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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.”





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