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No note from me today.
Chapter Twenty


“Holy crap!”

Xander was still clutching hold of Dawn’s arm, staring around him in total amazement.

“You know, I’m so used to not being in Kansas anymore that when I am in Kansas, it completely throws me.” He threw her a familiar goofy grin before grabbing her hands, spinning her around in a circle, then whooping loudly while jumping with her in jubilation. The gangly and euphoric celebration in being back on the Mouth of Hell nearly wiped out Angel as he stumbled out of the dimensional rip and Dawn giggled, loving the wind rushing through her hair as Xander resumed spinning her around and around.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Angel spluttered, but Giles arrived behind him and he had a smile on his lips and a tear in his eye.

“I never thought I’d see this place again,” the watcher admitted affectionately, looking around him at the familiar cemetery. “Restfield,” he sighed, and then spied the crypt that had been Spike’s home for the better part of their final years in Sunnydale.

“What was to miss?” Angel asked in confusion. Dawn rolled her eyes and started looking around. Being in a cemetery—a place of rest—reminded her of all the people she’d been unable to visit since her home had been rendered a massive hole in the ground.

“You think my mom could be here?” she asked Giles, a catch in her voice. His look of sympathy did little to control the emotional wobble of her bottom lip.

“Joyce might be completely well in this dimension, Dawn. It’s unlikely that everything has occurred here identically to our world.” He patted her shoulder comfortingly and at once the three were in contemplation of what this world could mean. It hadn’t escaped their attention when the witch had revealed that none of them existed here. It was a daunting prospect to possibly learn what each of their fates might have been if circumstances had been different.

Angel had lost interest almost immediately in their conversation and instead was glancing this way and that, trying to pinpoint the direction he could sense Spike’s presence. His gaze settled on a crypt in the viewable distance and, as though lured by an invisible force, he began to walk toward it.

Xander shrugged but followed. They had no leads at all and their best option was to go to Buffy’s house, but that would leave them out in the open with no super-strength protection if Angel planned to go off wandering.

They bunched up behind the vampire, confused at his blind obsession to head directly to Spike’s crypt, and then dawning realisation hit them and Xander and Dawn shared a look of excitement.

“Do you think it’s possible?” he asked, slightly awed.

“And then some,” she confirmed, and with another ecstatic whoop, they were off, sprinting negligently toward Spike’s old home and calling his name loudly the second they burst through the worn wooden door.

They were greeted with silence, a multitude of dust and the smell of neglect. Shoulders slumped in disappointment they were ready to leave, and would have if Angel’s bulky frame hadn’t blocked the exit.

“He’s here,” he said, his keen eyes looking around for the smallest scrap of evidence that the crypt wasn’t as vacant as it at first appeared. There was a partial footprint in the layer of dust near the bier and he smiled in satisfaction. Striding over to the stone coffin, Angel lifted the heavy lid like it was nothing but a thin plank of wood and propped it against the side. Peering inside, he snickered at the sight presented to him beneath the ancient bones. “What the hell happened to you?”

The words hadn’t been quite the incentive for the others to crowd around and observe the discovery, but the weak cough that exploded from the sarcophagus’s depths had all three of them running.

“Oh my God, Spike!” Dawn squealed, her hand diving in to start pulling him out.

He made no efforts to co-operate; his energy seemed to be sapped with just focusing on their presence. Xander gasped in recognition once the weakened vampire stood slumped against the slab, his eyes wary and exhausted. His lips were white and cracked, his face pasty and clammy and his body shuddered with the effort to stand. His eyes swept over all of them but finally fell upon the young brunette who had hauled him out of his self-imposed prison with a concern he’d never met with in a human before. She didn’t look a thing like Buffy, but he’d bet his dye job that the chit was the Slayer’s sister.

Only he knew she didn’t have one.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” she squealed at a pitch high enough to stun his eardrums and then she’d launched herself into his lax embrace and he stared, surprised, at the men she’d obviously been travelling with.

One was the Watcher he’d seen in ghostly form before he’d dived through the tear in dimensions and retrieved the wrong Buffy. The git definitely looked better when he was less transparent. The next was someone he vaguely remembered catching a glimpse of the year previously when he’d first come to town. The boy that followed his girl around like a lost puppy until he’d trusted the wrong slayer to show him how to be a man. Only this one was older, filled out and apparently fancied himself a pirate.

And then the third.

“Angelus,” Will croaked, his eyes burning resentment as he glared at his grandsire. It was obvious this entourage was from the other Buffy and Spike’s world and Will figured he should be grateful it was this pillock rather than his batty ex that had wandered along to his apparent rescue. He wasn’t going to rush and fill him in on what Will had done to Angelus in this world, though. He hadn’t completely lost his head—yet.

There was a short reprieve in silence as the girl still pressed her face into his chest, her arms squeezing him tighter than he would have allowed had he had any strength to object. And then the boy—Harris—hesitantly stepped forward and rested a reassuring hand on the lass’s shoulder.

“Dawn, this isn’t our Spike.”

And wasn’t that just the rub of it, thought Will bitterly. This lot would come to rescue their Spike; everybody apparently bloody loved their Spike to the point of nauseousness. His lip curled in resentment and Will slumped back even more on his not-so-successful hiding place as he contemplated his predicament.

“No, ‘m not. That git dubbed me Will for the duration. Take them back so I can be myself again, would you?” His request was dripping with derision and impatience and he felt justified in his private celebration for holding it all together. Liz would have been proud—if she gave a fuck about him.

“Oh,” Dawn sniffled in delayed understanding. “That’s okay. You don’t need to be our Spike to get a hug.” And she smiled at him.

