He’d finally done it. He’d won. He couldn’t really remember ever beating Angel and getting something they’d both wanted.

So this victory was a hundred and twenty some years in the making. A victory after so long that would cause him everlasting sorrow. Didn’t he just feel like the luckiest vamp on the planet?

Just as soon as he drank from the cup.

As he did, though, something didn’t go according to plan. “What the-?”

~~~***~~~

Pain woke him up.

His head was pounding. This must have been one of the worst benders he’d ever been on. Definitely up there with Dru dumping him, Buffy dumping him, Buffy’s swan dive…

That thought jump-started his synapses. He needed to figure out where he was and how he got there. One of the first things he could remember brought a smile to his face. He’d beaten the Poof to the Cup. He frowned. Mountain Dew shouldn’t pack such a punch. “What was in that stuff?”

“My Spike is awake. You’re just not my Spike, are you?”

He could pick that voice out of a crowd. It was the devil whispering in his ear when he made a choice, the soundtrack of some of his pleasant dreams, and the narrator of many of his nightmares. She’d been his everything for more than a century and she was looking intently at him from across what looked like a crappy motel room.

“What’s that, pet?” He needed time to think. Time and some working neurons. If only the marching band of Fyarls would stop stomping around in his brain.

“You’re going to send Princess away.” She made a vague hand gesture. “My black knight, always chasing the light.” She looked at him with such sorrow it made his soul ache.

His soul. He jumped up on the bed in panic and clutched his chest as if that could do something. Nope, still there. The thought of draining an innocent victim physically hurt. So what was he doing in a no-tell with Dru?

“Dru, where’s Angel?”

She hissed, retreated even further, and made herself as small as possible in the far corner. “Bad dog. Speaking out of turn. Daddy is still lost. Lost to us all.” She started to rock back and forth, covered her ears with her hands, and hummed a nursery rhyme to herself.

Spike wasn’t listening to her by then, though. All his attention was taken up by the spotty beat-up television set.

It was set to some local news channel, where a generic presenter blathered on about how the winds had picked up. They were calling it the worst storm of the year.

The year 1996.

He barely made it to the bathroom before he emptied his stomach. By the smell of things his hangover wasn’t booze related. Still, there was a ringing in his ears and he’d got tunnel vision.

Eight years in the past. Either someone was playing the cruelest of tricks on him, or… He had no second option available at the moment, seeing as his brain still refused to work properly.

He stumbled out of the bathroom and looked at Dru through bleary eyes. She was still rocking back and forth slowly, but she looked at him.

“You’re leaving.” Despite looking the picture of a mental patient, she sounded more lucid than he’d ever heard her.

It was more sobering considering it was exactly what he’d thought of doing. Well, closer to ‘the only thing he thought he could do.’ Whatever happened, he wasn’t sure he could stake her. He couldn’t just up and leave, though. Dru on her own was a recipe for a much bigger disaster than… he couldn’t think of something, especially with the mind-numbing pain.

He snarled in frustration and rushed for the door. He almost ripped it open, but for the vampire self-preservation instinct stopping him from burning up like a roman candle.

“Fucking sun!” He wanted to punch through the wall in frustration. But it was the paper-thin wall that separated him from the murderous rays of the sun. So that would be a no. The small bedside table became kindling instead.

“Motes of dust, blood like rust, Sunshine will eat us all up.”

He found himself wondering if her rhymes had always been that grating, or if it was the special hangover and temporal displacement that was making him rethink dusty endings. And why did he sound so much like fucking Angel even in his own head. God, he needed a drink. He also needed to think. If only Dru would stop cackling.

~~~***~~~

The sun had finally set outside. He’d been trapped with Dru in the infernal motel room from the past for more than six hours. At least she’d finally lulled herself to sleep.

Spike used the time to think, plan, rethink, and then start it all again from the top. There was a very problematic first step he had to take care of though, regardless of which future plan he chose, that he just couldn’t go around: what to do with Dru.

He’d accepted he’d been thrown into the past somehow, most likely by that damned Cup. Since it was supposed to mean torment, his first thought was that someone had sentenced him to reliving the previous years as a punishment. He would have to test Novikov’s principle.

He’d read and watched enough Sci-fi in his day to know time travel was a dangerous thing, especially with the whole ‘butterfly effect’ theory, but he decided he would try to make things better anyway. His most fervent hope was that he didn’t end up making it worse. And that brought him back to watching Dru sleep crouched against the wall.

What could he do about her?

He could try and find someone to pawn her off on. Maybe even look for one of her lovers from the first go-around. That would take time and effort, and all the while he’d have to walk a fine line between not killing anyone and making sure his change in status didn’t become public knowledge too soon. They’d smell the soul on him a mile away. Dru probably already knew about it. To say she wouldn’t cooperate would be putting it lightly. To hell with that plan.

He could just up and leave her. The sun was down, so nothing stopped him from walking out, getting in the car—if he remembered correctly it should be right outside in the parking lot—and driving away. She’d find her way. They hadn’t been to Prague yet, so she was up to her full strength. She’d find someone to latch on to soon enough. Or she’d manage on her own, as she had whenever they were broken up. Although the last time, in that future he was going to change, she’d also gone after Buffy.

He could dust her. But would he be able to? She’d been his everything once. Of course since then there’d been a soul, a death, a resurrection, and more recently a time jump. More importantly, there had been Buffy.

There was another option, of course. He looked at Dru’s corner again only to find her looking right back at him.

“My Spike’s thoughts are like ants on a hill. Running left and right, and then all in line. But Princess’ honey is sour for him.” She hissed. “It’s all her fault.”

“Dru.” She hissed at him again, as she clutched Miss Edith to her chest. “You know I’ve changed, yeah?” She vamped out and snapped her teeth at him. Oh, but this was going really well. “There is a demon in Africa. He gives you your heart’s desire if you fulfill his tests.” He got on his knees in front of her, close enough she could see how serious he was, far enough she couldn’t just rip his throat out for what he was about to propose. “He could give you your soul back. Probably make you less barmy as well. Just imagine—”

She attacked him with such fury it caught him by surprise although he was expecting her to resist the idea. She slashed, punched, and kicked at him as if she were berserk. It took him all his skill and strength to simply survive her first onslaught, but eventually he managed to get the upper hand.

He’d always been partial to fists, fangs, and sod all else, and Dru’s attack was too frenzied to stop him for long. He eventually had her trapped under him only to realize he had no stakes. “Dru, listen.”

She bucked and the back of her head hit him in the chin, almost breaking both his hold on her and his jaw. He tried to restrain her better, but she squirmed like an eel. His hand found a splinter from the defunct side-table and he collapsed on top of her dust.

He’d done it. It hurt like hell in that part of him that was the demon, the human part was morning the loss of a former lover, but he’d actually, really, done it. Dru was gone.

He lay there in shock for a long while, trying to get his bearings. Then he started laughing. It sounded crazed even to his own ears.

“If that doesn’t put a shock up Novikov’s ass, I don’t know what will.” He got up, surveyed the room, looked down at the ashes of his maker again, and then left into the night. He needed a lot of booze and then he needed to get to Prague.

~~~***~~~

*Somewhere high up in the Tatra Mountains, Czech Republic*

It had taken him longer than he’d liked, but he’d managed to track the Order of Dagon down, as they hid in plain sight in a Catholic monastery. He was pissed with himself all he could remember about them was the name Dagon and that they were Czech. It meant Buffy had already been Called by the time he made his way up the mountain. He’d wished he could be by her side when that happened, but his mission here was important enough.

After he managed to bluff his way past the gates and into a meeting with the elder monk—Yakov—he made his sales pitch. “I know you have the Key, but I need you to get off your collective asses and make her into Dawn Summers.”

“What did you say?”

Spike relished the old man’s shock. “Look, you blokes have been keeping the Key safe as houses for long enough, but you’ve been in the same place all this time. Glorificus—”

“Do not speak its name.” Yakov looked around in fright. “How do you know this?”

Spike was glad he remembered some of the alternative names for Glory. “I’ve fought the Beast before, and I probably will again. How I know what I know isn’t really the issue here, though. She will find you. Soon. And when she does she’ll lay waste to this place and slaughter everyone. Your best bet is to use your fancy magic rituals and shape the Key into a human.”

Yakov looked at him with disdain. “And let me guess, you wish for us to then turn over this human to you?” He brought out a cross from the folds of his robe. “Your true nature does not escape me, vampire.”

“Guilty as charged, although if you’ll look close enough, you’ll see I have a bloody soul.”

Yakov frowned. “Are you the one they call Angel?”

Spike snarled and swore. “Do I look like a no good ponce with a high forehead and nothing but rats on the menu for decades? No, I’m not the almighty Angelus. The name’s Spike, and I won my soul fair and square, not by raping and munching on gipsy virgins.”

The monk didn’t seem impressed. “Even if what you say is true, I still wouldn’t hand the Key over to the likes of you.”

“Didn’t ask you to do that, did I, mate? I’ve no use for a magicked-up younger sister. Be kind of difficult, seeing as how my parents have been dead for more than a century. No, what I’m asking should be far more up your alley. Send her to the Slayer.”

“Why would a vampire propose we involve the Slayer?” The man narrowed his eyes. “Unless your plan is to attract our foe to her. Is that it? Killing a Slayer through the use of the Beast?” The last word was said in an almost whisper.

Spike wanted to rip his hair out in frustration. “Look, you insufferable git. If I wanted a Slayer dead, I’d just go and do it myself. If you look me up you’ll find I already offed a couple of the birds in my day. Of course, that was before my change of heart, my trip to Africa to get my soul, and my joining the white hats full-freaking-time. What you need to know is that you need to get off your ass, mojo the Key’s energy into a human form and send her to Buffy Summers as her sister.” His yelling got louder and louder as he went on.

Yakov’s face was impassive. “There is something you are not telling me. What do you hide?”

As was the case with most of Spike’s plans, especially those involving Buffy, there was something that wasn’t going well. He could see the monk’s distrust, and he was sure the monks wouldn’t just do what he asked. In fact, by the way Yakov was clutching his cross, Spike thought they might not send Dawn to Buffy even when Glory actually did come. And all of that just because he had to run his big fat mouth.

Time to go to plan B. Since he was rubbish with lies, he’d go for the truth. “Okay, mate. You asked for it. Hope you got some of that communion wine handy, ‘cause it’s gonna be a long story.” He lowered himself in a chair and put his feet up on the monk’s desk. “See, it all started some six years ago, or two years from now, depends on how you look at things. Don’t worry, it’ll make sense by the end, I think.”

***

He told the monk the whole sordid tale, from running over the ‘Welcome to Sunnydale’ sign, to waking up eight years in the past in the same room as his maker, only to be forced to dust her.

Somewhere around Buffy and his destroying a house together a couple of bottles of Tatra tea—the good kind, probably close to the weaker Absinths in strength—found their way to their table and helped soothe the vampire’s frayed nerves.

His story and the two bottles finished at about the same time, leaving Spike with a slight buzz and a pit in his stomach.

“You have been through a lot.” Yakov’s eyes were closed and he was resting his head on the wall behind him.

“Understatement of the fucking century. And I should know.” Spike winked, even though the other man couldn’t see it.

“What I do not understand is why you would wish the Key sent to the Slayer now.” Yakov opened his eyes and straightened up in the chair, although not without some difficulty. “It might attract her even sooner than in your first…” He waived a hand around and wiggled his fingers.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Spike tried to coax a few more drops out of one of the empty bottles. “I could be screwing up things even worse than last time.” He stopped looking down the bottle’s neck to fix the monk with a glare. “I also know magic always has consequences.”

“That is true. Your point?”

“Last time you lot got slaughtered just as you were creating Dawn. Karma may be a bitch, but it couldn’t have worked that fast.” He sneered. “Not on you monks anyway. Instead ended up the slayer’s family paid the price. If I can save Joyce this time— I’ll do and try anything to do that. Having the Bit back sooner would be nice, too. They’re my best girls, see?”

Yakov was silent for a long time. “And if the Beast—”

“I’ll take care of her. That wanker she’s sharing a body with won’t last a fortnight in Sunnyhell, whenever they decide to come to town.”

Yakov slapped his palms on his thighs and got up. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. I believe I know what decision I should make, but I need to tell my brothers, and at the moment I need to rest a while.” He raised his arm when Spike made a move to protest. “You travelled a long way. You may rest as well and leave in the morning after we have a chance to discuss everything.”

Spike swore to himself, but he had to admit the man was right. So he allowed himself to be guided to one of the empty guest rooms and hoped the booze had been strong enough to give him at least a partial night’s good rest.

~~~***~~~

Travelling at night over an ocean in the belly of a plane wasn’t the most comfortable way to go, but to Spike it was going back home. Southern California had become home to him. Actually no, it wasn’t that. He was going to be seeing his girls soon. All of them. And if he was right, he’d finally managed to save the closest thing he’d had to a mum in a century.

He spent the rest of his flight making and remaking plans. It was much better than the nightmares that had plagued him ever since his trip back in time began.

*LA*

“Stupid fucking blundering idiot.”

Spike was running as fast as he could. He’d gone to the first demon bar he’d found and asked about Lothos. Knowing the bastard’s ego was as big as Dracula’s, it only made sense every demon on the West Coast would know what he was up to.

Apparently he’d been dusted as Spike was convincing the monks to put a rush on making Dawn a part of the Slayer’s life. Which meant that Buffy was back from her trip to Vegas and trying to explain to her parents about the things that go bump in the night.

He took a moment to thank all the gods and devils for the many hours spent talking about her past. It had given him a somewhat clear timetable for the period before he’d crashed into her life. Sure, he couldn’t quite remember the order of some of those events, but at least her first big battle and the immediate aftermath was clear in his mind. That’s why he knew he had to hurry even more than before. He might not have been able to spare Buffy from losing her first Watcher, but he could save her from her parents’ overreaction.

