Fell outta bed, butterfly bandage
But don't worry
You'll never remember, your head is far too blurry
-Fall Out Boy-
Chapter 4
Buffy woke slowly, her senses lazily stirring out of hibernation.
Her first thought was why is the room spinning? She couldn’t be hung over. She hadn’t partied last night, hadn’t gone to the Bronze.
What was it that she’d done last night?
Then she remembered. She hadn’t done anything. Spike had. Psycho-boy had chained her up and professed his undying love for her by flickering torchlight. He’d even offered to kill Drusilla for her – and what a fantastically romantic gesture that was. God.
Eyes still too heavy to open, she rubbed her hand against her temple, trying to soothe away the strange swaying feeling and underlying nausea. it didn’t make a bit of sense that the cattle prod she'd been zapped with should make her feel so woozy and off-balance, unless the bleached freak had managed to slip her a roofie as well. She wouldn’t put it past him.
Still, bizarre hangover notwithstanding, it was time for the rise and shiney. Her to-do list for the day was killer. She couldn’t miss her ten o’clock English Lit class, and she needed to go to a doctor’s appointment with her mom in the late afternoon. Last, but most pressing, was figuring out what to do about Dawnie and the she-god from hell that had her sister at the top of her shit list.
She forced her eyes open with a groan.
Whoa. Very big whoa.
Where she should have seen her pastel bedroom wall, she was, instead, faced with paneled mahogany and a large round window.
What the fuck?
She bolted upright in bed and looked frantically around the room.
It was absolutely unfamiliar, bordering on alien. Looking down, she saw the form of a sleeping brown-haired man, sharing her bed. His face was turned to her, body curved in a spooning position.
Blinking to clear her head, she took a closer look at him. He was terribly familiar, terribly and horrifyingly familiar: the pointed chin, the aquiline nose, the razor edge of his cheekbones.
Spike.
His hair was different, all brown and curly, but she knew in an instant – it was him.
And he was naked.
At least he was naked up to where the sheet lay across his hips. And…that wasn't the worst part.
She was naked too.
If she’d have woken up next to a decapitated horse’s head, à la The Godfather, that would have been disturbing. Waking up next to naked Spike was about three exits past Disturbia. How could she have underestimated the depth of his depravity?
Instinctively, she recoiled against the wall, pulling the sheets tightly around her body and using her legs to kick herself as far away from him as possible.
His eyes flew open; the bright blue of them leaving no doubt that he was indeed Spike. Not that there had been doubt in the first place.
He reached out to her, wearing and expression of absolute confusion. Her hand responded, no thought required. Punching with all the force she could muster, she smashed her fist into his nose with a satisfying squish.
A spurt of blood shot out of Spike’s nose, as bright pain blossomed up in her arm. Keeping the sheet wrapped tightly around her body, she scurried off the foot of the bed, landing on the floor with a thump.
She flexed her sore right hand – the once she’d punched him with. It sent out waves of pain that shot up her arm. Slayers didn’t feel this kind of reaction, not from a simple punch on the nose. She stared, dumbfounded, at her hand. Had the depraved little monster managed to mess with her slayer powers as well?
Her first instinct was to look for something non-sheety to wear. As she quickly scanned the room for any kind of clothing, Spike scrambled off the bed behind her. He seemed oblivious to the stream of blood flowing freely out of both sides of his nose and making rivulets down his chest; all his concentration was focused upon her.
“Elizabeth?” he asked, his voice high and panicked.
“Stay away. Stay the fuck away from me, Spike. The second I find a scrap of wood, you are so dusted.”
Her feet tangled in what appeared to be a discarded prom dress lying on the floor, and, because it just barely beat out the sheet as ‘clothing,’ she tossed it over her head.
“What’s happened, Elizabeth?” he asked. He seemed oblivious to his nudity andto the copious amounts of blood gushing from his nose.
“Stop calling me that, freak-boy.”
As she backed toward the door, she buttoned up the front of the gown with shaking hands. He followed, extending his hand to her.
“So much as touch me, and I will break your arm, Spike.”
