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Buffy is having a weird day.
Now she's used to a certain level of weirdness – as a Slayer, it's sort of an unavoidable part of her life – but this? This is something else.
When Willow and Giles came rushing into her office three days ago, talking over each other in ever-loudening voices about some kind of sacred tapestry she had, in typical Buffy fashion, tuned out until they got to the part about how, if it fell into the wrong hands, it could end the world. And honestly? She's sorta wishing she'd paid more attention now.
Because she was down to fight the new Big Bad of the week. She's good at that – if Slaying was an Olympic sport she'd have won gold at least nine and a half times by now – and she played it smart. She made a plan, and a backup plan, and even called in reinforcements like a responsible adult person should. She did recon, she made sure everyone had an exit strategy- just call her ‘responsible girl’ ‘cos she literally did all the things!
It felt so routine, at first. An isolated warehouse, a small hoard of vampire minions, big bad hidden away out of sight doing spooky magic stuff, same old same old. And all the prep work paid off because the demon guy, Kalshitok, er, Kalshiitake? No. No, that's a mushroom. Whatever, his name was, he was the guy! The one with the big teeth and the scaly red skin and the stolen magic artifact thingy, he went down easy. Even though it had been good, so good, the most good, to see her, she'd felt sort of bad for asking Faith to come all the way to Scotland just to stake a dozen or so vampires and help her tag team the baddie inside a tight five minutes. She'd wanted to ask if she could make it up to her somehow, offer to buy her dinner or something. Like friends do. Because they were friends, now, right? Sure, maybe it was just an excuse to spend more time together but it still sounded like the thing to do. And she was going to do it, really, but then Faith smirked at her in that one particular way she does and Buffy sort of just…forgot.
With the apocalypse canceled and tapestry thing in hand, she was about to call it a night when the room suddenly lit up like Times Square at Christmas and started going all…melty in a pretty much textbook display of ‘not of the good’.
She remembers trying to run, trying to get out, but she couldn't move. And she didn't understand why until she looked down and realized the room wasn't glowing or melting; the artifact was, she was. She remembers looking up to see Faith in the doorway screaming her name, hand outstretched and dark eyes wide with fear, and then-
-everything went white…
…then black…
…and then…nothing.
She was just…she just was.
There was no up, no down, no light or dark- the absolute lack of everything was both impossible and impossibly terrifying but she didn't feel afraid. She didn't feel anything, really, not even her body. There was just the void of space with some part of her floating in it.
And then, after what felt like a lifetime, she woke up here – wherever, whatever, ‘here’ is – back in her body, all her limbs and senses intact, in this strange, impossible place lined in all directions with dozens, hundreds, millions of strings. But not string-strings. Strings of light, brilliant, beautiful technicolor light that pulse and thrum like heartbeats. It is strange, more than strange, alien and wholly unknowable, and yet…she feels safe here. She doesn't know why, couldn't explain it if she tried, but she can't shake the idea that she belongs here.
That she's always belonged here.
Buffy reaches out instinctually, drawn towards the lights like a moth to flame, fingers outstretched towards the nearest tangle of incandescent threads.
“You really shouldn't touch that.”
She yelps and spins in place, fists rising to her chin as she assumes a fighting stance. But there's nothing there.
A soft throat clears and she just manages to resist the urge to yelp again. “Down here.”
Buffy blinks and tilts her eyes down until she sees the deceptively normal little girl – complete with blonde pigtails, big blue eyes, jean overalls with one shoulder undone, and velcro light-up tennis shoes – standing before her.
God, this is a weird day.
“You've got to be kidding me.”
The ‘girl’ offers her a wide gap-toothed smile. “That is a very strange way to say hello.”
She scoffs out a laugh that edges towards the hysterical as she slowly lowers her arms. “I'm dead, aren't I? I touched the relic thing and died again and this is some weird in-between purgatory-type place. Gold star, Buffy?”
The girl giggles. “You're funny. But to answer your question: no, not quite. You are alive, Buffy Summers,” she says, seemingly unaware of the way her use of Buffy's name makes her entire body tense up. “But you are also dead. It's complicated.”
“...you understand how not comforting that is, right?”
She shrugs. “Does it help if I tell you you've also never been born and will always have been born a thousand times and will and will not die a thousand more?”
Buffy's head hurts. She's dead and still getting headaches. Worst afterlife ever. She grimaces. “Not so much.”
The girl shrugs again. “Sorry. I did say it was complicated.”
“Who are you?” She looks at her again, eyes narrowed as she studies the near-perfect facsimile of a little girl before her. She'd say it was perfect if not for her eyes. They're old eyes, ancient really, standing in stark opposition to her child's face. “What are you?”
