Buffy was coming to the conclusion that Spike had been right about hygiene in the Middle Ages. The room she'd stepped into was as beautiful and tastefully decorated as the rest of the house--mansion--castle? appeared to be, but she decided to put off the ooh-ing and aah-ing in favor of a long hot shower that might finally wipe the memory of slimy insect insides from her mind. Except--she looked around with a sense of incipient panic--where was the bathroom? She opened a bronze-knobbed door she'd thought was the closet and stared. Its sole occupant was a round porcelain bowl on a pedestal. It looked somewhat like a tall flowerpot--and actually had roses painted on it! Was it supposed to make you want to use it more? she wondered. She closed the door slowly and looked back with resignation at the basin, jug, and soap on their little stand beside the fireplace. She'd washed her hands in it earlier, thinking that maybe it'd been put there for that convenient purpose. "Ooh boy," she sighed.

She finally made it to the library quite a while later, after having gotten turned around twice and finally conducted to the massive open cherry doors by a startled-looking woman in a maid uniform (they actually had maid uniforms!) who'd curtsied hurriedly at her smile and thanks and announced, "Your guest, my lord, my lady."

Both William and his mother stood as she walked inside a little uncertainly. Was she supposed to curtsy too? Bow? Put on a tap dance? "Um...hi...again..." she finally said.

"Miss Buffy!" There was something in William's warm smile that immediately made her feel less nervous, though she had a nagging suspicion that she still carried a bug-entrails-scented cloud around with her despite her liberal use of the soap and water (quite a lot of which, sadly, was now in soapy suds on her bedroom floor). William himself was looking completely neat and trim again, and she was tempted to ask him for tips on how he managed what she was convinced was an impossible feat with two bucketfuls of water and a sponge. He'd changed into a long black dinner jacket, a dark blue vest, and a white shirt with a necktie that concealed his neck. It somehow made him look older than her impression of him in the light brown coat she'd first seen him in...or--not older. More lordly, maybe? More haughty Colin Firth at the dance than Colin Firth about to dive into the pond? And really nothing at all like Spike...

A slight movement from William's mother made Buffy blink. Had they really been staring at each other for that long? Was she supposed to say something now? She opened her mouth--

"You look lovely," William beat her to it.

"--You too!" she blurted out. At the blank looks on both his and his mother's faces, she added, "I mean, handsome! Because you're wearing a spiffy dinner jacket and everything. Not that you're not when you're not...um...wearing... And I was going to ask how you manage with a pan and an itty bitty jug and no shower, but I just realized that that's probably inappropriate, so I'll...not. And can you take over this conversation now? Please?"

William's eyes were dancing with humor, but it was his mother who said composedly, "Do sit down, Miss Summers. I understand that you went to great exertions tonight. You must be tired."

"Oh, well," Buffy shrugged as they all sat, "it was definitely at the top of the grossness scale, but I wouldn't say it was all that special exertion-wise. Although a long soak in the bath usually helps afterwards."

"And is every home equipped with such a bath, in your modern age?" Mrs. Pratt wondered. "Or just that of the...Slayer?"

"Everybody," Buffy confirmed. "Except maybe the Hawaiians, since they live in huts on the beach, and I don't know if the tub would fit in with their canoes. And the Mexican immigrants who live in shacks and people's back yards. Which might be illegal. Because I'm finding out that plumbing is very important."

"Indeed," Mrs. Pratt responded neutrally. "Pray tell us more of your world, Miss Summers. I am most fascinated."

Buffy searched for something which interest an elderly woman from the past. "We have TVs! Um, televisions. You can sit around all day watching movies and soap operas and, er, infomercials..."

"And how do they work, these 'televisions?'" Mrs. Pratt asked.

"Well, you...plug them into the wall and turn them on, and instant entertainment! Although a lot of the stuff they have isn't actually very entertaining. And not very instant either, because of the commercials. But there is the occasional entertaining commercial, too, especially when the Super Bowl comes around..." She could tell by her audience's fixed, politely attentive expressions that she'd lost them around a bend somewhere--infomercials? the Super Bowl? entertainment?--and she bravely plunged on. "Oh! And Hawaii is a state now. The fiftieth state--or is that Alaska? Anyway, people go there for their honeymoons and stuff." She felt rather proud of herself for remembering that Hawaii had become a state way later than most of the other states. See? She hadn't spent all her time in History drooling on her desk.

Mrs. Pratt frowned. "The Hawaiian Islands...? I had understood it to be a sovereign kingdom. Surely the government of the United States would not have invaded such a place?"

"Invade? Oh no, I'm sure we didn't--um...maybe we just liked the beaches so much that we...stayed...?" Buffy suggested helplessly.



