Chapter Four
"He is just so much sweeter than Angel." Joyce stated to the room smiling broadly. "William, can I get you anything?" she asked the slack jawed Vamp on her couch.
"Uhmm, actually Joyce, its Spike." He answered slowly, "And everything is fine."
Suddenly Spike remembered the ring in his pocket and reached his right hand down to retrieve it. As he pulled it out of his pocket, the finger of the previous owner came with it. Removing the ring from its finger placeholder, the finger dusted as it fell. He couldn't stop his chuckle at Angel's finger dusting. He slid the ring of Amara onto his own in order to help the sleeping boy as he fed the boy his 'Sire's' blood.
Past Buffy was at first too shocked for words at seeing the ring, but then her anger simmered to a fine boil allowing her brain to focus. "YOU stole Angel's ring!" Buffy started advancing on the completely helpless vamp in front of her with stake raised only to come face to face with both her future self and the redheaded daughter blocking her path.
"Back off!" The older Buffy ground out from between clinched teeth, "That is my son he is healing."
However, the younger Buffy was not going to be deterred. As she moved to push by her future self, the redheaded child grabbed her arm and used an arm lock forcing the younger Buffy to her belly on the floor. "There will be no attacking of a Spike on my watch." Erin almost snarled into her mother's doppelganger's ear.
"Don't see how you can call it Angel's," Spike began, "I found it after it had been lost for centuries. YOU stole it from me, and gave it to him. Last I heard, being given stolen property doesn't make it yours."
"Buffy, how could you?" Joyce admonished her daughter.
"MOM, he was trying to kill me." Buffy fought the grip holding her, but quickly realized that the daughter of both a Slayer and a Vamp equaled someone stronger than just a slayer. "And besides…Angel deserved to walk in the sunshine."
"But Buffy, if the ring wasn't yours?" Joyce looked over at Spike with a smile. "I am sure that William didn't mean it."
"Uhmmm…actually Joyce she has a point. Kind of bloody did, but still it's my ring." Spike looked for all the world like a kid with his hand caught in a cookie jar. "And uhhm, again…the name is Spike."
"Still Buffy, you don't attack visitors in our home." Joyce admonished her daughter.
"But, IT'S SPIKE!" Buffy almost screamed as if this were the answer to every problem.
"Yes dear, and it looks like HE will be the father of your children." Joyce looked over at Erin, "You can let her go now."
She looked at the young girl carefully, "Are you my grand child too?"
Xander returned to consciousness chained to a the same chair. His face hurt, and his ribs felt like they were being twisted in place. He scanned the room for the insane nutcase, but all he saw was a woman setting in a chair facing him. And ye gods what a woman! She looked like a playboy centerfold, with blonde hair, blue eyes, long legs, and at least a Double D cup of booby goodness. Her skin-tight latex left nothing to the imagination. It was jet black, consisting of only a short skirt with a painted on top. He felt himself drooling through his bruises as she stood and walked towards him on bare feet.
As she walked towards him quietly, she pulled a strait razor out of her bra and opened it. All Xander felt was relief that this Golden Goddess was here to free him, and as she stepped behind him, he couldn't stop the relieved sigh from escaping his lungs.
But then he felt the cool kiss of steel as it moved up his right arm, slicing not his arm, but his shirtsleeve. His breath drew in a hiss as he tried to turn to look at her. Her eyes that only seconds before had seemed kind, now looked like the eyes of a demon - filled with hatred and mockery - as she drew the blade across his chest cutting his shirt completely off.
"What you thought I was here to save you?" Her melodious voice twisted with hatred, "I am your torturer, you pathetic boy."
She knelt at his feet wearing a sadistic smile as she began slicing off his jeans
Buffy Summers the Younger was pacing the floor in anger as she watched HER mom treating her older doppelganger, the two kids, and SPIKE like honored houseguests, and HER watcher trying to get a word in edgewise to figure out this mystery. It wasn't a mystery to her! Obviously either this older her was completely delusional, or HER Spike was nothing like the other Buffy's past-Spike, because it was so clear that this Future Buffy didn't really know Angel.
