Chapter Text
Buffy whirled her stake and caught it again and again as she made her way through Restfield, jittery pre-slayage energy thrumming through her body, out her fingertips and toes.
Okay, she admitted, stalwart. Time to be honesty girl. It wasn’t pre-slayage energy, or not just pre-slayage energy: it was post-Parker paroxysms.
Paroxysms. Good word.
Everything they’d said to each other was stuck on a loop in her head, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized she must’ve done something that put him off. He could sense she was too strong, too forceful, too much (just like Spike said). Only Dickenson-fanboy weirdoes like Owen Thurman were actually into that kind of thing, so for most guys you had to be more careful.
Parker was interested in non-Slayer Buffy. He’d asked about her: about her hobbies, her interests. He’d talked about his favorite books and widened his eyes flatteringly when she aimed for clever and hit the mark. He made her feel smart and grown-up, really trying this college thing on for size. Like they could become the best versions of themselves side-by-side until one day they’d be that hip, smart couple who invited their old college friends for wine and cheese and stimulating conversation… like Buffy remembered the sweeter years of her parents’ marriage, the LA house stuffed with Joyce’s art friends.
She knew she hadn’t been imagining his interest. He hung out with her all week, plying her with attention. He’d insisted on walking her home when they arrived separately at the Bronze and pressed his fingers to her scars. She’d used that playful flirty voice she knew the boys liked, the one that slurred her words a little and went into a higher register, to make her sound easygoing and girlish and fun. Not like she wasn’t easygoing and girlish and fun! It was just showing off her best side, like taking a picture from the most flattering angle. They’d traded trauma stories and their connection had been so natural and real.
Against her will, Buffy’s mind flashed to that look on Spike’s face when he’d assessed Parker. I like him. He’s got… what’s the word?... vulnerability.
He’d said it to be mean, but that was exactly what Parker had. Even the undead could spot it.
Maybe, Buffy thought, it was all the angry puppy stuff. She had been sure that Parker would have come in for smoochies if Willow and Oz hadn’t alerted her to Willow’s bite, courtesy of a vamped Harmony.
But maybe if he’d come into her dorm room then, it all just would’ve ended a hair faster.
Did he play the sensitive lad? Get you to seduce him? Spike’s words echoed through her head like off the inside of a mausoleum.
“Vampires?” she called, softly. “Come out, come out, wherever you are…!” She sighed. This was no good. Slayage was supposed to be a distraction, and instead it was such a quiet, demon-free night that it was just giving her extra broody time.
“Is that how you’re operating these days?” caroled a familiar voice, and Buffy spun. “Think they’ll come when you call?”
“Spike,” she growled.
There was a girl with Spike, long-legged, coltish.
“What the hell, Spike, you sure do move on fast.”
Spike gave a double-blink, exchanged a look with the girl at his side, and then the pair of them chorused noises of horror and disgust so synchronized that they might as well have been choreographed.
“Ew, Buffy!” the girl shrieked.
Okay, she thought, the girl looked, like, fourteen or maybe fifteen under that fall of shining brown hair and Buffy would give the devil his due: she’d never seen Spike put the moves on a kid, before.
But Spike was eyeing Buffy with something approaching wariness, now, and his hand extended just behind himself protectively, as though blocking Buffy’s way to the girl.
Which meant she must be a vampire.
Buffy had rarely had to kill a vampire who looked as young as this one; she’d been more relieved than she could say that she’d never had to stake the Anointed One. Her stomach churned, but that very hesitation launched her forward. She had killed Angel: she could kill anything.
Spike jolted backwards, blocking her blows, and the girl scrambled behind him, his extended arm herding her. “Slayer?” he demanded, sounding put out, and then something that sounded like “a bit behind me” to the girl. “Buffy,” he said, with such urgency that it almost gave her pause— had she ever heard Spike use her real name instead of Slayer, much less in that intent tone?— but she shook herself free. It was just Spike playing mind games, like he always did. She struck out with a flurry of kicks and punches, but Spike seemed easier to fight, somehow, than he had just hours ago.
“Not so brave without the Gem, are you, Spike?” she taunted.
