Title: The Surrogate 1/19
Author: Jacqui
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Buffy, Giles and all other assorted Buffy candies belong to Joss Whedon, WB and ME. Elizabeth, and everything from her world, belongs to me (the real me, not the ‘grr aargh’ ME .
Notes: I know this isn’t B/G yet (well, it is kinda, but not really. Confused yet? but eventually it will be. I’ve got to get past this little thing called ‘plot’ first.

Feedback: Give me a happy. wily_one24@yahoo.com.au

THE SURROGATE

She stood in front of the bathroom mirror, their bathroom mirror, although technically there was no ‘their’ anymore, her mind was cruel that night. As her trembling right hand lifted a dark lock of rich brunette hair, she could barely hold back her tears. An accusing voice, one that had made itself quite familiar to her lately, screamed at her that she’d promised him. But, cold blue eyes met in the reflection as another voice, hard and unfeeling, overrode the other in her mind, you promised him so many things and look at you now. He’s gone and you’ll never see him again. Get over it and get out of here, whilst you still can.

It took less than twenty minutes to complete a final walk through of the house, less than twenty minutes to bid farewell to the place she’d held so dear for so long. As she’d stared at every bare room, packed and emptied, it had occurred to her that what had made the place so special was not the things it contained, but who it had contained. There was no one but her now. She hefted the few bags she was taking, holding only that which she would strictly need and that which she could not let go, on to her shoulder and opened the door. The bags fell to the floor and her shoulders drooped.

"Good evening, Elizabeth. Going somewhere?"

She did not reply, not verbally, but her eyes lost the last vestige of spark they had ever held and her hands came unthinking to waver in front of her torso. She no longer had the stamina to hate the man who laughed in front of her now. There was no one, well almost no one, left for her to exert the energy needed to stay alive.

He stepped forward and she stepped back. A hand reached up and touched her hair, unknowingly mirroring her own gesture of before. She trembled and closed her eyes, wishing that he would just get it over with, whatever he had planned.

"You colored it. Nice. Got something to hide?"

Her mind could have made things easier for her in her last moments, could have soothed her with the many happy memories she knew it kept locked within. Instead it chose to throw at her one of the last conversations they’d had. When his hands, so infinitely different, warmer, safer, than those which touched her now, had run themselves through her hair. His voice had been pleading with her, trying to get her to promise him she’d never change it. Even as her voice shakily tried to get him to understand that it might very well save them, cutting it, dyeing it. She could still feel him as he held her to him with all the strength he had, breathed her in and made her promise not to touch a strand. She’d never been able to deny him anything.

Now one week after burying the owner of those strong hands, that voice, she had broken the promise, had dyed it. And it was all for nothing, she hadn’t even made it out of the house. It did not feel like a deep, luscious brown, it felt like a dirty, guilty stain. "I’m so sorry Baby, I tried." As her trembling lips whispered under her breath, she was not sure exactly who she was talking to. There were several possibilities, too many. All of a sudden her trembling stopped and she looked up at him.

"I’m ready Ethan, do your worst. I just want to be with them again. To be with them all."

For a second his hand paused in mid air then continued rushing forward. The bright blue-white light almost blinded him. Of all the scenarios he had played in his head, all the times he’d imagined that last final moment, he hadn’t planned on forgiving her, forgiving them, of regretting the things he’d done.

He wasn’t sure what had done it, exactly, maybe it had been the whispered, pain filled words, maybe it had been the lack of feeling and life in her eyes, or the resigned way she had given herself over. Maybe it was all of that, but in that last moment all his anger, spite and jealousies had melted away and he’d felt nothing but sorrow for her. He honestly hoped that wherever she was now was a better place than reality. At least for her.

* * * *

"Is it just me," Buffy stood with her hands on her hips, facing Willow. She waited three seconds before thrusting her right arm up and back. The vampire barely had time to raise his eyebrows at the back of her head before he exploded into dust. He had been the only vamp they’d seen in two hours. "Or has the Hell part of the Hellmouth been really quiet lately?"

