Repost FIC: To Cross the River Styx (4d/?)

[PChazzman@xxxxxxx]

TITLE: To Cross the River Styx (4d/?)
AUTHOR: Chazzman
E-MAIL: Pchazzman@xxxxxxx 
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters in this story. They all belong 
to Joss and the WB network. Please don't sue. 
SPOILERS: Open season on Season 4. 
SUMMERY: I'm re-inventing season 4.
RATED: PG
DISTRIBUTION: Just ask me, please...
FEEDBACK: Is very welcome.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: All right folks, when I started, I was expecting to finish 
'Hush' with this section, but it looks like I've got to have at least one 
more part. Please tell me what you think.


To Cross the River Styx
Chap 4d

Previously...

"Buffy! Wake up!" Willow screamed out as she tried frantically to pull out 
the black strand from her own back. "Come on fight it! Please God! Buffy!"

They moved though another pair of doors into a dimly lit hallway. Buffy 
paused for a second as if to contemplate something before she moved into one 
of the rooms. She floated over to the side of the patient and reached out to 
rip open the patient's hospital gown. Willow tensed up as Buffy carefully 
placed the scalpel against the girl's left breast, just above the heart. She 
had to stop Buffy, but there was nothing she could think of that would stop 
her. Why didn't the girl wake up?

Then she saw the face of the girl who Buffy was about to kill.

