The Unexpected Universe: Everything I Own by Passion4Spike
Summary: A multi-chapter continuation of the Unexpected Series. Buffy and Spike find themselves transported into two different worlds. They face their hardest test yet as they each try to survive their worlds, find who did this to them, and get back to life as they knew it in the Unexpected Universe.

Warnings for angst, angst and more angst... You knew it was coming...




Categories: NC-17 Fics Characters: None
Genres: Action, Angst, Horror, Romance
Warnings: Adult Language, Sexual Situations, Violence
Challenges:
Series: Unexpected Universe by Passion4Spike
Chapters: 34 Completed: Yes Word count: 209984 Read: 105385 Published: 04/27/2011 Updated: 07/02/2011

1. Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Passion4Spike

2. What a Difference You've Made in My Life by Passion4Spike

3. Elusive Butterfly by Passion4Spike

4. Remember Me by Passion4Spike

5. You and Me Against the World by Passion4Spike

6. Hero by Passion4Spike

7. Lean On Me by Passion4Spike

8. Don't Cry Sister by Passion4Spike

9. Lost by Passion4Spike

10. Just The Way You Are by Passion4Spike

11. Bridge Over Troubled Water by Passion4Spike

12. How Do I Love Thee? by Passion4Spike

13. Time Passages by Passion4Spike

14. Blue Sky by Passion4Spike

15. Love Can Build a Bridge by Passion4Spike

16. You'll Never Walk Alone by Passion4Spike

17. One Way or Another by Passion4Spike

18. Not Like the Movies by Passion4Spike

19. Even Angels Fall by Passion4Spike

20. Magical Mystery Tour by Passion4Spike

21. Billy, Don't Be a Hero p1 by Passion4Spike

22. Billy, Don't Be a Hero p2 by Passion4Spike

23. Just One Last Dance by Passion4Spike

24. Changes (The Butterfly Effect) by Passion4Spike

25. Home Sweet Home by Passion4Spike

26. Acapella by Passion4Spike

27. Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground by Passion4Spike

28. You Save Me by Passion4Spike

29. It’s a Small World by Passion4Spike

30. If Tomorrow Never Comes, Part 1 by Passion4Spike

31. If Tomorrow Never Comes, Part 2 by Passion4Spike

32. Wild Angels by Passion4Spike

33. Follow Your Heart by Passion4Spike

34. A note from P4S and 'Blue-boy', her blue-eyed muse by Passion4Spike

Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy’s Birthday, January 19th, 2005 – good things always happen on her birthday … right?
**
Music Referenced:
Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Performed by the cast of Glee):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNHTCglQ_Wk
  **~**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' for her suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
A VERY BRIEF synopsis of the past in this AU:



In 1998, Spike helped Buffy defeat Angelus and Acathlea, accidently dusting Dru in the process. In his rage over losing Dru, Spike fought with Angelus and inadvertently got his soul restored at the same time Angel did when Willow did the spell. When Buffy and Spike took comfort in each other's arms and fell in love, the monks entrusted them with 'The Key', a child made of them, their first daughter, Annie. Spike and Buffy were married just before her birth and Spike claimed her at that time, bringing the Slayer into the clan (she's still the Slayer, not a vamp). They share dreams and can communicate telepathically through the bond, but both of them must open it in order to do so. They later learned that there were many different dimensions and pieces of their souls were spread across them; weighty decisions caused the dimensions to splinter off and create even more worlds.

In May of 2003, a Buffy from one of these splintered dimensions (we call it the 'Evil Joss Dimension', which splintered into the 'Rome' dimension) had a huge decision to make: leave Spike in the Hellmouth to burn alone, or stay with him, make him understand fully how much she loved him. When part of her soul chose to stay and burn with him, the dimensions splintered again and the pieces of their soul, along with the memories from that dimension, were folded back into the the Unexpected Universe's Spike and Buffy as dreamy recollections. As a reward for their bravery, the PTB blessed them with two more children, twins: Danielle Dawn and William Rupert.

After another vamp went after the Gem of Amarra, Spike retrieved the it from it's hiding place in Sunnydale and it is now embedded in his chest, next to his heart, protecting him at all times.

To help with the care of the babies, Buffy and Spike hired a live in nanny, a friend of Anyas and ex-vengeance demon: Hallie. When Hallie (who Spike knew as Cecily from his human life) made a move on her husband, Buffy and her friends retaliated and Willow accidentally turned Hallie into a rat. Hallie-rat was kept as a pet for some time, before escaping its cage and disappearing a few months ago.


**



Time Line/History and notes:



Now: January, 2005



**



History:

Joshua "JJ" Harris was born on April 21st, 2004

The twins (Danielle, "Dani" and William, "Billy") were born on February 12th, 2004.

Annie was born on February 14th, 1999

Spike and Buffy were married in February 1999

Buffy was born January 19th, 1981

William/Spike was turned by Dru in 1880; first came to Sunnydale in September of 1997



All the Potentials were endowed with full Slayer power in February 2003.

Buffy and Spike learned of the other dimensions and got the memories from the 'Rome' Universe in May, 2003.



**



Keep in mind that both Buffy and Spike have the memories from both the 'Evil Joss' universe (basically BtVS canon, which in my world went off canon in S5 of Angel and turned into what I called the Rome!Universe) and the 'Unexpected' universe, despite them not actually having lived in the 'Evil Joss' universe since very early on (S2). A part of their souls from the 'Evil Joss' universe were combined with the 'Unexpected' universe at the end of the main story. Does that help or just make it more confusing? Not sure. Some people were confused as to how Buffy knows who Dawn is ...thus the explaination/reminder.



**~**



Wednesday, January 19th, 2005 – Buffy’s Birthday – early morning:



Buffy and Spike walked leisurely, hand in hand, along a winding path that circled a crystal clear lake. The warm air was filled with the sweet fragrance of the tropical flowers that covered the valley for as far as they eye could see, and the soft sand of the path was warm beneath their bare feet. There were flowers of every color and shape imaginable, and butterflies flitted lazily from flower to flower, back and forth across the path all around them. The sun tingled the lover’s bare arms and faces and felt amazing … unlike any sunlight they’d ever felt before – as if it was infused with magic.







When Buffy stopped to smell a dusty pink rose, one of the butterflies landed on her shoulder.



“Don’t move, pet,” Spike whispered to her as he watched the butterfly open and close its wings slowly as it rested on her shoulder.







“What is it?” Buffy asked, trying to look to the side to see what he was looking at.



“A butterfly … some say butterflies are the souls of those who have died as they wait to pass through purgatory … waitin’ to get into heaven – or not,” Spike explained, keeping his voice even.



“May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun, and find your shoulder to light on; to bring you luck, happiness and riches today, tomorrow and beyond,” Spike recited an old Irish blessing.



The butterfly suddenly took off and circled twice around them before flying out over the lake and out of view. It was the most beautiful iridescent blue she’d ever seen – well, perhaps not the most beautiful, but second, right after the color of Spike’s eyes.







“So a dead person landing on my shoulder is good luck?” Buffy questioned as she watched it fly away. “Doesn’t sound very lucky for them,” she pointed out.



Buffy turned to see why he hadn’t responded with some smart remark, but as she glanced around she found herself alone. “Spike?







“Darn …” Buffy moaned, she had been looking forward to spending more time here with him. An agenda of skinny dipping and naked Marco Polo in the clear, cool water of the lake had been the plan that she’d come up with when they found themselves in this paradise within their shared dream.



Buffy waited there a little while longer, but when Spike didn’t come back, she willed herself awake to see where he’d gone. Maybe he heard one of the babies crying and had gotten up to check on them.



Buffy rolled over in bed and stretched her arm out to feel for Spike next to her, but what she felt wasn’t Spike. Her hand met a warm body in the bed next to her – a rather large, warm body – definitely not Spike. Buffy’s eyes flew open to see who or what it was. Her eyes went wide in surprise and shock – her throat closed up as she tried to scream – she couldn’t get any sound to come out. Buffy scrambled off the bed, tangling in the sheets and falling on the floor as she tried to get away – to put distance between herself and Riley Finn.



Buffy looked around for a weapon – a stake, a sword – a brick, anything, but couldn’t find anything at all. All the commotion had awoken Riley and he looked at her with confusion.







“What’s the matter? Another dream?” he asked her sleepily as he stretched his arms up over his head and yawned.



Buffy’s mouth opened and closed as she tried to form words, but nothing came out – she looked around the room in a panic – her brain trying to process what was happening.



How could Riley Finn be alive? Spike … Spike killed him years ago!



Why is he in my bed? Buffy’s eyes darted quickly around the room - a room she didn't recognize. Wait, this isn’t my bed! Why am I in his? What the fuck is going on?!



“Riley Finn?” Buffy finally managed, backing towards the one door in the room as she continued looking around for some kind of weapon.



“Buffy – what’s wrong?” Riley asked, getting up out of the bed.



Buffy was glad to see that they both at least had pajamas on. What the hell is going on?!



“I… What…? How...?” Buffy stammered, unable to form complete thoughts or sentences. Finally she managed to ask, “What have you done? Where am I? Where are the babies? Where’s Spike?!”



Riley looked at her with confusion and then smiled. “That’s a new name for ‘Your Little Soldier’ … 'Spike'? Hmmm… I like it …”



“What!? NO!” Buffy screamed at him, shaking her head back and forth. “Where’s Spike!? My husband … Spike!”



“Buffy, what are you talking about? Did you stop taking your meds again?” Finn asked her, concern now creasing his features.



“You know we talked about this and you promised that you’d take them every day like the doctor said. You can’t just decide to stop – you know what that does to you,” Riley said, his voice bordering between pleading and resigned.



Riley started moving around the bed towards Buffy and she tensed, ready for an attack, but Riley stopped at a dresser on the wall and began pulling bottles of pills out of one of the drawers. He dumped pills out of six different bottles onto his palm and held them out to Buffy. “Here, just start back today – everything will be ok again in a little while,” he assured her.







Buffy looked from his face to the pills in his hand. Had he totally lost his mind? Had she lost hers? Maybe this was a dream … a totally fucked up dream. Buffy pinched herself on the arm to try and wake up … but nothing happened except for raising a red welt on her skin – Riley was still here; she was still here.



“Where is Spike?” she asked again through a clenched jaw, her hands balling into fists at her sides.



“Buffy, please just take your meds …” Riley suggested again, moving a step closer to her, the pills in the palm of his outstretched hand.



Buffy swatted the pills out of his hand; they flew into the air and scattered on the floor.



“Goddamnit, Buffy! You know you need those!” he admonished her. As Riley turned to get more pills from the bottles, Buffy launched herself at him, shoving him against the dresser and knocking everything that was on it down with a loud clatter – shattering the mirror and lamp that were atop it and scattering a rainbow of pills across the floor.



Riley yelled out before Buffy grabbed him by the throat and shoved him further back against the wall. “WHERE. IS. SPIKE!?” she demanded again as Riley tried to free himself from her grasp. “WHAT. HAVE . YOU. DONE?!”



“Buffy…STOP!” Riley choked out past her grasp. He hooked one leg around hers and pulled with all his strength, knocking her to the floor and away from his throat. Riley backed away from her as he rubbed his throat and tried to breathe.



Buffy jumped back up and started slowly towards him again. “Where is Spike?” she asked again.



“I don’t know any Spike…” Riley insisted, holding one hand up in the air, silently signaling for her to stop.



“You do! … Hostile 17,” Buffy amended. “Where’s Hostile 17?”



Riley finally stood back up straight and looked at her with confusion. “Buffy … you dusted all the hostiles when we shut down the Initiative years ago. Are you back on the magicks? Is that what this is?”



Buffy’s throat tightened and she felt all the air leave her lungs. “No…no that’s … I would never do that. I would never dust Spike – even when…even before… NO! You’re lying!” she accused, moving towards him again.



“I’m not lying, Buffy … you insisted on dusting them all personally,” Riley insisted, backing against the wall and holding both hands up in the air in front of him in surrender. “If you’ll just take your meds, everything will be okay in a little while.”



“NO! NO MEDS! Where’s Spike?! Where are my kids? What have you done!?” Buffy screamed at him, launching herself at him again and landing a hard roundhouse kick in his stomach. When Riley bent over in pain, Buffy wrapped her arms around his neck and tightened down. “Tell me what you’ve done! Fix it and I won’t kill you!” she screamed at Riley as he struggled to get free from her hold.



Buffy heard the door behind her open and she turned just in time to see Dawn with a tranquilizer gun. It seemed like time slowed down as she watched Dawn bring the gun up to her shoulder and pull the trigger. The first dart hit Buffy in the arm and she screamed out in pain, releasing Riley so she could pull it out before she was injected with too much of the drug.







Before Buffy could get the first dart out, another one hit her in the hip, then a third in her thigh. Buffy felt herself losing control of her body as the drugs in the darts started coursing through her system. She felt dizzy and nauseous … her legs gave out and she fell to the floor in a heap – unable to move, barely able to remain conscious.



Buffy battled the drugs with sheer willpower to remain awake … she was in a fog, but she fought to listen to what was going on around her.



Riley picked her up off the floor and laid Buffy back down on the bed, pulling the darts out and handing them back to Dawn before covering his wife up with a blanket.



“What happened?” Dawn asked, taking the darts back from him.



“I don’t know – she just went berserk – again! I think she’s off her meds – also again! Maybe even back on the dark magicks!” Riley ranted, pacing back and forth next to the bed. “I can’t handle her when she’s like this – you better call Andrew and have him send a couple of Potentials over here to help until we can get her stabilized again.”



“You know Giles doesn’t like doing that – he says it’s bad for morale for the girls to see her all Looney-Tunes like this …” Dawn pointed out.



“Which is why I said to call Andrew!” Riley yelled back at Dawn.



“Hey! Don’t take it out on me – I just saved your ass! Next time I could just let her put you back in the hospital!” Dawn retorted as she turned to leave the room in a huff.



“Dawnie – look, I’m sorry,” Riley sighed, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. “I’m just … just tired. I don’t know how to get her to stay on her meds. She gets pissed if I try to watch her take them, she gets pissed if I ask her if she’s taken them – counting them doesn’t work, she just takes them out of the bottles and flushes them.



“Now she’s raving on about Hostile 17! As if I could remember one hostile out of all the ones we dusted down there…" Riley lamented.



“I’m just at a loss – I don’t know how to help her anymore. It’s like being married to a grizzly bear … and I’m a salmon swimming upstream – she’s just waiting to bite my head off.”



Dawn sighed and rolled her eyes. “I know … she’s pissed with me 50% of the time, too – the other 50% I don't think she knows I exist. She’s never really been the same, has she?”



Riley sat down heavily on the end of the bed and rested his forehead in his hands. “No … she never has. I blame myself for that…I just – Willow said she could do it and … well, I guess she did, didn’t she? But I shouldn’t have let her even try to bring her back – we should’ve found another way.”



Dawn laid the tranq gun down on the dresser and sat down on the bed next to Riley with a heavy sigh. “I remember that night – God! I was so happy to see her! I just knew that everything would be alright with Buffy back. We could all stop cowering in the basement of City Hall … she would get rid of those motorcycle demons that had taken over Sunnydale and we could all go back to a normal life. Everyone would come back to town and everything would be ok again.”



“Yeah …” Riley agreed, thinking back. “I was just awestruck seeing her again … I mean we all did what we could to keep the peace in town that summer she was gone, but, let’s face it, an ex-soldier, an ex-vengeance demon, an ex-librarian, a teenage girl, a couple of witches, and Xander don’t strike a lot of fear in the hearts of demons.”



Dawn snorted softly. “Yeah … but Buffy did! She ran them out of town so fast… God, it was so great!” she enthused, smiling at the memory of Buffy kicking the demons’ collective asses.



“Maybe I should’ve swallowed my pride and called Angel to help us…” Riley offered. “It would’ve been nice to have someone on our side that had vampire strength to fight those demons.”



“You know Giles wouldn’t have let you – not after what Angelus did to him …” Dawn offered. “He barely tolerated Angel when Buffy was there – he might’ve staked him if he had shown up without her to intervene.”



Riley sighed. “Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed. “That was one long summer. I don’t know how they found out so fast that we didn’t have a Slayer in town. Those demons were like a swarm of locusts in a cornfield…they devoured everything in their path.”



Dawn gave him a funny look and rolled her eyes.



“Sorry – my ‘Iowa’ is showing, isn’t it?” he asked with a small smile.



“Just a little,” Dawn agreed, holding up her hand with her thumb and forefinger close together.



The demons had taken over Sunnydale that summer Buffy had been dead – running most of the citizens out of town. The ones that dared remain huddled together in the basement of City Hall for safety at night – only venturing out in groups during the day to launch counter-attacks, set booby-traps for the demons, or search for food. It had been a very dark time in the history of Sunnydale, and in the life of the Scoobies, without anyone with Slayer or vampire strength on their side to help them fight.



Buffy remained in the bed, unable to move, fighting to stay conscious and concentrate on what was happening with all her strength. She tried to piece things together – to figure out what was going on. Obviously, this wasn’t her dimension – since Dawn was here – this had to be one of the other dimensions. How had she gotten here? And still she wondered where was Spike? Riley acted like he didn’t even know Spike – and certainly he did. But, of course, if he was behind the scheme, he wouldn’t admit to knowing Spike, would he?



Her foggy brain worked to bring the memories from the other dimension that had been folded into hers all those years ago back to the forefront of her mind, but still what they were saying didn’t fit. Nothing seemed to fit … nothing made sense.



Buffy tried to listen to what Riley and Dawn were saying – but their words started to slur … or was it her hearing that was slurred? She felt them get up off the bed and heard a door close … had they both gone? She couldn’t tell … she tried to listen, but didn’t hear anything. She tried to move, but her body still would not function. She felt a black veil descend over her as the drugs finally won the battle and sent her into a deep sleep.



**~**









Buffy found herself walking in a canyon or a crater, surrounded by high walls made of rock and sand. Some of the walls had plateaus on top of them, while others were jagged, rocky points. Everything was red it seemed – the ground, the sand, the rocks – even the sky was red with purple swirls of what appeared to be clouds. There was a cold wind that whipped through the canyon, swirling and sending sand and dust into the air, making it hard to see or even breathe. Buffy found a rock outcropping and ducked behind it to get a reprieve from the wind and get her bearings.



She had never seen this place before – it looked like the surface of Mars – barren, desolate, apparently void of life – and cold, extremely cold. She shivered as she pulled her thin sweater closed and wrapped her arms around her body. She tried to will herself out of this place – to change the dream, to go back to the tropical paradise she had been in with Spike just before waking up to the bizarro-world she’d found herself in with Riley and Dawn, but nothing changed.



“Fine…” she muttered to herself as she changed tactics and tried to put herself in a thick jacket or a spacesuit – anything to stop the bone-chilling cold, but still nothing changed.



Buffy slumped down on the ground in her little rock enclave out of the wind and made herself as small as she could, trying to conserve warmth as she worked to piece together what was going on. Clearly, she had been transported to the wrong dimension somehow … which meant that she could get back. If she was here, then did that mean there was some crazy Buffy who needed her meds lying in her bed with Spike? Buffy shuddered at the thought – what if crazy-Buffy went ‘grizzly bear’ on Spike and dusted him? Oh no – she couldn’t! Spike had the Gem of Amarra!



“Thank God for small favors …” Buffy muttered to herself, relaxing slightly – at least he would be ok until someone figured out how to fix this.



She wondered who was behind it? Riley Finn seemed the first choice, since it was his bed she had awoken in, but did he have that kind of power? Certainly he had the knowledge of the supernatural and probably knew about different dimensions … and he had friends in the army that might have that power…



Suddenly, something that looked like a large shooting star fell from the sky and landed with a soft thud out in the center of the canyon, sending more dust and sand flying up into the air. Buffy peeked out from behind her rocks to see what it was…



A man she didn’t recognize stood up and looked around – he seemed just as confused as Buffy was about where he was or what he was doing here. As he was standing near the center of the crater, trying to get his bearings, the sand around him began to ripple and undulate. Buffy stood up to get a better look, but ducked quickly back into her hiding place when dozens of huge, hairy, black spiders emerged from under the sand and began to converge on the man. The man screamed … he was surrounded by them … there was no escape.







“Oh God!” Buffy exclaimed, covering her ears, as the man yelled and begged for someone to help him, but she could still hear him clearly.



“Fuck!” she yelled as she ran out from her hiding place and towards the man and the spiders. They were within inches of him now … there had to be at least fifty of the hairy, giant arachnids.



“Sword!” Buffy demanded of her dream, holding out her hand; but nothing appeared.



“Stake!” Nothing.



“God damn it! Scythe!” she demanded vehemently, but still nothing appeared in her hand.



“Bug spray!” she tried, but nothing happened.



Buffy reached the outer ring of spiders just as the inner ring reached the man. She began stomping on them with her boots, sending bright purple blood and viscera squirting out of their fat bodies. She kept fighting her way towards the center of the ring, stomping, kicking, and, only as a last resort, punching and hitting the spiders with her hands, but she was too late to help the man. The spiders covered him, biting him with their large pincers until he collapsed and then dragging him under the sand with them.



Suddenly, the remaining spiders that hadn’t made it to the man all turned on Buffy at once … and more surfaced from under the sand behind her. Now she was surrounded …



Buffy began trying to fight a path through them, but for each one she killed, it seemed that two took its place. They were grabbing at her with their pincers and their many legs – which all had sharp claws on the ends, ripping her jeans and drawing blood.



“STOP! STOP! WAKE UP!” she screamed, trying to get out of the nightmare. She wasn’t sure which was worse, this nightmare or the one she knew she would face when she woke back up with Riley and Dawn…but she was sure she’d prefer Riley and Dawn to these giant spiders.







“SCYTHE!” she demanded again, as she kept fighting with bare hands and boots, but no weapon appeared for her. One of the spiders jumped up and landed on her chest, nearly catching her throat in its mandibles, Buffy grabbed it in both hands and pried it off, tossing it away from her as she kept fighting with all her strength against the onslaught. She kept moving towards the wall of the crater, if she could get the wall to her back, at least she wouldn’t have to defend that flank.



“BUFFY!” she heard Spike’s voice off to one side of her. She looked around, but didn’t see him.







“BUFFY! HERE! UP HERE!” he shouted. She looked up and saw Spike on the rim of the crater. He was running, scrambling, climbing as fast as he could over the peaks and piles of rock that lined the upper rim of the crater, trying to get to her.



“SPIKE!” she screamed as she fought her way towards him. When she got to the wall, Spike slid and scrambled down onto a ledge about ten feet above her and lay down, extending his hand to her.



“JUMP!” he instructed her and Buffy jumped as high as she could, catching his hand with both of hers.



Spike held on tight to her arm and pulled with all his strength to get her up onto the ledge with him. Buffy kicked with her legs and scrambled against the sheer rock wall until finally they both fell backwards onto the safety of the ledge.



Three spiders had jumped onto hers legs as he was pulling her up and they began biting and tearing into her flesh. She screamed and kicked one of them off and Spike knocked another off the ledge with a powerful kick before he stomped the third one and killed it.



“God, Buffy! Are you alright, luv? What’s goin’ on?” Spike asked her, examining her wounds and trying to stop her bleeding.



“Spike!” Buffy exclaimed, pulling him away from her legs and into a tight hug. “I don’t know – where are we? What is this place?”











Spike held her to him, burying his face against her neck and willing the dream to end … but he’d tried that before and it hadn’t worked then, either.



Buffy pulled back and looked into his eyes. “What’s going on?” she asked him the same thing he’d asked her and he shook his head – he didn’t know.



“The babies – where are the babies?” Buffy questioned and Spike shook his head again.



“Is this a dream? What is this place? Who was that guy?” Buffy threw questions out, but all Spike could do was shake his head.



Spike led Buffy away from the edge of the ledge … the spiders were waiting below – the warriors could hear the spider’s claw-tipped legs tapping eagerly on the rocks below them, just waiting for one of them to fall or venture back onto the canyon floor.



They sat down with their backs against a rock wall and Buffy started by telling Spike about waking up in the other dimension – about Riley and Dawn and crazy-grizzly-druggie-Buffy and everything that she heard them talk about.



“Why did you leave me after the butterfly flew away? What happened after you woke up?” Buffy asked Spike when she’d finished.



“I was here …” he told her, waving his hand over the barren, red wasteland.



“Where is here?” she asked him.



“I have no bloody idea…” Spike moaned, shaking his head slowly.







“Fell from the bloody sky … landed down there,” he indicated the canyon below with the wave of an arm. “Them overgrown daddy-longlegs attacked me … only got out ‘cos another bloke fell outta the sky and landed on top of half of ‘em!” he explained, still shaking his head.



Spike took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Climbed up on some rocks … just kept climbin’ … finally figured out the bloody things can’t climb with them sharp buggerin' claws, they just slide off.”



“Spike, what’s going on?” Buffy asked again, leaning against him as she began to shiver again – there was no protection from the cold wind up here on the ledge. Spike shrugged out of his duster and wrapped it around her before pulling her close to him, trying to shield her from the cold.



“I’m in some bizzaro-world – apparently married to Riley Finn and you’re here … on the surface of a red moon – with ravenous, steroidal spiders. I’m pretty sure I’m asleep, but I can’t control anything here – I can’t get out, I can’t get weapons … I can’t get warm. None of it makes any sense!” she exclaimed, snuggling closer to him and tucking tightly in against his side. “Do you think you’re still at home asleep and this is a dream for you, too?”



“Not my idea of the perfect romantic getaway with m’ birthday girl…” Spike tried to joke.



Spike’s voice turned solemn, quietly serious. “I don’t know, luv – it certainly looks and feels surreal enough to be a dream, but I can’t wake up out of it and those spiders bite like they’re bloody real.”



“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too…” Buffy agreed, reaching down to touch the wounds on her legs. The bleeding had nearly stopped, but they still hurt … some of the wounds were pretty deep.







“I've a feelin’ we're not in Kansas any-bloody-more, Toto,” Spike said quietly, looking around at the desolate landscape.



“What do we do now?” Buffy asked him sadly – afraid that he had the same plan she did – which was none.



Spike tucked her head under his chin, hugging her close to him and trying to keep her protected from the cold wind. “I ‘aven’t got a single buggering clue, luv.”



**~**



{{Click here to hear "Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by the cast of Glee on YouTube }}



Way up high

There’s a land

that I dreamed of once

Once in a lullaby



Somewhere over the rainbow-

Skies are blue

and the dreams

that you dare to dream

really do come true



Someday I'll wish upon a star

and wake up

where the clouds are far behind me

Where troubles melt like lemon drops

high above the chimney tops

that's where you'll find me



Somewhere over the rainbow-

Bluebirds fly

If birds fly

above the rainbow, why

Oh, why can't I?

End Notes:
TBC ...

Don't feel bad if you're as confused as Buffy and Spike for the first few chapters, as they work through their predicament. The answers to your questions will be revealed in time (I hope! If they aren't, ask me!).

This has turned out to be a very long and very angsty story. If you like angst, you're going to be very, very happy ... or very sad ... not sure. Either way, keep the tissues handy! I'll try update regularly, at least once a week, more often, if possible.

You know my muse loves hearing from you!! Don't be shy!
What a Difference You've Made in My Life by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy tries to piece together what’s going on with her and Spike and the bizzaro-worlds they’ve been cast into.
**
Music Referenced:
What a Difference You've Made in My Life, BJ Thomas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wum38dMW5R8
  **~**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Wednesday, January 19th, 2005 – mid-afternoon:
 
Buffy woke with a pounding in her head and sharp pains in her legs, arm, and hip. She opened her eyes slowly - the room was dark, the curtains drawn, she appeared to be alone. Buffy sat up groggily as her eyes adjusted to the dim light coming from behind the curtains. Her hand instantly went to rub her forehead, trying to cease the constant pounding of bongo drums in her head, but she quit when pain ran down her arm from where the first dart hit her. She’d never been shot by a tranq gun before – she didn’t realize how much that hurt.
 
Buffy pulled the covers off her legs and gasped when she saw the sheets were soaked in blood. Her legs were covered in dried blood, scratches, gouges and bites; the sheets looked like she’d bled a pint onto them. “What the fuck?” Buffy mumbled to herself – she’d never had a dream manifest itself physically like this before.
 
This just kept getting more and more bizarre. Which was the dream? The Riley/Dawn dimension or the giant spider dimension? Were neither of them dreams? Or both? She wondered if Spike had awoken and, if he had, where he was. Back at home with the babies and their friends, or was he in some other dimension too? She hoped that he'd been able to get out of that cold, red world, at least. She reached out through their bond, just in case he was in this dimension with her, but she got nothing – she couldn’t feel him at all.
 
Buffy got up slowly, her head spun slightly at the change in elevation, and she leaned against the wall for support hoping she wouldn’t get sick or collapse. When the room stopped spinning, Buffy took a deep breath as she took a step on her bruised and bloodied legs, afraid they might not support her fully, but they seemed to be holding. Buffy pulled the curtains back to let some light into the room and then walked over to the dresser that Riley had gotten the pills out of and began opening drawers silently, searching each one … for what, she didn’t know. Clues?
 
One drawer was full of pill bottles … she picked each one up and read the name … they were all hers. There were medications that she didn’t recognize from doctors she didn't know, most of them names she couldn’t even pronounce – certainly not antibiotics or anything she’d taken before … citalopram, escitalopram, fluoxetine, paroxetineamitriptyline, desipramine, venlafaxine, duloxetine, dopamine, diazepam …




 
Buffy shook her head. If they were cramming all these pills down her, no wonder she acted like a grizzly bear. Buffy opened the next drawer and it was full of papers – printouts about the various medicines. She scanned through the papers and saw that they were for depression, mania, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, ADHD. It seemed to her they weren’t able to make up their minds about what she had, so they just kept throwing pills at her.
 


“One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small … and the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all,” Buffy murmured the old Jefferson Airplane song to herself as she closed that drawer and opened the next one.

 
The rest of the drawers just held clothes – hers and Riley’s. She noted there were no weapons in any of the drawers, which seemed odd – but then, if she’d attacked people before, maybe not so odd.
 
Buffy pulled out a t-shirt and some jeans, along with underwear and a bra and changed out of her pajamas. If she had to make a quick exit, she didn’t want to be running around town in blood-soaked, shorty PJs. Buffy held the jeans up and shook her head – she’d never be able to get these on … they were too small, she was sure.
 
"Bitch…” Buffy softly cursed her alter-ego self for still having the body of a teenager.
 
Since there wasn’t much choice, Buffy sat down on the bed, prepared to lie down and stop breathing in order to get them zipped. To her surprise, they slid on easily … no tugging or straining or breath holding required. That was weird - maybe this is the 'things appear smaller than they actually are' dimension.
 
Buffy picked up a brush off the dresser and ran it through her hair, but she’d broken the mirror earlier, so she couldn’t really tell what it looked like, but it felt oddly short. Oh well, she wasn’t here to win a beauty contest; she needed to get some answers and get back home.
 
Buffy paused at the door of the room and listened. She could hear voices outside – Riley and Dawn. Buffy took a deep breath and opened the door.  She no sooner stepped out into the hallway when she was stopped by two girls, one on each side of the door, grabbing her arms. Buffy reacted instinctively, slamming her arms backwards and pulling the girls with them. Their heads banged hard against the wall on either side of the doorway, causing them to let go of Buffy’s arms. Buffy grabbed her attackers by the back of their shirts and began dragging them down the hallway, towards the voices she’d heard through the door.
 
“Sorry girls…but hey, you think I’m crazy anyway….should be used to it,” Buffy muttered as she pulled them along and thwarted their efforts to get free of her grasp.
 
At the sound of the skirmish, Riley picked up the tranq gun and had it trained on Buffy as she came out of the hallway with the two Potentials in tow. Buffy tossed one of the girls at him, making him step to the side in order to avoid being knocked down, and then she lifted the other up in front of her to use as a shield.
 
“Put her down, Buffy,” Riley demanded, trying to get a clear shot.


 
“Put the gun down, Riley!” Buffy retorted, keeping the frightened Potential between herself and him.  “I don’t want to hurt her, but I will …. you know I can …”
 
Buffy narrowed her eyes at him, hoping he wouldn’t be able to see through her bluff. "So looks like you have a choice…toss the gun away and give me answers or…”
 
“Buffy … please just put her down. We’ll get you back on your meds and everything will be ok. Just trust me,” Riley begged her.
 
“I’m not putting her down until you lose the gun,” Buffy informed him, wrapping her arm around the girl’s throat and tightening down on it. “The gun or the girl …” she threatened.
 
Riley immediately raised the tranq gun over his head and tossed it off to one side. He’d seen Buffy hurt more than one person in the past when she’d been off her meds … he didn’t want to be responsible for her hurting this one. Buffy pushed the girl away, straight at Riley, as she dove over to where he tossed the gun and picked it up, rolling back up to her feet with it in her hands.
 
“Ok… good, that’s better,” Buffy breathed, taking the darts out of the gun and tossing them away before dropping the weapon back down onto the floor.
 
Riley, Dawn, and the two Potentials looked at her with emotions ranging from fear to worry to exasperation.
 
“Let’s talk…” Buffy started, waving her arm at the couch they had just been sitting on in what was obviously the living room of a small apartment. “You two can go…” she said to the Potentials – she didn’t recognize them and didn’t want to muddle the water further with complete strangers.
 
Riley nodded at them and the two frightened girls scurried out the front door. Dawn and Riley sat down on the couch as Buffy stood in front of them, pacing back and forth … trying to decide where to begin.
 
“Ok – here’s the thing, I don’t belong here. This is some kind of fucked up dimension – not mine, and I just want to go home,” she explained. Dawn and Riley looked at each other a moment before turning their attention back to her.
 
“Buffy – if you’d just get back on your meds…” Riley pleaded again.
 
“NO! No meds! I don’t take meds! I am not crazy!” Buffy yelled at them, stopping her pacing and facing them. “I’m not from this dimension,” she started again. “We need to call a Scooby meeting and do some research … I need to get back to where I belong. If we can just find the portal – I can use some of Dawn’s blood to open it and go home.”
 
“Buffy,” Dawn began, “We’ve been through this before … you aren’t from another dimension. You should listen to Riley … if you’d just get back on your meds…”
 
“God damn it!” Buffy yelled at them. “Are you not listening to me?! I am not your wife!” Buffy exclaimed, pointing at Riley. “I’m married to Spike … we have three kids, we live in Sunnydale on Crawford Street …”
 
“At the mansion? Angelus’ mansion?” Dawn asked with concern.
 




“Yeah … at the mansion – but it’s not Angel’s now, it’s ours,” Buffy replied.
 
“Yours and someone named ‘Spike’?” Dawn questioned with a tone of disbelief. “What kind of a name is Spike, anyway?”
 
“His real name is William … Spike's - it’s a nickname. He’s a vampire with a soul …”
 
Dawn’s and Riley’s eyebrows shot up.
 
“Like Angel?” Dawn asked softly.
 
“Yeah …no, sort of,” Buffy stammered. “That’s not important – I just need to get home to my real life, to my kids.”
 
“Buffy, you don’t have any kids … you said you would never bring children into this world. That it would be crazy for anyone to bring children into a world full of evil and even crazier for a Slayer to subject children to the kind of life that we lived,” Riley repeated what Buffy had told him time and time again over the years. He had desperately wanted to have a family, to move back to Iowa and have a normal life, but she’d refused vehemently.
 
“No…I do have kids – three, it’s hard, but we manage to keep them safe,” Buffy argued.
 
“You and this vampire … a vampire named ‘Spike’?” Dawn questioned.
 
“And our friends – Giles, Xander, Anya, Willow, Tara, and Lorne … everyone helps.”
 
Riley and Dawn looked at each other again. She’d really lost it this time.
 
“Buffy – most of those people you just named are … they’re dead,” Riley pointed out softly.
 
“WHAT!? HOW!? NO! That’s not true! You’re lying! This isn’t real!” Buffy screamed at him as her gut tightened at the thought of all her friends being dead. This isn’t real … this isn’t real. They’re fine … they’re at home and they’re fine and you just need to get back to them, Buffy admonished herself silently.
 
“You’re creating this different world, this different dimension, to escape the reality of your life,” Riley interrupted her thoughts, repeating what he’d been told by more than one of Buffy’s doctors over the years.
 
Buffy sighed heavily and rubbed at her eyes. “Noooo, I’m not. Because this …” she waved her arms around to encompass the room, “… isn’t my life.
 
“Look – all I’m asking is for a little help – a little research,” Buffy pleaded. “That’s it. Maybe Willow can figure out where the portal is that I came through … then we can open it back up and I’ll be out of your hair.”
 
At the strange looks they had, Buffy asked, “What?”
 
Dawn tried this time. “Buffy – Willow … well, Willow – you know we had to place her in that sanatorium upstate … back in California. Don’t you remember?”
 
“Why … why would we do that?” Buffy asked softly.
 
“Don’t you remember?” Dawn asked her again.
 
“Let’s pretend that I don’t remember, ok? I’m amnesia-girl. Would that work out for you?” Buffy asked sarcastically, her hands going to her hips.
 
Riley answered her. “Buffy – when you went through the portal to meet the Shadow Men, that ‘exchange demon’ came out of the portal and escaped. It killed several of the Potentials, including Kennedy, when they went to get it back.”
 
“No –no, that’s wrong! Spike fought the demon … he…Spike,” Buffy stammered. “Spike got it back…”




 
“Your vampire husband?” Dawn questioned with a look of pity.
 
“Willow re-opened the portal and we got you back, but it was too much for her. Between the power it took to reopen the portal and the shock of losing another person she really cared about…” Riley’s voice trailed off. “She just shut down when she found out that Kennedy had been killed. She’s catatonic … we had no choice but to place her somewhere that could take care of her,” Riley finished.




 
Buffy rubbed tiredly at her eyes, trying to make sense of what they were saying – trying to figure out how to convince them that this was not her world.
 
Suddenly she looked up at Dawn. “Where’s everyone else? Giles? Xander? What happened to them?”
 
“Buffyyy…” Dawn whined.
 
“Just humor me – ok? Start with Giles.”
 
Dawn looked at Riley who just shrugged, then she looked back at Buffy. “Giles is just outside of London … he’s trying to put the Council of Watchers back together.”
 
Buffy closed her eyes and sighed in relief – at last! One thing was as it should be. “So, how many people are out rounding up the new Slayers?”
 
Riley and Dawn looked at her with confusion. “You mean Potentials?” Riley asked her.
 
“No … Slayers – new Slayers. There should be dozens ... maybe hundreds of new Slayers…” Buffy clarified.
 
Riley and Dawn shook their heads. “What are you talking about – there’s only one Slayer at a time, Buffy – even with amnesia you must remember that rule,” Dawn advised her.
 
“No – the scythe … Willow released the magic … Willow,” Buffy stopped. Willow wouldn’t have been there to release the magic.

“What scythe?” Riley asked her, looking confused.
 
“The scythe that I pulled out of the stone … the one that Caleb was guarding, the one the First wanted – the one the Guardians had forged for…” Buffy stopped talking – they didn’t know what she was talking about.


 
“I didn’t ‘King Arthur’ a big, shiny, red axe thingy out of a stone?” Buffy asked them, confused again and they both shook their heads slowly.
 
Buffy closed her eyes and thought a moment. “Ok, did someone go up to the mission in Gilroy and check it out?” she asked them, opening her eyes and looking from one to the other.
 
“Yeah … Giles sent Andrew up there, but he didn’t find anything - a monk attacked him, he was nearly killed – or so he said,” Dawn recalled.
 
“A monk nearly killed Andrew?” Buffy asked, rolling her eyes. “He’s such a drama queen, at least that never changes,” Buffy murmured more to herself than them as she continued to try and piece things together. No one found the clues at the mission that led her to the scythe … Andrew went alone; Spike wasn’t there.




 
“Did you kick me out of the house there near the end?” Buffy asked, trying to find some common ground.
 
“What house?” Dawn asked her.
 
“What do you mean what house? Our house on Revello Drive … all the Potentials were there … we were fighting The First, the ubervamps, the bringers…Caleb,” Buffy supplied. “Is this ringing any bells?”
 
“Buffy, that house got burned down while you were dead … the motorcycle demons took over the town, burnt half of it to the ground," Dawn started to explain.





"No ... what about the Bot? Where was the Buffybot? It kept the demons away..." Buffy began, but all she got were confused stares from Riley and Dawn. There had been no Buffybot ... Spike had never had it built.

"When you came back, we lived in an apartment near the high school,” Dawn reminded her after a moment. “When the Potentials started showing up, we just rented more apartments …then finally, everyone else just left, so we had the whole building.”

“But yeah, then you and I got ‘kicked out’ … or demoted, or whatever you want to call it,” Riley agreed. “They put Faith in charge until she got half the Potentials killed…then they came crawling back to us…”
 
“Us…” Buffy repeated. “We were married then?”
 
“We were married before you died, Buffy … May 20th, 2001.”
 
Buffy shook her head. Riley hadn’t left her before she died … Spike hadn’t been there, poking and prodding and worming his way under Riley’s skin, making it clear to Riley that Buffy needed a ‘little monster in her man’; making it clear that Buffy could never truly love someone like him.

Buffy rubbed her forehead and eyes again before plopping down heavily in a seat across from Riley and Dawn.  The Potentials, Giles, Dawn, and her friends had kicked them both out … Spike hadn’t been there. Spike had been the one to find the clues in the mission in Gilroy. It had been Spike that had given her the will, the strength, the courage to challenge Caleb and find the scythe … Spike. The scythe must still be buried under what was left of Sunnydale … its magic never released - there was only one Slayer.
 
“Faith … where’s Faith?” Buffy finally asked, looking up at them.
 
“She’s dead, too – she died with Angel and most of the Potentials in the Hellmouth when it collapsed,” Riley told her.
 
“Angel? Angel wasn’t in the Hellmouth...” Buffy paused as soon as the words spilled out of her mouth. It suddenly became very clear on what was wrong with this dimension. It all revolved around Spike. Everything was different because Spike wasn’t here. “Angel wore the amulet…” she muttered to herself, “Because Spike wasn’t there…”
 




Buffy tried to re-focus … her brain felt like it was going to explode. Faith was dead, Anya and Tara were dead, Willow was catatonic, Angel burned up in the Hellmouth – did that mean he went back to W&H in L.A. afterwards? She didn’t know. She’d heard them talking about Andrew earlier, so he was apparently still here. Giles was in England. Who was left?

 
“Xander – what happened to Xander?” Buffy asked, looking at Dawn.
 
“Caleb …” Dawn started, shuddering and closing her eyes to try and block out the memory. “Caleb gouged both his eyes out…he was blinded.”




 
“No … that’s wrong …” Buffy started, closing her eyes to try and focus on the old memories that had been joined with hers. “No – Caleb poked one eye out – Spike … Spike…” Buffy murmured more to herself than them as her mind whirled with the memory of Spike knocking Caleb away from Xander.





Dawn and Riley both shook their heads. “Xander was completely blinded, Buffy … you stopped Caleb from killing him, but, in the end it didn’t matter. Between that, losing Willow, and losing Anya in the final battle, it completely broke him. He turned to whiskey, then to drugs. Buffy, he died last year, an overdose. We planned his funeral … don’t you remember that? We flew his ashes to California – back to Sunnydale and scattered them in the crater, where Anya died.”
 
Buffy shook her head in denial, tears starting to form in her eyes. She didn’t remember anything they were talking about – she only remembered the two dimensions that had Spike in them – not this godforsaken one.
 
“Buffy,” Dawn started, trying a different tack, “listen to what you’re saying for a minute. You have a vampire with a soul for a husband … we all know that Angel was the only vampire with a soul.
 
“You say you have children with this vampire … we all know that the undead don’t make babies and you wouldn’t bring children into this ‘evil world’ even if they did.
 
“You say you have all these friends that help you … Willow, Tara, Anya, Xander … Buffy, all those people are dead or in a mental ward. Your mind is making this stuff up to try and cope.
 
“You’ve created this person …this vampire…named Spike, as some kind of surrogate to Angel – you’re trying to regress, to go back to high school, when you and Angel were in love and everything was simple and all your friends were fine…” Dawn continued. They’d talked to so many doctors about Buffy’s condition over the last few years that Dawn could practically predict what they’d say about her latest manifestation, word for word.
 
Buffy looked from one of them to the other. “Ok – I know it sounds like that but it’s not,” Buffy argued. “I can prove it … here, look!” Buffy exclaimed, pulling the front of her t-shirt down to show the scar from the amulet on her chest.
 
“I wore the amulet in my world … Spike pulled it off me at the last minute – he and I have matching scars – see?” Buffy insisted, turning from Dawn to Riley to show them her scar.
 
They both shook their heads. “Buffy, there’s nothing there …” Riley pointed out.
 
“What?” Buffy questioned, looking down.
 
Buffy looked around the room and saw a mirror by the door. She jumped up, rushed over to it and tugged the front of her shirt down – the starburst scar from the amulet wasn’t there on her chest. She pulled up her shirt … the scar from the emergency C-section wasn’t there. Buffy tilted her head to the side and looked at her neck … Spike’s bite marks weren’t there.
 
She studied her face in the mirror … her face was thin, her eyes almost sunken, and bore deep scars from fights she didn’t remember. She ran her fingers over them, trying to remember where they had come from, how she had gotten them, but she couldn’t remember them at all. Her hair was short – not even shoulder length – there was no telling how long since it had been colored and highlighted or even styled.
 
Buffy looked down at her hands … the only ring was a plain gold wedding band, and it wasn’t the one Spike gave her – the engagement ring that had belonged to Spike’s mother wasn’t there; the ‘promise ring’ wasn’t there. She felt around her neck … she had on a cross, not the heart necklace that Spike had given her. She was starting to question her own mind … had she just dreamed that other life? Was this really her life?
 
“No, no, NO!” Buffy screamed as she smashed the mirror with her fists, cutting her hands and sending hundreds of glass shards across the floor. Dawn was the first to reach her and she pulled Buffy into a hug as Riley went to get towels and bandages for her cuts.
 
“Dawnie … you, of all people, have to remember Spike. Spike loved you like you were his own sister. Please tell me you remember Spike,” Buffy whispered to her sister as tears stained her face. Spike was real – he wasn’t a hallucination … that life wasn’t a figment of her imagination…it just couldn’t be. She was not insane – someone or something was fucking with them, with all of them – she had to find out who or what.  I am not insane, Spike is real … Buffy repeated over and over in her mind trying to convince herself.
 
Dawn shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, Buffy… I don’t know anyone named Spike.”
 
It wasn’t the first time Buffy’d had a mental break.  Dawn had been forced to grow up fast - she’d often been called on to act as the ‘older sister’ to Buffy over the last years since Buffy had been brought back from the dead. Buffy had never been the same since then. She had been depressed and unfeeling … she pulled away from everyone, including her friends, family, and her husband. No one seemed to be able to reach her after that. She’d turned to alcohol and drugs just to feel something … when that hadn’t been enough, she’d turned to powerful magic, often visiting Rack to get her fix.
 
Dawn and Riley had finally gotten her into rehab and various doctors had diagnosed a myriad of ailments and prescribed a mountain of medications for her – none really seemed to bring the old Buffy back. The best they could hope for from the medications was that they would keep her under control and keep her from killing or hurting herself or someone else.
 
Dawn led Buffy into the kitchen so she and Riley could work on her hands. They pulled out glass shards, stopped the bleeding, and bandaged them up as best they could. Buffy sat quietly as they worked, trying to get her mind to focus. It didn’t seem like Riley had done this to her – why would he go to all the trouble to make a world where he was married to a crazy-ass Slayer who had put him in the hospital more than once? Unless he didn’t know that was what he’d get without Spike…
 
“Giles…” Buffy murmured, looking up from her hands to Riley’s face. “Can we go see Giles?”
 
Riley shrugged. “Sure, if you want.”
 
Buffy nodded. “How far is it from Rome to London?” she asked.
 
“I have no idea…” Riley replied.
 
“We aren’t in Rome?”
 
Dawn and Riley looked at each other again. “No, Buffy, we’re in Oxford … it’s about an hour and a half to London on the M40,” Riley explained.
 
“I thought we were in Rome…” Buffy explained. “Why aren’t we in Rome?”
 
“Because I started college at Oxford University last fall?” Dawn guessed.
 
“Oh … that’s good, right? Oxford is all stiff-upper-lippy and hoity-toity as far as colleges go, right?” Buffy offered. “What are you studying?”
 
“Classics and Modern Languages.” It hadn’t been easy getting admitted to Oxford, especially after missing so much time from school in Sunnydale, but Dawn had worked hard to make up her courses and get good grades and studied her ass off to ace the entrance exams. Giles had agreed to give her a ‘scholarship’ from the Watchers’ Council coffer if she could get into the languages program there – and if she agreed to work for the Council for at least three years after she graduated.
 
“Languages …” Buffy murmured. Ok, one more thing was as it should be.  Buffy gave her a small smile. “Good, that’s good – you’ll do great at that.”
 
“Thanks.” Dawn smiled softly. That was the first time Buffy had shown the least bit of interest in her studies or given her any encouragement at all in years. Maybe ‘amnesia Buffy’ wasn’t so bad…


 


**~**
 
Buffy followed Riley and Dawn into what looked like a Victorian castle – this was perhaps further ‘outside’ of London than Buffy expected.
 
“What is this place?” Buffy asked, looking up at the tall stone walls.
 
“It belongs to the Council – it was their ‘retreat’ … I guess for when they got too stressed out from all that watching…” Dawn offered with a small smile. She and Riley had given up telling Buffy that she already knew all this – it was easier to just answer her questions.
 
“Yeah, that always stresses me out, too…” Buffy agreed. She was determined to show them that she wasn’t a lunatic … she was sane, she was in control, and she just wanted to go home.
 
Dawn and Riley stopped and looked at her … when had Buffy developed a sense of humor?
 
“What? Do I have something in my teeth?” Buffy asked, baring her teeth for them.
 
“No – it’s just… nothing,” Riley started and stopped, as he turned and opened the door for Buffy and Dawn to enter the castle.
 
Earlier, while Dawn finished tending to Buffy’s hands, Riley had called Giles to let him know what was going on; that Buffy was having one of her ‘episodes’, this time with (apparent) amnesia and delusions of being from another dimension, so Giles was expecting them.
 
Buffy followed Dawn down a long hallway. Dawn knocked on one of many doors that all looked pretty much the same to Buffy and called, “Giles, it’s us,” before opening it and stepping in.
 
When Dawn moved to the side out of Buffy’s way, Buffy gasped audibly and her bandaged hands went to her mouth in shock. “Oh my God! What…what happened to you?”
 
Giles removed his glasses and set them down on his desk as he forced a grim smile to his lips. He had two wide scars running from his right ear down across his cheek – one bisected his lips and the other was lower, ending on his chin. But that wasn’t the worst of it – his left arm had been amputated just below the elbow… and from the looks of it, not by a surgeon.
 
Dawn touched Buffy’s arm and Buffy looked with wide eyes from Giles to Dawn. “Angelus,” Dawn said softly.
 
“Angelus … did …that?” Buffy asked, looking back at Giles with tears glistening in her eyes.
 
“Indeed … he’s quite skilled with a chainsaw, actually,” Giles intoned, trying to remain aloof despite the anger and resentment he still felt towards Angel and even Buffy. He’d tolerated Angel because of Buffy’s feelings for the souled vampire – but deep down, on those cold, lonely nights when he could still feel the teeth of the chainsaw ripping into his flesh, he blamed Buffy, at least partially, for what had happened to him. Things had never really been the same between them since then.
 
“God, Giles … I’m so sorry,” Buffy sobbed, moving around his desk to pull him into a tight hug. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be…Spike agreed to protect you – he wouldn’t let Angel do that … God, Spike...”
 
Giles was gobsmacked for a moment – he stood, unmoving as she wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his shoulder. Buffy had never before offered to apologize for what Angelus had done. Giles finally got over the shock and shot a questioning look at Dawn and Riley – Who was this girl and what had they done with Buffy? He wrapped his good arm around Buffy’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

“Thank you,” he murmured finally.
 
When Buffy released him, he picked his glasses back up and put them on. “I understand you’re having some amnesia…”
 
“Uh, well, sort of – I think, no, I know, I’m from a different dimension … I think,” Buffy stammered. She wasn’t 100% sure anymore – if she was from a different dimension, why didn’t she have her scars and her jewelry like she’d always had before?
 
“Ok – that sounds lame…but here’s what I know: this is wrong,” she waved her hand encompassing the whole room, but really meant the whole world. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”
 
“And how is it supposed to be?” Giles asked her stiffly, sitting down on the corner of his desk.
 
That was a loaded question … which dimension should she describe? Hers or the one where Buffy and Spike and Dawn now lived in Rome? Since most of what she’d heard sounded more like the Rome dimension, she went with that.
 
“Ok … Angelus didn’t hurt you … so badly – Spike stopped him; that was our deal. I’d let Spike and Dru walk, if he helped me and protected you from Angelus,” Buffy started.



 
“’Dru’ as in Drusilla?” Giles asked with raised brows.
 
“Yeah – do you know Drusilla?” Buffy asked excitedly – if they knew Dru, surely they knew Spike! Maybe he just used a different name in this dimension.




 
“Certainly – she came to town and took up with the Anointed One – attacked us en masse on St. Vigeous…” Giles recalled. “We were…”
 
“Ok, ok – who did Dru come to town with?” Buffy interrupted, stopping his story.
 
“Just some minions, as far as we know,” Giles told her.
 
“No one named Spike? Or William the Bloody? Cockney accent, peroxide blond … cheekbones, blue eyes?” she asked expectantly.
 
“No, no one like that,” Giles assured her.
 
“What happened to Dru?” Buffy continued her questioning.
 
“Well, she took up with Angelus – or he took up with her after – well, umm, after he turned evil. She killed Kendra … I’m not entirely sure what happened after Angelus awoke Acathla … I was trying not to bleed to death,” Giles replied sarcastically. “You were the only other person there, Buffy – only you know for certain what happened.”
 
Buffy sighed and rubbed tiredly at her eyes. She had no idea what had happened. Had she dusted Dru? Or sent her to hell with Angelus? Or let her go? Or perhaps Dru escaped. But still, where was Spike? This was getting her nowhere.
 
“Perhaps we should turn in and continue this tomorrow, I suspect it’s been a quite long day,” Giles suggested and everyone nodded their agreement.
 
Buffy followed Dawn and Riley up a massive stone staircase and down a wide hallway. Dawn bid them good night and stepped inside a door on the left as Riley opened a door on the right and walked in. Buffy stood in the hallway, unsure what to do.
 
Riley turned around and looked at her. “Are you coming to bed?”
 
“Uhhh…maybe I should just bunk with Dawn,” Buffy suggested.
 
“Because you’re afraid that I’ll, what? Attack you? Give it a rest, Buffy,” Riley moaned as he walked further into the room, opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a pair of pajama bottoms – apparently they stayed here regularly.
 
“I just…I just don’t want there to be any misunderstandings… We’re not – I’m not your wife,” Buffy explained, stepping into the room.
 
“And there’s only one bed…” Buffy pointed out worriedly – there wasn’t even a comfortable looking chair to sleep in.
 
“And? Buffy, we’ve slept in the same bed for years – what’s different now?”



 
“I’m not your wife… I’m not having sex with you.”
 
Riley sighed heavily. “And that’s different than most nights how?”
 
Buffy looked at him with a furrowed brow as he folded and unfolded the PJ bottoms that he’d retrieved from the drawer.
 
“Why did you marry me?” she asked him softly.
 
Riley looked up at her and folded his arms across his chest. “Because I loved you.”
 
“Why did I marry you?”
 
Before he could answer, Buffy clarified, “The real reason.”
 
Riley sighed and rolled his head back, uncrossing his arms and resuming his task of folding and unfolding the PJs. “Because you somehow knew you were going to die … you wanted Dawn to have a legal guardian – you were looking out for her.”
 
“That’s a terrible reason to marry someone,” Buffy pointed out and Riley shrugged. “Why did you stay…after?”
 
Riley looked up from his fidgeting. “’Cos you needed me – Dawn needed me – you weren’t the same person. You’ve never been the same since.”
 
Buffy lowered her eyes and spun the plain wedding band on her finger. That much was true – when she was brought back from heaven, she hadn’t been the same person. The only person that could touch her in either dimension had been Spike. What would’ve happened to her if he hadn’t been there? Apparently, she was finding out.
 
“It wasn’t like this … it wasn’t supposed to be like this. You married Samantha – you were very happy,” Buffy offered, looking back up at Riley.




 
At the surprised look on Riley’s face Buffy guessed, “You know Samantha, don’t you?”
 
“How…? She … she came with Graham one time to try and get me to join their new demon eradication team… I never told you – how did you know?”
 
“You should’ve gone…” Buffy sighed, turning and sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. She heard Riley go into the bathroom and shut the door and then heard water running in the shower.
 
Buffy lay down as close to the edge of the bed as she could get, still in her clothes, and curled into a small ball, pulling her knees up to her chest. Her mind whirled with confusion as she tried to make sense of everything that had happened today, but it was like a tangled, jumbled mess in her mind – nothing made any sense.
 
“Happy birthday…” she muttered to herself as tears spilled down her face. Her heart ached for Spike, for Annie, Dani, and Billy – and for her friends. Willow and Tara, Xander and Anya – all lost in this world, and for Giles, so horribly disfigured, living a lonely and bitter life.
 
She hadn’t just imagined that life with Spike like Dawn and Riley said – it wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her. This was the world that wasn’t real … she just had to figure out how to get back. If she could just talk to Spike … he could help her. Buffy touched the finger that used to have the ‘promise ring’ Spike had given her … she had promised to never give up on him; he had promised to never let her walk alone again; but she felt alone – completely, utterly alone.



 
**~**

“Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?” ~Clarence Oddbody, Guardian Angel, It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946
 
**~**

{{Click here to hear "What a Difference You’ve Made in My Life” by BJ Thomas on YouTube   }}

What a difference you've made in my life
What a difference you've made in my life
You're my sunshine day and night
Oh what a difference you've made in my life
 
What a change you have made in my heart
What a change you have made in my heart
You replaced all the broken parts
Oh what a change you have made in my heart
 
Love to me was just a word in a song
That had been way over used
But you gave love a meaning
So I've joined in the singing
That's why I want to spread the news
 
What a difference you've made in my life
What a difference you've made in my life
You're my sunshine day and night
Oh what a difference you've made
End Notes:
TBC ... lots more to come!!! You know my blue-eyd muse loves to hear from you!! Don't be shy!
Elusive Butterfly by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy tries to research on her own … but the only clue about what’s happening to them comes from an elusive, blue butterfly…
**
Music Referenced:
Elusive Butterfly, Bob Lind: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPH8RxDZ_eY
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Thursday, January 20th, 2005 – early morning hours:
 


Buffy lay awake, curled into a small ball on the bed with Riley for what seemed hours. She tried desperately to still her racing mind so she could sleep … if she could sleep maybe she could find Spike, maybe he had found some answers that she hadn’t, but sleep was elusive. Buffy rolled out of the bed silently and crept out of the room, closing the heavy door as quietly as she could. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well do something.
 
Buffy walked back down the large staircase and finally found the room that was Giles’ office. She closed the door behind her and clicked on the lamp on the desk. He used to have old Watcher’s diaries; she and Willow had taken one once when they were in high school – it talked about Angelus and William the Bloody, Dru and Darla.  She hoped he still had it, that it had made it out of Sunnydale, maybe it could shed some light on where Spike was.
 
Research wasn’t Buffy’s forte – she’d much rather be hitting something other than books, but apparently no one else was going to help her, she’d just have to try and figure this out herself. After looking through nearly a whole bookcase of musty Watcher’s diaries, she finally found the one she was looking for.
 
“Angelus, the one with the angelic face…” Buffy read the first line aloud and then began silently skimming through the manuscript. She found mention of Drusilla, driven insane before being turned by Angelus in 1860 on the day of her confirmation as a nun at the Sisters of Mercy Convent… Buffy kept reading but there was nothing about Spike or William the Bloody. Dru sired two vampires, both men, but neither was named ‘William’. Both were later dusted by Slayers – the first by one in China during the Boxer Rebellion, the second by Nikki Wood in New York in the ‘70s. The diary reported that it appeared Dru had given up trying to find a permanent partner and simply surrounded herself with minions after her last ‘playmate’ was dusted...
 
Buffy slammed the book shut in frustration. She folded her arms on the desk and laid her head down on them as she tried to think. Maybe she was going about this all wrong. Maybe it didn’t matter why Spike wasn’t in this dimension, maybe the thing to do was find the portal back to their dimension and not worry about anything else. But what if this was their dimension – somehow changed, going back as far as 1880? Her mind kept fighting itself, theories and questions abounded, but there were no real answers.
 
Buffy’s eyes closed as her weary mind tried to work through the puzzle, soon sleep overtook her …
 
Buffy was back in the tropical paradise she and Spike had been in before she’d awoken to a crazy, Spike-less world. She walked along the path they had walked, hoping to find her husband here, but all she saw were butterflies…lots and lots of butterflies. Buffy stopped near the dusty pink rose bush and saw the same blue butterfly that had landed on her shoulder earlier. It fluttered down on her hand as she pulled the rose to her nose to inhale its sweet fragrance.


 
The butterfly didn’t fly away when she moved her hand; it seemed content to rest there as she gazed at the incredible beauty of its blue wings and body.
 
The way the colors blended… the light blue bleeding into dark blue then to black reminded her so much of Spike’s eyes, she felt like she could actually feel him next to her. It was the same feeling she got in her heart, in her soul, when he was near – that feeling of her soul being completed.
 
What had Spike said? Butterflies are the souls of those who have passed as they wait to pass through purgatory … waiting to get into heaven – or not.
 
“Oh my God…” Buffy murmured, watching the blue butterfly as it sat on her hand and slowly opened and closed its wings, warming itself in the midday sun. Suddenly, the butterfly took off … it circled Buffy twice then flew out over the lake. Buffy could physically feel her soul becoming emptier … like someone was draining energy out of the battery that was her soul. The further the butterfly flew, the more her heart and soul cried out for it to come back.

 

“Spike! God, Spike!” Buffy screamed after it. She took off running down the hill, through the flowers and bushes, over rocks and ledges, towards the lake, but she couldn’t catch it. Buffy splashed into the water, still trying to follow the blue butterfly, but it was gone – she couldn’t even see it anymore.

 
“NO! Spike! Come back!” she screamed, falling down to her knees on the sandy bottom of the lake, slapping her hands down in the warm water and splashing it up over her head. She closed her eyes when the water rained down on her, but quickly opened them again when she felt a cold wind against her skin and sand come raining down instead of water.
 
Buffy jumped up and took off running…she was in the center of the red crater and she could feel the spiders under her feet as they shimmied up through the coarse sand to the surface – to her. Buffy jumped as high as she could when she neared the side, frantically searching for a hand or foothold on the steep wall. She felt one, then two spiders jump onto her back from the sand below. She screamed out as their claws dug into her flesh and she began to slide back down the wall, unable to find purchase on the sheer rock. One of the spiders crawled down her arm and was cutting into her hand, wrist, and lower arm as she tried in vain to hold onto the wall. The other spider had wrapped two of its clawed legs around her neck and was biting down on her neck and shoulder as she tried to keep from falling backwards onto the sand with nothing but her willpower.
 
Suddenly, someone had ripped the spiders off her and she screamed out again with renewed pain as she was lifted up towards a ledge a couple of feet above her reach. Buffy grabbed onto anything she could, finally pulling herself up onto the ledge and safety. She quickly turned around and looked down. At first she didn’t recognize the man below who had helped her – a brunette with shoulder length hair, but when she saw his eyes looking up towards her, she knew it was undoubtedly Spike fighting the spiders off as he tried to climb up behind her.
 
“Spike!” she called to him in a panic – he was losing the battle – the spiders were nearly covering him. Buffy leaned down as far as she could, but couldn’t reach him. She started to climb back down to help him.


 
“NO!” he screamed at her. “STAY THERE!”
 
“SPIKE!” Buffy shrugged out of her jacket and dangled it down towards him. “GRAB IT!” she commanded and Spike stopped fighting the spiders and grabbed the jacket with both hands. Buffy pulled with all her strength as Spike climbed up the sheer wall, using her jacket like a rope, at least a half-dozen of the vicious arachnids still clinging to his body.
 
When he made it up onto the ledge, Buffy began stomping and hitting and flinging the spiders off him and off the ledge as he did the same. They soon realized that killing them rather than pulling them off still alive was best; when they pulled them off still alive, the spiders would tear flesh as they held ferociously onto their prey.
 
When all the spiders were finally gone, Spike collapsed down, rolling onto his back on the ledge and writhing in agony. He was bleeding copiously from innumerable cuts, scratches, bites, and punctures which covered his legs, arms, and torso, front and back. Buffy pulled his coat off him, a coat she’d never seen before, and then pulled her own t-shirt off and ripped it into long lengths to use to bandage his wounds and stop the bleeding. She could feel her own blood running down her arms, back, and chest from the wounds left when he had pulled the spiders off her, but his wounds were much worse and much more numerous. Buffy wrapped one bandage around her wrist where she had a deep gash that was bleeding profusely, then went back to tending to her husband.
 
“God, Spike … why aren’t they healing?” she asked him … shouldn’t the Gem of Amarra protect him from supernatural spiders? But Spike couldn’t answer her, he’d passed out.
 
The cold wind was whipping around them, filling the air with sand and caking their wounds with it. Buffy was freezing, she was bleeding, and had only her bra on her upper body for protection from the elements. In the fight with the spiders, her jacket had somehow been dropped after Spike had gotten up on the ledge, and the spiders on the floor below them were guarding it – just waiting for her to come back down for it. Buffy tended Spike’s wounds as best she could, then slipped his torn and tattered coat on and hefted him up on her shoulder. She had to find some cover for them – she’d freeze to death out here in the open.
 
Buffy struggled to climb up off the ledge they were on while carrying Spike. She would get nearly to the next ledge when loose rocks and sand under her feet would give way. Each time she tried and failed, Buffy would let out a cry of frustration before charging back up the steep wall again.
 
Finally, after what seemed hours, she made it to the very top of the rim of the crater with Spike, but the traveling wasn’t any easier there. Although some places were flat plateaus, most were jagged peaks made of loose rock and red sand. There had to be a cave or at least a small indentation in the rock somewhere they could take cover in. The top rim of the crater wasn’t very wide, perhaps ten feet, and on the other side there were more sheer cliffs that led to more sand … sand she had to assume held more hungry spiders.
 
Buffy struggled across the rocks, through the freezing, hurricane-force wind that whipped and swirled and threatened to push them off the top of the canyon wall, as she carried Spike and looked for some cover. Suddenly, something hit her from above and behind, knocking her and Spike to the ground with a hard thud. When Buffy turned and moved back to protect Spike from whatever had hit her, she gasped audibly. It was some kind of hairy, flying creature, easily as large as she was … now on the ground just a few feet away from Spike, who was still unconscious and completely defenseless.
 
The creature opened its jaws and growled, baring its huge teeth at Buffy as she put herself between it and Spike. It was like a flying werewolf, now crouched on all fours just a couple of feet in front of her, ready to pounce on them and rip them to shreds with its fangs and claws.



 "Dear Lord!” Buffy heard Giles exclaim and suddenly she was being shaken awake. “Buffy, what have you done? You’re bleeding!”
 
Buffy shook her head to clear it and looked around – she was back in Giles’ office, in his chair, the Watcher’s diary she’d been reading closed on his desk, covered in blood from the wounds on her wrist and neck.
 
“NO!” she screamed. “I have to go back! Spike! I have to get back!” Buffy’s mind raced – she had to get back to Spike … he was defenseless against that monster.


 
“Tranq gun!” she demanded of Giles. Giles looked at her blankly, not understanding.
 
“You’re bleeding…” Giles repeated, reaching for her wrist, which was still dripping blood freely. “Buffy, what have you done?”
 
“Where’s the fucking tranq gun?!!” she demanded, looking around the office in a panic. She finally saw a glass-fronted weapons case in one corner and ran to it.
 
Before Giles knew what she was doing, Buffy smashed the glass with her fist, grabbed up four of the darts that were loaded with tranquilizer, and stabbed all of them into her thigh with all her strength.
 
“Dear Lord! Buffy!” Giles exclaimed, catching her before she hit the floor, unconscious.
 
Buffy looked around … she was back down at the bottom of the crater again. “FUCK!” she exclaimed as she ran towards the wall in the direction she’d been when they had been attacked – towards where she’d left Spike and that creature.
 
She could feel the sand vibrating with spiders under her feet, which spurred her to run faster, she jumped like a long jumper when she neared the wall, fueled by fear and adrenaline, making it all the way up to the first ledge. She could hear spiders hit and bounce off the wall below her as she started scrambling up the sheer rock face faster than she thought possible.
 
When she got to the top where she’d left Spike, he wasn’t there … neither was the flying werewolf. “SPIKE!” she screamed, turning in circles and looking around, trying to see him or the monster. “SPIKE!”
 
Finally, she spotted them … there were two of the creatures now and they were fighting over Spike’s motionless body about two hundred yards outside the crater wall. Buffy half-ran, half-slid down the outside face of the rim, hitting the bottom in a dead run. She couldn’t feel any spiders under her feet, but maybe they just hadn’t found her yet.
 
Buffy watched as the monsters took swipes at Spike and each other with their teeth and claws. She could hear their vicious growls even through the wind; if one would try to pull Spike away, the other would attack … luckily they were fighting each other for the prize more than they were harming Spike – so far. There was a small (about six feet high) pile of rocks about ten yards from them.  Buffy stopped there and began hurling golf-ball sized stones at the werewolves to get their attention away from Spike and onto her. It worked.
 
The two creatures left Spike and began stalking slowly towards Buffy as she kept pelting them with stones. Buffy hurriedly shrugged out of Spike’s coat, which somehow she still had on from before, laid it out and piled about thirty pounds of large rocks in the center of it. She gathered the ends of the coat up and made a type of mace with it. She began to swing it above her head slowly as the werewolves came closer. As soon as they got within reach, Buffy swung it with all her might, catching the first werewolf in the head and completely decapitating it with one blow – sending bright red blood spurting out in all directions.
 
The second werewolf jumped back and flapped its large, hairy wings, taking off and circling above her, trying to get behind her.  Buffy turned in a circle and watched it, keeping her improvised weapon swinging and at the ready. When the beast came within reach, Buffy swung at it hard, catching it on the side and knocking it to the ground. She pounced on it quickly, bringing the full weight of the rocks down on its head and crushing its skull.
 
Buffy dropped her weapon and rushed over to her husband. “God, Spike…” she moaned – fresh claw and bite marks from the werewolves had joined the spiders’ scratches, stings, punctures, and bites on his torso, arms, and legs. Buffy looked around … at least they hadn’t been attacked by spiders out here … just flying werewolves. But the wind was nearly as strong as it was on top of the rim of the crater and just as cold, and there was still no cover to be seen.
 
Buffy picked Spike up and set him up against another pile of rocks a few feet away, out of the wind as much as possible. She retrieved his bloodied coat and slipped it on and then she set to work building them a shelter. Buffy worked feverishly, un-piling the rocks to get the largest ones from the bottom of the stack, then setting them in a circle on the sand. She continued stacking rocks atop rocks in a circle about five feet across, building a type of igloo out of them. When she ran out of suitable rocks in one pile, she’d go to another pile and bring the rocks back, carrying two or three large stones at a time, then running back to retrieve more. When she had the walls about four feet high, she took some smaller, smooth stones and lined the bottom, just in case the spiders found them, hopefully that would keep them out.
 
“Ok, c’mon, baby,” Buffy murmured to Spike as she picked him up and climbed over the wall and into the shelter. Buffy sat Spike down and then shrugged out of his coat. She stretched it across the top of the rock igloo and tucked the corners and sleeves under some of the rocks, creating a roof. It wasn’t the best, but it helped keep the wind out and hopefully it would keep them out of sight of the flying werewolves.
 
Buffy settled down on the hard stones of the floor and leaned her bare, blood-stained back against the cold wall, then pulled Spike against her, cradling him in her arms as she laid her cheek against the top of his head. “Please be okay,” she murmured as she rocked him gently in her arms. “Please, please, Spike.”
 
Buffy took Spike’s left hand in hers and looked at it, turning his palm over and back again. The sunburst scar from the amulet – the one that matched hers, wasn’t there. His ring finger bore a wedding band, but it was silver – not the gold one she’d given him. Buffy sat him back against the wall and unbuttoned the next button of his tattered and torn shirt … the small scar where the Gem of Amarra had been embedded against his heart wasn’t there; she studied his face – the scar on his brow was missing, too.
 
Buffy sat back and pulled him back into her arms. “God, Spike, what’s going on?” she whispered to him, but she was afraid that she was beginning to figure it out…

**~**

{{Click here to hear "Elusive Butterfly” by Bob Lind on YouTube   }}

You might wake up some mornin'
To the sound of something moving past your window in the wind
And if you're quick enough to rise
You'll catch a fleeting glimpse of someone's fading shadow

Out on the new horizon
You may see the floating motion of a distant pair of wings
And if the sleep has left your ears
You might hear footsteps running through an open meadow

Don't be concerned, it will not harm you
It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love
You might have heard my footsteps
Echo softly in the distance through the canyons of your mind

I might have even called your name
As I ran searching after something to believe in
You might have seen me runnin'
Through the long-abandoned ruins of the dreams you left behind

If you remember something there
That glided past you followed close by heavy breathin'

Don't be concerned, it will not harm you
It's only me pursuing somethin' I'm not sure of
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love
Across my dreams with nets of wonder
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love
End Notes:
TBC ... You know my muse loves to hear from you ... Are you ready for the angst to start? :O

Don't worry if you haven't figured it out yet ... lots more clues to come!
Remember Me by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy’s actions convince Riley and Giles that she has, indeed, lapsed into deeper mania or depression and they take action to ‘help’ her while she tries to figure out who is responsible for their plight and help Spike.
**Music Referenced:
Fields of Gold (Remember Me), Sting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r14CQxDJ0ro
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}
Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!

Friday, January 21st, 2005:



Buffy woke, shivering from cold, with a dull ache in her head and sharp pain shooting through her whole body. She didn’t know how long she’d been out. She’d stayed in the rock shelter with Spike for what seemed like days, but time was hard to judge in the cold, desolate world; there was no sun, no moon, just endless, angry, red and purple skies. Spike never woke up during all that time, and his wounds never completely healed, although the bleeding had eventually stopped.
 
Buffy tried to rub her aching head, but couldn’t raise her hand. As she tried again, she suddenly realized, to her horror, that she was shackled to the bed.

Buffy began pulling frantically at her confines, which were not only her wrists, but her ankles too, and the whole bed began to shake and slide. The noise of the bed legs scrapping against the floor and her shackles rattling against the railings, drew the attention of her ‘captors’.
 
“Buffy … stop! Calm down! Buffy, please!” Riley begged her, trying to hold her arms still and stop her from struggling. “You’re going to rip your stitches out!” he warned her. “STOP!”


 
“Let me go!” she demanded, pulling even harder against the padded restraints until she felt something in her wrist rip and warm blood begin to run down her hand.
 
“Damn it, Buffy!” Riley exclaimed, pressing down on her wrist to staunch the bleeding. Suddenly Giles and Dawn were there too and a man dressed in surgical scrubs, who she assumed was a doctor. The doctor raised a syringe in front of his face, checking the dosage and clearing the air from the needle, before lowering it and injecting Buffy in the arm with the drug.
 
“We’ll need to stitch that back up…” she heard him say as she lost control of her muscles and relaxed. She could feel them unbind her wrist and swab it with warm iodine, then more needles injected more pain killers. Buffy could feel them pulling the thread through her flesh as they stitched her wrist back up, but she was unable to move, unable to escape.
 
Buffy fought to stay awake, she had to find out what was going on. When the doctor finished, she felt them bandage her wrist, then the restraint was buckled back around it. She could hear their feet moving on the hard floor as everyone left her room, but from the sound of their voices, they hadn’t gone far. She could still hear them talking out in the hall, just outside her door and she struggled to stay conscious and listen.
 
“We’re going to have to keep her sedated and restrained until her wounds heal … then I would suggest transfer to Bedlam Sanatorium in Bromley,” said a male voice in an English accent – the doctor that had given her the shot and re-stitched her wound. “If her body temperature had been any higher, she would’ve almost certainly bled to death…”

 

“A mental ward?” Giles questioned. “Do you think they can handle her … special needs?”
 
“With proper warning and guidance, I think they can handle her,” the doctor assured Giles. “They’ve been doing this an extraordinarily long time, since the eleventh century … I seriously doubt it’s the first ‘special needs’ patient the Council has sent them.”
 
“It’s not fair…” Dawn whined – she had actually started to like amnesia-Buffy. “She seemed to be doing better…”
 
“Except for the amnesia and thinking she was from another dimension, married to a vampire with a soul named Spike, with three kids, and living in Angelus’ mansion on Crawford Street …” Riley added sarcastically. “The only thing missing was the white picket fence and blood-red geraniums in the window boxes…”

 

Dawn rolled her eyes and folded her arms over her chest, then looked despondently down at the floor. “She said I would do great…” she murmured softly, more to herself than them.
 
“Quite right,” Giles agreed with Riley, ignoring Dawn. “I believe that Angelus is the key – she was reading a Watcher’s diary about Angelus and the Aurelian clan when she made this latest attempt on her life. She’s created this world in her mind – this vampire with a soul, to replace what she lost with Angel. She’s trying to regress.”

 

Dawn sighed heavily. Even though she had told Buffy basically the same thing just a couple of days ago, she was starting to wonder if that even mattered. So what if her sister had a secret garden hidden in the back of her mind where everything was peachy with a side of keen? She had seemed lucid enough … well, right up until she tried to kill herself by apparently gnawing on her own arm and slashing and stabbing her throat and neck with a letter opener – at least that’s what Giles and Riley had told Dawn had happened.
 
“I’m sorry I can’t give you a better prognosis … I’ve read over her records … you’ve tried everything available – therapy, antidepressants, electroconvulsive therapy,” the doctor apologized. “Perhaps in the future there will be some new treatments that would be effective, but until then…” he shrugged as his voice trailed off, his meaning clear. Until then, placing Buffy in an institution was the only option left for her own safety and those around her.
 
Buffy felt tears well in her eyes and spill down her cheeks; she’d never felt so alone in her whole life, even when she'd been apart from Spike before, she'd always had her friends to lean on ... now she had no one. She had to get out of here – she had to get Spike out of the hell he was trapped in, she had to get them both back to their own world and not only did she not have any help, but she was being fought by her own family and friends…or what remained of them.
 
Buffy closed her eyes and just let the drugs overtake her, forcing her mind to relax. If she couldn’t get out of these physical restraints, at least she could go back to Spike – at least her mind was still free.
 
**~**


Buffy ran the spider gauntlet as she did every time she entered this … whatever this was… World? Dimension? Hell? She was getting better at it and now knew where the lowest ledge was that she could reach in one leap and how fast she had to run to keep ahead of the ravenous spiders. She scrambled up the smooth walls of the crater, knocking loose rocks down as she climbed with bare hands up to the rim then down the other side. She kept a careful eye out for the flying werewolves, as she made her way back to the shelter she’d built, where she’d left Spike, but none of the ferocious creatures appeared on this day.
 
“Spike? It’s me, it’s Buffy …” she called as she climbed over the wall and slid down into the rock fortress, taking care to not dislodge his coat from the top. “Spike?” she questioned again as she ducked under the coat and out of the freezing wind …
 
“SPIKE!” she screamed, standing back up and knocking one end of the cover loose from its moorings as she looked around the desolate landscape … Spike wasn’t there.  Buffy climbed out of the rock igloo and began searching the area frantically, making larger and larger circles around the shelter looking for him. What if the flying werewolves had come back and found him still unconscious and taken him? What if he’d wandered off in a daze and gotten lost in this godforsaken place? What if the spiders had figured out where he was and dragged him out of the shelter and under the sand?

 

A thousand thoughts and fears raced through her mind as she searched the cold, barren landscape for her husband.  Thoughts of their children – what if he was lost forever? How could she explain that to Annie? The thought of Dani and Billy never knowing him – never having any memory of their father, cut at her heart just a surely as if one of the werewolves had slashed her with its claws.
 
Buffy stopped from time to time and tried concentrating on contacting him through their bond, but she got nothing. Buffy screamed his name, calling over and over again – her voice lost and scattered in the wind as she ran faster and faster, getting further and further away from the shelter…further and further away from the relative safety it provided.  Tears streaked her face as she searched in vain for him; through the cold, through the wind and the sand blasting against her skin – but he was nowhere to be found.
 
Finally, after running for what must have been several miles, completely exhausted, trembling from cold and fear, Buffy stopped, crumbling to her knees in the sand as uncontrollable sobs racked her body. She should have never left him alone … she should have stayed asleep.
 
“WHY! God, why!?” she screamed at the angry red and violet sky, pounding her fists against the cold sand.
 
Suddenly, she was in the warm, crystal clear water of the lake. The water splashed up around her as she pounded her fists down, warming her and rinsing the grit and grime from her skin and clothes and warming her body. Buffy looked around for the blue butterfly, but didn’t see it.
 
“Spike!” she cried, pulling herself out of the water and then racing and scrambling back up the hill towards the dusty pink rose bush. She continued to call his name all the way as she struggled to get up the hill as quickly as her exhausted body could take her. She stopped at the rose bush and waited; there were lots of butterflies flying from flower to flower, but not the blue one.
 
“God, Spike, please!” she begged as she scanned up and down the path for the iridescent blue butterfly that she was now sure held Spike’s soul. It suddenly dawned on her that every other time the blue butterfly appeared, she’d been smelling one of the roses, so Buffy leaned forward, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply, taking in the sweet fragrance that always made her think of their wedding day and the look of love and awe she’d seen in Spike’s eyes as she made her way down the aisle towards him.

 

More memories flooded her mind … every birthday, every Valentine’s Day, every ‘just because’ – all those times that he’d given her the roses. Every time he’d been so careful, making sure they were the very same shade that she’d used in their wedding, right up until the last time, as he waited for her on Rodeo Drive. His words from that day still rang in her head, “I love two things, you and the rose. The rose for one day, and you forever.”
 
Tears stung Buffy’s eyes as she dropped to her knees in the soft grass next to the rose bush. “Spike…” she sobbed, unable to stop the tears from falling as the possibility that he was gone and never coming back washed over her heart like a heavy, black cloud.
 
Suddenly she felt like a ray of sunlight was breaking through the cloud around her heart … like her soul was being filled with warmth and love. When Buffy looked up, the blue butterfly was flitting around her, circling her head, waiting to land. Buffy held a finger out and it landed on it softly, completely unafraid, like that was where it belonged – like she was a rose.
 
“Spike … what do I do?” she sobbed, knowing that she’d get no answer. His soul was here while his body was in the cold, red, spider-invested purgatory. It was suddenly clear to Buffy that the dimension she’d awoken in with Riley and Dawn wasn’t some other dimension, at all. It was her dimension, their dimension, but without Spike. Somehow, someone or something had erased him from it … and not just recently, but as far back as 1880 when Dru should have turned him…perhaps back even further than that.
 
Buffy lay down on her side in the soft grass, the blue butterfly still on her hand. She laid her hand down in the grass in front of her face where she could see the beautiful blue of her husband’s eyes reflected in the flying flower still perched on her finger. The butterfly opened and closed its wings lazily – it’s tiny feet tickling Buffy’s hand as it turned first one way then the other, as if trying to give her comfort the only way it could.


 
“Spike … I need you.” Buffy spoke quietly to the butterfly, wishing with all her heart that it would speak back to her … but it couldn’t. But she could feel it in her soul … she knew it was Spike and his soul was drawn to hers, just as hers was drawn to his.
 
“The babies need you…” Buffy continued, then stopped abruptly as she realized, there were no babies; no Annie, no Dani, no Billy – without Spike they didn’t exist. Just like without Spike most of her friends were dead, disfigured, or insane … apparently including herself.
 
“Oh, God! The babies!” Buffy exclaimed, sitting up quickly and making the butterfly flutter into the air. “Spike! The babies! They don’t exist! Our babies don’t exist!” she half-yelled, half-sobbed as the blue butterfly fluttered around her head, then landed again on her shoulder.
 
“No…no…no,” Buffy sobbed as she covered her face with her hands. “This can’t be happening…can’t be…”
 
Buffy collapsed back down onto the grass, curling into a tight ball as sobs wracked her body. Everything was gone – Spike was gone, Annie, Dani, and Billy - her whole family was gone, the few friends she had left thought she was insane…
 
“Tell me I’m not insane, please tell me I’m not insane …” Buffy pleaded as the butterfly fluttered in the air above her then landed again, this time on her arm. The butterfly walked up her arm, through her hair and to her tear streaked face. Buffy thought she could actually feel Spike’s lips kissing her tears away as the butterfly paused and fluttered its wings against her damp skin.

 

“I must be completely insane…” Buffy moaned, closing her eyes as the butterfly roamed over her face. Her mind saw Spike in front of her, comforting her, holding her, assuring her – telling her that he loved her – he’d love her forever.
 
Don’t forget your promise, luv,” his voice rang in her head.
 
Buffy nodded as she tried to stop the tears. “I promise to not give up. I promise to not give up… I promise …” she repeated, over and over like a mantra, taking deep breaths in between to try and calm down and regain control.
 
Buffy finally wiped her tears away and sat up despondently with her back against a tree. The butterfly fluttered around, then landed on a wildflower not far from where she was sitting.
 
“Okay,” Buffy started, taking a deep, cleansing breath, trying to clear her head and think, as she spoke to the butterfly. “What do we know?
 
“We know we’re not insane… we hope.
 
“We know someone with power to spare and knowledge of magic must’ve done this,” she continued.
 
“We know that I’m the only one that remembers you … why do I remember you but no one else does?” Buffy posed to the butterfly, who simply looked at her from its perch on the flower.
 
“Why would someone take you out of our lives but want me to remember? Why let the Slayer remember? Or was I immune because I’m the Slayer?” Buffy continued trying to piece the puzzle together.
 
“Who would want you out of our lives that badly?” Buffy questioned. “You vote for Angel?” she questioned the butterfly’s silent answer. Buffy considered that a few moments before shaking her head.
 
“No … I don’t think so - I’m married to Riley, not Angel. Maybe if I was with Angel…” Buffy mused quietly. “Plus, I still remember you – not ideal for Angel or Riley. If I didn’t remember, then that would be different, but if I didn’t remember, then I wouldn’t be here wondering about why I remember, ‘cos I wouldn’t remember what I remember.”
 
Buffy looked at the butterfly … she thought she saw it roll its eyes and heard it sigh. “Right – not Angel or Riley,” she concluded, her voice sounding more confident than she felt.
 
“Maybe me remembering wasn’t an accident…” she postulated and the butterfly turned around on the flower, making a complete circle before facing her again.
 
“Oh – you like that idea, huh?” she asked him with a small smile. “Ok … not an accident,” she agreed. “Someone with knowledge of your past, obviously; someone with powerful magic or powerful friends … someone capable of completely changing history … and not Angel or Riley,” Buffy thought aloud, pondering their list of enemies.
 
“It would have to be someone who wants to make me think I’m insane … or someone who wants to drive me insane … or someone who wants to punish us – punish all of our friends and family – maybe get even for something we did…get revenge…get vengeance…” Buffy’s eyes went wide. “Someone like a vengeance demon! Someone like Hallie!”

 

The blue butterfly fluttered up off the flower and flew in wide circles around Buffy and the rose bush a few feet away. It flew up higher and higher until Buffy could barely see it, then floated back down gracefully and landed on her shoulder.
 
“Hallie … I think we can assume she’s not a rat anymore … well, not a small, furry one, anyway,” Buffy amended.
 
“May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun, and find your shoulder to light on; to bring you luck, happiness and riches today, tomorrow and beyond…” Buffy repeated the blessing Spike had said when the butterfly lit on her shoulder the first time.
 
“Let’s hope that sticks this time…” Buffy prayed as she stood up and turned her face towards the bright, warm sun which never seemed to move across the sky here. It felt good on her skin and she closed her eyes a moment, taking strength from its heartening rays as they tingled on her flesh.
 
She felt the butterfly take wing, lifting gracefully off her shoulder and she opened her eyes. The incredible blue butterfly circled her head then took off towards the lake … she could feel the warmth slowly drain from her soul as it flew further and further away. Tears stung her eyes as she watched him fly away until she could no longer see even a glimmer of his wings in the sun. She resisted calling out to him … but her heart called, her soul called, and her spirit cried.
 
Buffy closed her eyes and repeated her manta, “I promise to not give up,” softly to herself, but she had no idea how hard that promise would be for her to keep.
 
**~**
 
The next days were a sedated blur for Buffy … she was aware of being moved; transported in an ambulance from one hospital to another, she remembered Dawn visiting her … talking to her about school and a boy she’d met and telling her she was sorry about them putting her in this horrible place full of crazy people. Buffy remembered Dawn talking about how much she hated this place … she was always afraid one of the crazy people would start talking about the ‘pure green light’ or telling her that she ‘didn’t belong.’ Buffy wanted to hug her sister and tell her none of that meant anything … she did belong, but the fog she was in was too thick, too deep for Buffy to fight through – all she could do was listen.
 
Riley had been there at least once … she couldn’t remember him saying anything, just looking at her with a combination of pity and regret – she hated that look, she didn’t want his pity and she didn’t want to be responsible for his regrets. Buffy tried to sleep, to get back to try and find Spike in the wasteland or in the tropical garden, but she could never seem to stay fully asleep long enough – she seemed to just hover on the precipice between waking and sleeping all the time…never deeply asleep enough to really rest or awake enough to interact with her visitors … or cause any problems with the staff.
 
Finally, on her sixth day in the Bedlam Sanatorium (the same hospital from which the modern word, meaning uproar and confusion, was derived), the doctors adjusted her medications at Dawn’s rather loud and unwavering insistence, and Buffy’s exhausted mind and body finally fell into a deep sleep.
 
Buffy ‘awoke’ in the now familiar red crater and made the even more familiar trek across the sand and up the steep wall, outrunning the hungry spiders that emerged from under her feet. She could hear the spiders hitting the wall with their sharp claws as they tried to climb after her – they hissed and clattered their clawed feet on the rocks at the bottom, playing an eerie melody that she was sure Alfred Hitchcock would’ve paid good money for to use in one of his movies.
 
Buffy didn’t know how long it had been since she’d been here … days, months? Could Spike still be here somewhere – lost and wandering aimlessly across the bitterly cold landscape? She didn’t know, but she knew she had to search for him … there was nothing else to do.
 
Buffy made her way to the rock igloo. Sand that had been blown by the wind was piled in drifts around the outside of it. Spike’s coat was gone – probably blown away by the relentless wind, as well. Buffy tried reaching out to him through the bond, but got nothing … she concentrated on sensing him with her Slayer senses, but still nothing. Then it occurred to her – he was never turned, at least not by Dru – he probably wasn’t a vampire and they were never married – there was no bond. All they had were their souls … two halves of one whole.
 
Buffy thought about how her heart seemed to fill with love when the butterfly came near her – when Spike came near her. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, putting everything out of her mind, letting her heart guide her rather than her thoughts. She opened her eyes and began to walk back towards the crater, when she got to it, she turned to the right and began to skirt the high wall of the rim. So lost was she in trying to concentrate on feeling Spike’s soul that she’d completely forgotten to watch for flying werewolves…
 
About a quarter of the way around the crater, on the side blocked from most of the wind, she was dive-bombed and knocked to the ground by one of the hairy beasts. Buffy screamed in surprise and pain as the werewolf sunk its claws into her back when it hit her and latched onto her shoulder with its long, sharp fangs. They both rolled around on the sand, Buffy trying to free herself from the creature’s grasp and the hungry wolf-creature hanging onto its prey as if its very life depended on it.

 

Buffy kicked backwards at it and jabbed her right elbow into its ribs as she struggled to get it off, but her blows were ineffective against the large, supernatural creature. Buffy struggled to her feet and flung herself back against the rocky wall surrounding the crater, temporarily knocking the wind out of the werewolf and causing it to scream in pain as its wings were smashed against the rocks. But her victory was short-lived – the monster recovered quickly and bit down on her left shoulder even harder, tearing flesh and bone as it did so. Buffy could feel her blood pouring out of the wound, covering her body and falling in pools in the sand at her feet.
 
She fell to her knees as the beast continued to shred her flesh and growl in victory, shaking her like a rag doll in its powerful jaws. Buffy struggled to remain conscious …to fight, to keep her promise, to not give up – but she was losing the battle. The pain was excruciating and the blood loss was making her weak and dizzy. Her last thought as she lost consciousness was of Spike and their children – all lost. She’d failed them; she’d failed them all.
 
**~**

{{Click here to hear "Remember Me (Fields of Gold)” by Sting on YouTube   }}


You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in fields of gold

So she took her love
For to gaze awhile
Upon the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold

Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the fields of barley
We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we lie in fields of gold

See the west wind move like a lover so
Upon the fields of barley
Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth
Among the fields of gold

I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I've broken
But I swear in the days still left
We'll walk in fields of gold
We'll walk in fields of gold

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold

You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
End Notes:
TBC ....

Yes, I think the angst has started now ...but there's still LOTS TO come!! You know my blue-eyed muse loves hearing from you! Don't be shy!
You and Me Against the World by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy has been attacked by a werewolf – Spike and Dawn try to help her in their own ways.
**
Music Referenced:
You and Me Against the World, Gladys Knight and the Pips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvcJlHgC8SQ
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Tuesday, February 1st, 2005:
 
Spike growled ferociously as he kicked the flying werewolf in the ribs and dislodged it from Buffy’s prone and motionless body. The wolf-creature screamed in pain when it was kicked and turned to face Spike when it landed a few feet away. It bared its razor sharp teeth at him and growled as it began to move slowly back towards its prize.
 


“Want to compare wrinklies, do ya?” Spike asked it sarcastically, bringing his game face up and baring his own fangs at it with a deep growl as he moved forward and got between it and Buffy.
 
“C’mon, then … heeere kitty, kittyyyy,” Spike taunted, holding both hands out in front of him with his palms up and making a ‘come here’ motion with all his fingers, challenging the beast.


 
The werewolf sized him up for several long moments, but eventually decided that the meal wasn’t worth the fight and limped off, its broken wings dangling uselessly down its back.
 
“Tosser…” Spike muttered as he turned around quickly and began to try and administer some kind of aid to Buffy. He wasn’t squeamish…he’d seen worse, he’d done worse in his life, but he felt his stomach turn when he saw how badly her flesh was shredded.
 
“Buffy … God, why did you come back ‘ere, luv?” he asked her quietly as he tenderly picked her limp body up in his arms and carried her back to the cave he’d found and had been living in for the last … how long? He wasn’t sure - longer than a week, for certain – less than a year, he reckoned… anything more precise was impossible.
 
The entrance to the cave was small and low, he had to crawl on his belly to get in, but inside it opened up into a decent sized room, tall enough to stand and plenty wide and long enough to lie down comfortably…well, if you can lie comfortably on cold sand with rocks for pillows– but at least it wasn’t cramped.
 
Spike lay Buffy down outside the entrance and crawled in first, then turned around and pulled her in, trying hard not to embed more sand in her wounds or injure her further. Buffy moaned in pain when Spike pulled on her; knowing he was causing her pain made his stomach knot further and brought tears to his eyes, but he had no choice – he had to get her inside.
 
“I’m sorry, luv … there’s no other way,” he whispered as he continued to pull her as gently as possible.
 
Once he had her inside, Spike rolled a large boulder over the doorway to keep would-be attackers out, then worked to try and clean and close her wounds as well as he could. He used his fangs to cut off any flesh that he knew was beyond repair and gently licked her wounds to stop the bleeding and get as much of the sand out as possible.
 
Her left scapula and clavicle were both shattered – crushed by the werewolf’s jaws – Spike picked out as many of the sharp bone shards as he could … he didn’t know what else to do. He wished he had some water to wash it, some disinfectant, even some whiskey … anything – but he had never found any water here and there were definitely no antibiotics or whiskey.
 
Finally, when he’d done all he could to clean out and close her wounds, he used his shirt to make a type of wrap/sling out of, pinning her left arm against her chest and immobilizing it while at the same time holding the wound on her back closed.
 
Spike sat back and leaned against the hard, cold rock of the cave wall and pulled her gently to him, careful to not re-open her wounds or hurt her. He laid her on her good side in the deep sand between his outstretched legs so she could use his body as a pillow. Although he was sure that when she woke up she would be in excruciating pain no matter what position she was in, he had no idea how to stop it and this seemed like the one position that would cause her the least discomfort. He’d do anything to take her pain away – anything. He’d do anything to send her out of this demon infested, dismal, and desolate dimension – if he only knew what to do.
 
Spike stroked a hand gently through her hair – he hadn’t noticed before how short it was – and now caked in blood. She wouldn’t like that, he was sure. “God, Buffy …” Spike sobbed. With his mind no longer occupied with the task of tending to her injury, and the adrenaline of the fight waning, the reality of this situation cut straight to his heart.
 
“Why, luv? Why did you come back?” he asked her softly, still stroking her hair and face softly with his fingertips as tears fell from his eyes.
 
He didn’t know how long she’d been gone, or even where she’d gone – back to their dimension or the one she described with Riley Finn and Dawn – either one had to be better than this one, though. He remembered helping her get away from the spiders and them both finally getting to the relative safety of the ledge – the next thing he remembered he was standing in a courtroom of sorts. To one side were the gates of what he assumed was hell from the screams he heard coming from behind them; on the other side of the courtroom was a brilliant, blue-white light and what sounded like angels singing - the gates of heaven, he guessed.



The 'courtroom' itself was a round platform with a sterile, white floor that was lit from below. It seemed to be floating in infinite darkness - you could see nothing else except for the two gates, which were to either side of it. It was here that he was questioned by disembodied voices about his sins; many of them replayed for him on something that looked like the holodeck from Star Trek – in 3-D and living color. In the middle of the floor was a force field where Spike was delivered and held motionless through the questioning and the replays of his life, unable to look away from the horrors of his past, unable to escape or even close his eyes to them.




The tribunal started with the lesser of Spike’s sins: lies, slander, gluttony, laziness … he wasn’t sure when they’d get to the more heinous of his transgressions, and he didn’t ask. After what seemed hours of questioning and instant … or not so instant, actually, since they spanned more than a century, replays of his life, he was suddenly back here on the cold sand, fighting the werewolves and spiders and looking for Buffy, hoping beyond hope that she had gotten out safely.
 
Time had lost all meaning – every moment was the same as the one before, except for the times that he visited the crossroads between heaven and hell and relived his past. He knew which road he would ultimately take, for he had no answers for their questions; he wasn’t able to list enough compensatory good deeds to pay for the sins he’d committed over his un-life, and they were definitely keeping score. He wasn’t sure how he got there or how he got back here to … whatever this was, some kind of holding dimension? Limbo? Purgatory?

He remembered reading something long ago about there being twenty toll houses on the way to heaven that you have to pass … each toll house was a different sin that had to be answered for. If you didn’t have enough compensatory good deeds to outweigh the bad, then you couldn’t pay the ‘toll’ and proceed to heaven … you would either be left in purgatory where you could try and redeem yourself,  or your soul could be recycled … reincarnated, sent back to earth for another go, or, if you were too far in the hole – beyond redemption, you’d be dragged by the demons into hell with no chance for release. Buffy had told him before she didn’t remember any gates or any questions when she died … but then, what sins did she have to answer for? Compared to Spike, she was a saint; she’d probably gotten a free pass – a ‘get out of hell free’ card. Spike could really use one of those right about now.

Once back here in the cold, red wasteland, he had been relatively happy to finally find this cave. It offered a respite from the eternal wind and protection from the super-sized spiders and ferocious flying dogs. He was even more glad for it now, for Buffy’s sake … at least it offered her some protection from the cold. He wished he could build her a fire …do something to warm her, but he had never seen any wood here…not a twig or even a tumbleweed; just sand and rocks and bitterly cold wind.
 
Buffy groaned and tried to move in his arms. “Shhhh. Easy, pet…” Spike whispered, leaning down near her ear. “Don’t move. I’ve got ya, luv.”
 
“Spike?” Buffy moaned, trying to sit up, but when she moved pain shot through her entire body and she collapsed back down against his legs, writhing in agony.
 
“Try not to move, Buffy,” Spike told her again, stroking her hair and pulling it back away from her face. “The flying fur-ball thought your shoulder was a chew toy, pet. It’s broken … well, demolished, really. Try to be still…”
 
Buffy nodded against Spike’s leg as she swallowed back the tears that had popped into her eyes from the pain in her arm, chest, and shoulder when she tried to get up. The pain had started to subside back down to a dull, throbbing ache now – much better than the hot poker stabbing into her chest from behind that had been there when she moved.
 
“I’m so sorry, pet. I looked for you … figured you had gone back. Buffy, you should’ve stayed away – stayed with the babies, with Annie. They’re gonna need you.
 
“Buffy, I’m … I’m a lost cause, luv; can’t be saved – this is it for me,” Spike told her softly. He knew he was dead – really dead this time, and he was just waiting for his judgment to be handed down. He didn’t know how he’d been dusted, he had no memory of it and didn’t know how the Gem of Amarra had been thwarted, but there was no denying where he was and what was happening. It wasn’t a big mystery really, what his judgment would be – St. Peter, or whoever was in charge, had a very long memory … and the deck was stacked against him.
 
“Spike,” Buffy croaked out and then tried to clear her throat. She tasted blood in her mouth and wondered if her lungs had been pierced in the attack, but didn’t mention it to Spike; it would just cause him to worry more.
 
“I’m here, Buffy,” Spike said softly laying a hand gently on her cheek.
 
Buffy wished she could turn and look into his eyes, but she dared not move again. “You can remember the babies?” she asked him.
 
Spike furrowed his brow. “’Course … why wouldn’t I?”
 
“You remember Angel and Dru?”
 
“What are you on about, luv? Who could forget the magnificent poof?” Spike asked her, concern creasing his features.
 
“Spike … something … I think Hallie did something. You’ve been erased from everything – just gone…”
 
“WHAT?” Spike yelled louder than he intended and jerked under Buffy, making her wince in pain.
 
“THAT’s who did this!? Hallie!?” he exclaimed in surprise and anger.

 

“That bloody bitch! I’ll tear her from limb to limb … then feed her to the bloody werewolves! No! I’ll feed her to the werewolves and let them tear her limb from limb while we cheer!” Spike ranted. He desperately wanted to get up and pace around the small area, but dared not move lest he hurt Buffy more.
 
Buffy tried to clear her thoughts. She tried to figure out why Spike remembered everything like she did – maybe that was part of the vengeance, too. Or maybe the Gem of Amarra was partially protecting him, keeping the demon intact as much as it could under the circumstances.
 
Buffy squeezed Spike’s thigh with her right hand, the only part of him she could reach, and Spike laid his hand over hers. “Tell me everything…” Spike requested through clenched teeth. He should’ve just killed that bitch when he had the chance; he’d gotten soft, turned into a poof, and now his leniency was costing them all.
 
Buffy pushed herself up with her right arm. Holding her breath and closing her eyes against the pain that shot through her body from the effort. Spike tried to stop her, but quickly changed his mind and helped her sit up since that’s obviously what she wanted to do.
 
When the pain subsided to something slightly less than unbearable, Buffy opened her eyes and looked into Spike’s. They were the same blue – even though other things might’ve changed – his eyes remained the same, deep, soulful pools of love that she wished she could drown in.
 
Buffy raised her good hand up and laid it gently on his cheek and Spike closed his eyes and leaned into her touch, covering her hand with his and trying to memorize that feeling of her flesh on his – he wanted to make sure he could remember that feeling when he got to hell; it would make whatever he faced bearable.
 
“Spike, I don’t know exactly what she did or when she did it – I’m not even 100% sure it was her, but our world is changed and it’s …it’s…God, Spike, it’s a nightmare!” Buffy sobbed, leaning forward and dropping her forehead on his shoulder. Pain shot through her body, but she didn’t care, she needed to be in his arms. He gave her strength … in any dimension, Spike gave her strength.
 
Spike wrapped his arms around her gently, careful to not touch her wounded shoulder, and held her. “I’m sorry, Buffy…I’m so sorry…” he whispered to her as she sobbed against his bare shoulder. Spike lifted her tear streaked face up with one hand and kissed her tears away, just as she’d imagined the blue butterfly had done in its own way, and that only made her cry harder.
 
“Oh, Buffy,” Spike said softly, pulling her gently against his chest as sobs racked her body.
 
“The babies are gone, Spike … Annie, Dani, and Billy – they don’t exist. Everything you touched is gone…everything…gone,” Buffy told him through her sobs.
 
Spike’s head fell back and he closed his eyes to stop his own tears from falling, but it was a lost effort; they escaped the corners of his eyes and joined hers as they fell in agonizing rivers to the red sand below.  “Everything is gone,” Spike repeated what she’d said, trying to take that in and make sense of it in his mind, his voice low and despondent.
 
“Our babies are gone…the only good thing I’ve ever done…gone,” he whispered to himself. He felt all the hopes and dreams he’d had for their children shatter into a million pieces within his heart. He could clearly see Annie’s pout, her eye roll, her deadly stare when she was mad … and her smile. She had a smile that could lift him from the depths of self-loathing and depression – a smile that could launch a thousand ships. And the babies … just starting out their lives – just barely a year old, their whole future ahead of them - all snatched away in the blink of an eye with the uttering of a wish.
 
Their children were the only card he had to play with the angels of death that questioned him, the only real good he’d ever done … he was saving that card for his more serious sins … he still wasn’t sure if even they would be enough, and now that small hope was gone, too.
 
Buffy leaned heavily against his shoulder as she tried to compose herself. After a few moments, she sat back and looked at him; his eyes were closed as tears leaked out the corners and down his face. Buffy’s lower lip quivered and trembled as she tried to stop crying, wiping at her face with her good hand.
 
“Spike, what is this place?” she asked as tears continued to leak from her eyes.
 
Spike shook his head slowly. “Best I can figure, it’s purgatory … they’re judgin’ me for m’ crimes, Buffy … all my crimes.”
 
Buffy’s brow furrowed and she shook her head slowly. “But … but … what sins can you have? Are you even a vampire?”
 
Spike brought up his game face for her and Buffy reached out her good hand and touched him, running her fingers lightly across his wrinkled brow before he shook it off and brought his human features back.
 
Buffy shook her head, still confused. “Spike, according to the diaries, Dru never turned you. And your hair … it’s not – it’s not yours, and look at your hand – the scar is gone, the wedding ring – it’s not mine …” Buffy pointed out.

 

Spike ran a hand through his hair – he knew it was longer and the bits he could see weren’t bleached, he figured that was because he’d been here so long, and he had noticed the other things she mentioned, he had just assumed that had something to do with being dead – that you didn’t keep the scars from your physical body… he never could figure out the wedding band thing – he had given up on that.
 
“So, I remember bein’ Spike … I’m being judged for what Spike did, but you’re saying I was never Spike – I lived and died as William ‘the-bloody-Nancy’ Weckerly – the prat from Clapham?” Spike asked her incredulously. “Why am I a vampire, then?”

 

Buffy shook her head. “Maybe the magic that was used to do this reacted with the magic from the Gem of Amarra and … got confused? Or maybe Hallie planned it that way … for maximum punishment…” Buffy suggested.
 
“Bloody brilliant,” Spike moaned, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the hard stone of the cave wall.
 
After a few moments, Spike opened his eyes and looked at Buffy. Hallie may have done it to punish him, but he was grateful for his memories. For him, the last years with Buffy more than made up for the century plus with Dru and her betrayals and his less than successful life as a human. He was thankful for finding his soul mate, for her love, for her belief in him, and for the time he had with their children – even if it was fleeting, those years would be the ones he would cling to when the time came for him to meet his fate behind the fiery gates. Spike reached a hand out and touched Buffy’s face … even with all she’d been through, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on.
 
“Tell me 'bout your world,” Spike requested of her again.
 
Buffy took a deep breath and began to tell him about a world without Spike. Spike listened to her story intently, not interrupting her except to ask why in God’s name she would’ve married Captain Cardboard. Spike wasn’t sure who had gotten dealt the worse hand, him or Buffy; eternal damnation or being married to the enormous hall monitor… hmmm.
 
Buffy shook her head slowly. “He said it was because I knew I would have to die … ‘death is my gift’, and I wanted to make sure Dawn had someone, someone who was family.”

 

“That’s a bloody stupid reason to marry someone!” Spike exclaimed and Buffy smiled sadly – that’s basically what she’d told Riley. “You know I would’ve done anything for Dawn, Buffy. Protected her with m’ life.”
 
“But you weren’t there!” Buffy exclaimed, trying to make him understand, although she wasn’t really sure she understood completely.
 
“You weren’t there to look after Dawn for me,” Buffy told him softly, laying a hand on his cheek. “And you weren’t there to show me that…that Riley wasn’t what I needed.
 
“I’d been with Angel and…and Parker and Riley was so…stable,” Buffy explained. “He was Mr. Reliable … I thought that was what I needed, and without you there to challenge that idea, I just … I guess I just…” She didn’t remember what had happened, she was really just speculating now. Buffy shrugged and pain stabbed through her chest; she closed her eyes and held her breath trying to get it to stop the burning.
 
“He never challenged you … not your body, not your mind, not your spirit,” Spike pointed out.
 
Buffy started to shrug again then thought better of it, so she just shook her head slowly, her eyes still closed. “I know. I just …” She paused and sighed heavily, before starting over. “He was just safe, ya know? I didn’t know how bright a fire could burn without you there to show me,” she told Spike, finally opening her eyes and meeting his. “I never knew what love was until you.”
 
Spike looked away from her, he couldn’t meet her eyes when he asked, “Have you … slept with him?”
 
“Spike! No! No … never! Well, not as me … not as me that’s married to you!” Buffy exclaimed empathically.

 

“Spike, look at me,” she requested softly and Spike turned his face back to hers. “I am your wife … I will always be yours, that will never change, I don’t care what anyone does to us.”
 
Spike smiled at her sadly and laid a hand on the side of her face. “Buffy … I – I don’t think I’ll be able to get back from this,” he started and Buffy laid a finger on his lips, silencing him.
 
We will get back from this, both of us. And we will get our babies back and our friends back - we have to, Spike, ‘cos I can’t live in a world that doesn’t have you in it. Look what happens to me when I’m not with you!”
 
Spike looked down at the sand below them for a moment then raised his head back and met her eyes. “Buffy, I’m bloody terrified,” he admitted softly as tears glistened in his eyes. “I don’t scare easy, but I can feel the torment behind the gates, and it terrifies me. I know I deserve it … but…”
 
“NO! No! You don’t deserve it! That’s not gonna happen! I will not allow that to happen!” Buffy assured him, taking one of his hands in her good one and squeezing it tightly.
 
“I don’t think you can stop it, luv…” Spike whispered as he leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes.
 
“I have to try – Spike, I’ll hang onto you with every fiber of my being …with my soul and my heart and my last breath. Don’t give up on me. It’s just you and me now – you and me against this world. Please don’t leave me, I need you, Spike. I love you so much.”
 
Tears fell anew from Buffy’s eyes. The thought of living in that world without him terrified her – she would surely lose her mind, just as her alter-ego had done, without him at her side. The thought of him spending eternity in hell for crimes that he’d committed as a demon without a soul terrified her even more. He’d more than made up for those crimes – the world she’d been dropped into was proof positive of that.
 
“I love you too, Spike replied sadly. “In the depths of hell I’ll feel your love in my heart. You are everything to me – my world. I’ll fight to get back to you until my soul turns to ashes under Satan’s feet.”
 
Buffy dropped a soft kiss on Spike’s lips. “Hold me,” she whispered and Spike opened his arms as he leaned back against the cold stone of the cave wall. Buffy turned and leaned back against him, resting her tired and mangled body against his and closing her eyes as her tears continued to fall. She had to fix this … she was the only one that could.
 
**~**
 

Dawn sat next to Buffy’s bed in the mental hospital. She was relieved to see her sister actually resting, actually sleeping instead of in that half-awake / half-asleep state she’d been in since getting here several days ago. Although Riley and Giles had visited the first couple of days Buffy was here, only Dawn continued to come and see her every day. Although it was a long way from where she lived with Riley in Oxford, each day after class Dawn boarded the train for London. She did her homework during the hour ride each way on the rails, and on Fridays she stayed with Giles for the weekend, returning to Oxford on Sunday night so she could be ready for school on Monday.
 
Although she and Buffy hadn’t always gotten along, and since being brought back from the dead Buffy had been distant and unfeeling, then later she’d been out of control and irresponsible, abusing drugs and magicks, she was still Dawn’s sister – her only blood family in the entire world. Dawn would never forget what Buffy had sacrificed for her on that tower in Sunnydale, and she felt at least partly responsible for Buffy’s condition now. If she had done things differently somehow, escaped from Glory or Ben; if she had jumped into the portal, then Buffy wouldn’t have had to…if, if, if. Dawn had thought of a hundred things that she might’ve been able to do differently over the years since Buffy’s sacrifice, unfortunately, she hadn’t thought of any of them when it actually mattered.
 
Dawn hated this place – it smelled like vomit and urine and feces and death all wrapped up in antiseptics, which just made it smell worse. Not that it wasn’t clean or that the staff didn’t seem qualified, it was just the nature of the beast. You couldn’t have this many crazy people in one place and not have it smell like … like a bunch of crazy people.
 
Dawn wasn’t so sure that Buffy was as crazy as everyone thought, either. Why would she gnaw her own wrist, but slash her throat with a letter opener? Giles said it was because she couldn’t gnaw her own throat, obviously, but Dawn was unconvinced. What if something had attacked her and done it? Giles and Riley both pooh-poohed her, there was no sign of a struggle in the office, no proof that anyone had been there at all except Buffy. Dawn found it astounding that they could live in a world of magick and demons, but be so closed-minded about the possibility that something else had done this to Buffy.
 
It didn’t occur to Dawn until later that perhaps they were looking for some kind of excuse to do this to Buffy … to get her out of their hair, out of their lives. She knew that Buffy and Riley did nothing but either fight or ignore each other. Giles tried to be civil around Buffy, but it was abundantly clear that he still held her responsible for what Angelus did to him all those years ago. To say the old Watcher was ‘upset’ when Buffy hid the fact that Angel had come back from the hell dimension, would’ve been a gross understatement.
 
Even though Buffy hadn’t really ‘been there’ for Dawn since her resurrection, amnesia-Buffy seemed more like the old Buffy, like before Glory, before giving her gift of death. Dawn had a glimmer of hope that she was actually getting her sister back, then it was snatched away when Riley and Giles put her in this place, sedated and shackled to the bed ‘for her own safety’ – not even able to talk because of the drugs they had her on.
 
Dawn jumped up from her seat when Buffy’s prone body began shaking violently. Suddenly blood covered Dawn and the walls of Buffy’s room as flesh tore and bone crushed in the jaws of an unseen attacker. Dawn screamed in horror as she watched Buffy’s shoulder being ripped to shreds, the sound of bones breaking and splintering, and blood spurting in geysers from Buffy’s body made Dawn’s stomach churn. She barely made it out the door of Buffy’s room before she collapsed to her knees and vomited, still trying to scream for help from the hospital staff.
 
Nurses and aides rushed past Dawn into the room, the first two or three slipped on the blood that soaked the floor and fell as they tried to come to a stop. Dawn could hear shrieks and screams of horror from the aides along with yelling from the veteran nurses as they shouted orders and tried to quell the bleeding. Someone suggested that Buffy was possessed while others asked, “What happened?” over and over.
 
Dawn watched helplessly as the nurses tried to stop her sister’s bleeding. Buffy’s heart was racing, her blood pressure was dropping; the possibility that she could die wasn’t far from anyone’s mind, including Dawn’s, but no one voiced it as they worked feverishly to get her stable enough to transport to an operating room. More doctors and nurses were paged and soon blood was tracked up and down the halls of the hospital as the flood of staff ran in and out of her room with supplies, bandages, and IVs.
 
Dawn followed the throng of hospital staff as they wheeled Buffy quickly from her room towards the emergency / admitting area after getting her stabilized.
 
“Where are you going!!?” Dawn questioned as she ran after them.
 
“We have to transport her back to a proper hospital,” one of the nurses explained. “We don’t have facilities here to repair this.”
 
When Dawn tried to get into the ambulance with Buffy, one of the head nurses stopped her. “What happened in there?” the nurse demanded angrily.
 
“I have no idea!” Dawn replied, trying to get by her to get into the ambulance.
 
“You were the only other one there!” the nurse accused.
 
“Well, I didn’t do it!” Dawn defended. “I have to go!” she exclaimed, brushing by the older woman and climbing into the ambulance with Buffy.
 
When they arrived back at the same hospital she’d been in when her neck and wrist had been cut up, they rushed Buffy from the ambulance directly to the operating room. She had lost a lot of blood, her shoulder – clavicle and scapula, were both crushed seemingly beyond repair, shards of the bone had embedded in her lungs causing internal bleeding, and her flesh – skin, muscles, and tendons of her shoulder and upper arm had all been torn and shredded. Her shoulder looked like it had been through a meat grinder.
 
Dawn waited anxiously for the doctors to come out of the operating room with news. The minutes turned into hours of waiting. Riley and Giles showed up – Bedlam had called them to let them know what was happening, and they immediately questioned Dawn...
 
“What happened?” Riley asked Dawn in a harsh tone as he and Giles entered the waiting room.


 
Dawn glared up at them and shook her head. “I told you she didn’t do that to herself –but does anyone ever listen to me? No! I’m still just a stupid kid, right?”
 
“Dawn,” Giles tried using his most fatherly tone with her, “perhaps you could just tell us what happened today.”
 
“She was attacked – it was like Freddy Krueger – she was finally actually sleeping, and then WHAM! she was all ‘Nightmared on Elm Street’,” Dawn exclaimed, standing up and waving her arms out from her sides.

 

“’Nightmared on Elm Street?’” Giles questioned, looking at Riley. “I’m fairly certain that ‘nightmare’ is not a verb… and we are not on Elm Street.”
 
“It means something from her dream attacked her and manifested on her body physically…” Riley explained in terms Giles could understand.
 
“That’s what I said,” Dawn told Giles, rolling her eyes and flinging her arms out to the side in frustration.
 
“And you witnessed this … ‘nightmaring’?” Giles asked Dawn.
 
“Yeah – front row seat,” Dawn muttered, crossing her arms over her blood-stained shirt.
 
“And you wouldn’t…make something up just to protect Buffy? Perhaps to keep her out of isolation or…” Giles started.
 
“OH. MY. GOD!” Dawn exclaimed, throwing her arms in the air and turning and walking away from Giles and Riley in disgust. She was seriously about to lose it.
 
“Why did you even come down here?” she asked them, turning back around and putting her hands on her hips.


 
“Dawnie…” Riley started.
 
“Don’t ‘Dawnie’ me – I’m not twelve! Neither of you have cared about Buffy for years!” Dawn accused, pointing a finger at them. “You just pretend you do! That’s even worse than not caring at all!
 
“You don’t try to help her – you just try to control her! You treat her like she’s … she’s …some kind of monster!” Dawn turned away from them as tears stung her eyes. She could almost understand Buffy turning to alcohol and drugs and magicks … nearly everyone she’d ever loved was either dead, insane, or held her responsible for their plight in life.
 
“Dawn, I assure you that’s not true,” Giles defended, moving towards her and laying a hand, his only hand, on her shoulder.
 
Dawn shrugged his hand off and took a step away from him. “Why don’t you both leave?” she asked quietly. “It’s what you wanted to do all along, right? Leave her.”
 
“Daaawn …” Riley dragged her name out with that sanctimonious tone that she hated.
 
“Get. Out,” Dawn repeated through clenched teeth. When neither of them made any move to leave, she screamed, “GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!” at the top of her lungs until they both left the waiting room. Dawn collapsed down into one of the chairs and buried her face in her hands, sobbing. If they wouldn’t help Buffy, she would – she was the reason Buffy was in this state in the first place, she vowed to do whatever she could to help her sister and get her better, mentally and physically. It would be the two of them against the world…that seemed like a fair fight.
 
**~**
{{Click here to hear "You and Me Against the World” by Gladys Knight and the Pips on YouTube   }}

You and me against the world
Sometimes it seems like you and me against the world
When all the others turn their backs and walked away
You can count on me to stay

Remember when the circus came to town
And we were frightened by the clown
Wasn't it nice to be around someone that we knew
Someone who was big and strong and looking out for …

You and me against the world
Sometimes it feels like you and me against the world
And for all the times we've cried I always felt
The odds were on our side

And when one of us is gone
And one is left alone to carry on
Well then remembering will have to do
Our memories alone will get us through
Think about the days of me and you

Life can be a circus
They underpay and overwork us
And though we seldom get our due
When the day is through
I bring my tired body home
And look around for you…

…and me against the world
 Sometimes it feels like you and me against the world
And for all the times we've cried I always felt
That God was on our side

And when one of us is gone
And one of us is left alone to carry on
Well then, remembering will have to do
Our memories alone will get us through
Think about the days of me and you

Of you and me … against the world
End Notes:
TBC .... keep those tissues handy ... I'd love to hear from you! Don't be shy!
**
More info on ‘Toll houses’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_toll_house
Hero by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy has been attacked by a werewolf and is dying in both dimensions – Where will we find a hero?
**
Some dialogue from canon, written by Doug Petrie.
**
Music Referenced:
Hero, Enrique Iglesias: http://youtu.be/H3ltEfjNkfg
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise: http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Monday, February 7th, 2005 (6 days after the flying werewolf attack):

 

“We can’t get the infection under control,” the doctor was explaining solemnly to Giles, Riley, and Dawn that Monday morning.
 
It had been about a week since Buffy had been attacked by the werewolf in her dream and the doctors were doing all they could, but it wasn’t enough. They had used a pound of surgical screws to put her shattered bones back together – and more stitches than anyone could count to repair her flesh and tendons. If her bones didn’t heal properly, they may need to take a bone graft from her leg … but right now the big problem was the bacterial infection.
 
