Fic update: Gently Down the Stream (chapter 5 and epilogue)
Here it is: the conclusion! I hope you like it.
And if you were waiting for the whole thing to be posted so you could read it in one shot, now's the time!
Thanks once again to everyone who took the time to comment on earlier chapters-your comments made me happy. And a big thanks to
yourlibrarian, beta reader extraordinaire!
Title: Gently Down the Stream
Length: about 25,000 words total; this update is about 5400 words.
Pairing: Spike/Buffy along with other canonical pairings, but this isn't really a shippy story.
Warnings: Canon-typical violence; almost no sex.
Cross-posting: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal and AO3; read wherever you're most comfortable.
Chapter 5
Buffy had set her alarm for ten a.m., which was ungodly early considering she'd gone to bed at six, but she wanted to get up before anyone else did. Spike stirred a bit, but when she kissed his forehead and whispered "You don't need to wake up yet," he went right back to sleep.
She crept downstairs, and saw that Wesley was asleep on the sofa with an afghan draped over him. Angel wasn't in sight; Buffy decided she wasn't ready to look in the basement.
She made a pot of coffee and had a bowl of cold cereal. As she was finishing up, Tara arrived in the kitchen. She gave an automatic smile on seeing Buffy, but there was something about her expression that made Buffy worry.
"Is everything okay?" Buffy asked.
"Willow's awake," Tara said, which didn't answer Buffy's question. "I thought I'd get going to the library."
"Have some coffee first at least," Buffy said, pouring her a cup without waiting for agreement. "Seriously Tara, what's wrong?"
Tara just shook her head. "You should go up and talk to Willow," she said. "I really don't need coffee, thanks." And she quietly let herself out the back door.
"Yikes," Buffy said under her breath. And went upstairs.
Willow was sitting cross-legged on her bed. She looked up briefly when Buffy opened the door, then returned to what looked like meditation.
"Am I interrupting?" Buffy asked, unsure of herself.
"No," Willow said, eyes still on the coverlet in front of her. "I'm healing. It's okay."
"Oh," Buffy said. She stood there awkwardly for a few seconds. "Um, can I do anything to help?"
Willow finally looked up for real, and gave Buffy a smile. It was the kind of smile your best friend gives you after she's been away for a long time and things between you have changed and you're not really sure how to be with each other anymore. It made Buffy feel sad.
"Yes," Willow said. "If you're willing. If you hold hands with me, I can take a little energy from you. Only a little, I promise. It won't hurt you, but you might feel a little tired after."
After a moment's hesitation, Buffy nodded. She climbed onto the bed and sat facing Willow, and held out her hands.
She trusted Willow. She really did. And she wanted to help her.
"Last night you threw Drusilla up to the ceiling of the cave," Buffy recalled as Willow's cool, soft hands closed around hers. "Is this harder?"
"Not really," Willow said. "What I was doing last night, with the black eyes and all ... well, it's probably best if I don't do that very much."
"Okay," Buffy said. Not like she knew anything about how magic worked.
Other-reality Buffy probably had, though.
"So," Buffy said. "Are you ready to tell me the whole truth?"
"Ready?" Willow repeated ruefully. "Nope. But I guess it's time."
Buffy looked into her friend's pale, bruised face, and wished she could be comforting her now instead of confronting her. "Drusilla said Osiris wants four lives back from you."
Willow winced very slightly. "I'm so sorry, Buffy," she said. "I thought I could handle all this on my own. I thought I could protect you from it."
"Why would you need to protect me?" Buffy asked. "Wasn't I some kind of supergirl?"
"You'd had the weight of the world on your shoulders since you were fifteen years old," Willow said quietly. She sounded like she might start to cry. "It was crushing you. I thought ... I thought I could let you be normal. Then maybe you could have a chance to be happy."
"So you made a new reality where I could be Assistant Manager at the Double Meat Palace?" Buffy squeezed Willow's hands. "Couldn't you have at least made me a movie star?"
Willow let out a sound between a choke and a giggle. "You got the job at the Double Meat Palace all on your own," she said. "In the other reality. I know it might be hard to believe, but when I changed things, I changed as little as possible. The spell would've been unmanageable otherwise."
"What about Spike?" Buffy asked.
Willow nodded. "His part was the hardest. So many changes. He had a history with Angel and Dru going back to 1880, and of course they were still going to be vampires. For all their memories to match ... it was tricky."
Buffy felt a little cold. It was really just starting to sink in for her, the extent of what Willow had done. "You wanted me to be happy," she said. "So you took some ... some random vampire, and made him into the perfect boyfriend for me?"
"No," Willow said sharply. "I wouldn't do that. You and Spike already had a relationship. I told you, I changed as little as possible."
"But he was a vampire. And I was a vampire slayer." Buffy frowned. "Was he a good vampire?"
"Not exactly." Willow looked uncomfortable. "I didn't say you were happy together. It was ... kind of a mess. The rest of us thought you were crazy to be involved with him."
"So you fixed him." Buffy bit her lip. A chill was going down her back, and her arms felt heavy. She wanted to blame the healing spell, but she was pretty sure it was just the conversation. "Willow, that's not okay."
Willow leaned forward, an intense, slightly wild look in her eyes. "No," she said. "It's not like you're thinking. I didn't put him together from scratch. I made him human, but his personality, his feelings for you-all of that is really him."
"And the seizures? The headaches?" Buffy asked quietly. "Are those his punishment for whatever he did when he was a vampire?"
"God no," Willow said, looking appalled at the suggestion. "I'm really sorry about the seizures. He had brain damage, from this ... this government behavior-modification chip that was implanted in his brain. I made the chip go poof, but I didn't realize the scarring would mess him up so much."
"A government behavior-modification chip," Buffy repeated. "In his brain."
Willow shrugged. "It was a thing."
Buffy nodded. Every time she thought this alternate reality thing couldn't get any weirder, it did.
But that wasn't really the point here.
"Did you ask me?" she asked quietly. "Or Spike? In the other reality, before you changed everything to make us happier, did you ask us if that was what we wanted?"
The guilty look in Willow's eyes was enough of an answer.
"Willow, why did you do it?" Buffy asked, watching her face intently. "Were things really so bad for me? Did you just wake up one day and think to yourself hey, it's about time to replace this reality with a better one?"
Willow's eyes brimmed with tears. She squeezed Buffy's hands. "No," she whispered. "I did it because Tara was dead."
"Oh," Buffy said.
Willow began sobbing, crumpling in on herself.
So that's three, Buffy found herself thinking.
She knew she should be upset at the idea that Tara had died. But considering everything else she'd had to absorb over the past twenty-four hours, honestly this barely registered. She'd already had to deal with the idea that she'd died and been resurrected herself, that her boyfriend was really supposed to be a hundred-year-old vampire, that her ex-boyfriend was in fact a centuries-old vampire ... yeah, it had been one hell of a night.
Of course the main problem, Buffy remembered, was that Osiris wanted the dead people back.
