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Of course his suckhouse wally of a grandsire had to waste the power of the Ring of Amara beating on a pulser. In the dark. In an utterly non-fatal way. Angelus had always had a callow sense of drama: all Batman dramatics, no poetry. The body language below him in the street was boringly easy to read, even from six stories up.
“Oh, how can I thank you, you mysterious, black-clad hunk of a night thing?” As Angel’s posture changed, Spike dropped his voice to the cowboy register. “No need, little lady, your tears of gratitude are enough for me. You see, I was once a badass vampire, but love and a pesky curse defanged me. Now I’m just a big, fluffy puppy with bad teeth —“
From behind him came a giggle that choked off in a snort.
Spike whirled, poised for battle, and felt his mouth fall open before he could stop it: she was here, the Slayer, hand clasped over her own mouth, eyes shining with mirth.
He shut his jaw with a snap. The Slayer was relaxed, leaning against the bulkhead for the stairs. He used a nearby pipe to launch a roundhouse kick — and blinked as he found himself whipped around and pinned, face grinding against the bricks, her movements so liquid he barely knew how she’d done it.
The Slayer wasn’t even breathing hard, and her grip was like steel. “Spike,” she said, her voice full of unfamiliar emotion.
He blinked again, focusing on the bit of her he could see. Her pulse beat slow and steady against him; she smelled, surprisingly, like metal shavings and char, but the deep sweetness underneath was familiar. “You chopped your hair,” he blurted.
The bit of the eye he could see crinkled at him. “Spike,” she said again, now obviously amused. “It was necessary. But thank you for noticing.” The warmth in her voice brought an answering heat from his body, and he shifted uncomfortably.
“I am sorry about this. I should’ve realized you’d pick the prime rooftop. And then when I saw you, I was going to sneak off — but big, fluffy puppy with bad teeth—” She didn’t bother to stifle this laugh.
“Surprised you find mocking the old toother so funny,” said Spike. “Don’t suppose your newly discovered sense of taste means you’d like to release me? Brickwork’s abrading my coat.”
“Oh, we can’t have that.” She eased her grip on his wrenched arm a fraction of a millimeter, and he fruitlessly tried to use it to pivot towards her. She didn’t notice, all her attention focused instead on a blackened crystal bound to her wrist. “Fuck. We can’t have this either. We can’t have any of this. You’ve seen me — fuckety fuckdom of fucks.” She dropped her forehead emphatically into the back of his neck. Spike sucked in a short breath. Was she nuzzling him? Had she forgotten who he was? And the swearing — where had that come from? He held himself very, very still. Except the part of him that perked up, brick wall be damned.
“But. I haven’t winked out. So it all still happened — at least the big stuff. We’re still facing the fucking Elder Things, and I still … I still lost …” Spike realized he could no longer hear voices from the alley.
“Spike,” said Buffy, directly into his neck. Which settled it — this whole thing was utter bollocks, they were mortal enemies, and whatever was happening had to stop.
“Have you gone completely off your bird?”
She raised her head.
“C’mon, Slayer. What’s this, keeping me bent up like a pretzel? You gonna dust me right here, all defenseless, just to keep me from getting my ring back? Know you’d rather fight fair. Much prefer it without weapons, if I recall proper.”
She gave him a real smile at that and loosened her grip a tiny bit further. He considered struggling, but he suspected he wouldn’t break free — and it would be sodding undignified to dislocate his shoulder, never mind alerting her to his hard-on. The Slayer seemed weirdly stronger than she had been, and he didn’t think it was just the absence of the ring on his hand. Had she magicked up for him? The thought warmed him. He tried to ease his hips away from the wall to relieve the discomfort.
“Uh-huh,” said the Slayer. “Well, I’ll just say this: I don’t want you to dust, Spike. I don’t want to fight you, except maybe for mutual fun.”
“Mutu— what?”
“I need a little time to think. I’m still here, so I think there’s still a chance… I have to get this right. Do you remember our truce?”
At that, he twitched. “Could hardly forget. Lost me Dru, didn’t it?”
“It’s time for a new truce.”
“Don’t rightly see why. World’s not ending, love. You’ve nothing to offer me a fight to the death won’t do brilliantly.”
