Disclaimer:
I do not own any the characters of BtVS, I'm just a fanatic wielding the power of my own imagination and Microsoft Word program.Rating:
PG-13 for now, though may be subject to rating change later, not sure.Author's Note:
It is recommended that you read "Fortunate Son" before this since there will be many references to the backstory already established, but this short synopsis should bring you up to speed. Spike is Giles' estranged son who arrived to Sunnydale, only to find that his mother's long-lost murderer is none other than Buffy's true love, Angel. After Buffy turns Angel, he proceeds to kill the remainder of Spike's family and friends, including his girlfriend, Drusilla. He then tries to open Acathla (much in the same vein of the latter part of S2) and his portal, but Ms. Calendar re-curses him with his soul before Buffy can find out about it. She sends him to Hell minutes later after his soul returns. Spike is forced to stake Dru. Both are broken and in pain, subsequently leaving Sunnydale for L.A. Any more than that, you'll have to read "Fortunate Son" to clear up any confusion. Also, the first part of this chapter takes dialogue directly from "Anne".Feedback:
Yes, yes please! Also, I have another story currently going on called "Haven". If you haven't, please be the nicest person ever and check it out! Drop me a line about if you so please! : )********************************************************
Chapter 1: Anne
She stood on the beach, her toes curling in the sand. The breeze swirled her golden hair about her shoulders and the light cotton sundress about her tanned legs. Serenity flailed about in the wind and filled her with contentment. She smiled and closed her eyes when she felt the warmth of the sun beat down onto her cheeks. She was safe here, she belonged. She felt loved.
"That's because you are loved," a male voice assured her as two strong hands settled around her waist. She leaned into his arms and soaked him in. Her hand crept up his cheek and sought the comfort of his dark brown hair. She turned her head round so that she was gazing up into his chocolate eyes.
"By you?"
He grasped her hand, intertwining their fingers together. "Always."
"How did you find me here?"
"If I was blind, I would see you."
She never wanted this to end. But she knew it was coming. The sun was subsiding and bowing under the glittering opalescent blue of the horizon. "Stay with me?" she murmured, holding him tighter.
He chuckled softly into her ear. "Forever, Princess. That's the whole point. I'll never leave." His voice suddenly turned forebodingly dark as he whispered, "Not even if you kill me."
She stilled and a shiver ran through her bones. When she turned, she saw him with his chest bloodied and his face singed and burnt. "Bitch!" he yelled and she wanted to scream.
Instead, she woke up.
She sighed and brushed the sweat from her brow. She turned in her damp sheets and read the clock. 4: 05 AM. On schedule. She was shaking, but that was how she awoke for the past few weeks now. The nightmares were painful and heart-wrenchingly regular. She almost could count on them as her own personal alarm clock. Every morning, she would jolt awake in a feverish perspiration. It seemed appropriate that she should wake up when it was still the dead of night outside. She didn't think she could bear to wake up to light.
She got up out of bed and wearily got ready for work.
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Her name was Anne and she worked the graveyard shift at the little diner around the corner. No one really cared what her name was though. She was always addressed as "Hey you" or "Waitress" or "Yo Blondie!" anyway. All the polite customers didn't come to the dinner in the dead, quiet hours of the early morning. The customers who did were old, tired, horny or rude truckers who pinched her cheeks when she didn't ask them to, slapped her ass when she was walking away and waved measly change at her in return for lewd favors. There was a time when she wouldn't have stood for this and would have rewarded the smarmy old men with a fractured rib. But that wasn't who she was anymore. She could never be what she was.
She was sullen and silent and non-emotive at work and in consequence, never got many tips. She never flashed a smile like the more amiable waitresses and curtly asked for and delivered orders to customers. No one at the diner exactly liked her, but the manager Mitch, took pity on her. She had arrived in L.A. a little less than a month ago and looked lost and broken, despite her best efforts. He had seen the kind before; doe-eyed heart-broken girl who thought L.A. would be the answer to all her problems. Girls like her needed all the help they could get.
He had given her a job and she was a good worker. She didn't have very good people skills, but she was a hard worker, he could tell. No one knew what she was running from, but she seemed determined to relieve herself from whatever painful past she had as she busied herself everyday around the restaurant.
Today, she was intensely concentrating on refilling the ketchup bottles when something happened to almost draw her mind away. Another waitress, Sally stared at her in amazement as, for once, she seemed spacey and distracted.
"Hey! Anne! Earth to Anne!"