“We need to wake her up,” Dawn insisted for the hundredth time over the last few days.
 
“She’s in too much pain,” the doctor explained to her again, an edge of impatience in his voice. “If we take her out of the drug-induced coma, she may very well go into shock and die.”
 
“If you don’t wake her up and get her away from whatever’s causing her infection she’s gonna die!” Dawn exclaimed, throwing her hands up in frustration. Why couldn’t anyone else see this? Buffy’s healing powers should be able to fight the infection – the doctors had cleaned and disinfected the wound – they’d spent hours repairing the damage as best they could, they were pumping her full of strong antibiotics, and yet she was getting worse.

 

“Thank you, Dr. Dawn,” Riley replied sarcastically. “Why don’t we just let the doctors do their jobs?” he continued with a stern look. “Last I checked you were a freshman in college – studying dead languages, not medicine,” Riley pointed out, before turning his back on her and starting to talk with the doctor again.
 
Dawn growled and fumed out of the small consultation room they were in and down the hall, back towards Buffy’s room. Dawn had kept vigil with Buffy since the attack, afraid that more might come, but none ever did. Buffy would talk in her drug-induced sleep – often to her imaginary husband, Spike, but other than a stray word here and there, Dawn couldn’t make sense out of what she said.

 

Dawn plopped down heavily in the chair beside Buffy’s bed and dropped her face in her hands. They were killing her sister. Maybe not on purpose (although she wasn’t sure about that, either), but they were killing her, just the same. Dawn took a deep breath and brushed her long hair back from her face as she looked up at Buffy, lying on her good side, motionless in the bed. She had an IV in her hand, an oxygen tube running under her nose, and numerous monitors stuck to her body under the thin hospital gown. Buffy’s whole body was flushed with fever, sweating and shivering at the same time, and the wound oozed so much greenish pus that they had given up trying to keep bandages on it. The nurses cleaned it several times a day, changing her bed linens as well, but it still didn’t improve.
 
“I’ll get you out of here, Buffy … I promise,” Dawn whispered to her unconscious sister. “I won’t let you down again.”
 
**~**
 
“Spike?” Buffy called weakly as she tried to sit up on the cold sand floor of the cave, but she got no answer. She looked over to the entrance, the rock that Spike rolled in front of it when he was inside was still there. That could mean only one thing, he’d been taken back to the gates of hell for questioning.
 
Buffy didn’t know how long she’d been asleep this time or even how long it had been since she’d been attacked, but she knew she was getting weaker and they had long ago run out of anything clean they could use for dressings on her wounds. When she asked Spike how it looked he simply said, ‘not good,’ but Buffy knew that it was much worse than ‘not good.’ She could practically feel the bacteria multiplying by the minute, she was freezing and burning up at the same time, and bright red lines radiated down her arm – a sign that the infection was spreading.
 
Spike had been taken away several times since she’d been here – each time it seemed like he was gone longer and longer (although time was extremely difficult to judge here – each moment seemed very much the same as the one before and the one that followed) and each time he came back he was weaker and more despondent than the time before. He tried to keep a brave face for her, but Buffy could feel his anguish and guilt as all his past sins were revisited, shown to him in 3-D and living color.
 
At his insistence, Buffy had tried time and again to wake up and leave this dimension, which they had both come to call ‘limbo’, but to no avail. She couldn’t wake up, she couldn’t get out and, the way things were going, she’d be facing her own judgment day and trials very soon, because she was sure that she was dying.
 
Buffy lay back down on the cold sand floor of the cave and closed her eyes. Her tears had run dry long ago, but if she could, she would cry a river for all that had been stolen from them. She had to figure out a way to get back, to wake up – although she didn’t want to leave Spike here alone, it was only back in the ‘real world’, or what passed for the real world now, that she had any chance of fixing this.
 
Suddenly, Spike reappeared next to her. He rolled across the floor and crashed against the far wall of the cave with a hard thud, as if he’d been thrown by something much larger than himself. Spike moaned and held his ribs as he tried to sit up and get his bearings.
 
“Spike!” Buffy exclaimed, crawling on her knees and one hand over to him.
 
“Buffy…” Spike moaned as he sat half doubled-over in pain from hitting the wall with such force.
 
“Oh God, baby…” Buffy cried as she reached him and laid her hand on his shoulder. She wished she could take his pain away – not so much the physical pain, although she would certainly take that, but the mental pain, the emotional pain that was being inflicted on him during these trials.
 
Spike wrapped an arm around her and laid his head on her good shoulder and just sobbed against her. “I’m a bad, bad man…”
 
“No…no, Spike – you’re not. You’re a good man, you’re a good father, a good friend – a good husband,” Buffy assured him as the tears she thought had run dry began to dampen her eyes again.
 
Spike laughed maniacally, lifting his head up to look at her. “Do you know how much blood you can drink from a girl before she'll die? I do. You see, the trick is to drink just enough to know how to damage them just enough so that they'll still cry when you…”
 
“Spike, stop,” Buffy told him, laying her fingers on his lips. “That wasn’t you; it wasn’t your fault.”
 
Spike dropped his head again and shook it slowly from side to side. “No one else. Just me … Can you forgive me? Can you ever forgive me?” Spike pleaded, lifting his head back and looking into her eyes – his eyes held so much pain, so much guilt, Buffy’s heart felt like it was being wrenched from her body.
 
Buffy shook her head slowly. “There’s nothing to forgive.
 
“Spike, remember what you told me? It was Dru that turned you, but Angelus turned you into the monster? Remember that? Tell them about Angelus!” Buffy admonished him.
 
“Window dressing!” Spike shook his head slowly as he hung his head down in defeat. “Dru’s been through … waits behind the gates, she does. Angelus’ time will come. No excuses … no more lies – no hiding behind mummy’s apron strings. Angelus taught me, but he didn’t make me enjoy it.”

 

Spike looked back up and met her eyes. “Buffy … I enjoyed it. I sought it out! The rush, the feeling of life flowing out of the innocents and into me was …” Spike stopped and sighed deeply. “God, so many innocents,” Spike whimpered as tears threatened his eyes. Spike closed his eyes and pressed his palms against them to try and stop the tears, but every time he closed his eyes he saw what the angels had shown him during the trials, all his sins – what he had to answer for.
 
“Spike, that wasn’t you – it was the demon! Can’t they understand that? How can they judge you for what the demon did!? Tell them it wasn’t you!” Buffy argued.
 
“They don’t care…no difference here … soul in, soul out – like fireflies, no matter. Look up, look down…voices all around – do you hear them?” Spike asked her, lowering his hands away from his face and looking at her with wide, frightened eyes.
 
“No, baby – I can’t hear them…” Buffy whispered.
 
“No worries…just ghosts…ghosts can’t hurt, safe as houses, we are,” Spike babbled, looking around the cave for unseen spirits.
 
“Everybody's in here, talking. Everything I did...everyone I -- and him... and it... the other, the thing beneath -- beneath you. It's here too. Everybody. They all just tell me go... go... to hell,” Spike moaned, leaning back against her and sobbing against her shoulder.


 
“Oh, Spike, no…” Buffy whispered, wrapping her good arm around him and stroking his bare back softly, trying to give him some comfort.
 
Suddenly, Spike jumped up and started pacing back and forth across the floor of the cave and reciting a nonsensical poem that Buffy had never heard before.
 
“One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
 
“Back-to-back they faced one another,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
 
“One was blind and the other couldn't see,
So they chose a dummy for a referee.
 
“A blind man went to see fair play,
 dumb man went to shout "hooray!"
 
“A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came and shot the two dead boys.
 
“A paralyzed donkey walking by,
Kicked the copper in the eye,
 
“Sent him through a rubber wall,
Into a dry ditch and drowned them all!”
 
Spike dropped back down to his knees in front of her, his eyes wide and wild. “Don’t you see? Won’t be long now … the dead boys will fight – all the boys drown in sorrows down there. Soul in, soul out – no matter now.”

Buffy let out a long breath – he was getting worse and worse every time he came back from these inquisitions and, hard as she tried, she couldn’t go with him. He would just vanish and be gone without warning. They could be talking or he’d be holding her and he’d just fade away.

“Ca-Can--can we rest now? Buffy ... can we rest?” Spike asked her tiredly, slumping heavily against her and wrapping his arms around her.

Buffy winced in pain when his arm fell across her mangled shoulder. She held her breath and closed her eyes a moment to keep from screaming out. When he was like this he didn’t remember her shoulder was hurt … he was barely lucid.

“Yes, baby … we can rest now, just rest,” Buffy assured him after a few moments, wrapping her good arm around his waist and holding him against her.

“I love you, Spike,” Buffy whispered against his ear as she laid both of them down on the cold sand floor of the cave.

Spike drew his knees up into a fetal position as he cuddled tightly against Buffy. “She shall look on him with forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved. So everything's okay, right?” he asked her, his voice sounding as exhausted as his body felt.

“Yes, baby … everything’s okay,” Buffy assured him as she tucked his head under her chin and stroked his arm gently. “I love you. Everything’s okay…” she repeated softly before dropping a kiss on top of his head.

Buffy held Spike close and softly sang against his ear until he fell into a restless sleep…

“♫Early one morning, just as the sun was rising,
I heard a maid sing in the valley below:
"Oh don't deceive me, Oh never leave me,
How could you use a poor maiden so?”


It was the only thing she’d found that soothed him in these times after the trials. Buffy closed her eyes to hold back the river of tears that threatened to wash them both away; she had to fix this … she had no idea how, but she just had to figure out a way.

**~**

Early morning hours, Thursday, February 10th, 2005:

Several empty dinner trays clattered to the floor in the deserted hallway of the hospital. Dawn and Andrew quickly ran across the hall and into a closet away from the noise.


“Jesus Christ, Andrew!” Dawn exclaimed in a stage whisper. “We’re supposed to be sneaking in … not waking the goddamn dead here!”



“Sorry…” Andrew whispered back. “I’ve never been very good at sneaking…”

Dawn rolled her eyes before cracking the door open to look out and see if any of the third shift staff had come to investigate the noise, but she didn’t see anyone.

“Ok – just please pretend that you’re stealthy, alright? Like a … church mouse – quiet as a church mouse, got it?” Dawn suggested to Andrew and he nodded solemnly.

When Dawn opened the closet door and started to step out, Andrew grabbed her arm and pulled her back in.



“Can I be a vampire, instead?” he asked in a whisper. “They’re quiet. Mice they … they kind of scare me,” Andrew admitted with a shudder. “They’re always spreading plagues and leaving raisins all over the place – those raisins don’t taste very good, either. Tucker always told me they were good, but…,” Andrew explained, scrunching his nose up and making a face.

Dawn rolled her eyes again and let out a long breath. “You’re scared of mice but not vampires?”

Andrew straightened up and thrust his shoulders back. “I’ve completed seven of the ten levels of competency for becoming a Watcher,” he announced in a quiet voice. “I fear no vampyre … they fear me!”

“Oh, brother,” Dawn moaned. “Fine – you be a vampire … a very quiet, non-violent, stealthy vampire. C’mon,” she said as she opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

Andrew followed Dawn down the hall towards Buffy’s room. They had bypassed the nurse’s station by coming up the back stairs from the parking garage. Dawn would’ve preferred to rescue her sister by herself, but she didn’t think she’d be able to get Buffy out alone, so she’d recruited Andrew to help her. She was beginning to regret that decision.

Dawn grabbed a wheelchair out of the hallway and the pair slipped unseen by the staff into Buffy’s room and closed the door.

“Are you sure about this?” Andrew asked, looking at Buffy. Her skin was clammy and pale … she looked like she might be a vampire, herself.

“Completely,” Dawn assured him. “We have to get her out, get her awake – it’s for the greater good.”

“I don’t know…” Andrew balked.

“Andrew! I swear to God, if you don’t help me I’ll tell all the other Watchers that you have a poster of Billy Idol in the back of your closet!” Dawn threatened, keeping her voice low.


 

Andrew huffed, crossing his arms and raising his chin indignantly. “So? That’s not against the law! I like his music! I’m a total head-banging, punk rocker … uhh … dude!”

Dawn rolled her eyes and stomped her foot in frustration. “You’re a punk alright…” she muttered under her breath before taking a new tack. “You can’t back out now. You owe me! How many times did I keep Buffy from shackling you down in the basement of the apartment building when you were our ‘guestage’? You wouldn’t have liked it down there – lots of mice scurrying around dropping raisins with their plague-y germs!”

“Oh, all right…” he finally groaned out, rolling his eyes.

“Tell them it wasn’t you!” Buffy suddenly exclaimed from her sleep and Dawn and Andrew both nearly jumped out of their skins.
 
“You didn’t tell me she talked!” Andrew accused after he got his heart out of his throat.
 
“She talks … she sings, she hums, she cries – she’s Buffy! Appearing nightly in a deathbed near you!” Dawn announced like a sideshow hawker, before rolling her eyes and sighing heavily.
 
“C’mon, we have to work fast, when those monitors start going off, we’re gonna have company,” Dawn instructed Andrew in a serious tone.
 
Dawn pulled the IV needle out of Buffy’s hand and took the oxygen line off. When she pulled back the covers and lifted the thin gown to remove the catheter and monitor leads, Andrew turned his back.
 
“Andrew! This is no time to be shy! Help me!” Dawn demanded in a low voice. When Andrew shook his head adamantly, keeping his back to them, Dawn said, “I hope you never meet a naked vampire …”
 
When Dawn pulled off the monitor leads, the machines by Buffy’s bed started beeping loudly. “HELP ME!” Dawn demanded of Andrew, punching him in the back.
 
“OWW!” he cried, trying to rub the spot in the middle of his back where she’d hit him. “No hitting! You know I bruise like a peach!”
 
 Andrew turned around to see Dawn trying to get Buffy to a sitting position on the bed, Buffy’s gown was mostly back down over her front, anyway and Andrew came over to the other side of Buffy to help Dawn.
 
Dawn draped Buffy’s good arm over her shoulders and lifted Buffy up to her feet while Andrew helped steady her and pulled the wheelchair over behind Buffy. Buffy moaned in pain when Dawn stood her up, even more greenish-yellow pus oozed from her wound and Andrew gagged at the sight and smell of it.
 
“Oh, some vampyre’s nightmare you’re gonna be…” Dawn mocked. “More like a nummy treat…”
 
Andrew huffed and held his breath as he helped Dawn get Buffy into the wheelchair. About that time, a nurse opened the door and started into the room. “Hey!” she yelled when she saw the intruders. Dawn launched herself at the nurse and knocked her against the wall. “GO!” she yelled at Andrew as she held the stunned nurse out of the way.
 
Andrew pushed hard on the wheelchair, rolled Buffy out of the room and started down the hall towards the elevators. When he saw more nurses coming, he did an about-face and went down a side hallway as fast as he could, away from them. He slid around corners and down the waxed hallways of the hospital with Buffy slumped in the wheelchair as the nurses yelled and ran after him until Andrew was totally lost; every hallway looked pretty much the same. When he came to a sudden stop to try and get his bearings, Buffy tumbled out of the wheelchair and onto the floor.
 
“Oh God!” Andrew exclaimed, running around to where Buffy lay sprawled on the floor. “Oh God…oh God…” he repeated as he tried in vain to pick her up without touching anything that was oozing or her bare skin.
 
“Oh, Buffy – I know you said to never touch you … that you’d rip my arm off and beat me to death with it. Oh, God!” Andrew babbled as he tried to pick her up and get her back into the wheelchair. “I’m not really a vampire, you know … Oh, God, sorry! Sorry!” he exclaimed, yanking his hand away when it slipped and traveled under the flimsy hospital gown and touched her thigh.
 
Andrew heard footsteps coming down the hallway – they’d find them soon. With one final fear and adrenaline powered lift, Andrew got Buffy back into the wheelchair and began running with her again. As he passed a wide hallway, he heard Dawn yelling his name. He turned the chair around on a dime, being careful to tip it back so Buffy wouldn’t be slung out again, and went back. Dawn was holding the freight elevator door open.
 
“C’mon! Where have you been? Giving her the dime tour!?” she asked sarcastically as Andrew wheeled Buffy into the elevator and Dawn stepped in after them, letting the door close behind them.
 
“We’re even after this!” Andrew insisted. “No more – this is it! Do you comprende? Nada mas!”
 
Dawn sighed. “Yes, fine – even.”
 
“And no telling about my taste in music …”
 
Dawn rolled her eyes. “Fine … I won’t tell anyone you’re a closet punk … rocker.”
 
When they reached the parking garage, Dawn stepped out and looked around – there was no one there and very few cars at this late hour. She motioned for Andrew to follow her with Buffy and they wheeled her to the car Dawn had rented. After some effort, they finally had Buffy in the front seat and got the seatbelt fastened across her body. Andrew started to get into the back and Dawn stopped him.
 
“I’ve got it from here,” she told him.
 
“What? Why?” Andrew whined in confusion.
 
“Because you have a big mouth. If you know where we are, then you’ll tell Riley and Giles and this will all be for nothing.”
 
“That’s not true! I can keep secrets! I’m very good at keeping secrets!” Andrew defended.
 
“Oh right!” Dawn snorted. “Andrew, you'll fold faster than Superman on laundry day if either of them just looks at you sideways!”
 
Andrew clicked his tongue and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m deeply offended. Test number one in the Watchers’ curriculum is keeping secrets – I passed with flying colors!” he informed her, lifting his chin in the air. “I’m 89% better at keeping secrets now than I was back in Sunnydale.”
 
“Yeah, well, it’s the other 11% that worries me,” Dawn informed him, as she got into the driver’s side of the car and started the engine.
 
“Awww … c’mon, Dawnie. How am I supposed to get home?” Andrew whined, dropping his hands to his sides and pouting.
 
“Try the underground – or the bus, or walk,” Dawn suggested.
 
“It’s after midnight in downtown London! I could meet some unsavory characters!”

 

“Well, just use those mad-Watcher skills and you’ll be fine, Andrew. I have to go!” Dawn informed him, putting the car in gear and pulling away.
 
“Don’t forget to drive on the left! And look right first!” he called after her. “They didn’t teach that the Academy…and I kinda wish they would’ve ... it's sort of important,” he muttered as she drove away.
  
**~**
 
Buffy woke up to find Spike had been watching her as she slept. She reached her good hand out and touched his face softly and Spike closed his eyes, taking comfort in her touch. She never knew how long it would take for him to come back to himself after he returned from the trials. Buffy was afraid that one day he wouldn’t be able to push the insanity aside. Her heart bled for him, knowing what they were putting him through; every time he came back worse than the time before, but at least he had always come back … so far.
 
“I’m sorry, Buffy…” Spike whispered as tears leaked out from behind his lids.
 
“You have nothing to be sorry for…”
 
“I do,” he insisted, opening his eyes and looking into hers. “I got you into this – if not for me, you wouldn’t be in this … this hell.”
 
Buffy shook her head slowly. “Spike, if not for you I would never have known what love is; I would’ve never felt a life growing inside me; I would’ve never held our children in my arms and felt the joy of them; I would’ve never fully lived if not for you.”
 
Spike closed his eyes again and rolled over onto his back, covering his face with his hands as sobs wracked his body. Buffy sat up and moved over to him. She could feel the crust that had formed over her wound break open and the infection ridden liquid ooze down her back when she sat up.
 
Spike could smell it and he sat up and moved behind her to look at it. “It’s getting worse…” he informed her sadly.
 
“I know…” she admitted, turning around and facing him.
 
“Spike, I want you to remember one thing – you have to promise me that you’ll believe what I say and never forget this,” Buffy said solemnly as she looked into his blue eyes. Those eyes that were so expressive now held fear and guilt and sadness; she longed to see the joy in them again … the love and the passion that she knew he possessed, but was now hidden, buried deep within his heart.

 

“Promise me that you’ll remember that you’re a good man. What you’ve done for me, for our friends, and for the world more than makes up for any bad that the demon did. I love you with my entire heart and soul. I will fix this, Spike – promise me that you won’t give up because I will fix it.”
 
Spike shook his head slowly from side to side. “I reckon there are more than a few people who would disagree … people I’ve killed, girls I’ve…” Spike broke down and covered his face with his hands. “I’m sorry, Buffy … I wanted to be the man you deserved… All I ever wanted was to be your hero.”
 
Buffy pulled Spike against her with her good arm. “You are my hero, now let me be yours. I promise, I ‘Spike promise’, that I will fix this, but you have to believe. Spike, you have to believe that you’re a good man – that you’re my good man and that I love you. Do you believe that?”
 
When Spike didn’t answer, Buffy pulled back and looked into his glistening eyes. “Tell me you believe,” she whispered to him.


 
Spike looked into her emerald green eyes and he saw her belief and love – belief in him, love for him, reflected in their depths. Spike nodded slowly as he gently wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, careful to not hurt her shoulder. “I believe…” he whispered against her skin. “I believe in you.”
 
**~**
 
Dawn pulled the car into the garage under the flat that belonged to a friend from university who had gone on a three week ‘cultural exchange’ trip to China. She’d asked Dawn to water her plants once a week while she was away, so Dawn had the key. It would be the perfect hiding place – neither Riley nor Giles knew about it.
 
Dawn left Buffy in the car as she went up the stairs and unlocked and opened the door before coming back down for her sister. Dawn struggled to get Buffy’s still unconscious body out of the car – she couldn’t lift her, so Dawn finally decided the only way to get her upstairs was by dragging her. “I’m sorry, Buffy …” Dawn murmured as she sat Buffy on the floor and grabbed her from behind under the armpits and dragged her to the stairs and then up them one at a time.
 
Dawn could feel bones moving under her hand and Buffy’s wound oozed pus and blood as she pulled her sister up the stairs. “God…I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” she kept repeating as Buffy moaned in pain but never fully woke up; the drugs she’d been given in the hospital still keeping her mostly sedated.
 
The stairs opened into the kitchen of the small flat and Dawn laid Buffy down on her stomach on the floor near the sink. Dawn had already stocked the flat with every kind of antibiotic ointment she could buy, as well as antiseptics, gauze, bandages, a couple of slings, anti-inflammatory drugs, and a few old partially empty bottles of antibiotics that she’d found in the medicine cabinet at home and at Giles’. She set to work on Buffy’s shoulder, holding her breath against the stench, as she cleaned the wound with peroxide and Betadine then covered it with a thick coat of antibiotic ointment and gauze. It was nothing they hadn’t done at the hospital, and Dawn knew that it would do no good unless Buffy woke up.
 
Dawn got a couple of blankets and pillows and laid one of the blankets on the floor, turning Buffy onto her good side on top of the blanket and putting one of the pillows under her head, then covering her with the other blanket and propping the other pillow against her back to keep her from turning over and hurting herself. She knew that she’d have to clean the wound again many times and she didn’t think her friend would appreciate gross, smelly stains on their bed when she got back, so the floor in the kitchen would be the best place for Buffy for now.
 
Dawn sat down tiredly on the floor next to Buffy and stroked her sister’s hair back away from her face. Dawn sent a silent prayer to the Powers That Be … please let this work. She knew if she was wrong, if this didn’t work, then she would be the one responsible for killing her sister…again.
 
“I’m sorry, Buffy…” Dawn whispered to her as the guilt of Buffy’s sacrifice on the tower surfaced in Dawn’s mind.
 
“You have nothing to be sorry for…” Buffy murmured and Dawn looked at her, thinking that she’d awoken, but Buffy’s eyes were closed, she was still unconscious.

 

“You were always the brave one – always the one to protect me and Mom and all our friends the best you could …” Dawn talked as she continued to stroke Buffy’s hair. “I always wished I could be like you … be a hero, I just never could find it within myself… I'm just not as strong as you,” Dawn said sadly, her voice full of regret.
 
“You are my hero,” Buffy whispered in her sleep and Dawn looked at her again with a furrowed brow. Can she hear me?
 
“Do you believe that?” Buffy asked quietly as she shifted positions slightly on the floor to get more comfortable.
 
Dawn took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know…” she answered Buffy’s question. “I just believe in you …”

**~**

{{Click here to hear "Hero” by Enrique Iglesias on YouTube   }}

(Whispered) Let me be your hero

Would you dance if I asked you to dance?
Would you run and never look back
Would you cry if you saw me crying
Would you save my soul tonight?

Would you tremble if I touched your lips?
Would you laugh oh please tell me these
Now would you die for the one you love?
Hold me in your arms tonight?

(Chorus)
I can be you hero baby
I can kiss away the pain
I will stand by you forever
You can take my breath away

Would you swear that you'll always be mine?
Would you lie would you run away
Am I in to deep?
Have I lost my mind?
I don't care you're here tonight

Chorus

I just want to hold you (2x)
Am I in too deep?
Have I lost my mind?
Well I don't care you're here tonight

Chorus (2x)

You can take my breath my breath away
I can be your hero
End Notes:
TBC...

Is Dawn's theory right? Will Buffy heal if she can get her to wake up and leave limbo? What will happen to Spike if Buffy leaves him there all alone?
Lean On Me by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
The trials are taking their toll on Spike … Buffy wants to stay with him, but he insists that she wake up if she can, it’s the only chance to fix things before it’s too late.
**Some dialogue from canon, written by Douglas Petrie
“Scream ‘Montresor’”, from canon dialogue, is in reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Cask of Amontillado: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cask_of_Amontillado
Music Referenced:
Lean on Me – Bill Withers
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPoTGyWT0Cg
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!

And last, but not least, a huge thanks to Vette for the Manip of Henry Weckerly ... Spike's father.

Early evening, Friday, February 11th, 2005:


Dawn cleaned Buffy’s wound for the seventh time in the last fourteen hours since she’d ‘rescued’ her sister from the hospital. It wasn’t getting any better and Buffy hadn’t awoken. Dawn was starting to worry that she’d done the wrong thing. She had been so sure that getting Buffy off the coma-inducing drugs and letting her wake up would be the key to her sister’s cure, but it wasn’t working.
 
**~**
 
Buffy shivered and trembled and tried to curl into as small a ball as her shoulder would allow on the cold floor of the cave. Spike was gone again and her fever and infection had been getting worse and worse since the werewolf attack. Each time Spike disappeared, she worried that he wouldn’t come back – that the angels or demons or whatever was holding the inquisitions would damn him to hell and not let him return.
 
At his insistence, she had tried her hardest to wake her physical body up and leave this place, but it had never worked. It broke her heart to think of him being alone here with no one to give him any comfort or help, but she also knew that she couldn’t fix anything from here; she had to go back to the physical world to have any hope of setting things straight. Her heart was conflicted beyond reason – not wanting to leave him but knowing that she must in order to save him; it was tearing her apart.
 
Just as Buffy’s mind was drifting back into a fever induced sleep, Spike rolled across the floor and slammed into her with enough force to roll them both another three feet across the cold sand floor of the cave. Buffy screamed out in pain as all the bones in her shoulder and arm seemed to shift and stab into her flesh.
 
Spike jumped up and ran as far away from her screams and moans as he could get. He crouched like a frightened child against one wall of the cave, squeezed his eyes shut, and covered his ears with his arms to block out her cries. “No, no, no… didn’t mean it – don’t hurt the girl. Didn’t mean to hurt the girl. Bad man … bad, bad man! No soul – no good, you are … rubbish is all … beneath her, far, far beneath…”
 
Buffy’s heart was racing from the excruciating pain that radiated from her shoulder and permeated her whole body. She writhed on the floor, trying to get into a position that would minimize the agony she was in, but nothing seemed to stop it. Buffy tried to breathe through it, tried to get the discomfort back to a level she could live with, so she could go to Spike. After several minutes, she finally pushed herself up and crawled on her knees and one arm over to where he was huddled, trembling and frightened, against the wall.
 
 “Spike,” she said softly as she reached out a hand and touched his arm.
 
“Hey, hey, hey! No touching!” he exclaimed as he jumped away from her, scrambling on all fours along the wall of the cave before stopping a few feet away.
 
Buffy sighed heavily, she hated seeing him like this – she’d do anything to take his pain away. She wished that she could just once go with him to the trials … just once. She wanted desperately to rip the hearts out of those … whatever they were, who stood in judgment of him, just like they were ripping Spike’s heart out.
 
Buffy moved slowly over to him and laid her hand on his arm. “Spike, baby…” she whispered and he looked up at her with wide eyes.
 
 “Am I flesh? Am I flesh to you? Feed on flesh. My flesh. Nothing else. Not a spark. Oh, fine. Flesh then. Solid through,” he announced sounding lucid but making no sense.
 
Spike stood up and began unzipping his pants. “Get it hard; service the girl. Flesh on flesh …”
 
“Spike, no, baby.” Buffy winced in pain as she struggled up to her feet in front of him, then laid her hand on his, stilling it.

 

“Right. Girl doesn't want to be serviced. Because there's no spark. Ain't we in a soddin' engine?” Spike asked, looking around the cave.
 
“No … we’re in a cave – in limbo,” Buffy tried to explain to him.
 
“Ha!! No sparks in caves! No flesh, no salt to spill … no worries then, it can wait – wait for the girl. Won’t be long – what’s the time? Train’ll be along in a bit … won’t be long now,” Spike announced confidently. “Steam or diesel? No electric – no great sparks with electric motors … need steam or diesel…fire and sparks.”
 
Buffy blew out a long breath. “Spike, baby … come sit down, ok?” she suggested, motioning towards the floor.

 

“It’s not proper! That’s your problem, no proper etiquette … no education, no manners! Proper breeding, that’s what’s lacking!” he exclaimed as he started pacing back and forth across the sand floor. “A disgrace, it is! Scream ‘Montresor’ all you like, pet, there’ll be no porridge for you!”
 
Buffy laid her hand on his shoulder when he got within arm’s reach and he stopped and looked at her as if was the first time he saw her. “Buffy…”
 
“Spike, baby – come sit down,” she said softly, motioning with her head towards the nearest wall of the cave. “It’ll be ok.”
 
“Right …” Spike replied as he plopped down heavily on the cold floor, pulling his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs, and dropping his head down on top of his knees.
 
Buffy sat down gingerly beside him and wrapped her good arm over his shoulders, leaning her head against his arm. After sitting for several minutes in silence, Buffy asked, “What are you thinking?”
 
Spike turned his head to the side to look at her. “Nothing. If I don't move, if I don't think, if I don't listen to the voices, then I won't hurt...as much.”
 
“Oh, baby…” Buffy sobbed as she dropped a soft kiss on his cheek. “Lean on me – let me help.”
 
Spike snorted softly, dropped his head back down on his knees, and leaned his body into Buffy as tears stung his eyes. “You help more than you know, pet,” he said softly. “Only thing that keeps me clingin’ to this side of sanity is your love.”
 
Tears rolled down Buffy’s cheeks as she stroked her hand gently over his back, trying to give any comfort she could to him. How long could this go on? How many trials could he stand before he completely lost his mind? Was this part of the punishment?

 

“I’ll fix it, baby … I promise that I will,” she murmured against his ear as he leaned against her.
 
Spike nodded against his knees – if anyone could fix it, it would be Buffy, but he held no illusions – time was running short, his time was running short… it wouldn’t be long now before the trials would be over and his fate would be sealed.
 
Spike turned to look at her as he wrapped one arm around her back and held her body against his. “Promise me one more thing, luv,” Spike whispered to her.
 
“Anything…”
 
“If I … if you…” Spike closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “If you can get our babies back, but not me – you do that.”
 
“Spike … no, I’ll get you all back,” Buffy assured him, looking into his eyes.
 
Spike nodded but insisted, “I know … I know you’ll try, but you have to promise me with your soul, Buffy – if I’m lost, you fight for our babies. You give them the life they deserve … you tell them that I loved them more than …” Spike’s voice broke with emotion and he closed his eyes and cleared his throat, trying to keep his voice even.  “I love them more than I could say – if I’m gone, they’ll hold my soul within them. Promise me.”
 
Buffy nodded solemnly as tears ran down her face. “I promise…” she whispered, “with my soul.”


 
“I wish I could stay with you forever, Buffy … but you know you have to go – you have to get out of here. It’s the only chance to get our babies back,” Spike whispered to her sadly.
 
“I don’t want to leave you alone,” Buffy admitted softly.
 
“I’m never alone as long as you’re in the world … your love is like a shroud, it’s with me always, pet. It’s my light on the darkest of nights; it’s the thing I lean on when I can’t take another step. Go back, find a way to get our babies back … I’ll be ok, trust me.”
 
Buffy nodded against his shoulder. “I’ll try … I’ll try to wake up.”
 
“That’s m’ girl … my beautiful, strong Slayer … I love you so much,” Spike whispered, dropping a kiss on her forehead.
 
“I love you too.”
  
**~**
 
“Buffy! Buffy, stop!” Dawn screamed as she tried to hold her sister still on the floor in the kitchen of the borrowed flat. Buffy was screaming and writhing in pain – what the cause of the pain was, Dawn had no idea. Buffy finally stopped moving and screaming, but her heart was racing, her breathing was labored, and her skin was flushed and covered with a heavy layer of perspiration.
 
“God, Buffy…” Dawn moaned, unsure what to do now. Should she take Buffy back to the hospital or keep waiting? Her resolve was waning; her certainty that Buffy would wake up and be able to fight the infection basically on her own was fading.
 
It had been three days since Dawn and Andrew had liberated Buffy from the hospital, and still her sister hadn’t awoken and her infection was worsening almost by the hour. Plus, Dawn wasn’t able to give her IV fluids … she wasn’t sure how long Buffy could go without food or water, especially while trying to fight an infection that seemed to have a life of its own.
 
“It’ll be ok,” Buffy murmured in her sleep as Dawn turned her back onto her side and off her injured shoulder.
 
“I hope you’re right…” Dawn muttered. “I wish you’d wake up … you really need to wake up.”
 
“I’ll try … I’ll try to wake up,” Buffy muttered as she shifted positions on the floor to try and get more comfortable.
 
Dawn let out a long breath and sat back on her heels. “Good … that’s good – try hard.”
 
**~**
 
Spike held Buffy as she slept … he didn’t sleep if he could help it. He didn’t want to miss one moment with her … he knew that any moment could be his last, and if she didn’t leave this dimension soon, any moment could be her last, as well. Spike stroked a finger softly down from her forehead to her chin, brushing her short hair back from her face – a face that he vowed to never forget.
 
“I’ll find you again, my love,” he whispered to her. “In another life … one day my soul will be freed and will find yours, I promise you that – if it takes a hundred years or a thousand, I’ll never give up. I’m like a moth to your flame – drawn to you as surely as demons walk the earth.
 
“I’m sorry I bollixed this one up. I’m so sorry, Buffy…” Spike sobbed as he held her. He wanted nothing more than to make her happy; to see her beautiful smile, to hear her laugh again … with the hell they were living in, it seemed like years since she’d done either.
 
Suddenly Buffy’s whole body seemed to flicker … like a florescent light that won’t quite come on … fading out then coming back again. He would’ve prayed that meant she was waking up and not that she was dying, but he was positive that his prayers were on the ‘blocked caller’ list at the moment. When she flickered out and back into his arms again, he woke her up by gently kissing her lips. Buffy opened her eyes slowly and looked into his – their souls seemed to join for that moment, frozen in time, as they drowned in the deep pools of each other’s eyes.
 
“I love you – always and forever,” Spike whispered to her. “Never forget…”
 
“I love you too, Sp…” she said and she was gone.
 
Spike waited, but she didn’t reappear. He lay down on the cold sand on his side and curled up into a ball and sobbed. He knew she had to go … he’d insisted that she go, it was the only hope for their children, but he missed her all the same. His heart ached for her, his soul cried … it felt vacant and abandoned without her at his side.
 
**~**
 
“Spike…” Buffy moaned as she rolled over and her back hit something soft. She was warm …there was a blanket over her and a pillow under her head, Oh God! Was it all just a horrible nightmare?
 
Buffy opened her eyes and tried to focus. “Spike?” she called louder and she heard footsteps coming from behind her. She tried to turn over, but pain shot through her body and she stopped. “Spike!” she yelled, trying to hold still and get the searing and stabbing pain to subside.

 

She felt a hand on the side of her hip and tried to turn to see who it was. “Buffy, it’s me … it’s Dawn. Are you awake?”
 
“Dawn?” Buffy questioned with confusion before realization hit her – it wasn’t just a nightmare after all. “No…no, no, no…please no!” she sobbed against her pillow as Dawn tried to comfort her.
 
“It’s ok, Buffy.  I got you out – I knew you had to wake up to get better. I got you out,” Dawn told her softly as relief washed over her – Buffy was finally awake.
 
When Buffy calmed down a bit, Dawn got her some water, a few crackers, and some over-the-counter pain killers, anti-inflammatories, and one of the antibiotic capsules that she’d liberated from Riley’s medicine cabinet, left over from the last time Buffy had sent him to the emergency room. Buffy sat up slowly and leaned her good shoulder against the kitchen cabinet as she drank the water down quickly and Dawn got her more before handing her the pills.
 
“What are these?” Buffy asked with suspicion, looking up from the pills in her palm to Dawn.


 
“Just Ibuprofen and antibiotics…nothing else,” Dawn assured her.
 
Buffy looked at the pills closely and let out a deep breath.
 
“You’ve got a bad infection,” Dawn informed her. “I don’t have many antibiotics; you need to take them right away…”
 
Buffy looked up at her sister. “Where’s Riley?”
 
“Not here,” Dawn assured her. “He and Giles wouldn’t listen to me – they wouldn’t wake you up. I knew you’d be ok if they’d just let you wake up… well, I hoped. I stole you from the hospital.”
 
Buffy snorted a soft laugh. “You stole me?” she questioned. “Not at gunpoint, I hope … didn’t tranq the whole nursing staff, did ya?”
 
Dawn rolled her eyes. “Well… I broke you out, me and Andrew. It was a covert operation – middle of the night, secret-agent, ‘oo7’ kind of thing.”
 
“‘007’? With Andrew?” Buffy questioned, thinking that Dawn definitely had that ballsy, Summers’ blood in her veins.
 
“Well … maybe it was more like ‘Get Smart,’” Dawn admitted with a sigh. “Please take the medicine, Buffy, it won’t hurt you, I promise.”
 
Buffy nodded her head slowly and popped the pills in her mouth before drinking down the second glass of water and asking for more – she felt like she was dying of thirst. Dawn got her a glass of Gatorade, she thought that would be better for her dehydration, and Buffy sipped at it and nibbled on the crackers as she eased herself to sitting with her full back against the kitchen cabinet.
 
Dawn sat down next to her and fidgeted with her fingernails and the hem of her shirt before asking, “Are you really from a different dimension?”
 
“No…” Buffy sighed heavily. “Actually, I think I’m not. Someone … someone that hates us has done something to change reality. I’m not crazy, Dawn – this isn’t how things are supposed to be.”
 
“You’re supposed to be married to Spike and have three kids …” Dawn offered.
 
“Yeah…”
 
“But not a sister?” Dawn asked softly. It hadn’t gotten past her that the list of ‘friends’ that helped Buffy and Spike keep their kids safe didn’t include her.
 
Buffy sighed heavily and rubbed at her forehead with her good hand. She had no idea if the dimension that had Dawn in it still existed alongside hers or not – everything had changed. Her guess was that those two dimensions had never split in this world – it was all too confusing to try and think about and it made her brain hurt…more.
 
“Buffy?” Dawn asked after a moment when Buffy didn’t answer.
 
Buffy looked up at Dawn and smiled sadly. “No … I don’t have a sister in my world. The Key is our daughter, Annie. She’s …what’s today?” Buffy asked, looking around the kitchen for a calendar.
 
“Valentine’s Day … February 14th,” Dawn informed her.
 
Tears stung Buffy’s eyes – it was Annie’s birthday. She should be having a party with her friends and family. She should be blowing out candles and eating cake and ice cream – double chocolate fudge cake with whipped chocolate frosting and chocolate ice cream washed down with chocolate milk. They’d missed the twin’s birthday too – two days ago. Their first … their very first birthday cake … Annie would’ve helped them blow out the candle … all their friends would’ve been there, just like they were for Annie’s first birthday – it would’ve been a big celebration. She could see Spike’s face now – full of joy and pride and love for his family…and it was gone, all gone.
 
“She would be six today,” Buffy whispered.
 
“But you know who I am…” Dawn pointed out. Didn’t that fact alone prove that Buffy had made the other life up? If she didn’t have a sister, how did Buffy know who she was?
 
“It’s a long story…” Buffy intoned with a sigh.
 
“Got nuthin but time,” Dawn pointed out as she stood up and got Buffy some more Gatorade.
 
Buffy sipped at the drink as she explained to Dawn what Whistler had explained to them. How, when Angelus made the decision to kidnap Buffy, the dimensions split. In one dimension, the one where Angelus didn’t kidnap her, Dru wasn’t dusted and Spike didn’t stay, Dawn existed. Then, years later, when Buffy had a decision of leaving Spike in the Hellmouth alone or staying with him, the dimensions splintered again, the memories from the dimension where Buffy and Spike both burned closing the Hellmouth were folded into theirs – so they both had a memory of Dawn from that.
 
Dawn listened intently. She’d heard crazier ideas, she’d seen crazier stuff in her short life … she just wasn’t sure if this was one of Buffy’s elaborate imaginary stories she’d make up as she tried to cope with her life, or if it was real. She knew that, even though the TV show says that ‘space is the final frontier’, in reality, the human mind is probably a more vast unknown than space. The dark recesses of the mind were able to compensate with explanations for things that were beyond its ability to handle or grasp, is that what Buffy was doing or was her story real?
 
“So…if Spike didn’t stay in the dimension where I was, how did I know him?” Dawn asked finally, trying to poke holes in her story.
 
Buffy looked off with a blank stare, thinking back to the memories that had been folded into hers. “He came back … the Initiative chipped him but he escaped, he couldn’t hurt us and, eventually he … he worked with us, he fought Glory with us, he … he helped me cope when Willow brought me back, he helped us defeat The First – actually, he was a big part of that – a huge part.”
 
“And…I liked him…he liked me?” Dawn asked a little hesitantly.
 
Buffy smiled softly and looked at Dawn. She’d really grown up since the memories Buffy had of her – so mature, a beautiful young lady now, no longer a girl, and just as smart as Annie was proving to be. Buffy wondered if that eons old Key thing was part of it…
 
“Yeah – you saw the good in him before anyone – he loved you like a little sister, would’ve given his life to protect you … hell, he nearly did a time or two. We named our second daughter after you – you and Willow, Danielle Dawn is her name. She’s just turned one …” Buffy’s voice trailed off as her mind reminded her that no – she didn’t just turn one – she didn’t exist any longer.
 
Buffy closed her eyes to hold back the tears that threatened again. Dawn studied her sister’s face, her expressions. Although she looked like Buffy, she definitely didn’t act like the Buffy she knew. This Buffy was emotional and caring and she actually shared her thoughts and feelings and she talked to Dawn like she was an adult, not an insolent child. Whether this was all something Buffy’s mind had made up or not, Dawn couldn’t tell, but it was clear that Buffy believed it and it seemed to have changed her, for the better as far as Dawn was concerned.
 
“What attacked you?” Dawn asked, motioning towards Buffy’s shattered shoulder.
 
“A flying werewolf demon thingy. It was like a big, fluffy puppy with bad teeth … only it could’ve definitely used some one-on-one time with The Dog Whisperer,” Buffy said with a bit of a sneer. “Would’ve killed me if not for Spike …”
 
“Where…how…I thought he didn’t exist?” Dawn asked, confused again.
 
“Best we can figure, he’s in purgatory or limbo … I have to get him out of there, I have to figure out how to fix this before it’s too late – before they pass judgment. We’ve been able to share dreams since we did the claim on our wedding day … well, except for the time that Angelus severed it, but that’s a whole ‘nuther story.
 
“I guess somehow that’s survived, maybe the same way him being a vampire survived, even though the records show he was never turned by Dru. Somehow I can join him there, but I can’t get him out or change anything there. I’ve never had a dream ‘Freddy Krueger’ me before, though,” Buffy admitted with a roll of her eyes.
 
Dawn smiled at her sister's use of the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ analogy.



“So … what do we do now?” Dawn asked her as they both sat on the floor of the kitchen.
 
Buffy took a deep breath and let it out slowly before opening her eyes again and looking at Dawn. “How are you at research?”
 
Dawn shrugged. “I get by…”
 
“Well, until I can actually hit something, I think I’d like to find out about the life of William Weckerly, born in August, 1852 to Anne and Henry of Clapham. Where’s Clapham?” Buffy asked Dawn.
 
“It’s a district in south London,” Dawn told her.
 
“Great! Close by! Let’s go!” Buffy exclaimed, as she started to stand up, but stopped when searing pain stabbed through her shoulder. Buffy dropped back down, bent forward and held her bad arm against her body as she tried to breathe and not move.
 
“Maybe we should wait until you feel better…” Dawn suggested as she winced in sympathy. “You still have a bad infection … and I don’t have very strong antibiotics or drugs for you. I was hoping your Slayer healing powers would work if you woke up and got out of … purgatory.” Dawn hadn’t known where Buffy was until Buffy just told her, only that she needed to wake up.
 
Buffy shook her head adamantly. “No,” she said through clenched teeth. “I can’t waste time – I don’t know how much of it Spike has left, I have to start doing something now!
 
“Help me up…” Buffy requested of Dawn, holding up her good arm. Dawn stood up and helped Buffy stand. Buffy wobbled on her feet, her head spinning as she tried to get her balance.
 
“Lean on me,” Dawn offered, and Buffy accepted gratefully. “I have some of your clothes here; sit down here and I’ll get them,” Dawn instructed her, pulling out one of the chairs from the kitchen table for Buffy.
 
Buffy sat down gingerly in the chair as she fought the spinning in her head, the pain in her shoulder, and the churning in her stomach. She chided herself for her weakness … What Spike was going through was a million times worse and he was completely alone now – she needed to suck it up and get down to the business of saving her family.
 
When Dawn got back with some clothes, she cleaned and bandaged the wound on Buffy’s shoulder again and helped her sister get dressed as best she could, then put Buffy’s arm in a sling to hold it still against her chest.
 
“You know … a lot of genealogy stuff is online now – even super old stuff … maybe I should check that first before we go on wild goose chases…” Dawn suggested. “I’m actually not sure where to go to even go in London to find stuff like you’re wanting… I mean … churches? City halls? I really don’t know.”
 
“That’s a great idea…do you have a computer?” Buffy asked, looking around the small flat.
 
Dawn rolled her eyes. “Of course – you can’t go to college without a computer!” she informed her sister as she retrieved her laptop from its case and opened it on the kitchen table.
 
“Oh…right. Silly me,” Buffy conceded as she turned in her chair to look at the computer screen while Dawn pulled another chair up next to her and booted it up.
 
Buffy gave her as much information as she knew about Spike and his parents, where they were from, and where they lived and Dawn set to work.
 
“Crap …” Dawn moaned after about half an hour of searching for information on ‘William Weckerly.’
 
“What?”
 
“There’s more than one William Weckerly … do you know his middle name?”
 
Buffy scrunched up her face and thought … and thought and thought. Finally, she shook her head sadly, no.
 
“Well, that’s okay,” Dawn assured Buffy. “Maybe I can work backwards – find his parents and then find him,” Dawn suggested. “This may take a while…”
 
Dawn registered on several online ancestry and genealogy websites, using the credit card that Riley had given her for ‘emergencies’ to pay for the memberships. If this wasn’t an emergency, she wasn’t sure what qualified. Buffy watched and made notes on a legal pad when Dawn found something that seemed significant. Dawn said she could just print the stuff out, but Buffy wanted to write it out longhand – somehow the act of writing it down helped her think – it helped her process the information better.
 
“Ok, it looks like Henry Weckerle’s family immigrated from Germany to England in the early 1800’s and lived in Yorkshire … they changed the spelling of their name somewhere along the way to ‘Weckerly’ …” Dawn told Buffy as she looked through old census and immigration documents that had been scanned and put online.
 
Dawn continued searching different historical sites and she found that, “Henry became a citizen of the United Kingdom when he was fifteen and he attended Oxford! Hey!” Dawn exclaimed. “That’s cool, isn’t it? That he went to the same university that I’m going to?”

 

Buffy smiled at Dawn’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, that’s pretty cool. What did he study, does it say?”
 
Dawn turned back to the computer. “No…let me check the university’s records and see if it has that online …”
 
After a few more minutes, Dawn bounced in her seat and pointed at the screen. “He studied law! He received his Bachelor of Civil Law degree. He was a solicitor!”
 
“A solicitor?” Buffy questioned. “You need a degree to solicit? Back home, you usually end up with your three minutes of fame on an episode of ‘COPS’ for that…”
 
Dawn laughed and rolled her eyes. She wasn’t sure if Buffy was kidding or not. “Solicitor is English for attorney…” Dawn explained.

 

“Oh. I always thought attorney was English for attorney…” Buffy commented dryly.
 
Dawn looked at her sister, still not sure if she was serious or not, but the slightly evil twinkle in Buffy’s eyes gave her away. Dawn laughed again and turned back to the computer screen. She definitely liked this version of Buffy better than the one she’d lived with for the last four years since her sister had been yanked out of heaven by her well meaning friends.
 
Dawn continued to look for more information on Henry Weckerly as Buffy doodled on her pad and thought. She thought about Spike, alone in the cold cave … facing the trials alone and trying to keep his sanity. She thought about their children, now nothing more than memories – she wondered if Annie would’ve chosen to go to Oxford and follow in her grandfather’s and father’s footsteps. Although Spike never said so, and never admitted it to anyone they knew, Buffy knew from her trip through his memories that he’d gone to Oxford, as well, getting a Master of Arts degree.

 

Buffy remembered Spike reading to Annie from the books Buffy had given him for Christmas … the works of Shakespeare that were the same edition his father had, and how enthralled and amazed Annie was with them. When you’re five, an hour can seem like a lifetime, trying to comprehend how old those books were was beyond her grasp, but she knew they were important – that they had meaning. When Spike told Annie that he’d often read from them to his mother and he let her sit in his lap and read with him, Annie had been over the moon. Three generations were suddenly brought together through time in that moment – there was a connection to something bigger, and it was clear that Annie felt it.
 
As bright as their eldest daughter was, she might even get a Rhodes scholarship. God, Spike would shout it from the rooftops if that happened…every rooftop, in every town in America … and England, and the world for that matter. Buffy smiled slightly at the image of Spike going with Annie to orientation at Oxford … walking with her around the centuries-old campus, taking her around his hometown of London, telling her stories of his own life there, showing her where he’d grown up – sharing stories with her that even Buffy didn’t know – Annie would be in heaven!
 
Suddenly Buffy’s smile turned to tears as reality wedged its way back to the front of her mind; Annie didn’t exist, Spike didn’t exist … Every time she had to remind herself of that, it felt like a hot poker was being stabbed into her chest, making it hard for her to breathe … hard for her to even remain sitting.
 
Buffy was pulled from her thoughts when Dawn started talking again. “Ok, Henry Weckerly was killed in the Crimean War in 1856; he had the rank of Major.”

 

“Wait …” Buffy stopped her. “I thought he was a solicitor. What’d he do, go chase ambulances on the battlefield?”
 
“I don’t think they actually had ambulances back then,” Dawn pointed out and Buffy rolled her eyes.
 
“In the old days, wealthy men could purchase commissions. Basically, they bought their rank and were the leaders – fighting for the British Empire … although in all the movies I’ve seen, they mostly just sat in their tents wearing funny hats and drank tea …”
 
Dawn switched over to the historical military database and searched further. “Oh wow!” she exclaimed.
 
“‘Oh wow’, what?” Buffy asked, looking at the screen.




“He was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for ‘valour’,” Dawn told her, pointing to the screen. “I guess he didn’t just sit in his tent and drink tea! That’s the highest military decoration they award for ‘valour in the face of the enemy’,” Dawn explained.
 
“Somewhere in there between Oxford and death-by-valor did he get married to Anne and have a son?” Buffy asked her with growing concern that Spike … or William Weckerly, had never even been born.
 
“Hold your horses,” Dawn told Buffy. “I have to check other sites for that … it’s not on here.”
 
Buffy sighed and sat back while Dawn kept looking for more information. Buffy studied her notes, tapping her pen absentmindedly on the pad in her hand. Spike’s father was an intellectual, a warrior, apparently a leader, and ultimately a hero. Gee, that sounds vaguely familiar.
 
Buffy frowned when she realized that Spike never told any of this to her. Why wouldn’t he have shared that? Maybe he didn’t know? His father died in 1856 … William would’ve been four. Was it possible that his mother never told him that his father was a warrior, a hero? Would she have kept that hidden, perhaps in an effort to keep her only child from following in his father’s footsteps?
 
“Ok, here we go!” Dawn announced at last, pulling Buffy from her musings. Buffy leaned forward so she could see the computer screen as Dawn read aloud. “Henry Weckerly married Anne Wilkinson on November 10th, 1851 at the Holy Trinity Church of Clapham,” Dawn informed Buffy with a satisfied smile.

 

“November 1851?” Buffy asked, silently counting on her fingers. December, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August… nine months… “Well, they didn’t waste any time,” Buffy murmured.
 
“What about a son?” Buffy questioned. “Born August 20th, 1852.”
 
Dawn sighed and rolled her eyes. “Give me some time, it’s a computer, not magic … Let’s see if the church maybe has a record of the birth … if they’ve put it online.”
 
Buffy sat back again, careful to lean on her good shoulder, and worried her bottom lip with her teeth. What if Spike had never been born at all? How would she fix that? How could she track down Hallie – if it was even actually Hallie that had done this – she could be anywhere in the entire world … she could be in some other world, for that matter. Buffy could picture the brunette sitting in the shrimp-less dimension, sipping margaritas, and laughing her rat-skank ass off.
 
“HA!” Dawn exclaimed, bouncing in her chair and pulling Buffy from her thoughts. “‘Baby boy’ Weckerly, born August 20th, 1852 to parents Anne and Henry. You were right!” Dawn enthused, amazed that Buffy knew the exact date.
 
“Why ‘baby boy’?” Buffy questioned.
 
“They did that a lot, apparently – didn’t name the baby right away. Usually there’s another birth certificate filed in with the actual name,” Dawn supplied, as she continued to search for more information.
 
Buffy’s throat tightened. “The baby didn’t … it didn’t die before it was named, did it?”
 
Dawn furrowed her brow and looked through the death records for the month of August and November of 1852, but didn’t find anything. “No… I don’t see anything like that. Hang on, let me check one other place …”
 
Dawn began typing quickly on the keyboard, entering Riley’s credit card information yet again – now from memory. Riley was just gonna love this ...
 
“Who’s your daddy, now!?” Dawn exclaimed after a few more minutes, pointing to the computer screen.
 
Buffy looked at what she was pointing at and read aloud, “William Wesley Weckerly.”
 
“Say that five times fast…” Dawn teased as she began her search anew, now with Spike’s middle name included. “We’ll just go with WWW for short…”
 
“You do more than just ‘get by’ with research, you’re really good,” Buffy told her with a sincere smile as Dawn continued her search. Buffy was amazed there was so much information on the computer, and equally amazed and impressed that Dawn could find it. It had taken a while – Buffy didn’t see a clock, but it had been light out when they started and it was well past dark now.
 
Dawn shrugged but smiled. “Thanks.”
 
Dawn definitely liked this Buffy way better. She’d really love to meet Spike; he must be something really special to have been able to transform her sister from the unfeeling, unloving, mad-at-the-world, lost soul that had come back from heaven into this woman with a sense of humor who actually shared her emotions and seemed to care about other people.
 
“Are you happy?” Dawn asked Buffy after a few moments, turning attention away from the computer and onto her sister.
 
“Not so much…” Buffy started but Dawn interrupted her, “I mean with Spike and your kids… are you happy there?”
 
Buffy smiled sadly as tears stung her eyes and she nodded slowly. “Yeah … we’re happy – well as happy as you dare to be on the Hellmouth,” Buffy joked. “Spike really loved you, Dawnie … I wish you remembered him.”
 
“Me too,” Dawn whispered as her mind drifted for a minute to the question of if Buffy changed history and somehow got Spike back… what would that mean for her? Would she experience some happiness too? Not that her life was horrible, there were worse fates. She’d worked hard and been through a lot to get where she was, but she definitely yearned for a happier family life … a happier family. She would’ve given anything to have had this Buffy in her life for the last four years.
 
“Buffy?” Dawn asked, looking back at the computer screen to see if it had found anything yet. The little hourglass drained and turned and drained again … Working… Please Wait
 
“Yeah?”
 
“Do I …ummm … I mean, in those other dimensions with Spike … am I, I mean, are we all … happy?” Dawn asked, turning her attention back to her sister.
 
Buffy smiled gently. She didn’t know how Dawn fared in the dimension where both she and Spike had died; she’d never been there, never checked on her. Whistler said that she would be alright, that Buffy’s friends would take care of her … but he’d proven to be less than reliable. What was Buffy supposed to tell her?
 
“Yeah …” Buffy assured her, not really sure if she was lying or not – she sincerely hoped not.
 
Dawn nodded solemnly as she turned back to the computer screen to see what her search had found.
 
 “Ok, WWWF …” Dawn started, “ errr … I mean WWW, sorry … married Cecily Addams on January 19th, 1881. Hey – that’s funny, that’s your birthday!” Dawn exclaimed, looking from the computer to Buffy.

 

Buffy felt like she’d been sucker punched in the gut, all the air left her lungs and she struggled to breathe. If there had been any doubt before, there was none now – it was Hallie, Halfrek, Cecily, rat-skank-ho, or whatever the hell she wanted to call herself, who had done this to them.
 
“Buffy, are you alright?” Dawn asked, laying a hand on Buffy’s back as Buffy doubled over, hugging her stomach with her good arm as tears stung her eyes.
 
Buffy was trying to get air into her lungs, but she could only take shallow breaths – her chest suddenly hurt too much to breath normally; she could almost feel her heart being ripped from her flesh as that hot poker stabbed and twisted and wrenched her heart out. Buffy knew this wasn’t by chance — stealing her husband and marrying him on her birthday - Hallie had planned it all out meticulously. Buffy should’ve been prepared for something like this, but it was like being prepared for a loved one dying that had been sick a long while – you knew it was coming, but it still hits you hard when you get the news.


 
Hallie had found a way to get her vengeance and succeed in getting what she couldn’t in Sunnydale – Spike.


**~**


"Lean on Me"  Bill Withers
{{Click here to hear "Lean On Me” by Bill Withers on YouTube   }}


Sometimes in our lives we all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill those of your needs
That you won't let show

So just call on me brother, when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on

So just call on me brother, when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on

I just might have a problem that you'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

If there is a load you have to bear
That you can't carry
I'm right up the road
I'll share your load
If you just call me…

End Notes:
TBC ... Ok, Buffy knows for sure now who's behind it and what happened ... the question now is, what can she do about it?
Don't Cry Sister by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Dawn's helped Buffy find out who's behind it and what happened to Spike - Cecily married him in 1881 rather than spurn William's advances. Now what can Buffy do to set it right? An offer for help will come from an unexpected source, but can she trust him?
**
Music Referenced:
Don’t Cry Sister, Eric Clapton and JJ Cale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFj5mX0AuHI
**
Reference to a classic children’s book: Mike Mullgian and His Steam Shovel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mulligan_and_His_Steam_Shovel
**
Tinseltown Resturant/Diner: http://www.tinseltown.co.uk/
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}
Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!

Late night, Monday, February 14th, 2005:
 
Buffy wandered around the small flat trying to stay awake. Dawn had tried to stay up with her, but had finally fallen asleep on the divan. Buffy got her a pillow and covered her sister with a throw then went back to her wandering. She’d already downed nearly a pot of coffee and Dawn had gone out earlier and gotten her some Red Bull, Snickers bars, and ‘NoDoz’ pills from the all-night market. Although Buffy wanted desperately to go to sleep and back to Spike, she was afraid that, with her injured shoulder, she wouldn’t be able to get out of the ‘spider crater’ in one piece. She was also sure that Dawn was right, her infection would heal faster if she stayed out that dimension for a while, the infection had stopped spreading, but it had a long ways to go before it would be completely healed.
 
Although Hallie could’ve used any number of spells or other magicks, Buffy had to assume that Hallie had gotten her old power back and used her ability to grant wishes to go back in time and change reality by accepting William's advances instead of spurning him. Buffy wished desperately that Anya was here in this crazy world so she could find out how to reverse whatever Hallie had done – but she wasn’t.
 
Her next thought was of Willow – Willow had been approached by D’Hoffryn when Oz left her. Willow told Buffy at the time that she had his talisman that she could use to summon him if they ever needed it. Buffy didn’t know where the talisman would be now – perhaps with Willow in the sanatorium … but maybe that whole thing didn’t even happen here. She thought about waking Dawn up to ask her, but decided against it, Dawn was exhausted. She’d been up nearly round the clock with Buffy since liberating her from the hospital, just taking short naps between tending to Buffy’s wounds; Dawn needed to get some real sleep.
 
Even if Buffy were able to summon D’Hoffryn, she wasn’t exactly sure what she could do to him to convince him to fix this. She wasn’t sure what powers he possessed – certainly he could teleport between dimensions and presumably he could grant wishes like his ‘subordinates’, what else he was capable of, she didn’t know.
 
Buffy wished for Giles, her Giles, and his musty old books full of words she could barely pronounce, let alone decipher … well other than the little words that connected all the big words – those she could at least pronounce. From what Dawn had told her, they were on their own – they couldn’t turn to Giles for help now. Maybe Dawn could get Andrew to bring them some books on vengeance demons and D’Hoffryn from the Council’s library … Buffy jotted a note down to that effect and a reminder to ask Dawn about the talisman, not trusting her mind to remember by morning.

 

Buffy went into the bathroom of the flat and closed the door. She looked and felt like grunge squared and desperately wanted a shower. Dawn had told her she shouldn’t get her wound wet, but Dawn was asleep and Buffy really couldn’t fathom that taking a shower could do any more damage than had already been done. It took Buffy forever to get her clothes off using one hand and trying not to move her left shoulder, but she finally had a hot shower running and sighed deeply as she stepped under the warm spray. The water ran down her body, washing away weeks of sweat and grime and grossness. She didn’t let it pound directly on her wounds, but it did run down over them, and the open sores stung when the water hit them, but it felt so good everywhere else that the discomfort was a small price to pay.
 
Buffy couldn’t help but think of Spike as she leaned against the side of the shower, closed her eyes and let the warm water wash over her. She’d been trying to not think of him, she’d been trying hard to concentrate on making a plan of action instead of drowning in self-pity and worry – but she couldn’t stop her mind from thinking about him now. He was all alone in that cold cave … all alone, terrified and facing the trials of his life – trials that, as far as Buffy was concerned, were completely bogus and unfair; trials that were ripping his mind to shreds, wrenching his heart out, and slicing deep, bleeding gashes into his soul. She didn’t know if his wounds would ever fully heal … even if she got everything back to ‘normal’… would Spike ever be the same after this?
 
Spike had always seemed to be able to handle his past by blaming it on Dru and Angelus – but Buffy knew that it bothered him more than he let on, even before this. But now, having it replayed for him like some twisted episode of “This Is Your Life”, making William’s soul relive the crimes of the demon, making him remember every battle, every innocent, every drop of blood, every scream, every whimper … it was more than William’s soul could handle; it was more than anyone’s soul could handle.
 
 

Buffy sat down on the edge of the tub as the warm water continued to rain down on her and began to sob for him - he didn’t deserve that, it was so unfair! Yes, he’d done those things, but it wasn’t Spike, and it most certainly wasn’t William, it was the demon. She’d seen the things he’d done – she wasn’t blind to them, but she’d seen the good in him, too. The tenderness he had, the love in his heart for his friends and family, his bravery and his self-sacrifice.

Buffy slid down further, sitting down in the tub as the warm water continued to fall over her. She put the stopper in the drain, leaned back against the cool porcelain, and closed her eyes against the water that fell on her prone body and splattered up onto her face.
 
“Spike… baby, I’m so sorry,” Buffy murmured through her sobs as she pulled her knees up to her chest and covered her eyes with her good hand, trying to block out the image of Spike’s wild, frightened eyes and replace it with the one she loved most, the one where his eyes reflected awe and love and his passion for life. “I swear I’ll fix it … please hold on … please just hold on,” she begged, knowing that he couldn’t hear her. She hoped he could feel her in his soul – feel her love like he said he could, she hoped it would be enough to pull him through and help him stay strong.
 
Buffy cried and talked to Spike and even prayed, although she didn’t see that doing any good – but anything was worth a try, as she sat under the pouring water and let it fill the tub up. When the water turned barely lukewarm, she shut it off and leaned her head back against the tile, taking deep, shuddering breaths to try and calm down and regain her composure. She needed to stay focused, she needed to figure out a plan of action, she needed to get her husband and her family back the way it should be, the way it had been.
 
Buffy closed her eyes and the image from Christmas of Annie and Spike standing next to each other doing the 'hokey-pokey' in the great room with all their friends and family played in her mind and she laughed sadly through her tears. “There’s your killing machine!” she exclaimed to the ceiling. “Why can’t you understand that it wasn’t him!?” she pleaded to the unseen judges.

“Why…why can’t you understand … why can't you see his true heart?” she murmured, covering her eyes with her arm and willing her mind to conjure images of all the times that Spike had saved someone (including her and Annie), had dusted a vampire, battled a demon, unselfishly sacrificed himself, not only in their world, but in every dimension … of all the good that he’d done, just in case someone higher up the food chain might be watching.


 
Buffy’s mind and body finally began to relax and, in the steamy humidity of the bathroom, despite her resolve to not fall asleep, exhaustion finally overtook her as she soaked in the warm bath…
 
The warm water and moist air of the bathroom were replaced with bone chilling cold as dry sand blasted against Buffy’s skin. She opened her eyes and knew immediately where she was – the spider pit of hell … or limbo or hell-limbo. Buffy scrambled to her feet, trying to keep her left arm still, pinned against her chest and she began to run towards the wall of the crater. She could feel the spiders’ claws scratching at her ankles as she ran – her injury was slowing her down, just as she feared it would. Her mind raced as she crossed the cold, red sand – how was she going to climb up the steep wall or hold on with one arm?
 
“SPIKE!” she screamed while she ran as she also tried to send out a message across their bond, even though that had never worked here. “SPIKE!” she continued to scream as one of the spiders wrapped a leg around her ankle and tripped her. Buffy fell face first onto the sand and excruciating pain radiated out from her shoulder and swept over her whole body. Tears came unbidden to Buffy’s eyes as she scrambled back to her feet, kicking one of the spiders off her foot and pulling another off her calf as she started running again. When Buffy neared the wall of the crater, she took a deep breath and jumped with all her strength, bracing herself for the impact. Buffy’s eyes closed involuntarily and she held her breath as she sailed towards the wall, hoping beyond hope that she’d jumped high enough to reach the first ledge.
 
But, instead of the hard landing she expected, Buffy landed with a splash in the warm water of the lake in the butterfly-soul paradise. Buffy sputtered water out of her mouth and lungs as she struggled up from the bottom and broke the surface of the clear water. She swam the twenty yards from where she landed back to the sandy beach of the lake one-handed and dragged herself halfway out of the water, before collapsing and rolling gingerly onto her back.

“God…thank God,” she murmured as she tried to catch her breath.
 
“Close, but the boss frowns on us usin’ that name,” came a male voice with a thick Irish brogue from somewhere higher up the bank.
 
Buffy turned around quickly and stumbled up to her feet, backing up into deeper water – just as she been when she fell asleep, she had no clothes on here, either. She tried to keep her left arm pinned against her chest as she searched her memories for a name to go with the vaguely familiar voice.
 
“Who are you?” Buffy asked, as she stayed low in the water, so only her shoulders, neck and head showed.
 
“Alan Francis Doyle, at your service….” the man announced, walking down the bank towards her with his right hand outstretched. “You don’t remember me, do ya?”
 
Buffy looked at him closely … he did look a little familiar, like she’d seen him once in a dream or something.


  
“Well, we just met the once … I sorta worked for Angel in L.A. – you came down for a wee bit of a visit, kicked some ass and left…” Doyle reminded her.
 
“Doyle … you – you had the visions and gave them to Cordy or something. Spike told me about you. Aren’t you dead or something?” Buffy asked, ignoring Doyle’s outstretched hand as he got within arm’s reach of her.
 
Doyle dropped his hand and shrugged. “’Or something’, I suppose would cover it.”
 
“What do you want?” Buffy asked, backing up further into deeper water.
 
“What? No ‘thank you for saving my skinny ass’?” Doyle asked sarcastically.
 
“Thank you for saving my skinny ass – what do you want?” Buffy amended, looking at him suspiciously.
 
Doyle sighed deeply. “I would be deeply offended … except that I do actually want sumthin’.”
 
“All you PTB minions seem to want your pound of flesh … what is it this time? Save the world? Avert the next apocalypse? Get in bed with the devil? Whatever it is – you can just forget it! I have my own problems – I don’t need yours. Go find another Slayer to play your games!” Buffy exclaimed angrily and turned to swim away, but Doyle waded in quickly - more quickly than Buffy thought he could, caught her good arm, and spun her back around.

 

“Look – you don’t know me – I don’t know you, but maybe we can help each other, yeah? I’m not here on behalf of the Powers … I’m here for me and m’ old friends,” Doyle explained quickly, his accent getting thicker the faster he talked.

Buffy yanked her arm away from him, which sent pain radiating out from her bad shoulder and into her chest. Her eyes closed involuntarily as she tried to breathe through it.

“What could you possibly do to help me?” Buffy finally asked through clenched teeth as the pain subsided and she opened her eyes again and backed up a step from him, just out of arm’s reach.
 
“I know people … I can get you in to see the Oracles,” Doyle offered.
 
“Yeah, and? What are they? A washed-up sixties doo-wop band? No thanks…”
 
“And I thought Cordy was the queen of sarcasm …” Doyle moaned.
 
“Listen missy, the Oracles can manipulate time …they can put things back the way they were – that benefits the both of us,” Doyle explained.
 
Buffy looked at him for several long moments before asking, “What’s the catch? I'm already down an arm ... they want a leg, too?”
 
Doyle rolled his eyes and shook his head. “No catch … “
 
“If there wasn’t a catch, then you’d do it…you’d get them to put things right if that’s what you wanted.”
 
“Right or wrong is … arbitrary – there is no right or wrong, just one way or t' other. I can’t go to them – I’m just a lower being – a messenger – you, you’re a warrior.”
 
“And I just say ‘pretty please’ and they’ll put everything right … or … back? Why do I doubt that?” Buffy asked with skepticism.
 
Doyle rolled his eyes and sighed. “They don’t care one way or another – you have to convince them that the other way is better for the greater good…” Doyle clarified. “An offering may be helpful,” he added quickly.
 
“An offering? What are they, like Pele, ‘I demand a sacrifice!’? Thanks, but no thanks …” Buffy retorted and turned to leave again.


 
Doyle dove under the water and came up on the other side of her, blocking her path. He held both hands up silently asking her to wait, but didn’t touch her. “Not that kind of offering – a trinket … a gift, if you will … just a sign of respect. They don’t ask for your first born …” Doyle went on, “…usually,” he added under his breath.
 
Buffy’s eyebrows shot up. “Usually?”
 
Doyle waved his hands back and forth, dismissively as water dripped from his dark hair and down his face. “It can’t hurt to ask, yeah? I can get you in through The Gateway for Lost Souls – you can make your case … they may not want anything – depends on how good you are at convincin’. It’s worth a shot …”
 
Buffy sighed heavily and wanted desperately to cross her arms over her chest, but settled for putting her good hand on her hip, but the gesture was mostly lost because of the nearly shoulder deep water. “And what do you get out of this?”
 
“I get Angel and Cordy back in the mix … without Angel, my power – Cordy’s power, is goin’ to waste,” Doyle explained. “My sacrifice was for nuthin’.”
 
“Without Angel? Where’s Angel?” Buffy questioned.
 
“Trapped in that blasted bauble at the bottom of the Hellmouth!” Doyle informed her, waving his arms out away from his sides for emphasis and splashing water in all directions.
 
“Without Spike, Angel wore the amulet …” Buffy offered quietly. “So … why is he trapped? I thought he’d go back to Wolfram & Hart …”
 
Doyle rolled his eyes. “Noooo … not on his bloody own – needs help, someone has to open the portal, release 'im, and you’re the one to help get ‘im back!
 
“You go to the Hellmouth and retrieve the amulet, take it to Fred Burkle and I’ll get you in to see the Oracles,” Doyle offered.
 
Buffy shook her head. “Why do I need to do that? Why don’t I just go see the Oracles and get them to put everything back? You’d have Angel back all the same.”
 
“In case you fail … at least Angel will be back in the fight,” Doyle explained.
 
Buffy nodded. “Ooooh, I get it – I do your bidding, you get what you want and then, what? You just leave me hanging, right? That’s what you PTB messengers seem to be best at – always leaving out little details.”
 
“No, I give you my word, I won’t leave you hangin’ … you ask anybody, if nothin’ else, I’m a man of m’ word,” Doyle assured her, holding two fingers up like a ‘Boy Scout’ pledge.
 
Buffy looked at him for a long time as she tried to think. This may be a way to at least buy some time for Spike until she could get to D’Hoffryn and Hallie. At worst, maybe these Oracles could stop the trials and get the judges to leave Spike alone; at best, maybe they could totally fix it, if they were as powerful as Doyle said.
 
“How am I supposed to find the amulet buried at the bottom of the Hellmouth? Get Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel to dig the whole crater out?”


 
Doyle rolled his eyes again and sighed. “You’ve been reading too many kiddie books, Slayer - pretty sure they don’t use steam shovels anymore,” he informed her.
 
“But no," he continued, "there are tunnels – like catacombs, all through it … you just have to locate the bauble and bring it out, not much diggin’ required, I’d wager. He’s still a vampire, you’re still the Slayer – you should be able to sense it.”
 
“You seem to know a lot about this … why don’t you go get it?” Buffy asked with suspicion.
 
“I can’t interfere … I’m not supposed to even be here now. If I’m caught it will be the end a’ me, for sure,” Doyle informed her, dragging a finger across his throat to simulate beheading. “Free will and whatnot …you have to do it … and act like it was your idea.”
 
“If I do that, where will I find you again?” Buffy asked. “In the land of the leprechauns?”
 
“There are no such things as leprechauns,” Doyle assured her. “Take the amulet to Wolfram & Hart, give it to Fred, and go back to the Hyperion. I’ll find you. You have to trust me, Buffy … ya’ got nuthin’ else.”
 
Suddenly Buffy heard screaming and she was being shaken awake. “Buffy! What have you done?! Oh God!” Dawn screamed when she came into the bathroom and found her sister apparently unconscious in what looked like a bathtub full of blood.
 
“Dawn! Dawn! I’m awake … I’m alright!” Buffy assured her as Dawn continued to shake her.
 
“Dawn, stop!” Buffy demanded, grabbing her sister’s shoulder and pushing her back. All that shaking was sending sharp knives of pain stabbing out from Buffy’s shoulder and into her chest.
 
“Buffy! God! What have you done? I trusted you! I thought you were … I thought you were telling the truth!” Dawn exclaimed in a panic as tears rolled down her face.
 
“Dawn … I just took a shower … a bath,” Buffy tried to reason with her. “I know you said not to, but let’s not make a Federal case out of it. I just had to get some of the grunge off…”


 
“You’re bleeding! You tried to kill yourself again …” Dawn accused, pointing at the bloody water.
 
Buffy looked down and let out a long breath. The spiders had scratched her ankles and calf … they were bleeding. “Nooo, I didn’t – I fell asleep and was attacked again,” she assured Dawn. “Help me up…”
 
“You … you fell asleep?” Dawn asked as realization hit her. “Oh, Buffy … God, Buffy, you scared me so much…” Dawn sobbed as she gave Buffy a hand up and then pulled her into a soggy hug as sobs wracked the younger girl’s body.
 
“Dawn … it’s ok. Dawnie, I’m fine…” Buffy tried to assure her. “Dawnie, don’t cry.”
 
Dawn finally released her and wiped at her tear streaked face with her hands before handing Buffy a towel off the rack. “I’m sorry … I just … When I came in it looked just like the time … the time before,” Dawn started, her voice shaky.
 
Buffy wrapped the towel around herself and held onto Dawn’s shoulder as she stepped out of the tub and onto the cool tile floor of the bathroom. “The time before?” Buffy prodded.
 
Dawn swallowed hard as she looked into her sister’s eyes. “I … you …”she started and stopped, shaking her head as tears welled in her eyes again and she took a deep breath to try and compose herself.
 
“You’ve tried to kill yourself before, Buffy … one time I found you bleeding in the tub … it was … it was just like this. I was the only one home and … and I thought you were dead.” Tears fell from Dawn’s eyes as she spoke.
 
That had been one of the worst nights of Dawn’s life, just a couple of months after Buffy had been resurrected – it was Buffy’s first suicide attempt, the first of many. They weren’t all so obvious, many were disguised cleverly as ‘missions’ … solo missions where Buffy would take on more demons or vampires than one Slayer should be able to handle. She was often seriously injured on those missions and Dawn had taken to following Buffy around when she patrolled – not that she could help fight the demons so much (although she’d been forced to get better at that during the summer Buffy was dead) as she could call for help or get Buffy to a hospital afterwards.
 
Dawn felt that her sister’s unhappiness was her fault … if the monks hadn’t made her, hadn’t dropped her in Buffy’s life like a booby prize, none of this would’ve happened. Buffy wouldn’t have died on that tower; she wouldn’t have been resurrected and gone off the deep end – living in a world that she couldn’t cope with and trying desperately to get out of it.
 
“I’m sorry, Dawn,” Buffy said softly. “I didn’t mean to scare you – I never meant to hurt you at all – ever. Please, don’t cry …”
 
“It’s my fault,” Dawn sobbed, sitting down on the edge of the tub and covering her face with her hands. “If I had just… If I had just jumped off the tower into the portal none of this …”


 
“No! Dawnie, no!” Buffy insisted, kneeling down in front of her sister. “It’s not your fault. This life is not your fault. What you’ve lived through, how I’ve acted, is not your fault. It’s goddamn Cecily Addams’ fault – that’s whose fault it is for taking Spike away, and trust me when I say, I plan to set it right.”
 
Dawn continued to sob into her hands as she shook her head from side to side in silent disagreement. Buffy sighed heavily and pulled Dawn’s hands away from her face so she would look at her.
 
“Did I ever tell you it was your fault?” Buffy asked her sister.
 
“No…” Dawn admitted weakly.
 
“Dawn – it’s not your fault. The monks gave us a wonderful gift … Mom loved you – Dawn, she loved you so much. And I love you … I’d jump off that tower again to save you. I didn’t do it to save the world, Dawnie … I did it to save you. If you didn’t know that, then it’s time you did.
 
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to get my shit together when I was brought back … I’m sorry that I hurt you and scared you and made you grow up so fast. But look at you – I’m so proud of you, Dawn. You’re so strong and smart and such a beautiful woman now – Mom would be so proud of you.”


 
Buffy wrapped her good arm around Dawn’s shoulders and Dawn leaned forward and cried against her, letting all those years of worry and frustration and guilt flow out as Buffy reassured her over and over that what happened wasn’t her fault and apologized for scaring her.
 
Finally, Dawn pulled away and sat back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
 
“Thanks…” she whispered to Buffy, meeting her eyes.
 
Buffy smiled softly at her. “That’s what family is for … we help each other, we stick together…we love each other.”
 
Dawn nodded as she sniffed and wiped at her nose with a tissue.
 
“C’mon … help me get dressed,” Buffy requested, changing the subject, as she stood up and headed out of the bathroom. “I’m starving… what’s good to eat around here? How about a double bacon cheeseburger and fries? Or onion rings! Ooo – maybe a milkshake!”
 
Dawn laughed and followed Buffy out. “You’re in luck …there’s a twenty-four hour American restaurant in Clerkenwell … they have awesome shakes and killer sundaes! It’s called Tinseltown. Cute, huh?”

 

“Tinseltown … yeah, I like it, kinda like being back home,” Buffy agreed. She wasn’t sure how she was gonna tell Dawn that she needed to get back to the real ‘tinseltown’ (and Sunnydale) as soon as possible…maybe over dessert. 'Killer sundaes' always made bad news easier to swallow.




**~**

{{Click here to hear "Don’t Cry Sister” by Eric Clapton and JJ Hale on YouTube   }}

Don't cry sister cry, it'll be alright in the morning
Don't cry sister cry, everything'll be just fine
Don't cry sister cry, it'll be alright, I tell you no lie
Don't cry sister cry, don't do it, don't do it

When old man trouble knocks on your door
Don't give him no key, he just wants more
He'll turn your life to misery
Kick you down, just like me

Don't cry sister cry, it'll be alright in the morning
Don't cry sister cry, everything'll be just fine

Woke downhearted and you feel so bad
Somebody wants something of nothing you had
Love don't come too easy, you see
A little bit of you and a little bit of me

Don't cry sister cry, it'll be alright in the morning
Don't cry sister cry, everything'll be just fine

Don't cry sister cry, it'll be alright in the morning
Don't cry sister cry, everything'll be just fine

Don't cry sister cry, it'll be alright, I tell you no lie
Don't cry sister cry, everything'll be just fine


Everything'll be just fine
Everything'll be just fine
End Notes:
MORE TO COME ... (of course)

Will Doyle and the Oracles be able to help her? Will she even be able to find the amulet in Sunnydale?

I love hearing from you! Don't be shy!
Lost by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy has a plan, or the hint of one anyway, and she wants to get started right away … will she get lost along the way? Where will her quest for the amulet lead her?
**
Music Referenced:
Lost, Michael Bublé
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-8ez6dGao8
 **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Mid Morning, Wednesday, February 16th, 2005:


“Ok, I have the books from Andrew on vengeance demons … all two of them,” Dawn started, rolling her eyes. “Got our passports, airline tickets, your credit cards, rental car reservations, clothes, shoes – what else do we need?” Dawn asked Buffy as she sat her bounty down on the kitchen table.



Dawn had gone back to the apartment she shared with Buffy and Riley and packed a couple of suitcases, one for herself and one for Buffy, while Riley was at work. Then she’d met Andrew at a small confectionery shop not far from the Council’s castle to get the books from him, before heading back to the flat where she and Buffy had been staying since the ‘jailbreak’.

“Dawn,” Buffy started slowly, “I really think you need to stay here – I’ll take care of this myself.”

“No way … I thought this was settled – I’m coming with!” Dawn exclaimed in frustration.

“Dawn, you need to get back to your classes – you’ve missed too much time already on account of me …” Buffy argued for the fiftieth time since breaking the news on Monday night about needing to go back to California.

Dawn sighed heavily and rolled her eyes. “I’ll just take an incomplete this term and take the classes over … it’s no big! Helping you is way more important.”

“Dawn, please,” Buffy begged. She knew Dawn had worked hard to get into Oxford, she didn’t want to be the reason she got kicked out.

If Buffy couldn’t get things set right … well, she really didn’t want to think about that, but in truth she had no real confidence in her ‘plan’; not in Doyle or the Oracles or her ability to even find Hallie, who could be sitting on a beach in the shrimpless-dimension, sipping a margarita and laughing right now – the whole thing was a long-shot. There were so many obstacles in her way and it seemed that the PTB had abandoned her and Spike completely. Buffy felt pretty much alone in her mission – if not for Dawn, she would be completely alone and, if she failed to get Spike and her family back, then this would be their life. She owed it to Dawn to be the adult now, and, as the adult, she knew that Dawn needed to stay in school, just in case.

“No. This discussion is over. I’m coming with you,” Dawn insisted. “What if you fall asleep and get attacked? Who would wake you up? Plus, your shoulder still needs cleaning and medicine … who’s gonna do that? So, just forget it – I’m coming with.”

Buffy sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping in defeat. Dawn had good points, but she still felt bad about her missing her classes. “Are you sure you won’t be kicked out for missing the classes?” Buffy asked with genuine concern.

“Totally – I checked on it today when I was out and ‘family crisis’ counts as a valid reason to take an incomplete and re-schedule the classes for later. And my sister trying to get her family back is about as crisis-ey as it gets.”

Buffy smiled at her sister. “Thanks…”

“That’s what family’s for, right?” Dawn replied with a smile of her own. “Now, is this gonna be enough shoes?” she asked Buffy, opening the suitcase that she’d packed for her sister.

**~**

“Tell me about Spike,” Dawn requested as she and Buffy settled in for the long flight from London to L.A. “What does he look like?”

Buffy smiled softly; she blinked tears back and took a deep breath. “How to describe Spike …” Buffy mused with a grin, biting her bottom lip. “You know who Billy Idol is?”

“Yeah … Andrew has a crush on him – he has a poster of him tacked up in the back of his closet that he thought no one knew about,” Dawn told Buffy conspiratorially.

Buffy laughed – Andrew obviously had a ‘type’ … bad boys with hot bods and bleach-blond hair, which, coincidentally, was Buffy’s type, too. “Well, Billy Idol got his look from Spike…”

“No way!”

“Way!” Buffy confirmed with a nod. “He’s got platinum blond hair and the bluest, most expressive eyes you’d ever want to see, and these cheekbones that are so sharp you’d think they’d cut you when you touched them, and his lips are …” Buffy cleared her throat. “Umm…well, anyway, I guess you could say he’s pretty good looking.”



“And he liked me?” Dawn asked in amazement.

“Yeah – like a sister!” Buffy clarified quickly. “Dawn, you were a kid …”

“Still – I had a friend that was a total hottie!” Dawn smirked. “I bet Riley totally hated him.”

Buffy laughed. “You’re a smart girl.”



Dawn looked at Buffy and shook her head.

“What?” Buffy asked her.

“Just you – you’re so different than … you,” Dawn tried to explain. “You’ve lost everything and you can still laugh.”

“Well, I do my share of crying, too,” Buffy admitted softly, looking down at her hands. Buffy smiled faintly and looked back up at Dawn before continuing, “Spike showed me how to laugh again when I came back, how to feel again – it would be like … like giving in and saying that never happened if I stopped, like saying Spike didn’t matter. It would be letting the husband stealing, margarita sipping, skanky-whore-rat win without a fight.”

Dawn snorted a soft laugh and nodded – Buffy’s devotion to Spike made Dawn wish she remembered him, remembered that world with him in it, even more.

“Dawn?” Buffy asked in a serious tone.

“Yeah?”

“Did I … did I do the right thing by marrying Riley? I mean for you, was it the right thing for you?” Buffy asked with hesitation.

Dawn sighed heavily and blew out a long breath. “Riley protected me when you were gone … he and Giles were the leaders when you died, and Riley did a good job of keeping us all safe and making sure we had food and stuff…”

“But?” Buffy asked, knowing that wasn’t the full story.

Dawn shrugged. “But…he turned back into total ‘GI Joe commando man’ when you were gone – which I guess he kinda had to, but… Buffy, I think I might’ve been better off going to live with Aunt Arleen …”

Buffy nodded and looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry …”

“No, Buffy – don’t be. You did what you thought was best for me. Everything you did was for me. I’m the one that’s sorry. Willow and Tara even tried to get him to send me to Aunt Arleen’s, but he wouldn’t. He said you had made him promise to take care of me and that’s what he was gonna do…even if it meant living in the basement and hiding from the demons and eating month-old Little Debbie ‘Banana Twin’ cakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Not really the dream summer for a teenage girl, but I survived.”



Buffy scrunched up her nose. “He couldn’t find anything chocolate to feed you? No Twinkies or Ho-Hos? I read once that they have a shelf life of like ten years…”

Dawn laughed lightly and shook her head. “We were chocolate deprived.”

Buffy’s voice turned serious again. “In the other world, Spike promised to take care of you – and he did. He helped keep the demons out of town for a long time. He loved you, Dawnie, he loved you like family.”



Dawn smiled. “I don’t think Riley really loves me like that … I think it was just like a duty – like I was his mission.

“So…” Dawn started, changing the subject away from Riley. “Tell me more about Spike. Is he tall or short … thin, like Billy Idol, or thick, like Ril … ummm … Angel?”

Buffy smiled again. “Tall enough, not too tall – being good looking and athletic is his cross to bear… and he bears it really well. But, you know the best thing about Spike?” Buffy asked her sister.

“What?” Dawn asked, leaning in towards Buffy, her eyes going wide in anticipation of some juicy detail.

“His most beautiful bits are the ones you can’t see … his heart, his soul, his passion for life, his devotion to our family, his loyalty … Those are the things I miss the most,” Buffy admitted sadly as tears stung her eyes.

**~**

It was about noon when Dawn pulled the rental car up to the edge of the crater that had at one time been Sunnydale and put it in park.



“Home, sweet home,” Dawn kidded before she and Buffy both got out of the car.

Buffy’s infection was getting better almost by the hour since she’d woken up, but it still hurt and the bones hadn’t mended yet. She kept it in the sling that Dawn had liberated … from where, Buffy didn’t know or ask. With the help of ‘No-Doz’ pills washed down with Red Bull, she’d managed to not fall asleep on the plane or in the car on the ride down from L.A., but she knew that sooner or later she was going to have to sleep; she just hoped she could put it off until her shoulder was healed enough to face the spider gauntlet and the werewolf air force. She wanted desperately to get back to Spike, but she wouldn’t do either one of them any good if the spiders or another werewolf caught her.

Buffy stood on the edge of the crater that had been her town, her home, for so many years and tears stung her eyes. The town where she and Spike and all their friends had lived and loved and fought the forces of evil and had their children; the town that Buffy thought they would raise their children in, the town that she assumed she and Spike would probably always live in, was gone. Totally obliterated, just like Spike, just like her family, just like most of her friends… Buffy closed her eyes to it and bit down on her bottom lip to keep from screaming out in frustration and pain and anger. Why couldn’t people just leave them alone? Was that too much to ask?

“So, how exactly are we going to find this needle in the haystack?” Dawn asked, pulling Buffy from her thoughts as Dawn looked out over the barren wasteland that had once been their town.

“I have no idea… Doyle said I should be able to sense it, like a vampire…” Buffy offered, opening her eyes and looking more than a little overwhelmed by the enormity of the crater before them. “Theoretically, it should be under the high school, right?”

“Theoretically,” Dawn agreed. “And just where might the high school be?” she asked, looking over the desolate landscape.

Buffy shrugged. “One way to find out,” she offered as she walked to the very edge of the crater and looked for the tunnels that Doyle said were there. She hoped they weren’t rat-hole tunnels that you had to crawl on your belly to get through … that would be bad; her shoulder would never make it.

“I don’t see anything, do you?” Dawn asked, joining her at the edge.

Buffy let out a long breath. “Nope… You stay here, I’m going down to see if I can figure anything out.”

“No way! I’m not letting you go down there alone!” Dawn objected.

“I’ll be fine – I’m just gonna look around, see if I can find any of these tunnels…”

“Ok, let me put it another way – I’m not staying here all alone. What if one of those ugly vamps is still alive and comes up here and attacks me?” Dawn argued.

“Then, I’d say you’d win ‘cos he’d be a big pile of dust. It’s the middle of the day, Dawn.”

“A Bringer then,” Dawn amended, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m coming with …”

Buffy sighed. “Ok, fine – just be careful. We don’t both need to be crippled up – one lame duck is enough. Get the flashlight out of the car – if we find a tunnel, we’ll probably need it.”

Buffy sat down on the edge of the crater and began inching her way down the side on her butt and, after retrieving the flashlight, Dawn followed her lead. Although it was steep, it wasn’t nearly as steep as the crater wall that Buffy’d been scaling in her dreams, and it was a lot less rocky. Plus, there were no spiders or werewolves to worry about – this was like a walk in the park compared to that.

Dawn, however, wasn’t as experienced with such matters. About halfway down the side, Dawn lost her footing – the sand and small rocks under her started to slide unchecked down the side of the crater. She tried to dig her heels into the sandy surface, but they just slipped through it as more and more of the sand started to fall like an avalanche down the side, sending Dawn sliding faster and faster down towards Buffy.

“Buffy!” Dawn yelled as she tried to claw onto the side of the crater and stop her momentum to no avail.

About the time Buffy turned around to see what was going on, Dawn hit her and they both tumbled down the steep side of the crater towards the floor, gaining speed as they went. When they hit the bottom, the floor gave way and dropped them both another ten feet down into a cavern that had been hidden under the surface.

Buffy writhed in pain, holding her arm and shoulder and rolling around on the sandy floor of their landing zone as Dawn tried to get her breath back, which had been knocked out of her when she landed.

When Dawn’s lungs finally stopped feeling like they were being ripped out and she got some air back into them, she crawled over to Buffy to check on her. Buffy was laying perfectly still, her eyes closed as she held her bad arm firmly against her chest.

“Are you okay?” Dawn asked, afraid to touch her lest she cause her sister more pain. “I’m so sorry!”

“Spike was right, if you don’t move and don’t think it doesn’t hurt as much,” Buffy replied, still keeping her eyes closed as she tried to breathe through it and hope the stabbing pain was temporary.

“I’m really sorry …” Dawn lamented.

“It’s ok …” Buffy assured her finally opening her eyes. “The good news is, I think we found the catacombs – and I now know firsthand what the term ‘arse over tits’ feels like.”

“Catacombs?” Dawn questioned. “I thought you said ‘tunnels’.”

“Tunnels, catacombs … same thing,” Buffy reasoned as she sat up slowly.

“Not exactly … catacombs are like … underground burial grounds,” Dawn pointed out.

“Well, that fits … the whole town is a cemetery now – everything’s buried here. Our whole lives are buried here,” Buffy observed, looking around the small cavern they’d fallen into.

“Help me up,” she requested of Dawn holding her good arm out. Dawn stood up and pulled Buffy up behind her as they both looked around the cavern there were in. In one corner, half sticking out of the wall of the cave, was the bright yellow and orange ‘Welcome to Sunnydale’ sign.





“Welcome to Sunnydale,” Buffy mocked as she picked up the flashlight from the ground, turned to the only passageway leading out of the cavern, and started walking. “Enjoy your stay…”

**~**

Buffy was more than a little relieved to find that the tunnels under the surface of the crater were mostly tall and wide enough for her and Dawn to walk through. There were some steep inclines which took them down deeper under the surface, which they both slid down on their butts, and some areas where they had to crawl over debris to get past, but mostly it was fairly easy going. Buffy kept trying to sense the amulet or Angel, but she hadn’t gotten any tinglies that felt like him. When they’d come to forks in the tunnels, Buffy would just close her eyes and try to let her intuition, senses, kismet or whatever it was, guide her. She really had no idea where they were going, if they were even going in the direction of the high school anymore, or how they were going to find their way back out of the maze of tunnels.

Buffy could tell that Dawn was getting tired – they had no water or food with them, and she felt like they were quite deep under the surface now with only the light from the flashlight to see by, making her worry about possibly running out of oxygen or the possibility of being buried alive by a cave in. Buffy’s shoulder was aching and whenever they had to crawl or climb, sharp knives stabbed at her from the inside out. Buffy was starting to fear that this had been a really bad idea, but there wasn’t much choice now – the only choices were to go forward or go back, and Buffy hated going back, so she kept plodding forward and Dawn followed her without complaint.

When they came to a wide place in the tunnel, Buffy sat down on some concrete blocks and motioned for Dawn to do the same. Dawn sighed heavily when she plopped down, thankful for the rest.

“Do you know where we are?” Dawn asked, rubbing at her tired legs and trying to get some feeling back into them.

“Not exactly …” Buffy admitted.

“Can you sense the amulet?” Dawn asked hopefully.

“Not exactly…” Buffy admitted again.

“Do you know how to get back to the car?” Dawn asked with growing concern.

“I thought you were dropping breadcrumbs…” Buffy teased, before sighing heavily and saying, “Not exactly…”

“Oh. Well, that’s not exactly encouraging,” Dawn pointed out with a sigh as she rested her head against the side of the cave and closed her eyes.

“I do feel something … it just doesn’t quite feel like vampire tinglies,” Buffy tried to assure her sister. “Maybe I’m just out of practice,” she supplied, although she was sure, after all the time she spent with him when Angel/Liam showed up in Sunnydale, that she would know what Angel felt like, if the amulet wasn’t somehow distorting the ‘signal’.

“We’ve come this far … let’s keep going,” Buffy suggested. “Do you need to rest longer?”

“No, I’m good,” Dawn said, giving her sister a weak smile and standing up again. “Onward ho!”

“Hey! House rule number four - no name calling!” Buffy protested as she stood up, giving Dawn a stern look. Dawn just shook her head and rolled her eyes … this Buffy was definitely way more fun than the old Buffy, even if they were lost in the Sunnydale catacombs with no idea how to get back.

Buffy sort of wished Dawn would’ve wanted a longer break – she could’ve used it herself, but she dared not say so now. She’d gotten them into this, she needed to find a way to get them out; so she trudged forward, trying to figure out what it was that was tickling the hairs on the back of her neck.

About fifty yards further down the tunnel they were in, the tinglies Buffy was feeling started getting stronger and her hopes that the amulet was near rose. She started moving faster down the tunnel as her whole body felt like it was being pulled forward – but it still didn’t feel like Angel … it felt like …

“Oh my God,” Buffy muttered as she came to a dead stop and Dawn bumped into her back, making them both stumble forward.

“You should signal before you stop like that – didn’t they teach you anything in driver’s ed’? Oh wait! I forgot – you failed driver’s ed!” Dawn defended when Buffy grabbed her shoulder and winced in pain. “Why did you stop like that, anyway?”

Buffy stepped over to one side of the tunnel and began wiping dirt and dust and debris off a partially buried wooden sign. “Oh my God,” she muttered again as her suspicions were confirmed. “Shadow Valley Vineyards,” Buffy announced, shining the flashlight on the sign and filling in the missing letters, which remained buried.

“You should go on ‘Wheel of Fortune’,” Dawn advised, looking at the sign and only seeing 'Shad…Vine.'

Buffy closed her eyes and concentrated before she began walking quickly down the tunnel, then turning off onto a side tunnel, with Dawn following quickly at her heels. “What is it?” Dawn asked from behind her sister.

“The scythe,” Buffy told her as she moved quickly down the narrow passageway.

“I thought we were looking for an amulet,” Dawn pointed out.

“We are … but I need to get this first,” Buffy assured her as she came to a dead end in the tunnel. She recognized the stones and rocks that the vineyard’s wine cellar had been constructed out of at the end of the passageway and she began kicking at the wall with all her strength, which sent bolts of stabbing pain down from her shoulder through her whole body, but she gritted her teeth against the hurt and kept going.

“Buffy! Stop! What are you doing?” Dawn exclaimed, looking up above them at the unsupported ceiling of dirt and debris.

“Making a door,” Buffy replied as she held her arm against her chest and continued kicking at the rocks, which started to give way under her assault.

“A door to where? Limbo? Because I’m really not in a hurry to get there, what with the spiders and werewolves and all,” Dawn pointed out, backing up away from Buffy and the crumbling wall in front of her.

Suddenly, the wall blocking Buffy’s path crumbled completely, filling the air in the passageway with dust and dirt. They both coughed and covered their mouths and noses with their shirts as Buffy climbed over the remains of the wall and entered the cavern under the vineyard where the scythe had been hidden – where Caleb and the First and the Bringers had been working to free it from its stone prison.



When the dust cleared a bit, Dawn followed her into the cavern and joined her sister as Buffy stood next to the scythe, still buried in the stone. “This is what Spike helped me find …” Buffy informed Dawn. “This holds the power of all the Slayers from the beginning of time to the end of time. This was the only thing that could really hurt Caleb and the uber-vamps in my world,” Buffy continued as she pulled it from the stone with her good hand, holding it up for Dawn to see.

“Wow … you’re like King Arthur or something,” Dawn murmured in awe.



“Nope, just a Slayer,” Buffy pointed out as she closed her eyes and felt the magic and power of the scythe in her hand. It made her feel like anything was possible – like she was going to be victorious; she was going to get her family back, after all. Buffy could actually feel her shoulder healing as she held the scythe – feel the bones knit and the infection die. That had never happened before with the scythe, and she sent a silent prayer to the Guardians for the extra magic held within the relic – at least they were still on her side, even if no one else seemed to be.

“Oh my God!” Dawn exclaimed and Buffy opened her eyes and raised the scythe, afraid that Caleb or a Bringer had suddenly appeared to defend their prize. But, instead of a big bad, what Dawn had discovered was a barrel of wine … undamaged and still full of its savory, wet goodness. “I’m dying of thirst,” Dawn moaned as she moved over to the barrel and tried to get the cork stopper out of the bunghole in the top of it.

Buffy came over and Dawn backed up and cheered when Buffy pulled the stopper out of the barrel. After looking around the cavern for a couple of minutes with their light, they’d each found an earthenware mug and Buffy tilted the barrel down until the wine poured out as Dawn held the mugs under the red liquid.




“Do you think it’s still good?” Buffy asked as she took one mug from Dawn.

“I don’t care if it’s vinegar at this point – it’s liquid and I’m thirsty!” Dawn replied, as she gulped it down.

Buffy smelled hers first, it smelled ok … then took a sip – it was pretty good! Buffy drank hers down and handed her mug back to Dawn so she could refill them. Apparently 2003 had been a very good year for evil vineyard wine… not so good for evil vineyards, though.

Before long, Dawn and Buffy had consumed several cups of the sweet, red wine each and were feeling no pain. Everything was suddenly hilarious to them as Buffy related stories to Dawn about Spike and their children – about Willow and Tara and their wedding/handfasting and how Tara’s father had tried to stop it, about Giles and his iPod that Spike had given him for Christmas, and about Xander and Anya and JJ.

“Anya actually told Annie she’d gotten orgasms for her birthday?” Dawn asked, giggling uncontrollably.

“Anya thinks that just ‘cos kids are short, that they can’t hear very well … Spike says she has a ‘big bloody mouth’,” Buffy laughed, mimicking Spike’s accent at the end as she remembered the look of utter disbelief on Spike’s face when he told her that Annie had asked for an orgasm for her birthday.



“Oh God! I never thought of asking Mom for that for my birthday!” Dawn exclaimed, taking another sip of her wine. “Would she have died or what?!”

Buffy laughed and rolled her head back against the barrel she was leaning on. “I’m not having any more birthdays,” she announced solemnly. “Birthdays lead to badness … you get older and the world as you know it ceases to exist.”

“To no more birthdays!” Dawn toasted, holding her cup up towards Buffy. Buffy went to clink her mug against Dawn’s, but hit it so hard she broke both mugs into little pieces, leaving both girls holding just the handles in their hands, which just sent more waves of laughter washing over both of them.

When their laughter died, they both fell silent for a long while – each contemplating their own memories of birthdays past and what might await them on their next. Dawn moved over and sat next to Buffy, both girls leaning their backs against the wine barrel, and laid her head on Buffy’s good shoulder. “Do you remember that song Mom used to sing?” Dawn asked softly.

Buffy wrapped her arm around Dawn’s shoulders and tucked Dawn’s head under her chin before singing softly to her. It was a song Joyce used to sing while she worked around the house while picking up after her daughters or doing the laundry or dishes. It seemed like forever since Buffy had thought of it…


{{Click here to hear "Moon River” by Audrey Hepburn (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) on YouTube   }}

“♫Moon river, wider than a mile,
I’m crossin’ you in style some day,
Oh, dreammaker,
you heart breaker,
where ever you're goin',
I'm goin' your way.

Two drifters, off to see the world,
There’s such a lot of world to see,
We’re after the same rainbow’s end,
waitin’ ’round the bend,
My huckleberry friend,
moon river, and me.”


When Buffy had finished, Dawn was sleeping soundly, her head on Buffy’s shoulder as they sat on the floor of the cavern under the vineyard – the buried vineyard in the buried town of Sunnydale that held the buried ghosts of Buffy’s life. Buffy pulled the scythe closer to her other side until it was resting against her leg, within easy reach, switched the flashlight off, and laid her head against Dawn’s – closing her eyes, as the effort of the day, the lack of sleep, and the wine overtook her body and she joined Dawn in slumber.

**~**

Buffy jumped up from the cold floor of the crater when she felt the wind whipping past her, blasting her skin with icy sand, and started running towards the familiar wall that had a ledge she could reach in one jump. Suddenly, she realized that she wasn’t empty-handed this time, and she stopped abruptly as the spiders slithered out of the sand at her feet and began to surround her. Buffy swung the scythe low, holding the blade against the sand and turning in a fast circle – round and round and round, as the spiders approached her. The red sand was soon filled with small bits of black, hairy spider parts all covered in bright purple blood and viscera. When the sand under her feet stopped undulating, Buffy stopped twirling and just turned in a slow circle, holding the scythe at the ready as she waited for another wave to attack … but none came.



Buffy stood up straight and snorted out a laugh. “Not so tough now, are you? Who needs a Veg-O-Matic when I have this?” Buffy asked rhetorically, holding the scythe up with both hands. “It slices, it dices, it juliennes!” she announced victoriously before she began picking a path through the spider debris towards the wall of the crater. “Not sure if it’s dishwasher safe, though…”

Buffy climbed up the wall of the crater from ledge to ledge – her shoulder and arm felt a little weak, but at least it didn’t hurt any longer, and the infection seemed to be completely healed. She wondered, as she made her way towards Spike’s cave, keeping a wary eye towards the sky for flying werewolves, if that lone Guardian could have possibly survived the collapse of Sunnydale. Or perhaps Caleb had killed her in this world as he had done in the other – Buffy was looking for allies anywhere she could find them, and the Guardian might have some ideas that could help her get to Hallie and get the spell reversed.

She and Dawn had looked through the books on vengeance demons that Andrew had given her on the flight over from London, but they held little information. You had to ‘destroy the power center’ of a vengeance demon to reverse their magic – whatever that meant. They had the ability to grant wishes, of course, teleport and travel between dimensions, which meant that Hallie could be anywhere at this point. Finding Hallie and then holding onto her was going to be the problem; with the scythe now in her possession, Buffy figured that she would simply start slicing until she found the bitch’s ‘power center’ – the longer it took and the more it hurt, the better.



Buffy was pulled from her thoughts as she rounded the bend near Spike’s cave and came face to face with one of the flying werewolves … it was on the ground waiting to catch her off-guard. Buffy instinctively swung the scythe at its neck just as the werewolf sprung at her, and severed his head cleanly from its body. Blood showered down on her as she ducked under the headless body, which fell to the ground behind her with a heavy thud.

“Oh, gross!” she exclaimed as she was covered in the red blood of the werewolf. “Damn it – just once I’d like to not be covered in blood in this fucked up place!” she exclaimed as she shook her arms, wiped her face, and tried to get as much of it off her as she could. “At least it’s not mine this time,” she muttered as she continued her trek towards the cave, still trying to get as much of the blood off her as possible.

When she got to the entrance to the cave, Buffy looked around one more time for werewolves, in the sky and on the ground, before going down on her knees in front of it and calling Spike’s name, but she got no answer. The stone that Spike always rolled over the entrance was still there, but she knew that didn’t mean he was in there – he could be at the trials … or – she didn’t want to think about where else he may be. Buffy looked around again for werewolves before setting the scythe down in front of her and pushing with both hands on the rock.

“Spike! Spike, it’s me – it’s Buffy!” she called as she rolled the rock slowly away from the entrance. “Spike, baby – let me in …” she continued, using all her strength to move the rock out of the way.

“Spike?” she called when she got the rock out of the way enough for her to crawl into the cave. “Spike, it’s me …” she continued, wanting to make sure he didn’t attack her, thinking she was a werewolf. “It’s Buffy…Spike?”

Buffy got inside, then turned around and quickly pulled the scythe in behind her, before scanning the cave for her husband. When her eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the cave, she finally saw him, sitting huddled in a far corner, his arms covered his head and ears, his knees were drawn up against his chest and he was rocking his whole body back and forth. “Oh, Spike …” she moaned, tears stinging her eyes as she rolled the rock back over the entrance. Her heart was at once lifted, soaring among the clouds upon seeing him again, and at the same time shattered into a million pieces to see him cowering in the corner of the cave like a lost, frightened child.

“Spike, baby …” Buffy said softly as she approached him. “It’s Buffy … Spike? Can you hear me?”

Buffy knelt down in front of him and touched his arm. “Spike?”

Spike lifted his head off his knees and looked up at her with weary, frightened eyes. “Please leave me be … I’m beggin’ ya … I can’t – can’t take any more,” he pleaded with her. “Too many ghosts … can’t fit them in the parlor, will have to invite them into the sittin’ room and library, as well. It’s not proper, but it can’t be helped, can it? Are there enough cups and saucers? The good ones?” he asked Buffy with concern furrowing his brow. “Mustn’t use the everyday china for guests …”



“Spike, honey – I’m not a ghost. I’m Buffy – your wife … Buffy,” she said softly, laying a hand gently on his cheek.

“Slayer’s dead – laid in m’ arms and died – couldn’t help ‘er, couldn’t save ‘er,” he announced sadly, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “A ghost, you are … just like the others. Dead and gone … dust in the wind. Do you take sugar and cream in your tea?”

Before Buffy could answer or contradict him, Spike looked up and off to one side. “Yes, mother … this is the girl…” he spoke to the air, his cockney accent fading to the more refined accent of his youth. “Yes, she is, isn’t she?” he agreed with the unseen visitor, shaking his head slowly. “Yes, quite lovely … Yes, mother – I assure you, she knows… No mother, I don’t know why, either.”



Spike looked back at Buffy. “Mother would like to make sure you know I’m a demon … says you’re too lovely to have married such a wretched, evil monster … I told her you knew … but…” Spike shrugged as his voice trailed off and he gazed into Buffy’s eyes, his eyes haunted by the ghosts of his past, looked sadder than Buffy had ever seen them. Buffy felt tears well in her eyes and she dropped her forehead against Spike’s.

“Tell her that you are the strongest person I’ve ever known; tell her that your soul is full of light and love and passion and is the key to my heart – without the key to fit the lock and release it, my heart is forever hidden, forever locked in a dungeon of its own design. Spike, tell her that you’re a good man – a man that loves completely, that gives his heart wholly, a man that’s true to his word – a man that would do anything for his family … you’re a man with a beautiful soul.”

Spike jumped up suddenly, knocking Buffy onto her back. “NOT A MAN! Not a man – a DEMON! A MONSTER!” he exclaimed, pacing back and forth across the small area of the cave as he rubbed his hands over his head and face, as if to wipe her words off his skin.

Buffy jumped up and blocked his path, grabbing him by the shoulders and stopping him. “That’s what you are…not who you are…you’re a man first!” she insisted.

Suddenly, Spike grabbed Buffy by the shoulders and pulled her against him as his game face came up and he lowered his mouth against her neck. Buffy could feel his fangs just grazing her skin; she could feel his breath against her neck and hear a low, rumbling growl emanate from his chest. Buffy closed her eyes and held her breath. Spike’s fingers were digging into the flesh of her shoulders, she was half afraid that he would re-break the newly mended bones there, but she didn’t pull away, instead she did what she had done all those years ago when Angel had removed Spike’s soul – she relaxed and tilted her head to the side, baring her neck to him.

“William is stronger than the demon …” she whispered to him. “He’s a man first.”

Spike licked at the werewolf blood on her skin, making an ever widening circle on her neck with the tip of his tongue. Buffy closed her eyes and suppressed a moan – she reminded herself this wasn’t Spike, not right at this moment, and he wasn’t doing that to be sexy – he was doing it as a threat.

“I dreamed of killing you …” he whispered against her skin.

“Was that you … or the demon? What did the man dream?” she asked him gently. “I dreamed of loving you forever. I dreamed of getting our family back … of raising our children, with you at my side,” Buffy countered, as Spike continued to hold her with an iron grip.

Buffy could feel Spike fighting with the demon, fighting with himself, for control. Even though Buffy tried to appear confident and unafraid, the truth was, she didn’t know what he would do in this condition. His mind wasn’t his own, his heart and soul had been tortured and terrorized, beaten and trampled … crushed under the guilt of what the demon had done – she didn’t know if William’s heart was still strong enough to fight the demon or if it had been too badly damaged by the trials.

She did know that she couldn’t let him kill her – she was the only one that could get them out of this. Buffy felt around on the ground with her foot for the scythe and finally touched the stake end of it with her toe – it was off to the left, if she pulled them both over that way and onto the ground, she may be able to get it. What would happen if she had to dust Spike here? Was that even possible? Would it have any effect at all or would it send him directly to his final judgment? Would she even be able to do it, even to save herself?

“I love you, Spike,” Buffy whispered against his ear.

Spike raised his face away from her neck and up towards the ceiling and screamed out in pain and anger and frustration. All the veins and tendons in his neck stood out hard against his skin and his whole body tensed as his howl reverberated through the cave, bouncing off the walls and ceiling and surrounding them both with its primal desperation. He pushed her away from him hard, then dropped to his knees in the sand, reached for the scythe, and pulled it quickly to him, embedding the stake deep into his chest in one forceful blow.

“NOOO!” Buffy screamed when she saw what he was doing as she tried to regain her balance and get back to him.

When Buffy reached him, she pulled the scythe out of his chest, tossing it aside, and Spike collapsed onto his side on the cold floor of the cave, sobbing in anguish.

“Spike! God, Spike!” Buffy screamed, rolling him over and checking the wound on his chest – but it was gone; completely healed.

“Buffy … help me – please, please help me,” Spike pleaded as he rolled around on the floor of the cave in turmoil.

“Spike … God, baby – I’m trying … I’m trying so hard,” Buffy sobbed as she knelt beside him and pulled him up to her in a tight hug.

Spike wrapped his arms around her and sobbed against her shoulder. “Dust me … Buffy, just dust me – please, please just make it stop.”

“Oh, God, Spike …” Buffy cried against him and rocked him gently in her arms. “I would do anything in the world to make it stop, baby – anything to take your pain away …”

“Please, dust me …” he begged her again.

“Spike … you just did … it didn’t do anything …” she pointed out, pulling back and lifting his face up off her shoulder to look into his eyes. “Spike – I love you so much,” she whispered as she kissed his tears away. “I’m so sorry … oh, Spike – I promise I’ll fix it, I just … time … need more time…”

Spike closed his eyes, took a deep breath and nodded slowly as Buffy’s lips glided gently across his face and over his eyes. He didn’t know how he had any tears left – he’d cried, it seemed, for years now, but the tears, like the faces and voices of the ghosts that haunted him, seemed never-ending.

**~**

After Spike had calmed down, they sat side by side in the cold cave and Buffy told him what she had found out – that William Weckerly had married Cecily Addams on Buffy’s birthday in 1881.

“So, I never met Dru at all …” Spike surmised when she finished.

“No, I don’t think so…”

“Married the bitch … please tell me we didn’t have any children,” he begged, looking at Buffy with exhausted eyes.

Buffy made a face, scrunching up her nose. “I forgot to check on that …” she admitted. “I’ll have Dawn look when we get back.”

Spike nodded slowly. “Do you have a plan?”

“Oh, you know me – I’m all about the plan…” she replied in a voice much cheerier than she felt.

“In other words, you got no plan…” Spike clarified.



“I have a plan – a good plan, it’s the ‘make it up as you go along plan’ – I’ve used it many times with great success…” Buffy defended, trying to sound positive.

Spike snorted and wrapped an arm around her and she leaned in against him, laying her head on his shoulder. “I have no plan at all…” she admitted softly and Spike dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

“It’s alright, luv, you’ve always been good at improv – was one of the first things I noticed ‘bout you – tricky, you are – resourceful.”

“My only hope is that I can find Angel in the amulet, Doyle doesn’t double cross me, and these Oracles can and will help me…” Buffy sighed. “I hate relying on other people when the ‘other people’ isn’t you …”

Spike smiled sadly. “I hate not bein’ at your side … I can fight bloody demons and boogey-men and all the beasties of the world – but I’m losing the battle with the ghosties, Buffy.”

“You believe in me, right?” she asked, lifting her face to his and looking into his eyes.

“Always, pet.”

“Then believe this – those ghosts aren’t yours – tell them to ‘bugger off’! Tell them that you’re sorry, but what’s done is done and you can’t change it and you wouldn’t even if you could – because I wouldn’t let you. Tell them to come see me if they have any complaints…” Buffy coached him.

Spike cocked a questioning brow … the brow that should’ve had a scar through it, at her.

“Spike, I’m living in a world where those people that are haunting you didn’t die at your hand … and you know what? It sucks! Xander, Anya, Tara – all dead, not to mention innumerable Potentials; Me, Willow, and Giles – pretty much useless; so, they can come see me about it …”

“Buffy, that’s just a drop in the bucket in the tit-for-tat of their bloody game …” Spike pointed out.

“Ok, fine – how about all the people that I would’ve saved if I hadn’t been high or suicidal all these years? And what about all the people you saved since … since getting your soul back – even before that if you count Giles? And, what about all the people that Angel would’ve saved if he hadn’t been trapped in that amulet all this time?” Buffy argued, sitting up straighter as more ideas occurred to her. “OH! And what about taking down the Circle of the Black Thorn? Angel trapped an amulet can’t take them down, now, can he? Where does that leave their frilly little prophecy? Tell them to put that in their smoke and pipe it!”



Spike snorted a soft laugh at her enthusiasm but shook his head slowly. “Don’t know how to measure ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’, pet – plus I didn’t think we wanted Angel making new friends in that ‘circle’…”

“Well …” Buffy sighed and leaned back against him. “I’d really rather face the armies of hell with you by my side than for either one of us to face this alone,” she said quietly. “With you, I know everything will be alright – without you, I feel so lost.”

Spike wrapped his arms back around her and tucked her head under his chin as tears stung his eyes again. “I feel the same way, luv,” he whispered to her. “I love you so much, but I’m always at your side, Buffy. Don’t ever feel that you’ve lost me – I’ll always be here,” Spike told her softly, laying a hand on her chest over her heart. “You’re never alone; I’ll always be with you, my love will always linger just beyond the shadows until we both find the light again.”

**~**

{{Click here to hear "Lost” by Michael Bublé on YouTube   }}

Can't believe it's over
I watched the whole thing fall
And I never saw the writing that was on the wall
If I only knew
Days were slipping past
That the good things never last
That you were crying

Summer turned to winter
And the snow it turned to rain
And the rain turned into tears upon your face
I hardly recognized the girl you are today
And god I hope it's not too late
It's not too late

'Cause you are not alone
I'm always there with you
And we'll get lost together
Till the light comes pouring through
'Cause when you feel like you're done
And the darkness has won
Babe, you're not lost
When your world's crashing down
And you can't bear to fall
I said, babe, you're not lost

Life can show no mercy
It can tear your soul apart
It can make you feel like you've gone crazy
But you're not
Things have seem to changed
There's one thing that's still the same
In my heart you have remained
And we can fly, fly, fly away

'Cause you are not alone
And I am there with you
And we'll get lost together
Till the light comes pouring through
'Cause when you feel like you're done
And the darkness has won
Babe, you're not lost
When the world's crashing down
And you cannot bear to crawl
I said, baby, you're not lost
Mmm yeah yeah, yeah yeah
I said, baby, you're not lost
I said, baby, you're not lost
Ooh yeah yeah,
I said, baby, you're not lost

End Notes:
TBC ... Where will Buffy's quest for the amulet lead her? Will Doyle and the Oracles help or double-cross her? Even if they help, will Spike be able to keep from going completely 'sack of hammers' while she works to save him and their family?

Don't be shy, I love hearing from everyone!
Just The Way You Are by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy and Spike try to take away the other’s pain, at least for a while. WARNINGS FOR: Angst (duh!) and Sexual situations (at last!).
**
Music Referenced:
Just the Way You Are, Bruno Mars
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhCEhWiKXk
 **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Photo of boats in lagoon location: St. George's, Grenada
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Friday, February 17th, 2005:

In limbo/purgatory…
Spike wrapped his arms back around her and tucked her head under his chin as tears stung his eyes again. “I feel the same way, luv,” he whispered to her. “I love you so much, but I’m always at your side, Buffy. Don’t ever feel that you’ve lost me – I’ll always be right here,” Spike told her softly, laying a hand on her heart. “You’re never alone; I’ll always be with you, my love will always linger just beyond the shadows until we both find the light again.”

Tears stung Buffy’s eyes as she raised her head and looked up at Spike.  “I promise that I’ll bring us both back into the light … I promise with all my heart,” she vowed quietly and Spike gave her a sad smile and nodded.

He knew she would try, but even if she succeeded, he wasn’t sure he could ever be in the light again. His soul felt heavy … drenched in the blood of innocents – they had always been there, whispering in the corners of his mind, but now they shouted, insisted they be heard, demanded his full attention. He tried ignoring them, tried reasoning with them, arguing with them, screaming at them, apologizing to them, pleading with them … nothing would stop them from filling his entire being with guilt and regrets – so many regrets. He didn’t know how he could ever walk in the light again, how he could look his children in the eyes. How could he ever lay down with Buffy again without hearing them screaming at him, telling him that he was a fraud; he wasn’t a Champion, he was a murderer; he wasn’t a man, he was a monster. He could hear them mocking him even now … he didn’t deserve her love or the life that she’d given him – he didn’t deserve anything but to burn in the pit of hell for all eternity.

“How can they torture you like this? Can’t they see what I see? Can’t they see the Champion?” Buffy asked, as if reading his mind.

Spike shrugged. “I reckon they’d say you’re biased, pet,” Spike said with a sigh.

“No, I am not! Well, maybe a little – but any idiot can see that you’ve more than made up for what the demon did, anyone could see that you’re a good man – that you don’t deserve this,” Buffy argued.

Spike looked at her with awe – he never really fully understood how she could love him so completely, how she could forgive him his past – how she could believe in him so fully. “Why … why do you believe in me?”



Buffy laid a hand on Spike’s cheek and looked into the deep pools of blue that were the windows to his soul. “You did battle with the demon within, and you won, time and again. You faced the monster inside of you and you fought back. You gave up everything you knew, risked everything to help me defeat Angelus even before there was anything between us except the thinnest thread of trust. You did it to be a better man, and you are. There’s no one I would rather have by my side in a fight; no one I would rather have as the father of my children; no one I would rather have as my best friend, and no one I would rather have as my lover than you.”