*

Unfortunately he hadn’t been fast enough. Hank was already driving Buffy to the sanitarium to ‘rid her of her demons,’ or whatever it was that one of the stupidest men on the planet thought of his daughter’s calling. If Spike ever got his hands on the man that could leave not one, but three Summers women, he’d wring his neck, rip his spleen out and shove it up his ass.

Unfortunately when he’d hurried to go from one end to the other of the city he’d neglected to take his car. Now he was paying for it by having to sprint for bloody ever. Why couldn’t at least one measly little time-changing plan go right when it involved his slayer?

He had to reach the ‘We’re hacks that don’t know our heads from our asses’ Mental Health Center to save Buffy. In the end he managed to arrive there before the supernatural equivalent of a heart attack made his unbeating heart explode. He couldn’t remember running so fast for so long even when he escaped from the Initiative. He stopped right outside the doors to get a grip.

If he simply went in there, ripped Hank’s head off and put the fear of the devil in the good for nothing doctors about to mess with Buffy then she’d either stake him on the spot, or she’d never trust him again. Which wouldn’t be that much different than most of their time together, but it would hurt him too much.

To have her hate him again would break him. It was why he hadn’t run straight to her as soon as he’d become a real boy-vampire again. He’d finally done something right, managed to go out with a more than proverbial bang, and then he’d been brought back. He’d given her life back to her and from what Angel said, she was out there living it up. He couldn’t go and ruin it for her.

That had been the past though. Future. Regardless. What he had to do now was take a breather and figure out how he could get Buffy out of the loony bin without either making her hate him, or getting them both admitted.

He paced up and down the sidewalk trying to think of a solution. He was sure he looked a sight, all disheveled and manic, but his go-to move of going in for a brawl could very well cost him more than he was willing to pay.

He wished he could talk things over with someone. He needed a second opinion. Unfortunately his options were almost non-existent. Demons were out of the question. Buffy’s first Watcher—whatever his name was—had already died. Giles was too far away. Whether or not he’d gotten to Sunnydale yet didn’t matter, it was still not LA. He didn’t have anyone he could trust close—

