“Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.” - George Santayana

Near Kyoto, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Kaede watched as the eta loaded the last of the heads into baskets. They would be scattered to the winds, sent to shrines and castles, eight places as far from each other as possible. Each would be assigned to a family or sect to guard through the generations, and even she would not know all their locations. Maybe it would be enough to ensure that Orochi would never rise again.

Maybe.

She had refused to leave her post while the eta, the handlers of the dead, finished their grisly work. She had not slept since the battle, refusing food or rest until the field of battle was clear. Long black hair blew around her face, tangling and waving in the cold wind along with the tattered remains of her once-white kimono. Blood stained the trailing edges of the fabric. It was no surprise that none of the monks cared to linger long enough to insist that she eat or sleep. Her appearance and the hard, steely glint in her dark brown eyes were enough to keep them all at bay. None of the pain she felt made its way to her face. Her wounds hurt, but she refused to acknowledge them. After all, they would heal soon enough.

The same could not be said for her heart.

Kaede had always known that her time in this world was limited. As a slayer, she had thought she understood her destiny: to fight and eventually fall facing the vampires. She was to hold back the darkness for as long as she could and then die young, allowing another to take her place.

She was supposed to be the one who died fighting. It was her duty, her sacred calling, and the dark irony of the situation did not escape her. She knew in her soul that she should not have walked away from this fight.

Takeshi’s ashes had blown across the plain to be trampled into the snow. Kaede’s knuckles clenched white around the sword in her right hand, a dark mimic of the one resting on her left hip. The lacquered wood of the scabbard was smooth and warm against her skin. She would keep her promise, to Takeshi and to herself.

Kaede watched as Ichiro organized the monks and eta who would be transporting the baskets. She could feel his gaze, even at a distance. He would never know the truth of what had happened here. He did not deserve it. When all traces of the battle were cleared away, she would be escorted back to Edo. The monks would help her purify her mind and body, wash away the taint of death that seemed to follow her everywhere. She would leave this place, but she would never forget.

Kaede’s hand moved to her stomach. Takeshi had heard the new life there, growing in her womb. If it was a boy, she would name the child after his father, but a girl? A girl she would name Tsukiko. After all, what better name was there for the daughter of a slayer and a vampire than Child of the Moon?

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

“All I’m saying is that you either owe me some marathon girl time for therapy or about a ton of chocolate.” Buffy paced the length of her dorm room, her nervous energy carrying her back and forth between the confining walls.

The slayer could feel Willow’s wide eyed gaze, pleading and contrite. “Buffy, I said I was sorry. I’ve made with the groveling. I even baked you cookies. I don’t know what else I can do.”

“Do you have any idea what this is like?” Buffy stopped in her tracks and faced her best friend. “Do you?” her voice took on a panicked edge. “I kissed him Willow! And he was good at it.” She sat down abruptly on the squeaky dorm mattress and dropped her face into her hands. “I think about the…” her skin crawled with barely disguised disgust, Yes, disgust, we’re going with that explanation, “kissing, and the other… stuff and this is all your fault!”

Buffy glared around her fingers at the redheaded witch. Willow’s eyes had grown wider and wider throughout the litany. At that moment, they looked ready to roll out of her skull. The slayer groaned and covered her eyes again.

This is a nightmare. Yup, I’m gonna wake up any second now…

Ever since Willow’s “Will Be Done” spell, Buffy had not been able to go an hour without thinking about the peroxided pest. Spike had seemed about as impressed with the entire situation as the slayer. After she had managed to get him back to Giles’ apartment and safely chained back in the bathtub, the Scoobies had been treated to his loud and very profane feelings on the matter. He had finally promised to stop yelling if he was allowed in the living room while Giles and a mortified Willow explained what had happened. His laundry list of complaints had not stopped, even if the volume had been scaled back. It had finally taken Willow literally shoving a cookie into his mouth to silence him.

Stupid, obnoxious, evil, sexy vampire. No! Bad Buffy, not ‘sexy.’ ‘Sick,’ that was what I meant.

Buffy dug the heels of her hands into her eyes as if trying to squeeze the last couple days out of her mind. To make matters worse, a pall had fallen over her relationship with Riley. He had accepted her hasty explanation of her strange behavior readily enough, but he had never stopped looking at her like she was going to explode or start speaking in tongues. Not that she could really blame him.

Not when three days later she was still thinking about another man’s lips.

Buffy abruptly jumped to her feet and grabbed her toiletries bag from her dresser. “I’m going to go brush my teeth.”

“But you’ve already…” started Willow.

“And I’m going to do it again.” How could she explain to Willow that she could still taste smoke and whiskey, blood and cool lips whenever she closed her eyes? How could she tell her best friend that she had brushed her teeth until her gums smarted under the assault the night before and still woke to the flavor of Spike on her tongue? How could she reassure the redheaded witch when she could not make sense of the tangle in her own mind?

Minty freshness, here I come.

“I’ll be back in a sec Wills,” and with that the slayer left the room, fleeing the worried gaze of her friend.

Fifteen minutes later she finally gave up. With leaden steps, Buffy returned to her room. She found Willow hanging up the phone. “That was Giles. He wants us to meet him at his apartment.” The witch looked at her worriedly. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Right as rain.” The forced cheerfulness in her voice made Buffy wince inwardly. In spite of it all, she managed to conjure a cheerful smile. “Let’s go see what Giles wants.”

*****

Buffy, with Willow in tow, came bounding through the watcher’s front door not twenty minutes later. Seeing Giles pacing on the far side of the room, she called out, “Hey Giles! What’s the what?”

The watcher looked up from the letter he had been reading and nodded vaguely at the two girls. “Hello Buffy, Willow. Why don’t you have a seat,” he gestured with his free hand towards the couch.

When Buffy got closer to the couch, her eyes were drawn to the open wooden box that sat on the coffee table. “Look Willow! Giles brought me toys!” Two katanas, one in a black scabbard, the other in a tan sheath, sat inside of the velvet lined case. The swords were obviously old, the fabric wrappings on the hilts stained and frayed by time, the lacquer on the sheaths brittle and cracking, but Buffy’s hands itched to hold one of the weapons.

Buffy tossed herself onto the couch and pulled her feet up next to her. She looked up at Giles, face expectant as Willow took a seat next to her. Mysterious weapons and letters promised to provide a distraction from her unfortunate vampire obsession. Anything had to be better than rotting in her dorm room, replaying the events of Willow’s spell over and over in her mind.

Her watcher cleared his throat and held up the folded pieces of paper. “This is a letter from Quentin Travers.”

Okay, maybe not anything.

Buffy’s fingers dug into the fabric upholstery. “What part of ‘I don’t work for the Council anymore’ does he not understand?”

“Please Buffy. I know how you feel about the Watcher’s Council. For what it’s worth, I share your sentiments, but this seems to be important.” When Buffy released her death grip on the armrest, he continued. “He, ah, sends his regards and has forwarded the following letter and weapons,” he gestured vaguely towards the two swords, “from a Miss Reiko Maruyama.”

“Another watcher?” Buffy’s voice was cold and dismissive.

“No, actually. I guess you would call her a legacy. Her ancestor was a slayer in Japan some three hundred years ago.”

“But I thought that slayers don’t usually…” Willow trailed off with an apologetic glance at Buffy.

The slayer filled in the blanks in her own mind. Slayers don’t usually live long enough to have children. It was something she had tried not to think about ever since being chosen. Being a mother, watching her children grow, buying baby clothes: those were a few amongst a thousand childhood dreams that she didn’t think she would ever get to experience. Dreams she tried to pretend weren’t important anymore.

Buffy smiled at Willow, but her lips were thin and no warmth reached her eyes. Either Willow was too distracted to notice or Buffy was getting better at putting on a happy face whenever the going got rough. Then again, maybe she had been pretending for so long that her friend couldn’t tell the difference.

“Her name was Kaede, and she is one of the few slayers in recorded history who had a child.” Giles’ voice was clipped, businesslike as he continued. “I won’t bore you with the more technical details, but Kaede was responsible for defeating the demon lord Orochi. Despite her best efforts, she could not kill him though, so she dismembered him and his heads were sent to castles and monasteries all over Japan to be protected.”

“Wait,” Buffy interrupted. “Heads?”

“Yes, ah.” Giles scanned the rest of the letter. “Eight actually. He was apparently quite large.”

Buffy and Willow exchanged glances and the slayer rolled her eyes. “Quite large” could mean just about anything, none of it good.

Giles continued. “Four of the heads went missing during the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate. Two more after World War II. Over the last few months, the final two heads were stolen.”

“Stolen?” asked Willow. “Who would want two demon heads?”

“I’m afraid that a better question would be: who would want all eight heads? The first head was taken two months ago in Osaka, Japan. The monks guarding the shrine could not identify their attackers, but they did describe the men as well trained and equipped, maybe professional military.

“Then last week, the final head was taken from the Maruyama dojo in Chicago. Miss Maruyama was abroad at the time, apparently visiting relatives back in Japan, but her senior student had the misfortune of finding the robbery in progress. He was shot with some kind of tranquilizer, but not before he heard one of them speak.” Giles paused and gave Buffy a pointed glance. “They were American.”

“You think our little tin soldiers have been stepping up their extracurricular activities?” When the watcher nodded, Buffy continued, “But Giles, why would they go all saving private headless anyway?”

“With the proper rituals and all eight heads, Orochi can be resurrected. I would imagine that they intend to experiment on him, or maybe do to him what they did to Spike. I pray that is not the case though, because without certain spells and potions, which have been kept secret by the guardians of the heads,” he gestured with the note again, “Orochi cannot be injured or even feel pain. Trying to control him with a chip would be worse than useless.”

“Please tell me they sent their whole mystical cookbook.” Buffy asked, all business. “Don’t get me wrong, I love a good slay, but if I can’t even hurt this Olestra, then I’d rather take a rain check.”

“Orochi,” whispered Willow.

“Whatever.” Buffy looked up to find Giles watching her with a long suffering expression barely concealing his amusement. “Giles? Spells?”

The watcher cleared his throat. “Yes, the requisite ingredients and incantations are all here.” He shuffled the pages for a moment. “They seem common enough, even though the combinations are certainly unique. Also, the swords are important. It says here that they must be wielded by the slayer and, ah,” he scanned through the papers again before stopping and peering at Buffy cautiously over the rim of his glasses.

That reaction was never good. “What is it?” Buffy asked.

Giles finally met her eyes, but his gaze was guarded. “And her vampiric consort.”

Buffy found herself under the expectant eyes of her watcher and best friend. She glanced between them, nonplussed.

“Conswha huh?”

“Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.” - Søren Kierkegaard

Near Kyoto, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Kaede and Takeshi stood back to back, surrounded by fetid steam that rose from the torn scales and stinking flesh of the demon lord. Orochi was defeated, but he was not dead.

Takeshi turned in time to watch Kaede sheathe her sword, her motions elegant and silent: the product of years of training. She was as deadly as she was beautiful, especially with a blade in her hands.

He looked at his own sword. Its gleaming surface clean of blood despite the battle it had just seen. It was strange to look at the katana without seeing his reflection in the mirror-like finish. The folded steel and sinuous temper line always evoked a sense of calm in Takeshi. The blade was a true work of art; Kaede’s father had bestowed a great gift upon his daughter and son-in-law, perhaps greater than even he could have ever known.

With a deft roll of his wrist, Takeshi slid the sword soundlessly into its scabbard. He looked up to see Kaede watching him, her eyes wide and wet with unshed tears.

“You came,” she said, her voice wavering.

Takeshi raised an armored hand to her cheek. “Of course I did. How could I not?”

“But Ichiro said…”

“Your watcher is wise to the teachings of his Council, but they do not like or accept exceptions in the war they fight.” Takeshi’s other hand absently stroked the fabric wrapped hilt of his katana. “Thanks to your father, I am one of those exceptions.”

Kaede’s own hand rose to cover the one cupping her cheek. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“The sword, dearest.” He smiled and lifted his other hand to wipe away a tear that had escaped the slayer’s eye. “My soul went into it when I died. When I rose again, it was still there, waiting.”

Kaede leaned into his hand, her tears flowing in earnest. “I am so sorry,” she whispered. “I did not know…”

Takeshi cupped both of her cheeks and forced her to meet his gaze. “How could you? I do not blame you, Kaede.” He pulled the slayer, his wife, into his arms and allowed her to sob against the lacquered finish of his armor. “You are the slayer, and I am a vampire.”

The two warriors stood together among the remains of their enemy, momentarily oblivious to the ruin around them. Takeshi allowed himself to run a hand through Kaede’s long, blue-black hair, soothing her tears and letting the intimacy of the moment wash over him. However, reality soon came crashing back as the vampire noticed the barest lightening of the sky to the east over Kaede’s shoulder.

“Kaede, listen to me.” With a heavy heart, Takeshi pushed her to arm’s length and looked into her eyes. “I do not have much more time. The sun will rise soon.”

The slayer’s eyes widened in panic. “We can hide you! Find somewhere…”

Takeshi slashed his hand through the air in a negating motion. “Look around us,” he gestured at the wide, open plain in which they stood. The white blanket of snow was not even broken by the shade of a single tree to provide sanctuary from the rising sun. Had his horse been alive, he might have been able to reach the tree-line, but the animal lay in a pool of its own blood, torn by Orochi’s fangs. It never even occured to the vampire to hide with the remains of their fallen enemy. The spiritual pollution, even in his undead state, would have been unthinkable to the former samurai. “There is nowhere for me to hide. Now listen.”

Takeshi untied his sageo and pulled the katana from his belt. “You must take this.” Kaede was still shaking her head in denial. “You must. It holds everything that I am, and I will not have it misused when I am gone. Take it and go to the temple at Ise. There is a priestess there who has information about how to finally kill Orochi should he rise again.”

He extended the sword to her, blade facing him and parallel to the ground in the age old courtesy. Kaede’s nerveless hands wrapped around the black, lacquered scabbard. “I will do as you ask.” Her voice was dull as she clutched the sword to her chest.

The sky had lightened further, the coming glow finally visible to human eyes. Kaede’s tear streaked face turned to the eastern horizon in resignation.

Takeshi let his gaze wander over her face, tracing its contours one last time. In the silence, he heard the slightest flutter. His eyes narrowed and he focused on the vampiric senses that he had not had time to develop. He heard the sound again and his eyes flew wide as he located its source.

A pale hand stole across Kaede’s stomach. She turned to him, questions rising in her eyes at his odd gesture. The confusion on her face only increased when a radiant smile graced the vampire’s face. “You are with child.” Her mouth opened as if to speak, but no words came. “I can hear it.”

Kaede’s hand covered his own and she laced her fingers through his. Takeshi allowed himself to dream for a moment. He thought of what could have been, had fate not intervened. He would have had the family he had long desired. Grief flooded his frame, but he would not let the feelings surface. He would face his final death with dignity and stoicism for Kaede’s sake.

“It is time.” Takeshi reluctantly pulled his hand away from the slayer’s grasp and backed away.

“I will take the sword to Ise, and I will raise your child with the knowledge that you died a hero. I promise.” Her hand remained over her stomach and she managed to stop her tears.

Takeshi smiled at the brave face she presented him. “We will see each other again, beloved. If death could not keep us separated, neither will my dusting. I will wait for you.”

“And I will come, when the time is right.”

The sky was streaked with reds and purples, a sight Takeshi had thought to never see again. When the sun crested the horizon, the vampire allowed the pain to wash over and through him. Motes of ash, his own dust, drifted past his vision. Flames erupted from his skin, but he was beyond caring. His eyes remained fixed on the slayer and the sunrise behind her. It was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. No matter what fate awaited him, he knew that this vision would see him through a thousand trials.

Then he knew no more.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

The porcelain was cold and hard, but the indignity of his situation bothered Spike more than any physical discomfort he might have felt. He was chained to the shower fixtures in a watcher’s bathtub, surrounded by enemies and waiting to be fed week-old pig’s blood from a novelty mug. He had not been allowed to bathe or change his clothes in a week and his thoughts constantly returned to the bit of silicon and wires the Initiative had shoved into his head.

His only comfort was in knowing that he had survived challenging times before and he would again. Maybe his past experiences were not exactly the same, but living as a fledgling under Angelus, Darla, and Dru had had its moments. He had killed two slayers in his time, a feat few other vampires could match. Not to mention St. Petersburg, Rome, Paris, New York, Chicago, Prague… Yes, Spike had always managed to make it through the stickiest of situations with enough scars to keep things interesting, but with most of his hide fairly intact. A vampire does not live to celebrate its first centennial without having a good dose of luck and adaptability.

That luck seemed in short supply as Spike lay in the bathtub, futilely attempting to get comfortable. He had finally managed to curl up on his side, head propped on the lip of the tub in a somewhat less cramped position when the slayer’s exasperated shout caught his attention.

“He is not my consort!”

Well, this might be interestin.’

The watcher’s weary voice answered. Even with vampiric hearing, Spike could only pick out a few words, the most prominent among them being “Angel,” “figurative,” and “temporary.”

‘L see myself staked before I let Angelus see me this weak again.

The human’s conversation continued, but their voices soon dropped out of even a vampire’s hearing range. Finally giving up, Spike tried again to relax. He was soon asleep.

*****

“Wake up!” The imperious voice of an irritated slayer woke Spike from a dead sleep, sending him upright in surprise. Or it would have had the chains around his hands and feet not immediately jerked him back, causing him to crack his head against the porcelain and slither badly in the slick tub.

The vampire suppressed a groan at the new pain in his head. He would not give the slayer the pleasure, especially not when she was wearing that derisive smile under the false pretense of compassion.

“Dinner time, you know the drill,” the slayer said coldly. Giles appeared in the door of the bathroom, crossbow trained on the vampire’s chest.