Which was probably why Willow was so upset.
"Shhhh," Buffy said. "Shhhhhh. We're gonna figure this one out, Will. We're going to research Osiris and we're going to talk to Dru and figure out what we can do." She tried to sound a lot more certain than she felt.
"He can't have her back," Willow said fiercely through her tears.
"That's not even a question," Buffy assured her.
Willow lifted her head, sniffling. "Tara thought it might be."
"That's why she was upset when I saw her downstairs?" Buffy asked. "She thought you might turn her over to Osiris?"
"No," Willow said darkly. "She thought she might turn herself over to Osiris."
Buffy admired Tara's bravery, even as she swore to herself that she would not let that happen.
Only, how exactly do you defy an actual god?
"You still haven't told me who the fourth person is that Osiris wants," Buffy reminded Willow.
Willow nodded. "It’s Anya."
Buffy sat up a little straighter. Anya. All right. All four cards on the table, finally. Spike, Tara, Anya, Jenny Calendar. "How did she die?"
"Well, she didn’t, exactly. It's more of a technicality. She became a demon. Again. So that put her in Osiris's domain."
Buffy shook her head. "Is there anyone we know who isn’t supposed to be a vampire or a demon or have magic powers or whatever?"
"Xander," Willow said with a sad smile. "He’s always been perfectly normal, except for the fact that he hangs out with us."
"That’s ... kind of comforting," Buffy said. "I guess."
The rest of the day passed quietly. Willow concentrated on healing. Buffy helped her until she felt exhausted, and then she took a nap. When she woke up in the late afternoon, she found Spike alone in the kitchen, huddled over a mug of chamomile tea.
"I saw Dru," he said.
"Alone?" Buffy’s arms went goosebumpy, even though she could already see he was safe.
"No," he said. "Angel was there." He sipped his tea, a distant look in his eyes.
"And? How did it go?" Buffy prompted.
"She’s barking mad," Spike said sadly. "And she’s in so much pain."
"Still with the bugs?" Buffy asked.
Spike shrugged. "Had a long talk with Angel, too. He filled in a hundred years or so of history for me. Think I understand why he hates me, now."
"He has no right to hate you for stuff that other-you did in the other timeline," Buffy said, unconsciously curling her hands into fists.
"I think he might be coming around to agreeing with you on that point," Spike said, gently touching her hand so she uncurled her fingers. "And I think he finds that painful, too. Whatever else she did-Willow gave me a chance to walk away from my bloody history. I guess she did it for you, not for me, but there it is. Angel, though-his ghosts are all still haunting him."
Just then, Buffy heard the front door opening. "That’ll be Tara and Dawn, I guess," she said. "Let’s go see what they’ve found out."
Dawn and Tara each had a stack of books in their arms. The number of Post-It notes sticking out of each one was a testament to how intensely they’d been working that afternoon.
"So how about a quick summary?" Buffy suggested, eyeing the piles.
"Can we get everyone together first?" Dawn asked. "Also, some food? I’m starving."
Xander and Anya arrived just before the pizza. Tara fetched Willow from upstairs, and Wesley fetched Angel from the basement. Everyone gathered around the dining room table, where Dawn was trying to keep the library books separate from the pizza slices.
"Okay, what have we got?" Buffy asked.
"Nothing new from Drusilla," Angel said, lowering the mug he’d been drinking from. "She spent half the day sleeping and half the day talking about how she’d like to knit herself new stockings out of all our intestines."
Buffy shuddered. "Well that gives me warm fuzzies. Why does your drink smell like raw steak, by the way?"
"Pig’s blood." Angel tipped the mug towards her so she could see the dark liquid inside. "Wesley got it for me while you were napping."
Spike, at the other end of the table, blanched and put down his bean-sprout and tofu sandwich.
"Better than having a hungry vampire at the table!" Anya pointed out.
"True that," Xander said. "Is anybody else having the cheesy bread?"
"Focus, everyone," Buffy said. "We’ve got a pissed-off ancient Egyptian god to outwit. What’ve we got from Team Research?"
"Okay," Dawn said, talking around a mouthful of pizza. "So here’s the deal. Osiris is the Lord of the Dead but he isn’t a bad guy. At least, the ancient Egyptians thought he was a pretty righteous dude."
"One interesting thing about him," Tara said, "is that he was actually murdered by his brother Set, and then brought back to life by his lover, Isis."
"Seriously?" Buffy said. "But then how can he possibly be mad at Willow?"
"Well," Dawn said, "He didn’t get to stay alive. After a little while he had to go back to the Underworld, ‘cause those are the rules. So you can see how he might not feel like making an exception for Willow." From the look Dawn gave Tara, Buffy guessed that Tara had filled Dawn in on the fact of her own death and resurrection.
"It’s a pretty sad story," Tara added. "During his brief resurrection he got Isis pregnant, but then he never had the chance to know his son."
"That was Horus," Dawn added. "Another important Egyptian god. He’s the guy with the falcon head."
"Falcon," Buffy repeated. Why did that ring a bell?
Drusilla.
Mirrors and hedge mazes. I peek through the little holes the falcon makes and I see the way.
Was Drusilla giving her a hint?
"I want to talk to Drusilla," she said.
"Not without me," Angel said.
"Or me," Willow added.
"Actually, I think I’m gonna need Anya," Buffy said.
"Um, no," Xander said. "What the hell does she have to do with any of this? And also, again I say no."
"I can speak for myself honey," Anya said. "But I don’t see why I should go into the basement with the crazy vampire."
"She’s one of the ones Osiris wants," Buffy said. "Along with Spike, Tara, and Miss Calendar. Willow took all of them away from Osiris, and he wants them back."
Xander looked confused and angry. He laid a protective hand on Anya's shoulder. "I thought he wanted you back."
"No, we were wrong about that one," Buffy said. "But I think I can convince him not to take anybody at all."
Suddenly there was sound like a muffled explosion from the basement. The windows rattled.
"Uh oh," Willow said. "I think maybe Osiris has been listening in."
Buffy grabbed Willow’s hand. "Let’s go. Anya?"
She stood up. "If there’s a god after me, sweetie, we’d better do something about it," she said to Xander.
Buffy was already moving. She didn’t look back, but she sensed that everyone was following her.
In the basement, Dru was standing up. Her chains were gone and a turbulent cloud of smoke hovered over her head.
There was a face in the smoke.
"It is time, witch," said Drusilla and the face, speaking together. "Undo the spell and I will leave you in peace." The cloud’s voice was deep and seemed to echo from all directions at once.
"No way," Willow said. She sounded defiant but also a little scared.
Buffy glanced back at her. "Leave this to me, okay?" she whispered. Then she stepped towards Drusilla. "Osiris," she said, addressing the cloud. "I’ve come to, um, humbly beg you to reconsider."
Osiris glared down at her from the cloud. Drusilla’s lips twisted, echoing the expression. "The laws of life and death must be respected," said the god and the vampire together. "Four have been stolen from my domain; they must be returned."
