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It was New Year’s Eve, 2021 and Buffy was miserable. Every holiday was miserable. Every Christmas, every birthday, Valentines Days limped through with alcohol and valium. She wished she could have everyone back.
So Buffy spent her New Year’s Eve patrolling, chasing down any monsters she could get her hands on. She’d been told there was a temporal disturbance in a side street down Portobello Road, near the street market, so she’d gone with freshly sharpened scythe down the darkened London streets following the enchanted mouse that was supposed to be able to track it down. She thought it a little hard on the mouse, but the witches she was working with were a little on the dark side, and they claimed it didn’t actually hurt the mouse any to be reprogrammed as a temporal detection device. It would go on eating cheese and chasing other mice and generally mouse away even if it was drawn to temporal energies. So Buffy chased it down.
“Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one….” Buffy nearly lost track of the thing as it darted under someone’s feet. “The mouse ran down,” she added, shoving someone else out of the way.
It stopped at someone’s feet. “Hickory dickory…” Buffy froze. The mouse had found its place, all right, and was definitely sitting at a temporal anomaly. “Spike!”
The man at the cafe table glanced up at Buffy and frowned. “Do I know you, sugar-tits?”
“I… you…!”
The man stood up. He didn’t exactly look like Spike, now that Buffy examined him. He’d abandoned his bleach-blond hair for something darker and shortly cropped, and he’d eschewed his usual black leather to wear what seemed like an antique British soldier’s redcoat, and the look on his face was cold, even colder than what Buffy had originally seen when Spike was totally evil and man-eaty when she’d first met him. But it had to be Spike. It had to be Spike. No one else could have those cheekbones, or those full lips, or… or… Buffy almost sobbed and pushed him against the wall, pressing him into a kiss.
And holy shit, that wasn’t Spike. First off, he was definitely human, but with all the madness in Buffy’s life Spike being human wasn’t off the list of possibilities. But Spike kissing like that was not possible. Spike’s kisses, even under a spell, were glorious and carnivorous swells of passion. This was just lascivious and intrusive, which since Buffy had been the one to kiss him was a trick to pull off. She backed off. “You’re not Spike.”
“Too right,” said the man, whose voice wasn’t all that different from Spike’s. “But I could be if you wanted me to be--” He leaned forward for another kiss.
Buffy shoved him back and looked down. The mouse was still sitting on the man’s toe.
“Who are you?” she asked. “What are you? How did you get that face?”
“It’s my face, sweetheart,” the man said. “Call me John Hart. And as for what I am… say, what a very pokey shiny you’ve got there.”
“Right enough,” Buffy said. “And it kills things that shouldn’t be here.”
“Well, you’re right, I definitely shouldn’t be here. So I won’t be your problem for much longer.” He pulled up his hand and started tapping away on what looked to be a magical wristwatch. The mouse squeaked loudly. Buffy grabbed the watch, trying to rip it off the man’s wrist. And the world folded in on itself as if it had been sucked through a hole.
A second later Buffy found herself in bright sunlight, with birds singing, and various murmuring people surrounding her. But then she unbuckled the magic watch and it came popping off into her hand, making her new companion -- John whatever-his-name-was -- squawk. “Hey! Give that back! That’s mine, that is!”
“No, it is not,” Buffy insisted. “The local witches were convinced you were messing up the timeline, that’s why they gave me this….” She stopped and looked down. Her mouse wasn’t there. And the London street wasn’t there. And she was in what certainly looked to be California sunshine, and when she looked up she recognized where she was. “This is the corner market on Williamson and Agate streets.”
“Where?” John asked.
“I’m… I’m back in Sunnydale.” Gripping the wristwatch tightly in her hand she put her arm over John’s throat and pushed him back against the wall of the market. “And you are going to explain things to me right pronto, buddy. Not the least of which is how you got that face.”