She had been staring at someone in the window. He was tall and well built with dark brown hair, donning a long black leather coat. Her heart skipped a beat and she nearly dropped the ladle of ketchup into her lap. It seemed like the whole world had stopped for a moment around her. But she squinted harder and realized it was not the person she thought it was. Turning hollow again, she snapped back to attention. "Huh?"
"I've been calling your name for five minutes," Sally remarked, annoyed. "You have a customer at Table Five."
She veered her head around and saw someone seated near the window, obscured by the large menu he or she was holding. She sighed and handed Sally the ladle. "Thanks."
She was in no mood to handle customers. Well . . . she never was in the mood to handle customers, but especially today. One passing resemblance and her whole day was destined to be spent in brooding and dark introspection. So she gruffly approached the table and stood in front of the customer impatiently.
"What would you like?"
The menu still hung in the air, hiding the customer from her view. It didn't matter though. She rarely looked at whomever she was serving.
"Mmmm . . . what could I possibly get for . . . 79 cents?"
She rolled her eyes and slumped restlessly. "79 cents?"
"Well a gent's gotta be economical, doesn't he?"
If she wasn't in such a bad mood or in a hurry to be somewhere else, she would have recognized the brusquely British voice from behind the laminated menu. She just tapped her finger on her apron and huffed. "Ummm . . . 79 cents, let's see . . . you could get . . . yesterday's old bread crusts . . . apple cores . . . rotten Danishes . . . or . . . coffee."
"Uh-huh. And you got any international flavors with that?"
Her eyes began to widen as she detected a familiar low hilt of pitch in the customer's tone. Startled, she suddenly felt the impulse to run. "Uh, uh . . . what?"
"International flavors," he repeated with a hint of rudeness. "You know, like those creamers they've got on the market . . . Bailey's Irish cream perhaps . . ."
"Umm . . . we've got . . . coffee . . . I-I don't know anything more than that . . ."
"Well what do you know, you dumb bint?" he launched back sharply, throwing the menu down on the table to face the surly waitress. Surprised, he found no one there. All he could see was a girl with short, cropped blonde hair rapidly speeding away.
"Sally, you've got to help me!"
Sally looked up from her Cosmo and crackled her gum. Slightly astonished, she eyed Anne suspiciously as she held out her apron imploringly.
"What is it?"
"That customer, um, at Table Five. Take him for me?"
She glanced back at the bleached-blonde young man stretched out on the booth. "What's wrong with him?" she said distrustfully.
"Nothing . . . I just don't feel like taking him. I feel really sick, I-I think I need to go home."
Sally still had her eyes fixed on the black-clad, edgy-looking young lad. Beginning to smile, her gum crack in her mouth again. "He's dishy," she noted appreciatively. "S'really got that Billy Idol thing going for him. Yum."
"Whatever." Anne thrust the apron into Sally's arm and turned to make a run for it, but it was too late. He had seen her and shot a frustratingly mischievous grin at her. His whole face lit up when he saw her and he looked prepared to torture her. So she groaned and fled quickly to the back door.
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Dammit. Damn the damn . . . dammit. All she wanted to be was left alone. She didn't want anyone to find her, not her mother or her sister or her friends. And least of all, not him.
She stalked down Fullerton, gripping herself tightly. Maybe she was just being paranoid. Just because he had caught a glimpse of her didn't mean he'd track her down and proceed to entertain himself by bothering her.
And she knew he would bother her. He was annoying and perverse and caustic and abrasive. Just mocking her could easily amuse him. She burned inside with vexation just thinking about it. It was the most she had felt in weeks, but she wasn't very grateful for feeling.
It's not like she had forgotten how he fought beside her in that last battle. She hadn't forgotten that he was a good fighter and partner. But that wasn't her life anymore. She didn't want to be reminded of it. And what was he, more than a walking reminder of the life she had been trying so hard to avoid?
No, she tried to ease herself into thinking. No, it's okay. He doesn't care that much about it. He probably didn't even see me. He probably doesn't care if he never sees me again------
And then she heard it.
"Buffy!"
She groaned inwardly. No one had uttered that name for weeks and she had hoped she would go years before hearing it again. She pretended to not hear and continued on her way, rushing down the sidewalk.
He called out her name again. "Buffy!"
She hesitated, but didn't stop. Not until he called out for the third time, "Buffy!" did she pause. Clenching her fists, she sighed and turned to face him.
"Spike."
He stopped and smirked smugly at her. His face seemed to glow just from the annoyance he was eliciting from her. He nodded. "Slayer. I thought it was you."
She had no time for this. "What do you want?' she hissed.