“Nothing to offer,” said the Slayer disbelievingly. “From the man who once told me —“
He barely had time to react before she’d swung him around, his arm twisted between him and the wall now as she leaned into him. So much for concealing fuck all. He pasted on a leer he didn’t feel and bucked against her, wracking his brain for a crude insult that died on his lips when she responded, pulsing against him.
She looked down into the shadows inside his coat to where they were touching. He groaned, unable to stop himself, and vaguely hoped he could at least mortify her back.
She moaned; unmistakably, he could smell her arousal. She was practically straddling him. Fuckety fuckdom of fucks was right.
He realized she’d been muttering, her voice throaty and lush. “... isn’t everything, maybe some things have to happen, always happen, in every universe…”
And then he was free, his arm and his body. She was at least a yard away, her eyes dark as they met his. “We had a truce because we wanted the same thing,” she said.
“Don’t now,” he said harshly, unaccountably furious at having been released.
“Don’t we?”
“May soak your panties just thinking of me, sweetheart, but I’m after the ring, not Angel’s sloppy seconds.”
“Awesome,” said the Slayer. “You always had a good nose. But as I was saying: I don’t want to dust you. I don’t want to fight you. I … I actually want you to end up with the ring.” She said it like it was a piece of a puzzle she was just discovering.
“Look at you, missy,” said Spike, stalking sideways for a better angle. “Lying through your teeth like that. They’ll take away your white hat.”
“They’ll try. Not for that, though.” She smiled as she moved with him, stopping when the streetlamp lit up her face. “Spike. Spike. Look harder, Spike.”
He stared. She had lines beside her eyes, generous laugh lines he’d never seen before. The ambient light of the city had turned her golden hair to silver – but the left side was barely a half-inch long, and the rest looked to have been hacked off with a knife. Her clothing was practical, plain, her hoodie torn.
“You’re older,” he realized aloud and launched a flurry of blows.
“I am,” she said, casually prepared for each of them.
“Portal?” He gasped as she knocked him to his knees with a leg sweep.
“Spell,” said the Slayer. Her boot caught him in the shoulder, sending him sprawling backwards. “Stop fighting me, Spike. I’ll make sure you get the gem.”
“You want me to believe you came back in time to get me the gem back? What the hell makes me so important?”
She was on top of him. “You are important,” she said gently, “to me.” She interlaced one hand in his, and placed it to the side of his head. “But I came back to grab it for myself.”
“Balderdash,” said Spike, incredulous. “Only works on—“
“Turns out, the demon that gives the Slayers their power is not so different from yours,” said the Slayer, leaning forward over him to catch his other hand. “But it doesn’t matter — you saw me, and that’s changed things. I can’t go back to my time now.”
“Because it’s been changed,” said Spike slowly, relaxing into her grip.
“Doesn’t exist anymore,” said the Slayer. “Not exactly; not close enough. And if I alter much more here, I’ll blink out of existence entirely.”
“Just like that,” said Spike. “You’ll – you’ll die?”
“It won’t be death,” said the Slayer. “Something else. If things change so much I wouldn’t have needed to come back at all, I’ll just vanish. That’s the theory. The Buffy that’s in Sunnydale right now will continue on a different path, and future her won’t have to do anything quite … this drastic.”
She leaned down and kissed him then, a dark, deep kiss as though she knew him to his core. And he was kissing back, fervently, fight forgotten. Maybe she lied and maybe she didn’t, but her kisses flamed true.
Spike lit a cigarette as the Slayer retrieved first her jeans, then a boot that had ended up beneath a duct. He took a deep drag and eyed her bottom appreciatively. “So now what, Slayer? I’ll have you know I’m well on my way to getting the ring back myself. Help’s been hired, trap’s been laid.”
She scanned the rooftop as she stood back up with the boot. “Do you see my underwear anywhere?”
“No,” said Spike, sliding his lighter back into his pocket next to the panties. If he couldn’t see them, it was perfectly true – so why was she peering at him as though he’d lied anyway? “We fight a bit more over the sodding ring, get all hot and bothered, shag?”
“I told you, I want you to have the ring,” she said shortly.
“Because you won’t need it anymore? Apart from the shagging, I can’t see that you’ve changed fuck-all, future-wise.”