He stopped in his tracks. The answer was so simple, he slapped his own forehead. He could have saved himself forty-some blocks of running, and made Buffy’s experience with this place even shorter had he thought of it before. He needed to talk to Joyce.

~~~***~~~

The door was mocking him. It was simple, well kept, normal, and closed. Doors tended to stay that way when all you did to try to open them was to glare at them. He knew that. He simply couldn’t do anything else about it.

The answer to all his prayers was just beyond that door. Or at least, it was the next step he needed to take to make everything better. All he had to do was knock on the thing and talk to the woman whose death he was still mourning

In the end the decision of whether to knock, sound the bell, or stand around like an idiot was taken out of his hands. Joyce opened the door and frowned at him. “Can I help you?”

She was a vision. Her maternal instinct was most likely warning her about the predator on the porch after dark while her littlest one was tucked away safely inside. She might have looked calm and composed to the casual observer, but Spike knew her better. The stress of her failing marriage and her daughter’s supposed mental problems had shaken her to the core. By the smell of things she’d resorted to alcohol to dull the pain. In short, she was far removed from the woman he’d come to see as a surrogate mother.

Despite all of that, as soon as Spike saw her he wanted to rush and hug her for all she was worth. He didn’t have an invitation though, so he brought forth all the class and culture of a time gone by. “Mrs. Summers, mind if I come in? I have some information pertaining to your daughter. Daughters, in fact.” He tried to convey without words all that her family meant to him.

She wavered, frowned, and finally took a step back. “Yes, sure, come in. What about them? Is Buffy okay?”

Spike smiled. It felt so right to have an invitation to their house. He’d had it—not counting that bit between his telling Buffy his feelings and taking down Glory—since they’d first partnered up against Angelus to the very end of Sunnydale. Sure, it wasn’t the same house, and it wasn’t even in the same city, but it was still a Summers house. And home is where the heart is.

“Don’t worry about your eldest, J—Mrs. Summers. She’ll be just fine. In fact, I came here to tell you there’s nothing wrong with her brain either. Buffy’s not crazy and she doesn’t belong in that place.”

Joyce narrowed her eyes and her nostrils flared. He’d seen that look on her oldest enough times to be on guard. “Are you the one that put all that nonsense in my daughter’s head? Is that why she burned down her school?” She looked him up and down and he was definitely found wanting. “Are you that Merrick person she mentioned, or someone pretending to be some sort of vampire?” The way she spat out the last word cut Spike up inside.

He needed to start speaking fast, but he found it hard to do past the lump in his throat. She reminded him so much of that first time he’d seen her he almost expected her to have an axe in her hands again. He cleared his throat and gave it a try anyway. “No, my name’s not Merrick. Not nearly stuffy enough for a poncy name like that. Name’s Spike. Well, William, but most everyone calls me Spike.” He could see he wasn’t winning many points so far, so he decided to go all in. “You were right about one thing, though. I am a vampire.” He looked her right in the eye as he brought forth his game-face as slow as he could. To see the detached hostility turn into horrified understanding was difficult, but he knew it had to be done. “Now I’m not gonna hurt even a hair on you or yours’ heads, but all the rest of the bloodsuckers out there aren’t me. Your daughter, the older one, is an honest to god hero, chosen by the Powers that Be to protect this world from the things lurking in the dark.”

“You—your face.”

He morphed back into his human guise “I need you to call that husband of yours and tell him he’s to bring Buffy home. She doesn’t need to spend even one minute more with people too blind to see the truth of what she’s saying.” He maneuvered around her, careful not to spook her even further. He then sat down on the couch in the living room. “While he gets it all straightened out, I’ll be here to answer whatever questions you have. Willing slave and all that. My safe word is ‘Peaches.’” He winked and took a bit of pleasure when the outrage over his last comment snapped her out of her shock.

She went to the phone and dialed a number from a flyer next to it. “This is Joyce Summers, I would like to talk either to my husband, Hank Summers, or to whomever is in charge of admissions.” She listened for a while, then repeated her request. They put her on hold again and she tapped her foot while she shot worried glances Spike’s way.

As for him, he took his time looking around the house Buffy had grown up in. It was nothing to write home about. A typical California house. Normal. He sniffed deep. A mix of Buffy, Dawn, Joyce, and something unfamiliar that must have been Hank. He even smelled like a deadbeat.

A small noise brought his attention to the stairs to the upper level and made him smirk. It seemed Dawn’s first contact with him was written to be the same: her sneaking a peek through the slats of the bannister. She was older than she’d been in the fake memories though. This time she was just one year younger than the slayer. He’d convinced the monks it wasn’t necessary for her to be much younger just so Buffy felt obligated to protect her. The Slayer was hard-wired to protect everyone, and her sister would come first no matter what age she was.

With a Dawn at about the same age as Buffy, the youngest Summers would be more included in the slaying gig and would also understand her sister better. Spike hoped it would prevent a situation like the one that led to Dawn kicking Buffy out of her own house. He’d also get a second chance with the human that had become his best friend for a while, until he’d bollixed it all up.

Joyce’s raised voice brought him out of his revelry. “I don’t care you already signed, un-sign and get our daughter home.” She listened to whatever it was Hank was saying. “I didn’t actually agree, you decided. Well now I decided she’s coming back. I shouldn’t ever have let you take her out of our house until we got to the bottom of this.” Another pause. “Listen, and listen closely. Either you come with Buffy, or you don’t come back at all and I go pick her up.” What made the threat even scarier was Joyce’s even tone. It was the tone known throughout mankind as the ‘do as I say, or you’re in the dog house for life.’ Despite himself Spike felt a bit sorry for the man. “Yes, I would take our daughter out of there, and you can go to your secretary for all I care. I’m sure she’d be able to find some place to put you to bed.” She took her ear off the receiver as Hank lied through his teeth about his affair. “As I said, I don’t care right now. All I care is that you get Buffy safely here. If you don’t do it in an hour, I will, but you won’t be welcome in this house anymore.” She hung up over his loud protestations. Spike was proud of her.

Of course, the adrenalin high had to break at some point, so Joyce’s knees almost gave way. Spike was next to her in a couple of strides. He kept her upright, guided her to the couch, and fixed her a drink. When she got her nerves under control, or as close to it as she could, she pinned him with her gaze.

“You are going to tell me exactly how you know Buffy, and what Dawn has to do with any of this.” She reached over to the open bottle of brandy, raised it, and then put it back down. “After you tell me all that, you’ll answer any and all questions I can think of while I wait for—” She stopped talking and just stared ahead.

“I already told you, I’m your willing slave while we wait.”

She looked at him with a small frown and a glimmer of a question in the depths of her eyes. “And after you tell me what you know about my daughters, you’re going to tell me what you know about me.”

He chuckled. “I always said you were a sharp one.”

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Okay, see, this is gonna sound strange, and it’s gonna be very bad before it gets better.” He checked the clock above the door. “And if you want the long version, you’re gonna have to wait, ‘cause there’s only so much I can squeeze in less than an hour.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“Okay, Joyce. May I call you Joyce?”

“Something tells me you will anyway, so sure.”

“There’s no easy way of saying this, so here goes. I’m not just a vampire, I’m one of only two vampires with a soul in the world. Well, as far as I know. Apart from that, I’ve recently woken up in a motel room, next to my sire—that’s the vampire that makes you one—eight years before where I was supposed to be.”

That got Joyce’s attention. “So you what, travelled through time?”

“Your guess is as good as mine as to how, but yeah. Time travel’s a new one even for me.”

He spent the next half an hour telling her the story of Spike of Sunnydale – shortened version. He skipped over Dawn being the Key, the more graphic details of Buffy and his failed relationship, including the trigger for his trip to regain his soul, or about the Buffy-bot, but he told her as much as he could. By the end Joyce had tears running down her cheeks, but she’d refused to drink anymore. Spike thought that was a good sign. During one of their hot chocolate talks she’d admitted to crawling into a bottle more than once after the divorce became a real possibility and all the way up to Buffy’s graduation. Perhaps Joyce would cope better this go-around by tapping in to that well of strength he knew she had.

“So you’re here to get Buffy to fall for you instead of this Angel person.”

“No, I’m here— Look, I don’t know how I got back here, or who sent me, but as long as I’m here I’ll try to make things easier for the people I care about. That includes Buffy, Dawn, you, and even those meddling friends of hers.”

“She’s fifteen and in high school.” The warning was clear in her voice.

“I’m not the Poof.” He knew what it was going to look like if he hung around. He also knew he couldn’t leave her to face the coming problems on her own. Joyce was right though: the Buffy of this time was not his Slayer, she was a fifteen year old girl. A girl with a destiny and superpowers, but still just a teenager, not his General-Buffy. “I know she’s not my—I’ll leave her be best I can. I’ll help her, but I know she’s under-aged, yeah? Not gonna try anything to make you want to go at me with an ax.” He snorted. “I’ve gotten pretty decent at pretending I’m just a thing without feelings, so…”

She gasped. “No. I might not know about vampires, witches, and hell-gods, but you don’t sound like someone without feelings.”

“Thank you, Joyce.”

Joyce looked at him with narrowed eyes. “So why did you only show up now? What did you do between waking up in the past and showing up on my doorstep?”

Spike didn’t want to tell her. He couldn’t just saddle her with such knowledge. Especially when Dawn was listening in to everything he said. He didn’t have a problem to the Bit knowing the rest, as his track record of keeping secrets from her was anything but stellar, but this could not be how she found out about her true nature. “I’d answer, but I don’t think what I have to say is appropriate for your younger daughter’s ears.”

“What?” She looked up at the stairs. Spike could hear the gasp and hurried escape as it happened. “I’ll be right back.” She hurried to Dawn’s room and left Spike alone in the living room. Joyce managed to deal with her daughter quickly enough, but she didn’t come back before the sound of a car pulling up in the driveway could be heard.

Hank had made the smart choice after all.

Joyce came down the stairs and headed for the door. Dawn was right behind her, despite her mother’s instruction that she should stay put. Spike also found himself taking a few steps in that direction, but he held himself back. He wanted the family to reunite on their own.

Hank came through the door first, but Dawn plowed right by him to envelop Buffy in a giant hug. Joyce whispered a few words to her husband who shot Spike a hostile look before she joined her daughters in the embrace.

Spike was happy just watching them. He didn’t have time to bask in it though because a pair of hazel eyes pinned him on the spot.

“Mom? What did you do?”

Spike could do nothing except smirk and say “Hello, cutie.”

She looked so young. It wasn’t the slight baby fat where in the future there would be hardened muscles; nor was it the bouncy hair from frequent trips to the salon which had given way to a permanent messy ponytail; and it wasn’t the small scars that had gathered over the years which now were missing. It was the innocence in her eyes.

When he’d been thrown back in time he’d made plans upon plans about how he could help her, how to make her life easier. He’d thought of all the things he remembered that had hurt her, made her harder, and brought her nightmares. He was going to try to change all of them, if that was possible. He’d just never seen her before it all weighed her down.

Even when he’d first laid eyes on her all those years before, she’d been through enough problems to break a normal person. She’d lost people she’d cared about, had fought for her life every night for more than a year, had been sent to the loony bin by her parents, and had even died once.

He could tell that the stress she’d been under since being Called and losing her first Watcher had already begun to cast its shadow over her. Despite that, she was still an innocent. A young girl no older than the Bit had been when Glory was after her.

Of course he loved her. She was Buffy. She just wasn’t his Buffy. She wasn’t that combination of Slayer, General, den mother, mature woman, and lover who made his heart ache. She wasn’t the Buffy who’d said she loved him—whether he believed she’d said the truth that one time was beside the point. Seeing her look at him without any recognition, wearing a face that was familiar, yet not, he wasn’t sure she ever would be. And just like that he realized he might love her, but he wasn’t in love with her. She was yet another Summers woman – his to protect, but not his everything.

“I asked who you are and what you are doing in my house.”

“Dad, I think you better stand back.” Buffy took a step toward Spike. “What do you want here?”

“I think we should all sit down—”

“Mom, wait, I don’t know what he’s been telling you, but he’s not what you think he is.”

“What’s that?” He’d gotten lost in his thoughts and now he was losing control of the situation. He saw Buffy’s eyes dart around, no doubt searching for something that could become a stake. Just his luck she hadn’t sniffed out Angel’s undead status for weeks the first go-around, yet she figured him out straight away. Must have been the hair-gel fumes and the brooding git’s frequent disappearing acts that left her wondering. He needed to focus. “Truce. Let’s not ruin your mother’s doilies for no reason.” He spread his arms wide. “I’ve got my soul, you’ve got no stake, and we’re on the same side. Why don’t we all just sit down as your mom said and let’s figure things out. Deal?”

Buffy was still wary. He couldn’t really blame her after the kind of day she’d had. Of course, her father was a different issue.

“You can stop talking to my daughter like I’m not here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think I deserve some answers.” He turned to Joyce. “Who is this man, why is he in my house, why have we gone back on Buffy’s treatment, why is Dawn still up, and in general, what the hell is going on around here?”

There was a shocked silence after Hank’s explosion. Spike would have answered with some choice words, but it wasn’t his place. Whatever happened, the man was still Joyce’s husband and the girls’ father. Just as Buffy wasn’t the hardened warrior, Hank wasn’t the deadbeat who’d left his daughters fend for themselves without even sending child support after their mother died.

“No more shouting. We’re all going to sit down and discuss things.” Joyce’s voice had taken on that special bone-chilling tone again. “And then we’ll let our guest tell his story.” She shot Spike with a meaningful look. “As long as he remembers there are minors present.” The last part was a clear warning to steer clear of more adult topics such as sex, death, and the yearly apocalypse. Or at least that’s what he thought it meant.

Dawn was the first to shrug and walk past Spike to take a seat on the couch. The Bit wasn’t going to miss any chance to be included in the discussion, which only made her that much more similar to his version.

Buffy hurried after her sister and stopped briefly next to Spike to look him up and down. He gave her his brightest smile and a small shrug, then took a seat on a nearby armchair. Buffy got on the couch sitting closest to the vampire in her house, as any good slayer should, no doubt ready to jump between him and her family if he tried anything.

Joyce then sat between her two daughters, which left Hank hovering around the entrance without a purpose. He grumbled something not even Spike could pick up, took off his coat with jerky movements, and then took a seat on an armchair opposite from the other man.

Once they all settled down, nobody was sure who should start. In the end Joyce took it upon herself to break the stalemate. “First of all, Buffy, honey, I’m really sorry about today. We should never have stopped listening to you and sent you to that place. I promise you I’ll never not take you seriously again.”

Buffy was visibly flustered. “Yeah, okay, whatever.”

Spike frowned and leaned forward a bit. For a second there he thought he’d heard Harmony speak. He shook it off and leaned back again.

“Joyce, please. Let’s start with the important question: who is this man?” Hank was glaring daggers.

“Name’s William, but you can call me Spike.”

Hank scrunched his nose as if he’d smelled something bad. “What kind of name is Spike? What is this? First Buffy runs away from home after burning down her school gym with a guy named Pike, now there’s a Spike sitting in my living room. What’s next? Is he moving in with us? Is she moving in with him?”

Spike laughed. He couldn’t help himself. The discussion was just so surreal.

Buffy was glaring daggers at him. “Would you, like, shut up? And Dad, God. I already told you, I wasn’t running away, I was chasing a demon.”

“Here we go again: vampires, demons. I think I should take you right back to the Institute.”

“You don’t take the Slayer to the loony bin.” Spike’s answer to Hank’s idea was said in a growl, but he couldn’t stop it if he tried.

“I should have known, you’re in on this with her. Look—”

“Shut up, Hank. We said we’d let William tell his story without any yelling and all you’ve done is yell.” Joyce had sat up and was giving her husband her best glare.

He ignored it, only proving to Spike he was indeed an idiot. “I just want to know why we’re even talking about all this nonsense.” He huffed. “We need to find a solution to our daughter’s delusions, not bring a punk in our house.”

“May I show them, Joyce?”

She sighed. “Yeah, sure.” She turned to Dawn. “Don’t be afraid, Pumpkin-belly, he’s not going to hurt anyone in this house.”

Dawn’s eyes were as big as saucers. “Okay Mommy.”

“No staking, deal Slayer? Show and tell only.”

“U-huh. But you try anything and it’s, like, the dust-buster for you.”

He chuckled. “Wouldn’t dream of trying anything, love.” He switched into his demon visage and continued to talk, ignoring Dawn’s ‘eeep’ and Hank’s ‘Oh my Gods.’ “Tell me pet, when you explained about your calling to your parents the first time, why didn’t you just raise the couch with them on it, or something to prove your point?” He put his game face away again.

Her eyes widened. “I never thought of that.”

“So Buffy’s like a superhero?” The way Dawn scrunched her face betrayed she wasn’t happy with her reaction. She’d probably intended to say something snooty and with teenage levels of disdain, only to be short-circuited by her hero-worship. Some things never changed, whatever the timeline. “Means she’s an even bigger freak than I thought.” She turned to her sister. “You gonna use those pompoms of yours to stake vampires?” She smirked to herself, no doubt confident she’d been obnoxious enough to make up for her initial slip.

“What kind of trick is this?” Hank looked like a man ready to go to war. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it has to stop right now. This is my house and I won’t have—”

“Will you just shut up?” Joyce had put an arm around Buffy’s shoulders in a clear sign of support, while her other hand rested on Dawn’s forearm, either to stop the younger sibling from making anymore comments, or to show her she’s included. “I told you to listen and all you do is run your mouth like always. If you can’t see what’s right in front of your eyes, maybe you can hear. Otherwise I don’t know what you want from us anymore.” She narrowed her eyes, got up and dragged her husband by the sleeve into the kitchen.

She then started talking in hushed tones, which meant her daughters didn’t hear her, but Spike had no problem listening in. “Is that it? Ever since you started fucking your secretary I’ve stayed quiet, thinking our daughters need their father.”

“Joyce, it’s not what you think, I was just working late.”

She snorted. “The least you could do would be to man up and admit it. I’m not dumb, or naïve enough to buy that, and you should know it after all these years.”

Hank tried to say something else, but his attempt to dig himself out of the hole he’d dug was too low for Spike to pick up. Regardless, he was cut off by Joyce. “As I said earlier, I don’t care about your midlife crisis right now. What I care about is our daughters. If this is the kind of father you want to be—yelling and ready to put our own daughter away just so you don’t have to deal with her—then maybe I should have kicked you out and sued for a divorce a year ago.” Her voice had gotten quieter, but hadn’t lost any of its power.

“I did what I thought was best for Buffy. She was acting out, destroying property, running away, and doing god knows what. I had to intervene. Do you know how much it cost me to have the charges dropped?”

“I know and I don’t care. Even if our daughter hadn’t been fighting for her life with vampires, she still deserved better than how you—how we treated her. Now I need you to be her father that loves her and support her.”

“Support her in what? Chasing Casper? Maybe she’s not the only one I should be driving to the Institute, maybe you should accompany her.”

There was a long silence after that, then some whispers Spike didn’t make out, and finally Joyce’s voice was clear and loud enough that even the girls must have heard her. “Get out now.”

Spike looked at Buffy and Dawn, now huddled together on the couch and looking as miserable as he’d ever seen them. He wanted to go to them and hug them as tight as possible, to shield them from the end of their parents’ marriage. Only there was nothing that he could do. These girls wouldn’t accept any help from him. He needed to earn back his place with the Summers clan. The idea filled him with both hope and dread.

Joyce’s face was impassive as she made her way back to the living room. Spike had seen her wear that mask enough in the future when she was trying to protect her children from her inner turmoil. It was the face she’d worn in the hospital enough times. Which meant she now saw Hank as a danger on the same level with her possible death. Her two daughters, in contrast, had shrunk in on themselves even further, with Dawn visibly close to tears.

Something dark passed over Hank’s face as he emerged from the door behind his wife. It was the ripple of evil William’s tutor got right before a caning and the memory made all of Spike’s muscles tense in anticipation. “This house is a freak show.”

The snarl building up was impossible to stop. “To have the supernatural stare you straight in the face and still deny it takes some special kind of stupid. Threatening to walk away from these three proves exactly how big of a wanker you are.”

Hank stood up straighter, his face twisted in anger. “I don’t care who you are, but don’t you dare talk to me like that in my own home. I want you to leave now.”

Spike’s body was coiled for a fight, and he could tell Buffy had tensed up as well. He slouched back a bit more in the armchair and tried to exude an air of disinterested confidence. “Can’t mate. Was invited to stay and tell my tale. Wouldn’t do to upset the lady of the house, now would it?”

Hank made to move toward Spike only to be intercepted by Joyce. “I told you to get out.”

“Joyce, can’t you see—”

She glanced at Buffy and Dawn for a moment, then raised her head high and looked her husband in the eye. “All I can see is a man who doesn’t belong in this house anymore. Now leave before you say something we’ll all regret.”

The two stared at each other for a few tense moments, until Hank looked away first. “If I leave, there’s no going back. You know that, right?” He’d lowered his voice, but the anger could still be heard in his tone.

“I do. You still need to go.”

He whirled in place and strode to the entrance. Once there he stopped, grabbed his jacket, and spoke over his shoulder, not even turning to look at his wife and children. “I’ll send for my things soon.” He then walked out and slammed the door shut behind him.

“He’s going to his floozy, isn’t he?” Dawn’s question came like the first thunder of a storm: clear, loud, and shocking in its suddenness.

Joyce all but collapsed on the couch behind her and gathered her daughters in her arms. “Your dad just needs some time to cool down. I’m sure he loves you very much. He’s just angry and confused by everything happening at work and he feels like he’s losing control at home, too.” She kissed Dawn’s temple. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere, though.”

Spike noticed Joyce neither denied her husband’s infidelity, nor backed down. In fact, she was already behaving like a divorcé. He wanted to shrug it off, since he knew Hank was a non-entity in his girls’ future, but he couldn’t. He’d experienced losing a parent and the hole it left behind, no matter the reasons, or the circumstances, it still hurt to this day. He also knew her father’s leaving paved the way for Buffy’s future abandonment issues. Maybe things would be better with Joyce stepping up to the plate earlier this time, and by keeping Angel—

Crap. His trip to the Tatra Mountains had taken up so much time that the Enormous Forehead had gotten his chance to see Buffy outside her school and fall ass over tit in love with her soul. As if the fact he’d been a complete letch with a penchant for virgins as a human had nothing to do with it.

Angelus described in great detail exactly what he wanted to do to the fifteen year old girl sucking on a lollipop in her cheerleading outfit. He even used Dru to demonstrate some of the more depraved and acrobatic ideas. If Spike hadn’t been stuck in the wheelchair at the time he’d have dusted the sod just to stop him from talking.

He needed to do something about the brooding git who was probably already taking three baths a day to wash off the rat filth while he worked himself up in a self-righteous frenzy. He’s probably already planning his seduction—not that he would ever admit to such a thing.

He’d heard of the first few months of the great Buffy and Angel love story and it read so much like a pedophile’s playbook it made him sick. There would be no mysterious stranger action while Spike was around. It was one of the reasons he’d decided to come right out and say what, who, and from when he was.