“I am The Weaver of Fate, The Keeper of the Grand Tapestry, The Nexus of Knowing, and The Seer of All Things.”
Though the girl never raises her voice, her neutral tone never wavering, the words themselves echo in Buffy's mind like thunder, reverberating inside the marrow of her every bone. She doesn't know a lot about these kinds of things – being more of a ‘slay now, ask questions never’ type of woman, she's never cared to learn – but she knows these are titles of great and terrible power the same way she knows the weight of the Scythe in her hands or the prickling sensation on the back of her neck whenever Faith is nearby.
And that is why it takes her a solid minute to find her voice again. “Why do you look like a little girl?”
She giggles, peering up at her from beneath long golden lashes. “If I were to assume my true form, your brain would liquefy and run out of every orifice on your face. And-”
Buffy swallows, hard, against the accompanying mental image.
“-after looking through your mind, this seemed like the least threatening option.” She blinks, head tilting to the side in open curiosity. “I could change into something else, if you'd prefer.”
“No, it's…it's fine,” Buffy says at last. “At least you aren't, like, creepy British twins or something.” She clears her throat. “Do you, uh, have a name?”
“I have many,” she says, smiling up at her.
She waits a beat but the girl doesn't say anything else. “Could you tell me one?”
“Oh. Yes. Uhm.” Her small brow creases in a frown. “Humans only have one tongue, right?”
“Uh…yes?”
She nods. “In that case, you may call me Weaver; I've always liked that one.”
It isn't the incomprehensible three plus syllable name she'd been expecting and Buffy can't help but sigh in relief. “Okay, Weaver,” she says with a nod. “I'm Buffy. But I guess you know that already, huh?”
“I do. But thank you for telling me. I don't get to talk to people much. I am the Seer of All Things but I rarely get visitors.”
“So you…live here?”
Weaver's shoulders lift in a shrug. “In a manner of speaking.”
Buffy decides not to look at that too closely. “And where is here?”
“Oh. You really don't know, do you?” she asks, peering up at her with those impossibly wide, impossibly wise, eyes. “How strange. I've never had someone come here who didn't know where they were going.”
She really should've paid attention to Giles and Will this time. If, when she gets back, she's gonna get them both a cookie bouquet or something. “Sorry.”
“Oh, don't apologize!” she says. “It's wonderful! Something…new. I love new things.”
“Then, uh, you're welcome?”
“No, Buffy Summers; you're welcome. The most welcome, in fact,” Weaver says, spinning in a circle with her arms raised. “This, all of it, everything you see and feel and know, is the Grand Tapestry, the Woven Heart of Time Itself. More specifically, this is your spool, your, hmm, chamber, let's say.”
“My chamber?” Buffy blinks down at her. “What does that mean?”
“The threads,” she says, gesturing vaguely around them. “They aren't just made of light. They're made of you. Every string, every single glittering fiber, is you. Any you. Every you. Every life you've ever lived, every choice you've ever made, every divergent path you've ever walked. It's all you.”
“Like…alternate timelines?” she asks, brow furrowed as she tries to remember any scrap of potentially useful information from every Sci Fi movie Will and Xander have ever made her watch. “Parallel worlds?”
“If you'd like,” Weaver says with a haughty sniff. It reminds Buffy of Giles and the thought makes her smile, just a little. “I've always thought those words to be…small. Limiting. But they'll do.”
She nods like she understands, like it makes sense. It doesn't, not even a little, but it also sort of does? Because Weaver's right; Buffy does know this place, feels it like a second heartbeat thumping seamlessly beside the first. “I, uhm, this is great and all, really, but I'm not stuck here, right Weaver? I can still…I can go home?”
“Of course!” she says brightly.
Buffy sighs, shoulders slumping forward with relief she doesn't bother trying to hide. “Good. Great. So, if you'll just send-”
“Just as soon as you ask the question.”
“-me back, I'll-” She blinks. “Wait, what?”
“What, what?”
“What question?” Buffy asks. “I don't understand.”
“The Tapestry wouldn't have brought you into the Heart unless you had a question,” Weaver says softly. “So, once you ask – and see the answer, of course – you'll appear back where you were. That's how it works.”
“But I don't have a question! I mean, okay, I have a lot of questions but that's really just because this place,” she gestures around them at the sea of flowing, pulsing lights, “is crazy.”
She sighs, shaking her head. Buffy hasn't felt so thoroughly chastised since her mom died. “Take your time, Buffy Summers,” she says as she turns her attention to the nearest cluster of threads and, with quick, steady hands, begins untangling them.
