Chapter Eight
Horrified silence greeted the kidnapping for heart-stopping seconds.
Almost before there was any real chance to make sense of it, Spike released a deafening roar and leapt after his slayer, bumping past Buffy as he went. It was what she needed to shunt her out of her paralysing shock, and in an acceleration fuelled with fury, she threw herself at the disappearing doorway, barely noticing the shove she’d received from behind as Willow did her best to keep up and follow.
One by one they filed through the rip, pandemonium greeting the mass entrance to Buffy’s living room.
Buffy had expected to run into a macabre scene of Spike holding the dead body of the other world’s slayer, her blood staining his lips ruby red, a third slayer notch finally on his belt. What she stepped into the middle of was an entirely different scene, and for the most part, it was one that elicited a grateful grin.
Good Willow was still grasping onto her shirt, her stunned eyes drawn toward the vision of herself lying flat on the ground and obviously completely out to it. Standing over her was a proud-looking Spike, though by this time, Buffy was hard pressed working out which one was which.
Everyone stood in different corners of the room, looking back and forth at each other warily, except for the Spikes. Once Bad Willow was assessed to be currently harmless, her attacker took stock of his audience and a frown marred his face. Disbelieving eyes swung from one Buffy to the next, and then caught on the spitting image of himself and his eyes went wide.
“Bleeding Christ. I’ve stepped into the Twilight Zone. Beam me up, Scotty,” he implored to the ceiling and then rolled his eyes as no one moved and no one spoke. “Don’t tell me you’re a bunch of mutes?” he accused sarcastically but with a glimmer of wicked fun in his eyes.
“Shut your gob.” Other world’s Spike stepped forward, blood still dripping from cuts on his face and hands. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, mate! But no one messes with the Slayer.”
“I’m not bloody messing with her. Was trying to rescue her from wherever this crazy bitch had sent her to,” he spat, jabbing violently at the lax figure unconscious on the carpet.
“Why?” The only reason Buffy could figure for his attempted rescue was for him to kill her as soon as they’d returned, only…he’d not even been standing near the slayer he’d pulled through the dimensional rip when she’d come barrelling through. His main concern seemed to have been to neutralise the unpredictable witch—for which she was several shades of grateful.
“Why what?” Piercing eyes bluer than anything she’d ever noticed before stabbed straight through her and Buffy realised how grateful she was that the correct parties seemed to be responding to each other, despite the lack of proper differentiation. He seemed to know who she was without being told and that impressed her more than she wanted to admit—if she was content to ignore his slip at taking the wrong slayer in the first place.
“Why would you want to rescue me?”
The quiet question seemed to startle him and Buffy could see the rampage of thoughts going on in his head. She was highly interested to hear his explanation—not that she wasn’t grateful, at least a little—so when he did answer it was with a vagueness that she found completely infuriating. Not that she’d ever found Spike to be anything less.
“Just did.” He crossed his arms and looked at her defiantly, silently daring her to ask more questions that she knew he wasn’t going to answer while he was surrounded.
“Do you have a soul?”
His spluttering protest was all she needed to get an accurate picture and Buffy actually smiled. She didn’t think things had gone all whacky when she wasn’t looking. He still appeared lethal, still surly and clothed head to toe in the most alluring black—if she was attracted to the bad boy image. Which she so was not!
“Bloody hell, Slayer. Can’t a bloke do a good deed without being accused of having a soul stuffed to the gills?” he demanded, hands propped angrily on his slim hips.
She looked at him nervously, obviously unsure how to answer, and then her gaze swung to the other Buffy who was watching the exchange with an amused grin on her face.
“Uh huh,” the older blonde agreed, nodding enthusiastically. “Absolutely.” Then she yelped as the completely besotted vampire beside her dropped a severely weakened arm across her shoulders and squeezed affectionately.
“Never thought you realised,” he admitted bashfully. “Kind of…well, I thought it was the soul that mattered in the end,” he said.
Otherworld-Buffy looked at her Spike, a glimmer of saddened self-awareness betrayed in the solemn set of her lips and the shimmering state of her eyes. “Yeah. I guess we’ve got all sorts of things to discuss.” And then she kissed him full on the lips, expecting it to be a quick peck but quickly giving in to the storm of emotion she’d released in him, curving her body into his as he held her tightly against his lithe frame.
Buffy screwed up her nose and turned back to her world’s incarnation of the same vampire. He looked smug as he watched the kissing couple and Buffy suddenly went cold. He so better not be getting any ideas!
The room was quiet except for the obscene smacking of lips and the low moans of the slowly awakening witch on the floor and Buffy suddenly realised they had a situation on their hands. Before she’d managed to organise everything straight in her brain, a small voice asked hesitantly, “Um, not that I’m prying, because believe me when I say what happens in your dimension is totally your business, but…why did Spike knock me unconscious if he isn’t planning to eat all of us?”
In lieu of an answer, Spike stomped forward, his heavy boots scuffing the carpet, and brandished some ropes. Without asking, without needing to seek a consult, he took Buffy’s acquiescence for granted and started tying the witch up like a prize pig, a dirty piece of fabric arranged next to bind her mouth’s potential damage by separating her teeth and keeping her tongue dry and something black to blind her eyes.