Spike scowled, even as he raised his hands for the slayer’s attention. “You know I can’t hurt you. I think you’ve just got a thing for tyin’ me up ‘s all.” In some twisted corner of his mind, Spike hoped that irritating the slayer and her watcher enough would convince them to finally untie him and free him of this godforsaken bathroom. He leered at Buffy suggestively as the slayer released the links from his wrists and went to work on the ones binding his ankles. “Bet you dream about chainin’ me up and havin’ your way with me.”

That was apparently the wrong thing to say because the slayer’s hand faltered around the link on his left leg, sending the sharp edges of the key across his shin. It didn’t really hurt, but he complained all the same. “Oi! Watch what you’re doin’ with that thing!”

Buffy’s face turned a particularly unflattering shade of red and she opened her mouth to let fly with what passed for a colorful insult in this day and age, but her watcher beat her to the punch. “Do be silent Spike. I would hate for you to make me nervous when I was aiming a crossbow at your heart.”

The slayer smiled victoriously when that earned nothing beyond a dark scowl from the vampire. Spike truly hated that expression on her face. No other slayer had been able to send him into the towering fits of rage that this one could conjure with ease. He had never hated the slayers he had faced before. Not really. They were simply challenges, ways for a young vampire to prove himself. Their meetings had always been about the heat of battle, the rush of the fight, and the sharp edge of danger, not the girls themselves. Not so with this one. He had no idea why Buffy Summers evoked such a visceral reaction in him, and part of him feared finding the answer.

Spike rose stiffly when the last chain fell away and the slayer backed out of his reach. Hours in a tub made him creak like an elderly human. He flexed his arms and massaged his wrists.

“Move it.” As expected, the slayer had managed to produce a stake from somewhere in her skimpy outfit and was holding it at the ready, eyes hard and cold as steel. With as much dignity as he could muster given the circumstances, Spike stepped out of the bathtub and made his way past the slayer and watcher to the living room and the chair they had designated as his.

He found Willow sitting on the watcher’s couch, reading through some papers and nibbling on one of her guilt cookies. When she looked up from her readings, her eyes held a pleasing glimmer of fear, which helped assuage the vampire’s fragile ego.

“’Lo Red. Glad you could join me for lunch. Rupes ‘ere tends to be stingy with the blood, but I’m sure he’d share if you’d like.” Spike had barely started to grin at the horrified look on the witch’s face when Buffy’s foot slammed into the back of his knee, dropping him unceremoniously into the waiting chair. “’Ey! Watch it!” Buffy answered him with a falsely sweet smile.

Bloody bint.

The vampire met her cloyingly sweet expression with a long, angry glare before Buffy scooped up a rope and started winding it around his waist. The entire ritual was beyond ridiculous. They didn’t even bother to tie his hands anymore, not that the extra bonds would have mattered much. If he had really wanted to, Spike could have smashed the simple wooden chair to kindling and shrugged his way out of the ropes with ease. In the long hours of the night when his mind was most awake, even as he lay chained in the watcher’s tub, he often wondered why he did not do that very thing.

Spike would have voluntarily dusted before admitting, even to himself, that it was the ghost of Willow’s spell that kept him still and compliant under the slayer’s ministrations.

Ministrations that at that moment were revealing more of the slayer’s cleavage than the vampire could believe she planned as she bent over him. Mortal enemies or not, Spike wasn’t blind. After giving him an eyeful, Buffy deposited a mug of warm blood into his hand and flounced over to join her watcher and the witch. He watched her retreat with thinly veiled appreciation before taking a sip of his blood.

Huh. Ninety-eight point six. Since when did the slayer get so thoughtful?

For once, he drank his meal in silence.

“Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.” - David Hume

Near Kyoto, Japan: Genroku Year 4

They danced. Amidst the raining blood and scales, they whirled and sliced and wove a pattern of pain for the demon lord. Kaede swung onto one massive coil and sliced through the stalk of Orochi’s nearest neck, severing a third head. She was tossed from her perch as the serpentine stump thrashed in agony. The slayer landed heavily on her back, but was up in an instant, sword leading the way as she plunged back into the tangled snarl of scales.

Takeshi fought beside her, his dark armor stained with demonic blood. Every silver arc of his blade left destruction in its wake. He had been a skilled warrior as a human, peerless in the art of kenjutsu. As a vampire, he was awe inspiring. In the back of her mind, the part that was not solely concerned with survival, Kaede recognized him for what he truly was: her fighting equal.

A fourth head soon came crashing to the ground, and a fifth. Kaede and Takeshi darted in and out of the giant coils, aiming for the remaining three heads, but landing heavy blows against whatever part of the demon presented itself. The mass of coils and writhing flesh that was Orochi shivered and convulsed, showering the warriors with scales and blood. Deep, rippling cries of pain, so low as to almost be felt instead of heard, came from the gigantic beast.

Takeshi leapt for one of the remaining heads. Focused on his goal, he never saw the barbed tail that slammed into his back, but Kaede did.

With an incoherent cry of rage, Kaede attacked Orochi with a flurry of rapid cuts and stabs, her katana flickering silver in the bright moonlight. She tore into the mass of scales, severing another head and slicing deep gashes in the looped flesh and darting tails that came within striking distance.

Kaede stood over Takeshi as he regained his feet. Slayer and vampire stood back to back as Orochi’s loose coils closed in a ring around them. Everywhere she looked, Kaede saw death waiting.

There were too many coils to watch, too many targets and potential threats. Kaede took a steadying breath and let herself fall back into her training. Pain, worry, doubt: she let it all fall away. Thought followed until there was nothing left to clutter her mind. Kaede existed in the moment, with nothing to distract her from the battle at hand, a heightened state of awareness called zanshin. The moon seemed brighter, color crisper, and time seemed to slow to a crawl. She watched one of Orochi’s bladed tails dive towards her head, only to be intercepted by her blade. She watched her katana, a wedding gift from her father, dive into the throat of one of Orochi’s heads. Her body acted upon pure instinct, her eyes taking in her surroundings and reacting without any conscious guidance.

She sensed rather than saw the dark power behind her. It mirrored her movements, moving with a grace and fluidity only matched by her own. Wrapped in the stillness of the void, Kaede knew without knowing that dark entity behind her could be trusted with guarding her life, her very soul.

Her katana sliced through one throat just as the last head fell to the ground behind her. The malevolent energy of the giant serpent flared in sudden brilliance before collapsing in upon itself, leaving the barest glimmer of life behind.

Kaede let her sword tip drop to the ground. She released the calm emptiness and allowed conscious thought to flood back into her mind. Time returned to normal, and she became intimately aware of her own condition. Nicks and scratches covered every inch of her body. A deep gash cut across her ribs, but she could not remember when she had received it. Her clothing had been reduced to shreds, she was covered in sweat, and without the emptiness of zanshin, all of her stress and weariness returned in force.

Kaede looked across the field of battle. Orochi lay in loose coils all around her. Pieces of demon, some identifiable, some not, were scattered across a wide area, marring the white perfection of the snow. Steam rose from the torn body of the demon, covering the field with a hazy mist.

Even though her blade was clean, protected somehow by the potion that coated it, Kaede performed a quick chiburi, a formal blood shedding technique, before sliding it back into her scabbard. The action, smooth and silent, was comforting in its familiarity. She took solace in the long practiced actions, trying to find an anchor for her mind amid her confusing emotions.

She could sense the vampire, no the man, behind her. Her thoughts were a tangle: love and fear, caution and wild relief. She took a steadying breath and turned to face Takeshi, the man who had been her husband.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

Buffy nibbled at her chocolate chip cookie disinterestedly. She tried to pay attention to Giles’ droning explanations, she really did, but her eyes kept going to the sullen vampire on the other side of the room. Spike was nursing his mug of blood and pretending to not watch the people gathered around Giles’ bookshelf.

Buffy thought about her time under Willow’s spell. It had been strange, her behavior and thoughts had been guided by the conjured “love” from the magic, but she had still been Buffy at heart. Her actions had still been her own, which led her to the question: were Spike’s actions indicative of his true nature?

Yes he had teased her and made sarcastic comments to her friends, but he had also lavished praise upon her fighting skills and beauty, speaking the kind of words that could even make a slayer blush. He had worried aloud that he would not be able to protect her in that crypt, a gesture that had been equal parts touching and irritating. When the chips were down, he had jumped to her defense, discovering that the governmental programming did not keep him from hurting demons, by attacking one of the creatures as it had stood over the prone slayer. When the last demon had been defeated, he had scooped up Buffy in his arms and twirled her around the crypt, kissing her all the while and jubilant that he could join her on patrols. Buffy couldn’t help but wonder if that had been the real Spike, the one that was usually kept under layers of bravado.

Willow had appeared and broken the spell, sending the two old enemies back at each others’ throats, but Buffy had noticed something right before her closed fist had slammed into the vampire’s sharp cheekbones. She thought she had seen a hint of sadness, of regret in the vampire’s blue eyes.

“Buffy, have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?” Giles’ voice cut into the slayer’s line of reasoning, yanking her back into the present. Two sets of eyes pinned her to her chair, ironically the same one that she and Spike had shared while under Willow’s spell. Buffy cast about, trying to sift through her preoccupation and find the thread of the conversation once again. Failing miserably, she offered up an apologetic smile that she knew did not look very sincere.

“How about one of you introduce me to my new weapon and just point me in the right direction?” She tried to joke, but her words were lost on her watcher.

Giles gave a long-suffering sigh and removed his glasses to pass a hand over his eyes. “We have to call Angel first so that we can see if the swords will accept both of you.” He replaced his glasses and pinned Buffy with a pointed look. “Which you would have known, had you been paying the slightest bit off attention.”

“Okay, okay. Just call me attento-girl from here on out.” Giles’ eyes told her what he thought of that statement, and Willow snickered. “I’ll call Angel as soon as we’re done here,” she heard a growl from the far side of the room, but chose to ignore it. In truth, she wasn’t very happy about the situation either. Angel’s last stint into stalking, followed by his strange behavior and stilted dismissal in L.A., had driven another wedge between the slayer and the subject of her high school infatuation. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the dark, brooding vampire anymore, but she was pretty certain that is wasn’t in a consorty way. That way held badness, and she had been trying to sever her heart’s ties to Angel ever since his departure from Sunnydale. It was strange how successfully she had been. Buffy sometimes wondered why their estrangement didn’t hurt more.

Willow spoke up then. “Giles, could we go ahead and look at the tangs? I know that we’ll have to anyway before Angel and Buffy use them, but I would love to take some time to study the inscriptions there.” The redhead’s eyes were wide and guileless. “It sounds like a binding of some kind, and they just don’t make those like they used to.”

The watcher smiled slightly at the redheaded witch. “I believe that we could both profit from learning what kind of magic was used when the swords were forged. Give me a moment.” Giles went to his weapons chest and rummaged around in it before returning with a small rectangular box. From it he produced a small brass implement that screwed apart into a small peg and hammer. He unsheathed the blade in the lighter scabbard and used the small tools to remove two wooden pegs from the sword’s hilt. With practiced ease, the handle, hand-guard, and a wide array of smaller bits and pieces were removed and arranged on the table, leaving the blade bare.

A faint white glow emanated from the archaic Japanese words that decorated the length of the tang. “That is odd,” the watcher murmured.

Both Willow and Buffy leaned in to get a better look. “I thought you said the letters would only glow when Buffy and Angel were both here?” asked Willow.

Giles peered at the tang in confusion. “They shouldn’t. I don’t understand why Kaede’s blade is reacting.” He looked at his slayer. “Buffy, please come here for a moment.” Sure enough, when the slayer rose from her chair and walked to within touching distance of the katana, the carved calligraphy burst into brilliant light.

A worried, disdainful expression crossed the watcher’s face. “The letter said that the swords will only react when the slayer and the vampire who is destined to help her fight Orochi are both near?” His question was rhetorical, but the two girls nodded anyway. Giles continued with a decidedly unenthusiastic tone of voice. “As much as I do not want to bring up the possibility, what if Angel is not the vampire we should be looking for?”

As if by some unspoken cue, everyone in the room turned to look at the one vampire present. Spike, who looked like he was still attempting to ignore the proceedings around him, finally met their weighted stares with a defensive snarl.

“What now?”

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.” - Karl Marx

Near Kyoto, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Takeshi rode for all he was worth, pushing his black mare to the limits of her endurance. Branches struck him across the face as he sped through the trees, but he barely noticed their sting. Only one thing mattered: getting to Kaede in time.

He had fallen behind during the day. Forced to take refuge under a rocky overhang, he had paced the confines of the tiny cave, knowing that every second that passed, Kaede’s palanquin was being carried closer and closer to a battle that she could not win.

He had soundly cursed his fate, his vampiric nature, and particularly Sano, his late and unlamented sire. He had railed against the sun for keeping him trapped, the gods for cursing him with life beyond the grave, and Ichiro, for sending his slayer on this suicide mission. In the end, he had spent the final hours of daylight damning himself for not being strong enough to avoid being turned, for not being able to convince Kaede of his continued loyalty, for not being fast enough to reach her with the potion and news he carried from Ise.

With the sun’s light still fading on the horizon, Takeshi had left the cave, riding hard down the Tokaido, the highway that connected Edo to Kyoto, the only road Kaede could have taken.

He had caught her signature an hour after sunset. He did not think he would ever get used to his ability to identify people on scent, but there were moments that he could appreciate the talent. He followed the wispy trail of steel and sweat, silk and white plums, the perfume she wore in her long black hair, when it lead him off of the Tokaido and into the wild. Kaede’s party became easy to track as they had made their way across virgin snow.

When his horse finally broke through the tree line into a wide, snow covered expanse of barren land, he knew he was getting close. Fire had scoured the area bare of trees for miles around and the glow of the moon on the snow gave the plain an ethereal beauty. The tracks and the scent pulled him onward. He goaded his horse into even greater speeds, cold fear gripping his unbeating heart when he detected a new scent on the wind. It smelled of damp earth, rotting flesh, the stagnancy of truly dead water, and through it all a scent he found disgusting even as it called to him: human blood.

After what felt like an eternity, he crested a small ridge and nearly fell when his horse reared in panic. For the first time, Takeshi saw Orochi in all of his terrible glory. The monster’s true size was difficult to gauge, thanks to the endless coils that could tangle together into a mass the size of a small house, or spread far and wide to cover a city block. At irregular intervals, Orochi’s eight barbed tails bobbed and reared, moving as if they had minds of their own. In some ways they did, because eight great heads weaved and dipped among the coils and dangerous tails. This was the demon lord that had only known defeat before at the hands of a god.

On some level, the vampire took note of all of this, but his eyes were riveted to the figure in white who held the demon lord’s attentions. Even as he watched, Kaede landed a strong blow against one of Orochi’s writhing coils, but the wound immediately closed again, leaving no trace in its passing. In retaliation, one of the serpentine tails swept across the snow, tossing the slayer aside like a rag doll.

Takeshi spurred his horse forward, forcing the maddened beast to obey. He drew his katana, coated with the potions the priestess Ai had given him, and charged down the hill, screaming a battle cry.

All eight of Orochi’s malevolent heads turned to face this new threat. With seeming disdain, the demon lord struck at Takeshi with one of its heads. The vampire leapt from his horse in time to see the razor sharp teeth sink through the mare’s throat. The horse, another gift from Ai, screamed in pain, thrashing in her death throes. Even as Takeshi struck, he lamented the creature’s death. His mount had deserved a better fate. Down came his blade, arcing through the scaled neck and severing one great head.

This wound did not heal. Ai had been right.

Orochi reared back in pain and surprise. Taking advantage of the moment, Takeshi pulled a pouch from his belt and threw it toward Kaede who had regained her feet, if not her voice. She was staring at him with wide eyes, her mouth agape and her sword tip nearly touching the ground. She stirred from her shock in time to catch the bag midair.

“Kaede, pour the potion on your sword! It was blessed by a priestess of Amaterasu!” The smallest flicker of understanding dawned in the slayer’s eyes. Takeshi moved to defend her as she hurriedly opened the bag and removed the small vial within.

The vampire’s sword turned the attack of one tail and landed a solid blow against a part of Orochi’s writhing body before he noticed Kaede standing at his side. He chanced a glance at her face and saw the confusion and other warring emotions written there. “I am here as your ally Kaede. All else can wait until after the battle.”

She looked as if she was about to protest when suddenly the slayer’s eyes opened wide. With a speed he had no hope to follow, she struck him across the chest, sending him sprawling to the ground. His surprise was complete when he saw scaled jaws snap closed not a hand’s breadth above his chest. The silver flicker of Kaede’s sword cut through the creature’s head, mangling it beyond repair. Orochi howled, an unearthly sound so low and pain-filled that it rattled through the vampire’s bones.

The next thing he knew, Takeshi found himself staring up into the twinkling eyes of the woman who had been his wife. A smile tugged at her lips as she offered a hand and pulled him swiftly to his feet. Despite the danger, not to mention indignity, of his situation, Takeshi laughed. This was battle as he remembered it: facing the thrill of the fight with dark humor and the woman he loved.

The spell was broken when Orochi pressed his attack again. The two warriors shared a look of complete understanding and harmony before returning to the fray.

All else could wait until after the battle. They had a demon lord to slay.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

“Sod off, Rupert.”

Spike sat in the hard, wooden chair, still tied, with his arms crossed and an expression of complete revulsion on his face. Giles had been trying to talk him into joining the white hats and taking out some ancient Japanese demon-god-thing. The vampire was having none of it.

“You keep me chained in your loo for weeks, feed me coagulated slop, let your little slayer torment me at every turn, and now you want my help? Not bleeding likely.”

The watcher was sitting in a similar chair, sans ropes of course, holding his glasses in one hand and his head in the other. “Your part in this has been preordained. You have to help.”

“Don’t have to do anything, mate.”

“We could pay you.”

That gave the vampire pause. “Doubt you’d be able to meet my price,” he said at length.

