CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
 
Taking out The Gentlemen was almost too easy this time. With Buffy and Spike hiding in the clock tower, they only had to wait until the box was opened and they felt their voices leave to make their presence know. The gentleman holding the box slammed it shut and gestured for his helpers to grab the two humans who seemed to be volunteering to contribute their hearts.
 
After a closer look at Spike, he shook his head and pointed at Buffy instead. When they grabbed her arms and tried to hold her for the gentleman holding the knife, Spike began flinging them aside to make his way to the box and smash it. When Buffy felt her voice return, she opened her mouth and began screaming, not stopping until all four gentlemen had lost their heads. With them gone, the minions vanished as if they’d never existed.
 
“Huh!” Buffy stared around the room. “That was a lot easier than the first time.” She peered at him. “Probably doesn’t hurt that you’re a better fighter than Riley was.”
 
“Now what? That pretty much took care of those evil visitors. What’s next?”
 
“Let me think… We need to stop the Vahrall demons from collecting their stuff and jumping into the hellmouth with it. That’s next.”
 
“I remember that night. One of the ugly buggers hit me so hard I hit him back and found out I could still fight demons.”
 
“Yep. Was a big highlight for you – even if you did end up throwing him into the hellmouth and making me have to dive in after the last one….”
 
“Sorry?  I think I was a little over-excited.”
 
“Ya think?  Ah well, no harm done and Riley got a better understanding of what a slayer is.”
 
Spike’s expression darkened. “I’m sure he did,” he growled.
 
Buffy stopped and glared at him. “Let’s just put this in perspective, ‘k? At this point in our time, you still wanted to kill me. When you thought you got your chip out, you did try to bite me.  You’ve got no right to be jealous of Riley or anybody else I might have been dating back then.”
 
He sighed and put his arm around her. “Right you are, love. I’m a git. But in my defense, I was probably already half in love with you and just not willing to admit it to myself. I was already jealous of anybody who got near you, just, my demon didn’t know how to express it properly.”
 
“So he wanted to kill me?”
 
Spike shrugged. “Probably? It’s a vampire thing. To the demon, you would have been just as desirable undead as you were alive. Doubt I would have followed through, though. I remember when I thought the chip was out and I had you down. Feeling you moving under me…. I think my mind wandered right away from any thoughts of killing you.”
 
“Easy for you to say now.” Buffy led the way out of the clock tower. “Anyway, that’s the next job. Just stop those demons from getting the stuff they need. We didn’t do that last time, but maybe with you helping me, we can stop at least one of them. If they don’t have the stuff, they can’t work the ritual.”
 
“Makes sense to me. Time to go home?”
 
“I guess. I’m going to hit my classes tomorrow and then I guess tomorrow night we’ll have to talk to Xander.”
 
“Lookin’ forward to it,” he said, rolling his eyes.
 
XXXXX
 
When Xander and Anya walked into Giles’s apartment, Xander looked around at everyone who was already there and then turned to Willow accusingly.
 
“I thought you said it was just going to be a Scooby meeting? What are Fangface and this guy doing here again?” His irritated gesture included Spike and Winston, and his glare focused on Giles.
 
“It is a Scooby meeting,” Buffy said quietly. “You and Anya are Scoobies, so we needed you here. We want to bring you up to speed on what’s going on.”
 
“Why now and not two nights ago?”
 
“Because two nights ago, you hadn’t gone blabbing to someone who’s already tryin’ too hard to find out things he doesn’t need to know about something else he doesn’t need to know.” Spike flinched when Buffy punched his arm, but was unrepentant as he met Xander’s shocked stare with his own icy gaze.
 
“So, I’m here because I told Riley you were a vampire? Not seeing the downside to that. It’s what you are, a soulless, bloodsucking, slayer-killing vampire.”
 
There was a silence while everyone waited to see who was going to challenge Xander’s conclusion. Finally, in what seemed to be a random change of subject, Giles said, “Anya, we’ve been meaning to ask you—do you recall from your days as a vengeance demon ever doing any time-travelling?”
 
“Well of course.” She shrugged. “I could cross time dimensions and go back to other times whenever I needed to work a vengeance.”
 
“Then you have some understanding of how changes in one time can affect the future?”
 
“Duh?” She peered suspiciously at Giles. “What’s this all about? I haven’t done anything. I can’t do that time travelling thing anymore.” She tried to shrink behind Xander in case someone was planning to punish her for something.
 