Willow giggled. It had been quiet, ever since graduation two months before. She didn’t even need to be here, in the graveyard, patrolling with Buffy, at least not to help with the slaying. It was more of a ‘save the slayer’s sanity as she faces another night of nothing’ type of thing. Willow now sat on a headstone, her legs crossed, as she talked to her friend. A vague notion floated through her mind that maybe she should be slightly disturbed with the fact that she wasn’t at all disturbed about sitting on a headstone. Somehow in the past few years, Willow’s ideas and beliefs about the dead had changed dramatically. She pointed behind Buffy and tried not to laugh out loud.

"It’s not just you. But you might wanna chase that undead escapee there."

Buffy looked down at the freshly opened grave and then up at the retreating figure of a fledgling vamp. She looked back at Willow and grinned.

"I’ll be right back."

It had been a while since she had really had to work to catch them, to stretch her muscles and push her body to the limits, she was looking for a good fight. Lately it had been mostly Giles’ favorite form of slaying ‘plunge and move on, plunge and move on.’ Buffy felt the need for a more challenging night, she let her limbs expand and contract as she ran, working them into a good fighting mood. When she caught up with this one, she’d really let loose. She turned the last corner to face the vamp, and came across him being beaten by, well, by herself. Buffy stopped short.

"I’m on hiatus, damn it! Why can’t you all leave me alone?"

Buffy felt as if she were in a dream, one of those weird dreams where you found yourself in the middle of school with no clothes, or running down a hallway that never ended or changed or went anywhere. Or found yourself watching yourself fighting a vampire. This was giving her the major wig, but she couldn’t move. She watched herself quickly and easily dust the vamp, unable to stop herself from feeling the movements, the expressions, as if they were her own. She could feel the force this version of her used and knew that she was pulling back, not giving it her own, though why she couldn’t tell. Once again, she thought, the Hellmouth had risen to the occasion, though what that occasion was she didn’t know.

Elizabeth looked up from the pile of ashes and almost choked. Standing there, with her mouth hanging open, her body in full fighting mode, was herself. Blue eyes met blue and confusion reigned. Her hand floated across her stomach and she had one thought. Ethan! Where or when have you sent me? Is this her?

"What year is it?"

"Huh?" Buffy groaned inwardly at her extremely intelligent response. With everything she’d expected, having this, she wasn’t exactly sure what to call her, version of herself ask what year it was, was definitely not on the top of her list. Of course, meeting face to face with yourself in a graveyard wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence either. "I… ah… 1999."

"Oh."

Buffy wasn’t sure what to make of the other girl’s disappointment. It was as if she’d been hoping for something. There was only one thing she could think of to ask, and it seemed a damned relevant question to her.

"Who are you?"

Elizabeth was shaken out of her reverie by her own voice asking a question she hadn’t asked. If this wasn’t the future, if this wasn’t her child standing in front of her, and if it was the exact same year, she surmised that there was only one other solution, though she didn’t want to think about it. It must be a different dimension, some sort of parallel reality, and this must be her. She wanted to laugh.

"I’m you, Elizabeth Anne…" She hesitated on the last name, her eyes taking in the fact that there was no ring on the other’s finger. "Summers."

"Huh?" That was beginning to become a much hated phrase from her lips that night. Buffy was confused enough not to notice when Elizabeth’s hands went behind her back and removed her wedding and engagement rings, placing them in the pocket of her jeans. She was distracted by a voice calling in the distance, she turned her head.

"Buffy? Are you okay? Surely that vamp didn’t give you a decent fight…?"

When Buffy turned back, her eyes wide with a panic she didn’t know the cause of, ready to ask the other her ‘what now?’, Elizabeth had gone. She’d disappeared. Buffy shook her head as if to dislodge the memory, testing to see if it would stay or shimmer and fade. Giles was going to get some late night visitors tonight.

"Over here Will."

* * * *

There was a knock at his door. Giles paused to see if the person would knock again or let themselves in. It was a pretty good guess that, being so late in the evening, the person was Buffy and she’d let herself in. She still knocked, even though she had a key, mostly for decorum, he assumed.

"Giles?"

