A/N: Okay, using what we now know, you need to read this story assuming that either Cordy's not a vessel of Evil, or that her little demon spawn isn't yet in control. In short, this is just plain Cordy. Although, feel free to blame the demon spawn for her going at it with Connor. Very few things in life would make me happier than to be able to blame that disturbing image on someone (or something) that's not Cordy. Uggh!
Chapter Thirteen: Back Through the Looking Glass
Cordelia skidded to a stop in the entrance to the alleyway. Peering down the dimly lit passageway, she could see two people sitting on a bale of hay about halfway down. Squinting, she could make out William's features, and then recognized the slim back and dark hair of the figure leaning close to him as Drusilla, or rather, Buffy.
"What is it with these people and alleys?" she wondered aloud, recalling Connor's birth, and Fred's replay of the things Darla had said to Angel before staking herself.
Looking closer, Cordy saw that the couple was sitting close together, engaged in one of two activities. Either Buffy was going for a land speed hickey giving record, or she was feeding off of William. The seer paused, relief filling her. She didn't know how, but she knew that Buffy had figured it out. Cordelia's belief was confirmed, as she saw the dark-haired woman pull back from William before biting her own wrist and pressing it against his mouth. Although clearly nearing unconsciousness, the man made a valiant effort to smile at his killer as she pressed the bloodied wrist to his lips. Cordelia watched with a strange fascination as William's lips sealed around the bite mark, and he began sucking gently.
The edges of her vision dimmed, and Cordelia was filled with relief at the understanding that Buffy's actions had succeeded; the two women were returning to their own time. As her knees buckled, Cordelia saw Buffy pull her wrist from William as his eyes closed and his lips went slack. The Slayer leaned down and kissed William's forehead, a lone tear falling from her cheek onto his. As the spell took her, Buffy felt herself slump across William's now prone body.
A passerby who might have chanced to peer down the alley would have seen a strange tableau. At one end, a beautiful, well-dressed, blonde woman lay as if she'd fainted. Farther on, a couple also lay unconscious atop a seat made of hay. The man half lay, half sat, his back to the wall the hay was situated against. His skin was ashen, and a trickle of blood ran from the puncture wounds on his neck. Across his lap, another woman lay, her head pillowed on the hay, her face turned to the empty alley. Her skin glowed with a strange, unearthly power, the corner of her mouth decorated by the ruby red of the man's lifeblood. A strange silence seemed to envelope the trio. Outside the small area that had witnessed unspeakable sorrow, pain, and heroism, the sounds of a party dispersing were accompanied by the average sounds of London at night. In short, while time froze for the three, the world around them continued to turn.
The blonde was the first to stir. With a groan, she raised her hand to the back of her head as she sat up, feeling the bump that had formed when she'd fallen. Her concern over her head was quickly replaced by concern over the fact that she didn't recognize her surroundings. Quickly rising, the woman scanned the alleyway, her senses extended, searching for danger. Finding none apparent, she relaxed her stance slightly.
"Dru?"
Farther down the alley, the dark-haired woman stirred, lifting herself from across the man's lap and looking at the speaker.
"What's going on?" Darla continued, seeing that the other woman was indeed her companion.
Drusilla looked between her grand-sire and the corpse beside her, the taste of blood still fresh in her mouth. Smiling enigmatically, she turned to Darla.
"I've found a knight, the wisest and bravest in the land."
Darla rolled her eyes, the oddity of their predicament forgotten for the moment. After all, it was hardly the first time she'd woken up in a back alley somewhere. Wonderful, she thought sarcastically, curiosity at whether Drusilla would even remember this childe by the time he rose warring in her mind with relief that Drusilla would now have a playmate to take her attention away from Angelus.
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In Sunnydale a young woman known to her friends as Buffy, known to the demon world as the Slayer, opened her eyes to find herself in her bedroom, lying on her bed.
In Los Angeles a similar young woman, known to the Powers That Be as the seer of one of their most promising champions, woke in a different room than the one she'd gone to sleep in. Quickly she recognized it as one of the spare rooms in the Hyperion hotel, headquarters of Angel Investigations, and home to the company's namesake.
Each sighed with relief when she realized she was home and once more herself. Both were immediately mobbed by their respective families. But neither noticed the vampire in her life remain present only long enough to ensure that she was once again home before silently slipping away.
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"So, I've been thinking," Cordelia announced as she walked out the Hyperion's doors and came to stand beside Wesley in the early evening twilight.