Giles looked up from his hands and his eyes held the most pleading look the vampire had ever seen. Spike was unmoved. He smirked at the watcher when the raised voices across the room made it plain that Willow was having about as much luck with Buffy as Giles was having with him.

“Get this chip out of my head and we might have a deal.”

Giles looped his glasses through his fingers and allowed his face to sink again into his open palms. “I need a drink,” Spike heard the man mumble.

“You and me both, old man.”

“I hardly think that you have the right to be casting dispersions upon my age.”

Spike simply shrugged. “Pour us both a round of scotch, not that swill you have in the kitchen either, the good stuff hidden in your study, and I might feel a little more charitable,” he said, not really meaning anything past the request for alcohol.

“How do you know about…?”

“I’m dead Rupes, not stupid.”

With a sigh that seemed to come from the soles of his feet, the watcher rose from his chair and walked to his study. From the bottom, right hand drawer, under files and a few strategically placed books, was the subject of Spike’s interest: a bottle of Laphroaig, aged fifteen years. Giles poured two glasses, no ice, before returning to his chair and offering the vampire one of the drinks.

The liquid was smoky and burned pleasantly on the way down his throat. It was the best thing that had passed his lips in a long, long time. Spike closed his eyes and savored the moment.

“Now where were we?” Giles interrupted.

Spike looked at the watcher, scowl returning in full force. “You were tryin’ to convince me to don a cape and tights and fight along side your little Scoobies.”

Watcher and vampire stared at one another for a long beat. Spike was unnerved when Giles’ eyes opened wide, then narrowed and took on a calculating glint.

“Spit it out Rupes. Neither of us is getting any older.” He smiled sarcastically, “Well maybe you are…”

The watcher let the jab pass and sipped from his glass. “I was just thinking that if you wouldn’t fight against Orochi for any of the right reasons, maybe revenge would be a better impetus.”

That had Spike’s full attention.

“Think about it Spike. Miss Maruyama’s letter said that the last of Orochi’s heads was stolen from her home by a group of American commandos.” Suddenly the conversation became a great deal more interesting to the vampire. In truth, he had missed that little bit of information before. “They were traced to Sunnydale, which seems to have an underground military force with a penchant for experimenting on demons.” Giles gave Spike a pointed look.

“Go on,” the vampire growled.

“It’s just that a demon of Orochi’s size and strength, he would have to be a rather important project for such a group, don’t you think? Maybe even the most important project…” Giles trailed off, but his eyes never lost their gleam.

Spike hated that the watcher could manipulate him, but the bait was too good to resist. Revenge on the humans who had effectively neutered him, especially revenge that would not result in a splitting headache or an acute case of dustiness at the hands of the slayer? How could he say no?

The watcher shrank back into his chair and his victorious look faded into obvious nervousness when Spike’s face rippled and shifted, fangs descending and eyes blazing gold. With a grin made all the more fierce by his demonic visage, Spike gave Giles the answer the watcher had sought.

“Count me in.”

“The past is never dead; it's not even past.” - William Faulkner

Near Kyoto, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Kaede stood in the snow, waiting for sunset. Ichiro had taken the rest of the party into the woods where they would wait out the battle. The desolate plain, in the depths of winter, might as well have been the face of the distant moon. The slayer had never felt so alone.

The tips of burned stumps and charred rocks peeked through the snow cover. The fire scars were not fresh and Kaede wondered what had happened to scour the surrounding area so. There was a tall post driven into the ground some distance behind her. Ichiro had told her that Orochi’s sacrifices had been tied there. Every week a new girl from the closest village had been staked out in the field to buy her neighbors a few more days of life. The thought sickened Kaede. She could almost taste the fear and desperation of those girls, hanging like a mist in the air.

Ichiro had wanted her to stand at the post with her arms linked behind her, pretending to be bound, in order to make sure that Orochi took the bait. Once her watcher was out of sight, Kaede had put as much distance between herself and the blood-stained beam as possible. Ichiro knew lore and ancient texts, but Kaede knew demons. Orochi would take the bait, post or no, and she could not stand to be near the site of so many innocents’ deaths.

The sun was sinking over the distant mountains, leaving trails of pinks and oranges in its wake. Orochi would be waking soon. Kaede’s eyes grew distant. It would be her first serious fight in a long time that she would have to face alone.

Her lips thinned and she shook herself slightly. She could not let herself be distracted before this battle. Takeshi was a vampire, and no amount of mourning would bring him back. She steeled her heart and watched the sun’s last glow fade behind the horizon.

She waited in the snow, shivering slightly at the cold as the hours slid by. The moon was rising, bright and full, and its brittle light cast eerie shadows across the barren plain. She pictured herself, a pale ghost in her kimono: white fabric against white snow. Only her dark hair would stand out, drifting around her face like a living thing. She would have preferred her looser practice attire, dark hakama over a worn gi, but Ichiro had insisted on the kimono and loose hair. He felt that her disguise needed to be complete.

Kaede had learned long ago that arguing with her watcher, or even suggesting strategy, would do little good. He gave her orders and was so confident that she would obey them that he never even noticed her fighting her own way, learning strategy and implementing her own plans. Thinking for herself. She still bowed to his knowledge of demons and magical rights, but crafting death was her domain.

And so the dress remained, but Kaede would not stand helplessly on the bloodstained ground, waiting for Orochi to come. She would meet him proudly on the field of battle as the daughter of a samurai and loyal Tokugawa vassal should.

It was the silence she noticed first. No birds sang. No insects hummed from the woods. Even the wind seemed to stop. Kaede could feel the back of her neck prickle in anticipation. Something dark moved behind the tree line, grabbing and keeping her attention. It seemed to flow among the trees, its massive size not disturbing the branches around it. Finally, looping coils broke free of the forest and Orochi slid into view.

Even at a distance, Kaede could sense the power radiating from the demon lord. He was immense, coiled high to stand nearly as tall as the trees behind him. Barbed tails and endless loops of scaly flesh shifted and writhed, moving Orochi forward in irregular bursts of speed. His eight weaving heads seemed to focus on the slayer, eyes gleaming with malevolence.

Kaede slid her hand over the hilt and drew her sword. It made barely a whisper as it slid free from the sheath, glittering coldly in the moonlight. She pushed her fear to the back of her mind, stilling her thoughts.

In the blink of an eye, Orochi’s tangled body started to flow across the plain, aiming directly for the slayer. He closed quickly, covering ground in bursts and starts, a pace that was completely in accord with his chaotic form.

Kaede deepened her stance, holding her sword steady before her. She waited, watching the first of Orochi’s bladed tails dive towards her, before spinning aside and slicing downward with her blade.

The edge of her katana cut deeply into flesh, sliding easily through tough hide and bone. Her swing was true, but she did not quite manage to sever the dangerous appendage. With a fierce tug, Kaede yanked her blade free and returned to a ready stance, waiting for the next attack.

The injured tail slowly retreated until it was in front of Kaede, if still outside of her immediate reach. She watched in horrified fascination as the deep wound knit together before her eyes, gaping flesh mending into unbroken scales in the time it took her to suck in a startled breath.

Ichiro had told her nothing of this.

A low rumble, as if the earth itself was laughing, shook Kaede to the core of her being. She lunged wildly, leaping towards Orochi and slashing her keen blade down one great eye. The terrible sound continued as that wound too closed as if it had never been. An icy tendril of fear wormed its way into Kaede’s heart.

She focused her attention on defense, hoping against hope that some stroke of inspiration, some divine intervention would give her a way to defeat Orochi. She turned as many blows as she could, but the weight of utter despair slowed her hands. She stood alone against an enemy that could not be injured and her body was being battered and cut on all fronts. She attacked when she could, dodged frantically when she could not. Her sword work was dazzling, her forms flawless, but the edge to her skills, the speed and confidence that had seen her through many battles in the past, was missing.

It came as little surprise when one of Orochi’s many tails swept her from her feet. She struggled to stand, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat even as she saw the nearest of the demon’s great heads coil to strike: an attack she was in no position to defend against.

Even as she defiantly rose to face her certain death, part of Kaede’s mind accepted her fate. When she fell, another would rise to take her place. Orochi would fall to another’s hand as he had in the past. It was time to lay down her sword and let another take up the fight.

I am coming Takeshi.

Her eyes rose unconsciously to the stars, wanting to witness their beauty one last time before death took her. In the corner of her eye, Kaede saw Orochi’s head start its inexorable dive. She closed her eyes and hoped that the pain would not last very long.

It was then that she heard the battle cry.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

“Let’s get this over with.” Buffy turned her back on Willow, fixing her watcher with an angry glare.

Stupid duty.

She watched Giles untie their vampiric prisoner with an impassive face. Even when Spike walked to her side to look at the two katanas on the coffee table, Buffy managed to ignore him. With the weight of his resignation weighing heavily upon him, the watcher went to the table and unsheathed the darker blade as well. After reassembling the first of the blades, he positioned the two swords in the padded lid of the box.

“The tan one is for Buffy, and the darker one is for you, Spike.” The watcher eyed both of them warily. Buffy snorted softly to herself.

As if we haven’t fought together before.

She caught Spike’s sideways glance and smirk out of the corner of her eye and tried to fight the blush rising in her cheeks. Underneath his amusement, the slayer could almost feel his desire to lash out at those who had muzzled him. In spite of the mess that constituted her emotions over the blond vampire, she was thankful he was on her side once again.

Giles gestured tentatively to the blades. His gestures were unsure, a fact that disturbed the slayer more than any of his words. “The letter said that all you have to do is pick up the swords and they will indicate whether or not they will accept the two of you. There should only be a glow from the swords if this works, but if you would like for me to do some research before attempting…”

“Well, what’re we waitin’ for?” Buffy gasped when Spike leaned forward and grabbed the darker of the two katanas. When his hands touched its wrapped hilt, the desire to take up the other blade became overwhelming. In the back of her mind, Buffy watched herself reach for the sword with a kind of detached interest. As her hand neared the handle of the sword, she noticed a white glow escaping from the wrappings.

Huh, shiny.

Her hand closed around the hilt and the light became blinding.

*****

Buffy found herself standing in a garden. Spike, Willow, Giles, the watcher’s apartment: they were all gone. Only the katana remained, clutched in her right hand. Taking comfort in the weapon, the slayer started looking at her surroundings.

Flat stones were placed in winding pathways throughout the garden. Soft moss covered the ground beneath her feet. There were trees and flowers everywhere, each seemingly placed with the greatest care so as to complement its neighbors. A stream babbled nearby, and arching wooden bridges crossed its clear water. Buffy let herself relax a little. She could not imagine anything evil in this place. At a loss as to what she should do, the slayer walked to a stone bench that was positioned at a bend in the stream and sat down, the naked blade resting across her knees, to think.

She had been staring, transfixed, at a cluster of water lilies that were floating in a quiet eddy when she felt the presence behind her. Acting on instinct, Buffy leapt to her feet and spun around, sword leading the way. She found herself standing toe to toe with another woman, her weapons hand caught tight in the other’s grasp.

The woman was petite and pale, even in the bright sunlight, with dark tilted eyes and jet black hair. But it was not her appearance that stayed Buffy’s hand, it was the power coming from the woman in waves: power that Buffy recognized.

“Hello, sister.” The woman’s eyes flashed with suppressed humor.

This woman was another slayer.

“What? Who?” Buffy stuttered. Then understanding widened her eyes. “You’re Kaede.”

The woman smiled and released Buffy’s hand. “I am. That is my sword you wield.”

“But, uh, how are you speaking English?”

The bright twinkling in the other woman’s eyes was as clear as if Kaede had gone ahead and laughed out loud. “I’m not, but it is what you know so it is what you hear.”

Buffy finally let the katana drop to her side. The kinship she had felt with Faith also bound her to this woman, made all the stronger by the tingling power she felt in the sword in her grasp. Questions leap to her throat, but before she could ask them, Kaede cocked her head to one side as if listening to something only she could hear. “You have interesting taste in your consort. He is quite… profane.”

“Who, Spike? He’s not my… I mean, your sword picked him and… Oh my God, you don’t mean that… It’s just, it’s Spike.” Buffy stumbled back against the bench and dropped onto the slab of stone. “This isn’t happening.”

Kaede looked at her with concern. “Is something wrong?”

Buffy laughed, but she sounded a little hysterical even to her own ears. “Spike is not my consort. Arch nemesis? Maybe. Royal pain in my ass? Most assuredly. But he is not my consort.” She squirmed uncomfortably under her sister slayer’s appraising gaze. “I don’t even like him, much less… you know.” To her horror, Buffy blushed.

“The swords did not ‘pick’ you. They only looked for the appropriate feelings in you both.” Kaede replied placidly, her eyes opaque and unreadable.

“Then they messed up. Or… or Willow! This is all Willow’s fault!” Buffy wailed.

“I think I understand.” One side of Kaede’s mouth quirked upwards in what might have been a smile, but it was gone before Buffy was certain of what she had seen. “It is of no importance. You are here so that I can tell you how to kill Orochi.”

“People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.” - James Baldwin

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Takeshi sat on the banks of the Sumida River, watching the lights of the Yoshiwara pleasure district where they were reflected in the water. What would have normally been a beautiful sight was obscured by the scene replaying in his memory.

Kaede would not see him. He should have been thankful that his wife still felt enough for him to not stake him on sight, but watching her grief ravaged face as she slid her door shut in his face had to have felt similarly.

What made matters worse was that she would not hear his message either. He had received word from Hideaki the night before that one of the priestesses at the great temple in Ise could help the slayer defeat Orochi. Unless their plans had changed, Ichiro would be taking Kaede to face the demon in a few days, and Takeshi had no way to convince them to take a detour past the Shinto shrine.

It was not in Takeshi’s nature to brood, but he was at a complete loss. He could not get to Kaede, and even if he did, she was more likely to kill him than listen to his advice. Attempting to contact Ichiro would be even more futile. The watcher still disapproved of his marriage to the slayer and probably saw his turning as fitting punishment for daring to wed his charge.

The priests and martial arts instructors who worked with Kaede would knew of his condition by now, so no one remained in the household who might invite him across the threshold. The slayer’s home was completely closed to him. And so the vampire sat, miserable, on the banks of the Sumida and tried to come up with a way to get through to his wife before it was too late.

His stomach growled and the demon he could feel inside of him struggled to come to the surface, but Takeshi forced both his hunger and his new nature aside. When he had risen two nights before, he had killed the other vampires in the nest and drained Sano, his sire, dry before dusting him as well. The revenge had not satisfied his aching bitterness and rage, but the elder vampire’s blood had managed to stave off the burning need to feed that had assaulted Takeshi’s senses. Even though the hunger tore at his insides and he could feel himself getting closer and closer to loosing control of the demon inside of him, he could not bring himself to feed from a human. The few animals he had captured had left him feeling unsatisfied and dirty. His training allowed him to ignore physical discomforts, but the dangerous lure of the demon coupled with the raw edge of his hunger were conspiring to rob him of his hard won control.

After hours of contemplating the dark river, Takeshi rose to his feet and started walking to the seedy hotel where he was staying. The streets were nearly deserted, which was a blessing. The sound of so many heartbeats and the smell of bodies packed together in the busier parts of town nearly drove him mad. All of his senses were amplified: sight hearing, smell, even taste and touch. He couldn’t stand the company of others for long and simply tried to ignore his new abilities, but that was proving as futile as his attempts to control his hunger.

The forces warring inside of him made it hard to think clearly, and so Takeshi wandered the streets of Edo, alone and torn. It was only when he stepped to the side of the narrow road to allow two horseback riders to pass that the solution to his problem came to the vampire.

Half an hour later, two bags of coins sat in the stables of a seedy hotel: one next to the dead and drained body of an old horse, the other in the empty stall that had held the animal he was riding at all speed down the Tokaido.

*****

His old mount was dead. After days of hard riding, it had finally stumbled, its broken legs signing its death warrant even before the tear of Takeshi’s fangs. He was still half a night’s ride from Ise, but with no horse, the trip would take even longer. After cleaning the blood from himself with a towel he found in the pilfered saddle bags with a disgusted grimace, Takeshi took up his sword and started down the road, settling into an easy lope that he knew he could maintain for hours.

He did not need hours though. The vampire skidded to a halt a few minutes later when his path was blocked by a large black horse, with what looked like a suit of armor tied on its back, and a shrine maiden, her bright red and white outfit vivid in the moonlight. The girl could not be much older than Tai, the girl who did Ichiro’s laundry, but she had an air of authority about her, and when she raised a hand when Takeshi neared, he felt compelled to obey her unspoken command.

The girl spoke with a voice that was too deep and powerful to be her own. “You are Takeshi.”

The vampire hung back, wary of the girl and the strange energy he could feel coming off of her. “Yes. I am bound for Ise. If you would let me pass…”

“You will never reach Ise in time. I am Ai. You have heard of me.” The last was a statement, not a question.

Takeshi nodded mutely in surprise and more than a little trepidation. Ai was a priestess of much renown, feared and loved in equal parts for her strange abilities as a shaman and seer. Hideaki had been evasive about his contact at the shrine, even fearful, but Takeshi had never expected this! It was said that the old woman could kill with a glance and possess other’s bodies, and Takeshi knew that he was facing evidence of that rumor.

The young girl laughed with the old woman’s voice. “Do not fear for Kieko, vampire,” she gestured towards herself, indicating the girl whose body Ai was using. “I cannot leave the Great Shrine, so she runs my errands for me and has volunteered for this position. No harm will come to her. Now listen.” Ai held up a small pouch and her voice lost all of its mirth. “You must take this potion to your slayer. She goes to a battle that she cannot win. I wish she had come to me herself, because you will not be able to carry the final weapon: the one that will kill Orochi forever. The potions are easily handled, but I fear that your body would disagree with an amulet blessed by Amaterasu.” The high priestess’ voice was laced with dark irony.

Takeshi snorted in ill humor before he caught himself. No, Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun, would not appreciate a vampire carrying her artifacts. His heart sank with the knowledge that his weakness, his inability to defeat or escape Sano and his minions, had more far-reaching consequences than he could have known.