Why couldn't the son over on the couch be named Liam with brown hair and eyes? No! HER possible future son just had to look like SPIKE, exactly like SPIKE. It so pissed her off to the point of violence. But having felt Erin's strength, she knew it would be quite a battle. And she just didn't want to have to kick the four of their asses all over her mother's home destroying it. Yeah, that was why she hadn't punched anyone yet. Shut up little voices.
Suppressing a smile, Buffy the Elder watched her younger self. It wasn't hard to figure out what her other self was thinking. "You wish your crutch was here, don't you?" she asked with a smirk.
"My what?" her younger self answered.
"Your crutch. You know Angel, your emotional crutch."
"What the heck are you babbling about now?" Younger Buffy asked, actually baffled enough to almost forget her anger.
"As long as you pretend Angel is your soul mate, you don't have to invest yourself with loving anyone else." Darker Buffy answered, "Then you can just coast through life barely living, blaming everything on fate, because you are too much of a coward to even try."
Buffy shook her head as if trying to clear it. "Look I don't know why you have an obsession with this soulless evil vamp, but it doesn't give you the right to keep insulting Angel. He IS a great MAN."
"Then where is he?" Erin snapped, sarcastically looking around the room as if she was really expecting the brooding vampire to be hidden somewhere.
Glaring at Erin, she argued, "He left me, so I could have a normal life." She felt confident in her answer as Willow and Joyce nodded with her. But all it drew from Spike was a snort then an out right laugh.
"Bloody hell slayer, he sold you a bill of goods." Spike snarked.
"Oh yeah, and you know about love, how?" Young Buffy's anger rushed back to the surface once again.
Spike looked deeply into her eyes and said, "If I loved ya, I would go to the end of the bleedin' earth to make myself what I needed to be to have your love." His statement was one of simplicity. Even before she could argue, she saw the three future folks just nodding in agreement.
Older Buffy smiled sadly before beginning, "My Spike and I had a fight. We hurt each other a lot, and said many terrible things. It was both our faults, but Spike being Spike, he blamed himself." She glanced quickly over at the present Spike. "So he went to Africa seeking out a legend. He endured a tournament and torture on the chance that he might win his soul, and just so he might be able to get me to love him back." She was crying now. "Ya know, the funny thing was I already loved him."
The others including Spike went slack jawed at that. "No bleedin way! NO! I won't become a bloody, broodin' poofter for bloody anyone."
"Are you saying that SPIKE fought for and won a soul on purpose?" Giles was cleaning his glasses at a rate previously unknown to all present. "That is remarkable, and he did it out of LOVE?" His question seemed laced with more inner thought rather than directed toward anyone.
Older Buffy noticed Willow in the corner with her hand raised in the air like they were in class. She snickered, and then motioned for the redhead to speak.
"How did he…uhhmm…father children? I mean we know that Vamps can't. Was it a prophesy or what?" Willow stumbled through her questions.
"We thought it was a Prophesy at first, but then the coven in Bath acted like we were idiots for thinking that. It seems that some philosopher named Galen had it right, something about a soul being to a body what sun and rain are to a flower." Older Buffy wiped the tears from her eyes.
"OH, OH, then why didn't Angel…" Willow began just to be cut off by the older Buffy.
"Simple. First not his real soul; second the Demon and the soul have to completely accept each other." She explained.
"Not his soul? Then whose?" Giles asked this time.
With a grim, disgusted look on her face, the older Buffy bit out, "Stupid Gypsies cursed him with the soul of child he killed."
Staring helplessly down at the blonde at his feet, Xander could only watch as she had sliced off his pants and begun to shave his legs. She was also mumbling to herself, sounding for all the world crazier than Drusilla, "No hair…no hair. Men are slaves. Slaves should be shorn from head to toe." The way things kept going, Xander figured he would be bald as Kojack in just a few minutes.
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