The man's gaze remained fixed on a position visible only to him, and Cordy's patience soon wore thin at his continued silence.
"I said, I've been thinking," she repeated.
While his gaze refused to relinquish its hold on the night beyond the pair, Wesley's voice was teasing as he asked, "Is there really a chance that you won't tell me if I don't ask what about?"
"Nope," Cordy responded, laughing lightly, finding she missed the easy camaraderie she had shared with the Englishman before his exile following the terrible events of the previous Spring.
"Well then," he replied, his head finally turning to look at her. "What have you been thinking about?"
"If our getting home hinged on Spike being turned," Cordy began slowly, the right words to express her concerns eluding her as she finally gave voice to her concerns, "then he has the potential to be a major player. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been sent back to screw up the past."
"Why does that worry you?" Wesley asked. "It's hardly surprising that Spike has the potential to become a major player, given his lineage and his connections to the Slayer."
"Hmmph," Cordy snorted in amusement at Wesley's words, thinking of Buffy's revelations concerning just how well connected Spike was to her. Realizing she shouldn't be the one to reveal that secret to the LA gang, she quickly spoke again. "What does it mean for Angel?"
"Angel?" Wes asked in confused surprise. "Why should it affect Angel?"
"The prophecy," Cordy explained. "The shanshu."
"The shanshu prophecy mentions a vampire with a soul," Wesley reminded her. "It's not about Spike."
It was then that Cordelia realized she wouldn't be able to keep all of the Sunnydale gossip under wraps. Going for casual, she replied, "Yeah. About that."
"Are you saying Spike has a soul?"
"Yes," she replied simply. "I don't know all the details, but…"
"Oh my," Wesley replied, the possibilities that another souled vampire in the world opened up flashing through his mind. Focusing on his conversation with Cordelia, though, he quickly understood her concerns. "And you're worried that the shanshu might be not be for Angel."
"What if it's not?" she said, the worry for her friend naked upon her face.
"It doesn't matter," a new voice joined the conversation, as the vampire stepped out of the shadows.
"Angel," Cordy said, "I didn't want to tell you until I'd talked to Wesley. Maybe there's something I don't remember about the prophecy, or maybe the translation is more specific, or–"
"I'm afraid I can't say for sure if there was anything more specific to help us distinguish between Angel and Spike in the prophecy," Wesley said, cutting her off.
"It doesn't matter," Angel repeated. "Sure, turning human someday would be nice, but that's not what the mission's about. It's about helping people."
"Good," Cordy replied. "After all, wouldn't want you thinking it wasn't."
"Cordy," Angel began, smiling slightly at his seer's quick switch from concern over his purpose in life to her infamous imperial attitude. Then, he turned serious. "When you were in the past, I didn't …I … did I…"
"No. You didn't hurt me. Or Buffy," Cordy said, throwing a conspiratorial wink at Wesley as she answered. "As a matter of fact, it was kind of fun being Darla."
Off Angel's surprised look, she continued, "I've never had so much fun bossing you around."
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Spike continued to stare sightlessly into the night of the Summers' back yard, sitting on the steps, his forearms resting on his knees. He kept his gaze fixed, refusing to look when he heard to back door open, and soft footsteps he knew to be Buffy's approached him. The Slayer sat down next to him, following his lead, and squinted into the darkness.
Both remained silent for a long moment while Buffy ran a variety of possible opening lines in her mind.
How's the holding down the steps coming?
So, William was a real badass, don't you think?
Been to England lately? Yeah? Me too.
Finding nothing that seemed appropriate, the petite woman settled on an old favorite.
"Hey," she said, gently swinging her right knee over to nudge his left, her eyes still facing forward.
Although he remained facing the darkness beyond the house, Spike did allow his eyes to slide over and look at the young woman at his side, his left eyebrow cocking slightly in inquiry of the unusually normal quality their current situation implied.
Buffy causally leaned back and propped her elbows up on the step behind her, leaving her body open, her posture a mirror inversion of the vampire's closed-off pose.
When Spike remained silent, she tried another track.
"Do you remember?"
He was silent for so long after she asked, Buffy began to grow frustrated, certain he was going to ignore the question. Finally, he spoke.
"It's weird. I remember both, kind of." Turning to make eye contact with her for the first time he said, "I remember you."
"And from before? With Dru?"
"It's like a story someone told me or that I read. It's all hazy." His gaze slipped away from hers again as he explained. "The narrative is there, but the stuff that makes memories, the smells, and sounds, and feelings, they're fuzzy. Like a dream."