“I did it to keep the world safe for happy meals…” Spike pointed out.

Buffy shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You can’t bullshit me, Spike … we’re way too far past that now; I know your heart, I know better.

“You once told me I was the one … but you were wrong – you’re the one. You’re the one that gives me strength and courage and hope. You’re the one, Spike.”
 
Spike shook his head slowly, silently disagreeing with her. Buffy sat up and swung one leg over both of Spike’s, sitting in his lap and facing him and he laid his palms on her hips. She took his face in both her hands and lifted it to hers. “Close your eyes and just feel my heart …” Buffy whispered to him.



When Spike closed his eyes, Buffy began feathering soft kisses over his face, kissing the trail of tears from his cheeks, pressing her lips to his closed eyelids, then over his brows, forehead, and down the side of his face, along one sharp cheekbone, to his full lips. Buffy’s lips hovered over his as she concentrated on opening her heart to him. Even though the bond hadn’t worked in this fucked-up place, she could still feel his soul and she knew he had to be able to feel hers. She wanted to take some of his pain away, replace it with the love and devotion she felt for him – push the misery out of his heart and replace it with hope, light a candle in his soul to help chase the ghosts away.

Spike felt his body and mind slowly relax as Buffy brushed kisses softly over his face – the familiarity of her touch was like a child’s security blanket, giving him comfort and solace, making him feel safe in her embrace. The voices slowly quieted, moving back into the shadowy back alleys of his mind, until he could barely hear them. Finally, all he could hear was her heartbeat, all he could feel were her lips on his face, all he could see behind his closed lids was her golden hair falling like a shimmering waterfall across his skin, and his heart and soul let their guards down and opened their gates, letting her in and taking strength from hers.
 
He’d felt her love for him before – across the bond, and it had always amazed him – this was no different. How could she hold so much love for him within her heart? A feeling of warmth washed over him … he suddenly felt completely safe, like a ship taking refuge in a harbor sheltered from the storm – he felt at ease for the first time in a very, very long time. His heart and his soul were safe with her – he knew she would protect them inside her own; only Buffy could touch that deepest part of him – that part belonged to her and her alone.



Spike suddenly felt a flicker of hope spring to life, hope that he could make it back to her one day – as if she’d dropped a lighted match down into the deepest, darkest corner of his soul and ignited the embers that he thought had been forever lost. He had hope that he could stand in the light with her again, because there would always be that place within him that nothing else could ever touch – not the ghosts, not the judges, not even God or Satan – only Buffy could find it, and he hoped that small flame would be enough – that it would be enough to build the fire again and heal his heart.



Spike wrapped his arms around her and pulled her body against his, burying his face against her shoulder and sobbed with relief. He had nearly forgotten what hope felt like … she had given him his hope back, hope that one day this nightmare would end, they would be together again, they would have their children back and their life back – he just had to hold on; he just had to fight and cling to the faith she had in him like a life preserver and never let go.

“I love you, Buffy,” Spike murmured against her skin as she wrapped her arms around him and held him to her. “A hundred hearts would be too few to carry all my love for you.”

“Oh, baby, I love you so much,” Buffy whispered through her own tears – when he opened his heart to her, she could feel his anguish, his guilt, his desperation, and the darkness in his soul. It ripped her own heart to shreds to know he was going through this and facing it all alone – at least she had Dawn to help her; he had no one at all.

Buffy lifted his face to hers and kissed him gently, feathering her lips over his, kissing his bottom lip softly, as if he would break if she pressed too hard. “I love you…” she repeated, murmuring against his lips and Spike deepened the kiss, tightening his arms around her body and pressing his tongue between her soft lips to taste her.

There was nothing else that tasted like Buffy … she always tasted like heaven to him … sometimes drenched in chocolate or garlic or champagne … but the underlying flavor was of heaven, he was sure. He knew he’d never be able to confirm that … he’d never see heaven, and God might say that he was biased, but it didn’t matter – she was his heaven and he would hold on to her love with his last gasp, with his last thread of hope.

Suddenly Spike released her and sat back, his eyes wide with worry. “Bloody hell - your shoulder! I’m sorry … Buffy, I forgot! Oh, God – Buffy I’m so sorry, pet!”

Buffy shook her head and smiled at him, lifting her left arm up in the air and making a large circle with it, before settling it back around his neck. “All better …”

“B-but how, luv? It was … buggered,” Spike questioned. In fact, Spike knew it was worse than bad, he thought that she’d died from the infection … he thought that was why she’d disappeared before and hadn't been back.

Buffy shrugged. “Apparently we have two people on our side – Dawn, who made sure I woke up, and the Guardians, who drew me to the scythe and left a little extra magic in it,” Buffy explained, tilting her head towards the scythe now lying on the ground not far from them.

Spike smiled softly. “Give Dawn my love … and, when you find Hallie, cut her into little bits with that axe o’ yours, yeah?” Spike requested, reaching out and pulling the scythe closer to them.


Buffy laughed lightly. “It will be my pleasure … now, where were we?” she asked, leaning back in and capturing his lips with hers again.



Spike wrapped his arms back around her again, pulling her body against his with renewed vigor as her tongue delved into his mouth and danced a slow waltz with his. Buffy moaned against his lips as he ran his hands down her sides, across the swell of her breasts, to her hips and outside thighs, then back up again. It seemed like years since she’d felt his touch, and his palms on her body, even through her clothes, sent shivers down her spine and made her whole body tingle.

“Make love to me,” Buffy murmured against his lips, as she pulled away from him and lay back in the sand. Spike crawled on his hands and knees up her body and dropped kisses all over her face and neck, trailing his tongue down until it was stopped by the collar of her shirt. He tugged her t-shirt up over her head and Buffy lifted her arms as he pulled it off. Buffy watched his eyes … the eyes that had not long ago been those of a frightened child were now Spike’s again, the Spike she knew so well – full of love and passion and yearning; that was a look she wanted to see every day for the rest of her life.

When her t-shirt was off, Spike continued his exploration of her body with his lips and tongue, stopping in the center of her breastbone where the scar from the amulet had been, and swirling his tongue around that spot with a sigh. Buffy lifted his left hand from the sand and Spike sat back as she laid his hand on her chest. “It’s still there …” she whispered to him. “It’s just on the inside now – locked in our memories and burned into our souls instead of on our skin.”

Spike nodded slowly as he pulled her hand, which had covered his on her chest, up to his lips and kissed it gently before leaning back down and capturing her mouth again with his. Spike started his journey anew, his mouth roaming down her neck then across her collarbone. When he reached her bra, he slid the straps down her arms, revealing her breasts to him.

“So beautiful you are, pet…” he whispered as he circled one areola with his tongue, causing Buffy’s nipples to harden and her back to arch against him as she moaned with longing and desire.

Spike turned her bra around so the clasps were within reach and unhooked it, letting it fall away completely before he continued his journey down her body with his hands and mouth. Her body wasn’t that of his wife … it was thinner and missing the scars that he loved so much – the scars that showed the world what she was, her badges of honor and courage, but it was still Buffy. He knew that this was his wife, the love of his life, the mother of his children, his best friend, his most ardent supporter – his soul mate; he could feel her in his heart, in his soul.  She was right, the scars were still there, they were just on the inside now. Her moans were the same, the goose bumps on her flesh were the same, the way she moved was the same, the way she smelled and tasted and called his name … none of that had changed.

At her waist, Spike unbuttoned her jeans and slid the zipper down slowly. Buffy raised her hips up and Spike slid her jeans and thong down her thighs. Every place his skin touched hers felt like it was on fire, and every lick, every kiss was like tossing gasoline on the flames. Buffy was ablaze with desire and need for him and Spike’s yearning was urging him to go faster, but he kept the pace slow, kept his touches light and gentle. He didn’t know when or if they would be together again, despite the flicker of hope in his soul. If this was to be their last time together, he wanted her to remember the man that adored her as a gentle man, he wanted her to remember light touches and tender caresses, he wanted her to remember his love and forget the monster, forget all the bad that he’d done in the past.

When his mouth reached the spot on her lower abdomen where her c-section scar had been, Spike paused again, lingering in that area for a long while as he blinked back tears. It was one thing for the scar from the amulet to be gone … that memory could be held in their souls, but for the scar from the birth of their son to be gone, well … that just wasn’t the same. You couldn’t hold a memory in your arms … you couldn’t have hopes and dreams for a memory … you couldn’t watch a memory grow from a boy to a man.

Misunderstanding the reason for his long pause, Buffy said, “A lot less of me to love in this body, huh? … It’s like the girl you fell in love with – do you remember?”

Spike furrowed his brow and moved back up her body so he could look into her eyes, supporting himself on all fours above her. “I remember the girl … it’s true, I loved the girl first, but I love the woman even more. The girl is still there – in your laugh, in the evil glint you get in your beautiful eyes when know you’ve pulled one over on Big Bad, in the joy of a shoppin' trip. I still love the girl, Buffy – but don’t ever think that I want her back. The woman that girl grew into is the one I want – always and forever. She was perfect; don’t ever think that woman needs to change, Buffy – you’re amazing, just the way you are.


“I wish you could see what I see when I look at you, luv. You’re so beautiful, so bloody beautiful, inside and out – eyeballs to entrails, my sweet Slayer,” Spike assured her, his eyes locked onto hers – at least they hadn’t changed – they were still the deep pools of cool green that he knew and loved so much.



Tears stung Buffy’s eyes and she gave him a small smile. “Some may say that you’re biased…”

“Ahhh, well … I reckon so,” Spike agreed with a smirk. “‘Cos the journey from that girl to the woman that I love was traveled at my side, as my wife, my lover, my best friend, the mother of our babies – you’re everything to me, Buffy – and nothing would make me happier than to walk to the end of the bloody world with you.”

A sob escaped Buffy’s throat and she pulled Spike down against her, capturing his lips with hers as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “There’s no one I’d rather have by my side for all eternity than you,” Buffy whispered into his ear after the kiss broke.


Spike kissed her lips again, nibbling lightly on her bottom lip with his teeth, then moving down and nibbling gently on her chin before starting his trek back down her body again … grazing her skin tenderly with his teeth and lips and igniting new fires, while fanning the flames of the ones he’d started earlier, all down her body. Spike chose a path down her right hip this time, rather than over the middle of her abdomen, and worked to push the thoughts of their children from his mind – this moment was about Buffy … everything else could wait.



Buffy moaned as he swept his mouth slowly down her thigh then back up from her knee to her burning center. Spike raised her legs over his shoulders and settled between them and Buffy held her breath in anticipation. Spike held her pussy lips open with his fingers and blew a soft, cool shaft of air against her clit and Buffy’s hips jerked up as she moaned and reached down to touch him. Her hands fell against his strong shoulders as Spike continued to tease and tantalize her body, replacing the delicate stream of air with the velvety touch of his tongue to her most sensitive spot.

“Oh, Spike …” Buffy moaned low as her back arched and her fingers dug into Spike’s trapezius muscles at the top of his shoulders. A small orgasm passed through her body like one of Spike’s ghosts … ethereal and impalpable; she almost felt like her body floated up off the floor of the cave for a few beautiful moments. Spike barely let her come back down before he circled her clit and laved her cum from her throbbing slit – his every move slow and divine … and making Buffy crazy with desire for him. She needed him inside her, needed his whole body touching hers, needed his eyes gazing into hers …

Buffy sat up and pulled her legs off his shoulders as she pushed Spike back onto his heels. Buffy ran her hands down his bare chest and across the hard muscles of his stomach. His body looked nearly the same as he had in their world – the only differences were his hair, long and light brown, his missing scars, and his clothes, which were obviously William’s and not Spike’s.

“I need you now …” she murmured as her hands sought out the top button of his trousers and began to undo it.

Spike sat still and watched her … his cock hungered for her touch … ached to be inside her heat, but this wasn’t about him, this was about her, and he refused to rush through it. By the same token, since it was about Buffy, he would let her guide him where she wanted to go and decide when she wanted to go there.


Spike moaned when Buffy’s hand wrapped around his hard cock after releasing it from his britches. Spike stood up momentarily to step out of his trousers, and then dropped back down to his knees in front of her. Buffy wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him with her as she lay back on the cold sand … but she didn’t feel the cold now – all she could feel was Spike’s hard body pressing against hers, all she could see was the blue of his eyes, all she could think about at that moment was her love for him.

Spike was transfixed … hypnotized by Buffy’s eyes; he let her pull him down atop her as they both moved ever so slowly back onto the cold floor of the cave. Her eyes were like magic … they blocked out the voices, they blocked out the sadness and the worry and the lunacy that had plagued his mind in this place, until all he was aware of was the green pools of love that seemed to wrap around him with a comforting shroud.

Then his body was pressing against hers – her flesh was warm and supple against his chest and stomach, it was his own personal heaven. He knew he’d never see the one that Buffy had described to him, but he found it every time he lay down with her, every time he looked at her; he found it in her eyes, in her smile, in her love – and now he clung to that feeling with every fiber of his being. He knew it would be fleeting, he knew he would likely never feel it again – it was only with her that he could find heaven; it was only her belief in him that let him pass through the gates into the Utopia that she created with her love.



Buffy kept her eyes locked on Spike’s as she pulled him down to her, they were the one thing that she could count on to never change. Always so expressive, and now was no different, she could almost see his fears and worries fall away, for this moment, at least, she could take his pain away – it wasn’t much, but it was all she could give for now. She again vowed to herself that she would succeed in fixing this – she never wanted to see fear and sadness in his eyes again, she never wanted to feel his soul bleed or his heart break.

Buffy pulled Spike’s body down against hers; forehead to forehead, she wrapped her arms around his back and her legs around his hips and held him tight as she willed for the millionth time for this nightmare to end … for them to suddenly wake up and be home, in their bed, in their room, in their house on Crawford Street with their children sleeping peacefully down the hall and all their friends nearby … and for the millionth time, it didn’t work.

Buffy turned her head to the side and closed her eyes so Spike wouldn’t see her tears, then whispered, “Can you just hold me a minute?” softly against his ear.

“I would hold you forever, pet…” Spike replied softly as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, relaxed his body against hers, and held her as tightly as she was holding him.  

After a few minutes, Spike rose up onto his elbows and kissed the tears away that had leaked from her eyelids and Buffy blinked her eyes open and looked up at him.


“I’m sorry … I wanted to … I thought I could …” she started before sobs overtook her. She brought one hand up and covered her eyes as she continued to cry uncontrollably under him. “I just wanted to … take your pain away … for a while,” she gasped out finally.



“Having you near takes my pain away, luv … I wish I could take yours, because I would happily bear it for you if I could.

“I love you, Buffy,” he whispered to her. “You and you alone make me feel alive; other men have seen angels, but I’ve seen you, and that's enough. You are my heaven … my sweet, strong Slayer.”

A sob shook Buffy’s body and she pulled back Spike down against her again as she wrapped her arms around his back. “I love you … I love you so much, Spike. I promise that I’ll get our family back, I promise that you’ll see the real heaven one day … I swear it.”

“I’ve seen it, luv … I see it in your eyes, in your smile – I’ve seen it in our children. You’ve made my life complete, Buffy – I would’ve wished for it to be longer – but my love for you is eternal, the flame will never die. My soul will find yours one day and we’ll be together again, if not in this life, then in another time and another place, I promise you,” Spike whispered back to her as he wrapped his arms back around her shoulders and dropped his mouth next to her ear.

“Oh, Spike …” Buffy tried to stop crying, that wasn’t what she wanted to do, she wanted to take his pain away for a little while, at least, not add to it, but she lost the battle as tears continued to leak from her eyes.

Spike rose back up onto his elbows and gazed down on her. “Please don’t cry, Buffy …”

Buffy closed her eyes tightly and tried to stop the tears, she tried to think of happy times they’d spent together and tell herself that there were more happy times to come, and not in some future life, in this life – she could and would fix everything; everything would be all right … but she was unable to stop the flood.

“Buffy, luv, look at me,” Spike requested softly. “Look into my eyes …”




Buffy opened her eyes and looked into his. They hadn’t changed – no matter what else changed about him, his eyes were the same. That beautiful blue with small flecks of gold, and now they held that look of love and adoration that she loved so much – she longed to see that look every day for the rest of her life. She never wanted to see the sadness and misery that he’d worn since the trials began in Spike’s eyes again – that look was like a knife to her heart.

“Put everything else aside and just look into my eyes – just be, just feel, don’t think. Feel my love for you, feel my heart … it belongs to only you. There’s nothing else in the world right now except you and me and our love, yeah? Can you see it in my eyes? Can you feel it?” Spike asked her gently.

Buffy nodded slowly, never taking her eyes away from his.  Buffy concentrated on putting everything else out of her mind except the blue of Spike’s eyes and the love for her that poured out of them and washed over her. She studied Spike’s eyes … the dark and light streaks of blue that gave them such depth, and the small gold flecks that held the demon just behind the man – they were the eyes she wanted to wake up to every morning for the rest of eternity.  


Giles had tried to teach her this once during one of his more transcendental periods … When a thought pops unbidden into your mind, open a door and shove the thought behind it then close the door. That thought can wait behind the door … you don’t need to pay attention to it now, he’d explained at the time. Buffy didn’t really get the point of it then … but she did now, and she started slamming figurative doors on the thoughts that popped into her mind, but she couldn’t quite get her tears to stop trickling from her eyes.



Spike could feel her relax under him, feel the stress and worry slowly dissolve as she gazed into his eyes and he gazed into hers, until there was nothing else in the entire universe except them at that moment. There was no heaven or hell, no purgatory … there wasn’t even an earth, there was only them, surrounded by a cocoon of love, and that love blocked out everything else.

Spike leaned down and began kissing her tears away … kissing her damp cheeks and then around her eyes. Buffy closed her eyes as he kissed the tears away from her eyelids and the blue of his eyes was replaced by the blue of the butterfly in the soul paradise behind her closed lids, but as hard as she tried, she simply couldn’t get her tears to stop completely. In her mind’s eye, she watched the blue butterfly flutter around the dusty pink rose bush, as if waiting for her to return, as Spike continued to kiss her face gently with his soft lips.



Buffy let her legs fall off of Spike’s hips and rested her feet on the ground as everything else fell away but Spike’s words. There’s nothing else except you and me and our love … nothing else…nothing else… But no matter how she tried, the tears continued to flow. Her left foot came to rest on the handle of the scythe where it lay beside them and suddenly a feeling of peace came over her … all the unbidden thoughts quieted behind their doors … and somehow she felt like all there was in the world was her and Spike.

Spike suddenly stopped kissing her and looked up from her face in surprise as he felt a soft, warm rain falling on his back. He’d never seen rain in purgatory … and definitely never felt anything warm here except Buffy.

At the same time Spike stopped kissing her, Buffy’s eyes flew open – the sweet perfume of roses filled the air and instead of the cold, hard sand of the cave, she felt warm, soft grass under her back. A mist of warm rain fell on the parts of her that Spike wasn’t covering and her arms and legs glistened in the sun. They were in the butterfly soul paradise … lying on the soft grass next to ‘their’ rose bush as a soft rain fell from a blue, cloudless sky.

“OH MY GOD!” she exclaimed. “We did it! We got out!” she screamed, hugging Spike tighter as a gleeful smile spread across her face and her tears of sorrow turned to tears of joy.

Spike looked back down at her and had to smile himself. There it was! There was the smile! There was his heaven!

You got us out, pet … not we – you,” Spike assured her as he smiled down on her.

“No … we did it, ‘cos we’re always stronger together … together we can win, Spike! Can you feel it? I know we can!” she exclaimed, almost giddy from happiness that they were both out of the hellish limbo that Spike had been trapped in for so long.

There was that hope again. Buffy was pouring it over him like sweet, warm Maple syrup, practically drowning him in the hope that they could win … that she could get him and their family back and set the world right. It was still only a flicker in his soul, but it was more hope than he’d had in a very long time, and looking at her face, so full of love and excitement and happiness, he couldn’t help but feel that small flame of hope burn a little brighter.

Buffy lifted her head up until her mouth was against Spike’s ear and whispered, “Make love to me …”

Spike lifted up onto his arms as Buffy loosened her grip on his now glistening body and he lined his hips up with hers, sliding his cock down her wet slit until it found the heaven it had been craving.  Buffy moaned, her eyes closed involuntarily, and her back arched as he paused, the head of his hard rod pressing lightly against her throbbing hole.

“Look at me, pet … let me see your eyes…” he whispered as he started to press into her heat.

Buffy opened her eyes and looked up at him. As they gazed into each other’s eyes, Spike pressed into her and Buffy raised her hips slowly up to meet his, wrapping her legs back around his body. Another small orgasm fluttered through her as he pressed in and she suddenly felt like one of the butterflies, flying silently on delicate wings from flower to fragrant flower – she felt free. All the worries, all the fears were locked behind their doors – and she was free for the first time in what seemed years, but certainly had been no more than a month. Buffy moaned deeply as chill bumps raced over her body and she trembled and quivered under Spike as she came.



Tears of joy fell from her eyes … she hadn’t been sure she could even feel that free again … of course it would be Spike that could give her these moments in heaven; only Spike. As her tears began to fall again, the soft rain, that had nearly stopped a few moments ago, started again and bathed them both in warm, clear droplets of water. Buffy ran her hands down from Spike’s shoulders, across his hard back to his buttocks and back up again. His soft, wet skin in sharp contrast to the hard muscles beneath – if she was his heaven, then most certainly the opposite was also true – he was hers.

The lovers kept their eyes locked onto the other, neither wavering – blue and green drawn to each other like a magnet to steel. As Buffy came back down from her climax, Spike began to move against her, pulling out slowly then pushing back into her core just as gently. Buffy matched his slow rhythm with her hips lifting up to his on every stroke while she continued to run her hands up from his strong arms, to his shoulders, down his back to his hard ass then back up again. She could never get enough of the feel of his body against hers, never get enough of how his muscles moved and flexed when he was making love to her, never get enough of how she felt complete when he was buried deep inside her.

Spike ground his hips in a slow circle on each downstroke, pressing his pubic bone hard against her clit, which sent electrical shocks, like lightning bolts, down Buffy’s legs and curled her toes. Buffy’s back arched up, pressing her body against him and Spike leaned down and sucked one hard nipple between his lips before nibbling on it lightly with his teeth.

“Oh, Spike … God, baby, so good…you feel so good, ahhhhhh, baby, yes … I love you, love you, so much…” Buffy murmured to him as the fires that he’d started earlier all suddenly ignited again across her whole body and seemed to consume her within their yearning and passion.

“I love you, Buffy … so bloody beautiful, you are, pet … always so wet, so hot – oh, what you do to me, luv - you’ll never know – never know how much I love you, never know how perfect you are,” Spike whispered back to her as he began to increase his pace and lift her back up to heaven.

“Yes … yes, Spike … God, yes!” Buffy exclaimed as he increased the pace and force of his strokes into her. He knew her so well, he knew just what she needed, and he could always send her body and spirit soaring – flying free, high above the clouds.

They fit together so perfectly … their sharp minds, their warrior spirits, their hero souls. They connected on so many levels, each building on the last and fusing the two parts into one whole, creating a beautiful, colorful mosaic of love and devotion. The mosaic of their life, of their love, had blues and greens swirling and touching and melding together, creating even more, beautiful and wondrous colors. It was a montage of their life - never simple, never easy - but always breathtaking ... always turning and changing, with the blue never straying far from the green. And, at moments like this, there was nothing more perfect, as they gave themselves fully to the other – mind, body, and spirit, the blues and greens swirled together in a tornado of passion, until all that was left was a blur of color and light and joy.



Spike felt Buffy begin to lose control as her body quivered and tensed under him and her velvet walls tightened around his shaft, pulling him deep into her core. He stopped holding back, slamming into her hard and fast until her arms and legs and pussy all held him so tight that he could no longer move. The lovers fought to keep their eyes open … locked onto the other’s as their bodies let go of everything and they both flew on gossamer wings up through the raindrops towards the brilliant sun.

As if in a dream, they both heard Buffy’s scream and Spike’s roar of release as their bodies convulsed and climaxed … but it seemed far away – far below them, as they fluttered their wings and soared higher and higher. Then the raindrops, like Buffy’s tears, were gone, replaced by brilliant rays of golden sun, and the green butterfly and the blue butterfly waltzed together on the shafts of sunlight, spinning and flying, then gliding down gently before rising up again, circling each other in a joyous, graceful dance of pure love.

Their souls had never felt as close as they did in this moment – both unprotected, defenseless, and fragile – completely exposed and vulnerable. They had given everything to the other – they had taken the other’s fears, pain, sadness, and worries and bore them as their own for no other reason than they could. There were no ulterior motives, no hidden agendas, and no hope for anything in return other than knowing that they had eased the burden for the other, and that was all the reward they wanted. They knew their time free of worry would be fleeting, but even giving one moment of joy to their soul mate during this sorrowful and turbulent time was worth everything – because that’s what you did when you loved someone so deeply, you lightened their burdens and you gave each other hope.

**~**

{{Click here to hear "Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars on YouTube   }}

Oh, her eyes, her eyes, make the stars look like they're not shining
Her hair, her hair, falls perfectly without her trying
She's so beautiful, and I tell her every day

Yeah, I know, I know, when I compliment her she won't believe me
And it's so, it's so, sad to think that she don't see what I see
But every time she asks me do I look ok, I say

When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are
And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while
Because girl you're amazing, just the way you are(yeah)

Her lips, her lips, I could kiss them all day if she let me
Her laugh, her laugh, she hates but I think it's so sexy
She's so beautiful, and I tell her every day

Oh, you know, you know, you know, I'd never ask you to change
If perfect's what you're searching for then just stay the same
So, don't even bother asking if you look ok
You know I'll say

When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are
And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while
Because girl you're amazing, just the way you are
The way you are, the way you are
Girl you're amazing, just the way you are

When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are
And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while
Cause girl you're amazing, just the way you are. Yeah

End Notes:
TBC .... Yay! They got out - finally! Sorry to say, the angst is not over, however. We're just taking a short intermission from the tears to stock up on tissues...
Bridge Over Troubled Water by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Spike and Buffy spend some time together in the butterfly-soul paradise and hope springs eternal.
**
Music Referenced:
Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_a46WJ1viA
 **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Adam and Eve statue by Gail Caulfield located at Villa Montalvo.
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
**
Warnings for sex, sex, sex ... and a little angst in the middle!
Friday, February 17th, 2005:

In the butterfly soul garden…


Spike rested his forehead against Buffy’s, both lovers keeping their eyes open and glued to the other, as they floated down on rays of golden sun and back into their bodies. Buffy was breathing hard, trying to get air back into her lungs, back to her brain – Spike could feel her chest fall and rise with every breath, he could hear her heart racing, her pulse pounding in her veins as he relaxed atop her and held her body against his. He wished he could find a word to tell her how much he loved her … how absolutely perfect she was in every way, how exquisite…how radiant…

“I love you so much,” he whispered to her. “You’re effulgent … you fill my soul with hope and light.”

Buffy tilted her lips up and touched his gently as her eyes fluttered closed. “I love you, too … never forget that – never doubt my love for you,” Buffy murmured against his lips, her breath caressing his lips softly as she spoke.

Afraid that his weight was getting to be too much on her, Spike rolled to the side, pulling Buffy with him, then all the way over onto his back, so she was laying on top of him. Buffy held onto his shoulders as he rolled over and unhooked her legs from behind him so he could lie on his back. She nestled against his hard body as he wrapped his arms around her and held her to him. With her head resting on his shoulder, Buffy sighed contently as Spike's cool fingers traced lazy circles up and down her spine.

Spike cherished every day he had with Buffy and regretted every day they’d been apart over the last few years. Looking back, he reckoned there were too many of those days apart – some his fault, some hers, some were no one’s fault, just life, but he knew now there had been too many. If he got back from this, if she was able to fix it – if that flame of hope she had lit in his gut turned into a bonfire and they got their life back, he vowed that there would be fewer of those days – and his stubborn pride wouldn’t be the cause of even a single lonely night for her. There had been too many tears shed, too much pain, too many tearful nights on account of his temper and his foolishness – of all the things he’d done in his life, of all the things that he was being judged for, those actions which hurt her were the ones that he regretted the most.

Above them, Spike could see the dusty pink flowers on the rose bush and the blue sky and bright sun beyond that. He watched as the blue butterfly hovered and circled above the roses, and then lit gently on one of the buds and stayed there – as if watching over them. With Buffy draped over him and the butterfly standing guard, Spike allowed his eyes to close … he hadn’t felt this safe in a very, very, very long time. He knew this was far from over, but perhaps they’d turned a corner … perhaps things would start going their way for a change.

Buffy hadn’t intended to fall asleep … she didn’t want to squander one moment with Spike, but she felt so safe laying in his arms, surrounded by his love – she felt more at peace than she had in a very long time. She awoke slowly, not quite remembering where she was at first, then she sighed happily when she felt Spike’s body under her, his arms still wrapped around her. She lifted her head and looked at his face … his eyes were closed, he had fallen asleep, too.

Buffy studied his face as he slept … she thought he looked like an angel. His shoulder length, light brown hair, damp from the earlier rain, fell in curls around his handsome face, and reminded her of Annie. Annie’s hair was darker than Spike’s, but the curls were just the same, the cheekbones were just the same, so much about their daughter was just like Spike. Tears stung Buffy’s eyes when she thought back to the day she found out she was pregnant with “The Key.” She thought her life was over – she was seventeen and pregnant, she was alone, she hadn’t seen Spike in a month, she’d been kicked out of high school, and she still hadn’t been fully cleared of Kendra’s murder by the crack team of investigators on the Sunnydale PD … and she couldn’t have been more wrong. Her life wasn’t over, it had really just begun.

Spike opened his eyes slowly and looked up at her as a small smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Penny for your thoughts…” he whispered.

Buffy smiled softly back down at him. “I’ve seen three lives of Buffy the Vampire Slayer now – all very different and all very much the same, but the one with you by my side …” Buffy shook her head slowly, “… well, you’ve made all the difference, Spike. I can’t understand why the Powers can’t see that … it’s a no-brainer – what are they, scarecrows or something?”

Spike smiled wider but shrugged. “I reckon there’re some things that are just too … too vile to forgive, pet – no matter what…and I’m one of them.”

Buffy shook her head slowly and then laid her head back down on his shoulder as she hugged tighter against him. “That’s so not true. You can’t really believe that.”

Spike shrugged slightly and wrapped his arms around her tighter. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, pet,” he told her, his voice low and rumbly, full of emotion.

“Well, I do – you’re a good man, Spike, you have a good soul – don’t you ever forget that,” Buffy assured him as they lay in the soft, warm grass under the rose bush.


Spike closed his eyes and dropped a soft kiss on the top of her head … he wasn’t so sure about anything anymore, but he was grateful for her belief in him, it made him want to believe, too.


After a time, the lovers got up and began strolling lazily along the path, meandering their way down towards the lake. Although they had been transported into paradise, their clothes had not. Buffy felt like Eve in the Garden of Eden and Spike was her Adam … who needed clothes when the only other living creatures in sight were butterflies? At least, she hoped that’s all they’d find here – hopefully Doyle wouldn’t pop in for a chat.



They talked and walked and laughed – neither of them again mentioning the trials or their children or anything that was happening in the real world; neither wanted to spoil this time together, even though those thoughts and feelings weren’t far below the surface – they both left them buried for now. There would be time later for those worries and fears … but right now wasn’t it.

Spike watched Buffy move, watched her expressions and rejoiced in her laughter. This body she had now from the altered reality wasn’t that of his wife, and for that he was sorry … but her movements were the same, her mannerisms, her sly looks, the green of her eyes, and her laugh – none of that had changed. The flicker of hope that they would get out of this, that he could get back to her and their family, that she would be able to fix everything, grew a little brighter with each minute they spent in the tropical paradise.

They stopped at a large orange tree, heavily laden with large, ripe fruit, and Spike picked a sweet orange for her and began to peel it.




“What kind is it?” she asked as they stood under the large tree.

“I reckon it’s a ‘bend-over’ orange, luv,” Spike answered with a smirk.

“Excuse me? Is that some kind of lewd suggestion?”



Spike just smiled and handed her a slice of the peeled orange. When Buffy bit into it, juice squirted out in all directions and ran down her chin. She instinctively bent forward to keep the juice from running further down her body.

“Like I said … a ‘bend over’ orange. Nuthin’ lewd ‘bout it,” Spike laughed as he popped a whole slice into his mouth.

“Oh … darn. That’s disappointing,” Buffy remarked with a frown as he handed her another piece.

“Is it now?”

“Mmmhmmm … very disappointing,” Buffy assured him as she bit into the new slice he gave her and this time let the juice run down her chin, down her neck and start down her chest.

Spike leaned in and caught one of the drops on his tongue as it started to run between her breasts, then licked the trail back up her chest, neck and chin until his mouth reached hers. “Doesn’t have to be disappointing,” he whispered to her as he covered her mouth with his, licking and sucking all the sweet juice from around her full lips.

Buffy moaned and leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her body against his as he continued licking and kissing her mouth, sucking all the sweet juice from her skin, before sliding his tongue between her lips and tasting her. Buffy’s tongue wrapped around Spike’s as he probed her mouth slowly, as if he’d never kissed her before, and his arms wrapped around her body, molding it to his.

Buffy broke the kiss and pulled Spike’s left hand, and what remained of the orange, from around her body. She took the orange from his hand and bit into it like it was an apple, sending rivers of the sweet juice running down her body. Then she offered the remainder to him, and Spike bit into it greedily as the sweet nectar flowed down his chin and chest and then to his hard abs and beyond.




Buffy began kissing and licking a line of orange flavored flames down Spike’s body, starting with his sweet lips and gliding down over his strong chin to his Adam’s apple. She lingered there for a few moments, licking and sucking the juice from his neck and particularly from his voice box. She loved his voice, loved to hear him talk and sing and laugh, and roar with pleasure when he came. All he had to do was whisper in her ear – some sweet line … even just one carefully chosen word, in that deep rumbling voice, to make her knees go weak and her heart beat faster.

Even after all these years, he could still make her heart skip a beat, make her legs tremble, and her body tingle with a word, a look, a touch. Buffy knew that wasn’t typical … but then, nothing about Spike was typical. She read all the articles in Cosmo … How to Make Your Guy Want You, How to Turn your Guy On, How to Keep the Fire Burning, How to Keep Your Sex Life Sexy … there were hundreds of them, but she’d never needed any of their advice. The fire had never waned – not when she was pregnant and felt like the Goodyear blimp, not after the twins were born when she had what she thought was an ugly scar from the c-section and extra weight that wouldn’t go away, not even on her worst bad hair days. Spike always found her sexy and had always shown her that she was the most beautiful and desirable woman in the world – he hadn’t gotten bored with her in all these years and she certainly had never gotten bored with him.

Buffy moved her mouth down further slowly, licking and kissing the sweet juice from Spike’s soft skin; down past his collarbone, across his hard chest to his six-pack abs. Spike moaned as she traced the “V” down from his abs to his now hard cock as she dropped to her knees in front of him. She took what was left of the orange and gave it a hard squeeze, dribbling the remainder of the juice over the head of his cock and letting it run down its hard length to his balls. Buffy tossed the orange aside then pulled Spike’s cock to her mouth, swirling her tongue over the engorged head and across his cumslit, tasting his pre-cum mixed with the sweet nectar of the orange.

Spike’s legs quivered as Buffy trailed her mouth down the underside of his rod, sucking and kissing the whole way, as she followed the path the juice had taken. He rested his hands on her shoulders, not certain of his ability to remain standing, as she ‘Mmmmm’d against the base of his cock then licked slow circles around his balls.

“God, Buffy … so good, so bloody good,” Spike moaned as he watched her beautiful mouth taste and lick his hard shaft and tease his balls with her tongue.

He never grew tired of her touch. Her mouth, her hands on him – anywhere on his body, was enough to send fire shooting through his veins. When her body pressed against his or when she worked her magic on his cock, he thought that he might spontaneously combust at any moment from the pleasure of it. He’d never had anyone that could make him feel the way Buffy did … make him struggle against his own body to hold back right from the first touch of her lips to his, from the first caress, the first whisper.

Buffy pressed two fingers hard against his taint as she palmed his balls and took the head of his cock into her mouth and Spike’s knees nearly buckled. Buffy grinned around his cock, but didn’t stop – moving her mouth slowly down his thick shaft, taking him into her heat slowly, then pulling back up again, before going down a little further and back up, her movements remained tantalizingly slow and deliberate and it was driving Spike bug-shagging crazy. She alternated between pressing her fingers hard against his sensitive prostrate and barely touching that delicate spot, as she swirled her tongue against his hardness and continued her slow rhythm up and down his rod with her luscious mouth.


“Oh, Buffy …” Spike moaned deeply as he held on to her shoulders for support.

He loved how she could go from ‘make love to me’ to taking charge and sending him spiraling out of control. She could be sweet and demure or fast and furious – at times a girl, at others a woman – one day a sinner, the next day a saint…or perhaps an angel with slightly scorched wings and a halo just a tiny bit askew.



Buffy suddenly increased her pace and slammed the sensitive head of his cock against the back of her throat, sucking down on him hard, taking as much of his rod into her mouth as she possibly could, while at the same time lightly pinching the area she’d been fingering between his balls and anus.




“Oh, God … Oh, Buffy! Can’t hold … gonna cum, luv! Fuck! Oh, God!” Spike exclaimed as he lost control and felt his body win the battle against his restraint. There was no way he could hold back when she slammed down on him and began sucking up and down with hard, fast strokes. Spike felt that familiar feeling of her lifting him up into the cloudless sky as his cum shot out in streams into her heavenly mouth. He felt like he was floating … perhaps he was, he couldn’t tell – his body felt weightless, like a feather floating softly across a field of wildflowers on a gentle breeze. It was that place that she could always bring him … their personal heaven, and he relished the feeling now perhaps more than ever before, because he’d seen hell, he’d felt hell … and that made every moment with Buffy that much more heavenly; that made these moments when she took him up beyond the sun and moon and stars that much sweeter.

Buffy struggled to swallow Spike’s cum as she continued to move up and down on his cock with her mouth and caress his tight balls with her hand. His whole body tensed, every muscle seemed to bulge with exertion, and a roar began deep at the core of his being and filled the entire valley with his passion as he came. Buffy slowed her movements, but continued sucking and licking the cum from his rod as she felt him begin to relax and his cock soften.

Buffy pulled off him when she felt his legs give way. Spike fell to his knees in front of her – for a moment his whole body felt like an overcooked egg noodle and he slumped heavily against her.


“Bloody hell, woman … You have no idea what you do to me, luv … turn me into jelly, you do,” Spike gasped out as Buffy wrapped her arms around him and began dropping kisses on his face and shoulders.

“Mmmm … orange jelly – marmalade!” Buffy clarified as she continued kissing his face, which still tasted like the sweet, ripe orange.



After a few moments, Spike regained control of his muscles and took her face between his hands and gazed into her eyes. “I love you, Buffy Anne Summers-Weckerly. I love you with every fiber of my being. True love is like a ghost; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it. I’ve seen it, Buffy – I see it every time I look into your eyes.”

Tears sprang to Buffy’s eyes and she blinked them back. “I see it too, Spike,” she whispered to him.

Spike took her lips in a soft, sweet kiss as he held her face between his palms – she tasted of his cum and the sweet nectar of the orange and Buffy. The flavor of Buffy was indefinable – sweet, sexy, funny – full of love and laughter, but today the salty taste of her tears was mixed in there, too. How many tears had she shed these last … how long had it been? Months? Years? It felt like decades to Spike. He wished he could take her tears away forever.

Spike kissed her closed eyelids gently, then trailed his tongue down her cheek – even though the tears had dried, he could still taste them, still follow their well-worn track down her face.

“I’m all sticky …” Buffy murmured coyly, lifting her chin to reveal her orange juice covered neck to him. She could feel Spike’s spirits starting to plummet again as he tasted the remnants of her tears; she wasn’t ready to think about tears just yet, she wasn’t ready to think about anything but Spike and Buffy, Mr. and Mrs. Weckerly, William and Elizabeth … everything else could wait behind the doors for a while longer.

“Are you, now? Well, can’t have that, can we?”

Buffy shook her head slowly as Spike changed directions with his tongue and licked under her chin and down her neck to the hollow at the base of her throat. Spike swirled his tongue into the hollow and licked up the sweet, dried orange juice that lingered there, and then sucked lightly on the bones on either side of his chalice. Buffy moaned and dropped her head back as Spike continued down her body cleaning the sticky sweet orange from her skin and leaving a trail of fiery-ice in its stead.  

Spike pushed lightly against Buffy’s shoulders and she went down onto her back, pulling her legs out from under herself as she went. Spike trailed his mouth down between her breasts, still tasting the orange stickiness on her skin … just how far had that juice run, anyway? He couldn’t wait to find out. Spike took a detour from his mission and swirled his tongue around one breast, making smaller and smaller circles with it until he reached the darker skin of her areola. Buffy could feel chill bumps form and run in fast circles, chasing Spike’s tongue round and round on her skin, and her nipples hardened in anticipation as his mouth got closer and closer.

Spike teased her breasts with his mouth and tongue, moving from one to the other and back again … carefully avoiding her erect nipples. Buffy’s back arched and she moaned in agony as he teased her with his tantalizing tongue.

“Sumthin’ you want, pet?” he asked innocently, looking up from his task towards her face.

Buffy opened her eyes and lifted her head; if looks could kill … well, she still wouldn’t kill him, but she might hurt him a little bit. “You’re killing me…” she moaned out, dropping her head back onto the soft grass.

“Am I? I didn’t know, luv … ever so sorry …” Spike smirked as he went back to teasing her with his mouth and lips … adding his gentle fingers to the torture, as well.

When Spike thought that she couldn’t stand it one more moment, he sucked down hard on one nipple as he pinched and pulled the other between two fingers. Buffy screamed out, her back arched, and her body tensed as all the tension that he’d been building escaped and washed over her body in a powerful tidal wave of bliss. She didn’t know how he could do that … make her cum by making love to nothing more than her breasts, but he’d done it time and again – starting with the very first time they’d been together. She felt like she was flying, as if Spike had just shot her out of a cannon and she was circling the world at warp speed – completely free, completely unencumbered by gravity or any of the voices behind the doors … the only thing missing was Spike flying at her side.

As Buffy’s body began to relax again, Spike slid his palms down the sides of her rib cage, savoring her soft skin under his palms. His mouth and tongue followed the orange-juice trail down the center of her body as his hands continued slowly down her sides to the flare of her hips, stopping when they reached her upper thighs. This time, Spike didn’t linger at her bikini line where the c-section scar should’ve been, but forged past it and into her curls. He slid his hands under her knees and lifted her legs up and out, revealing her pink folds and heavenly scent to him as he settled between her thighs.

Spike tasted her gingerly … barely touching her hot, damp slit with the very tip of his tongue and Buffy moaned and writhed under him, silently begging for more. Spike knew her moans, her movements, how she tasted, and the aroma of her desire better than he knew his own – but they never ceased to send blood rushing away from his brain as she filled his body with need for her.

Spike was a bit surprised to find the sticky orange juice had made its way all the way down into her curls, but he dutifully cleaned the stickiness off her outer lips before delving into her. Buffy’s hips jerked up against him as he slid his tongue into her tight hole and twirled it back and forth deep inside her.

“Oh, God, Spike! Yes, baby!” Buffy exclaimed as she reached down and touched his strong shoulders with her hands.

Spike sucked hard against her hole and pressed his thumb down against her clit and Buffy’s body jerked and convulsed again as another blissful tidal wave overtook her and lifted her back to heaven.

“Oh, Spike! Cumming … oh … God!” Buffy screamed, her fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders as she soared back high above the world.

Spike laved her hot cum from her pussy, moaning against her as he licked and sucked and lavished her with his mouth and tongue, keeping her floating amongst the stars as long as he could. He loved the taste of her slick juices, the pounding of her heart rang in his ears and he could feel her pulse racing under his hands … it all combined to make his cock ache for her again; ache to be inside her, to melt with her.

Remembering her disappointment at the meaning of a ‘bend over’ orange, Spike pulled back and, holding onto both of her hips, turned her over onto her stomach. Buffy’s heart jumped and her pulse quickened again as she raised up onto her knees and elbows in front of him.  Spike ran his hands up and down her back, from her shoulders to her ass and hips and back again as he moved up behind her. Buffy looked back over her shoulder and watched Spike’s face as he slid his cock into her wet, hot pussy. She gasped in pleasure as he entered her and it was all she could do to keep her eyes open as she watched him over her shoulder – but the look of unabashed desire and pleasure on his face made the effort worthwhile. She loved that look, she loved knowing that she was the one that could make him feel that way, just as he was the one that made her feel the same way.

Buffy moaned and her hips pushed back against him as Spike started moving in and out of her with shallow thrusts, popping the head of his cock just inside her then pulling back out over and over again. Then Spike leaned forward so his chest was against her back and his hands were resting on her shoulders and pushed all the way into her in one slow, fluid movement and just stopped. That was the feeling he wanted … that feeling of melting against her, of being enveloped by her body, of her skin against his, her flesh heating his, her pulse becoming his own.

Buffy struggled to breathe … struggled to keep from falling to the side, as Spike’s cock touched her core, pressing against her womb and sending bright rays of ecstasy out in all directions. The waves of bliss seemed to bounce off his hard chest as it pressed against her back, then dance off his fingers where they were touching her shoulders which sent them zinging down her legs, where the ricocheted back again to where they began, in her core. Her pussy walls tightened hard around Spike’s cock as all the sensations flowing through her sent another orgasm flooding over her body. Spike began kissing her shoulders and the back of her neck and twirling small circles with his fingers against her skin and Buffy could no longer think, she could only feel – feel her lover’s hardness buried deep in her suppleness, feel his flesh and hard muscles against hers, feel his lips on her skin, feel his love through his gentle kisses and caresses.


Even on her knees and elbows, Buffy’s limbs began to give way and Spike laid them both over gently onto the grass, never breaking his embrace or moving his hips from hers. Buffy tried to breathe … tried to stay upright, but she couldn’t, it was a struggle to simply stay conscious. It was a feeling more intense than she’d ever felt before … more than an orgasm, more even than she’d ever felt with the bond or the time that the monks had used their magic and made Spike alive when they created Annie. She thought she could feel Spike’s love actually flow into her body from his own – as if she now held his love, perhaps even his soul, within her, and it was overwhelming.



Spike felt it too … he didn’t know what it was, but it was unbelievably powerful; it was as if their souls had physically touched for a split second, as if they had both reached a place that was so deep within the other that no one else could ever touch, the spot that was for their soul mate alone to know.

“W-What … was … that?” Buffy finally gasped out between breaths.

Spike kissed the back of her neck and began moving his hips slowly against her as they lay on their sides in the soft grass under the orange tree. “I think our souls got jealous, pet … wanted a bit o’ fun of their own,” Spike theorized.

“Mmmmm …” Buffy moaned, draping her top leg back over Spike’s and opening herself to him fully, as Spike continued moving his hips slowly, pressing in and pulling out of her heat with a slow, sensuous rhythm. “I hope they do it again…”

Spike smirked. “I’ll see what we can do ‘bout that, pet…”

Spike stopped moving and took Buffy by the hips and rolled onto his back, holding her to him as he went and ending up with her in atop him in a reverse cowgirl. Buffy moaned as his cock slid deeper into her when she settled down atop him; then she balanced herself on his thighs and began to move again. Soon they had their rhythm back, with Spike thrusting up against her as she came down. He settled his hands on her hips and pulled her down hard on him with every thrust, taking Buffy up to the top of that cliff, but not quite over the edge.

“Need to see you…” Buffy moaned as she stopped moving, then lifted up off him and turned around so she could see his face and look into those blue eyes that captivated her soul.

Buffy lowered herself back down as Spike guided his shaft into her again. She moaned her approval as she laid her hands on his hard chest and leaned forward so she could look into his eyes before they both began moving again. Buffy ground her hips down in slow circles against him as they began climbing back up the mountain, their eyes locked onto the other – they seemed to be looking directly into each other’s soul as their thrusts became hard and frantic. Spike slid one hand between them and Buffy’s clit came down on his knuckles, sending electrical shocks out in all directions as the lovers continued their trek up past the mountaintops to the clouds.

“Cum for me, Buffy … scream for me…” Spike whispered to her, his voice deep with desire and lust as her pussy enveloped his shaft, sliding up and down at a fast and furious pace that threatened to overwhelm him before he was ready. “So beautiful you are … so bloody beautiful. I love you so much, Buffy … so hot … so fucking good… so perfect…”

“Oh God … oh, Spike …yes, fuck me, baby … yes … God yes!” Buffy screamed as her back arched and her muscles began to convulse through her whole body. She struggled to stay leaning forward and keep her eyes open – she wanted so much to see him when she came, but the feeling was starting to overwhelm her. “Cumming….. God, Spike, now, baby … cum with me – now!”

Buffy slammed down on him one last time and Spike fingered her clit as their bodies trembled and took flight. Her screams of pleasure echoed off the walls of the valley – across the lake and back again and severed the last thread of restraint Spike had. His hips jerked up into her one last time as his cum boiled up from his balls and shot into her tight channel. Spike’s roar joined Buffy’s screams as they both soared up into the blue sky and towards the never-moving sun. They flew as one towards the bright orange orb, veering off at the last second to circle it and slingshot back towards the earth. Spike was sure it was those blissful trips around the sun that had scorched Buffy’s angel wings and sent her halo teetering off to one side.

The lovers sailed freely through the warm air … diving down towards the lake, then pulling up at the last moment before they drifted lazily back down to earth … back to their bodies, back into each other’s arms. Buffy collapsed down atop Spike’s chest as she tried to get air into her lungs. Spike wrapped his arms around her and held her tight against him as he whispered, “I love you,” against her ear, but it didn’t seem like enough.

He continued whispering softly, saying ‘I love you’ in every language he and Annie had learned it in. “Je t'aime … Te quiero … Ana behibek … Ti amo … Aishiteru … Wo ai ni … I love you, I love you, I love you.” He felt like he couldn’t say it enough – like there should be more, those three words just didn’t seem large enough to hold all the love he felt, but there were no other words that said it any better.

Buffy raised her head up and looked into his eyes, then dropped a gentle kiss on his lips. “I love you, too,” she murmured against his soft lips before laying her head back down on his chest and hugging her arms around his neck with a contented sigh. Buffy smiled softly to herself as she remembered the times that she’d sat on the stairs in the basement and watched and listened as Spike and Annie played their language games. Spike must’ve certainly known she was there, but never turned his attention away from Annie and their father/daughter time.

They’d had a contest once that she’d witnessed, who could say ‘I love you’ in more languages … Annie, of course, had won. Although Spike hated to lose at anything, losing to Annie never really bothered him, even though he would sometimes gripe about it to Buffy and their friends. Buffy knew that, in truth, what he was doing was bragging about Annie in a way that didn’t sound quite so … ‘braggy’.

Buffy couldn’t have asked for a better father for their children than Spike – he was everything that she could’ve hoped for and more. Just like her, he would and could protect them from any and all threats, he would be willing to not just die for them, but kill to protect them; then the same man would fall asleep on the couch or in the rocker with a baby in his arms, or sing a soft lullaby to comfort them when they cried, or recite ‘The Cat in the Hat’ from memory. He was a renaissance man, no doubt, and never ceased to surprise and delight Buffy with long hidden talents.




Buffy squeezed her eyes closed hard to keep the tears from escaping … her family had snuck out from behind their doors in her mind and made her heart ache. Spike could feel her whole body tense and her breathing became labored again and he lifted her chin so he could see her face.


“Buffy, don’t cry, pet. It’s ok … I didn’t mean to make you cry.”


Spike sat up, taking Buffy up with him and held her to him, rocking her gently in his arms and the tears that she’d been fighting for so long flooded out of her eyes. Buffy clung to him as all the doors in her mind starting opening … one worry, one fear, one obstacle, one friend, one child after another, until she felt completely overwhelmed by them.

Spike just held her and murmured soft, loving words to her, interspersed with verses from the lullaby that he’d sung to her for the first time so many years ago, as she cried against him. He wished he could come back with her to the ‘real world’ and help her fix this, help her fight for their family – there was nothing he wanted to do more than fight something right now, but he knew that wasn’t in the cards – it was all on Buffy’s shoulders. For the first time in a very long time, he’d broken a promise to Buffy – he couldn’t stand by her side; she was alone, and it cut him as deeply as any crime that he’d ever committed. All he could do now was try to ease her pain, make sure she knew that he loved her and believed in her and always would. The words to an old Simon & Garfunkel song came to his mind, and he sang to her softly as she let all the tears and worry and frustration that she’d been holding back flow out. He wished he could always dry all her tears, always be her bridge over troubled water …

{{Click here to hear "Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel on YouTube   }}

“♫When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all

“I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

“When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you

“I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

“Sail on Silver Girl,
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way

“See how they shine
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind … ♫”


Buffy fought to stop her tears as Spike sang to her and rocked her gently in his arms. She tried to put all the worries and fears back behind their doors, but it was harder now that they’d learned how to escape … or maybe she was just exhausted from holding the doors closed against their strong objections. She changed tactics and started trying to replace the worries with positive thoughts, like the fact that at least they’d been able to get Spike out of the hell-limbo he’d been in. He’d be ok here while she worked to get things fixed, and that was a huge relief, an enormous weight off her shoulders. And at least she had Dawn helping her out in the real world – she’d be pretty lost without her – her sister had been a huge help in so many ways, from emotional support to research to filling in all the blanks of the world Buffy had found herself dropped into. And, Dawn had been really sure that D’Hoffryn’s talisman was with Willow’s belongings at the sanatorium upstate – so they even had a backup plan in case Doyle and the Oracles didn't come through – so that was good news. 

See? Buffy silently admonished all the doubts and worries in her mind, Things aren’t that bad … we have some leads, we have the scythe, we have a sort of plan, my shoulder’s healed, Spike’s safe … it’s gonna be ok. You can do this – you can win.

When Spike finished singing and began humming softly, Buffy looked up and smiled at him gently, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand. “I love you …” she whispered to him.

“Why?” he replied, just as quietly.

Buffy shook her head slowly and laid a hand gently on his cheek. “How can you ask that?” she wondered aloud before answering his question as best she could. “You are my bridge over the trouble water, Spike. I love you not just for what you are, but for what I am when I’m with you. I love you not only for what you’ve made of yourself – for what a good man you are, but for what you’re making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out, the part that, without you, would’ve been impossible for me to find, and for making me a better woman, a better wife, a better mother – a better person. Having you by my side makes me better; it makes me want to be better, makes me try harder to be what you deserve, and I love you for that.”


Spike snorted softly, as if to refute her, but didn’t argue with her. He pulled her back against his chest and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You took my line, pet,” he told her with a small laugh.



“I’m sorry … but I didn’t know I’d made you a better woman, just don’t try to borrow my shoes, that would really cross the line,” Buffy retorted with a smirk, trying to get back to the place they were before, back to a lighter mood, free of worry and doubt.

Spike smiled and pulled back so he could see her face – he knew what he’d see there, that evil ‘I gotcha’ glint in her eyes and a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth, and he wasn’t disappointed.

“You don’t mind if I borrow your lacy undies, then? The black ones with the red swirly-gig-thingies are my favorites…”


Buffy smiled wider. “I’d love to see you in those … Do you think you could…ummm …tuck everything in? I might have to help you with that…” Buffy suggested with a coy look.

“I’d wager, if you helped me, I’d definitely not be able to tuck anything in.”

“You do know, when we get back, I’m gonna make you try …” Buffy whispered seductively against his ear. “I think you’d look fine in lace panties and stiletto heels … Dr. Frank-N-Furter.”





Spike threw his head back and laughed deeply – that laugh that Buffy loved, which seemed to start deep in his soul and reverberate through his whole body. Spike’s laugh was contagious, and soon Buffy was laughing just as hard and they both fell back onto the grass as their emotional rollercoaster swung back up to the manic side of the ride. When their laughter waned, Buffy curled up against Spike’s side as he lay on his back, draping a leg over his and resting one hand against the hard muscles of his stomach. Spike wrapped an arm around her and pulled her body against his as he laid his other hand over the one she had on his torso, his larger hand covering hers completely.



Buffy sighed deeply as she laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. The nagging voices of worry and fear and sadness had quieted again and she suddenly felt exhausted from the manic-depressive E-ticket ride they’d been on. Spike stroked her back gently as her breathing evened out and her body relaxed against his – he was glad that he could get her to laugh again – maybe he could ease her mind and be that bridge, after all.
End Notes:
TBC ... Now that Spike's safe, what will Buffy run into when she wakes up and gets back to her search for the amulet ...? I'll have more soon, probably Sunday night if not sooner!

Oh - sorry for the JM 'screencap' for the laughing Spilliam, hope you don't mind ... they just didn't let Spike laugh enough on the show ...
How Do I Love Thee? by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Spike and Buffy spend time together in the butterfly-soul paradise, but are things there as safe as they seem?
**
Music Referenced:
How Do I Love Thee? (Originally by the Shadows) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrDoMZi3JeY
 **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
**
Warnings for ... ummm ... well ... ok, sorry: ANGST!
Friday, February 17th, 2005:

In the butterfly soul garden…





Buffy sat between Spike’s outstretched legs on the white sand at the edge of the lake and leaned back against his chest. She relished the feeling of the soft water lapping at her legs, the warm sun caressing her skin, and his strong arms wrapped around her, holding her tight to him. They had laid in each other’s arms under the shade of the orange tree a long while, then slowly meandered down the trail to the lake, where they’d swum and laughed and washed all the remnants of the orange orgy from their bodies.

As they sat on the soft, white sandy beach at the edge of the lake they talked of Buffy’s plan … of Doyle and the Oracles, of getting D’Hoffryn’s talisman from Willow’s belongings. They tried to anticipate problems Buffy might face along the way and perhaps alternatives or other options that she might need to try. Buffy was so relieved to have Spike to at least talk to about everything … his experience as a warrior gave her a perspective on things that Dawn just couldn’t. Spike didn’t really know Doyle … he had the memory of a brief meeting with 'the Mick' from the memories that had been folded into his from the other dimension, but apart from that, Spike only had second-hand information from the time he spent helping Angel Investigations several years ago. Everything he’d heard from Cordy and Angel about the messenger seemed to support Doyle’s contention that he was a man of his word.

Spike had never heard of the Oracles and the lovers talked a good while about what kind of ‘trinket’ she should take them, as Doyle had suggested, to show her respect and get their help … would something personal be better or something expensive? Buffy wished she had the jewelry that Spike had given her in their world … she would gladly trade it all for their life back, but she had none of it – just a plain gold band – from Riley, and her necklace was the cross that Angel had given her the first time they met. She wondered briefly if Riley knew where the necklace had come from … she guessed that he didn’t.

Buffy couldn’t tell how long she’d been with Spike, the sun never moved in the sky here, but it seemed at least a day, maybe two counting the time in the cave. It seemed odd that she and Dawn could sleep so long … even with the half barrel of wine they’d consumed (well, perhaps it wasn’t really that much), but Buffy didn’t want to kick a gift horse in the mouth – she was happy for every moment with Spike.

She was beyond relieved that they had been able to get Spike out of the hellish limbo he’d been in for the last month. Between that place and the trials, it was a wonder Spike hadn’t lost his mind completely. As hard as they’d both tried before, they had never been able to get out of the cold, red dimension; she wasn’t sure what had made the difference … perhaps the magic and power of the scythe was the key this time. Buffy felt so much more confident now with Spike here, away from purgatory and the trials, and lucid; if she ran into problems with her plan, she could talk them over with Spike the next time she slept. It felt good to know that she had him here, even though he wasn’t at her side, it was a great relief to know that she could turn to him for advice if she needed it.

Spike tried to think of any glitches that could pop up in Buffy’s plan … he knew for each one he thought of, there were probably fifty he didn’t, but he had confidence in Buffy, and the longer he stayed in the butterfly-soul paradise, the more hope he had that she would find a way out of this for both of them. Buffy was a scrapper, she could think on her feet, improvise, and she was as tough a Slayer as ever walked the earth, of that he was sure. If anyone could fix it, it was Buffy.

The voices of his victims were still screaming at him from the deep, dark corners of his mind – but with Buffy here, he was able to keep them confined to those deep, dark corners. He knew she couldn’t stay, though, and what would happen when she was gone, he wasn’t sure. He hoped he could keep his shit together, for her, for their family … so he could be what she needed when she came back, not a babbling idiot – or worse. He hoped that the ghosts that haunted him in the cave were trapped there because he wasn’t really sure how much longer he could take being haunted by all those faces … starting with his own mother and ending with the last person he’d killed in cold blood, Riley Finn. It seemed somehow ironic to Spike that Riley Finn from their world would be haunting him and, in the new world, he was alive and well and married to Buffy – it was like a win-win for Captain Cardboard.

After talking about everything they could think of regarding Buffy’s plan, the warriors fell silent. Spike rested his chin on her shoulder as Buffy leaned against his hard chest and they just gazed out over the large, blue lake before them and across it to the green mountains in the distance. They cherished the feeling of their lover’s body pressed against their own – each lost in their own thoughts, each fighting to keep the worry and fear of failure from their minds. If she tried really hard, Buffy could almost convince herself that they were just on vacation on some remote, deserted island and one of those float planes would be landing in the lake at any moment to take them back home …. Almost.



Spike turned his face so his mouth was near Buffy’s ear and began to recite one of his favorite love poems, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43 …

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
"My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight…”
 
Suddenly, Spike stopped. Buffy could feel his body tense behind her and his head snap up and scan the calm water of the lake.
 


“No! …No, no, no …” he muttered as he stood up quickly, pulling Buffy up behind him. “Buffy – run! Run and don’t look back, don’t come back! Just run!” he commanded, his voice panicky, as he pushed her away from the water and towards the path that led back up the hill, away from the lake.
 
“What!? Spike, what is it?” she demanded, turning her head and looking behind her at the water but seeing nothing.
 
“RUN!” he screamed at her as he pushed her away again, this time harder. “GET OUT!”
 
Spike was yanked violently backwards away from her by an unseen attacker – he landed a good twenty yards out in the water of the lake and went under.
 


“SPIKE!” Buffy screamed, starting back towards the water. “SCYTHE!” she demanded, and the scythe appeared in her hand as she splashed into the clear water of the lake.
 
Buffy dove under when the water got thigh high and swam towards the spot that she’d last seen Spike, but she didn’t see him. She turned in slow circle under the water and finally spotted him, he was fighting against an unseen force, kicking out, hitting, and trying to pull away at the same time.
 
Buffy couldn’t hold her breath any longer, she had to surface … she quickly gulped air into her lungs when she broke the surface of the water and immediately dove back down. She grabbed onto Spike’s upper arm and pulled, kicking her feet in the water with all her strength to try and get him away from whatever it was that had him, but the force holding him was too strong. She let go of Spike’s arm and swung the scythe in the clear water in front of him, slicing down through what appeared to be nothing, but suddenly Spike was released. He grabbed her free hand and began pulling her away, back up to the surface and towards the shore.
 
When they surfaced, Buffy stopped swimming and inhaled deeply then began coughing water out of her lungs that she’d breathed in, but Spike continued pulling her towards the shore – not letting her stop. Spike dragged Buffy out of the water by one hand as she continued choking and they both stumbled back onto the beach, but still Spike didn’t stop, he continued to pull her quickly across the sand towards the path that led away from the lake.
 
“What…are…they?” Buffy choked out between gasps and coughs, but got no answer from Spike as he continued to move away from the water with her in tow.
 
Suddenly Spike stopped and turned around, putting himself between Buffy and the lake. “RUN, SLAYER! Get outta here! You can’t win – just run!” he screamed at her, giving her a hard shove away as he moved past her. Spike threw a hard round-house kick at an attacker Buffy still couldn’t see then followed it with several solid punches in rapid succession. It was obvious by the way his punches and kicks landed that he was actually hitting something ... Buffy just couldn't see what it was.
 
Buffy caught her balance from Spike’s shove and moved quickly back towards her husband and the invisible demon, scythe at the ready. But, as she got within a couple of feet of them, the attacker grabbed one of Spike’s fists, stopping it in mid-punch, picked him up, and swung him around high over Buffy’s head like an athlete would swing a hammer at a track and field event. Buffy swung her scythe hard and low; she knew she’d hit whatever it was, because it released Spike – unfortunately, the momentum the monster had built up sent Spike flying back out into the lake. He landed with a large splash at least a hundred yards out and went under the water, out of Buffy’s view.
 


“Motherfucker!” Buffy exclaimed, swinging her scythe a few more times at the air, not knowing if she had hit anything or not or even how many invisible giant demons they were fighting. Hopeful that she’d at least incapacitated the one that Spike had been fighting, Buffy turned back towards the lake and began running. She ran as far as she could, until the water was too deep, and then started swimming out to where Spike had gone under, but the going was slow with the scythe in one hand and he was much further out this time.
 
“SPIKE!” she screamed as she swam, looking around for any sign of him on the surface … air bubbles or disturbances in the water, but she didn’t see anything. When she got to where she thought he’d gone under, she dove down and looked around for him, staying under as long as she could before surfacing again.
 
When she came up for a breath, she felt something large and strong start to push her back towards shore, but she still couldn’t see what it was that was attacking them. She swung the scythe in a wide circle at her unseen attacker and whatever it was that was pushing her stopped, at least momentarily.
 
“SPIKE!” she screamed again, before taking a deep breath and diving back under the water, swimming down as deep as she could and turning in all directions looking for him, but she still couldn’t find him. Suddenly, she was yanked up out of the depths of the lake and tossed like a rag doll back up onto the shore. She dropped the scythe when she hit the ground and rolled several feet before coming to rest against the base of a large tree.
 
Buffy screamed out when she scrambled back to her feet as pain stabbed her chest, it felt like several of her ribs were broken, or at least cracked. Doubled over, trying to breathe, and holding her aching ribs, she stumbled back towards the lake, but was hit again before she could even get to the scythe, which was just at the edge of the water, and sent flying back once more. She landed hard against the side of a large boulder that was half buried in the bank surrounding the lake, and she felt and heard her skull crack against it like a coconut. The world began to spin out of control and she fought to stay conscious as she slumped down onto her back in the sand. She closed her eyes against the spinning and took deep breaths to try and stop the nausea, dizziness, and unbelievable pain in her head, which made her completely forget her broken ribs.
 
**~**
 
Spike landed in the warm water of the lake and was immediately dragged under the surface by one of the demons he’d come to refer to as “Jeeves” – his personal escorts into the belly of the beast. He couldn’t actually see them any more than Buffy could, but after so many trips with them back and forth between limbo and the trials, he could feel them, sense them … and in the cold, red world, he feared their arrival more than he’d ever feared anything in his life.


 
He thought that he’d escaped their reach in the tropical paradise … that he would be able to stay there until Buffy could fix things … that he would be able to remain Buffy’s ‘bridge’, her shoulder to lean on. If he couldn’t fight with her, at least he could offer advice and perhaps take her pain away for short moments in time, but that hope was short-lived – the small fire of hope that Buffy had lit in his soul was now nothing more than a pile of cold embers. He knew now that was just an illusion, a pipe dream – there wasn’t really any hope for him ever getting out of this and back to his family.
 
He also knew what was coming now … he’d be taken back, back to the cold, lonely cave; back to the voices screaming at him, looking at him with accusing eyes; back to the bloodshed and screams and whimpers that stabbed at his soul; back to the trials. How long could they last? He seriously doubted that hell could actually be any worse, and more than once he wished they would just get on with it. The only thing that ever made him glad they hadn’t tossed him away yet were the times that Buffy came to him. Her face, her eyes, her heart and soul … they took away his pain; only she could pull him back from the brink of insanity, only she could heal his soul.
 
Spike fought against the unseen force that was pulling him down into the depths of the lake with all his strength. He knew there was more than one of them here and he knew Buffy hadn’t run as he’d told her to, she was as physically incapable of running from a fight as he was, and that meant only one thing, that she was fighting them, which meant she could be hurt or even killed by the oversized chauffeurs to the Powers. She had no idea what she was up against – no idea of their strength and size – she was outnumbered and outgunned, even with the scythe; he had to get back and help her.
 
Spike raged against the demon that was pulling him deeper and deeper down under the water of the lake, fighting not just for himself this time, but for Buffy, as well, and for the first time since this all began, he slipped from their grasp. Spike began swimming back to the surface as fast as he could – he had to find where Buffy was and get to her, help her. When he broke the surface of the water he turned around in a fast circle as he tread water … then he spotted her on the bank – even from this distance he could smell her blood.
 
“NOOOO! Buffy!” he screamed as he started swimming towards her, fueled by fear for her well-being and anger that she’d been hurt trying to protect him. Before Spike went ten yards back towards the shore and his injured wife, the invisible demons caught him again and with one holding his arms and one his legs, they pulled him back under the surface, back down into the deepest depths of the lake – back to face his worst fears.
 
**~**



 “Spike …” Buffy moaned as she rolled over and pushed up to all fours. She crawled back towards the lake, not attempting to get up; she could’ve sworn she’d heard Spike call her name, but the ringing in her ears and spinning in her head made it hard to know for sure. She grabbed the scythe and dragged it with her back into the water. She wasn’t sure anymore where to look for Spike … her vision was blurry and her head was spinning and hurt like a motherfucker … so she just started swimming. When she thought she was about where he’d gone under, she dove down as deep as she could, trying to find Spike or find something, some clue, that would lead her to him.
 
She didn’t know how long she’d looked … it seemed like hours of diving and surfacing and diving down again, but she couldn’t find any sign of him or their attackers, but she couldn’t give up. The spinning in Buffy’s head was getting worse from holding her breath under the water and the drums beating behind her eyes felt like they would pound them right out of their sockets, but she kept pushing herself – she had to find Spike. As she dove down again, she lost her grip on the scythe and it fell to the bottom of the lake, out of sight.
 
Buffy moaned mentally, What the fuck else!? she thought as she headed back to the surface. Buffy took several deep breaths and dove back under, kicking her feet hard to propel herself all the way down to the sandy bottom of the lake and the scythe.
 
About three-quarters of the way to the bottom, she suddenly felt like she was free-falling through thin air. After falling for what seemed a full minute, Buffy landed hard; searing pain shot out from her bruised and cracked ribs, radiated out from the crack in her skull down her spine, and what little breath she had left was knocked out of her lungs. Even writhing on the floor with her eyes closed tightly against the pain, Buffy knew where she was – back in the cave … back in the cold, desolate, red hell-limbo that Spike had been in since this all began.
 
Sobs began wracking her body as her adrenaline waned and the realization that Spike had been taken back to the trials set in. She thought he would be safe in the tropical garden – safe from the trials that were slowly driving him insane and bleeding his soul dry, but they had found him. They had found him and dragged him back here, back to the trials, back to his own personal hell.
 
All the relief that she’d felt upon getting him out of the hell-limbo and away from the trials turned into unbelievable grief and imploded inside her tenfold – overwhelming her mind and body. Buffy lay on her back, holding her head in both hands, and screamed out in anguish – a long, sorrowful scream that filled the whole cave, perhaps the whole dimension, with agony – she’d failed him, she couldn’t keep Spike safe and now they had him again.
 
The manic-depressive rollercoaster they’d been on just crashed and burned … shattering into a million sorrowful pieces on the cold sand floor of the cave.
 


**~**
 
“Buffy! What is it? Buffy, wake up!” Dawn exclaimed after being awoken by Buffy’s soul piercing scream. She shook Buffy awake, pulling her sister off of the dry, sand floor of limbo and back to the damp darkness of the wine cellar.
 
“I’m awake …” Buffy moaned, grabbing her head with both hands to try and get it to stop spinning. Suddenly there was a light in her eyes and Buffy squeezed her lids shut against the pain that the bright light stabbed into her brain.
 
“You’re bleeding!” Dawn exclaimed, reaching a hand out to touch the gash on the side of Buffy’s head.
 
“I’m ok,” Buffy assured her, but she didn’t sound ok. Her voice sounded hoarse, weak, and shaky, as if she’d been crying for a very long time.
 


“What happened?” Dawn asked, lowering the light away from Buffy’s face. “Was it a werewolf again?”
 
Buffy sighed heavily and tears stung her eyes at the thought of Spike being tortured and tormented at the trials. “No … it’s … it’s a long story – I’ll tell you later. We need to get moving - how long were we asleep?” Buffy asked as she reached down on the ground next to her leg and picked the scythe up, holding it in both hands and feeling its power flow through her. Buffy let out a sigh of relief as she felt her ribs begin to mend and her head slowly stop spinning and the pounding behind her eyes fade.
 
Dawn pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans and looked at it. “About an hour …” she answered.

 

“What?!! Are you sure?” Buffy asked, pulling the phone from Dawn’s hand. She was sure she’d been with Spike for at least two days … perhaps longer, but Dawn was right – it had only been about an hour since they’d fallen asleep.
 
Tears welled in Buffy’s eyes … for every hour of time in this dimension, Spike was spending at least forty-eight hours in hell-limbo. That meant, over the last month since Buffy had awoken in this fucked-up world, Spike had spent… she tried in vain to figure out how long that would be, but the only answer she could get from her frazzled mind was ‘a really long time’ … even at her best, she’d never be able to figure that out without a calculator, twenty sharpened, number ten pencils, a whole pad of paper, a math tutor, and perhaps an IBM supercomputer.
 
“What’s wrong?” Dawn asked, seeing the confusion and distress in Buffy’s eyes.
 
Buffy looked up at Dawn slowly. “Time is moving differently here than … than there,” Buffy explained. “I was there at least two days… at least, but only asleep here an hour …”
 
“So, for every day here, forty-eight days would pass in limbo?” Dawn asked her.
 
Buffy looked at her with wide eyes. “Forty-eight days there for every day here?”
 
“Yeah – there are twenty-four hours in a day, an hour here equals two days there, so one day here is forty-eight days there, two times twenty-four…” Dawn explained with a shrug. “Simple.”
 


“So how long would thirty days here be in that simple math?” Buffy asked her.
 
“Ummm … forty-eight times thirty …” Dawn pondered. “Uhhhh, well, fifty times thirty would be fifteen hundred … so take away sixty and you get one thousand, four hundred and forty days…” Dawn figured aloud.
 
Buffy sat back heavily against the oak barrel at her back and closed her eyes. It was amazing that Spike was in as good a shape as he was … “So, Spike’s been there, like, what, four years?!” she asked Dawn, opening her eyes and looking at her sister.
 
Dawn shrugged. “Yeah, pretty close.”
 
Buffy shook her head slowly as that sunk in. Spike had been living with nothing but his ghosts to keep him company for four years … every minute she wasted trying to fix this would mean he spent … Fuck! I hate math! … a long time there. How long would they keep him there? Was there a cut-off time … five years? Ten years? Or were they waiting for him to lose his mind completely before sending him on to his final fate? One thing was clear, Buffy couldn’t waste one more minute in her mission to get him and their family back. One minute for her was … a long time for Spike – a long time with nothing but ghosts for company.
 
Buffy stood up and wobbled slightly on her feet and her stomach churned angrily … not from the hit on the head, but from the wine she’d consumed earlier. “Let’s go,” she announced as she started back out the door she’d made in the wall to get into the cellar.
 
“Do you know which way to go?” Dawn asked, following closely on her heels.
 
“I haven’t the foggiest idea, but I have to go … we need to keep moving,” Buffy asserted as she climbed through the hole in the wall and went back towards the main tunnel they had been in earlier.
 
 
**~**
 
 
Buffy wished more than once that she had a compass or some way to tell which direction they were going. She was sure she could’ve navigated from the vineyard to the high school much more quickly if she could tell which fucking direction they were heading, but, as it was, she simply had to try and follow her instincts and hope they weren’t too drunk to give her good advice. After walking through the tunnels for another hour, Dawn’s foot got caught on something and she stumbled forward into Buffy’s back, sending them both sprawling on the rough floor of the passageway.
 
“Are you ok?” Buffy asked as Dawn got up off her.
 
“Yeah … sorry. I think something grabbed my foot,” Dawn explained.
 
“Something grabbed your foot?” Buffy questioned with concern. “Like a demon or something?”
 
“I don’t know …” Dawn admitted as they both turned around and Buffy scanned the floor of the tunnel with the flashlight before finding some netting that had been pulled out of the dirt. Buffy tugged on it and pulled it all the way out of the soil.
 
“Oh, yes, that would be the basketball hoop netting demon … they’re very tricky, they go through life disguised as unassuming recreational equipment, then BAM! Without warning, they just attack,” Buffy quipped, dropping the offending ‘demon’ back onto the floor. “Let’s keep moving…” Buffy said in a serious tone as she pressed by Dawn and started walking again.
 


“WAIT!” Dawn exclaimed. “How many basketball courts were there in Sunnydale? How many with netting on the hoops?”
 
Buffy turned around. “I don’t know … probably a lot.”
 
“Buffy! Think about it – all the basketball courts in the parks had chains for the net, not…not this string stuff!” Dawn exclaimed, reaching down and picking up the dirty white netting. “The only ones with this stuff were in gyms … like at schools!”
 
Buffy sighed. “There were lots of schools, Dawn …” she pointed out.
 
“Yeah, but this netting jumped up and grabbed my foot …”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes and let out a long breath, but in a way Dawn was right; Rule Number One: There were no such things as coincidences on the Hellmouth – even if the Hellmouth was closed.
 
“Ok – let’s keep going, if this is the gym then the library should be …” Buffy started, trying to remember which way the library was from the gym.
 
“Not the library, Buffy – we need to find Principal Wood’s office,” Dawn corrected her. “It would be … ummm … I think that way,” Dawn said, pointing at the solid wall of the tunnel to her right. “Or that way …” Dawn added, pointing in the opposite direction, also a solid wall of debris.
 
“Yeah … that’s what I was afraid of …” Buffy muttered. “Let’s see if we can find any more clues … or side tunnels,” Buffy suggested as she started walking again. “I forgot to bring my steam shovel …”
 
As the girls walked slowly down the tunnel and looked for more clues or passages off the main tunnel, Buffy couldn’t help thinking about Spike … they’d been at this a good hour – that meant Spike had been at the trials or alone in his cave for two days … Buffy blinked back tears thinking about him huddled in one corner of that cave, trying not to move, trying to block out the pain and the ghosts and the screaming in his head… every hour was two days, every minute wasted was … a long time for Spike.
 
“Here!” Buffy exclaimed as she came to a small opening down low on the side of the main tunnel – barely large enough for her to crawl through. Buffy lay down on her stomach, poked her head in, and shone her light into it. There was a steep drop down from where they were and it didn’t get any larger, in fact, it might be even narrower further down …but there was something else. Angel. She could feel him tingling up and down her spine now.
 
“This is it,” Buffy announced.
 
“That!?” Dawn exclaimed, looking at the rat hole in the wall of the main tunnel. “I hate to tell you, sister, but you’re not that skinny.”
 
“Well, I guess I better suck it in, ‘cos this is it,” Buffy retorted. “Here, you hold onto this for me,” Buffy instructed Dawn, shoving the scythe towards her sister.
 
“Maybe we should keep looking …” Dawn suggested. “Maybe there’s another way in.”
 
“Dawn, listen to me,” Buffy admonished her sister, sitting back on her heels and looking up at her. “If something happens … if I don’t come back out of there in fifteen minutes, you need to get out of here – go find a way out, find the car, and go back to England.”
 
“NO! No way!” Dawn objected. “I’m not leaving you here!”
 
“Dawn, if I’m not back shortly, then I won’t be coming back, trust me on this – please do as I ask,” Buffy requested, her voice soft but unwavering.
 
Dawn swallowed back her fear and objections and nodded her head slowly. “I love you, Buffy,” Dawn whispered as she felt tears well in her eyes. She felt like she’d just gotten her sister back after so many years of living with a distant and unfeeling Buffy, she finally had her real sister back, and now the chance that she would lose her to the Hellmouth after all was heart wrenching for Dawn.
 
“I love you too, Dawnie … and Spike sends his love to you. You’re a smart girl, you’ve grown into a beautiful woman – and we’re all really proud of you, me and Spike, and mom."
 
Dawn dropped down onto her knees and pulled Buffy into a tight hug. “Please be careful.”
 
“That’s my middle name…” Buffy quipped as she pressed the flashlight into Dawn’s hands and turned back towards the small opening in the wall.
 
“You need this …” Dawn objected, trying to give the flashlight back.
 
“No – you might need it. I’ll be ok, I’m not afraid of the dark,” Buffy replied, slipping her head, arms, and shoulders into the small passageway. She silently prayed that her hips weren’t any wider than her shoulders as she pulled herself through the tunnel on her belly.
 
Buffy let out a sigh of relief when her hips cleared the opening and was really glad she wasn’t claustrophobic, because the tunnel was pressing on her from all sides now and it was pitch black. With the downward slope of the tunnel, it wasn’t too hard to pull herself along, except in some spots where her butt got stuck. She could hear and feel her heart beating in her chest and fought the urge to panic each time that happened; she didn’t need the whole thing to collapse on her by pulling too hard or trying to thrash loose. She would carefully push herself back and try turning her body at a slight angle to get through the tightest spots, that usually worked; once or twice she had to power her way through it, pushing with her toes on the bottom of the tunnel while pulling with her arms and elbows, luckily, each time she’d been able to get through, taking some of the soil and rocks and debris with her.
 
Buffy wasn’t sure how far she’d traveled down the small tunnel, it seemed like miles, but certainly couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty yards. Buffy put the thought of how she was going to get back up that passage and back to Dawn out of her mind for now – she’d deal with that when, and if, she actually found the amulet. Suddenly the incline got much steeper, in fact, it wasn’t so much an incline as a straight drop, and Buffy began falling down the shaft head first and gaining speed. She dug her toes into what was now the side of the passage and spread her legs to slow herself down – then, without warning in the pitch black, her head, shoulders, arms, and upper torso were completely out of the restricting tunnel, they were dangling free in space.
 
Buffy hung on with all her strength with her legs pressed against the sides of the shaft and reached her hands out in front of her – but didn’t feel anything. She had no idea how far down the floor was or what she might land on – rocks, sharp shards of debris, worse? An image of the pit trap with lots of wooden stakes sticking up (and the requisite impaled skeletons) from Raider’s of the Lost Ark crossed through Buffy’s mind as she felt herself slipping further down out of the shaft.
 


“Oh shiiit!” Buffy exclaimed as she felt the sandy sides of the shaft come loose and begin to fall, taking her down with it.
 
Buffy held her breath and braced for impact, but, in fact, she only fell about five feet and had a relatively soft landing in just plain dirt with no stakes or skeletons to impale her.
 
Buffy rolled onto her back and began to laugh uncontrollably as all the adrenaline and fear that had been building suddenly turned to relief … then her laughter turned to tears just as quickly as all her emotions seemed to crash into each other as they tried to escape. Buffy took deep breaths and tried to calm her heart and stop the tears as the ‘fight or flight’ feeling within her slowly relinquished its hold and turned her body back over to her brain.
 
“Are you ok?” Dawn called from above, shining the light down the shaft.
 
“Yeah … peachy with a side of keen,” Buffy replied as she wiped her face, smearing her tears with the dirt she was covered in and making muddy streaks down her cheeks.
 
Buffy took a deep breath and sat up, then closed her eyes (she wasn’t sure why, because she couldn’t see anything anyway – habit she guessed) and concentrated on sensing the amulet and Angel. Not sure what was on the floor of the cavern she was in and not wanting to fall off any cliffs or down any rabbit holes, Buffy crawled on all fours towards where her senses told her the amulet was, feeling out in front of her gingerly before moving.
 
Finally, after crawling across the floor for several yards, over rocks and other debris, Buffy’s fingers hooked in the chain the amulet was on as she swept her hand over the ground out in front of her.


 
Buffy snatched it up and felt it with her hands before letting out a sigh of relief. She was starting to think her senses were off … but she had it now, at last. Buffy started to put it around her neck, then thought better of that and shoved it deep down into the pocket of her jeans before turning and starting back towards the tunnel she’d come down to get here.
 
Buffy finally found the shaft that she’d fallen through from the small sliver of light still shining down from above and she yelled, “I got it!” up to Dawn and she heard Dawn squeal in delight and “Yay!” echoed down the small tunnel.
 
Buffy tried to climb back up the passage, but with the last twenty feet of it being basically a mine shaft, straight down, every time she tried to climb up into it, the sandy sides would just give way and drop her back down onto the floor of the Hellmouth. After her fifth attempt to climb up into the shaft and her fifth fall back to the floor, Buffy screamed out in frustration. She was going to have to find a different way out.
 
“Are you ok?” came Dawn’s voice again from above her.
 
“Yeah – I just can’t get back up this stupid tunnel,” Buffy lamented. “I’m gonna have to find another way out.”
 
“Can you see another way out?” Dawn asked.
 
Buffy snorted a laugh. She couldn’t see anything; she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face, let alone another way out. “Not exactly,” she answered dryly.
 
“Ooops!” Buffy heard from above her as dirt began falling out of the shaft onto her head. “Look out! I dropped the light!” Dawn called down, just as the flashlight fell and hit Buffy in the head.
 
“Goddamit, Dawn! That was a stupid thing to do!” Buffy scolded as she rubbed her head and picked up the flashlight.
 
“Sorry, it just fell out of my hand!” Dawn called back down with a smirk. “Can you see another way out now?”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes, but shone the light around the area, stopping on a pair of steel, double doors a few feet away. “Maybe,” Buffy called back up the shaft before walking over to the doors.
 
She tried one handle, then the other, but they didn’t budge. Buffy stepped back and kicked hard against one of the doors and she felt it give slightly under her strength. She kicked again, and again … and again. Finally, on the fifth kick, the door swung open with a loud clang. Buffy poked her head through and shone the light around – it looked like a hallway from the school … like the whole hallway had fallen straight down into the Hellmouth, intact, with lockers on each side and even a D.A.R.E. poster still hanging on the wall. Buffy walked down the hallway and, to her delight, found a staircase leading up. It wasn’t completely intact, but enough that she could make it up without a lot of difficulty and at the top she found a landing which was bisected by a large tunnel.
 


Buffy rolled her eyes and shook her head … it was the tunnel they had been walking in. If they’d just walked a little further (as Dawn had suggested), she could’ve walked down the stairs, through the doors, picked up the amulet and walked back out – like a cake walk in the park.
 
“Why do things the easy way?” Buffy muttered to herself. “That just wouldn’t be any fun, and Slayers are all about the fun.”
 
Buffy made her way back towards Dawn, switching the light off before she got close to her sister.
 
“Buffy!” Dawn was lying on her stomach with her head in the opening of the small shaft that Buffy had gone down. “Buffy! Where are you?”
 
Buffy walked up beside her and quietly said, “Right here.”
 
Dawn screamed and jerked up, banging the back of her head against the top of the small tunnel. “OWWW!” she cried, pulling back and rubbing the bump that was quickly forming. “You scared the fuck out of me!” Dawn accused, standing up as Buffy switched the light on.
 
“Bad word!” Buffy joked. “You owe me a dollar. And you’re still a brat – the light just fell out of your hand … do I have ‘fool’ tattooed on my forehead or something?”



Dawn rolled her eyes as she kept rubbing the back of her head. “I thought you needed it more than I did … and what about a dollar?”
 
“It’s … it’s something we do with Annie if she says a bad word …” Buffy explained, picking up the scythe from the floor.
 
“Oh, nice. Your daughter has a potty mouth!” Dawn teased as Buffy turned and started down the tunnel in the direction they had been going.
 
“So, apparently, does my sister,” Buffy retorted.
 
“I can curse in ten languages …” Dawn replied, following Buffy. “Va chier, verpiss dich, besame culo, paskudniak …”
 
Buffy snorted a laugh, interrupting Dawn. “That’s something to look forward to …”
 
Buffy bit her bottom lip as she walked ahead of Dawn and blinked back tears. Did she really have anything to look forward to? Would she really be able to do anything to put her world back as it was and get Spike and their children back? She had hope when she thought that Spike would be safe in the tropical soul garden, just knowing that he was safe had taken a huge burden off her shoulders, but she’d been wrong, Spike wasn’t safe. Knowing that he’d be there for her when she needed advice or someone to lean on had lifted her hopes of victory, but those hopes crashed and burned at the bottom of the lake.  The fear, the panic, in his voice when he was trying to get her to run to safety was in such sharp contrast to the sweet honey that had flowed from his lips only seconds before ... “How do I love thee …” his voice echoed in her head.
 
Suddenly Buffy got fighting mad. She never wanted to see fear and panic in Spike’s eyes again – never wanted to hear it in his voice; it just wasn’t Spike. She’d never heard that much fear in his voice in all the years they’d been together, never. They were breaking him down; slowly but surely they were bleeding his soul dry and shattering his Champion’s heart, and soon there would be nothing left for Buffy to save. Buffy wiped the tears from her eyes and stuffed her hand down in her pocket, pulling the amulet out and looking at it in the light.
 
“This better fucking work…” she muttered to herself as she picked up her pace, making Dawn struggle to keep up with her.
 

“Bad word!” Dawn called from behind her and Buffy couldn’t help but snort out a laugh. She would get Spike and her family back or take every angel, demon, messenger, and minion of the PTB down trying … right up to the top.




**~**

{{Click here to hear a cover of the instrumental "How Do I Love Thee?” Originally by The Shadows on YouTube   }}


How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.



End Notes:
TBC ...
What will happen with the Oracles? Will she be able to convince them to set things right?
Time Passages by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy and Dawn deliver the amulet to W&H. Will Doyle and the PTB double-cross them or help them set things back as they were?
**~**
Music Referenced:
Time Passages, Al Stewart
http://youtu.be/AgOgEL72isY
**
a ghrá – Irish-Gaelic term of endearment, roughly used like ‘luv’.
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Saturday, February 18th, 2005:

“Fred Burkle, B-U-R-K-L-E” Buffy repeated slowly, trying to keep her temper under control as she stood at the security desk on the first floor of the Wolfram & Hart building in L.A.
 
The security guard shook his head as he looked at a computer screen. “Sorry, we don’t have any ‘Fred Burkle’ working here, Miss. Maybe you should come back on Monday when the regular receptionist is here …”
 
“No, I am not coming back on Monday. She works here … she works with Ang … errr, Gunn and Wesley! Try that – Wesley Wyndam-Pryce,” Buffy argued.


 
The security guard checked the computer again. “Yes, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce works here, but he’s not signed in today,” he informed her, looking up from the screen.
 
“Gunn … Charles Gunn,” Buffy requested.
 
“Not here today …”
 
“Lorne! Lorne … uhhhh … I don’t think he has a last name … L-O-R-N-E,” Buffy requested of the guard.
 
The guard sighed and typed it in. “Not here today …”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes and sighed. Who knew ‘Evil Inc.’ took weekends off?
 
“Buffy, isn’t Fred’s name something else … like Willamina or Frederica or something?” Dawn asked from behind her.
 
“Oh, God! That’s right! Winifred! Try that!” Buffy demanded of the guard, pointing a finger at the computer on his desk. “Winifred Burkle.”
 
The guard rolled his eyes and typed in the new name. “Ok, Winifred Burkle is signed in today. I’ll call her down,” the guard informed Buffy before picking up the phone and dialing Fred’s extension.
 
Buffy turned away from the guard and faced Dawn. “Good work!” she told her sister, giving her a light, ‘atta-girl’ punch in the arm.
 
“Owww!” Dawn moaned, rubbing her arm. “Remind me to not help you anymore…”

 

“Ms. Burkle will be right down …” the guard announced.
 
Buffy didn’t know if Fred actually knew her in this dimension … surely she’d heard of her, but she had no idea if they’d ever actually met, Dawn didn’t think so, but she wasn’t sure either, so Buffy chose her words carefully when Fred met them near the elevators, trying not to sound like she had no memory of anything in this world prior to the last month.
 
“Buffy! Wow! Angel talked so much about you, I feel like I know you!” Fred exclaimed, pulling Buffy into a hug.
 


“I feel the same way …” Buffy replied, before stepping back and introducing Dawn.
 
“Ya’ll c’mon upstairs to my office. This is such a nice surprise! I was trying to get caught up on some work, but I’m having the hardest time with this one consonant representation mathematical transfiguration formula, it really has me bumfuzzled! Every time I run it, the microns just implode in on themselves and it all turns into a big blob of blue goo.”
 
“I hate it when that happens,” Buffy sympathized, giving Dawn a look that Fred couldn’t see that said, ‘what the hell is she talking about?’
 
Dawn shrugged and scrunched up her nose, she had no idea either.
 
“So what brings ya’ll to the big, bad city? On holiday? Getting tired of that damp, English weather, come back for some California sunshine?” Fred asked with friendly smile as she led them from the elevators to her office.
 
“Well, not exactly,” Buffy hedged as Fred motioned to a couple of chairs in her office and Buffy and Dawn sat down as Fred took a seat behind her desk.
 
Buffy pulled the amulet out of her pocket and laid it on Fred’s desk. “A messenger of the Powers told me to get this and deliver it to you … do you know what it is?” Buffy asked Fred.

 

Fred picked the amulet up and looked at it carefully. “It looks like the amulet that Angel …” Fred started, then stopped. Looking up at Buffy with wide eyes she continued, “This is the amulet that Angel wore to close the Hellmouth and avert the apocalypse, isn’t it?”
 
“Yeah and there’s some way to get him back out of it … he’s like trapped inside or something,” Buffy explained.
 
Fred’s eyes went wide. “Are you sure? You’re saying we can get Angel back?!”
 
Buffy nodded. “I don’t know how or what the … you know, mathematical transmografication thingy is, but maybe Wes can find it in one of his books …”
 
Fred jumped up and quickly moved around her desk to give Buffy another hug, then she hugged Dawn and then Buffy again. “This is … it’s unbelievable! It’s better than sweet-potato pie with marshmallows at Christmas! Oh my God … I have to call Wes!” Fred bubbled, turning her back on Buffy and Dawn and picking up the phone.


 
“Oh good heavens, where are my manners!?” Fred asked rhetorically, rolling her eyes and shaking her head as she hung the phone back up and turned back to Buffy and Dawn.
 
“It’s ok – we have to go anyway – have some other people in town we need to see,” Buffy told her, waving her hands dismissively.
 
“Do you need me to show you back down …” Fred started to ask.
 
“No – I’m sure we can find it – twenty feet that way, get in the magical moving box, then push the button that says ‘1’, right?” Buffy asked, pointing towards the elevators.
 
“You’re just as smart as Angel said!” Fred gushed, a huge grin on her face. Fred could barely keep still long enough to pick the phone back up and dial Wesley’s cell phone. “Thank you!” she called after Buffy and Dawn as she waited for Wes to answer his cell phone.
 
“Our pleasure …” Buffy replied before stepping into the elevator and heading downstairs.
 
“Ok, Doyle!” Buffy exclaimed to the ceiling of the elevator after the doors closed. “I did my part, you better come through!”
 
**~**
 
After making a little side trip to Tiffany’s on Rodeo Drive with Riley’s credit card, Buffy and Dawn waited in the garden of the Hyperion for Doyle. Buffy paced back and forth while Dawn sat next to the dry fountain and watched her until Dawn’s neck got stiff from turning back and forth. Buffy had no idea how to convince the Oracles that they should set the world back on its axis … that it would be for the greater good. The world, as a whole, didn’t really look any different to her; outside of her own family and circle of friends, nothing noticeable seemed to have changed. Buffy remembered a book she had read in school about someone who went back in time and changed the entire history of the world by accidentally stepping on a butterfly … apparently Spike’s victims hadn’t had any huge effect on history one way or the other, or at least none that she’d found yet. So, it would come down to why the world as a whole would be better with Spike in it … and that really was a very simple argument – wouldn’t the world be better off with one more Champion than without him? That seemed like a good argument, the old ‘the more, the merrier’ argument – hard to dispute that.
 
For the tenth time in twenty minutes, Buffy asked Dawn what time it was. “Maybe we should’ve bought a watch, too …” Dawn suggested as she read off the time from her cell phone.
 
“Where the hell is Doyle?” Buffy wondered aloud. “So help me God, Doyle, if you screw me, I’ll hunt you down like a rabid dog …”
 
“Will ya now? And just what would a skinny lass like you be wanting to do with this ole dog?” Doyle inquired with a smirk as he walked up from behind Buffy.

 

“Doyle! Where the hell have you been!? It’s been hours since I delivered the amulet,” Buffy chastised him as she swung around to face him.
 
“Ah, well … the life of a messenger, busy like a bee, can’t always just drop everythin’ and stick my neck out like a chicken on the choppin’ block,” Doyle defended. “Are ya’ ready?”
 
“I was born ready – let’s go!” Buffy assured him.
 
“We’re off, then,” Doyle replied, turning and going into the hotel then down the stairs to get to the sewer entrance.
 
“Who knew? The Powers live in the sewers!” Dawn observed from behind Buffy.
 
Doyle stopped and turned around. “Not the Powers, a ghrá,” Doyle started, addressing Dawn. “The Powers are on a different plane of existence. The Oracles are …”
 
“Just minions,” Buffy filled in sarcastically. “And, Doyle, don’t call her cute little Leprechaun names … her name is Dawn and you most definitely aren’t Spike.”
 
“Sorry … no disrespect intended,” Doyle replied sheepishly as he turned around and continued walking.
 
“It’s ok, Buffy … it just means…” Dawn started.
 
Buffy turned around and cut her off. “I don’t care what it means – I don’t want him calling you pet names … that’s … that’s... It’s something Spike did and … I just … I don’t like it, not from him – he’s not Spike,” Buffy stammered, not sure how to explain to her that it hurt too much to have someone else calling her sister cute little names.
 
“Oh…” Dawn said softly and gave Buffy a sympathetic look. Buffy blew out a long breath, and turned back around and continued following Doyle.
 
“And the Oracles are more like conduits than minions…” Doyle added when the girls caught up with him.
 
“Great – we’re going to see the aqueducts of the supernatural world …” Buffy muttered as the continued walking.
 
After a time, Doyle turned off into a smaller side tunnel and then opened a heavy metal door that revealed a fairly large room. There was another doorway on the other side of the room surrounded by white marble with words engraved in a language Buffy didn’t recognize above it.
 
“'The Gateway for Lost Souls',” Dawn translated, reading the inscription.
 
“Well, that sounds like exactly what I need …” Buffy muttered as Doyle began the ceremony to summon the higher beings.
 
“We beseech access to the knowing ones,” Doyle intoned as he ignited the herbs he’d mixed in a large, stone mortar in the center of the antechamber.
 
Suddenly, there was a bright flash of light and a portal opened within the marble archway. “You’re in,” Doyle informed her. “Be quick, get to the point and don’t dilly-dally. They can be finicky and unpredictable,” he warned.
 
Buffy snorted a laugh and rolled her eyes. “My whole life is finicky and unpredictable,” she informed him before stepping through the gateway.
 
“Come before us, Warrior,” the male Oracle invited as Buffy stepped further into the room.


“What have you brought us?” the female asked as the two Oracles stopped a few feet from Buffy.
 
Buffy pulled a ruby and diamond, heart-shaped pendant on a gold chain that she’d bought at Tiffany’s out of her pocket. She would’ve liked to have had the very one that Spike had given her because she thought it would hold more meaning, but she didn’t have that one. This one wasn’t exactly the same as the one Spike had given her in their world, but it was as close as she could find given the time restraints and Riley's credit limit.
 
“I bring you William Weckerly’s heart and soul … and ask for it in return,” Buffy replied, holding the sparkling heart up towards the woman.
 
The female Oracle held her palm out and suddenly the necklace was snatched from Buffy’s hand and sailed through the air to the Oracle. The gold skinned woman held it up and turned in over and over in her hand before looking back at Buffy.

  

“William’s heart, his soul, is not ours to give. It is not our place,” the woman told Buffy dryly, finally looking up from the bauble.
 
“The Powers have him, they can give him back – they can set the world back the way it was,” Buffy argued. “It would be for the greater good.”
 
“The greater good? Or the good of one Slayer … one of an endless army of Slayers? This is a matter of love. It does not concern us,” the male Oracle informed her and the female nodded her agreement.
 
“Spike … William is a Champion, a Warrior!” Buffy continued her argument, throwing her hands away from her body for emphasis and moving closer to the pair. “How can the greater good be served by erasing him from history? Do you have any idea the sacrifices he’s made? The demons he’s killed?! The humans he’s saved? The apocalypses he’s averted? You gave him the Shanshu in the other dimension – you must realize how important he is to the greater good!”
 
“What is done cannot be undone,” the male stated flatly.
 
“If it has happened, it was meant to be,” the female added before waving her hand dismissively at Buffy and sending her flying out of the portal and back into the room where Doyle and Dawn were waiting.
 
Buffy hit the wall on the opposite side of the antechamber hard and fell down onto the floor, but jumped up quickly and ran back towards the portal, but it had already closed. She screamed in frustration and pounded on the now solid wall where the portal had been, before turning back to Doyle.
 
“You! You knew they wouldn’t help me! You just used me to get the amulet back! You were working for the PTB the whole time – you lied to me!” she accused, moving menacingly towards the messenger.
 


“No, no, no – you got it wrong, Slayer,” Doyle defended, holding his hands up in surrender. “I told you they were finicky … you never know what they’ll do.”
 
“You know what? I’m tired of playing by everyone else’s rules! I think it’s time that I make a few rules of my own,” Buffy informed Doyle as she wrapped a hand around his throat and tightened down. “I’m going to be gone a little while, when I come back, I want the portal opened again. Am I making myself clear?”
 
Doyle nodded slightly against her grip and Buffy let him go. “Don’t even think of disappearing … ‘cos you won’t like me hunting you down like a dog – trust me,” Buffy threatened, her voice low and deadly calm.
 
“Dawn – stay here with our Irish friend, I’ll be back soon,” Buffy instructed her sister as she started out of the room and into the sewers.
 
“Where are you going?” Dawn called after her.
 
“To get another offering,” Buffy called back over her shoulder as she began running through the tunnels.
 
**~**
 
It was nearly an hour later when Buffy returned, out of breath from running most of the way.
 
“Ok – let’s go – open it up,” Buffy demanded of Doyle when she stepped back in the room, waving her arm at the portal.
 
“Where did you go?” Dawn asked, standing up from where she’d sat down on the floor.
 
“To get an offering they might have a real interest in,” Buffy supplied, pulling the amulet that held Angel’s essence out of her pocket.

 

“Hey!” Doyle exclaimed. “That’s not the deal – the deal was you give that to Fred and I get you in…”
 
“Yeah, well, here’s the new deal: you get me in there or I’ll smash this into a bunch of little shiny bits of glass. Think Angel’s spirit can survive that?” Buffy threatened.
 
Doyle stood and looked at her for several long moments. “You wouldn’t do that to Angel – you love him,” Doyle observed.
 
Buffy snorted a laugh. “You haven’t been following along – I love Spike. If I have to sacrifice Angel to get Spike back, that’s a no-brainer. Now, open the fucking portal!”
 
“Buffy, summoning them again so soon can get them testy. It’s really not a good idea to piss them off,” Doyle warned.
 
“Yeah? Well, you know what? It’s an even less good idea to piss me off. Open the portal!” Buffy demanded, moving closer to the marble doorway.
 
Doyle sighed and shook his head but mixed the herbs in the mortar, recited the summons, and lit the herbs, as he’d done before, and the portal opened again.
 
Buffy stepped through, holding tightly to the amulet so the Oracles couldn’t snatch it out of her hand. Getting it back from Fred had been easier than she’d hoped – she simply told Fred the PTB had sent her back for the amulet, that they forgot to tell her she needed to perform a ceremony with it before it would be possible to release Angel.


 
“Can’t you do it here?” Fred had asked, not wanting to give the amulet back at first.
 
“No … it’s a super secret Slayer ceremony … I have to do it alone, in a cemetery at midnight under a crescent moon. I’ll bring it back right after – you and Wes can do your research then be ready to mojo Angel out of it when I get done,” Buffy had assured her.
 
“A super-secret-Slayer-ceremony in a cemetery under a crescent moon?” Fred asked with a frown, handing the amulet to Buffy.
 
“Yep, that’s the SSSCCC ritual – check it out, I’m sure Wes knows about it,” Buffy assured her, taking the amulet back.
 
“Oh … Ok then. If you say so,” Fred agreed with a bit of disappointment.
 
“Don’t worry – you’ll have Angel back in no time,” Buffy assured her, heading back to the elevators with the amulet.


 
Buffy moved into the room and waited as the Oracles made their way down what looked like a never-ending hallway towards her. She wondered if that hall was the ‘conduit’ to the Powers and what would happen if she went down it…
 
“Hi, remember me?” Buffy asked with a wide smile as the Oracles approached.
 
“I believe we were quite clear; what is done cannot be undone,” the female Oracle repeated. “Our time is valuable, you are wasting it.”


 
“Yeah, I know it must be really hectic around here, what with the doing of nothing and all – and you’re probably missing Oprah. You know, they have things called DVRs now – you can record it and watch it later…” Buffy sympathized sarcastically.
 
“You show no respect,” the male Oracle informed her as he pulled his hand back, preparing to throw Buffy back out of the portal again.
 
Buffy quickly held the amulet up for them to see. “Recognize this?” she asked them.
 
The male Oracle changed his hand movement and tried to pull it from her grasp, but Buffy held tight and wouldn’t let it go. “Uh-uh,” Buffy told them. “Not this time. Here’s the deal … You put the world back the way it was and I don’t smash your precious prophecy boy here into a million little glittery bits,” Buffy threatened as she dropped the amulet on the floor, still holding the chain so they couldn’t pull it away, and pressed the heel of her boot down against it.
 
“Time’s a-wastin’,” Buffy informed them when they just stood and looked at her disbelieving, as if in shock.
 
“Count of, what? Five?" Buffy asked, cocking one brow at the amulet under her heel. “Five….four….three….” Buffy looked up at the Oracles, they were just staring at the amulet under her foot, trying to figure out if she would really do it.



“You do realize what happens after I get to 'one', right? Bye-bye-birdie. Twoooo…..” Buffy pressed down harder on the amulet and could hear it starting to crack under her heel.
 
“Wait! Stop!” the female Oracle exclaimed, holding her hands up in surrender.
 
Buffy let up the pressure on the amulet, but kept it under her heel so they couldn’t pull it away, as she looked at them expectantly.
 
"We don’t have the authority to change the physical world,” the male Oracle told her.
 
“If it had been just a day, perhaps we could’ve bent the rules, simply absorbed that day … but too much time has passed, the trials are nearly complete, it’s beyond our scope,” the female added.
 
Buffy looked at them like they were crazy. “’Beyond your scope’?” she asked indignantly. “Beyond your scope!?” Buffy repeated, louder. “What am I dealing with, the door greeters? Well, I want a refund – put a little sticker on me and let me in to see someone with some authority!”

 

“It will do you no good,” the female countered. “Once the trials have begun, they can’t be stopped. William cannot be released without judgment …”
 
“Whose cockamamie rule is that!? Trials are stopped all the time!” Buffy argued.
 
“Human trials, perhaps, trials of the flesh,” the male agreed, “but not trials of the soul.”
 
“It is as it has always been,” the female added.
 
“Oh, one of those rules … the ‘we do it this way because that’s the way we’ve always done it’ rule,” Buffy said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “Well, there’s a fly in your logic ointment there somewhere … if Willow was here, she could tell you what it was. Oh! I forgot! Willow can’t tell you anything because she’s flown over the cuckoo's nest because Spike wasn’t there!
 
“Well, here’s a new rule for you: help me or you’re gonna be down another Champion, because amulet-Angel here, he’s going bye-bye,” Buffy threatened, pressing down harder on the amulet with her boot.
 
“Wait!” both Oracles exclaimed at once.
 
“Perhaps…perhaps you could speak with the tribunal,” the male Oracle suggested.
 
“Brother, you know that is forbidden – only the accused can speak in such matters,” the female argued.
 
“Perhaps there could be an exception. This is rather … exceptional,” the male pointed out.
 
The female looked back to Buffy. “Give us the amulet and we will see if we can get you an audience with the tribunal.”
 
“Nice try, but you and your little Leprechaun out there don't inspire a lot of trust, ” Buffy smiled ruefully. “You get me in to the ones that make the rules, and then, after I have my say, I’ll give them the amulet.”
 
Buffy looked at her bare wrist as if checking the time on a watch. “Tick-tock … you have thirty minutes,” she informed them, tapping a finger on her skin. Buffy pulled the amulet out from under her boot, making sure to hold to it tightly, then turned abruptly and walked back out of the portal. “That’s earth minutes!” she called over her shoulder before clearing the portal and entering the room where Doyle and Dawn were waiting.
 
“What happened?!” Dawn asked, when Buffy came right back out of the portal. "You're not flying across the room ... that must be a good sign!"
 
“They’re going to let me talk to the tribunal …” Buffy explained.
 
“The tribunal?!” Doyle exclaimed. “That’s huge! Mortals don’t get to talk to tribunals … well not live mortals.”
 
“Yeah, well, I’m exceptional,” Buffy countered as she stuffed the amulet down into the pocket of her jeans. “What time is it?” she asked, looking at Dawn.


 
Dawn sighed and rolled her eyes before pulling her cell phone out of her pocket to check the time. “You really should’ve bought a watch…”
 
**~**
{{Click here to hear "Time Passages” by Al Stewart on YouTube   }}


It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All 'round the day was going down slow
Night like a river, beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.

Well, I'm not the kind to live in the past
the years run too short, and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don't last
well its just now and then, my line gets cast into these
time passages
There's something back there that you left behind
oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.

Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don't know why you should feel
that there's something to learn
it's just a game that you play.

Well, the picture is changing now you're part of the crowd
they're laughing at something and the music's loud
a girl comes toward you, you once used to know
you reach out your hand, but you're all alone in those
time passages
I know you're in there, you're just out of sight,
oh time passages
buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.
End Notes:
TBC ... this is actually only about half of a chapter, but it was so long, I had to divide it up. Will have the other half posted very shortly ... Thanks so much to everyone who's reading and extra special thanks to everyone who has taken time to write a review! I really love hearing from you!
Blue Sky by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy has demanded to speak with someone with authority - will the Oracles get her in to see the tribunal or with they, along with Doyle, double-cross her ... again?
**
Music Referenced:
Blue Sky, Francesca Battistelli
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZsjCHJ9GkY
 **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
 
Saturday, February 18th, 2005:

Buffy paced back and forth across the antechamber waiting for the Oracles to open the portal and take her to Spike’s tribunal. Dawn got tired of reading the time out, so she just gave Buffy her cell phone. After twenty-five minutes had passed, Buffy turned to Doyle, who was leaning against one wall and said, “I hope they know I’m serious … I’ll smash this amulet to smithereens. I don’t give a shit about Angel and their prophecies.”


 
“I’m pretty sure they know that, Slayer,” Doyle assured her with a sigh.
 
Buffy had felt confident that they would let her in to see someone with some authority. For them to send Doyle to trick her into retrieving the amulet, that must mean they really wanted Angel back in the fight, and the way the Oracles had reacted when she threatened to smash it told her the same thing. They weren’t all ‘que sera, sera’ when it came to their golden boy…None of that ‘if it happened, it was meant to be’ bullshit, Buffy mused silently. Why the Powers thought Angel was such hot shit, she didn’t know. She guessed it was like buying a race horse and putting all your time and money into grooming it and training it then, when you realized you’d spent all this time and energy on the wrong horse, it was too late or too embarrassing to change your mind.
 
Buffy looked down at the time on the cell phone again … twenty-nine minutes … Maybe they don’t really think I’m serious, she thought to herself. Buffy stopped pacing in front of the large, stone mortar that Doyle had used to mix the herbs in for the portal opening ceremony and pulled the amulet out of her pocket. She dropped it in the bottom of the thick, stone bowl and picked up a heavy pestle from the altar next to it.
 
“Whoa, lassie!” Doyle exclaimed suddenly, pushing off from the wall he’d been leaning against and moving towards her. “These things don’t just happen in the blink of an eye… give them some time.”
 
“They’ve had their time, thirty minutes here is at least a day there – if they can’t get something done in a day … well, I guess they really are nothing more than minions,” Buffy reasoned, holding the large, stone pestle above the amulet and looking at the time on the cell phone. When the minute clicked to thirty, Buffy slammed the pestle down on one side of the amulet, chipping off a small bauble, then quickly raised the grinding tool back up and started back down with it when Doyle tackled her, knocking her to the floor and sending the pestle flying across the room.
 
Suddenly, what was atop her wasn’t the cute Irishman, but a Brachen demon with red eyes, green skin, and sharp blue spines covering his face.

 

“I knew there was something about you I didn’t like,” Buffy quipped as she kicked him off her and jumped back to her feet.
 
“Bigoted against demons, are ya’?” Doyle accused, standing back up as well.
 
Buffy snorted a laugh. “Hardly! I just hate two-faced liars,” Buffy clarified, hitting him with a round-house kick and sending Doyle back against the wall. “And you’ve been lying about everything."
 
Doyle began moving back towards Buffy when suddenly the portal to the Oracles opened with a bright flash of light. Buffy dove over to the mortar to get the amulet before the Oracles could snatch it away, but the stone bowl was empty. “Fuck!” she exclaimed, looking around the altar and floor for it.
 
“Buffy!” Dawn called from the other side of the room, holding the chipped amulet up for her to see.
 
Buffy sighed in relief, but the relief was short-lived when the amulet was pulled out of Dawn’s grasp and began hurtling towards the open portal. Buffy quickly stepped to the side and put herself in its path. The large stone and gold filigree surrounding it hit Buffy in the breastbone so hard that it felt like it might’ve embedded itself in her chest. Buffy screamed out as she grabbed the amulet with both hands and dropped to her knees. Buffy doubled over from the pain, her chest sinking down against her legs as she tried to get her breath back and make sure her heart was still beating – because at that moment, she wasn’t entirely sure.
 
Dawn ran past Buffy towards Doyle, who was approaching fast. “Don’t wanna hurt ya, a ghrá,” Doyle told her. “Leave the fightin’ to the demons.”
 
Dawn looked back at Buffy, who was still doubled over on her knees, then up at Doyle, who was nearly to her, and took one step to the side, out of his path.

 

“That’s a good lass,” he muttered as he continued moving fast towards Buffy and the amulet.
 
Just as Doyle got to her, Dawn stuck one foot out and tripped him. Not expecting it, Doyle lost his balance and tumbled to the ground next to the Slayer, who was still doubled over as if in unbearable pain. Buffy pounced on him immediately, pulling a stake out of the waistband of her jeans and holding it against his chest as he lay on the stone floor of the antechamber. The chain of the amulet was wrapped around the hand that held the stake several times and flashes of color danced over the whole room as the light from the portal bounced off the faucets of the stone while it dangled against the stake.
 
Doyle held his hands out in surrender and morphed back to his human features. “Not a vampire …” he pointed out.
 
“You’d be surprised how many demons can be killed by a stake to the heart,” Buffy threatened.
 
“You’re about to lose another one!!!” Buffy called over her shoulder through the still open portal to the Oracles as she pressed the stake harder against Doyle’s chest. Doyle tried to kick her off, but was no match for her strength, especially in his human form, and his struggling just made Buffy press down harder until blood stained the messenger’s shirt.
 
“You may stop,” the female Oracle said calmly from behind Buffy. “Your request has been granted. You have your audience with the tribunal.”
 
“The tribunal could strike you down as easily as look at you. You must know that we cannot guarantee your safety on the other side of the conduit,” the male Oracle added.
 
Buffy snorted and let up off Doyle. “What the fuck else is new?” she asked as she stood up and put her stake back into the waistband of her jeans at her back and re-secured the amulet in her grasp.
 
“Let’s go,” she said as she started walking towards the portal.
 
“Buffy?” Dawn called quietly.
 
Buffy stopped and smiled softly at Dawn. “It’ll be ok – they aren’t gonna strike me down … maybe a little torture, a broken bone or two.”
 
At Dawn’s pained expression Buffy quickly added, “Just kidding! Really, I’ll be fine.”
 
“I love you,” Dawn said softly, pulling Buffy into a hug.
 
“I love you, too, Dawnie,” Buffy replied, giving her a tight squeeze. “You dun good,” Buffy told her, tilting her head towards Doyle, who was just getting up off the floor.
 
Dawn smiled and nodded slightly before Buffy turned and followed the Oracles back through the portal.
 
The female Oracle held her hand out. “We’ll take the amulet now,” she stated flatly.

“Ya know, I’m thinking that would be a world of no,” Buffy replied. “I’ll give it to the tribunal after I have my say.”
 
The two Oracles looked at each other for a long moment but then nodded their agreement. “Follow this hallway as far as it leads,” the male told her, waving his arm at the hallway behind him that looked never ending.
 
“Right – follow the yellow brick road,” Buffy muttered as she started walking.

 

Buffy only walked a short ways down the very long hallway when it unexpectedly opened up into a large, open area. Buffy stopped and scanned the area quickly – the floor was white, about twenty feet across, and round. It seemed to be lit from below and was surrounded by nothing but darkness, darker than the darkest night, even in the direction she’d just come from.  Buffy didn’t see the gates that Spike had described to her … she wondered if only he could see them. Off to one side of the lit floor, which she assumed was the courtroom, was a round, black ring which seemed to be a projector of some kind with a 3-D, life-size hologram playing in it of Spike fighting with Nikki Wood on a subway train. Spike was standing in another black ring in the center of the floor – unmoving, his eyes glued, unblinking, to the fight.
 
Buffy walked closer to the hologram and could not only see the fight between Spike and the Slayer, but also hear it, smell it, even feel it as if she was standing right there on the subway with them. Buffy had seen this fight before from Spike’s perspective, when she’d gone through his memories; it was one of his most vivid recollections. Buffy pulled her eyes away from the life-size horror movie that was playing out before her and looked at her husband. He seemed to be frozen in place, unable to move or look away from the scene that played out in front of him. He was again dressed in William’s clothes, his long, light brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, but it was his eyes that made Buffy’s stomach twist into a knot – his eyes had the fear and panic and guilt that she’d seen too much of late – the look that she would give anything she owned to never see again.

 

“Spike, oh baby,” she moaned, walking over to him, but he couldn’t see or hear her; all he could see was the fight as it played out in front of him.
 
 

When Buffy got to him, she tried to touch him, but the forcefield that was holding him still repelled her hand. She moved in front of him, trying to block his view of the holodeck, but he seemed to look right through her. Buffy turned around and watched as Spike pinned Nikki down and broke her neck, then removed her duster and took it as his own. As Spike exited the subway train with Nikki’s duster, the scene cut to Nikki’s funeral and the hologram focused on the eyes of a young boy standing by the coffin – Robin. Tears stained his face and the sadness, fear, and confusion in his young eyes was heartbreaking. Buffy thought of Annie, about the same age as Robin when Nikki was killed, and how scared she got when either Buffy or Spike were in danger or away from her for extended periods of time. Buffy couldn’t stop the tears from welling in her own eyes as the hologram zoomed in on Robin’s face until all you could see was utter desperation and loneliness reflected in his soulful eyes.

When the hologram went dark, Spike was released from his invisible prison and he fell to his knees behind Buffy. Spike sat back on his heels and laid his chest down against his legs, making himself as small as he could on the cold, sterile floor.
 
“Spike!” Buffy exclaimed, moving to him and going down on her knees next to him. “Spike, it’s me, it’s Buffy. Can you hear me?” she asked, dropping her head down next to his near the floor.
 
“I’m sorry …” Spike moaned, covering his head and ears with his arms. “Tell the boy I’m sorry for his mum…”
 
“Spike … you already told him, remember?” Buffy reminded him, rubbing a hand down his back and trying to soothe him.
 
“Kill or be killed … couldn’t be stopped … should’ve dusted in China … should’ve died in England … should’ve never been born. I’m a bad, bad man – tell Robin, she was brave, a Champion, she was,” Spike muttered, never raising his head off his legs.
 
“Spike, it’s ok … it wasn’t your fault. Vampire – Slayer, it’s what we do. If it wasn’t you, it would’ve been someone else,” Buffy tried to assure him as she looked around the room and wondered where the tribunal was – where were the judges? The jury? The executioner?
 
Suddenly a deep, booming voice came from above them. “What say you, William? What atonements have you for this crime against humanity?”
 
“I have none …” Spike whimpered, his voice barely audible.
 
“That’s not true!” Buffy jumped up. “He saved my life more than once! He saved our daughter’s life, he … he sacrificed himself to close the Hellmouth and stop The First Evil – he saved the world!” Buffy offered looking up at the vast darkness above them. She wasn’t sure if her Spike got credit for the actions of the Spike in the other universe, but since they had the memories of it, and part of their souls had merged, she thought it was worth a shot.
 
“The Champion, Angel, closed the Hellmouth,” another voice, this time female, contradicted.
 
“NO! Angel did not!” Buffy argued.
 
“Then what is that which you have in your hand?” the male voice asked.
 
Buffy held up the amulet. “This is a lie and you know it!” she exclaimed, looking at the ceiling and turning in a circle to try and see who was speaking.
 
“We know only that which has come to pass,” the female voice informed her.
 
“You know, I’m not liking this talking to the wind thing … why don’t you come down here so we can really talk…” Buffy suggested, dropping the amulet on the floor and pressing the heel of her boot down on it firmly.
 
Suddenly, there was a flash of light. When Buffy blinked her eyes back open and got her pupils readjusted, there were three people standing before her.
 
“You certainly drive a hard bargain, missy. I like you!” the man exclaimed with a cheery smile. “You’ve got spunk - initiative! That’s what’s missing from our young people these days, initiative, imagination! Don’t you agree?”


 
“What the fu … Mayor Wilkins? You’re … you’re judging Spike!? You became a big snake and tried to eat us all! How can you judge Spike!?” Buffy questioned, before turning to the other two people in front of her.
 
“Lilah Morgan?! She works for Wolfram & Hart! She’s just as evil as you!” Buffy accused, looking from Lilah back to the Mayor.

 

Buffy looked at the third member of the group. “Would you please tell me what the fuck is going on here!? How can these … these...these …” Buffy couldn’t even think of a word to describe Lilah and Mayor Wilkins strongly enough, she just shook her head in disbelief before finishing her thought, “judge Spike!?”
 
