Heaven Hath No Fury
"When I first entered heaven I thought everyone saw what I saw. That in everyone's heaven there were soccer goalposts in the distance and lumbering women throwing shot put and javelin. That all the buildings were like suburban northeast high schools built in the 1960s. Large, squat buildings spread out on dismally landscaped sandy lots, with overhangs and open spaces to make them feel modern. My favorite part was how the colored blocks were turquoise and orange, just like the blocks in Fairfax High. Sometimes, on Earth, I had made my father drive me by Fairfax High so I could imagine myself there.
...They were my dreams on Earth."
--Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
Prologue.
She was dead before she jumped.
Inside of her, something clicked, and that was the end.
It wasn't the fall that killed her, it wasn't the portal.
It was something deeper, something more innate than anyone could have imagined.
It wasn't Dawn, wasn't Spike, wasn't Giles- sure as hell wasn't Willow or Xander- none of them had done anything out of the ordinary.
It wasn't her mother's death, or her sickness; although those had happened, and surely changed her in some way, they never could have caused this gaping black hole to open in her heart that swallowed her alive until only a demonic portal could fill it.
Who was she? Who was she, really?
Being dead was no different than being alive, for Buffy.
She was still on the side of good.
She still worked out and went after punching bags until they burst from the stress put upon them. Sometimes she trained alone; other times, with Kendra.
She still hung around the school library after hours, telling stupid jokes and hoping someone might laugh.
Sometimes, she went to the computer lab, and talked to Jenny.
Just like normal.
But the high school had burned down. Jenny was dead. Kendra was dead.
Buffy was dead.
She lived on in the dust of memories.
It was a lot like what she expected heaven to be like.
It was a lot like hell.
I.
"Tara, could you pass me that?"
"Pass you what?"
"The, um, the doohickey attached to the whatsit with the little hoopy thing."
"The part that's supposed to attach to the BuffyBot's ear?"
"Yeah."
"You could have just said the ear."
"Oh, it's still connected?"
"Um, yeah."
"Sorry."
Heaven was, for Buffy, routine. What people miss most isn't the best things that happened to them. It's the routine, the comfortable day-by-day that they don't realize they need until it's gone.
For Buffy, it was some type of peace. She hadn't had the day-to-day in so long, she was beginining to forget what it was.
In heaven, Dawn hadn't been created. She missed her sister, but at the same time never really processed that she wasn't there. Her parents must have been divorced, although it never really occurred to her; eventually, she would realize that she lived only with her mother because her sister and father were still alive, but in the beginning, it was just like old times, and that was that.
In heaven, Joyce was alive, and somehow she knew about the slaying but didn't. For Buffy it was a retread of the best parts of sophomore and junior years; she would sneak out, but she never, ever got caught.
In heaven, she spent time with Angel and Spike- not the Angel or Spike she knew, but some Angel and some Spike nonetheless. They talked for hours. Neither of them had fangs or drank blood from unsuspecting victims. They ate food and played gin rummy over matchsticks rather than kittens. They were aware that, somewhere, their other selves raped, tortured, killed... they knew that, somewhere, they themselves had each attempted to kill or kiss Buffy on multiple occasions.
Up here, none of that mattered.
Up here, Angel used a lot less gel.
II.
"Do you think she's happy?"
"Who?"
"Buffy. Do you think she's up there, somewhere... happy?"
"I don't know."
"Well, you died... or whatever. What's death like?"
"I never really got the death thing. I'm right here in front of you, Niblet."
"So do you think she's happy?"
"She could be."
"I miss her."
"Who doesn't?"
She still slayed, but it was easier than it had ever been before. If she'd wanted to, she could have stopped, but she was finding more and more that it was a part of her. She was Buffy first, but the Slayer a close second.
It wasn't hard to slay, because there were no demons in heaven- at least, not the way demons had been on earth. A plague hadn't reached humanity here, because humanity was already dead. But because she was the Slayer, she still slayed.
There were other Slayers here, she was sure. Others besides Kendra- those who had given their lives such that she might follow in the grand tradition of sticking pieces of wood into undead hearts.
But she had never met those Slayers, so if she passed them at night in the graveyard, she didn't pay much attention. They were just other shadows passing in the night.
If she saw Kendra, they made eye contact, smiled, maybe talked for a few minutes, but it was too painful, too awkward. They never stayed long.
The graveyards were mostly empty, because people didn't want to see their own tombstones. Buffy was lucky; hers had been in the middle of the woods, far enough away that she wouldn't slip and see her own tombstone.
Buffy Anne Summers. She saved the world. A lot.
But the world couldn't save her.
That was why she was there.
III.
"How much should we sell this for?"
"Wh- what?"
"Giles, you haven't been listening to me for the past ten minutes. You're zoning out, and there's money to be discussed!"
"Oh... sorry."
"You're thinking about her again, aren't you?"
"How..."
"You have that look in your eyes."
"It's what she wanted, isn't it?"
"She wanted to be happy. She wanted to snap out of it."
"This is sort of the ultimate 'snap', then."
"She's probably happy... whereever she is."
