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Author's Chapter Notes:
This is one of several future fics that I've done - all designed to get Buffy and Spike back together eventually. I kinda like this one -

ETA: My apologies to everyone who is being caught by surprise. I should have mentioned that there is a good bit of non-explicit Spike/other in this fic. If that squicks you out, best to skip this one....
Lovers and Lethe (October 19, 2005)
Author: Slaymesoftly
Future Fic (post NFA)
Rating: NC17 (eventually)
Word Count –33,000
Distribution: If you already have permission to take my stuff, help yourself. If not, just let me know who you are and where it’s going.
Disclaimer: The characters belong to Joss Wheedon and probably some big, scary corporations. Alas, they aren’t mine. But I play with them, ‘cause the man said we could.
I am sure I detect the talented hand of Amyb’s fine beta skills here – so thank her for making this readable.
AN/Summary: Some not terribly original plot concepts, including some I’ve used before, but hopefully an original take on those ideas. Buffy has come to LA to find amnesiatic Spike who is apparently the only survivor of the battle with the Senior Partners’ demon army.


Chapter One

Buffy hesitated as she approached the shelter’s parking lot, stopping to apply more lip gloss and run a hand over her hair.

(Ok, no reason to be nervous. I know he has amnesia. He probably won’t remember me right away. But that’s okay. I can cope. I’ll fill him in on the way back to England. I just have to keep my cool. Don’t frighten him. Calm, controlled Buffy. That’s the way to go.)

Squaring her shoulders, she walked toward the front door, waiting as a homeless man shuffled out before going from the bright sunshine into the gloomy interior. She looked around for another woman, remembering that she was told the director was someone named Anne. Spotting a head of long blond hair, she made her way through the various people sitting and standing around the large room until she was close enough to see the other woman.

“Lily?” Buffy asked with uncertainty. “Is that you?”

Anne whirled around at the sound of her old name and frowned briefly before she broke into a smile and ran up to hug Buffy.

“Buffy! It’s so good to see you. What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to…what are you doing here? And, you’re ‘Anne’ now?”

Anne blushed and nodded. “Yes, I took that name tag you gave me and went to work at your old job. Eventually I was spending so much time helping out at the shelter that they hired me. Been here ever since. I try to help people who are lost –the way I was.”

“Oh.” Buffy wasn’t sure how to reply to that. It was obviously a step up from the streets and probably another step up from the greasy spoon where Buffy had sent her to work in her place. She knew her memories of that summer in LA were tainted by the misery she’d been in after sending Angel to Hell, but even so….

“So,” Anne asked again. “Why are you here?”

“I’m…I’m looking for a…man…a vamp, actually. But I doubt he’s here.” She looked around at the humans sitting in various states of misery or indifference. “I’m pretty sure after he’d tried to kill you years ago, you wouldn’t want him anywhere near you.”

At Anne’s incredulous smile, Buffy hastened to add, “Not that he would hurt you now! He’s got his soul, and he saved the world, and he…I’m sorry. I guess we got bad information.”

Buffy’s shoulders slumped and she fought back the tears as she turned to leave. “It was great to see you again,” she said as she walked toward the door.

“Buffy. Buffy!” Anne’s voice rose as she watched the slayer who had saved her life at least twice walking away. “If it’s Spike you’re looking for, he’s here. He’s downstairs. I’ll get him for you. Follow me over here.”

Anne was already turning to walk toward the back of the room and missed the flash of sheer joy that flew across Buffy’s face at her words. Before she had taken two steps, the slayer was at her side asking softly, “Is he all right? I mean except for the amnesia thing.”

“Oh, yeah. He was pretty beat up and it’s taken a long time for him to heal, but I think he’s all right. It’s frustrating for him not being able to remember anything, though. He’ll be so happy to see somebody who can tell him more about his life. I mean, I covered the basics – you know, stay out of the sun, avoid girls with pointy wooden things, stuff like that. But I really don’t know much about what happened before he showed up at Angel’s and started helping them. I know he was in Sunnydale and that he supposedly saved the world somehow. Gunn had told me that, but that’s all I know.”

Anne interrupted her chattering as they reached the top of the stairs and she shouted down, “Spike? Honey? There’s somebody here to see you. Somebody who knows you.”

(Honey?)

Buffy’s breath caught in her throat as a familiar blond head came into sight and she felt the prickle of tears when a pair of curious blue eyes met hers briefly before turning to smile at Anne. He came the rest of the way up and stepped to her side, resting his arm on her shoulder as he looked back at Buffy and tilted his head.

“So, you know me, do you?”