He’d been right. Though something in her voice made him look up with concern. It was a mixture of confusion, fear and doubt, something he hadn’t heard nearly all summer. Suddenly the weeks spent ignoring the texts and concentrating on his new museum job about to start flashed before him and he hoped that nothing too dismal had risen.

"Mm?"

"Giles, remember when the vampire version of Willow came through that temporal fold, vortex thingie?"

She walked into the room and settled herself on the sofa straight away. He could tell she was troubled. There was no usual breezing through the door, no unconscious sweeping of the room to check that everything was in its place, no claiming of territory. Buffy had come straight over and sat down, looking at him with raised eyebrows as if he could answer anything.

"I do believe so. Not something I’d forget in a hurry."

He looked over at Willow who was standing in the doorway, but she only shrugged and answered his confused glance with one of her own.

"Well, what if, when we sent her back, it didn’t work? What if somebody else came through?"

"Buffy, slow down. Tell me what’s wrong."

"I was at the cemetery."

Willow and Giles looked at each other again.

"We know that part."

"No. I mean, I was there, me but not me." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "Another me."

* * * *

Breathe. It was a command that left no room for argument, though she had to tell herself over and over again. Elizabeth wasn’t sure why she was so surprised, if she had been sent to another dimension of course the chances were high that some of them were still alive. Possibly all of them. That thought gave her a small kernel of hope to cling to.

Yet hearing that voice, having the words float through the air as if it meant nothing to hear them spoken from living lips, had hit her physically. Willow was alive. How would she react in the face of Joyce? Or even Rupert? Her Rupert, still breathing, still existing somewhere other than her mind.

Breathing came hard as she sat on a bench in the graveyard. She didn’t know what had come over her, but when she’d heard Willow’s voice she’d had to get away, disappear before the face had appeared. Elizabeth wasn’t sure how many times she’d wished her friends to be alive again, but to have it actually happen was surreal and almost unbearably painful.

Hands came around her head and covered her eyes in an intimately familiar gesture. The one constant from her world to this. She would have known those hands anywhere, and yet they were not the ones she knew.

"Guess who?"

"Xander."

She turned to face him and saw confusion in his eyes.

"You… you dyed your hair." He looked around. "And ditched Willow. Buffy what’s going on? I came out to surprise you guys."

Elizabeth had to blink at the name. Buffy? She hadn’t used that name for two years. For a world that looked physically the same, so many infinitely small things were different and so many unmistakable ones as well. She could not help but cry again.

"Buffy? Are you okay?"

Real worry set in. Xander looked at the woman in front of him and realized something. If he had been forced to put that something into words, he would have said something along the lines of it being that this person did not act like, move like or even, in some strange way, look like Buffy. Yet it was her.

"Xander, Willow’s still, maybe they’re all still alive, and you’re here, you haven’t gone to LA, and I can’t sense any presence of Ethan, and even though I know where I am, I have no idea where I am, and I’m not really Buffy, or I was, but I haven’t been for a while, and things are really, really wrong."

She broke her stream of near hysterical words to burst into confused sobs and fall into his arms. Xander stood still for one second and then stood her up, guiding her to his car. The near incoherent babble he’d just heard not really clearing up the strange sensations he was getting, but confirming them just the same.

"Okaaay. First of all, no more caffeine for you. Ever. Second, I have no idea what you just said, but I think this is a job for the G-man."

* * * *

"What, exactly, happened?"

Buffy looked up from her place on the sofa. Giles handed her a cup of tea that he’d laced with enough sugar to poison it, just the way she liked it. She breathed deeply, glanced over to Willow, who gave a little nod of confused encouragement, and started from the top.

"I don’t really know. One minute we were talking, then I ran after this vamp but when I turned the corner, there she was. Me, fighting the vamp. She staked him then she saw me, she got all wiggy and asked what the year was. That confused me, she was disappointed when I told her. Don’t ask me why. Then when I asked her who she was, she told me my name."

"That makes sense, if she is you, I mean, of course you’d have the same name. Right Giles?"

Willow looked to Giles for confirmation, when he nodded at her, she gave a slight smile.

"Yeah but, my real name, I’ve never used my real name, or referred to myself like that, why would she?"

