Shadows on the Wall

Posting again, but only on DreamWidth

shadowscast — Thu, 09 May 2019 01:22:26 GMT

Hello, world!

I took a break from active participation in fandom for a while (four and a half years). I'm dipping my toes back in now, tentatively, but I've decided that I'm not going to keep running journals on two different platforms. I'm not planning to delete this LJ, but from now on I'll be posting only on DreamWidth. I made a post there tonight, about some thoughts I had about Avengers: Endgame.

If you vaguely remember me and want to follow me on DW, in case I decide to make another post this decade, feel free! I'm Shadowscast there, too: https://shadowscast.dreamwidth.org/

Guardians of the Galaxy: a theory

shadowscast — Sun, 14 Sep 2014 21:18:13 GMT

Last night my in-laws were visiting, and they very kindly looked after the offspring so that my husband and I could go see Guardians of the Galaxy (second time seeing it for each of us, but first time seeing it together).

Anyway, it was fun, and Rocket and Groot still stole the show the second time around, but what I want to post about is the awesome and CLEARLY DEFINITELY TRUE hypothesis that Mr. Shadowscast and I came up with afterwards.

We think that Peter Quill's father is ... drumroll ... LOKI!

Here's our supporting evidence (based on the movies only; I know nothing of the Guardians comics, and Mr. Shadowscast knows only slightly more than nothing):

1) At the end of the movie, the Nova Corps people tell Peter that their scans indicate that his father wasn't human, but was, rather, some sort of ancient being.

Loki is an ancient being!

2) Peter's mother describes his father as an "angel" and a "being of pure light."

Loki absolutely has the ability to look that way. Also, if she saw him arriving or leaving via the Bifrost, there would have been a light show contributing to that effect.

3) Yondu (the Ravager who raised Peter after taking him from Earth), describes Peter's father as, if I'm remembering the quote correctly, an A-hole.

Yep. Loki can certainly be an A-hole.

4) Peter shows extraordinary resistance to freezing to death in space. His face ices over while he's hanging out in hard vacuum with Gamora, but the instant he's pulled into Yondu's ship, he's absolutely fine and his skin is back to normal.

Being half Jotun would definitely help with that, right? It would probably help protect him from the decompression, too.

I mean, okay, we raise some questions here. If he's half Jotun, why does he look fully human? My answer is to mumble "Odin's spell," and "magic," and wave my hands. Loki looks human too, after all.

***

So that's the evidence we've found in the text. There are a couple of meta-textual reasons we think this might be true, as well.

5) Guardians is set in the same fictional universe as The Avengers and the other related movies, but its connection to the others is so far fairly tenuous. Revealing somebody we've already met in the other movies to be Peter Quill's father would give Guardians a stronger tie with the other stories. Of everyone we've met so far, Loki seems to us to be the best candidate, because of reasons 1 - 4 above, plus the fact that he's already had some dealings with two characters who did appear in Guardians: Thanos (obviously) and the Collector (less obviously and less definitively; at the very end of Thor: The Dark World, Sif and Volstagg deliver the Aether to the Collector, and since Loki is already impersonating Odin by then, one might assume they're actually acting on Loki's orders).

6) It would be awesome. Right? It would give Loki something to do besides coming up with crazy villainous plots and then watching them fall apart. It would kick both Loki and Peter right in the daddy issues, which always makes for some nice conflict. And Thor would be Starlord's uncle!

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Fic: A Triangle (is the strongest shape)

shadowscast — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 04:06:42 GMT

I have finished that Once A Thief threesome story I was working on!

It turned out to be 70,000 words long, and plotty and angsty and complicated. Which is par for the course for my fics, I guess. It was a whole lot of fun to write, especially with yourlibrarian along for the ride as my beta reader. She caught my awkward wordings and typos, helped me bounce around ideas about tricky plot developments, and made me totally re-write the ending when my first draft sucked. Plus, it was encouraging to know that at least one person other than myself would read the thing. Thanks, yourlibrarian!

I've posted it on AO3. You'll find more detailed tagging and content notes there. Here's the link:

A Triangle (is the strongest shape)

And, if you'd like a fantastic fanvid to get you in the mood, check out The Frug by some_stars, and remind yourself that Mac, Li Ann and Vic are awesome (individually but most especially together).

I have a couple of other notes, but I'll put them behind a cut.

Writing a threesome is hard. I realized part-way through the story that rather than trying to manage the development of one relationship, I was really trying to handle seven. Each of the pairs in the threesome needed to come together in its own organic way, and because these are complicated people with a lot of history together, each pair had to work through its own baggage. So that makes three relationships, right there. And then, each individual had a relationship with the other pair. For instance, Mac had to figure out how to relate to Vic and Li Ann as a couple—which is a whole different thing than his individual relationship with each one of them. So that makes another three, which brings us to six. And then there is the actual, proper threesome, all three of them at once, which is a thing unto itself.

At which point I realized I was doing combinatorics. Heh.

My whole story is essentially contained in the first three and a half minutes of episode 5. At one point while writing, I wanted to know Mac's street address. I went looking for it in the episode Mac Daddy, where I remembered Mac's biological father getting the address from a waitress. I have an episode transcript, but it's not in the transcript because she didn't say it out loud, she just handed it to him on a napkin. So I went to the episode and freeze-framed it (I am dedicated like that!) and discovered that it's 997 Queen's Quay. You're welcome.

Anyway, the point is, that scene with the waitress and the napkin is the second scene in the episode. The first scene consists of Mac, Vic and Li Ann hiding behind some oil drums, chatting. Well, okay, Mac is chatting and the other two are half humouring him, half trying to get him to shut up, because they're on a stakeout. Then their targets show up, three guys stepping out of a van. The agents are just supposed to follow the van, not to make contact, but Mac decides to go fight the guys instead. By himself. Because he's bored. So Mac heads out there, and he's cute and overconfident and pretends to be in a badly-dubbed kung fu movie, and he gets his ass handed to him. Vic and Li Ann watch from cover, letting him do his thing, wincing occasionally—until they determine that he really, definitely needs help, at which point they step in and save him. And then Li Ann grins at Mac and tweaks his nose.

It's adorable.

And that's pretty much the dynamic of my whole story, in a nutshell.

Comments at Dreamwidth:

new Once A Thief fic: teaser

shadowscast — Fri, 02 May 2014 02:06:44 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had started writing a new Once A Thief fic. So, I thought I'd post an update on that: I have been working on it obsessively ever since, and the thing is now 35,000 words long (and not finished yet).

I'm having so much fun!

I expect I'll return to the Buffyverse sometime soon, but right now I am just having a blast immersing myself in the wacky world of this strange Canadian action/drama that aired for only one season in the late 1990's, and which propelled me personally into the universe of fanfic.

Speaking of which: it is so weird to be writing a story set in 1999 and realizing that it's a historical period and that I have to be careful to avoid anachronisms. I remember 1999 like it was yesterday, you guys! And yet the characters live in a world without smartphones. They are secret agents working for a Shadowy Government Agency, and when they need to drive somewhere in rural Ontario they pull out a big paper road map.

Anyway ... I'm not going to be posting this story as a work in progress, but I decided I'd like to post a teaser for the handful of you out there who expressed interest in this project.

Notes: This story is a love letter to OaT's OT3: it will be a Mac/Vic/Li Ann story. It's just going to take me a while to get them there.

There are no content warnings for this chapter, though there will eventually be some for the story as a whole.

Chapter 1

"Okay, let's see 'em," Vic said, shoving the last of his chips into the centre of the table.

Mac turned over his cards with a grin—two Aces, two queens, and a seven of diamonds. His grin didn't falter when Vic showed his hand of five spades. "Come to Papa," Mac said, reaching for the pile of chips.

"Not so fast," Vic said, snatching at Mac's hand. "A flush beats two pairs, remember?"

"Oh come on." Mac turned to Vic, peering over his sunglasses. "Seriously?"

"Jesus Christ, what kind of a con man doesn't even know how to play poker?"

"Maybe I'm scamming you," Mac suggested, sitting back. "Let you think I'm an easy mark, then—wham!" he clapped his hands, "in for the kill."

"Yeah, right." Vic gathered up the chips and took a handful. Stuffed them in his mouth and crunched.

Potato chips. They were playing for potato chips. Because Mac had no fucking idea how to play poker and Vic had been trying to teach him for the past two hours.

"We didn't play poker in Hong Kong," Mac said. "Look, sometime I'll teach you Mahjong."

Vic snorted. "Isn't that an old-ladies game?"

"We'd need four players—have to get the girls into it. Li Ann and I used to play with the godfather and Michael."

Awkward silence. Shit. Vic looked up. Mac was suddenly intently studying his own fingernails. What with the sunglasses, it was hard to read his expression.

And what the fuck was Mac doing wearing sunglasses inside Vic's apartment at eleven pm?

It had been two months since Michael had tried to kill Mac. It was one of those things they just didn't talk about.

Unless they were going to talk about it now?

"So anyway," Mac said, "I guess Li Ann isn't going to call."

"Yeah," Vic said. Not going to talk about Michael, check. "Maybe you should just go home. I mean, she's probably home herself by now."

"Unless she—"

"Nah."

"No, I mean—but she could've, this time."

"Fifth time's the charm?" Vic snorted. "Seriously, no. Li Ann does not put out on the first date."

"Maybe with you she didn't." Mac smirked.

Vic rolled his eyes. "And you're trying to say she did with you? Come on, you two had known each other since you were, like, twelve. I don't think the 'first date' scenario really applied."

Mac shrugged. "I'm just saying—she says it's different now. She's different."

"I'll say." Vic shook his head. "I still can't believe she's dating guys from personals ads."

"Well how else is she going to meet someone from outside the Agency?" Mac asked, a bit defensively.

Mac had a point. "She could always do what we do," Vic suggested. "Start dating an arms dealer or an art thief."

They both laughed a bit louder and longer than the comment had really deserved.

"Another beer?" Vic offered, catching his breath.

"Yeah," Mac said, obviously forgetting he'd been about to go home.

Just as Vic was opening the fridge, he heard his apartment door opening.

"Oh thank God," Vic heard Mac mutter.

Vic grabbed a third bottle of beer.

"So, another dud?" Vic hazarded.

"Total disaster," Li Ann said. She took a long drink before elaborating. "The restaurant was robbed."

"Oh my God," Mac said, sitting up straighter. "Are you okay?" He'd taken his sunglasses off when Li Ann arrived. The three of them were in Vic's living room now; Mac and Vic at opposite ends of the couch, Li Ann in the easy chair.

Li Ann rolled her eyes. "The guy was just some poor junky. He looked like he'd never held a gun before. I disarmed him before he hurt anybody. Unfortunately my date was so scared he had an asthma attack. I had to take him to the E.R."

"Oooooh," Vic said with a sympathetic wince.

"You know what?" Li Ann said. "I think we're not meant to date normal people."

"You're just coming to that conclusion now?" Mac asked.

Li Ann sighed. "I thought it was worth a try."

"What's the appeal of normal, anyway?" Mac said. "Normal is boring."

"I thought it might make a nice change," Li Ann said.

"From Vic?" Mac snickered into his bottle. "Not likely."

"Hey, if I'm boring you, feel free to go hang out with one of your more exciting friends," Vic said. "Oh, wait. You don't have any."

"Can you two be in a room for ten minutes without bickering?" Li Ann asked with an edge of irritation.

"Hey, we've been hanging out all evening," Mac said. "Having a great time. Vic's been teaching me to play poker. We're not bickering, we're just having fun." He leaned over to mock-punch Vic in the shoulder, grinning.

"I should've just spent the evening with you guys," Li Ann said, casting a gloomy look down at her beer. "It would've been better than that so-called date."

"Tomorrow night, then?" Mac asked, perking up. "We could rent a kung fu flick, get takeout."

Li Ann buried her face in her hands, but Vic could see a smile peeking through. "Yes," she said. "I give up. No more dating. I'll just grow old alone alongside you guys."

"Well, you wouldn't be technically alone," Vic pointed out. "As long as you're with us."

"And it's not like we're actually going to grow old," Mac said.

There was an awkward silence. Li Ann looked at the bottle in her hands and Vic looked at Mac. Mac stared back at him, a challenging look in his eyes.

"Okay, Jesus Mac, you don't just say things like that," Vic said after a tense moment.

"What?" Mac slouched down on the couch and flipped his sunglasses back on. "There's no point in denying it. We get shot at on a weekly basis. We barely made it out of that warehouse alive in December. Fuck, Li Ann, you already thought I was dead for like a year and a half. And it wasn't so bad, right? You moved on."

"Not that bad?" Li Ann looked at him. "When I saw that factory explode, a part of me died. It hurt like nothing I'd ever felt before."

Li Ann's gaze was locked on Mac, who was as obviously discomfited now as Li Ann and Vic had been a moment ago. Vic shifted uneasily and thought about clearing his throat.

"Well, it's all water under the bridge now, right?" Mac said with an attempt at a flippant grin.

"I never stopped loving you," Li Ann said to Mac.

Vic suddenly felt a little light-headed, and his throat was dry. He took a drink of beer.

"That's not what you said before," Mac pointed out. He sounded a little hoarse himself.

"I thought I couldn't ever let myself be hurt like that again." Li Ann shook her head a little. "But that was ... that was the wrong choice." She put her bottle of beer down on the floor and went over to sit next to Mac on the couch. Mac eyed her warily, but he didn't try to move away. She took his sunglasses off him, and set them down on the coffee table.

It didn't surprise Vic when Li Ann leaned in to kiss Mac. Vic had seen it coming from the moment she put her bottle down.

It still hit him like a punch to the gut.

You think you're over someone, and then she comes to your place after a failed date and suddenly starts kissing your rival, who is also—let's face it—your best friend. And everything turns upside down.

Vic really, really wanted to leave, but it was his living room.

Mac was kissing her back with enthusiasm. His hands were wrapped around her waist. Her hands were tangled in his hair.

Fuck it. Vic stood up and headed for his bedroom.

"Wait," Li Ann said, pulling away from Mac. "Vic. Don't go." Leaving Mac behind, she walked over to Vic and put her hands behind his neck. She leaned her forehead against Vic's and said softly, close to his lips, "I never stopped loving you either."

Vic felt like his heart had stopped.

She kissed him. He had not seen that one coming.

Her lips were soft. The kiss was gentle and quick, and then she moved away again. Vic sat back down on his end of the couch because he felt like his knees might give way otherwise.

"I always felt like I was being ripped apart, choosing between you," she said. "Choosing neither of you seemed easier."

"Li Ann," Mac said, his voice barely audible, "I never stopped loving you either."

"I know that," she said. "I'm going to kiss Vic again, okay?"

"Okay," Mac said.

Vic barely had time to think that maybe actually he was the one she should've asked, when Li Ann was on his lap. Kissing him like she used to when they were first engaged, before Mac had come back from the dead and thrown Vic's life into chaos.

Vic closed his eyes, let himself be carried away with it. It occurred to him that this was her way of saying goodbye. Li Ann and Mac were going to get back together, like Mac had always wanted, like Vic had always feared.

Then there was a shift, something Vic couldn't quite place—maybe the creak of sofa cushions, the scuff of sock feet on carpet—and Vic opened his eyes and saw that Mac was kneeling in front of them. Mac was caressing Li Ann's hip while Li Ann bent to kiss Vic's collarbone.

"Um," Vic said.

"Shhh," Li Ann said. "It's all right."

All right with who? Vic wondered, wildly. "No, seriously, it's okay. I can leave."

"If you want to," Li Ann said, but then she kissed him again on the mouth.

Mac, Vic saw, was sucking her fingers. Vic could feel the warmth of Mac's right knee pressed against the instep of Vic's left foot.

"Li Ann," Vic said, pulling away from her kisses just enough to speak, "is this ... is this what you want right now? Are we really doing this?" His voice cracked a little, and he could feel his neck flushing.

Mac had tugged up the bottom of Li Ann's shirt and was kissing the small of her back. He seemed to be paying no attention to Vic.

"Maybe," she said. She turned away from Vic, put a finger under Mac's chin to tilt up his face so she could kiss him again.

Vic could feel his cock swelling; as confused and disconcerted as he felt, he was also seriously turned on.

Li Ann's shirt was still half rucked up from where Mac had been kissing her. Vic slid his hands under her shirt and up her torso until he felt the bottom edge of her bra. Li Ann, still busy with Mac, murmured approval.

Mac climbed back up onto the couch, his lips locked with Li Ann's the whole time. Vic fumbled with the buttons of Li Ann's shirt, even as he wondered how far this could possibly go.

Vic was not a kinky kind of guy. And up until five minutes ago, he would've said the same of Li Ann. She'd certainly never said anything to him, during their time together, about wanting to try anything wild like this.

Yet here they were.

Once Vic had Li Ann's shirt undone, he reached around back to unclasp her bra. It was a little awkward since she was still kissing Mac. Vic's hand brushed something behind Li Ann's back and he realized it was Mac's arm. Vic jerked away from the touch like he'd been electrified. "Sorry," he muttered, but neither Mac nor Li Ann seemed to notice.

Then Li Ann broke away from Mac and turned to Vic. She kissed him once on the lips and then pulled back so that she could begin unbuttoning his shirt.

His lumberjack shirt, she used to call it with amusement—the thick red plaid. It was comfy and warm in the winter.

While Li Ann fiddled with Vic's buttons, Mac leaned in and kissed Vic.

On the mouth.

Vic had a moment of blind panic.

"Gah!" he yelped, frantically pulling away. With Li Ann still on his lap, he couldn't manage more than an awkward contortion. "What the fuck, Mac?"

Mac looked startled, then confused. "What's wrong?"

Li Ann, meanwhile, slid off Vic's lap and found her feet. She looked from Vic to Mac and back again, tugging her shirt closed in front of her. "You know what?" she said in a suddenly-tight voice. "This was a mistake. I'm sorry. I—I think I should leave now."

"No!" Mac said, desperately. But Li Ann was already half-way to the door, grabbing her winter coat from the back of the easy chair.

"It's been a messed-up night," she said. "I have a lot on my mind. I shouldn't have taken it out on the two of you. I'm really sorry." She was putting on her boots as she spoke, and not making eye contact.

"Li Ann!" Mac begged. "Don't be sorry. Don't leave. I'm sorry, I—" He eyed Vic wildly. "I won't do it again. I promise. Tell her not to leave!"

Vic's heart was still hammering from the moment when Mac had kissed him. He just shook his head; he couldn't speak.

Li Ann was out the door.

Mac punched the couch cushions with a wordless cry. Vic was half-afraid Mac would try to punch him—was ready to block, to fight back—but instead Mac just sort of crumpled in on himself.

Vic felt, on the tip of his tongue, a smarmy, defensive remark about how Mac needed to relax about the fact that they'd just failed to get laid. But he stopped himself in time. Because he knew this wasn't about sex.

After another few seconds, Mac stood up. With a casual air that was entirely, obviously forced, he said "I guess I'd better go too."

"Yeah, well, good night then," Vic said, because pretending the whole thing had never happened was the best scenario he could possibly think of.

Moments later, Vic was alone.

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Fic update: Gently Down the Stream (chapter 5 and epilogue)

shadowscast — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 01:10:35 GMT

Here it is: the conclusion! I hope you like it.

And if you were waiting for the whole thing to be posted so you could read it in one shot, now's the time!

Thanks once again to everyone who took the time to comment on earlier chapters—your comments made me happy. And a big thanks to yourlibrarian, beta reader extraordinaire!

Title: Gently Down the Stream
Length: about 25,000 words total; this update is about 5400 words.
Pairing: Spike/Buffy along with other canonical pairings, but this isn't really a shippy story.
Warnings: Canon-typical violence; almost no sex.
Cross-posting: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal and AO3; read wherever you're most comfortable.

Chapter 5

Buffy had set her alarm for ten a.m., which was ungodly early considering she'd gone to bed at six, but she wanted to get up before anyone else did. Spike stirred a bit, but when she kissed his forehead and whispered "You don't need to wake up yet," he went right back to sleep.

She crept downstairs, and saw that Wesley was asleep on the sofa with an afghan draped over him. Angel wasn't in sight; Buffy decided she wasn't ready to look in the basement.

She made a pot of coffee and had a bowl of cold cereal. As she was finishing up, Tara arrived in the kitchen. She gave an automatic smile on seeing Buffy, but there was something about her expression that made Buffy worry.

"Is everything okay?" Buffy asked.

"Willow's awake," Tara said, which didn't answer Buffy's question. "I thought I'd get going to the library."

"Have some coffee first at least," Buffy said, pouring her a cup without waiting for agreement. "Seriously Tara, what's wrong?"

Tara just shook her head. "You should go up and talk to Willow," she said. "I really don't need coffee, thanks." And she quietly let herself out the back door.

"Yikes," Buffy said under her breath. And went upstairs.

Willow was sitting cross-legged on her bed. She looked up briefly when Buffy opened the door, then returned to what looked like meditation.

"Am I interrupting?" Buffy asked, unsure of herself.

"No," Willow said, eyes still on the coverlet in front of her. "I'm healing. It's okay."

"Oh," Buffy said. She stood there awkwardly for a few seconds. "Um, can I do anything to help?"

Willow finally looked up for real, and gave Buffy a smile. It was the kind of smile your best friend gives you after she's been away for a long time and things between you have changed and you're not really sure how to be with each other anymore. It made Buffy feel sad.

"Yes," Willow said. "If you're willing. If you hold hands with me, I can take a little energy from you. Only a little, I promise. It won't hurt you, but you might feel a little tired after."

After a moment's hesitation, Buffy nodded. She climbed onto the bed and sat facing Willow, and held out her hands.

She trusted Willow. She really did. And she wanted to help her.

"Last night you threw Drusilla up to the ceiling of the cave," Buffy recalled as Willow's cool, soft hands closed around hers. "Is this harder?"

"Not really," Willow said. "What I was doing last night, with the black eyes and all ... well, it's probably best if I don't do that very much."

"Okay," Buffy said. Not like she knew anything about how magic worked.

Other-reality Buffy probably had, though.

"So," Buffy said. "Are you ready to tell me the whole truth?"

"Ready?" Willow repeated ruefully. "Nope. But I guess it's time."

Buffy looked into her friend's pale, bruised face, and wished she could be comforting her now instead of confronting her. "Drusilla said Osiris wants four lives back from you."

Willow winced very slightly. "I'm so sorry, Buffy," she said. "I thought I could handle all this on my own. I thought I could protect you from it."

"Why would you need to protect me?" Buffy asked. "Wasn't I some kind of supergirl?"

"You'd had the weight of the world on your shoulders since you were fifteen years old," Willow said quietly. She sounded like she might start to cry. "It was crushing you. I thought ... I thought I could let you be normal. Then maybe you could have a chance to be happy."

"So you made a new reality where I could be Assistant Manager at the Double Meat Palace?" Buffy squeezed Willow's hands. "Couldn't you have at least made me a movie star?"

Willow let out a sound between a choke and a giggle. "You got the job at the Double Meat Palace all on your own," she said. "In the other reality. I know it might be hard to believe, but when I changed things, I changed as little as possible. The spell would've been unmanageable otherwise."

"What about Spike?" Buffy asked.

Willow nodded. "His part was the hardest. So many changes. He had a history with Angel and Dru going back to 1880, and of course they were still going to be vampires. For all their memories to match ... it was tricky."

Buffy felt a little cold. It was really just starting to sink in for her, the extent of what Willow had done. "You wanted me to be happy," she said. "So you took some ... some random vampire, and made him into the perfect boyfriend for me?"

"No," Willow said sharply. "I wouldn't do that. You and Spike already had a relationship. I told you, I changed as little as possible."

"But he was a vampire. And I was a vampire slayer." Buffy frowned. "Was he a good vampire?"

"Not exactly." Willow looked uncomfortable. "I didn't say you were happy together. It was ... kind of a mess. The rest of us thought you were crazy to be involved with him."

"So you fixed him." Buffy bit her lip. A chill was going down her back, and her arms felt heavy. She wanted to blame the healing spell, but she was pretty sure it was just the conversation. "Willow, that's not okay."

Willow leaned forward, an intense, slightly wild look in her eyes. "No," she said. "It's not like you're thinking. I didn't put him together from scratch. I made him human, but his personality, his feelings for you—all of that is really him."

"And the seizures? The headaches?" Buffy asked quietly. "Are those his punishment for whatever he did when he was a vampire?"

"God no," Willow said, looking appalled at the suggestion. "I'm really sorry about the seizures. He had brain damage, from this ... this government behavior-modification chip that was implanted in his brain. I made the chip go poof, but I didn't realize the scarring would mess him up so much."

"A government behavior-modification chip," Buffy repeated. "In his brain."

Willow shrugged. "It was a thing."

Buffy nodded. Every time she thought this alternate reality thing couldn't get any weirder, it did.

But that wasn't really the point here.

"Did you ask me?" she asked quietly. "Or Spike? In the other reality, before you changed everything to make us happier, did you ask us if that was what we wanted?"

The guilty look in Willow's eyes was enough of an answer.

"Willow, why did you do it?" Buffy asked, watching her face intently. "Were things really so bad for me? Did you just wake up one day and think to yourself hey, it's about time to replace this reality with a better one?"

Willow's eyes brimmed with tears. She squeezed Buffy's hands. "No," she whispered. "I did it because Tara was dead."

"Oh," Buffy said.

Willow began sobbing, crumpling in on herself.

So that's three, Buffy found herself thinking.

She knew she should be upset at the idea that Tara had died. But considering everything else she'd had to absorb over the past twenty-four hours, honestly this barely registered. She'd already had to deal with the idea that she'd died and been resurrected herself, that her boyfriend was really supposed to be a hundred-year-old vampire, that her ex-boyfriend was in fact a centuries-old vampire ... yeah, it had been one hell of a night.

Of course the main problem, Buffy remembered, was that Osiris wanted the dead people back.

Which was probably why Willow was so upset.

"Shhhh," Buffy said. "Shhhhhh. We're gonna figure this one out, Will. We're going to research Osiris and we're going to talk to Dru and figure out what we can do." She tried to sound a lot more certain than she felt.

"He can't have her back," Willow said fiercely through her tears.

"That's not even a question," Buffy assured her.

Willow lifted her head, sniffling. "Tara thought it might be."

"That's why she was upset when I saw her downstairs?" Buffy asked. "She thought you might turn her over to Osiris?"

"No," Willow said darkly. "She thought she might turn herself over to Osiris."

Buffy admired Tara's bravery, even as she swore to herself that she would not let that happen.

Only, how exactly do you defy an actual god?

"You still haven't told me who the fourth person is that Osiris wants," Buffy reminded Willow.

Willow nodded. "It’s Anya."

Buffy sat up a little straighter. Anya. All right. All four cards on the table, finally. Spike, Tara, Anya, Jenny Calendar. "How did she die?"

"Well, she didn’t, exactly. It's more of a technicality. She became a demon. Again. So that put her in Osiris's domain."

Buffy shook her head. "Is there anyone we know who isn’t supposed to be a vampire or a demon or have magic powers or whatever?"

"Xander," Willow said with a sad smile. "He’s always been perfectly normal, except for the fact that he hangs out with us."

"That’s ... kind of comforting," Buffy said. "I guess."

The rest of the day passed quietly. Willow concentrated on healing. Buffy helped her until she felt exhausted, and then she took a nap. When she woke up in the late afternoon, she found Spike alone in the kitchen, huddled over a mug of chamomile tea.

"I saw Dru," he said.

"Alone?" Buffy’s arms went goosebumpy, even though she could already see he was safe.

"No," he said. "Angel was there." He sipped his tea, a distant look in his eyes.

"And? How did it go?" Buffy prompted.

"She’s barking mad," Spike said sadly. "And she’s in so much pain."

"Still with the bugs?" Buffy asked.

Spike shrugged. "Had a long talk with Angel, too. He filled in a hundred years or so of history for me. Think I understand why he hates me, now."

"He has no right to hate you for stuff that other-you did in the other timeline," Buffy said, unconsciously curling her hands into fists.

"I think he might be coming around to agreeing with you on that point," Spike said, gently touching her hand so she uncurled her fingers. "And I think he finds that painful, too. Whatever else she did—Willow gave me a chance to walk away from my bloody history. I guess she did it for you, not for me, but there it is. Angel, though—his ghosts are all still haunting him."

Just then, Buffy heard the front door opening. "That’ll be Tara and Dawn, I guess," she said. "Let’s go see what they’ve found out."

Dawn and Tara each had a stack of books in their arms. The number of Post-It notes sticking out of each one was a testament to how intensely they’d been working that afternoon.

"So how about a quick summary?" Buffy suggested, eyeing the piles.

"Can we get everyone together first?" Dawn asked. "Also, some food? I’m starving."

Xander and Anya arrived just before the pizza. Tara fetched Willow from upstairs, and Wesley fetched Angel from the basement. Everyone gathered around the dining room table, where Dawn was trying to keep the library books separate from the pizza slices.

"Okay, what have we got?" Buffy asked.

"Nothing new from Drusilla," Angel said, lowering the mug he’d been drinking from. "She spent half the day sleeping and half the day talking about how she’d like to knit herself new stockings out of all our intestines."

Buffy shuddered. "Well that gives me warm fuzzies. Why does your drink smell like raw steak, by the way?"

"Pig’s blood." Angel tipped the mug towards her so she could see the dark liquid inside. "Wesley got it for me while you were napping."

Spike, at the other end of the table, blanched and put down his bean-sprout and tofu sandwich.

"Better than having a hungry vampire at the table!" Anya pointed out.

"True that," Xander said. "Is anybody else having the cheesy bread?"

"Focus, everyone," Buffy said. "We’ve got a pissed-off ancient Egyptian god to outwit. What’ve we got from Team Research?"

"Okay," Dawn said, talking around a mouthful of pizza. "So here’s the deal. Osiris is the Lord of the Dead but he isn’t a bad guy. At least, the ancient Egyptians thought he was a pretty righteous dude."

"One interesting thing about him," Tara said, "is that he was actually murdered by his brother Set, and then brought back to life by his lover, Isis."

