"What do you have to offer me, William, William the Bloody, Spike?" He said the names in quick succession, nearly blurring them into one long word.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to explain the process to me. In all my years, here and there, I don't know as I ever heard of the likes of you." Spike kept his eyes on the man's, but it hurt to do so. They were constantly, subtly, changing shape, color, and expression. "Hub, eh? Like on an auto?"
"Somewhat," he said, letting his kaleidoscope eyes flit from Spike to Laramie and back again. He sighed heavily and shook his head sorrowfully. "I see that the frog here hasn't told you anything about me." He pulled his mouth into a pout, his face growing structurally a little longer, his eyes a little bigger. It was a caricature of the previous face, an overdramatically sad rendition. "I'm disappointed. My ego is wounded." Abruptly, the face snapped back. "Just as well, Watcher. You Council bastards never tell my story right anyway.
"I am the Hub. As there are many spokes in a wheel, so there are many dimensions in the world. To say I am actually the Hub is a bit of an overstatement, though I'm quite deserving—" he paused to buff his fingernails on the front of his shirt, his eyes gleaming with glee as he saw Spike's impatience. "But you could rather say that I am in control of the hub, in control of the comings and goings between dimensions."
"How in the bloody hell did that happen?" Spike asked, more out of curiosity than designed insolence. It was ludicrous for an ex-vampire to profess belief in God, but Spike did, and it made him wonder how such a being, a shifty, shiftless, mercenary being, could come into such control.
"Life is but a cosmic accident," the Hub said loftily, effectively brushing off Spike's question. In reality, the Hub didn't even know how it had happened. But the bratty, poetic failure of a vampire didn't need to know that. "I control the dimensions like a toll road."
"So you're kind of like a Key," Spike mused aloud, thinking of Dawn. "Only a thieving skeleton key."
"You know a Key?" The Hub clucked his tongue and shook his head. "Well, then, that's a buzz kill. I was going to explain that, as well. Moving on," he shouted, making both men wince. "Toll road. So what I'm telling you is that even if you lived in this world a hundred and fifty years, two hundred years, three thousand years, you would never reconvene with your Slayer." He mimed wiping a tear away and laughed when Spike growled low in his throat. "Because this is the dimension where you didn't get vamped. Because you didn't get vamped, you didn't have your Slayer fetish and murder indulgence, and so—" He spread his hands in a fait accompli gesture. "Here you are. Pity for you, really, blondes haves much more fun." And without any effort, the dark hair styled impeccably atop his large head faded into an ashy blond.
"And so now all I have to do is pay my toll," Spike finished. He ignored Laramie's heavy sigh behind him. "Well, then, that doesn't sound so bad. What do you want from me?"
"Your soul, Willy my boy. Is that so much to ask?"
~~~
"I can't do it." Willow looked apologetically up at Wesley and spread her hands. "I can't do a locator spell when there are so many variables. Maybe he's not alive, maybe he's a vampire, maybe he's not. If I don't even know what kind of being he is, how can I find him, and if I can't find him, how is Buffy ever going to know? You know, it's just all this big mess, and I don't think I can handle letting her down. Every time I talk to her on the phone, it's like—"
"Hey." Kennedy placed a hand over Willow's and looked up at Wesley imploringly. "It's okay, Red, take it easy."
"I always want to fix everything," she said miserably. "And I can't ever do it."
"I dunno," Xander said, coming in from the kitchen of the apartment. "I'd say you did a bang-up job with the whole 'Boom, thousands of Slayers' thing." He bit into a sandwich and grinned around it.
"You can't argue that," Wesley said. "Don't worry about the location. I just wanted you to know we looked. We tried to wait around and see, but nothing came about."
"She's so miserable, Wesley, but she doesn't seem to know it. It's like…" Willow struggled for the words and sighed. "It's like she has all these happy parts and then one big sad part. It's sorta makin' all the happy parts… sad."
"Hopefully we'll figure something out soon," Wesley said, patting her on the back awkwardly. "I should be going." Once the Watcher had left, Willow turned to her girlfriend and best friend.
"He was the only one who stood by her," she said insistently.
"Wesley?" Xander asked, tossing his paper plate onto the table and earning a glare from Kennedy.
"No," Kennedy said, rolling her eyes. "Spike." She turned to Willow for affirmation. "He was the only one who stood by Buffy. But when do you mean?"