“Without the what?” he demanded, and she realized he was only blocking her blows, not bothering with any of his own.
It was maddening. “Fight me!” she ordered, but he merely parried, faster and faster.
“Buffy, you know he can’t!” the girl shrieked, looking horrified. “Why are you doing this?” All along, she continued to dart behind Spike like a well-trained shadow, as though she were used to Spike standing between her and danger.
“Bit, go get the witches,” Spike said, out of the corner of his mouth. “Something isn’t right.”
“Y-you bet,” the girl replied, and turned on her heel.
But Buffy wasn’t about to let one get away, or bring back these witches, whoever they were. She darted around Spike faster than he could catch her and threw the girl down; she fetched up against a gravestone with a thwack!
Spike turned to her, eyes widening. Then, his features morphed and he roared, the sound filling up the night. Still, he waited for her to make the first move, then struck fast, grabbing her dominant arm.
She tried to swing him around with the arm as leverage, but he planted his feet; growling in frustration, she swung her other arm in a haymaker and he caught that, too, fast as thought, then hooked Buffy’s ankle to tip her to the soil with a thump. She bucked, trying to gain enough momentum to push him off of her, but he only bore down harder.
This is it, she thought, giddily. Just that fast. And he doesn’t even have the Gem of Amara. I’m just going to be killed by an ordinary vampire on an ordinary night. Oh god, is he gonna turn me like he did that girl?
Buffy realized she could hear sobbing coming from behind Spike, distracted for a blessed moment in the face of her oncoming death. She looked back to find his features had reverted to their human-seeming mask.
“Bit?” he said, threads of panic in his voice.
Buffy bucked again, and he bore down harder.
“You stay put,” he growled, then said in that voice that used to belong to Drusilla alone, “Bit? Tell Spike you’re all right, now. Anything broken?”
“Spike…!” warbled the young girl’s voice.
“I know, poppet,” he said. “C’mere. I’ve got big sis. C’mon, now.”
The girl emerged, dark pulling back from her tear-streaked face. Buffy was surprised to see her still human-featured. But then, Spike rarely ‘vamped out’, whereas it seemed default for many others. Perhaps this girl was like him that way.
“Come ‘round where I can see you.”
The girl circled, standing at Buffy’s head so that Buffy couldn’t see her.
“Anything broken?”
“Don’t think so. My head hurts.”
“Anything else?”
“My leg.”
“Right. I see it. Nasty scrape. Your back?”
“Dunno,” the girl murmured, disconsolate. “Hurts, too.”
Buffy writhed again, but to no avail; she just couldn’t get enough purchase.
“You stay put, I said,” Spike shot at her, eyes flashing gold.
“You got her down without hurting her,” the girl observed.
“Yeah,” Spike said, and Buffy froze in her struggles when she realized it was true. Spike hadn’t touched a hair on her head.
That made her defeat even more pitiful. At least maybe Parker would be sad.
“You’ve got a tiger by the tail,” the girl observed. “I can go get some rope.”
“Good job, Nibblet. Some at my place, bottom level…”
The girl darted away.
“What’re you going to do?” Buffy demanded, trying to make her voice hard; she winced when it quavered.
“Take you to the witches, like I said,” Spike muttered. “Rule out… lessie. Possession, amnesia, robotics…”
“Uh, what?”
“Time travel…” he winced. “Oh. No…” He gazed down intently at her neck, and Buffy went rigid in anticipation, squinching her eyes shut… here it came... But, “…still wearin’ the cross,” he murmured, and his head dipped and he issued a desperate little relieved laugh at the back of his throat. “Oh, thank God,” he said quietly, not for the girl and not for Buffy: just, to himself. “Oh, thank God.”
Icy tingles shot through Buffy. Spike sounded, well, traumatized—like so many bad things had happened that he wasn’t sure where he would put one more.
Buffy knew the feeling.
