Irony Becomes Her

Welcome to my own personal Buffy~verse, breaking off from the Jossverse after season six ends.

I've always been better at starting in the middle of plots and working my way forward from there. This story is going to be the sequel to another story, that, if you'll investigate, you'll find was never actually written. Allow me to explain.

This whole speculation~based, 'Spike-comes-back-from-Africa,-he's-all
remorseful,-Buffy-doesn't-like-him-at-first,-then-realizes-that-she's-loved him-all-along' thing is getting kind of old. But I am very much in favor of a Buffy/Spike ship. So. To avoid the aforesaid plot, I have taken a few liberties. Because I can. It's a fanfic. My fanfic. I'm a rabid BtVS fan. I can do whatever darn-well I want, and people will back nervously away from my frothing mouth and wild eyes.

Pretend Spike did get his soul, comes back to Sunnydale, still desperate to prove his love to Buffy, who still hates him for various reasons, not the least of which being the fact that he left in the first place. . .

. . . Then, things change.

1. Spike falls out of love with Buffy. ( *Awww* )

2. Buffy falls in to love with Spike. ( *Yay!* )

Note: She did not love him before, no matter what her insightful sort~of~sister thinks about it all. She was using him, and his love for her, for her own selfish, bitchy reasons. But when he gets back, she falls totally in love with him, bordering on (but in no way beating) his initial obsession with her. Think Gone With the Wind.

So the tables have turned, Buffy no longer being a bitch, Spike acting indifferent to her, everyone else just sort of there.

Another thing. Away with the weepy Willow, 'I nearly destroyed the world, aren't I terrible?' thing. And away with Xander/Anya tensions. He apologizes. He grovels. She makes that 'well...' noise. He proposes again. She says yes. They get over it. They're planning another wedding. A better wedding. Nay, a wedding to end *all* weddings.

Giles, realizing that, hey, the Sunnydale world really will fall apart without him there, moves back from England, for the sake of all humanity. He, due to long and involved and actually quite funny circumstances --which I haven't actually figured out yet, but may allude to-- is now a bar~tender at Willy's. He has cleverly renamed it 'Rupert's.' He makes a mean O+ cocktail, and many of the regulars remark upon how clean the glasses always are. It seems like he's always wiping one off...

The gang gets cell phones. Finally. The rest of the free world has cell phones, and they were still running around looking for phone booths and stuff. Think back on all the apocalypses they could have nipped in the bud if they could communicate instantaneously. But, however much decorative cell phones are becoming the true windows to the soul, Dawn got to pick theirs out, and they don't exactly match people.

And, because I like the Buffybot, and think she's funny, she's back. Use your imaginations. Think of some good explanation for it. I'd love to hear it. I'm sure it's very interesting. While you're at it, try to figure out why that day in season one, when Buffy was turned into a vampire, courtesy her nightmares, she didn't combust in the sunlight. I've been wondering about that ever since it happened. Ah well. On with the shenanigans.
You'll notice I'm a bit peeved at Buffy. She was being a rotten person in Season Six.

...And now you know what I consider necessary background information. Turn back now, before it's too late.

~Star Mouse

@ @ @ [sick of asterisk dividers. Making my own rules. I'm a rebel.]

And so it begins, like all good stories, with a love~sick crybaby drowning kes sorrows in a bar.

Rupert Giles, ex-Librarian, ex-Watcher, ex-Magic Shop Owner, currently Bar Tender, set to work on a dirty shot glass with a vigor usually only reserved for his spectacles. He glanced over at the latest casualty in the soap opera that was, increasingly, life on the Hellmouth. He cleared his throat.

"Um. Perhaps you should think about... Stopping. At some point in the near future?"

Buffy looked up at him. Her eyes were doing that thing he hated. That one where she's ready to cry, and all the color in her eyes and all the make-up she wears around them kind of blend, and her eyes look like deep black pits and shallow tide-pools at the same time. He raised his eyebrows.

"Or, perhaps not."

Buffy looked back down at her drink.

She had wanted to try some of the blood, but Giles had been very firm on that point. And he wasn't letting her have alcohol, either. What kind of bar was he running, anyway?

...The only one she could go to to get advice she valued.

The only one she could think of that wasn't the Bronze, where she would see her friends. Her happy, wedding~planning friends. Cheerful friends.

Stupid friends. Being happy all over the place.

So the Slayer was attempting intoxication by Diet Coke.

Wow, was she pathetic.

She had finally surrendered. Had finally gotten over all those roadblocks, all the huge reasons why they could never work, and had just given in to it. She never surrendered. She was a 'go-down-fighting' kinda gal. But for him, she had finally spread her arms (and legs) and said "You win." It had been the hardest thing she'd ever done, in ways, but once she admitted it to herself, the only thing left to do was to admit it to him:

She had fallen in love with him.

She had fallen in love with Spike, and had finally told him what he had always begged her to tell him. Said exposure of self, complete surrender to the whirlwind that was him and the hurricane that was fate's idea of a test course for Buffy romance, and she had told him she loved him.

She nearly cried into her coke at the memory.

He had just stood there, outside the crypt where she'd acosted him, blinking at the emotional young woman in front of him, something glinting in his eyes...

...And then she'd recognised that glint, and nearly vomitted.

Pity.

And he had turned her down. Totally. With no hint at future possibilities. He hadn't actually said "I hate you," but the sentiment was there. It was the last thing she had ever expected, and the subject of all her nightmares since.

Now that she had taken the leap she had been dreading, she couldn't stop. She was doing all that creepy stuff he had been doing to her. Well, not the stealing articles of clothing' thing, but the watching and stalking thing, sure. Now she knew what it had felt like, for him. A one-sided obsession. She needed him, and wanted him to need her, and he didn't.
The only difference was, before, they had needed each other. She had needed him too. But now she loved him, and he could stand alone.

