Disclaimer: I do not own or claim ownership of any element of the BTVS universe. This is fan fiction, and I am not profiting from the publication of this story.
Author's Note: I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer and have long shipped Buffy and Spike. When the show ended in '03, I was heartbroken by their ending--yes, she said, "I love you", but he died. And yes, he came back in Angel, but Spike didn't reunite with Buffy. I did not get around to reading the comics, and upon my recent rewatching of the show, I Googled if Buffy and Spike got back together in the comics and was dismayed to find out that they do not end up together. This story developed from my age-old fan wish for them to have a happy ending, and so that's what this is, an epilogue of sorts. I'm not sure how long this project will be; I write it in my downtime while working on other projects.
Episode One: In Dreams
It started with a dream.
Energy burst from the Champion’s Amulet resting on Spike’s chest, piercing every snarling Turok-Han with its white-hot light. They screamed through exposed pointed teeth, rusted from endless feasts of blood. The scrunched grey and hairless skin of their monstrous faces betrayed the pain and confusion that rippled among their masses as the light spread across the bowls of the Hellmouth. But he did not burn with his kin. Spike’s pale skin and bleached hair were cast in the glow of the Champion’s Amulet. He looked warm, Buffy thought—he was warm. She knew that, though she never admitted it.
Buffy, the Slayer, her clothes dusted with hell’s dirt and blood seeping from the gash above her left eye, approached her champion. Everyone had already fled upwards to escape, but she remained. He held his arms out, bent, and palms pressed out, urging her to go. The cavernous walls shook and crumbled, and the ceiling of hell threatened to collapse onto them. She took his hand in hers, wrapping her fingers around. A fire sparked through the gaps between their flesh, emanating brighter and brighter until a white flash blinded her.
When the world became clear again, Buffy stood in the primordial clay, her blonde hair wisping in the breeze. She’d been to a place like this before—it had sienna rock formations rising from the sand and arid plant life, but this landscape was barren for miles.
Her slayer sense tingled; she could feel it—them?—behind her. Buffy slowly turned her head to face it, the shadow of a figure standing out of view.
“Buffy,” Spike’s voice called in her ear, so close yet far and away.
Darkness.
Buffy’s eyesight adjusted quickly to the blackened room. She stared at the vaulted ceiling of broad rectangular wooden rods cutting across an ivory base. The white cotton sheets were cosy but not hers. The mattress was of cloud-like comfort but also not hers. Her room, her home had been destroyed. The house she slept in belonged to Rupert Giles, her Watcher—former Watcher—she didn’t know anymore. He’d been on and off in the position since she was sixteen, but he was more than that. Giles had been a father to her when her parents divorced and her mother, Joyce Summers, moved the two of them to Sunnydale, and he continued to be one when Joyce died.
The country estate where the Scoobies found respite after the destruction of Sunnydale eight months ago had been passed down through Giles’ family. The surrounding three acres belonged to Giles and provided ample land for the newly called slayers to train. The diluted morning sun, dulled by an English fog, told her she was probably the only one awake at this hour.
Buffy lay in bed, waiting for sleep that she knew wouldn’t come. The dream had her too keyed up to fall asleep now. She pulled the comforter back, swung her legs over the edge and slid on her fuzzy slippers that sat ready on the frigid hardwood. Buffy pulled her robe off the hook, wrapping the tie tightly around her, and entered the hall. Giles provided her one of the seven bedrooms, leaving the other Scoobies, Xander, Willow, her younger sister Dawn, and Faith, with their own room on either the first or second floor.
Buffy walked lightly across the upper floor, down the hall towards the library. It did not match the size of the Sunnydale High School library, but it wasn’t some mere office with a couple of stacks. The semi-octagonal room was lined with shelves reaching from floor to ceiling, converging on either side to a lattice window that overlooked the stables. Giles had classics—Austen, Yates, Byron, but he also had an impressive collection of historical texts on demonology, magic, and the like. She stared at the shelves before her, unsure of where to start. Giles, Willow, and Xander did the book thing, and Buffy did the slaying.
