Summary: A slayer barters with a demon to rescue her lover, and finds herself unwittingly projected nearly three hundred years into the future with no memory of the life she left behind.
It was important to remember that. She had to remember that. If nothing else, if her mind provided her with no knowledge beyond any certain realm of understanding, she had to keep her wits about herself long enough to understand that the eyes staring her down didn’t recall sweeping over her naked flesh with shameless admiration. The eyes staring her down didn’t remember gazing endlessly into hers as their bodies rocked together. He didn’t remember laughing under her merciless hands as she tickled him into submission. He didn’t remember holding her against him until it was impossible to tell where her body ended and his began, twirling her in the falling rain as the sky roared and thundered above them. He didn’t remember kissing her brow whenever she fell asleep in his arms. He remembered nothing. Nothing of consequence. Nothing concrete.
Nothing she could touch.
And yet, Buffy couldn’t help herself.
“Will,” she breathed again, if only to relish in the feel of his name on her tongue. It was beyond strange having the sensation of missing something she, so recently, hadn’t known to miss. An essential piece of herself—her history—wrapped in a collection of restored memories, all encompassed in the whisper of her lover’s name.
She stood before the man she loved, a woman thoroughly divided. A woman who knew him yet remained a stranger. The eyes boring into hers were devoid of anything one could attribute to love. The strain of recognition which had thrived there just nights before was nowhere to be found. Gone was the face of the man whom had caressed her mouth with his on Halloween, who had stood before her to protect her virtue as she straightened her clothing; instead, there was nothing but a conflicted veil of loathing and a sheen of cold self-disgust.
He looked at her as though she was a sickness to be eradicated.
It was all she needed to remember exactly whom she was. With the sting of Paimon’s hellish kiss burning through her skin and the devastated adoration eating her organs away and rendering the rest of her to dust, she needed to remember who she was.
This was not a reunion between lovers. The woman who had sold herself to find him again might live once more, but the William she loved was buried in a callous, soulless creature who loved someone else. This was not Will—this was Spike, and Spike did not know her.
A point he emphasized the next second, a low growl rumbling in the back of his throat. And before she could even muster a gasp, the biting smack of his backhand rocking against her jaw had the ground vanishing beneath her, her back smashing against the rocky cemetery ground.
“Don’t,” Spike snarled, rapidly seizing her shoulders and jerking her back to her feet, only to knock her down again, “call me that.”
Buffy’s lungs clamored for oxygen, pain blistering her skin. So that was that. Tears blinked behind her eyes and her chest ached with a pain too deep to be merely physical. She was utterly alone.
To thine own self be true…
She had to be true to herself. She had to pull her mind out of the eighteenth century and clamor back to the girl she’d been before the walls around her mind were demolished. The woman she’d been and the woman she was could not be confused. While there was no part of her which wasn’t Elizabeth Travers, she couldn’t revert to form. She had to be Elizabeth and Buffy. She had to be both.
Just because she remembered her life as Elizabeth didn’t mean she had to forgo being Buffy as well.
Buffy was her present. She had to be Buffy.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?” Spike spat, his steps heavy as he trekked around her again. “You conniving li’l bitch, you—”
Buffy’s leg shot up as he leaned over her and smacked hard into his brow. Spike howled and flew back, giving her the opportunity to roll to her feet. Then she was facing him, her hands poised upward, her chest heaving, her mind racing.
“What I’ve done?” she repeated cheekily, her voice coated with indifference she didn’t feel. She wanted desperately to seize the attitude which had once dominated her persona and wear it with confidence she no longer possessed. And while it was there in spirit, her insides remained hollow and barren. “Oh, you mean give you a hell of a concussion?”
Spike just growled and lunged at her again. He lunged but it came slowly—so slowly. She saw everything unfolding as though captured on a reel of film, rolling out before her eyes frame-by-frame. She knew at once what his next move would be. And the next. And the next. And the one proceeding. In an instant, she saw a blueprint of the battle laid out before her with Spike’s moves beautifully choreographed. She saw it all.
She knew every move he would make because they had done this a thousand times.
He just didn’t know it.