“Hey, hey, hey! Language, missy! Just because you think you’re all grown up now, doesn’t mean you can throw curse words around like hockey pucks. They’re nothing more than crutches – you should be able to make your point without resorting to such vulgarity,” the Mayor chastised Buffy. “Such a pretty girl shouldn’t use those ugly words.”
 
Buffy ignored him and kept her gaze leveled at the third member of her greeting party, the last of the Guardians.
 
“My child, you have much to learn,” the Guardian said softly, a small smile playing on her lips.



“Really? I’m all a-twitter with curiosity! Please explain to me how ‘Mayor Snake’ and ‘Lizard Lawyer’ can presume to judge anyone!”
 
“Actually, I’m not a judge – I’m here in an advisory and administrative role,” Lilah clarified quickly. “Think of me as the clerk of court …”
 
“Swell,” Buffy hissed sarcastically. “And I suppose you’re just here to eat the leftovers?” she asked the Mayor.
 
“Oh, no – I much prefer Moon Pies. Would you care for one?” he asked, pulling one out of the pocket of his suit jacket.

 

Buffy’s mouth fell open in disbelief and her head shook involuntarily.
 
“’No, thank you,’ is the customary response in polite company,” the Mayor informed her before opening the wrapper and taking a bite of the pastry.
 
Buffy blinked her eyes in utter disbelief. This was the tribunal that was driving Spike insane with guilt? Of course, they did sound a lot more formidable when their voices were booming down from on high…
 
Buffy turned her attention back to the Guardian. “I’m waiting,” she said simply, folding her arms over her chest.
 
“My dear … this isn’t about us judging anyone – it’s about evil deeds and atonements. It’s really quite simple,” the Guardian informed her. “One must have atoned for their indiscretions. Your vampire has not.”
 
“He has!” Buffy insisted, waving her arm at Spike who had rolled to his side and was curled in a fetal position on the floor. “What about all the help he’s given me? All the vampires he’s dusted and demons he’s killed? What about saving my life? What about Annie, Dani, and Billy? What about Tara, Xander, Faith, Anya, and all the Potentials he saved? What about protecting Giles from Angelus? What about keeping Willow out of the looney-bin? He wore the amulet and sacrificed everything to save us all – to save the world. What about all that!?” Buffy pointed out.

 

“None of that happened, dear,” the Guardian argued.
 
Buffy threw her hands out in frustration. “ALL of that happened and you know it! If you’d just wave that magic wand of yours and I’ll click my heels three times, I bet we can put the world back the way it was and you could see it all on your overgrown, 3-D Viewmaster here!” Buffy suggested.

 

“It doesn’t work that way, my child,” the Guardian told her, shaking her head slowly.
 
“There’re rules, missy – we have no direct bearing on the physical plane, we can only make suggestions, send messages … what is done with those is up to your free will,” the Mayor interjected.
 
“Are you out of your fucking mind!?” Buffy asked looking from the Guardian to the Mayor and back again. “Just put it back!”
 
“Rule 8.098.87F states clearly that neither the higher forces of evil nor good can take any direct action in the physical planes of existence,” Lilah supplied.



 “Rule 8.098…?” Buffy questioned.
 
“Point 87F,” Lilah added.
 
“That’s bull … evil takes direct action all the time!” Buffy insisted. “I’ve got the scars to prove it! Or I did…”
 
“I take offense to that, young lady,” the Mayor retorted. “Rules exist for a reason, and they must be followed for the system to run smoothly. Without rules, there would be chaos … we all have our part to play to keep everything running like a well oiled machine.”


 
“Where have you been? It is chaos! What about The First? He … or it, was doing stuff all over the place – and he’s about as high up the evil food chain as you can get!” Buffy pointed out.
 
“No,” the Guardian began, her voice calm and almost soothing.  “The First made suggestions, but what you, or anyone else, did with those suggestions was your own free will. The First couldn’t physically touch anything on your plane, if you recall …” the Guardian provided.
 
Buffy’s jaw dropped open again as she stared at the Guardian, trying to absorb what she was saying.
 
“Buffy, what you don’t understand is the physical plane is not our prevue … it is yours. There is a balance to good and evil; that balance must be maintained to properly assess each soul as it travels through that dimension. If there is too much good or too much evil on that plane, then the test is distorted and the soul’s worthiness can’t be properly judged,” the Guardian explained.
 
“You yourself brought on the current state of affairs, young lady,” the Mayor told her, popping the last bite of Moon Pie into his mouth.
 
“Yeah, by not killing the bitch when I had the chance …” Buffy muttered under her breath.



“No, Buffy – you brought this on by releasing the magic in the scythe. That much magic wasn’t meant to be released all at once. There was a reason that for eons there was only one Slayer at a time – for the balance,” the Guardian corrected Buffy’s assertion.  “By releasing all the magic, by creating an army of Slayers, you tipped the balance too far to the side of good. It was only a matter of time before it had to be set right, above all else, the balance must be maintained. If it hadn’t been this, it would’ve been something else.”
 
“Something else … like the Circle of the Black Thorn and the armies of hell being let loose in L.A?” Buffy questioned, recalling the apocalyptic battle from the other dimension that Angel had dragged them into.
 
The Guardian gave Buffy a small smile and nodded. “Yes, that would qualify…”
 
Buffy rubbed at her eyes tiredly. “So, what you’re saying is, all we’re doing is treading water … we aren’t supposed to win, we’re just supposed to … play the game? Well, I didn’t get that memo and now Spike's paying the ultimate price for it! You know, a little communication from you … you people would go a long way! Don't you have cell phones up here? Faxes? Email?”
 
“There’s no need to take that tone, missy,” the Mayor admonished her. “You know, you worry too much for a girl for your age. That's unnecessary stress. Luckily, I've got just the thing …” the Mayor told her, pulling another Moon Pie out of his pocket and offering it to Buffy.
 
Buffy let out a long, exasperated breath and just looked at the proffered pastry, but didn’t take it from him. Mayor Wilkins shrugged and put it back in his pocket.
 
The Guardian smiled softly at Buffy. “You are a remarkable Slayer … the best we’ve ever seen, and, with your friends, well, that added a level of competence that was unprecedented – Slayers were meant to work alone with just a Watcher to guide them, you – you changed the paradigm. You did things that no one here thought possible, including releasing the magic of the scythe. I’m sorry that we can’t help you, but our hands are tied, as they should be. The physical plane is not our prevue …” the Guardian repeated.
 
“It’s mine,” Buffy filled in with a sigh and the Guardian nodded.
 
“Ok … let’s talk about Spike,” Buffy suggested, changing the subject. “I assume these trials are your prevue, so you can do something about them.”
 
“There is nothing that can be done to stop his trial … it is nearly complete,” the Guardian told her.
 
“And he’s waaay behind on points,” Lilah offered. Lilah held her hand out and a computer the size, shape, and thickness of a piece of paper appeared in it out of thin air. On the screen was a tally sheet with ‘William the Bloody’ at the top and two columns; one column had lots of red marks in it, the other had only a few green marks … Buffy assumed the one with lots of marks was the ‘bad’ side of the scale.
 
“Well, that’s just wrong,” Buffy told them. “Where’s his lawyer? He needs someone to speak up for him … you’re not playing fair with the ‘This is Your Life’ show.”
 
The Guardian laughed lightly. “There are no lawyers here.”

 

“What about her?” Buffy questioned, pointing to Lilah.
 
The Guardian rolled her eyes. “Yes, well – we all have our crosses to bear, but what I mean is, each soul must account for their own actions – they must speak for themselves,” the Guardian clarified.

“Yeah, well, he can’t do it, so I will. First of all, put down points for saving my life … uhhh, I think four times directly and indirectly every day since we met,” Buffy started. “Then, let’s have some points for Annie, Dani, and Billy and points for Xander, Anya, Faith, and Tara … points for protecting Giles from Angelus, and for keeping Willow sane … Ummm, let’s see, points for killing Marcus and rescuing Annie … Oh! And lots of points for wearing the amulet and closing the Hellmouth, and you can take all of my points and give to him, too,” Buffy concluded, tapping a finger on the nearly empty column on Lilah’s computer, imploring her to make the entries.
 
The Guardian was shaking her head as Buffy spoke. “Buffy, none of that happened, dear, the records are quite clear.”
 
“Like hel..ck!” Buffy protested, looking sheepishly at the Mayor and hoping he would give her the last minute save on the ‘bad word’.

 

“I very well remember that all happening! If you’re saying that William the Bloody killed Nikki Wood, then how can you say he didn’t wear the amulet and sacrifice everything to save the world? You know I had Willow release the magic of the scythe, but you don’t remember that Spike’s the one that gave me the strength to find it in the first place?” Buffy questioned. “There’s something wrong with your logic here, people! Your computer’s been … hacked or something! You either have to stop counting all the bad that Spike did, or you have to start counting all the good – you’re not … not in balance!”
 
The Mayor and the Guardian looked perplexed, as if they couldn’t quite follow what she was saying.
 
“I tried to tell them that from the beginning, when he claimed your rug-rats as atonement for case numbers 17.1880.1 through 17.1889.75,” Lilah defended. “But what do I know? I’m just a clerk working off her eternity contract…”
 
“In Louboutins and Armani … looks dire,” Buffy muttered with an eye roll before turning her attention back to the others.

 

“Hel-lo?” Buffy sing-songed, waving her hands in front of the two judge’s faces. “Are you both completely stoned? What kinda fairy dust do you have in those Moon Pies, anyway?" she questioned when neither answered her.



The two judges looked like they were trying to process what she’d said, but couldn’t quite come to grips with it. Buffy thought of Dawn’s explanation of Willow’s condition – ‘she can hear you but the wiring inside is crossed, it goes in but gets lost in there’ – it seemed like the same thing with the Mayor and the Guardian, the words were going in, but getting misdirected and muddled once they got into their brains.
 
“The lights are on but nobody’s home…” Buffy muttered with an eye roll as she snapped her fingers in front of their faces.
 
“Perhaps we should adjourn to … uhhh… consider this further …” the Mayor suggested at last, still looking bewildered.
 
“The circumstances really are quite … unique,” the Guardian agreed and suddenly the two judges were gone in a flash of light.
 
Lilah held her hand out to Buffy, cocked a perfectly sculpted brow, and looked down at the amulet that was still under Buffy’s boot heel. “I think that belongs to us now.”
 
Buffy bent down and picked the amulet up, holding it up above Lilah’s outstretched palm. “Under one condition,” Buffy started. “Check into the possibility that the magic that was used to change the physical plane might’ve wafted up here and, oh, I don’t know, erased all the good and just left the bad on Spike’s records. Things are seriously wacked up here! They know I released the magic of the scythe, but in the world as it is, I didn’t; they think Spike’s a vampire, but he was never turned. Someone’s totally fucked up your records, hacked your computer – someone like a big, fat, vengeance demon rat,” Buffy informed her. “I’m not asking for favors – just fairness.”
 
Lilah raised her brows and she shrugged, but then nodded; she had considered that, but normally they were immune to the magicks used on the physical plane. Maybe if the spell was worded just right and had enough power behind it – that would explain the judge’s confusion and where all Spike’s ‘good points’ had gone. “I’ll do what I can.”
 
“And put all my good points on Spike’s account…”
 
“This isn’t a revolving charge account at Macy’s – you can’t atone for someone else’s Louboutins ... or Doc Martens,” Lilah informed her. Buffy pulled the amulet back and stared Lilah down. For several long moments the two women stood toe to toe, neither flinching or giving any quarter. Buffy began to squeeze her fist shut around the amulet until they could both hear the stone pop free of its mount. Buffy smiled ruefully, it wouldn’t take much more to crack the stone into a million pieces in her grip.
 
“Fine – but you have to sign,” Lilah finally grudgingly agreed. Lilah tapped a few times on her computer and then turned it around so Buffy could read it.
 
“What’s that?” Buffy asked as she started to read it. Agreement to Transfer Penance it said at the top.
 
“A legally binding contract,” Lilah explained. “To transfer your … good points, to Spike’s account. You have to sign.”
 
“Fine…” Buffy agreed, holding her hand out for a pen or something to sign with.
 
“In blood…”
 
“Of course – should’ve known – it’s always about the blood, isn’t it?” Buffy asked rhetorically.
 
Lilah handed her a dagger and Buffy sliced across her palm and pressed it down on Lilah’s computer screen where the document was. The computer seemed to absorb the blood then started to pull Buffy’s hand into it, as well. Buffy yanked her hand away quickly. “Hungry little devil…” Buffy muttered, looking at her hand, which had completely healed, no trace of the cut or any blood remained on it.
 
The computer disappeared into thin air, just like it had appeared, and the lawyer held her now empty hand out further, silently demanding the amulet.
 
Buffy sighed, but dropped the bauble in Lilah’s hand and the lawyer disappeared with a flash of light. The amulet was Buffy’s only leverage – she hoped the dead fashionista would keep her side of the bargain. If Spike were judged fairly, either as a vampire or a mortal man, Buffy was sure that he would come out with plenty of marks in the atonement column to balance out the bad, and with her ‘points’ as well – he should have no problem getting into the real heaven if Buffy couldn’t get the physical world back to what they called 'normal'. Hallie had really done her homework … that must’ve been some wish.
 
Buffy took a deep breath and turned back to Spike, who was still laying on the bright white floor, curled into a ball. Buffy dropped down onto the floor with him and stroked a hand softly down his back. “Spike, baby – it’s gonna be ok,” she whispered, leaning her face down next to his.
 
“No … not ok, Slayer. Nuthin’s gonna be ok ever again…” Spike mumbled, never lifting his head. “Can’t you feel it?”
 
“Feel what?”
 
“The storm … it’s buildin’ – thunder rollin’, lightning flashin’ … fire and brimstone falling from the sky – just over there,” Spike told her, waving a hand out towards the darkness behind them.  “Won’t be long now…”

 

Buffy furrowed her brow and looked in the direction he waved his arm, but didn’t see or feel anything.
 
Buffy sat down Indian style and pulled Spike to her. He hugged his arms around her waist as he laid his head in her lap like a child. Buffy stroked his long, brown hair, pushing stray strands back from his beautiful face as a thousand emotions collided inside her from sadness to frustration to anger to overwhelming guilt.
 
“I’m sorry, Buffy – so sorry I bollixed it up. I loved you so much … I didn’t mean … didn’t mean to hurt you. Ruined your life, I did,” he whispered as tears fell from his eyes.

 

Tears rolled down Buffy’s cheeks. “No, no, no,” Buffy murmured softly. “It wasn’t you that ‘bollixed’ it up … it was me. Me and my great ideas! It’s my fault, Spike … I’m so sorry. I thought … I thought we were supposed to win. I didn’t know it was a fucking t-ball game – just for fun, I thought it was, you know, for real.”
 
“Can you see the storm clouds? So dark, so heavy … I’ve never seen such black clouds, ‘ave you?” Spike asked, never opening his eyes or lifting his head from her lap.
 
Buffy closed her eyes, but she still didn’t see the clouds he was talking about. Buffy leaned down so her mouth was near his ear. “Just hold on, Spike … I’ll fix it, I promise. I’m here, I’ll always be with you, wherever you are. Let my love be your blue sky… can you see it?” she asked him softly.
 
Spike shook his head ‘no’ almost imperceptibly against Buffy’s leg. “Storm’s rollin’ in … can’t be stopped now… gonna drown in the flood, drown in the sorrow, drown in the blood.”
 
“No, Spike, I won’t let you drown. Feel my love, Spike – my whole heart is yours – can you feel it? My love will clear the clouds, I promise you won’t drown,” Buffy tried to assure him. She took his left hand and raised it to her chest where the amulet had nearly embedded into her breastbone during the fight with Doyle. She traced the outline of the stone in her flesh with his finger and then laid his palm against it. “Feel my love …” she whispered to him.
 
Spike finally opened his eyes and looked up at her. His blue eyes glistened with unshed tears and pain and fear of the coming storm – the coming judgment.
 
“The scar … it’s comin’ out,” he observed with wonder.
 
Buffy smiled down at him and nodded. “Soon, we’ll have all our scars back, Spike – our family and our friends and our scars. I won’t let you down again. Can you feel it?”
 
Spike furrowed his brow and traced the outline of the amulet on her chest again, then looked up into the depths of her green eyes and nodded before dropping his head back onto her lap and sobbing against her.
 
Buffy sobbed with him and for him … he was going through all this because of her. They had lost everything because of her zeal to win, her unstoppable quest to be the best, to eradicate evil, to make the world a better place – to fulfill her calling. It was all her fault.
 
“Can you see the blue sky?” Buffy asked him again, leaning down and wrapping her arms around him. “Look in the distance – on the horizon … can you see it?”
 
Spike nodded ever so slightly against her.
 
“Keep watching that blue sky, Spike – that’s my love and it’s going to drive the clouds and the thunder and the blood away. Do you believe me?”
 
“You’re the only one I believe … you’re the only one I believe in,” Spike murmured back to her.
 
“I’ll keep you safe,” Buffy promised as she continued to stroke her hand gently down his back.
 
She prayed that she’d be able to keep that promise. She had really hoped that she would be able to convince the PTB to just fix everything … but that possibility was gone now. They’d made it perfectly clear that it was up to her, they weren’t going to help her. Her great plan had been a great flop – she’d spent days getting back to California, finding the amulet, and getting it back to L.A. and to Fred … for nothing. She was no closer to getting her family back now than she had been a week ago or even a month ago.
 
Her only hope was that she'd had some effect on these monkey trials. If Lilah would and could counteract whatever was keeping the judges from seeing the good that Spike had done, that would at least give Spike a fair shot at getting into heaven and not being damned – this time for eternity.
 
“So tired. Can we rest now?” Spike whispered against her leg, never opening his eyes.
 
“Yes … rest under the blue sky,” Buffy replied, dropping a soft kiss on his cheek. “Just rest now… I'm here, I've got you.”



**~**
{{Click here to hear "Blue Sky” by Francesca Battistelli on YouTube   }}



When you're down,
And you're out,
And you don't think you have a friend...
When you're lost,
In the doubt,
And you can't see what's around the bend...

Just hold on...
Don't turn around.
Keep on walking.
Don't lose heart,
'Cause I am here.
I am here,
Wherever you are,
Wherever you are!

When the rain is falling,
And there is no silver lining,
And you just can't seem to find the light...
When you need a reason,
To help you keep believing,
Let my love be your blue sky!

(Your blue sky!)
Your blue sky!
(Your blue sky!)
Your blue sky!
(Your blue sky!)
Your blue sky!
(Your blue sky!)

Don't you know that I know...
Life can be so hard.
It makes you wanna give up.
(Wanna give up,
Wanna give up!)
But don't you know,
Over the horizon,
The sunny day you're looking for
is waiting right here...
In my love!

Just hold on...
Don't turn around.
Keep on walking.
Don't lose heart,
'Cause I am here.
I am here,
Wherever you are,
Wherever you are!

When the rain is falling,
And there is no silver lining,
And you just can't seem to find the light...
When you need a reason,
To help you keep believing,
Let my love be your blue sky!

(Your blue sky!)
Your blue sky!
(Your blue sky!)
Your blue sky!
(Your blue sky!)
Your blue sky!
(Your blue sky!)

Come on... come on...
Don't you be afraid.
Whatever comes tomorrow,
My love is here to stay.

Come on... come on...
Don't you be afraid.
Whatever comes tomorrow,
My love is here to stay.

Come on... come on...
Don't you be afraid.
Whatever comes tomorrow,
My love is here to stay.

Come on... come on...
Don't you be afraid.
Whatever comes tomorrow,
My love...!

When the rain is falling,
And there is no silver lining,
And you just can't seem to find the light...
When you need a reason,
To help you keep believing,
Let my love be your blue sky!

(Your blue sky!)
Your blue sky!
(Your blue sky!)
Your blue sky!
(Your blue sky!)
Your blue sky!
(Your blue sky!)

Come on... come on...
Don't you be afraid.
Whatever comes tomorrow,
My love is here to stay.

Come on... come on...
Don't you be afraid!
Whatever comes tomorrow,
My love is here... to stay.

End Notes:
TBC ... Now what? Her only other idea was going to get D'Hoffryn's talisman from Willow - she will get some sage advice from an old friend, but will she take it to heart? And what about Spike ... can he hold on much longer?
Love Can Build a Bridge by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy and Dawn go to see Willow to try and find D’Hoffryn’s talisman. Buffy meets an old friend along the way … but will she be able to follow the advice she's given - will she even get a chance?
**
Music Referenced:
Love Can Build a Bridge
(Originally by The Judds)
Cher, Chrissie Hynde, Neneh Cherry & Eric Clapton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7uP3Bbu_pQ
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
**
Warnings: Sexual Situations, Violence, and ... what was the other thing? Oh yeah, Angst.
Sunday, February 19th, 2005:

Buffy sat by the fireplace in the great room of the ‘Christmas Tree Vineyard Lodge’, a bed and breakfast she and Dawn were staying at in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Auburn, California. She sat alone, with a cup of coffee, her legal pad, and a pen and tried to think. She’d been trying to think since she’d been ‘ejected’ from the … she didn’t even know what to call it, the supernatural courtroom where Spike’s trial was being held the previous afternoon. She had to come up with a new plan to get her family back, the Powers weren’t going to help her. It was early, no one other than the proprietors were up, breakfast wasn’t even scheduled to be served for another three hours, but Buffy couldn’t sleep and she didn’t want to wake Dawn, so she came down here and tried to think. Thinking wasn’t actually the problem – she couldn’t stop thinking – the problem was trying to form a conclusion – some definite answer, a plan.
 
She knew her next step, she and Dawn would go see Willow at the sanatorium in town and see if D’Hoffryn’s talisman was still with her. Visiting hours didn’t start until ten though … so Buffy had plenty of time between now and then to think.
 
Buffy turned her legal pad to a blank page and began writing down any idea that came to her mind … she had to get her ideas out of her jumbled brain and down onto the paper. They were just clogging her brain up – she’d start thinking about one idea when another would jump in and interrupt, then she’d forget what it was she’d been thinking about before and end up getting more and more confused and further and further away from a solid plan.
 
She started with, ‘No direct help from the PTB,’ on the first line … then continued her list of ideas:
 
‘D’Hoffryn – Get talisman and summon,’ she wrote. And what? Ask him nicely to put everything back? File a harassment complaint against one of his employees? she thought grimly, rolling her eyes. She had no leverage over him, she didn’t really even know the full extent of his powers. Leaving space under that idea in case she thought of something to actually do once she summoned him, Buffy went on to something else.
 
‘Go back in time and kill Hallie,’ was the next thing on her list. She wasn’t sure how to go back in time, but there had to be a way. She wondered if she went back in time to the night Hallie, or Cecily, should’ve rejected William’s advances and killed her, would that be enough to send William out into the street and into Dru’s clutches - putting history back on its proper track? Of course, the other possibility was that by killing her, that would simply reverse the wish; the research book that Dawn had gotten from Andrew said ‘destroy her power source’ … certainly if she were dead, that should take care of the power source.
 
Going back in time and killing Hallie was starting to sound like a win-win-win and just the thought of it gave Buffy a kind of warm and fuzzy feeling inside. If it didn’t drive William out to Dru, perhaps it would simply reverse the spell – which would accomplish the same thing and, it would make Buffy feel infinitely better … even though Hallie deserved worse, killing her would have to do. Buffy drew a big star next to that line and moved on.
 
‘Go back in time and don’t let Willow release the magic from the scythe,’ was her next idea. The Guardian said that by releasing it she had skewed the balance of good and evil … perhaps if she went back and undid that, then there would be no cosmic pull for Hallie to have escaped her rat cage and fulfilled her little plan of revenge. Buffy scrunched her nose up at that idea and drew a line through it, if she was going to go back in time, she’d rather go kill Hallie …
 
‘Find another vengeance demon and make my own wish,’ was her next idea. If she got a vengeance demon to grant her a wish to undo Hallie’s wish, would that work? But then, what if Hallie just re-wished it? How many times can you counter someone else’s wish? And would another vengeance demon even do that? Go against one of their own? Probably not… she thought with a sigh, again wishing that Anya was here to give her some advice …
 
OH! ‘Go back in time and talk to Anya,’ Buffy wrote on the next line. That might be a good thing to do before going back in time all the way to 1880 and killing Hallie – a little trial run to make sure it would work and get some advice right from a horse’s mouth, too. Buffy put another star by that idea on her paper.
 
Buffy looked up from her pad and stared blankly at the large windows. The sun was just starting to light the sky and there was a soft snow falling outside. Annie had loved the snow when they spent those weeks at the coven in Canada … and ice skating and horseback riding and swimming in the warm underground springs … We should’ve taken her back there, Buffy thought sadly. Tears stung her eyes as she watched the snow falling gently outside, turning the world into a white, winter wonderland. Dani and Billy had never even seen snow – everything was new and wondrous to them, their whole lives awaited discovery, and now they were gone, just erased from history without ever even having a chance to show the world who they were, what they could do – without a chance to even see snow.

 

“Need a refill?” a friendly female voice asked, making Buffy jump in her seat. Wanda, who, along with her husband John, owned and ran the bed and breakfast, was standing next to Buffy with a coffee pot in her hand.
 
Buffy smiled tiredly and nodded, picking her cup up handing it to the woman. Wanda was in her fifties Buffy guessed, with an easy way about her that made you feel comfortable with her, as if you’d known her forever.
 
“Brought work with you on vacation?” the older woman asked, tilting her head towards Buffy’s legal pad.
 
Buffy flipped the pages down and stuffed the pad down between her leg and the edge of the seat. “Something like that…” Buffy replied with a small smile.
 
“It’ll work out, child,” Wanda advised, handing Buffy her newly filled coffee cup.
 
“What will?”
 
“Whatever it is that’s got you all knotted up inside.” Wanda gave Buffy a knowing smile before adding, “Don’t give up hope, my dear. God works in mysterious ways …”
 
Buffy snorted softly before taking a sip of her coffee. Yeah, like with Lilah Morgan and Mayor Wilkins as his lackeys …
 
“You know, my daddy always said, ‘Everything will work out fine in the end, if it ain’t fine, then it ain’t the end’ …” Wanda added, before turning and heading back to the kitchen.
 
“Well, I’d say we’re a long way from the end, then,” Buffy muttered to herself, pulling her pad back out and flipping it open to the page she’d been working on.
 
Buffy sighed heavily … she really didn’t have any more ideas that warranted a place on her list. She wracked her brain trying to think of some kind of leverage to use against D’Hoffryn to get him to reverse the spell, but all she could come up with was threatening to kill all his ‘employees’ and she wasn’t sure how much of a threat that would be since she didn’t even know how to find any of his employees…
 
“Oh my God!” Buffy exclaimed. “It’s so simple! Why didn’t I think of it before?”
 
Buffy made a new entry on her idea page, ‘Go back in time – kill Hallie-rat.’ That would be so easy! Just go back, sneak into Annie’s room, take the rat out and … dispose of it, before Hallie could escape and start this whole nightmare in the first place!
 
Buffy jumped up and ran back upstairs to the room she was sharing with Dawn. “Dawn! Dawn, wake up!” Buffy exclaimed excitedly after getting inside and closing the door to their room.
 
“Go away…” Dawn moaned, pulling her pillow over her head to block out the noise.
 
“Dawn! Wake up! I’ve figured it out! I can fix it!” Buffy exclaimed again, pulling the pillow away from Dawn and shaking her by the shoulder.
 
“Go away!” Dawn repeated angrily, turning over and covering her head with the blanket.
 
“C’mon, Dawnie!” Buffy begged. “What do you know about time travel? How do I go back in time?”
 
“I don’t know, but I wish I could go back and sleep about six more hours …” Dawn moaned, pulling the blanket tighter over her head.
 
Buffy pulled the blanket completely off her sister and Dawn screamed when the cold air hit her warm body. “Good thing you’re the Slayer or you’d be dead right now!” Dawn exclaimed, wrapping her arms around her torso before jumping up and heading quickly into the bathroom.
 
Buffy ignored her outburst and followed her to the bathroom door, talking through it and telling Dawn her plan as Dawn peed, brushed her teeth and hair and washed her face to get the sleep off.
 
When Dawn emerged from the bathroom she said simply, “It won’t work.”
 
“What! What do you mean it won’t work! It’s perfect! Easy, simple – requires no killing of actual humans … it’s foolproof!” Buffy insisted.
 
Dawn sat down at a small table in the room and took Buffy’s notepad and pen from her hand. “You’ll get caught in a time-loop you may never be able to get out of,” Dawn informed her.
 
“What does that mean?” Buffy asked, her excited smile now replaced with a frown.
 
“Ok,” Dawn started, turning the pad to a blank page. “Let’s say this point is the moment the rat escaped its cage, right?” Dawn asked, drawing an “H” on the page. “Hallie goes and somehow turns back into a human … or a demon or whatever, and casts a spell that changes everything …” Dawn continued, drawing a line out from the “H”.
 
“Ok, now, when she does that, it bends the time-space continuum and creates a different reality, so here you are in this new reality,” Dawn continued, drawing an “B” on the paper, “and you go back in time and you exterminate her here, before she does any spell,” Dawn continued, intersecting Hallie’s old reality with Buffy’s new reality.
 
“Now – in theory, reality will go back to … normal because Hallie won’t cast the spell, BUT, if Hallie doesn’t cast the spell, then the time-space continuum doesn’t bend and you aren’t here going back in time to kill her … so she’s alive to cast the spell … except, if she’s alive to cast the spell, then here you are again, going back to kill her …”
 
Dawn started drawing huge circles on the page, representing Buffy going back in time, killing Hallie, then reality going back to ‘normal’ which would mean that Buffy wouldn’t have any reason to go back in time, leaving Hallie free to cast the spell … and on and on.
 
“You’ll be caught inside that loop – maybe forever, I’m not sure, doing the same thing over and over again,” Dawn warned, handing the pad and pen back to Buffy. “Did you ever see 'Groundhog Day'?”


 
Buffy sat down heavily on Dawn’s bed and flopped backwards, covering her eyes with her arms and leaving her legs dangling over the edge. “Are you sure?” she asked despondently.
 
Dawn shrugged. “As sure as you can be about stuff like this. You know, Andrew is kind of a … a science fiction nut-job freak, so we used to entertain ourselves by thinking up time travel scenarios and going through all the what-if’s and trying to figure out what would happen in the present if you changed one thing in the past…”
 
“Fuck,” Buffy muttered, not moving from her place on Dawn’s bed. Buffy had no desire to relive the last month … not for eternity, not even once – the first time was more than enough for her.
 
“Sorry…” Dawn said softly.
 
“So, going back in time and changing things will pretty much not work at all…” Buffy surmised.
 
“Well, you have to be super careful – there’s really no way to know all the unintended consequences of changing something in the past. It’s not as simple as they show on ‘Dr. Who’, if it was, everybody would do it,” Dawn informed her with a shrug. “Did you ever hear of ‘the butterfly effect’ or read Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’ in high school?” Dawn asked Buffy as she lay down on Buffy’s bed and pulled the covers over herself.

 

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Yeah… I think so,” she admitted solemnly.
 
“Then you know what I’m talking about. This guy goes back in time and steps on a butterfly and changes the entire world as he knew it, that’s what they call the Butterfly Effect or Chaos Theory. There’re just so many unknowns; going back in time isn’t something you can play around with…”
 
“So, what would happen if I go back and killed Hallie back in 1880 or 1881, after she’s already on the new timeline?” Buffy posited, sitting up and looking at Dawn’s time-loop drawing, but got no answer. “Dawn?”
 
Buffy sat forward and looked at Dawn – she’d fallen back asleep. Buffy shook her head. That girl could sleep through an apocalypse…
 
Buffy went back downstairs by the fire and crossed out the ‘kill Hallie-rat’ idea and put a question mark next to the ‘Kill Hallie’ line and added a note, ‘after change in timeline’. According to the books, she had to ‘destroy the vengeance demon’s power source’ … didn’t that mean she had to kill Hallie? Buffy put several more question marks by that line and focused on the idea further down the page … ‘talk to Anya’. That seemed like the very best thing to start with. They’d go see Willow today, hopefully retrieve the talisman and then she’d figure out how to go back in time and talk to Anya. Buffy wrote another note next to that line, ‘before wedding.’ Buffy didn’t want to be dealing with a bitter, angry, vengeful Anya that had been dumped at the altar in this world … talking to her before her wedding day would be best.
 
“Have a revelation?” Wanda asked, coming back with the coffee pot.
 
Buffy sighed. “False alarm …”
 
“Well, you keep workin’ at it, honey – love can build that bridge,” Wanda assured her.
 
Buffy looked at her with a furrowed brow … Spike’s voice rang in her head as he sang ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ to her when they were in the tropical soul-garden. “What bridge?”
 
Wanda smiled softly as she refilled Buffy’s cup. “The one that will lead you home …”
 
“Who are you?” Buffy asked suspiciously, standing up to face the older woman.

 

“Just someone who knows a lost soul when she sees one,” Wanda offered with a shrug, handing Buffy’s coffee back to her.
 
“You can see my soul?” Buffy asked with confusion.
 
“No child, I can see your pain. Your love is strong … so is his, just don’t give up – God works …” Wanda started.
 
“… in mysterious ways,” Buffy finished. “You know, I really wish He’d switch to some Nora Roberts, even Danielle Steele … I’m really tired of the mysteries already.”
 
Wanda laughed lightly. “Yes, your love is strong … your souls are …” Wanda started and stopped. She smiled softly and said, “I need to get breakfast on, the rest of the guests will be up soon…”
 
“Wait.” Buffy touched the older woman’s arm, “What about our souls? What do you know? What do you know about Spike?”
 
Wanda shook her head and turned back towards the kitchen.
 
“Please help me,” Buffy begged, gripping the older woman’s arm tighter.
 
Wanda turned back around to face Buffy. “There are times we must walk alone, my dear … to test our resolve, to test our souls … this is one of those times. But you aren’t alone – I can see his love surrounding you, just as it did when you were lost in the darkness before … follow your true heart, it will lead you back to the light, back to him. The love you two share really can build that bridge. Don’t lose hope.”
 
“Who are you?” Buffy asked again.
 
“I told you, just someone who knows a lost soul when she sees it …” Wanda repeated, before turning away from Buffy. Buffy released her arm and the older woman left Buffy alone in the great room.
 
Buffy shook her head, picked her pad of paper up from the chair where she’d dropped it, and sat back down. She thought of pressing the woman for more … but had a feeling that would be useless and might lose her an ally, and she could use all the allies she could get.
 
Buffy turned to a new page on the pad and drew a big heart in the middle of the page. Above it she wrote, ‘Follow your heart,’ and below it she wrote, ‘Don’t lose hope.’ “God, Spike … I miss you so much,” she muttered as she looked at the page and tears welled in her eyes. “I won’t give up … I promise I’ll find a way to fix this …”
 
**~**
 
Buffy knocked softly on the door of Willow’s room at the sanatorium before opening it and stepping in. Willow was sitting up in a wheelchair next to her bed, staring blankly out at the snow that covered the ground outside her window. Buffy thought she looked gaunt … thin and pasty – she didn’t know what she really expected … she guessed she expected ‘Willow’ – her Willow, with her quick smile and sharp mind and a sparkle in her green eyes, but her Willow wasn’t here.
 
“Willow …” Buffy said softly, moving around the bed towards her, but Willow didn’t look over or do anything that indicated she even heard Buffy.
 
“She can hear you … she just can’t process it,” Dawn advised Buffy as she looked through Willow’s meager belongings for the talisman. “All her wiring got … like, fried, according to the doctors – it goes in, but gets lost in there.”
 
“Hey, Wills … it’s me, it’s Buffy,” Buffy continued softly as she moved next to her friend and put herself in Willow’s line of sight, but Willow just kept staring straight ahead as if Buffy wasn’t even there.
 
“It’s not here …” Dawn announced as she finished looking through the last drawer in a small chest of drawers in Willow’s room.
 
“I’m sorry I haven’t been here to see you before now …” Buffy told Willow, letting Dawn’s bad news go for the moment. She clenched her jaw and fought back tears as she dropped down into a squat in front of her friend, putting herself at eye level with Willow. “I sure missed you a lot. This looks like a pretty nice place,” Buffy continued. “Nice yard outside – do you want to go outside and get some fresh air?”
 
Buffy looked up at Dawn and asked, “Can we take her outside?”
 
“Yeah, I think so – let me get a blanket or something, it’s cold outside,” Dawn offered, heading out to the nurse’s station.
 
Buffy pushed Willow’s wheelchair down the sidewalk that connected all the buildings until they came to a bench near a fountain in the center of the large quad. Buffy turned Willow’s wheelchair towards the bench and then sat down in front of her so they were face to face. “This is better, isn’t it?” Buffy asked her friend as Dawn kept walking over towards the fountain to give her sister a little privacy.
 
“Willow, I’m so sorry about this, it’s all my fault. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. You … you and Tara got married, oh, Willow, it was such a beautiful wedding!” Buffy told her friend as tears stained her cheeks. “Tara’s father tried to stop it, but Spike tossed him out on his ear," Buffy recalled, before quickly adding, "Oh, but the rest of the ceremony was just lovely!



 “Just that small fight in the middle to make it interesting. You know we can’t ever do anything without a little brawl to break up the boredom of being happy.” Buffy laughed lightly through her tears at the memory of Spike decking Tara’s father and carrying him out of the mansion like a sack of potatoes … rotten potatoes.
 
“Willow, I’m going to fix it. I’m going to get Tara back … Tara loves you so much – you guys were so happy,” Buffy said softly, looking into Willow’s eyes and holding both her friend’s hands in hers. Buffy’s brow furrowed as she looked at Willow – she could’ve sworn she saw … something – something like recognition or understanding pass across Willow’s face.
 
“You loved Tara, too – I think you two were soul mates …” Buffy continued, watching Willow’s face closely, and then she was sure she saw it – Willow definitely focused on her, actually saw her, for the briefest of moments.
 
“I need your help, though – I need D’Hoffryn’s talisman. Do you still have it? I need it to get Tara back,” Buffy told her. “Someone made a vengeance wish and I need to try and reverse it to get Tara back. I figured I could start at the top, right? You know me – jump in with both feet, leap before I look and all that.”
 
For the first time since Buffy had been there, Willow moved her head. She lifted her chin and tilted her head from side to side slowly as if trying to show Buffy something. Buffy looked up at what Willow was looking at above them, but didn’t see anything but a cloudy sky with a few patches of blue peeking through. Willow lowered her head and barely shook it just once, then tilted her chin up again; then Buffy saw it – a chain around her neck. Buffy reached out and pulled the necklace from under Willow’s gown, there was a medallion on it – D’Hoffryn’s talisman.
 
Buffy unhooked the chain from around Willow’s neck, then took her own necklace off – the one that held the cross that Angel had given her so many years ago, and traded with her friend.


 
“Thank you…” Buffy whispered as she hooked the necklace that held D’Hoffryn’s talisman around her own neck. Tears leaked from the corners of Willow’s eyes, but her expression went back to the blank stare that she’d had since Buffy and Dawn arrived – the blank stare Buffy assumed she’d had since losing not only Tara but Kennedy, as well. “I promise that I’ll get Tara back for you … I promise with all my heart,” Buffy whispered as she leaned her forehead against Willow’s and took her friend’s hands back in hers. “I promise I’ll fix it, Wills.”
 
**~**
 
“Where to now?” Dawn asked when they got back in the car after spending the better part of three hours with Willow. In all that time they’d spent with her, Willow had only seem cognizant of her surroundings for that brief moment in time when she showed Buffy the talisman. It was heartbreaking for Buffy to see her friend turned into that. Buffy thought that being trapped in catatonia was perhaps worse than death, especially for someone as intelligent as Willow. Taking her mind away was perhaps the worst thing that could have happened to her friend.
 
Buffy took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she looked at the talisman hanging from the chain around her neck. “I guess we need a witch to help us … I wonder if the Halliwell sisters still live in San Francisco,” Buffy suggested.
 
“Who?”
 
“The Halliwells … you know, The Charmed Ones? Piper, Phoebe, and Paige … ‘the power of three will set us free’?” Buffy clarified.


 
“Buffy, you do know that’s just a TV show … they aren’t really witches, those women are actresses…” Dawn informed her, not 100% sure if Buffy was kidding or not.
 
“Are you sure? ‘Cos I thought that was one of those reality TV shows. Did you see how much weight Piper gained after having Chris? I mean, if that’s not reality, what is?” Buffy insisted. “And she nearly died having him - it was like déjà vu all over again! Heck, he was half Whitelighter, you’d think he would’ve just orbed out.”
 
“Orbed? Whitelighter?” Dawn questioned, she’d never actually watched that show very much.
 
“Yeah – see, Piper married her Whitelighter, Leo – even though it was forbidden … Whitelighters are like Guardian Angels and they can orb in and out – go up to the Powers and come back down; of course they called it going to the ‘Elders’, but po-ta-to, pa-ta-to. They pose as like normal people to keep an eye on their charges … Leo posed as a handyman …” Buffy’s voice trailed off as pieces of a puzzle clicked into place in her mind.
 
“Oh my God! Guardian Angels pose as normal people in your life … like nurses and … and bed and breakfasters … I knew she looked familiar!”
 
“Who? Piper? I thought Leo was the Whitelighter ...” Dawn questioned, trying to follow Buffy’s ramblings.
 
“No! Wanda!” Buffy clarified.
 
“Wanda’s a witch and John’s a Whitelighter?” Dawn guessed – still not understanding Buffy’s train of thought.
 
“No! Wanda’s a Guardian Angel! She … she was at the hospital when I had the twins … when I was in a coma and then later when Dani was so sick … she was there the whole time! God, why didn’t I remember that?! And then this morning she was talking about following my heart and lost souls and building bridges …”
 
“She builds bridges? What, like the Golden Gate?”
 
“No … well, I don’t think so – bridges like … like over troubled waters,” Buffy explained. “Go back to the lodge … I need to talk to her again.”
 
**~**
 
Buffy ran from the parking lot into the lodge … she and Dawn had checked out earlier, assuming they wouldn’t be back after their visit with Willow. Inside the B&B, Buffy headed for the kitchen – Wanda always seemed to be in there fixing something for someone …
 
A woman Buffy didn’t recognize was kneading some dough on a marble-topped table in the center of the kitchen and she looked up when Buffy barged in. “Buffy – did you forget something, dear?” the woman asked with a soft smile.
 
“Uhhh … do I know you?” Buffy questioned, stopping just inside the doorway.

 

“Are you alright, dear? You just checked out a few hours ago – I ran your credit card and John helped you out to your car with your bags…” the woman clarified.
 
“You … you ran the credit card? You’re Wanda?” Buffy asked with confusion – this was not the person that had done all that this morning.
 
“Of course, dear … Do you need the room back? We haven’t cleaned it yet, but I can get right on it if you need it back for the night,” Wanda offered, moving to the sink to wash her hands.
 
Buffy let out a long breath. Wanda was gone … her Wanda, her Guardian Angel; apparently she’d delivered the message and had gone wherever Guardian Angels go to relax, maybe to Maldives or Bali or somewhere equally warm and paradisey.
 
“No … that’s ok. Thanks anyway,” Buffy sighed before backing out of the kitchen and heading back out to the car.
 
“Well?” Dawn asked when Buffy climbed back into the car.
 
“She’s gone …” Buffy explained tiredly. “Do you know any real witches that can help us?”
 
“Maybe one … but I’m not sure it’s such a good idea,” Dawn replied hesitantly.
 
“Well, good idea or not – it’s one idea more than I have,” Buffy told her. The thought of the witches at the coven in Canada crossed Buffy’s mind again – but without an invite, she wouldn’t even be able to see the safe house … she wasn’t really sure if it was even there in this world or if she could remember the way to it. “Who is it?” Buffy asked.
 
“Rack.”


 
Buffy looked at Dawn with alarm. “You know Rack?”
 
“Well … if you call literally dragging you home from his place night after night for almost a year knowing him …” Dawn explained with a shrug.
 
“Oh …” Buffy replied softly. “I’m sorry – I don’t remember …”
 
Dawn shrugged again. “Don’t worry, you didn’t remember then, either.”
 
“There must be more witches around … maybe a Wicca group or something,” Buffy suggested.
 
“You won’t find one with more power than Rack …” Dawn pointed out.
 
“Yeah, but he’s not very … trustworthy,” Buffy countered.
 
“True – but if you pay him enough, I think he’ll do what you want. As long as he gets what he wants, I think he’d do whatever you want him to,” Dawn told her sister.
 
“And you know how to find him? I assume he’s not in Sunnydale anymore – not much clientele left there unless he’s dealing with ghosts now.”
 
“Last I heard, he went to L.A.” Dawn offered. “I can’t find him, Willow had to help me – but you can – or you always could.”
 
Buffy drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Ok, let’s go back to L.A.” she said at last, pulling her seatbelt across her body and clicking it in place.
 
Dawn chuckled softly and shook her head as she put the car in reverse to back out of the parking space. “What’s funny?” Buffy asked.
 
“Just you and the seatbelt … you never used to wear seatbelts, you said you were the Slayer and a ‘little car crash wouldn’t hurt you’…” Dawn explained.
 
“Yeah, well, I didn’t have three kids then, either. One of which won’t let you even sit in a car without putting your seatbelt on or ride a bike without a helmet or roller stake without knee and elbow pads …” Buffy defended.
 
“Or say bad words …” Dawn added.
 
“Or say bad words … at least not without adding to her Maserati fund…” Buffy agreed with an eye roll.

 
**~**
 
Despite Buffy’s best efforts to stay awake and keep Dawn company while she drove them back to L.A., the lack of sleep over the previous days finally overtook her resolve and Dawn insisted Buffy just put the seat back and get some rest – Dawn would be fine driving with the radio for company, and Buffy acquiesced.
 
Buffy jumped up from the cold sand floor of the spider pit of hell and held the scythe at the ready … but no spiders appeared. “I guess they haven’t restocked yet. Maybe FedEx doesn’t deliver here,” Buffy mused as she began walking towards the wall of the crater. Buffy climbed up and out of the pit then back down the other side and began making her way towards Spike’s cave, keeping a careful eye out for the flying werewolves, but didn’t see any of those either.
 
Buffy looked around one more time before dropping down to her knees in front of the entrance to Spike’s cave and laying the scythe down so she could roll the boulder out of the doorway, but she still didn’t see any threats. She had just called Spike’s name and began to push the boulder away from the opening when she was hit from above and knocked down from her knees flat onto her stomach. Buffy screamed out when she felt the claws of one of the werewolves dig into the flesh of her thighs and back. Buffy reached for the scythe, but she had no leverage to swing it pinned down on the ground. Buffy tried to push up with her arms, to roll over or somehow get some room to fight when she was hit and knocked down again – a second werewolf had joined the attack. She could hear them growling at each other, their breath was hot against the back of her neck and slimy drool dripped from their jaws and ran down her cheek.


 
Buffy tried to roll over or push up, but every time she tried to move, she felt eight sets of claws dig deeper into her flesh and the creatures turned their attention from each other back to her. “Spike!” Buffy screamed, not even knowing if he was in the cave or, if he was, if he would be in any condition to help her. “Spike!” she screamed again, lifting her head slightly so her voice would hopefully carry into the cave rather than be drowned out by the incessant wind.
 
When she lifted her head, one of the werewolves growled deeply and swatted the side of her head with powerful paw, cutting her face with its razor-sharp, talon-like claws. Buffy felt like her brain rattled inside her skull and the whole red world began to tilt slightly on its axis. The last thing she remembered before she passed out was an incensed growl that sounded even deeper and angrier and meaner than the werewolves as it passed over her … Spike.
 
“Buffy! Buffy, wake up!” Dawn screamed, shaking her sister in the seat next to her. She’d gotten worried when Buffy started screaming Spike’s name, then the blood began flowing and Dawn pulled off to the side of the road quickly so she could focus on her sister.
 
“Buffy!” Dawn repeated as Buffy moaned and put a hand to her head, trying to stop the pain and dizziness.
 
“Buffy, are you awake? Are you here?” she asked, still shaking her sister.
 
“Yeah … I’m here,” Buffy moaned, trying to hold her head still with both hands so Dawn wouldn’t shake her brains out of her ears, which she thought was a distinct possibility.
 
“What happened?” Dawn asked, releasing her hold on Buffy’s shoulder and reaching in the back seat to find something to use to quell the blood from pouring out of four long gashes on Buffy’s face.
 
“Werewolves …” Buffy explained simply. “…have to get back … Spike.”
 
“No…no, no, no,” Dawn half-begged, half-demanded.
 
“Hand me the scythe,” Buffy requested, ignoring Dawn’s protest.
 
“Buffy, please …”
 
“Dawn, I have to go back now! Spike’s all alone against two of them! Hand me the scythe so I can heal,” Buffy insisted. “Then get a tranq dart and some of those sleeping pills.” Buffy had insisted that they buy several loaded tranq darts as soon as they got to L.A. and bring several of her prescriptions for sleeping pills with them, just in case …
 
Dawn sighed and pulled the scythe from the back floorboard then got out of the car and went to the trunk to retrieve the other items that Buffy wanted. Buffy closed her eyes and held the scythe in both hands. As the magic ‘circuit’ was completed, Buffy could feel the power of the scythe flow through her body and stop the spinning in her head, then slowly begin to heal the cuts, gashes, and scratches on her body. Buffy released the scythe from one hand, breaking the magical circuit … she didn’t know how many times she could do that, how much power was left in the scythe, and she didn’t want to use it all up on small, inconsequential injuries.
 
Dawn returned from the back of the car and sat down heavily behind the wheel, holding out the pills and tranq dart to Buffy. “At least wait until I can get us somewhere safer than the side of the interstate …” Dawn requested.
 
“No time … you drive – get off at the next exit. Do you have the stimulant?” Buffy asked and Dawn held up a hypodermic needle with three cc’s of clear liquid in it – a stimulant to counteract the effects of the tranquilizers, just in case it became imperative to wake Buffy up.


 
“Ok – don’t use that unless I’m on the brink of death … I mean it, brink of death!” Buffy instructed her and Dawn nodded and rolled her eyes; they’d been over this before more than once.
 
Buffy stabbed the tranq dart into her thigh then quickly downed three of the sleeping pills before her vision started to blur and she felt herself lose control of her muscles. She heard Dawn start the car again and felt them moving … then she opened her eyes and she was back on the floor of the spider pit, with the cold wind whipping around her and blasting her skin with sand.
 
Buffy jumped up, the scythe in her hand, and began running … she cleared the crater in record time, sliding down her now well worn path on the outside of the rim like a huge Slip-N-Slide … only without the water and with cold sand and hard rocks instead of smooth plastic.
 
Buffy ran as fast as she could towards Spike’s cave … praying, not to God, but to Wanda, her Guardian Angel, that Spike was alright.
 
“Spike!” she screamed as she rounded the last bend, scythe at the ready, prepared for the fight to get Spike away from the werewolves. Buffy heard a deep, primal growl before she could even see what had happened to Spike and it made her heart jump with fear - was she too late? Buffy stopped short when she saw the carnage near the cave entrance, her eyes wide with shock at the amount of blood that covered the ground, the wall of the crater, and Spike.

 

“Oh my God…” Buffy muttered, taking in the scene. Spike was crouched over one of the werewolves growling and gnawing at the beast’s neck – the other werewolf appeared to be scattered in dozens of pieces all over the ground. Spike looked up from his prey, his mouth, his face, his whole body was covered in blood – the gold eyes of the demon narrowed at Buffy and he growled again … warning her off his bounty.
 
“I guess you have it under control…” Buffy quipped, trying to sound casual and unafraid.
 
Spike growled again before standing up and moving towards her … his movements were slow and deliberate, the demon's eyes locked onto hers – Buffy realized immediately that he was stalking her. He was like a wild animal stalking its prey … and she was the prey. Back in their normal life, Buffy would’ve found the way he was moving sexy … it was that slow, graceful gait he used when he was trying to really look his sexiest … but this wasn’t sexy, this was deadly.
 
“Spike … it’s me – it’s Buffy,” Buffy tried to sound reassuring as she turned and started sliding her feet sideways, moving slowly towards the entrance of the cave – her scythe still raised and at the ready, but she already knew that it would have no effect on him except, perhaps, to slow him down if he attacked.
 
“Slayer…” Spike growled her moniker as he continued to stalk slowly towards her.
 
“Wife …” Buffy amended. “Mother of your children? Soul mate? Love of your life?” Buffy offered as she continued to move slowly away from him and towards the cave entrance – it was only a few feet away now … if she could just get a little closer, maybe she could dive through the opening fast enough …
 
“Slayer…” Spike growled again as his eyes traveled up and down her body, sizing her up.
 
Buffy lowered the scythe and held it up perpendicular to her body as she turned quickly and dove towards the entrance to the cave, sending the scythe in ahead of her. Buffy made it halfway through the opening, then started scrambling on her elbows, hips, and stomach to get the rest of the way in, but Spike was faster and he grabbed her feet before she could get all the way in and began dragging her back out.
 
As Spike began pulling her out of the cave, Buffy reached for the scythe that she’d tossed in ahead of her but couldn’t reach it. Buffy held her arms out perpendicular to her body and braced them against the sides of the cave just inside the opening which stopped Spike from pulling her out further, at least momentarily. She kicked at her husband with her feet as he continued to tug on her legs with all his strength to pull her back out of the relative safety of the cave. She could hear and feel her boots landing on his face and neck, but that seemed to just incense him more. With one final, desperate growl, Spike pulled with everything he had and Buffy slipped out of the entrance of the cave, her arms no match against his full strength.
 
Buffy turned in Spike’s grasp and continued kicking at his face, chest, and hands as he tried to get a new grip on her. Buffy kicked with both feet and they both landed solidly on Spike’s chest, sending him stumbling back away from her. Buffy had a split second to decide … did she try to crawl back into the cave or stay and fight barehanded…
 
Buffy put her hands on the ground on either side of her head and flipped her body up – landing on her feet, her fists at the ready for Spike’s attack.
 
Spike came at her fast, swinging hard at her face, but Buffy ducked quickly and swung a leg out, catching Spike in the ankles and knocking him to the ground. Buffy pounced on him, pinning his hands down on either side of his head with hers and pressing her hips down hard against his thighs, hopefully down far enough to keep him from kicking her off.
 
“Spike!” Buffy yelled, her face directly above his as he struggled to get free of her grip. “Spike! Stop!”
 
Spike growled again and screamed out with effort as he tried to kick his legs up and flip her over his head, but Buffy pressed down harder with her hips and held him down firmly. “Spike, stop it! It’s Buffy … Spike, please!” Buffy begged him as she struggled to hold him still.
 
“Slayer wants ta play, does she? Want a little bit of ole Spike ‘fore he drains her sweet blood … I bet there’s only one thing better than killing a Slayer…and that would be fuckin' one,” Spike taunted as he continued to struggle to get free of her grasp.
 
Spike continued lifting his hips and kicking his legs up, which made Buffy slide further up his thighs until her hips were over his. She kept sliding back to keep him from kicking her off, but each time he kicked up with his legs, she slid forward, toward his hips.
 
“Gets me hard just thinkin’ ‘bout what a sweet, tight quim you’d have …” Spike continued. “Can you feel me against you, Slayer – can you imagine how that would feel pumping into you? You know you want it … Come on. I can feel it – I can smell it, Slayer. You know you wanna dance.”
 
“Say it's true. Say I do want to…” Buffy breathed, leaning her face down so her lips were nearly touching his, her green eyes locked onto the amber eyes of the demon.
 
Spike stuck his tongue out from between his fangs and licked a slow line across her lips. “You’d love to fuck a vamp, wouldn’t you?” Spike breathed against her lips. “Do it. Give it to me good, Slayer …”
 
Buffy suddenly dropped her mouth onto his in a frantic kiss, she pressed her hips down against his erection and released her hold on his hands. Buffy’s tongue probed into Spike’s mouth, she swirled it to one side and sliced it on a razor-sharp fang and her blood trickled into his mouth as she continued to kiss him with unbridled passion. She was sure that the taste of her blood, the feel of her lips on his, of her body pressing against him, would bring Spike, her Spike, back.
 
Spike wrapped his arms around her back when she released him and a deep rumbling growl emanated from his core when her blood touched his tongue, sending him spiraling even further out of control. Spike flipped them over and ripped at her clothes with his fangs and hands, shredding Buffy’s shirt and bra before tearing at her jeans. Buffy tugged at Spike’s shirt … actually, it was William’s shirt, she was sure, but this wasn’t William she was with by any stretch of the imagination. Buffy popped all the buttons down the front of his shirt until her hands found the hard muscles of Spike’s chest. She slid her hands down his hard body, relishing the feeling of his muscles as they flexed and quivered under her touch, until she found the waistband of his pants and ripped them open, as well, freeing his cock from its confines.
 
Spike moaned as Buffy wrapped her hand around his hard-on and stroked him hard and fast, bringing him to climax almost immediately. Spike’s cum shot out and covered Buffy’s stomach and chest with its slippery wetness as Buffy continued squeezing and pumping his rod fiercely.
 
“Bloody hell…” Spike moaned as his head lolled back and his eyes closed while his cum covered her body … he couldn’t remember anything feeling that good in … forever – and that was just her hand! What would her sweet, hot quim be like?
 
Buffy dipped two fingers in the cum on her body and lifted them up to his lips. Spike took her fingers into his mouth and sucked his cum from them, swirling his tongue around and around, making love to her digits as he licked them clean.
 
“Fuck me…” Buffy demanded when he released her fingers, laying back and raising her ass up off the cold sand so Spike could pull what was left of her jeans off her body.
 
Spike cocked a brow at her. “Don’t ask fer much, do ya, Slayer?”
 
“Nothing you can’t handle …” Buffy assured him, reaching up and wrapping one arm around his neck and pulling him down atop her as she slid one hand between them and guided his still hard cock into her dripping pussy.
 
“Bloody hell…” Spike muttered as he pressed into her. Her tight, hot hole wrapped around his thick cock and pulled him deep into her. He'd never felt anything as divine as her pussy as it engulfed his rock-hard staff, quivering and trembling around him as he entered her. She was hot and wet and the smell of adrenaline and fear from the fight mingled with her passion and yearning for the dance – the combination of it all was nearly overwhelming for him. It was all Spike could do to keep from shooting another load into her right then, but there was more to be had, and he knew it. He was right, fucking a Slayer was better than killing one.
 
Buffy gasped in pleasure as Spike’s rod pressed into her throbbing pussy, lifting her hips up to meet his and wrapping her legs around his hard body, she pulled him against her with all her strength as a small orgasm washed over her. It seemed like it had been forever since they’d been together in the butterfly soul-paradise … she wanted him as badly as he wanted her, even if he didn’t know who she was yet.
 
“Uh-uh … you don’t get to control me…” Spike objected, pulling Buffy’s legs from around his waist and lifting them up, folding her nearly in half and hooking her knees over his shoulders - opening her completely up to him.
 
Buffy squeezed his cock with her pussy walls until Spike gasped. “You want to dance with a Slayer, you better learn the rules…” Buffy told him as she pulled his face down towards hers until he could feel her breath against his lips. “Rule number one … I decide who’s in charge.”
 
Spike narrowed his golden eyes at her and began moving his hips ever so slightly against her. “You Slayers always think being in charge is so bloody wonderful … fine – ‘ave at it then,” Spike informed her, unhooking her legs from his shoulders, wrapping his arms around her, and flipping them over in one fast move so she was on top.
 
“I didn’t say I wanted to be in charge, I said I decide who’s in charge…” Buffy clarified as she clung to him and rolled them over again, putting Spike back on top.
 
“So …” Spike started as he lifted her legs back up to his shoulders and pressed into until his shaft was buried in her heat to the hilt. “…how many more rules do you ‘ave?”
 
“A few …” Buffy murmured as she pulled his face back down to hers. “Kiss me and I’ll tell you the rest …”
 
Spike dropped his mouth down onto hers and captured her lips with his. Buffy knew his fangs were only a breath away from cutting her lips, but she didn’t hold back, parting her lips and welcoming his tongue into her mouth. Buffy wrapped her own tongue around his as he explored her – his tongue and cock both buried in her wet heat. When Spike broke the kiss, Buffy whispered, “Rule number two … Wet towels go in the hamper; not on the floor.”
 
“Pfffttt…” Spike snorted, grinding his hips down against her, then leaning down and dropping another kiss on her lips.
 
 “No public nudity – keep your privates private …” Buffy offered next.
 
“Oh, p-leease! Where did you get these Nancy rules, Slayer? From ‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’?” Spike taunted as he pulled out and began pressing into her again.
 
Spike leaned down and kissed her again as he started moving his hips against her harder and faster. “No hurting another person. No yelling, screaming, spell casting, name calling or curses on anyone's mother,” Buffy recited another of her house rules … it was becoming harder and harder for her to remember them, though.
 
“You Slayers are all balmy birds … goody-two-shoes, you are,” Spike informed her before dropping down and ravishing her mouth again until she had to push his lips off hers in order to breathe.
 
“Don’t feed sugar and caffeine to the children after five pm…” Buffy gasped out … shortening the rule in order to save oxygen.
 
“I can take care of those pesky children for ya, Slayer…” Spike offered before dropping down and sucking her bottom lip into his mouth, then grazing it with one fang and drawing blood. Spike sucked her sweet Slayer blood from her lip as his cock ploughed into her faster, deeper, and harder.
 
“Yes! Fuck me! God, Spike … YESSSS!” Buffy screamed as he ground down slowly on her clit with his pubic bone then went back to hard and fast strokes.
 
“That’s the rule I was waitin’ for …” Spike smirked as he pushed her legs off his shoulders and spread her thighs even wider. “Beg me for it, Slayer…” Spike demanded as he fucked her with a primal passion and barbarity only a vampire and Slayer could desire and hunger for.
 
“Yes! Yes! Fuck me! Spike … Fuck yessss!” Buffy screamed as he drove her into the cold, red sand. She’d long ago forgotten about werewolves and house rules … she’d even forgotten that Spike didn’t know who she was; her body had taken the control away from her mind and all she could do now was ride the wave of pleasure it was carrying her away on. Buffy’s body tensed as the waves of bliss that had been building started crashing down on her – Spike’s body on top of her, totally in charge, completely in control of her; his deep voice demanding everything of her - it all combined to send her over the edge. A scream started building in Buffy’s core – rising through her body, desperate to find an escape lest it explode within her. Buffy’s scream of release and pleasure echoed across the barren wasteland as her whole body quivered and trembled under Spike and her sugar walls tightened and quaked around his shaft, demanding his cum.
 
“Such an animal, you are! A bloody, fucking beast! Just like me, you are, Slayer … a demon at your core! Take it all, Slayer … take it … Oh, fuck! Take it!” Spike screamed at her as he felt his cum boiling up from his balls, ready to erupt like a blaze of molten lava.
 
“Only thing better than killing a Slayer is … fucking one … while … you … kill … ‘er…” Spike gasped out as he slammed his cock into her again and again before leaning down and sinking his fangs into her neck. Spike’s cum exploded into Buffy’s tight channel as her blood flowed into his mouth and down his throat like manna from heaven. Spike couldn’t remember experiencing anything as ironically sweet as this … a Slayer’s blood, hot and full of the passion of her climax, filling him as his cum filled her – it was intoxicating, exhilarating beyond anything he’d ever felt before.
 
Spike’s fangs piercing her skin sent Buffy back up the tidal wave of bliss, and the scream that had begun to fade erupted from her throat again as she raced across the ocean of pleasure on a wave so high and so strong that she could scarcely see the earth below her… but where was Spike? Buffy looked around as she surfed atop the wave, but Spike wasn’t there with her.
 
Suddenly, the crystal blue water that she’d been riding on turned blood-red. Buffy touched her neck and her hand came back covered in blood, as well, making Buffy’s heart race with alarm as she screamed Spike’s name. Confusion turned to fear as Buffy realized too late what was happening, that Spike’s love, his consciousness, his soul, had been driven so deep into hiding from the guilt and anguish of the trials that all that was left was the vampire – the demon … the monster.  Not even she could reach him now … not even her love could touch the man; the demon was all that remained.
 
“William ...” she cried as the wave she’d been riding atop crashed down, forcing her under the blood-red ocean, taking her breath and smashing her against the sharp, jagged rocks below.  Buffy tried in vain to push him off her as the faces of their children flashed before her eyes … their unfulfilled potential crashed on the rocks along with Buffy as she realized that she’d made a terrible mistake thinking that Spike would come back to himself in her arms. She could feel the bridge that Wanda had promised would guide her home, lead her back to her family and the life she once knew, crumbling under her feet – the man she loved was gone, all that remained was the demon and the demon demanded blood – Slayer blood.

 

“Dawn…” she moaned as the red she was drowning in faded to black and everything suddenly fell deathly still and perfectly quiet …
 
**~**

{{Click here to hear "Love Can Build a Bridge” by Cher, Chrissie Hynde, Neneh Cherry & Eric Clapton on YouTube   }}


(Originally by The Judds)


I'd gladly walk across the desert
with no shoes upon my feet
To share with you the last bite
of bread I had to eat

I would swim out to save you
In your sea of broken dreams
When all your hopes are sinking
Let me show you what love means

Love can build a bridge
Between your heart and mine
Love can build a bridge
Don't you think it's time

I would whisper love so loudly
Every heart would understand
That love and only love
Can join the tribes of man

I would give my heart's desires
So that you might see
The first step is to realize
That it all begins with you and me

When we stand together
It's our finest hour
We can do anything, anything
If we keep believing in the power

Love can build a bridge
Between your heat and mine
Love can build a bridge
Don't you think it's time

Don't you think it's time

End Notes:
TBC .... Can Dawn wake Buffy up in time and heal her with the Scythe or will she join Spike in purgatory for real?
You'll Never Walk Alone by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy goes on a quest to find out what the tribunal has done to SpikeÂ’s soul, but can anything be done to delay his judgment day?
**
Music Referenced:
You'll Never Walk Alone, Elvis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN8oN8I3lrk
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!


Sunday, February 19th, 2005:


Buffy awoke to Dawn’s panicked screams. The scythe was in her hands as they sat in the rental car, which Dawn had parked in the parking lot of a Speedway gas station, just off the interstate.



“Buffy! Buffy are you awake? Please wake up!” Dawn yelled as she tried to stem the bleeding from the wound on Buffy’s neck and keep Buffy’s hands on the scythe to try and heal her sister. She’d injected her with the stimulant to counter the tranquilizer a few minutes ago, as soon as Buffy started bleeding profusely from the wound on her neck.



“Dawn…” Buffy moaned again, opening her eyes and trying to fight the fatigue and dizziness from the loss of blood and drugs rushing through her body.



“I’m right here – hold the scythe, Buffy! You’re hurt! You’re bleeding!” Dawn advised, the panic in her voice just barely contained.



“Ok…I think I’m alright,” Buffy told Dawn as she closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and held tightly to the scythe until she could feel the magic flowing through her and healing her wound.



“What happened? Another werewolf?” Dawn asked as the bleeding stopped and the bite marks on her neck began to heal over.



“Spike…” Buffy answered simply, never opening her eyes.



“What!? Your husband did that?” Dawn asked incredulously.



Buffy let out a long breath and opened her eyes. “He wasn’t my husband … something’s happened … he’s …” Buffy shook her head and looked down at her clothes, which were drenched in blood. “They’ve broken him … they’ve shattered his soul,” Buffy offered in Spike’s defense as tears threatened her eyes and she closed them again. “There was no trace of the man there … only the demon …”



“I’m sorry…” Dawn offered softly. “Are you ok now?”



“Yeah … I think so,” Buffy assured her. “Let’s … let’s just go. I need to get back in and find out what the fuck they’ve done to him – we need to get back to L.A. and back to the tribunal.”



Dawn sat back and re-buckled her seatbelt before starting the car and heading back towards the interstate. “How are you going to get back in without Doyle?” Dawn asked as she drove. “How will you open the portal?”



“We have the Key …” Buffy offered with a small smile, before leaning her head back on the head rest and closing her eyes, trying to stop the tears that were threatening to overtake her. Was Spike … her Spike, gone forever? Could she do anything to get him back? Had his soul been taken away – cast into hell, or perhaps, if Lilah had done as she said she would, sent to heaven, so all that was left in limbo was the demon? She had to know … she had to know whether she had any chance of getting Spike back now.



**~**



Stopping at a blood bank under the pretense of giving blood and then grabbing the plastic IV bags filled with Dawn’s blood and bolting, had netted them a ‘Key’ that would open the Gateway for Lost Souls. The girls divided the blood up into some small plastic containers that they bought at the Dollar Store and then headed underground to the gateway.



“Ok ...” Buffy started, opening one of the containers. “I assume they’ll eject me back here – hopefully not before I can get to talk to the tribunal again. If I’m wrong and I don’t come back out in a half-hour, then go to the Hyperion and wait and I’ll find you there, ok?”



Dawn bit her bottom lip and nodded. “Be careful,” she advised Buffy before giving her sister a hug and backing away from the portal.



“That’s my middle name…” Buffy quipped with a small smile before pouring the blood onto the portal. The portal opened with a sudden flash of light; Buffy looked back at Dawn one more time and gave her a ‘thumbs up’ before stepping through and into the world of the Higher Beings.


Buffy walked slowly and silently down the long hallway that she’d walked before, unsure if anyone monitored the portal or the hallway or if there were any guards she might have to fight to proceed to the tribunal, but she didn’t see or hear anything or anyone as she walked further and further down the apparently endless hall. Buffy was just starting to wonder if she’d be able to find the place she’d been before without the aid of the Oracles when Lilah stepped out from behind one of the many archways that lined the endless path.


“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Lilah informed her, crossing her arms over her chest.



“What the hell happened to Spike? What did you do to him? Did you send his soul … away?” Buffy demanded angrily, ignoring Lilah’s protest as she came within arm’s reach of the lawyer.


Lilah held her hands up as if in surrender. “I didn’t do anything to him; I’m just an advisor. His soul’s still where it always was, though.”


“Then what the hell did they do to him?” Buffy demanded again, her hands going to her hips.


“The same thing they’ve been doing – holding his trials, showing him his crimes, asking for his atonements …” Lilah offered.


“I think the last one was … ummm…” Lilah started, holding her hand out. Her paper-thin computer appeared and she touched the screen a few times then looked back up at Buffy. “Oh, yeah … attempted rape of a Slayer after she broke off relations with him …”



The disturbing scene from the other life, the other dimension of Spike forcing himself on Buffy and Buffy fighting him off flashed through Buffy’s mind and her stomach knotted. She knew that as much as that frightened and angered her, it tore Spike up after he’d done it, so much so that he traveled thousands of miles and faced who knew what to win his soul back. Seeing that again, reliving it, must’ve been the final straw that drove him over the edge … that sent his soul scurrying for cover and left the demon in control in the hell-limbo dimension.




“I thought you were going to fix that so they could see the good, too! What happened to that?” Buffy asked angrily.


“I said I would try … and I did try – but whatever mojo was used to alter your dimension altered it all the way to the top. All that exists on any of the records is the bad … the rest is just … gone – erased from all the memory banks,” Lilah explained with a shrug. “I set it up to transfer your good deeds to his account, but that’s all I could do.”


“Then how do you know about it? How do you know history was altered?” Buffy asked suspiciously.


Lilah shrugged again. “I was probably elsewhere … in some other dimension perhaps, when the spell was cast…”


“Or you had something to do with it…” Buffy accused.





Lilah rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You really have no idea how much I hate Angel, do you? He’s been a thorn in my side in every dimension he’s in! There’s no way I would go to all this trouble just to make him out to be a big hero, saving the world and all that crap – putting him first in line for the Shanshu.” Lilah snorted softly and rolled her eyes again. “Trust me … I had nothing to do with it.”


Buffy narrowed her eyes and studied the lawyer a moment. “But you know who did…”


Lilah shrugged again. “So do you – a vengeance demon.”


“Do they have that much power?” Buffy questioned. “To reach all the way up here? This is ‘up’ isn’t it?”


Lilah sighed. “More like … sideways - parallel,” Lilah advised before answering her other question. “If they worded the wish exactly right … maybe – I've never seen it happen before, but anything's possible. They’d have to know exactly how to word it … I mean, exactly. It would have to be someone with lots of experience with wishes…”


“Like a vengeance demon …” Buffy offered.


“Actually, vengeance demons can’t wreak vengeance all on their own, they have to have a human to help them – ‘the human, or injured party, must make the wish; the vengeance demon can then choose to grant the wish – or not’. Rule 0960.959.95V,” Lilah clarified.


“Do you have a rule for everything?” Buffy asked cynically.


“Of course … What, you think they stopped at ten?” Lilah snorted sarcastically.


Buffy rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest as she considered what Lilah said. “So, a human has to make the wish … one vengeance demon can’t wish to another one?”


“Against the rules…”


“Can I counter the wish and wish it away?” Buffy wondered.


“If you can find a vengeance demon that will grant your wish – I suppose you could, but they choose whether or not to grant a wish, just making the wish doesn’t make it come true … otherwise there would be complete chaos,” Lilah informed her. “Now, if you could find a Genie and release it, then they must grant you three wishes, Rule 0850.849.56G … but Genies are historically tricksters – they grant wishes, but they generally don’t come out the way you intended.”


“What do you mean?” Buffy asked the lawyer.


“Well, say your mother was sick and you wished that your mother was no longer sick … the Genie would most likely have your mother die, thus granting your wish of her no longer being sick, but not in the way you intended. That’s a classic,” Lilah snickered lightly at the thought.



“That’s just wrong,” Buffy protested.


Lilah shrugged. “Just the way it is. Vengeance demons can do the same thing, by the way … there’s no guarantee that your wish will come out exactly as you intend unless you are extremely specific … and I mean extremely specific and have it worded perfectly.”


Buffy rolled her eyes. “So, how do I fix it?”


“The best way would be to find the demon that granted the wish and destroy their power center … of course, that only reverses the last wish they granted – so if they granted someone else’s wish since the one you want reversed, then even that won’t help you,” Lilah provided.


“That’s actually a new rule, 2005.598.14V … ‘only the last wish granted will be reversed upon the destruction of a vengeance demon’s power center.’ We had a big problem with the old way when all the wishes got reversed, it sent all kinds of dimensions and realities crashing into each other … it was a big mess. It took weeks to straighten them all out last time.”


“Swell…” Buffy moaned. “So what you’re saying is, I’m screwed.”


“Not as screwed as you were earlier by Spike – he’s very impressive, by the way, I can see why you want him back … but yeah, you’re screwed,” Lilah verified with a nod.


“You were watching us?!” Buffy asked, incredulous, throwing her arms out from her sides in protest.


“Well, duh! Gotta have something to break up the monotony around here!” Lilah snorted. “What did you expect? Privacy out there in the open? Please!”


Buffy sighed, rolled her eyes and put her hands back on her hips. “I hope you enjoyed him almost killing me …”


“Yeah, it was just getting good there when you disappeared,” Lilah snickered. “You should’ve seen the look on his face when you were just gone … you left him completely dazed and confused. It was really … priceless.”


“You’re a piece of work …” Buffy moaned, rolling her eyes again and tried to focus on something productive. “Ok … so do you have any other ideas about how I can fix this and put everything back?”


“Well, I know a couple, but you aren’t gonna like them – they involve giving up your first born to Gamangi demons or Sacatari Brethern eating your children’s brains with a ceremonial spoon…”


“You’re just full of fun facts and sunny suggestions,” Buffy intoned with a sigh. “What about D’Hoffryn? Does he have the power to reverse the wish?”


“The power? Yes. The inclination? Probably not,” Lilah answered with a shrug.


“How can I get some leverage on him?” Buffy questioned.


Lilah shook her head. “All he has is the company … his ‘girls’, as he calls them. They’re his family – he recruits and grooms each one personally.”


“I guess there’s no rule on nepotism, then…”


Lilah gave Buffy a sarcastic smile. “No, I guess not.”


**~**


When Buffy re-emerged from the Gateway for Lost Souls after talking to Lilah, Dawn wasn’t in the antechamber. There was a note and a white Swatch wristwatch that looked like it had angel wings coming out from the face on the floor just beyond the portal. Buffy picked up the note and read aloud, “Meet me at the Hyperion … it’s been two hours, you’re late! You need a watch!”




Buffy shook her head – time must move even differently in the … she didn’t know what to call it, the ‘Land of the Higher Beings’, than it did in limbo, she had only been gone a few minutes, she thought. Buffy sighed and buckled the watch on her wrist before heading out to find Dawn…she still had no real plan on how she was going to fix things. She wished with all her heart that she had Spike to talk to … to bounce ideas off of, get advice from … get support from. Tears stung her eyes as she walked through the sewers towards the hotel – what he must’ve been put through to drive his soul so deep that not even she could touch it. All alone in that cold, red world with nothing but ghosts and guilt for company … nothing to do but think about what he’d done and all that he’d lost.



“Spike…” Buffy cried as she splashed through the muck. “God, baby … I love you so much. Please, please, God, please,” Buffy begged as she trudged along, but unless rule number … ummp-teen hundred and eleven, got broken, Buffy knew that help from above … or wherever … wasn’t coming. She had to do this herself.



At the Hyperion, Buffy found Dawn waiting in the lobby of the abandoned hotel … all the previous inhabitants were now living elsewhere; working for Wolfram & Hart and living like normal people in normal houses, like she should be – but her normal house was at the bottom of a crater once called Sunnydale.



After Dawn gave Buffy a relived hug, she asked, “What happened? What’s next?”



Buffy sighed and plopped down on the round settee in the center of the room. Buffy leaned down and retrieved her legal pad from one of the bags that Dawn had brought in from the car and looked at her idea list.


D’Hoffryn – Get talisman and summon


Go back in time and kill Hallie


Find another vengeance demon and make my own wish


Go back in time and talk to Anya



Buffy thought about going back in time and talking to Anya, but she was relatively sure that what Lilah had told her was true, so she didn’t know how productive that would be and it would take more time … time that Spike didn’t have. If they were already up to the ‘attempted rape’ then time was definitely running short.


She crossed out the third idea of finding a vengeance demon and making her own wish – first of all, she doubted any vengeance demon would grant her a wish and second of all, if they did, if she didn’t word it just right, it could backfire.


She thought about going back in time and killing Hallie and that made her tingle inside … she would soooo love to kill Hallie. “Ok,” Buffy started, looking up from her list to Dawn. “What do you think would happen to the time warp loopy thing if I go back to 1881, after the new reality started, and killed Hallie? Or, more precisely, tortured her for information, then killed her?”



“Well…” Dawn started as she took Buffy’s pad and started drawing Hs and Bs representing Hallie and Buffy again, “…let’s see. Ok, she’s already changed reality so she’s already part of this reality, so if you go back now and kill her after that…” Dawn paused to think a few moments as she studied the little drawing she made on the paper. “I think that would only change things that Hallie had direct contact with after that point – like, if she had kids or invented something … or her kids invented something or did something that affected the world. I don’t think it would undo the wish or get Spike back.”



“But if I could get her to tell me who the vengeance demon was that granted the wish and if that demon hasn’t granted any more wishes since then … I might be able to find that demon and destroy their power center and reverse the wish,” Buffy clarified. “Right?”


“You don’t think Hallie’s a demon?” Dawn asked, slightly confused.


“No … I think she might be human,” Buffy supplied, before filling in for Dawn what Lilah had told her.


“So, you’re going to kill a human?” Dawn asked with raised brows. “Isn’t that like … against the rules?”


“Yeah, well, a great man once said, ‘rules are made to be broken’,” Buffy insisted. “‘You’re remembered for the rules you break.’”


“You’re quoting MacArthur now?” Dawn questioned.


“Oh … no, I was quoting Spike. You mean he stole that?” Buffy asked, shaking her head in disbelief.


Dawn rolled her eyes. “Well, at least he was well read,” she quipped before turning somber. “Seriously, you can’t really be thinking of killing a human, no matter what they’ve done. Think about the consequences … think about … think about what Spike’s going through now – do you really want to go through that one day?” Dawn warned.


“What am I supposed to do, Dawnie? Just let her get away with it? Just let her steal my family? Condemn Spike’s soul to hell? It’s not like I can call the police and have her arrested and punished, is it? I’m the only one that can deal with it – I’m the only one that can fix it,” Buffy defended.


Dawn gave Buffy a disapproving look. “You know, if she’s gone to all this trouble, and put this much thought into her plan, then it’s hard for me to believe that she hasn’t prepared for the possibility of you coming back in time and trying to get information out of her. I really don’t like the idea of going back in time and I'm not even sure how to do it. You never know what you can affect unintentionally, the smallest mistake could have catastrophic results – and I’m afraid that it won’t do any good, anyway.”


Buffy sighed and rubbed tiredly at her eyes. Of course Dawn was right about one thing – Hallie had thought this out really well. Buffy guessed she used all that time as a rat to her advantage. Who knew rats were so good at making plans while they ran on their exercise wheels and kept their butts in shape?


“Do me a favor – find out if Hallie … errr … Cecily and William had any kids and see if you can find out anything about what happened to them – I mean, did they stay married, get divorced, did he maybe kill her after a few months of wedded bliss … did Cecily suddenly disappear from the face of the earth…anything like that might help,” Buffy requested. Spike had asked her about that anyway … so it wouldn’t be a complete waste of time, even if she didn’t go back in time. “Then, see what you can find on how to summon D’Hoffryn with this do-hickey,” Buffy added, fingering the talisman around her neck.


“Sure … but can we get cleaned up some first, get some food, and some rest? I’m exhausted. I didn’t have a nice, wet dream where I almost got killed to refresh me today …” Dawn pointed out.


Buffy snorted a laugh. “Sure … sorry. Is there water and electric still working here?”


“Yeah – I checked it out while I was waiting. Angel must still be paying the bills here,” Dawn confirmed.


“Ok – let’s find a room … or two and order in some food. I hope Riley hasn’t canceled that credit card yet. Now that you mention it, I think I could eat a cow,” Buffy rubbed her empty stomach as she stood up then picked up their bags and the scythe and headed for the stairs.


“Which part?” Dawn asked, following Buffy towards the stairs.


“All of it…”


"Even the eyeballs?" Dawn asked with a smirk.


"Ewwww! Dawn! Gross much!?"


**~**

Monday, February 20th, 2005, early morning hours:


Buffy and Dawn had long ago finished the Chinese food that they’d ordered and Dawn had done as much research as she could on the various genealogy sites about Cecily and William Weckerly. Now, Buffy sat under the stars in the garden of the Hyperion alone, going over the notes she’d made about what Dawn had found out.


Cecily and William Weckerly had three children, two girls and a boy. Their names were Anne, Elizabeth, and William. Tears stung Buffy’s eyes as thoughts of Hallie raising what were rightfully her children bounced around her heart and cut gashes in her soul. Hallie had truly stolen everything – not only had she taken Buffy’s family away, she had kept them for herself – she even had the gall to name the youngest girl after Buffy. That was no accident, Buffy knew – Anne she could understand, that was William’s mother’s name; the son, of course, named for his father … but to name one Elizabeth, that was meant to cut Buffy to the core, and it did.



Dawn had tried to track what happened to their children; William Jr., the youngest child, she found, had died in World War I – he had been only seventeen, unmarried and had no children that she could find. Anne, the eldest, had married an American soldier and moved to the United States after the war … Dawn would have to try different sites tomorrow to get more information on her. Dawn could find no information on Elizabeth, the middle child – no death certificate, no marriage information … nothing. It was like she had just vanished. Buffy had no idea what that meant … she hoped that it wasn’t because Hallie had done something to the child that she’d named after the one person she was trying to hurt most in the world.



Cecily and William had remained married until William’s death. The records showed that William had died of ‘consumption’ in January of 1917; Dawn couldn’t find a death certificate for Cecily … at least not in the records in the U.K. If Cecily had moved to the United States or some other country, then that could explain the lack of a death certificate in England … or, Buffy thought, part of Hallie’s wish was to be immortal or perhaps she was turned back into a vengeance demon after William’s death.



Buffy picked up the fortune cookie that Dawn had left for her and opened it. Follow your heart, her fortune read. Buffy snorted a laugh through her tears – her heart was broken in a million pieces … which piece did she follow?



Buffy looked up at the stars above the garden – the moonless sky held few stars in L.A. because of all the lights of the city – not like in Sunnydale, but there were some to be seen and two familiar ones next to the Big Dipper held Buffy’s attention. Tears fell from Buffy’s eyes as she gazed at the star that Spike had named for her and the one next to it that she had unofficially named for him. The phrase ‘star crossed lovers’ popped into Buffy’s mind from Romeo and Juliet and she wondered if that was what she and Spike were – doomed from the start. Were the stars working against them? Was it just too much against the laws of nature for a Slayer and a vampire to be in love and have a happy life? Buffy thought back to high school and the affair she’d had with Angel, which had also seemed doomed from the very start … perhaps it was just too much to ask for a Slayer to be with a vamp, even one with a soul. She certainly felt like the whole world was against her – against them, like she was a salmon swimming upstream, but the stream she had to get up was the Niagara River … and she was getting battered and bashed by the insurmountable falls.



Buffy pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, laying her head down on her knees as sobs began wracking her body. She only had two ideas left on her list, she had no real confidence in either one of them and Spike was running out of time … in fact, he may already be out of time and if he was out of time, that meant she was, too. Spike’s words rang in her head, “If you can’t get me back, get our babies back…” and Buffy’s sobs came harder – his babies had already lived and died, even if he didn’t remember them. So, what was left? If she was too late to save Spike, if neither of her plans worked – what was left? This life? In this world without him, without their children … without love, without hope? Was that a life she even wanted to live?


“Pull yourself together! You will not give up!” Buffy admonished herself. “You’re wasting time!”


Buffy wiped her tears and tried to focus again. She picked her pad back up and flipped the page to the page that had information about summoning D’Hoffryn that Dawn had found in one of the books they’d gotten from Andrew. There were a few magical herbs that they would need … Dawn said she would go in the morning to get them. Buffy read the list: blue cornflower, dandelion leaf, thistle flower, and mandrake root.


“What, does he live in a field of wildflowers or something?” Buffy wondered aloud. “And what’s with the mandrake root in every spell? I need to plant some of that when I get home, I could make millions …”


Buffy looked at her new watch, 3:30am – it would be hours before the stores were open, wasted hours. She decided a ‘want, take, have … leave some money to cover it’ mission was in order. Buffy wrote the ingredients they needed down on another piece of paper to take with her, then wrote Dawn a note telling here where she had gone and left it in the kitchenette where they’d eaten dinner, then she headed out to find a magic shop.


When Buffy returned two hours later, she had all the ingredients they needed for the spell. She was pleased that she’d been able to find a magic shop that was actually open twenty-four hours a day, so she didn’t even have to break in, which saved her … or Riley, from having to pay for damages. She wondered how long he would let her and Dawn keep using that credit card before he reported it stolen and shut them down … of course, they were married, so technically, that card was just as much Buffy’s as it was Riley’s. Buffy put that thought aside, choosing to burn that bridge when she came to it rather than add to her list of things to worry about.



Buffy crumbled up all the ingredients in a bowl she found in the kitchenette, then went out into the lobby of the Hyperion and sprinkled them in a circle about six feet across, per the instructions from the book. Buffy then stood next to the circle and read the summoning spell from her notes. It was in Latin, or something … she thought about waking Dawn for this part, but decided she could do this – she’d just sound the words out…like phonics in second grade.


“Beatum sit in nomine D'Hoffrynis. Fiat hoc spatium porta ad mundum Arashmaharris,” Buffy read the spell aloud and waited, but nothing happened. She sighed and tried again, changing the pronunciation of some of the words … still nothing. She tried again … and again and again. Nothing.


“Fuck…” Buffy muttered to herself in exasperation.


“Pretty sure that’s not part of the spell,” she heard from behind her. Buffy swung around to find Lilah Morgan standing at the garden door, her arms folded across her chest.


“Yeah, well – this stupid spell doesn’t work anyway,” Buffy defended. “What do you want?”


“If you want to see your husband and say goodbye, you better come with me now,” Lilah informed her. “They’re about to pass judgment.”



“What!?” Buffy exclaimed, dropping her paper and stepping away from the ring of herbs towards the lawyer. “So soon!? Can’t you stall them?”




Lilah shook her head. “I tried everything I could think of … they aren’t biting.”


“Fuck!” Buffy exclaimed. “Let’s go.”


**~**


Lilah and Buffy walked into the familiar tribunal ‘room’ … a room that seemed to be surrounded by nothingness that went on forever … ‘ad infinitum’, apparently unlike the trials. As much as Buffy hated seeing Spike put through the horrors of the trials, it was much better that than having them end … especially since neither she nor Lilah had been able to reverse any of the magic that seemed to be blocking the judges from seeing the good that he had done in any life.


“Spike!” Buffy exclaimed when she caught sight of him, standing in what was apparently the defendant’s box in the center of the room … neither the Mayor or the Guardian were there. Probably going to pass judgment from ‘on high’, Buffy thought as she rushed towards her husband.


Buffy threw herself into Spike’s arms just as he turned to see who had called his name.


“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed in surprise when she hit him and knocked him down to the hard floor at their feet.


Spike pushed her off him and sat up. “Slayer!” he exclaimed with shock of seeing her again … then a knowing smirk came to his lips. “Didn’ get enough o' Big Bad, eh? Back for more, are ya? I reckon I got a few minutes to scratch your itch…”


“Spike! Please, listen to me!” Buffy pleaded, ignoring his smirk and innuendos. “I love you … never forget that I love you and I’ll fight to my last breath to get you back.”


Spike stood up from the floor and stalked over to where he’d pushed her, reaching her just as she got back to her feet. Spike grabbed her by the upper arms and pulled her to him, capturing her lips in a rough and passionate kiss. “You taste like lemon drops … sweet and tart all at once,” he informed her when he released her lips.


Buffy gasped for breath and tried to get her head to stop spinning and her heart from racing. She held to his shoulders, afraid that her knees had gone too weak to hold her. “Spike, please …” Buffy begged, trying to get her body to stop reacting to his kiss, to his touch, to his hands on the bare skin of her arms. “Please tell me that you won’t give up!”


“Ole Spike never gives up, Slayer … don’t they teach you anything in Slayer-school? William the Bloody never stops, never gives up, never quits until …”


“…everything in his path is dead,” Buffy finished. “Yes, I’ve heard the rhetoric. Points for motivation and thoroughness. Now, how about this one … William’s a good man, he’s got a heart the size of Texas and he loves with every bit of it – he loves his family, he loves his wife and his friends and he’ll never give up on getting back to them.”



“William’s a ponce!” Spike exclaimed with a sneer, pushing Buffy away and releasing his hold on her arms.


“You’re William!” Buffy insisted.


“I am William the Bloody! I’m Spike! I’ll never be that weak, lovelorn tosser again and you’d be wise to remember that, Goldilocks!”


Buffy opened her mouth with a retort when suddenly a large, booming voice announced, “William the Bloody, do you have any final words before judgment is passed?”


Spike looked to the black sky above them, from whence the voice came. “Yeah, I do … sod off! You can all bend over and stuff this whole thing up your godly arses and kiss mine while you’re down there!” he screamed at them in anger.


“NO! NO! He didn’t mean that!” Buffy interjected, pushing Spike down onto the floor in an effort to shut him up.


“I bloody well did!” Spike retorted, standing back up quickly.


"Shut up, Spike! Can’t you shut up for once in your life?” Buffy yelled at him angrily, before shoving him back down on his ass.


“He’s a good man – he loves his family … he’s saved the fucking world, for God’s sake!” Buffy screamed at the sky. “Just give me more time … I’ll prove it! Lilah! Tell them!” Buffy demanded from the lawyer who was still standing off to one side.


Lilah shrugged. “I’ve tried …”


Spike jumped back up and shoved Buffy out of the way. “Don’t need no Slayer sullyin’ m’ good name. Nothing they can do to me can come close to what I’ve had at the hands … and other bits … of Angelus …” he informed her. “They don’t scare me.”


“Damn it, Spike! This could be forever! It’s not a year or a decade or even a century … it’s forever! You might not be scared, but I am!” Buffy exclaimed as she turned and moved back towards him.


“The fated has spoken,” announced the booming voice from above them.


“NO!” Buffy begged. “Just give me a little more time! What's the hurry!? You'll have him for eternity! Just give me a few more days!”


But the tribunal ignored her and just kept talking, “William the Bloody, you are hereby condemned to eternal damnation for your sins against mankind…”


“Don’ forget womankind…” Spike interjected sarcastically. “Equal rights now, ya know.”


“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” Buffy screamed at the black sky as tears stained her face and her whole body shook in fear and rage and frustration.


“Spike! No, please no!” Buffy sobbed as she made her way back to where he now stood stoically, legs spread wide, his arms folded across his chest, in the round ring that had been used to hold him still and silent as they forced him to relive every crime he’d ever committed over the last century.


Buffy wrapped her arms around his neck and sobbed against his shoulder, but Spike never moved to hold her, standing perfectly straight and still as he waited for his sentence to begin.


Spike could feel it starting deep in his gut … like a fire was starting at his core and burning him from the inside out. He could actually feel his physical body begin to turn to ashes … to dust, little by little as the flame spread out from his center in all directions. When the fire reached his heart, he felt something explode within him like a keg of dynamite … he knew it would only be a few seconds now before he would be no more of this world or the last, but of the next – of hell.


He took Buffy by the arms and pushed her back away from him, lest she burn as well. For a moment he wasn’t sure why he cared if the Slayer burned … then their eyes met. Her green eyes glistened with unshed tears and suddenly he was afraid … more afraid than he’d ever been of anything in his life. A rush of love poured over him, as if that explosion had broken the damn that had been around his heart and freed his soul from its hiding place. In that moment he realized, the fear he was feeling wasn’t of hell, it wasn’t of the torment that he would face, it was a fear that he had broken his promise to her and left her to walk alone. It was fear that he would never find her again – ever, never feel her soul next to his again, never feel her heart beating next to his, never feel her love again.


“Buffy …” Spike whispered softly. “I’m sorry…”



“Spike!” Buffy cried, trying to move back towards him, but he held her at arm’s length as he felt the fire rise through his chest and up towards his neck. “I love you … please … please, God!” Buffy begged through her sobs.


“I love you, too, Buffy … I’ll always love you, I’ll always search for you – I promise I won’t stop until I find you again – somehow, someday. Keep me in your heart and you’ll never walk alone … don’t give up hope,” Spike told her as tears fell from his own eyes.


“Tell them you’re sorry … you didn’t mean it! Beg them for another chance … for more time!” Buffy admonished him, but Spike just shook his head slowly.


“It’s too late, luv. I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her as he looked deep into her eyes one last time … past the green pools of sorrow on the surface down deep into her soul, he needed to have that one last glimpse of his heaven...one final glimpse to last him for eternity.



Then Spike closed his eyes, holding that vision behind his closed lids, and pushed Buffy away from him with all his strength as he felt the fire within him expanding and growing. Within moments, he was engulfed in flames. He screamed out as his head snapped back and his body tensed in agony as he burned from the inside out … and then he was just gone. The entire world seemed to go completely silent and perfectly still in that moment, as if it had stopped spinning for that split second.



“SPIKE! NO!! GOD, NO!” Buffy screamed, moving back to where he had been standing, but all that remained was a pile of dust and hot embers. Buffy dropped to her knees next to it as she sobbed and screamed out from the pain which stabbed and burned her soul. The heat from the fire blistered her legs and hands as she pounded her fists down in frustration and anger and heartbreak, but she didn’t feel it – she could only feel the void that was left within her soul, it was like a black hole had opened up and swallowed everything that was good in her life.



“Please, please, please … No … Please, God, no! I need him! Please, bring him back!” Buffy begged. “I’ll do anything! Just tell me what to do!! I’ll do anything!” Buffy bargained … but there was no response from above – there would be no answer to her prayers.


Buffy collapsed down onto her side next to the pile of embers and sobbed uncontrollably. She’d failed. She’d failed to save him, she’d failed to save her family and her friends … she’d failed to save herself. It was over, Spike was gone, her family was gone, most of her friends were gone. The most important mission of her life was over and she’d failed.

**~**

{{Click here to hear ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ by Elvis on YouTube }}

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk

You'll never walk
You'll never walk alone.


End Notes:
TBC .... Where does Buffy go from here? Is there any chance of getting Spike back now? Don't be shy - you know my blue-eyed muse loves to hear from you!
One Way or Another by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy summons D'Hoffryn ... will he help her set things right? She also meets one of William and Cecily's descendants and finds a surprise or two at the bottom of a 'Cracker Jack' box.
**
Music Referenced:
One Way or Another, Blondie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDLcyXzLMfg
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Monday, February 20th, 2005:

As Buffy laid on the bright, sterile floor next to all that remained of her life, her heartbreak turned to anger. It was an anger like she’d never felt before, anger that threatened to consume her - that burned within her just as surely as the fire that consumed her husband, and her whole mission changed. Two can play the vengeance game. If she couldn’t get her life back, then one way or another, she would have revenge.
 
Buffy pushed herself up from the floor and she wiped her face with hands as she turned to Lilah. “Tell me what you know about D’Hoffryn,” Buffy demanded of the lawyer, her voice surprising her with how deadly calm it sounded.
 
“I’ve told you pretty much all I know … you should check with your friends at Wolfram & Hart, they have a whole room dedicated to him and his organization,” Lilah advised her with a shrug.
 
“Get me outta here.” It was more of an order than an request as Buffy brushed past Lilah and headed back the way they’d come.
 
**~**
 
It was nearly noon when Buffy got back to the Hyperion, and she decided it was time to get Dawn up – there was work to be done. When Dawn made it down to the lobby, still bleary eyed and sleepy, Buffy wasted no time putting her to work.
 
Handing her the paper that held the summoning spell for D’Hoffryn, Buffy instructed her sister to, “Summon that bastard,” as Buffy stood to one side of the magical-herb circle with her scythe in hand.
 
Dawn looked at the circle, then down at the paper then back up to Buffy. “What happened?” she asked.
 
“Never mind what happened, summon D’Hoffryn,” Buffy replied curtly.
 
“Okey-dokey … someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Dawn muttered under her breath. She looked at the circle again and realized the talisman wasn’t in it. “You have to put his talisman down in the center of the circle,” Dawn instructed her.
 
“Fuck!” Buffy exclaimed, realizing what she’d done wrong before. Of course, it wouldn’t have made any difference, even if she’d gotten him there earlier, she wouldn’t have had enough time to do anything about it before Lilah had shown up.
 
Buffy took the pendant off from around her neck and laid it in the center of the circle, then stood back and held her scythe at the ready. “Ok …” she said to Dawn and Dawn began to recite the incantation to summon the demon.
 
There was a flash of light and then the master of the vengeance demons was standing in front of them. “Behold, D'Hoffryn. Lord of Arashmahar. He that turns the air to blood and rains…” he began in a regal tone, before looking around.

 

“Dawn! It’s been a while! How have you been?” he asked, stepping out of the circle on the floor.
 
“This isn’t a social call,” Buffy informed him, moving closer to him with her scythe.
 
“Yes, I see …” D’Hoffryn agreed, eyeing the weapon. “You realize that I would be gone before you could even swing that, don’t you?” he asked her nonchalantly, waving his arm at the scythe.
 
Buffy straightened slightly and loosened her grip on the weapon. “I need some information,” Buffy told him. “I need a wish reversed – I understand you can do that or tell me how to.”
 
“I see … this wish wouldn’t have anything to do with one of my ex-employees being turned into a rat, would it?” D’Hoffryn asked.
 
“That was an accident … what she did wasn’t. She’s gone too far and it needs to be fixed this minute,” Buffy argued. Buffy hoped that since Spike had just been … sentenced, perhaps if the wish was reversed immediately, she could get him back – perhaps he was still in processing or … in line waiting to be searched for contraband or something.
 
D’Hoffryn ran his thumb and forefinger down his moustache and beard as if in deep thought. “I see … yes, I can see your point,” he started. “Unfortunately, it’s bad for morale for me to go behind my girls and second guess them. I’m sure you understand.”
 
“What!?” Buffy screamed, moving toward the demon. “You’re talking to me about morale!? I’m talking about people’s lives here! I’m talking about Spike’s soul being damned to hell for fucking eternity! As in forever! Are you out of your fucking mind? Fix it!”
 
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with, little girl. I’m not some two-bit vampire that quakes in their boots at the mention of the Slayer. I don’t take orders from you … I don’t take orders from anyone!” D’Hoffryn informed her. “You and your little problems are of no concern to me …”
 
“They’ll be your concern when I kill every last minion you have!” Buffy threatened, raising the scythe up to a ready position again. “You won’t be much of a pimp without any hoes!”

 

“You’re way out of your league, Slayer. My girls are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves against the likes of you …” D’Hoffryn snorted. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m late for my tee time with Izzy,” D’Hoffryn said matter-of-factly before turning back to Dawn. “Good to see you again, young lady,” he told her and just that fast, he was gone.
 
“ARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!” Buffy screamed, lifting the scythe up and bringing it down on the round settee in the middle of the lobby over and over again as she vented her fury and frustration.
 
“Buffy! Stop!” Dawn yelled at her, but Buffy didn’t even hear her.
 
“Buffy! It’s dead! You’ve slain it!” Dawn informed her sister when it was nothing more than a pile of wood and fabric and stuffing and springs on the floor of the lobby. “Stop now!”
 
Buffy finally stopped her assault on the furniture and turned and faced Dawn. “Stay here, I’ll be back. Do that research you were gonna do,” Buffy instructed her as she handed Dawn the scythe then headed for the door.
 
“Where are you going now?” Dawn called after her.
 
“The belly of the beast … Wolfram & Hart,” Buffy called back as she hit the door and started running.
 
“Geez … she really needs to switch to decaf,” Dawn observed as she shook her head and headed for the kitchenette … maybe there was some Chinese food left … she was starving again.
 
**~**
 
“Buffy!” Angel exclaimed, as he came around his desk and met her halfway across the floor of his office at Wolfram & Hart. Angel grabbed her in a hug and Buffy returned it … she really need a hug, even if it was from Angel, and she didn’t need to piss him off, either – not when she was about to try and get him to help her. Buffy found him being corporeal to be quite telling … she knew that when the Spike from the other dimension was released from the amulet, he was a ghost for a long while … no one at W&H was able to find the correct spell to make him solid again ... isn't that convenient? It was amazing what the PTB will do for their ‘golden child’, even more amazing to her was that the PTB still considered Angel their prophecy-boy.
 
“You look good,” Buffy told him when he released her. “Last time I saw you you looked like something Liz Taylor wore to her last wedding.”
 
Angel laughed lightly and waved his arm at a chair for Buffy to sit down. “I understand I have you to thank for getting me out of there.”
 
Buffy shrugged. “The Powers direct, I follow. Like a good little lemming …” she replied sarcastically.
 
Angel looked at her with confusion. “Huh?”
 
Buffy shook her head and waved it off. “Nothing … never mind. Look, I need a favor – I think you can help me with a problem I’m having.”
 
Angel brightened. “Sure – anything! Just ask! We ... I owe you - big time!”
 
“I need all the info you have on D'Hoffryn. How to reverse wishes, how to find and defeat vengeance demons, how to kill them … everything you’ve got,” Buffy told him, as he took his seat behind his desk.
 
“Oh …” Angel answered slowly. “Ummm…ok, well, let me see what I can do and I’ll get back with you. How’s next week? Lunch maybe … Friday?”

 

Buffy narrowed her eyes and looked at him. “What’s wrong? Don’t tell me the mighty Wolfram & Hart is afraid of D’Hoffryn!”
 
“Uhhhh … well, no, it’s not that,” Angel hedged, then made a face like he was in pain, which he was afraid he would be in a moment. “Actually, he’s a client and … we have client-attorney confidentiality issues.”
 
“You cannot be serious!” Buffy exclaimed, jumping up from her seat and moving towards his desk.
 
Angel backed up away from the desk until he was against the wall at his back. “I’m afraid I am … but, I can have Wes and Gunn go through what we have, and anything that’s public record we can give you,” he offered hopefully.
 
“D’Hoffryn didn’t build a fucking vengeance demon empire by publicizing their Achilles’ heels! I need to know how to defeat him, not what tailor he uses or where he plays fucking golf with Izzy!” Buffy exclaimed, pressing her fists down on Angel’s desk and cracking the thick, wooden top.
 
“I’m sorry, Buffy … I just – we can’t give you that,” Angel apologized, trying to figure out if he could get past her and out the door of his office before she could catch him.

 

Buffy snorted out an angry laugh and folded her arms across her chest. “What happened to you, Angel? You used to be one of the good guys. They must be paying you pretty well … nice office, necro-tempered glass, good view of the City of Angels from way up here in your ivory tower,” Buffy asserted, moving away from him and looking out at the panoramic view of the city below.
 
“You used to be on the front lines – you used to know what it was to help people, now you just look out your window while they die in the streets … too far below you for you to even notice. What happened to you?” she asked again, turning back around and facing him.
 
Angel sighed and looked down at the floor, before lifting his eyes back up to hers. “It’s not what you think … I’m still one of the good guys,” he defended.
 
Buffy snorted again. “Right. Keep telling yourself that and one day you may actually believe it – but I’ve got news for you, thinking it don’t make it so, Angel. The only thing that counts is actions.” Buffy preached. “I don’t know what I ever saw in you … you're pathetic,” she informed him angrily as she headed out of his office.
 
“I guess that means you don’t want to get lunch?” Angel called after her, but she just kept walking.
 
**~**
 
Buffy refused to cry as she walked out of the Wolfram & Hart building and started back towards the Hyperion … another dead end. It was like a conspiracy, every road she took led her nowhere. Buffy stopped in a small park along the way and sat down on one of the benches to try and gather her thoughts – she had no way to find D’Hoffryn’s vengeance demons, she didn’t know how to defeat them if she did find them or where their ‘power center’ was and she was worried that time for saving Spike was past now. Knowing how time moved in the other dimensions, his soul was most likely firmly ensconced in hell with Dru. A sudden pang of jealousy stabbed at Buffy’s gut and she laughed ruefully at herself.

 

“Oh, yes, that’s good … let’s be jealous of Dru spending eternity in hell with Spike. You are so mental!” Buffy admonished herself out loud, drawing funny looks from passersby.
 
Buffy dropped her head in her hands and willed herself to push the fear and heart wrenching sadness away, she needed to hold onto the anger, because she’d never have Spike back now … all she could do was wreck havoc on the demons that did this to him … and on Cecily. She had to find someone who could give her more information on D’Hoffryn and on vengeance demons – someone with no scruples, someone without a confidentiality contract, someone who dealt with demons or perhaps was a demon. “Rack …” Buffy said aloud, answering her own question. He certainly fit that description to a ‘T’.
 
But L.A. was huge … Rack’s place could be anywhere. How do you find a crack house? By asking crackheads. How to find a warlock that dealt in dark magicks to demons? Ask demons.
 
Buffy found the nearest sewer entrance and dropped down into the underbelly of L.A. She touched the stake she had in the waistband of her jeans at her back and made sure it was within easy reach, then started walking … picking the direction at random. It didn’t take long to find a couple of vamps – it really was just what she needed – a good fight, a good slay … it was all over in just a few moments.
 
“Oops …” Buffy moaned aloud when she dusted the second one in the heat of the battle. “Nice work, Destructo-Girl! They can’t talk when they’re all dusty like that!” she reminded herself, rolling her eyes and stuffing her stake back into her jeans. “Just talk to them … no staking next time…” she instructed herself as she started walking again.
 
It wasn’t long before she came upon another vamp, this one was sitting in a dry area of the tunnel smoking a doobie. Buffy walked right up to him and was standing over him with her arms crossed (to keep from staking him too soon) before he even saw her. “Dudette … you’re like, in my personal space,” the blond whined before taking another toke.
 
“That’s illegal, you know,” Buffy informed him, taking the half-smoked reefer out of his hand and tossing it into a puddle a couple of feet away. "It'll fry your brain cells, too..."
 
“No way!” the blond screamed, jumping up. “That’s totally bogus! It’s no more illegal than killing the poser that I stole it from … just like I’m gonna kill you!”
 
Buffy backed up a step and put her hand on the stake at her back, but didn’t pull it out. “Wait a minute! I know you!” Buffy exclaimed when she got a good look at the vamp’s face. “You’re Kalani! You drive a limo!”

 

“Too true … but I don’t drive limos anymore … I kill little dudettes who think their shit don’t stink…” Kalani informed her, pulling a small Derringer, two shot pistol out of his pocket and aiming it at her.
 
Buffy ducked and grabbed his hand, twisting it and turning him around, so his arm, and the gun, was twisted up behind his back.

“What kinda vamp are you? Vamps don’t use guns!” she exclaimed.

 

“Whoa! Like, didn’t mean nothin’ personal, Little Blondie,” Kalani cried, trying to get free of Buffy. “Gun’s pretty cool, though, right? That’s called thinkin’ outside the box! I’m like Taco Bell!” Kalani announced with a proud grin. “You should try it – be radical – dangerous, unpredictable!” he advised her.
 
“Yeah, and I think someone’s rung your bell one too many times. Guns are never helpful,” Buffy informed him taking the gun out of his palm and sliding it into her back pocket.
 
“Ever heard of a Slayer?” Buffy asked him, still holding him tight.
 
“Yeah – heard stories … figured they were bogus, like, just to scare us, ya’ know?”
 
“Well, you would be wrong, but I’m sure you’re used to that. You’ve just met your first Slayer and, if you’re a good boy and give me some information, you’ll live to tell the tale … so to speak,” Buffy informed him, never loosening her grip.
 
“Sure … I’m Info-Dude – I’m like a kiosk of information … whatcha need to know?” Kalani agreed immediately.
 
“Where do I find Rack’s place?”
 
“Rack? You don’t want to mess with Rack, Little Blondie … he’s bad news,” Kalani informed her.
 
“I’ll be the judge of that – just tell me where to look for his place,” Buffy insisted, lifting Kalani up onto his toes by his arm.
 
“Owww! Whatever! Just chill already!” Kalani screamed and Buffy let off the pressure on his arm slightly.
 
“Where do I look for him?” Buffy repeated.
 
“Near the pits …”
 
“The pits? I’m starting to think that could describe most of L.A.,” Buffy retorted, tightening her grip again.
 
“No, no, Little Blondie … the tar pits!” Kalani clarified. “If he isn’t in the park near the pits, then try between Wilshire and Pink’s on La Brea – he likes the hot dogs.”

 

“What hot dogs?” Buffy questioned.
 
“Pink’s,” Kalani clarified.
 
“He likes pink hot dogs? What in the world do you make pink hot dogs out of?” Buffy asked, scrunching her nose up.
 
“Not pink hot dogs! Hot dogs from Pink’s,” Kalani tried again. “Are you sure you haven’t had a toke or two, Little Blondie?”
 
“No, unfortunately, I haven’t – I’m just not from around here…” Buffy explained.
 
“Usually he sends someone out for the Bacon, Chili & Cheese Dog with the works around 2am. My girlfriend used to be his …” Kalani started, but stopped.
 
“His what?”
 
“You really don’t want to find out … he’s bad news, Little Blondie, you should steer clear of that place,” Kalani advised.
 
Buffy released the surfer vamp, pushing him away from her as she did. “Thanks … and, sorry about the – you know,” Buffy motioned her head towards the soaked reefer on the ground.
 
“Yeah, that was totally rude – you really need to chill out, Little Blondie,” Kalani advised her, looking sadly at the wasted weed.
 
“That is so true,” Buffy agreed as she turned away from him and started walking … now she had somewhere to start looking for Rack. Buffy went up to the street at the next manhole and looked around for somewhere to get directions. She found a convenience store about halfway down the block and got directions from them to the tar pits, it wasn’t too far. Buffy looked at the watch Dawn had given her … it was only 2pm, it would probably be hours before Rack would have his place set up for business. Buffy sighed and headed back to the Hyperion to see what Dawn had found out about Cecily and William’s children. Not that it really mattered now, but …
 
As she walked she thought about Kalani … somehow Spike’s erasure from this world had changed his fate. Probably some vamp that Spike would’ve dusted didn’t get dusted and ended up turning the surfer from a polite, mild-mannered limo driver to a reefer stealing killing machine. Buffy wondered how many more Kalanis there were in the world … people that had been saved by Spike’s actions or damned by his absence. She snorted softly … there was probably no way to even calculate that, even if she didn’t hate math.
 
“Why couldn’t you idiots see this!!??” Buffy exclaimed to the sky as she walked. “What fucking good are you if you let one rat bitch do all this!?”
 
A drunk grabbed his brown paper bag and stumbled up from where he was sitting on the curb before staggering across the street away from Buffy. Buffy rolled her eyes and kept walking … she was now officially crazier and scarier than L.A. street people.
 
**~**
 
Dawn jumped up from where she was sitting at the reception desk when Buffy walked in. “BUFFY! You’ll never believe what I found! Check this out!” Dawn exclaimed, waving her sister over to the computer.
 
Buffy walked over to where Dawn was working and looked at the screen as Dawn pointed to the important part. It was a scan of a birth certificate for a Henry William Hart, born in L.A. in May of 1987. “And?” Buffy asked after looking at what Dawn was pointing at.
 
“And …” Dawn started. “This is Anne Weckerly-Johnson’s great, great, great, great, great grandson,” Dawn informed her, counting off the ‘greats’ on her fingers.

 

Buffy’s brow furrowed as she looked from the screen to Dawn. “Are you sure?”
 
“Totally! I tracked it … it was easy, apparently someone’s already done a total genealogy map on ancestry.com … all I had to do was find Anne and it was all laid out!” Dawn informed her. “And, he still lives in L.A! Or Venice Beach, to be exact,” Dawn continued, pulling his name up on the white pages listing.
 
“Wow … that’s … wow,” Buffy stammered, not really sure what to do with this information.
 
“Let’s go talk to him!” Dawn suggested eagerly.
 
“I don’t know … I mean, what can he really tell us?” Buffy wondered aloud, but in truth her curiosity was about to get the better of her. There wasn’t anything she could do now, anyway, not until later that night when Rack was open for business …
 
“Awwww… c’mon! I found something! And it’s right here! He might remember something or have some old stuff handed down …” Dawn begged.
 
Buffy looked at her with doubt. “He’s eighteen and living on Venice Beach, Dawn. I doubt he’s into genealogy or the history of his family…”
 
Dawn gave Buffy her best sad puppy look and Buffy rolled her eyes and sighed. “Fine … let’s go meet Henry William Hart.”
 
**~**
 
The cab pulled up and stopped in front of a house painted a bright lilac that Buffy thought might’ve been a Cracker Jack box in another life, actually, it was so small, it might’ve been the prize at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box …

 

“Well, at least there’s not a lot of upkeep to worry about,” Buffy mused as she paid the cab driver and she and Dawn got out. Buffy found herself running her fingers through her hair, trying to make herself look more presentable.
 
“Do you have a scrunchie?” Buffy asked Dawn, as she pulled her hair back from her face. It still wasn’t very long, but it had grown some since she’d landed in this crazy world, and was finally long enough that it could be put in a short ponytail at the nape of her neck.
 
“A what?” Dawn asked, looking at Buffy, confused.
 
“A scrunchie … for my hair?” Buffy explained, holding her hair in a pony tail with her hand.
 
“I don’t know what a scrunchie is … but I have some of these rubber-band thingies,” Dawn offered, pulling out a blue, elastic ponytail band from her purse.
 
“What do you mean you don’t know what a scrunchie is?” Buffy asked, taking the band from Dawn and securing her hair in a ponytail.
 
Dawn shook her head, shrugged and held her palms up. “Never heard of it …”
 
“You’ve lived a sheltered life…” Buffy told her with an eye roll as she smoothed her shirt down and turned to Dawn. “How do I look?”
 
“Like a crazy person who hasn’t slept for days who would just as soon bite your head off and eat your brains as look at you,” Dawn told her with a sarcastic smile.
 
“Perfect. That’s the look I was going for,” Buffy quipped as she started up the walk to the front door of Henry’s Cracker Jack box.
 
Buffy rang the bell and the girls waited … they could hear someone moving around inside then a man’s voice call, “Just a minute,” through the closed door.
 
Buffy’s stomach was doing flip-flops, she really couldn’t figure out why she was so nervous meeting what would’ve been William’s great grandson six generations removed …
 
When the door finally opened, Buffy’s jaw dropped and she reached out and grabbed Dawn’s arm to keep from collapsing onto the floor of the small porch.
 
“Spike?” Buffy asked at last, unable to take her eyes off the young man that stood before them who looked almost exactly like her husband.

 

“Yeah? Can I help you?” he replied, his voice deep and rich, but with no discernible accent other than southern California. Buffy’s eyes were drawn to his …they were just as blue as Spike’s, his cheekbones were just as sharp, his lips just as luscious, his jaw just as strong, his hair short and spikey and platinum blond. A pair of baggy, blue surf trunks with the word ‘Billabong’ written down one leg barely clung to his hips … and that comprised his entire outfit. He was a little taller than Spike … maybe six feet, Buffy guessed … and he was missing the scar in his brow, but otherwise – he was a teenage Spike.
 
Buffy’s eyes wandered down his hard, tanned torso and legs all the way down to his bare feet, then back up to his face, which now had a smirk on it that made her hold more tightly onto Dawn’s arm, lest she either throw herself into his arms or simply melt onto the porch like a bowl of Jell-O in the microwave.
 
“Hi!” Dawn started cheerfully, giving Buffy a death glare as she moved slightly in front of her. “We’re looking for Henry William Hart.”


 
“You found him,” the young man replied, as he glanced quickly at Dawn but then looked back at Buffy who stood motionless with her mouth hanging open.
 
“A closed mouth catches no flies,” Henry informed her as he reached out and put a finger under Buffy’s chin and lifted lightly. Buffy snapped her mouth shut and averted her gaze from him to a very interesting "Welcome" sign that hung by the door, which featured a line of multicolored flip-flops and some palm trees. Under it was another sign that read "Gone Surfin'" and featured a red 'Woodie' with a surfboard on top.
 
Dawn elbowed Buffy in the ribs and Buffy jumped and yelled, “Oww!” as she rubbed the spot that Dawn had hit, giving her sister a death glare of her own.
 
“Do you surf?” Buffy asked, moaning to herself at the absurdity of that question, but unable to think of anything else to say.

 

“Yeah … Do you?” Henry replied, the smirk still on his face, as he dropped one hand down and hooked his thumb into the waistband of his trunks and splayed his fingers down the front of them.
 
Buffy’s eyes followed his movements despite her best efforts to keep her attention on the ‘Welcome’ sign, and her eyes stopped at his crotch. Dawn elbowed her again. “What!?” Buffy exclaimed, tearing her eyes away and looking at Dawn with wide eyes.
 
“He asked you a question,” Dawn reminded her as she widened her eyes, raised her brows and motioned with her head towards the young man standing in the doorway.
 

“Oh … what was the question?” Buffy asked, looking quickly at Henry then back to the ‘Welcome’ sign.
 
 

“Do you surf?” he repeated.

“Oh … no … no, I don’t,” Buffy stammered, trying to remember just what it was they had wanted to find out from this man.
 
Buffy wanted to pound on her forehead to get her brain to work, but thought that would just make her look even crazier than she already did, so she tried to concentrate on just breathing a moment.
 
“Are you like a professional or something?” Dawn asked, trying to buy some time.
 
“Or something …” Henry replied, never taking his eyes off Buffy.
 
“Have we met before?” he asked Buffy, narrowing his eyes as if trying to remember where he’d seen her before.
 
Buffy gulped and her eyes went wide as she looked up at him “No … no, I’m sure … I would remember,” she stammered, dropping her eyes back to the ‘Welcome’ sign and trying to calm down as she concentrated the colorful flowers that were painted on the flip-flops and wondered why a Woodie would be painted red ... weren't they like ... wood grain - wasn't that the point?


 
Buffy took a deep breath and met his eyes again. “You’re probably wondering who we are and what we want,” she said at last.
 
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Henry admitted as he leaned against the door jamb with amusement in his eyes and that sexy smirk on his face.
 
“Well, you see …” Buffy started, trying not to look directly at him, but past him, “… we’re working with the Historical Society of Clapham, England and we’re trying to find any information on former residents that lived there during the 1800’s and your name came up…”
 
Henry ran his tongue across his lips and smiled wider. “I didn’t live in England in the 1800’s,” he pointed out.
 
“That’s what you think…” she muttered quickly under her breath before laughing nervously. “No, of course you didn’t. But we believe your distant grandparents did … William and Cecily Weckerly, and we were hoping that, as their heir, you might have inherited some photographs or other documents…” Buffy began to clarify when she was cut off by a woman’s voice coming from behind Henry.
 
“Who is it, Spike, honey? If it’s the Hare Krishnas, tell them we gave last week down at Sammy’s.”
 
Buffy looked towards the voice … it sounded familiar, in fact it sounded like … “Hallie,” Buffy muttered as a woman in a short, red, silk robe walked up behind Henry and wrapped an arm around his waist as she moved up beside him into the doorway.

 

Hallie smiled sweetly at Buffy. “You don’t look like a Hare Krishna,” she informed Buffy as she ran her free hand down Henry’s chest, across his hard abs and finally settled it on top of his hand that he had hooked into the waistband of his trunks.
 
Buffy’s mouth moved but no words came out … if seeing a man that looked almost exactly like Spike was a shock, seeing Hallie with him was a double-whammy. Buffy’s chest tightened and she couldn’t breathe, she was aware of the very real possibility that she might actually faint from lack of oxygen.
 
“C’mon, baby … we have some unfinished business in the bedroom,” Hallie whispered loud enough for everyone to hear as she guided Henry back out of the doorway.
 
“Sorry girls … I don’t have anything from any distant relatives … didn’t inherit a thing,” he told Buffy and Dawn as he let Hallie pull him back into the house and closed the door.
 
Buffy could hear them talking … Hallie asking who they were and what they wanted and Henry … who apparently went by Spike, telling her he wasn’t really sure what they wanted, but they were amusing.
 
“Buffy, are you alright?” Dawn asked when the door was closed.
 