***
As the afternoon sun sank behind the buildings, the two of them sat down at one of the tables outside the market where various local demons were playing cards or dominoes. John, Buffy discovered, was incredibly annoying. For one thing, John flirted with everyone--the check-out guy, the demons, the patrons, the Dalmation someone had tied up outside. Well, he was right, it was a very handsome Dalmation, but seriously, it was a little wiggy. He grabbed at her tits without any kind of restraint, and didn’t seem to care when Buffy twisted his arm up behind his head for it. “You were the one who introduced herself with a kiss, sweet-cheeks.” And then he was remarkably unhelpful, but kept trying to snatch his watch back.
“Why is Sunnydale back?” Buffy asked him.
“It’s not, you’re back.”
“But why am I here?”
“You had the wrist strap, you tell me.”
“What the hell is this thing?”
“That’s the single greatest temporal machine of all time. Well, maybe second greatest, the Time Lords had stuff legend claims was better. But that’s the height of 51st century technology, I’ll have you know.”
“So it’s not a magic watch, it’s a time machine?”
“It is exactly a magic watch,” John said. “And it’s my magic watch, so give it back.”
“No.”
“We’re breaking into your own timeline here, sweetheart, you don’t want to go mucking with that.”
“Why not?”
“You can make your entire world blink out of existence, or at least snap you along into a different dimension.”
“But it blinked me back in time? To Sunnydale? Why did you take me here? What is this place to you?”
“It’s nothing to me, it’s something to you. You were the one holding the strap. I was just thinking ‘get away,’ you were the one who must have wanted to come here.”
“You mean it could read my mind?”
“The controls are largely psychic, so yes, it reads your intentions and works with them. And now you’ve mucked it up.”
He sure sounded like Spike. Looked like Spike. But everything was slightly off.
“What were you thinking about when I activated it?”
“A… a friend of mine,” Buffy said. “You… remind me of him. A lot.”
“So you showed up where your friend is. Riddle solved. Wrist strap please.”
“No,” Buffy said, strapping it onto her own wrist. “How do we get back?”
“Well, we can’t. The thing wasn’t calibrated for you; it’ll be days before it’ll work to get us out of here.”
“What?”
John grabbed her hand and flipped open the strap. Buffy shifted the scythe so that the pointy end tickled at John’s jugular. He swallowed. “Look there,” he said, indicating a red light flashing on the corner of a little screen. “That’s the recalibration light. Until that goes off again, that machine won’t be working for anyone.” He shook his head. “I’m surprised it worked for you. It usually only works for people who have already traveled in time unless I pre-calibrate to take them with me.”
“I’ve gone back in time before,” Buffy said. “It was ugly.”
“Well, that explains why the strap is confused.” He let go of the little machine and tilted back in his chair. “Got almost two days here before we can get you home, sweetheart. So let me warn you -- under no circumstances go and see yourself.”
“What?”
“There’s two of you here, aren’t there? If you run into yourself, all kinds of shenanigans can ensue.”
“Like what, temporal paradoxes?”
“Temporal paradoxes that can rip a hole in the space-time-continuum and let in monster bat demons who’ll eat everybody.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” John stretched and leaned his head back. “So we’re not going anywhere for a while. I suggest you lay low.”
“I can’t do that. What if I do change things?”
John shrugged. “I don’t care what you do to muck up the timeline, do I? It’s your life you’ll be messing with. Just don’t go see yourself. I don’t feel like dealing with a bunch of bloody Reapers jumping through dimensions to eat us all up.”
“So… don’t go see myself,” Buffy said. “What if I do see myself sort of… in passing?”
“Why would you even want to do that?” John asked.
Buffy paused. “I want to say goodbye to my mother,” she admitted. “She died when I was twenty.”
A flash of something human passed over John’s face. Just a flash, but it was there. “Want to see her again, do you?”
“I… do,” she said. There were a lot of people Buffy wanted to see again. “Can I save her, do you think?”
“What did she die of?”
“Aneurysm.”
He shook his head. “Probably not,” he admitted. “Unless you want to try and take her to the 22nd century and see what they can do for her there…. But it would probably drive her insane. I guess you could try.”
