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Author's Chapter Notes:
The response to this story had been so fabulous, it's great to know I have so many people intrigued with this alternate universe I've created. If you're reading, I'd lovelovelove to know what you think, so review! Chapter title from a song by REM.
Buffy knew she was dreaming, which made it easier.

Sometimes, she wasn’t sure if it was dreams or reality, and she’d get so happy, so hopeful, thinking that maybe everything was right in the world. But when she ultimately did wake up, and of course she always did, the crushing sadness that resulted would threaten to render her useless for the entire day.

But this time, she knew she was dreaming. In fact, she wasn’t even really herself in the dream, she was watching herself. Watching herself kissing Angel, and letting him undress her, and making that stupid decision that would destroy the thing she held most dear. Or, used to hold most dear. Is that really in the past now? She didn’t know.

She wanted to scream out, “Stop, don’t, please!”, but couldn’t, being as she wasn’t even really there, or at least there in the sense that she mattered at all or had any say in what was happening. She was a floating black cloud a few feet away, amorphous and worthless, unable to stop the train wreck in front of her.

Well, no. Not exactly. She must be corporeal, because suddenly there was a hand gently resting on her shoulder, a gentle, but firm hand, a hand that sent shocks throughout her body.

She turned to see William smiling down at her. No, not William, Spike, with the bleached blonde hair and the cocky grin and the leather. But William. In a way. In the eyes.

“I’ll make it all okay,” he said to her sweetly, and began to lean in, ever so slowly. Angel’s apartment faded, she was in her room, then outside in a cemetery, then in the library. Day shifted to night shifted to day.

As his lips touched hers, she awoke to the early morning sun streaming in through her window, and the beeping of her alarm clock.

“What the what?” She mumbled. “That was weird.”

Not the dream itself, necessarily. Everyone had weird dreams, and this one didn’t even make her top ten (the number one spot was held by a dream she’d had three years earlier involving a pink giraffe, a robot Buffy, and an impromptu mambo.)

No, it was weird for a different reason. It had felt like a Slayer dream.

She shook the strangeness off and set about getting ready for another day in this crazy, mixed up world.

Buffy did wonder why, after her shower, she automatically set about blow-drying her hair, applying makeup, and dressing in a cute but comfortable outfit. It was a far cry from her apathetic attitude of the previous day.

It was resignation, she finally decided. She was going to live in this world the way she would if she was home, until she could get back there. And she knew she would find a way home. As soon as possible.

Buffy Summers was not going to sit just around and brood.

“So here’s the plan, Watcher,” she said when she bounced into the kitchen, grabbing a piece of toast off his plate. “We now know that me Buffy is not crazy, and while you still stay there’s no other Buffy, I want to be me Buffy in me land not me Buffy here so let’s research, okay?”

He stared at her in confusion. “Huh?”

Buffy sighed, swallowed a bite of bread, and spoke in more simplistic terms. “More research. Get me home.”

William managed to hide his almost overwhelming disappointment. He had let himself think, for maybe just a moment, that she might want to stay here. Obviously, he had been wrong.

“Well, Buffy,” he said, straightening up and adopting his adult authority voice. “I really don’t think another day of skipped classes is going to sit well with the principal. I can research while you’re in class, and then you can join me after.”

She pouted. And that alone almost got him to relent, but he held strong, not speaking, just meeting her icy gaze.

“Fine. I’ll go to class.”

“Good girl,” he smiled, trying to lighten the mood.

Her response was not so light. Buffy snarked, “Do I get a cookie?” She then stalked out of the kitchen, slammed the front door, and impatiently waited for him next to his car.

William came out silently a minute later, opening her door for her. She didn’t look at him, just climbed into the car and pouted some more.

“Are you not talking to me?” He asked as they began to drive.

She sighed. “I’m just being a brat. I’m cranky. And sorry.”

“Well, that was not the response I expected. I figured more sodding pouting.” She playfully slapped him, and just like that, any tension dissipated, and they were the two of them. Buffy and William. Or, Buffy and Spike.

Or Buffy, and this person she felt like she knew, but couldn’t even remember.

Or, William, and this girl that he desperately wanted to believe, and did feel in his heart, was his Buffy.

Whoever they were, whatever it was, it was comfortable.

They arrived at the school, and William gave her a few words of encouragement before disappearing in the direction of the library. Buffy sighed, and steeled herself for a very bad day.

But it was surprising to her, really, how seamlessly she fit into the student body. She guessed by the lack of initiated conversation by her classmates, that she was just as much a freak and outsider here as she was at home, so maybe it wasn’t so strange that no one noticed anything was…different. She had no idea what was going on in most of her courses, but again, that wasn’t really a huge difference from the way things usually were.

She was pleased to find Angel and Dru in more than one of her classes, but not pleased to see Dru’s exhausted demeanor and swollen eyes. The eyes of someone who had spent all night crying. Buffy knew those eyes, she saw those eyes more often than not recently when she looked at herself in the mirror. And she felt awful for her new friend.

