Welcome To The Future
Chapter 1
Buffy groaned when the shrill ringing of the telephone woke her from her dreamless sleep.
"Go away" she mumbled, rolling over onto her stomach and burying her head under her pillow. The phone however, would not cooperate.
Why wasn't Dawn or even Andrew here to answer the thing? Under normal circumstances it was attached to Dawn's ear. She wasn't sure if it was attached surgically or by demonic possession but regardless it never was allowed to ring this long.
She glanced to her bedside table and took note of the time that was displayed on her clock.
Noon, really? That's not possible. Of course it would explain why there was no one to answer the bringer of evil.
She could just tell that it was Giles by the annoying ring, she could see him polishing his glasses while scowling at her, demanding that she answer the phone now.
Why hadn't she opted for the phone package complete with caller id and voice mail? She asked herself.
"What" she growled into the phone.
"Good Lord Buffy" Giles scolded, "is that any way to answer the phone?" "And why do you even have a bloody phone if you refuse to answer it?
"I didn't answer it, because I thought that eventually you would take the hint and go away." was her response.
"Honestly I just now got to sleep, late night you know, proving to the immortal ass that he's not so immortal."
It was a rough night, if she had been forced to hear one more story about how no other vampire would ever measure up to him, she would have staked herself in the heart.
Didn't he know that there was only one vampire for her and even in his expensive Italian loafers, complete with lifts, he could never measure up? He wasn't even worthy of being dust on Spike's Doc Martins.
Her stomach clenched in pain; the thought of her vampire could render her completely incoherent, and so assuming that Giles had a point to make she shoved those thoughts aside.
It was never a good idea for her to think of Spike, while talking to her watcher, even a year later, the memory of his betrayal was fresh. His attempt at separating her from her vampire, made her want to remove her watchers' lungs by way of his nostrils.
"Oh good then. So I take it the immortal is." Giles began.
"An immortal pile of dust." Buffy finished.
"Excellent, very glad to hear that, but Buffy, now that that little problem has been taken care of, we need to move on to other things."
"I'm afraid that we have a very big problem."
"Of course we do" she sighed, "it's a day that ends in y."
"Look Giles, I'm in need of sleep, in need of a vacation, I'm ready to take early retirement, isn't that what you promised that I could do after I got rid of the immortal?"
"Really what's the point in having all of the other slayers and slayers in training, if you're just going to keep calling me in?"
"I mean honestly, they're going to get their slayer feelings hurt and a unhappy slayer is never with the good."
"Buffy" Giles shouted, "this is serious and just so you know, all slayers will be called in on this."
"All?" She gulped, oh God this must be big.
"All" He repeated. "Xander, Faith, and Wood are bringing groups today from the states, I need, you, Dawn and even Andrew on the first flight to London that you can catch."
"So it's….." She really didn't want to finish that sentence.
"Apocalypse Buffy."
"Shit," she mumbled before disconnecting the call with the promise to leave as quickly as possible.
Three hours later, Buffy, Dawn and Andrew were taxiing down the runway on their way to Heathrow airport; Buffy couldn't help but notice the way that Dawn had been watching her so carefully. Dawn knew, she would always know.
Buffy had been avoiding going to London like the plague. If Giles needed her in person, she always made him come to her; Buffy had hoped to never step foot in that city. The city that had been the birthplace of the love of her existence;
She battled the memories every day; knowing that if she gave herself over to them, she would break and the chances were good that she would never recover.
Memories, of her vampire, the one person in her whole life that had loved her unconditionally, the one that willingly gave his life or unlife or whatever so that she could live.
Oh God the way that she had treated him, and yet he never failed to stand by her side.
The way she punished him for his existence, teasing him and tormenting him; telling herself that he was a monster, and that he didn't have feelings, so she had free reign to abuse him.
The truth was, and she knew it even then, that she was the real monster; and despite it all he still loved her. Then came the day that she went too far and his demon snapped.
That was her fault too; he was just playing along with the rules that she had been playing by in the previous months; How could she expect him to know that the rules had changed?
The tears were falling freely now and she just stared out the window unable to stop them.
Andrew thankfully was oblivious to this show of emotion; he was pre-occupied with watching Star Wars on his phone; but Dawn saw. Dawn always saw everything and instead of calling her out on it, she simply squeezed her sister's hand and said "I know Buffy, I miss him too."
Not being in the mood to talk about it, Buffy gave her younger sister a small smile and settled into her seat and inserted her earbuds into her ears; selecting the play list from her Ipod labeled simply "Spike."
Her eyes drifted closed as soon as the opening strains of (I wanna be) Sedated, by The Ramones began playing. She gave up fighting the smile that appeared immediately as she remembered the night of the stakeout or the "so not a date" as she likes to call it.