After much stomping about, swearing, putting on his duster and taking it off again, futile smoothing of his wet hair, and frustrated attempts at lighting his remaining fags, Spike finally made it downstairs. The burning in his chest and the rolling and churning in his stomach were worse, and that, combined with his sour anticipation of the look of suppressed mirth that he just knew would be on the sodding Slayer's sodding face and the addition of a strange quivering feeling in his poisoned intestines, were enough to make him hurl. He looked back and snarled at the wide double spiraling staircase of gleaming mahogany. Why the hell hadn't he left the Slayer and his git of a past self on the road and found himself a nice meal and a warm bed (not necessarily in that order) for the night? For that matter, why the hell was he still here? He was a free vamp in a free country, and he could come and go as he pleased.

Mind made up, he had already turned and was about to take the first stair back up (bloody hell, he knew he shouldn't have left his duster) when the nails-on-chalkboard whine of the Slayer's voice drifted down the hall to him. He couldn't make out the words, but the tone spun his head about. Meekness from the Buffy Summers? The Slayer never backed down before anyone--he'd have thought it a constitutional requirement. This he had to see.

The voices grew clearer as he neared the library, and he paused outside. He could now smell the Slayer's nervousness, and it was delicious. He took a deep bracing breath. Better than a whole terrorized city, that was. Especially since his mother, of all people, was making her squirm. His mother putting the screws to the Slayer! This, he decided with a beatific smile, was worth the time-hopping and the giant bug squishing--possibly even worth the Slayer meeting his nancy boy human self. Better make his entrance, though: he didn't like the direction the questions were headed; who knew what the Slayer was thinking in that blond head of hers? She might be worth any ten village strongmen in a fight, but she had the discretion of the village idiot. Probably didn't even know what the word meant.



Buffy felt her spidey-sense--her spikey-sense?--tingle just as Mrs. Pratt asked, "And what is my son--my son from the future's connection to you, Miss Summers?"

"Um--" Buffy resolutely stopped herself from looking at Spike as he came in behind her. She'd been worrying about how to answer that exact question since Spike's mother had opened the door. It wasn't like she owed Spike anything, but she was going to be staying at least for the night in his mother's house, and since Mrs. Pratt seemed like a nice ordinary woman (if slightly scary in the way that old women usually were in period movies--or, well, in general), she probably wouldn't care to hear 'We try to kill each other every chance we get because he's an evil blood-sucker and it's my job to dust evil blood-suckers.' "...He's a Slayer too?" she suggested to the rich dark velvet backing of Mrs. Pratt's chair tentatively. "Like me--except not, because I'm a girl and he isn't?"

The chair seemed unfazed by that revelation, but William, sitting beside his mother, was giving her a look that she would've called out-and-out gaping from anyone less polite. Spike's footsteps came abruptly to a dead stop, and a sneaking glance at his face showed that it bore the exact same expression--except maybe with an inclination toward some sort of homicidal explosion. His hands were doing that twitching thing that meant he was probably imagining them around her neck moments before giving it a good wringing.

She gave him a half-defiant, half-exasperated look that said, Well, what was I supposed to say? You weren't here for the grilling! At least I didn't tell her we were in a band together and you sang!

He saw her look and raised her incredulity for defiance, derision for exasperation: And that was the best you could come up with?

In response, she arched her eyebrows and deliberately ran her eyes from the top of his now-curling head to his white shirt, unbuttoned jacket, and neatly pressed trousers. She paused at his feet, then swept up again to his face. Her lips quirked. He glared. At least he was still wearing his own Doc Martens.

Spike turned to his mother, opened his mouth to bugger the Slayer and all Slayers since the dawn of time to hell...and stopped. She was gazing at him with that same expression he had last seen on her face just before he'd turned her: a mixture of uncertainty, bewilderment, relief, wonder...hope. The hole in his chest throbbed. "'s it in a nutshell," he found himself agreeing inanely. "Savior of democracy, fuzzy chicks, and a whole continent of bloody Yanks...er, ignorant Colonials--that's me."



Anne Pratt, Viscountess of Wincott, slowly stood as if in a dream. She walked the few steps to her son and lightly placed a hand against his cool cheek. She felt the shock again as their eyes met, as she had when she had first seen his face, savage with the vestiges of his recent battle, lift from the shadows of her door to the warm lamplight, and she had known...

She had loved him from the moment she became aware of his presence inside her, wondrous and strange and yet so much a part of her. But it was only when he had first opened his eyes, already a clear and startling blue even then, to look into her face with sleepy contentment, with innocent trust and all the eloquence of a sentient being, that he had truly become real to her: a completely unique individual with his own limitless potential. Nothing in the world could have made them unrecognizable to her, no matter what tragedies or horrors they bore witness to.

