Chapter 12
Author's Notes:
A/N: Sorry for the teeny delay. And it really was teeny. Just trying to get you all antsy. *huggles*
I finally present you with what you’ve been waiting for…kinda in the sense that it’s one of the things I’ve noted most in reviews… ONE of the things...perhaps not the biggest thing, but one of the things nonetheless. *hides*
Thank you all so much. *squishes* And who knows…I might be moved to update again this weekend if given proper motivation.
In all seriousness, I love you guys. My endless thanks for your encouragement and enthusiasm.
Sunnydale, California, 1997
After a year and a half under Giles’s care, Buffy considered herself rather schooled in the many expressions of an overly-analytical Watcher. She could almost time how long he would be able to refrain from dropping his spectacles into a waiting handkerchief. The furrow of his brow always marked confusion over a teenager and-slash-or American colloquialism. The narrowing of his eyes was his way of telling her wordlessly that, yes, he did in fact think she’d lost her mind. And, of course, the at-times-comical blanking of his face meant an absolute loss of words.
Never had she expected to fall witness to the entire library of Giles’s expressions in one sitting. In one glance.
Buffy inhaled sharply and quickly averted her eyes. This was uncomfortable enough without her staring him down.
Even if the silence between them was deafening.
Finally he broke with a pointed clearing of his throat. “Do you…do you want to…say that again, perhaps?”
She shuffled uncomfortably. “Which part?”
“The ur…” The corners of his mouth tugged upwards, desperation straining his eyes. “The part that sounded…absurd?”
“I’m
not crazy.”
Giles nodded hard and took a step back. “Of course you’re not crazy. I just thought you…perhaps…I thought you…”
“You think—”
“I think you might be confused.”
“I’m not confused.” Buffy shuffled again and heaved a long sigh. “Really, I’m not. And I know how it sounds.”
“I don’t think you can, respectively.”
“No, I do.” A pause. “And maybe if I wasn’t absolutely certain that this is what happened…Giles, my memories are crystal clear. I might as well have been there yesterday.”
“Yes, well…” The Watcher exhaled, turning a quick corner around the library check-out counter to retrieve one of his many aged texts. “According to Xander, he remembers everything about his…persona’s past as well. Including the layout of the nearby military base, as well as how to put assorted weaponry together. I even took the liberty of looking up that Sergeant Nichols fellow he mentioned…the man exists, and he holds the rank—”
Buffy held up a hand, her temper growing short. If she didn’t watch out, she was going to lose what little patience she had left.
She didn’t know why no one was taking her at her word. While true, her story did have its gaping holes and its healthy dose of
say-what-now?, she was reasonably certain it wasn’t the strangest thing that had ever happened—especially in the world they lived in. A world crawling with night-time uglies, undead fiends, and creatures otherwise inclined to make the sort of deal she made with Paimon.
Creatures inclined to feed upon the devastation of others.
Buffy remembered so many things; she remembered how she felt making the deal. How she’d trembled while sealing her fate, while her blood poured over Paimon’s quill and the clouds above her head crashed together in a frenzy of foreboding. She hadn’t minded the price then—she hadn’t cared. At the time, it was merely the cost of doing business. Signing over a part of herself which she had come to view as a burden rather than a blessing. Signing over the part of herself which had sealed William’s fate.
The part of herself that, at the moment, still belonged to her.
Paimon hadn’t shown his head once. Not once. In the three years she’d been slaying vampires, fighting demons, and averting apocalypses, she hadn’t once crossed paths with the Hell King or his legion.
The knowledge was rather unnerving. Had Paimon intended for her to remember him and their deal before he came to collect? Was he planning to collect in person—so to speak—or would she just wake up one morning with an essential piece of herself missing? And if he hadn’t intended for her to remember anything, how was it that she did?
A fluke. A human spell gone wrong.
God, she didn’t know. And not knowing was going to drive her mad.
Then there was Spike. Spike—her William—reborn. Spike, who was likely confused and furious and a thousand other things she didn’t wish to consider. She’d sold herself to come and find him—to give him life again so that they might be together, and he was in the world, void of her memory and hating every inch of her. No matter how drawn to her he was. William wasn’t William here. He’d had a very different upbringing. He was a part of the Aurelian line—Angel’s line. He was Angel’s grand-whatever here.