“Come on, Spike,” Buffy continued, a fresh rush of adrenalin pumping her veins as she side-stepped his attack, her hand shooting up so his swinging fist met nothing but a forceful block. “Don’t hold back on me now.”
“Shut your gob!” He made a move to kick away her balance, but she was already airborne to avoid the blow by the time his leg took the swipe at hers.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” she retorted snappily, ignoring the pangs each word shot against her heart. “And here I thought we were getting along.”
“’Cause I din’t kill you when you were beggin’ me to fuck you raw? You’re off your bird.” He snorted and dove for her again. And again, Buffy shot into the air, her body flipping eloquently over his and landing with gracious ease directly behind him.
She sucked in a breath and did her best to ignore the rush that raced down her spine. “How is that?” she demanded. “How can one theoretically be on a bird?”
“You wanted it, din’t you?” Spike demanded, rage flaring behind his eyes when she deflected yet another blow. “You wanted me to plunge my dick inside that hot li’l cunny of yours.”
Shamed heat flooded her cheeks.
“I don’ do slayers, Slayer. Sorry to burst your monster-lovin’ bubble.” He growled again, then grunted in frustration when she blocked his next attack. Every failed assault only seemed to strengthen his outrage. “Sure, you tasted sweet, but—”
“Awww, are you saying I’m not the most gorgeous creature you’ve ever seen?”
“What idiot put that idea in your head?”
Buffy rolled her eyes, catching his leg when he attempted to kick her again. “You, you dummy.”
“You’re barmy.”
“You just have a lousy memory.”
Spike roared again, then again when his fists swung for her head and missed. “Rot,” he retorted. “I remember jus’ fine. I remember the dark princess waitin’ for me at home. The way she feels an’ tastes…” His eyes fell shut with an overtly theatrical moan of pleasure. “God…jus’ lovely, that is.”
Revulsion and horror churned her insides, and without warning, Buffy felt the all-too-familiar sting of tears. Dru. He was talking about Dru. And though it hurt like nothing else, the knowledge made something else click. In trying to taunt her, Spike had just betrayed himself. Betrayed his own knowledge. He knew something about Buffy—about what she remembered. About what he likely thought was nothing more than a schoolgirl flight of fancy or a conjecture based on a faulty history. Her friends had thought as much, of course; why not Spike?
Especially Spike. Spike, whose eyes were conflicted. Spike, who had recognized her without knowing her. Spike, who had no idea why he was hers, only that he was.
Even if he didn’t want to admit it.
“Didn’t stop you from copping a feel,” she countered, her voice shaking even as she applauded herself for not backing down. “I don’t seem to recall you putting up a struggle.”
“Chit throws herself in any man’s arms an’ he goes wonky upstairs, provided he’s not a poof.” Spike shrugged as though to convey it was no big deal, but she didn’t miss the way his eyes glazed over, or the shudder which commanded his shoulders. “Doesn’ mean a lick, sweetheart. Sorry to burst that pretty li’l fantasy.”
“Well, if that’s all,” Buffy continued, kicking him back when he began to advance, “I don’t see what the big is.”
Ignorance, as far as the vampire was concerned, was evidently a deadly sin. “You’ve ruined everything!”
She shrugged. “You’re not dust and you got a handful of Buffy-Concentrate. If it meant so little—”
“You say that like it’s some prize, love,” he retorted, swinging at her again. Again, she blocked him with ease which had his eyes blazing with rage. “I’ve been tryin’ to wash your nasty scent off for days. Doesn’ wanna take.”
There was no way she could walk away from this unscathed. Hurt swelled her insides, and her eyes threatened to leak with tears. “Sorry to be an inconvenience,” she replied. “It’s not my fault my senses were overtaken by a bored demonologist.”
“Don’ seem to recall you complainin’.”
“Funny. Neither were you.”
He growled and swung again. “How the fuck are you doin’ that?” he demanded, eyes blazing when she easily ducked his advance and rolled a safe distance away.
“Doing what?”
He didn’t answer, instead shaking his head and redirecting his anger. “Jus’ stop wigglin’ so I can kill you properly.”
