Chapter One: Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl

** Miles to go before you sleep ... **

Oh, God.

This wasn't how this was supposed to go, you know. According to the girls in charge, this wasn't supposed to hurt so much. The basic order of events was supposed to go; someone dies. Their soul leaves. My soul moves in and puts up much prettier window displays.

Ouch. Just ... ouch. That's all I can come up with right now.

"Doctor Jarvis? Is she ..." I hear something. Not all of it, though. The world's gone mono on me. "... 30 ccs of ... holy shit, her pulse shouldn't ... steady after stopping ..." It's like watching "ER" through flickering television snow. And of all the things I can think of right now, "I hate that show" is the first thing that pops into my head.

** You have perfect timing, my girl. **

I think my arm is broken.

Nope. No, I'm sure it is. I know broken bones like some people know sports stats. That is definitely my broken arm.

Ow. And my stitched-up abdomen, and ... ooo, there's a nice surprise ... the goose egg on my forehead.

Damn. Above all else, I'm going to miss broken arms that last about as long as a bad case of stomach flu for normal people. Stomach flus ... I never had a stomach flu. Colds, yeah, but never stomach flus. Oh, I am so not ready for this.

** It seems you died too early. Someone else was supposed to have died in your place. Pity, that.**

"... Jarvis, she's stable."

"For now."

Things are getting clearer. That's good. Confusing and mildly discomforting, but still, better than unconsciousness.

I want to wake up. Need to. Need to see the world I've ended up in. I'm in someone else's life now, someone else's shoes, someone else's ... I'm a girl, right?

I wiggle a little, and I do mean a little. I can't breathe a mental sigh of relief fast enough. Breast check complete. Requisite two in attendence. So I'm definitely a woman.

Oh, God. Or a sumo wrestler. "She" ... female sumo wrestler?

"Doctor, I think she's waking up."

I ignore the voices around me, trying to struggle back to the real world. My brain revs up, an engine that's been sitting around unused for a while. My body's screaming at me to relax and hold back, but no dice. No time for love, Doctor Jones. I have to wake up. I have to get better and get back home and tell everyone --

** We need you back in the fight. We need all the warriors we can get.**

"Miss Willis?"

Bright white light. That's all I can see. Painful fluorescent light crowding my vision. A dark blob encircled in a reddish-brown halo hovers over me. So things are getting worse, I see. I've gone to hell, and I'm apparently situated right next to the Amityville Horror.

"Miss Willis, can you hear me?"

I say nothing, and just nod. For all I know, simply saying "Yeah, sure" could be out of character.

The blob clears up a little as the light dims behind it. Well, pass out cigars, it's a girl. A middle-aged woman, actually. Latina, elegantly beautiful. Makes me wonder what the hell she's doing in a place that, so far, reminds me of a morgue.

She's got sweet eyes. Maternal eyes. Makes me want to reach out and hug her. She smiles and ... oh, look, her smile matches. "Miss Willis, I'm Doctor Jarvis. I'm the new doctor here in the infirmary. I heard I'm going to be seeing you often." Her smile widens, but I can't be comforted by it.

Infirmary? Infirmary is not a good word. Where are there infirmaries instead of hospitals? Military bases, maybe? Camp? UC Sunnydale had one. Oh, and ... jail. Jail has infirmaries.

She's still talking. "You were attacked by another one of the ladies. Her story is she was hired to do it. Won't say by who, but we've got her in isolation."

Isolation.

I tilt my head to the side. The walls are whitewashed. A row of beds stretches to the ceiling-high windows. Crisscrossing metal webbing reaches through the glass from top to bottom.

Willis is awfully close to Wilkins.

The Powers That Be had a body. They needed a warrior to fill it.

No. Not a chance. I've already got this T-shirt, thank you very much. They wouldn't do this to me twice. This is just cruel and unusual punishment of the worst kind.

"You, on the other hand, have been worse. After all the damage you sustained, your heart was ready to give out on us. But it just miraculously got back to work."

The doctor is looking at me again, and I turn my head to stare her in the eyes. She's warm and friendly, even going so far as to reach out and push a strand of dark hair (but I'm a blonde) from my eyes. She obviously hasn't been working here long. I've only been in this body for a minute and a half and I can tell.

She wants me to speak. Some kind of response for the whole "miraculous" thing. Hate to be cliched, but been there, done that.

I ask for a mirror.

"Uh, yeah. Tony?" She flashes me a fake reassuring glance, even though I can tell I've flustered her. How many people recently back from the dead ask for mirrors? A dark male hand -- I don't see the owner -- passes her a handheld mirror. The doctor opens her mouth to say something, bites it back, then holds up the mirror.

"There you are, Miss Willis."

I was wrong. They did do this to me.

Rumor has it that when you die, there are three things you need to look for. First off, there's the bright light. Oh, I definitely had that. Second, there's the long hallway to walk down. And third, the loved ones. Now, that, I didn't get. What I did get was a lecture about how I'd bought a ticket for a ride that hadn't opened yet and that they needed me to go back to the "It's a Small World" ride. In other words, back to the world of the lively for Buffy Anne Summers.

Nowhere in there does it say that I have to live in Faith's body.

Do you see it? Because I don't.

Okay, now I need to pass out. A lot.

I say the first thing that comes to mind.

I ask, My name is Willis?

The room goes silent. Doc shares a worried look with someone I can't see. It's the only thing I can think of. Fake amnesia. I can't pretend to be Faith. I didn't even bother trying last time. Better that I not remember who I was than I start acting all Buffy-like all of a sudden.

You can do this, Buffy. How many times did you catch Spike or Mom watching "Passions" and sit in just for the hell of it? You can fake amnesia. You can also switch babies, have affairs, and cause miscarriages with the best of them. Goes with your bachelor's in Soap Opera Life.

Doc flashes a light in my eyes. "You don't know who you are?"

Well, if I know who I am, would I have asked?

She flinches at that. A little too snappy, Summers. But incredibly in character.

Doc gives me the once-over, asks me the year (2001), the President (I thought they were supposed to stop asking that because it depressed people), what I know about myself. I know everything about myself. Faith was a walking question mark. So, I say nothing. Shake my head, and listen for the rattling sound.

See, Mom? No brains.

The doctor's getting desperate, I can tell. Amnesia's not a common jailhouse ailment, I'm gathering. Don't know how I'm going to explain it away when she gets really worried and starts taking those X-ray shots of my brain pan, but I'm voting for purely psychosomatic or whatever it's called where there's no brain damage.

In any event, spooked doctor. Right after spooked parental unit on the list of people you should never, ever scare.

I turn my head when I see movement, and it's the nurse guy, holding a file. Doc digs through the file folder, trying to be all supportive chick even though I think I just wandered into the realm of things Doc isn't prepared for.

She hands me the list of contacts from Faith's file. "Do any of these names looks familiar to you? Even the least little bit?"

I skim it just out of curiosity. A couple of totally British names ... Nigel something, Trevor whatever. Hey, look, Quentin Travers. And it's his home phone. And his address. Wow. Faith must be really unpopular.

Still cool, though. I see a number of highly intimate Strip-O-Grams in his future.

I skip over the rest of the list -- no one with a name that screams, "You know me! Over here!", so who cares? -- but freeze as soon as I hit the last name on it. I bite my lip, try to make it look as if I'm trying damn hard to recognize something and can't when the last name is doing the non-proverbial screaming fit.

Angel O'Brien.

Chapter Two