"I mean, I couldn't tell what with the new Supercuts do you got going on.." He pointed at the air around to mimic her own transformation. "But the pissed-off expression just gave it away. What's with the new bouffant anyway?"
She ground her teeth. "I did it to go unrecognized."
He whistled. "Well let me tell you, I don't think it did the trick. You want to go covertly- like, you need massive personality overhaul. For instance, that instant bitchy persona is distinctly you. Won't be easily relieved with a few snippings of the shears."
She shook her head and repeated, "What do you want, Spike?"
"Can't a fella say 'ello to a mate if he feels like it?"
She stared at him, mystified. "Mate?"
He shrugged. "Well okay, someone I don't particularly wish death upon."
She pursed her lips. "Well hi. There you go. Now if you can let me go on my way----"
"Wait a bloody second." He gently grabbed her arm before she could stride off. "I run into one of Sunnydale's finest and she can't even spare a little small talk?"
She winced when he had said the dreaded S-word. She wanted to stay unreminded of home at all costs. "We've never done small talk, Spike."
"Well I say we start. Come on, how long you been in L.A.? What you been doing here? Painting the town red with Sis and Mum, I bet. Don't say I get the whole waitressing gig, but I guess it's always good to rack up a few dollars during the summer."
She widened her eyes. Behind his affable, light socializing, he had no clue. "Don't . . . don't you know what happened?"
He looked sincerely blank. "What? What happened?"
"I . . . I'm here in L.A. by myself. Not with my mom or Dawn at all. I left Sunnydale . . . for good."
He stared at her for a moment before erupting into laughter. "Oh gone on!"
She furrowed her brows and glanced around nervously. "I'm serious! I left Sunnydale right after . . . right after that thing with Acathla."
He immediately stilled and stopped laughing. "You left when?"
"Well I thought you would know. Everyone else probably found out the day I left, unless you . . ." She paused. So he hadn't been trying to track her down after all. He must have left for L.A. before she did, or around the same time. "Wait. When did you arrive in L.A?"
"Day after the Acathla business, same as you." She noticed that he immediately grew dark and guarded, as if he was reluctant to even refer to the event. Suddenly, he perked up and stared at her. "Wait. That means . . . you've been in L.A. this whole time, same as me!" He started to laugh. "Well bollocks, we could have gotten together and formed the Lonely Hearts Band!"
She didn't laugh at all. He grew quiet also when he realized this was more truthful than funny. He sighed and stared down at the pavement, as did she. Feeling slightly more sociable, she looked up and asked him quietly, "So where are you staying?"
He seemed to shrink at the innocent question. Trying to shrug again flippantly, his face masked over so that it was unreadable. "Oh you know . . . places . . . here and there."
Something about his demeanor made her instantly suspicious. "What's 'here and there'?"
"What you are, my Mum? 'Here and there' is 'here and there'! You know, mates' flats and the like."
She shrugged and waved her head around dubiously. "Where do they live? Around here?"
He pursed his lips and clenched his teeth. "Why yes, Mrs. Summers, they do," he crooned in a falsetto accent. "What the hell are you asking for? Sod off."
It was funny how the tables had turned and he was the one who wanted her to shut up. She ignored him. "You know," she said in a patronizing voice. "This neighborhood isn't exactly the safest place to live."
He furrowed his brows and cocked his head at her. "Speak for yourself."
"Well I think both you and I know I can handle myself, don't we?"
He shrugged. "Buffy could. But you don't seem to be her anymore, do you . . . Anne?" He finished, squinting at her little clip-on waitress tag. "What with the hair, the new locale and all. Looks like you're running away from what you used to be."
She glowered silently as he struck a chord. "Not the only one to be doing that, am I?"
"Oh I fully admit to running away willy-nilly, first chance I got. But at least I'm not pretending to be noble and isolated and anti-social."
She stared at him innocently. "Who's pretending?"
He smirked at her, then stuffed his hands in his pockets. "If that's the way you feel, fine. You don't fancy talking with another member of the human race, I won't burden you. See you around, princess."
With that, he turned around and walked away, leaving her stunned on the sidewalk. She hadn't seen that coming. Didn't think he would leave so abruptly. She was fuming and on edge while talking to him, but she secretly felt better at the same time. It was the most she had spoken to another person in weeks. She watched his retreating, black-duster-waving figure in confusion and furrowed her eyebrows, almost in wistfulness. But it soon passed and she returned to walking home, wondering if she would see him again.
TBC
………Haven't had a chance to edit it, I was too excited to upload it (impatient ol' me), so excuse some slight typos, I'll go back and fix them later.