There wouldn't be any relationship. Not even a meaningless one.

She wanted to die.

Well, or kill something.

She threw back another shot of Diet Coke, and tapped the glass against the counter. Giles looked up from his conversation with a slightly tipsy Danag demon and saw the empty glass. He sighed. She didn't really care what she was drinking, not really. And he knew it didn't matter what she was drinking. It was the principle of the thing. And, on principle, she had consumed enough Coke to lay her out of the floor. But he refilled her glass in silence.

He wasn't going to try to talk to her yet. She needed to think before she could talk. He wasn't entirely sure what all of this was about, but he guessed that it had something to do with Spike. When he'd returned from England, things had been very different from the Sunnydale social structure he remembered. And his Slayer had been in love with another vampire. Whenever she cried, now, it always had something to do with Spike.

It seemed like everything did, nowadays. For instance, this chappie here, Grlarnkmkun, seemed to think that very vampire was the subject of some prophecy he claimed to possess. By the sound of it, one that Giles himself was not familiar with.

"Ah, now then, Mr. Grlarnkmkun, what was that you were saying about a prophecy?"

"She'lefme."

Giles blinked. He'd been speaking English just a moment ago, but that certainly sounded like Sumerian to him. "Pardon?"

"She *left* me. Me! Fer'a. . . Fer'a Yangkew. Ugly sunsbitches."

"Oh! Oh, right. Well." Giles tried to slip back into bartender mode. He'd watched quite a bit of Cheers for material. He started back to work on the glass. "Well, why don't you tell me all about it?" His clipped off t's and general delivery didn't really do the phrase justice, but the demon seemed not to notice.

"Why'd she avda leave? I luver!"

"Oh, there there." As the yellow demon slumped against the bar, sobbing and making the wood his in protest to it's acidic tears, Giles tried to remember why he was running a demon bar. He continued cleaning glasses. The demon talked on.

"I mean- I mean- What'she se'in'im?" The demon turned teary fly-eyes on Giles, pleading.

He shook his head. "I have no idea. You are truly a very fine fellow. Perhaps she... just needed time. Now, Mr. Grlarnkmkun, do you remember what you were saying about a prophesy?"

"...*sniff*..."

"Mr. Grlarnkmkun? The prophesy."

"...Drusilla..."

Giles blinked. "Drusilla? The vampire? Is she in the prophesy? What about Drusilla?" Now he remembered why he was running a demon bar. Averting the Apocolypse, one day at a time.

The demon just shook his yellow head mournfully.

"She left me."

Giles did a double take. "Drusilla is the young lady you've been refering to?" A sad, drunken nod. "Oh, for--" Giles slapped his towel down on the counter and looked around Britishly. He had much better things to do than discuss Drusilla with her latest leftovers. What was the point of it all? He leaned down to lock eyes with the teary, yellow demon.

"Please focus, Mr. Grlarnkmkun. A prophesy. Involving Spike? What do you know about it?"

The demon leaned away from Giles's fierce gaze, overbalencing and ending up on the floor. The other patrons of the establishment didn't even look around. Giles sighed, and walked around the counter. He hoisted the drunken sod back into his seat, being careful not to touch the poisoned barbs along each arm. He had learned from experience not to let a lead go. And he was not going to start now.

"Giles?" He turned. Buffy was standing behind him, holding her purse.

"Buffy?"

"I'm gonna go patrol. Work out some stress. Thanks for the Coke. I, ah, put the money in the tip jar."

"Oh! Um, thank you. Yes. Very good. But do you ...really think you should patrol? You don't ... seem very focused." She really didn't. Her eyes were bleary and her hands holding the purse against her were slack. "Perhaps you should just head home. I'll put in a call to Xander."

"Nah. I can handle it. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Buffy, you really shouldn't patrol alone. Are you sure you'd rather not go with Willow, or, or Spike, even?"

Buffy clenched her purse more tightly. "Nah. Catch ya later."

She left.

The patrons all heaved a united sigh of relief. While the Slayer never actually started bar fights, she tended to end them very quickly, usually by the simple expedient of killing all involved. She had earned herself toleration at Rupert's, but things were a lot tenser when she was there.

Giles looked around. He looked over at Grlarnkmkun. He sighed. If he wanted to know what the yellow demon was talking about, this would be a long night.

But first... He pulled out his cell phone. There was a leopard-print cover on it. He couldn't remember how Dawn had persuaded him to accept it. Let's see... Speed dial. Buffy was 1, Xander was 2, Willow was 3, The Magic Box was 4, Dawn was 5, Angel Investigations was 7.

He pressed 6.

@ @ @


It's a crypt. It's supposed to be quiet.

A shrill rendition of 'Ode to Joy' rings through the silence. A corpse stirs and says, "Bugger."

A cold, pale hand gropes over the edge of a tomb. It grabs a pink Hello Kitty cell phone. The phone pauses on it's way to the dead man's ear, as said dead man curses Dawn Summers and her sense of humor.

Then, "Lo?"

Pause. "Yeah, Rupe, what's up?"

Pause. "Ah, no. No, can't imagine."

Pause. "No, I think she can take care of herself."

Pause. "Wull, she can."

Pause. "I didn't know librarians knew that word."

Pause. "Yehyeh. Alright. I'll play stalker. Right. Fine. You're over-reacting, you know."

Pause. "I said I don't!"

There was a beep as Spike hung up the phone.

He lay on the tomb for a moment, fingering the antenna. Then he stood up and grabbed his duster from the hook near the door and headed out to do Buffy duty.

@ @ @

Hope you liked it. More to come. Much more.

~Star Mouse