“I fear you’re unwell again, love. You called me Spike when you were ill. Don’t you remember?”
“What I remember is that you went all nutso on me and chained me up in your crypt. This is apparently Act 2 of that little freak show, and this is me, exiting stage left.”
“Elizabeth, please. You’ve a fever!” He reached out to touch her forehead. She was faster, however, and reacted instinctively, grabbing his arm and twisting it viciously behind his back.
With her other hand she reached up to yank off the ridiculous brown wig he was wearing. Her fingers, careless in rage, dug a bloody trench along his temple in the process.
She yanked on a handful of hair, hard. Nothing. It was apparently not a wig at all, but attached to him via some kind of spell. He stifled a moan and pulled away from her, dripping blood on the front of her dress in the process.
Frantic to get away from him, she tore open the door of the room to find herself in a narrow hallway. When she was immediately hit with a wave of ocean air, the odd swaying sensation suddenly made sense. She was on some kind of boat. How the hell had Spike managed such a thing?
Her ‘fight or flight’ instincts were beginning to fire on the ‘flight’ cylinders now, so when she spied a patch of open sky to her left, she dashed down the hallway as fast as she was able.
The passage opened onto the sunny deck of a boat unlike anything she’d ever seen.
Four large masts, complete with pirate-like billowing sails, covered the entire length of the deck. A sailboat, then. A really big one, with a smoke stack settled smack dab in the middle, for some bizarre reason.
She rushed to the side, to get her bearings, to get some sense of how far she was from the shore, only to have her hopes crushed. Water. As far as she could see, nothing but ocean.
Turning back around, she noticed a small crowd was beginning to gather – all the people wearing the same type of old fashioned clothing. It was as though she’d landed on a themed ocean cruise. Instead of something safe like ‘Rosie O’Donnells All Gay Family Cruise,’ she’d landed on the one themed ‘People Who Take Charles Dickens Way Too Seriously.’
They looked at her with stunned and appraising eyes. Barefoot and with hair flowing down her back, she did not fit in.
She glared back at them and backed up against the deck rail.
This was a dream. It had to be! Except the throbbing in her arm from where she’d punched Spike told her this was something not quite like a dream.
A spell then. He’d managed to transport her into Fuddy Duddy Land via some kind of spell. All she had to do was… what? Willow handled counter-spells. Buffy punched things. Those were their roles and they were very good at them. If punching her way out of this wasn’t an option – what was?
Even if fighting her way out of this situation did suddenly become an option, she would still be shit out of luck. Her slayer powers seemed to be kaput anyway.
“Ma’am?” A timid voice broke through her contemplations. He had a very thick accent which reminded her, strangely, of the Beatles. She turned to see a teenage boy with a mop of black hair, wearing a uniform that indicated he was part of the staff of Ye Olde Carnival Cruise Lines. “Mrs. Pratt, are you quite all right?”
“Who’s Mrs. Pratt?” Buffy asked.
“Shall I get Mr. Pratt? Are you unwell?”
“No. I want to see…” and who was it she wanted to see, really? Anyone from Sunnydale: Giles, Willow, her mom. She’d be happy to see her history professor at this point.
“I want to see the captain of this ship,” she said in an authoritative voice. At least, she hoped it sounded authoritative.
The boy only looked at her, blankly.
At that moment Spike came bursting onto the deck. He was wearing old fashioned pants and a blood-spattered white shirt which he was buttoning as he ran, still bleeding profusely from his temple and nose.
He was not burning.
He was standing directly in the sun and he was acting as though it was perfectly natural. How, by the name of all that was holy, had Spike managed to work this kind of magic?
“Elizabeth,” he said.
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
“What should I call you?” His voice was choked with agony. Christ, she hadn’t hit him that hard.
“My name. No, wait. I don’t want you to call me anything. I want you to leave me the fuck alone.”
The teenaged boy looked at Spike, his face a question. Spike’s voice was urgent. “Please fetch Dr. Crowdner.”
The boy tore off toward the center of the ship without another word.
