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.
Buffy nodded as she stepped back, lowering her sword. “He even had a reason for everything. For making me forget. For making Wil…Spike forget. For listing William as my killer,” she said bitterly, shaking the ache which lingered in her arm away. “You know that line in The Exorcist…he lies with the truth?”
Giles blinked hard, looking about three seconds away from falling over. There were times during their training sessions when she forgot to go slow so as to not give him a heart-attack, but especially now that she had her memories from her first life back, it was doubly hard to keep her compounded knowledge at bay. She just didn’t have the heart to tell him training was very much of the no-longer-necessary.
“I don’t…remember,” the watcher panted, digging the tip of the sword into the library floor so he could lean on the hilt. “Was that…line in the movie?”
She made a face. “Maybe not. But it would’ve been a good line.”
“I’m sure.”
“Point being, Paimon…he didn’t lie to me. I just…” Buffy broke off again and shook her head. “It took me all night to admit that, and it still sounds very wrong. He took everything…he did it…”
“For gain, I’d imagine,” Giles agreed, doing his best to look dignified even with sweat dripping down his somewhat-wrinkled brow.
“Have I mentioned how much I really hate demons?”
A soft, poignant smile crossed the librarian’s face. “It will therefore make you think twice, I’d imagine, before striking a bargain with one in the future,” he observed, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief which seemingly materialized from nowhere. “I suspect it wasn’t a coincidence.”
“What?”
“Paimon…seeking you out like this. After you’ve discovered the true nature of your history.”
Buffy’s eyes immediately fell downward, a fresh rush of shame spilling through her veins. Giles was being very careful with her—very cautious. Very fatherly in trying to help her disclose as much information as she was comfortable giving. He hadn’t asked again what her debt to Paimon was—not since she first confessed the deal the night prior. And though she knew she was running out of time to be secretive, the idea of admitting her sin made it more tangible. Made the price she had to pay something concrete rather than just an abstract idea.
Funny. It was something she never thought she would miss. Not during her first life—God, especially not during her first life. And not now. She’d bemoaned the duties of being of the Chosen for so long that the idea it might all be ripped away had often come in thoughts surrounded by white fluff rather than crisp ashes.
It seemed even her subconscious was leaning toward the perils of Hell nowadays.
“You’re not wrong,” she confessed. “He…umm…it’s payment time. He says I have a week. Before…you know…before I have to pay up.”
Giles nodded solemnly and though she could literally see the words pressing against his lips, he didn’t make a sound.
And that was it. Buffy couldn’t stand it anymore—couldn’t rely only on herself. Especially when he was so supportive. So kind and un-watchery. Not once had he admonished her for the decisions she made, past or present. Not once had he called her crazy or suggested she needed help of the mental sort. It wasn’t a startling revelation on Buffy’s part, but it was revelation enough. Giles had come through for her in a big way. He was the anti-Kenneth, and if anything, he’d proven he wouldn’t judge her.
No matter how outrageously stupid she could be.
“It’s…it’s the Slayer, Giles.”
He blinked rapidly in astonishment. She didn’t blame him. The announcement came without preamble though its meaning was easily deciphered. He clearly hadn’t expected her to forfeit anything without a fight.
Thus, his reaction was not altogether surprising. In fact, it provided her with an odd surge of reassurance.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s what I gave him. The Slayer. Me. The part…I gave him my…my strength.” Buffy tore her eyes away, her heart racketing hard against her chest. “I don’t…it sounded harmless. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it sounded just…he was right. I was prepared to do anything to get Will back. The price didn’t matter to me. I would’ve given him my soul if he’d asked for it.”
There was a long, hollow beat. “A-and he…he did not?”
Giles didn’t sound like the Giles she knew. He sounded very much like just-saw-a-ghost-Giles. And she’d done that to him.
Buffy glanced up. The least she could do was own up to her faux pas and look him in the eye. Hiding wouldn’t solve a damn thing. “No,” she replied softly. “No…ummm…according to Paimon, slayer souls are no good. As the warriors of the peace, or whatever, we get this nifty little ‘no touchy, no torturey’ pass from the good side of the PTB. Even if he had…you know, taken my soul, I would’ve been off-limits.”
“So he asked for the Slayer instead.” She nodded; Giles’s eyes narrowed. “The thing guarding your soul…he asked for that, and you gave it to him.”
The world froze around her, and Buffy’s eyes went wide. Her heart stopped. There was a sudden ringing in her ears. Her fingers were numb and her skin was cold. She felt nothing—nothing but wretched understanding. Nothing but the worst sort of knowledge. She felt nothing.
