We Will Remember Them….

By Lilachigh

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Laurence Binyon



Chapter Seven: Rivers of Time



London – 2001

Rupert Giles stared across the Watcher Council’s polished boardroom table to where Quentin Travers sat, gazing out of the window at the plane trees in the square below. Giles felt woozy. The Council had hired Concorde to bring him and Travers back from America but he felt as if his body was still somewhere mid-Atlantic.

“What do you mean, it isn’t working?”

Travers sighed and steepled his fingers together, one by one. “Rupert, you know I can’t go into classified details with someone on your salary level. Suffice it to say that there are signs, portents, changes and shifts in events to make it perfectly clear that in 1943, Miss Summers, so far, has not succeeded in her task to return the Slayer called Joy to England.”

“She’s only been gone a day. How soon did you think she would manage that? Anyway, you won’t know for sure until she drinks the charm antidote and realises she can’t get back.” Giles’ voice tightened with pain. He still could not believe or accept what he had had to do. Why hadn’t he just told Buffy the truth? He knew in his heart of hearts that she would have sacrificed herself once again. Indeed, he had the oddest feeling that she would almost have been pleased to have done so.

Quentin Travers ignored him. He had turned back to the table and was busy working out figures on a notepad. “Hmmm, of course, it might be the vampire who is stopping her. I must admit that is a complication as I believe she has a sort of affection for him.”

Giles stared. “Affection? Vampire? Oh God, Quentin, you don’t mean Buffy is running around France with Angel?”

“Certainly not!” The older Englishman looked shocked. “Angelus is in America at this point in time. No, from what I can tell, the Army sent our old friend, William the Bloody, to save Joy.”

“Spike! Oh, I should have guessed!” Giles threw his file of papers across the table, watching them flutter to the floor. “I tell you, Quentin, whatever rivers of time exist, they have the greatest pleasure in sweeping those two together!”

“But she has no deep feelings for this vampire, does she? Apart from a lingering affection as you would have for a pet dog? This is important, Rupert. If only the Army’s records were clearer. They seem to indicate at first that William the Bloody was sent to rescue Joy, but later on – these jottings here – and here – seem to point to another reason for his presence there. I do wish I had been in the Council at the time. Sadly I was a mere youth. Ah, I wonder - perhaps Spike kills our Miss Summers in 1943 and that plays a part in returning Joy to England? It is extremely interesting.”

Giles took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose where they pinched. In twenty-four hours, if Buffy was still alive, she would drink the charm to return her to 2001 and it would not work. She would know she had been tricked by the Council, but at least she wouldn’t know he had been involved.

But he knew! He had colluded in this plot to send her back in time because it had been clear from the records that that had already happened and he trusted her to kill any ordinary vampire who got in her way.

But if he had known that it was Spike she would meet in France - a Spike who obviously was not killed by Buffy or anyone else – then he would have hesitated. For he was quite certain that the feelings she had for the vampire were quite different to those she had had for Angel. That vampire she had killed to save the world. Giles had a nasty feeling Buffy would sacrifice the world to save Spike.

He left Quentin Travers to his feverish calculations and went downstairs, though two hidden doorways, into a basement below the basement.
In a small office he found an elderly woman, sitting knitting a long red scarf, watching football on a small television as some foul smelling concoctions bubbled away on the Bunsen Burners on her desk.

“Rupert Giles! How lovely to see you. It’s been such a long time. Goodness, I do believe it was at last year’s cricket match between the Council and the Salvation Army team. When there was all that fuss because the bails blew off in the last minute even though there was no wind. Do sit down. Mind that toad! And that piece of cheese. It’s got a little runny.”

“Dorcas – I can’t imagine what spell you’re doing that needs a toad and cheese.”

“What? Oh, don’t be quaint with me, Rupert. The cheese is left over from my lunch, as you very well know. Now, what can I do for you?”

Giles smiled at the old lady. “I need your help. I need a very special spell…..”

* * * * * *


France: 1943



In the woods just outside the village where Joy lived, Buffy and Spike stood, the dust of the vamp she had just staked still drifting between them.

Buffy shuddered. “Did you see it’s face? Who the hell did that to it?”

Spike shrugged. “Some scientists, I suppose, using their own initiative to creep into Herr Hitler’s good books. Vampires are fair game at the moment, Slayer. Round them up and ship them out. There are whole trainloads heading for Eastern Europe, so the rumours go. And not just vamps, people, too, so they say. People whose faces don’t fit into Herr Hitler’s idea of what’s bloody well correct. But hey, vamps always exaggerate. My fangs are longer than your fangs; I’ve killed a Slayer; I can wipe out a whole town overnight. You can’t believe everything you’re told in this War. Remember poncy Neville and his “Peace in Our Time”.”

Buffy turned away so he couldn’t see her face and peered out through the branches to the empty track that led down to the village. There was still no sign of Joy. She felt sick. She knew as much as any other girl of her age about the atrocities that had occurred during this War, but she hadn’t realised she might come up against them first hand. The camps, the extermination of millions of people. It was going on at this very moment but there was nothing she could do to stop it.