But oh, how he had changed!

Her father had taught his three daughters to recognize dangerous men, for once upon a time he'd been one himself, had been celebrated for being such. (He'd never taught them how to recognize dangerous women, saying only that they should pay particular attention when their mother came into the room. Since his great booming laugh had followed the words and since her mother had been a mild, affectionate being, Anne had assumed that it'd been one of his not infrequent displays of humor.)

Fancy that young fellow in the red coat, do you? An army officer! Well, well. No harm in conversation, my dear. Pay close attention to the direction of his gaze. You'll make out his signal by the by.

Do not assume the volume of a man's words reflect his soundings. Many a quiet man have I known with hidden depths, and it may be well worth your while to take their measure.

A tiger's stripes are always on display; not so a man's! Why, did not the 36-gun Phoenix capture the French 40-gun frigate Didon in the year five by pretending to be a 20-gun sloop? A sloop, ha ha! (This remark was followed by a detailed discourse on disguise and the art of ruses de guerre particularly as applied to naval warfare, by which story his listeners, long used to his lengthy tangents, took to mean that men were perfidious dogs with the moral understanding of lampreys.)

It was plain that this son of hers was nothing so harmless as a lamprey. He wouldn't have been able to set a foot in her father's house, let alone come anywhere near his daughters. But he was her son: of that much she was certain, even if she was certain of nothing else. What momentous events, what desperate need, what lonely tragedies could have transformed him from her gentle scholar into this hardened warrior? And what could she say now to this man for whom she had already been dead for a century?

She brushed soft fingers against the scar at his eyebrow, and her eyes blurred with tears. "Oh William," she whispered. "Welcome home."



They sat down to a light late supper around the family table which she and William used when they dined alone or with a few intimate friends. Anne sat between her sons--both incarnations of her son?--while Buffy Summers was seated to the right of William--her William--William-in-his-own-era. She shook her head a little, wondering if people of the future would have better words to describe such fantastical events. Of course there was an easy solution, if only she were willing to accept that ghastly name which her son had apparently adopted, at least in her own mind.

As dinner progressed, two things became clear to Anne. The first was that there were many aspects of his life her son from the future was unwilling to discuss with her. It was understandable, of course, but it caused fleeting misgivings to flash through her mind: had he arrived at his current state of being of his own volition? Miss Summers had called him a Slayer, but from the look of surprise that had flashed across both her sons' faces, it was not a title they generally attributed to him. It was not in her nature to force a confidence, even from her own son, but...she had never needed to, with William. She felt a vast great gulf between herself and this son with his oddly-colored hair, his scars, his coarse accent, and deadly, wary eyes: of years, of experience, of all the myriad changes great and small wrought by time, and however inevitable it was, it...hurt her. But she resolved not to rush either him or herself in this, for it would take her longer than a night to reconcile herself to--to Spike, she told herself firmly. And if he should disappear in the morning with as much abruptness and capriciousness as he had appeared, then he would at least return to his own time with this memory of her untroubled by suggestions of darker suspicions.

The second was that her initial impression of Miss Buffy Summers had been quite far off the mark. This change in her opinion came about not so much from what the young woman herself did or said, but from how well she knew her son. Yes, knew him even now. Spike was aware of this puzzling young woman's every movement--almost, it seemed, her every breath. The reactions appeared unconscious and habitual on his part: the tightening of his fingers against his glass at the toss of her head; the slight tilt of his head as she spoke to William, even as he entertained his mother with stories of traveling to China, to Italy, to the Americas; the darkening in his eyes at her smile. And neither was William, she saw with disquiet, entirely unaffected.

He had always been a quiet, tractable child, eager to please and ever careful of his parents' regard. But he was also much given to daydreams and wandering within his own private inner world, a world which he guarded jealously and revealed to no one. Anne was, in truth, beginning to despair of his ever finding a wife--or at least of finding a wife within their own limited sphere. There was no shortage of prospects, certainly, for his wealth and his title were enticements enough for many an enterprising young lady and ambitious potential mother-in-law, even if they secretly found his preference for his books and his pen over riding, hunting, and dashing acts of valor wanting. And William, for his part, had remained more or less indifferent to their studied charms and long lists of ladylike accomplishments. He was the careful son of a careful man, and she had not raised a fool: despite being too credulous of the goodness of others by far, he was not one to mistake an attachment to his fortune for an attachment to his person. But for the first time Anne wondered if he might not have been better served to have accepted one of those aspiring viscountesses vying for his affections. It would not have been what she would have wanted for him, but at least he would have been comfortably settled before this unusual young woman had ever appeared in his life.

For she now knew another fact with absolute certainty: Buffy Summers was a dangerous woman.