“Can I change things?”
John sighed. “Some things are fixed, some things are in flux,” he admitted. “I don’t think this point in time is a fixed one, at least not so long as you don’t meet yourself, but I wouldn’t go mucking about too much. Pick one person to talk to, just one, and make sure it’s someone you can trust. Here.” He took hold of the wrist strap again and pressed a couple of buttons. “Here’s your timeline,” he said, and the recalibration light now had a countdown. It was approximately forty-six hours. “We can’t leave until that counts down. Now if you do change something too drastic, this light down here will show up green.” He pointed to another light on the bottom of the strap. “If it turns yellow, you’re skirting the edge of the danger zone. It turns red, and the world rips apart. Your call, sweetheart.” He tipped his feet up onto the edge of the table and glanced at the demons around them. “Anyone here up to a game of checkers?”
“We’ve got an extra seat for dominoes,” said the Poerate demon to his left.
“I could toss the bones a bit,” John said. “If you need me, I’ll be here.” He looked at her and added, “Don’t leave town without me. That wrist strap will explode if it’s off my wrist too long.”
Buffy stared at him. “Are you lying about that?”
“Wouldn’t be very good for you if I wasn’t, would it?”
It was mad how much he looked like Spike, and maddening how much he really wasn’t. Still… Buffy had a chance now to put at least one thing right. Or at least see her mother again before she died. She knew she could trust her mother, and if she warned her about the aneurysm… maybe… maybe she could get it checked out before it broke loose and killed her? Maybe she could change just this one thing….
One person. She could contact one person.
She ran off into the growing night with the magic watch on her wrist.
***
Home looked just the same. Every detail that she remembered, the scent of the neighbor’s trees, the sound of the crickets in the bushes, and of course the house on Revello Drive, welcoming and inviting and Buffy wanted to pull the key out from under the stone frog in the garden and let herself in. Instead she lurked outside under a tree and waited for her mother. That was all she wanted to do, tell her to go to the hospital, check out her brain, warn them of the aneurysm. Stay in the hospital until they find and repair it.
She checked the watch again to see if she’d already changed something. There was no warning light, green, red, or otherwise, so there was no indication that she’d changed things for the worse by just being here. She was shaking. Why was she shaking? She’d gone through bizarre situations before, there was no need to be so nervous. The hair was prickling on the back of her neck. And even as she stared at the watch, a new light flicked on. A tiny green light.
“What? What, I didn’t do anything yet!” Buffy said aloud.
“You seem to have done plenty, slayer,” came a voice from behind her. “What have you done to yourself? You look like you’ve gone through hell.”
Buffy stiffened and turned. Of course. Spike was still stalking her house at this time. It was the early days of Spike’s crush, and he was full on obsessed with her, lurking under her tree -- this tree -- smoking cigarette after cigarette, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. But this time it had the opposite effect. She caught one glimpse of him, and she couldn’t help it. The ill-considered kiss she’d bestowed upon John burned in the back of her head, and she wanted to purge it, and here, here before her was the actual Spike, clearly Spike, moving like Spike and sounding like Spike and smelling like Spike, the vampire she knew and loved -- or who would one day become the vampire she loved -- and she’d had her decision forced on her. One person. Contact one person, someone you can trust.
She could trust Spike. She knew she could trust Spike. Past Buffy didn’t know Spike was trustworthy, but current Buffy knew, and that was all that mattered to her. This was Spike, it was Spike, even if it wasn’t the finished Spike, the soulful, self-sacrificing Spike, it was Spike, the real Spike, not just a look-alike, and she ran forward and flung herself into his arms. “Spike!”
He visibly jumped. “Slayer?”
“Shut up,” Buffy said, and pressed her lips to his.
Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely yeah. This was Spike’s kiss. He groaned deep in his throat and kissed with his whole body, his hands pressing against her arms, his shoulders inching forward as if trying to climb into her, his hips twitching, breath he didn’t need passing heavily between them as Buffy tasted the uniquely exotic zing of vampire, of Spike, particularly, devouring him between breaths.