Buffy turned around and sat down on the top step of the small porch and tried to breathe, leaning her head down between her legs as she tried to not hyperventilate.
 
“Buffy?” Dawn questioned again, sitting down next to her sister.
 
“That’s…that’s Spike and that’s Hallie … Cecily,” Buffy finally told Dawn.
 
Dawn looked back at the closed door. “She looks good for a great, great, great, great, great … great grandmother. He’s not bad either.”
 
**~**
 
Back at the Hyperion, Buffy paced back and forth near the slain settee, trying to calm down and gather her thoughts.
 
“Obviously, she’s not human,” Buffy contended as Dawn sat on the stairs and watched and listened to her sister rant and think aloud.
 
“Obviously, she’s a total whack-job,” Buffy continued. “I mean, you’re sleeping with your own great … whatever grandson!? Who does that?”
 
“She might be human but immortal,” Dawn pointed out.
 
“Humans are not immortal,” Buffy disagreed, shaking her head as she continued to pace the floor.
 
“I thought you told me that you were,” Dawn argued.
 
“Yeah, I’m a Slayer, too … I don’t count,” Buffy contended and Dawn just raised her brows at her.
 
“Plus, he’s eighteen! Even if you don’t count the hundred and twenty five years since she married William, and the millennium she lived as a vengeance demon, she’s old enough to be his mother!” Buffy continued to rant.
 
“How old was Spike when you married him?” Dawn posited.
 
“Not old enough to be my fucking father!” Buffy defended.
 
“And if he was? Would that have changed anything?” Dawn prodded. “What about Angel? He was pretty old, and weren’t you like … seventeen?”
 
“We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about her! A cradle robbing, incest-sicko, rat bitch!” Buffy exclaimed, avoiding Dawn's question.
 
“I doubt she’s over thirty,” Dawn opined.
 
“Pffft!” Buffy snorted. “She’ll never see forty again!”
 
“What are you going to do?” Dawn asked, changing the subject, sure she’d never win the age argument.
 
Buffy stopped pacing and turned to face Dawn. “I’m going to slay her … she’s a demon.”
 
“What if Henry loves her?” Dawn questioned.
 
“He’s young, he’ll get over it – he can do way better than her, anyway!” Buffy assured her sister.
 
“What if she’s human?” Dawn continued, but Buffy just shook her head.
 
“She’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, human,” Buffy informed her.
 
**~**
 
Buffy waited down the block from the Cracker Jack house later that night, hoping Hallie would come out, and she wasn’t disappointed.
 
Buffy followed Hallie down the street and then past Pacific Avenue and onto the beach. When Hallie got to a deserted area with no homes or people nearby, she stopped and turned around. “I knew you’d come eventually,” she said to Buffy, who was about fifty yards behind her.
 
“Yeah … and what did you plan on doing about it when I showed up?” Buffy asked, closing the distance between them.
 
Hallie shrugged. “Rubbing your nose in it … then maybe finding a witch and having her turn you into a rat.”
 
“Who did you get to grant your little wish, anyway?” Buffy questioned, like she was talking to a friend about where they went to lunch.
 
Hallie smiled at her as Buffy got within a few feet and stopped. “That’s a question even I don’t know the answer to … see part of the wish was that I don’t remember who I made it with. It could’ve been one of over a dozen different friends.”
 
“How do I know you’re not lying?” Buffy questioned.
 
“You don’t … but I had a long time to think about this while your little brat dressed me up in those ridiculous Barbie outfits and I ran on that fucking exercise wheel for hours and days and months on end! I left nothing to chance, and you can believe that,” Hallie sneered. “How is that little brat anyway?” Hallie asked in a friendly tone. “Oh, that’s right … I forgot, she’s my little brat now! Mine and William’s,” Hallie taunted.
 
“Have a good life, Slayer,” Hallie called as she turned her back on Buffy and started walking away.
 
Buffy launched herself at Hallie, tackling her around the middle and driving her into the soft sand of the beach, but Hallie had more strength than Buffy anticipated and she hit Buffy in the ribs with an elbow and knocked the Slayer onto her back. Hallie jumped up and turned to face Buffy, her stance low, ready for the fight.
 
“I’ve been waiting a long time to kick your ass, Slayer,” Hallie informed her as she pulled a switchblade from the back pocket of her jeans and opened it. “Get ready to join William in hell …”
 
“You can save me a seat,” Buffy hissed angrily as she reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out the small, two shot Derringer that she’d taken off Kalani, pulled the hammer back, and aimed it at Hallie’s chest.
 
“Just like a rat to bring a knife to a gun fight,” Buffy quipped as she pulled the trigger.
 
Hallie’s face was awash with confusion and pain as the hollow-nose bullet hit her chest and mushroomed as it traveled through her breastbone and into her lung.
 
Buffy was on her in a second. She kicked the knife out of her hand and spun Hallie around then knocked her down onto her face. Buffy held the ex-demon against the sand as blood flowed out of the bullet wound in her chest and stained the white sand beach a crimson red.
 
Buffy leaned in close to Hallie’s ear. “If you want to see Spike again, tell me who granted the wish and I’ll make sure you do, otherwise …”
 
“You shot me!” Hallie exclaimed, still in shock, as she coughed up blood and tried to breathe. “I’m human and you shot me!”
 
“Yeah, I was told I should think outside the box … You’re running out of time,” Buffy informed her. “Tell me who granted the wish and I’ll help you get back to Spike.”
 
“You shot me!” Hallie said again as she touched her hand to her mouth looked at it … it was covered with blood.
 
“I think we’ve covered that portion of the program already. Who granted the wish?!!” Buffy demanded, pressing down harder on Hallie’s back and making her cry out in pain.
 
“I don’t know! I really don’t know!” Hallie screamed.
 
“Give me somewhere to start looking then!” Buffy challenged.
 
“Uhhh … Bianca or Yumiko or maybe …” Hallie started before beginning to cough uncontrollably.
 
“Give me more!” Buffy demanded
 
“Jaiyana,” Hallie choked out, “… Abrianna.”
 
“Is that it? You said over a dozen!” Buffy screamed at her.
 
“No … it’s … one … of … those,” Hallie assured her between deep gasps of oxygen.
 
“You’re sure? Bianca, You-me-ko, J-yawn-na, and A-bree-anna? That’s it?” Buffy confirmed.
 
“Yes … yes … please, I need some help,” Hallie pleaded.
 
Buffy smiled ruefully and lifted up slightly, then flipped Hallie over so she was lying on her back in the sand and facing Buffy. Buffy dropped back down and straddled her stomach, keeping the ex-demon from getting up. Hallie’s chest was covered in blood, with sand caked on it, and blood was coming from her mouth and nose, as well.
 
“You took my family …” Buffy informed her, her voice low and calm. “You took Spike, you took Annie, and Dani and Billy,” Buffy continued as tears welled in her eyes. “They didn’t get any help, did they? You didn’t even look them in the eye when you killed them. You didn’t hear Spike scream in agony when they took him to hell! You didn’t see him …” A sob escaped Buffy’s throat and she choked it back as the memory of Spike burning right in front of her flashed through her mind.
 
“Please …” Hallie begged as she started to cough up blood again.
 
“They didn’t get to beg for their lives – Anya and Xander, they never had a chance to plead with you, not for their lives or the life of their son. I thought Anya was your friend!” Buffy accused, trying to change her focus away from Spike, lest she break down and lose her advantage.
 
“Casualties … of … war,” Hallie gasped out as she tried to breathe.
 
“Casualties of war,” Buffy repeated slowly. “How very casual.

 

“They were people! They were my friends! My family! My life!” Buffy screamed at her as tears flowed down her face and her anger grew like a fireball in her chest. “They weren’t characters in a video game or pawns on a chess board! They were people! They didn’t deserve to be killed just because you got your feelings hurt!”
 
“I gave you…what you asked…keep your word,” Hallie begged again.
 
“With pleasure …” Buffy sneered as she stood up, pulling Hallie with her, but, instead of heading up the beach towards help, Buffy pulled the injured and bleeding woman into the water. Hallie tried to pull away from Buffy, but she’d lost too much blood – even with the extra strength that she’d had added with her wish, she couldn’t break free of Buffy’s hold.
 
“You promised …” Hallie pleaded with her as Buffy pulled her deeper into the ocean.
 
“Yeah … I promised to let you see Spike again. When you see him in hell, tell him I said ‘hello’,” Buffy hissed as she pushed Hallie under the water. Hallie struggled against her, but only for a few moments before she went still. Buffy swam with Hallie’s lifeless body further out into the waves until she was well off shore, then heaved the small gun as far as she could throw it.
 
“Guns do come in handy sometimes,” Buffy observed as she left the dead woman floating in the waves and swam down the beach several hundred yards before coming ashore.
 
**~**
 
When Buffy got back to the Hyperion, she found Dawn waiting in the lobby.
 
“You killed her, didn’t you?” Dawn asked solemnly. “She was human, wasn’t she?”
 
“Yeah, and I got some names,” Buffy confirmed excitedly. “We need to track them down … find out how to summon them, how to destroy their power centers …” Buffy started as she headed for the desk to find some paper and write the names down.
 
“No,” Dawn replied simply.
 
Buffy stopped and looked at her. “No?”
 
Dawn shook her head. “No … I can’t … I can’t condone what you’ve done. I … I’m going back to England, back to school; I’m leaving,” Dawn informed her, reaching behind the desk and pulling out her suitcase.
 
“You can’t condone what I’ve done? What about what she’s done!?” Buffy exclaimed angrily. “She killed Tara and Kennedy and I don’t know how many other Potentials, not to mention Anya and Xander … she drove Willow totally insane and had me on the brink of it! She killed Spike and sent his soul to hell for eternity! She took away my children and raised them as her own … she … she disfigured Giles, making him a bitter, angry, lonely man. What the fuck about all that!? You think she should get a free pass on that because she’s human!?”
 
Dawn shook her head and closed her eyes. “I don’t know … I just know, this isn’t right. This isn’t you. You don’t kill humans,” Dawn insisted.
 
Dawn opened her eyes and looked at Buffy. “Where does it stop? Who made you judge, jury, and executioner?”
 
Buffy snorted angrily and shook her head, folding her arms over her chest. “I’m the Slayer … I’ve always been the judge, jury, and executioner, Dawn. Hallie knew who she was dealing with when she started this – she knew better than to fuck with me right from the beginning.”

 

Dawn frowned and looked down at the floor. “I doubt that … I don’t even know you anymore, I doubt she had any idea…”
 
“She was a fucking ex-demon, Dawn! She’s not Joe-Blow out there pissing on the sidewalk! She killed people, real people, on purpose … premeditated, and planned out … perfectly executed. Who am I supposed to call to judge her? Judge Judy? Joe Brown? Simon Cowell, maybe?” Buffy quipped.
 
“I’m the only one that could’ve done it … and I did what I had to do. I’m not going to apologize for it. Shit – we don’t even have fucking scrunchies in this godforsaken world she created!”
 
“And what if you get caught? They’ll send you to jail, or worse!” Dawn pointed out.
 
“I’m not gonna get caught and go to jail,” Buffy moaned with a roll of her eyes.
 
“That’s what all criminals think, until they do! Otherwise, they wouldn’t be criminals!” Dawn argued, folding her arms across her chest to match Buffy.
 
“I’m a nobody … a stranger. They don’t know me from Adam …” Buffy asserted.
 
Dawn mimicked a police officer doing an interview, “Yes, Mr. Hart, did anything unusual happen on the day your girlfriend was killed?” then, changing her voice to a deeper one, she answered her own question, “Why, yes, officer – there were two lunatics here acting strangely and asking questions …”
 
“Two lunatics with the Historical Society of England asking questions about historical stuff!” Buffy defended. “Just where do you think the police will be looking for those two nut-jobs? In an apparently abandoned hotel in east L.A.? Doubtful.”
 
Dawn shrugged and shook her head slowly as tears welled in her eyes. “Buffy – don’t you remember what happened to Faith? Where does it end? Today it was Hallie … but what happens tomorrow? What happens when someone else … another human, crosses you?”
 
“I’m not Faith!” Buffy argued. “I know what I’m doing! It’s not the same thing.”
 
“Faith thought she knew what she was doing, too…” Dawn contended sadly. “I’m sorry … I can’t … I can’t help you anymore. I won’t tell anyone – I won’t tell Giles or Riley where you are or what you’re doing, but I can’t do this. You’re asking too much.”
 
Dawn’s heart was breaking … she thought she had her sister back – she thought she had what little was left of her family back, but she’d been wrong. Buffy … the old Buffy, would never kill a human, no matter what she thought that person had done; it was wrong. Dawn’s hopes that she’d found her sister again were dashed in the blink of an eye … or the squeeze of a trigger.
 
Buffy sighed deeply and shook her head as she rubbed a hand tiredly across her eyes. How could she get Dawn to understand that sometimes in life you had to make hard choices … sometimes you had to shoulder a heavy burden to protect the ones you love … and in the case of a Slayer that could mean that you have to mete out the ultimate punishment because there was no one else that could.
 
“Dawn, please understand,” Buffy begged her. “I did it to protect my family … including you – you have no idea what she’s capable of. There was no one else that could do it, only me.”
 
Dawn shook her head in disagreement. “You did it for revenge, Buffy … you can wrap it up in pretty paper and tie it up with a bow, but what you did was no better than what she did … now you’re both murderers.
 
“I suddenly don’t know who you are – you’re not my sister – not the sister that I knew and looked up to. I thought I had you back, but… you aren’t who I thought you were,” Dawn explained sadly as she tried to control her quivering lip and keep her tears from falling.
 
Buffy sighed heavily as her frustration over the whole situation boiled up to the surface. “Fine … that’s fine, you should go. I’ll handle the rest myself,” Buffy said coldly, as she turned and headed to the desk to find a pen and piece of paper like she had started to when she first came in.



When Buffy looked back up, Dawn was walking out the door. Tears welled in Buffy’s eyes as she watched her only friend, her only ally, her only family, walk away. She wanted to call her back … tell her … tell her she loved her and was so proud of her and beg her to stay, but she wouldn’t apologize for what she’d done to Hallie. She had killed a human and she’d done it in cold blood, but she wasn’t sorry. It had to be done … and she was the only one that could do it. Spike wasn’t here to take that burden from her shoulders like he had when Riley attacked them and shot Tara; this would be Buffy’s burden to carry and she’d carry it and answer for it when the time came.

**~**
 
{{Click here to hear "One Way or Another” by Blondie on YouTube   }}

One way or another, I'm gonna find ya'
I'm gonna get ya', get ya', get ya', get ya'
One way or another, I'm gonna win ya'
I'm gonna get ya', get ya' ,get ya', get ya'

One way or another, I'm gonna see ya'
I'm gonna meet ya', meet ya', meet ya', meet ya'
One day maybe next week, I'm gonna meet ya'
I'm gonna meet ya', I'll meet ya'

I will drive past your house
and if the lights are all down
I'll see who's around

One way or another, I'm gonna find ya'
I'm gonna get ya', get ya', get ya', get ya'
One way or another, I'm gonna win ya'
I'll get ya', I'll get ya'

One way or another, I'm gonna see ya'
I'm gonna meet ya', meet ya', meet ya', meet ya'
One day maybe next week,I'm gonna meet ya'
I'll meet ya' ah

And if the lights are all out
 I'll follow your bus downtown
See who's hangin' out

One way or another, I'm gonna lose ya'
I'm gonna give you the slip
A slip of the lip or another I'm gonna lose ya'
I'm gonna trick ya', I'll trick ya'

One way or another, I'm gonna lose ya'
I'm gonna trick ya', trick ya', trick ya', trick ya'
One way or another, I'm gonna lose ya'
I'm gonna give you the slip

I'll walk down the mall, stand over by the wall
Where I can see it all, find out who ya' call
Lead you to the supermarket checkout, some specials and rat food
Get lost in the crowd

One way or another I'm gonna get ya'
I'll get ya'
I'll get ya', get ya', get ya', get ya'
Where I can see it all, find out who ya' call

End Notes:
TBC ... What will Buffy do now that she's completely alone without even Dawn to help her? Will Rack be of help or will the cost of his services be too high?
Not Like the Movies by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy approaches Rack for help … but eventually turns to an old friend. She also has a surprise visit and finds out something new about William and Cecily’s children.
**~Music Referenced:
Not Like the Movies, Katy Perry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClijSwB-rCc
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
JM Photos courtesy of www.CivilizedJames.org
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!

Tuesday, February 21st, 2005:
 
Later that night Buffy walked around the park near the tar pits, then up and down La Brea between Wilshire and Pink’s, but couldn’t find Rack’s place. She knew that it was cloaked – typically only demons could find it when he was in Sunnydale, but Dawn had said that Buffy never seemed to have any problem locating it before …

 

“Shit …” she moaned as she started back down La Brea Avenue from Pink’s to the tar pits one more time, still not seeing or feeling or sensing the hidden ‘crack’ house of magick. Then she saw a girl carrying a bag from Pink’s … she couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She was skinny and dirty, her hair was a mousey brown and looked like rats slept in it – she had to be going to Rack’s with his hot dog. Buffy fell into step a few feet behind the girl and tried to look nonchalant, but there was no need – the girl never looked back or seemed to even notice her.
 
The girl suddenly turned onto a small side street and disappeared almost immediately – Buffy followed right behind her, right into Rack’s waiting room.
 
Buffy watched the girl go through another door with her delivery as four other ‘customers’ waited their turn in the dingy waiting room. Buffy had no inclination to wait, though; she’d already wasted over an hour looking for this place, so she followed the girl with the hotdog into the inner sanctum, into the lion’s den, despite the protests from the magic junkies in the waiting room.
 
Inside she found Rack … sitting on a sofa that she was sure even Goodwill wouldn’t even take, just starting to take a bite of his chili, bacon, cheese dog.
 
“Hey – the door was closed for a reason! Wait until you’re called!” Rack exclaimed angrily, his attention on his dinner.
 
“Sorry – I don’t do ‘wait’ well… plus, you need new magazines out there – I mean, really, 'Road and Track' from 1999?” Buffy quipped. “And not a single Cosmo or People …”
 
Rack looked up from his meal – his eyes went wide and he sat the hotdog back down on the bag it came in.
 
“No fair! Rack, it’s my turn!” the young girl who had delivered the hotdog protested. “Make her leave!”
 
“Shut up and sit down!” Rack yelled at the girl, turning a cold glare on her before looking back at Buffy.
 
“Slayer … thought you’d moved to greener pastures – found redemption or Xanax or something…” Rack commented as he stood up and began moving closer to Buffy.
 
“Yeah, well, things change. I need some help, I’m told you might be able to help me,” Buffy explained, backing up a step when Rack got too near.
 
Rack moved his hands, as if touching her aura, all around her head, neck and shoulders – his eyes followed his hands with a look of awe. When he lowered his hands down to her chest, level with her heart, his eyes closed involuntarily and Buffy thought he was going to have an aneurysm or an orgasm, or both.


 
Buffy took another step back and Rack slowly opened his eyes and met hers. “It’s been a long time, Avengelyne,” Rack whispered to her seductively.

 

Buffy’s brows furrowed in confusion, she didn’t know who Avengelyne was, but she shook it off – it didn’t matter what he called her as long as he did what she wanted. “I need information on vengeance demons and D’Hoffryn; how to defeat them, how to reverse a wish. Can you help me?”
 
Rack looked at her for a few long moments then shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve partied with them, but you don’t want to get on their bad side – they’re a nasty lot … vengeful, if you know what I mean.”
 
“I can take care of myself – I just need to know if you can help me and what it will cost,” Buffy told him, folding her arms across her chest.
 
Rack shrugged again and went back and sat back down on the sofa and picked his hotdog back up and took a bite.


 
“Well? Will you help me or not? I don’t have all night!” Buffy demanded, moving closer to where he was sitting.
 
Rack sat the hotdog down as he chewed and leaned back on the sofa. “I can help you – you know the cost,” he informed her after he swallowed.
 
“Let’s pretend I don’t know the cost … why don’t you just give me a number,” Buffy suggested. “Do you take credit cards?”
 
Rack looked at her with confusion a moment. “The cost isn’t money, Avengelyne … it’s power,” Rack reminded her. “Sweet, wicked, ancient power…”
 
“How much?” Buffy asked, not sure exactly what that meant.
 
“Just enough … not all,” Rack assured her, leaning forward and taking another bite of his dog.
 
“Well, that’s good, ‘cos I probably need some to do little things like breathe …” Buffy retorted sarcastically. “You can have ten percent,” she bargained, not really sure how she could stop him from taking more, but figuring it was worth a try to at least act like she knew what she was doing.
 
“You always were a tough cookie … seventy-five,” Rack countered.
 
“Twenty …” Buffy negotiated.
 
“Fifty and I’ll tell you everything you need to know…” Rack shot back.
 
“You tell me first … then you get paid if your information’s worth anything,” Buffy stipulated.
 
“Fair enough, Avengelyne … have a seat,” he offered, waving his hand at the couch.
 
“I’ll stand,” Buffy declined, trying not to scrunch her nose up at the grossness of that couch.
 
Rack shrugged and took another bite of his hotdog, then said, “Suit yourself,” with his mouth full.
 
Is he trying to totally gross me out? Buffy thought as she stood and waited for him to finish his dinner.
 
Rack wiped his mouth and hands on a napkin when he finished eating, then held his right hand out and a paper appeared in it from nowhere.
 
“D’Hoffryn’s party girls,” Rack explained, handing the paper to Buffy. “I haven’t met them all … but that’s a start.”
 
“There’s over fifty names here … these are all vengeance demons?” Buffy asked incredulously as she took the paper.
 
“Yeah … just the ones I know … clients,” Rack clarified.
 
Buffy looked down the list, pulling the list of names Hallie had given her from her pocket and comparing them. Sure enough, three of the four names that Hallie had given her were on the list.
 
“Ok,” Buffy started, looking back up from the paper. “Now, how do I summon them and destroy their power source?”
 
“Summoning isn’t a problem … I can give you the spell for that, the hard part is keeping them from vamoosing as soon as they realize they’ve been duped,” Rack advised her. “They can teleport like that!” Rack told her, snapping his fingers. “Poof – gone!”
 
“Ok … how do I keep them from poofing on me?” Buffy asked.
 
“Ahhh, now, that’s gonna be more costly, Avengelyne …” Rack cooed softly as he got up and moved towards Buffy.

 

Buffy backed up a step, then side stepped a coffee table that had seen better days, putting it between them. “I don’t think so – you get fifty percent – that’s it. You give me everything I need, that’s the deal. Take it or leave it,” she bluffed. In truth, if he could help her take out D’Hoffryn and his minions, she’d give just about anything – there wasn’t anything left for her here except revenge, anyway. Without Spike, without her family and friends, what did she really have left?
 
Rack stopped moving and looked at her a long moment. “Your mouth says ‘no’, but your soul says ‘yes’,” he informed her.
 
“Yeah? Well, guess what? Mouth trumps soul. I’ll just find someone else, I’m sure there’s more than one slime-ball that would like some of this ancient power…” Buffy continued to bluff, as she turned towards the door and started walking away. In fact, she had no idea where to look for another slime-ball like Rack…

 

Rack stepped in front of her and blocked her path, laying his palm on her breastbone before she could stop him or move away. Buffy felt a surge of magic flow through her, it seemed to explode within every cell of her body, like a million-trillion little firecrackers all going off at once. Buffy suddenly understood … she understood why she turned to Rack in this life, why she turned to magick, because without Spike, this was all she could find to make her feel alive again. Even though it wasn’t real, it wasn’t love … it didn’t matter – her body felt wave after wave of magical bliss wash over it as bright flashes of color danced before her eyes. Then, just as quickly as it began, it stopped when Rack pulled his hand away and Buffy nearly collapsed, catching herself with her hands on her thighs as she bent forward and tried to breathe.
 
“What the fuck was that?” Buffy gasped out, still bent over with her hands braced against her knees.
 
“Just a little taste for my fallen angel … a little reminder of how my magick can give you wings,” Rack murmured to her as he came back down from the high, himself.
 
“Yeah, well, you can keep it, Rack – I don’t need you or your fucking magick!” Buffy informed him, suddenly angry at him for invading her like that and angrier at herself for enjoying it. Buffy straightened up and brushed past Rack; she hurried out the door that she’d come through into the waiting room then out to the street, not slowing down, the list of vengeance demons he’d given her still in her hand.
 
Buffy heard him call after her, “You’ll be back, Avengelyne … you need me like a vamp needs blood!” and she began to run, not stopping until her legs and lungs began screaming in protest.
 
“I don’t need that … I don’t need that … I don’t need that,” Buffy repeated like a mantra when she’d finally stopped running and collapsed down onto a bench, holding her head in her hands and taking deep breaths.

 

But she did need help, she needed information. Now where was she going to get it? She thought about trying the Council … they might have someone that could help her, then she remembered - Giles was the Council. There had to be someone else who had information and was still on the side of good … unlike Angel.

Then an idea came to her – Wesley! Wesley would know everything that she needed to know and he was ex-Council … surely he would be willing to help her if she asked as the Slayer – as Slayer to Watcher, or ex-Slayer to ex-Watcher. Buffy looked at her watch … 4am … she’d go back to the Hyperion, clean up and change, then go wait outside the W&H building for Wes to come to work. Fuck you, Rack!
 
**~**
 
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2005:

 

Buffy stood across the street from the main entrance of the W&H building at 7:00am and watched all the suits file in like ants to a picnic. She hoped that she would still recognize Wes … and that he hadn’t fallen so far under the W&H spell that he would still help her. Buffy had turned on the radio while she was showering and changing back at the hotel, but didn’t hear anything about any bodies washing up on Venice Beach … maybe the tide took Hallie’s body out to sea or maybe a shark ate it. If a dead shark washed up on shore, that would answer that question, she thought ruefully. That would be a good break, and she could use a good break for a change. Even though Buffy assured Dawn that there was no way the police could tie her to that crime, there was still a nagging doubt and worry in the back of her mind about that; she really didn’t want to have to flee L.A. just yet.
 
So lost in her thoughts was she, that Buffy nearly missed seeing Wesley as he walked up the sidewalk towards the entrance. Buffy ran across the street and caught him just in time, just before he entered the building.
 
“Wesley!” Buffy called as she grabbed his arm to keep him from going in.
 
Wes turned and looked at her, confused for a moment before recognizing her, “Buffy! What are you doing here? I thought you were in jolly old England.”
 
“Yeah – well, I had some business here and … well, that’s what I need to talk to you about. Do you have a minute?” Buffy asked, getting right to the point.
 
“Certainly … come up to my office – I’m sure Angel would love to see you, as well,” Wes offered.

 

“Uhhhh – no, actually, could we, ummm … talk over here?” Buffy asked, waving her arm towards a coffee shop across the street. “Your treat.”
 
Wes smiled and nodded. “Giles still has you Slayers on a shoestring, I see…”
 
“Yeah … well you know how that is. Council’s always been tighter than Sister Mary Margaret's ass,” Buffy confirmed.
 
Wesley laughed and nodded. “Indeed … I’m sure I wouldn’t know of such things.”
 
“Right – you’re a saint, I forgot,” Buffy teased as they made it into the coffee shop. She hoped that was true … that he was a saint … or at least not a ‘company man’.

 

When they had their coffees and danishes and were sitting at a table in the back, Buffy got down to business. “Wes, here’s the thing. I need information on vengeance demons … specifically, how to summon them, how to hold them, and how to destroy their power sources – and I’m in kind of a hurry.”
 
Wes sat back in his chair and took a sip of coffee and another bite of his danish, not saying anything for a long while. “You do realize that D’Hoffryn is a client of Wolfram & Hart?”
 
“Yes …” Buffy answered, her hopes fading.
 
“And you realize that I’m in the employee of Wolfram & Hart …”
 
“Yes …” Buffy agreed, her voice getting lower as a knot formed in the pit of her stomach.
 
“And I could get in a tremendous amount of trouble if I helped you … as could the firm,” Wes pointed out.
 
“Yes … I understand that. I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t really important and I had anyone else to turn to,” Buffy told him, practically begging.

 

Wes looked at her for a long while, then nodded his agreement and Buffy let out a long breath that she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding. “I’ll see what I can find and get back to you. How’s tonight? Where are you staying?” Wes asked her.
 
“At the Hyperion,” Buffy told him. At his surprised look she added, “Angel doesn’t know – I just, it wasn’t being used so I sort of … commandeered it.”
 
“Yes, the Council hasn’t changed much at all … no allocation for food or lodging,” Wes sympathized. “Fine – I’ll be there around eight, I’ll bring dinner.”
 
“Great!” Buffy exclaimed, her spirits finally rising with hope that she’d finally get something she could use.
 
As they were leaving the coffee shop Buffy thanked Wes, then added, “Don’t tell Angel … I don’t think … I don’t think he’d approve.”
 
Wes nodded. “I’m quite certain that you are correct.”
 
**~**
 
Buffy went back to the Hyperion to get some rest and wait for Wesley … she felt like she hadn’t slept in days … she actually couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept …
 
Buffy’s sleep was filled with nightmares of the last time she’d seen Spike … of him apologizing to her, of the fear and sadness in his eyes, of him burning right in front of her and his scream of agony which cut like a razor, slashing her heart and draining her soul. The scene replayed over and over in her dreams as she tossed and turned and tried to will herself to wake up so it would stop – but she could never get fully awake and would fall right back asleep and dream the same thing over and over again.
 
Buffy was in one of those many moments between sleep and wakefulness when she heard Spike calling out, as if searching for her. “Hello?! Anyone here? Is anybody home?” he called. Buffy sighed and turned over again, hopeful that this would be the beginning of a better dream … but Spike just kept repeating the same thing, only louder, and then she heard someone ring a bell and she realized finally, that it wasn’t a dream … it was coming from downstairs. Spike was downstairs!
 
Buffy jumped up from her bed and dashed down the stairs from the room she had near the landing on the second floor. “Spike!” she screamed as she ran, catching a glimpse of him standing at the reception counter as he banged a hand down repeatedly on the old desk-clerk bell that was there and continued to yell, “Hello?!”
 
Spike turned around at the sound of her voice and Buffy surprised him by being right behind him when he did. She flung herself into his arms and wrapped her arms around his neck. “God, Spike! How did you get away?! How? Please tell me this isn’t a dream!” she begged as she held him tight, afraid that if she let go, he would vanish.
 
“Well … it’s good to see you again, too … Miss Historical Society. You take your job real personal, don’t you?” Spike asked her, as he tried to extricate himself from her arms.
 
“Huh?” Buffy asked as it dawned on her that his voice, although deep and rich, wasn’t Spike’s … it had no accent. Buffy pulled back and looked him in the face.
 
“Oh God! Oh, I’m so sorry! Henry! I thought you were … I thought you were someone else!” Buffy exclaimed in apology as she released him quickly and backed up. “Oh, I’m so embarrassed … I’m sorry! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
 
Henry William Hart laughed. “No … takes more than a little hug to hurt me. I must admit, that’s the best greeting I’ve gotten in a long time, though,” he smirked at her as Buffy’s face turned ten shades of red and she tried to find something to do with her hands.
 
Buffy started nervously picking up papers off the counter, turning them over, straightening them, and putting them in piles. “So … ummm, Henry, what are you doing here? How did you find me?” Buffy asked, never meeting his gaze.

 

Henry stood back away from the counter and watched as Buffy moved the papers around, putting them in one pile, then separating them, then piling them back again mindlessly. “Wasn’t hard – you took the beach taxi … Joe, the driver? He’s a friend of mine,” Henry informed her, folding his arms over his chest and smiling at how cute she looked while trying to act nonchalant.
 
“Did I wake you up?” he asked and Buffy looked up at him, then down at her disheveled clothes, then she ran her hand though her hair and realized she had total bed-head.
 
“Oh, God … I must look horrible! Yeah … I was … I was up late doing some research and … I just laid down for a little nap,” she admitted, trying to smooth her hair out with her hands.
 
“So, ummm, Henry …” Buffy started.
 
“Call me Spike, everyone does,” Henry advised her with a smile.
 
“Oh, uhh, okay, Spike,” Buffy started again. “What brings you here?” Please don’t let it be anything to do with Hallie … Buffy prayed silently.
 
“Last night, I got to thinkin’ – I knew I’d seen you somewhere before and it finally hit me today where it was,” he told her, pulling out some old photographs from the back pocket of his jeans. “You look exactly like my grandmother.”
 
“Your grandmother!” Buffy exclaimed. “I’m not that old! I’m not that much older than you!”
 
Henry … err, Spike, laughed and laid the pictures on the now uncluttered counter. “When she was young …” he clarified. “You could be twins.”


 
Buffy gasped when she looked at the photos … they did look just like her … without any help from Miss Clairol. Buffy stood in silence as she picked each photo up and studied it – her mind whirling with questions. Just what had Hallie done? How could someone who was supposed to be William and Cecily’s descendant look just like Buffy? Buffy could reason out this young man standing before her looking like Spike … but how could his grandmother look so much like Buffy … in fact, exactly like Buffy? Had Hallie physically stolen Buffy and Spike’s children … or taken Buffy’s DNA and used it to create the children? What the hell kind of game was she playing!? Well, it was too late to find out now … dead women tell no tales.
 
“She was a dancer, a prima-ballerina with The Pacific Northwest Ballet Company … well, until she married my grandfather and had my mother – then she retired from dancing and taught ballet,” Henry offered, pulling Buffy from her thoughts. “I always told her I got my balance and build from her side of the family. Even when she was older, she had a grace about her … she moved like … well, she moved like you.”
 
Buffy looked up from the photos and met Henry’s blue eyes and she fought to keep her composure. Hallie wasn’t shacking up with her own great-whatever grandson … she was shacking up with Buffy’s! She had found a way to not only steal Buffy’s children away, but she had literally taken them … taken Buffy’s own flesh and blood, for her own. Buffy could feel her heart racing, her chest heaving trying to get air, and tears threatening her eyes as the extent of Hallie’s crimes against her and her family came crashing down on her.
 
“Are you okay?” Henry asked, concern creasing his features.
 
“Could you get me some water?” Buffy asked, waving her hand towards the kitchenette.
 
“Sure…” Henry agreed, moving past Buffy in the direction she’d indicated.
 
Buffy took deep breaths to calm down … she needed to just calm down now.
 
“Here you go,” he offered, coming up behind her with the glass of water she’d requested.
 
Buffy drank it down eagerly as she tried to calm herself … as she tried to pull the knife out of her heart – again.
 
“You aren’t really from the Historical Society, are you?” Henry asked when Buffy set the empty glass down on the counter.

Buffy shook her head ‘no’, but couldn’t meet his eyes – the eyes of her great, great … too many greats, grandchild - eyes that reflected Spike’s so perfectly.

 
 
“Were you Grandma Ackerman’s … what I mean is … was your mother my mother’s half sister?” Henry asked softly.
 
Buffy’s mouth opened and closed and she finally looked up and met his eyes. “I … I don’t know – what happened to her?” Buffy hedged.
 
Henry shrugged. “Grandma Ackerman got pregnant in high school, it was a big scandal … the guy split, he was older … she had to give the baby girl up for adoption. No one knows what happened to her after that,” he explained.
 
“I … ummm, you know … probably not. They say everyone has a doppelganger, right?” Buffy said, trying to act like she hadn’t just been punched in the gut.
 
“Then why the questions about old family stuff?” Henry pressed.
 
Buffy smiled and shook her head. “It’s just … a truly long and boring story. But I appreciate you showing me these,” she added quickly, handing the photos back to him. “They’re … amazing.”
 
Henry shrugged. “Sure … no problem.” Henry motioned with his hand towards the center of the lobby where the dismantled settee still lay as well as the ring of herbs from the summoning spell. “Having some trouble with vandals?”
 
“Huh?” Buffy asked, confused before following his eyes. “Oh … no – it’s … uhh … termites!”

“Termites? Must be some pretty big ones,” Henry mused, as he narrowed his eyes and studied her.
 
“Yeah … it’s a new variety from Madagascar … Madagascar termites. You know, everything’s bigger in Madagascar,” Buffy explained, her nervousness coming back.
 
“And the potpourri?” he asked, indicating the ring of herbs on the floor.
 
“Oh … that’s … they don’t like potpourri! They’re very anti-potpourri there,” Buffy babbled, bending down quickly and picking up D’Hoffryn’s talisman from the center of the ring and stuffing it into her pocket.
 
“You’re strange …” Henry informed her. “But in a good way … you remind me of my family – they’re all just a little bit off center.”
 
Buffy laughed nervously. “Well, everyone’s family is that way,” she assured him.
 
“Where’s your friend?” Henry asked, looking around the lobby. “Also napping?”
 
“Who? Oh, Dawn! She’s not my friend, she’s my sister,” Buffy clarified. “She had to go back to England … she’s attending Oxford,” she added before kicking herself mentally for offering too much information.
 
“Really?!” Henry asked, his brows rising in surprise. “I start there in the fall. I’ve got a Rhodes Scholarship … I was just chillaxin’, taking some time off before, you know, getting down to officially being an adult…”
 
Buffy’s jaw dropped open momentarily, but she snapped it back shut before Henry could tell her about catching flies. “That’s … really amazing. I’m so proud of you,” Buffy told him before catching herself and quickly amending what she said. “I mean, of her … I’m so proud of her … my sister – sisterly pride – pride of sister,” she babbled quickly.
 
Henry looked at her as if trying to see beyond the surface, making Buffy avert her gaze from his eyes back down to the Madagascar-termite potpourri barrier on the floor.
 
“You are very strange …” he told her again.
 
Buffy shrugged and took a deep breath before asking, “Speaking of friends … how’s your … friend?”
 
Henry looked at her with confusion for a moment before realizing who she was talking about. “Oh, Hallie? She’s not really a friend so much as an … acquaintance, I guess. In fact, I just met her a few days ago and apparently she’s over it – she went to the store last night and never came back. Don’t you hate it when girls do that … just leave without telling you what it was you did wrong?”
 
Buffy sighed in relief; she hadn’t killed the love of his life, after all. “Does that happen often?”
 
“Well, no, not really … not like that. Usually I get the ‘it’s me, not you’ line,” Henry admitted. “I think maybe there’s something wrong with me.”
 
“I’m sure it’s nothing to do with you, Henry. You seem like a very nice guy … and obviously smart and charming and that tan, hard surfer body is pretty … uhhh … what I mean is – I’m sure it has nothing to do with you,” Buffy assured him.  
 


Stop macking on your own great-whatever grandchild! Buffy admonished herself silently as she gave him her most reassuring, motherly smile.
 
Henry shrugged. “That’s just it … they see the blond hair and the tan, California surfer, and they don’t want to look any deeper. Do you believe in soul mates?” he asked her, out of the blue.
 
“Yeah – yeah, I do.”
 
“I thought girls wanted to … you know – to find their soul mate, to connect on a deeper level, to find true love, but all the girls I meet just seem to want to connect with my … uhhh … with the surfer, not the Rhodes Scholar - Hallie was the same way,” Henry told her with a sigh. “Not that that isn't ... you know, great as far as it goes, but I thought girls wanted some romance - you know, dancing and flowers and long walks on the beach …”
 
“You just haven’t found the right one yet, Henry.”
 
“Spike,” he corrected her.
 
“Huh? Oh, right … Spike, sorry,” Buffy apologized. “Where did you get that nickname, anyway?” Buffy asked, praying that it wasn’t from poking railroad spikes in people’s eyes …
 
“It’s actually a very long and embarrassing story,” Henry hedged.
 
Buffy raised her brows and shrugged. “I’ve got time … I’m all rested from my nap, and since you got to see me with bed-head, I think it’s only fair that you share something embarrassing about yourself – squid pro quo.”
 
“Quid pro quo,” Henry corrected her.
 
“Oh, right … quid … a totally different sea creature than squid…” Buffy agreed.
 
Henry furrowed his brow and shook his head – this girl was so very strange, but in a totally adorable way.
 
“Okay … well, when I was five, I used to build sandcastles on the beach, then I’d dig miniature trou de loups all around it,” he started, then, at Buffy’s confused look, he explained, “You know, like punji pits or tiger pits? Anyway, I’d line the bottoms with toothpicks … then pretend my GI Joes where attacking the castle and they’d fall into them and get spiked and die horrible deaths,” he related.

 

At Buffy’s amused look he added, “I was kind of a demon as a child … our neighbors said I would grow up to be an axe murderer – but I grew out of it, mostly,” Henry related with a shrug and a smile.
 
“Mostly?” Buffy questioned.
 
“Well, I haven’t actually axed anyone … although, I do enjoy a good horror movie. Anyway … someone gave me the nickname ‘The Spikester’, which got shortened to ‘Spike’ and it just stuck,” he explained with a shrug.

Buffy laughed and wondered if that was what awaited them when Billy was five – would he be finding new and unusual ways to kill his GI Joes? Then a dark cloud crossed over her face – she would never know – Billy would be growing up in Victorian England with William and Cecily, not in California with her and Spike; Billy would never see his eighteenth birthday, he’d be killed in WWI at the age of seventeen, he’d never have a family, never have a wife – he’d never build sandcastles on the beach with his sisters, he’d never know what a GI Joe even was. Buffy blinked tears back and pushed the heart-wrenching thoughts from her mind as she forced a smile back to her lips.




 
“I always just dug moats around my castles and dug canals from the water to fill them up,” she offered.
 
“That’s lame, girly stuff,” Henry informed her with a smirk. “Everyone had moats – I wanted something different, something better – deadlier. Now, if I could’ve gotten miniature alligators or sharks to go in the moat to eat ole Joe, then that would’ve been ok.”
 
They both laughed easily for a minute, then, when the laughter died, Henry asked, “Are you … would you like to go out maybe … we could have coffee or ... there's a 'Nightmare on Elm Street' marathon at the Beach Multiplex - twenty-four hours of Freddy Krueger ...”
 
Buffy looked at this young man in front of her … this younger version of her husband, so handsome, so nice … so very young and so very much a part of her and Spike. At the look on her face he quickly said, “Never mind, sorry, that was really presumptuous of me – you probably have a boyfriend.”
 
Buffy smiled sadly at him, she wanted to lay a hand on his face, she wanted to touch him so badly, but she didn’t reach out, instead she clasped her hands in front of her and met his eyes with hers. “I … yes, actually, I’m married,” she explained, holding up her left hand with Riley’s wedding band on it.
 
Henry shrugged. “It’s like they say … all the good ones are taken – or gay,” he laughed lightly.
 
“You’ll find someone one day, Henry … someone that makes you feel complete. You’ll look at her and your heart will skip a beat and your world will stop spinning, you’ll feel it, like a fire in your soul, then you’ll know she’s the one. Just keep looking, just like in the movies, you’ll be her prince charming and she’ll be your dream come true.”
 
“Is that how it was for you?” he asked softly, holding her eyes captive with his.
 
“Exactly how it was …” Buffy assured him with a smile.



"You're really lucky..." Henry began when the front door of the hotel opened and Wes tired to hold it and get inside with his hands full of bags of Chinese take-out, drinks, and a large wooden box.

“Little help here!” the ex-Watcher called, trying to maneuver through the doors without spilling the food or drinks or dropping the box.
 
“Oh! Wes!” Buffy exclaimed, moving quickly to him and taking one bag and one drink from his hands.
 
“That’s my cue to exit stage left …” Henry told her with a smile. “I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for, Miss … What is your name, anyway?”
 
“Elizabeth, but my friends call me Buffy,” she told him as Wes brushed past them to set the rest of the food down in the kitchen.
 
“Well, Elizabeth … good luck with your search,” Henry told her.
 
“You can call me Buffy,” she told him with a smile.
 
“And you can call me Spike …”
 
Buffy laughed and nodded. “Fair enough, Spike … thanks for showing me those photos and good luck with your search,” Buffy told him before he turned and pushed the door open and headed out into the cool night air of L.A.
 
Buffy watched him walk away, down the sidewalk and around the corner and he was gone. Her heart wanted her to run after him … it told her it didn’t matter who his great-whatever grandparents were … that was Spike! And he was leaving! She was losing him again! But her feet didn’t move, because despite what her heart said, her mind knew that wasn’t really Spike and it wouldn’t be fair to him for her use him as a stunt double when he should have his own starring role with someone … with his own soul mate.
 
“Who was that?” Wes asked, walking up behind her and taking the bag of food from her hand.
 
“Just someone I used to know… a distant relative,” Buffy sighed as she turned and followed Wes back to the kitchenette.
 
After they had eaten, Wes picked the wooden box up off the floor and put it up on the cleared table. He opened it and pulled out some old scrolls and unrolled one in front of Buffy. “You do realize I could get in an enormous amount of trouble for this …” he reminded her again.

 

“I know – I swear, no one will know where I got this … I’ll take it to my grave,” Buffy assured him and Wes nodded gratefully.
 
“These hold the names of all of D’Hoffryn’s vengeance demons – their proper names, as well as the spell to summon each one and what their power center is,” Wes explained.
 
Buffy looked at the first scroll, but didn’t see any of the names that Hallie had given her and her brow furrowed in worry. “I’m looking for Bianca, Yumiko, Jaiyana … or Abrianna,” Buffy told him as she pulled her hand written list out of her pocket. “I don’t see any of them on here.”
 
“These are their proper names … those are probably names they go by in the human world,” Wes clarified.
 
“Like Hallie and Halfrek … or Anya and Anyanka?” she asked him.
 
“Indeed … they should be close – usually. Sometimes, of course, they use completely different names in the human world,” Wes told her.
 
“Yeah … like Cecily….” Buffy muttered under her breath as she started looking at the first scroll anew, looking for names that were close to the ones she had.
 
“Here!” she exclaimed at last. “Axriabianca … that must be Bianca! Okay, now what do I do?”
 
“Ok, this is the summoning spell, just under the name … you’ll need a sacred circle …” Wes started.
 
“Yeah … I got the potpourri already….” Buffy interrupted him, motioning with her head at the circle of herbs on the lobby floor.
 
“Very good … then, since you don’t have their talisman, you will need to stand within the circle when you summon them. Here, under the spell is their power center,” Wes pointed to Axriabinanca’s name on the scroll then slid his finger down to the second line under her name, it read “Jade amulet.”
 
Buffy nodded. “Oh, I thought that was their Christmas wish list,” she quipped dryly. “Ok, so I summon her, and destroy the jade amulet and the last wish she’d granted will be reversed, right?”
 
“Yes … but you’ll need to be fast to get the amulet – you don’t want to have to fight a vengeance demon – they really are quite difficult to kill and they can teleport. If they see the attack coming, they could just leave … that’s what these are for,” Wes informed her, pulling three baseball sized, light pink crystals out of the box.

 

“Put two of these down, just outside the sacred circle, equal distances apart and recite a short incantation. When the demon appears, place the third one down so all three are basically equally spaced … this will form a magical barrier from which they cannot escape … but neither can you.”
 
“Sooooo … how do I get out once I’ve destroyed her power source?” Buffy questioned, picking one of the crystals up. It seemed to buzz in her hand, like it was alive, and she set it back down.
 
“There is a reversal spell for you to say that will shut them off …” Wes told her, pulling another piece of paper from the box and handing to her.
 
“I’m not a witch …” Buffy pointed out, reading the paper silently.
 
“No … but we all have power within us … as the Slayer, you have more than most, you simply have to channel it and believe…” Wes assured her.
 
Buffy snorted softly, as if in doubt.
 
“If you want it badly enough, you can do it,” Wes added.
 
“Well, it shouldn’t be a problem, then…” Buffy sighed. “About how many wishes does a vengeance demons grant in say … a month?” Buffy asked Wesley.

 

Wes shrugged. “It varies by demon … some only grant a few a year, while others grant a few a week – there is no quota really or set amount.”
 
“Swell…” Buffy moaned.
 
“Are you certain you want to take on D’Hoffryn, Buffy? He can be quite … vengeful,” Wes pointed out.
 
Buffy gave Wes a rueful smile. “My new title is Buffy, the Vengeance Demon Slayer. I’m very sure I want to do this. This whole vampire slaying thing's getting a little blasé... I think it's time to branch out - expand my horizons.” If she hadn’t been sure before Henry’s visit, she was more than sure now. She doubted any of this would get her life and family back, but if she was going to lose her family and her life, then she would take every vengeance demon in the world down with her – right up to the top; she didn't have anything left to lose.
 
**~**
 
Buffy waited for Wes to leave, just in case anything went wrong, she didn’t want one of the vengeance demons escaping and it getting out that he had been there helping her. Buffy started with the last name Hallie had given her … just because, even at death’s door, she didn’t trust Hallie. In fact, Buffy wasn’t sure if any of the names would be the one that Hallie had made the wish with, but she had to start somewhere.
 
Buffy re-did the potpourri circle and set the crystals down as Wes had instructed her, then she read the incantation to ‘power up’ the trap. Holding the third crystal in one hand and her scythe in the other, she stepped inside the ring and read the spell to summon Abriannatalfect and waited … and waited … and waited.
 
“Fuck…” Buffy moaned. “I fucking hate Latin…” she muttered. Just as Buffy began to read the summoning spell again, there was a flash of light and a small redheaded woman with large, kelly-green eyes was standing in front of her.
 
“Abrianna?” Buffy asked hesitantly.
 
“Yes … you called? Your parents are warts and you wish them turned into hogs and slaughtered so you may dine on the bacon …” the demon guessed.
 
“Ummmm… yes, you got it exactly right,” Buffy replied, then remembered about the crystal in her hand. Buffy crouched down and placed the crystal on the floor behind her and a light pink force-field appeared all around and over them, like a huge, pink bubble of Bazooka bubblegum.
 
“What is the meaning of this?” Abrianna asked, indignantly.
 
“Did you grant a wish for Halfrek in the last month?” Buffy questioned.
 
“I’m sure that’s none of your business – vengeance demons don’t grant and tell!” the redhead informed her as she tried to teleport away, but bounced against the barrier and fell to the floor.
 
Buffy took that opportunity to press her scythe against the demon’s neck and pull a large, emerald ring from her finger, which was what the scroll listed as her power source. “Did you grant Hallie a wish?!” Buffy demanded again, but Abrianna morphed into her demon self and shoved Buffy off her and back against the barrier.
 
“You don’t frighten me, little girl! I eat girls like you with my bacon at breakfast!” the demon informed Buffy, as she drew her fist back and hit Buffy hard in the jaw, sending the Slayer down onto the floor.
 
Buffy blinked back the stars that were flashing in front of her eyes and tried to focus, but before she could get back up or defend herself, Abrianna hit her again, sending Buffy sprawling on the floor again. Buffy shook her head to clear her mind and turned away from the demon, setting the emerald ring on the floor and quickly lifting the scythe up and coming down on it with all her strength. There was an explosion of light and magic from the ring, which sent Buffy flying back against the other side of the magical jail and down to the floor, taking Abrianna down with her.
 
Buffy thought she felt the whole world stutter and shake like a small earthquake … as if it shifted on its axis or stopped spinning for a moment, but it was over quickly … and Buffy was still there, still trapped in the pink bubble-gum cage, not back in Sunnydale with her family.
 
Abrianna hit Buffy again, but it was barely a love tap – her power was gone – she was human again.
 
“What have you done!?” the ex-demon demanded of Buffy as she continued punching Buffy in vain.
 
Buffy grabbed one wrist and twisted it up behind her back … she thought she felt something pop in the woman’s shoulder when she did it and Abrianna screamed out in pain. “Did you grant Hallie’s wish?” Buffy asked again. “Tell me or I’ll rip it right off…”
 
“No! No! I haven’t seen Halfrek in years!” Abrianna exclaimed. “Let me go!”
 
“Are you sure?” Buffy asked, pulling the woman’s arm up behind her further.
 
“YES! I SWEAR! STOP! PLEASE STOP!”
 
Buffy released her and recited the reversal spell to drop the magical cage. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the pink bubble burst and Buffy pushed the ex-demon ahead of her towards the door of the hotel.
 
“Have a good life…” Buffy told her as she shoved her out the door and locked it behind her.
 
Buffy turned around and headed back to the sacred circle, fixing the herbs again so there were no breaks in the circle and re-setting the crystals and she started again, summoning Jaiyana, Yumiko, Bianca in turn. Each claimed to not have granted Hallie’s wish and destroying their power center didn’t send Buffy hurtling back to Sunnydale, didn’t bring Spike back to life or restore their family. When she questioned them further, none claimed to know who did grant the wish … they all went down fighting, but in the end, they all lost their power centers and their standing as vengeance demons – but that didn’t help Buffy at all.
 
After shoving the last of the four vengeance demons Hallie had named out the door and locking it again, Buffy dropped down onto the floor just outside the summoning circle and rested her forehead in her hands. She should’ve known that Hallie wouldn’t have given her real possibilities … Hallie assumed that Buffy would help her. Of course the Slayer would let her live and go back to the young Spike that she had ‘created’ … why would she give up real names? Why chance losing what she had – she’d probably waited a long time for one of their descendants to look that much like Spike.
 
Buffy closed her eyes and sighed heavily – there had to be eighty vengeance demons on the list … it would take forever to summon, question and defeat them all and she wondered if it would it even do any good? Apart from meting out her own brand of vengeance, would it get her family back?  Even if the wish was reversed, would it bring Spike back? Could you really get someone back from hell? She was so tired, so very, very tired, and nothing was working like it should.
 
“Let’s face it,” Buffy said to the empty lobby, “it’s not really like the movies … well, unless the movie was Soylent Green, or Easy Rider, or Butch and Sundance …”

 

Buffy bit her bottom lip … Butch and Sundance, just the mention of that movie brought so many memories up for her, memories of happier times, of partnership, friendship, and love and helping each other overcome fears and that night in Mexico and that day in Big Sur …
 
“God, Spike … I miss you so much,” Buffy sobbed as she collapsed down onto her side and curled up into a ball on the floor and cried. She cried for her husband, for her family and her friends and herself … she felt like she’d been crying for years. She wanted to hold onto the anger, hold onto the hate and the need for vengeance … but right now, she was just so tired and things seemed so hopeless, all she could do was cry. She tried to imagine Spike’s arms around her, holding her, and imagine his voice, deep and loving, singing his soft lullaby to her – soothing her worries, drying her tears, and allaying her fears with his words, his touch, his promise that there would be better days ahead.
 
But deep down, she held no illusions … all the ‘better days’ were past, what lie ahead was war … brutal, dangerous … merciless and most likely ending with her defeat, but at this point, her actual death seemed but a technicality.
 
**~**

{{Click here to hear "Not Like the Movies” by Katy Perry on YouTube   }}
 
He put it on me, I put it on,
Like there was nothing wrong.
It didn't fit,
It wasn't right.
Wasn't just the size.
They say you know,
When you know.
I don't know.

I didn't feel
The fairytale feeling, no.
Am I a stupid girl
For even dreaming that I could.

If it's not like the movies,
That’s how it should be, yeah.
When he's the one,
I'll come undone,
And my world will stop spinning
And that's just the beginning, yeah.

Snow white said when I was young,
"One day my prince will come."
So I wait for that date.
They say it’s hard to meet your match,
Find my better half.
So we make perfect shapes.


If stars don't align,
If it doesn't stop time,
If you can’t see the sign,
Wait for it.
One hundred percent,
With every penny spent.
He'll be the one that,
Finishes your sentences.

If it's not like the movies,
That’s how it should be.
When he's the one,
He'll come undone,
And my world will stop spinning,
And that’s just the beginning.

'Cause I know you're out there,
And your … your love came for me.
It's a crazy idea that, you were made,
Perfectly for me you'll see.

Just like the movies.
That's how it will be.
Cinematic and dramatic with the perfect ending.
It's not like the movies,
But that's how it should be.
When he's the one,
You'll come undone,
And your world will stop spinning,
And it's just the beginning.

End Notes:
TBC .... Will Buffy get her revenge? Will any of it make any difference in her life? Can she ever get Spike and her family back? Her family, her children, had already lived and died in Victorian England ... can anything change that?
Even Angels Fall by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy spends years tracking and destroying vengeance demons all around the globe. What will happen when she has a chance to take them all out in one fell swoop?
**
Music Referenced:
Even Angels Fall - Jessica Riddle
http://youtu.be/c0JgH7piD6g
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
 2005-2010
 
After summoning ten vengeance demons to the Hyperion, interrogating them, and destroying their power sources, the summoning trick stopped working for Buffy – word had spread, and none of them would answer a summons any longer if you didn’t have their talisman … and D’Hoffryn wouldn’t answer at all, so Buffy was forced to find a new strategy.

 

Wes liberated an ancient Tibetan concealment bracelet from the safekeeping of Wolfram & Hart for Buffy. As long as she wore it, D’Hoffryn and his minions would be unable to find her with locator spells or magicks. Since she had summoned so many to the Hyperion, and dispatched their power sources there, he advised her to move … perhaps it would be best if she left L.A. completely, at least for a while; Buffy had no problem with that – there was nothing holding her in the City of Angels.
 
Since Buffy couldn’t get any of the vengeance demons to answer her summons any longer, Wes showed her how to do locator spells for them, and, after about a week, Buffy finally got the hang of channeling her power and anger into the magic and locating them. The problem then was, would they still be there when she got to them … most of the time, they weren’t, but she was able to track enough of them down to make the treks worthwhile. She even caught one leaving Rack’s place, but with their ability to teleport, it was slow going. Luckily, they often hung around near the ‘wish zone’ for a while to admire their handiwork, and that worked in Buffy’s favor.
 
She’d been just about all over the globe since she undertook her new calling, Buffy, the Vengeance Demon Slayer; tracking them, catching them, destroying their power sources. At first she still held a small glimmer of hope that one of them would be the one that had granted Hallie’s wish and the wish would be reversed when their baubles were destroyed … but it never happened. After a few months, she knew with utter certainty that she’d never get Spike back … she’d never get her family back – all she had left was vengeance. Anger and a burning need to eradicate the demons that stole her life and her family were her only friends; they kept her warm at night and they drove her ever forward, no matter how far she had to go, they kept her putting one foot in front of the other; nothing else mattered.
 
Riley and Giles had tracked Buffy down by following her credit card charges after Dawn got back to England. They caught up with her in Canistota, South Dakota – a small town known more for its tornadoes and wide open spaces than a need for vengeance or Slayers. The men tried to talk some sense into Buffy, get her to come back to England, to get the help she needed, but Buffy was having no part of that. Even when Riley told her he had cut off her credit card accounts and he was going to have to file for bankruptcy because of all her spending, she just blew them off. She didn’t need his money – she found that she actually needed very little for her new, solitary life as a demon hunter. What she couldn’t find on the street or bum or steal, she could work odd jobs to get – she had her anger, and that was really all she needed to get through.

For a long while, whenever Buffy would see a girl that looked like Annie or hear a child’s laugh or a baby’s cry, the memories of her own children would descend on her like a noose and tighten around her heart. Those were the hardest memories to bury; the laugh of a child was the saddest, most painful thing Buffy could hear – the smell of Johnson’s baby shampoo was enough to send her into hiding for days, a blond baby with bluer than blue eyes could make her throat tighten to the point that she thought she might actually suffocate. As time passed, Buffy built a wall around her heart … she took her memories and her love and everything good that she’d ever known and bricked it up inside that wall … leaving it there to wither and die.

 

She knew she had succeeded when one day, in a small town on the outskirts of Chicago, Buffy saw a mother and her three children playing in the park. Buffy paused on her journey to watch a moment as the boy threw a ball over the head of the eldest girl … the ball landed not far from where the Slayer was standing. The girl chased after it, skipping happily towards Buffy, her long, dark, curly hair flying behind her as she moved across the green grass. When she got to the ball, the girl looked up at the hardened Slayer and smiled – her blue eyes shone with the delight of being a child in the summer – green grass below her bare feet, blue skies above and the promise of ice cream with sprinkles on the way home.



Buffy didn’t return her smile – she didn’t waver, her heart didn’t ache. Even when Buffy heard the girl’s mother call, “Anna – time to go!” the Slayer didn’t react – she wasn’t a mother anymore, she wasn’t a wife or a friend or a lover – she was nothing but a solitary hunter.
 
The suburbanite from L.A., even the Slayer from Sunnydale, had vanished, replaced by a woman that could live on the streets and who could make her own way. She’d gotten street smart and hardened – stowing away on freight trains and cargo ships, hitching rides with truckers, hippies, businessmen, musicians, and even a family or two. There had been some ‘misunderstandings’ along the way … men thinking that a tumble in the back seat would be their payment for the ride, but Buffy quickly and decisively set them straight on that point. She gave no quarter … if they didn’t want to give her a ride, that was fine – she’d just walk.
 
The going was slow, but Buffy had all the time in the world – she was as immortal as D’Hoffryn, and she knew one day she’d finally get her ultimate revenge. That day had come sooner than she thought – at his 2009 holiday party, in New York City, and her invite to the well-guarded, secretive affair came from an unexpected source … Rack.
 
Buffy would return to L.A. when she was within a few hundred miles of the City of Angels … but it wasn’t to see Wes or to regroup or relax … it was to see Rack, or more accurately, Rack’s magick. Rack had been right, after all – what he had, his magick, she needed like a vamp needed blood. As vehemently as she resisted giving any part of herself to anyone for any favor, large or small, she couldn’t stop herself from giving everything to Rack’s magick.
 
She felt like a whore, selling her Slayer power for the high that he could give, and she always hated herself afterwards, but she always came back – sooner or later, she always came back. She tried to stay away – she’d gone over a year tracking demons in Europe without it, but as soon as her feet dropped down off the cargo ship she’d stowed away in and touched American soil – the pull was more than she could fight and she went right back to him. She would sometimes stay at his place for weeks without leaving, without coming down without even thinking of the mission. Then, eventually, the guilt and the anger with herself for doing that when she should’ve been tracking demons won out and she’d leave again … she’d track down another vengeance demon and reverse another wish. But none of the wishes that got reversed made any difference in Buffy’s life, and eventually she’d turn back to Rack’s magick to take the edge off for a little while longer.
 
Her life had turned into a vicious circle of hate, revenge, and magical highs … that’s all there was. She had no friends and didn’t try to make any. If someone approached her, tried to befriend her, she fled or simply ignored them – she didn’t want any friends. She didn’t want to care about anyone again, because that just meant that her heart would be broken again one day when they were snatched away from her. She thought of Henry Hart and sometimes wondered how many other descendants she and Spike had wandering the earth, but she made no move to find them. Even when she was in England … within a short train ride to Oxford, she made no effort to check on Dawn or Henry. She was alone, all she had to worry about was herself, and the next time she died, there would be no broken hearts left behind – no one in this world would miss Buffy Anne Summers-Weckerly, no one would know her name or cry at her graveside, and that was how she preferred it.
 
Buffy’s heart, along with the rest of her, had hardened over the years. She rarely cried any more … it was a waste of energy, only on the darkest and loneliest nights did she cry for Spike and her family, usually after a particularly ‘bad dream’ of happier times. She dreamed of them often, sometimes of happy times, but many times of that last image of Spike as he burned in front of her. She wasn’t sure which was worse, they both hurt, they both fueled her hate, they both kept her focused on the mission, on her anger, and on revenge.
 
Even her appearance had changed … she doubted Spike would even recognize her now; she barely recognized herself. When she’d catch her reflection in a shop window it always surprised her – it wasn’t her, but it was. Her soft, golden hair that he loved so much had grown out long and dark, she never colored it anymore, and a shower with actual shampoo was a rare luxury. Her body held many scars from fights with demons and humans alike, but none of the scars were the ones that Spike knew and loved … those scars were from another world – another time … perhaps they were actually from a dream, maybe they never existed at all. She wasn’t really sure anymore – it seemed so long ago and far away. Maybe Giles and Riley were right – maybe she was just bug-shagging crazy.
 
She had been at Rack’s when he’d gotten an initiation to D’Hoffryn’s holiday party – the invitation was for ‘Rack and Guest’ …
 
“D’Hoffryn has a Christmas party?” Buffy asked incredulously as she read over Rack’s shoulder from where she lay on the ceiling.
 
“Actually, it’s a holiday party these days … people are so touchy anymore,” Rack clarified.

 

“He has one every year?” she asked as she floated down from the ceiling … letting her high go.
 
“Yeah – in one dimension or another,” Rack explained. “He comes 'round these parts every six or seven years.”
 
So that’s why I could never find any vengeance demons at the end of the year! They were all in some other dimension at the fucking party! Buffy realized.
 
Buffy knew immediately, even through the magical fog, that that party would be her chance – she had to be that guest. Every vengeance demon in the world would be there in one place, at one time … all she had to do was get Rack to take her and then figure out how to destroy them all with one blow. Getting Rack to agree to take her wasn’t really that hard … he loved and needed her power just as much or more than Buffy needed his magick. She’d learned how to mete it out over the years, to control how much he could take, and it took only a few days of holding back for him to be begging her … promising her anything, for his own fix.
 
Then came the challenge of how to take them all out at once … the key had to be with D’Hoffryn – he had the power, he gave the girls the power – if she could destroy his power source, she was sure that would destroy all of them in one fell swoop. Barring that, plan ‘B’ involved plastic explosives and lots of it…
 
Buffy had learned a lot over the years about power sources, so much so that she didn’t even need the scrolls Wes had given her any longer to know, just from looking at a vengeance demon, which of their baubles was their power source. It was how it was worn, how it was displayed, and how it was flaunted that gave them away – she only had to watch them a few minutes to hone in on it; their body could be covered in a million diamonds but Buffy would still be able to pick out the one that D’Hoffryn had given them – the one that held the magic.
 
In the weeks leading up to the party, Buffy stayed in L.A. making her plans, working, and forcing herself to stay away from Rack as much as possible. She couldn’t cut him off completely or she’d lose her leverage over him, but she needed to be sharp for this one last mission, and she wouldn’t be sharp if she was high. She took odd jobs cleaning offices, waitressing, and washing hair in a beauty salon, so she would have money to make herself presentable for the party. She needed to fit in and not look like a warrior that had just returned from the battlefield; not look like the Vengeance Demon Slayer.
 
The waitressing job kept her fed … she learned early on that there were always free meals when you worked at a restaurant, be it waitressing, busing tables, or washing dishes; the job at the beauty salon got her hair washed and colored and styled … she let one of the new girls practice on styling  and coloring it … it went from brunette to platinum blonde … to pink and purple and jet black and then red – she seemed to have a different color for every day of the week; the office cleaning job gave her access to computers – at night, when there was no one around, she could clean a while, then get on the internet, looking up everything she could about the venue D’Hoffryn’s party would be held in, what was around it, where the emergency exits were, the floor plan and layout – she found out everything she could, she never knew what would be important when the time came.
 
Buffy bought a fairly conservative, long sleeved, little-black-dress to wear that fell just above her knees but was made out of a Lycra Spandex material so it didn’t restrict her movement. She traded in her combat boots for a pair of black heels … she hadn’t worn heels in years, so she practiced walking, running, and fighting in them for days before the party, just to make sure she could still do it.
 
When it came time to leave for the party, Buffy’s hair was a movie-star red that fell in waves half-way down her back and she had long bangs that could cover her eyes if she let them fall just so. Buffy let the girl at the hair salon do her makeup; with plenty of concealer under her eyes to hide the dark circles, bright red lipstick, and coal eyeliner. Buffy had learned a long time ago, if you want to appear inconspicuous and nonthreatening, you need to stand out … hide in plain sight, and this look definitely fit that bill.

 

Buffy stood in front of the mirror and wondered who it was staring back at her … she’d never met this woman before. In her eyes she saw nothing but hardened determination, she could no longer feel her heart or her soul, she sometimes wondered if they were still even there. She never laughed anymore … she never took time to enjoy a sunset or walk on the beach or dance or do any of the things she used to enjoy – it all reminded her too much of Spike and of their children and friends – of people that would never know those joys again.
 
Buffy nodded resolutely at herself in the mirror. This is it … tonight it’s going to end, one way or the other, she told herself. She thought it was kind of strange that she didn’t really care which way it ended … just to have it end was all that mattered now. Buffy slipped on a pair of John Lennon sunglasses and ‘Buffy the rock star’ was ready to ‘par-tay’.
 
Buffy played the part of an aloof rocker well since it was pretty close to the one she’d been living as the aloof Slayer the last five years. She held loosely to Rack’s arm as he mingled and talked with the demons and humans that attended the blow-out gala event of the season, but she didn’t make idle conversation or smile or even acknowledge anyone else was there. As they walked around the large gathering, with her eyes hidden behind her sunglasses, she surveyed the room and made mental notes of where different demons were seated and where D’Hoffryn’s table was.

 

When she saw Angel approaching, she held her breath. She knew from what Rack said that at least one person from W&H would be there, she hoped it wouldn’t be anyone she knew, but, of course, it had to be the one person that knew her better than anyone left on the face of the earth. Now came the real test, would he recognize her and give her away or had she changed enough to fool even him? Rack introduced her to everyone as Avengelyne … which was all he ever called her anyway; when he introduced her to Angel, Buffy took a sip of champagne from her glass and looked away, acting bored and uninterested, and Angel just ignored her; she’d passed the test.
 
She’d long ago given up the idea of blowing the whole place up … it was in too close proximity to other buildings, there was too great a chance of innocent people getting hurt or killed. From Hallie’s viewpoint, they would be ‘causalities of war’, but, despite Dawn’s contention that Buffy was no better than Hallie, Buffy wasn’t ready to stoop quite that low. It was one thing to kill demons … after all, that was her calling; she’d killed one human in her life and she still felt it was justified, but she wouldn’t kill innocents, that would make her no better than Hallie. So Buffy had only one plan, and that was to identify and destroy D’Hoffryn’s power source and hope that her theory was right, that it would destroy all the power of all the vengeance demons there – if it didn’t, she was dead for sure; she’d never be able to fight them all.
 
Buffy steered Rack towards D’Hoffryn, not right up to him, but close enough for Buffy to watch him discretely. He had a large red jewel around his neck, one ring on each hand, and a walking stick with a crystal at the top of it. Buffy studied him as he talked to his guests … the perfect host, friendly, charming, gregarious – laughing and joking with demons and humans alike – it made Buffy’s stomach turn. He had no right to be happy, to be laughing and joking when everyone she loved had that right stolen from them by one of his minions. Buffy struggled to stay in character … she wanted to launch herself at him and rip his heart out and shove it down his throat … but she knew better – she wouldn’t stand a chance with that approach – she had to stick with the plan, she had to keep her cool and be smart.
 
Buffy discretely rearranged the seating cards so that she and Rack were at the table next to D’Hoffryn’s and she continued to watch him through the five course meal, which she barely touched. After the second course, when the waiter asked her if it wasn’t to her liking, she told him rudely that she wouldn’t feed that slop to her dog – the waiter didn’t ask again.
 
Finally, Buffy saw her chance … her stomach fluttered with butterflies as she got up and followed their host from the main room down the hall towards the restrooms. Buffy entered the men’s room about a minute after D’Hoffryn did and locked the door behind her, he was just finishing at the urinal and Buffy wondered what color blood someone with purple pee would have.
 
“This is the men’s room, young lady ...” he informed her, tucking himself back into his long robe.
 
“No way! Are you sure? ‘Cos I was told first door on the left … this is the first door on the left, isn’t it?” Buffy asked, looking bewildered and perhaps a little tipsy.
 
“No, my dear, this is the first door on the right,” D’Hoffryn explained, moving away from the urinal and starting to walk past her. “The word ‘Men’ on the door might’ve been your first clue.”

 

“Didn’t your mother teach you to wash your hands after you pee?” Buffy asked him, her voice sober, as he came within reach of her.
 
“No – my mother taught me to not pee on my hands,” he retorted as he kept walking.
 
Buffy reached down and pulled a dagger from its scabbard which she’d strapped to her inner thigh under her dress and swung around with all her strength, catching D’Hoffryn in the back of the neck with it and slicing all the way through to his throat. Caught off guard, D’Hoffryn fell forward onto the floor, reaching behind his neck to extricate the weapon.
 
“It takes more than that to kill the great D'Hoffrynis!” he exclaimed as red blood poured out of his wounds and he began to push up from the floor.
 
“Oh, okay … that’s no problem,” Buffy agreed amiably as she pulled the dagger out, raised it up again and stabbed it deep into the side of his neck. Buffy sliced forward with it, opening a large hole in the front of his throat, then quickly reached into the gaping, oozing wound and pulled a large, blue crystal out.

 

D’Hoffryn threw her off him and she sailed across the large bathroom and hit hard against the far wall. Buffy struggled to keep a hold of the dagger and the gem when she hit, but she held onto both as if her life depended on it … or perhaps like her family’s life did.
 
D’Hoffryn got to his feet and started towards her, holding one hand over his throat, growling, and spurting blood in all directions, but before he could reach her, Buffy smashed down on the gem with the handle of the dagger. The first blow put one crack in the gem and D’Hoffryn stumbled; the second blow sent fissures out in all directions and D’Hoffryn fell to the floor; the third blow exploded the gem into a million pieces – sending magic and power out like blue bolts of lightning, blowing huge holes in the walls as they traveled towards the room full of guests, who were just being served dessert.

 

Buffy watched from the now open-air restroom as the blue lightning bolts found their way to each vengeance demon’s power source, hitting and exploding them all, one right after another, in rapid succession. The guests and wait staff scattered like roaches, some running from the room, others taking cover under tables, many screaming or cursing as they tried to figure out what was attacking them.  The heat from the magical explosions set off the fire alarm and the sprinklers came on, dousing everyone that remained with cold water as the sirens blared and lights flashed their warnings to exit the building.
 
The ‘attack’ was over nearly as quickly as it began, leaving the vengeance demons as nothing but humans … including D’Hoffryn, who had morphed back into a small man of about thirty with thin, mousy brown hair and a definite acne problem. D’Hoffryn moaned and rolled over on his back as he held his ravaged throat with both hands, trying to staunch the bleeding. Buffy stood up and walked slowly over to him, dropping her sunglasses on the floor as she went.
 
He looked up at her with angry eyes. “How?” he choked out as blood flowed between his fingers.
 
“Do you have to ask? Seriously?” Buffy asked incredulously. “You have a tell – you rub the hollow of your throat with your index finger at least once a minute. Really, I was thinking it would be the staff … ‘cos it’s always about the staff with you guys,” Buffy continued as she crouched down next to him and gave him a rueful smile.
 
“Help…me,” D’Hoffryn gasped out, reaching one bloody hand up towards her.
 
“I’m thinking that wouldn’t be good for morale,” Buffy sneered before standing up and walking slowly away from him, the heels of her shoes echoing eerily off the tile floor of the restroom.
 
Buffy walked calmly through the pandemonium of the large ballroom as the sprinklers rained down … half eaten desserts sat on abandoned tables, ex-vengeance demons were shrieking and crying and trying to figure out what had happened, humans and other demons were fleeing, the wait staff had retreated to the kitchen, some of them were peering out the small windows in the doors as they grumbled about all those tips they’d just lost…
 
Buffy picked her purse and coat up from their table, and then stopped at a tray of desserts that hadn’t yet been served and lifted the lid off one. “Oh, chocolate!” she exclaimed, picking up one of the fancy deserts that featured layers of white, milk, and dark chocolate mousse with white chocolate shavings on top.

 

Buffy grabbed a spoon and ate as she walked. “Now this … this would be good enough for my dog,” she commented as she walked slowly to the exit and out into the cold New York winter. After five years of tracking vengeance demons all over the globe, her mission was finally complete … every last one had been neutralized or killed or both, including D’Hoffryn.

 

Buffy walked a while trough the streets of New York City until a soft snow began to fall and the cold got to be too much. She ducked into a small pub called O’Malley’s and the warm air inside the small bar felt like a tropical paradise compared to the frigid temperatures outside. There weren’t very many people in the place and no one even gave her a second look, even though she was soaking wet, her clothes were pretty well covered in blood, and her teeth were on the verge of chattering. She sat at the end of the bar, away from the other patrons, and waited for the barmaid to finish talking to one of the regulars about the fight at last night’s hockey game.
 
After a minute, the barmaid set a napkin down in front of Buffy and asked, “What’ll ya’ have?”
 
“Jack – Black … bring the bottle and two glasses,” Buffy requested, laying her last $50 on the bar.
 
When the bottle and shot glasses were in front of her, Buffy poured two shots and sat one of them on the bar in front of the empty stool beside her. “To vengeance,” she toasted as she clinked her glass against the one on the bar then swallowed the amber liquid in one gulp.

 

The barmaid sat a cup of hot coffee down on the bar in front of Buffy. “So … it’s a celebration,” the barmaid mused. “Of what? Not freezing to death?”
 
“Of winning the battle but losing the war …” Buffy offered as she poured herself another drink, clinked her glass against the one on the bar and downed her second shot.
 
“That doesn’t sound like much to celebrate,” the barmaid pointed out, pushing the coffee closer to Buffy.
 
“Well, you take what you can get,” Buffy proclaimed, ignoring the coffee and pouring herself another shot.
 
“Is someone joining you?” the barmaid asked, tilting her head to the other drink on the bar.
 
“Only in spirit,” Buffy told her, clinking her glass once more against the one on the bar and gulping another shot down.
 
The barmaid took the drink off the bar and poured the whiskey into the coffee and slid it back in front of Buffy. “He’d probably prefer you not drink yourself to death, child,” the barmaid offered as she picked the bottle of whiskey up and set down behind the bar.
 
“Hey! That’s mine!” Buffy argued, reaching over the bar for the bottle.
 
“Is this really what he’d want, dear? For you to be sitting alone in a bar, soaked and frozen to the bone, drinking yourself into a stupor … or worse?” the barmaid asked her, her voice sympathetic but firm.
 
“Who? God? ‘Cos if you’re gonna preach to me about God, you’re wasting your breath! I’ve met God … or what passes for him around these parts, and gotta say, I wasn’t impressed,” Buffy snapped angrily.
 
“God does work in mysterious ways, child … but I was talking about your invisible drinking partner …” the barmaid offered, tilting her head towards the empty stool next to Buffy.
 
Buffy’s brows furrowed and for the first time she really looked at the woman behind the bar and snorted sarcastically. “Well, you were a ton of help before … and where have you been the last five years, Wanda?”
 
Wanda smiled softly and pushed the cup of Irish coffee with one finger against Buffy’s arm where it was resting on the bar. “You didn’t follow your heart, child …” she informed her.
 
Buffy snorted again, pushing the coffee away. “My heart? My heart?! I don’t have a heart! It got ripped out and tossed away a long time ago … or maybe you hadn’t noticed. What are you, anyway? Some kind of Guardian Angel? ‘Cos gotta say, super job with that! I can see why you’re working here … plenty of lost souls that need angeling – but I’m not one of them. Go find fuckin’ George Bailey if you want an easy case…”

Wanda shook her head sympathetically, her eyes soft and full of concern. “You have a heart … you’ve built a wall around it and let the ice in your soul freeze everyone out. You let your hatred get in the way … take the walls down, dear, your heart will lead you home," Wanda advised her, her voice still gentle and kind.
 
“Swell…that’s swell. I’ll take that under advisement,” Buffy scoffed. “Can I have my bottle back now?”
 
Wanda sighed and shook her head slowly as she handed the bottle back to Buffy. “It’s always darkest before the dawn, child. Follow your heart and you’ll find the light again,” she advised before turning away and going to check on the other patrons.
 
“Yeah, and the Easter Buffy will coming hopping down the bunny trail … and Santa will fly in with Rudolph … and if I click my heels three times and say, ‘there’s no place like home,’ over and over, everything will be hunky-dory,” Buffy muttered as she poured another shot for herself and one for Spike, downing hers and setting his in front of his empty seat. “It doesn’t work, by the way … I already tried it.”

 

**~**
 
Buffy got to the sanatorium where Willow was a couple of weeks later, in early January of 2010. She didn’t go back to L.A. with Rack after the wreckage at the party, she knew he’d be totally off the deep end with what she’d done … he’d either be livid or elated – either way, she didn’t feel like dealing with him, so she hitched rides across the country from New York. Hitching rides in winter really hadn’t been her best plan, she thought she was going to freeze to death a time or two … but, unfortunately, she didn’t.
 
Buffy had traded in her dress and heels long ago at a homeless shelter, opting for jeans, a couple of sweatshirts, an army coat that was three sizes too big for her, woolen socks and combat boots, and now she waited in the common area of the hospital for visiting hours to begin. The looks she was getting from the staff made her wonder if they thought she was one of the inmates instead of one of the visitors, but she put on her ‘don’t fuck with me’ attitude and it worked, no one said a word to her.
 
When the clocked ticked over to 10am, the waiting visitors began dispersing down the many hallways of the hospital and Buffy followed suit. She knocked lightly before entering Willow’s room … Willow was sitting in the same place she’d been five years ago, staring blindly out the window at the snow, as if no time had passed at all. For the first time in a long time tears threatened Buffy’s eyes and she felt some of the bricks surrounding and protecting her heart begin to crumble slightly. She’d promised Willow that she would fix things, that she would get Tara back for her, and she’d failed to keep that promise – just as she’d failed to keep her promise to Spike that she would save him and their family. She couldn’t tell Spike that she was sorry, but she could tell Willow …
 
“Hey, Wills, it’s me. Sorry it’s been so long again – I thought I’d be back sooner, but you know me – so easily distracted by bright, shiny objects,” Buffy babbled as she moved around the bed and up next to her friend.
 
Buffy knelt down in front of her so she could meet Willow’s eyes with hers. “I … Willow, I’m sorry … I tried so hard,” Buffy started as the tears that were threatening came to the surface and welled in her eyes. “I couldn’t get them back … I couldn’t get Tara or Spike or any of them back,” Buffy admitted sadly.
 
“I really, really tried,” Buffy told her. “I’m so sorry…please forgive me,” she begged her friend as she dropped her head into Willow’s lap and sobbed openly for the first time in years.
 
Willow moved her hand from the arm of the chair and laid it on Buffy’s head, tangling her fingers in the Slayer's long, red mane and trying to give her friend all the comfort she could manage. When Buffy looked up, she saw tears welled in Willow’s eyes as well, and that just made Buffy cry harder. “I’m so sorry …” she repeated over and over, as she knelt in front of Willow and laid her head back down in her friend’s lap.
 
Buffy stayed in that position for the longest time as she cried and explained to Willow what she’d done and how she’d won the battle but still lost the war. When Buffy had cried herself out, she finally sat back on her heels and removed D’Hoffryn’s talisman from around her neck – even though it never worked to summon him after that first time, she’d kept it and used it as a reminder of her ultimate goal of destroying every last vengeance demon. Now that she’d reached that goal, completed her mission … she didn’t need it any longer.
 
Buffy traded necklaces with Willow again, just as she’d done the first time she’d been here, taking the cross back that Angel had given her the very first time she’d met him and giving Willow the talisman.
 
“I probably won’t be back,” Buffy admitted to Willow. “I … I don’t have anything left here, my mission is over, my family’s gone and I’m just exhausted. I love you, Wills … I love you like a sister. I’m so sorry I couldn’t fix it,” Buffy apologized again. She thought she saw a small smile cross Willow’s lips … a forgiving smile, an understanding smile, as Buffy asked her one last time to forgive her for her failure.
 
Buffy kissed Willow on the forehead as she stood up and then turned and left her room without looking back. Buffy passed a nurse with a medicine cart as she left the hospital and, with practiced ease and without missing a step, Buffy palmed an entire bottle of sleeping pills when the nurse turned her head momentarily to hand a patient their medicine.
 
Buffy dropped her hand into her coat pocket and held tightly to the pill bottle in her palm … it would be her ticket out. Maybe it, along with everything else she’d done in the last five years, would land her in hell … maybe she’d be with Spike again, after all.
 
**~**

{{Click here to hear "Even Angels Fall"  by Jessica Riddle on YouTube   }}

You found hope, you found faith
Found how fast she could take it away
Found true love, Lost your heart
Now you don't know who you are

She made it easy, she made it free
Made you hurt 'til you couldn't see
Sometimes it stops; Sometimes it flows
But baby that is how love goes

You will fly and you will crawl
God knows even angels fall
No such thing as you lost it all
God knows even angels fall

It's a secret that no one tells
One day it's heaven, one day it's hell;
And it's no fairytale, take it from me
That's the way it's supposed to be

You will fly and you will crawl
God knows even angels fall
No such thing as you lost it all
God knows even angels fall

You laugh you cry no one knows why,
But oh the thrill of it all
You're on the ride; you might as well open your eyes

You will fly and you will crawl
God knows even angels fall
No such thing as you lost it all
God knows even angels fall

Even angels fall
Even angels fall

End Notes:
TBC ... Can anything stop Buffy from joining Spike in Hell?
Magical Mystery Tour by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy’s completed her mission … all the vengeance demons are dead or disempowered. Can anyone or anything keep her from joining Spike in Hell?
**
Music Referenced:
Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles: http://youtu.be/99aL0NkcQDw
Willy Wonka's Boat Ride: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zail7Gdqro
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
January 14th, 2010:
 
Buffy got back to the Hyperion a few days later, it was the closest thing to a home she had. She took her time getting back from Auburn, California where Willow was – taking the long way west across the state to the Pacific Coast Highway, then heading south along the scenic road. She walked most of the way, taking rides only occasionally. It was her last tribute to Spike … to walk along this highway that they’d traveled so many times and to remember; to remember his voice, his laugh, to remember the mischief and love and desire and a thousand other emotions that always reflected so openly in his eyes, and to remember their children. She thought of things that she hadn’t allowed herself to think about in a very long time and she laughed and cried and screamed and danced and crawled along the roadway and later the beaches, as she made her way back to the City of Angels.
 
Back in the still deserted Hyperion hotel, Buffy dropped her bedroll and few belongings on the floor, then set the bottle of pills she’d taken from the hospital down on the reception counter, along with a bottle of chocolate wine and a chocolate bar that she’d lifted from a grocery store along the way.
  
The old legal pad with all of Buffy’s old notes sat on the reception counter and caught her eye. Buffy picked it up and flipped the pages until she found her ‘to-do’ list:
 
 

 D’Hoffryn – Get talisman and summon



 
Go back in time and kill Hallie
 

Find another vengeance demon and make my own wish


Go back in time and talk to Anya


 
Summon and destroy every vengeance demon – destroy D’Hoffryn
 

 
Buffy picked up a pencil from the counter and put a big check mark next to the last item listed. “Done,” Buffy announced to the empty room, “…and done,” Buffy said again, putting a check next to ‘kill Hallie’ before setting the pencil back down. She wished that she could’ve gone back in time and killed Hallie before she got her mitts on William … but Hallie had been killed, nonetheless. Buffy smiled sadly as she looked at the big star she’d drawn next to that idea, remembering how much she had really, really wanted to do that, but cooler heads prevailed when Dawn explained about the dangers of ‘unintended consequences’ and time travel.
 
Buffy headed upstairs and took a long, hot shower … it was one luxury that she really had missed living on the streets and back alleys as she hunted her prey. When all the hot water was gone, Buffy reluctantly got out of the tub, wrapped a towel around her body, and stood in front of the mirror, wiping the steam away so she could see her reflection. She stood and looked at herself for a long time, she still didn’t recognize this woman that looked back at her – her eyes were hardened, her expression grim, she looked as cold and unfeeling as her heart had felt the last years, and she suddenly worried that Spike really wouldn’t recognize her if she managed to get into hell with him. She had gotten used to the scars on her face, even though she didn’t remember getting them … her hair color had faded slightly to an auburn-red and it had started growing in darker at the roots, but it was her soul that she was most worried Spike wouldn’t know … her soul felt like ice, like it had been put in suspended animation, like those people that freeze their bodies after they die, hoping that in a hundred years someone will figure out how to bring them back to life. Buffy didn’t know if her soul could ever be revived … she’d had hope for a while, but nothing she’d done had ever made any difference … nothing had brought the other half of her soul back to her, and that, she was sure, was the only thing that could bring her own soul out of the cryogenic deep freeze.
 
Buffy wrote Dawn, the only person she thought might care, a short note to tell her goodbye, to thank her for believing her crazy story and for the help she’d given her. She told Dawn how proud their Mom would be of what she’d accomplished and apologized again for not being there for her. Riley had long ago filed for divorce from Buffy … Buffy never responded to the papers he sent to the Hyperion and once when she’d come back to L.A., she’d found a ‘Final Divorce Decree’ waiting for her, which she just tossed in the trash.

 

Buffy found a glass and took it, along with her chocolate wine, her Ghirardelli chocolate, her pills, and her final goodbye note out to the garden. She was a few days short of her twenty-ninth birthday, but she’d stopped thinking about birthdays long ago. When she was Called, her life expectancy went from about sixty more years down to about zero … and then she met Spike, and with him and all her friends by her side, she thought that she had a shot at living, if not a normal life, at least one longer than the average Slayer. When she sacrificed herself to save Annie and Spike from Glory, Buffy had been ready to die – she knew what she had to do and there was a calm, peacefulness to her like she’d never known before or since; a calm that came from knowing, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that she was doing the right thing; this was her time; she’d fought the good fight and her time was done.
 
After the initial shock of being brought back from the dead and learning that Willow’s spell had made her immortal, she grew to embrace the idea that she could be with Spike forever, despite the worries that they would outlive their children, she felt that together, they could get through anything, even that.

 

Buffy sat down on the floor of the garden, leaned her back against the dry fountain, and poured herself a glass of the chocolate wine and nibbled on the chocolate bar as she pondered her life for the last time. Spike would’ve called her life an ‘E-ticket’ ride … in truth, it probably would’ve been a ‘Z-ticket’, if Disney had invented a ride that took you from California, down into the deepest depths of hell, then to the highest highs of heaven and back again… She’d had everything, she’d lost everything more than once … struggled to be the wife and mother that her husband and children deserved, and she finally thought she was getting it figured out when everything was stolen from her.
 
“Well, at least I won’t have to face turning thirty…” Buffy quipped quietly as she looked up at the stars above and sipped her wine. Her eyes automatically searched the northern sky for her star … her’s and Spike’s.
 
“I’ll be there soon, baby,” she whispered to the stars before turning her attention to the pill bottle. She opened it and poured a bunch of the bright pink pills into her mouth like they were Tic-Tacs, then swallowed them with the wine … she did that three times, until all the pills in the bottle were gone. She laid down on the hard floor of the garden, closed her eyes and waited for the ride to begin…she wondered if they had re-stocked the spiders in limbo yet … she figured she’d soon find out.
 
As the pills started taking effect, Buffy’s head began to spin slightly and she felt like she was falling down through a long, black tunnel. She could see a brilliant white light in the distance – it looked like it was a hundred miles away … then there was a brilliant white flash of light and suddenly she was bathed in the glow that had seemed so far away just a moment ago. Buffy blinked against the unexpected brightness, covering her eyes with one hand. When she got her eyes adjusted and looked around, she realized immediately where she was. She was in the sterile supernatural courtroom … the last place she’d seen Spike outside of her nightmares.

 

Buffy sighed. “My turn …” she muttered as she looked around the empty area. When no one appeared after what seemed several minutes, Buffy walked to the center ring, where she knew Spike had faced his final judgment and called, “Hello?! Anybody home?! I’ve come for my Moonpie!”
 
“Sorry … have to watch my figure … I can’t eat those things,” Lilah’s voice came from behind her and Buffy turned quickly to face the ‘clerk of court’.
 
“Well, that’s disappointing … I figured one benefit of being dead would be you could eat anything you wanted without gaining weight …” Buffy quipped.
 
Lilah shrugged. “Maybe in heaven … not here,” she explained.
 
“So … where are the judges?” Buffy asked, holding her arms out to the side and turning in a circle under the blacker than black sky, completing a full circle and facing Lilah again. “Tell you what – I’ll save us all some time. I plead guilty … just send me to hell. No muss, no fuss … none of those pesky appeals.”
 
“Before you do that … someone wants a word with you,” Lilah informed her. “But I was never here… understood? You haven’t seen me … I’m not involved ... you don't even know me! If you’re caught, you're on your own!”
 
“Huh?” Buffy asked moving towards the lawyer. “Who?”
 
There was another bright flash of light which made Buffy close her eyes – when she blinked them open, her mom was standing where the lawyer had been.
 
“Mom!” Buffy cried, moving quickly towards her mother ... how long had it been? Five? ... no! nearly ten years!
 
“Oh, God! Buffy!” Joyce exclaimed, opening her arms and taking her daughter into a loving hug.
 
“Oh, mom … I missed you so much!” Buffy murmured against her mother’s shoulder as Joyce hugged her tight and dropped kisses on the top of her daughter's head.
 
“I know, honey … I’m so sorry I had to leave you … I love you so much,” Joyce told her, pulling back from the hug to look into Buffy’s glistening eyes.
 
“Buffy … I can’t stay long – you need to listen now …” Joyce started, brushing Buffy’s long, red hair back from her face.
 
“You need to keep your promise to Spike … your family is depending on you,” Joyce admonished her with a stern look.

 

“But … I did … I did everything I could! I tried everything I could think of!” Buffy defended.
 
Joyce shook her head. “You promised to never give up,” Joyce reminded her. “You promised to get the babies back, even if you couldn’t save Spike. You promised him, Buffy – he’s depending on you. You have to keep your word.”
 
Tears welled in Buffy’s eyes. “But … mom … I …. I don't know what else to do! There’s nothing else! I can’t stay there … mommy, please don’t make me,” Buffy begged as tears stained her cheeks. “Please … don’t make me live forever without him … I just … I’m not that strong.”
 
“You’re stronger than you think, Buffy – you’ve always been stronger than you thought, always succeeded against overwhelming odds,” Joyce reminded her, her voice soft but unwavering.
 
Buffy shook her head. “Not without Spike … not without my friends … my family. Without them, what’s left?”
 
The answer to Buffy’s question came from behind her, “You. Your heart. You must follow your heart’s true desire – only it can find the light.”
 
Buffy spun around to see Wanda standing behind her. “I did follow my heart!” Buffy insisted again, before turning back to her mom. “I killed Hallie … I killed her for Spike – for Spike and our babies. I took out every vengeance demon – every single one, including D’Hoffryn! I couldn’t get the wish reversed!!” she pointed out.
 
 “But that wasn’t what your heart truly wanted,” Wanda advised.
 
“It was! What else was there to do!?” Buffy questioned, turning back from her mom to Wanda.
 
Wanda handed Buffy her yellow legal pad with the list of ideas on it and Buffy looked down at the list. “See, I did all this! I didn’t talk to Anya, but I didn’t need to … I … I … I,” Buffy stopped and looked back up at Wanda. “I didn’t go back in time ... but I still killed Hallie! That counts ... doesn't that count?" she asked her Guardian Angel with concern. When Buffy made the list, going back in time and killing her nemesis was the one thing that she had really, really wanted to do right from the start.
 
Wanda smiled softly at her and gave her a small shrug.
 
“But … but Dawn said … unintended consequences and dead butterflies and world-changing chaos stuff…” Buffy stammered, looking back from Wanda to her mom.
 
“Is that what I was supposed to do?!” she asked, looking frantically from her mother to her Guardian Angel. “Why didn’t you tell me before!?”
 
“I did, my dear. Follow your heart,” Wanda advised her again, before she disappeared.
 
Buffy looked back at her mom, her eyes wide with confusion and fear. “Keep your promise to him, Buffy. He’s a good man, he loves you so much … he deserves that. Save the babies – all of your babies, even if you can’t save him,” she advised and she too was gone in a flash of light.
 
“Mom! Wait! Oh God! Oh God!” Buffy exclaimed, trying frantically to wake up from the drug induced sleep. Buffy finally woke up, back in the garden of the Hyperion, coughing, choking, and trying to breathe. She quickly stuck her finger down her throat and began gagging, and what remained of the pills and wine and chocolate came out and covered the floor in front of her in a spray of bright pink and brown vomit.
 
Disoriented and struggling to remain conscious, Buffy half-crawled, half-stumbled out of the garden to the street, where she was nearly hit by a passing car. When the driver stopped and got out to see if she was alright, Buffy could say no more than, “Help me,” before losing consciousness again.
 
Buffy awoke later that night strapped into a hospital bed … it was like déjà vu all over again … just like when Riley and Giles had admitted her to the hospital in England after the spiders attacked her in limbo. Buffy pulled on the restraints lightly, unlike the ones at the hospital in England, she was sure these would give if she used her full strength, and she sighed in relief and closed her eyes again. She just needed to wait for her head to stop pounding and spinning first … then she’d go.
 
“Feeling better, dear?” a familiar voice came from the doorway of her room.
 
“Yes…” Buffy answered, not opening her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
 
“I did, dear child … you must always follow your heart – only it can lead you home,” Wanda reminded her, moving up to Buffy’s bedside.
 
“Are they going to let me go or do I need to break out?” Buffy asked, finally opening her eyes and looking at the older woman.
 
“They should release you in the morning, dear; they simply don’t have enough beds to hold every indigent, suicidal patient for long,” Wanda assured her.
 
Buffy nodded and closed her eyes again. “You should’ve told me …” Buffy insisted again. “I wasted so much time.”
 
“My dear girl, I can’t tell you what to do; there are rules – rules that I’ve bent to the breaking point for you … for you and William. I can only point you in the direction of your dreams and hope you can find the right path. There are no guarantees, but your only chance is to follow your heart’s true desire,” Wanda explained. “Get some rest, dear … you’re going to need it,” Wanda advised, before turning and starting out of Buffy’s room.
 
“Wait!” Buffy called after her. “How do I go back in time?”
 
“Strong, dark magicks,” Wanda replied simply and left Buffy alone.
 
Buffy sighed. “Sounds just peachy,” Buffy muttered to herself. She tried to raise her hand and rub her eyes, but was stopped by the restraint around her wrist. Buffy shook both arms in frustration, rattling the restraints against the metal railings on the sides of the bed. Why didn’t she just do what she had wanted to do in the first place all those years ago? Why had she let Dawn talk her out of it?
 
“Because everything Dawn said made perfect sense…” Buffy answered herself aloud. What if she did something wrong and ended up not only not saving her family, but actually making things worse? Although she wasn’t sure how it could get worse, she had lived on the Hellmouth long enough to know that no matter how bad things seemed, they can always get worse. Unfortunately, logic and reason rarely have any say in matters of the heart. The heart neither knows, nor cares, about logic or risks or making perfect sense ... it cares only about fulfilling its own desires.
 
**~**
 
January 15th, 2010:
 
When Buffy was released the next day, with a two weeks worth of antidepressants, a referral to the county mental health doctor, and good-bye wave, she headed to the only person she knew that had ‘strong, dark magicks’: Rack. She still couldn’t actually sense where his cloaked house of horrors was, but if she walked around the area just a little while, she’d find someone to follow who could lead her there.
 
“Long time, Slayer … you’ve been quite the talk in the underworld … taking out D’Hoffryn, that was pure genius,” Rack greeted her with a wide grin, as he got up off the couch and started towards her. “You’ve got a real knack for destruction …”

 

“Yeah, I’m destructo-girl,” Buffy agreed, backing up and keeping Rack at arm’s length lest she get caught up in his magick and lose her focus. “Look, I need to go back in time … back to London, back to 1881 – can you do it?”
 
Rack looked at her for a few long moments then shrugged nonchalantly. “What could you possibly want to go back there for when I have everything you’ve ever wanted right here…” Rack questioned, waving his arms out to encompass the room and himself.
 
“My reasons aren’t important – I just need to know if you can do it and what it’ll cost,” Buffy told him, folding her arms across her chest.
 
Rack shrugged again and went back and sat back down on the sofa.
 
After a few minutes of thought, he shook his head. “I’ve only tried it once, Slayer … and I can tell you right now, it’s gonna take more power than even you have.”
 
Buffy had no way to know if he was lying or not, but she didn’t doubt that such a spell would require a lot of power … after several moments of silence, she asked, “How much more?”
 
Rack dropped his head back on the back of the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. “Lots.”
 
“If I can get it, can you do it?” Buffy asked.
 
“If you got the power, I got the magick, baby. I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, ya’ know – but you and me, we go way back, Avengelyne,” Rack advised, never looking at her.
 
“Ok – I’ll be back, you be ready,” Buffy told him before turning and heading out of the fun house to get what she needed … more power.
 
**~**
 
Buffy returned about an hour later, the Guardian’s scythe in hand – she knew it was powerful but she didn’t know if it would be enough.
 
“Will this work?” Buffy asked, handing the scythe to Rack.
 
Rack took it and turned it over in his hands, then looked back up at her. “I guess if you were chopping carrots it would, but I don’t feel any power in it.”
 
Buffy sighed and rolled her eyes, taking the scythe back. “How about now … do I have more power?”
 
Rack moved his hands slowly from her head down to her shoulders, never actually touching her, just as he did when she first came back to him, as if touching her aura. When his hands got even with her heart, his body tensed and he screamed out in pain then he was suddenly thrown back away from her with enough force to land him against the farthest wall.
 
“Oh, God! Are you ok?” Buffy asked, moving towards him to help him up.
 
Rack shook his head to clear the chirping cartoon birds that were swirling around his head and let her help him over to the couch.
 
“Does that mean I have enough power now?” Buffy asked, sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
 
“Yeah…” he moaned, holding his head with both hands. “I think that’ll do it.”
 
After clearing the cobwebs for a few minutes, Rack patted the sofa next to him, inviting her to sit there. Buffy really didn’t want to sit on that sofa; she’d always avoided it in the past, it looked like it might have lice or bedbugs or other equally squicky things on it … but she stiffened her resolve and shifted over from the coffee table and sat where he indicated.
 
“Keep in mind, I can’t protect you from here … whatever happens to you there, will happen to you here. If you get killed or hurt there …” Rack warned her with a shrug.
 
“No problem … I’m used to that …” Buffy asserted. “Let’s do it.”
 
Rack picked up a greasy, chili-stained hotdog bag and a pen off the floor and handed them to her. “Write down exactly the date, time, and place you want to go on there,” he instructed. “I’ll keep you there as long as the power holds out, but it will be a onetime shot. Even with the power you have, I can only control it for so long before it becomes dangerous for me and drains my magick. You need to get whatever business you have there done quickly.”
 
“About how long will I have?” Buffy questioned, trying to get some idea of how fast she would need to work.
 
Rack shrugged again. “With that power, I’m guessing anywhere from eight to twenty-four hours … I can’t really be sure.”
 
“I need at least … at least ten hours,” Buffy insisted. She didn’t really know how long she’d need, but ten hours seemed like the minimum to find Hallie and carry out her heart’s desire.
 
“I’ll do my best…” Rack assured her, urging her to go ahead and write it out with a nod of his head towards the paper in Buffy’s hand.
 
Buffy used what Dawn had found on the genealogy sites to choose the place: Clapham, south London, which is where William grew up and where he and Cecily lived after they were married, in the family home with his mother. She had a harder time deciding on a date … she finally decided to go before they were married, but after the new time-line started, after Hallie, or Cecily, had encouraged William’s advances. Buffy wrote down December 15, 1880 for the date and 12:00 noon for the time, sure that that would be well into the new timeline that Hallie had created, but before they were actually married in 1881.
 
“Now what?” Buffy asked, handing the paper bag back to Rack and grabbing the scythe, which was lying across her lap, and holding it in both hands.

 

“Now, get ready for the magical mystery tour …” Rack informed her with a leer that made Buffy suddenly feel like she’d made a huge mistake. Before she could question him further or move from her seat, Rack pressed the bag she’d written the place, time, and date on against her heart with the palm of his hand and Buffy felt something explode out of her.

Buffy felt like she was spinning and free falling, soaring then diving and then spinning again. Everything became a blur of bright colors and loud noises, like she was riding a wild carousel inside a psychedelic kaleidoscope while a calliope played ever faster and louder music … and it felt exhilarating, exciting … amazing. It was more powerful than any other time she’d experienced Rack’s magick, and that was saying a lot. It was so far beyond anything she’d felt before that Buffy suddenly didn’t care if she ever came back earth, she didn’t care about London or 1880 or Hallie or even Spike … she suddenly didn’t care about anything but this feeling of ecstasy that seemed to go on forever. Nothing else mattered beyond this moment and this feeling – it was overwhelming, irresistible, and beyond her capacity to control or question.

{{Click here to hear / see Willy Wonka’s Boat Ride on YouTube   }}

Her body felt wave after wave of magical bliss wash over it as bright flashes of color danced before her eyes and music rang in her ears. The boat ride from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory flashed through her mind – this was just like that, only without the singing and without the boat and the whining children … and without the chocolate river. She missed the chocolate river, that would’ve made this magical journey complete.

 

Buffy screamed out and her whole body tensed like a bow as the power of the scythe flowed through her body, out from her heart and into Rack and Rack’s magick flowed in. Rack closed his eyes and felt her power, felt her rapture, felt her scream engulf him … felt her come back to him just as readily and willingly as a kitten coming to a bowl of catnip-laced cream. His fallen angel was back and she’d brought with her the power of a thousand angels – he vowed to himself to find some way to hold onto her this time and never let her, or her angelic power, go again.
 
 **~**
{{Click here to hear “Magical Mystery Tour” by the Beatles on YouTube   }}

 Roll up.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.
Roll up.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.

Roll up.
And that's an invitation.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.
Roll up.
To make a reservation.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.

The Magical Mystery Tour
Is waiting to take you away.
Waiting to take you away.

Roll up.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.
Roll up.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.

Roll up.
We got everything you need.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.
Roll up.
Satisfaction guaranteed.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.

The Magical Mystery Tour
Is hoping to take you away.
Hoping to take you away.

(Mystery Tour..)
Ah.. The Magical Mystery Tour.
Roll up.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.

Roll up.
And that's an invitation.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.
Roll up.
To make a reservation.
Roll up for the Mystery Tour.

The Magical Mystery Tour
Is coming to take you away.
Coming to take you away.

The Magical Mystery Tour
Is dying to take you away.
Dying to take you away.
Take you today.

End Notes:
TBC ... What will Buffy find at the end of her Magical Mystery Tour? Will Rack double-cross her or actually send her back to Victorian England?
**
Sorry for so few screencaps - having computer problems and it's taking a lot of my time trying to fix them - thought you'd rather have the chapter with fewer caps than wait. Also, Buffy has red hair ... I don't have any screencaps of Buffy with red hair, so that's somewhat limiting! :D
Billy, Don't Be a Hero p1 by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy has put herself at the mercy of Rack … will he do as she asked and send her back in time or steal her power and leave her wrung out? If he can get her back to 1880 and she can find William and Cecily – what will she do then? Can she follow her heart’s desire and kill the ex-demon, the human Cecily … again?
**
Music Referenced:
Billy, Don’t Be a Hero
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2nW6w-sZQ
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!! I really appreciate them filling in for Pagan for this story!
January 15th, 2010:
 
Suddenly, all the lights and sounds stopped swirling around Buffy (or was she swirling around them?) and she felt herself falling again. She looked around but couldn’t see anything – it was just complete darkness around her now, she couldn’t even tell if she was falling down or falling up or maybe she wasn’t falling at all…
 
Buffy searched in vain for some way back to where she’d been before; back to that feeling, that euphoria and peaceful blissfulness that she’d been engulfed in – back to the magick. That feeling was gone, along with the music and the colors, and its absence hurt mentally and physically.
 
As she was trying to figure out what was happening and a way back, she was suddenly blinded by a bright flash of white light and found her answer about which way she was falling when she landed with a thud on something cold and hard. Buffy’s eyes were closed, first against the blinding light that had flashed, then from the pain that radiated out from her lungs when the air was knocked out of her from the hard and unexpected landing.  It's not the fall that'll kill ya, it's the sudden stop at the end. She laid perfectly still for a couple of minutes, trying to breathe, trying to get the pain to stop … then she realized, she must be in limbo! Somehow the Grim Reaper or the PTB or whoever had found out she'd cheated them and they'd come for her.



Buffy forced her eyes open, wrapping her arms around her burning ribs and tried to get up in case someone had re-stocked the spider population. But, instead of the cold, red, dry sand of limbo, Buffy was met with grey clouds above and white snow beneath her …

 

Where the hell am I? she thought as she gathered some of the snow in her hand and looked at it like it would answer her question.
 
“I dare say! No one has any morals any longer! What is this world coming to?” Buffy heard a woman’s voice behind her. Buffy sat up slowly and looked in the direction of the voice. There were two women standing on a sidewalk behind her gawking at her. They were both dressed in long dresses and hats and carried umbrellas - they clutched heavy capes around their shoulders against the cold wind and looked down their noses at Buffy as she sat on the cold, damp ground.

   

 “Where am I?” Buffy asked them, stumbling up to her feet.
 
“Dear Lord … she’s a lunatic!” the second woman exclaimed.
 
“No doubt escaped from Bedlam,” the first woman added.
 
“Just tell me where I am,” Buffy requested, brushing what snow hadn’t yet melted from her jeans and t-shirt.
 
“You, my dear, are in Clapham Common! And we don’t tolerate such … such obscene and vulgar behavior in these parts!” the second woman informed Buffy.
 
“Have you ever seen the like?” the first woman asked the second as the two women turned and started walking away.
 
“Never in all my days…” the second agreed. “I believe we should complain to the constable – something really must be done about these vagrants and tramps. Soon, they’ll be at our doorsteps, luring our husbands into debauchery.”
 
Buffy snorted. “If your husbands are so easy to lure, maybe you should look closer to home for the problem!” she called after them, but they ignored her and just kept walking.

 

Buffy sighed and looked around. He actually did it! Buffy thought as she watched the few people that were walking across the Common cut her a wide berth. Buffy looked down at her clothes … she hadn’t really thought of that when she’d embarked on this journey – she should’ve worn something that would allow her to blend in. She didn’t even have any money … at least not what would be considered money in 1880 London, to buy new clothes. She not only didn’t blend in, but she was starting to freeze … who knew it got so cold in London!?
 
Buffy wrapped her arms around her torso and decided that her first course of action would be to find some suitable clothes before she got hauled off to Bedlam. She looked around the large park and saw the steeple of a large church … surely they would have some proper clothes for a poor, American derelict to wear…

 


 Buffy opened the front door of the church and stepped inside. Candles burned near the altar at the front and there were a couple of people in the pews too lost in their own troubles to notice her. She scanned the various doors around the edge of the main hall and finally picked one, pretty much at random, to try – it turned out to be a kitchen. A middle-aged woman was sitting on a bench at a long, wooden table peeling potatoes – she looked up when Buffy entered and simply stopped and stared at the strange sight before her.
 
“Ummm…hi!” Buffy greeted the woman brightly. “I … ummm, I need some help. Someone, uh … stole my clothes and I was wondering if maybe you might have some that I could … uhhhh … you know, maybe borrow for a while,” Buffy stammered, trying to look lost and damsely … the lost wasn’t so hard, but she’d never done damsely very well.
 
“Where are you from, child?” the woman asked, finally getting over the shock of seeing a young girl dressed so … inappropriately.
 
“Sunny … America,” Buffy amended. “You know, the colonies?”
 
“Indeed … I have a sister that lives in Philadelphia,” the woman offered, setting her work to the side and wiping her hands on her apron. “I must say I’ve never seen her dressed so … oddly.”
 
Buffy shook her head and tried to look innocent. “Oh, it’s not what you think, honestly – I just got here and the … airlin …errrr … ship, lost my luggage and this is just all I could find …” Buffy stammered, trying to think of something plausible to explain her attire. “One of the sailors gave them to me … it’s … it’s what all the fashionable sailors wear these days.”
 
“I thought someone stole your clothes …” the woman questioned the change in Buffy’s story.
 
“They did! They did! Someone stole my clothes when I was in the shower and then the ship lost the rest of my luggage … it was kind of a double-whammy,” Buffy rolled her eyes mentally, but gave the woman as innocent a smile as she could muster.
 
“You poor dear! That must have been terribly traumatic! Are you sure you’re alright? Shall I call for the doctor?”
 
“No … no doctor. I’m fine, I just need some clothes so I can, you know, get home without … ummm, causing a scene,” Buffy assured the woman.
 
“Certainly, dear child. We have some clothes for the poor and indigent here in the back, I’m sure we can find something for you,” the woman offered, turning and starting towards a door that led to a small storage room at the back of the church.
 
“Do you have far to travel?” the woman asked as she looked through the clothes for something Buffy could wear.
 
“Uh, I don’t exactly know – I’m looking for the Weckerlys … William Weckerly. Do you know him?” Buffy asked.
 
“Oh, of course! William’s such a fine, sweet boy. So devoted to family and community …” the woman acknowledged as she held a dress up to Buffy’s shoulders.
 
Tears stung Buffy’s eyes and she blinked them back. In any time, William … Spike, was above everything else, devoted to his family.
 
“Yes…” Buffy agreed quietly as the woman checked the dress for fit.
 
“This will work, I think, my dear,” the woman told her, handing Buffy the floor length, fairly simple, black cotton dress, a white apron to go over it, a small crinoline, two petticoats, and a corset. Buffy took the items from her and the woman stepped out of the small room and pulled the door nearly closed to give Buffy privacy to change.

 

Buffy looked at the corset and crinoline and immediately decided that was totally not happening.
 
“How do you know the Weckerlys?” the woman asked from outside the door as Buffy was changing.
 
“Uhhh … William’s my …” Buffy desperately wanted to say ‘husband’ and it nearly fell off her tongue, but knew that would just require more wriggling to get out of, so she changed it to, “uncle,” at the last moment.
 
“Uncle!? William has no nieces,” the woman stated suspiciously.
 
Shit! “Did I say ‘uncle’? I meant …” Buffy tried to think if Spike’s mother or father had any siblings … she couldn’t remember … “cousin,” Buffy amended and held her breath for a retort.
 
“Oh! You must be Bess’s daughter. How is the poor dear doing?”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes and sighed … she forgot the cardinal rule of lying – keep things simple and don’t offer information that’s not necessary. “As well as can be expected,” Buffy hedged, pulling the dress on over her jeans and t-shirt, just in case she needed to make a speedy exit at some point during her stay.
 
“Well, you tell her we’re all praying for her. God works in mysterious ways,” the woman offered sincerely just as Buffy opened the door.
 
Buffy looked at the woman closely, her brows furrowed in thought. “Wanda?” Buffy questioned.
 
The older woman smiled and tilted her head in puzzlement. “How did you know my name, dear child?”
 
Buffy’s jaw dropped open for a moment as she studied the woman’s face … it was Wanda. The same Wanda that she’d just talked to in the hospital yesterday – in 2010, the same Wanda that was in New York and at the B&B and at the hospital when the twins were born… But this Wanda didn’t seem to know her.
 
“I’m just good with names … it’s a gift,” Buffy said uncertainly.
 
“Can you direct me to William’s house? I’m sure they must be getting worried about me …” Buffy asked as Wanda handed her a ruffled, white hat and Buffy pulled it on, covering the top of her auburn-red hair.
 
“Certainly, child – follow me and I’ll show you the way …” Wanda offered, leading Buffy out of the church by a side door. Once outside, Wanda pointed to a street leading away from the church. “That’s Macaulay Road right there … just follow that down a wee bit … you’ll see their house on the left, dear. The name’s on the gate…
 
“By the way child, what’s your name?” Wanda asked, turning to Buffy.
 
“B … Elizabeth,” Buffy replied, hoping Wanda didn’t know Bess’s children’s names.
 
“Ahhh … after your mother – and just as lovely, I might add, now that you’re dressed properly,” Wanda remarked, brushing a bit of stray hair away from Buffy’s face. “Are you married, child?”
 
Buffy smiled softly. “Yes …”
 
“A good man, is he?” Wanda asked her.
 
“Yes, a very good man,” Buffy responded as tears stung her eyes.
 
“And why did he send you on this journey alone, child?” Wanda wondered.
 
“He … he came ahead – I’m supposed to meet him later,” Buffy explained, which wasn’t exactly a lie.
 
“Ahhh, well then – I know you’ll be a sight for sore eyes, child,” Wanda assured her.
 
Buffy looked away from Wanda as she blinked her tears back. “What if I’m not?” Buffy asked softly, lowering her gaze to the frozen ground below their feet.
 
Buffy remembered how much it hurt when Spike didn’t remember her after Dru put him under her thrall. She knew that seeing William and him loving Cecily and not knowing her would be like someone taking a dagger and twisting it in her heart, but she had no choice … unless she could find Cecily alone - perhaps she wouldn’t even have to see William at all. The idea of that made her ache inside too, to be this close to him and not see him – she wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse.
 
“Just follow your heart, dear. The heart always knows what the mind cannot fathom,” Wanda assured her.
 
Buffy quickly wiped a tear from the corner of her eye before it fell and nodded. That advice sounded familiar.
 
“Your children are very lucky to have such a kind mother,” Buffy offered.
 
“Oh … all of God’s creatures are my children, as my husband and I have none of our own,” Wanda told her with a sad smile.
 
“Oh … I’m sorry,” Buffy apologized. Remove sock, insert foot.
 
“Don’t be, dear child. I know the Lord has a purpose for us all … he works in mysterious ways,” she repeated, laying a comforting hand on Buffy’s shoulder.
 
Buffy nodded and took a deep breath then she turned and looked down the street that Wanda had indicated. “This one?” she asked, changing the subject and pointing down Macaulay Road.
 
“Yes, dear … just a wee bit – not far at all,” Wanda agreed. “You’ll come back to see me – let me know how everything went, won’t you child?”
 
Buffy turned back and smiled through her tears. “Of course. Thank you for everything.”
 
“Bless you, child. God be with you,” Wanda offered, giving Buffy a motherly hug. “Everything will be fine – you’ll see. My father always said …”
 
“Everything will be fine in the end, if it’s not fine, it’s not the end,” Buffy filled in with a smile.
 
Wanda laughed and nodded.
 
Buffy touched Wanda’s arm gratefully before turning and starting to walk towards the road that held what was her last hope.
 
“Follow your heart,” Wanda called after her and Buffy nodded as she trudged through the wet snow, holding her skirt up out of the snow to keep it from getting any wetter than it already was.
 
**~**

 

The Weckerly’s home was a large Victorian (duh!) in the middle of the block, not far from the church. Buffy stood on the footpath and studied the house. There was a short, wrought-iron fence across the front near the street and a small garden with a large flower bed on one side of the walk that led to the front door, and large tree on the other side. She wasn’t sure what kind of tree it was, but she’d seen them in the park, as well - it suddenly seemed important to know that - to know everything about this house, William's house. Buffy could imagine a lovely English garden growing in front of the house in the summer, perhaps some tea roses on the fence, and the tree shading a nice patch of green lawn, but now everything was brown and dead, covered in a light layer of snow. The house itself was three stories and painted in a muted violet with mauve and grey accents around the windows and doors. There were window boxes under each window – but nothing was growing in them this time of year. Buffy wondered what they held in the summer … probably something that matched the color of the house … violets or pansies, perhaps.
 
Buffy took a deep breath and refocused on the task at hand. She needed to try to find Cecily and get her alone and … grant her heart’s desire of killing the rat-skank. That was the goal – that was the mission, she needed to be all about the mission, not on memorizing everything she could about William’s childhood home.
 
Buffy opened the short gate and walked up the footpath to the double front doors of the large Victorian house and knocked using the knocker. Buffy straightened her dress, smoothed her skirt and brushed her red hair back from her face, tucking what hung out of her hat behind her ears – then put on a smile and waited.
 
The door opened about a foot or so, but no one was there … What is it, haunted? Buffy thought with an eye roll. She was just about to push the door open further when a familiar face peeped around the edge of the door and looked out with blue eyes that did belong to a ghost … the ghost of her daughter, Annie.
 
Buffy gasped audibly and the spinning sensation returned, but this time it was coming from within. “Annie…” Buffy whispered as the girl behind the door opened it further but didn’t move to invite Buffy in.
 
The girl before her was her daughter – only older, perhaps nine or ten. She had the same blue eyes, the same angelic bone structure of her father, the same long, dark, curly hair.
 
“May I help you, milady?” the girl asked with a refined, English accent that reminded her more of Giles than Spike.
 
Tears fell from Buffy’s eyes and she pulled the girl into a hug and began dropping kisses on the top of the child’s head … then Buffy saw another girl standing behind Annie … she was perhaps three years old with the blondest hair she’d seen since … Dani.
 
“Oh my God…” Buffy dropped down to her knees, never releasing Annie, and pulled the other girl into the hug, as well. Had Hallie changed the timeline completely? She was sure Dawn had told her the records showed Cecily and William were married in January of 1881 … and she wrote December of 1880 on the paper. Buffy pushed her confusion away, choosing instead to let her heart embrace her daughters … Spike’s daughters, William’s daughters.
 
“What’re you girls doin’ out there? Anne! Bess! Close that bloody door! You’ll have us all with the winter death!” Buffy heard a woman’s voice call from another room. Buffy stiffened and released the girls as she stood up and prepared herself to meet Cecily Addams or perhaps Anne Weckerly … but, instead the woman that came into view was an elderly, heavy-set woman with grey hair that Buffy was sure had at one time been red, dressed almost exactly like Buffy. She was wiping her hands on an apron and walking as fast as she could, which wasn’t very fast, across the parlour towards them.
 
“Come in and close that door, child!” the woman ordered with a scowl, waving one arm at the open door. Buffy stepped all the way in and closed the door behind her as she wiped the tears from her eyes and the two girls moved away from her and back towards the older woman.
 
“Early, you are,” the woman informed Buffy. “Wasn’t supposed ta be ‘ere ‘til after Christmas …”
 
Buffy shook her head apologetically – she had no idea who the woman thought she was but at least she wasn’t being kicked out. “Sorry … I … I had a little trouble…” Buffy offered vaguely.
 
“No matter, then. I’m Elenoria … but everyone jus’ calls m’ Nellie,” the woman introduced herself, sounding very much like Eliza Doolittle at the beginning of My Fair Lady … very much like Spike.
 
“Elizabeth … everyone calls me Buffy,” Buffy offered with a smile, not sure whether to extend her hand or not; did Victorian women shake hands? She really wanted to pull the woman into a hug – this was the famous Nellie … the candy-cane cookie making cook that Spike had told her about – the one that had left such a lasting impression on young William.
 
Buffy did her best to contain her excitement and clasped her hands in front of her to keep from doing anything embarrassing – at least until she found out who she was supposed to be.
 