Just that note in his voice sent her reeling back to that terrible summer: Kendra and Angel dead, Buffy wanted for murder, kicked out of school, out of her own house by her own mother. The volume of badness couldn’t even be processed by that point, but her stupid brain kept trying. Kept repeating those bad things in her mind on a loop, searching for some kind of meaning or sense to extract. Like her heart and mind were punishing her: see, you did it wrong, you did that wrong, people are dead because of you; keep staring into it until you make some sense of it all. Keep on staring until you go blind.
Buffy shook the dark thoughts away with a toss of her head— she’d had to learn— and immediately chided herself for sympathizing with a vampire, even for a moment, but the damage was done. Spike had been ready to grieve for her, and she couldn’t un-know that. Even though it made no sense at all.
“I’m not a vampire,” she confirmed, experimentally.
Spike’s head lifted so that his sharp blue eyes were on hers. “Well, most go after family first,” he said, tightly. “You hurt Dawn,” he explained, sounding baffled, child-like. “You’d never. Not in your right mind.”
“Okay,” said Buffy, slowly. “All right. I’m… really sorry I hurt Dawn. I didn’t recognize her.”
“Know you didn’t,” he said, but his lip twisted wryly. “Saw it. Could tell.” His face looked different, now, eyes staring into hers so dizzyingly close that Buffy’s wanted to cross. “Know where you are, Slayer?”
The words almost didn’t register. Spike’s blurred features still read as desperation under a thin veneer of responsible concern. No one had ever looked at Buffy quite like that, before, though it made her think of Angel.
“…Restfield?” she heard herself reply, faint. “Sunnydale.”
“Good girl,” he praised, and though the force behind his hold never eased, his fingers loosened into a pliable cage about her wrists at this hint of cooperativeness. His gaze had gone impossibly softer. “An’? You know me?”
This wasn’t a game. It just couldn’t be. No one could be that good of an actor. His eyes. “Spike,” she said, gamely: carefully, too, as though he needed reminding. But then something filtered through, something important that had been background noise, before. “You said big sis. Dawn’s— that girl is…?”
His lip quirked with what looked like sympathy.
“Al— alternate universe, you said?” she blurted.
“See?” said Spike, nodding. “That’s good. Now you’re thinking.”
“But you’re… you’re a vampire,” said Buffy, double-checking… like she thought Spike would answer honestly.
“That or a very well-preserved viginticentarian,” said Spike.
Buffy felt her expression slide to incredulous. He was joking with her or, well, at her. He wasn’t hurting her, though his grip felt like iron. It shuddered through her that he’d beaten her fair and square and could do anything he liked in this position, but he wasn’t even making salacious comments. This was Spike, who had just punched and kicked her repeatedly a few hours ago, not just in the stomach and face but also in the ego a few times for good measure. (And, to be honest, those had hit home harder.)
“Wait,” she said, the family part sinking in further. “That was a person?”
“Dawnie?” Spike gawped. “Yes, she’s a— what the hell kind of question is that?”
“But you were protecting her,” Buffy said, half in protest.
“Well, yeah,” Spike said, like that was a damned stupid question and hell, maybe to him, it was.
“You’re protecting… my family?”
“Well… yeah,” Spike said, in a much softer voice, and with much softer eyes, and well.
Well.
Wow.
What does it take to spread the Slayer’s dimpled knees?
So, like… that hadn’t been a hypothetical question, huh? Actually, she’d thought he’d put it that way to be as gross as possible, but that was… a lot of detail not to have… imagined it.
Her dimpled knees, the spreading thereof.
Buffy could hear someone trundling along through the dry grasses of Restfield, and craned her head nearly backward to see the girl’s ballet flats on the approach. She skirted to Spike’s side again, giving Buffy a wide berth.
“Thanks, Niblet.”
“Niblet?” Buffy echoed, before she could remind herself not to ask the maybe-crazy-people questions.
“Oh, Spike’s got, like, a dozen nicknames for me,” the girl said, sounding lofty and also extraordinarily pissed off. Her eyes were still red from crying. “Niblet… pet… Bit…”
“Snack size,” said Spike, fondly.
Fondly?! Also, ICK.
“Oh, I’d forgotten that one.”
“An’ Bitty Buffy.”
“I like, totally forgot that was where Bit came from,” the girl announced.