"Well," Giles cleared his throat. "Circumstances in alternate realities don’t always mesh. Small things happen that change the course of a multitude of things."

"Oh wait!" Buffy brightened for a moment. "I read that somewhere. Something about the flutter of a moth’s wing destroying rainforests half a world away, right?"

"Yes, uh, something like that. What happened then?"

"Then Willow called, I turned to look, when I turned back little miss mirror had gone."

"And that’s all?"

Buffy nodded.

"That’s all she wrote… wait, no…" Her brows furrowed in thought, "when I first saw her, she was talking to the vamp. She was really irked. Wanted him to leave her alone, something about being high because she ate us… no that’s not right. Unless she’s a drug using cannibal, which I really don’t think so. It was weird."

Giles took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, it was a distraction, by doing so he could hide the smile that pulled at his mouth. A drug using cannibal?

"Could she possibly have said ‘hiatus’?"

"Yes! That’s it! What’s it mean?"

"Loosely? Rest, respite, holiday…"

"So she’s on a break? Wow, you know, when I think holiday, I think Hawaii, tropical isles, sun, surf, beach. I don’t think portals to another world. This other me has grand plans."

Willow tried not to giggle, she really did. The situation was serious, she could still remember the eerie sensation of seeing herself, and the capacity for evil within her, as a vampire. It was worse than frightening, it was possible. She knew how Buffy must be feeling, at least this double wasn’t a vampire, or in any way evil. Willow still had nightmares about that other realm. A thought slipped into her head and she gasped.

"Buffy? Did she have a scar?"

"What? A scar? No. Why Will?"

"On her lip? She didn’t have a scar?"

"No. What’s wrong?"

Buffy and Giles were both looking at her.

"When I did that spell with Anya, I saw the other world, the one where I was a vampire. I saw you there Buffy, and you had a scar, you were cold and hard, like a robot, and you had a deep scar on your lip."

"But she didn’t…." Buffy started the sentence.

"Have a scar." Giles finished it.

There was another knock at the door.

* * * *

She knew this had to be done eventually, it might as well happen sooner than later, but as she stood outside the doorway Elizabeth couldn’t help but wish she were anyplace else. Breaking down in front of Xander had not only been humiliating, but also cruel. If this Xander were anything like her own Xander, he would be confused, scared for and worried about her.

It had been easier with him, much easier than it had been with herself and especially Willow. Mostly because he wasn’t dead. Elizabeth had seen him and Cordelia off to LA only two nights previously. So seeing him in the flesh, she could at least pretend things were still normal. It was seeing the dead come back to life that seriously freaked her out.

Now she was standing outside their… no, Rupert’s, she corrected herself, apartment. It was achingly familiar yet there were a million tiny things which screamed at her. The little changes that hadn’t been made, the little additions that would announce herself as part owner. The inside would be more of the same, she knew, and she was afraid to go in there.

As Xander knocked, she leant against the wall, out of sight from the door and tried to stop her trembling. How could she face him again? After she’d failed to protect him, after she’d gotten him killed. Even though this man would not be her Rupert, it would still hurt a thousand times over to look at him, to be reminded of what she’d once had and could never have again.

She was wrong, as Rupert’s voice filtered out to her, she knew it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. It was amazingly worse. The air was sucked out of her lungs and countless tiny knives pierced her heart. Her last waking thought as she plunged to the ground was ‘if he touches me I will die.’

* * * *

Giles opened the door to find Xander looking edgy and shuffling from foot to foot. He stepped back to let the boy pass, but Xander didn’t step forward, instead he tilted his head to the side and gestured for Giles to come outside.

"Giles, there’s something really wrong with Buffy. I don’t know what, she rambled pretty fast. Something about Willow being alive, me not being in LA and not being herself anymore. Oh, and also Ethan, though what that low life has to do with the price of fish, I don’t know. I thought you could make sense of it, because I sure can’t…"

Xander’s voice trailed off and his eyes were fixed on something past Giles’ shoulder. Buffy and Willow had come to see what the noise was. Xander blinked.

"Buffy? You’re blonde again." His eyebrows lifted and then fell with comical elasticity, "And you’re inside. Then who…?"

