Willow stared at the coffin. She took in every knot and whorl in the dark mahogany, noted the way the sunlight glinted off the bright brass handles. It was so ugly, worse than any demon or any corpse.
It was all wrong. Every detail of this funeral would have pinched and chafed Jenny Calendar like a left shoe on a right foot. What would she have wanted with a cassocked priest and prayers intoned more solemnly than spells? She was a gypsy and a witch and a cyberpagan, and she'd have hated a Church of England funeral as much as Willow would. As much as Willow hated it for her.
She should have had a gypsy funeral, whatever that might be. Something beautiful. Wild, mournful Romany songs, barefoot women swaying as they prayed, hundreds of red candles surrounding her shrouded, uncoffined body. Something as unlikely in Sunnydale as Ms. Calendar herself.
But no one from her gypsy family had come forward to claim her.
Giles had planned the funeral, and hadn't let anyone else help. Or make suggestions. It was all very English, like a scene out of Masterpiece Theater. The kind of thing he'd want for his own funeral, probably. To him it must be old-fashioned and familiar, something that made him feel better.
Though he didn't seem better. He was standing blank-faced and wet-eyed, looking at the pile of earth beside the grave, mouthing the phrases silently as the priest spoke. Sometimes Giles got it wrong, lips and words going out of sync like one of those Japanese monster movies Xander liked, and then Willow had to pinch her arm to keep from laughing. Not that it was funny, nothing had been funny since that night and how could she laugh at anything that helped Giles? But giggles rose anyway, coming out of deep murky darkness, like the Loch Ness Monster.
Willow bit her lip and concentrated on the strange, seductive, horrible words.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
She couldn't remember ever believing in god. It just didn't make sense. If there was a god, why was he never around to hand out the comfort? No god had sent a heavenly hug to console Grandpop and Grandmom in Auschwitz; they'd had to survive on their own, and it left shadows behind their eyes. No god protected Sunnydale High School. No god had bothered to keep Angel's soul in his body or stop him from breaking Jenny Calendar's neck.
Vampires seemed to believe in god. In Christianity, anyway. Crosses scared them, holy water burned them. Willow kept a cross in her purse, where her dad would never look. You don't have to believe in a tool to use it.
You don't need to believe in anything. You don't need comfort to survive.
Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.
Ms. Calendar smiled like there was no misery in the world. Like there was nothing to be afraid of. Like she'd live forever, instead of thirty-six years.
She was wrong. She was amazing.
Most of the other teachers were old and wore baggy polyester and smelled like mothballs, but Ms. Calendar was beautiful. With her teaching computer class, Willow didn't feel so embarrassed about it. Maybe she wasn't doomed to be the biggest nerd in California. Maybe she could be like Ms. Calendar instead. Maybe she could be beautiful and smart and be called Ms. instead of Miss. Maybe she could have everything, have magic and logic too.
It would be great to go back to worrying about being a nerd. To a time when better clothes and a Pentium processor were worth hoping for.
Willow hoped for bigger things now. Maybe the earth could spin backwards, maybe time could spool back on its reel. Maybe something could be fixed. Belief did nothing, and logic led nowhere, but magic was still worth trying.
The last victory shall be over death.
Giles had found her dead body in his bed. Maybe that was what made him white and thin and dried out with horror. He looked like a vampire himself.
He'd gone alone to fight Angelus, wanting revenge. Wanting to bruise and break and kill his grief. Wanting, Willow knew, to die. It was obvious. She could tell, looking at how he stood. Shoulders slumped, arms hugged over his chest like he might split open if he let go. A muscle twitched in his jaw from clenching his teeth against a sob or a scream or a curse shouted to the sky.
Willow recognized it all. She'd seen it in Xander, after Jesse was killed and turned and killed again. For weeks afterwards, Xander moved like all his bones had been shattered and glued back together. His eyes had gone the way Giles' were now, flat and dead like the eyes of fish on ice at the supermarket.
And that meant . . . that meant something. Meant, maybe, that Xander had really cared about Jesse. Loved him, the way Giles loved Ms. Calendar. It could be that Willow had seen Xander's heart break and not quite understood. Later, tomorrow or next week, she'd try to ask him. It was pretty late now, but maybe not too late.
She'd better not put it off. It was late in more ways than one. Willow needed to ask Xander before this all ended the way it had to, in a losing battle against Angelus, against the Angel of Death.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
And now Willow wanted to giggle again. Dust to dust. So appropriate, in all the most awful ways. We dust vampires, she thought, and they dust us. It just takes longer for us to crumble.
Oh no. What if Ms. Calendar . . . what if Jenny had been turned somehow? What if on tonight's patrol they found her clawing out of the grave, dead limbs marionetted by a demon? Pale and cold and beautiful, cruel and hungry. No more like Jenny than Angelus was like Angel.
Had Giles thought of it? Had he put a stake through her heart, for safety's sake, before the coffin was closed? Jenny had lain there like some Disney princess, rosy and beautiful, her dress ivy-green against white satin. Like all she needed was a kiss to wake her.
Giles was a Watcher. No way would he not think of it. And he'd do it. For love. It must be a kind of love, saving a person from eternal unlife as a demon's suit of skin. Love and necessity. Necessity was a Giles word, like duty and responsibility and maturity and caution. He was twice as grown up as any grown-up Willow had ever known.
She hoped Giles had done it, hoped with the same sick misery that she hoped they'd all live to see senior year, or summer, or tomorrow morning. Thinking of Jenny as a vampire was too awful. It was better to think of her rotting away slowly to earth and dust. Not awake, not thinking, not able to kill and torture and be hurt. It hurt vampires, being dusted. They screamed.
Willow could never do that to Jenny Calendar, or even to a demon wearing her face.
And that meant . . . something. She'd think about it tomorrow, or next week, when all this was over.
Date: 11/12/2003
Notes: Written for Darcydodo in the Back in the Day ficathon. Bold text comes from the funeral service in the Church of England prayer book.
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