Buffy woke to find herself submerged in a nearly blinding white light, the vaguely familiar shapes of the Squad's makeshift infirmary looming over her like crudely shaped monsters. Everything felt sharp, angled, malicious, foreign. The sheer confusion of her situation made the oblivion of sleep seem more tempting than ever, and as it rushed back to her – Giles coming in, the amulet, going after Willow, blacking out – Buffy let out a sharp cry.
Hesitantly, she shifted one leg. It felt heavy and thick. The effortless elasticity she was used to feeling made this new sensation something of a shock. Her Slayer-strength was still on vacation, Buffy realized with dismay. But it was more than that; she was weaker than a regular human being. Buffy couldn't remember ever feeling like this before.
Whatever was doing this to her, whether it was a spell or the presence of some obscure chemical element, it had to end. She had too much responsibility to lie around in bed hypothesizing over her mysterious new condition. Fighting the urge to let her knees buckle and eyes close, Buffy stood on trembling legs and made her way towards the door, blinking rapidly so as not to be overwhelmed by the light. It wasn't as imposing now, but the glare still hurt. She hated this, this weakness.
Weakness was not something Buffy had to deal with anymore, ever. The most doomed romantic relationships ever, some seriously judgey friends, around a thousand ancient tomes predicting how and when she'd meet her untimely ending, yeah. But not physical weakness. She took her strength for granted. As she stumbled to the ground and worked to push herself up again, Buffy shuddered at how dangerous this weakness could be, especially given her state of mind.
"Buff, are you awake?" Xander called from the other side of the door, suddenly. Apparently her tripping routine hadn't been too stealthy.
"I'm here!" Buffy leaned on the door knob. Xander pulled it open and grinned, evidently satisfied with her physical condition.
"You look a lot less terrible than you did yesterday." He said brightly.
"Thanks for the honesty." Buffy raised an eyebrow. He sounded like Anya when he said things like that, and the profound effect she'd clearly had on him made Buffy miss the ex-demon, if only a little. "Just out of curiosity, just how terrible was I yesterday?"
"Um…" Xander seemed to be weighing how blunt he should be. "Kinda corpseish. But all things considered…"
"What things, exactly?" Buffy demanded urgently. "Something's messing with me, and I don't think the Watcher's Council is really in the position to make with the magical-Roofies anymore, since they're kinda obliterated by dark agents of the First, so what the hell is it?"
"Drawing up a list of your enemies is probably not a very good use of time," Xander considered. "But does anyone in particular want you dead right now? I mean, besides the usual suspects."
Buffy thought. There was no one, no outstanding threats made in a while. They'd done an outstanding job of keeping the Squad a secret, down to the rural Scottish highlands location that demons surprisingly didn't seem all that drawn to. She hadn't heard anything from her contacts, Giles hadn't seemed too worried over anything… she drew a total blank. "Sorry, but things have been eerily quiet around here, lately. No threats to speak of."
"Anything change?" He said thoughtfully. "With you, I mean. Maybe it's not a malicious undead type thing, it's just a Buffy having problems type thing."
"I do not have problems, Xander!" She retorted defensively. To tell the truth, Buffy had been wondering the same thing, but to be stricken down by something as clumsy and useless as a disease couldn't even fully register for her. She was a Slayer. In some people's eyes, The Slayer. Slayers didn't get taken down by anything so run of the mill as a human condition. Or so the lore said. In all of the years she'd had this gig, all of the threats to her life that she'd faced, nothing had forced her into anything less than a hero's death. All powerful, ancient forces of evil that emerged from under the Earth with the intent of swallowing up humanity, sure. But not this. What was her gravestone going to say? "All powerful vampire slayer, saved the world a lot, battled it out with the worst of the worst, died from cancer?" No. She couldn't go that way.
"Didn't say you did." Xander muttered, backing off. Buffy knew the hostility was coming off her in waves, probably making her friend incredibly uneasy – not that she could have hurt him at all, given her current circumstances – but she couldn't get over it.
"Is Buffy awake?" Willow poked her head through the door eagerly, joining Xander in front of her.
"Was everyone just sitting around waiting for me to wake up?" Buffy asked, confused and a little worried that neither of her two best friends were out with the new Slayers. Short staffed was a generous way to describe their operation and with so many threats constantly present, they couldn't afford to take risks.
"Oh, come on, Buffy, we were worried! You were doing the comatosey thing and – Oh, I have news for you! The amulet turned up when they were excavating Sunnydale and I called about it and used that authoritative, Scary Willow voice, you know the one? And they sent it to us."
"Scary Willow?" Buffy repeatedly slowly, unable to comprehend. "What's it mean, having the amulet back? Does it still… do anything?"
"Well, that's the part we don't know yet." Willow said. "Yesterday morning, Dawn and I tried this spell to make it 'show its power,' which was supposed to help us determine whether it still had any magic in it, but something crazy happened and it knocked us against the wall and started glowing and fell from the desk onto the floor."