He turned to look at the woman he’d brought here and gasped. She was lying unconscious on the ground. Giles pushed past him and couldn’t stop himself from pausing in shock before he scooped the figure up and took her inside.

* * * *

The first thing to penetrate Elizabeth’s conscious was a deliciously familiar scent. She was lying on Rupert’s sofa, the thing infused with a mixture of his after shave, dust, books and the ever present tea. She breathed it in deeply, then regretted it. It was not exactly what she remembered, there was no hint of stale apples where she’d spilled juice once, no intangible scent of her. It all came rushing back to her. In this world she was not a part of Rupert’s life. Voice filtered through to her from the kitchen.

"Just how many parallel universe, separate dimensions are there?" Xander sounded more confused than he had when he didn’t know what going on.

"The theory is that there is no limit. A possible infinity of different worlds might exist simultaneously to our own." Rupert sounded excited, the way he got when any new challenge arose. Some things didn’t change.

"It’s still wiggy, okay? I don’t care how many me-s there are out there, I’m the only me that’s supposed to be here." There was no mistaking that voice, yet it sounded so strange outside of her head.

"At least this you isn’t a vampire, not that the other you was, but I was, and it’s spookier than you think. Can you imagine how many worlds there are in which you are a vampire? With your strength and all, you’d make a fierce… what? What did I say?"

Elizabeth actually smiled as she got off the sofa, Willow was exactly the same. Looking into the kitchen, unobserved by the group, she watched them for a few minutes. Maybe she’d been wrong. Willow and Xander didn’t surprise her, sitting across from each other at the table.

It was the other two, herself and Rupert, that she watched with interest. Maybe they did share something stronger, even if they weren’t married yet. It wasn’t in what was said, but what wasn’t. The two were standing, and pacing, and the way they accommodated each other without thinking, the shared looks, made Elizabeth smile.

Some things always stayed the same.

"One thing I have to ask." Xander’s voice bought her out of her reverie. "Isn’t that Angel’s jacket she’s wearing? I mean, isn’t there some kind of rule that says it can’t be here if Buffy has the same jacket?"

"That’s for time travel." The four of them turned to stare at her, open mouthed. "Not different dimensions. You know the paradox, the same matter cannot exist simultaneously at the same time. If I was from the future, or the past, then you’d be right. I’m from a different dimension entirely, so technically, it’s not made from the same matter."

Silence.

"You knew that?"

Buffy smiled at her other self, though she was getting a feeling she didn’t like. The more time she spent in the same area as this other her, the stronger it became. Deep in the pit of her stomach she began to feel a heavy tightening, a disturbingly solid lump that shouldn’t be there.

"Yeah, I read a lot before… well, just before."

Painful memories could only be painful if you dragged them, kicking and screaming, to the surface. Elizabeth decided she wasn’t going to do that now, not if she could help it. She was getting the strangest feeling, it emanated from Buffy, who was giving her odd looks.

"Is anyone else strangely excited right now?" Four pairs of disbelieving eyes turned to Xander. "Come on Giles, help me out here, you know what I mean."

"No I really don’t, Xander."

Something clicked in Elizabeth’s head. They still called him Giles? And they still called her Buffy? Maybe she wasn’t so wrong after all, at least, not yet. Willow tried to diffuse the tension.

"Hey, at least this means we have two slayers again. Both on the side of good. Buffy, you can have a break, come to the Bronze more often. And you too, Elizabeth, you’re welcome too."

"Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? We don’t know exactly what happened, and until we do, I think it’s best to treat this carefully."

Her Rupert, ever the thoughtful one. Elizabeth hated to burst their bubbles.

"Sorry, I’ve given up actual slaying, for the time being."

They all turned to stare at her. Giles spoke first.

"You’re not the slayer anymore?"

"No Giles."

Buffy’s voice was calm and even, she didn’t look at him when she spoke though, her eyes were looking straight at Elizabeth’s, her hands were resting lightly on her stomach in a gesture frighteningly akin to the one Elizabeth was making. That strange feeling in her abdomen became clear to her.

"She’s still the slayer. She’s just pregnant."

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