The longer Buffy looks, the more fingers Weaver has, the more the guise of girlhood slips away to reveal the barest glimpse of the truly alien being hidden beneath. It makes Buffy's head hurt and her nose run. When she reaches up to wipe it away, her fingertips come away red.
“I did warn you,” she hums, glancing up at her from the corner of her eye. The blue of her irises glimmers like star stuff. “Also, it's rude to stare.”
She chuckles. “Sorry.”
“No harm done,” she says with an errant wave of her small but not small enough hand. “Not yet anyway. But you really should stop. This isn't where your thread’s meant to end. Besides, this isn't about me. You need to ask the question.”
Buffy huffs and pretends she isn't pouting when they both know she is. “How can I ask it if I don't know what it is?”
“But you do know,” she counters. “It's your question, after all. Just…don't think. Feel.”
She sighs and, after another lingering look, forces her gaze away from Weaver and up into the threads. There's so many of them, more than she could ever count, ever imagine. She wonders how many Buffy's are Slayers. How many of them died in pursuit of the Calling. How many are living normal lives with babies and minivans and a half-dozen dogs because Faith loves dogs and is always talking about getting-
Buffy blinks, cheeks growing hot. She glances over at Weaver but the not-quite-a-girl seems completely absorbed in her minding of the weave or whatever she calls it.
So, with the full freedom inattention offers, Buffy lets her thoughts drift to the one subject she so often denies them: Faith. Her friend, her other half, her enemy, her competition, her friend, her always almost so much more than just a friend, her…just her Faith. Except Faith isn't hers, not really, not like that. But she could be, maybe. If Buffy asked. If Buffy stopped running and hiding and pretending.
“I know my question,” she hears herself say.
Weaver smiles. “Then ask.”
“I…could we ever…” She knows the question, damn it, of course she does. Because it's what she was thinking when she picked up the tapestry, what she's always thinking about, kept tucked away in the back corner of her mind where she can pretend she doesn't see. So why can't she say it?
Weaver looks up at her, eyes dancing with ethereal light, and smiles the softest, gentlest smile Buffy thinks she's ever seen. “Give me your hand, Buffy Summers,” she says as she holds up her own. The threads are wound around her fingers like a cat's cradle.
“You said I shouldn't touch them.”
She chuckles. “You weren't ready then.” She wiggles her fingers. “You are now.”
Buffy looks at her upturned palm, at the crisscrossing strings of glimmering light, and, after a slow, steady exhale, reaches out and clasps her hand.
“Buffy?! Buffy, you've gotta- fuck, you've gotta wake up. Please, Buff-”
Buffy sits up with a gasp, swinging her fist on instinct.
Without missing a beat, Faith catches it and uses the momentum to pull her into a bone-crushing hug. If Buffy wasn't a Slayer, it would break her ribs; she thinks she feels a few of them creak anyway. “Damnit, B. Don't…you can't fuckin’ do that, okay?”
“Sorry,” she says as she curls into her chest. “What, uhm, what happened? Are you okay?”
“Am I okay?” Faith asks as she pulls back just enough to wipe at her eyes. “Shit, B. Ya grabbed that stupid rug thing and it started glowin’ and then you just, you just dropped and I thought you were…” She swallows hard and looks away, her jaw tense. “I couldn't, I couldn't feel you,” she whispers, shoulders hunched as she curls inward.
“Hey,” she reaches out, presses a firm hand to Faith's shoulder and feels her shudder under the weight of her touch. “I'm okay.”
“Yeah. ‘Course you are.” She rises to her feet, offering her a shaky smile that doesn't come close to reaching her eyes. “Let's, uh, let's get outta here, huh?”
Buffy nods and makes to rise, not hesitating to take the hand Faith offers her even though they both know she doesn't really need it. When she reaches for the tapestry though, Faith steps forward, brow furrowed. “Maybe you shouldn't-”
“It's okay,” she says with a smile. “It already answered my question.”
Faith cocks her head to the side. “The rug can talk?” she asks, eying the fabric suspiciously.
“Not exactly,” she says as she picks it up, tucking it gently under her arm. “But, uhm, I could tell you about it. Maybe…maybe over dinner? I mean, if you want to…?”
Already halfway to her side, Faith misses a step, only her Slayer reflexes keeping her from eating the floor. “Yeah. Sure,” she clears her throat, the tips of her ears turning red as she looks away. “Sounds good.”
Today has been the weirdest day.
But as Buffy looks up and, for a moment, sees Faith's dark eyes gleam gold, she decides maybe weird isn't such a bad thing after all.