Buffy nodded in understanding. It was risky to mess with that stuff, she knew, and while she was grateful to have a powerful witch like Willow by her side, she wished her friend was less reckless. Especially when her teenaged sister was involved. Dawn was still very much an amateur and that amulet had been powerful beyond almost anything Buffy had experienced. "So I'm guessing this was an inconclusive result?"
"Yeah. We still don't know." Willow said, disappointed. "Giles is all with the research now, though, and he's even taken to that newfangled thing we call the Internet."
"Must be serious, then." Buffy was genuinely alarmed. In all of the years she'd known Giles, she'd found him to be absolutely repelled by anything remotely close to what could be considered modern technology. "Do you think it could be dangerous?"
"To us? Not so much." Willow smiled, "Besides, no one's putting it on, so it's probably pretty dormant, but I think it's probably one of those things we can't let fall into the wrong hands."
"Otherwise known as the entire demon population and a good chunk of the human one?" Buffy sighed, already tired. "Protecting stuff is nothing new, luckily, but thanks for the updates. Really."
"I'm guessing you're more curious about the blacking out portion of the show, though." Willow said knowingly. Xander, who had busied himself with changing the sheets on the bed, looked up with surprise. Was there something they weren't saying? Something they were keeping from her? Buffy chided herself for being so paranoid but had to admit there was definitely something going on there.
"Well, yeah." Buffy admitted. "Not to be self-centered beyond belief, and I did really want to know about the amulet, but I seem to be missing my Slayer Strength."
Spike shoved the spindly pine branches aside, impatient with the thick foliage that surrounded him. Finally, the ambiguity of this sodding place, would fade into reality, where he wasn't wondering around a wood in confusion like a lost child.
A few parked cars ornamented the quiet, empty street, but the road had a vaguely foreign look to it, the cars were different, older. Spike squinted, trying to understand what he was seeing. He'd never been one for lengthy international vacations, much as Dru had liked them. It was always so disconcerting to play by someone else's societal rules. Overwhelming, too. He'd probably been everywhere there was to go in Europe and Asia, and he had hazy memories of streets that looked something like this, but the letters on the storefronts and street signs were English ones, making the place even more of a mystery. Everyone spoke English now, probably wouldn't make a difference if he went to bloody Egypt, there'd be English!
Spike sighed irritably and fumbled in his duster's back pocket for a lighter and cigarettes. He didn't know if he'd remembered to stick them in there on Apocalypse Eve, which felt like light-years ago now. It was just as well, he didn't particularly want to relive any of that, besides…
Oh, bloody Hell. She'd said she loved him, choked it out in a sob, so desperate and so vulnerable, and he'd thrown it back in her face. He hadn't let himself think of that. When it had happened, he'd been so concerned with getting her out of there alive, giving her the chance to be alive and move on and not love him anymore. He'd denied it because it hurt so much to be burning alive when the one thing he'd wanted more than anything happened, he couldn't deal with the irony.
"Never been good with that poetic stuff," Spike said lightly to himself, forcing himself to snap out of it and stepping out of the brush to traverse the road. He was now fairly confident that this was something Northern and decidedly European, which meant all sorts of complications, like having to speak the language and communicate and pretend he was a regular human being without the excuse of being a foreigner. Couldn't do the pillage and plunder bit anymore, that was for sure, being deprived of both his soullessness and his desire for carnage.
Glancing warily towards the skyline, which was threatening him with the milky first light of dawn, Spike made his way towards an unceremonious building marked, simply, "Inn." It seemed promising enough, though there was the matter of money, which he didn't have. Spike paused in the door way, suddenly worried – he had money, he had enough money to buy the bloody inn, but it was locked uselessly away in the crypt he suspected was now destroyed in Sunnydale.
"Should never have put on that amulet. Sodding world can take care of itself." Struck with a new idea, Spike wrestled for the expensive watch he humored himself by wearing. So it'd stayed on through the hellfire and brim stone, had it? Impressive. The man who he'd ripped it off of had good taste, he thought, somewhat cynically. Then, with more remorse, as he remembered that he'd reduced that man, with his expensive watch and leather wallet and home and family and life, into a drained corpse.
"I want a room." Spike said confidently, planting himself assertively in front of the counter.
"Now?" The man stared in confusion. "It's 5am."
"I know." Spike sighed in irritation. "Will this be enough?" He shoved the watch onto the counter. "You can tell your guests how irregular their check ins are with more precision," he muttered under his breath, knowing it probably wasn't wise to patronize the nice man who was going to ensure that he wasn't reduced to dust and ashes.
The man stared blankly at it, then shrugged, held the watch thoughtfully between two fingers, and put a key card over the counter. "For one night."
Spike grinned, knowing his paltry attempt at payment shouldn't have worked. "That watch has been through Hell," he informed the manager, "You take good care of it. You hear me?"
Making his way up the stairs, Spike realized he hadn't even asked what country he was in. He was really losing his touch.