“Slayer…” he breathed between kisses.
“Don’t question it,” Buffy said, knowing that Spike at this stage had no idea where their relationship was heading, and was very much of the opinion that she would never truly love him, and unfortunately… he was probably right. Because it had just occurred to Buffy that she was thinking too small. She’d wanted to change things just a little, maybe save her mom, but no… now that she had Spike, the real Spike, here by her side, powerful and dangerous and just enough evil, Buffy knew she wasn’t going to let things happen the way they had before. She wasn’t going to die, she wasn’t going to call the First Evil, there would be no need for the Scoobies to betray her, no need for Xander and Anya and Willow or even Tara to die, because she was going to start the dominoes falling and see where and how the pattern ended up. It couldn’t fall any worse than it had.
Spike made her forget how to be responsible.
Meanwhile Spike had shifted Buffy against the tree, and was starting to kiss her throat, laving at her skin with his cool, dangerous tongue, and all of Buffy’s dreams of a new future were driven out of her head as his hands inched up her shirt, darting over her bra, finding her nipples, lifting them into hard pebbles with his deft fingers, and Buffy found herself reaching for his belt buckle, shocking him all over again as she manipulated his jeans open and let his length slide into her hand. Unfortunately she was wearing jeans, and getting them down was going to be too much work, so she just ground herself against him, her legs lifting around him, and Spike sensed what she was doing and unzipped her, his hands sliding down the front of her underwear to fondle the nub in its little nest of hair, and they pressed against each other, their hands busy and determined, their heads a little apart as they gazed at each other.
Spike’s eyes were awed, confused, racked with pleasure, but searching. He could tell something was off about Buffy. She was twenty years older, for one. She knew her own eyes were haunted and her face was haggard and hair was utilitarian at this stage in her life. But Spike’s fingers were on her clit, and he was pressing himself against her, and it was the same, it was him, and she moaned against him, and “Oh, god,” Spike breathed as she came over his hand, and then he tensed, her own sounds too much, throwing him over the edge, and Buffy felt him come cool and sticky in her hand, and Spike shuddered and kissed her heavily and that was it, there wasn’t even a question that he was on board. She could see it in his eyes. He was already hers.
After they came down a little, their foreheads resting against each other, Buffy took in a deep breath and reluctantly let go of his cock. Spike kept his hand down her pants until she gently took his wrist and rearranged him. “We need to talk.”
“You’re not Buffy,” he said quietly.
“I am.”
He shook his head. “You smell right, but off. And you don’t even look right.”
“Then why did you kiss me back?”
He opened his mouth and then looked down.
“See? You knew it was me.”
“Then what’s wrong with you?”
“I’m from the future,” Buffy said. “And it’s a long, complicated story. And we can’t have it here. Can we go back to your crypt?”
Spike hesitated. “Can we shag there?” he asked, and it sounded almost innocent. Buffy grinned and rested her head against his shoulder. Oh, she had missed out by not loving Spike back in these early days, she knew she had. He was completely helpless against her.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
Without another word Spike grabbed her hand and started almost running with her toward his crypt.
***
“So when are we, exactly?” she asked. It wasn’t a short walk to Spike’s crypt, and Buffy was fairly sure they wouldn’t want to talk much once they got there. “What’s just happened? Have we faced Glory yet?”
“Once. In the hospital.”
“Right, while you were fighting the fight of the knocked unconscious. But this is before Dru shows up back in town and you decide to kidnap me for kicks and giggles in some vampire attempt to seduce me.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Spike said indignantly. Buffy looked at him pointedly, and Spike sighed. “Okay, yes, I would, if I thought it would work. I take it it wouldn’t?”
“No. But yes, Dru’s going to come back and try to get you to go back with her. Get rid of her.”
“Why? Are you going to live here now?”
“No,” Buffy said. “But I’m going to change one big thing, and hopefully that’ll make everything else go better.” She sighed. “After these last couple years, it’s not as if things can get much worse.”