In heaven, the high school had been burned down, and yet it still existed, and people still went. She was still in high school. She slept through or cut nearly all of her classes. She never got report cards. She had only been sent to the principal's office four times, and each of those was for something as benign as getting assignments from when she was absent- "when I was sick".
Principal Snyder seemed transformed. Physically, he looked the same, but he had clearly been declawed. He no longer threatened her with expulsion; he no longer told her how much she was sullying the entire town of Sunnydale. Instead, he was a mild threat, a cartoony villain in a world where evil never truly applied. At times Buffy even pitied him. The rest of the time, she played a cunning Road Runner to his not-so-Wile E. Coyote.
Principal Flutie was in there sometimes, big and teddy-bearish, friendly to a fault. He always smiled. He called her Bunny or Betty, and asked her if she wanted something to drink while she collected her algebra. He was a lot like he had been when Mr. Gregory had died.
Mr. Gregory was there. His was the only class Buffy stayed awake for. She was somewhat disturbed by how interesting she was beginning to find biology. For the dead, the study of the living is the most complex.
They skipped any chapters about decomposition.
IV.
"Angel? Are you hungry? Angel?"
"I got take-out."
"Butcher, mugger, or Angelus-y? Because, I have a place that I really need to-"
"Cordelia, can I possibly have some quiet for once?"
"Oh, okay. Still definitely Angel."
"Do you miss her?"
"What?"
"You knew her. Do you miss her?"
"Every day."
In heaven there were no divisions. Black, white, poor, rich, demon... everyone got along, or if not, at least didn't see anyone else who might arouse their ire.
You couldn't die in heaven, couldn't even really hurt. And if you couldn't, you couldn't inflict it... so what was the point?
In heaven, Angel had never gone to L.A. He had stayed with her. And her parents hadn't gotten divorced, not really- her father wasn't there, but he hadn't left them, hadn't forgotten them, hadn't skipped Joyce's funeral because they couldn't reach him.
In heaven, Joyce hadn't died.
Dawn was there, the way Willow and Xander were, but she had a more tenuous grip on Buffy's reality. There were walls of photographs of Dawnie and Buffy, Dawnie and Joyce, Dawnie with Buffy and Hank on the beach.
In heaven, Dawnie wasn't the key. She was just Buffy's little sister.
It was nice.
V.
"Xander?"
"Yes?"
"Are you having a good time?"
"Yes."
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"You can't think of me because you think of her."
"Well, you look identical."
"Yes."
"But you're..."
"A machine, made with many different parts!"
"Right. Exactly."
Anyone she was truly close to was more of an idea than a physical presence. Her friends were always just leaving, and she always felt like they had just spent a great day together. She still trained with Giles, although he was never there. She could hear him in her head, could hear him telling her how to spar, what to do next, which move to practice each day.
She still saw some kids from the high school. They talked to her in the cafeteria, sometimes even passed her notes in math class. Larry introduced her to his new boyfriend. It was nice to see him so happy.
Harmony told her that her hair looked overly shampooed, but her necklace was a step in the right direction.
Ford was there, and he didn't have a tumor anymore. He wasn't evil. He wasn't playing games. He was just a guy, one year older than Buffy, who was cute and fun to spend time with and ultimately loyal.
She spent most of her time in the computer lab. She talked to Jenny a lot. She understood things better then. Ms. Calender hadn't always done the right things, but she'd tried. She'd saved Angel, ultimately. And she had loved Giles.
It had been different from how Buffy loved him, but it had been just as strong, just as deep.
Buffy remembered Jenny's funeral, and although neither of them ever mentioned it, Jenny knew she had been there. Although it never came up, Jenny forgave Buffy for not killing Angelus earlier, and Buffy began to forgive herself. It was enough to connect them.
In heaven, Buffy took to searching for connections.
Connections to the dead, and sometimes, connections to the living.
VI.
"Faith! Message for you."
"For me?"
"Do you see another Faith here?"
"What is it? Is it a note?"
"A message. Buffy is dead. You're active."
"Is that all it says? Or is it-"
Silence.
The dead weren't constrained by the time they had followed so rigidly while breathing. There was no one to tell them that a day had to be twenty-four hours, and as such, it rarely if ever was. Interactions could be with someone from centuries ago; they could be with someone from tomorrow.
But the Slayers never crossed paths.
There was a shared destiny. Buffy had seen it in The First Slayer, in Kendra, in Faith.
They were connected, deeper than blood, deeper than bone.
None of them knew why they had been called. Just that they had been, and when they looked in the mirror, they saw the shell of a power hundreds of years old.
Slaying had been a part of them, and although in death they had passed it on, they'd never truly given it up. It shined through in old, burned-down lairs and worn Watcher's Diaries.
Alive, Buffy was part of the solution. Now she was a part of history.
Epilogue.
In Sunnydale, there's a gravestone.
It's in the woods, where no one can really see it.
It's off the beaten path- in fact, it's off any path, really.
They find their way through their hearts rather than simple geography, when they go. Normally there's no need to consult a map, since they wouldn't go anyway unless pressed.
They'll have time for mourning later.
When they're back with her, they can mourn the loss.
Until then, they keep fighting.
It's what she would have wanted.