Chapter Text
Gallowglass watched the smoke he’d just exhaled drift up into the night. One of the best things about being far, far away from Matthew and Marcus was being able to smoke if he wanted to, whenever he wanted to.
He’d fielded several phone calls from Granny in recent days about how unfeeling it was of him not to take a closer interest in his godchildren, particularly given that one of the wee lad’s names was in honor of him- and that Diana and Matthew had managed to satisfy his request that he be godparent to a blond babe.
He had no doubt Diana was disappointed that he had kept his distance since Matthew’s rescue. He doubted very much his uncle shared the sentiment.
He’d finally defended himself to Ysabeau by confessing that he’d been fool enough to let Diana find out that in his years of watching over her as Grandfather had requested, he’d fallen for her, despite knowing that no good could come of it. And what Diana knew, Matthew knew. There had been silence at the end of the line for a full five seconds before Ysabeau murmured ‘we will speak of it no more.’
She had, however, pointedly added that she would expect to see him at Matthew’s birthday party. Gallowglass had avoided answering.
He had no intention of stirring from the Outback anytime soon. So far as he knew, he was the only de Clermont- or Bishop-Clairmont- who liked spending time in Oz. The nearest relative would be that infernal daughter of Baldwin’s, and she wasn't even in the same time zone, much less the same continent. She was also unlikely to care about his presence, much less the reasons for it.
He was the only living soul for a hundred miles at least, and that suited him just fine.
At least, he was the only living soul for a hundred miles until the strange light show lit up the sky. At first he’d thought it was the aurora australis, but he’d never seen an aurora so localized- or that pulsed with the sensation he usually associated with witches. Then a warmblood had come plummeting out of it.
He was on his feet and running before she could hit the ground.
---
On the bright side, at least she wasn’t too high. Another twenty or thirty feet, and she’d have been looking at injury, but she’d jumped from this height before when she had no choice.
She resigned herself with a sigh to the rough landing, and was immensely surprised to find that she was not alone. Someone- a male someone with more gallantry than sense- had taken it on himself to try to break her ‘fall’. She supposed it was a nice gesture- after all, if she were a normal girl, it just might be high enough to kill her. As it was, they ended up in a highly undignified tangle of limbs, as she realized a split second too late that he actually intended to catch her.
Her would-be rescuer cursed in a language she didn’t recognize. The sound of it put her in mind of Anya for some reason. That was the first thing that made her think something was really not right. Well, that and the fact that the man appeared to be completely uninjured despite the impact of one-hundred odd pounds of flying Slayer.
Odds were he was no more a ‘normal’ human than she was.
On the bright side, she didn’t get any evil vibes from him. On the less bright side, her Slayer sense couldn’t quite figure out what he was.
“I am so sorry about that,” Buffy said, picking herself up and offering the huge blond a hand to help him up.
He raised a surprised eyebrow.
“You intended to kill yourself falling out of mid-air?” he asked wryly, clambering to his feet without her assistance.
Buffy snorted.
“I intended to arrive in Melbourne to help with a local problem. But it seems like my sister was exaggerating slightly when she said she had things under control. Am I at least on the right continent?”
The man blinked.
“If you mean the Melbourne in Australia, yes, you’re on the right continent. But you’re about a thousand miles off. Maybe more- I haven’t exactly been keeping an eye on the map lately.”
Now it was Buffy’s turn to blink. In this day and age, most people had given up navigating the old-fashioned way and relied on GPS.
“Ok, so I’m what, somewhere near Uluru?”
He laughed.
“Further. Karlamilyi National Park, in Western Australia.”
Now it was Buffy’s turn to swear.
“I don’t suppose you’re a magic user, are you?” she asked hopefully. “I really do need to be in Melbourne stat.”
---
“Afraid not,” he told her. “Though I do know a few witches. But they’re all in Europe now. I don’t know much of magic, but I doubt they can help you from there.”
The girl’s face fell only a little.
“That’s ok,” she sighed. “You being a magic user would have been a bit too much luck.”
“Too much luck? As in, so much it’s suspicious?” Gallowglass stifled a snicker at her superstitiousness. Then again, Aunty had showed him that some superstition was rooted in folk memory that survived despite modern humans determined ignorance of magic and creatures.
She pulled out a phone he didn’t recognize, and here he’d thought that between Marcus, Baldwin, and Hamish, he’d been kept apprised of all the latest and greatest in communications gadgets. She dialed, and he could hear the person on the other end answer- clearly not who she’d expected. The girl hung up immediately, looking confused. After she’d tried two more numbers and gotten the same results, she started to look unsettled.
“This is going to sound like a crazy question,” she said in a subdued tone, “but what year is it?”
Gallowglass was startled, but then realized it would make sense that Aunty couldn’t be the only time-spinner these days- or possibly in days yet to come. When he told her the year, though, the girl’s confusion only increased.
“I don’t understand,” she muttered, in an undertone soft enough that humans wouldn’t have heard it.
“Since you seem to be experiencing a problem, and I suspect you’ll need help in solving it,” Gallowglass said pleasantly, “perhaps we should introduce ourselves? My name is Gallowglass.”
The girl gave him a look as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.
“Gallowglass?” At his nod, she bit her lip slightly, as if she wanted to ask something else but couldn’t quite decide if it was a good idea or not. “I’m Buffy.”
“Buffy?” he asked, trying not to let the skepticism bleed into his tone. “Like the vampire slayer?”
“You’ve heard of me?” she asked in surprise.
Gallowglass eyed her closely. The show hadn’t been on TV in ten years. But the girl did look almost exactly like what he remembered from when Marcus had cajoled him into watching a few episodes so he’d have someone else to laugh with about it. Her hairstyle had changed, and her eyes a little different, but aside from that, she could pass for Buffy Summers.
“What’s in Melbourne?” he asked. “A convention?”
She frowned.
“A demon clan running amok,” she replied, suspicion not quite entirely concealed from vampire ears- or eyes. “They killed one Slayer and injured another.”
Gallowglass almost didn’t take her seriously, except for one important detail- he didn’t know any way someone playing at being a fictional character could appear out of thin air a hundred miles from the nearest town with no sign of a vehicle anywhere nearby. Real witches wouldn’t deal with wannabes.
He just hoped she didn’t attack him when he pointed out the obvious.
“I hate to say it, Buffy, but your problem might be a little bigger than I thought,” he said gently. “You’re more than just miles away from where you meant to be.”
She looked at him for only a split second before she got it.
“What- oh, no.” She seemed to deflate a little as she realized what he meant. “I’m in a different dimension?”
He nodded, impressed that she seemed to be a little quicker on the uptake what he remembered seeing. Then again, maybe the episodes he’d seen hadn’t shown her at her best. Her mother had just died. Or possibly she’d put the intervening years to good use- she hadn’t taken exception to the year when he’d said it. If time had run the same for her, she had another decade of experience under her stylish belt.
“But you recognized me!” she protested.
He’d never been so pleased to be a vampire- his kind of vampire- as he was now. He had a feeling she was not going to take this next bit well.
“There used to be a show on TV-”
As her eyes widened in outrage, Gallowglass decided with a small sigh that it might be just as well there were no other creatures within a hundred miles. Just when he’d thought he was done with warmblood women turning his life topsy-turvy...