"Yes," said Buffy, heart pounding. "We all know how important rules are. But if Willow undoes her spell now, she won’t extinguish four lives-she’ll extinguish five." She pointed at Anya. "She’s pregnant. It’s like Isis and Horus, right? How would you have felt if your god buddies had said that you had to retroactively make Horus stop existing just because he was never actually supposed to exist in the first place?"
The face in the clouds turned to Anya. "Is this true?" it asked her in its terrifying doubled voice.
"Yes," Anya said, standing her ground and putting a hand over her belly. "I have a bun in my oven. We’re really excited about it and we’ve already started buying baby clothes. The thought of you making Willow change the past so that I’m dead and the baby will never exist at all makes me very sad. Please don’t do that."
Osiris’s cloud went into overdrive. Tendrils shot out in all directions, only to pull back again a second later. The cloud expanded, roiling. Osiris and Drusilla opened their mouths wide and roared.
"Eeep," Anya said, falling back a step.
"Well?" Buffy said to the cloud.
The cloud contracted suddenly to its original size. Osiris and Drusilla turned towards Willow. "I will renounce my claim on the four for the sake of the fifth," they said together. "On one condition."
"Name it," Buffy said, keeping her poker face with a great effort. Had she actually just managed to out-negotiate a god?
"The witch must surrender her power. She will offer it to me and I will burn it from her. No more will she interfere with the just and natural order of life and death."
"Okay," Buffy said, but at the same moment Willow said "Wait! Let me think about this for a second!"
Buffy turned to Willow. "Uh, Will?" she said under her breath. "Isn’t this kind of a no-brainer?"
Willow shot a desperate glance at Tara. "There’s got to be another way," she said. "Without my power I won’t be able to protect any of you anymore."
"Maybe that would be for the best," Anya said. "Considering how you mostly seem to protect us by messing around with us and lying to us."
"If it weren’t for me you’d be a demon," Willow said angrily.
"Huh?" Anya said. "A demon? I thought I was supposed to be dead."
"Willow," Tara said, reaching for Willow’s hand, "We’ll all protect each other. Like we did yesterday. Not like this summer when I felt you slipping away from me every day. Please, love, take Osiris’s deal."
Willow held Tara’s gaze for a long moment. Her lip trembled, and it looked like she was fighting back tears. "Without my magic I couldn't have saved you," she whispered.
"I grow impatient, witch," said Osiris/Drusilla. And then suddenly Dru was in motion, a blur crossing the room, heading for Dawn. There was a twanging sound and something small bounced off her, clattered to the floor. Buffy was already moving to intercept, but the god-touched vampire was too fast. Dru reached Dawn first.
Dawn shrieked as Dru grabbed her. Dru spun to face the rest of them, one arm around Dawn's shoulders, the other gripping Dawn's head. "Accept my offer, witch," said Dru's voice along with Osiris's, "or my creature will begin to murder your friends."
Buffy flinched, her heart in her mouth. She was still more than arm's reach from Dru. Angel, not very far away on the other side, shifted into his vampire face.
"Buffy, Angel, no," Wesley said quickly. "Dru is under Osiris's protection. My bolt just bounced off her. You'll only get Dawn killed." He had a crossbow in his hands, Buffy saw, and it looked like he'd already re-loaded it.
"Willow!" Buffy shouted. "Take the fucking deal!"
"All right!" Willow yelled at Osiris, her panicky gaze darting between Drusilla and Buffy. "I accept! I accept!" She was still holding Tara's hand with a white-knuckled grip.
Drusilla let go of Dawn as abruptly as she'd grabbed her, and stalked over to Willow. "Good," she said in her doubled voice.
Buffy rushed to Dawn and wrapped her arms around her.
"I'm fine," Dawn squeaked, but she sagged against Buffy like her knees had just given out.
Dru, meanwhile, had reached up with both hands to cup Willow's face. Nobody moved to interfere. Willow stood ramrod straight, her face gone very pale. Tara had backed off a couple of steps, and she looked terrified.
The clouds with Osiris's face in them roiled and bubbled across the basement until they were directly over Willow-and then, suddenly, Dru did something with her hands and Willow's mouth opened wide and the clouds flew in.
Willow began to shake. It made Buffy think of Spike's seizures, but Willow didn't fall-maybe because Dru was holding her up. Willow's eyes clouded over and then went jet-black. Willow screamed. Tara darted forward, crying Willow's name, but she seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier a few inches from Willow. Willow's scream went on and on.
And then it stopped.
The clouds whirled back out of her mouth, forming a heaving gray mass once again over Willow's head. Osiris's face glared down from the cloud. "IT IS DONE," he said, and this time Dru didn't echo the words.
Dru let go of Willow. Willow dropped to the floor like a rag doll. Osiris's face melted into the cloud, which began to spin, faster and faster, a tight miniature tornado, and then it pulled into itself and was gone.
Dru staggered sideways, then caught herself. She looked around at everybody with a mildly puzzled expression. "Were we having a tea party?" she asked.
And then something twanged just to Buffy's left, and a crossbow bolt sprouted from Drusilla's chest.
Dru looked down, surprised. "Oh," she said, and exploded into dust.
Everyone looked at Wesley, with varying degrees of shock. He calmly lowered his crossbow. "It appears that Osiris withdrew his protection at the moment of his departure," he said.
"You ... you wanker," Spike choked out. "You didn't have to ... she wasn't ... we could have..." He fell to his knees with a strangled sob. Buffy would have gone to him, except she didn't want to let go of Dawn.
"Remember what she really was," Angel said. "Wesley did the right thing." His own voice seemed a little unsteady, though, and the look he gave Wesley was not entirely approving.
"Tara," Xander said. His arms were wrapped around Anya. "Is Willow ... okay?"
Tara was kneeling on the floor by Willow. "She's breathing," she said. "Could somebody help me? I think ... maybe we should get her to the hospital?"
"Probably best to let her rest here at home and see how it goes," Wesley suggested. "Hospitals aren't often much help with this sort of thing."
"So, just to be clear," said Anya, "We're safe now, right? Nobody has to go back to the Underworld? We won?"
"Looks like it," Angel confirmed.
"Yay us," Buffy said, faintly.
Epilogue
Willow woke up the next morning. She seemed to be all right, physically, but she was very quiet. She mostly lay in bed, staring empty-eyed at the window for days on end.
Spike was the one who suggested putting her on suicide watch.
"I think maybe I know a little bit about what she's going through," he had said, "and it isn't going to be easy."
"Getting your magic burned out isn't exactly like quitting heroin," Buffy had said.
"Well," Spike had said, "None of us know what it's like, do we? But here's one thing she's got in common with an ex-junkie: now all of a sudden she's going to have to deal with reality on its own terms. That's hard, at first, when you're used to having something else to reach for.
"And here's another thing," he had added, "Now she's going to have to face up to everyone she lied to."