“What’s the big thing?”
“I’m going to kill Glory. Or Ben, actually. He’s not an innocent according to Dawn, and I don’t consider him human.”
“Who is Ben?” Spike asked. “Does Ben have something to do with Glory?”
“Oh, not you,” Buffy said. Then she realized it was just that Spike hadn’t actually met Ben yet.
“Am I hearing you correctly, Slayer? You want to kill a human?”
“He’s not a human. And yeah, past me, the one you’re in love with, would really balk at doing that, but I’ve been through so much these last years, killing Ben just seems like a public service.”
“How are we going to kill this Ben? I mean, I’m all for murdering anyone you want out of this world, but I’ve got a chip in my head, if you remember, and…”
“That’ll take care of itself in a couple years.” Buffy fell into a quick recap of her life story, starting from when she was coming from, New Years Eve, 2021. John had said she could tell one person, and here she was telling him everything. Joyce’s death, her death, Warren and the Trio, Tara’s death, Buffy’s depression, their affair, Spike getting his soul -- she omitted exactly why, because she hoped past-Buffy would get to skip that particular sordid incident -- the First Evil, the fight against the Turok-han, and then she got to Spike’s death and if a vampire could go white, he went white.
When they did get to the crypt Spike surprised her by not instantly jumping in with the shagging. Instead he sat her down and had her go all over it again, and finish up with everything that happened after. Willow flaring out a second time, and this time eating up her own corporeal form in the process. Xander drinking himself to death within a year after. Dawn losing her grip on her human form and dissipating into green energy, probably zapping between dimensions, which probably could have been stopped by Willow, but Willow was already gone by then. All the complications that calling all the Slayers had brought into the world. And poor Giles succumbing to organic brain damage and spending his twilight years in a secure retirement facility.
“And in the end it’s just you… alone… fighting the good fight still. Until you ran into a man with a magic wristwatch and decided to change everything?”
“The magic wristwatch just kind of sent me here. I was thinking about you when I met him because he reminds me of you. Like… seriously reminds me of you a lot. To the point I thought he was you. But he’s not. He’s really not.”
“And he’s at the demon market on Agate Street?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go, then. I want to get this sorted out.”
Buffy felt disappointed. “Spike… this might not work.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean everything might just blow up in my face and get worse than ever.”
“And?”
She couldn’t believe she had to plead for this. “I want to hold you again,” she said, and it came out as a whimper.
Spike fell forward and caught her up in his arms. “Don’t cry, slayer,” he whispered, kissing her cheeks. Had she been crying? She supposed she was.
“Tell me you love me.”
“I…” he hesitated. “I love her,” he said finally. “I guess that means I love you. But you won’t love me unless I keep loving her, and somehow get her to love me, and I don’t know how….”
“She’s closer than you think. Try not to screw it up, and keep fighting for her. Listen when she says no, but always be there for her. And have and respect a proper safe word. I think that can do it. Oh, and don’t get jealous over Angel. She doesn’t realize that’s done, but that’s so done.”
“And while you’re here?”
Buffy passed her hand over Spike’s chest and pushed his coat off his shoulders. “I’m claiming you while I’m here,” she said. And she led him unhurriedly to his bed.
***
Making love to Spike like this was like entering into someone’s fantasy life. He was very adult when it came to what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it, but he was fast and urgent and desperate, and when he slowed down he looked as if he were in a dream. “Tell me what you like,” he asked her over and over again. “You want that? You want me to want you like that?”
Buffy knew he was cataloguing all of her responses to use on his present Buffy, and she didn’t mind. This was a stolen moment, from a Spike that didn’t belong to her, and it was a treasure she wasn’t going to abandon without a struggle. But she would gift him everything she knew, every possible trick to seduce her younger self, and in the end they weren’t tricks. “Just love her. For real, in every way. Show her by your actions, what you’re willing to do, who you’re willing to fight, how you’re willing to sacrifice yourself. Be… like her. Become like her. Love like she does and she’ll love you back. Also, for the record, dressing like Riley doesn’t help your case any.”
