Title: Once In A Lifetime 9/24
Author: Karen Jephson
Disclaimer: Not mine, unfortunately. Want to adopt and treat them better
than their owners, but I don't have enough.
Feedback: Live for it.
Note: To Trich and Gail. Thanks for your nagging, your precise beta, and your
constant encouragement.
"We're married?"
Buffy nodded. "I figured that you and your Buffy weren't."
"How?" They both ignored Dawn's question, neither wishing to explain the events of the previous night.
"When?" Giles' couldn't contain his curiosity.
"Just before Mom died." Buffy smiled in memory. "She wanted to make sure Dawn and I'd be okay when she went in for her operation. So we had the ceremony in the hospital room. We all cried." There were a few teary eyes in the room. Giles could only assume it was a very special moment.
He looked around the room, this place and these people so familiar, yet different. Anya sat on Xander's lap, her head resting on his shoulder. Tara rested on the arm of Willow's chair, her hand playing gently with her lover' s hair. It still hurt to see the life and vitality of the blonde witch in this version of his life. Dawn rested against Willow's legs on the floor. All of them seemed content, full of a quiet joy that was missing in his world. Even Buffy had an extra layer that his Buffy didn't.
Giles sighed. "It must have been beautiful. And Joyce didn't mind about you and me?"
Buffy shrugged. "Well, the age thing was a bit of an issue at first. But other than that, why should she?"
................
"I slept with your mother? I don't think so!"
"It was a spell. You thought you were teenagers."
"Buffy! I've been in love with you since you were seventeen. Why on earth would I, spell or no spell, sleep with the mother of the person who'd stolen my heart?"
"Oh." She seemed to be saying a lot of that recently. But what could a person say to such a comment? And she couldn't help but wonder if her own Giles had had similar feelings back then.
"This is very confusing." Anya leaned forward. "Everything is mixed up. I wonder where it changed?"
"Changed?" Dawn shook herself out of the shocked silence that had settled after Rupert's latest announcement. "What changed?"
"Alternative realities are created when a choice is presented. Like a fork in the road." Anya looked to Rupert for confirmation.
"The right fork creates one world, the left another. A split in the universe."
Anya nodded. "So which choice created Rupert's world instead of ours?"
Rupert shrugged. "The only way to find out is to compare histories and find that one variation in decisions."
"I think I found it!" They all turned to Willow as she looked up eagerly from her laptop. "I think I know how Rupert and our Giles swapped places."