Buffy blinked, a rush of dark humor seizing her insides. A laugh erupted between her lips. “Sorry sweetie,” she replied, shaking her head. “I didn’t realize this was ‘Shoot A Slayer In A Barrel’ night at Western Sizzlin’.”
Spike ignored her and busied himself with another quickly-deflected attack. “How are you doin’ this?” he demanded again, brushing himself off. “How are you—”
“Anticipating your every move?” Buffy shrugged sweetly and did her best to ignore the warm rush of cool nostalgia which raced up her spine. The many times she and William had fought had schooled her well. She could script out his attack plan and hand it to him if so asked. As it was, even with the hurtful words spilling from his lips, there was a part of her relishing this. The thrill of being with him again in any form—a feeling so familiar, so known, she couldn’t help but soak him in.
He didn’t remember her, but he knew her.
There was a difference there—a difference which demanded recognition.
And this was beyond excellent. Fighting with him without fearing him. Talking with him as she would anyone else. She was Buffy Summers still. Buffy Summers and Elizabeth Travers intertwined. She wouldn’t repeat the heedless mistakes that had resulted in his death. Not now. Not when she had him back.
Even if he didn’t remember her. Even if he loved someone else. She had him back. If watching her William pine after another woman was her punishment for getting him killed, she would suffer but live through it. She would have to.
Presuming Paimon didn’t kill her first.
“Now that you mention it,” Spike muttered irately, stalking forward yet again. His goal wasn’t to attack this time—there was a tell in his eyes which always gave him away. Always. She decided, however, not to let him know.
Not when he was asking the question. The important one.
The one with the simplest and most complicated answer the world could contrive.
“I know you,” Buffy said simply, emotion welling inside. She’d do best not to burst into tears here, especially with the war raging within.
Spike’s brows perked. He didn’t look particularly surprised at the claim, and she wasn’t surprised at his lack of surprise. He’d obviously deduced as much on his own; he’d merely sought her out for verification. “You mean the rot about you an’ me bein’ lovers from days past? Don’ tell me you actually buy into that.”
Buffy balked, cold consuming her thoroughly. That was a bit more on the nose than she’d anticipated. “How?” she asked.
“Let’s jus’ say we have a vamp in common.”
“Angel.”
Spike nodded slowly and took a methodical step forward. “He dropped in a couple nights back,” he said. “Wanted to make sure my intentions were honorable an’ all that nonsense. Then he told me the funniest story…”
The cold was rapidly thawing into fury. Angel had no right to tell Spike anything. It was her story to tell—or not tell. Especially with the way things were. Especially with the man she loved looking at her like she was a stranger, and a crazy one at that.
Oh God.
The weight of her solitude came crashing down without preamble.
She was alone. She was so alone. Giles believed her, but there was nothing he could do to help. Nothing he could orchestrate to prevent the demon from claiming his debt. Nothing he could do to make Spike remember the life he’d led before Drusilla. Giles might believe her, but belief could only get her so far.
She was alone. Paimon was coming for her. William didn’t remember her.
William was now Spike, and Spike was in love with someone else.
She was alone.
“I’m going home,” Buffy said numbly, turning slowly. She didn’t worry about showing Spike her back; somehow she knew he wouldn’t assault her again. Just as she knew his eyes would narrow in confusion and his weight would shift impatiently from one foot to the other before he gave up the pretense of indecision and raced after her.
She knew him well. No matter what he remembered.
No matter what he believed.
“Buffy.” Spike barreled forward just as she’d predicted, the fight in his eyes having vanished completely. The next second he was in front of her, his hands clamped around her shoulders, confusion barring way for the conflicted anger which had lived there only seconds before. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Go home?”
“I need to know.”
She smiled sadly and shook her head. There was no preamble here, either. There was only tacit understanding. He knew she would know, just as he knew what her answer would be. Even as strangers, they knew each other well. “You wouldn’t believe me. God, you already don’t.”
Spike shook his head and tightened his grip on her shoulders. “Try me.”
The words struck her like bullets. He was a walking contradiction.
“Let go.”
“If this is about the whole ‘I’m here to kill you’ thing, you should know it was jus’ a cover.”