Lies.
There were the lies Willow had been telling them all summer, mostly lies of omission, and that was one thing, but then there was the fact that their entire reality was a lie she'd constructed.
Only this reality wasn't a lie now, it was the new truth. The whole thing was pretty confusing to Buffy, but Angel and Wesley, who both apparently had some experience with this sort of thing, backed up Willow on this point: what you see now is what you get. The original reality had been written over; it was retroactively non-existent, except for Angel and Willow's memories of it.
That and the dreams, and the dreams had stopped right after the confrontation with Osiris. Wesley's guess was that the dreams had been the result of Osiris trying to push the original reality back into them all; now that he'd given up on that, no more dreams.
Buffy missed the dreams.
The dreams were her only first-hand experience of the original reality, and no matter what Willow or Angel said, Buffy was convinced that there was a hierarchy of realities and that the old reality had been more real than this one.
The old reality had been naturally-occurring. This one was Willow-made.
Only ... there was that thing about other reality re-writes. The thing about Dawn. It sort of made Buffy's head hurt, trying to parse it. Apparently the original reality wasn't the original reality, really; originally there had been a reality with no Dawn in it. Even Willow and Angel didn't remember that one, but they remembered discovering its existence.
(Original-Dawn had been pretty upset, apparently, to find out that she was really a glowing green Hell-dimension key. Buffy didn't exactly have to imagine it, because she'd lived through the corresponding event in the current reality, when in going through their mom's papers after her death they had found out that Dawn was adopted.)
Buffy had been learning as much as she possibly could about the other reality-from Angel, before he went back to L.A., and from Willow, when she was willing to talk. Buffy figured that if she was going to have to step into this Vampire Slayer role now, she'd better know as much as she possibly could about how it worked, and how original-Buffy had done it.
All in all, the more Buffy learned about the other reality, the more she was pretty glad she hadn't lived through it.
Not that this reality had been any piece of cake either, and that was interesting when you thought about it-Willow hadn't made life perfect. Buffy's mom was still dead. Buffy was still poor.
But hey, Buffy wasn't dead, thanks to Willow, and neither was Tara. Spike and Anya were ordinary people, with good days and bad days, and Buffy and Xander loved them.
Unlike Buffy, Xander and Anya seemed to have decided that they didn't want to know any more than they had to about the original timeline. Since the big showdown they'd been mostly keeping to themselves. Buffy knew more about their past than they did, now-Willow had explained the whole vengeance demon thing to her, and about how in the original timeline Xander had left Anya at the altar. Buffy figured maybe eventually Xander and Anya would want to know that stuff, when it seemed more distant. Or maybe not. Their call.
Dawn was fascinated by the stories of the original timeline, but she seemed to almost see them as interesting fiction-a "what if?" alternate version of her own history. She thought the whole glowy-green-key thing was hilarious. She speculated about whether the made-from-Buffy's-blood thing meant that they were biological sisters after all. She loved the story about the Mayor turning into a giant snake and Buffy and her friends blowing up Sunnydale High. "I knew that gas leak story was fishy!" she claimed.
Tara ... Buffy wasn't really sure what Tara thought. Tara had been almost as quiet as Willow, ever since the confrontation with Osiris. When she emerged from Willow's room, she often had puffy eyes as though she'd been crying. Buffy knew that Tara and Willow were talking to each other, at least, because she heard their murmuring voices through the door sometimes-but more often than Buffy would have expected, Tara came out and asked someone else to sit with Willow. Then Tara would leave the house, or if it was after dark, she'd sit in the living room and read one of her women's studies books. Buffy got that there was tension, and she figured she had better give them space.
And then there was Spike. Buffy had worried about Spike at first. Spike had been the one to suggest that they should all watch over Willow; Buffy, in turn, had quietly asked everyone else to keep an eye on Spike.
Spike was a recovering heroin addict who'd been clean for two and a half years, but who depended on high-powered prescription painkillers to cope with his headaches. He walked a knife's edge on a regular basis. And sure, this was apparently all Willow's construction-but it was real, too, the only reality that counted now. And now he'd found out that his whole life was a lie, that he was a century-old monster, a literally bloodthirsty killer. Or at least that he had been, until Willow had re-made him into Buffy's perfect boyfriend.
Before Angel left, Spike had spent hours and hours with him, privately talking through their history together and what Angel knew of the rest of Spike's un-life. At one point Buffy had tried to intervene, quietly begging Angel to go easy on Spike and maybe spare him the goriest of the details, but Angel had pointed out that sparing everyone the details had been Willow's plan, and that that hadn't gone very well at all.
"Why do you want to know about all that awful stuff?" Buffy had asked Spike afterwards, lying in bed at night. "It doesn't matter anymore. It never happened. This you never did those things."
"It does matter," Spike disagreed, splaying his fingers gently across her bare belly. "It matters because who I am now is a reaction to all of that. My horror of violence, my veganism, even the way I come over all woozy at the sight of blood."
"Willow was making you as different as possible from what you had been."
He shook his head. "Not exactly. That's not the way she explained it to me. She said she sort of ... took away the demon that had been part of me, and then my human personality had to fall into place of its own accord. And, well, later on I wouldn't remember being a vampire, but at that moment when the spell happened, she and I had to sort of work together to build my new past. Make it all fit. Same thing as happened for each of the rest of you, according to her, only it was harder with me because there were so many changes. So, this me I am now-I chose it for myself.
"And another thing. Angel's told you a thing or two about souls by now, yeah? Well, here's something I haven't told him-Willow says that when she reached out to me with the spell, I already had one."
"Huh?" Buffy propped her head up on her arm, the better to look at him. "That doesn't make sense-Willow told me you were still evil, even when we were dating, it's just that you had a chip in your head that stopped you from biting people."
"Yeah, she told me about that too," Spike said. "And she's sure that I didn't have a soul the last time she saw me, pre-spell. But when she grabbed me with her spell, there it was."
"How's that possible?" Buffy asked.
"Dunno. Willow doesn't know, and Angel certainly doesn't, so I guess that'll be one unsolved mystery. But, well, Willow did see into my mind a little, like, when she did the spell. So what she could tell me was that the soul was no accident. I'd somehow come around to realizing the horror of the monster that I was. And so I'd gone out and got a soul." He gazed up at her, gave her a tentative little smile. "And she thinks I did it for you."
"Spike," Buffy whispered. Her eyes prickled with tears, which she covered up by kissing him.
After a few intense seconds, Spike pulled away enough to give her a serious look with a smile on its edge, and said, "What are you thinking now, Vampire Slayer?"
"I'm thinking," Buffy said, "that this life is a gift. And we might as well enjoy it." She kissed him again.
And then they made love, sweetly and gently. Afterwards, drifting off to sleep with Spike's warm arms tucked around her, Buffy thanked Willow, in her thoughts.
Maybe what Willow had done hadn't been right. But this was Buffy's life now, and she wouldn't want it to be any different.
