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Title: Dimension Dementia
Part: 8
Author: SallyMcFine
Feedback: I love feedback. Bring it on!
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: All disclaimers apply
Thanks: To my beta, Mrs. McFine, for her editing and storyline skills that are out of this world.
Setting: AU/canon crossover
Summary: What happens when a shy, introverted girl is torn away from her world and deposited into a dimension full of vampires, demons, and...a girlfriend?
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Part 8 - Layers
Willow woke up early. Her sleep had been restless and filled with troubling dreams, and when she finally surfaced through the last remnants of the dream, she felt tremendous disappointment to still be in Buffy's bed. A tiny part of her had hoped that when she woke up, she'd be back in her world and could write off the strange events of yesterday as a side effect of her head injury.
Apparently not - she was still here, at any rate. As she lay in bed a fantasy crept into her mind. What if she had knocked herself out on the freezer door and hadn't woken up at all? What if, instead of coming to groggily on her kitchen floor with Buffy in tears, and being rushed to the hospital, she had remained unconscious and was right now lying in a coma at the Sunnydale hospital? And this weird experience, this strange world, was all happening in her head?
She felt warmed by the idea. If that was what was happening, then all she'd have to do would be to wait it out until she woke up. And this world - it didn't really matter what she did while she was here. She was just killing time until her body and brain healed enough to welcome her back. Yes, that had to be it!
She sighed. As attractive as the idea was, it didn't feel right. Her experiences didn't have a dreamlike quality to them - they were so close to real life that she had trouble believing that she was in some version of La-La-Land. And if she was in a coma, she would hope that she'd dream up a place for herself to spend time that was a little more...fun than this place was. But regardless of whether she was really here or not, she felt physically unable to lie in bed any longer. Spending the better part of the last 16 hours asleep was about as much as her body could tolerate.
She guessed it was early - no one else in the house seemed to be up yet, from what she could hear. Yes, the clock said 6:30am - too early for Buffy, to be sure, especially if she had been out late last night. She didn't know Dawn, but figured the teenager's sleeping habits were probably the same as others in her age group. And Tara - well, Tara might be an early riser for all Willow knew.
A quick inspection of the hall closet yielded towels where she remembered, and she felt refreshed after a shower. She dressed in Buffy's room, donning the other Willow's borrowed clothes. She sorted through the stack of shirts Tara had given her, finally choosing the most muted of the selection, which wasn't saying much - all of the shirts seemed to be brightly colored or to have some sort of strange design on them. The shirt she chose was multicolored and a little tighter and busier than she would usually wear, but it was the least wild of everything in the pile.
Showered and dressed, she turned some attention to her surroundings. Yesterday she had been too tired to notice many details about Buffy's room, but today with a clearer head she looked around. There was a framed picture on top of the dresser of her - Willow, that was, though she found herself thinking "her" instead; somehow it seemed easier - Buffy, and Xander with their arms around each others' shoulders at graduation. She stared for a long while at the three people in the picture, wondering how different her own high school experience would have been if Xander had lived, and if they and Buffy had been able to form their own version of the Three Musketeers in her world.
Another picture on the dresser caught her eye and startled her - it was Buffy standing with her arms around a man. She picked up the photograph, sure that her eyes were playing tricks on her - but no, it really was Buffy and Dr. Angel. Instead of the antagonism her roommate had shown toward the doctor, in this scene they looked happy and comfortable together - even a little snuggly. She shook her head and replaced the photo on the dresser.
On another wall was a bulletin board which held a variety of pictures, ribbons, and other odds and ends. Willow gazed at these photos, her eyes drawn to a picture of her and Tara. They were sitting on the couch in flannel pants and T-shirts, cuddled up together. Tara was sitting upright, while Willow was lying down, her head in Tara's lap. The perspective was from above, as if the photo taker had been standing up a few feet away from the couch. Both were looking at the camera with grins, and Willow could almost hear the photographer saying something funny to elicit the reactions.
She couldn't tear her eyes away from Tara's hands, which were caught in the act of stroking Willow's hair. One hand was tucking a lock of red hair behind Willow's ear, while the other one was in the process of smoothing her hair back from her forehead. The gesture, for all its unconsciousness and intimacy, was piercing. Willow became aware of her breathing as she continued to look at the scene, and tried to think back to her relationship with Danny. Had they ever been so easy with each other, so intimate? The photos she had of her and Danny together had been taken by Buffy when they were on their way out somewhere, and they looked stiff and awkward in them, compared to this scene.
That had ended up being part of the issue between her and Danny, anyway - her social circle had consisted mainly of him and Buffy, and she liked it that way. That hadn't mattered as much at first when they were interested in getting to know each other, but as the months wore on, Danny seemed to have tired of their nights spent exclusively together. He had tried to cajole Willow into going out to parties or bars with his group of jazz band friends, and she had given it a try, but she never felt like she fit in, and eventually begged off.
She sighed, and tore her eyes away from the picture. She checked the clock; the glowing green digits said 7:30am. She decided to go downstairs and read a magazine or a book until the others were up.
