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I Would Still Have Loved You by slaymesoftly
 
Chapter Twelve
 
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CHAPTER TWELVE
 
When Buffy and Spike appeared at the kitchen door, Joyce blinked her surprise, but opened the door for them. Spike hesitated on the threshold, until Buffy pulled him inside, saying, “Your invitation was never revoked—”
 
“Next year it was.”
 
“This isn’t next year. Just come in and sit down.”
 
“Buffy?  Isn’t this Spike? It’s so confusing keeping up with his status. Evil vampire, working together, back to an evil vampire, and now…”
 
“I’m gonna explain it, Mom. I promise.  And this Spike, the one you’re seeing now, isn’t evil any more. He’s got a soul.”
 
“So did that other creature.”
 
“Not him, Joyce. Not like him. Never was and never will be.”
 
Joyce sent Spike a frown, then looked at Buffy for an explanation.
 
“Better sit down, Mom. This is going to be…. hard to believe.”
 
“Harder to believe than vampires are real and my teenage daughter is supposed to ‘slay’ them?”  Joyce gave her a disbelieving grin, which faded as Buffy and Spike exchanged glances.  “Oh, come on. How bad can it be?  Spike has a soul – is that it? You know I don’t get all this soul/no soul stuff—” She broke off when they didn’t smile, but sighed instead.  “Okay,” she said with a resigned sigh of her own. “I’m sitting. Let me have it.” Suiting actions to words, she sank onto one of the kitchen stools.
 
Buffy took a deep breath and launched into a short explanation for their being who and what they were. She left out the specific events that were the reason for their being sent back in time, hoping to avoid discussions about anyone’s death for as long as she could.
 
“So, the Council – what was left of it – decided if they could magic me back to before the… thing… happened, I could fix it before it happens and the First Evil won’t rise and… and… it will save a lot of lives. Including Spike’s,” she added, sending him a look that it was impossible to misinterpret. Joyce picked up on it immediately.
 
“If Spike died, how is he here. Now?”
 
“Um… well… that’s the other part of it. Seems like Angel—” Buffy paused when her mother made a face and Spike growled.
 
“You know, you two really need to get over these automatic reactions to hearing Angel’s name. Seriously? If I can say his name without having a meltdown, you can hear it without making faces and growling.”  She put her hands on her hips and glared from one to the other until they nodded after exchanging their own looks of solidarity.
 
“Are we done now? Okay, it seems like Angel and his people in LA came to the same conclusion the Council did and they decided to send Spike—” 
 
“Who was dead?” Joyce frowned as she reached over and poked Spike’s arm. “Okay, not a ghost.” 
 
He snickered and mumbled, “Not anymore.”
 
“He was a ghost when he first came back from helping me save the world from the First. But then he turned solid, and before he could call me and tell me he was alive, Angel and Wesley sent him back in time for the same reason the Council sent me. We don’t know why or how we both ended up here – this year – when the… thing… isn’t going to happen till next year. But here we are.”
 
“So….” Joyce frowned and shook her head.  “You’re right. I’m having a really hard time with this one.” She gave Buffy a shrewd look. “I’m guessing Spike and his soul were already a part of your life when he…. died?”
 
“Yes, Mom. We… we’re….”
 
“We love each other,” Spike said softly. “Wasn’t an easy path here, and we had some bumps along the way—” He glared at Buffy when she snorted. “But by the time I thought I was giving my life to save Buffy and the world she lives in, we were pretty much each other’s….” He trailed off, not sure what to call what they’d been by the end of that year.
 
“We were each other’s most important and most trusted person,” Buffy said. “It wasn’t the time for big romantic things, but that’s what we were. And until a few days ago, I thought he was gone forever. I was still mourning for him. Then he turned up here just like I did.”
 
“And you found each other?”
 
“Well, that part was easy because in our time, Spike was captured by the Initiative and brain-chipped so he couldn’t kill or hunt. He escaped, and then he came to us for help when he was starving. So, I was busy pretending to be the me I was four years ago, and he was busy pretending to be the Spike that couldn’t feed himself, and there we were in Giles’ apartment, yelling at each other about something and—”
 
“And we could see who we really were. Knew it wasn’t the eighteen-year-old Slayer glaring at me like that—”
 
“And I could see the soul in his eyes. We just knew who we were. Right away.”
 
“So am I the last one to learn about this?”
 
“No, Mom, of course not! We only told Giles – cause he couldn’t understand why we weren’t trying to kill each other.  And then I had to tell Willow because… Well, she needed to know so she would listen to me about not doing a certain spell.”
 
She kicked Spike when he muttered, “For all the good that did.”
 
“But you weren’t even back from your trip yet when all that was happening, and we’ve been too busy trying to figure things out – what we can change, what we should change, what we can’t change… It’s a whole ‘the wrong changes could make us disappear before we fix things’ thing. So, anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t call you right away yesterday to tell you I was all right. I did know you were coming home Friday night, but I was trying to keep you out of this to be honest.”
 
“You weren’t planning to tell me?” Anger and pain were more than obvious in Joyce’s voice, causing Buffy to wince and close her eyes briefly.
 
