Snapshots of Eternity
by Slinkyspychokit


Title: Snapshots of Eternity
Author: Slinkypsychokit
Chapter One: "Open Your Eyes
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Post "Chosen" and "Destiny," Spike leaves Los Angeles and goes in search of his girls in Rome only to discover that things are different and more complicated than he could ever have imagined. Once again, we are all reminded that magick has consequences.
Warnings: Sexual Situations, Violence, & Extreme Language.
Beta'd by Oracleholly

A/N: Open Your Eyes-- We begin with an emotionally unstable Dawn and Buffy Summers. They have both been claimed, though not in the same way, by Spike before his death in the hellmouth. The sudden loss of connection to him is what has caused their slight case of insanity. But, it goes deeper than merely the effects of the Claim. There is also the once dormant Key part of Dawn that has awoken through all the magicks used during Willow's spell to feed power to all the Slayers. The reason she was affected by the spell to begin with was because of her link to both Buffy and Spike through the Claim. The Key wants to come out and play. Dawn has yet to understand that.

Then, compounding already confused emotions is the realization that Dawn isn't Buffy's sister, but in fact the daughter of both vampire and Slayer. The reason is has not come out before was due to the monk's spell in creating a human vessel for the Key and their creation of all those fake memories.


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She'd been crying for months. Slowly sinking further and further into that void of despair. Yet no one knew it wasn't really her in control. No one had come to visit, because no one doubted the well-thought out excuses of her devoted assistant, the sister who was actually the daughter. The daughter now playing the mother, their roles effectively reversed. She'd learned how to do it from the enitity that was 'father'.

Her genetic make-up screamed for the paternal being to come and make the mother being better. They were both drowning in their sorrow, and spells could only do so much to ease their suffering. Just ease a part of the ache, but still leave all the rest of her raw, like open, bleeding wounds. While the misery and the heartbreak shred their world, she clung to it, for misery and heartbreak seemed to be all that was left of their souls.

The sister/daughter sank to her knees in the deep cream pile of carpet outside the sister/mother's closed bedroom door. As tears silently rolled down her cheeks, her body shook violently. It had been six months since Sunnydale, but each day they died a little more without him. Each night they clung to each other as they drifted off into fitful slumber. Each silently knowing that the other was just something to hold onto and get them through the nighttime...his time...when his kind roamed.

Her hand gently caressed her scars, fingers ghosting along the marred flesh. The scar was almost nothing now; just skin that marked where his razor sharp fangs had pierced her delicate flesh at the bend of her left elbow as a claim of family and protection. No one outside of the three of them knew she'd been marked as his. A private mark shared between her and the parent beings, though false memories said they were otherwise.

As she touched the marks, she started frantically stretching, reaching, searching along that too long psychic tripwire linking the three of them together. She easily the burning red from the sister/mother and her own emerald green of the sister/daughter. On and on and down and out into that endless black which spread into forever in all directions. She was drifting throughout the black sea of nothingness and everything, her consciousness fully submersing in the endlessness of it all.

Ahh...there it is...

A wall. That aggravating wall! A huge, ominous, mental and psychic shield opposing her quest, like an ancient castle's impenetrable defenses. A moat with its ominous, lurking presense warning: DANGER! KEEP OUT! NONE SHALL PASS!!

She knew that the very oldest of magicks and rituals were used to protect one mate if the other should perish. Still facing that wall infuriated her. It kept her out, separate. And her need to connect overwhelmed her.

What was that?

The shield had the tiniest of cracks. The faintest whisper of blue/purple light was filtering through. Essence! Friend/father! Impossible!

Pretty to think so.

The thought made her more aware of what was going on about her.

The world outside had grown eerily quiet, so she pushed back from the void, pulled out, dragged away and returned along the green and the red lines. She had stayed too long. She had to get back before anyone knew what she'd done. She'd used too much energy and would have to use even more to cover her tracks. Folding the layers of her path taken in obscurity in case anyone came after and tried to track her signature to where she'd been, she made her way back to the other reality.

She came back to herself with the sprig of Lethe's Bramble pinched between left thumb and forefinger. She cupped it and whispered one word: Forget.

Dawn blinked and wiped the tears coursing down her cheeks. Why was she sitting on the floor outside Buffy's room with a piece of potpourri from the basket on the entry table? She stood with a sense of not-quite-right-ness, still able to hear soft whimpering from within the bedroom and felt helpless.

Should she start slipping sedatives into those herbal teas Buffy seemed to drink 24/7? Would sedatives help or would they push her further into depression? She'd pray to the Goddess for strength and guidance.

Dawn decided she would make one last attempt at making herself feel better tonight. The cold, fresh air on the terrace helped to drown out the lingering sound of her sister's anguish. Gazing into the clear night sky with thousands of glittering stars twinkling merrily down at a sleeping city, she felt a semblance of peace.

Snippets of long ago conversations in a sun dappled kitchen with yellow curtains fluttering in the soft summer breeze...

*********************FLASHBACK************

"What is it? Why does every chick I know nearly lose it over that guy? What's he got that I don't?" Xander asked in earnest.

"He's very manly and has a large penis. You can tell whenever he goes around Buffy in those tight jeans and leather pants he always wears. I bet he gives her lots of orgasms."