“Do not fear, Takeshi. Orochi will be defeated, and he will be banished from this world for many generations, but the victory will come at a great cost. Here, take the potions, the armor, and this horse. I daresay she will carry you faster than your last one, but I would ask you to not eat her.” Takeshi took the bag and reins, and would have flushed a deep red had he been able, but the girl’s wide smile took away her words’ sting. “Take this as well.”

Before the vampire could react, the girl placed her hand on his forehead and her eyes flared a bright white. His body seized as he was held in the grasp of Ai’s magic. After a few moments, Takeshi could feel the tug of his demon, the voracious hunger and barely controlled need to destroy, fade to a mere whisper. Ai/Kieko released him, and he staggered back before grasping his head in awe and confusion.

“That should make your task easier. You are brave Takeshi, but you are still a fledgling. I am surprised you could control the hunger for as long as you have. Now go! And when the fight is done, send your slayer back to me. We have a great deal to discuss!”

Takeshi straightened to thank the priestess, but when he looked where Kieko had stood just moments before, she was gone.

A few minutes later, so was he, clad in new armor and riding as it to catch the wind.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

Spike found himself standing on a bridge in what was very obviously a traditional Japanese garden. He had seen many such gardens in his time in Japan with Dru, and the style was unique. However, it was not the perfectly manicured grass or elegantly shaped trees that caught the vampire’s attention.

It was the sun.

His first reaction had been to jerk away and find shelter, but cold logic dashed his rising panic. He was not burning. Spike looked up into the sky and stared at the sun until his eyes watered and he started seeing spots. With his head still tilted back, Spike closed his eyes and let a child-like smile overtake his features. He had missed the warmth of the sun, one of a hundred things he had forfeited when he became a vampire so many years ago. To feel it touching his face, sinking into his skin, was like the touch of a goddess. Spike could loose himself in that caress.

Slowly sounds penetrated the vampire’s consciousness: the gurgle of running water, the sound of wind in the trees. However, the sounds of nature could not draw him out of his preoccupation with the sun. It was left to the heavy tread of a foot on the small bridge to do that.

Vampire!

Acting on instinct, he lashed out with the sword he realized was still in his hand. His eyes were golden as he watched his blade arc towards the intruder, only to be stopped by the metal guards on the other vampire’s forearm. When metal hit metal, Spike froze and tilted his head to one side.

Placid golden eyes set in ridged features met his own.

“Hello, brother.”

That was not the reaction Spike had expected. He lowered his katana to his side in surprise. “Who in the hell are you?” he finally blurted.

“My name is Takeshi. You are holding my sword.”

Spike took in the vampire’s garb, ancient Japanese armor, the hallmark of a samurai. Spike grinned as the idea occurred to him. “My sword now, mate.” As expected, the other vampire’s eyes flashed dangerously at that statement.

Gits take their weapons way to seriously.

Spike was disappointed when the vampire, Takeshi, mastered his rising anger and regained his air of placid calm. Part of him was simply itching to try out the blade in his hand. He sighed as he watched the chance of a good fight slip further and further away.

“So you’re what? Hauntin’ this blade? A spirit guide? My own, personal Clarence?”

“You could call me a guide. I am here to tell you how you and your consort can defeat Orochi,” was the Japanese vampire’s response.

Spike blinked slowly. “Who?” he asked at length.

“Your consort?” When Spike’s blank expression did not change, Takeshi continued. “I believe her name is Buffy.”

“What?!” Spike roared. Vague memories of the conversation he had overheard from the bathroom floated to the surface of his mind, but he forced them aside. “That self-important, insufferable little bint is not my consort!”

“Then why did the swords accept you?” Takeshi asked blandly.

“Because I agreed to help kick some demony ass, not because I give two cents for some chosen bird with delusions of grandeur!” Spike was really becoming incensed with his so-called guide. To imply that he and the slayer… Well, it was unnatural. It was unthinkable. It was perverse

It was right up his alley.

No!

With a growl, Spike threw himself at the other vampire, katana leading the way.

*****

“So, the slayer, huh?”

“Yes, but I was still human when I fell in love with my Kaede.”

“And where is she now?”

“We thought it best if we spoke to the two of you separately.”

Spike grunted from his seat on the grass. His gingerly touched a rising bruise over his right eye. It was some comfort that Takeshi was leaning against a Japanese maple, nursing what looked like a broken nose in his now-human face. The other vampire had disarmed him readily enough, but Spike found himself a more than adequate match for his opponent in hand to hand combat. Both vampires looked as if they had been hit by twin trucks.

“You’ve got a pretty mean right hook,” he admitted with grudging respect.

“And you are not so bad a fighter yourself,” the other vampire noted. “You will be more useful to your slayer than I was to mine. I was merely a fledgling when Kaede and I faced Orochi.”

“About the slayer?”

“Yes?”

“Does this,” he picked up the sword by his side and looked at its mirror finish, “really mean that the slayer and I are…? Well…” Spike stopped in the face of his rising embarrassment and insecurity.

“Without a doubt.” The other vampire’s simple statement sounded like a death knell in Spike’s head. He laughed: a bitter, desperate sound even to his own ears.

I really know how to pick ‘em.

First Cecily and her humiliating rejection, then Dru’s loyalty to her “daddy” and the mad vampiress’ many dalliances throughout the years, and now this. His mind simply did not want to accept it, even when Drusilla’s words echoed in his mind. “You’re all covered in her.”

Dru knew and she… No wonder she was so angry.

Spike stared dully at the sword he held across his lap. “So now what?” he asked, miserable in his dawning realization.

“Now, I give you this.”

Spike looked up in time to see Takeshi’s armored hand close over his right shoulder. Visions and words, too many for him to fully grasp at one time, flooded his mind. The information overload sent his consciousness into a downward spin. As he felt the darkness overtake him, he heard Takeshi speak one last time.

“Goodbye, brother. And good luck.”

“History repeats itself because no one was listening the first time.” – Anonymous

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Kaede could hear the commotion in the dojo that was also her home. She heard it, but she managed to ignore it. Nothing mattered to her except for the crisp white paper resting in her lap.

Dearest Kaede,

I had your husband over for drinks. I do not think the vintage was to his tastes, but I found the evening delightful. I will be sending him to you tomorrow. I hope you have a wonderful reunion.

I told you not to cross me.

Sano

She had not left her room since receiving the letter the evening before. Nothing could pry her from her position in front of her small, personal altar. She had burned stick after stick of sweet-smelling incense, but her mind could not form prayers that seemed adequate. And so she had knelt in silence and stared dully at the letter while an entire day had passed. She had only moved once, when Ichiro had come by to offer his “condolences.” His stilted attempt to provide comfort had seemed the pinnacle of hypocrisy. After she had forcibly evicted her watcher from her room by tossing him through the flimsy, sliding door, the rest of the household had carefully avoided intruding upon her grief.

When she heard hurried footsteps in the corridor outside of her room, she knew it was time. She could not turn her back on this duty. When Ichiro appeared on the other side of the torn doorframe, she was on her feet and waiting for him.

“He is here, Kaede.” Her watcher’s voice was uncharacteristically muted. A traitorous little corner of her mind wondered if their relationship would improve if she started throwing him through walls on a regular basis. The bruises on Ichiro’s face gave her a small sense of satisfaction.

“I know.” Her voice sounded hollow, dead.

“He is not the man you knew. There is nothing of Takeshi left.”

Kaede smiled coldly when the watcher stopped speaking and shrank against the far wall as she wrapped herself in a shawl and stepped through the hole in her door. “I know,” she repeated. Almost as an afterthought, the slayer snapped a piece of wood from the hanging mess that had been her door. “I will see to this, and I will be ready to leave for the battle, as planned, in two days. If I see you or anyone else before then, I cannot be held responsible for my actions.”

Without waiting for a response, Kaede turned and made her way down the hallway. She hardly cared what her watcher thought of her behavior at that point. It had been Ichiro who had sent Takeshi to meet his contact from Ise, who had sent Takeshi to his death.

Barefoot and clad in a loose sleeping robe, Kaede drifted through the hallways of the dojo, silent as a ghost. Apparently the rest of the household had fled to their rooms, knowing that to meet either her or the creature shouting her name from outside was to face death.

When she rounded the final corner, she was faced with the specter of her former husband. He quieted at her approach, his face worn and pleading. It seemed unfair that he could look so human in that moment. It would have made things so much easier if he had been wearing his other face: ridged, inhuman, and unfamiliar.

His hands were pressed flat against the invisible barrier that kept him out of the building. He looked just like Takeshi. In her heart, Kaede wanted nothing more than to take him in her arms and weep, but she could not. Takeshi was gone and nothing but this shell remained. She had seen too many vampires try the very same trick with former friends and family to doubt Ichiro’s training in that respect.

This was not Takeshi anymore.

Her hand tightened on the makeshift stake in her right hand, the rough splinters from its torn end digging into her calloused flesh. She stopped within touching distance of the vampire and looked at him with dead eyes. She knew what she had to do, but her hands would not obey, and so she stood and stared at the thing that had been her husband.

“Kaede,” his voice was rough, hoarse as if he had not slept in ages. “I know you won’t invite me in, but please listen to me. Hideaki told me…”

“Stop.” Her voice was quiet, but it cut the vampire short. She raised her left hand and pressed it against his right where it was resting flat against the unseen barrier. His skin was cold and dry, even if the texture was familiar. Her face was stiff and rigid, even as tears started flowing from her eyes. When she searched the vampire’s face, she felt herself being drawn into the vampire’s dark eyes. It made her jerk her hand back as if burned. She knew in that moment that she could not stake him, no matter what he had become. Not when he could still look at her like that.

“Give Sano my regards and tell him I will not fall into whatever trap he is planning.” She turned to go back into the house, unwilling to let the monster that had been Takeshi see any more of her pain.

“Kaede, listen to me! Sano is dead. I killed him myself. And you have to go to Ise…” The vampire’s voice was pleading, desperate. It was a tone she had never heard in her usually reserved husband. It tore at her heart, even as she dried her eyes and steeled herself for what she had to do. When she turned back to face him, hope flared in the vampire’s eyes, making them flash with unearthly gold. That made what she had to say just a little easier to force past her lips.

“Goodbye, Takeshi. If I ever see you again, I will kill you.” She slid the dojo’s front door shut and tried to ignore the look of anguish on the vampire’s face.

She spent the next two days in her room, never speaking and only eating when one of Ichiro’s servants managed to slip a tray of food into her room while she slept. When she stepped into her palanquin two days later, she swore that she would not cry in the face of an enemy ever again, even if that enemy wore the face of someone she loved.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

“Buffy, wake up.”

Buffy was warm and comfortable, or she would have been if someone hadn’t been poking her in her sleep. She snuggled back down into the soft blanket that covered her and scrunched her eyes tightly shut. “Go ‘way mom.”

“Buffy, please wake up,” the voice insisted. It certainly didn’t sound like her mother. In fact, it sounded like…

“Giles!” Buffy sat up abruptly, but the sudden motion set her head spinning and she fell back amongst the pillows and blankets her watcher and friend had piled around her on the couch. She pulled one pillow over her face to fend off the light and groaned. “What’s going on?”

“We were hoping you could tell us that.”

Buffy lay still for a moment before finally pulling the pillow aside and dragging herself up into a sitting position against the couch’s arm rest. Willow shoved a glass of water into her face, which Buffy accepted gratefully. After a long sip and a last glare at the room’s offending lights, Buffy looked at her watcher, who was seated on the edge of the coffee table with one of the most worried expressions on his face that Buffy had ever seen.

“I, uh, remember picking up the sword and there was this bright flash,” she started, sifting through the muddle that was her mind.

“Yes!” Willow cried. “But then you vanished. I couldn’t even feel any magic. You were just gone! And then you were back, but you were unconscious. What happened?”

“I don’t know. One second I was here, and the next I was in a garden, talking to Kaede. She did something to me.” Buffy rubbed her temples with her fingers and avoided her watcher’s worried stare. “I can remember what happened to her…” she trailed off.

“But, Buffy! That’s incredible! Do you mean the swords gave you this slayer’s memories? Wait! I need to get my notes.”

Buffy had never seen Giles so excited. She might have even found it amusing if she wasn’t so busy sorting through the new memories that had been shoved into her brain. “Not really Giles. I’m saying that Kaede and Takeshi have been waiting inside of those swords for the last however many years. She gave me her memories.”

Giles’ eyes lit up. “That’s amazing, Buffy. I can’t remember anything in the Council’s records that mentions such a thing occurring.” Buffy could almost see the theories whirling behind the watcher’s bespectacled eyes.

Willow poked Buffy on the arm to get her attention. “Um, who is Takeshi?”

“Takeshi was Kaede’s… Wait.” She glanced around the room. “Where’s Spike?”

*****

“I still don’t think that this is a good idea, Buffy,” Giles said from his position at the bathroom door.

“You want him to fight with me instead of against me? Maybe you should've started by not chaining him to your plumbing again.” Buffy snapped. She didn’t want to admit it to Giles, but she knew that Kaede’s words and memories were guiding her actions. She couldn’t help but think that she wouldn’t be in this position if slayers hadn’t been conditioned through the ages to believe everything their watcher’s said. She knew that her knee-jerk reaction to Giles’ statement was unfair, but she couldn’t help it.

She sighed and leaned against the bathtub, hands dangling loosely over the edge of the porcelain. “Look, Giles. I get why you’re worried. I really do. But we can’t keep treating him like a rabid dog if you want him to act like an ally. Yeah, he probably still wants us dead,” Oh yeah, well why did the swords accept you two then? Shut up! Stupid brain. “but the simple fact is that he can’t hurt us, and he can help. This whole Orochi thing is never going to work if you don’t give him a chance.” With that, she looked over her shoulder and tried to gage the effect of her words on her watcher.

He was studying her with hooded eyes. When he did not respond for a long, uncomfortable moment, Buffy turned back to her task and unlocked the last of the shackles from Spike’s legs and tugged the vampire out of the tub and into her arms, cradled like a giant child. “Giles?”

The watcher seemed to shake himself a little, and met her gaze. “Yes?”

“Super strength’s great and all, but he’s getting kind of heavy.”

“Oh, you want me to…?” He suited his words with actions, stepping out of the doorway and clearing the slayer’s path.

“Yeah, thanks.” Buffy manhandled the vampire out of the bathroom, down the hall, and onto the couch without any major incidents. Once there, she managed to resist the urge to tuck one of Giles’ blankets under Spike’s chin. Pro-vamp girl talk and new memories aside, she didn’t think she was ready to explain such behavior to her watcher.

When her eyes came to rest on the sword box, one last detail from Kaede's memories came to mind. Without stopping to warn Giles, she picked up the empty container and threw it against the hardwood floor. Hard.

“Buffy!” Giles exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing? That box is a valuable antique!”

“No it’s not. It’s a tootsie roll pop.” Buffy replied as she walked around the table to sift through the broken remains of the box. “The good stuff is on the inside.” Knowing full well that the watcher was looking at her as if she had lost her mind, Buffy avoided meeting his eyes until she found her goal.

With a cry of victory, she found the fragments of the sealed, secret compartment and pulled its contents free. Triumphant, she dangled the golden amulet in front of her watcher. “Do you think this goes with my outfit?”

On the other side of the swinging pendant, she noticed crystal blue eyes observing her from the couch.

“I believe that history is capable of anything. There exists no folly that men have not tried out.” - C. G. Jung

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Takeshi sat in a small food stand in the Nihonbashi, the merchant district of Edo, watching his cup of sake cool. It was quickly becoming obvious that Ichiro’s contact, Hideaki, was going to be late, and he did not want to be caught out after dark with too much rice wine running in his veins.

With his chopsticks, he poked disinterestedly at the cooling pile of noodles and vegetables that had been set in front of him. The wait was becoming interminable. All he wanted was to return home to Kaede, maybe join her on a patrol, and retire for the evening. Well, maybe not retire. Kaede had yet to come home from a night of slaying tired in three months of marriage. Takeshi smiled to himself at the thought. He was a lucky, lucky man.

His pleasant thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of a reed-thin man in dirty clothes, obviously fresh from the road. His shaved pate marked him as a fellow samurai, but his weak frame and furtive manner led Takeshi to believe that the man could not be a warrior of much repute. He watched the newcomer glance around the noodle-shop nervously before his eyes finally came to rest on Takeshi himself. The man, who could only be Hideaki if Ichiro’s description held true, slipped through the crowd and joined him in the booth with a timid greeting.

Takeshi decided to try to hurry the conversation along and cut straight to the point. “Ichiro sends his regrets, but planning for the battle has kept him occupied.” When Hideaki glanced around the room in horror, Takeshi pointed at the lantern hanging over the table. It glowed with an eerie light, slightly greener than the candle-lit ones that were scattered throughout the rest of the restaurant. “Relax. There is a spell on this booth that keeps anyone from hearing what we’re saying. You can speak freely. My name is Takeshi.”

“You are the slayer’s husband?” When Takeshi nodded, the man continued. “My name is Hideaki, but you already knew that. I wish I had better news for you.” Takeshi suppressed his impatience when the man leaned over and helped himself to a cup of sake. After sipping cautiously at the liquid and pinning Takeshi with an appraising stare, Hideaki finally spoke. “My patroness says that the slayer will not survive the fight against Orochi unless she comes to Ise.”

“What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?” he growled, worried and defensive all at once.

Hideaki’s calming gestures did little to comfort the young warrior. “I am not insulting your wife’s prowess. From how I hear it, she is one of the best warriors in many generations. What I meant is that Orochi cannot be harmed without certain potions or spells. My patroness is a priestess and can provide such things.”

