Thanks to my wonderful, amazing beta, Eowyn315!!! And thanks to all my wonderful readers for being so patient with me throughout the last few hectic weeks :) *hugs to all*


“So…these visions of yours. Pretty much useless at this point, right?”

Spike looked up at the glum tone of the Slayer’s voice, her eyes downcast as she sat beside him on the couch. It was mid-afternoon, and the Watcher and the gypsy teacher were outside the house, setting up a protection spell in an attempt to prevent Willow’s magic from affecting them inside Giles’ house. Neither of them being particularly magically inclined, Buffy and Spike had opted to stay inside.

“Come again, love?”

“Well, so many things have changed, and you said you only saw what would have happened before you started changing things…right?”

Spike nodded slowly. “Right.”

“Then…from this point on, we should kind of…disregard the visions and just…just deal with Willow from here on out the best we can,” Buffy concluded, though there was still a note of uncertainty in her voice. “I mean…if everything’s changed…”

“But…not *everything’s* changed, love,” Spike pointed out with a thoughtful frown. “Seems like a lot of stuff is still happening, ’s just…happening a lot sooner, yeah? All out of order and such.”

Buffy looked up at him, her brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean? Willow did this in the visions you saw?”

“Well…not exactly *just* this.” Spike shrugged as he looked away. “But…sort of…”

Buffy raised a single brow, irritation beginning to show on her face. “Okay, and you are *so* not helpful right now, Spike…”

“Well, it’s bloody confusing to me, too, love!” he exclaimed, a bit defensively, as he rose to his feet abruptly, his arms crossed over his chest as he began to pace the floor, his eyes carefully averted when she tried to catch his gaze. “What I saw versus what’s actually happenin’, and all points in between…’s gettin’ so I’m not even sure what’s actually happened and what I just *saw* anymore!”

Buffy blinked at him in surprise at his outburst, considering the question for a moment before she asked in a low, solemn voice that stopped his pacing.

“Spike…what *did* you see?”

Spike was silent for so long that Buffy really did not expect him to reply at all, his eyes lowered and his back turned to her, before he finally answered quietly.

“Not gonna happen now, is it? So it doesn’t matter, then.”

“It matters to me.”

Spike hesitated before voicing another objection. “It’d only hurt you to know, Slayer. You don’t need to know.”

“Spike…I *want* to know.”

The blond vampire jumped, startled, when he felt the soft warmth of her hand on his arm, turning to face her in a motion that seemed more than a little defensive. As he processed the fact that she had actually crossed the room to his side, actually *touched* him in a gesture of something strongly resembling compassion, Spike’s tense stance gradually relaxed, the expression in his eyes softening with a sort of awe.

The moment Buffy saw it there on his face, she self-consciously dropped her hand from his arm, taking a step back and crossing her arms over her chest. She casually averted her eyes as she insisted softly, “I just…I just want to know. Come on, if it’s not going to happen anymore, then what’s the harm in telling me?”

Spike drew in a weary breath, letting it out with a sigh as he turned and slowly walked back to the sofa, sitting down and looking up at her expectantly, waiting for her to join him. Buffy swallowed back her irrational nervousness, trying to put Miss Calendar’s words out of her mind and simply allow herself to listen to the story Spike had to tell. But now that the idea had taken root in her mind, it was not all that easy to dismiss it…especially not when faced with the strange tenderness and vulnerability that was present in Spike’s eyes.

Had it always been there? Had she simply never noticed it before? Or was it a result of his recently restored soul?

“If I tell you,” Spike spoke quietly, his deep voice tearing through the confusion of her thoughts and drawing her attention back to him. “Will you bloody well let it go and not talk about it again?”

Buffy considered for just a moment before shrugging. “It’s not going to happen. No reason to talk about it again. I just wanna know.”

Spike nodded his acceptance of her words, staring at the floor, leaning forward, his hands folded together in front of his knees as he prepared himself to speak, apparently trying to find the right words.

*Or trying to decide how much to tell me?* Buffy wondered, her eyes narrowly skeptically.

“Right. The future…the way I saw it. Well, I got that soddin’ chip…and it *didn’t* come out in a matter of a day or so, love, not in that world. It…it never came out.”

Spike hesitated, and Buffy felt a strange pulse of sympathetic emotion in the pit of her stomach as she watched his jaw working with the effort to repress his own feelings enough to continue the story. She momentarily chided herself for actually feeling bad about the fact that in his visions, Spike never regained the ability to kill humans again. After all, in his visions, he hadn’t had a soul…had he?

*And ask Angel again what good a soul is?*

She frowned, forcing the traitorous thought out of her mind as she asked, “Did you…did you have a soul in that future, Spike?”