She buttoned her pants and came back, sitting on the tar paper near his feet to pull on her boots. “When I need it – if I need it – you’ll give it to me.”
He snorted. “Why in hell’s bells would I do that?”
She paused in the middle of lacing up a boot. “I believe in you, Spike.”
The words hit him hard, unaccountably. What did they even mean, coming from the Slayer? She believed he was the big bad? He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.
“But when I’ve done enough here to make sure you’ll get it, I’m pretty sure I’ll also have changed the timeline enough to …” she waved her hand.
“You’ll vanish,” said Spike.
“Yeah. Got to get it just right. Can’t tell you what’ll seal the deal until everything else’s ready.” She tugged her layers back into place, then stood and met his eyes straight-on – a bloody warrior goddess in threadbare clothes. “How do I look?”
“Look fine,” he said gruffly.
She gave him a faint, knowing smirk, then a strange little embrace that she danced back away from. “So on with your trap, and on with your plan,” she said. “Meet me back here tomorrow, before dawn.”
The door clanged shut behind her, and he listened to her footsteps grow faint down the building stairs. However much it was she knew about his plans, she must not realize he was going to torture Angelus. And why would he meet her, when he’d already have the ring? Spike tapped out another smoke and reached for his lighter, realizing as he did it what that awkward hug had been about.
Slayer’d stolen back her underwear.
***
Buffy pulled her hood as far forward as she could, just in case some random creature chose to amble through the sewers; she certainly didn’t need anyone else spotting her here in the wrong time. Angel had been broodingly censorous about her time-travel plan. He’d come astonishingly close to suggesting that if altering the timeline was the only way to save the world, maybe they should let it fall through the Gates of the Elder Things — but eventually, he’d told her where the gem was, at the only time it was unguarded.
She’d found the right junction. But the brick was another story; the fucking sewer was built of bricks, and which way was North-North-East anyway? How did that even work?
So she went at it systematically, starting at the ladder, prying at each brick anywhere near the floor as she made her way around the junction. It was the crux of her task, finding the ring, but it was taking real work not to drift off into thoughts of Spike, Spike on the rooftop, beautiful and young and stunningly full of contradictions — she nearly missed the sound of Cordy complaining as she approached.
But luck, this one time, was with her. The brick beneath her hands moved. And there was the ring. She slipped it snugly on her thumb, and pelted away down the closest tunnel as quietly as she could.
***
Oz secured the amplifier to the wall of the van with a strap.
“I’ll be right back,” said Devon, loping off towards the lit doorway.
A shadow detached itself from the alley wall. “Hey, Oz,” said Buffy.
Oz looked at her for a long moment, and frowned ever so slightly. “Hey?”
“I need you to do something for me,” said Buffy. “A favor.”
“Mm,” said Oz. His gaze landed on her cropped hair, then dropped to her ripped jeans, her well-worn moto boots.
“And you can’t mention it to anyone ever.”
“Huh,” said Oz.
She held out a tiny package wrapped in brown paper and twine. “Oz, I need you to take this back to Sunnydale and hide it in a very specific place.”
There was a sound of something loud being rolled from inside.
Oz took the soft package and examined it. She watched as his fingers discovered the small round shape at the center.
“And Oz, this is really important: you can’t tell anyone, not even Willow. You can’t even tell — you can’t tell me, okay? Maybe especially me. Me can’t know. No one can.”
“Is this … the ring?”
“Uh … well, yeah,” said Buffy. “Plus something that will smell really…” She trailed off.
It wasn’t a long silence because it was full of hubbub from the club.
“The ring I brought to L.A. three days ago,” said Oz wonderingly.
“Three days ago,” said Buffy. She laughed a little bit wildly. “Ok, so three days ago was a bad idea, a really really bad idea. Oz, I’m going to tell you something that’s going to sound insane—“
“Are you from the future?” asked Oz.
There was a distant sound of falling drums and vibrating cymbals, then an indistinct raised voice.
“Yes?” said Buffy.
“Well,” said Oz mildly, “that makes sense.”
***
Spike paced back and forth on the roof. She’d made off with it — his fucking gem, on his fucking ring, found through his fucking research and his brilliant fucking plan. And he’d basically let her. One little phrase from the Slayer and he’d turned from big bad to little match girl, desperate for love. That was all it took.