Will looked at her in wonder, his hands shaking as they came up to clasp weakly at her arms. He couldn’t hold back the grateful grin and she received it with a gentle kiss to his cheek.

The Watcher stepped forward then, clearing his throat loudly to cover his overt examination of the vampire in front of him.

“If I’m not mistaken, you’ve just escaped from the Initiative. Am I right?” He waited calmly, not a speck of condemnation or intolerance on show and again Will was left floundering at this unexpected display of acceptance.

“If they’re the wankers that go about shooting a bloke in the back with electrical shocks and then do weird scientific experiments designed to do a vamp’s head in then yeah, that’s what I’ve escaped from.”

Giles nodded, obviously grasping enough from Will’s brief description to confirm his suspicions. He peered intently at the vampire, absorbing the decimated state he was in and comparing it to a memory. “You must be quite hungry,” he concluded after a quiet minute and Will nodded his head in agreement.

“Every time I think of it, though, my head feels like it’s gonna implode,” Will admitted shrewdly, eyes narrowed and watchful. He was careful not to word it in a way that reminded them he sucked the blood from humans to keep his body moving. He didn’t kill anymore—couldn’t. Not with the Powers breathing down his neck and then a slayer to impress. The second he realised he loved her he knew she’d never allow him near her if he was whittling away the population.

“Yes, you’ve been chipped,” the Watcher told him and Will’s attention perked up tenfold.

“I’ve been what now?” he demanded.

“You’ve had a behaviour modification chip placed in your brain so that whenever you think of killing humans you’ll get zapped. The pain will act as a deterrent and renders you—”

“You say impotent and I’ll bleeding well bite you, no matter the pain,” he warned sharply. Not that there was any pleasure at all in threatening to off the Council lackey, but Will was done being made the butt of some cosmic joke.

Giles grinned nostalgically and Will found himself softening.

“You lot would be here to help then?” he prompted hopefully.

And they did. Together they rallied around him and headed off to Revello Drive, deeming it safe after Will’s hurried explanation of evil Willow and her bid for ultimate power.

Dawn rolled her eyes as they strolled along. “Not this again,” she grumbled.

Will glanced appreciatively at the girl that shared Buffy’s blood. He could smell it on her—could sense the power that rushed through her veins. The lure of it was amazing and yet he felt no desire to taste. Had no desire to kill. He smiled inwardly, as if he’d passed some kind of secret test that he’d set for himself.

It wasn’t until the newly familiar door of Liz’s home came into sight that his apprehension returned. “Not sure you should take me in there,” he felt compelled to point out, though he was too weak to do anything but be pushed up onto the front porch.

“Don’t worry, Big Bad. I’ll protect you,” Dawn declared, ducking low so that his arm fell unresisting across her shoulders. He could get used to these people—being accepted gave him a high more addictive than anything he could get on or off the black market. And even though he could tell she had no super-strength, that there was no magical talent running through her veins, there was not one doubt she could deliver on her promise.

“I’ll hold you to it, Bit.”

Her giggle was like a symphony of love.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Willow woke slowly, relishing the pleasant ache of her body as she stretched sensually against her bed mate. Eyes still closed, she grinned sleepily as her reactive nipples brushed against an unyielding chest. Her belly hollowed and she bent further back, moaning at the hardness that suddenly brushed between her legs and probed her slick and eager entrance.

“Morning,” she heard, muffled at a distance as a wet tongue circled the now engorged bud before it was sucked completely into Riley’s mouth. The pain was a sweet one, darting forth to connect to her pussy and infusing it with sensation. Her lower lips clenched tight and against the misleading objection, Riley diligently pushed and they both sighed as he sank into the warm depths of her.

Willow wasted no time in pushing him onto his back and taking a seat. She loved the deep stab of his cock as she wriggled around on top of him, sliding up and down while he stroked her body and then pinched her perky nipples hard. She loved being in this position—being in control. She could ride him like this forever, she’d decided one day in the middle of a sweaty session. There was nothing she didn’t love about how Riley’s body suited her own and this was the primary reason why she’d decided to not share her predicament with him at all.

It was time to go to the boss.

Riley had fucked her raw, leaving her a laughing, satiated mess before they’d finally fallen asleep. Through the night she’d awoken to find him curled into her, his lips brushing her shoulder with absent kisses as he slept. It was sweet and Willow realised she couldn’t lose this—not yet. Her only recourse now was to go to her professor and confess all she knew, offer up Buffy as the perfect lab rat and then insinuate herself so deeply into the project that Maggie Walsh would have to take her into her confidence.

And then she’d strike.

He must have sensed her distraction, thought Willow as she felt his fingers sift through her hair, grasping a handful and nudging her head closer to his. His lips bestowed a soft and sweet kiss on hers and Willow felt her heart expand. She shouldn’t be allowing this kind of affection—she had few defences against it.

A shudder of pleasure raced through her body and Willow moaned. She shouldn’t be allowing it, not at all, but it appeared she was powerless to stop it. He made her powerless in moments like these and it was the only time the witch could accept that maybe the answers weren’t all about who had control. Maybe the question was why she needed it.

Mouths fused hotly together and bodies indulging in a slow, sensual rhythm, Willow Rosenberg suffered a momentary episode of weakness.

“I love you,” Riley rasped against her lips and Willow sniffled, welcoming in the next second his pulsing release deep inside her body. Receiving his fluids against her internal flesh seemed so much more personal than being naked with him and it was something Willow was proud she could give him. She didn’t love him, but she did care.

“I know,” she replied softly, sincerely, because she had absolutely no doubts that he did.

She just had no love left to return.





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