Title – Once In A Lifetime


Author – Dramagirl42


Rating – PG-13, for violence and sensuality in later chapters


Spoilers – Possible S6 later on, but if you're caught up through S5 it should be okay


Disclaimer – All "Buffy" and "Angel" characters belong solely to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, the WB and UPN networks, Fox Broadcasting, and any number of other affiliates bound together by paperwork. Also, if you see a line, phrase, or lyric and you say, "Hey, I know who said that," you are probably right and it obviously isn't mine. Because I plan on using a lot of outside, "real world" influences on the characters there is no way to disclaim them all. Just know that I mean no disrespect, only homage and don't be mad if I've got your stuff. If you are, let me know and I'll take it off.

Feedback – Yes please! This is my first FF and I need to see if it works at all. :-) Post reviews or e-mail me at ImYourTeacher@yahoo.com If you would like to be added to the update list, e-mail me as well.

Special thanks to buzz and 1istner, my beautiful, witty, sassy-as-all-get-out beta readers.

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Spike stood dumbfounded. For the first time since the day he had been sired, he was fully engulfed in sunlight. He stared out the windows, drinking in sights he had been denied for a more than a hundred years, reliving memories of easier, happier times.

"Soup's on," Lydia's voice brought him back to the present and the table. "You're jumpier than I expected. Sit down, have some blood, get your bearings, and I'll fill you in on anything you want."

"Right," he said slouching into his chair.

He studied her as she finished preparing whatever it was she was preparing. She was roughly his height, with a soft, curvy body and long golden-brown hair that hung loosely braided to a point just above her waist. Almost child-like, she padded across the hardwood floor barefoot. As innocent as she appeared to be, she had an air of unquestionable strength, as though nothing could hold sway in her world without her permission. She wore faded gray sweats cut off at mid-thigh and a flowing, lilac blouse with a scooped neck. Both articles of clothing, although decidedly ordinary, only worked to accentuate her smooth, shapely legs and plump breasts. To Spike, it appeared as though she was clad in the robes of a queen and he found himself staring at her.

Their eyes briefly met as she turned slightly and looked his way. The first thing he had seen upon waking were her eyes. They had been filled with such caring and concern that even now when she wasn't facing him, he could still feel her empathy for him. It emanated from the very creaminess of her skin, the gentle rose of her cheeks and the deep pink of her lips that always carried a trace of a smile. She now stood frozen for a moment, holding two bowls, eyes closed and head bowed.

Lydia opened her eyes again and set a bowlful of red liquid and a small plate of Saltines in front of him, and placed similar looking bowl and plate at the seat opposite.

"And this is…?" Spike asked, skimming the surface suspiciously with his spoon.

"Blood!" she said with a patient smile. "Geez, if this is any indication of your level of intelligence I'm amazed you've stayed alive as long as you have."

"Funny," he responded wryly. "What I mean to say is, there isn't any extra ingredient that'll make me grow hair in odd places or turn me into a barnyard animal or what all?"

"Not a thing," she said. "Just a good old-fashioned, home-cooked bowl of Lydia blood, AB positive."

"Alright," he said, curious as to why she had bags of her own blood lying around. "If I've got blood, what've you got?"

"Tomato soup," she said, swirling a piece of cracker in the center of the bowl. "I'm human. I need my vitamin C."

"That's one question down," Spike thought as he raised the spoon to his lips. "I'm too bleedin' tired to try and figure this all out…best to just go with it for now."

He swallowed the first spoonful and was filled with warmth, infusing his aching limbs with strength and clearing his mind of all extraneous thoughts. He didn't let on how much of an effect her blood was really having on him.

"Not bad pet," he said. "Not the liveliest meal I've had, but it's giving me a bit of my own back."

"I thought it would," she said, starting in on her own food.

Without thinking, Spike picked up his bowl and in two long, smooth gulps, swallowed the rest of the blood before Lydia had taken a single bite. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and leaned back in his chair, thoroughly satisfied.

"Wow," said Lydia, her spoon poised in front of her lips. "I've never seen anyone chug from a bowl before. You drink like Falstaff."