Takeshi thought for the moment. Many demons did have strange immunities, and it would make sense that a demon-lord as powerful as Orochi would have many such protections. It was just one more thing that Ichiro’s “infallible” books had not told them. Takeshi could appreciate the values of research, but he often felt that Kaede’s watcher put too much stock in his own knowledge and value. The world was much larger and more complex than the older scholar seemed to want to admit. “I can pass that message along to the slayer easily enough. Does this patroness of yours have a name?”

Hideaki turned a few shades paler, if that was even possible. “She told me that she would make herself known to the slayer when the time was right.”

Takeshi’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but he would not ask a fellow samurai to disobey his lady. “Fair enough. If that is all, I must return to the slayer and give her the message so that Ise can be worked into her plans.” With a slight bow, Takeshi took his leave and retreated to the streets.

He had not made it three blocks when a commotion in one of the dingy allies caught his attention. He thought he could see figures, a man and a woman, struggling in the darkness. A muffled “Help!” sent him running between the buildings.

And into a trap.

Takeshi skidded to a halt, sword drawn, when he recognized the “victim” as one of Sano’s followers, a vampiress named Akane. He cursed his rash behavior when her “attacker” turned, revealing the familiar face of Katsuo, her mate. Takeshi had crossed blades with the pair before, and he knew them to be a powerful and crafty duo. It was not until other figures started appearing out of the shadows that Takeshi really started to fear. As skilled as he was, he could not take on this many vampires alone. He glanced around the alley, frantically searching for an escape route.

“Well, what have we caught in our net?” a sibilant voice called from the shadows. Takeshi’s heart froze. He knew that voice. The vampires directly in front of him parted to allow the speaker through. When Sano stepped into the circle, Takeshi felt the final shred of hope leave him. At this point, he could only try to take as many of his opponents as he could with him into death. “The slayer’s little play thing.” Laughter erupted among the other vampires, and Sano waited for it to quiet before he continued. “You know, I still owe her for this,” he gestured to his empty eye socket. Sano’s smile twisted into a fierce grimace. “I think killing you might just be the message she needs.”

With that, the other vampires fell silent. They started circling Takeshi, watching him with glowing golden eyes. The young warrior gripped his sword in front of him, and waited for the first attack. The knowledge that Kaede would die without the information he carried guided his hands. He lasted a full five minutes and felt the dust of as many vampires before Sano’s teeth sank into his neck. The other vampires grabbed him, pinning him to the ground and adding bites of their own.

Takeshi opened his mouth, but if he meant to curse his attackers or ask the gods’ forgiveness, he was not sure. It did not matter though, because suddenly his mouth was filled with a thick, cloying liquid. As darkness overtook him, Takeshi realized that Sano had slit his own wrist and shoved the bleeding wound into his mouth. He struggled against the grip of the other vampires, against the fluid that was running down his throat, but all of his strength had left him.

I’m so sorry Kaede.

*****

The first thing Takeshi noticed was the hunger. It writhed and tore inside him like a living thing. The next thing he noticed was the burning drive to hunt, to kill. His body stirred at the prospect, desperate to wake and satisfy the powerful drives that were pulling at him. He instinctively knew that he had been reborn, that he was a human no longer. He was a demon, a vampire.

As he clawed towards consciousness, his hand closed around the familiar hilt of his sword. His grip tightened in anticipation of the violence he would reap with this blade, but suddenly his being was flooded with brilliant light. Heat and warmth flowed from the sword and into his body, bringing with it everything Takeshi had been before his death, bringing with it his soul.

Kaede!

Takeshi jerked awake, confused and disoriented. His unneeded gasps broke through the silence of the room. A wild survey of his surroundings revealed that he was in what appeared to be an abandoned boat house. Racks where boats had once been stored lined the walls, a few broken oars stood in the corner, and the smell of fish permeated the air. In that moment, the sharp edge of Takeshi’s hunger chose to return to him.

The newly risen vampire gripped his head, at war with himself. His newborn demon was screaming for blood, but his soul fought against the prospect, telling him that he needed to escape and find his wife. In the end the rational part of Takeshi overtook his primal, demonic urges and he managed to calm himself enough to truly study his surroundings.

He could hear boisterous voices in the next room. He recognized some of them: Akane, Katsuo, Naoki, Cho, Sano, all of his murderers in one place. Unless he was too much mistaken, the voices were all raised in amusement and revelry. He could guess what they were celebrating, their perfect gift for the slayer: him.

They expect me to wake craving violence and blood. Kaede’s blood.

The demon in him reached for the voices, recognizing them as kin, but Takeshi was too overwhelmed by rage to let that tiny voice sway him. He moved to the door and took a moment to listen to the demons in the adjoining room. Without meaning to, his face shifted and his own demonic visage emerged.

Let’s see how much they like their new toy.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

When Giles asked Willow to go to the local magic shop to pick up some of the ingredients for the potion, Spike surprised everyone, including himself, by volunteering to accompany her. He needed to escape the watcher’s house, even if just for a little while, and he figured any escape route would suit him just fine. He hadn’t expected to be allowed to go.

The vampire had actually woken up in the middle of Buffy’s “be nice to Spike” lecture, but had feigned unconsciousness in order to see what would come of her little speech. Then, when she had scooped him up and carried him into the living room, well, he wasn’t about to miss out on being pressed against the slayer’s chest. Amusing diversions aside, the conversation with the undead samurai, the memories that seemed to have been shoved into his head, and the slayer’s odd behavior had all conspired to make for one very confused vampire. He needed to get away and feel the night air on his skin before he went mad.

Giles had hemmed and hawed until Buffy had fixed him with a withering glare, and so Spike was stuck with a nervous witch, walking the streets of Sunnydale. There was one thing about Willow that the vampire noticed very, very quickly. When she was nervous, she babbled.

“So I guess we need to pick up the eel’s bane, tree bark, and dove feathers at the magic store, but I bet we could find the seaweed, sea salt, and dried mushrooms at the grocery store for a better price. I mean, if you’re okay with walking the extra distance. Not to say that you’re out of shape because, duh, vampire, but I was just thinking…”

“Red!” Spike cut the girl off. She clammed up immediately and gave him a nervous glance.

“Yes?” she asked meekly.

“I’m not going to eat you, or stab you with a bottle, or any of the other things I’m sure are runnin’ through that head of yours. I just needed to get out of that flat, yeah? So cut with the chatter. You’re drivin’ me ‘round the bend.”

“Oh, okay.” The witch fell silent, and Spike breathed a sigh of relief.

They walked in peace and quiet for the next couple of blocks, the witch fidgeting with her shopping list and the vampire trying to make sense of the tangle in his head. At length, Willow broke the silence again. “Um, Spike?”

“What?” he snapped.

Willow took a deep breath and plowed on in the face of his irritation. “Don’t take this the wrong way, or as a suggestion or whatever, but, um, why aren’t you running off right about now?”

The question, asked in so earnest a manner, caught the vampire completely by surprise.

Because I’m apparently in love with the slayer.

“Because how else am I supposed to get my revenge on the army boys? Don’t worry, Red, I’m not gonna bolt at the nearest cemetery.” He smirked at the expression on Willow’s face, a mixture of disappointment and relief. After that, they continued their walk in relative peace.

The stop by the magic shop was fairly uneventful. Spike even managed to refrain from commenting on the change in décor from the year before. At the grocery store, however, things got interesting. Willow had already found the sea salt in the seasonings section, and the two were standing in the ethnic foods aisle where Willow was looking at bags of nori seaweed and dried shiitake mushrooms.

Not that the moment of quiet wasn’t doing wonders for his need to mull over the day’s events, but Spike had always hated the bright fluorescent lights and mirrors common to most grocery stores. They made him feel exposed.

The vampire was considering telling Willow that he would wait for her to finish outside, when he spotted the trio of men on the other end of the aisle. All three were well-built and dressed in ordinary college-student clothes, but something was very familiar about them. Spike studied them as discreetly as he could out of the corner of his eye. Two were white with light brown, short hair and the third was black with a shaved head. It was the combat boots the shortest man wore that finally fit the pieces together in the vampire’s mind.

“Grab what you need Red. We’re leaving.” When the witch looked ready to argue, he pinned her with an angry glare. “Now!” he growled.

She gulped, and nodded before finally selecting a bag of mushrooms. “All ready.” She glanced down the aisle and her face lit up. “Hey, that’s Riley!” When she started to wave at the three men, Spike grabbed her by the arm, chip tingling a warning at his rough handling, and led her out of their line of sight and to the nearest cash register.

“Spike, what’s the big deal? I was just going to go say hi to Buffy’s boyfriend.”

Well doesn’t this just get better and better.

“I don’t care if he was the pope. We’re gettin’ outta here.”

Spike shifted his weight from foot to foot, watching the aisles nervously. He half-expected the three to come running around the corner at any second, armed to the teeth with tasers and electrified nets. When the witch finally handed the cashier the money and picked up her bag to leave, he thanked the stars that had guided Drusilla all those years and fled the store with the witch in tow.

After he had dragged her for three blocks, Willow finally decided to protest. “Spike, stop it.” When she struggled against his grip on her wrist, Spike instinctively tightened his hand, which made the chip fire. With a cry of agony, the vampire dropped her arm and moved to clutch his aching temples instead. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on.” She crossed her arms and put on the sternest expression her doll-like features could manage.

“You know the commando group you’ve been huntin’? The ones that put this damned chip in my head?” When Willow nodded reluctantly, he continued. “Well, Mr. Perfect and his merry band back there are all card-carryin’ members.”

“Without passion there might be no errors, but without passion there would certainly be no history.” - C. V. Wedgwood

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Kaede and Takeshi were sparring in the practice room of the dojo. Each held a wooden bokken, a practice sword, and sweat dripped from both of their brows. The determined expressions on both of their faces might have made a casual onlooker worry as to the seriousness of the fight, but the two combatants knew better.

Kaede tested her husband with a feint, but he knew her too well to take the bait. Instead, he whirled away on agile feet and dropped back into a defensive position. She followed with an elegant oblique cut, this one serious, which Takeshi parried with ease. She turned his counter-attack as well and the two faced off again, stances mirroring one another.

Suddenly, Takeshi leapt forward with a quick strike aimed for Kaede’s head. She started to move her sword to block the attack, but saw him change the blade’s direction at the last second and instead dodged to the side, bringing her own weapon in line with Takeshi’s stomach.

Her husband released his sword with one hand and caught the attack with the hilt of his bokken. His free hand reached out to give her a good, solid shove. Had her balance been off in the slightest, she would have fallen, but of course, it wasn’t. Freeing a hand of her own, she locked Takeshi’s wrist in a bind and dropped back, using the weight of her body and her superior strength to send him sprawling across the hard, bamboo floor. They both rolled with the impact, but Kaede did not relinquish her hold on Takeshi’s wrist and she was soon perched on top of her husband’s back with his left arm twisted and locked behind him.

“Do you surrender?” she whispered into his ear.

“You cheated,” he complained teasingly.

Kaede twisted his arm a little harder and smiled impishly when he winced a little at the pressure. “Whatever do you mean?”

“We agreed to not do any more throws after you sent me through the wall last week,” he reminded her.

The memory made Kaede chuckle. “You insulted my stances. You deserved it.”

Takeshi laughed as well. “That might be so, but you still cheated.”

With a final tweak of his trapped wrist, Kaede released him and started to stand. Before she could possibly react, Takeshi wrapped one of his legs behind her knee and sent her sprawling with a whooping laugh. She found herself flat on her back, with her husband propped up over her, looking very pleased with himself. She could have escaped easily enough, but she didn’t really want to. “Now you’re cheating,” she said, voice husky.

“What? Just because you know I’m about to…”

The sound of a discreet cough sent to two rolling away from one another, faces flushed with more than just embarrassment. Kaede’s eyes darkened with irritation at the disapproving look in her watcher’s eyes. Yes, he had walked in on them in a compromising situation, but this dojo was her home as much as it was her training ground. It was a set up that required a little more flexibility from her watcher, but he would not accommodate that. Ichiro acted as if her relationship with Takeshi was akin to high treason.

“Takeshi, I need for you to cover one of my meetings again this evening at the usual location. The man is named Hideaki, and he is an unusually thin, mousy-looking samurai. He will be very hard to miss. Kaede, please come to the library. I would like to discuss the Orochi matter with you.” He turned and left without even waiting to see if they would obey his commands. The watcher’s casual arrogance had irritated Kaede since she had been chosen, but it grated more harshly with each passing year.

Takeshi walked to her side and laid a calming hand on her shoulder. “Think of it as a kata, dearest. We all have to go through certain motions. I promise to make it up to you when I return.” Kaede turned so that her face was pressed into his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist. He tucked her head under his chin and held her close. “The faster we go, the faster we’ll get back. You know all he’ll want you to do is listen to his ingenious plan and nod at appropriate intervals.” That earned a laugh, muffled against his thick training shirt.

Kaede hugged him as tightly as she dared and stepped back. “Tonight then?”

Takeshi reached up and brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Tonight.”

*****

As expected, Ichiro simply listed the details of his plan while Kaede stood impassively and nodded idiotically. She disagreed with many of his points, but saying so would change nothing and only prolong the amount of time she had to stand in the library, listening to her watcher ramble. After what felt like an eternity, he dismissed her and Kaede only waited until she was out of Ichiro’s direct line of sight before turning and fleeing to the room she shared with her husband.

She was not sure how long she would have until Takeshi returned, and she wanted to be ready. She washed herself from a basin of water she had brought from the kitchen by one of Ichiro’s servants. After drying her hair, she set to combing it. Her face was distorted in her silver hand mirror, but she managed to get the blue-black mass combed thoroughly and braided. Make-up tended to be rather silly in her line of work, but she did dab on a little perfume: white plums, a gift from her mother when she left home so many years ago.

It was a fine line she walked. She was a warrior, with all of the skills and philosophy that went along with that title, but she was also a woman in a society governed by men. After being chosen, she had been removed from her father’s estate and the strict rules of formal society in the shogun’s court. This had given her the flexibility a slayer needed in her actions, manner, and dress, but in many ways the people around her still did not treat her as an equal.

Ichiro did not respect her opinions or recognize her growing knowledge regarding strategy and demonic lore. He also did not allow her to keep in contact with her family or friends, pointing out that it would put them in danger, but he still kept a house full of servants and acquaintances of his own. She often felt like a prisoner in the dojo. Kimiko, who was in charge of the dojo’s upkeep, turned her nose up at what she saw as Kaede’s inappropriate behavior. Even the monks and martial arts masters who visited the dojo with scrolls, exercise regimens, and arcane advice either ignored her completely or tried to act as if she was a rather slow boy. Through it all, Kaede tried to play along and follow their ever shifting rules, but the falsehood that was her life was tiresome. In fact, she only felt like she could truly be herself around Takeshi. His company kept her sane.

She hummed to herself, a wordless tune she remembered from childhood, while she straightened up the room. When she went to fix her bedding, Kaede saw a folded piece of paper resting on her pillow. One of the servants must have placed it there while she had been meeting with Ichiro. Curious, she picked up the letter and unfolded it.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

“Giles, can’t we talk about this later? I think my head is about to explode. And slayer brains on the carpet? You know that’ll stain.” Buffy was sprawled across the couch again, nursing a glass of water while her watcher paced the living room, mumbling and gesturing excitedly.

“But Buffy, to have the extra thoughts and experiences of another slayer on hand? Why, this could be instrumental to winning future battles, particularly this situation with Orochi!” The slayer had not seen her watcher this energized since he had been asked to present a paper at the Annual Proceedings of the Watcher’s Council meeting the summer before. His enthusiasm just made her feel that much more tired.

“I could write everything down in a diary or something,” she suggested wearily. Even though the idea distressingly resembled homework, she was desperate to escape the watcher’s questions and find a little peace and quiet so that she could sort out the mess in her head.

“Yes, yes. I suppose that could work, but I would like to start planning what we’re going to do about Orochi as soon as possible.”

“Giles, we don’t know where to find these commando guys. Spike can’t remember how to get back in. We don’t even know where to start looking!”

The door of Giles’ apartment swung open to reveal a scowling vampire and a nervous witch, loaded down with shopping bags. Spike’s face was dark and angry when he spoke. “That’s not exactly true, now is it, slayer?”

*****

“This can’t be happening.”

Willow awkwardly patted Buffy on the back in an attempt to comfort the slayer. The two were sitting on Giles’ back porch, avoiding the watcher and vampire who were still yelling at each other inside. “Maybe Spike made a mistake,” she offered hopefully.

Buffy’s miserable look silenced that line of reasoning. “He just seemed so… normal.” The slayer looked at her best friend pleadingly. “I really suck at this whole dating thing, don’t I?”

“Well, one of your exes does go all fangy on occasion, and this one apparently has some interesting extracurricular activities, but at least they never turned all hairy and had to maintain a private kennel. And, hey! Look at Xander’s track record!” The fact that Willow was willing to joke, even obliquely, about her relationship with Oz, drew the slayer out of her self pity.

“We are quite the trio, aren’t we?” Buffy asked with a tremulous smile.

“I like to think of it as us being particularly open minded.”

“It’s just, what if I was some kind of secret mission, or special project, or whatever? What if he never…?” Buffy voice started to tremble with impending tears.

“Don’t be silly. He does care for you. It’s just that you guys have a pretty serious conflict of interest.”

Buffy wiped her eyes and looked up at the redheaded witch. “So much for ‘normal,’ huh?”

Willow’s face turned serious. “Buffy, can I ask you something?”

“Fire away.”

“Are you crying over Riley, or are you crying over the idea of Riley?”

The question hit Buffy like a ton of bricks. She wanted to answer Willow, wanted to defend her emotions, but she couldn’t. Willow’s spell, Kaede’s words, even her own off-hand comment, uttered right before Spike had stumbled back into her life, haunted the slayer.

I like my evil like I like my men. Evil.

But Spike wasn’t really the poster-boy for evil anymore, was he? Buffy had the sneaking suspicion that Giles’ resident vampire could have escaped and caused all sorts of mayhem if he had really wanted to. And now he was kind of helping her fight one of the baddies. Again. She just didn’t know what to think anymore.