Comments at Dreamwidth:
And if you were waiting for the whole thing to be posted so you could read it in one shot, now's the time!
Thanks once again to everyone who took the time to comment on earlier chapters-your comments made me happy. And a big thanks to
yourlibrarian, beta reader extraordinaire!
Title: Gently Down the Stream
Length: about 25,000 words total; this update is about 5400 words.
Pairing: Spike/Buffy along with other canonical pairings, but this isn't really a shippy story.
Warnings: Canon-typical violence; almost no sex.
Cross-posting: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal and AO3; read wherever you're most comfortable.
Chapter 5
Buffy had set her alarm for ten a.m., which was ungodly early considering she'd gone to bed at six, but she wanted to get up before anyone else did. Spike stirred a bit, but when she kissed his forehead and whispered "You don't need to wake up yet," he went right back to sleep.
She crept downstairs, and saw that Wesley was asleep on the sofa with an afghan draped over him. Angel wasn't in sight; Buffy decided she wasn't ready to look in the basement.
She made a pot of coffee and had a bowl of cold cereal. As she was finishing up, Tara arrived in the kitchen. She gave an automatic smile on seeing Buffy, but there was something about her expression that made Buffy worry.
"Is everything okay?" Buffy asked.
"Willow's awake," Tara said, which didn't answer Buffy's question. "I thought I'd get going to the library."
"Have some coffee first at least," Buffy said, pouring her a cup without waiting for agreement. "Seriously Tara, what's wrong?"
Tara just shook her head. "You should go up and talk to Willow," she said. "I really don't need coffee, thanks." And she quietly let herself out the back door.
"Yikes," Buffy said under her breath. And went upstairs.
Willow was sitting cross-legged on her bed. She looked up briefly when Buffy opened the door, then returned to what looked like meditation.
"Am I interrupting?" Buffy asked, unsure of herself.
"No," Willow said, eyes still on the coverlet in front of her. "I'm healing. It's okay."
"Oh," Buffy said. She stood there awkwardly for a few seconds. "Um, can I do anything to help?"
Willow finally looked up for real, and gave Buffy a smile. It was the kind of smile your best friend gives you after she's been away for a long time and things between you have changed and you're not really sure how to be with each other anymore. It made Buffy feel sad.
"Yes," Willow said. "If you're willing. If you hold hands with me, I can take a little energy from you. Only a little, I promise. It won't hurt you, but you might feel a little tired after."
After a moment's hesitation, Buffy nodded. She climbed onto the bed and sat facing Willow, and held out her hands.
She trusted Willow. She really did. And she wanted to help her.
"Last night you threw Drusilla up to the ceiling of the cave," Buffy recalled as Willow's cool, soft hands closed around hers. "Is this harder?"
"Not really," Willow said. "What I was doing last night, with the black eyes and all ... well, it's probably best if I don't do that very much."
"Okay," Buffy said. Not like she knew anything about how magic worked.
Other-reality Buffy probably had, though.
"So," Buffy said. "Are you ready to tell me the whole truth?"
"Ready?" Willow repeated ruefully. "Nope. But I guess it's time."
Buffy looked into her friend's pale, bruised face, and wished she could be comforting her now instead of confronting her. "Drusilla said Osiris wants four lives back from you."
Willow winced very slightly. "I'm so sorry, Buffy," she said. "I thought I could handle all this on my own. I thought I could protect you from it."
"Why would you need to protect me?" Buffy asked. "Wasn't I some kind of supergirl?"
"You'd had the weight of the world on your shoulders since you were fifteen years old," Willow said quietly. She sounded like she might start to cry. "It was crushing you. I thought ... I thought I could let you be normal. Then maybe you could have a chance to be happy."
"So you made a new reality where I could be Assistant Manager at the Double Meat Palace?" Buffy squeezed Willow's hands. "Couldn't you have at least made me a movie star?"
Willow let out a sound between a choke and a giggle. "You got the job at the Double Meat Palace all on your own," she said. "In the other reality. I know it might be hard to believe, but when I changed things, I changed as little as possible. The spell would've been unmanageable otherwise."
"What about Spike?" Buffy asked.
Willow nodded. "His part was the hardest. So many changes. He had a history with Angel and Dru going back to 1880, and of course they were still going to be vampires. For all their memories to match ... it was tricky."
Buffy felt a little cold. It was really just starting to sink in for her, the extent of what Willow had done. "You wanted me to be happy," she said. "So you took some ... some random vampire, and made him into the perfect boyfriend for me?"
"No," Willow said sharply. "I wouldn't do that. You and Spike already had a relationship. I told you, I changed as little as possible."
"But he was a vampire. And I was a vampire slayer." Buffy frowned. "Was he a good vampire?"
"Not exactly." Willow looked uncomfortable. "I didn't say you were happy together. It was ... kind of a mess. The rest of us thought you were crazy to be involved with him."
"So you fixed him." Buffy bit her lip. A chill was going down her back, and her arms felt heavy. She wanted to blame the healing spell, but she was pretty sure it was just the conversation. "Willow, that's not okay."
Willow leaned forward, an intense, slightly wild look in her eyes. "No," she said. "It's not like you're thinking. I didn't put him together from scratch. I made him human, but his personality, his feelings for you-all of that is really him."
"And the seizures? The headaches?" Buffy asked quietly. "Are those his punishment for whatever he did when he was a vampire?"
"God no," Willow said, looking appalled at the suggestion. "I'm really sorry about the seizures. He had brain damage, from this ... this government behavior-modification chip that was implanted in his brain. I made the chip go poof, but I didn't realize the scarring would mess him up so much."
"A government behavior-modification chip," Buffy repeated. "In his brain."
Willow shrugged. "It was a thing."
Buffy nodded. Every time she thought this alternate reality thing couldn't get any weirder, it did.
But that wasn't really the point here.
"Did you ask me?" she asked quietly. "Or Spike? In the other reality, before you changed everything to make us happier, did you ask us if that was what we wanted?"
The guilty look in Willow's eyes was enough of an answer.
"Willow, why did you do it?" Buffy asked, watching her face intently. "Were things really so bad for me? Did you just wake up one day and think to yourself hey, it's about time to replace this reality with a better one?"
Willow's eyes brimmed with tears. She squeezed Buffy's hands. "No," she whispered. "I did it because Tara was dead."
"Oh," Buffy said.
Willow began sobbing, crumpling in on herself.
So that's three, Buffy found herself thinking.
She knew she should be upset at the idea that Tara had died. But considering everything else she'd had to absorb over the past twenty-four hours, honestly this barely registered. She'd already had to deal with the idea that she'd died and been resurrected herself, that her boyfriend was really supposed to be a hundred-year-old vampire, that her ex-boyfriend was in fact a centuries-old vampire ... yeah, it had been one hell of a night.
Of course the main problem, Buffy remembered, was that Osiris wanted the dead people back.