"Yeah?" he said with a half-smile. "Let's hope I don't start to look like him. Fangs or no fangs, fat, dirty old men don't really inspire horror now do they?"

"Are you kidding?" she said with a twinkle in her eye. "Next time a paunchy, sweaty forty year old starts hitting on you at the bar see how fast you move towards a bouncer."

"Point taken pet," he said, upgrading his half-smile to an amused smirk.

 "Dirty old men aside for the moment, I was wondering if you remember anything that happened immediately before you came to," she said, resting her chin on her hands in front of her.

"We playin' twenty questions now, love?" Spike said with a smirk. "Alright, what do you want to know?"

"Ooo, I'm good at that game! Is it a breadbox?" she said with a goofy grin. "But seriously…what's the last thing you remember before you woke up?"

He paused for a moment. What did he remember?

"It's kinda fuzzy," he said, brow furrowed thoughtfully. "Dru and that damn chaos demon, I bloody well remember that. And the bit in the bar, guy came into my bar with his buddies…wankers…I remember being out in the alley, getting' ready for a spot o' violence. The rest is kind of dark."

"Well that's good," she said, relief washing over her face. "We found you about then, so I can fill you in on everything that happened post savage beating."

"You mean you knew what's going on already?" he asked, shocked that he had surrendered that much information so easily. It felt too natural to lead to anything good.

"Not entirely, but that's never stopped me before." Spike studied her intently as she started to eat again, and still couldn't place her anywhere in his past. Why was she so bloody familiar?

"Okay luv," he said, pushing aside the now empty bowl, his demon satiated, and leaning across the table, trying to look ferocious. "I'm feeling like my old evil self again…my turn to be grand inquisitor."

She started laughing…again.

"Hey," he said, leaning back, thoroughly annoyed. "Evil bloodsucking vampire here! I'm not bloody 'Punch and Judy.'"

"I'm sorry," she said with a smile of mock contrition. "We don't really do the whole fear thing around here, so sinister things tend to amuse me."

"What kind of disturbing, human freak show have I fallen into?" he asked, annoyance bordering on bewilderment.

"Michigan," Lydia said, curling her legs onto the chair and smiling faintly, "Hoffsburg, Michigan to be precise. Not freaky exactly, but do we have a Hellmouth, three fairly good Chinese restaurants, and a totally bitchin' punk scene."

"Now we're getting somewhere," he said, relaxing slightly at the mention of a Hellmouth and punk. "How'd I get here?"

"I brought you here," she said simply.

"You're gonna have to do better than that," Spike was too tired to put the effort into a good sarcastic response.

"I know, I was just teasing you a bit," Lydia replied, her eyes reflecting the sunlight with a warm glow. "I was in Brazil tracking down some chaos demons that have been disrupting our construction projects. I was out searching the demon bars with a couple of the guys who could ID them. We went into one of the bars and saw a group of them go out through the back. We followed them into the alley and found them pummeling you."

Spike winced as memories of the "fight" came flooding back. Too drunk, angry, and heartbroken to fight them properly, it had not been his finest hour.

"They were the same demons who had been messing up my stuff," she continued. "We kicked the slime out of them in a few minutes. I mean, I recognized you right away, but if I had known what kind of shape you were in I would've killed them sooner. I'm really sorry about that. Anyway, I knew you'd probably end up in the sun or being used as target practice by the other drunks peeing in the alley, so we took you back to the plane, patched you up, and brought you here. I didn't want to leave you all open and vulnerable like that."

She smiled, reminiscing; Spike was taken aback. She seemed so pure; she looked like any number of girls he and Dru had shared over the years. Yet there she was, sitting in a nice, cozy kitchen in the middle of Michigan, eating tomato soup and talking about killing demons as though it was the natural course of life. He could almost see himself liking a girl like this, as long as she didn't turn into a Slayer. He was so focused on her story that he failed to notice that she claimed to have recognized him.

"So why did you bring me here?" Spike asked.