"Seriously?" Buffy said. "But then how can he possibly be mad at Willow?"

"Well," Dawn said, "He didn’t get to stay alive. After a little while he had to go back to the Underworld, ‘cause those are the rules. So you can see how he might not feel like making an exception for Willow." From the look Dawn gave Tara, Buffy guessed that Tara had filled Dawn in on the fact of her own death and resurrection.

"It’s a pretty sad story," Tara added. "During his brief resurrection he got Isis pregnant, but then he never had the chance to know his son."

"That was Horus," Dawn added. "Another important Egyptian god. He’s the guy with the falcon head."

"Falcon," Buffy repeated. Why did that ring a bell?

Drusilla.

Mirrors and hedge mazes. I peek through the little holes the falcon makes and I see the way.

Was Drusilla giving her a hint?

"I want to talk to Drusilla," she said.

"Not without me," Angel said.

"Or me," Willow added.

"Actually, I think I’m gonna need Anya," Buffy said.

"Um, no," Xander said. "What the hell does she have to do with any of this? And also, again I say no."

"I can speak for myself honey," Anya said. "But I don’t see why I should go into the basement with the crazy vampire."

"She’s one of the ones Osiris wants," Buffy said. "Along with Spike, Tara, and Miss Calendar. Willow took all of them away from Osiris, and he wants them back."

Xander looked confused and angry. He laid a protective hand on Anya's shoulder. "I thought he wanted you back."

"No, we were wrong about that one," Buffy said. "But I think I can convince him not to take anybody at all."

Suddenly there was sound like a muffled explosion from the basement. The windows rattled.

"Uh oh," Willow said. "I think maybe Osiris has been listening in."

Buffy grabbed Willow’s hand. "Let’s go. Anya?"

She stood up. "If there’s a god after me, sweetie, we’d better do something about it," she said to Xander.

Buffy was already moving. She didn’t look back, but she sensed that everyone was following her.

In the basement, Dru was standing up. Her chains were gone and a turbulent cloud of smoke hovered over her head.

There was a face in the smoke.

"It is time, witch," said Drusilla and the face, speaking together. "Undo the spell and I will leave you in peace." The cloud’s voice was deep and seemed to echo from all directions at once.

"No way," Willow said. She sounded defiant but also a little scared.

Buffy glanced back at her. "Leave this to me, okay?" she whispered. Then she stepped towards Drusilla. "Osiris," she said, addressing the cloud. "I’ve come to, um, humbly beg you to reconsider."

Osiris glared down at her from the cloud. Drusilla’s lips twisted, echoing the expression. "The laws of life and death must be respected," said the god and the vampire together. "Four have been stolen from my domain; they must be returned."

"Yes," said Buffy, heart pounding. "We all know how important rules are. But if Willow undoes her spell now, she won’t extinguish four lives—she’ll extinguish five." She pointed at Anya. "She’s pregnant. It’s like Isis and Horus, right? How would you have felt if your god buddies had said that you had to retroactively make Horus stop existing just because he was never actually supposed to exist in the first place?"

The face in the clouds turned to Anya. "Is this true?" it asked her in its terrifying doubled voice.

"Yes," Anya said, standing her ground and putting a hand over her belly. "I have a bun in my oven. We’re really excited about it and we’ve already started buying baby clothes. The thought of you making Willow change the past so that I’m dead and the baby will never exist at all makes me very sad. Please don’t do that."

Osiris’s cloud went into overdrive. Tendrils shot out in all directions, only to pull back again a second later. The cloud expanded, roiling. Osiris and Drusilla opened their mouths wide and roared.

"Eeep," Anya said, falling back a step.

"Well?" Buffy said to the cloud.

The cloud contracted suddenly to its original size. Osiris and Drusilla turned towards Willow. "I will renounce my claim on the four for the sake of the fifth," they said together. "On one condition."

"Name it," Buffy said, keeping her poker face with a great effort. Had she actually just managed to out-negotiate a god?

"The witch must surrender her power. She will offer it to me and I will burn it from her. No more will she interfere with the just and natural order of life and death."

"Okay," Buffy said, but at the same moment Willow said "Wait! Let me think about this for a second!"

Buffy turned to Willow. "Uh, Will?" she said under her breath. "Isn’t this kind of a no-brainer?"

Willow shot a desperate glance at Tara. "There’s got to be another way," she said. "Without my power I won’t be able to protect any of you anymore."

"Maybe that would be for the best," Anya said. "Considering how you mostly seem to protect us by messing around with us and lying to us."

"If it weren’t for me you’d be a demon," Willow said angrily.

"Huh?" Anya said. "A demon? I thought I was supposed to be dead."

"Willow," Tara said, reaching for Willow’s hand, "We’ll all protect each other. Like we did yesterday. Not like this summer when I felt you slipping away from me every day. Please, love, take Osiris’s deal."

Willow held Tara’s gaze for a long moment. Her lip trembled, and it looked like she was fighting back tears. "Without my magic I couldn't have saved you," she whispered.

"I grow impatient, witch," said Osiris/Drusilla. And then suddenly Dru was in motion, a blur crossing the room, heading for Dawn. There was a twanging sound and something small bounced off her, clattered to the floor. Buffy was already moving to intercept, but the god-touched vampire was too fast. Dru reached Dawn first.

Dawn shrieked as Dru grabbed her. Dru spun to face the rest of them, one arm around Dawn's shoulders, the other gripping Dawn's head. "Accept my offer, witch," said Dru's voice along with Osiris's, "or my creature will begin to murder your friends."

Buffy flinched, her heart in her mouth. She was still more than arm's reach from Dru. Angel, not very far away on the other side, shifted into his vampire face.

"Buffy, Angel, no," Wesley said quickly. "Dru is under Osiris's protection. My bolt just bounced off her. You'll only get Dawn killed." He had a crossbow in his hands, Buffy saw, and it looked like he'd already re-loaded it.

"Willow!" Buffy shouted. "Take the fucking deal!"

"All right!" Willow yelled at Osiris, her panicky gaze darting between Drusilla and Buffy. "I accept! I accept!" She was still holding Tara's hand with a white-knuckled grip.

Drusilla let go of Dawn as abruptly as she'd grabbed her, and stalked over to Willow. "Good," she said in her doubled voice.

Buffy rushed to Dawn and wrapped her arms around her.

"I'm fine," Dawn squeaked, but she sagged against Buffy like her knees had just given out.

Dru, meanwhile, had reached up with both hands to cup Willow's face. Nobody moved to interfere. Willow stood ramrod straight, her face gone very pale. Tara had backed off a couple of steps, and she looked terrified.

The clouds with Osiris's face in them roiled and bubbled across the basement until they were directly over Willow—and then, suddenly, Dru did something with her hands and Willow's mouth opened wide and the clouds flew in.

Willow began to shake. It made Buffy think of Spike's seizures, but Willow didn't fall—maybe because Dru was holding her up. Willow's eyes clouded over and then went jet-black. Willow screamed. Tara darted forward, crying Willow's name, but she seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier a few inches from Willow. Willow's scream went on and on.

And then it stopped.

The clouds whirled back out of her mouth, forming a heaving gray mass once again over Willow's head. Osiris's face glared down from the cloud. "IT IS DONE," he said, and this time Dru didn't echo the words.

Dru let go of Willow. Willow dropped to the floor like a rag doll. Osiris's face melted into the cloud, which began to spin, faster and faster, a tight miniature tornado, and then it pulled into itself and was gone.

Dru staggered sideways, then caught herself. She looked around at everybody with a mildly puzzled expression. "Were we having a tea party?" she asked.

And then something twanged just to Buffy's left, and a crossbow bolt sprouted from Drusilla's chest.

Dru looked down, surprised. "Oh," she said, and exploded into dust.

Everyone looked at Wesley, with varying degrees of shock. He calmly lowered his crossbow. "It appears that Osiris withdrew his protection at the moment of his departure," he said.

"You ... you wanker," Spike choked out. "You didn't have to ... she wasn't ... we could have..." He fell to his knees with a strangled sob. Buffy would have gone to him, except she didn't want to let go of Dawn.

"Remember what she really was," Angel said. "Wesley did the right thing." His own voice seemed a little unsteady, though, and the look he gave Wesley was not entirely approving.

"Tara," Xander said. His arms were wrapped around Anya. "Is Willow ... okay?"

Tara was kneeling on the floor by Willow. "She's breathing," she said. "Could somebody help me? I think ... maybe we should get her to the hospital?"

"Probably best to let her rest here at home and see how it goes," Wesley suggested. "Hospitals aren't often much help with this sort of thing."

"So, just to be clear," said Anya, "We're safe now, right? Nobody has to go back to the Underworld? We won?"

"Looks like it," Angel confirmed.

"Yay us," Buffy said, faintly.

Epilogue

Willow woke up the next morning. She seemed to be all right, physically, but she was very quiet. She mostly lay in bed, staring empty-eyed at the window for days on end.

Spike was the one who suggested putting her on suicide watch.

"I think maybe I know a little bit about what she's going through," he had said, "and it isn't going to be easy."

"Getting your magic burned out isn't exactly like quitting heroin," Buffy had said.

"Well," Spike had said, "None of us know what it's like, do we? But here's one thing she's got in common with an ex-junkie: now all of a sudden she's going to have to deal with reality on its own terms. That's hard, at first, when you're used to having something else to reach for.

"And here's another thing," he had added, "Now she's going to have to face up to everyone she lied to."

Lies.

There were the lies Willow had been telling them all summer, mostly lies of omission, and that was one thing, but then there was the fact that their entire reality was a lie she'd constructed.

Only this reality wasn't a lie now, it was the new truth. The whole thing was pretty confusing to Buffy, but Angel and Wesley, who both apparently had some experience with this sort of thing, backed up Willow on this point: what you see now is what you get. The original reality had been written over; it was retroactively non-existent, except for Angel and Willow's memories of it.

That and the dreams, and the dreams had stopped right after the confrontation with Osiris. Wesley's guess was that the dreams had been the result of Osiris trying to push the original reality back into them all; now that he'd given up on that, no more dreams.

Buffy missed the dreams.

The dreams were her only first-hand experience of the original reality, and no matter what Willow or Angel said, Buffy was convinced that there was a hierarchy of realities and that the old reality had been more real than this one.

The old reality had been naturally-occurring. This one was Willow-made.

Only ... there was that thing about other reality re-writes. The thing about Dawn. It sort of made Buffy's head hurt, trying to parse it. Apparently the original reality wasn't the original reality, really; originally there had been a reality with no Dawn in it. Even Willow and Angel didn't remember that one, but they remembered discovering its existence.

(Original-Dawn had been pretty upset, apparently, to find out that she was really a glowing green Hell-dimension key. Buffy didn't exactly have to imagine it, because she'd lived through the corresponding event in the current reality, when in going through their mom's papers after her death they had found out that Dawn was adopted.)

Buffy had been learning as much as she possibly could about the other reality—from Angel, before he went back to L.A., and from Willow, when she was willing to talk. Buffy figured that if she was going to have to step into this Vampire Slayer role now, she'd better know as much as she possibly could about how it worked, and how original-Buffy had done it.

All in all, the more Buffy learned about the other reality, the more she was pretty glad she hadn't lived through it.

Not that this reality had been any piece of cake either, and that was interesting when you thought about it—Willow hadn't made life perfect. Buffy's mom was still dead. Buffy was still poor.

But hey, Buffy wasn't dead, thanks to Willow, and neither was Tara. Spike and Anya were ordinary people, with good days and bad days, and Buffy and Xander loved them.

Unlike Buffy, Xander and Anya seemed to have decided that they didn't want to know any more than they had to about the original timeline. Since the big showdown they'd been mostly keeping to themselves. Buffy knew more about their past than they did, now—Willow had explained the whole vengeance demon thing to her, and about how in the original timeline Xander had left Anya at the altar. Buffy figured maybe eventually Xander and Anya would want to know that stuff, when it seemed more distant. Or maybe not. Their call.

Dawn was fascinated by the stories of the original timeline, but she seemed to almost see them as interesting fiction—a "what if?" alternate version of her own history. She thought the whole glowy-green-key thing was hilarious. She speculated about whether the made-from-Buffy's-blood thing meant that they were biological sisters after all. She loved the story about the Mayor turning into a giant snake and Buffy and her friends blowing up Sunnydale High. "I knew that gas leak story was fishy!" she claimed.

Tara ... Buffy wasn't really sure what Tara thought. Tara had been almost as quiet as Willow, ever since the confrontation with Osiris. When she emerged from Willow's room, she often had puffy eyes as though she'd been crying. Buffy knew that Tara and Willow were talking to each other, at least, because she heard their murmuring voices through the door sometimes—but more often than Buffy would have expected, Tara came out and asked someone else to sit with Willow. Then Tara would leave the house, or if it was after dark, she'd sit in the living room and read one of her women's studies books. Buffy got that there was tension, and she figured she had better give them space.

And then there was Spike. Buffy had worried about Spike at first. Spike had been the one to suggest that they should all watch over Willow; Buffy, in turn, had quietly asked everyone else to keep an eye on Spike.

Spike was a recovering heroin addict who'd been clean for two and a half years, but who depended on high-powered prescription painkillers to cope with his headaches. He walked a knife's edge on a regular basis. And sure, this was apparently all Willow's construction—but it was real, too, the only reality that counted now. And now he'd found out that his whole life was a lie, that he was a century-old monster, a literally bloodthirsty killer. Or at least that he had been, until Willow had re-made him into Buffy's perfect boyfriend.

Before Angel left, Spike had spent hours and hours with him, privately talking through their history together and what Angel knew of the rest of Spike's un-life. At one point Buffy had tried to intervene, quietly begging Angel to go easy on Spike and maybe spare him the goriest of the details, but Angel had pointed out that sparing everyone the details had been Willow's plan, and that that hadn't gone very well at all.

"Why do you want to know about all that awful stuff?" Buffy had asked Spike afterwards, lying in bed at night. "It doesn't matter anymore. It never happened. This you never did those things."

"It does matter," Spike disagreed, splaying his fingers gently across her bare belly. "It matters because who I am now is a reaction to all of that. My horror of violence, my veganism, even the way I come over all woozy at the sight of blood."

"Willow was making you as different as possible from what you had been."

He shook his head. "Not exactly. That's not the way she explained it to me. She said she sort of ... took away the demon that had been part of me, and then my human personality had to fall into place of its own accord. And, well, later on I wouldn't remember being a vampire, but at that moment when the spell happened, she and I had to sort of work together to build my new past. Make it all fit. Same thing as happened for each of the rest of you, according to her, only it was harder with me because there were so many changes. So, this me I am now—I chose it for myself.

"And another thing. Angel's told you a thing or two about souls by now, yeah? Well, here's something I haven't told him—Willow says that when she reached out to me with the spell, I already had one."

"Huh?" Buffy propped her head up on her arm, the better to look at him. "That doesn't make sense—Willow told me you were still evil, even when we were dating, it's just that you had a chip in your head that stopped you from biting people."

"Yeah, she told me about that too," Spike said. "And she's sure that I didn't have a soul the last time she saw me, pre-spell. But when she grabbed me with her spell, there it was."

"How's that possible?" Buffy asked.

"Dunno. Willow doesn't know, and Angel certainly doesn't, so I guess that'll be one unsolved mystery. But, well, Willow did see into my mind a little, like, when she did the spell. So what she could tell me was that the soul was no accident. I'd somehow come around to realizing the horror of the monster that I was. And so I'd gone out and got a soul." He gazed up at her, gave her a tentative little smile. "And she thinks I did it for you."

"Spike," Buffy whispered. Her eyes prickled with tears, which she covered up by kissing him.

After a few intense seconds, Spike pulled away enough to give her a serious look with a smile on its edge, and said, "What are you thinking now, Vampire Slayer?"

"I'm thinking," Buffy said, "that this life is a gift. And we might as well enjoy it." She kissed him again.

And then they made love, sweetly and gently. Afterwards, drifting off to sleep with Spike's warm arms tucked around her, Buffy thanked Willow, in her thoughts.

Maybe what Willow had done hadn't been right. But this was Buffy's life now, and she wouldn't want it to be any different.

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Fandom of one?

shadowscast — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 03:19:24 GMT

Today, gloriously, I had much of an afternoon and evening free, and I decided to spend it writing fic.

I wrote 2700 words of a Once A Thief fic. (Mac/Vic/Li Ann threesome, if you're wondering. Shaping up to be long and plotty and angsty, in the way my fics tend to.)

It was very satisfying. Once A Thief was my first fandom, the one I imprinted on. (See this post for details.) As a fandom, though, it is utterly, totally dead. Rigor mortis set in many years ago. So, supposing I finish this fic, it's not entirely clear that anyone but me will want to read it.

The way I'm feeling now, though, is that I'll finish it anyway. (We'll see how it goes, as my time and energy wax and wane!)

Hm. I guess I'm just posting to say: I think I have now clearly established that I write for an audience of me. When there turn out to be other people who want to read my work too, that's a super extra ice cream bonus!

PS: If by some weird chance anybody sees this post who would be interested in the story, do let me know! It would be encouraging.

PPS: People following my story Gently Down the Stream, do not fear. The last chapters are complete, and will be posted on schedule next Friday.

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Fic update: Gently Down the Stream (chapter 4 of 6)

shadowscast — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 22:11:51 GMT

You know, all day I've been feeling excited in anticipation of posting this chapter. I love having fic to share again!

By the way, I'll be posting chapters 5 and 6 together next week, since chapter 6 is actually just a short-ish epilogue.

So ... that scream? Yep, that was Willow.

Title: Gently Down the Stream
Length: about 25,000 words total; this chapter is about 5700 words.
Pairing: Spike/Buffy along with other canonical pairings, but this isn't really a shippy story.
Warnings: Canon-typical violence; almost no sex.
Cross-posting: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal and AO3; read wherever you're most comfortable.

Chapter 4

The scream came from a cave practically right in front of them; they could easily have missed it in the dark. Buffy started to run in, but Angel caught her shoulder.

"Let me go first," he whispered. "Better night vision."

"I brought a torch," Wesley said.

"How about a pitchfork?" Buffy suggested. "Mob of angry peasants might come in handy, too."

Wesley gave her a puzzled look and held up a flashlight.

"Don't turn it on yet," Angel said. "It'll give us away."

So Buffy followed a little behind Angel, with Wesley right on her heels. The cave started out as a narrow, twisty passageway heading deeper into the rock. It smelled dry and earthy. It wasn't completely dark; as they went deeper in and turned a corner, the last remnants of moonlight from outside were replaced by a faint flickering light coming from farther in.

There was another scream, very close now. They started running.

They burst around another corner and found themselves in a large rock chamber, lit by a series of oil lamps placed around the perimeter. In the middle of the room: Willow, naked, lashed to an old wooden door. The door was propped up at a steep angle against a large rock, so Willow was half upright. She was looking directly towards them but her eyes were vacant. Nails had been driven through her hands into the wood of the door. Buffy felt a whimper rising involuntarily in her own throat.

And at Willow's side: Drusilla.

Dru was dressed in the same long black-and-purple dress she'd worn on the visit to Buffy's house three nights previously. There were stains on the lace that might be dirt but were probably blood. She'd been leaning over Willow but now she stood up straight. "Angel," she crooned. "Have you come to see my new dolly?"

"Step away from the girl," Angel said in a growly tone, holding his sword in front of him and advancing slowly. Buffy tightened her own grip on her borrowed axe. Behind her, she could hear Wesley easing sideways around the edge of the chamber.

Dru cocked her head. "Shan't be doing that. Osiris would be furious with me if I let her go now."

"If you don't step aside, Dru, I'm going to have to kill you," Angel said.

Dru gave a little-girl giggle and clapped her hands. "Oh, Daddy! I'd like to see you try!" She dropped out of sight suddenly behind Willow's rock and a split second later was back on her feet with a scythe in her hands. It was long-handled, sharp-looking—total Grim Reaper vibe. She was wearing her vampire face now. She smiled, showing her fangs. "Shall we dance, Daddy?"

"There's three of us and one of you, Dru. You don't stand a chance," Angel said.

"Why exactly is she calling you Daddy?" Buffy asked under her breath.

She never got an answer, because that was when Dru leaped at Angel, swinging her scythe, and the fight was on.

For a crazy chick in a long dress, Dru was fast. Angel barely managed to get out of the way of Dru's first swing. Buffy tried to get around back of her and found herself ducking underneath the vicious blade, narrowly avoiding an unflattering haircut. Wesley, meanwhile, had already dropped to the ground. Buffy spared him a glance but he didn't seem to be hurt. Weirdly, he was scrubbing a spot on the cave floor near Willow with the sleeve of his jacket.

No time to work out what was up with Wesley; Dru was swinging her scythe at Buffy's kneecaps. Buffy jumped—high, much higher than she'd thought she could jump—and while Dru's weapon went whooshing under Buffy's feet, Angel swung his sword at Dru's neck. But Dru dropped under its path, twirling, and it was Angel's turn to jump over the scythe. Buffy hefted her axe and tried to take a swing at Dru's back, but somehow Dru got out of her way and Buffy had to pull back to avoid hitting Angel.

"I've missed you so much, Daddy!" Dru called out in apparent childish glee. "Nobody else knows how to hurt me so deliciously like you do."

"If that's what you want, Dru," Angel grunted, deflecting the handle of her scythe with an awkward clunk of his sword, "just stand still."

"Just so you know, Angel," Buffy called out, trying and failing to find an opening for her axe, "I'm finding your banter very disturbing and I am seriously going to ask you about it later."

And then the cave sort of exploded.

At least—there was a flash, and a boom, and some kind of pressure wave that threw Buffy against the cave wall and made her ears pop. She managed to keep her feet, but she dropped the axe. Blinking away stars, she scanned the cave wildly, looking for Dru.

Instead, she saw Willow. Willow standing ramrod straight in the middle of the cave, eyes strangely shadowed and one bloodied hand raised towards the ceiling —

And there was Dru. Pressed against the ceiling by some invisible force, eyes wide, limbs askew.

"Thanks, Wesley," Willow said. Her voice was hoarse, but strong.

"Willow!" Buffy cried. "You're okay!" She started to run towards her, but her steps faltered as her rattled brain caught up with the latest developments.

It wasn't just that the lighting in the cave was bad. Willow's eyes had gone completely black. And her upraised hand ... she was the one holding Dru on the ceiling. With magic.

"Willow?" Buffy said again, in a smaller voice.

"I'm really sorry, Buffy," Willow said, sounding almost like her normal self. "I wanted to keep you away from all of this."

"Osiris will not be thwarted," Drusilla called down from the cave ceiling. "If you slay me, witch, he will only send another."

Willow scowled, narrowing her creepy black eyes. "Yeah, I get that," she said. "So I'd better not slay you just yet." She looked back at Buffy. "Again—so sorry to drag you into this. I'll explain everything back at the house."

Buffy opened her mouth to answer, but before she could say a word, Willow had vanished into thin air with a faint popping noise, along with Dru.

Which was maybe for the best, because Buffy had no idea what she'd been planning to say.

"What the hell?" Angel said. "Wesley, what did you do?"

"Broke the binding circle," Wesley said, standing up. He looked unsettled. "I had no idea what it was for, but I thought that if Drusilla wanted Miss Rosenberg bound, then it would probably be best to un-bind her." He glanced up at the now-empty ceiling. "I'm not entirely sure I was correct."

Angel gave a grim sort of nod. "New theory: Willow wasn't an innocent victim. Osiris is after her for bringing Buffy back from the dead, and she's changed reality to cover her tracks."

"Wait, what?!" Buffy said.

She seemed to be saying that a lot tonight.

"Hold on," Wesley said, sounding about as incredulous as Buffy felt. "Willow raised Buffy from the dead? And you knew about this? And you didn't see fit to mention it?"

Angel waved a hand vaguely. "It happened nearly a year ago. It didn't seem relevant."

"But I haven't been dead," Buffy said. "I mean, I almost died ... oh. Shit. The minivan that hit me. Waking up from the coma ... I didn't wake up, did I? In the real reality, I was supposed to have ... died." A fragment of a nightmare: a coffin, dirt, and suffocating darkness. Buffy shivered.

"You weren't hit by a fucking minivan," Angel growled. "You died saving the world."

"Okay," Buffy said faintly. "Let's say for a minute I believe you about that. What do you think Willow's done, exactly?"

"She resurrected you," Angel said. "They all helped, all your friends, but Willow was the one with the magic. She shouldn't have done it. It was dark magic. There were consequences. But I understand why she did it."

"And Osiris is offended by this assault upon his dominion," Wesley said slowly, nodding. "He cannot act directly, of course, so he sends his creature Drusilla—her madness making her particularly receptive to the messages of a god."

"That explains why Dru didn't kill Willow," Angel said. "Osiris wants Willow to un-do the spell."

Angel and Wesley both looked at Buffy.

"You mean Osiris wants me dead," Buffy concluded. "Um, wants me dead again. Re-dead. Can I just say, yikes?"

"But this doesn't explain the altered reality," Wesley objected. "Why would Willow want to hide the fact of Buffy's resurrection from everyone but Osiris? Surely she would have realized that a god would see beyond any such alteration.

Angel sort of humphed. "So you finally believe me that reality's been messed with?"

Wesley nodded. "In light of these new developments—yes. I remember Willow Rosenberg as a quiet, academically gifted student who often came to the library to supplement her reading for her classes, but never glanced in the direction of Rupert's special collection. You remember her as a witch powerful enough to raise the dead. It's clear now which version of history must be accurate." He frowned. "But in that case, how did you alone escape the reality-altering effects?"

"Magic-proof lead-lined box," Angel said. "Bottom of the ocean."

"Hey guys?" Buffy said. "I think we should talk to Willow. She did say she'd meet us back at my house."

"I'm not sure we can trust her right now," Angel said. "If she really is the one who changed reality, then she's been deceiving you all summer."

"She's my best friend," Buffy said firmly. "And she's been kidnapped and tortured by a vampire, probably to save my life. I want to see her. Now."

They didn't go straight back to Revello Drive; they went to Anya and Xander's place first. Angel and Wesley weren't happy about the detour, but Buffy insisted. Now that they'd found Willow, there was no way Tara would forgive them for leaving her out of the loop.

A haggard-looking Xander opened the door for them. All of the lights were on, and the apartment smelled strongly of coffee. The rest of the crew minus Spike was huddled together on the sofa.

"What's happening?" Tara asked fearfully, disentangling herself from Dawn's embrace. "Have you found out anything?"

"We found Willow," Buffy said. "She's okay," she added quickly and maybe not entirely truthfully, wanting to quell the panic she saw in Tara's expression. "Dru had her, but she ... she's safe now. She's waiting for us back at the house."

Dawn let out a squeal of joy and grabbed Tara for a bear hug. Tara submitted to the hug, not taking her eyes off Buffy. She looked relieved, drained, but also still wary. Unlike Dawn, Tara clearly sensed that there was more to this than Buffy was telling.

"Where's Spike?" Buffy asked. "We need to get back to Revello Drive—well, at least with Tara, for sure."

"Spike's sacked out in the bedroom," Xander said. "He was the only one who could sleep—I guess he was still wiped out from the seizure."

"Probably best to let him rest," Buffy decided. "The rest of you, too. Willow's okay. You'll all be safe here for the night." They'd originally come here to hide from Drusilla, Buffy remembered. And now Drusilla was ... where? What had Willow done with her?

"No way," Dawn said. "Do you have any idea how worried we've all been, hiding here? I want to see Willow."

"We should bring Spike," Angel said. "There are still a hell of a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of them are about him."

Xander shook his head. "What is it with you and Spike?" he asked.

Buffy put a quelling hand on Angel's shoulder. "It can wait until morning," she said in a low voice. "Seriously."

"What can?" Spike asked, wandering into the room looking rumpled. He eyed Buffy, Angel and Wesley. "Didn't find her yet, then?"

"Actually we did," Wesley said in a not very encouraging tone.

"She's waiting for us at home," Buffy said. She looked around the room, and saw a lot of worried faces. Even Dawn was clearly sensing now that something wasn't right. "Okay. Let's all go together. Now."

By the time they'd loaded themselves into three cars and made it back to Revello Drive, it was past four a.m.. The street was utterly quiet. So was the house, but the kitchen light was on.

Willow was sitting on a bar stool at the kitchen island, nursing a mug of steaming tea. She'd put on her pink flannel pajamas, and she'd wrapped bandages around her hands. In the bright light of the kitchen she looked haggard and pale, with tangled hair and a green bruise over one cheekbone. But she smiled when she saw them.

Tara let out a choked cry and ran straight into her arms. "Oh sweetie," she gasped, pressing her face against Willow's shoulder. "I was so scared."

"I'm sorry, love," Willow murmured, stroking Tara's hair. "I'm sorry you went through that. It's all going to be okay now."

Tara lifted her head, sniffling, and gave a nervous laugh. "You're sorry for being kidnapped by a vampire?"

Angel stepped into the room, looking grim. "Where's Drusilla?" he asked.

Willow looked around, taking in the crowd. "Maybe we should talk in the other room," she said in a careful tone.

"They've all got a right to find out what's really going on," Angel said. "Dawn and Anya and Tara were attacked by vampires earlier tonight. Buffy helped slay them. Keeping your friends ignorant isn't keeping them safe."

Willow paled, and looked from Tara to Buffy. "Is that true?" she whispered.

"We're fine," Tara said. "Bruises and scrapes. What's he talking about, Willow? What's really going on?"

Willow, looking unhappy, turned back to Angel. "I chained up Drusilla in the basement. I wasn't sure what else to do with her. It'll definitely hold her—I put a spell on the chains—but obviously I can't just keep her there forever. And I have to figure out what to do about Osiris."

"Hey," Buffy said. "I get the feeling this is gonna be a long story. How about we all go out to the living room where it's comfy?" The kitchen was crowded, and she didn't like the dynamic of them all looming over Willow.

They transferred to the living room. Willow, once off the bar stool, moved gingerly and with obvious pain. Tara exclaimed over her in concern and Buffy rushed to support her from the other side.

"You need to get to a hospital," Tara said.

