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Slowly groggy green eyes open to stare at the white ceiling above. The sun shines through the window lighting up the room. As Buffy turns her head to glance at her alarm clock she feels peacefulness in the room. It’s quiet. The clock reads 7:12 in glowing red numbers. Then Buffy rolls on to her back. It’s quiet. It’s too quiet, completely soundless actually. Buffy sits straight up in bed. There is no pitter patter of potential slayers, no sounds of girls arguing over who gets the bathroom first, and no beeping of the microwave from Andrew’s experiments.

Buffy gets up and walks out of the room. Something is off. She makes her way into the hall and down the stairs. It’s too quiet. Even her own steps seem muffled as she walks. Buffy walks into the living room and sees Xander asleep on the couch, Andrew curled up in the chair and a mass of potentials sleeping on the floor. At first glance they’re just sleeping, but on further scrutiny Buffy notices something odd. They’re all still, perfectly still. They’re not moving at all, they’re not even breathing. For a moment Buffy is frightened, but then she realizes that her friends aren’t dead. They’re just motionless, as if they were frozen in time.

“What the hell is going on?”

Buffy runs back up the stairs and peers into Willows room. Same thing, Buffy looks at Willow; her arm is outstretched hitting the top of her alarm clock. 7:12 that was the same time that her clock read when she had first woken up, but that had been at least five minutes ago. Buffy starts to get panicked as she glances into Dawn’s room and then rushes back down the stairs after finding her sister in the same condition. She opens the front door and walks outside. There is a red car in the road. It’s not moving, but not parked. There’s no breeze and no sound of any kind. Buffy glances around. Everything is frozen as if she were standing in a photograph.

Buffy walks back into the house. Then she hears it. Sound. Muffled footsteps, someone is coming up the basement stairs. As the basement door opens it creeks, although no where near as loud as it should. Buffy watches as Spike walks out into the kitchen running his fingers through his tussled blonde curls. She sighs loudly with relief that she’s not the only active person in this motionless world. Then she watches as Spike stops dead in his tracks.

Spike knew instantly when he woke up that something was wrong. His internal clock was off and the air around him felt stale. He made his way upstairs and into the kitchen then... Stop. Spike focuses his eyes on a tiny insect. After coming up the stairs he saw it. Its presence is not as surprising as the fact that it’s not moving. The fly floats in the air hanging suspended in time. Spike looks at the fly with amazement and confusion then his vision focuses on something in the distance. He sees Buffy.

“What the bloody hell is going on?”

“My words exactly,” Buffy responds.

--

Buffy sits at the head of the dining room table with her head in a book. Violently she flips through the pages of the ancient text. However, she doesn’t really know what she’s looking for. Spike walks into the room with a mug of blood in his hand. He leans in the door frame and stares at her.

“You’re not going to find anything in there,” he says as he takes a sip from his mug then stares down at the crimson liquid and notices its flat taste. It’s not old or spoiled, just flat, like soda that’s lost its fizz.

“Well we have to do something, what do you think we should…” Buffy starts to say then stops as she notices Spike staring oddly at his mug of blood “what? What’s wrong?”

“It tastes funny?”

“It’s not bad I just bought it ye…”

“No, not like that… I don’t know how to explain it… look, Slayer, we’re not going to fix this by sticking our heads in a bunch of stuffy books… this, whatever it is, it’s obviously magical. Some sort of spell that’s been bollixed up or what have you.”

“Great, so how do we undo it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Real helpful Spike.”

“I don’t know because I don’t know what caused it… all spells have a purpose right? I think our best bet to get the world back on its rotation is to figure out what that is, an considering you and I are the only two not affected I’m thinking that it has something to do with one of us.”

Buffy listens to his words then her facial expression falls as realization of what’s happening comes to mind. I wish I had more time to figure it out. Her own words about her feelings for Spike run through her head. Eshana was a vengeance demon. She glances up at the blonde vampire before her. He was what this was all about. Her uncertainty about him is what kept the two of them in this limbo land of frozen pictures. Once she figured out how she really felt for him everything should go back to normal, she hoped.

“What is it love?” Spike asks. She can’t tell him, her feelings for him are not something she should be looking into right now, there are more important things to deal with; but if she didn’t figure out what he meant to her they might never break the spell. Of course she didn’t have to figure that out right now. With the world frozen she had more time to think, more time to plan for the big battle, maybe she could use this to her advantage and get ahead of the First.

“The First,” she responds.

“What?”

“The First… we have to figure out how to stop him.”

“Right, that’s been the objective for months now slayer, where’ve you been?”

“No, the spell… the spell is so that we have time to figure out how to defeat the First.”

“Okay, well that’s good, mind sharing how it is that you know this bit of info?”

“I made a wish to a vengeance demon… well I didn’t know she was a vengeance demon at the time, but I said that I wished I had more time to figure things out… with the First, so maybe to break the spell we need to find a way to defeat him.”

Spike looks at Buffy a little oddly. Her explanation doesn’t completely make sense. Spike is still confused as to why it is that he and she are the only ones not frozen, and he can tell that she’s hiding something; however he decides to leave it alone and not question her further. Whatever she was hiding she was doing it for a reason. Spike sits down at the table adjacent to her and grabs a book.

“Alright,” he says “let’s get a move on then.”





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