Hours after, they lay naked and snuggled together, weary but not shattered; content. The sun was finally going down again. “It won’t be like this at first,” she warned him. “She needs to get past a barrier in herself before she can love you.”
“But she can love me?”
“The you you’ll become if you keep loving her. Yes. She can.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Oh, night and day.”
“But she’ll have this passion? This animal hunger?”
“Probably not all the grief,” Buffy said softly. “And you have to keep changing.”
Spike hesitated. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You can and you will. I love you. Is it worth that?”
Spike hesitated, his hand rubbing idly on Buffy’s shoulder. “Yes,” he said eventually. He closed his eyes. “It’s a bigger crumb than I ever thought I’d get. I know I shouldn’t take it as a promise….”
“It’s not a promise.”
“I know,” he said, and he took in a deep breath of her hair. “It sounds hard.”
“It will be hard.”
“Can’t I come back to the future with you?”
“Without you there won’t be any future at all,” Buffy said.
“You sure about that?”
“I think John was.”
“Then I want to see this John,” Spike said. He got up, stopped, returned to the bed and gave Buffy one more passionate kiss. “If that’s okay?”
“It’s fine,” Buffy said. “But it’s probably a good thing you haven’t been looking in any mirrors lately, because he’d give you a serious case of the wiggins if you had.”
They dressed, and Buffy strapped on her scythe, then they went to the corner market on Agate Street. Sure enough John Hart was still there, or there again, flipping dominoes with a Naylor demon this time. “John,” Buffy said behind him.
“Give us a tick, love, about to win this--” he glanced up at Buffy and Spike and jumped. “Bloody hell, you sure as shit weren’t kidding.” He stood up and looked Spike in the face. “That is uncanny. What a handsome looking bloke. Spatial genetic multiplicity, that’s astonishing. Do you have any children?”
“Children? I’m a vampire, mate.”
“Oh, so you’ll have plenty of time to find out, then, won’t you? You naughty girl! You didn’t tell me we were related!” he said, grinning down at Buffy.
“Um… you’re not--”
“Well, that’ll be a lark for you two, won’t it then.”
“Vampires can’t have children--”
“Sure they can. Just takes some complicated genetic manipulation, or as you’d call it, a little magic. They always said there was some demon on my mother’s side. Won’t know for another three millennia, anyroad. In the meantime, you just sit there and give me a good view, will you, eye-candy? Thanks, love. Love the blond. Do you think I should try it? Obviously looks good with the cheekbones.”
“You can do whatever you want with your hair, John,” Buffy said. “Spike wanted to meet you.”
“Well, given the circumstances, I’m completely chuffed to meet him,”
“We’re going to do something dangerous,” Spike said.
“And what’s that, exactly?”
“Fight a god.”
“A god. Protrusion from another dimension into this one?”
“Got it in one.”
“Hyperstrong and completely amoral?”
“You got the picture.”
“It might not be a god,” Buffy said hurriedly. “Ideally it’ll just be some kinda cute medical intern who sometimes turns into a god.”
“That may be more my speed. Why should I help you?”
“Seeing as we have some mutual goals…” Spike said.
“Hold it, platinum blond, we have the same face, we don’t have the same goals.”
“If you think we’re related--”
“I sure as shit don’t know that for sure,” John said.
“She’s rich,” Buffy added in. “And I do know that for sure. You can raid her apartment.”
“Gems?”
“Probably.”
“Art?”
“Definitely.”
“Let’s go, then.” John placed a final domino on the table and said, “I win, mate.”
“You cheated!” said the Naylor demon. “I was focusing on those two!”
“Never focus on the other guy,” John said.
They headed to the rich apartment building that Buffy remembered as being Glory’s hideout. Buffy gripped her scythe, and Spike readied himself into fighting stance. Buffy turned to John and found that he’d already armed himself with an impressive looking… well, ray gun? It looked even more future tech-y than anything the Initiative had come up with. “Let’s go.”