He was furious – and waiting for her just as she’d asked.
He’d been poised to slam Watcher Junior’s head into the wall when he’d caught the telling detail amid Cordelia’s frantic excuses – fast little guy in a ratty hoodie. Spike had dropped Wesley to the floor and roared with frustration.
He was gazing out across the city wondering if some higher power had actually officially doomed him to being led around by his cock when the door’s hinges squeaked.
“Spike,” Buffy said, stepping forward without an evident care in the world. “It was good of you to let Angel go even when they couldn’t find the ring — gotta say, I didn’t necessarily expect that.”
“Didn’t you,” said Spike dangerously. It hadn’t even fully registered that that was the result of what he’d done. He paced towards her. “Don’t suppose you brought me a little something for my trouble? Why, I don’t know… perchance my ring?”
“No, Spike, but it’s safe.”
He leapt at her, sure even as he did it she’d block; instead, she pulled his weight against her so they tumbled to the rooftop. He struggled to get a quick blow in, but she’d rolled right back up into a fighter’s crouch.
He rose with a growl. “Give it back to your honey, did you? Have a good laugh? Look at that dozzy twonk Spike, done in by four little words.”
“I. Believe. In. You.” She launched each word like the weapon it was, and he flung himself at her with a roar, too enraged to strategize.
This blow, to his own shock, landed – she was too busy pulling his head to hers, kissing him hungrily til his arms wrapped around her despite himself. They careened into the bulkhead with bruising force, bending the doorframe. The Slayer struggled to loose his pants with one hand while she kept a grip round his neck with the other. A dislodged gutter spout crashed to the rooftop as he ripped apart the zipper on the tell-tale hoodie.
His fury turned to something else as she sank down on him, something he didn’t want to examine – not right now. He shut his eyes and let go, losing himself to her heat and driving rhythm.
Hours later, when Spike opened his eyes, he was lying on his back, the Slayer beside him. She moved her hand lazily through his hair, mussing it to the roots, and gave that smile again, that infuriating, knowing, once-and-future-Slayer smile. “Spike,” she whispered.
The emotion in her voice was unmistakable – there was hope there, and the warmth of familiarity, all shot through with a grief he recognized but didn’t understand.
“Slayer?” he said cautiously.
She sat up against the bulkhead and pulled his discarded shirt over her knees. “You’re still worried about your precious. I am going to tell you. I just — I have to get this just right, or when I disappear, it’ll be lost.”
He stared at her a moment. “Was going to say, if I had to guess … we’ve been together before this. I mean, the other night, obviously, but–”
“We were together,” said the Slayer quietly. “We were together a long time.”
“But not any more?”
“You died.”
Something cracked a little inside him; her grief was for him. Spike sat up and leaned against the damaged bulkhead beside her. “How long ago? I mean, for you?”
“Long enough that when we were planning this, it didn’t even occur to me – to anyone – that if I was going this far back, maybe I could fix that too. If I hadn’t picked this rooftop to keep tabs on Angel, I’m not sure it would have.”
“So you didn’t give the gem to Angelus. Aren’t keeping it for yourself.”
She shook her head. “No, no — too much has changed here; I can’t go back. And I can’t come into contact with myself either. Anyway, I’ve had time to work it out, so listen.” She took a deep breath. “You need three things to find it. Where, how, and when, right?”
“Could just hand it to me.”
“It’s too dangerous right now – you’re too dangerous. But there’ll be a time you really, really need the gem. To save yourself while you save the world.”
Spike snorted. “That’s your gig, Slayer. If you’re leaving the—”
“And by the way, Spike, don’t wear it on your hand. Keep it somewhere no one can see. And keep it on all the time, never take it off, even if – especially if I give you other jewelry.”
Spike shut his mouth. That was too weird and specific to ignore.
“Okay, so listen. Here’s the where: the Ring will be hidden where the last vampires you made rose.”
Spike frowned. “The factory?”
She punched him lightly in the shoulder. “No, the last ones you made when. As in, the big when. The when when you can find it.”
“Which is … when, precisely?”
“I’m getting there – first the how. Use all your senses.”
Spike’s nostrils flared — Slayer sweat; soot and steel; their spendings.
“Not now, Spike — that’s the how.”