“These ‘ere girls are Anne and Bess … but I reckon you’ve met them …”
 
“Yes … Anne and Bess,” Buffy repeated, making a note to not call the older girl Annie or the younger one Dani
 
“You’re from the Colonies …” Nellie observed.
 
“Yes…” Buffy agreed, trying to remember her rule of not offering extra information and keeping her lies simple.
 
“Came a long way fer a nurse maid job, ya’ did,” Nellie observed.
 
“You have no idea,” Buffy agreed.
 
Nurse maid? For a ten and a three year old? Buffy pondered, looking at the girls who were peeking out from behind Nellie at the strange American in their parlour.
 
“Don’t ya’ got no bags?” Nellie asked, looking behind Buffy.
 
“Uhhh … no, the ship lost them. They … ummm, said they’d send them around when they found them,” Buffy offered.
 
Nellie shook her head in disgust. “I always say them contraptions will be the death of us all … If God intended us to cross the water, He’d a made it soin’s we could walk on it like ‘im,” Nellie pontificated before turning away from Buffy and heading back in the direction she’d come from with Anne and Bess at her heels.
 
Buffy shrugged and smiled. “Can’t argue with that…”
 
“Got sweet breads bakin’ … need to get back ‘fore they scorch,” Nellie explained, and Buffy followed the woman through the parlour into the kitchen.
 
“Candy-cane cooki … errr … biscuts?” Buffy asked with a smile.
 
“How did ya’ know that, child?” Nellie asked with a furrowed brow as she removed a pan of the sweet treats from the oven before adding more wood to the stove and stoking the fire.


 
“Lucky guess…” Buffy hedged, silently chastising herself for once again saying too much.
 
“Is William or Anne or Cecily at home?” Buffy asked as she fidgeted with her apron.
 
“Master William is at University … won’t be ‘ome for a couple a’ ‘ours yet …” Nellie started. “Lady Cecily is spending the day at the shops downtown …” Nellie provided. “And you done met Anne,” she added, waving her arm at Annie’s identical twin who was now sitting with Bess at the kitchen table.
 
“Oh … yes, I know – I meant William’s mother, Anne,” Buffy clarified.
 
Nellie looked at her with confusion. “Mama Anne died some years ago, child. Don’t that agency ever update their fancy papers?”
 
“Oh …” Buffy stammered, shaking her head. “I thought … ummm … How long have William and Cecily been married?”
 
“Nigh on ten years now,” Nellie confirmed.
 
“And … and who am I supposed to nurse maid for?” Buffy asked as her heart began to race and she felt her face flush, afraid that she already knew the answer. “Surely not Anne and Bess…”
 
“What’s got you all flustered, child?” Nellie asked, looking at Buffy with concern.
 
“Just tell me – who am I nurse-maiding?”
 
“The baby when it comes … I say it’s gonna be a boy this time, Lady Cecily’s carrying low – sure sign,” Nellie said with a knowing nod.
 
Buffy plopped down in a seat at the table with the girls. “Cecily’s pregnant now … with Billy,” Buffy muttered.
 
“You sure you’re alright, child?” Nellie asked with concern.
 
“Yeah … ummm … when is the baby due?”
 
“Lady Cecily’s due sometime after Christmas – I think it’ll be in January, m’self – boys like to keep their mum’s waitin’,” Nellie offered.
 
Buffy shook her head – this was wrong. The genealogy reports that Dawn found couldn’t have all been faked, could they? William and Cecily got married in 1881, in January. Anne was born right at nine months later … then Elizabeth – Bess, then William was born in January of 1891 … he died at the end of World War I, he had only been seventeen.
 
“What…What year is it now?” Buffy asked Nellie.
 
Nellie looked at her with concern. What kind of lunatic had the agency sent them?
 
“Just … I know this sounds strange, but just tell me what year it is, please,” Buffy begged.
 
“1890 … December the fifteenth, 1890,” Nellie answered her.
 
Buffy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Rack had sent her back to the right day, but the wrong year.
 
“Are you alright, Miss Buffy?” Anne asked her, laying a hand on Buffy’s arm.
 
Buffy opened her eyes and looked at what was rightfully her daughter, hers and Spike’s, and then over to Bess, who was also looking at her with concern. They were both beautiful girls – just like Annie, just like she knew Dani would be one day. Tears rolled down Buffy’s face – she couldn’t stop them. Buffy bit her bottom lip to keep it from quivering and wrapped her arms around her body to try and keep her heart from being literally ripped out. Hallie had truly taken it all from her, her husband, her children, her whole life. Of course, she knew that already, but seeing it right in front of her – seeing her daughters in this world … it ripped the scabs from her wounds and made her heart ache; it completely crushed the wall she’d built around it with a single blow.
 
“I just … I think … ummm …maybe I’m just jet-lagged or ummm … boat-lagged, just really lagged,” Buffy stammered. “Maybe I could – ummm – is there a room where I can lay down a little while? I’m just really tired.”
 
Nellie showed Buffy to her room up which was up on the second floor next to the nursery; Anne’s and Bess’s rooms were just down the hall.
 
“Ummm … is there a bathroom .. or .. ummm, a loo?” Buffy asked Nellie but got a blank stare. “Ummm … watercloset?” Buffy tried.
 
“Oh!” Nellie finally understood. “Certainly – we were one of the first on the street to have one! Now we’ve got two! Just this way …” Nellie indicated, taking her back downstairs and showing Buffy to the bathroom.
 
“Where’s the other one?” Buffy asked Nellie.
 
“On the third floor – but it’s just for Master William and Lady Cecily … you don’t need to go up there,” Nellie informed her.
 
Buffy nodded and thanked her before stepping inside the small room – she finally understood why it was called a ‘water closet’ … it looked like it had been a closet at one time and was just big enough for a sink and a toilet. Buffy wondered where they bathed, but shook it off – she wouldn’t be here that long, she hoped.
 
Buffy wandered around the first floor a while before heading back to her room on the second. She opened doors and peeked inside each one, just trying to take it all in. This was Spike’s home … William’s home. It was where he grew up, where his mother and father had lived, where he spent his most formative years and she wanted to see it all.
 
One room peaked her interest above the others – the library. Buffy stepped in and closed the door behind her silently. She walked over to what she knew was William’s desk and found papers about different classes at London University: ‘Theatre Languages’, ‘Literature and Empire’, ‘Poetry and Justice’, ‘Shakespeare: Romance and Tragedy’. That confused her because she knew he had gone to Oxford, until she saw the name of the instructor for the classes … Professor William Weckerly.
 
“My warrior the professor … you’d never want anyone to know, would you?” Buffy whispered to herself. “I would never tell, Spike … don’t worry. Your image is safe with me.”
 
Buffy set the papers back on the desk and looked up at the bookshelves, filled to overflowing with old tomes. Her eyes were drawn to one particular set of books, though – Sir Thomas Hanmer’s “The Works of Shakespear” – his father’s volumes, the same edition Buffy had given Spike for Christmas … their last Christmas together. It seemed like another lifetime ago. Buffy pulled the last book out and sat down at the desk with it. After several attempts to figure out how to use the pen and inkwell on the blotter, Buffy wrote inside the back cover of the book:

 

My dearest William,
 
I followed my heart to you and you completed my soul. I will follow you forever – to the depths of hell or heights of heaven, until the moon no longer follows the sun and the stars dwindle, one by one.  Always know, never doubt, that I love you with all my being and I will find you again one day.
 
Your loving wife,
 
Buffy
December, 1890

 
Buffy blew on the ink until it dried, then put the book back on the shelf with the others. She wasn’t really sure why she even felt the need to do that – but somehow it made her heart feel better; it made her feel like, if nothing else, she’d connected with William … with the man. Buffy thought back to the last time she’d been with Spike in limbo – William hadn’t been there, so devastated was the man over the actions of the demon, he’d fled to the deepest, darkest corner of his soul to find refuge. So buried was the man, that even the demon’s attempt to kill her didn’t bring him out of his hiding place. Spike had once told her that she’d never met William … but he had been wrong, William was never far below the surface and it was him that made Spike what he was … a good man, a strong man, a loving man … her man.
 
Buffy slipped out of the library and back up to her room and lay down on the bed. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing she’d ever slept on, but it was dry and warm and she suddenly felt exhausted.   She’d rest just a while, then … then what? “Kill Hallie,” Buffy said to herself quietly. “Kill her ratty-skank-husband-and-family-stealing ass,” Buffy admonished herself.
 
Buffy felt like she’d just nodded off when she heard a soft knock on her door. “Yes?” she asked, sitting up sleepily on the edge of the bed.
 
The handle moved and the door opened slowly. “We thought you might like tea,” Bess offered, holding a small tray with four of the candy-cane biscuits on it with both hands as Anne stood behind her with a saucer and cup of tea.
 
Buffy smiled and took the tray from her small hands and set it on the nightstand, then patted the bed next to her for the girls to sit down.  Anne sat the cup of tea next to the cookies and sat on the bed as Buffy helped Bess up.

 

“Thank you so much – that’s very sweet of you,” Buffy told the girls as they sat next to Buffy.
 
“Papa says sweets always make you feel better when you’re sad. Are you sad because you’re far from home?” Anne asked.
 
“Yes, I’m very far from home and I miss my family very much,” Buffy agreed as she looked from one of the girls to the other. How Hallie had literally stolen their children was beyond Buffy, but she most certainly had.  
 
Buffy couldn’t help but notice the girls eyeing the tray of sweets, so she picked the tray up and offered them each a biscuit, which they both accepted eagerly and with wide smiles. Buffy took one, too – she suddenly felt like she was starving – she couldn’t recall when she’d last eaten. Oh yeah, hospital food the previous night … that seemed like a hundred years ago. Note to self: Eat something that will stay with you longer than mushy peas, cardboard chicken, and rubberized Jell-O before embarking on time travel missions.
 
“What else does your Papa say?” Buffy asked as she nibbled on the biscuit, trying to make it last.
 
“He says he’s going to take us to France next summer to see the Eiffel Tower before they dismantle it!” Anne exclaimed with excitement. “He says it’s an ‘engineering wonder and a feat of human ingenuity’!”
 
“Really? Oh, that will be so much fun. Parlez vous francais?” Buffy asked, avoiding making any comment about not having to hurry on account of them dismantling it.
 
“Oui! Parlez-vous Français, aussi? Le papa m'a enseigné! Votre papa vous a-t-il enseigné, aussi? Viendrez-vous en France avec nous?” Anne replied enthusiastically.
 
“Uhhhh … oh, well that’s the only French I know … ‘parlez vous Francais’. I only parlez vous … English – American English mostly,” Buffy admitted.
 
Anne shrugged. “That’s alright, perhaps Papa can teach you, too! He’s an excellent teacher!”
 
Buffy laughed lightly, thinking of the six months Spike had tried to teach her Spanish during high school. All those words and rules and phrases simply vanished from her mind as soon as the test was over and she’d graduated. Then the scene from the first day she’d come back to the mansion after sending Angel to hell flashed through her mind. She’d demanded Spike teach her how to be slutty … Buffy’s smile widened and the room suddenly felt much warmer as those lessons replayed in her mind.
 
“He is a good teacher. Maybe … maybe I can learn French one day,” Buffy finally agreed, wiping a thin layer of perspiration from her brow with her hand.
 
“He says Mr. Retchford is a Bulgarian!” Bess supplied cheerily when the conversation lagged.
 
“Bess! That’s telling tales!” Anne scolded her sister.
 
“Is not – it’s true! Papa said that last night at supper!” Bess defended.
 
“It’s not to be repeated!” Anne informed her with a scowl.
 
“Is there something wrong with being a Bulgarian?” Buffy asked with confusion … were they at war with Bulgaria or something? From her vague memories of World History 101 at UC Sunnydale, England always seemed to be at war with someone…
 
Anne rolled her eyes and Buffy’s heart nearly jumped out of her chest, the girl looked and acted sooo much like Annie. “Vulgarian,” Anne clarified, putting emphasis on the “V”.
 
“Oh. Well, it’s ok, I won’t tell anyone,” Buffy assured them with a smile.
 
“My name is Elizabeth,” Bess offered, changing the subject. “Just like yours!”
 
“That’s right,” Buffy agreed.
 
“But they call me Bess – I wish I could be Buffy! I like Buffy better!” Bess told her with a smile as she popped the last bite of biscuit into her mouth.
 
“I like Bess … it’s a lovely name for a lovely girl,” Buffy countered with a smile.
 
“So … what time does your father get home?” Buffy asked, trying to sound nonchalant as she broke the last candy-cane in half and offered the two halves to the girls.
 
“Oh, he’s already been home … but he went out to meet mother for supper. They’re having supper out tonight,” Anne supplied, taking the proffered half of the sweet biscuit from Buffy’s hand.
 
“Oh…” Buffy said, showing more disappointment than she intended. “Well, I guess I can meet … them later, when they get in.”
 
“They’ll be late – they’re always late when they go out with the Retchfords,” Anne offered before finishing off the cookie.
 
“They’re going out with the vulgarian?” Buffy questioned.
 
Anne lowered her voice conspiratorially, “Confidentially, Papa says, if he wants a lectureship, then he has to ‘make nice with the Neanderthal,’” Anne clarified.
 
Buffy mouthed, ‘Oh’ and shook her head in understanding. Apparently, the vulgar Neanderthal was William’s boss at the university…
 
Buffy gave both girls a hug before they left with the empty tray. Buffy sat in a chair by the window and drank the now cold tea as she looked outside at the street and footpath below. She could see the church where Wanda was in the distance and she thought of going back there for advice on what she should do next, but Wanda had already given Buffy her advice – follow your heart.
 
Buffy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Ok heart, start talkin’,” she demanded.
 
Buffy tried to concentrate on what her heart was telling her to do and she started making a mental list, because honestly, written lists with that fountain pen thingy and the inkwell were just too hard to do.
 
What her heart really wanted was her family back … and her family was right here, or would be soon. William, Anne, Bess … and soon Billy would be here. All she had to do was wait for William, Jr. to be born, kill Hallie and take over. She could marry the widower Weckerly and have her family back.
 
Buffy shook her head as she thought about that idea. First of all, she didn’t know how long she could even stay in this time – Rack had told her twenty four hours at the most … not a lifetime. Second of all … as much as she loved William, William wasn’t Spike. Spike would never ‘make nice with the Neanderthal’ … he’d beat the shit out of him and take what he wanted – or at the very least, find some way to get the vulgarian fired … actually, Spike would probably be the vulgarian, so, he’d probably just buy the guy a pint and take him to a kitten poker game. And thirdly, Buffy had no desire to live in skirts and corsets, crinolines and petticoats or to have to put wood in a stove to make it work or go who knows where to get a hot shower … This wasn’t her time and William wasn’t the man … wasn’t the whole person, that she loved. Buffy needed the man, but she needed the demon, too – she needed Spike.
 
Her next thought was back to her original plan – kill Hallie. The only problem with that plan was Buffy hadn’t considered that Hallie would be nearly nine months pregnant at the time she’d made it. Buffy wouldn’t just be killing Hallie, but also William’s son. Would she actually be able to do that? Buffy shook her head … did that small detail really even matter? This wasn’t real … was it? These weren’t Cecily’s children, they were Buffy’s; they didn’t belong in this time in the first place. But what about William? She’d be taking his son away and Buffy knew that losing a child would hurt William deeply, perhaps more than even losing his wife. Was she prepared to be the one to stab a knife into William’s heart and make his soul bleed, just like the tribunal had done to him?
 
Buffy blinked back tears at the thought of hurting William that deeply. Yes, his son died young, died in battle – another warrior, like his father and grandfather before him, but was it her place to cut that life down before it even had a chance?
 
Buffy screamed out in frustration and banged her fists against her thighs. Her heart had no answers for her. What was she supposed to do here?!
 
“Are you all right, child?” Buffy heard from outside her door – it was Nellie.
 
“Yes … yes, just saw a … rat,” Buffy called through the door.
 
“Vile, nasty vermin!” Nellie agreed. “I’ll get you a trap to set later. Come down for supper now – we’re eating in the kitchen tonight,” Nellie told her through the closed door.
 
“Ok … I’ll be right down,” Buffy called back, wiping the tears from her face and trying to compose herself. She hoped to God that they were having something she could stomach … no blood or liver sausage or haggis or jellied eels or any of the other weird things Spike had told her they used to eat… She was starving, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever be hungry enough to eat jellied eels.
 
“Please…if there is a God, let it be something normal,” Buffy prayed before opening the door and heading downstairs.
  
Buffy was pleased to find that dinner was a cottage pie … nice and ‘normal’, with mashed potatoes, minced beef and other stew-like veggies layered in a deep pan and baked. Buffy remembered her mom had always called it ‘shepherd’s pie’, but Nellie assured her that this was ‘cottage pie’, made with beef; shepherd’s pie was made with lamb. Buffy let out a long, thankful sigh … she’d forgotten to add lamb to the list of things she would’ve preferred to not eat – maybe there was a God, after all. Buffy was famished and ate more than her share of the cottage pie as she let Nellie and the girls control the dinner conversation and only spoke when spoken to directly, forcing herself to keep her answers short and simple. Buffy was again thankful at the end of the meal when the ‘afters’ came; she’d managed to save enough room for the dessert Nellie had made, treacle sponge pudding.
  
Despite it not being chocolate, it was one of the best things she’d had in a long while. It was a steamed sponge cake with a sweet, golden syrup poured over it and there was warm egg custard to go with it. It was ‘scrummy!’ according to Bess, and Buffy had to agree.

 

After dinner, Buffy helped Nellie give the girls baths … in a small, round washtub in the kitchen next to the stove – which provided not only warmth for the room, but the warm water for the baths. By the time the baths were done and the girls had been put to bed, Buffy’s mother instincts were screaming at her to take the girls and run with them – but she knew that would never work. Where would she run? Even if she could stay in this time, she had no money, she had no home, she had no friends or relatives and, despite Buffy’s fears that Bess was being mistreated, she saw no sign of that in the time she’d spent with them. It was clear that Nellie loved the girls, possibly as much as William did … she was sure that Hallie, or Cecily, had no capacity to love anyone, even these girls who she’d given birth to.

 

Later that night, Buffy sat by her window and watched the street. The grandfather clock in the parlour rang out ten o’clock, then eleven, then twelve … at about half past twelve a horse-drawn carriage pulled up outside the Weckerly home and Buffy got her first glimpse of William. She would know him anywhere – the way he moved, the way he offered his hand to Cecily, helping her step down from the carriage. Even as a human, he had a grace and ease to his movements and Buffy’s heart ached to go to him, but she simply sat and watched as Cecily took his arm and he led her through the gate and into the house. Buffy heard the door open downstairs as the carriage pulled away, then there were footsteps coming up the stairs and her heart thudded in her chest … she was sure could actually feel him coming nearer. Buffy cracked the door to her room and looked down the hallway. In the dim lamplight she could see them both turn the corner on the landing and start up the next flight of stairs towards the third floor.
 
William was helping her up the stairs, holding her left elbow as she used her right hand on the railing … Cecily was big as a house. Buffy hoped that meant she’d need a C-section to birth William, Jr. ... that would be fittingly ironic – maybe she’d die in childbirth and save Buffy the trouble. Buffy then listened as their footsteps got further and further away … up to the next landing, then further still, to the third floor and for the millionth time since this began tears stung her eyes. Her husband was going to bed with another woman … he loved another woman … he made love to her, he laughed with her, her cried with her, he comforted her, he was her bridge over troubled water.
 
Buffy blinked her tears back and took deep breaths to try and stay calm as she opened her door silently and slipped out, climbing the stairs slowly. One of the stairs creaked under her feet and she froze … but no one seemed to notice. She could hear them talking softly in the hall above … was he telling her he loved her? Or was it something more mundane … perhaps he was talking about the Neanderthal or the wine at dinner or one of a million other little things that couples talk about. Buffy choked back a sob, she missed those moments – when you’re lying in bed and just talking about your day … about the teacher at school who went the extra mile for your child or the Neanderthal at the T-ball game who was yelling too much or even complaining that the dishwasher wasn’t washing right or moaning about the pukey tile in the bathroom for the hundredth time. It wasn’t what you were talking about that mattered, it was having someone beside you that understood you, that gave you support or complained with you or affirmed your belief that some parents at T-balls games should have the shit kicked out of them…
 
And, when the conversation waned, it was the kisses and the whispered ‘I love you’s and lying in each other’s arms as you both slipped off to sleep. It was the comfort of knowing you weren’t alone – you weren’t the only crazy person in the world, that there was someone else, someone who was just as screwed up and crazy as you were, and somehow that made it alright. It was alright to be Looney-Tunes as long as someone else was Looney-Tunes, too.
 
Buffy bit down on her bottom lip to keep from crying or screaming … she held to the banister with both hands to keep herself from running the rest of the way up the stairs and either tackling Hallie and knocking her away from William or throwing herself into William’s arms … at that moment, she wasn’t sure which she wanted to do more. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then let it out slowly, before moving further up the staircase. When she got where she just see over the floor of the last landing, she stopped and watched as William kissed Cecily softly on the cheek and Cecily entered a room on the left side of the hall … then William turned and stepped through a door to the right.
 
Buffy watched and waited … certainly one of those rooms was the other WC that Nellie had told her about … and, sure enough, just a few minutes later, Cecily emerged from the room on the left carrying a candle in a holder, but, instead of going across the hall where William went, she headed down to the end. Buffy went up another step to get a better look and it was clear that the room at the end of the hall was the WC …
 
What the fuck? Buffy thought, before it dawned on her … They sleep in separate rooms.
 
Buffy eased back down and sat on one of the steps out of sight of the hallway above as her mind raced. This was her chance! She would sneak into Hallie’s room, knock her out … carry her … where? Somewhere deserted, maybe back to the middle of the big park where she’d landed this morning, and … and let her heart decide what to do next.  Maybe there would be some way to save the baby but still kill Hallie … Buffy could feel the adrenaline racing through her, she was sure everyone in the house could hear her heart pounding in her chest. This was it – this is what she’d come for, she didn’t know how much longer Rack could keep her here, she needed to do this now.
 
Buffy heard Cecily come out of the WC and Buffy peaked up above the landing to make sure she went back into the room on the left … and she did. Buffy took some deep breaths and stood up. She crept silently the rest of the way up the stairs then down the hall. She stood between the two doors – William was in the room to her right … Cecily to the left. She needed to subdue Cecily quickly, not let her scream for help or alert William. Buffy reached for the handle and tested it – it wasn’t locked. Buffy took another deep breath and quickly turned the handle, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind her.
 
“I dare say!” William exclaimed, pulling his trousers back up and fastening them. “It’s customary to knock before entering a dressing room!”
 
“Shhhhh!” Buffy admonished him in a low voice, raising a finger to her lips. “I need to talk to you, William.”
 
“How do you know my name? Who are you? A harlot sent by Retchford? I can assure you, I do not partake in such improprieties,” William declared, picking his shirt up from a chair and slipping it back on, as well.
 
“No… shhhhh!” Buffy admonished him again, moving away from the door towards him.
 
William backed up and moved around the bed, putting it between himself and the crazy woman in his room. “You need to leave immediately!” he told her, as he continued to back up.
 
“William, I won’t hurt you … I just need to talk to you, then I promise I’ll leave,” Buffy told him as she made her way around the bed. William was trapped, with a wall to his back and his right, the bed on his left and a crazy girl moving quickly towards him.
 
“Please leave! I will not ask again!” William demanded, but Buffy kept coming.
 
“Some things never change – you can’t just be quiet and listen, can you?” Buffy asked in exasperation. How Cecily didn’t hear them, she had no idea.
 
William made a sudden move to try and get across the bed and away from Buffy, but Buffy saw it coming and intercepted him, tackling him on the bed. They struggled for what seemed a long time, but was only moments, Buffy trying to pin him down and hold him still and William trying to get free of her grasp. Buffy couldn’t figure out why she was having such a hard time controlling him – it wasn’t like he as a vampire – he was just a human; she should be able to hold him down with one hand tied behind her back… then it dawned on her … Rack had taken not only the power from the scythe, but most of her Slayer power for the magick…
 
“Fuck…” Buffy muttered under her breath as she continued to struggle with William.
 
“Please stop and listen!” Buffy yelled at him, no longer trying to keep her voice low. “Your son’s life depends on this! Please stop!”
 
William suddenly stopped struggling – looking at her with a furrowed brow, he asked, “My son? I haven’t a son …”
 
“Your next child,” Buffy explained, loosening her grip on his wrists and sitting back on his legs as he lay on his back under her. “Your next child with be a son, trust me on this. I know this is totally crazy and you don’t know me from Adam, but you need to listen to me now. There will be a war – a big war, with Germany and Russia and I don’t know who all, but you can’t let your son go to that war. Do you understand me? He’ll be killed – he’ll be seventeen and he’ll be killed. Keep him home – tie him up, lock him in the root cellar, do whatever you have to, but keep him home. Do you understand?”
 
William looked at her with bewilderment and shook his head ‘no’. “Who are you?” he asked her again, sitting up against the headboard and pulling his legs out from under her.
 
Buffy let him pull away and then sat back down on her heels on the bed in front of him. “That’s not important … what’s important is that you do what I’m telling you. I’m not a crazy from Bedlam … I’m …” a crazy from Bedlam, Buffy thought and rolled her eyes.
 
“Do you believe in Guardian Angels?” Buffy asked, taking a new tack.
 
“Satan is an angel,” William pointed out. “Corinthians 11:14 ‘…for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light,’” William recited. “Perhaps you are a fallen angel … here to lead me astray.”
 
Buffy let out a long sigh and shifted positions, sitting down on her butt on the bed and curling her legs beside her. “Ok … that’s probably true about the fallen angel thing …” Buffy admitted, “… but I’m not here to lead you astray. I’m here to help.
 
“Ask me something only your Guardian Angel would know … anything,” Buffy pressed, folding her hands in her lap to keep from reaching out and touching his face.
 
William shook his head slightly, trying to make sense of this girl who claimed to be an angel. “What … How did my father die?” he asked her at last.
 
“He died in battle in the Crimean War in 1856; he was a hero, sacrificing himself to save his men. He was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for ‘valour’,” Buffy informed him.

 

William tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes at her and Buffy fought against herself to keep from reaching out to him. “How do you know this? No one knows of that, it’s never been spoken of! Even I wasn’t aware of it until after mother’s death… I found the papers …
 
“Who are you?” William asked again, nonplussed, his brows knit in doubt.
 
“I told you, I’m your family’s Guardian Angel,” Buffy assured him again.
 
“What’s your name … what do they call you?” William asked the green-eyed angel with fire-red hair that sat across from him on his bed.
 
Buffy opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again before letting out a long breath. “Avengelyne … they call me Avengelyne.
 
“Now listen,” Buffy continued, “… when William, Jr. wants to go into war, don’t let him. He won’t live to see his eighteenth birthday if he goes into that war. Do you understand?”
 
This time William nodded yes, but still looked flummoxed and bewildered.
 
“Ok … good. That’s good. Now, I have a question for you,” Buffy informed him. “Are you happy?”
 
“Am I … happy? What sort of inquiry is that?” William retorted.
 
“It’s something a Guardian Angel needs to know the answer to … so I’ll know what to do or not do. Are you happy?” Buffy repeated.
 
“Of course …” William started dismissively.
 
“No,” Buffy stopped him, laying a hand on his arm. “I want the truth, not what you tell yourself to get yourself through the day; not what you tell your friends or even your wife – I want what’s in your heart, William. Tell me what’s in your heart when you lay in your bed at night and everything’s still and quiet. Are you happy?”
 
William looked down at her hand, which still rested on his arm and then back up into her eyes. “I am happier than I ever thought I deserved to be,” he began softly. “My girls are … they’re my world. Do you know them? Little beauties, they are, and smart as whips,” he continued and Buffy nodded, answering his question and agreeing with him at the same time.
 
“My wife is with child … a boy, you say!” William exclaimed, his eyes going wide with wonder and Buffy could practically feel him swell with pride and joy over the news.
 
“My job has some tedium … bureaucrats, more interested in crowns than knowledge … but the look on the faces of my students in that moment when they see the power of language … the joy of literature … the passion of Shakespeare … that look is what it is really about. There are nobler professions, higher paying positions, but I wouldn’t trade my chosen profession for any other,” William went on and Buffy could feel how much he loved being a professor, opening young minds to new and wondrous ideas. He was making a difference in the lives of the students he touched and it was clear that he treasured that.
 
“And your wife?” Buffy asked softly, never moving her hand from his arm.
 
“Cecily … dear Cecily. I’ve loved her since the moment I laid eyes on her. She’s given me two beautiful children and a third … a boy, will be here forthwith. She is my Juliet. I feel like we were destined to be together, she’s the one, the only one for me,” William espoused and Buffy could feel his deep love and devotion for his wife … not for Buffy, but for Cecily – she could feel it as surely as she could feel someone turning a dagger in her heart.  
 
Buffy couldn’t stop the tears from falling from her eyes as she released his arm, stood up, and moved quickly towards the door. Buffy hesitated with her palm on the door handle and leaned her head against the jamb as William watched her, perplexed. He’d done as she asked, told her his heart, he wasn’t sure why she’d suddenly jumped up, seemingly upset with him.
 
“I’m sorry … I … I thought you wanted my true heart,” William apologized, standing up and moving towards her.
 
Buffy nodded against the door. “I do … I did,” she assured him. When William reached out and touched her shoulder, Buffy turned around quickly and pulled him into a tight hug. “Don’t forget what I told you about Bil ... I mean William … keep your son out of that war,” she admonished him before pulling back, laying a hand on his cheek, looking into his bluer than blue eyes, and dropping a soft kiss on his lips. “I love you …” she whispered against his lips before quickly turning away, flinging the door open, and running from his room … down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the night.
 
Buffy kept running, past the church and into the park … back into Clapham Common, past the spot where she’d awoken that morning – and still she ran. In the center of the Common, she came upon a large, round structure where all the footpaths leading in and out of the park met like the hub of a large wheel. Buffy stopped in the middle of the structure and fell to her knees; it felt somehow fitting for her to end up here – at a crossroads … not knowing which way to go.

 


Continued ....
End Notes:
Chapter continued ...
Billy, Don't Be a Hero p2 by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Continued from part 1 ...
 

Buffy’s whole body melted onto the floor of the bandstand as the snow started falling again all around her, dusting the ground, trees, and benches with a white veil that made it seem like she was the only person in the world. Buffy curled into a ball on the cold stone floor below her and wept … she wept for herself, she wept for William and Spike, their children, and their friends – she wept five years worth of tears. The wall around her heart was nothing but rubble and, as hard as she tried to rebuild it, she couldn’t stop the hurt any longer … she couldn’t pretend that nothing mattered but revenge, because all that really mattered was love, and William’s love belonged to another, just as her children did.
  
Buffy wept for so many reasons … reasons that kept clattering and smashing around in her brain, bumping into each other and merging then separating again.
 
She wept because she wasn’t able to do what she’d come here to do – she wasn’t strong enough, not emotionally and not even physically – she had failed. She couldn’t kill Cecily … She could still feel William’s soul expand with joyous pride when he finally believed her…when he realized that his next child would be a son. Buffy knew that William loved his girls with all his heart, but there’s always something special when that first son is born – someone to carry on the family name – a legacy.
 
She wept for William … for the loss of his love. He had given his heart to Cecily, just as Spike had given his heart to Buffy – wholly and truly and right from first sight; that was so very William. Buffy wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say when she asked him if he was happy. A big part of her, maybe all of her, wanted him to say ‘No’ … to scream ‘No!’ to shout it from the rooftops … ‘NO!’ She wanted him to hate Cecily … to despise and loathe her and regret the moment he met her and that part of her, that green monster inside her, sobbed now … because he didn’t do any of that. He loved Cecily … still. It hadn’t been a passing fancy, an ill-advised infatuation, or a case of puppy-love … it had been his destiny.
 
Buffy chastised herself for even going into William’s room … if only she had done what she had planned and gone into Cecily’s room … even with only part of her Slayer strength, she should’ve been able to overpower a pregnant, Victorian housewife. But as she stood there between the rooms she suddenly felt her heart … she felt it pull her towards William. Her heart had finally told her what to do and she had finally listened … and it had been wrong. So very, very wrong.
 
“Stupid … so, so stupid,” Buffy muttered to herself though her tears. What did you think, that he would walk away from his wife and run into your arms? That he’d feel your soul and somehow know that you were his destiny, not her? “Such a stupid fool …” Buffy moaned as she covered her face with her hands and continued to sob.
 
“Seems a quite queer place for a Guardian Angel to sleep,” William observed, walking into the bandstand behind Buffy.
 
Buffy jumped up quickly and wiped at her eyes and nose with both hands before turning to face him.
 
“Angels can sleep anywhere…” Buffy informed him, smoothing her skirt and trying to look nonchalant.  
 
“Indeed … and are all angels ‘stupid fools’?” William asked, walking slowly towards her.
 
“Only me …” Buffy admitted, taking a step back as he stepped forward.
 
“Who are you … really?” William asked as she studied her face in the dim lamplight. “You appear to be flying much too close to the ground for an angel of any standing – fallen or otherwise.”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes and sighed as she folded her arms across her chest. “Someone who cares about you … who cares about what happens to you and your children. A fallen angel trying to get her wings back.”

 

“You said you loved me … that wasn’t … the way you said it …” William stammered before stopping and starting over. “I haven’t been loved by many women … well, really only one, but I could feel … something. When you said that, it felt … oddly genuine. What was that?”
 
“We … it …” Buffy started and stopped, rubbing tiredly at her eyes. What was she supposed to tell him? That his wife, the woman he thought was his destiny, was a rat-skank-husband-stealing-whore that made a wish and ruined their lives and condemned his soul to hell? That would probably go over like a lead balloon – she would no doubt end up in Bedlam … again, with that story. Plus it would just be hurtful … it would cut his heart, bleed his soul, to know what his Juliet really was, and above all else, Buffy didn’t want to hurt him like that.
 
“We were together in another time … another life … hell, maybe it was another universe, hell, I don’t know, anymore. We were each other’s destiny … I … I lost you and I’m trying to find a way back there – back to you, but … I just, I haven’t been able to …” Buffy dropped her head into her hands as tears overtook her.
 
William closed the short distance between them and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into a hug and Buffy melted against him as the sobs came even harder than before. She could feel his heart beating in his chest, feel his chest heaving with labored breath from running after her all this way, feel his warm arms encircling her. William was alive – truly alive, and he was happy. He had a family, he had a wife that he loved who, if she didn’t love him, at least made him think that she did, he had a job that he loved, he was affluent and even respected … why was she trying to take all that away from him?
 
“‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions,’” he recited Hamlet to her, his voice soft. “I’m sorry … I’m sorry that I’m not the man you were seeking.”
 
Buffy nodded and reluctantly backed up away from him and out of his arms, wiping at her eyes and trying to stop the tears. “It’s not your fault … I’m just … I’m afraid I’m being trampled by the battalions. This was my last chance,” Buffy told William before giving him a small smile. “You should … you should go home – go home to your family.”
 
William tilted his head and looked at her with a certain amount of awe, along with a little bewilderment. “Is what you said true … about a son and a war?”
 
Buffy pursed her lips together and nodded as she raised her eyes up to his and held his gaze. “Don’t let him go … he’ll want to be a hero, he’ll want to be like … like you. Don’t let him be that hero, William, it’s not worth the price.”

 

“I’m no hero … that was my father,” William pointed out.
 
Buffy forced a sad smile to her lips. “No … you’re a hero, too. To me you’re a hero … to your students and your children you are. Don’t sell yourself short, William – you have the soul of a warrior, the heart of a lion,” Buffy assured him. Buffy reached behind her neck and unfastened the chain that held the cross that Angel had given her at their first meeting. She took the pendant and fastened it around William’s neck, sliding the cross down in place over his heart.
 
“To remember me by … to remember that you’re a hero,” Buffy murmured, sliding her hand down from his neck and touching the cross as it rested against his chest. Buffy could feel his skin warm under her fingers, feel his heart beating below her palm, feel his chest fall and rise with breath … she thought she could even feel his soul as it reached out for hers. It felt so right to have her hand on his chest … she longed to be back in his arms, longed to have his love, longed to be with him…
 
Buffy suddenly pulled her hand away, and wrapped her arms around her torso to keep from reaching out and touching him again. Averting her eyes from his, she told him, “Go now … someone will miss you. You shouldn’t be here, it’s not proper; I might lure you into debauchery.”
 
William cocked a brow at her, but she just tilted her head in the direction they’d come from, back towards his house where his family and his wife waited for him, afraid to say another word lest she beg him to stay, to hold her … to love her. When he didn’t move, Buffy turned her back on him and walked to the other side of the pavilion, hugging her arms even tighter around her body and closing her eyes against the pain – she felt like she was losing him all over again even though this man … this William, had never been hers to begin with.
 
“Thank you for coming … for my son’s life. I won’t forget … I won’t forget you, Avengelyne,” William told her softly before he turned and headed down the steps of the pavilion and began walking through the falling snow back towards Macaulay Road.
 
“I won’t forget you, either …” Buffy whispered as she turned and watched him walk away into the cold, dark night.



**~**
 
{{Click here to hear “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” by Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods on YouTube   }}

The marchin' band came down along main street
The soldier blues fell in behind
I looked across and there I saw Billy
Waiting to go and join the line
And with her head upon his shoulder
His young and lovely fiancée
From where i stood i saw she was cryin'
And through her tears I heard her say

Billy, don't be a hero, don't be a fool with your life
Billy, don't be a hero, come back and make me your wife
And as Billy started to go,
She said keep your pretty head low
Billy, don't be hero, come back to me.

The soldier blues were trapped on a hillside
The battle raging all around
The sergeant cried, We've got to hang on boys!"
We've got to hold this piece of ground
I need a volunteer to ride up,
And bring us back some extra men,
And Billy's hand was up in a moment
Forgettin' all the words she said

She said,
Billy, don't be a hero, don't be a fool with your life
Billy, don't be a hero, come back and make me your wife
And as Billy started to go,
She said keep your pretty head low
Billy, don't be a hero, come back to me.

I heard his fiancée got a letter
That told how Billy died that day
The letter said that he was a hero
She should be proud he died that way
I heard she threw that letter away......

End Notes:
TBC ... What will Buffy do now? Has her last chance passed? Don't be shy! I love hearing from you!
Just One Last Dance by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy follows her heart, but once again, it leads her astray.
**
Music Referenced:
Just One Last Dance, Sarah Connor
http://youtu.be/-oOeXMHkfUU
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Tuesday, December 16th, 1890, early morning hours, London:

  

William walked about twenty yards down the path before stopping and looking back. He could hear the angel weeping … he thought he’d never heard anything as horribly heartrending in all his life, it cut him as deeply as if it had been one of his own family. Like the feeling when she said ‘I love you’ … her tears seemed to reach deep into his soul, it was something he’d only felt before upon the birth of his children and the death of his mother. He pondered her words … her story, as he stood in the cold – what did it mean? Was she an angel or a mortal being? Why did she seem to care so deeply for him and his family? Why did her words touch him so profoundly? Why did her pain seem to cut him so harshly?
 
He suddenly felt horribly guilty for not being completely truthful with the … with Avengelyne … about his life. It was true that he was happy … for the most part. He loved his children with all his heart and he loved his job, he was good at it and he did love helping young people realize and appreciate the glory of the written and spoken word, and he loved his wife. But … if he had been completely honest, he would’ve admitted to her that on those cold, still nights that she'd asked about, as he lie alone in his bed, that he longed for a warm body to share it with, a heart beating next to his, for a soft touch, a tender kiss.
 
He loved Cecily … more than he’d ever loved any woman, but she was distant, cold, and shared his bed only occasionally. It hadn’t started out that way, of course, but after confirming her first pregnancy, just a couple of months after their wedding vows, things changed. He knew that he loved her much more than she loved him and, on those dark nights of which the angel spoke, that stabbed at his heart, but he would never betray his wife. She was a good mother, she was a proper lady, she could be witty and charming and all his friends and colleagues loved her … and she’d given him two, soon to be three, beautiful children. He thought, perhaps, he was simply expecting too much.
 
**~**
 
Buffy lay on the cold floor of the bandstand and cried and prayed and wished with all her heart and soul to just leave this place, this time. She wished for that feeling of bliss that she’d had just before landing here … for the bright lights and the music and the peaceful, euphoric feeling of Rack’s magic. She was so tired of crying, so tired of the pain and hurt that seemed to invade every cell of her body like a virus – just so very tired. She had lost … she’d lost everything – Hallie had it all; her husband, her family … her happiness, and Buffy’s hope that she would be able to get it all back died like the last ember of a forest fire after a soft rain … slowly, but oh so surely.

 

Buffy was so lost was in her own thoughts that she didn’t hear William return to the pavilion; didn’t know he was there until she felt his hand on her arm.
 
“Avengelyne…” he said softly. “…please don’t cry. It … I can’t explain it … it pains me so to hear you cry,” William whispered to her as he crouched down next to her.
 
“You should go …” Buffy told him through her tears, not looking at him or moving to get up.
 
“I … I have a confession I feel I must make. I’m afraid I wasn’t completely truthful with you and … and my conscious begs me to correct my misdeed,” William explained quietly.
 
Buffy took some deep breaths to try and calm down and wiped her face with her hands before pushing up to sitting and facing him. “Whatever it is … I’m sure it’s fine, William. You really should go.”
 
William pursed his lips together and nodded in acquiescence before standing up and turning away from her again, but before he got to the stairs that led down from the bandstand to the walkway, he stopped and turned back. “May I ask you something … something rather personal?”
 
“Of course,” Buffy agreed, still sitting on the floor. “Anything.”
 
William moved back to her and crouched down so he could look her in the eye. “You said we were … we were together in another place … another universe. I don’t pretend to know what that means, I don’t pretend to understand, but there are some things in life that we must take on faith and I … I don’t know why, but I believe you,” William began.

 

Buffy smiled softly and nodded slightly – she wasn’t sure she even understood that anymore.
 
“So, ummm … what I mean to say is … When you say we were together … do you mean in the biblical sense?”
 
Buffy had to smile wider at how completely uncomfortable and proper he looked asking such a risqué question.
 
“Yes … we communed with God quite a bit,” Buffy offered, her smile widening.
 
“You mock me … I … I shouldn’t have …” William started, standing up quickly and moving back towards the stairs.
 
Buffy jumped up and ran after him, catching his arm and stopping him before he started down the stairs. “No … William – I didn’t mean it that way. I’m not making fun, honest. It was … it was kind of a joke we had … I shouldn’t have said it that way. Please don’t leave,” Buffy pleaded with him. When he turned back to face her she added, “Ask me anything – I promise that there’s nothing you can’t ask me; I would never mock you, I’d never hurt you that way.”
 
William looked at her … her green eyes glistened in the low light from the street lamps and he thought he’d never seen anything more beautiful before; her eyes held such love and sincerity it left him speechless.

 

“William? Please ask me … anything,” Buffy prodded softly when he didn’t speak or move for several moments.
 
William cleared his throat and pulled his eyes away from hers. He walked over to the edge of the pavilion and looked out at the darkness surrounding them. With the soft snow still falling, it felt like they were the only people in the world at that moment. Without looking back, William said, “What I wondered was … well, it’s quite embarrassing really … I just, oh dear,” William stammered, trying to gather his thoughts.
 
Buffy moved up behind him and laid a hand on his back. “William, we’ve shared everything … there’s nothing you can say or ask that will offend me or scare me …” she assured him.
 
“Indeed … well, I wondered if … during our ‘communes with God’, if, well … was I … sufficient?” William stammered out, never looking at Buffy.
 
Buffy nearly laughed, but knew that would be the absolute wrong thing to do, so she bit her lip and put her hand over her mouth as she regained her composure. Finally she said, “Yes … well, I’m not sure I’d use ‘sufficient’ to describe you … maybe … what’s a word that’s way, way, way better than ‘sufficient’?”
 
William finally turned back to look at her with confusion creasing his features. “Are you certain?”


 
Buffy had to smile now. “Oh yes, beyond certain.”
 
At the continued look of doubt on his face, she asked, “Why are you asking that?”
 
William shrugged slightly and looked past Buffy, avoiding her gaze. “And just how long did you say we were ‘together’?”
 
“Six years … before … before I lost you.”
 
“And you were … pleased with my … efforts … during that time?”
 
Buffy pursed her lips together to keep from smiling wider. “Yes … quite pleased.”
 
“And … ummm … how many times, roughly, over those years did we have … relations?” William asked, still not looking at her, even though she was standing right in front of him.
 
“Roughly?” Buffy asked, crunching her face up as if in deep thought. “Ten million …”
 
“What!?” William exclaimed, finally dropping his gaze to her face.
 
Buffy shrugged. “Give or take a million or two …”
 
William’s jaw dropped open, then closed, then dropped again – his mouth was working but no sound was coming out. Buffy lifted a finger up and pressed up on his chin, closing his mouth. “A closed mouth catches no flies…” she told him with a small smile, repeating what their great-whatever grandson had told her all those years ago.
 
“Now, I get to ask a question. Why are you asking me about this?” Buffy questioned, her voice turning serious.
 
William spun back around to face out towards the darkness and leaned heavily on the railing, but didn’t answer her.
 
“Ok, we’ll start with an easier question … how many times have you had relations with your … uhhh … wife … with Cecily?” Buffy asked, nearly choking on the words as she called Cecily his wife.
 
William rolled his face up to the ceiling of the pavilion then dropped it back down so his chin was on his chest. “Roughly?” he asked rhetorically, “ten.”
 
“No … I mean total – in ten years,” Buffy clarified.
 
“Oh …” William began again, “…ten.”
 
Now it was Buffy’s turn to exclaim in surprise. “What?!” She knew that she and Spike were different than ‘normal’ people … but even so, ten times in ten years? They weren’t that different.
 
“William … why?” Buffy questioned softly, pulling on one of his arms and turning him back around to face her.
 
William shrugged. “Cecily says …” he started, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly, shaking his head. “This really isn’t proper. I should … I should go.”
 
“No. You started this, now you have to finish it. What does Cecily say?” Buffy demanded, holding onto his arm to keep him from moving.
 
William finally met her eyes. “She says it hurts … it’s too painful.”
 
Buffy looked at him with concern and confusion. Certainly William didn’t have the experience that Spike did; perhaps he was rushing things too much.
 
“Do you … is she, you know, uhhh … ready before you … ummm …” Buffy sighed, when did she get so embarrassed talking about sex? Just pretend it’s Spike … she told herself and started over, “Do you have foreplay? She needs to be wet before you have intercourse … otherwise, yeah – it would hurt.”
 
Even in the dim lights, Buffy could see William’s face turning even redder as he pulled at his collar with one finger to get some air. “Just talk to me, William …” Buffy advised, laying a hand on his arm.
 
William cleared his throat again. “Yes … ummm, well, yes, I have read the books and I am aware of how the female body functions. I am not a brute,” he defended.
 
“I know you’re not … but some women might take longer than others to be ready,” Buffy advised him.
 
“Yes … I can appreciate that everyone is different,” William acquiesced, still pulling at his collar and fidgeting with his glasses, which had started to fog up; he wasn’t sure how it had suddenly gotten so hot outside with snow still falling around them.
 
“And?” Buffy prodded.
 
“Yes … ummm, well, I pleasure her with my mouth … my tongue and hands first until … well, until she cries out …”
 
Buffy smirked. “Oh, William, you little scoundrel!” she teased.
 
William’s eyes went wide with horror and embarrassment. “Is that wrong?!” he asked worriedly.
 
Buffy laughed. “No … that’s not wrong. That sounds perfectly wonderful,” Buffy assured him before asking, “So she’s hot, she’s wet … and then what?”
 
William cleared his throat again, suddenly wishing for a glass of water … or a pint of lager. “Then I … we … have relations,” he hedged, unable to voice anything more specific at that moment.
 
Buffy nodded knowingly … but couldn’t imagine what Cecily’s problem was. It was ironic that just a short while ago, Buffy was hating Cecily for having what was rightfully Buffy’s – for sleeping with William, and now Buffy was angry at her for not doing it enough.
 
“So … what’s her problem, then?” Buffy asked again.
 
“She says it painful … I’m unnaturally large and I may damage her if we …”
 
“Oh, please spare me!” Buffy exclaimed, throwing her hands out to the sides as she started pacing back and forth in front of William. What the hell was Cecily playing at? She wanted Spike, or William, and now that she had him she didn’t want him anymore except to reproduce?
 
“That’s a bunch of crap!” Buffy assured William as she continued to pace angrily back and forth.
 
“That fucking bitch … what kind of game is she playing, anyway?” Buffy muttered under her breath as her anger rose. Buffy suddenly stopped and turned to face William.
 
“You told me you were happy! That you loved her! She was your Juliet!” she accused.
 
William looked down at the floor and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Yes … I … that’s the thing I came back to set straight with you. She is my Juliet … I’m just afraid that I’m not her Romeo.”
 
William looked up at Buffy and met her eyes. “I’m afraid that I love her, but alas, she … she doesn’t love me … as deeply.”
 
Buffy folded her arms across her chest and sighed angrily as she looked at this man that loved with all his heart, a man that gave everything to the one he loved. How could she not have seen and felt his heartbreak earlier? Because you were too caught up in your own pain and self-pity to notice his, came the answer in her head. Cecily had found a way to hurt him, after all – to have him and hurt him at the same time, by taking his love, promising her love, but not actually giving him any in return. It had apparently become more about inflicting pain and wreaking vengeance for her and less about having Spike…unless Spike was an eighteen year old surfer in the twenty-first century, of course.
 
Buffy’s expression softened as she looked at William … so handsome – not in the roguish way Spike was, and he was older by ten years, but those years had been kind – he really didn’t look any older at all; his eyes were just as mesmerizing, his cheekbones just as sharp, his lips just as soft, and his heart just as true.
 
“There’s nothing wrong with you, William,” Buffy assured him, moving closer to him. “You’re only crime is loving too wholly, giving your heart too freely … it’s the thing I love most about you.
 
“Have you ever been with anyone else? A mistress?” Buffy asked softly, laying her hands on his chest.
 
William shook his head ‘no’ … unable to speak as this angel touched him and took the breath from his lungs.
 
“No … you wouldn’t … you wouldn’t betray your love,” Buffy acknowledged as she lifted up onto her toes. Her lips hovered close to his as she asked, “Would you like to know what true love feels like?”
 
William had no capacity to speak as Buffy pressed her body against his; he could barely breathe and he felt all the blood rush from his brain to his nether regions as this angel offered to show him true love. He shook his head ‘yes’ one time and Buffy closed the space between their lips and wrapped her arms around his neck.
 
Buffy slid her tongue into William’s mouth and his tongue wrapped around hers as his arms encircled her body and pulled her even tighter. Buffy was surprised to find that he even tasted like Spike and a thousand memories and feelings flooded her heart and soul with longing and desire … this was her husband, his heart, his soul, his body. She let herself get lost in the feeling of his body against hers, his heart thundering in his chest, his cock, stiff and prominent in his trousers pressed against her hip, and she knew that he wanted it just as badly as she did.
 
Buffy pressed him down to a sitting position on the stone floor of the pavilion, his back against the short, cold, metal latticework wall that encircled it – but he didn’t notice the cold at his back or the hard stone under him, he could only feel this girl … this angel, whose lips tasted like ambrosia and felt like heaven against his, whose body was supple and warm against him, and whose heart was so full of love and desire that he could actually feel it inside himself.
 
Buffy straddled his lap, pressing her pussy down against his erection. She gently removed his glasses and set them off to the side and then resumed the kiss … this time inviting his tongue into her mouth, and he eagerly accepted as he wrapped his arms back around her and pulled her body against his. When the kiss broke, both of them gasping for air, Buffy leaned her forehead against his and began unbuttoning his shirt and William voiced no objections. Buffy ran her hands down his chest and abs … his muscles weren’t as sculpted as Spike’s, but his skin was just as soft and his body firm beneath it.
 
“Does she make you quiver when she touches you?” Buffy asked as she felt his body tremble under her hands.
 
“No…” William whispered … it was all he could manage.
 
Buffy unbuttoned his trousers, freeing his erection. His cock jumped and throbbed in her hand as she squeezed it tightly … careful not to be too hard – he wasn’t a vampire, after all. She started stroking slowly up and down his length, then she swirled her thumb around the mushroom head, smearing his pre-cum round and round, eliciting a deep moan from William’s throat as his eyes fluttered closed and his head lolled back against the metal latticework.
 
“Does she touch you like this? Does she make you moan?” Buffy asked softly before running her tongue down his neck from his ear to his shoulder then back up again.
 
“No…” William moaned as he tried to maintain some semblance of control over his body.
 
William swallowed the lump in his throat and watched her hand move on his erection, swirling the drops of slick liquid around and around the head. “That … that does not trouble you?”

 

Buffy raised her brows, looked up to his eyes and shook her head ‘no’. “Nothing about your body troubles me,” she whispered, sliding down his legs, leaning down and replacing her thumb with her tongue on the head of his cock, while she continued to stroke his hard rod with one hand.
 
Buffy took the head of his cock in her mouth, moving her lips up and down just over the head in the same, slow rhythm as her hand was using on the thick shaft, but in opposite directions; her mouth going down as her hand came up.
 
Buffy could feel William’s balls tense and his body tremble and she paused momentarily and asked, “Do you want to cum in my mouth?”
 
William gasped audibly, then stammered his reply, “I … that’s … I mean to say … it’s not necessary. It must be quite … unpleasant for you.”
 
Buffy smiled and lifted up then she leaned in so her lips were near his. “No, not unpleasant … nectar of the gods,” she whispered, repeating what Spike had told her the very first time she’d done this. “And I should know, being an angel and all…”
 
“Oh my…” William moaned as Buffy dropped her mouth back down on his cock and began sucking and licking and stroking him harder and faster. She swirled her tongue round and round the length of him as she took as much of his rod into her mouth as she could, all the while stroking the rest with her hand. Buffy could feel him tense again and knew that he was so close, she slammed down on him hard, sucking and licking and swallowing until the head of his cock hit the back of her throat and William’s cum exploded into her, his hips rose involuntarily against her and a low, urgent moan escaped his throat as she continued to lick and suck his rod eagerly.
 
Buffy pulled back slightly to give herself room to swallow as his cum flowed into her mouth. William’s whole body tensed and his moan rumbled deeply in his throat; this was unlike anything he’d felt before. This angel was unafraid of him … this angel was moaning and devouring him with a passion he’d never before seen in a woman … and she was enjoying it … she was enjoying giving him pleasure.
 
Buffy swirled her tongue around William’s rod, licking up every drop of cum from it when he finally stopped shooting into her, but she didn’t swallow the last bit; instead, she raised her lips back up to his and kissed him. William gasped in surprise when he tasted his cum in her mouth, on her lips, and pulled back from the kiss momentarily. Their eyes met, his wide with wonder and excitement, hers smoldering with passion and love, and then he captured her lips again, sliding his tongue between her lips and tasting himself on her … it was amazing, this girl was amazing.
 
When the kiss broke, Buffy smiled softly at him. “See? Not unpleasant … it’s not chocolate, but … it’s a close second,” she teased.
 
William smiled back at her … her smile lit up her whole face, her eyes seemed to glitter and dance with love and mischief, she seemed to actually glow from within, even in the dim light … this angel was truly effulgent.
 
Buffy didn’t want to rush him … she knew that he was a man, not a vampire, and she had no idea how long it would take for him to recover from that orgasm, which rivaled Spike’s, but she longed to have him inside her. Buffy backed up off his legs, then spread them open and she turned around so she could sit with her back to his chest between his outstretched legs. Neither of them seemed to notice the cold any longer or care that they were actually out in the middle of the Common. The snow falling around them was like a veil of white, shrouding them – watching over them, protecting them. Buffy actually felt like they were inside a snow globe that someone had shaken up and this was all that existed in the entire universe, just her and William and this pavilion and the snow.


 
Buffy sighed as she leaned back against him and took his arms and wrapped around her. William rested his chin on her shoulder and closed his eyes. If he concentrated hard enough, he could feel her heart beating against his, he could hear only her breathing, he could smell only the sweet scent of her long, auburn hair and the sounds and smells of the city beyond the bandstand vanished. Where had this girl come from and why did he feel so … so safe with her? She was a perfect stranger … a trespasser, in fact, but something about her touched him more deeply than he thought possible.
 
William laced his fingers in hers and felt her wedding band. He lifted her left hand up and looked at it in the dim light. “You are married,” he whispered softly.
 
“Yes …”
 
“To me?” William asked hesitantly, afraid that her answer would be no.
 
“Yes …” Buffy answered as tears stung her eyes. She had never removed the wedding band from her finger, in her mind it was Spike’s wedding band, not Riley’s; despite the years since she’d lost him, she would never be married to anyone but Spike.
 
“And do I … make you happy?” William asked softly.
 
Buffy smiled through her tears, but her chin and voice quivered as she answered. “Yes … you’re a good man, William. You always make me happy.”
 
“A good man with the heart of a lion …” William repeated what the angel had told him before. “But I am lost to you now …”
 
“Yes …” Buffy agreed, closing her eyes tightly to keep the tears from falling.
 
William brought a finger up and touched her face. “I’m sorry … I did not mean to make you weep. Your tears are like daggers to my heart … I cannot explain it. I don’t even know you, and yet you affect me so deeply.”
 
“That’s true love … that’s what soul-mates do,” Buffy murmured as she took his hand, which was still interlaced with hers, and wrapped it back around her middle.
 
The pair sat in an easy silence for several minutes, each reveling in the comfort of the other being next to them. For the first time in years Buffy felt the black-hole inside her fill with serene joy again as William’s soul sought hers out, like a moth to a flame, a magnet to steel, his soul joined with hers and completed her. It had been so very long since she’d felt it, like a key fitting into a lock, his soul fit hers perfectly, and released her heart from its solitary prison of depression and vengeance and anger.

 

Buffy smiled knowingly when she felt William’s cock start to jump and stiffen again against her back. Buffy took one of William’s hands, lifted it and began lazily swirling his fingers softly over the swell of her breast. William didn’t pull back, but let her show him how she wanted to be touched. He brushed her long, fiery locks to the side, dropped his mouth to her shoulder, and kissed a blaze of desire up her neck, ending at her ear and finding the spot that drove her crazy, before starting back down again. Buffy moaned and tilted her head to the side, letting her auburn-red halo of hair fall away and giving him full access to her soft skin. She could feel his erection growing with every moan that escaped her throat, with every shudder and every goose bump that he raised on her skin.
 
Buffy reluctantly left his embrace and stood up so she could turn around to face him again. She kicked her shoes off, then raised her skirt and unfastened her jeans, dropping them down and kicking them off as well. When she stood up, William opened his eyes, which he had closed to concentrate on hearing her breath and feeling her body as it quivered under his touch. Now he watched her … enthralled with her movements, her grace … savoring every glimpse of skin, hungering for her body to be back against his. Buffy unbuttoned the front of her dress and pulled her t-shirt off from underneath before dropping back down to her former position on William’s lap, facing him.
 
“Do you want to touch me?” Buffy asked as she unfastened her bra and lifted William’s left hand up to her bare breast.
 
William dragged his eyes away from her breasts up to her eyes with a look of fear and pleasure all mixed together. He felt like he could barely breathe … she was beautiful, graceful, an angel… she was like something from a dream.
 
“Tell me what … what pleasures you …” William requested quietly as he dropped his eyes back to her bare chest and raised his other hand to cup both of her full breasts gently. Buffy laid her hands over his and guided them to her nipples, circling them softly with his fingers. She released his hands and, as he circled her areolas with light touches, she pinched her nipples lightly, showing him what to do. It took only a moment before William was making love to her breasts with his hands, then his mouth, his teeth and tongue and lips. Buffy moaned in pleasure as her own eyes fluttered closed and she felt a small orgasm pass over her. It had been so long … so very long since she’d had a man’s touch against her skin – it was something she had put aside, given up on ever happening again. Her life without Spike was acappella; Spike was gone and she knew no one could take his place, and yet, here he was … one last time, one last song, one last dance.
 
William was unsure at first, hesitant, but then as he learned what she wanted and gained confidence, his touches became more and more like that of her husband – full of caring and reverence, wanting to please her, wanting to make her feel as good as she made him feel. Buffy could see so much of Spike in this man … and so much of this man in Spike. What Spike had told her so many years ago was true – you don’t lose everything you were when you become a vampire, what you were is still in there, deep down, you are still you.
 
Buffy raised her hips up and reached between them to guide his cock into her, but William stopped her by grabbing her wrist. “I … I don’t want to hurt you…” he explained softly, searching her eyes for that look that said ‘stop’ … he was well familiar with it.
 
Buffy sat back down on his legs and pulled her hand out of his grasp. She took his face in both of her hands and made him focus on her … on nothing but her eyes. “You won’t hurt me,” she assured him.
 
“Are you certain? I … I would never forgive myself…” William started and Buffy covered his lips with her thumbs, silencing him.
 
“I want you … I love you,” she told him softly. “Can’t you feel my love yet? Open your heart and let my love in, William, it will make all the difference, you’ll see.”
 
William took a deep breath as he lost himself in the green of her eyes … he felt like he was falling … falling down a tall, green waterfall … falling for an angel. Buffy raised back up and guided his shaft into her, lowering down slowly on him as she kept her eyes locked on his until he was buried in her to the hilt, then she stopped moving.
 
“Does she make you tremble and shiver when she makes love to you?” Buffy asked softly.
 
William’s mouth moved, opened, then closed, then opened again, but he could utter no words … no thought could form in his mind from the fireworks that were exploding there, which blocked everything else out. He’d never had a woman like this … he’d never met a woman like this.
 
When he didn’t answer, Buffy began to move on him, sliding up and down his rod slowly at first, then faster and harder as their passion and desire built … rising up towards a fantastic crescendo. Buffy knew that William was close to cumming … she could see the look in his eyes … they smoldered, just like Spike’s, and she slowed her movement and then stopped.
 
“I want you on top, William … I want you to make love to me, then I want your cum in me. You won’t hurt me … don’t think, don’t hold back … just be,” Buffy encouraged him … telling him the same thing that Spike had told her the first time they’d made love … just be.
 
“Are you certain?” William started and Buffy pressed a finger to his lips.
 
“Don’t think – just be,” she reminded him as she rose up slowly, pulling off him, then stood up. Buffy pulled her dress off completely, the cold air felt amazing as it caressed her hot skin, covering her in chill bumps and sending shivers down her spine, but they weren’t only from the cold. She laid her dress down on the stone floor as William watched her … never before had he seen such a beautiful woman and he ravished her with his eyes as she stood before him, naked, vulnerable, trusting, and this angel wanted him.
 
Buffy laid down on her dress, opening her legs to her lover, and William moved over her, crawling on hands and knees until he was above her, then he stopped and looked into her eyes … still waiting for that look, that look that said ‘stop’ … that look that said you’re vile, you’re unnatural … you’re beneath me, but that look never came.
 
Buffy wrapped her legs around his hips and slipped a hand between them to guide him into her as she raised her hips up to meet his. Buffy moaned when he entered her and another small orgasm passed over her body … it was a feeling she could never get enough of – a feeling that she’d longed for and dreamt of over the last years … a feeling she’d been sure she’d never know again outside of her dreams. William pressed in halfway and stopped … still afraid of hurting the girl …
 
Buffy raised her head up and whispered against his ear, “Let yourself be what we all are at our core, William … primal, visceral. Don’t think … just be!” she admonished him again, pulling with her legs until his hips hit hers.
 
William began moving against her, slowly at first … watching her face, still waiting for the sign to stop, but instead he saw pleasure and longing and desire and … love. It was what he had been missing his whole life … it was what he had searched for and thought he’d found with Cecily, but he had been wrong. What he thought was love paled in comparison to this … he could feel it, he could feel her love on his skin where their bodies touched, he could see it in her eyes, he could hear it in her moans and cries, he could taste it on her lips when he kissed her. It was as if she was drowning in love and he let himself be pulled under the waves with her until he was drowning in it too.
 
She had promised to show him true love and she had … this was it – it was like a damn breaking within him, that ‘ah-ha’ moment that comes when you can finally see the answer to a puzzle you’d been trying to solve your whole life. The flood of emotions that had been building behind the damn flowed out of him like a raging river and washed every thought, every doubt, every inhibition away with it. William found that part of him that she wanted … the visceral, primal animal that exists only in that moment and doesn’t think about the next, and he began slamming into her with more power and passion than he thought existed within him.
 
Her moans and cries spurred him on, harder and faster he ploughed into her and she gave back as much passion and power as he delivered. William held his orgasm back … it wasn’t easy, it took the every bit of the small part of his brain that was still working to control it – he wanted her to scream his name … he wanted to give her as much as she’d given him.
 
Buffy knew when William found his inner demon … it was like night and day … like William and Spike. Not that Spike couldn’t be gentle, but it was that primal power that she wanted and needed now … it was the inner animal that she wanted William to know, because he’d never had anyone allow him to touch it before. Spike had shown Buffy how to touch her own inner demon, now it was her turn to return the favor.
 
“Yes, William! God, yes, baby! Give it all to me … I want it all…William! Yes!” she cried as the small waves of pleasure began building into a tidal wave of ecstasy.
 
“Oh, God… Oh … oh …OHHHHH! Christ! Yessss!” William cried out as the last thread of control he had slipped from his grasp. He felt her warm, velvet walls tighten harder around his cock, felt her body tremble and then stiffen under him as the wave crashed down on both of them. William felt like he was drowning … then flying … then drowning again as his cum boiled up, hot and urgent from his testicles and shot into her tight channel. He’d cum before, of course … but this – this was more than that – it lifted him higher than he thought possible.
 
Buffy lifted her head up and captured his lips with hers as the scream in her throat demanded to be released. She screamed against his lips as she came, filling William with even more passion, lifting him even higher, until he was no longer being drowned by the waves but soaring over them. William soared faster and higher – it was intoxicating, it was exhilarating … it was a high that he’d never felt before. And then she was there, his beautiful Guardian Angel, and he was in her arms and they were laughing and loving and dancing on the clouds. It seemed to go on forever … they jumped from one cloud to the next … then up into the stars, soaring high above the clouds. He’d never known anything like this before … he’d never know such a thing existed, to be so free, to be so … visceral.
 
As they came back to their bodies … both gasping for breath, lungs struggling for air, chests heaving as their muscles and brains demanded oxygen, William collapsed down on top of her … he hadn’t meant to do that, but he had nothing left. She’d wanted it all and he had given her everything … not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually … he had given his mind, body, heart, and soul to her and he knew that she had given all to him, as well. She had promised to show him what true love felt like … and she had.
 
William lifted his head from where it rested beside hers and began dropping soft, sweet kisses over her face. “I never … knew … this … was … possible,” he told her between kisses. “I … never … knew … this … existed.”
 
“This is true love, William … that’s what it feels like when two souls become one,” Buffy explained to him as she held his body against hers with arms and legs.
 
“Stay …” William blurted out suddenly, pulling back slightly and gazing wondrously into her eyes. “Stay with me. I can … I’ll leave Cecily – take the children, run away. We can be together. Say you’ll stay,” he demanded giddily.  
 
He saw a cloud of sadness cross his angel’s face and thought he’d never seen anyone look so forlorn and lost … just as her tears broke his heart, that look seemed to stab deep into his soul.
 
“I … I can’t … William, I can’t stay. I only have a short time here. This isn’t my place,” Buffy explained.
 
“I’ll… I’ll come with you then – anywhere. I’d follow you to the ends of the earth,” he offered.
 
Tears fell from Buffy’s eyes as she shook her head. “I … I don’t know how … and our … the babies need you here, William. Your son will need you … the girls need you.”
 
Tears glistened in William’s eyes and he blinked them back and nodded. “Of course, I understand,” he told her stoically, as he pressed up and off her.
 
“No … you don’t understand,” Buffy pleaded. “I would stay if I could. I would!” she insisted as he gathered his clothes and glasses and began quickly pulling everything back on and fastening buttons.
 
“William, stop! Don’t do this!” she demanded, standing up and laying a hand on his arm.
 
“You are a fallen angel … the right hand of Satan himself. How can you say you love me? How can you lay with me … show me this heaven you promise, then turn your back?” William asked angrily as tears welled in his eyes.
 
“No … no, no – you don’t understand,” Buffy pleaded. “I just wanted to … I wanted to give you what you gave me – I wanted to show you what love can be,” Buffy explained as she began picking her own clothes up and pulling them back on as tears fell freely from her own eyes.
 
“Congratulations … you have succeeded, my dear, Avengelyne,” William announced, trying to keep his voice angry and not show her how much she’d hurt him. He quickly finished buttoning his shirt and pulled his suspenders up over his shoulders before turning and running from the pavilion, pulling his overcoat back on as he ran. He had to get away from her … away from the heartache and the pain – he had, in the same moment, found and lost everything he’d ever been searching for his whole life.
 
“William!” Buffy called after him, still trying to get her jeans back on. “Please, come back!” she called as she started down the stairs after him, barefoot and shirtless. She ran back and grabbed her shoes and t-shirt and started after him again, but in the dim light, she couldn’t tell which way he’d gone. Buffy kept moving and calling him, pulling her shirt and shoes on as she looked for a trail in the snow, but it was too dark and he didn’t answer her cries … he was gone.
 
Buffy dropped down to her knees in the snow, still calling his name, begging him to come back, to try and understand … but he never returned.  She had only wanted to show him what was possible … what love really was, that there was nothing wrong with him, that the problem lay with Cecily, not him. She had, again, followed her heart and again, it had led her astray. She had done the one thing that she never wanted to do … she’d hurt William – she’d done more than hurt him, she’d broken his heart. She’d shown him heaven then cruelly snatched it away. Buffy curled up on the cold ground as the snow continued to fall softly from the dark sky and sobbed, wishing that the cold would simply engulf her and put her out of her misery, once and for all.
 
Buffy laid in the snow crying and cursing herself for a long while, until there were no tears left to shed, only pulling herself up when she began shivering uncontrollably from the cold. She didn’t know how long she’d lain there on the frozen, hard ground, but the sun was just rising in the east and it lit up the whole sky in shades of pink and purple and gold. The snow had stopped falling and the whole park was perfectly still and quiet and covered in a blanket of white.
 
Buffy stood up stiffly, every part of her body hurt, from her heart and soul all the way out to her frozen fingers and toes. She turned and headed back to the pavilion, dropped down to her knees at the top of the steps and began to cry anew. Buffy pounded her fists down on the cold, hard floor beneath her in anger and frustration, cracking the frozen stones and sending tingles of pain shooting up her arms.
 
“So stupid … such a stupid, stupid fool,” Buffy scolded herself yet again as she collapsed all the way down onto the floor and sobbed. She sobbed for herself, she sobbed for William, and she sobbed for her children – children who she would never have, children she would never see grow up, children she would never comfort during a thunderstorm or take trick or treating or shuttle to soccer games or band practice or dance recitals; children she would never again see sleeping in their father’s arms; children who were now Cecily’s.
 
She had done as Wanda had advised her, she had followed her heart; she had done as her mom asked and saved all their children by warning William of the danger to his, to their, son, but none of it made any difference at all. Apparently, she was incapable of finding the right path … the path that would lead her back home; all she’d done was hurt William by coming here … and that hurt her just as deeply.
 
Buffy thought briefly of going back down Macaulay Road … of going and finding William to try to make him understand … or to forgive her for what she’d done, how she’d hurt him. But, in the end, she decided that would only make things worse … so she stayed where she was as the sun rose over the park and people began moving through the Commons … living their lives as if everything was normal, as if everything was fine. A feeling of complete and utter isolation came over Buffy, like she was the only one in the entire world that knew that the world had changed and she was, apparently, the only one that cared. She felt like an alien that had been left behind by her spaceship or who had crash-landed in some bizarre and unexplored world. ‘ET phone home…’


 
Buffy curled into a tight ball on the hard stone floor of the bandstand; her heart was as heavy now as the day she’d lost Spike, in fact it felt very much like she’d just lost him all over again. She prayed for a bolt from the blue to come and strike her down … or perhaps Jack the Ripper could come and slit her throat … or a meteor could come and crash into the earth and bury her … or maybe some aliens could come and actually abduct her or perhaps, when she did finally get back to her own time, back to L.A., she’d simply find more pills and finish what she’d started before. Certainly that would be one thing that even she couldn’t fuck up twice…

 **~**
{{Click here to hear “Just One Last Dance” by Sarah Connor on YouTube   }}

Just one last dance....oh baby...just one last dance

We meet in the night in the Spanish cafe
I look in your eyes just don't know what to say
It feels like I'm drowning in salty water
A few hours left 'til the sun's gonna rise
Tomorrow will come an it's time to realize
Our love has finished forever

How I wish to come with you (wish to come with you)
How I wish we make it through

Just one last dance
Before we say goodbye
When we sway and turn round and round and round
It's like the first time
Just one more chance
Hold me tight and keep me warm
Cause the night is getting cold
And I don't know where I belong
Just one last dance

The wine and the lights and the Spanish guitar
I'll never forget how romantic they are
But I know, tomorrow I'll lose the one I love

There's no way to come with you
It's the only thing to do

Just one last dance
Before we say goodbye
When we sway and turn round and round and round
It's like the first time
Just one more chance
Hold me tight and keep me warm
Cause the night is getting cold
And I don't know where I belong
Just one last dance

Just one last dance, just one more chance, just one last dance


End Notes:
TBC ... Where does Buffy go from here? What will happen when she gets back to the future?
Changes (The Butterfly Effect) by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
It’s always darkest just before the dawn…
**
Music Referenced:
Changes, David Bowie
 http://youtu.be/ZgvxBakbWns
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Tuesday, December 16th, 1890, dawn, Clapham Common, London:



Buffy was awoken when someone laid a warm hand gently on her frozen, bare arm. She blinked and wiped the hard crusty tears from her eyes as she tried to focus.
 
“Dear lord, Avengelyne, you’re nearly frozen! Please forgive me, I shouldn’t have never left you alone,” William told her, taking his coat off and wrapping around Buffy’s shoulders as she sat up stiffly.
 
“You came back,” Buffy whispered, her voice rough and barely audible from crying. “I’m so sorry, William. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never meant to hurt you.”
 
William helped Buffy to her feet and guided her out of the pavilion and down one of the paths. “I understand – you were just trying to show me a different path, a better path. I acted like a cad and a coward, to take what you offered and then run away like you were a … street urchin. I beg you to forgive me.”
 
Buffy nodded as tears started anew … he was apologizing to her when it was she that had hurt him so badly. “It’s not your fault … I shouldn’t have … I shouldn’t have done that. You must think I’m a terrible person.”

 

“Never … I would never entertain that thought, Avengelyne. You just … I was just …” William started, his voice trailing off as they walked further into the Commons.
 
“Hurt,” Buffy supplied in a gravelly voice. “I didn’t mean to hurt you … I’ve done things that I’m not proud of, but hurting you is the worst … it’s something I never wanted to do – ever.”
 
William nodded solemnly as they turned a corner in the path and started walking onto a bridge that spanned a wide river. Buffy looked around trying to get her bearings … she didn’t remember seeing a bridge or a river in the Commons yesterday … it was a big bridge – not just a foot bridge, certainly she would’ve remembered that.
 
“What is this?” Buffy asked, waving her arm at the bridge they were walking onto.
 
“The London Bridge … over the Thames,” William supplied.

 

“London Bridge?” Buffy questioned, looking around. Buffy tried to remember the time she’d spent with Dawn in London when she first woke up in this crazy world. They had driven down to Clapham once, just to look around … and they’d been on the some bridges, including London Bridge, but those two places weren’t that close to each other … were they? She wished now she’d paid closer attention.
 
“But … your house isn’t over the bridge,” Buffy pointed out the one thing she was sure of.
 
“No, but yours is,” William supplied as they got to the center of the bridge. “This is as far as I go … you’ll find your destiny on the other side, Avengelyne,” he told her as he stopped just short of the halfway point.
 
“What … what does that mean?” Buffy questioned, looking from William then across the bridge to the other side.
 
“Thank you … thank you for what you’ve done, for my life, for the children … all the children,” William told her softly, laying a hand on her cheek and kissing her gently on the lips before turning and heading back the way they’d come.
 
“B-But … what am I supposed to do?” Buffy called after him.
 
“Follow your heart,” William advised, and he was suddenly gone.
 
“Follow my heart …” Buffy repeated to herself, looking around in confusion. Suddenly a tremor shook the bridge, as if the world had just stopped spinning for a moment, and Buffy grabbed onto the railing to keep her balance. She leaned over the edge of the bridge and looked down at the water far below. She’d never seen water in a river look so tumultuous and angry. There were huge swells and waves raging below as if it were an ocean in the middle of a hurricane.
 
“Like a bridge over troubled water…” Buffy murmured to herself.
 
“Love can build a bridge… follow your heart,” Buffy continued to mutter as she turned towards the other side of the bridge and began running as fast as she could. When she’d gotten nearly to the end she saw him … like a beacon in the dark, like a port in the storm … like a warm fire on the coldest night...
 
“Spike!!” she cried as she ran even faster, throwing herself into his arms when she reached the bank on the other side.

 

“God, Spike!” she cried as he caught her and spun her around then covered her mouth with his and devoured her lips in a desperate kiss while pulling her body tight against his with strong arms.
 
“Oh, God, Spike! Are you back!? Is it real or am I dreaming?” Buffy questioned, running her hands over his face, across his scarred brow, through his platinum locks, and down to his shoulders to make sure he wasn’t some kind of mirage.
 
“’Course I’m back, pet … I just took the bits to practice. I told you I’d be right back. Are you sure that bump on the noggin isn’t worse than you’re lettin’ on?” Spike questioned, as he ran a hand over the back of Buffy’s head.
 
“Huh? What bump? What … what are you talking about?” Buffy questioned, searching his eyes for answers and running her own hand over the back of her head.
 
“Buffy, wake up, luv. I hate talking to you when you’re snoozin’ … you never remember it later,” Spike advised as he shook her shoulder lightly.
 
Buffy blinked her eyes as everything suddenly went fuzzy; she tried to focus on his face and comprehend what he was saying. Buffy shook her head slightly and looked around again … she was in bed – in their bed, in Sunnydale, in the mansion on Crawford Street.
 
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Spike questioned again as he sat on the edge of the bed next to her. “I know you hate the chop-shop hospital we got ‘ere, but …”
 
“Spike? What… what’s going on?” Buffy questioned as she sat up and looked around … it was definitely their room. Her head hurt and there was a pounding behind her eyes that she thought would pop her eyeballs out.
 
“Don’t you remember, luv? Blue demon, big stick …. used your skull for battin’ practice?” Spike asked with concern. “That’s it … we’re goin’ to the bloody hospital, I don’t care whatcha say …” he announced, standing up.
 
“Oh my God, Spike! You’re here … we’re here!” Buffy exclaimed, the pounding in her head suddenly feeling much better. She jumped up and grabbed him, pulling him into a hug that would’ve crushed a mortal man. “It was a dream…just a horrible, nightmare … Oh, God, oh, thank God…” Buffy murmured as she captured his lips in a frantic kiss.
 
“The babies! Where are the babies?!” Buffy asked, her eyes wild with emotions ranging from worry to excitement to utter relief. Before he could answer, Buffy grabbed his hand and headed out the door and down the hall, dragging Spike along behind her. She stopped first in Annie’s room … but she wasn’t in there, so she headed quickly to the nursery…
 
Buffy stopped short when she swung the door to the nursery open; all the air was sucked from her lungs and all the blood in her body seemed to go cold. Instead of a nursery, she found a room that belonged to young children, with two twin beds instead of two cribs. One bed had soccer and basket ball pillows and Spiderman sheets with a Manchester United poster on one wall and a crouching ninja poster above the bed…






The other bed had sheets and a quilt depicting the solar system and a large, stuffed pillow that looked like a guitar was on the floor next to it. There was a dinosaur poster on the wall next to the bed with color drawings of various dinosaurs and their full names.


   

“Wha … where … what …” Buffy stammered as she moved slowly into the room and took it in. She turned back to Spike with her eyes wide with confusion. “Where … where are the babies?”
 
“I told ya, I took ‘em to practice, pet …” Spike explained again. “Dance, gymnastics, and football t’day,” Spike clarified when Buffy just stared at him. “Buffy, what’s wrong, luv?” he asked, moving into the room and up to her with a look of concern.

“I … I don’t know … I just … ummm, maybe I got hit harder than I thought,” Buffy hedged as she looked down at her hands. The rings were hers – William’s mother’s engagement ring and the promise ring, only there was another one that she didn’t recognize on her pinky … two hearts intertwined in white and yellow gold. Buffy reached up and felt around her neck … it was the ruby and diamond heart pendant that Spike had given her for Christmas. She turned to the mirror in the room and faced a stranger from what seemed a long ago dream; her hair was long and blonde, the scars on her face that she’d finally gotten accustomed to were gone, the hardness in her eyes was replaced with nothing but confusion. She pulled the collar of her shirt down, the scar from the amulet was there, Spike’s bite marks were on her neck - she didn’t need to look for the C-section scar, she knew it was there by just looking at the small bulge around her middle. Buffy looked back at Spike, the scar on his brow was there … she lifted his left hand, his matching starburst scar from the amulet was there …


 
“Buffy, please tell me what’s the matter, luv,” Spike pleaded again as he wrapped his hand that she had picked up around hers.

 

“I thought … I dreamt … I …” Buffy stammered as she shook her head in disbelief and confusion. What had happened? Was it a dream or real? Is this a dream or is it real? “I don’t know… Spike, I – have I been here the whole time? How long was I unconscious?”
 
“You were out a minute or two … don’t you remember that at all? We were patrolling … not even sure what kinda demon it was. Big, blue, buggering son-of-a-bitch jumped out and hit ya’ ‘fore I could stop ‘im. I think we need to get ya’ to the hospital … your head ain’t as hard as I thought…” Spike tried to joke, but his concern was growing. She seemed fine earlier, just a bad headache when they’d gotten home last night. He left her sleeping to go run the kids to their various Saturday practices and now she seemed confused and disoriented.

 

“C’mon … let’s see what Dr. Hack n’ Chop can find…” Spike suggested as he guided her out of the twin’s room and down the hall towards the stairs.
 
Buffy let him guide her as her mind whirled with questions that she had no answers for. As they walked down the upstairs hallway, her eyes wandered over a plethora of framed photographs that lined the walls … some she recognized, her and Spike at the Bronze, Spike and the babies in their Santa hats at Christmas, Billy as an infant swimming in the Man-U jersey Spike had gotten him, Annie with her prized Elmo doll, Annie with Miss Kitty, Willow and Tara at the beach … but there were more that she didn’t recognize … Annie in a pink ballet outfit, smiling for the camera, a blonde girl of about three posing with a soccer ball … her tongue stuck out of her mouth and curled over her teeth, reminding Buffy of Spike, a boy of about five with a curly blond mop of hair making a funny face as he rode a big white rabbit on a merry-go-round … and more, there were so many more and Buffy didn’t recognize or remember any of them.





 
Buffy stopped and pulled away from Spike when they got to Annie’s room and she stepped inside. Now that she took a moment to really look, it had changed, as well. Posters from different world-renowned ballet companies lined one wall; the other wall was covered with pictures and posters of various landmarks around the world: the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum in Rome, the Cathedral of St. Basil in Moscow, Stonehenge, Manchu Picchu, the pyramids in Egypt … Buffy’s eyes settled on one of the Eiffel tower, it was a progression of how it was constructed, and Buffy’s mind went back to 1890 and how excited Anne was about the prospect of their father taking them to see it in person…before it got torn down.

 

Buffy suddenly had a hard time breathing … she couldn’t figure out what was real anymore. Was Hallie real? Was Cecily married to William raising what were rightfully her children in the nineteenth century real? Were Riley and Dawn real? Was Spike real? Was this real? Buffy turned to Spike, who had stopped in the doorway, as tears welled in her eyes and she struggled to breathe. She was losing her mind … Riley and Dawn and Giles were right, she’d lost her mind … that must be what it was … she’d almost certainly lost her mind.
 
“What … what year is it?” Buffy asked Spike as he watched her and tried to figure out what was wrong.
 
“Buffy…” Spike pleaded, ‘Let’s just go to the doc…”
 
“NO! NO DOCTORS!” Buffy exclaimed, remembering the nuthouse Riley and Giles had put her in and the drawers of pills they’d stuffed her with. “Just tell me what year it is!”

 

“Buffy …” Spike started, before sighing heavily. “2010 … it’s Saturday, January 16th, 2010, luv. Buffy, please tell me what’s wrong,” Spike begged her, moving into Annie’s room and up to his wife. He put his hands on her upper arms and tilted his head as he searched her eyes for answers.
 
Buffy closed her eyes, unable to withstand his scrutiny, and leaned against his chest heavily. Spike wrapped his arms around her and dropped a kiss on top of her head as he tried to comfort her, even though he couldn’t figure out why she was crying.
 
“Spike … I …” she started, wanting desperately to tell him the story – how Hallie had stolen their lives … but that must’ve been a dream, because everything was here … she’d just lost five years. How could she tell him she’d lost five years of their life without him thinking her completely insane?
 
“Maybe … yeah, let’s go to the hospital, maybe … maybe I have a concussion or something,” she finally acquiesced, hoping that an MRI or X-ray could explain what was going on … and not just prove that she was, in fact, fit for Bedlam. She just needed to hold it together for a while, act normal, so they didn’t lock her up in the loony-bin and toss away the key.
 
**~**
 
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news…” the comedic doctor began as he walked back into the small curtained room where Buffy and Spike were waiting for the results of the x-ray.
 
Buffy let out a breath she hadn't been aware she was holding … Thank God, there was a problem and that’s what had caused the hallucinations and why she couldn’t remember the last five years … when it healed, everything would be fine.
 
“What’s the good news?” Buffy asked, already knowing that the bad news was that she had brain damage…
 
“The good news is you have a little bump on your head, but otherwise you’re fine … there’s no concussion, no swelling around the brain, just a small hematoma … you have a bruise, nothing more,” the doctor explained and Buffy looked at him in utter disbelief. Could they actually see that she was crazy from an X-ray? Was that the bad news?
 
“What’s the bad news, then, doc?” Spike asked when Buffy didn’t speak.
 
“You have to go home…can’t stay here,” the doctor told them with a chuckle. “Just check in with the admitting nurse on your way out ... “ he instructed before turning and leaving them alone.
 
“Well, that’s good news, then, innit?” Spike asked as he picked up his duster from where he’d laid it over the back of a chair.
 
“What?” Buffy asked, her mind whirling again trying to figure out what was wrong with her. “Oh, yeah … great … great news. I was looking forward to the mushy peas, cardboard chicken, and rubbery Jell-O at dinner…”
 
**~**
 
“When can we go get the … kids?” Buffy asked, finding it hard to say ‘kids’ instead of ‘babies’, as Spike drove them home from the hospital, a prescription for a painkiller in hand which Buffy had no intention of filling.

 

“Normal time…” Spike answered and watched her out of the corner of his eye.
 
“Oh…right,” Buffy replied as she turned her head towards the window and rolled her eyes. “Could we maybe pick them up early … like now?” If this was a dream, she’d like to at least have a little time with her whole family before it ended … if it wasn’t a dream, she’d like to spend as much time with them as possible before she lost what little was left of her mind.
 
“Buffy … what in the buggering hell is wrong with you? Doc says you’re fine, but you aren’t acting fine, are ya?” Spike questioned, annoyed that she wouldn’t tell him what was wrong. “You know as well as I do that the bits would all be hell to live with if we pulled ‘em out of their lessons early…”
 
Buffy looked down at her hands and shook her head. “I just … I seem to be forgetting little things … I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m fine – I’ll be fine, really. It’s probably just this bump on my head.”
 
Spike looked at her a moment and sighed. “Are you sure, pet?” he asked, his voice full of worry as he looked back out the windshield. “We can drive up to L.A., get a second opinion, if you think…”
 
“No …no … I’m sure it’s nothing,” Buffy assured him as she slid over and cuddled against his side. Spike took one hand off the wheel and tucked her under his arm, pulling her close. He wasn’t entirely convinced that she was ‘fine’, but he didn’t know what else to do. He’d have to trust that she’d know if something was really wrong and that she’d tell him. Since the ‘Angel thing’, as it had come to be called, Buffy had made a concerted effort to include him in any and all life altering decisions (and most non-life-altering ones, too) and confide in him fully. They shared their fears, great and small, and their joys with each other and, although Spike knew that he’d never be her equal, she’d always be the Slayer, he felt like she was living her promise to be a better wife, a better friend, and a better mother.
 
Suddenly Frank Sinatra started crooning “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and Spike moaned as he fished his cell phone out of his pocket.
 
“It’s my day off.  This better be bloody good,” Spike announced into the phone without preamble.
 
Since when did Spike have a job? Buffy wondered as she tried to hear who was calling and what they were saying, but Spike had the volume on the phone turned down too low for her to hear it. Damn vampire hearing!
 
Spike listened for a few moments then sighed heavily. “Yeah. Yeah … fine, I’ll be right there,” he told the called before hitting the end button and tossing the phone on the dashboard.
 
“I gotta go down to Willy’s for a bit … rumor is there’s gonna be some kinda trouble there t’day,” Spike explained.
 
“But it’s your day off …” Buffy complained, using the part of the conversation that she had heard. “Can’t someone else handle it?”
 
“Willy’s a bloody wanker, but he wouldn’t’ve had Clem call me in and pay me overtime if he didn’t think the threat was real. He’s a cheap SOB, to be sure,” Spike moaned.
 
“Should I … maybe I should come with you. You might need help,” Buffy offered.
 
“Thanks, luv … but Faith’s there, she’ll cover m’ back,” Spike explained.
 
“Oh … Faith,” Buffy repeated, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. Since when would Spike rather have Faith covering his back?
 
“But … I could come anyway … you can never have too many people covering your back…” Buffy pointed out.
 
“I appreciate it, luv … but maybe you should get a bit a’ kip – that was a nasty blow, rattled your brain a bit, yeah?” Spike rebuffed her gently, still concerned that she wasn’t 100%, hopeful that she’d be back to normal with a little more rest.
 
“Someone’s got to pick up the bits later …will you be alright to do that?” he asked her as he swung the Desoto up to the curb in front of the mansion and came to a stop. “If not, I’ll call …”
 
“No … no, I can do it!" she interrupted him.  "That would be at the normal time ….” Buffy prodded.
 
“Right … four o’clock,” Spike supplied, then added, “At the Northwest Community Center… football and dance and tumblin', yeah?”
 
“Yeah, no problem. I got it,” Buffy assured him as she reluctantly slid over and got out of the car. “Please … be careful, ok?” she admonished him as she leaned in through the open window.
 
“No worries, luv. I’ll be home for dinner,” Spike replied as he put the car back in gear and pulled away.
 
Buffy’s stomach started doing flip flops as she watched him drive away. If this was a dream, so far it sucked. A dream with Freddy Krueger would’ve been better … at least she’d know what was going on and what to do – kill the bad guy. Simple. Easy. Clear. Just as she’d lived the last five years – catch and disempower the vengeance demons. She suddenly longed for a clear mission – she’d take anything that was clear at this point.
 
When Spike rounded the corner and was out of view, Buffy turned and looked at the mansion. It looked pretty much the same as she remembered it … she thought it could use a coat of paint and the windows needed washing … but otherwise, it looked about the same. Buffy went down the garden steps and into the great room. All the research books were still here, she noted that ‘Bert and Ernie’ the hermit crabs were gone. How long did hermit crabs live, anyway? Miss Kitty’s food and water were still in the kitchen, so that meant she was around here somewhere.

 

Buffy wandered around the empty house, opening doors, looking in rooms, picking up mementos and pictures – some she recognized, some she didn’t. Apparently, it was just them living here now … none of the guest rooms appeared to be occupied. She wondered where Willow and Tara were … then it dawned on her, they were probably living in Washington state, Willow was probably working at Microsoft. Lorne was gone, as well … she wondered if he was still running The Bronze. Lorne’s ominous reading of Spike after the Christmas show suddenly came back to Buffy. “Nothing, I got nothing. Like you weren’t even there…” he’d told Spike.
 
“Oh God … he was right – Spike was totally gone,” Buffy muttered to herself, still not sure if Spike was actually back or what parts of her life were real and what parts were delusions.  Had her life before with Spike actually been some figment of her imagination like Riley and Giles said and she’d fallen back into that delusion somehow? No, that had to be real … and Hallie had wished it away from her … right? But how did she get it back? What was this? Was this a dream?
 
Buffy pounded her hand against her forehead to try and stop the questions from forming like whirlwinds in her brain … questions she had no answers to. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” she screamed aloud.
 
“Ok, Slayer … think,” Buffy spoke aloud to herself. “Ok … mission, what’s the mission? Find answers … try to figure out what’s going on. Try to figure out if this is a dream or …” Buffy’s voice trailed off, not wanting to voice her fears that she’d totally lost her mind and was actually sitting in a sanatorium somewhere in a catatonic stupor imagining all this. Buffy pinched her arm, just as she’d done when she woke up in bed with Riley … and again, the only thing that happened was a red welt forming on her skin.

 

Buffy took a deep breath to calm down then started looking around for a pad of paper to make a list … she always thought better if she could write it down. Buffy headed into the room that was her office and sat down at the desk, but before she could even start a list, an open bank statement caught her eye. Buffy picked it up and studied it … where was all the money? Had they spent that much in the last five years? They weren’t broke, but there was nowhere near what had been there before …
 
“No wonder Spike’s got a job…” she muttered to herself.
 
Buffy began rummaging through old bank statements, going back, and back and back … the money had never been there. Finally, she found the accounting that Angel had given Spike just before she and Spike had gotten married. The accounting showed zero contributed to the clan from William … all Angel showed on the report was what Dru had brought in. Buffy shook her head … that was wrong. Spike … or William, had money, there was that house and jewelry and furnishings – Buffy had seen that with her own two eyes … and who knew how much money there was in the bank.
 
“What the hell?” Buffy questioned as she continued looking through statements and income tax filings … Spike had been working at Willy’s as ‘security’ for four years. Buffy had even had some part-time jobs in the last four years … she worked at the Magic Box for a while, as an ice skating instructor for one season, and she’d had a ‘security’ job herself, at the Bronze.
 
Buffy scratched her head as she read over the various statements, where had William’s money gone? Buffy went back downstairs and searched the research library for the Watcher’s diary that spoke about Clan of Aurelius. It didn’t take her too long to find the familiar tome and she sat down at the research table and began reading. It spoke of Angel and Darla and Dru … then finally William the Bloody.
 
William the Bloody is the childe of Drusilla, turned in 1890. It has been reported by more than one reliable source that he killed his entire family, including his wife, two young daughters and a newborn son.

 Barely escaping London after an angry mob of townspeople turned on him….

  
The diary went on to document the exploits of William the Bloody but Buffy couldn’t read any further, she just kept reading the same paragraph again and again. Turned in 1890 … killed his entire family … two young daughters and a newborn son …

 

“No …no, no, no, no, no…” Buffy cried as she read it over and over again. “Oh God … no, please, Spike, no,” Buffy pleaded to the empty house as tears fell from her eyes. William had been turned in 1890, not 1880 … Buffy had gone back to 1890 … history had changed.
 
Dawn’s warning words rang in Buffy’s ears, ‘there’s really no way to know all the unintended consequences of changing something in the past.’
 
“What have I done? Oh God, I killed them … I killed the babies …” Buffy sobbed as she dropped her head down on the book and tried to come to grips with what had happened. Had it all been real? The life they had before, the years hunting the vengeance demons, the trip back in time … and now this? All real?
 
Buffy suddenly jumped up from the table and ran upstairs to their bedroom and began pulling out drawers. Hairbrushes and combs, hair nets and barrettes and covered elastic bands fell out of the drawers, but not one scrunchie. Buffy went to Annie’s room and searched all the drawers, tossing the contents onto the floor, but still, no scrunchies.

 

Buffy slid down against one wall in her daughter’s room, surrounded by enough hair paraphernalia to stock a Wal-Mart, but not one scrunchie. Buffy shook her head in disbelief … it was real, it was all real – it was all the same world. She had gone back in time and stepped on a butterfly … she’d changed history with her actions, unintended consequences. She’d gotten Spike back, gotten her family back, but at what cost? Her mother’s words echoed in her mind … ‘save all the babies’. She thought of William’s girls … Anne and Bess, sweet, smart, beautiful girls … and his unborn son … children that were not only made from William, but from herself, as well. How Hallie did it, Buffy still didn’t know, but she knew that those children were her own flesh and blood … and Spike had …
 
“Spike … tell me that’s wrong, that must be wrong. You’d never kill our babies, please, Spike, it has to be wrong,” Buffy pleaded again to the empty house as she dropped her face into her hands and sobbed, trying to wish it away, to make it not be true.



**~**

{{Click here to hear “Changes” by David Bowie on YouTube   }}

Oh yeah
Mm
Still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets and
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Turn and face the strange
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Turn and face the strange
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
So the days float through my eyes
But stil the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Turn and face the strange
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Don't tell them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Turn and face the stranger
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Where's your shame
You've left us up to our necks in it
Time may change me
But you can't trace time

Strange fascination, fascinating me
Ah changes are taking the pace I'm going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-Changes
Oh, look out you rock 'n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-Changes
Pretty soon now you're gonna get older
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
I said that time may change me
But I can't trace time



 **~**
End Notes:
TBC ... What now? Assuming this is real, will Buffy be able to fit back into her family? Will she be able to forgive Spike for what he did to his children in 1890? Will she be able to forgive herself?
Home Sweet Home by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy tries to sort out what’s going on – is she really back to her home, sweet home?
**
Music Referenced:
Home Sweet Home, Motley Crue
 http://youtu.be/Z5DPvCDDM-I
**
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Saturday, January 16th, 2010:
 
Buffy didn’t know how long she’d sat there on the floor of Annie’s room, trying to make sense of the senseless, when she was pulled from her thoughts by a phone ringing. Buffy stumbled to her feet and tracked the sound down. “Yeah?” she answered, her voice as tired and downtrodden as the rest of her felt.

 

“Mom! Are you ok? You’re late … Dad called earlier and said you were gonna pick us up.”
 
“Annie?” Buffy questioned … wondering when she had turned into ‘Mom’ and Spike had turned into ‘Dad.’
 
“Should I call him? Are you ok?” Annie questioned.
 
“No … no … I’m fine, I just got … I lost track of time. I’ll be right there,” Buffy assured her.
 
Buffy found her purse and rushed downstairs to the garage, but the only thing in there was the Harley … she went out to the driveway where she found a blue minivan and she snorted and rolled her eyes. How had she let Spike talk her into that?! Buffy climbed in and tried to familiarize herself with the controls a minute before starting it and heading to the Northwest Community Center as fast as she could.
 
Buffy could see a small group of children and an adult that looked like the soccer coach waiting in front of the Community Center when she rounded the corner. Her heart skipped a beat then began racing even faster in her chest; there they were … the babies! Her babies, their babies … all grown up!
 
Buffy slammed the transmission into park before the minivan was even fully stopped and jumped out. She made it around the vehicle just as the group started making their way up the sidewalk to her, the two towheaded blondes in the lead. Buffy grabbed them, one in each arm as they ran down the sidewalk and pulled them to her, raining kisses down on their faces and heads as they laughed and squirmed to get away from their crazy mother.
 
“Mama! Stop … that tickles!” Billy exclaimed as he giggled and tried to put his hands up to protect himself.
 
Dani just laughed and used her free hand to tickle Billy further by poking him in the ribs, which made him squirm and laugh and squeal louder.
 
“Oh, God … oh my babies! Look how big you are! I love you so much! I missed you … God, I missed you,” Buffy exclaimed as she held them close. Tears fell from her eyes … her little babies were little people now … walking and talking and laughing. How did this happen? How did she miss all those years? Buffy pulled back to look at them … they were beautiful children, still just as blonde as the day they were born. Billy looking more and more like his father every day with deep blue eyes, sharp cheekbones and a curly mop of thick, soft hair. Dani looked just like Bess from 1890 … if there was any doubt before that Hallie had, in fact, stolen her children, there was none now. Her hair was wavy, but not as curly as Billy’s, and long, and it framed an angelic face with the same blue eyes as her siblings and father.
 
“Mom? Are you sure you’re ok?” Annie asked as she and the coach made it up to where she was holding the twins.
 
Buffy looked up and bit her lip to try and hold back the tears as she looked into her eldest daughter’s eyes. “Annie … oh, my little Annie … look at you,” Buffy cried as she set the twins down and pulled her little ballerina into a tight hug. “Oh, Annie … you’re so beautiful. I knew you would be … I knew … you look just like …” Buffy almost said Anne, because she did, just like the Anne from 1890, but she corrected herself at the last minute, “… just like your father.”
 
“Gee, thanks, Mom! That’s what every girl wants to hear!” Annie moaned with an eye roll as she pulled back from Buffy’s embrace.
 
“No … I mean … look at you,” Buffy amended as she reluctantly released her daughter. Buffy put her hand on Annie’s cheek and just looked at her for a moment … she was what now? Spike said it was January, 2010 … Buffy counted in her head, almost eleven! “You’re beautiful … you’re not my little girl anymore …” Buffy muttered, shaking her head in disbelief and sorrow for having missed the intervening years, but at the same time joyful for having somehow gotten back to them.
 
“What about me?!” came a small voice from Buffy’s right and she felt someone tugging on her shirt.
 
Buffy looked down … it was another child that had been waiting. A boy about the age of Dani and Billy with a thick head of dark brown hair and soulful brown eyes. Buffy’s mind whirled … did they have another child? She hadn’t seen another room …
 
Suddenly Dani punched the brunette boy in the arm. “You smell too bad for anyone to hug you, JJ!” Dani informed him with a smirk.
 
Buffy couldn’t help but laugh as she went down on her knees in front of the boy and took him into a hug. “I missed you too, JJ. And you don’t smell bad.”  
 
“Wow … you must really love your kids …” the coach commented after a few moments. “Most parents are happiest when they’re dropping them off … not picking them up.”
 
Buffy composed herself the best she could and stood back up, wiping the tears away and putting on a smile. “Yeah … I do, you have no idea...
 
“I’m really sorry I’m late…” Buffy continued.
 
“Ah, it happens,” the coach dismissed it with a wave. “I wanted to talk to you or your husband about Billie anyway … she’s really outstanding … the best I’ve seen in fifteen years of coaching five year olds,” the man started and Buffy shook her head slightly trying to make sure her hearing wasn’t going as well as her mind.
 
“She? Billy?” Buffy questioned.

 

“Yeah, she’s quick and smart and has a lot of natural ability – an innate sense of the game … she’s got quite a leg on her, too. You may want to look into this private league,” the coach told her, handing her a card. “It’s a little more expensive than here, but I think they could really groom her … she could really be something one day, the next Mia Hamm.”
 
“She? Billy?” Buffy stammered again as she took the card from the man’s hand. “Uhhh … yeah, ok, thanks. I’ll … I’ll talk to my husband about it,” Buffy hedged still trying to figure out how the girl got to be named Billie. Her eyes darted to the children who were now climbing into the minivan … sure enough, the girl was dressed in a soccer uniform, black shorts and a red shirt with the number ‘17’ on the back of it, JJ was also in a soccer uniform … the blonde boy had on a white T-shirt and blue shorts … what practice had he been at?
 
When the coach left, Buffy got back in the minivan and checked to make sure everyone was buckled in, the three younger children were in the back seat and Annie was in the front next to Buffy. After she was sure everyone was secure, she put the vehicle back into gear and started out of the parking lot.
 
“Cut it out, JJ!” she heard coming from the backseat. Buffy looked in the rearview in time to see the blonde girl … Dani? Billie? … sock JJ in the arm with her fist.
 
“Ok … no hitting,” Buffy chastised as she turned into traffic and started back towards the other side of town.
 
“He hit me first!” the girl argued.
 
“Did not!”
 
“Did too!”
 
“Not!”
 
“Too!”
 
“OK! OK!” Buffy yelled, finding her ‘mom’ voice hadn’t completely abandoned her. “Let’s not worry about who hit who first … let’s just stop now.
 
“JJ … am I taking you home or to the Magic Box or what?” Buffy asked and all the kids gave her a funny look.
 
“What?” Buffy asked, looking at Annie. It was all Buffy could do to keep from stopping the car pulling her into her arms again. Annie had grown into a beautiful young lady … she’d always been beautiful, but she had just gotten lovelier as she’d grown.
 
“JJ always comes home with us …” Annie informed her with a sigh and an eye roll.
 
“Oh … does he … I mean … where’re Anya and Xander?” Buffy asked as her chest tightened. Please don’t let them be dead! She hadn’t thought of that before … maybe the mansion was empty because all her friends were dead in this new world, too.
 
“At work, I guess…” Annie told her with a shrug and Buffy let out a sigh of relief.
 
“Ok … fine, good, to the house then,” Buffy confirmed … she could do that.
 
**~**
 
Back at the house Buffy didn’t have much time to think about 1890 or Hallie or what was real or if she was losing her mind … three five year-olds running loose and a ten year-old screaming that someone had been in her room and had messed up all her stuff more than occupied her time. Buffy helped Annie put all her hair stuff back in her drawers and started a video for the other three, then went in the kitchen to start dinner. Spike said he thought he’d be home for dinner … she’d better find something to make.
 
Buffy found a pack of hamburger already thawed in the sink, so she made a meatloaf and steamed some new potatoes and green beans to go with it. Everything was just about finished when Spike got home.
 
“What’s the occasion?” Spike asked, walking up behind her in the kitchen and wrapping his arms around her as she stood at the sink washing some of the bowls and pans she’d used.
 
Buffy leaned back against him and closed her eyes … his arms around her felt so good, his body felt like heaven against hers … then the words from the Watcher’s diary invaded her thoughts … ‘killed his entire family … two young daughters and a newborn son’ and Buffy stiffened and pulled out of his embrace.
 
“Just dinner…” Buffy answered his question, as she busied herself pouring glasses of milk for the kids and getting the food on the kitchen table, not looking at him. Neither Anya nor Xander had shown up for JJ, so she set a place for him, too …
 
“C’mon kids! Dinner!” Buffy yelled from the doorway of the kitchen.
 
“You didn’t have to cook, Slayer … I told ya I’d be home for dinner,” Spike pointed out as he watched her scurry from one task to another, never making eye contact with him.
 
“You getting tired of my cookin’, that it?” Spike asked as he grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat down at the table.
 
Your cooking?” Buffy questioned, finally stopping and looking at him. 



Spike raised his brows at her. “I was gonna make Shepherd’s pie with that ground beef…” he told her, tilting his head towards the meatloaf.
 
“Oh … I … Shepherd’s pie?” Buffy questioned. “Shepherd’s pie is made with lamb…cottage pie is made with beef,” she corrected him.
 
Spike raised his brows at her again, his eyes widening in surprise. “Is it, now? And when did you come to this epiphany? You’re the one that argued with me for three bloody days about callin’ it ‘cottage pie’ …”
 
“Oh … well…” Buffy stammered but was cut off by three pint-sized Tasmanian devils arriving in the kitchen and taking their places at the table. Buffy took that opportunity to go out into the great room and call up the stairs for Annie again as she tried to figure out when it was that Spike had taken over the cooking and why. Maybe he doesn’t like my cooking… she worried silently. She’d never been the best cook, but he’d never really complained about it … except jokingly. Maybe he wasn’t joking… Maybe it was like having Faith watch his back instead of her … maybe …
 
Buffy’s thoughts were interrupted as Annie appeared at the top of the stairs and started down; her graceful movements reminded Buffy of Spike, and the dance classes she’d been taking for years were apparent, as well. Buffy still couldn’t believe how much they had all grown and changed, and she’d missed it all. Hallie had still managed to get her revenge; she’d stolen five years of memories from Buffy and the lives of the children she’d brought into the Weckerly’s Victorian home as her own.
 
Buffy wrapped an arm around Annie’s shoulder and walked into the kitchen with her where the others were waiting impatiently for them. Spike had put portions of the meatloaf and green beans and potatoes on each of the children’s plates and they dug into their meals as soon as Buffy and Annie sat down.
 
Buffy looked at her family … plus one, and bit her bottom lip as she tried to hold the tears back. This was as quiet as they’d been since she’d picked them up. All the children were just as she imagined they’d be, just as she’d seen in dreams and met at the Weckerly home in the distant past, all with eyes as blue as the ocean and faces of angels. Buffy was still having a hard time figuring out the twin’s proper names, though.
 
“Billy,” Buffy started. “Could you pass the salt?” Buffy requested and the girl handed Buffy the salt. Everyone had started talking again … Spike asking the children about their various practices and each one relating what they’d done that day, when the next practice was or the next game or the next recital, who’d annoyed them, funny jokes they’d been told …
 
“What color is a burp?” …. “Burple!”
“Why was the apple so lonely?” …. “‘Cos the banana split!”
“What's a polygon?"…. “A dead parrot!”
"Knock Knock." ... "Who's there?" ... "A little old lady." ... "A little old lady who?" ... "I didn't know you could yodel!"
 
 (well, they thought they were hilarious).
 
Buffy took a deep breath and jumped into the fray. “The soccer coach said that Billie is doing really well,” Buffy informed Spike. “He gave me a card for a different program that he thought we should look into … he said she could be the next … ummm … ham … something” Buffy started, trying to remember the name he said.
 
“Mia Hamm,” Annie supplied.


 
“Right … Mia Hamm,” Buffy agreed, not having any idea who that was, but it must be someone good. “What do you think?”
 
“Coach said Billy could be the next Mia Hamm, eh?” Spike questioned, looking from Buffy to the two blondes and back again.
 
“Yeah… said she was really good, best he’d ever seen for her age,” Buffy agreed, trying to sound casual and confident … like she knew what she was talking about.
 
“Uh-huh … and what do you think? You think Billy could be the next girl to lead an American football team to gold?” Spike questioned and all the children stopped eating and looked at Buffy expectantly.
 
“I … ummm … I don’t know, that’s why I was asking you …” Buffy started when suddenly Spike slapped the glass of milk out of the blonde girl’s hand just as she was getting ready to take a drink. The glass was nearly to her lips and white liquid went flying across the table, covering the floor and the front of her shirt as the plastic glass bounced off the wall behind them.
 
“Spike! What are you doing?!” Buffy exclaimed, jumping up from her seat and moving over to the surprised child.
 
“That was milk in that bloody glass!” Spike yelled, jumping up himself. “What the bloody hell is going on with you, Slayer!? Where the fuck is your mind at?”

 

“What are you talking about!?” Buffy yelled back as she got a towel and started wiping up the milk.
 
“What am I talking about!?” Spike screamed as he went to the refrigerator and pulled out a container of almond milk and poured a new glass and set it down in front of the wide eyed girl. “I’m talking about you not remembering our children’s bloody names! I’m talking about you not remembering that Dani’s allergic to fu… to bloody cow’s milk! I’m talking about you not remembering where practice is and what time it’s bloody over!
 
“The Niblett’s in charge,” Spike announced to the room (eliciting moans from the younger children) as he grabbed Buffy’s wrist and pulled his wife out of the kitchen, across the great room and into the training room, slamming the door behind them.
 
“Now, you better tell me who the hell you are and where my wife is, or you and me are gonna have a big problem – and I can assure you, your problem will be a bloody sight bigger than mine!” Spike threatened as he slung her by the arm up against one padded wall of the room.
 
Buffy hit the wall hard, but barely noticed … she was still trying to process everything he’d said. Buffy sank down onto the floor and covered her face with her hands as tears fell from her eyes. “I’m sorry … I … Spike, I am your wife, I swear, I just … I don’t remember.”

 

“Bollocks!” Spike exclaimed, lifting her up by the shoulders and shaking her violently. “Buffy would never forget our children’s names! I don’t give a buggering fuck how hard she’d been hit on the head! Last chance … tell me where the hell my wife is or you’ll wish you’d never been born … or conjured … or whatever-the-bloody-hell-ever!”
 
“Spike … it’s me, it’s Buffy. I swear!! I just …” Buffy tried to figure out how to tell him about Hallie and Cecily and the wish and the years she spent trying to get their family back. “It’s all so confusing … Hallie, Hallie made a wish with a vengeance demon and I tried to reverse it to save you but I couldn’t and I went back in time and stepped on a butterfly and now I’ve lost five years… Spike, I swear, it’s me,” Buffy pleaded as tears fell freely from her eyes.  It sounded crazy even to her … it sounded more than crazy, it sounded completely insane.
 
Spike released her and took a step back, his hands going to his hips. “Who writes your stuff?” Spike quipped. “Larry, Moe, or Curly?”
 
“Spike, it’s true, just let me … let me prove it,” Buffy begged.
 
“And how do you propose to do that? Gonna try to kill more of the bits? Ya know, the goofy lookin’ one ain’t ours …” Spike taunted.

 

“Anne Joyce Summers-Weckerly, born on Valentine’s Day, 1999 …” Buffy began quickly. “Named after your mother and mine; created of us, by the Monks to conceal the Key from Glory. I died when she was two … we saved her from Glory. She loves chocolate and dancing and playing videogames with you and collecting her pennies for ‘bad words’.
 
“Danielle Dawn Weckerly,” Buffy continued, “Born February 12th, 2004. Twin of Billy, she was born first. She’s named after Willow and Dawn, who is the Key and my sister in the other dimension. You loved Dawn like a sister, protected her when I was dead … Can you still remember that?”
 
“I remember fine …” Spike assured her, as he crossed his arms over his chest and studied her. She sounded like Buffy, looked like Buffy, smelled like Buffy …
  
“Joshua Jacheal Harris …” Buffy continued until Spike held his hands up, stopping her.
 
“None a’ that’s top secret. Don’t prove nuthin’,” Spike pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest.
 
“Fine … ask me anything! Anything only I would know … just not from the last five years,” Buffy insisted. “Our wedding day … how you proposed … the promises we made when you gave me this ring …” Buffy suggested, holding the hand up that held the ‘promise’ ring Spike had given her after the ‘Angel thing’. “Anything.”
 
Buffy stood silent and waited as Spike pondered her request. She prayed that nothing she’d done in 1890 had affected the first six years of their life together …
 
“What color panties did ya’ have on when you came back with your overnight bag and moved into m’ house uninvited?” Spike asked, narrowing his eyes at her, his arms still folded over his chest.
 
Buffy rolled her eyes … of course Spike would ask her a trick question. “I didn’t have on any panties…” she replied, still praying that things from ‘before’ hadn’t changed.
 
Spike pursed his lips as he studied her. “What were the first words I ever said to you?” he asked.
 
Buffy closed her eyes and replayed that conversation in her mind. She opened her eyes and tilted her head to the side as she crossed her arms over her chest. “You said, ‘Nice work, luv,’” Buffy informed him. “Then I said, ‘Who are you?’ and you said I’d find out on Saturday … and I said…”
 
“Yeah, yeah, yeah … don’t have to beat a bloody dead horse,” Spike interrupted her.
 
“Spike … it’s me,” Buffy repeated, moving up to him. “I’m sorry about Dani … I didn’t know. When … she didn’t have any allergies as a baby,” Buffy pointed out.
  
“No…not until she was three. Came on all the sudden-like. Thought we were gonna lose ‘er again,” Spike admitted, his voice breaking slightly at the memory of rushing her to the hospital when her throat closed up suddenly and she went into anaphylactic shock after drinking a milkshake at McDonald’s.



"I didn’t forget their names … I just, I got confused when the soccer coach talked about Billy being a ‘her’ ...” Buffy explained, looking up at him. “Why … why did he call Dani ‘Billy’?”
 
Spike snorted a soft laugh and looked up at the ceiling, then back down to Buffy. “You signed Billy up for football and Dani up for tumblin’ at the community center,” Spike began to explain. “Well, turns out, our girl’s not much on tumbling … and Junior’s not much of a footballer. You had to leave to go pick up the Niblett – as soon as you were gone, the little buggers switched without tellin’ anyone. We figured it out pretty quick, but the names on the rosters never got switched … Billy was officially playin’ football and Dani was officially tumblin’. If you’da talked to the gymnastics coach, she would’ve told you how wonderfully our son ‘Danny’ was doin’ …”
 
Buffy laughed and shook her head – as if she didn’t have enough confusion. “That part really made me think I had totally lost my mind …” Buffy admitted.
 
“Well, the jury’s still out on that …” Spike pointed out as he wiped her tears from her cheeks with the pad of his thumb.
 
“Spike … I … maybe I have lost my mind,” Buffy agreed. “But I’m your wife … I love you with all my heart, I love our babies with all my heart – you and the babies, you’re my whole world. I just … I’ve lost five years,” Buffy told him, laying a hand on his cheek and looking into his eyes. “Do you believe me?”
 
Spike looked at her a long while before closing his eyes and nodding. “From a wish?” he asked, opening his eyes and looking at her. “Who’s Hallie? What kinda wish?”
 
Buffy sighed heavily. “It’s a really long story … five years worth of long… can we … can we just finish dinner first, put the babies to bed? Then I promise I’ll tell you everything,” Buffy requested.
 
Spike shrugged his agreement. “You’re sure you’re ok, though?”
 
“Yeah … physically, I’m fine … can I just ask you one more thing?”
 
Spike shrugged. “Anythin’.”
 
“The night you … the night you met Dru, in 1890 … what happened before that … before Dru?” Buffy questioned.
 
“What difference does that make now?” Spike questioned.
 
“It just does … tell me what happened that night,” Buffy asked again.
 
Spike sighed. “I told ya’ before ‘bout that night – I don’t really remember much. Out for a walk … met Dru … not much else to tell.”
 
“That’s it? That’s all you remember?” Buffy questioned. “What was the date?”
 
“I’m supposed to remember the date after a bloody century plus?” Spike argued, shaking his head.
 
“Ok … was it the night you and your … wife went out to dinner with the Retchfords … in December?” Buffy asked, nearly choking on the word ‘wife’.

 

Spike looked at her curiously, biting his bottom lip slightly with his teeth and furrowing his brow. “How do you know ‘bout the Retchfords?”
 
“Never mind that. Was that the night?” Buffy pressed.
 
“Mighta been … one night was pretty much the same as the next back then…went out with the Retchfords pretty regular.”
 
Buffy sighed. “So … nothing unusual happened to you that night? I mean, before you met Dru?”
 
“Not that I recall,” Spike contended. “Why’re you asking about this now?”
 
“I just … I thought maybe … maybe you met someone … and … never mind,” Buffy said dejectedly. That pretty much blew her theory that she’d driven William into Dru’s clutches … that what she’d done had, in fact, been the thing that had re-written history – again, and at least partially undone Hallie’s wish. The fact that he didn’t remember Avengelyne made Buffy worry that perhaps this was all some kind of hallucination or a dream after all, and she’d wake up from it at any moment.
 
“The books say … they say you had three children back then,” Buffy fished further.
 
“Reckon so…” Spike hedged, not sure where she was going.
 
“They say … they say you … killed them,” Buffy continued.
 
“Reckon so…” Spike agreed, his hands going to his hips as he stood in front of her. “Evil, remember? That’s what vampires do, Buffy. You know that.”
 
“Yeah … evil vampires,” Buffy muttered as she swallowed back a lump in her throat and looked down at the floor.
 
“So … if you killed them, what happened to your money?” Buffy questioned as she summoned the courage to look him in the eye again. She just wasn’t ready to let it go … she still had a hard time believing Spike would’ve killed the children, evil or not.
 
“Vampires don’ need money,” Spike pointed out with a shrug.  “Just walked away, I did; didn’t matter none to me. Regret it now, ‘course – might not be working fer Willy the wanker if I’d’ve signed a couple of papers back then like Angelus wanted…let the bank fix it like they did for Dru.
 
“Ya know, we’ve been over this before,” Spike told her. “It’s sumthin’ I live with everyday, Buffy – what happened to m’ other family, it eats at my soul, not sure there’s a point in re-hashin’ it.”

 

“Yeah, I know … I just … I just wanted to make sure I remembered right. I’m sorry,” Buffy offered, resigned to let it drop.
 
“Spike … I don’t know if I’ll ever get the years back that I’ve lost,” Buffy told him solemnly as tears stung her eyes. “I … I’m gonna need help for a while until I figure stuff out.”
 
Spike closed the short distance between them and pulled her to him as her tears fell again. “It’s ok, Buffy, we’ll figure it out, pet.”
 
“Thank you for believing me. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if you turned your back on me,” Buffy sobbed against his chest as she took solace in his embrace.
 
“I’d never turn my back on you, luv. That’s one thing you can always depend on, don’t you know that? I promised to never let you walk alone … you know I always keep my promises,” Spike told her softly as he held her close.
 
Buffy nodded against his chest as she wrapped her arms around his waist and the tears she’d been fighting fell freely from her eyes. She might’ve actually made it home, assuming this wasn’t some new cruel hoax or dream; the possibility that this wasn’t real still worried her. Her family was here, her husband, her soul-mate, was here … her friends were here. At anytime during the last five years she would’ve given anything and everything she owned to get back here, but the victory, assuming it was real, was bittersweet. She’d lost those five years … years of memories she could never get back, years of her children’s lives that she’d never know … and she’d let Spike down. Her mom admonished her to save all their children; told her that Spike was depending on her … she had failed. She’d saved only these three … the other three, William’s children from his human life, were lost. She wouldn’t let herself fully believe the Watcher’s diary, she wanted to hear Spike say it, and he had …
 
“Spike … I missed you so much. I missed our babies and now look at them … they aren’t babies anymore! They’re all grown up! They’re beautiful! Like angels!” Buffy cried against him.
 
“Well … I wouldn’t go that far. Give it a week, you’ll be wishin’ fer some vengeance yourself, luv,” Spike kidded as he dropped a kiss on the top of her head and Buffy laughed lightly through her tears.
 
Buffy and Spike had just started to walk back towards the door of the training room when it flew open. “Mooom! JJ’s pulling my hair again and Dani’s blowing bubbles in her milk and Billy won’t eat his green beans and they won’t listen to me even though Dad said I was in charge!” Annie complained.

 

“See what I mean?” Spike asked her with a smirk and Buffy laughed lightly. That was fine, it was perfect … it was a family - it was home.
 