“No, no. We’re not blaming you for anything, quite the contrary. We wish to learn from you. We have some… questions… about time travelling.”
 
Anya came out from behind Xander, paused and thought for a moment. Then her eyes lit up and she walked over to Buffy. She stared at her intently, then at Spike, grabbing his chin so she could look into his eyes.  “I knew it!” she crowed. “I knew there was something going on with you two.”
 
Xander took her arm and pulled her away from Spike. “Don’t get too close to the vampire, An. And what the hell do you mean by ‘I knew it’? What did you know?”
 
“Look at them. Buffy’s skinnier than ever, her hair’s different, and she and Spike keep touching each other. They aren’t our Spike and Buffy.”
 
“Well then, who the hell’s Spike and Buffy are they?” Xander stared at them. “Did you come here from some other dimension?”
 
“Well, kinda.  Why don’t you sit down so we can tell you?” Buffy said, smiling brightly.
 
“They came from the future. How can you not see that, Xander? That’s why they know stuff they shouldn’t know.”
 
“Is that true?” He whirled on them. “You’re from the future? Our future?”
 
Giles attempted to maintain the subject he’d begun. “That is a brilliant deduction, Anya. And exactly why I asked you about your experiences. I believe your knowledge could be extremely valuable to us… all of us,” he added, looking pointedly at Spike and Winston.
 
“Well, yeah. If they’re here by accident and don’t want to mess up their future….” Anya saw Buffy and Spike exchange frowns.  “Of course, if they’re here on purpose…. What do you want to change?” she asked them directly, sitting in a chair she drew up closer to them.
 
Xander was still on his feet, staring at Buffy and Spike.  “You’re from the future? Both of you? How far into the future? Why isn’t he dust yet, Buffy?”
 
“Sit down, Xander and I’ll explain,” Buffy said. “Yes. We are from several years in the future. Because of something that happens—or happened—more than a year from now, Giles sent me back to change it, and… another group sent Spike back to do the same thing. Neither one of us knew the other one was going to be here. But we are, and—”
 
“How do you know the group that sent him back wasn’t evil?”
 
Buffy sighed. “It was Angel, Xander. And Wesley and some other people who work with Angel in LA. They sent him back and he got here just a few minutes after I did. It took us a couple of weeks to find each other and figure out who we really are, but—”
 
Xander sat down heavily, shaking his head.
 
“Do you want to hear everything a little bit at a time, or in one big information dump?” Willow asked.
 
“Oh, just throw it all at me. If I’m going to freak out, I might as well get it over with all at one time.”
 
“If I may?” Winston spoke up for the first time. “I’m also from the future, only a short time after Spike and Buffy were sent back, but already my timeline had changed slightly from theirs—yours. They are trying to control how many people know about them in order to limit the effects they may be having on that future. That is the reason they did not immediately tell you who they were. However, it is obvious that you need to understand the situation in order to stop yourself from accidentally making it worse.”
 
“Okay, I get that,” Xander said with a sigh. “And I already screwed up by telling Riley about Spike.”  He frowned in Spike’s direction. “But why didn’t he think Spike was a vamp?”
 
“Because he’s seen me strolling in the sunshine with Buffy,” Spike said, and waited while Xander processed what that meant.
 
“You gave him the ring? Are you nuts?”
 
“It’s fine, Xander. For several reasons. Let Winston finish telling you about it, okay?”
 
“The important thing, just to set your mind at ease, is that Spike has his soul. He may or may not wish to share with you how and why he got it, but he did seek out a demon that could restore it.” He waited for Xander to stop sputtering, then continued, “Allow me to bring you up to date on why they are here, and what has happened since they arrived.”
 
With only minor interruptions from Xander, who kept stealing glances at Spike and Buffy—now sitting much more closely together—and with the occasional pause to verify what he was saying with Buffy or Spike, Winston gave a concise summary of what happened in the following years, and what an effect it had on the world.
 
“So, let me get this straight… Buffy and Spike got sent back to somehow kick hellgod butt so that Buffy doesn’t have to… die?”  Xander stared at her, flinching when she nodded. “Because that made something else really bad happen? What could possibly be worse than Buffy dying? And then… not dying?” He frowned in confusion. “But you’re here. All alive and…. hey! You’re not a vampire like Fangface now, are you? Is that why you’re letting him hang out with you?”
 
