only the way I wished it was…

My face tilted up to meet his without conscious thought and I found his lips, warm, gentle, so very, very sweet…A thousand possibilities flashed through my mind, of what life could have been…but it was time to go, I had to go, and I broke away before he could taste my tears.

"Goodbye," I cried and grabbed my bag and ran home, to the world I wasn't sure I belonged in anymore.

Go to Part 9