“I know.”
“I’m goin’ outta my mind. Every time I close my eyes, I see…” As though in need of whatever it was he saw, Spike’s eyes fell closed and he fortified himself with a deep breath. “I see you. An’ I don’t know why. You’re everywhere. God, you have been for…”
“If you’ll just let me go—”
“It’s crazy. Y’know it’s crazy, right?”
Buffy’s humorless smile only grew wider. “You mean the whole time-jump thing? And here I thought it sounded like another Thursday afternoon in Sunnydale.”
Spike didn’t laugh. She didn’t expect him to. “You called me Will,” he murmured instead. “You called me Will tonight.”
“And you asked me to stop. Stop I shall.”
“No one’s ever called me Will.”
Buffy inhaled a trembling breath, every inch of her threatening to crumble. She was divided between truth and evasion, and God help her if she knew the path to take. A few minutes ago there would have been no question. No hesitation. No blinking. But Spike knew—he knew enough, thanks to Angel. He knew what she thought. He knew what had inspired her to leap into his arms just a couple days back, even if he didn’t know the cause of their initial separation or what she’d done to ensure his return from the netherworlds.
He didn’t know, and his lack of answers had rendered him even more lost than she was.
There was no answer. There was nothing to say which would satisfy him. The truth would lapse belief. He’d proven as much with words already spoken. Thus Buffy was rendered in a Catch-22; the truth wouldn’t be believed and there was no lie to give him. There was nothing she could say to dig herself a way out of the prison in which she was trapped. There was nothing at all.
It was just as it was. She stood muted, desiring nothing more than to throw herself upon the mercy of his incredulity and confess everything—desiring it, but knowing better than to forsake herself completely.
Such was a sin but committed once. She wouldn’t curse herself to repeat her fate.
“Go home, Spike,” Buffy said with intent, the name her lips formed sounding so out of place to the face to which they were spoken. She ignored the inner screams which begged for William, ignoring how the scattered pieces of her heart shattered into something lost beyond recognition. To save herself, she had to ignore it.
“’ve no longer got a home.”
The confession froze her feet and her heart along with them. “You…” She broke off, shuddering at the nauseating image that speared her brain without invitation. “You…earlier…I thought…your girlfriend…”
Spike snorted ineloquently. “Come now, Slayer. Don’ tell me you don’ know a smoke-screen when you see one.”
“What?”
“In the world according to Dru, she’s history. No longer a factor. She’s made it clear she wants nothin’ to do with me.” He met her eyes, trembling, his body wrought with vulnerability that made her ache. “Dru booted me all the way to the bloody curb after…well, after you.”
Buffy inhaled sharply. “Me?”
“She smelled you all over me. Drove her right nutty. Or nuttier, I should say.” He released a short laugh which held no humor. “It’s a bloody riot when you think about it. The bitch never could keep her mitts to herself, but the second I wander…”
The words, when said over and over, finally began to form a sensible pattern in her head. “Drusilla…she kicked you out?”
“Made quite a scene about it, too,” Spike agreed. “Surprised this is the firs’ you’re hearing of it.”
“I don’t exactly read Vamp Weekly,” she retorted with a small smile. “Dru really kicked you out because of me?”
He nodded, a dark shudder racking his shoulders. “Din’t like it that I got a taste of someone else,” he said. “I don’t, either.”
“I didn’t ask you to kiss me.”
“No, you grabbed me before you could ask.”
A blush tinted her cheeks, and for the millionth time, she considered how far gone she was. How deep into the labyrinth she’d allowed Paimon to drag her without stopping to consider the consequences he laid at her feet. How it must have been for Spike to encounter her, a sniveling girl composed of tears and heartfelt confessions, lunging into his arms and assaulting his mouth with her own. How he must have felt then—how everything in his mind could have shut down from logic and gone strictly to primal instinct. And perhaps there was a bit of their shared claim leaking through in the revelation—the reason he hadn’t been able to thrust her aside as though she meant nothing was due to the fact that they were, and they always would be, linked by blood.