Buffy started to ask a question and the girl shrunk away, stepping back.
“Rope, Slayer. You gonna behave?”
Buffy stared back and forth between this girl she didn’t know, who was somehow her sister in this world, and Spike, one of the most skilled fighters she’d seen, vampiric or otherwise. She thought back to fighting Spike, exchanging blows in a battle to the death. Then she thought of his behavior here, blocking her blows and refusing to deal any of his own, his look of horror when he thought she’d been turned.
It was hard to trust the evidence of her eyes. But, from giving her ‘fair warning’ that he was going to kill her outside of the Bronze, to earlier today, telling her Parker was probably turned off by her strength—echoing her own insecurities—Spike was always honest with her: painfully so. Lying to her about her family and being on her side didn’t sound like something Spike would pull.
All the same:
“If you tie me up, I can’t help if we get attacked.”
Dawnie heaved a sigh. “Spike can take care of monsters, and Spike’s vamp face can chase off any humans who mess with us. You hit me,” she said in a small voice, “hard. It’s the rope or...” Her innocent features firmed. “Spike’ll hold you in place an’ I’ll knock you out.” Her lower lip trembled. “And I can do it!” she protested, as though Buffy had argued. “Spike taught me exactly where to hit and everything!” But her eyes were teary and panic-wide.
Okay, she was officially feeling like the villain, here, which was totally unfair. “I thought you were a vampire.”
“Oh, so it’s stake first, ask questions later?” the girl shot back as Spike eased off of Buffy only long enough to wrap her wrists together behind her back.
“Spunky little thing,” Buffy said, then winced when she saw the half-smile twitching at her own lips reflected in Spike’s features, though he had the good sense to duck to hide it from the girl.
“At the very least, you wait for bumpies!” the girl shot back. “I have none. Ergo.”
“You were with Spike. Ergo.”
The girl faltered. “But I’m, like, always with Spike. You really don’t remember me?”
“C’mon, Bit. Better get her to the witches.” He leaned into Buffy, his chin hooked over her shoulder as he peered down at his knotwork. “Not too tight, is it, love?”
Buffy turned to look at him just as he was drawing away, so that their faces were an inch apart. They were too close, she thought in panic, and— and this Spike wasn’t gonna bite her (she didn’t think) and so the closeness felt weird, like he actually cared about her?
“Slayer?”
Buffy blinked. Ah, there had been a question in there. “Good,” she said. “It’s… good. Fine.”
“Good, is it,” he said, slyly, then hauled her to her feet, holding one end of the rope. “How’s the leg, Bit?”
“I can walk,” the girl retorted, and she went up another notch in Buffy’s estimation.
“Yes, well, we’re taking a proper look at those injuries back at the house—now, you mind me…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dawn muttered, but she seemed a little pleased by the well-meaning harassment, her lips curling and eyes averted. Someone liked a bit of attention from the Big Bad.
Big Bad who didn’t seem all that bad, all of a sudden. Obviously things were different, here, and Buffy needed more information; but she made sure she had enough wiggle room in the ropes that she could escape them quickly, if need be.
A boy scout Spike was not, in more ways than one.
Together, the ragtag group made their way down the dark street. When late-night partygoers made themselves known with raucous cries, Spike shrugged out of his leather jacket. When he reached for Buffy, she jolted back, but Spike didn’t pause; he settled the jacket over with a quiet, “cold, luv?” hiding her bound hands from view. When the leather slipped down the silky material of her top, Spike wrapped his arm around her shoulder to hold it in place, giving the drunk college-aged crowd a nod as they passed.
Buffy knew better than to cry out. If Spike was lying and those kids tried to help her, chances were they’d get eaten. And it was true that seeing a girl with her hands tied behind her back might’ve prompted someone to come to her aid even if she swore it was fine. So really, she should be grateful, kinda, that he’d thought so quickly.
Only now Spike’s arm was wrapped around her shoulder and it didn’t seem like he was inclined to remove it. Sure, if he did, the coat would go sliding down again, but still. There was no one else on the street, now. He should be drawing away. Instead, she was still tucked into his side, having to match his stride to ensure she didn’t stumble, and it was humiliating. He’d been trying to kill her hours ago as far as she was concerned. Now they were playing sweet couple and kid sis, walking home from the movies or something. It made her skin crawl.