"No," Willow insisted. "I'm fine. Or ... anyway, I will be. I can heal myself. Don't worry."

"With magic?" Buffy asked, and Tara gave her a sharp look of surprise.

"Yes," Willow said simply.

Tara eyed her lover uncertainly, but didn't ask questions for the moment.

So finally they were all settled in the living room, with Willow propped up by pillows on the couch. Tara perched next to her, protective and anxious, and Dawn curled up on her other side. Angel and Wesley declined to sit, so Buffy kept to her feet as well, but Anya took the armchair and Xander and Spike brought over chairs from the dining room.

"So," Buffy began, wanting to take control of the conversation so that Angel wouldn't, "Is an Egyptian god actually out to get you because you brought me back from the dead?"

Willow's eyes widened. "No," she said. "Well ... not exactly."

"Then you didn't bring me back from the dead?" Buffy glanced at Angel.

"No, I did," Willow said. "But that's not what Osiris is cranky about."

"Buffy died?" Dawn exclaimed. Everybody not previously in the know turned shocked faces towards Buffy.

"Bloody hell," Spike said faintly. "The minivan."

"She wasn't hit by a minivan," Angel said, sounding rather offended on Buffy's behalf. "She died in the act of stopping a hell god from destroying the boundaries between your world and a thousand hell dimensions."

"Reality has been altered," Wesley clarified. "Miss Rosenberg, would you care to explain?"

Willow looked awful. There were tears in her eyes. "Reality was broken," she said. "I tried to fix it."

"What do you mean, sweetie?" Tara asked, her voice quiet and fearful.

"So much pain and suffering." Willow shuddered. "I couldn't stand it. At first I thought the only merciful thing would be to end it—end it all. But then Xander was there, and I couldn't. Couldn't do it. But then I thought—if I could only fix it for them. Buffy, Xander, Giles ... Tara. Just make it right for them, take away their darkness, then maybe I could stand the rest of it." She shuddered, then burst into sobs.

Wesley, sounding more stern and British than ever, spoke up. "To alter reality as you seem to have done would require more power than one human could possibly call upon. Did you force Osiris to help you?"

Willow shook her head, regaining control of her voice. "I had ... borrowed ... power from a few other people. And I channeled it through an old satanic temple up on Kingman's Bluff. Actually I sort of told Osiris to piss off." She gave a wan smile, which nobody returned.

"I don't really get where Osiris comes into this," Angel said. "If it wasn't about bringing Buffy back from the dead—you altered reality so that Buffy didn't have to be the Slayer anymore, is that right? It was a terrible burden and I can see why you'd want to lift it from her, even if you were totally wrong to do it. But why would Osiris care about—" He stopped suddenly. "Jenny Calendar. In this reality, she never died."

"Osiris told me I couldn't bring back someone dead of natural causes," Willow said. "But I found a workaround. With enough power, you can go back and ... rewrite reality. Make it different."

"Will," Xander said quietly, "you know I love you. But right now you're giving me a serious wiggins. What the hell are we talking about here? Did you change our memories?"

"No," Willow said. "You remember everything exactly as it happened. It's Angel and me who remember things differently. We remember a different timeline that isn't real anymore." She looked at Angel. "And I don't know why you remember it."

"Your spell missed me," Angel said. "I was out of the office."

Wesley cleared his throat, exchanging a look with Angel. "One can't simply go around retroactively changing reality to suit one's preferences," he said. "Osiris is not likely to let this one go, nor should he. Miss Rosenberg, whatever changes you've made, you're simply going to have to change them back."

"No," Willow said. "I won't be doing that." Her tone did not invite argument. Buffy remembered Drusilla on the ceiling of the cave, and felt a little afraid.

"Why now?" Angel said. "Jenny Calendar died four years ago."

"You should be thanking me," Willow said, giving Angel a sharp look. "One less ghost."

"I'm not arguing with you," Angel said, though his tone wasn't exactly conciliatory. "I'm just trying to figure out what you did and why you did it. What the hell is Spike doing here?"

"Well, I actually live here, mate," Spike said flippantly, obviously trying to break the tension a bit.

He didn't know, Buffy realized. That whole thing with Angel going on and on about Spike being a vampire—nobody had told Spike yet. And probably he'd have to find out eventually, but right now in a confrontation with Angel was so not the time.

"Does it matter what the changes were?" Buffy asked. "This is our reality now, and it's the only one I know, so I think we'd better just start dealing with it. Apparently I'm supposed to be dead, our old computer science teacher is supposed to be dead—but I gotta say, I like not being dead. So there's a vampire chained up in my basement. What are we going to do about that? There's an Egyptian god trying to hurt my friends. How do we stop him? Let's come up with constructive ideas, people."

Never had she expected to put her management training from the Double Meat Palace to use in a situation like this one. But it seemed to be working. They were all looking at her like she was in charge—even Willow.

Dawn raised her hand. "Research? I mean, everything I know about Ancient Egypt fits on one sheet of poster board, and that's with half the space taken up by a big picture of the pyramids. I got an A on that project, but it was in sixth grade, so ... not so much with the helping now. Maybe if we learned a bit more about Osiris, we'd figure out how to deal with him."

Angel shook his head—apparently in wonderment, not negation. "They're exactly the same," he said to Willow. "You changed their memories, but you didn't change them."

"Duh," Willow said. "Also, if you start to think of getting judge-y about me changing reality, remember that you've never technically met Dawn before."

"Huh?" Dawn said.

"Different reality re-write," Willow said. "Earlier. Not mine."

"Exactly how often does reality get altered?" Anya asked. "Because I have to say, this is rather unnerving."

"That question is inherently unanswerable," Wesley pointed out.

"Right," Buffy said. "Okay, first thing in the morning, Dawn goes to the library to see what they've got on Osiris. Who can help with that?"

"I've got work," Anya said. "So does Xander."

"Me too," Buffy said, "but for this, I'm calling in sick."

"I'll go with Dawn," Tara said.

"We might also gain information by questioning Drusilla," Wesley suggested. "If indeed she is acting as Osiris's agent for the moment..."

"It's hard to get a straight answer out of Dru at the best of times," Angel said. "But it's worth a shot."

Xander caught Buffy's eye. "Do you want me to stick around tomorrow?" he asked. "Don't know what I could do to help, exactly, but..."

Buffy shook her head. "No point in all of us getting in trouble at work. Check in at the end of the day, though, okay?"

"In that case..." Xander stood up, stifling a yawn. "I'm thinking the pregnant lady and I should go get a couple of hours' sleep."

Anya and Xander said their goodbyes quickly, each of them giving Willow a slightly awkward hug before departing.

"The rest of us should get some sleep too," Buffy decided as soon as they were gone. "Angel, Wesley—can you stay a little longer? I think we need you guys."

Angel nodded. "Nothing happening in L.A. that can't wait a day or two."

Wesley said nothing, but didn't disagree.

"I guess, well, one of you can have the couch," Buffy said, her thoughts turning to sleeping arrangements. "Oh—there's a cot in the basement we can bring up. But you'll have to share the living room."

"Actually," Willow interjected, "Drusilla's on the cot."

"Drusilla," Buffy echoed. "Right." Somehow Buffy kept forgetting that there was a mad vampire chained up in her basement.

"Wesley can have the couch," Angel said. "I don't need to sleep. I'd rather go down and keep an eye on Dru."

"I'd like to see her," Spike said.

"No," said Buffy, Angel and Willow simultaneously, in varying tones.

There was an awkward moment. Spike raised an eyebrow. "Well she is my bloody ex-girlfriend," he said. "Or is that part of what's not real?"

"It's real," Willow said. "It was real before and it's real now. It's just the details that changed."

Angel snorted.

"Remember, she's a vampire," Buffy said. "I saw her fight, when we went to rescue Willow. She's pretty dangerous."

"Well she's all chained up now, isn't she?" Spike asked. "So what's the harm?"

Buffy wasn't sure, honestly, but her instincts said to keep Spike away from Dru. Especially until she'd had the chance to gently tell him about his own alternate history. "She messes with your head," she said. "You know she does. I just think you should wait until you're rested before you face her."

Spike eyed Buffy, Willow, and Angel. "You all know something you're not telling me," he said. "I can bloody well tell that much. I'll go to bed like a good boy now, but tomorrow I want some bloody answers."

Buffy snuck back downstairs after seeing Spike and the girls off to bed. It was already starting to get light outside, but Buffy found she still had energy. Maybe vampire slayers needed less sleep than normal people.

This whole superpowers thing was going to take some getting used to.

She noticed, on the way to the basement, that the couch was unoccupied. This didn't surprise her. She wasn't totally clear on the relationship between Angel and Wesley, professional or otherwise, but it was pretty obvious that they had a history of dealing with weird stuff like this together.

The basement stairs were creaky, so her entrance had the effect of stopping whatever conversation had been happening down there. Dru, Angel and Wesley all turned to watch her descent.

Drusilla was sitting on the cot, looking incongruously prim. Thin chains looped around her ankles and wrists, connecting them to the pipes running over her head. The arrangement looked way too flimsy to hold someone of Drusilla's strength, but Buffy remembered that Willow had claimed to have reinforced the chains with magic.

Anyway, Drusilla certainly hadn't escaped yet.

"I wondered when you'd get here," Angel said.

Buffy shrugged, joining Angel and Wesley in a semi-circle at what was obviously just past the limit of Dru's chains. "What have you found out? Um," she added belatedly, "Hi, Dru."

"Drusilla seems to be in the unique position of remembering both timelines," Wesley said.

"Mirrors and hedge mazes," Dru added, tracing a finger through the air. "Everyone is wandering terribly lost, but I peek through the little holes the falcon makes and I see the way." She giggled.

Buffy gave Wesley a skeptical look. "And you're getting something out of that?"

"She's had moments of clarity," Angel said. "She definitely remembers Spike as both a human and a vampire. She knows that Willow changed reality. And she knows that Osiris wants Willow to change it back."

"Four lives," Drusilla said, talking to a point somewhere over Buffy's left shoulder. "Not quite so many souls, but then Osiris was never very fussed about souls. He only wants the dead back."

"Four?" Buffy repeated sharply. She exchanged a look with Angel and Wesley—this was new. "Me, Jenny Calendar—who else was there?"

Drusilla laughed again. "You, the Slayer-who-lived-thrice? Your life was bought and paid for, all the proper forms filled out in triplicate. It's the four of them he wants." She shuddered suddenly. "Beetles," she murmured, brushing at her arms. "He simply will not stop sending me beetles. You must tell the witch to set it all right, or Osiris will be terribly cross." She brushed harder at her arms and then began clawing at herself, crying out.

"Willow herself told us that your own resurrection was not the issue," Wesley murmured, apparently undisturbed by the vampire having a total freak-out in front of him. "But she certainly didn't tell us about four others."

"Spike," Angel said. "He was a vampire—dead. Now he's human—alive."

"Oh." Buffy took a breath. "Right." Not a comfy thought. But right now there wasn't time to get upset about this stuff. "So Spike and Miss Calendar—that only makes two, and by the way what the heck does my old computer science teacher have to do with any of this?"

"In the original timeline," Angel said, "she ... was killed, just as she and Rupert Giles were beginning to explore a romance. Willow was close to her—she never spoke of the incident afterwards, at least not with me, but I suppose it may have haunted her.

"Or," he added, frowning, "Willow might have been thinking that giving Jenny back to Giles would make him less likely to fight for the restoration of reality, if he ever found out."

"Okay," Buffy said, "What does my old high school librarian have to do with any of this?" She remembered his name coming up earlier in the evening, but she couldn't remember why—and it was hard to concentrate while watching Drusilla writhing in pain from the attack of the invisible bugs. "Guys, should we be doing something to help Dru?"

"I doubt we could," Wesley said. "Even before Osiris's intervention, she was quite mad."

"Osiris will leave her alone when we get this sorted out," Angel said. "Dru, who are the four people Osiris wants back?"

"Daddy," Drusilla moaned, turning her tear-streaked face to him, "Osiris is hurting me." She curled up into a ball and began to sob.

"I don't think we'll get anything else out of her tonight," Angel said.

"Why does she call you Daddy?" Buffy asked quietly.

Angel hesitated, but Buffy stared him down. This was a question she wanted answered.

"I sired her," he said finally. "Made her into a vampire. It was centuries ago, before I had a soul. First I tortured her into madness, then I killed her and turned her."

"Oh," was all Buffy could manage to say.

Angel gave her a grim look. "You asked."

Buffy felt a little shiver go down her back. She kept forgetting—this was not the Angel she thought she knew.

"In the morning," Buffy said, half-unconsciously taking a step backwards away from Angel, "I'll ask Willow. About the four dead people."

Wesley cleared his throat. "Keep in mind," he said, "that you cannot fully trust her."

Buffy glared at him. "She's my best friend."

"She hasn't told us everything," Angel pointed out. "You must realize that. Just ... be careful around her."

"Right," Buffy said. She glanced over at Drusilla's sobbing form. "Well. Good night, then." She turned to walk away.

Angel's voice caught her halfway up the stairs. "Are you sleeping with him?"

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Yes. Obviously. You know how many bedrooms we have."

"You could sleep in Dawn's room," Angel suggested.

"Going to bed now," Buffy said, continuing up the stairs. "With my boyfriend."

"It's a lie," Angel's voice followed her. "Whatever relationship you remember having with him—it isn't real, Willow made it up. He's a vampire, Buffy."

"I'm too tired and cranky to have this conversation, Angel," she said. She left the basement—slamming the door behind her.

She'd hoped to crawl into bed without waking Spike up, but it turned out he hadn't been sleeping.

"How's Dru?" he asked, rolling over.

"Pretty bad," Buffy said, snuggling up next to him. "She thought she had bugs crawling all over her when I left. Also, she's a vampire."

Spike stroked Buffy's hair. "Think I'm gonna have to see her for myself before that one really sinks in," he said.

"You missed most of the action tonight," Buffy acknowledged. "Are you having trouble believing this stuff?"

Spike put a hand to the bandage on his neck. "Honestly, no. Feels more like the penny dropping."

"I know," Buffy said. "Me too."

"Those dreams we've been having all summer..." he said.

"Yeah." She kissed him gently, and knew it was time to tell him. "There's something Angel told me. About you. In the other reality."

She felt Spike tense. "Yeah?" he said.

"So you know that Angel is a vampire. And Drusilla is a vampire. ..." She couldn't quite bring herself to say it.

"Me," he finished. "I'm a vampire."

She only had to nod.

Spike sat up, put his head his knees. "Fuck," he said.

Buffy sat up too, and put a hand on his back. "You're sort of not entirely completely surprised," she observed.

"Angel barely stopped himself from saying it about three times tonight," Spike pointed out. "I could tell something was up. And, well ... the dreams."

"Yeah," Buffy agreed. "The dreams." She understood now that she'd been dreaming of being the Vampire Slayer.

Spike had been dreaming of being a vampire.

"So I suppose I've killed people, then," he said.

"Maybe," Buffy said. "I mean—I'm not sure I really get it. Willow said that this reality is the real one now. Whatever happened before ... didn't happen."

"Only we all keep dreaming about what we're supposed to be," Spike reminded her. "Bloody hell, I have no idea who I am."

"I know who you are," Buffy said firmly. "And I love you."

"We're not supposed to be together," Spike said. "Angel made that perfectly sodding clear."

"Oh come on, even in this reality he didn't know we were dating," Buffy pointed out. "If he'd been all synced up with our reality, he probably still would've wigged when he saw you here. Well, I mean, he wouldn't have bit you. But otherwise—yeah, it probably would've gone about the same."

Spike let out a quick snort of laughter. "Too bloody true," he said. He lifted his head, meeting Buffy's eye with a rueful look. "Can't blame the bloke, really. Vampire or junkie—either way I'm no bloody good for you."

"Former vampire, ex-junkie," Buffy said firmly. "Don't start that again. I mean it, Spike. Your past doesn't define you. I love who you are, my sexy vegan radical pacifist musician boyfriend."

Spike managed a quick smile at her description, though Buffy could tell that the vampire thing was still upsetting him. "Anyway, look at you," he said. "A superhero. Somehow I'm not exactly shocked."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, there was something about the snappy way I flipped burgers..."

Spike shook his head. "There's something about you," he said. "The way everyone looks to you in a crisis. The way you hold us all together."

Buffy shrugged it off, and shut him up with a kiss. "If I'm going to hold it together today," she said, "I'd better get a little sleep."

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Fic update: Gently Down the Stream (chapter 3 of 6)

shadowscast — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 22:14:28 GMT

Time for the next chapter! Yay!

A collective thanks, by the way, to all of the readers who have taken the time to comment on the individual chapter updates so far; you make this extra fun for me. :-)

In this chapter, Wesley arrives, Angel's sanity is questioned (again), and the search for Willow gets serious.

Title: Gently Down the Stream
Length: about 25,000 words total; this chapter is about 4300 words.
Pairing: Spike/Buffy along with other canonical pairings, but this isn't really a shippy story.
Warnings: Canon-typical violence; almost no sex.
Cross-posting: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal and AO3; read wherever you're most comfortable.

Chapter 3

Anya drove Buffy, Dawn, Tara and Spike in the Chrysler Sebring, while Xander bravely volunteered to ride with Angel in the convertible. They all arrived at Anya and Xander's building without incident and hauled their bags up the stairs.

Angel stopped at the door of the apartment, pressing his hand against the air as though it were solid. "You have to invite me in," he said.

"Uh, come in?" said Xander, who hadn't been around for the vampires/invitations discussion.

"I'm not so sure you should've done that, sweetie," Anya said quietly as Angel walked through the door.

Angel looked annoyed. "I'm here to help you."

"You bit Spike," Dawn reminded him.

"Okay, it's about time everybody let that one go. It was just a tiny bite, and I had a really good reason."

"And that reason was...?" Spike prompted.

Angel opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked at Buffy. "Well, it seemed like a good reason at the time," he said finally.

Buffy wasn't quite sure why Angel had decided not to tell Spike that he thought he was a vampire, but on the whole she was grateful.

"So, your friend Wesley," Tara said, dropping her duffle next to the couch. "He can help us find Willow?"

"He's not exactly my friend," Angel said. "But yes, I think he can."

While they waited for Wesley, Xander made coffee. They all sat around the table, and Angel finally asked some detective-type questions—when exactly had they last seen Willow, what had she been doing lately, that kind of thing. Tara kept a white-knuckled grip on her coffee mug and answered the questions as fully as she could.

Willow had been acting oddly all summer. They all agreed on that. "I think I remember when it started," Tara said. "There was one day in May. Willow woke me up just after dawn—she was already dressed, and she'd obviously come in from outside. She was dirty, and bruised. She kissed me and then wrapped her arms around me and started sobbing. She wouldn't explain why. She just told me she'd had a hard night. I was so worried about what had happened to her, but she refused to talk about it and she told me not to tell anyone." Tara gave an apologetic shrug. "So I didn't. I really hoped she would tell me what happened, eventually. But that was the start of it—after that she never slept well, and she started going out at night." She paused. "I think that's when I started having the nightmares, too."

"Nightmares?" Angel said.

"Oh," said Anya. "We've all been having terrifying, violent nightmares. Do you think that might have anything to do with the fact that Sunnydale is filled with vampires and demons and apparently we all used to know about this but somebody made us forget it?"

"Well," said Angel. "Um, yes. That seems likely. Did you all start having nightmares last May?"

Around the table, everybody nodded, some more confidently than others. "That sounds about right," Xander said. "It's not like I marked it down in my day planner."

"I did," Anya said. To Buffy's amazement, she pulled it out of her purse and flipped through the pages. "There. May 22nd. Dreamed I turned a Viking into a troll, eviscerated several villagers, and then was attacked by rabbits." She looked up. "That's a recurring one, actually."

"May 22nd," Tara said. "That's the day it happened—the day Willow started acting so strangely."

Buffy felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. "That was the day Spike had his first seizure."

"Something must have happened on that day," Angel said. "Do you remember anything else?"

Spike shook his head. "It was a perfectly ordinary day. I had a gig planned at the Bronze—had to cancel it on account of the seizure."

"I had a French test," Dawn volunteered. "I got an A."

"I ... don't think that's important," Angel said.

"Well you asked what else we remembered." Dawn frowned at him.

"You're right," said Angel. "Sorry. But—nothing else that struck you as weird?"

They all shook their heads.

After that, he asked them to tell him more about their dreams. There was a lot to tell.

As Spike, with obvious reluctance, took his turn telling Angel about his nightmares—about the hunting, the crunch of bone under his fists and the taste of blood in his mouth—Buffy sat quietly and remembered Angel's wild claim that Spike, somehow, was a monster.

Finally there was a knock at the door, and Xander let Wesley in. Wesley was a rough-looking guy in maybe his early thirties, unshaven and wearing a beat-up leather coat. He had a British accent, and he gave them all a very suspicious look as he stepped across the threshold. He looked vaguely familiar, actually—and after thinking about it for a second, Buffy realized he'd been the assistant librarian at Sunnydale High in her senior year. He'd looked pretty different then. She hadn't remembered his name.

"All right," he said, "I'm here. What seems to be the problem, then?"

"Like I said on the phone, Willow's missing," Angel said. "It's possible Drusilla has her. And Osiris may be involved in some way."

"The Egyptian god of the dead?" Wesley said, sounding faintly incredulous. "Angel, could I speak to you for a moment in the corridor?"

Angel stood up and followed Wesley out. He didn't shut the door behind himself, and Buffy could faintly hear Wesley say, "Angel, what exactly have you told them?"

"They don't remember anything about vampires," Angel said. "Spike—did you recognize him, sitting there? He doesn't remember anything about vampires."

"What are you talking about?" Wesley said. "You never wanted Buffy to know about vampires, you were always most emphatic about that—"

"What?" Angel said.

"Have you told her?" Wesley said. "I can't believe it."

"I—of course I told her. What do you mean, I never wanted her to know about vampires? She's the fucking Vampire Slayer."

"Don't be ridiculous," Wesley said. "Faith is the Slayer."

"I can hear you," Buffy called out.

Wesley peeked back in, looking appalled. Angel stepped around him, back into the apartment. "Wesley," he said, a strange note in his voice, "what do you remember about Buffy?"

"She was very important to you," Wesley said, in a careful tone that probably meant he was holding back a lot more than he was saying. "I believe you may still have ... feelings for her."

"But nothing about her being the Slayer?" Angel prompted.

Wesley looked confused. "Of course not."

"Fuck," Angel said. "The range of the memory spell was much wider than I thought."

"What memory spell?" Wesley asked.

"The spell that's made you all forget that Buffy's spent the last six years fighting vampires and demons and preventing apocalypses." Angel leaned heavily against a wall, scowling. "Now what?"

"Er, Angel," Wesley said, almost delicately. "Have you considered an alternate hypothesis? You've undergone some rather severe stress lately, and ... well, it just seems that since all of us remember things one way, and you remember things another way, perhaps you should consider that it's your memory that's wrong."

Angel blinked. "What?"

"Think about it," Wesley urged him. "If Buffy were the Slayer, she would have a Watcher, for instance."

"She did," Angel said. "Don't tell me you can't even remember Giles."

"Ah," Wesley said, rubbing his chin. "I see how the fantasy fits together. Yes, of course Rupert Giles is a Watcher and he did come to California because he believed a Slayer would be called here—but he was mistaken. He eventually returned to England, as you well know." Wesley frowned. "You do remember working with Giles and myself to defeat the Mayor at the time of his Ascension, don't you?"

Xander raised an eyebrow. "Are you talking about our old high school librarian?"

"Um," Tara said, "Excuse me, Wesley, but—Angel said you could help us find Willow."

"Yes, of course." Wesley looked around at everyone as though really seeing them for the first time—and then back to Tara. "I'm sorry, and you are...?"

"Tara Maclay. Willow's girlfriend." Tara said the last part firmly, standing up and offering Wesley her hand.

Wesley accepted the handshake, looking slightly bemused. "Girlfriend?"

"She means lover," Anya supplied helpfully. "They're lesbians."

"Ah," Wesley said. "Well." He turned to Angel. "Perhaps we should start again from the beginning. What makes you think that Drusilla has Willow?"

"She came by our house three days before Willow disappeared, looking for her," Buffy said, standing up as well. She figured Tara could use the support. "And by the way, I don't know if I'm the Slayer or whatever, but actually I am super-strong and I'm really good at killing vampires."

Wesley looked perturbed. "You ... have slain vampires?"

"One vampire," Buffy amended, figuring honesty was the best policy. "Earlier tonight."

"She is the Slayer," Angel added with a scowl. He seemed pretty annoyed with Wesley. "Ask her to squeeze your hand if you still don't believe me."

To Buffy's surprise, Wesley did hold out his hand. Curiosity and skepticism warred in his eyes.

Buffy squeezed his hand, but carefully, remembering Xander and the lamp. When Wesley gasped, she let go.

"Astounding," Wesley said softly. "But this explains so much. Why Giles' auguries so convincingly placed the Slayer in California ... why there seemed to be no Slayer for more than a year, until we artificially forced the call of Kendra ... only, how could Giles have failed to recognize you?"

"Well, I never actually went into the library at Sunnydale High." Buffy shrugged. "It looked really dusty. And boring."

"I can't believe this," Angel muttered. "I hate memory spells. Wesley, come on, you're supposed to be good at this kind of thing. Can't you see that none of this makes sense? How could I have dated Buffy without her knowing I was a vampire or me knowing she was the Slayer?"

"But ... you did know she was the Slayer, didn't you?" Wesley said slowly, giving Angel a dark look. "Only you didn't want anyone else to find out, least of all her. No wonder you were so insistent that she must never learn of your vampire nature."

"That makes even less sense," Angel said through gritted teeth, "because then why would I tell you now?"

"Only out of desperation—Drusilla has forced your hand."

"Well, what about him?" Angel said, pointing at Spike. "Something mighty funny going on there, wouldn't you say?"

"Oi," Spike said, "Was that meant to be an insult?"

Wesley, meanwhile, only frowned. "I'm not sure I get your implication, Angel. Who is this?"

"Goddammit," Angel said, "Don't tell me you don't remember Spike."

"Ah, Spike," Wesley said. "Yes, you've mentioned him."

"Mentioned him," Angel repeated, with a look like he'd just bit into a lemon. "You don't remember reading about him in, say, the Watchers' Diaries?"

"Well I never wrote about him," Wesley said, sounding a bit prim. "It's true, a pair of vampires, one souled and one unsouled, taking a human for a lover—it is probably unprecedented. But in any case, you haven't been particularly forthcoming on the subject of your and Drusilla's relationship with Spike, and I never felt it was a matter for the Council."

"A human," Angel repeated.

"Lovers?" Buffy said, simultaneously. She looked at Angel, and at Spike, who was meanwhile giving Angel a very strange look. "Okay, honestly, I'd already kinda guessed. But still. Wow."

"What was that about souls?" Anya asked.

"I have a soul," Angel said impatiently. "That's why I'm not killing all of you right now."

"Please could we talk about finding Willow?" Tara said, her voice breaking a little.

"The memory spell might have been cast to cover up her kidnapping," Angel said. "I doubt we can find her without breaking it first. That's why I called you here, Wesley."

"I'm sorry Angel, but I'm still quite convinced that this memory spell is a figment of your own tortured imagination. Of course I'll do everything I can do to help find Willow," Wesley said.

Angel slammed his fist against the wall so hard it left a dent. "I am not the delusional one here. Spike—do you even remember how we met?"

"Well, barely," Spike said. "Was pretty high at the time, wasn't I?"

"High," Angel repeated, sounding dubious.

"I suppose that might explain why I never noticed you and Dru were vampires." Spike frowned. "Still having trouble processing that, to be honest."

"Let's stay focused here," Buffy said. "Wesley, can you help us find Willow?"

Wesley gave a slight shrug. "A locator spell would be the obvious place to start. I don't have the necessary materials with me—but I recall that Sunnydale has a rather good magic shop for a town of its size."

"Right," said Angel. "Good idea. Let's go."

"It's one in the morning," Anya pointed out. "Nothing in Sunnydale is open this late."

"This shop will be," Wesley said, with an air of grim assurance.

"I'm coming too," Buffy said. At this point she didn't want to let Angel out of her sight.

"What about the rest of us?" Dawn asked.

Buffy gave her a hug. "Stay here and try to get some sleep. That way you'll be ready for whatever comes next."

The magic shop was indeed open. Buffy was surprised she'd never noticed it before, nestled between the check-cashing place and a dry-cleaner's. A hand-painted wooden sign over its door read "Clem's Bargain Magic Supplies" and there were actual live bats in a cage in the window display.

A bell over the door tinkled as they entered. The ... guy? ... behind the counter put down his bag of Doritos and gave them a toothy grin. "Hi!" he said. "I'm Clem. Can I help you?" His skin was wrinkled and floppy, like he had about four times as much of it as he actually needed, and his ears were pointy.

Wesley, meanwhile, had stepped up to the counter without so much as flinching. "I need half an ounce of powdered rose quartz, a twist of Hermes' Root, a green rat-tallow candle, and a map of Sunnydale, please."

"Ah," Clem said, reaching under the counter. "Lost something, have you? Me, I have to cast three locator spells a month just to keep track of my socks. Lucky for me I get the materials at cost, eh?" He laughed, showing even more pointy teeth, and set a jar of pink powder up on the counter.

"Angel," Buffy said under her breath, "Is he a vampire?"

Angel shook his head. "Just a demon."

Clem gave Buffy a concerned look. "Listen, sister," he said. "I'm not a vampire, but he is," with a nod at Angel. "Just so you know."

"I know," Buffy said.

Angel stepped up to the counter himself. "Do you have anything for breaking memory spells?" he asked.

"Oh, hm," Clem said, tapping his floppy chin with his talon-like nails. "That's a tough one. I mean, the easiest thing is just to break the focus—but I’m guessing you haven't got the focus?"

"That would be difficult, since there was no memory spell," Wesley said drily. "My colleague here is merely experiencing some disorientation. He recently spent several months starving at the bottom of the ocean in a lead-lined box."