The still free-wandering Willow sucked in a harsh breath, eyes wide with shock, and took a very large, protective step backward. “Okay, so…you aren’t planning to tie me up too, are you? Because I promise I’m good.” She swung around to gape at her fellow dimensional-travellers. “Guys, tell him I’m good. Please?”
The urgency in the panicked witch’s voice broke through the slow, languorous reunion kiss and Buffy blinked. “Huh?” Then she looked down and noticed the form of her friend—or the copy of her friend—bound thoroughly with ropes and now writhing furiously.
Suddenly the end of an apocalypse was dwarfed by the realities of an entirely different experience. Buffy clasped Spike’s hand and stepped back toward her Willow and the kitchen. “I’m beginning to think this is not the time to take anything for granted, right?”
“I’m sorry if this is confusing for you.” Buffy took comfort in knowing she was back in her own home, and that leant an understanding for what these dimension-hoppers might now be going through. “Imagine how it was for me tracking down Spike and being kissed by a vampire I’d known to be the most heinous in history?”
“Oi!” Both Spikes exploded at the unsavoury description and strangely it brought an identical grin to the lips of both slayers. But then the shared moment was broken with an irate “You kissed him?” Buffy decided that the only reason her dimensional Spike would even care was that it might sully his precious reputation. Despite knowing she should use caution around this known killer—and she was going to kill Willow for giving him an invitation into her house after she was done being grateful for his role in getting her home—Buffy turned her back on him and contemplated her visitors.
But it was otherworld-Buffy that took the leap of faith as she looked deeply into her double’s eyes. “Maybe it’s time you filled us in on what’s going on here. Starting with the kissing thing?”
“Hey!” Spike objected, affronted at his mistake being turned against him. “I bloody thought she was you.”
He got a glare for his trouble. “If you’d bothered to look me up at all this past year, you’d easily have spotted the differences. Can I point out the obvious? Younger, darker hair…less peppy?”
The home slayer took a deep breath and prepared to reveal the unsavoury truth about her existence while totally ignoring the less than complimentary points behind the quick image assessment. She told it all, leaving none of her unhappy experiences on the Hellmouth to interpretation and tried not to see the horror reflected in the three sets of eyes as Buffy, Spike and Willow listened to her story.
There was silence when she was finished, peppered only with unflattering growls from the unrepentant witch tethered with ropes. Buffy felt nervous as she waited for a reaction—their not believing her was a possibility that she’d rather not face. Dark Willow was likely quite a stretch of the believable in the first place, but the brutal deaths of people that probably still lived in their world might be something they just couldn’t accept.
As she tied herself in knots, waiting and wondering how this standstill would end, she felt the talisman in her pocket and realised finally that it burned furiously against her thigh. It was painful, and yet reassuring as well. She wasn’t sure what it meant, only that her connection to her faceless and nameless friend was far from broken. Buffy had been positive that Willow would have killed him the second he’d shown up and asked for her. That the talisman still hummed with their powerful connection gave her immense hope. As much as she craved these newcomers to stay—to give her a little of what she’d lost when everything had gone bad—she was desperate to get away to her hill and talk to him. Take the talisman from her pocket and hold it soothingly in the palms of her hands as she sought his companionship.
A gruff voice broke through her reverie and Buffy jumped guiltily.
“Reckon if we’re gonna be around for any length of time, we might want to do something about the name situation. It’s gonna get mighty confusing with two Spikes, two Buffys and two Reds to answer to.” There were nods of agreement from both women of the other dimension and so he made the call. “You two can be Will and…bloody hell…Liz?” He looked at his Buffy for her approval and her casual shrug made the nerve in Buffy’s forehead twitch. Fortunately her Spike jumped forward, his fury at being sideswiped with such an important decision vibrating around the room.
“Why do we have to change our names? This is our world you’re in now. Maybe you’re the two that should be going by Will and Liz.”
Spike stepped up to himself, battle-worn but suddenly all fired up with energy. His hands stuffed into his coat pockets, his lips arranged into an impressive sneer, he moved so close he was almost rubbing noses with his mirror-image. “Got one word for you, mate. Seniority.”
The newly-dubbed Will clenched his jaw, his backbone seemingly wired straight. He didn’t refute the claim, didn’t argue his point, but it seemed he was unwilling to back down. “Fine…Spike,” he conceded through gritted teeth. The grin from his counterpart elicited a growl of warning, but then both master vampires backed down and everyone breathed their relief.
“Okay, names are so not important,” Liz reminded, her voice a touch frosty. She wasn’t going to argue, despite hating every second of her new identity. She needed to get to her hill, but unfortunately not before she staked Spi…Will. Just because he’d saved her it didn’t give him a free pass to her town—or her home. And just because he seemed all soppy and soul-having in another world, it didn’t mean she should start believing he’d changed any since the last time he’d darkened her doorstep.
“What is important?” asked the good Willow meekly. Nobody seemed to notice that there’d been no split of her name.
Foreboding crept into her heart and Liz felt her gaze drawn to the struggling form on the floor. She wondered why the question had to be even asked.
“Her.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Hope I'm not shocking you all with another update so soon...*giggles*