“Oh God.”
“Buffy—”
“Oh my God.”
Giles held up a hand. “I didn’t mean to alarm you—”
“Well, you’re a bit late for that.”
“Demons are bound to their word. As long as you consented to give him only your…” He paused and cleared his throat. “Your strength…as long as the language…as long as you allowed no room for the removal of your soul as an additional or penalty clause—”
“I didn’t. This predates fine print, Giles.”
“Obviously not.”
Buffy swallowed hard. “I meant the literal sort of fine print. The trade was pretty even. Me and Will for my strength.”
He nodded numbly. “And only your strength…the…the Slayer part of you.”
“Yeah. And don’t get me wrong, because I’m kinda loving the lack of screaming at me, but…why aren’t you more wigged than this?” Buffy worried a lip between her teeth and shuffled her weight from one leg to the other. “I kinda figured you’d pull a major spaz and go all…Rambo Giles on me.”
A ghost of what could have been a smile crossed his lips. He nodded and glanced down. “I suppose…I think I was prepared for the removal of your soul,” he replied. “Your strength…don’t get me wrong, Buffy…this is very serious. Very, very serious. It’s unprecedented and it could throw the whole of the cosmos out of balance.”
This was more of what she’d expected. Buffy immediately fell silent.
“…however,” Giles continued, clearing his throat. “I…I think I’m…I’m relieved.”
“Relieved?”
“Torn between losing your strength and losing your soul…well, yes would be the short answer.” There was a still, sober beat. “I must consult my books. I’m…while I’m most certain a demon of Paimon’s…notoriety wouldn’t make a mistake, there is the question of the…the possibility of any such removal in the first place.”
Buffy frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The Powers have a Chosen warrior—they always have. It brings balance and order to the world. I’m not sure if there…” Giles trailed off thoughtfully, his brow furrowing. “I suppose the removal of your power would be seen, in essence, as your death. The Slayer line in you would be discontinued, and the next girl would be brought forward.”
She was quiet for a long minute. “I…it was because I was the Slayer that Will was killed, Giles,” she said, knowing explanations weren’t required but feeling she owed him one nonetheless. “If I hadn’t been the Slayer…”
“You and William would have never crossed paths,” the watcher supplied softly.
“No, we would have. It just would’ve been different.”
Of that she was certain. No matter what lives they led or what bodies they inhabited, Buffy was convinced she and William were meant to be a part of one another’s lives in some revolutionary, significant fashion. It was why they were where they were—blood claim or no blood claim, William had found her again. William in the form of Spike. And even if they hadn’t the history they did between them, there was no doubt in her mind they would have created new history together. There would have been fighting, laughing, blood, sex, tears, and everything in between. But they would have known each other.
They were meant to know each other.
“It’s a romantic notion,” Giles confessed.
“It’s the truth.”
“I know better than to argue with you.” He heaved a long, burdened sigh and resigned his weight against the check-out counter. “The debt you owe…is to forsake your birthright. To no longer be…the Slayer.”
“I didn’t know you when I made this deal, Giles.”
There was no condemnation in his eyes. “I am not accusing you of anything.”
“I still feel like I should…” A heavy sigh rolled off her shoulders, directing her contrition-filled eyes downward once more. “I know I haven’t been…I’ve always talked about wanting a normal life. And how much easier it would be on me if…if I wasn’t the Slayer. But I never wanted this. It was all talk, you know? Just talk. Just stupid things you say…like I wish I’d never been born or something like that.”
Giles smiled faintly. “Believe it or not, Buffy…I know.”
“I just wish I’d been better…for you.”
“You keep talking as though the world is ending.” He paused. “Though I suppose if it was, we’d know how to face it.”
“I just never appreciated how good I have it. Compared to Kenneth…” A dark shudder commanded her being. “I haven’t been grateful enough.”
He held up a hand. “And as much as I would love listening to all the apologies I have coming for the countless times you’ve shaved years off my life, I don’t want you to assume that this…bargain you made with Paimon is the final word in anything.”
Buffy’s eyes narrowed. “Do the words ‘unbreakable stone tablet’ mean anything to you?”
“Not really.”
“How about ‘signed in blood.’ Or hey. We can put them all together. I signed an unbreakable stone tablet in my blood. There’s no way—”
Her watcher shook his head. “There are always loopholes.”