Buffy’s voice roused him from his musings. “So are you gonna do with the spillage sometime this century, or are you just going to stay in that la-la land you keep slipping off to?”

Spike smirked at her and got ready to tell the third version of his story in as many weeks. Sure, Joyce and Dawn had heard about his feelings, but that didn’t mean Buffy had to find out. He figured she’d probably learn about them sooner or later, but telling a teenage girl you were in love with the older version might not be the best starting off point. Especially with her being a slayer and he a vampire.

So he told his tale, ignored the sly looks from Dawn, or Joyce’s stern silence, and focused on Buffy’s face. There was a wealth of information to be found there.

She’d started off still clearly upset from her dad’s abrupt departure. Then there was disbelief at his revelation about being from the future, but she settled down to listen to the rest. There was interest, hurt, and betrayal while he told her of their initial meeting and his many unsuccessful attempts on her life. His recollection of how he ended up helping her shocked and angered her, so he hoped she wouldn’t side with the Initiative at all this time. When he got to winning his soul back and all the torment it brought with it—while skipping her death and their doomed relationship—she interrupted him.

“Wait. So what you’re saying is after a century of being a run of the mill vampire—”

“Oi. Master Vampire that offed two of you Chosen birds, don’t you forget. I was an unliving legend.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You got to this town on the mouth of hell.”

“Hellmouth, yeah. The place is called Sunnydale, and you’ll all be moving there soon enough.”

“What if we just, you know, don’t?” The Bit’s eyes were red from lack of sleep and crying, but she was wide awake and looked as if she were on a sugar high.

“Don’t what? Move to Sunnyhell?”

“Dawn has a point. If we just stay here in LA, or move someplace else, all the things that went wrong there wouldn’t hurt us, would they?” Joyce looked much too happy with the idea for Spike’s liking.

“As much as I wish you could, I don’t think it’s in the cards. If you don’t move there then there’ll be nothing to stop the Master from bleeding the town dry, or the Mayor from devouring the town, or the Initiative’s monster from creating his very own cyborg army.” He locked gazes with Buffy. “You’re the key to stopping the world ending, love.” He focused on Joyce, trying to convince her as best he could. “And even if you run away there are still things out there that spend their entire existence hunting for the Slayer. Lothos was just a sick bugger who preyed on new girls who didn’t come into their strength yet, but there are much more powerful enemies that would hunt you down. If you just run and hide you won’t ever manage to defeat them. Buffy needs experience, practice, a support system, and a reason to fight.” He chanced another look at the young slayer. “And she’ll be brilliant given a chance, trust me.”

“See? There, that’s exactly what I was getting at. You’re not telling me everything. After being the ‘unliving legend,’ and ‘trying to kill me’ for a few years, you’re forced to help me, fine.” The way she was using her fingers for air quotes left Spike wondering if he’d ever seen his Buffy make that gesture. “But why would you just wake up one day and decide to get a soul. What, were they all out of holy water you could have bathed in to hurt yourself?”

“I— Look, I’ll promise I’ll tell you all my darkest, deepest secrets one day, but let’s just say I felt I needed it to make heads or tails of what’s good and bad. When I was soulless I could still tell right from wrong about the big things, the biblical sins. But hell is in the details.” He gazed off into nothingness remembering some of the most spectacular failures of his to understand what he was doing wrong. “I couldn’t risk hurting the ones I lo—cared about anymore, so I decided the only way was to get a soul. Much good it did me.” He went on with a brief account of the fight with the First Evil, his sacrifice and time spent as a ghost.

Buffy regarded him for a few moments once he was done talking. “So why are you here?”

“To help.”

“Yeah, I got that part, but why? Why would you want to go through all that again?”

He cursed on the inside. Leave it to the slayer to cut to the heart of the matter. “First off, I’m still a demon, yeah? Soul gives me a moral compass but it doesn’t stop me from needing my fix of violence. Second of all, I really like watching a game of footsie, especially when Man U is playing, and if one of those pesky apocalypses that I helped stop the first go-round manages to stick, it’s good-bye Leicester Square, so long, ‘Passions.’ You get the point. And last but not least, cow’s blood may taste like crap, but demon blood is downright disgusting, so if I want my meals to not burn me like battery acid, I need to make sure this little ball of sunshine you call Earth doesn’t go completely ars—I mean sideways.” Joyce had still caught the beginning of the expression and was giving him the evil eye while motioning toward Dawn.

Spike knew he’d need to clean up his speech if he didn’t want a repeat performance of ‘Joyce – the ax wielding mother hen.’

“Bull.”

“Buffy.”

“I only said bull, I didn’t continue it.”

“It doesn’t matter, young lady. You won’t be using that kind of language around me, superpowers or not.”

“Yes Mom.” Buffy rolled her eyes and then fixed her gaze on Spike again. “But what you said is still not everything.” She narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t need to come here. From what you told us we were on our way to Sunnydale whether we wanted to or not, and that’s where all the nasties that matter right now are. Also the world didn’t end until you started helping, so you could have taken a couple of years off to…oh, I dunno, whatever the vampire equivalent of suntan is in the moonlight. Moontan? Sit on the beach and drink Margueritas, or just sleep days away, come in at the right time, stop whatever is endangering your precious shows and then go away again. So why are you here?”

Spike sighed. Once, just once could things go his bloody way? Of course not. Well, here goes. “Because I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Why? I survived just fine the first time, so—”

“No you didn’t you infuriating bint. You died. And not just once, mind, but twice. Thrice if you count the one time with the bullet. And it isn’t just that you die and get brought back to that hellhole, it’s the people you lose on the way, the pain you feel, the heartbreak, the—” his voice cracked and he got up to pace. “There’s a whole boatload of crap waiting in that place and I’m trying to keep you from drowning in it before you even get there.” He looked at her and stopped dead in his tracks.

Her face was a mix between horror, excitement, and something else he couldn’t decipher right then and there. “Me. You’re here for me.” Her brain was probably going a mile a minute, so it wouldn’t be long until she got to— “What were we? In that future of yours that you’re trying to make better, were you and her, me, us… was there an us?”

He never could lie to her for long. “Yeah, pet, there was. Not gonna go into details, but let’s just say me and the future you have a history. Wasn’t all hearts and roses, mind. As I said, spent the first couple of years trying to do her in, on and off. But by the end there, there was something that… there was just something, and let’s leave at that for now.”

“And you got your soul—”

“I said ‘leave it’ slayer. I’ll be outside for a smoke.” He all but fled the house. His hands were trembling when he pulled out the cigarette and he almost couldn’t light it because of the shaking.

He took the first long drag and exhaled a column of smoke in the attempt to calm his nerves.

“Bugger.”

*Two weeks later, LA*

One more kick to the ribs, a sweep of the legs, and it was time for the stake to the heart.

“That was pretty good, Slayer. But you’re still dropping your right shoulder before you punch.” He pointed at the new pile of dust with the hand holding his cigarette. “Next time might not be against some poor sod turned in a hurry by a mindless minion. You’ll come up against one of the Master’s favorite pets, and annoying and ritual-minded as they are, they still pack enough brains and experience to turn that tell of yours into their own personal ‘one good day.’ Remember that.”

Buffy snorted and rolled her eyes. It was a combination Spike was getting very closely acquainted with. “As if. And even if we do move to Sunnydale after the divorce finalizes, you said it yourself: I took them on and won the last time. And I so do not drop my shoulder. And even if I did, what are you, the posture Nazi? I thought vampires were all for the mayhem and ‘to hell with all the rules’ anyway.”

Spike couldn’t help thinking that old Rupert was a saint for having survived this version of Buffy. Even the older version of her had provided some epic moments of frustration for the watcher, but nothing could compare to this constant stream of denials, sarcasm, and annoying remarks. “It’s not about rules, or about what happened in a different timeline. This is about you now. Just because I’m here and you were there in the future doesn’t mean this couldn’t be an alternate universe where you die earlier. Or stay dead when the Master kills you. Or simply piss me off enough to end you myself.”

That last bit made her deign to look at him out of the corner of her eye. “You won’t.” More eye-rolls. “And I guess I could do something else with my shoulders. But only because I want to.”

He couldn’t help but smile. He’d take small victories wherever he could get them. “Wouldn’t dream of anything different.” He really needed to get Giles to take over as her watcher. Not that he knew exactly how he got wrangled into the role, but somewhere between having a cuppa with Joyce, talking with Dawn about her history lesson, and trying to teach Buffy some of his signature moves, he’d found himself being just that. Not that he really minded.

They started to walk down one of the many back alleys in the bad part of LA. Well, one of the bad parts which just happened to suffer from an undead infestation. They’d already dusted five fledges and it wasn’t even getting late yet.

Spike wanted to patrol some more, work with Buffy on her attack moves, but instead he stopped walking and took stock. He was doing it all wrong. Just because he was filling in for Rupert didn’t mean he had to also act like him. With all the training and talk about future threats he’d forgotten to cater to Buffy’s teenager side. She hadn’t spent all that time in the Bronze for nothing back in Sunnyhell. She needed entertainment and friends. Since Red and the Whelp were all the way in the other town, she needed to spend some hours with whatever friends she must have had before her move. It was the time to get the Slayer to have fun.

“So pet, I seem to remember Joyce mentioning a party tonight. I can take care of any stragglers around here if you want to go indulge in some teenage fun.”

He saw her shoulders tense. “Nah, that’s fine, we can hang around here a bit more then go home.”

He got in front of her and grabbed her arm. “What’s wrong, Buffy?”

She gave him a look filled with Buffy grade stubbornness. He expected her to deny anything was wrong, storm off, and bottle it up. Instead she huffed and started to kick invisible pebbles. “I don’t wanna go.”

He narrowed his eyes. “They didn’t invite you?”

She turned around and started to stomp down the street. “No, they didn’t. And if I was still me from a few months ago, I wouldn’t invite me either.”

“Why the hell not?”

She flung her hands in the air. “Because it’s the birthday party for my varsity quarterback ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey, who’s dating my used to be best friend and co-head cheerleader, Jennifer. And if that wasn’t sucky on the scale of suck enough, the party’s full of people I used to hang out with and who haven’t called me, or answered any one of my calls since the night I killed Lothos.” She huffed and Spike could all but hear tears in her voice. “I’m just the freak who burned down the school and is running around with pointy sticks.”

He had heard enough. “Stop being daft. You’re not just some silly little girl going through a phase. You’re the Slayer. Didn’t you save all their asses when you killed Lothos? I know people are in deep denial about anything supernatural, but they must have seen you rescue at least some of them.”

She chuckled. “A vampire was about to eat Jen and Jeff while they were having sex, but I saved them.” She sighed. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. I’m not popular anymore, what with the fire, getting expelled, and now the divorce.”

“That’s not your fault.”

She snorted in response.

“Listen to me. The fact that your dad can’t understand what he’s giving up for a bit of slap and tickle is not on you. It’s his brain that’s working all wrong. I have half a mind to rip the bastard in two for putting you through this, but he’s not worth it.”

Her face closed down into a hard mask. “You don’t know anything.”

He raised his scarred eyebrow. “I know enough. First time around he completely disappeared from your life by the time I rolled into town. At your lowest and neediest he still couldn’t be bothered.” He cupped her cheek. “You, your mother, and Nibblet can do so much better than him.”

“You can’t choose family, Spike.”

“You’re right. But that doesn’t mean you can’t chose who you have next to you.”

She gave him a strange look out of the corner of her eye. “Whatever. Let’s see if anymore undead decide to show up for this party and leave my former friends to theirs.” The way she said it would have fooled a lesser vamp, but Spike wasn’t on his first merry-go ride.

He touched her arm and guided her down another street. He kept changing the direction on her for another few turns until he reached his intended destination.

“What are you doing?”

He looked at her and shrugged. “I screwed up. Stick around me long enough and you’ll realize it’s something of a specialty of mine.” He raked the fingers from his left hand through his hair. “I was turning into your bloody Watcher, and that’s not what you need right now.” He pointed at the door of the run-down warehouse in front of them. “This is where you should be. Just one rule – no slaying in there. Well, unless someone attacks you, but I don’t think anyone will be stupid enough to do that.”

She was looking at the place as if it were a smudge on her brand new shoes. “And what is this place?” She frowned and took a step back. “It better not be some weird demon sex dungeon or something.”

He couldn’t figure out if he should laugh or get upset at her words. The idea brought back some good memories, some not so good, and none that really fit with the young girl next to him. He settled on a grunt. “Behind that door is your first taste of what real demons are like. Not the piss-poor excuses for vampires we’ve met until now, not that poncy bugger you offed, and not anything that dead watcher of yours might have told you about.” She scrunched her nose at him so he decided to explain some more. “It’s a demon bar, pet. Not very high end, but not the worst there is, either. It’s about damn time you had some fun on the job.”

“It doesn’t look like fun.”

“It’s not always what’s on the outside that counts, pet. Not everyone is cursed with my good looks, but some people still manage to be all right on the inside.”

She smiled briefly before schooling her features in her patented look of disdain. “Well from what I’ve seen so far demons are gross.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet.” He groaned. “Could you please just bloody trust me on this? We go in for one drink. We leave whenever you decide. But not later than twelve or your mum will have my hide, deal?”

“Okay, sheesh.” She went to the door and tried to get in. A peephole opened in the heavy door and a gravelly voice right out of cliché Hollywood movies asked for the password. She gave Spike an incredulous look and tapped her foot as he gave the code-word to the bouncer. Whoever thought putting old horror movie titles as passwords was a good idea needed a flogging.

They made their way in and he could practically feel her go into Slayer mode. If any demons worth their salt were in there tonight Spike bet they felt it too. He gave the room a quick scan to map any possible threats. A couple of vamps looked itchy in a booth, a Novak sneered and started heading for the back door, and a couple others gave him the stink eye. Nothing they couldn’t handle, but it always paid to get the lay of the land.

He put an arm around her and guided her to the bar. They occupied a couple of stools next to some peaceful demons about ready to piss their pants and ordered some drinks.

“ID?”

Spike snorted. “Chit’s the Slayer and you ask for an ID? I thought this was a reputable demon establishment.” That earned him some snickers from the other patrons within earshot. Even Buffy cracked a smile.

“One beer. Non-negotiable.”

“One rum and coke, you can add an extra ice-cube if your conscience is bothering you.”

Spike locked eyes with the bartender. There was a greenish tint to the man’s corneas, sort of like a cat. Probably some type of half-breed. In the end they both nodded, an agreement reached. Soon the drinks had been served and the bartender was keeping himself busy wiping down the counter and flexing his muscles ever so slightly to emphasize the ‘no violence’ policy written above the booze shelves.

“Tell me a story.” Her voice was perky and her eyes seemed to sparkle a bit. Maybe it was the effect of the missing half of her drink on an empty stomach and without any previous experience. Spike thought she needed to eat more.

“A bit old for ‘three little pigs,’ aren’t you?” He smirked and took a long sip of his whiskey.

She swatted at his shoulder. “You know what I mean. You gave us the short version of your history when we met. Now I want the dirt.”

The request brought him up short. He’d expected she’d ask, sure, but that didn’t mean he had any idea what to tell her. Where to start? What to leave out? What to put emphasis on? He settled for the tried and true and slouched a bit in his seat, playing casually with the rim of the glass in front of him. “So you wanna know about the Big Bad?”

Her eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “The what now?”

“’S what I was for most of my unlife. The Big Bad Wolf, ready to eat little Slayers right up on their way to their grand-watcher’s.”

She burst out laughing. It was something she’d almost never done back in the other timeline, so even if she was laughing at his expense, he couldn’t find it within himself to get upset. Instead he chuckled along, ignoring some of the patrons’ uneasy stares.

“You really have a thing for wolves, don’t you? You sure you didn’t want to be a werewolf instead of a member of the undead?”

“Nah. Sure, the walking around in the daytime is nice and all, but to completely lose control for a few nights a month is really not my style.”

The way her eyes widened reminded him of the Bit when she was trying to play him. “You mean werewolves are real?”

He frowned. “Sure. You’re sitting in a demon bar and talking to a vampire. Why wouldn’t there be werewolves somewhere out there?”

“Because—” she stopped and scrunched up her face. “What else is out real? Are there ghosts, aliens, or is there a Bigfoot?”

“Seen some ghosts, even a couple of Sasquatch, but I don’t know about aliens. I guess if you consider alternate realities and other dimensions as alien worlds, then sure, they exist. But I’ve never met any little green men. Well, except that one time in Cadiz, but those were just some type of elves.”

“Elves are real? Is Santa real too?”

He couldn’t help but smile. The Bit had asked him the exact same thing when she was hiding at his crypt at some time. “Yeah, but not exactly the Coke version. From what I hear it’s more Grampus than Jolly Saint Nick.” At her blank look he shrugged and elaborated. “More punishment for the wicked than treats for the good.”

She sat back in her seat. “Huh. The more you know.”

They kept talking about types of supernatural creatures he’d encountered and he found himself studying her reactions. Sure she could give Harmony a run for her money from time to time with some comment so vapid it made his ears bleed, but she was also very good at getting to the heart of a matter and she had a killer wit, which reminded him of other times.

Which made the decision he’d come to that much harder. “Pet, there’s something I was thinking about.”

The smile left her face in an instant. “Oh-oh. Nothing good comes after something like that.”

He snorted. “I guess you’ve got a point, but still needs to be said. The thing is I was thinking of going to Sunnydale a couple of weeks ahead of the rest of you lot.” Her face all but crumbled and he felt like a prick. “Not by much, mind you, just by a couple of weeks, once you’re starting to get ready for your move. Thing is I won’t be able to help you out too much with that, and instead I was hoping to get a lay of the land.”

“I thought you said you lived there for years.” Her voice was so cold it cut him to the bone.

“I did, but not in this time. I don’t know how the Master has things set up, or what else might have been lurking around the corner before I stepped foot in there. And I’d be acting as your eyes and ears, the trusty foot soldier back at work.”

“You’re not my soldier.” She sounded a bit offended.

“I know that. But I’m not your Watcher either and I bloody sure ain’t Peaches. I’m better fighting at your side, or doing your bidding than I am ordering you about and teaching you the correct stance in fisticuffs—never was much for Queensbury myself. Anyway, I’d be going out on a scouting mission, not abandoning you.” He touched her hand. “I’d never do that.”

She studied him through narrowed eyes then very slowly drained the last of her drink – more colored melted ice than anything by that point. “You still owe me a story.”

He was thrown by the non-sequitur.

“You still need to tell me about this ‘Angel’ guy that you sometimes call ‘Peaches’ and other such nice names.”

The thought didn’t sit at all well with Spike but he knew that sooner or later he’d have to explain. It seemed a good a time as any, so he started telling her about some of his most noteworthy memories of the Gelled Wonder. By the time his second whiskey was empty and the third bottle of beer was close to emptying as well he’d finally managed to recall his first sighting of the soul-having Angel.

“Thing is, though, that the souled version of the bugger was never that different from his unsouled one. It’s all about what Angelus wants. He talks to you, he does the ‘right thing,’ but in fact he’s making you do exactly what he wants. It always worked for him, especially with the birds. That’s how he’d get them to come willingly to his lair before he started making his ‘art’ with their blood.” He snorted in derision. “Before I was thrown back here I spent some months as a ghost haunting the offices of this big evil law firm he took over.”

“Some good guy.”

“’S what I said. But by the end there…” He shuddered. “He almost had me thinking his becoming CEO of Evil Inc. was a good idea.” He gave her a surreptitious look from under his lashes while she played with her second beer—technically his fifth, but he’d redirected a couple her way. “I knew all his tricks, all the ways he tells you one thing, meaning another, and making you think a third, and despite all that he still had me fooled. Took being thrown eight bloody years in the past to realize it, but he was a git and I was a wanker to listen to him.”

She was smirking at him. “You’re still not telling me the most important thing, though, are you?”

Damn her and her ability to cut through his smoke screen. Say what you want about Buffy Summers, but she sure wasn’t dumb. “You’re right, pet. Thing is Angel was your first love. You were fifteen and a newly minted Slayer, he was two hundred and fifty and the forbidden fruit. You could sell this shit to Hollywood in a heartbeat and all the high school chits would be lapping it up with a spoon.”

“You’re jealous.”

“It’s not a matter of me being jealous or not. Look, I don’t hide that I was in love with my Buffy, but even so, even with you being her, I’m not going to start sniffing around you and playing the night in midnight armor. You deserve better, you deserve more, you deserve to live your life and learn what’s out there, not fall under the thrall of someone who’ll make you grow up faster than you need to. It’s enough your calling is going to weigh you down, give you hell, and fuck you up. If there’s anything I’d wish for it would be one more day for you without the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

She was frowning at him. “So.. what, you don’t think you’re good for me? Don’t I get to choose what and who I want?”

That hurt him. How was it that he always ended up sounding more like Peaches and the Watcher despite his protests? This time travel thing must have done a bigger number on him than he thought. “Of course you do and trust me when I say that if you gave the word, I’d be your willing slave.” He pinned her with his eyes and grabbed her hand in both of his. “But it wouldn’t be fair for either of us. You’d be taking advantage of the feelings I have for someone that’s not you, or better put, you’re not her yet. And I’d be taking advantage of your lack of any options at the moment, and a possible small case of hero worship, since I pulled you out of the loony bin and gave you your first rum and coke and your first beer.” He grinned and she smiled as well. “Not the ideal way to start something that should last, is it? If, or when we ever decide to give it a try, it should be because we actually want it, and we really know each other as we are.” He gave her a small squeeze of her hand. “I don’t want a fling, or a high school romance. I want everything. I also want to give everything, and right now, with all the things that have happened to me in the last… let’s say year, I need some time to figure out what my everything is, too.”

There were tears in her eyes as she smiled and nodded at him. She tried to cover it by draining the last of her beer, but they both knew something big had happened between them. What that would lead to, only time will tell.

*Sunnydale outskirts, a couple of days later*

The tires screeched, groaned, and squealed, but the hulking car came to a full stop right before smashing into the ‘Welcome to Sunnydale’ sign. Spike opened the driver’s side door and stepped out, lighting up as he did so. He looked at the ugly thing he’d barreled over in the past—his grand entrance from when he was soulless—as he leaned against his car and smoked the rest of his fag. Some of his best memories, some of his worst, and some of his most resounding failures had all happened in this seemingly quiet little burg perched on top of the mouth of hell.

He’d also burned to dust while he brought it down around him.

Spike sniffed, cracked his neck, and flicked his still glowing cigarette butt at the garish sign. He was going to do everything he could so that this go-around, with this new and improved entrance, without grand gestures of mindless vandalism, without the ghosts haunting his every step, without the First tormenting him, and without his maker in the picture, would be the one to mark the start of good things.

First things first, though: he was going to say ‘hi’ to a relative.