When she’d known him, he hadn’t had anyone but her. He’d been alone most of his unlife. He’d tumbled into her village and everything had changed for both of them. She’d been so lonely—so miserable. So isolated from others that she truly forgot, at times, that she was more than just a living weapon. She was more than a girl with a Calling.
She was a woman. She was valuable for who she was rather than simply what she was.
She was someone to be loved.
At least William had loved her. He’d given her so much and asked for so little. He’d wanted forever with her, and she’d happily acquiesced. Only she hadn’t been brave enough to take the final step.
The part which could have saved his life.
She hadn’t run. Kenneth had found them in the end.
Had she run…had she had the courage to toss all else aside for him…she wouldn’t be here. Buffy didn’t know why she hadn’t acted; the life she’d had with Kenneth had been meaningless, but a part of her had clung to it. Perhaps that was due to the understanding that no matter how horrid it was, it had still been all she knew. All she’d ever known before William barreled into her life.
And even when he asked her to trust him, she’d been reluctant to sever the last essential tie.
She’d failed him in that sense.
And if she hadn’t failed him, she wouldn’t be here now.
No. She’d be with William. They would be together. There never would have been a bargain with a demon, a death, a rebirth, and this damnable separation. Instead, Paimon had strategically placed them at opposite ends of the universe. He’d made sure William grew up as he had, of course, and while Buffy knew without question that Spike was completely the man she loved, she also knew that consequences had changed the circumstances.
William wasn’t alone here.
He was with a woman. His sire.
And he was in love with her.
William was in love with another woman. There weren’t words enough to express the pain rocking her insides. The ache in her heart. The sickness in her belly. William was hers. He was all hers. His eyes. His hands. His arms. His lickable stomach. His chest. His smile. His mouth. God, his mouth. Everything belonged to her.
And yet he was with someone else.
Buffy felt like vomiting.
Everything else about William might well be the same. William’s nickname, beyond
Spike, was William the Bloody. There was no note of how he’d acquired this nickname in any of the texts she’d picked up, but Buffy had managed to finagle a confession from Angel; Spike earned the nickname because of poetry.
Just as her William had. He would tell her such unbelievable stories about his human years she never knew whether or not to believe him. The subject of his poetry, however, had always been a sore one, thus a topic they danced around without ever seriously broaching it but once or twice. There was very little about his writing that he was proud of.
Except for the time he ran it by Thomas Kyd, who thought it was
charming. Shakespeare had given it a cursory glance as well, and while his criticism ranked more on the side of praise, William had been quick to downplay the encounter as though it had meant nothing at all.
“Now that I think about it, it’s possible the git was trying to bugger me,” he whispered into her hair, followed by a quick explanation on what the word ‘bugger’ truly meant.
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and giggled into his chest. “Oh, Will…”
“The man was a bit of a poofter, love. Sorry to burst your adorable li’l bubble.”
“He wrote the greatest romance of our time!”
“Yeah. An’ two blokes had to act it out.” William winked and licked his lips, then proceeded to lick hers. “Not sayin’ his poetry wasn’…poetry…but I wouldn’t shag him over it.” There was every possibility he had lied off his ass about meeting both playwrights, but she hadn’t cared then and she didn’t now. It was a part of William—his poetry and his affinity for telling tall tales. Whether it was drinking with Sir Thomas Moore or stealing jewels from King Philip II, he would spin yarns, then crack with a shit-eating grin when he saw she was hanging on his every word. Mock-fights would inevitably ensue, typically with her beating him over the head with a feather pillow until he confiscated it and mauled her to the bed with hungry, playful kisses.
Buffy sniffed hard, her eyes filling with tears.
How was it possible she’d lived nearly seventeen years of a life she’d bartered for without knowing it until two nights ago?
How was it she hadn’t remembered the man that had saved her from herself?
