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Forward to Time Past by Unbridled_Brunette
 
Chapter Forty-Two
 
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Many thanks to Immortal Beloved for being kind enough to beta this chapter.





Chapter Forty-Two






The sound of the door slamming startled all of them, and for a merciful moment, there was complete silence in the room.

Of course, it didn’t last.

Xander was the one who spoke first. He snorted and, with a nod to the broken picture frames that littered the floor, said sarcastically, “Yeah, that’s our Spike. All about the dramatic exits.”

“He is very good at them,” Anya pointed out.

“But how did he get in?” Willow asked. “I mean…my spell should’ve held—”

“It did,” Xander interrupted. He looked accusingly at the young girl who was currently bearing the weight of her older sister on her shoulder. “Dawn invited him in. Didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer, and he grabbed her arm, looking angry enough to shake her. “What were you thinking? Inviting that thing back into this house after what he did to Buffy!”

Dawn pulled away from him, her spirit up and her eyes flashing. “This house is my house. Mine and Buffy’s. You can’t tell me who I can invite into it.”

“Oh, well, that changes everything then! Let’s just invite all the evil dead things over to watch videos. Anyone got Nosferatu’s telephone number? I hear he’s not much of a talker, but—”

“Xander!” Giles’ voice broke out above the din, harsh and authoritative. Immediately, Xander fell silent, and the Watcher went on more quietly, “Now is not the time for this. Buffy is obviously in shock…who knows what she’s had to endure for the past several months. The last thing she needs is to hear all of you shouting at each other.”

“Well, what does she need?” Anya asked. “I mean…since she got back, she’s just been kind of…sack o’ potatoes. Are you sure her mind is all there?”

Immediately, Willow turned on her with a fierce expression. “Anya! She’s standing right there. How could you say—?”

Unaffected by the rebuke, Anya merely shrugged. “Well, it’s a valid question. And I don’t see how it’s going to upset her. If she is brain damaged from the cross-dimensional road trip, she won’t know what I’m talking about anyway. And if she isn’t, then why should she be offended?”

“My God! Do you have any control over what comes out of your mouth?” Willow demanded angrily.

Before the argument could escalate, Tara intervened, putting an arm around her girlfriend and gently pulling her out of the fray. “Willow…sweetie…Giles is right. Now isn’t the time.”

Xander nodded determinedly. “You’re absolutely right, Tara. It isn’t. Now’s the time to put that barrier spell back up and—”

Still clutching her sister protectively to her side, Dawn snapped at Xander: “You’ve got no right to do that spell!”

He backed down a little, but not by much. “Okay…” he said in a quieter tone. “Let’s just ask Buffy. She’s the one who Evil Dead was stalking, and she’s the one who wanted his invitation revoked in the first place. What do you say, Buff? You want us to put the invitation into effect again?”

Buffy, who until that moment had been slumped with her face in Dawn’s shoulder, startled at the sound of his voice being directed at her. She looked up, appearing thoroughly confused by the question.

“Wha…I…”

“It’s all right, Buffy,” Dawn interrupted. “You don’t have to answer that question right now. You don’t have to answer anything.” She shot the rest of them—Xander in particular—a look that warned them not to argue with her.

They might have done it anyway had Giles not said quietly, “Well put, Dawn. What Buffy needs right now is rest and quiet.”

“And a bath couldn’t hurt,” added Anya. She motioned to Buffy’s torn and filthy dress, to the parking-lot grime that streaked her arms and face.

For a moment, Giles looked exasperated.

“No…” Buffy interrupted when he started to speak. “No, she—she’s right. I think I’d like a…”

“I’ll take her,” Dawn announced before anyone else could speak. She shifted her body so that she could more comfortably support Buffy, who was still leaning on her. However, a moment after this, Buffy pulled away.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I’ll…be okay.”

Dawn nodded. “Okay. But, uh, do you need help with—”

She motioned to the dress, and an expression of dismay and irritation crossed Buffy’s face. The corset. Always the damned corset…the one thing about 1880 she wouldn’t miss. She sighed and nodded to Dawn. “Yeah…I guess I need help.”