“Giles—”
“I know. I know. Paimon is an exceptionally old, not to mention clever Hell King. He’s…well, some of the stories I’ve read of his account attribute him with horrors beyond this world’s comprehension. He would have ensured the legitimacy of the deal. He would have made it fool-proof.” Giles’s gentle smile grew wider—not with happiness, rather with hope. “But you and I, despite appearances, are not fools. There are always loopholes.”
“I don’t want you getting involved in this,” Buffy protested. “If something happened to you because of this mess I created, I don’t—”
“Don’t worry about me.”
Irritation nagged at her nerves. It was impossible to hear those words without recalling a certain vampire some three hundred years ago who had said the same thing. Only now the enemy wasn’t a human man with human faults; now the enemy was a creature of Hell itself. A creature who had the power to make her see the source of Dante’s Inferno. A creature who made good on his promises, depending on how he wished to interpret them.
Still, she couldn’t deny the warmth which cushioned the loom of the impending fall. There was nothing she could do or say to Giles to keep him from doing something stupid on her behalf, and this was because he loved her. He was her keeper, her father, and her mentor. He was everything she’d needed for three centuries. No matter what it cost him, no matter what was to come; he would not let her face the end alone.
He would be there until the curtain fell. Until the actors took their final bow.
Because he loved her. And for some wonderful, unknown reason, he likewise understood.
“I don’t suppose,” Giles continued a few minutes later, forcing himself back to his feet and raising his sword in silent indication that she should do the same, “that…Spike has attempted to contact you since Halloween?”
Heat kissed her cheeks and Buffy forced her eyes downward. “Ummm…I must’ve skipped that part.”
The watcher’s eyes widened. “He has attempted contact?”
“About three seconds after Paimon vanished, Spike was very much…with the there.” And he’d done things to her body that made her heart sing and inspired tears to her achingly tired eyes. For a man who didn’t remember her at all, he certainly knew how she liked to be touched. How she liked him to flick his tongue over her sensitive girly parts. How hard she wiggled when he caressed her clit between his thumb and forefinger while his mouth explored her vagina. Granted, William was the only other man who had ever gotten so close—he was the one who had introduced Buffy to what she liked. And since Spike was William sans the recollection, it made sense that he would do the exact same.
After all, she thought darkly, he’d had a buttload of time to practice on his skanky ho of a girlfriend.
“Since you neglected to mention this upon arriving, I suspect the visit was not altogether a good one.”
She hadn’t mentioned meeting Spike in the cemetery because she didn’t want to provide her surrogate father with X-Rated images starring herself. The thought alone was simply too wigsome.
“Well, he showed up all grumpy, if that’s what you mean,” Buffy said, still refusing to meet his eyes. “He was mad ‘cause his…Dru had tossed him out. And he thought it was my fault. Or something. But…but…the fight didn’t last long.”
Giles was quiet.
“He doesn’t remember.”
“Right now?”
Buffy shook her head slowly. “I don’t think he will. I…Paimon mentioned the…he said the claim was what…what kept our memories guarded. For me, at least…it was what—”
“You were claimed?” Giles demanded, his normally-quiet voice quite possibly rocking the Richter-Scale. “You and…and William were mates?”
The suddenness of the outburst had her jumping. “I…I didn’t tell you?”
“I think this is something I would’ve been inclined to remember.”
“We were mated, yeah. We did the…the claimy thing.” Buffy worried a lip between her teeth, her heart suddenly thundering hard against her chest. “He was all I had, Giles.”
There was another long delay; it seemed a thousand years passed before the tension in her watcher’s body at last relaxed. Before he offered a gentle nod, his mouth forming a resolved line. “I do not begrudge you—”
“Really? ‘Cause the yellage sounded like a helping of grudge with a side of be.”