Buffy couldn’t answer. All she could do was drink in the sight of the vampire she’d loved too late. The vampire she’d mourned for twice before finding out he was still alive after the near-apocalypse that had taken Angel’s un-life. At the last second, just before she threw herself on him in a frenzy of grateful kissing, she noticed the easy familiarity with which he and Anne touched each other and the way he was looking at the slender blond woman. With an effort of will she didn’t know she was capable of summoning, she stopped herself from touching him and settled for a strangled, “I guess you could say that.”

The vampire cocked his head at her curiously. He could hear her accelerated heart rate, as well as smell the barely suppressed tears. He frowned in confusion. Anne had implied that this woman was someone who knew him well and yet she was reacting to him as though she’d seen a ghost.

“Is something wrong?” he asked kindly.

“No…no,” she struggled to control her voice. “I’m just…I didn’t think…I mean we didn’t know you were alive until just a week ago and I…we thought you’d be glad to see me…somebody you knew.”

“Oh, I am glad to see you. I hope I didn’t give the impression I wasn’t. I can’t wait to sit down and talk about my life – or what you know of it. Did – do you know me well? Were we friends?”

“I’d like to think so,” Buffy replied softly, regaining control of herself and smiling brightly at the slender couple staring at her. There was no question that she was facing Spike, but the upper class accent, so unlike his normal one, and his obvious affection for Anne were throwing her off.

“Buffy is a slayer, honey. I’ve told you about her. She used to be the only slayer – back when you were evil.”

“Oh! THAT Buffy. Why didn’t you say so?” He beamed at Buffy and took her hand lightly as he searched her face. “So, you’re the famous last of the Chosen Ones. I’m honored. I mean to think you would come all the way over here to see me. Of course this is your home, isn’t it? So perhaps you’re not really here to see me? ”

Buffy continued to drink in the sight in front of her, trying not to notice the way he and Anne were holding hands. She put her hands behind her back to prevent herself from shoving the other woman out of the way so she could run her hands over him and assure herself he was really there.

“Buffy?” Anne was puzzled by the sudden silence on the slayer’s part. “Did you not mean to come here? You could have sent one of the LA slayers to see if he was here.”

“No, I couldn’t do that,” she said as steadily as she could, never taking her eyes off Spike. “You are-were too important to…to us. You deserve the real thing. Anyway, Dawn would never have forgiven me if I didn’t come myself.”

Buffy saw Anne stiffen beside him and watched how he used his hands to soothe her while he asked, “Dawn?”

“My sister,” she explained. “She and you – you were very fond of each other at one time and she was devastated when she thought you had died without her having healed the rift between you.”

“So,” Anne asked carefully, “Your sister and Spike were…involved?”

“What? Oh no. Oh, god, no! He protected her for me and then he was her babysitter while I was – and then he was like a big brother to her. And then she got angry at him for--and then he died and… She loves you,” she finished, looking him in the eye.

Spike smiled at her in relief, and said, “Then I am sure I will love her too.” He turned to Anne to ask, “What do you think, love? Shall we ask Buffy to join us for dinner tonight? Give me a chance to pick her brain?”

Buffy felt her smile turning into a grimace as the other woman reached up to stoke his cheek.

“Of course it is, honey. Why don’t you two go on upstairs and start talking while I close up here?”

Buffy was having trouble breathing as her body reacted to the obvious affection and familiarity between Anne and Spike. The slayer in her wanted to rip the other woman away from him while the woman who had been so full of joy just a few minutes before wanted to fall to the floor and scream. She trembled as she struggled to come up with an excuse to leave before her poor impulse control ruined everything.

“Um…I have…um…things. Yes, that’s it. I have things to do. Can I take a rain check on that dinner?”

In an uncanny example of the way Spike could always see right through her, he frowned and asked suspiciously, ”What kind of things? I thought you came to see me?”

“I need to… to patrol! I need to patrol. There are things out there that need to be killed and I…I really need to kill something right now. I’ll come back later. After dinner maybe?”

He was wearing his “who do you think you’re kidding, Slayer?” look and Buffy felt her heart cracking. That he could seem so familiar with her and yet be so unaware of who she was. Even as he looked at her in clear disbelief, he wrapped his arms around Anne from behind and spoke to Buffy over her shoulder.

“I could patrol with you. Could use a bit of violence to work out the kinks”

“No!” Anne’s voice was fearful as she lifted her head to look back at him. “You’re not well enough yet.”

“I’m fine, pet. You know that,” he murmured into her ear, nuzzling it as he did so. “You ought to know. Being as how you donated the medicine,” he leered as he licked her neck.