“Buffy,” Spike emphasized her name. “Please, you must return to our cabin. You’re unwell.”
A small crowd was beginning to swell, the bloody red flag of Spike’s shirt catching their attention like a beacon. The costumed audience stayed a polite distance away, as they were a well-bred crowd and were careful to only gawk at car accidents from a respectable distance.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, Spike. You need to stay the hell away from me.”
When she looked directly into his eyes, she was shocked to see the agony within them. She felt such a strange surge of vertigo that she had to turn away, just to clear her head. Gripping the rail, she looked down at the churning sea beneath her and for just for one crazy instant, considered jumping- just hoisting herself over the rail and taking a leap, doing something, anything, to escape this bizarre ship of fools on which she’d landed.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She just needed to shut out the creaking and moaning of the wooden timbers of the ship, shut out the sight of a bleeding and all too human looking Spike,, shut out the Beatles sounding boy and the strange people in Dickens’ clothing. She needed to shut it all out and return to her life. .
“Elizabeth.” A gentle voice spoke from behind her.
She whirled around. “If I hear that name one more time, I swear to God…”
A tall, dark-haired man stood before her. His kind eyes met her gaze steadily. “What would you like me to call you?”
“Buffy. My mom named me Buffy. Who are you?”
“I’m Dr. Crowdner.” He stepped towards her, with his palms out. It was an unthreatening gesture, but it reminded her of the way one would approach a feral animal… or a madwoman. “I understand that you’re unwell.”
“I’m fine. I’m just…not where I’m supposed to be.”
“And where are you supposed to be?” The doctor took another step closer to her. She took a step back, pressing her spine to the rail tightly. He was talking to her as though she were a very small child and it was beginning to piss her off more than just a little.
“I’m supposed to be home in bed. My bed. In Sunnydale. Not on a ship with a bunch of costume enthusiasts. It’s Spike. He did this.”
“Spike?” The doctor seemed genuinely nonplussed at the name, or was, perhaps, a very good actor.
“Spike,” she pointed at Spike, standing behind the doctor wearing, beneath a veneer of blood, an expression of abject misery.
“Your husband, ma’am. William.”
“Freakazoid is not my husband.” She wanted to hit something so badly that she clenched her fist, despite the wave of pain that shot up her arm. “He’s done something: some kind of alternative dimension. Or it’s a spell.”
“A spell?” The doctor turned to Spike and asked, “Has your wife suffered delusional spells in the past?”
Buffy interrupted before Spike could respond. “Not that kind of spell. A witchy kind of spell. Something that makes it so that he can stand in the sun.”
“You are surprised that your husband can walk about in the sun?” The doctor took another baby-step towards her. “Let’s return to your room, Eliza…Buffy. That would be a much more pleasant place to continue our conversation, don’t you think?”
She was just about to fire back a snappy retort and argue with him, when it occurred to her that, come to think of it, it actually was a pretty good idea. Now that the initial rush of adrenaline was wearing off, she was feeling strangely exhausted. Besides, she certainly wasn’t going to accomplish anything by continuing to freak out in front of this audience of would-be Christmas carolers.
“Okay,” she said, before casting a scowl at Spike, who stood just behind the doctor. “But just you and me.”
“That would be agreeable, for now.” The doctor turned towards a small blonde woman to his left. “Jane, would you kindly take Mr. Pratt back to our room and tidy him up a bit. Give me a few moments alone with Mrs. Pratt.”
The woman nodded and gave Buffy a weak smile before walking over to Spike and taking him by the arm. Buffy frowned as Spike continued to stare at her even while allowing the small woman to lead him away without argument.
Buffy pushed away from the ship’s rail, ignoring the arm that Dr. Crowdner held out to her. The doctor stepped in behind her.
“Could you please guide us to the Pratt’s cabin?” the doctor asked the young, scared-looking crew member who had been on deck with Buffy from the outset.
The boy led them down the back toward the center of the ship and down the narrow passageway toward her room.