It was Willow's turn to roll her eyes, but she kept the gesture in check. No matter how much she cared about Kennedy, she was still naïve. She was like a bulldozer, doing things and never realizing what she was doing. "We kicked her out of the house when we knew it wasn't safe. We shunted her from the group when we were practicing safety in numbers. We told her she was wrong, and for the millionth time, she was right. And the only person who didn't do that was—"
"The pussy-whipped vampire," Kennedy finished with a sneer. "I still say we were right. Just because he was trying to get on her good side even more, he—"
"Shut up, Kennedy." Willow had been prepared to say it herself, as much as she hated to, but it was Xander who had spoken against the girl. "You wanna learn a lesson about being a leader? About being Chosen? First lesson, have some humility." He stood up and crumpled the paper plate into a ball. "Spike saved my ass, sure, but he saved yours, too. I don't care what you thought of him before that, but now, shut your damned mouth. Admit when you're wrong." He took a few steps away, then turned to look at her, aiming the barb he knew would strike truest, hurt most.
"Buffy would have known better."
~~~
"Wow, was that ever stupid." Buffy mopped her eyes with a paper towel from the roll hanging beside the sink and looked at Kelly. "I hope you came up with a really good excuse for me. Like… 'She has multiple personalities. It looks like one of them is sad today.'"
Kelly laughed despite herself. She wanted to suggest Buffy get help, but what kind of help could she get? She couldn't very well go to a psychologist and tell them the true story. For the truth, she'd easily be committed as insane.
"I'm sorry," Buffy finally said, sweeping her hair out of her face with one hand and tilting her head thoughtfully. "You know, I made it almost two weeks this time."
"What?"
"It's been almost two weeks since I did that. Cried at random." Though she was smiling about it, Kelly's heart ached for her. She looked as though she had more to say, so Kelly sat back and prepared to listen.
"I was okay… but I had this dream last night." She described, as best she could, the two men in the darkness, the plans they were making, things she didn't understand. "And then one looked up… and it was though he was staring straight at me." Buffy shivered as the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. "And his eyes…" She heard her voice tremble and laughed. "There I almost went again."
"What about his eyes?" Kelly prompted gently. She might not be a psychologist, but the least she could do it help Buffy get it out of her system.
"They were Spike's." She rubbed a hand over her face, exhausted and embarrassed. "I'm just stressed."
Kelly thought not. She'd been reading, doing research, and she had figured out a long time ago that none of her dreams were just dreams. They always meant something, indicated something. More often than not, they indicated something wrong. But she would do a little more research, ask around, see what she came up with.
Kelly also thought it was high time she found some of the other people who had been through the Sunnydale battle.
If Buffy was going to be helped, it had to be a two-front war.
~~~
Spike sucked in a breath, his cheekbones standing starkly from his face. "My soul, eh? Awfully dear for a toll road, don't you think?"
The Hub shrugged negligently and took another pull from his flask as though it made no difference to him. But he was hungry for this one, even if—
"What do you do with them? What do you want with my soul?" But the gears in Spike's head were already turning. The soul didn't matter as much as it could have. Sure, he'd fought to get it back, but he'd proven he could love without it, and love quite well. He could love without a soul and with a demon. And his soul belonged to her. No matter what this twisted highway robber did with it, it would always belong to her.
"Where do you think I get all my pretty masks?" the Hub said petulantly, sounding like a child. Sounding, Spike thought with a shudder, like Dru. "And oh, what fun I'll have with your pretty face." He morphed into a woman with a cloud of strawberry blond hair and piercing green eyes. "The ladies love men who look like you. Haunted eyes and all that hair." She tipped a wink even as she turned back into the Brooklyn rum-runner.
"Fine," Spike said. "I'm sick of nattering about it, just get the matter over with."
Laramie's breath was taken away by the rashness, by the sheer determination of the man. He had tried to use the Hub when Katya was turned, but couldn't bring himself to do it. He was too used to his soul, but moreover… moreover, if he were taken from this dimension, someone might kill her.
The Hub rubbed his hands together and stopped with a sharp clap. "Let's rock and roll," he said gleefully, manufacturing a piece of paper out of thin air. "Sign on the dotted line, my friend."
The minute Spike picked up the pen to sign, he vanished completely.
So did Ramie.