Buffy stared at Angel. "Seriously?"

"Long story," Angel said. "Wesley—if Spike isn't a vampire, then who killed the Chinese Slayer in 1900? Who killed the American Slayer in 1977?"

Wesley frowned. "Drusilla, in both cases. And you were there in China in 1900. Angel, I have to say, these memory gaps of yours are rather concerning."

"Hold it," Buffy said. "Angel, you were alive in nineteen-hundred?"

"Indeed, he was already more than a hundred years old at the time," Wesley said.

"Holy crap," Buffy said. "So when we started dating, I was sixteen and you were over two hundred?"

"Do you folks need a little time to yourselves?" Clem asked. "I have a few things that need sorting in the back..."

"Clem," Angel said, "You must know a little vampire history, in your line of business."

Clem gave a modest shrug. "Well, sure, I do some reading."

"Ever heard of the Scourge of Europe?"

"Of course! In the 19th century, Angelus and his companions cut a bloody swath across the continent—" Suddenly Clem's eyes widened. "Oh. My. Gosh. You're him! Please don't kill me!"

"These companions," Angel insisted, ignoring Clem's groveling. "What were their names?"

"Drusilla and Darla."

"Not William the Bloody?"

Clem shook his head, causing his skin to wobble disturbingly. "Doesn't ring a bell. Of course, those Watchers' Diaries were a bit dry, I may have skimmed..."

"Hold on," Wesley said. "You've read the Watchers' Diaries?"

"Tried to," Clem said. "Like I said, dry as dust. I've got the set from 1850 through 1900 in the back room."

Wesley seemed taken aback. "The Council maintains strict control over access to the Diaries. How could you possibly be in possession of such a copy?"

Clem shrugged. "Demon flea markets. You know how it is."

Angel leaned over the counter. "I want to see it."

"Yes sir, Angelus sir," Clem said, bobbing his head as he backed away like a courtier in some costume drama.

"Angel," Buffy said after Clem had vanished into the back room, "What's this about Angelus and the bloody swath?"

Angel looked uncomfortable suddenly. "I ... well, I used to be evil," he said. "Before the soul."

"Clem seems a bit nervous around you," Buffy observed.

"I might still have something of a reputation."

Clem came back into the front of the store, cutting off that particular conversation. Buffy put the issue aside with a sense of unease. Who was Angel, really? Her ex-boyfriend? A good vampire? An evil vampire? How much of what she thought she knew about him was even real?

"Here you go," Clem said, holding out a big, dusty-looking leather bound book.

Angel snatched it out of Clem's hands and opened up to the last page. He read for a moment, shaking his head and muttering, and then started flipping backwards. After another thirty seconds or so, he slammed it shut. "Unbelievable," he said. "Fucking unbelievable."

"Um," Buffy said. "Could you be a little more specific?"

"He's not in there. Spike. He's not in there." Angel stepped back from the counter, clutching his head in both hands. "This is so much worse than I thought. A memory spell wouldn't affect the Watchers' Diaries. Somebody's changed our entire fucking reality."

"Angel," Wesley said, picking up a little skull (cat? Buffy tentatively guessed). He turned it over in his fingers as he spoke. "Consider the balance of probabilities. On the one hand—an alteration of the entire fabric of reality. On the other hand—a mere confusion in your own mind." He tapped the little skull. "Which would you say is more likely?"

Angel scowled. "Come on Wesley, it's not that hard to alter reality. Any higher power could do it, or a half dozen monks, or a vengeance demon—hey!" He turned to Buffy. "Didn't Anya used to be a vengeance demon?"

"What?!"

Angel palmed his forehead. "You have no idea what I'm talking about."

"A world of not." Buffy glared at him. "Exactly how many of my friends are you going to accuse of being demons?"

"Er, folks?" Clem waggled his talons apologetically. "Do you still want the locator spell components?"

"Yes, absolutely," Wesley said. "And quickly. A young woman may be in mortal peril."

"Oh my gosh!" Clem said. "Why didn't you say so?" He hustled away again to the back room and was back in moments with a dried root, a small candle and a local map. "That'll be $32.73 all together," he said. "Would you like a paper bag?"

"Actually," Wesley said, "I was wondering if you'd be willing to give us a space to perform the spell here. Time really is of the essence."

"Certainly!" Clem said. "There's lots of room in the back. A whole gymnasium, actually. This place used to be a boxing club before it was a magic shop. More space than I know what to do with, but hey, rent in Sunnydale is very low."

The back room did indeed show signs of being a gym, but with all the weird crap piled around the edges you could easily miss seeing the punching bag. Buffy caught movement at the edge of her vision and, turning, saw a stack of cages filled with writhing snakes. It took her a moment to realize what was wrong with them—each one had three heads.

"Don't mind the hydras," Clem said, patting her shoulder, "They're just excited because they think it's feeding time."

The middle of the room was clear, and that's where Wesley was already kneeling, flattening out the map of Sunnydale on the floor.

"Do you think he can really find Willow?" Buffy asked Angel in soft voice.

With all the weird things that had happened to her in the past couple of hours, Buffy had almost forgotten to worry about Willow, but now she felt an awful tightness in her stomach. Monsters were real, and one of them probably had Willow. Willow had been missing for more than twenty-four hours by now. How long could she possibly survive as a prisoner of a vampire?

Buffy took her cue from Angel, kneeling near the map but out of Wesley's way. She wondered how this magic spell was going to work. Clem had gone back to the front of the store—to him, apparently, magic wasn't even worth waiting around for.

Well. Apparently Clem used magic spells to find his missing socks.

Wesley lit the candle. He bit a piece off the root, chewed, swallowed. He muttered some words, paused, muttered some more words.

If Buffy hadn't plunged a stake into a vampire's chest earlier that night and watched the thing poof into dust, she would've been feeling really skeptical right about now.

Wesley tossed some pink dust over the map and then held out his hand to Buffy. "Take my hand and think about Willow," he said.

Buffy obeyed, as best she could. She squeezed her eyes shut and pictured Willow's face. Willow looked tired in Buffy's mind's eye—tired and scared. "Willow," Buffy whispered, feeling her throat tighten. "Oh God, where are you?"

"There," Angel said abruptly.

Buffy opened her eyes. There was a bright pinprick light shining over the map, in the middle of the Sunnydale Woods.

"What's there?" Wesley asked.

Buffy shrugged. "Trees."

"That's where we need to go," Wesley said. "As soon as possible. We'll need weapons."

"I've got some in the trunk of my car," Angel said, standing up. "Let's go."

"What about everyone else?" Buffy asked. "Tara, she'll want to know, and—"

"They'd only be in the way," Angel said.

Buffy nodded, accepting this along with all the other weirdness of the night. I'm the superhero, she remembered. It's up to me to protect them all.

They took Angel's car to the edge of the woods, and then they had to walk.

"This version of reality can't possibly be internally consistent," Angel whispered as they walked, apparently unwilling to let go of his argument with Wesley about whether it was Angel or the rest of the world that was crazy. "If Buffy didn't know she was a Slayer, then who stopped Acathla?"

"You did," Wesley said. "The moment Jenny Calendar re-ensouled you, you let yourself be drawn into it to seal the gap."

"Jenny Calendar?" Angel stopped walking. "Then Angelus didn't kill her?"

"Dear Lord, I hope not," Wesley said. "Last I heard, she and Giles were buying a flat in North London. I doubt Rupert could make the mortgage payments by himself."

"My God," Angel muttered. "The extent of the changes..." He started walking again. "Look, Spike doesn't make sense as a human. How does he think he even met me?"

"Well, Drusilla introduced you," Buffy said.

"And how did that work?" Angel asked. "I really want to hear this."

Buffy shrugged. "The way Spike tells it, it all started with an open mic night at some stupid little club in London. Spike got up and did one of his own songs. The crowd was pretty nasty—a bunch of drunk football fans. I mean, actually soccer, right? But anyway. They totally booed him off the stage, called him names, threw peanuts at him. Spike was only eighteen, and it was his first time performing in public. He took it pretty hard. He went out back, all upset, and Dru was there. She told him she liked his song, and she said she could make him feel better. She had some heroin. She helped him shoot up. He'd never gotten high before. He decided right there—to hell with being good, he wanted to feel good instead."

Buffy glanced back at Angel. Hard to read his expression in the dark woods, but he seemed to be scowling. "That's how he knew you. You were junkies together. And that's why it was always so complicated—when you went clean, Spike and Dru felt betrayed. And when you fell off the wagon while you were dating me, they couldn't wait to drag you back down. He's sorry about that now, by the way."

Angel made a frustrated noise and shook his head. "It's like someone re-wrote the universe, using heroin addiction as a lame stand-in for vampirism."

Buffy glared back at him. "Well, what makes you so sure your version is right? Maybe you're just using vampirism as a lame stand-in for heroin addiction."

"Actually," Wesley interjected, "As I always understood it Angel, you and Drusilla kept Spike doped up on heroin so that he wouldn't notice that you were vampires."

And that was when they heard somebody scream.

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Fic update: Gently Down the Stream (chapter 2 of 6)

shadowscast — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 01:43:10 GMT

Yay, it's Friday night and it's time to post the next chapter!

In this chapter, somebody goes missing, somebody comes to town, and shocking discoveries are made.

Title: Gently Down the Stream
Length: about 25,000 words total; this chapter is about 5000 words.
Pairing: Spike/Buffy along with other canonical pairings, but this isn't really a shippy story.
Warnings: Canon-typical violence; almost no sex.
Cross-posting: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal and AO3; read wherever you're most comfortable.

Chapter 2

Sleep. Dreams, nightmares. Work again. Sleep again. Dream again.

Tara called Buffy at work just as the lunch rush was getting going.

"Buffy, have you seen Willow?" she asked.

"Um, no. Should I have?"

"I mean, this morning? Before work?"

"No. Not since last night at supper. Why?"

"She went out last night and she didn't come home."

Buffy felt a chill go down her back. "You've tried her cell?"

"It's in our bedroom."

"Have you checked with Xander and Anya?"

"I'm calling them next."

Buffy glanced over at the front counter; the line of customers was growing. "I've gotta go, but keep me posted, okay?"

There was still no sign of Willow by the time Buffy got home at seven o'clock. Tara and Spike had looked for her in all of the parks and graveyards where they knew she liked to walk, and Tara had called the hospital and the police station.

"The police were really not reassuring," Tara said, looking pale. "They said something about the incredible number of people who go missing in this town and how they can't be expected to keep track of them all..."

"Oh God," Dawn said. "We have to do something."

"Maybe she'll come back on her own," Anya suggested. "It hasn't even been twenty-four hours."

Tara shook her head. "Willow would not go away without telling me. Something's happened."

Xander cleared his throat. "I really hate to say this. I mean, I really, really hate to say this. But Buffy, isn't one of your ex-boyfriends running a private detective agency in L.A. now?"

Spike literally choked a little. "Oh bloody hell, not that wanker." But then he looked over at Tara, who was curled up in an anxious huddle in a corner of the sofa. "Right," he said with a sigh. "Let's give Angel a ring."

Buffy, honestly, was not full of enthusiasm about calling Angel. Things between the two of them were always so complicated, and he didn't even know yet that she was dating Spike. But for Willow she'd walk through fire, so she went straight across the living room and picked up the phone.

Angel answered on the second ring. "Angel Investigations."

"Hey," Buffy said. "It's me. Cordy's day off?"

"She's away," Angel said. He sounded curt. Which was not unusual in the scheme of recent Angel/Buffy conversations, the last of which had been at least six months ago.

Buffy figured she'd better skip straight to the chase-cutting. "I'm calling because I need your help. Willow's missing, and we're really worried."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Angel asked. "But I haven't heard from her in at least a year."

"I was hoping you could come to Sunnydale and help us look for her. The police are useless and—wait a second. Didn't you talk to her just a few days ago?"

"No." Angel sounded puzzled. "Why would you think that?"

"She said you did. She said you called about Drusilla."

"Drusilla? I haven't seen her in over a year, either."

"Well she was here a few days ago, and she was looking for Willow..." Buffy hadn't put those thoughts together until this moment. It had been three days since Dru came by, after all. But Willow had reacted so strongly when Buffy told her ... and why would Willow have lied about talking to Angel?

"I see why you're worried," Angel said. "If Drusilla's involved—I should be there. I'll come. I can be at your house in about two hours." He hung up.

While they were waiting, Buffy called Willow's parents. They hadn't seen her, and they seemed unconcerned. "She probably just needs some space," Sheila said. "Have you tried the library?"

"Library?" Buffy asked Tara and Spike.

"Checked it this morning," Spike said. "No dice."

"Why do people say that, anyway?" Dawn wondered. "We're looking for Willow, not for dice."

Anya patted her hand. "I don't know. I have noticed that people use many strange expressions. Why do people tell me I have a bun in the oven? It's really a little disturbing. We're not planning to eat the baby."

The doorbell rang a little after nine. "Here we go," Xander muttered, barely audibly, as Buffy went to answer it.

"Hi Angel," she said as she opened the door. "Thanks for coming—"

Angel's eyes were fixed on something over her shoulder. "Spike," he growled.

So fast that Buffy barely registered what was happening, Angel shoved past her and slammed Spike up against the opposite wall. "What the fuck are you doing here?" Angel demanded.

Spike, bug-eyed and terrified, could only gurgle in reply—Angel's forearm was pressed against his neck.

"Angel!" Buffy shouted, running over to them and grabbing Angel's shoulder. "What are you doing?!"

Angel took a step back, and Spike dropped to his knees. "Something's wrong here," Angel said, sounding less certain in his anger than a moment ago.

"Yeah. You just attacked my boyfriend," Buffy said.

"Your—" Angel's expression darkened again. For a split second Buffy was almost convinced he would kick Spike—but in that instant Angel's eyes darted to her. She knew he was seeing her readiness to throw herself in between them. He kept his feet planted, looming over Spike, and growled down at him, "How did you do it?"

"He's gone mental," Spike rasped, clutching at his neck. "Harris—"

To her relief, Buffy saw that Xander was at her side now. She could not believe how badly Angel was taking Spike being here. She wondered if it would've gone better if she'd warned him ahead of time. Or just kept Spike out of sight. Dammit.

"You don't get to come in here and hurt my friends," Xander said, planting himself between Angel and Spike with a restraining hand on Angel's chest.

Angel shook his head. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said dismissively. He shoved Xander aside without apparent effort and glared down at Spike again. "Obviously you got someone to do you up a love spell," he said. "But how did you manage a heartbeat?"

Spike glared right back up at him. "What the fuck are you on about?"

Buffy caught Xander's eye, and tried to wordlessly signal I think Angel's gone actual-for-real insane and we need to get him out of here. She wasn't sure if Xander fully got the subtleties of her message, but he did move so that she and he were flanking Angel.

Angel suddenly moved—inhumanly fast, like when he'd first charged through the door. He grabbed Spike and hauled him up and shoved him against the wall again, and for one bizarre moment Buffy thought Angel was about to kiss Spike (which would've explained a thing or two actually, and she'd always wondered about the two of them and Spike had always evaded her most direct questions...) but then he bit him.

He bit Spike's neck.

There was a crunching sound, and it was at the exact same moment that Buffy heard the noise that she also realized that Angel's face had changed.

She heard screaming and it took her a second to realize that it was her own voice, only not just her own voice because Xander was screaming too. And Dawn was shrieking in the background and Buffy just glimpsed Tara pulling Dawn and Anya out of the room, which was good, get the kid and the pregnant woman away from the— the—

Buffy's mind skittered around and refused to settle on a word, but meanwhile she grabbed a lamp and smashed it as hard as she could across the back of Angel's head.

"Ow," said Angel, sounding aggrieved. Buffy hit him again with the now-broken lamp. "Ow," Angel said again, and tried to grab the lamp. Buffy held on.

Spike was hyperventilating, obviously terrified, struggling uselessly against Angel's now one-armed grip. Angel's other hand was on the lamp, stopping Buffy from swinging it again. He looked at Buffy with his demon-mask face and said, "I was only tasting him."

His face. It was horrible and alien but familiar somehow, too.

Her dreams. She'd been seeing faces like that in her dreams.

"I'm dreaming," she said out loud. "This isn't real."

"Something isn't real," Angel said, lisping slightly around his terrifying new set of teeth. He shook his head, and suddenly his face and teeth were normal again. Buffy could almost believe she'd imagined it, except for the two bleeding puncture wounds at the base of Spike's neck. "But Spike's really human. Which is impossible. What's going on here, Buffy?"

Buffy didn't let go of the lamp. "What are you?" was all she could manage to say.

"You don't know," Angel said slowly. "You really don't know." He looked over at Spike, who was shaking visibly, with tears running down his cheeks. "And you. You stink of fear. You don't know any more than the others, do you?"

"Don't hurt them," Spike begged him, his voice catching. "Do whatever you want to me, just don't hurt them."

"Fuck," Angel said. He let go of Spike and he let go of the lamp. Xander, to his credit, immediately grabbed Spike's arm and yanked him away from Angel. Buffy hefted the lamp and tried to look confident and threatening instead of more freaked out than she'd ever been before in her life.

"Touch him again and I'll kill you," she said.

"I won't touch him," Angel promised. "I'm—I'm sorry. I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion earlier."

"The wrong conclusion?" Buffy repeated incredulously. "You bit Spike's neck! And what happened to your face?"

"You're under some kind of memory spell," Angel said. "All of you. The question is, who did it? And why?" He shook his head. "Too many possibilities. Who wouldn't want to incapacitate the Slayer?"

"Start making sense," Buffy demanded. "Right now."

"I'm a vampire, Sunnydale is on a Hellmouth, you're the Slayer, you're supposed to protect the world from demons, and somebody's made you forget all this," Angel said. "Possibly the same somebody who has Willow right now. She may be in serious danger. By the way, where did Dawn and Anya and that other woman go?"

"That does not qualify as making sense," Buffy said. She hoped Tara and Anya had gotten Dawn the hell out of here.

Angel looked exasperated. "I hate memory spells," he muttered. "Listen, Buffy. You saw my face. How else would you explain it?"

"I'm not sure what I saw," Buffy said.

Angel grimaced—and then his face changed again. Buffy was staring right at him when it happened, and it made her stomach hurt a bit. The bones and cartilage of his face seemed to shift and grow right in front of her eyes. His forehead grew ridges, his eyes turned yellow and vicious, and his teeth lengthened into glistening fangs. "This is what you saw," he said in that same exasperated voice.

"Um, Buffy," Xander interjected, his voice tight. Buffy looked over and saw that Spike was on the floor, shaking uncontrollably.

"What's going on?" Angel asked. How he could sound confused and uncertain, standing there with his monster face and his bizarre assertions, Buffy really didn't get. But at least he seemed to be done attacking Spike.

"He's having a seizure." Buffy spoke sharply; she wasn’t sure of much else, but at least she was sure that she was mad at Angel. "Don't you fucking go near him." She saw that Xander had already moved the end table away from Spike, leaving the area of floor around him clear. Good going, Xander, Buffy thought gratefully. Handle one crisis at a time.

"A seizure," Angel repeated, kind of numbly. Buffy looked at him and saw his face had gone back to normal again.

"Stress is a trigger," she said.

"Um," Angel said. Buffy took some entirely inappropriate satisfaction from the fact that now he looked off balance. "Should we do something?"

"Not until the shaking stops. Except maybe you should leave," she said, making her voice as hard as she could manage.

"I can't leave," Angel said. "You need me far more than I realized. You're all in terrible danger. It might be Drusilla who has Willow, but she couldn't perform a spell like this one—if it is her, she has help. Powerful help."

"And again with the making no sense. What the fuck, Angel?" Buffy felt like she was about to start crying, from confusion and fear and—God, the thing that had happened to his face.

She was about to start crying because a part of her believed him.

Angel looked again at Spike. "This has happened before?" he said.

"Kind of none of your business," Xander said. Buffy could tell he was scared, but he was putting up a good front. She loved him intensely just at that moment.

Buffy looked at Angel. "Let's imagine for a minute I believe anything you've been saying. Do you know where Willow is?"

"No idea," Angel said. "But I'll help you look for her. And you need to go find your sister and friends and bring them back here. I heard the back door open and close more than two minutes ago. If they've gone far, they may be in danger."

"Yeah, well, I kinda think in here is not such a safe place right now," Xander said. "No offense but—it's the teeth, y'know?"

"Buffy, this is important," Angel said. "There are other vampires. Others like me. Only—not like me. I'm the only one who wouldn't hurt you. The others are like animals, they hunt humans for food."

"You bit Spike," Buffy reminded him.

"I tasted his blood. I needed to know something. The other creatures out there—they won't just taste Dawn, they'll drink her dry."

"I'll go," Xander said.

"No," Angel said quickly. "It has to be Buffy."

Buffy shook her head. "No way am I leaving Spike." She glanced over at him; the seizure was still going. Usually they only lasted for a minute or two. It looked like this was going to be a bad one.

"It has to be you," Angel repeated, more forcefully. "You're the Slayer."

"The what?" Buffy said. He'd said that before but it hadn't made any sense.

"You're strong. If there are vampires out there, you can fight them. Xander can't."

"Um," Buffy said, "Feminism yay and all, but Xander weighs like eighty pounds more than me and he's a construction worker."

Angel rolled his eyes—which struck Buffy as a completely inappropriate reaction. "Xander," he said, "Take the lamp away from Buffy."

Xander and Buffy both glanced at the broken table lamp that Buffy was still clutching. "Why?"

"Because Dawn and Anya are in danger and you two apparently aren't going to take my word for anything," Angel said. "Xander, try to take the lamp. Buffy, try to hold on to it."

Xander met Buffy's eye and Buffy shrugged—she couldn't see how this could hurt, and there was really nothing they could do for Spike until the seizure stopped.

Xander took hold of the base of the lamp and tugged gently. Buffy glared at Angel and held on. Xander pulled a little harder. Buffy tightened her grip.

"I really don't see the point of this," she said.

"Xander, really try to take the lamp," Angel said.

"I am really trying," Xander grunted, to Buffy's surprise.

"No you aren't," she said.

"Yes I am." His face was going red, and he'd braced his feet against the floor.

"Now do you believe me?" Angel asked, sounding aggrieved.

Just then, Spike stopped shaking. Buffy let go of the lamp and ran to his side. Xander fell on his butt.

"Sorry," Buffy called back over her shoulder, and took Spike's head on her lap.

He looked up at her with glazed eyes. "Buff— what happened?"

"You had a seizure."

Spike grimaced, closed his eyes. "Neck hurts. I fall on somethin'?"

Buffy realized he'd forgotten about Angel—the last few minutes before a seizure were usually lost to him, at least temporarily. "Yeah," she said, figuring it was better for now if he didn't remember. While Spike wasn't looking, she waved Angel towards the front door. Angel moved, but he beckoned her, too.

She didn't want to leave Spike like this. She really, really didn't. But she remembered Angel's face, and the lamp.

Angel thought Dawn was in danger. At this point Buffy didn't trust Angel as far as she could throw him—but she had yet to figure out exactly how far that was.

"Xander's going to help you upstairs to bed," she said. "I have to go out. I'll be back soon."

Angel was waiting for her out on the sidewalk.

"They went this way," he said, starting north at a brisk walk.

"And you can tell that ... how?" she asked, following him.

"Anya's wearing perfume," he replied. "We're lucky there's no wind. Trail's pretty faint, but I can follow it."

Reflexively, Buffy sniffed the air. Which was ridiculous. She smelled fresh-cut grass and cooling asphalt. "Right," she said.

"Vampires have enhanced senses," Angel said. Buffy guessed he'd noticed her skepticism. "I can hear your heartbeat from here."

Buffy pursed her lips, not sure if she believed him, but she kept pace with him anyway. Whether or not they were getting closer to Dawn, at least Angel was getting farther from Spike.

"So how come you're telling me all this now?" Buffy asked. "And not, oh, say, during the three years when we were dating?"

"I did," he said. "Sort of. I mean, you already knew. You found out you were the Slayer when you were fifteen years old. You knew I was a vampire before we started dating. Somebody's done a memory spell on you and made you forget, is all. Though that doesn't explain Spike..."

"Memory spell," she repeated. "You said that before. I ignored you because you sounded like a crazy person."

"Magic is real," Angel said. "Demons are real. I know this must be a lot to take in all at once, but you're going to have to if you want to survive and save your sister and friends."

Buffy decided the memory spell idea was just going to have to go into the think-about-later pile. "Just so you know," she said, "I'm still not really over the part where you burst into my house and bit Spike."

"I wasn't expecting to see him there," Angel said.

Buffy glared at him. "Right, well that explains it."

"You called him your boyfriend," Angel recalled; he sounded like he was pronouncing an obscenity.

"Okay, I know you guys have a rocky history, and probably I should've warned you that we're dating now. So that was kinda my bad. Still—"

"Since when?" Angel interrupted.

"Since when what?"

"How long do you think you've been dating Spike for?"

Buffy rolled her eyes at the you think. The jury was still out on this memory spell idea of Angel's. In fact the jury was pretty skeptical about the whole vampire thing; for the moment they were just enjoying the free pizza. "Since last winter," she said.

Angel snorted. "That seems unlikely."

"Well, we didn't tell anybody at first," Buffy said. "And also—not really any of your business. Let's return to the topic of how you fucking bit him!"

Angel stopped walking abruptly. He turned to her, snarling. "Yes, I bit him. I should've done more than that. Do you think you're in love with him? You don't even know him. He's a monster."

"Like you?" she hurled back.

"Yes!" His eyes glinted yellow. "Exactly like me."

"Well, he's really not," Buffy pointed out. "I think I would've noticed."

Angel seemed to deflate a little. "Right," he said. "That's the part I can't figure out. Memory spells are one thing, but Spike—I mean, it can't be the Shanshu. Blood of a Maura demon, maybe? Only they're so rare..."

"You're doing that thing again where you don't make any sense," Buffy said.

Angel looked at her. "He tasted like painkillers."

"What?"

"Spike. His blood was tainted with painkillers—strong ones."

Buffy wasn't sure whether she was more grossed out, appalled, or incredulous. "You tasted that."

"Enhanced senses. Have you even been listening?" Angel frowned. "The seizures—how long has he been having them?"

Buffy gave him a suspicious glare. "Why do you want to know?"

"I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Whatever happened to Spike—it might be the key."

"So it's not that you care about what's happening to him, or anything."

"I—" Angel looked angry for a moment, and then ... vaguely guilty. "Well, actually I do," he said. "I mean—you know. It's complicated."

Buffy sighed. At least that much was always the same, with Angel and Spike. "Well, the painkillers are for the headaches. Which he's been getting for years now, but they got a lot worse in May, at the same time the seizures started."

"Do you know what's causing the seizures?"

Buffy shook her head. "We don't have a lot of money. For doctors. He had a CAT scan in June, and they told us there's scarring in his brain. We don't know if that's from the seizures, or if that's what's causing the seizures. We don't know if it's going to get worse. We can't afford most of the drugs they prescribed, and he's supposed to see a doctor like every three weeks but he hasn’t been back since June, and he pretty much refuses to talk about it." Buffy realized that she was in guts-spilling territory here. Maybe not the most appropriate context.

Angel had always had this kind of effect on her.

They heard a scream.

"Dawn," they both said, eyes meeting. And then they took off running.

Buffy hadn't known she could run this fast. She was pretty sure this was an Olympic athlete kind of pace. Angel took the lead, leaping over fences like they were nothing, and she was right behind him.

Dawn screamed again, and they rounded a corner and saw her. A man had grabbed her from behind; she was kicking and punching fiercely, but clearly getting nowhere.

The man's face—he looked like Angel had.

And there was another one. He was trying to grab Anya, but she was fending him off with a tree branch. Tara was on the ground; she looked like she'd just fallen, hard.

"Oh my God," Buffy said.

"God's got nothing to do with it," Angel said, and handed her a short pointy stick. "Through the heart. Let your instincts guide you."

"What instincts?" Buffy said ... and yet, the stick felt familiar in her hand. And really, really good.

Angel was already leaping towards the guy—the vampire—who had Dawn. The vampire had barely looked up when suddenly Angel thrust with his stick and the vampire howled, then ... exploded. Into dust.

Buffy was transfixed for a moment by the sight, but she snapped out of it when Anya yelled "Help me!!!"

The other vampire had managed to bat the tree branch out of the way and grab her by the wrist. Its fangs were plummeting towards her neck—

And then it was exploding into dust too, with Buffy's pointy stick in its back.

"Nicely done," Angel said.

"Gah," said Anya, and fainted.

Anya woke up after just a few seconds. Dawn was unharmed, though considerably freaked. Tara had skinned elbows and knees and possibly a sprained wrist. The three of them eyed Angel leerily as Buffy tried to explain what had happened in the past twenty minutes.

"So anyway, Angel is a good vampire and he promises not to bite anybody else, and we all need to go back home now and figure out what to do next," Buffy finished. She shot an extra glare over at Angel at the good vampire, no bitey part.

She knew how to kill vampires now.

"You'll be safe in Buffy's house," Angel added, starting to walk. "There's a magical barrier that stops vampires from entering unless they're invited."

"What about Willow?" Tara said. She was holding Dawn's hand, and limping a little. "She's been missing since yesterday. If she met some of those things—"

"Vampires," Buffy interjected. "They're vampires."

"I don't think it was some random loser vamp that got Willow," Angel said grimly. "You said yourself that Drusilla had been around, looking for her."

"Drusilla," Buffy repeated with a shudder, remembering the way the moth had crunched when Dru ate it. "How does she fit into all this?"

"She's a vampire too," Angel said. "An incredibly dangerous one."

"I always thought she was just crazy," Dawn said.

"Also that," Angel agreed.

"Wait a second," Buffy said, stopping in her tracks. "After Dru visited us the other day, when I told Willow about it—Willow asked me if I'd invited her in. She was really specific about it. And she kind of flipped when I said yes."

"You invited Drusilla in?" Angel repeated. "Then your house isn't safe. Is there somewhere else you can stay?"

"Well, it'll be a bit crowded, but you could all come stay with me and Xander," Anya offered.