~*~
William had never known pain like this. He’d suffered through hardship, through illness, death, but never anything like this. Never had he imagined he’d see his Elizabeth mad and raving, with a look of pure revulsion every time she gazed upon him.
He felt the loss of her as a physical ache. Numbly, he followed the doctor’s wife down the corridor. Upon seeing him, startled passengers slid away from him like raindrops down a windowpane. He walked on, numbly letting the woman guide him, head and heart cast down to the floor. He could see drops of blood in his wake, falling less freely than they had been earlier.
He was dimly aware of entering a cabin, which was slightly larger than the one he shared with Elizabeth. The doctor’s wife urged him to be seated, and he felt her press a cool, damp cloth to his nose.
“Here, place your head against the chair. Just lean back,” she soothed.
The room was beginning to pitch and sway in a way that made him feel most uncomfortable. He closed his eyes.
He could feel her dabbing at the wound on his temple – first with something cool and then with something stinging. He kept his eyes closed. Jane Crowdner, wise woman that she was, said nothing.
What could have happened with his Elizabeth? Was this some kind of residual effect from the trauma of time travel? Had her illness last night precipitated the event? He was lost to the cause, so how could he aid her in a solution to it?
Now that the initial shock had worn off, now that he was sitting, William felt the pain from the injuries his beloved wife had bestowed upon him earlier. It was nothing compared to the pain of being parted from her. He had to constantly fight the urge to run to her, to break through walls and obstacles and simply be near her.
“Here. Press this cloth to your nose, William.” The doctor’s wife took away the soaked cloth and replaced it with a fresh one. He did as he was told.
“Constant pressure. That’s the trick,” she said, her words clipped carefully.
After some time, three minutes or thirty – he could not tell, he felt her remove the cloth from his face.
“All better now.”
Not better. It wouldn’t be better. Not until he could hold his Elizabeth.
“Please rest easy. Your wife could not be in more capable hands, I assure you. My husband specializes in female hysteria. You’re fortunate, really.”
Fortunate? William forced his eyes open.
Jane Crowdner stood before him wearing a compassionate expression. She was holding out a fresh white shirt. “Charles is a bit longer in the arm than you are, but I believe this will do for now. I’ll just slip out into the hall while you change.”
She didn’t ask, but told. Bless her. Thinking and responding would be quite beyond him just now.
As soon as she left, he mechanically changed out of his blood splattered shirt and into the fresh one. Now that he was standing and no longer bleeding, he began to feel a great deal more like himself. Again the need, the craving, to be by her side rose within him with a vengeance. He just needed to see her with his own eyes, even if she reviled him.
Fresh shirt buttoned and legs feeling surprisingly steady, he stepped out into the hall to find the doctor’s wife waiting for him.
“Yes, let’s go and check in on your Elizabeth, shall we?” she said, breezily, as though the morning events had been nothing terribly out of the ordinary, as if they might be meeting up for breakfast. She was a kind and good woman, this Jane.
The closer he got to Elizabeth, the larger his steps seemed to be. The doctor’s wife had to scurry to keep up with him.
As William reached for the door handle to room seventeen, Jane Crowdner placed her hand on his shoulder with surprising firmness.
“Let’s just…knock first, shall we?” She smiled at William before giving two sharp raps on the cabin door. 'Charles, William and I are here. Shall we enter?”
“Ahh, Jane,” his voice, firm and commanding from behind the door. “Why don’t you come in, dear? I’d like to have a word with William.”
The door opened just wide enough for Dr. Crowdner to slip out into the hall. He gave his wife a long look and some unspoken communication seemed to pass between them.
She reached out her hand and patted William on the shoulder. “I’ll just see to your wife, then. Please, don’t worry.” She slid inside the room and shut the door firmly behind her.
“William, let’s step into the lounge.” Dr, Crowdner stepped toward the small reading lounge just two doors up the hallway from where they stood. The large glass windows of the room revealed that the cozy room was empty at this early hour.
William followed behind. “I need to see her,” he said, insistently.
“Oh, you shall. It would be best for her if we spoke first, however.”