“Candlestick in the library’d be a tad more practical,” said Spike.
The Slayer smiled and leaned over to steal a quick kiss.
“And the when … is when I tell you — when she tells you —” She stopped and kissed him again, this one a long, lingering kiss. Spike could feel something inside him loosening dangerously, his defenses crumbling like the doorframe of the bulkhead behind them. When she ended the kiss, he pulled her into his lap and sought out another one, his hands cradling her head.
She broke it off and leaned her forehead against his, her eyes close and intent.
“She’ll say: I believe in you.”
It was a moment before he realized the shock he was feeling wasn’t solely internal. The Slayer was vibrating. She drew back, looking down as tiny blue sparks crackled across her body. “It’s here, Spike. That was it. I’m ending.”
“No,” he blurted, pulling her close – and she was close, right there against his chest, but she also wasn’t, she was standing before him, she was kneeling to his left, and again a few inches further away, and she was at the edge of the roof, every version of her lit with blue zaps, more and more of them, bluer and bluer—
—the world wrenched sickeningly sideways, and all the Slayers were gone.
Spike felt a loss he could barely define. He could still taste her. Still smell her, still feel the fierce heat of her. Still hear the longing in her voice, longing for him.
He let out a breath. None of it had been for him, not exactly.
He wasn’t her Spike. He wasn’t a white hat. And the Buffy in Sunnydale — that wasn’t her, wouldn’t look at him the way she had, wouldn’t know all his moves and tricks before he even thought of them.
But maybe they both could be. In time – their own time. Their own future, the one that started now.
***
Spike moved quietly across the basement floor, skirting the disturbed mounds of earth. He’d made some vague excuse to get out of training the potentials this evening as soon as the sun began to set — there was no way he was going to try to explain to Buffy that in a different future, she’d flown a kamikaze mission through time.
He’d worked hard not to remember it himself. He’d got it figured pretty quick, the importance of pushing all memories of the older Slayer down, deep down and out of the way, just to get on in the world. At first he didn’t want to change too much, didn’t want to risk her not becoming the woman who would come back to his past; but that had been a circular mindfuck, leading to nothing but paralysis as he endlessly second-guessed himself.
So he had done his best to forget, and live his life. And it wasn’t as though that wasn’t plenty to handle, what with government-sponsored monsternapping, torture by goddess, Dawn’s food experiments. Buffy’s death plunge had made the memory all the more painful, thinking the version of her that could believe in him might as well have been a delusion, and would never now exist. The soul — well, by the time he’d taken on the soul, he’d known the plan had failed. Whatever future-Slayer had or hadn’t done, it hadn’t been enough, and the gem might as well have never been found.
He’d shut it out so utterly that when Buffy said the words, again, the magic words, I believe in you — for a moment he didn’t know why it rang in his head like a klaxon. And just as the realization hit, he’d been scooped up by the Bringers. Had thought he’d die releasing their ubervamp, just short of finding the gem once again.
Now, though, he remembered it all, clear as a brightly-lit room; he’d been lying to himself to believe he’d forgotten the slightest detail. He could catalog every little difference between future Slayer and Buffy. Slayer’d been harder but softer, somehow – more resilient. She’d smelled like Buffy, but different … it came back to him vividly, that faint acrid whiff of metal shavings and sweat and sex, so vividly that —
He was smelling it now. The faintest, most ephemeral trace of it. He closed his eyes, moving slowly, extending all his senses, til the air told him he’d neared a wall — and there, there was a brick with cracked mortar. He eased it out, little by little, raspy bits of grit falling to the floor. Tucked behind it in the insulation was a crumpled bundle.
His fingers were trembling, but it didn’t matter: the aged paper fell apart in his hands, the scrap of cloth inside equally fragile from its years in the wall.
He slipped the ring on his finger. Exactly where she’d told him not to display it — and right she was. A toe then, til he could think it through. He headed back to the stairs and sat, nearly giddy, to unlace his boot. He’d actually raised his hand to chuck the wrappings away before another whiff hit him, and he recognized he was holding the remains of the Slayer’s panties.
“Would you look at you?”
He started to slip them in his pocket — but these weren’t from his Buffy, the Buffy who was waiting for him at Revello Drive. He laid them gently on the step beside him, and went about situating the Ring.