They were mated—they had been mated. He’d claimed her and she’d claimed him back. It was supposed to be the strongest of the ancient bonds. More powerful than any spell or incantation. Stronger than any demon in this or any other world. A union forged with blood and held together with love. It was a dangerous thing, binding oneself with a vampire. Vampires themselves rarely enacted the practice because vampires were, by definition, mutinous creatures. So few of them cared for the frailties of human emotion. There was lust, of course, but rarely love.
Not love like what she and William had shared.
He’d wanted eternity with her. She’d given it to him. They were linked by blood.
And yet she hadn’t remembered him. She’d sacrificed so much for him, but she hadn’t remembered him. Not even after seeing his face.
William had become Spike. And Spike was in love with someone else.
He wasn’t lonely in this world.
Neither was she.
It didn’t make her love him any less. Time couldn’t change what they’d shared or what they were to each other. Nothing could; not even demons with the ability to shift reality and make them both forget everything that had ever been important to them.
No, Buffy loved him. He was the only man she’d ever truly loved.
And he didn’t know her at all.
It occurred to her that she’d been very quiet for a very long time. With a hard sniff, Buffy looked up and met her Watcher’s worried, compassion-filled eyes. And not for the first time, she felt herself swelling with daughterly love and gratitude.
If only Giles had been alive three centuries prior. If only he’d been her Watcher then.
“I know it’s crazy,” she said slowly. “I really do. But it’s real, Giles. It’s very, very real. All of it. And even if…Angel said there was nothing about me and Will in the history books…fine. But you don’t know this demon I…the demon I summoned wasn’t a garden-variety guy. He was powerful.
Is powerful. One of the most powerful demon-lords in the…history of those kinda guys.”
“What was he called?” Giles asked, flipping through his book. “The demon?”
Buffy bit her lip and wiggled guiltily. It felt good—this teenage reaction stuff. Made her feel a bit more normal; the sort of normal she’d grown accustomed to over the past couple years. “You’re gonna wig,” she said, her voice meek.
“Buffy…”
“He’s major bad news.”
“And if…” Giles sighed his exasperation. “If I believe you…that you made a deal with this…demon, we need to know all we can about him and his powers so we have a way to…to stand up to him whenever he comes to collect…whatever it is that you bargained.”
She swallowed hard and rubbed her suddenly-chilled arms with her hands, desperate for some friction. “I don’t think it’ll work,” she replied. “What I…I signed a tablet. A stone tablet. With blood. I don’t think this is the sort’ve bargain you can just ring up an attorney and try to find a loophole.”
“I still think it best to know what we’re dealing with…if it comes down to it.”
Buffy inhaled sharply. “I don’t wanna.”
“What?”
“I don’t wanna tell you. You’ll get all…” She shifted again, feeling all at once very itchy. “It’s something…” It was something he would definitely pull a massive wig over, and given the fact that she’d made the deal when she was in mourning and in a different century, she didn’t feel up to getting an earful from a man who hadn’t been born at the time the deal was made. “I plead the fifth?”
A long sigh peeled through his lips. “Buffy—”
She needed a distraction and fast. “Who was the Slayer?”
There was a long pause, followed by an equally long blink. “I beg your pardon?”
“The Slayer…in the…in the time when I was the Slayer?” Her brow furrowed—her mind playing a rapid game of catch-up. “Who do the history books list as being the Slayer? If not me…Paimon had to—”
Giles’s perked up, his face draining of color. He ceased page-flipping and glanced up. “Paimon?”
Rats. “Ummm…”
“The…the Hell King…that Paimon?”
Buffy smiled uneasily. “Unless you know of another one…?” Her stomach dropped when her Watcher met her eyes, and cold invaded her skin. “He has the…the kind of power to make the universe his playground…right?”
Giles swallowed audibly and nodded, every inch of his expression wholly frozen. “He does.”
“He had to do some major mojo, then, to make it so there wasn’t a slayer during the time when I was the Slayer…and to…make sure Will was born to his mother…and me to mine.” Buffy’s eyes dropped again, a long shudder commanding her tired body. “He never wanted me to remember, Giles. He did what he said he’d do. He put me in this world and he put Will here, too…but we were never supposed to cross paths. Never.”
