Who am I?
 
Timeline:  Season 4 – starts in Who Are You – when the cops have “Faith” in the car before the Council guys get her.  Goes AU after that.

 
Response to BSV Challenge #36 – “In the episode “Who Are You?”, what if, instead of Buffy and Faith switching bodies, Buffy and Spike got switched?”

 
AUTHOR’S NOTE:  Okay, so the challenge said Buffy and Spike get switched “instead” of Buffy and Faith, but I just couldn’t do it because I just LOVE the scene where Faith – in Buffy’s body—gives Spike that speech about how she could ride him at a gallop until he popped like warm champagne.  So, needless to say, I had to include that. **snicker**  And, well, that just changes things a little.  Come on, be a sport, okay?

 
DISCLAIMER:  I own nothing.  I’m only playing with them.  I promise to put them back after I’m done.  No harm, no foul. ;-)

 
SPECIAL THANKS to my beta, Spikez_tart, for putting up with my arguing. **hugs**


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Chapter 1 - Wigsome

 
It was dark where Buffy was.  Dark and hot.  And painful.  God, she hurt.  Ribs ground together with every breath.  Bruised muscles cramped in protest. 

 
What the hell happened and why did she feel like puking?

 
She hadn’t gone out drinking again, had she?  She couldn’t remember and it was more than a little wigsome.  Wait.  Take stock.   No, the pain wasn’t centered in her head like her last whopper of a hangover.  Uh uh, it was throbbing through all of her.  Every muscle and bone. 

 
Being the Slayer, she’d felt like this before.  Yeah, every time she’d been beaten within an inch of her life.  Minus the retch-factor, that is.

 
And, once again, what the hell!?  There was something.  Something important she needed to remember.  Something life or death. 

 
Damn it, brain, WORK!

 
And as if it couldn’t help but obey, flashes of memories poured through her sluggish brain. 

 
Faith.

 
Fighting her on campus.  Warning a smirking Riley.  Crashing through her mom’s upstairs window to smash Faith – okay, that was a little over the top, but still, got her attention, didn’t it?

 
Then what?

 
Oh, yeah.  Wrecking the living room.  Mom’s so not gonna be happy about the broken French doors. 

 
And?

 
A flash of light.  A tearing sensation.  Dizziness, throbbing pain and... darkness.

 
The hospital.  Surrounded by strangers.  Frantically trying to get them to understand, but no. They just held her down while someone shoved some kind of drug into her arm.

 
Darkness again.

 
Buffy swam through the mental images over and over as they sped by until her mind latched on to one clear picture – a snapshot of her holding her mom’s hand as emergency workers scurried up and down the porch.  Only it wasn’t her holding her mom’s hand.  Because she was the one being loaded into an ambulance.

 
Her heart stuttered, fear pushing adrenaline through her veins as she pictured her mom clinging to a Buffy that was not Buffy.

 
She rolled her head, unable to stop the groan the slipped out as her system fought off the last lingering effects of the drugs.  “Faith,” she mumbled.

 
“She’s coming to.  Man, I want this kid’s constitution.”

 
The voice sent anger flowing through her system.  That voice was at the hospital, too.  A cop, maybe? 

 
If he had only listened, damn it, none of this would be happening!

 
Buffy opened her eyes and prepared to rip into the moron, scalding them with her infamous Summers’ wit, when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.  Slayer instinct whipped into overdrive and she braced herself for a jarring crash seconds before the car rammed an armored truck.

 
Even braced, her head managed to have a spectacular meeting with the plexiglass between the front and back seats.  Pain exploded through her head and her stomach nearly crawled out of her throat.  She mentally added yet another wound to her list. 

 
Damn.  Head wounds bleed like a son of a gun.


Even with blood running down her face, she was in better shape then the driver and the smart-mouthed cop who hadn’t even seen the collision coming. 

 
Buffy swallowed back the bile, blinking the blood out of her right eye.  As she watched, the rear doors of the truck swung open and two men spilled out.  They moved in sync, both showing a confidence and purpose that only came from training.  The pistol that one of them carried might have marked them as military, but the black leather they wore pretty much ruled out the Initiative.  As gun-boy trained his weapon on the two unconscious men in the front seats, the other hefted a sledge hammer and strode toward the door beside her.

 
Discretion is the better part of valor.   She heard some long-dead guy say that in one of those old black and white movies her mom loved to watch.  Well, heck, she bought that.

 
Time to play possum.

 
When the window smashed, showering her with glass she didn’t even flinch.  She allowed the sledge wielder to manhandle her limp body out of the car, gritting her teeth against the grinding pain, thankful that in order to drag her out he had to drop his weapon.

 
In a very familiar accent, he mumbled something about the “order of the Watcher’s Council”.  The anger that she felt when she woke was nothing compared to the white hot rage that erupted as those words registered.  It burned away her confusion, blocked out the pain and fueled the primitive essence that was her power. 

 
How many times did she have to tell these bozos that she didn’t work for them anymore? 

 
She was the Chosen One. 

 
The “one girl in all the world” yadda, yadda, yadda, and they still thought they could control her?  Their manipulations cost the lives of a bunch of watchers, nearly crippled her relationship with her father-figure, put her mother’s life in jeopardy, not to mention her own and could have set an insane vamp loose on the population of Sunnydale. 

 
The nerve of these people!  Once again they showed up and once again, her mother was in danger.  It was enough to make her see red.  All the fury she felt after the Cruciamentum burst forth and her inner Slayer howled.

 
Just as her feet were sliding clear of the window, Buffy channeled the volatile emotions into action.  Bracing her left foot on the door of the patrol car for leverage, she whipped her right foot out and felt a satisfying crunch as she connected with jaw of the Council thug holding the gun.  The move was vicious and lightning fast and he fell, unconscious, before he even realized he was under attack.  The other was stunned just long enough for Buffy to grab his thumbs and yank back, hard , causing him to drop her unceremoniously to the ground on her rump.

 
Brilliant colors danced behind her eyes as her ribs protested.  “Uff.  That wasn’t very nice of you,” she hissed, even as she swung round and swept his knees out from under him.  A quick jab to his face and he was sleeping the sleep of the unconscious, just like his buddy.

 
“Love to chat,” Buffy quipped, “but I gotta get to my mom.” Dragging herself to her feet, she ignored the throbbing of her – well, Faith’s – battered body, and stumbled toward home.