She spent about half an hour on the couch reading last month's copy of
Cosmopolitan. She had just gotten to the quiz - "How Kinky Are You?" - when she heard the shower upstairs. Apparently someone else was awake.
Soon after, Tara came down the stairs with damp hair clinging to the collar of the Sunnydale High School sweatshirt she was wearing.
"Good morning," Willow said. She noticed that Tara's eyes were puffy and red, though the blonde seemed composed.
"Morning," Tara said. She did a slight double take at Willow sitting on the couch, but recovered quickly.
Willow looked at her sweatshirt curiously. "Did you go to Sunnydale High too?"
Tara shook her head. "No, I grew up in northern California. This is Willow's sweatshirt."
"Oh." Willow suddenly felt awkward, as if she should have known.
Tara cleared her throat. "I usually make breakfast on Saturdays, if you're hungry. We have eggs, cereal, there's some bacon in the fridge - oh, but you don't eat bacon."
"Right - but eggs sound good. Don't go to any trouble, though."
"It's no trouble." Tara followed her words with a faint smile. "I might wait till I hear some stirrings from upstairs, though, unless you're ravenous."
Willow shook her head. "I'm okay." In fact, she was quite hungry, but didn't want to inconvenience the blonde.
Tara walked over and perched on the arm of an armchair, and cleared her throat. "Did you sleep well?"
Willow nodded. "Yes, very well. I woke up pretty early - I think I got so much sleep yesterday that my body just couldn't take any more rest."
Tara smiled. From upstairs, they heard footsteps, a door opening and closing, and a toilet flush. Shortly after, a sleepy and yawning Buffy came downstairs, still dressed in her pajamas.
"Did we wake you?" Willow asked.
Buffy stretched and shook her head. "No, not at all. I think sleeping in a strange bed was what did it, actually."
"Where did you sleep last night?" Willow hadn't even considered where Buffy would sleep, since she had given up her room.
"With Dawn - who is still dead to the world."
Tara stood up. "Breakfast, Buffy?"
Buffy nodded eagerly. "I'm famished."
"How do you like your eggs, Willow?"
Willow closed the magazine and put it down on the coffee table. "Sunny side up?"
Tara's expression was carefully neutral as she nodded and walked into the kitchen.
"Did I say something wrong?" Willow asked Buffy.
"No, not at all," Buffy said. "It's just that Willow - our Willow - also likes her eggs sunny side up. It's a little joke between her and Tara."
Willow nodded. She felt slight surprise that after all the differences she had noticed between her and her counterpart, that they had something in common.
I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised, though - we're probably more alike than different.
From the kitchen came sizzling and gurgling sounds, and the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing soon permeated the lower level of the house. After some discussion, they decided to let Dawn sleep in. Willow remembered what Tara had said about breakfast yesterday - that she had made eggs and pancakes, and that Dawn had decided to have cereal instead.
Tara served Willow's eggs to her and put a stack of toast on the kitchen table. She and Buffy were having scrambled eggs as well as the bacon Willow had smelled earlier, and each had a cup of coffee to go with it. Willow took a piece of toast and broke the yolks of her eggs with a fork, using the toast to sop up the yolk. She noticed Tara watching her, and wondered if the other Willow did the same.
"So, Willow," Buffy spoke into the silence, "you and I - I mean, your Buffy - live together in your world?"
Willow nodded. "Yes, in an apartment over on Redwood Place."
"How come not in the house?"
Willow shifted in her seat. "The house was sold, um, after…" she trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence.
"Was it Mom? Buffy's mom, I mean?" Buffy winced in anticipation of the answer.
Willow bit her lip. "Joyce, um, died during our senior year of high school. It was a brain tumor."
Buffy nodded and looked down at her plate. "How?"
Willow felt her heart throb in sympathy. "She died in the hospital from complications after surgery. She never woke up. Buffy - my Buffy - was a wreck, which I guess goes without saying. She moved in with me and my parents for the rest of our senior year."
"Poor Mom," Buffy said, her eyes shining with tears.
"Yeah," Willow said. She hated to ask the question, but figured she knew the answer already. "Is your mom…"
Buffy nodded and wiped at her eyes.
"When did it happen?"
"A few months ago. She had had a brain tumor removed, too, but seemed to be doing fine. Then one day I came home and found her…on the couch. She was so…still. They said it was an aneurysm."
Tara reached over and rubbed Buffy's back comfortingly as she struggled with her words. She took a few deep breaths and her voice stopped quavering.
"Anyway, after she died, it was just me and Dawn here. Then some other stuff happened when we were fighting a hellgod and I got...sick for a while, so Willow and Tara moved in to help out with Dawn." Willow detected something evasive in Buffy's tone but figured now wasn't the time to pursue it.
"That was nice of them. You, I mean," Willow amended, directing her comment at Tara. She heard herself and internally cursed -
nice of them? She hurriedly continued before anyone had to respond.
"So are you and Dr. Angel dating?" she asked.