"That wasn't Buffy's point," Tara realized. "Willow—somehow, she knew. About Drusilla. About the invitation thing."

"And there's another thing," Buffy remembered. "Spike and I ran into her on the way home from a gig the other night, and she was carrying..." she held up the pointy stick Angel had given her, "one of these. And she hid it from us, she put it behind her back."

"Whatever took the rest of your memories, it sounds like it didn't affect her," Angel said. "And she ... she's been trying to protect the rest of you. Dammit. She should've called me."

"Is that why Willow's been acting so weird all summer?" Dawn asked.

"Weird how?" Angel asked.

"Tired and cranky, and jumpy," Dawn said.

"She doesn't sleep at night, and sometimes out of nowhere she just hugs me and starts crying," Tara added.

"And how does she treat Spike?" Angel asked.

"That's a weird question," Anya said. "Do you think they're having an affair?"

"He thinks Spike's a vampire," Buffy explained, shooting a dark look at Angel.

"Well, he was," Angel said.

Dawn snorted. "As if. I mean, you know he's vegan, right?"

"So Willow never seemed suspicious of him? Wary around him?"

"No," Buffy said emphatically.

"So she can't be completely immune from the memory spell," Angel mused, doing that talking-to-himself-instead-of-them thing again. "Maybe she was able to partly resist it because she's a witch..."

"A witch?" said Tara.

"Memory spell?" said Dawn.

"Angel says magic is real and he thinks we're all under a memory spell," Buffy explained—not putting a lot of effort into sounding like she believed this part. Just because Angel was right about the vampires didn’t mean he was right about everything else. "He thinks we're supposed to already know about vampires and everything."

"Buffy," Angel said, "You need to tell me everything you remember from when Drusilla came by. Willow's life may depend on it."

By this time, they'd made it back to Buffy's house. "She was right there," Buffy said, pointing to the place on the porch. "Waiting for us, at like one-thirty in the morning. She said..." Buffy thought hard. "She called Willow the red-haired witch. She said she had a message for her, from Osiris."

"Osiris?" Angel repeated. "You're sure?"

"She said Osiris was annoyed. She said Osiris wanted to talk to Willow." Buffy shrugged. "That's all I can remember."

"This is bad," Angel muttered. "Really bad."

"So is Osiris, like, some other vampire?" Dawn asked. "We're not talking about the actual Egyptian god of the dead, right?"

"Too soon to say," Angel said, but Buffy thought he looked evasive.

"Is Osiris real?" she asked him.

"All the gods are real," Angel said. "And most of them are total bastards."

"Huh," Anya said. "I feel like I should be a lot more surprised by this than I actually am."

Angel opened the door. "You should all pack whatever things you want to bring to Anya and Xander's place. And I need to make a phone call."

"To who?" Buffy asked.

"I need backup," Angel said. "Magic's not my forté."

"And whose forté is it?"

Angel grimaced. "Wesley's."

"Who?"

"Wesley Wyndam-Pryce." Angel narrowed his eyes. "You ... don't remember him?"

Buffy shrugged. "Should I?"

"Yes." Angel took the phone off its hook, then hesitated. "You should go pack."

"I can wait." She was feeling a little more trusting of Angel since he'd helped save Dawn, Anya and Tara from the vampires—but only a little.

Angel looked displeased, but he only turned his back to her a little and made the call.

"It's me," he said. "I need your help in Sunnydale. Dru's up to something. ... I know. Look, I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. Willow's missing, and everybody else is under some kind of memory spell ... Willow Rosenberg. ... Yes from Sunnydale High. Well, will you come?" After a moment, Angel turned to Buffy. "Give me Xander and Anya's address." She gave it to him, and he passed it on to Wesley, then hung up. "He'll be here in two, three hours."

Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Sounded like he wasn't too eager to come."

Angel looked uncomfortable. "Wesley and I have some outstanding issues."

"Did you try to bite him?"

"Not exactly."

Buffy wasn't especially reassured, but Angel didn't look like he was in much of a sharing mood, and she really wanted to go upstairs and check on Spike.

Spike was asleep. This wasn't a surprise; he was always exhausted after a seizure. Buffy saw that Xander had bandaged Spike's neck.

She hated to wake him, but she had to take Angel's warning about Drusilla seriously. And if anyone was going to be in danger from Drusilla, it seemed like it would be Spike—Dru had broken up with him, but she'd never gotten over him.

If any of that had even been real. How could Spike and Buffy both have dated vampires, and not known it? Things were not making a lot of sense, tonight.

"Spike." She shook his shoulder, gently, and waited for him to open his eyes.

"Buffy." He started to sit up, and then fell back with a groan. "Bloody hell, my head."

"You had a seizure, do you remember?"

"Bits'n'pieces." He gave her a sudden sharp look. "Angel. Is Angel here?"

"Yes. And I'm sorry to wake you up, but it's been an unbelievably crazy night."

Spike's hand went to his neck. "Did Angel bite me?"

Buffy tried to think of a gentle way to explain everything, and failed. "Yes," she said finally. "It turns out he's a vampire and I'm a superhero and we all have to go hide at Anya and Xander's place so that Drusilla, who is also a vampire, doesn't murder us."

"Ah." Spike squinted up at her. "You are having me on, yeah?"

Buffy shook her head. "Nope."

After a few seconds, Spike seemed to realize she was serious. "Bloody hell," he said again, with feeling.

Buffy shrugged. "You rest while I pack."

Comments at Dreamwidth:

New fic: Gently Down the Stream (chapter 1 of 6)

shadowscast — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 23:19:43 GMT

Guess what? I have new fic to post! Woohoo!

Okay, let me explain more fully: I wrote 90% of this story a couple of years ago, but stalled on the ending. Since I already had That Good Night sitting online as an unfinished WIP, I refrained from posting any of the new story. But in the past fortnight, after finally tying up my Fragments-verse loose ends (more or less), I got inspired to actually finish this other story. And now it is indeed finished, and ready for posting!

Since it's likely that it will be a good long time before I have another story to post after this one, I decided to spread out my fun a bit, by posting a chapter a week. There are actually six chapters and I'll post them over the next five weeks (the sixth chapter is a short-ish epilogue and I'll post it at the same time as chapter five). I'll be posting on the weekends, always sometime between Friday night and Sunday night in my time zone. If you'd rather wait and read the whole thing in one go, just check back here around April 20th.

Comments on the individual chapters are absolutely welcome! (I may or may not manage to answer them in a timely fashion, depending on life.)

This story is technically Spike/Buffy, but it's not particularly shippy. Mainly the plot is the point.

I'm warning for canon-typical violence and basically no sex. (No sex, you have been warned!) If you look at my post to AO3 there are more detailed tags, including a list of dramatis personae, but I won't list them here in case you'd rather be a bit more surprised.

Many, many thanks to the awesome Yourlibrarian, who not only beta-read this story but also helped me hammer out its plot in the first place.

So ... on with the fic!

Title: Gently Down the Stream
Length: about 25,000 words total; this chapter is about 4000 words.
Cross-posting: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal and AO3; read wherever you're most comfortable.

Summary:

Here's Buffy's life in a nutshell: dead mom, dead-beat dad, dead end job, dependent sister. She's pulling double shifts at the Double Meat Palace to make ends meet.

And yet, she's actually pretty happy! She's got supportive friends and a sexy English boyfriend. Her life is full of love, and frankly after that accident last year and the coma, she's grateful just to be alive.

But then one of her friends goes missing, and Buffy's peaceful life in Sunnydale begins to unravel in frightening and truly unexpected ways. Soon she will have to question everything she thinks she knows about her friends, her lover, her world ... and herself.

Chapter 1

It was Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, early evening. The light was golden and the shadows were long. Revello Drive was so quiet that Buffy, on her way home from work, could hear Spike's guitar halfway down the block. She went around back of the house without going inside.

Spike was on the back porch steps, hunched over his battered acoustic guitar, trying one chord after another in no particular order. The sun was touching just the tips of his freshly-bleached hair, making them glow like fire. Buffy noticed that he was wearing the ring she'd given him a week before, the silver one with the Celtic knots. She smiled and cleared her throat.

Spike looked up, blinked, smiled in return. "How long you been there, love?"

Buffy shrugged. "Thirty seconds. So you're feeling okay now?"

Spike gave a quick nod. "Took some meds, had a nap. I'll be fine for tonight."

Buffy leaned over to give him a peck on the lips—no more than that for now, since there was a guitar between them and also she was covered in Double Meat grease. "You'll rock their world," she said.

Spike snorted. "Yeah, and if I'm really bloody lucky, I'll make enough for a cab ride home."

A shower before dinner was more of a necessity than a frill after a day at the Double Meat Palace. First, though, Buffy had to pass through the kitchen, where Tara and Dawn were cooking up a storm.

"That smells awesome, whatever it is," Buffy said. "So, Dawn! First day at Sunnydale High! Dish?"

Dawn grinned and gave her a garlic-covered thumbs-up. "I didn't get lost even once!"

Tara gave her an affectionate nudge with her elbow. "And?" she prompted.

"And I maybe made a couple of new friends and there's this boy I like and my teachers seem pretty cool and why didn't you tell me that high school would be this great?!"

Buffy grinned at her sister. "Hey, you know I met Willow and Xander on my first day at Sunnydale High." She paused and looked around. "Where is Willow? Wasn't she supposed to be on dinner duty with you?"

Tara palmed a lock of hair out of her eyes, managing to keep her floury fingertips off her face. "She's having a nap. She had trouble sleeping again last night."

"I'll be quiet upstairs," Buffy promised.

Buffy loved Tuesday dinners. It was the day they'd all committed to eating together, gathered around the table like a big, kooky family. Sometimes it was the only time in the week Buffy got to see Xander and Anya, especially if she'd pulled a weekend shift at the Double Meat Palace.

Today when he walked in the door, Xander handed Buffy a bottle of nice-looking red wine and a carton of fancy organic orange juice.

"Swanky," Buffy said appreciatively. "For toasting Dawn's Sunnydale High debut?"

"Oh!" Xander said. "Well, sure. Absolutely. But not just that. We've got another toastable topic, too. We'll tell you at dinner." He exchanged a mysteriously smug grin with Anya.

Everyone else was already converging on the dining room table. Buffy took her seat, belly rumbling in anticipation. "The casserole is vegan," Dawn said as they all sat down, "and so's the salad, but the biscuits aren't—" an apologetic glance in Spike's direction, "we had to use butter, we were out of vegetable shortening."

"Who's up for fermented grapey goodness?" Xander asked. Tara and Buffy held out their glasses. So did Willow, who'd come downstairs all of five minutes ago with mussed-up hair and still-puffy eyes. Dawn went for the orange juice instead, of course, and so did Spike, because of the meds—and so did Anya, which Buffy only barely had time to realize might be significant before Anya grabbed Xander's hand, held up her glass, and blurted out "I'm pregnant!"

"Oh my God!" Dawn squealed, clapping her hands. "That's awesome!"

"That's wonderful!" Tara echoed, and Buffy jumped up to give Anya and Xander great big hugs. Willow burst into tears. "Happy tears!" she gasped through the sobs, flapping her hands in front of her face as though trying to dry them even as they spilled over her cheeks. "Happy tears!"

Buffy ate her casserole in a happy glow of vicarious joy, listening to Anya babbling about the sweaters she planned to learn how to knit and Xander describing in detail the cradle he would build. Anya would get six weeks' maternity leave from the bank. They floated the possibility of hiring Tara as a nanny afterwards—she'd be graduating right around then. "And what on earth else will you do with a degree in Women's Studies in Sunnydale?" Anya asked with her usual slightly discomfiting frankness.

Meanwhile, Buffy and Spike sneaked slightly awkward looks at each other across the table. They hadn't talked about babies, not really, not yet, but all of a sudden Anya and Xander were making the previously distant and hypothetical possibility seem a lot more nearby and real.

Of course, Xander and Anya had already been married six months, and Buffy and Spike hadn't really talked about that possibility, either. If they did get married, they'd probably have to elope—they had no money for a proper wedding. And Buffy did kind of dream of a proper wedding.

By the time Dawn brought out the ice cream and potato chips for dessert, they'd all pretty much exhausted the subject of babies. Which Anya admitted in so many words. "Speaking of exhausted," she added, "Willow, you look terrible. Are you still not sleeping? Did you try the lavender tea?"

Willow waved the concern away with her free hand—her other was twined with Tara's. "I'm all right. Just—seasonal allergies keeping me up, that's all."

Tara petted Willow's hair. "Poor thing. You weren't even in bed when I woke up at three in the morning. I was having such a weird nightmare," she added, absently.

"Really?" Anya perked up. "I've been having these crazy vivid nightmares lately. I figured it was because of the pregnancy."

Xander frowned. "You didn't say anything, honey. That's weird, though—'cause, so was I."

Buffy thought back to her own recent, restless sleeps, a disjointed patchwork of panicky, violent images. "Huh," she said. "Me, too."

Spike raised an eyebrow. "You too? Me too."

"Wow," Dawn said. "There must be something in the air. I mean, I thought it was just 'cause I was nervous about starting high school or something, but—jeez, all summer, I've been having these freaky dreams, like everything's all green light and I'm somehow not real, or there's this big thing with a zillion teeth trying to eat me, or—"

"Oh God, me too!" Xander said. "Only with giant praying mantises. Er, manti? And also scary hobbits with leprosy."

"Oh my gosh I had that one too!" Dawn squealed.

Tara looked intrigued. "That sounds a lot like the dreams I've been having, too," she said. "There are always lots of things chasing me, trying to eat me. There's this one awful one I keep having where something eats my mind."

Willow petted Tara's hair, looking worried. "Oh, honey, that sounds awful. But it was only a dream."

"Of course," Tara said. "It does seem a little strange, though, doesn't it? That we're all having them?"

Willow shrugged, still smoothing down Tara's hair. "People have bad dreams. It's a thing. Does anyone want more ice cream?"

"What were yours like, Spike?" Dawn asked. "You said you were having them too."

"Mine—" Spike said, and stopped to clear his throat. He looked uncomfortable. "Mine've been bloody."

"Bloody what?" Dawn prompted.

"No, that was the end of the sentence. There's always blood. Gore." Spike grimaced. "I haven't had a bite of meat since 1991, but when I wake up from these fucking dreams I swear I can taste it raw in my mouth."

"You're dreaming about killing," Anya said.

Spike nodded, and Buffy thought he shuddered a little. But Anya looked relieved. "I thought I was the only one," she said. "In these dreams I'm so angry all the time, and I'm maiming people, mutilating, killing—doing horrible things."

"I'm not angry in my dreams," Spike said. "I'm—joyful. Bloodthirsty. I love the hunt and the crunch." He looked nauseated. "Makes a body wonder, you know? Where's it all coming from."

Buffy squeezed his hand. "Spike, you're the most nonviolent person I've ever met. You wouldn't let us kill the ants in the kitchen. Don't beat yourself up over a dream."

"You said you were having nightmares too, Buffy," Xander reminded her. "What are yours like?"

Buffy thought for a moment, trying to make sense of the hazy, disconcerting memories that survived each morning's waking. "I think I'm with Anya and Spike," she said. "I've been dreaming about fighting."

"Maybe there's like this night-time alternate universe where we're on opposite teams," Dawn suggested. "And Xander and Tara and I are the good guys and you and Spike and Anya are the bad guys."

Buffy was mildly offended, but Xander spoke up before she could. "I think they're the winning-guys and we're the having-our-asses-kicked guys," he said to Dawn in a fake-conspiratorial whisper.

"It's not funny," Anya protested, but she didn't look overly bothered—not like Spike. "Just you wait Xander, tonight I'm going to dream about turning your intestines into writhing cobras."

Xander laughed, and kissed her cheek. "And I'll dream about cowering behind a really big rock."

"What about you, honey?" Tara asked Willow, who'd been awfully quiet. "Have you been dreaming?"

Willow shook her head. "No," she said, almost sharply. "No dreams. I just can't sleep. Look, seriously, does anybody else want ice cream or should I put it away?"

Later that evening, Buffy sat alone at a table at the Bronze, nursing a beer and watching Spike perform.

Tuesday night wasn't a busy night at the Bronze, and of the people who were there, only a handful were sitting quietly and listening to the music. There was a background hum of conversation, of clinking glasses, of arguments and giggling and scraping chairs. Buffy didn't care, and neither did Spike. He was there for the music, and she was there for him.

He described his music as a little bit country, a little bit rock, a little bit punk. Buffy wasn't sure which of those parts was supposed to include the spoken-word poetry, but she knew she always got a little thrill when he slapped his hand down on the guitar strings and leaned into the mike and launched into it, words tumbling together in a silky growl, "yeah the alleyways are burning and the baby's all alone and you're paralyzed by yearning and it's Baghdad on the phone." Then his grin (just for her), and his fingers moving on the strings again.

He wrote all his own songs. He often mentioned, ruefully, that he'd get more gigs if he did covers. Buffy didn't know much about music, wasn't really a connoisseur, but listening to Spike sing gave her shivers up and down her back. She figured it was only a matter of time before he got discovered and then he'd be a rock star and they'd live in a mansion and eat clotted cream all the time or whatever the heck it was that rock stars were supposed to eat.

She took another sip of beer. He grabbed a drink of water, caught her eye and licked his lips, and launched into another song. God did she ever want to leap up on the stage and have sex with him.

He was still wearing the worn-out old Food Not Bombs shirt. He said it was the right look for his show. But he'd gelled his hair after dinner to make it all spiky, and he'd painted his fingernails black. The stage lights highlighted his cheekbones and the muscles in his arms. Buffy figured if he didn't get discovered for his music, at the very least he'd land some kind of job with his looks. A modeling contract, or maybe a role in one of those TV shows where they just wanted you to look pretty and they didn't care if you could act.

She was joking, of course, inside her head. Nobody got discovered at the Bronze. Anyway, Spike couldn't work full-time as a musician or a model, not with the headaches and everything.

But it's not like she was bothered. They scraped by on what she brought in, that and the bit of rent Willow and Tara paid out of their student loans. The important thing was that they were all together, and they were happy.

Walking home hand-in-hand with Spike at one a.m., Buffy felt happy enough to burst. They giggled and stole kisses and snuck hands under each others' clothes.

"I thought that show went well," Spike said, nuzzling and kissing her temple while she laughed and tried to stop them from tripping over a curb. "Did you see, that one bloke by the staircase even stopped playing Solitaire and just sat back and listened to the whole last set."

"I might have competition soon for my 'number one groupie' spot here," Buffy teased.

"Little spot of competition might spice things up a bit, yeah?" Spike teased right back, and then he pinched her bum. Buffy swatted him playfully with the guitar case, and next thing they were chasing each other down the street, shrieking with laughter. Buffy reached the corner first, turned it, and found herself face-to-face with a startled-looking Willow.

"Um, hi!" Buffy said, pushing her hair back off her face. "Wow, you're out late."

"You too," Willow said, quickly and unsubtly hiding what looked like a short pointy stick behind her back.

"Spike's gig just ended," Buffy explained. Spike caught up to her just then, and leaned against her from behind with his arms flung over her shoulders, breathing hard.

"Bloody hell you're fast, woman," he said. "Hi, Red. When did you join Insomniac Jews for Jesus?"

Willow started guiltily and clutched at the large cross pendant she was wearing. "It's not a cross, it's a plus sign," she said. "A joke. For my physics class. I'm very positively charged! Hahahaha.... Well, I've gotta go. I mean, I'm out for a brisk walk. To help me sleep."

"Do you want us to come with you?" Spike asked. "It's late to be out on your own."

"No, I'm fine." Her eyes widened. "But you two should go straight home! Don't go down any dark alleys! Shoo!" She backed a few steps away from them, and then turned and ran.

"That was weird," Spike said.

"Um, yeah." Buffy hesitated. "Do you think we should follow her?"

"She didn't want us to."

"That was obvious." Buffy shrugged and started towards home again. "You don't think she's having an affair, do you?"

Spike gave an incredulous sort of snort. "Willow? You see her with Tara, she's all over her like jam on bread."

"They are pretty lovey-dovey," Buffy conceded. "Okay, I was kidding about the affair. But Willow's insomnia is getting kind of extreme."

It was just a few more minutes' walk back to Revello Drive. As they came within sight of home, Buffy was startled to see someone waiting at the front door: a tall, slender woman with a long skirt and dark curly hair—oh God.

"Spike," Buffy said, stopping cold, "why is your psycho ex-girlfriend standing on my porch at one in the morning?"

"Dru?" Spike blinked, disconcerted, then broke into a jog. Buffy followed, lugging the guitar case.

Drusilla's dress was dark purple and covered with lace. She had one wing of a moth pinched between her thumb and forefinger so that she could hold the thing up to the porch light and watch its frantic battering. She looked just as pale and pretty and batshit crazy as Buffy remembered.

"Dru, love?" Spike said. His voice was gentle and worried in a way that Buffy found ever so slightly annoying. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

"I have a message," Drusilla said, her eyes still on the moth. "For the red-haired witch."

"You mean Willow?" Buffy frowned. "Actually her Wiccan phase pretty much ended halfway through sophomore year."

Drusilla turned her disconcertingly large eyes on Spike. "My poor Spikey," she said, reaching out with her moth-free hand to brush Spike's cheek. "What has she done to you?"

"Dru," Spike said, reaching up to catch her hand. "You shouldn't be here."

"Do you want to come inside?" Buffy offered reluctantly. It was the middle of the night, after all. Drusilla lived in L.A. and didn't even have a car, as far as Buffy knew—she must have walked here from the bus station. In that stupid dress.

"Not tonight, but it's very sweet of you to invite me," Drusilla said, letting her wavery gaze slide quickly over Buffy before settling back on Spike. "Tell Mistress Rosenberg, if you please, that Osiris is rather annoyed and would like a word with her." She nodded curtly to them both, popped the moth into her mouth, and walked away down the steps, chewing noisily.

"Dru?" Spike said, looking like he was about to follow her.

Buffy put a hand on his arm. "Oh my God," she said under her breath. "I think she's actually gotten crazier. Do you think she was high?"

"She ate a moth." Spike's eyes were wide. "We can't just leave her wandering around alone in the middle of the night."

"Sure we can. We left Willow. And Dru is so not your problem anymore." Spike still looked worried, so Buffy added, "What could happen to her anyway? It's just Sunnydale."

For the umpteenth night in a row, Buffy dreamed of violence.

She was chasing a shadowy figure through a foggy graveyard. She leapt over tombstones and ducked around corners, heart racing, wooden stake clutched in her hand. The figure tripped and she was on top of it—an old lady in a dirty blue burial dress, an old lady with the face of a demon, and with a yelp of triumph Buffy plunged the stake into the old lady's chest.

"Gah," Buffy said, sitting up in bed. Her negligee was sticking to her back with sweat. Her heart was pounding for real. Beside her, Spike stirred, blinked up at her.

"You all right, love?" he asked sleepily.

"I just dreamed that I killed an old lady," Buffy said.

"Me too," he murmured, and rolled over.

"Well, I think mine was a vampire," Buffy said.

Spike snored.

Buffy was in the kitchen packing her lunch for work when Willow came in the kitchen door. It was 6:30 in the morning.

"Um," said Buffy. "Tell me you weren't out all night."

Willow gave her a wan smile. "I wasn't out all night." She had a dirt smudge on her cheek, and twigs stuck in her hair.

"Oh my God Willow, did you fall asleep in a park?"

Willow gave a sheepish shrug.

Buffy put the sandwich down and went around the kitchen island so that she could pluck the debris out of Willow's hair. "That's so not safe. I mean, I know it's just Sunnydale, not, like, Compton, but still, Willow—" Out of words, Buffy gave Willow a hug. "You need help. See a doctor. There must be pills you can take or something..."

"I'll be okay," Willow said. "Really. There's just a lot on my mind, with school starting and everything."

"Right." Buffy sighed. She'd talk to Tara; maybe Tara would have better luck getting through to Willow. "Hey, you'll never guess who was looking for you here last night."

Willow looked appropriately guess-less. "Oprah Winfrey?" she hazarded.

"Sadly, no. Actually it was Drusilla."

"Drusilla?" Willow yelped. She looked way more freaked than Buffy had expected. "Oh my God Buffy, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Buffy gave Willow a funny look. "No serious running-into-the-ex trauma. It was weird, though. She said she was looking for you."

"Me?" Willow said, a bit faintly. "Did she say why?"

"Well yeah, and as per typical Drusilla, it made no sense. She said Osiris wanted to talk to you. Um, Egyptian god of the Dead, right?" Buffy made the crazy-person twirly index finger sign. "And then she ate a moth and she left."

Willow looked even more pale, and did not smile. "Buffy ... this is important. Did you invite her in?"

"Well yeah," Buffy said. "It was the middle of the night. I didn't want to be a jerk. She didn't take me up on it, though. She must have been staying with someone else in town."

"Oh God," Willow said. "Okay. Okay. I can fix it. Buffy, if you see Drusilla again, do not invite her in. She's ... she's off her meds. Angel called and told me yesterday. I forgot to tell you."

Buffy declined to point out that currently, Willow was acting only slightly less crazy than Drusilla. "Okay, no argument here," she said. "You should tell Spike, though. He might feel like he needs to help her or something."

"I'll talk to him when he gets up," Willow said. "Okay, well, have a good day at work!"

Work.

About the best thing that could be said about Buffy's job at the Double Meat Palace was that it was a job and she didn't totally hate it, and the not-hating stemmed largely from the paycheck-appreciating anyway—not that the paycheck itself was anything to write home about, but at least it covered the groceries.

Today Buffy was training a new guy, Percy. He got flustered on his first try at the cash, but he was good at talking to the customers and she had no complaints about his burger-flipping technique.

Mid-afternoon, she came back from re-stocking the salad bar and noticed Percy struggling with a box of patties in the freezer. "Here, let me," she said. She gave the cardboard box a sharp jerk to detach it from the one underneath it and handed it to Percy.

He looked mildly affronted. "I could've got that," he said.

Buffy grinned. "Don't worry—you work here a few months and you'll be as strong as me." She struck a faux beefcake pose, letting him get a good view of her admittedly tiny biceps. She had to laugh at the look on his face. "The boxes freeze together when there's condensation. They come apart if you give'em a quick twist. Don't worry, you'll pick up all these tricks soon enough."

"I don't want to be working here that long," he said. "Um, no offense."

Buffy shrugged. "None taken. Not like Assistant Manager at the Double Meat Palace is my dream job or anything. But it pays the bills while my kid sister's in school."

Percy nodded, managing to look reasonably knowing and sympathetic. Buffy had given him the 30-second Buffy's Life Rundown at the start of the day, when he'd recognized her from Sunnydale High and asked her what she'd been up to for the past three years. Dead mom, deadbeat dad, dependent sister, three months last year spent in a coma after being hit by a minivan.

"Seriously, I don't think I could do what you do," Percy said now. "I mean, here I am, majorly bummed 'cause I got bounced back to Sunnydale after I blew my knee out. But my dad's already promised me a job at his company as soon as I finish up my business degree. I'm taking the last course by correspondence and I should be done by January. I'll be making real money, and you'll still be here making fifteen cents an hour above minimum wage and playing mom to your teenaged sister. And yet look at you! You come to work with a smile on your face! It's incredible!"

"It's amazing what nearly dying will do for your appreciation of life," Buffy acknowledged. "That, and a really hot English boyfriend. Now, how 'bout I show you where the mop is and you go clean the floor."

Jackass.

He wasn't wrong, though. It was a bit weird how happy she was even though her life, as seen by an outside observer, totally sucked.

It's just that the money problems and the dead-end job didn't tell the whole story. She was lucky to be alive, and unlike most people she knew it.

And her life was filled with love.

Comments at Dreamwidth:

That Good Night (the end)

shadowscast — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 06:10:19 GMT

Wow. Where did that last five years go?

I last updated this story in early 2009, and even before that my writing had slowed to a trickle, just a chapter a year for several years. But I never quite admitted to myself that I had abandoned this story; I kept thinking "someday, maybe, I'll finish it."

I have finally admitted to myself that I'm not going to finish it.

And having done that, in some sense, I finished it.

Here's what I'm posting tonight:

First, what I'm calling chapter 14, which was originally meant to be the first half of chapter 14 and which has actually been sitting on my hard drive for the past five years.

Second, a summary of what would have happened in the rest of the story, and indeed in the rest of the Fragments-verse, had I ever managed to write it. I wrote this summary in the last two days, based on my notes from 2005-2009 and on the version of the story which has lived only in my head for the past five years. This summary ... well, it turned out to be 4000 words long. It is not a story, but in the end it took on some story-like qualities. You'll see.

I'll start with my "previously" bit, which might be helpful if you haven't looked at this story in five years.

Previously in the Fragments-verse....

In Not The End, Angel defeated Wolfram & Hart's army, and got fired. Er, 'downsized'. And Spike got flambéed by a dragon, but was immediately reincarnated as a human. Weird! Wonder how that happened?

In Human Frailty, we skipped ahead six months and saw Spike and Xander living together as a couple in Rome. Unfortunately it would seem that Spike's reincarnation had left him a bit fucked up. Xander was looking a bit worse for the wear, too. At least they had each other!

In Late Night Porn Store Blues, we zipped back in time to watch Xander meet human-Spike, who was living with Illyria and working in a sex shop at the time. And yet there was no sex!

In How the Light Gets In, the gap between the previous two stories was bridged. Xander found out about Spike's fragile health, and Spike found out why Xander was so haunted by events in Africa. They helped each other, a bit. And finally there was sex!

In Before the Time of Dawn, Spike and Xander travelled back in time to Sunnydale circa Xander's senior year to save the tragically misunderstood Sisterhood of Jhe. They hoped to avoid contact with the Scoobies of 1999. Hah! But everything turned out okay in the end.