When her silence stretched out for over a minute, Willow patted her on the shoulder again. “Not to ruin the introspective moment, but don’t you think we should go break up the guys before Spike breaks too much of Giles’ furniture and we have to clean vamp dust out of the air filters?”

When the witch’s words were followed by a resounding smash of broken glass, Buffy sighed gustily and pulled herself to her feet. “Vamps!” she groused.

Willow’s eyes twinkled. “Can’t live with ‘em,” she quipped.

Can’t live without ‘em.

The thought was strangely comforting.

“Historical awareness is a kind of resurrection.” - William Least Heat Moon

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Takeshi had waited one month to ask her, one whole month before even trying to broach the subject. The weeks following their marriage had been too perfect to disrupt, but he had felt that it was time to make his request. He had thought that she would protest or cite his human weakness. He was prepared with arguments and bribes.

He wasn’t prepared for her answer.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to ask.”

Takeshi stared at her with amazement. His Kaede was certainly full of surprises.

*****

“This is a picture of Sano, but it’s not very accurate anymore.” Kaede indicated a sketch from Ichiro’s diaries. He knew that she had taken to stealing the scrolls in the dark hours of the night when only the two of them were awake. She would return them by morning after spending time educating him in the ways of vampires.

“How so?” he asked with curiosity. He wanted to know his enemies, down to the very smallest details.

“This was drawn before he lost his right eye.” When Takeshi pinned her with a questioning glance, Kaede elaborated. “I stabbed him there with a stake.”

“I… Oh.” The simple way that she described the act was somehow more shocking than if she had boasted or provided him with lurid details. Takeshi knew that she was a powerful warrior, he had seen her fight before, but he often wondered if he had even scratched the surface of the mystery that was his wife. He was more determined than ever to join her on the hunt, if only to further explore her many contradictions.

“Here’s a picture of Akane and Katsuo. Ichiro says that she was a child of one of the shogun’s cousins and he was a poor actor. When her family discovered their relationship, the two decided to perform a shinjū, but not in the usual way. They sought out Sano and had him turn them both so that they could be together forever.” Such ritualistic double suicides were not rare, but Takeshi could not imagine someone voluntarily choosing such a manner of death. “That was over fifty years ago. They are two of his most powerful fighters,” Kaede continued.

For the next hour, she flipped through the pages of the diary, introducing him to the members of Sano’s gang: Isamu, the old fisherman; Cho, the former geisha; Naoki, the fat son of an unsuccessful merchant; Sichiro, the disgraced samurai. Takeshi memorized the faces of the gang of vampires that had plagued Kaede ever since she had been Chosen, filing them away for future reference.

Later that night, after Kaede had returned Ichiro’s scrolls to the library, they lay together in the darkness, listening to the wind brush the branches of a maple tree against the dojo’s outer wall. Kaede’s head rested on Takeshi’s shoulder, and her hand ghosted along the line of his collar bones.

“So, when am I going to get to actually meet some of these vampires?” he asked quietly, absently caressing her bare shoulder.

“Soon enough,” she replied. There was a sadness in her voice he had never heard before. When he opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, she pressed her fingers against his lips to silence him. Her hands soon found other ways to drive the question from Takeshi’s mind.

He had forgotten it by morning.

*****

With a cry of victory, Takeshi sank his katana into the vampire’s stomach. Kaede had taken him to one of the many seedy bath houses in Edo, a place that was surrounded by rumors of illegal prostitution and other, darker transgressions. She had explained along the way that most of the bath attendants were actually young vampires who exchanged the addicting sensation of their bite for money. He had not believed her at first, but when they were attacked by two vampires within moments of entering the dark alley that abutted the building, he could not deny the truth.

The fledgling pulled itself off of the sword and launched itself at Takeshi again before the warrior saw the error in his attack.

“Head and heart, Takeshi!” his wife called, reminding and teasing him all at once. She had finished her own opponent easily enough and was watching his fight from the shadows.

With an irritated growl, Takeshi sidestepped the vampire’s wild attack and brought his blade up and around, through its exposed neck as the fledgling stumbled past. As the dust settled around him, Kaede stepped to his side and offered him her own oil cloth to clean his blade.

“Head and heart. Keep cutting until you see dust,” she murmured under her breath with a small smile.

“What is so funny?” Takeshi asked.

“That is one of Ichiro’s favorite quotes. He used to repeat it over and over again when he was first training me. It got irritating after a while, but it's still good advice. I think it's from the handbook.”

“There is a handbook?”

Takeshi’s heart skipped a beat when Kaede turned a wide smile towards him. “Maybe I’ll ‘borrow’ that one next.” She glanced up at the stars beyond the tightly packed eves and sighed. “We should be getting home.”

“But why? The night is still young.”

“Ichiro wants to meet with me first thing in the morning. He mentioned something about a disturbing report from Kyoto. It is probably just another angry river spirit or possessed farmer’s daughter.”

“I understand.” Takeshi was disappointed, but he would not ask Kaede to compromise her sacred duty.

“Don’t look so thwarted. I promise to take you past some of the gambling halls tomorrow night.”

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

“You soddin’ bastards! You’ve been workin’ with them all along!” In light of the slayer’s abrupt retreat, Spike had managed to work himself into an impressive fit of anger. “When were you plannin’ on sellin’ me back down the River Styx?”

Giles had shrunk against his desk where he was less than discreetly fumbling with a drawer Spike knew held a vial of holy water and a cross. “Spike, please. We are just as surprised by this news as you. Please try to see reason.”

Spike threw a half-filled highball glass against the far wall. “No, damn it! I will not ‘see reason.’ When, Ripper?! After you managed to soften me up for them?” Gold eyes burned and his fangs itched to sink into something. Anything. “After you made me…” trust you?

When the front door of the apartment swung open, Spike whirled, fully intending to take out more of his rage on whoever was interrupting his tirade. However, it was only his quick reflexes that let him catch the casually tossed stake before it bounced off of his forehead. “Oi! Watch it!” He found himself standing toe to toe with the slayer, her hip cocked to one side is a challenging pose.

“Stop complaining you big baby. It’s not like it would have hurt you. Now come on!”

“Come on where? Back to your boy-toy’s buddies? No thank you.”

“Don’t be stupid. We’re going patrolling.”

“I’m not goin’… wait. What?” Spike’s anger dissipated in a cloud of confusion.

“Patrolling.” She enunciated every syllable slowly and distinctly. Spike glowered at her.

“Buffy, I don’t think this is a good idea.” Giles’ voice had regained a bit of its previous surety. Spike did not need to turn around to know that the watcher had finally managed to retrieve his weapons.

“Giles,” she said in a tight voice. “He needs to kill something. I need to kill something. It’ll be like a warm-up act for our assault on Fort Knox, or Fort Abercrombie, or whatever. I can catch him if he tries anything.”

“He attacked me with a glass of alcohol.”

“All the more reason to get him out of the house. And if we’re getting technical about it, it looks like he attacked your wall with a glass of alcohol.”

If there was one thing that was guaranteed to make Spike’s mood worse, it was being talked about as if he wasn’t standing right there. Knowing full well that he was behaving like a child, and made all the more angry by that knowledge, the vampire stomped over to the door under the surprised eyes of the others.

“Are we gonna do this or what?” he growled.

*****

“I’m really not in the mood to talk about this right now.”

“Oh no, slayer. You dragged me out on this little midnight stroll, and now I want some answers.”

“Look, I really didn’t know that he was one of those army guys. I thought he was just my psych T.A.”

“That’s insane. How could you not know?”

“It’s not like I do background checks on potential boyfriends. Plus? I don’t think he would have put ‘secret agent man’ on a resume if I had asked for one.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Well, what is your point then?”

“I don’t know!”

“Oh thank God.”

“What?!”

“Vampires.”

*****

It was amazing how a good dose of violence could instantaneously put Spike in a better frame of mind. After the dust from his last opponent settled around his boots, he decided to take up a post on one of the larger tombstones and watch as the slayer toyed with the last of the fledglings.

He cocked his head to one side and watched her fight. She really was a sight to behold, fists and golden hair flying as she beat the scrawny vampire to within an inch of its unlife. Spike smirked with appreciation. The younger vamp had never stood a chance. When she finally tired of her game and put her stake to good use, Spike broke the ensuing silence with applause.

When the slayer whirled around, face twisted in a scowl as if she thought he was mocking her, Spike hopped down from his perch and grinned. “Nothin’ like a little mayhem to get the juices flowin,’ eh slayer? Where to next?”

The anger dissipated from Buffy’s face to be replaced by a lopsided smile. “I was thinking more about plotting some violence, but we can walk and talk at the same time. The Ensloe Street Cemetery is usually good for a demon or two this time of the week.”

“Makes sense. A rinjal demon named Chloe runs a little business out of one of the crypts there. Thursdays are her pick-up nights.”

“What kind of business?” The slayer’s tone was tight, accusatory. Spike grinned in anticipation of her disappointment.

“Laundry.”

Buffy stopped in her tracks. “Laundry?”

“Think about it, slayer. What do you think would happen if eight feet tall, slimy and/or spiny demons started hangin’ out at the local laundermat?” At the look of consternation on Buffy’s face, Spike rolled his eyes and continued. “Never thought of that, huh? We like a clean set of sheets or pair of pants as much as the next guy. So you bag up your dirties with your name and ten bucks, leave them in the crypt she uses as her drop-off point, and she returns them Friday evening: washed, pressed, and folded. All very civilized. And while we’re on the matter, why don’t you leave Chloe alone tonight, huh? She’s harmless and so are most of her clients.”

Buffy’s scowl had returned. “And what does this Chloe do on her off hours?”

“She’s a paralegal.” At the slayer’s shocked expression, Spike couldn’t help but laugh in her face. “Not every demon out there is interested in eatin’ babies and takin’ over the world you know. Lots of ‘em just want to get a job, find a mate, maybe raise some spawn. I’d go so far as to say ‘white picket fence,’ but I’ve got this sneakin’ suspicion that you wouldn’t believe me.”

The expression on Buffy’s face was priceless, but Spike lost all thoughts of teasing her about it when her own response floored him. “Check, ixnay on Ensloe. Shady Oaks?”

*****

After finding a few more vampires and a molting gr’nish, which had even managed to turn Spike’s stomach, the slayer and the vampire found themselves wandering back towards Giles’ apartment. Their main topic of conversation, aside from teasingly mocking each other’s fighting styles, had been how they were going to deal with the military guys and Orochi in particular. Despite himself, Spike was impressed with the slayer’s plan. It was devious and underhanded, while maintaining an edge of violence and bloodshed.

He loved it.

But he did have a few reservations. “It can’t be that easy.”

“Why not? A couple little spells and some high-tech handiwork that I’m sure Willow will be glad to supply, and we’re in. Then there’s the fun breaking and entering, maybe some looting. Stir in some high level slayage and serve over ice. I thought you’d be all about this plan.”

“I have to admit, it sounds like a right good party, but what happens if I get captured again? You’re human, they won’t do sod all to you.”

She eyed him critically. “Even though you haven’t admitted it, I’m betting you got the same memory upgrade I did from our Japanese Romeo and Juliet. You know I can’t kill this thing without you.”

Spike wasn’t about to reveal all that he had talked about with Takeshi on his trip inside the swords, but he couldn’t help but wonder what all the slayers had discussed. He decided to sidestep those questions for the time being and cut right to the point. “And after?”

“After what?”

Spike sighed at her intentionally dense behavior. “After I help you kill this thing, what happens if they nick me during the escape?”

“I’ll get you back.”

“And if I don’t believe you?”

“Look, Spike. I protect my,” the slayer’s mouth hung open for a second before she continued in a rush, “allies. I promise I’ll get you away from them if it comes to that.”

To that, the vampire could only nod. He was far more interested in what the slayer had almost said than in what she had.

“In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.” - Edmund Burke

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Kaede had known. She had known when she had drunk from the marriage cup. She had known when Takeshi had informed Ichiro that they would be wed if he had to have the watcher arrested and held in jail during the ceremony. She had known that first night he had snuck into the dojo, and they had spent hours walking in the nearby grove and simply talking.

Takeshi would ask to join her fight.

He fought evil in his own way every day. He was a yoriki, serving in one of the lesser prefectures of Edo. It had been a hereditary post, but Takeshi loved the position. Amongst the corruption that festered among many of Edo’s law enforcement officers, he prided himself in striving towards real justice. He was young and idealistic, and Kaede knew that his sense of duty and honor would eventually lead him to join her war.

She could only hope that she could protect him when the time came.

Kaede knew that she could not refuse him should he ask. He would be wounded, offended and rightfully so. Takeshi was an impressive swordsman. His skills were renown throughout Edo, and many commented that his amazing inherent skills partnered with his unwavering dedication to his job would catapult him into higher positions within the ranks of police officers. Takeshi was honorable in his pursuits, but he had a fair amount of ambition as well. He had confided in her that he dreamt of earning a higher post, perhaps a position as magistrate, where he could affect real changes for the common good. He knew that his chances were slim, but he was still young enough to dream.

In many ways, Kaede felt so much older than her husband. While he was three years her senior, Kaede had fought in more battles than Takeshi had ever seen and killed more demons than he could imagine. Her calling bore down on her, dogging her steps and grinding away at her soul until she feared that soon nothing would be left but ashes and the dust of all the vampires she had slain. Takeshi had brought light and life back into her, but she could not regain all of her lost innocence. She had looked into the shadows of Japan’s greatest city and had seen monsters staring back at her.

She had felt herself slipping. After four years of slaying, she had grown tired of the bloodshed. With no rest, no accolades, and no one to share her burden, Kaede had felt the insidious roots of apathy take hold in her mind. She had been called a week after her fourteenth birthday, barely old enough to wear her first furisode, and the years following had not been kind.

Her first gown had actually come with her when she was taken from her father’s house and placed into Ichiro’s care. She had used to pull it out and run her hands over the bright colors and intricate embroidery. It had been a gift from her mother and Kaede had secretly wished that she could pass it on to her own daughter, but she now knew that to be impossible. She would die long before she ever bore a child. That was simply the lot that slayers were cast.

The gown had seen its last use a scant few weeks before. The furisode had not been the most appropriate garment to wear at her wedding, but no one had been there to see her exchange her vows or care what outfit she chose to wear. Her family had been forced to cut ties with their daughter, and Takeshi’s family had died in one of the many fires that had plagued the capital city in recent years. And so she had worn the dress, her only piece of finery, and he had worn his uniform, and both had basked in the other’s presence.

There had been no miai between their families, since neither really had one to be concerned with the propriety of a formal meeting, no ritualistic exchange of gifts, and the pair had been hard pressed to find a priest willing to perform such an unorthodox ceremony, but in the end they had managed it, somehow.

After the ceremony, held in the small Shinto shrine where they had met, the pair had returned to the dojo to be met at the door by a scowling Ichiro. He told them in clipped terms that while he had not approved of their union, he had been honor bound to tell her father. Her watcher told them that her family’s present was waiting for them in their room before turning and stalking away to his private study. Too happy to let even Ichiro’s censure affect their good spirits, Kaede and Takeshi had rushed to her room like small children. There they had found two swords, one tan and slender, the other black and heavy, wrapped in silk. Attached to each was a short letter.

Takeshi’s note had been a welcome into the Maruyama clan, as warm as their untraditional association would allow. Kaede’s had been slightly longer. Her father had told her that he was proud of her and wished her well in her new life. The swords, he indicated, had been forged by his own private smiths. He had spared no expense in their creation and the end results were truly breathtaking. Folded in the note itself was an ornate turtle shell comb. Between the letter, the sword, which appealed to her warrior’s side, and the comb, which she could remember holding up her mother’s long, dark hair, Kaede had started to weep.

Takeshi, who had never seen her shed a tear even when one of Sano’s gang had nearly gutted her with the ragged end of a broken flagpole, had simply taken her in his arms and stroked her hair while she cried. It had felt good, almost liberating, to be able to cry again after so long.

The first few weeks of their marriage passed in a happy blur. The clearest memory of those earliest days had been a quiet evening when the two of them had decided to clean and oil their new swords together in the dojo’s training room. Takeshi had taken his blade apart first, but the inscription on the tang had been so surprising that Kaede had disassembled her own sword quickly in order to compare.

They both held the same inscription, an abbreviated, altered version of a formal wedding announcement:

The bearers of these swords are now united for all of eternity, that they might fulfill their duties in never-ending trust and affection.

When they had finally slipped their handles back over the exposed tangs, Kaede could have sworn she had seen the carved kanji glimmer with their own light. Every time she touched the hilt of her katana, she remembered those words. She had often caught Takeshi holding his own sword and looking at her with so much love in his eyes that she knew he did the same.

It was the memory of those written vows that had guided Kaede when Takeshi had laid his request before her.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to ask.”

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

Giles had been surprisingly open to Buffy’s plan, especially after he had gotten over the shock of both she and Spike returning voluntarily and uninjured. With only a few, minor suggestions, the watcher gave the scheme his blessing. Willow’s inclusion was a given, and Giles thankfully only responded to her request to keep Xander out of the picture with a raised eyebrow. Buffy loved the boy dearly, he was one of her best friends, but she had no interest in hearing his opinions on her alliance with Spike just yet. That could wait until after the battle.

The next afternoon, Buffy found herself sitting on Giles’ couch, playing with the vials of potion the watcher had brewed for her while Spike slept the death-like repose of his kind. As she watched the greenish liquid swirl around inside the tiny bottles, the slayer thought about the events of the last day.

Had it only been one day? It felt like a lifetime. In all fairness, it kind of had been. Every thought, every fight, every pleasure and pain Kaede had experienced from the moment she met Takeshi until she handed her five year old daughter over to her sister on her death bed and gone, at long last, to join her beloved husband had been downloaded into Buffy’s mind. The memories were crisp and clear, but still separate from Buffy’s own experiences.