“It’s just unprecedented, is all. Of course it makes perfect sense…how your memories would become unlocked with…with a spell like that. But…it’s never done, Buffy. Claiming, that is. It’s never done. Never.” He shook his head in amazement. “Not even then. The practice of claiming mates is almost as ancient as the old paradigm of caveman bashing his choice of mate with a club before tossing her over his shoulder. I don’t believe there are any modern examples of vampires who have been mated, or even gave the ritual any sort of thought. A vampiric claim is the oldest sort of blood-bond in known history. More powerful than the deepest magicks…more respected than…God, anything I can think of. And unbreakable. Blood is binding, eternal, everlasting; blood links you. To assume the blood of another is to…to assert that life as being your own. It places so much power into the hands of another…and since vampires are duplicitous in nature, many would utilize that power to an ugly personal advantage. If William wanted to mate with you like that…”
“It wasn’t to use me, Giles,” Buffy snapped. “It wasn’t. And I don’t care how wonderful you’re being, if you even suggest—”
“I wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort,” he replied calmly. “Rather, I was merely going to point out how very much he must have loved you. To place the entirety of his being into your hands…regardless of the fact that he got yours in turn…”
The gate of emotions she’d opened on Halloween kept growing wider. Buffy found herself overwhelmed with another potent wave of tears, her body crippled with the weight of recollection. With a thousand memories of tender, loving smiles. With the ghost of his hand framing her face as his lips explored hers. The way he held her when she wept. The way he caressed her body when he thought she was asleep—touching her so softly for fear of disturbing her, his trembling hands trying hard to connect what he was seeing to knowledge. Trying hard to realize it wasn’t a dream. That she was real.
She knew because he told her. God, he told her everything.
In essence, Giles wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. But to hear it from someone else—to hear it from someone who hadn’t even known them then but understood what they had on the simple disclosure that they’d been mated…it meant the world.
Especially since, even with as magical as her night with Spike had been, it had brought with it an ugly revelation:
Spike was never going to remember. Never. He knew her well enough because of the claim, but there wasn’t hope for them to pick up where they’d left off. His memories were going to remain buried in history. And while what she’d told him remained the truth; she loved him—Spike—because she knew him. He might not remember his life before, but he was the same man. He was exactly whom he had been before. Circumstances hadn’t molded them into different people, even if they had taken them down different paths. She knew Spike—what was important, anyway. And she would eventually know the parts she didn’t know already.
It still ached that he didn’t remember her. He didn’t remember loving her as he had. And though she knew it didn’t mean he wouldn’t love her in the future, the thought of times she knew to be precious carrying no value for him whatsoever couldn’t help but hurt.
“A part of him will always remember, even if the rest of him does not,” Giles told her, as if reading her thoughts. “The claim won’t allow him to forget. Not everything. And it likely explains the reasoning for his…off-again-on-again violent tendencies.”
“Other than him being a vampire?” Buffy offered wryly.
“Well…of course. But I mean…he’s at battle with himself and he doesn’t know why. And chances are he has been for a long, long while. Perhaps since he was sired. Perhaps even before that.” A heavy sigh rolled off Giles’s lips. “Blood never changes, ergo claims cannot be eradicated. They are older than all magicks and engrained in nature as well as sorcery.”
Buffy’s eyes darkened. “It didn’t stop him from getting all naked with another woman.”
Giles flushed and cleared his throat but did not protest. “Erm, well,” he said, coughing into his hand. “It is possible with death…the claim went into remission, as it were. After all, you haven’t been alive in this world but seventeen years. Your blood remains connected, of course, but…”
“In remission,” she repeated skeptically. “Isn’t that what we usually call cancer when it goes away?”
“Buffy, please. I’m not trying to downplay the significance—”
She held up a hand, nodding tiredly. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. It’s just…imagine dying, selling yourself, getting reborn, and going through the emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on in the past few days for a man—or, erm, in your case…woman—you loved more than anything in this or any other world…and he already has a girlfriend.”
Giles shrugged. “Chances are the demon was just waiting to be reunited with you and formed, in the meantime, a connection to the next strongest blood-link available.”
“I don’t want him forming blood-links with anyone but me.”
“And since the demon obviously recognizes you as his mate, it’s likely causing a good bit of conflict within Spike. Thus explaining his tendency to react to you with violence before his mood becomes…” Her watcher turned pink again. “Well, amorous. I suspect he’s been waiting for you for a long, long time, Buffy…he just doesn’t know it.”
The thought ended with the clearing of a very familiar throat. Buffy about jumped out of her skin, whirling around and immediately finding herself lost in the endless blue of his ocean-eyes. Her nerves sung and her body rushed with heat. How she hadn’t heard his approach—how her tinglies had remained silent—she would never know. Only now he was there. He was very there.
And he was looking at her as though seeing her for the first time.
“You have no bloody idea,” Spike said, his voice reverent, familiar eyes bathing her in awe. “We…we were mates?”
The pink in Giles’s cheeks deepened into bright red, mortification plastered across his face. “I…ummm…Spike, I presume?”
The vampire nodded numbly, his gaze not moving from hers. “Buffy…”
Death could not stop the way he rolled her name off his lips.
It was an odd thought, but for the ringing in her ears, she could summon nothing more.