It was Faith, and she was still in a coma.

~~~~~~~~~~

Willow would never actually be certain what it had been that gave her the 
idea. The sight of Buffy wielding the scalpel. The sight of Faith whom 
Buffy had stabbed with her own knife. The memory of Faith holding that same 
knife against her throat.

It was an epiphany. She existed in a state where thought literally formed 
existence as she knew from being able to change what she appeared to be 
wearing. The line by which the creature had attached itself to her was 
created by a thought and it therefore stood to reason that it could be broken 
with a thought. At least she hoped so. She no longer had the luxury of time 
for experimentation. As Buffy began to press the scalpel into Faith, Willow 
willed into existence the largest, sharpest pair of scissors and with both 
hands snapped the blades closed, cutting through the black strand.

Buffy stiffened and collapsed to the floor.

To say that it hurt would have been a grotesque abuse of the term in relation 
to the pain that Willow felt. In fact, it would have been fair to say that 
if she had not snapped the scissors closed as fast as she had, she would 
never have been able to do it. It was as if she had cut off a finger... or 
maybe a hand... or possibly a leg. 

The strand that was still attached to the creature zipped off and disappeared 
through a wall. Willow hoped that the damn thing was in as much, if not 
more, pain as she was at the moment. The strand that was attached to her, 
and through her to Buffy, hung limply in the air but did not vanish as she 
had hoped it would, and now Buffy lay unconscious on the floor. 

"I can do this," Willow whispered to herself with a firm conviction. 
Although was it was that she was going to do was less clear. Holding the 
limp strand she whispered a quick prayer for some divine guidance from 
whoever was monitoring the celestial switchboard tonight. Concentrating, she 
first tried to will the thread to detach itself from wherever it had affixed 
itself to Buffy. Nothing. Five minutes later, she had still no success. 

Willow was starting to worry that maybe she had permanently damaged Buffy. 
Perhaps the shock of the severing the evil cord had overloading her mind. 
Willow examined the end of the cord only to see it was comprised of hundreds 
of tiny strands the seemed to gleam and ooze. Hesitantly, she poked at the 
ends with her finger. An abrupt, cascade of images began to flash before 
Willow's eyes, startling her so much that she yanked her hand away. The 
images had been accompanied by feelings of anger, hate, grief and despair. 

For several minutes, she stared and the strand like it was a poisonous cobra. 
For several long minutes, she thought about what she had seen and felt. The 
creature had tapped into Buffy's negative experiences and emotions and, from 
there, had controlled the rest of her mind and body. Now it was up to Willow 
to fix it.

How? With magic, you had to balance the forces in order to prevent a 
destabilizing of the spell. Here, it looked as if there was no balance, only 
an overwhelming of negative emotions. Could she simply counter the negative 
emotions with positive ones? Could it be that simple? She had, after all, 
just severed the link with a pair of shears that she had simply thought up 
out of thin air. Still, Willow tried to think about but nothing else came to 
mind.

Willow tried to meditate and calm herself. When she felt she was as ready as 
she would ever be, she picked up the strand and placed her hand over the end 
of it. The onslaught of sensations hit her again but this time she was ready 
for them. Willow strove to keep her mind calm and focused as images flooded 
her thoughts. Buffy running into their dorm room and finding it a wreck and 
Willow gone. A dark basement with a voice telling her how she should give up 
and that everyone had abandoned her. Angel walking away as the high school 
burned. Stabbing Faith on the rooftop. Faith betraying her and going to 
work for the Mayor. Giles confessing to injecting her with the muscle 
relaxant. Acathala. Kendra. Angelus. Jenny. Ford. The Master. Her 
parent's divorce. Merrick dying. Her friends at Hemery distancing 
themselves from her as she developed her Slayer skills. On and on, further 
and further back they went. 

Willow began to concentrate on remembering the good moments that she had with 
Buffy, their friendship and their support of one another with each of their 
own strengths and love. Slowly, the rush of images from Buffy began to slow. 
Willow's delight in this gave her a feeling of happiness that she fed back 
into her link with Buffy. With ever-increasing speed, the black strand began 
to dissolve and fade, but a few pieces appeared not to be affected. Willow 
could still sense Buffy's sadness and feelings of abandonment and the fear 
demon Gavrock telling her how everyone was going to leave her. Dominating 
this thought was the weeks of fear she had bottled up inside of her for 
Willow's safety and the slowly growing despair that she would never find her.

Willow began to speak in order to focus her thoughts. 'Buffy. Please listen 
to me. Gavrock was wrong. I haven't left you. Even if I were still alive, 
my heart would always be with you. Yes, I am dead. It's a little strange, 
not exactly what I was told would happen. But hey, it looks like I'm going 
to be with you now for the rest of your life, and I want it to be a good long 
one, Buff. We've got a lot of evil still to fight. I can still fight it 
too, apparently. You're gonna get better and we're gonna go back to that 
clock tower and you're gonna kick evil's butt in the real world while I take 
out a certain blobby parasite. If it thinks that it can just stick its ugly 
little tendrils into us and make us do whatever it wants, well it's just got 
another thing coming."

As Willow babbled, the last of the black strands began to fade, first to a 
grayish color, but slowly brightening until they shone with a clear white 
light. If she had still had a real body, Willow would have said she was 
beginning to feel lightheaded and weak. She began to ramble as she continued 
to talk to Buffy.