“No, Xander. I’m not a vampire. And I’m not dead anymore. Weren’t you paying attention? Willow and you and Anya and—Tara, who you haven’t met yet— did a spell that brought me back to life. So to speak,” she muttered, smiling when Spike put his arm around her and gave a comforting squeeze.
 
Which sent Xander’s face into a sequence of color changes, from white to red to purple… and back to white.
 
“What the hell is that?” He glared at Spike, whose arm was still resting on Buffy’s shoulder.
 
“This is the man—vampire—who got me through my depression at being yanked out of heaven. Who has loved me and protected my family and friends for years with no idea he would ever have a reward for it. A vampire who got a soul… for me. Who burned up saving the world after it turned out my resurrection upset a balance that was keeping the First Evil from taking over the world. He is, and has been for a long time—except when one or the other of us is dead—the man in my life.” Buffy finished her impatient response and slumped back against Spike’s side, nodding when he murmured quietly in her ear. 
 
Xander glanced at Willow, who had sat stoically while Winston glossed over her resurrection spell and its consequences.
 
“Willow? Is all this true?”
 
“So it seems,” she said. “Turns out when we brought Buffy back from the dead, it wasn’t as good an idea as it seemed at the time.”
 
“Wow,” he whispered, almost to himself. “Wow.” He gazed at Buffy, wincing when Spike dropped a kiss on the top of her head as she sat up.  “And Deadboy Jr is… he has a soul? Like Angel?”
 
Spike’s snarled, “I am nothing like him!” had Buffy petting his arm soothingly.
 
Xander shrugged. “You’re a vampire, you’ve got a soul, and you’re macking on Buffy. Sounds like Angel-lite to me.”
 
“Can I eat him, pet? Pretty please. I promise to brush my teeth after.” Spike never took his eyes off Xander, who glared back while moving away quickly.
 
“Just stop it, you two.” Buffy nudged Spike, who subsided with a grumble. Then she focused her attention on Xander.
 
“And you. In the future, you two are on the same side. And he saves your life more than once. By the time he….” She stopped “You know what? I’m not going through this again. Take my word for it. He’s earned the right to be trusted. I don’t expect you to suddenly become besties when you haven’t lived through any of that stuff yet, but I do expect you to believe me when I tell you that three years from now, Spike is, and has been, very much a part of our lives.
 
“The question now,” Giles said with a sigh, “is will you join us in supporting Buffy and Spike—and Winston—in their quest to avoid bringing about the rise of the First Evil?”
 
Xander stared around him at the other people waiting his answer. “Of course I will! What do you think I am?”
 
There was a crashing silence while everyone waited for someone else to speak up. Spike surprised them all by avoiding the anticipated snarky comment to say, “I reckon we weren’t sure if the you in this timeline could handle knowing I was part of Buffy’s life. And that we come from a time when that’s alright with everybody.”
 
Anya was nodding her head, even as Xander started to protest. “That’s just….”  He looked down, hanging his head. “…just fair, I guess. I never think anybody’s good enough for our Buffy, and another vampire is….” He shook himself as if casting off something dirty. “I’ll try, Fangface, but I’m not making any promises. I really thought she might have something going with Riley. You know, nice normal guy.”
 
“And now it’s time to tell you about the Initiative and how amazing Willow was….”
 
XXXXX
 
By the time they had caught Xander up on not only what Willow had done to make Buffy’s job easier this time around but also what other sorts of things were going on in the Initiative labs, he had gone very silent.  When there was a pause that no one filled, he said, “But they’re all vamps and demons, aren’t they? I mean, you kill them all the time Buffy, how is that different?”
 
“I don’t torture them,” Buffy said tersely.  “And I only kill the evil ones. Sunnydale is full of demons and half-demons who are harmless to people. They aren’t evil.”
 
“And Riley?” Spike growled at the way Xander seemed to be grasping at straws to avoid believing he and Buffy were a couple, but Buffy’s hand on his leg calmed him down.
 
“In our time I did date Riley for almost a year, but he couldn’t handle being the Slayer’s boyfriend. There would have been no point in even trying this time around, even if Spike wasn’t here. Which he is.”
 
“Give it a rest, Xander,” Anya said.  “They’re together. Look at them.”
 
“I’d rather not,” he muttered, glancing at Spike briefly. “No offense.”
 
Spike made a rude gesture at him and relaxed into the chair.
 
“So what else can you tell us?” Anya asked with an eager smile. “Information about the stock market? What lottery tickets to buy?”