"Oh." Buffy didn't know how to respond. She felt like she ought to apologize, like she'd taken something precious from him. But at the same time, her sarcastic inner voice – the one she gave control of her mouth to all too often – demanded How can the memories of being turned by Dru be better? Another part of her mind, one that was brutally honest and she'd gotten very good at shutting out last year countered with one word. Jealous?
"No great loss," Spike replied with a shrug, pulling Buffy out of her inner debate.
"So, is it like your memories just changed, or they were always there?"
"I think you were always there."
"Then why…"
"Why'd I still end up here?"
Buffy's nod confirmed the question she'd been unable to form completely. The laws of time travel, at least according to every movie and TV show she'd ever seen said that even a small change could lead to a radically different future. While Buffy was thankful to have woken up in a familiar reality, she was concerned about how that could be possible.
Spike smiled slightly, his lips twisting not in amusement, but self-deprecation. "You know me, Slayer. Stubborn as a bloody mule. Decided I wasn't going to be good just because some time traveling bird said I was supposed to. Set out to cut a swath of destruction a mile wide and leave you in the dust. Put you out of my mind. By the time I remembered and realized who you were, it was too late." He turned to face her again, his eyes full of guilt and self-recrimination. "I was already making promises I couldn't keep."
Meeting his gaze, Buffy sat up straight and said, "I'm proud of you."
The comment was unexpected, and quite frankly, one of the last things Spike ever thought he'd hear come out of her mouth.
"You're proud of him." He said, accusation in his narrowed eyes. "Not me."
Buffy's first instinct was to vehemently deny the charge, although the words froze just before leaving her lips as she wondered why it was so important to her that he understand this point. Taking a deep breath she considered her options before responding.
"When I first met William," she confessed, now leaning forward to match Spike's position on the steps, "I thought it was you. Of course, it wasn't. But as I got to know him, I realized I already did."
Spike's eyes once again focused on something unseen in front of him as he snorted in response to her assertion.
"Course," Buffy allowed, "the version I know's a little more cynical, a little more world weary. If there's one thing I missed, it was your tongue."
A blush colored her cheeks as the innuendo behind her words caught up to Buffy. Instead of the smart remark or leer she expected from him, Spike's only visible reaction was a slight curve at the corners of his mouth.
"What I mean is your sarcasm," she clarified quickly. When Spike only nodded to show he understood, Buffy found herself oddly disappointed at his lack of reaction.
She paused before continuing with her confession. "I thought about it, you know. That maybe the reason I was sent back was to keep you alive, to let William live out his life. He'd never have to know the kind of evil this world has to offer, never have to know the pain of falling for a girl who…" here her voice trailed off in shame. Steeling her resolve, Buffy forced herself to continue, "who treated him like dirt."
"You did what you had to do," he said, his tone betraying nothing of what he felt at her admission. "Couldn't mess up the timeline. Be just like letting the world end."
"No," she said. "I know all the reasons why you had to be turned. All the things that would change. All the risks. But in the end? Those aren't the reasons why I let myself be persuaded by you. I was selfish. I didn't want William to live if it meant I wouldn't know you."
This time when Spike turned to meet her gaze, his eyes reflected the hope she'd seen in them so many times before.
"I don't know what it means," she said. "But I do know that I recognized you in William, not the other way around. And not just now. Those parts were there last year, and the year before, and probably all the years before that. William was a good man. But so are you."
Comfortable silence enveloped the two, as Spike absorbed Buffy's words before she added, "And, I'm proud of you."
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A/N: Whoo-doggies! It's done! I am, of course, now experiencing that sense of bittersweet accomplishment. While I'm sad to see this end, I'm also kind of glad, b/c I was feeling massively guilty at having yet another piece hanging around unfinished. I'm sure there must be a special level of hell reserved for authors who leave you hanging. My sincerest apologies.
For those that have asked, yes, I do plan to finish "Interview with a Scourge," but, sadly, no, it won't be soon – a couple of months at least. But hey, if I'm real lucky, I'll get in finished before it hits the one year mark.
Thanks to all my loyal readers who reviewed since I last posted: Jedi Buttercup, Samson, Winter, Karen Daltry, Lelly (times 2!), Eirian, Annie, Ivy, and Anne Rose (also times 2!).
And special thanks go to all those who took the time to review during this story's development. When I try to express just how much your support and feedback means to me, words fail me. Thank you!