Perhaps the claim had saved her life that night, just as it had saved the hope of regaining herself. Paimon couldn’t erase from her what was ingrained in her blood, nor could he thoroughly eradicate her memory from William’s subconscious. Somewhere inside her vampire was the man she loved, beating against plated glass doors and screaming for freedom. Memories were pushing at the corners of Spike’s brain. The walls he’d constructed were fortified beyond reason and there was every chance those memories would be lost forever. What was important, however, was the fact that they existed.
As long as they existed, there was hope.
“I was hoping you’d forgotten that part,” Buffy admitted, her voice low. “The part where I…kinda attacked you with my mouth.”
A strange light penetrated her vampire’s eyes. “Forgotten?” he rasped. “Christ, love, how could I forget? You changed me. Bollocks, you changed everything. You…”
“I didn’t mean to.”
It was the truth, but even standing here as she was, Buffy knew she would take it back for nothing.
“But you did. You called me…”
“I won’t call you Will anymore,” she told him again. “You don’t have to…I know it now. You…you’re not Will.”
No, but Will was Spike. Will lived inside him.
Will loved her. Loved Buffy. Will wouldn’t have given a damn about this Drusilla or getting kicked to the curb, as he put it. Will would have taken her in his arms, laughing and peppering her face with kisses as he twirled her under the glow of moonlight. Will lived within Spike, and if he ever broke free, he and Spike would be one in the same. But Spike was not Will.
This was not a vampire who loved her. This was a vampire who was infatuated with her. Haunted by her, perhaps. But he didn’t love her.
“I’m not Will,” Spike repeated, and it sounded, for all the world, as though he were trying to convince himself of that fact. “I wasn’ around then. In the sodding eighteenth century, or whatever it was you told Peaches. I wasn’ alive. An’ sorry to break it to you, sweetheart, neither were you.”
“I made a deal—”
“—with a demon,” he supplied, nodding, his feet carrying him a step closer. “’S what I gathered.”
Buffy swallowed. Hard. “And you don’t think it’s possible?”
“No.”
The word was barked—forced. He was trying to convince himself. The tell was back in his eyes—a glimmer he didn’t want her to see. He was trying to convince himself.
“I know my life, Slayer. I know it too bloody well. There’s no way I went through all that for rot. To what? Meet up with you so we could have our merry happily ever after?” He offered a derisive snort. “Where were you, then, when I was trailin’ after Cecily like a hapless pup? Where were you when I stumbled into the alley an’ met my redemption? Where were you every sodding night of my life when I needed—”
Buffy couldn’t help the sob she choked anymore than she could stop tears from gathering behind her eyes. “I can’t help when I was born.”
“No you can’t, an’ that’s what I’m tryin’ to get through that gorgeously thick skull of yours.” Another step. He was so close now; if she reached out just a few precious inches, her hand would be against his chest. “It din’t happen. None of it. There was no you. There was no me. There was no brilliant shagging. There was nothing. It didn’t happen. An’ that, my love, is that.”
A frog the size of Texas leapt into her throat. “Brilliant?”
Unprecedented glimmer bled into his eyes. “Slayer…with you, it’d have to be.” He paused and frowned, shaking himself to his senses. “Point being… whoever you think I am doesn’ exist.”
“Never say never.”
Something broke behind his eyes—the last snap of his restraint, and all was lost without warning. A snarl tore through his lips and his hands leapt upward, capturing her face between his cool, firm palms, his fingers making a prison of any escape. “I’m. Not. Will,” he snarled. “This is Spike. You hear? This is all Spike. Nod for me if you understand.”
Buffy nodded. There was nothing else to do. Through her tears she nodded.
And then it was gone. The outrage. The anger. The everything—it poured out of him in a blink, and suddenly his eyes were sweeping over her, searching hers before landing on her lips. A ragged beat stilled between them and for a long, wondrous second, she saw him fighting for memories he could not reach. She saw him denying his own convention—reaching for something beyond grasp. Something he sensed was important but knew not how.
In that instant, she saw William.
“My name,” he murmured hotly. “Say it.”
Buffy steadied herself and gave him what he wanted. “Spike.”
“Good. Try to remember that.”
Then his lips came crashing upon hers, and reason melted into song.