The
Forces Of Destiny II
By:
Morpheus Dreamerfall
Disclaimers: All Buffy The Vampire Slayer and related
characters don't belong to me, so THEY'RE NOT MINE TO BEGIN WITH IF YOU TRY
SUING ME FOR THEM!!!!!!!!!! The
characters "Richard (Ja'Redd, The Cosmic Protector) Todd", "Maxwell (The
Eternal Champion) Quaylen" and related bestiary not found on the show however
ARE mine…. So you need permission from me to "borrow" my characters for your
personal literary uses.
Summary:
Takes place ten months after my first fic's timeline also found within
Fanfiction.net and four months after the events of "The Gift". My idea of how Buffy might come back in
Season 6, done my way.
Chapter I: "Once Upon A Stormy Night…" (And all
other corny beginnings)
He
would have been content to hover invisibly there for the rest of the night, but
his sanity demanded the better of him.
Spending the better part of the evening listening to the peroxide blond
vampire's drunken rants and ravings about losing his beloved slayer beside her
grave were getting on his nerves. He
was hoping for a chance to be alone by the grave site to do what needed to be
done – unfortunately, Spike had the same damn idea every night since the Slayer
died four months ago. Exasperated
beyond belief, he decided now was a better time than any, for the longer this
was put off – the worse the outcome. He
took pity on the vampire as he drank enough to stuff a brewery and
materialized, floating down to land beside the vampire.
Spike,
also known as "William, The Bloody", the killer of Vampire Slayers twice over –
was drunk to the gills and going on about how he had fallen for something he
hunted in all of his undead life for the better part of the night got
shell-shocked sober in the instant the stranger materialized in mid-air and
landed near him.
"Bloody HELL!!" Spike bellowed, getting up and smashing the bottle he carried
over Buffy's gravestone – silently sending his apologies to the deceased Slayer
and promising to clean it up later – used the broken bottle as his only defense
against the thing that landed in front of him.
"Ease
up there, Spike." The stranger held out
his hand and stood by the Slayer's grave.
"I am here to pay my respects."
"Who
the hell are you?" Spike said warily,
"And for the record, WHAT the bloody hell are you?"
"An
old friend of hers." The stranger
gestured towards the grave. "She and
her friends might have mentioned me in passing. My name is Richard Todd."
Spike's
eyes widened, Willow mentioned him in passing while they were getting ready to
go kick Glory's butt. "Well, you're
four bloody months too late! We
could've used your help and none of this should've happened when we fought
Glory. As far as that witch and the
Watcher knew – you could've probably killed that hell god without breaking up a
sweat with both hands tied behind your back."
"I
didn't know," Richard answered truthfully, regretfully. "But I wasn't on earth for the past eight
months – if I was, she'd never have died."
"Huh?" Spike nearly laughed. He'd already met someone like the man in
front of him. "A friend of yours also
said the same thing, goes by the name of Max Quaylen. The bloody former Archangel turned Eternal Champion came a few
weeks after the funeral. Said he had
some business back in Sudan involving demons so couldn't stay long. Would've bloody joined him if it weren't for
the little bit the Slayer asked me to protect."
Richard
smiled, he had never met the Dawn – and he was never affected by the spell that
inserted Dawn into the current time stream to fool Glorificus. But it never stopped him from finding out
though. Just from scanning Spike's
memories, he surprises himself to find the depths of Spike's feelings for
Buffy. It amazed him at how the demon
and the man inside the vampire were so much alike - and yet so changed by the
outcome. With that, he knew
everything. It didn't take him long
enough to freeze the current moment in time and venture back and witness the
actual battle himself. He was more than
satisfied to find out that what he was suspecting was true. There IS a chance to undo this.
Spike
looked at the human-looking creature in front of him and frowned. "What are you doing here in the first
place?" He asked.
Good
question, Richard thought. Why am I
here? Silently, he traced back the
number of events that led him back to Sunnydale. He had just returned from a long and arduous journey in space –
resolving the matter of certain warring civilizations ready to tear up their sector
of galactic space – only to arrive back on earth to find that a
multi-dimensional barrier had been foolishly opened and haphazardly
closed. The implications were
staggering! As far as he knew, he and
only he, had the capability to create multidimensional rifts – had anyone else
tried, all hell would literally break loose.
Finding and homing in on the energy spent was tricky, but it had finally
led him back to Sunnydale. The first
thing he did upon returning to earth was to visit Angel and the gang in L.A. –
talk things with Quaylen and see how they held up. He was more than shocked to find the news and them, sans the
Eternal Champion, in silent mourning.
Angel was the hardest hit by the Slayer's death. He was numbed to find that it also affected
the soulless vampire beside him even worse.
The energy trail led him here, and now he knew why. Those mystic monks created Dawn in Buffy's
blood and image – how Buffy would have been as she would have been without her
slayer abilities. And so in essence,
Buffy could have also been "The Key" by blood…….. So no matter who jumped –
Buffy or Dawn – the gate would close.
Scanning
the grave, he was rewarded with the telltale signs of multidimensional energy
still bleeding out as if kept closed by a thin, but stubborn sheet of
tissue. Spike was surprised to see
Richard's eyes glow bluish-white. The
vampire followed his gaze back to the grave.
"What the fucking hell are you up to?
Leave her alone!"
Richard
suddenly grabbed the peroxide blond vampire's coat and dragged him near,
holding Spike aloft with just one hand.
"Shut up and listen," He began. "Within the next few minutes are going
to be crucial, I want you to give me your full and undivided help and
attention. If not, so help me, I'm
going to jam a miniature star inside you to fry you inside out. UNDERSTAND!?!"
Spike
nodded as Todd released him and stepped back to let the man do his work,
whatever that was going to be.
If
anyone had the sense of mind to be awake at that time of the night, they
would've sworn on a stack of Bibles that the cemetery glowed like a miniature
sun gone nova for the barest of moments.
When
the light died down, an awestruck Spike was charged with a command he knew he'd
give his undead life worth dying for.
Richard
Todd commanded Spike with three words:
"Tell
no one."
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To
Be Continued…………