'It's weird Buff. Most of the time, I don't feel too bad being dead and all. 
I just wish I could talk to you. Tell you I'm OK with it, and that you need 
to start living again. I feel like I'm waiting for something. Like my death 
has been put on hold. Of course, since I have no idea where my body is, 
maybe it's cause I haven't been buried properly. There's one for Giles to 
figure out. Or maybe the Greeks had it right and I need some coins to pay 
the ferryman. I wonder if he still uses a wooden ferry or if he used all 
that money to get himself a bigger more modern boat. You think maybe he's 
got a hovercraft now? Bet that be pretty cool. Course he's pretty much got 
a monopoly on the whole crossing the river. Of course why I would need to 
ride a boat across when I could just fly over it.'

A half-remembered poem came to mind, as Willow grew more tired. Slowly her 
head started to drop, and she closed her eyes as she concentrated on 
remembering the poem. 

'So do not weep when I am gone, 
My shade shall wait for thee.
Though I can see Elysium, 
I'll not pay Charon's fee.

For I am waiting for you, my dear,
Beside the river Styx, 
And with our love, we'll need no boat,
To cross the river Styx.'

As she softly murmured the last few lines from the poem, Willow drifted off 
to sleep and her spirit retracted back inside the slumbering body of Buffy 
Summers.

****

Buffy awoke to the sensation of something cold and hard pressing against her 
face. After a few seconds, she realized that her face was pressing against 
the floor. 'Why am I on the floor,' she thought. 'I don't remember a fight.' 
Her body, however, felt exhausted. While she didn't exactly feel sore in 
her muscles, the commands to move and sit up were not being obeyed rapidly. 
Her eye caught the gleam of light off of the scalpel near her hand. There 
was blood on it. 'Blood?' The image of her cutting into Faith flashed 
across her mind and suddenly she was sitting up and saw that she was in a 
darkened hospital room and a body was in the bed. 

'Oh god, please no,' she gasped to herself as she struggled to stand up. As 
Buffy stood, she saw Faith resting in her bed, her gown torn and a shallow 
cut upon her left breast. Buffy exhaled in relief as she saw that Faith was 
still alive. The wound was small enough that Buffy could see it would heal 
quickly, she just needed to clean up the blood and fix the gown. Ditching 
the scalpel in the needle disposal box, Buffy cleaned the wound that had 
already stopped bleeding. She looked through the room's cupboards for a 
replacement gown and came up empty. Finally, she decided the only thing she 
could do was switch gowns with Faith and invent a story that she must have 
torn it herself in her sleep. As she took a last look at Faith, before 
leaving the room, she remembered Faith's final words to her, 'You killed me'. 


It occurred to Buffy that maybe Faith would rather be dead than in her 
current state of existence, for as it was, there was nothing waiting for her 
if she ever awoke. Normally, this line of thought would have depressed Buffy 
with it's futility, but for some reason she was feeling inspired. Angel had 
believed she could be redeemed. Of course that was before she tried to kill 
him, but even so, maybe he could think of something she could say to Faith to 
get her to listen. Faith would probably fight her tooth and nail, but she 
was going to listen when she woke up. A smile crept across Buffy's face. 
'Why wait until she's awake?' Buffy thought as she left the room. 

Five minutes later she was being guided back to her room by a concerned nurse 
who came across her staggering down the hall, apparently lost and confused. 
The nurse helped change her gown and went to fetch the doctor. When the 
nurse brought back the doctor on call, the doctor wrote out a series of 
questions about how she felt. Buffy smiled and wrote that she was feeling 
fine except for a feeling of being weak and tired. After half an hour of 
writing back and forth, the doctor finally said it would be OK for Buffy to 
try to get some sleep as whatever apparently had been affecting her seemed to 
be moving out of her system. Since the blood tests had shown no signs of 
drugs or elevated white blood cell counts, the doctor decided that whatever 
had affected Buffy must have been some form of stress induced exhaustion 
probably exacerbated by the sudden loss of everyone's voice. The doctor told 
Buffy that she would proscribe her some medication to help her relax and left 
her to sleep.



*****

In the morning Giles, Xander, Anya and Olivia showed up. Immediately, Buffy 
showed Giles the account she had written out about waking up in Faith's room 
with the scalpel and the cut on Faith's chest. Giles paled as he read her 
story, then he showed her the morning paper and its announcement of two 
murders over night each with the victim's heart cut out. 

Buffy stared in shock at the article before raising her eyes to look at Giles 
and ask if she had done it. Giles immediately assured her that she couldn't 
have done them since she had been here at the hospital. If there had been a 
victim here at the hospital then, perhaps, but apparently her Slayer 
abilities have overridden whatever had directed her to Faith's room. When 
she calmed down, Giles showed her what they had found out about the 
Gentlemen. How Olivia had seen one last night and had sketched it. Giles' 
own research had finally turned up information on them as fairy tale 
monsters. They were invulnerable to weapons but could be killed with a 
scream. Which was why they had stolen everyone's voices. He also theorized 
that, somehow, the Gentlemen had known of the Slayer's presence and had 
apparently taken steps to keep her from interfering with their 'Harvest' of 
seven hearts.

'So they are afraid of me?' wrote Buffy.

Giles nodded.

'GOOD!' She mouthed emphatically before writing, 'So let's get me out of 
here and figure out how to get my voice back.'

******

Although the hospital had been reluctant to release her, Buffy was able to 
check out by one in the afternoon. She was still feeling very sluggish and 
drained. As she sat in Giles' living room she was beginning to worry whether 