~~~***~~~

*Angel’s basement apartment, a short while after that*

The door was flung open after the first couple of bangs on it. Spike’s grand-sire looked more like a pissed off Angelus than he did the broody Angel.

“’Lo there, Peaches. Long time no smell.” He made a point of sniffing. “No matter how long you scrub, you can still smell the rat, though, can’t you?” He ducked the punch headed for his jaw, but found himself in a headlock.

“What are you doing here, Spike?”

“Was in the neighborhood, thought I’d drop by.” A well placed punch, and an even better placed foot and he was free of the other vampire. He was a bit surprised at how easy that had been, but he didn’t dwell on it. “You gonna invite me in, gramps, or do I just barge in like a bog-trotter is used to?”

They snarled at each other for a good minute by Spike’s estimate, until Angel stomped away and sat down on an armchair, leaving the door wide open.

There had been no invitation, but Spike neither needed, nor expected one, so he walked in, closed the door behind him, and took a seat opposite Angel. He made to light up when a growl stopped him.

“Could you not?” Angel made vague gestures toward Spike’s cigarette.

Spike laughed. “Almost forgot. No leather pants, no personality, and an extra heaping of brood means no smoking allowed near his high-foreheadedness.” He made a disgusted face, but put the pack and lighter away.

“Have you come to bow to the Master too?” Angel narrowed his eyes. “Did you and Drusilla receive the call?”

Spike shrugged and talked in a falsely excited tone. “Yeah, sure, you know me: all pomp and circumstance and no play makes Spikey a happy camper.” He waved an arm dismissively. “Using hair gel after a century in the gutter must have burnt out the last of your working neurons. Probably put your nose out of commission, too.” He stood up, arms spread wide at his sides. “Can’t you feel it?”

Angel also stood up and frowned. After a few seconds Spike could see the dawning realization come over him. “You’ve got— but that’s impossible. How—”

He put his hands in his pockets in a fake show of shyness. “Went and proved myself in a bunch of tests and won a lovely prize. Little worse for wear, but it’s one hundred percent, all mine.” He smirked. “And it’s not going anywhere.”

Angel frowned even more, but seemed to dismiss Spike’s last statement. “So it wasn’t a curse?”

“Well, I’m already cursed with good looks and brains, adding a cursed soul would just be cheating.” He winked.

“Why would you do that? Was it because I—”

“Despite what you might think, you’re not the center of anyone’s universe except your own.” Even as he said it, Spike knew it to be a lie. In a very round-about way, his soul had been because of Angel. If Buffy hadn’t bought the line about the soul being the ‘be-all, end-all’ of things to have, he never would‘ve even thought of getting one. Maybe not even after the incident in the bathroom. Of course, he would never own up to such a thing to the vampire in front of him. He’d spent too long trying to crawl from under his shadow to do that.

“So you’re here to what, exactly?”

“Answer asinine questions, apparently.” He smirked. “The reason why I’m in this town is none of your business, but I couldn’t pass up a round of back and forth with my grandpops, could I?”

“I’m starting to wonder, not for the first time, why I didn’t just stake you as soon as Dru dragged you in.”

“Because your unlife would have been so drab and dreary?” He dropped all traces of mirth from his voice. "I came here mostly to warn you."

“O-ho, now I see. What’s the matter? Gone soft since the soul and now you’re scared of a little Hellmouth?” The smile on Angel’s face reminded Spike of Gerard from his human days. A terrible bully and horrible person, it was a service to evolution that ‘Willy the Bloody’ had shoved a railroad spike through his worthless brain cavity before he had a chance to procreate.

“No, you twit. I know the reason you’re out of the gutter and living it up in this…” He made a show of taking the small basement apartment in. “place that I really don’t know how you can afford is a small blond girl.”

Angel’s nostrils flared. “What do you know?”

“More than you could ever imagine, but we won’t talk about that now.” He fixed his grand-sire with his most serious look. “We both know she’s exactly the type the more fun part of you would have gone after.”

“No. She’s so bright and pure and—”

“Special, and with a family that you were going to separate her from, bit by bit. You’d slither your way in every aspect of her life, making her more and more dependent on you, until you’re her entire world and she can’t imagine love without suffering, and life without darkness.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. She’s the—” Angel paused, eyes a bit wide, as if thinking if it was such a good idea to divulge the possible location of a Slayer to the vampire that made his name killing them, soul or not.

“She’s the Slayer, and she has the potential to be the greatest that ever lived.” He shook himself out of the memories those words had evoked. “And you are going to get her killed.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Spike snorted. “I don’t? I’ve seen your handy-work first hand, remember? All those girls you wooed and then destroyed. It wasn’t even that you were a vampire, it was just something you liked.” He hardened his features as much as he could. “And I lived with your crowning achievement for over a century. Drusilla, that bright girl with a shiny future, with parents that loved her, and a strong belief in God. She had a calling, she had a gift, and you took it all from her and twisted it in the worst way. That is what you do, you wanker.” There was spittle flying by the end, but the sheer rage that had built up was overpowering even his soul’s cries for clemency.

Angel looked down. “That was Angelus. I try to atone every day for what he did.”

Spike mimicked one of those buzzers from a game show. “Wrong. It might have worked on some poor bugger who didn’t know his ass from his elbow, but I’ve been there and I’ve done that, mate.” He drew himself up. “I’m the same person I was before I was turned, and the same when I was unsouled, and I’m the same now with my shiny spark. It was me then, now, and always, give or take a conscience.”

“But the soul—”

“Soul, shmoul. I got it thinking it would solve my problems, make me something better, something worthy of—. But you know the only thing this bloody thing ever did for me? It allowed me to burn to a crisp for the woman I love.”

“What’s wrong with Dru?” Angel was getting agitated, which looked strange on him.

“Worried about the homicidal maniac you created?” Despite the hostility, there was still a tremor in Spike’s voice. He hated himself for it just a little, but on the other hand he knew he couldn’t help it. She’d been his everything for so bloody long. “She didn’t take my having a soul a well as she took yours. Was getting ready to go on a rampage and I just couldn’t—” He pinned Angel with his suddenly misty eyes. “She’s gone, man.”

“You? You dusted Drusilla? So much for eternal love, huh?” The fact that he sounded shaken by the news was the only thing that saved Angel from a quick dusting at Spike’s hands. As it was, he chucked it to one more dig against him that he didn’t want to fall for.

“Better than never having been in love, huh ponce?”

“You don’t know me. I’ve changed. I’ve fallen for…”

When no continuation came, Spike decided to do the honors himself. “You what, fell in love with the chit you saw once from afar?” At Angel’s startled look, he smirked and went on. “Yeah, I know more than you, as I said before. But riddle me this, oh great forehead, are you truly, honestly, and really in love with Buffy Summers, or just with the idea that she’ll be your ‘salvation?’ You see, I gave all of this a bit of a think and it added up to her being your favorite prey. Admit it, not to me, not to anyone if you don’t want to, but you, Angelus, are a sexual predator. You were one before you were turned, you excelled at it after the turning, and you’re still one now, even if you cover it with the quest for redemption, and the atonement, and the remorse. You saw a pretty blonde licking a lollipop and it made you hard. As a sexual predator through and through, if it gives you a stiffy, it’s love. Just that your love takes more than it gives, it corrupts, corrodes, and creeps up on the target. You’re going to go after a girl that’s jail-bait in every civilized country in the world and if you keep going you’ll ruin her before she becomes a woman.”