Gotta start somewhere, she told herself. Buffy started on the left and walked along, scanning the spines for familiar words. She came upon an old book—super old in her mind—that had a thick leather cover embossed with precise lines that intricately curved and spread across the surface. It definitely smelled old. The book bore no title, no inscription on the front, and the language scrawled across the yellowed pages looked Latin? Sumerian was the one with the symbols, she tried affirming to herself. Perhaps this had the answers she sought.
#
The sun rose over Westbury, and the fog dissipated. It was still early, though not too early for Giles. He emerged from his bedroom dressed for the day and headed for the stairwell. In his semi-retirement, he ditched the tweed suits and opted for his brown corduroy jacket, casual button-up, and jeans. His 50th birthday had come and gone without much ceremony—as he preferred it. The off-key singing and obligatory attention didn’t measure up to a well-aged scotch and half-decent book. Buffy and the rest minded his space and kept to their own devices throughout their indefinite stay.
He turned to head down, he noticed the library door was cracked. Curious, he approached, reaching out to slowly open the door by pressing his right hand against the door. Buffy sat at the table in the centre of the room, her legs curled up in the seat, her head resting in her hand as she flipped through what looked like one of the Arcana volumes. Several other books surrounded her on the table, some open, others closed.
“Starting the day with some light reading?” Giles asked in his soft Londoner accent.
“The healthy way to start the day,” Buffy replied, lifting her head off her hand, “No, wait, that’s breakfast. I’ve been living here too long.” She appraised Giles’ clothes, noting he was fully dressed and she was still in her robe. “What time is it?”
“Quarter past eight.” He paused, looking over the compilation of texts on the table. “Something on your mind, or are you planning a book club?”
“None of these are exactly on Oprah’s list.” She reached for a pocket-sized one to her right. “Well, maybe this one. The plot’s a little convoluted but it’s pretty spicy.”
Giles’ brow pinched with concern. “Are you having nightmares?”
“No. I don’t know.”
He took the seat next to her and leaned over with concern. “What did you see?”
“What do you know about the amulet?”
“The Champion’s Amulet?” He sat up straight, thinking. “No more than what Angel conveyed to you and what happened when it activated.” He could see that his lack of knowledge in the area did nothing to allay her concerns. “But I’m sure there’s a history documented somewhere.”
“Great, where do we start?”
His brow pinched with worry and confusion. “We’ve dismantled all known openings to other Hellmouths,” he told her, “and even if The First were to mobilise an army, the network Willow set up would notify us.”
“I know,” she replied, still not comforted. “Now, where do we start?”
Giles removed his glasses. “What’s this about?”
“I just need to know more about what we did, what—” She couldn’t bring herself to say his name. “I’m going to shower.” Buffy made haste to the door.
“Buffy,” Giles called, and she stopped. “Don’t forget you’re training session today.”
“Faith can do it,” she replied, returning to her room.
#
The bombing of the Watcher’s Council headquarters in London obliterated a significant portion of the upper floors, including Quentin Travers and members of the upper echelon. No one who had been in charge of anything really was not targeted by The First Evil and its black hooded harbingers—retired watchers, watchers in training, bookkeepers, archivists, and potential watchers who had yet to be recruited. Some active watchers, those charged with overseeing the training of potentials who were believed to be called next (like Kendra had been), went to the ground, seeking out harbingers and striking when they least suspected. After The First’s plan to open the Sunnydale Hellmouth and flood the Earth with hundreds of thousands of Turok-han vampires had been foiled by Buffy and her team, the scattered forces of good came to the Watcher’s Council headquarters in London to rebuild. Leading the physical effort to repair damages to the building was Alexander “Xander” Harris.
Xander had been fighting alongside Buffy since she moved to Sunnydale in 1997 and found out in her first week that she was the Slayer. He also lost his best friend, Jesse, to vampires, had to slay him, and proceeded over the next few years to assist in stopping a number of apocalypses and overall baddies. While he had no supernatural power himself, he never ceased to be a valued member of the Scooby gang, as they had affectionately dubbed themselves. He didn’t go to college like Willow and Buffy but rather went into construction and became a master craftsman. Xander walked the conference room at the corner of the building, reviewing the progress of the room. He’d gotten used to singular vision; most days, he didn’t notice the eye patch. The walls’ interior had been rebuilt and now needed to be covered in drywall and painted. In about a week, Watchers could be meeting in here, devising plans to save the world.