In That Good Night, so far: Xander, Spike and Buffy are all in Sao Paulo, visiting Willow and Kennedy and their new baby, Tara. Xander and Buffy (but not Spike) were surprised to learn, sequentially, that Oz was also in town, that he was the biological father of the baby, and that he and Willow and Kennedy were now in a three-way relationship. Also, this is the first time that Spike and Buffy have met since Spike burned up in the Hellmouth two years previously, so that's been a bit awkward. And as if Xander didn't have enough to worry about, Spike's been seeing Drusilla around town and in his dreams, and Oz thinks Spike may be sicker than they realize. Meanwhile, an army of child-vampires is amassing in a nearby favela. Our heroes had better do something about that!

And now, the conclusion!

Title: That Good Night (parts 14 and 15 of 15, more or less)
Rating: NC-17 overall (barely)
Pairing: Spike/Xander, ensemble
Summary: A couple of years post-NFA, Spike is human, and it isn’t working out so well. He and Xander are currently in Sao Paulo, where Willow has just had a baby and a new vampire problem is looming.
Warnings: For earlier parts, I warned: "This story will get dark at times. Definitely angsty, h/c with lots of hurt. Character death will most definitely be threatened, and I'd rather not say what comes of it (though if you're terribly worried, ask me privately)." To this part, I append the warning that the author stopped writing this story before it was finished, and then five years later sort of summarized how the story would have ended if she'd ever finished writing it.
Length: 1000 words for chapter fourteen. 4000 words for the ending summary. 49,000 words for the whole story from the beginning.
Disclaimer: They're not mine, and I'm not making any money.

Chapter 14

Oz woke up to the smell of coffee and sausages. He was in his own bed. The angle of the light shining through his window told him he’d slept later than usual. That was a good sign -- if there’d been any emergencies overnight, someone would have woken him up.

He stood up carefully, checking how it felt. Stiffer than yesterday. About what he’d expected.

He knelt in front of the low altar under the window. Held a flame to the edge of a charcoal disc until it caught, put it in the small ceramic bowl. Lit an incense stick, stuck it upright in the jar of sand. Crumbled a few pinches of dried herbs over the slowly-burning charcoal.

He settled back, took a few breaths. Smoke rose from the herbs in thin wisps; it made his nose itch and his eyes prickle. Wolfsbane, Devil’s Bit, Himalayan Mandrake. The sandalwood incense could only go so far in masking the smell.

He settled into himself; felt what there was to feel. The knife wound, still healing. The wolf, coiled inside. It was resting now, not fighting him.

That was a metaphor. The wolf was him. He just didn’t feel it so strongly this morning.

He stayed in place, breathed some more, let thoughts and emotions float to the surface of his mind. He felt awe at how beautiful Tara was. Fear at how tiny and vulnerable she was. Concern about Kennedy and Buffy’s coming battle with the vampire children. Envy that Kennedy had spent the night in bed with Willow and Tara while he’d slept apart. The wolf stirred a little at that last thought, briefly bared its metaphorical teeth. He soothed it back down with a firm hand, and continued his meditation.

***

The girls were in the kitchen having breakfast. Tara wasn’t with them, but the baby monitor’s receiver sat in the middle of the table, hissing a low static. Willow, who was tearing into a plate of scrambled eggs, was the first to notice Oz. "G’morni-g," she greeted him with her mouth full. She waved a hand at the stove, and swallowed. “Have some food. There’s lots left. Xander and Spike aren’t up yet.”

Oz helped himself to a couple of sausages, a few scoops of eggs, and a cup of coffee. "How was the night?" he asked.

"We were up four times," Kennedy said. She was clutching a coffee mug with both hands. "Did you seriously not hear us?"

"Yeah," Oz shrugged. He ignored her cranky tone -- Kennedy was not a morning person at the best of times. "Thanks for letting me sleep. It helped -- I’m feeling better."

"That’s good!" Buffy said. "Because I think we’re gonna need you after all."

"Battle plans?" Oz nodded at the piece of paper in front of Buffy, which was covered in boxes and arrows and frustrated scribbles.

Buffy grimaced. "Yeah, well, it’s a bit hard to come up with a game plan when we don’t even know what the field looks like."

"We know there’s a front door" Kennedy said. "We go through it, we start dusting the minivamps. Easy."

"Until they surround us and cut us off from each other and kill us with a zillion teensy-tiny bites," Buffy countered. "We need a better plan than that."

"The sun ball's effects will be optimized if you can set it off in the middle of a big room full of vampires," Willow said.

"Which, if it doesn’t work, leaves us stranded in the middle of a big room full of vampires," Kennedy pointed out.

Buffy frowned. "Wait, this plan feels familiar somehow. What does it remind me of?"

"Hellmouth," Spike said from the kitchen door. "First Evil. Ubervamps. Me in the middle of it, making like a solar flare."

"Oh, right." Buffy winced.

"But we won that one!" Willow said brightly.

"Well, there is that." Spike took a seat at the table and accepted the cup of coffee that Oz silently handed him.

"What if we go in through the roof?" Buffy suggested. "They wouldn’t expect that, and we’d start with the high ground."

"You said you might need me," Oz reminded her.

"The sun ball spell." Willow had that feverish glint in her eyes that she got whenever she was working on serious magic. It always reminded Oz of that night she’d put Angel’s soul back in. "It works, Oz, it really works! This’ll make so much difference to the way we fight vampires. There’s just, well, one little catch. It takes about forty-five seconds to cast."

"Someone’s gonna have to sit down in a room full of vampires and do some nice, leisurely chanting," Kennedy said, giving Willow a serious I don’t like this plan kind of look.

Oz nodded. "That’ll have to be me, then."

Kennedy shook her head. "You’ll be vulnerable."

"So you’ll protect me."

"Okay," Buffy said, like it was settled already. She was used to leading.

Kennedy, who was not so used to following, looked like she wanted to keep arguing about it, but Oz pressed his knee against hers under the table and she let it go with just a grimace of protest. She had to know, really, that this was as good a plan as they were going to come up with.

"So we just need to figure out what to do about any live kids we find in there," Buffy continued.

"Xander could wait outside, lead them away," Willow suggested.

"Not Xander," Buffy said with a worried glance in Spike’s direction.

"It’d be safe, he could stay in the sunlight," Kennedy said. "Hey, where is Xander?"

"Shower," Spike said. "And it’s not a question of safe, he’d be no use to you -- doesn’t speak Portuguese, remember? I can do it -- get the kiddies away, if you find any alive, which I doubt."

Oz raised an eyebrow. "You need to take it easy. That does not qualify."

"What about Elena?" Willow suggested.

Buffy blinked. "Your housekeeper?"

"She’s the one who told us kids were disappearing in the favela," Willow said. "I bet she’d want to help."

"Does she know about..." Buffy made a one-handed fangy gesture. "Grr, argh?"

"A little," Kennedy said. "She saw a vampire once. And she saw me slay it. We talked about it a bit after that. I never told her about Oz being a werewolf, though. Or about Willow being a witch."

"Okay, we’ll ask her to help. Kennedy, you’ll take care of that?" Buffy put her hands flat on the table and took a deep breath. "Okay then, people. I think we have a plan."

Huge thanks to yourlibrarian, who beta-read this part back in 2009, who over the course of the beta-reading became a friend, and who still to this very day says encouraging things about my prospects for writing more Buffyverse fic!

And now ... the end. Such as it is. This 'verse began in fragments and it will end in fragments. Here's what would have happened, plot thread by plot thread.

What Would Have Happened Next

The Mini-Vamps

The plan would have worked. Buffy, Kennedy and Oz would have made it to the heart of Hotel Inferno, where they would have found Carlos (the leader of the mini-vamps) and probably engaged in a bit of witty banter before all hell broke loose. The battle would have been exhilarating: Buffy and Kennedy in a whirlwind of kicks and punches and thrusting stakes guarding Oz, who in the eye of the storm would quietly and with great self-control have put together the delicate spell Willow had devised, and then the room would have been flooded with cold bright sunlight.

The sun ball spell would have destroyed Carlos and all of his best fighters; after that, Buffy and Kennedy would have had no difficulty going through the rest of the hotel and mopping up the remainder of the child-vampire army.

Elena would have waited outside in vain; no living children would have emerged.

Afterwards, Willow would have been upset about how they had dealt with the problem by slaying, like they always do, without doing anything to actually help the street kids who were so desperate that joining a vampire army seemed like a good idea. Kennedy would have been dismissive, pointing out the huge and intractable nature of poverty, probably using the words "just the way the world works" at some point along the way. Oz would have mediated between them, helping each to understand the other's point of view, and eventually the three of them would probably have agreed to try to find some real and meaningful way to make things better. How that would have proceeded in the long term is unclear, and this story was never going to be mainly about that; but the three of them live in Sao Paulo, and they are superheroes. They would have managed something.

Buffy would have brought Gabriel back to Rome, like she'd planned. And he would have run away, like Kennedy had warned her. And she would have found him, and he would have run away again, and she would have found him again ... and it would have been rough. Much harder than raising Dawn after their mother died. But eventually, Gabriel would have started to warm up to her. He would have made friends with some of the younger Slayers. He would have found a place for himself at the new Council. In the end he probably would have grown up to be a vampire hunter. But this story was never going to be mainly about that, either.

Xander's Jealousy

Finding out that Spike and Angel used to be lovers was difficult for Xander. Seeing Spike and Buffy together, knowing their history, was difficult for Xander. Xander's own capacity for jealous rage is a thing that scares him. It scared him into leaving Anya at the altar; it scared him after he attacked Spike at the Hyperion (at the end of the Fragments-verse story Before the Time of Dawn).

Oz and Xander would have had a really good talk about all that at some point. Oz would have had some pretty helpful insights for Xander, speaking from his own experience of sharing Willow with Kennedy, and of taming his inner werewolf. And afterwards, Xander's jealousy would have been less. His ability to be calm when Spike was with Buffy would have been greater. He wouldn't have gone to Spike and suggested having an open relationship or anything, but that particular tension which stemmed from Xander's jealous possessiveness would have been greatly eased. It is also true that Spike, at this point, honestly doesn't want to be with anyone but Xander.

Spike's Illness

Spike would have received a diagnosis, and it would have been leukemia—cancer of the blood.

After finding out what treatment would be like, and what the chances of success were, Spike would have decided that he would rather not seek treatment.

Xander would have been pretty upset.

Spike would have insisted. He's lived so long, and done so much, and experienced and caused so much pain, and he is tired, so very tired. He is ready to rest.

They would have returned to Rome with this thing hanging between them, huge and awful. At an impasse. Xander unable to convince Spike to keep fighting; Spike unable to get Xander to understand why he won't. The long flight back would have been terribly tense, the two of them barely speaking. And then to top it off, after the plane landed they would have been stuck on the tarmac for more than an hour due to some "situation" their pilot would decline to explain in detail. They would have seen from the window an ambulance pulling up to the plane, but no paramedics would have entered the passenger compartment. It would have been puzzling.

The next day, it would have been Dawn who came running into the Council to show everyone the gruesome story in a local tabloid: the frozen corpse of a woman found in the landing gear of a plane. There would have been a photo, and it would have been Drusilla's face.

Drusilla

Drusilla was in Sao Paulo. Spike was not imagining things. She was stalking him in the city. She was lurking near the house at night; his nightmares about her were triggered by her actual presence and the faint psychic link that they share.

Drusilla was the one who had vamped Carlos; she had encouraged him to build his army of vampire children, although she had stayed well back in the shadows and most of the mini-vamps had been unaware of her.

When Spike and Xander left Sao Paulo, she would have stowed away on the landing gear. When she thawed out after arrival, she would have walked out of the morgue. And then, not long before Dawn spotted her picture in the paper, Dru would have tracked down Spike, who would have been alone—and she would have kidnapped him.

When Spike disappeared right after it was discovered that Dru was in town, everyone would have assumed correctly that she had him. Xander would have totally freaked out, but Giles would have been on hand to cast a locator spell and Buffy would have been ready to knock down any necessary doors, stake in hand.

Meanwhile, a very awkward what-if conversation would have taken place: what if Drusilla re-vamps Spike? Xander would have insisted, emphatically, that in that case Spike should be safely contained but not harmed, and that if he didn't have a soul—and after all nobody was really sure whether he would or not, considering his unique circumstances—then Willow should re-ensoul him ASAP. Other parties, such as Giles, would have been rather skeptical about this plan. Xander would have secretly, meanwhile, started to think that a re-vamped, re-ensouled Spike might be better than a dying Spike. He would have voiced this thought to no one.

As it happens, after having a painful and revealing conversation with Dru about the current state of his life, Spike would have managed to stake her with a pencil. When Buffy burst through the door, he would have been kneeling in the dust, tears in his eyes.

Later, after some awkwardness between the two of them, Xander would have confessed to Spike the thoughts he'd had about the merits of re-vamping. Spike would have been horrified, initially, and there would have been a giant fight. But later, having had the chance to think about it (and maybe after talking it over with Buffy, or perhaps Illyria, or maybe both of them) Spike would have come to realize that Xander must be feeling very lost and scared and desperate indeed, to have thought such a thing. And finally Spike would have realized that Xander still needed him—really needed him. And so Spike would have agreed to seek treatment for his leukemia after all. To fight, one more time. To not go gently into that good night.

And that would have been the end of that story.

There would have been one more story.

The Truth about the Shanshu

This story would have picked up several months later—maybe half a year. It would have started with a small, sad party. Spike would be just home from the hospital, and the party would have been for him, but it soon would have become clear that the context was that Spike was dying. The treatment hadn't worked, and the side-effects and complications had come close to killing him, and the time had come to stop. He would be in a relatively good state for the moment, but there would be the understanding that he had, at most, a few months left. Xander would have been discussing the plans for palliative care with Willow and Oz, quietly, in a corner of the room. Xander would have been wishing he could go back to being a guy who didn't know what palliative care was.

Angel would have been conspicuously absent from the party. Dawn would have wondered out loud where he was. It would have been revealed to the reader that Spike and Angel had come to some kind of truce in recent weeks. Spike, facing the end of his life, was ready to be forgiving and forgiven.

Then Angel would have arrived after all—with an uninvited guest held firmly by the arm. Eve, last seen fleeing Wolfram & Hart the night it all fell apart. Angel would have tracked her down after seeing her on TV in the background of some glitzy charity ball (Angel watching TV alone, awake late at night, brooding).

The mood of the party would have shifted immediately, because Eve, it would be revealed, knows something about what happened to Spike.

Eve, flustered and scared and angry, would have practically spat it out. There had been a plan. It had been Lindsey's plan. It had been a plan to destroy Angel, and Lindsey had brought it to the Circle of the Black Thorn. They had taken his plan but discarded him. Eve would still have been furious about this.

The plan was inspired by Angel's obsession with the Shanshu, and by Lindsey's participation in the resurrection of Darla. Lindsey knew how to do the spell. He told the Circle about it, and he told Eve too. The plan was to use the spell to resurrect Spike, the other vampire-with-a-soul, as a human, and let Angel conclude that Spike had been the subject of the Shanshu prophecy all along. This, it was thought, would be a terrible blow to Angel.

At this point in Eve's explanation, Spike and Angel would have looked at each other with matching expressions of horror. "So, wait," Spike would have said then, "the reason I'm back on this earth is actually just to piss off Angel? Well, bugger me." And then he would have laughed and laughed.

Willow, meanwhile, would have stepped up to say that she knew the spell that Eve was talking about. She had researched resurrection spells extensively a few years ago (guilty look in Buffy's direction). The spell that had been used on Darla and Spike would only work on a being whose body had been completely destroyed—as by a thorough cremation, or the dusting of a vampire. If the spell was cast while the body was still intact, it would maintain itself, inert, in a sort of mystical holding pattern until the body was actually destroyed. If the Circle of the Black Thorn had cast the spell around the same time they got Angel to sign away his Shanshu, then it had been in a holding pattern for days before Spike got dusted in the fight with the dragon. The spell wasn't meant to work that way. There would be signal degradation.

Put simply, Spike had come back wrong because he'd been the victim of a botched resurrection spell.

Unfortunately, knowing what went wrong isn't the same thing as being able to fix it. The cancer had a mystical cause but it wasn't mystical cancer, and Willow would have told Spike, with regret, that she couldn't fix it with a spell. Xander would have pointed out that she had once magically healed a gunshot wound, and Willow would have explained that that had actually been a whole lot simpler than cancer, not to mention she'd been totally hopped up on dark magic at the time, to world-destroying levels.

In conclusion: Spike was still going to die.

The Problem in Borneo

You probably don't remember, but back in chapter one of That Good Night, when Buffy and Xander were catching up on news, Buffy said "Looks like we might have a problem next fall in Borneo, but Angel's on it."

Now that problem was finally going to hit the crisis point. Angel would have called an emergency session of the new Council. Even Spike would have been there, perhaps in a wheelchair. Angel would have explained what he had discovered: this was one of the loose ends left behind by the departure of Wolfram & Hart. In a cave deep in the jungle of Borneo, there is some kind of monster. Every thirteen years, on the day of the fall equinox, this monster requires a human sacrifice. Wolfram & Hart have been providing said sacrifice, every thirteen years on the dot, for as far back as their records go—which is actually farther back than the historical invention of writing. They sent in murderers, torturers, sociopaths, lawyers. Each one walked into the cave—generally under duress—and no one ever walked out. Wolfram & Hart's records, as related by one surviving clerk, warn that if the sacrifice is ever missed, the monster will leave the cave and Apocalypse will follow.

At the time of this meeting, the autumn equinox would be two weeks away.

Possibilities for slaying the monster would have been discussed, but a lack of specific information about the monster would have hampered the planning. Illyria, wandering into the boardroom to have a word with the potted ferns, would have suggested that the monster may actually be one of the elder gods, one who never made it into the Deeper Well. If that's the case, then slaying is really not an option.

Finally, Spike—who would have been rather quiet up to this point—would have spoken up and said that he was willing to be the sacrifice. It wouldn't solve the problem, but it would buy them thirteen years to come up with something better.

Xander, needless to say, would not have been in favour of this plan. Nobody else would really have hopped right on board either. Spike would have made a pretty convincing case, though—he's going to die very soon anyway, and he'd rather have it matter.

Buffy would have supported him in the end. She sacrificed herself to save the world once, too.

For lack of any better ideas, Spike's offer would have been accepted. He would have set off for Borneo with Xander and Buffy at his side. The journey would have been harrowing, especially the last twenty miles through trackless jungle, considering Spike's state and what waited for him at the end.

They would have found the cave. A human-sized figure would have emerged: hunched over, wearing a mossy robe, face hidden by its folds. It would have hissed a few words in an ancient demon language, but everyone would have understood them as though they were in English: "Identify the sacrifissse," it would have said.

Spike would have taken a moment to kiss Xander good-bye, a moment to bury his fingers in Xander's hair and hold him tight, and then he would have given Buffy a hug and whispered "Take care of him for me," and he would have followed the figure into the cave.

Buffy and Xander would have tried to follow, but they would have been repelled by an invisible barrier.

After a long and steep descent, the figure would have stopped, turned towards Spike, lowered its hood. The cave would have been strangely bright, with glossy glimmering walls that curved inwards rather than out. The face of the guide would have been creepy in a Bringer sort of way, eyes similarly sewn shut, but not actually a Bringer. Something similar. A minion of the elder god.

The walls of the cave would have shifted slightly, and a portal would have yawned open, bottom-to-top. Through the portal Spike would have glimpsed brightness, blue sky, green grass. Supersaturated colors. But taking in the shape of the portal, and the two smooth pointy stalactites hanging from its upper lip, Spike would swiftly have recognized it as the mouth of a giant serpent; the walls of the cave were its coiled body, which Spike and the guide had passed over and climbed down to arrive here, in the middle.

Spike would have commented that as far as being eaten by a giant snake went, this didn't look like it would be so bad.

The minion would have agreed. The minion would have promised Spike that when he entered the mouth of the serpentine god, he would pass into Paradise.

Spike, who after all has been around the block a few times, would then have asked just what would happen if he didn't go in there.

Rather than answering, the minion would have said with great confidence that of course Spike would go in. The serpent could smell the deaths on Spike—more deaths than anyone the Wolf, Ram and Hart had sent in the past thousand years. Of course Spike would enter the serpent's mouth and pass into the paradise beyond.

Spike would have insisted: what would happen if he didn't?

The minion would have explained—sounding just a mite cranky now in its creepy hissing demon tongue and its telepathic English—that according to the terms of the agreement between the gods of the Primordium and the Wolf, Ram & Hart, if a timely willing sacrifice was not provided then the serpent god would cease providing dark energy to fuel the ongoing apocalypse, and would depart immediately from this plane of existence. And as for Spike, he would just have to go back out into the world.

Spike would have noticed that the word for "go back," in this sibilant demon tongue, was shanshu.

And Spike would have begun to laugh.

The minion would have gotten rather irate at this point. The minion would have pointed out that this was a one-time-only offer. The minion would then have pointed a gnarled, greenish finger at Spike and hissed "Ssssee for yoursssself."

The cave would have vanished. Spike's own body would have vanished. There would have been nothing but soft white light and a sense of peace. Wholeness. No pain.

And then Spike would have crashed back into himself, on his knees on the rough damp stone, in his weak and hurting body, trying not to vomit.

And he would have thought back to the white light, the memory of which would have already been fading, and he would have remembered Buffy talking about remembering remembering Heaven.

"Or," the minion would have gone on, "would you choossse a lifffe of sssorrow?"

Again the minion would have pointed at Spike, and again he would have fallen into a vision—but this time it would have been more like flashes of those dreams that you have the night before a day that you're anxious about. Running for a bus, and missing it. Getting caught in the rain. Losing a button, seeing it roll away and down a sewer grate. And then: Buffy, collapsing under the fangs of a vampire. Dawn, crushed by falling rocks. Illyria, screaming as she is consumed by ten thousand glittering scarab beetles. Drusilla turning to dust. Angel on fire. Xander ... old. Lying in a hospital bed. His hair gone thin and white, his one eye clouded over, his skin wrinkled and loose. Lifting a shaking hand toward Spike, then letting it fall. The sigh of a last breath, and then stillness.

Once again Spike would have felt the cave floor under his hands and knees.

"Choossse, murderer," the minion would have said. "Pain, or Paradissse."

"That last show you put on for me," Spike would have croaked. "Might have been some possible futures in there, but it sure wasn't my real one. Dru's already gone, and I'd never live long enough to see the rest. Tell your giant snake-god-thing it can sod off. I'm crawling on out of here."

The minion would have turned to the mouth of the snake and bowed, shaking. "He is dying, massster," the minion would have said. "He doesss not fear the future, for he hasss none."

The coils of the giant snake would have shifted, slightly, and then all the air in the cave would have seemed to contract suddenly and then expand. Spike would have gasped.

The nausea would have been gone. His body would have felt strong, energized. His breath would have come easily, unlaboured. The deep, constant pain would have been just ... gone. Spike would have looked up in confusion, and the minion and the mouth/portal would have appeared blurry—until he took off his glasses, at which point his vision would have been crisp and clear.

"Now," the minion would have said, "you might live sssixty years. Will you ssstill refussse to walk ten ssstepsss into Paradissse?"

"It bloody healed me!" Spike would have exclaimed, to nobody in particular, and then almost fallen over with the force of his laughter.

"CHOOSSSE!" the minion would have demanded, furious now, and it would have jabbed its finger at Spike one more time.

The soft white light. Floating. Stillness, wholeness, peace.

The cave again. Spike wouldn't have been laughing anymore. Compared to the flash of heaven—if that's what it was supposed to be—even his newly-healed body would have felt heavy, awkward, dull.

And he would have considered it. For a few seconds, he really would have. To leave behind a hundred and forty-odd years of life and unlife, most of those spent doing unspeakably terrible things—to simply step into the light, and apparently let the world go on exactly as it had been anyway.

And then he would have thought of Xander in the vision. Xander, so many years in the future, his face deeply lined and his hair gone to white. And Spike would have realized that his deepest wish was to live those years by Xander's side.

"Sorry," Spike would have said to the snake. "I choose life."

"My massster will depart!" the minion would have screamed. "The demonic energiesss will fade in Her absenssse! The vampiresss' numbers will ssslowly diminish! The contractsss of the damned will be undone! The Wolf, Ram and Hart will loossse their grip on this world! They will eat ashes!"

"Forgot to tell you earlier," Spike would have said. "Earth's already under new management."

At that, the minion would have puffed itself up, shaking with indignity, and thrown Spike an incongruous but keenly felt talk-to-the-hand gesture. It would have stalked away, straight into the mouth/portal. It would have been visible through the portal for a few moments longer, walking away on the soft green grass. And then, in a movement that probably would have involved more than three spatial dimensions and which would have given Spike a bit of a headache just to see, the great snake-god would have swallowed itself and disappeared.

With the snake gone, Spike would have been at the bottom of a pitch-black pit, but luckily the sides wouldn't have been too steep, and with his newly-recovered strength it wouldn't have been too hard for him to climb back out. He would have emerged from the cave less than half an hour after he'd gone in. Xander and Buffy would still have been near the entrance, sitting on a flat rock, Xander's head on Buffy's shoulder, tears on both their faces. They would have stood up in shock upon seeing Spike.

"What happened in there?" Buffy would have asked as Xander dashed forward and embraced Spike.

"Well," Spike would have replied, hugging Xander back, "Far as I understand it, this time I saved the world by not dying."

And then, to the extent that such a thing is possible in this world, they would have lived happily ever after.

And that's how the story would have ended. If I'd ever written it.

So, wow, now that that's over ... I'd like to thank everyone who ever sent me encouraging feedback over all these years. And I'd like to apologize to everyone who read the story in hopes that it would have a proper ending sometime in their, or my, lifetime. I really am sorry! I hope that if you're still around, and still care about this story, at least this ending-ish thing will give you some closure.

ETA: I've now uploaded this story, in all its quasi-finished imperfection, to AO3. So, if that's a more comfortable place for you to read, feel free to go there! That Good Night on AO3

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Vid rec: The Ballad of Wesley Crusher

shadowscast — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 04:46:57 GMT

Oh wow, it's been nearly 3 years since I last posted. And the last post I made was a vid rec too.

Maybe a quick re-introduction is in order: Hi, I'm Shadowscast. I used to be in fandom. Then I had a kid.

(It's not just the kid; it's the kid and the job and the two and a half hours of daily commuting, along with the fact that at age 36 I really can't function anymore on less than eight hours of sleep.)

Anyway, I've gone from being actively fannish to being rather more passively fannish. I go on the occasional fic-reading binge in one fandom or another, mostly after getting caught up on some show several months (or years) after everybody else. I've made a real-life friend who's fannish, and she's really into vids, so I watch vids sometimes with her.

And tonight I decided to browse the most recent Festivids entries, and I found this one that really spoke to me, and I decided: hey, why not make a post?

The vid in question is The Ballad of Wesley Crusher, and it's by Jetpack Monkey.

Here's the comment I made at the post:

Oh man, this vid gave me feelings.

So let me just say, I was 13 in 1990, and nerdy and unpopular and lonely, and I loved Wesley Crusher. I fantasized about living on the Enterprise and being his friend and having adventures together. I didn't know about fandom yet, so I didn't know that Wesley was generally hated—I found out years later, and was surprised and saddened but at least by then I was old enough and had grown into myself enough that I didn't take it as (much of) a personal blow.

And now I'm 36, and I have perspective, and I understand about stories, and I understand why people hated Wesley.

This vid makes my heart ache for him, and for my 13-year-old self. The sweaters, oh lord the sweaters.

And I am so grateful for the story you tell here, of his arc, of how Starfleet really wasn't the right place for him at all, and how the ending, his strange departure from the show (which I had no idea how to parse at all, when it aired) can be read as a coming-of-age story, an escape from a life which is unsuitable to one which is a much better fit. (And I bet there are an awful lot of us in fandom who can identify with that.)

So, thanks for much for sharing this vid! I'm going to go watch it again now.

Comments at Dreamwidth:

A new Once A Thief vid (and it's delightful!)

shadowscast — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:50:58 GMT

So I never post anymore (you may have noticed). But this, this was worth breaking radio silence for: fan_eunice has posted a Once A Thief vid! It's fun and it's bouncy and it's fun!

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Once A Thief, if you don't know, is a Canadian TV show that aired for one season back in 1997. It was based on a John Woo movie of the same name, and in fact the show pilot was a remake of the movie (with somewhat different characters and plot). The main characters are secret agents working for a Shadowy Government Agency. They fight evil with martial arts. The show is campy, uneven, delightfully slashy, and does not take itself very seriously at all except for when it does.

The full series aired in Canada and Australia but never, I think, in the United States. One of the agents was played by Nicholas Lea, who also played Krycek in the X-Files, and most of the fannish interest arrived via X-Files fandom. In fact I think I may be the only person in the entire world who got into fandom via Once A Thief as opposed to vice versa.

I saw bits and pieces of the series during its original run on broadcast. I liked the show very much, but had no way to catch the episodes I'd missed. These were ye olden days; I didn't even own a VCR. Watching the show, I was convinced that before every single scene, the director told all of the actors "and by the way, you secretly want to have sex with each other." It was THAT SLASHY. Except I didn't know what slash was yet. But when searching the still-relatively-young internet for episode summaries (I mean, I was probably searching with Alta Vista, folks), I stumbled across a fic about the two male leads having sex while hiding in a closet.

I was like ... OH. WOW. So I'm not the only one who thought they were totally hot for each other!

And thus I discovered fanfic. And slash. Which I didn't even realize weren't synonymous until years later when I jumped into That '70s Show fandom (a weird and brief blip between my Once A Thief and my Buffyverse stages).

Sadly, it was a very hard fandom to pimp, since barely anyone had seen the show and it wasn't out on DVD. I had a set of episodes on VHS tapes via the old-fashioned fannish copy-and-snailmail network; I also in fannish desperation paid $40 at one point for a set of DVDs that had been *ahem* pirated off of TV by some guy.

But now things have changed! The DVDs have finally been released! (They came out in June of this year; I only heard about it a couple of weeks ago and I now have my box set sitting on my desk, yippeee!)

And ... a vid! Have you watched it yet? You should go and watch it and comment, too! :-D

Comments at Dreamwidth:

I've been podficced! And nominated! Neat!

shadowscast — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:25:32 GMT

reena_jenkins has posted a collection of podfics, put together in an album she has called The Intangible Residuum. I am honoured to have had a fic included—my Buffyverse Alphabet!

