a/n Apologies for such a long delay in posting. RL kicked me around for a while. Hopefully that won't happen again too soon. :-)

Beta thank you's go to Megan and Gail - thanks, ladies.

Enjoy.

hugs, sfg

Who am I?

~~~***~~~

Chapter 16 – So...chains?

It was quiet.  No rioting fear or anguish.  No bright lights spearing her eyes through her eyelids.  And, oh, how Buffy wanted to remain there, hiding from this latest injustice.

But the roar of a demon was not something Buffy could ignore.

It snapped her out of her hiding place in an instant and she came tumbling back into the chaos of sound she had only briefly escaped.

She found herself crouched, muscles tensed to spring as she surveyed the room quickly to locate the source of the agonized cry.  Instead, she came face to face with...herself.

Her opponent was also crouched, tensed for action and had placed herself between Buffy and a trembling, tear-streaked Willow.  Buffy noted the cold look in her own green eyes and the surprising fact that her hand, which had been empty, now held a stake at the ready.  The quiver of her muscles broadcast her intention to launch, but all of a sudden a confused look clouded her eyes and she tilted her head in a strangely familiar manner.

The standoff stretched out until the Buffy-shaped opponent grabbed her head and whined, “Christ, Summers, you couldn’t’ve drug the whiny, shrill, girly emotions with you when you vacated?  It’s worse then Darla on a bender in here.”

Right.   Spike.  In her body.  Why did The Powers That Be hate her so much? 

Her voice sounded so strange sporting a low class British accent.  Plus, Buffy could practically hear the air whistling in and out of her hijacked body.

Buffy gave a mental groan.  Hyper-sensitive hearing?  Painfully bright lights?  Roiling stomach?  Okay, that one was a bit different than nausea but it was still way uncomfortable.  The whole ‘beer bad, cave Buffy’ hangover had nothing on this one, by golly. 

“Shut up, Spike,” she growled.  No, literally, she growled.  Gah!   “You didn’t exactly take your stupid, monumental hangover with you when you went strolling.” 

Her mouth felt swollen and pasty and it was hard to push the words out.  Then there was that painful zinging that kept washing across her brain and tensing up most of her muscles in waves.  She didn’t remember feeling that the last time.  It was aggravating. 

“And if who ever it is that keeps zapping me with the static doesn’t knock it off, I’m going to get really irritated!”

That got Buffy-shaped-Spike’s attention and he stilled, dropping his hands and looking up at her.  Then a huge grin tipped his lips.

“Oh, HO!  That’s the chip!  YOU’VE got the chip!”  He popped to his feet then, in that characteristically Spike-way, all loose limbs and swagger, an evil glint in his eye.  “And I...don’t.”

Buffy barely had a minute to process that little disturbing tidbit when Spike, in her body, jolted, enveloped in a blue light that crackled around him like a weird aura.  He shook like he was in a sudden fit of palsy.  His eyes rolled back into his head and he dropped like a stone to reveal...Giles, holding a tazer gun.

“Whoa, Giles.  Was that really necessary?”  Spike had, for whatever strange reason, been helping tonight.  Besides, the look on her Watcher’s face was a bit wiggy.   “And when exactly did we step up to tazers?  I thought we were all about the stakes and crossbows and stuff.”

Giles shrugged but his expression eased into one that was a bit less with the wiggy and a bit more with the sheepish.  “Y-yes, well, I thought we might broaden our horizons.  I hadn’t had a chance to test it, though.”  He looked down at her crumpled body.  “It seems to have worked quite well.”

Realization suddenly bloomed in her.  Narrowing her eyes, Buffy crossed her arms and stuck out a hip, tapping her toe.  “This is what you were inching for, wasn’t it?  Wasn’t it?!”

“W-well...um...”

“Giles!”  She stamped her foot and was rewarded with a solid thump from Spike’s heavy boot and a wince from Giles.

“Ahem.  Perhaps we should table this until we’ve gotten, well, you tied up.”

Buffy was horrified.  “Hey!  We already covered this.  I’m not letting you tie me up—”

“I meant your body ,” he interrupted.

Uh, like that was better?

“The one that Spike is now currently inhabiting?  I shudder to think what he might get up to were he to get free.”

Oh.

Buffy felt a disturbing flash of resistance to the idea.  Spike had believed her freaky ‘I’m Buffy and she’s not’ story without hardly a second thought.   Unlike Giles.  Spike had dragged her sorry self all the way to Giles’ apartment, as mortifying as that was to admit.  He was even - dare she say it? – sensitive about the whole Faith/Riley situation. 

Well, to her at least.  

And, apparently, he’d taken a brain zap to keep Faith from making a run for it before the green glowy thing malfunctioned so horrifically, since that was obviously what the aftershocks seemed to be about.

Huh.

When she really thought about it, Spike hadn’t done anything but help all night. 

Which was...weird.

Alright, so he was annoying, but that was just Spike.  But even when she was all ‘bloody Buffy in a Faith suit’, with Slayer’s blood practically oozing from every pore, he didn’t so much as lick his lips. 

Which was way weird.

Then Buffy remembered the trip from the Bronze to Giles’ apartment.

//“Spike, if you don’t want to go through your unlife hand-less, as well as fang-less, you’ll keep your mitts off my butt.”

“Just trying to help, here, Slayer.”  She could feel his smirk.  “’Sides, don’t know what your all on about.  Not like it’s really your bum, anyway, right?” //

Jerk.

Buffy rocked forward on the balls of her feet, swinging her arms. “So…chains?”

tbc