“Wow,” Faith said from the doorway. “Almost looks like a massacre didn’t happen here.”
“That should be my business slogan,” Xander joked.
The sultry and always dangerous Faith Lehane sauntered into the room, her wavy hazelnut hair still growing out the red she dyed it to immigrate here with a fake passport. Though she reformed herself, the Watcher’s Council bribed some powerful people to put her on the no-fly list. Mina Meyer didn’t serve prison time and didn’t go rogue or kill anyone. Nor did she have a husky voice or wry smile. Thankfully, the ruse only lasted as long as it took them to travel from LAX to Heathrow.
“They going to make you a Watcher after all this?” she asked.
Xander chuckled. “I don’t drink enough tea or know enough of what a crumpet is to be a Watcher.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, sliding her rear effortlessly onto the conference room table, her palms pressed to the edge between her thighs as her feet dangled. “If my Watcher was like you, I’d probably kept him around.”
“Really?”
“Well, no. But I think the girls would like someone more on their level.”
Xander completed his review of the room and came around to stand in front of her. “I think I’ll stick to building things and giving grade-A moral support.”
Faith’s countenance softened with concern. “What’s up?”
“Working, helping out around here has been great and stuff, I’m not sure if it’s for me.” He ran his hand around the back of his neck. “I’ve always helped Buffy—and you, but with slayers all across the world and all the big baddies keeping a low profile, there’s more real-life happening than I’m used to.” He took a seat beside her on the table. “Sunnydale was my whole life.”
“Tell you what, why don’t we do some training tonight? Get your head clear. Huh?” She leaned her shoulder into him, nudging.
“Sounds like a plan.”
She smiled. “All right. Now, I gotta go whip our newbies into shape,” she said, hopping off the table. Faith walked backwards as she spoke to him. “See you at eight?”
“See you at eight?”
She turned and headed out into the hall.
#
Willow came into the kitchen of Giles’ house; her gardening gloves browned with dirt. She carried a handful of radishes and set them down on the long island at the centre of the room. She looked perfectly ordinary, her ginger hair hanging on her shoulders and straw hat shading her fair skin. Unlike Faith, nothing about Willow appeared remotely dangerous despite having the same human kill record and Willow almost destroying the world, but that was Dark Willow, and this early morning gardening, one with the Earth, innocuous-looking Willow was the new her. She reminded herself of that every day.
Sweat coated her brow, and she wiped it clean with the sleeve of her sweater. A figure clouded the archway as she brought her arm across her face.
“Dawnie?” Willow asked.
Dawn Summers, Buffy’s 18-year-old younger and taller sister, backtracked into the kitchen. Her hazelnut silky brown hair peeked out under the black velour bucket hat she nicked from Buffy’s closet and grazed the shoulders of her black leather jacket. “Morning,” she greeted. “I’m just heading out.”
“Would you like a radish omelette?”
“Is that a thing?”
“We’ll find out,” replied Willow, “I seem to have an overabundance of them, which is weird because it was the plant I couldn’t get to grow.”
“I’ll pass,” said Dawn, giving that polite, tight-lipped half-smile she used often in times like these. She tried going on her way—
“What are you up to today?”
“I’m going to peruse the campus scene.”
Willow lit up, her cheeks flushing with excitement. “Are you checking out Oxford?”
“It’s on the list,” Dawn responded coyly, not nearly as thrilled at the prospect.
“Would you like me to go with you? I don’t know if you remember this, but I was accepted to Oxford.”
“I do,” Dawn said, amused by Willow’s passion for all things educational. “This is just a casual thing, you know, to get the vibe.”
“Totally,” Willow nodded.
Buffy came up behind Dawn. “Just getting in?”
“Going out, actually.”
“She’s checking out colleges,” Willow said, still aflutter.
“Oh,” said Buffy, then lightening, “that’s great. Do you want me to come with you?”
“Don’t you have training?” Dawn asked.
“No, Faith’s doing it.”
“Dawnie’s just window shopping,” Willow explained.
