Part 3
Buffy slammed the door and sank down against the rough surface, her breathing and heart rate increasing perceptively.
“Slayer? Love? Buffy?”
She finally glanced at him, her expression dazed. “Spike? What is that?”
“Maybe it’s an illusion, some sort of trick.”
Before he could continue, she bolted upright. “Dawn! I’ve got to make sure she’s alright.”
“Buffy, wait!”
She’d slung open the door and was gone before he could stop her. He stared at the bright sunlight and reluctantly nudged the door shut with one foot. A quick scan of the floor showed no hole like he’d carved out in his own crypt to allow access to the tunnels of Sunnydale. He reached into his pocket and meditatively lit a cigarette before sliding to the floor. It would be a good three or four hours before he could follow.
++++++++++++
Buffy raced across the seemingly endless cemetery, her terror mounting as she took in the number of fresh graves. So many recent ones, bearing inscriptions from 1996, 1997, 1998.
She slowed suddenly and began to move from tombstone to tombstone, her fingers tracing the dates carved in the marble and granite. March 1998. October 1998. She stopped at the newest grave she’d seen, almost at the edge of the cemetery. December 1998.
She swallowed hard and made for the gates.
++++++++++
Sunnydale High should be a shell, a blackened cave that stood in mute testament to Sunnydale’s most ambitious mayor. But it was there, every brick in place, the carved letters over the entryway firmly in place.
She entered the front and walked through the deserted hallways, a ghost town of learning. The library doors stood ahead, achingly familiar yet strangely alien. She pushed the swinging door aside and was confronted with the last person she’d expected to see in la-la land.
“Larry?”
He turned, swifter than she remembered and raised a cross in her general direction.
Buffy held up her hands in swift surrender. “Whoa there, not fangy here.”
He didn’t crack a smile, his eyes dropping over her low-cut top and bright red skirt with disdain rather than the leer she recalled him sporting. Of course that was pre-out of the closet well-adjusted Larry. Was he critiquing her fashion choices? Granted the skirt was a tad on the skank side, but . . .
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Buffy, Larry, you know me. Where’s Giles?”
His eyes sharpened even as he returned to whittling the stake he’d been at work on before her interruption. “”Fraid I don’t. And Giles had to go home, run an errand. Can I help you?”
Home. It echoed in her head, reverberating back and forth like an echo yelled into a canyon. Mom. Mom would be at home. If this was 1998, she would still be here.
“Larry, what year is this?”
He frowned at her. “It’s ’98. Lose your calendar?”
She was out the door before he’d finished his response.
++++++++++
The shadows were starting to lengthen but the sun still lit the streets of Sunnydale as she turned down Revello Drive and made for the familiar porch at 1620.
She raced to the door and grabbed for the handle that refused to turn in her hands. “Mom? Mom, are you in there? Mommy?’
She knew she sounded hysterical as she rattled the door again, feeling the wood starting to crack and groan as she stopped and stepped back before slowly sinking to the weathered wood of the porch.
The post still said 1620, but this wasn’t her home. The house had been painted a dull shade of grey, and iron bars covered the windows. She backed down slowly, stopping by the mailbox that said Robertsons in black boxy letters.
Her mother wasn’t here. But Buffy was starting to realize where she was.
++++++++++
The trip to Giles’s house took only a few minutes, but she found herself glancing furtively over her shoulder as the shadows began to lengthen. Sunset would be coming soon, and for the first time in many years, she found that thought to be discomforting.
The courtyard still looked the same, and she approached the door, knocking softly. “Giles? Are you home? I need to talk to you.”
There was no answer. She thought about breaking the door, leaving him a message. But if she was where she suspected, this Giles didn’t have a Slayer and didn’t know Buffy Summers from a housecat.
She tried again, her knock almost frantic, then glanced at the sky. Dusk was starting to fall, and she’d rather be with the devil she knew than the devil she didn’t.
She turned and made for the cemetery.
+++++++++++
He jerked open the door before she cleared the slight step that led into the crypt. “Where have you been? What’s going on out there, Buffy?”
She was slightly ashen as she made for the tomb, shakily resting against it as he followed, wanting to reach out and calm her somehow. He decided to take the chance as he settled next to her and slid his arm around her.
She stiffened for a moment, then leaned against him, and he was oddly grateful for the feel of her slight body against his, for reasons that had nothing to do with his usual urges when she pressed against him. He’d been going slowly insane, pacing the length of the crypt, wishing he had a way to dig back through the floor and into the tunnels he knew ran underneath, wishing she hadn’t run off, wishing there was no sun. Of course if wishes were horses . . .
She shifted against him, and he braced himself as she pulled away. “We’re not in Sunnydale.”
“We’re smack in the middle of Restfield, Slayer, what’d you mean we’re not in Sunnyhell?”
She snorted a little and he was happy to see a grin crack her face. “Well, then again, maybe it is Sunnyhell.”
“Enough with the cryptic, Slayer, spill.”
“Okay, so you know the Master?”
Spike snorted in disgust, “Old Batface? Yeah, had to do the bow and scrape before him a time or two, Darla made us go pay our respects. Course, you dusted him, love, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “I did. Except here, I don’t think so. I think that maybe I never came to this Sunnydale. And it’s partly because of you.”
++++++++++
Spike sat back and listened as she recounted a garbled tale involving Xander and Willow getting caught together after he had locked them in the warehouse, leading to some sort of high school drama far less entertaining than Passions. Then there was Anya as a vengeance demon, and a spurned Cordelia wishing for a world without Buffy. He’d made that wish a few times himself, early on. He nodded with understanding, which Buffy took as encouragement.
She plunged on to Anya’s attempt to retrieve her necklace and the botched spell that had brought a very vampy Willow among them, requiring them to corral her and send her back.
“You sent her back?” Spike asked.
Buffy shrugged. “She was Willow.”
He snorted. “No, she wasn’t, but bet she was glad you believed it. Just like I’m not . . . “
“William. Got it. You were born bad. Or rose bad. Whatever your people call it.”
She rolled her eyes at him and he was glad to see a little spark had reemerged. The Buffy from before . . . she’d have been out the door and ready to fight. But this Buffy, the one with the vacant look who plodded through her slaying and sometimes lay so still until he touched her that he wondered if she was really alive, he was less sure of.
“My people?” He had to query that one.
She half shrugged. “You know, undead Americans.” He harrumphed and she laughed. “Right, how could I forget, Union Jack, undead English.”
The moment died between them, as noises sounded outside and they knew it meant the dead were rising.
“Guess we get to it?” he asked.
She nodded. “We need to find Giles, he’ll know what to do. I went to look for him earlier, but he was gone. We need to go back to his house, or check the school again.”
He followed as she led the way.