Title: England and the Afterlife 1/7
Author: Saint Buffy
Rating: NC-what-else-would-it-be-17
Pairing: B/G
Spoilers: Season Six
Feedback: I'll make it easy for you: `Dear Saint B, I really enjoyed this fic.' Now cut, paste and send.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue
Distribution: The usual suspects. Anyone else just ask
Summary: Takes place immediately after Grave. Willow and Xander are on a cliff, Anya and Giles are staggering out of the Magic Box, Buffy and Dawn are enjoying the view. So what happens next? I mean, in our world?
Dedication: To Giles Fan, with tea and thanks… I hope you like it. Not the tea, the fic. And the tea too, although it's virtual tea. And I'll shut up now. Thank you.

Colour and light washed over her, flooding her vision, flooding her mind until she thought of nothing but the sunrise ahead of her and the warmth of her sister's body next to hers, their arms entwined. She barely moved, but her mind flashed with thoughts faster, sometimes, than she could register.

God, she had been so wrong. She could see it all now, see how those first few days of pain and confusion had tainted her view of what was a miraculous next chance at life. Heaven, or wherever she had been, was better than this; that she couldn't deny. But this place had more intricacy in the variation, more symmetry in the pattern, more satisfaction in the contrasts between hard and soft, hard and easy, and that made it a more worthwhile place, somewhere to be savoured. She could see it now, and it overwhelmed her, more, even, than the darkness it replaced.

Buffy had never felt like this. She opened her eyes wide, pulled the fresh cool air deep into her lungs, strained her ears to catch every noise, held Dawn closer against her side and smiled as Dawn tightened her grip in reply. The scene was so full of beauty, filled with release, it was like… she couldn't think of anything if was like. She frowned, closed her eyes, and ran her mind over her memories, searching for a comparison, relishing the new perspective she felt as she pulled through treasured memories and more recent impressions.

A face flashed in front of her inner gaze. Her eyes snapped open. That was it, it was exactly the same as she had felt for the briefest second, looking up from the floor in the Magic Box to see-

- and now he was, or he might be-

Fear, pure, chest-fixing fear rose up to swallow whole the joy she felt only seconds before. Her heart pumped; she sickened.

"Dawn, we have to find Giles," Buffy said, and turned without another word to run back towards the Magic Box.

Giles woke up in a hospital room and for a moment, couldn't think how he got there. Then an anxious, blurred face surrounded by blonde hair swam into focus above him and he remembered. He squinted up at the face and smiled.

"Buffy," he said softly, trying to find a hand beneath the confusing bedclothes and things that surrounded him.

"No, it's Anya," the blonde head replied, sitting down beside him. "How are you? You must be pretty bad if you can't figure out who I am."

"I'm fine," said Giles, recovering some more of his awareness. He stretched, feeling his bruised body protest as he tested it, and then relaxed. "Where's Buffy?"

"I don't know," Anya said. "Last time I saw her, she was kinda trapped in a big hole in the ground."

Giles nodded. "I remember," he murmured. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Not long," Anya supplied. "You passed out as soon as we got to the hospital."

"Oh," Giles said. He shut his eyes.

"Giles?" Anya asked a moment later. "Are you sleeping?"

"No," he said patiently.

"Could you…" He opened his eyes, wishing for his glasses, which were currently on his bedside table… in another country. "Could you tell me again how Xander saved the world?"

He was saved this task as a nurse came into the room.

"Mr Giles, you're awake," she said, with the kind, bustling energy of nurses everywhere. "I'm glad. How do you feel?"

"I'm fine," Giles said again, automatically. He hauled himself up further in the bed and tried to still his face from the groan that bubbled up inside him. The nurse gave him a look. "How long will I have to stay here?" he asked.

"Well, you haven't broken anything, but your ribs are severely bruised and we'd like to run tests to check there isn't any internal damage, so we'd like to keep you overnight," the nurse said. Giles sighed with relief.

"Wonderful," he said. Anya and the nurse gave him a strange look. "I meant… I was hoping it wouldn't be for long," he added.

"Don't get your hopes too high," the nurse warned. "If the tests show you have internal injuries, you'll have to stay a lot longer."

"There's nothing wrong with my insides," Giles said. The nurse raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't know we had an expert here," she said, shaking her head with a smile. "How would you know if there's any damage?"

Giles felt like saying, from experience, but decided against it. He rested his head back against the pillow and said nothing. The nurse smiled. "That's better. You did get one hell of a beating there, if you don't mind me saying. Are you sure you don't want the police involved?"

"That's a little hard for him to do, you see, considering the person who beat him up is actually-"

"Anya," Giles growled. He turned to the shape of the nurse. "No, thank you," he said to her, and she shrugged.

"Well, if that's how you want it…" She left the room. Giles shut his eyes again, shutting out the fuzzy light of the world outside. He felt tired, incredibly so, although, he though, it wasn't that surprising in one who fully expected- fully intended, even- not to see the light of this newly confusing day.

"Anya, would you mind…" he said. "I'm feeling quite tired."

"Would I mind what?" the vengeance demon said. Giles opened his eyes and looked at her, and then pointedly at the direction in which he thought the door might be.

"Oh," Anya said. "Yeah, sure, I'll go see what's happened to the others." As soon as she finished speaking, she vanished.

Giles lay back and sighed. In the empty room, his heart seemed forcefully loud, unnecessarily strong. He slid his hand over it and felt the beat, closing his eyes, feeling nothing except the steady thump of blood and the rise and fall of his own chest. Never had these simple acts of natural engineering seemed so powerful. He had come close to death before, too many times to count, but this had been the first time he had stared it down so calmly, planned for it, even. He remembered Dawn talking about Buffy's last few moments, the day after his slayer jumped from the tower; about how calm Buffy had seemed as she turned to take her own life. He had thought he could understand that, when he heard it. Dawn's words pierced even through the thick fog of grief that blanked out so much of the days following Buffy's death. But now he knew the feeling, from the inside; he felt the total calm of knowing how it would end.

And yet it hadn't. Here he still was, in an incongruously normal hospital room in Sunnydale, his home, his heaven and hell for so long. With his heart still thumping ungraciously beneath his worn out hand.

Giles took his hand away and let it fall back beside him. Life was a mysterious thing, even more so now the mystery of death had been commuted in some part, by Buffy's return. If felt like a force, running through him, pushing him ever onwards, like time, towards new things, away from the old. But yet now, his life also felt like a constant, a thing unwavering despite his best attempt to end it.

He wondered rather academically, distantly, if this was what it was like to be suicidal. The word jarred in his mind. Had his plan been suicide? Had Buffy's been the same, when she jumped from that tower? Or was there another word? They both knew their lives would end if they carried out their plans. And the decision had been easy, both times, he thought.

His first plan had failed; he knew, inside, that it would. An ancient spell woven with borrowed power would not fool anyone so powerful as Willow. So he had used that borrowed power as a Trojan horse, and it had worked.

By all reckoning, such a total vasectomy of magic, both his own and the extra, should have killed him almost instantly. And yet, as the continuing beat of his heart proved, he was still alive. Giles frowned. Perhaps it was an inner strength that had saved him, but he believed… he would like to believe that some vestige of the old Willow had caused the grief-fuelled nightmare before him to relent, by just a fraction, as she wrenched the power out of him; relent just enough for him to still be alive when the dark force of her power bled away, returning, as it went, all of his own power to him.

There were more thoughts, serious questions to be asked, but for the moment, Giles's mind was releasing him, relaxing his aching body until he fell deeply into a heavy sleep.

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