And slowly, so slowly, she climbed the stairs to her old room, her old clothes, and her old life.

She and Dawn were hardly out of sight when the five people downstairs resumed their discussion—albeit far less heatedly than before.

“What went wrong?” Willow fretted. “She was supposed to come to the Magic Box…to us. Instead, she reappeared here—”

“Not here,” Giles countered thoughtfully. “From what Dawn said, I don’t think it was here. She must have arrived somewhere else and made her way back home on foot.”

“But why?”

“Does it matter?” Xander asked. “She’s here now.”

“But where do you suppose she’s been?” asked Anya. “Did she piggy-back on Glory’s trip to the hell dimension?”

“It would make sense—” Willow began. But Tara shook her head.

“The—the spell hit the mirror, remember? That could have altered it…thrown it off kilter and directed the teleportation somewhere else. Not to mention—” she hesitated.

“What?” Giles pressed.

“Well…w—we weren’t exactly sure whether it would work…it was a really complicated spell. Transferring solid objects…living things…it isn’t…exactly easy. And even if you know where to send them, dimensions move. So, it’s not really foolproof.”

“Then, how do you know where Glory ended up?”

Willow looked sheepish, a little nervous. “Well—here’s the thing: We don’t know exactly.”

You don’t know exactly?” Giles’ voice was incredulous, more than a little angry. “Willow, do you realize how foolish it is for you to perform magic without considering the consequences—”

“Giles, I did consider the consequences. And if it weren’t for me, Dawn would be dead now—”

“That’s true,” Anya piped up. Then she added, with a poorly concealed sense of maliciousness, “Of course, if it weren’t for you, Buffy wouldn’t have been sent to God-knows-where, been tormented for months on end, and come back brain damaged.”

“She is not brain damaged! And I didn’t do that on purpose! I never intended—”

“Whoa, whoa!” Xander interrupted, holding out his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Let’s all just take a step back here.”

“Xander is right,” Tara said. “We aren’t going to get anywhere by arguing.”

Willow nodded. She waited until she had calmed down enough to speak, and then she said to Giles, “We’ve been trying to do a locator spell. We tried to do one on Buffy as well, in order to bring her back. But it’s—”

“Very complicated,” he broke in dryly. “I know. Well, keep trying.”

She nodded with a hint of her old meekness and did not argue.

“I don’t get it,” Anya said, furrowing her brow in confusion. “How’d you get Buffy back if you didn’t know where she was?”

Tara and Willow exchanged an uneasy look.

“We channeled an ancient,” the latter said finally. Her tone and words were eerily careful. “We made it a deal.”

“What kind of deal?” Giles questioned, once again suspicious.

“A sacrifice,” she answered, adding quickly: “But not anything dangerous.”

“But dark magic.”

Tara nodded slowly, almost shamefacedly. “W—we couldn’t just leave her there. And—and we were careful. There shouldn’t be any negative consequences.”

Giles rubbed a hand across his forehead. “With magic, there are always consequences.”

There was a moment of uneasy silence then. Once again, it was broken by Xander.

“Hey, you know…we still haven’t dealt with the matter at hand, guys.”

The other four of them looked confused.

“The matter at hand?” echoed Willow.

“Spike.”

Giles made an impatient sound. “Xander, I really don’t think that Spike is important right now.”

“He is important,” Xander insisted. “Remember what he was doing right before Buffy disappeared? Stalking her, stealing her stuff? Tying her up and—”

Before he could finish, Anya suddenly decided to play Devil’s Advocate, surprising them all. “Yeah, but that was weeks before she actually left,” she said. “Plus, he can’t really hurt her now. Remember? Not while he’s got that chip in his head.”

“Not unless Drusilla decides to join in on the fun again.”