Neither one saw the stricken look on Buffy’s face as she fought to remain impassive. The sight of twin fang marks on Anne’s neck was all it took to destroy her shaky grip on her emotions and she whirled before they could see the tears on her cheeks.

“I have to go now,” she managed to choke out. “I’ll try to come back later.”

Before either one could say or do anything, she had crossed the large room and bolted out the door into the waning sunlight, heedless of who she knocked out of her way.

************************

Buffy ran until the light was gone and she couldn’t run anymore. Over and over she replayed the impersonal way Spike had looked at and talked to her. The tender way he looked at Anne and the gentleness with which he touched her. She thought she’d known what to expect. She’d been told that he remembered nothing and no one, but in her heart she’d been sure that the sight of her would be all it took to snap him out of it. Never, in all the reunion dreams she’d indulged in the past week had it occurred to her that he might have fallen in love with someone else.

Shaking off the despair that threatened to overwhelm her, she began walking back toward her hotel, biting her lips to prevent the sobs that wanted to break out. She made it back to her room with no interruptions except for one very brave or foolish vampire who challenged her even after she’d identified herself as a slayer.

“I think I’d like to eat a slayer,” he growled. “I’d become the Slayer of Slayers!”

“No, you really wouldn’t,” Buffy replied grimly, delighted to have found something on which to take out her anger. “I know the Slayer of Slayers. I’ve fought with the Slayer of Slayers, and trust me,” she growled as she plunged her never-absent stake into his chest, “you are no Slayer of Slayers.” She watched wistfully as his dust drifted down to the ground.

“You’re not him,” she whispered as she put her stake away and continued toward her hotel.

She got back to her room and called Dawn to report what she’d found, soft-pedaling the fact that Spike was living with someone, but telling her that he didn’t seem to remember either one of them. She hung up after promising to call again when she had spoken to him more. She pulled off her dusty clothes as she walked toward the bathroom.

Standing in the shower, she finally allowed the disappointment and pain to wash over her and she stood in the pounding water, clutching her stomach and allowing the gut-wrenching sobs to wrack her body. The water had turned cold by the time she stopped crying and moved, zombie-like to put some more patrol-appropriate clothes on.

She listlessly dried her hair, leaving it down and long the way she knew he liked it and carefully reapplied her make-up. She stared at herself in the mirror and tried to find the slayer he’d fallen in love with so many years ago.

(All right, I can do this. I’m not the slayer for nothing. He’s not dead. He’s not even rejecting me. He doesn’t remember us, that’s all. I will be understanding, informative and…and…understanding.)

Summoning up all her determination, Buffy left the room and marched down the street toward the shelter where the vampire she loved was living happily with another woman.

***************************

Spike stared after the slayer curiously as she pushed her way out of the building. There was something very off about her behavior and he growled in familiar frustration at his lack of understanding. Somehow he knew he was missing something very important about the whole situation, but nothing penetrated the thick wall surrounding his memories.

“Not a very polite girl, is she, pet?” he said as he rested his chin on Anne’s shoulder and looked at the humans Buffy had bowled over on her way out the door.

“That’s really not like her,” Anne frowned. “I wonder what’s wrong? She didn’t seem very glad to see you after coming all this way.”

“Maybe we don’t really like each other very much, and she just came because she promised her sister.” He shrugged and gave his girlfriend a squeeze. “I hope she comes back later, though. I have a feeling she could fill in a lot of gaps for me.”

“Maybe her memories aren’t good ones,” Anne agreed. “I think I remember that she and Angel were involved when we were in high school. Maybe she’s resentful that you survived and he didn’t.”

Smothering the unexpected growl that her words evoked, he agreed quickly, “I hadn’t thought about that. Seeing me probably reminds her of him. Poor chit. No wonder she was in tears.”

Anne shot him a look. “She was in tears?”

“Yeah. Could smell ‘em. She tried to hide it though. Got to give her credit. She’s a strong one.”

Anne flinched a little internally at the admiration in his voice. “She’s very pretty too,” she offered, suddenly remembering how “put together” Buffy had looked and glancing down at her own serviceable jeans and tee shirt.

“That she is, love,” he mused, not noticing the way her face darkened. “Maybe she has a date tonight and that’s why she didn’t want to eat with us.”

“Sure, that’s probably it.” Anne’s agreement didn’t reach her eyes as she searched her memory for any snippets of information anyone from Angel Investigations might have let slip about Sunnydale. Nothing came to mind, and she shook her head silently at herself for worrying. All she could remember was that Angel and Buffy were in love and couldn't be together for some reason.





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