Chapter 2
 
 
Buffy closed the front door behind her, jumped lightly down the porch steps and walked briskly away from the house.
 
Once she was certain she was out of sight, she let out a long weary breath and slowed her pace. Her shoulders slumped and she allowed a slight limp to show in her stride. She had been unable to hide the cut on her forehead, but she thought she’d succeeded in concealing the rest of her most recent injuries from her mother. It would take a day or two yet for the big bump on the back of her head to go down and the cracked ribs and bruised hip and shoulder to heal completely. Being flung into a brick wall by a Hell God hurt!
 
She paused under a street light to roll some of the tension out of her neck and shoulders and take a deep breath of cool fresh air. It was so good to get out into the night again, away from the demands her family and friends made upon her.
 
Then she immediately felt guilty for needing this time alone, out in the darkness where all she had to deal with was the comfortable routine of slaying.
 
She knew they meant no harm, but nevertheless they all unintentionally increased the pressure she was under. Her mother couldn’t help being anxious and over-protective and Dawn was still acting out, struggling to come to terms with the discovery that she was a mystical key thingy that Glory wanted to stick in some kind of lock.
 
She loved them dearly, but Xander and Willow never seemed to understand that not every problem could be solved by a silly joke, a box of doughnuts or a night out at the Bronze, and as for Riley… She was sure that he didn’t mean to be such a clingy dead weight, but recently she’d had neither the time nor the energy to devote to their relationship and pander to his need to be needed. When she did cave and allow him to come with her on patrol, she had to spend half her energy watching to make sure he didn’t get hurt. He distracted her from her slaying, and that put them both in danger.
 
Above all…
 
“Slayer.”
 
Buffy was jerked out of her thoughts by the quiet voice. She spun around, instinctively slipping the stake from her sleeve and taking up a defensive posture.
 
Oh, great. Another vampire stuck in the eighties. Although this one was hot. Dismissing the passing thought, she responded calmly, “Vampire,” and waited for him to attack.
 
She was taken aback when he took a pace backwards and held his hands up, open palms outward in surrender.
 
“Not gonna fight you, slayer,” he said quickly. “Just wanna know what you did to me, and how I can reverse it.”
 
Well, that was… new. “Huh? Did to you? I haven’t done anything to you.” She screwed up her nose in confusion. “What is it you think I did to you?”
 
“The spells, slayer.” Now he was looking just as confused as she was. “You didn’t…? I don’t understand… Don’t you recognise me?”
 
“Never saw you before in my life.”
 
Buffy relaxed and folded her arms, watching in bemusement as the vampire lit a cigarette and began pacing back and forth in front of her, puffing away and waving his arms in the air.
 
“Bloody hell! It had to have been here… The spell made me forget you, so I was sure it had to be you! I can’t feed; I’m killing my own kind… Who the hell else would…?” He abruptly stopped pacing and turned to face her again, pointing at her with the cigarette. “It’s not just me is it?”
 
“What’s not just you?” This was getting weirder by the second.
 
“The forgetting spell. It made me forget a bunch of stuff about what happened to me in Sunnydale—and you—and everything for months afterwards. And there’s a spell trying to keep me away from Sunnydale…”
 
“Someone put a spell on you and you thought it was me?” Buffy asked. “I don’t do magic. I’m the slayer, not a witch. Anyway, even if I did meet you before, which I so didn’t, I wouldn’t have put a spell on you. I’d have staked your vampire ass! Slayer here! That’s what I do!”
 
“Right then. Wasn’t you. Got that bit wrong. This changes things.” The vampire scrubbed his face with his hand and taking one final draw from his cigarette, tossed it away. He took two purposeful strides towards her and Buffy immediately brought the stake back up to ward him off.
 
He stopped and again raised his hands. “Sorry, pet. Still don’t want to fight you.”
 
“Why not?” Buffy asked, by now totally intrigued. “This is ridiculous…”
 
“Looks as if you’re under the same spell as me, slayer. Except for the stay away from Sunnydale part, obviously.” He took something from his pocket, turning it over and over in his hand. He tilted his head to one side and asked thoughtfully, “Anything that you feel you should know, but you just can’t seem to remember, slayer? Any bloody irritating holes in your memory?”
 
Buffy gaped at him. How could he possibly know…?
 
“Aha!” He said triumphantly, cocking a finger gun and pointing it at her. “Now then. I might be able to help with that. I call truce, slayer.”
 
“Truce?”
 
“Yeah, truce. No trying to kill each other ‘til we’ve sussed this thing out. What do you say?”
 