“But she is my salvation. She’ll cleanse the evil from me. Whistler promised it. He works for the Powers, so I think I’ve got the best green light there is. Don’t worry, though, your theory is very entertaining. Now get out.”

“It’s not a theory, mate, it’s fact. Look, I don’t know who told you what, but I bet he told you to help the Slayer and you translated it in your pea-sized excuse for a brain to ‘have.’ Wake up, man. Nobody’s going to send the two hundred and something year old pedophilic vampire to deflower the virgin fifteen year old Slayer and call it star-struck.” Spike felt like kicking something. The look on Angel’s face was all too familiar – he’d made up his mind, and nothing could change that. So he decided to go for broke. “If you don’t leave her alone, and you manage to get in her knickers, the soul goes on a walkabout and it’s ‘hello bloody Angelus.’ The curse that you think makes you the dog’s bollocks can be broken. She can brake it.” Well, actually he was pretty sure it was a lot baser and a lot sicker than that, but Angel could only take that much criticism before he completely shut down and didn’t hear a thing.

“You’re lying. She’s my redemption, not… What’s the matter, Willie, did you catch a whiff of my Slayer and want her all to yourself? Better remember: I don’t like to share.” Angel had drawn himself up in an attempt to become more imposing.

“You know what? Fine, don’t believe me. You could do the smart thing and look up the Kalderash. But knowing you, you’ll just brood some more and convince yourself you’re God’s gift. I don’t care anymore. Come near Buffy with your mind games and all the rest of the shit and I dust you.”

He anticipated the attack, so the dodge was easy to pull off. Also this Angel hadn’t spent the previous few years fighting other demons. In fact the last bit of a scuffle must have been back on the sub with the Jerries.

Spike’s las fight—not bar brawl, nor a quick stalk-and-stake, as there’d been enough of those—had been with the Angel of his time. And he’d won. So he met this shakier, weaker Angel with a whoop and an uppercut. What followed was a good, old-fashioned beating. By the end they were both bruised and bloody, but Angel had definitely received the worst of it. So much so that Spike ended up holding him down, ready to deliver the finishing blow.

He couldn’t do it though. It wasn’t that he felt he owed Angel anything, especially not this version who hadn’t done anything of note to help anyone other than himself. What stayed Spike’s hand was the team Angel had gathered around him in LA, and the good they’d done there. Maybe, just maybe, he could get through the armor-plated forehead of his grand-sire and make him understand his point.

He wasn’t really holding his breath, but he felt he had to try. Maybe the soul did make you more of a sentimental wanker.

“There’s a demon in Africa. You do some trials, he gives you a wish. It’s how I got my soul, so I’m sure he could anchor yours. Or talk to the members of the gipsy tribe who cursed you. Maybe you can convince them to modify the curse and make it so it doesn’t have that happiness clause. I don’t care how, or what, but you have to do something. This is your last chance. Next time you go at me half-cocked, or you start your usual ‘I know what’s best for everyone’ speech, you’re dust.”

With that, he shoved Angel away, uncaring how he landed, and walked out of the apartment. There were still some stops to make.

~~~***~~~

*The Alibi room, later that night*

The kitten poker game was reaching a crescendo. It was down to the final three, with Spike using every advantage he’d gathered over the previous years of observing the same people play over and over, while being a complete enigma to the rest. He’d also managed to keep Clem in the game, with the intention of having him close by as long as possible. The floppy skinned demon was even more of a connection to his past than the rest of Sunnydale, so Spike intended to recreate their friendship as fast as possible.

The shark demon across from him was another issue altogether. He owed a reckoning there, even though the bugger wasn’t technically at fault yet. No matter, sometimes revenge is a balm for the soul.

Two hands later, and Clem was out, leaving only Spike and the literal loan shark at the table. It took two more hands for all the kittens to belong to Spike. As he got up to gather his winnings he noticed a couple of burly vampires he remembered working for his opponent get up.

“Won fair and square, mate. Hope I don’t have to start eating sushi sprinkled with vamp dust, yeah?”

The smile he got in return showed all the other demon’s front teeth. “Of course, what do you take me for? I always make good on my debts.”

“Glad to hear it.” With that he motioned for Clem to come closer. “You can have the whole lot.”

Clem’s eyes lit up. “Whoa, thanks man. Is there anything you need from me in return?”

“Well, I heard you’ve got connections up and down this rat-hole. I’d like to start searching for a place that’s vamp-friendly. No crypts.”

Clem looked a bit askance at the last statement, but shrugged his shoulders and started counting the pot. “So I guess you’re not with the Master, huh?”

Spike snorted. “Not by a long shot, mate.” He looked around at the rest of the bar’s patrons. They all seemed to be minding their own business and nursing their drinks, but any one of them could be an informant. “Just keep it between us though, right?”

“Yeah man, sure, whatever you say.”

~~~***~~~

It was early morning and he was feeling the pull to go to ground and rest. Even after all these years of keeping more human hours than vampire ones, the nights spent hunting his kind and other demons meant he was still mostly nocturnal. He’d tried not to waste any second from the moment he’d stepped foot in Sunnydale, so the hour and a half spent dozing off while he waited around for the other man to come was the only rest he’d allowed himself.

It also gave him a chance to think. During those months spent in Angel’s offices as nothing more than a ghost, he’d learned—perhaps for the first time in his life—to sometimes just sit back and observe, to contemplate, and mostly, to wait. He would still probably choose not to do it given a chance, but he’d found depths of patience he didn’t know he had. He could only hope it would help him not screw everything up.

As his sleep deprived brain was grinding away, his prey finally arrived. Spike watched the other man go about his morning ritual with a bitter smile on his face. He was watching someone about whom he had more than a few bad memories, some of which almost ended in his own dusting.

Still, there was enough good in there, and more importantly, enough potential that Spike had to take the chance. He needed an ally. He also needed someone versed in the supernatural to bounce ideas off of. Hair-gel wonder-boy was out of that picture.

So in the end he gathered his wits and his courage and stalked out of his hiding spot. Watching the other man startle and almost trip over his own feet in an attempt to get to the nearest weapon—the crossbow under the counter made him smirk.

Spike raised his arms in a gesture of peace and stopped a few feet away. “Hullo there Rupert. Got into a bit of a pickle and I need to borrow your ear for a moment.”

Giles was obviously grabbing his crossbow as tight as he could. “And how, pray tell, could I possibly be of assistance. Please keep in mind this is a high school library. Perhaps you are in need of the public library on 3rd?.”

“They also have an active Watcher and former Eghyon worshipper manning the desk?” Spike really enjoyed the shock on the other man’s face.

“How—? Who are you?”

“Well, first of all let me ask you how familiar you are with the butterfly effect.”

“I’ve read a thesis on it when I was in college.”

“Good, ‘cause I think I offed a bloody swarm of them and I’m wondering when the hurricane will hit.” He jumped up enough to sit on a desk without lowering his hands, showing just a bit of his supernatural speed. It was time to tell his story again and hope that Giles—this Giles—would be more inclined to help than the bitter version he’d left behind.

*Early evening, The Espresso Pump*

Spike looked around the coffee shop. Near the back he saw Giles sitting at a table and their gazes locked. Their early morning conversation had been cut short by some students looking for books, which apparently only happened whenever Giles needed some privacy. Spike though maybe it was part of the bad luck from being on top of the Hellmouth, but he didn’t voice his theory.

They’d rescheduled to this place after sundown. Which meant this was Spike’s chance to explain himself and get the man on board with his plans. So he sauntered over and sat down, as casually as possible. “’Lo Rupert.”

“I understand you might be more familiar with me than I am with you, but for the meantime I think I would be more comfortable if you called me Giles.”

Spike raised his scarred eyebrow. “And I understand you might have a pole stuck up your arse, but when one is greeted, one answers before admonishing the other on proper etiquette. Especially when the other might teach one about proper Victorian manners in a way that might make one’s great-grandmother bring out the rod.”

Giles cleared his throat a squirmed in his seat. “Yes, quite, hello to you too.”

In the meantime a waitress had approached so Spike ordered a coffee and a chocolate cake, ignoring Giles’s surprise at his choice. He wasn’t the average vampire, and the faster the other man understood that the better.

“So we were just about getting to the good part, weren’t we?”

Giles hastened to leave his coffee to the side and leafed through the notebook he’d used that morning to write things down in. “By my notes you were returning to Sunnydale to kill the Slayer after your failed trip to Los Angeles.” He adjusted the glasses on his nose. “You didn’t tell me why you were there in the first place, though.”

Spike looked around for a moment, making sure the gesture was caught by Giles. Everything seemed in order, but you never knew. “That’s a story for another time and another place. What I can tell you is that when I got back, full of piss and vinegar, I got caught by some government experiment gone wrong. They went and put a chip in my noggin that shocked me every time I tried to hurt a human.” The next part was going to be tricky, so Spike tried to be as careful as possible with how he phrased things. “Thing is the chip read violence regardless of any rhyme or reason. Every time I so much as bumped into someone on the street by mistake it would zap me. The worse the offense the more powerful the zap.”

The spark of interest he’d dreaded was there in Giles’s eyes as he wrote down his notes. “And did they implement these chips in other vampires or demons?”

“Far as I know they did, but here’s the thing: most of the more violent types—the ones they were after to control—are not that gifted in the brains department. So most of the fledges and demons they tried it on fried their own brains first few hours out of the vivisection with a side of electronic neutering.”

Giles stopped writing. “Vivisection?”

There was enough outrage in the man’s voice to give Spike hope for the future. “Yeah. They didn’t want to waste their precious painkillers on ‘Hostile Sub-Terrestrials.’ Thought of us as some sort of animals only without the Greenpeace seal of protection. The things they did reminded me of the Jerries under Hitler. In fact we later found out the good old US army took whatever documents they could find from the Nazis and decided to run with it.”

“Good Lord.” The expression was accompanied by more furious writing.

“I’ll fill you in on that bit of fun another time. Suffice to say I escaped and found my way at your door asking for sanctuary.”

Giles gasped. “Is that when you became a member of the team?”

Spike laughed. “Nah mate. You chained me up in your bathtub, barely fed me even though I was skin and bones by that point, and kept insisting I was up to something. Didn’t help your Slayer started dating one of the soldier boys and was this close to joining up.”

“I couldn’t possibly have allowed such a thing.” The conviction in Giles’s voice was clear, but to Spike it was still futile.

“You don’t exactly get much of a say when it comes to your charge, though, do you? The older a Slayer gets, the harder it is to dictate what she can and cannot do, and in this particular case, it never actually worked. Isn’t it one of the reasons you gits developed the Cruciamentum?”

“That’s an archaic and barbaric ritual.” His voice was filled with horror and disgust.

“Couldn’t agree with you more. You still had her go through it, though.”

“Impossible.”

“Take it from someone who’s been around a few: never say never.”

Giles stood back in his seat and took off his glasses. He put the end of the temple in his mouth with one hand and used his other to play with the cup of coffee in front of him. Spike would bet all the treasures buried with the Gem of Amara that old Rupert was about to ask one very important question. “I must say I spent some time this afternoon reading the records we have on William the Bloody. It proved to be a very interesting read indeed.” He placed the glasses on the table and pushed the coffee cup aside again, suddenly looking so much more the Ripper. “I need to know exactly why I should trust even one word out of your mouth.”

There it was. Spike had wondered exactly how long he had until the prejudice would start to show its head. Sure, it was nothing as bad as it would be post-Angelus, but Giles was still a Council trained Watcher. And that meant limited to no actual personal contact with the supernatural world—save for his demon worshiping youth.

“Fair enough. We can leave the long version for later.” He took a deep breath and placed both palms on the table, looking straight in Rupert’s eyes. “Thing is, under the bleached hair and leather, past the fangs and the blood, part of me never let go of that git who got turned by Dru in an alley over a century ago. What the books don’t say—because I made sure nobody knew—was that I wasn’t some street thug, but a mild mannered wannabe poet from the Victorian upper middle class.”

“What’s that—”

He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Just providing a bit of context: not all fledges are created equal. The thing is I fell in love with my mortal enemy and I used everything I could to make her mine, keep her when she was near, and get her back when she went away.”

“That sounds, ah, intense.” Giles had obviously struggled with finding an appropriate word. Spike knew what he meant, since he’d heard it thrown in his face enough times.

“It was obsessive, ‘s what it was. Took getting the soul back to get me to see how wrong I was sometime.” He breathed deeply. “Didn’t change the fact the love beneath it all was real. At the end though, before it all blew up around me and I found myself here, when we almost thought the First Evil was going to win… We built something there, something lasting, something… I would never betray that. I fucking burned alive for that. ”

“And you are trying to recreate that with the Buffy you found here.”

“Gods no. The Buffy that’s about to move here is fifteen mate. She’s just a child. A child with a bloody destiny, but not much more than that. What I want is to help her survive, grow up into the amazing woman I know she can become, and maybe help her not suffer all the things she’s had to suffer through the first time around. I’m not asking for anything in return.”

Giles was looking at him dispassionately. “That all sounds very compelling, however there is still a glaring lack of proof that this isn’t some scheme by a member of the Order of Aurelius. The same order you yourself said is here now, preparing for the Master’s resurgence.”

Spike felt a pang in his heart. It was going all wrong. Giles would be Giles, only earlier. He’d failed spectacularly. If only he could think of something, anything, that would prove he’s a changed man, worthy of the Watcher’s trust. Problem was, though, that all the things he knew were either going to happen too far into the future to help, or were so general that he could have found them some other way than by interaction with Rupert. Except a few things he’d learned while living with the man that hopefully hadn’t changed that much over time.