Which was probably why Willow was so upset.
"Shhhh," Buffy said. "Shhhhhh. We're gonna figure this one out, Will. We're going to research Osiris and we're going to talk to Dru and figure out what we can do." She tried to sound a lot more certain than she felt.
"He can't have her back," Willow said fiercely through her tears.
"That's not even a question," Buffy assured her.
Willow lifted her head, sniffling. "Tara thought it might be."
"That's why she was upset when I saw her downstairs?" Buffy asked. "She thought you might turn her over to Osiris?"
"No," Willow said darkly. "She thought she might turn herself over to Osiris."
Buffy admired Tara's bravery, even as she swore to herself that she would not let that happen.
Only, how exactly do you defy an actual god?
"You still haven't told me who the fourth person is that Osiris wants," Buffy reminded Willow.
Willow nodded. "It’s Anya."
Buffy sat up a little straighter. Anya. All right. All four cards on the table, finally. Spike, Tara, Anya, Jenny Calendar. "How did she die?"
"Well, she didn’t, exactly. It's more of a technicality. She became a demon. Again. So that put her in Osiris's domain."
Buffy shook her head. "Is there anyone we know who isn’t supposed to be a vampire or a demon or have magic powers or whatever?"
"Xander," Willow said with a sad smile. "He’s always been perfectly normal, except for the fact that he hangs out with us."
"That’s ... kind of comforting," Buffy said. "I guess."
The rest of the day passed quietly. Willow concentrated on healing. Buffy helped her until she felt exhausted, and then she took a nap. When she woke up in the late afternoon, she found Spike alone in the kitchen, huddled over a mug of chamomile tea.
"I saw Dru," he said.
"Alone?" Buffy’s arms went goosebumpy, even though she could already see he was safe.
"No," he said. "Angel was there." He sipped his tea, a distant look in his eyes.
"And? How did it go?" Buffy prompted.
"She’s barking mad," Spike said sadly. "And she’s in so much pain."
"Still with the bugs?" Buffy asked.
Spike shrugged. "Had a long talk with Angel, too. He filled in a hundred years or so of history for me. Think I understand why he hates me, now."
"He has no right to hate you for stuff that other-you did in the other timeline," Buffy said, unconsciously curling her hands into fists.
"I think he might be coming around to agreeing with you on that point," Spike said, gently touching her hand so she uncurled her fingers. "And I think he finds that painful, too. Whatever else she did-Willow gave me a chance to walk away from my bloody history. I guess she did it for you, not for me, but there it is. Angel, though-his ghosts are all still haunting him."
Just then, Buffy heard the front door opening. "That’ll be Tara and Dawn, I guess," she said. "Let’s go see what they’ve found out."
Dawn and Tara each had a stack of books in their arms. The number of Post-It notes sticking out of each one was a testament to how intensely they’d been working that afternoon.
"So how about a quick summary?" Buffy suggested, eyeing the piles.
"Can we get everyone together first?" Dawn asked. "Also, some food? I’m starving."
Xander and Anya arrived just before the pizza. Tara fetched Willow from upstairs, and Wesley fetched Angel from the basement. Everyone gathered around the dining room table, where Dawn was trying to keep the library books separate from the pizza slices.
"Okay, what have we got?" Buffy asked.
"Nothing new from Drusilla," Angel said, lowering the mug he’d been drinking from. "She spent half the day sleeping and half the day talking about how she’d like to knit herself new stockings out of all our intestines."
Buffy shuddered. "Well that gives me warm fuzzies. Why does your drink smell like raw steak, by the way?"
"Pig’s blood." Angel tipped the mug towards her so she could see the dark liquid inside. "Wesley got it for me while you were napping."
Spike, at the other end of the table, blanched and put down his bean-sprout and tofu sandwich.
"Better than having a hungry vampire at the table!" Anya pointed out.
"True that," Xander said. "Is anybody else having the cheesy bread?"
"Focus, everyone," Buffy said. "We’ve got a pissed-off ancient Egyptian god to outwit. What’ve we got from Team Research?"
"Okay," Dawn said, talking around a mouthful of pizza. "So here’s the deal. Osiris is the Lord of the Dead but he isn’t a bad guy. At least, the ancient Egyptians thought he was a pretty righteous dude."
"One interesting thing about him," Tara said, "is that he was actually murdered by his brother Set, and then brought back to life by his lover, Isis."
"Seriously?" Buffy said. "But then how can he possibly be mad at Willow?"
"Well," Dawn said, "He didn’t get to stay alive. After a little while he had to go back to the Underworld, ‘cause those are the rules. So you can see how he might not feel like making an exception for Willow." From the look Dawn gave Tara, Buffy guessed that Tara had filled Dawn in on the fact of her own death and resurrection.
"It’s a pretty sad story," Tara added. "During his brief resurrection he got Isis pregnant, but then he never had the chance to know his son."
"That was Horus," Dawn added. "Another important Egyptian god. He’s the guy with the falcon head."
"Falcon," Buffy repeated. Why did that ring a bell?
Drusilla.
Mirrors and hedge mazes. I peek through the little holes the falcon makes and I see the way.
Was Drusilla giving her a hint?
"I want to talk to Drusilla," she said.
"Not without me," Angel said.
"Or me," Willow added.
"Actually, I think I’m gonna need Anya," Buffy said.
"Um, no," Xander said. "What the hell does she have to do with any of this? And also, again I say no."
"I can speak for myself honey," Anya said. "But I don’t see why I should go into the basement with the crazy vampire."
"She’s one of the ones Osiris wants," Buffy said. "Along with Spike, Tara, and Miss Calendar. Willow took all of them away from Osiris, and he wants them back."
Xander looked confused and angry. He laid a protective hand on Anya's shoulder. "I thought he wanted you back."
"No, we were wrong about that one," Buffy said. "But I think I can convince him not to take anybody at all."
Suddenly there was sound like a muffled explosion from the basement. The windows rattled.
"Uh oh," Willow said. "I think maybe Osiris has been listening in."
Buffy grabbed Willow’s hand. "Let’s go. Anya?"
She stood up. "If there’s a god after me, sweetie, we’d better do something about it," she said to Xander.
Buffy was already moving. She didn’t look back, but she sensed that everyone was following her.
In the basement, Dru was standing up. Her chains were gone and a turbulent cloud of smoke hovered over her head.
There was a face in the smoke.
"It is time, witch," said Drusilla and the face, speaking together. "Undo the spell and I will leave you in peace." The cloud’s voice was deep and seemed to echo from all directions at once.
"No way," Willow said. She sounded defiant but also a little scared.
Buffy glanced back at her. "Leave this to me, okay?" she whispered. Then she stepped towards Drusilla. "Osiris," she said, addressing the cloud. "I’ve come to, um, humbly beg you to reconsider."
Osiris glared down at her from the cloud. Drusilla’s lips twisted, echoing the expression. "The laws of life and death must be respected," said the god and the vampire together. "Four have been stolen from my domain; they must be returned."
