Title: Once In A Lifetime 11/24
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.
"I still don't get it. I understand the eclipse and the feast thingy, but how did that cause our Giles and you to swap? Why not another Giles? Or Buffy, or somebody else?"
"Well, as to the 'who', I believe that is because Giles and I were in the right, or rather the wrong, spot at the wrong time: the point where all these occurrences converged. And as to why these two particular realities." Rupert bent down, until he was equal with Dawn. He picked up a pen from the case she'd left out, and opened one of her school workbooks to an empty page. He began drawing a line, before splitting it into two. "For all of us, our lives are a straight line, until we come to our first choice. When we make that choice, then we create a different reality, where we had chosen differently." He drew one of the new lines along until he split that again. "And each time we make a choice we create more realities, never merging, just moving parallel, but differently." The page was now covered in lines forking in different ways, none touching the other. "What happened last night, is that two of the universes somehow fused for just a moment, causing them to become inter-linked, and for Giles and I to somehow cross over into each other's realities."
"Again with the why?"
"I can only guess. Buffy, what were you and Giles doing just before we swapped?"
Buffy blushed. "Well, not just before. But we'd had an argument and Giles stormed out."
Rupert nodded. "What was the argument about?"
"I'd gone after a demon without waiting for him to finish researching what it was."
........................
Giles shook his head, somehow relieved that some things were the same, even if it was the stubbornness of his slayer. "Did he call you stubborn and irritating?"
Buffy smiled. "Oh yeah."
Giles laughed, unable to stop himself. He returned to the drawing he'd made for Dawn. "For just that moment the same event was playing itself in both realities. For just a fraction, instead of running parallel, the two worlds crossed." He drew his line over another. "It was enough, mingled with everything else, for us to step into each others' lives. A billion-to-one chance. One to never be repeated."
A gasped sob echoed in the silent room. He looked up to see the tears shimmering in Buffy's eyes. "Then I've lost Rupert forever?"
He stood in realization. "No! No, Buffy. Your Rupert will come back to you!"
"When?"
....................
"Probably tomorrow night?" Rupert nodded at Willow's query. "The eclipse lasts for three nights. All Hallows' effect lingers for about a week, same as the feast. There's a slight wane tonight, but I think that I can fix a booster spell for tomorrow night so we can merge the two worlds again, and the two Gileses can swap."
"But how?" Buffy had contained herself. She'd been upset for herself, true, but she'd been more upset for the other Buffy. True, her Giles was there, but he wasn't Rupert. He wasn't the husband of the Buffy in the other world. "I mean, don't you guys have to do exactly the same thing at the same time again?"
Rupert smiled. "Don't you think your Giles and my Willow would have already worked this out? And realized the same as I? I have to leave this house at exactly the same time as I left last night."
Buffy sighed in relief. "So what'll we do tonight?" She felt the colour tinge her cheeks as she realized how that could be taken. Rupert smiled in understanding.
Anya provided a distraction and a suggestion. "Why don't you compare your histories and see where things changed?"
Rupert moved back to the sofa, settling besides Buffy. "Good idea. Well, I suppose we should start from where we met. That would be the one place where things started the same. I was assigned as your Watcher after the death of Merrick, and a position was found for me as the librarian of Sunnydale High School."