The word Spike had used – initiative – still sent cold tremors down her spine. He had no idea, of course, that a government agency in a country thousands of miles and nearly sixty years later would use the same word to describe themselves and their experiments on demons and vampires.

“I’ve no problem with ridding the world of vamps,” she said shortly, “although I’ve no idea why the Germans can’t just stake them.”

Spike raised an eyebrow and fished in the pocket of his leather flying-jacket for a cigarette and matches. “Most of them are staked, Slayer. But I’ve got a feeling there’s some laboratory back there at the Chateau where lots of fat little Nazi white-coats are playing “let’s arrange the next vamp’s features” even as we speak.”

“Must you?” Buffy wrinkled her nose at the strong, pungent smell of cheap tobacco.

“Well, yes, I reckon I must. Not going to kill me, is it?” He grinned at her and for a second she forgot where and when they were and found herself smiling in return, until she realised he was looking at her with an expression of astonished puzzlement on his face.

“Anyways, Slayer. Where’s the other one?” Spike said. “Where’s Joy?”

“She went down to the village with the baby.”

Spike crossed the glade in three long strides and peered out through the branches, his face inches from Buffy’s. “Are you completely off your trolley? You let her go on her own? Excuse me if I’m missing something here, but we’ve just spent hours trying to rescue the sodding bint and you let her go!”

Buffy edged away from him. She couldn’t bear to have him that close and not be able to touch him. “She said she’d be back within half an hour. She had to get milk for the baby.”

Spike closed his eyes and groaned. “And you believed her?”

“Why shouldn’t I? She’s a Slayer. We don’t go around telling lies to other Slayers.”

“That’s the most ridiculous, poxy reasoning I’ve ever heard.” His fingers suddenly bit into her shoulders as he twisted her round to face him. “Listen, she’s a Slayer, right? She has a mission. The first thing all vamps learn is you never get between a Slayer and her mission or else you’ll end up dust.”

Angrily, Buffy pulled away from his hard hands. “I’ve got a mission, too, unless you’ve forgotten.”

Spike kicked out at a cluster of toadstools on the trunk of a tree. “Yes, exactly! Your mission was the same as mine - to get her back to England. Not let her out of your sight. So why isn’t she here? She must have been gone far longer than half an hour.”

Buffy shrugged. “Perhaps she met up with her husband – perhaps she’s trying to find someone to look after the baby – perhaps the Germans are closer than we know and she’s staying out of sight. There are a hundred different reasons, Spike, but she will come back. Anyway, where did you go when you walked away from us?”

Spike glared at her. God, he hated this American bitch so much. He’d met some aggravating women during his life and death but she was at the top of the list. He was worried sick that she’d lost Joy; that he would fail to get the English Slayer home and Dru would die.

“Great! We’re stuck here in the middle of the woods whilst the Slayer and her husband play hide the sausage! And strange as the strategy may seem to you, Slayer, I was checking to see how many Germans were still guarding the plane. I didn’t walk away from you – the two of you walked away from me! I thought you’d be there when I got back.”

Buffy felt a quiver of guilt. “We needed milk for Aurore. If she’d started crying – ”

“You should have let me kill it back in the Chateau.”

She glared at him in deep disgust and self loathing. Yes, he would quite cheerfully have killed an innocent baby. Even now, she knew that if he thought Aurore would stop Joy leaving France, he would kill her.

She shuddered. And she had let this – thing – touch her! Have sex with her. Run his hands across her breasts, down her thighs and – ” She forced her thoughts away from the Spike she knew in Sunnydale, wondering if she was going mad because the desire for him never lessened. Whatever he was now, she was ashamed to admit that she would still want the vampire when she got home. So what did that make her, apart from disgusting?

William the Bloody lit another cigarette. This American girl confused him. He could sense the anger, the hatred she had for him, which was quite right and proper. Hatred he could handle, especially from a Slayer. But then, underneath the loathing there was something else. A warmth, a roiling, boiling fire of – his nostrils flared – passion. That was what he could sense and it made him feel sick. This Slayer was having wickedly passionate thoughts – about him!

Every vampire bone in his body told him to get away from her, every part of him that loved Dru urged him to back off. But even as he was listening to all those instructions, he had thrown the cigarette aside and his hands were reaching for the Slayer.

Her jerked her towards him, hearing the little gasp as he head fell back. He was going mad! He must be. God, he must not kiss her. She was the Slayer. But he knew as his lips touched hers and her mouth opened under his that if this was madness, he welcomed it.

For a long moment the world spun round Buffy. The mouth, the tongue, the taste, everything was Spike and she knew if she once lifted her hands to hold his head, she would be lost and he could take her, there, on the forest floor.

Then suddenly, they were both pushing away, cursing, spitting and scrubbing at their mouths. Buffy drew her fist back to punch the face she loved so much and stopped as a stutter of machine gun fire ripped through the trees.

Tbc.