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Chapter 13

”So sweetie, how are you doing?” Joyce asked her beautiful daughter once they had settled on the couch in Giles’ living room.

“Confused,” Buffy told her mother honestly. “We haven’t really made any big changes yet, but my memories are still changing. I mean…I totally get the whole cause and effect thingy, but I can’t work out how we’re causing some of these changes.” Buffy shook her head as if to clear her thoughts.

“Why don’t you tell me about the latest memory, maybe we can work it out together,” Joyce offered, encouraging her daughter to talk.

Buffy thought for a minute before attempting to vocalize her altered memories. “I had this whole scene replay for me earlier. I was standing outside the library with Xander and Willow, and Xander had the door opened just a little bit so we could hear Giles and Angel talking. The things that Angel was saying…I just can’t imagine the Angel that I know saying those sorts of things or acting the way he does. But I saw and heard it, so it’s kind of hard to reconcile what I know with…well, what I know.” Buffy turned to her mother, her confusion bringing tears to her eyes.

Joyce gathered her tearful daughter into her warm embrace and tried to help her emotionally scarred child. “Sweetie, have you considered that maybe the Angel you know, you only know through the eyes of the child that you were? That maybe in your timeline, you were so in love with him that you didn’t notice any faults and that now that you are seeing him from an adult’s point of view?

“Honey, I loved your father, but as we grew older we both changed and the people that we grew into had different goals and dreams, different beliefs. He wasn’t the man I fell in love with and I wasn’t the woman he fell in love with. Some couples grow together and some grow apart. Maybe the woman you are now needs something else in a partner and this is allowing you to see Angel clearly.”

Buffy wiped her tears and looked up guilelessly into her mother’s eyes, becoming vulnerable and young once again, “I don’t know if I ever really knew him mom. The younger me is already seeing the flaws, he hid them from me mom and maybe if I had seen it, maybe we wouldn’t have even been a couple, and then none of the badness that came after, would have come, you know?”

Joyce hugged Buffy tightly to her, running a hand gently down the side of her face. “I know, sweetie, but this could be a good thing too, honey. If the younger you, doesn’t go through the pain that you did, doesn’t that mean that you won’t have to live with it anymore?”

Smiling softly to herself, Buffy offered a heartfelt, “Yes.”

~*~*~

Angel sat in his only chair; the dark basement’s only source of illumination was a single candle. He knew there was something funny going on with Giles. He’d clearly known that Buffy was listening to them; Giles might even have set him up deliberately, trying to make him look bad in front of Buffy. Of course once he explained everything to his beautiful little slayer, she would understand that he, Angel, only had her best interests at heart. She would understand.

He pitied Giles; the poor man had clearly never had a true love of his own, so of course he couldn’t understand the connection between soulmates. But, that didn’t excuse Giles for doubting him in the matter of Joyce’s sanity; as if he wouldn’t recognise insanity, he’d perfected the art of making someone insane, who was Giles to question him?

~*~*~

“I’ll kill him!” Buffy spat out furiously.

Giles looked up from the book he was showing Joyce on slayers and, after a shared glance it was silently agreed that he would be the one to question the angry Slayer. “Who are you planning on killing, Buffy?”

“Spike,” she glared at the watcher, as if daring him to disagree. “He went to the Bronze and let the other me see him.”

“Was there a fight?” Joyce hesitantly asked, her smile well concealed. She was fairly certain that the emotion she was sensing from her daughter was a little closer to jealousy than anger.

“No, she saw him from across the room.” Buffy explained, her ire building by the minute. Dammed idiot, didn’t he realise that the other Buffy would be at the Bronze tonight…and what the hell was he doing going there anyway?

Giles and Joyce shared another glance; both had a good idea as to the source of the slayer’s anger. “I don’t understand the problem then Buffy, surely if they didn’t communicate in any way, her seeing him shouldn’t cause a problem, should it?” Giles innocently asked.

“No problem?” Buffy almost screamed, “She’s been dreaming about him, she just saw him and thinks he’s her destiny, a gift from the Powers, let her get her own damn gift!”

“Oh dear,” Giles commented, desperately trying to stop himself from laughing.

~*~*~

When Spike entered Giles’ apartment, it was to discover both Joyce and Giles in the middle of a laughing fit, doubled over and with tears streaming down their faces. Buffy stood watching them, her arms crossed and her foot tapping out her irritation, clearly not seeing the funny side of what ever it was that had the other two in near hysterics.

Slowly turning her head towards the sound of the door, Buffy’s eyes narrowed. “You,” she spat out in anger as she started to stalk towards him.

Moving behind the dining table, and fully intending to keep said table between him and the little warrior at all costs, Spike’s first thought was, ‘Bollocks. Spikey, me lad, you’re toast’.

“You did that deliberately.” She fumed.

“I forgot she’d be there, alright. It wasn’t bloody intentional,” he barked back; he wasn’t going down without a fight.

Buffy would not be halted, no table was going to stop her from getting to him; it was time for tactics. “Don’t think I haven’t worked out what you’re trying to do, Blood Breath. You’re trying to get her to fall for you so that I will.” Buffy announced with calculated accusation.

Spike stopped, frozen in shock at her wild and unfounded accusation, hell he hadn’t even thought of that. “Are you all sack of hammers, Slayer? I only saw her for a soddin' second and then I scooted right out of there.”

“What’s sack of hammers? Is that one of those weird British things?” She moved closer; almost there.

“Are you bloody crazy, is what it means, you stupid bint,” he snapped right back at her, getting right into her personal space and trying to stare her down. It was the flash of triumph in her eyes a fraction of a second before she grabbed his lapels that had him thinking, ‘You’re buggered now, mate’.

“She is off limits, Spike.” She almost growled the words.

“She is a child, Slayer.” He did growl out the words.

“So you’ve got no plans of trying your chances with her then?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“I don’t want her, Slayer, I want you and if I haven’t made that perfectly clear by now, it’s about bloody time I did.” Swiftly lifting his hands to the back of her shoulders, he pulled her to him, his lips crashed down on hers with bruising deliberation.





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