“You keep a bottle of 30 year-old Macallan hidden in a secret compartment in your desk, on the left hand side.” He moved in a little closer, whispering across the table. “You keep the really good one in the underwear drawer.” He cocked his head and winked. “Which is not the best idea when your flatmate is a recently chipped vampire with too much time on his hands and a penchant for scotch.”

Giles drew back sharply. “How do you know I didn’t buy those bottles at a later date? Or moved them over time.”

“Well, the first answer would be that you told me you go them with the severance package from the British Museum. Second would be that you got the desk from your Grand-mum, so it came with the secret compartment, and nobody trades up to secreting their liqueur with their pants.”

Giles started to clean his glasses. “Yes, quite.”

Spike stretched his back and slouched back. He’d managed to find the right proof. Who said scotch was bad for you?

~~~***~~~

*Late at night, Giles’s apartment*

Spike woke up from a short nap to find Giles writing furiously in his Watcher’s diary. The sight brought a pang to his heart, but he shrugged it off and went to look for whatever was left of Rupert’s good booze.

After he drained the last two glasses from a bottle of expensive scotch, he presented his host with a glass and took a seat close to him.

Giles barely acknowledged the offer, busy as he was with writing down everything Spike had told him about the world he’d come from. Considering how sleep deprived and drunk Spike had got by the end of his story, and taking in account how much alcohol Giles himself had consumed, the whole thing must have been full of gibberish.

It was time for cooler heads to come together and make sense of it all.

Spike gave a sigh, put his drink aside and went to the kitchen to prepare a proper cuppa. Luckily his memories of the place were good enough to allow him to manoeuvre. Cups in the upper left cupboard, tea—leaves, not bags, never those—in the upper right, teapot in the drawers under the counter, water from the faucet, and everything was ready. He drew strength and peace from the simple act of making the tea. Of course, had it been one of his girls in the other room he’d have made Joyce’s hot chocolate recipe, though he never really managed to get it to taste exactly the same.

Still, delving into the intricacies of time travel called for tea.

“Here you go, Watcher, the perfect drink for our task.”

Giles focused his bloodshot gaze on Spike for the first time since he’d woken up. The watcher clearly needed sleep and lots of it, but wouldn’t be able to rest until he wrote everything he could down. “So you said the Slayer encountered the First once before the final series of confrontations.” He checked his notes. “Yes, at Christmas in two years’ time. Do you remember any details about that encounter?”

Spike made a show of drinking his tea and didn’t speak until Giles caught on and downed half of his drink as well. “Sorry to disappoint, but I was deep in Brazil around that time. Nothing like celebrating the holidays surrounded by half-naked people.”

“Yes, I’m sure to a vampire that is as close to heaven as one can get.”

“Close, mate, pretty darn close. But that’s not what we were discussing now, was it? From what I was told, the Slayer didn’t actually set eyes on the First that time around. In fact it was halfway through the last year there that the First showed itself to the Slayer.” He frowned and sat up. “You think there’s a reason to that? I mean, far as we were told the First could only come through if the Slayer line was weakened, and it took it gathering its bloody harbingers, and gaining strength through the Turok-Han for it to even deign to talk to the Slayer. What if it wasn’t just avoiding her out of some strange superiority complex, but was avoiding her because there’s something unique to her that could possibly hurt the First, even without the Scythe?”

“Good Lord, if that is in fact the case then it would be a real boon.”

“Boon?” Spike snorted. “I didn’t use that term before I was turned, why on Earth would you use it a century later?”

“Well I—”

“If you start saying things like ‘I swear,’ and ‘my word’ I’m out of here until you remove the pole from your arse and the wax from between your ears.” He looked Rupert straight in the eye. “Less Primly MacPriss, more Ripper, got it, mate? Buffy doesn’t need a useless knob, she needs a Watcher.” He made a face. “And none of those Travers approved automatons, either. You’ll need to step up and be a man. I know you have it in you, ‘ve seen you do it, but I need you to get there faster, and you mustn’t forget Buffy comes first. Always. You have her back and she’ll be there, night after night, doing her duty, and stopping any apocalypse. But you have to be there for her.”

Giles was visibly shaken, which was exactly what Spike was going for. He needed to scare all the Council teachings about being away and aloof right out of the git, or risk ending up with the hardened, jaded man who almost had Spike dusted for trying to do what he couldn’t—be the Slayer’s right hand man.

“I’ll do my best.”

“I hope so. I really hope so.” He leaned back in his seat. “Want to go through it all now that I managed to get a bit of kip, or would you rather I do a quick patrol and we start over tomorrow?”

“Patrol? You’re going to go out and kill your kind?”

Spike burst out laughing. “You just finished writing down how I helped save the whole bloody world from the First Evil and his band of merry Uber-vamps, and you’re surprised I’d go out to kill a few fledges for my nightly bit of mayhem? Mate, there’s so much you still need to learn about how vamps work.”

“I must inform you I was properly trained—” Giles stopped talking and took his glasses off to massage his eyes. “My training and information on vampires, and quite possibly other types of demons are not up to par according to you, are they?”

Spike settled for a smirk and a shake of his head.

“And are you going to help me, ah, clarify the incorrect information?”

“I can tell you all I know, and there’s nobody stopping you from writing it in your dream journal there, but if you send any of it back to Merry Old, it’s more likely you’ll get fired and replaced with a newer, more brain-washed version even faster than last time.”

“Good Lord.”

“Bloody buggering hell indeed.” Spike winked and slapped his thighs. “And with that bit of interesting news, I’ll be off to do a bit of active reconnaissance. Don’t wait up, but do leave the door unlocked, will you? Don’t have my own digs yet and I’d rather not spend the night somewhere under the Master’s control.”

“The same Master that is your Great—”

“Old Batface isn’t a great anything, except perhaps windbag. The bugger is stuck in the Hellmouth like a cork pushed down in a bottle, but it doesn’t mean he’s powerless, or that his followers are completely useless. I need to find out exactly how things are set up so I can help Buffy, seeing as how last time around it was all over before I blew into town.”

“Indeed. You’ll be able to spend the night here, of course, and tomorrow we shall continue our discussion.”

“Ta, Rupert.” Spike grabbed the duster from next to the door on his way out. Some poor bugger was about to have a very bad night.

~~~***~~~

*Later, in one of Sunnydale’s cemeteries*

Spike had done his rounds, found his snitch and beaten the information he needed out of him, followed by a swift dusting, of course. He was doing just one more sweep before going back to the watcher’s when he found himself next to a strange mausoleum. It looked more like a pyramid, and that reminded him of something, only he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

When the door opened and he found himself face to face with an old crone he suddenly remembered. “You’re the Guardian, aren’t you?”

The woman smiled, although it looked rather bitter. “Yes I am. I know who you are too, William.”

The statement gave Spike pause. If he remembered correctly the Slayer had said the woman was full of some primal energy—white magic and the like. Of course that demented priest had managed to gut her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have some tricks up her sleeve. And for her to know him meant she knew of the two slayers under his belt. What if she wanted revenge? “Changed vamp here, got me a case of the soul something frightful. All white hats in my closet.”

The smile on the Guardian’s face turned more genuine at that. “I know who, what, and from where you are. But you better come in, so we can discuss this better.” She gave a furtive look around the rest of the cemetery.

Spike followed her inside at a loss for words, but with renewed hope in his heart. Ever since he’d been dropped in the past he’d wondered why that happened. Maybe she had some answers. At the very least, she was the first person he’d met who hadn’t needed any convincing. He hadn’t realized how difficult it had been on him until right that very moment. “Why am I here?”

“To talk, silly.” She must have interpreted his expression correctly as the representation of murderous thoughts, so she dropped the jokes. “I have some powers that allow me to monitor the Slayer line. Recently something unheard of has happened that allowed me to see where you came from. In general I can only see things related to slayers, but for some reason my scrying showed me what you went through. Well, a Powers representative also tipped me off.”

“Bugger. I was afraid those wankers had something to do with all of this.”

“I’m afraid they’re the ones to blame for transporting you here.”

Spike sighed and went to light up a cigarette, only to be stopped by a raised eyebrow from the woman. He sighed again. Visiting goody-goody people was putting a real dampener on his smoking. “So what did the ‘Powers that love to screw with you’ want with yours truly?”

“I don’t know.”

Spike wanted to rip something to shreds.

“I’m not a representative of the Powers, or anything of the sort, and the only thing their messenger told me was that they brought you here to mend some things that had gone wrong in your timeline.” She seemed to be weighing how to say what was next. “Your consciousness was copied and put into the body of the Spike from this universe, soul and all. That was only possible since the potential for this Spike to become the same as you was the greatest, so all the Powers did was to, well, speed up time in a way.”

Spike’s mind was a whirlwind of H. G. Welles, Doctor Who, and other such sources of information on time travel. “So what’s that mean for the universe I left?”

She looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure, but from what Trish said there’s still a you there, still doing anything you were going to do.”

“But why?” It was all he could do not to stomp his foot like an upset child.

“I don’t know. All I know is that you’re supposed to fix something. What exactly that is…”

“Yeah, great, brilliant. Any other useless information to tell me? Is Angelus a wanker?”

“Look young man, you know who and what I am, so I’ve already told you more than I should have been able to. The real question is: what are you going to do?”

“Well first I’m gonna find me one of those Powers wankers and have myself a real good day. They’ve been yanking my bloody chain for too long, but this last bit, the putting me in what, another universe? That takes the fucking cake. And they didn’t even have the balls to say it to my face.” He kicked at a wall. “Argh.” He panted and tried to calm down. He wanted a smoke. Not even the months spent in LA as a ghost made him crave a cigarette this much.

“You know that’s not what I meant.” She sounded so maternal it made Spike’s teeth hurt, like having too much candy. “What is your plan for what’s to come?”

Spike looked at her as if she’d suddenly gone insane. “What do you think I’ll do?” He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “I’ma help Buffy, that’s what. You’re tuned in to Slayer TV, yeah? Well you should have noticed me doing something different, maybe something smarter, and definitely faster. I’m in this for the long haul. ‘S just— would’ve been nice to be asked, or for someone to have waited for me on the other side: hey mate, we bollixed up your life again, but don’t worry, here’s what we’ve done, now enjoy. Instead I’ve been going at this alone for weeks.”

She touched his arm in a gentle way. “You don’t have to be alone.” She let out a puff of air. “The last time around the people helping the Slayer all hated you, for one reason or another. In this universe, in this time, they are mostly blank pages, ready to be written upon.  You have the opportunity to do things right, to help and be helped, and make them your friends. The mother and sister will help you, the watcher has potential, and…” She cleared her throat and drew herself up. “I am here. I am the last of my line, but perhaps now, at the twilight of the guardians, we’ll finally manage to fulfil our duty. And then I can rest.” Her voice cracked at the end.

Spike was almost overcome with the urge to hug her, but kept himself back. He didn’t quite do hugs, so he settled for patting her hand. At the same time his mind was working a mile a minute. Of course, she was right. He hadn’t given much thought to the rest of the Scoobies. Sure, they existed and odds were Buffy would become their friend again, but other than that he hadn’t planned anything for them. Well, other than ‘keep them alive.’ So the idea they could become his friends was a sobering one. It also sounded exciting.

He’d already started changing the dynamic of his relationship with the watcher, more out of necessity than anything else, so at least it was possible.

Could he do it? Could he and the Scoobies become mates? It had been close there at the tail end of Sunnydale. There had been ups and downs, but overall he’d felt more included than ever. Well, except that summer that he refused to think about. But maybe if he managed to get to them before the prejudice, before Angelus, and without the baggage of broken bottles and broken hearts, then it could be done.

There were others to consider as well. Where was Tara at this point in time? He couldn’t remember when she’d said her mother had passed, so he couldn’t remember if she’d still be at her home—not that he knew where that would be—or if she’d already taken off to wherever she went before Sunnydale.

What about Anyanka? Would his presence influence the Whelp enough to not bugger things up with the Cheerleader, so would the Vengeance demon not be summoned? There were so many things to take into account, so many possible outcomes. He felt somewhat like Paul Atreides. But would his choices be better?

He’d already had some rock-solid self-imposed rules about what he’d do. Among the first was ‘no digging in Sunnydale until the Master is gone.’ Sure, there was a great deal of treasure buried under the city, with the Gem of Amara and the Scythe just the top of the pile. There were all kinds or rare items, a whole treasure trove, a haunted colonial mission, and many other things to be found, but while the Master was still underneath them all no heavy machinery could be used without tipping off half the bloody Order of Aurelius. The last thing he needed was for someone like Darla or Luke wearing Amara’s ring and funnelling blood to the old fucker.

What other things could he play around with? Here he thought he’d at least made some sort of a plan, but as usual, most of his thoughts revolved around the Slayer and her family, so the rest of the picture was somewhat blurry around the edges. The Guardian’s words had brought things in perspective, but he now had even more questions. Which reminded him of something he’d been meaning to ask. “By the way to nothing, what’s your name?”

She laughed. “Abigail, but you can call me Abbie.”

“Well then Abbie, I have a question for you: would you meet with Buffy’s watcher? He’s not exactly made from the same mould as the rest of the wankers you’ve been hiding away from and I think he’d be willing to hear you with an open mind.”

She grew silent for a long time. “I will think about it. Even if what you say is true, what I saw wasn’t all that flattering, and I don’t think the time has come for me to reveal myself yet. Perhaps at a later date.” She took a step back. “Until then you may come talk to me once in a while, if you so desire. And please, bring Buffy with you.” The smile lighting up her face was bright and warm. “I’d love to meet her in person.”

He smiled back. “I’ll do that. But in return I need you to tell me how to find some people. A couple might be in different dimensions than ours. Can your mojo do something about that?”