"Yes," said Buffy, heart pounding. "We all know how important rules are. But if Willow undoes her spell now, she won’t extinguish four lives-she’ll extinguish five." She pointed at Anya. "She’s pregnant. It’s like Isis and Horus, right? How would you have felt if your god buddies had said that you had to retroactively make Horus stop existing just because he was never actually supposed to exist in the first place?"
The face in the clouds turned to Anya. "Is this true?" it asked her in its terrifying doubled voice.
"Yes," Anya said, standing her ground and putting a hand over her belly. "I have a bun in my oven. We’re really excited about it and we’ve already started buying baby clothes. The thought of you making Willow change the past so that I’m dead and the baby will never exist at all makes me very sad. Please don’t do that."
Osiris’s cloud went into overdrive. Tendrils shot out in all directions, only to pull back again a second later. The cloud expanded, roiling. Osiris and Drusilla opened their mouths wide and roared.
"Eeep," Anya said, falling back a step.
"Well?" Buffy said to the cloud.
The cloud contracted suddenly to its original size. Osiris and Drusilla turned towards Willow. "I will renounce my claim on the four for the sake of the fifth," they said together. "On one condition."
"Name it," Buffy said, keeping her poker face with a great effort. Had she actually just managed to out-negotiate a god?
"The witch must surrender her power. She will offer it to me and I will burn it from her. No more will she interfere with the just and natural order of life and death."
"Okay," Buffy said, but at the same moment Willow said "Wait! Let me think about this for a second!"
Buffy turned to Willow. "Uh, Will?" she said under her breath. "Isn’t this kind of a no-brainer?"
Willow shot a desperate glance at Tara. "There’s got to be another way," she said. "Without my power I won’t be able to protect any of you anymore."
"Maybe that would be for the best," Anya said. "Considering how you mostly seem to protect us by messing around with us and lying to us."
"If it weren’t for me you’d be a demon," Willow said angrily.
"Huh?" Anya said. "A demon? I thought I was supposed to be dead."
"Willow," Tara said, reaching for Willow’s hand, "We’ll all protect each other. Like we did yesterday. Not like this summer when I felt you slipping away from me every day. Please, love, take Osiris’s deal."
Willow held Tara’s gaze for a long moment. Her lip trembled, and it looked like she was fighting back tears. "Without my magic I couldn't have saved you," she whispered.
"I grow impatient, witch," said Osiris/Drusilla. And then suddenly Dru was in motion, a blur crossing the room, heading for Dawn. There was a twanging sound and something small bounced off her, clattered to the floor. Buffy was already moving to intercept, but the god-touched vampire was too fast. Dru reached Dawn first.
Dawn shrieked as Dru grabbed her. Dru spun to face the rest of them, one arm around Dawn's shoulders, the other gripping Dawn's head. "Accept my offer, witch," said Dru's voice along with Osiris's, "or my creature will begin to murder your friends."
Buffy flinched, her heart in her mouth. She was still more than arm's reach from Dru. Angel, not very far away on the other side, shifted into his vampire face.
"Buffy, Angel, no," Wesley said quickly. "Dru is under Osiris's protection. My bolt just bounced off her. You'll only get Dawn killed." He had a crossbow in his hands, Buffy saw, and it looked like he'd already re-loaded it.
"Willow!" Buffy shouted. "Take the fucking deal!"
"All right!" Willow yelled at Osiris, her panicky gaze darting between Drusilla and Buffy. "I accept! I accept!" She was still holding Tara's hand with a white-knuckled grip.
Drusilla let go of Dawn as abruptly as she'd grabbed her, and stalked over to Willow. "Good," she said in her doubled voice.
Buffy rushed to Dawn and wrapped her arms around her.
"I'm fine," Dawn squeaked, but she sagged against Buffy like her knees had just given out.
Dru, meanwhile, had reached up with both hands to cup Willow's face. Nobody moved to interfere. Willow stood ramrod straight, her face gone very pale. Tara had backed off a couple of steps, and she looked terrified.
The clouds with Osiris's face in them roiled and bubbled across the basement until they were directly over Willow-and then, suddenly, Dru did something with her hands and Willow's mouth opened wide and the clouds flew in.
Willow began to shake. It made Buffy think of Spike's seizures, but Willow didn't fall-maybe because Dru was holding her up. Willow's eyes clouded over and then went jet-black. Willow screamed. Tara darted forward, crying Willow's name, but she seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier a few inches from Willow. Willow's scream went on and on.
And then it stopped.
The clouds whirled back out of her mouth, forming a heaving gray mass once again over Willow's head. Osiris's face glared down from the cloud. "IT IS DONE," he said, and this time Dru didn't echo the words.
Dru let go of Willow. Willow dropped to the floor like a rag doll. Osiris's face melted into the cloud, which began to spin, faster and faster, a tight miniature tornado, and then it pulled into itself and was gone.
Dru staggered sideways, then caught herself. She looked around at everybody with a mildly puzzled expression. "Were we having a tea party?" she asked.
And then something twanged just to Buffy's left, and a crossbow bolt sprouted from Drusilla's chest.
Dru looked down, surprised. "Oh," she said, and exploded into dust.
Everyone looked at Wesley, with varying degrees of shock. He calmly lowered his crossbow. "It appears that Osiris withdrew his protection at the moment of his departure," he said.
"You ... you wanker," Spike choked out. "You didn't have to ... she wasn't ... we could have..." He fell to his knees with a strangled sob. Buffy would have gone to him, except she didn't want to let go of Dawn.
"Remember what she really was," Angel said. "Wesley did the right thing." His own voice seemed a little unsteady, though, and the look he gave Wesley was not entirely approving.
"Tara," Xander said. His arms were wrapped around Anya. "Is Willow ... okay?"
Tara was kneeling on the floor by Willow. "She's breathing," she said. "Could somebody help me? I think ... maybe we should get her to the hospital?"
"Probably best to let her rest here at home and see how it goes," Wesley suggested. "Hospitals aren't often much help with this sort of thing."
"So, just to be clear," said Anya, "We're safe now, right? Nobody has to go back to the Underworld? We won?"
"Looks like it," Angel confirmed.
"Yay us," Buffy said, faintly.
Epilogue
Willow woke up the next morning. She seemed to be all right, physically, but she was very quiet. She mostly lay in bed, staring empty-eyed at the window for days on end.
Spike was the one who suggested putting her on suicide watch.
"I think maybe I know a little bit about what she's going through," he had said, "and it isn't going to be easy."
"Getting your magic burned out isn't exactly like quitting heroin," Buffy had said.
"Well," Spike had said, "None of us know what it's like, do we? But here's one thing she's got in common with an ex-junkie: now all of a sudden she's going to have to deal with reality on its own terms. That's hard, at first, when you're used to having something else to reach for.
"And here's another thing," he had added, "Now she's going to have to face up to everyone she lied to."