“I wasn’t really thinking that far ahead yet, Mom. Having unchipped future Spike here changed a whole lot of what I thought I knew about this year’s events and what to do about them. I guess I just thought if I didn’t see you very often, you’d think I was just having such a good time being in college that… I dunno. You’ve got all those ‘Mom’ ways of knowing things.  How long do you think it would have taken you to figure out I’m not the me you think I am if you were seeing me a lot?”
 
Joyce studied Buffy for a few seconds, glanced at Spike, back to Buffy and said, “About five minutes.  For both of you,” she added. When Buffy frowned and shook her head, Joyce asked, “Wouldn’t it? How long has it been since you weren’t my you?”
 
Buffy smiled and walked over to give her mother a tight hug. “I’ll always be your me, Mom. I’m just an older version of me. Who’s had a few kind of big… events… in her life. But, to answer the first question, I’ve been back for a few weeks now. And in case you need a reason for telling you now…. sometime soonish, Faith is going to come out of her coma and escape from the hospital. She’s going to come here. I’m going to try to stop her, but you need to know that if I don’t, she and I might switch bodies for a while and she’s going to pretend to be me.”
 
“And you think I’d fall for that?”
 
“Would you even think something like that could happen? If you saw me fighting with Faith, and then the cops showed up to take her back to jail, why would it cross your mind that we’d switched bodies?  Wouldn’t you just be so relieved I was all right that the thought I might not be me wouldn’t even be on your radar?”
 
Joyce went pale. “You’re telling me that actually happened?”
 
“It did. But I managed to get away from… well, never mind that. The point is, it all worked out, and Faith went off to LA or something.  And this time, I’m hoping to avoid touching that crystal she used. And since you and Giles and Willow… and Spike… all know about it, I don’t think anybody will be fooled for very long if it does. So we should be able to switch us back pretty easily.”
 
She reached over and smacked Spike on the head.
 
“Hey!”
 
“Buffy!” Joyce sounded shocked.
 
She ignored her mother’s frown and glared at Spike. “I saw your eyes glaze over. I know what you were thinking….”
 
Joyce stared at them in bewilderment as he laughed and pulled Buffy closer. “Only for a second, love. I swear. I was just remembering what she said to me when she was you….”
 
“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know,” Buffy muttered, allowing him to soothe her in spite of her frown.
 
“You don’t. Trust me.”
 
“Pig!”
 
“Oink.”
 
As Joyce realized what they were probably talking about, she sent Spike a frown of her own, making him find something very interesting to stare at near his boots.
 
Buffy pushed herself away from him and leaned on the counter. “So, that’s why I’m here, actually. Well, two reasons I guess. One is to make sure you know about the body swap, just in case it happens. If you aren’t sure, just ask me a question that only I would know the answer to. If you don’t like the answer, be super careful until you can get hold of Giles… or Spike, I guess.” She looked at him. “Did you get a phone last night?”
 
“Did.” He patted his pocket. “Got one for you too.”
 
“Write the numbers down for Mom, please.”
 
“You said two things,” Joyce reminded her, pushing pencil and paper toward Spike. “What is the other?”
 
“Oh, well, you know that guy I told you I was sort of dating? Shut up, Spike. He belongs to this secret army group that was experimenting on demons and vampires in labs underneath the campus.  And in our time, one of those weapons they were creating – a cyborg of some sort – got loose and started killing everybody to make cyborg soldiers. But this time, we think we took care of it before he could wake up, so maybe we don’t have to worry about him.  I won’t be sure until we can find out exactly what happened there yesterday, but we hope so. The thing is, this time around, I won’t be dating Riley, so he won’t have a chance to learn about me except whatever he can find on line about slayers. And he saw Spike and me fighting the escaping demons and he thinks I’m some kind of demon or something, so we’re kind of hiding from them until the Council or somebody gets it handled.”
 
“So you need to stay here?”
 
“Oh no! I don’t want you dragged into this. And they’d be able to find us here too easy because they have access to my school records. No, we’re just going to hide out at Spike’s crypt or an apartment he rented until Giles tells me it’s safe to be out and about.”
 
“But you’re here now.”
 
“We were careful coming over. We stayed underground.  I really think Riley and his buddies are too busy explaining themselves to… whoever… right now to worry about me—us, but just in case…”
 
“So, you won’t be staying for dinner then?”
 
Buffy and Spike exchanged looks. “I really don’t think we should, Mom. If they show up here looking for us, I want you to be telling the truth when you say we aren’t here and you don’t know where we went.  I’m just going to run upstairs and grab some clothes and… something else I need. And then we’ll be out of sight for a couple of days. But you’ll have the phone numbers, so if you need us for anything….”
 
When there was no reply, Buffy left the kitchen and ran upstairs. She went into her closet and felt around in the toe of her favorite boots until she found the ring with the Gem of Amara.  She stuck it on her thumb and wrinkled her nose at its ugliness.
 
“I guess if it can keep Spike undusty, I can get used to it,” she muttered as she stood up.  It took her only a few minutes to pull together some clean underwear and a change of clothes.  She looked longingly at the bathtub as she went by, but decided being untased and uncaptured was more important than being clean.
 
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