"What do you mean, 'why?'" she said, somewhat surprised. "You were hurt, you needed help, and there was no way Drusilla would've done it after the way she treated you."

"How'd you know about Dru?" he asked, springing to his feet, defensive. "How do you know who I am? What're you playing at, girl?"

"Spike, sweetie, relax," she said in a soothing voice, not even flinching. "My best friend is the goddaughter of a Watcher. We used to read through copies of the diaries. I know about your history, about Drusilla and Angelus, about the Slayers you've killed, lots of stuff. When we found you I recognized you right away, like I said. I wanted to know what they were beating you up for, so I beat it out of one of them."

Spike was dumbfounded. He stood before her, unable to process what he was hearing. She knew him? She's a demon killer, but not a Slayer? She knows exactly who and what he is…and she didn't kill him?

"Are you going to be alright?" she asked. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I guess I'm just used to people knowing all about me, so I didn't think it'd freak you out like this."

"I'm…I'll be…I mean bloody hell woman!" he shouted. "Layin' this on a guy all at once is a bit heavy! You haven't even really explained who the hell you are!"

"Fair enough," she said perking up. "I can do that, if you're willing to get back on the couch for a while. You are way too riled up, you need to relax."

"S'long as I'm gonna get filled in," he said with a sigh of resignation.

Lydia got up, took his hand, and led him back to the couch he had been laying on when he woke up. Spike was far too dazed to protest. He lay down, propped up with extra pillows from the other couch, and she gently tucked a light blanket around his body. Her movements entranced him as she settled into the recliner at the end of the couch; she moved softly and deftly, not wasting a single motion.

"Are you comfy?" she asked, scooping up the stuffed aardvark he had seen earlier.

"I'm good," he said, relaxing and readying himself to take in as much as possible.

"Faboo. I guess I'll just start with the basics," she said, leaning back into the overstuffed cushiness of her chair. "I'm Lydia Marie Hartford. I'll be seventeen in two weeks and I go to school here in town at the high school and part time at U of M, Flint. My best friend, Moira, lives with me and we take care of a little girl named Lillian whose mother was killed last fall by a drunk driver. Oh," Lydia said almost as an afterthought, "Moira is a vampire too." She paused with one eyebrow lifted, waiting for a reaction from Spike.

"Sounds like bloody Never Never Land," Spike quipped dryly. "Aren't there any adult types lurking about?"

"Not any more," Lydia said sadly. "When the Hellmouth opened up three years ago, no one understood what was going on…this is Michigan farm country…we have cherries, beaches, lakes…not vampires and demons. People kept dying and nobody knew why. But, when Moira came to live with us, she figured out what was going on in about a week. She was raised around this sort of thing, you see. Her godfather is a Watcher. Isn't it ironic, don't you think? We found her and she found us and now we are so happy." Lydia smiled at Spike and he responded by raising his eyebrows. "Not a big 'School House Rock' or Alanis fan I see." Lydia said wryly. "Well, anyway, she told us everything about vamps and other ghoulies, showed us how to kill them and eventually everyone in my family started patrolling. After a month or so, the people from church saw what was going on and we organized."

She chuckled wistfully, thinking about the chaotic first months of her family's patrolling. "Makes sense so far?"

"Yeah, so far," Spike said softly, engrossed and almost eager to find out what kind of place had churches that openly hunted vampires. He was still completely at a loss as to why she was telling him so much in the first place.

"Everyone saw it as a direct attack, on us, on God, on our town…righteous indignation can be a deadly catalyst," she said with a smirk. "There were enough people in moms' Hapkido class already good enough to fight in teams, but we had to have more people involved. We couldn't handle it all by ourselves. It's their town too right? In a nutshell, we spent the next few months doing physical and weapons training classes for people who wanted to start patrolling, and all the churches did major work with spiritual warfare preparations. We…"

"Wait just one sodding minute," Spike cut her off. "You meant to tell me that I've somehow landed myself in the middle of some kind of bloody holy rolling boot camp town?

"Holy rolling boot camp," Lydia said with a thoughtful smile. "You know, I like the sound of that."