"ANYA!!!" Xander cried in mortification at his fiance's tactless and inappropriate observation.

Both in support of her newly betrothed friend and with sadistic glee at furthering Xander's torment, Dawn nodded enthusiastically. "I think it's his perfectly heart-shaped ass!" Here, the Key provides a double-handed grabby motion for dramatic effect. "You could probably bounce quarters off an ass that firm!"

"Dawn! Not you, too?!"

Dawn shrugged. "'m just sayin'". Privately, she was ticking off the moments to find out if Xander's head will explode or if he would pass out from all the embarrassment. After all, he was the one who insisted on hanging with the estrogen brigade instead of going to that seminar with Giles.

"Razor sharp cheekbones," Tara offered, delighted when the male in the room shot a dirty look her way. She let out an appreciative sigh, "And the eyes. They're like soothing pools of liquid sapphire." Slyly, she glanced at her girlfriend with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

"That mouth is what really gets me," Willow admitted with a dreamy smile. "Ooh, what I wouldn't give for just an hour alone with that mouth..."

Yep. Any second now. Combustible Xander right in the middle of the Summers' kitchen.

The basement door opened, and Buffy emerged, her clothing wonderfully askew revealing more than it covered. Flushed skin coated in sweat, chest heaving as though she'd just run ten miles uphill at full Slayer speed. "It's the accent," she explained and reached into the freezer for a handful of ice. Her eyes are nearly crossed as she envisioned the naughty words he whispered in her ear in that deep, sensual baritone. "That bad boy Cockney, all rumbly growly rough and tumble. All it takes is one little crook of the eyebrow and a few whispered naughties and I'm ready for him to throw me against the nearest wall and take me all the way to happyland." She grinned wickedly and did a sexy little shimmy, a la Faith, to further the visual.

Everyone was so caught up in Buffy's words they didn't notice the shirtless vamp in question slipping out of the basement and approaching the blonde Slayer. He took the ice from her with a devilish smirk and an impish wink that made her knees weak. "Here, kitten. Lemme get that for you," he whispered in his sexy bedroom voice just loud enough for the whole room to hear.

Oh, so slowly, Spike glided the melting cubes across Buffy's overheated flesh. His eyes locked onto hers as she softly whimpered at the contact. His fingers drew lazy patterns along the sensitive skin of her throat, across her collarbone, down between her breasts.

Four sets of eyes flickered to Xander in an attempt to gauge his reaction to the erotic display before him.

Yep. Any second now...

The vampire's tongue followed the trail of water from the hollow of his love's throat up along her jawline to capture her lips in the kind of kiss one can only see on late night cable. Limbs entwined as they pressed closer and closer. One of Buffy's supple thighs wrapped itself around his denim-clad hip. Pelvises slid and grounded against each other.

The Slayer emitted a long, lusty moan...

The vampire growled his excitement...

Exploding Xander in 3...2...1...

THUDD!!!

All action came to a sudden halt and six heads turned to find an unconscious Xander lying atop the freshly waxed linoleum.

"I'll be damned, Slayer!" Spike grinned down at the supine carpenter, "Bloody well worked!"

Buffy beamed as she checked her watch and held out her hands, "I called twenty minutes! Pay up, guys!"

"Not fair," Dawn pouted as she handed over a wrinkled twenty-dollar bill. "Isn't gambling illegal?"

"Yep," Buffy agreed as she counted her winnings to be split with Spike.

"Not fair," Dawn grumbled with the infamous Summers' pout in full affect. "We agreed no hands."

"It's all in how you look at it, Sweetbit," Spike explained to the sulking teen as he tucked his half of the loot into his pocket. "You said we couldn't put our hands on Harris. Never said Big Sis an' I couldn't put our hands on each other."

"Dammit," disgruntled and broke, Dawn wandered off in search of more people to swindle.

***********************END FLASHBACK*******

Ahh, happier times, Dawn thought with fondness. Staring at the sky, Dawn noted that the sun would be up in a couple of hours. Hopefully Buffy will have found some peace in her dreams. Maybe she'd even find a few happy memories of her own.

With her head down and eyes closed, Dawn startled as a pair of strong arms enveloped her and pulled her back against an equally strong chest.

"Open your eyes, Nibblet."

Oh, God!...His voice!...No! It can't be! He's...he's...he's...

Turning herself around to see the truth with her own eyes, she saw her sister/mother and the owner of those strong arms. Standing beside him, tears of joy are falling from Buffy's eyes. Unbeknownst to Dawn, Buffy's tears had been falling off and on since his arrival on their doorstep while Dawn had been at work.

Dawn was speechless for a moment as her eyes traveled from one blonde to the other, "Spike?"

"Yeah, Nibblet?"

"It's really you?"

"It's really me."

"You're here with us? Not gonna go away again?" Inwardly she cringed at sounding like the little girl she once was and not the woman she had been pretending to be during these long months.

"Never gonna leave my sweet, beautiful girls alone again," he promised as he pulled them both into his arms and held them for all he was worth.

Home.

He was finally home where he belonged, the Key thought. Spike, friend/father, the father being was finally home where he belonged. Yes, indeed. Things were falling into their rightful places.


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