The day dragged on. She succeeded in avoiding that guy she had apparently dated when he started to approach her in the hall, and also managed to not make a fool of herself when teachers or students spoke to her. She was forced by Principal Snyder to spend the lunch hour in a form of detention for some transgression she didn’t remember committing. Of all the possibilities in this alternaverse, the fact that he was still the principal and still hated her struck Buffy as almost funny.

When the last bell of the day rang, she felt all the tension leave her body, and knew that her newfound relaxation was because she was minutes away from being with William. Or, Spike. She hadn’t yet figured out how to refer to him in her mind, but she knew his presence made her rapidly beating heart slow to a normal pace, and soothed her frazzled nerves. Why, she had no idea. But she did know that she trusted him, and that he meant to help her.

Help her get home, where, while things didn’t make any more sense, at least she knew what was what.

Buffy burst into the library, startling William, who’d been completely immersed in a text that might prove helpful. He glanced up quickly, finding the Slayer bathed in sunlight, hair and skin glowing, a soft smile gracing her features.

God, she was beautiful.

That thought wasn’t just a casual, passing one. It was tinged with guilt for even thinking it, with lust, with desperation, with fear. But regardless of the varying emotions within him whenever he looked at the girl, he knew that one thing. She was beautiful.

“Any luck?” Buffy asked as she threw herself into the chair next to him.

“Actually, yes,” he nodded. “Nothing concrete yet, but I found a very detailed analysis of alternate universes and how that affects individual identity. Unfortunately it’s in Greek, which I’m not fluent in, so it’s taking some time to translate.”

“It’s all Greek to me.” She winced at her own bad joke.

“Bloody riot, you are,” William smirked at her. He started to turn back to his book, when she interrupted him.

“We ran into Willow last night,” she said quietly. “She’s kind of scary.”

“She is,” he nodded.

“She used magic on me. It was like…I was frozen, I couldn’t do anything to stop her.”

“Yes. Dru is working on some sort of shield for you, to resist her magic.” William waited, sensing there was more she wanted to get out.

“It’s one thing to you see you and Dru and Angel in your…different ways, here,” she tripped over her own words. “But seeing Willow, who was my best friend, who was…such a good person, seeing her like that…”

It was coming again, the all encompassing dread and sorrow. She didn’t want it. She couldn’t handle it, not here, not with him looking at her with such pity in his eyes. And her head was pounding. Buffy leapt from her chair and ran up the stairs, lost herself in the stacks, using all of her inner strength trying to suppress the tears within her.

So wrapped up in staying calm, she didn’t sense that William had followed her. And when he placed his hand on her shoulder, she felt herself falling, her shaking legs giving out under her. Aware she would probably hit the floor with a painful crash, Buffy still could do nothing to soften her fall. But instead of the hurt she expected as she collapsed, she found her self quickly caught in William’s strong arms, and he gently lowered her to the floor, pulling her small body against his chest.

“Buffy…I’m here…” He murmured into her hair, rocking her back and forth.

“I can’t…I can’t…I don’t remember…” She managed to force out in between sobs that wracked her entire body, sobs that she could feel in her feet, in her chest, in her already hurting brain.

“You don’t have to,” he said simply, clutching her against him tighter. He just held her. He didn’t feed her platitudes of “It’ll be alright, it’ll be okay”, he didn’t tell her not to cry, he didn’t pull away. He just embraced her as she broke down.

It could have been ten minutes; it could have been an hour. Buffy was cradled against his body, her head tucked up under his chin, and he used one hand to stroke comforting circles on her back. The pain searing through her head started to fade, replaced by a dull ache, and she ran out of moisture to produce as tears.

She pulled away slowly, staring down at her hands. William was reluctant to let her go, but he allowed her space, letting his arms drop to his sides. His knees were aching, his back sore from sitting on the hard floor, but he was unaware of these things. The only thing he cared about was Buffy.

“I hate being such a crybaby,” she said to her hands, not looking him in the face. “I’m sorry you have to deal with me being all…stupid and childish and wigged beyond the telling of it.”

He said nothing, just reached out one hand and wiped a tear from her cheek. Buffy slowly lifted her head to look at him, and his heart broke. Her eyes were shining impossibly green after the shedding of torrents of tears, and were filled with such a raw misery William didn’t understand how she could even bear it.

It was only a small movement forward, and then he was pressing his lips to her forehead, his grip on her tightening. Buffy melted into his embrace. From the place where his lips met her skin, warmth and electricity radiated, and she sighed.

They pulled away simultaneously, quiet, still, staring. She opened her mouth to break the silence when Angel’s voice came from beyond the stacks. “Pratt? Buffy?”

William jumped up, the spell broken. “Up here, Angel. Be right down.”

He reached down and offered a hand to Buffy, and she used it to haul herself off the ground.

“You alright?” He murmured softly.

“Yeah, I just need a minute to...Thank you.”

William smiled at her awkwardly. “Any time.”

He spun and rushed out of the stacks, and Buffy leaned up against the nearby bookcase to regain control of herself. Her legs were shaking again, but this time, for an entirely different reason.





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