**~**
{{Click here to hear "Home Sweet Home” by Motley Crue on YouTube   }}


You know I'm a dreamer
But my heart's of gold
I had to run away high
So I wouldn't come home low

Just when things went right
Doesn't mean they were always wrong
Just take this song and you'll never feel
Left all alone

Take me to your heart
Feel me in your bones
Just one more night
And I'm comin' off this
Long & winding road

I'm on my way
I'm on my way
Home sweet home
Tonight, tonight
I'm on my way
I'm on my way
Home sweet home

You know that I've seen
Too many romantic dreams
Up in lights, fallin' off the silver screen

My heart's like an open book
For the whole world to read
Sometimes nothing keeps me together at the seams

I'm on my way
I'm on my way
Home sweet home
Tonight, tonight
I'm on my way
Just set me free
Home Sweet Home
Home Sweet Home
Home Sweet Home
Home Sweet Home

I'm on my way
I'm on my way
Home Sweet Home
Yeah
I'm on my way
Just set me free
Home Sweet Home
End Notes:
TBC ...
Will Buffy really be able to share *everything* she'd been through the last years with Spike? What will Spike make of her story? Can she find a way to honor her mother's request and save the other Weckerly children from 1890?
Acapella by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy tries to fit back into life in Sunnydale. After living a life acapella for nearly five years, will she be able to keep the walls around her heart down and allow her family and friends back in?
**
Music Referenced:
 Acapella, Kerlis
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMB02-5XF0s
 **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Saturday, January 16th, 2010:


Anya and Xander came later that night, around 8:30, to pick up JJ. Spike explained to Buffy that Xander had lost his job because the construction company he was working for went out of business due to the slow housing market. To make ends meet, Anya was working a second job back at the Video Hut when she wasn’t working at the Magic Box, and Xander was working all the hours he could bartending at the Bronze as well as picking up odd-jobs for neighbors and friends doing handyman work. They couldn’t afford a babysitter or daycare, so, to help their friends out, JJ often stayed with Spike and Buffy before and after school and on weekends.
 
Buffy tried not to gush too much over seeing Anya and Xander, but couldn’t help but give them both big hugs when they came in. She knew she’d have to tell all her friends about what had happened to her and the huge hole in her memory, but first she needed to tell Spike, then she’d get to everyone else.
 
When she asked about Willow and Tara, Spike told her, yes, they were living in Washington state, Willow had climbed the corporate ladder quickly, she was a hot shot at Microsoft now, and Tara had opened a private practice as a psychologist and was doing well in her own right. They came back to visit about four or five times a year, often spending a couple of weeks in Sunnydale with Spike and Buffy around Christmas and Buffy, Spike, and the kids made the trek up to see them when they could, as well.
 
Giles still owned the Magic Box and it was still doing well. In fact, the downturn in the economy seemed to help his business as more and more people came in looking for good luck charms and talismans and spells to turn their luck around. He was still single and didn’t have a girlfriend that Spike was aware of. Buffy didn’t like the sound of that as she remembered the bitter and lonely Giles from the Spike-less world … Giles needed someone to love and someone to love him.
 
Lorne still lived in Sunnydale and ran the Bronze. He’d gotten a posh apartment not far from the club and was having a good time as a swinging bachelor managing the hottest club in town. He’d started bringing in talented, but little known, singers and entertainers on Friday and Saturday nights and had even drawn a couple of better known bands to town. The owners of the club were well pleased with his efforts and pretty much gave him free reign to do or try anything he wanted.
 
**~**
 
As Spike worked on getting the twins their baths, Buffy went into Annie’s room to tuck her in. Of course, Annie was too big to be officially tucked in any more, but Buffy just wanted to spend a little alone time with just her.
 
Buffy sat down on the edge of her daughter’s bed and a thousand memories flooded her mind of the times she and Spike tucked her in when she was little, of the bedtime stories and ‘I love you’s they’d shared. Buffy straightened her daughter’s covers and as she swallowed back the lump in her throat. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?” Buffy asked at last.
 
“I love you too, Mama,” Annie replied softly and Buffy had to swallow back her tears at her use of ‘Mama’ instead of ‘Mom.’
 
“Is everything alright?” Annie asked her, looking at Buffy with big, blue eyes full of concern.
 
“Yes … yes, everything’s fine now. I … honey, I’ll explain everything later, but I’m gonna need your help for a while. Someone … well, someone stole some of my memories and I might need you to help me with remembering things. Can you do that?” Buffy asked her, not wanting to scare her, but at the same time not wanting to lie, either.
 
“Who stole your memories?” Annie asked with worry.
 
“A bad person … no one you know, honey. I … I took care of it, they won’t be back, so don’t worry,” Buffy assured her. “Will you help me remember stuff?” Buffy asked again.
 
“Sure, Mama … I’ll help you. I can remember really well,” Annie assured her mother. “Papa says I remember too well!”
 
Buffy laughed softly, certain that that was true. Kids can always remember the things you don’t want them to. “Sounds perfect. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you today when I picked you up … I’ll try not to do that again,” Buffy offered as she brushed some stray curls back from her daughter’s face.
 
“It’s ok … none of my friends were there,” Annie told her with a shrug and Buffy laughed and nodded knowingly. How many times had her mom embarrassed her in front of her friends when she was Annie’s age or a bit older? Too many to count.
 
“Sooo,” Buffy started, looking up at the posters of famous places that lined Annie’s wall. “Which place do you want to go see most of all?”
 
Annie followed Buffy’s gaze with her eyes and settled on the poster of the Eiffel Tower. “Paris… then London, I think … and Rome,” Annie listed her favorites. “Do you think Dad will take us to London sometime and show us where he grew up and stuff?”

 

Buffy shrugged. “I don’t know … it’s probably all changed by now, but maybe we can talk him into it one day.”
 
“I think it would be neat. Mademoiselle Deschanel says that Americans don’t understand what ‘old’ is or what it means to live in a ‘historic district’ … not like in Europe or the Middle East or the Orient. We’d have to live in caves to be in a ‘historic district’ here! It’s neat to think that you could stand on a spot and know that a hundred or five hundred or a thousand years ago, someone else who might’ve been your distant grandparent could’ve stood on that very same spot. Don’t you think that would be neat?” Annie asked, her eyes wide with wonder over the notion.
 
Buffy thought a moment before nodding. “Yeah, it is a neat thought. Your great-great-whatever might’ve helped lay the bricks that built the London Bridge… Of course, actually, I think that particular bridge is in Arizona now, we could go see it on a weekend trip …” Buffy supplied with an eye roll. “But I get your point …
 
“Do you like history?” Buffy asked her and Annie nodded. “And languages, you still like languages, right?” and Annie nodded again.
 
“What subject is your least favorite?” Buffy asked her.
 
“You know I hate math,” Annie moaned and Buffy laughed…that sounded familiar. Maybe she did get more than her love of chocolate from Buffy.
 
“Time for sleep, Niblett,” Spike announced from the doorway and Buffy nearly moaned aloud, but she reminded herself that there would be more time tomorrow to get to know the young lady her daughter had grown into … and she prayed she’d also have the day after that and the day after that and the day after that...
 
Buffy leaned in and gave Annie a kiss on the forehead. “If I haven’t said it lately, I want you to know how proud I am of you and what a beautiful girl you are and that I love you with all my heart,” Buffy told her softly.
 
Annie wrapped her arms around Buffy’s neck. “I love you with all my heart too, Mama,” Annie replied. “People say I have a weird family, but I don’t mind ‘cos I know the truth.”
 
Buffy pulled back and looked into Annie’s eyes and asked, “What’s the truth about your weird family?”
 
“You and Dad are superheroes – you fight the bad guys and keep us all safe, so you’re allowed to be a little weird,” Annie supplied proudly.
 
“Well, that’s good to know …” Buffy laughed. “Good night, Sweet Girl,” Buffy whispered to her as she dropped another kiss on her daughter’s forehead and stood up.
 
Spike leaned over and gave Annie a kiss on the top of the head. “Love you, Niblett.”
 
“Love you, too, Dad…” Annie replied. “Good night.”
 
When Spike and Buffy were out in the hallway and Annie’s door was closed, Buffy laid a hand on his arm and stopped him.
 
“When did we become ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’?” she asked with a sad expression.
 
Spike snorted a soft laugh. “I reckon about third grade … she came home from school one day and announced ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’ were baby names – it was ok for the Littlebits, but she was too old for that.”

 

Buffy shook her head. “I missed a lot,” Buffy sighed. “Is she still doing good in school?”
 
Well…” Spike corrected.
 
“Well, what?”
 
“She’s not doing good, she’s doing well …” Spike clarified.
 
“Oh … are we living with the grammar police now?” Buffy questioned.
 
Spike nodded and rolled his eyes. “Your daughter is like a dog with a bloody bone,” he informed his wife. “We don’t do good, we do well; we don’t lay down, we lie down; we don’t have less demons, we have fewer.”
 
Buffy let out a long breath. “That sounds swell … my daughter has officially surpassed my knowledge of every language known to man…”
 
“Don’t feel bad, you aren’t alone. She’s top o’ her class … she’s surpassed us all, pet,” Spike assured her.
 
“And Dani and Billy? What about them?” Buffy questioned, looking down the hall towards their room.
 
“Junior’s a bookworm … he’ll try to read anything. Gotta make sure you don’ leave any ‘romance’ novels laying … errr … lying about,” Spike warned her. “He seems to find the naughty bits in ‘em right off.”
 
“Like father, like son …” Buffy quipped with a small smile.
 
“Yeah, not so funny when he starts spelling words out in front a’ God and everybody and asking ya what they mean…’C-L-I-T-O-R-I-S ... V-A-G-I-N-A …” Spike informed her with a smirk.
 
Buffy scrunched her face up. “Oh… yeah, I can see your point. He really did that?”
 
Spike nodded. “At Christmas dinner. I thought Rupes was gonna stroke out for a minute… ‘Course, Anya was gonna explain it to ‘im…”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes and bit her lip to keep from laughing … she could imagine the shock on her Watcher’s face when that came out of their son’s mouth and she could hear Anya giving their son an anatomy lesson … five years old or not. It made Buffy wonder how JJ had turned out so normal …
 
“Check. No books ‘lying about’. And Dani? Did the meningitis … did it … is she alright?” Buffy questioned.
 
“Doc says they can’t find any problems from it,” Spike assured her. “Tomboy, she is, rather be outside climbin’ a tree than readin’ a book. But got that milk allergy … that’s a pretty big deal, Buffy. Got one of them medical alert necklaces, she does … there’s a list of foods she can’t ‘ave on the fridge …”
 
“I didn’t see a list when I was cooking,” Buffy pointed out.
 
“Might be covered up now with sumthin’ else now … we need to find it. It took a long time for us to remember all the stuff that has milk in it, like chocolate bars,” Spike told her.
 
“Chocolate? She can’t have chocolate?! Ever!?” Buffy exclaimed. “That’s … that’s terrible!”
 
“There’re some special made sweets she can ‘ave, hard candy’s ok and Gummy Worms … but she’s not big on sweets anyway, so…” Spike shrugged.

 

Buffy made a face. “Gummy Worms? Does she have some kind of fish gene or something?”
 
Spike laughed and shook his head. “They’re like Gummy Bears but … worms. Your daughter’s not squeamish, I’ll grant ya’ that.”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes and shook her head. “What about the allergy … is it … like forever?”
 
“Doc says she might outgrow it … but it came on late, so they can’t say for sure,” Spike filled in.
 
Buffy blew out a long breath … she had missed a whole lot.
 
“You ready to tell me what’s goin’ on?” Spike asked her.
 
Buffy looked down the hall towards the twins room then back at him. “Yeah … just give me a minute.”
 
Buffy opened the door to the twin’s room and peeked in. They had both already fallen asleep, Dani in the bed with the Man-U and Ninja poster over it and Spiderman sheets; Billy in the bed with the dinosaur poster and solar system sheets. The tomboy and the bookworm … Buffy wasn’t sure what she really expected them to be. Dani had always been the more outgoing, aggressive one, Billy more laid back and demure. They had grown from being inseparable as newborns into two separate people, with personalities all their own … and Buffy had missed it.
 
Risking awakening them, Buffy stepped into their room and gave them each a soft kiss goodnight then stood for a long time just watching them sleep in them dim glow of a nightlight. Buffy recognized the nightlight as the Dagon Sphere that used to be in Annie’s room … the ancient orb that ‘repels that which can’t be named’.
 
Buffy smiled sadly as she thought of the memories lost, but at least now she had the chance to make up for those lost years…she had her family and her friends back. After five years of just surviving, of living from day to day, hand to mouth, depending on no one and not allowing anyone else to depend on her, it felt strange to suddenly be back in the strong embrace of a group of people that loved her and depended on her and whom she loved and depended on just as much. Buffy hoped that she wouldn’t let them down … she felt like she was starting all over again.
 
Over the last years she’d turned back into ‘The Slayer’, ‘The one who stands alone’, living her life with the mission in mind and nothing more … now she had to turn back into a wife, a mother, a friend, a lover … she had to keep the walls from building back around her heart, she had to let people in. The life she had been living acapella had suddenly turned into a symphony; she was again supported by an orchestra of friends and family to lean on. They could help color her black and white world with a rainbow of color called love – but only if she let them in.
 
Buffy nodded resolutely to herself. And the first person you need to let in is Spike … she commanded herself silently. She needed to tell him everything – everything she’d done in the last five years, even the things she wasn’t proud of, even the things that might hurt him, things about Cecily and how Buffy had turned to Rack’s magic in her weakest moments, about purgatory and the trials, and how, in the end, she’d hurt William so deeply and not been able to save all their children.
 
Buffy stepped out of the twin’s room and into the hallway to find Spike waiting for her.
 
“You ok?” he asked, moving up to her as she leaned back against the closed door of their babies’ room. “If you need more time…”
 
“No, I’m ok … it’s time,” Buffy told him with a tired smile … it was time to share her pain, because that’s what wives and friends and lovers did … they shared the joys and they shared the pain. That was the only way to keep the walls from building back around her heart.
 
Buffy led the way downstairs – she couldn’t decide where to do this … in the bedroom it would be too easy to fall into his arms and forget about talking, the kitchen table or the research table might be good, she could sit facing him, but that felt so … distant; finally she decided on the couch. Spike followed her as she took a seat and turned sideways, pulling her legs up under her, and faced him.

 

“I don’t know really where to start…” Buffy began as she looked into his eyes. God, she had missed his eyes … and his voice and his arms around her. She’d missed his sense of humor and his smirk and his lips and …
 
“Start at the beginning,” Spike advised her. “What’s the last thing you remember from … from before the wish?”
 
Buffy closed her eyes and nodded her head as she thought back to just before she woke up in Riley’s bed.
 
“It’s ok Buffy … it’s you and it’s me and we’ll get through whatever it is, pet. Whatever happened, you can tell me. I’ll never love you any less. My love for you only grows stronger with each sunrise,” Spike assured her, reaching out and laying a hand on her arm.
 
Buffy opened her eyes and looked into his as tears once again slid down her face. “I did some things I’m not proud of … I did some things a Slayer maybe shouldn’t’ve … but I never stopped loving you and our family, Spike. I never betrayed your love,” Buffy told him before taking a deep breath and beginning her tale.
 
“The last thing I remember was my birthday in 2005 … we were sharing a dream, it was a tropical paradise with a lake and butterflies … do you remember it?” Buffy asked him.

 

Spike nodded. “Yeah … it was brilliant … never had that dream since then, even though we both tried to go back there. There was a dusty pink rose bush and we made love in the grass next to it … then swam in the lake. You wanted to play Marco-Polo, I let you catch me pretty fast. I’m not much good at staying away from you when you’re naked,” Spike recalled, his voice gentle and loving as he remembered the dream.
 
Buffy shook her head slowly back and forth. “In my world, you disappeared just after the butterfly landed on my shoulder and you recited that blessing … do you remember that?”
 
“Yeah … May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun, and find your shoulder to light on; to bring you luck, happiness and riches today, tomorrow and beyond,” Spike repeated the old Irish blessing.
 
Buffy nodded. “That’s the last time … after that, the only time I could be with you was if I was asleep or unconscious …”
 
Buffy then asked Spike if he knew Hallie, and he said he didn’t … so Buffy explained who Hallie was … that she was Cecily, his wife from his life before Dru, and that she was an ex-vengeance demon herself.
 
Apparently, some things from their life together that Buffy did remember had changed; they had gotten a live-in nanny/housekeeper when the twins came home, and she was a friend of Anya’s, but it wasn’t Hallie. She had stayed about six months, Spike told Buffy, then they didn’t really need her any longer, and she moved away.
 
Spike thought that Buffy’s revelation that Cecily was once a vengeance demon explained a lot about the woman that he married in 1881, but he didn’t share that thought with Buffy. He didn’t like talking about his life before Dru … not even with Buffy, they weren’t good memories and they were best left buried.
 
Buffy and Spike talked through the night as she tried to recall everything that she’d been through the last five years, Spike giving her as much comfort as he could … crying with her when she cried, holding her when she buckled, assuring her when she faltered. Spike tried to not interrupt her as she told her story, but had to ask her why in the bloody hell she would’ve ever married Captain Cardboard, making Buffy snort a soft laugh … that sounded like a familiar refrain.
 
Buffy noticed Spike stiffen when she told him about Cecily actually somehow ‘stealing’ their children and about meeting Henry William Hart, their great-whatever grandson.
 
“You’re sayin’ Anne and Bess and William were … ours – yours and mine?” Spike questioned, his eyes full of concern and confusion as they searched hers for an answer.

 

Buffy nodded. “I’m sure of it. Anne and Bess looked exactly like Annie and Dani – that’s no coincidence. Spike, do you remember what they looked like?” Buffy asked softly, laying a hand on his arm.
 
“I … yeah, I just … I thought ‘cos they were mine they … they resembled,” Spike stammered, closing his eyes as the faces of his children from a century ago flashed through his mind.
 
“Spike, they did more than ‘resemble’ … they were exact twins. They were ours, not Cecily’s … yours and mine,” Buffy contended. “I’m sure of it.”
 
Buffy looked down at her hands, unable to meet his eyes for what came next. “I … at the end, mom came to me and told me I needed to save all our children – that you were depending on me. I tried … I went back in time, I warned you to keep William out of the war … you thought I was an angel, a Guardian Angel … and then I did such a stupid thing …”
 
Buffy paused, shaking her head slowly, ashamed of how she'd hurt William. When she finally looked up, Spike looked ashen … even for a vampire.
 
“You do remember!” Buffy accused, her eyes going wide.
 
Spike shook his head slowly as his mind raced. “That … that was you?” he stammered. “You were the one in my room? You were the one in the Common? How … how could that be?”
 
“I told you! I went back in time … I was going to kill Hallie … errr, Cecily … but Rack sent me to the wrong year. I couldn’t kill her without killing William, so I followed my heart – I warned you about the danger to your son … to our son,” Buffy explained. “I tried to keep them safe… I tried to do what mom asked.”

 

“No … that angel had fiery red hair and she said … she said she was from a different time, a different universe. She said … she said she was married to me but had lost me and … bloody hell,” Spike recalled aloud as pieces of a century old puzzle clicked into place in his mind.
 
“Spike … why did you lie to me about that night? You didn’t just go for a walk and meet Dru. It wasn’t just a night like any other! Tell me what really happened after …” Buffy’s voice trailed off as she searched Spike’s face for answers. He looked like he was about to hyperventilate or pass out … can vampires hyperventilate?
 
Spike stood up from the couch and started pacing back and forth across the great room, running his hand through his hair as he contemplated what Buffy was telling him. The children he and Cecily had were not Cecily’s but Buffy’s … the angel that came to him that night was Buffy … the angel that he’d searched the entire world for for decades after that night was Buffy.
 
“Don’t move…” Spike told Buffy as he turned and headed up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.
 
“Where are you going?” Buffy questioned, turning in her seat and watching him, but he just held up a finger, silently asking her to wait.
 
Buffy sighed and turned back around. Why did he lie about that night? she wondered as she waited for him to return, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
 
When Spike got back he was carrying a very old and dusty, leather-bound journal that Buffy had never seen before, some comic books, and the necklace that Angel had given Buffy so many years ago. Spike dropped the comic books one at a time down on the couch next to Buffy and dropped the cross necklace on top of them …




 


 Buffy picked up the cross – the cross she’d given William to remember her by, and then took in the comic books, picking up each one slowly. They were called ‘Avengelyne’ and were about a red-haired, green-eyed, scantily clad, fallen angel fighting against evil as she tried to get her wings back. Buffy looked back up at Spike who was flipping furiously through the old journal. When he found the page he wanted, he stood in wide eyed silence and just stared at the page without saying a word for what seemed forever to Buffy.


“Spike … please tell me what’s going on,” Buffy pleaded with him. “Why did you lie to me?”
 
Spike looked up from the journal, then turned it around so it was upside-right for Buffy and laid it on her lap, still open to the page he had been looking at.
 
Buffy looked down at the page … it was a pencil drawing – of her. She turned the page, the journal entry before it was December 15th, 1890.

  

“I searched for Avengelyne, for years … decades,” Spike admitted when Buffy looked back up at him. “I finally gave up … decided that whatever time or universe she was from was one I’d never find. When those comics came out, I had to nick ‘em … but they weren’t the girl I was lookin’ for. I thought I’d never forget her face … her touch, her voice … and I guess I didn’t really, did I?
 
“I never told you ‘bout Avengelyne ‘cos I …” Spike stopped and looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath before looking back down at Buffy. “She was the only person I ever knew that I loved as much as I loved you, that made me feel complete, like you do. I never wanted you to think that … that you were second to anyone, Buffy. I never wanted you to wonder … what if that angel comes to call, will I lose ‘im? But it was you all along?” Spike questioned again still not quite believing his eyes and ears.
 
“Where are the books I gave you for Christmas … the Shakespeare ones, the old ones?” Buffy asked as she stood up and started scanning the bookcases in the research area with her eyes.
 
“What? Why?”
 
“Just … trust me, where are they?” Buffy repeated.



Spike walked around to the other side of the research area and showed Buffy the books, up on the highest shelf, safely away from small hands that might damage them. Buffy reached up on tiptoes and pulled the last book out of the line and held her breath as she opened it to the back cover. She bit her bottom lip as she found what she was looking for … her note from 1890 to William. Buffy turned the book around and showed it to Spike.
 
“Bloody hell…” Spike murmured as he read what she’d written.
 

My dearest William,

I followed my heart to you and you completed my soul. I will follow you forever – to the depths of hell or heights of heaven, until the moon no longer follows the sun and the stars dwindle, one by one.

Always know, never doubt, that I love you with all my being and I will find you again one day.

 Your loving wife,

 Buffy

December, 1890


 

“That … I never saw that before…” Spike muttered, looking up from the book and into Buffy’s eyes.
 
“I wrote it that day … that day I was at your house. I wanted to … to somehow be part of your life, even if it just as a footnote. I never meant to hurt you that night. I missed you so much, I just … I hated Cecily for how she was treating you and I wanted you to know what was possible,” Buffy admitted as tears stained her cheeks again.
 
Spike nodded and closed his eyes as she laid a hand on his face. “I know … I understood later … after Dru…”
 
“Please tell me what really happened …” Buffy whispered to him.
 
Spike opened his eyes and let the green of her irises surround him with her love. How could he not have known this was his angel, his Avengelyne? Perhaps because of all the years that had passed … his memory had faded – he had long ago given up the hope of finding her  … but his heart, his soul knew her the moment he laid eyes on her that first night in the Bronze. His conscious mind may not have known, but the rest of him, his true heart, recognized her instantly.
 
Spike took a deep breath and wiped his tears with the back of his hand as he sat the book down on the research table. “When I ran off I … I was upset. I couldn’t go home in that state, so I ran and walked and crawled and cried and … and I literally bumped into Drusilla on the other side of the Common. She talked some jibberish ‘bout spirit and imagination and catastrophes crashing down from heaven and…” Spike’s voice trailed off and he shrugged. “And, the next thing I remember, I was clawing m’ way out of a grave … and she was waiting for me on the other side.”

 

“What happened to the babies?” Buffy asked with trepidation, holding her breath as she awaited his answer.
 
Spike sighed and rolled his head back, looking up at the ceiling for a long time before looking back down at Buffy. “Dru and me stayed around London for a bit … a couple of months.  Angelus and Darla were supposed to meet up with ‘er there, but they hadn’t showed yet. I looked for my angel every night in the Common, but, o’ course, she was never there again. One night, I … I told Dru I had to take care of some things on my own … I slipped away from ‘er and went back to the house. I hadn’t been back since that night …”
 
Spike stopped talking and started pacing back and forth in front of Buffy as he ran his hand through his hair again and Buffy closed her eyes as she waited to hear what he’d done to their children.
 
“Nellie invited me in, of course … she and the girls had been frantic looking for me, worried that I’d been hurt or killed – robbed and dropped in Thames...” Spike stopped and snorted softly before continuing, “Cecily had given birth to a son … just as the angel … just as you had predicted.”
 
Spike stopped in front of Buffy and put his hands on her upper arms and Buffy opened her eyes and looked at him. Her heart raced and her stomach knotted as she waited to hear what he had done. “Tell me…” she whispered as tears glistened in her eyes and she felt the knot in her stomach rise to her throat.
 
“I … I got the girls up from their beds … got the baby boy from his crib, wrapped them up in coats and blankets and … and Nellie and I took them to the vicarage …”
 
Buffy’s mouth dropped open and she tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “You took them to…”
 
“To the church on the Common … we woke up the Vicar and ‘is wife … I told them the children needed a home, they were orphans and asked them to take care of ‘em. Buffy, God, Buffy … I gave the babies away,” Spike sobbed as he fell down onto his knees in front of her and wrapped his arms around her waist and cried. “I gave our babies away…” he repeated. “I’m so sorry … I loved them so, but … if Dru knew she would’ve … it was the only thing I could think to do to keep them safe. I told everyone that I’d killed them  … bragged ‘bout it … I … I didn’t want Dru or Angelus to go lookin’ for them.”
 
“Oh God, Spike … oh, baby,” Buffy sobbed as she dropped to her knees with him and held him as he cried. “You gave them to Wanda…” Buffy realized and Spike nodded against her shoulder. “But Wanda … she knew you – she would’ve known you were their father … not orphans.”
 
“She knew … she knew by lookin’ at me … somehow she knew …” Spike murmured against her shoulder.

"Spike, why? Why didn't you tell me that before? Why did you lie? Let me believe you killed them?" Buffy wondered.

Spike shook his head against her shoulder. "I ... I told the world I'd killed 'em for so long ... I started to believe it m'self. You ... you had read the Watcher's diaries before - when Dru and me first came to town, so you knew that story. I just ... I just never dissuaded you from that notion. At first I didn't know you well enough - thought ... well, thought maybe you still loved Angel and ... and then, later ... it just seemed too late to fix it ... then we just never talked 'bout it..." Spike's voice trailed off and he shook his head again and tears rolled down his cheeks. "I'm sorry ... never meant to lie to ya ... I'm so sorry, Buffy ... I didn't want to give the babies away ... I didn't know what else ta do."

 

“Spike … William, look at me,” Buffy requested as she pushed him back slightly so she could look into his eyes. “You did the right thing … you did the only thing you could do. Wanda … Wanda is the real guardian angel. You did the right thing,” Buffy assured him again, before hugging him to her as sobs wracked his body.
 
When Spike had calmed down, Buffy stood up and pulled him up with her then guided him back to the couch, moving his journal and the comics out of the way, and she sat down with him. Spike leaned his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands as he struggled to regain his composure … he’d never told anyone before what he’d done with the children. Not one other soul, living or dead, in one hundred and twenty years knew that his children had lived.
 
“I … I signed the house and most o’ the money over to the Vicar … gave the rest to Nellie to make sure she’d be all right. She said she’d stay with the children – with the Vicar and ‘is wife … I don’t know if she did or not. I never saw them again after that night,” Spike continued his story. "I went back a couple years later ... when Dru left me alone ... off on one a' her flings ... but they were gone. The new Vicar didn't know where they'd gone ... or wouldn't tell me."
 
“What happened to Cecily?” Buffy asked hesitantly.
 
“Had run into my dear wife a couple a' nights earlier …” Spike told her, his voice turning colder. “Turns out, she had a thing goin’ with Daniel Retchford. I was faithful to that frosty bitch for ten long years … and she was bangin’ boots with my bloody boss…” Spike snorted. “Did the whole buggerin' world a service that night, I did …”
 
Buffy nodded, understanding fully what that meant. He killed them.
 
“I guess we both did the world a service, then…” Buffy told him softly as she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him to her.
 
Spike turned and wrapped his arms around his wife, his angel, and buried his face against her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Buffy … I’m sorry about the bits … I … I …”
 
“Shhhh…” Buffy soothed him, running a hand down the back of his head and neck. “You did the right thing … you did the only thing you could do, Spike. Dru, Angelus, Darla … you know what they would’ve done … you know,” Buffy assured him as tears stung her eyes again. “Wanda loved them like they were her very own, I know it. I promise, Spike … you did the right thing.”
 
**~**
 
Buffy woke from a dreamless slumber to find that she and Spike had fallen asleep on the couch in each other’s arms. She sent a silent prayer to the only angel she trusted, Wanda, for waking up to the same world she’d gone to sleep in. Buffy watched her husband for a long while as he lay against her; salty, dried tears clung to his cheeks and eyelids and Buffy longed to take that hurt away from him. He said what he’d done to the children ate at his soul, and she knew that was true … even though he’d done the only thing he could do under the circumstances to save them, she knew how much he loved his children. She knew how much it hurt when they had to send Annie away with Anya and Xander to the Coven when they were fighting the First … how that must’ve torn at Spike’s soul to give his child away again.
 
It was clear that things in their life would’ve changed … not even counting the last five years, things before that would’ve changed, as well. Buffy had no idea how to know what had changed or how. It would just take time for her to figure it out. She sent another silent prayer to their guardian angel to give her that time; please let this be real, please let me stay with them, please don’t take them away again, please let the nightmare life be over, Buffy prayed as tears stung her eyes anew.
 
Buffy was pulled from her thoughts by footsteps coming down the stairs. She raised up slightly to see over the back of the couch and saw Dani and Billy padding slowly down the stairs in their PJs. Oh, God … they’re so big…
 
Buffy slid out of Spike’s embrace, careful not to wake him, and met the twins at the bottom of the stairs. “Mama!” Dani started in a loud voice and Buffy shushed her softly.
 
“We’re gonna play a game this morning,” Buffy whispered to them, going down to her knees to be eye to eye with them. “It’s called ‘how quiet can I be’ and whoever is quietest the longest gets a special treat. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
 
Billy nodded enthusiastically, but Dani looked at her with suspicion, that didn’t sound like any fun at all. “Are you hungry?” Buffy asked quietly, putting a finger on each of their mouths to remind them to answer silently and they both nodded.
 
“Ok … quiet as churchmice, now,” Buffy instructed, putting a finger up to her lips as she took their hands and led them past her sleeping husband to the kitchen.
 
**~**
 
Spike woke to the smell of bacon cooking and rubbed tiredly at his eyes. It had been a long and painful night and his heart still ached. Buffy had been through hell … she’d been alone, no family, no friends, no one to lean on, for five years. It was mind-boggling to think that he remembered none of what she described … not the cold, red purgatory or the trials … he remembered a life with her and their children living fairly happy and fairly normal lives here in Sunnydale … well, as happy and normal as it gets for a vampire and a Slayer living on a Hellmouth. It was clear that what she’d been through had changed her … she wasn’t the same woman he’d gone on patrol with the previous night … he could feel a hardness in her now that she hadn’t had before, but she also had a strength and a resolve and a love even deeper than he’d felt before. She knew what it was to lose everything, she knew how precious her life and her family were and he was sure there would be no moments taken for granted. It would take time, he knew, for him to share the million little things that they had been through the last five years, but that was alright – they had an eternity to do it.
 
Spike listened to the whispered voices of his children and wife in the kitchen. Buffy asking how they liked the bacon, crisp or soft, did they want juice or milk … or almond milk?
 
“Can Dani eat toast?” Spike heard Buffy ask, then he heard pages being flipped on the list of foods that Dani could and couldn’t eat.
 
“Yeah … this special bread from the kosher bakery,” Annie supplied. “But no butter … she can have jam or peanut butter or this special margarine.”
 
“Ok … what about eggs? How do you guys want your eggs?” Buffy asked the assembled group.
 
“I want eyeball-eggs!” Dani exclaimed in a loud voice.
 
“Shhhh … remember the quiet game?” Buffy whispered to her.
 
Spike chuckled. Good luck trying to keep that girl quiet…
 
“What are ‘eyeball’ eggs?” Buffy questioned.

 

“Poached,” Annie supplied. “Dad told her they were eyeballs to make her eat them …”
 
Buffy scrunched up her face. Her daughter would rather eat eyeballs than eggs? “Poached? I don’t think I know how to make poached eggs … do I?” he heard Buffy ask.
 
“Papa makes them poached. I want poached eyeball-eggs!” Dani insisted and Spike could envision her bottom lip out in a pout and her arms folded across her chest, just like her mother and sister before her.
 
“Well, Papa’s just turned into a regular Julia Child, hasn’t he? Does he guzzle wine while he cooks and say ‘bon appétit’?” Buffy asked.
 
“No, beer …” Annie supplied. “And mostly he says ‘eat it or starve’ …”
 
“Oh … Martha Stewart, then…” Buffy amended and Spike could actually feel her eyes roll from the other room. “How do you poach eggs, anyway?”
 
“He boils water really hot and then you drop the eggs in and scoop them out …” Annie relayed, using her hands to imitate dropping an egg in a pan of water and scooping it out.

 

“That’s boiled eggs…” Buffy pointed out.
 
“No … it’s different … he takes the shell off first,” Annie clarified.
 
Spike heard Buffy snort sarcastically. “Well, I leave the shells on when I poach eggs…we’re having Mama’s poached eggs this morning, ok?”
 
Spike couldn’t help but laugh and he thought briefly of getting up to help her, but she was just so cute …
 
“Did you hear something?” Buffy asked the group and Spike closed his eyes and turned over to face the back of the couch before anyone could catch him eavesdropping.
 
He heard Buffy walk to the door of the kitchen (he knew it was Buffy because she was the only one with shoes on) and could almost feel her eyes on him as he played possum. “I guess not…” she said quietly and he heard her walk back into the kitchen and everything got quiet…too quiet.
 
After a few moments of silence, Spike turned over to see if he could peek through the kitchen door and see what was going on, but as soon as he rolled over he was attacked by his family, who had snuck out of the kitchen and up to the couch on tiptoes. He screamed and squirmed as the children pounced on top of him and began tickling his sides as they laughed and screamed in delight.

“Uncle! Bloody hell, uncle!” Spike exclaimed as he tried to grab three pairs of little hands with his. “Little help, Slayer!” he called as he got a hold of Annie and Billy, but couldn’t grab Dani.

“Oh, did you need help?” Buffy asked with a sly smile as she closed in on Dani. Buffy went to grab Dani around the middle, but instead she bypassed their daughter and went for Spike’s ribs, taking up where Annie and Billy had been thwarted.


 
“Fuu…dge!” Spike screamed as he released Annie and Billy in order to try and stop Buffy. Before long, the attack on Spike had degenerated into an all out tickle-fest on the floor in front of the couch with no one safe from the tickle torture.
 
Before long everyone (except Spike) was out of breath from laughing and screaming and wriggling and tickling and they all lay in a pile on the floor trying to stop giggling as their lungs fought for air.
 
Buffy rolled over and dropped a kiss on Spike’s lips. “I love you …” she whispered to him, the silly grin still on her face from getting him. She couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed so hard ... or laughed at all, for that matter. It felt ... it felt good, she'd forgotten how good it felt to laugh.
 
“I love you too, Slayer…even if you don’t know how to poach bloody eggs…”
 
As Buffy leaned down for another kiss, she and Spike were suddenly smothered with laughing children. Kisses and raspberries were dropped on faces and tummies until all the small people screamed for mercy. It wasn’t until then that Buffy realized they had gained another child …
 
“When did you get here, JJ?” Buffy asked as she released Billy from her clutches.
 
“Just now,” JJ told her, still giggling from the tickling that someone had inflicted on him.
 
“He just shows up like that… like a poltergeist, whether you want him to or not,” Annie offered, rolling her eyes.
 
“Demon Bird drops him at the curb on ‘er way to work … waits ‘til he’s inside,” Spike clarified as he began to stand up, hoping to avoid a round three of ‘Tickle-Me-Spike’.
 
“Oh, okay,” Buffy began. “Are you hungry? How do you like your eggs?” Buffy asked JJ as Spike gave her a hand up.
 
“Sunnyside up!” JJ enthused.
 
“Finally! Something I can do!” Buffy laughed as they all started back towards the kitchen.
 
“Soooo…you cook now, huh?” Buffy questioned Spike as they walked.
 
“Yeah, well, we can just keep that deal forgotten … that’d be fine with me,” Spike told her with a smile.


 
At Buffy’s pleading look, he rolled his eyes and explained about the cooking, “You said that you’d cooked for the first eight years … that it was my turn to cook for the next eight … then we could switch back. I’ve got five years left on my sentence … unless you want to modify the parole agreement…?” Spike asked hopefully.
 
“Don’t tell me that it’s my job to tune up the cars or something…” Buffy questioned.
 
“P-leease! Your job is to keep the bits out of the kitchen while I’m cookin’ …”
 
“Oh, that sounds like a fair trade to me. I think we should just keep the deals we made in the past the same … I mean, it wouldn’t be fair for me to change things just because I don’t remember making the deal…” Buffy reasoned with a small smile.
 
“How did I know you’d feel that way?” Spike wondered aloud as they made it into the kitchen. “Ok, who’s for Papa’s world famous poached eyeball eggs?”

**~**
{{Click here to hear "Acapella” by Kerlis on YouTube   }}


I was walking, was living
My melody was acapella
There’s a beat I was missing
No tune, or a scale, I could play

The sound in the distance
No orchestra playing together
Like a boat out to sea,
The silence was too deafening!

So come and revive me
I can’t feel my heartbeat
Just me surviving alone
-
(Chorus)
Before you,
My whole life was acapella!
Now a symphony’s
The only song to sing
Before you,
My whole life was acapella!
Now a symphony’s
The only song to sing
-
Everything was the same
One color was just like the others
An assembly routine
My memories were all black and white
Till I stopped over-thinking
Decided to draw back the curtains
And I cleared all the cobwebs
And began to let in the light
-
So come and revive me
I can’t feel my heartbeat
Just me surviving alone
-
Before you,
My whole life was acapella!
Now a symphony’s
The only song to sing
Before you,
My whole life was acapella!
Now a symphony’s
The only song to sing
-

You are the drum in my heart beat
Bass and guitar lead
Stuck on the notes you play
My heart that you play on
Grab like a crayon
I can’t walk away
-

Before you,
My whole life was acapella!
Now a symphony’s
The only song to sing
Before you,
My whole life was acapella!
Now a symphony’s
The only song to sing

End Notes:
TBC ... Is the angst over? Hmmm.... well, maybe the worst is past (for now)... Kudos to those of you who *knew* that William would never kill his children! I'm getting too predictable, it seems... Will have more soon!
Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy keeps working to fit back into her family and life in Sunnydale …
**
Music Referenced:
Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground, Willie Nelson
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3DxVVfTifg
  **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Sunday, January 17th, 2010:

After spending half the afternoon in the ‘bat cave’ playing games and watching cartoons with all the kids, Buffy and Spike put the twins and JJ down for a nap, and Spike decided to lie down too. He had to work security at Willy’s tonight and he hadn’t rested very well last night, he just needed to get a little kip before heading down to the bar. Buffy tried to get Annie to go for a bike ride or something, but Annie begged off, saying she had homework she needed to get done before tomorrow. Buffy thought about lying down with Spike, but was afraid that would lead not to sleep, which she knew he really needed, so she wandered the house, trying to take in all the changes.
 
There were lots of photos of the last five years … trips that she didn’t remember, birthdays, parties, Christmases, Easters, nights out on the town, t-ball games, dance recitals, photos of her and her friends and family laughing, goofing around, having fun ... posing for the camera; she remembered none of it. She made a mental note to ask Spike if there were any videos she could watch … at least that would be something. Buffy finally ended up in her office and she sat down at her desk with a sigh … how was she ever going to figure all this out? Would she ever have any confidence in her ability to parent her children when she couldn’t remember such a huge chunk of their lives? When so many things could easily be taken out of context?









Buffy rubbed at her eyes and shook the self-pity off. “You’re back, you got them back … that’s all that matters,” she admonished herself. If trading five years was the cost, then that’s just what she’d have to pay. It really was a small price in the grander scheme, considering she didn’t think she’d ever have this life back, have her family and friends back.
 
Buffy took a deep breath and began perusing the various folders in the file cabinet in her office. Most were bills and statements, but she found one marked “Faith/Council Reports” and pulled the papers out of it. It contained quarterly reports from Faith and Wes to the Council about the Weckerly children. They all pretty much said the same thing, “Nothing unusual to report. Children remain unremarkable. No abnormal abilities or skills noted.”
 
Buffy snorted softly as she flipped through them … one after another said the same thing, ‘nothing unusual to report.’ Faith had kept her word, apparently – she was just telling the Council something to keep them at bay. Never mind that Annie could probably speak five different languages by now … and Dani was gonna be the next Mia Hamm… and Billy could find the 'naughty bits' in a romance novel and embarrass them all at Christmas dinner.
 
Buffy put the papers back in the file and on a whim turned to her computer and Googled “Henry William Hart.” Buffy was surprised to see so many results come back. She clicked on a few of them, including one on something called ‘Facebook’, but none of them was the same Henry William Hart that she and Dawn had met. Buffy sighed … there was no telling what had happened to the children after Spike took them to the vicarage … history would’ve changed for them, as well. She thought about going on the genealogy sites like Dawn had done, but Buffy just wasn’t that good on the computer … maybe she could get Willow or Tara to help her. Maybe she could find out what had happened to Anne, Bess, and William and see if she could find any of their descendants, if for no other reason than to show Spike that he had done the right thing.
 
Buffy found a book with phone numbers in it and she looked up Willow and Tara’s number and called it. Tara answered and Buffy fought to keep her voice even and not sound like a lunatic by crying.
 
“Tara! God, it’s so good to hear your voice!” Buffy started.
 
“Hey, Buffy … it’s good to hear yours too – it’s been soooo long, like what? Five whole days?” Tara replied with a little laugh.
 
Buffy rolled her eyes … five days for you, five years for me. “How are you guys doing? How’s Willow? How’s everything going there?” Buffy rattled off.
 
“Good, good, and good,” Tara answered her questions. “How ‘bout you?”
 
“Well, I’ve been better, been worse … lots worse,” Buffy hedged. “Listen, I need to talk to you guys … in person. Is there any chance you could come down for a visit … soonish?”
 
“Buffy! We were just there! We just left like two weeks ago! You know how hard it is for us to just drop everything nowadays,” Tara reminded her. “What’s up? Can we do it over the phone?”
 
Buffy sighed. “No … I really need to get the whole group together and have a … talk. I … a lot has happened here … to me, and … I think it would be best if I could just tell everyone at once. I really need an old fashioned Scooby meeting. I know it’s hard and you were just here … but it’s really important. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t.”
 
“Are you ok? What happened?” Tara asked, suddenly concerned.
 
“I’m ok now, I think … I just … I’d just like to go into it with everyone at one time,” Buffy explained, dreading the thought of having to re-tell her story numerous times.
 
“Ok … I’ll talk to Willow and see if we can reschedule some stuff and make it this coming weekend. Would that work?” Tara asked.
 
“Yeah … that would be great. Thanks,” Buffy agreed.
 
“Ok, count on that unless you hear differently. I guess we’ll see you Saturday, then,” Tara confirmed.
 
“Sounds great … Tara?”
 
“Yeah?”
 
“I love you guys … tell Willow – I love you guys so much,” Buffy told her as she fought back a lump in her throat.
 
“We love you guys too. See you Saturday,” Tara replied sincerely.
 
“Ok, bye.”
 
**~**

 Spike was awoken from his nap by screaming coming from somewhere in the house. He pulled on his jeans quickly as he opened the door to their bedroom and tried to figure out where it was coming from … right down the hall. At first he thought it was coming from Annie’s room, but then he saw Annie come out of her room to investigate. It was coming from the bathroom across the hall from her room.
 
“Oh my God!” Buffy exclaimed again … how had she missed this on her wanderings around the house? She hadn’t been in the upstairs bathroom since she got … home.
 
“What?! What is it?” Spike asked as he made it through the bathroom doorway, pushing Annie back and out of harm’s way.
 
“Spike! Oh my God!” Buffy exclaimed, turning to face him, her eyes wide with excitement.
 
“Christ woman! You gave me a bloody heart attack! Thought you found a beastie!” Spike chastised her with an eye roll. “That’s not my bloody towel on the floor. You have your son to thank fer that…” Spike informed her as he brushed past and picked up a damp towel and hung it on a towel bar that said “Billy” above it.
 
“No … not that! Look at this bathroom! How? When? It’s gorgeous!” Buffy clarified as she turned in a circle and took in the remodeled upstairs bathroom.

 

“Huh?” Spike asked, confused.
 
“When? How? Did you do this? Who did this?” Buffy asked with excitement as she looked over the bathroom that no longer had the pukey tiles from the 1950’s that she remembered, but neutral, natural stone tiles with light blue accents. There were only two things in the whole room she recognized: the huge claw-footed tub and the carved wooden bench that Spike had given her up on the hilltop – that seemed like a lifetime ago; she’d actually forgotten about it until now.
 


A large shower had been added and a long vanity with two sinks; a huge mirror lined nearly the whole wall above the vanity, there was a dressing area with full length mirrors on three sides where the bench sat and new lights … lights you could actually see by to put on makeup or get dressed in, and the commode had actually been put in a small room all its own.
 
“Oh my God – a water closet!” Buffy exclaimed as she opened the door that revealed the small room that had nothing but the toilet and a small cabinet above it for essentials.
 
“When did this happen?” Buffy asked again as she ran her hand over the cool, smooth tiles around the tub.
 
Spike laughed despite her giving him a proverbial heart attack … she was just excited about it the first time she’d seen it. If there was any doubt that this woman was, in fact, his wife, her reaction to the ‘new’ bathroom pretty much eliminated it.
 
“Harris did it for me for your birthday … when you and the Niblett were gone that week to visit your Aunt Arleen. It’s been years … ummm, five years?” Spike guessed.
 
“Aunt Arleen … I never … I never made that trip,” Buffy told him as she worried her bottom lip with her teeth. It had been five years … the five missing years.
 
“I love it,” Buffy gushed, turning to him and wrapping her arms around his neck. “I might’ve told you before … but it’s amazing. I totally love it. It must’ve cost a fortune …”
 
“Naaaa… Harris works cheap and he got the tiles at a second-hand building supply place … it’s one of those, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ things,” Spike assured her, not adding the small detail of the ‘bunny blackmail’ Spike had elicited from Xander that Christmas.
 
“The tiles are gay?” Buffy asked, confused.
 
“No, they’re not bloody gay … they might’ve been liberated from a construction site … resold cheap. The second-hand supply place don’t ask questions ‘bout where stuff comes from,” Spike clarified.
 
“Oh … you re-did our bathroom with stolen tiles,” Buffy summed up.
 
“Not stolen … liberated.”
 
“Oh, they were being held captive by Columbian paramilitary rebels and you rescued them, gave them a new home … impressive. Who knew building materials were such a big target for kidnapping and you were such a Good Samaritan,” Buffy teased before dropping a kiss on his lips. Spike wrapped his arms around her and pulled her body against his as he deepened the kiss.
 
“Not sure you actually thanked me proper back then…” Spike hinted before capturing her lips again.
 
“Mmmm… well, I’ll have to fix that,” Buffy murmured against his mouth, pressing her body fully against his.
 
“What’s going on?” Buffy and Spike heard a small voice ask from behind them.
 
“Nothing, just Mom and Dad smooching again…” Annie answered with a sigh before she turned and went back into her room.
 
“Oh brother …” Billy moaned, rolling his eyes as he walked past them like they weren’t even there and went into the small WC, but didn’t pull the door fully closed. Buffy and Spike laughed against each other’s lips as they heard him raise the lid on the commode and the sound of water flowing into water emanate from the small room.

 

“Is it just me, or does that put a damper on the mood?” Buffy asked with a smile and Spike rolled his eyes.
 
“That’s why there’s a bloody lock on the door …”
 
“Well, we’ll have to remember to lock it next time,” Buffy offered as Billy flushed the toilet and emerged from the WC.
 
“Seat?” Buffy asked and Billy sighed, his shoulders slumping, and turned around and plodded back in and put the seat down then came out and started past them towards the door of the bathroom.
 
“Hands …” Buffy reminded him and Billy sighed again and rolled his eyes before going back to the sink and washing his hands.
 
When he had finished, Buffy and Spike followed him out of the bathroom and watched him go back into the room he shared with Dani and begin rummaging around through the toy box, making enough noise to wake his sister up from her nap.
 
“He’s turned into a real boy, hasn’t he?” Buffy asked as they watched their son ‘accidentally’ drop a Koosh-ball on his sleeping sister’s head.

 

Spike laughed and nodded as Dani woke up and threw the ball back at him. “’Snips an’ snails and puppy dogs tails’… I think they both got a bit o’ the puppy dog tails.”
 

**~**
 
After dinner, Spike headed out to Willy’s, telling Buffy he’d most likely be home around two … unless it was really slow, in which case he’d be earlier, or really busy, in which case he’d be later.
 
“When should I start to worry?” Buffy asked as she walked out into the garden with him.
 
“Don’t worry, pet … got the Gem, remember? Plus, Faith’ll be there most a’ the night, I expect,” Spike assured her. “I’ll let ya’ know if I’m gonna be very late, yeah?”
 
“Oh … Faith again,” Buffy muttered under her breath as she looked everywhere except at Spike.
 
Spike stopped walking and narrowed his eyes at her, lifting her chin up with a finger so she had to look at him. “Faith works there too, Buffy. Council don’ pay her squat … she’s gotta make some spending money. She patrols ‘n then stops in ‘round ten or eleven, works ‘til two, during the roughest part o’ the night.”
 
Buffy nodded. “Sure, I understand …”
 
“No, you don’t. You’re standing there right now thinkin’ that I’d rather be around Pincushion Girl than I would you, and you’d be bloody well wrong. You’re the only one I want, Buffy … the only one I love. Never doubt that, pet,” Spike told her sincerely as he held her eyes captive with hers.
 
“What about Avengelyne?” Buffy asked softly. “What if she was … what if she wasn’t me?”
 
Spike shook his head slowly from side to side. “But she was you. You’re the one, Buffy … you’ve always been the one.”
 
“Maybe you’d rather have that wild angel ….”

 

“Please stop,” Spike interrupted her. “You. You’re the wildest bloody angel I’ve ever known … if you got any wilder, I’d spontaneously combust just lookin’ at ya. I stopped searching for Avengelyne a long time ago … I stopped dreaming ‘bout her the moment I laid eyes on you.
 
“Buffy … Avengelyne showed me what love could be, but it was you that made me feel like I was worthy of it. She gave me a moment of epiphany, but you … you give me so much more. I died so many years ago, but every moment of every day you show me what it is to live. The angel uncovered my heart, but you filled it to overflowing with love. You’re the one, the only one I want.”
 
“I love you so much, Spike … I just … I’ve missed so much and I don’t know how to be – I don’t know what to be. I’ve changed, those years changed me … I don’t know if I’m still the woman you want,” Buffy admitted. “I’m not the same woman you went to bed with two nights ago…I don’t know how to be that woman.”

 

Spike sighed and tilted his head to the side as he studied her. It was true enough, she wasn’t the same woman, there was a hardness to her eyes that hadn’t been there before, but at her core, she was still Buffy. She’d always been a warrior, but now she was a hardened veteran who had been in more than her share of tough battles, who’d seen more than her share of pain and loneliness.
 
“Then stop trying to be her – just be you. You’re pushing yourself too hard, luv … I can’t stand to see you this distressed. In my eyes you’ll always be my angel, my heaven,” Spike told her, laying a hand gently on her face. “I’m sorry I let you down … I’m sorry you had to walk alone; I’d take that off you if I could. It doesn’t change how much I love you – if anything, what you’ve endured, and the strength you’ve shown, that just makes me love you more. You’re an angel that’s been flyin’ too close to the ground … lucky for me that you chose here to land, with me. I love you. You don’t have to be anything other than what you are – my angel … the other half of me.”
 
“I don’t want to let you down…” Buffy whispered.


 
“You could never let me down, pet,” Spike assured her. “You gave me my life back, yeah? I was gone - you gave me our family back. How could you possibly let me down?”
 
“I don’t know … I …” Buffy started.
 
“You’re over thinkin’ it, luv. I love you. You love me. It’s simple … don’t think, Buffy … just be. Just be you, what you are at your core – that’s all I ever want. An angel once encouraged me to do that, and she was right…” Spike reminded her.
 
Buffy smiled sadly up at him. “A vampire once encouraged me to do that…”
 
“And he was right…” Spike filled in, a loving smile on his lips. “Now … I suggest you go back inside and make sure all the bits are still alive and no one’s been locked in a closet, an’ then you can think up a proper christening for yer new bathroom, yeah?”
 
Buffy smiled wider. “It’s five years old…” she reminded him. “I’m sure it’s been christened before.”
 
“Never can ‘ave too many christenings …” he assured her, wagging eyebrows up and down suggestively.
 
“You might be too tired …” Buffy suggested with a sly smile, dragging a finger slowly down his chest.
 
“Never happen …”
 
Buffy laughed and gave him a kiss. “Be careful … Gem or not.”
 
“‘Careful’s m’ middle name…” Spike told her as he turned to go.
 
“Uh-uh … it’s Wesley,” Buffy giggled as she turned back towards the house.
 
“Bloody hell…” Spike muttered as he headed up the stairs to the street. How’d she find that out?
 
**~**
 
Anya showed up about 8:30 that evening to pick up JJ … apparently that was the ‘normal’ time. Buffy noticed that she looked exhausted, working two jobs and trying to care for a child and a husband were taking their toll on her. Buffy wished she could do more to help her friends, in her old life, she could’ve … but not now, not without William’s money in the coffer.
 
“You know … if you and Xander need some alone time, JJ can spend the night or something sometime – I could even take him to school,” Buffy offered, it was the only thing she could think of that Anya might appreciate.
 
“Oh, that would be great!!” Anya began, looking more like the enthusiastic woman Buffy remembered. “A few extra hours of sleep would be like heaven.”
 
Sleep? Buffy questioned silently. She must be more exhausted than I thought…
 
“I was thinking about … well, I haven’t talked to Spike yet, but maybe, I thought we could take the kids up to the mountains so they could see snow maybe later this month. If you don’t mind JJ missing school, he’s welcome to come,” Buffy offered.
 
“Really?! For how long … like a week … or two?” Anya asked, looking even more enthusiastic.
 
Buffy shrugged. “Maybe a few days…”

 

“Oh, that would be…Yes!” Anya exclaimed, grabbing Buffy into a tight hug.
 
Buffy finally extricated herself from Anya’s embrace. “Are you and Xand … are you ok? I mean … as a couple?”
 
Anya sighed and rolled her eyes, before looking around the room to make sure there were no children listening – she’d learned her lesson with the ‘birthday orgasms’ incident. Anya leaned in and kept her voice low, “He’s so tired and worried all the time … and so am I … I never thought I’d say this, but if it weren’t for sleeping a few hours every night, I don’t think our bed would even be necessary, and if it weren’t for fighting about money, we probably wouldn’t talk at all.”
 
“Oh…” Buffy frowned. “I’m sorry. He’s not … he’s not drinking or anything is he?”



Anya rolled her eyes and nodded. “Like a fish! We can’t afford to set the heat above sixty degrees, but he can afford his whiskey and his beer! Sometimes I wonder if we should’ve ever gotten married,” she admitted. “I mean … it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be and … well, forever is a lot longer than I thought. I thought I’d blink and it’d be over … but it just goes on and on and on.”
 
Buffy pulled her top lip into her mouth and held it between her teeth to keep from telling Anya that she was wrong … you could blink tomorrow and it could all be over, her family could be gone, she could be dead … anything could happen.
 
“What about Willow … maybe she and Tara could lend you some money,” Buffy suggested.
 
“Oh, she and Tara definitely could! Both of them are making money hand over fist! They’ve got that big house in the country, matching Mini-Cooper convertibles in the driveway … plus the pool, sauna, and room for a pony! Then there's the home theatre, that original Dali painting, and every electronic gadget known to man!” Anya enthused. “I sure wish Spike would’ve told me about that ‘silver shilling in the shoe’ thing when I married Xander!”

 

“Yeah … well, don’t feel bad, he didn’t tell me about it, either,” Buffy offered sympathetically.
 
“Actually, Willow did give us a loan before she bought that ridiculously overpriced and absurd eyeball painting … but Xander made me give it back,” Anya admitted to Buffy with a roll of her eyes.

 

“Why would he do that?”
 
“He said we weren’t ‘sponging off our friends’ … that we would stand on our own two feet. It apparently has something to do with testosterone, ‘cos he said something about being a man. I guess that extends to standing on the street corner when we lose the house …” Anya groused.
 
“Lose the house?! You might lose mom’s house?” Buffy questioned, clearly alarmed. Apparently, without William’s funds, Buffy and Spike weren’t able to give them the house free and clear, there was a mortgage still on it.
 
“We’re barely making the mortgage now … if anything happens to our jobs or we have any kind of emergency, if one of the cars breaks down or the roof starts leaking, we would never be able to cover everything,” she explained. “God forbid one of us gets sick and can’t work or …” Anya let her voice trail off and shrugged.
 
“We can’t even sell it for what the mortgage is on it; the prices have gone down so much since the real estate crash …” Anya continued to explain.
 
Buffy frowned. She didn’t know about a real estate crash … she hadn’t been paying much attention to anything over the last five years but her mission. She really didn’t know what to do to help her friends, so Buffy just nodded and gave Anya a sympathetic look and repeated her offer of watching JJ for them.
 
“Well, JJ’s a good kid … he’s welcome anytime,” Buffy assured her.
 
“He’s really the only good thing we’ve done,” Anya admitted, stopping abruptly when JJ, Dani, and Billy came running down the stairs. “Thanks, Buffy … Xander says I don’t tell you enough – I really appreciate you watching him for us.”
 
“Sure... That’s what friends are for.”
 
**~**
 
When Anya and JJ left, Buffy got Dani and Billy their baths and got them dressed in their PJ’s. Now she sat on the edge of Billy’s bed, tucking them in.
 
“So … what story do you guys want tonight?” Buffy asked as she perused the familiar books in the bookcase … books that had been handed down from their older sister.
 
“Cinderella!” Billy requested.
 
“No, that’s too mushy! Hansel and Gretel!” Dani enthused.
 
“No! Aunt Willow says that’s an unfair rep… unfair re-pre-…” Billy argued, trying to remember the word Willow had used, but finally giving up. “It’s not real. Witches aren’t mean and they don't eat kids!”
 
Buffy smiled as they sat up and continued to argue their points, finally holding her hands forming a “T” like a football coach asking for a ‘timeout’.
 
When they had quieted, she suggested, “How about the first time I met your Papa … has he told you that one?”
 
Both of their eyes went wide and they nodded enthusiastically.
 
“You dusted the bad vampire!” Dani offered.
 
“Papa fell in love with you from the moment he saw you!” Billy added.
 
“Yep … a little something for violence lovers and romantics alike …” Buffy laughed. “Ok, lay back down now and let’s get you tucked in …” Buffy suggested and the twins both lay back down and Buffy got them both tucked back under the covers.
 
“Well, it was September as I recall … but it was a warm night. Uncle Xander and Aunt Willow and I were at the Bronze. I was supposed to be studying … but I was dancing instead," Buffy began.



"What were you 'posed to be studyin'?" Billy wondered.

"Hmmm ... let's see now ..." Buffy bit her lip as she thought a moment. "OH! French! It was French!" she finally recalled.

"You speak French?" Billy questioned, his eyes wide. This was new information!

"Uhhhh ... well ... you see, studying at the Bronze never really worked very well 'cos the dancing kinda got in the way of the actual reading of the books ..." Buffy explained. "I don't recommend it. You should learn from your mother's mistakes - don't try to study and dance at the same time... those two things are un-mixy."

"Annie can speak French goood!" Dani offered.

"Yeah ... my point exactly, see!? She doesn't try to study and dance at the same time! Anyway ... as I was not studying, this really handsome stranger came in …”
 
“Papa!” Billy filled in, interrupting her.
 
“Yep …” Buffy agreed. “He said that there was a big guy out back trying to bite somebody. So, I ran out back and, sure enough, there was a bad vampire out there attacking someone.”
 
“So you kicked his ‘bloody bum’!” Dani added, enthusiastically, using the phrase that she’d heard Spike use more than once during this story.
 
“Well… first, he kicked mine a little bit, knocked me down, then Uncle Xander came out and he tossed me a stake and then I kicked the bad vampire’s … uhhh … bum!” Buffy agreed.

 

“Then you saw Papa again!” Billy prompted.
 
“I did … he was applauding,” Buffy continued. “He said …”
 
“Nice work, luv,” Billy filled in, trying to deepen his voice as he mimicked his father’s accent.
 
“Hey! You’re good at that!” Buffy smiled at him.

 

“And I wondered who this handsome guy was … I’d never seen him before, so I asked him what his name was,” Buffy continued, then stopped, unsure how Spike normally ended this story.
 
“And what did Papa say?” she asked Billy.
 
“You’ll find out on Saturday,” Billy filled in with a decent Cockney accent and Buffy gave him another smile.
 
“But he showed up on Thursday, ‘cos Papa couldn’t wait,” Dani filled in. “And grandma Summers hit him over the head with an axe! BAM!”


 
Buffy’s jaw dropped and her eyes went wide … how exactly had this story been related to them? “Yep … why did she do that?”
 
“’Cos she thought he was a bad vampire, but he was really a good vampire, and he just wanted to see you again and have some of your lemonade!” Billy supplied.
 
“That’s right…” Buffy agreed.
 
“You know, your grandma Summers would love you guys so much, she’d be so proud of both of you, just like I am. I’m sorry you never got to meet her,” Buffy told them softly as tears stung her eyes.
 
“We know, Mama,” Billy assured her, sitting up and giving Buffy a hug. “We love you too.”
 
Buffy returned his hug as she closed her eyes and tried to get her composure back. Maybe she should’ve gone with Hansel and Gretel…
 
Buffy swallowed back her tears and dropped a kiss in Billy’s soft, blond curls and he lay back down. “Ok, you guys … time for sleep,” Buffy told them as she tucked his covers back around him and then moved over to Dani’s bed and dropped a kiss on her forehead.
 
“Next time, I’ll do one with more fighting, ok?” Buffy asked her daughter and Dani nodded enthusiastically.
 
“I love you, Danielle Dawn,” Buffy whispered to her.
 
“I love you too, Mama.”
 
**~**
 
Buffy left their room and pulled the door closed behind her, leaning back against it heavily as she closed her eyes. She couldn’t get over how much they’d grown … how they were their own people now, with their own personalities, their own likes and dislikes, their own opinions and their own views of the world.
 
How was she ever going to fit back in? How would she be able to be their mother when she’d missed so many milestones of their lives? When every conversation was filled with confusion for Buffy, making her unsure of what to say or how she should react? So many emotions flooded through her … exhalation at having them back, trepidation that she might do something to put them in danger again … something as simple as feeding her youngest daughter chocolate, guilt over nearly giving up … okay, guilt over actually giving up on ever getting back here, joy over having a second chance with them … with all of them.
 
Buffy wiped at her eyes and took a deep breath as she pushed her back off their door and headed towards Annie’s room to say goodnight to her eldest daughter. Buffy had faced harder battles and won … surely she could find a way to fit back into her family … to be the mother, lover, and friend that they needed. It would just take time and help from all her friends – just like it had been before, just like it had been right from the beginning.
 
Buffy nodded, trying to assure herself, she was no longer standing alone … she had a group of friends and family that loved her and they’d help her through, just like they’d always done. That had always been the thing that set her apart from other Slayers – her friends and family. They’d patch her broken wings and help her until she could fly on her own again.
 
All the emotions she was feeling suddenly meshed into one … hope. Hope for the future, hope for her family and friends and their happiness and well being. Knowing her friends and family were here, that they’d always be by her side, lit the flame of hope in her soul again and, like a small beacon on a faraway shore, she prayed it would be enough keep her from crashing against the rocks.

 

**~**
 
{{Click here to hear "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” by Willie Nelson on YouTube   }}

If you had not have fallen
Then I would not have found you
Angel flying too close to the ground

And I patched up your broken wing
And hung around a while
Tried to keep your spirits up
And your fever down

I knew someday that you would fly away
For love's the greatest healer to be found

So leave me if you need to
I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground

Fly on, fly on past the speed of sound
I'd rather see you up
Than see you down

Leave me if you need to
I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground
End Notes:
TBC ... Ok, if you haven't already, you can open your eyes now ... most of the angst is over ... there will just be a few small moments of angst, but nothing too catastrophic ... The bathroom 'christening' will be next ... then we'll have a Scooby meeting and see if the brain trusts can sort out some remaining questions... There are still a couple of surprises along the way, so don't go anywhere just yet!
You Save Me by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
There can never be too many christenings …
**
Music Referenced:
“You Save Me” - Kenny Chesney
 http://youtu.be/oWsSDIQ1bHY
  **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
"Spike is something special. Some part of his soul was always there. He could fall in love with Buffy. No other vampire could." ~David Fury
 **
Dodecahedron: is any three dimensional, solid object with straight lines and twelve flat faces. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodecahedron
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story arc because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Monday, January 18th, 2010, 1:30am:


As their children slept peacefully in their beds, Buffy paced the length of the upstairs hallway from the stairway to the twin’s room and back again as she waited for Spike to get home, careful not to step on the dusty pink rose petal trail that led up the stairs and down the hall to the ‘new’ bathroom. She couldn’t remember ever being so nervous in her life…well, maybe over the SATs or her driving test, but not over a guy … not over her husband.
 
She’d found a stash of white pillar candles in the hall closet and had two large groups of them burning on the floor of the bathroom on either side of the carved wooden bench in the dressing area. Their soft glow reflected in the mirrors that surrounded the bench on three sides and it looked like they went on forever as they reflected from one mirror to the other and back again. She’d also scattered more candles around on the vanity and near the tub, which was full of steaming water splashed with scented bath oil with more rose petals floating in it, making the whole room smell like a garden full of roses and gardenias. She’d struggled with what to wear, finally settling on a white nightgown that had thin straps, a stretchy, lace-covered bodice that hugged her upper body and a full, satin skirt with a flowing kerchief hem that fell just below the knee. She’d put on some strappy high-heeled, white sandals with it, knowing how much Spike liked seeing her in heels … she hoped the look wasn’t too ‘lady of the evening’.

 

Buffy checked her hair in the mirror at the top of the stairs for the hundredth time before turning and starting her journey back down the hallway. It’s Spike … it’s me and it’s Spike, she tried to assure herself, but the butterflies continued to flutter in her stomach. What if he’d changed? What if she hadn’t? What if … what if she really wasn’t the same person and they didn’t connect like they had before? What if? What if? What if?
 
After pacing the length of the hallway and back again, and checking her hair yet again, Buffy turned to start her trek anew for the up-teenth time. As she turned, she nearly jumped out of her skin when she almost ran into Annie, who had come up behind her.
 
“Oh, God! You scared me!” Buffy exclaimed, trying to get her racing heart to slow back to just a fast gallop. “What are you doing up, honey?”
 
“I had to go bathroom,” Annie explained. “You look pretty.”
 
“Do I?” Buffy questioned, looking back in the mirror again. “Do you think Papa will like it?”

 

“He says you’d be pretty in a burlap sack!” Annie informed her with a smile and Buffy laughed.
 
“That was probably when I was wanting to buy a really expensive dress and he was wanting to buy a do-dad for the Harley instead,” Buffy offered.
 
Annie shrugged. “I think burlap would be itchy,” Annie pointed out, rolling her eyes.
 
Buffy laughed again and nodded in agreement. “Silk and satin is much better.
 
“Hey, Annie … can you use the bathroom downstairs, honey … I kind of have that one … occupied,” Buffy requested, tilting her head towards the upstairs bathroom.
 
“I know … you’re gonna give Dad smoochies, huh?”
 
Buffy smiled and bit her bottom lip lightly with her teeth before answering. “Yeah … do I … do I give him smoochies a lot?”
 
“Uh-huh …” Annie confirmed with a smile. “He likes your smoochies! He always smiles afterwards and says you taste like heaven!”
 
“Does he? That’s good … that’s good to know,” Buffy told her, trying to hold back a silly, schoolgirl grin.
 
“I think it’s just the chocolate he tastes …” Annie admitted and Buffy laughed out loud.

 

“Do I eat a lot of chocolate?” Buffy asked with an amused smile.
 
Annie nodded enthusiastically. “He says we’re his ‘cocoa cuties’!”
 
“Well, maybe things haven’t changed that much, after all…”
 
**~**
 
Buffy got Annie put back to bed and finally, at 2:13am, according to the grandfather clock at the end of the hall that Buffy had been watching, Spike walked through the garden doors. Buffy ran down the hallway to the bathroom and closed the door gently behind her as she tried to decide where to wait for him, finally settling on the wooden bench. They could start there and move to the tub …

 

Oh, God, is the water still hot? she wondered, running over to it and dipping her fingers in … plenty warm enough, not steaming, but, hopefully, she and Spike would be making their own stem very soon.
 
Buffy could hear Spike’s boots on the stairs as he took them two at a time, following her rose petal trail. Thank goodness Lorne had so many friends in this town … he knew exactly who to call to have a dozen of the dusty-pink beauties delivered, even at the late hour that Buffy had come up with her plan and called him for help.
 
Buffy heard Spike’s footsteps getting nearer and she took a deep breath and quickly laid down on her side on the bench, resting her head on one hand, bending her knees slightly and pulling the hem of her nightgown up to show more thigh … then she put it back down, thinking that was too skanky … then pulled it back up ‘cos Spike wouldn’t think it was skanky, he’d think it was hot. She picked up the last dusty pink rose and laid it down on the bare skin of her thigh, holding it in place lightly with her free hand. She’d no sooner gotten set, than the bathroom door opened and she heard Spike step in, then the door close and the lock turn.
 
Spike walked slowly up to the dressing area … an area that used to be part of a bedroom next to the bathroom before Xander not only re-tiled the old monstrosity, but re-plumbed it and expanded it to fit their expanding family, as well. Spike stopped moving when he saw Buffy … he would’ve stopped breathing had he actually needed to breathe, and his heart would’ve stopped beating. She seemed to be floating on the soft candlelight that surrounded her, her hair shimmered in the golden glow and framed her face like a halo … this was his angel, all dressed in white.

 

How had he not known that all this time? How had he not remembered? He thought that Avengelyne’s face, her eyes, her voice, her touch, her love, were burned into his mind like a brand, that he’d never forget them – not in a hundred years, not in a million or even a trillion … but he’d never put the two together before. He always knew that Buffy was his angel … his heaven; he just didn’t realize that she was the angel he’d been searching for all those years. Of course there couldn’t be more than one angel for him … it made perfect sense now, she was the one – the one and only woman that he’d ever truly loved with every fiber of his being, with his whole heart and soul.
 
Buffy held her breath as Spike came into view and she waited for his reaction. It had been so long since she’d been with Spike that she felt like it was their first time, only now there was so much more at stake. Their first time was about lust … it was about solace and perhaps a little defiance and trying to forget the world for a while … this was about so much more; this was about love. As confident as she’d been with William (had that only been a couple of days ago?), Buffy found herself feeling full of doubt and insecurities with Spike. What if the years she’d spent alone had changed her too much?
 
Buffy saw a range of emotions cross Spike’s face and flash through those expressive eyes, from awe to lust to something that looked like realization. After Spike didn’t move or say anything for what seemed an eternity to Buffy, she finally swung her legs around, sat up on the bench, and extended the rose towards him.

 

Spike stepped closer to her and took the rose from her hand as he went down on one knee in front of her. He took her hand and kissed the back of it gently, then began trailing soft kisses up her arm. Buffy reached out to lay her other hand on his cheek, but he moved at just the wrong time and she poked him in the eye. Spike gasped and grabbed his eye, dropping her arm and the rose and turning away from her.
 
“Oh, God, I’m sorry! Oh, are you alright?” Buffy questioned with genuine concern. Buffy went to stand up so she could go around and check on him, but Spike stood up at the same time and they head butted each other, both exclaiming “Ow!” in unison and grabbing their heads. The head-butt knocked Buffy back onto the bench and her legs swung out from under her when her butt hit. As Spike went to walk over to the sink to run some water over his injured eye, his legs tangled in hers and he fell flat on his face on the hard tile floor.
 
“Oh, God! Spike! I’m so sorry!” Buffy began again as Spike moaned and rolled over; forgetting about his eye and head as he tried to straighten what he was sure was a broken nose before the Gem of Amarra healed it crooked.


 
When Buffy stood up to go over to him and help, the heel of her shoe got caught in the hem of her nightgown and she stumbled, kicking over several of the candles and spilling hot wax on the instep of her foot and over her bare toes. Buffy screamed out in pain, pulled her foot away from the hot wax instinctively and kicked Spike hard in the ribs.
 
“Bloody hell!” Spike exclaimed, forgetting about his broken nose and reaching for his broken ribs, but he didn’t stand a chance of reaching them before Buffy tumbled down on top of him, as she tried to balance on one foot so she could get her shoe, and the hot wax, off the other.

 

“Oh, God! Spike! I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed again as he yelled out in renewed pain when she came down hard on his stomach and chest, sending knifes of pain through Spike’s torso from his injured ribs.
 
Buffy finally got her shoe, and the rapidly hardening wax, off her foot and started to try and get up off Spike, not sure how much pain he was in, but Spike wrapped his arms around her and held her firm. “Please, just stop,” he requested as he kicked two of the still burning candles that she’d knocked over away from them before they both went up in flames … and not in the kind of flames he had in mind when he came in here a few minutes ago.
 
“I’m sorry … I’m so sorry,” Buffy cried as she turned over and buried her face against his shoulder and tried to lie as still as she could so she didn’t do anything else to hurt him. “I screwed this all up… Are you ok?” Buffy asked, not daring to move or even look up.
 
“I’ll survive …” Spike assured her. “What about your tootsie?”
 
“I’m so sorry, Spike … I wanted this to be perfect … I just wanted … I ...” Buffy stammered as she began to cry against him, ignoring his question. She’d completely fucked this whole thing up … He must think I’m drain bamaged. ‘Klutzy Slayer kills husband, sets house on fire – story at eleven!’
 
“Buffy, luv … look at me,” Spike requested softly and Buffy slowly and carefully lifted her face to look at him, mindful to not hit him in the chin with her head as she raised up.
 
“You’re tryin’ too hard, pet,” he told her as he brushed her hair back from her face with one hand. “You’re nervous as a long tailed tabby in a room full a’ rockin’ chairs. Nothin’ needs to be perfect … nothin’s ever perfect, luv, and that’s the beauty of life, that’s what keeps it interestin’.”

 

Buffy snorted softly. “Well, then this must be one of the most interesting nights of your life…” she replied dryly, rolling her eyes.
 
Spike sat up, turning her around and pulling her with him as he leaned back against one wall of the dressing area, a safe distance away from the candles. Spike wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest as she sat between his legs on the cool tile floor.
 
“Buffy … I can’t begin to imagine all you’ve been through, I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all go away; I’d bear it for you if I could; but no matter what, you ‘ave to know that I love you. I love you in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, and in joy as well as in sorrow. I promise to love you unconditionally, to believe in you, to honor and respect you, to laugh with you and cry with you, and to cherish you for as long as we both shall live and beyond,” Spike assured her, reciting their marriage vows to her. “You remember that, yeah?”
 
Tears ran down Buffy’s face and she nodded slowly. “I remember … I just … Spike, I’m afraid … I’ve changed. I’m so afraid that I’m not … I’m not the same person you love, that I’m not the same person that you made those vows to.”

 

“No? Who are you, then?” Spike questioned. “The Slayer? A wild, fallen angel? My best friend? The woman who believed in me, who fought alone to save me and our family? The mother o’ my children? My heaven, my earth, my stars? ‘Cos I made those vows to all those women.”
 
Buffy closed her eyes and let out a deep breath, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “I’m just Buffy …” she whispered, covering her face with her hands as the tears came harder.
 
“Ah, well … that’s different, innit?” Spike asked rhetorically. “Just Buffy’s m’ favorite of ‘em all… you know why?”
 
“No,” Buffy replied, her voice barely audible.
 
“I’ll tell ya,” Spike began as he pulled her hands away from her eyes. “’Cos that’s Just Buffy,” he told her, pointing to her reflection in the mirror across from them. “Just Buffy is a living, breathin’ basket of contradictions and puzzles, she changes constantly and confounds and confuses the sharpest minds with ‘er charms. She’s strong and vulnerable, she’s serious and funny, she’s sexy and … uhh … damn sexy, she’s fire and ice, devil and angel, naughty and nice, woman and girl. Every day she surprises and perplexes me with somethin’ new … a new puzzle, a new contradiction … and I get to spend the rest of eternity unraveling all those contradictions and finding the answers to all those puzzles.”
 
“So, you’re saying I’m a Rubik’s Cube?” Buffy asked sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
 
Spike chuckled lightly and wrapped his arms around her tighter, pulling her back tight against his chest. “You, my darling wife, are the mother of all Rubik’s Cubes. You are a jumbled up rainbow o’ colors and 'ave more sides than dodecahedron.”




Buffy scrunched up her face in confusion. Did he just call me a ‘dodo’? “I’m not sure I know what that means …”
 
“It means, luv, that it’s gonna to take more than a poked out eye, a bump on the noggin, a broken nose, some cracked ribs, and being nearly set on fire to get rid o’ me.”
 
Buffy laughed and rolled her eyes. “Well … I’ve got more where that came from,” she warned him.
 
“Do your worst, luv … I don’t scare easy.”
 
Buffy laughed and shook her head as she rubbed at her eyes. She should’ve known he wouldn’t have changed … he still knew just the right thing to say, he still knew how to comfort her, how to make her feel like she was the center of the universe …
 
“I love you, Spike,” she whispered as she leaned back and relaxed in his arms, closing her eyes and letting the memories of what seemed a long ago life flood her heart … memories of other times spent in his strong arms, memories of laughter and passion and … smoochies.
 
“I love you, Buffy,” Spike whispered back against her ear. She had told him a lot about what had happened to her, but he knew that she was holding something back … he didn’t know what. She’d told him of the time she’d spent with him in purgatory … in the cold red-hell-limbo, and how the trials had ‘taken a toll’ on him … but she’d hedged when he questioned her about what happened after that. How had the trials ended? What had been his fate? She said she didn’t know … that one day he was just gone; she said it didn’t matter anyway because the wish had skewed the trials, they weren’t fair … they weren’t real.
 
He could only guess that his judgment was what he always thought it would be – hell. There would be no second chances for him; his soul wouldn’t be recycled, there would be no ‘give it another try’s here on earth, and definitely no heaven. She didn’t want to tell him that … he could understand her trepidation; he wouldn’t want to say those words to her if the situation were reversed. He wished he could remember it himself … but at the same time, he was thankful that he didn’t. He was sure that one day he’d have his chance again, that he’d face those same trials and most likely, meet the same fate that she’d witnessed and reversed, which was all the more reason to relish his time on earth, with his wild, fallen angel.
 
“You know,” Spike started, his mouth close enough to her ear that she could feel his breath against her skin, “If you’re still set on perfection, they say there is one way to achieve it.”
 
“Yeah? What’s that?” Buffy asked as she hugged his arms even tighter around her body with hers.
 
“Practice, practice, practice …”
 
“Is that right?” Buffy asked coyly, a small smile replacing her tears.
 
“Uh-huh,” Spike assured her as he pulled her hair back and trailed his tongue slowly down from her ear to her shoulder and back up again.
 
“Mmmmmm,” Buffy moaned, tilting her head to the side to give him easy access to her neck. “I guess we should get on that right away then…”
 
Buffy reluctantly pulled away from Spike, pushed her other shoe off with her slightly burnt toes, and very carefully stood up … taking extra care not to step on him or kick him or anything him, before offering him her hand and pulling him to his feet. When Spike was standing in front of her, he pulled her to him and kissed her lips softly over and over again. Buffy wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the tender kisses … there was no rush to them, there were no demands. Like a child would savor the last few bites of ice cream in a bowl, taking smaller and smaller bites to make it last as long as possible, Buffy and Spike savored the feel and the taste of their lover’s lips as moments turned into minutes.

Buffy was still half-afraid that she’d wake up at any moment … that none of this was real, but it felt real. His soft lips on hers felt unbelievably real; his strong arms around her felt just as she remembered; his body pressed against hers made her heart race and her own body ache in need of him. Surely it had to be real … after all, who would put a ‘Keystone Cops’ sequence in and turn a perfectly good wet dream into a comedy of errors?

  

Spike could feel her nervous fear start to wane as he rained the gentle kisses over her lips. What she must’ve been through! Alone for five years … not even a friend to confide in, to lean on, no one to hold on those long, cold nights. He thought of Avengelyne and remembered the sadness in her eyes, how her tears had torn at William’s heart and how she had shown him what love could be; what was possible. Buffy had never stopped loving him. In all those years, she’d never taken another lover … yes, she’d turned to Rack and his magical high, but hadn’t Spike turned to whiskey more than once in his long life to ease the pain of being alone? Her love and devotion for him never ceased to amaze Spike, how deep her love must be.
 
Spike’s heart filled anew with love for this woman … this Slayer, who, for reasons unknown, had chosen him to love. His heart suddenly felt like it was the winged angel … soaring among the stars with exaltation … filled with bliss and rapture. Spike put his hands on each side of Buffy’s face and pulled back to look into her eyes … those eyes that shone like sparkling emeralds, those eyes that were filled with love.

 

“Why do you love me?” Spike asked her softly, searching the depths of her eyes, trying to see into her soul.
 
Buffy felt like she was drowning in the blue of his eyes as he delved into hers – the one thing that never changed were Spike’s eyes. So expressive, now they were filled with love and compassion and … hope. Hope for the future, hope for their family, hope for the world … it was the thing that she had tried to give Spike in purgatory, but she had never really succeeded in building his hope into more than a small flickering flame. But now hope burned eternal in her husband’s eyes and Buffy knew in that instant that this wasn’t a dream; it was real. She was back home and that small hope that she had felt earlier blossomed in her heart into something that was tangible, real.

 

“I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you … not once, but twice,” Buffy replied just as softly. “You’re the other half of me, Spike, and somehow the entire universe knows that we belong together … the entire universe minus one – you.”
 
Spike shook his head slowly, as much as he loved her, as filled with light as his heart was to realize the depths of her love, he still wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve it. “What happened to me … what happened in the trials?” he asked her, his eyes never wavering from hers, daring her to tell him the truth.
 
Buffy tried to look away, but he held her head still and moved with her eyes, so she couldn’t avoid his gaze. “They weren’t real, Spike. All they could see was the bad, the demon. I love you because I can see the good, I can see the man … I know what’s in your heart; I know your soul. You have to trust me when I say that what happened there will not be your fate. This I promise you … I ‘Spike’ promise.
 
“I walked through hell to save you … to save our children, all our children,” Buffy continued. “That won’t be in vain, Spike … I know it, I feel it … I promise.”
 
“You save me every day, Buffy. You’ve saved me every day since that night in the Common. I don’ know how you did it, but you touched a piece of my soul that night, protected it with your love from the demon … it’s always been there, waiting for you to unlock it. I felt it that first time I saw you in the Bronze … didn’t know what it was then, but I do now. It was that piece of me that was still searching for my angel, it never left me; it knew you instantly,” Spike admitted.
 
Buffy shook her head slowly. “No, Spike … that wasn’t me protecting a piece of your soul – that was you. It’s always been you, even before … before there was an Avengelyne. You always thought that William was a … ‘ponce’, but that’s not true. William has the soul of a warrior …”
 
“An’ the heart of a lion?” Spike questioned, tilting his head to study her as he repeated what Avengelyne had told William all those years ago.

 

Buffy smiled softly and nodded before laying her palm against Spike’s unbeating heart. “He was strong enough to fight the demon when it really mattered … he was strong enough to keep that small piece of his soul safe, hidden from the demon – and that’s made all the difference, Spike. It saved your … our babies back then, it saved Giles from Angelus, it saved me and all of our friends more than once…even before Avengelyne, before the wish, you tried to save your mother from her illness, so it wasn’t me, Spike – it was you.”
 
“The chip … the soul …” Spike started to protest, but Buffy interrupted him.
 
“In the other dimension, the chip was an excuse … you had ample opportunity to kill me, to kill my friends … you had Willow and Xander in the factory, completely defenseless … and yet, you didn’t kill them, even before the chip,” Buffy pointed out. “Just like getting the rest of your soul restored in this life, getting the chip in the other life was an excuse for the demon to give in to William. Neither of those things made you help us … but you did, time and time again, even as the demon protested. You’re a warrior Spike … with a good heart … do you really need to ask me again why I love you?”
 
Spike studied her face as he processed what she’d said … What other vampire had ever saved their family? He always thought it was his Guardian Angel that had given William the strength to do that … but now she said even before the wish he had tried to save his mother. And she was right, in the other dimension, even with the chip, if he had wanted to kill her and her little Scooby gang, it wouldn’t have been that hard to do. There were plenty of ways he could’ve done it without triggering the chip if he’d really wanted to, but the fact was, he didn’t really want to. There was always something holding the demon back with her and her group of misfits; that little piece of soul that William had been able to hang onto – it knew her, it could feel her soul, it knew she was the one; his soul mate, his other half. Spike finally gave her a small nod of agreement and Buffy gave him a reassuring smile.
 
“When’d you get so smart, Slayer?” Spike asked her, his voice low and soft.
 
Buffy shrugged. “I’ve always been smart; I just don’t like to let on … kinda like a certain vampire I know … Professor Weckerly.”
 
Spike snorted softly and rolled his eyes. “Don’ go spreadin’ that around. Watcher’ll be wanting me ta piddle with ‘is books or some such nonsense.”
 
Buffy raised her brows and laughed. “Yeah, I can definitely think of better things to piddle with …”

 

Spike leaned down and touched her lips with his, kissing her softly again as he’d done before. Buffy leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his neck as he pulled her tightly against his body and deepened the kiss. He could feel her need building again along with his own, but he didn’t want to rush this. Even though Spike remembered all the love they’d made over the last years, including just two nights ago, before going on patrol and meeting that big blue demon, he knew Buffy didn’t. Except for that night with William, this woman in his arms had been alone for nearly five years … for her it wasn’t one of their many nights (or days) together, it was a big deal … it was special … it meant a lot.
 
“I think the water got cold…” Buffy murmured against Spike’s lips.
 
“No worries…we can christen it another night. How about I get a shower an’ meet you back in our room, yeah?” Spike suggested and Buffy nodded shyly, as if she was thirteen and a boy had just invited her to go under the bleachers with him to neck.
 
Spike gave her one last kiss and released her and Buffy stepped away from him, picked her shoes up from where she’d left them and started towards the door.
 
“Just be a minute, luv…” Spike assured her. He wouldn’t have even done that except he knew he smelled like Willy’s … beer, and cigarettes, and demon blood from the fight he’d broken up earlier, and that wasn’t what he wanted her to remember from this night.

 

“Okay,” Buffy murmured as she reached the door and put her hand on the lock. She turned back and watched him as he dropped his t-shirt and jeans into a hamper inside one of the closets in the dressing area and slid his boots in next to it before closing the mirrored door. There was a whole line of hampers in there, each with a name over them just like the towel racks … Papa, Mama, Annie, Billy, and Dani. Buffy couldn’t help but smile … how had she managed to train them all, even Spike, to put their clothes in the hampers rather than leave them on the floor? She’d have to ask him about that one day…
 
Buffy watched as he went to the shower, stepped in and turned it on … not even waiting the requisite five minutes for the warm water to make it through the old, rusty pipes. His body was just as she remembered, lean and sculpted and just begging to be touched. Buffy felt a wave of desire wash over her body, sending goose bumps racing out from her core in all directions, up and down her arms and legs and tingling the back of her neck all the way up to her scalp. Buffy let go of the latch on the door, leaving it locked. She dropped her shoes from her hand and slid her nightgown off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor next to them.
 
Spike jumped slightly when Buffy came up behind him and took the sudsy sea sponge out of his hand as she stepped into the shower with him. “I’ll get your back…” Buffy offered with an easy smile.
 
“Thanks, luv,” Spike replied as he turned and leaned against the side of the tiled shower. He’d made sure Xander had made it big enough for both of them to fit in comfortably … just in case one of them needed those hard to reach places … uhhh … reached.
 
Buffy smiled at the label on the soap he’d been using. “Stud Bubbles” it said and it smelled of sandalwood and vanilla. She added a little more of the soft soap to the sponge and started at his shoulders, covering them thoroughly with the creamy lather.
 
“Who picked this out?” Buffy asked as she worked her way down one of his arms, then back up and started on the other.
 
“Demon Bird gave it to us for Christmas … said it was an ancient aphrodisiac supposedly used by Cleopatra,” Spike explained.
 
“Hmmm, hope she kept some for her and Xander,” Buffy mused as she started down Spike’s back with the suds, using the sponge and her hand to draw circles over the hard muscles of his back.
 
Spike moaned, closed his eyes, and dropped his head as Buffy kneaded and massaged his back. “You’re tight…” she informed him as she worked.
 
Spike chuckled softly. “That’s usually my line, pet…”
 
Buffy laughed and slapped his shoulder lightly. “You’re so bad…
 
After a moment, her voice turned serious and she asked, “Spike, are we ok – you and me? I mean … money must be a problem… Anya said she and Xander were … well, they’re having money problems and…” Buffy’s voice trailed off, not sure exactly how to ask him if they were having the same problem as their friends. She continued to massage up and down the hard muscles on either side of his spine, working the tightness and soreness out little by little as she waited for his answer. 



“We’re fine, luv. We manage with the money. Willy don’t pay much, but the work’s regular and fits my schedule. I’m sorry ‘bout the money … William’s money,” he began again.
 
“No … don’t ever apologize for that again, you did the right thing. Spike … I would give that money and Dru’s money and this house and every dime I’ve ever made, every pair of shoes I’ve ever bought, every bit of jewelry you’ve ever given me, for this moment in time. For you, for our family … I’d give everything I own for this. I don’t care if we have to live on the streets and eat out of dumpsters … as long as we’re all together, that’s all that matters,” Buffy assured him.
 
Spike turned around under the spray, sending water spattering in all new directions, and pulled her into a hug. “I promised your mum and your Watcher that I’d take care of you and provide for our family … and I will, Buffy. You never need to worry. You won’t be eatin’ out of any bloody dumpsters…”
 
Buffy nodded against his chest as the warm water rained down on both of them and the sandalwood and vanilla wafted lightly through the damp air. “You can find some really good stuff in dumpsters if you know where to look,” Buffy pointed out, having lived in the streets and alleyways of many a city as she hunted her prey over the last years had given her a new appreciation for dumpster diving.
 
“Humph!” Spike disagreed. “For us, maybe … I’m afraid your girly-girl daughter would object.”
 
“What about Dani and Billy?” Buffy questioned, looking up at him as water bounced off his shoulder and splattered on her face.
 
“Our Lemon Drop … she could hold ‘er own with the best dumpster divers, I’d wager,” Spike enlightened her.

 

Buffy smiled at his new nickname for Dani. “Lemon Drop?”
 
Spike shrugged. “Sweet, but got a kick to ‘er, that girl does. Don’t want to get on ‘er bad side, but ya just gotta love her – like ‘er mum – sweet and tart at the same time – full a’ contradictions,” Spike explained.
 
Buffy smiled and laid her head back against his shoulder. “And Billy?”
 
“Junior, well … he’d be happy long as there were books to be had. I believe he’d rather read than eat…” Spike told her.
 
“Well, then … we’ll just have to make sure we pick the right dumpsters … maybe Borders or Barnes & Nobel…” Buffy mused. “There was this one huge bookstore on Piccadilly, they had the best scones, it was so big, you could hide in there for hours out of the cold and no one ever asked you to leave…”
 
“You’re a piece a’ work, you are,” Spike laughed as he lifted her face to his and dropped a kiss on her nose. He wasn’t sure how, but this woman, who couldn’t remember the last five years of their life, had made him love her even more. Yes, she’d been changed, but it was clear the changes had made her stronger, had made her appreciate their family even more, and seemed to have opened her heart to him even wider.
 
“Now, what happened to m’ back?” Spike asked. “Not trying to get out of it, are ya?”
 
“No way…” Buffy assured him, releasing him and stepping back as he turned back around and faced the wall.

Buffy continued to massage Spike’s hard muscles, the silky soap made his skin feel even softer and her hands slid over his muscles easily. Buffy worked her way down further, kneading his lower back with strong hands and Spike moaned again and leaned heavily against the wall of the shower as he let her work out all the stress and worry from his taut muscles. He had been worried about her since the blue demon attack … and then, when he found out about the wish and all she’d been through, his concern for her just grew, manifesting in his body with sore and tired muscles. Her hands on his body were like magic … erasing the fears, the worries, the doubts … this was still his wife, what she’d been through would be with her forever; what she’d lost, the years by his side, watching their children grow, could never be replaced, but it was still Buffy.

 

Buffy moved her hands to his butt, lathering his cheeks with the fragrant soap as she admired the view. He’d always had the cutest ass … and it hadn’t changed one bit, the view from behind Spike was almost as good as the view from the front. Buffy reluctantly pulled herself away from her adoration of his hiney and moved down his strong legs, over his hamstrings, past his knees, calves, ankles, feet … then she started back up, running her hands up the outside of his legs to his slim hips. She got more soap on the sea sponge and lathered it between her palms, then circled his body with her hands. Leaning against his back, she wrapped her arms around his torso and lathered his chest and abs … then went lower.
 
Spike smirked as he watched her hands move over his body, covering his skin with the fragrant aphrodisiac. With her body pressed against his back, so warm and supple, her hands caressing his body, her breath on his skin ... he really didn't need any help in the 'aphrodisiac department'. By the time Buffy reached his cock, it was standing at attention for her, and she wasted no time lathering it with the ‘Stud Bubbles’.
 
“Pretty sure that’s not m’ back, luv…” Spike pointed out with a smirk.
 
“Sure it is… it’s the front of your back … I did the back of your back, now I’m doing the front of your back. I’m nothing if not thorough,” she informed him with a sly smile.
 
“Ahhh, well then, carry on.”
 
“I plan to…” Buffy murmured back as she stroked his cock from behind, then circled his balls with the soft sponge, eliciting a moan from her husband. God, she’d missed that sound … that low, rumbling growl that seemed to come from the deepest depths of his being. It told her more than words could ever say … it told her he still wanted her, it told her that her touch still reached that deepest part of him … that things hadn’t changed between them, it told her they could still take each other to heaven.
 
Spike started to turn in her arms and Buffy released her hold on his cock. “I want to make love to you,” Spike whispered to her when he was facing her, his eyes locked onto hers. “Slow and sweet, in our bed … In my arms, all night long.”
 
His words surprised Buffy at first, before she realized that, of course, he knew this a big deal for her … it wasn’t just another night for her … it meant a lot. He wouldn’t want it to be rushed and frantic in the shower … he’d want to give her everything he had, his body, his heart, his soul … all night long.
 
Buffy bit her bottom lip as tears welled in her eyes for what seemed like the millionth time since she’d gotten home. How the tribunal couldn’t have seen the tenderness, the goodness in this man, even through the magic veil that Hallie had cast, was beyond her. The last of her butterflies fluttered away … she finally felt like she was really home and things didn’t need to be perfect, in fact, if you can’t be imperfect with the man you love, then who could you show your imperfections to?


 


Buffy lifted up on her toes as the warm water continued to shower down on them, rinsing the suds from their bodies, and kissed Spike gently on the lips. “Yes … make love to me. Show me what true love feels like, William.”



**~**


{{Click here to hear "You Save Me” by Kenny Chesney on YouTube   }}

 Every now and then
I get a little lost
The strings all get tangled
The wires all get crossed
Every now and then
I’m right upon the edge
Danglin’ my toes out over the ledge
I just thank God you’re here

(Chorus)
When I’m a bullet shot out of a gun
When I’m a firecracker comin’ undone
When I’m a fugitive ready to run
All wild-eyed and crazy
No matter where my reckless soul takes me
Baby you save me

It’s hard lovin’ a man
That’s got a gypsy soul
I don’t know how you do it
I’m not sure how you know
The perfect thing to say
To save me from myself
You’re the angel that believes in me
Like nobody else
And I thank God you do

(Chorus)

Well I know I don’t tell you nearly enough
I couldn’t live one day without your love

When I’m a ship tossed around on the waves
Up on a high wire that’s ready to break
When I’ve had just about all I can take
Baby, you,
Baby you save me

(Chorus)
End Notes:
TBC ... SERIOUSLY!?! Sorry ... my evil muse just loves to leave you hanging... Will have the rest of the 'christening' soon!
It’s a Small World by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Spike and Buffy finish what they started in the ‘new’ bathroom, but end up on a wild ride that threatens to take Spike back to the guilt and insanity of purgatory.
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
**
Music Referenced:
It’s a Small World
http://youtu.be/eIxXXSufOAo
   **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
Monday, January 18th, 2010, early morning hours:


Spike turned off the water and grabbed Buffy’s towel from the rack and began drying her hair, her shoulders, her back, her legs, her feet – then started back up her front. Slowly and softly, he mopped the warm water from her golden skin … up her legs, over the swell of her hips, across her soft curls to her abdomen and Billy’s scar. He paused momentarily at her navel, circling it gently with the towel, before moving up over her stomach to her full breasts. Spike stilled the towel in his hands just below her breasts and dropped his mouth down to her skin. He began licking the dampness from one breast, then the other, with slow circles, moving closer and closer to her ever hardening nipples.
 
Chill bumps jumped up on Buffy’s skin everywhere Spike’s lips touched her and she couldn’t help but moan his name as he sucked one damp nipple into his mouth and laved it with his tongue, then moved to the other and carefully repeated his ministrations. His mouth felt like heaven on her skin, she longed for that mouth to roam over every inch of her body … to kiss and lick and taste all of her, to take her where she knew he could, to heaven … all night long.
 
“So beautiful you are, pet …” Spike murmured against her damp skin, before lifting his head and looking into her eyes. “What you do to me, just lookin’ at you, watching you walk, hearin’ you laugh … makes me want you every moment of every day. Make me crazy, you do … without even tryin’ and when you try …” Spike’s voice trailed off and he shook his head, unable to even express how crazy she drove him.
 
Buffy reached out and touched his still wet skin, running her hand slowly down his chest to his abs. She could feel his muscles tremble and quiver under her touch and see his hard cock jump as she grazed his skin softly with her fingertips. “You always make me crazy, too … I’ve never stopped wanting you, never stopped loving you. I dreamt about you … God, Spike … so many times – about moments like this. These last days, I’ve been afraid I’d wake up at any moment, that this was just a dream, but it’s not, is it?”
 
Spike shook his head slowly. “Not a dream … a dream come true,” he assured her.
 
Buffy let out a deep breath and nodded. “It’s a good thing we found each other, believe me when I say, it’s better to be crazy together than alone…”
 
Spike bit his bottom lip and nodded. “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep my promise, luv. I never meant for you to walk alone ever again.”
 
Buffy smiled as tears welled in her eyes unbidden. She raised her hand up and laid it gently on Spike’s cheek. “I was never alone … I could always feel your love, deep in my soul, a part of you was always with me. On the darkest nights, I could feel your arms around me, and it gave me strength to fight another day.”
 
Buffy raised up on her toes and took Spike’s face in both hands as she kissed him, softly at first, then deeper, more demanding. Spike wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up off her feet, pulling her body hard against his.
 
“Make love to me…” Buffy moaned, pulling back slightly from the kiss, the breath of her words warm against his lips.
 
Spike carried her to the dressing area and reluctantly set her down before retrieving a robe from one of the closets and holding up for her to put on. Buffy looked at him questioningly, but slipped her arms into it and watched as he put one on, as well, cinching it closed with the belt. At Buffy’s slightly confused look, he reminded her, “House Rule number two … ‘Keep your privates private’. Little Bits have big eyes …” widening his eyes for emphasis.
 
Buffy laughed and nodded, then squealed when Spike quickly bent down and picked her up with one strong arm under her knees and the other around her back. Buffy wrapped her arms around his neck and Spike headed for the door … Buffy unlatched the lock and pulled it open when he paused.
 
“Quiet as a church-mouse now…” Spike whispered to her as he stepped into the hall and started back towards their bedroom with her.

 

Buffy smiled and tucked her head against his neck as he carried her past the rooms of their (hopefully) sleeping children. Her chest tightened and she bit her bottom lip to keep from screaming out in joy. Their babies were sleeping peacefully in their rooms, her friends were all alive and well … and she was in Spike’s arms. The world had been put back on its axis … she’d stepped on a butterfly and gotten a second chance … or a third chance or however many chances this was now, and she intended to make the most of it – starting tonight … all night long.
 
**~**
 
In their soundproof room, with the door closed and locked, Spike laid Buffy down gently on the bed, then turned and lit some candles on the dresser behind him, casting the entire room in a soft, golden light.
 
He turned back to her and pulled the belt of her robe and let it fall open. Like a hungry man standing in front of a smorgasbord, Spike raked his eyes over her body, trying to decide where to begin … Her soft lips? Her tender neck? Her full breasts? Her sweet mound? Her golden thighs? Her ticklish toes?
 
Buffy didn’t move, but watched his eyes as they danced sensuously over her body … her woman’s body; not the body of the girl she’d had the last five years, that she’d had with Spike in purgatory or with William, but the body of the woman who’d borne their children, with the scars and the hips and tummy to prove it. In her lover’s eyes she saw desire, she saw adoration and lust and longing and she started to feel like a goddess again, something she hadn’t felt in a long time … a very long time. Except to reach one hand out and lay on the side of his hip, just because she couldn’t stand to not be touching him, she didn’t move as his eyes devoured her. She had the scars of their life together laid out for him … and her imperfections, her badges of honor, made her even sexier to him than she’d been as that girl he’d first laid eyes on so many years ago.
 
Spike dropped his own robe on the floor as he continued to caress her body with his eyes, finally deciding to start at the top and work his way down. Spike went to the end of the bed and crawled slowly over her body on all fours, dripping water from his blond curls as he went. Buffy wiggled under him as the now cold water droplets hit her body and ran off, tickling and chilling her hot skin. Her squirming made Spike shake his head, sending hundreds of droplets in all directions and covering not only her, but the bed and dresser and even putting one of the candles out.

 

Buffy squealed and jerked under him as the cold water covered her, then grabbed the sides of his head to stop him from shaking it anymore. “You’re crazy!” Buffy exclaimed as she pulled him all the way up, so his lips were just inches from hers.
 
“Thought we’d already established that, Slayer … your fault … make me crazy, you do,” Spike defended.
 
Buffy ran her hands through his damp hair, smoothing it back from his face, and raised her lips up to his. With barely a hair’s breadth between them, she murmured back, “I intend to drive you completely insane…”
 
“Can’t wait…” Spike whispered back before dropping his lips on hers and capturing them in a lustful kiss. His tongue delved into her mouth, tasting, teasing, dancing with hers and Buffy wrapped her arms around his neck and returned the kiss with as much desire and passion as Spike was giving her.
 
Spike slowly pulled away from the kiss and turned his head so his mouth was next to her ear. “I love you, Buffy … more than you’ll ever know, more than words could say,” he whispered to her, his voice deep and full of emotion.
 
Buffy took his face in her hands and turned his eyes back to hers. “I love you too. And I do know how much – I love you just as much,” she assured him before raising her lips back to his and brushing them silkily over his luscious mouth.
 
Spike kissed a trail from her mouth back to her ear, then swirled his tongue in slow circles up and down the side of her neck, spending extra time on the special spot behind her ear that made her moan and her body tingle all over. Goose bumps chased up and down Buffy’s skin as Spike teased and licked that magical spot behind her ear and she turned her head to the side in a silent invitation for him to continue … please, Spike, please don’t stop.
 
I’ll never stop, luv, Spike sent back to her through their bond and Buffy’s eyes flew open as she turned her head and looked at him with surprise. The bond! She’d nearly forgotten about it… she’d gotten so lost in his touch, lost in his love, and let all her defenses fall away, opening the bond.
 
“I didn’t mean … to … uhh … say that out loud…” Buffy stammered and Spike tilted his head and considered her. After being alone for so long, that must’ve freaked her out, to have someone hear your thoughts.
 
“You can say anythin’ to me, Buffy … I’ve seen the best and the worst of you, and I love you for all of it. Don’t be afraid to let the walls fall; let me in, Buffy, I’ll never hurt you,” Spike assured her gently.
 
Buffy bit her bottom lip and nodded as a small smile played at the corners of her mouth. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the last of the walls surrounding her heart crumbled into dust and a feeling of peaceful joy swelled up within her. She wasn’t alone anymore … she was home and she was loved and she could share anything with Spike without fear of judgment or retribution or mockery. It was freeing; she felt like a prisoner who had just been exonerated for a crime she hadn’t committed – her death sentence had been overturned; she’d been liberated from her nightmare and sent back to her life, back to her family.
 
Make me cum, Spike … take me to heaven, Buffy pleaded to him silently and Spike smiled a sweet, gentle smile – a smile full of awe and love and yearning as he looked into her eyes.
 
Spread your wings, my fallen angel, get ready to soar, Spike replied as he dropped his lips back down to her neck and kissed and licked and sucked against her soft skin, igniting fires that spread through her entire body. Spike trailed his mouth slowly down her neck and past her shoulder, licking a trail of flames down her breastbone. He circled her hot, round mounds with his mouth, first one, then the other, leaving a damp circle-eight on her skin as he went round and round, closing the loops a little each time until he reached her hard nipples.
 
“God, Spike… please…” Buffy begged him aloud. She was standing on the edge and he was holding her there, not letting her fall, not letting her fly.
 
“What does m’ sweet angel want?” Spike asked innocently.
 
“Cum…need to cum – you promised…” she reminded him, her voice pleading as she ran her hands over his shoulders and arms and back again.
 
“Did I, now?” Spike questioned with a teasing smirk. “Well, you know Spike always keeps ‘is promises, luv.”
 
Spike dropped his mouth down on one hard nipple and nibbled on it lightly with his blunt teeth before circling it with his tongue and sucking hard with his magical lips. Buffy’s back arched and her body trembled under him … she could feel the fire building, she was standing on the cliff and the fire was at her back, threatening to devour her if she didn’t fly soon. When he switched over to give her other tit the same treatment with his mouth, he replaced his mouth with his hand and began lightly rolling and pulling her wet nipple between his fingers, and Buffy found her wings just in time. The flames exploded behind her in a bright orange fireball just as she soared off the cliff of ecstasy into heaven.
 
Buffy’s body tensed and arched and quivered under Spike as the scream he loved so much escaped her lips and he knew his angel had found her wings. Spike kept his attention on her sensitive breasts, even after all the air had left her lungs and her scream turned into nothing more than silent rapture; he kept her soaring among the clouds for as long as possible.
 
Buffy felt wave after wave of pleasure wash over her body … first a wave of fire, then a wave of refreshing ice, then the fire and ice battled for control as she soared over the earth and past the moon until she was dancing on the stars. Goose bumps raced over her skin as the ice washed over her and then they were replaced with a thin bead of perspiration as the fire heated her … then back to the cool – over and over and over again. She’d lost all capacity for conscious thought as her body took over and let Spike keep her burning and chilling and burning again as she sailed around the sun … singeing her angel wings in the flames.

  

As Buffy came back down to earth, she gasped for air, gulping in the sweet aroma of sandalwood and vanilla that emanated from their skin and holding to Spike’s shoulders, as if she’d fall back and be consumed by the flaming orb if she let go of him. “Oh, God…Oh, Spike …God, Spike…” was all she could say when she finally got enough air in her lungs to speak.
 
Spike smiled against her skin as he left a trail of damp kisses down the middle of Buffy’s stomach, around her navel, down across the C-section scar and into her dark forest of curls that he considered his own personal utopia. Buffy was still trying to get her breathing back to normal when Spike lifted her legs at the knees and opened her pink folds to him.
 
“OH FUCK!” Buffy exclaimed as Spike’s mouth found her clit and he circled her erect nubbin with his tongue then lightly touched down on her most sensitive spot. Her hips jerked up against him, demanding more, but Spike wouldn’t be hurried. He continued to tease with his lips and tongue, circling her clitoris, then dipping his tongue into her hot, wet slit before sliding it down to her taint … and then circling her puckered hole and starting back up.
 
“Oh, God … Spike … pleease!” Buffy pleaded as he continued the rapturous torture, taking her time and again to the edge of the cliff, but never giving her wings.
 
“What do you want, pet?” Spike asked again … trying to sound innocent, but he lost the battle with his own desire and his voice came out deep and rumbly; full of his own need for her.
 
“Need you in me … God, Spike – need you now,” Buffy moaned as she tried to pull his face away from her pussy and bring him up her body.
 
“Now?” Spiked asked as he fought against her efforts to move him.
 
“Yes … now!” Buffy agreed, her pleading tone turning into a demanding voice.
 
Right now?” Spike continued teasing her.
 
“God damn it! Yes! Now! Right now!”
 
Spike moved faster than Buffy remembered him ever moving before, pressing her legs up and out and suddenly he was over her, his cock poised at her wet entrance, pressing against her, the muscles in his arms bulging as he held himself over her.
 


“Now?” Spike asked again, his voice barely a whisper as he plunged slowly into her.
 
“Oh yes! Spike … oh, God!” Buffy exclaimed as he pressed into her and the fire and ice started the war in her body again, painting her skin with burning ice. Buffy pulled her knees higher, hooking her legs over his shoulders and opening herself up to him completely as he slid into her, each keeping their eyes open and locked onto the other.

 

Spike moved slowly, fighting his own desires to plunge into her hard and fast, so he could give her as much pleasure as possible as he stretched and filled her. Her pussy trembled around his cock, pulling him in deeper and deeper until his hips hit hers and the head of his cock pressed against her cervix.
 
Buffy’s skin was awash with goose bumps and perspiration … she felt both hot and cold, one moment soaring around the sun, the next diving into cool, clear water … but above everything what she felt was complete. She didn’t know if Zeus had actually split humans apart all those eons ago like Lorne had told her, but in these moments, when her body was one with Spike’s, when she could feel his love, feel his soul so close to hers, she couldn’t deny that it felt … perfect, as if this is where they both belonged.
 
Spike watched the emotions in Buffy’s eyes as he pressed into her. He could see not just physical pleasure, but her love, her devotion, her joy – that feeling of being completed. He knew that look, he knew that feeling, because he felt it, too. It was as if part of his being was missing when they were apart and the closer they were, the more complete his soul felt. He longed to melt into her, to become one with the only woman that ever made him feel like that was possible, with the only woman that had ever touched his soul.
 
Spike leaned down and dropped a soft kiss on her lips before he started moving against her, pulling out just as slowly as he’d pressed in. He kept the slow pace going, savoring the feeling of her body under his, of her sugar walls engulfing his shaft as if they didn’t want to let him go, savoring the sights and the sounds and the aromas of his fallen angel. Her green eyes, locked to his, surrounded him with love; her skin smelled of sandalwood and vanilla and tasted salty from her fiery exertion; her hands felt like angel wings as they roamed softly up and down his back, from his strong shoulders all the way down to his thighs, and brought goose bumps to his flesh; her moans were like music to his ears … singing a song of contentment and bliss.
 
“I love you so much, Buffy,” Spike began, his voice deep and full of desire as he increased his pace, alternating short, fast strokes with long, hard, deep ones. “So passionate, you are, pet. What you do to me … you’ll never know how crazy you make me – how hard it is to keep my ‘ands off you, how hard it is to leave you for even a minute.”
 
Buffy loved the sound of Spike’s voice and his words and emotions lifted her higher and higher; the words seemed to drip from his tongue like warm, golden syrup and cover her in their sweetness.
 
“Let’s go to heaven,” Buffy whispered to him. “Come with me … dance with me in heaven.”
 
She could feel the fire and ice beginning to battle again within her as Spike’s hips banged down on her, grinding his pubic bone hard against her clit on the long strokes and pounding quickly against her throbbing nub on the short ones, sending red-hot sparks up and down Buffy’s legs and curling her toes.

 

“Yes! Spike … God, yes! More! You know what I need … give it to me! SPIKE! Yes, baby! Yessssss!” Buffy screamed as the waves of fire and ice began to crash over her, lifting her higher and higher until she was once again standing on the edge of heaven. “Cum with me … now, Spike … NOW!” she demanded.
 
Spike growled viciously as his demon came up to fulfill her demands for more. He knew what she wanted him to give – everything; mind, body, heart, and soul, and he gave it all to her eagerly. Spike slammed into her faster and deeper as she dug her nails into the cheeks of his ass, pulling him against her harder, and screamed at him to give her what she needed. Spike knew she needed … what they both needed, pure, unadulterated, visceral, primal passion. There was no holding back for either of them … there was no need to hold back, they both fed off the power of the other, off the lust and the love and the moans and the screams and the growls until there was nothing between them but raw desire and need – a need only they could fill for the other.
 
Buffy felt herself get washed away by the waves of burning, icy passion. She suddenly felt free, completely free of the earth and the pull of gravity. She fought to keep her eyes open and locked on Spike’s, but the feeling overwhelmed her and her lids fluttered closed as she began to fly up towards a blue, cloudless sky. Buffy’s heart, already racing from the waves of bliss washing over her, skipped a beat when she realized where she was … it wasn’t heaven, it was the butterfly soul garden and she was once again the green butterfly, floating on silky wings, high above the tropical paradise.

 

No…no, no, no! her mind screamed. She didn’t want to go back there…never, never again. Then suddenly Spike was next to her, his blue butterfly flying and fluttering in the clear sky with her and he grabbed her and began to spin her around … waltzing to unheard music across the rays of golden sunlight.
 
It’s alright, luv. Dance with me – fly with me, she heard his voice in her mind. Buffy forced her eyes open and Spike was there, back to his human features, his blue eyes smoldering with desire and boring into hers.
 
“Dance with me…” he whispered aloud and Buffy lifted up and captured his lips with hers, wrapping her arms around his neck, closing her eyes, and letting herself go back with him, back to the dance … back to that feeling of being free.
 
The lovers soared and fluttered lazily from sunbeam to sunbeam, rising and falling and floating and spinning in the clear blue sky as their souls joined their bodies in the passionate dance. Somewhere far below, Buffy’s scream and Spike’s growling roar bounced off the valley walls, across the clear blue lake, and seemed to fill the entire world with their passion for each other as their souls rejoiced and seemed to melt into one for the briefest of moments.
 
The lover’s gasped against each other’s lips as a powerful orgasm spilled out from their souls and devoured their bodies with its pureness. It was as if their bodies had fallen away and let their spirits, their souls, fuse for that split second. Suddenly, there was nothing between them … no walls, no barriers, no skin or bones or consciousness – just pure spirit energy.
 
Buffy realized instantly what was happening and tried to pull away from it, tried to end the dance, put the walls back up around them both, but it was too late. Everything that had happened to Spike’s soul in this place over the last five years flooded out of the ether and into his mind, into his memory, into his soul – Spike’s trials, his ghosts, his guilt and pain, his attempt at killing Buffy, his final judgment and after … Everything that Spike’s soul had been through in the ‘Wish-World’, in purgatory and in hell, crashed down on him like a burning tidal wave.
 
It was over in a moment … decades of pain and suffering slammed into Spike’s mind like a freight train out of control. He screamed out as the flood gates closed, holding his head with both hands as he rolled off Buffy, writhing in anguish on the bed next to her.


 
“NO!” Buffy screamed rolling over to try and help him. One thing she’d been happy about was that he didn’t remember those years … that he didn’t know the pain and misery that he’d been in during the trials, that the voices of his victims stayed as whispers at the very corners of his mind.

 

Spike continued to hold his head, moaning in agony, his eyes pressed tightly closed as he rolled back and forth on the bed. All those feelings, the fears, the regrets, the guilt, the years of trials, and the final verdict, along with what seemed longer than an eternity spent behind the gates of hell, crashed against his skull from the inside. His head felt like it was going to explode, his heart felt like it had been ripped from his chest, and his soul bled from deep, gaping, jagged slashes.
 
“No ... no, no, no!” Buffy screamed again as she rolled over on top of him. She pulled his hands away from his face – she knew what she would see there, the frightened and guilt-ridden eyes, full of fear and pain, that had met her more than once in purgatory … and she was right. That look that she never wanted to see in his eyes again was back and it stabbed straight to her heart and ripped at her soul.
 
“Spike … open the bond … give it to me – it’s not yours, it’s mine … OPEN THE BOND!” Buffy demanded, shaking him by the shoulders.
 
“Buffy…what … what … Oh, God … Buffy… help me…” Spike stammered as he searched her eyes for some relief from the unbelievable pain that seemed to fill his entire body, his heart and soul, with sorrow and misery.
 
“Open the bond … take down the walls, let it go, give it to me, Spike …” Buffy repeated as she opened the bond between them as wide as she could and waited for him to do the same.
 
“God, Buffy … make it stop,” Spike moaned as he continued to roll from side to side under her in pain. The memories of the trials and the faces of his victims continued to stampede through his mind and trample his soul with their accusing eyes and harrowing screams. “Please, God … make it stop …”
 
“Open the bond…” Buffy said softly, putting her hands on either side of his face and holding his head still. “Look in my eyes … open the bond, let me take it away.”
 
“No… not yours,” Spike protested, trying to pull away from her.

 

“Yes … trust me, Spike. Open the bond,” Buffy pleaded with him. “Do you trust me?”
 
Spike nodded, his blue eyes glistening, wide with fear and confusion as all the feelings that his soul had been through continued to swarm around within him like a thousand killer bees … stinging his heart and filling him to overflowing with unbearable agony and guilt.
 
“Then open the bond, let me in.”
 
Spike finally focused on Buffy’s eyes and concentrated through the pain to open the bond with her. Buffy could immediately feel the ghosts and the guilt and the regrets and fears in his heart. She closed her eyes and let her heart take all his pain in … she had to take it away from him, she couldn’t let him bear it alone – not again, not when it was within her power to stop it.
 
Suddenly Buffy found herself sucked into the deepest recesses of Spike’s mind, standing in the center of the cold, red pit of spiders from limbo. Hundreds of the large, hairy spiders surrounded her, tapping their sharp claws on the sand, daring her to try to cross their ranks to help Spike, who was huddled on a low ledge about fifty yards away, trying to hide from the ghosts and escape the ache in his soul.
 


“Scythe!” Buffy demanded, holding her hand out and the Guardian’s scythe appeared in her hand.
 
“You never learn…” she muttered coldly to the hungry arachnids as she began swinging the powerful scythe in a low circle, chopping legs and heads and bodies of the spiders and leaving a mish-mash of purple blood and viscera and black, hairy body parts in her wake as she worked her way towards her husband. Some of the spiders tried to jump up over the scythe and attack her, but her focus was unwavering and her aim true – as they jumped, she countered with the scythe, catching them in mid-air and slicing cleaning through their bodies with a sickening crunching sound. Even as the ones at her back jumped, she could sense them and would turn quickly and rain their body parts down on the others. Only when two or more jumped at the same time did she get caught, but she’d been there before and didn’t panic. When one jumped on her back, she stabbed down from over her head with the stake end of the scythe, dislodging and injuring the angry creatures, before turning and dispatching them with the blade.
 
From her first swing against the spiders, Buffy could feel the pain and guilt and remorse in Spike’s soul lessen as she took it into herself. Each spider that died lightened Spike’s burden and added to Buffy’s … as if by killing the spiders it was transferring his pain, his guilt, his transgressions, from his soul to hers. Buffy had felt his pain when he was in purgatory, but to actually have it within herself, to have it surround and penetrate her soul, was excruciating – how he had been able to stand it all that time he was alone in the cold, red world, Buffy didn’t know. The fact that William’s soul had finally given up and retreated, leaving just the demon to face the trials and the ghosts, Buffy now understood with complete clarity.  Tears stung Buffy’s eyes and streamed down her face, but she fought on as the voices of Spike’s ghosts began to scream at her and their faces danced in front of her eyes. Each blow of her scythe added to the agony in her soul, until finally, there was no more to add; the spiders all lay defeated in the red crater, their bright purple blood completely covering the red sand.
 
Buffy collapsed to her knees, then dropped her body all the way down to the blood-stained ground, as sobs wracked her. She’d seen Spike’s crimes before when she’d visited his memories while he was under Dru’s thrall … but now she felt them, every last one of them, and they stabbed at her heart and cinched a tight noose around her soul, demanding to be heard, demanding justice.
 
Buffy fought against them, conjuring the faces of her friends to her mind … friends that would be dead or disfigured or driven insane if not for Spike, and the ghosts of Spike’s victims scoffed at her … those few saved for so many lost? But Buffy didn’t waver, bringing up the faces of their children in retort and Kalani, once a polite young man who would’ve been turned into a demon if not for Spike, but still the ghosts mocked her.
 
Finally, Buffy screamed out in pain and frustration, coming back up to her knees and holding the Guardian’s scythe high above her head. “What about this!?” she screamed at the ghosts. “How many has it saved?!” she demanded to know and the ghosts quieted momentarily.
 
Buffy jumped up to her feet and swung the scythe at the ghosts who now surrounded her, passing it harmlessly through the apparitions. “Tell me!” she demanded of them again. “How many has it saved?!”
 
