"Sunnydalopolis..." Part XXVIII...

Sunnydalopolis part XXVIII
Conclusion

Xander and Giles came back the next day. At three the previous morning, Spike had come by
the hospital to ask about Buffy and told them that Warren seemed to think he had stopped
the deterioration for now at least.

He and Giles had promised to check-in while the others stayed with Buffy...
***
She is in a bathrobe, sitting up outside the crypt in the morning sun, only a few burn scars
visible. She is reading something and smiles up at Xander...Spike having asked Giles inside...

"Well, Buf...Buffy Rebecca...you're looking great. Warren does it again I see."

"Xander, I'm so glad you came... Is everyone all right?"

"Right as rain...Buffy's going to be fine...Unfortunately even the loathsome Mr. Willes looks to
make it...Umm, Buffy...Rebecca...the others will be coming to see you a little later...As for
Buffy...When she's better...Well...it's a little hard for her to deal yet..."

"I know, Xander...I don't expect her to come...But I am so happy you did."

"What'ya reading. 'David Copperfield'. A classic...a Spike favorite by any chance?..."

"Giles is here...He should be out in a minute..."

The silence around them is deafening and he knows now why Warren and Spike and Giles are
so quiet inside the crypt. She is only a robot, he thinks...only a robot. She's not alive, she's
not.

But he knows...He is not attending a sickbed...this is a deathwatch...

She looks at him...So, she knows too...And she wanted to tell him alone...Because she knew
that of all the gang...

...Just as Buffy would...

"Well, Buffy...it..." He can't speak...It's not fair...It's not...She's not Buffy...I shouldn't have to
feel this way...

She takes his hand...

"Xander..." She says gently, looking at him gravely. He can't help bursting into tears and she
strokes his head in her lap...
***

Warren continued to monitor her for the remaining hours of her life but he had known since
early that morning that it was hopeless. Spike amazed him, quiet and patient, no more angry
railing against fate and the gods, just gentleness to the end. When Buffy Rebecca, feeling her
mind slipping away, begged to be placed in the tank so that her body would regenerate as
much as possible, so if Dawn came to see her...Spike agreed and carefully lifted her into
the tank. He sat by her, the tank open while Warren worked to the end, patiently...

Finally about two o'clock that afternoon she looked at Spike gently.

"William, you know what we slayers say...If you can't be good..." She grinned at him... "My
sister will kill you..." Then she went to sleep, humming the tune Spike had given her...

A gift from a mother-in-law dead over a century...

I Know Where I'm Goin'
***
Buffy finally came by the crypt two days later, fighting conflicting impulses.... She was startled
by Spike's manner, so gentle, so quiet, so anxious to make it easy for her. He was the
perfect...brother-in-law? He guided her to where the robot had spent the few weeks of her life
and left her to look through and piece together the little snippets of Dawn's and hers' and
Joyce's lives that Buffy Rebecca had managed to gather from Spike's collection of Buffy items
and from various places. Old discarded photos, a bit of Joyce's old needlework, an old
Sunnydale High poster, a college catalogue...an old ridiculous clay thing Dawn had made
for Joyce...all things that had linked Buffy Rebecca to the mother and sisters she had never
known outside of memory.

And a picture, half old...Joyce, Buffy, Dawn...the gang...half new...Warren, Spike, and Buffy
Rebecca...taped together...The Summers and the Walthrops...

My sister, thought Buffy. My twin sister...who I knew completely and never knew...

On the table a notebook with some entries, she tries to read some but can only manage a little
at this time. On the first page, notes on Glory...and a list of careers, some ridiculous, but
one... "Child Psychologist" marked with a check and then a question mark. Child
Psychologist...and Slayer...she thought.

Good combination... A little career advice from my twin sister...

Further in the journal, one entry catches her eye. "Angel was given his humanity back...Spike is
having to earn his..." And near the end, "Buffy Rebecca Summers-Walthrop. Buffy Rebecca
Walthrop-Summers? Oh, please!..." Exclamation point right through the page.

And tucked inside, a couple of hesitant, tentative poems, by one William Walthrop, Esquire.

Spike was waiting patiently when she came up and he handed a video tape.

"I've a copy, thought you might like to have one yourself...It's from when she was making a
tape for old Riley."

"A tape for Riley?"

"She wanted to replace the one you thought was going to him. Old Warren's neural
recording... She thought if she sent one to him, as you, he might send one back... Guess
she didn't like the thought of you waiting for an answer from him when he never received
yours."

"He did...I thought it was a little strange...different from the one we sent."

My last gift from my dead sister... Riley had better be worth the trouble...

My twin, who, like the song Spike had given her, always had known where she was going
...who she would be with...and feared for the twin who didn't...

"It's just some practice and foolishness...but you...and Dawny might like it..."

"Thanks, Sp...Will...Thank you."

My brother-in-law, the vam...my brother-in-law William Walthrop.

"I'll be going..."...He hesitated. "If you don't object...I'm not going that far away...Warren has
some idea I could hold an honest job...and I may have some Slaying of my own to do. She
wanted someone to keep an eye on Dawny...Just in case Keys outlive the normal span, you
know?"

She nodded...A last gift to Dawn...

"Keep in touch, Will...I mean that."

"Right, Buffy, well.."

They left the crypt and Buffy headed home to Dawn...
***
He watched her... My sis...Buffy Summers, Vampire-Slayer...quite a girl...

He'd be around...Dr. Walthrop the cybernetist...maybe in time he'd actually learn enough from
old Warren to keep his end up...he had plenty of time... And he'd look after the Summers girls,
his sisters-in-law...by night...but maybe by day, too, in time... There must be another of those
damned daylight rings around somewhere...He'd ask Willow sometime... He might need it...It
would be just like Buffy to survive countless attacks by endless monsters to get in trouble from
some mugger in the daylight...

He'd just got it wrong before...A slight mistake...He was in love with a Buffy Summers...just
not this particular Buffy Summers, a different one...Buffy Rebecca Summers, plucked for a
visit to him courtesy of his friend Warren the cybergenius out of an infinite universe of infinite
possibilities...to let him know...that she was waiting for him...and so it was worth it...to try...
Even if the bloody chip ever failed him...

He would find her again...somewhere... All it took was a little British pluck... After all, he had
eternity... And Eternity was plenty of time...

And when he found her...

...oh, the joy...

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