It was no exaggeration to say that she had aged six years in the blink of an eye. She had experienced love like she had never known before, love that made what she had felt for Angel seem immature and shallow. She had felt the agony of losing her family to her duty and her husband to her training and a horrible misunderstanding. She had known the pain of childbirth and the joys of motherhood.

Instead of feeling like a violation, the memories were comforting and almost familiar, as if they had always been there waiting to be remembered. Maybe that had something to do with her prophetic dreams and the pieces of other slayers’ lives she sometimes saw while she slept. Buffy promised herself that she would ask Giles about that when everything had calmed down again.

Willow had jumped on Buffy’s requests with her usual zeal. At the rate she was working, the slayer wouldn’t have been surprised to be facing off against Orochi that very night. The thought was both frightening and relieving. Frightening because she was about to walk into the lions’ den with only three hundred year old memories to guide her, and relieving because she knew in her bones that Orochi’s fate would come full circle when she and Spike faced him.

The crash of disturbed pots and pans in the kitchen drew Buffy’s attention to the vampire in question. He had apparently woken up and ambled into the kitchen during her reflections. His hair was rumpled, eyes still blurry from sleep, and he was clad in nothing but a baggy pair of grey sweat pants. They had stopped by his old crypt to retrieve whatever clothes and personal items Harmony hadn’t destroyed in her violent fit of anger following his capture. Buffy thought it had been her best idea all day.

Yum.

She recoiled from the thought with her usual hasty mental backtracking before she caught herself. Hadn’t Takeshi died, and nearly Kaede with him, because the Japanese slayer had not allowed herself to see past a label? Hadn’t Kaede herself told Buffy that the swords would have rejected them had there not been some connection on both their parts? She had almost called him a friend, You sure that was what you were gonna say? Nope, not listening, last night, much to her chagrin. That had to count for something. Buffy looked at Spike again, but this time with new eyes.

All physical attributes, and there were many, aside, Spike was certainly a breed apart from your typical vampire. Yes, he had tried to kill her, but she had tried to kill him too. It was the natural order of things, but he had also fought by her side and come to her for help when he was in need. He spoke of love and sacrifice, not with derision like most of his kin, but with faith and longing. She had seen the depths of his emotions in his dealings with Drusilla, even if she had denied it at the time. He also had a strong sense of honor, twisted and warped as it was, and he always kept his word. Ironically enough, Spike was the most honest person Buffy had ever known. He was a cunning fighter, and something told the slayer that more than a little intelligence lurked behind his blue eyes.

And yeah, if she was honest with herself, he was really hot too.

Did she love him? Could she love him? It seemed impossible, but Kaede had said that the swords did not lie. Buffy decided, as she sat watching the vampire go through his surprisingly domestic waking patterns in her watcher’s kitchen, that one way or the other, she would try to start looking at Spike with eyes unclouded by preconceptions.

She would learn from the past.

*****

“I’ve got them!” Willow burst into Giles’ apartment, waving two pouches of smelly herbs and a CD above her head. “One whopping computer virus and two klingon cloaking devices, as ordered.” When Buffy snickered at her friend’s turn of phrase, the girl blushed a little and shrugged. “I’ve been hanging out with Xander too much,” she said by way of explanation. The redhead hurried over and sat next to Buffy on the couch. “Look, it’s easy as pie.”

“And yet you say that, having experienced my cooking,” quipped Buffy.

Giles looked at the young witch with a great deal of interest. “Willow, please continue.”

Willow rolled her eyes at the slayer, but her impish grin never wavered. She waved one of the smelly pouches in front of Buffy. “All you have to do is wear these around your necks, and no one will be able to see you. Uh, except for the two of you of course. You’ll be able to see each other. Anyway, even security devices like cameras or heat sensors won’t pick up you guys.”

The witch started when Spike appeared behind her. Buffy had felt rather than heard him enter. The vampire had been strangely subdued most of the day, prone to ghosting in and out of rooms without so much as a by-your-leave. It was pretty disconcerting, and Buffy couldn’t help but wonder what was going on in his mind.

Willow regained her composure and continued. “As for the disc, all you need to do is find the nearest computer and stick it in. It’s a real doozy.” She grinned with slightly malicious pride. “I’ve been working on it ever since you escaped, Spike. Your description makes it sound like the whole place is hooked up to a main computer system, even the doors and lights. And I was kinda bored in my computing class, but um, anyway, this puppy’ll eat through anything and everything on their network. They’ll be too busy trying to figure out what’s going on with their systems to notice you guys slip in and out.”

“Slick, Red.” Spike commented. “Well, slayer?”

“Ready when you are.” When Giles cleared his throat and started to speak, Buffy cut him off. “If we run into trouble, I promise we’ll run like mad. You said yourself that Orochi can’t be fully restored or else we would have known, what with all the screaming and death. This’ll just be a quickie.”

As expected, that earned a leer from Spike and a wry smile from Giles. “I trust you to do the sensible thing, Buffy. I just tend to worry, as you well know.” Then the watcher’s expression turned forbidding. “I’m putting a lot of faith in you, Spike. Don’t make me regret it.”

Buffy turned and searched Spike’s face, finding it uncharacteristically blank. She could have been knocked over with a feather when the vampire jerked his head in a brief affirmative, eyes dark and unfathomable.

“Shall we?” he asked.

Buffy could only nod.

“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.” – Machiavelli

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 4

Takeshi had to see her again. Her face was burned into his mind, haunting him in his dreams and following him during his waking hours. He found it ironic that a woman could so captivate him when he did not even know her name.

The fight three nights ago had been astounding. When he had arrived at the temple after being told of a disturbance, he had found a petite woman, dressed in worn men’s clothes, fighting a whole host of men with nothing but a wooden spike. But had they been men? Their faces had been deformed and hideous, and when Takeshi had joined the fight, they had proven to be incredibly strong.

Most of the girl’s attackers had fled when Takeshi joined the fray, but some dogged ones had remained and fought. Whenever he could distract himself from the fight at hand long enough to glance her way, the number of attackers around the girl had always seemed to lessen, but he saw no bodies on the floor and he hadn’t heard them run away. It was uncanny.

He had grown frustrated when his attacks seemed to have little effect on his opponents other than to enrage them further. That had been confusing as well, because he could see the ragged edges of fabric, stained with blood where his sword had bit deep. Any normal men would have been dead or at least unconscious from blood loss. When one of his opponents attempted to lunge past him and stab the girl in the back as she spun past, Takeshi deflected the blade and took a deep cut across the forearm for his troubles. He snarled in irritation and pain and redoubled his efforts to fend off his strange foes.

Finally, the three facing him had broken and fled into the night. Takeshi had turned to help the strange woman, but instead had found her standing alone, watching him with a mixture of vague curiosity and trepidation. He had never seen a woman so calm and collected in the face of such a battle.

“You are injured,” she had said, voice low and quiet. When he had tried to brush the wound aside as a mere scratch, she had interrupted him. “They sometimes poison their blades. Come. I know someone who can help you.”

He had started to protest, but with the rush from the fight quickly draining away, he started to feel disoriented. Suddenly his vision took on an eerie cast and the sound of his own heartbeat became deafening. The rest of the night was a dark, swirling blur in his memory.

When he had awakened hours later, he found himself on a pallet in what looked for all the world like an old library or records storeroom. A dour faced man had been sitting in the corner, writing on a scroll. Upon seeing Takeshi awake, the man had asked his name and sent for a servant to help the still-weak warrior stand. Takeshi had begged to see the girl who had brought him, but he had been met with blank stares. He had been told that no women meeting his description lived there and that he had wandered to their doorstep, alone and feverish the night before.

Afterwards, Takeshi had been served breakfast and sent on his way. With all his instincts and training as a yoriki screaming the man’s words were lies, he had found it difficult to let the subject of the strange girl pass. That was why he currently found himself climbing the outer wall of the building where he had woken up the morning after the fight and dropping, silent and unseen, into the courtyard below.

A single maple tree stood in the yard, close enough to the building to provide shade to the walkways and small garden. Clothing hung in orderly rows from drying lines, waiting for the sun’s rays. A stone walkway curved around the side of the building and Takeshi chose to follow it.

When he stepped off of the path to look in the still waters of a small, decorative koi pond, an arm that seemed stronger than a band of iron wrapped around his neck and a knife glittered in his vision. He grabbed his attacker’s wrist and twisted deftly out of the hold, drawing his sword as he spun.

It’s her!

The tip of Takeshi’s sword dropped low, leaving him unguarded in the light of his mounting surprise. The girl looked equally shocked.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed.

Takeshi drew up to his full height and closed his gaping mouth in an attempt to regain some of his damaged dignity. “I came here to see you.”

She blinked, as if completely knocked off guard by his response. “Why?”

“I wanted to thank you for your help a few nights ago, but when I woke, your father sent me away.”

A silvery laugh, quickly stifled, broke the silence of the garden. “He’s not my father.” Both Takeshi and the girl whipped around when they heard noises from inside the building. “Come, I know a place where we can speak freely. Follow me.”

Takeshi wasn’t sure what he had expected in coming here tonight, but this slender girl with all of her straightforward manners and warrior’s reflexes was certainly not it. “Wait Miss. I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Maruyama Kaede,” she replied as she slid her dagger into her wide obi next to what looked like a wooden stake. “And who are you?”

“Sato Takeshi.”

“Well Takeshi, there’s a small grove of trees on the other side of that wall where we won’t wake the entire household.”

“How will we get to it?”

Her impish smile returned. “The same way you got in.” With that, she disappeared in a flurry of white and black fabric up the maple tree and down one of its branches where it hung over the tall wooden wall.

Takeshi shook his head in confusion. He half believed that he had fallen into the company of a forest nymph, because the girl certainly didn’t act like any of the women he had ever met. She was exciting, a complete mystery to the young yoriki. What else could he do?

He followed her over the wall.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

Spike’s nose twitched. The reeking herbs that Willow had given him seemed to be working, no one had noticed the vampire and slayer walking through campus with swords in hand, but the scent bothered his sensitive nose. The fact that something about the area seemed familiar did little to calm him either. He hadn’t taken time to stop and take note of his surroundings during his jail break, but his instincts hummed in warning.

“This is it,” Buffy whispered at his side.

“You sure ‘bout that?”

She nodded. “Riley lives in there. So do the other guys he always hangs out with. It’s gotta be like their barracks or something.”

“Lead the way, slayer.”

The two crept into the fraternity house, taking extra care to avoid bumping into the few people they saw along the way. Willow’s spell made them invisible to human eyes and technology, but they were still solid and a careless stumble could blow their cover. Spike snarled under his breath, trying to quell the rising fear that had settled into his gut. It was an emotion he was unaccustomed to, and it angered him that he could be so humbled. Buffy sent him a warning glance so he subsided into silence again.

In the end, it really was too easy. One of the men from the grocery store walked past the alcove they had been using to spy and stopped in front of a mirror. A green light appeared from behind the glass, scanning the man’s face before disappearing again. The glass slid away to reveal what looked like an elevator. Slayer and vampire shared a surprised glance. Buffy shrugged and gestured towards the elevator with her head.

Silent as ghosts, the two slipped into the white room before the door closed again. The man, who’s name was apparently Graham Miller if his voice activation code was to be believed, seemed to sense something because he kept shifting his weight with nervous energy and glancing around the elevator. Buffy and Spike stayed pressed against the far wall with their swords pulled tight against their chests, one completely silent, one trying to not even breathe, on the ride down. Spike was surprised that the soldier across from them couldn’t hear the sound of the slayer’s heart pounding. To him, it was nearly deafening. Finally the door slid open again and Graham stepped out with a shake of his head and a shrug.

Spike and Buffy followed on his heels, twin sighs of relief waiting until the soldier had disappeared from sight into another door. Spike took the moment to glance around their new surroundings. He had never seen this part of the facility. They were standing on one side of a room that was easily the size of a large airline hanger. Even he, who had been a prisoner in this very facility, was taken aback at the sheer scale of the operation. If Buffy’s eyes were a good indication, she was similarly shocked. The whir of machinery more than covered the sound of their steps as the two slipped along one wall and behind a stack of plastic barrels.

“So, fearless leader, where to now?” Spike whispered.

Buffy glanced around nervously. “I didn’t expect this place to be so… big.”

“Well, for starters, I’d say that looks promisin’ for Red’s little present,” he indicated a wall of monitors where two soldiers were relaxing with coffee. “Security?”

“Looks like.” Buffy glanced at the two men watching the screens with a worried expression. “Can you go over there,” she indicated the stacks of boxes near the wall of computers, “and make some noise or something. Nothing big, I just don’t want them looking when I put the disc in.”

Spike nodded. He gave himself a liberal head start, skirting the edges of the room and checking over his shoulder often to make sure that Buffy was following. Despite the danger surrounding him, Spike couldn’t help but contemplate his current situation. This little alliance had gone far beyond what he had originally anticipated. One year’s worth of memories should have been like a drop in the bucket for a being well over a century old, but Takeshi’s experiences had made more of an impression than Spike would have ever expected.

He learned many things from his encounter inside of the sword, like the true nature of love and sacrifice. He knew his feelings for Dru to be real, but the memories of Kaede and Takeshi’s relationship made him question the validity of the vampiress’ feelings over the past hundred years. The thoughts hurt, but perhaps less than they should have.

Another revelation was that this little jaunt back into Spike’s personal hell had long since stopped having much to do with revenge and more to do with the petite blonde making her way stealthily behind him. Spike just hoped he wasn’t setting himself up for another impressive emotional nosedive. Takeshi’s assertion that the slayer cared for him did very little to soothe the turmoil in Spike’s mind. He had spent the entire day following the incident doing some pretty serious soul-searching, or whatever it is that soulless beings do when faced with such a quandary.

In the end, he had found no real closure. There was only one thing he knew to be true. Buffy was more than just the slayer to him, and he was more than just a vampire to her. He just didn’t know what that meant.

*****

For an elite military unit, or perhaps because of that fact, the soldiers running security were laughably predictable. When he saw the slayer near their desks, Spike shoved over a tall stack of boxes and shrank back into the shadows. As expected, the two came to investigate, side-arms drawn. The vampire slipped right past them as they poked around in the cardboard, oblivious to his presence.

Thinking that he might just make it through this ordeal alive, Spike rounded the edge of the security monitors just in time to see Buffy remove Willow’s disc from one of the computers. With a grin of triumph, she stuck the disc back into its carrier and tucked it in the back of her pants. The vampire returned the grin, finally allowing himself to loosen up and enjoy the fact that he was sticking it to the people who had crippled him.

The two ran, covering the sound of their actions by following a jogging troupe of soldiers around a sunken work-floor in the center of the room. As they passed, Spike glanced into the hole and nearly stumbled to a halt when he saw what was going on there.

Rows of gurneys, each holding a different demon, filled what looked like a laboratory floor. Men and women in lab coats were working on the various creatures, cutting things out of or putting things into their unconscious “patients.” When Buffy grabbed his arm to keep him going, he heard her gasp when she caught a glimpse of what he was seeing. Despite her own shock, she managed to pull him into a staggering jog again.

Spike ran, immersed in dark thoughts. It wasn’t until the group they were following passed a trio of soldiers escorting a tall polgara demon that he snapped out of his preoccupation. The polgara was looking straight at him. Not through or by or around, but at.

Shit!

He grabbed the slayer’s arm and spun them both around and into the shadows next to what looked like an armory. At her confused look, Spike held up a hand, listening hard to make sure that no one was around before he spoke.

“Problem, pet. Demons can see us.”

“But Willow’s spell…”

“I think Red’s spell only hides us from humans.”

“Crud,” Buffy’s face twisted into a pout. Despite the seriousness of their situation, Spike smirked. She was cute when she was frustrated. “And it looks like the machines are starting to go on the fritz.” She indicated the flickering lights above some of the doors around the room. “We need to pick up the pace and then scoot on outta here.” At the vampire’s quizzical look, she pulled out the gold amulet that had been hidden in the sword box. Spike’s eyes widened as he heard the slayer whisper something under her breath. He heard the words “Orochi” and “Amaterasu,” but little else he recognized. When the little pendant started to glow and tug away from Buffy’s hand, his eyebrows rose with surprise.

“Didn’t know you knew any magic,” he whispered.

She smiled slightly and tapped her temple with a finger. “I don’t, and that’s the only spell Kaede knew. It was a gift from the priestess who made this spiffy piece of jewelry.”

“Ai?”

“Yeah, how did you…?” she paused. “She’s the one that gave Takeshi the potions wasn’t she?” When Spike nodded, Buffy continued. “At some point we need to compare notes about our upgrades.”

“Sounds like mine’ll be less excitin’ than yours.”

“We’ll see. Now c’mon.” The two froze for a moment when the first security alarm rang through the huge room. “I think things are about to get really interesting.”

“Hope is the other side of history.” - Marcia Cavell

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 4

The man would have been heavy even if Kaede had not just fought against a score of vampires. As it was, the slayer was hard pressed to carry him back to the dojo and inside while avoiding unwanted attention.

The man was in sorry shape; the effects of the poison making him shake with chills and sweat in turns. He was unconscious, but he was mumbling to himself. Having experienced the effects of the magical concoction that Sano’s gang used first hand, she knew well the kinds of fever dreams the substances could evoke. She did not envy him.

When Kaede finally staggered into the dojo, she found Ichiro sitting in the library, as usual. He was placing his latest journal into the sending box that he used to keep in contact with his mysterious Council. Ever since the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu, had evicted all foreigners from Japan’s shores almost a century before, Japan’s watchers had been forced to use magic to stay in contact with the rest of the Council. For the most part, Ichiro performed his duties as her watcher autonomously, but he still kept in contact with his nominal brethren and sent reports regularly.