The three charged into the apartment building with Buffy breaking any locks they came to. She eschewed the elevator in favor of the stairs, where they couldn’t get trapped. Within moments various looking scabby-hobbit guards came poking their heads out of doors and standing between them and Glory’s apartment. “You can’t come in here.”
“Sure we can, mate,” said one of the men at Buffy’s back, and she blinked. She had no idea which one of them had said it. Then Spike got into the fray, and she knew the difference between them. Spike was very much a vampire, he was physical in the way he fought. John Hart stayed out of the fray, but shot without hesitation. Buffy just swept the hobbits out of her way and prayed they’d get to Ben before he had a chance to turn into Glory.
“Bloody hell, love!” Spike said to Buffy. “You’re a better fighter than ever!”
Buffy grinned.
“And you’re lazy,” Spike added to his physical counterpart.
“Ta. Yes, I am,” John said.
Finally the hobbits were vanquished and Buffy slammed her way into the apartment. They were lucky. It was Ben. He was standing looking nervous in scrubs in the middle of the opulent room. John ignored him and started rifling what looked like a jewelry box on the side table. Buffy pointed the sharp end of the scythe blade at Ben’s throat.
“Don’t kill me!” Ben cried out. “I’m on your side, I swear to it!”
“And when you’re Glory, you’re pure evil,” Buffy said.
“Buffy… are you Buffy?” Ben started.
“Just go with it, mate,” Spike said. “It’s been that kind of day.”
“How did you even know Glory’s in me?”
“Spike’s a demon, and I’m… getting wiser in my old age,” Buffy said, actually not sure why the magic that had protected Ben’s identity no longer worked on her. She assumed it was because it had already worn off on her once.
“Buffy, you don’t understand. I have no choice! I’ve done everything I could to mitigate the damage Glory causes.”
“Like what?”
“I’ve become a doctor, trying to help people. You know I have. I… I called in someone to help clean up the messes she left behind.”
“Clean up the… the ones Glory drove crazy?” Buffy asked. “You’re the one who called in that Queller alien who tried to kill my mom?!?”
“You called in the Queller! That’s impressive,” said John Hart from behind them. Buffy glanced at him and found him stuffing his pockets with glittery jewelry. “I think that’s really the best place for you, mate.”
“What are you talking about?” Buffy said.
“Aren’t we going to kill him?” Spike asked. “Because I was just going to-- ow!” He had lunged for Ben’s throat with his hands outstretched, but then cringed and ducked. “How did you say I got rid of this chip thing?”
“We were nice to Riley when he came back,” Buffy lied.
“Oh, bloody hell, that’s worse than the pain, that!” Spike complained. “So who kills him, then? Since I can’t do it.”
“I…” Buffy hesitated. She knew she should do it, and do it quickly before Glory popped out under her scythe, but Ben really was on his knees, begging for his life. That might not mean anything to Spike, or even to John, but it meant something to her. “You should… you should leave Sunnydale,” she said. “Leave Sunnydale and never come back.”
“I can’t promise she won’t come back,” Ben admitted. “I don’t have any control of her when she takes over.”
“Well, I can solve that,” John said. “So you get on well with aliens, do you?” He pulled what looked like a button out of his pocket and stuck it on Ben’s shirt, then pressed it. “You should definitely try more of that.” The button flashed several times, beeped, and then Ben seemed to be sucked through the ceiling.
Buffy stared. “What was that?”
“Homing transponder,” John said. “There’s plenty of aliens whizzing past, they transmatted him up to the nearest ship. I basically just had him pull out his thumb and hitchhike.”
“To who?”
“Whoever’s passing,” John said. “Takes him out of this world, which was the goal, wasn’t it?”
“Why didn’t we just kill him?” Spike asked.
Buffy sighed. “We probably should have. But… if he’s out of this world, if Glory isn’t in this world, then… then we’re safe. Oh, but there’s still the Knights of Byzantium. Spike, why don’t you take Buffy and Dawn for a road trip?”