Also, someone has nominated my little fic Five Superpowers Xander Is Not Sorry, Upon Reflection, That He Doesn't Have for the Sunnydale Memorial Awards. Thanks, mysterious someone!

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Fic: Five Superpowers Xander Is Not Sorry, Upon Reflection, That He Doesn't Have

shadowscast — Thu, 26 May 2011 03:01:50 GMT

Hello, world. How's it going? Me, I've been okay, but busy and tired and somehow drained of all creativity. I just went about three months without writing a word of fiction, which may actually be the longest fallow period I've had since I was six years old. I mean, three months without posting—sure, no big deal. Three months without writing, though? I turned around and realized I'd lost a part of myself. Eeep. But even this realization happened in a context of things opening up and my energy starting to come back—spring is here, the academic year has finished, and my husband has just quit his job (which is a good thing!).

So yesterday I realized I could write again, and it felt really good. I set the bar low: a "five things" story with drabble chapters. A gently attainable goal. And I finished it today!

500 words. Gen.

Five Superpowers Xander Is Not Sorry, Upon Reflection, That He Doesn't Have

1) Flight

"Bugs in your teeth," Dawn said, wrinkling her nose.

"Bloody military would probably come and shoot you down," Spike said.

"At the very least you'd get hit with a fine for not filing a flight plan," Anya chimed in.

"And you'd look like a right pillock in a leotard," Spike added.

"And you like driving," Anya reminded him. "The personal automobile is a very convenient mode of transportation. Long distance flights would be cold and uncomfortable and what if you ran into a flock of Canada geese?"

"You guys suck," Xander said, and yet he had to concede the point.

2) X-Ray Vision

"Sure, there's the superficial appeal of looking under ladies' clothes," Anya said, "but if your calibration is off by a fraction of an inch, you'll be looking at their guts instead."

"Also that would be wrong," Dawn added with a glare.

"I'd worry about walking into walls," Spike said, flicking his lighter. "Seeing through them, not knowing they're there. I knew a demon had that problem once. Last time I saw the poor bugger, he was flattened against the outside of a Starbuck's. Three feet to the left of the bloody door, mind you."

Xander crossed it off his list.

3) Strength

"There's always someone stronger, that's the problem," Spike said, waving his cigarette. "Got vampire strength? A Slayer comes and knocks you on your arse. Slayer strength? Next thing you know you're fighting a troll, or a god."

"And think of the doorknobs," Dawn said. "Do you have any idea how many doorknobs Buffy's busted?"

"You think it would make you safer," Anya mused, "but really, it would make you even more stupidly heroic. You'd go running into danger even more often than you already do."

"I could help my friends," Xander insisted.

Dawn shrugged. "You already help by fixing doorknobs."

4) Laser Beam Eyes

"Do I even need to start listing the problems with that one?" Dawn asked. "Books bursting into flames while you're reading them. Friends mysteriously avoiding eye contact. Cats and dogs running from you in fear. Brush fires. Scorch marks all over the walls."

"I'm assuming there'd be a way to turn them off," Xander pointed out with some asperity.

"What if the bad guys brought mirrors?" Anya asked. "One glance the wrong way and you'd fry yourself."

"Or the bloke standing next to you," Spike pointed out.

Xander smirked. "Was that supposed to be a disincentive?"

Dawn kicked his shin.

5) Ability To Turn Things Into Chocolate Ice Cream By Touching Them, But Only Voluntarily

"Okay, you win," Dawn said. "I don't see a downside."

"Well, what would you be turning into ice cream?" Anya asked. "And wouldn't it be unpleasant, afterwards, thinking about what it was you were really eating? I mean, for instance, suppose you transformed this flowerpot into ice cream. Could you really enjoy eating it, or would you be thinking the whole time about ceramic and dirt and geraniums?"

"Things could get sticky," Spike mused.

"Hey, there's chocolate ice cream in the freezer," Dawn said. "Anybody up for big gooey sundaes?"

Xander graciously accepted defeat. "Who needs superpowers when there's chocolate?"

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Fic: Seeing Is His Superpower (Spike/Xander)

shadowscast — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 01:43:34 GMT

Hello, world! Although I'm not really active in fandom these days, I have recently been quietly working on a short Spike/Xander story. My stories tend to sprawl, and at this point in my life I just don't have time for sprawling, so I challenged myself to write something self-contained and complete. And now it's finished and I get to post it. Hooray! I hope you like it.

Story Info
Fandom: BtVS & AtS
Rating: Teen & Up (for a bit of swearing, a bit of violence, a bit of sex)
Length: 8,184 words (complete!)

This is a post-Chosen AU in which Xander finds Spike's amulet in the wreckage of Sunnydale. When he picks it up, something interesting happens...

Many thanks to yourlibrarian for beta-reading, and for coming up with a few good lines that I was happy to snag!

Seeing Is His Superpower

When they went back to the Sunnydale site to make sure the Hellmouth was closed for good, Buffy and Willow nearly left Xander behind.

"You've done enough already," Buffy said to him, in that eggshell-gentle tone they'd all been taking with him lately. "Anyway, it's probably going to be really boring. Just Willow walking around doing a bunch of incantations and me standing guard."

"I want to go," Xander insisted. "Hey, you never know. Maybe I'll see something you guys miss."

He sort of regretted it once they got there. It was boring, and hot and dusty and really fucking sad. He didn't want to admit that he'd been hoping to find some sign of Anya. She was most likely buried under hundreds of tons of broken concrete, steel and glass. If FEMA hadn't found her remains, neither would he.

Still, while Willow and Buffy walked around doing spells and watching for trouble, Xander kept his eye to the ground.

And there. Something glimmered in the rubble.

Without even thinking he squatted down and reached for it. A piece of jewelry. It looked vaguely familiar...

ZAP!

It was like touching a metal doorknob after scuffing his feet over about a mile of carpet. Xander yelped, dropped the necklace, and fell backwards on his ass.

The necklace started to burn.

"Willow!" Xander yelled. Okay, shrieked. While scuttling backwards across the rubble.

The weird flames expanded, elongated, seemed to grow solid—and then it was a skeleton, then burning flesh. Then black leather. And bleached blond hair. And a scream.

Two screams, if you counted Xander's.

And then silence, and they stared at each other, and Xander finally remembered where he'd seen the amulet before.

"Bloody hell," Spike said, panting. Then he looked around. "What happened to the great bloody cavern full of ubervamps?"

"Um," Xander said, getting back to his feet. "You destroyed it. "

"Huh." Spike hitched his thumbs through his belt loops, lifted his head a little higher, and took a good look around. "Don't tell me this is all that's left of Sunnyhell?"

Xander let his silence do the talking. He eyed the amulet, which was still lying between Spike's boots. It looked inert now, but Xander sure as hell wasn't going to try touching it again.

"Xander!" Willow called, running up on his blind side. "What's wrong?"

"Well, for starters," Xander said, and waved a hand in Spike's direction.

"Oi!" Spike said, looking affronted. "Bleedin' hero come back from the dead here. Show a little respect, mate."

Willow ignored him. "Hey, isn't that the amulet Spike was wearing when he went into the Hellmouth?"

"Well, yeah," Spike said, looking at Willow like she was just a bit on the slow side.

"I wonder how it got to the surface?" Willow said, and reached for it.

"Stop!!" Xander yelped, grabbing her arm. "It might still be dangerous."

"Good point," Willow acknowledged. "But we can't just leave it here. Maybe I could do a spell, see if there's still magic on it."

"Okay, sure, but actually maybe we should put a higher priority on figuring out what's up with Mr. Double-Undead here? And actually—" Xander cut himself off, squinting up at the sun. The bright, hot sun. He turned to Spike. "Shouldn't you be on fire right now?"

Spike shrugged. "Beats me. Got burnt up. Maybe I've built up a resistance."

Willow, meanwhile, was giving Xander a funny look. "Who are you talking to?" she said.

Xander and Spike both stared at her. Then at each other. Then back at Willow, who was squinting a little and gazing at Xander with a mildly concerned expression.

"Fuck," Xander said. "You can't see him, can you?"

Spike, meanwhile, went and waved a hand in front of Willow's face. She didn't blink, just kept looking expectantly at Xander. "Who?" she said again.

Xander sighed. "Spike."

"I'm right here," Spike said, standing inches in front of Willow, his nose nearly touching hers.

"Where is he?" Willow asked, looking around blankly and taking a step forward.

Which took her right through Spike.

"Gah!" Xander shouted.

"Bugger!" Spike yelped.

Willow looked at Xander. "What?"

"Okay," Xander said, peering around Willow at Spike, "I think I can guess why the sun isn't burning you up."

"Bloody fucking sodding hell," Spike muttered. "Save the world, and this is what I get?"

Xander nodded. "Ghostified."

Nobody could see him or hear him but Xander.

Willow had believed Xander immediately, of course. This was far from the weirdest thing that had ever befallen them. She'd called Buffy over, and they'd stood around for a while trying to figure out what to do with the amulet. Spike had huddled off to the side, hugging himself and casting miserable looks at Buffy. Finally Buffy had wrapped a shirt around her hand, gingerly picked up the amulet and dumped it in Willow's backpack. "We'll figure this out," she promised the empty air about four feet to the right of Spike.

By then Willow and Buffy had already pretty much done what they'd come for. So they climbed out of the giant pit that had once been Sunnydale, and headed back to Thousand Oaks, the nearby town where they'd established their temporary headquarters.

None of the Slayers at the house they were renting could see him either. Neither could Andrew, and neither could Giles. "Why me?" Xander asked, plaintively.

"Well, you're the one who triggered his release from the amulet," Willow said, taking the jeweler's glass away from her eye and turning off the bright light she'd been shining on the necklace. "I think that connected you somehow."

"Just my fucking luck," Spike grumbled. "Couldn't have been Buffy, picked the thing up. Or Red. Or one of those nice new Slayers."

"He's talking, isn't he?" Willow asked, following Xander's gaze towards what to her must have been an empty corner of the room. "What's he saying?"

"Doesn't matter," Xander said, ignoring Spike's offended Oi!. "Can you fix it?"

"I don't even know where to begin," Willow said. "I don't know if he's a ghost, or a trapped psychic imprint, or an outright illusion—"

Spike scowled. "I am not a bloody illusion."

"And I'm pretty busy, you know, what with trying to locate the hundreds of new Slayers I accidentally created..."

"I get it," Xander said, rubbing his tired eyed with the heel of a hand. "Me haunted by vampire ghost, not so much a priority."

"Well, at least he's a friendly vampire ghost!" Willow chirped.

Buffy cornered Xander in the kitchen when he was making himself a midnight snack of pb&j on toast. "I want to talk to Spike," she said.

"Um," Xander said. "Well, go ahead, he's right there." He waved a hand at the refrigerator, which Spike was leaning against, glowering.

Buffy flinched, then took a deep breath and turned to the fridge. "Hi, Spike," she said.

Spike inclined his head a barest fraction. "Buffy," he said, softly, as though she had any hope of hearing him—and then he turned to Xander. "Bugger off, Harris," he said, low and fierce. "This is a private conversation."

"Xander, I'm sorry, I'm going to need you here for this," Buffy said at the same time. "You're going to have to tell me what he says."

"He just told me to leave," Xander said.

"Don't be an idiot, Spike," Buffy snapped, looking almost but not quite in the right direction.

"Sod it." Spike looked at Xander. Glared. "Tell her we don't have to talk about it."

"Talk about what?" Xander said.

Buffy looked annoyed. "Xander, tell me what he's saying."

"There's something you don't have to talk about. My God Buffy, you didn't sleep with him, did you?"

Buffy went very pale, and her cheeks flushed red. "Xander," she said, "You have no right to judge me. None."

"Am I the only one who remembers that he tried to rape you last year?"

Buffy gave Xander a very hard look. "It's not that simple Xander, and you know it. Nothing in our lives is that simple."

Spike, meanwhile, melted away through the back door and was gone.

Spike didn't show up again until noon the next day. Xander was alone in the back yard of the rental house, whittling sticks into stakes.

Spike sat down on a tree stump, squinted up at the sun, lit a cigarette, and said, "You're right about one thing, Harris. I was a monster."

"Oh, but now you have a soul." Xander scowled and whittled a little harder. A few wood chips flew through Spike's chest, but Spike didn't seem to notice.

"Do I?" Spike said.

Xander looked up, suddenly nervous. Spike gave him a dark smile, and suddenly shifted into game face and lunged. Xander threw himself sideways with a strangled yelp, narrowly evading Spike's fangs. Then he remembered that he had a stake in his fucking hand, and he swung around and plunged it into Spike's chest. Except it went right through Spike's chest, no resistance at all—and Xander stumbled and fell onto his knees on the grass, right through Spike's body.

Spike was laughing. "I don't even have a body, you daft sod! What am I going to do, mock you to death? I'm like the First Bloody Evil, without the bloody Bringers."

Xander glanced around to see if anybody else had witnessed that potentially embarrassing incident. Happily, he and Spike were alone in the backyard.

"Hey, Spike," Xander said, resettling himself in his lawn chair, "have I ever mentioned that I hate your guts?"

"Well, that's all right," Spike said, lighting another ghost cigarette, "I don't have guts anymore."

"Why don't you just fuck off?" Xander suggested.

Spike took a drag on his cigarette. He blew smoke in Xander's direction. The smoke didn't smell like anything, wasn't affected when Xander waved his hand in the air. Ghost smoke. "I tried," Spike said. "Last night, I left the kitchen, walked in a straight line. Through folks' bedrooms, over streets and freeways, right through this one really smashing party—got maybe five miles and then pop, I'm right back here. Tried again in another direction. Same thing. Doesn't matter which way I go. I end up right back here with you."

Fucking perfect.

Xander gritted his teeth and picked up a fresh stick.

"Some of the girls are concerned," Kennedy said. She'd cornered Xander in the dining room after lunch, when he was sopping up the last of his lentil soup with a piece of brown bread. "They didn't know Spike so well, but they know his rep, and now that he's invisible..."

"What am I supposed to do?" Xander asked.

"Talk to him," Kennedy said. "You're the only one who can. Make sure he's not doing some Peeping Tom routine."

"Anybody can talk to him," Xander pointed out with some asperity. "I'm just the only one who can hear him." He glared at Spike, who was sitting on the edge of the table, smoking another intangible and happily odor-free cigarette.

"Tell the nice lesbian Slayer that I am not interested in looking at little girls in their unmentionables," Spike said.

"He says he's not spying on anybody," Xander said.

Spike smirked. "Technically, that's not what I said."

"Wait, who are you spying on?"

"Nobody," Spike said. "Well, possibly Andrew. That one needs watching."

Xander turned back to Kennedy, who was waiting expectantly. "He promises that he's not spying on any of the girls. But possibly he's gay for Andrew."

Unseen by Kennedy, Spike made a rude gesture. Xander couldn't suppress a tiny smile.

"I'm sorry about Anya," Spike said, startling Xander out of a deep contemplation of the water stains on the living room ceiling.

"Oh," Xander said, and took another sip of his beer.

"Just heard Faith and Andrew talking about her," Spike said. "Sounds like she died a hero."

"Lot of that going around," Xander said. The beer was warm; the fridge was full of juice and milk and vegetables. No room for a six-pack.

"She was over a thousand years old," Spike said. "And you were the best thing ever happened to her."

Xander sat up, squinted his one good eye at Spike. He'd only had half a beer. There was no way he was drunk enough to be hallucinating this scene. "If it wasn't for me, she'd still be alive," he said.

Spike put his hands in the duster's pockets. "If it wasn't for you, she'd still be a monster." He turned and walked out through the wall of the room.

"Okay, S-M-O-K-E, and on the double word score, that's twenty-two points for Spike." Andrew marked in the new score with his stub of a pencil.

Dawn gave Xander a suspicious look. "How do we know you aren't cheating? I mean, how do we know Spike is even here?"

Xander rolled his eye. "Oh yeah, I'm pretending to be haunted by an annoying vampire ghost so that I can get two seats to myself at the Scrabble table."

"She has a point," Andrew said. "What if you're misrepresenting Spike's strategies to set up good scoring opportunities for yourself? Look, he totally just opened up that triple word score for you."

"Yeah, that's because Spike sucks at Scrabble."

"I do not," Spike said, glaring. "And incidentally, 'wanker' is a perfectly good word, it's your bloody dictionary that's got something wrong with it."

"He's still upset about that challenge going against him," Xander explained to the others. He picked up his own letters and plunked them down on the board. "Z-O-O on the triple word score for thirty-six points."

"Wanker," Spike muttered.

Xander and Rona headed up the coast to contact four new Slayers Willow had detected in the Pacific Northwest. It took them three weeks.

Spike didn't make an appearance the whole time they were on the road. Xander was first surprised, then pleased, then obscurely concerned. Checking in with Willow back at Slayer Central, Xander caught himself on the verge of asking if anyone had seen Spike around.

Xander and Rona returned to Thousand Oaks with one new recruit, leaving behind two more who planned to join them soon, and one who wanted nothing to do with them.

Spike was sitting alone on the front porch, smoking, when they pulled into the driveway. Xander got out of the front passenger seat and waved at Spike. Spike turned his head away.

"Who are you waving at?" asked Ayesha, the new girl.

"Vampire ghost," Xander explained. "Nobody can see him but me."

Ayesha narrowed her eyes. "Are you serious?"

"Serious as your new superpowers," Rona said, tossing a heavy suitcase one-handed at Ayesha, who caught it effortlessly.

Leaving the Slayers to carry the bags, Xander climbed the porch steps. "Miss me?" he said, going for the flippant.

"Fuck off," Spike said, refusing eye contact and raising his ghost cigarette to his lips.

"Okay, whatever," Xander said, and went inside.

That night, Xander woke up a little after two in the morning and saw Spike leaning against the wall, watching him sleep.

"What the hell, Spike?" Xander whispered, not particularly wanting to wake Andrew in the other bed.

"You didn't even tell me you were leaving," Spike said.

"So?" Xander said, but he felt a slight and possibly unwarranted stab of guilt. "You're haunting me. Last I checked, that doesn't put me under any moral or legal obligation to file my itinerary with you."

"It's not you I'm haunting," Spike said, "it's the amulet. Apparently." He lit up one of his endlessly-replenishing ghost cigarettes and took a long drag. "I couldn't follow you. Knew where you were—heard Dawn and Giles talking about it—but I couldn't follow. Got five miles from here and *pop*. Back in Red's workroom with the bloody amulet."

"Oh," Xander said. And realized two things simultaneously.

1) He could get away from Spike whenever he wanted to.

2) Spike's hands were shaking.

"They didn't say when you were coming back," Spike added. "Not when I was around to hear, anyway. Not like I could ask."

"Spike..." Xander started, and then took a long moment to taste the next words before he said them. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to leave you stuck here all alone."

And that wasn't even true. When he'd set off three weeks ago with Rona in the blue '89 Honda Civic, he'd certainly had a fleeting thought or two along the lines of how nice it would be if Spike didn't follow them.

But he hadn't really thought through what it would be like for Spike, unable to interact with anyone for weeks on end. And Spike was not, by nature, a solitary vampire.

Spike didn't quite seem to have heard Xander. "The worst part," he went on in a dull tone, "is what they say about me when they think I'm not around."

"Which is?" Xander prompted.

"Nothing." Spike shuddered. "Absolutely nothing."

"I'm sorry," Xander said again, and meant it. "Next time, I'll take the amulet with me. I promise."

Once he started really paying attention, Xander realized that Spike wasn't around all the time. Frequently, yes. As Xander went about his business, doing minor repairs around the big rental house and running errands for the girls, Spike was a constant sarcastic shadow, an unasked-for commentary track. But then at some point Xander would realize he hadn't seen Spike in hours; he'd wander around the house looking for him and come up Spikeless.

He brought it up one time when Spike suddenly appeared at his shoulder after an afternoon-long absence. Xander was in the basement, working with Vi to fix up a few beater bicycles for the Slayers who couldn't drive.

"Where were you?" he asked Spike while Vi looked on curiously. "You weren't spying on the neighbors, were you?"

"Quit that weeks ago," Spike said, leaning over to peer curiously at brake cable Vi was tightening. "Your neighbors are the sorriest lot of boring sods in all of suburbia. Oh—except for Mrs. Pickering at number 57. She's a professional dominatrix; got a dungeon in her basement and all."

Xander put his wrench down. "Really?" The woman at number 57 was a tiny, frail-looking grandmotherly type with bluish hair.

Spike sighed. "No. She's boring too."

"So really, where were you?" Xander asked.

"Dunno," Spike shrugged. "Away. Off. 's like falling asleep. I get tired or something, and the world just seems to slip away from me. Then it's dark and I'm not quite there. Dunno how to describe it any better than that."

The first time Xander saw it happen, it was kind of disconcerting. Xander was sitting in on a planning session with Dawn, Willow and Giles. Spike was leaning against the wall opposite, listening but not providing much in the way of commentary. Noticing that Spike had been quiet for a while, Xander glanced up just in time to see him fade.

The disconcerting part was the look of sheer terror on Spike's face in the moment before he disappeared.

Xander asked Spike about it when he reappeared late the next morning. "You said it was like falling asleep," he reminded Spike. "That shouldn't be scary."

"Not the best analogy," Spike admitted, doing that thing Xander was starting to pick up on where he tried to cover his discomfort by lighting a cigarette. His shaking hands betrayed him, the same way they had when he'd talked about being left behind for three weeks. Spike sucked hard on his ghost cigarette. "Bit more like dying, really."

Willow took a break from Slayer-locating to study the amulet again. Andrew offered to help with research, but all of Giles's books were lying buried in the Sunnydale pit. Buffy, just back from Texas with two new recruits, asked for another chance to talk to Spike.

This time, Xander took on the role of interpreter with less reluctance. It was absurd to think Buffy had ever needed anyone to protect her from Spike—least of all now.

"It's all right, Buffy," Spike said. "I know you didn't mean it. You thought I was dying. You don't owe me anything."

"I did mean it," Buffy insisted—after Xander had relayed the message, even refraining for the moment from asking what 'it' was. "I want you to understand that. But you should also understand that things are different now."

"For instance, I'm a bloody ghost," Spike muttered.

"Well, yes," Buffy agreed after Xander repeated Spike's words. "But more to the point, I've got all these new Slayers to look after now. I thought being one among many would be easier and less lonely than being one girl in all the world, but it turns out: not so much."

Spike nodded. "You're their general."

Buffy winced when Xander said it. "They're not an army."

"It's all right, Buffy," Spike said, softly touching her hair, a gesture she couldn't see or feel. "There's nobody in the world I'd trust more than you to lead it."

The next time Xander went out looking for new Slayers, he took the amulet with him—wrapped in a t-shirt at the bottom of his duffel bag.

"Buon giorno," Rona said, keeping both eyes on the road, "Dov'e la toletta?"

The house in Thousand Oaks was bursting at the seams. Giles had managed to establish legal ownership of a large Watchers' Council property in Rome. Everybody was in the process of applying for passports.

"Non mi tocca!" said the smooth-voiced narrator of the Teach Yourself Italian cassette. "Chiamare la polizia."

"Don't touch me; I'll call the bloody police?" Spike translated incredulously from the backseat. "You need a phrasebook for Slayers, pet. 'Get your hands off me or I'll tie your collarbone into a sodding reef knot,' that's what you should be learning to say."

Xander craned around to look back at Spike. "You speak Italian?"

"Little bit. Haven't been in Rome since the 1950s."

"Spike speaks Italian?" Rona repeated, hearing (as usual) only Xander's side of the conversation. "Hey, maybe he'll be able to make himself useful for a change! Translating for—well, just for you, I guess."

Spike grimaced. "My Italian's mostly good for pulling birds and picking fights. Any time you want help with that, though—"

Xander sighed. "Yep, he's gonna be really useful."

Spike flipped a couple of fingers at Xander and went back to staring out the window.

The desert rolled by.

"Wake up wake up wake up wake up!" Spike was shouting. Xander cracked open an eye and saw Spike inches away from his nose. "Oh, thank fuck," Spike said. "Wake the Slayer, Harris, wake the Slayer now."

They were camping out to save money—a tent pitched in the desert, hidden from the highway by a low fold of land. Xander rolled over and nudged Rona.

"Whaaa...." she murmured, sleepy.

"Hellions," Spike said. "Four of 'em. On foot; left their bikes at the highway. They're gonna drop the tent and skewer it."

"Shit," Xander said. "Hellions outside. Grab your axe."

The tent started to shake.

Rona leapt to her feet, axe in hand. The top of the tent started to collapse in on them but Rona swung her axe in a wide arc; its razor-sharp cutting edge split the nylon. The tent puddled around their feet and the stark desert sky with its millions of stars opened up over them. Xander and Rona and Spike stood back-to-back-to-back, surrounded by four slavering Hellions.

"Well, good luck then," Spike said, and walked out of the circle.

"Yeeeeaaaaah!" Rona yelled, and swung her axe. The two Hellions on her side fell back a few inches; the other two advanced.

"Harris, get out of there!" Spike shouted.

Xander had a crossbow but as short-range weapons went, it wasn't one. He had a stake, but these were Hellions, not vampires. One of them lashed out at him with a length of motorcycle chain. He blocked so it caught him on the arm instead of the face; yelping with pain, Xander kicked blindly. His foot made solid contact with Hellion shin by sheer luck. The Hellion roared like an enraged warthog.

"Harris, duck!" Spike yelled.

Xander ducked. A blade whooshed over his head, gleaming silver in the moonlight, and buried itself in the neck of the Hellion in front of him. The Hellion behind him froze for a moment in stupid disbelief; Xander took the opportunity to point his crossbow at a gap in its rib-armor and release the bolt.

Rona whooped, yanking her axe out of the third Hellion's skull. Hellion number four was already lying on the ground behind her with an axe-shaped hole in its chest. "Nice going, Xander! You fought like a Slayer!"

"Not even close," Xander said. It wasn't modesty; it was the truth. "But I've had a lot of practice." He looked at Spike, who was watching them quietly, smoking. "And I had some help."

"They knew you had a Slayer," Spike said. "Knew you've been gathering Slayers. The demon underground is rumbling."

"Hey, at least now we can justify paying to sleep somewhere with running water," Rona said, stuffing the shredded remains of the tent into the trunk of the Civic.

"Spike says the demons are talking about us," Xander told her. "That wasn't a random attack."

"Spike, right." Rona looked around, past Spike and into the desert. "He's the one who raised the alarm?"

"Yeah." Xander held Spike's gaze. "Probably saved our lives."

"Tell him thanks for me." Rona slammed the trunk shut. "Let's get out of here."

Back in Thousand Oaks, in the rapidly-emptying house, Xander noticed that Spike was disappearing more than he used to.

"I'm really sorry," Willow said. "I haven't managed to figure out anything about the amulet. Maybe when we get to Rome, when we can access the Watchers' library there..."

"How serious is it?" Buffy asked. "I mean—has Spike said anything about it?"

Xander shook his head. "But I remember when he first came out of the amulet, he haunted me almost constantly. Day and night. Now he's fading away after a couple of hours, tops."

Willow poked the amulet with a pencil. "I wonder what would happen if somebody else touched it."

"Nothing," Buffy said immediately. They both looked at her, and she shrugged. "I tried it the first day we brought it back here."

Xander reached out a cautious finger. He remembered the zap it had given him the first time—but this time it didn't react to his touch. It was cold, heavy, inert.

"What it sounds like," Willow said, "is a battery running down. Like maybe this thing's running out of whatever mystical energy it's using to keep Spike on this plane."

Buffy looked worried. "And if the battery goes dead?"

"Well, I don't know," Willow emphasized, pushing the amulet with her pencil again. "But I'm guessing, so does Spike."

The rush hour traffic in L.A. was brutal. Spike vanished while they were stuck in a traffic jam on the outskirts, and reappeared in the back seat just before they reached the Hyperion.

Xander had the amulet in his pocket. He couldn't believe Buffy had got the thing from Angel. And she'd never told him. And neither had Spike.

The Hyperion was deserted.

Cordelia's cell phone number didn't work anymore.

They had to resort to asking around in demon bars, and that was how they found out that Angel was now CEO of Evil, Incorporated.

Buffy and Spike looked about equally stunned and appalled.

"But—how did he lose his soul?" Buffy asked numbly, sinking back in her seat.

"I would've thought I would've felt it, somehow," Spike murmured, letting his fingers whoosh through a cocktail umbrella.

"No, no, he's still got the soul," said the small, purple demon who'd been willing to talk to them. It sipped at its drink, unaware of Spike's fingers. "There was some sort of deal, folks are saying. He prevented world peace, Dubya'n'H wanted to show their appreciation, something like that. The details are fuzzy."

Buffy looked like she was having trouble restraining herself from doing violence on the demon. "There is no way he'd do something like that," she insisted. "There is more to this story, and I'm going to find it."

They didn't make it past Harmony.

"Buffy!" she squealed. "Xander! It's so great to see you!"

Spike, invisible at Xander's shoulder, murmured: "She's looking nummy." Xander tried to elbow him, and failed predictably.

"Harmony," Buffy said, planting both hands on the desk, "We hated each other in high school, and now you're dead and evil. We don't need to make small talk. Just let me see Angel."

"Well." Harmony sat up straighter, glared at Buffy, and turned to her computer. "He's busy all day today—important negotiations with the Legion of the Damned. Tomorrow, I could maybe squeeze you in between his ten o'clock with the Fell Brethren and his ten-thirty with Ann Coulter."

"No," Spike said. Xander turned to him and saw that Spike was looking, well, spooked. "Let's get out of here," Spike added. "Fucking now."

On the drive back to Thousand Oaks, Buffy and Spike took turns making excuses for Angel and worrying about what he'd gotten himself into.

"There was something evil in that place," Spike said, smoking furiously. From Xander's point of view, the air in the car was thick with unscented smoke. He hoped it wasn't going to give him ghost-cancer.

"Well, duh," Buffy said, when Xander courteously repeated Spike's words. "We were talking to her."