Dr. Crowdner shut the lounge door firmly behind him and gestured toward the high backed chairs in the corner. William took a seat.
“Is Elizabeth all right?” William blurted. But he knew better than that, and so he amended it. “Is Elizabeth going to be all right?”
The doctor gave William a confident smile, which had a wonderfully calming affect.
“There is every hope that your wife will recover. Tell me, William, has your wife ever had anything similar happen in her past? A time when she’d thought you to be another man?”
What could William say to this? That his wife had come from the future and that the ‘Spike’ she referred to was another, monster version of himself?
He looked at the doctor and rubbed his hand on his temple, momentarily forgetting that it had been recently bandaged.
“William, the more I know about Elizabeth, the better equipped I shall be to assist her.”
Choosing to walk the line between the truth and a lie, William said, “My wife was ill, in the past and during that time suffered a sort of delirium, but nothing like this.”
“I believe that, for Elizabeth’s good, we should deal with her condition forthrightly. William, I do not wish to shock you but,” the doctor placed his hand on William’s forearm, as if to steady him, “your wife believes she comes from a different place and time, entirely.”
William was feeling far too numb to feign surprise at this, and so he merely nodded in response.
“This type of hysteria is uncommon, but it’s not unheard of. It also happens to be something of a specialty of mine.”
“Your wife has mentioned as much,” William said, his voice sounded strangely monotonic even to his own ears.
“I have every hope that, with treatment, she can make great strides in restoring her wits, although admittedly, a ship is hardly the ideal location for such treatment.”
“When can I see her?” William asked.
“She is most adamant about not wishing to be in your company, William. I do feel, however, that this goes against her best interests, and it certainly goes against yours. Let’s just wait a bit before you rejoin her, shall we? It’s most prudent if we proceed cautiously at this juncture.”
William nodded, feeling too shell-shocked to do little more than agree with the medical professional.
Dr. Crowdner patted William reassuringly on the shoulder. “Try not to worry. You know, with patience, our wives can often accomplish amazing things. My own Jane, for example.”
“Your wife suffered…hysteria?”
“Well, not hysteria, but her background is somewhat unsettling. However, with patient work and elocution lessons, I daresay no one that meets her is the wiser.”
It was evident that William didn’t follow the point that the doctor was attempting to make, so he leaned in and said in a conspiratorial tone, “My wife was born an Australian.”
“I would never have guessed,” William said, unsure of the correct response to such an admission.
“First, let’s you and I attend to breakfast. Your wife has settled down a great deal already – Jane will continue to see to her. In the meanwhile, I should like to discuss with you a course of treatment which I should like to commence at the soonest available opportunity. This afternoon, if she is amenable to it.”
The older man clasped his arm about William’s shoulder as he guided him from the room.
“I have every expectation that your Elizabeth will surprise us all.”
“Perhaps a pleasant surprise,” William mumbled. Thus far he was heartsick at the surprises the day had brought and wasn’t sure how many more surprises his heart could endure.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Firstly, I would never tell you to do this if it weren't hysterical, but check out the reviews for chapter 3. It began with an "anon" review and took a hard right into hysteria. The cast of characters are wonderful. Full of wonder, I am! :)
Thank you to AmyXaphania for a banner that inspires me every time I look at it. I don't deserve her! Also, for betas who are patient and wise: DoriansKitten, Lutamira and Capella42. Thank you!
Lastly to readers for leaving feedback! WIth a special shout out to reviewers Steven, and Rupert and the PTWB. The whole gang, really. Even you, "anon" :)
Thank you to AmyXaphania for a banner that inspires me every time I look at it. I don't deserve her! Also, for betas who are patient and wise: DoriansKitten, Lutamira and Capella42. Thank you!
Lastly to readers for leaving feedback! WIth a special shout out to reviewers Steven, and Rupert and the PTWB. The whole gang, really. Even you, "anon" :)
Chapter End Notes:
Do you know how they treated hysteria? Only with (according to the ads, I kid you not) "the greatest medical discovery the world has ever known."
Wait for it!
Wait for it!