The blond vampire shook his head silently, pausing for a moment before he went on.

“Just the chip, love. Kept me good and leashed well enough; couldn’t harm a living thing. Turns out, couldn’t harm a thing with a soul, either, as a matter of fact, living or not…”

Buffy’s eyes widened with recognition as she realized what he was talking about.

“Angel.”

Spike nodded again. “Couldn’t hurt him, either, unfortunately. Bloody pillock. Could have made things a lot easier on you…a lot easier on everybody…if I could have just staked him to begin with, long before things got so…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head, unable to find the words to finish that remark.

Buffy bit her lower lip, a frown of confusion creasing her forehead as she tried not to think too closely about Spike’s careless admission of concern for her. It was not like it was the first time he had said or done something to indicate that he cared what happened to her, but it was the first time since Miss Calendar’s perception, and Buffy found that every fragment of evidence to support the teacher’s theory was resonating with her, despite her best attempts to ignore it.

“So…Angel went bad, like he did here,” she pressed gently, trying to focus them both back onto the subject at hand. “Did he lose his soul, or just…?”

“He lost it, but he got it back…a lot like what happened here. Not that it made any difference,” Spike replied, a note of disgust in his voice, though Buffy thought it seemed directed at Angel rather than at her. “He was perfectly capable of giving in to his own darkness with the precious soul intact, Slayer. And he did. He just…hid it, for a while.”

Buffy felt a cold sensation in the pit of her stomach, as she asked in a whisper, “How long?”

“A…a few years. None of you…not a one of you had a bloody clue! He kept Dru all chained up in that mansion for months, and let you lot think she’d left town, before he finally got tired of her and staked her. Just…on a whim.”

Spike shook his head, his eyes wide and stricken with the trauma of the false memory, and once again Buffy felt the urge to reach out to him, to offer him some kind of comfort. Her own chest was constricted with the shock of hearing what Angel’s future had held, before it had been changed, how badly he had deceived and betrayed them all…but she knew that the pain she felt over those offenses paled in comparison to Spike’s sense of loss over his love of over a century.

“He just…killed her, without a second thought. Then went to you lot and made out like he was the big bloody hero. Claimed she’d come back to town again, and he’d dusted her in a fight. I…I was the only one who knew the truth.”

Buffy frowned. “How did you know?”

Spike’s smile was sad and bitter as he replied, “How could I not? He was my bleedin’ *sire*, love. That…that means something. I…I knew when he killed Dru…even *before* I saw that she was gone…”

“Wait,” Buffy objected, holding up a hand to halt him, shaking her head in confusion. “Okay, so…where were you during all this, while Angel’s pretending to still be one of us, and all the time keeping his ex chained up in the mansion?”

Spike laughed softly, his eyes dark and haunted as he looked down at the floor at his feet. “Half the time…chained up right beside her,” he admitted, his voice low and hoarse with emotion. “Rest of the time…well, just trying to avoid you lot. And…and Angel.” Spike paused for a moment, swallowing hard as he added, “Not succeeding very well. You didn’t exactly make it easy. It was all I could do just…just trying to survive.”

“How *did* you survive?” Buffy asked, her voice gentle and holding more concern than she had really intended. She did not quite understand everything that Spike was telling her – not yet – but she knew that the future they had already averted had been a terrible time for him, and it was a fresh agony reliving it. Still…there were some things she had to know. “I mean…you couldn’t bite anyone, with that chip in your head. So…how did you get…?”

“Blood?” Spike finished for her, a single eyebrow raised at her discomfort at speaking the word, at facing the thought of what he needed for sustenance. When she nodded, he looked away again, his expression inscrutable to her eyes. “Butchers. At first. Until Angel decided it’d be a good laugh to scare them all out of selling to me.”

Buffy frowned, unsure why the idea of what Spike was telling her made her feel so indignant. “Why would Angel do that?” she asked. “What good would it do him to do that, just to make it harder on you?”

“Making things harder on me was a bloody end in itself to him,” Spike scoffed. “He just did it for kicks, love.”

Buffy opened her mouth to protest, but Spike went on before she could speak.

“I…I knew what he was up to…what he was hiding…but…but he…he made sure I couldn’t say anything to you about it…”

When he stopped, unwilling or unable to go on, Buffy tried to suppress her impatience as she pressed, “How? How did he do that?”

Spike was very quiet for a long moment, before he finally replied in a voice that was carefully calm, “He…renewed his sire’s rights, and that…well, it bloody well *forced* me to keep quiet. To…to do whatever the soddin’ hell he told me to do. Double life he was living for a bit, there. Keeping Dru all chained up at the mansion to do whatever he wanted with her, and…and keeping me at his bloody beck and call as well…and all the while pretending that he was your dotin’ lover, all good and noble and such rot. I…I *wanted* so badly to tell you, Buffy…but…but I couldn’t…”

Buffy’s heart was smote with compassion at the sorrow and anguish in his voice, and she realized with a shock that Spike was speaking about the events he had foreseen as if he had actually experienced them…and it sounded as if whatever he had been through at Angel’s hands had been truly terrible.