Buffy gave her a decidedly confused look. "Angel?"
This was beginning to feel familiar. "He's not a doctor in this world, I take it?"
Tara stifled a giggle, which sounded strange in the quiet kitchen so soon after the sad conversation.
"Sorry," the blonde said. "It's just...Angel's definitely not a doctor here." She glanced over to Buffy, who responded with a nod. "He's...a vampire."
Willow was stunned. The nice doctor who had done so much to allay her fears, who had clashed with Buffy in the hospital over her care, was a bloodsucking fiend in this world? She didn't know what to say.
"Oh," she finally responded, blinking. "He's my neurologist." She paused. "So he's an evil demon here? He seemed like a nice guy. But wait, why is there a picture of you two in your room? It doesn't look like you're trying to slay him. I wasn't snooping, it was just there on the dresser," she rushed to explain.
Buffy smiled. "It's...complicated. He's a vampire, yes, but he has a soul. It's a long story, but the short version is, he crossed some Gypsies, and they cursed him with a soul."
"Doesn't sound like much of a punishment," Willow said.
"Not on paper, but he had been a vampire for hundreds of years at that point, and had killed a ton of people, and was pretty nasty. So he had a really hard time adjusting to having a soul and a conscience again. I think he went kind of insane with the guilt."
"So he's insane?" Willow asked. She was having trouble assimilating all the information.
"No, not now - at some point he started helping people and fighting evil, and that helped. It gave him a purpose. He's not what I'd call cheerful, but he's not like he used to be."
Willow nodded thoughtfully. "He helped me a lot when I was in the hospital, beyond the doctor stuff, I mean. I was worried, but he has a very good bedside manner, and was patient with all the questions I had about my head."
"Yeah," Buffy said. "He helps people here, too. Although I don’t think I’d say he has a great bedside manner." Another silence developed, but it didn't feel quite as uncomfortable. Willow had more questions - did Buffy actually date Angel, then, or were they just close friends? Where was he now? She felt like now wasn't probably the time to ask them, though - she didn't want to upset the sense of camaraderie and commonality that had grown out of the conversation with an interrogation.
Tara stood up and started to collect the plates. Willow stood up too and gathered her dishes.
"I can get that, Willow," Tara said.
"You cooked - I'm happy to do the dishes," Willow replied. "If that's okay."
"Sure - thank you." Tara looked faintly surprised, but didn't push the point.
"When you're done with that, we should probably head over to the Magic Box," Buffy said. "More research for how to get you home."
Willow nodded. As she rinsed the dishes and scrubbed out the frying pan, her thoughts wandered to questions about the dynamics around the other Willow, rather than questions about how to get back to her dimension. Did her counterpart usually do the dishes, or was it rare? Did Tara shoulder most of the housework for the entire household? She felt a growing curiosity, but chalked it up to the normal curiosity that anyone would have about an alternate version of themselves, and went upstairs to brush her teeth.
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"Giles," said Anya from her perch behind the counter at the Magic Box. "Maybe you can explain something to me."
"Maybe," said Giles. He rubbed his temples - a long night of reading after leaving Buffy's house last night had left him sleep-deprived and frustrated. "What is it?"
"When you told Willow you thought she had switched places with our Willow - you were right, the flash of light and the headache were indicative of dimensional travel, especially for a first-timer. But I don't understand why you think that they necessarily switched
with each other - there could have been a hundred other things that happened. It's unpredictable."
Giles sighed and put his glasses atop his head, covering his face with his hands so he could more easily rub his eyes. "Yes, I know. I thought it was best to put forth that I thought they had switched, rather than any of the other possibilities. I didn't want to panic Willow any further than she already was - or Tara, for that matter."
"So you said something that you knew wasn't necessarily the case to spare everyone's feelings?"
"That's right."
"That's what I thought," Anya said with pride. "That's why I backed you up, even though I thought it was hinky. And I could have pointed out several holes in your logic."
Giles looked over at the ex-demon with surprise. "Anya, you showed restraint. And tact."
"I
know!" she crowed.
The sound of voices outside the door came into earshot and grew louder. He shot Anya a look.
"And that look you just gave me means two things - first, you're proud of me for catching on to the feeling-sparing thing. And second, that we should keep the uncertainty about which dimension our Willow is in between ourselves."
Giles nodded. "Quite so." As he spoke, the door opened, and Buffy, Dawn, Tara, and Willow came into the shop.
Anya twirled around on the stool behind the counter, shooting Giles a virtuous, conspiratorial look.
"Good morning," he greeted them. "Let's get to work."
by Grayson » Tue Aug 22, 2006 7:25 am 
) I await the next update with impatience and delight. Poor Willow. Poor Tara! I hate to even think about what she's going through. Absolutely wonderful update m'dear.
. Willow's head must be spinning with all the new information she has to process. It's not everyday you hear stories about vampires 
. Ah.. this feeling is probably caused by us only seeing one dimension in this story.. so we don't know if people in the more-normal-dimension worry.
you may be on to something Willow