Ichiro offered her the barest glance as she lowered the man onto the library floor. Kaede watched him close the lid of the ornate wooden box and place his right hand on the smooth panel that dominated the top of the strange contraption. With a word of power and a brief flash of light, the sending was complete and Ichiro finally turned towards his slayer.

“Is there a reason that you have deposited a sick and bloody yoriki on my floor?” he gestured to both the man and the jitte, the weapon of the police force that signified his position in life.

Kaede wanted to hit her watcher in that moment, but managed to restrain herself like she had a hundred times in the past. “I ran into Sichiro and a large group of Sano’s other lackeys tonight. This man appeared and started fighting them as well. I dusted six of them, and he managed to injure three others before the rest escaped. I don’t know who he is or what he was doing there, but Sichiro managed to cut him with a poisoned blade before he ran away.”

Ichiro’s face remained blank during Kaede’s report. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat and cold. “I see. What do you expect me to do about him?”

Kaede’s mouth started to drop open, but she managed to clench her jaw and speak politely instead. “Whether it was needed or not, this man helped me fight tonight. I owe him the cure to Sano’s toxins in the very least. Besides, he might be a demon hunter or someone else who would make a good contact.”

“Or he could be a police officer who received reports of a fight and came to investigate…”

“Ichiro-san!”

“Oh, very well. But you are to make yourself scarce after he wakes. If he is just a yoriki, I will tell him some lie about how he arrived here and hope that his hallucinations will cover the truth. He will be out of this house and out of your life tomorrow morning. If he is something else, well, I will decide where to go from there.”

Kaede nodded curtly; what else could she do? She helped her watcher wrestle the man onto a palette and watched as Ichiro spread a thick, tar-like substance over the yoriki’s wound and bandaged it with strips of cloth.

She found herself studying the man’s face. It was certainly handsome, with strong lines along his jaw and cheekbones and a mouth that would have curved into a natural smile had it not been contorted in fever. Kaede flushed and turned her eyes back to the man’s wounded arm before Ichiro caught her looking at their patient in such a way. She was a slayer, and there were some things she could never have. There was no point in even dreaming, and she did not want to hear a lecture on the matter from her watcher.

Ichiro dismissed her with orders to stay far away from the library unless summoned the next morning. Kaede nodded and with a curt bow, left the room. As she drifted off to sleep that evening, she was met with images of the handsome stranger. She wondered what his name was.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

Interesting wasn’t the word Buffy would have used to describe their situation. Nerve-wracking? Maybe, but not interesting. Buffy and Spike were huddled against a door marked 314, trying to figure out how to open it while soldiers streamed all around them. Just when she thought that Willow’s computer virus would never reach this particular door, the red light over the keypad lock flickered and turned green. She started to grin in triumph at her partner in crime when suddenly Spike’s arms were around her, hand over her mouth as he rolled them both to one side of the door.

And just in time. The door burst open and a familiar figure stormed past the invisible couple.

Professor Walsh?!

Spike must have felt her stiffen because his hands pulled her even tighter against his hard chest, keeping her still. They both stood stock-still as her psychology professor stomped into the main room, shouting demands for explanations.

When the immediate danger had passed, Buffy started to become very aware of the vampire behind her. She could feel his skin slowly warming at their contact and the hard lines of his muscles pressed against her back. The faint smell of leather and cigarettes surrounded him, and the little tingle along the back of her neck that had saved her life so many times was screaming that the vampire behind her was old and very strong. She had no idea what she should do. Her extra senses were telling her to run, but other parts of her body were content to leave things as they were.

As if sensing her confusion, Spike slowly released her. He kept his hands raised at his sides as if in surrender. “Sorry, pet. Just didn’t want our cover blown by a door to the face.” He seemed almost apologetic, as if he expected her to punch him in the face at any second.

She waved off further explanations. “No harm, no foul, but what are we supposed to do about…” She glanced down and saw the toe of Spike’s boot propping the door open. “Nice,” she smiled at his quick thinking.

Spike took the handle of the door and swung it wide with a faux-courtly bow. “After you, ma’am.”

Picking up on his playful attitude, Buffy returned the bow with an exaggerated curtsy, made all the more ridiculous by her tight jeans. With twin grins, the two disappeared into room 314.

*****

“That’s just gross.” Buffy wrinkled up her nose at the scene in front of them. After following the glowing pendant through various doors and hallways, they had finally reached another large room, empty of the soldiers and scientists so common in the rest of the facility. It wasn’t as large as the main room they had first entered, but it was still big enough to hold a basketball court.

Or a really big, nasty body.

Giles had been right about one thing: Orochi was not completely resurrected. The creature before them was little more than a knot of serpentine skeletons held together with strips of muscle tissue and blood vessels. If she looked closely, Buffy thought she could see the beginnings of organs starting to grow inside the long, twisting rib cages. It was quite possibly the grossest thing Buffy had ever seen, and that was really saying something coming from a girl who dealt with grave robbing and Xander’s taste in girlfriends on a regular basis.

Buffy’s eyes were drawn to the bright glint of silver on one of the gigantic skulls. A mesh of wires and electrodes was attached to the back of the head in a glittering net. A quick survey revealed similar devices on each of Orochi’s heads. She would have bet her best pair of Italian boots that she was looking at a jumped up version of the chip in Spike’s head.

The pendant in her hand was tugging against her grip frantically as Buffy and Spike descended the stairs to the main floor where Orochi lay. When she finally reached the bottom landing, she released the chain and let the amulet do the job it had been designed to do. It flew across the room like a golden comet, chain trailing like a tail, and struck the closest skull in the forehead where the amulet exploded in a shower of sparks. Buffy and Spike froze as Orochi’s entire body shuddered, but when the glow faded, the skeleton remained still.

“He’s mortal now,” Buffy said into the echoingly quiet room. Spike only nodded his understanding.

It seemed anticlimactic as Buffy poured her vial of liquid over Kaede’s katana and handed Spike his. As they set to work, cutting through the brittle bones and half-formed sinews holding Orochi’s eight heads onto his body, Buffy couldn’t help but be disappointed at the lack of a good fight, but it seemed fitting as well.

Orochi was Kaede and Takeshi’s kill. They were the ones who had battled him to a temporary defeat three hundred years ago. They were the ones who had suffered and sacrificed and lost. Buffy and Spike were only performing a long overdue cleanup.

The slayer cut the same four that Kaede had originally claimed and Spike took the remaining half. When the final skull was separated from Orochi’s body, Buffy walked to Spike’s side and looked over their handiwork. Pieces of Orochi’s skeleton started to crumble, the disintegration following each bone to its completion as the entire body reduced itself to dust before their very eyes.

Spike huffed disconsolately. “Thought I’d get myself a little rough and tumble at the end of this.”

Buffy laughed at him. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Maybe next time.”

The vampire eyed her archly. “Who says there’s gonna be a next time?”

Buffy just rolled her eyes. “You went all Sean Connery on this Alcatraz before. How’s about leading the way out? I need a bath.”

“Used the air vents the last time.” Spike looked around the room before gesturing towards a large grate near the stair case. “That one looks promising, but these swords are gonna be a problem.”

Buffy looked at the sword in her hand for a moment before unwrapping the woven sageo from the sheath and retying it around the handguard and ornate cap on the end of the scabbard. This she swung over her shoulder and head, settling the sword between her shoulder-blades. “And voila!”

Spike grinned in response before emulating her actions. Once his blade was similarly secured, the two started walking towards the ventilation duct.

They had only walked half of the distance to their escape route when the every door in sight burst open and the struggling bodies of soldiers and various demons broke into the room. Willow’s virus had apparently gotten into the demon containment facilities and opened many of the cells. Buffy barely had time to register what was happening before a huge yellow demon, she had no idea what kind, leapt at her. She tried to fight it off, and Spike jumped on its back to help, when a shot rang out in the room.

With a surprised shout of pain, Spike dropped to the floor next to a very dead demon. The bullet that had killed her attacker had also passed straight through the vampire’s chest. Buffy rushed to Spike’s side to help him to his feet, when she noticed that the shot had destroyed something else as well. The pouch controlling Spike’s invisibility spell hung in shreds over a bloody and painful-looking exit wound.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

Spike was visible again.

“Oh no, no, no,” she kept repeating under her breath.

“S’nothin’ slayer. Bullets can’t hurt me.” He tried to draw himself up as if to prove to her that he was perfectly fine, in spite of the bleeding hole through his chest.

“Spike, come on,” she tugged at his arm in desperation. “You’re visible!”

“What?” His hand dropped to the little leather bag and found its contents blasted to tiny bits. “Oh, bleeding fuck.”

They started into a stumbling jog, Spike wincing as each step jarred his injury. Careless of their surroundings, Buffy slammed into demons and soldiers alike as they made for the grate. When she reached the wall, Buffy grabbed the screen and gave it a strong tug. It fell away in her hands. She turned around to shove Spike into the hole just in time to see a soldier tackle the vampire and pin him to the ground.

Thanks to the chip, Spike was helpless against the man’s attack. He was trying his best to guard his head as the man’s fist connected again and again with the vampire’s body. Acting on instinct, Buffy caught the soldier’s arm as it descended in another punch and yanked him off of the struggling vampire. She almost fell over when she realized who it was.

Riley! Oh crap!

She mourned the relationship they could have had, but her fist only paused for a moment before connecting with his jaw. Her decision had been made when she teamed up with Spike on this mission. Riley dropped like a stone at her feet. Buffy grabbed Spike and shoved him into vent before following after him, dragging Riley’s unconscious form behind her. Ex or not, she wouldn’t leave him in the open to be killed. She pulled the grate up, closing them into the vent and hiding them from the battle outside.

In the semi-darkness, she could see Spike’s eyes glowing golden when she turned around. “Can you climb?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He sounded oddly choked, but Buffy couldn’t read his face in the dim lighting. “What about him?”

Buffy looked down at Riley. “I can’t carry him.” As close as the quarters were, crouched inside the vent, she couldn’t avoid Spike’s gaze for long. “I don’t know what to do,” she finally admitted.

An awkward hand patted her shoulder. “His buddies have things well in hand out there. He’ll be fine if we leave him for them to find.”

She covered Spike’s hand with her own and nodded in resignation.

Goodbye Riley.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” - Mark Twain

Edo, Japan: Genroku Year 3

The streets of Edo were bustling with activity in the early evening as Takeshi walked slowly through his precinct. He knew most of the people around him, from the merchants to the craftsmen to the street sweepers. He hadn’t had a serious case on his hands in a few weeks, and the peace in his district gave him a sense of accomplishment.

Along his casual walk, he took a report on a suspicious person seen loitering around a fish stand, broke up a fight between two drunken brothers, and checked in with the neighborhood’s night-watchman. He came across nothing that seemed worth making an arrest, and so he kept walking, nodding to people he knew and just generally keeping an eye out for trouble.

After a while, he left the busy, well-lit streets and started walking deeper into the darker allies and byways where any real trouble would be brewing. Those streets proved just as peaceful as the others, and when the night-watchman tolled midnight, Takeshi started for home.

He had only made it three blocks when a cry caught his attention.

“Help!”

His response was hard wired into his psyche. Before he really knew what he was doing, Takeshi was running through the allies, searching for the source of the shout. It didn’t take him long to find it.

The yoriki soon found a little boy, one of the street urchins Takeshi often saw running around the area, stumbling towards him. With a deft arm, he caught the boy and managed to subdue his struggling with two firm hands on his shoulders.

“Jiro! What’s wrong?” His voice was quiet and soothing as he tried to get the boy to calm down enough to talk intelligibly.

After a few moments, he managed to get the words “shrine,” “girl,” and “attack” out of the frightened boy. With a quick thanks and an order to go run home to his parents, Takeshi took off running again.

There was only one shrine in his district.

Pretty soon, he heard the clash of weapons and angry shouts. Paying no heed to social niceties or religious traditions, he scaled the steps of the shrine three at a time, sword drawn and gleaming in the moonlight. The sight that greeted him at the top of the steps was far from what he had expected.

A young woman was fighting against an entire host of men. And doing quite well if he was any judge. He stood gawking for a moment.

Gods above and below, she’s so beautiful.

Shaking off the thought, Takeshi cried his challenge and threw himself into the fray.

*****

Sunnydale, California: 1999

When Spike had felt the bullet tear through his body, he had been unpleasantly surprised. As much as he could have lived without a forty-five round ripping a hole in his chest, it had nothing on the sinking feeling in his gut when he realized that the soldier trying to pound in his face was none other than Buffy’s boyfriend, the elusive Riley Finn.

Just when he was about to give up hope of ever seeing the night sky again, the slayer grabbed the boy and ripped him off of the vampire’s chest. Spike watched the emotions flicker across her face and was amazed. Anger and worry were replaced by surprise, and then there was a hardening of her features that he took for determination.

Then her fist smashed into soldier-boy’s chin.

If the situation had been different, he would have laughed at the surprised expression on Finn’s face as he had his ass handed to him by an invisible opponent, but Spike was simply too shocked to take much note. All he could think was that he was thankful he was already lying on his back, because he knew his knees wouldn’t have supported him had he been standing.

The next thing he knew, Spike was being shoved through the hole in the wall, followed by the slayer and the limp form of her boyfriend. Or was it ex-boyfriend? He really wasn’t sure after the punch she had just handed out. When Buffy slid the grate back into place, he allowed his demonic features come to the fore in order to see in the dark.

Buffy finally looked at him. “Can you climb?”

The gunshot wound still hurt, but nothing short of the final apocalypse itself could have kept him in this building any longer. “Yeah.” His eyes fell to the prime source of his confusion. “What about him?”

Buffy’s face was hidden by a screen of golden hair as she looked down at the body between them. “I can’t carry him.” She sounded so torn and confused. Spike could understand completely. “I don’t know what to do.”

She looked so fragile in that moment that Spike reacted on instinct. He found himself patting her on the shoulder and offering her words of comfort. When her tiny hand covered his, he let his fears fall away. She had decided, and for once, he had come out on top.

The climb was problematic. The walls of the vent were slick, but there was more than enough room to maneuver even with the swords hanging across their backs. Between the two of them, they eventually found a chute leading to the outside world. With a well placed kick from Spike’s booted foot, they were free.

Two swords were tossed out into the grass. The vampire climbed out first and offered a hand up to the slayer even though his muscles were burning with exertion. After he pulled her out, they both rolled onto the grass. While the slayer tried to catch her breath, Spike chuckled to himself.

“What’s so funny?” Buffy asked petulantly.

“So what’re we gonna do next weekend, slayer?”

Her breathless giggles mingled with his. “What about ‘Who says there’s gonna be a next time’?”

“What about ‘Shut up and get back in the bathtub’?” he retorted.

“Well, we could always come back and muck up the works for our friendly neighborhood Dr. Moreaus some more. That could be fun.” The slayer’s voice was light, but there was a thread of iron running through her words that caught Spike’s attention.

“You declarin’ a turf war on some fellow demon hunters?” He tried, and failed to keep the hopeful confusion out of his voice.

The slayer scowled, suddenly serious. “Hunters? No. What those guys are doing is not hunting. It’s dangerous and stupid and I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if they had managed to wake up Orochi.”

“Say the word, slayer, and I’ll be there with bells on. I bet the two of us could put a whole world of hurt on their operation if we put our minds to it. Might even get a medal for valor from your precious Council.”

Buffy just laughed again before propping herself up into a sitting position. “Speaking of which, we should really be getting back to Giles’ place. I bet he’s polished through one of his lenses by now.”

He scowled with mock anger. “No more bathtubs?”

“No more bathtubs,” she laughed. With a final chortle, Buffy dragged herself up and stretched, joints popping after the cramped confines of the chute. When she offered him a hand, Spike took it and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

They found themselves standing toe to toe, barely a hair’s breadth between them. Spike’s fingers itched to smooth her golden hair back from where is lay, mussed from the climb and shining in the moonlight. Controlling the impulse, he simply grinned: an honest smile, not one of the sarcastic leers he tended to wear around her. When she looked up at him as if seeing him for the very first time and smiled, an unneeded breath caught in the vampire’s throat.

Gods above and below, she’s so beautiful.

The moment passed, but the effect didn’t as the once enemies retrieved their swords and walked back towards the busy streets of Sunnydale.

*****

Two ghostly forms watched as Buffy and Spike walked away.

“Do you think they know what is to come?” asked Kaede.

“No, but I have the feeling that they will manage just fine,” replied Takeshi. “I have never met two such warriors. It’s a pity we never knew them in life.”

The slender slayer sighed. “I will miss our garden.”

“It’s their garden now, if it even remains a garden. I get the impression that the slayer might prefer a beach. We knew this would happen.”

“I know. Their bond to the swords supplants our own, but I will still miss it.”

Takeshi wrapped ghostly arms around his wife’s waist. “I will too, beloved,” he finally admitted.

The translucent forms stood for a moment in the clearing, each basking in the other’s presence. After a few minutes, Kaede spoke again. “I wonder if my father knew what he would start when he gave us those swords.”

“We can always ask him on the other side, not that we will be there long. Warriors for the light are too rare for the Powers to let sit idly by. I would imagine that we will be spun back out into the mortal realm soon enough.”

Kaede smiled to herself. “But we are bound now. That much will remain from our time in the garden. No matter how many lives we lead until the wheel of time finally stops, we will never have to fight alone again.”

“Yes, and neither will they.”

The two warriors stood in the warm California night, savoring the final moments of this life. There would be others though. They would carry different names and different faces, but their souls would ever be the same, and now they truly had one another for the rest of eternity.

“I am ready, Takeshi.”

The ghostly samurai simply responded by pulling the slayer closer against his chest. The two forms, one light and one dark, started to glow. Soon the light from one was indistinguishable from the other and their radiance burned with a cold white flame. With a blinding flash, they were gone.

Gone, but no longer alone.




A/N I would like to thank my beta, LimitlessD, for her proofreading and encouragement. I'm a big coward sometimes, so her hardheaded bullying has a lot to do with me posting at all. Here's to you, D.