She hesitated, chewing on the inside of her cheek. What if he could truly help? Of course if it turned out to be a trick, she could always stake him later. She gave a little shrug. “Okay, truce. What did you have in mind?”
 
The vampire held up what looked like a large silver coin that glinted in the lamplight. “Got me a talisman to help me work past some of the soddin’ magic. Doesn’t totally cancel it, just kinda weakens it enough to let me know it’s there and helps me fight it. Seems only the original spell-caster can reverse it completely. If you’d take it…”
 
Buffy cautiously held out her hand, and he dropped the heavy, engraved disc into her palm. She looked down at it, expecting to be swamped by lost memories. Absolutely nothing happened. She glanced up to see him holding up what looked like a large business card.
 
“Hold it tight in both hands and read out what it says on the card, slayer.”
 
Buffy scanned the words on the card. They looked pretty harmless. In fact, she couldn’t see how they could be anything but beneficial. She looked back up at him, catching his piercing blue eyes. He quirked one eyebrow, the one with a scar through it, challenging her to take a leap of faith.
 
“Okay…” She tucked her stake away and clasped her hands together, pressing the amulet between her palms. She took a deep breath and read:
 
“Guiding spirits light the trails
Clearing mist, the truth unveils
Help me fight this obfuscation
Work against malign compulsion
By your grace, the conjure fails.
So mote it be.”
 
The amulet suddenly warmed in her hands, although not uncomfortably so. The half-expected flood of memories failed to appear. Instead, Buffy was assailed by a series of flashes, like brief out-takes from a movie in which she had the lead role.
 
A confrontation with the bleached blonde vampire in a school corridor:
“Do we really need weapons for this?”
“I just like them. They make me feel all manly.”
 
 
In a filthy warehouse, wearing a period gown:
“Hi Honey, I’m home.”
 
 
On a gantry overlooking a room packed with vampires and teenagers, restraining a female vampire and pressing a stake to her chest:
”Let everyone out or Dru fits in an ashtray.”
 
 
In a church amid a confused battle, a clever gymnastic move and she faces him:
“I'd rather be fighting you anyway.”
“Mutual.”
 
 
In the street beside a police car, he smirks and says:
“I wanna save the world.”
 
 
They’re outside her house and her mother is there:
“I'm, uh... in a band. A… a rock band with Spike here.”
“Right. She plays the, the triangle.”
“Drums.”
“Drums, yeah. She's, uh, hell on the old skins, you know.”
“Hmm. And, uh, what do you do?”
“Well, I sing.”
 
 
Inside her house:
“Be ready to back me up when I make my move. If Giles dies... she dies.”
 
Buffy waited for endless seconds, eyes squinched shut, hoping against hope that she’d be able to remember….. but no. That was all there was. It was enough though. Enough to convince her that he was right. That somebody had deliberately screwed with her memory.
 
She became aware that he was gripping her by the upper arms, effectively holding her up. She opened her eyes to see him regarding her with concern. She straightened her back and gave him a little nod of thanks.
 
He stepped back, releasing her arms, and she felt unaccountably bereft.
 
“Spike?”
 
“Yeah. Remember me now then?”
 
“Yeah.” Buffy chewed her bottom lip. “You tried to kill me.”
 
“Well, to be fair, love, you tried to kill me too.”
 
“And then you helped me to save the world.”
 
He glanced around anxiously. “Not so loud, slayer. Got my reputation to think of.”
 
He held out his hand, and after looking at it blankly for a moment, she realised what he wanted and handed back the talisman.
 
“So what now, slayer?”
 
That was a very good question. Exactly what was the standard procedure when you discovered that someone had put a spell on you and stolen a bunch of your memories?
 
She grabbed him by the sleeve of his leather duster and started dragging him down the road. “We need to go see Giles.”
 
“Oy! Watch the leather, slayer!” He batted at her hand until she realised he was willingly keeping step with her and released him. “Who’s Giles?”
 
“My watcher. You don’t remember him?”
 
“Don’t remember much from that year…” He admitted reluctantly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Might recognise him if he was in any of the memories the amulet gave me, but they mainly focused on you.”
 
Buffy glanced sharply up at him. There was no way she was telling him that without exception, all the memories the amulet had given her had featured him.


 
 
A/N Some snippets of dialogue borrowed from the following episodes:
‘School hard’ – written by David Greenwalt
‘Halloween’ – written by Carl Ellsworth
‘Lie to me’ - written by Joss Whedon
‘What’s my line? Pt2’ – written by Marti Noxon
‘Becoming Pt2’ - written by Joss Whedon