Nikki Wood’s ghost stepped forward from the crowd and stood in front of Buffy, placing her hands next to Buffy’s on the handle of the scythe and suddenly the dead Slayer’s apparition solidified in front of Buffy. “My son grew up without a mother because of William the Bloody,” Nikki informed Buffy coldly, never letting go of the scythe.

 

“I know,” Buffy admitted softly. “I’m sorry … I’m so sorry about that … but you have to know the good Spike’s done. You have to see his hero’s soul.
 
“I’m the oldest Slayer ever known and there’s just one reason for that – Spike. He stands at my side and fights the fight with me, he gives me strength, he’s the reason I found this,” Buffy indicated the scythe by shaking it, “I’m sorry for your sacrifice … I’m sorry for your son, but it was the road William had to travel to be the man I needed, the man the world needed … to be a hero, to save the world.”
 
“The mission is what matters...right?” Nikki asked her solemnly.
 
Buffy wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or serious, she hoped serious. “Spike’s part of the mission now … he’s part of the answer, a huge part. No matter what evil I’m facing, from the armies of hell to The First to … to Satan himself, I’d rather have Spike at my side than a hundred Slayers,” Buffy informed her. “You didn’t die in vain … none of you,” Buffy told them, moving her eyes from Nikki to encompass the other ghosts who were surrounding her, waiting and listening. “You were all part of the mission from the beginning…you all made him what he is today, a hero, a Champion, which makes you all heroes, too.”
 
Buffy dropped her hands from the scythe, leaving Nikki holding it alone, and walked over to where Spike was still crouched on the ledge, covering his head with his arms and trying to make himself as small as possible. She held her hand up towards him, silently imploring him to join her. Spike looked around at the ghosts who had turned and watched her and who were now watching him … so many eyes … so many innocents. Spiked looked back down at Buffy, unsure, and Buffy nodded to him, assuring him silently. Spike lowered himself slowly down from the ledge and took her hand and Buffy walked with him back to the center of the angry spirits.

 

“We avert apocalypses as a part of our daily life it seems … it’s our mission, to keep the world safe. There’s a reason the universe brought Spike and I together, in this time, in this place. I don’t know what it is yet … but I know one thing, there are no coincidences; it wasn’t an accident,” Buffy told the group. “If you all want to stay here and drive us both insane,” Buffy shrugged, “then go for it. We’ve both been insane before…
 
“But, if you want to save the world … I mean really save it one day; if you want your sacrifice to mean something, give us your blessing; give us your forgiveness and let us work the mission,” Buffy concluded, squeezing Spike’s hand tightly in hers.
 
“What sayeth the vampire!?” came a loud male voice from the back.
 
Spike knew the voice immediately. “Retchford,” he muttered sourly under his breath.
 
Spike took a deep breath and looked at Buffy for help. “I can’t tell you what to say … follow your heart,” she advised him.

 

Spike closed his eyes for a long moment and took another deep breath before opening them and surveying the expectant and accusing faces of his victims. “You’re all part of me … in me all the time. Your blood is on my hands, but also in my veins and it … it makes me want to be a better man, to be a good man, to be the man that stands next to the Slayer. The kind of man that can give her strength and hope and love and … and be part of the mission. It makes me want to save the world for more reasons than the happy meals with legs.”
 
Buffy hoped Spike hadn’t gone too far with the ‘happy meals’ remark. “He has the soul of a warrior, the heart of a hero … let him prove it, let him show you all that your sacrifice wasn’t in vain,” Buffy added quickly.
 
“He's not a man, he’s a demon! A monster, a murderer and he'll never be anything else! He doesn’t deserve your pity or forgiveness! He doesn't deserve anything but a stake to the heart!” a man’s voice called out from the crowd.
 
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Riley,” she sighed.
 
A low murmur came over the assembled group and slowly, one by one … little by little, the apparitions began floating up out of the crater towards the red sky until finally the only ones left were Nikki Wood, Xin Rong (the Chinese Slayer Spike killed during the Boxer Rebellion), Riley Finn, Cecily Addams-Weckerly, and Daniel Retchford.
 
Spike turned his attention to Xin Rong, who was standing next to Nikki. He bowed deeply and said, “Wo hen bao qian fa sheng le shen me.”
 
“I thought you did not speak Chinese…” Xin Rong pointed out, her English perfectly understandable despite her thick Chinese accent.
 
“I didn’t … I … I learned it later,” Spike admitted.

 

“You wear my scar,” the Chinese Slayer observed, reaching her hand out towards Spike’s brow.
 
Her hand felt like a cold wind against his skin as she passed her ghostly fingers over the scar her sword had left so many years ago. Spike closed his eyes and shivered involuntarily as her essence touched his and the souls of the two warriors found peace with each other.

 

“The Slayer speaks the truth,” Xin Rong announced as she pulled her hand away from Spike’s brow. “His soul is that of a warrior … he is one of us.
 
“Live each day as if it were your last, for one day, it will be,” Xin Rong advised Spike before she gave him a deep bow then floated up, out of the crater and out of sight.
 
Nikki extended the scythe towards Spike and Spike laid his hands on it next to hers. “Keep the mission always in mind … to save your children, you may need to save the world first,” she advised him. “The music’s just starting…” Nikki warned, throwing Spike’s own words from 1977 back at him, as she released the scythe.
 
Spike nodded solemnly as he took the scythe from her hands.
 
“Oh, give me a fucking break! You’re just gonna let him get away with it?!” Riley exclaimed, addressing Nikki. “It’s simple! He’s a fucking vampire! He’s evil! You think he’s changed? You think a soul changed him? He killed me with is soul firmly in place!” Riley pointed out, walking up closer to where Spike, Buffy, and Nikki stood.
 
“You know …” Nikki started, looking from Spike to Riley. “That makes me realize something …”
 
“That you need to fulfill your Calling, use that axe and make him pay for his sins?” Riley asked hopefully, looking at the scythe now in Spike’s hands.

 

“Noooo … I realize that you’re not about the mission at all,” Nikki informed Riley, turning away from Spike and Buffy to face the ex-soldier. “You’re about you and if you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you myself.”
 
Nikki grabbed the scythe back out of Spike’s hands and swung it at the indignant Riley, hitting him on the side of the head with the flat side of the blade and knocking him out cold. “Some people just don’t get it…” Nikki intoned as she handed the scythe back to Spike.
 
“Why in the world would you have ever married this jerk?” she asked Buffy.
 
Buffy shook her head and sighed. “I have no idea…”
 
Nikki grabbed Riley by the foot and followed her fellow Slayer up into the atmosphere, dragging the unconscious ghost of Riley Finn with her.
 
Buffy and Spike turned to the last two ghosts … Cecily Addams-Weckerly and her lover, Daniel Retchford. Spike handed the scythe back to Buffy and crossed his arms over his chest as he considered them, two of his first victims.

 

“Well, aren’t you going to apologize to us, William?” Cecily asked indignantly. “Convince us that we’re part of the greater good and all that?”
 
Spike looked at Buffy and their eyes met for the briefest of moments, but that was all it took. Buffy and Spike both pulled back a fist and slammed them simultaneously into the ethereal jaws of the ghosts standing in front of them … Buffy’s into Cecily and Spike’s into Daniel. Cecily and Daniel both fell onto the cold sand at their feet, crying out and holding their injured mouths.
 
“We’ll haunt you forever, old chap!” Daniel Retchford warned as he tested his jaw to make sure it wasn’t broken … can ghosts get broken bones?
 
“I’ll never give you a minute’s peace!” Cecily agreed.
 
“Sod off!” Spike replied angrily. “You two couldn’t haunt the bloody Amityville house! Pathetic, you are!”

 

“Buffy! You know what I can do!” Cecily warned. “You know my power!”
 
Buffy shrugged. “Weren’t so powerful when it was just you and me without all your demony friends to help you; I’m guessing they aren’t too happy with you about now. I wonder if D’Hoffryn remembers what I remember. Hmmmm…maybe I should give him a call … catch up on old times.”
 
Cecily stood back up and huffed, smoothing her vaporous Victorian age dress down and Daniel stood back up beside her.
 
“Now, why don’t you run along … or stay here – I really don’t care either way, ‘cos I’ve seen scarier cockroaches,” Buffy informed them as she took Spike’s hand in hers and started walking away from their unforgiving ghosts.
 
“What did you tell the Chinese Slayer?” Buffy asked him as they walked.
 
“I either told her I was sorry for what happened, or I asked her when dessert was being served on the next train…”
 
Buffy threw her head back and laughed and suddenly she and Spike were back in their room, in their bed, Buffy sitting atop his stomach – her laughter still echoing in the small room.

 

Buffy looked down at him just as Spike opened his eyes. “Are you alright?” she asked, laying a hand softly on his cheek. She was relieved to see only a bit of confusion in his eyes, not the overwhelming fear and guilt that had been there earlier.
 
Spike let out a long breath and nodded, now fully understanding what their souls had been through the last five years. The pain and guilt that had slammed into him had been excruciating … but Buffy had taken it away, taken it on herself – for him. All of her words to his ghosts were tattooed forever on his mind and heart – she considered him a hero, a warrior … a Champion. He hoped that he could live up to those claims when the time came; her belief in him was extraordinary … her love deep – as deep as his for her, there was no doubt.
 
“I’m sorry … I never … never wanted you to see that ... to feel that,” Buffy told him quietly as she stroked her hand gently against his cheek.
 
Spike smiled softly up at her. There were no words that could express his love strongly enough, so he just used the only ones he knew. “I love you, Buffy.”
 
Buffy smiled down at him and leaned down to drop a soft kiss on his lips. “I love you too, Spike,” she murmured, laying her body down against his and nestling her head on his shoulder.
 
Spike wrapped his arms around her body and held her tight. “I knew my life would never be boring with you, but … could we step back to a kiddie ride for a day or two, Slayer? These E-ticket rides are startin’ to spin m’ head ‘round.”
 
“Tired of the Tea-Cups, huh? I’m guessing no Space Mountain or Matterhorn Bobsleds or Twilight Zone Tower of Terror,” Buffy mused with a sly smile, as she lifted her head to look into his eyes.
 
“Hmmmm …” Buffy pondered, sitting up, looking at the ceiling, and tapping one finger on her lips as if in deep thought.
 
“Well, how about, ‘It’s a Small World’ … and we go all the way around?” she asked seductively as she looked back down at him and leaned forward, capturing his lips with hers.

 

“Mmmmm…” Spike moaned. “Not sure that’s a ride for the kiddies, but I’ll suffer through, I reckon.”
 
“For your safety, remain seated with your seat belt fastened, keeping your lips, hands, arms, and dangly bits against me at all times… hang on to your personal belongings and no flash photography,” Buffy mocked the safety warnings that she’d heard a hundred times at Disneyland with a mischievous grin as she slid her body slowly down Spike’s. “Get ready for the wildest ride of your life…”
 

**~**
{{Click here to hear "It’s A Small World” on YouTube   }}

It's a world of laughter, a world of tears
It’s a world of hopes, It’s a world of fears
There’s so much that we share
That it’s time we're aware
It’s a small world after all

It’s a small world after all
It’s a small world after all
It’s a small world after all
It’s a small, small world

There is just one moon and one golden sun
And a smile means friendship to everyone.
Though the mountains divide
And the oceans are wide
It's a small, small world

It’s a small world after all
It’s a small world after all
It’s a small world after all
It’s a small, small world
End Notes:
TBC .... The Scooby meeting is next ... and a couple of surprises are still in the offing ... don't go away yet ....
If Tomorrow Never Comes, Part 1 by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy’s still working on fitting into life and connecting with her friends. She calls a Scooby meeting and shares what happened to her and, in the end, discovers what going back in time and stepping on a butterfly really did to her world.
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
**
Music Referenced:
If Tomorrow Never Comes
By Ronan Keating from the movie: P.S. I Love You
Originally by Garth Brooks
http://youtu.be/1T7tsRXEbg4
   **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
 
Monday, January 18th, 2010, 6:00am:
 
Buffy woke up early and, with Annie helping her with the twins, had gotten the kids ready for school, letting Spike sleep in. All three children now rode the bus to school – Annie still attended the magnet school that Buffy remembered, which focused on languages and other cultures, alongside more typical elementary school curriculum; the twins were in kindergarten at one of the ‘regular’ elementary schools in town, Wilkins Elementary. Buffy didn’t much like the sound of that … a school named after the former mayor and half of the tribunal that condemned Spike’s soul to hell, but figured she and Spike must’ve checked it out before letting them go there.
 
It seemed nearly criminal to Buffy for them to have to catch a bus at 7:15am and start school at 8:00 … but that was the schedule. Luckily, the bus stop was just a couple of doors down from the mansion, on the corner of Crawford Street and Ennis Drive. Buffy walked with them and waited with the other parents until the buses came, trying her best not to talk to anyone, since she had no idea what any of their names were, which ones she liked or didn’t like or what had transpired over the last years. Luckily, all the other parents seemed just as sleepy as she was, and many waited in their cars for the buses to arrive, so she didn’t have to interact with anyone on this morning.

 

Annie’s bus came first, then the twins’. Buffy kissed her kids goodbye and tried not to tear up as she watched her babies climb up the tall stairs and take their seats on the big yellow bus – another milestone she’d missed, their first day of school. She watched the bus as it traveled down Ennis, stopping a few blocks down to pick up more children, then it turned a corner and was out of sight. Buffy sighed heavily and looked around – she was the only parent left, all the others had left as soon as the kids were safely on the bus. She turned and started walking back towards the mansion alone, pulling her coat closed and hugging her arms around her torso – she suddenly felt ice cold. Every time Buffy was alone, she had to keep assuring herself that it was just temporary, they would come back – everything would be ok.  She kept telling herself that they were just at school – they’d be back that afternoon … there was no need to worry, but it was hard to convince her heart of that, and it ached to have them back home, back in her arms.
 
Since she knew Spike was still sleeping and would be for a while, Buffy decided to try and take her mind off the kids by going to see Giles. She had wanted to get a Scooby meeting together as soon as possible, but with everyone’s hectic schedules, and Willow and Tara not being able to come until the weekend, it wouldn’t be as soon as she’d like. She had some things she wanted to say to Giles in private, though – before the meeting, so when she got to the mansion, she just walked past – heading towards downtown and the Magic Box.
 
Buffy stopped at the Espresso Pump and got a cup of coffee and a danish for herself and Giles, then made her way to the Magic Box, hoping that her Watcher, or ex-Watcher, would be there alone.

 

Buffy looked in the window of the magic store and saw Giles readying the shop for opening time. She knocked on the door and held the bag of danishes and coffee up for him to see. Giles smiled brightly as he walked over an unlocked the front door for her.
 
“Buffy! What a pleasant surprise!” he started happily, then a worried look crossed his features. What is she doing here at this hour? “Is everything all right? The children? Spike?”
 
Buffy gave him a warm smile as she entered the store. “Everyone’s fine … I just wanted to see you, is that so hard to believe?”
 
“Before 8:00am? I fear I’d have to say ‘yes’,” Giles informed her as he closed and locked the door behind her.
 
Buffy sat the coffee and danishes down on the table near the back of the store and turned and waited for him to join her. When he got near, Buffy pulled her Watcher into a tight hug, taking him by surprise. “I don’t tell you enough, but I hope you know that I love you,” she told him as he got over the initial shock and returned her hug.

 

“I love you too, Buffy … However, there may be much less of me to love if you squeeze my entrails out…” Giles gasped as she squeezed him tighter.
 
“Oh! Sorry!” Buffy apologized, releasing him quickly and stepping back.
 
“Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” Giles questioned as he sat down and helped himself to one of the sweet rolls.
 
“Everything’s fine now … I think … I just, well, something happened and I need to have a Scooby meeting with everyone. Tara and Willow are coming this weekend – maybe we can do it Saturday night after closing?” Buffy questioned as she took the other danish and started picking at it with her fingers, absentmindedly putting small bites into her mouth as she talked.
 
“Certainly … I can be there,” Giles confirmed. “Do you need me to do something in the meantime? Research, perhaps? What is it that’s happened?”
 
Buffy sighed deeply. “I really just want to go over it once … you’ll understand why afterwards, and the research can wait too. But I do need you to do something for me …”
 
“Of course, Buffy, anything you need,” Giles offered, taking a sip of the coffee to wash down the sweet roll.
 
“I need you to start going out … dating … maybe call Olivia …”
 
“Beg pardon?” Giles sputtered, spitting coffee out over the table, taken off guard by her request.
 
“Giles – you’ve been here alone since … well, for a long time, and it’s just wrong. I know you loved Jenny and I’m so sorry for what Angel did …” tears welled in Buffy’s eyes as she thought about all that she’d heaped on her Watcher over her time in Sunnydale – all that he’d sacrificed for her, for the mission. “I may not have told you before, but I’m really sorry for what I’ve put you through, for Angel and … and Angelus – what he did to you and … and to Jenny. You deserve to be happy, you should get out there and ... I don’t know – do something for you for once, before it’s too late.”
 
“I may seem to have one foot in the grave, but I can assure you, Buffy, that I do not,” Giles defended, thinking she was taking a pot-shot at his age.

 

“No! That’s not what I mean!” Buffy clarified, standing up and pacing back and forth near the table. “Anything can happen to anyone at anytime – it’s not about how old you are or how healthy you are or any of that … it’s about living and loving and having someone to share your life with. Being alone is … well, it’s lonely and it sucks.”
 
Buffy stopped pacing and looked at him. “You liked Olivia, right? She liked you? Why don’t you at least call her … maybe she’s still … you know, waiting for you to call,” Buffy suggested sincerely.
 
“I seriously doubt she’s waited this long, Buffy … and I’m fairly certain that my … ummm … love life isn’t …”
 
“Don’t you dare tell me that it’s none of my business!” Buffy interrupted him. “You’re like a father to me – in fact, you’re more of a father than my father ever was. You’ve given me lots of good advice over the years, not that I took all of it … but, that’s beside the point. Now it’s my turn to give you some. Call Olivia – go to England if you have to – you never know if you don’t try!”
 
“Buffy … what’s brought on this sudden concern about my … social life?”
 
Buffy sighed and plopped back down in her seat. “Giles, just trust me when I say that life’s too short waste even one minute away from the people that you care about … it’s too short to spend alone when you could be with someone that loves you – someone that you love.”
 
“Buffy, I’m not alone – I have wonderful friends, you and Spike, Xander and Anya, and the children, you’re all like family to me … and Willow and Tara with the …” Giles started.

 

“No … no, it’s not the same, Giles!” Buffy interrupted him. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Buffy pressed, the vision of the bitter and lonely Giles from the Spike-less wish-world was burned in her mind’s eye. Even after all the years since she’d seen him, the resentful and angry man that he’d become in that world was like a dagger to her heart. “You said you’d do anything I need … well, this is what I need. I need you to call Olivia. Just one call – if she tells you to ‘sod off’ … then fine, I won’t mention it again,” Buffy promised.
 
Giles sighed heavily, taking his glasses off and polishing them furiously for several moments. Finally, he looked back up at her and slipped his glasses back on. “Very well, if it’s that important to you…”
 
Buffy smiled and jumped up from her seat, throwing her arms around his shoulders as he still sat in his chair and squeezing him tight. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
 
“Air … air!” Giles gasped as she hugged all the oxygen from his lungs.
 
After visiting for a while longer, Anya came in, turning the ‘Open’ sign around on the door and leaving it unlocked. Buffy confirmed with her that she and Xander could also make a Scooby meeting Saturday night before saying goodbye to them both and starting for the door as customers started filing in.
 
“Buffy …” Giles called after her.
 
“Yeah?” she answered, as she turned to look back at him.
 
“It wasn’t your fault …” Giles told her sincerely. “What Angelus did – it wasn’t your fault.”
 
Buffy shrugged, unconvinced. “See you Saturday …”
  
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010, 6:30am:
 
“Buffy, luv,” Spike whispered in his wife’s ear as she lay sleeping in their bed.


 
“Mmmm?” Buffy moaned and rolled over away from him.
 
“Slayer … put this on, pet,” Spike continued, rolling her back over and holding her robe out to her.
 
“Huh?” Buffy questioned, finally opening her eyes and squinting against the overhead light that he’d turned on.
 
“Put this on, the Bits got sumthin’ for ya,” Spike explained.
 
“What time is it?” Buffy asked, sitting up. Actually, it was a complaint more than a question.
 
“They wanted to see ya’ ‘fore the school bus got ‘ere,” Spike explained.
 
“Okay…” Buffy agreed groggily before pulling on her robe, standing up to cinch the belt then plopping back down on the bed and closing her eyes again. She’d heard Spike get up earlier and knew that he was getting them ready for school. She’d tried to wake up enough to get up and help him, but ‘five more minutes’ had turned into nearly an hour. The previous night after dinner, they had all spent a long time looking through scrapbooks and photo albums … report cards and Christmas cards. After everyone else had gone to sleep, Buffy got back up and looked through all the memorabilia again … and again, and again, studying each photo, each drawing, trying to commit them all to memory. So many milestones that she’d missed, so many vacations and parties and lost teeth and scraped knees. It had been nearly four in the morning when she’d finally come to bed and gotten to sleep.
 
As she sat with her eyes closed and waited for the ‘Bits’ to say ‘bye’ to her before the bus came, she vowed to get to bed – to sleep – earlier on school nights. Luckily Spike was off work last night, but it wouldn’t be fair for Spike to work all night and then get up early and tend to the kids, too – she needed to make sure she pulled her weight.

 

A chorus of small voices screaming, “SURPRISE!” made Buffy’s eyes fly open. Annie was standing in the middle, with Dani and Billy on either side of her. Her eldest daughter held a tray of food out in front of her. The main attraction on the tray was a tall stack of chocolate chip pancakes smothered in strawberry sauce, whipped cream, and topped with a brightly burning birthday candle.
 
“Oh God!” Buffy exclaimed. Her birthday! It was her birthday! She’d completely forgotten it … she’d stopped celebrating birthdays five years ago, just as she vowed to Dawn that she would do. Birthdays led to badness!
 
As Annie moved into the room with the tray of food, the children all began singing, “Happy Birthday” and Buffy’s throat and stomach tightened into knots. No, no … no birthdays! Please, no!
 
As the children sang and got closer to her, the aroma of chocolate and strawberries, along with bacon and eggs and coffee, wafted from the tray and filled Buffy’s senses with … nausea. “Oh God…” Buffy said weakly, before covering her mouth with her hand. She jumped up and slid past the children and Spike, who was behind them, running out the door and down the hall to the bathroom. She barely made it to the sink before the bile hit the back of her throat – she had to stop there, she’d never make it to the toilet. Buffy leaned over the sink as wave after wave of nausea wracked her body, bringing up nothing but acrid, yellow liquid from her empty stomach.

 

When the waves had passed, Buffy rinsed her mouth and face off and slumped down onto the cool tile floor, leaning her back against one wall. She wrapped her arms over her stomach, pulled her knees up towards her chest, and leaned forward in an effort to keep the nausea from returning. “It’s ok …it’s ok … everything’s ok,” she assured herself over and over again.
 
“You alright?” Spike asked as he crouched down next to her and put hand on her face to check for a fever.
 
“Yeah … I just … I probably ate something that didn’t agree with me,” Buffy hedged, not wanting to tell him about her vow to not have any more birthdays, keeping her head down against her knees. “I’m sorry … they worked so hard on that, didn’t they?”
 
“No worries…” Spike assured her as he moved his hand down from her face to her shoulder and gave her a comforting squeeze.
 
Buffy finally looked up into his eyes. “Spike … I’m so sorry, I just …” Buffy closed her eyes and took a deep breath before looking back at him and continuing. “I just panicked … I lost everything on my birthday … I … birthdays frighten me,” she admitted as tears stung her eyes.
 
“Bloody hell … I didn’t … I didn’t think. I’m sorry, luv,” Spike apologized as went to his knees next to her and pulled her into a hug. Of course she’d told him it was her birthday when everything had gone pear shaped for her, but it had become a tradition for the kids to make Buffy breakfast in bed on her birthday and he didn’t think…
 
“Mama?” came a small voice from behind Spike.
 
Buffy wiped her eyes quickly and put on a smile. “I’m ok, honey. I’m sorry …” she apologized to Billy as Spike released her from the hug and stood back up. Buffy held her hand out to her son and he took his father’s place in her arms. “I love you so much,” Buffy whispered to him as she hugged her sweet boy to her.
 
Buffy looked up from the embrace to see Dani and Annie waiting in the doorway and Buffy reached a hand out to them and soon she had all her children in her arms, still on the floor of the bathroom. “I love you all so much,” she told them. “Thank you so much for the breakfast, it looked wonderful.”
 
“You didn’t make your wish,” Annie reminded her.
 
“That’s ok, honey … everything I could ever wish for is right here in this room,” Buffy assured her.
 
“Wow, you must really love this baf-room!” Dani exclaimed.
 
Buffy laughed despite herself and nodded. “Yeah … I sure do.”
 
**~**
 
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010:
  
Willow and Tara arrived at the mansion, as promised, about mid-morning. The kids had just finished their breakfasts and were ‘discussing’ which cartoons to watch on TV. The witches dropped their bags near the stairs and wandered into the kitchen where Buffy and Spike were still sitting at the table working on getting the gumption to either do the dishes or referee the cartoon ‘discussion’.
 
“Hey guys!” Willow called cheerfully as she walked into the kitchen in front of Tara.
 
“Willow!!” Buffy exclaimed, jumping up and grabbing her friend into a tight hug.
 
“Uhhh … witch, remember? Not Slayer!” Willow protested as Buffy squeezed her so tight she thought her eyeballs were going to pop out.
 
“Oh, God – sorry!” Buffy apologized, releasing her quickly.
 
Buffy turned to Tara, ready to give her a hug, as well, but stopped dead in her tracks. “Tara! You’re … you’re pregnant!” Buffy exclaimed as her eyes went wide, taking in Tara’s full, round belly.
 
“Am I? Oh, thank goodness, I thought I was just getting really fat!” Tara joked, rubbing a hand over her swollen abdomen.
 
Buffy looked from Willow to Tara then to Spike. “You … you didn’t tell me!” she accused her husband, before turning back to the witches.
 
“How? Who? When?” Buffy questioned looking from one to the other of her friends.
 
Willow and Tara both looked at her strangely – Buffy knew how, who, and when…

 

Spike moved up behind Buffy and put his arms on her shoulders. Rupert … ‘bout seven months ago, he sent to her through their bond.
 
“GILES!” Buffy exclaimed, her eyes as large a saucers. “Giles is the father?! You slept with Giles? You had sex with Giles?” she asked horrified, looking at Tara with wide eyes. No wonder Giles didn’t want to call Olivia – he’s having an affair with Tara!
 
“Buffy! What’s wrong with you?” Willow asked her friend, her brow furrowed in concern.
 
“Slayer’s havin’ a bit of a memory problem of late, girls …” Spike explained. “Rupe donated the wigglies …” Spike clarified for Buffy.
 
Buffy looked at him, still confused. “Huh?”
 
“Wanked off in a cup …” Spike elaborated.
 
“Giles ‘wanked off’?” Buffy asked, shaking her head, trying to get that image to go away, not sure which was worse; Giles having sex with Tara or wanking off.
 
“Buffy, I was artificially inseminated,” Tara explained patiently. “Mr. Giles … Rupert, was the donor.”
 
“Oh … artificial … right … of course,” Buffy stammered, unable to take her eyes off Tara’s abdomen. “Congratulations,” she offered tentatively, raising her eyes to Tara’s and then looking back to Willow.
 
After a moment, when it finally sank in, Buffy pulled Tara into an easy hug and then hugged Willow again. “That’s so great, you guys! You’re gonna have a baby! Is it a boy or a girl? When are you due? When’s the shower? Oh, God … I didn’t miss it, did I?”

 

Willow and Tara gave Spike a questioning look. “Just play along … all will be explained t’night,” he told the witches.
 
“It’s a boy. I’m due March 9th and no, you haven’t missed the shower …” Tara told her.
 
“But you are supposed to be helping with it,” Willow added quickly.
 
“Oh God! I can’t believe it! You guys are gonna be Moms!” Buffy gushed, reaching her hand out to touch Tara’s tummy. “You’re gonna have a little witch … or is a boy a warlock? Awwww … that’s gonna be so cute, a little magical pagan baby … he’ll be levitating things before he can walk!”
 
“Oh my! I sincerely hope not,” Giles interjected as he walked into the room behind the witches – he’d stopped in to pick up a couple of books from the research library when he heard voices in the kitchen.
 
“Giles!” Buffy exclaimed, stepping past Willow to grab her Watcher into a tight hug. “You’re gonna be a dad!”
 
“Indeed …” Giles intoned dryly, returning her hug, but in truth he was ecstatic about the idea. He’d been gobsmacked when Tara and Willow had asked him to be the sperm donor – he’d long ago given up any hope of having any children of his own, content to look on Buffy as his de facto daughter and her children as his grandchildren. His only regret was how far away Willow and Tara lived; it would be hard to spend as much time with his son as he’d like, but he knew Willow and Tara would give him a loving and happy home and he’d be able to spoil the boy rotten several times a year then hand him back to his loving mothers.
 
“Have you picked a name?” Buffy asked, as she released Giles and stepped back.
 
“We haven’t decided yet…” Willow began. “Rupert is a possibility, but we’ll probably go with Edmond …”
 
“Who’s Edmond?” Buffy questioned, looking from Willow to Tara.
 
“I am …” Giles interjected. “My middle name.”
 
“Oh – wow! I never knew you had a middle name! Did you know Spike’s middle name is W… oomph!” Buffy started before Spike silenced her, pulling her back against his chest and holding his hand over her mouth.
 
Don’t you bloody dare! Spike sent her through their bond.
 
What?! I like it! I think it’s cute! Buffy sent back, as she tried to pry his hand off her mouth.
 
Not bloody ‘cute’ … vampire, remember? Badass vampires are not bloody ‘cute’! Spike protested indignantly.
 
“Sorry, what was that? W-oomph?” Willow asked with a smile – certain that whatever it was, Spike didn’t want them to know.
 
Wicked … m’ middle name is Wicked, Evil, and Mean … and I’ll bloody well prove it if ya’ keep on, Slayer,” Spike threatened, still holding his hand over her mouth.
 
Buffy started laughing behind his hand, then suddenly she felt the nausea that she’d had off and on since her birthday start building again. Let me go! NOW! Buffy screamed silently to him and Spike released her just in time for her to make it to the garbage can and heave her breakfast into it.
 
“Oh, Buffy! Are you ok?” Willow asked, moving towards her friend, but Buffy couldn’t answer, she could barely breathe as the dry heaves continued even after the food was gone.
 
Finally, the nausea passed and Buffy leaned over the sink and washed her face and mouth, splashing the cool water up and on the back of her neck as she rested on the edge of the counter.
 
“Are you sick? Is it the flu or something?” Tara asked with concern, backing up away from her. She didn’t need to get sick now, not seven months pregnant.
 
“No … I don’t think so … just food isn’t sitting too well with me lately,” Buffy explained as she grabbed a towel and dried her face and hands. “I’ll be fine – it’s probably just … nerves or stress…”
 
“Are you sure?” Tara asked with concern. “’Cos your aura looks a little … off.”
 
Buffy shook her head. “I’m surprised I even have an aura …” At Willow, Tara, and Giles’ confused looks, Buffy shrugged. “I’ll explain at the meeting tonight…” she assured them.
 
**~**
 
Later that evening …
  
Around 9:30 that night, with all the children (including JJ) tucked in bed upstairs, Buffy began a tale of a world without Spike; a tale of a wish and of lost friends, stolen children, a woeful Watcher, and unintended consequences. It was well after midnight now, and all her friends sat in stunned silence as they let her story sink in – as they tried to come to grips with what she’d been through and how she’d lost five years of memories, but had, in the end, saved them all. At first her tale seemed unbelievable … like perhaps she was pulling a prank on them, but the longer she talked, the more heart-wrenching her story became and the clearer it was that it was no joke – it was real. Buffy left out some details in her story, like Spike trying to kill her and what had happened between her and William in the Common, simply saying that she’d managed to drive William into Dru’s arms but not elaborating further.

 

Xander pushed his drink away … it had been his seventh or eighth … maybe tenth, Jack and Coke he’d had since arriving for the Scooby meeting; he’d actually lost count, but he suddenly had no desire for more - ever. He’d always feared that he’d turn into his father and it suddenly dawned on him, as Buffy told how he’d died from a drug overdose in the ‘wish-world’ she’d been living in, that he had fulfilled his worst nightmare. Like a neon bar sign lighting up over his head, Xander realized that if he continued down this path, he would surpass even his father’s ‘accomplishments’; he would never embarrass his teenage son with his drinking … because he wouldn’t be around to see JJ become a teenager.
  
Faith took Xander’s abandoned drink and downed it in a couple of large gulps, happy for a little mind-numbing whiskey at that point to wash down the bad taste in her mouth that Buffy’s story had left. She wondered if the witches could reincarnate Hallie so that Faith could kill her again…
 
Willow and Tara were both weeping openly as they huddled together, their hands laid lovingly on the baby boy growing within Tara, and thought of losing not only the life that they had built as a couple, but of their baby and the bright future that he had in front of him – a future with endless possibilities. Tara couldn’t imagine what Willow in the Spike-less world had gone through. How traumatic a life she must’ve lived for Willow to have lost her mind so completely. It stabbed at Tara’s heart to think of what the love of her life would’ve suffered in that scenario. It would’ve been a living hell for Willow … to be alive but unable to think clearly, unable to formulate ideas, unable to communicate, to speak or write or read; it would’ve been a living hell for the red witch. Tara was sure, in that world, she had gotten the better fate – Willow’s was a fate worse than death.
 
Giles removed his glasses for the hundredth time – he’d quit even the pretense of cleaning them long ago, and now set them down on the research table and rubbed tiredly at his eyes and the bridge of his nose. Now he understood Buffy’s early morning visit earlier in the week … now he understood her contention that he should take a chance at happiness and her apology for Angelus. His heart ached for his Slayer … for his daughter in every sense but blood, for what she’d been through and how she’d fought for her family … how she’d fought for them all. He was concerned about her admission that she’d killed Hallie … killed a human, but he couldn’t argue with her point that letting the ex-demon live wasn’t an option, and there was no one else that could’ve exacted the punishment to fit the crime. He hoped that it wouldn’t weigh heavily on her heart … killing a human, even if deserved, wasn’t something to take lightly – just ask Spike.
 
Anya was furious that an ex-vengeance demon – someone that Buffy claimed to have been Anya’s friend and colleague, would’ve done such a thing to them. Causalities of war, indeed! Anya, of course, didn’t remember Hallie … or Halfrek, she’d never heard of her, but Buffy was sure … adamant even, that she had been one of Anya’s closest friends in the ‘pre-wish’ world. Anya suddenly felt foolish for her complaints to Buffy just a few days ago about ‘forever’ being longer than she thought it would be. Despite the hard times they were having lately, she did still love Xander and their son was growing up to be a handsome and sweet boy – not the axe murderer that Anya had once feared he’d grow up to be. ‘Forever’ suddenly seemed like a blink of the eye … ‘forever’ could arrive at any moment.
 
Wesley and Fred sat on the perimeter of the meeting. They had been officially dating for three years now – the only thing keeping them from taking the next step was Angel. Fred was loyal to the man that rescued her from Pylea and continued to work for Angel Investigations in L.A.; Wesley had no sympathy for Angel after the vampire had tricked them all into getting his soul removed (along with Spike’s) and nearly killed his Slayer several years ago. So, their relationship was in a holding pattern – seeing each other only on weekends, holidays or vacations; either Fred would come to Sunnydale and see Wes or he would go to L.A. ... neither wanting to let the relationship die a natural death but also neither of them giving in on the subject of Angel. Wes found Buffy’s story that he went behind Angel’s back to help her in the Spike-less world somehow ironic, given the current state of affairs – the irony wasn’t lost on Fred, either.
 
Fred knew all too well how easily a word could change life as you know it … being sucked into a portal after reading an incantation in an ancient tome had flipped her life upside down. It had turned her from a respected graduate student at UCLA into a ‘cow’ … living in solitude and fear for five long years in Pylea – until Angel saved her. As much as she loved and respected Wes, she couldn’t just turn her back on the man that got her out of that hell – the man that gave her a second chance at life. She could empathize with Buffy – living in solitude and feeling like the whole world had abandoned you … she knew those feelings very well. As good as Fred was at calculating abstract physics equations, she had no idea how to meld the two parts of her personal life together, and she often felt like she was being pulled apart at the seams as her heart battled itself – part of it wanting to make a life with the man she loved and the other part wanting to remain loyal to the man that saved her. But the moral of Buffy’s story was also clear to Fred – cherish the time you have with the ones you love, because tomorrow may never come.
 
Lorne also sat on the perimeter of the meeting, taking in Buffy’s epic tale. His heart broke for what Buffy had lived through; he knew perhaps better than anyone how close she and Spike were, how their souls completed each other, and how difficult it must’ve been for her to go on all those years without him. The anger she felt must have been all consuming to give her the will to continue to fight, even when it was clear that she would never be able to win the war. He could see the scabs on her soul as she spoke; deep, gaping wounds that had begun to heal over. He wondered if they would ever fully disappear … he doubted it, the scars would remain forever. He felt guilty for not being able to warn them of the imminent danger before it happened – although Buffy said that he had done a reading and told them of the strange ‘nothingness’ that he’d gotten off Spike, he hadn’t been able to give them any specific warning. He wasn’t sure if there would’ve been anything they could’ve done to prevent it, but he still felt partly responsible for the years both of his friends had spent suffering without each other. He sometimes wondered what good his ability was – fuzzy visions of the future were of little practical use.
 
After several minutes of contemplative silence, Giles finally replaced his glasses and spoke, looking directly at Buffy. “What can we do to help you?”

 

Buffy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, for starters, you can do what we talked about the other day …”
 
Giles smiled softly and nodded. “Of course … but what can we do for you?”
 
“Well, just know that I don’t remember what happened here the last five years…I’ve got nothing – zilch. Which begs the question – why don’t I remember what happened here and why did I remember what happened before the wish when no one else in that world did?” Buffy asked the group as a whole.

 

“It most likely has to do with where you were when the realities shifted,” Wes offered. “Both times you said you were in a dream state … perhaps your consciousness and memories were protected in the dream and they simply came with your physical body as reality shifted around you.”
 
“But Spike was in the dream too …” Buffy pointed out, looking at her husband who had remained, for the most part, silent as she told the story, offering her support when she faltered, but allowing her to tell the tale, “and he didn’t remember it … until, well … uhh, until it got crammed into his brain a few nights ago.”
 
“But he did remember …” Giles corrected her. “You said he remembered everything pre-wish when he was in purgatory, correct?”
 
“Yes ...” Buffy agreed. “But he didn’t remember purgatory when I got back here.”
 
“But he wasn’t in a dream with you when the realities shifted the second time,” Wes added. “Realities shifted when Dru turned him … he wasn’t dreaming, he was fully awake.”
 
Buffy chewed on her bottom lip and rubbed her eyes tiredly as she thought about their theory; it was making her head hurt … more.
 
“Perhaps because you’re the Slayer; Slayer dreams are rather unique … prophetic, certainly, but also perhaps they have other qualities that we aren’t even aware of,” Giles offered. “Add to that the unique situation you have with Spike and the bond … it would undoubtedly be difficult to know what effect that may have on your subconscious mind’s abilities to defend itself.”
 
Buffy decided that sounded as feasible as any other explanation for her scrambled memories … she still wasn’t sure that it didn’t have something to do with the wish Hallie had made. Buffy looked at Anya. “How could she wish this so good … uhh, I mean, well?” Buffy asked the ex-demon, looking around sheepishly as she waited for Annie to correct her English – but Annie was in bed. “For her to do everything that she did, it would take like a whole day to make that wish!”
 
Anya sat up straighter in her seat as all eyes turned to her for some explanation. “Actually, it would’ve only taken one short wish – it’s a well kept secret, only long-time vengeance demons even know about,” Anya informed them matter-of-factly. “It rarely gets wished because … well, since vengeance demons can’t grant their own wishes and mortals don’t know about it – usually.”
 
When she didn’t continue, Buffy asked, “And? What’s the secret?”

 

“Oh, that’s insider information!” Anya explained with a shake of her head. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Anya informed Buffy.
 
Buffy laughed out loud. “Better than you have tried and failed! Spill it, Anya – what the fuck did Hallie wish for?”
 
Anya looked around the room nervously at all the expectant faces, then back to Buffy. “D’Hoffryn would have my head …”

 

“Fuck D’Hoffryn!” Buffy exclaimed, standing up from her seat at the head of the table. “I know his little secret, too – he’s not going to touch you, trust me.” Buffy wanted desperately to add, but if you don’t tell me, I will … but she bit her tongue. She was trying to keep her friends, not alienate them. She wasn’t the aloof and lonely Slayer any longer … she couldn’t just go around threatening people …or worse, to get her way.
 
Anya looked around the room again, then leaned forward towards Buffy and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “She wished for her ‘heart’s true desire’,” Anya whispered so only Buffy (and, of course, Spike) could hear.
 
“Her ‘heart’s true desire’!?” Buffy exclaimed loud enough for everyone to hear. “That’s it?! That did all this?”
 
“Shhhhhhhhhhhh!” Anya admonished her, looking around fearfully, expecting D’Hoffryn to show up at any moment.
 
“It’s a very powerful wish …” Anya explained, keeping her voice low. “Most people wish for one certain thing – for their boyfriend to be turned into a pig or a worm or bunny. But if you wish for what’s in your heart, your true heart, depending, of course, on what is in your heart, the possibilities are virtually limitless. If she was a vengeance demon for as long as you said, she would’ve known that.”
 
“And she had a good long time as a rat to fill her heart with plenty of juicy desires …” Buffy sighed, sitting back down in her chair heavily.
 
Wanda’s words to Buffy when she met her at the lodge before going to see Willow rang in Buffy’s ears, ‘follow your true heart, it will lead you back to the light, back to him,’  and then, after she’d overdosed on sleeping pills, Wanda told her again … ‘your only chance is to follow your heart’s true desire.’ Buffy closed her eyes and sighed, shaking her head in regret. The only way to fight Hallie’s wish was to follow her own heart’s true desire – it’s what Wanda had been trying to tell her the whole time, if she’d only listened with her heart instead of her mind.
 
Finally, Buffy looked back at Anya and asked, “And could the magic of a wish be so strong to reach all the way to the Powers?”
 
Anya shrugged. “If that was her heart’s true desire … maybe. D’Hoffryn’s magic is ancient and very powerful…”
 
Buffy shook her head and sighed, then suddenly her brow furrowed in worry. “Did her wish survive this – did any part of her wish survive?” she questioned, looking from Giles to Wesley then to Fred, the three smartest people she knew apart from Spike. If her wish survived, then what would happen to Spike when he faced the trials again one day? Would they be skewed in the favor of evil as they had been before?
 
“Spike, you say you … ummm … dispatched Cecily after you were turned, is that correct?” Giles asked him.
 
“If by dispatched, you mean did I drain the bloody whore and use ‘er bones for toothpicks, then yeah …” Spike confirmed.

 

“Indeed,” Giles started, removing his glasses again and polishing them. “Then I think it would be safe to assume that no part of her wish would’ve survived … as she wouldn’t have been alive to make the wish in the first place in this reality.”
 
“Although understanding the wish is quite interesting, I believe that we have another, more pressing issue to deal with: the scythe,” Wesley pointed out. “You say that the Guardian told you that you brought this on yourself … that the scales were tipped too far to the side of good and must be set back in balance. If that’s the case, then what you’ve done … by getting Spike back and creating an army of Slayers, you have set the scales out of balance once again.”
 
“Indeed,” Giles agreed. “It appears that, if we do not reverse the magic and go back to one … or two, as it were, Slayers at a time, then we can expect some other form of Armageddon in the future.”
 
“The question then becomes,” Wesley continued. “Would we rather face that Armageddon with an army of Slayers or try to avoid it and continue to fight our ‘normal’ apocalypses with just the two…”
 
Of course we have to put the magic back – why is that even a question!?” Buffy insisted, looking from Wes to Giles.
 
“Why ‘of course’?” Faith interjected. “I think we need to think about this, B. I mean, I really don’t want to be the only frontline Slayer – I’m getting into this ‘teamwork’ gig … now that I’ve lived past the legal drinking age, I’d just as soon keep living.”
 
“That’s easy for you, Faith – you don’t have a family to think about! Hallie took everything … not just Spike and the kids, but most of you guys, too,” Buffy pointed out, waving her hand to encompass the whole room. “The next big bad to come along and try to put things ‘back in balance’ could be even worse!”
 
“But the point is, you fixed it, B! We stand a better chance at taking out whatever the next threat is with a hundred Slayers than just one or two!” Faith argued.
 
“Yeah, I fixed it – but at what cost!? I lost five years – five years with my kids and I … I walked through hell alone to do it. Next time we might not be so lucky, next time we might not even have a chance to walk through hell. Then what!? Everything I did, everything I went through, will be for nothing!” Buffy shot back, the agitation in her voice growing.
 
“Well, if there’s a hundred Slayers, then the chances of finding the highway to hell would be a lot better than if it’s just you and me!” Faith pointed out as she stood up and moved closer to Buffy. “I’d rather fight with an army than alone.”
 
“Yeah, well I’d rather not have to fight at all. I’d rather stay here with my family and try not to miss the next five years of their lives. I’d rather they have a chance to grow up … I’d rather they have the chance to live to legal drinking age and beyond! Putting the world back in balance is the only way to …”
 
“Don’t say that’ll stop the next apocalypse, sister! We’ve had our share of those well before the scythe!” Faith interrupted her. “If you don’t want to fight, then you should want to have more Slayers, not less! You stay home and bake cookies … we’ll fight!”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes and shook her head, her anger with her sister Slayer growing. “You have no idea what’s possible, do you? The longer the world stays out of balance, the worse whatever comes will be! I’d rather deal with ten of our annual apocalypses than one Armageddon. God damn it, Faith – can’t you put something other than ‘want, take, have’ first for once in your life! It’s not all about you, ya know!”
 
“It’s not all about you, either, B! Seems to me, you’re the greedy one here – what about all those girls that are Slayers now? They’re all someone’s daughter, too! Have you given one thought to what would happen to them if you suddenly took their power away? What happens if the First comes back with his blind mice to kill them? What about all the ones that have already died defending innocents? What about all the ones that died to save your ass from the Armageddon that Angel dragged you into in the other dimension? You sayin’ none of that counts for anything?” Faith continued to argue.
 
Buffy stood up as Faith got close to her at the head of the research table and stood facing her sister Slayer as the others in the room watched the argument escalate. It was like watching a speeding locomotive jump its tracks and the cars begin to accordion onto each other – not something that you ever want to see, but something you can’t drag your eyes away from, either.
 
“It was a mistake to release the magic in the scythe. It needs to be fixed. What happens to those girls … well … the Council can …”
 
“Oh please give me a break! The Council can’t find their ass with both hands!” Faith asserted. “I’ve gone along with you on a lot of things, B – but not this. I won’t let you do it.”

 

“Just try and stop me …” Buffy threatened.
 
“It would be my pleasure …” Faith retorted as waved her arm out, intending to invite Buffy into the training room for further ‘discussion’ – Slayer to Slayer, but Buffy misinterpreted her actions.
 
Before Faith could even finish her hand gesture, Buffy kicked her feet out from under her and pinned Faith to the ground with her hips straddling the other Slayer’s stomach, one arm holding one of Faith’s arms and her other arm pressing down against her throat, cutting off her oxygen.  Faith hit out at her with her free arm and tried to buck her off or turn over, but Buffy had the leverage, she had the upper hand from the very beginning of the fight.
 
“No one fucks with my family! Never again!” Buffy screamed at Faith as she pressed even harder and felt the dark Slayer’s hyoid bone break under the pressure, but still she didn’t let up.
 
Everyone had jumped up from their seats when the Slayers hit the floor and they were all screaming at them to stop, but Buffy heard none of it. One thing she had learned from five years as a solitary demon hunter was don’t let anything distract you during a fight – it could be deadly. Another thing was, make the first move count – don’t hesitate; be decisive and deadly and don’t stop fighting until you’re sure you’ve won. Buffy no longer saw Faith under her, but a threat to her family. It wasn’t her sister Slayer there, but a big bad trying to take away what she’d struggled so hard to find again, trying to take her life, her family, away again. Buffy had lived with the guilt of releasing the magic from the scythe for five long years – she blamed herself for what happened to Spike, for the torment that he’d gone through. Now she had a chance to make it right, to reverse her misdeed … and Faith was trying to take that chance away from her.
 
Buffy felt someone attack her from behind, and she swung an elbow back with all her strength into the ribs of her attacker, still keeping her forearm pressed hard against Faith’s throat. Spike winced in pain when her elbow cracked two of his ribs as he dropped down behind her and wrapped his arms around Buffy’s arms and torso, trying to restrain her. Buffy struggled to get him off her as he tried to pull her forearm away from Faith’s throat. Faith had passed out from lack of oxygen to the brain; Wes and Giles were trying to get a hold of Faith so they could pull her out from under Buffy as Spike was trying to control his wife without hurting her. Spike’s mouth was next to her ear, imploring her to stop – but she didn’t even hear him. Buffy jerked her head backwards and head-butted Spike with the back of her head and he temporarily loosened his grip on her just as Giles and Wes were beginning to pull the unconscious Slayer away. Buffy swung at the Watchers, but they both had let go of Faith when Spike screamed out in pain and they were just out of her reach when Buffy swung at them.
 
Buffy was back atop Faith in an instant, pressing down again on her throat, making sure the threat was neutralized, when Spike threw his whole body at her, hitting her from behind and knocking her completely off the defeated Slayer. Buffy and Spike tumbled around on the ground, each trying to get the upper hand as Wes and Giles checked on Faith. She was breathing, but just barely, her windpipe crushed and almost completely closed.
 
Buffy fought blindly, not even realizing who she was fighting or even what the original reason for the fight was. Her body, adrenaline, and instincts for survival had taken over – instincts that she had honed for five long, lonely years; instincts that had kept her alive to seek her vengeance for her family and friends. Willow moved over to where Spike and Buffy were wrestling on the floor, ready to put Buffy to sleep as she’d done when the First triggered her, but Spike yelled at her to stop – he needed to be able to stop her without Willow; Buffy needed to be able to stop herself. Buffy finally stopped fighting, at least momentarily, when she heard Spike inside her mind through the bond. He wasn’t screaming, he wasn’t demanding that she stop, but instead simply telling her calmly that it was alright, everything was alright, her family, her friends loved her and everything was alright. When Buffy hesitated, Spike wrapped his arms around her, stilling her hands and covering her body with his, holding her still on the floor of the great room.
 
Shhhhh … it’s ok, pet. Everything’s ok, Buffy. I love you. You won … you don’t need to fight anymore … shhhhh …. Easy now, luv. Relax … I’ve got ya, it’s ok.
 
“Spike?” Buffy questioned aloud as the fight or flee adrenaline began to release its hold on her mind.
 
“Yeah, baby – it’s me. Everything’s ok, just relax now, luv … it’s ok,” Spike assured her, his voice barely a whisper against her ear.
 
“Oh God … what have I done!? Faith!” Buffy realized as she tried to turn her head to see her fellow Slayer.
 
“She’s alright, pet …” Spike assured her. Although he wasn’t really sure how ‘alright’ Faith was, he was sure she wasn’t dead.
 
“God, Spike! I’m sorry! I didn’t … I didn’t mean to … Oh, God, what’s wrong with me!?” Buffy cried against his shoulder as he continued to hold her. Dawn’s words from what seemed another lifetime ago echoed through Buffy’s mind like a ghost, What happens when someone else … another human, crosses you? and Buffy began to sob uncontrollably against Spike’s shoulder. She knew if he hadn’t been here, she would’ve undoubtedly killed Faith – and for what? Because they disagreed over the right course of action regarding the scythe? Because they had differing points of view? Because Buffy felt like Faith was threatening her family, even though Faith was no more a threat to them than Willow or Tara or Giles or any of her friends.
 
“Shhhhh…no worries, now. Pincushion Girl was outta line…” Spike assured his wife as he rolled off her and sat up on the floor, pulling her with him. Buffy wrapped her arms around Spike and buried her tear-streaked face against his neck as he stroked a hand down her back soothingly.
 
“No … no, she was right – I am the greedy one,” Buffy admitted as she continued to cry against him.
 
“Bollocks …” Spike protested. “You’ve made mistakes, pet, we all have – but being ‘greedy’ isn’t part o’ your chemistry.”
 
Buffy snorted softly, disagreeing without words. “Maybe it is now…”
 
“Never happen, Buffy … it’s not who you are,” Spike assured her.
 
Buffy just rolled her eyes – he didn’t know, he couldn’t possibly know how much the last years alone had changed her, how the anger and the hate had embedded themselves into her being, into every molecule of her body and soul … perhaps right into her DNA.
 
“Are you alright, Buffy?” Giles asked gently as he bent down and laid a hand on her back.
 
“Yeah … how’s Faith?” Buffy asked, lifting her head and looking over at her fellow Slayer. Wes was administering to her and Tara was on the phone with 911.
 
Giles shrugged. “Not dead …” was the best he could say. “They’re ringing for an ambulance…”
 
“Wait … tell them to wait on the ambulance,” Buffy insisted, pulling from Spike’s embrace and standing up.
 
“But, Buffy, she’s badly injured …” Giles objected, stepping back to allow her to stand.
 
“I know – but … just wait a minute, ok?” she requested of Giles. Then, turning to Spike, she asked, “Where’s the scythe?”
 
Spike looked at her suspiciously for a moment, then stood up and silently asked, Not gonna finish ‘er off are ya? ‘Course, that could mean more hours for me at Willy’s, might be able to afford that new transmission for the DeSoto…
 
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Nooo … just tell me where it is.”
 
Spike led the way into the training room and Buffy followed. He entered a combination on a locked door at the far end and opened it for her. Inside was a myriad of weapons – kept safe from little hands behind the locked door, including the scythe. Buffy grabbed it and headed back to the great room with it.
 
She knelt down next to Faith and took both of Faith’s hands and put them on the scythe, holding them on it tightly with her own. Buffy didn’t know if it would work … she didn’t know until it did. She could feel the magic circuit connect and start flowing through both of them, just as the scythe had done in the ‘wish-world’ for her. Whatever had changed in the magic of the scythe due to Hallie’s wish had remained; why, in that reality, the Guardians had long ago infused it with additional magic, Buffy didn’t know – perhaps they anticipated the need or somehow had warning of the dangers she would face. Whatever the reason, Buffy was happy for it and she was glad that releasing the magic and creating the Slayers didn’t completely drain the magic from the ancient weapon.
 
“Damn, B…” Faith uttered finally as her wounds healed and her head stopped spinning. She took the scythe from Buffy’s hands and sat up slowly. “It never did that before …”
 
Buffy nodded and smiled apologetically at Faith. “I know … it’s a side effect of the wish, I guess – not sure.”
 
“Man – do you think it would work for a hangover?” Faith asked, looking at the scythe with renewed awe.
 
Buffy laughed lightly. “I can tell you with certainty that it doesn’t,” Buffy informed her, remembering too well her churning stomach and spinning head from the wine she and Dawn drank in the wine cellar in the Sunnydale crater and how the scythe had no effect on either.
 
“Bummer…”
 
“Faith … I’m … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go all ‘postal’ on you like that…” Buffy started, her voice turning serious.
 
Faith shrugged. “Fair fight, you just got the jump on me this time. I guess that means we put the magic back …”
 
Buffy shook her head slowly. “No … no, you were right. There’s always an apocalypse on the horizon ... always a threat. We stand a better chance with more Slayers, not less. When the time comes, we’ll just have to find a way to win …”
 
“Hey – we always do, right?”
 
“Yeah … yeah, I guess so,” Buffy agreed half-heartedly, remembering how she’d won the battle but lost the war with D’Hoffryn and his minions. If it hadn’t been for Lilah setting it up so Wanda and her mom could stop her from ODing, her war would’ve ended there – she would’ve lost; they all would’ve lost.
 
**~**

Continued ....
End Notes:
Continued in next chapter ... (over 10,000 words ...)
If Tomorrow Never Comes, Part 2 by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Continued from previous chapter ...
... Continued from previous chapter ...

**~**


Since it was in the small hours of the morning when the Scooby meeting finally broke up, everyone just stayed at the mansion for the night, sleeping in spare bedrooms or on the couch or the floor … wherever they could find a comfortable spot. Buffy rolled over and tried to focus on the bedside clock … 11:14am it said – it seemed like she’d just gone to sleep. The kids must be starving … hopefully they haven’t killed each other yet. It wasn’t until Buffy sat up that she realized Spike was already up and gone from their room … making poached eyeballs for the kids, no doubt.
 
Buffy got dressed and headed downstairs. She could hear her friends and family talking and laughing in the kitchen and she paused halfway down the staircase, sat down on one of the steps, and just listened. Willow was talking to Fred about some new technology she was working on and how it would change the way the world used computers, Tara was talking to Anya about the baby and the nursery and names, Spike was talking to Xander about rebuilding the transmission in the DeSoto and Xander was telling him they’d be better off pulling a used one off a junker and just replacing it, Giles and Wes and Faith were talking about what they should tell the Council about ‘the wish’, if they should tell them at all, and the children were earnestly discussing who would beat up who … Batman vs. Wonder Woman – Wonder Woman of course; Wonder Woman vs. Green Hornet  – Green Hornet, they decided; Green Hornet vs. Kung Fu Panda … Huh? Kung Fu Panda? Who the hell is Kung Fu Panda?
 
As Buffy sat there trying to figure out who or what a ‘Kung Fu Panda’ was, the aroma of poached eyeball eggs reached her nostrils and sent her stomach into a tailspin. Buffy put her hand over her mouth and nearly jumped the rest of the way down the stairs to the first floor, barely making it into the bathroom in time. Spike heard her and everyone was waiting for her when she emerged a few minutes later, still a little green around the gills.

 

“You alright, luv?” Spike asked, his brows furrowed in concern as he rubbed a hand soothingly down her back. She’d been sick for several days now and it didn’t seem to be getting any better.
 
“Yeah … just, I don’t know … just my stomach isn’t happy with poached eyeballs, I guess,” Buffy theorized.

 

“Maybe it’s something else,” Tara suggested. “Maybe you’re pregnant,” she offered, remembering all too well her own morning sickness and what Buffy suffered through with her previous pregnancies … and her aura still looked a little off … but not in a bad way.
 
“Oh … ha ha, very funny!” Buffy replied sarcastically, rolling her eyes, but no one else was laughing.
 
“Guys … I’m not pregnant! I couldn’t possibly be – that’s ridiculous! I’m on the pill and Spike’s a vampire and there haven’t been any monks around and … Oh God!” Buffy exclaimed, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and shock as her hands covered her mouth. “William … William wasn’t a vampire … I wasn’t on … I wasn’t on anything,” Buffy stammered, looking at Spike. “Rack said … he said he couldn’t protect me – whatever happened there happened to me…”
 
“Bloody hell…” Spike muttered, a look of amazement and joy spreading across is features.
 
“What does that mean, ‘William wasn’t a vampire’?” Giles asked, his brows furrowed in confusion, but Buffy didn’t hear him as her mind whirled.
 
Save the babies … all of them … all of them … all … her mom had admonished her as Buffy was on her way to join Spike in hell.
 
“All the babies … save all the babies …” Buffy muttered, her hands going to her abdomen. “B-but … it was … it wasn’t this body … it was …” Buffy stammered, trying to work through it – it was all the same dimension. Yes, she had a different body in the ‘wish-world’, but it wasn’t a different dimension, she wasn’t a different person, it was just a different set of circumstances … a different fate, it was still her.

 

“Oh my God, Spike …” Buffy cried, her eyes still wide with shock as she looked up at him. “I think Tara’s right … I think I’m pregnant …”
 
Spike pursed his lips together, then ran his tongue across his teeth as a wide smile spread across his face. “William had some brilliant swimmers … I’ll give ‘im that,” Spike bragged before grabbing her in a hug, lifting her feet off the ground and swinging her around in delight.

 

Dear Lord – she slept with William! Giles finally realized, taking his glasses off and scrubbing them furiously but not voicing his revelation to the group.
 
Tara, Willow, and Giles, the closest people to them, backed up to avoid being hit as Spike swung Buffy in a circle and all her friends began talking and asking questions at once. “What?” “Who?” “When?” “How?” “Huh?”
 
But neither Buffy nor Spike heard them … all Spike could hear were Buffy’s words echoing in his mind, I’m pregnant, and all Buffy could hear were Spike’s vows of everlasting love and devotion whispered softly against her ear, his voice full of emotion and his heart swelling with elation over the possibility of another baby.

 

When Spike finally set Buffy back down on her feet, he leaned down and kissed her gently. His eyes danced with joy and he couldn’t wipe the silly grin off his face as he pressed a palm against her abdomen.
 
“Can you hear it?” Buffy asked him, laying her hand over his.
 
Spike shook his head. “Not yet … How long ‘as it been? Just since the buggering blue demon?”
 
Buffy shook her head trying to clear her thoughts. “Yeah … we were together that night and then the next morning I woke back up here – you said I had been attacked by a blue demon. So just, umm … like a week?”

 

“Would someone please tell the mushrooms what’s going on?” Xander asked, still confused, his request finally being heard by the warriors. “I’m pretty used to living in the dark, but every once in a while I’d like to know what the f…iddlesticks is going on!”
 
Buffy pulled her eyes away from Spike’s to look at her friends, who were all waiting expectantly. “I stepped on a butterfly and saved all our babies.”
 
**~**

If Tomorrow Never Comes
By Ronan Keating from the movie: P.S. I Love You
Originally by Garth Brooks


{{Click here to hear "If  Tomorrow Never Comes” on YouTube   }}


Sometimes late at night
I lie awake and watch her sleeping
She's lost in peaceful dreams
So I turn out the lights and lay there in the dark
And the thought crosses my mind
If I never wake up in the morning
Would she ever doubt the way I feel
About her in my heart

If tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her
Did I try in every way to show her every day
That she's my only one
And if my time on earth were through
And she must face the world without me
Is the love I gave her in the past
Gonna be enough to last
If tomorrow never comes

'Cause I've lost loved ones in my life
Who never knew how much I loved them
Now I live with the regret
That my true feelings for them never were revealed
So I made a promise to myself
To say each day how much she means to me
And avoid that circumstance
Where there's no second chance to tell her how I feel

If tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her
Did I try in every way to show her every day
That she's my only one
And if my time on earth were through
And she must face the world without me
Is the love I gave her in the past
Gonna be enough to last
If tomorrow never comes

So tell that someone that you love
Just what you're thinking of
If tomorrow never comes
  
End Notes:
TBC ....

Kudos to Magnus who predicted Buffy's preganancy ... albeit a bit early ... I must be getting too predictable ...or my muse has loose lips and needs a lashing ... any volunteers? :O

Will have more soon ... we still have more things to find out about William's children from 1890 ...

Oh, and one other thing ... start thinking of names for the new baby ... it will be a girl, red hair and green eyes. I'll ask for your suggestions at the end of the story!
Wild Angels by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Buffy and her friends are still trying to sort some things out, then The Weckerly family (plus one) spend some time in the snow…
**
Music Referenced:
"Wild Angels", Martina McBride
 http://youtu.be/X7Z9lvUz2DI
   **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!
Sunday, January 24th, 2010, mid-afternoon:
 
“Yes … yes … I understand. Yes, thank you for your time. No! You’ve been a great help!” Willow assured the historical secretary of the Holy Trinity Church of Clapham before hanging up the phone and looking up at Buffy.
 
“Ok … she says the records show that John Weatherford was the Vicar there from 1875 to 1891 … that he and his wife, Wanda, left suddenly in early 1891 and moved to America …” Willow explained as Buffy paced back and forth behind her, wearing a path in the carpet on the floor of her small office.
 
“Wanda said she had a sister in Philadelphia …” Buffy offered, chewing on her thumbnail as she continued pacing impatiently. “Maybe they went there.”
 
“Buffy … this might take a while for me to track them down. Maybe you should … you know – sit down,” Willow suggested. “You’re making me nervous.”
 
“Sorry, Wills,” Buffy apologized as she stopped pacing and clasped her hands together to keep her fingers out of her mouth. “I just … Spike feels so bad for what he did, I really want some kind of good news to give him about what happened to the children,” Buffy explained. Although that was true, what Buffy didn’t say was that she needed it too. She needed to know that what she did in 1890 actually did save all their children.
 
“I know, Buff …” Willow sympathized. “Our baby isn’t even born yet and I already love him so much. I can’t imagine doing what Spike did. I mean, I know he had no other choice, but still …” Willow made a pained expression, unable to fathom having to make such a difficult decision.
 
“Wills … do you think … I mean, I think part of William’s soul stayed in Spike – after her was turned. Do you think that’s possible?” Buffy asked, losing the battle with her nerves as she starting chewing on her thumbnail again.
 
Willow shrugged as she turned her attention to the computer and started typing queries for ‘Wanda and John Weatherford’ in one of the genealogy sites. “You know …” she answered Buffy after hitting enter and waiting for the computer to do its magic, “I think that’s totally possible. You remember when Angel de-souled himself and Spike?”

 

“Yeah …”
 
“And Spike didn’t … you know, kill us all?”
 
“Yeah…”
 
“Well … it didn’t really hit me until just now, but Tara mentioned to be back then that Spike’s aura wasn’t all black … like it should be if he was, you know … totally soulless. I didn’t really think much of it, honestly – I figured because he’d just lost it that maybe there was some cosmic residue or something lingering…” Willow admitted.
 
“But now you think maybe he really did keep part of William’s soul, even after he was turned?” Buffy asked hopeful that her friend would confirm her theory … confirm what she’d told Spike about William’s soul.
 
Willow shrugged. “What other vampire has ever saved their family?”
 
Buffy nodded. “That’s what I thought, too … But what about all the bad he did as a vampire? He killed a lot of people …” Buffy pointed out.

 

“Well … it might’ve just been a small piece of his soul … and it would’ve had a hard time fighting the demon all those years. I wonder if it just went into hiding … gave up…” Willow theorized as she looked back at the computer screen and started clicking on possible matches to her search.
 
Buffy thought of the last time she’d seen Spike in purgatory … there was nothing but the demon there; his soul had definitely gone into hiding, given up. “What do you think brought it back out of hiding? Why did he help us fight Angelus … why did he keep his word and protect Giles … and help me?”
 
Willow looked back up at Buffy with a look of disbelief. “Do you really have to ask that?”

 

“Me…” Buffy whispered, more to herself than Willow.
 
“Duh!” Willow agreed, rolling her eyes before turning her attention back to the computer.
 
In every dimension or world that Buffy had seen that included Spike, there had always been a change in him when he hit Sunnydale. Despite numerous chances to kill her or her friends, Spike never did. The Watcher’s diaries chronicled rivers of bloodshed and mountains of mayhem attributed to William the Bloody … but in Sunnydale that seemed to change. Maybe not completely – he wasn’t instantly transformed into a saint, and he talked a good game and made a good show of trying to kill them all … but in the end, he never did.
 
Had it been that little sliver of William’s soul, somehow protected from the demon, that had been drawn out of hiding when it came near Buffy’s? His warrior’s soul was just waiting for an opportunity … for an ally, for a reason to battle the demon again. Perhaps finding its other half gave it that motivation, gave it the strength and resolve to rein the monster in. In this world, that sliver got a boost when Willow restored the rest of his soul, along with Angel’s, using Jenny Calendar’s spell; in the other dimension, that sliver was bolstered when Spike was chipped by the Initiative. All it needed was just that little bit of help to win the battle with the demon – all it needed to fight again was that feeling of exaltation finding its other half gave it.
 
“Oh! Here they are!” Willow exclaimed, pulling Buffy from her thoughts. “You were right! They emigrated from England and settled in Philadelphia. John, Wanda, Anne, Elizabeth, and William Weatherford!”
 
“They changed the children’s surname …” Buffy mused aloud, looking at the computer screen over Willow’s shoulder.
 
“Probably would’ve been easier than trying to explain a totally different name…” Willow offered as she continued to search for more information.
 
“Before, the whole family line up to 2005 had already been mapped out on ancestry.com …” Buffy suggested.
 
Willow checked but shook her head. “That would’ve been nice, but nope…”
 
Buffy sighed … it had probably been Hallie that had done that – tracking down her next squeeze.
 
Willow performed the protection spell on Buffy, just as she’d done during her other pregnancies, then searched for more information on the children online. She looked for as long as she could before she and Tara had to leave to make the trip back to Redmond, Washington so they could both go back to work the next day. She promised to do more research on the Weatherford descendants as soon as she had time and get back to Buffy, but she left Buffy armed with some good news for Spike about his decision to leave them in the care of the vicar and his wife.
 
Anne had married at the age of eighteen. Her husband was a US Marine and fought in France during World War I. They had four children, two boys and two girls and lived on military bases all over the world for most of their life. They finally settled in Seattle, Washington after her husband retired from the service with the rank of Colonel and they lived there for the last twenty years of their lives. Anne had passed away in 1953 at the age of seventy-two; her husband passed just two months later – after fifty-four years of marriage.
 
William, Jr. did not serve in World War I … Buffy was glad to hear that. Spike hadn’t told her if he warned Wanda about that or not, but probably he did; Wanda must’ve locked her youngest child in the root cellar and kept him home. William had married at the age of twenty-four, had two children, a girl and a boy and he lived in or near Philadelphia all his life. William’s wife died in childbirth and he was a widower at the age of twenty-eight with two small children to raise. Willow couldn’t find any record of him ever re-marrying and he passed away in 1943 at the age of fifty-two.
 
Just like Dawn in the ‘wish-world’, Willow couldn’t find anything about Elizabeth … Bess. It was like she just dropped off the face of the earth, but Willow promised Buffy that she would keep looking. The middle child might’ve moved to another country or simply moved somewhere that didn’t keep good records, Willow assured her.
 
Buffy didn’t really know what to make of Bess’ lack of records, but she focused on the positives … Anne and William, Jr. had lived and loved and had children and grandchildren and who knows how many great grandchildren. Perhaps their lives weren’t all peaches and cream … William’s especially sounded sad losing his wife at such a young age, but they’d had a chance to live and love – Spike had given them that chance with Wanda and John; he had done the right thing.
 
**~**
 
Later that night, after giving everyone the good news about the fate of the children from the 1800s, all their friends, except Giles, had gone home. Buffy went up and got the kids ready for bed, leaving Spike and Giles alone in the great room. When she started back downstairs, Buffy paused, just out of view of the men, when she heard her husband and her de facto father discussing – what else? Her.
 
“Sydney’s an old friend and an excellent psychologist … he’s well versed in treating cases like this,” Giles assured Spike.


 
“Cases like this? Got many of ‘em, do ya? Slayers getting tossed into a strange world and havin’ to fight with every fiber of ‘er being to get ‘ome and save her family?” Spike questioned sarcastically, his hands going to his hips.
 
“Indeed … well, perhaps not exactly like this – but he’s worked with many soldiers coming home from battle…” Giles defended.
 
“Slayer ain’t gonna like it …” Spike pointed out with a sigh, shaking his head slowly.
 
“She’s been through a trauma … I’m quite certain what she’s experiencing is a type of post traumatic stress, just like soldiers returning from war. Add the hormonal changes from her pregnancy and … well, it seems clear that she needs help dealing with everything,” Giles insisted. “You saw her last night … she would’ve killed Faith if not for you stopping her. What happens when the person on the receiving end of her anger isn’t a Slayer? What happens when it’s someone else … a child, perhaps? What happens if you’re not there to stop her?”
 
Spike blew out a long breath and hung his head. It was hard to argue with that, although he was sure she’d never hurt any of the Bits – not after what she’d gone through to get them back. He didn’t know what she would do if confronted by someone she perceived as a threat to them, though – human or demon, whether the threat was real or imagined. Her ‘mother instinct’ to protect her babies had been magnified to the power of a hundred over the intervening years … he wasn’t sure how long it would take her to scale it back, to ask questions first before going on the attack.
 
Buffy sank down onto the floor at the top of the stairs and covered her face with her hands as tears fell from her eyes. Giles thought she was crazy and Spike didn’t disagree. They thought she was a danger to her children … they were going to put her in the loony bin after all! They were going to fill her with pills and put her in a padded room and toss away the key! She felt like a rat trapped in a maze – everywhere she turned was a dead end it seemed. Anytime she found any small glimmer of hope or happiness, someone or something came along to snatch it away from her; she just never expected that it would be Spike and Giles doing the snatching.
 
Buffy jumped when she felt a hand touch her arm. “Buffy … what’s the matter, luv?” Spike asked softly as he knelt down next to her.
 
“You’re just like Riley!!” Buffy accused through her tears.
 
Spike pulled back, clearly insulted. “I bloody well am not!”
 
“You think I’m crazy – you think I need to be drugged and locked up and forgotten about – just like he did!”
 
“Awwww, pet … that’s not true. No one’s talking ‘bout locking anybody up or taking any pills …” Spike assured her. Spike put a finger under her chin and lifted her face so she would look at him. “Rupe’s just worried ‘s all – worried about you. You’ve been through a lot, Buffy.”
 
“I can’t believe you think I’d hurt our babies! Spike, I swear I’d never hurt them … never in a million years … please, you have to believe me,” Buffy begged, her eyes shining with tears as she searched his for understanding. “What happened with Faith … it was … it won’t happen again,” Buffy promised.
 
“I believe you, pet. But it might not hurt to talk to this head shrink … he might be able to help you deal with …”
 
“NO! No, no, no!” Buffy screamed, covering her ears with her hands to block his words out. “I am not crazy!”
 
“No one’s sayin’ you are …”
 
“Yes you are! You all think I’m crazy!”
 
“Buffy, I can assure you that is not the case,” Giles offered as he came up the stairs to see what was happening. “It might help you … adjust to speak with someone with experience in these matters.

 

“Buffy, what you’ve been through is akin to war. You’ve battled alone for so long – you’ve been an army of one and it’s got to be quite a shock to your psyche to suddenly be thrust back into this life with no time for decompression or period of adjustment,” Giles explained.
 
Buffy shook her head as he talked, not really hearing him – her mind focused on the thought that Spike and Giles thought she was crazy, that she was a danger to her children… “All I’ve wanted for five years was to get back here, to get my family and my friends back … and now you’re saying that I can’t handle it!? Sometimes I think I’m the only one that’s not crazy around here!”
 
“No one’s sayin’ you can’t handle it, pet,” Spike assured her, his voice calm and soothing. “No one’s saying you’re crazy or that you’d hurt the bits and no one is gonna push any pills down your throat. We’re all just worried ‘bout you and want what’s best for ya.”
 
“Sometimes talking it out can help you deal with the anger and frustration so it doesn’t manifest inappropriately,” Giles added.
 
“I’ve talked and talked and talked! I’ve talked to Spike, I’ve talked to all you guys … I’ve turned into fucking Chatty Cathy since I got back! How much more can I talk!?” Buffy questioned as she stood up and faced Giles. “I’ve talked so much, I’m gonna use up my word allowance for the whole year pretty soon and it’s only January!”
 
Giles rolled his eyes. “Indeed … well, if you feel like you’d like to speak with a professional, I’ll leave his number on the refrigerator … just in case.”
 
“I’m not crazy,” Buffy repeated.
 
“I never said that you were, Buffy. We all need help from time to time … it’s not something to be ashamed of. Even the Slayer can use a hand now and then,” Giles offered sympathetically.
 
“Buffy … look at me,” Spike insisted from where he now stood behind her.

 

Buffy turned around and faced her husband. In his azure eyes she saw love and faith and the promise of a life she thought she’d forever lost. Her anger waned as tears welled in her eyes again. “Buffy, we love you – we all love you and we all know how strong you are. All Rupe’s sayin’ is, don’t be afraid to ask for help if ya need it, luv. You’re not alone anymore. We’re all here, we’re all standing with ya now.”
 
“I don’t want to talk to a stranger about … stuff. Can’t I just talk to you?” Buffy questioned solemnly.
 
“’Course, pet … you can talk to me ‘til you use up all your word allowances for the rest of eternity … then you can ‘ave mine.”
 
Buffy pulled her top lip into her mouth and held it between her teeth before nodding solemnly and melting into his arms. “Thank you …” she murmured against his chest as Spike wrapped his arms around her and stroked a comforting hand down her back as he tucked her head under his chin.
 
“You’re not like Riley at all,” Buffy admitted softly as she took comfort in her husband’s arms.
 
Spike snorted a soft laugh. “Well, glad we got that sorted out at least.”
 
**~**
 
Saturday, February 12th, 2010:

 

It was the twins’ sixth birthday; Annie would turn eleven in two days. Buffy and Spike had taken a week’s vacation, pulled the kids out of school and brought them, along with JJ, to the  ‘Christmas Tree Vineyard Lodge’, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Auburn, California to see snow. The twins (and JJ and Annie) had actually seen snow before, but Buffy had missed it, and Spike agreed that it would be a nice way to celebrate their birthdays, as well as give Buffy a little ‘closure’ by coming back to the lodge where she’d first talked with Wanda and hatched her idea of going back in time and fulfilling her true heart’s desire.
 
Buffy had good days and bad days over the last month since she’d reversed … or at least partially reversed, Hallie’s wish. Some days she was still afraid that it would all be yanked away from her – that she was just dreaming … but that never happened. She’d been embarrassed a few times when people she should’ve known would speak to her and she didn’t know their names or what they were talking about, but she didn’t worry about it too much, the really important people in her life knew what was going on and were happy to fill in the blanks for her.
 
Buffy, Spike, and the kids spent the day playing in the snow in the hills around the lodge. She felt like a kid again when, after breakfast (which she skipped ‘cos of the morning sickness which was still raging), they built snow fortresses and had snowball fights – the girls against the boys. There had been no clear winner in the Great Snowball War of 2010…and each side claimed victory. After a warm and welcome lunch, they went for a hike on one of the many trails around the lodge, with Spike and Annie in the lead, followed by JJ and Billy then Buffy and Dani. It wasn’t far down the trail that Spike and Annie froze in their tracks and Spike held up a hand stopping the rest of the procession. Buffy’s heart raced as she grabbed Dani’s hand and stilled her … what had he seen? A demon? A bear?
 
Deer, Spike sent her silently through the bond as he and Annie crouched down and motioned for the rest of the group to come up slowly to see. It was one of those magical moments of nature – when you come face to face with another living being, with no walls or fences between you, and time stands still. Three deer peered out of the snow laden bows of the evergreens lining the trail and watched the strange, brightly colored creatures that were only a few yards away. The moment seemed to last forever as neither group moved or breathed – then, suddenly, one of the deer snorted loudly and stomped one cloven hoof on the frozen ground before turning and running quickly back into the dense forest in leaps and bounds, and the other two quickly followed.
 


“Cool!” “That was so neat!” “Wow!” “Awesome!” “Did you see that?” “It looked right at me!” came the excited cries of the children as they all stood back up from their crouches – eyes wide with wonder and joy. Buffy smiled and caught Spike’s eye as they both stood back up, as well. Spike wrapped an arm around her and dropped a soft kiss on her forehead.
 
“Their first Bambi…” he told her softly.
 
Buffy nodded and blinked back tears. She’d missed so many firsts … but there were still more to be experienced … she hadn’t missed them all.
 
After their hike and stopping back at the lodge for some almond-milk hot chocolate (with mini-marshmallows, of course!), they headed to the sled hill, each armed with a brightly colored, plastic sled. Spike thought that was cheating … lightweight plastic sleds … nothing like the heavy wooden one he had to drag up the hill when he was a boy, but the kids just rolled their eyes and moaned. Not another one of those old stories … When I was a boy I had to walk ten miles to school in the snow, barefoot, uphill, both ways … and I was happy for it…

 

Of course, the sledding quickly turned into a competition … which is so strange, because neither Spike nor Buffy have a competitive bone in their bodies … yeah, right. Spike was able to claim clear victory on the sledding races … unlike the snowball war. Buffy complained that it wasn’t fair; he was heavier than the rest of them so, of course, he would go faster in the hard-packed snow. Spike, of course, contended that it his skill and natural athletic ability that gained him the victory and they were all just sore losers!


The family (plus one) sledded until nearly dark, then headed back to the lodge to warm up by the fire and fill their hungry bodies with the best pot roast Buffy had ever had. Buffy had arranged in advance with the B&B for a dairy-free birthday cake for the twins, which came after the meal. They’d have a ‘proper’ party for the kids when they got home, with their friends and family, but she didn’t want to let this day pass without a celebration. She may not celebrate her own birthdays anymore, but she couldn’t imagine taking that simple joy away from her children.

Billy, of course, received books for his birthday, including his very first journal – to say he was thrilled was an understatement.



Dani got the Spiderman skateboard that she’d been begging for since before Christmas, the one that Santa forgot to put under the tree for her. She, of course, wanted to start riding immediately, but would have to wait … no skateboarding indoors and outdoors was covered with snow, plus it was dark out – maybe tomorrow.

 

After getting the kids bathed and put to bed … the boys in the room adjoining Buffy and Spike’s to the right and the girls in the room to the left, the lovers took a little time for themselves in the Jacuzzi hot-tub on their balcony.
 
**~**
 
Billy was awoken by what sounded like a grizzly bear devouring a poor, helpless girl – her cries were muffled, but still clearly audible. What’s that!? he asked silently, pulling the covers over his head so the bear couldn’t see him.
 
Annie says it’s ok … it’s just Mama and Papa playin’ a game, came the silent answer from his twin sister in the other room.
 
A game? What kinda game? he asked, peering out from under the covers; JJ was still asleep. Billy didn’t know how anyone could sleep through that!
 
Annie thinks it’s Little Red Riding Hood, Dani informed him.

 

Oh … but just pretend, right? Billy asked, quite familiar with the old fairy tale of a girl and her grandmother being eaten by a big, bad wolf.
 
Yeah, it’s just a game, Dani assured him after a moment.
 
Annie says we need to go back to sleep now, it sounds like the game is over, Dani told him after a few minutes.
 
Billy uncovered his head completely and listened. Dani was right, the growling and screaming sounds that had been coming from outside had stopped. Ok, g’night, he sent to his sister.
 
G’night …
 
**~**
 
Spike held Buffy in his arms after their love-making as he reclined on the full length lounge seat in the Jacuzzi and she lay contentedly atop him, her back to his front, and closed her eyes. Buffy sighed happily as the warm bubbles and swirling water surrounded them like a blanket, chasing away the cold night air. Her soul mate’s arms wrapped around her and her family sleeping peacefully just a few feet away filled her heart with a joy she had, not so long ago, been certain she would never feel again. To be in Spike’s arms … to be in the bosom of her family and friends again – it was literally a dream come true for her.
 
Spike reached over and turned the whirling bubbles off and, after a few moments, he began tapping a soft rhythm on her abdomen with his fingers. Buffy smiled and laid her hand over his as he moved his fingers gently in time with the beating of their baby’s heart.

 

“A miracle, it is, pet,” Spike whispered in her ear and Buffy nodded softly as tears stung her eyes.
 
“Are ya scared?” he asked her, remembering her contention that she was ‘allergic’ to pregnancy after nearly dying when the twins were born.
 
“No … somehow I know everything will be alright this time. We have wild angels watching over us … Wanda and mom … and Avengelyne,” Buffy assured him with a little smile.
 
“Ahhh, no worries then,” Spike returned her smile and nuzzled his lips against her ear.
 
“Like a Phoenix, you are, luv. Rose out of the ashes, you did … and brought us all with ya; made new life out of the ruins. You’re the strongest, most amazing woman I’ve ever known, Buffy – the strongest person I’ve ever known. I love you so much,” Spike murmured against her ear as she lay against him, his voice deep with emotion and love.



“You gave me that strength, Spike … even in the darkest moments you were still there with me, even when I didn’t want you to be … when I didn’t want you to see me … see me doing those things … I knew you were there. Your love gave me wings, I never stopped loving you – ever,” Buffy assured him and Spike wrapped his arms around her body and held her tighter, the heartbeat of their unborn child and her words of love ringing in his ears.
 
“Do you think Rack sent me to the wrong year on purpose … or do you think … I don’t …maybe Wanda or mom did it?” Buffy asked him. It was one question no one had ever answered for her.
 
She felt Spike shrug slightly under her. “Rack’s a selfish bastard, to be sure. He mighta done it just to keep you from succeeding …he mighta known he’d lose you if you were able to get us back…” Spike hypothesized.
 
“It was weird though because I knew when I was in his magick … it was … well, it was euphoric … it made me want to stay in that place, I didn’t care about anything else but that high – then that feeling suddenly stopped and everything went black – then I was in the Common,” Buffy recalled for him.
 
“Like someone pulled you outta his spell?” Spike questioned.
 
“Yeah … I guess, something like that,” Buffy agreed. “But if someone pulled me out – why did they drop me where … or when, they did?” Buffy wondered.
 
“Worked, didn’t it?” Spike pointed out.
 
“Yeah, but … my plan probably would’ve worked too and been … easier,” Buffy lamented.
 
“’These are the times that try men’s souls,’” Spike quoted Thomas Paine. “Didn’t Wanda tell you that you were bein’ tested? Being made to walk alone?”
 
“Yeah…”
 
Spike tightened his arms around her and leaned the side of his head against hers. “Maybe that was part o’ the test…you had to give us up in order to save us.”
 
“That just proves my theory that all tests were invented by bored, evil, sexually frustrated prudes who think it’s fun to put the rest of us through the ringer…”
 
Spike chuckled a soft laugh. “Oh, so you think the Council o’ Wankers is behind it, then?”
 
Buffy laughed but shook her head. “Well, the shoe definitely fits, but no … I don’t think they have that much power.”
 
Spike turned serious again. “Buffy, if you’da gone back to 1880 … what would you have done?”
 
“Killed Cecily,” she answered confidently. “Not let her marry you.”
 
“Would you ‘ave slept with William?”
 
Buffy shrugged. “I don’t know … probably not … I just – I was just so mad at her for how she treated you, using you – never letting you know what was possible… keeping your love for herself but never letting you feel what true love is.”
 
“So, you wouldn’t have saved all the babies…” Spike pointed out, laying his palm flat on her abdomen, covering the embryo growing within her. “Not just this one … but the others, Anne, Bess, and William. They would’ve never been born in that time…” he pointed out. “I don’t know which babies your mum was talking about when she said ‘all’, pet … but this way there’s no doubt, yeah? You saved them all.”
 
Buffy sighed and nodded her head slightly. “I guess that’s true…”
 
The lovers cuddled in the warm water of the hot tub in silence as the winter air touched their cheeks with a cool, soft breeze. Each lost in their own thoughts of the years gone by and the test that Buffy had faced … a test she might’ve failed if not for someone giving her a push in the right direction – her mom? Wanda? She still didn’t know for certain. She also didn’t know who had helped Hallie … who had helped her escape her cage and turned her back from a rat to a human, who had granted her wish. That missing detail nagged at Buffy … could whoever helped Hallie pop up again one day and be a threat to them? Had it been D’Hoffryn? Or some old enemy or perhaps someone unknown to them? She hated having that loose end hanging out there without an answer, but right now she’d have to live with it, because she didn’t have an answer to that mystery.

 

“If you want to go through my memories, you know you can, Buffy – anytime,” Spike offered quietly, pulling her from her thoughts. It wasn’t the first time he’d offered that since she’d ‘returned’, but she’d always declined.
 
“I know … I …” Buffy began, not sure how to explain why she didn’t want to do that. “You know, I’m kind of liking this getting to know you again. We both have all new stories and experiences we can share with each other, it’s kinda like when we were first together. Everything’s sort of new and wondrous…it’s like falling in love with you all over again,” she explained.
 
“I feel cheated for missing those years, but every time we share something with each other … some little thing that pops into our minds and we can’t wait to share it … I don’t know, I just feel like we’re re-connecting again. I don’t know if you can understand …”
 
“I understand, pet,” Spike assured her. “Just know it’s always there. There’s nothing I wouldn’t share with you …”
 
Buffy nodded and bit her lip. There was one thing she did want to know, but had been reluctant to ask. “Can I ask you something else?” Buffy started tentatively.
 
“Anything.”
 
“When you were … when you got the memories of those years in purgatory and the trials … do you … do you remember after that…after you were taken away?” she asked hesitantly.
 
“Yeah …” Spike sighed, closing his eyes against the memory of it.
 
“Was … what was it like? Can you tell me?” Buffy asked. Part of her wanted to know what he’d been through; part of her wanted to know what she might face one day for her own sins; part of her worried for him, just as he and Giles worried for her, that keeping that memory bottled up would eat at him; and, as crazy as it was, the little green monster within her still wondered if Dru had been there with him.
 
When he didn’t speak for a moment, Buffy turned in his arms and sat up on his lap in the hot tub facing him. Spike’s eyes were closed, but she could feel the pain the memories aroused in him and she was suddenly ashamed of herself for broaching such a hurtful subject.
 
“I’m sorry … it’s alright,” Buffy assured him, kissing the tears that had leaked out from his closed lids away. “If you want to talk about one day …”
 
Spike opened his eyes and let the green of hers surround him with love … just as he’d done as he stood in front of her before meeting what could’ve been … should’ve been, his final judgment. The love and caring in her eyes never ceased to surprise him, never ceased to give him strength and courage and hope, and now was no different.

 

Spike took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s not like they say in the books …” he began. “Not constant, eternal fire … if the fire had been constant, you could’ve gotten used to it … learned to deal with it. You’d burn one day, then freeze the next …back and forth. One day blistering sun, roaring fires, ground covered in hot coals everywhere ya step ... the next day bone chilling wind colder ‘an any snow or ice you’ve ever felt, cut right through ya. Never long enough to get used to either one. Had the same decorator as they did in limbo, though … sandy, rocky … desolate and filled with every kinda buggering monster you could imagine and that many more you wouldn’t want to…
 
“I could feel other souls there, but you couldn’t see them or touch them or communicate – you were completely alone, just you and the monsters. And there was this constant fear … you could never relax, never just curl up in a ball and hide – they’d track ya, find ya, no matter where you went or how well you thought you’d hidden…” Spike stopped and closed his eyes and tired to breathe through the memory.
 
Buffy took one of his hands in hers and held it tightly, as she waited for him to continue, wishing she could take his pain away. The one thing she had been glad of in this new world was that Spike hadn’t remembered the torture his soul had faced … until it, along with all his ghosts, had all come crashing down on him from the ether.  She could take away his ghosts, but she couldn’t erase the memory of it from his mind.

 

Spike finally opened his eyes and began again. “They’d pull ya from your hiding place … rip ya from limb to limb … God, Buffy – you never felt such …” Spike faltered as a lump formed in his throat and he closed his eyes again.
 
“Oh, baby … I’m so sorry,” Buffy whimpered as she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. Spike sat up and pulled her to him, burying his face against her shoulder and sobbing.
 
“That’s not the worst … the worst bit was, when the pain got to be more than you thought you could stand for another second, there was a moment you’d think ‘this is it … this is gonna end it’ and you get this faint glimmer of hope that you’d actually die.”
 
Spike snorted a derisive laugh and pulled back to look into her eyes. “But you forgot … you’re already dead – there ain’t anywhere else to go. The moment you have the small glimmer of hope, you’re suddenly back in one piece … freezing, burning, running from the beasties again, scared out of your mind – knowing they’re gonna catch you again…knowing that it’ll never end, that there was no hope, after all. Having that little moment of hope … it was worse than not having any hope at all.”
 
“Oh, God … Spike,” Buffy cried as tears for her husband fell from her eyes and she pulled him back against her. “I’m so sorry … it was all my fault.”
 
Spike shook his head against her shoulder, silently disagreeing with her before pulling back and meeting her glistening eyes with his. “No … not your fault, Buffy, never think that. It was Cecily (he still had a hard time calling her ‘Hallie’ ... he’d never met ‘Hallie’) … not you. You saved me – you saved William, you saved us all,” Spike assured her. “You’re the real wild angel, Buffy … you’re the one.”


  
**~**
 
{{Click here to hear "Wild Angels” by Martina McBride on YouTube   }}


Between the perfect world and the bottom line
Keeping love alive in these troubled times
It's a miracle in itself
And we know too well what that's about
Still we made it through, only God knows how
We must've had a little help

Must've been Wild Angels, Wild Angels
Watching over you and me
Wild Angels, Wild Angels
Baby what else could it be?

Well it must've been hard, it must've been tough
Keeping up with crazy fools like us
'Cause it's so easy to fall apart
And we still break each other's heart sometimes
Spent some nights on the jagged side
Somehow we wake up in each other's arms

Oh it must've been Wild Angels, Wild Angels
Watching over you and me
Wild Angels, Wild Angels
Baby what else could it be?

There are some nights
I watch you while you dream
I swear I hear the sound of beating wings

Oh it must've been Wild Angels, Wild Angels
Watching over you and me
Wild Angels, Wild, Wild Angels
Baby what else could it be?

End Notes:
TBC ... What's up with Dani and Billy? Oh, were they born with a bond? Do you remember when they were babies and seemed to be able to 'communicate' about what foods they liked and didn't? Do Spike and Buffy know about it? Hmmmm ... doesn't seem like it .... yet.


Only one more chapter to go in this story arc ... Will have more soon! Keep thinking of names for the new baby ... I'll officially ask for your suggestions at the very end...
Follow Your Heart by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
The Weckerly family (plus one) spends some time in the snow and meet an old friend who advises them to 'follow their hearts.' This is the final chapter of this story arc.
**
Music Referenced:
Follow Your Heart, Menyo
http://youtu.be/EAKjVefkyvg
    **
ScreenCaps courtesy of ScreenCap Paradise:
http://www.screencap-paradise.com/?cat=3
**
Thanks so much to Paganbaby for her continued support and wonderful ideas. I especially needed her help with this story because of the complexity of it! {{Thanks PB!}}

Special thanks also to 'u2fan2005' and 'epd4' for their suggestions, corrections, and help betaing this chapter!!

**
Warning for sexual situations.
 Sunday, February 13th, 2010:
  
Buffy moaned a low, sleepy “Mmmmm” as she felt velvet fingers tracing random patterns on her skin and a cool tongue swirling delicate circles down her spine, sending tinglies through her whole body. She lifted her arms over her head and stretched her sleepy body – lengthening and tightening all her muscles, arching her back, and pressing her butt against the creator of those tinglies.
 
“Good morning, handsome…”
 
“G’mornin’, cutie…” Spike replied before dropping his mouth back to her body and beginning a new trek down her golden skin.
 
Buffy moaned and yawned at the same time as Spike’s fingers circled one areola lightly, teasing her nipple to attention.
 
“Not boring ya, am I?” Spike questioned with a smirk.

 

“Uh-uh …” Buffy muttered, trying to stifle another yawn as her eyes closed again. They’d been up late the night before and, judging by the lack of sunlight shining in the windows of their room at the B&B, it was still pretty early. “Sleepy…”
 
“Shall I stop, my Sleeping Beauty?” Spike wondered as he trailed his soft mouth further down her spine and moved his hand to her other breast, sending goose bumps racing over Buffy’s skin as her back arched again and she felt his hardness against her ass.

 

“Uh-uh …”
 
“Might wake ya up if I keep goin’…” Spike pointed out.
 
“Mmmmmm … best way to wake up ever invented,” Buffy assured him, her voice still sounding half asleep.
 
Spike smiled and continued his trek down her body with his mouth and hands … barely grazing her hot skin with his cool fingers and leaving a damp trail of curlicues and figure eights up and down her spine.
 
Buffy was still oscillating between sleep and wakefulness … which made his touches, his hands, his mouth, feel all the more dreamy on her rapidly heating skin. Her body tingled all over from Spike’s tender touches and she could feel her juices dampening her labia as his hands moved like a phantom … slowly, deliberately over her body.
 
Buffy pulled one leg up, bending it at the knee, when Spike’s fingers trailed across her mons, welcoming him into her. Spike dipped one finger between her damp folds and sent a thousand little bolts of electricity down both of her legs when he delicately touched her clitoris with the tip of his finger.
 
“Oh God …” Buffy moaned, pressing back against him harder as he teased her wet slit with his fingers and rained soft kisses on the back of her neck.
 
Spike kept his touches light and teasing … over and around her clit … then down to her dripping hole and back again as his tongue found the spot behind her ear that never failed to awaken and electrify every nerve-ending in Buffy’s body. Buffy turned her head back over her shoulder and Spike captured her mouth with his, sliding his tongue between her lips and exploring her mouth with the same delicate movements that he’d used on the rest of her body.
 
Need you… Buffy pleaded silently, wrapping her tongue around his as he tasted and teased and tantalized her.
 
Spike didn’t need a second invitation … her golden body, her heavenly scent, her hot skin, her wet folds … they were all combining to drive him as crazy as he was driving her. Spike guided his penis down her ass until it was at her throbbing hole, then pressed his hips forward slowly, pushing the engorged head of his cock into her tight channel.
 
“Oh, baby … Mmmmm…” Buffy moaned as he pressed into her. That moment of connection … moment of becoming one with him, never disappointed. Their bodies fit together as perfectly as their souls … spooning together as if they were made for each other, as if they were formed out of the same mold … or perhaps had been one at some time in the past, before Zeus separated them.
 
“So beautiful you are, pet …” Spike whispered in her ear as he pressed in further. His mouth found the soft skin of her neck again and his hand found a hard nipple and he began his teasing, ghostly, heavenly torture of her body anew. “What you do to me … God, Buffy …”
 
Spike moved his hips ever so slightly, making slow, easy love to her as his hands and mouth kept the chill bumps racing over her fevered skin. Buffy closed her eyes and just let the feeling of his body against her back, his hands caressing her breasts, and his cock filling her, consume her completely. It truly was the most perfect way to wake up ever invented … slow, sensuous sex with the man you love on a Sunday morning … was there anything better?
 
“You’ve got the job…” Buffy teased as she pressed back against him, running one hand down his outside thigh.
 
“Do I, now? And what job is that?” Spike wondered as he continued his slow rhythm of pressing in and pulling out of her hot, wet pussy.
 
“Alarm clock…” Buffy informed him. “You can be my alarm clock for all eternity. It doesn’t pay much, but the fringe benefits are awesome…”

 

“Mmmmm …” Spike moaned against her skin. “Sounds bloody brilliant…”
 
Spike reached across her towards the nightstand by the bed, but couldn’t reach it, so Buffy opened the drawer and pulled out what she knew he was looking for … a small fingertip vibrator. She took it out of its little velvet bag and slipped it on his index finger and Spike turned it on.
 
Buffy’s body jerked back against him and a loud moan escaped her throat as Spike pressed the pliant vibrator between her folds and touched her clit. Buffy raised her top leg higher and draped it back over his, opening her pussy to him and Spike continued to tease her hard clit with the vibrator, just barely touching the erect nubbin, as he filled her hole with his thick shaft.
 
“Oh, God … Spike … baby … need more …” Buffy begged as she took up where he’d left off, teasing her own breasts, pulling and pinching her nipples and pressing her ass back against him. He was driving her completely insane … but this was finally the kind of insane that she didn’t mind; insane with desire, insane with lust for her husband … insane with yearning and need.
 
She could feel the tide within her swelling … so close, so close to breaking and crashing down on her … so very close … building higher and higher … into a tidal wave … so close. When Spike thought she couldn’t stand one more second of his torture, he jerked his hips hard into her and pressed the vibrator down onto her throbbing nubbin and the wave that had been building slammed over her like a thousand tsunamis.
 
Buffy screamed out as wave after wave of bliss washed over her whole body … remembering a little too late to bury her face in a pillow to muffle her scream. Her body tensed and trembled, her velvet pussy walls quivered and tightened like a vice around Spike’s cock and she let the euphoric waves that he’d built within her carry her away. Buffy felt like she was floating in a sea of ecstasy. Cool water as blue as Spike’s eyes tickled her skin and seemed to bubble with blissful abandon in every cell of her body as it lifted her higher and higher into the stratosphere.
 
As Buffy floated back down on fragile bubbles of rapture, she pushed the pillow away from her face so she could breathe again. Her heart raced, her body shuddered, and a thin layer of perspiration covered her skin, despite the cool air of their room, as she struggled to breathe and waited for her brain to start functioning again.
 
“God Spike …” she breathed between gasps of air as he held her tightly against him, not wanting to break the spell of her orgasm. He loved feeling her cum around him, under him, next to him … to be able to take her to that little corner of heaven on earth – made his desire for her grow even stronger.
 
When he knew she was ‘back’, Spike began moving against her again, but Buffy pulled away and tuned to face him. At his confused expression, she simply removed the fingertip vibrator from his finger and, with a coquettish smile, pushed him onto his back. She flipped around and straddled him, putting her pussy over his heavenly mouth as she dropped her lips to the mushroom head of his cock and began teasing him with feathery flicks of her tongue.
 
Spike moaned against her hot, pink folds, laving her cum from her pussy lips before delving deeper into her dripping hole. As Buffy teased his cock with her tongue, teeth, and lips, licking her juices and his pre-cum from his hard rod, she switched the small vibrator back on and pressed it against the base of his cock. Shockwaves washed over Spike’s balls and up his shaft, tickling Buffy’s nose as she nibbled and licked and kissed the silky skin covering his hard, heavenly shaft.
 
Spike’s hips jerked up into her when she touched him with the vibrator and he moaned loudly against her, pressing his tongue deep into her slit which caused Buffy to moan just as deeply around his rod. She began moving up and down on him, slowly at first, trailing her tongue in zigzag patterns over the length of him as her lips sucked and squeezed his thick cock and she moved the vibrator slowly over his balls down to his taint and then further down, until it pressed firmly against the sensitive skin around his puckered hole.
 
It was all Spike could do to keep from slamming his hips against her, fucking her mouth with wild abandon as he fucked her pussy with is tongue. He reached out and cupped her breasts in his hands, then found her nipples and teased them back to full attention before pulling and twisting lightly, sending bolts of pleasure down her body and making her pussy throb faster and harder around his tongue.
 
Buffy had intended on teasing Spike within an inch of his life … or un-life … or whatever … but his tongue and mouth and hands were thwarting her good intentions … Oh well, what was the saying? “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” She wasn’t looking for the road to hell, anyway … quite the opposite. When Spike removed one hand from her tit and slid it down the crack of her ass, she knew that she was about to lose the battle with her good intentions. He pressed his thumb slowly into her tight, puckered hole, still fucking her pussy with his tongue, and Buffy jerked back against him then slammed down on his cock … all thoughts of teasing him completely washed from her brain.
 
Spike sucked and licked and fucked her with his mouth and hands as he felt her orgasm building along with his own. Her mouth on his cock – so hot, so wet, so tight … sucking and licking and fucking him, had him on the brink … When Buffy pressed harder on the vibrator against his ass and it slipped in, he completely lost that small sliver of control he’d been clinging to. Spike growled deeply against her pussy; his balls tightened as his cum demanded release and exploded up like a geyser into her heavenly mouth.
 
His deep growl seemed to reverberate through Buffy’s entire body, starting with her core and spreading out in a blissful echo, reaching from her curling toes to the top of her head to the tip of her hot tongue then folding back in on itself. She struggled to swallow his cum as she licked and slurped and fucked his ass and cock with her mouth and finger – holding her own orgasm just a moment longer … just one moment … just …
 
Buffy screamed around his cock, unable to stop the waves of his deep, animalistic growl from releasing her own wild animal from its self-imposed confines. Her body bucked against his mouth and hand, driving his tongue and finger deeper into her convulsing body and suddenly she was free … a cheetah bolting across a wide, green prairie at what seemed a hundred miles an hour. And suddenly Spike was next to her, his lion’s mane flowing gracefully in the wind as they skimmed the earth … two warriors, two hunters … two pieces to one whole.
 

 
They careened around trees and sailed over fallen logs, splashed through cool puddles of clear water, sending exaltations of birds fluttering into the air away from them. They seemed to run forever, first one in the lead, then the other, before finally tangling and tumbling down together under a canopy of a huge tree in the middle of nowhere … as if they were the only beings on earth.

  

The predators growled against each other … snarling and snapping, rolling and grappling on the soft ground under the tree until finally realizing there was no winner or loser … neither was greater than the other -- they were different, yet the same.
 
Buffy came back to herself to find that they had grappled and rolled and ended up face to face in each other’s arms. As she looked up and met Spike’s eyes she saw and felt the one thing that Rack’s magick could never give her … unabashed love and adoration. Buffy reached a hand up and touched Spike’s face gently, drinking in the love that showered over her like a warm, blue waterfall.
 
“I love you …” she whispered to him.
 
Spike turned his face and dropped a soft kiss in the palm of her hand before looking back into her eyes and letting himself drown in their green depths. “I love you too … my wild angel.”
 
**~**
 
Buffy plopped down on the bench next to Spike with a laugh and he pulled her to him with a strong arm around her shoulders and dropped a kiss on the tip of her red, frozen nose. It was nearly lunch time and she and the kids had been skating since after breakfast … which she was finally able to eat today. She wondered if her new ‘alarm clock’ had anything to do with her lack of morning sickness this morning, and made a mental note to test that theory tomorrow morning … and the morning after that…

 

Spike, true to the vow that he’d made years ago at the Coven that she’d never get him on ice skates, had been watching from one of the benches surrounding the small outdoor rink. Buffy began to unlace her skates and put her boots back on as the kids continued showing off their moves on the ice. Yells of “MAMA!” … “PAPA!” … “DAD!” … “LOOK!” … “UNCLE SPIKE!” … “WATCH ME!” filled the air as the children all vied for attention and skated … and fell, and got up and laughed, and skated some more.
 
“They’ve turned out wonderfully,” came a familiar voice from behind them and the warriors turned around quickly to see Wanda standing there. The Guardian Angel watched the children with a soft smile and a look of longing … or perhaps of nearly forgotten memories of the children she raised as her own so many years ago.
 
“Wanda!” Buffy exclaimed, jumping up from her seat as she stomped her feet into her boots then went around the bench and pulled the vicar’s wife turned Guardian Angel into a tight hug. Spike stood up and watched as the mother of all his children embraced the woman that he trusted with the lives of three of those children so many years ago. In truth, it was kind of surreal and a little disconcerting for him…
 
“Your heart found the right path, child,” Wanda told her when Buffy released her. “I knew you could…you just needed to trust it more.”
 
“Come sit down!” Buffy insisted, pulling Wanda by the hand back around the bench and sitting her in the middle of the seat. Buffy sat down next to her, but Spike remained standing, not quite sure what to say to this woman who not only raised his other children but helped his wife find her way back to him.
 
Buffy kept a hold of Wanda’s hand, afraid that the angel would disappear before she had a chance to ask her some things. Buffy followed Wanda’s gaze to the skating rink where the children were all still trying out their moves and Buffy smiled softly, sitting in silence with her, understanding how heart-wrenching it must be for her to see children that looked exactly like the ones she raised and loved in her mortal life.
 
Finally, Wanda lifted her eyes to Spike and reached her other hand out towards him, silently inviting him to sit with them. Spike dipped his head and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck … feeling uncomfortable, not knowing what to say to this woman who not only raised his children but helped Buffy save them all. The sadness and guilt and shame over giving his children away came to the surface again as he looked into this woman’s eyes …
 
“Come sit, William,” Wanda invited softly, extending her hand further towards him and Spike finally acquiesced and sat down next to her. Wanda took his left hand in hers and pulled it over to the hand that Buffy was holding, pressing their hands together between hers.
 
“You are both very special to me …” Wanda began, looking from one to the other. “You trusted me with your family … you brought love and laughter and joy into the life of my husband and I, and for this, I am eternally grateful.”
 
Wanda looked out over the skating rink, but in fact, she was looking back in time over a hundred years as she saw the faces of what she came to think of as her children laughing and smiling in front of her.
 
“Anne was a lovely girl … bright! … My word, that girl was bright,” Wanda recalled for them. “She fell in love with a serviceman … head over heels – it was love at first sight for both of them. They had four beautiful children … and never stopped loving each other … ‘until death do us part,’” Wanda related to them with a sad smile.



“William … dear sweet boy he was … just like his father,” Wanda told them, looking at Spike with loving eyes. “He loved his books … just like you, William, and was a fine poet. He aspired to writing a whole book of love poems and sonnets … but lost the love of his life quite young,” Wanda related sadly. “He loved his children dearly and devoted his life to them after she passed … but he was never quite the same after that.
 
“He never could open his heart to another … I think that’s what finally took him, truth be told. After his youngest child, a son, got married and moved away, his vow to his wife that he would love and raise their children was fulfilled and he simply fell asleep one night and never awoke … I believe he died of a broken heart.”
 
Buffy and Spike’s eyes met, both misty with emotion before they looked out at the rink at their son … racing across the ice in an attempt to catch JJ and body-check him ‘out of bounds’ as they played a ‘make the rules up as you go’ game of ice-tag-puckless-hockey.
 
The three adults fell silent for a long while, each lost in their own thoughts as they watched the children play and argue about the rules of their made up game and put suggestions for rule changes to a vote …
 
After several long minutes, Buffy turned back to Wanda and asked the question she’d wondered for many years … since before going back in time. “What happened to Bess?”

 

Wanda took a deep breath and squeezed the warriors’ hands tightly between her own before looking at Buffy. “She was a Slayer…”
 
Buffy felt the air being physically pulled from her lungs as her chest constricted. It felt like the cold hand of death had grabbed her heart and was trying to rip it out of her chest. “A Slayer …” she whispered, shaking her head in denial. She’d always worried that Annie, and later Dani, might become Slayers … she’d never thought about the other girls from Spike’s human life being Chosen.
 
Wanda nodded sadly, lowering her eyes down and looking at the hands held between hers. “Mr. Travers came when she was thirteen … she had just been Called … we honestly didn’t know what to think …” Wanda began.
 
“Travers!? Quentin Travers was her Watcher!?” Buffy questioned.
 
Wanda smiled softly and looked up at her. “No child … Harold Travers … it was 1900, dear.”
 
“Oh …”

 

“1900?” Spike questioned, his mind flashing back to that year … and the Boxer Rebellion and Xin Rong …
 
“Yes … just before Thanksgiving …” Wanda recounted.
 
“Bloody hell…” Spike muttered rubbing his eyes; his stomach tightening into a knot. Had his actions caused his youngest daughter to be Chosen?
 
“Mr. Travers took her back to England … for training. She was so frightened … being pulled from her home at such a tender and impressionable age … We …we never saw her again,” Wanda continued, her voice shuddering with emotion at the memory as her eyes closed, holding back her tears.
 
Buffy wanted to pull the older woman into a hug, but the Guardian Angel had such a strong hold on her hand that Buffy didn’t want to force her to release it, so she simply leaned against her shoulder, giving her as much support as she could.
 
Wanda took a deep breath and resumed her story. “We got letters from her every week for months … then they suddenly stopped. We sent telegrams, tried to telephone … tried to find out what happened. Finally, Mr. Travers came back several months later … told us she had been …” Wanda’s voice broke and she took a moment to compose herself as Spike and Buffy waited for what they knew was coming…
 
“She had been … turned … and he had no choice but to …” Wanda lifted her hands to her lips, along with Spike’s and Buffy’s, as her chin quivered and tears fell from her eyes with the pain of losing her youngest daughter.
 
“Bloody hell…” Spike moaned, closing his eyes and shaking his head slowly as his own heart was wrenched from his chest. Had he been the cause of his own daughter’s death? If he hadn’t killed the Chinese Slayer, would Bess have ever been Called? Spike’s words to Angelus echoed in his mind and Spike’s chest tightened further … “I figure there's a new Chosen One getting all chosen as we speak. I'll tell you what... when and if this new bird shows up, I'll give you first crack at ‘er!”
 
“Oh God…” Buffy muttered. She was prepared to hear that Bess had been killed, but that she had been turned then staked by her Watcher … it was a Slayer’s … and a Watcher’s, worst nightmare.

 

After several minutes Wanda released their hands and wiped at her eyes as she tried to compose herself. Buffy took the opportunity to wrap her arm around the older woman’s shoulders and try to comfort her as she looked up at the rink. Buffy’s eyes settled on Dani, who had just come up behind her brother and pushed him in the back, sending him careening ‘out of bounds’ and into the snow bank on the other side of the rink.
 
“Mr. Travers was quite … quite upset over the whole thing. He brought us … ashes … dust,” Wanda continued finally. “He took away our beautiful, exuberant daughter and brought us back dust…”
 
“I’m so sorry …” Buffy offered as tears welled in her eyes, squeezing the older woman’s shoulders. Buffy’s own heart was breaking as well … dear Bess was a sweet child, to die so young, before she really had a chance to live, was … was just heart wrenching.
 
Wanda nodded sadly and gave Buffy a wan smile. “We did our best with them … and we loved them … oh, we couldn’t have loved them more if they had been our own flesh. Thank you for bringing them into our lives; they brought so much joy … so much happiness,” Wanda offered, looking from Buffy to Spike.
 
Spike nodded solemnly but stood up and walked a few feet away from the women, towards the ice rink, as he watched his children laughing and playing their game. Would that be the fate of one of these girls? Would Dani follow Bess and become a Chosen One? He made a vow to her years ago when she was just a baby … the same vow he’d made to his wife, he wouldn’t let her walk alone … none of them. If the fates decided that one … or both, of his girls were to be Slayers, he would be there … he wouldn’t allow the same fate to befall them that claimed Bess, he would protect them with his life.
 
Buffy could feel Spike’s pain … she had hoped for some better news about Bess – that she had simply moved to Siberia or Timbuktu or someplace equally remote and that’s why her records were non-existent. Buffy looked back at the woman that had become her family’s Guardian Angel. “I told Spike he’d done the right thing trusting you with them …” Buffy offered. “What happened isn’t your fault … it … it couldn’t be helped.”

 

“I owe you and William my family, child. I’ll be forever in your debt … and am eternally grateful for the years of love and laughter we had. The children were scared at first, of course … but Nellie stayed with us and … and we told them their father was a warrior and had to go to battle … Which wasn’t entirely untrue,” Wanda recalled, looking up at Spike. “You’re both warriors … you’re both extraordinary … always remember to follow your heart and hold to each other and you’ll be victorious against even the most overwhelming odds.”
 
“Will we see you again?” Buffy asked and Spike turned around and looked at the women, awaiting her answer, as well.
 
“Yes … I’m sure you will. I’ll never be far …” Wanda assured her.
 
Buffy smiled sadly at the woman that had taken it upon herself to raise their children when neither she nor Spike could … and now had taken on the responsibility of being a Guardian Angel to a Slayer and a vampire with a family living on the Hellmouth … she was either a glutton for punishment or a saint. “Thank you for your help … I’m … I’m not sure I could’ve found my way back without you…”
 
Wanda nodded and gave Buffy a smile. “The heart always knows …”
 
“…what the mind cannot fathom,” Buffy finished, recalling the words the human Wanda told her at the church on the Common so many years ago … or not so long ago, for Buffy.
 
“I must go…” Wanda said sadly, looking again at the children, who had given up on their game and were now making snow angels in the snow bank on the other side of the rink.
 
Buffy laid her hand on the angel’s arm, stopping her. “Can I ask one more thing … Did you … did you pull me out of Rack’s spell and get me to the Common … did you get me to 1890?”
 
Wanda smiled knowingly, a slightly devious look in her eyes. “That would be against the rules, child,” she informed Buffy and then she was just gone.
 
Spike had started to take a step forward towards them … he needed to thank her … thank her for everything, when their Guardian Angel vanished. He stopped short and sighed heavily, before turning back towards the children, still playing in the snow.
 
Buffy got up and walked over to him and wrapped her arms around him from the back, leaning her head on his shoulder blade. “You did the right thing, William,” Buffy assured him. “No one could’ve helped what happened to Bess… it was her Calling … it was her destiny.”

 

“You don’t understand …” Spike started, his voice deep with regret and sorrow and guilt.
 
“I understand more than you think …” Buffy informed him, her voice unwavering. “I understand that even in the ‘wish-world’, when William was never turned, when ‘William the Bloody’ never existed, when he never killed a Slayer, that the same thing happened to Bess…”
 
“You can’t know that…”
 
“I can and I do,” Buffy assured him, stepping back slightly and turning him around by the shoulders to face her. “Even when you raised her … you and Nellie and Cecily … she just vanished into thin air. You can’t blame yourself for what happened …”

 

“You said before she might’ve just … run away or moved or …” Spike began to protest.
 
Buffy silenced him by laying a finger softly on his lips and shook her head slowly. “No … you don’t believe that. Spike, there are some things in life that are … well, I guess pre-ordained … you can change the circumstances, but the outcome stays the same. Me dying when we were fighting Glory, for example … the circumstances changed, but the outcome was the same,” Buffy reminded him. “There are some things that just can’t be stopped, no matter what you do.”
 
Spike sighed heavily and nodded, but it didn’t really make him feel any better that Bess had died so tragically. His eyes drifted back to Dani, who was laughing as she threw a snowball at JJ and ducked one that Billy was throwing at her, and he vowed to himself again to not allow that to happen to these girls.
 
As if reading his mind, Buffy offered, “We won’t let it happen to her … to either of them. I promise.”
 
Spike smiled sadly and drew her into a hug. “What if it’s their destiny … pre-ordained?” he wondered, his voice low.
 
“Then we’ll just follow our hearts and find a way to change it. You heard Wanda … overwhelming odds be damned,” Buffy told him confidently as she returned his hug.
 
Just as Spike dropped his head down and touched his lips to hers, the warriors were bombarded with snowballs from all directions. Buffy screamed as some of the cold snow fell down the back of her jacket and hit her warm skin and Spike tried to cover her to protect her from the 'attack'.

 


Soon, the Second Great Snowball War of 2010 was underway … parents vs. children, old vs. young, contemplative vs. carefree. Screams of delight and laughter echoed through the snow laden bows of the evergreens as the battle raged and snowballs filled the air. Worries of the past and the future were put aside as the children reminded the adults what it was to be free … to let your heart soar and to laugh and play and live … to just be.

    

**~** THE END **~**

 
{{Click here to hear "Follow Your Heart” by Menyo on YouTube   }}



Every day is a new beginning
Every day is a brand new start
It's about the wheels you're spinning
And the sun inside your heart

So turn around and see
It was made for you and me
If you wanna touch the sky
Just spread your wings and fly

Follow your heart
You will see
All your dreams become reality
Follow your heart
You and I
Reaching up to touch the sky

It goes..
A-OOOO.
Follow your heart
A-OOOO
Right from the start
Follow your heart
Everywhere you go  

A-OOOO
A-OOOO

Follow your heart
Everywhere you go
Right

Every day is a new beginning
Every day is a brand new start
It's about the wheels you're spinning
And the sun inside your heart

So turn around and see
It was made for you and me
If you wanna touch the sky
Just spread your wings and fly

Follow your heart
You will see
All your dreams become reality
Follow your heart
You and I
Reaching up to touch the sky

It goes...
A-OOOO
Follow your heart
A-OOOO
Right from the start
A-OOOO
Follow your heart
Everywhere you go
 
A-OOOO
A-OOOO
 
A-OOOO
Follow your heart
Everywhere you go

Gather all your friends around
Bless the day and sing along
Make them dreams reality
Forever you and me

Listen up people
This life is for living
It's about making dreams come true
So follow your heart
Wherever you go

It goes...
A-OOOO
Follow your heart
A-OOOO
Right from the start
A-OOOO
Follow your heart
Everywhere you go

A-OOOO
Follow your heart
A-OOOO
Right from the start
A-OOOO
Follow your heart
Everywhere you go
End Notes:
Well ... that's it kids ... except for one heartfelt request from my blue-eyed muse ... we need name suggestions for the new baby ... check the next chapter/epilogue for some suggestions we've already gotten ...

Thanks so much for reading, I hope you won't be shy - my muse loves to read reviews, it keeps him up off the couch and away from the telly ... So, if you want more ... tell him to get up off his bum! {hugs}
A note from P4S and 'Blue-boy', her blue-eyed muse by Passion4Spike
Author's Notes:
Just a quick request ....
Hi Spuffy fans!!

Well, this concludes this section of their lives, but there will be more to come - new adventures and challenges await our Spuffy couple including the birth of Willow, Tara, and Giles' baby and their own new bundle of joy.

Now, I need your help naming the new baby! I can tell you now that it will be a girl with auburn red hair and green eyes. I need your suggestions!


Here are some of my favorite ideas I've gotten from a few different people. If you like any of them, let me know - but if you have more suggestions tell me!! I'd love to hear them all!!


Wanda
Avengelyne
MacKenzie (meaning 'Born of Fire')
Phoenix
Victoria (for the era in which she was conceived)
Verity (meaning 'Truth')
Nevaeh (Heaven spelled backwards)
Anastashia (Meaning 'Resurrection')
Vanessa (meaning 'Butterfly')
Shanley (meaning 'Child of the Hero')


My blue eyed muse and I will be waiting for your suggestions in the reviews, so don't be shy!



Thanks so much for reading!! I (we!) always love to hear from you, so feel free to email anytime, but definitely help us out with the baby's name!

~Passion4Spike
7/2/2011




Hey you! Yeah, I'm talkin' to you!
What the bloody hell are ya waiting for?!
We need a name!
We can't call the Bit 'new baby' forever, ya know!



Here's your chance to add to the story ...
How could you not want to help this poor, helpless
... sexy, hot ... muse of mine? {heehee!}


**~**


{{Click here to hear "Everything I Own” by Bread on YouTube   }}

You sheltered me from harm
Kept me warm, kept me warm
You gave my life to me
Set me free, set me free
The finest years I ever knew
Were all the years I had with you
And...

(Chorus:)
I would give anything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give ev'rything I own
Just to have you back again

You taught me how to love
What it's of, what it's of
You never said too much
But still you showed the way
And I knew from watching you
Nobody else could ever know
The part of me that can't let go
And...

(Repeat chorus)

(Bridge:)
Is there someone you know
You're loving them so
But taking them all for granted?
You may lose them one day
Someone takes them away
And they don't hear
The words you long to say

(Repeat chorus)

Just to touch you once again

End Notes:
C'MON NOW ---- you heard him! Don't be shy!