A Barely Breathing Story: Epilogue: Logan

[jesterladyfic]

Epilogue: Logan

He blinks wearily, wondering why his eyes are having trouble focusing and why his chest feels like PCHers were pounding on it.

“His eyes are moving,” he hears someone say.

“Logan?” she asks.

“Ve-“ he starts to say and then coughs.

“Take it easy,” she says and he feels pressure on his hands like she’s gripping them. “You’re gonna need to take it easy for awhile.”

“What happened?” he asks, finally opening his eyes all the way.

She swims into focus before him and her eyes are red-rimmed and she looks like she’s barely slept and there are twigs in her hair, but she looks beautiful.

“You want the short version or the long version?” she asks, grinning at him.

It takes awhile because he keeps falling asleep on her but he finally hears the full version of what happened and how Willow eventually saved his life. Which is a bit awkward and he’ll have to think more on that later.

Later on he opens his eyes and finds practically everyone standing around his room.

“It’s your turn,” Buffy tells him with a wan smile. “Willow’s still with Tara though. She refuses to leave until Tara wakes up. She didn’t get the huge magic dose you did. Otherwise the doctors say you wouldn’t have woken up for maybe a week.”

“So magic saved me and best friendship saved the world?” he asks.

“Well, it was slightly more magical than that,” Giles says, taking off his glasses. Logan wonders how many times a day he does that. “It, uh...the magic she took from me, it-it did what I hoped it would do.”

“Oh. You dosed her,” Logan says. “You knew she was going to take your powers all along.”

“The gift I was given by the coven was the true essence of magic. Willow's magic came from a...place of rage and power.”

“And vengeance. Don't forget vengeance,” Anya pipes up from where she’s practically wrapped around Xander’s middle.

“Oh, how could I? In any case, the magic she took from me tapped into...the spark of humanity she had left. Helped her to feel again. Gave Xander the opportunity to...reach her. It was he who got to her in time. He saved us all.”
“I’ll only require you all to mention it every year on my birthday and Christmas,” Xander says, buffing his nails on his shirt.

“What’s going to happen to her now?” Dawn asks and Logan guesses that all the finer details haven’t really been worked out yet.

“She is not all well,” Giles says sadly. “To have taken a life…”

“She’s still Willow!” Xander says sharply.

“We know, Xan,” Buffy tells him softly. “But she’s not the same Willow.”

“I will be taking her to England with me,” Giles says, looking at Buffy. “She requires close guidance by the coven there. I-I would return but I feel my presence…someone she knows…might be…best.”

“We get it, Giles,” Buffy assures him with a smile.

On second look, Buffy looks better than Logan’s seen her since…they met.

“I will bring her back and we’ll be…back,” Giles says.

“And the nerds?” Logan asks.

“In jail. I’m personally going to testify on behalf of Jonathan though,” Buffy says.

Logan closes his eyes because it’s too hard to hold them open anymore.

“We should let him rest,” Veronica says, kissing his forehead.

He hears them all troop out from somewhere far away and then he’s back to the oblivion.

When he wakes up again it’s dark and Veronica’s sitting beside him, huge textbooks in her lap. She’s clean and bright again.

“Don’t-“ he tries to say and then clears his throat “-don’t you get saving the world exemption status from final exams?”

“You’d think in Sunnydale,” she tells him, slamming the book shut and leaning over him. “You okay?”

“Bullet wound aside? Fine.”

“You were a little bit brave there. Should I be worried?”

“I think that you have the right idea about the supernatural,” Logan says slowly. “Getting shot is so fun I think I want to save the world every week.”

“I don’t,” Veronica says, shuddering. “I’ve been so focused on the good stuff I never saw the bad coming until it hit the floor with a bullet-shaped hole in my boyfriend.”

“Told you so,” he says raggedly and tries to smirk.

It probably looks really weak because she smirks for him at him.

“You’re such a jackass,” she says.

“But you…love me,” he says and then slips away into the dark again.

“I do,” she says somewhere above him.