Forgetting her self-conscious uncertainty, Buffy found herself leaning toward him on the sofa, one hand reaching out to rest on his arm in a comforting gesture, though she had no words to offer him. What could one *say* in a situation like this, anyway?

Spike looked up at her sharply through startled blue eyes, glancing down at the place where her soft, warm hand touched his cool, trembling flesh, swallowing hard as he struggled to keep control of his own emotions.

After a moment, he appeared to win the struggle, his jaw setting as he went on in a steady, even voice.

“Dru lasted nearly a year…half bloody starved, in constant pain…he used her as nothing but a soddin’ toy. I tried my best to help her, in between helpin’ you lot sometimes. Found out demons were the only thing that bloody chip would let me kill, so when I could…when you’d let me…I’d fight with you. That is, when Angel…when Angel didn’t have me…”

His voice broke off as he shook his head and continued abruptly, “Dru lasted nearly a year before he killed her. And it was two years after that when he killed Red.”

Despite her sympathy for the blond vampire, Buffy couldn’t help her surprised curiosity at that. “So…Angel managed to pull off the ‘good vampire’ act for three years in that future?”

Spike nodded as he continued with an apologetic grimace, aware that his words would be hard for the Slayer to hear. “Seems all along he had a…a bit of a thing for Willow…tainted innocence and all that…’s just in that version of the future, he held out longer. Seems some small events we changed must have served to push them together a bit sooner than was supposed to happen, and make it all happen faster.”

Buffy was quiet, struggling with her own emotions as she tried to process what he was saying.

It seemed there was just too much pain these days to even sort it out.

“Once he…he turned her,” Spike continued, a grim smile rising to his lips, though his blue eyes were still solemn and haunted, “he didn’t last a soddin’ week. She was too powerful by then, yeah? As a human, in that version of things, she’d become a right smart little witch, and she didn’t lose that power when he turned her. ’S why I assumed that it wouldn’t be that way this time around…’cause she hasn’t had time to develop the skills she was supposed to eventually have, yeah?”

Buffy nodded slowly, her eyes wide as she took in the story.

“But she managed to drain him, do the resiring ritual, and gain control of him in a week’s time. I thought things would be better for you…for all of us…with Angelus out of control. Red always seemed a bit sweeter than Angel, with or without the soul, yeah? So how could it be anything but better with her in charge, even as a vamp?”

Spike was quiet for a moment before adding grimly, “I was wrong.”

After a moment, Buffy spoke up in a voice that was trembling dangerously. “So…so if everything just…just happened faster…do you maybe know…what she was planning then? What she might be going to do?”

“No telling, love,” Spike sighed, giving her an apologetic look. “See….there’s no telling if she’s even heard of the things she did in the visions. By the time she got turned in the visions, she’d had years to study magic and such, and had all kinds of dangerous knowledge in her hands…”

“Except now, she doesn’t need it,” Buffy pointed out with a frown, alarm rising in her eyes. “Because if what Giles said is true…her very essence *is* magical…and she might not even *need* a spell to do whatever she wants to do magically, you know?”

Spike nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

After a long, tense moment, Buffy stated softly in a voice of practiced calm, “You’re right, Spike. I need to stake her.”

“’S going to be hard getting to her at this point, love,” Spike pointed out. “We’re going to have to try to come up with some way of…of incapacitating her long enough to take her out.” He paused, his head lowered sadly as he added in a low voice thick with emotion. “I’m sorry, love. Wish I could…could be more helpful…’s just…”

“Why?”

Spike blinked, looking up at her in surprise at the softly spoken question, and his unneeded breath was stolen away by the softness, the question in her eyes. “Come again, love?”

“Why, Spike?” Buffy repeated, searching his gaze intently. “Why…are you sorry? Why do you want to help me, when a week ago you wanted me dead?” When he started to respond, she cut him off with a raised finger of warning, “And *don’t* say it’s the soul, because I know that’s not true. Angel has a soul, too. Doesn’t make him care. And besides…you said you cared in the visions…when you didn’t *have* a soul.”

Spike looked away abruptly. His prepared answer, designed to appease her without revealing too much, having failed, he had no idea how to answer her.

“Spike,” Buffy whispered, leaning in closer, her hand shifting slightly on his arm, and drawing his focus reluctantly back to her. “In…in the future that’s never going to happen now…did you…I mean…were we…were we in love?”