“She’ll never agree.”
Buffy shrugged. “You can still try. But… my mom is….”
“I’ll do whatever I can, love. I promise.”
The magic watch on Buffy’s wrist suddenly beeped.
“Well, that’s done it, we’re recalibrated,” John Hart said. “Make your goodbyes, sweetheart. And make it a good one, I’d like to be born one day.”
“I am not your great-great-something grandmother.”
“And I’m not taking chances,” John Hart said. “Not now I know where I got my murder kink.” He caressed Spike’s cheek and pulled him into a not-innocent kiss. “Keep it real, gramps.”
“Call me gramps again--” Spike said, but John had already danced out of reach.
Buffy was left facing Spike. “I think I have to go back,” she said, glancing at the wrist strap. “This just turned yellow. Any more big changes and it’ll turn red.”
“What happens when it turns red?”
“Buffy blinks herself out of existence,” John said, sounding surprisingly gentle for him.
“Then I guess you’d better go,” Spike said. “I’ll miss you. Will she… really love me?”
“She can. Whether she will is up to you. You have a lot of work to make yourself worthy of her.”
“Don’t I know it,” Spike said.
Buffy reached forward and kissed him softly, tasting him completely one more time. “Don’t die on me,” she whispered.
“You either,” Spike said.
“Sweet, but it’s time to go,” John said. “Though to tell the truth, I like this place. I might come back. In some dimension, anyway.” He took hold of the wrist strap on Buffy’s wrist and pressed a button on it. “Later, mate.”
“Later, then,” Spike said.
And as the world folded in on Buffy and John again, her last sight was of Spike reaching out for her.
She coughed and gagged as they rematerialized in the middle of the cafe she and John had left two days ago. “That’s it for that adventure, blondie,” John said, recovering faster than she did. She supposed he was more used to it.
“When are we?”
“Just after we left,” John said. “About ten minutes have passed. Can I have my wrist strap back?”
“I guess,” Buffy said, unbuckling it from her wrist. “If you’ll promise to get out of town.”
“I’ll get out of this century, if you want it of me, sweetheart,” John said. “It’s been real.” He strapped the watch to his wrist and turned away from her.
“Wait, John?” Buffy asked.
“What?”
“What if I just made everything worse?”
“This was your adventure, sweetheart. Don’t be surprised if you start to get mixed memories. Time is like a river. You can throw in the occasional shopping trolley, and it’ll still get to the ocean.”
“Which means?”
“If you’re still here, you’re going to remember things differently.” He ran his hand casually through his hair. “But you’ll always remember me.”
“You know you’re insane.”
John grinned, a wide grin that didn’t quite look like Spike. “I’ll take the compliment,” he said. He sauntered away.
Buffy sighed.
She reached into her pocket and turned her phone back on. She’d turned it off to save battery, since there was no signal in past-Sunnydale anyway. It dinged over and over again, new message, new message. She clicked on the last one, and up popped a video call.
It… was Spike.
“It’s almost New Year, slayer, where are you?” he said.
“Spike? Spike, is that you?”
“Of course it’s me, pet, who did you expect? The whole party’s been waiting for you for yonks.”
“The whole party?” Buffy said.
Spike stepped out of the frame and aimed the phone at what was clearly a party going on in the background. There was Willow, and Tara, and Dawn, and Xander, still with two eyes, and Giles was playing his guitar in the background, and, “Mom!” Buffy cried out. “How did you survive your aneurysm?”
But there it was, in her memory, Spike claiming he could smell something different about her, taking her to the hospital. Spike hanging around. Spike always being there for her. And Buffy remembered dying, but not dying, and then Spike dying, but not, and everything starting to fall into place as her memories began to bleed into another set. She staggered.
Spike said, “Buffy, is there something I should know?”
“It’s New Years Eve, 2021, Spike,” she said. “Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, bloody hell. Pet, come home.”
“I have,” Buffy whispered, already running for her car. “I have come home.”