“Ah,” replied Buffy, then to Dawn, “See you for dinner?”
“No problem,” Dawn nodded. She took off towards the front door, paused, listened, then snuck upstairs to her room, stepping lightly so as not to give herself away. Once to her room, she lifted the door slightly by the handle so as not to let it creak as she opened and closed it. Dawn unclasped the necklace hiding under her black mock-neck top, pulled out the gold crucifix, and set it on her bedside table. She removed her jacket, revealing a black harness strapped with two wooden stakes on her sides and two curved daggers on her lower back, one coated with dried blood.
Back in the kitchen, Buffy approached the island counter while Willow removed her gardening gloves. The Slayer was abuzz with questions, and only half present.
“What’s got you all lost in thoughty?” Willow asked.
“I had a dream about the Hellmouth.”
“Oh?”
“Do you think it’s possible something survived that?”
Willow paused, considering it. “I suppose. What did you see in your dream?”
“Nothing—but I knew something was there.”
“Maybe it’s just your average dream,” Willow suggested, however regretful for not offering a helpful answer.
“Maybe,” Buffy said, not believing it. It felt real, which meant— “What do you know about the Champion’s Amulet?”
“No more than Angel told us and what happened, but I can look into it,” she offered in her most positive tone. “I’m sure I can find out.”
Buffy nodded. “Let me know as soon as you know something.”
Willow opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it, but the words came all the same. “Is this about Spike?”
“Would it change anything?”
“What? No, of course not. I know—well, I don’t know what you feel for him, but—” realising she was rambling, she wrapped up, “no, it doesn’t change anything.” Willow stared down at the radishes, digressing. “I don’t know what to do with these. What even is a radish?”
Buffy thought about it and came up blank. “A fruit?”
“Maybe a pie?”
#
“Again,” Faith commanded.
The massive training room Xander retrofitted to accommodate multiple slayers featured twelve punching bags, six on each end, wooden staves, dulled axes, and an assortment of knives and other weaponry hanging on the walls. Six slayers, women aged 15-32, stood at the opposite end of the rectangular room from six others, dressed in workout clothes. They were tired and slick with sweat, ready to go again, but only because they had to. The six on the left and six on the right ran at each other, engaging near the centre. Some had speed, others had agility. They were all strong, to be sure; whether they knew how to utilise their newly acquired slayer strength best was another matter entirely.
Faith sighed in disappointment. “Come on, you guys. Demons and vamps aren’t going to be pulling their punches. You’re gonna be fighting for your life out there.” The slayers sparring continued to be energetic but gentle. Faith pulled in her bottom lip and let out a high-pitched whistle. The slayers winced and ceased their practice. They settled about the room like children in trouble with Mom.
Faith looked to each one as she walked down the line of them. “When you’re facing a juiced-up demon, they’re going to be looking for any advantage to make you good and dead. They are going to give it their all.” As Faith passed a teenage slayer with pigtails, she bent her arm and jabbed it into the trainee’s chin. She had raised her hands in defence but got struck all the same. “And not all of them have horns and wrinkles. You never know when they might be standing right in front of you.” Faith stared down the trainee at the end of the row.
“Please don’t hit me,” the trainee said.
Faith circled back to centre to face them. “Look, I’m only riding you guys because I don’t want you to die. They know who you are: a slayer. They can be anything—a vamp, a snake, a ghost, the mayor…”
“A friend,” Giles said, entering.
“Yeah,” Faith replied, feeling the weight of his meaning. She digressed. “Hit the showers or something. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The trainees cleared out, their bodies aching.
“Heavy is the head,” Giles said.
“I don’t know about heavy, but definitely thumping,” she replied. “This group, man, they’re too nice.”
“They’ll come around in time.”
“When I found out I got to wail on vamps, I was pumped.” She jabbed the air with her fist.
“Not everyone approaches slaying with the same,” he proceeded with delicacy, “enthusiasm. Some of these girls are here to make sense of what has happened to them and may not go on to be slayers. For the first time in generations, Slayers have a choice. Besides, things seem to have calmed down since the razing of Sunnydale.”
“Yeah. Slaying doesn’t have the same pizazz it used to.” She paused. “Did I just say ‘pizazz’?”