Xander looked around the group, and when no one agreed with him, he added persistently, “I mean…who knows what kinds of sick thoughts are going through his head right now?”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~






Spike paced the length of his crypt’s lower level restlessly, ceaselessly. It seemed to him that if he stopped moving even for a moment, then it would all have been a dream. A nightmare maybe. But a dream nonetheless.

He felt almost dizzy with shock…almost sick with it. It was almost unbelievable. He wouldn’t have believed it had it not been for that bracelet. So many things had faded from his memories over time…had been forcibly pushed away because they were painful. Odd that a single piece of jewelry could bring all of it back in an instant. Could bring it back with such agonizing clarity. His mind feverishly recalled the night in the music room, the night she had thanked him for buying her the bracelet. Her hand on his arm…the way she smelled…the closeness of her. All of it was suddenly so real.

Too real.

Abruptly, he spun around and lunged across the narrow passageway. His heart ached terribly, and he didn’t know what to do to ease the hurt. He did the only thing he knew how to do—he lashed out with his fists. He drew back and beat the stone wall with both hands, punching it repeatedly and with so much force chunks of rock broke off and the jagged surfaces they left behind peeled the flesh from his knuckles, so forcefully he could feel his bones giving way under the abuse. He couldn’t stop. He was hardly aware he was doing it—hardly aware that he was screaming.

You bitch, you bitch, you goddamn lying bitch!

One hand became imbedded in the rock, and he had to brace his foot against the wall to jerk it out. When he withdrew it, the fingers were twisted; it wouldn’t make a fist. Cursing, he kicked at the blood-smeared, crumbling surface.

She had known. The whole bloody time she had known that she wouldn’t last there; she had known that her motherfucking friends would find a way to bring her home. She didn’t belong there, and still she—

She made me fall in love with her. She fucked up my entire life.

He knew, goddamn it. He knew what she was playing at. Bit of a lark for her. Screw with his mind, give herself something to do while she waited for the Wicked Bitch of the West to drag her back to her real life.

She made me into what I am…she made me…

But he’d always been this way, hadn’t he? She hadn’t caused that. The look in her eyes when she saw him tonight—the utter lack of surprise—told him that.

But I was not this bad, he insisted to himself. Couldn’t have been. Not this sodding screwed up. She did that to me. All the pain—all the years of pain—she made me love her—

She made him need her.

And then she—then she—

Then, you fucking took it away!

He had no idea if he was screaming the words aloud or only in his head. There was an explosive pain in his hands and wrists; his head was pounding. He hardly even noticed it. Unable to close them into fists now, he slammed the palms of his broken hands against the stone. She might as well have stuck a blade in his heart. She might as well have been twisting it at that moment. It was a physical pain far beyond anything else he might have been feeling. It was agonizing. It was enraging. He wanted to kill himself.

He almost wanted to kill her.

Spike fell forward against the stone, bracing himself on his elbows, panting and dizzy with the thought. Something in that thought—something—

What happens on Saturday?

I kill you.


In a rush, it all came back to him. Over three years of violent hatred for the Slayer. Up until the past six months or so, he’d been—

You could never hurt me, William. I trust you never to hurt me.

—trying to kill her.

He’d tried to kill her.

And he could feel it suddenly. Feel his hands on her…beating her face…backhanding her down a set of stairs. He could feel himself kicking her with heavy boots…could feel his fangs bared and driving for her throat.

The anger drained out of him at the memories, and he slowly sank to the floor.

All I have wanted—all I want—

Is what—?

Only to be worthy of you.


A burst of hysterical laughter escaped his lips at the irony of that. The stupidity of him, to think he could be worthy of her, to think that she had loved him. To think that she could love him.

To think that he knew her at all.

He dropped his head into his broken hands and began to sob.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





Buffy had forgotten how bright their bathroom was. The pale pink wallpaper, the white tiles with blue accents…the tub-and-shower insert the color of mint chewing gum. The lighting bounced off the clean surfaces, making her squint. The blinding glare of it took her back to those moments she had spent in limbo. The moments before her return.