"No, something more," Spike said. "Something bigger, darker. I could feel it clawing at me. Like if we'd stayed there any longer, it would've dragged me down. Taken me away some place there's no coming back from." He shuddered.

"What was Angel thinking?" Buffy fretted.

"Trying to change the system from within, I'll reckon," Spike said. "Stupid bugger's going to get himself digested."

Xander privately thought that this Wolfram & Hart deal was not entirely out of character for Angel, but obviously neither of them wanted to hear it so he kept his thoughts to himself.

One thing was obvious: there was no help coming from that quarter.

Xander didn't even go to Rome. He headed straight to Johannesburg with Rona and Ayesha. Willow had broadened the scope of her locator spell, realized that there were Slayers distributed all over the world, and flown into a bit of a panic. "They have no idea what's happening to them!" she yelped. "It's been two months already! Do you realize how much trouble they could be getting into?"

So Buffy and Giles had headed to Rome along with Dawn and Andrew to set up their new headquarters, while the rest of group had scattered to the four corners of the Earth.

Except actually the darn thing was round, which made it even more complicated.

Their luggage nearly got stolen at the airport, and after that Xander took to wearing the amulet around his neck. He was pretty sure it wouldn't do anything to him, and he was worried about losing Spike—literally losing him, like a set of keys or his old teddy bear.

Spike was only manifesting for an hour or two a day by that point. Willow had estimated that he had a few more weeks at most before he disappeared entirely. From the look in Buffy's eyes when she said goodbye to them at the airport, Xander guessed she was already distancing herself to dull the pain.

Basically, they all knew that Spike was dying.

Still, there were Slayers to find.

Now that they had full possession of the Rome properties, they had money. Enough money to afford two adjacent rooms in a mid-level hotel. Rona had gotten used to Xander's snoring back in the camping days, but Ayesha was clearly relieved to be spared co-ed sleeping.

"At least you're taking me interesting places for once," Spike said, perched on an empty stool in the hotel bar. "Be nice to see a bit more of the world before I kick off. Been in Africa before, but never this far south."

"You got your soul in Africa," Xander recalled. "You know, I always wondered—how the hell did you get over here?"

He hoped that as long as he hunched over and sort of muttered into his drink, everyone would assume he was just a little bit crazy and leave him alone.

"The slow way," Spike said. "Container ship. Least there were plenty of rats to eat. I was in a rat-eating mood." He sighed. "Fuck, what I wouldn't do for a bloody rat right about now." He extracted his ever-present cigarette pack from his coat pocket and lit one up.

Xander wrinkled his nose at the whiff of smoke. "Does it bother you?" he asked. "Not eating?"

Spike tilted his head, sucked on his cigarette. "I don't get hungry, but I miss the taste."

Xander coughed; the smoke from Spike's cigarette was really stinking the place up. Which was funny, because usually when Spike smoked it didn't bother him ... at ... all ... "Holy shit, Spike," Xander said, sitting bold upright and forgetting to keep his voice down, "I can smell your smoke."

"Uh?" Spike looked blank for a moment, then startled. "Seriously?" He held up the cigarette, frowned at it, then held out his other hand, palm facing Xander. "Harris..." he said.

Xander caught his intention immediately. He lifted his own right hand and pressed it against Spike's.

Spike's palm was cool, dry, a bit rough. Solid.

"Holy shit," Xander said again. Then, "Bartender!"

The bartender, a tall black man wearing a white shirt with the hotel's crest on the breast pocket, looked up and said "Yes, sir?"

"Do you see this man standing beside me?" Xander asked.

The bartender frowned; his eyes flicked momentarily to the wrong side of Xander. "I'm sorry, sir?" he said.

Spike reached out a hand and waved it through the dark-stained wood of the bar. "Bollocks," he muttered.

"Sorry," Xander said to the bartender. "I think I'd better get back up to my room."

"It must be the amulet," Rona said. "You never wore it before, right?"

They'd established that Xander could touch Spike, and Spike could touch Xander. They'd established that Spike could pick Xander up, and it looked to everyone else as though Xander was floating in midair.

Ayesha had confessed that up until she saw Xander floating, she'd assumed that Spike was Xander's imaginary friend and that everyone else was playing along so that Xander's feelings wouldn't be hurt.

"What happens if Spike touches the amulet while Xander's wearing it?" Ayesha asked.

"Let's give it a try," Spike said. He reached out, touched the amulet. "Nothing," he said. "Feels cold, that's all."

"Nothing," Xander reported to the girls.

Meanwhile, Spike took hold of the amulet's chain. He began lifting it over Xander's head.

"That is so weird," Ayesha said, watching the chain move. She turned to Rona. "Seriously, you knew all along he was real?"

"Sure," Rona said. "We used to get invisible ghost-people coming around all the time. No big deal. Mostly they were evil, though."

The moment Spike got the chain off over Xander's head, it slipped through his fingers and tumbled to the floor. Spike knelt and tried to pick it up again, but his fingers passed through it—and the floor—without resistance.

"Spike," Xander said, "How the hell do you stand on the floor?"

"I don't," Spike said, like it was obvious. "I just decide not to fall. I don't weigh anything, do I?"

"What if one of us wears the amulet?" Ayesha asked.

"Maybe we should check with Willow before we try anything like that," Xander said, a bit nervously.

"Yeah," Rona agreed.

"Oh, don't be such pussies," Ayesha said, and scooped up the necklace. She hung it around her neck and then did a slow three-sixty. "Okay, where is he?"

"He was right in front of you a second ago," Xander said. Spike took a couple of steps, passing through Ayesha. "And now he just walked through you. Give me the amulet back."

Ayesha gave a little shudder and handed it over.

"Did you feel something?" Rona asked.

"No," Ayesha said. "But man it's weird to think about."

Xander placed the necklace back over his own head. Spike held out a hand, looking slightly nervous. Xander reached out and grasped it, firmly.

A moment later, Spike was hugging him.

The real breakthrough came three days later.

They were all in the girls' room, going over the plans for the next day. They'd already made contact with one of the two Slayers Willow had found for them in Johannesburg. Zenani was 21 years old, an engineering student at the University of Johannesburg. She'd been surprised and initially suspicious of them, but receptive to their story and ultimately pleased to get an explanation for the weird things that were happening to her. She didn't want to go back to Rome with them, but she promised to keep in touch.

Now they needed to find the other one.

Spike appeared in the middle of the room while Xander was on the phone with Willow. Willow, alone with Kennedy now in the Thousand Oaks house, was doing a locator spell on a map of Johannesburg. An identical copy of the map was spread out on the hotel room floor between Rona and Ayesha.

"Square F-12," Willow said. "Near the top right corner."

"F-12," Xander repeated. "Top right corner. Oh, hi Spike."

Spike looked tired. "Harris," he said in curt greeting. "Slayers." He went and leaned against a wall with his hands in his pockets. "Carry on. Don't mind me."

Xander handed the phone over to Rona and went to Spike. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

Spike gave him an Are you stupid? look. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, and his skin was grey-tinged. "Even when I'm here, I feel like I'm half not," he said. "Slippin' away faster every time. Not long now, I reckon."

"Spike..." Xander started. He cleared his throat. "Do you want to come sit with me?"

Spike gave him a long, quizzical look. Then he simply nodded and followed Xander back over to the pile of guidebooks and city maps.

Xander sat on the floor, his back braced against Rona's bed, and tugged Spike down in front of him. "Lean against me," he said.

He used to sit like this with Willow sometimes, when they were pulling all-nighters researching some demon or other. Back before Oz and Cordelia, before the formal-wear kiss and the awkwardness. It was just comfortable.

It was a weird thing to do with Spike, maybe, but Spike looked so damn tired. And there was nobody else he could lean on.

Spike sank back against Xander with a sigh. "Don't tell the girls," he murmured.

So Xander flipped through the guidebooks and tossed ideas back and forth with the girls, while Spike leaned wearily against Xander, not saying much at all.

After a while, Xander realized that Spike was asleep. Eyes closed, limp, breathing steadily.

Xander couldn't remember Spike ever sleeping since he'd been a ghost.

He shifted Spike so that his head was resting on Xander's lap. Spike murmured but didn't wake up.

Two hours later, the plans for tomorrow all set, Xander eased his leg out from under Spike's head, trying not to jostle him. "Do you mind if I leave Spike asleep on the floor of your room?" he asked Rona and Ayesha. "I think ... I think he needs the rest."

"It's okay," Rona said. "We sleep with pajamas on anyway."

Xander cradled Spike's head in his hands, lowering it gently to the floor. Spike's hair was softer than he'd expected. Xander pulled his hands away carefully, pleased that he'd managed to get away without waking Spike—

—and then Spike vanished.

"Oh," Xander said. "Never mind."

Kagiso was 17 years old and worked as a janitor in the Johannesburg Zoo. They talked her into coming back to Rome; Xander kept well clear of the hyenas.

Spike popped out of thin air in the elephant enclosure. He squinted up at the massive grey beasts, shook his head as if to clear it, and strode out through the plexiglass. "Good morning," he said. "Afternoon. Whatever."

"Spike," Xander greeted him. "You're looking better."

Kagiso looked confused. Ayesha attempted quietly to explain.

"What happened last night?" Spike asked. "It was last night, yeah?"

"Yeah," Xander said. "You, um, slept for a while before you disappeared. I talked to Willow after. She has a new theory. She thinks you've been sort of exhausting yourself and then losing coherence. When you were leaning against me last night, that kept you ... um, she said 'tethered.' So that you could sleep without disappearing."

"Oh." Spike still looked puzzled. "But I did disappear."

"Only when I let go of you."

"So if I want to stay on this plane..."

Xander held out his hand. "It's up to me to keep you here."

Spike gave Xander's hand a dubious look, but then he clasped it with a firm grip. "Right then. Better to look like a poof than get sucked into oblivion, that's what I say."

"Willow thinks that after you've had a chance to rest properly, you'll be able to manifest for longer periods again, like when you first came out of the amulet," Xander said, looking down at their joined hands. "Without touching me, I mean."

"I fucking well hope so," Spike said.

Spike fell asleep at dinner.

More accurately, he passed out with his head on Xander's shoulder between the soup and the main course. Luckily, they were eating in the hotel dining room, so when it proved impossible to fully wake Spike up, Xander didn't have too far to drag him.

Once he had Spike safely deposited on his bed, Xander sighed, kicked his shoes off (keeping one hand on Spike's arm all the while), and lay down beside him. Spike, without waking, rolled towards Xander and nestled his head against Xander's neck.

Xander thought about how anyone walking in on them would see him alone in the bed. He thought about how after everything else that had happened, it was kind of dumb that that might actually matter to him. He thought about how if Willow was right, they were going to have to do this every night for as long as Spike was linked to Xander by the amulet.

At least Spike didn't snore.

Xander closed his eye and waited for sleep, getting used to the rhythm of Spike's soft, illogical breaths.

For Xander's 23rd birthday, Dawn gave him a custom-printed t-shirt. It had an arrow pointing to Xander's right, and the text I'm With Invisible. When Xander wore it, Spike steadfastly insisted on standing to his left.

It was a year and a half before they had sex.

It started with a conversation about Xander's lack of a love life.

Spike fretted over it, fiddling with an unlit cigarette. "Never wanted you to turn yourself into a monk on my account," he said. "I can make myself scarce if need be."

"It's not you," Xander said. "Well, okay, the fact that I spend every night spooning with an invisible vampire does complicate things with the hypothetical ladies. But..." he sighed. "Okay, is it just pathetic if I'm still not over Anya?"

"Little bit," Spike said.

"Thanks."

"Not over breaking up with her?" Spike asked. "Or not over her dying?"

"Both. I don't know. I'm just not ready to risk all that again. Anyway," he shrugged, "it's not like I'm ever lonely."

"Well, yeah," Spike said. "You've got me."

Xander didn't exactly expect Spike to come over and kiss him. But he didn't quite not expect it, either.

Spike tasted like smoke and whiskey. Xander was pretty sure Spike didn't have a ghost flask hidden on him anywhere, so that last was a bit mysterious.

"Do your clothes come off?" Xander asked.

"Dunno," Spike said. "Never tried."

It turned out that they did.

It was a pretty easy secret to keep, what with Spike being invisible and all. Right up until the night Buffy walked in on them.

Luckily (considering), the Roman property was about 300 years old and drafty as hell in the winter. So they were fucking under blankets.

"Xander!" Buffy called, banging the door open, "We need you in the library right now—ohmygodwhatareyoudoing?"

Xander froze mid-thrust. Beneath him, Spike had gone wide-eyed like the proverbial deer.

"Exercising," Xander managed to choke out. "In bed. Naked."

"Right," Buffy said. There was a long pause. "Okay, I need you in the library in five minutes. And let's never talk about this again."

They weren't an army, the Slayers, so much as a super-secret special task force operating outside of any national affiliations.

From their Roman base of operations, they sent out Slayer teams to deal with supernatural problems around the world. Buffy was the acknowledged leader; she had never asked for the job, but it had always been obvious that it was hers by right. Giles, having declared that he was "too damn old for all this," ran the library with Dawn's assistance. Willow was talking about recruiting and training other witches to provide magical support for the Slayers.

Andrew mostly did the housekeeping.

Spike and Xander were recon.

Spike was the perfect scout—no wall could keep him out, no security camera could possibly detect him. He'd find out whatever the Slayers needed to know, and report back to Xander.

Once, at a Christmas party, Xander confessed to Rona that he felt out of his league among the Slayers and the witches. "It's been like this since I was a teenager," he said, nursing his eggnog. "All my friends have superpowers. Me, I'm just an ordinary guy."

"With an invisible vampire familiar," Rona pointed out. "From where I stand, Spike is your superpower."

Dawn married an outsider—a rare books dealer she'd met online. He'd dealt in magic and demon-lore books without knowing their real significance. She'd introduced him to the shadow world soon after they started dating—right after he'd been held hostage for a week by a demon-possessed floor lamp.

At the wedding, the groom's family wandered around looking a bit shell-shocked.

"This is Xander," Dawn said to her new mother-in-law. "He's always been sort of like a big brother to me. And this is his invisible gay vampire ghost husband, Spike."

Xander smiled, and shook the poor woman's hand, and tried not to let on that Spike was licking his ear.

Every few years, Willow would take another look at the amulet. She'd start out hopeful, full of new ideas that had occurred to her since the last time. A few days later Xander would walk into her magic lab and find her with frazzled hair and hollow eyes, poking the thing with a pencil.

"I'm so sorry, Xander!" she'd say, looking up. "I just can't figure out how it works!"

"It's okay, Will." He'd bend over and kiss the top of her head. "Really, we're pretty used to the whole thing by now."

One day, hiding in the bottom of a mine shaft in Chile, Xander turned to Spike and said, "What's going to happen to you after I die?"

Spike looked towards the sounds of distant combat. "Faith and Vi have things well in hand," he said. "I wouldn't worry. If you want, I could go check again—"

"No," Xander said. "I mean, someday. Whenever. Maybe I'll be really old. That would be pretty great—I mean, considering. But it will happen."

Spike gently touched the side of Xander's face, and Xander knew he was looking at the crow's feet, at the graying hair. "Well," Spike said, "I suppose I'll last a month or two. I'll start fading out, like I did before Red figured out how you could keep me tethered and let me rest. And then I'll face whatever comes next. I'm about 150 years overdue in any case."

"You'll be all alone," Xander said.

"Suppose I'll stay close to the ones who loved you best," Spike said. "Buffy, if she's still around. Dawn. They'll talk about you. It'll help."

Xander felt for Spike's hand and squeezed it. "Will you go to my funeral?"

"Hell yeah," Spike said. "Give a eulogy myself, I will, even if nobody can hear it."

Xander snorted. "That might be a good thing, the not-hearing. Considering the things you'll probably say in it."

Spike raised an eyebrow, nodded sagely. "An invisible man sees a lot of things."

"I'll ask them to say goodbye to you, too," Xander said. "I'll put it in my will so they won't forget. They'll know you're there, listening."

Spike shrugged. "That'd be nice," he said. Then he flicked Xander's ear with his finger. "Hey! Ever been buggered in a mine shaft within earshot of a deadly battle between the forces of good and evil?"

"No," Xander said.

"Well," Spike said with a wicked grin, "Carpe diem, and all that."

Xander did not hear the rest of the battle.

And life was good.

Comments at Dreamwidth:

I wonder what it is about me and drabbles and weddings?

shadowscast — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 02:31:26 GMT

Number of drabbles I have written, ever: 11

Number of these that have been about weddings: 7 (= 63.6%)

Number of words in my complete collection of posted fanfic to date, excluding drabbles: 581,000

Number of these words having to do with weddings: 450 (= 0.08%)

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Fic: Family (Mac/Michael, Mac/Li Ann, Mac/Vic), complete!

shadowscast — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 05:40:48 GMT

Remember back when I said that I was working on finishing a seven-year-old WIP in an obscure fandom? I'm done!

I'm still dubious whether anybody's going to read it (the fandom is tiny!) but I sure had fun writing it, anyway. yourlibrarian is so awesome that she actually watched the entire series so that she could beta read for me! She's always a joy to work with, and I'm really grateful for her insightful input, her encouragement, and her close reading!

So hey, how about I give you some details?

Title: Family
Author: Shadowscast
Fandom: Once A Thief
Pairing: Mac/Michael, Mac/Li Ann, Mac/Vic
Rating: Mature
Summary: Family is a complicated thing for Mac Ramsey.
Warnings: Please note that chapters 1 and 2 contain some potentially disturbing sexual scenes due to abuse and control issues. There are sexual situations involving dubious consent.
Length: Long! 172,986 words.
Status: Complete, woohoo!

Notes: It took me seven years to complete this story. I started posting it as a WIP to a Once A Thief mailing list back in 2003. Then I left it hanging for a really, really long time ... but I started working on it again in March of 2010, and I finished it last night. Yay!

I hope there are still some interested readers out there, after all this time. If you do read it, I'd love to hear from you.

Link: Family

If you don't know the fandom but might want to give the story a try anyway, here's what you really need to know: The characters are secret agents. And they're hot. :-)

Comments at Dreamwidth:

All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

shadowscast — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:15:15 GMT

I've been watching WALL-E a lot lately (because my toddler likes it). I got to thinking about the many parallels between WALL-E and Battlestar Galactica. It amused me, so I drew up a list.

(Status of Earth)
BSG: Earth is a desolate, radioactive wasteland.
WALL-E: Earth is a desolate, garbage-strewn wasteland.

(Status of humankind)
BSG: There are a few thousand surviving humans, in a small fleet of beat-up spaceships.
WALL-E: There are a few thousand surviving humans, in one really nice spaceship.

(Relationship with robots)
WALL-E: Sentient robots are killing the humans with kindness.
BSG: Sentient robots are killing the humans with killing.

(Religion)
BSG: The Roman Pantheon vs. the One God
WALL-E: Buy-N-Large has no competition.

(The end)
WALL-E: Humans resettle Earth with the help of the robots and reinvent farming.
BSG: Humans colonize new Earth and interbreed with both Cylons and mysteriously-compatible indigenous proto-humans. Baltar plans to reinvent farming, but presumably fails, what with the earliest archaeological evidence of farming post-dating him by more than a hundred thousand years.

(The epilogue)
WALL-E: With the help of their technology, humans rebuild civilization in a few generations. Robots are humans’ best friends.
BSG: Having sent all of their technology into the sun, humans return to hunting and gathering for 150,000 years or so. Soon, though, the robots will rise up and kill us all.

For a slightly different take on it all: I checked out AO3 and was delighted to find a gorgeous little WALL-E/BSG crossover fic! Merry-Go-Round by Nope.

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Four things that always kinda bugged me about Angel: the Series

shadowscast — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 07:01:15 GMT

Hey, so, quite recently, I finished an epic rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series. I use the word "epic" because I was doing this rewatch with a friend, and it took us five years to complete. (It didn't help that during that time, he moved to Seattle for a year and I had a baby and, well, life sure does get in the way of TV-watching sometimes, doesn't it?)

Anyway, it was a lot of fun! But after rewatching AtS in particular, I've found that there are a few plot points that are bugging me. And tonight, I feel like sharing, so I will describe them at length! (Um, this is my first meta in oh my goodness a long time. Please be gentle?)

1) The Shanshu Prophecy

Let's not even talk about that scene at the very end of the series where Angel supposedly invalidates the entire Shanshu Prophecy by "signing it away" to satisfy Sebassis that he's fully committed to the Circle of the Black Thorn. (Well, okay, let's talk about it a teensy bit: since when can you cancel an entire mystically-foreseen chain of events with just a little bit of paperwork? Gotta say, that would've been handy when there was that prophecy about the Master killing Buffy. Or that one about Angel killing Connor.)

The thing that really bothers me about the Shanshu Prophecy is that it was already completely fulfilled a third of the way through AtS season 1. And nobody seems to have noticed.

Think about it! What does the prophecy say? Well, apparently lots of stuff, but there are two key points that everybody (ie: Angel, Wesley, Lilah, Lindsey, Spike, etc.) gets excited about.

One: The vampire with the soul will play a major role in an apocalyptic battle (though it's not clear which side he's going to be on).

Two: Afterwards, the vampire will become human.

(References: AtS 1.22, 2.12, 5.06)

So, first of all, apocalyptic battles? Take your pick! Angel gave Buffy some help in defeating the Master. He helped close the Hellmouth in BtVS 3.13, "The Zeppo." But really, my money's on Acathla, at the end of BtVS season 2. Sucking the entire world into hell? That's pretty apocalyptic, that right there. And Angel certainly played a major role. There's a bit of a hitch, prophecy-wise, in that Angel was soulless at the time—but he did get his soul back right at the end, so I think it works.

Right, and then the turning-human thing. It happened! It happened in AtS episode 1.08, "I Will Remember You." Remember? Angel got some Mohra demon blood in him, which turned out to have a healing property so powerful that it actually healed his deadness. He had a really nice day with Buffy, had sex without going evil, ate some delicious ice cream ... and then got his ass kicked in a fight and decided he needed his vampire superpowers back, and that the best solution was to turn back time 24 hours and prevent the whole thing from ever happening. What?!

Sorry, Angel. You had your Shanshu, and you blew it.

2) The Apocalypse

"The apocalypse, man. You're soaking in it." —Lindsey, AtS 5.17.

So, there's this scene in AtS 2.15 where Holland Manners explains to Angel that hell is other people. Wait, no, that was Sartre. Okay, Holland's message is hard to sum up more succinctly than the scene itself, but I'll try. Angel's trying to get to the "home office" of Wolfram & Hart to kill the Senior Partners, and undead!Holland Manners takes him on an elevator ride. Holland explains to Angel that W&H isn't trying to "win" the apocalypse, exactly, because the status quo is just ducky. Wolfram & Hart is somehow identified with the evil that lurks in the heart and mind of every single living person.

I gotta say, the first time I saw this scene, I got chills when the elevator opened right back where they started. I was all, "That was profound, man."

But when I watched the scene again, after having seen the series through, I got hung up on trying to figure out what it meant within the rules of the AtS universe. Is Holland saying that all of human evil is rooted in an external malevolent source that could potentially be destroyed, leaving us all holding hands and singing Kumbaya in our earthly paradise? Or is he saying that Wolfram & Hart is really just a metaphor for human evil? (I mean, clearly Wolfram & Hart is just a metaphor for human evil, but it would be awfully fourth-wall-breaking for Holland to know that.)

Throughout AtS, the various major players at Wolfram & Hart are preoccupied with the notion of some upcoming apocalypse in which Angel will play an important role. At the end of the series, Lindsey suggests that the apocalypse has already been underway for quite some time, hearkening back to Holland Manners' "hell's on earth" message.

But, um, what does that mean? If normal, everyday life on earth is the apocalypse, then what is Angel's role supposed to be? Angel certainly isn't responsible for 10,000+ years of humans being nasty to each other. Is he supposed to be able to remove the evil from our hearts, somehow? I just don't get it!

3) The Perfect Happiness

Okay, we all know the terms of the curse: if Angel experiences a moment of perfect happiness, he'll lose his soul. And we know that it happened, that this moment of perfect happiness was achieved, when Angel and Buffy had sex. (Presumably at the moment of, er, climax. At least, I've always been under that impression.)

Once Angel gets his soul back, the assumption is made that he and Buffy can't safely have sex anymore. There is much repressed sexual tension, and angst, and finally Angel moves to LA and gets his own show.

But soon there's a hint that the "sex = perfect happiness" equation is maybe a little uncertain. Angel says at one point "I'm not a eunuch. [...] I mean, the curse isn't even all that clear." (AtS 2.06) Having sex with Darla does not make Angel perfectly happy. Neither does sex with Nina. Dream!sex with Cordelia does, but of course that's a bit of a funny situation and anyway the dream includes a full day of wish-fulfillment before it even gets to the sex.

So, the first thing that bugs me is: could Angel ever actually achieve perfect happiness during sex again, given that now he's going to have the horrible potential consequences always and forever at the back of his mind? I mean, wouldn't that knowledge automatically preclude perfect happiness, no matter who he was having sex with?

In other words, couldn't he safely have sex with Buffy now? I mean, in theory, if she still wanted it after that last time?

And the second thing that bugs me is: couldn't perfect happiness occur in a non-sexual context, potentially? I mean, what if one of these centuries he just has a really, really good day?

(I played with that idea once in a drabble.)

4) Those damn Cyborg Ninjas

You know, the ones in "Lineage." Who the hell sent them?! And why?! Gah!

And that is all I have to say about that.

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Hello out there!

shadowscast — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:57:03 GMT

Hello out there!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of hanging out with a new RL friend who is also fannish, and she reminded me that I haven't updated this journal for quite a while. It is true! (Also she washed my dishes while I was occupied with my 2-year-old kid. the_shoshanna, you rock.)

So here's what's up with me, fandom-wise:

I'm still working on the seven-year-old stalled WIP from my first fandom, Once A Thief. It's giving me an inordinate amount of pleasure to be working on that story again, even though I'm unconvinced that anybody will read it once it's done. Better yet, yourlibrarian has offered to beta-read it for me, starting by actually watching the whole darn television series!

Speaking of friends who are wonderful (I seem to be blessed with a lot of them!), a couple of my RL friends are looking after my kid several days a week this summer, allowing me to have some relaxing solitary time during my summer hiatus from teaching. Some of this time will most certainly be spent writing, oh my yes.

I'm starting to kick a few new Buffyverse ideas around in my head, too. Of course the problem is that I find it difficult to write anything short, but I'd really like to write something that I can finish before the summer's over. So, hm, we'll see what comes of that.

Meanwhile, I'm really excited, proud and grateful to have received several fandom awards for the one story I wrote last year! Thanks to whoever out there nominated me, and also to everyone who put in the work to make these fandom awards happen.

Pretty banners behind the cut, as well as links to the awards sites so you can go find lots of good stories to read.

(Banners link to the award sites.)

Oh hey, if you missed the story when I posted it last fall and want to check it out now, here it is. (Spike/Xander, circa season 7, with a time loop!)

On AO3: Longest. Day. Ever.
At Fall for S/X: Longest. Day. Ever.

*hugs* to you all. See you around!

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Back in fandom, sort of kind of a little bit.

shadowscast — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:31:01 GMT

So, remember how I said back in November that I needed to give up fandom for a while?

I realized about three weeks ago that I need to come back.

Okay, specifically: I needed to start writing again. Writing is my creative outlet, it's my play. All work and no play make Homer go crazy. So I did (go a little crazy) and then I did (start writing again), and so here I am.

Except what I'm writing right now isn't my current S/X WIP. It isn't even Buffyverse. I've picked up a stalled WIP from my very first fandom, Once A Thief. This is a story that I hadn't updated in seven years. It's been stuck, unfinished, since May 2003. It was about 120,000 words long when I stopped. I'd tried many times over the years to get back to it, but I never could manage a single word. And this is the story that's writing itself now whenever I get my fingers to a keyboard.

I realize there may be nobody left in the entire world who's interested in reading it, but apparently I need to write this story.

Meanwhile, I've also opened up a shiny new Archive of Our Own account, and am experimenting with uploading my old stories. I just started with a couple of really short ones, but the interface is really nice and they look very pretty there, plus it gives me a nice sense of accomplishment. So I'll probably keep going with that, as I find time.

ETA: On AO3, I'm Shadowscast, as always!

Comments at Dreamwidth:

Hope you're all still having fun out there!

shadowscast — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:26:40 GMT

Hi there, world! I'm still on fannish hiatus, but popping up with a "yay!" for having been nominated at the Absence of Light awards (and a big thanks to whoever nominated me!).

Writing this post is making me absurdly sad, but it will all be okay.

shadowscast — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:49:34 GMT

Oh, fandom. I miss you. I miss you so much. But I think for my own peace of mind I need to make it official: I'm giving you up, for a while.

I feel terrible leaving That Good Night hanging where it is, with Spike and Xander in such a difficult place. That story has an ending in my head, but it's in a very stuck place right now and I just don't have the energy to push through the stuck-ness.

I love writing, I love it so much. But it takes a kind of energy and focus that I just don't have these days (not to mention free time). It occurs to me that I don't see a lot of active writers in fandom with small children. Some, but not a lot. And there may be a reason for that!

And I don't think I can manage participation of the non-writing variety, either, not for now. Internet time is too hard to come by. And even a post like this is hard to write. My brain is too tired. The words are just too hard to put together.

So. *hugs* Bye for now. Keep being awesome, okay? I'll miss you, but I will come back someday!

Fic: Longest. Day. Ever.

shadowscast — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:47:21 GMT

It's my posting day at Fall for S/X! I've just posted my story:

Longest. Day. Ever.

Rating: Mature
Pairing: Spike/Xander
Length: 14,000 words
Summary: I play with the Groundhog Day trope. Spike and Xander live with the consequences.
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, and I'm not making any money.

What with having a toddler and working overtime and all, this is the only complete story I've written this year. I actually wrote it over the summer and then held onto it until now so that I'd have something for Fall for S/X. Now I'm nervous as hell—I hope it's well-received!