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Part Three

Spike walked, Buffy tagging along beside him, questions spinning around her head so fast she couldn’t focus. She watched instead. Watched the confident lope that had been his hallmark pre-chip, watched the back of his head and marvelled at the strong hair gel that kept his hair from moving even a little. Watched him smoke a cigarette and wondered if he’d stop if he had a soul like her Spike had.

It was when they were bearing down on Giles’s door that she finally realised where her thoughts had taken her. This Spike still oozed confidence and purpose, something of which her Spike had been robbed of the second he’d realised the Initiative had stolen his life. But if he had no chip…what was going on here?

Buffy snatched at his coat sleeve, her fingers slipping on the leather.

“Spike, stop.”

He did, dead in his tracks. Then he spun on his heel, grabbed her and pushed her into the bushes, crouching down low beside her and indicating she should shut her mouth or he’d eat her to make sure of it.

She truly hated to admit it, but the show of his dislike and violence gave her a thrill.

Giles’s door opened and it was all Buffy could do to hold in the cry of distress as she saw what her watcher looked like in a world where she’d never returned. He was dishevelled, his eyes bleary.

“You really need to get a grip, old man.”

Buffy looked closer and felt the familiar disfavour she’d felt whenever she’d seen Wesley. Which hadn’t been for a long time. Seeing him now as he was then, she was wishing it’d been even longer.

“Why don’t you poke your nose into your own slay—I mean, business, and leave me to worry about mine?” There was a darkness in Giles’s voice that Buffy didn’t get to hear often, and now she could see why. It was damn scary, which she had to admit was a relief from Wesley’s usual patronising tone.

“For God’s sake, man. It has been five years. She’s gone and you know it. Stop torturing yourself and just let her go.”

The furious glint in Giles’s eye had Buffy grabbing Spike’s hand, clutching it tightly.

“I know nothing of the sort. I have heard nothing of what happened to my Slayer, and it might do you well to remember your training. If something had happened and your slayer was dead, you would feel the severing. I have not felt it, so do not tell me how I should conduct myself as I search for her. If I have to search for another five years, I bloody well will. Now kindly vacate my welcome mat and go entertain your own slayer. She seems to enjoy you, though I rather question why.”

Delivering his acerbic opinion, Giles slammed his door in the younger watcher’s face, leaving Wesley to scowl at it before turning and walking smartly away.

Spike held onto Buffy’s hand, holding her in place till he could hear the watcher return to his car and the engine roar to a start. No spluttering old faithful for this watcher, not now he had a voracious young slayer he was putting it to regular.

They finally stood and Buffy turned saucer-shaped eyes to Spike and barely stopped herself from laughing out loud. Unfortunately, she snorted instead.

“Oh. My. God. Wesley is boinking his slayer? Who is it?” Reason dictated that in her world, the only living slayer besides herself was Faith. But no way would Faith have let Wes lay a finger on her, even as free as she was with her affections. Hell, she’d nearly killed Xander and he was a little closer to Faith’s league than Wes was.

“If you mean shagging, then your answer would be yes. As to who it is, was forgetting you wouldn’t know. Bird by the name of Faith. Real piece of work, that one. Wanker doesn’t even realise she’s got him wound right round her little finger.”

Oh he was wound all right, even Buffy could see that. Giving into the impulse, she giggled. Spike looked sharply at her, shocked at the sound and her apparent ease as she stood beside him. Then he noticed they were still holding hands and he flung it away, rubbing it against his pants leg as if slayer touch was repulsive. Buffy realised that for this Spike, it probably was.

It made her feel sad.

Things were seriously different about this place. So far it seemed good, if a little weird. Nothing like the Sunnydale she’d come from. The one where everything was shaping up to go to Hell in a hand basket. Nightmares of potential slayers being slaughtered by robed monks wielding wickedly sharp daggers, visits from those dead to give messages of being devoured from beneath them, Spike turning the populace into vamps. None of it made sense, and all of it made Buffy’s tingly sense of impeding doom set her teeth on edge.

And wow, Faith was still around, rather than being a prison inmate for killing one of the mayor’s minions. Maybe her guess about that was right on the money. All Faith had needed was some support and a place to shine. A place where she’d never met or had to be compared to Buffy.

That feeling of sadness was spreading.

The many possibilities about this place made her head spin. Buffy wanted to know it all; she wanted to know why Giles was still looking for her rather than giving up when in her world he couldn’t wait to abandon her and return to his life in England. She wanted to know why an unchipped Spike was killing other vampires and saving the residential idiots wandering the alleys at night in a town renowned for its mortality rate. She wanted to know if her friends had continued looking like Giles had, or if her mother had survived the appearance of Dawn rather than become a resident of one of the many cemeteries the town had to offer.

Had Spike fallen in love with Faith and that’s why he was trying to be good?

Suddenly, Buffy didn’t want to know the answer. She looked up and that penetrating blue stare he had seemed to delve right to the depths of her soul. She shuddered. It wasn’t him, not her Spike and as often as she reminded herself of that fact, it didn’t end up mattering in the slightest. Because he was completely the Spike she thought she knew. Only she never really had known him, had she? Not if she didn’t even need to think before she plunged her stake into his chest.

Buffy could see a million questions forming in that gaze, the one she wanted to dive into and never break back to the surface. A million questions she was hesitant to answer until she had a few answers of her own. And for that she needed to see Giles, even though she knew how cruel it was going to be.

In the end Spike didn’t lend his voice to even one question, choosing to turn himself off from her and nod toward the closed door. They could hear loud music seeping through the cracks of the apartment and Buffy’s eyes widened. She’d never known Giles like this. He’d always been very absorbed in whatever he did, but this was still a side of Giles she’d never been privileged to know. If she had, perhaps he wouldn’t have been so quick to leave her. Maybe he’d have invested a little of himself in her like she’d invested most of herself in him.

“Right then.” Spike turned his back on her, then as if remembering who he was with and who had just confessed to dusting him in another world, he spun so fast he nearly fell over. “After you, Slayer.”





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