she would be in shape to patrol that night. At the moment, Tara was 
explaining about her inability to break the silence spell.

'Either the spells I've cast keep getting countered by the original silence 
spell, or I just don't have sufficient power.' Tara wrote to Buffy. She 
hung her head down showing which explanation she believed. 

Tara was feeling more self-conscious than she ever had in her life. She knew 
that she could do magic. Powerful magic. To a degree. However, since 
meeting Buffy and being asked to help cast a single locator spell, everything 
she had attempted had ended up being a failure. The latest had been her 
attempts to break the silence spell. 

Buffy reached out to tilt Tara's head up, looked her straight in the eye and 
waved her finger at Tara. She then wrote out, 'You're doing the best you 
can. That's all any of us expect. Don't kick yourself. I appreciate your 
efforts.' 

Tara smiled and then snapped her fingers as she remembered something and 
began to dig through her purse. She drew out an amulet and handed it to 
Buffy. She then wrote that last night when she had seen Buffy at the 
hospital, she had seen Buffy's aura looking fainter than it had earlier when 
Tara had looked at it, almost as if it was being siphoned off. This amulet 
was something Tara's grandmother had given her to help protect against a 
psychic attack and would help restore her energies from the surrounding 
environment. 

'My Aura?' asked Buffy as she eyed the amulet. It was circular, made of some 
type of metal with a rather intricate design carved upon its face. The amulet 
was about two inches in diameter, considerably larger than anything Buffy 
usually wore. As she held the amulet, it seemed to warm and grow lighter.

'Yes. It's very strong and really stands out. Actually, it almost looks as 
if there is more than one person there. But I'm guessing that is just 
something connected to you being the Slayer. Maybe it's your Slayerness 
shining through.'

Willow awoke with a start when Buffy put on the amulet. Tara was pleased to 
see Buffy's aura immediately began to brighten. After an hour, Buffy was 
feeling much more energized and alert. By the time night fell, Buffy was 
ready to kick some demon ass.

Willow was feeling pretty powered up as well. She would have been bouncing 
off of the walls is she wasn't passing through them. While they had waited 
for night to fall, Willow had concentrated on building a shield around her 
and Buffy. She wasn't certain whether the creature could have attached 
itself to Buffy if she hadn't given it a path through herself, but she was 
not going to take any chances. 

Ten minutes after she was finished, Willow began flipping through outfits to 
go into battle with. At first, she thought about her Joan of Arc costume she 
had worn at Halloween. However, since she already had the full body shield, 
she decided to try something that had a 'less bulky, more stealthy' feeling 
to it. She pictured herself in what her vampire double had worn and began to 
modify it. Toward the end, she was experimenting with an outfit that was 
like something she had seen on 'Aeon Flux'. It was wholly impractical and if 
anyone could have seen her, she would have died of embarrassment. But there 
wasn't anyone except the monster and she didn't care what it thought. She 
did care about what she thought, though, and she felt silly. Deciding that 
with the shield it didn't matter what she wore, she decided to be comfortable 
and settled on a pair of blue-jeans and a T-shirt. Pink. Although with 
minimal frillage. 

Through out it all, she had kept the sword from the Joan of Arc outfit. It 
sort of gave her a comfortable feeling to be holding something that seemed 
heavy and sharp. She wasn't certain that 'thought' guns would work but 
since the scissors had, Willow hoped that a sword would as well. She was 
guessing the sword was an extension of her spirit in the same way that the 
clothing she believed herself to be wearing was. A vision of herself as the 
shape shifting T-1000 from 'Terminator 2' gave her a start when her right 
hand suddenly shifted to a silver color and merged with the sword she was 
holding in it. 'Woah,' she thought, as she began to play with having the 
sword dissolve down into her hand and then suddenly shoot out like a lance.

Finally, after playing with her newest ability for awhile and learning to 
control it, Willow decided to settle down and wait for nightfall. As she 
waited, she did something that she hadn't done since she had died. 

She sent a prayer of thanks to the God and Goddess for gifting her with the 
ability to fight off the earlier threat to Buffy, and asked for the strength 
to defeat the creature. 

*****

Eve looked up when Maggie Walsh slammed the door shut as she stormed into the 
lab. 'Damn him!' she shouted silently. Jude Law had pulled rank on her 
again and countermanded her authorization for the teams to suit up and patrol 
with weapons tonight. When she had pointed out that people had been killed 
last night and probably would be again tonight, he had simply shrugged and 
told her that it was unimportant to the mission. Maggie could see her inner 
frustration and anger reflected in the eyes of 'HER' soldiers, and she was 
about ready to tell him to 'get the hell out of here'. Her soldiers would 
have backed her up, she was sure of it. But then Jude had passed her a note 
telling her that if any weapons were issued to the teams he would e-mail 
Washington and order an immediate cancellation of the whole project. She 
knew he wasn't bluffing, so she had been forced to fold in front of the 
troops who had been waiting for her order.

'What is wrong?' wrote Eve on the computer.

Sighing Maggie took her seat next to Eve's and wrote a quick summary of the 
confrontation that had taken place. Eve read the account and looked blankly 
at Maggie. 'So?'

'So more people are going to die tonight.'

Eve shrugged and wrote, 'People die all the time in Sunnydale. It's Buffy's 
problem not yours.'

Although Maggie understood Eve's first statement, the second one had her 
stumped. She wrote back, 'What do you mean? Buffy Summers? Why is it her 
problem?'

'Because she is The Slayer.'

~~~~~~~

TBC...