The numbed look on her Watcher’s face slowly thawed into something more encouraging. “But you did,” he said swiftly. “Paimon’s plan was thwarted by Spike’s coming here.”
Buffy glanced up slowly, her heart thundering with hope. “You…Giles, you’re talking like you…like you believe me.” She paused. “Do you believe me?”
“I…” He flushed. “You know Paimon. You know the name. That much makes me…it lends you credibility. We’ll leave it at that.”
She rolled her eyes but couldn’t contain her relieved smile if she tried. “Gee, thanks.”
“You have to admit, Buffy, books and demon names are not your specialty.”
A long, dry laugh rumbled through her throat. If she wasn’t careful she might laugh until she cried. The wealth of what she could tell Giles now would have his jaw permanently stranded on the floor. The things Kenneth had made her remember. Recite. Memorize in seven different languages. Oh Lord…she could teach Giles a thing or two now. She could become the Watcher.
Thankfully, the conversation rolled onward before she could reveal as much. She didn’t want to give her surrogate father a complex. Not now.
Not now when he was the only one around who didn’t completely believe she was out of her mind.
“Something went amiss,” Giles mused. “In Paimon’s scheming…there was something he wasn’t banking on. Something which threw Spike into your path again.”
Buffy nodded slowly, the wheels in her head at last beginning to turn. “Yeah. You’re right. If Paimon never intended for me and Will to get back together…to find each other…then—”
“But you said he doesn’t remember you. Spike doesn’t, I mean.”
“No, he doesn’t, but there was something. When we were in the…when we were together, there was something.” Buffy worried a lip between her teeth, her brain desperately pulling on fact and theory, trying to make sense out of a senseless world. She wanted something concrete—something she could grasp and hold. Something to give her some form of hope. “Giles, he could’ve killed me. I was completely defenseless. I thought…I thought he knew exactly who I was. I thought he was just lost and confused…like me. I mistook the…the confusion and stuff for, well, confusion of a different kind. There was a part of him that recognized me. Not a big part, but part enough. And he got all protective of me when the gang showed up. He stood in front of me so I could…” Her cheeks reddened and she cleared her throat. Giles didn’t ask her to elaborate, and she was glad because she wasn’t about to get chatty about how Spike nearly ran all the way to home plate with her in just a few minutes. “There was something about me that he knew.”
“Something else Paimon hadn’t considered,” Giles mused thoughtfully. “Any semblance of recollection.”
The implication in his words made the world stop spinning. Buffy held her breath, hope seizing her tattered heart. “Do you think…” Her eyes fell shut. She tried to rein in control, but it was so hard. So hard when everything was riding on a simple answer. “Do you think…if Paimon didn’t consider this…if he didn’t plan on Will—I mean Spike…if he didn’t plan on him remembering me, but a part of him does at least on some level…do you think it’s possible—”
“That Spike might one day remember you completely?”
Tears prickled at her eyes and she nodded, choking in a sob which desperately wanted freedom. “Giles…he was…” She inhaled sharply. “I loved him so much. I still do. And knowing he’s out there…with someone who’s not me…not remembering me or what we had…it’s…”
“There’s a chance,” he said quickly. “Buffy…all things are possible.”
“Did I tell you he gave me that name? He’s the one who first called me Buffy.”
Giles blinked but didn’t ask. It was probably wise. “All things are possible.” He glanced down, his eyes focusing on the page his fingers had landed on. “As it is…I believe your remembering might have opened a gate.”
She sniffed miserably and wiped at her eyes. “A what?”
“Unlocked doors of history. As long as no one knew what had happened, it was as though it
hadn’t. Understand?”
“Uhhh…”
“But now that you remember…the history cannot be concealed. The missing history occurred.” He looked up again, an odd twist of astonishment and pride sweeping his eyes. “Elizabeth Travers. Born 1682, died 1701. Slayer to one Kenneth Travers.”
Everything stopped. Her blood ran cold.
“What?”
“It’s here. A page that wasn’t here before.” Giles held up the thick, aged manuscript and turned it around for her viewing. “No picture. Just a name.”
She saw it immediately. There was no way she could not.
It was her name.
And beside it—beside her name—was William’s.
Listed as her killer.
TBC