"So what do you do," he said with a sneer. "Say ten 'Hail Mary's,' swing some incense around and stake everything in sight?"

"Wow, you really are out of touch," she replied. "When was the last time you went to church?"

"You mean for something other than a quick meal?" he asked snarkily.

"No, I'm serious," she said. "I think you've got our stuff confused with 'religion.' I'm talking about being plugged into the power of God, whomping on the forces of evil, keeping our town safe, and allowing the majority of people here to live fairly normal lives, without a bunch of archaic rituals. It's really not that complicated."

"Right then," he said, temporarily conceding the point and beginning to scheme for his escape from this sanity free burg. "Go on."

"Things were going fine until all the big league vamps got driven out of Prague," her voice tapered off slightly until she snapped out of her reverie. "Some hotshot master vamp decided he wanted Hoffsburg, a nice, quiet, cozy Hellmouth he called it, and my family was in the way since they were the ones who started the war…so he killed them." She tried to shrug her statement off, not wanting to let Spike see how much it affected her, but she failed miserably. "One of his minions planted a bomb in the car and…" she stopped, unable to continue.

She sat silently for a few minutes, clinging to the stuffed aardvark she had scooped up. Tears streamed down her cheeks and the transformation from the strong, collected woman he had just seen to this scared little girl startled him. He remembered how frail Dru had been during her sickness and how Lydia appeared the same. He tried to ignore the surge of compassion he felt for her, but the look on her face made his heart ache.

As he watched her cry, Spike realized that he had never stayed around long enough to see how anyone who knew his meals reacted. Death, blood, and mayhem were fun. They weren't supposed to make a beautiful creature like that break down into tears. He didn't know whether he wanted to stroke her hair and soothe her, or slit her throat for making him care. The fact the master in question had most likely been with him in Prague didn't make it any easier.

"Who was it?" he asked, softly, breaking the silence.

"Who was who?" she said through sniffles.

"The master who killed your family," he said. "I was in Prague about that time too, so…"

"Oh…" she said, trying to regain her composure. "Lucius. He said his name was Lucius."

"Oh bloody hell pet, I'm sorry," he said, truly meaning it. "I've known him for decades…he's a lunatic even by vampire standards."

"Was," she whispered. "He was a lunatic. I killed him."

"You?" he was stunned. "You're a child, a human child. You're barely old enough to be a Slayer! How did you take out a five hundred year old master like Lucius?"

"He killed my mommy and I wanted his head," she said in a cold, detached voice that gave Spike a slight chill, "so I found his lair and cut it off. Simple as that."

The cloud of pain passed over her face, she wiped away her tears, and once again she wore the gentle smile that put him at ease.

"Things are better now," she said, looking more tired than she had before. "The community pretty much runs its own patrolling units now, so I don't have to worry about scheduling and training anymore. I have more time for school, my dancing, and Lillian, all the normal teenage things." Her eyes flashed a hint of sadness as she finished.

They sat in silence for a time, regarding each other, neither one able to read the emotions of the other.

"Well…" Spike said, once more breaking the quiet. "Sounds like you've had a time of things. Where exactly do I fit into all this?"

"I hadn't really thought that far ahead," Lydia admitted. "I just knew you were in trouble and I wanted to help."

"Let me get this straight," Spike said, still trying to wrap his mind around her train of logic. "You fight vampires on a Hellmouth because of some holiness trip. You understand how they work. You found a master vampire broken and bloodied in an alleyway, and then not only do you give him medical attention, but you fly him thousands of miles to stay in your home?!?"

"Oh good," she said grinning. "You do understand. I was afraid…"

"What do you mean understand?" he roared. "I don't get one sodding bit of it! You say live with a vampire? Where is she? You know things about me…that you just shouldn't know! You're parents are dead and you don't have any adults around? Bollocks! I'm gonna get the truth if I have to kill you!"

With that he lunged across the couch intent on pinning Lydia to the floor. Unfortunately, the ball of her foot smashed into his throat and sent him sprawling onto the floor.

To be continued in the next chapter…