“Seems Xander is rubbing off on you.”
“I’ve never been in a place this long. Well, except prison.”
“We appreciate you staying,” he told her. “In another of a long list of firsts, Slayers are training Slayers.”
Faith shrugged in agreement. “We don’t talk. Something up?”
“Oh,” Giles began, clearing his throat, “came by to thank you for filling in for Buffy, and I wondered if you’ve been having dreams.”
“Sure,” she replied, “though not the ones you’re thinking of.”
“Right.”
“Come to think of it, I had one about the Hellmouth—what was left of it.”
“I see. Anything of note?”
“Just the eerie feeling that The First is lingering out there.” Faith’s countenance hardened. “Man, if that thing had form, you know what I would do?”
“Jam it in the face with your elbow?”
Faith smirked. “I reserve that for trainees.”
#
Darkness descended on the country. The moon filtered in and out from behind cloud cover. The pigtailed slayer in training, Chelsea, not that Faith bothered to learn it, walked with her bag clutched to her side. Ever since learning about demons and vampires, she’d been on edge, her eyes burrowing into every stranger she passed. Everyone started to look like a demon after a while—she couldn’t stand it. She took the well-lit pavement home as she was too claustrophobic to take the tube, and one of the girls mentioned that vampires liked picking up prey in the cabs. So walking it was.
A scream drew her attention from the ally, and she stopped. She had the power to help whoever cried out. Chelsea took a deep breath and approached the mouth of the alley. A man tore from it, running as fast as he could—too quick for her to register his face. She could have chased after but became distracted by the woman on the ground, whimpering.
“It’s okay,” Chelsea called. “He’s gone.” She approached, slow, the face of the woman shrouded by her long, dark hair. “You’re safe.” Chelsea stood over the woman, bending over to see her. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
“I know,” the woman said in an eerie, sing-song British accent. She twisted around, exposing her vampire face, lunged forward and bit Chelsea’s neck. The vampire, Drusilla, drained Chelsea quickly and dropped the body onto the ground. She blew a kiss to the body, and her face transformed back to its human form. “It’s nice to be home.”
#
The dining room in Giles’ home featured a checkered glass wall that slanted into the ceiling, giving diners a view of the endless plain that sloped into soft hills dotted with trees. Giles sat at the head and Buffy on the other end. Dawn sat beside her sister, then Willow, and Faith and Xander took up the other side.
“Smells good,” Xander said. “What are we having, Wil?”
“Radish chicken.”
“Yum—what?”
Dawn spoke, “Apparently, we have a lot of radishes.”
“Sounds lovely,” Giles said, considerate, yet his face betrayed his apprehension. “Pass the salad, Dawn.” She took the bowl and passed it over, which he took only to spot sliced radishes sprinkled on top.
“Beats prison food,” Faith said, driving her fork into a cutlet and setting it on her plate. She cut in, took a mouthful, and paused.
“Thank you,” Buffy said to Willow, drawing her attention away from Faith.
“Maybe next time I’ll overgrow the green beans,” Willow said with a smile.
“Or potatoes,” offered Xander.
Willow exhaled a soft, sardonic laugh, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“We missed you at training, B,” Faith said, taking a drink of wine.
“Thanks for covering.”
“No prob.”
Buffy looked at Dawn. “How’d it go today?”
“Good,” she replied, proceeding to fill her plate.
“Not yet. I mean, I have the whole world, right? Why just look at colleges in England?”
Giles piped in, piqued, “England has the finest institution in the world.”
“Giles is right,” said Buffy, “Where else would you want to go?”
Dawn shrugged, “I don’t know.”
“You need to figure it out and stat,” Buffy said, “you need to get your essays done, letters of recommendations—” she sighed, exasperated. “College is important, Dawn.”
“Is that why I’m surrounded by college graduates?” she spat. Dawn allowed herself to cool down a hair to say, “Thank you for dinner, Wil.” She got up and took her plate to the kitchen to clear it.
Silence lingered in the wake of Dawn’s fit.
“Hey!” Willow called. “Giles graduated.”
“No, I didn’t,” he replied with incredulity. “But thank you for drawing attention to the fact.”