“S’gonna be all right, pet,” Spike said, suddenly breaking the silence. Because he felt her stiffen up? “We’ll get this sorted, you’ll see.”
Buffy frowned, if only because his confidence was actually comforting. Wish you were like this where I’m from, she thought, then dug a grave to bury that thought, six feet deep. She couldn’t think like that; she just couldn’t. The Spike from her world would eat her alive, maybe literally, if she gave him an inch.
But even that was a forbidden thought. Maybe she was in the same world as ever. Spike could just be playing a game, and for some reason have conscripted this human-seeming girl so that he could… walk the Slayer down the street with his arm around her shoulders? That was the most menacing thing he’d done so far.
Right.
Spike’s arm squeezed, lifting her free of her troubling thoughts. For a moment, she thought he was trying to comfort her, but then she looked up to see they’d reached her house on Revello Drive. Only now did he withdraw his hand, and don his coat again. “C’mon, Slayer, Niblet.”
Buffy looked up at the doorway. “Shouldn’t I be going back to the dorm?” she asked, belatedly, as Dawn opened the front door. But she guessed there was no reason to think this Buffy went to college at all. Maybe she’d started an interior design business, or did gymnastics, or made edible arrangements.
“The dorm,” Spike echoed, pausing at the doorway— waiting for one of them to invite him in, Buffy expected.
Fat chance.
“When you said ‘the Gem’ earlier,” Spike said, slowly, “you didn’t mean The Gem of Amara?”
Buffy blinked.
“Oh, holy—” said Dawn; then, with a skittering look towards Spike of all people, “…forking… shirt.”
Spike rolled his eyes, shifting on his feet, agitated. For the first moment since she’d clapped eyes on him, he really looked like the Spike she remembered. “Are you bloody telling me that the last thing you remember is Parker dumping you after a…?” His gaze darted to Dawn, shiftily, just as Dawn’s had to him. “After he… took advantage?”
Buffy blinked once more, with feeling.
Spike stomped into the house without an invitation—
(Oh, god, he already has one!)
…and, heedless of the late hour, began to shout. “RED!” he growled. “Come down here like a good girl an’ tell us what in the bloody hell you’ve done, now!”
To Buffy’s shock, Willow clattered down the steps. “No, I wasn’t asleep, not at all, thanks for… Buffy, you’re all tied up!”
Willow looked different, noticeably different in a way Spike didn’t. She’d done something to her hair, and it was a little longer than she remembered. Her choice of fashion had also shifted dramatically: rather than the cute sweatersets Buffy was used to seeing, Willow had gone full-on earth mother, or maybe fairy princess, or maybe some absolutely killer marriage of the two. Willow, from teendom on, had always looked like she was trying to dress five years younger than she really was. This Willow had managed to catch up to herself.
Then Willow’s gaze flickered over to the others, and she blinked. “Dawnie! You’re hurt?”
Out of the corner of Buffy’s eye, she could see Dawn begin to tremble, and then she slid down to sit against the wall just inside the door, shaking.
“What happened?” Willow demanded, and her voice had gone strange and dark; Buffy thought she caught a flash of black in her eyes.
But Spike wasn’t cowed. “That’s what I want to know!” he retorted, angrily. “You’ve been messing with our heads again, don’ think I don’ know it! Dawnie first, an’ then we’re going to have a long chat. Where’s the missus?”
“Upstairs,” said Willow, faintly.
“Bit needs her,” Spike said, and apparently that was compelling enough, because fairy-princess-earth-mother Willow retreated.
Buffy stayed put in the entryway while Spike settled Dawn on the couch. She’d started crying. “Tell me where it hurts,” Buffy just barely heard him murmur.
Dawn shook her head and sobbed.
“Bit of camel, straw?” he inquired.
There was a distinct pause before she nodded.
He rose up to sit on the couch by her and half-opened his arm; she fell into it, clutching at his tee shirt.