“I think I know who you might mean, but I cannot help you. What you need is a witch, or a mage. Preferably a powerful one.”

He swore. If only Red was up to snuff, or if there was a single conjurer out there he could trust not to double-cross him. Then again, maybe there was. Rupert wasn’t exactly powerful, but he had connections, and if need be, he could channel. His newfound plan might be possible yet.

*Shortly after New Year’s, random bar outside LA*

Spike downed his drink and let himself enjoy the burn all the way down his throat. He’d been running all over the US for the past month and he hadn’t allowed himself the luxury of getting out-of-his-mind, blind drunk, so he had taken a decision to slow down for this one day, drink away his troubles, and pick it all up again the next morning.

And what a day that would be. The Summers family was moving to Sunnydale. It was all coming together and he was terrified. In fact his hand was trembling when it brought up the next shot up to his mouth. He allowed the alcohol to spread through his body, the warmth of it helping dull the aches and trembles.

His pager beeped. Someone was trying to get a hold of him, but for tonight he didn’t want to care. He’d done all he could for now, so, as far as he was concerned, he was free to do as he damn well pleased.

~~~***~~~

*The Magic Box, almost a month before*

Spike was spending his time waiting for Ms. Calendar to arrive by cataloguing all the differences he could detect between this year’s version of the store and the one he was more familiar with. It was clear that Giles and Anya had set up the shop much better than the current owner. And there should be a lot more books. Instead of having three rows of different herbal tea variants—none of which would do a lick of good as either tea, or magic components—there could have been a library as Rupert set up, filled with books on the dark arts, demons, and history.

Spike had expected different from the clan that managed to do the almost impossible and cursed Angelus with a soul. Speaking of which they didn’t even seem to have an Orb of Thessulah anywhere in the shop. Which meant there hadn’t really been a backup plan in place for Angel’s going Mr. Hyde.

It reminded him of the many, many times the Scoobies barely scraped by with their happy-go-lucky attitude towards being prepared. Apart from the Watcher none of them gave much serious thought to what could be hiding behind the next corner. That’s not to say he was any different, as he preferred to live his life from minute to minute, without anything resembling a long term plan. At least, anymore of a plan than ‘do whatever to please the girl.’

Yet another thing that had to change.

He was so lost in his thoughts he almost missed the shopkeeper creeping up behind him. “What can I help you with, Sir?” At least Spike knew the guy’s Eastern European accent wasn’t fake, unlike half of the merchandise.

Spike snorted and leaned against a gaudy display case with counterfeit voodoo dolls. “See, I have this hypothetical for you. There’s this really sadistic bastard, does this really stupid thing and gets put into a gimp suit. The people who did this nice thing play the voyeur for the next century or so. Unfortunately along come some wankers who like to mess things up and start loosening the ties keeping his suit on. So my question would be this: imagine you’re one of those Peeping Toms and you have the gimp becoming Ol’ Sadistic Forehead again. What do you do?”

The guy’s face was priceless, and reminded Spike he still had no idea what his name was. Not that he cared all that much. He’d barely remembered the name of the computer teacher until he’d checked the class schedules.

“Who are you and what do you want?” The guy was taking tentative steps backward, his left hand sliding behind him to what must have been some kind of weapon. He got points in Spike’s book for that. At least he wasn’t a complete wanker.

“Why don’t we wait for your cousin to show up and, in the meantime, I’ll tell you some stories from the good old days.” He was sure their tribe must have boogieman stories about the evil vampire they cursed and why that was necessary, but they couldn’t have known even a thousandth of all the vile crimes the Forehead had performed for centuries. By the end of his tales from the crypt the shopkeeper was more than willing to help Spike find a way to find Angel’s curse and maybe improve it, making his soul permanent.

As bad as Angel was, Angelus was an even bigger threat. And if Buffy and Angel were really ‘meant to be,’ at least she wouldn’t be scarred for life by it. Well, more than anyone would be scarred by being around the Great Gel Helmet for too long. Spike felt like dry heaving just thinking about it.

~~~***~~~

*Middle of nowhere, Nebraska, a couple of week later*

The sounds from the cabin were definitely not those of a happy family. The father yelled at the mother, the son at the daughter, and the father at everyone all over again. Even the dog outside was barking up a storm, although that could have been his way of announcing there was a vampire on the premises.

All of a sudden a great noise came from the woods nearby, complete with broken branches and howling. The men in the cabin hurried out with their shotguns, took the dog with them and went to check up on the threat to their livestock.

Spike waited a few minutes and strolled to the now-quiet door. He knew the demons he’d hired would lead the two men on a merry chase for at least an hour, so he’d have time to say his peace. He could only hope he managed to be convincing.

As soon as he knocked on the door a woman answered it. She was thin, gaunt even, with dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and a pale complexion that almost gave Spike a run for his money. Despite all of that one could still tell she must have been a looker in her day. She also bore a strong resemblance to Tara, down to the quiet calm she exuded. Once upon a time someone like that would have set his teeth on edge.

She eyed him up and down. “Yes, may I help you?”

He put on his most charming smile. “Mrs. McClay, it’s an honor to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot of great things. May I come in? There are some matters to discuss about your health coverage.”

She frowned and wavered. After a few seconds she took a step back and opened the door wider. “My husband handles these things, but please come in. He should be back soon.”

Spike managed not to grin at that. If everything went according to plan he would be on the way back to Sunnydale by the time the men returned.

He’d barely made two steps inside the house when he spotted her.

Tara.

The pang he felt was so powerful he almost bent over. He’d always had a soft spot for the shy good witch, but seeing her, or at least the younger version, brought up all the feelings of loss he hadn’t been able to process back in Sunnydale since he was newly souled and the First was looming over everything.

He hadn’t mourned her, and she was one of the few humans he knew who deserved his tears—excluding his long list of victims, of course.

She was hidden half behind a support beam, her whole body betraying her discomfort at having a strange man in her parental home. What’s more Spike’s knowledge of her allowed him to realize the exact moment she read his aura and discovered his true form.

Bugger.

He was sure one day, someday, one of his plans would actually go, well, according to plan. He bet there was some rule about probabilities that dictated it. But the way things were going, he’d be better off playing roulette blindfolded in one of the most crooked casinos in the world. He had too much on his mind to try to remember which one that was.

As it was, there was only one card he had to play. It was time to tell his story again. Truth be told, he was getting tired of hearing himself tell it. At least he was almost done introducing himself to this universe. The rest of the world could just go bugger itself and learn of his future actions, never mind his past.

***

Spike got up to leave, since he was sure the males of the clan would be coming home soon. He couldn’t really complain, as he’d managed to achieve his main goal.

“I’ll take Tara tomorrow to the town hall to help her start her emancipation. I’ll talk to Jolene to keep it between us until the time is right. Then she’ll be free to move to Sunnydale.” Mrs. McClay was white as a sheet, but Spike was impressed by how well she’d taken the news of her impending death. Just as Spike had thought she’d react, her maternal instinct took over and recognized he was trying to help her daughter have a better life than what her father would allow her to have.

“I promise the Guardian, Jenny, and Giles will teach Glinda magic the right way. There are people there that will love her as their own. I’ve seen it.” He squeezed the woman’s hand. “She’ll be happy, and I give my word I’ll protect her ‘til I’m dust.”

“I believe you. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.” She looked over at Tara. “I just want what’s best for you.”

Tara hadn’t stopped crying silently since midway through Spike’s story, when she’d found out the circumstance that had led her to Sunnydale. She just nodded and threw herself into her mother’s arms.

Spike’s heart broke for them, but he took solace in the knowledge he’d done all he could to make their last days together really mean something.

And Tara would be free of her toxic family that much earlier.

He wiped his eyes and left without saying anything else. He’d done all he could here so it was time to go home.

~~~***~~~

*Shortly after New Year’s, random bar outside LA*

Another sound from his pager. Spike downed the remaining beer in his bottle, growled in displeasure, and checked the screen. For a moment his mind went to his memories of the future. He’d need a cell phone as soon as possible, but for that he needed more resources than the few well placed bets and poker winnings had netted him. He blinked and shook his head to clear it. He was supposed to call Giles. ‘999’ it said. That meant emergency for a Brit.

Spike grumbled once more and went to the public payphone. He really wanted a cell phone now. As soon as someone picked up at the other end Spike barked in the receiver. “What? I’m on a bloody one-day vacation, and as far as I know this year’s Apocalypse won’t be until May, or something.” He frowned. “Or was it June? Anyway, it’s half a year away, so what the fuck is the problem?”

He could imagine Giles clean his glasses with disapproval etched on his features. “I’m really sorry to disturb your alcohol intake, but—”

“Well, a merry freaking new year’s to you too.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Giles cleared his throat. “The- the thing is I have come across a text mentioning a series of prophecies in the Pergamum Codex.”

Spike snorted. “Is that how you’ve been spending your new year’s Rupert? You couldn’t have asked the Gipsy bird out for a round of drinks?” His answer was a series of splutters. “At least you could’ve gotten piss drunk while thinking of Merry ‘Ol. The rot in that book is what got the Sl— you know what? It doesn’t matter now. We’re months away from anything to worry about, and the way I’m thinking, we’ll be rid of old Bat-face long before that.”

“That is good to hear. However the real reason I contacted you was to let you know what my research has turned up regarding the Powers and their representatives.”

Spike’s ears perked up at that. He really wanted to have a word with those wankers. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy he had a chance to make Buffy’s life better, easier, and safer. He hated being used with a passion, though.

“There are some so-called Oracles that can be contacted via a portal underneath a post office. I haven’t been able to find out exactly which one yet. There does, however, appear to be some sort of sacrifice requirement.”

“I’m sworn off the virgin bloodletting gig.”

Giles chuckled. “I’m quite confident the representatives of the Powers that Be will not be asking for anything so… barbaric.”

Spike grunted. From his perspective he wasn’t so sure about that. Then again this year’s Giles knew nothing about the sacrifices being a White Hat entailed. All the girls, the friends, and the innocent bystanders that had died because of something or other that the almighty Powers dictated.

Still, a simple chat shouldn’t cost more than a rib or so. Although… those ribs could be dangerous enough, if you believed the book of Genesis.

“Don’t worry about it, mate. I’ll find it, now that I know what it is I’m looking for.” There was a whisper of a memory about that somewhere in the shadows of his mind. Maybe with one less drink he would have been able to listen in, to remember what he sort of knew. He shrugged, although Giles couldn’t see him. It would have to wait until tomorrow.

Giles’s tone changed, turning almost pedantic. It was the tone he took with the Scoobies many times during their research parties. “I have spent the better part of the week after Boxer’s Day to find out all I could on this matter as you said you wanted a method to contact them before Buffy moves to Sunnydale.” A tone of Ripper broke through. “So may I once again excuse my interruption of your libations, but this is more important than whatever it is you’re wallowing in. Now sober up, beat up whatever demons you need to, and find out where the Oracles are. Do it so you can get this out of your system and come back to aid my Slayer.”

Spike smirked. “Consider it done, mate.” He ended the phone call and rolled his shoulders. There was work to be done until morning. “Happy new year, indeed.”

~~~***~~~

*Oracles’ plane of existence*

“Have you brought a gift?” The woman Oracle asked.

“A gift? Of course, why not?” He threw a bag at the Oracle’s feet. “Inside are all of Dru’s dolls. She always said they whispered the future to her, so I figured ‘birds of a feather’ and all that.”

The male looked down his nose at the bag while the female waved her hand and nodded. The bag floated away down the hallway behind the beings.

“We accept your thoughtful gift. What is it you wish to know about your future?”

Spike fought to keep his snort in. His future? Were they pulling his leg? Still, he didn’t want to end up a frog, or a snail, or some other slimy thing, so he kept his opinion to himself. There was a question he was dying to ask about the future, though. “Will the copy of me left in the other universe make it okay?” What he wanted to ask was much more specific, but he lacked the courage to do it.

The male frowned. “Don’t waste our time asking for things we care noting about. If that is all you want to know, you may leave now.”

“I think I’m owed an answer about that, mate.”

“The journey will be hard, but the answer to the question you wanted to ask is yes.” The female had tilted her head, which gave Spike the impression of a bird of prey watching its target. The owl to his mouse.

Her answer, though. His stomach filled with butterflies at the implication. Could it really be? Buffy and him? He closed his eyes and shook his head. Now was not the time to dwell on parallel future might-have-beens. He still had questions to ask and his time was running out. “Why did the Powers bring me here, now? What do they want from me?”

“You already know that. The Guardian was instructed to answer that question. You are wasting our time.” Spike was willing to bet the male would have checked his watch, had he been wearing one.

“You lot stole mine, so call it tit for tat and answer the bloody question, please.” His temper was rising and he was very close to letting his mouth run wild.

“You were needed to correct some events, you were tested, and you were retrieved. What more do you wish to know?” The female had straightened her head and looked at him with disdain.

Spike had had enough. “You know what? You’re right. This is all a waste of time. You can’t tell me anything I want to know and I just realized I don’t want to know what you could tell me about the Powers’ plans for me. I’ll just go do what I think is right and I’m sure your bosses will let me know if I fuck things up. Probably do it mid-Apocalypse, but I don’t bloody care anymore.” He raised his arm and pointed at the Oracles. “You lot could have done this right, talked to me when you yanked me from one reality and shoved me in another. You decided to let me go about things best as I could, so that’s what I’ll do. Don’t come crying to me if I don’t follow your guidelines, because spoiler alert, you gave me none.”

“Insolent maggot.” The male flicked the fingers from his right hand and Spike flew back through the portal that had brought him to their realm.

He decided he deserved the pain. He should have known the ‘Powers that Love to Screw you Over’ would be useless and cryptic on top of that. He spat some blood on the ground. Tomorrow his new  future would start in earnest.