Dazed, Buffy stood in the center of the room, looking around her. Dawn positioned herself at Buffy’s back and fumbled first with the hooks on her bodice and then with the laces of her corset.

“I can see why you said you needed help,” said Dawn with false cheer. “These things really are a pain in the butt.”

Buffy looked over her shoulder at her sister, her face blank. It made Dawn’s smile falter; it made her eyes cloud. She bit her lip, for the moment forgetting the corset as she struggled to ask the question that had been on her mind since Buffy first reappeared.

“Buffy…where you were…where you got sent…did they…hurt you?”

Immediately, Buffy’s head snapped back around. She fixed her eyes on the bracelet that encircled her wrist and willed herself not to cry.

“No,” she said softly. “They didn’t hurt me.”

Dawn nodded—“That’s…that’s really good”—and resumed her work. It was a little bit of a struggle for her to get her fingers beneath the lacings; they were done up very tightly. But eventually she got them all loosened enough to pull off the corset.

“Do you…do you want me to turn my back now? Or, I could leave if you want…”

Buffy was staring at the water that streamed from the faucet into the half-filled bathtub, seemingly mesmerized by the cloud of steam and mounds of bubbles it produced. If she heard her sister’s question, she didn’t answer it. After a moment of uncertainty, Dawn finally started to help her undress. There was a ridiculous amount of underclothing involved in the outfit, she thought as she worked. Very Gone With the Wind-y. Buffy seemed completely out of it, completely devoid of embarrassment. So, Dawn unlaced her boots for her and removed her stockings…pulled her chemise over her head.

And then her eyes widened.

“Buffy…what is that?”

Buffy looked down at herself, at the small reddish circle that adorned the pale flesh above her collarbone. The place where, on their last night together, he had gently gnawed at her…kissed her…whispered into her flesh that she was beautiful. When he had seen the mark it left afterward, he had been upset. He was afraid he had hurt her, and it took a lot of reassurance to convince him otherwise. The thought of it made her ache inside.

Quickly, she covered the mark with her hand. She could see in her sister’s eyes that Dawn knew exactly what it was and that she was concerned. And for an instant, Buffy thought about telling her everything. But only for an instant.

“Nothing,” she mumbled instead. “It’s…nothing. And…and thanks for helping, but I think I want to be alone now.”

Dawn opened her mouth as if to protest. Then she closed it again and nodded. “Okay. If that’s what you need…”

“That’s what I need.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





When Dawn went back downstairs a few minutes later, Willow and Giles seemed to be holding a whispered conference together while the others listened. They stopped talking after Dawn walked into the room.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“We were discussing the best way to help Buffy readjust,” Giles answered. He pulled off his glasses and wiped them with a tissue—never a good sign. Then, he asked, “How is she?”

“She’s…” Dawn hesitated, unsure of how to answer the question. She didn’t know how Buffy was, except that she was oddly impassive and almost silent. And that there was a mark on her chest—

She swallowed.

“Buffy’s not really…she’s not herself.”

“We noticed,” Xander said dryly. “Any guesses as to why?”

“No, I don’t. She wasn’t exactly all up for the chitchat, you know.” She looked from Giles to Willow, as if those two were certain to hold the answer to her next question. “What—what was that outfit she was wearing? It looked old. Like…like historical or something.”

“I noticed that as well.” Giles looked at Willow. “Is there a possibility that she could have been sent to a different time instead of a different dimension?”

Willow looked offended. “No…no…I did that part of the spell right!”

Quickly, Tara broke in. “Of course y—you did, Willow. But she might have gone to another dimension similar to our own. Some place where they wear corsets,” she finished lamely.

Giles cleared his throat, clearly skeptical. “Yes. Well, regardless of where she was, I think it is safe to assume that her experiences there were traumatic. Her behavior says as much. The question is, how long will it last…and what can we do to help her in the meantime.”

There was a thoughtful silence at that, a moment where they all racked their brains. Finally, Willow said softly:

“I think—I think maybe we should call Angel.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

 
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