“She hit me, Spike! Buffy hit me!”
“I know, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Didn’t mean it, did she? Not herself.”
Buffy figured they didn’t know Slayer hearing extended this far. They were speaking quietly enough that a normal person would probably just know they were talking.
Dawn sobbed between each word. “I can’t take any more…!”
“You shouldn’t have to, but you can, poppet,” said Spike. “You’re so strong. You’re doing so good…”
She shook her head into his chest.
A clatter on the stairs snapped Buffy from her eavesdropping; there was a stranger standing there.
“Buffy,” she said, a world of softness and empathy in the word. She was dressed mostly like Willow, and Buffy suddenly thought she understood where the changes in Willow had come from. This girl must be good friends with Willow. Buffy tried hard not to feel jealous, but there was a sense of quiet self-possession about her that Buffy had never experienced for herself or, in fact, encountered in anybody else. The girl gave her a wry half-smile as if to say, sure, things are tough, but, you know, I’m here.
“Hiya,” said Buffy, feeling a little overwhelmed despite herself.
“Willow is upstairs figuring out what might have gone wrong,” she explained, descending the rest of the way and wrapping her arms around Buffy to give her a squeeze.
What the hell, she even smelled like she looked: like sweet herbs and maybe like she’d been baking recently. Unfair, Buffy thought. Some girls were just naturally… girls.
“Oh! You’re tied up. Do you need to be tied up?”
“No,” said Buffy, swiftly.
“Spike, does Buffy need to be tied up?”
Spike looked up from stroking the girl’s hair. He eyed Buffy for a long, critical moment. “…No,” he said.
The girl got to work on the knots, but Buffy slipped out of her restraints before she could finish.
“…oh,” said the girl with another one of those half-smiles. “That was all for show, huh? Like Houdini.”
“Tara, she doesn’t know you,” Spike said, as the girl led the way into the living room. “I think that’s… well, nineteen-year-old Buffy. Eighteen? She hasn’t met you.”
“Oh!” said Tara, surprised, but then, as though this happened to her every day, “well, I’m Tara McClay. And,” she added earnestly, “I’m sure we’ll sort this all out really soon.” She turned her attention to Dawn, whose sobs were dissolving into hiccoughs. “Hi, Dawnie. Wanna tell me what happened?”
Dawn said, “I’m okay,” in the most unconvincing possible way.
“I’m sorry, Dawnie,” said Buffy. “I really thought… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. And I’m sorry you’re—dealing with… other stuff.”
Dawn peered up from under Spike’s arm and sighed. “I know. I know you are.” Then, viciously, “everybody’s sorry.”
Spike squeezed her closer in a sharp jolt, some combination of comfort and reproach, Buffy thought. It made Dawn straighten, and wipe under her eyes.
“I’ll get you a cool cloth, sweetie. Do you think that would be good?” said Tara, who Buffy was like, half in love with at this point.
Predictably, Dawn nodded and Tara disappeared in a flurry of diaphanous skirt and motherliness. Speaking of which…
“Hey, where’s—” said Buffy.
“Hey,” Spike interrupted, eyes wide. “Right. Bollocks.” He looked down at Dawn in consternation; Buffy couldn’t begin to imagine what was running through his head.
Tara returned swiftly, and Dawn accepted her blotting at her red face for a moment before claiming the flannel for herself.
Spike stood. “Can you have a look at her leg, her back, an’ her head? Said she had a headache. Don’t wan’ another concussion.”
“Yeah, of course,” Tara said. “W-will you talk to Buffy?”
“Yeah, Glinda,” he murmured. “C’mon, Slayer. I’m dyin’ for a smoke.”
“What?”
“Back porch,” Spike said; then, turning to Tara, “any blood?”
“Some in the fridge at the back,” she said without looking up.
What the hell. Okay.
Spike removed the bloodbag (marked O NEG), poured its contents into a mug with a ring of red that meant it was clearly for the purpose and microwaved it for forty-eight seconds. It took him only moments to down it. Then, he opened the back door for her like he was playing at being some kind of gentleman and then they were free of that house that looked so much like hers but wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t.