He was so cute in his nervous, clumsy attempt at trying to do something "normal" with her; She should have known then that she would be hopelessly lost to him one day.
It would have saved so much pain and misery if she could have just given herself over to the vampire that was slowly but surely worming his way into her heart.
Spike, he was a paradox in himself.
The image was of the big bad, but when it came to the people he loved, he couldn't help but show the tenderness that he desperately craved to be returned.
He was rude and crude, but never far from the surface was the heart of the poet.
He had a body made for sin and the face of an angel; Cheekbones so sharp that you could cut glass with them, and lips so soft that one kiss could soothe all pain.
His platinum blond hair always worn slicked backed in order to hide soft, brown, curly locks that could melt even the coldest of hearts. Her heart.
She often wondered what he must have looked like as a little boy, and then inevitably she began imagining what their child would have looked like, if they had been able to have one that is.
She knew that he would have been an amazing dad; How could he not have been? She wasn't blind, she had seen first hand the way that he was with Dawn. Hell the way that he was with her.
When she first returned from heaven the nightmares were awful; He would hold her and talk to her in such a soothing voice that would immediately chase the pain away.
Then once he thought that she was asleep, he would sing softly to her, mostly beautiful Beatles songs.
The Beatles quickly became her favorite band, and yet she never thanked him for making the pain go away and life easier to live. Hell she never thanked him for anything really.
"No" she told herself, these thoughts are never of the good;
These thoughts were a road that led nowhere but to agony and pain; and the further she traveled down those roads, the more she knew that it was becoming likely she would find herself in a place so dark that she would never be able to find her way home.
Spike was never the type to ask for anything for himself; He would give until it hurt, and the hurt usually came from her hand; and still he only asked for one thing from her ever.
He only asked for a crumb, never more than a crumb.
Hell if only she could have one more chance, she would give him the whole fucking bakery.
She knew that there was nothing that she wouldn't do for him, just given the chance, but she knew that wasn't to be.
She was in the habit of soothing herself to sleep every night, by whispering his name and proclaiming her love for him, like a litany of prayers made to the Gods each night.
It wasn't fair she knew, but that didn't change anything.
It really wasn't fair, if she couldn't tell him how she felt, what right did she have to use his love to bring her comfort?
But then again, she was never really known for playing fair when it came to emotions like love.
Love, that was an issue of its' own: Buffy began squirming in her seat, this plane ride was giving her way too much time to be was just another thing had never been kind to her, her first love Angel, turned into the biggest mistake of her life.
She should have known that love was going to be something that she would never be good at considering that as soon as she gave her love and her innocence to Angel, he became evil and began his killing spree with the intentions of destroying her before he destroyed the world.
Then there was Riley AKA Angel lite; When Angel left her for his life of brooding and helping the helpless for a price, he literally ordered her to find a nice normal boy.
Enter Riley, he was cute and sweet in an aww shucks kind of way, but her life proved to be too much for him and so he left.
Funny, Spike had always tried to tell her that she wasn't made for normal, and after a couple months, she had to begrudgingly admit that he was right.
She sighed when she realized that once again her thoughts had wound their way back to Spike, they always did.
"I miss him so much" she thought as she heard the introduction to Billy Idol's Rebel Yell.
"In the midnight hour, she cried more, more, more."
Yep, that was her, always demanding more; Holding Spike to impossible standards and even when he was able to maintain those standards, giving nothing in return.
She never gave him credit for turning completely against his nature, for everything he did for her to prove his love.
Jesus, he even went to the ends of the earth and fought for his soul to be returned; He was a mess then, and instead of embracing him and making sure that he was taken care of she belittled what he had done (for her) and ignored him.
Why she hadn't acknowledged he was a better man without a soul than Angel was with one, she would never know. She was pretty sure that the reasons were Giles and her friends.
Every time that she was reminded of how she had been living her life as their puppet, living for what they expected and wanted from her instead of for herself the more her rage grew.
Truthfully she didn't care if she ever saw any of them again, she had to place at least some of the blame on their shoulders.
She swore from that moment on she would live for Buffy, for Dawn and for Spike's memory, other than that no one else mattered.
Giles wasn't going to know what hit him, she thought to herself, feeling her spirits lift for the first time in what felt like forever. Today he would be meeting the new and improved Buffy Summers, and screw him and the others if they don't like her.
It was as she was hearing the first verse of her favorite Beatles song, the one that he sang to her to chase the nightmares away, that she felt Dawn tapping her on her shoulder, to let her know that they were about to land.
She closed her eyes again, desperate to hear the song before she had to turn her Ipod off:
"The long and winding road always leads to your door"
"Will never disappear"
"I've seen that road before it always leads me here"
"Leads me to your door."
Oh if only this time those words were true.
The pilot began an announcement over the intercom system and she begrudgingly turned the player off and put her seat in the upright position so that they could begin their descent.