AN: This is totally canon until Entropy, where the others didn't find out about Buffy and Spike's affair. Only Tara (who is not dead) knows. Tara is also the one who found Buffy after the attempted rape scene, and is the only one who knows about that, too.
My memory refused to separate the lies from truth
And search the past my mind created
I kept on pushing though
Standing resolute, which you
In equal measure loved and hated
-Warrior, Beth Crowley
Spike had a headache. A major, throbbing, Dru-just-left-me-again-and-I-spent-the-last-week-getting-beyond-wasted-and-now-I'm-hungover-as-hell kind of headache. Which, now that he thought about it, was probably what had happened, considering he wasn't injured and was lying alone in a bar.
Stumbling towards the back, he was gratified to find a large pile of blood bags. Demon bar, thank God.
After drinking his fill, he took stock of his surroundings. It was your typical somewhat grungy bar, the only unusual aspect being that other than him, it was entirely empty. Strange, considering it was the middle of the night. Perhaps someone recognized him and everyone had cleared out least he go on one of his famed killing sprees. It'd happened before.
Figuring he'd see what date it was, he picked up a nearby newspaper. He'd known it must've been a while, considering the last thing he remembered clearly was finding out the most recent slayer was dead - The novice had barely lasted a year - but that in no way prepared him for the date on top of the paper.
September 4, 2002
What the hell? That... there was a mistake. It was only 1995! Dru was messing with him, or someone else was. That had to be it. There was no way he'd lost seven years. It just wasn't possible...
Snatching the paper up, he headed to the door. He needed to find his Dark Princess, and figure out what the hell was going on.
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It had taken two weeks, but he'd finally tracked down Dru. Who, apparently, was healthy again. Still insane, of course, but physically healthy. She was in Paris, feasting on tourists and using her thrall to keep anyone from asking questions. Smart girl. He felt a pang of resentment when he saw how well she was doing. So, why, exactly, did I dedicate my life to you, if you were perfectly capable of taking care of yourself?
He quickly pushed the thought aside. She was his everything, and it didn't matter if she could take care of herself, because he was here to do it for her.
So he strode towards the seemingly abandoned manor, and ignored the voice in his head - which sounded oddly like a teenage girl - rolling its eyes and informing him how whipped he was.
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"Dru?"
Standing in the doorway to the parlor, he could only see the back of the woman, but it was her. Long dark hair swept over the back of her full-length red dress.
Turning, Spike was shocked to see surprise written across her normally vacant face. "William?"
"What's going on?"
"I don't know what you mean, William. Everything that has happened, you wanted. You did it," she replied dreamily, floating towards him.
"I'm pretty bloody well sure I didn't ask to forget the last seven years, Dru."
"Forgot?" she murmured to herself. Suddenly she started laughing, "Forgot his sunshine," as suddenly as her humor had started it stopped, and she slapped him as hard as she could. "Bad William! Bad, cruel William for treating his princesses this way, leaving and forgetting."
Spike stared at her. "I've got no clue what you're on about."
Her eerie calm was back, "I know what you did. You should know too. Shouldn't feel guilty, shouldn't care. It's wrong. You're wrong. Daddy was right. You came back too human..." she giggled, "One too human, one not human enough."
Spike just stared, bewildered.
"You deserve one another. Go back to the sunshine," Drusilla commanded, turning her back on him.
"Look, I don't know what happened, but -"
"Go! You're nothing but ashes still!" Drusilla screamed.
Spike went. She could manage without him, and he clearly needed to figure out what he'd done the past seven years.
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Spike was frustrated. He'd hunted down every contact he could think of, and all of them had refused to tell him anything. The most he'd gotten was; "Look, I don't know what happened between you two, but she scares me a lot more than you. I don't want to get on her radar."
The demon in question then refused to say who "she" was, other than not Dru. Spike killed him.
So as much as he hated to admit it, that left only one option. And he really, really hated to admit it.
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He could tell it was empty, so he strolled into Angelus's apartment without knocking. Although he probably wouldn't have knocked even if Angelus had been home. Or Angel, ever since the pathetic wanker had gone and gotten himself cursed with a soul. That still made Spike laugh. If he knew one person less angelic than himself, it would be his good for nothing grandsire. Although the git probably didn't even realize how ironic his own name was.
Spike was somewhat surprised when half an hour after he arrived he sensed Angel approaching. He'd assumed that he wouldn't be back until nearly dawn.
As soon as he walked through the door, Spike drawled, "The city of angels? Really?"
"Spike?" the older vampire sounded worried. "Why are you here?"
"Nice to see you too, grandpops."
"I'm serious Spike. What's going on?"
The blond strolled towards him. "See, I'm wonderin' the same thing myself. One minute I'm hearing about the latest slayer kickin' it, next thing you know, it's seven years later. So my question, what the bloody hell happened?"
Angel had gone very still. "The last seven years? You remember nothing."
"Give the vamp a prize."
"And you came here?"
"No, I went everywhere but here, but none of my contacts will tell me anything and Dru just yells about sunshine and ashes, crazy bint. And then I came here."
Angel walked past him. "And have you been feeding off of humans?" he asked warily.
Spike stared at him incredulously. "Well, duh."
"Damn it," Angel muttered. Spike was about to ask what he was on about when his fist flew towards him and everything went black.
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When Spike woke up, he was lying in the back of a fancy black car with tinted windows. Reaching for the door, he stopped when Angel called from the front, "I wouldn't, unless you want to dust. It's nearly noon."
"Where are we going?"
"Sunnydale." At Spikes blank look, he elaborated, "the California Hellmouth."
"Why?"
"To see a slayer about a chip and some memories."
Whatever that meant.