Spike comes back immediately post chosen but thought years had passed

It's an old, short fic, I'm pretty sure it's a one shot, and I'm sure that it was by one of my favorite authors. I think that Spike had been taken to a hell dimension and tortured (by the senior partners?). They told him that Buffy had moved on, that years had passed, but he didn't care. When he came back to her, he found her in a motel room and it turned out that he had been gone for mere hours.

That sounds like "Someday" by Holly except Spike was with the PTBs that told him years had passed and Buffy moved on. That's in the last chapter.

hmmm lol wow. I bet that was it. I was so sure that the story started after the hellmouith closed, and totally forgot anything about Shanshu. I also thought that there was more angst before he came back. And now I think I was mixing that and Holly's "Other Side of Midnight" along with a splash of Slaymesoftly's "Prologue to Life" (becuase I was sure that there was a scene in a diner where she got upset and left because Kennedy had forgotten about those that they'd lost). I'd even gone through Holly's fics just because the few lines I could remember felt like her writing, but I totally dismissed "Someday" just because the summary didn't feel right. *headdesk*

Anyway, THANK YOU for saving my brain.