Lies.
There were the lies Willow had been telling them all summer, mostly lies of omission, and that was one thing, but then there was the fact that their entire reality was a lie she'd constructed.
Only this reality wasn't a lie now, it was the new truth. The whole thing was pretty confusing to Buffy, but Angel and Wesley, who both apparently had some experience with this sort of thing, backed up Willow on this point: what you see now is what you get. The original reality had been written over; it was retroactively non-existent, except for Angel and Willow's memories of it.
That and the dreams, and the dreams had stopped right after the confrontation with Osiris. Wesley's guess was that the dreams had been the result of Osiris trying to push the original reality back into them all; now that he'd given up on that, no more dreams.
Buffy missed the dreams.
The dreams were her only first-hand experience of the original reality, and no matter what Willow or Angel said, Buffy was convinced that there was a hierarchy of realities and that the old reality had been more real than this one.
The old reality had been naturally-occurring. This one was Willow-made.
Only ... there was that thing about other reality re-writes. The thing about Dawn. It sort of made Buffy's head hurt, trying to parse it. Apparently the original reality wasn't the original reality, really; originally there had been a reality with no Dawn in it. Even Willow and Angel didn't remember that one, but they remembered discovering its existence.
(Original-Dawn had been pretty upset, apparently, to find out that she was really a glowing green Hell-dimension key. Buffy didn't exactly have to imagine it, because she'd lived through the corresponding event in the current reality, when in going through their mom's papers after her death they had found out that Dawn was adopted.)
Buffy had been learning as much as she possibly could about the other reality-from Angel, before he went back to L.A., and from Willow, when she was willing to talk. Buffy figured that if she was going to have to step into this Vampire Slayer role now, she'd better know as much as she possibly could about how it worked, and how original-Buffy had done it.
All in all, the more Buffy learned about the other reality, the more she was pretty glad she hadn't lived through it.
Not that this reality had been any piece of cake either, and that was interesting when you thought about it-Willow hadn't made life perfect. Buffy's mom was still dead. Buffy was still poor.
But hey, Buffy wasn't dead, thanks to Willow, and neither was Tara. Spike and Anya were ordinary people, with good days and bad days, and Buffy and Xander loved them.
Unlike Buffy, Xander and Anya seemed to have decided that they didn't want to know any more than they had to about the original timeline. Since the big showdown they'd been mostly keeping to themselves. Buffy knew more about their past than they did, now-Willow had explained the whole vengeance demon thing to her, and about how in the original timeline Xander had left Anya at the altar. Buffy figured maybe eventually Xander and Anya would want to know that stuff, when it seemed more distant. Or maybe not. Their call.
Dawn was fascinated by the stories of the original timeline, but she seemed to almost see them as interesting fiction-a "what if?" alternate version of her own history. She thought the whole glowy-green-key thing was hilarious. She speculated about whether the made-from-Buffy's-blood thing meant that they were biological sisters after all. She loved the story about the Mayor turning into a giant snake and Buffy and her friends blowing up Sunnydale High. "I knew that gas leak story was fishy!" she claimed.
Tara ... Buffy wasn't really sure what Tara thought. Tara had been almost as quiet as Willow, ever since the confrontation with Osiris. When she emerged from Willow's room, she often had puffy eyes as though she'd been crying. Buffy knew that Tara and Willow were talking to each other, at least, because she heard their murmuring voices through the door sometimes-but more often than Buffy would have expected, Tara came out and asked someone else to sit with Willow. Then Tara would leave the house, or if it was after dark, she'd sit in the living room and read one of her women's studies books. Buffy got that there was tension, and she figured she had better give them space.
And then there was Spike. Buffy had worried about Spike at first. Spike had been the one to suggest that they should all watch over Willow; Buffy, in turn, had quietly asked everyone else to keep an eye on Spike.
Spike was a recovering heroin addict who'd been clean for two and a half years, but who depended on high-powered prescription painkillers to cope with his headaches. He walked a knife's edge on a regular basis. And sure, this was apparently all Willow's construction-but it was real, too, the only reality that counted now. And now he'd found out that his whole life was a lie, that he was a century-old monster, a literally bloodthirsty killer. Or at least that he had been, until Willow had re-made him into Buffy's perfect boyfriend.
Before Angel left, Spike had spent hours and hours with him, privately talking through their history together and what Angel knew of the rest of Spike's un-life. At one point Buffy had tried to intervene, quietly begging Angel to go easy on Spike and maybe spare him the goriest of the details, but Angel had pointed out that sparing everyone the details had been Willow's plan, and that that hadn't gone very well at all.
"Why do you want to know about all that awful stuff?" Buffy had asked Spike afterwards, lying in bed at night. "It doesn't matter anymore. It never happened. This you never did those things."
"It does matter," Spike disagreed, splaying his fingers gently across her bare belly. "It matters because who I am now is a reaction to all of that. My horror of violence, my veganism, even the way I come over all woozy at the sight of blood."
"Willow was making you as different as possible from what you had been."
He shook his head. "Not exactly. That's not the way she explained it to me. She said she sort of ... took away the demon that had been part of me, and then my human personality had to fall into place of its own accord. And, well, later on I wouldn't remember being a vampire, but at that moment when the spell happened, she and I had to sort of work together to build my new past. Make it all fit. Same thing as happened for each of the rest of you, according to her, only it was harder with me because there were so many changes. So, this me I am now-I chose it for myself.
"And another thing. Angel's told you a thing or two about souls by now, yeah? Well, here's something I haven't told him-Willow says that when she reached out to me with the spell, I already had one."
"Huh?" Buffy propped her head up on her arm, the better to look at him. "That doesn't make sense-Willow told me you were still evil, even when we were dating, it's just that you had a chip in your head that stopped you from biting people."
"Yeah, she told me about that too," Spike said. "And she's sure that I didn't have a soul the last time she saw me, pre-spell. But when she grabbed me with her spell, there it was."
"How's that possible?" Buffy asked.
"Dunno. Willow doesn't know, and Angel certainly doesn't, so I guess that'll be one unsolved mystery. But, well, Willow did see into my mind a little, like, when she did the spell. So what she could tell me was that the soul was no accident. I'd somehow come around to realizing the horror of the monster that I was. And so I'd gone out and got a soul." He gazed up at her, gave her a tentative little smile. "And she thinks I did it for you."
"Spike," Buffy whispered. Her eyes prickled with tears, which she covered up by kissing him.
After a few intense seconds, Spike pulled away enough to give her a serious look with a smile on its edge, and said, "What are you thinking now, Vampire Slayer?"
"I'm thinking," Buffy said, "that this life is a gift. And we might as well enjoy it." She kissed him again.
And then they made love, sweetly and gently. Afterwards, drifting off to sleep with Spike's warm arms tucked around her, Buffy thanked Willow, in her thoughts.
Maybe what Willow had done hadn't been right. But this was Buffy's life now, and she wouldn't want it to be any different.
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