“What’s her deal?” Faith asked.
“If I had a nickel for every time I wondered that,” Buffy replied.
“It’s gotta be tough for her,” Xander offered, “she’s been through a lot in the last year.”
“So have we all,” said Buffy.
“Yeah,” Willow chimed in, “but we all chose this life—well, us,” she clarified, looking anxiously at Buffy and Faith, “Dawn’s been sort of along for the ride.”
“Plus, the whole being created by mystical monks,” Xander said. “Her life had been dictated by day one.”
“She’s finding her way,” Giles said, “and she will, in time.”
Buffy sighed, hopefully soon.
“Is there anything on this table not covered in radishes?” Xander asked, drawing Willow's ireful eye. "I just don't wanna hog them. Can't get enough of those radishes."
"Then you can have mine," Buffy said, reaching across to dump hers on his plate.
#
After dinner, Xander and Faith took a run around the property, their sneakers leaving imprints in the slowly softening mud of the dewy night. The sky was a dusky blue inlaid with millions of stars for as far as the eye could see, and the city lights of London could not reach them. Faith slowed to a stop and Xander with her.
“You can’t be getting tired,” Xander said.
“Please, I just want to make sure you don’t sprain your hip or something.”
“I’ll have you know I’m in the best shape of my life.”
The corner of Faith’s mouth rose into a grin. “I’ve noticed. Trying to jump back into the dating pool?”
“Not trying to drown just yet,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” Faith spoke as they transitioned into a walk, “you’re the full package. Any babe would be lucky to have you.”
“If only that’s what I attracted. I’m a demon magnet.”
“You and I got cosy once, remember?”
“I never let myself forget.”
Faith chuckled, and he smiled nervously. As pleasant the memory of Faith taking his virginity was, it had been followed too closely by her nearly killing him in that very same bed in her seedy motel room. Her unbearable hotness bled together with the terror she instilled. And she was part demon—kind of—the earliest Watchers created the First Slayer by imbuing her with essence of demon. I really have a type, Xander thought.
“What do you say we finish that mile,” he said.
“Sure.”
They broke into a jog, continuing the path.
“Hey, what was that thing you said earlier,” Faith said, “about Dawn being made by monks?”
“A few years back, these monks sent Buffy a magical key that could open the doors to all dimensions via a little sister,” he explained.
“A few years?” she asked, thinking back to all her memories of Dawn.
“Yeah, they gave us all these fake memories; it seemed so real.”
“How’d they make her?”
“Blood of the slayer,” he answered.
Faith retreated into her mind, going back to the beginning of her memories of Dawn, using her instinct to guide her all the way back to a dream she had while in a coma.
#
Willow sat in the library, flipping through the pages of The Observations of Krishanna, a historian of all things demonic from the Middle Ages.
“Can’t sleep?” Giles asked from the doorway.
Willow checked her watch; midnight approached. “Oh.”
“May I ask what you’re researching?”
“The Champion’s Amulet and I’ve come up with a whole lotta nada. This thing must be old old. Predate the written word old.”
“Not surprising really; it had the power to destroy a Hellmouth.”
“Yeah,” Willow said, "those primordial forces are nothing to mess with." The irony of that statement wasn't lost on either of them.
"Do let me know if you find anything.”
“Sure,” Willow said, struggling to make sense of Giles’ concern. “Do you think something bad is a brewin’?”
“There is always something nefarious lurking.” He stood at the table, staring off during his rumination. “When we last tapped into primordial forces—to defeat Adam…”
“You don’t think the First Slayer is going to try and kill us in our sleep again?” Willow asked, hoping he’d say no.
“We haven’t violated any natural law that I am aware of,” he replied, taking a seat beside her. “Whoever created the amulet did so for the exact purpose it was used.”
“That's not exactly true”
“You think the amulet had another purpose?”
“No," she replied, “violating natural law. Using the Slayer scythe to activate slayers in waiting across the world—is that not a big no-no? Don't want to get Freddy Krugered again.”
“No one has visited it us yet; I wouldn't worry,” he said. “If Buffy is having dreams about the amulet, better to be cautious and find all we can.”
“If it’s not some big baddie,” Willow began, “do you think that maybe Spike survived?”
“Logically, no. However, logic rarely applies when it comes to Spike, or Buffy for that matter.” Giles captured Willow’s gaze, his stern countenance preventing her from looking away. “I must ask you to come to me with your findings before Buffy. Her judgement becomes clouded when it comes to Spike; it’s crucial she remains focused right now.”
Willow’s breath became unsteady as she spoke, “I know I’m Miss Almost Destroyed the World, but I’m still not so good with the lying.”
“Not lie, simply hold off until we can give her concrete answers. Let’s not get her hopes up.”
“Right,” Willow nodded in agreement.
#
The latch to Willow’s bedroom door clicked shut, and the house became still. Dawn slid her black jean jacket over her black turtleneck—two freshly carved stakes tucked into her holster and two clean sliver knives strapped to her back. She nabbed her black beanie off her dresser and clasped her cross necklace around her neck.
Buffy snuck in and out of her bedroom window for years, crawling onto the awning and hopping down onto the lawn. Mom never heard her, but Dawn did occasionally. At least those were the memories the monks implanted her with. Dawn pushed open the casement windows and swung her leg through, stepping onto the ledge and climbed down the brick until she reached grass. From there, she moved right along towards Bath (she already missed the train to London). Dawn never took the same path twice, conscious of wearing a trail—especially from her window—and trekked under the shadow of sprawling walnut trees. The owls flew silently between the branches, hooting now and again. Her boots left only the slightest audio trail in the wild grass. She walked as a predator would: discreet, alert, and listening. Dawn’s eyes darted to her periphery, catching a shadow floating to her left. She paused. Nothing had made itself known—not yet.
The leaves crunched, and Dawn drew her stake, spinning around to face—
A hare. It hopped its way into a hole, burrowing deep for the night. She lowered her stake, chastising herself for being unnecessarily jumpy.
Drusilla loomed behind her, wearing her demon face and a sadistic grin.
#
Buffy lay fast asleep in her bed, her lids twitching as she tossed.
In her dream, she stood at the decimated Sunnydale Hellmouth, the wind blowing harder this time, pulling her hair across her face. The ground rumbled beneath her, and several somethings moved underneath, pushing the ground up as it charged its way to the epicentre, growing larger and threatening to burst free. Buffy watched, ready for whatever came through. The ground broke, and a blinding white light shone through.
The surruration of the ocean replaced the whistling wind. The shoreline breeze harmonised with the waves to create a symphony in blue.
Buffy stood at the end of the Cobb in Lyme Regis, facing the stirring ocean. The mist wet her skin and the air smelt of salt and stone.
“I don’t remember this place,” she said.
“I do,” Spike told her. He stood beside her, staring out at the horizon. “Used to come here on holiday—back when…”
She felt at peace here—in the space between the calm and the storm, standing at the edge of stability and chaos.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
He hmm’d in agreement. “I never thought I’d see this place again.”
Buffy turned to him, and he her. She brought her hand to his face, and her eyes traced every aspect of it. The depths of his blue eyes, the scar that cut through his left eyebrow, the almost untameable curls of his platinum blonde hair—he appeared clearer to her than he ever had in any memory. In this moment, Spike was more real than he had been in nearly a year. There were no words that could complete this moment.
Spike didn't need to hold her to feel her with his whole body—her warmth spread across his form, enveloping him. He couldn’t tear his eyes from her, terrified that the next second would tear him from her.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Here, with you.”
“No— Are you…” She wanted to ask “alive” but feared the negative.
Spike lifted his head from her hand, and he stared off behind her, taken by fear.
“Spike?”
“Buffy, wake up.”
Buffy snapped awake. Her room appeared the same as when she drifted off, dark and undisturbed. She rolled her head to stare out the closed window instead of the stupid vaulted ceiling. A long, heavy sigh passed over her lips, and she closed her eyes.
“Hello, Buffy,” Drusilla greeted from the shadows on the far end of the room.
Buffy shot up and jumped to her feet, her body ready for a fight. Drusilla approached, stepping into the moonlight gleaming in from the window. “You and I have business to discuss.”
_
End episode one.
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